I intend to fly, Reghal.
She created an image, crafting it in such a way that she could send what she intended to the draasin. Ciara added the image of Ter, and Rens, and of soaring high above, before mixing in the clouds and the darkness, all the things that she feared, everything that indicated Tenebeth.
The draasin quickly climbed to her feet and unfurled her wings, flapping violently as the images reached her. Steam erupted from her nostrils and Reghal moved to protect Ciara, standing in front of her so that she wouldn’t be injured.
Other images returned to Ciara: those of the sun shining overhead, the hot ground below, and the draasin soaring, searching for prey.
“I know that you don’t want to help me search for Tenebeth,” she said, “but we need to find others like you. When they found Bayan, they destroyed the draasin.” That had been the part that troubled her the most. She couldn’t stand the idea that other draasin would be damaged, that they would suffer, simply because of Tenebeth. If there was anything that she could do, even if she still didn’t fully understand her ability, then didn’t she need to do it?
The draasin settled back onto the ground and wrapped her tail around her body.
Nothing more came through the connection. Nothing that indicated that the draasin would pay her any attention.
Ciara sighed. Can you help me with her?
She sees the same as I do. You are meant to be powerful, little Light, but you are not there yet. You must control the summons before you can take the fight to Voidan.
The longer that we wait, the more his army grows. And the more elementals are harmed.
Not only the elementals but how many more villages would be attacked like hers had been? How many more people would suffer because no one was willing to face Tenebeth?
She turned away from the draasin and made her way back into the camp, trying to suppress the frustration that she felt. When she reached the edge of the camp, she ran into a compact woman with dark hair, her short sword sheathed at her side. The woman must have noticed to Ciara immediately because she altered her course so they would meet. She held tightly to the hilt of her sword as she approached.
“You are the girl from Rens,” the woman said. She had a clipped way of speaking, one that was similar to others in Ter but almost accented as well. Ciara didn’t know this woman, though she had seen her around the camp before.
“I’m from Rens,” Ciara agreed. “Cheneth knows that I’m here.”
The woman turned to take in the barracks, looking at the collection of buildings all laid out in neat lines, stout single-room places that those in the camp referred to as dorms. She had the sense that the people of the barracks considered them simple, plain even, but they were much fancier than anything that she would have had in Rens. There they had the caverns cut into the walls of the rock, as if the village elders had wanted to hide their presence. Only the shepa stables were built, and those were carefully constructed so that they blended into the walls of the rock.
“Yes, Cheneth. Much mystery around him, isn’t there? Or maybe not to you. He brought you here, didn’t he?”
“Your shapers brought me to this camp when they found me in Tsanth.”
“What would a girl of Rens be doing in Tsanth?”
Ciara tapped her j’na lightly on the ground, feeling the steady rumbling deep beneath the earth. The woman tipped her head to the side, almost as if listening for something. Could she hear the way that Ciara summoned the elementals? She might not be able to shape, but she’d discovered that she had another sort of power, one that wasn’t dependent on shaping.
“I am no girl.” Ciara tapped her j’na more firmly into the ground, trying to suppress her frustration. Was that the way that Jasn Volth saw her as well? She was nearly eighteen, and old enough to serve as nya’shin!
The woman smiled, flashing her teeth. “Fine. Not a girl. You are a young woman, one who holds a spear that appears nearly too large for you, and who somehow is responsible for healing the draasin rider when she returned to the barracks. Do you deny any of that?”
Ciara clenched her fingers around the spear, thinking that she would show this woman how the j’na was sized perfectly for her. “I assisted in healing your shaper,” Ciara said carefully. “At the request of the leader of your camp.”
The woman smiled again. “Leader? Is that what we must see him as? I think that Cheneth keeps secrets from us, and those secrets are dangerous, don’t you?”
Ciara tapped the j’na again. This time, the wind kicked up, gusting from the north. The woman tipped her head and sniffed at the air. Could she recognize the elementals that Ciara summoned? She didn’t think that there was anyone here able to speak to all of the elementals, but then, she would never have expected anyone to speak to any of the elementals.
“There are many dangerous things in this world,” Ciara said.
“Hmm. Perhaps you are right. Such as the draasin that remains in the woods, a draasin that for all intents should be dead, is that not right?”
“You will not harm that creature.”
The woman took a step back at the comment, and the smile that had faltered returned. “Ah, perhaps not a girl at all. Something else, though.” Her smile widened. “I can see why he likes you.”
“Who?”
The woman didn’t answer, instead made her way past Ciara and disappeared into the trees. She considered following, worried that the woman might think to harm the draasin, but decided against it. The woman was not Tenebeth and would have a hard time harming the draasin, even if she wanted to do so.
Can you watch her just in case?
Reghal appeared suddenly, and she wondered how he managed to do it. She hadn’t seen him make his way out of the trees, but he had not been there only a moment before. You worry that she might harm the draasin?
I don’t know what she might do.
Reghal sniffed the air before running his tongue along her boot. She is undecided. I will observe her for now.
Undecided. Did that mean that the woman might be swayed to side with Tenebeth?
She sighed. If there was such animosity among the shapers of Ter, how did they hope to defeat Tenebeth? How would they find a way to stop him if those with the ability to overcome him could not work together?
5
Jasn
Jasn was always stronger than he realized, even when we were children. I often wonder if he remembers the time we tracked the wolf through the mountains only to have it turn on us. Were it not for his quick bow, and his steady shot, we both might have died that day.
—Lachen Rastan, Commander of the Order of Warriors
Jasn strained again for his connection to shaping and detected nothing. It was almost as if whatever Rehnar did had separated him from his ability to shape. Always before, he had the connection, the ability to draw on shaping were he the need, but to suddenly lose it, to be so weak that he could do nothing to oppose what they did to him… Since learning that he could shape, Jasn had never felt so weakened before.
But would he be able to reach water? Even if he could, was there anything that the elementals would be able to do to help?
I need your help, he said.
Water returned slowly, sliding through him as if gradually rising up through his skin, trailing along his legs, up his body, before settling within him. What would you ask of water now?
He calmed himself before answering. He had faced worse many times and survived. There were dozens of times in Rens where he should have been dead by now, but he wasn’t. This would be no different, especially if water still responded to him.
I am trapped.
Water moved through him, slipping along his heart, his veins, filling him with an awareness of it. Jasn had felt connected to water before, but what he now detected was stronger than that. This was as if water attempted to fuse with him in some way.
You were never trapped. You only believe that you are.
Jasn tried reaching for shaping again
, but it still didn’t come to him. He couldn’t even sense. Without the connection to water, he would have felt even more helpless, but at least water remained, connected to him, though he didn’t know exactly what he might be able to do with it.
Can you help? Rehnar does something with those patterns.
Do you think it’s the patterns you should fear, or your inability to stop him?
His tapping, Jasn decided. There was something about the tapping that was very much like what Ciara did with her spear. Was there any way that he might be able to convince the water elementals to stop him from tapping on his leg? I need you to help me stop him.
Stop. You would stop the summoning?
Summoning? That was too much like what Ciara did to be coincidence, wasn’t it? She managed to summon the elementals using her spear and the way that she moved. There was a pattern to it.
Did the patterns on the wall mimic that?
He might not be able to move his legs, but could he move his hands?
Finding that he could, Jasn started tapping on his leg, following the movements that he saw Rehnar complete. The old man used a powerful tapping that filled Jasn, thudding through his heart, as if the summoning would overwhelm him. When Jasn began copying it, the thudding intensified.
He stopped. That wasn’t what he needed to do. He needed to find some way to counter what Rehnar did, not augment it.
Could he use the sense of water that he felt within him?
There was a flowing sort of quality to the water, one that he could mimic as something of a dance, swaying from side to side as he let the motion of water roll through him. Every so often, he added a steady tap on his leg, much like what Rehnar did. When Jasn did this, he felt a sharp shift in the pressure around him. Water surged away from him, leaving him, and pushed outward, as if it went toward Rehnar.
Help me, Jasn asked of the water.
You do not need water to teach you to summon.
The water elemental receded from him, but not completely. Jasn continued his swaying in place, tapping on his leg as he did, feeling returning to his legs. Slowly, he managed to move them.
He took a step.
Rehnar frowned and his tapping increased in intensity, slapping at his thigh.
Jasn felt the effort shift, whatever he had managed to do countered now by Rehnar. He redoubled his efforts, putting more strength behind the swaying, steadily tapping at his thigh, beginning to move his hand in a circular motion as he did.
His legs came free.
Jasn considered lunging for Rehnar, but what he wanted was to secure his ability to shape. That required continued focus. He remained working through the swaying, the movement, the connection to water.
Then he felt a release. His sense of shaping returned.
Without hesitating, he pulled on the connection, drawing it deeply, and formed a shaping designed to overwhelm Rehnar.
When he nearly released the shaping, it simply dissipated.
Jasn staggered back.
He’d never experienced someone with the ability to take away his ability to shape, and to do so while full of the shaped power.
And Rehnar barely moved, as if the effort of taking it did nothing to him.
The old man stopped tapping on his leg. “Now that you’ve proven yourself useful, you will come with me.”
He strode past Jasn, leaving him standing in the center of the room, the sense of movement from the patterns on the walls no longer there.
Jasn didn’t know what to say, or even what to do. He could barely move, but this time, it was shock rather than anything that Rehnar did.
The ability to shape remained, but the shaping that he’d built was gone. Would Rehnar be able to tear away another shaping were he to build it? Was there anything that Jasn could even do to oppose him?
This had been a mistake coming here. Not only in seeing Katya—and having her destroy him again—but in realizing that he could do nothing were he opposed by Hyaln. Their ability to shape was so far beyond his that he could do nothing other than watch and try not to get harmed.
Yet Katya had seemed genuinely interested in how he had managed to defeat Tenebeth. When they had saved the draasin, that had been a combined effort, and the last time had required Ciara’s strange ability and her summoning.
If there was anything that he could learn, if he could discover how to summon the same way that she had managed, would he be able to defeat Tenebeth on his own?
And why had he let her leave? When she had taken the draasin with her, she had effectively stranded him here. That might have been Cheneth’s intent, but he didn’t think that was entirely what the old man had wanted. He had wanted Jasn to learn from Hyaln, but couldn’t Ciara have learned as well? In some ways, wasn’t she a better candidate than him?
He stared at the doorway, wondering what he should do, when it began to swing closed. The patterns on the walls took on a faint glow, and he feared that if he remained here, he would be trapped, and then he would have to wait for one of the others to release him.
Chasing after Rehnar, he left the room before it closed upon him, trapping him in place.
6
Jasn
Renis came for me and brought me to the university. I don’t think he expected to find another in our village.
—Lachen Rastan, Commander of the Order of Warriors
“Who sent you here?” Rehnar asked.
“You know who sent me,” Jasn said.
The man tapped his leg again, the strange summoning that Jasn had seen when he attacked—tested, the man claimed, but it had sure felt like an attack. “We know what you claim, but there are many ways to shade the truth. We have seen all of them.”
“I came to learn, not shade the truth,” Jasn said.
“Hmm.”
They strode through the halls and stopped at a wide stair leading down. Rehnar hurried down the stair, moving more quickly than Jasn would have expected, given his age. The man paused every so often, looking up to see if Jasn would follow.
“I thought I came here to learn shaping.”
Rehnar paused at the question. “Is that what you believe happens here?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what happens here.” A growing frustration raced through him. If they were not going to teach him, and if they were only going to attack him, he would be better off remaining in the barracks and doing what he could to learn the subtleties of shaping with Alena. There might be things that he could learn from Ciara as well.
And even though he had found Katya once more, he couldn’t shake Ciara from his mind. He’d thought her a girl when he first met her, but she was more than that. Capable and strong, nothing like anyone he’d ever met. Other than Katya. Hadn’t she also been capable and strong? Weren’t those the reasons that he’d been drawn to her from the moment that he saw her?
He followed Rehnar through a lighted arch and outside the castle. Gray light filtered through the sky. It was a strange sky, one that was not sunlight or darkness, but somewhere in between.
A large stone circle spread out on a flat ledge that overlooked the water. Far below, Jasn could feel the way that water crashed, the way that waves struck the shore, and smelled the salt of the air, practically able to taste it.
Rehnar looked at him. “You must have some talent or you would not still be here. What is it?”
Jasn frowned. “What is my talent?”
The man tapped on his leg, and Jasn could feel the way that it pulled on water, as if it pulled through him as well. The sensation was a strange one, and unpleasant. With a shake, he forced the strange sense from his mind.
Rehnar smiled. “There. I sensed what you did.”
Jasn resisted the urge to laugh. He sensed that Rehnar was not one for humor. “Can you tell me what that was?”
“Ilyana believes that you can learn and that you have talent. I admit that she has an eye for such things.”
“I knew your Ilyana as Katya,” Jasn said.
&
nbsp; Rehnar only shrugged. “The name she chose doesn’t matter.”
“Why doesn’t it matter?”
“Because there is only one name. That which you know in your heart. That is the name that gives power. Now. What is your preferred element?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Which is strongest? All shapers have a preferred element.”
“Water,” Jasn said. “I know water the best. Even if I chose to ignore it.”
Rehnar frowned. “And why would you do that? There is much power in water.”
“The wrong kind.”
“And that is?”
“It wouldn’t let me die.”
Rehnar offered him an amused smile, likely thinking that Jasn joked with him. When he didn’t elaborate, the man turned away and stopped at the edge of a low wall, staring down into the sea. Jasn made his way to stand next to him, surveying the rock far below. Even from here, water exerted a powerful pull on him, as if the waves and the water called to him to join them, to crash with them along the rock. He could feel it, a steady rhythm to the way that they moved, and he rocked with it.
“You feel it here,” Rehnar said.
Jasn maintained his focus on the water and the waves far below. How could he feel anything else but the way the water pulled on him?
“I feel...”
“Focus on the rhythm,” Rehnar said. “You have that already, I think, or you wouldn’t have survived above.”
“I don’t understand…”
“Listen.”
Jasn continued to focus on the waves, letting the steady rhythm of the water draw on him. The waves seemed to wash through him, settling into his body, into his bones, the same water that had prevented his death when that was all that he had wanted during that year in Rens. In some ways, he hated water.
Something struck him, sending him falling onto his back.
Summoner's Bond (The Endless War Book 4) Page 3
