Summoner's Bond (The Endless War Book 4)

by D. K. Holmberg

  Would water aid him?

  He didn’t know how deep the connection stretched, and whether it would respond to him here. Hyaln was in another land, different than Ter and Rens, the only other places where he’d tested his connection to water. And Tsanth, but that was close enough that he wouldn’t struggle the same as he would by coming to Hyaln. A massive expanse of the sea separated him from the rest, enough that he wasn’t fully certain that he’d be able to return on a shaping, not without borrowing the draasin.

  Will you help?

  Jasn didn’t know any other way to ask other than bluntly.

  Water stirred deep within him. He recognized it now that it did, a steady pulsing sensation that worked with his heartbeat, like the flowing of his pulse, filling him with elemental strength. Once, he would have scoffed at the idea of something else, of something more powerful that he could connect to, but he couldn’t explain the fact of his survival all those months in Rens any other way.

  What would you ask of water?

  A way to prevent others from knowing what we might say.

  The elemental—Jasn wished he had a name for it, but still hadn’t discovered what that might be, and from what Alena had said, he might never learn—washed through him a moment more. Then Jasn began to have a sense of water seeping up through the stones of the castle.

  The air was damp enough the way it was, but now it seemed that the stones themselves pulled on that dampness, drawing the moisture out of the air and layering it across the stones so that they glistened like a morning dew. It spread along the stones beneath him, flowing up the walls and then around the ceiling, fusing with the patterns that were etched into the stone.

  When it was done, Jasn detected the soft pressure of a pop as water sealed off everything else. The air took on a muted quality, and he knew that what the water elementals had done worked.

  Katya smiled at him, her lips pressed together so that the expression didn’t reach her eyes. A forced smile. “See, Rehnar, he has more talent than we realize.”

  Rehnar smiled, tapping his hand along his thigh. The patterns along the wall began to snake even more, sliding around the room in such a way that the room itself seemed to spin. Jasn tried taking a step but found that his legs didn’t move.

  “Katya?” he asked.

  She ignored him and started to the door. “Find out what else he might be able to do, Rehnar,” she said.

  With that, she opened the door, leaving Jasn standing with the bald man, his heart beating quickly as he strained to move. But his legs didn’t answer, and his attempt to shape managed to get him nowhere.

  He looked over his shoulder and tried to meet Katya’s eyes, but she was already through the door and closing it. As she did, he thought he caught her attention, and she glanced at him, but there was no compassion in her eyes, nothing that would remind him of the woman he had loved so deeply before.

  He strained to shape, to find some way to escape, but could barely move. Jasn could barely even breathe, as if the wind were constricted from his lungs.

  Rehnar stood across from him, one hand tapping on his thigh, watching Jasn.

  Jasn couldn’t keep his attention on Rehnar. The swirling patterns along the wall pulled his focus away, tearing him from watching the old man. As the patterns moved, he felt himself getting pulled down further into the stone, as if it intended to swallow him.

  His mind didn’t work as it should, but there was one question that lingered, that he couldn’t shake, regardless of how much he wanted to try: Why would Katya do this to him?

  3

  Ciara

  The Khalan have not been as secretive as they believe in their actions. They have hidden from the college, but then again, they have remained too distant over the years. Integrating more tightly might have prevented this outcome.

  —Lachen Rastan, Commander of the Order of Warriors

  Sunlight set through the trees, filtering in streamers of orange light that settled through the thick pine branches, so unlike what Ciara was accustomed to seeing in her homeland. There, the sun burned bright and hot until it fell behind the horizon, disappearing until the next day, leaving them to light fires and huddle together for warmth. Here, in Ter, the lands didn’t carry the same heat and didn’t cool nearly as quickly, and even when the sun was still out, there were shadows.

  Ciara cowered from them.

  She stood in the midst of one shaft of light, but it moved, shifting with the swaying of the branches so that she had to move with it, stepping from side to side as if in some sort of dance that she still didn’t fully understand. Her j’na rested across her shoulder, keeping it off the ground. Every time that she attempted to walk these days, she found that she tapped the spear as she went, inadvertently signaling the elementals. She didn’t want to summon them, not unless there was a need or reason, but she found that she couldn’t help herself anymore.

  Reghal existed in her mind, but the elemental wasn’t near her. The strange lizard scurried off as often as possible, as if he didn’t want to remain too close to the camp. Not that Ciara would blame him. The people here had been welcoming enough, but her people had fought Ter all these years, making it difficult to ease back into a different mindset. They were her enemies, weren’t they?

  You forget who the real enemy is already?

  Reghal called to her through the strange connection that they shared. When she had first heard his voice in her mind, she had been near death and had wandered on the waste for days, maybe weeks, without anyone else with her. She had water, but it was brought to her by the lizard in the form of gourds. There had been a part of her that thought the gourds might have caused the hallucinations.

  Now? Now she couldn’t deny that the lizard existed, or that she spoke to it. She still didn’t know what it meant for her. Or for the others.

  Not the real enemy, she said.

  With water sensing, she detected the people in the camp all around her. Distantly, she had the sense of Alena, the woman of fire who had a connection to the draasin, though not quite the same as Ciara’s ability to summon them. There was the scholar, Cheneth, who claimed a willingness to teach her how to complete the summons, but she had not learned nearly what she thought that she would have when she first agreed to come here. But then, she had come thinking that she would find a way to help her people, and she had. Using what she knew, even if it wasn’t the same as what Cheneth knew, she had managed to free her father and the rest of the village from the fate of Tenebeth. Wasn’t that the kind of success that she wanted?

  And she had defeated Tenebeth a second time. She should have more remorse at what she’d been required to do, but she had seen the way that the darkness had been willing to attack. Had she done nothing, had she been unwilling to destroy that man Thenas, then she would have suffered. And Tenebeth would have had the one person that he wanted most of all.

  Why does he want me?

  The elemental had not been able to answer her yet, but she held out hope that she would learn something. After Reghal had healed Bayan, those had been her first words.

  You represent something that he does not understand.

  I don’t understand it either.

  It is not necessary that you do, only that the Mother sees in you the ability to help.

  Ciara grabbed her j’na and set it to the ground more sharply than she intended. The sound rang out like a branch shattering in a storm. The ground reverberated with the contact, as if she already started the summons. Why does the summons change for me?

  You have changed for it, little Light. It answers now.

  What does that mean?

  The nobelas lizard appeared at the edge of the trees, standing where shadows had been only moments before. Now there was a soft orange light that surrounded the lizard, filling in the space between the trees as if the lizard reflected the light from the falling sun.

  Reghal worked his tongue over his lips and almost appeared to smile. Ciara watched him, knowing that there w
as more to him than she understood, something that Tenebeth feared.

  That means that you grow stronger. You will continue to learn.

  And you think that I can learn to summon without the j’na?

  What is it other than a focus? Do you need the focus when your mind can form the necessary summons?

  I don’t understand.

  But you will, little Light. Trust that you will in time.

  Water sensing told her that someone approached.

  Ciara turned to see Bayan. The petite woman wore only a white dress, and her hair had a golden sheen to it, something that the others in the camp claimed was new since the healing. She rubbed her wrists together and stared into the trees before turning her attention to Ciara.

  “We haven’t spoken much since you…” She swallowed and smiled. “Since you returned me.”

  “Cheneth had too many questions for you,” Ciara said.

  “You are from Rens?”

  Ciara squeezed her j’na, but there had been no accusation to the tone, only a question. Strange that the people of Ter—and the shapers—seemed so unconcerned about the fact that they had someone from Rens in the midst of their camp, almost as if nothing that Ciara could do or learn threatened them. And it was possible that she couldn’t.

  “From Rens,” she agreed. “Near the waste.”

  Bayan took a deep breath and began rubbing her neck. “I still don’t understand what happened. I was with Jasn when he fell into a pit. They tell me he survived.”

  Ciara smiled as she thought of Jasn. A powerful man and one filled with water. He would have made an excellent nya’shin were he of Rens. And he would have been the kind of man her father would have approved of.

  Now he was gone, left across the sea in a place Cheneth called Hyaln. She didn’t know when—or if—he would return, so she needed to push thoughts of him from her mind.

  “He survived,” Ciara agreed.

  Bayan considered her. “You know him?”

  She flushed but forced it away. There was no reason for her to flush at the thought of Jasn Volth. “He helped save one of the draasin, and then helped me when we faced another claimed by Tenebeth.”

  Bayan sighed. “Tenebeth. Cheneth tells me that is the name of the darkness, but not the one that I knew.”

  “What did you know him as?”

  “He was powerful, a sense of everything—and nothing. Those who served willingly worshiped him as the Lord of Night.”

  Would that have been Fas? Ciara had taken away his connection to Tenebeth, but Fas longed for the power. She worried that he would return, would continue to chase the power that she had taken from him, but there wasn’t much that she could do to prevent him from doing so. Her father would help, and now that she knew he’d been trained by Cheneth, there was more that he would be able to do than she had realized.

  “What did you call him?” she asked.

  Bayan wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “Not all served him willingly. Those who did not know him as the others used a name that seemed right. Voidan.”

  Through her connection to Reghal, she knew that was the name the elementals used when referring to Tenebeth. “Do you speak to them?”

  “To him? I tried not to speak to him, but when he commands, there is nothing else that you can do. You answer, and you want to answer.” She shivered again, squeezing her arms around her even more tightly. “I have never been a weak shaper, but what I could do was nothing compared to what I managed when wrapped in the power of Voidan.”

  Once, Ciara would have felt the draw of such power. It was the power that Tenebeth had sought to offer to her, though at the time she didn’t know that she should fear him and that she needed to refuse him, only that there was a part of the offer that she didn’t understand, a part that didn’t feel right to her. What would have happened had she agreed, and had she gone to him?

  “What did he have you do?”

  “There were attacks I was asked to lead. I was a rider and there was—”

  “A rider?” Cheneth hadn’t shared that with her. “You rode the draasin?”

  Bayan glanced over at her and then nodded. “Most he claims are given a similar assignment.”

  “Most? How many are there?”

  Bayan glanced at the trees. “More than you can imagine.” She said the words softly, pulling her arms more tightly around herself. “We cannot win. Not against the force of his might, and not when those he claims are gifted strength from him. The darkness, it… it flows through you. I don’t know how else to describe it.”

  Ciara nodded. “I’ve seen it.”

  “You’ve seen it and survived?”

  “One of your shapers. A man called Thenas. We faced him several times before defeating him.”

  Bayan had sucked in a breath at the mention of Thenas. “He came willingly and served him well. He would have been granted much power. How is it that you were able to stop him?”

  Ciara tapped her spear, and it cracked loudly. The ground rumbled beneath her feet. She placed it again, another flick of the spear, and this time light flared from the end of the j’na. “I don’t know. Cheneth claims that I can summon the power of the elementals, but…” Not only Cheneth made the claim, but Reghal as well. She believed the elemental more, but she still didn’t know why she had the ability to do what she did.

  “That is why he comes for you,” Bayan whispered. “You can protect them from his influence, can’t you?”

  Ciara nodded. “Not only me. Your shapers,” she said, thinking of those who had worked with her when they found her in Tsanth, “they helped restore one of the draasin. Tenebeth no longer controls her.”

  Bayan shivered again. Ciara wondered why she would. The day wasn’t nearly as cold as some, and the sunlight still provided enough warmth. Dressed as she was, Bayan should be protected, but then, speaking about Tenebeth sent a chill through Ciara as well.

  “You should not be here,” Bayan said. “You are a danger to all of us.”

  Ciara swallowed. “You would have me leave when I might be the only one who can defeat him?”

  “Defeat? Is that what you think? We’ll be lucky to survive him. When he comes again, and he will, he is more powerful than anything you can imagine. We might be better off returning and serving him willingly. At least that way, we have a chance at survival.”

  4

  Ciara

  It surprises me, but Jasn might be a part of the key to our success. There was a time when I thought him superfluous.

  —Lachen Rastan, Commander of the Order of Warriors

  Ciara returned to the clearing with the draasin for the first time since leaving Jasn Volth. Standing here, she had a mixture of sadness and longing for him. She did not know him well and understood that he had done things while in Rens that she should fear, but having him around had given her a measure of peace.

  Speaking to Bayan had only made her more resolute to defeat Tenebeth. The draasin had been tentative after they had restored her, and now Bayan was much the same. Would they be forced to convince each person they rescued that they could help? Would there be anything that they could do to expedite the process? Relying on time and the hope for recovery might not be enough, especially if Tenebeth’s forces were as potent as Bayan indicated.

  There had to be something that she could do, something more than simply remaining here, waiting as she continued to learn how to better summon the elementals. If Tenebeth feared her, then shouldn’t she try to fight back before he became even more powerful?

  You wish to run when you’ve only begun to walk, Reghal said to her.

  He appeared next to her and pushed against her legs. For a small lizard, he was strong and managed to force her to the side, where she fell onto her buttocks.

  Even when you can run, your legs can still get tangled, the lizard went on.

  What if I were to fly?

  Reghal dropped onto the ground next to her and nudged his long nose into her arm. He licked, d
rawing his rough tongue against her skin. That had once saved her.

  You would go from walking to flying? You are a brave one, little Light.

  She looked toward the draasin crouched on the ground, her tail wrapped around her body. The draasin watched her with bright golden eyes, the falling sunlight catching off the red in her scales, making it almost as if flames danced along her back.

  Ciara could do nothing without the draasin. Walking would take her days—weeks—to get anywhere beyond the borders of Ter, and running wouldn’t get her there any faster. But flying! When she soared with the draasin, she would be able to reach far lands. That was how she had made it to the waste at the heart of Rens and then back with only two days passing.

  But would the draasin help?

  After what she had been through with Tenebeth, Ciara knew the draasin was hesitant. She feared another attack and getting called back into the darkness. There wasn’t much that Ciara could do to convince her that she could help protect her, but she hoped that defeating Thenas was a step.

  If only she could speak to the draasin as she could speak to Reghal. That would make it easier. Instead, she could summon, but what good was a summons when the draasin could only answer her in images?

  She stood and approached the draasin slowly, letting her j’na drag across the ground. This she did intentionally, hoping to use it as something of a call, but not wanting to fully summon the draasin when she stood in front of her. Ciara formed the rest of the summons in her mind, trying to do as Reghal had suggested, to find a way to reach the call without stepping through the patterns, and thought that she managed it adequately.

  What do you intend to do here, little Light?

  Reghal stood next to her, but not between her and the draasin. Ciara wished she had the draasin’s name, using something other than Sashi, the nickname that Alena had given to her, but had nothing else.