Only, she didn’t think she had.
Ciara stood for a moment before taking a step beyond the door. If she missed the sun, at least she could step outside the tower, get beyond the walls for a short time, even if it was still night. Brown grass crunched beneath her boots, springing up between a cobbled path that led up to the tower door. She expected to see a city spread around the base of the tower, but there was nothing. Only a vast expanse of the same dried grass.
She made a slow circle around the outside of the tower. A mountain peak rose up like a shadow in the distance, but she couldn’t see anything beyond that. There was only the tower, a massive structure that rose up alone, stretching high into the sky, with nothing else around it.
Where was she?
This wasn’t Rens, and she had no recollection of coming here.
The more she walked, drumming her fingers along her side as she did, the more she began to worry. And she knew she should worry. It seemed she remembered less and less the longer that she was here, only able to retain what she’d learned here. She had flashes at times, some of those flashes more vibrant than others, what she almost believed were memories, but what kind of memory had her riding on one of the draasin? What kind had her speaking to a lizard? And what kind had her afraid of the night?
Ciara turned back to the door of the tower, and with a summons to wind, she pulled it closed behind her. It was past time for her to reach Shade and the lessons he promised.
34
Shade
She attacks. I wonder if my father ever had one of his stones begin rolling on its own?
—Lachen Rastan, Commander of the Order of Warriors
Damn that girl. Not a woman; she had clearly not been a fully grown woman before she left her village, but what had she been? He still didn’t know, just as he still didn’t know how she managed to befuddle his attempts to get through to her.
He was almost there. The connection had been formed, and he could see the desire to understand more burning in her eyes, but everything had been tied to her desire to help her village. Shade had to get her past that, to coax her into understanding that there was more that she could do, more that she could be, if only she were willing.
And then to have managed to escape the tower…
No others had ever managed to find a way free of the tower. That she had told him all he needed about her and her potential, as if he had any doubts before. From the first moment he’d seen her, he had no doubts. Even less now that he’d seen what she had so easily managed to do.
He stormed down the hall, stopping briefly to touch the wall, running his fingers along the wood in a soft caress that would summon both fire and wind. He held onto the summons, drawing the connection through him, and carried the energy as he walked, letting it surge with him, overflowing around him.
When he reached the door, he pushed it open on a gust of wind. The boy on the other side was barely older than Shade had been when he first came to the tower, barely older than Sevn, but he had failed over and again. If he would not show his potential, then Shade would see that he managed to draw out the potential. Shade’s failings with the ala’shin would not carry over to the boy.
“Shade,” the boy said, looking up. He leaned against the wall as if the contact would help him learn to summon more effectively. His short hair revealed a red blemish on his scalp, at his hairline, something that Shade suspected was a burn from long ago. “I was going to come to you—”
“Don’t bother,” Shade snapped.
He released the summons he held, unleashing it so that it exploded around this boy. Fire singed the lower portion of his robe and the wind caught it, lifting the flames in such a way that they burned more brightly. He held onto this connection, calling to the elementals, holding on to both wind and fire—the draasin most tightly of all.
“Have I displeased you?”
Shade let the summons to the elementals overwhelm the boy. The others called him Doln, a name that Shade himself had given the boy, much like the name Sinsa given to the other girl. Doln had little of the same potential that he saw from the ala’shin, but he could be useful, especially as he brought her around to what he needed from her.
“You have failed me,” Shade said. “So in that, I would say that you have displeased me. What have I asked of you?”
“Y-You asked that I befriend her. That she would be lonely. And I have done that.”
The idiot. He’d done what Shade asked of him, but then he’d befriended the wrong girl. Partly that was Shade’s fault. He had not made himself clear, and then he had taken the ala’shin away from the classes with the others, wanting to work with her on his own. How else would he meet the timeline that they set on him? But he had thought that Doln would be able to reach her. There was enough of Rens in him that he made a passable version. And all the time Shade had put into coaxing Doln into believing that he had come from Rens rather than some damned cold place far across the sea… A waste. That was all that it was. And now, Doln would suffer for it.
“You have done what I asked,” Shade said. “And you have wasted your attentions on Sinsa.”
“But she is what you claimed, Shade. She is lonely, needing the attention.”
Shade released the summons. Doln wasn’t bright enough to waste on his anger. And there might be another way that he could use him, but it would require something that he had never attempted before. Could he wipe his mind again? If he could, Doln could be salvaged, perhaps even made better in some ways, and then he could introduce him to the ala’shin when she was more susceptible to him.
He smiled. “You’re right, Doln. You have done all that I asked. And now I must ask something else of you.”
Doln didn’t look down at his robes, almost as if he had no idea that Shade had nearly immolated him in his anger. “Anything. You know that I came here to learn.”
Shade suppressed his smile. Doln had come here because he had been discovered on the edge of an icy island, his ability to summon weak, but enough that it caught their attention. With any such ability, Shade might be able to use them, and this boy had some ability.
“Learn. That is what I will ask of you.”
“Is it a new summons?” He didn’t mask the raw hunger in his voice. A shame Shade had to use him in this way. He really could have been useful in many others, especially with the desire that he possessed to improve. Not all had such a drive.
“Not a new summons,” Shade said. He shifted to a different summons, drawing on the darkness. With these three in the temple, he had to constantly hold onto the connection to the dark. That was the way to wipe the mind, and with the ala’shin at least, he had to work harder at it than he usually did. “Not for me.”
Shadows swirled from the floor and began to settle into Doln. The boy convulsed, the first step in the wipe, and then fell to the ground. Shade didn’t bother to catch him. It wouldn’t matter. It would be weeks before Doln was able to come back out so any bruising that he sustained would be healed.
Shade held onto the summons, working it through him. Unlike summoning with the other elementals where he held both the intent and the command in mind when he used it, when summoning the night, he had to add a certain willingness to welcome the night. The first time that he’d succeeded, he’d felt the cold creep into him and had nearly lost the summons. Many had died that way. But he regained his composure and welcomed the cold, welcomed the touch. Whatever it took for him to control the power of the night.
35
Alena
I have always believed that a strong shaper could equal that of any summoner, even exceed it, as there are few summoners with the ability to use more than one element at once. From what I have heard, that may not be true.
—Lachen Rastan, Commander of the Order of Warriors
The shadows outside the tower were no different today than they were the last time she’d hidden in the streets of Atenas. Alena crouched in the alley between a pair of taverns, the music drifting out of both of them slowly
pounding in her brain. But she would watch the tower, determined to see if something happened at night that was different than in the day.
Bayan stood in the shadows next to her, head covered by a cloak. In the time that they had returned to Atenas, Bayan had spent much of it with Yanda, intrigued by the woman’s water healing, and—Alena suspected—her humor. Too much in the barracks had been bleak. With Yanda, there was a sense of humor about everything.
“What do you think you’re going to see?” she asked Alena.
“I told you, watch the shadows.”
“And you need the spirit stick?”
Alena had held onto the spirit stick, telling Oliver she needed it for another night. Truthfully, she wasn’t sure she did, or that it would make any difference, but she figured she had to try it. Her ability to shape the darkness and the shadows that snaked along the side of the tower had failed, and that was with pulling on as much of the element power as she could. Would it make a difference if she used spirit?
“Cheneth intended us to try this,” Alena said.
Bayan laughed softly. “Cheneth sent us here to find out what happened with the council, and you’ve said you discovered that.”
“I discovered we don’t know as much as we think about the council. And we don’t know as much as we need to know about the Commander.” They would have to learn if they were to understand what it was that they were facing, but right now she wanted to determine if there was anything more with the shadows that she could discover.
So they hid in the shadows, watching the tower. Bayan remained mostly silent, still deferring to Alena even though they were no longer in the barracks. Since recovering from the attack, since Ciara had healed her, Bayan had been somewhat different. Quieter in many ways, but in others, she watched the world with a different eye.
“What do you remember from when you were…” She didn’t know how to phrase it in such a way that wouldn’t come off wrong. Anyway that she tried to put words to it, she knew that she would sound condescending.
“From when I was forced to serve him?”
Alena took a deep breath, eyeing the street in front of them. Had one of the shadows shifted? She couldn’t be certain, but it didn’t seem as if it had. There was more of a chill in the air than there had been earlier, but that wasn’t unexpected in Atenas at this time of night. Wind blew in from the north, a cold and crisp sort of wind, but one that didn’t have any of the bite that the mountain wind did in the barracks. This had something of an earthy scent to it, one mixed with pine, something that she thought seemed almost familiar.
“Yes. When you were forced to serve,” Alena asked. She glanced back at Bayan and caught her eyes. The other woman wore a faraway look. One hand ran along the hilt of her sword, touching the leather wrap there. “When they found you… you were shrouded in darkness. Do you remember any of it?”
Bayan closed her eyes. “I remember… I remember the way that it felt. Like a cold embrace. The first time it touched me, I knew it would burn me, a cold burn, like holding onto ice with a bare hand for far too long. The second time it touched me, that sense faded, and a part of me welcomed it. By the third time, I longed for the touch.”
It was the most that Bayan had spoken since her rescue. In some ways, Bayan was much like Sashi when the draasin had been rescued, silent and hesitant. With Bayan, the silence was a quiet agony, one Alena knew she suffered with.
“Do you long for it still?” Alena found herself asking.
Bayan took a deep breath and shivered. “Sometimes in my dreams, I remember the way that it felt. More than that, I remember the way I felt when I held onto the darkness. There’s power there, Alena, more than I can reach shaping. I don’t think there’s anything we’ll be able to do to defeat the darkness, not when it comes and claims others.”
Alena shivered at the words. “Ciara pushed away the darkness. She saved you.”
Bayan closed her eyes. For a moment, she said nothing, only breathed, each breath coming slowly. “Did she? I… I’m not the same person, Alena. How can I be?”
“You can still fight.”
Bayan looked at Alena with eyes that seemed to search for answers. “What happens when I can’t fight anymore? What then, Alena? It’s easy to do in the daylight. I feel the warmth on my face, and I feel the kiss of the sun… but at night, in the darkness, with a wind like this blowing through… I can almost feel a call, like a caress. I fear one night I’ll answer and he’ll return. I don’t know that I’ll be able to resist him then.”
She fell silent and stared straight ahead, leaving Alena to worry about the fact that she’d brought Bayan here at night, to a place where she would be in more danger. As Bayan remained silent, Alena stood against the building, thinking about what had happened to her. She had been abducted by a servant of Tenebeth, taken and forced to serve and made to ride one of the draasin, forced in some ways.
But Alena hadn’t asked Bayan about it before tonight, about what it had been like for her to suffer beneath what Tenebeth wanted. They had all understood that Bayan had been healed, and with the quiet way that Bayan carried herself, most believed that was the case. But what if it was not? She might not have wanted to have been abducted by Tenebeth, but there was a seduction to what had happened to her, a treatment that Alena didn’t fully understand. And if a part of Bayan still wished that she were back with Tenebeth, there might be nothing that any of their healing would be able to do.
“What was it like when Ciara healed you?” Alena asked.
Bayan started to smile but then caught herself and shook away the thought. “There was a warmth. It started slowly. I remember that clearly. But it built. That warmth pushed away some of the connection to the darkness, enough I actually felt a desire to return. I felt the welcome, and something like a memory, as if I should know what it once had been like in a time before I had served him.”
“You don’t remember that time?”
“That’s the thing,” Bayan started. “I remember it, but what I remember doesn’t fit with what I think I should remember. There’s the memory of when I came to the barracks the first time when I began to learn what the barracks could teach, but then there’s more, only I can’t completely recall what that might have been.” She stared at the wall. “It’s like the tower. I remember when I came to Atenas, the first lessons that I learned here and the way I was supposed to continue my studies, but the details… they’re fuzzy, as if intentionally faded. I think if I struggle to remember, if I strain for those details, I could remember them, but most of the time, I don’t even bother. What’s the point when anything I do will lead to nothing more than darkness?”
Alena wished that she had something she could say, that there was any way to console Bayan about what she’d experienced, but she didn’t think there really was. Nothing Alena had ever experienced gave her enough understanding of what her former student had gone through.
She didn’t have to answer. The darkness near the tower began to shift, sliding again as it had the first time that she saw it moving, only this time, there was no question what it was that she saw.
Alena started forward, immediately shrouding herself in a shaping and hating that there wasn’t more time to help console Bayan, but what would she say? What could she say that would make what the other woman went through any easier?
As she stared at the strands of darkness, the fingers of shadows crawling along the side of the tower, she realized the air was suddenly much colder.
She glanced back at Bayan. “Are you…”
Bayan’s eyes widened as she stared across the street. “I feel it.”
“What is it that you feel?”
“The cold. Like a hand settling across my heart.”
Could Alena use that sense? Bayan didn’t deserve to be used, but then, they needed every advantage that they could find. “Can you tell where it’s coming from?”
“North.”
“Will you guide me?”
Bayan closed h
er eyes and Alena thought she might refuse, but she started into the street. She wasn’t careful about concealing herself, so Alena extended her shaping to include her student. As she followed, she held the spirit stick in her hand, readying for it to flare with more coldness but also ready to send her shaping through it. She wasn’t completely certain it would work, but the other shaping that she’d attempted hadn’t worked either, so she had to try something. Otherwise, they would have no way to counter the shadows and the darkness, nothing other than Ciara, and she was gone.
They passed dozens of shops, most with darkened storefronts. A few people made their way along the streets, but none paused or seemed to recognize that they were there. Bayan began to slow as they left the main street, turning into an alley with the tower still looming overhead, its massive form impossible to overlook.
“Bayan!” she hissed, sending the word on a shaping of wind, only enough to reach the other woman.
She didn’t stop, but went forward, as if compelled.
Alena cursed under her breath. This was dangerous having Bayan here, and more dangerous relying on her to help find the source of this shaping. There wasn’t any other way, but that didn’t make it any better.
Bayan didn’t turn around and made no sign that she even heard Alena.
A shaping built from her, one that had a strange and beautiful complexity, but one Alena had never seen before. It certainly wasn’t anything they’d ever practiced before. As Bayan shaped, Alena felt the shifting of the cold. Now it came from Bayan.
The blasted woman was calling to the dark!
Would the spirit shaping make a difference?
Alena raised the spirit stick and aimed it at Bayan. When she directed the shaping through the spirit stick, she felt it as it settled over Bayan, layering onto her mind. There was a moment of resistance, and in that moment, she felt a painful darkness on her, but Alena continued to push.
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