Darkness Rising (The Endless War Book 2) (27 page)

But I didn’t ask.

You might not have known that you did, but the request was there.

Jasn didn’t know whether to be relieved or frightened that he had been asking for help all along without knowing it. What did that mean for him? What did that make him?

Maybe nothing, or maybe he had never changed quite so much as he had thought.

You say that I healed myself. What healing did I require?

Darkness had seeped within you.

Tenebeth?

Not the one you call Tenebeth, but tendrils of his power.

And now?

Now it is gone.

Others can be healed from the influence?

Not all. Some have embraced that power too strongly to return. You did not.

Jasn looked at Alena, who was speaking softly to Wyath. Both of them watched him, and neither appeared all that surprised that he was standing to the side, basically speaking to himself.

What of the draasin? Can those corrupted be returned?

Not by water.

Jasn sighed. He had thought they would be able to use the healing effect of water to help them.
Can you help us find her at least?

There is little that can be done. The Mother abandons those tainted by Voidan. Over time, they are returned to the source.

The Mother?

She is the source. She is the light.

Jasn shivered. He had never believed the dreck the priests claimed to know about the creator, but what if there was something more? The water elemental certainly seemed to believe there was a higher power. And Cheneth believed there was a darkness, what the priests would consider evil, that existed as well. Didn’t that make for a higher power?

Can you help us find her?
Jasn asked again.
The Mother might have abandoned her, but we have not.

The water elemental receded from his mind. Jasn worried that he might have offended it, but then it surged back into sharper focus, slipping into the forefront of his consciousness.

She is here.

An image appeared in his mind like a flash of light, and with it, Jasn knew where to find the draasin. From what he could tell, she was not far from him, not from where they were now.

He looked to Alena and Wyath and swallowed. “Water speaks to me.”

Wyath laughed softly. “I see that. And it is about time that it does. Most with the skill that you’ve shown develop the ability to speak long before now.”

“They said darkness had started to reach into me. It wasn’t until I healed myself that I was able to reach them.”

Wyath’s eyes narrowed. “You should not have been touched by Tenebeth…”

“I spent nearly a year along the border of Rens. Wouldn’t that have given Tenebeth access to me? Wouldn’t that have allowed me to be corrupted?”

Wyath glanced over to Alena and they met each other’s eyes. “We didn’t even know.”

“There could be others.”

“That’s not all that water told me. I know where to find the draasin.”

C
iara waited
for the lizard to appear from the mist and the fog, but it didn’t. She heard it deep within her mind, the sound as foreign to her now as it had been the very first time she’d heard it.

The heavy fog still hung in the air, and Ciara made certain to continue tapping with her j’na, sounding out the pattern she’d learned from her father. With each step, the fog intensified, growing thicker and denser and mixed with a familiar sort of heat.

Olina stood nearby. Ciara sensed her through the connection with water, not because she could actually see her.

“What is this?” Ciara asked.

“Do you hear them?”

She comes. The others follow.

Ciara’s breath caught.
Who comes? Olina?

She needs your help. And you must work with the others. This is why the Mother brought you here.

“What does it tell you?” Olina asked.

“Something comes.” Ciara continued tapping, moving with the steady rhythm that she’d seen only once before, sliding her feet across the rough surface of the roots and tapping the j’na with a steady crack of her wrist at each step. The fog muted the sound now, keeping it from spreading.

Olina stepped close to her, and Ciara no longer simply sensed her presence, she saw her vaguely outlined in the fog. “When you come to this place, there is only one thing that can come.”

“What
is
this place?”

Olina stepped into the middle of the circle that Ciara made and began walking the opposite direction. She dragged her staff as she went, moving steadily and with a different rhythm.

“Once it was a place of light, but that has changed over time. Now it is a place of darkness. Why did you come here?”

“I told Nevan that I needed a flat surface to attempt to summon the draasin.”

Olina hesitated, and as she did, the rhythm she created by dragging her staff changed, fading for a moment. The surge of power that had been coming from her faded with it. “That fool,” she said, though it seemed mostly to herself. “Does he really think that drawing him here would help him?”

“Drawing who here?”

“Tenebeth.”

Ciara was the one to stop this time and looked at Olina. She shivered at the thought of somehow calling the shadow man to her. Why would Nevan have led her here?

“Maybe he didn’t know,” she suggested.

“Keep moving,” Olina urged. “We will need all the help we can get.”

“For what?”

“To survive.”

Ciara continued in the steady pattern, working in a loop around the outer edge of the roots. Olina marched on the inside, and in something other than a circle.

“What do you summon?” Ciara asked.

“Help.”

You are not with Tenebeth, but what are you?
Ciara asked.

You must be ready, Nya’shin.
The lizard spoke the word like a name rather than a title and carried with it much of the tone of ancient Rens.

Ready for what?

As if in answer, a dark shadow drifted over the treetop, blotting out the light. A horrible cry echoed, bellowing out from the draasin.

“The draasin have come to help,” Ciara said excitedly to Olina.

The older woman lifted her staff and slammed it into the roots. A surge of wind exploded outward, and a massive, thundering crack tore through the forest. The fog dissipated, fading in the flash.

“Not this draasin.”

Ciara held her j’na poised to strike again, but she realized that it wouldn’t matter. What Olina had done had changed the summoning, turning it somehow. “I thought you said the draasin were the light? That they opposed the shadows?”

Olina tipped her staff toward the trees, and a blast of wind and another rumble of earth echoed from within. A low yelp sounded from deeper within the forest. Olina nodded with a satisfied smile. “Not all the draasin. Tenebeth claims all the power he can. Many have been lost.”

“The riders,” Ciara said.

Olina nodded and started into the trees at a hurried pace. “The riders.”

Ciara raced after the old woman and had to hurry to keep pace. How could she move so quickly at her age?

“Once, the wise had many riders and feared nothing from the draasin, but much has changed. The draasin no longer answer our summons. Darkness threatens to descend upon us.”

The draasin roared again, the sound tearing through Ciara’s ears and so different than any other draasin she’d ever heard. “This is my fault.”

“No. This is not your fault. You summoned, but not the draasin.”

“Then what did I summon?”

Olina paused long enough to look over at her, her mouth pinched. “Hopefully you summoned help.”

Olina continued through the trees, moving ever more quickly, and soon disappeared.

Ciara hurried after her but was slowed by the soggy ground that sucked at her boots. Her long cloak dragged across the ground as she walked, pulling leaves and debris with her. Every so often, the draasin roared, and each time, Ciara tensed, feeling the unsettling fear of what would happen if it descended.

She’d experienced the shadow man. What would it be like to experience a draasin twisted by him?

Ciara knew the answer: Terrifying.

She neared the edge of the trees and saw Olina standing in the middle of the grassy plain at the top of the hill she’d climbed up. Her staff swung around her head and periodically, she would slam it into the soft ground. Power exploded up from her, lifting the grasses and sending surges of earth and droplets of water into the air to rain back down upon them.

Ciara panted as she ran forward. She still felt the heat of her blood within her, but there was something else, the distant awareness of the lizard within her mind. That awareness grew steadily closer. Ciara wondered at that as well. What did it mean that she could hear the lizard within her mind?

Olina hesitated.

No, Ciara realized. She hadn’t hesitated. Something caught her in the back and she flung her arms up, losing her jainah as it went flying down the side of the hill.

Ciara looked around the clearing and saw Nevan standing near the shadowed edge of the trees, his arm cocked back, holding another rock.

Without thinking, Ciara flung her j’na at him.

Tipped with draasin glass, the spear flew straight, whistling through the air. It struck him in the shoulder and sent him spinning.

She raced toward him. He struggled on the ground and tried to pull the spear from his shoulder, but it had wedged deeply. Ciara kicked him in the stomach, sending him doubling over, and then kicked him again in the head until he lost consciousness.

She trembled. Nevan had been kind to her, hadn’t he?

Then again, Fas had been her friend, and she had seen the way the shadows had tainted him. The same way the shadows sought to taint her.

She grabbed her j’na and yanked it from Nevan’s shoulder.

As she turned back to Olina, she saw the draasin descending from the sky. It streaked toward Olina as she scrambled across the ground, searching for her jainah, but the staff had tumbled down the steep slope.

Ciara cocked her arm and flung her j’na at the draasin.

All she wanted was to deter the massive creature. If it had been tainted, then there might not be anything she could do, but she wanted to slow it first, keep it from striking Olina.

The draasin glass struck the scaled underbelly, grazing it, before the spear fell back to the earth, plunging point first into the ground.

At least it had the intended effect. The draasin swooped back into the air, avoiding Olina.

Ciara ran to her and helped her up. “We need to get to safety.”

“Where the tainted draasin are concerned, there is no safety,” Olina said. “We must fight, or all will die.”

From the vantage at the top of the hill, Ciara saw the town of K’ral spread out below. A few people were in the street, but most raced for the protection of their homes. They had experienced this before, Ciara realized.

“What can we do?” she asked.

“Hope that our help arrives in time.”

“What help?”

As she asked, she sensed the surge of water. It was massive and more than anything she had ever experienced before. With it came the rumbling of earth and the gusting of wind. All added to the familiar heat radiating from the draasin, though she felt that heat as a cool flame, so different than what she’d experienced while in Rens.

But she knew the sense that came now. Ciara had felt it before, more times than she cared to remember. Each time, there had been an attack, and each time, her people—her village—had suffered.

Shapers of Ter.

They appeared on lightning that streaked from the sky.

Ciara reached for her j’na, ready to throw it. The draasin was bad enough, but shapers…

She stood, staring defiantly at the sky. She would not die without fighting.

“
I
see the draasin
,” Alena said.

Jasn could more than simply see the draasin, he could feel the heat coming off it. The sense was different than from any of the draasin he’d experienced in the barracks. That had been a dry, painful heat. This burned through his body, leaving him feeling a painful agony.

They streaked past the draasin and landed in a grassy clearing much like what they had left. An old woman crouched on the ground and a Rens warrior clutched her long spear, preparing to pull it from the ground.

Jasn had seen many such warriors in his time in Rens. One had left a spear plunged through his shoulder, but as usual, the elementals had healed him.

He was starting to shape an attack upon the warrior when the voice of water exploded in his mind.

Do not harm her.

Jasn shifted his shaping toward the ground, preparing a buffer for their landing. Alena dropped next to him. Wyath came more slowly and landed with a thundering surge of earth. Wind whipped around and he wondered why Wyath shaped it with such strength.

“Is there anything you can do?” he asked Alena.

Her eyes were wide as she stared at the draasin circling in the sky. It breathed fire toward them that Wyath waved away with a shaping of earth and water.

“I can’t reach her. She’s silent.”

The Rens warrior held her spear, prepared to strike. “You won’t use your tainted draasin against us.”

The old woman reached for the warrior’s arm and pulled it down. “Easy, Rider.
They
are the help.”

The girl—Jasn realized she was barely more than a girl—hesitated, lowering her arm a moment. “They are of Ter. I’ve seen attacks from them before. Whatever else you think, Olina, they will not help.”

The draasin dipped toward them, drawing Jasn’s focus. He used water and pressed up, pulling on the moisture in these lands. There was plenty, enough to provide significant strength to his shaping.

The Rens warrior watched him, her eyes narrowing.

“Olina?” Wyath said as he stepped toward the girl and the woman. He breathed out a sigh that came something like a laugh. “Cheneth, you sneaky bastard.” Wyath turned toward the two women and raised his hands. “We are friends of Cheneth, Enlightened of Hyaln.”

The woman, Olina, nodded. “Why have you come?”

Alena turned toward her and motioned to the draasin. “The draasin. She’s been tainted by…”

“Tenebeth. Yes,” the Rens warrior said.

Alena tipped her head. “We would heal her.”

Olina shook her head. “There is no healing from that, not for one of the elementals.”

The wind kicked up again, and Jasn realized that it spun around the draasin in a torrent. That was part of the reason the draasin hadn’t descended and attacked. It had been held on a shaping. But who could do that?

Jasn knew the answer. Eldridge.

He’d seen the wind strength the man had, much more than any other shaper he’d ever met. That strength was tied to his ability to speak to the elementals.

Could they use the combined strength of the elements to help the draasin? Alena with fire, Wyath with earth, Eldridge and wind, and him with water.

The ground surged and Alena was flung into the air, tossed down the hill. Flames raced after her.

Jasn didn’t have the chance to react, and she was still weakened by the connection to the egg that pulled on her fire shaping.

A dark shape streaked toward them, dark as night, and landed on the ground only a few paces in front of them.

It took Jasn a moment to recognize Thenas.

He had changed. There was no question that he had embraced the darkness. It oozed from him, much like the new strength that he possessed oozed from him.

The shaping he worked was immense. Thenas sent it toward all three of them at the same time, forcing Jasn back a step. Wyath surged through the earth to solidify his connection, and Eldridge did the same with the wind. Each pushed back.

But Tenebeth had made Thenas strong. Thenas smiled and used a dark shaping on them.

“I have you to thank,” he said to Jasn. “Your healing opened me to such power, and this beast as well. You could have had the same, if only you hadn’t resisted.”

Jasn drew upon water, pulling on each of the elements as he had never done before. Water poured through him, slamming into Thenas, but did nothing to slow him.

“At least now I understand what she hid all these years,” he said, his eyes drifting toward the hillside. “If only Calan knew, but I think even he was too foolish to appreciate what he could have had.” He pushed outward, the strength of his dark magic forcing each of the Ter shapers back another step. “Now that I’ve been paired, there is little any of the hunters
will be able to do to stop me.”

The shaping that built was almost more than Jasn could suppress.

He leapt toward Thenas with his sword unsheathed and was thrown back. Wyath tried reaching him and was swept away on a shaping of wind. Even the old lady attempted to thwart him but could not.

Thenas smiled, and an enormous shaping built. The draasin howled.

“You think your shaping can stop me?” Thenas cried. “She said you were foolish, Volth, but I did not think you would fall so easily.”

Then his chest exploded, and the tip of a long spear pierced his skin.

Thenas reached for it, wrapping his hands around the spear and trying to push it back, but the spear had penetrated his heart. Jasn could sense the way his blood spilled from the gash. It was the kind of wound that would be fatal.

“Let Rens stop you, Tenebeth,” the warrior said. Her mouth twisted in a fierce scowl, and Jasn wondered if she might make a run at Thenas to grab the spear, but she didn’t. She only waited.

Thenas dropped to his knees as his life poured from him. “You think you can stop him? He is greater than them all. And he will blot out the light.”

Thenas fell forward and said no more.

The Rens warrior walked over to him and grabbed her spear, pulling it from his chest. “How do you intend to help the draasin?”

Jasn had no idea. He had thought that he could use the combined elemental draw, but when they had attempted that on Thenas, they had failed. If not for the Rens warrior’s attack, he suspected they would have been overwhelmed.

What could they do?

Jasn looked at Wyath and Eldridge. Neither man spoke, watching him.

It was then that Jasn realized they hadn’t used each of the elementals on Thenas. Fire had been missing.

“We need fire,” he said. “Alena—”

“She is hurt, Jasn Volth,” Eldridge said. “The connection is weak.”

“I don’t know if it will work without a connection to fire.”

“Rider,” Olina said. “You must call fire.”

The girl looked back at Olina. “I don’t speak to fire.”

“You are a rider. You
can
speak to fire.” Olina turned to Jasn. “You have each of the others?”

Jasn nodded. “As much as we can.”

“It might work,” she said to herself. “It has never been tried, but it is possible.” She turned to the girl. “Use your pattern, but slower; feel the rhythm of the flame within you.”

The draasin swooped, shooting fire toward them. Eldridge directed it back into the sky with a shaping of wind. Without Thenas, the focus for the draasin had shifted.

The girl watched Olina for a moment and then nodded. She began to make a small circle, moving slowly and pressing her spear into the ground. At first, Jasn didn’t think she did anything, but he began to feel the way power built each time she pressed her spear into the ground.

“Now the others,” Olina told him. “Add earth.”

Wyath nodded and surged earth into what the girl was doing. Jasn felt it as a rumble through the ground as it hardened. Each time her spear tapped down, it rang out with a sharp
crack
.

“Wind,” the woman said.

Eldridge focused his shaping on the pattern and added the strength of what he could do to it. It built, and each time the spear struck the now-hard ground, it rang out more loudly. On and on it went, power building even more.

“Water,” Olina urged. “You must direct it as a healing focus.”

Jasn turned the water into a fountain, sending it spraying toward her pattern. He expected it to crash into her, but instead it joined into the pattern, mixing as if he were combining a shaping. He pulled on the elemental strength, using as much power as the water elemental could lend, and sent it toward her.

The shaping built.

Jasn could feel it deep within him.

The draasin dove toward them.

“Now,” Olina said.

The girl lifted her spear. Light streaked from the tip and hit the draasin.

The massive creature fell in a heap on the far side of the hilltop.

“Damn!” Jasn swore. “We didn’t want to kill it!”

As he ran toward the draasin, Wyath caught him by the arm and pulled him back. “Easy, Jasn. Look.”

Jasn stopped and saw the elemental begin to move. The massive creature sat up, stretched her long, leathery wings, then her talons, digging them into the soft earth where she had landed.

Did it work?

He directed the question to water, wondering if the elemental would be able to answer.

At first, the water elemental was silent. Jasn wondered if it
would
answer. When it did, there was relief in the elemental’s tone.

You have done well. Better than the Mother expected.

What does that mean?

It means she is restored.