Seal of Light (The Endless War Book 5)

by D. K. Holmberg

  Do not answer, Little Light.

  Reghal nudged her as he spoke. Ciara shook herself, trying to clear the sound of Tenebeth’s voice from her mind. He was there, deep in her head, and though she hadn’t invited him, he somehow managed to crawl into her mind.

  She took another step, this time slamming her j’na down. Light exploded from the end of the spear as she did, and she let out a relieved sigh.

  Tenebeth laughed. “Do you think that delays me? You can try, but you have not the power to suppress me, Ciara S’shala.”

  Ciara took another step. She lifted her j’na and slammed it back down again, letting the sound flow through her. Light surged from the end of the spear and pressed back the shadows around her.

  Another step. Then another.

  This felt as difficult as when she’d first started learning how to summon. At that time, she hadn’t known the technique and had attempted to summon with little more than cursory guidance, the recommendation from Cheneth that she focus on the connection to the elementals and try to draw whatever power from them that she could. Now, she had a greater connection to the elementals, and Shade had guided her through the summons, teaching her all that she had to know.

  She slammed the j’na into the ground again. This time, light flowed not so much out as it did away from her, pressing back what she detected from Tenebeth.

  Reghal pressed against her legs much as he had the first time that she’d faced Tenebeth. She glanced down at him and realized that she had started to veer away from the pattern that she intended to create. Tenebeth had coerced into leaving the pattern that she wanted, guiding her away—and toward him.

  Ciara took a deep breath and focused on the intent of her summons again. That was the key: holding the intent within her mind so that she could draw forth what she intended. In this case, what she wanted to draw forward was the light, pulling on the connection with it.

  Another step, this time back toward the circle that she’d formed around the base of the tower. Reghal followed her, bumping into her every so often, licking her leg as he did. Tenebeth followed her, a dark shadow of a man who watched, more curious than concerned.

  “Do you really think that you will succeed? Your friends will die unless you call to me. You could save them then. You could save him.”

  An image of Jasn Volth formed in her mind, this time unbidden.

  Had Tenebeth placed the image there? Did he know of her feelings toward Jasn, and the fear that she had to act upon them?

  Tenebeth laughed. “You almost have come to me twice before. Do you think that you can refuse? Others have thought the same and have failed. What makes you think that you are special?”

  She looked over at him as she lifted her j’na, anger coursing through her. She held the intent within her mind more easily now. “Why do you want me if I’m not special?” she demanded.

  Then she slammed the j’na into the ground once more.

  Light burst from it, and she swung it around so that it struck where Tenebeth had been standing. The shadows disappeared in a flash of light. When she brought her j’na back down, Tenebeth was gone.

  Ciara let out a long sigh. Reghal nudged her, pushing her back toward the circle they had formed around the base of the tower. She took a step, continuing the pattern. A part of her felt weary, drained from the effort, but the steady power coursing through her j’na, summoned by her movements, helped restore her strength. That, and the connection to the elementals.

  With each step she took, she felt the seal around the tower strengthen. Would this be enough to suppress Tenebeth? She had to hope that it would be and that by doing this, they would weaken the Khalan, which then would give them more time to find where they hid, and attack if needed.

  Reghal stopped.

  Ciara stopped behind him.

  His body started to glow, and the ring around the tower glowed with him. It pulsed, something steady like a heartbeat, and Ciara found herself drawn toward the pulsing. She tapped her j’na in sync with it.

  As she did, she noticed two of the Khalan approaching.

  This must not be interrupted, Reghal said.

  Ciara could sense the same. If she stopped, if Reghal stopped, they would have to begin the entire process again, and she didn’t know if she had the strength for it, or whether they would be able to press back another Khalan attack.

  The two Khalan stopped on either side of her. She recognized the summons they used against her—it was one that Shade had intended to teach to her, and one that he had demonstrated several times when he’d used it against Sinsa and Doln. It wouldn’t take much for her to stop it—other than to disrupt the summons that she worked. Then they would fail.

  Talyn!

  Where was the draasin? She should be able to protect her, and Ciara should have thought about trying to call to her before now, but hadn’t. If Talyn would enter the fight, she could help not only Ciara, but Jasn and Cheneth.

  Little Light?

  Something was wrong with the draasin.

  Ciara didn’t have time to think about what it was. Could the Khalan have somehow influenced her as well? Had they used a summons against the draasin? She thought that the bond between them protected Talyn, but what if it did not?

  Ciara maintained her focus, holding onto the connection that she felt through Reghal. She followed his movement, drawing forth more of the light. It surged from the ground, bathing the tower in a soft light that built steadily. All they needed was another moment. She could feel how tantalizingly close they were to completing it.

  The Khalan attacked.

  Power exploded from them.

  Ciara held her focus. If she died, at least she could complete this pattern.

  Jasn shouted, and his voice nearly tore her focus off what she needed to do.

  Another few seconds. The power sweeping along the edge of the tower was nearly complete.

  She sensed another explosion of power, this time streaking toward her.

  Ciara made the last movement.

  Reghal exploded in bright white light as Ciara expected to be hit by the attack, but it didn’t come.

  She finally risked turning. Jasn lay on the ground, crumpled, with black streaks running along his chest and stranding out toward his fingers and down his belly.

  Not yet, Little Light.

  The Khalan that had attacked him turned to her, a wide smirk across his face. All Ciara would have to do would be to blast him with her j’na, but she didn’t dare, not until Reghal told her that their summons to contain the tower was complete.

  Another attack built from the Khalan.

  Ciara felt compelled to make one more movement, this time swirling her j’na over her head. As she did, light spilled from the end, sending the draasin glass vibrating with power.

  Throw it, Reghal urged.

  Ciara hesitated.

  The attack released.

  Ciara threw, launching the spear at the tower, where it impaled all the way to the draasin glass tip, the stone practically swallowing her j’na.

  Then she was hit.

  18

  Alena

  The College of Scholars is a place of understanding. The library surpasses any found elsewhere. The college possesses records dating back thousands of years, though they are protected, and few are able to access them.

  —Lren Atunal, Cardinal of the College of Scholars

  Alena stood atop the tower, the wind swirling around her and the sun shining brightly in the cloudless sky. In some ways, it pained her to be here, forced into a position that she never wanted, but in others, what choice did she really have? Atenas had been attacked. She might not be the same member of the Order that she once had been, but she had a responsibility to help, even if she didn’t want to. Even the draasin seemed able to tell her that.

  “You look like you swallowed a bola fruit,” Oliver said.

  His hands were clasped behind his back, one of them concealing the spirit stick that he kept with him at all
times. The long robe he wore barely covered his enormous belly. She suspected that more fabric had gone into making the robe than had been used by shapers during the earliest attacks on Rens.

  “I hear them more loudly than I had before,” Alena said. She closed her eyes and focused on the hatchling curled up next to the hearth in her room. The door was sealed as tightly as she could manage so that hopefully no one else accidentally came upon it.

  “Them? What them do you hear?”

  Alena closed her eyes, in some ways wishing that she didn’t hear the draasin voices deep in her mind, but she couldn’t shut them out, even when she wanted to. Now they had become more frequent, though she didn’t understand why.

  “The draasin, you idiot,” Yanda said. The woman seemed impossibly frail and tiny compared to Oliver, but she remained faithfully by his side and stood up to him as well as anyone. Like Oliver, she clutched a spirit stick in her hands, but she held them clasped in front of her. Her gaze swept around the city as if trying to take in all the destruction that had been done by the false council.

  “Yes, the draasin,” Alena said. “I hear them.”

  Oliver glared at Yanda, but his expression softened when he looked over at Alena. “I thought that you always hear them.”

  “I did. I do. This is different.”

  There were more distant voices murmuring in the back of her mind now than there had been before. Alena didn’t know what that meant, or whether there was anything to fear from it, only that there were more draasin. Many more. After years of silence other than the occasional draasin that she had discovered in Rens, this was almost overwhelming. And after hearing the hatchling’s concern about Voidan—their name for Tenebeth—she worried. It couldn’t be a coincidence that she heard the draasin at the same time that Voidan grew more powerful.

  “The commander probably did something to her when he was last here,” Yanda said.

  “The commander didn’t do anything to her,” Oliver said. “You were here for that. You know that the commander only helped fend off the attack.”

  “That we know of. What if he did something else?”

  “Don’t you think she would have detected it? The woman had a spirit stick!” Oliver said.

  “Sword,” Alena said, touching the hilt of her sword. “And I don’t think the commander did anything to me.” Though if he had, would she even know of it? His shaping ability far exceeded hers. She suspected that he had ties to Hyaln but had yet to know for certain.

  “Why do you hear more draasin, then?” Oliver asked.

  “Because there are more draasin,” Yanda answered.

  Alena noted the earnest expression on her face. Yanda had fought with them as the city was besieged with an attempt to summon Tenebeth. They had managed to fend it off for now, but how much longer would that be true? If another wave of summoning occurred, would they be strong enough to suppress it?

  Could there be more draasin than there were before? The fire elemental had always been rare, a creature so deadly and dangerous that whenever it made its presence known, others knew. They were infrequent, though, and had never been seen often enough to be more than a passing threat. What she heard was much more than that.

  “You still look like you swallowed a raw bola fruit,” Oliver said. “I prefer them fried, but even steamed is better than raw. Too sour, if you ask me.”

  Yanda tapped him on his prodigious belly. “No one asked you. Besides, when have you ever turned down food?”

  Oliver shrugged. “I didn’t say that I would turn it down, only that I preferred it fried.”

  “You prefer everything fried.”

  “Lard makes everything better,” Oliver said.

  Alena looked away, stepping up to the edge of the tower. Since they’d nearly been destroyed, the banter between the two of them had become insufferable. Neither seemed able to handle the fact that they had nearly died, just as neither seemed able to fully accept the fact that the council had been so thoroughly compromised, in spite of the fact that Oliver had been the one to bring it to Cheneth’s attention.

  She wanted to return to the barracks, but that was not her place. As much as she might want it to be, she needed to remain here. Even here, she could hear the distant voice of the draasin hatchling in her mind, his voice louder than any of the others. Besides, Bayan had made it clear that the barracks were safe. Cheneth had a plan, and she had a part to play in it.

  Alena didn’t know if she should care more for her role in Cheneth’s plan, or for what the commander had in mind for her. Both wanted something, and she wasn’t sure that they were fully aligned.

  The city still needed time to recover from the attack. What would happen were another attack to occur? Atenas might be geared for war, but when it came to the city itself, and people who had never been a part of it, what did they know of recovery?

  The commander needed to be here and needed to lead.

  Alena should not have been surprised that he was like Cheneth and able to shape spirit. Enlightened, Cheneth would say, but Cheneth had a great many things that he could say and didn’t.

  After the attack, the city had quickly gotten back to rebuilding. Part of the speed came from the fact that it had been geared up for war for so long that rebuilding was one more task in an ongoing struggle, but there was something to be said for the commander’s presence within the walls again, but then he hadn’t remained for long.

  He had been gone for so long that most didn’t know what to do when he returned. Alena had allowed herself to believe that he might be working on behalf of Tenebeth, but that didn’t seem to be the case at all. The commander opposed Tenebeth, which meant that he understood the threat of Tenebeth and that he understood what role those dark shapers played in releasing him upon the world.

  But now he was gone again, leaving her in charge of repairing the city. More than that, she was left in charge of making other amends.

  “Why did he continue the war?” she asked herself.

  “What was that?”

  Oliver and Yanda managed to stop their bickering long enough for him to stand at her shoulder. He stayed back from the edge of the wall, not strong enough with his other shaping abilities to save himself should he fall. Alena didn’t know whether she would be able to help him if anything happened, either. He was a heavy man.

  “The war. If the commander knew about Tenebeth shapers, then why did he continue the war?”

  “The war preceded all of this,” Yanda said. When they stopped arguing, they really could be quite useful and were practically the only friends that she had within the city, if they could even be called that. Within the barracks, she had few friends. She had set herself apart for so long, angry over the destruction of her homeland, conflicted about her role in the war, that she never let anyone get close. Only Volth had managed, and that was because he had shaped himself closer to her. Otherwise, she never would have allowed it.

  “Did it precede everything?” Alena asked. “These dark shapers, they seemed interested in continuing the war. Think about how they increased the buildup.”

  “They probably wanted to destroy the Order,” Yanda said.

  It made as much sense as anything. The Order had been involved in the war for as long as she had been a part of it, long enough to weaken it, and long enough to have destroyed Rens. Few even knew what Rens had once been like. Alena knew, but that was because she had grown up near the border and remembered a time of peace, a time before the draasin destroyed both sides of the border, and a time before she had learned that she could hear and speak to the draasin. The people that she knew of Rens had been peaceful. Something had changed in them. But then, something had changed in the Order as well.

  “If they wanted to destroy the Order, then why did the commander help? He doesn’t want to destroy the Order.” Oliver crossed his arms over his chest and looked at Yanda with a mixture of annoyance and affection. It was a strange combination and a relationship between them that Alena had not figured
out. They could almost be a couple if not for the fact that Oliver would crush Yanda were they to attempt anything more than superficial affection.

  “I don’t think that he does,” Alena said. That didn’t change the fact that Oliver was right. The commander didn’t seem interested in destroying the order. Hell, the man had returned to Atenas to protect it from an attack. That wasn’t the action of a man interested in seeing the city and its people fail. “But he was responsible for the buildup across Rens. He’s the reason that the Order pressed so deep.”

  “We should ask him,” Yanda said.

  “If the blasted man returns,” Alena said. After saving the city—and her—he had disappeared again. He might have promised to return, but she wasn’t convinced that he would anytime soon.

  “He is quite the bastard.”

  Alena started to chuckle and turned to Oliver, but the large man had turned as white as fresh-spun cotton. She followed the direction of his gaze and realized that he stared at a man standing only a few steps from him.

  Yanda remained equally unmoving for a moment, then she tipped her head in something like a bow. “Commander.”

  The commander was a muscular man with hard, flat eyes. A peppered scruff of beard lined his strong jaw. How could one village create two men such as Jasn and the commander?

  He tipped his head, and a hint of a smile parted his lips.

  With a flush, she realized that the blasted man knew her thoughts. He was Enlightened after all, and she had been foolish enough not to maintain a shaping through her sword—her spirit stick. What she needed was something smaller so that she could maintain the shaping constantly, so that she didn’t have to worry about someone knowing her thoughts. Now that she knew about spirit shapers, she feared to leave her mind unprotected.

  “It’s about time that you returned,” she said to him.

  His smile widened, only for a moment, but long enough for her to know how deeply he’d read into her mind. Blast him for being able to read her!