The Place of Knowing, page 25
part #5 of The Volatar Saga Series
“What was that?”
I turned, looking around. “Could it all be about the great powers.”
“What about them?”
“All of this. We been trying to better understand just what we might have been dealing with, but we haven’t been able to come up with the answers. Not nearly as well as what we want. What if this is somehow about the great powers?”
“How would it be about that?” Coldan asked.
“We have the Jahor. Bound to elaron, at least most of us are. Not all, but many. That’s not altogether that different than the tu’alan, though they can use more than just the elaron.”
“So?” Coldan asked.
“Then we have the Hith,” I said, trying to work through things. “They are more like the is’anish. The power that they possess, the belief that there is something greater within that.”
“Are you going to tell me there are people that are like the dwul’ran?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Much like I don’t know if there are people like the cera’an. Or the ger’thin.”
“The ger’thin can take on many forms,” Coldan reminded.
“I know. But if it’s tied to that, then…”
If it was tied together, then it would at least offer a level of explanation that we didn’t have before. I couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow I was onto something.
The Vicenz. They were tied to something.
Power. They had known how to use power, and especially how to use power that wasn’t theirs. That had to mean something.
I had to find the ger’thin.
That hadn’t changed. I had felt I needed to find the ger’thin so that I could defeat the Trilan, but now I began to question if I had an even greater reason to find them. I needed to better understand whether there were any people bonded to them. What if the Vicenz had been tied to the ger’thin?
The Vicenz served somebody higher than them.
It would make sense they would have done so. Why create a war between the Hith and the Jahor if the Vicenz intended to use both?
I held on to the power within me, probing out through the city, feeling the shifting energy that was here. That seemed significant to me. There was still that energy within the city. There was still something here that I could feel, which meant there was something here that I needed to take action on.
I turned to Nevii. “Did you ever learn about the Vicenz more than what they had shown you?”
“I have shown you the Vicenz,” she said.
“You have shown me part of the Vicenz,” I said. “Was there anything more that you might be able to remember about them?”
“What are you getting at, Hevith?”
I turned to Coldan. “We have believed that the ger’thin were battling with the tu’alan and the others. What if that wasn’t right?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if the ger’thin weren’t battling with all of the others of their kind?”
“Did you learn they were the ones who wanted to start a war with mankind?”
“They did,” I said, thinking about what the dwul’ran had said. “But did they really want to start a war with all of mankind, or was it only one particular kind of man?”
“I don’t understand,” Nevii said.
“When I was in the temple, I saw something. I saw the way that the people of that time had moved to this continent. I saw the way that your Hith began to build villages, then towns, then cities. I saw the temple rising up. In none of that did I see violence. In none of that did I see destruction. Not at all what I thought that I would see, especially considering what the is’anish had claimed.”
Was it even the is’anish that had claimed it, or was it from somewhere else? “I didn’t make the connection. I’m still not even sure if I’m right. But I wonder if our people. Your people. Moved away from something different.”
“What would they have moved away from?”
“Violence.”
“Violence?”
I nodded. “It seems to me that all of the different peoples we have encountered, the tu’alan, the dwul’ran, the is’anish, have all made a point of wanting nothing to do with men. What if that wasn’t always the case?”
From the visions that I had within the temple, I knew that hadn’t always been the case. “What if there was a time when they had been together?”
“Why would they have separated?” Coldan asked.
“I don’t know. They view us differently. We have such short lives compared to them, and perhaps they grew tired of us. Perhaps…”
Perhaps we had served them. And if we had served them, but no longer did, then they wouldn’t want to have us around. Where would I find those answers?
Perhaps nowhere.
There was one place that we hadn’t gone. It was a place I hadn’t visited in a long time, though perhaps it was time.
I looked over to Coldan. “It’s time for us to go back to Laranth.”
20
Volatar
A slight haze hung over everything. The air was cool, crisp, and despite that, not unpleasant. There was the ongoing sense of the elaron everywhere. Something I could feel all around me. On our journey north, I had been able to feel the growing sensation of the elaron in more places around us. Every so often, I would detect another surge of power, another flicker of the elaron that probed against me. Every so often, I would be aware of how that energy flashed more brightly in my mind.
Then it was gone. Disappeared. It left little trace behind, though I didn’t expect much more than what I had already detected.
I found myself looking all around me, searching for answers, searching for other Jahor. Without meaning to, I sent out the call I once had, a calling I had learned from the inestar. A device that had been made for us by the tu’alan.
What reason would the tu’alan have needed for a device like that? They had helped us, hadn’t they? Or had they?
I no longer knew.
All I knew was that we had been given something from the tu’alan, something that put my people in danger. We had believed it was valuable, and it had been. It had allowed me to learn how to summon the Jahor, to gather us together, to unify our people once again.
Had we made a mistake, though?
I didn’t want to think we had, but as I started to consider the power we had been given, the energy that had been lent to us, I couldn’t help but wonder whether or not that was the case.
I could feel the elaron swirling out around me.
“What are you doing?” Nevii asked.
She had taken to riding close to me every so often, and I couldn’t tell if it was out of curiosity or fear. I wondered if she worried that I might do something, wondered whether she thought I might trigger an attack on her people. I had no interest in harming her or her people. All I wanted was answers.
“I’m using the elaron in order to create a summons,” I said.
“For what purpose?”
“So I can better understand whether there are other Jahor still out here.” I looked off into the distance. It was difficult to see anything with the haze, but I could feel the energy that was here, and I was fully aware that there were others who had control over the elaron. It wasn’t only me. “After the war, the second war,” I added, “the Jahor were scattered. Most went into hiding. We feared what might happen to us.”
“We weren’t slaughtering the Jahor,” Nevii said.
“I’m not so certain,” I said. “It doesn’t even matter. All that matters is that my people were scattered.” She watched me, and I wondered if she recognized that I was sending out a summons using the elaron. How much of it was she able to feel?
Given that I had felt a hint of elaron throughout her with the entirety of our journey, I suspected she would be able to feel quite a bit of it, only she made no sign of it. Perhaps that was for the best. If she did, then I would have to try to explain what she was feeling and whether there was anything to it that she could utilize. I didn’t know if Nevii had any way of controlling the elaron, though I doubted that she would be able to master it.
Perhaps the key was that she would have some energy bound up within her, the same sort of energy that was bound up with Coldan. He was able to control his to a certain extent, though not nearly as well as Shae or Erich or me.
“Can you feel anything?” I asked.
“What should I feel?”
I shook my head. “I don’t really know. I am curious as to whether or not you can detect anything at all. It isn’t necessarily a subtle summons. When we were first using it, we suspected that the Hith were able to detect it.”
Now in hindsight, I had to believe it wasn’t the Hith that were able to detect it at all, but the Vicenz. If they were the ones that were responsible for all of this, then that was who we had to fully understand.
“I don’t feel anything,” she said.
As I watched her, I couldn’t tell if she was telling me the truth, but I wasn’t about to push her. There was no reason to torment her when it came to this.
We continued forward. The haze began to thicken, growing darker. The ongoing presence of elaron intensified, as well. I could feel it up in front of us. That was where we were heading.
“I’ve only been through here one other time,” I said.
“This city?”
I nodded. “The city. There was no need. When the Jahor were scattered, I brought them back together, but I visited Laranth, thinking that I might be able to learn something here. Unfortunately, what I found was that the people of Laranth didn’t want anything to do with the Jahor outside their city. They wanted to hide.”
“And so they hid,” she said.
I nodded. “And so they hid.”
“I get the sense that you are disappointed by that.”
“I’m disappointed by the fact that we would have no way for us to stay together.” I shook my head. “Even after we were scattered a second time, I never came back here.”
“Why not? If this was some place that mattered to you, then why would you not have returned?”
“Because this place itself wasn’t something that mattered to me. This place was the home of a people who wanted nothing to do with the Jahor that I knew.”
She watched me, and there was a twisted frown on her face. “You are an interesting man.”
“I wish that I weren’t,” I said.
“What do you wish you could have done?”
I stared into the distance. “I don’t even know. I look over to Coldan, and I see a man who wishes he had an opportunity to settle down and have a normal life, but me…” As I shook my head, I couldn’t even picture what a normal life would’ve looked like. I thought of the type of power that I had been introduced to, the energy that I knew, and the understanding that had come to me because of the elaron—and now the ne’rash. Because of all of that, I had become something more than I had ever expected. “What about you?” I asked Nevii.
“I wanted to serve my people. That is all I’ve ever wanted.”
“That is all?”
“I discovered I had a connection to the ne’rash when I was very young. As you can understand, that is a proud moment for one of my kind. It allows us to serve our people, to offer ourselves willingly to a greater cause. When I was brought into the temple—at least, the remains of the temple—I knew exactly what I needed to do. I needed to work with my people. I needed to understand the Hith. And I needed to do whatever it would take for us to thrive.”
I grunted. “I would say that you have thrived for a long time.”
“You would be wrong. The war has taken its toll on my people, as well. I know you believe that you were the only ones to have suffered, but my people have suffered. I have suffered.”
I breathed out, and in the cool air, my breath misted, joining the haze. “To be honest, I hadn’t considered much about what your people had suffered. I thought only about mine. It wasn’t until I went to the is’anish I began to realize how I might be perceived.”
“Why would you care?”
“I wanted to help my people. I’m not denying that. And I did what was necessary. At the time, I believed that. I suppose I still believe that. But what, exactly, is necessary?” I looked over to Nevii. “Could we have accomplished what we did in a different way? Were we not manipulated by the Vicenz”—I could see from the frown on her face that she still wasn’t convinced—“would we have been able to accomplish more? And now with what I’ve learned, and with what I have experienced, I begin to think that perhaps the Vicenz might even have an answer for their actions.”
It made me wish I would’ve had opportunity to visit with Morad and Mother all those years ago. At the time, I was resentful of what they had done, the way they had used us, tapping into our power and trying to steal it.
What if there was some other reason behind that? That was what I needed to understand.
“Why, though?
They wouldn’t have shared anything with us. I doubted Morad or Mother would have bothered telling us what they were doing and why they were after it, but perhaps if they would have, things might’ve been different. We might have gained a different understanding of each other, and we might have been able to work together, to find a common ground.
Perhaps the whole war could have been avoided.
It was easy to sit back, looking to the past, and think about what might have been. It was far harder to look at the future through this haze, and try to find a way that all people could thrive.
It had to be all people, too. It couldn’t just be the Jahor. It couldn’t just be the Hith. It had to be everyone. Somehow, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was even a possibility for all of our people to thrive.
Maybe we were too far gone and such a thing was no longer possible.
As I looked over at Nevii, and I saw the curiosity on her face, I began to wonder if maybe there was still that possibility. Maybe she would be the one to help us see beyond ourselves.
We rode onward, and the further we went, the easier it became for me to feel something more out here. It was the elaron, and it hung over everything similar to the haze.
“When I first came to the city,” I said to Nevii without looking over to her, “there was a man who had hidden himself here. He was using the Jahor who’d gathered here. I suppose the fact that he was here, hiding, should have warned me that there might be more Vicenz within other Jahor cities, but as we had completed the war, I thought that we had eradicated all of the Vicenz.”
As she winced at my choice of words, I realized I should be a little more careful.
“He was a man who’d tormented me. He’d led to the death of people I care about. People who wanted nothing more than peace.”
“Who?” Nevii asked.
“A woman who taught me. She gave me some of my first lessons, instructing me on the elaron, though I didn’t even know it at the time.” The thought of Mel made me smile. It had been such a long time since I had given her much thought it all, though perhaps I should have remembered her long before now. “And there was another. A woman who tried to take much from me. She wanted power. She was willing to do anything, even hide in a prison in order to gain that power.”
“What would she accomplish hiding in a prison?”
“You have seen what the vrendans can do,” I said. “I know that you can feel it.” I pulled the vrendan out of my pocket, and held it out. I didn’t know how much of the power she could feel, or how much of it she was willing to feel. All I knew was that there had to be some aspect of it that she could detect. I probed the vrendan, pushing a little bit of power into it. It stored there, lingering for a moment. Long enough that it wouldn’t take much for me to pull that power back out. When I did, then I could use it, free it.
I released that energy again. There was no point in continuing to hold on to it.
There was nothing within the vrendan that I needed. Not now that I had a way of reaching for the elaron and the ne’rash. Doing so would only diminish me a little bit.
“You speak… almost fondly of them,” she said.
“It was a complicated relationship,” I said. “When I first met the woman hiding in the prison, I didn’t know anything about her. To be honest, I didn’t really know anything about elaron. Or even the war. Only that my family had continued moving north, trying to stay ahead of it. It wasn’t until I started to discover aspects that she had been hiding from us, aspects that left me aware she was trying to manipulate us, that I began to really understand the effect she had on the Jahor.”
“And what effect was that?”
“She intended to use us,” I said. “She thought she needed to, if only so she could gain the power she wanted. I don’t know if she was instructed to do so, or if it was of her own accord. Regardless, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that she stole from us. But she also taught me. Were it not for her, I don’t know that I would have learned how to control the elaron in the way I did.”
It was strange for me to admit that Mother was responsible for so much of my education when it came to the elaron, but it was the truth.
“And you believe this person was Vicenz?”
“I know that this person was Vicenz,” I said. “I didn’t know at the time, but it took me a while to realize that she was using vrendan, the same way that all of the Vicenz have used vrendan.”
She studied me for a long moment, saying nothing, and I could tell that she didn’t necessarily know what to believe, whether or not I was telling her the truth, but perhaps it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she began to question.
The haze started to part, and in the distance, I was able to see the outline of Laranth.
It had been a long time since I had been here, long enough that even now as I looked at the city, I could only make out the faintest part of it, just a bit of the outline of the city, enough that I was able to see what it had been.
I could feel the elaron within the city, but not much more than that. I recognized power there, but knew there weren’t any people remaining. Not anymore. Anyone who had once been here had scattered long ago.
