Darkness Rising (The Endless War Book 2)

by D. K. Holmberg

  “You speak to them. You know things are changing.”

  “They grow frightened, but I don’t know why.”

  “It does not help that Calan nearly crushed one of them,” Cheneth said between bites. “Nor does it help that the attacks persist along the border.”

  “They won’t explain why.”

  “No. I do not think that they will.” He took another few bites and then chased it with a swallow of ale.

  “You know something more than what you’re telling me.”

  He sighed. “Not with any certainty. There’s a reason I came to Ter, searching for answers to the war, seeking a way to end it. Now?” He leaned toward her, patting her hand as if he were her father, or maybe even her grandfather, as the serving boy stopped by their table again. Cheneth waved him away with a warm smile and then turned his attention back to Alena. “Now I wonder what I might have missed.”

  “Missed? About the draasin or about the war?”

  “Both. That’s why it’s important that we not lose any who are able to speak to the elementals. We offer a kind of protection, though they do not know it.” Cheneth leaned back and took another couple of bites. He glanced around the tavern as he did. “What do you think of this place?”

  She snorted. “Were you thinking to impress me with your choice of taverns?”

  “There are many throughout this part of the city who still claim a certain loyalty to the old kings. Most think it harmless, a relic of a time long past.”

  “You don’t think it harmless?”

  Cheneth looked up from his plate. Color flashed in his eyes, as if whatever mask he wore slipped, if only for a moment. “The bloodline of the old kings was powerful. Different than even those of the order. Scholars have long tried to understand why.”

  Alena hadn’t known that. “If they were so powerful, how did they die out?” The last king of Ter sat the throne hundreds of years ago. Since then, they had been led by the council, with the head of the order sitting at the forefront. That person hadn’t always been the commander. That position evolved over time as the attacks increased and those of the order were tasked with defending Ter.

  “You ask the same question that scholars have long asked, and I have no different answer than they did.” Cheneth tipped his mug back and drained the last of his ale. “You will return to the barracks now.”

  “That’s it? That’s the entire reason you called me here?”

  “Not at all, Alena. I have a task for you, but one that will be difficult.”

  She didn’t like the way that sounded. Tasks from Cheneth were never pleasant. “What is it?”

  “It is time for you to understand your connection to the elementals and guide Volth in his, even if it means freeing the remaining draasin. I need to know what the elementals know. There is something I’m not seeing, and it worries me.”

  She frowned, thinking about what it would take to free the draasin. “Calan and Ifrit will know if I free the other draasin.”

  “I think we can no longer hide. Not as we have.”

  “Why the urgency? Why risk Calan learning what I might do?” Not only that, but if she couldn’t free the draasin without getting caught, it risked capture, and worse, for her. Then she would have to answer questions she doubted Cheneth was prepared for her to answer.

  “Can’t you feel it?” he asked.

  “I don’t feel anything.”

  He sighed and set his palms atop the table. No longer were they crooked and gnarled. “I would think that your connection would tie you to them, but you might be too far from them to understand.”

  “The draasin?” she whispered.

  “We need to know why they’ve come to us to help.” He leaned close to her, and the scents she noted when he first arrived remained. “Why teach? Why allow us to bind and confine them? They know something but have not shared.”

  “I’ve felt that as well, but what would the draasin need help with?” she asked.

  “That is the question that keeps me up at night.” He took a breath, grabbed his cane, and hopped from the chair. “When you return,” he said, “you will see to the draasin. Release it if you must.”

  “What of you? Don’t you intend to return?”

  Cheneth tapped his cane on the ground once and turned toward the door. “I’ll return, but there is something more I must do. Find a way to keep the calm, will you?”

  Alena stood and took his hand, keeping up the charade as she walked with him. Outside, the sun blazed brightly, reflecting off the tin sign hanging above the tavern. For some reason, it reminded her of the symbols used by the scholars to store shaping.

  “How long will you be gone?” she asked.

  “Long enough to find answers, I think.” He started down the street, leaning heavily on his cane at first but gradually using it less and less. When he turned the corner, he no longer looked like a grizzled old man. Now he appeared closer to his true age.

  Alena realized she might not even know his true age. What if he held a mask at all times, disguising himself from everyone? He could be anyone if that were true.

  No, holding a shaping like that would be nearly impossible to maintain. She had no reason to believe Cheneth would even bother. There was value in maintaining your identity, especially when said identity was that of one of the most intelligent scholars of Ter.

  With a parting glance to the sign, she made her way toward the tower. Before returning to the barracks, she would check to see that Wyath remained well. The walk to the tower went quickly, and she entered through the lower level, unlike Eldridge and his secretive entrance, one that should not even be accessible. The tower was supposed to be sealed to shaping so that those living inside didn’t have to fear others attacking. It was meant to be a place of study, but nearly as much, it was meant to be a place of peace. If the shapers could be attacked within, the tower offered no advantage.

  She hurried up the long stair at the center of the tower. She passed a few others, but none she recognized, and simply nodded as she went. Most were younger, wearing the simple white that marked them as students. Surprisingly, none offered her much more than a passing glance even though she was dressed in deep brown leather pants and a loose wool jacket that looked nothing like anyone within Atenas. Had she known, she would have dressed differently and attempted to blend in better, but she hadn’t expected to come to Atenas.

  As she neared the healer floor, she realized she didn’t sense Wyath as she should. She’d made a point of focusing on his heart rate and used that when she sensed to reach for him, listening for a connection, for anything that would tell her he was still well, but there was nothing.

  She stopped at the door and hesitated before knocking.

  Oliver answered the door, pulling it open and filling the doorway with his wide form. His hands crossed over his massive belly, resting on it. “He is not here.”

  Alena looked past him but didn’t see anything moving. “I can tell that he’s not. Where did he go?”

  “He returned.”

  “Returned? He wasn’t well enough to return. He should have taken days before he was well enough to do anything more than sleep and eat.”

  Oliver grunted. “Yes. Healing like Jasn Volth manages is a different approach than the guild.”

  “You knew about him.”

  “Not about him, but we knew he was different. He had to be, given how precocious he was. Every healing he ever attempted was more powerful than some of our most advanced shapers. You don’t think there’s something special in that?”

  “You didn’t tell him?”

  “Did we need to? We wished him to learn. He couldn’t learn if he already thought he knew what he needed.”

  “You couldn’t have taught him,” Alena said. “Not what he needs to know.”

  “And you think you can?” When she nodded, he continued, “As you taught Katya?”

  Alena sighed. “You’re the reason that he knows of her?” When Oliver made no effort to den
y it, she jabbed at his thick chest. “We need him. Didn’t Eldridge tell you that?”

  “So it’s Eldridge who leads you now?”

  She bit back her answer, recognizing how Oliver fished for information. She’d been so long away from Atenas, she had forgotten the way some—especially those high up within the guilds—would attempt to reach for knowledge they were not meant to have. The scholars were the worst, using their stated goals of trying to understand the core of shaping to discover facts and truths that some would like to keep buried.

  “What type of training leads to a shaper of Wyath’s pedigree being injured as he was?” Oliver asked. He smiled as he did, but it failed to reach his eyes. “What type of training takes the famed Alena so long away from Atenas? You, who could have sat among the council had you remained?”

  She sniffed. “I never wanted to sit on the council.”

  “No? Too many seek power and should not have it. You, perhaps, should have it but seek to hide from it.”

  “I don’t hide,” she said. “What I do is important for Ter.”

  “Yes. Training.”

  She tipped her head. “Is that all?”

  “Not in the slightest. I don’t intend to try to keep you here. I know that you’re far too skilled for me to manage that. Even Jasn has learned how to peel away the water layer, something he should only have learned from the guild.” He nodded to her. “That was from your training, I presume?”

  “There’s nothing particular about what is taught,” she said. “He learns to appreciate a certain sensitivity to the elements.”

  “So that he can reach for more?”

  Alena hesitated. What did Oliver know?

  The guild had always proven themselves to be intelligent shapers, and inquisitive. They had to be in order to understand something as obscure as healing, using water to help the body recover in ways that others could not; even those with water shaping ability struggled to accomplish what the guild managed.

  She glanced at the wall of books behind Oliver and wondered if there might be something more. Were they more like the scholars than they let on? Scholars within Atenas were different from men like Eldridge and Cheneth, at least as far as she remembered, but maybe not all of them were. What if there was more to the scholars than she realized?

  “I don’t know what you’re suggesting,” she said.

  Oliver sniffed. “No? You did not seem all that surprised to see Jasn heal our friend.”

  “What do you know, Oliver?”

  A dark smile spread across his face, stretching his heavy cheeks. A shaping of water built, settling around them, sealing everything else out. She wondered why he would need such precautions here.

  “Enough to know that there are mysteries to the world that even the scholars have yet to answer. Enough to know that there are powers in our world that I can’t explain.” He leaned toward her and lowered his voice. “But there are others who can. Others to whom those mysteries are not mysteries, who walk down paths I can’t fathom.” He hesitated, letting the words settle for a moment, then he leaned back. “From the look on your face and the way your heart races, I can tell you’re not one of them. Eldridge might be closer, and whoever leads you closer still, but I think you still don’t know nearly what is needed. There is a darkness coming to our lands, Alena Lagaro. I can feel it, even if I don’t know what it means.”

  Alena felt her heart flutter. Oliver’s words reminded her so much of what Cheneth said, but why? “What do you know, Oliver?” she asked again.

  He shook his head slowly. “Probably nothing. But the guild recognizes that the world changes and that with change comes pain. We must do what we can to heal that pain. And you’ve taken Jasn Volth from us, a man who would help more than you know.” He sighed. “You have made him nothing more than a soldier when he could be so much more.”

  Oliver lowered the protective shaping and tipped his head toward her, stepped back into his room, and closed the door in her face.

  16

  Jasn

  Do elementals reproduce? Do they breed the way the wolves prowling the mountains outside of Atenas do, or are they created, simply connected to the elements? If there truly are those who speak to the elementals, it is possible they know.

  —Lren Atunal, Cardinal of the College of Scholars

  The barracks felt different than the last time Jasn had been here. Then, he’d left with questions and uncertainty, not knowing what to do about Lachen’s request of him or about what he’d discovered of Alena. There had been frustration as well. How much time had been spent trying to coax Alena to teach him, as if he should need to force her?

  Even in the short time he’d been away, much had changed. Mostly it was within him. Not only had he come to understand that he could speak to the elementals, even if he didn’t know what that meant, but that Katya might still be alive.

  What did that mean for him?

  The past year he’d spent trying and failing to die. Now that he learned she might still live… Had Lachen known? Was that the reason he’d brought him to the barracks? If so, he could have simply told him, unless there was more to the reason of Lachen bringing him here, and Jasn wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case.

  The change wasn’t only within him. He’d been gone for barely more than a week, but the barracks itself had changed. There was a darkness about it, and the air stank of blood and fire. Alena had warned him about what had happened, but he hadn’t been certain what to believe when it came to her. The buildings and the trees around the barracks didn’t look any different, but there was a sense here that had been absent before. Maybe it was only he who had changed.

  Jasn stepped out from the edge of the trees, leaving the cool of the forest as he approached the buildings. His eyes were drawn to the nearest draasin pen, the one that contained the smallest draasin, and he was surprised to see the pen destroyed. The pens were made of circular stone walls, completely enclosed, and had been fortified with earth shaped into them. They had been strong enough that he could think of no way for them to be damaged. This pen had crumbled, as if the stone of the pen had been squeezed together, leaving a pile of rock.

  Had the draasin been inside?

  It was a measure of how much he had changed that he wondered. When he’d served along the border of Rens, he’d cared about nothing more than getting revenge for what had happened to Katya. That meant attacking the draasin, even if there was nothing he could really do.

  He made his way toward Cheneth. Regardless of what he decided, whether he would work with Alena or he would do as Lachen asked, the scholar led the camp. He had been the one to explain the purpose of the elementals, even if Jasn wasn’t ready to hear it. Jasn had seen there was more to Cheneth than he let on, and he wanted to understand what that was.

  “He’s not there.”

  He paused and turned to see Bayan watching him from between a pair of buildings. She was a slender woman, dark hair pulled back behind her head. Her short sword hung at her waist, though she carried it less comfortably than most of the order. “Where can I find him?” he asked her.

  Bayan took another step forward, studying his face as if he were some puzzle she needed to solve. “I don’t know. He’s been gone since…”

  She turned in the direction of the fallen draasin pen but didn’t finish.

  “What happened?”

  “I’m not certain.” Bayan studied him. “Where have you been?”

  Jasn had known the questions would come. He’d left the barracks after learning of Alena’s ability, after healing Thenas, and there would be those who wanted to know why, especially since he had passed the first trial. Were he to stay, there would be other tests until he was raised to full hunter, but even after all that had happened, Jasn wasn’t sure he wanted to be promoted to that level.

  “Atenas.” There was no point lying to Bayan, especially if she knew the truth about Alena.

  “Why Atenas?”

  Jasn sighed and started towar
d the draasin pen, curious about how it had fallen. Bayan fell in beside him. “You know what I did before I came here?”

  She laughed darkly. “You haven’t hidden yourself quite so well as you would think.”

  Jasn glanced over at her. “I hadn’t intended to hide myself at all.”

  “So you didn’t care if anyone knew you were the Wrecker of Rens?”

  Jasn closed his eyes a moment. It was a title he hadn’t wanted, but also one he had claimed. With all the destruction he’d caused Rens, didn’t he deserve such a title? “I came to get away from that.”

  Bayan watched him. “Why? You were the reason Ter claimed so much land along the eastern border. Why leave?”

  Jasn grunted, tipping his head toward the debris. “It would seem that I had much to learn.”

  They stopped outside the remains of the pen. The stink of the dead draasin hung in the air. Some of the stones were stained red, and Jasn almost imagined the creature crushed beneath the weight of the rock. If what Alena said was true, the creatures had come here willingly, allowed them to bind them in stone, but he still didn’t understand why. And now one of them had died because they remained here, so close to so many who wanted them dead.

  “The stories about you—”

  “Are mostly true,” he said, not lifting his gaze off the rock. He could feel the way the stone had been squeezed, as if earth had heaved together simply to crush the draasin. It would have been a horrible way for the creature to die.

  “How? I mean, how are you still alive?”

  That question had plagued him for the past year. At least now he had answers, even if he didn’t fully understand them. Why would the elementals care enough about him to keep him alive? What was he to them?

  More than that, Alena spoke of how she communicated with the draasin. As far as he knew, he’d never spoken to the elementals of water, never had the sense that there was anything there other than the fact that he couldn’t die. Every attack left him healed, or allowed him to heal himself, something those within the guild like Oliver claimed shouldn’t be possible. Even here, while in the barracks, he’d used his ability to heal himself when the draasin had attacked him. That it had been deserved didn’t make it any better. Worse, he now wondered if Alena had somehow asked the draasin to attack. Had she known what he could do? Was it some way of testing him, of finding out what he might be, or did she simply want him gone? She hadn’t denied the fact that she wanted nothing to do with teaching him. Now, at least, he understood why.