Shattering the Ley (6 page)

“Can you tell me what’s wrong now?” the gardener asked, and somehow the question sounded more formal, more weighted. He sounded like one of her teachers at school.

She almost told him about the energy that was being diverted away from the circle of stones—so much more energy than coursed through the stone around her now, so much more than what had once passed through here—but then she realized he meant the red-streaked stone she’d pointed out earlier.

She pulled her attention away from all of the new sensations and focused on the scattered stones at her feet, focused on the currents that she couldn’t really see pulsing through the stone and air and the rocks before her.

“It’s out of place,” she said. “It doesn’t belong there.”

The gardener didn’t move, didn’t react at all. “And where does it belong?” When she turned to look at him, he smiled. “It’s all right. You can move them around. You won’t harm anything. Not here.”

She slid off of the stone ridge and picked up the red-streaked stone. The flows around her changed instantly, shifting before her. She stood a moment, considering, feeling the weight of the stone in her hands, heavier than she’d expected, her fingers brushing its grit and roughness. Then she stepped to one side and set the stone down in a new location.

But even as she did so, the flows changed yet again, settling into new streams, ones that were decidedly worse than before. But she knew the red-streaked stone belonged there. She felt it, felt the eddies coursing through it.

The other stones were wrong as well.

She began moving them all, picking them up, setting them down in new locations, rearranging them. A few times, with a new arrangement, she’d step back and shake her head, then move in again. Some stones had to be stacked one atop the other, or next to each other, balanced precariously, although as soon as they were set properly she could feel the energy flowing through them and knew that they were right. Others were set to one side, solitary. Color did not matter, nor texture—or if it did, then the meaning was too complex or too subtle for her to see.

Finally, all of the stones were in place except one. The size of her fist, blue-black with swirls of white in it, she held it a long moment, contemplating the pattern before her, then turned to the gardener.

“This one doesn’t belong here,” she said.

The gardener raised his eyebrows in surprise. “It doesn’t belong in the grotto at all?”

She bit her lower lip at his reaction, glanced down at the pattern again, then back at him. “No.”

He grunted, then stood slowly and took the stone from her, gazing at it in consternation, then at the layout of stone before them. Her father said nothing, although his expression was pinched with worry and resignation.

Kara fidgeted as the silence stretched. For a brief moment, she thought she felt something else on the eddies surrounding her, another presence, but the impression was fleeting.

Finally, the gardener nodded. “I believe you are correct.” He tucked the stone into one pocket and glanced toward her father. “I think the outcome of the test is obvious.”

Her father stood slowly and nodded. “Yes.”

“You are not surprised.”

“No. As you said before, we knew. We simply . . . didn’t want to admit it. She’s too young.” Her father caught her gaze, gave her a strained smile.

“She’s young, yes, but not too young. The talent is appearing earlier and earlier as the Baron continues expanding the ley network, as it continues to grow. And with the sowing of the tower, he’s increased the potential in Erenthrall itself greatly. I’m not surprised she was overwhelmed by the surge created in its sowing.”

Kara’s heart shuddered. Something had changed as they spoke, something had shifted, like the lines of energy had shifted as she moved the stones. A distance had opened up between her and her father, a distance she felt even when he had smiled.

“What do we need to do?”

The gardener drew in a deep breath as he straightened, brow creased in thought. “Nothing for now. She should continue to go to school as usual. I’ll inform my fellow Wielders.”

Kara started in surprise, glanced at the gardener’s brown robes in consternation. The Wielders wore dark purple jackets, not robes. And the Prime Wielders—like the ones that came to the school for the testing—wore cloaks.

The gardener—the Wielder—studied her, then said to her father, although his eyes stayed on her, “I believe she has . . . great potential. Perhaps she will even become a Prime. She sensed that the stone did not belong, something I had not yet discovered in my own ministrations of the grotto.” He touched the pocket where he’d secreted the stone, and Kara suddenly remembered seeing him at the entrance to the gardens, doing what she had done here in the grotto—adjusting stones. “I have not been a part of the politics of the Wielders for a long time, so I cannot say what her role will be, not for certain. But I will inform the appropriate people.”

“Very well.”

As if hearing the resignation in her father’s voice, the Wielder tore his attention away from her, smiled, and grasped his shoulder. “You will have some time with her yet,” he said softly. “And there will be other times afterward. Enjoy them.”

Her father nodded, although he did not seem convinced.

The gardener—the Wielder—turned toward her, then knelt, meeting her gaze squarely. “And you, little one . . . you should not be afraid. You will have to leave your father, yes. Your mother and your friends as well. But you will find so much more. You are just beginning to discover the world.”

He smiled and stood, but his words hadn’t settled the trembling panic in her chest or the faint nausea in her stomach. She didn’t like the creases between her father’s eyes, the tension around his mouth.

And she didn’t want to leave Cory and Justin or any of the others behind.

Ischua watched Kara and her father as they left Halliel’s Park, his reassuring smile slipping into a frown as soon as they passed beyond sight. Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew the stone Kara had said didn’t belong in the grotto, rubbing his thumb over its blue-black surface. “You shouldn’t have known this didn’t belong,” he muttered to himself. “
I
didn’t know it didn’t belong.”

He looked up, in the direction the two had taken out of the grotto, then tucked the stone back in his pocket and headed out of the grotto and through the park, moving toward the entrance and the city beyond. As he did, he scanned the area for signs of the other Tenders of the garden, men and women who had once been Wielders but were now retired, content to work with the lesser, natural node here in the park rather than the intricate and convoluted ley lines and nodes that had been created throughout Erenthrall. He saw no one near the grotto, and only a distant figure—Terrana, perhaps—once he neared the entrance. He hesitated, watching her hunched figure as she pruned one of the hedges, but he didn’t think she’d noticed his visitors.

He entered the flow of traffic on the street, weaving swiftly through the stream of people, carts, and horses toward the marketplace. He skirted its edges, delving deeper into the shops and storefronts that lined the narrower streets to the east. Here the buildings were built of riverstone on the first floor, the second and third stories of wood, part of the oldest section of the city. He made for a small door tucked between two larger shops. He glanced down the street in both directions before entering and descending the stairs into a wide basement beneath both buildings to either side. The noise began as soon as he opened the door and reached a wincing pitch by the time he entered the main room. The acrid scent of ink hit like a stone to the face, even though Ischua had been expecting it. Nose wrinkled, one hand covering his mouth, he tried to take shallow breaths as he searched through the cluttered basement for Dalton. The leader of the Kormanley was near the back, working the printing press making such a profound racket. Ischua wended his way through stacks of newsprint, tied and ready to be distributed by Dalton’s crew of newsboys to the streets above, past reams of yellowish paper smelling faintly of acid and numerous desks and tables full of racks and cubbyholes with the small lettered printers’ blocks in each. Dalton was hunched over one rack, slotting in tiles for the newest article with surprising speed, mumbling to himself as he scanned the scrawl of the writer’s notes. He never looked up from the page, his hands finding the correct letters and fitting them into place out of habit.

Ischua shifted into Dalton’s line of sight slowly, but the Kormanley leader still jerked upright in surprise, hand reaching for something beneath the desk before he registered who had arrived. His eyebrows rose—Ischua rarely saw Dalton outside of the Kormanley’s usual cavernous meeting room—but he shut down the printing press so they could talk. It died with a moan and clatter. Ischua felt its connection to the ley falter, a tension against his skin lessening.

“Ischua, what brings you to my shop?” Dalton asked, wiping his hands on a cloth as he approached. His fingers were stained heavily with black ink, but Ischua didn’t hesitate to shake his hand.

“Someone visited Halliel’s Park today, a young girl. She’s been coming to the park recently, drawn to the node there, I’d guess, and I had her father bring her into the grotto.”

Dalton’s eyes had narrowed. “To test her? She’s manifesting early?”

“Yes.”

“How did she do?”

Ischua pulled the stone from his pocket and set it on Dalton’s work desk. “She aligned all of the stones perfectly, and told me that this stone doesn’t belong in the grotto at all. I’ve been trying to place this stone correctly for four months.”

“So she’s powerful?”

“Definitely Prime level. Although she’s only twelve. It’s possible the manifestations are spiking and she’ll level out below Prime, but I doubt it.”

Dalton picked up the stone and massaged it that same way Ischua had inside the grotto. “Did anyone see you test her?”

“No. None of the other Tenders were present.”

He met Ischua’s gaze. “Then you don’t have to report this to the Primes.”

“I don’t think so. Her parents have noticed her talent, but I don’t think the school is yet aware of it. They’ll find out shortly, though. I don’t think she’ll be able to keep it controlled on her own long enough to last until the testing at fourteen. Someone in authority will notice before then.”

“You should be the one to find her and take her to the Primes for the official testing. And we’ll have to keep watch once she’s in the Wielders’ hands. If she can be made sympathetic to our cause, perhaps she can provide us with information about what the Wielders are up to.”

He’d gripped the stone in a tight fist as he spoke, but now unclenched his fingers and, after a contemplative pause, handed it back to Ischua.

He gripped Ischua’s shoulder and added, “Keep an eye on her, Ischua. Let me know when she’s ready to be approached by the Kormanley, and when the Wielders become interested in her.”

Tyrus nearly cried out when Calven, his initial contact with the splinter group in the Kormanley, thrust the burlap sack over his head, cutting off his sight. He only stopped himself by biting down on the inside of his mouth hard enough to draw blood. As its coppery taste tainted his mouth and the itchy scent of the impromptu hood assaulted his nostrils, he heard a door open behind him and the tread of at least two pairs of feet enter. A hand fell on his shoulder and squeezed hard.

“Are you certain of this, Calven?” The voice rumbled, low and deep. The hand on his shoulder felt huge. “We know he’s in tight with Dalton and the others who lack true faith.”

Tyrus suppressed the urge to shudder and straightened in indignation. “I have faith,” he protested.

Calven shifted closer, Tyrus straining to pick up any other sounds. His eyes had adjusted and he could see faint light through the weave of the sack. “You heard him. But we’ll be cautious just the same.” His voice shifted toward Tyrus. “We’ll take you to this meeting, but you’ll have to keep the hood on while we travel.”

The man standing over him leaned down and muttered in his ear, “Don’t try anything funny.”

Tyrus cringed.