Free Shattering the Ley by Joshua Palmatier Page A

The Nexi that are in the Baronial cities like Erenthrall have nothing to do with the natural structure of the ley. That network of ley—the network controlled by the Prime Wielders and Baron Arent Pallentor—is political, the Nexi created at the whim of the Primes. The Barons pay for their access to the ley and for the Nexi in their cities. Even then, those Nexi are run and maintained by Wielders who are trained here in Erenthrall and are loyal only to Baron Arent. No, that is an artificial network. This set of stones, and those like it spread throughout the continent, are markers for the natural ley system.”
    “The one the Kormanley wants us to revert to?”
    Kara looked up at the mention of the Kormanley, saw the gardener looking at her father oddly, concern flashing across his face.
    “Yes,” he said as he studied her father. “That is what the Kormanley preach. A return to what is natural.”
    Her father nodded and the gardener relaxed, his gaze shifting toward her.
    “What’s wrong, little one?”
    She started, grimacing as her father turned toward her sharply. “I don’t know. There’s something wrong with the stones. With that stone, I think.” She pointed toward a white stone with a streak of red running through it. “But I can’t tell what.”
    The gardener’s attention was fixed on her completely now, as well as her father’s.
    “Why can’t you tell what’s wrong?”
    She frowned. “I can’t feel it through my feet.”
    The gardener chuckled, then leaned forward, eyebrows raised. “Then take off your shoes,” he said softly, and grinned.
    Kara glanced toward her father, who nodded permission. Without hesitation, she kicked off the soft leather and planted her feet directly onto the stone.
    And gasped. Energy shot through her legs and into her gut, spiking a moment before settling down into a steady stream. What had felt like a single current through the stone now split into separate eddies, flowing in all directions, although still interconnected, still part of the same whole. Goose bumps broke out on her skin and she shuddered, her heart adjusting to the flow, even as the grotto came into sharper focus. Scents amplified, stone and dust and the damp, dark taste of the moss by the stream. Pollen from the trees outside exploded across her senses, along with the heat radiating up from the rock all around, heat it had absorbed during the day from the sun. With the sudden awareness of the heat, she realized the eddies and flows she felt in the stone were in the air as well, that she could sense the air, like cloth, all around her, that everything was connected—stone, stream, air, and the lake of ley far beneath her, with an upwelling there, at the center of the stone stellae. Except that a deeper upwelling had been siphoned off, diverted and centered farther away, north of here. She frowned as she tried to pinpoint it exactly, but couldn’t. The energy outside of the grotto was too blurred, too vast for her to try to take in and understand.
    “Can you tell me what’s wrong now?” the gardener asked, and somehow the question sounded more formal, more weighted. He sounded like one of her teachers at school.
    She almost told him about the energy that was being diverted away from the circle of stones—so much more energy than coursed through the stone around her now, so much more than what had once passed through here—but then she realized he meant the red-streaked stone she’d pointed out earlier.
    She pulled her attention away from all of the new sensations and focused on the scattered stones at her feet, focused on the currents that she couldn’t really see pulsing through the stone and air and the rocks before her.
    “It’s out of place,” she said. “It doesn’t belong there.”
    The gardener didn’t move, didn’t react at all. “And where does it belong?” When she turned to look at him, he smiled. “It’s all right. You can move them around. You won’t harm anything. Not