Darkness Rising (The Endless War Book 2) (15 page)

“
W
hy do
you think I need your help?” Tarak asked Jasn.

He was a small man with narrow-set eyes and a high, sloping forehead he tried to hide with long hair combed forward. He crossed his arms as Jasn appeared at the door, and tried to push him back.

Jasn didn’t know Tarak well. He was one of the order but had specialized skill in healing. In that way, he was much like Jasn. “Calan thought I could help.”

“You? You’ve been here”—he squinted, squeezing his lips together as he considered Jasn—“a month or two, and you think there is something you can do to help? I know you helped Wyath when he was injured, but that was before I’d returned.”

“Not only Wyath.”

Tarak waved his hand at Jasn, shooing him away like he was nothing more than a child. “Return to your lessons. There’s nothing you can do to help me.”

Jasn pushed into the room. He was well over a head taller than Tarak and didn’t like the idea of simply shoving past him, but he grew tired of trying to explain himself to everyone in this place. “I was the one who healed Thenas,” he said as Tarak started to object, running around Jasn to stand in front of him again. “I trained with Oliver. Now, where is Ifrit? Calan thought I would be able to help.”

“Oliver?” he said.

The room was different than many of the others. Rows of cots were set up, leaving it something like a hospital, though Jasn hoped there would never be a need for so many beds. If all were filled, it would mean that most within the barracks had been injured. Pots of oil were set into the wall, heated with shapings that gave the air a sickly, familiar odor that reminded him of the time spent in Atenas. Only one of the cots had anyone on it.

Jasn made his way to Ifrit. He only knew of her and was surprised to see she was young and had the dark complexion of someone who lived along the border with Rens. Black hair spilled around her shoulders. She breathed slowly but was otherwise motionless.

“You can tell Calan that I’ve done what I can,” Tarak said.

“I don’t doubt that,” Jasn said, “but let me see if I can help.” He looked over to the small healer and forced a smile. “Listen, I mean no disrespect. All that I want is to help.”

Tarak watched him for a moment. “How long did you study with Oliver?”

“Three years.”

“And you’re here now?”

Jasn nodded and turned his attention back to Ifrit. “Healing… Well, it wasn’t for me.”

He took Ifrit’s shoulders between his hands and squeezed gently, connecting to her. She was soft and warm, but he immediately sensed the injuries within her. Tarak’s healing layered atop her, essentially preventing her from dying, but it would not save her. It wasn’t crude—Jasn could tell the man had some training—but Oliver would have found it distasteful.

“Fluid sits around her heart,” he said to himself, “and the fracture of her leg is significant. She has lost much blood.”

“Fluid?” Tarak asked.

Jasn ignored him as he readied a shaping. Once he started, he would need to work quickly. It was much like what had been necessary with Wyath, only this time Jasn didn’t have someone else to help stabilize the healing.

With a surge of water, he stripped away the shaping that Tarak had done. Ifrit gasped and then her breathing stopped.

“What have you done?” Tarak shouted. “Do you know how long that took to hold?”

Jasn used a different shaping of water and began layering it over Ifrit. He began by removing the fluid around her heart. If he left it alone, the pressure would limit her breathing. It might be the reason she failed to improve already. With another shaping, he sent waves rolling through her, starting at her heart because it seemed the most injured and running out from there in all directions.

Tarak grabbed him, and Jasn threw him off using a shaping of earth.

He continued to press, pulling through his shaping, but he couldn’t draw enough water on his own. Reaching for water he sensed around him, he felt it stirring deep within him, and he called to it. At first it didn’t answer, but slowly, it built before running through him in gradually increasing waves that he directed through Ifrit.

This shaping didn’t require the same strength as the one he’d used on Wyath, but there was a different level of skill involved. That had been brute force and power. Without it, Wyath wouldn’t have survived. This was the soft caress of rain, the pulling of the current as he stepped in a stream, and he directed it, controlled it.

Ifrit took another breath and he stepped back.

Jasn released the shaping and looked around, but Tarak was gone.

“What are you doing here?” Ifrit asked. Even recovered, her voice was strong and commanding.

“Calan asked me to help.”

She rolled to her side and started to sit. Jasn placed a hand on her shoulder to keep her from moving too much. Healing like he’d used would take days to recover from.

“Step back, student,” she said.

“Not here,” he said. “You need to rest.”

She resisted a moment and then fell onto her back. “Why did Calan ask you to help?”

“Because I was a healer once.”

“You? I’ve heard the stories, Volth. There’s no healing in what you did.”

“No,” he agreed. “But before. There was before.”

She took a few deep breaths. “Where is Calan? Did he chase the draasin?”

“What draasin?”

“It escaped. We were…” She looked up at him as if debating what she should share. “No matter. Bad enough the damn thing escaped, but it was injured, too. Calan should have gone after it.”

Jasn wondered if that was where Calan had been going when he’d found him. He’d made a comment about making sure that Ifrit would survive but hadn’t he been equipped as if he were planning something? Was that where Alena had gone? When she’d sent him back to the barracks, making a point of
suggesting
that he return rather than directing him to—a sharp change from how she’d spoken to him in the past—she hadn’t said where she was going other than alluding to the fact that she had something else she needed to do. If it wasn’t the draasin, then what else would it be?

He touched Ifrit’s arm, sending a sensing of earth and water through her as he did, and nodded mostly to himself. “The healing will leave you weakened for a few days,” he said, beginning to tell her what he’d told countless others while studying in Atenas. “You will need rest and plenty of food.”

In that way, it was much like shaping, only with shaping, there was a period of recovery. Normally when he worked a shaping like he’d used on Ifrit, he would be tired, unable to shape for a little while, even if only for a few hours. At least now he didn’t feel quite as wiped. Was that because he had grown as a shaper in his time in the barracks or because he hadn’t shaped her himself? What price did he pay for using the power of the elementals?

Ifrit brushed him off and sat up. Already she seemed stronger than she had before. She shouldn’t be quite so refreshed already, but maybe Tarak’s healing had held more than he realized. The man
had
managed to stabilize her wounds and keep her mostly safe.

“Do you think this is the first time I’ve required healing?”

“I tell everyone the same. It’s up to you to decide whether you’ll listen.”

“Everyone?” she asked. “You’re a soldier, not of the guild.”

“A soldier now,” he agreed. “Anyway, that doesn’t change the fact that you should rest.”

He turned away. Now that Ifrit had been healed, he had an urge to see what Calan had been doing. Calan didn’t seem the sentimental type, so Jasn hadn’t expected the man to worry about whether Ifrit would be well. But then, Jasn didn’t know Calan all that well, only what he knew from rumor.

He reached the door and pulled it open, stopping when Ifrit called to him.

“What was that?” she asked.

Jasn turned. “I didn’t say anything.”

A frowned furrowed her cheeks. “I thought I heard…” She shook her head, looking at her hands and turning them over.

Jasn watched her for a moment, and when she said nothing more, he left her alone.

The winds outside had shifted, carrying a hint of warmth from the south that mixed with a piney scent coming out of the mountains. The steady clang of swords rang out through the barracks as students practiced. Jasn had no interest in joining them, not after completing a healing. Besides, he’d spent countless days practicing with his sword, and so far he’d barely ever even used it. The weapon was a relic of a time long past, when men fought without shaping. The battle for the front had been done with shaping. Other than watching how Calan used his sword, he’d rarely actually seen anyone attack with it.

Where was Calan anyway? If he blamed the draasin for Ifrit’s injury, then it was likely that he
would
go after them, even if the attack hadn’t been intended to harm them. And Bayan. Jasn needed to find her and learn what she might know of Katya.

He found himself along the edge of the camp, stopped where the barracks’ shaper circle had been erected. The stone circle was much like the draasin pen, infused with shapings of earth, trapping it in place to prevent damage while using shapings of lightning to travel. It was much like the one in Atenas, though the stones in the barracks were less polished, and if anything, the earth shaping infused into them was more solid. Jasn wasn’t entirely surprised given what he’d seen from the barracks and how skilled the shapers were.

Bayan sat on a fallen log at the edge of the forest, staring into the trees. That wasn’t quite right, he realized. She stared
up
and into the trees.

When he neared, she sighed. “How is Ifrit?”

Jasn took a seat next to her. What brought her out here? “Healed, as far as I could tell.”

“Tarak healed her?”

“No.”

“So you haven’t completely given up healing.”

“Even if I wanted nothing to do with it, I don’t think healing will give me up.”

Bayan looked away from the trees and considered him for a moment, then turned her focus back to the forest.

“Why did you come out here?” he asked.

“I needed a chance to reflect.”

“On what?”

She shrugged. “On the reason that I’m here.”

Jasn chuckled, moving on the log so that it didn’t press painfully into his backside. Water sensing told him that Bayan’s heart fluttered, as if she was nervous. Earth sensing told him of the sweat slicking her neck and her palms.

“What did you see? What has gotten to you?”

“I didn’t—”

Jasn faced her, straddling the log. “Do you think I can’t tell? You saw something that upset you. Does it have to do with what happened to Ifrit?”

Bayan sighed and didn’t turn to meet his eyes. “There are things you can’t understand yet, Jasn. You haven’t been here long enough. You might have passed the first trial”—the soft cough as she said it made clear her surprise—“but you don’t understand what the barracks are.”

“And you do? How long have you been here, Bayan? How long will it take me to understand?”

She closed her eyes. “Too long. I’ve been here too long. When the scholars came to me, suggested that I had the potential to train here, I was like you. I knew nothing about the barracks. Even after I’d been here a few weeks, realizing how much
more
the others knew, things I hadn’t even realized were possible while studying in Atenas, I still knew nothing.” She opened her eyes and looked over to him. “Do you realize I had been here nearly a year before I learned they hunted draasin? An entire year.” Her voice went softer as she remembered. “When I first discovered it, I remember how terrified I was.” She offered a sad smile. “I didn’t serve along the front nearly as long as you. I never really became accustomed to seeing the draasin. I’m sure that after enough time, you become immune to that fear.”

“Not immune,” he answered. “There’s always the terror when you see the distant draasin. I don’t know if that terror will ever completely go away, or whether it even should.”

“I saw how you were when you first saw the draasin here. You weren’t like most who come through. You didn’t seem bothered by them at all.”

“The first one I saw here was small. Little more than a hatchling.” Jasn had found draasin eggs while serving along the front. Searching for their nests was one of his assignments, though not one he’d been particularly good at. Others were more skilled finding them. Jasn was mostly skilled at not dying.

Bayan sniffed. “And even the hatchlings can kill. I’ve seen draasin no larger than the one we had in the small pen tear through a dozen shapers before getting dragged down. A dozen! So when it was explained to me that one of the things I would be learning here would be how to hunt the draasin, you can imagine how frightened I was.” She sat silent for a moment, staring at her hands. She shook her head as she did.

“Why are you telling me this, Bayan?”

“Because you asked. And because you need to understand the barracks in a different way than you do. When I came, there was only one draasin. The smallest. Calan had captured it and had brought it here, wanting to train his students.”

“Calan? Not Alena?” He would have expected the draasin to all have come here because of Alena. Why wouldn’t Calan have simply killed them? The man had an intensity to him about the draasin, one that almost bordered on anger. It was a sentiment that Jasn shared, or
had
shared, before coming here, before knowing anything more about Katya. He didn’t know how he felt now.

“Calan. He found it deep in the waste and managed to drag it here. Alena wanted to study it, learn from it, and see if they could find weakness. I think Calan is still angry that Cheneth sided with Alena.”

“Then the draasin haven’t been here all that long?” He had thought the draasin had been in the camp since it had been founded, but Alena hadn’t been here that long. Were there others who spoke to the draasin as well, or was she the only one?