Unfinished, page 15
Lilah frowned at her. “I’m not telling you her plan.”
“Because you think I’m going to interfere?”
“You could not. Even Benji could not. He tried, though.”
“I’m not so sure. Benji couldn’t see when it came to me, and I suspect the same is true for Abigail.” It was more than just suspecting that the same was true. She knew that it was. When she had last seen Abigail, she had revealed that much to Imogen.
“I don’t know her plan,” Lilah finally said. “She doesn’t tell me. She keeps those things to herself, because she feels that if she were to reveal them, it would influence the plan itself.”
“Will it?”
She paused in whatever it was that she was doing, the power that she was holding on to fading, dissipating out over the water.
Imogen focused, thinking about the various possibilities. She didn’t even know if this was some part of her plan, as it was exactly the kind of thing that Abigail might try. She might be using Lilah, and in that case, Lilah might even be trying to use Imogen, hiding things from her that Imogen needed to know so that she could help her people, but she couldn’t tell.
“If you tell me what you’ve been doing, I might be able to help,” Imogen said.
“There’s nothing that you can do. I am to draw them out so we can prevent them from succeeding.”
“Succeeding in what, though?”
Lilah turned to her, and there was a darkness that glittered in her eyes. “In removing the Porapeth ability to see.”
“I don’t understand,” Imogen said. “The Porapeth ability is something they were born with.”
“Is that what he told you?”
Imogen thought through all the different things that Benji had told her, but the most important thing that he had said was tied to what he believed about himself. It was the core value of what Benji believed, and the key to what he claimed of the Porapeth. That was the most significant.
Abigail may not feel the same way.
“He told me he was magic. And given everything that I saw from him, I was led to believe he was. But what are you getting at?”
“Only that the truth is more complicated, as it often is. The Porapeth ability to see came from how they distributed their power. Abigail wanted to keep that power within the Porapeth.”
“You wanted Benji’s power.”
“Only because he was fading and she knew it.” She waved a hand dismissively, as if that answered everything that they had done on behalf of attacking them. “And Abigail knew she needed to be in control of that power so she could protect it, and so she could decide how it would best be used.”
“But Benji chose otherwise,” Imogen said.
Lilah turned to her. “She will not let that stand.”
“The last time I saw Abigail, I had the sense she didn’t necessarily care. And even if she did, she didn’t seem interested in doing much about it.”
“Maybe you could ask her when she comes.”
Imogen tensed. Abigail was coming here?
Did that mean that Abigail had some hand in what had happened with the Koral—and how they had been looking for them?
She had to get ready, because she wasn’t sure that she could stop Abigail, but if it came down to fighting her, Imogen wanted to be prepared.
Chapter Seventeen
Imogen didn’t expect Abigail to come to attack. She wasn’t even sure if she could. She tried thinking through possibilities, focusing on what she might be able to see, but saw nothing clear. The wind whistled in the back of her mind, the same steady sound she’d felt for quite some time, as if it attempted to give her a warning and speak to her. She listened the way that Benji had instructed she try, but she learned nothing from it.
She looked over at Lilah, who remained standing at the edge of the pond. “Did you know that I found her recently?” Imogen held on to Tree Stands in the Forest, keeping Lilah away.
“She spoke to me. She said that you were chasing a real danger.”
“My brother. He has become Sul’toral. And he intends to harm my people. Much like you once attempted to harm my people. I intend to protect them.”
“All you’ve done is weaken them. Abigail intended to strengthen your people as well as mine.” She turned away and looked toward the pond again.
“We wanted to help you,” Imogen said.
She shifted, moving from Tree Stands in the Forest to Petals on the Wind, gliding forward, ready for any possible attack, but there was nothing. When Imogen stopped at the edge of the pond, Lilah hadn’t moved. Imogen once again took on Tree Stands in the Forest, anchoring herself and preparing for another magical onslaught, but it never came. She was distantly aware of the renral behind her, still waiting, but she also had a sense of something else from him.
“You can’t help me, not with what I know,” Lilah said.
“Because you’ve been working with Abigail?”
When Lilah said nothing, Imogen softened her connection to Tree Stands in the Forest, no longer pushing outward with quite as much force, not needing quite that much. “Do you think your time with someone like her has given you so much insight? I’m sure all she’s given is exactly what she wants you to know, exactly what she thinks that you need to know so that you can follow whatever plan she has in mind for you.”
“And he was so different?”
Imogen could hear Benji then. That was imagined, and not real—at least, she didn’t think it was real—but she could practically hear him laughing in the back of her mind.
“He wasn’t so different,” Imogen agreed. “He made it clear that he wanted to use me, to coerce me into helping, and that he wanted to convince others to follow him.” Even that wasn’t completely true. Benji wanted to guide her, and in doing so, he wanted to help her find her own truth. “Do you even know that there is a magical army approaching my homeland? And yours?”
Lilah slowly turned to her. “What sort of magical army?”
“Enchantments, strange creatures, swarming toward the Koral lands. And the Leier.”
Lilah looked out at the water, her gaze distant, the same as Imogen’s when she was looking at the various possibilities. Imogen focused and tried to uncover her own answers but saw nothing but emptiness.
“I can’t do anything about them,” Lilah said. “Even if I wanted to, there’s nothing that could be done for them.”
“You aren’t unskilled. I’ve seen your talent. If you wanted to help your people, you could do it.”
“You’ve seen what I wanted to show you,” Lilah said.
Imogen was reminded of how much Lilah had changed from the young and seemingly helpless woman that Imogen had first encountered. This was a confident person. In some ways, she reminded her of herself.
“When did you really begin learning about magic?” Imogen asked. “You told me what you thought I needed to hear while we were journeying together, but I suspect it wasn’t the truth. I told you when I started learning the sword. I suspect your connection to magic was similar.”
Lilah remained quiet, and Imogen began to think she wouldn’t answer.
“I was four,” Lilah said softly. “I didn’t know what it meant, but I made our table levitate. It was a simple trick, or so I thought. My mother loved it; my father did not.” Lilah fell silent for a moment. “We had shamans in our land, several in our village, but none of them with much potential. My father knew what it meant even then. He knew I was going to have to go and work with the shamans, and that I would eventually leave.” Lilah did look at Imogen then. There was a bit of darkness in her eyes, with something else. Was it sadness? “He didn’t want me to leave. He didn’t want me to go with the shamans. He didn’t want me to have to leave our family, but he knew I would.”
“When did you have to leave?”
“In our village, I was able to study with the local shamans for a few years. I was seven when they decided it was time for me to leave.”
Seven. Even younger than Imogen when she had gone away to try to master the sacred patterns.
“They couldn’t come to you?” Imogen asked.
“Learning what we can do is different from learning what you can do. You have people all around you who can teach you. What we can do is different. What we can do requires deft touch, and it’s not one that can simply be flung around quite so easily.”
“How did you learn?”
“We have places that teach what we need to know.”
Temples, Imogen suspected, much like the Leier had their sacred temples. Why would it be so different for Lilah and her people?
“How many others trained alongside you?”
“Any who show talent are permitted to train. It’s not like it is with your people. We don’t exclude those who have less potential, as there aren’t enough of us.”
Imogen allowed the comment to slip past her. Lilah wasn’t wrong. Imogen’s people did exclude some from training with the sacred patterns. “And by the time we met you?”
“I had shown talent,” Lilah said, as if she was picking her words carefully. “I had been studying for five years by then. I had demonstrated many skills, and my instructors thought I had real potential to lead the people.” She drifted quietly, and then she looked down, staring at her hands. “Those of us who show real potential are offered a different opportunity. We are offered a chance to go beyond our borders and find a place where we can truly learn to embrace the power that is within us.”
“The Society,” Imogen said.
Lilah shook her head. “You said that as we traveled with you. That’s not what they called it.”
“What did they call it?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t heard the term Society before I met you. They took those of us with most potential away, weakening my people.”
“Because they believe it strengthens something else,” Imogen said. And by strengthening the Society, they built it up, but at the expense of the Koral. “When I met you, had you managed to escape, or were you already working for Abigail?”
“I had already connected to Abigail,” Lilah said. “But it wasn’t until later that she began to teach me.”
“She taught you while you were with us?”
Lilah smiled tightly. “She thought it a great game. She could sneak in, demonstrate a few techniques, and then be gone before you or he was even aware.”
How could Benji not have known?
Benji had been skilled enough that Imogen would have expected him to have detected Lilah and Abigail working together. She would have expected Benji to have seen something.
“How?”
“She’s one of the Porapeth.”
“Benji was one of the Porapeth as well,” Imogen said.
“He was growing tired,” she said.
“You don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“I know what I heard. I know what she was telling me. She made it clear that he was weak, and that if we did not intervene, he was going to cause more danger to our people.”
“Such a danger that he wanted to bring our people together?”
Lilah shot her a darkened look. “Are you sure that he brought us together?”
Imogen started to answer before catching herself. How much had been Benji, and how much had been her?
Benji had guided Imogen while she had dealt with the branox, but she had done most of the rest on her own, as Benji had not been able to see anything. She felt there was something more here that she needed, and as she stared at the water, feeling the wispy wind in the back of her mind, she tried to find traces of Benji, but there was no answer.
“Perhaps it wasn’t him,” Imogen said. “It was me. I led the Leier to work with the Koral, and I continue to do so. I will protect both peoples and bring them together. We are moving to safety, but we need help.” She breathed out slowly. “Your people need help. I have rescued as many as I can, and I’m going back to the Leier homeland to try to help more, but I could use some assistance.”
There was a hesitation in Lilah’s eyes. “Why would you help my people?”
“If you had stayed with us, you would have seen.”
“I saw what you tried to do. It wasn’t working.”
“No. You saw what happened before. You haven’t seen what has happened after. Sword and shield,” Imogen said, smiling to herself. “The Leier are the sword, and your people are the shield. The combination is what protected us. That combination helped us. And we survived.”
Imogen turned away from the water, and she looked off into the distance. She could see the renral still perched, wings folded in, but he was looking toward her, as if he was aware of her looking toward him. She needed answers, and though she could feel some of the connection between her and the renral, she wasn’t sure that she could obtain anything from him.
“What can you tell me about the Koral temples?” Imogen asked.
“You aren’t Koral,” she said.
“And you aren’t Leier, but I would tell you about my sacred temple. I would be willing to tell you about my climb up the mountainside after I was chosen to go to one of the sacred temples. I would tell you about the cold whipping my skin, biting, and nearly killing me. I would tell you about those who fell on the journey before we reached the sacred temple. I would tell you how that temple has fallen.”
Lilah jerked her head over, looking at her.
“And I would tell you how other sacred temples have fallen. Sul’toral attacking, my brother leading them. The temples were connected to the Porapeth. Has Abigail told you that?”
Lilah ignored that question and focused on a different aspect of what Imogen had said. “Why would your brother destroy your sacred temples?”
“I don’t know,” Imogen said.
Lilah turned back toward the water, clasping her hands in front of her. Imogen felt the faint tracing of magic, that steady stirring of power that began to constrict around her, giving her a hint of the energy that Lilah was pulling upon. Imogen could feel the magic she used, but couldn’t tell what she did. There were no patterns to it. Instead, she focused on Tree Stands in the Forest and watched Lilah.
There was a crackling of energy. It began to build with a strange intensity, and the sky rumbled. She was calling on a storm, or so it seemed.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m doing what I told you I was going to do,” Lilah said.
“Attack me?”
Lilah looked back. The movement didn’t disrupt the pattern she had started to use, and yet there was still a flickering darkness in her eyes. Imogen could practically feel the power that crackled within her as well. “Have I attempted to harm you since you came here?”
“I’m not sure that you could.”
“Maybe not.”
She turned away, and the crackling energy continued to build, rising with a vibrant intensity, and then the sky turned even darker. The storm that Lilah called upon crackled, and there was a sizzling sort of energy around. It sent a lightning bolt streaking down from the clouds, toward the mountainside.
But it avoided this space. It avoided the pond. It avoided everything here.
Imogen look back at the renral. He had sat up, and he moved toward her slightly, as if he was uncertain. She didn’t know if this kind of magic would affect the renral. The renral had natural defenses against magic, and so she didn’t know if he could be targeted. The storm continued to crackle, sending waves of energy all around them. Imogen looked over, and she watched Lilah, trying to understand just what it was that she was doing, but she found nothing.
She focused instead on the power that she was pulling upon. She focused instead on the pattern she used. And it was that pattern Imogen recognized. She had seen a pattern much like it before. She could see it now. When the lightning struck, shooting down from the sky, it came in regular bolts of energy, and it sent swirls of power around, and Imogen thought that she understood what it was, even if she wasn’t sure why Lilah would be using that kind of power.
“What are you doing?”
“If you are going to ask questions, this is going to take longer than it needs to,” Lilah said. “You wanted to see her, didn’t you?”
Abigail. That was what this was about.
“Are you calling her here?”
“She will need to know what happened.”
Imogen frowned, and she turned in place, looking all around her. She could feel that energy, though, and she could feel something building, even if she wasn’t exactly sure what it was, but it did have a specific pattern to it, something that struck Imogen as distinct and so significantly similar to the Porapeth.
As that power continued to build around her, and as that magic continued to cascade down, Imogen braced for what might come next. Thunder rumbled.
And then the water parted.
Imogen had not expected that.
Abigail the Lost strode forward out of the pond.
Chapter Eighteen
Imogen did two things at once. One, she focused on her connection to the renral, trying to somehow alert him that she might need his help. Imogen had no idea if Porapeth magic would be useful against a renral, but she suspected that it would be mitigated much like any other magic was. It would offer Imogen a layer of protection if she needed it. And if she needed to escape quickly, she would need the renral to get her out of here. Two, she anchored Tree Stands in the Forest, and she did so by pushing downward, testing whether there was anything in the pond that would provide her with an explanation. She could feel the flowing of water, and she could feel some aspect of it underneath the ground, some aspect that seemed to call to her, as if she should have known about it all along.
Abigail stood before her, dressed in a dappled green robe, completely dry despite having stepped out of the water. And Imogen wondered if it even was water. Benji had said that the Porapeth were magic. Abigail was powerful and had proven that time and again.
Imogen didn’t move. “Abigail,” she said.
Abigail stepped toward her, and she glanced at Lilah, her brow furrowing, darkening, and yet there was still something else within her eyes. Was it disappointment? Was it anger? “You weren’t supposed to call me quite yet,” Abigail said.
