Was that what this was about? Did he still struggle with the past? With Lauren, of course he would. In some ways, her serving the Order was the most surprising, especially given the way that she practically detested them.
“I serve knowledge and understanding. I would think that as a student of the college, you would as well.”
The admonishment was intentional. Lauren had long ago risen above the level of student and had served as Sister beneath him while in Atenas. Eldridge knew that she had been promoted to Cleric when she returned to the college, only a few ranks beneath him, a much smaller power differential than there once had been.
Lauren narrowed her eyes, the irritation that he’d hoped to elicit coming forth in a flood. “Student. I have been giving you the rank you deserve—”
“You have been giving me the rank you would prefer me to claim. That I no longer claim it in the way you prefer upsets you.”
Lauren started to respond before clamping her mouth shut. She studied Eldridge, this time with a renewed expression, the lines on her brow easing. “Why would the bishop return to the college? There cannot be anything that he needs of me, but there must be something that he needs. Otherwise, he would not have come back here, not after all this time.” She made a slow circle around him, her gaze drifting up and down over him as if trying to solve a puzzle—or evaluate a cow for the slaughter. “You were last known serving the Order, but I knew the bishop and know that he wouldn’t have simply served, which means you went where you thought that you could learn something.” She tipped her head and tapped a finger to her lips. “What is it, Bishop? What reason would you have for disappearing for all this time? And what would bring you back?”
Eldridge offered a slight smile. Lauren would be key to regaining the trust of the college. He might still hold the rank and title of bishop within the College of Scholars, but he had been far removed from that person, far enough that some—particularly those who were here—would not see him in the same way.
And as strange as it might be, he couldn’t have them viewing him as Bishop Eldridge. He needed to be the outsider within the college, just as he needed the connections that Lauren might be able to offer, even if he wasn’t quite sure how it would work.
“Darkness comes, Lauren Ysat. It is time for the College of Scholars to step forward, into the light, and face the darkness.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying the college is needed. We must fight, or we all will fail.”
6
Shade
The people are fragmented and have warred far too long. The Khalan had planned this.
—Lren Atunal, Cardinal of the College of Scholars
Wind carried him, soaring high over the water. As he traveled, Shade exerted a varying summons to the wind, shifting with the way it flowed across the sea, moving from one elemental to the next, letting the different elementals of wind pull him forward. Few were skilled enough summoners to travel in this manner, though most of the Khalan had long ago mastered it. Had he not the skill that he had, he would have dropped from the sky leagues ago, only to drown or get eaten.
Sevn and Restain came with him, though once again, Shade led. It had brought a smile to his mouth when Ghalen had demanded that he pursue the girl and that he attempt to learn what elemental she might have discovered. Not only did the Khal grant him a chance to atone for his mistake, but they offered him the opportunity to obtain revenge on Sevn as well. He still marveled that it had come to him so quickly.
Land loomed before him and Shade slowed. Dusk fell, and with it came the darkness that they could use to shield themselves even though the summons to the darkness required a defter touch, and one that he wasn’t sure that he could achieve while carrying himself across the sea. Better to land first and then attempt the summons.
He shifted directions, heading south, making his way beyond Hyaln, careful not to approach too closely. Awareness of the draasin pressed on the fire summons that he used to keep himself aloft, but he resisted the urge to use it. Fire had power, but fire also carried seduction, and he risked ending up facing a horde of draasin that pulled him to their presence without any way of actually controlling them. He could control them, but that required he have enough time and not fear them eating him.
Once they made it past Hyaln, the southern border of Rens came into focus. The lands were poorly populated—at least they were here—and he landed. The others came to the ground next to him. Sevn watched Shade with a frustrated expression, his mouth pinched together in such a way that Shade would almost believe him constipated, but then Sevn always had been full of it. Restain managed a graceful landing, her long hair wrapped into a bun so that it didn’t catch in the wind, her lean cheeks neutral and her high forehead lined with… concern? He couldn’t read her well enough to know what she might be thinking.
“Why have you brought us here, Shade?” Sevn demanded.
“This is Rens.”
“I know the lands. Why have you chosen them?”
Shade crossed his arms, wishing that they were back in the time when Sevn had feigned respect for him. Shade had never really believed it—the man wanted power too much for him to respect Shade, who had not quite achieved the level that Sevn wanted—but it had allowed them to communicate more comfortably. This open disregard angered him.
That, of course, was what Sevn wanted. Get Shade upset, let him make a mistake. Shade refused to fall for it.
“I have chosen them because this is where the girl came from.”
“You are certain?”
Shade tapped on his thigh. The summons was weak but enough to soften the earth and start to swallow Sevn within it. “Do not challenge me on this.”
Sevn made a swift motion and lifted free of the ground. He hadn’t seemed too concerned when Shade dropped him into the earth. Perhaps he needed to be more careful with Sevn than he realized. The man had talent, even if he also had too much ambition.
“Again,” Sevn said, almost as if he hadn’t nearly sunk to his chest in Rens soil. Restain watched them both with an unreadable expression. Shade would have to watch her. He didn’t know her well, but Ghalen had insisted that she come with them. “Why have you chosen Rens?” Sevn asked.
Shade sighed. “The girl claimed to be what is called an ala’shin in these lands.”
“Ala’shin?” Restain asked.
Shade smiled. Restain seemed to understand the translation, even if it wasn’t native to Rens. “That’s right.”
“Is the term a coincidence?”
“I do not think so. It took me some time to understand that was what she claimed, but she had some natural understanding of summoning that she must have obtained from someone from Hyaln.”
Restain scanned the sky. The sun dropped below the horizon, leaving streaks of color, and more importantly, shadows stretching across the ground. “We would have known had any of the summoners departed Hyaln for something like this.”
Shade had thought the same. “What if they weren’t of the summoners?”
“Not a summoner? Where would you expect this person to have learned?” Restain asked. She had a peculiar way of speaking, one that clipped her words, leaving them strangely accented.
Shade had traveled to many lands, but he did not recognize the accent. He found it odd… and strangely alluring. “I suspect they were from Hyaln, but not of the summoners.”
“There are few summoners of Hyaln, and none without our knowledge,” Restain said.
That had been what had troubled him as well, but that was the only explanation, especially for using a term like ala-shin, one that was distinctly of Hyaln. “All who come to Hyaln are offered the opportunity to learn each of the disciplines. Is it not possible that someone slipped past us?”
Restain frowned but said nothing more.
“What do you expect to learn here?” Sevn asked when it became clear that Restain would say nothing else.
“I expect to find this woman.”
“You know her name.”
Shade nodded. “A name only, and an idea of a village.”
“You would use her people against her?” Sevn asked.
“If I must. I would find her first.”
Reaching for the growing darkness, he let it flow around him, obscuring him. Sevn did the same, but not Restain. Rather than the darkness, she used earth to shield herself. Shade thought that odd, but then, what did it matter what she used to obscure her presence so long as she did?
They took to the air. Within Rens, the air that gusted was much hotter, almost painful. He focused his intent, holding the wind away from him, and called on a small focus of fire to draw away the heat. That many summons at the same time taxed even him. Were he to attempt another… that would be more than he could manage. For him to someday challenge Ghalen, he would need to find a way to summon more than simply three at once. From what he’d seen of Ghalen, the man managed at least four summons, and possibly more.
Shade surveyed the land as they soared above the ground. Nothing moved below him, but then this was the part of Rens they called the waste. A few scrub plants appeared but otherwise, the ground was hard and cracked and lifeless.
In the distance, a tower of stone rose above the ground. Shade motioned to the others to follow and traveled toward the finger of rock.
He landed near the base of the rock and used a summoning of earth to reach for signs of life, but felt nothing. Someone had been here before, but they were not now.
“This place has known darkness,” Restain said as she landed. She pulled the leather band off her bun and shook out deep yellow hair, running her fingers through it as she did.
Shade tapped the tips of his fingers together, drumming them in the subtle pattern that would summon a hint of the darkness. For what he needed, there would not have to be much, just enough to search for what else might be out there in the night. As he did, he realized that Restain was right.
Had she summoned so quickly? He hadn’t even noticed her summoning the darkness. Maybe he’d been wrong about her, and she had summoned it before they crossed over the waste, even if it hadn’t seemed that way to him at the time.
“Summoners?” Sevn asked.
Shade detected his summons. The damned man could be subtle, but not with darkness. With that, he was more like a blind man fumbling. “What else can call on the dark?”
“There are some who suggest the dark can call upon itself,” Restain said.
Shade turned to her with a frown. “They are stories meant to scare us off from using this power. You should know better than that. If you do not, you are free to return to Valahs, where the Kahl can instruct you.”
Rather than shy away from his rebuke, Restain turned toward him, curling her hair back around into a tight spiral that she looped with the band of leather. “I have learned that it is often better to search for the seeds of truth in everything I hear. Often, there is more than I expect within it.”
Shade considered debating with her. “As you search, tell me if you find signs of the darkness summoning itself,” he said and strode away from them.
He pulled on a summons of earth and wind, letting the elementals that he called upon help him to search. As he had expected when he first landed here, he didn’t detect life, but there had been life here before. Not only people but livestock of some kind. He detected traces of their presence, enough of a lingering sense that he knew they had not been gone for long.
Days?
The summons didn’t give him enough information, but with the wind, the scent of dung was faded enough to tell him it had likely been longer.
Perhaps weeks, then. The woman had only escaped a few days ago, so it wasn’t likely that she had warned them. That meant there had been something else that had, unless this place had failed to support them. There was no sense of water here, nothing that he would usually have attached to the need for life. There was barely any vegetation around here. What would make a people remain in such lifeless conditions?
“What do you find, Shade?” Restain asked.
She had appeared next to him without him able to detect her. That would require a powerful summons of either earth or darkness. Either way, he realized that he might have underestimated her.
“There was a village here. It is no longer,” he said.
“I believe they have been gone for nearly a month,” Restain said.
He would have said less, but the more that he let his summons of earth stretch from him, the more that he began to wonder if she might be right. A month. Had something happened here that sent them scurrying away? And if it had, would they have any way of finding where the people had gone?
But then, that wasn’t why they had come. They came to find the woman, and whether she came from this village or not remained to be determined, but was not important for why they had come.
“We should go,” Shade said.
Restain watched him with the same unreadable expression on her face. A part of Shade wished that he could summon the darkness to wipe it from her, but he feared that she might actually have more talent with the darkness with him. That would have to be the reason Ghalen sent her with them.
“Where would you have us travel?”
Shade considered the choices. When they had found the woman, she had been with the soldiers from Atenas but camped in the forest. The darkness had led them to her, almost as if the darkness itself wanted to find her. She had not been here, not in these lands, even if this had been her homeland. He should have taken the time to understand her better, then he would have known why she had departed her home, but then, had he taken the time to understand her better, he would have come to expect her eventual escape from his summons.
The next time, he would be ready, if only he managed to find her to get another chance.
7
Katya
Summoning is the purest of the elemental arts. Power comes not only from the summoner but from the elemental as well.
—Ghalen, First of the Khal
She hovered in the air, letting the wind whip at her long, dark hair, savoring the smells of Ter. How long had it been since she’d been in these lands? Long enough that she no longer answered as easily to the name she’d taken here. Katya carried with it the memories of her time here, and the memories of the woman she had been, one who would have been able to settle down with Jasn Volth, who would have been willing to share the life with him that he wanted.
You wanted it, too.
The thought came unbidden and similar to all the thoughts that she’d had since Jasn appeared in Hyaln. They came frequently, and spoke loudly to her, almost as if her mind thought to torture her. Seeing Jasn again had startled her, and were she honest with herself, left her with something bordering on hope, even though she knew they were not to be. How could they when she served Hyaln and he served Atenas?
Hyaln called him as well, she reminded herself.
Did that generate the same loyalty for him as it did in her? She had served Hyaln for many years, long enough that she recognized the need for the scholars, and recognized that as one of the Enlightened, she needed to remain diligent in her service.
Katya had faded when she left Ter, disappearing the same way her other names had disappeared when she left other lands, taking on a new name each time. Names held meaning and power, but only so much as what you were willing to invest in it. Changing names as often as she did meant that none held any real sway over her. Katya came the closest, making it the most dangerous in some ways.
“Can you see anything?” Olina called up to her.
Katya returned to the ground on a shaping of wind. She could mix the shapings, use what Atenas considered a special shaping, one that only their warriors could use, but as one of the Enlightened, she could also add spirit to the shaping. With it, she would be able to travel more quickly. It was one that she knew she should teach Jasn, but since the return of the draasin, there hadn’t been time for her to teach anything.
Katya tried to ignore the thoughts, but they continued to intrude on her.
“There is nothing that I can detect,” she said to Olina.
Olina watched her. It had been years since Katya had seen the Wise woman, and in that time, Olina had never really abandoned Hyaln, but had left when the draasin disappeared. Most of the Wise had departed then, leaving Hyaln unbalanced. Could that be the reason that the Khalan managed to gain so much power?
“We could go with them,” Olina said.
“We will only slow them,” Katya said.
“That’s not why you choose not to go with them.”
Leave it to the damned Wise to see through her so easily. “There are reasons that I should not return to Atenas. I spent years there as Katya, a woman who should be dead. It is better—and simpler—for us if she remains that way.”
“As a shaper of your talent, I do not think that is much of a problem, do you?”
Katya used a shaping of water, concealing her natural features, turning her into a young woman, and then old, and then released the shaping. “No. There are many faces that I can wear if I choose.”
“It is not the face that worries you, is it, Ilyana?”
Interesting that Olina would call her by the name that she’d worn when she first came to Hyaln. Even that had changed over time, from Ilyana to Issa to Myafi to… more names than most would be able to easily keep straight. Yet each name stuck with her, in some ways changing something about her. That was what made them dangerous, and what gave the names such power.
“You see too well, old woman,” Katya said.
“How hard was it for you?”
“How hard was what?”
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