Darkness Rising (The Endless War Book 2)

by D. K. Holmberg

  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.”

  28

  Ciara

  I witnessed a great summons last night. The darkness appeared to come alive, practically swallowing the summoner. When complete, he was changed and more powerful. I have not seen him since.

  —Lren Atunal, Cardinal of the College of Scholars

  Nevan 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.

&nb
sp; “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.

  29

  Jasn

  The Khalan do not understand the consequences of what they do, nor do they understand what they have released. To them, Tenebeth is nothing more than another elemental. Had I access to the archives, I could prove otherwise, but were I to leave, I doubt I would find them again. This observation is too valuable to abandon.

  —Lren Atunal, Cardinal of the College of Scholars

  Jasn stared at Cheneth. He’d seen the transformation before but hadn’t known what it was. He’d known shapers to hide their ability from others—wasn’t that what Alena did at times?—but never so completely as what he’d seen Cheneth manage. The man exuded power. Had Jasn not recognized the difficulty of the shaping Cheneth had placed on the walls, stairs, the entire building for that matter, he might have been caught more off guard. As it was, he had been waiting for Cheneth to reveal himself.

  Alena stared at the scholar with wide eyes. She still clutched the egg to her chest. Jasn kept waiting for her to set it down—the damn thing had to be heavy—but she didn’t seem interested.

  “Enlightened?” she asked when she regained the ability to speak. Her eyes didn’t move from Cheneth. “I thought you were from Ter.”

  “I serve no land,” he said, “and all of them. As do all the enlightened.”

  Enlightened. That seemed as preposterous a name as “the commander.” And Cheneth seemed to have no more shame than Lachen at the title. “Not the darkness?” Jasn asked. “Not this Tenebeth?” Even the name felt foul on his tongue, but strangely familiar in some ways.

  Cheneth’s face clouded a moment. “Not Tenebeth, though I suspect that there are some in this land who do.”

  “Lachen?”

  “I do not know who the commander serves,” Cheneth said. “I have not been able to tell with him. It is even possible that he is one of the enlightened.”

  Jasn wondered what Lachen truly was. His old friend had changed since they had last truly known each other, to the point where the boy Jasn had known was no longer; now there was only this strangeness that was the commander. Should he still even call him Lachen anymore, or had he become his title?

  “Tell me,” Jasn began, “why we should fear Tenebeth.”

  Cheneth took a deep breath and stood, then began pacing. There was a rhythm to his steps as he made his way across the floor, almost a tapping to the way he walked. “Tenebeth is a myth. At least, that is what I have always believed. He is darkness. He—or more accurately it, as we cannot really attribute gender to a creature of power such as Tenebeth, even though stories claim he usually appears in the form of a man—apparently has been known by some for many years.”

  “You went searching for answers and returned with… a myth?” Alena asked.

  Cheneth paused and glanced at the fire, motioning to Alena. “You should set the egg down, Alena. You will not be able to hold it until it hatches.”

  A flush worked up her face. Normally a lovely woman, the extra coloring made her even more attractive. “And where do you propose I set it?”

  “I think the hearth will do nicely,” Cheneth said. “You can keep it as warm as you like.”

  “A fire won’t hurt it?” Jasn asked.

  “It is a creature of fire, Jasn Volth. Fire will only help.”

  Alena flushed again and brought the egg to the hearth, setting it down carefully. She propped a few logs against it and lit them with a shaping. Flames curled aro
und the egg, leaving it unharmed in the middle of the fire.

  Alena stood in front of the hearth for a few moments before turning away and taking the chair Cheneth had vacated.

  He began pacing again, resuming his rhythmic tapping. “In the stories, Tenebeth is more than simply darkness. In most, he seeks power and seeks to destroy.” He stared at the flames dancing around within the fire. “The elementals we know are born from light. They create life, they are life. What I can find tells me that Tenebeth would change that and would twist these elements, turn them into something they are not so that they serve darkness rather than light.” He sighed again. “But everything I’ve found tells me that he cannot do it alone. He is powerful, but the light has ensured there are limits to his power.”

  Jasn shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He had come to the barracks to learn to hunt the draasin, to face fire, but what Cheneth described was even greater than that. And he still didn’t know how it was tied to what had happened to Katya. If she wasn’t dead, was there some connection to this Tenebeth?

  “What is this about, really?” he asked Cheneth.

  “I have answered that question already.”

  “No. You’ve told me what you care about. But this is about more than Ter and Rens.”

  Cheneth smiled tightly. “Obviously.”

  “Except that’s why I was sent here. Lachen wanted me to learn how to hunt the draasin. He thought it could turn the tide of the war. And he sends an attack deeper into Rens.” Where the draasin eggs were hidden, though he didn’t need to say that.

  “Think of the Wrecker of Rens, the man unable to die, now with the ability to hunt draasin alone. How powerful would that make the order?”

  “That’s not what you want, is it?” Jasn asked.

  Cheneth hesitated. “I have never sought to strengthen the order.”

  “Then why are you here?” Jasn asked.