Summoner's Bond (The Endless War Book 4)

by D. K. Holmberg

The connection from it surged, giving her a sudden awareness of the other woman. Images from her time in Ter, in Atenas, flashed through her mind. She saw Wansa as a younger shaper, one who had ambition and drive for more power. There were images of her before that when she still struggled to gain her abilities, and as Alena pressed more deeply into Wansa’s mind, she saw flashes of what she had been before she even came to Atenas, of the little girl…

  At least Wansa was the person she claimed to be, not like what she suspected of Margo.

  Alena focused on the strange barrier that she’d detected and ensured that she peeled it completely away. When she receded, Wansa gasped softly.

  “What was that?” Wansa demanded.

  The answer was not an easy one, not without revealing the reason that she had come to Atenas, but then again, they needed allies within the city, those who could help her discover what might have happened to the other councilors, and to help her know what they faced. And if she had managed to remove the influence from Wansa’s mind, then she could be that person they would work with.

  “Atenas is under attack,” Alena said.

  Wansa frowned. “I don’t know what kind of things you’re experiencing out in the Commander’s camp, but the city has never been under attack. We’re too well protected here, both by simple geography and because of our shapers.”

  “And what if those shapers could be influenced?” Alena asked.

  “Influenced? There’s no influence that would change our ability or desire to protect the city, Alena. You have been too far removed from the city to understand, and I think maybe it is a good thing that you returned. The Commander will understand you have been away for too long.”

  “I haven’t been away for too long,” she said. “I think you’ve remained too deep in the city to appreciate what else happens beyond the boundaries of Atenas. Not only has Atenas been attacked, but you have been attacked.”

  Wansa frowned, and Alena prepared an explanation, intending to tell her all about the fact that Margo had been twisted, or about the way that Oliver had been attacked, when the air took on a soft chill.

  She glanced at the sky. The sun still burned overhead, but the temperature dipped, making her suddenly fearful of what it might mean.

  “Come with me,” she told Wansa.

  The other woman stared at her and started to shake her head.

  Shadows began to swirl behind her, coalescing into thick arms. If Alena stayed here, the shadows would attack. And they would do so in the daylight. That they would mean the darkness continued to grow stronger here. If she didn’t manage to find a way to counter it, the darkness would soon overwhelm the rest of the city. And then what would happen? Who would oppose this darkness if not for Atenas?

  “Look if you don’t believe me!” Alena told Wansa. “But don’t be such a fool that you refuse to understand there is something more going on than you believe.”

  She pointed to the wall opposite them where the shadows began to swirl, crawling slowly up the side. Alena focused on the elements and shaped through the spirit stick, drawing as much strength as she could, but after shaping as much as she already had today, mostly through the spirit stick, she was nearly too weak to use it fully.

  The end glowed softly, but not as it had the night before. The markings along the side of the spirit stick had none of the strength they had when she had shaped through it even a few moments before. Without stronger shaping, the spirit stick would be no sort of defense against anything.

  “What is that?” Wansa asked.

  “I’ll tell you later. For now, look,” she urged, pointing to the shadows that moved, tracing along the stone.

  Wansa seemed to finally see them. She started toward it, as if intending to study it, before Alena grabbed her arm and jerked her back.

  “What do you think that you’re doing?”

  “This… I can feel it, as if it draws to me.”

  Damn! Wansa too? “If you feel it drawing to you, then you should know enough to recognize you need to ignore it. You have to ignore it. There is power, but it is a dark power and one that will attempt to destroy you.”

  Wansa’s gaze drifted to the end of the spirit stick, taking in the way Alena stood with her arm outstretched, holding the rod like a short sword, jabbing at the wall as she held the shadows back.

  When Alena’s shaping failed, the shadows separated from the wall, almost as if they had been waiting for such a moment.

  Wansa gasped at it and took a step back.

  Alena grabbed the councilor and, feeling the fool for risking herself like this, dragged her away from the alley and the base of the tower, pulling her back onto the main street. Wansa resisted at first, but she came along. Had she not, Alena was prepared to simply knock her out and drag her if it came to it.

  Once out on the street, with the warmth of the sun shining more clearly upon her, the crowd of people pushing all around, she allowed herself to relax.

  There were too many already in the city who shaped the darkness. If they had gotten that established, what did Alena think she could do to dislodge them? Her spirit stick was not strong enough, and she was not strong enough.

  What they needed were more sticks much like the one she carried. With that, she thought she might be able to draw enough strength to withstand the darkness. If she could get others to help, they could work together, and they could hold back the night.

  But what happened if the night became stronger?

  Alena shivered at the thought.

  40

  Alena

  There are days when I hide and observe Cheneth. I waited far too long to begin these observations.

  —Lachen Rastan, Commander of the Order of Warriors

  “Tell me why you’ve brought me to the healer guild hall,” Wansa told Alena, the agitation in her tone softening the longer that Alena pulled her away from the street. Wansa had followed her back into the tower without arguing too much, but now that they were in this part of the tower, she began to come back alive, and the questions began coming one after the other.

  “I told you what you need to know,” Alena said. “And now I will show you what you need to see.”

  Wansa frowned but said nothing more.

  When they readied to knock, Oliver pulled the door open and peered out. His eyes fell on Wansa and widened. “You’re a fool, Alena. What do you think you’re doing coming here with her?”

  “She is councilor of the Seat,” Wansa said. “I think you should watch your tone.”

  Oliver pulled himself up, thrusting his considerable stomach forward. His dark eyes held her for a long moment. “And I would think you would watch your tone with the head of the healer guild.”

  They stared at each other, neither saying anything, so Alena pushed past him and made her way into Oliver’s room. Yanda sat in a chair near the window and looked up when she entered.

  “Ah, Alena. You’ve returned with a guest?”

  She nodded. “I’m going to let the two of them decide who has the more important position.”

  Yanda leaned to the side until she could see Oliver facing off with Wansa, and then smiled. “Well, Oliver will claim that he’s the head of his guild. Which puts him in a position that Wansa can’t claim. And Wansa, I suspect, will claim her position on the Seat gives her the authority to demand even the head of the guild answer to her.”

  She said it so matter-of-factly that Alena couldn’t help but laugh. “Which do you think will win out?”

  “If I know my large friend—and I think that I do—he will probably back down. As he should.”

  As she said it, Oliver glanced over at her and stepped out of the doorway, making room for Wansa to follow Alena inside.

  Wansa stared at the shelves filled with books, ignoring Oliver’s stares as she made her way slowly in a circle around the inside of Oliver’s room.

  “What were you working on?” Alena asked Yanda.

  Yanda glanced at Oliver, and he nodded slightly. Alena
frowned. These two had such a strange interaction that she couldn’t help but wonder about whether they were more than friends. But the idea of tiny Yanda with massive Oliver made her stomach churn. The man could crush her.

  “That ring you brought us,” Yanda said. “When you borrowed the spirit stick, you left him with nothing to protect himself. We sought to change that.”

  “How do you think to change that?” she asked.

  “We needed to study what it is about the ring and the stick that gives them protection from spirit.”

  Wansa paused, her ears perking up.

  “Did you discover anything?” Alena asked.

  “Nothing that would help us recreate it, and that’s the point of this. We can make these patterns, but we can’t seal them to the metal, so without that…” Yanda pointed to the small marks on the ring, the same ones that were on the spirit stick. On the ring, they were smaller and more compact, but they were the same. “We can’t seem to get them to stick, if you will. Oliver thinks the metal itself doesn’t matter, that it’s more about the patterns themselves than the metal, but we aren’t able to find a way to hold these patterns on the damn ring.”

  Alena laughed. Why hadn’t she thought of trying to recreate the patterns? Wyath had taught her to make these sort of patterns as some of the earliest lessons he had for her when she went to the barracks, and she had used similar patterns on the draasin pen as well as on the stone chains that they used to hold the draasin.

  “There’s a certain intent to using these patterns,” Alena said. “Let me try.”

  Yanda shrugged and handed her a small strip of metal. “As I said, we don’t think the metal itself matters.”

  “It shouldn’t,” Alena said, thinking that she had used the same sort of patterns on both stone and then on the pen. The substrate wasn’t what mattered, it was the patterns that they placed, and how they were placed. Yanda had a small sharpened rod Alena could use to etch the engraving into the metal. The narrow band of metal was soft and took the engraving well.

  As she carved the shapes into the metal, she pressed a shaping into each one. If there was one thing that her time in the barracks had taught her—other than how to stalk the draasin and to hone her ability to speak to them—was that each of these shapes had a certain tie to the elements, so as she made them, she fused the corresponding element into the etching, letting it settle deeply into the metal. There was a pattern to them as well. One that pulled on the elements in a specific order, and Alena traced through that pattern in her mind, recognizing it as well.

  “How is it that you’ve managed to do that?” Yanda asked, standing now over her shoulder and staring down at the etchings that Alena made.

  She didn’t answer. Doing so would distract her and pull her attention from the last shape. This was one that she hadn’t seen before, and one with a mystery corresponding element.

  None of the primary elements worked as she tried to fuse it into the pattern.

  There wasn’t anything that worked.

  Unless…

  She fished the spirit stick out of her pocket and started the shaping pattern that she needed to call spirit through it. She wouldn’t be able to pull too much—she was too weakened from all the shaping that she’d done earlier in the day—but these etchings didn’t take much.

  Alena sent the shaping through the etching, letting it settle into the soft metal.

  She held her breath. If this worked, would they be able to copy the ring? More than the ring, would they be able to recreate the spirit stick?

  The shaping flared with a flash of light.

  “Balls,” Oliver said. He stood over the band of metal and reached for it, tracing his fingers over the shapes that she’d made. “You did it.”

  Wansa pulled herself away from the wall and stopped about a pace away from them. “She did what?”

  “Test it, Oliver,” Yanda said.

  He took the narrow band of silver metal and bent it around his wrist. “Try the spirit stick,” he told Alena.

  She held the spirit stick up to him and started the shaping, letting it wash out from her, striking Oliver. There was no subtlety to it. She didn’t have the energy for subtlety.

  The shaping struck him. His eyes narrowed, and he scratched at the band on his wrist.

  “Did it work?” he asked her. “I felt the stupid thing go cold, and then a warmth washed over me, but there wasn’t anything else.”

  “I had nothing. No sign that I shaped you.”

  “Oliver? What is this?” Wansa demanded. She had regained the stern demeanor that Alena had always associated with her.

  “This, I imagine, is what Alena told you about, Wansa.”

  Wansa considered first Alena and then Oliver. “Tell me again.”

  Oliver cocked his head at Alena. “You’re certain that she’s safe?”

  “There was… something… on her mind, but I removed it,” Alena said.

  “How?” Oliver asked.

  “Like your blade of water shaping, only with fire.”

  “That would require a touch so fine…” His eyes widened. “You speak to them, don’t you?” An excited smile spread on his face. “That’s why he wanted you. Why he wanted Volth. How many are like the two of you?”

  She hesitated, trying to gauge Yanda’s interest. Admitting that she spoke to the draasin to Cheneth was much different than admitting the same to Oliver, or Yanda, or even Wansa. The draasin were creatures the shapers of Ter believed to be dangerous, creatures that others in Ter would have hunted. For her to speak to them was almost akin to admitting she didn’t belong in Ter to begin with, a thought she once had when she was a much younger person.

  “There are others,” Alena admitted.

  “What’s it like?” Oliver asked. “How many others are—”

  He cut off when Yanda shot him a hard glare.

  “Fine. But you and I will speak again when we get past this,” Oliver promised.

  Alena nodded. “You may speak. I may not answer.”

  Oliver waved his hand as if indicating she’d have no choice but to answer, and Alena wondered if that might not be the case. Oliver could be persuasive at times. “You’re sure you removed this film from her mind?”

  A film. Interesting he would describe it that way. It was the same way she thought it had been, sitting atop Wansa’s mind when she’d reached into it with the spirit stick.

  “I’m sure I did,” Alena said. “You can test if you would like.”

  Oliver tipped his head as he considered and then held his hand out until she offered him the spirit stick. He pointed it toward Wansa and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

  The shaping built from him. The stick didn’t glow like it did when Alena used it, and there might be a surge of power, but it wasn’t the same. Oliver was skilled with water, but he lacked in strength with the other elements, leaving him struggling to power the spirit stick.

  But he would be able to see that Alena had cleared Wansa’s mind. That should be enough.

  When he finished his shaping, he lowered his arm and handed the spirit stick back to Alena. “Yes. She is free of distraction.”

  Wansa pursed her lips as she glared at each one of them in turn. “Would one of you tell me what this is all about?”

  Alena fingered the edge of the spirit stick and then held it up for Wansa to see. “The only way for you to understand is for you to experience this yourself,” she began. “You need to shape each of the elements into this, and you must do so in equal measure.”

  “Equal makes no difference,” Oliver countered. “It’s the shaping of the elements that matters.”

  “I think it matters if you intend to power it with much strength,” Alena said. “But Oliver is right. I doubt he has much strength with fire and he manages to make this work.”

  Oliver huffed, and Yanda patted him soothingly on the arm.

  “What does this weapon do?”

  Alena started to tell her that it was no weapon, but the
n, that wasn’t necessarily true. The spirit stick was a sort of weapon, only it wasn’t any kind of conventional weapon, and certainly none that anyone would ever identify as one. “You have to experience it yourself to understand,” she said, coming to a decision. Her ability with the draasin might not remain a secret for long.

  Wansa raised the spirit stick. The shaping that built from her was tentative at first, but as she steadied herself, she poured more and more shaping ability into it, letting her shaping flow into it. Then she pointed it toward Alena.

  Alena readied for the attack. There was no other way to describe it. Were there another way, she would refuse to allow Wansa to shape her with spirit, but they needed the support of the council. And to do that, they had to convince her.

  If this worked, and if she understood what they faced, they might have an ally who would be able to help them reach the others on the council, though Alena still feared what would happen when the Commander returned. So far, he had been absent during her time in Atenas. But he knew she had been assigned to work with Volth. If he discovered she was here, he might question, and that would lead to a confrontation she wasn’t certain she was ready for, though that confrontation might give them all the information that they needed about where the Commander’s allegiances lay.

  The shaping settled into her with a sort of warmth.

  Alena hadn’t detected the same warmth when Oliver had shaped her. Was there something about the shaping that was different, or was it that Wansa was such a stronger shaper that she experienced it differently?

  It was brief. A flash of fire within her, and she felt the distant stirring of the draasin. Memories of protecting the egg, of finding it, and then earlier, of working with Volth, and before, to Bayan and when Alena had first come to the barracks…

  Wansa dropped the spirit stick.

  Oliver was there, scooping it off the ground and giving Wansa a sour expression. “Careful with this, councilor. This might be the only thing that can keep us safe.”

  “What… what was that?” she asked, eyeing Alena. “It was like I was in your head, in your memories, but what I saw there would be impossible!”