Endless Night

by D. K. Holmberg

  The air exploded with lightning, followed by a concussive peal of thunder.

  Ciara staggered back, nearly losing her j’na.

  The dark shaper stood in the midst of the lightning strike. He eyed the draasin and then turned to face Ciara and then Jasn.

  “You’re a long way from the barracks,” the dark shaper said with a sneer.

  Jasn jumped forward, his sword suddenly glowing. He slashed and struck at the dark shaper, pulling on power so strongly that she sensed it. “Thenas!” he screamed.

  Water surged from within the pool, responding to the power of Jasn’s shaping. Ciara was overwhelmed by the strength she sensed, wishing she had the same ability.

  Thenas caught Jasn’s sword. Where he touched, the bright light faded, absorbed by the darkness. “You have chosen the wrong side, Volth.”

  Jasn attempted another shaping, swinging his sword around, but it missed and Thenas pulled on the blade, tearing it free from Jasn’s hand.

  Thenas swung the sword toward Jasn’s head.

  Ciara shot forward, spinning with her j’na, and caught the edge of the blade on her spear.

  She twisted, and the sword went flying.

  She tapped her j’na on the ground, and the sound came out soft and muted, nothing like the sharp crack she knew was necessary if she were to oppose Tenebeth.

  Thenas smiled. Darkness streamed away from him, creating a buffer that prevented her from fully using the j’na.

  She tried again, slamming her j’na to the ground, taking the step that she knew was needed, and again there came the soft, muted thump. Light flickered on her j’na and then faded again as if it had never been there.

  The draasin rose to her feet and slammed her tail into the ground.

  If she did nothing, if she didn’t defeat Thenas now, the draasin would be in danger. Already Tenebeth’s servant had come for the draasin twice, and now he came a third time.

  “Jasn!”

  Jasn had grabbed his sword and started to bring it back around when Thenas shot tendrils of black from his hand.

  Jasn appeared to see them too late, and froze.

  Ciara wished she could shape, wished she had some of the power Jasn possessed, that she wasn’t dependent on the j’na to use the power she needed to try to summon… what? The light? The lizard?

  The draasin roared. Flames streaked from her, warping around Jasn and striking not Thenas but the darkness that came from him, as if attacking the power of Tenebeth himself. The heat rising from the draasin rivaled what had been required for the egg, and the draasin continued to rage, shooting flames unlike anything Ciara had ever encountered at Thenas.

  The blackness faded.

  Ciara snapped her j’na to the ground. The sound filled the growing night.

  She took a step and then crack.

  Something had changed. The sound was muted again.

  “Jasn! He’s… shaping… something so that I can’t do this!”

  Jasn rolled, coming to his feet near her, his sword outstretched. Sweat streaked across his face and a jagged gash in his cheek filled in, mending as she watched.

  “Wind and earth,” Jasn said. “And he’s stronger than me.”

  Ciara looked at her j’na, wishing that there was something she could do, but she couldn’t summon the light she needed without the ability to follow the pattern. “I’m not strong enough,” she said. “I don’t know enough. We’re going to fail because of me, and the draasin—”

  Jasn touched her arm, and it tingled where his fingers rested. “You are strong enough. You stopped him when he came before. You can do this.”

  But she couldn’t. Jasn wouldn’t be able to convince her of something she knew was not possible. She couldn’t reach the pattern, and if she didn’t, then she would fail, Jasn would suffer, and the draasin would again be claimed. All because of her.

  But she had to try. For all of them—for herself—she had to try.

  Take a step. That was the hardest part.

  Ciara stepped forward. She brought her j’na up and prepared to slam it into the ground but felt wind battering against it. She might be able to bring it back down, but there was no way she was going to be able to create the necessary pattern, not to summon the power she needed.

  What she needed was something that Tenebeth feared. If only he feared her, but she knew there was nothing about her that scared the darkness. He wanted to control her, wanted to use her strange ability to summon the elementals, but fear her? That wasn’t Tenebeth, at least not with her.

  “You think shaping can defeat this power?” Thenas asked over the rising wind.

  Ciara realized Jasn had been shaping, though she didn’t know what he’d been shaping.

  Thenas sent dark power at Jasn.

  This time, he wasn’t fast enough to escape it.

  It struck him like a fist, sending him flying backward.

  Ciara cried out his name, and Thenas only laughed.

  “You mourn the Wrecker of Rens now? After all that he’s done to your people?” He laughed again, the wind pushing her j’na up and up, keeping her from even trying to bring it to the ground. “You should ask him sometime about how many people of Rens he destroyed. How he survived in Rens for a year while so many died. Ask, but only after you embrace…”

  Nobelas!

  She ignored Thenas, crying out to the lizard instead. That was the only thing Tenebeth feared, but why were they intertwined? Why was it that whenever she attempted to summon Nobelas, Tenebeth appeared? Was it something she did? Some way her summoning failed, or was there something about the lizard that drew Tenebeth?

  I need your help! I can’t summon.

  A voice flickered in the back of her mind and then was gone again, as if chased away by the wind.

  Ciara reached for it again, needing to reach the lizard. It might be the only way she survived. And if she did survive, she would need the lizard’s help saving Jasn, if he could be saved after what Thenas had done to him.

  Nobelas!

  She shouted in her mind, the urgency adding a snap to it that reminded her of the sound her j’na made, of the sound Olina and Cheneth used when saying ala’shin.

  The flicker in her mind came closer.

  I need your help!

  This time, she pushed everything she could imagine into the call, the urgency, the pressure of how she would summon, even an image of the steps she would have taken in the steady dance that would summon.

  With that, the voice was heard. There was no mistaking it, and it filled her mind.

  You finally have summoned.

  Ciara let out a relieved sigh. I need your help. Tenebeth—

  Tenebeth attacks, but through his servant. You are strong enough to face him.

  I’m not. He stops the j’na.

  You have summoned without the j’na. It is no different, ala’shin.

  Through the darkness, she caught sight of the bright eyes of the lizard looking over at her. The lizard didn’t move, made no effort to come to her, to help. Without that help, was there anything she could do?

  But nobelas claimed that she could summon without the j’na. Cheneth had made the same claim, only he hadn’t seemed to be able to show her what to do.

  There was something to the call. She had felt it when she reached for nobelas.

  Could she repeat it, but only in her mind?

  Ciara formed the image of the j’na and took the step, grounding herself so that she wouldn’t have to try to imagine too much of the summons. Within her mind, she felt it as the crack reverberated.

  The j’na began to glow.

  She smiled.

  Another step and another crack, again within her mind.

  The j’na lit brightly.

  Another. And another.

  The j’na began to push back the darkness of night.

  Thenas pressed upon her, using the dark power he commanded, but she ignored it, focusing on one more step, one more crack, and soon the j’na was bright, bu
rning like the sun. She swung it toward him, less concerned with healing him than with destroying Tenebeth.

  The draasin-glass tip sliced through him.

  Darkness spilled out, but her j’na pressed it away from her.

  Thenas attempted another attack. Ciara felt the power of it rising around her, as if she could feel his shaping water or even command of the darkness, and she took a step, filling her mind with the sense of the crack. With the j’na, she pressed it back.

  She sliced again, swinging the j’na so that it connected with his stomach. Darkness burbled free, and the light from her spear forced it away.

  Again she attacked, and again her spear struck flesh. Each time, the light in the draasin glass threatened to fade, but she used her mental summons and it returned as bright as before.

  Thenas stopped moving, but darkness still swirled around him.

  She had raised her j’na, ready to stab him, needing to end him so that he couldn’t attack again, when the lizard raced across the rock and bounded onto his chest.

  Slowly, methodically, the lizard began running his tongue along Thenas’s face. With each pass, the color returned, reminding her of what had happened when she had touched him with her j’na. This time, she had wanted only to stop him, less concerned about saving him. But the lizard chose to save him.

  Ciara staggered back, sinking to the ground, the weight of what she had done making her weak. She propped herself up with the j’na, managing to watch as the lizard worked his way around Thenas before finally climbing down.

  Did you heal him? she asked.

  That one was beyond saving. We released the darkness.

  Why release it?

  There must be darkness and light. There cannot be one without the other.

  But Tenebeth attacks.

  That which is Voidan attacks, but even he is not the darkness, only a conduit. Much like the Mother is but a conduit.

  I don’t understand.

  You do not have to. Not yet.

  Why did you not come when I called before?

  You did not know how to summon Reghal before, Ciara S’shala.

  Ciara started to object, to tell him she could speak to him and that she had summoned him when she had been in Tsanth, when she realized what he had said.

  You are Reghal?

  The lizard brushed against her leg, and there came a flash of light as if sealing the connection between them.

  Ciara staggered back from the power that surged between them. Not only could she hear Reghal, but she could feel him, as if knowing his thoughts. As he would know hers.

  What happened?

  Reghal licked her leg. The bond is set, ala’shin.

  With that, he made his way to the draasin and curled up with her but kept his glowing eyes fixed upon Ciara.

  She stared until she realized she didn’t know where Jasn Volth had gone.

  She found him near the pool, one arm half in the water. Tentatively, she touched his neck, feeling for a pulse, and leaned close to listen to his breathing. It came slowly but steadily. At least Jasn still lived.

  His eyes flickered open and he took a deep, gasping breath. When he saw her, his gaze darted past her, looking into the darkness before settling once more on her. “Is he gone?”

  She nodded.

  “Chased away?”

  She swallowed and shook her head, wondering how Jasn would take the news that she had killed Thenas. “Destroyed.”

  He scooped a handful of water from the pool and took a drink. Sitting up, he took her hands and held her gaze. “Good.”

  44

  Jasn

  Darkness can be destroyed by the light. The opposite must also be true. Now I must understand how we can summon the light.

  —Rolan al’Sand, Enlightened of Hyaln

  The air thinned this far to the north. Wisps of clouds blew past Jasn, but nothing more substantial than that. Gray skies threatened to spill rain but never did.

  Below him, the ground had changed to hard rock with little vegetation. Nothing seemed alive. How could this be where he was meant to travel?

  “Are you sure I should leave you here?” Ciara asked.

  Jasn glanced at her, standing next to the draasin. Since seeing the way she had defeated Thenas, he hadn’t been able to look at her the same way. There was power to her unlike anything he’d ever seen, power he couldn’t deny. But she had a gentleness to her as well and had wanted to help Thenas in spite of everything he had done.

  “I think you have to leave me here,” he said.

  “I could go with you…”

  Jasn crossed the distance between them. “And I would like that, but you’re needed in the barracks. You’re the only one able to hold back Tenebeth’s attacks if he comes again.”

  Ciara squeezed her spear and lifted it off the ground slightly. Jasn held her gaze until she looked away. If only there was some way that she could come with him, but Thenas wasn’t the only person Tenebeth would have turned. That was the entire reason for the war; Ter was convinced that Rens attacked and so invaded. And Jasn had participated, destroying so much as the Wrecker of Rens. Knowing what he did about Ciara and the way she wanted only to protect her people, he couldn’t help but feel guilty.

  “When will you return?” A soft flush came to Ciara’s cheeks with the question, and water sensing told him how her heart fluttered.

  He suspected she detected the same within him.

  “I don’t know what will be required of me. Cheneth hasn’t been exactly forthcoming about what will be expected of me here.” But Cheneth had wanted him to try to find Hyaln, claiming they would know how to find Katya. Jasn wondered if he might be able to find more than where Tenebeth might have drawn Katya. If he could learn some of what Cheneth knew, maybe he would be better equipped to face the darkness.

  Ciara tapped a hand on the draasin’s side, a movement that reminded him of what she did when summoning the creature.

  “What of you?” he asked, watching the draasin.

  Ciara’s eyes took on a troubled expression. “For so long, all I wanted was the ability to shape water so that I could be a true nya’shin, and now I have…”

  “You have something more,” Jasn finished for her. “What you can do is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. You need to continue to learn what that means so we are ready when the next attack comes.”

  “I wish…” She shook her head. “It does not matter.” Ciara tapped her spear on the ground. The smooth black stone on the end flashed with a burst of color and then faded. With a nod, she climbed onto the draasin and looked down at Jasn. “Be careful, Jasn Volth. There is much I would like to learn from you.”

  She flushed as she said it but stared at him almost defiantly.

  Jasn nodded.

  At her tap on its hide, the elemental took to the air, leaving him standing alone on the rock.

  Jasn watched as the draasin disappeared before turning to stare at the mountains. Olina had said he would find Hyaln beyond the mountains and that he would have to search for it on his own. The draasin could not come.

  After taking a deep breath, he pulled on each of the elements and crafted his shaping.

  The shaping to get him beyond the mountains had drained more strength from him than it should have, but something like a barrier prevented further travel. Without his connection to the water elemental, he doubted he would have passed the barrier. Was that why Ciara had not been allowed to come? Was there a connection to the elementals required, an ability to speak to them that he didn’t know if she possessed?

  The farther he went, the more he began to wonder if this wasn’t a mistake. What did he think to accomplish by coming here? Cheneth thought he might find answers, but what if there was nothing? What if he wasn’t meant to find Hyaln?

  He shared a renewed connection with the water elemental since Olina had tested him, but was there anything he could learn in Hyaln that would help keep Tenebeth from invading his mind again? Was there really anythin
g that would keep him from ending up tainted like Thenas?

  Yet if it meant he might be able to find—and help—Katya, it was a chance he was willing to take.

  The mountains were nothing more than a distant memory. Nothing but the same hard rock spread out around him. He felt the distant pulling of water and suspected he neared the ocean, but he couldn’t see it. Nothing else pulled on his senses.

  Jasn lowered himself to the ground as doubt crept into his mind.

  What was he doing here? This wasn’t what Lachen had asked him to do. The commander—his old friend—had wanted him to learn what he could in the barracks. But maybe he needed to find Lachen, discover what he knew about Tenebeth, and then return to the barracks.

  Jasn reached another barrier. This time, it did not yield before him.

  He lowered to the ground. If he couldn’t get beyond the barrier, he wouldn’t be able to find Hyaln, and then he wouldn’t be able to learn what Cheneth suggested he could by coming here.

  With a frustrated sigh, he turned and looked behind him. He should have returned with Ciara. They could learn together. He might not be able to do the same things she could, but now that Alena had recovered, they could work together, figure out how to hold back Tenebeth.

  A shaping built nearby and Jasn spun.

  A figure appeared in the distance. Jasn watched as it became clearer. Long, dark hair draped over the woman’s shoulders, and there was a sway to her walk, one that was almost familiar…

  The barrier dropped.

  Jasn felt it as an easing of the shaping.

  As it fell, he reached toward the woman with a water sensing. The woman paused, face shrouded in shadows, waiting.

  His shaping washed over her and his breath caught.

  No! It couldn’t be possible, not after all this time.

  Jasn started forward until he was nearly in front of her. His heart hammered wildly and he made no effort to slow it.

  “Katya?” he said in a whisper. “Is it really you?”

  A sad smile parted her mouth as she nodded.

  45

  Ciara