Darkness Rising (The Endless War Book 2)

by D. K. Holmberg

  Wyath sighed. “That was my fear.”

  “There has to be a way to reach her, isn’t there?” Jasn asked. “How does the connection work?”

  “Fire is different than water,” Alena said.

  “You don’t know how water works.”

  “Just as you don’t know how fire works.”

  Jasn fell silent. He didn’t want to argue with Alena, though she often seemed eager to yell at him, angry at who he was or the fact that she had to work with him or, now, that they were connected by his shaping. “Must they be separate?” Jasn said. “Is there a way for your fire and my water to work together?” He looked at Wyath. “And you. Who do you speak to now?”

  A small smile tugged at the corners of Wyath’s mouth. “Now?”

  Jasn nodded. “Since the healing. Ifrit now hears the elementals. I don’t know which ones, but it’s there. And Alena said the healing changed you as well.” He looked Wyath over and knew that to be true, even if he didn’t quite know how. “So which elementals do you now speak to?”

  “I speak to earth,” Wyath said. “But that has not changed since your healing. What has changed is that I can now hear others.” He glanced at Alena. “Like the draasin. Perhaps others as well.”

  Jasn wondered why the healing he performed using the elementals to assist would give others that extra ability, but now wasn’t the time to theorize. Now they needed to figure out how to find the draasin.

  “Can we use each of the elementals?” Jasn asked. “Earth. Can you use earth to find where the draasin might be hiding?”

  “What makes you think the draasin hides?”

  “Do you think the draasin doesn’t hide?”

  Wyath frowned. “I’m not sure what I know anymore.” He sighed. “You ask if there is any way we can work together, and my answer would be that there must be. My connection to earth doesn’t share with me where to find the draasin, but there is darkness that I detect, much like what I suspect Alena must be able to detect with fire. As could you with water if your connection to it were stronger.”

  Wyath looked to Alena. “Tell me, Alena, what can you sense with fire?”

  “In these lands?” She shook her head. “There is nothing. We followed you here, and I thought you would know where to find the draasin, but…”

  Wyath closed his eyes. A rumbling shaping came from him, one that echoed deep into the earth, rolling through the ground before stretching out away from him. Was that how Wyath managed to speak to the elementals? Did he join shaping with them in order to reach earth?

  Wasn’t that what happened for him? Each time he’d managed to reach for the elemental powers, he had been shaping, hadn’t he? Always he’d been healing. The only time he hadn’t had been when the elementals healed him, protecting him from his own stupidity.

  Jasn focused on water, thinking about what he did when healing. The shaping used in healing was complex and required knowledge of a person’s injuries, but when he managed to achieve the more impressive shapings, he had none of that. He simply shaped. There was the pull of water, and somehow the connection and water seemed to know what needed to happen, pulling on him as much as he pulled on it.

  With that same sort of brute shaping, he sent it out, trailing along the damp blades of grass, sending a water shaping surging away from him almost like he would were he using water sensing. This was different, and with the shaping added to it, his awareness jumped from droplet to droplet, pulled along by all the moisture he found in these lands. Had it not been here, Jasn wondered if he could have managed the same shaping.

  Water coalesced, but only within his mind. The shaping pulled on something he could sense but not see, drawing it toward him.

  Power surged within him, power that was so much like what he felt when healing. Jasn held on to it, drawing it to him, allowing himself to be filled by the strength of the water all around him.

  What would happen if he tried healing, but not externally? Could he heal himself?

  Would that allow him to reach the water elementals better?

  Jasn had never intentionally tried to heal himself. Every other time, it had come without thought and without any sort of plan. He had healed many others over the years, but only a few where he suspected there was something more to what he did, that he now knew to be the elemental influence.

  And if he turned that influence inward?

  Most within Atenas believed a shaping couldn’t be used on oneself, but Jasn had seen others do it before. The results were unpredictable and could often be unstable, much like what had happened when he’d used such a shaping to help Alena.

  The shaping began working within him but built rapidly, reaching the point where he could no longer control it.

  Cold surged through him, and he nearly cried out.

  The sense was like nothing he’d ever experienced, even when lying near death in Rens. Always there, the healing had come over him gradually, slowly easing through him. This was a powerful burst and shot through his blood like an icy touch, surging to his mind and then was gone.

  Jasn let out a shaky breath.

  “What was—”

  He didn’t hear Alena ask the rest. A voice drifting into his mind pressed her away.

  You have finally allowed healing.

  Jasn staggered forward and was caught by Wyath, who watched him with a curious expression. “What the stars?”

  “Talk to them,” Wyath urged.

  “How… How do you know?”

  The old man smiled. “I had much the same reaction the first time I spoke to earth.”

  Water?

  Water. Yes. Water of a sort.

  Are you an elemental? Speaking in this way, talking within his mind, felt awkward, and he had to resist the urge to speak aloud.

  That is your term for us.

  Why have you kept me alive?

  There came the sense of laughter. That is the question you would have answered?

  It was you, wasn’t it?

  We have helped, as we will continue to help, as long as you ask.

  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 f
ocus, 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.”

  32

  Ciara

  I must return and search the archives for records of the last time Tenebeth escaped.

  —Lren Atunal, Cardinal of the College of Scholars

  Ciara 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, ha
dn’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.