Summoner's Bond (The Endless War Book 4)

by D. K. Holmberg

  The wind died as she collided with the wall, and her breath was knocked from her.

  Shade crouched in front of her. “See, ala’shin? You only have to have the intent. You can control the elementals.”

  30

  Jasn

  In Hyaln, I suspect she would have been one of the Wise, but the Wise have scattered, essentially disbanded. A shame, as such a connection would be more valuable than ever now.

  —Lachen Rastan, Commander of the Order of Warriors

  “Why are there so few people in Hyaln?” Jasn asked Katya as they sat in the small windowless room with walls of ancient texts arrayed all around, the solid oak table where Tobin continued to work with him now stacked with books demonstrating the different rune traps. A single lantern burned with a bright white light, giving off enough illumination for him to clearly see.

  It had been about a week since Katya had given him the glimmer of hope at rekindling the romance between them. The kiss had been nice, if strangely awkward. Once, he had known her lips well and kissed them often. But this time, he had been as hesitant as the first time he kissed a woman.

  He sensed that Katya shared his hesitance. They had shared another kiss since then, but it was equally awkward, almost as if they were newly courting. Jasn thought it was the strangeness of them coming back together that made it odd between them but began to wonder if maybe he had changed so much that Katya no longer was the right match for him.

  That thought troubled him. He once believed that they would be able to get through anything if they were together, but would he not be able to come through this with her?

  But then, she had been the one who had deceived him, not the other way around. She had faked her death and had made no attempt to come for him, to find him and reveal that she still lived, even if her commitment to Hyaln wouldn’t allow them to be together.

  “You know why there are so few in Hyaln,” Katya said.

  Tobin moved quietly along the shelves, moving books and replacing some that he had used. He had already demonstrated the rune traps that Jasn was to reproduce and left him time to practice.

  “I don’t think that I do know,” he said.

  “We are selective about who is allowed access. That limits the potential pool.”

  “Why be selective? It seems that doing so only limits those you might overlook. Besides, I’ve seen the size of the castle. This place has room for hundreds of people, not only the dozens that I’ve seen.” And many times, it seemed like much less than that. He rarely interacted with anyone other than the few instructors that he’d been assigned, though he saw others working with different instructors. There were times when he’d come to this library and seen that Tobin worked with a few others. And if not Tobin, then an older woman with hair cut close to her scalp and a long necklace hanging nearly to her stomach with a particular pattern marked on it. Even when he was out on the ledge with Rehnar, he occasionally saw others. And he’d discovered that he wasn’t the only person that Rehnar worked with. Only Katya seemed to have no other students.

  Katya glanced over at Tobin. “You know the other reason.”

  “The Khalan?”

  Was it his imagination, or did Tobin stiffen? Had he heard Katya mention the Khalan?

  “The summoners have always been the most numerous. Other than shapers, a talent that is little different here in Hyaln than it is in Ter, if only focused with experience, summoning is among the easiest to learn, if not the most difficult to master. The others… spirit, and the rune traps—they take a different set of talents.”

  Jasn stared at the page spread out before him, his pen hovering over the top. He began copying the runes, adding the small shaping that was required to make it work and feeling the surge of power that came with each one. They were more powerful when used other places, but the paper gave an impermanence that allowed practice—and prevented him from injuring himself when a rune trap failed.

  “What of the Wise?” he asked. “You’ve told me they left but never really explained it.”

  Katya frowned. “What do you know of the Wise?”

  “There was a woman I met in Tsanth. She spoke of Hyaln, and of the Wise.”

  “Olena never could keep quiet.”

  “It has something to do with draasin riders, doesn’t it?”

  Katya looked up at Tobin again and then nodded. “And it’s a point of contention with the summoners. They can control the elementals, but the Wise were able to ride the draasin—some claimed even the other elementals—without controlling them. They could call them, but it was different than what the summoners would do.”

  “When did they leave?”

  “There hasn’t been a Wise of Hyaln in decades,” Katya said.

  “That was how long she’d been gone?” When Katya nodded, he frowned thoughtfully. “Since the summoners grew stronger?”

  “I don’t think they’re related. The draasin dwindled, though none know quite why. And now they are hunted. More than that, I don’t know.”

  Jasn wondered if there was a connection there. The Khalan were offshoots of the summoners, and if what Katya told him was true, then they were also the more skilled of the summoners. He flicked his gaze toward Tobin and lowered his voice. “Could the Khalan have anything to do with the disappearance of the Wise?”

  Katya shook her head. “Is it the Khalan or summoning in general?” she asked. “Or is it something else? Take the draasin. The elementals have grown increasingly rare, especially since Ter began to hunt them. There are many who believe that they will go extinct.”

  “What does that do to fire?”

  “The elementals will not fail. If one disappears, another will take its place. It has been that way for as long as man has known the elementals,” she said.

  Jasn set his pen down on the table and frowned. “Ter hasn’t been all that successful in hunting the draasin,” he told her. “There are some who are skilled, but Alena deflects them as much as she can.”

  The one time that he thought that he’d seen a draasin hunter working, he’d been duped. That had been Alena convincing the draasin to pretend to be dead, to the point where it allowed Calan to claim one of the draasin’s talons.

  Katya tapped her fingers on the table. There was a rhythm to it, and he watched, wondering if she might be using something like a summoning, but there was no sign that it was anything more than fidgeting. “Then I don’t know why the draasin are less frequent.”

  “It’s Tenebeth,” Jasn said. “That’s what we’ve seen in Rens. Draasin that are tainted and ridden by other dark riders. We managed to save one and restore her, but she is not the same.”

  “The Varden doesn’t believe that Tenebeth can influence the elementals.”

  It was the first time she’d admitted the Varden knew of Tenebeth. Before, she’d chalked it up to rumors and nothing more.

  “I can assure you that he does.”

  “What you speak of is dangerous, Jasn. This is a dark and dangerous time, and there are few enough who understand what we face.”

  “We can’t be scared to speak of Tenebeth.” He thought it strange for Katya to be scared of anything. The woman he knew had not been afraid of anything, but this was a hesitance that he found disturbing, almost as if she hid from something.

  But then he remembered what he’d overheard when he first had come. Katya had been afraid then as well, fearful about who might overhear them. Jasn remembered her remarking on the Khalan, and on how they might hear.

  And he started to wonder. Was it possible that the Khalan had some influence still within Hyaln?

  Katya watched him, and then she nodded.

  Jasn blinked.

  Had she known what he was thinking?

  There came another nod.

  This was what it meant for her to be Enlightened, he suddenly realized. This was what she could do, the nature of the abilities that she possessed.

  Jasn had never understood what Cheneth meant when he claimed to be one o
f the Enlightened. Spirit, but what was spirit, really? An element that Jasn had never known existed, and one that none in Atenas had ever heard was able to be shaped. Cheneth had proven himself a capable shaper, but Jasn had never learned why, or what it meant that he called himself Enlightened.

  But if he could know another’s mind?

  Katya’s gaze flickered to Tobin standing behind him, and he thought that he understood. Tobin had willingly worked with him and had shown him the rune traps, sharing as much knowledge as he possessed, but Tobin had also made it clear that he didn’t necessarily think there was any merit to fearing the darkness.

  It was the intent of the shaper, not the intent of the element. Wasn’t that what he had said?

  But Jasn had seen the intent of the elemental as well. He had felt the cold pressure of the darkness, and the angry violence when it came to attack. That hadn’t been pushed on them by Thenas, or by any other attacker. That had come from the darkness itself.

  If there were those within Hyaln who didn’t believe that the darkness should be feared, he began to see the problem. They wouldn’t fear using it. Summoners would call to it. Shapers might attempt to work with it. Perhaps rune masters like Tobin would think to trap it. Not because they had any dark intent, but because they didn’t understand how the darkness was different than the other elements.

  Katya watched him, her eyes slowly narrowing. This was what she had wanted him to understand. For some reason, Katya thought that he could help, that there might be something that he could do.

  Cheneth must have as well. Why else would he have sent him here?

  Only, Jasn had no idea what it was he was meant to do. How could he—an outsider, and someone who had only been here a short while—convince Hyaln of the threat they faced?

  31

  Ciara

  The shadows push against me. How many others feel them?

  —Lachen Rastan, Commander of the Order of Warriors

  Ciara stood on top of the tower, her fingers drumming through the pattern that Shade had taught her that day, letting the wind play around her, dancing off her hair, pulling on her cloak. The more that she understood what she did, the easier it became to hold the intent within her mind and force the pattern into place. Once there, making the elementals do as she asked became much easier.

  As Shade suggested, wind was safest. It might blow her against the wall—and it had done that twice more until she learned to decrease the focus of her intent—but it wouldn’t burn her clothing off her back as fire had done to the other man, one who Shade called Doln. The other girl Shade called Sinsa. There was a hint of something more in that title, but Ciara wasn’t quite sure what it was. Both had managed to summon, but not nearly as well as Ciara. She had been the best student so far.

  Under the flickering stars, Ciara stood alone. There weren’t many times that she was allowed to be alone in this place, though she was increasingly often allowed private time. She suspected there was something more dangerous here, something she had yet to understand, but she would trust Shade. His lessons had proven effective so far. In the weeks that she’d been here, she had managed to summon each of the elements, and now there was a promise of more, of learning elements that even the shapers of Ter didn’t understand. When Shade spoke of that, a nervous excitement fluttered through her chest, getting her heart racing. She would do anything to learn what was required to defeat Ter.

  A shadow circled overhead, and she looked up, practically expecting Shade atop his draasin, but there was no sign of the draasin. She saw no sign of the shadow either and decided she must have imagined it.

  Releasing the wind, she shifted her focus to earth. From here, she couldn’t see the ground, but she could use a summons of earth to change the tower, if only briefly. She had not managed to summon anything with more power or permanence yet, but Shade promised that was coming. All of the powerful summonings he did were through his j’na. Without a j’na of her own, she doubted she would be able to do the same, but she would wait. Now that she knew she could learn, she would wait.

  “You come here often.”

  Ciara saw Shade standing along the edge of the tower. She no longer questioned how he appeared, suspecting that it had something to do with his summoning. “As often as I can.”

  “Does the night draw you?”

  Ciara considered the darkness and the shadows that stretched out in front of her. “Not the darkness. The stars.”

  He frowned at her briefly. “There is no power in the stars.”

  She laughed softly. “Is there power in the night?”

  Shade tipped his head in a nod. “As I have said, there is power in both light and dark, ala’shin.”

  Had he told her that? Ciara didn’t remember, but then, she struggled to remember much before she came here. There were flashes of things that came to her, snippets of memories from her village, and some that most certainly had not come from her village, but she ignored them. All that she remembered was the reason that she’d come: her father had sent her to learn, to understand how to summon the elementals, and how to become ala’shin.

  That might be the biggest change for her. She no longer questioned she could be ala’shin, only when. With what she learned from Shade, she would be able to help her village and her people much more than she had ever hoped, maybe more than even her father. If she could call on the elementals, would they ever want for water again? Would they ever need to fear a Ter attack?

  “Of course,” Ciara said, forcing her attention back to Shade. He could be impatient if she ignored him for too long.

  “You have progressed rapidly, much as I expected,” Shade said. “Soon you’ll be ready for more powerful summons.”

  “I don’t have a j’na.”

  He smiled. “You will find a substitute. Not all who come to us are nya’shin.”

  Ciara looked out into the darkness, staring at the night. She had not left the tower since she first arrived and had never seen the landscape during the daylight, only at night. During the day, Shade had her busy, pushing her and the others through the training exercises, helping them to learn how to summon the elementals. By the time they were finished and had eaten, the sun had set, leaving only the darkness.

  But there were stars. One thing she had not forgotten was staring up at the stars, counting them as she watched them burn softly in the night like a thousand small candles. Could they be something else? Elementals even, much like Shade alluded that darkness had an elemental? Growing up in Rens, she knew the power of the sun and the way that it burned and understood that there was much power in the light. Perhaps even in the night, there were still lights that burned.

  “What’s the price of this training?” she asked.

  “Price?” Shade stood next to her, but she hadn’t seen him move. He smelled of sharp greens and wet earth, scents that she almost understood.

  She turned to him. “There must be a price for your willingness to teach. You aren’t in Rens any longer.”

  She said the last not certain whether it mattered to Shade or not, but it mattered to her. If Shade really came from Rens, and with the carved j’na he carried, she suspected he did, even if his clothing felt somewhat off, he no longer was. She didn’t know where she was and couldn’t remember where her father had brought her—or even how she’d gotten here—but she knew this was not Rens. The air had none of the heat and none of the clean scent of sand when she summoned. In some ways, it was more like the way that Shade smelled, a sharp scent like that of cut ilyan root mixed with wet earth.

  “There is a price for everything, so there would be a price for this knowledge as well, ala’shin. Only you can decide whether you are willing to pay it. It cannot be forced, not like the elementals.”

  “And what price is that?” She tapped her fingers on her cloak, drumming them in a small pattern Shade had taught her. To this, she added something of her own, an impulse that caused her to combine two different patterns. She fused her intent to it, but there
was no response. Ciara released the summons with a tight smile, determined to attempt it again.

  Shade tapped his j’na. She rarely saw him in the tower without it. “The same price you paid coming here. You must be willing to learn.”

  “Have I not been willing?” She felt offended by the suggestion. She would do anything for her people and for her village. That was the reason that she was here. Wasn’t it?

  “You have been willing.” Shade’s fingers moved in a slight circle, a pattern that Ciara had not yet learned.

  What did he summon when they stood here together? What intent did he hold in his mind as they stood looking out at the darkness? Possibly he called to the wind. It tugged on her with a gentle caress, one she had not summoned. Or maybe he had called on the earth, bringing the heady, thick scents to her nostrils. It could be water; here in these lands, it was thick in the air, something she had never experienced before coming here. But not fire. She doubted he called to fire. The air carried too much of a chill for that.

  Clouds rolled over the sky as if a storm approached. Ciara watched as the stars began to blink out, obscured by the clouds. An uneasiness worked through her as they did, but why should she fear the night? Why should she fear the coming storm? The night brought a cool blanket over Rens, allowing the land to recover for the coming day, and the storms… the storms allowed her people to survive.

  “What do you see now?” Shade asked.

  She stared at the blanket of clouds hanging dark and thick overhead. Thunder rumbled distantly, a sound that carried a familiarity, but she wasn’t sure quite why. No lightning flashed, nothing like the great storms that her people knew to fear and revere.

  “I see the night,” she said.

  “You see it, but can you feel it?”

  Ciara smiled. “What is there to feel?”

  “You could not feel the daylight?”

  “With daylight, there’s the warmth of the sun on your skin, the heat rising up around you, the occasional hiss of the vipan as they slither past.”