“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?
And it had brought her to this place, almost as if it wanted her to be a part of… whatever it was that happened here.
At the edge of the village, others joined the man. He spoke quickly, his hands waving about as he did, and pointed in her direction. Ciara watched for a moment and then started toward the village.
Ciara approached the village warily. The man stood in the middle of a group of others, each dressed in heavy robes that were much the same. The men had shaved heads while the two women she saw each had long braids hanging to the middle of their backs. They paid no attention to her until she was only a few steps away.
The man turned to her and gave her a serious nod. “This is the rider,” he said to the others.
One of the women stepped forward, moving hesitantly. Why did she walk so carefully around her? Ciara might have ridden here on the draasin, but that didn’t make her a rider, regardless of what the man thought.
“You have come to K’ral?” the woman asked carefully. She gripped the waist of her robe and glanced over at the others waiting back by the man.
“I am Ciara S’shala,” she said.
“Where is your draasin?” the woman asked.
“I don’t—” She looked to the man, wondering what he might have told them. If she was to be a rider, if that was what they expected of her, what would happen if she proved she was not? Hadn’t the draasin brought her here? But why? What purpose would there be in bringing her to lands so far from those she knew, so different from her home? Hadn’t her people lost enough already?
“He hunts,” she said. Let them think her a rider. Let them believe it to be true.
The woman’s eyes widened. “You loosed the draasin to hunt in Tsanth?”
Ciara realized that she should have been more careful. “I don’t control where the draasin hunts,” she said. At least that much was true.
“But you are its rider!”
Ciara considered what she should say. If she let them continue to believe she was some sort of draasin rider, she might never learn the reason she’d been brought here. There had to be a reason the draasin thought it necessary.
The woman pinched her lips together as she studied Ciara and then turned toward the others. They simply stood and watched, saying nothing. “You would allow this?” the woman asked.
Ciara wondered to whom she spoke, but then the circle of people parted and a short woman stepped forward. She wore a dress striped with bright colors, each stripe a different shade, and carried a slender staff with her. Ciara’s eyes widened as she realized the carvings on the woman’s staff resembled those of a j’na. No osidan tipped it, but the carving was much like what her father had made on her own.
“She is of Rens,” the woman said. She was older, and age had bent her back. Filmy eyes somehow managed to fix Ciara with a hard expression, as if she still saw her.
“I am of Rens,” she agreed.
“Why would you come to us, Rider of Rens? Have your people not taken enough from Tsanth?”
“My people?” Ciara asked. “We take nothing. We struggle to survive, and—”
“The Riders. They have taken. And now you return. Bold, this one is,” the woman said, turning to the others with her. “She comes without her draasin, as if she were able to call upon fire herself, but none of Rens call fire. For what her people have done, we should stake her. Leave the remains for the draasin to find. That would be a just sentence.”
Ciara struggled with finding an answer. Hadn’t the man promised that K’ral would treat her well? “My people have done nothing.”
The old woman scanned the sky as if seeing something there that others could not. “Nothing? Tsanth once was a proud land. Now we fear. Riders are to blame.”
She turned her back on Ciara, and as the others approached with thick ropes now in hand, she didn’t have the strength to resist as they restrained her.
14
Ciara
They were called the Wise. Men and Women connected in some way to the elementals, though primarily to the draasin. They were known to ride the draasin but did not control them. The college was never able to ascertain whether the Wise could speak to them, but suspected they had some form of communication. Before the attack on Rens, they disappeared.
—Lren Atunal, Cardinal of the College of Scholars
; Night had come and, with it, cold unlike anything Ciara had ever experienced. She shivered, her arms straining against the ropes binding her to the post, but she could move. The thin fabric of her elouf, so perfect in Rens, did nothing to protect her here. Her j’na was speared into the ground, tip first, only a few paces from her, as if taunting her.
The woman—the leader of the town—had not spoken to her again, leaving her to her fate and to struggle against the cold and darkness. It was the darkness that bothered her the most.
Ciara felt her head grow heavy. After surviving all she had, for her to die this way, out here, so far from home without understanding why? Why would the Stormbringer do this to her? She had been nothing if not a faithful servant, listening for water, helping her people. She had risked crossing the waste for her people and had nearly died. Now, for the draasin to bring her here and for the draasin to be the reason she would die, it seemed a cruel fate.
Her father would never know what happened. Perhaps it was best that he should think on her with pride and believe she had ridden the draasin and she might somehow find help for the people rather than death. But he would live, thinking that help was coming, that she would find a way to rescue those lost. Instead, she would die here in lands surrounded by more water than she had ever sensed.
The sense of the K’ral was distant. She’d been strapped to this post too long already and had nothing to drink all day, pulling her from her connection to water. She felt it within her, but it was a weak sensation, only from her pulse threading along.
In spite of the cold, she detected a streamer of heat much like she had earlier in the day when she’d followed the man toward the village. Ciara didn’t know what she sensed or how she could sense it, but it tugged at her distantly.
Her eyes dipped closed again.
Flashes of color came to her as she slept, deep greens and orange that hovered at the edge of her vision. She had no true dreams, nothing like the memories of her mother and dead brother that used to haunt her, but still she rested.
After a while, she came around again. The strange green light shimmered distantly, as if the dream had burned itself into the back of her mind, leaving her with memories of fading light.
Ciara lifted her head. The cold had left her numb, she no longer felt her hands, and her legs were like stone weights threatening to pull her down, but the ropes bound around her wrists held her in place, keeping her from sagging to the ground.
The distant green changed, steadily growing brighter.
She shivered, this time for a different reason. The color reminded her of what she’d seen when she followed the shadow man across the waste, before she’d decided to return to her people.
Green light flashed brighter and then faded suddenly, leaving her in darkness so bleak, she couldn’t even see herself.
“I could free you,” a voice called from the darkness.
Ciara trembled, recognizing the shadow man. How had she ever found that cold voice welcoming? “I will be free soon enough.”
There came a steady laughter, dark and painful, sounding like the tearing of roots from rock. “You could be so strong, Ciara S’shala. The potential is within you; I sense it.”
“You think I am not strong enough already?” She was nya’shin. Regardless of what happened to her, she had already proven herself to her people.
Laughter came again. The darkness changed and the shadow man stepped forward, a blanket of night unfolding toward her. Somehow, she could see the deep smile etched into his face and the way his eyes looked her over, surveying her with amusement shining within them.
“You are strong. Otherwise, I never would have come.” A hand darker than the night reached toward her, and she felt it brush her cheek. She jerked her head back and slammed it into the post holding her. “You are without your spear this time. It is a shame, but at least I can touch you.”
Ciara tried kicking, but her legs didn’t work as they should and she thrashed uselessly, only her torso trembling, as if she were nothing more than a snake trying to find its way back to the shade. “What do you want with me? Why have you come to harass me?”
“Harass? Ah, Ciara S’shala,” he said, holding her name strangely on his lips before it released into the wind, “I think you are mistaken. I would see you find strength. I would see your people restored to the power they possessed when they worshipped me. You, who should be so much more, can learn. Is that not what you have always wanted?” He reached toward her again.
This time, Ciara couldn’t move. Her body was frozen and all she could think about was the way his touch sent ice shooting through her. The night already left her cold, but his touch was different, painful, in a way she had never imagined.
As he leaned toward her, she imagined his breath in her ear, a sound like nails scratching at rock.
“You continue to refuse the offer. Your people once sought the night, but now you think to pursue the sun. You have lost so much that should be yours.”
Ciara turned toward his voice, searching for eyes that weren’t really there. “Why do you care? Let me die here, away from my people!”
“Ah, Ciara S’shala.” Again, he said her name in such a way that made it seem like he tried to claim it, to possess it, before the words caught the wind and blew into the night. “You will not die. I have seen greatness for you, but you must embrace it.”
He leaned toward her again, and cold surged in her veins, slowing her heart. “In time, you will see.”
She shivered again. It took all the strength she could summon to form her next words. “Leave me,” she managed to whisper.
The shadow man laughed again. Cold seeped into her, slowly and unrelentingly.
Ciara wished for the warmth she had sensed earlier, praying that the Stormbringer could bring her even a hint of that comfort.
The wind shifted and gusted from the west. With it came a momentary warmth, enough to remind Ciara of the desert and the sun and the heat of her home. She gasped with it and held it within her.
The shadow man laughed again and reached toward her, but she jerked back and away. This time, his touch missed her. He leaned in, and then withdrew. As he withdrew, so did the darkness, like a fog receding. His laughter trailed behind him, leaving her with only a memory of it.
For long moments, she couldn’t breathe, not daring to release the warmth that had come on the wind, the warmth that had reminded her of Rens, of home, and of the reason she had risked summoning the draasin.
The wind shifted again, this time blowing away from her, catching the easterly cold once more, tearing at her elouf as it bit her skin. Ciara shivered.
At least the shadow man had left her. Now would death claim her?
She tried to sleep, to drift, hoping she would fade from there, but sleep would not come again. Her mind raced, thinking of the shadow man and what he might be, and the battle between light and dark that priests had once told her father about, but eventually that faded, leaving her with nothing.
After a while, the sky began to change, and she wondered if the strange green light on the horizon would return. She’d seen it twice before, and each time it had come with the shadow man. Ciara didn’t think she’d be able to survive him again.
Streaks of orange and faint red touched the distant sky. Not the shadow man, but the coming of another day. Her arms ached where the ropes held her, and her legs no longer supported her, leaving her to sag toward the ground, nothing but heavy weight that pulled her down. With the coming light, the tall green grasses became visible, and she saw the way water formed on the leaves. Had there been rain and she’d missed it? How would the grasses have so much water?
Even with all that water, she had no sense of it, as if there was no water around her. She felt nothing; cold and empty.
But not even cold. The wind still swirled around her, pulling at her elouf and sending it slapping at her wildly, but she had no sense of it, as if her skin had been deadened by time spent strapped to the post. Only the s
trange pull of warmth running through the grasses was different.
If she could only reach her j’na. She might be able to pry it from the ground, tip the draasin glass end up so that she could use the sharp edge to cut her bindings, but it was too far from her. Were her legs to work, she still wouldn’t be able to reach it.
Footsteps pressed softly, coming toward her slowly and steadily. Ciara didn’t even have the strength to lift her head to see which of her tormentors had come.
“You remain in spite of the night.”
She recognized the voice. It was the man who had brought her to K’ral, claiming that the people would welcome her. Had she known what was to happen, would she have said something different? Could she have said anything that might have kept them from setting her out in the night like this?
The man took a few more steps. The ground crunched softly beneath his feet with each one. “You are a rider. Do you not welcome the night?”
Ciara turned so that she could see him but was able to see only his feet and the bottom of his robe. He stood a few steps from her, next to her j’na.
“I hate the night.” Her voice came out hoarse. She needed a drink but doubted they would offer her anything. Maybe it was time that she died, return to her mother and brother, reuniting her family… but no. She couldn’t think like that. She would return and help her people.
The man slid forward another step. “How can the rider hate the night?”
There was something to the question, but Ciara’s mind wasn’t working as it should. “Cold comes at night,” she said. “Shadows come.”
The man said nothing, and for a while, Ciara thought he might leave her. She would welcome the solitude.
“Did shadows come last night?”
“They came. I refused to answer. You can tell the shadow man that he will not have me.”
The K’ral man took another step and now was standing directly in front of her. He smelled of grass and damp earth, neither of which was unpleasant, but both so foreign to her. This close, she could sense the way his heart fluttered.
Darkness Rising (The Endless War Book 2) Page 12
