Undone Deeds Read Online Free

you’d be dead. It would have crushed your skull and smooshed your brain into pulp, although sometimes I do wonder.”
    “You told me Gillen Yor said it was the stone,” I said. Gillen was my healer, my frustrated healer who had no idea how to help me. Meryl had been acting as go-between for us since people had a tendency to take a shot at me whenever I showed my face near any secure facilities.
    “The stone is a metaphor for essence that has somehow become bonded to you. It’s a stone, and it’s not a stone,” she said.
    “Okay, that hurts my brain more than having the stone in there,” I said.
    Meryl produced a distinct snicker. It was cute when it was because she was amused. It was embarrassing when it was because she thought you had said something stupid. Sometimes it was hard to tell which was which. “That’s what you get for abandoning your druidic training when you did. What we do, Grey, is not just manipulate essence. We interact with the Wheel of the World, and that’s a much bigger deal. It’s about faith and balance and fate as much as it is knocking someone on his ass with a bolt of essence. Whatever the faith stone is, it is also something tied to the Wheel of the World. That’s power on a level we can’t understand because it’s starting to touch the ineffable, so we try to reduce it to a concept we do understand.”
    “Like a stone,” I said.
    “Precisely. The stone is a metaphor for an idea with a purpose wrapped in essence,” she said.
    “And the dark mass is the opposite,” I said. The dark mass had been the bane of my existence for over three years. When I was working for the Guild, I had tried to capture a terrorist named Bergin Vize. I cornered him at a nuclear power plant north of the city. Something went wrong. I woke up weeks later in the hospital with my memory and my abilities gone, and Vize still on the loose. A dark mass had appeared in my brain, preventing me from manipulating essence. I went from being one of the most powerful druids to come along in a long time to a guy living on disability checks.
    The dark mass in my head drained essence from anything ittouched. When the faith stone hit me in the head, it achieved a coexistence with the darkness. They pulsed against each other in my mind—one hot pain, the other cold. The plus side to the whole thing was my body shield came back. I could form a full one again, thickened essence around my body that slowed physical objects and deflected essence-fire.
    “Nothing can be in the World and not be in the World. The dark mass can’t be devoid of essence and be in the World. The World, by definition, is essence,” she said.
    I smiled. “Teacher, teach thyself. It’s no different than saying a stone can be a stone and not a stone at the same time.”
    She twisted her lips in thought. “I’m not buying it. The stone and the idea of faith are things that we can define. You’re defining the dark mass as something that can’t be defined.”
    “It has a definition, though. It’s the Gap.”
    Meryl frowned with dismissiveness. “Don’t forget who your source was for that idea, Grey. Brokke worked for the Elven King and protected Bergin Vize.”
    Brokke was a dwarf who had been a high-level advisor to Donor. He was also one of the most powerful seers in the world. The only thing he didn’t see coming was his own death when the Guildhouse collapsed. I watched him die. As much as he frustrated me, I took no joy in his death.
    He gave me somewhat of an answer to what the black mass in my head was. He called the darkness the Gap, an indescribable force that existed as nonexistence. It devoured the essence that made the World possible. It drained the life out of people. It had the potential to destroy the World, which meant I had that power. Brokke claimed I couldn’t control it, that no one could. I didn’t believe that—yet. While I lived, I believed I had a choice to let the darkness overwhelm me or to find a way to stop