Darkness Rising (The Endless War Book 2)

by D. K. Holmberg

“Even if I wanted nothing to do with it, I don’t think healing will give me up.”

  Bayan looked away from the trees and considered him for a moment, then turned her focus back to the forest.

  “Why did you come out here?” he asked.

  “I needed a chance to reflect.”

  “On what?”

  She shrugged. “On the reason that I’m here.”

  Jasn chuckled, moving on the log so that it didn’t press painfully into his backside. Water sensing told him that Bayan’s heart fluttered, as if she was nervous. Earth sensing told him of the sweat slicking her neck and her palms.

  “What did you see? What has gotten to you?”

  “I didn’t—”

  Jasn faced her, straddling the log. “Do you think I can’t tell? You saw something that upset you. Does it have to do with what happened to Ifrit?”

  Bayan sighed and didn’t turn to meet his eyes. “There are things you can’t understand yet, Jasn. You haven’t been here long enough. You might have passed the first trial”—the soft cough as she said it made clear her surprise—“but you don’t understand what the barracks are.”

  “And you do? How long have you been here, Bayan? How long will it take me to understand?”

  She closed her eyes. “Too long. I’ve been here too long. When the scholars came to me, suggested that I had the potential to train here, I was like you. I knew nothing about the barracks. Even after I’d been here a few weeks, realizing how much more the others knew, things I hadn’t even realized were possible while studying in Atenas, I still knew nothing.” She opened her eyes and looked over to him. “Do you realize I had been here nearly a year before I learned they hunted draasin? An entire year.” Her voice went softer as she remembered. “When I first discovered it, I remember how terrified I was.” She offered a sad smile. “I didn’t serve along the front nearly as long as you. I never really became accustomed to seeing the draasin. I’m sure that after enough time, you become immune to that fear.”

  “Not immune,” he answered. “There’s always the terror when you see the distant draasin. I don’t know if that terror will ever completely go away, or whether it even should.”

  “I saw how you were when you first saw the draasin here. You weren’t like most who come through. You didn’t seem bothered by them at all.”

  “The first one I saw here was small. Little more than a hatchling.” Jasn had found draasin eggs while serving along the front. Searching for their nests was one of his assignments, though not one he’d been particularly good at. Others were more skilled finding them. Jasn was mostly skilled at not dying.

  Bayan sniffed. “And even the hatchlings can kill. I’ve seen draasin no larger than the one we had in the small pen tear through a dozen shapers before getting dragged down. A dozen! So when it was explained to me that one of the things I would be learning here would be how to hunt the draasin, you can imagine how frightened I was.” She sat silent for a moment, staring at her hands. She shook her head as she did.

  “Why are you telling me this, Bayan?”

  “Because you asked. And because you need to understand the barracks in a different way than you do. When I came, there was only one draasin. The smallest. Calan had captured it and had brought it here, wanting to train his students.”

  “Calan? Not Alena?” He would have expected the draasin to all have come here because of Alena. Why wouldn’t Calan have simply killed them? The man had an intensity to him about the draasin, one that almost bordered on anger. It was a sentiment that Jasn shared, or had shared, before coming here, before knowing anything more about Katya. He didn’t know how he felt now.

  “Calan. He found it deep in the waste and managed to drag it here. Alena wanted to study it, learn from it, and see if they could find weakness. I think Calan is still angry that Cheneth sided with Alena.”

  “Then the draasin haven’t been here all that long?” He had thought the draasin had been in the camp since it had been founded, but Alena hadn’t been here that long. Were there others who spoke to the draasin as well, or was she the only one?

  “Not live draasin. We’ve learned so much since that first draasin came. How to hold it in chains—that was Cheneth who discovered that—and how to fortify the pens. How the draasin eat, how much they drink, whether they sleep. So much that can be applied to the reason that we’re here. It wasn’t long after that the second draasin came to the barracks.” She took a deep breath. “It never gets any easier, either. Not for me, at least. You were able to simply walk up to the draasin, as if it might not tear your arm off, but I still have a hard time with that. And now with Alena—”

  “What about Alena?”

  “You know that you didn’t even ask about what happened to the draasin? Or to Calan?”

  Jasn hadn’t realized what he’d said.

  “You knew, didn’t you? That’s why you didn’t ask about her when you returned. The only thing you didn’t know about was what happened with the draasin.”

  “She came to Atenas while I was there.”

  “Alena? She hasn’t been to Atenas in years.”

  That would explain why Jasn had never met her. “Yes. Well, she brought Wyath to Atenas for healing. Tarak was busy and Wyath’s injuries were too severe for him to be healed here.”

  Her eyes widened. “And Wyath? How is he?”

  “He’ll live. I didn’t learn what happened.”

  “Training,” she said.

  Jasn grunted. “You sound like Wyath.” When she arched a brow at him, he explained. “Wyath called it a training accident, but I don’t think there was any accident. Was there?”

  Bayan met his eyes. “Calan and Ifrit went to the third pen. We were training, and we felt their shaping. When we reached them, we saw them shaping the draasin, pushing earth against it.”

  “They were going to destroy the draasin?”

  “I don’t know. I think so. The shaping they used was not one I’m familiar with.”

  “That’s how the draasin escaped? What happened?” Jasn imagined the draasin fighting against the shaping and attacking, but Wyath’s injuries hadn’t been those of a draasin attack.

  “Alena. She”—Bayan lowered her voice, her eyes darting toward the trees—“freed the draasin. She released the chains. The symbols hold the shaping in the stone, making that the fragile part. I don’t know how she did it, but she pressed fire into the stone, snapping it.”

  Jasn could imagine Alena borrowing strength from the draasin, much as he seemed to borrow from the water elementals. “So Wyath and Ifrit were hurt by the explosion as the draasin escaped.”

  She nodded. “Alena returned and went with Eldridge.” When Jasn nodded, she continued, “And Calan has been gathering supplies since seeing Ifrit to Tarak.”

  “Ifrit thinks he intends to hunt the draasin that escaped,” Jasn said. “She said it was injured.” Which meant it was likely injured before the attack. Was that why they had tried to destroy it?

  “I think it’s about more than that.”

  “More?”

  “As long as I’ve been here, Calan has hated the way the draasin were allowed to remain penned. He doesn’t mind the study, but he blames the scholars for dragging it on, that whatever can be learned has already been learned. Now he wants only to hunt them. Who can blame him? He’s been one of the most successful hunters we have.”

  Once, Jasn would have felt the same way. And maybe he still did. But now he believed the draasin were elementals, just as he believed that he was somehow able to use elemental power in his shapings, even if he didn’t know what that meant or how he did it. That left him with the strange sense that he couldn’t let Calan hunt the draasin, not until he understood more. Whether Alena helped him understand or the draasin somehow spoke to him, he would learn two things: why they attacked along the front, and what happened to Katya.

  Jasn stood and started toward the shaper circle. He didn’t know what he intended, only that he couldn’t stay here, not
with everything that was going on around him.

  “Where are you going?” Bayan asked.

  “To find Calan.”

  He heard her stand in a hurry and rush to him. “You can’t go after Calan, Jasn. Even if you could, what do you think you’re going to do?”

  “I haven’t decided. But there are answers I need and questions that must be asked. I think it starts with Calan.”

  As he stopped in the shaper circle, Bayan grabbed him by the arm and held him. He frowned at her, pulling his arm away. “You shouldn’t do this, Bayan. You said yourself that you’re afraid of the draasin. Where I need to go will bring me face-to-face with them.”

  She released his arm. “Then you haven’t been listening. I’m not afraid of the draasin, but I’m not sure they should be hunted. And seeing the way Alena helped them, I don’t think she does either.” She studied his face. “Neither do you, it seems.”

  “No. She doesn’t hunt the draasin,” Jasn said.

  “Then I would know why a woman who supposedly lost her entire family to the draasin would think to help them. Can you answer that for me?”

  Jasn hadn’t known, and even if he had, would it have made any difference? Alena’s motivations were her own, and he had proven that people changed over time. If he could go from healer, to the Wrecker of Rens, and now to… whatever he had become, then it seemed possible, and even likely, that Alena could have changed.

  It left her open to more questions, though. Much like it did with him.

  “Where do you think to go?” Bayan asked.

  Jasn thought about what he knew. The draasin attacked in Rens. He’d seen it and knew it was true. For so long, he’d believed Katya had been killed by Rens, but now he wasn’t even certain of that. If Alena had family killed by the draasin, she would have reason to be more like Calan, only she was not.

  Why would the draasin attack along the border if they wanted help? That was the part that made the least sense, but it was the answer he needed first.

  He looked over at Bayan and shook his head. “I need to go to Rens,” he said. “I need to learn why the draasin attack.”

  18

  Jasn

  I discovered a cadre of riders today. They claim the power to call the darkness. They celebrate that ability when they should fear it.

  —Lren Atunal, Cardinal of the College of Scholars

  Rens opened before Jasn like an oven, the hot ground baked by the sun and the heat stealing his breath as soon as his shaping lowered him to the ground. He’d been back in Rens since leaving the front, but he’d been so focused on what Alena was doing, he hadn’t been able to care about the way the heat tormented him. It had been earlier in the day then as well, when the sun hadn’t been out long enough to turn the hard, cracked ground into this place of torture.

  Before that, he’d been here when Lachen had summoned him to the tower of Atenas before sending him to the barracks to train. Then, Jasn had been willing to sacrifice everything in his single-minded goal of destroying as much of Rens as possible. He still saw these lands as ugly and barren, but the hatred had eased.

  These were the lands where Lachen thought to send shapers to find the draasin, and finally end the war. Maybe, if they were able to hunt and destroy draasin, they could.

  “Tell me what you think you will do here,” Bayan said. Her lips pressed in a tight frown, and she pulled her dark hair off her neck as she surveyed the land around them. “Do you really think that you can find a different answer about why the draasin attack?”

  Alena thought there was another reason, and as much as he wanted to trust what Lachen shared, he believed Alena. She had given him no reason not to. “There has to be something here. The draasin at the barracks are different than those we face along the border.”

  “Calan thinks that’s because they are captives.”

  He might be right, but Jasn suspected Calan had a different motivation, only he wasn’t completely certain what that might be. “Captive or not, why would it matter?”

  He still wasn’t sure how much to share with Bayan, but she had come with him, and she had more experience in the barracks than he did. That experience made her valuable. “There is something different.”

  “What do you hope to find?”

  Jasn didn’t fully know. The last time he’d been here, to this exact place, he’d been attacked by one of the draasin. He remembered the way the creature’s wings blotted the fading sunlight, casting horrible dancing shadows across the land beneath it, just as he remembered the way the draasin breathed smoke and fire before tearing through the line of shapers facing it. How many had died that day, how many who could have been saved had he known what Alena did? How many could have been saved if she had been willing to reveal her ability?

  Maybe that wouldn’t matter. Would it have helped had Alena revealed she could speak to the draasin? From what she’d said, she didn’t control them, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t reach them and convince the draasin not to attack.

  “Answers,” Jasn said.

  Parts of the ground still seemed stained with the maroon blood of the fallen, though that might only be his imagination. The hot air stank as it often did in Rens, the bitter scent of plants baked by time and the sun.

  “Where are we?” Bayan asked. “I know this is near the front, but where exactly?”

  Jasn pointed toward a few mounds of rock in the distance. “That was Hessan. Not much of a city, more of a village, but enough that shapers were sent to help and see if we could save any. When we arrived, there was nothing left. The village was abandoned, leaving only the remains of what had been here.” Like nothing more than bones from a decaying animal, Jasn remembered thinking. There were many villages like Hessan, and many where the people had already either disappeared or been killed. “They blame us now. Did you know that?” he asked her, not taking his eyes off the slopes of the roofs he saw in the distance. “We came to help, and they blame us.”

  “How do you know?”

  Jasn closed his eyes, thinking of the young woman that he’d met during one of their missions. There had been terror in her eyes and she had been convinced that he’d come to destroy them. And he would have destroyed them, had they shown any ability to shape, but that wasn’t the reason he had come to the village.

  “I’ve seen it, and I’ve spoken to them.” That had been when he first had come to the front, when he’d still been conflicted about whether he should have come at all. Water had pulled at him strongly then, leaving him to wonder whether he should return to Atenas, return to the guild. When he’d spoken to the woman, all he had been able to think about was the way Katya would have questioned him, knowing she would have wanted him to return.

  Then the draasin had come.

  “They were here,” he said softly. “The draasin. Only one came, but that was enough. There were seven of us, three warriors, and the draasin tore through us as if we were nothing.” He would remember the shouts and the sounds of the dying until his last days. That had been his first experience seeing one of the draasin, and it had changed something inside him, as if a piece had died. Until going to the barracks, Jasn had thought he would never feel the draw of water again, urging him to heal.

  “Is that why you came here?” Bayan asked.

  Jasn sighed. “I don’t know why I chose here,” he said, knowing that he lied to himself. He’d chosen here because this had been where he’d first come to hate the draasin. That wasn’t even quite right. He’d come to hate the draasin because of what happened to Katya, but he’d learned to fear them here. Now he no longer knew what was real, only that he might have been wrong about so much. Still, he’d almost died here. This was where he’d first learned that as much as he tried, he might not be able to die. Water healed him, even if he didn’t want it to. Back then, he’d thought it his shaping that healed him, as if some deep part of him struggled to stay alive. “It is a place to start.”

  Jasn made his way toward the buildings. When he’d bee
n here last, time and wind had worn the hard rock smooth, leaving them rounded and, in some ways, giving the utilitarian buildings a sense of craftsmanship that they wouldn’t otherwise possess. That hadn’t changed over the past year, but sand and dirt had blown up against the base of the buildings, leaving them even more rounded and with the appearance that they were mounds of dirt or stone that had risen up from the ground rather than buildings constructed by man.

  “This was a village?” Bayan lowered her head to one of the windows—little more than a narrow opening that once would have been covered by wood—as she peered inside.

  “I thought you served in Rens.”

  When she turned toward him, her nose wrinkled, and fine, gritty sand clung to her sweat-dampened face. “Served, but near the old cities.”

  “They’re nothing like the front.” Old Rens had been a place of vibrancy and life. When Ter had assumed control of ruling the cities, that vibrancy had changed, though not faded completely. Those cities still existed, living on now under Ter rule, and the people within were now Terran as well. Some, like Jornas and Pa’shu, were important parts of the Ter Empire. Others, places like T’shin and Ralass, lived on in a different form, less than they once had been.

  “Not here, if this is what you consider the front.”

  Jasn turned toward the largest of the buildings within the remains of Hessan. Debris had been piled highest around here, and as he stared at it, he realized it was almost intentional. This was not from the shaping he’d used to seal himself in after the attack, but maybe it was from the remains of what it had required for him to survive. The gash in his stomach hadn’t even scarred. That should have been his first warning that something was different about him, that water shaping was different for him, but Jasn had thought his training had taken over.

  Bayan knelt next to the building, running her hand through the dust. “This is shaped.”

  “This is where I hid,” Jasn said. “After.”

  Bayan wiped her hands on her pants and stood. “What happened with the others?”