Unfinished, page 21
“I understand you’re chasing power that you should not have.”
He whipped his staff around, angling the tip toward her chest as if to stab outward.
Imogen ducked, flowing off to the side, but not before a blast of invisible power surged toward her. She had to jump off to the side, using Lightning Strikes in the Storm to carry her quickly, and she realized that she was calling upon some aspect of Zealar as she did. The connection to him had given her some help.
Could it help her in other ways?
Zealar was naturally immune to magic—it was some trait of the renral—but perhaps there was some way for her to use that.
She had to figure out what that connection was and try to understand whether there was something more that she might be able to comprehend, but even as she tried to think about it, she didn’t have time. There was not going to be the time when faced with somebody like this. Somebody who had command of his staff and knew sacred patterns in a way that Imogen had only recently come to comprehend. He flowed through them, his staff whipping and whizzing through the air, his power well greater than Imogen had expected to find. He would have easily defeated the sacred sword masters within the sacred temples.
“You were there,” Imogen said. She frowned as she looked at him. He must have stayed hidden. There had been a power that had lifted the others away. Could it have been him? “With Timo, and the other two.”
He spun his staff again. “So it was you. You decided to shift my plans.”
“Are you the one who gave Timo his power?”
He paused again, bringing his staff down. In that moment, Imogen recognized what he was doing. He was using his staff to connect to something akin to Tree Stands in the Forest. She pushed out with her own connection to Tree Stands in the Forest, and as she did, she felt the blooming power flowing beneath her. This was a powerful Sul’toral.
Far more powerful than any that she had ever encountered before. The others had been simply superpowered sorcerers, but this one…
He was something else. He was powerful in a way that others had not been. And he understood magic in a way that others did not. Not just magic, but how the sacred patterns formed their own addition to magic.
“You’re his sister,” he said. He started laughing, and his grip shifted on his staff.
Imogen noticed that in the moment before he brought it around.
But she was ready. She had been fighting and training to fight like this for her entire life, so she had learned to look for little tells, little slips that could share with her what somebody might do. She had learned to find those secrets. And his secret was that he shifted his grip on his staff slightly before he spun it.
Imogen dropped, brought her blade around, and stabbed him in the side again.
She backed away as he recovered and slipped his staff back to block. He brought it down, Tree Stands in the Forest, or whatever it was that he called it, and then he turned to her. He didn’t look as if he was even bothered by the way that her slender blade stabbed him. He didn’t seem to mind the pain.
Who is this?
“You are more difficult than I was expecting. Why is that? Why is it that I can’t see what I need to from you?”
There it was again. Another person who commented on seeing something about Imogen but thought that she was a blur.
What was it about her?
It didn’t matter right now. She had to defeat him. Defeat his army. And save her people.
“I am curious about you. Perhaps I will take you with me and dissect your ability. You would be most useful in reaching an understanding of what I need to end all of this.”
“End all of what?” Imogen asked.
“End all of what has taken place.” He smiled.
Imogen hated his smirk immediately. It was almost slimy, reminding her of the oily feathers of the renral, but that was a pure and functional oiliness. This was something else. This was something dark, and there was something malevolent in the way that he looked at her.
He brought his staff around.
His hand shifted in just a moment, and she reacted, but he must have sensed that she had noticed his tell, as this time when he brought his staff down, he switched direction, bringing it around to the side.
It caught Imogen in the flank.
She tried to flow with the pain.
She had been struck before. It was not the first, and if she survived this, it would not be the last time that she would be struck in such a way.
It knocked the wind out of her.
And she spun, trying to move off to the side with it, trying to hold on to herself, to focus on what she could feel, but all she knew was pain. It coursed through her, as if he had shot her with some magical power.
Perhaps he had. Perhaps that was part of what he had done. Perhaps it was his blast, the strike, that had overwhelmed her and had somehow managed to drive through her.
She focused. Tree Stands in the Forest.
The connection between her and the renral bristled with power, and it strengthened her.
Not only that, but it seemed as if the energy helped her recover somewhat.
She got to her feet.
And as she did, Imogen realized she had moved while holding Tree Stands in the Forest.
That shouldn’t even have been possible.
Tree Stands in the Forest should have required complete concentration and complete control, and yet she had moved.
The Sul’toral watched her, and he seemed to realize her surprise.
“Very interesting,” he said. “Now I would very much like to bring you back with me. You have something I would very much like to know about.”
He brought his staff around, but Imogen braced for it.
And this time, rather than simply holding on to Tree Stands in the Forest, she opened herself to the connection that she shared with Zealar.
That connection formed a bursting of power that crackled out through her. It shot upward and downward, forming a cage of electricity that surged outward. As his staff struck, it bounced back.
And she pushed even more.
He tried to drive his staff toward her again. Imogen held on to the connection, held on to the power, and could feel it flowing. As it flowed, and that energy built, Imogen wondered if there might be some other way for her to use it.
Could she attack with it?
She had the renral, and she had his strange natural ability, and she had seen how it would mix with Tree Stands in the Forest, and she had also used it with Lightning Strikes in the Storm.
Imogen watched the Sul’toral for a moment, and when his grip shifted, she watched his shoulders, saw him starting to twist, and she released Lightning Strikes in the Storm.
It flowed from her, and there was power that burst out of her, burst through her, pouring from the renral. It seemed to augment and concentrate her sacred patterns. And as that power exploded, she shot out, sweeping around.
And there was a burst. A surge. There was something powerful.
She detected that energy, and she pushed downward, holding on to it.
The Sul’toral backed away.
The smirk that he’d been wearing had faded. It had been replaced with something else.
Was it concern?
Imogen wasn’t sure if that was what it was. Perhaps it was merely his own amusement. His eyes shone with it, and she watched him, feeling his irritation beginning to build.
There had to be something she could do to drive him back.
Not just that, though. She had to incapacitate him and do the very thing he wanted to do with her. He wanted answers, which was what she wanted.
She had to let the connection flow through her, and she began to feel power building as she stood in the barrier of Tree Stands in the Forest. She tried to open herself to the renral, but Zealar had started to fade.
She could feel the energy weakening.
He had limited power.
The Sul’toral regarded her. Imogen stood motionless, Tree Stands in the Forest, using a hint of the crackling power of Zealar, only enough to reveal she still had it, and hopefully enough that it would push him back and keep him from attacking.
“Who are you?” Imogen asked. “You know who I am, but I don’t know anything about you. I imagine you’ve lived a long time, and given what I’ve seen of other Sul’toral, you likely want to brag about yourself and your power. So go ahead. Tell me.”
“You’re a fool,” he said. “You think I haven’t faced people like you before? Do you think I haven’t destroyed them just as easily as I’m going to destroy you?”
“Oh?” Imogen asked. She did not move, but she still held on to Tree Stands in the Forest and still felt that energy of Zealar flowing through her. “I’m the fool, but I’m not the fool who’s been stabbed twice by someone who has probably lived a tenth of your life.”
“Not even a hundredth of my life,” he snapped.
Imogen smiled tightly. She was getting to him.
She needed to use that.
“A weak little Leier. Trained by her people and discovered by a Porapeth.” Imogen shrugged her shoulders just enough, the barest fraction of a shrug, and smirked. She called upon even more power, letting it flow through her and pushing outward.
As she did, she recognized that energy was building, and she started to question what he might do.
She watched his hands, his shoulders, his feet. He wasn’t moving yet. She had a little bit of time before he took the next step, but she had to be ready. The moment he shifted, Imogen had to be prepared for what he might do.
“And if you aren’t afraid of me, then why won’t you share with me your name?”
He brought his staff up. Imogen was ready. She opened herself even more to Zealar. She had to use this exactly right. She wouldn’t have many more attempts, but if she could coax the Sul’toral into thinking that she had more power than she did, then perhaps she could turn this.
His staff slammed down into the ground.
Imogen hadn’t been ready for that, but she was Tree Stands in the Forest, summoning the renral power through her, and that power flowed outward, and she reacted, bracing herself. In doing so, she pushed. The air crackled with the lightning of the renral.
“There is a trick you don’t know,” Imogen said.
He brought his staff back down again.
Imogen still held on to Tree Stands in the Forest, but she no longer kept herself as open to Zealar as she had before.
“Perhaps it would do well for you to know my name when you die. I will take you, and I will understand what you’ve done. It will be added to the rest.”
He raised his staff, but then he hesitated. She could feel power building, and she wondered what it was.
“I am Aneadaz. I am the Hand of Sarenoth.”
With that, Aneadaz brought his staff down, and there was a shattering of power that exploded outward, but when that was gone, so was he.
Imogen held Tree Stands in the Forest for a few moments more in case he returned. But there was no sign of him. No sign of anything.
Only the crackling of energy around her, a crackling of thunder from some distant place, and she realized that Lilah was still circling atop Zealar. Imogen wondered if there might be some way to use the connection in order to help Zealar draw upon even more power, but she did not know.
She finally released her connection, finally released the power that she was holding on to, but even as she did, she worried that she would need to use it again.
Aneadaz.
A Sul’toral.
And probably a powerful one, given what she had seen from him.
But that wasn’t what worried her.
It was what he had said afterward.
He was the Hand of Sarenoth.
Zealar came swooping down, a silent shadow that circled over her, before landing.
When he did, Lilah climbed off, looking around. The valley had been emptied of the strange creatures. Imogen couldn’t help but think that the creatures had been little more than enchantments… perhaps even illusions.
“Imogen?”
She looked up and realized that Lilah was not alone.
“Abigail.” She snorted. “You waited until I nearly defeated him.”
“But you did not.”
“Do you know this one?”
“I didn’t see whom you fought.”
“His name was Aneadaz.”
There was a soft gasp, and Abigail stopped, her hands clutching her chest, her eyes narrowing slightly.
Imogen just watched her. “Apparently, you do know him.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Abigail strode through the clearing, using a strange flowing gait that reminded Imogen of how Benji had walked. His had been more of a glide that seemed to follow the wind, whereas Abigail used something else. Imogen found herself watching Abigail’s pattern but couldn’t identify anything.
“I know him,” Abigail finally said, approaching a small hillside with what looked to be the remains of a building set into it. It was only then that Imogen realized that she had been here before—at least, someplace like this. “I have known him for many years.”
She paused, and as she did, Imogen became aware of a sense of power that came off Abigail, a hint of magic that emanated from her and suggested that she was pulling upon what Imogen believed to be sacred patterns, but what she suspected was actually nothing of the sort. It was probably more akin to the Porapeth magic, and something Benji had been doing.
In the back of her mind, she had a hint of a whisper, as if Benji was there, giving her insight into what it was that Abigail was doing, but even as he did, Imogen did not know whether there was anything to what Abigail did that she might be able to identify.
“Who is he to you?” Imogen asked.
Imogen looked over at Lilah and found her standing, feet set slightly apart and hands out from her, as if she was trying to call upon some pattern, or sorcery, but did not dare to use it completely around Abigail.
“He is a means to an end. I’ve been trying to get to the most dangerous of them, and Lilah has been drawing them out for me.”
“Why?”
“Because I cannot,” Abigail said.
Abigail crouched down, and as she ran her hands along the hillside, Imogen could feel something. It was the whisper that came through her. It was almost a murmuring.
Imogen paused, tilting her head to the side, and then she found herself crouching down to join Abigail. She ran her hands along the top of the grass, tracing a pattern just like Abigail had. Imogen was testing for something within that pattern, testing to see if she might be able to uncover anything that she might learn, and trying to determine if there was something that would help her understand just what it was that Abigail had done.
Benji would have known. Benji would have heard the whispering here, and Benji would have understood that there was something here, some message, some way for her to know just what it was that she might be able to hear from the grasses themselves.
“Do you hear it?” Abigail asked, regarding Imogen carefully.
“Not in the way he wanted me to,” Imogen said. “He tried to get me to understand what he was doing, and he wanted me to learn how to listen to the wind, but I never mastered it.”
“All this time, and he was trying to find someone to follow him,” she said, shaking her head. “All this time, and I did not understand. I could not have understood.”
“What were you trying to understand?” Imogen asked.
Abigail got to her feet and started moving, and this time, Imogen recognized the pattern that she was using as she walked. There was a steady sway, and Imogen followed, using the same sort of pattern. With each step, she could feel something deep within her.
She hadn’t noticed it before, but she had missed some aspect of what Benji had been doing. Seeing Abigail and the way she was walking and moving and swaying as she made her way across the meadow gave Imogen a different insight into what she might be able to do. She followed, feeling that energy, and feeling something else within it. It was as if Imogen had blocked off one aspect of the patterns Benji had shown her, or perhaps he hadn’t shown her all of them. And now, standing with Abigail, she could feel that energy building, and she recognized that there was something within it.
As she moved, she began to feel currents around her.
It was almost like the wind, but it was not the same. When she closed her eyes, Imogen thought that she could feel those currents moving and shifting and flowing. And with a start, she realized just what it was that she was detecting.
She gasped. “This is how you see,” Imogen said.
Abigail looked over and frowned at her. “I thought that you understood that.”
Imogen shook her head. “I knew that there was a pattern that Benji used to see the possibilities, but the one I use is different from this.”
“Then he didn’t show you everything,” Abigail said.
She continued moving, and Imogen followed her, modeling the same pattern.
“Tell me about Aneadaz,” Imogen said. “He called himself the Hand of Sarenoth, and I know enough about Sarenoth to know that means he has a position of significant power. But I don’t know if he is somebody that I need to fear more than the others.”
“When others discovered the key to connecting to Sarenoth, he was the greatest of them,” Abigail began, still moving carefully but not with the same pattern as before. She paused from time to time, bending down to touch a flower, a blade of grass, or a small shrub, plucking a berry off it and popping it into her mouth. “Others learned to connect to that power and served Sarenoth, thinking to claim his power and gain even more of it. They failed him.”
She was talking about the Sul’toral, but this was an aspect of them that Imogen had never heard before. “How did they fail him?”
“He showed them what he should not have. And they saw his power, but they could never reach it. They tried to understand what he could do, and they tried to understand how he could call upon the power that he did.” Abigail turned, and she tipped her head back, breathing in deeply. “It has been many years since I’ve been here.”
