Seal of Light (The Endless War Book 5)

by D. K. Holmberg

  “Ciara, you’re safe now.”

  She nodded, but he noted the way she gripped her spear, her knuckles going white as she did. “I know. It’s just… it’s just that I had no control. And when I was gone, they convinced me that I was someone else.” She closed her eyes. “I don’t know what would have happened had I not already bonded to nobelas. Without the elemental, would they have convinced me to serve Tenebeth?”

  She shivered, and Jasn couldn’t help but shiver with her. The idea of getting forced into anything terrified him, but especially serving Tenebeth. He had seen what the darkness would do, and the way that it changed someone, and he couldn’t deny the appeal of the power that would be offered by Tenebeth. What would he do with such power? Perhaps that was the appeal to the Lost.

  He took her hand, and she didn’t resist. Olina and Katya waited for them in the distance, neither watching. Jasn didn’t care if they did. He needed to help Ciara now, needed to help her see that she didn’t need to be afraid of Tenebeth and that she wouldn’t be alone when she faced him the next time. “You know enough now that you’re safe,” he said.

  “Only because of what they taught me. What if there were things they taught me that put me at risk?”

  He squeezed her hand. “Use your elemental connection, then. See that you remain safe, and that the elemental will keep you safe. Let the connection remain strong in your mind.”

  “What if that’s not enough?”

  Jasn pulled her toward him. As much as he feared losing control again, and as much as he feared what might happen to him if he allowed himself to get close to someone again, he feared more for what would happen to her if he did nothing. “Then I will be there with you.”

  4

  Jasn

  There are those who oppose the dark, who can call upon the light. There are no references of summoners of light, though a few can reach the edges of the light, and can call upon it.

  —Lren Atunal, Cardinal of the College of Scholars

  The barracks seemed so much smaller than the last time that he’d been here. Grasses attempted to grow over the paths worn from hundreds of booted footsteps, and some weeds flourished here. The dark stone buildings looked less comfortable and cozy than they did after his time in Hyaln, and more sparse and isolated. Strange that he’d become comfortable here and now felt even that was taken from him by his time in Hyaln.

  Had another version of him died during his time in Hyaln?

  Ciara still held onto his hand, and he had been reluctant to let go, not wanting to release the connection to her. She seemed to feel the same way.

  Katya eyed him. Had he not known her as well as he once had, he would have believed that she felt nothing seeing him with Ciara, but that tight line to her mouth was one that betrayed a hint of irritation. Jasn tried not to think about what that might mean.

  “Where are the others?” Katya asked.

  He shrugged. “Possibly their dorms, or the dining hall, or even sparring.”

  “The barracks are empty,” Katya said.

  “How do you know?”

  “There are things I can sense. You could too if you chose.”

  Jasn focused on the still-strange sense of spirit, letting it work through him. This was a sense unlike any of the other elements that he’d learned to use, one that he’d discovered in a different way than any of the others.

  As he let the sense of spirit work through him, he sent it out in something like a sensing that he used with the other elements.

  There was nothing other than those he’d come with.

  He tried earth and mixed water, both elements that gave a connection to others, but he still detected nothing more. Katya was right. There was no one in the barracks.

  “Where would they have gone?” Jasn asked.

  “Do you think Tenebeth attacked here?” Olina asked.

  Ciara released Jasn’s hand and jabbed her spear onto the ground with a sharp crack that reverberated throughout the camp. She cocked her head to the side, as if listening, and then shook her head. “There is nothing of darkness here,” she said. “There has been nothing of Tenebeth here other than the last time that I was here.”

  “You can tell that with one tap?” Katya asked.

  Ciara nodded. “There is much that I can detect with my j’na.”

  “How is it that you know what you do?” Katya turned so that she could face her. “What you describe is something that only the most powerful summoners of Hyaln ever knew how to do. You are not of Hyaln.”

  Ciara looked over at Jasn, almost searching for his help.

  He frowned at Katya. “There are many ways that summoners learn, aren’t there? Ciara learned from her father and then from Cheneth much of what she needed to know. And I have seen the way that she used her ability, the way that she was able to defeat Tenebeth when he attacked us the first few times.”

  Katya pressed her mouth together and watched Ciara for a moment before leaving them as she made her way through the barracks.

  Olina smiled at Ciara. “There is something more than what you let on, is there not? When you last came to me, you weren’t able to consistently use your summoning ability, and now you can detect whether the darkness was here with a single thrust of your spear?”

  Ciara swallowed. “I don’t know what happened.”

  “You received training.”

  Ciara nodded. “I was trapped and had no choice but to learn.”

  Olina grunted with a laugh. “They were fools then if they thought to equip you with the knowledge that you need to defeat them.”

  “They wanted to turn me to him,” Ciara said.

  “Then they were even greater fools than I realized.”

  “Why?” Jasn asked. Ciara was much more comfortable with Olina than she was with many people that he’d seen her with, but then, Olina was the woman she’d been with when they first found her.

  “This girl can summon nobelas.”

  “I don’t really know what nobelas is,” Jasn admitted. “It’s a lizard of some sort, but why is that so important for her? Cheneth felt the same way.”

  “Nobelas is one of the oldest elementals,” Olina began, “one that has not been seen in many years.” She watched Ciara as she spoke. “I had not thought that I would ever see nobelas before you came to me, and then… and then you manage to not only show it to me, but you can summon it.”

  “It’s more than that,” Ciara admitted.

  “I suspect that it is,” Olina said with a smile. “Have you bonded to the creature?”

  She nodded.

  “That is a great honor, and one that is not done lightly, I think.”

  “I don’t understand,” Jasn said.

  “Nobelas are one of the oldest elementals of the world, and in some ways, they would be counter to Tenebeth, a way to light where Tenebeth brings only dark. But where Tenebeth believes that it is somehow greater than other elementals, nobelas is both a part of the world—and more than that.”

  “I didn’t think Tenebeth was an elemental,” Jasn said.

  Olina frowned at him. “What are the elementals but a connection to something greater? They are ways of reaching the energy of creation, a way to touch the creator himself. Would Tenebeth not be the same? What is darkness but the power of destruction?”

  Hearing her describe it in that way made sense, but if that were true, wouldn’t they be able to find a way to harness Tenebeth, much like they were able to use the draasin, or water, or even earth?

  Jasn shook off that thought. Thinking like that was what had led to the Khalan thinking that they could use the power of Tenebeth and the darkness rather than the other way around. “I—we—have seen how Tenebeth will use a shaper,” Jasn said. “We’ve seen how he taints them, twists them until they are nothing like what they had been before. That is not an elemental.”

  Olina tapped her mouth thoughtfully. “Perhaps not an elemental, but power much like it nonetheless.” She looked at Ciara and met her gaze.
“Think of your connection to the draasin. In some ways, they are creatures much like Tenebeth. They are independent and intelligent creatures, much like I would argue that Tenebeth is.”

  “But the elementals can be controlled,” Jasn said.

  “Can they? They can be summoned, but that is not the same as controlling.”

  “But Tenebeth—”

  “The twisting of the elementals by another does not constitute the same as a shaper controlling the elemental. You can speak to the elementals, and you can work with them, but that is not the same as controlling them.”

  “How does that have anything to do with nobelas?” Jasn asked, thinking of what brought up the connection in the first place.

  “Only in that nobelas counters the darkness of Tenebeth. Perhaps not entirely—that is not nobelas’s role, but enough that it gives a chance for success.”

  “A chance?” Jasn asked with a smile. “You haven’t seen what Ciara can do.”

  Olina looked at Ciara and nodded once. “A chance is all that we can ask for, I think. With Tenebeth, especially now that his power has been unleashed unchecked into the world, if we can find a way to contain it, I think we will have succeeded.”

  Katya returned from surveying the barracks. One hand rested on the hilt of her sword, and a frown curved her lips, creasing her brow in such a way that she appeared almost angry. “There is no one here. Cheneth has moved the camp.”

  Jasn thought about where Cheneth might have moved it but could come up with no answers. Why would Cheneth have abandoned the barracks, especially now that they truly faced the threat of Tenebeth?

  Unless Tenebeth had attacked. Ciara might not have detected an attack here, but that didn’t mean there hadn’t been an attack somewhere else, one that had forced the entirety of the barracks to depart.

  “We have no method of finding them,” Ciara said.

  Not the barracks, but would he be able to find Alena? Not only could he reach spirit now, but there remained another connection for him, one that he hadn’t tried reaching in the time that he’d been away in Hyaln, but maybe now was the time for him to do so.

  “That’s not entirely true,” he said.

  5

  Eldridge

  It is a simple matter to control it. You must summon but not hold it. Doing so risks losing yourself to it. That is a mistake I am not foolish enough to make.

  —Ghalen, First of the Khal

  The halls of the College of Scholars were awash with brilliant light glowing from the dozens of lanterns set into the wall. The college preferred the pure white light of the shaper lantern, the spheres carefully constructed by men able to control the elements in such a way that they contained fire within stone, mixing a touch of water for security and adding wind to disperse the light. Eldridge knew how the lanterns were created even if he could not create them himself.

  Returning to the college was harder than he had expected, but it was necessary. After everything that they had seen, he needed to know that the college remained committed to help.

  It was more than that, but he didn’t know whether the rest of the college would see it the same way. They would have to do more than help. Fighting the darkness, and the release of Tenebeth, would take the scholars’ greatest minds to discover a way to suppress it again, if it even could.

  Eldridge stopped at a small wooden door. Some might call it plain, though Eldridge would not. He knew the carvings on the other side of the door and the way that they sealed the power of the elements within, trapping them. It was a trick that Hyaln thought they alone understood, but Hyaln also believed that they knew more than the college when it came to the elements.

  With a knock sent of the wind, Eldridge waited. So far, he had not encountered anyone else in the hall. The longer that he went without seeing someone else, the worse he felt about the odds of success. To defeat the darkness, he needed the college. Eldridge, Bishop of the College of Scholars, had never needed the college before. For him to do so now… it troubled him.

  The door opened, and a young woman greeted him with a smile. She touched a hand to her brilliant red hair, smoothing it back. “Bishop? You haven’t visited the college in…”

  “Many years, Lauren. Will you allow me to enter, or will you keep me standing in the hall?”

  She ran her tongue over her lips as she stepped back to allow Eldridge into her room. He cast a quick glance down the hall before entering. Lauren had been a confidant of his when he remained in Atenas, but when she returned to the college, they had lost their connection. Yet, when he had decided that he needed to return to the college, she was the first person that he thought of.

  Her room, like many in the college, occupied a massive space. Much of it was taken up with shelves and books, but Lauren had three tables spaced equidistantly apart in the center of the room. Different items rested on the table, an assortment of strange slender rods or nearly circular items, and some that appeared more machinelike, a combination of parts that she had assembled. This was the reason that he had come to Lauren.

  “I see that you haven’t abandoned your research,” he said when she had closed the door behind her.

  “Why would I abandon it when I have made such progress?”

  Eldridge stood in front of the nearest table and lifted a large bowl made of a strange dark metal. Light shimmered along its surface strangely, as if it reflected a different source of light than the five lanterns stationed around the room. A few engravings etched into the metal caught the light, as if trying to hold it. He felt an urge to shape wind into the bowl, but the connection to the wind elementals suggested that he not.

  Setting it down, he turned to another item, this a long, slender rod, nearly the length of a cane. In some ways, it reminded him of the staff the woman from Rens carried, especially with the surface coated with different shapes, each carrying meaning that he didn’t fully understand. He had no doubt that Lauren had mastered them.

  “What kind of progress have you made?” he asked.

  She took the rod from him and tapped it into the ground. The motion reminded him of Ciara and her summoning, but there was a muted sound from the end. She shaped, pulling on the power of the elements. Eldridge should not detect that so easily, yet he did.

  Lauren released the shaping. As she did, a bubble of energy shot from the tip of the staff, streaking to the wall, where it met resistance and faded. Eldridge studied the wall, noting that she had patterns and shapes worked into the stone as well. They would provide protection—that much he understood—but what else would they have done to diffuse the shaping that she’d generated… and why would he have been able to see the shaping?

  “Much,” she answered. She set the rod onto the table and crossed her arms over her chest as she watched Eldridge. “You did not come here to ask of such things, I think. For the bishop to return to the college, something has changed.”

  “Something has changed,” Eldridge agreed. He paced around the room, noting the finely woven carpet—likely a Tipoli design—that Lauren kept tossed across the floor. He paused at one of her canvas paintings. “This looks to be from either Hav or Nesere,” he noted. The hard lines and dark ink around the letters indicated more Hav stylings, but the faded colors were preferred in Nesere.

  “Leave it to the bishop to recognize such things,” she noted.

  “Interesting that you would have them here. Few enough travel as far as Hav, and to Nesere…”

  She tipped her head but didn’t indicate one way or another. Eldridge fought back the smile that came to his mouth. Interesting. Lauren thought to hide something from him. And here he had come thinking that he could ask her for help with Tenebeth. Of any in the college, Lauren Ysat had been the one he thought most capable of finding a way to defeat Tenebeth.

  Eldridge surveyed the room, noting for the first time the layer of dust on the farthest table from them, dust that he didn’t see on the nearest—or on the painting. “When did you return, Lauren?”

  �
�Scholars are welcomed throughout the land. I think that you have proven that, don’t you, Bishop?”

  “I have found that my welcome depends on the reason for my visit.”

  Lauren arched a brow again. As she tipped her head toward him, lantern light reflected off her hair, making it a deeper red that contrasted with her pale skin. In another time, he would have found her lovely, but in another time, he might have chosen to stay with the college.

  “What is the intent of your visit today, then? Do you come to ask about my travels? I think that you will find that I have much more interesting items than paintings from beyond Hav.”

  Beyond Hav. Even reaching Hav would have challenged him, and he could ride the winds. A full shaper, one able to access each of the elements, wouldn’t have much difficulty, but there were few warrior shapers willing to pass beyond the borders of Ter, especially with the war raging in Rens. In some ways, the war had protected those distant lands, keeping them from the Order’s notice, but in other ways, they were isolated from the protection that Ter would have been able to offer if they had formed better connections.

  “What else have you found?”

  “Is that why you returned to the college, Bishop? You would discuss my studies?”

  Eldridge heard the harder edge to her question. There had been a time when Lauren would have answered him without question, but that had been a time when he had served as the bishop within Atenas. He may still hold the rank of bishop, but there was more condescension in the title than honor.

  “I came for your help. Perhaps that was a mistake.”

  Lauren frowned, and her gaze drifted past Eldridge to the tables, sweeping around the room before settling on his face again. “From what I hear, you have no need of help of the college. You have abandoned those who welcomed you, raised you within the college, to serve the Order.”