Darkness Rising (The Endless War Book 2) (26 page)

I can bring her back to the light.

The draasin twitched his tail and paced along the wall.
The Mother.

Alena frowned and spoke aloud. “The Mother?”

Jasn glanced at her but still said nothing. He stood close to the draasin, hands lowered to his sides, much more relaxed than she had ever seen him.

What you call the light, we call the Mother.

And the darkness? Tenebeth? You have a name for him as well, don’t you?

The draasin hesitated but then answered.
Darkness. Yes, we know the darkness. To the draasin, he is known as Voidan.

Alena sensed the draasin’s hesitation in telling her even that much. The draasin feared him, feared what this creature they called Voidan would do to them.
What is he?

The Mother is everything. The source of all.
The draasin seemed to struggle for what to say. When speaking as they did, the words didn’t always matter. She could understand the draasin, and they could understand her. But there were times when the words
did
matter, and the draasin struggled with concepts that she easily understood, and just as often, she struggled with what the draasin had knowledge of.
Voidan is opposite of the Mother. Emptiness.

Alena shivered.
If Voidan is opposite, then he is powerful?

Very.

Why haven’t we seen him before?

Voidan has always existed, but something has changed. His power grows. The draasin do not understand, but we know that he cannot continue to grow stronger. All will fail then, not only draasin.

Was there anything she could even do to help the draasin against such a power? Alena didn’t know, but she couldn’t simply wait and do nothing.

She stepped forward, stretching the egg out in front of her, and set it on the ground in front of the draasin. Heat radiated from it, and for a moment, Alena thought she heard a voice in the back of her mind, tiny and small, but then it was gone.
You will need to protect this egg while I am gone.

Confined as I am?

Alena noted bitterness from the draasin. The elementals had always claimed the benefit to their “capture” outweighed the torment they felt from their confinement, but she didn’t get that sense from him now.

You would be free within these walls. You can keep the egg safe until I return.

And if you do not return, Lren? What happens then?

Then you will be freed.

There is no freedom in these lands, not while Voidan wanders.

How can we confine him?

The draasin snorted.
You must ask the Mother.

Alena waited for more, but he said nothing.

She freed him from the chains around his wings and he stretched them, raking his claws across the ground. He breathed out a cloud of steam that filled the air, and then he circled the egg, wrapping his entire body around it.

“We should go,” she said to Jasn.

He nodded and started back toward the stone wall, pressing a shaping into it that opened the door. Bright daylight spilled inside, and Alena remembered to extinguish the shaping she’d used to light the lanterns, leaving the draasin once more in the dark.

Hunt well, Lren,
the draasin said.

Alena nodded her thanks and followed Jasn outside. As he sealed the pen door, using a shaping of stone more intricate than she’d realized him capable of, she heard Calan’s voice.

“Where is it, Alena?” He stepped from the side of the pen, his massive body casting a long shadow.

“Cheneth asked it to be safe,” she said. “So it is. I have placed the egg with the draasin.”

Calan’s face clouded. “Cheneth has returned?” She nodded, and Calan’s jaw clenched. “I would see the egg. Even Cheneth cannot deprive me of that right.”

“Talk to Cheneth. It was his order that I followed.”

“And what of you?” Calan asked Jasn.

There seemed a deeper implication to the question, but Jasn only smiled. “Cheneth leads the barracks, does he not?”

Calan grunted. “For now.”

She sensed Jasn adding an additional shaping to the pen, but one that she wouldn’t expect from him. Fire, but he mixed it with water in a strange way. The effect was slight, but enough that it would make opening the pen difficult. Calan didn’t even notice what Jasn did. She might not have either if not for the connection they shared.

He tapped her arm, ignoring Calan. “You will show me the Sanash as you promised.”

“A waste of time,” Calan said as they walked away. “You will not find the second trial quite so easy with me.”

Jasn ignored him and led Alena toward the clearing at the edge of the barracks where the shaper circle would be found. It was a measure of how much she had changed that she simply followed him.

How did she intend to help the draasin when she could barely stand up for herself?

J
asn let
the shaping guide him. The connection to Alena helped, but he still wasn’t sure they were going in the right direction. Air whistled past him, but the shaping moved him along, if slower than it should. Bringing Alena with him added to the difficulty, though her efforts assisted their travel.

“Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?” he asked.

Alena held on to his hand, squeezing more tightly than was necessary. When he’d suggested they would need to work together, he hadn’t expected her to do so with such anger. The woman hated him, likely because of what he had done before coming to the barracks. Jasn didn’t blame her, either. The man he had been had done terrible things in the name of Ter.

“I follow Wyath,” she said.

Jasn didn’t ask how she tracked Wyath. It was probably the same as how she had managed to find him. And had she not… He didn’t want to think about what would have happened. The stone had nearly crushed him, and would have, had she not arrived.

They moved north. Jasn had traveled much of the lands around Ter but had rarely gone north. Beyond the Gholund Mountains were other small nations he no longer remembered. The scholars in Atenas would be disappointed to know how little he remembered of his geography, but why did it matter when most of his time had been spent along the border with Rens?

They passed over the mountains. Jasn wasn’t surprised to see that they moved beyond the dark green slopes to flat plains that reminded him of Ter along the northern coast. Land blurred past beneath them, a steady undulating field of green and brown. In the distance, thick storm clouds were visible and thunder rumbled, mixing with the thunder of their shaping.

Alena began to descend, and Jasn provided more shaping strength to aid as she did. They dropped to soft ground covered by long grasses. Water dampened the blades of grass, soaking through his clothing. Damn, but he wished he would have grabbed a different cloak before making this journey. With the rips in his, the cold wind gusting from the north drifted through the cloth and water managed to get past it, trickling down his legs.

“Why here?” he asked.

Alena looked around, her brow furrowing. “This is where I thought I would find Wyath.”

“Sort of how you found me?”

“I
did
find you, didn’t I?”

Jasn nodded and stepped away from her. The ground was soft beneath his boots, and with the damp grass, he knew there had been a recent rain. To the east, he sensed the vastness of the ocean, the massive swells of water pulling on his senses. He could almost taste the salt in the air but suspected that was only his imagination. The distance to the ocean was too far to truly detect anything out there.

“What are we looking for?” he asked.

“The draasin.”

“And you think that we can simply find the draasin and that will be it? I’ve barely been trained, and you’re weakened.” When she shot him a look, he raised his hands to placate her. “You can refuse to acknowledge that, but it doesn’t change that it’s true. The egg leaches strength from you. I can feel it as it does.” Jasn looked at the sky and shook his head. “Even if we find one of the draasin, or this draasin that you expect us to find, we probably won’t be able to do anything, especially if it has been twisted. You’re going to have to accept help, Alena.”

“I have. I brought you, but I’m not sure it’s
we
.”

“Then you’re not strong enough to help the draasin.”

Alena shook her head. “I don’t think I am, but you can use the elementals. If you can reach for water, you can use that to help the draasin.”

Jasn didn’t know what to say at first. The idea of him somehow healing a draasin was impossible to consider. Even if he was able to reach for water, even if he somehow convinced the water elementals to help—and that wasn’t a guarantee—how was he supposed to heal one of the draasin? Blighted stars, but he had a hard enough time healing people at times! When Alena had been injured, there hadn’t been anything he’d been able to do short of nearly sacrificing himself, and Jasn didn’t think that would be the key to helping the draasin.

“I don’t think—”

He felt an enormous shaping building, stronger than almost anything he’d ever felt before. The earth rumbled beneath his feet and threatened to throw him to the ground. The last time he’d felt something similar, he had nearly died.

“Careful!” he urged Alena.

Lightning split the sky, though the storm seemed far to the south, and struck the ground with a massive explosion of light and fire.

Jasn readied a shaping, half expecting to need to defend himself. When his vision cleared, Wyath stood only a dozen paces from them, a bemused expression on his face. He had changed since Jasn last saw him. Not only because he was now healed, but it was more than that. Hair that had always been graying had more color to it. Wrinkles had faded. But it was his entire demeanor that had changed as well. He walked without a limp, and vibrancy twinkled in his eyes.

“You’ve finally come,” he said to Alena. “And you still live. Can’t say that I’m surprised.”

“What is this, Wyath?” Alena asked.

“I told you I would find us help,” he said. “I thought you were going for more help than only him.”

“It’s what I could find. Bayan is gone, and I haven’t found Eldridge.” Alena hesitated. “There is something else, Wyath. We found an egg.”

He whistled softly to himself. “Cheneth knows?”

“He knows. But we need to find a female to help it hatch. And the only female I can find quickly enough is the one we followed.”

Wyath nodded. “She’s in danger, you said.”

“More than I even realized.”

Wyath tilted his head, studying her. “So Cheneth shared with you as well. Good. If half of what he says is true, then we need help.”

“Did you know about him?”

“I don’t think he wanted me to know, but I’ve been around the barracks a long time and spent much of that with him. He masks himself well, but not as well as he would like. Finally got him to talk to me, and all he does is tell me about his former teacher.” Wyath shook his head and turned to Jasn. “Commander was right about you, though.”

“Does Lachen serve Tenebeth?” Jasn asked.

Wyath tapped one foot on the ground, moving with a restless energy. “I don’t know that I can say with certainty what the commander serves. He has never advocated for peace, but then again, this war was not his choosing, was it?”

Jasn hadn’t really thought of that. The war with Rens had been going on for years, long before Lachen ever assumed power, back when the commander was a man named Nolan. It was possible Lachen didn’t know anything about the greater war that was coming, but from his comments, Jasn doubted that was true. Lachen
knew
, only Jasn wasn’t completely sure
what
he knew. But the attack on the heart of Rens, that was Lachen’s doing.

When they finished this business with the egg and whatever it took to help the draasin—if they even could—then he would need to go to Lachen again. This time he would have answers. Real answers.

“We need to find her soon,” Alena said. “If we don’t, the egg will die.”

That was the first that Jasn had heard of that. “How do you know?”

Alena shook her head. “The other draasin, the male, warned me that the egg was weak and needs a female.”

“There are others,” Jasn suggested.

“How many more? How many will fail until we manage to stop the darkness from using the draasin? How many more will Ter need to destroy?” Heat had entered her voice, and her face flushed with the power of her words. “If what Cheneth tells us is true, then we need to find a way to help the draasin, not harm them.”

“Do you know where she has gone?” Wyath asked softly.

Alena closed her eyes and breathed slowly for long moments. “I don’t sense her any longer.”

Wyath sighed. “That was my fear.”

“There has to be a way to reach her, isn’t there?” Jasn asked. “How does the connection work?”

“Fire is different than water,” Alena said.

“You don’t know how water works.”

“Just as you don’t know how fire works.”

Jasn fell silent. He didn’t want to argue with Alena, though she often seemed eager to yell at him, angry at who he was or the fact that she had to work with him or, now, that they were connected by his shaping. “Must they be separate?” Jasn said. “Is there a way for your fire and my water to work together?” He looked at Wyath. “And you. Who do you speak to now?”

A small smile tugged at the corners of Wyath’s mouth. “Now?”

Jasn nodded. “Since the healing. Ifrit now hears the elementals. I don’t know which ones, but it’s there. And Alena said the healing changed you as well.” He looked Wyath over and knew that to be true, even if he didn’t quite know how. “So which elementals do you now speak to?”

“I speak to earth,” Wyath said. “But that has not changed since your healing. What has changed is that I can now hear others.” He glanced at Alena. “Like the draasin. Perhaps others as well.”

Jasn wondered why the healing he performed using the elementals to assist would give others that extra ability, but now wasn’t the time to theorize. Now they needed to figure out how to find the draasin.

“Can we use each of the elementals?” Jasn asked. “Earth. Can you use earth to find where the draasin might be hiding?”

“What makes you think the draasin hides?”

“Do you think the draasin
doesn’t
hide?”

Wyath frowned. “I’m not sure what I know anymore.” He sighed. “You ask if there is any way we can work together, and my answer would be that there must be. My connection to earth doesn’t share with me where to find the draasin, but there is darkness that I detect, much like what I suspect Alena must be able to detect with fire. As could you with water if your connection to it were stronger.”

Wyath looked to Alena. “Tell me, Alena, what
can
you sense with fire?”

“In these lands?” She shook her head. “There is nothing. We followed you here, and I thought you would know where to find the draasin, but…”

Wyath closed his eyes. A rumbling shaping came from him, one that echoed deep into the earth, rolling through the ground before stretching out away from him. Was that how Wyath managed to speak to the elementals? Did he join shaping with them in order to reach earth?

Wasn’t that what happened for him? Each time he’d managed to reach for the elemental powers, he had been shaping, hadn’t he? Always he’d been healing. The only time he hadn’t had been when the elementals healed him, protecting him from his own stupidity.

Jasn focused on water, thinking about what he did when healing. The shaping used in healing was complex and required knowledge of a person’s injuries, but when he managed to achieve the more impressive shapings, he had none of that. He simply shaped. There was the pull of water, and somehow the connection and water seemed to know what needed to happen, pulling on him as much as he pulled on it.

With that same sort of brute shaping, he sent it out, trailing along the damp blades of grass, sending a water shaping surging away from him almost like he would were he using water sensing. This was different, and with the shaping added to it, his awareness jumped from droplet to droplet, pulled along by all the moisture he found in these lands. Had it not been here, Jasn wondered if he could have managed the same shaping.

Water coalesced, but only within his mind. The shaping pulled on something he could sense but not see, drawing it toward him.

Power surged within him, power that was so much like what he felt when healing. Jasn held on to it, drawing it to him, allowing himself to be filled by the strength of the water all around him.

What would happen if he tried healing, but not externally? Could he heal himself?

Would that allow him to reach the water elementals better?

Jasn had never intentionally tried to heal himself. Every other time, it had come without thought and without any sort of plan. He had healed many others over the years, but only a few where he suspected there was something more to what he did, that he now knew to be the elemental influence.

And if he turned that influence inward?

Most within Atenas believed a shaping couldn’t be used on oneself, but Jasn had seen others do it before. The results were unpredictable and could often be unstable, much like what had happened when he’d used such a shaping to help Alena.

The shaping began working within him but built rapidly, reaching the point where he could no longer control it.

Cold surged through him, and he nearly cried out.

The sense was like nothing he’d ever experienced, even when lying near death in Rens. Always there, the healing had come over him gradually, slowly easing through him. This was a powerful burst and shot through his blood like an icy touch, surging to his mind and then was gone.

Jasn let out a shaky breath.

“What was—”

He didn’t hear Alena ask the rest. A voice drifting into his mind pressed her away.

You have finally allowed healing.

Jasn staggered forward and was caught by Wyath, who watched him with a curious expression. “What the stars?”

“Talk to them,” Wyath urged.

“How… How do you know?”

The old man smiled. “I had much the same reaction the first time I spoke to earth.”

Water?

Water. Yes. Water of a sort.

Are you an elemental?
Speaking in this way, talking within his mind, felt awkward, and he had to resist the urge to speak aloud.

That is your term for us.

Why have you kept me alive?

There came the sense of laughter.
That is the question you would have answered?

It was you, wasn’t it?

We have helped, as we will continue to help, as long as you ask.