Summoner's Bond (The Endless War Book 4)

by D. K. Holmberg

  In that time, he’d come to realize that there were more within Hyaln like Tobin, men and women who were scholars, learned people, and who studied with a fervor that exceeded even the College of Scholars. The longer that he was here, the more he came to question what Cheneth had taught. What if this being they called Tenebeth was nothing more than a man more talented than anyone else?

  Hadn’t he seen what could happen with a single shaper of significant power? Ciara could summon with amazing power, and there were shapers—like Lachen—who had enormous power as well.

  “You are growing more talented with your rune traps,” Katya said. She sat near the edge of a stream, trailing her fingers in the water. A soft shaping built from her, and Jasn suspected that she intended to mask it, but with water—and his connection to the elementals—he could detect most shapings.

  “I don’t know if talented, but I see the way that they can be used.”

  He asked the current of water to flow toward her. Not a shaping and not a summons, but a request to water. It was nothing like what he learned in Hyaln. Jasn doubted that he could learn about his connection to the elementals here, as so few were known to have one. None were willing to speak of the wise, and he’d given up asking.

  Katya looked over her shoulder, her wide eyes reflecting the brightness of her smile. “I thought that you would know that the Varden approved you to stay. You are a student of Hyaln now.”

  Jasn closed his eyes and stretched his arms out, moving his fingers as Rehnar had instructed, something of a summons. The wind fluttered over him, and he inhaled deeply. When Cheneth had suggested that he come to Hyaln, he hadn’t been certain what he could learn that he wouldn’t learn in the barracks. The shapers there were more skilled than any in Atenas, and he’d grown increasingly more skilled with shaping in his time there. But what he now knew made him realize how all of that paled in comparison.

  And he had so much still to learn.

  Rehnar and Tobin seemed impressed that he had talents in several different areas. From what he could tell, that was rare. Rehnar was a master summoner, teaching Jasn the way to add his intent to the call to the elementals, holding that in his mind. Tobin was a master of the rune traps, using shapes to hold and store the power of the elements, to augment it in certain ways that made him impressive. But neither had much talent in the other area.

  Anytime he asked Tobin about something he’d worked on with Rehnar, the other man brushed it off, answering it in a way that he could explain with his rune traps. The same happened when Jasn asked Rehnar about the rune traps. Even Katya hadn’t seemed to master each of these areas. She was a shaper and claimed to be Enlightened, but she had less ability in the other areas than him. More exposure and knowledge, but he’d seen that she wasn’t nearly as able to perform some of the things that he had mastered.

  And now he was a student of Hyaln. That had been the goal in coming here, intending for him to learn enough that he would be able to help the barracks as they faced Tenebeth.

  “The Varden hasn’t even met me,” Jasn said.

  “Do they have to have met you to understand that you know how to shape, or to recognize your ability to summon when Rehnar claims that you can, or even to believe Tobin when he reports your ability to create the rune traps?”

  “What of the Enlightened?”

  “What of them?”

  “In the time that I’ve been here, I’ve been given time with others, but never with the Enlightened.”

  Katya smiled and pulled her hand from the water, wiping in on her cloak. “Is that what you believe, Jasn?”

  He studied her, wondering if she had been testing him in some way. He had no way of knowing if she did, just as he had no way of shaping spirit on his own. That was as much beyond him as summoning in the way that Ciara did.

  “You?”

  She smiled. “Few who come to Hyaln ever have the potential to be one of the Enlightened. It’s the reason why there is such prestige to the Enlightened.”

  “I thought you said the summoners had the loudest voice.”

  “The one who speaks the loudest does not necessarily wield the most power. I would think that you recognize that?”

  “What does that mean?”

  She smiled. “Only that I know how much you’ve seen of the world, Jasn.”

  “You don’t know what I’ve seen since you left.”

  “I know the sacrifice you attempted to make. I know what you were willing to do. I know, Jasn.”

  He hated that she did and that he hadn’t managed to keep it from her. Katya didn’t need to know what he’d been willing to do, the fact that he had been willing to die because she had been gone.

  “I still don’t understand why,” she answered softly. “You were a healer. In time, you would have replaced Oliver. I think he knew that, which was why he took such interest in your training.”

  Jasn closed his eyes, thinking back to that time. They were memories that he wanted to forget, the sharp pain that he’d known when he first learned that she was gone, the hurt and anger that had surged through him, leaving him a husk of who he had been. How could he ever hope to help heal another when he couldn’t move past what had happened to him? The healing that he’d known, the peace and thirst for knowledge that had driven him before, was replaced by a nothingness.

  Had Tenebeth attempted to claim him then?

  He had been damaged and had healed himself to reach water more directly. It had been water that told him how he’d been damaged, though Jasn always had sort of known.

  “You have to care in order to heal others,” he said softly. “When you were gone… when I heard that you had died… I couldn’t bring myself to care anymore. Not as I once had, and not as I needed.” He sighed. “And in Rens, there was a sort of peace. I went there to help, turning myself from the healer and into the warrior they called the Wrecker of Rens.”

  Katya took a sharp breath. “That was you?”

  “Was. Is. I don’t know. That man is gone, the Wrecker no more. And now I don’t know what I am. I’m not a healer, Katya. I don’t know if I care enough anymore, not like I did.”

  “But you still use your abilities. Isn’t that why Thenas and Ifrit and Wyath were healed?”

  “I couldn’t… I couldn’t let them die. Not if there was something that I could do. But that’s not the same as caring, as wanting to use your ability to serve others.”

  Katya watched him for a moment, her brow creased as she bit the inside of her lip. “Why did you come here, then?”

  “Because I saw what we faced and I knew how helpless I was to do anything. I didn’t want to be that person anymore.”

  “If you’re not a healer, then why do you think you can be this person?”

  The question got at the heart of what troubled him about coming to Hyaln.

  He smiled. Katya was one of the Enlightened. She was somehow reaching into his mind. She had to be for her to understand him as she did, to ask the question that he really should have been asking himself.

  “I think… I think that this person is one who can be both,” he started. “The warrior, the Wrecker, can fight Tenebeth, and in doing that, I can satisfy the healer as well. That would be worthwhile,” he said.

  “That would be worthwhile,” Katya agreed. She stood and stepped to him, taking his hands and looking up at him. This close, he could smell the fresh and clean scent of her, and he felt the heat coming off her body, heat that mixed with his awareness of her and her steady beating of her heart through his connection to water. “You would have made an excellent healer, Jasn. You would have risen to the head of the guild, and you would have made them powerful.”

  As he stared at her, Jasn swallowed. There were times when he wondered what his life would have been like had she not disappeared. Would they have married, as they had always planned? Would she ever have told him how she served Hyaln? And him, would he have remained in Atenas and continued to study water, mastering the intricacies of the body a
nd doing all that he could to help those sent off to the war?

  He would never have been the Wrecker, and he might never have learned about the elemental connection that he possessed, only knowing that he was a powerful water shaper.

  It was possible that what happened, that the torment that he’d experienced, had been necessary. As hard as that might be to believe, and as hard as that was for him to have lived through it had brought him a deeper understanding of himself. He was both the healer and the warrior. He couldn’t have been the warrior if it hadn’t always been a part of him, much like he couldn’t have been the healer were water not a part of him.

  “I wish it could have been different for us,” Katya said.

  He sighed. “I do too.”

  “I want you to know that the feelings were real. The affection that I felt for you was real.”

  Jasn swallowed. “Only affection? Because for me, it was deeper than only affection.”

  She answered him by rising up on her toes and kissing him softly on the lips.

  26

  Alena

  The first time I encountered a tainted elemental, I knew there would be no way to salvage the creature. Do any but the scholars know that destroying the elemental does not destroy the power, only the host? Elemental energy is never consumed.

  —Lachen Rastan, Commander of the Order of Warriors

  Alena returned to Atenas in the daylight, this time with an intent and a goal. She shaped herself back on a bolt of lightning and made a point of appearing at the shaper circle near the base of the tower. She held her shaping for longer than necessary, a calling of sorts, so that others would know she had returned.

  She strode from the shaper circle and made her way into the tower. This time, servants raced along the halls, and she paid them no mind. She made her way up the stairs and paused outside the wide double doors of the Seat of the Order, staring at the doors before throwing them open.

  All of this was as Cheneth suggested.

  She carried herself with more confidence than she felt, but in this she agreed with Cheneth. The Order needed stability, and if she wasn’t willing to provide it, then she would have to assist the person who would.

  Three councilors sat at the long table, and they looked up as she entered. This was the part of Cheneth’s plan that she feared. Would they shape her? If they did, if the attack came, she would have to defend herself. She didn’t like her chances, especially after what she had witnessed the night before. How could she defend against the darkness when she knew nothing about it?

  One of the councilors rose. Alena recognized Lester Dakan from the last time she had spent any real time in Atenas, having studied under him for a brief spell. The others had served on the council then as well, though Wansa had been younger, if only by a few years. She still had the same severe expression when she looked around the room, and her eyes still narrowed to little more than slits when she looked at Alena.

  “You should not disturb the council,” Lester said. “The Seat convenes to—”

  “To choose a new member,” Alena said. “That is why I have returned.”

  Wansa pressed her thin lips together, shifting the folds of her black robe so they settled around the velvet belt and peered at her through sharp gray eyes. Her silver hair was pulled back and secured with a band of matching velvet. “How is it that you believe the Seat calls a new member?”

  Wansa dispensed with any formalities, and for that, Alena was grateful. Oliver claimed the council had attempted to shape him, but had they all shaped with spirit, or had only Hester—or whoever that man was—and Margo been the ones to use spirit?

  If she intended to help the Order, she would have to work with the Seat. Doing so meant discovering who—if anyone—she could trust. Alena feared there were none trustworthy on the council, especially given what she’d learned from Oliver. If that were the case, then the entire Seat would be unsettled. The ramifications of that would reverberate throughout Ter.

  “Has the Seat not lost two members?”

  Alena held her breath as she said it. Admitting that she knew what happened opened her up for questions, but then it also placed her in a position of power. She needed to leverage that power if she intended to take one of those spots.

  Wansa glanced at Lester and then back to her. “The Seat has lost no members, Warrior Lagaro.”

  Lester frowned at her. “You haven’t been in Atenas in nearly a decade, Alena. What would make you return?”

  “The Order needs leadership, Lester, and I am willing to serve. If I was mistaken… if my sources were mistaken”—let him think that was all that this was—“then I will apologize. You both know that I served Phinar well while he sat on the council before his death.”

  Lester leaned toward Wansa and whispered softly. “She speaks of the Seat as if she—”

  The door opened, and Alena turned to see a lean man with a hardened face enter. She had not seen him before, but his dark eyes considered her for a moment, and he carried himself with a confidence that told her he expected that he should be here.

  “Hester,” Wansa said. “It’s good that you finally joined us. “And word on—”

  Hester Jons—at least, the man who pretended to be Hester Jons—raised his hand, silencing them. “What is this?”

  “This is Alena Lagaro. She was the Hand of Phinae before she departed Atenas.”

  Hester stopped across from her. He leaned toward her, his eyes narrowed, and he took a deep breath as if he inhaled her scent. He smelled of the heat, and of strange herbs, and nothing like a man of Atenas should smell, but then, Hester was not a man of Atenas, at least, if what Oliver said was true.

  “You have been away from the city a long time,” he said.

  “Long enough to know it is time for me to return.”

  He leaned forward, and the ring on her finger began to grow cool. Alena smiled, hoping that Cheneth’s ring worked as he intended.

  Hester’s mouth pulled in a dark frown. “She should not be here. We have business that must be addressed. We don’t need someone who has felt she doesn’t need to serve the Order interfering.”

  Alena bit back a retort. She had served the Order, but she had done it in a different way than most. Going to the barracks had been her way of serving, but learning how to first hunt and then speak to the draasin had been the way that she had really served.

  “I have served the Order as well as any to train in Atenas,” she said carefully. “You have only to ask the Commander, and you will understand the way in which I served.”

  Hester stared at her, and she feared that he might say something more, but he moved past her and took a seat at the table. “Margo will join us later.”

  Wansa tipped her head to the side. “You have seen her?”

  Hester glanced at Alena as if debating how to answer before shifting his attention back to Wansa. “Not seen her, but I have word that she will be joining us soon.”

  He turned to Alena and fixed her with a hard expression.

  Alena didn’t know what to say. She had expected to come into the Seat and to prove she should be considered for the Seat, but with Hester, how would she be able to overcome his objection?

  As she stood staring back at Hester defiantly, the door to the council opened again.

  Alena glanced back and saw a woman enter.

  She had seen this woman before—only, when she saw her last, the woman had glassy eyes that carried the expression of her death, and Alena had been forming the shaping that would consume her body in flames.

  “Ah, Margo,” Hester said, standing. “About time that you joined us.”

  Margo cleared her throat. “I have been delayed,” she said carefully.

  She made her way to the table and took her seat with the others.

  Alena watched and felt a flush come over her as she did. She had been a fool in coming back here and in thinking she knew what was taking place in Atenas. Oliver might have had a woman who looked like this, but had
he actually had Margo? Could it be possible that she had made a mistake?

  She feared it might.

  As she looked at the other councilors, noting the sudden confusion on the face of Wansa and Lester, she realized that perhaps she hadn’t.

  The ring on her finger flared cold again, and she resisted the urge to tear it from her finger. Doing so would do nothing but expose her to Hester and to whoever this woman who pretended to be Margo was.

  No, Alena had to remain in control. She would discover what was going on in the city, and she would gather the strength of the Order, and they would oppose this darkness Hyaln intended to bring to Atenas.

  Wansa glanced from Margo to Hester, and something passed between them.

  Had Hester shaped her?

  There had been the briefest flash of cold along her finger, but she hadn’t detected anything else. But then, if he shaped with spirit, it was possible she would not.

  “It’s good you’ve returned,” Wansa said, clasping her hands on the table and leaning slightly forward. “We have been in need of instructors. Someone of your stature can help teach the students.”

  Alena bit back the retort that came to mind. Teaching in Atenas was something all were expected to contribute to, but not all did so willingly. And most of the more advanced warriors were excluded except for certain occasions. But they would not have known Alena had spent the last few years teaching. As much as she had disliked it—and she had, for the most part, wanting nothing more than to have the opportunity to chase the rumors of draasin, and then do what she could to protect them once she learned what the barracks really intended, in Atenas there might be some value in her teaching.

  She would have to play this the right way. Hester and Margo would know she suspected them, and if the other two were only shaped and not replaced, she would have to find some way to restore them. Oliver and his spirit stick would have to help.

  “I think I could better use my talents in other ways,” she said, choosing her words carefully. Let them think she refused.