He stepped forward and smiled, his gaze darting all around him, skipping to the rest of the barracks. “Returned and restored.”
“Oliver said you weren’t willing to wait to recover.”
“There was no need. Whatever Jasn did healed me faster than anything I’ve ever experienced.”
“You’re the second one to say that.”
“Thenas?” he asked.
“No, Ifrit. She was injured in their… Whatever it was they were trying to do. Tarak tried healing her, and it seems that Jasn Volth finished the healing.”
A troubled look crossed Wyath’s face. “Ifrit now as well? Ah Cheneth,” he whispered to himself, “do you know what that means?”
“Cheneth isn’t here.”
Wyath was acting strangely, from the way he spoke to himself, to the nervous way he rocked from side to side while standing. Wyath had always favored his injured hip but now he rocked as if it didn’t bother him.
Please, Lren, the draasin sent again.
This time she recognized the urgency from Sashi. She had to discover why, but first she had to find out what Wyath knew.
“I know Cheneth isn’t here,” Wyath said. “And you need to be going, don’t you?”
She frowned. “Wyath?”
He laughed softly and tapped his leg. “Doesn’t hurt as it once did. Like I said, recovered and restored. Not only that, but there was another benefit of his healing, but I’m not sure I know what it means just yet.” He met her eyes. “Where is Thenas?”
“Calan’s student? I haven’t seen him since he attacked Volth.” She hadn’t given much thought to him after the attack, though considering the way Calan had attacked Sashi, she probably should have.
“Not the barracks,” Wyath agreed. “And I think we need to find him. Like me, he was healed by Jasn. I need to see if he had the same outcome as I did.”
“You saw what happened to him after Volth healed him. What outcome do you mean?”
Wyath started toward the shaper circle and stepped into the middle of it, holding Alena’s gaze. “The same one that lets me know the draasin are calling you.”
With a surge of shaping, he disappeared.
Alena stood for a moment before focusing on the draasin begging for her help, though the call was now quiet in her mind. It came from the same direction Wyath had gone. “Blast it,” she whispered. Alena took off on a surge of lightning.
She trailed behind Wyath. Traveling on this shaping, one that only warriors were able to use, gave a sense of speed and solitude, but there was movement with it, rough and violent. Wind whistled around her, and she shaped it to stay on course. Fire burned, and she held tightly to it as well, trying to follow the flows as she sensed Wyath. Earth provided the strength as she traveled, and water lent an energy to the shaping that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.
When she emerged from the shaping, she found Wyath standing along a ridge overlooking the ocean. She hadn’t expected him to travel quite so far, thinking he would instead bring her into Rens. Water crashed against the rocks far below her, the steady pulling of the waves a sharp change to her water sense.
“Why did you come here, Wyath?” she asked.
“You were always so skilled.” He nodded toward the south, out over the ocean. Three dark shapes circled high above the water, the draasin flying with a sort of urgent speed. One dove suddenly, reaching for the water before pulling up, a massive sailfish clasped in its talons. Alena had a distant sense of the draasin’s satisfaction, almost enough to know what it was thinking, before it faded as the three creatures streaked ever farther south, finally fading completely from view.
“You sense them still?” he asked.
“I do.”
Wyath turned, looking north. Alena didn’t know quite where they were, so north could be Ter for all that she knew. “Do you sense it now?”
“Sense what?”
But even as she asked, she knew what he meant. Pain drifted through the connection she shared with the draasin, though Alena had no idea how. It was vague, an indistinct agony that left her with little understanding of where to find the draasin, but somehow, she still knew it was the same draasin as before, the one that had called to her.
“She is out there, injured. Now I see that something… dark… comes for her. Maybe it already has,” Wyath said, mostly to himself.
“How do you know this?” Alena asked softly.
Wyath turned toward her. His eyes were round and bright, burning with the intensity of the sun. “I hear it. Not as you do, I don’t think, but since I was healed, there are whispers in my mind. If I focus on them, I can almost make out what they’re trying to say.”
“But you’ve always been able to speak to earth,” Alena said.
“I could speak to earth, but this is different. It’s like the healing awoke something in me. I don’t know how to explain it any better, but the longer I hear them, the more I can tell that they’re concerned.”
“You think they’re elementals?”
Wyath nodded. “They can be nothing else.”
If Wyath had something woken in him, had the same happened with Thenas and Ifrit? And if that had happened, what would it mean for the elementals? For the draasin?
“Why did you come here?” she asked.
“Because this was where you were summoned,” Wyath said.
She shook her head. “Not here. I don’t know where I was summoned, only that the draasin called me.”
Wyath pointed toward the north. “I can’t hear the draasin as you do, not clearly and not yet, but I hear the way the earth calls to me. There is great pain near us. That is why the draasin wanted your help. And earth calls to me, which is why I came to you.”
He lifted into the air on a shaping of wind and earth, sliding in a way that Alena had yet to master as completely. She followed on the wind, trailing him, reaching for the distant and silent sense of the draasin, wishing there was something that would tell her what happened to them, but she found nothing. Other than the three draasin, there were none here that she was aware of, not like the many draasin that she found in Rens.
“Where are you going?” she asked Wyath.
“The same place that you must go, Alena. To see if there is anything we can do to help the draasin.”
They flew over a copse of trees and down a rolling valley, quickly moving away from the ocean. When she’d first learned the trick to the traveling shaping, she had used it frequently, visiting places she never would have thought herself able. Often she had come to the ocean, simply to sit and listen to the waves crashing as they rolled toward the shore, but she had always gone to the water along the western coast of Ter. It was hotter there, the sand so white that it sparkled along the beach, burning hot beneath her feet.
Then she felt a sharp stab of pain and nearly lost control of her shaping.
With it, she was aware that they neared the draasin. How had Wyath known and she did not? She was the one connected to the draasin, wasn’t she?
Lren.
The call was weak and nothing like before. There was a desperation that Alena had never known the draasin to have.
I am almost there.
Darkness. You should not have come. Turn back—
As the draasin cut off, a terrible roar echoed toward her, splitting the air like thunder.
Her shaping faltered and she dropped to the ground. Wyath stumbled, the control he’d so easily demonstrated failing.
“We must hurry,” she said.
Wyath shook his head as he looked to the sky. There, a dark streak of black and purple rose on massive wings, Sashi’s spikes steaming and her massive sides bellowing lungs full of flame toward the ground, leaving nothing but burned and charred remains that reminded Alena of the Sanash.
“We are already too late,” Wyath said.
Alena knew he was right. A dark shadow sat atop the draasin, blacker than the night. Almost as if knowing she watched, the shadow turned toward her, and the dra
asin heaved fire at them before taking off toward the north, faster than Alena could keep up.
20
Alena
The riders demonstrated the way that darkness can twist the elementals. If they can do that, then they can twist shapers. It is possible that a greater threat than the college realized has escaped.
—Lren Atunal, Cardinal of the College of Scholars
Sashi disappeared, not only from sight but also from within her mind. Alena tried calling to her, but the draasin didn’t answer, as if the shadowed figure she’d seen riding atop Sashi had obscured the draasin from her, much as she’d learned to obscure her shaping from others.
“Where did she go?” Wyath asked.
“I thought you could hear them now?”
“Not as you do,” he said. “Something was wrong with the creature, but I don’t know quite what it was.”
“Someone rides the draasin,” Alena said. “With her, I don’t think that should be possible.”
Wyath lowered himself to the ground and squeezed the hilt of his sword for a moment. “What do we know of what’s possible with the draasin, Alena? What do we really know of them?”
Alena followed him to the ground. “Why ask this now? You’ve seen how much we’ve learned from them.”
“I’ve seen what they’ve wanted us to know,” Wyath said. “That’s not the same as what we need to know.”
Wyath had always been one of the draasin’s best supporters, so why would he change now? “You think they allowed themselves to be captured simply to gain our trust?” She couldn’t shake the way Sashi had called to her, the desperation in her voice. She needed to reach her and discover what had happened, but there was a part of her afraid of what that shadowed figure meant.
“They’re creatures more powerful than us. How can we know the reason they allowed their capture? What if they’ve sided with Rens all along?”
“You’re a fool then,” she snapped, and Wyath frowned at her. “You know how I speak to them, and you think I wouldn’t know if they were hiding something from me?”
They didn’t share everything, but then the fact that the draasin would fear something was enough to make her nervous. That alone would mean the order should prepare, but she had the sense that none within the warrior’s caste had any intention of doing so.
“You’ve told me they hold back. And from what I can tell, they have a way of withholding much more than we might realize. What if they keep from us the secret of why they attack in Rens?”
“There is something more than we know, Wyath, something that Cheneth suspects but doesn’t share. And whatever else you think, I’m going after the draasin to see if I can help. They deserve that much.”
“Then I will go with you. That is why I brought you here.”
“Not to help?”
“There may not be much that I can do on that front.”
Lren!
The draasin’s voice slipped into her mind again, briefly but with enough strength that Alena dropped to her knees and grabbed her head again. This time, she didn’t try to squeeze the sense of the draasin out of her mind. Instead, she embraced the connection, wanting to reach to Sashi, to learn what had happened.
Where are you? What happened?
Darkness. You must come—
The draasin cut off, the voice in the back of her mind going silent as if it had never been there.
“What was it?” Wyath asked.
“The draasin suffers,” she answered. And what was it that she said about the darkness?
Wyath’s face contorted as he looked toward the sky. “And you want to learn what happened.”
“I need to learn. I need to go after her. There is something… a darkness. That is what the draasin fear, Wyath.”
He watched her a moment before turning toward the north and the direction Sashi had disappeared. His face began to look troubled. “If you do this, you can’t go alone. If it is strong enough to overpower the draasin…”
Wyath was right, and for the first time, she wished that her students were with her. Always before, she had feared sharing too much with them, never wanting to open up about what she did or how she understood the draasin, protecting that secret at any cost, but now that it was out there, now that Jasn Volth—and likely Bayan—knew about her, she needed their help. Jasn particularly, especially with his connection to the elementals, but Bayan, and her ability to detect shapings and the intent behind them, would be invaluable.
“You won’t help?”
“I… I need to find Cheneth. There are answers we need.”
“But the draasin—”
“Might be the key to more than we understand. If the scholars know something, I think it’s time they share.”
Alena sighed, wishing for easier answers, but they didn’t come.
“We need help,” she said. And from those who could reach elementals. That left her with limited options, but she needed to try. “Eldridge, Volth, maybe Bayan.” There might be a few others, but it would involve much more exposure than was probably wise. But could she risk not exposing herself? Maybe it was time those within the barracks who had been groomed for this revealed themselves.
The old man actually smiled at her. “Good. I was beginning to think you as foolish as everyone else in the barracks.”
Wyath walked over to her. It was strange to see him walking without his limp, and with a purpose and determination to his stride.
“Where can I go? Volth is gone. Eldridge too. And I’m not certain where Cheneth went, but I know that it’s related somehow. If we go back to the barracks—”
“What help do you expect to find in the barracks?”
“Do you know another way to reach Eldridge? To reach Cheneth?” She thought she might be able to reach Volth, but the connection was tenuous. The shaping had been one of the first things she’d done when working with him, taking the lesson from what had happened when she’d lost Issa.
“There might be something I can do. You find Volth. I’ll go for the others.”
21
Ciara
They call themselves the Khalan, a name steeped in histories they should not know. They are master summoners, each of them, and clearly trained by Hyaln. Perhaps I was wrong in thinking Hyaln seeks to remain neutral.
—Lren Atunal, Cardinal of the College of Scholars
The fire crackled softly in the hearth along the far wall. For some reason, Ciara could sense the way the flames pulled on her, sending warmth sliding along her shoulders and trying to press back the cool morning air. She pulled her elouf tightly around her, drawing in the heat and the warmth, but it did nothing to truly keep her warm.
Her other hand gripped a large chipped mug full of spiced water. Olina claimed the spice would help her heal, and Ciara had drank carefully, not wanting to take the risk in case it was poisoned, but the spice was a familiar scent, though Ciara didn’t know why. She sipped slowly at first and then with more urgency. With each taste, her sense of water returned. Tension eased from her shoulders, helping her relax. Her wrists still burned, though, where the ropes had held her in place.
Other than the old woman Olina, she was the only one here. She sat on a chair that seemed made for a child, the wood smooth and clear and the backrest coming to the middle of her back. Her j’na rested out of reach in the corner. There was a part of her that longed to reach for it, mostly because she still wasn’t completely comfortable with what Olina intended.
Olina leaned over the hearth, stirring a long spoon within a pot suspended over the fire. In that way, she reminded Ciara of all of the women she’d ever known in her village, but the smells coming from the pot were unlike anything she had ever experienced. There was a mixture of sweet and salty, and her mouth watered. She took another sip and ignored it.
The old woman turned and offered her a cup of steaming broth. “Drink this, but do it slowly. You’ve been too long from warmth.”
Ciara set her mug down and took the bowl, holding
it between her hands as she brought it to her nose and inhaled. The smells wafting up were even better this close. The liquid seemed to bubble softly. She tipped it to her mouth and took a small sip, wincing as it burned her lips.
“Careful,” Olina warned. “It will burn if you’re not ready for heat.”
Ciara pulled the bowl away. “What do you mean? I’m from Rens. I’m always ready for heat.” Since returning from the darkness, Olina hadn’t done much more than speak in cryptic phrases. Nothing that would make Ciara believe that she could learn anything.
Olina’s mouth pinched at the mention of Rens. “Is that what you believe? Tell me, girl of Rens, how growing up in the waste prepared you?” She pulled the bowl from Ciara and put it to her mouth, tipping it back and drinking slowly and with no sign that the hot liquid bothered her. She passed it back to Ciara and wiped an arm across her face. “You might know the heat of Rens, but you don’t know fire. You might understand fire, but do you know it? If you are to be a rider, then you must know fire.”
Ciara glanced at the bowl and the liquid that still bubbled as if boiling. “Why do you think I can know fire?”
“You summoned the draasin. That much I have seen. There is little doubting your ability to know fire, but you must learn to listen. Once you can listen, only then will you be able to speak. Then you can become a rider.”
Ciara pulled the bowl of boiling liquid up to her face again and inhaled softly. The sweetness she smelled within drew her, but not as much as the salt. She didn’t know what Olina intended to teach her, or how, but she did want to drink the liquid. Her rumbling stomach compelled her.
Heat pressed on her face and her sensitive lips. She resisted the urge to blow on it, doubting that it would make much difference. The water within the bowl pulled on her senses, but not nearly as much as the heat. She felt it in much the same way she felt water, but why should that be? Why should she sense it?
Ciara tipped the bowl and took the smallest sip.
Darkness Rising (The Endless War Book 2) Page 18