Unfinished, page 22
The change of topic was jarring. “Why have you not returned?”
“I was young when I first came here,” Abigail said, and she smiled as she tilted her head slightly to the side, breathing in. “The meadow looked different then. Not as many flowers, though I think this is lovely in its own way.”
This was a side of Abigail that Imogen hadn’t seen when she had dealt with her in the past. Abigail had always come off as a dangerous Porapeth, a being of incredible power, and a being of incredible magic that Imogen couldn’t even fathom. This was somebody who was almost wistful and was more like how Abigail had been when Imogen had seen her in a meadow like this before.
“How long ago was it?” Imogen asked.
“Longer than you can imagine,” Abigail said softly.
“I can imagine quite a bit. And given the time I spent with Benji, I think that I have a pretty good sense of how long Porapeth live.”
Abigail looked over. “Did he tell you?”
“He didn’t tell me how long he’d lived, but he mentioned fighting against creatures like the branox.” She took a deep breath, then let it out. “And yet you thought to use them.”
“I didn’t use them.”
“No. You used my brother in some plan of yours.”
“It was necessary,” Abigail snapped. Then she took another deep breath, as if calming herself. “Much of what I have done has been necessary, but I wouldn’t expect you to be able to understand. Not yet. In time, perhaps you will see it, but for now, the answer is not there.”
Imogen could hear Benji suddenly. He surged into the back of her mind, wanting to laugh, and wanting Imogen to know that he was there. It was a deep, heavy cackle that carried upon some part of Imogen’s mind and left her frozen.
“Benji finds that amusing,” Imogen said.
“Is he here again?”
“I don’t think he’s ever truly gone. Every so often, he decides to make his presence known. Annoyingly.”
Once again there was a surge of what sounded like laughter.
Imogen closed her eyes. She could feel that energy in the back of her mind. She could feel Benji’s whispering sense. It was a guiding sense when he wanted it to be, but for the most part, Benji didn’t really offer that to her. For the most part, Benji was simply there, as if he lingered, waiting for the right opportunity to offer something more.
But more than that…
Imogen didn’t have the opportunity to gain more than that.
“I thought that he was fully gone,” Abigail said, her voice dropping to a whisper.
“Did you want him to be gone?”
“For a time, yes.”
“You cared about him.”
She breathed out softly. “Very much.” She strode forward, then stopped on a mound, grass heaping up over it, but Imogen could see the contours of what had once been a building, something like a home, but a larger home than Imogen would have expected to find out here in the middle of what looked to be nowhere. There was no sign of any city, and as she had flown with the renral, she hadn’t been aware of anything else. This valley would be difficult to reach, much like many places in the Leier lands were difficult to reach. It was isolated.
“Who was he to you?” Imogen asked.
“He didn’t tell you about me?”
Imogen sniffed. “He told me about you when he needed to. I think he was concerned about what you might do, and for good reason, it seems. When we first encountered you, he was worried about what you might do to me.”
“For good reason,” Abigail echoed. “I didn’t expect to actually lose to him. I thought that I could bring him back. I thought the two of us could…” She forced a smile, and the hardness in her eyes flared again, and the silver shot through them once more. “All this time that I spent looking for answers, and he was looking for something else.”
Abigail turned and strode down another hillside. But then she paused. She spread her hands to her sides, and the air shimmered and then began to take on a hint of a shimmery, faint flowing quality. In that moment, it looked as if a lake had formed, blooming into view. Imogen could have sworn that it was not real, that it was nothing more than an illusion, but it felt real.
She had seen this from Abigail before, but this time it felt different.
“This is what it looked like,” Abigail said. She swept her hands to either side of her again, stretching them all around, and the ground rumbled, shifted, taking on different contours.
Suddenly Imogen caught a house behind her. It reminded her of the house where she had last seen Abigail, and as she looked at it, she noticed how comfortable it appeared. There was even a faint stirring of smoke that came from what had been a chimney, though Imogen suspected that was part of the illusion.
“What was this place?”
“It was my home,” Abigail said. “Our home, really.”
Imogen smiled to herself, shaking her head. “Benji, you bastard.”
Abigail glanced over at her. “Are you talking to him?”
“I don’t know if he’s listening.”
“He could be a bastard,” Abigail said, nodding to her. “That is part of his charm. At least, it was. He could be stubborn, and he was determined that he could see things others could not. And…” The image shifted, and then the home faded. The lake began to withdraw, and then it was gone. “He told me that things would change. That time would change for us, that he had seen it. He told me that he alone knew what we needed to do.”
“That seems to be a Porapeth trait,” Imogen said.
“More than you can know,” Abigail said. She strode forward again and flicked her gaze up to the sky. “The air smelled different then. I can remember it. It was almost sweet, filled with the faint white scent of the meadow flowers.” She swirled her hand and formed another pattern, and as she did, the air shimmered again, and a large white flower formed in her palm. Abigail held it out, and she turned in place, twisting it, until she twisted her hand once more. The flower faded, disappearing altogether. “Benji believe that we needed to stay out of events within the world.”
“I thought the Porapeth were not permitted to intervene.”
“Permitted,” she said, shaking her head. “Who is to say what is permitted or not? At the time, we were what permitted everything.”
She strode back up the hillside and paused at the top. From here, Imogen followed the direction of her gaze. She looked toward the east, the direction that they had been traveling in, where Lilah stood. Zealar rested, wings tucked in, long, sharp beak stretched out in front of him, and he looked terrifying against the green meadow. He was massive, even from here, and Imogen could open herself to that connection and feel the power of him flowing through her. She didn’t dare draw upon it. She was getting answers from Abigail, even if she wasn’t sure what to make of the answers that she was getting. They were answers that seemed important to Imogen, and if she permitted Abigail more time to share with her, Imogen had to believe that she would learn what she needed.
Zealar looked up, and even from a distance, he locked gazes with her. She could feel the energy coming through him. He was gifting her some of the power that he had collected.
“We thought to call the renral to you,” Abigail said. “Not to harm you but to slow you.”
“You want them to harm us,” Imogen said.
“Perhaps,” Abigail admitted. “You took a path, and a journey, I did not want you to take.”
“Why?” Imogen turned to her then and was unmindful of the danger. This was a powerful Porapeth, someone who had proven herself willing to harm Imogen, and harm those who had come with her, and even harm another Porapeth. This was somebody who had anticipated things Imogen couldn’t even fathom. “Why would you do that to us? What had we done to you?”
“It was nothing that you had done. It was what you might do.”
“Benji used to think the same thing, but he recognized there were certain things he couldn’t clearly see, and he didn’t fight that. Rather, he searched for understanding.”
“He was wiser than I,” Abigail said.
“So what did you see?”
Abigail breathed in. “It has been so long since I’ve been here. Too long.”
“What are you going on about?”
Abigail flicked her gaze to Lilah. “When I discovered that Benji had taken on someone like you, I realized that perhaps he had seen something I had not. I decided I should follow his lead, but I never had the same touch with people.”
It was Imogen’s turn to laugh, and she did so, chuckling deeply. “If you knew Benji as well as you claim you did, then you would know that he didn’t really have a good touch with people. In fact, I would say that Benji was probably one of the worst people I’ve ever met when it comes to interacting with people. He was stubborn, cantankerous, and would swear at the drop of a hat.”
“All of which made him entertaining,” Abigail said. “But those traits are warranted when you have lived as long as he had. As long as all of us have,” she said, adding the last softly. “He must have seen something in you. And given what I have seen myself—or not seen, as the case may be—I begin to question if perhaps he really was the greatest of us.”
“You’re going to have to explain yourself better. Are you still trying to hurt me?”
Abigail looked over. “This was never about you, Imogen Inaratha.”
“You could’ve fooled me. It felt like it was about me when you were trying to harm me. When you sent your guardians after me. When you tried to cut me down, and you used somebody I’d saved, or thought that I’d saved, to do so.”
Abigail looked over at Lilah. “Maybe you could still save her. I thought she was what we needed to achieve my goal. I thought she was going to be the key to helping me with Aneadaz, but perhaps she cannot be. Perhaps she never could.”
It seemed too harsh a sentence for Lilah. “And what goal is that?”
Abigail looked back at Imogen. “The only goal that matters to me. Saving myself.”
Imogen started to smile. “You’re actually saying something truthful for once.”
“I would never deny the truth when it comes to that. I want to save myself, Imogen. I have wanted to ever since I saw the end coming.”
“What end?” Imogen asked carefully.
“Why, the end of the Porapeth. That is what Benji feared. That’s why he came after you. That’s why he gifted you what he did.”
Imogen snorted. “I’m not exactly sure that Benji cared much about the end of the Porapeth. And I’m not sure if he gifted me anything. He did it so that I could stop the sorcerers, so that I could make sure that they did not continue to harm us, and he did it so that I could defeat the Sul’toral.”
“And whom do you think the Sul’toral serve?” Abigail asked.
“Sarenoth.”
“Exactly. One of the Porapeth.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The air rumbled, and there was a steady buildup of energy in the distance, as if a storm was brewing, but Imogen didn’t know if it was a real storm or if it was magically induced. As a trembling began to fill the air, she flicked her gaze to the sky, listening, feeling the energy, feeling the power that was building, and waiting for there to be something else. There was no sign of anything more. No sign of the power that might persist, no sign of any additional energy that was building. The only thing that she detected with any real understanding was a hint of power that filled the air.
Imogen realized what Abigail intended. This was about revenge. This was about stopping someone who had harmed one of her own.
“How do I stop him?” Imogen asked. She had a sense from Abigail that she was not going to share anything more, but it wasn’t even about Sarenoth, at least not really. It was about power like his that Aneadaz and others pursued.
More than that, though, Aneadaz had power similar to Imogen’s. Porapeth power.
He had become more like Sarenoth.
And he was a sorcerer, which meant that he could do things that she could not.
“He was always skilled at drawing in those who sought power,” she said. “And he trained them, guiding them along his techniques. It was how he made them as powerful as they became.”
“His techniques meaning sorcery?”
She tilted her head slightly, a brief nod. “His techniques have evolved into sorcery. We all had our own. Benji used what you have learned. He tried to instill that in his followers, but very few have ever truly managed to master it, whereas I have tried to instill what I know in my followers. But then, my followers are few and far between.”
“I don’t understand any of this,” Imogen said.
“How is it that you can use Benji’s understanding of the world?”
Imogen shrugged. “Part of it comes from the sacred patterns… That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? You’re saying that Benji led those who could use the sacred patterns.”
“He offered guidance. There were some that were more useful than others, and very few could truly understand how to conceptualize them. Those who could became more powerful, something even he was able to see.”
“What do you mean, even he?”
“I mean that Benji identified that there were some who had the mindset to recognize patterns in a way that others did not. He would use those patterns, and he tried to guide them, much like he tried to guide most of his people.”
“And you?” Imogen glanced over at Lilah. “I take it that your people are the Koral?”
“My people have been gone a long time,” Abigail said. “Why do you think they call me Abigail the Lost?”
“I suppose I don’t know.”
“They faded. It was a time long ago, a time before. Benji had been advising me to avoid influencing the world. He advised all of us to avoid influencing. He thought that was necessary for us to keep our hands out of what happened around us. He thought that if we were to permit ourselves to get involved, we would find that we faded faster.” Abigail smiled tightly. “You claim to have seen something. He claimed that it was one of the most common threads he could identify. As he was Benji the Elder, most believed him.”
“Most of the Porapeth,” Imogen said. She felt foolish in making a comment like that, but she felt that she didn’t fully understand what was going on here, and she needed to wrap her mind around all of this. Benji was a Porapeth, and though she knew there weren’t that many Porapeth, there was something about what Abigail implied that suggested that the Porapeth were more than what she had known. It was as if she was suggesting that the Porapeth were almost gods.
What had Benji told her, though?
He was magic.
What was that but a god?
“There were only a few of us. There never have been many. It was as if the powers that be did not want that energy concentrated in many places, or perhaps diffused into too many places,” Abigail said. “Those of us who had power chose to embrace it, trying to hold on to it. Some of us more tightly than others.”
“And Sarenoth?”
Abigail frowned at her. “He thought to try a different tactic. He thought that he could get around what Benji had done, that he might be able to find a way past it. He thought that he might be able to avoid the darkness that Benji claimed would come eventually, regardless of what he attempted. That attempt changed him. It was slow, gradual at first, but over time, it changed him like all of us were changed over time. We did not see it for a long time. We could not see it, I think. And as it changed him, as we saw him beginning to influence, we began to recognize that what he had done had made his fate different. I’m not even sure that I understand it.”
“And his followers?”
“His followers embraced the lessons he taught, wanting to understand him, and wanting to understand the power that he had. They all wanted to claim the same power as Sarenoth. But there is only one Sarenoth.”
Imogen thought of what she had learned about the Sul’toral, those who had served Sarenoth. They summoned a different power. She had seen how they could summon that power, and she’d seen the magic that came from them, and how they could draw that out from themselves. It was as if they were accessing something greater.
They were accessing energy, magic.
They had harnessed it in a way that seemed impossible, but perhaps it was not impossible at all. Perhaps what they had found was a truth, and a way of grasping that truth.
“How is it that Sarenoth’s followers can call upon his power? I have seen that, and I have seen the power that he summons, and I have seen the energy that the Sul’toral can draw upon.”
“They learned to harness his power.” Abigail smiled tightly. “Do you believe that Sarenoth was only exiled?”
“I don’t even know anymore. I think what we were taught was that Sarenoth was captured, held, because he was somehow too dangerous to exist in the world. That, at least, is what I have been told.”
“It is what we wanted others to believe. But what happened, what truly happened, was that those who followed Sarenoth were not content with merely accessing part of his power. They did not want to be cut off from it. They found another way to hold on to it. Much like your brother once tried.”
“They trapped Sarenoth,” Imogen said.
“They did. And he remains trapped. The Sul’toral hold him, and only they know the key.”
“What would happen were he to be freed?”
“You misunderstand, Imogen. As they held him, they destroyed him so that only his power remains.”
Imogen looked up at the sky, thinking of what she had seen of Benji and how he visited her. Would it be like that?
Why not? Benji had that kind of power and had wanted to prevent others from trapping it and using it, so why would it not be the same with Sarenoth?
“Why were you not able to free him?”
“Because Benji saw that we could not. He saw that we should not. They knew how to trap the power of a Porapeth. How could they not trap another?”
Imogen had seen an attempt like that before. It was what Dheleus had attempted, and had nearly succeeded in.
