Blood of the Watcher (The Dark Ability Book 4) (13 page)

S
tanding
on the rock overlooking the stretch of plains leading up to Thyr, Rsiran paused, debating whether he should continue forward. Night had fallen, and the thin sliver of a moon didn’t give much light—more than before, now that he had a hint of Sight—but he could still make out the pale white tower gleaming in the distance. His heart fluttered as he considered it, debating whether he should Slide any closer.

“I’m still not certain this is a good idea,” Brusus said. He crouched on the rock, his long, wool cloak catching the breeze that whispered past this high up on the rock, and cupped a hand over his brow, almost as if shielding his eyes from the light of the moon. Brusus was Sighted, but could the moonlight really make
that
much of a difference?

“It probably isn’t,” Rsiran agreed. “That’s why I brought you.”

Jessa elbowed him in the stomach and touched the pale blue daisy tucked into her lorcith-shaped charm. Rsiran still wondered if the flower sufficiently diluted the bitter odor of the lorcith. Having grown up around lorcith, the only time he noticed it was during a Slide, when for some reason, he always detected the scent of it burning in the air.

“Didn’t you say the last time you came too close, they
pulled
you to them?” Brusus glanced from Jessa to Rsiran.

Rsiran touched the heartstone alloy sword, his cloak keeping it covered. He’d taken to wearing it since escaping from the palace a second time. There was reassurance to having a sword, even if he barely knew how to use one. But he hoped that with the heartstone alloy blade, he wouldn’t have to worry about his Slides being
pulled
by someone like Sarah, or Della. As far as he knew, he was the only person able to Slide beyond the heartstone alloy, and probably the only person able to Slide
with
the alloy.

“I don’t think they will find it that easy this time,” he said.

Jessa looked at him with a troubled expression. He noted the deep crease in her brow, and she chewed on her lower lip as she often did when she worried.

“They’ll only find another way to draw you in, Rsiran. You promised them, and Haern said—”

“Haern said they’re dangerous,” Rsiran said. “Well, I’m dangerous too.” He glanced at Jessa and she shook her head.

“You’re not dangerous. You’re barely able to—”

He Slid to her in a heartbeat and cut her off with a kiss.

“Bah,” Brusus said. “Even here? C’mon, we’re on a job.”

Jessa pulled him closer for a minute before giving him a shove away. “See? Not dangerous at all. You couldn’t even stop me from hitting—”

Rsiran detected the sudden flash of lorcith and grabbed Jessa, pulling her back a dozen steps, Sliding faster than he once would have thought possible. He emerged long enough to grab Brusus, and
pulled
him into the Slide as well, drawing them behind a teetering tower of rock behind them.

Had they been followed? The fact that it was lorcith, and that he’d noted the same thing the other times made him afraid that neither the heartstone sword nor the way that he Slid kept them safe.

Brusus had a pair of knives already in hand as they stopped, and Jessa ducked down, peering around the bottom of the rock. The bracelets that he’d made for her bumped softly against the rock. With their Sight, she and Brusus would be best equipped to see what he might have detected.

“Lorcith,” he said softly. He focused on the sense of it, trying to find where he’d sensed it. The faint presence of the ore had changed. Had it disappeared?

He couldn’t have them attacked this close to Thyr. If they were followed, and someone prevented them from reaching Thom, he wouldn’t be able to get answers about Alyse.

That meant confronting whoever might be out there.

He had claimed that he was dangerous, and he intended to prove it. Haern had worked with him enough that he felt more confident in his ability to keep himself safe if attacked, at least against someone not nearly as skilled as Haern. If he encountered another assassin who shared Haern’s skill, then he would need to rely on Brusus and Jessa to help.

Rsiran stepped around the rock, five small knives already
pushed
out in front of him and now hovering in the air. If the lorcith had disappeared, that meant someone was Sliding. Maybe Valn and Sarah, even though he hoped they hadn’t followed him from the city. Could the lorcith have been masked? This close to Thyr, with the Tower of Scholars in the background, he could think of only one reason it could be masked.

“Rsiran?” Jessa hissed.

“Wait for me,” he said, stepping forward. The long cloak he wore to cover the sheathed heartstone sword caught the wind and flapped behind him. With each step, he
pushed
the knives before him, holding them floating in the air in an arc around him. He strained for the sense of lorcith, but didn’t pick up anything more.

Experience had taught him that didn’t mean there wasn’t anything more there. Especially here, in the shadows of Thyr. Moments passed, and he detected nothing else. No sense of lorcith that flashed before fading. Nothing.

What of heartstone?

Drawing the knives back to him, he caught them in his palm and held them ready.

Detecting the alloy took a different sort of attention. He had to ignore the call of lorcith in order to hear heartstone, and when he did, it left him with no sense of the metal. Pushing away lorcith had become easier over time, and now he did it in a heartbeat.

The sword called to him, demanding he unsheathe it. The time he’d spent with Haern had made him passable with the sword, but he would need even more time to give him real competence. There was an almost angry sort of energy from the sword, as if it were something alive rather than forged from metal at his forge. Rsiran ignored it, pushing the sense of the sword away from him.

Then he sensed the alloy in Jessa’s necklace and noted that she approached, ignoring the dangers of whatever he had sensed. “What do you sense?” she asked.

There was no other alloy nearby.

Reaching beyond him, he strained to reach a distant sense of the alloy and felt a moment of relief that there was something within Thyr made of the heartstone. It didn’t move, and he worried that it wasn’t what he had detected from Krali Rock. The heartstone—and Thom—was the reason they had come.

“I don’t know,” Rsiran said. “Probably nothing.”

Brusus scraped along the rocks as he came out from hiding. His brow creased into a deep frown, and he stood on the ledge of rock overlooking the Thyrass River rushing with a white froth far below. “I’ve learned that when you’re involved, it is always something,” Brusus said.

“I sensed lorcith, then I didn’t.”

Brusus glanced over at him, drawing one of the small knives he kept with him from a hidden sheath beneath his cloak. He held it out to the bright moonlight, letting it spill across the blade. “Like you did in the forest? You think you were followed?”

Jessa watched him, biting at her lower lip as she did.

“It’s possible,” he admitted.

Brusus nodded. “Possible. You told me about the time in the forest, and Jessa told me about the time near the docks. You really think they would have followed you here?”

Rsiran shook his head, uncertain. The Forgotten Sliders had been afraid to venture too far from their hiding place. That had been one thing that he’d counted on, knowing that they would be protected in some ways from them by his willingness to Slide. And carrying the sword, he’d not noticed any influence on his Slide, but that didn’t mean that the others weren’t out there, attempting to follow. And Sliding three people would create enough ripples, noise of a sort, that someone like Sarah would be able to follow it.

“We should get to Thyr and get this over with,” Rsiran said. “Find Thom, get to my father, and then…” Then he still had to figure out where to find Alyse. Only they couldn’t do that without risk. Was he ready to expose Jessa to that risk?

“It’s okay if we wait,” Jessa said. “If we’ve already been detected, this might not be the right time.”

Rsiran stared toward the city, one hand going to the hilt of the heartstone sword. It had a certain reassuring weight to it, and he pressed his palm into the simple leather wrappings he’d placed around the hilt. “You heard what Haern said. If we do nothing, she’ll die. I can’t wait, not knowing that I would be responsible for that.”

“You won’t be responsible, Rsiran,” Brusus said. “Whoever did this to her, they are the ones responsible. And if it has something to do with your father, then
he
is the one who is ultimately responsible. Don’t take blame when you have none.”

“You know, after Jessa and I escaped from the palace, I thought the Forgotten would come after me first,” he said. “And then we were attacked by Thom. Both want me afraid of them. And I am.”

“You don’t have to be ashamed for fearing. Damn, Rsiran, you’ve gone through more than any of us would ever want for you, and you’ve handled it better than I would have ever dreamed. And now? Now you intend to go into Thyr, after a man who attacked you. That’s not fear anymore, that’s bravery.”

Rsiran sighed and turned away, focusing his attention on the distant city. From where they stood, Thyr in some ways looked no different from Elaeavn, just another city sprawling across the flat ground. The massive pale Tower of Scholars looked to be a part of the city, but he knew that they were separate. Other than the Tower, he had not been to Thyr, and couldn’t risk Sliding them directly into the city. That was why he had stopped on the rocks overlooking the river, unwilling to take them any farther.

“He studied in the Tower,” Rsiran said. After barely surviving Thom, and learning of the metal implanted in him, he knew that to be true. “Like Haern. I’m not sure going after him is bravery, or if it’s stupidity.”

“You’ve brought help. And we’re as protected as you can make us,” Jessa said.

Brusus smiled. “You’ve never told me what part of Thom had a piercing of lorcith. How you can find him.”

“Not lorcith,” Rsiran said, but tapped his head. Like Haern, Thom had a vicious scar along his face from what the scholars had done.

Brusus turned, frowning. “Then how do you sense him?”

Rsiran still didn’t understand why Thom would have heartstone implanted beneath his skin, and what ability he hoped to gain. There was a part of Rsiran that was curious. Would he be able to gain similar abilities using the knowledge found within Venass? If he went to the scholars, could he learn to become a Reader? To Compel like Thom? Even if he could, what price would he pay for those abilities?

“Heartstone,” he said. “He has a heartstone implant.”

Brusus let out a sharp breath. “Did you talk to Della about that?”

“Why would it matter?”

“Because it’s heartstone. The damn metal is strange, Rsiran. There’s a reason you don’t find it very often. I thought it gone completely until we found the samples in the warehouse.” He cupped his hands together and squeezed. “You think lorcith has strange qualities, well heartstone has just as many.”

“I know.”

Brusus took a step back and looked over at him, a hard gleam in his eyes. “Yes. You do. You’ve seen what lengths others will go to hide it.”

Rsiran nodded. He’d seen the way the Forgotten had hidden the heartstone in the Forgotten Palace, and the way that Evaelyn had protected herself with heartstone, practically walling herself into the palace with the metal so that none could Slide past. It was a metal that offered qualities different from, and sometimes more powerful than lorcith.

That was the reason the Forgotten wanted to find out how
Rsiran managed to Slide past their barriers. More than that, and still not known to those who pursued him, was the fact that Rsiran could Slide
with
heartstone. He was just learning the breadth of what he could do with heartstone, and hoped it would help him now.

He needed to Slide, free of any fear of being influenced. With heartstone, Rsiran didn’t
think
he could be influenced the same way, but then, he wasn’t entirely certain, either.

It made coming this far north a risk. It made Sliding anywhere a risk. But he had no choice if he was going to find Alyse.

Brusus sighed. “Tell me again what you intend after you find Thom?”

“Find my father. And figure out why he was hiding the map in the hut and where it might lead.”

“Let’s play this out. What if he’s not willing to share what the map is for? You said your mother told you that he worked with the Forgotten willingly. What if he protects them?”

“He’ll do what he can to protect Alyse,” Rsiran said. That was what he counted on. His father might want to protect the Forgotten that he worked with, but he would do anything to help his own daughter. He’d shown that over and again. Rsiran struggled with believing what his mother said about how he’d wanted to keep Rsiran safe as well. How would sending him to the mines keep him safe? How would letting him nearly die keep him safe? If he knew something about his abilities, why hide it from him?

“Are you ready to do what is needed?” Brusus asked. “If Thom comes at you, will you be ready?”

He nodded slowly. “I’ve been working with Haern.”

“I know that you have, but there’s a difference between learning how to defend yourself and actually doing what might be needed when the time comes. Had Haern been so unwilling to come even close to this place? He should be here instead of Jessa.” Brusus tipped his head and shrugged. “No offense, Jessa, but he’s the more capable one when it comes to stuff like this.”

“I know he is,” Jessa said.

“From here on out,” Brusus began, watching as Jessa hugged her arms around her body and dipped her head toward the small flower tucked into her lorcith charm, “everything is dangerous in a way that we haven’t experienced before.” He pointed to Rsiran. “Even for me. You start with Thom, and you show Venass that we’re willing to go on the offensive. We need to be ready. All of us need to be ready. You, Rsiran. You’ve a kind heart, and I’ll be honest and tell you that’s something that worries me. When it comes down to it, can you find the darkness you need?”