The Lost City (The Lost Prophecy Book 5) Read online

  “One of them was yours, wasn’t it?” Brohmin asked.

  The Deshmahne leaned on his sword and tried to stand, but was unable to. His eyelids sagged closed before he managed to open them again. “One of them. Was mine.”

  “How long ago?”

  The Deshmahne sighed. “Jason was five. He disappeared in the first wave of attacks. School started to protect them.”

  Brohmin glanced back at the Lashiin priests. Not priests at all, but something else. He would have answers. “Did you ever learn what happened?”

  The Deshmahne fell forward, and Brohmin hurried to him, rolling him to the side. His breathing was ragged, and he wouldn’t survive for long.

  “Found. In the mine.”

  “Mine?”

  “Use children. Metal. Connection.”

  Brohmin sucked in a breath. How long had it been since wars had been fought over teralin? Centuries? Longer even? The last time was before the Magi were founded, back when the damahne still walked the earth.

  It was a sad irony that Raime’s discovery of the metal’s use would lead to pain for his priests.

  The Deshmahne took a ragged breath. And then another. He didn’t have much time remaining.

  “Whose child did they claim this time?” That mattered. The reason—and the parentage of the child—mattered somewhat.

  He sucked in a breath, and for a moment, Brohmin didn’t think he would take another. With a great heave of effort, he opened his eyes and looked over to Brohmin. “High Desh.”

  With that, he breathed his last.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  It was an uncomfortable feeling to mourn the loss of a Deshmahne, but that was exactly what Brohmin did. He’d lived for decades feeling hatred for them, seething with anger at the destruction they leveled throughout the south, and then with the violence they inflicted upon the north. Though was natural to hate them, he had never let that hatred cloud his judgment.

  With the loss of this young priest, Brohmin found himself saddened. What the Lashiin priests had done managed to humanize the Deshmahne. It was something he once would have thought impossible, but now that he knew that they could suffer, that they could fear for the loss of their own children, he couldn’t help but feel differently.

  He left the Deshmahne, sliding the dark teralin sword underneath his body so that no one else could claim it, and made his way to the three fallen Lashiin priests. Each wore the same twisted metal ring on his middle finger, a mark of their deception. That they would use a mark of the Lashiin and twist it in such a way felt foul.

  He should have known that no priest would have done what these had. He knew better than to believe that the Urmahne priests would come to lands occupied as these were by the Deshmahne. He should have known that no priest would ever have brandished a knife as he had seen the man in the street carrying.

  Surprisingly, the man he’d met in Polle Pal was not among these men. The sense of ahmaean led him here, but it was no longer present.

  Without the Deshmahne to fear, Brohmin stretched out with his connection to the ahmaean, straining into the distance. The marker remained, and it was nearby, but below him.

  Below meant within the mines.

  He had experience within mines before, but it was a time that he preferred to forget about. The dark teralin had influenced him then, creating a haze over his mind that he still struggled to move past.

  But he no longer doubted that the Lashiin priests had abducted children. Dying men rarely lied.

  Brohmin quickly tied the two men he’d knocked out, binding both wrists and ankles, before hurrying up the stairs, and doing the same with the man he’d first encountered. He dragged that man down below and secured him to the others.

  Then he sat back and waited.

  It wasn’t long before the men came around. Brohmin had knocked them all out, striking them in such a way that they would have headaches when they awoke, but he hadn’t harmed them in any other way.

  The first man to awaken looked around, a panicked expression on his face. When he saw Brohmin sitting in the simple wooden chair he’d pulled over next to them, the panic faded, and something resembling relief swept across his face.

  “What happened? What are you doing here?”

  Brohmin sat back, staring at him with an unreadable expression on his face. He said nothing, preferring silence so that the man could implicate himself. Part of Brohmin questioned whether he could even say anything without revealing the depth of his anger.

  “Why am I bound?”

  One of the other Lashiin priests began to come around. Brohmin stood and unsheathed his sword. He fixed his gaze on the man who had awoken first and glared at him. “Where is the child?”

  “Child?” He managed to make himself sound sufficiently confused. “You’re from the north. I can hear it in your voice. You know what they do. You know how dangerous they are.”

  Brohmin had worked for years to remove the accent from his voice. Would they believe that he hadn’t come from the north, at least not the north as they knew it? His home was a place that few claimed these days, at least unless they had no other choice.

  “I’m aware that you abducted a child. Where is he?”

  The man’s gaze drifted to Brohmin’s sword, and his eyes widened slightly. “Abducted? No. Rescued. They abuse those children.”

  Brohmin held the tip of his sword out, moving it close to the man’s throat. He let the sharpened point press against his skin, drawing a small drop of blood. “I’ve seen the school. I know the children are not abused.”

  That had been one of the hardest things for him to wrap his mind around. It had been easy to believe that the Deshmahne would harm children the way that the Lashiin priest he’d encountered in Polle Pal claimed. Instead, he’d found something else, something harder to comprehend. The Deshmahne prized their children.

  That shouldn’t have surprised. The next generation of Deshmahne would come from their children, but those were not unhappy students in the courtyard he’d watched for days. There had been the sounds of laughter, the sounds of giggling children, enjoying a normal childhood.

  It was not what he had expected.

  None of it was. He hadn’t expected to come to Paliis and find what he had. There was violence in the darkness of the Deshmahne, but the people in the city were no different from people anywhere else in the world. The traders there had been no different. Life went on, despite what others might believe about the Deshmahne.

  And why shouldn’t it?

  Even the Urmahne didn’t have the right view of the gods. Why should the Deshmahne be faulted for the same misperception? They might favor violence, but they did so as their way of honoring the gods, their way of demonstrating strength to them.

  “You’re from the north.”

  “Your saying it again won’t make it any more valid. Where is the child?” Brohmin pressed with the sword, just enough to force the man to pull his neck back.

  The last Lashiin priest had awoken, and like the other two, he jerked on his bindings but found he couldn’t move. Brohmin had tied them to a post in the middle of the room. They would have no choice but to either answer or suffer.

  Something in the man’s expression changed, slipping from confusion to a mask of hatred. “You won’t find him. They won’t find him. We’ve taken him away, and will use his abilities—”

  Brohmin slammed the hilt of his sword against the man’s temple, and his head lolled to the side. He turned to the man next to him and stabbed his sword toward his neck. “Perhaps you will be more agreeable.”

  This man had a pudgy face and beady eyes that stared at the sword pointing toward his neck. He didn’t move, not jerking back as the other man had. “I don’t know where he’s gone.”

  “But you know who might,” Brohmin said.

  The man stared at him for a moment, and the muscles around his eyes tensed as he seemed to consider how to answer.

  Brohmin motioned to the remaining Lashiin p
riest. They might be something else, especially considering what they had done, but until he learned who they were, that was what how he’d think of them.

  “If you don’t answer, I’m sure your friend here won’t have the same objections, especially if he wants to live.”

  Brohmin pressed the sword back into the pudgy man’s neck.

  “The child. Tell me where he has been taken.”

  “You don’t understand. How else will we stop the Deshmahne?”

  “Is it your responsibility to stop them?”

  The other man answered. “It’s everyone’s responsibility to oppose them. They defile what the gods ask of us. They seek to destroy.”

  There was something about his voice that carried with it a sonorous quality, and Brohmin studied him for a moment. He had a sharp nose, and a cleft in his chin, but the look in his eyes and the passion in his voice spoke of a man who had experience with the priests. Likely that man had been a priest before.

  “If you truly believed in the Urmahne, you wouldn’t be doing this,” Brohmin said. “Taking children goes against what your gods teach.”

  “My gods?” The priest stared at him, shaking his head. “They are our gods.”

  “Only if you believe in them,” Brohmin said. He shifted his chair, putting it so that he could pay attention to both of the men who were awake. He doubted the priest would be the one to reveal where they had taken the child, and he didn’t know whether the pudgier man knew enough. “Where have you taken him?”

  “You’ve already proven yourself to be a nonbeliever. I see no markings on your arms, which tells me that you do this to gain their favor.”

  Brohmin breathed out, and solidified the ahmaean around him, creating the markings on his arms.

  The man who had once been a priest gasped.

  Brohmin released the connection, letting the illusion of the markings fade. “Why would I need to gain their favor when the gods have already favored me?”

  “You said you didn’t believe!” the priest said.

  “I don’t need to believe to know their power. If you don’t tell me where to find the child, I will share with the gods what you have done. If you think that you’ve curried their favor by your actions, you will find yourself mistaken. Besides, what will the gods think of one of their priests who has chosen to serve the Deshmahne?”

  “I have chosen to serve—”

  “Do you think the Deshmahne reveal themselves so easily? Sometimes, they prefer to hide their connection.” Brohmin used his ahmaean and shifted the markings so that they crept along the priest’s arms.

  The other man’s eyes widened. “How? Have you been hiding this from us?” he asked the man who had once been an Urmahne priest.

  “I have not! I would not!”

  Brohmin maintained the connection, though doing so weakened him. He wanted answers, and he was determined to get them now, so that he could find this child, and rescue Salindra. When that was done, he didn’t know what he would do next.

  “Where is the child?”

  “Remove them,” the former Urmahne priest said.

  “Where is the child?”

  “Remove them,” he begged.

  “Only if you show me what I ask.”

  The priest glanced at the other man before nodding. “I will show you.”

  Brohmin breathed out, trying to hide his fatigue. “Once you do, then I will remove them.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Brohmin wasn’t completely surprised when the Lashiin priest led him back toward the city. It was later in the day when they reached the heart of Paliis, and the distant rumbling, the threat of storms, continued with more intensity. The clouds never quite reached the city, almost as if something about the city itself pushed them away. Instead, they remained closer to the mountains, swirling around the upper peaks, obscuring them completely.

  The air held the humidity that Brohmin had grown accustomed to within Paliis. He found his breathing more difficult than it should be and worked to steady it, slowing it so that he could react if needed. He was uncertain what he would encounter now that they were back in the city, but feared he would be forced to act quickly.

  He kept the priest in front of him. The other two remained back at the manor house, tied to the post, with a promise that Brohmin would return, and would do so with more violence if the priest attempted to escape. He had seen those men against the Deshmahne and doubted that a single priest would be able to overwhelm him.

  The markings along the priest’s arms remained, forced there by Brohmin’s connection to his ahmaean, and creating the illusion of the Deshmahne tattoos.

  “Where in the city do you intend to take me?” Brohmin asked.

  The priest slowed, and others along the street pushed past them. “You wanted to know where the child went.”

  Brohmin debated whether or not to reveal the fact that he could still detect the other Lashiin priest who was missing, but if he revealed that connection, he risked his remaining advantage. He wanted this priest to fear that Brohmin would leave him marked as Deshmahne.

  There was more he might need to know. It was possible the Lashiin priests kept some way of funneling children from Paliis. Until Brohmin knew what exactly they were doing with the children, he would keep whatever advantage he had.

  “The child was brought to the square,” Brohmin said. “I observed that much myself.”

  Let the priest think that was all Brohmin knew.

  The Lashiin priest nodded. “He was brought to the square, and then he was taken away from it.”

  “Not to the manor house?”

  The priest’s eyes narrowed. “How is it that you knew of our home?”

  “The gods have given me a way to track you. They don’t look kindly on those who would harm children.”

  “We don’t harm children. We do what is necessary to remove the threat of the Deshmahne. We must stop this generation, and the next, and the one following it. Only then can we be safe, and only then can we be certain that we have removed enough of the Deshmahne influence that they will no longer be a threat to the Urmahne.”

  The priest spoke more loudly than Brohmin would have expected, especially in a place like Paliis, surrounded as they were by those who sided with the Deshmahne. Most within the city had converted, and though Brohmin hadn’t observed their worship, he was fully aware of the influence the Deshmahne had.

  “You would rather destroy lives than show them the error of their ways?” Brohmin asked. “You would rather kill than convince them your way is right?”

  “How many more lives will be lost if we don’t do this? I hear it from your voice that you have spent time in the north. I’ve seen what happens when the Deshmahne attack. I’ve seen the way that they press their will on others.”

  “Where?” Brohmin asked, pushing the man forward.

  The man shook his head. “What does it matter?”

  Brohmin shrugged. “Maybe it doesn’t matter. Much like you think the lives of these children don’t matter.”

  The man continued along the street, veering away from the trading square. Brohmin was surprised to note that they made their way generally toward the distant Deshmahne temple.

  “Litchem,” the Lashiin priest said.

  Brohmin frowned. “That’s where you’re from?” Brohmin knew of the village. It was a small village, only a few days’ ride from Vasha, and close enough that the people of the village shouldn’t be easily converted. That close to Vasha, the home of the Magi, he was surprised to hear that the Deshmahne would have much influence.

  The priest nodded. “That’s where I served. When the Deshmahne came through, they forced conversions, taking many of the young men, branding them in such a way that they gained unnatural abilities.” His gaze drifted to Brohmin’s sword. “They used this as a way to prove to these men the power of their beliefs. Few understood the cost. All they saw was the Deshmahne priests, and the strength that they demonstrated, power that granted them abil
ities that only the Magi and the gods possessed.”

  Once again, the priest looked up to Brohmin, meeting his eyes.

  Brohmin grunted. “I am neither Mage nor god.”

  The priest sniffed. “Whatever you are, you are more like the Deshmahne than like the Urmahne.”

  Brohmin suppressed a grin. “And how is that?”

  They reached a branching in the road, and the priest led him away from the trading square. Now Brohmin was certain that they headed toward the temple. What would the Deshmahne do when Brohmin returned without the other two priests that had been sent with him? Would they blame him for their loss?

  He had to find the child, had to do whatever was necessary so that he could rescue Salindra.

  “You’re forcing me the same way that they forced those in my village.”

  “That’s where you’re mistaken. I’m forcing you to make amends for a mistake.”

  “There is no mistake in stopping the Deshmahne,” the priest said. At least in this, he kept his voice low. Though it was later in the day, the crowd around them was fairly thick. The people moving past forced their way, requiring that both Brohmin and the priest stand their ground as they remained in the middle of the street.

  They weren’t too far from the school and the room that Brohmin had rented. Somehow, the Deshmahne had known about the room and had known where he was staying. They had known he had sat there, watching the children. It wasn’t difficult to see things from their perspective, and believe that Brohmin had less than benevolent intentions.

  “When innocents are brought into a fight meant for adults, everyone loses,” Brohmin said.

  “Innocents? Many of them are no more innocent than you. Many have chosen to fight, and willingly side with the Deshmahne.” The priest continued for a couple of steps before glancing over his shoulder. “When the Deshmahne came to Litchem, they brought children with them. Some were no older than twelve or thirteen, yet all had markings. All had been given the same dark powers that the Deshmahne grant their priests. Does that make them innocent?”