The Red Wrath, page 11
part #3 of Storyweaver Series
He raced forward, and when he reached the ruins, he felt something.
He still held his blade out, and he could still feel the power within it, but it seemed to him that whatever was up here was different from the barrow-wights.
A different threat. Perhaps a more dangerous one.
Lan moved slowly then.
When he reached the outskirts of the stone ring that formed the temple ruins, he slowed.
He saw legs.
For a moment, he was brought back to when his grandmother had been killed. He had seen her legs like this.
He hurried forward and saw an older woman, dressed all in green, holding something in her hand. He didn’t need to bend down to realize what it was.
A wand.
Karell?
Why would one of them be out here?
It wasn’t Thea.
At least, not the one who was dead.
But what if she was responsible for this?
The barrow-wights. Thea. The Shavln.
It had to be all connected.
They had been looking for evidence of what was going on and trying to make sense of what somebody like Thea would be after, even though Lan still didn’t know if he had it right. Regardless, there was power here that he still did not fully understand, power that he was left feeling like he needed to understand, and…
He realized that he had overlooked something.
A darkness began to swirl toward him.
Lan rolled to the side, aiming his sword.
It was a foolish approach, he knew.
But as soon as he did, pale light shot out of the end of it. It wasn’t something that Lan had intended, nor was it something that he had any control over, but as it spilled out from the end of the blade, he heard a scream.
He popped up to his feet, drawing upon his connection to the Heart of the Grove, thinking that if nothing else, he needed to have that power in him, but…
He didn’t see anything.
That wasn’t quite right.
Another body. Another Karell.
He didn’t feel any strange pressure around him any longer, though. Whatever had killed these people—and there were three others, for a total of five Karell ringing the inside of the ruins—was gone.
He turned, looking for any trail, footsteps, or anything to tell him what had happened here, and how he was going to have to deal with it.
Nothing.
“What is it?” Magnus asked as he approached.
Lan motioned toward one of the fallen Karell. “I don’t know. Somebody is targeting them, though.”
“Or they were just caught out by the barrow-wights.”
“I would say so, but it’s not the first time.”
“No,” Magnus said, frowning as he looked around. “I suppose that it’s not. What does it mean?”
Lan shrugged, sweeping his gaze around. In the distance, out in the night, the Taihg were finishing with the barrow-wights. They were not a dangerous threat. They were easily killed. They were a distraction.
A distraction from whatever had happened here.
“I don’t know, but I think it’s time I headed back to the Raven Queen.”
Chapter 10
SOPHIE
Sophie sat back, looking at the notebook that she’d been keeping. She found herself far more intrigued by what she had found in the children’s library than she had expected to be, though perhaps she shouldn’t have been surprised by that. The library had plenty of old stories—and many of them were so old that they were variations of stories that she had heard as she’d grown up, though not all of them. There were quite a few books that the librarian had brought her that were new to her. Not new in general. These were all incredibly old books, so Sophie knew that none of them contained new stories, but they were new to her, which meant that they gave her an opportunity to look into things that she had never even thought about before.
This was part of the reason that she had brought a notebook the second time that she’d come to the library. Sophie had needed to take notes, as she wasn’t allowed to take the books out of the library.
The first thought that she had when going through some of these books was that her nana would have been thrilled to have an opportunity to come to a library like this and read some of the books here. She would have been amazed by how many stories could be found here.
The second thought she had was that it seemed impossible that there were so many stories.
The challenge that Sophie had was in piecing together what she uncovered, and discerning whether there was any way in which she might be able to use the information. There had to be some meaning here, but every time she read a story, she realized it had only hints of a greater truth. Some of the older stories were just like the librarian had claimed—a little dark and a little scary. Sophie skimmed through those, looking for any reference to the gods, but she had found nothing. There were some that did reference gods, but not by name. They spoke about darkness. They spoke about the sun. They spoke about a mother. All of those were terms for gods, she had realized. Nothing used the names of the gods.
She leaned back, tapping her quill pen on her scroll. It was late, and she knew that it was getting close to closing time. This library wasn’t open nearly as late as the palace library, not that she would expect late opening times for a children’s library. The other librarians had come to learn why she was here and had offered their services, especially after Nevarn had spoken to them. It irritated Sophie that she would need Nevarn for such a thing, but at the same time, if he hadn’t spoken to them, Sophie wouldn’t have been given quite as extensive access as she had been.
“Are you going to keep sitting there?” Nevarn asked, leaning on his elbows. “I’m getting tired, and my eyes are burning, and the sound of these children screaming is just getting to be too much.” He lowered his voice as he said the last, sweeping his gaze around the library before he turned his attention back to Sophie. “And considering that we told the librarian that you were telling stories to the children later this week, we’re going to run out of time here.”
“I keep thinking that we will find something,” Sophie said. “But…”
“But you’ve got a notebook filled with notes about random names of entities, but nothing that actually speaks about gods.”
She nodded. “It’s incredibly maddening,” she said.
“What if your theory is wrong?”
“Maybe I’m going about this the wrong way,” Sophie said, clasping her hands over her stomach as she looked at the stack of books. All of them were thin enough that she could read them quickly. She’d gone through hundreds of stories over the last few days, and none of them had revealed anything of use. Then again, she had enjoyed them. They were stories. That alone was enough for her to enjoy what she was doing. This was the kind of research that she liked, not what she had been doing in the palace. “We are looking for the gods, but maybe they aren’t going to be found in children’s stories. Maybe the right place for them is someplace else. Older kids?”
“You have these,” Nevarn said, motioning toward a stack of longer stories, but nothing there had really been of use, either. Sophie had skimmed through them, finding nothing.
“I know,” she said. “And maybe I’m failing here. I don’t really know if we’re going to find anything else, and if not, I suppose that I should just be thankful that I had an opportunity to come here and read some of these older stories.”
“That’s all that you care about?”
“Well, it has distracted me a little bit from my studies, so I suppose I’ve enjoyed it a little. I’ve been so focused on my poses and everything that Parvella has been teaching me that it’s nice to have a distraction.”
Nevarn leaned toward her, frowning. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on,” Sophie said.
“You need a distraction from learning sorcery?” He still kept his voice quiet, but he said the last a little bit louder than Sophie wanted. She was tempted to use the prayer pose against him and knock him back, but Nevarn had been helpful over the last few days, and she didn’t want to take her frustration out on him.
“I don’t need a distraction from it,” Sophie said, shaking her head. “It’s just that I kept thinking that I was going to learn something useful.”
“I would say everything that you’ve been able to do so far is useful.”
“It’s useful. It’s sorcery,” Sophie said, and she wrapped a bit of the gilan pose power around them, shielding them from anybody else hearing what they were saying, as she didn’t need any of the librarians or the children listening in on this conversation. “It’s just that as I have continued to develop my sorcery and progress with my skill, I keep thinking I might be able to do something meaningful with it, but your mother hasn’t asked me to do anything.”
“My mother takes care of most things,” he said, waving his hand. He sat up and seemed to realize that she had placed a barrier around them. He frowned. “You did that without me even noticing.”
“Why should you be able to notice something like that?”
“I have been trained in some aspects of sorcery,” he said. “Remember when I taught you how to use the piasa pose on yourself?”
“How could I forget? You did it when I was nearly corrupted by the same power that had corrupted you.”
He frowned. “I didn’t know that I was corrupted. And I did help you, if that’s any consolation.”
Sophie nodded, and it did raise a question for her. She had used the pose on herself and had forced it outward. That power should have restored him at that time as well. Then again, Sophie might not have used enough power, and even if she had, he might have been too deeply corrupted for her pose to have been of much use to him.
“We can go,” Sophie said.
“Are you sure? I am perfectly happy to stay here with you as long as you need. Well, ‘perfectly happy’ might not be exactly right. I’m hungry, and every time I bring pastries out, the librarians get agitated. I’m the prince.”
“I think they don’t feel too strongly about you being the prince when it comes to following the rules of the library.” She looked over at the stack of books that she had not needed to pay for and realized that wasn’t exactly right. “Well, most of the time.”
She got to her feet, locked eyes with the librarian who was nearest her, and nodded. The man came scurrying over, looking at the stack of books piled on the table.
“Will you be needing these tomorrow?”
Sophie shook her head. “Thank you. We now have everything we need to help the children.”
He smiled tightly, looked over at Nevarn, and bowed his head more deeply. “Anything for the prince.”
Nevarn sniffed. “Anything but letting me eat pastries,” he muttered, though Sophie wondered if she was the only one who heard it.
The librarian scooped the books off the table and made his way back behind the barrier, leaving Sophie and Nevarn alone.
She packed up her notebook, slipped the pen and ink into her pouch, and looked around. The children’s library was comfortable, and it was nice enough that she had enjoyed the time that she had spent here, so it did feel a little strange knowing that she really wasn’t going to come back. At the same time, she wasn’t sure that she could return, and even if she did, she doubted that she would find anything of use. It was time for her to move on.
She couldn’t shake the idea that she was right about the stories, though. There had to be something there. It was just that whatever she could find out about the gods may not come through the children’s stories. There were some stories that were designed for older people.
And none of the stories had been like the ones that her grandmother had told her.
Maybe what I need to find is a Nana.
She smiled at that thought.
“What is it?” Nevarn asked as they stepped out of the library and into the street.
Daylight was fading, with the sun starting to set over the buildings in the distance. There was activity in the street, and music drifted from one section of the city. She smelled roasted meats and nuts and sweet treats.
A festival?
“I was just thinking that my nana might have known something, so it’s really too bad that I don’t have her to go to for help with this.”
“Well, if she was a Karell, maybe hers are the kinds of stories that they pass down.”
Sophie frowned. “I don’t really want to go to the Karell about this.”
“They aren’t all like Thea,” he said.
“I know,” Sophie said softly.
“Most of them are probably more like your nana. Or Oleda. You liked her.”
Sophie nodded. It was strange to have Nevarn bring up Oleda, partly because it was strange for her to talk to anybody about her. She missed Oleda. At least, she missed her when she thought about her.
But then again, she missed others that she had met in the palace what seemed like an eternity ago. Dannith. Ridaln, even.
So many that she had left behind. And Darius was still there, people that she had cared about, people that she had known, stuck under his rule. Was there anything she could do about that?
Probably not without having the Raven Queen’s approval. Sophie couldn’t risk herself, and even if she were to do so, she wasn’t trained enough to handle Darius. As far as she knew, Darius would recognize it the moment that she entered his land.
What she needed was help.
And knowing that Dannith was moving—and that Ridaln was with him—she wondered whether that was the kind of help that she needed.
She was bothered by all of this, but she wasn’t about to say that to Nevarn, especially since anything that she said to him would get back to his mother, and that was not something that she wanted at this point—not until she felt more strongly about what was going on.
She made her way back toward the palace with Nevarn following. By the time she reached it, she still wasn’t convinced about what she needed to do. She was supposed to find information about the gods and continued to fail, but she believed that there had to be something more to uncover, but it was too difficult for her at this point.
When she reached the main entrance of the palace, she froze.
“Lan?”
Her brother turned toward her.
He looked larger than the last time she had seen him. He had filled out.
Maybe it was more than that, though. It wasn’t just muscle that she saw on him. It was also the energy that was within him. He was glowing. She marveled at that, especially as the last time she had seen him, he hadn’t glowed quite so much.
“Sophie,” he said. “They said you were out, and they invited me in to wait, but I didn’t want to. I figured I would wait for you out here. I hoped that I would see you, and…” He flicked his gaze over to Nevarn, his expression clouding for a moment. He bowed his head slightly. “Prince Nevarn.”
“Lan,” Nevarn said.
“If you don’t mind, I would like to talk to my sister.”
Nevarn seemed to consider this for a moment, and given his comments over the last few days, Sophie wasn’t sure if he was going to make a point of forcing Lan to let him stick around, but thankfully, he smiled at Sophie and tipped his head slightly. “I will find you later, Sophie.”
She nodded. “Thanks for your help today. Well, thanks for your help all week.”
“And thank you for giving me a chance.”
With that, Nevarn walked away, leaving Sophie with her brother.
Lan’s gaze followed Nevarn as he entered the palace, lingering on the closed door for a long moment. He seemed to glow more brightly, and then, as he turned back to Sophie, the glowing faded ever so slightly.
“Would you like to walk?” Lan asked.
“I imagine you just got to the city,” Sophie said. “And I can’t imagine that you want to walk, considering you must have traveled quite a way.”
He chuckled. “You know, you can just ask me where I’ve been.”
“I will.”
“You don’t want to walk?”
“If that’s what you prefer, but I do have this notebook and some ink, and I’d like to put them away.”
Lan nodded, and Sophie considered whether she would run up to her room and leave her belongings there, but she decided against it. It was nice to see him.
“I got your letter,” she said.
“Letter?”
“You sent me a letter telling me that you were coming to the city.”
“How long ago?”
That was a strange question, but not one that Sophie was going to argue with Lan about. “Not long. I thought it strange you would send a letter of all things.”
He snorted, before shaking his head. “And it wasn’t even my idea, though I should be better reaching out, Sophie. We’ve been apart… well, far too long. With our family gone, we only have each other.”
“So why did you write it?”
“At the queen’s suggestion.”
“The Raven Queen?” That seemed an odd thing for her to do, though there were many things that the Raven Queen did that seemed odd to Sophie. Though admittedly, Sophie needed Lan. Not as the Taihg soldier—there were plenty of soldiers around if she needed protection, something that was much less necessary these days—but she still needed her brother. They were supposed to take care of each other.
“That’s why I came to you,” he said. “I need your help.”
Sophie frowned at her brother before glancing up at the palace. “The Raven Queen has me researching some things, but she hasn’t involved me in anything. Are you sure that she wants me to be a part of this?”
“Not entirely, but seeing as the two of us work better together, I think it is wise that we do.”
“And you want to get away from the palace to talk about it,” Sophie said.
He shrugged.
Sophie sighed, clutching her notebook up against her. “Let’s walk,” she said. As she did, she formed the prayer pose and erected it around them. “We should be safe now.”
