“Not impossible,” Alena said, ignoring the way that Oliver stared at her. She hadn’t let him use the spirit stick on her. There had been no need. She had attempted it on him, and then on Yanda, and each time she had gained a deeper understanding of both of them, but they had never used it on her. Had Wansa seen everything that had flashed into her head, the same sudden surge of memories that had gone through her mind? From Alena’s experience of standing on the other side of the spirit stick, she suspected she had. And that was the power of the device.
“That lets me see inside your mind?”
“It’s a spirit stick,” Oliver said, rolling it along his palms. “There’s an element we have never managed to shape in Atenas, one our shapers seem to have never mastered. This lets us reach it.”
“Spirit? I have never heard…” When she trailed off, she gaped at Alena. “You said you peeled something from my mind. What was it?”
“There was a shaping there. Some sort of layer. I’m not sure what the purpose of it was, only that it affected you. I think the others on the council were equally affected.”
“This is the real reason that you’ve returned, isn’t it?” Wansa asked.
Alena nodded. Now that they shared with Wansa, she had to share everything with her. “Oliver recognized that something had changed.”
She turned her attention to Oliver. “The healer guild uses spirit?” Wansa asked.
“Not spirit, but I recognized there was something off when I was summoned to the Seat and nearly attacked.”
“We would never attack—” Her eyes widened. “By the stars,” she whispered. “We did. I remember it, though it’s like it comes through a fog. You were called before us, and then you defied the Seat.”
Oliver huffed. “Defied. I am doing more to help save Atenas than the council right now.” Yanda touched his arm, and he glanced at her, shaking his head so that his jowls shook. “Oh, fine. Maybe you’re doing something as well.”
Yanda glared at him. “That’s not quite what I was getting at, you foolish man.”
“No. You’re trying to tell me that I need to behave with the second. I know what you want for me.”
“I think there’s something to that, yes,” Yanda said.
“Well, after what they put me through, I don’t think I much care.”
“I know what you’ve been through. I was there with you, remember?”
“Can we get back to this issue?” Wansa asked. “Rather than whatever this is between the two of you?”
Oliver flushed and turned back to the councilor. “Fine. The issue at hand is that the council has been tainted by outsiders who are able to shape spirit and have somehow managed to slip unnoticed into Atenas.”
Wansa frowned. “There is no way that they would slip unnoticed…”
It took Alena a moment to realize why Wansa had trailed off, but when she saw what Oliver had managed to do, the way that he had used a shaping over himself to turn himself into what appeared to be a thinner, much shorter old man, she gasped. It was the same technique that she’d seen from Cheneth. Had he shared it with Oliver?
She would ask why with him, but then, she suspected it was Oliver’s ability with water that was the reason. The mask he shaped over himself changed him completely, making him look nothing like himself.
When he released the shaping, the familiar healer reappearing, he smiled triumphantly at Wansa. “You see how someone would be able to slip unnoticed into Atenas. Even someone you think is someone else.”
With that, he changed himself again, this time taking on the form of Margo before fading back into Oliver once more.
“You think Margo is not who she claims?”
“I know she isn’t. And there are likely others.”
Wansa looked around the room, her arms now hugging herself rather than crossed. “I don’t understand any of this. Why would Atenas have been infiltrated?”
Oliver and Yanda looked to Alena. It felt strange for her to be the expert on this, but then, she had worked the most with Cheneth, had hunted draasin in Rens, and she had faced the threat of Tenebeth, but for some reason, this felt more dangerous than anything that she’d ever done.
“There’s a darkness that has come to Atenas,” Alena started. “That’s what I was looking at when you found me outside. And the darkness spreads, growing stronger. I came to try to help, but there might not be anything that can be done to prevent the darkness from overwhelming all of Atenas.”
41
Jasn
Cheneth is Enlightened. Neither of us can use spirit on the other. A shame that we cannot.
—Lachen Rastan, Commander of the Order of Warriors
“I need to see the Varden,” Jasn told Katya. They stood in the room Katya had brought him to the first time he’d come into Hyaln, and this time, he managed to use the power of the runes carved into the wall, and added to that power both summoning and shaping. Somehow, the combination created something of a seal. That must have been the reason that Katya had come here that first day, and was the same reason that he came today.
It had only been a few days since they sat in the library, with him beginning to understand the depths of what he might face. In that time, he’d tried to understand what it was that he would be able to do, determine the reason that Cheneth had sent him here.
At first, Jasn suspected that it was only to learn, but that wouldn’t have been Cheneth’s only reason. The blasted man had known something, or suspected, hadn’t he? Would he have known that Jasn had potential with summoning and rune traps? The latter came more naturally to him, though he still didn’t know why. He had progressed through the different patterns that Tobin demonstrated for him, quickly managing to reach some of the more complicated runes. He still didn’t know how to place them together for maximum effect, but he thought that he might be able to learn. The more that he worked with them, the more that he began to think he understood the patterns and how they could be combined together.
But Cheneth had known about his ability with water, and with the elementals. And he had known about what happened when Jasn shaped another with water and the effect that it had. There was power in those shapings, power that Hyaln did not possess.
That had to be the reason that Cheneth had wanted him to come here.
Why had it taken him so long to realize?
“You’ve been accepted into Hyaln, but asking to see the Varden… That is something that you should not yet do.”
“I thought you said that they lead Hyaln.”
“They do.”
“Aren’t those they lead allowed to speak to them?”
“This is not the council in Atenas, Jasn. They have no obligation to meet with you.”
He laughed. Even the council had no obligation to meet with shapers. New members were chosen by the council, elevated because of strength in shaping or connections they possessed in Atenas, not because of any other real reason. Often, it was more political maneuvering than anything that managed to get someone on the council.
All but the Commander.
Jasn still wished he understood why his friend had managed to reach such heights when he struggled, working hard simply to manage half of what Lachen could do.
“I think you have a misunderstanding of what the council is willing to do,” he said. “But this is not about me. This is about Hyaln and having balance on the Varden.”
Katya frowned. “I don’t see what—”
He didn’t give her the chance to finish. Grabbing her wrist, he poured the shaping of water that he’d prepared through her.
Katya tried jerking free, but one thing that his time in Hyaln had taught him was how to use water to hold steady, and he refused to let go. As he did, he called on the elementals, sweeping through her with not only the power of a water shaping, but that of the water elemental.
I need to demonstrate what I can do, Jasn said to water.
She knows, Jasn Volth.
She might have heard me, but sh
e doesn’t know.
Water agreed and coursed from him through her, in powerful waves that she couldn’t resist.
That was the other reason he had wanted to come to this place. Not only could it shield from the Khalan, were they listening in some way, but he would be able to shield the rest of Hyaln from knowing just what he did. If they discovered that he had essentially attacked Katya, how would they react?
The shaping met a strange resistance.
Jasn pushed, recognizing that the resistance should not be there.
He hadn’t expected to find anything within her. When he shaped her, he thought that he would demonstrate forming an elemental connection when there was nothing to heal. Since Katya seemed uninjured, what would he have been able to heal?
But the shaping came across something.
Jasn had felt a similar sort of resistance, and that had been when healing himself.
Odd that he should detect it here in Katya.
The shaping swept through her, building again and again, the pressure of the water shaping reaching something of a crescendo as it poured into her.
Her back arched and her mouth opened in a silent scream.
Jasn felt her thoughts.
It was fleeting, only a moment, but he was connected to her, much as he had connected to Alena. The distance between he and Alena made it so that he didn’t feel her quite as he did when they were both in the barracks, but when he focused late at night, he still had that distant awareness of her. He wondered if he would ever lose it.
With that brief connection, he knew her.
Everything that she’d told him about her feelings toward him was true. There was confirmation that she had cared for him and that it hadn’t all been an act. Returning to Hyaln had been difficult for her, and she had done it because it was her duty but also because she believed that there was a higher purpose for what she did. And he saw that she still served that higher purpose and that she would always serve Hyaln.
They may have spoken of commitment to each other, and about the possibility of staying together, but Katya had already been committed long before she met him, and would be long after he left.
Knowing gave him a sad sort of relief, as well as closure. She would never be able to be what he wanted, and either he had to be fine with that fact or he would have to move on.
She turned her head, as if aware of what he managed to sense within her. A sad smile crossed her face.
Then his shaping overwhelmed the resistance.
Katya gasped, and Jasn released his shaping, released his connection to the water elementals.
She staggered away from him, holding her wrist where he had touched her, almost as if it burned. Her eyes were wide as she looked around the room. “What did you do?”
Jasn waited. He didn’t know how long it took for her to feel the effects of his shaping, but if she had been healed so that she could now reach one of the elementals, he suspected that she would begin to hear them.
“Jasn?” Katya asked again.
“I healed you,” he said.
“There was nothing wrong with me for you to heal.”
“There was something within you, Katya. I don’t know what it was. But it’s gone now.”
Katya frowned. He could feel it as she cycled through a few quick shapings, as if to ensure that she could, before breathing out in a relieved sigh. “What was it then?”
Jasn shook his head. “Like I said, I don’t know.”
“But if you healed me, that means that…”
“I don’t know what it means,” he said. “It’s possible you won’t be able to hear any of the elementals. I don’t know how the healing works, or whether it works every time.”
“You said it had so far.”
“In Ter. What if it’s different in Hyaln?” he asked.
Katya closed her eyes. She took regular breaths, steady and slow. “There is nothing else,” she said finally.
Jasn sighed. “I don’t know how long it takes to begin to detect it,” he said. “With Thenas, I don’t think that it was right away. I don’t know about Ifrit either. And I left Wyath in Atenas after I healed him.”
“Why Atenas?”
“They had brought him to Oliver for healing.”
“And you were there.”
“I went to discover why Lachen had sent me to the barracks. He was the reason that I left Rens.”
Katya bit her lip, frowning. “I—”
The door shook from the power of an enormous shaping.
Jasn jerked his head around. Katya turned slowly and focused on the door, and he realized that she shaped. He’d never managed to detect her shaping quite so clearly since coming to Hyaln. Had his healing her changed something so that he could? Had it connected him to her in a way?
“There will be questions,” she said softly. “Do not fight. Doing so only puts you in danger.”
“Questions?” he asked.
She nodded. “You’ve been raising suspicions around Hyaln. Too many comments about the Khalan. I’ve done what I can to deflect them, but you were too new…”
“There hasn’t been anyone to ask. I’ve spoken to you, to Rehnar, and to—”
“To Tobin,” Katya said. “As I said, too many questions.”
“They’re coming for me?” he asked.
Katya didn’t answer. She didn’t have the chance.
The door opened, and two people that he’d never seen stood on the other side. One was a man with hard eyes and a cane that reminded Jasn of Cheneth. Power surged from him, shaped in such a way that Jasn was simply aware of it. The other was a woman taller than him, and muscular. She had short, curly black hair and skin so dark that it looked like the night had already claimed her.
“Ilyana,” the woman said. She had a musical voice, and her feet clicked on the stone as she stepped forward. “The Varden has requested your presence.”
For some reason, Jasn had a brief sense of terror from Katya, but then it was gone.
42
Ciara
I lose faith in the shapers I attempt to train.
—Lachen Rastan, Commander of the Order of Warriors
The summoning held her to the wall. Ciara looked down the hall, fearful that Shade might find her. She was to meet him atop the tower again and attempt to summon the night. After failing again the night before, she had the same dreams, this time so vividly that she awoke to them, with the sound of the lizard talking in her mind, warning her away from the summons. She hadn’t been able to fall back to sleep.
Instead, she had sat in her room, knees bent, and focused on the wall, trying to think of what she could remember from her home. Her father. Fas. Others in the village.
But there was more. There had to be more, only she couldn’t think of it.
That troubled her more than anything, especially knowing Sinsa had a similar experience. For now, Ciara’s fingers still worked as they should, and the summons still came without difficulty, but what would happen were her fingers to go numb once more, the same way they had after she’d left the tower, the same way Sinsa’s had after asking to return home? No summons would come if her fingers didn’t work.
She snuck through the tower, not certain what she intended, but feeling the urge to do something other than join Shade again, to sit under the blanket of darkened clouds and stretch for the emptiness of night. He claimed she would be able to reach the night and that when she did, she would be powerful enough to protect her people, but wasn’t the ability to summon the elementals enough to protect her people?
There was another reason she refused to go to the top of the tower, at least for now. The last dream had been different for another reason. In it, she again saw herself riding on a draasin. She’d had the same dream before, but they had never been quite as clear as this time. With this dream, not only had she ridden on the draasin, but she’d ridden on the draasin she’d seen Shade commanding.
Ciara needed to go to that draasin.
She s
nuck through the halls, holding onto the earth summons that kept her shielded, steeling the intent firmly in her mind. When she reached the stairs, she hurried up them, pausing only a moment at Sinsa’s level, and then again where she would have found Shade before continuing up again.
The rising heat told her she was in the right direction.
Reaching the top of the tower took a different stair, one that didn’t lead past the draasin level, so she hadn’t been here before, but she recognized the way that the heat built, how it pressed against her. When she stepped off the landing, she glanced down the hall but saw no sign of anyone else.
Ciara crept through the hall, holding her summons. When she reached a door that glowed softly, she carefully pushed it open, making certain to close it again behind her.
The draasin cowered along the far wall and barely looked over when she entered.
The creature was enormous, long tail wrapped around her, with spikes lining her neck. Golden eyes stared at her with something bordering on disinterest. The draasin unfolded her wings and barely moved.
Was Shade’s control over her such that she wouldn’t move even when he wasn’t here? That would be impressive were it true.
Ciara moved closer to the draasin, releasing the summons she held shielding her. She stood in front of the creature. Shade summoned her; what harm would there be in Ciara doing the same? She could control fire, why could she not control this fire?
Focusing on her intent, she held what she wanted in her mind. With the draasin, it would be something simple: she wanted the draasin to look over at her, nothing more. If that worked, she might be able to try something more complex.
Ciara started with fire, using the tight squeeze she’d learned from Shade. Fire required friction, and pain, to summon effectively.
She felt warmth work along her arms, but it wasn’t enough. Either the summons wasn’t enough, or the intent that she held in her mind was not enough.
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