Darkness Rising (The Endless War Book 2) (23 page)

“Shadow?” Jasn asked. When she nodded, he said, “Not Rens?”

Cheneth closed his eyes again. “I thought we had more time, but it appears we do not. Could the student’s attack have weakened her enough for Tenebeth to make his move here?”

“Tenebeth?” Volth asked.

Cheneth’s eyes opened. “There are things that I have tried to understand. That is the reason that I came here in the first place, but the answers weren’t to be found here, even with the drive to hunt elementals. Who would have believed that a mythical threat could be real?”

“What are you saying, Cheneth?” she asked. “What is this Tenebeth?”

He sighed. “It is what none of us are ready for. The reason for this endless war, I think, though I do not yet know how. The elementals know something, but even they have not provided answers.”

“Cheneth?” Alena asked.

He sighed again, “Tenebeth is a name from the old tongue for the darkness. A creature that opposes the light.”

“Creature?” Jasn asked. “Like the draasin?”

“Not like the draasin. The draasin are elementals, drawn from the power of the elements. Tenebeth is different. Greater in some ways, but limited, too. There have always been those with access to the darkness, much like there are those who access the light.”

Alena wondered if that was what Cheneth thought those able to speak to the elementals were. She didn’t feel particularly connected, but what did she really know?

“Which are you?” Jasn asked Cheneth.

Cheneth frowned.

Jasn leaned forward, nodding at Cheneth. “I’ve seen the power you possess, old man. Tell me, which are you?”

Cheneth pulled his glasses from his face and changed. Alena suddenly understood what she saw. He appeared brighter, more real, if that were possible. “Tell me, Jasn Volth, Wrecker of Rens, voice of water, what do you think?”

Alena took a step toward Cheneth, not willing to let go of the egg. The warmth pulsing through it seemed to flow with the beating within her chest, and she felt its steady draw of fire from her. She should be more weakened from it—there were limits to shaping, after all—but the fact that she wasn’t told her that whatever connection Jasn had forged between them still held, giving her the strength she needed to keep going. What would happen if that connection failed? Would she be too weak to shape, or would she be able to find a way to continue?

And what would happen to the draasin egg? Would it draw all her strength and leave her dead? That was what it had felt like when she’d been in the cavern. The egg had pulled all the shaping from her, draining more than what she’d ever thought herself capable of pulling, to the point where it began drawing her heat. Jasn had saved her with the connection and the healing it brought.

“What are you, Cheneth?” she asked. She couldn’t take her eyes off him now that she saw it. He practically glowed. “You’re no scholar, are you? And not a warrior—”

“No, I am neither. Where I come from, I am considered one of the enlightened.”

C
iara had managed
to find one hard surface on the outskirts of K’ral. It was located at the base of a collection of massive boulders, which were stacked to the north of the town as if placed there. She climbed to the top, feeling each stone shift as she did. It was not nearly as high or the view nearly as dizzying as what she’d experienced while in Rens, but she hoped to use the rock and see if she could find a way to call the draasin. All she needed was for it to answer, then maybe it would realize she needed to return to Rens.

The rock she stood upon was unstable and rocked softly each time she moved her feet, but none of the others were large enough to support her. She held her j’na carefully, not willing to release the shaft of the spear, and snapped the spear into the rock as she had seen her father do. The spear bounced off the stone, sending her rocking slightly, forcing her to steady herself before she could take the next step.

The next time, the same thing happened. Ciara snapped the spear, and then she felt the stone beneath her move, requiring that she position her feet in just such a way that she didn’t slip. Maintaining balance took most of her focus, and she doubted she would be able to continue with the regular pattern her father had demonstrated when they had called the draasin, but the ground all around the village was too soft for her to try summoning the draasin anywhere else.

“What are you doing?”

Nevan stood on the ground beneath the stack of rocks, watching her with a bemused expression. He had dark eyes that appeared even darker from the way the sun slanted overhead, and the curious smile slipped as she snapped the shaft of her spear into the stone once more.

Nothing happened. At least not as she needed it to happen. There was no sense of power and no rhythm, and that had seemed to be the key when she had summoned the draasin before. If she couldn’t replicate that, then the whole exercise was pointless.

“Apparently nothing.” Ciara carefully made her way down and stopped next to Nevan. As usual, he wore a dark robe similar to the one Olina had lent her, but Nevan’s fit him snugly, revealing his muscular frame. In some ways, he reminded her of Fas.

“Do you know what these are?” he asked.

Ciara shook her head. “Am I supposed to?”

Nevan pointed to the stack of rocks, waving his hand at them. “These have been here since… Well, since Tsanth has been here. There are some who claim that creator himself placed them here when darkness still covered everything.”

“Why leave them?” Ciara suddenly felt even more uncomfortable about climbing on the rock. She shouldn’t have used this spot, not that it had worked all that well anyway. “If the darkness is everything that Olina says, why not take them down?”

“They are a reminder to others across Tsanth of the power of the darkness and what the world would be like without the light.”

“You said they are a reminder of what it was like before?”

Nevan shrugged. “Olina teaches that Tenebeth once controlled everything, that darkness once was common. That changed, though no one really knows why. She teaches tell of a great change, a time where light came into being, pushing back the night. Tenebeth lost power, ceding it to light.” He smiled. “She claims that Tenebeth seeks to return to his previous glory.”

“What do you think?”

“I think there is much in the world that we don’t understand. I have seen the power that darkness has. In some ways, it’s more than the light.” He shrugged. “Olina says others of Hyaln can explain it better.”

“I would like to visit Hyaln,” Ciara decided. If they understood the shadow man and what he might want with her, then that was where she needed to go.

“Only those chosen by someone already of Hyaln may go.”

“Where is it?”

Nevan shifted slightly in place, so that he looked north. His movement was so subtle, Ciara wasn’t even certain she had seen it. Maybe he had been looking north this whole time? “I don’t know.” Nevan glanced up at the rocks and then back to Ciara. “You haven’t said what you were doing here.”

“I was trying to summon the draasin,” she answered.

Nevan took a step back, eyeing her j’na warily. “Did it work? Is one of the draasin coming?”

“I don’t think you have anything to fear. I’m not sure I know enough to summon one.”

“But you’re a rider!”

“Who was helped by my father. He knew how to summon them, but I do not. I thought by coming here, I might…” She stopped before telling him why she had come. She thought she understood why the draasin brought her here—to learn the real threat of the darkness and find help. Thanks to Olina’s teachings, she understood more than she had before, but now she could not return to her home. What did it matter that she’d learned?

“Why here? There are better places farther from K’ral that you could go. Why risk the people of the town as you summon? What happens if you succeed?”

Ciara hadn’t given much thought to the outcome. So far, she’d managed to get her spear stuck in the mud and had nearly fallen from rocks that she now learned were thought to be the shadow man’s. Even had she succeeded, would it have helped?

“I need a flat, hard surface.”

Nevan looked up to the rock again and pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I know of a better place,” he suggested, “but it will be difficult for us to reach.”

“You would show me?”

Nevan stared at her j’na before answering. “If you’ll teach me what you do to summon the draasin, then I’ll show you what I can.”

N
evan led
Ciara up a steep dirt slope. She hadn’t expected the climb to be so difficult, but the rain had made the grass slick and she slipped down the side of the slope for every two steps she climbed. Progress was slow, almost painfully so.

“Not much farther now,” he said.

Nevan didn’t seem to have the same difficulty with the climb. Even in his dark robe, he made his way up the side without panting as Ciara did and without requiring the balance of the j’na, as she did. The blasted man almost seemed to be having fun with her. In that way, he reminded her much more of Eshan than Fas.

“I thought you said there would be flat rock,” Ciara said, grunting with the next step.

“There will be. Patience, Rider.”

She grunted again. She could only be a rider if she summoned the draasin. So far, she had only managed to do so once. If she could call them again, she could return to Rens. Until then, she didn’t even know how to begin finding her way back. Olina hadn’t shared anything about where Tsanth was in relation to Rens, so walking was out of the question. Ciara didn’t know where to begin, or even how long it would take. That meant reaching the draasin and somehow finding a way to speak to them if they answered her summons. Only then would she be able to make it back.

She continued up the sides of the slope. It was less steep here, and she was better able to keep up with Nevan but still had to lean on her j’na as she walked, hurrying after him with cautious steps rather than rushed. The one time she got careless, she slipped back a dozen steps. With the soft, wet ground, retracing her steps was harder than making them the first time, forcing her off the path and onto new, still-damp grass.

Blast this place! She imagined reaching the summit only to find that Nevan had brought her to a small rock surface, barely enough for her to try the summoning pattern her father had demonstrated. That would do her no better than attempting the pattern on the rocks.

She reached the peak and found Nevan waiting for her. One hand was tucked into deep pockets on his robe and the other was busy smoothing the robe down. Water dripped off as he did. “That took you longer than I would have expected.”

“Really? How long did you think it would take me?”

He shrugged. “The children of K’ral can make it up faster than me. I thought you said Rens was a hard land?”

“Hard. Not wet. I haven’t learned to walk with all this water.”

Nevan smiled. “You think this is water? You should see Gulan Lake. It takes days to paddle across.”

He pointed to the west as he spoke. Ciara had already realized that east was the ocean. Not only could she sense the massive expanse of water—if she focused on it, the huge swells were all that she felt—but she could taste the salt in the air. It had taken a few days to become accustomed to that. Somewhere north was Hyaln, at least if she was correctly reading the way Nevan shifted when she’d asked about it. And to the west was Gulan Lake.

What direction had she come in on the draasin? Ciara had lost track, clinging fearfully to its back and not wanting to fall, so that she hadn’t paid as much attention as she should have. Had she not been as scared as she was, she might have focused more, knowing from her time wandering through the waste that direction and the ability to return to the village were among the most important things she could recall.

“It’s more than I’m used to,” Ciara said.

“What’s it like in your home?” Nevan asked.

“Hot. These lands are…” Ciara tried to think of the right word. Not soft, though the ground
was
soft. That implied something she didn’t think of the Tsanth that she’d seen, at least considering the way that Olina didn’t appear scared of the shadow man. That took a different kind of hardness. “Soggy,” she chose. “We rarely see rain, and when it comes, it pools on the rock. The seekers collect it, storing it for the rest of the village.”

“Seekers?”

Ciara nodded. “Water seekers. Nya’shin.” She drew herself up, thinking how proud she had once been that she was made nya’shin. Now she was so long away from her home that she no longer knew if she would be nya’shin when she returned. Fas remained—if he lived—but there might not be enough of the village left for her to serve. Had her father managed to find the rest? Would he have been strong enough to save them?

She sighed bitterly to herself. Her father was likely much more capable than she had ever known. He had kept so much from her, so much that would have helped their people, hiding in the desert when he could have led them to strength and peace. What would have happened had Ciara never wandered into the waste? Would she have learned of the shadow man? Would her father have revealed what he knew? What he was capable of doing?

“You have to collect water?” Nevan asked.

She could hear the incredulity in his voice. It was much the same way that she felt when exposed to the vast riches of water she found throughout Tsanth. How could these lands have so much when her people had so little?

Ciara tried not to think of how the Stormbringer could do that to her people as she scanned the ground all around her, looking for the reason that Nevan had brought her up here. “Where is the hard rock you promised?”

Trees rose around her at the top of this slope. That didn’t do them justice, she decided. They towered over her. The trees were taller than any she had ever seen, taller even than anything she could imagine, rising high enough into the sky that the draasin would have been forced to climb over them. The thought of the draasin swooping around the tops of the trees brought a smile to her face.

“Not rock,” Nevan said.

He motioned her forward, and she followed. If there wasn’t any rock, how was she going to summon the draasin as she intended?

Shadows swallowed her as soon as she stepped under the canopy of the trees. Ciara shivered, thinking of the shadow man and the way his cold touch had crept through her, but here there was no cold, only the damp wetness she had come to associate with Tsanth. The ground became less and less soft the farther they walked, and Nevan weaved through the trees, stepping around and sometimes over roots that popped up out of the ground, some taller than her.

Then he stopped. “Here.”

Ciara looked around. They were in a denser part of the trees, but the sky opened up overhead. Somehow the ground beneath her feet was hard, almost as hard as the rock in Rens. The air was still wet, and she wondered how the ground remained dry.

“The roots come together here,” Nevan said. “It makes the ground hard, almost like rock. When you said you needed something hard, this was the first thing that came to mind. This forest is almost interwoven in a way. All the roots converge here, leading to this.” He stepped carefully along the roots. “We call it Talia’s Table, after the first to come to K’ral.”

Ciara walked along the roots. They were elevated here and ran together, almost perfectly parallel in sections, and relatively flat so that she could walk without difficulty. The open space was nearly fifteen paces across in all directions, much more than what she would need were she to use it to summon the draasin.

“Will it work?” Nevan asked.

Ciara slid her feet across the tops of the roots. Her boots caught, so she knew it wouldn’t be the same as what she had done while in Rens, but could she try?

She looked to the sky. With the opening between the trees, she would be able to see the draasin were it to come. She suspected it could land on the ground outside the trees. All she would have to do would be to find some way to speak to it. First, though, she would have to summon it.

“It might,” she said.

Nevan stepped back into the trees and waited.

“You want me to try now?”

Nevan frowned. “You want to climb that slope again? Are you sure that is—”

She cut him off with a sharp look and Nevan raised his hands, backing another step into the trees.

But he was right. She didn’t want to climb that again, not if she could help it. And she wanted to return to Rens. That meant that she needed to try to reach the draasin.

She started by making her way around the clearing in a steady circle, sliding her feet slowly as she did. After making the first loop, she set the end of her j’na to the root, snapping it with a quick flick of her wrist. The sound echoed through the trees and vibrated the roots beneath her feet. She took another soft step and flicked the spear again. The loud
crack
sent Nevan stepping forward.

“How do you do that?” he asked eagerly.

“It was something my father demonstrated.” Ciara continued forward, taking a step and snapping the j’na. She didn’t know why this should matter or why the j’na would summon the draasin, but this was what her father had done. Another step and another snap of her wrist, one after another. With each one, she began to fall into the rhythm, letting her feet slide and the j’na hit the roots. The steady
crack
sounded like branches breaking, and the roots continued to vibrate, leaving her feet tingling, but she did not stop.

Nevan started tracing her steps but without the j’na. He had a natural rhythm, but one that was different than hers. Shadows swirled around him that Ciara ignored, focusing on her steps and her movements.

She became aware of a change in the air. Heat sizzled each time she snapped her spear, and a soft mist began to rise around the end of the j’na and settled over the clearing. After a while, she was no longer aware of Nevan, though water sensing told her that he was still somewhere nearby and still moving in time with her. Her pulse quickened, and she felt the heat within her.

Ciara almost lost control of what she did then. Why would she be aware of heat within her veins? But it was not only within her, but within the trees around her, within the ground, even in the air with every breath that she took.

Her skin tingled, starting from her feet where the roots trembled and vibrated with each snap of the spear and working up through her legs and into her chest before settling deep within her mind.

The heat intensified. Ciara hesitated, her hand raised to snap the spear again, pausing as uncertainty filled her. Was she doing something wrong? She didn’t remember feeling this type of heat or this strange mist in the air when she had done this before, but she had been with her father then, and he had guided the steps. This time, she had followed her own sort of pattern. What if she had been wrong? What if she was doing the summoning incorrectly?

With the mist in the air, she couldn’t even be certain that she called the draasin. She could no longer see the sky, only a thick cloud around her, much like the dense fog that rolled into Rens before the rains came.

The mist started to ease as she hesitated, and the heat she felt around her—and
in
her—started to abate as well.

“Do not stop.”

The muted voice came from outside the mist and was filled with a strange power. Ciara recognized Olina’s voice even though it was muffled and changed as it came through the fog.

At Olina’s urging, she continued, taking another step, sliding her feet carefully along the roots, and snapping her wrist so the j’na cracked into them. The mist thickened again as if drawn by her movement. The heat began to rise once more, filling her body with the slow burn that she felt around her. It intensified, filling her mind, but not painfully.

“What is this?” Ciara asked, careful not to lose the rhythm of her movement. “Am I summoning the draasin?”

“Not the draasin,” Olina answered. “You are summoning something else, something I did not realize anyone still remembered how to call.”

“What?” Ciara asked.

But Olina didn’t need to answer. Ciara sensed the presence of the lizard in her mind.