Jasn hated the clinical way Lachen spoke, as if referring to a horse rather than the woman Jasn loved. “It is the reason I went to Rens.”
“You know little, my friend, but if you take the choice I offer you, you will understand far more than you ever wanted to know.”
“What choice is that?” For the first time in nearly a year, curiosity burned softly within Jasn.
“The first choice is returning to Rens, continuing your vendetta. In time, I do not doubt that even the Wrecker of Rens will fall, finally dying.”
Jasn closed his eyes. He had longed for death for months, but each time he thought it might claim him, water brought him back. If he could turn off his ability to heal, he would. “Or?”
“Or you face a different kind of hardship, one that will give you a chance to understand what happened to Katya, perhaps bring meaning to her death.”
Jasn stared out toward Rens, thinking of the war. Returning would be easy. He had learned to search for the draasin, to attack the soldiers of Rens push them back. More than once, he’d kept the walls of Jornas clear because of his willingness to die, but always they returned. Rens might not have strength with shaping, but they had a different kind of strength, one that brought fire and pain wherever they went.
“What do you ask of me?” he asked softly.
Lachen turned toward the south, toward Rens, his eyes going to the sky and a shaping building from him. It was complex, more than Jasn could follow. When it released, it streaked toward Rens as if targeting something. Jasn wasn’t skilled enough to understand what.
“You have served Ter and protected our shapers, but I would offer you the chance to become something more.”
Jasn laughed bitterly. “More than this?” he said, sweeping his hands over his form. “You don’t think the warrior is enough anymore?”
Lachen’s eyes tightened, and all the warmth that he’d shown while speaking of Katya disappeared. The commander returned. “Not for this. Not for what comes.”
“What then? What can I become?”
Lachen swung his gaze, filled with a blazing intensity, back to Jasn. “More than the Wrecker of Rens. More than a hunter of fire.”
2
Ciara
After the loss of Pa’shu, the people of Rens moved south, away from the dry lands they once called home, to even drier and hotter lands, places men were never meant to exist. Somehow, small isolated villages managed to survive, although the ongoing war forced them to continue to migrate until very little of old Rens existed.
—Lren Atunal, Cardinal of the College of Scholars
Ciara S’shala clung to the rock, pressing her face against the hot stone as she shimmied up the side. Each time she moved, she squeezed her thighs as she reached, straining for another handhold. This high above the ground, purchase was harder to find, but today would be the day she reached the top.
“What are you trying to prove?” Eshan called down from the top of the rock finger, disdain clear in his voice.
Blast him. Stupid man was the reason she’d made this attempt to reach the top, and he knew exactly what she needed to prove. He was nya’shin, one of the water seekers of her village, and she needed to prove to him that she could do as much as him, even if she couldn’t reach water the same way.
Her fingers brushed a small lip, barely more than a crack in the rock, and she dug them in long enough to slide her legs up the rock again. Wind—surprisingly warmer this high above the ground, as opposed to down in the village—gusted, carrying the stink of sweat from Eshan above her and a mixture of the bitter stench blowing off the waste as it billowed her black hair.
She was almost there. Another stretch—this time the grip was easier—and as she pushed her legs up, she found another handhold. Ciara took a steadying breath. How much farther? With her connection to water—the blasted shapers of Ter called it sensing, which fit as much as anything her people might call it—she was able to detect the blood pulsing through Eshan above her, and also through Fas, another of the nya’shin, as he climbed next to her. Did that fool wait for her?
“What are you doing?” She risked moving her head, tipping it back enough to see him hugging the wall, a playful smile on his chiseled face. She refused to admit he was handsome. The blasted man was too lithe and graceful, all fluid movements to Eshan’s hard, muscular force, and he knew it.
“Waiting for you.”
“Stop waiting and get up the rock,” she said. “You’re blocking my way up.”
Fas chuckled. “You can do it this time, Ciara. I just want to be here when you do.”
“I know I can.” Her hand started to slip and she adjusted her grip, scrambling for another place to hold, but there wasn’t one. Legs started to slide, the fabric of her elouf wrap pulling on the rock. She needed to keep climbing or she’d end up with the wrap over her head, and she would not give Eshan the satisfaction of seeing her like that.
She found a ledge barely wide enough for two fingers and grabbed it, holding it long enough to shift her legs and make her way up the rock again. Only another few feet. She was almost there. This time she would reach the top, and then Eshan could stop holding this over her head. He’d still have another dozen things he taunted her for, but this wouldn’t be one of them.
As she reached for the top, she felt herself slip again.
Ciara squeezed, trying to hold herself in place, but her elouf shifted around her. The fingers holding the narrow ridge slipped and she started sliding down the face of the rock. As high up as she was, she might not survive the fall.
A strong grip grabbed her wrist and pulled her up.
Fas smiled at her as she lay at his feet, panting and trying to slow the pounding of her heart in her chest. Had he not caught her…
“What do you think you were doing?” she demanded, pushing to her knees and pulling her elouf down to cover her legs. She didn’t care for the way Eshan leered at her or the casual strength Fas had when he looked at her.
“Keeping you from falling,” he said.
Blast him, but she would have fallen to the ground had he not caught her. As much as she wanted to reach the top, it wasn’t worth dying for, was it?
She stood and stared out from atop the rock. It was the first time she’d reached the summit. Maybe she hadn’t made it on her own, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy the view. The expanse of Rens stretched all around her, nothing but barren and cracked rock pitted in places. A few scrub plants grew, those that could survive the heat and the constant drought, waiting for the intermittent storms before they bloomed again. The desolate expanse of the Rens waste stretched beyond the rock, the edge only barely visible as a shimmer of heat rising off the ever-shifting dunes. Nothing lived there. It was a place her people didn’t dare even visit.
She’d never seen Rens this way. From the ground, it was nothing but rock. The village, a collection of openings cut into the sloped side of a rocky hill, looked tiny from here. Children playing outside in the early morning air appeared as shadows moving against the rock. A small feras fox, its wide ears perked as it watched the children, sat near the mouth of a cave. Nothing else moved.
Fas stood next to her, nearly a head taller than her. She sensed the way his pulse pounded in his chest and the clean smell of his sweat and tried not to think about the heat rising from his body mingling with hers as he brushed against her.
He pointed out over the rock. “From here, we can sometimes see pockets of water after the storms,” he said. “It makes collecting it easier.”
“I don’t need to see water to know where to find it,” she said.
“No, but not all of us can hear the water as strongly as you.”
She had proven to be a strong water seeker but couldn’t manipulate water the same as Eshan and Fas, shaping it, as they called it in Ter. Her ancestors once referred to it as al’asan, a changing of water, but she’d never seen Eshan or Fas change anything about water. Their skills were different even than those of the shape
rs of Ter, not as potent, but that didn’t mean they weren’t useful. More than anything, Ciara wished she could learn to do even a portion of what Eshan and Fas could do.
“I don’t hear any water now,” she said. How long had it been since the last rain? Weeks? And much longer since the last great storm. Long enough that the stores of water had dwindled to nearly nothing. The nya’shin rarely had to wander too far when seeking water, but lately they had needed to venture farther and farther away from the village to find enough to last.
“Neither do I,” Fas said.
She heard the concern in his voice and knew her father shared the same concern. Most in the village did, even if they weren’t willing to speak of it.
“Probably because the draasin have drunk all of it,” Eshan said.
“The draasin have kept Ter from pushing this deep into Rens,” Fas said. “Were it not for them—”
“How are you so certain it’s the draasin that keep us safe?” Eshan asked. “They seem unconcerned about us and can reach the pools of water far sooner than we can. How many times have we found a source of water only to discover the draasin have been there first?”
“The draasin don’t attack us. That’s how we know,” Ciara said. The massive creatures of fire left the people of Rens mostly alone. Partly that was because Rens knew to hide when the draasin hunted, but there seemed another reason as well. “Without the draasin, Ter would have attacked us by now.”
Eshan grunted and leaned down to tie a loop of rope to the long nail that had long ago been embedded in the top of the rock. “What makes you think they want to attack us here? They’ve already taken everything of value Rens has to offer. What have we got that they want?”
He looped the rope behind him and wrapped his legs around it. Then he jumped over the edge, quickly rappelling to the ground.
Ciara sighed, removing Eshan’s rope while Fas unspooled his own. “He’s right, you know. What do we have that Ter wants?”
“They want our land,” Fas said.
Ciara finished tying Fas’s rope and stood, pointing out at the rock. “They wanted Jornas for its gold, and Pa’shu for the mills and stonework. They don’t want any of this. To them, we’re…” Ciara couldn’t finish and shook her head. What did Ter want? There was nothing this far into Rens for them, nothing other than the shifting sand of the waste. All that they had been was gone before Ciara had even been alive. “How much longer will the village survive, Fas? We’ve lost so many in my life; how many more can we stand to lose?”
“What would you have us do? Move everyone somewhere else?”
Ciara nodded as he wrapped the rope around his waist and looped it around his ankles. She’d dreamt of moving the village—a dark dream, but one that was filled with the promise of hope. Why must they remain here, waiting for the next attack, praying to the Stormbringer for the next rainfall? What if they didn’t have to live that way? “You know the stories of what lies beyond the waste.”
Fas laughed. “I know the stories as well as you, but they are only that: stories. You can’t really believe that we can move beyond the waste,” he said. “There’s nothing but sand. There’s no water there.”
But there were stories of men who survived crossing the waste, men seen wandering and returning with stories of places of great power. A part of Ciara wanted that power more than anything else, wanted to know if there might be something her people could learn, some way that might not only keep them safe and provide the water they needed but also give them a chance to flourish. Staying here, living on the edge of the waste, they merely survived. And that wasn’t enough, that couldn’t be enough.
“I could find water in the waste,” she said.
Fas smiled at her. “If anyone could, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was you.”
He jumped from the top of the rock, sliding down to the ground quickly. Once down, he pulled on the rope twice to signal to her that she could follow.
Ciara took a moment and sat at the edge of the tower of rock, staring out over Rens. Now that she was alone, there was a certain peace here, a sense of calm. Almost she could imagine staying here, living at this place on the edge of the waste where her people had made a home. Almost. But she wanted more. Not only for her—that was part of it, but not the only part—but for the village. Her father, a man who’d given up so much in his time as ala’shin, leader of the village. Friends who were nearly family. But herself as well, if she were being honest. Staying here, along the waste, there was nothing for her. Only more searching, always searching for water, never finding enough. Staying here meant fighting for survival, not living.
Water seeking took focus and time, but she’d been doing it for so long that it came naturally to her. Standing this high above the hard ground gave her a better vantage to see and also allowed her to reach farther. She focused on the sense of water around her, starting as she always did on the blood flowing through her veins. From there, she sensed the others in the village, Fas and Eshan nearest to her, and then those farther or in the caverns. Her father was a familiar sense, and she noted the relaxed pulsing from him.
Beyond the people around her was the occasional animal and the scattered plants that had a faint pulsing of water, but nothing more. Nothing that would sustain the village. From here, she was able to reach south to the waste, north toward Ter, and east and west, straining for the emptiness around them. She sensed no water.
The only hope the village had was for rain, but the cloudless sky didn’t look as if rain was likely. The Stormcallers claimed rain was imminent, but they always said that when there was a shortage. How much longer could they hold out?
Ciara was wrapping the length of rope around her waist, studying the sky, when she saw a distant dark shadow circling. She sat back and watched as the draasin made a large loop, spiraling once, twice, and then moving south and disappearing.
She smiled as she slid down the rope. The draasin was a sign—it had to be. If the enormous creature could find water to the south, and water enough to keep it alive, then there was no reason that she couldn’t find water for the village, was there?
“Did you see it?” she asked Fas.
“See what?”
She pointed to the cloudless sky. “Draasin. And moving south.”
Fas stared for a moment, cupping his hand over his eyes, and then turned back to her. “I don’t see it. And there’s not water enough to the south for the draasin. They avoid the waste the same as us.”
“But this one didn’t.”
“Ciara—” Fas said.
She shook her head, already starting past him and toward the village. Her father should know and should understand what she’d seen. If the draasin could find water to the south, they could as well. Maybe the rumors of water beyond the waste were more than rumors.
Fas hurried to keep up. He’d slipped his j’na, his long, carved spear tipped with osidan, back into its sleeve behind his back and looked every bit the nya’shin. “You know he won’t send us. The Stormcallers say—”
She rounded on him, stopping him. “The Stormcallers seem to think we’ll have rain any day now, don’t they?” she snapped. How could they be looked to for advice when they were wrong so blasted often? They claimed the ability to listen to the clouds, that they could hear the coming storms, but they were rarely right.
“They say the storms are difficult this time of year,” Fas said.
The storms were difficult at all times of the year. Ciara suspected there was more to it than that. She just didn’t know what.
They reached the entrance to the caverns, and the temperature dropped as she hurried inside. The rising sun pushed a circle of light into the caverns before stopping altogether, leaving dense shadows broken by a few small lanterns. Smoke trailed toward the top of the cavern, hovering there like a cloud. Rain was more likely to fall from there than from the sky outside.
Her father caught her in the hall. His elouf couldn’t hide the fact that he remained a muscular man. S
treaks of gray ran along his temples and worry lines were prominent around the corners of his eyes. “I thought you were scouting today.”
“Climbed the rock,” she said.
“You did?”
Ciara glared at him, refusing to admit that she’d needed help the last few feet. “I did. And saw one of the draasin.”
“They have been… active… lately.”
Not only active, but strange as well. Once, the draasin had left her people alone, but lately, they seemed to almost chase them. It had been weeks since she’d last seen one of the draasin, though it was more recent than the last rainfall. She’d never considered what happened to them during extended droughts. Did they stay in a single place, or did they have another source of water? They were always more active following storms, but no one really knew whether that was because of the cooler air or for another reason. For all she knew, they searched for water, the same as her.
Her father motioned her to follow as they made their way back out of the cavern. They passed a circle of three elderly women with legs crossed, bent forward over a rolled parchment. The Stormcallers.
Ciara’s eyes lingered on them until her father pushed her forward. “This one was heading south.”
He paused, and his gaze darted back toward the Stormcallers. “South?”
She nodded. “You know what that means, don’t you? What if the stories are—”
He cut her off with a wave of his hand. “They are nothing but stories.”
“But if the draasin can find water to the south, we can too.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and glanced at Fas. “You believe this, too?”
“I don’t know. It seems impossible to think anything can survive out there.”
“Did you see it?” her father asked Fas.
“Not like Ciara. I had already descended. She was there alone.”
“Father, I don’t sense any water. And if we don’t have a storm soon…”
“Neither do I,” he said softly. They stepped out of the cavern and into the sunlight. “And there won’t be a storm. Not soon enough.”
Journey of Fire and Night (The Endless War Book 1) Page 2