Summoner's Bond (The Endless War Book 4)

by D. K. Holmberg

  “How is night any different?” Shade asked. “There is not the same warmth, but there is a quiet about the night, a heaviness.”

  “A stillness,” Ciara said.

  He nodded. “Yes. And a stillness. All of that has a different sense than the light.”

  “And this matters?”

  “More than you know,” Shade said. “There are four known elements, but there are others that have power as well. Perhaps not quite as direct as earth or fire, but dark and light are in many ways more powerful. When you learn to summon this, you will truly be powerful.”

  Powerful. The comment struck to her heart, to the desire that she tried to hide, but clearly, she had failed. That was all that she wanted, to possess the ability to help her people, to have the strength to protect them. But she was nothing more than a water senser.

  Or had not been, prior to coming here. Now she could summon the elementals. Now she could help her people. And soon she would have to return to Rens.

  “How can you summon the light?” she asked. With the clouds overhead and the heaviness to the air, she longed for the warmth and the memory of Rens. How long had she been here? Long enough to learn some of the lessons that Shade intended of her, but not long enough to master everything. And it was possible that she would not be able to master everything that she wanted before he was no longer willing to teach, or before she had to return, knowing that her people needed her, and what she had learned.

  “The light is different,” Shade answered. His eyes narrowed as he answered. “There is power in the light, but you must use the others to reach it. Think of what you described. All are aspects of other elements, are they not?”

  She considered what he said. The sun would be fire. The heat rising around her could be from fire, or it could be wind and water. Hadn’t she summoned something similar? Even the vipan would be from earth, she suspected. “How is night any different?” she wondered.

  But as she did, as she looked around, she knew that there was something unique about the night. There was the stillness that she felt, a weight about the air that she could not explain by the other elements, even the uneasy sense she had from the dark. Not fear, only an understanding that it was vaster than anything she could imagine. Where the light seemed like life and vibrancy, the night was a shroud—not death, but a sense of nothingness.

  “I can see from your expression that you understand,” Shade said.

  “And you can reach this?” she asked.

  “Not all can, but those who can, who are willing to take the risk, can be more powerful than you can imagine.”

  Again, it seemed as if he knew what she held in her heart, the desire to help her people. To do so, to be able to fully keep them safe, she would need to know as much as possible so that the next time Ter came to attack, she would be able to call on the elementals and demand that they fight on her behalf.

  “When will you teach this?” she asked.

  Shade smiled, the shadows of the night making it difficult to see him clearly. “Soon, ala’shin. You will be ready soon.”

  32

  Alena

  The attack will come soon, which means I must play my hand sooner than I intend. I do not think that I am fully prepared.

  —Lachen Rastan, Commander of the Order of Warriors

  Alena carried the cool metal rod in her pocket, running a finger along the shapes etched into the side. In some ways, the shapes reminded her of what she had seen on Ciara’s spear, but these were smaller and carried with them a sense of movement. As she looked at them, she thought that she should be able to follow that movement, should be able to trace it, but then she lost it.

  Oliver had reluctantly agreed to lend her the spirit stick. Only when she had given him the ring and proven that it worked against spirit shaping had he let her have it. But then as soon as he had the ring, he began to study it. He had seemed determined to understand how it worked and whether he would be able to recreate it.

  She had returned to the toss yard, wanting to test Jef first. She didn’t think he’d been turned by Hester or Margo, but then, she didn’t know either. With him working with the students, he had a position that placed too many others in danger if he might be turned, so she decided that she needed to test him first.

  Interestingly, Oliver had demonstrated not only the spirit stick but a strong shaping that he used to cut off a shaper from their ability. Alena hadn’t managed to succeed when trying it with water, but when she’d shifted to fire, she’d been able to hone nearly as sharp an edge as Oliver managed with water, and through this, she had kept him from shaping.

  Where had Oliver picked up tricks like that?

  Could he have come from Hyaln, infiltrating Atenas the same way that Issa had?

  No. She didn’t think that was the case, though she wasn’t entirely certain, but Oliver had been within Atenas for much longer than she had, long enough that stories of him were widespread. Were she to question, she would have only to ask others.

  Maybe he was right that the guild was more capable than she realized.

  She crouched in the corner of the yard, holding onto a shaping that concealed her, shaping it in such a way to mask her ability as well. Few within Atenas would even know this shaping, and if they did, she doubted they would be able to detect her before she attempted it.

  Jef led the students out into the yard. He was an affable man and the students responded well to him, so she understood why he’d been chosen to try and pull the abilities from them. But what he did also posed a threat to them, one they were too young to even understand.

  She held the spirit stick in her hand, clutching it tightly. It didn’t appear to matter whether she aimed it at the person—it seemed to be more about the intent behind the way she shaped—but she found it easier to aim the spirit stick at the target. Oliver had claimed the same.

  Wrapping each of the elements together, the shaping was in some ways much like what was required to travel, only this was directed into the rod, where it activated the markings along the edge. She didn’t know if it was something about the metal or about the markings, or maybe neither mattered. It was possible it had more to do with her tying the shaping together, binding it in such a way that she could reach spirit.

  Once the shaping took hold, Alena could feel how it worked, and could feel the way that it coursed from her.

  She aimed the spirit stick at Jef and released.

  The shaping eased away. Alena had discovered while practicing with Oliver that if she wasn’t careful, she could overwhelm the target. Doing so might not only alert them she was there but might do damage. She had no idea what would happen if she pulled on too much spirit and what would happen if she unleashed it on someone without any warning. Until she had a chance to question Cheneth more, she would not risk it.

  Jef stiffened slightly when the shaping struck.

  As it did, the superficial thoughts racing through his mind drifted to the forefront of hers.

  She detected the way he looked at the children. He had real enjoyment for this work. Alena almost smiled along with him as he looked at each of the children, naming them in his head, almost as if taking a count. As he did, she felt the way he shaped. There was a soft pull from deep within him, something she never recognized when she shaped, but now that she felt it through him, she realized she must do the same. His was an earth shaping, a soft and subtle one that prodded at the students as if trying to understand them.

  Alena pulled with a little more force through the spirit stick, drawing more from each of the elements. Doing this was the only way she would be able to search more deeply into his mind.

  There, she saw how he felt at home in Atenas, the comfort of his bed, the taste of the food, but there was a loneliness in him. It was a quiet sense, one she wasn’t sure whether she really saw at first, or whether there was something else in him. She held onto the sense of loneliness, delving deeper into it, and saw how he missed his home, and how there was a part of him that
thought he might have betrayed his people by coming to Atenas to learn, but how could he not have, especially as there seemed so much for him to discover, that ability to shape, and to use that to help his people?

  She retreated from his mind a little.

  This was a man who came from lands traditionally held by Rens, but now he was in Ter, wanting to learn what he could so that he could still help Rens. Not by attacking Atenas, but by using what he could learn here so he could both understand Atenas and could guide Rens.

  She looked at Jef in a new light.

  And then she delved deeper into his mind.

  There she found his childhood. Memories from before he came to Atenas, before he learned even that he could shape, memories from his home.

  This wasn’t a man who wanted to harm Atenas.

  She released the shaping. When she did, the spirit stick went cold.

  Alena wrapped her shaping around her, suddenly fearful. For it to go cold meant there was a spirit shaper out there, one who attempted to reach her. The cold in the spirit stick was brief, barely long enough for her to notice, but she did notice.

  She remained motionless, ready for another attempt, but it didn’t come.

  Alena decided that it was time to reveal herself and return to the students.

  She stepped forward, shedding the shielding as she did. When she reached Jef, he grinned at her, shaking his head a moment.

  “Didn’t expect you to come back. Most don’t.”

  “I told you I was assigned to work with you.”

  “That don’ mean that you’ll come back. Just means the council thinks you should.”

  She shrugged and touched the spirit stick in her pocket, running her thumb over the shapes along the surface. “What are you working on today?”

  “Same as yesterday,” he said.

  One of the students giggled, and Alena realized it was the same girl as the day before who had giggled at him. She had sandy-colored hair and a nose that turned up, and when she stared at Jef, she did so through deep brown eyes. The girl couldn’t be any older than eleven, but then, hadn’t Alena had her first crush about the same age? She hadn’t fallen for any of her instructors—that had come later—but she had felt those early stirrings. Given the way Jef looked at them the way her spirit shaping had shown how he looked at them, she suspected that they saw his affable personality as more appealing than most of the instructors in Atenas.

  “How can I help?”

  “You mean it?”

  She nodded, and when Jef smiled, she realized she really did mean it when she offered to work with him.

  33

  Ciara

  They have discovered the making of rune traps and locking spirit. I did not think that would be learned by any within Atenas, and certainly not with the aid of someone as weak a shaper as Oliver. It does not surprise me, though, that Alena is involved.

  —Lachen Rastan, Commander of the Order of Warriors

  The inside of the tower had become monotonous to Ciara, and she’d lost track of how long she’d been here. Had her father known that she would be gone for so long? She continued to learn, now able to delicately control the elementals, mastering each technique that Shade taught her. She had progressed beyond Doln and Sinsa and now worked with Shade individually, but she had the sense that she would reach the end of his knowledge.

  But not quite. He still had not taught her about summoning the night. Had it been a week ago that he first promised that she would learn?

  She began to grow agitated staying here. Not the tower itself, or even because of Shade, but an unsettled sense that she needed to return, that there was something that she’d left undone. Maybe that sense was tied to the blasted dreams that kept coming. She had another one last night, one that awoke her with a cold sweat, a strange voice in her mind telling her that she needed to return and always that lizard, sitting and staring at her, watching her with eyes that seemed more intelligent than any lizard should be.

  Ciara tried putting it out of her mind, but she struggled. It was dreams like that that made her feel she needed to return. Had Ter attacked her village? Was that why she had them? Now that she’d learned to summon the elementals, it seemed possible that she would be able to know what took place even as far away as Rens.

  She rounded a corner and reached a stair. Up would take her to her lesson, where Shade waited for her. But down… Ciara still didn’t know where down would take her. She hadn’t been down too many flights in the tower, and never to the main floor.

  Shade would be angry for her making him wait, but if she went now, she would be in lessons with him for hours. And there was another reason that she wanted to go down. Ciara longed to see the sun, to feel it against her cheek, to welcome the warmth of it against her skin. It had been far too many days since she last felt that heat, and too long since she had breathed air other than the inside of the tower—or at night.

  Hurrying down the stairs, she decided that Shade would have to wait. He might be angry, but she doubted that he would be too angry with her, especially since she was the only one of the students he currently taught who had mastered the summoning. Not that the others were incapable of reaching the elementals, but she had proven much more skilled, the first time in her life that she had ever managed to be more skilled at anything.

  The bottom of the stair led to a wide hall. A double door filled one side, and the other was a row of lanterns, but nothing else. Was this all that there was on this level? Could she have come down here only to find that there was nothing else?

  She touched the door and found it warm. There was no handle, nothing that would let her open the door, almost as if it had been closed from the outside, intended to trap those inside. She smiled at the thought. There would have to be a way to open it.

  Feeling her way along the door, she found nothing. The doors were smooth, almost perfectly so. Only the seam that ran down the middle told her that they would open.

  Were she a shaper, she would blast the door open.

  Could she use a summons?

  If she didn’t anger Shade by not appearing for her lessons, this would surely do it.

  But the desire to see the sun, to get out beneath the heat of the day, overwhelmed her concern over angering her instructor. And really, she doubted that he would be angry over the fact that she tried to open the door. She wasn’t a prisoner here.

  How to work a summons that would open the door? Wind might push it open, and using earth might unsettle it enough that she could jar it free, but neither seemed the right answer. Fire might burn, but that meant calling the correct elemental with the right amount of strength. Sometimes fire could be fickle. And water… how could she use water to open the door?

  She wasn’t sure that she could.

  Could there be a combination of summons that she could work? Would that help her?

  Earth and wind? Maybe… but water seemed like it could help as well.

  Ciara started with the steps that Shade had taught, beginning with the intent. She wanted to open the door. With this fixed in her mind, she began by summoning earth, a gentle drumming on her leg. If she could disrupt the angle of the door enough, then she might be able to use the wind to pull it open. Earth rumbled steadily beneath her, but slowly, and with an aching groan. Ciara held tightly to her intent, demanding that earth answer, but the summons she used wouldn’t be enough.

  She took a step, adding a thump of her boot on the stone to the summons. This drew on earth. She felt the way it responded, and the groan eased into a steady rumble. Another step and another thump, and Ciara demanded that the earth respond, demanded that the door move, if only a little.

  When it did so, there came a creaking sound.

  Ciara almost lost control of her summons, but held on, fearful that she would lose control of the elemental. Shade had made it clear that was a risk with the summons. If you lost control of the elemental, there was the potential that they could attack. That was what had happened the first
time that she had summoned wind—and the second, for that matter. Wind slapped against her, driving her into the wall. With as much earth as she called now, she didn’t want to think about what would happen were it to rebound on her.

  Another creak and the seam of the door began to separate, pulling slightly apart.

  Ciara could almost put her fingers into the seam, and if she could do that, then she needed to add wind. Could she summon the wind at the same time as she summoned earth? She had never tried doing it simultaneously, but nothing Shade had told her made it seem like she shouldn’t be able to.

  Wind required a different intent and a different call. Ciara held onto the idea that she wanted to open the door and continued to stomp her way across the floor, using the steady rhythm to demand earth respond, and added to that the quick fluttering of her fingers that was required for the wind. She wiggled them in a rhythmic pattern until she began to feel the pull of wind.

  Earth and wind, together.

  She didn’t have time to get excited about the fact that it had worked. She used wind and pulled through the lower hall, dragging on the door, attempting to pull it open. There was resistance, and she pulled on this, demanding that the wind respond.

  A gale of wind whipped through, answering her call. The earth continued to groan as it pulled the doors apart.

  With a loud crack, the doors flung open.

  Ciara released her summons and stood staring at the opening she had made.

  There was no sun.

  She stepped outside, looking at the sky. Nothing but darkness stretched overhead in a sky full of clouds that obscured the stars. She stood transfixed. It was the middle of the day, wasn’t it? Or had she spent so much time on earlier lessons that she’d lost track of time so badly?