He stopped near a small stream, one she hadn’t even sensed. What did it say about her water-sensing ability if she couldn’t even detect a full stream? When she had been in Rens, this much water would have managed to keep her entire village alive indefinitely, but now she struggled to detect it. All the water around her made it difficult to detect anything with much clarity. She picked up the steady thrumming of Cheneth’s heart and the blood in his veins, and she sensed the way water moved through the trees, drawn up through the ground. The presence of water was so pervasive that it seemed to obscure everything else she attempted to sense.
And then there was the chill on the air. She hadn’t been so attuned to the temperature before going to Tsanth. But the night that Olina had chained her outside the village, leaving her exposed to the darkness and the night, she had become very aware of the currents of heat and cold in the air. Had that come from riding the draasin?
Or was it more?
Olina seemed to think she could control fire, but Ciara doubted she could do anything more than summon the draasin, and that only with the help of her father. Without him, what had she ever really done? She had drawn the lizard. That was it. And what was so special about the lizard?
Other than the fact that the lizard had kept her alive. Without it, she would have died on the waste. Without the lizard bringing her the gourds and taking her to a source of water, she wouldn’t have made it more than a few more hours. And then, without the lizard, the shadow man would have claimed her. She had little doubt that she would have succumbed to his seduction.
Cheneth leaned into the water and took a long drink before standing. He wiped his chin, leaving streaks of water glistening in the early-morning light. “What can you tell me about the elementals?”
Ciara glanced at the water, wondering if she should take a drink. Thirst hadn’t been an issue for her in a long time, but the instinctual part of her, that which remained Rens, always seemed to suggest that she drink, even when she knew it didn’t really matter. Why should it, when she’d been offered water whenever she wanted? The people of Cheneth’s camp even used water to cleanse themselves with, not like the dried leaves and sand that Rens used for scrubbing.
“I don’t know that I can tell you anything you don’t already know,” she said to him.
Cheneth smiled. “You might be surprised, nya’shin. You know of the draasin?”
“All know of the draasin. They are the reason Ter attacked Rens.”
“Is that what you think?”
“Ter wants to control the draasin, but they cannot be controlled. They are too powerful for any one person to control.”
“Were that true, then riders of draasin would not have attacked Ter, perpetuating this war. They are not the riders I once knew. Whatever controls the draasin is different.”
“You knew riders?” Ciara knew nothing about the riders, only what she had briefly heard from Olina, but there was more to the riders than Olina had shared. And if what she had shared was true, then her father had once been a rider. What had changed for him? Why had he left Tsanth? And when had he gone to Rens?
“The Wise of Hyaln could speak to the draasin. Not the way that Alena does. They had a different connection to the elementals.”
“Why did they leave?”
Cheneth sighed. “Only the wise know the reason. Perhaps it has to do with whatever controls the draasin, forcing them to attack.”
She noted that he didn’t accuse Rens. “Do you think it Tenebeth?”
His eyes narrowed and he looked toward the sky. “When this started, I knew nothing about Tenebeth other than stories told to children. I still don’t know what it means that the stories are real… that the darkness is real.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
He shook his head. “It’s not an answer. There is more to Tenebeth than simply the shadows you faced. From what I have learned, something had to release him.” Cheneth took another drink and wiped his sleeve across his mouth.
“Who would release the darkness like that?”
A troubled look crossed his face, but he didn’t answer. Cheneth started up the slope as if to disappear into the trees again.
“You haven’t told me about the lizard. What is the nobelas?”
Cheneth turned slowly, resting one hand on the nearest tree. “I think it is too early for you to learn about the nobelas.”
Ciara stared after him, waiting for him to return, but he didn’t. Running to catch up, she found him far up the slope, much farther than he should have been able to reach without shaping. “The lizard found me. I didn’t summon it. It saved me when I was trapped in the waste. Brought me gourds that helped me survive. I would have died otherwise.”
Cheneth didn’t look back at her. “That would fit with nobelas.”
“It stopped me when the shadow man tried to call me. When Tenebeth tried to bring me… somewhere. Had it not been for the lizard, I would have gone with him.”
Cheneth stopped at that. “He tried to lead you away from your home?”
She nodded. “I don’t know where he intended to bring me. But there was greenish light all around, and I could feel the power he promised me. Almost as if I could touch it. But the lizard, nobelas, pushed me back.”
“He promised you power?”
She nodded.
“From what I have learned, you must have power, nya’shin, or he would not have wanted you. All Tenebeth cares about is those with power. He can’t provide it if they don’t already possess it.”
“But I’m not a shaper. I have no power.”
He spun and grabbed her j’na in a single, fast motion. His hands were a blur as he spun it. Then he slammed it against the ground.
Unlike when Ciara used the j’na like that, there was no sharp crack, there was nothing like the power she managed to summon. Cheneth eyed the staff as if expecting it to do something more, and when it didn’t he lifted it again, readying to slam it into the ground.
Ciara grabbed it from him. “Your technique is wrong,” she told him. “See what you have to do?” She flicked the spear, and it struck the hard rock of this part of the mountains, loosing such a loud crack that it sounded like thunder and reminded her of the warriors appearing on their shaping. She took another step and slammed it into the ground again, this time with another flick of her wrist, leading to another crack. Power pulsed as she did, and she could feel the shaping already starting to build. Many more like this, and she would summon… what? The draasin? The lizard? Something else?
What good would it be if she had no control over what she summoned? What good would her ability, whatever this was, be if she never knew what it meant or how to use it?
Ciara paused.
Cheneth stepped forward. “Do not stop.”
“But I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what will come.”
“What comes is what must come. There is intent behind your dance, and the power that you draw with your shaping.”
“This is no shaping.”
“Ah, my dear nya’shin, what else could it be if not a shaping?” He pointed to the spear. “Please. Continue.”
Ciara held the spear and flicked it again. Crack. Another flick. This time, the spear bounced, less than the solid crack and more of a snap as it struck the stone. She moved her feet, feeling that smaller steps were safer here, and sent the staff into the ground again. And again. And again.
Wind whistled around her, writhing around her arms and her face, pulling at the thick cloak she wore, sliding down her spear.
She looked at Cheneth, who eyed her with an intense interest, watching to see what would happen.
“You must continue,” he said, this time more softly.
“What is it?”
“Don’t you feel it?” he asked. “Don’t you feel what you have done?”
“I feel the wind pulling on me. I feel the way it seemed to try to tear the j’na from my hand. I feel it, but I don’t know what it is or what it is that
I do.”
“You are calling the wind,” he said. “And you must continue.”
She kept flicking the spear into the ground. As she went, the force required to do it changed, and she felt as if the wind almost guided her hands, showing her how to place the spear to lessen the impact on the stone. Ciara continued and the wind increased, growing into a powerful torrent. She could almost imagine she saw faces appear in the wind, but then they passed.
Over time, her arm grew tired, and she slowed her steps, letting the j’na settle back to the ground. When she finally stopped, the wind had settled, though she could still feel the way it curled through her hair, along her arms, and slipped around her j’na. There was the sense that if she only reached into the wind that ran along the j’na, she could control it, but that sense faded, leaving her with something like an aching within her.
“What was that?” she asked Cheneth.
“That was a call to the wind. Do you remember what you did?”
Ciara thought about her steps, the dance, as Cheneth had called it. Could she replicate it? “I thought I was repeating what I had done before.”
“Before, you summoned the draasin. Do you remember what you did then?”
She thought of the steps. When she had been with Olina, and then with Cheneth in his small building, the pattern she’d used hadn’t been the same as when she had been with her father. Was it because she had been in Rens? Or was there something about the location that mattered?
“I… I don’t know.”
“You have summoned draasin. Nobelas. Golud. And now ara. Each should have a different signature for you. You have only but think about what it was that you did and you should be able to repeat it.”
Did they have a signature as he suggested? There was a different pattern to each, and a different way that she used her j’na when summoning each, wasn’t there? So far, she hadn’t been able to repeat any of the patterns. When she thought she was using the same pattern, it ended up changed, and she ended up with a different summons than the one she expected.
What did it mean that she would be able to summon elementals? It had been strange enough when she had learned she could call to the draasin, and then to the lizard, but to earth and wind as well? What did that mean for her?
Cheneth seemed to understand her concern because he smiled reassuringly. “In the barracks, this place where you have come, we have shapers able to reach the elementals. They can learn to speak to them. That is why we have brought them here, knowing we must train them, protect them so that Tenebeth doesn’t reach them and twist them. But you… you have another gift, one that is unlike any that we have here.”
“What?” she asked, already suspecting the answer.
“We have shapers able to speak to the elementals, but they can only reach one. Alena speaks to fire. Eldridge to the wind. Wyath to earth. Volth to water. There are others with potential, but they have not shown the extent of that potential yet. In time, that will change. That must change, or we will lose.”
Volth. That was the powerful water shaper she’d seen. He had strength to him, but anger as well. He was a powerful man, and if she were honest with herself, was alluring as well.
“Is that what you think I will be?” she asked.
Cheneth met her eyes. The bright intensity that shone back nearly made her step away. She set her j’na to the ground, but there was no power to it this time. “You are more than nya’shin,” he said. “You may be more than ala’shin. That is something we will need in the days to come.”
“I don’t understand.”
Cheneth shook his head. “No. But you will. You must, nya’shin, so you will.”
12
Ciara
Could it be that the College of Scholars is responsible for what happened in Atenas? I would not have believed they had such connection to spirit, but then I would not have expected that they would have sealed away such knowledge with spirit. Why hide what might be essential to survival?
—Rolan al’Sand, Enlightened of Hyaln
The air crackled with the energy of her j’na striking the ground. Ciara stood in the mountains again, alone as she was so often these days, with nothing but the trees surrounding her. In the time since she’d last worked with Cheneth, she had managed to summon other elementals, but never had she repeated a summons. That was the task assigned to her.
Today was no different. She fixed in her mind the idea of summoning the draasin, of drawing one of the massive creatures to her, and focused on the steps she had used when summoning him while in Rens. Her feet followed those steps at first, but then she stopped. Not by choice, but because she began shuffling into another pattern, and her j’na began to leave her hand with a different angle or level of force or even the bounce, enough that it changed the sound as it struck the ground. Between that and the steps she took, the intent shifted.
She had thought Cheneth would teach her. Wasn’t that why she had come? So far, he had done nothing more than leave her alone in the mountains with the instructions to repeat a pattern. It mattered little to him which pattern she repeated, only that she perform one consistently. But if he never told her how to do it consistently, how did he expect her to repeat it?
She flicked her j’na in frustration.
The end of the spear cracked more loudly than it had for a while, and she let out a soft cry and dropped to the ground. The stream she’d seen when she first came to the mountains with Cheneth ran nearby, and she no longer struggled to sense it. The presence of the water filled her, as did the understanding of the depths of it. The second time she had come here, she had stood in front of the water, focusing on how far it stretched, letting awareness of it fill her. The stream rolled out of the mountains, joining another wider stream—or river, she suspected—before continuing onward. She lost track of it out there, but rivers continued flowing, and it would eventually reach the sea. So much water here, enough that her people would never want. How could the Stormbringer offer so much to these lands and so little to hers?
Maybe the Stormbringer did not exist. Maybe he was nothing more than superstition.
Ciara tapped herself on the chest, making the sign to ward off his anger. Those thoughts were dangerously close to what the shadow man had said to her, and she knew he was not to be trusted. Yet how was she not to believe there was something different when her people never knew such excess?
You cannot think that way.
The voice intruded into her mind with a suddenness that made her gasp.
Ciara jumped to her feet and looked around. Was it the shadow man? Tenebeth had always spoken aloud to her, but with the power he possessed, it seemed just as possible that he would be able to reach into her mind, much like the lizard.
Only it sounded nothing like the shadow man. It sounded more like…
More like the lizard.
She found it crouched along the streambed, lying atop one of the stones as if sunning itself. When she looked over at it, the lizard stuck out its long tongue and ran it across the rock. Ciara remembered all too well the sense of that tongue across her arms, and her legs, all over her, as the lizard healed her.
You’re nobelas.
The lizard flicked its stubby tail. Nobelas. As reasonable a name as some.
Are you not nobelas?
I am one of the creatures men once called nobelas.
Why have you not come to me again? Why now?
There has been no need.
You came when I summoned before.
You called. We answered.
Not you?
The lizard climbed from the rock and jumped across the stream. Ciara was surprised at the agility the lizard displayed, especially as small as it was, but she suspected there was much more to the lizard than she knew. This creature had not only healed her but had healed the injured draasin. That meant it was much more powerful than she had ever suspected.
She hadn’t told Cheneth about that. She hadn’t told anyone, not even her father.
Did it matter if she did? Olina and Cheneth seemed impressed that she spoke to nobelas, though she still didn’t understand why. There was something about the creature that they sought, but what? Why would they be impressed with this lizard?
The lizard bumped up against her, pushing her with his stout body. His tongue snaked out, and he ran it along her boots, leaving a thick paste that dried quickly into a solid crust. Perhaps me. Would that displease you?
You were the same one who helped me on the waste.
You were thirsty.
That is the only reason?
There is a fire that burns within you. It was not time for it to be extinguished.
Fire. Her people were water seekers, and some could call it. But fire? That was the skill of the warriors of Ter, and she was not of Ter.
Not of Ter, but you call each of the elements, the lizard said.
Just because I can call them doesn’t mean I can shape them.
No? I think they are related. You cannot summon without the ability to reach the element in the first place. You must be able to reach a deeper bond before you can understand the elementals.
What about you? What element do you represent?
The lizard flicked his tail and circled around her, pushing her so that she took a step back. I am of all elements, and of none.
Ciara frowned. The comment was too much like what Cheneth had said about Hyaln and the enlightened. I don’t think I can shape the elements I’ve summoned. If she could, what did that make her? Was she meant to be like a shaper of Ter, able to ride lightning and thunder? Was she meant to destroy rather than build? If so, she didn’t want that power.
You can summon. For now, that is enough.
But I can’t summon consistently. Every time I try to draw the same elemental to me, I fail.
You see failure and I see growth. Each time you try, you find another that you hadn’t met before. How is that failure when you learn how to reach another?
Endless Night Page 7