Unfinished, page 23
“After all that, he still did not want to intervene,” Abigail said.
“Because he knew better.”
“He knew nothing,” she said.
Imogen understood. She could see it in Abigail’s eyes. “So you avoided them—and avoided the world—because you were afraid?”
“We prepared. At least, that is what we thought we did. That is what we told ourselves we did. I prepared by guiding my people, but even that wasn’t enough. I prepared by trying to draw them into the world, helping them find a different way. But they were lost, much like me.” She glanced over at Imogen. “And Benji … he trained his people in a different way. He decided that there were other ways of teaching. It wasn’t about taking his power, but harnessing that which exists in the world.”
Imogen could easily imagine Benji doing this. It was the same way that he had tried to teach her. Hadn’t he demonstrated that the power didn’t come from him but from everything around him? He might be magic, but it was the power that he had demonstrated to her, power that came from everything that he had shown her, that really mattered. It wasn’t about his magic.
But then he had gifted her something. Imogen could still feel it if she closed her eyes. That energy was there, lingering within her. If she closed her eyes, she could focus; she could feel that connection to Benji, and she could feel that there was something that he had granted her, some connection to power that had not been there before.
Was it that different from what the Sul’toral chased?
What she had to do was find a way of harnessing it.
It couldn’t be a coincidence that Benji had trained those who could overpower a Sul’toral. It had to be the reason he and the other Porapeth descendants had wanted the Leier to learn how to fight magic.
“So now what?” Imogen asked.
Abigail looked over at her. “My path became hazy. I believed that my time was at an end. And I have been trying to avoid that fate.” She looked up at the sky. “You cannot understand what it’s like to have lived in this world as long as I have, to have seen what I have, and to have influenced in the way that I have, only to know that it’s coming to an end. You have no idea what it feels like to feel that the answers are there, just at the edge of my understanding, only to not be able to grasp them.”
“I don’t know what Benji was after, and I certainly don’t know what he was trying to do, but I do not feel that it was his attempt to prolong anything that was not supposed to be prolonged.”
Abigail watched her. “You cannot understand.”
“Perhaps not,” Imogen said. “And perhaps I never can. But I’m not exactly sure that it matters. Benji wanted me to see something, and he wanted me to know the truth in a way that you can’t show me.”
“What do you intend to do?” Abigail asked.
Imogen had been concerned Abigail might try to do something to her, that she might try to either stop her or take the power that Benji had given her. “What do you intend to do?”
“I’m not stopping you, Imogen Inaratha.”
“No. You’re hiding, and now you’re using Lilah as bait. And all that does is put you, and everything else, in even more danger, doesn’t it?” Imogen could feel Zealar trying to connect to her. There was an urgency to it, and she realized that they were going to need to get moving. The renral seemed to have detected something. “Do you know what the difference was between you and Benji? I don’t know much about what happened between you long ago, but he obviously still cared about you enough to try to help you. And I suspect he was trying to help you. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have brought us together. Benji understood that if he couldn’t see something, it didn’t mean the end. He didn’t fear what he couldn’t see. It was simply another challenge to him. But you’ve chosen to run from what you can’t see. You’ve chosen to hide. And it makes you weak.”
“Perhaps if you live long enough, you will understand the truth,” Abigail said.
“I’m not even sure if that’s true. Now it seems as if my task is to stop the Sul’toral so that I can save my people and, in doing so, free the power of Sarenoth.” It was a strange change from when she had first learned about the Sul’toral and the kind of power they possessed. That had been a time when she hadn’t needed to fight on her own. Gaspar and the Chain Breaker could help, but there were others as well. The Toral Jayna could help, if she was willing. But all were too far from her. “But I will start with one. I will start with Aneadaz.”
An idea came to her, though she wasn’t sure if it would work.
Aneadaz called upon the power of a Porapeth.
It was a power that Imogen knew. Not in the same way that he did, and perhaps she never could know it in that way, especially as he had held on to that power for a long time. But she had seen how a different kind of power could counter what he could do. It would be unexpected—and something he couldn’t see.
She had the renral. Not only Zealar but other renral. And if they were able to work quickly enough, powerfully enough, then perhaps it might even be enough.
“You can’t stop him,” she said. “Not by yourself.”
Imogen looked over at Abigail, who had turned back and was facing the mounded remains of the home. Imogen suspected that this was the home that she had shared with Benji, before whatever had happened between them had taken place.
“You could help,” Imogen said.
“I am not getting involved,” Abigail said.
“Because you choose not to.”
“Because I recognize the danger if I do.”
“You can still help. You have remained involved all this time, and only now, because of your fear, you have chosen not to?”
“As I said before, if you live long enough, you may come to understand that fear yourself.”
“If I live long enough and begin to understand that fear, perhaps it will be time for me to pass on.” In the back of her mind, Imogen could practically feel Benji laughing. “And Benji agrees.”
She had started forward when Abigail grabbed her wrist. Imogen felt strength in her grip, and there was a bit of energy, heat, and something that reminded her of Tree Stands in the Forest, though she wasn’t exactly sure why. She could feel the way that Abigail was calling upon that power, some aspect of it that reminded her of how she held on to that, but she could not tell what Abigail did. Her magic was not quite the same as that which Benji had used.
“If you talk to him…”
“Benji?”
Abigail held her gaze. “Tell him that I’m sorry.”
Imogen looked up at the sky. “You can tell him yourself. He’s not gone. I still hear him, and unfortunately, I even see him from time to time. That is how he has changed. It’s how you will eventually change, if you stop fearing it. You are Porapeth. You are magic. And I don’t know that magic can be destroyed. I don’t know if magic can end.”
Abigail watched her, and there was a brief flicker in her eyes, a hope that shone.
“You’re afraid of dying,” Imogen said softly.
“I have lived a long time,” Abigail said. “I have seen the end of the rest of my kind. At least, all but Benji. He was the last. And now you’re telling me that he’s not even gone.”
“Not really,” Imogen said. She smiled at another thought. “And his lessons are going to live on, so Benji will never truly die. He taught me ways of accessing the sacred patterns that will be handed down to others.”
“Your people have tried to access your sacred patterns for a long time, and none of them have succeeded.”
“And I don’t know why. But I wonder if Benji knew something or suspected something. Regardless, it’s up to me to prepare the others.” Imogen took in a deep breath before letting it out. “Either you can choose to fear death—and I’ll be honest, there are many people I have known who fear death—or you can choose to recognize that it is part of life, and do what you can with the time that you have.”
“You don’t fear it?”
It seemed a real question, and Imogen knew that Abigail deserved a real answer.
“I don’t want to die. And if I were able to do anything to keep from dying, of course I would do it, but there are some things worse than dying,” she said, glancing over at Lilah before turning her attention to the renral.
She started forward, and Zealar got up, shaking out his massive inky wings. He stretched, and his feathers tilted enough that Imogen could feel the wind flowing over them in some way. It was a strange thing for her to be aware of, strange that she could feel that wind and the contours of it as it flowed over the surface of the feathers. It was stranger still that she could feel the way power worked through him and into her.
The connection was considerable, significant in the way it flowed, building between the two of them, bridging and forming something greater than it had been before. And as she focused on it, she knew that gave her an advantage that she had not had before. If she could find a way to connect to other renral, perhaps that would be enough for her to stop Aneadaz. Maybe that would be enough for her to overwhelm the rest of the Sul’toral.
At least now she had an understanding of something that she needed to do.
Stop the Sul’toral.
Free the power that was trapped.
And then…
Then she didn’t know. Perhaps then her people could live without fearing magic.
Abigail flowed toward her, and Imogen glanced over at her. Was she going to come with them?
“What’s worse than dying?” Abigail asked.
Imogen smiled tightly. “I can’t believe you have to ask that. You’ve lived a lot longer than anybody has a right to live, and yet you still don’t know.”
When Abigail said nothing, Imogen shook her head. “It would be worse not to live.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
INTERLUDE
The forest encircled her. Imogen could have sworn that she had come this way on the way toward Loruv, but this time, there had been a blockade that had prevented her from passing through the forest as easily as she remembered. Outside the city, she had encountered several different enchantments, and Imogen had been tempted to cut through them, but she had refrained. If there was one thing she had uncovered while she had been in Loruv, it was that there would always be another enchantment. Much like there would always be another sorcerer. Perhaps that was the lesson that Master Liu had hoped that she would learn by sending her out on this bond quest.
A wolf howled, its sound mournful out in the forest, and she leaned against one of the trees, resting her back against the trunk as she listened to the wolf, along with the sounds of the forest around her. She had not seen any other travelers this way. When she had left the city, she had headed east—at least, she had believed that she was heading east, but now that she was in the forest, she had found herself turned around.
Heading away from her homeland had been easy. She had found a road, and she had taken it, using that to guide her, as if she could simply find her bond quest in that manner. In some ways, she wondered if the bond quest itself had pulled upon her like some mystical force drawing her away from her homeland and toward her destiny. Now that she’d completed it, she had been left aimless.
Did that mean that she was meant to do something else? Perhaps she should take on another bond quest. A bond quest was supposed to be difficult. It was meant to challenge one of the Leier, not only to force them to learn aspects of the blade that had been hidden from them, but also to help them uncover some aspect of themselves.
What did it mean that Imogen’s bond quest had taken her less than a few years?
It seemed that was not long enough.
She pulled her blade out and rested it on her lap. She stared down at it. The metal was as gleaming as it had been when she had first been given the blade. It was smooth, and she ran her hands along the blade, wishing that she had been notched, but perhaps that didn’t matter. She had put so much into the idea of having a notched blade that she had made it into something almost supernatural. Having traveled to Loruv and having worked with the others, Imogen had come to know that her level of swordsmanship exceeded that of those found in the outside world by a significant margin. What did it matter if she did not have a notch?
She closed her eyes, letting her mind wander. But she kept coming back to a single thought. It mattered because she was not one of the greatest swordsmen.
And she never would be.
That thought hurt in ways that it probably should not. There was always somebody hoping to get better, faster, and more skilled among the Leier. Imogen had felt that way, and it had been that desire that had driven her, helping to push her so that she could become something more and greater, but maybe she should be satisfied with the idea that she was still one of the most skilled swordsmen in the world. Not only that, but she had used her skill to help train others and prepare them to handle the dangers of magic.
When she had left, all had wished her well. All but Ruhid, who hadn’t even seen her off.
That had hurt. They had been close, and she had believed that he had wanted what was best for her, but when she had chosen something other than him, he had taken it as a personal insult when that had not been her intent. Why couldn’t he understand that she wanted something more for herself, which she couldn’t find in Loruv? Why did he think that she needed to stay and help him accomplish his goals while sacrificing her own?
She drifted, and when she came awake, she got back to her feet and wandered. She spent the next few days seemingly following the path, though Imogen wasn’t even sure if the path that she believed she followed was the path that she actually intended to follow. She thought it was taking her toward the Leier homeland, but she didn’t know.
She was nearly a week outside Loruv when she reached the edge of the forest.
It was late, and dark enough that Imogen couldn’t see the horizon, so she wasn’t able to tell which direction she’d been heading in. The forest had been too dense for her to see the rising sun, so she had no good idea of how she had been moving, but she thought she had been traveling in the right direction. She was moving into the darkness, wanting to get a better start on reaching the homeland, when she saw fire crackling in the distance.
It was the first sign of life that she had encountered since leaving Loruv.
Her hand went to the hilt of her sword, as it often did when she thought she was threatened, but perhaps that was a mistake. Imogen had no idea who or what was out there, but other than the occasional howling from a wolf, the chirping of birds, the buzzing of insects, she had not heard anything or anyone. There had certainly not been any sense of magic.
She picked her way forward, and when she reached a set of boulders, she stepped toward the firelight.
No one was there.
Something pressed into her back. “Now, what do we have here?” The voice was deep, a little gruff, and she understood what had happened.
Here she had thought that she was going to sneak up on whoever had the fire crackling, but instead, they had noticed her coming and set a trap.
She didn’t move. “I don’t have anything of value.”
“I’m not here to rob you,” the man said. “Are you here to rob me?”
“I’m not a thief.”
“Anyone can be a thief. It just takes the right attitude and mindset.”
She started to move, but she felt the knife press into her back just a little bit more. She relaxed.
“Then what are you doing out here?”
“Heading home,” she said.
“Home? You don’t sound like you are from around here.”
“I am not.”
“Though you’re dressed like it.”
“I’m heading east.”
She waited for him to say something more, figuring that if she could find the right moment, she might be able to turn this to her advantage. It wouldn’t take much, she didn’t think. All she had to do was take a step, and she could unsheathe her blade and easily gain the upper hand—assuming that this man didn’t have somebody else with him. She wasn’t sure. She hurriedly scanned the fire site, looking for signs of how many were here, but she couldn’t discern anything. As far as she could tell, there had been none here.
Not only had he sensed her coming, but he had done so with enough time that he’d managed to clean up any evidence of how many there were.
How could he have done that?
Magic.
That had to be it.
“What are you? Sorcerer? Enchanter?”
She had some experience with both now, and so she felt this was a reasonable question to ask.
He started to laugh. “Enchanter? Is that what I look like?”
“I don’t know what you look like.”
The man shoved her forward, and Imogen staggered before spinning, blade coming out in a single fluid movement. The man standing across from her held a pair of knives, and he did so with a fluid comfort that suggested that he was capable of using them. A knife was a dangerous weapon in the right hands. Someone who was comfortable with knives could easily toss one, and with the right attack, it could injure her before she had a chance to counter.
“You’re awfully skilled with that blade.”
“I am,” she said.
The man grunted. “Good. The road gets dangerous. You’re going to want to be able to protect yourself.”
“What kind of dangers?” She hadn’t seen anything, but then again, Imogen had been traveling through the forest, so it was possible that whatever danger he anticipated that she would find still had yet to reveal itself.
“Oh, the kind that can get you into trouble if you’re not careful. Then again, you strike me as somebody who’s careful. Aren’t you?”
“I am.”
“And you said you were traveling east?” The man flicked his gaze off in the opposite direction to the one Imogen thought she needed to go in. Could she really have gone that far astray? “It gets more dangerous that way.”
“I can handle it,” she said.
