Read Online Threading the Needle by Joshua Palmatier - Free Book Online

from the main buildings.”
    â€œI can feel it. Not that strong.”
    â€œBut stronger than anything near the Hollow.”
    Artras didn’t answer. They stepped off the stone of the road and between two buildings, storefronts of some kind. Behind were a few storage buildings, scattered cottages with gardens now growing wild. Beyond, the terrain was rougher, but Kara could sense the pull of the ley. They brushed through grass, the knee-high stalks pattering against their legs, only rolling grassland interrupted by a few trees stretching into the distance.
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    Kara squinted. “I don’t know.”
    They stumbled onto the lip of a depression surrounded by a low wall of stacked stones. A break in the wall acted as a gate, and in the center of the shallow bowl of carved-out earth sat a rough-hewn triangular boulder resting on three squat round stones.
    â€œIt’s like the bowl around the Nexus in Erenthrall. Not on the same scale, and that rock doesn’t look anything like the Nexus when we found it, but close enough.” Kara descended down into the depression. The ley grew stronger as she approached. She laid her hand on the rough surface. “It’s the node,” she said, then corrected herself. “No, it’s not. But the node is directly beneath it.”
    Artras had laid her hand on the stone as well, brushing her hands across its surface as she moved around its three sides, eyes narrowed, searching. Most of the bowl was shadowed, deep enough it wasn’t catching the light from the distortion. “I don’t see any markings.”
    Kara realized what she was looking for and began searching as well. Within two steps, she stumbled on a stone hidden in the darkness. She felt it roll away—
    And the energy within the bowl shifted. It was a subtle change, but Kara suddenly remembered Ischua, her father, and the test the Tender had given her in the middle of Halliel’s Park when she was twelve. Her eyes widened as the memory poured in.
    â€œIt must be an old node.” She reached down to pick up the displaced stone and returned it to its proper position. “One that was probably part of the ley network before Prime Augustus and Baron Arent subjugated the ley by forming the Nexus.”
    â€œBut Hernande and Cory have been checking the network using the sands. They haven’t seen many pockets of stability at all.” Artras patted the rock between them. “This node feels stable.”
    â€œI don’t think they’ve been monitoring it this far out. There’s nothing here, after all.” Then, in a softer voice, “Or there wasn’t.”
    Kara shifted, reaching for the ley as she sighted along one of the ley lines. It angled straight for Erenthrall, the massive distortion looming on the horizon now, the auroral storm in between. It didn’t surprise her that the node was connected to the city. But it couldn’t be attached to the Nexus, or even Halliel’s Park; both of those nodes were locked inside the distortion. It had to be connected to something else. But what?
    And then there was the branching line.
    She twisted, stepping away from the node toward the west, sighting along the second line. Unseen, it streaked straight across the plains, toward the mountains.
    She’d started to reach out to follow it, perhaps to its destination, when Artras touched her arm.
    â€œLook,” the elder Wielder said, motioning toward the stone.
    â€œWhat? I don’t see . . .”
    â€œThe stone. It’s pointing in the direction of the lines.”
    The stone had been oriented so that two of its vertices were pointed directly along the paths of the ley lines. The third . . .
    â€œThere must have been another ley line in the past.” She stepped around Artras, lined herself up with the third point of the triangle, kneeling down so she could touch the earth there, reaching into