Underlord (Cradle #6)(70)

He found it easier to follow the aura when they were arranged in contrasts. Reaching through the fist-sized ball of gray soulfire swirling inside him, he extended his senses. The treasures radiated great power, but it was still nowhere near as easy to sense as it had been in the Night Wheel Valley.

He traced the lines of color back to their sources, but stretched further. To the yellow veins of the stone beneath him, the green feathery breath of the air around him, the faint heat radiating from his own body. He could feel the connections, the subtle blending as one power became another. He was ready.

Lindon focused inward.

I need the power to protect my family, he thought. He filled himself with the desire to protect, focusing on the horror he'd felt as Suriel had shown him Sacred Valley, on his desperation to save Yerin.

Nothing happened.

He strained to detect any change in the aura. If some Truegolds who were qualified to be Underlord missed it, then it must be a subtle change.

[Yeah, but you’re thinking of backwoods Truegolds from an aura-poor nation with only a handful of Underlords,] Dross said. [They missed it because they were…I don’t want to say they’re stupid. Ignorant? Poorly educated? Backwards savages stumbling through their Paths like blind men?]

Lindon's balanced sense of aura trembled, threatening to collapse, the fire aura suddenly much more vibrant than the others. He steadied himself, calming his emotions, holding his perception in place.

“I fight to save my family,” he said, this time aloud.

Had the earth aura beneath him shaken? He focused on it, which caused his spiderweb-thin meditative state to crumble. His perception reeled back in, the vital aura a mishmash of disconnected colors again.

Lindon kicked to his feet, scattering the natural treasures and not bothering to pick them up. He strode over to a table against one wall. He had already arranged tools and boxes here to give himself something to work on. He needed to focus on a problem that was possible to solve.

Dross spoke in a soothing, even voice. [Take deep, calming breaths. Relax. That's it...relax. Breathe deeply. You have three whole days left! You could do a lot in three days. Like reaching Underlord! Theoretically.]

Lindon grabbed a yellow-and-black striped binding shaped like a blooming flower and demanded Dross make a Soulsmithing model. He had spent much of the last eight weeks with Fisher Gesha, crafting constructs; if Yerin hadn't been dying, the Fisher would have chained Lindon to her foundry and worked him to death.

A certain failure rate was inevitable in Soulsmithing, because every sample of madra was unique. Even an experienced Soulsmith like Gesha tried to prepare two samples of her materials when she could, because she'd fail two or three out of every ten times.

So being able to run the experiment in his mind, as many times as he wanted, was the Soulsmith's dream. It exhausted Dross, and there were still madra interactions Dross was unclear on—if Fisher Gesha's success rate for simple constructs was seventy-five percent, Lindon's was now ninety. Not one hundred percent, but miraculous nonetheless.

However, there was more to Soulsmithing than simple constructs. Sacred instruments—like weapons or the Skysworn armor—were beyond him. At least for now.

Once Eithan returned with the Arelius technique library, or Dross had the chance to absorb dream tablets from more Soulsmiths...Lindon couldn’t imagine all the possibilities.

This time, Lindon was working with a common binding and a type of simple construct he'd made before. He only needed to run it through in his head once before he could pull the ingredients together on his table, Forging them into a shimmering red-and-orange ball.

He was working inside a protective script, this time. A ninety percent success rate still meant a ten percent rate of failure, and he was making a bomb.

When he was finished, he placed the bomb into a scripted case with the others.

He would not return to the Night Wheel Valley unprepared.

A knock at his door surprised him. Yerin should have been trying to advance, and who else would come visit him?

He opened the door warily to see Mercy standing there, eyes shining, her hair long enough that she could pull it back into a ponytail again. She wore her smooth purple breastplate over a black-and-white set of sacred artist's robes, so she looked just like when he'd first met her. She leaned again on Suu, the dragon's head at the top hissing at his presence.

“Hi! Are you meditating? Ooooh, no, you're Soulsmithing! Can I watch?” She stepped forward, and then hesitated. “Ah, can I come in?”

He ushered her inside politely, but was still unsure. Mercy had never visited him before.

She ran over to the table, stumbling once but catching herself on the edge of the bed. When she got to his Soulsmithing tools, she picked up the goldsteel-plated tongs for holding tricky pieces of madra and held them up to the light, examining them.

“I always thought it would be fun to be a Soulsmith,” she said. “But I never had the knack for it. My sense for Forging is good, but shadow madra isn't the most widely compatible, and my tutors said it was better to concentrate on my talents.”

“My mother was a Soulsmith,” Lindon said. “It's always been an interest of mine. I have to say, I didn't expect to see you here.” He didn't want to be rude, but he did want to steer this conversation toward a quick conclusion. Every minute wasted was a minute Yerin moved closer to the edge.

She placed the tongs back down and faced him. “How are you?” she asked.