The place of knowing, p.1
The Place of Knowing, page 1
part #5 of The Volatar Saga Series
The Place of Knowing
The Volatar Saga Book 5
D.K. Holmberg
Copyright © 2020 by D.K. Holmberg
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Contents
1. Volatar
2. Volatar
3. Volatar
4. Hevith
5. Hevith
6. Volatar
7. Volatar
8. Hevith
9. Hevith
10. Volatar
11. Volatar
12. Hevith
13. Hevith
14. Volatar
15. Volatar
16. Volatar
17. Hevith
18. Hevith
19. Volatar
20. Volatar
21. Hevith
22. Hevith
23. Volatar
24. Volatar
25. Volatar
26. Hevith
27. Hevith
28. Volatar
29. Volatar
30. Hevith
31. Epilogue
Author’s Note
Series by D.K. Holmberg
1
Volatar
The massive city of Coynahl loomed in front of us. I sat atop the horse, studying the place from an elevated vantage. From here, a rolling hillside swept down and toward the city itself. An enormous wall surrounded the city, high enough that I wasn’t able to see the buildings closest to it. They were likely not nearly as impressive as the cluster of dozens of towering structures near the middle of Coynahl, all of them rising high. A single structure soared above them all, much larger than the rest. It was made of a faint grayish stone, a flat-topped, singular tower that loomed above the rest of the city.
Outside of the wall was a collection of homes, all of them crammed together, pressing inward as if they were trying to gain the protection of the city, and failing because they couldn’t come nearly as close to Coynahl as they wanted.
It was a place where I had avoided coming over the years. A place I knew was a stronghold of the Hith, a place that had been dangerous to the Jahor, enough so that I had avoided it.
“What is it?” Coldan asked.
I shook my head. “It’s probably nothing,” I said softly.
He grunted. “I’ve seen that expression from you before. I recognize the look on your face.”
I glanced over to him. His cloak covered him, though the sun shone bright and hot overhead. One hand seemed as if it were constantly reaching for the sword sheathed at his side, as if he wanted to be prepared for the possibility of attack at any moment. Knowing my friend as I did, that wasn’t too far off.
With everything we’d experienced over the years together, coming to Coynahl, to a place that had served as the headquarters of the Hith, the home of the fighting that we had experienced for the majority of our lives, I understood his reluctance. It was one that I shared.
“I suppose I have wondered whether or not this is the strategy we should be taking,” I said.
“We don’t have to come here,” Coldan said.
“After visiting with the is’anish, I think we do.”
I still couldn’t shake the feeling I’d had when I’d been there, the awareness of the power that the is’anish possessed, and a sense of how they were connected to it, a connection I was still trying to understand.
Having left the is’anish, my connection to the ne’rash, to power that I had long associated with the Hith, had changed, evolving so that it offered me far greater power than I had ever known before. No longer did the powers within me conflict the way they once had.
Now there was a different issue that warred within me.
“How certain are you that this is safe for us?”
I just shook my head, smiling at Coldan as I stared down at Coynahl. “I’m not certain at all.”
“Then maybe we don’t do this,” he said.
“If we don’t, then the war persists. We’ve been used.” I nodded, looking down toward the city. “They have been used. They may not know it, but we have to help them see that.”
“And if we’re destroyed in the process?”
I looked behind me to the others who had ridden with us. All of them were prepared to fight, some to die, for this cause.
I hoped it didn’t come down to that.
It had been my goal to protect them, to offer them as much safety as possible, but safety, especially when it came to the Trilan, was not necessarily something I could guarantee.
Safety might be merely an illusion.
“There isn’t going to be a we,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
I looked over to Coldan. This was the part I hadn’t shared with him, an aspect of the plan I had avoided revealing, knowing the moment I did he would begin to push back against it. Unfortunately, try as I might, I could come up with no other way for what needed to happen to be effective.
“I have to do this myself,” I said softly.
“Hevith,” Coldan started, lowering his voice as he briefly looked around him. “You can’t go into Coynahl by yourself. You know what they will do to you.”
I stared at the city. From here, it didn’t look as terrifying and threatening as it had always been in my mind. Even when we had faced the Hith, battling with them the first time, before we understood the role of the Trilan, Coynahl had been a place of safety for the Hith. It had been a place of danger for us.
Now it was even more so. It was one part of the Hith Empire that had not fallen.
Not that I had caused the downfall of the entire Hith Empire. That had never been my intent. I had simply pushed back the Hith where they had attacked, trying to ensure the safety of the Jahor, and attempting to reclaim land I believed was ours. Had I only known then what I knew now, I couldn’t help but wonder how different things might have been.
I could only wonder how different my reaction might have been.
“If I bring all of the Order, all of the Jahor, with me, I know what will happen.” I looked to Coldan, meeting his gaze. “They will see us as a threat. And we would be a threat. Which is why it has to be me. It has to be the Volatar.”
Coldan growled softly. “We’ve been going months. Years. I have been trying to get you to reclaim that title you’ve resisted and now you would choose to embrace it?”
I smiled at him, though I knew it did nothing to reassure him. “It’s not a matter of embracing it. It’s a matter of recognizing it needs to mean something different. At least, it needs to mean something different than what it has meant.”
“Why? The Volatar meant the safety of our people.”
“The Volatar meant the safety of our people, but at a cost.”
It was that cost which I had to acknowledge. That was the real challenge. That was what I had to recognize, knowing I had been a part of something more than what I should have been for years. I had propagated danger. Destruction. My actions had led to violence. I had caused the Hith to continue their attacks.
Turning to Coldan, I forced a smile. “I want you to keep our people ready. If something comes up, I will do my best to alert you and the others.”
With the resurgence of the elaron and the ne’rash within me, I no longer doubted whether I would even be able to do so. I knew that I could. I knew that power filled me, flowing within me in a way that would permit me to protect our people. In this case, it wasn’t so much protecting them as it was calling to them.
“The people will be ready,” he said.
“Thank you.”
Coldan shook his head. “I don’t think you understand, Hevith. I’m going with you.”
“You should not.”
“It’s not a matter of what I should and should not do. It’s a matter what I am going to do. I am going with you. You can tell me no, but that doesn’t change that I am making the journey.”
I had seen that determination from him before, and I recognized how he looked at me, the edge of anger and irritation in his eyes.
Coldan wasn’t going to be swayed.
“If we bring soldiers into the city—”
“You are going into the city. That is enough of a soldier to the Hith.”
I shook my head. “They won’t know who I am.”
“Not until you announce yourself.” Coldan studied me. “I presume that is what you intend to do.”
“I will need to,” I said.
“As I thought. Because you intend to announce yourself, you will put yourself into unnecessary danger.”
“It’s not going to be danger.”
“You can tell yourself that all you want, but we know that you are more at risk than what you want to acknowledge.”
I looked behind me, to the others with me, including Shae and Erich. They rode side-by-side and sat watching, waiting.
If I went into the city without alerting them, I couldn’t help but wonder what they might do.
But I needed to go into the city without them. I needed them to help lead the Jahor in my absence.
&nbs p; That was my intention.
They may not want to do so, but at this point, I needed to ensure that our people were safe, and so I needed to leave behind someone I knew could lead. Shae had been working up to that for as long as I had known her.
“I can’t abandon the people,” I said to Coldan. “I wanted you to ensure their safety.”
Coldan nodded. “I’m well aware of what you wanted, but I’m telling you what you will get.”
“And what I will get is not what I want?”
“What you’ll get is what you deserve.”
“That sounds to me something like a threat.”
“You can view it however you want. I’m telling you that you are not going into the city by yourself.”
I let out a long sigh. Perhaps it was for the best that I not to go alone. Perhaps it would be for the best I have Coldan with me.
I had done enough by myself, and at this point, I had seen how the Jahor had been growing again, their influence once more taking off. Because of my role, and everything that we had done, we had rebuilt the people.
If we didn’t do this, if we didn’t end the fighting in the war, then everything that we had done would have been for nothing. All of this was to help protect our people, to ensure that everything that we had gone through recently, and in the past, mattered.
We needed to ensure it did. We needed to ensure we had not wasted all of those lives. And we needed to ensure that the ger’thin weren’t able to continue to lead to the destruction of us and our kind.
And then…
Then it would be up to us to ensure the war did not return. That there was no further fighting. It would be up to us to find a way to ensure the safety of all of our people. I had no idea if such a thing would be possible. Still, of all the legacies I might be able to leave, that was the one I wanted the most.
I took a deep breath, letting out slowly, and I looked to Coldan.
“Come with me.”
He nodded, and after we shared a few words with Shae and then Erich, instructing them to keep the Jahor camped out of sight, we made our way toward Coynahl.
“After all we’ve been through, we come back together like this,” I said.
Coldan smiled. “Perhaps it is fitting,” he said.
“I suppose that if I have to face the possibility of death, it might as well be with you.”
“You would rather it be with someone else?”
I smiled at him. “You and I have been through so much together over the years.”
“We have.”
The horses brought us closer to the city, and with each passing moment, the wall loomed even larger, an ever present threat. Strangely enough, though, I didn’t have the feeling of a threat from it.
As I stared at it, watching the city come closer and closer to us, I couldn’t help but feel as if it was no different than any other city we had visited over the years. Perhaps different in the fact it wasn’t ours. There had been a time when I had considered the Jahor cities my own, a time when I had claimed them, even though it was possible I should not have.
This city was not altogether different. It was older. That much was evident. Some of these buildings had been here for centuries, judging by the appearance of them. They were old, and this place was old.
“I remember when we were pushing south,” Coldan said. “You had the Jahor reclaim land we believed were our ancestral homes.”
I nodded. “I remember.”
“And at the time, you had a limit on how far south we would travel.”
“There was no point in us making our way too far south. Any place beyond the Carren River had never been Jahor.”
That was what we had believed. That was what the Movras had informed us.
It had taken me a while to fully appreciate the history of the Jahor, but once I had, I wanted to understand what our role would be, and how we would exert our influence. Once we had pushed the Hith influence away, we had united the northern lands under the Jahor.
In hindsight, I began to wonder whether or not that was a mistake. It was possible that in doing so that we had created a different sort of challenge. Before the Hith, many of those places had been distinct nations. Following the Hith invasion, those distinct nations had been separated, turned into something else.
Now…
Now they were all once again under the Hith umbrella. Not only that, but they were bound to the Trilan. It was that influence, that connection to the Trilan, we needed to ensure we stopped.
“How long do you think the ger’thin had been active?” Coldan had asked the question before, so this wasn’t new, but it was new enough that he was probably not only asking out of curiosity. I suspected that part of his curiosity came from nervousness.
Not that I would ever tell Coldan I believed he was nervous. He would never acknowledge it.
“I don’t know. If we go by what the dwul’ran and the tu’alan and the is’anish have told us, then the ger’thin have been active ever since they were destroyed.”
“The entire time?”
I just shrugged. I didn’t really know. What had become painfully obvious to me was that this war was one that had been waged for a long time. Of course, a long time to my people was probably not all that long to those like the ger’thin. If they lived hundreds of years as it seemed they did, then it was incredibly likely they wouldn’t view things the same way we did.
“How do you think we can ever manage to stop this?” Coldan asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know that we can hope to stop it. All we can do is try to intervene, to slow the inevitable, and see if there’s any way that we can delay what is coming for us,” I said.
“I fear what it might mean,” Coldan said softly.
I took a deep breath, nodding. “I fear it, as well.”
We reached the main road leading to Coynahl.
We fell silent, though I glanced back, looking toward the hillside. I wasn’t able to see our people, though every so often I would feel something. It was a tremor of power, a hint of the elaron, and it was an aspect of that power that called to me. How many others would be sensitized to it?
I believed that it was only because my connection to the elaron I was able to detect it quite as strongly. Coldan might feel it as well, though given his unique connection to the elaron, he may not even realize what he picked up on.
“You intend to have us just walk in?” he asked.
“Walk in. Make our way toward the Hith headquarters. Announce ourselves. Pretty much that.”
“You do realize what they will do to us.”
“Honestly, I have no idea what they might do to us,” I said.
I worried more about the possibility there would be ger’thin within the city we wouldn’t even recognize. If they were instigating the attack, and if they were the reason for the various battles we had waged over the years, then the ger’thin likely would have headquarters within the city. Without knowing who they were and if there was any way to identify them, we might not even be able to react in time. The challenge for me was identifying them in a way that wouldn’t push away the Hith.
I turned back to the road.
There was activity here. As we neared the slums outside of the wall, there were children running through the streets, animals chasing them, people pushing wagons along the road. No one else was on horseback.
That might signal a problem, though I wasn’t sure.
“We should dismount,” I said to Coldan.
“Are you sure?”
“We aren’t running,” I said.
“If we have to lead the horses, we are at a disadvantage.”
“We are coming into Coynahl. We’re at a disadvantage no matter how you figure it.”
The two of us got down from the saddles, and we grabbed the reins of the horses, guiding them. Coldan looked uncomfortable. I could see him reaching for his sword, as if he wanted to unsheathe, but he refrained. At least he had the strength of will to avoid carrying a sword openly into the city. Under the circumstances, I wouldn’t have been altogether surprised were he to do so, though it wouldn’t have benefited us. It would’ve only put us at odds with people that we were trying to understand.
