Darkness Rising (The Endless War Book 2) (11 page)

T
he air whistled
in Ciara’s ears, reminding her of when she’d fallen from the side of the rock. It was hot and gusted past the draasin’s dark scales, off the massive spikes protruding from its back, leaving thin streamers of mist in the air. Ciara clutched one of the spikes, not knowing what else to do.

Somehow, she still held her j’na. It had caught between her and the draasin, and her chest pressed against the long length of carved wood, pushing painfully. She shifted one of her hands and grabbed the middle of the spear, pulling it to the side, where it settled between a pair of spikes.

She turned her head and nearly vomited. The ground was impossibly far below, nothing more than a streak of reddish brown, with occasional flashes of color. She couldn’t tell which direction they flew and ducked her head to keep her gorge down.

“Please,” she begged softly, “bring me back down.” The words caught in the wind and were blown away, disappearing like nothing more than a sigh.

The draasin streaked through the air, at one point tilting as it flew, the massive wings beating at the air, sending her clutching at the spikes again, determined to hang on. If she lost her grip, she’d drop to the ground, and she doubted there would be anything any magical lizard could do to help her then.

After what seemed an eternity, the draasin began to descend. They circled a few times, moving ever more slowly before settling to the ground with another burst of wind, this time mixed with a spray of dust and what felt like water.

Ciara trembled against the draasin’s side, afraid to even move. As the draasin lowered its head and waited, she lifted her j’na and climbed from its back, dropping to the ground.

Was this where her people had gone? Had the draasin brought her here to find them?

But this didn’t seem a place where they could have been taken. Lush grass grabbed at her feet. Not cracked and browned, but fresh and vibrant. She took a hesitant step away from the draasin, each step feeling like walking on mud, but softer and more pleasant. Once she moved away from the draasin, the air had a pleasant scent to it: none of the hot, bitter smell of dust and dirt that she was accustomed to smelling so close to the waste.

A cool breeze swept around her, brushing back her hair and carrying the taste of salt. Ciara stood motionless with her eyes closed, letting the wind play around her shoulders, tugging on her hair and sliding through her elouf. When she shivered, she opened her eyes.

The draasin had gone. It circled overhead, flying in a dark spiral before moving off toward the west.

She was left alone.

She shivered again, this time not because of the cool nip to the air.

A series of questions raced through her mind, none with answers.

What had happened? Her father claimed they had summoned the draasin, but if they had, then why had it not remained? Where had it brought her? How would she ever manage to make it home? And where were the rest of her people?

More than she ever had while stranded on the waste, Ciara felt alone.

“What have we here?”

Ciara spun, raising her j’na and preparing to throw it. A tall man appeared before her, covered in long, flowing robes that seemed woven of the hides of strange animals, stripes of silvers and browns meeting in long, ornate seams. He had a bald head and dark skin and stood barely a dozen paces from her.

How had he approached without her knowing?

Maybe it was the shadow man. She had assumed she hadn’t sensed his heartbeat because she’d been disconnected from water, the dry and hot air diminishing her ability to sense, but now she doubted that was the case at all.

She focused on water, listening for the connection, reaching for the way water pulsed within this man. It was faint and slow, but the sense was there, a steady and distinct rhythm. Ciara found herself relaxing but held the j’na on her shoulder, ready to throw.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

The man tipped his head, studying her as he did. “I would think the question should be mine to ask. You arrive near my home, dressed like that and holding a weapon aimed at me.” His words had the sharp edge of an accent, fast and clipped. He glanced at the sky, his eyes widening as he caught the fading shadow of the draasin. “You are a rider.”

“A what?”

He looked back to her. His eyes were a deep brown, the color of the wet rock that she so rarely saw in her part of Rens. “Are you not? Is that not why you’ve come?”

Ciara couldn’t decide if he sounded interested or scared. She glanced toward the sky, looking to see what he might have meant, but saw nothing. The draasin had disappeared, leaving her stranded with this strange man and feeling a rising uncertainty. Should she summon the draasin again? She had her j’na and she remembered the way her father had tapped the spear into the ground, the flash of light and the steady drawing of power that came with it, but what if it didn’t work here? What if the summons only worked in the desert, near where the draasin could be found?

“I don’t know why I’m here,” she answered softly. She lowered her j’na; she wasn’t going to attack this man, not without knowing where she was and what she might find. Besides, water sensing told her she wasn’t alone, that there were others nearby. Even were she to attack, it was likely she would be overrun by whomever this man was with. “The draasin brought me here.”

He turned toward the sky, which was full of thick, white clouds that actually blotted out the sun, staring for long moments and saying nothing. When he finally did speak, he didn’t take his eyes off the sky. “Fire. You speak to it, yes?”

Did he think she could actually speak to the draasin? Her father had shown her some of how he called to them, but that was different, wasn’t it? “I don’t speak to it.”

“You must speak to fire. Otherwise, how would you ride?”

“I don’t know what I did.”

His gaze jumped to her j’na. “You must know something. You come by fire.”

She looked at the draasin glass, not sure what to say. “I don’t know how I came here.”

The man crossed his hands beneath his belly, tucking his hands into his sleeves. “If you are not a rider, how are you here?”

Ciara looked around. Trees taller than some of the rock formations scattered throughout her part of Rens rose in the distance. The strange, soft grass stretched all around, sweeping in gentle rises, some growing much taller. Yellow flowers bloomed in some places, and she recognized their fragrance on the wind that carried with it the hint of salt. In the distance, she felt water so massive that she thought she must be imagining it.

“I search for my people,” she answered.

The man frowned and then glanced to the sky. “Your people will not be found here, Rider.”

“Where am I?” she asked, not looking back at the strange man. The draasin had brought her here, and if what her father said about them was true, that they were powerful and intelligent creatures of light, creatures that battled against the darkness, then the draasin must have had a reason, hadn’t it? But why, when this was so far from anyplace she’d ever been, and so different than anything she could ever have imagined?

“Where?” the man repeated. “You do not recognize these lands?”

Ciara shook her head. There were stories about places like this. Old Rens was said to once have been a lush land much like this, a place where water ran in wide rivers through the old cities, where trees much like she saw in the distance grew tall and proud, and where life flourished. That had been long ago, before the war, before the cities were built, before her people struggled with each day, begging the Stormbringer for the rains that brought life to the desert. That had been a time before the nya’shin, when her people had thrived. So much had changed, and so much had been lost.

“I’ve never seen anything like them,” she said. “But they are beautiful.”

“You have only been here moments and you think the lands of Tsanth beautiful?” He tipped his head. “If beauty will hold back fire…” he started before shaking his head and clenching his jaw. “You have seen nothing, Rider. Let me show you beautiful. Let me show you why you should not harm us.”

The man started away from her before Ciara could object and tell him she had no interest in harming anyone, heading through the grass toward a trail that Ciara couldn’t see. The man seemed to know where it was intuitively and weaved through grasses that rose ever higher, quickly reaching above her shoulder and then above her head. A narrow space was worked between the grasses, wide enough for her to walk, and she followed, fearful of losing him. If she did, she doubted she would find her way back. These tall grasses were so high that she could easily imagine wandering for days, losing herself as she struggled to find her way free.

Yet as she walked, she had the sense of something. There was a strange warmth to the air that lingered where they walked. It eased if she stepped off the trail, only to return when she came back to it. Ciara could almost close her eyes and sense her way along, not by the sense of water but by the warmth she detected.

At one point, she bumped into the man as she followed him. He glanced back and smiled at her.

“Where are we going?” Ciara asked.

“You would learn of Tsanth? Is that not why you came? Or did you come for another reason?” He looked to the sky again and made a motion with his hands.

“What is Tsanth?”

“Is that not why you’ve come?”

He had a strange way of speaking. Not only the clipped and rapid way he asked questions, but the smile that punctuated everything he said. He continued forward, leading her as he walked, and she realized heat radiated from him as well.

“I came…” she started, but was unsure
why
she had come. Fas was hurt. The summons of her father using his j’na. And the draasin. Hadn’t she come to find the rest of her people, those taken before her return? Wasn’t
that
why he had summoned the draasin? “The draasin brought me here.”

“Brought you, but perhaps you still can choose for yourself.”

The man went onward, and the grasses began to change, no longer quite as high or as thick, but the trail of heat she sensed, for some reason, didn’t change. He weaved through the grasses, and as they began to thin and lead away from the taller grasses and the bright yellow flowers, she noted another trail, one tamped down by feet over time.

She realized they neared the trees. At first, she thought he might lead her into them, and she wasn’t sure how she would feel about that. She’d never seen trees as tall as those that grew here, high enough that they could scrape the belly of the draasin as it soared overhead, but the man turned away from them and continued to march along the edge of the denser grass. Mixed with the heat that Ciara noted was a sense of water. It was different even than the massive source she detected. Ciara couldn’t believe such stores existed and suspected that something about these lands had twisted her ability to detect water.

They topped a small rise about the same time Ciara began to feel the earliest hint of thirst. Again, she walked without a water skin. It was much like when she had wandered through the waste without water, but then, it had been an accident. This time, she had traveled without even bringing one along.

And it was not only the waterskin that she missed, but the heat as well. Her thin elouf—normally perfect for keeping her cool in the heat of the desert—allowed the cold wind to penetrate easily. She shivered against the cold, wishing for something more, perhaps something like the man’s hide cloak, but she was nya’shin. She could handle the change in temperature and would be fine.

As the ground sloped away, she saw buildings in the distance. Water was there, somewhere at the heart of the buildings, enough to sustain a village. Not only a source of water, but a stream, an actual wide stream that flowed toward the buildings so that they sprawled out and around the water.

She hadn’t realized that she stopped until the man grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her forward.

“This is why you have come, yes?” he said, nodding to the village. “K’ral. My home. The people are kind, much like me. You will see. They will not harm fire. Fire must not harm K’ral.”

As they neared the buildings, the sense of water all around her became overwhelming. She was accustomed to only the faintest amounts of it. After the rains, she might detect more, perhaps enough to tug at her senses and make it difficult to focus on the people of the village, but never enough to fully obscure the village. The water that she sensed below overwhelmed her, making it difficult for her to focus on anything else.

Mixed into it, though, was the strange awareness of the heat rising from the trail she followed. Why should she notice something like that? What did it mean for her that she did?

Probably nothing. These lands were so different from Rens, different enough that she might simply be imagining the change in temperature coming off them.

Ciara stopped about a hundred feet from the outer buildings. She didn’t need water sensing to know that countless others were down in the village, more than were in
her
village. “I should not be here,” she said. “Let me return—”

“Return?” the man said. “You will go for the draasin now?” His voice quavered as he spoke.

“Not the draasin,” Ciara said. “All I want is—”

“I know what you want, Rider. Now we must see if we can convince you otherwise.”

“But I’m not a rider,” Ciara said, chasing after the man.

He glanced back. “I watched as you descended. You are a rider, or you are a
rider
.”

What was this about? Why had the draasin brought her here?