“I know what you are.”
“You know so little, shaper of Atenas.”
Alena stopped, drawing on more strength through the sword. “I know of Hyaln, and I know of the Khalan. The commander does as well. Your planned attack on this city will fail.”
“This city? Is that all you think we intend?”
“You and your kind think yourselves so smart, but you don’t even know what you’ve unleashed. You think that you can control that power, but I’ve seen how it controls the shaper.”
Jef’s smiled widened. “Have you seen that? And who did you witness? One of your shapers of Atenas? Weak-minded, unfortunately. It requires strength of will, focus of intent, to hold the darkness to your summons. I am afraid that your Atenas shapers cannot accomplish that.”
They don’t even know what they have done, Alena said to the draasin.
They do not. They think only of power and control.
There is no control with Voidan.
No. There is not.
“Why have you summoned the others here?” she asked.
“You disrupted our plans. I admit to being surprised when you appeared, and even more surprised when you offered to teach the students. Few before you ever did. That was what gave us the advantage here.”
Alena sucked in a breath. The students. Had the Khalan twisted them? Was there anything that they would be able to do to release what had been done to them? She had feared what would happen were shapers influenced, but she hadn’t thought anything of the students. Some had already shown great promise and power with shaping.
The Khalan had infiltrated the students.
But it went deeper than that, didn’t it? It must have. She thought of those raised to the Order, men and women who Wansa had even noted who would not have been raised in the past. How many of the warriors that she’d tested sided with the Order… and how many were of the Khalan?
“You look like you understand that there is nothing you can do here, Alena. Everything that you thought to do will fail.”
She held her sword out, the shaped light within it glowing brightly. “I stopped the last attack. I will stop this one as well.”
Jef tapped his foot with increasing vigor. The power that she detected from him increased, washing over the toss yard and beyond, into the cold of the night, the wind gusting against her, the thunder rolling steadily. Doubt crept through her, threatening to knock her off her feet. Alena held herself upright, standing tall against that power, not certain how long she would be able to maintain it.
“How long do you think that you can hold out?” Jef asked. “You don’t even understand what you face. You shapers of Atenas have never understood, thinking that the power you control is all that there is in the world. Now your pride will be your undoing.”
Alena pulled on the connection to each of the elementals and went deeper than that, drawing from the sense of the hatchling as well. There was great power that the draasin could access, and somehow so could she through him. The light of her sword flickered, going from white to almost blue, and heat surged from it.
Finally the smile on Jef’s face faltered.
“There is power that you don’t understand, either,” she told him. “Just as you don’t understand that the elementals will answer in other ways, and not only to your summons.”
She called to the draasin, and he circled quickly and dropped to the ground next to her.
Jef looked from the draasin to Alena. Then he laughed. “That? You wish for me to fear a draasin child?” His tapping shifted, and he began rubbing his arms, moving in a strange rhythm that pulled on her.
It pulled on the draasin as well.
Alena could feel the way that the summons worked on the elemental, and there was nothing that either of them could do to stop it. If she didn’t, Jef would pull on her elemental.
She’d made a mistake thinking that her connection to the elemental would give her greater strength than a summoner. She had seen the power that they could manipulate, the way they were able to call upon more than she could imagine. And now the draasin would suffer for her pride.
Which made Jef’s comment all that much worse. Pride. Ter had always been a prideful nation, a place where the Order believed they ruled supreme, controlling the power of the elements and using the warrior shapers to fight their wars and expand the borders. From the founding of Ter, to the claim on the neighboring lands of Vasha and Uhl, and now to Rens. So many had suffered and died.
And now she would, because she couldn’t withstand Jef’s shaping, and because she had believed that her connection to the draasin would protect both of them.
It will.
The voice came distantly from the draasin, and with less strength than she had communicated with him in the past.
The summons pulls you from me.
It does. But without the connection, he would already have succeeded. You must defeat him.
You warned not to destroy him.
The draasin flapped his wings briefly. Not destroy. There is a difference between defeat and destruction. You must find that balance.
Alena wasn’t sure that she knew how. But to save the draasin, she would have to find a way.
Using spirit against Jef wasn’t the answer. He had a counter to that, but was there something else that she could do? Alena could reach for fire through the draasin and had always been a skilled fire shaper, but she had another connection that was equally potent, and one that didn’t always make sense to her given the connection she shared with fire.
Pulling on earth, she sent a rumble through the ground, attempting to disrupt the summons.
Jef countered it quickly.
Alena mixed earth and fire, this time pulling on a greater connection to fire, drawing on wind and water, mixing them in ways that she wouldn’t have considered before. Spirit surged but connected as she was to the draasin, the surge of spirit flowed from her, from the sword, and into the draasin.
The connection between them sealed more tightly.
The draasin roared.
Jef’s eyes widened.
The draasin shook his wings, and then his entire body. As he did, he lengthened, almost like the shaping of spirit fed him in some way. He flicked his tail and smashed it into Jef, sending him flying across the toss yard.
Alena chased Jef, reaching him as he landed. He still breathed but otherwise didn’t move.
Using earth and wind, she wrapped him in bindings so that he remained immobile. This way, he wouldn’t be able to use his summons against her. She didn’t know if he had a way of shaping without summoning. Likely he did, especially since he had trained the students, but she didn’t know of any way to prevent him from shaping.
Use spirit, the draasin suggested.
Drawing through her sword, she secured a shaping of spirit over his mind. She felt as it parted through, slicing off his connection to the elements. She shivered as she did, thinking how she would feel were someone to do the same to her.
Now what?
Thunder still rolled steadily, and the chill remained in the air. Worse, now that she knew what had been happening in Atenas, she feared that the warriors she thought safe, those she had thought tested, were compromised. And that still hadn’t solved what she would do about the students.
A blast of lightning came, followed by another, and then another.
Thunder rolled again, this time sharper and deeper, crashing through her.
Alena realized that she didn’t have any more time. Whatever attack the Khalan intended had just begun.
33
Eldridge
Others have done so, but they have lost themselves. I must find a way to hold my identity as I make this change.
—Ghalen, First of the Khal
The wind carried Eldridge and Lauren to Atenas. Even as it did, he could feel the chill rising in the wind, unseasonable for this time of year. Something about that worried him, but he didn’t know why it should.
See what yo
u can discover, he sent to the wind.
He spoke to the wind, but not quite in the same way that he had learned others spoke to their elementals. Alena could speak to the draasin and seemed to know which of the fire elementals she spoke to. Wyath rarely spoke of his experience with earth, but Eldridge thought he had the same connection. For Eldridge, it was different. He could reach the wind and could speak to it, but there was no sense of which of the wind elementals that he spoke to, almost as if he spoke to all of the wind, even though he doubted that was true.
“I don’t like this,” Lauren said.
She traveled next to him, using a combination of water and wind, a strange concoction that carried her on some sort of platform of mist. She was a skilled shaper in her own right and would have eventually risen to join the Order were she to choose, but she had always had more interest in study than in battle. The College was a better fit for her.
“Something is amiss,” he agreed.
The crossed the Gholund Mountains, and he heard the first stirrings of the brewing storm. Thunder steadily rolled, mixed with the chill on the air, and Eldridge shivered. He had known such cold before, but there couldn’t be another attack here, could there?
Lauren watched him, floating as she did upon her platform. In some ways, she was more stable and didn’t have to worry about the changing currents or a sudden warmth that might send her flying off in a different direction. Her platform kept her safe. Controlled. That was something he rarely felt when traveling on the wind. For him, it felt more like he was thrown into a storm as the violent gusts of wind tossed him forward.
“You know something, don’t you, Bishop?”
He sighed, wishing that he didn’t. “This is… familiar.”
“Should we turn back?”
Eldridge shook his head. If they turned back, they wouldn’t learn what they needed to. The book that contained the runes that Lauren had discovered was in Atenas. For what he thought would be needed, they needed to find that book and discover if there might be some way they could use it against Tenebeth.
The closer they came to Atenas, the more certain that Eldridge became of what they would find.
He slowed, pulling against the wind now, circling around the city. Lauren streaked next to him, following on her strange platform. Both of them surveyed the city below.
“What is it?” Lauren asked.
Eldridge didn’t know. Wind pressed him forward, guiding him away from the edge of the city and toward the tower. As he went, he felt a strange pulsing against him and realized that the wind shifted in time with it.
A summons.
“Careful here,” he called to Lauren.
She had already changed her platform, solidifying it. A knife appeared in her hand, and Eldridge smiled. He didn’t expect her to use the knife to attack, but it was comforting to know that she was willing to try if it came to that.
As they neared the tower, he realized what he detected.
Shapers stood arrayed on the street, all focused on the tower itself. Why would they be focused on the tower? Then he discovered the answer. They weren’t only shapers. They were summoners.
Had Cheneth’s Hyaln taken to attack Atenas?
Eldridge didn’t think so, but it was possible.
Lauren gasped, and he jerked his attention to her.
A strand of thick shadow arced toward her. He tipped on the wind. Lauren tried to do the same, but the shadow seemed to follow and touched upon her platform, parting it.
Lauren fell.
Eldridge swooped toward her, using a shaping and controlling the wind, and caught her before she could hit the ground, but in doing so, other shapers noticed him and turned their attention to them.
Lauren stood and held her knife away from her.
“I don’t know how much good that will do you,” Eldridge whispered.
Using his connection to the wind, he sent it swirling through the shapers. He didn’t want to harm them, only to slow them. If he could reach the tower, he knew a way in and thought that he could find answers. Oliver would be here and, if nothing else, the healer would provide the answers that he needed.
The warriors simply dismissed his shaping.
But they couldn’t dismiss his connection to the wind.
Eldridge hadn’t known Atenas to possess wind shapers of such skill, which told him that these weren’t all Atenas shapers. And if they weren’t of Atenas, they should not be here.
Forming a knife of focus with the wind, he pressed forward, slicing through the assembled shapers. As he did, he widened the focus, scattering the shapers. They tumbled off to the side.
Eldridge pulled Lauren with him and leaped into the air, streaking toward the tower. They needed to reach it. Nothing farther.
As they neared, he arced them up, sending them soaring toward the upper-level windows. Lauren screamed something at him, but he ignored it.
Then he reached the window he sought.
Using a shaping of wind, he opened the window, and they tumbled inside.
Someone shouted at him, but he didn’t know if it was Lauren or someone behind him. Eldridge barely paused as he resealed the window and rolled to the side. He bounded to his feet, ready for another attack.
Oliver glared at him. “You could have warned me that you were coming through the window.”
Lauren hid behind him. She clutched the knife in a white-knuckled grip, scanning the inside of the room.
“What’s happening here, Oliver?” Eldridge asked.
The large water healer strode through the room until he reached one of the wide red fabric chairs and dragged it toward them. “Sit, and I’ll explain.” He pulled a slender metal rod from a pocket and rested it on his legs.
He didn’t threaten them, but Eldridge still detected the hint of a veiled warning in the motion.
Lauren eyed the rod. Her gaze flickered to Eldridge as she shook her head.
“I think we’ll stand,” he said. Had something happened with Oliver as well? It was bad enough to see the streets filled with warriors, but to get attacked, and then worry about another attack here in Oliver’s room… that made him nervous.
“Balls, man!” Oliver said. “I’m not going to do anything to you.”
“You’re not, but who is?”
The large man waved his meaty hand at the window. “Whatever is happening out there. We thought the Khalan were coming, and damn if I know where Alena ran off to.”
“Alena is here?” He hadn’t expected that. She hadn’t enjoyed returning to Atenas the last time, and that had been to help save Wyath. What would have prompted her to return… and to stay?
Oliver nodded absently. “Claims Cheneth sent her. Of course, that was after I sent word to you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Damn council was compromised. Your friend Cheneth came and gave me this,” he waved the slender metal rod in the air and Eldridge could make out the markings along the side, “which lets me know if someone has been attacked with spirit. Turns out half the damn Seat was compromised. Thankfully Alena came and figured out a way to use these to cure them.”
Eldridge felt his mind racing to understand what Oliver told him. The Seat of the Order compromised. Cheneth had come. And shapers he referred to as the Khalan were here. That wasn’t Hyaln, but were they connected?
“Where is Alena now?”
Oliver’s gaze went to the window. “I thought maybe you were her. She disappeared when we detected the attack. She went somewhere, but I don’t know what she was thinking. Then the Khalan attacked. Damn if they aren’t half of our warriors.”
“How?” Lauren asked.
Oliver shook his head. “Don’t know how. All I know is that these shapers can control shadows.” He looked over at Eldridge. “Did you know they could do that?”
“Tenebeth,” Eldridge whispered.
“That’s what Alena thought as well, but the commander tells us this is something other than that.”
“The
commander has returned?”
Oliver bobbed his head in a nod. His jowls wobbled wildly, almost taking on a life of their own. “Returned. Helped stop the first attack. Supposedly had a separate school of his own that these Khalan destroyed. And now they’re coming for Atenas.”
How much had the commander known about these attacks? They hadn’t figured out where the commander’s allegiances lay before, but if he had a separate camp, and he intended to fight the darkness, then it seemed that he would be on their side, wouldn’t it?
Cheneth needed to know.
But Cheneth had taken a trip of his own, disappearing from the barracks, sending only the word that he had taken Jasn Volth and the girl Ciara with him. Wherever they had gone was important, but so was learning about this Khalan attack.
If he couldn’t find Cheneth, then he needed to find Alena, especially if she understood what was happening here.
The door rattled, and Oliver jumped up, moving faster than a man his size should be able to do, and reached the door. With a shaping of water, he unsealed it, pulling it open.
Eldridge breathed out a sigh of relief as Alena stood on the other side. She carried a man along with her, and Eldridge could sense the wind shaping binding his arms.
As soon as she saw him, she dropped the man and unsheathed her sword, pointing it at him. The end glowed a bright reddish hue, one that reflected in her eyes, making them appear almost angry.
Eldridge took an involuntary step back, pressing Lauren behind him. “Alena?”
She said nothing as light surged from the end of her sword, coming straight toward him.
34
Jayna
How many times have the seals failed? This is not the first, and if they succeed in replacing these seals, I do not think it will be the last. How many must suffer before we finally learn how to suppress it for all time?
—Lren Atunal, Cardinal of the College of Scholars
Seal of Light (The Endless War Book 5) Page 20