Shattering the Ley by Joshua Palmatier Read Free Book Online

before the door, drawing his hand across its entrance, leaving a faint trail in the dirt among several others. He muttered a short prayer beneath his breath and tried to center himself before rising and stepping into the room.
    Tyrus waved a hand in dismissal and began pacing. “They’ve taken this too far,” he growled. “I knew this . . . this splinter group would be trouble the moment we heard about it. I can’t believe we allowed them to continue once we found out they were meeting on their own in secret. We should have forced them to disband—”
    “And had them regroup and meet again, with more precautions?” Dalton asked with a raised eyebrow. “Disbanding them would only have made them angrier. At least now we know who they are and what they are up to.”
    “Do we?” Tyrus rounded on him as Dalton settled into one of the high-backed chairs surrounding the rough-hewn oak table in the center of the chamber. “Did you know what they planned at the Baron’s party?” He stalked toward Dalton, his fervor altering as he approached, hand outstretched, his words now edged in horror. “One of them lit himself on fire, Dalton! He immolated himself in protest! The Kormanley is peaceful. We have always been peaceful.”
    Tyrus leaned forward onto the oak table, as if he’d used up all of his energy to get there, then fell back into the chair next to Dalton. “What have they done?”
    Dalton listened to the low murmur that arose from the other members present, heard the strained fear in the tone of their voices, then cleared his throat.
    Everyone fell silent. Dalton had been the nominal leader of their small group for at least a decade. He’d been a member twenty-four years, recruited at the age of fourteen. The chamber where they met—more of a cavern, with its rounded earthen walls smoothed by time and its dry scent of earth—felt more like home than his own rooms above ground in the city. It was, literally, his sanctuary, where he sought peace and a stronger connection to the ley. The
natural
ley, not the monstrosity that Prime Wielder Augustus and the Baron had built in the center of Grass.
    But the peace he and the others had always found here had been broken in the last decade. It had begun as a mere grumble of discontent within the group, easily ignored, especially when Dalton agreed with the misgivings at their heart. Complaints about the abuse of the ley, about the Baron, and in particular about Augustus. But the grumbling hadn’t stopped. In fact, it had escalated, picked up by the younger members, kept active by Dalton and a few of the elders. Until it had reached such a pitch that someone had finally taken action, had taken that discontent to the streets.
    That’s when Dalton had realized the splinter group needed to be kept separate and secret from those of the Kormanley who were peaceful at heart, who did not condone such active protest. Members like Tyrus. When they’d discovered the group’s secret meetings, they’d been outraged, but Dalton had managed to calm them.
    He wouldn’t be able to calm them after this. What Michael had done at the Baron’s party sickened him. When he’d first heard of it, his legs had given out on him. Immolation! He couldn’t imagine going to that extreme. The heat, the intensity of the pain . . . it must have been unbearable. No one in the splinter group had known what Michael intended, Dalton had made certain of that before coming here, but he suddenly realized that the splinter group was more dangerous than he’d thought.
    Aware that the eyes of the gathered members were still on him, expectant, he shifted forward. “They have not yet stepped over the line—” he paused at Tyrus’ snort of disgust, then continued, “—because no one aside from one of our own was seriously hurt.”
    “I disagree,” Tyrus said harshly. “They
have
hurt us. Before they began preaching in the streets, the Baron and his Dogs left us alone. Now, we risk