Seal of Light (The Endless War Book 5)

by D. K. Holmberg

  “I don’t know that it worked. I tried healing Katya, but nothing happened.”

  “Nothing?”

  Jasn nodded. “There was resistance when I tried healing her, but when I pushed past it, when I managed to get through, she didn’t have the same outcome that Wyath or Ifrit or—”

  “Thenas,” Cheneth finished.

  “Or Thenas,” Jasn agreed. “What if I can’t create a connection between the elementals as I thought?”

  Cheneth chuckled. “If that’s what you fear, and the reason that you think you might have been a failure, then that is my fault. I thought that perhaps your ability worked that way, but even if it didn’t, think of what we gained in you traveling to Hyaln. You have discovered that you can summon. From the markings on your sword, it appears you have developed some skill with runes. You were already a skilled shaper, so I doubt there would have been too much that you could have learned there. And I suspect that you have reached spirit.”

  Jasn hadn’t shared that with Cheneth yet. Other than Katya, no one else knew that he could shape spirit. “When we were in Hyaln, the Varden…”

  “They were compromised.”

  Jasn nodded.

  “They would have had to be considering what we’ve learned. If you are able to reach spirit, then you would have shown more potential than any who had gone to Hyaln in many years.”

  “So I’m Enlightened?” Jasn asked.

  Cheneth shrugged. “It is not as simple as that. You can shape spirit, but serving as one of the Enlightened is more than that. Much like I can summon the elementals but am not a summoner. I have some skill with runes, but am not a rune master.”

  “Can you speak to the elementals?”

  Cheneth shook his head. “That has never been my ability. I am not one of the Wise.”

  He reached over to Cheneth and grabbed his hands. Cheneth didn’t resist, even when Jasn forced a water shaping through him, drawing on the strength of the elementals as he pulled on the connection to water. Much as there had been with Katya, he sensed a surprising resistance. Jasn added a soft summons to water and pulled on more power than he had with Katya, and it surged through Cheneth. The resistance disappeared, pushed away like rock before a river.

  Jasn released the shaping and sat back, letting go of Cheneth’s hands as he did.

  “I should have asked first. I’m sorry.”

  “That is your healing?” Cheneth asked. The flames dancing along his skin made him suddenly appear younger.

  Jasn nodded. “It has changed over time. Once, I would not have known how to reach for the elemental as easily as I do now. When I healed Thenas—and Wyath, I suppose—there had been a desperation to what I did, and I let water flow through me. This was more controlled.”

  Cheneth laughed softly. “If this was controlled, I do not want to know what it felt like uncontrolled.”

  “Uncontrolled is like the ocean sweeping over you rather than a river,” Jasn said. “Do you notice anything different?”

  Cheneth closed his eyes. Power built from him, and the old man made no attempt to disguise what he did, or how he channeled his power. When he released it into the night, he opened his eyes. “There is nothing.”

  “Then I cannot create connections to the elementals.”

  “Would that be all bad? Think about this, Jasn, that if every time that you healed someone you had to worry about what connection they would gain to the elementals, that you would have to fear that you would suddenly draw them into a world of power that they might not be prepared for, would that change how you used your ability to heal? This would be better.”

  “Why did it change?” he asked.

  “Maybe your ability didn’t change, only the way that you use it,” Cheneth suggested. “When it flooded from you, it’s possible that you simply overwhelmed others.” The old man smiled and patted Jasn’s hand. “None of this changes the fact that you need to determine how you feel about her, don’t you?”

  Jasn breathed out heavily. “I know how I feel. It’s how she feels now that she knows who I am.”

  “How can she when it doesn’t seem that you know who you are? You aren’t the Wrecker of Rens, that much is clear. Even when you were him, you weren’t. Does that make sense?”

  Jasn shook his head.

  “When you came to the barracks, I wondered why the commander had sent you.”

  “He wanted to know what you were doing.”

  Cheneth smiled. “A spy. That would fit the commander, now wouldn’t it? Yet you came. And I allowed you to stay. Knowing what you do, have you ever wondered why?”

  Jasn turned his attention back to the fire. He hadn’t spent much time thinking about why Cheneth would have allowed him to remain in the barracks. “You let me because the commander sent me.”

  “If that were true, then I would have allowed countless others to remain. The existence of the barracks was no secret, not to the Seat, and certainly not to the commander. To them, we trained draasin hunters, and we were successful. Even more successful once Alena came,” he said, winking as he did. “But the commander had tried sending others into the camp before, and we—I—had never allowed them to stay. They might be given a chance to remain for a week or two, but something always happened where they washed out, as I knew that they eventually would. None of them were appropriate for the barracks. Until you.”

  “Because I could speak to the elementals.”

  Cheneth nodded. “You showed immediate talent. Not only with shaping but with an affinity for a few… other… tests that I ran.”

  Jasn wondered how else Cheneth would have tested him, and decided that he didn’t want to know. Not now. It didn’t matter to him anymore.

  “You were the first of those the commander had chosen to send with real talent. At the time, I thought it nothing more than chance that it would be you, a man from the same village as the commander, a man who had been childhood friends with the commander. I think it is less coincidence now.”

  “You think there is something about our village?”

  Cheneth shook his head. “I think it something about you. And Lachen knew it.”

  “You said that none he’d sent before succeeded.”

  “I think he expected them to fail.”

  “Why? What do you suspect of Lachen?”

  Cheneth smiled, the light from the fire dancing along his face. “I have wondered about the commander for many years. He is a man of immense skill. All have agreed to that. And he is clever. I have failed finding out anything more than what everyone else knows. Yet he leads by example, guiding the warriors through Rens. I thought that he wanted only to destroy Rens, and that made me suspicious of him, even more so when I discovered that the Seat of the Order had been compromised.”

  “Compromised?” That was the first Jasn had heard of that. If the Seat had been compromised, then all of Atenas would be in danger.

  “That is the reason I sent Alena to Atenas. Oliver sent a request for help, and when I went, I discovered that there were spirit shapers there. There should not be any spirit shapers outside of Hyaln.”

  “The Khalan?”

  Cheneth nodded. “This was when I realized the extent of the fracturing of Hyaln. You asked if your ability to reach spirit made you Enlightened, and I answered that it didn’t necessarily mean that you were. In some ways, you are much like those of the Khalan who have ability with spirit. It is the choices that you make that will determine who you are.”

  Jasn didn’t know if he could be Enlightened. There was a certain amount of planning involved, and he didn’t know if it suited him. Cheneth certainly planned, and what Jasn had learned of Katya showed quite a bit of planning as well. That didn’t suit him.

  What did, then?

  Not the rune masters. They were more content to sit, to study, and to understand the runes. Jasn appreciated the knowledge and had been able to use it, but that didn’t fit him either. The Wise—those connected to the elementals—he didn’t fully under
stand. Perhaps that was what he was meant to be like.

  The other option was for him to be a summoner. He had shown an affinity with summoning, but nothing like what he’d seen of the Khalan, and certainly nothing like Ciara. His ability required him to focus on a single element at a time, not multiple as he’d discovered the Khalan could handle, and not four at once as Ciara had demonstrated.

  “What is Lachen?” he asked.

  “The commander remains a mystery to me. I don’t have an answer about what abilities that he might possess.”

  “But you suspect.”

  “I suspect that he has studied in Hyaln. He must have, given the abilities that I have witnessed.”

  “Do you think that he is one of the Khalan?”

  Cheneth sighed. “I don’t know. And that’s what frightens me. He sent you to the barracks for a reason. I would like to know the reason, and whether he suspected your abilities long before we did. And if he did, what he intended to use them for.”

  26

  Alena

  The Khalan grow in power. The darkness grows in power. Was there a mistake in not stopping the release of the seals?

  —Lren Atunal, Cardinal of the College of Scholars

  Alena sat in the tower again, watching the draasin as he curled up to the fire. Almost as if knowing that she watched, he tilted his head and looked over at her with brightly glowing eyes. She sighed, thinking of what she’d learned while with Lachen, wishing that she knew what she could do, what any of them could do.

  “The commander has now returned twice in two weeks,” Wansa said.

  Alena looked over at Wansa as she stared out the window. The older woman held her hands clasped behind her back and wore a neatly trimmed jacket over a long, flowing dress. Like Alena, she carried a sword with her, though Wansa had hers better concealed in the folds of her dress.

  In the time that she’d been in the city, Wansa had become an advisor to her and, more than that, someone who Alena could trust. There weren’t many people she could trust, especially in Atenas, so having even one meant quite a bit to her. Most of that was because Alena had been the one to free Wansa from the spirit shaping that had been used against her, but as Alena served on the council, the connection between them had grown.

  “He fears another attack,” Alena said.

  The hatchling turned his head so that he could look at her. She didn’t need the connection between them to know that the draasin considered her carefully, or to know that there was more going on within his mind than what others would understand. She could see that reflected in the bright orange of his eyes, and the interested way that he looked from Wansa to Alena. The other counselor refused to pay much attention to the draasin as if ignoring him would make him disappear.

  Voidan will not go easily from this world.

  How is it that you know so much about Voidan?

  All connected deeply to the elements understand Voidan. There is Voidan, and there is the Mother.

  The Mother?

  The hatchling stretched out his long claws and arched his back, looking for a moment like nothing more than a huge cat. He had grown much since hatching, but even when Bayan had brought him to Atenas, the draasin still had been small enough that she could hold him. In the time he’d been in Atenas, he’d undergone a surge of growth and now was nearly as long as Alena was tall. She wouldn’t be able to carry him anymore. Soon, he’d be able to carry her.

  Not only had his body undergone growth, but he seemed more intelligent. The draasin snorted, and she wondered if he knew her thoughts. It wasn’t that he hadn’t been intelligent before, but now, with the changes, he had more wisdom than he’d possessed before.

  Much as Voidan represents darkness and destruction, the Mother is Light. Creation.

  Alena thought that other elementals she’d spoken to had much of the same philosophy, but she’d never heard it described quite in that way. Like the Creator?

  The names are unimportant.

  I thought that names were very important, she sent to the draasin.

  The hatchling fell silent and curled back to the fire, wrapping his long tail around him as he snuggled into the heat radiating from her hearth.

  “Interesting that he would show himself so often, don’t you think?” Wansa said.

  “Only if you suspect the commander of having a role in the attack.”

  Wansa turned to her, touching the hilt of her sword briefly. Alena wondered if the counselor reached for spirit as often as she did. Especially in the city, and after the attack that they’d barely survived, there was something reassuring about knowing that they possessed some way of pressing it back, even if it was something they didn’t fully understand. Spirit came from them, but came from their combined shaping and using the spirit sticks. Were they Enlightened like Lachen—or even Cheneth—they wouldn’t have the need for the spirit sticks.

  “You do not?” Wansa asked.

  “I don’t think the commander attacked. He has made it clear that he may be responsible for something else.”

  The image of the empty camp, the place he called Alast, remained with her. She could still feel the hollow reverberations of earth where the fallen bodies lay. She could still see the sorrow within the commander as he spoke about what had happened. He might be a powerful shaper, but he was still a man, and he had made a mistake. That humanized him even more.

  “What if he only told you that to gain your trust?” Wansa asked.

  Alena pushed back the frustration that came to her. Since freeing Wansa from the touch of spirit that had forced her into doing what she would not normally do, the woman had been paranoid that others had been similarly shaped. “He allowed me to shape him. I have seen that he is not influenced.”

  “What if that was what he wanted you to think?”

  “I think we have to trust him.”

  “Then why is he not here?” Wansa asked. “If we are to trust him, and trust that he wanted only to protect Atenas from this other attack, how are we to do so when he snuck away our shapers with the most potential? And now they’re gone. Dead. Killed by whoever it is that we face.”

  “The Khalan,” Alena said. When Wansa frowned, she went on. “That’s what they’re called. The Khalan.”

  “The shadow shapers?”

  “I don’t know that they even are shapers. They can summon the shadows, and can use that against us, but—”

  “I saw the way that they used the shadows against us. They controlled it, much like I control a shaping.”

  Alena didn’t have any better way of explaining it. She could not summon, not as Lachen or Ciara could, but she believed there were those with the ability to summon the elementals. How could she not, when she had seen it firsthand?

  “And there is little that we can do to protect ourselves,” Wansa said.

  Alena unsheathed her sword. “There is much that we can do to protect ourselves. We’ve already shown that.” As she pressed a shaping through the sword, it began to glow, the runes along the surface accepting and holding the power that she summoned through the blade, the combined effort of the shaping creating spirit, creating light that she hoped she would be able to use if she were attacked by shadow shapers again.

  That was what the hatchling mentioned. That power that she could summon through her sword, using the connection to spirit, that was the counter to darkness. Did that mean that spirit itself would counter it?

  The door to her room bounced open, and Oliver strode in. He glanced briefly at Wansa, tipping his head in something like a nod but definitely not a bow, before pausing much longer at the draasin, eyeing the creature for long moments. He bowed his head much deeper for the draasin than he did for a member of the Seat of the Order, a fact that Alena found strange, but then this was Oliver. The man many considered the most talented healer in all of Ter was not always the easiest to get along with.

  “What did he want with you?” Oliver asked without looking up at her.

  Yanda stood in the
doorway and closed it behind her as she entered. She remained silent, glancing from Alena to Wansa and then to Oliver, never saying anything.

  “The commander?”

  Oliver glanced to Yanda. “No, the Lord of the Moon. Yes, the commander! Balls, woman, you leave me to fly off with the commander and you don’t have the courtesy to come back and tell me what he wanted with you?”

  She watched Wansa as she told Oliver what Lachen had shown to her. The other woman’s face didn’t change, but Alena worried about what she might do. Wansa feared something else happening to her that would be like what the Khalan had done before.

  “Damn,” Oliver whispered. Yanda raised her brow in a question. “If the commander can’t stop these shapers—”

  “They’re not shapers,” Alena said. “At least, that’s not their greatest power.”

  “Whatever. If the Commander can’t stop these summoners,” he said, nodding to Alena, “then what do we think we can do? You said he took some of our greatest shapers to this little party he held, training them with the knowledge that he possessed, and they still weren’t enough?”

  “Party?” Yanda asked. “You sound like you would like to have been there.”

  “I would like to have been invited,” he said.

  “You can barely shape fire!”

  “Well enough that I joined the Order.”

  “That’s not saying anything. They’ve let anyone in the Order lately. Think of how weak some of these shapers have been who have been granted access to the Order. Most would never have been granted entry even a decade ago.” Yanda seemed to recognize that one of the counselors was in the room with her and her eyes widened slightly. “No offense meant, but you know what I mean.”

  Wansa took a seat in one of the plush chairs. Alena had chosen this room—one that had once been the great shaper Hobal’s—mostly because of the furniture, but also because it would be comfortable for the hatchling as well as for her. The chairs were comfortable, and the hearth large enough to create a fire the draasin enjoyed.