The Red Wrath, page 31
part #3 of Storyweaver Series
“Lan knows him,” Sophie said.
Ridaln looked up, and she shrugged.
“He’s known as the Hunter. He has talked with him.”
“Darish is real?” Dannith said, his voice soft.
“I thought you were chasing the gods because you believed Darius was after their power?”
“That’s why we came, but it is one thing to believe their power exists, and that the gods were once real, and another to meet them. We struggled to find anything about them in the first place.”
“So did I, and I even went as far as to go to a children’s library, but I didn’t find anything.”
“That’s because the knowledge has been suppressed,” Ridaln said.
Sophie found herself reducing her prayer pose, which led to some power seeping out, so that she was not holding quite such potent energy as she had been before. There was no point in doing so, as she was no longer convinced that Ridaln or Dannith was going to pose any danger to the Raven Queen. And Sophie was holding Ridaln’s god stone.
“How many other stones do you have?” Sophie asked.
“Only this one,” Ridaln said. “And that was by chance. I think we came upon it right before Darius. The Shavln corrupts the power, forcing those who have it to give it up.”
“Which god?” Sophie asked.
“It doesn’t work like that,” Ridaln said.
“You don’t know what god stone you have?”
“Unfortunately, we don’t have any way to identify which god is present in each stone.”
“What happens to these god stones?”
“Nothing happens,” Ridaln said.
“No,” Sophie corrected. “What happens to the gods?”
“I’m sorry,” Dannith said. “Once they turn into stones, their power is gone. Their influence is gone.”
The sacrifice hurt her even more than it had before. Parvella was gone.
She had left behind only a part of herself in the stone.
“There’s theoretically a way to draw them back out,” Ridaln said, “but it can only be done by one of the old gods.”
“I thought you didn’t know much about the gods,” Sophie said.
“I don’t, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t stories about them, and ways that we can try to understand what the old and the new gods might ask of us.” Ridaln shrugged. “The new gods are only those who have managed to draw upon power.”
“What about others who have been given the gifts of the gods?” Sophie asked.
“You’re asking about your brother,” he said.
Sophie nodded.
“Well, I suppose it’s possible that he has been given the gift of a god. If given enough time, and enough understanding of the power, it’s possible he will eventually ascend, as it were.”
Lan would be a god?
Well, he would certainly hold that over Sophie’s head.
“That’s not to say that he’s actually going to become a god,” Ridaln said hurriedly, sensing Sophie’s shift. “It has more to do with the fact that he may simply have access to power he could not have otherwise. And if he were able to use it, and gain some mastery over it, he could have godlike powers. Whether he sticks around as one of the named gods, like Darish, is a different question altogether.”
“But he could become a god,” Sophie said.
“He could,” Dannith said.
“And if Darius learned of that…”
Sophie didn’t want to think about what that would mean for her brother.
She didn’t have to.
It meant Lan would be a target.
Chapter 35
LAN
Lan looked at the Heart of the Grove, trying to make sense of what she was telling him, and not having any real idea, though he could feel the steady drumming deep inside him. It was calling to some buried part of him that he had not felt before. He wasn’t sure why she would activate the drumming, nor why she would want him to feel this energy.
“What is it about the thisten?”
All around him, there was a faint, steady glowing, which he made out through the trees, and some of it seemed to come from him, but some of it came from the Heart of the Grove. Surprisingly, he didn’t feel as if the warmth radiating from him came directly from her, as he would have expected. He had thought that the power she had given him had come from her, but perhaps that was not the case at all. Perhaps instead what she had done was activate something inside him, so that he could feel the power, but it did not have to necessarily come from her.
“You have already saved the thisten once,” she said.
“Right,” Lan said, “when the Hunter—Darish—intended to destroy them. My sister realized that they could be saved.”
“In that form, it was surprising that they could be saved,” she said.
Lan frowned at her. The way she had phrased this troubled him. “What do you mean, in that form?”
“I simply mean that they are a bridge of power.”
He had heard that before, but who had he heard it from?
They were power—he knew that—and when he had first encountered them, and dealt with the danger of the thisten, he had believed that they were corrupted by the Shavln.
Had they not been?
“A bridge?”
Lan knew that he was taking too much time with this conversation, and that his sister—and the Raven Queen—was waiting on him. The longer he took here, the more likely it was that the dangerous sorcerer would return. And if he came while Lan was away, what would happen to his sister, and what would happen to the others? Did they have enough strength and enough sorcery to withstand him again? When he had attacked while Lan was there, it had taken every bit of his and Sophie’s combined magic to resist him.
“There are certain things that are clear to me and certain things that are unclear. Time makes it difficult to share them,” the Heart of the Grove said.
“What is clear?”
“The entities you know as the thisten are a bridge for a primordial power, a link between something old and something new. They have become a manifestation of that power in this world.”
It took a moment for those words to sink in for Lan, but even as they did, he wasn’t sure that he understood them.
“Are you saying that the thisten represent god power?”
“I am saying that they represent a manifestation of an ancient power, and they are a link to something newer. That is all. They can be summoned, and they can take the form that they need.” The steady drumming began to build again, and Lan could feel the energy deep inside him. The energy was building, as if the Heart of the Grove was calling to the thisten.
Only…
Lan wasn’t sure if it was her summoning the thisten or if it was something that he was doing. Regardless, he felt that energy deep inside, as if the power of the thisten was drumming for him, trying to build in a way that it would detect him, and the power that was near him.
“I do not know why they took this form,” the Heart of the Grove said.
“Which means that there are other forms that they could take,” Lan said.
The Heart of the Grove bowed her head slightly. Some of the glowing within her began to shift, but it didn’t seem to be quite as potent as it had been before. Was she losing strength?
And if she was, what did that mean for her, and what did it mean for what Lan had to do? He had known that the Heart of the Grove had been giving him power, and that through her power, and through the connection, he was able to reach for more strength, and perhaps even the strength that was necessary to withstand the kind of attack that they had coming for them. But he questioned whether that was the truth at all. Maybe everything that he knew about this power, everything that he had come to believe about it, was inaccurate.
“There are other forms. And unfortunately, that power can be just as dangerous in any form.”
“What of the Shavln?” Lan felt they were still struggling to understand the key to that power, as it was going to be the answer to everything that they had to deal with, but so far, he had not been able to learn anything useful about the Shavln. It was a corrupted sort of energy, but how so?
“That is not the same,” she said.
“How certain are you?”
The Heart of the Grove frowned, and then her power began to falter once again. Lan could feel the energy stuttering in the same way as it had before, the same way that he had felt his own energy stuttering.
“There are certain things that I know and certain things that I think I once knew,” the Heart of the Grove said. “I have wandered these lands for a long time.” She smiled at him. “And perhaps it is time that my wanderings came to an end.”
“What do you mean?”
“I just mean that perhaps I no longer need to wander.” She took a deep breath. “Use the primordial power. You are connected to Odian. Let that guide you. Draw it.”
She turned away from him.
Lan called after her. He couldn’t let her leave, not yet, not before he had better answers. If he was going to get them, they were going to come from the Heart of the Grove, somebody who seemed to be connected to power in a way that he could not fathom.
But he wondered if perhaps it was the same way that he was connected to power.
“How can we help the Raven Queen?”
The Heart of the Grove paused and turned back to him. “Are you sure you want to?”
“Why wouldn’t I want to?”
She watched him, and for a moment, he wasn’t sure if she was going to answer. He needed to have this answer, as he believed it was going to help him.
“You must go to the guardians,” she said.
“I don’t understand.”
“You must find them. They can provide you with what you seek.”
“And who are they?”
“They will provide you with the answers that you seek.”
He stared at her for a moment, and he began to contemplate a different set of questions, but he also started to wonder if perhaps the answers were already there.
Maybe he didn’t need her to explain, because he had already heard the answers.
It was something that he remembered the Raven Queen talking about, something that he believed that she feared facing, but perhaps that belief was incorrect. Lan simply did not know the truth.
“The Karell. That’s what you’re talking about.”
“That is what they are known as now,” she said. “But there was a time when they were known by another name, and they were referred to as the guardians.”
“But guardians of what?”
Even as he asked, he thought that he understood. The guardians of magic. To get the help they needed, he was going to have to convince his sister to bring the Raven Queen to the Karell.
Would she be willing to do that?
Knowing Sophie, and how stubborn she could be, it was possible that she wouldn’t even be willing to listen to Lan.
But if he said that the Heart of the Grove had directed him to do it…
However, that wasn’t exactly what she had said. She had implied that the guardians might be able to help the Raven Queen, but she hadn’t promised it. And it was possible that the Karell wouldn’t be able to help.
The Heart of the Grove disappeared into the trees, and as she went, her glowing faded.
Lan chased after her.
She reached a small ring of stones. It was old. Lan could feel that, and he could feel that it was some sort of ruin, much like what they had dealt with many times. There was an energy here, an energy that drifted over everything, filling him with a sense of it, though he could not tell the source of it.
The Heart of the Grove stopped in the middle of the ring, and she looked up at the sky. “The stars look so different than they once did.”
“I didn’t realize that the stars changed,” he said.
“Oh, yes. Like everything, the stars will change. And eventually, you will find that they change beyond what you recognize, as will everything around you. Pray that you live that long.” She smiled at him.
“Pray?” He took a step toward her. “Who am I supposed to pray to? You?”
She smiled, and then she turned, holding her hands up. She began to glow, and all around Lan, the stones glowed as well.
“Not to me, Lannerdon. But pray nonetheless.”
Her power continued to build.
Lan could feel it swelling. She seemed to be drawing upon some of the energy and sending it upward with a burst of pale light.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“It is time that I stopped fighting the summons.”
“What?”
She looked at him. “You have the mark. You must use it.”
With that, there was a flash of light, and then she was gone.
Lan hurried over to her, or where she had been, and he saw a small stone glinting in the moonlight. He picked it up. It looked something like the starlight overhead, and he stared at it for a few moments before stuffing it into his pocket. It reminded him of what Parvella had left for them. And if it was like that, maybe it was powerful like that.
What had the Heart of the Grove done?
Could she have abandoned them?
Lan had thought that Darish had abandoned them as well, but maybe he hadn’t.
The Heart of the Grove hadn’t fully abandoned them, though, as she had given Lan some advice about what they needed to do—what he needed to do.
He had a weapon. The thisten.
Lan didn’t know how he could use them, but he was going to have to make sense of them, because if he didn’t, he might not have the strength to handle the dangers ahead.
He stood in the middle of the ring of stones for a long time before turning away. There was something peaceful about it, but as he stood there, he found himself wondering if perhaps he was supposed to feel that way, or perhaps he was supposed to feel something different. Maybe sadness.
He didn’t know.
The Heart of the Grove was gone. He tried to focus on the connection he had to her, power that he knew was there within him, and there was a bit of energy, but he wasn’t sure what the source of that energy was. He could feel something flowing, some aspect of it that began to build inside him.
Lan made his way back. He could still feel the warmth within him, and he hoped that what he felt was tied to the Heart of the Grove, but he wasn’t entirely sure if it was. He also didn’t know if there was something else, something more, that he was supposed to find and feel.
He focused on the others. Surprisingly, it seemed as if an understanding of the forest came to him. He knew exactly where he needed to go, even though he could tell that his sister and the others were moving.
Lan hurried toward them, and by the time he reached them, he had begun to feel a different sort of energy.
Sophie frowned when he approached. “What is it?” she asked him.
“I think I know where we are supposed to take the Raven Queen,” he said.
“We are heading to Hester,” Sophie said. “She needs help, and we can’t stay in the forest any longer. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but Darius seems to have some way of tracking us. If he catches us before we manage to get her to safety, and get her awake, I don’t know if we are going to be strong enough to withstand another attack. Ridaln knows some things,” she went on, glowering at the other sorcerer, “but not enough to counter that amount of power.”
“I saw the Heart of the Grove. She suggested that we go to the Karell.”
Dannith was there, standing next to Sophie, and he nodded as if he completely understood.
“She wants us to go to them?” Sophie asked. “Even after what happened, and the way that Thea tried to use the Shavln power, betraying—”
“That was just her, not all the Karell,” Lan said.
He needed to get his sister past this anger, but he wasn’t sure he could convince her to let it go. There were certain things that Sophie could be stubborn about, and in this case, she was being incredibly stubborn—almost too stubborn.
“I know,” she said, shaking her head, “but it’s still hard. You have to understand that, Lan. She attacked us. She attacked Nevarn. She used power that should not have been used like that. How many others knew about what she was doing and didn’t do anything?”
“You don’t know that any others knew anything,” Nevarn said, sliding over to her and meeting her gaze. “I know how frustrating it is.”
Sophie shot him an irritated look. “You don’t know anything. You were corrupted. You were barely aware of that time. How do you think you can help here?”
“Sophie,” Dannith said.
It surprised Lan that the old king used almost a fatherly tone for Sophie.
“Let it go.”
Sophie squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “We get to Hester. We can see whether there is a magical or nonmagical way of helping her. That is where we need to go.”
“That’s fine,” Lan said.
The Heart of the Grove hadn’t told him where they needed to go to find the guardians, so it didn’t matter to him if it was Hester or somewhere else. Besides, it wasn’t as if Lan knew how to find the Karell easily. They wandered, but more than that, in many of the places that they had visited, they had found slaughtered Karell.
“And we can regroup,” Sophie said, letting out a heavy sigh, as if realizing that she was being a bit irresponsible and unreasonable. “We can see what else we need to do, and we can counter any further attacks.”
Lan nodded. “That is fine,” he said.
“You are judging me.”
Lan laughed. “I am not, and I never would. Not when it comes to this. I understand what you are doing and what you are dealing with, and I understand your hesitation. But remember, we don’t know what Nana did, or how much she was involved with the Karell.”
Sophie regarded him for a long moment. “That’s not fair, Lan. You are going to use Nana against us? Against me?”
