Free The Hidden Icon by Jillian Kuhlmann

understand the things that I can do, the things that I may do.”
    He looked off, eyes unfocused. I wondered if he saw something in the shadows that I could not, as Jurnus had often claimed he could when feeling particularly put out about my intuition. Monsters he had seen, most often, and here at least that would be true.
    “You are untrained now, which means you will be strongest when your feelings get the better of you. Stronger still when you are in a place Theba has touched.”
    Gannet seemed to regret sharing this information, though I had stories enough for explanation. Theba had divided Shran’s sons and so his kingdom, and it was only after many hundreds of years of war that Salarahan returned and with him, peace. It was just one of many stories of the destructive force that was the dread goddess.
    I shuddered again at what I had risked in the ruins, at not knowing what had drawn me there. If I was indeed the icon of Theba, I would not be welcome any place. I did not like the thought, either, that if these powers were hers, they had been with me all of my life.
    “What happens when I’m trained?”
    “You will be strong all the time.”
    It was my turn to look away, the two of us staring into distances much greater even than the ruins that stretched beyond the barge. The urge to go into the ruins, the things I had done once there, had not been mine. It seemed to me that the stronger I became the less control I would have, but the desire to test my own boundaries was too great a temptation.
    “Will you train me?”
    At this Gannet shook his head and quickly, as though to ensure that I had no delusions. Or, and I started as I read his thoughts, that he did not.
    “You will be trained by many hands, least of all mine. I have other duties.”
    So I would be again among people I did not know and who did not know me, even in the ways that Morainn and Gannet and the others did. When I spoke next, my voice was shielded, and I extended what cover I could to my mind, as well.
    “I’ll be trained for a purpose. Like you were.”
    It was the first time I had allowed my own tongue to accept that I belonged in some way to whatever it was Gannet was, what I reluctantly accepted myself to be. It felt like I had swallowed something thick, slow to go down and slower to settle in my stomach.
    Gannet nodded, but didn’t speak. The heel of his hand brushed his lips, and in the dark it seemed like a pale stone matched against the muted iron of his mask. In that moment he was more artifice than man. As bullheaded as any of my siblings, I continued.
    “And you can’t tell me why.”
    Gannet rose, his heavy sleeve brushing against my bare shoulder as the cot shifted underneath him. I was reminded again of the sensations in the ruins, the feeling of being brushed past, of people just out of reach.
    “I won’t go far,” Gannet said, ignoring my last. “I know you value the distance you keep from us, and I will let you keep it now.”
    He parted the curtain and crossed into the narrow corridor. They would be rough on the animals tomorrow in their haste to be far from Re’Kether, and though I felt for the beasts, I longed that we should go even faster, even if it meant putting greater distance between me and my home. What would they think of me now, should I ever return? A man had died because of me.
    If I were Theba, he had not been the first, and neither could I hope that he would be the last.
     
     

Chapter 8
     
    We were twenty-eight days from my home and four out from Re’Kether when I began to dream of mountains, their summits split in the smiles of long dormant volcanoes, rivers and rambling, forested slopes. While I had stories for such things, I had never seen their like. But now I could see the white capped mountains where the Ambarians made their homes, and they were a wonder to me every time I laid eyes upon the horizon.
    In the dreams, though, I ravaged the mountains and rivers and forests. I was a devastating