The Guild Secret (The Dark Ability Book 6) (20 page)

He still couldn’t Slide.

The man from Venass approached, walking around the outside of the others, careful not to cross through the ring of the four men surrounding Rsiran. “You made a mistake in coming here, guildlord.”

Guildlord. That meant they knew about him. They knew what he could do, as well, and had prepared for it, figuring out some way to keep him from Sliding. Or so they thought. Rsiran had a trick remaining, one that even his grandfather wouldn’t expect.

“The council made a mistake if it thinks that siding with Venass will help them achieve what they want.”

“Do you really think you know the mind of the council?” the man said.

“I don’t know the council. I know that you won’t be able to reach the crystals.”

The man from Venass smiled. Rsiran waited before doing anything else. He needed to know more about what they intended, and this was the best chance that he had. If he did manage to Slide away, he would lose his chance to find out what they wanted from him, if anything. It was possible that they only wanted him dead now.

“The crystals,” the man said. “You have prevented access for now, but that will not stand once the rest of your Elder Trees fail.”

So that was it. Venass thought to destroy the remaining Elder Trees. Rsiran didn’t know if they could, but they had managed to destroy one of them, and damage another. The protections that he placed around them might not be enough for the trees to remain intact. The guilds would have to change their focus, and protect the trees.

“They will not fail. Venass thinks they understand power, but they do not. They know there is power in the world that they seek to possess, but what they don’t understand is how to use that power, to have the wisdom to recognize that they are not all powerful…”

“You’re a fool, blacksmith. You haven’t the knowledge or the experience to stop what we have been planning for decades.”

The attacker pulled another two spheres from his pocket and held them up.

Rsiran eyed them. He could stop one, but would he be able to withstand two?

If he couldn’t manage to Slide, it wouldn’t matter.

Rsiran
pushed
on the remaining knives that he had with him. Three were heartstone, and they streaked toward the men surrounding him. The others were lorcith. Rsiran managed to hit two of the men, but the knives didn’t penetrate very far, managing only to catch them in the shoulders. None of the men winced; none of them even moved.

That left him out of weapons.

The man from Venass smiled. “Now, I think you are fully disarmed. Unfortunate. We thought so long on how best to trap you, but it became clear there would be only one outcome when it came to you. A shame. I still think we could have learned much from you.”

He brought the spheres together.

These weren’t like the other ones. By bringing them together, they would work like the ones Rhan had used when he had nearly killed Rsiran.

He tried Sliding, but they still prevented him somehow. Was it the spheres? Some secret of shadowsteel that he didn’t know?

Rsiran
pulled
, drawing toward the place in between Slides, and felt himself begin to ooze away, but he would be too slow. They held him fixed in place, unable to move.

The spheres would reach him before he could get away.

Rsiran felt it as part of him managed to reach the place in between Slides. As he did, power began to flood into him, power that he drew upon from the Elder Trees. Awareness of lorcith flooded into him, combined with something that Luthan had once said about the stone in the palace.

The heartstone that was added to the stone for the building had become something different. Travelstone. Could he call on it as he did heartstone and lorcith?

He
pulled
on it, using the strength of the Elder Trees to fuel him. Chunks came free from the wall, and he directed them at the men surrounding him. Two of the men fell. The resistance to Sliding disappeared.

Rsiran finished his Slide, and stepped into the space in between.

R
siran paused long enough
to let power flood into him. As usual, the power that filled him left him restored and strengthened, and wishing that he could use that power on the other side rather than only here.

But he had used it, hadn’t he? He had paused in between the Sliding, pulled partway so that he could reach only a part of the Slide, with part of him on this side where he accessed that energy. Could he do that again? Could he be half in one part of the Slide and half in another? If he could, then he would have access to power that even Venass wouldn’t be able to understand. He might even manage to contain shadowsteel and prevent the shadowsteel spheres from harming him.

How had he overlooked the possibility that the Elvraeth might be working with Venass?

He had wanted to believe that the Elvraeth wanted peace for the city, but what they really wanted was their power to be secured, and they viewed the guilds as a threat to their power.

He couldn’t delay here for too long.

And he needed to return, but to where?

The palace. He needed to know who else in the palace might be a threat to him.

He hoped the guilds were safe.

Rsiran Slid back to the palace.

The halls were empty. Faint blue light glowed from the lanterns as well as from the heartstone set into the walls themselves. Restored by the Elder Trees, Rsiran felt the way the heartstone tugged at him. He could
pull
on it if he wanted. With enough strength, he wondered if he could bring the entire palace down.

Was that what it would take to keep the city itself safe?

Rsiran pushed the thought out of his mind, listening for anything that would make him think there were others from Venass here. He focused on lorcith and on heartstone, searching for them.

He Slid to the nearest source that he sensed and emerged in a small room. Three men looked up as he entered. One of them had a long scar of Venass. Hjan. Rsiran couldn’t tell about the others.

The Hjan quickly pulled a black sphere from his pocket.

Rsiran started to Slide, but paused halfway in the Slide, so that he was partway across the threshold where he could reach the Elder Trees’ power. He
pulled
on that strength and used it in a bolt of power that knocked the man back. He didn’t risk using the power on the shadowsteel sphere, not yet certain whether it would harm the trees.

The Hjan hit the wall with a soft thud. The sphere remained in his hand.

“Pick it up,” Rsiran said to the others.

Neither man moved. Rsiran used another bolt of power drawn from the Elder Trees and sent the nearest man flying back to the wall, where he crashed and landed next to the Hjan.

“Pick it up,” he said to the one man standing.

“Who are you?” the man asked. His medium green eyes widened as he watched Rsiran.

“I’m the guildlord. Now. Pick it up.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re going to destroy it.”

The man grunted. “You destroy it.” He lunged for him, but Rsiran had been ready. Using the power, he sent a bolt of power through the man, and he dropped to the ground.

The sphere remained in the hands of the unconscious Hjan. He had to find some way to prevent the sphere from being used on him.

The heartstone in the walls of the palace was the only thing that he could think of, but using that would take strength and care so as not to destroy too much of the building.

Remaining partially through the Slide, he
pulled
on the heartstone in the walls. The connection to heartstone had once been weak, and then it had been slippery, but the more he worked with it, the easier it became for him to use. Now, heartstone felt little different from lorcith, though he still didn’t have the same capacity to communicate with it.

The walls
pulled
away, slowly folding so that they reached the sphere in the Hjan’s hand. Rsiran wrapped the heartstone around the sphere, and withdrew it into the walls of the palace. Within a moment, it exploded, but the heartstone and the stone itself contained it.

Without the connection to the Elder Trees, Rsiran wouldn’t have been able to stop that sphere from damaging him—or possibly damaging others.

He listened for other senses of lorcith and heartstone, and Slid to the next that he detected.

Two men, neither Hjan and likely only the tchalit, waited in the hall.

Rsiran struck them down the same as he had the last.

The next room had another of the Hjan. Rsiran didn’t even attempt speaking to him, and used the power of the Elder Trees to attack him. He Slid on, again and again, each time drawing upon the power of the Elder Trees.

Finally, he reached a room on one of the upper floors.

Inside, he found Naelm. Three Hjan were with him, and Slid toward him the moment that Rsiran had entered, almost as if waiting for him.

Rsiran Slid partway,
pulling
on the Elder Trees, and disabled them with the same pulse of energy he had used on everyone else.

“Was this your idea?” he demanded of Naelm while
pulling
on the walls, curling them out so that they pulled the shadowsteel weapons into the walls. The Venass attackers didn’t move. They weren’t dead—not yet—though he considered using the iron fire poker in Naelm’s room to end them.

“Was what my idea?”

“Using Venass. Did you really think that you could use them to eliminate the guilds?”

Naelm’s face twisted. “The guilds have had too much power for too long.”

“The same can be said of the Elvraeth.”

“We were chosen by the Great Watcher to rule in Elaeavn. The guilds had their time and it is over.”

Naelm took a step to the side. Rsiran didn’t have any weapons to hold him in place, nothing other than the Elvraeth chains still wrapped around his arm.

He Slid to Naelm and slapped the chains onto him. With them in place, Rsiran could control him somewhat, and keep him from going anywhere.

Sliding back, a tingle ran up his back. There was something else that he sensed, equally familiar. Heartstone. He had detected this particular piece of heartstone before.

Rsiran spun.

Danis stood across from him.

Arrayed around him on the ground were a dozen shadowsteel spheres. They began spinning in a steady circle around him. Danis watched Rsiran, an interested gleam in his eyes.

“I am impressed. You have grown far more competent than I ever would have believed possible. Before you were troublesome. Now… now I think I have had enough.”

Rsiran
pulled
on the chains that he’d clasped onto Naelm. “I thought the Forgotten deserved their exile. Isn’t that what you claimed?”

Naelm crashed into Danis, but the spheres spinning around him did not falter, somehow parting long enough for Naelm to slip between them and then circled both of them. As they did, Rsiran’s connection to the chains disappeared.

He thought of Luthan, and the way that he had simply disappeared. Was the same trick used on him?

“What did you do with Luthan?” Rsiran asked.

Naelm pushed himself away from Danis and wiped his hands on his pants. “Luthan was a fool. Thought that he Saw something about you that benefited the council, and didn’t believe me when I told him there was no way that he could have. How can he See anything with the damned ability to Slide protecting you?”

“And Danis?”

Rsiran suspected that he only had a few more moments before whatever Danis intended would be complete. Once the sphere released, and if they attacked him, he doubted he would be able to stop all of them.

But he could try to contain them.

He
pulled
himself partway in a Slide, barely enough that Danis would even know. With that connection, he still had enough access to the Elder Trees. He used that power and
pulled
on the heartstone all around him, drawing chunks free from the walls, and sent them flying at the shadowsteel spheres. As they struck, they fell harmlessly to the ground, as if the shadowsteel managed to create an impenetrable barrier that Rsiran couldn’t reach beyond.

He
pulled
again, this time using the stone, dragging chunks free that he swung at Danis and Naelm. Again, they hit the barrier and failed.

Danis smiled darkly. “Impressive. But even your talents aren’t enough against the wisdom of Venass. Now that the Elvraeth recognize what we can offer…”

“You were exiled.”

“My
sister
was exiled,” Danis countered. “I chose to leave.”

Rsiran’s breath caught. Could that be true?

What had Della told him?

But he remembered what Della had told him. Evaelyn had used her abilities against someone in the city, and had been exiled for it. Danis had wanted to help her and had followed her from the city, only… only it was likely that Evaelyn had not wanted his help, and he had instead gone to Venass where he’d learned their way of using metals and acquiring abilities that they should not possess.

“And now you think to return?”

“The guilds have controlled access to the crystals for long enough. And we now know how to bypass the barriers they have placed.”

“Not all have been placed by the guilds.”

“No. There is still the matter of your barrier, but I don’t think that will pose as much of a problem as you believe.”

Rsiran shook his head. “You still think the crystals are the key to power,” he said. “That’s been the mistake the Elvraeth have made for centuries. They have resented the fact that the guilds protect the crystals, when in fact, the guilds have possessed the real power all along.”

“And soon, the guilds will be nothing more than a memory,” Danis said.

The spheres were spinning more rapidly now, something like a blur around him so that he couldn’t see anything more than streaks of black.

Rsiran wouldn’t be able to stop them, which meant he wouldn’t be able to reach his grandfather. All this time that he’d searched, and to be so close… only, were he to try anything else, he would risk the power of the Elder Trees. He refused to do that.

Danis watched him, that dark smile returning, almost as if he were Reading Rsiran, but the bracelets on his wrists made that impossible. Since putting them on, he hadn’t been Read or Compelled by anyone.

“I See that you are finally coming to realize what you face. You cannot win here, guildlord. Elaeavn is lost to you.”

He was right. If the council worked with Venass, and if Venass continued to place the shadowsteel spheres around the city, there was nothing that Rsiran could do until he discovered a way to remove them safely. That might involve using the power of the Elder Trees, but he didn’t know how shadowsteel would affect the trees’ power, and didn’t dare attempt anything with it until he did.

That meant retreating.

Even though he was so close, he could almost reach Danis.

The shadowsteels spun even faster, and Rsiran felt a strange burning along his skin. He glanced down and realized that shadowsteel started to coat him.

His heart hammered.

Would he even be able to Slide?

He had to escape, which meant that he had to try.

“The city might be lost for now,” Rsiran said quickly, “but the crystals will never be yours. And I will reclaim Elaeavn.”

“You will die, grandson.”

Rsiran shook his head as he
pulled
himself in a Slide. “Next time, grandfather.”