Darkness Rising (The Endless War Book 2)

by D. K. Holmberg

  The draasin stared at her, slitted eyes a deep gold with a hint of green, watching Ciara as she stepped to the top of the point. “What am I supposed to do?” Ciara asked.

  In answer, the draasin lowered her head.

  Ciara stared, and the draasin waited.

  She approached carefully, fearful of what the draasin might do. There were stories of the great creatures of fire attacking, but for the most part, they left her people alone. Maybe that had more to do with the connection to them through osidan, or maybe it was because of what her father once had known, magic that he had never shared with her.

  Ciara dragged her j’na along with her, trying to suppress the fear coursing through her—and failing.

  When she neared, the draasin nudged her with her head, much like the lizard nudged her, and Ciara fell, dropping onto the creature’s back. With a flutter of wings, the draasin rose into the air, quickly gaining altitude with Ciara trapped atop her back.

  8

  Alena

  Even within Ter, there are those who choose discord.

  —Lren Atunal, Cardinal of the College of Scholars

  Alena’s head pounded in ways that it hadn’t since she’d welcomed the connection to the draasin, the steady drumbeat of the connection putting pressure on her eyes and in the back of her mind, making it difficult to see the trees around her. Nausea rolled through her and she struggled to keep her breakfast from spilling back up. The sour odor to the air, an almost bitter stink that reminded her of vomit, didn’t help.

  Hopefully Bayan had gone back to the barracks as she’d asked of her, but blast it if she knew what the woman would do once she got there. That was the part she couldn’t predict, but she hadn’t much choice at the time, not if she wanted to do what she could to help the draasin.

  Where was Wyath?

  She staggered to the next tree, holding on to it and knowing that if she wasn’t careful, she would fall. Even reaching for a shaping was difficult now, and her mind struggled to wrap around the elements, the painful pounding making even the most basic thoughts difficult.

  She needed to find him. Or Eldridge. Stars, but she would even be pleased to find Cheneth now, and that was knowing how he’d chastise her when she did. The scholar had little tolerance for this kind of mistake, but then, this hadn’t been her mistake, had it?

  She sensed nothing to tell her if Calan or Ifrit remained in the forest, but she’d not seen them come past and hadn’t seen any sign that they’d shaped themselves away and after the draasin, either.

  She needed to go after Sashi. But even were she able to reach the draasin, if it was attacked, there was nothing she could do to help at this point. She was too weakened.

  Alena made it to another tree. Her vision was improving, at least enough for her to see the clearing through the trees where she should find the pen. The air was thicker here from dirt and debris that still hung suspended in the air, mixed with the tang of blood.

  Was it draasin blood? The elemental had made it out, but had it done so with injury, or had he gotten free before the attack?

  Releasing the tree, she staggered into the clearing and stumbled on a piece of rubble that had been strewn across the ground. Alena glanced down and had to blink twice before she knew what it was that she saw. Not rubble.

  Wyath sprawled across the ground, blood pooling from a half dozen different injuries, each likely enough to take his life. Somehow he still lived, but he would not for much longer.

  Crouching next to him, she smoothed the hair back from his head and was surprised when he opened glazed eyes and looked at her.

  “Dangerous,” he wheezed.

  “Don’t speak. Let me heal you,” she said, but she wasn’t sure she was strong enough for what Wyath needed. The only person she knew at the barracks who might have the potential to save him was gone; left and hadn’t returned. For all she knew, Volth didn’t plan on returning, and she couldn’t fully blame him. What he’d seen was more than most within the order ever learned, and that was without finding out what it meant for his potential.

  Wyath chuckled. “I’m getting old, Alena. Don’t need you to think you can save me each time something foolish happens to me.” He coughed, and a bubble of bloody phlegm spit from his lips. “Did good, girl. Go after her. Keep them safe. Already, one is lost. Can’t let the same happen to the other. We… owe them.”

  “Quiet, you old fool.” She used a shaping of water and settled it through him, stabilizing the injuries she could detect, but water had never been one of her true strengths. She could use water better than most who came through Atenas, but not in the same way, and not with the same skill at healing as so many who trained there. What she did was no different than a field medic would do, something she had far too much experience with from her time spent fighting.

  “Not much to do for this,” Wyath said. “Damn shame it had to be this way, you know?”

  Alena looked around the clearing. Where had Calan and Ifrit gone? Were they still here, they might be able to do something, possibly help her heal Wyath more effectively. Without them, she didn’t have the necessary knowledge.

  But she could get him back to the barracks.

  Using a shaping of earth, Alena lifted Wyath and carried him. The old man groaned once but didn’t say anything else. That should have warned her how far gone he was. She held on to earth, pushing through it to strengthen her so that she could carry him more easily. Alena hurried through the woods, fearing she would be too late.

  As they neared the barracks, she heard commotion. Voices shouted and someone cried out orders. What was happening here?

  She stepped from the trees to see Bayan speaking to Calan. Nothing she could do about that now other than ignore whatever accusation she might level at her. Calan glanced at Wyath and turned away, hurrying to the end of the camp. Blast that man. There wasn’t much she could do, but she didn’t need to have another challenge, not considering everything that was happening, which she already didn’t understand.

  A firm grip grabbed at her elbow and she spun to see Eldridge guiding her back toward the trees. She pulled away, shaking him off. “He needs healing, Eldridge. And we have to make certain the other draasin—”

  Eldridge cut her off with a finger to her lips. He glanced around and nodded. “You think I can’t see that? It’s only by Cheneth’s will that the last draasin lives. Calan refuses to risk angering him, but if something happens…”

  Alena didn’t want to think of that or the pain she would feel as the draasin suffered. Already she felt the drawing of the draasin as he demanded to be freed. “Where is Tarak?” she asked, needing to get Wyath to the healer before she could help the draasin.

  “Busy. Whatever happened out there left Ifrit pretty bloodied. Tarak won’t have the strength to help both of them.”

  “There are others—”

  “Not today,” Eldridge said. “Cheneth can’t help, and the only other person able to help you would be Calan. Given the way he looked at you, I don’t think he’s much interested in healing.” Eldridge glanced around, his thin lips pursed and his long, sharp nose tipped upward, as if smelling the air. “What of Volth?”

  “He hasn’t returned.”

  “Damn. That leaves us with only one option if we want Wyath to live. I know what he’d say, but he’s got a bit more to do before his time is up.” Eldridge pulled her deeper into the woods as he spoke, leaving the commotion within the barracks behind.

  “What do you think we can do?” she asked.

  “Wyath needs the kind of healing that can only be found in one place.”

  “Eldridge,” she began, already slowing. Wyath felt heavier in her arms as her earth shaping sagged. “You know I can’t go back there.” And she needed to go after the draasin. But then, the sense of the draasin had faded from her mind. Even were she able, she wouldn’t know where to search.

  The last time she’d been to Atenas had been ten years ago, back before the barracks had been fully establi
shed, around the same time she began to hear the steady call of the draasin in her mind. At first, she’d thought something wrong with her and sought healing within Atenas, but no healer took her seriously. It wasn’t until Eldridge found her by chance that she’d been brought to the barracks and offered a chance to study. Wyath had taught her, and she remembered well how insanely competent the old man had seemed even then. In the years since, he had only grown in her eyes.

  Eldridge waved a hand dismissively. “I know your feelings about Atenas, just as I know your feelings about Wyath. Are you telling me that you wouldn’t do whatever is needed to help him?”

  “You know that I will.”

  Eldridge huffed as if there hadn’t really been a need for discussion. “Good, because I’m going to need your help with this shaping.”

  They stopped in a small clearing that wasn’t nearly as large as the one holding the now-damaged draasin pen. When Eldridge took hold of Wyath’s legs, his mouth pressed into a tighter line. “Not much time for him,” he said softly.

  Wyath hadn’t said anything since she’d lifted him to carry him back to the barracks, and she’d noted how his skin had grown cooler with each passing moment. Even his breathing had changed, becoming more irregular. She’d seen something similar before, and she’d been just as helpless to do anything about it.

  “Come now,” Eldridge said. His wind shaping built with a steady competence, and he wrapped flows of wind around them, pulling at his cloak and slowly starting to lift into the air.

  Alena copied the shaping. She could use a more complicated shaping of each of the elements to travel, but she couldn’t carry another with her, not without risking both her and whomever she attempted to bring along. Weakened as she was, carrying herself might be more than she could manage. Eldridge could only shape wind, though, and so even were she to attempt to travel on her combined shaping, she would lose the scholar. But using wind, especially shaping it together, they would be able to travel on the air itself, guided by the strength of the wind.

  With her shaping to assist, they lifted into the air. Alena made a point of funneling the strength that she could shape into the wind, stabilizing the shaping with earth. Even that was nearly too much for her.

  Eldridge took control of the shaping and guided them as they raced to the north, away from the barracks. Wind whistled around her as they moved faster than she would ever have managed with wind shaping alone.

  Atenas first appeared as a dark shadow in the distance but quickly resolved into the massive tower of black stone that rose high over the city all around its base. Eldridge pulled them ever faster, pushing them along with his shaping. She expected him to lower them at the base of the tower, bringing them to the shaper circle infused with earth to provide strength, but he did not. Instead, he pulled them toward the upper aspect of the tower and held them in a controlled hover near one of the high-level windows.

  “Careful,” he warned.

  He touched the pane of glass, tapping gently and with a steady rhythm, sliding his fingers over it. There was no shaping used, at least none that Alena could tell, but the glass began to part, spreading away like the pulling of a curtain.

  “Go,” Eldridge said, strain now evident in his voice.

  Alena climbed through the opening, her training as a hunter over the past decade taking over so that she quickly glanced around. She was in a small, unlit room. A square of carpet covered the floor. A narrow table butted up against the window, and a lantern rested on top of it. There was nothing else.

  Eldridge started passing Wyath through the window, and she took him, realizing how cold he felt. The old warrior didn’t move as she pulled him into Atenas, and she didn’t see him breathing. Only the faint pulsing within his chest told her that he still lived, but even that grew weaker by the moment. She took a moment to perform another shaping of water but didn’t think it would be enough to keep him alive.

  Eldridge climbed into the room after her, forcing her back against the plain brown door leading out. “We must hurry,” he said, pushing her aside and performing a shaping so subtle that she couldn’t tell what he did. The door swung open, leading into a dark hall.

  “How did you do that back there?” she asked as they reached a stair.

  “A simple lock,” he said. Eldridge took the stairs two at a time, his shorter legs assisted in each step by his shaping. He might be able to shape only wind, but he was extremely skilled, using it in ways that warriors of the order rarely considered. In that fashion, he was more like the healer guild and their specialization.

  “Not the lock. The window.”

  Eldridge swung around a corner at a landing and paused long enough to catch her eye. “There are more ways to enter Atenas than the shaper circle.”

  There weren’t supposed to be any other ways to enter the tower. From what Alena remembered, the only ways in were through the main doorway or through an entrance atop the tower itself. Both were reinforced and heavily guarded to keep out those not given access. But Eldridge had simply swept away a pane of glass, leaving it as if nothing had been there. Not only was it a neat trick, but she could think of dozens of uses for such a shaping.

  Eldridge didn’t give her the chance to question anything more as he stopped on one of the landings—Alena wasn’t able to tell which floor they were on and doubted it would matter anyway, as she’d been too long away from Atenas to know what was where—and tapped on a door along the hall.

  Whatever was on the other side of that door was shielded from her using water. She hadn’t seen a shielding quite like it before and started probing along the edge, using a masked shaping of water and fire.

  “There’s no need for that,” Eldridge said.

  Alena hesitated. How had he known she was shaping? He was a wind shaper only and shouldn’t be able to detect when she used water and fire. “Where are we?”

  Wyath didn’t have the luxury of wasting any more time. Already, it might be too late for him.

  “Wait,” Eldridge cautioned.

  The shielding around the door dropped and then the door opened. The wide face that poked through the cracked door had ruddy cheeks and a saggy jowl that reminded Alena in some ways of her father, a water shaper long gone. The eyes that caught on Eldridge and then Alena before settling on Wyath looked nothing like her father’s, though. They were hard and calculating.

  “Balls, man,” he said. “What are you doing back in Atenas?”

  “We need your help.”

  “I see that, but are you really certain this is… wise? You could have summoned and it might have been safer.”

  “There was no time. Now, will you allow us in, Oliver?”

  Alena had heard the name before; most who spent any time in Atenas had heard the name of the greatest healer in Ter. At least Wyath would have a chance, but how did Eldridge know him, and why would Oliver ask if it was wise for him to come?

  Oliver stepped to the side and pulled the door open. He was a wide man, and his gray robe did nothing to disguise his bulk. In spite of that, he moved with a certain grace that reminded her of the R’sar dancers. The thought made her smile; she couldn’t imagine a man the size of Oliver spinning and slashing with the precision the dancers possessed.

  When they were in the room, he slammed the door shut with a shaping of water, sealing it once more. Oliver motioned to a cot along the wall, and she carried Wyath to it, setting him down. Oliver quickly reached for Wyath and ran his hands over his face and down his sides, probing expertly.

  “Who shaped him?” he said, keeping his focus on Wyath.

  “There was an explosion,” Alena said. Oliver didn’t need to know how it happened, she decided, and she would try to keep Eldridge from saying anything that might lead to more questions. “A training accident.”

  Eldridge eyed her askance and Oliver sniffed to himself.

  “Training accident. Seems the old man shouldn’t be involved in too many training accidents anymore, should he?” Oliver directed
the question to Eldridge, ignoring Alena. “But that wasn’t what I wanted to know. Who performed the first shaping?”

  “I did,” Alena said. “Does it matter? I needed to staunch the bleeding, or he wouldn’t have made it even this far.”

  Oliver looked up then. As he did, Alena realized that she hadn’t sensed him shaping, but there was no question that he was. Traces of color had returned to Wyath’s face. He was still cool and pale, but his blood flowed with a little more force than it had before.

  The trick of masking shapings was not unique to those who trained in the barracks, but she hadn’t met anyone within Atenas who managed to do so with such skill. She couldn’t detect a thing as he worked, hiding his shaping with such precision that he might as well have been sitting in a garden.

  “Of course it matters,” Oliver snapped. “The first shaping is the most important. If you can’t steady the body, there might not be anything that can be done. Depending on what you did, I might have to remove the shaping, but that runs the risk of him bleeding out completely. He’s far enough gone that he might not survive that.”

  “Can you help him?” Eldridge said.

  Oliver opened his mouth but closed it at Eldridge’s intense stare. “Damn it,” he whispered. “I will try, but I can’t do it alone, and I’m not sure he’s willing to help. There’s a part of him that doesn’t accept what he can do.”

  Alena was frowning, wondering who Oliver meant, when she realized they weren’t alone in his room.

  She stood and took a step back and saw the shadow looming along the far wall, watching them. Flickering light from the hearth played across his face, casting it in darkness, but not enough to mask the anger on Jasn Volth’s face.

  “Will you be a part of this?” Oliver asked. The water shaper didn’t look over, but Alena knew the question was intended for Jasn.

  He hesitated long enough that Alena feared he wouldn’t answer. She didn’t know why the greatest healer in Ter wanted Jasn to help, but she sensed that an important question was asked, even if she didn’t know quite what it meant.