I turned my mother onto her back. Indeed she was breathing, but the side of her face was bright red, as if she’d been hit really hard.
“Hmmm,” my father said. “The Lens is acting up again. I didn’t realize I’d put so much power through it. Well, good job getting her to put down the gun, my boy! That was some solid teamwork there.”
Now I was “my boy”?
“Dif,” I said. “Go out in front of the hut here and watch for Grandfather. He said he was coming. Give me warning if Librarians come instead.”
“Sure thing,” Dif said, slipping out of the hut’s front.
My father continued chuckling to himself as he removed a stack of hidden notebooks from behind a bookshelf. “Shasta really should have guessed that I was wearing two different Lenses,” he said. “Disguiser’s Lens in one eye, Concussor’s in the other. One of the oldest tricks in the book, even if it is challenging to wear two different Lenses at once.”
I reluctantly left Shasta on the ground. She was a bad mother, but not a bad person—at least she was trying to do what was right. I didn’t have the same confidence about my father.
“Here, my boy, let me show you what I’ve discovered!” Attica sat down at a table, swapping his Lenses for a different pair. I recognized these new ones. Translator’s Lenses. Those were the first type of Lenses I’d ever owned—at least, if you counted the bag of sand that arrived for me on my birthday.
“We really can do this,” my father said, flipping through his notes, pushing aside a stack of Forgotten Language texts. To my unaided eyes, they just looked like scribbles on a page—and not even in a “this is a language I don’t know” way. It resembled the squiggles and loops a toddler might draw.
“Father, I’m not convinced we want to give everyone Talents,” I said, looking over his shoulder at his notes. “What if Mother’s right? What if this will cause a disaster?”
“Nonsense,” Father said. “Son, you have to understand. Your mother is a Librarian. In her heart she’s terrified of change—not to mention frightened of the idea of common people being outside her control. I mean, look what she did to you during your youth.”
And you were any better? I thought. At least she’d kept an eye on me. Who knows where Attica had been for most of that time?
“What I’ve discovered here is revolutionary,” my father said. “It changes everything.”
“What do you mean?” I needed to get him talking, to stall long enough for Grandfather to arrive. I felt completely incapable when dealing with my father, but Grandpa … he’d know what to do.
“It’s all here,” my father said, spreading out his hands. “The history of the Incarna. How they went about bringing Smedry Talents into the world.”
“Those Talents destroyed them,” I said, shivering.
“No, they didn’t.” Attica turned to me, eyes twinkling. He looked like his father at that moment. “That’s the secret, Son. That’s what everyone’s been wrong about. The Talents weren’t responsible for the destruction of Incarna.”
“Alcatraz the First thought they were,” I said. “He left a warning about the Breaking Talent. He called it … what, the ‘Bane of Incarna’?”
“Alcatraz the First was a fool,” my father said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “He hated the Talent, said it had betrayed him. These records claim that it was not because his Talent destroyed his people—they insist his anger was because his Talent failed to save his people.”
“Failed to … Huh?”
“I’m not sure what it means,” my father said, voice growing softer as he flipped through his notes. “But these books are clear. The Talents were created to stop the destruction of Incarna, after the place was already in danger. I don’t know how they were supposed to help. But I do know that they didn’t destroy the Incarna—what really brought the civilization down was power. Energy.”
He opened to a page and tapped it with the back of his fingers before continuing. “Energy drives the world, Son. Oil, coal, brightsand. The Incarna invented all kinds of glass, but their means of powering these discoveries was limited. Brightsand was so hard for them to mine. Oculators were extremely rare, and could only use specific, specialized types of Lenses. They wanted something else, something more. And they found it. A source of power so vast, it could charge all the glass they wanted it to.”
“What was it?” I asked, growing genuinely interested.
“Something dangerous,” my father whispered. “I don’t know yet what it was. But they were determined to use it. They found it unfair that there were so few Oculators. They all wanted to be like Oculators and have glass to use however they wanted. But this power they discovered, they couldn’t control it. It was too much for them.”
And suddenly I understood.
The destruction of Incarna.
The column of light.
The reason I could power glass with a touch.
And the truth behind the Talents. The reason they acted out so much, when we didn’t want them to.
“It’s us,” I whispered. “We’re the power source.”
“What’s that?” my father said.
“They did something to our family line,” I said.
The pillar of light in my vision—it was like the column of destruction from a Firebringer’s Lens.
“They created us,” I said, “to power their glass and give their culture energy. They created us too strong though, and glass started to go crazy around us. Like it’s doing now. They made us all Oculators—no, not just Oculators, but some type of super-Oculators, capable of charging all kinds of glass.”
“Interesting,” my father said.
“Most of the Talents mimic the powers of Lenses,” I said. “What if the Talents are an outgrowth of what happened when the Incarna created us? Or … no, Father, you said they were intended to help somehow. Perhaps they bestowed the Talents as a way to stop the destruction. A way to funnel off the energy.
“That makes sense.… It’s starting to happen to Kaz and Himalaya too. It’s stronger in Grandpa, me, and you because we’re also Oculators. Naturally born ones, magnifying the power the Incarna gave us. Alcatraz the First was one too. And now that the Talents are gone, the power source has nowhere to go. It’s building up, and releasing when we touch glass—any of us. But how did they give us the Talents in the first place?”
“Interesting,” my father said.
I looked at him. He wasn’t even paying attention to me! He was reading another page, nodding absently, but didn’t seem to have heard what I’d told him.
“Father, how did the Incarna give us the Talents?”
“Hmm?”
“The Talents,” I said. “How did the Incarna bring them to us?”
“Oh, well, it has to do with something they called the ‘dark powers.’ I think I can replicate what they did, though I’ll need to go to the Worldspire. It’s connected to every living being, you see, and so if I perform the ceremony correctly, I can use that connection to send the Talents to the world. Perfect, I’d say. So elegant.”
“The … dark powers. That term doesn’t bother you?”
“Should it?” he asked absently.
I stepped back. Ignoring me, as always. I sighed, moving to go wait for Grandfather, but then I stopped.
There was something I needed to know. I fished in my pocket and brought out my Shaper’s Lens. It was warm to the touch; I was powering it without wanting to. We were the energy source the Incarna had created, somehow. Always before, the Talents had been there to take our excess energy and do something with it, like a drainage pipe used to shunt away excess rainfall.
I held up the Lens, looking at my father. Grandpa had warned me about this, had said it could give me too much information. Unfair information.
&
nbsp; I used it anyway, and I started to glow.
Through it I saw what my father wanted most in life. I saw him standing atop a pillar, surrounded by a sea of people looking at him with adoring eyes. Some shouted to him with excitement; others tossed gifts. He was idolized, loved by all.
That was exactly what I’d expected. But in the vision, I stood at his right, and Shasta stood at his left. Sure, it was an idealized version of each of us—I was more like a kid from an old ’50s television show, with overalls and freckles. Mom wore a cheery dress and was smiling sweetly. But we were there.
I pulled the Lens away. Somehow it would have all been easier if his version of a perfect world hadn’t included us. He did want a family. He wanted me, at least kind of.
“Here, Alcatraz, come look at this,” my father said. “You’ve got to read what Plato said about his visit to the Incarna. It’s remarkable.”
I remained in place. Suddenly I wished I’d never been given this Shaper’s Lens. What good was it doing me? I shoved it into my pocket. “Father,” I said, “we don’t know what effect the Talents will have on ordinary people.”
“What’s that?”
“Listen to me for once,” I said, taking him by the arm. “Our family line is the power source. We are what the Incarna created. The Talents work because we power them. So what will it do to common people to gain them?”
“We … are the power source.…” My father’s eyes opened wide. “Why yes, of course.”
“We can’t proceed,” I said, “until we know what the Talents will do to ordinary people. We have to learn from what our ancestors did. We can study, but we can’t just barrel into this without thinking! Like … like…”
Like a Smedry?
My father’s face fell. He yanked his arm out of my grip. “You sound like her. Well, you’ll both see sense once I’m done. You’ll admit that this was an incredible discovery.”
There really was no changing him, was there?
“Son?” a voice asked.
Finally. I turned with relief as Grandpa Smedry and Draulin entered, Dif walking beside them.