Hester smiled at her and drummed his fingers across the top of the table.
Alena frowned. She’d seen movement like that before from Cheneth.
At least she understood Cheneth had been right. Hester—or whoever this man was—had trained in Hyaln before coming here. The drumming of his fingers was some sort of summons, one she would have to remain mindful of.
“The students will find the talents of the great Alena Lagaro most beneficial,” Wansa said. “I think Jef can help you find your assignment…”
Alena glanced down the row of faces, wishing the Commander had been here. She would love to discover which side he was on so Cheneth would know. But more than that, she wanted to remove Hester. She could not do it openly, and now that Oliver had revealed himself, he placed himself at risk. More than that, they needed to understand who this false Margo was, and where she had come from.
Asking her to work with the students was a sure way to remove her as a threat. She would be too busy training them to focus on the council. At least, they would think so.
After nodding slowly, she left the Seat and hurried to find Oliver.
27
Alena
Reports from the west make me question how many draasin will need to be destroyed for us to survive. Dozens? Dozens of dozens? All of them? As much as it pains me, it would be a sacrifice worth making.
—Lachen Rastan, Commander of the Order of Warriors
Alena found Jef in the wide walled practice yard on the other end of Atenas. The students weren’t allowed to practice too close to the tower, fearful that someone with untapped—and uncontrolled—power might somehow disrupt the stability of the stone. The toss yard, as the students had taken to calling it because they felt tossed from the tower, was nearly five hundred paces across in either direction. Wide enough that most of the students could work inside at the same time.
“Alena?” Jef said as she appeared in the yard. “There once ‘ben an Alena in Atenas back ‘fore I ever came.”
“That would be me,” she said.
Jef shook his head. He was a younger man and had pale blue eyes that seemed washed out by the sunlight. His deeply tanned face reminded her more of Rens than of anyone from Ter, and she realized that he must come from one of the border cities, places that once had been Rens.
“Nah, you too young to be her. And ya got more of a pretty face.”
Too young? Alena was nearly thirty and had spent the last decade working in the barracks. She had to be several years older than Jef.
“Trust me, I’m the same one. The council has asked I help teach,” she said.
“If you Alena, then you don’t need to do no teachin’. I thought you had the inside leg for the council.”
“I never wanted the council,” she said. She had to be careful with what she shared with Jef. If Wansa wanted her to work with him, then she had to wonder if he had been turned in some way, or if he was even the same person. It was possible these men and women of Hyaln had infiltrated dozens of places within the Order.
As had she made her way to the toss yard, she’d began to worry about how deeply it had gone. Oliver thought that he’d killed Margo so that he could protect Yanda, but if she could be replaced, and in such a way that few would be able to tell, they were in more danger than any of them realized.
“Well, nothin’ too exciting today. Just fresh shapers. They got some of the basics down, but they don’ know much more than that. I be tryin’ to see if any got more potential.”
Alena looked at the dozen students all mingling together. They were young, most as young as she had been when she first came to Atenas, and spoke quietly and excitedly amongst themselves. “That seems early to be searching for warriors, don’t you think?”
Jef shrugged. “That’s what I say, but the Commander wants all the students tested early. Thinks they need somethin’ more. We ben doing that for the last few years now.”
“Few years?” When she had come to Atenas, she had first shown potential with fire. That was the way it was for most shapers. Demonstrate ability with a single element and build comfort with it, and after that, begin working to see if you have potential with the others. Anything else was felt to be a waste of time. And given how many warrior shapers Ter produced, the system seemed to work. Why change it now?
“So we get them tested, working with them each day to see if they show the ability to shape anything else.”
“You’re not working with them to teach them how to shape?”
“There’s some of that, but we ben told that it’s not as important.” He shrugged again. “I’m not much of a teacher like that, but I got a knack for drawin’ out potential. That’s why I’m here.”
“And you said this was the Commander’s idea?”
Jef nodded. “Commander ben asking us to find more shapers.”
“Why would he need shapers who have no training?” she asked but didn’t expect an answer. Jef didn’t seem to really know what was taking place here, other than that he had been asked to help draw out shaping ability. But shapers without any training would be not only a danger to themselves, they would be a danger to others.
“Not sure. Probably have someone else workin’ with them. After I get them to show what they can do, they take ‘em from me. Can’t say I blame them. I wouldn’t be able to teach ‘em what they need anyway.”
Alena paced slightly, glancing at the line of children. They were children, and so young. Most would be ten, maybe twelve, though a few would be a little older. What would the commander want with children like that? Why test them rather than let them develop their ability?
Had she not had the opportunity to develop, she never would have managed to really understand what she could do with fire, and she would never have understood the way the voices in the back of her mind called to her, drawing her toward fire.
Was that what the Commander hoped to prevent?
Alena sighed. “Dangerous way to teach,” she said.
“Probably why they sent you. Maybe figured you could show ‘em some things I don’t know how to teach.”
That couldn’t be the reason. Not if the council had been betrayed. But she didn’t know why they would have wanted her here. Did they want to keep closer tabs on her? Jef didn’t seem like he attempted to shape her, and the ring hadn’t gone cold since she came to the yard, but Wansa and the others had to have some reason for her being here, if only she could find it.
And she thought working with the students wouldn’t distract her, that she’d be able to find a way to reach the council, but now that she was here, she had other questions, ones that had nearly as deep implications as anything the council might do.
“Anyway, we got to get them ready.”
“Ready for what?” she asked, turning back to Jef.
“For what? The war. Isn’t that where you ben? Commander says the war along the border ben going worse, so need more with real potential.”
“The war is mostly over,” she said.
“Nah. You should see all the supplies moving through the city. Not mostly over. Not that I can say fer myself. Ben a few years since I ben able to get to the border. Sort of hard for me.”
Alena remembered that the last time that she had come to Atenas, she had seen supply carts moving through the city. Dozens of them, and it looked like there would be others. That wasn’t the sign of a war winding down.
But why? Everything that she’d seen told her that the war with Rens was over. There might be some fighting along the inner borders, places where Volth had gone and gained his reputation, but there wasn’t anything there to claim. Was there?
She didn’t know. Her time in the barracks had isolated her from the rest of the war. It was possible the war raged on more angrily than she understood, but when she searched for the draasin, when she was there in Rens, she saw nothing to make her believe it was the same.
“Can you show me what you do to help the students?” She needed to figure out why the coun
cil had sent her here. Other than as a distraction, there had to be some reason. She would start with Jef, and would watch to see what he did and whether there was anything that seemed like he sided with Hyaln.
Jef flashed a crooked smile and started toward the students. “Gather round. Come on, ya noisy tumbleweeds.”
The students fell silent as Jef approached. Most looked up at him with smiles. Alena remembered well the excitement of coming to the toss yard, those early lessons where it seemed that you would be able to do anything, but also the anxiety that you might not be able to shape anything more than what brought you to Atenas. No one wanted to shape only one element. Without having the ability to shape any of the others, you could never join the Order, and that was really the goal of everyone who came to Atenas.
“Got a special guest today. She be here to help work with you. So think of it like you got two instructors. Treat her tha same as you treat me.”
One of the girls giggled, and Jef arched his brow at her.
“Okay, Lennie, maybe not quite tha same as ya treat me. Be nicer to her than me.”
“Who is she?” one of the boys asked.
Alena stepped forward. These students had a different reaction to Jef than she remembered having with her instructors when she was young, but then, he wasn’t really trying to teach anything to them. He was trying to draw out their abilities. But did they have to be different? When she had been here, learning about new abilities came with working with the first element.
“My name is Alena.”
“Are you a new warrior?”
Alena smiled. “Not new. I’ve been in the Order for over ten years.”
One of the other girls giggled. “That would have made you our age when you joined the Order.”
Alena frowned. “Not your age. But I’ve been away from the city for a while.”
“And you want to teach now that you’re back?” one of the boys asked.
“I think I have much I can teach.”
“Show us!” someone said.
Alena smiled. They had an excitement for shaping that she had forgotten about. “What would you like to see?”
“Fire!” two of the children answered at once. They appeared to be twins, and both had reddish hair and freckles dotting their faces.
“I can show you fire,” she said and called on fire, drawing on the element and, without intending to, drawing on the connected strength of the elemental still hidden within the barracks. She hoped Wyath cared for him like he promised while she was gone.
She raised up on the shaping of fire, lifting into the air. Fire bloomed below her, swirling in a spiral that she aimed toward the ground. Alena added wind, containing the flames so that they didn’t escape and harm one of the children, and streaked higher into the air.
From here, she could see the tower.
Sunlight blazed brightly overhead, and she cupped a hand over her eyes to keep from blinding herself. In spite of the sun, it seemed as if shadows wavered around the tower, much like what she’d seen the night that they first came to Atenas.
Alena almost lost control of her shaping.
Had the influence that Cheneth feared grown so bold they would use it during the daylight? Or was there something else? Had Tenebeth managed to invade Atenas?
As she lowered herself back to the ground to the children’s clapping and cheering, she worried she might be in well over her head. Cheneth would need to know what she’d discovered, but when he did, what would he be able to do?
That worried her most of all.
28
Alena
When I return to Atenas, I feel the strength of summoning magic there. The practitioners of that arcane art are more accomplished than I realized. I am not enough to stop them alone.
—Lachen Rastan, Commander of the Order of Warriors
The room felt warm, the flames jumping in the hearth crackling with a steady energy. Alena stared at the fire, unable to shake the sense that there was darkness all around her, as if the tower itself had been infected with it.
“Margo is dead,” Oliver repeated. The healer still struggled with what she had told him, but then, she had seen the woman’s body. How was it possible that she’d returned?
“Dead, but not dead.”
Oliver turned away from the window, his hands clasped over his belly, and shook his head. “You were here, Alena. You were the one who helped destroy the body!”
“I know what I did,” she said.
“And you say that Hester has returned to the Seat.”
She nodded.
“Balls,” he swore and started pacing around his room. Alena again marveled at the way that he moved, so light on his feet given his size. He practically glided through the room. “That means two of them are this spirit shaper. Probably have the other two controlled. And the Commander—”
Alena looked up. “What of the Commander?”
Oliver paused. “Well, he has to be in on this, don’t you think? For them to be able to do what they’re doing, the Commander would have to know. The blasted man is the most powerful shaper in Ter.”
Alena closed her eyes, trying to work through what she had discovered, but couldn’t piece together the parts, not with what she knew. “When was the last time you saw him here?”
Oliver pulled the spirit stick out of his pocket. He’d been doing that more and more the last few days. “Not anytime recently, but then I don’t sit on the Seat. Never really was around much to begin with. That’s sort of been the mystery with him.”
“You can’t rule the council when you’re absent.”
Oliver tapped the spirit stick against his leg. “But he doesn’t rule. He leads. And he can lead from a distance. He’s shown us that he can, especially as he’s the one leading the effort in the war.”
It all came back to the war. Lachen pulled all the shapers into the war as soon as they were ready. And he drew on those with barely enough training, asking Jef to get them ready so that they could be raised to the Order. Without any real training, they would be in even more danger.
It almost seemed as if he was trying to see that Atenas didn’t have enough shapers to protect Ter.
Could that be what he intended? That seemed so devious, but pulling away those who could defend Atenas and forcing them into this war would do that, wouldn’t it? They wouldn’t have enough shapers were Ter attacked again…
“No,” she whispered.
Oliver looked up. “No what?”
She thought about what she understood, but it fit. Damn, but it fit. “When I went to the council—”
“I still think that was a mistake. They know you’re on my side now.”
Alena shook her head. “I don’t think they do. Not yet, anyway. But that’s not the point. When I went to the council, they had me go work with the students. There’s a man there by the name of Jef. Do you know him?”
Oliver waved his hand. “I don’t know him, but I stay focused on the guild these days. I barely even teach anymore, and only when I find someone with real talent.”
“Like Volth?”
Oliver nodded slowly. “Volth had talent unlike anything I’d ever seen. What he could—can—do with water is impressive.” He paused and focused on Alena. “You know how he managed to do it, don’t you?”
“You know I do.”
He patted the long, slender rod against his palm a few times. “Strange to know that anyone can speak to water in such a way, but he’s not the first.”
“What do you mean that he’s not the first?”
Oliver glanced at the books lining his wall and frowned. “The guild keeps records. In some ways, we have nearly as much recorded history as the College of Scholars.”
Alena glanced at his shelves. There was no doubting that there were thousands of journals stored here, but as much as the college? That seemed to be stretching the truth. “I can’t claim that I’ve been to the college, but Eldridge has shared with me how there are rows upon rows of books�
�”
“Having more books doesn’t mean that they have more knowledge than the guild.”
Alena chose not to argue. “You said Volth wasn’t the first, and when he was healing Wyath, you didn’t seem surprised by what he could do.”
Oliver shook his head. “Not surprised, not after what I witnessed from him while he trained with the guild. A natural healer, and one who could have surpassed me in the guild had he remained in Atenas. The blasted man chose to go to Rens, to abandon everything that he’d been taught, risking it for—”
“I know what happened to Volth,” she said. “As I suspect you know the reason he left.”
Oliver’s eyes narrowed. “You think I shouldn’t have told him.”
“What I think about this doesn’t matter.”
Oliver watched her, his hands resting on his stomach and his fingers twitching. “You didn’t know, did you?”
Alena blinked slowly. “I didn’t know. I think Cheneth might have, but he kept it from me. I haven’t learned how it is that you knew about her.”
“There’s no real secret to it,” Oliver said. “The guild has people spread throughout Ter. When word came that Katya had died, I asked the guild to keep their ears open for more information. Knowing Volth, I feared that he would do something rash.”
“Like racing off to Rens?”
“That would qualify, don’t you think?”
“The elementals kept him alive.”
“And if they hadn’t? You can’t tell me that he was never in any real danger, Alena. There are certain things his healing would not save him from.”
Alena had nearly died because of something his healing wouldn’t have saved him from. More than only her, they both had nearly died because of that. Had he not managed to pull through, it was possible that her foolishness with the draasin egg would have killed them both.
“I am aware.” She frowned. “When did you learn she still lived?” Why hadn’t she asked this when they had been here the last time? But Alena knew the answer: she had been so focused on finding a way to save Wyath that she hadn’t been able to focus on what Oliver had said to Volth. And then he had confronted her, so she had taken him to the Sanash where she had died. Or where Alena had thought that Issa had died.
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