Journey of Fire and Night (The Endless War Book 1)

by D. K. Holmberg

  The sense of water remained. Ciara didn’t feel it growing stronger, but the source was out there. It gave her hope that what they did find would be enough. She prayed to the Stormbringer that hope wasn’t misplaced.

  With her untipped spear, she pointed toward the water calling to her, a steady beacon in her mind. How could Fas not sense it too?

  “It’s still there,” Ciara said, not wanting to sound too confident or risk insulting Fas by the fact that she sensed water and he did not.

  Fas nodded. “Good. Then we keep going.”

  She licked dry lips and touched the leather of her waterskin, longing to take a drink, but the quickening of Fas’s pulse told her that she should not.

  They continued in silence. The sun baked the hard-packed sand around them as it rose steadily in the sky. Ciara should have pushed to leave later in the day, to wait until the sun began to set, but then they’d have been walking at night, and that posed a different danger.

  Her father had watched as they left the villagers, moving at a quick jog across the sand to the south, heading toward the promise of safety and hopefully water. Ciara wished he would speak to her and that she could learn what he might know, but he had only watched with his dark eyes, his j’na planted in the rock and the sense of a shaping swirling around him like the wind in a storm.

  About midday, they topped a small rise in the dune. Far below, the ground changed from sand, shifting to harder rock. She blinked to clear her vision, wondering if the scrub plants she saw growing were real or imagined.

  “I sense them,” Fas said.

  She smiled tightly. If they could get the village past the sand, moving across the rock—regardless of the heat—should be much easier. And the presence of plants meant water, didn’t it? Maybe she wouldn’t have to worry about conserving what water she had in her skin. Her lips began to swell and her legs felt heavier than normal. If she continued to refuse to drink, her mind would begin to swim. Ciara had experienced dehydration before—that was part of her earliest lessons as nya’shin—and knew the dangers, but she’d made a choice to help Fas.

  He took another drink and tipped his skin all the way back, emptying the last drops from it. He didn’t look over at her.

  “Here,” she said, handing him her skin.

  Fas shook his head. “One skin, Ciara.”

  “You won’t make it if you don’t drink.”

  “I’ll make it. Besides, once we reach there,” he said, waving his hand toward the plants, “we’ll find another source.”

  “Right. So drink,” she said.

  He met her eyes and she saw a flicker of emotions: shame and anger and pride, all rolled together. Finally, he reached for her skin and took a quick swallow. When he handed it back to her, his coarse fingers brushed hers. “You’re strong, Ciara. Even Eshan knew that. I think that’s why he pushed. He knew you were capable.”

  She sniffed and hooked the waterskin back onto her belt, sliding it so that it didn’t bump into the shaft of her spear. This was the first chance she’d had ranging away from the village with the spear, so she had new concerns. “Had he believed that, he might not have died.”

  They continued across the sand. Late in the day, the massive dunes changed, leaving scattered stretches of flat desert. The haze had faded the closer they came, and sand no longer seemed suspended in the air, threatening to fill their mouths and choke them. Both lowered their veils as they walked.

  A spiked plant with thick, waxy brown leaves growing up from the ground in a mound greeted them. Fas brushed against it, sending needles shooting into his leg. He winced and jerked back as drops of blood bloomed.

  “Blasted plant,” he swore, pulling his j’na free and swinging it at the plant, sending it flying. When he set his spear down, a few of the barbs were stuck into the wood.

  “A new addition to your carving?” she said.

  Fas shot her a look as he plucked the spikes from his leg. All had long spines on them, and his face tightened as he pulled them out. On the last, he groaned softly.

  Ciara pulled the barbs from his j’na and studied one. They were sharp and jagged with a serrated edge in the wicked curve that reminded her of the osidan tip to the j’na. She tossed one, expecting it to catch in the wind and go tumbling, but it flew true.

  She did the same with another, throwing it toward another small plant, similar to the first. The barb struck and others were released like a trap springing closed.

  Fas jerked back a step and whipped his j’na in front of him, cursing under his breath. “Warn me next time you intend to do something like that, would you?”

  Ciara crouched carefully and picked up the needles that sprayed from the plant. There were nearly a dozen in all, and that from nothing more than throwing the needle. They would need to be careful they didn’t venture too close to the plants. From Fas’s reaction, she could easily imagine the pain of plucking them out of her skin, and that had been from pulling out a couple. If all these ended up buried in her leg, or arm, or backside… She shook the thought away, not wanting to consider how much that might hurt.

  But the barbs might be useful. Shaped as they were, they were practically designed by the Stormbringer to fly. The serrations along the edge would carve skin, and the sharp spikes along the end reminded her of the draasin and would lodge into flesh.

  What was the thick, sticky fluid along the edge, then?

  Ciara touched it and rubbed it between her fingers. It burned where she touched, as if the plant stored fire in its veins. She wiped it on her elouf.

  “Are you poisoned?” she asked Fas.

  As he shook his head, she used water sensing on him, stretching through him to detect whether the fire sap of the plant had done anything other than cause pain. She found nothing to make her think he was harmed.

  “Not poisoned, just angry. What are you doing?” Fas asked as she tore a piece of fabric off her elouf and rolled the barbs inside.

  “Saving these.”

  “For what? To torture me later?”

  She pulled the fabric tight, closing the specimens within. Her mind began to work through ways the barbs might be useful, especially if they were attacked. “Something like that,” she said. “We shouldn’t wait here for too long.”

  Ciara started across the rock, avoiding getting too close to the plants. A part of her wanted to study them. With natural defenses like the plants seemed to have, there might be other uses. If they could somehow tap the sap from the plant, they would have a strong weapon to use against Ter if they were attacked again. With as few shapers as the village possessed, they needed any advantage they could find. But they needed to reach the water, not stop and examine these strange plants.

  “They remind me of the dowa plant,” Fas said as they passed the fourth one.

  There were similarities to the dowa, Ciara saw, but differences as well. Dowa grew taller, but maybe that was because it thrived where the heat of the sun wasn’t quite as potent. And no dowa she’d ever seen had such sharp barbs.

  “Maybe the leaves,” Ciara said, “but nothing else is the same. Stormbringer, you can eat dowa leaves if needed.” The water trapped in the leaves was one way nya’shin survived between finding other pools of water. She couldn’t imagine biting down on one of these leaves; just thinking of the heat burning down her throat made her gag.

  Fas slowed as they approached a stretch of rock, guiding them more carefully forward. With each step, he slid slowly. Ciara sensed the way his heart raced more than it should, but he gave no outward appearance of stress from the heat. They needed to find some source of water for him to refill his waterskin. The farther they walked, the less chance there would be for him to manage, and the less likely it would be that they would both make it back to the village.

  They reached a ledge where the rock dropped off in a sharp shelf. The ground had to be nearly one hundred feet below, but straight down. Without needing to use water to sense—and Ciara wasn’t sure how valuable water sensing had bee
n in this part of the waste, as she hadn’t been able to sense anything from the strange plants—she saw more scattered plants. Some appeared tall, possibly as tall as she was, but it was difficult to tell from this vantage.

  “Stormbringer,” Fas breathed out.

  “I thought nothing lived in the waste,” Ciara said. “Look at all that grows. For that much life, there has to be water even before we reach what I sense.”

  “Yes, but how do we get down there? How will the village get down there?”

  Night fell as Ciara and Fas continued to make their way along the ledge. It was such a sheer cliff that neither wanted to walk too closely to the drop-off. Heights didn’t necessarily bother her, but she didn’t have to work hard to imagine falling from the rock, tumbling through the air until the hot, hard ground welcomed her.

  As they walked, she strained to sense water. The distant sense that pulled them across the waste still called to her, but it seemed no closer. They would have to somehow scale this shelf for them to have a chance to reach it. Only, they had found no clear way to reach the ground. Perhaps if they had the shaping tricks of Ter, they might be able, but only Ter had warriors able to shape all the elements. Water wouldn’t allow them to fly, even were they to find enough to use.

  Fas had been silent for much of the past few hours. Ciara had shared her water with him, but both knew speaking too much wasted water. Only half her waterskin remained, and that was with her choosing to only moisten her lips, barely enough for her to keep going. Already they didn’t have enough water for both to return to the village. They’d found no other source, only the life so far below as to make it impossible to reach.

  A soft shuffling sound came from somewhere behind them. Ciara listened, shivering against the growing darkness, but the sound didn’t come again. Water sensing didn’t give her a picture of anything. Either Fas didn’t notice, or he was already too dehydrated to care.

  Both possibilities bothered her.

  Ciara touched Fas’s arm. “You need to return to the village,” she said, breaking the silence between them. The realization had been building the longer they followed the ledge and still hadn’t found any way to climb down. Even if they did, at this point it was probably too late for both of them to make it.

  “We both go.”

  She smiled, but in the darkness, he wouldn’t be able to see it. “We have enough water for one to make the return. You’ll be able to move faster. And I know there is something out there. I sense the water…”

  She could tell from Fas’s racing heart that he might not make it back across the dunes to the village. Though they hadn’t seen one of the dangerous linaas or heard the cry of one of the deadly chira, they knew the predators were out there. Both animals preferred to move in the dark, and both had better eyesight than humans possessed. Only water shaping would save them, but the longer they walked and the more dehydrated she became, she wondered what she would sense. Fas’s pulse had already started to sound fainter than it should. How much longer before she couldn’t sense him standing next to her? How could she expect to detect chira or linaas if she couldn’t even sense the nya’shin walking with her?

  “Water? Ciara, this was about getting our people to safety and then we’d find water.”

  Ciara looked away, back toward the rock wall that dropped away from them. “They’re the same. Without water, we can’t have safety.”

  He watched her for a long moment and then shook his head. “Then it should be you. You’re the daughter of the ala’shin, and you’re the only one able to sense water out here. I’ve been following your lead, Ciara.”

  “If I’m the only one able to find water, then it has to be me.” She didn’t want him to know that her sensing ability had started to fade. So far, she could still detect that distant source of water—she felt it more than anything else—but how much longer would that last?

  “You couldn’t even climb the tower. How do you think you can make it down this shelf?”

  “Neither can you. Not like this,” Ciara said. She shouldn’t embarrass him by reminding him how his heart raced or mentioning the thirst she sensed in him. “You’re nya’shin. And a water shaper. Whatever my father might claim—” and Ciara didn’t think he’d make any claim to her importance—“I think the rest of the village would argue that you are more valuable to its survival.”

  Fas clenched his jaw as if debating with himself, but then sighed. “I’ll go, but only because you’d have the best chance to reach water.”

  Ciara pulled her waterskin out from under her elouf and shook it. There might not even be enough for him to make it, but one of them had to try. The village had to know that the crossing might not only be dangerous, it might be pointless. She took a small drink, only enough to wet the inside of her mouth and her lips.

  “Give me yours,” she said. When Fas handed his waterskin to her, she poured barely more than a few mouthfuls of water into it, enough to last her a few more hours but probably not much more than that. She handed the rest to him. “Have the villagers wait. I’ll either find a way down or…”

  She couldn’t finish, and Fas didn’t need for her to. If she didn’t find a way down, and if she didn’t find a source to drink from, she wouldn’t be returning. She was nya’shin. That was the risk she agreed to take, the sacrifice she would make on behalf of her people. Her father would understand that.

  “Make me a promise,” Fas said. “If you can’t find a way down in the next few hours, you’ll start back toward the village. I’ll go back for water and return for you.”

  She considered how long it would take. They’d been gone most of the day and several hours into the night. No moon shone to give a sense of time; the Stormbringer had seen fit to test them during the black night, the time when the moon hid from view, leaving the sky darkened except for the stars twinkling overhead and shadows moving around them. Ciara figured there was probably only another hour before midnight. That meant the return, even if he went straight through, would take longer, especially fatigued and dehydrated. For Fas to reach her after making it to the village… It would be impossible for her to survive on only the water she had with her.

  Which meant she had to find something. Even if it meant coming across a plant like the dowa, one that stored enough water for her to make a few more steps.

  Fas stared at her and even in the darkness, his eyes begged in a way that his words did not.

  “I promise,” she said softly, hating the lie as it left her lips.

  It was a measure of how dry Fas had already become that he nodded, as if she would do nothing else.

  He took a small drink before attaching the waterskin back onto his belt. He pulled his shaisa veil over his mouth and let out a soft sigh. “You’ll reach water, Ciara. I know it.”

  She forced a tight smile as he turned and started back toward the village. As he did, she wondered if she would ever see him again.

  17

  Ciara

  We continue to discover elementals, some of great power. Not all can be seen like the draasin or saldam, which makes discovery more challenging. Some can even selectively reveal themselves, though the elementals generally prefer to maintain a separation from man. I have not determined what motivates the elementals to become involved.

  —Lren Atunal, Cardinal of the College of Scholars

  The sounds of the night echoed around Ciara, surprising her with the vibrancy of life that existed this deep in the waste. The rocks caught the occasional howl, making it reverberate across the stone in a way that made her think a desert fox chased her. Maybe it did. The blasted sound had come every time she began to feel comfortable, setting her teeth on edge with each call. So far, she hadn’t sensed it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t nearby.

  With each passing hour, she felt increasingly drained, her ability to sense fading the farther she walked. She paused to count how many hours had gone by since Fas had left her and came up with three, maybe four. It couldn’t possibly be longer, c
ould it? Daylight still hadn’t come and neither had the shimmering heat that would rise up with the coming day. At least with the cool night, she didn’t need to drink as much water.

  But with the night came the shifting shadows.

  Since Fas left, she’d felt increasingly uncomfortable. His presence had reassured her and without him, she hated the way the desert sounded around her. Every so often, she could swear something moved in the darkness but she never caught sight of anything.

  She still hadn’t found a way down from the rock ledge.

  The ground below beckoned, taunting her with the promise of life and water if only she could find some way to make it down the wall. So far, she’d come across no path, nothing that would allow all the wagons and the chemel to make it safely down, let alone the villagers, some too old to move quickly.

  Had she more energy, she would scream. Instead, she grunted to herself and gripped the shaft of her incomplete spear as she trudged onward, quietly praying that the Stormbringer would grant her protection in her travels.

  No, not protection. She needed water.

  But she didn’t sense anything. Only the distant awareness of the promise of enough water for the village, perhaps enough water they could stop wandering, but no sense of where the water existed. All the time she’d spent walking had left her feeling disoriented. Did she still travel south? She no longer knew. She might be able to return to the village, to use the sensing of the people to return, but it would not be easy. And she would need water first.

  She paused and licked the lip of the waterskin. She could still taste Fas’s breath on the bottle and hoped he had made it safely back to the village and given word to her father that they needed to remain where they were—maybe even return to the caves—and find a different source of water. Ciara didn’t want to be the death of the village, and if they followed her here, there was no way that she wouldn’t be. The village would reach this shelf and be stuck, the same as her.