That the lizard would try to reassure her surprised her. How does that help? If I can’t reach the elementals in a timely fashion, how does it help that I can even summon them?
The lizard bumped against her leg again and pushed. You will get stronger. Over time, you will learn how to control your power. Once you do, then you will learn how to summon with more speed. You ask how it matters, but know that it does. Know that if Voidan calls, there can be another who can call. That is why you must continue to learn.
Voidan. Is that the same as Tenebeth?
It is emptiness. It is nothing. That is what the darkness seeks.
The lizard licked her boot again and started toward the trees with a strange sort of waddle, disappearing into the darkness.
Ciara chased him, but by the time she reached the trees, he had disappeared.
13
Jasn
How much do I risk those who can speak to the elementals? Will they be the sacrifice required to replace the seals?
—Rolan al’Sand, Enlightened of Hyaln
“What do you plan to do?” Alena asked.
Jasn stood outside the barracks, the massive trees rising up all around him as he stared at the remains of the draasin pen. How had Wyath managed to survive long enough for Alena to stabilize him and get him to Atenas? Of all the things he’d seen since his return, that might be the most surprising. The water shaping she’d used on him had kept him alive, but not much more than that. Had she not… he had no doubt Wyath would have perished in the explosion.
“Cheneth left the barracks again, and I still want answers,” he said.
Alena stood near one of the trees, blue eyes taking in the destruction as she ran her fingers through her blond hair. She had found him as he made his way through the woods. Jasn wasn’t surprised she had managed to find him. He hadn’t attempted to shield himself, and with Alena, he wasn’t sure that it even mattered.
She brushed her hair back and tucked it under the neck of her jacket. “You still think to find Issa?”
“Katya,” Jasn corrected.
He looked over at her, but Alena did not meet his eyes. The bond that had formed between them when he had healed her was likely how she had found him so easily. The bond went both ways, not only allowing him to know what had happened to her but granting her the same insight with him. It was a greater sharing than he wanted, especially with Alena.
“She is lost, Jasn,” she said. The annoyance in her tone had softened since they had found the draasin egg. He still didn’t know how much of that was because of the connection between them and how much was because she had nearly died twice. Had it not been for him, she would have died.
“I refuse to believe that.” Having Alena talking like this was progress. At least she seemed to be feeling better, even if the connection between them told him otherwise.
“And if you search for her? Do you plan to take on Tenebeth yourself?” Alena stepped away from the tree, moving so that she was only about a pace away from him. He could smell the heat of her body, the way it mixed with the floral soap she must have used, something that seemed so out of place in the barracks. “You have seen what this darkness can do. When even Thenas is nearly too much for us… Issa was always more skilled than Thenas.” She stared into his eyes, unblinking.
Jasn swallowed. Katya had always been more skilled than him as well. And if she had been claimed by Tenebeth, she would be a powerful ally for the darkness. What did Jasn really think he could do if he were to encounter her? Did he think he could draw the darkness away? The elementals didn’t listen to him consistently as it was. How could he think he might be able to find her and then heal her?
And if she hadn’t been taken by Tenebeth, where would she be? What else could have happened to her? He needed to know. And if he didn’t… if he refused to try, how much of a betrayal would that be?
He knew the answer, just as he knew what he had to do.
“I have to try,” he told her. “Eventually, I will have to try. Once you’re safe…”
Alena continued to stare at him. Jasn felt heat growing through him at the weight of her gaze, but he refused to look away. Alena was a lovely woman, and had he met her under different circumstances… and had Katya not still lived. But she did. And the circumstances were what they were.
“Tell me about her,” Alena said. She started away from the trees, toward the remains of the draasin pen.
Jasn followed. The closer he came to the rock, the more he felt the residual effect of the shaping used to hold the stone. How powerful must the explosion have been when it erupted? Calan was lucky to have been uninjured. For that matter, Ifrit was lucky to have lived.
“You knew her,” he said as he reached for the jagged edge of rock. He picked it up and examined the powerful runes used to hold the earth in place. The only time he had attempted runes like that had been when he needed to save his life. Strange that he would go to Rens and try to live. “Why don’t you tell me?” Would Alena know more than what Cheneth had told him?
Alena glanced to the rock in his hand. “We knew her as Issa. She was a shaper of much power and brought to us by the scholar Listan.”
“Not Cheneth?”
Alena pulled her eyes away from the rock. “Cheneth had come to the barracks, but he had not assumed control. Not yet. That would come later. Listan sat high in the College of Scholars, and when he brought her to the barracks, I had only recently been raised to full hunter.”
“Did you know you could speak to the draasin then?”
“I have always known,” she said softly. “Growing up along the border, close enough where I could see the draasin… I heard their voices. I didn’t know what it was at the time. When I learned, I thought there was something wrong with me. That the creator found me damaged. When I went to Atenas, the voices faded until I no longer heard them.”
Jasn wondered what it must have been like for Alena to have known for as long as she did that she could hear the elementals. Probably no different than for him to know that he couldn’t die. There was the same reason for both, and though he didn’t know what caused his… affliction… he understood that something was wrong with him.
It must have been the same for Alena, only worse in some ways. She could hear the voices of the elementals. Jasn had only known he couldn’t die, not the reason for it.
“When Issa—Katya—came to the barracks, I was chosen to teach. She proved an adept student and learned quickly, but it was her affinity for fire that I noticed the most. She could use fire in ways I had never seen trained in Atenas.”
“She always had a connection to fire,” Jasn started. “It was the first element she managed to reach, and with fire, she was able to do so much more than I ever could. But Katya was more powerful than me with just about every shaping she did. The only element I exceeded her in was water.”
“I think you exceed everyone with water,” Alena said.
Jasn chuckled. That hadn’t always been the case, or at least he hadn’t always known that was the case. With Oliver, when he’d been learning from the guild, he hadn’t known anything other than the fact that he felt ignorant about so much. In hindsight, most of his ignorance stemmed from physical knowledge and inexperience, not a lack of ability with shaping. Even now, Oliver was much more knowledgeable about the body and the ways to repair it, but Jasn thought his connection to water gave him an advantage. He didn’t need to know the workings of the body to heal it. Water seemed to know what was needed.
“We met in Atenas,” he continued. “She had already mastered nearly every element. I came to Atenas barely able to sense, and that only with water. She guided me, showing me the way that she knew to reach water. She was patient, and kind, and…” Jasn swallowed again. Those early memories of Katya were some of the hardest for him and ones he had tried not to think about while in Rens. Why was it that they came back so easily now? Why was it that Alena managed to pull them from him?
He could still recall the f
irst time he’d seen Katya. Small and petite, with short raven hair, her eyes had blazed brightly. She had an energy about her, almost an aura of her power, that he couldn’t resist. When she’d offered to work with him, he had not refused.
“You didn’t know she’d come to the barracks,” Alena said.
“No. She was raised to the order before me and was given an assignment she claimed she couldn’t share. At the time, I didn’t know anything about the workings of the order, only that assignments would come from the council. The Healers Guild had already staked their claim on me, so I knew what my assignment would be when I managed to reach each of the elements.” And even if he never had reached them. Jasn never feared what he would do. The guild had made it clear he had a place, even were he not of the order. Sitting among the order would grant him more opportunity, but it was not entirely necessary for him to succeed.
Alena stood in the middle of the rubble, an earth shaping building from her as she moved some of the rock. “How did you hear about what happened with her?”
Jasn debated answering. Doing so would only dredge up more of the painful memories he had of Katya, but maybe that wasn’t necessarily a bad one to revisit. How long had it been since he’d thought about that day? When he’d been in Rens, he’d relived it every single day, the same way that every single day, he had hoped he would be able to find the same death that had come to her, and each day he had failed.
“Someone of the order brought word to me,” Jasn said. He remembered the man’s face, his dark eyes and flat stare. When the man had come to him, he had known he was from the front, just as he had known he came bearing bad news.
Alena stood and turned. “The order? You didn’t receive word from one of the scholars?”
Jasn shook his head.
“Do you remember what this man looked like?”
“Remember? I don’t think I’ll ever get his face out of my mind. When he appeared on my doorstep, bearing her sword… I knew.”
“We never recovered her sword. We never recovered her body,” Alena said.
Jasn frowned. “This man, he had her sword. He gave details about what happened to her.”
“You saw what happened. I showed you where we lost her. But there was no body, and there was no sword.”
“What are you saying?”
Alena’s shaping completed and the remains of the pen slid to the center of the clearing, stacking into a neat circle, though nothing like the structure that had been there. “What I’m saying is that I don’t know who would have come to you, but whoever it was, he didn’t come from the barracks.”
14
Ciara
Darkness and Light. From both sprang all that we know. There was a time when I would have thought that nothing more than folktale, but with what I have seen, I begin to wonder.
—Rolan al’Sand, Enlightened of Hyaln
Ciara remained hidden in the trees. Shadows stretched around her and the stream ran nearby. As had become her practice, she focused on the water flowing through the stream first, trying to gain an awareness of water, thinking if she managed to master the element, then she could understand what she needed to do with the summoning.
Her j’na rested on her knees. The end of the staff had blunted, but not as much as she would have expected with all the striking she’d done, sending it into the rock over and over. Each time she did, she wondered if the spear would crack and break, but it never did. It was possible that the patterns her father had placed upon the length of the spear protected it.
She thought of him often. Were she to return to Rens, would he offer to teach her what she needed so that she could understand how to summon the draasin, maybe help her master how to summon the other elementals? So far, she had managed to summon elementals, but there was still no consistency to it and no control. The lizard—and Cheneth—seemed to think she could learn that skill, but she wasn’t certain. It was as if each time she attempted to recreate a pattern she had done before, something shifted, preventing her from repeating it.
How long had she been at the barracks? More than a week. And then two weeks in K’ral before that. Over a month since she’d last been in Rens. And in that time, so much had changed for her. Not only her understanding of things, but the realization that she might really be more than simply a water seeker. She might not be able to call it like Fas or Eshan had managed so easily, or even like her father, but there was the hope that what she did might give her even more potential. If she could reach the elementals, creatures like the draasin, or earth, or wind, or even the lizard—maybe especially the lizard—then what else might she be able to do? Only, everything required that she remain in Ter, studying with Cheneth. But so far, he had not done much to teach.
With a sigh, Ciara stood and made her way over to the stream. She took a long drink before standing, not missing the constant thirst that had been her companion in Rens. She missed the heat of the sun, though, and the dry air. Here, everything was moist, including the air.
Returning to the clearing where she had attempted every summons, she paused to consider what she wanted to try. Attempting to call the draasin had been unsuccessful. It was as if the pattern she’d used to draw the draasin was different than the one she remembered in her mind. Maybe it wasn’t the pattern, though. Maybe it had more to do with the fact that she didn’t summon the draasin in Rens. It was possible the location mattered as much as her actions.
The first steps had proven to be the hardest. Ciara tried to fix an image of what she wanted to summon in her mind and used that image to strain for the memory of what she had summoned in the past. So far, she had summoned enough different elementals that she thought she should be done finding new ones, but that hadn’t proven to be the case. Even within something like wind, there were slight variations that told her there were differences. The temperature, or the force of the wind, or even the way it touched upon her skin. All told her she hadn’t managed to consistently reach the same elemental.
Earth. That would be what she summoned today.
She could think of five different earth elementals she had summoned so far. The first had been while in Cheneth’s home. The others had all come here. One had been so powerful that it had nearly split the ground beneath her feet. Had she not released the summons, she suspected she would have been thrown into a deep chasm. And without the lizard to heal her, she doubted she could survive a fall like that again.
Thunder rolled distantly, and she glanced at the sky.
Storms, but thunder didn’t necessarily mean rain. Not in Ter.
The Ter shapers used lightning to travel. Cheneth had traveled with her on a similar shaping. Now when she heard thunder, she looked up, wondering who might be traveling and where they might be heading. This time, she saw thick dark clouds in the distance, and the thunder rumbled again. Perhaps it meant rain after all.
The Stormcallers of her village would have had a fit had they the chance to call to the rain in these lands. She’d not been here that long, but there had been two rains, one heavy enough that she might once have called it a great storm. Now she wondered if that was even true.
If the storm came while she was out here… She would just have to start back to the camp before that happened. But first, she wanted to try the summons. Likely she would fail. She doubted she would manage to summon the elemental that she intended.
A subtle shifting of earth. That was all she wanted. There had been one elemental that seemed to have limited strength, but her second attempt to reach it had resulted in her calling the extra powerful elemental. She had hesitated to try again, but maybe she couldn’t hold off any longer.
The first step. That’s all she had to take.
It was hardest because she struggled to hold the form in her mind. Once she began, the pattern essentially flowed from her, almost guiding her without giving her much choice. She only had to step, tap, and step.
Could she draw on the weaker earth elemental?
She tried thinking
of it and took the step.
When her foot struck, she flicked her j’na, sending it to the stone with a sharp crack.
The sound seemed right. Sometimes the sound of the j’na against the stone mattered as well. She hadn’t managed to master the difference, but there were differences to the speed, or the angle, or even how long she held on to the shaft of the spear, either muting the sound or amplifying it.
She took another step. Crack. Another. Crack.
As she took her steps, Ciara made a point of holding the thought of the earth elemental in her mind. If she could reach for it, if she could only repeat the pattern she had used before, she would have more confidence that she could reliably do this. Even once. That was all she wanted.
The pattern took on its own form. Was it the same? Ciara didn’t know. Thinking too much about it was distracting, and she’d learned she would fail if she tried. Instead, she had to allow herself to move in the pattern, to let it draw her.
Step. Crack. Step.
Her feet slid forward, knowing the steps, the sound of the j’na striking the ground filling the air. Would someone else hear it? Would they know what she did? She thought the camp was isolated, but what did she really know about anything of Ter? It was possible they were near a Terran city.
Ruthlessly, she returned her concentration to the task at hand.
Step. Crack. Step.
She felt a deep rumbling. Was this the same as what she’d done before? Was this the gentler elemental she’d worked with before?
Wind started to pull on her cloak, biting through the thick layers.
She had to ignore it. Focusing on the wind would only have her draw wind to her when she wanted earth.
Step. Crack. Step.
The rumbling beneath her took on a more violent form.
Ciara’s next step missed. The j’na slipped, colliding with the ground with a snap.
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