Light the Reign (The Forgotten: Book 3) (8 page)

“Our mages haven’t been able find a way to
break the spell either, despite having much more experience and
talent than most of yours,” Heinrich was saying, and Layna bit her
lip to keep from retorting. He was constantly bringing up the fact
that her mages had been handicapped by the previous laws which
curtailed their talent. From what she had witnessed, it seemed that
their sudden freedom with their magic had brought out quite a bit
of creativity, but it wasn’t worth pointing this out to him.

“So we are no farther than we were at our
last meeting,” she sighed instead.

“You said that you have a party which is
currently near the tribe’s village?” Lady Aria asked, referring to
Katya and the Knights.

“Yes,” Gryffon acknowledged, “though we have
not had the chance to contact them recently. They know to report if
something useful is found, but the wild magic has been interfering
with our attempts to get in touch with them.”

“You should have them take the powerstone,”
Heinrich said. They had relayed the information about the stones
which had been used to try and solidify the spell, and how Katya’s
brave deed had kept them from being able to make the spell
permanent. “If the tribe thought that all of them could make the
spell unbreakable, would it not also stand to reason that together
they could break it?”

Excited murmuring broke out.

“Can we justify taking the powerstones from
them?” Layna asked.

“Why not?” Whitcomb countered, “you said it
yourself that all of the tribes were involved with the curse. The
Myaamia might have orchestrated it, but they all were
accomplices.”

“True,” a woman on their Council agreed, “But
we don’t know what the stones do for them.”

“Or what their removal might mean,” added
another man on the Ieldran.

“Or even if they realized what exactly they
were helping to do.”

“So you’d rather let the majority of our
population turn into monsters who will then eat the remainder?”
asked Lord Guirette.

Everyone fell silent. It was true, the
alternative was bleak, and so far, this had been the first new
idea.

“I will discuss the possibility with our
people,” Layna said quietly. “I am not saying that I will ask them
to steal them, but I will ask them to explore options.”

The meeting soon came to an end, with most
other issues on hold until the life-threatening one was resolved,
and the six Council members left them alone to contact Katya.

“Katya,” Layna greeted her friend, glad to be
speaking to a friendly face when the mirror shimmered and reformed,
“Please tell me you have good news.”

Katya was silent a moment. “I’m afraid that
the most pressing news is bad news,” she said finally, “we’ve
discovered that the curse of the tribe was mutated into spreading
some kind of blood-magic rather than the intended curse. My guess
would be that Kali somehow altered it. She seems to be the one who
arranged the nasty events up here.”

Layna laughed humorlessly, earning her a
confused look from Katya. “Well, we have come to that conclusion
ourselves recently, though we believe that the interference was
actually the control spell that Telvani was performing. My laugh
was just that at least your bad news wasn’t something even worse. I
keep thinking that it can’t get any worse, and then the universe
proves me wrong. How did you come across this information?”

Katya relayed how the Dena’ina had approached
the Knights and that it had led them to find their way inside the
village. Layna and Gryffon looked at each other excitedly.

“What are the dynamics of the tribe?” Gryffon
asked, cutting into her explanation.

“What do you mean?”

“One of the Ieldran suggested that we take
the powerstones from the tribe and use them all together to break
the spell since they were going to use all of them together to make
it unbreakable. Layna and I are hesitant since we don’t really know
how much the tribe was involved in the curse, but...”

“That makes sense. I don’t know much about
the stones yet; even the majority of the tribe was unaware of their
existence – or at least their significance – until this whole
situation came out. Finding all of them could potentially be
useful. As far as the dynamics of the tribe, interestingly, the
Myaamia just retrieved theirs to try and break the curse for
us.”

“They what?” Layna asked, astonished.

“Yes, after much prodding, they came to
realize the faults in the actions of the Elders, and were finally
exposed to the lies that had been told to them. Most of the tribe
believed that what they were doing to Phoenix was to help cure her
of some ailment so that she would be healthy to rule. The tribe is
not all bad.”

“What happened when they tried to break it?”
Gryffon asked.

“They were unable to do it,” she informed
them, “they neither had the essences of the other tribes’
powerstones as they did when performing the original spell, nor is
it exactly the same spell they put on her anymore. They were
unsuccessful.”

“Do you think you can get the other tribes’
powerstones?”

Katya paused, thoughtful. “I am not sure that
the other tribes would part with them willingly. The Myaamia seem
to be in an area where the chaotic magic is not as harsh as other
places and though they retrieved it from its hiding spot, I’m not
sure they would actually part with it in order for them all to be
used either. It’s possible that the essences as used originally
would work, but given the extra power the spell absorbed from the
blood-magic, I wouldn’t bet on it. I would think that only the
actual stones together would be powerful enough to do what it would
need to. I could have succeeded in stealing the powerstone of the
Dena’ina had I thought there was a need, I probably could get them
all for you this way if you’d like.”

“No,” Layna assured her quickly, “not yet
anyway. I don’t want to rush into anything until we’ve decided that
it is the only route. But it is a possibility that cannot be
ignored either.”

“Most really had no idea what was going on,
or that Kali was not being honest with them,” her friend told her,
seeming relieved by her answer, “and many of them seem to be
willing to listen to a different point of view. The group of people
who were responsible for the attacks against you – or at least
those who actually understood that they were attacks – seems to be
very small. Just like the Order acting behind your back.”

Layna knew Katya didn’t mean this as in
insult and simply pondered this a moment. She would have to get the
Council and Ieldran to readjust their thinking. It wasn’t the tribe
who was the enemy, only a small group of people who had done them
wrong.

“Do you think you can discuss the use of the
powerstone with whoever is now in charge of the Myaamia who is
likely to be on our side?” Gryffon asked, “I hate to ask you to do
more, but...it would be very helpful if you could also ask the
other tribes…”

“Absolutely,” she nodded, “I’ll begin right
away.”

*

Hunter strode into the building, giving
Lorcan a sideways glance where he sat next to the bed Katya was
resting on. Though she had been healed very well from the tribe
healers, she knew that getting rest while she could would be
important. It seemed as though fate had yet another quest for her
to go on.

She watched Hunter’s graceful movements with
admiration. His lithe form rippled with well-defined muscle. He
gripped the back of the chair before the table, and picked it up
with ease to swivel it around. He sat in it backwards, setting the
rolled parchment in his hand on the table and unfurling it.

“Convinced one of the Elders to part with a
map of the tribes’ locations,” he told them, still eyeing Lorcan
out of the corner of his eye. Though Katya had insisted that Lorcan
would never have intentionally hurt her and was only driven by the
pain of the loss of his parents, the older man still held a dislike
for him. If she didn’t know better, she might think he was actually
jealous…

Katya sat up. “Where’s the nearest one?” she
inquired.

Hunter paused a moment, squinting at the map,
then he raised a hand and pointed to an area slightly north and
west of their present location. “Looks like here,” he answered,
“though the terrain looks a little rough, so even if the distance
is less, it could really be more time. Hard to tell.”

“Which tribe is it?”

“The Kanza. The Dena’ina leader implied that
we may not receive a very warm welcome there, however, so it may be
better to start somewhere else.”

“Where else are they?”

“Here,” he pointed to the far west, along the
coast. “The Dakelh. And here,” he pointed again, his finger moving
over the area to the north and east she knew to house the Dena’ina,
which he confirmed. “The Dena’ina.” And finally, he drew it down
the map and stopped, tapping his finger on the parchment a few
times before withdrawing it. “The Gwich’in.”

Katya pondered the choices. No matter what it
would be a bit of a journey. “Do you know of a plant called
chokeroot?” she asked.

Hunter looked surprised. “I do, why?”

“Layna and Gryffon asked for it, they said
that it will help to slow the spread of the disease. The Knights
have been sending some for that girl’s sister, but now that they
know the Bricrui is really what the curse is, they are looking for
more. What areas is it most likely to be found in?”

Hunter rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I’ve
only ever seen it in the middle of the Plains, growing around
groups of rocky areas.” He examined the map. “The coast is probably
too wet for it, and the area around the Gwich’in looks to be mostly
forest. I would guess that the Kanza is the most similar to the
Plains terrain and therefore would be the most likely to have
it.”

“Then let’s start there,” Katya said
decisively.

The Elder who had become the new leader since
Kali’s absence, Grayson, entered the hut. Katya, Hunter, and Lorcan
looked up at him expectantly.

“We have decided to allow you to take the
stone,” he told her seriously, handing the stone to her once more.
“The wrongs we have committed against you need to be righted, and
as we are no longer capable of doing so, we must provide you with
the means to do it yourselves. The taming of the chaotic magic
spells you have shown us will help to keep the area cleansed, as
the stone previously did for us, so there is no reason not to
entrust it to you. After all, you proved yourself worthy by
carrying around the Bloodstone without being tainted by its
aura.”

Katya’s hackles raised. Though she knew that
Nathair himself had been tainted by the darkness of Nuko inside the
stone, she now thought of it as the remnants of Nathair himself,
and did not like him being referred to as evil. She bit her tongue.
“Thank you,” she said instead, reaching out and taking the stone
from his outstretched hand. “Hopefully it will be able to help us
and we can return it to you soon.”

Once it had been decided where they would
begin their journey and that the Myaamia would indeed give them
their stone, it was not long before they were on their way. The
Dena’ina chose to travel with them once again, adding to their
entourage a strange cart that four of them hauled along. Katya
wondered where the thing had come from, but supposed that it could
have been following along behind them on the journey to the Myaamia
and then hidden in the woods. The Dena’ina mysteriously refused to
give her an answer as to what it contained.

Several of the Myaamia chose to accompany
them, to Katya’s surprise, as well as Slade. She kept her distance
from the latter, glad that he had come around to realize his erred
thinking, but still not ready to forgive him for the emotional toil
he’d caused her. She also wasn’t fond of the tension that suddenly
filled the air between him and Hunter whenever he was near.

A fly buzzed around Katya’s head and she
swatted at it irritably. They had come to the edge of the Kanza
lands and now stood in front of their leader. She had explained
their position, backed up by both the representatives of the
Myaamia and the Dena’ina, and was showing him the stone which the
Myaamia had relinquished to her.

The Kanza leader’s eyes widened as he saw
what she held before her. His gaze flickered to the Dena’ina leader
and Katya thought she saw the other man nod slightly, but she
couldn’t be sure.

“We have already been given the Myaamia stone
once the majority of their people realized what had been done in
the name of the tribes. We can show you how to cleanse the area so
that the stone is no longer necessary to keep the chaos at
bay.”

The man looked considerably surprised by this
information, and impressed, though Katya could tell he was trying
to suppress this feeling. “Why would we give you our stone to
reverse the spell. What is it to us?”

“Not only is the act committed against them
unspeakable, but the two countries of the Lost Lands are currently
in negotiations to unite, and these combined allies would make a
formidable foe, even after having a large portion of their
population wiped out.”

“Are you threatening us?” the Kanza leader
asked, raising an eyebrow, though not looking overly concerned by
this possibility.

“Only an observation,” Katya clarified,
“Gelendan in particular has had a lot to be angry at in recent
years. They may welcome someone to direct this anger at.”

“Indeed,” the man said thoughtfully, rubbing
his chin as though stroking an imaginary beard. “We cannot,
however, just hand over the stone to you. I’m sorry.”

“Surely there must be some way she can prove
she is worthy of the responsibility?” the Dena’ina leader
suggested.

The Kanza leader looked sourly at him. “It is
not a question of responsibility. It is simply impossible. The
stone not only controls the chaos in this region so that we are
able to survive the harsh magic, but it also counteracts the
atrocities done to us during the Dark King’s rule.”