Endless Night (12 page)

“
I
saw what you did
.”

Ifrit made her way toward Alena, straight dark hair barely moving as she walked. A light cloak hung over one shoulder, leaving her sword exposed. Alena hadn’t taken much time to speak to Ifrit since returning to the barracks with the egg. Now she realized that she should have. Ifrit had changed because of Volth’s healing. Everyone he healed changed, allowing them to reach their capacity with the elementals. What did Ifrit hear now that she had been healed? What would she do?

“What did I do?” Alena asked.

Ifrit stopped barely a pace in front of her, and she looked up at Alena. The blasted woman might be shorter than her, but she somehow turned it into an advantage.

“The draasin.” She spoke with barely more than a whisper, and there was heat in her words.

Alena tensed. Had Ifrit seen her moving the draasin from the pen in the barracks? How would she explain it if she had? Cheneth would understand, and he led in the barracks, but even he recognized that it was a tenuous sort of leadership. If Ifrit were to make trouble, and if she had Calan on her side, there would be little that Cheneth could do without betraying himself. And it might come to that. Eventually, it would
have
to come to that, but Alena suspected Cheneth wanted a little more time before he revealed what he knew. Likely he wanted to discover why Tenebeth was now moving.

Of course, Alena didn’t really know. With Cheneth, you could never be sure what he intended. The blasted man was nearly as difficult to read as Volth.

Ifrit watched her, waiting for an answer. If Ifrit attempted any sort of shaping, there would be very little Alena could do to prevent it. Weakened as she was, any shaping would be more than she could handle. The twisted smile on Ifrit’s face made Alena wonder what the shorter woman knew.

“What about the draasin?”

Ifrit casually turned her eyes up the street. “You brought something back here. I know that you did.”

Alena relaxed slightly. The egg. That was what she meant. Calan had seen her with it as well, though he hadn’t been all that pleased when she wouldn’t let him examine it—or destroy it. “Cheneth knows about it, if that’s your concern.”

Ifrit’s half smile faded and she pulled her gaze back to Alena. “That’s not really my issue. With you, I’ve never doubted that you have the support of Cheneth. It’s the others who know that you should worry about.”

The sound of boots thudding across stone caught both of their attention.

Calan strode down the center of the barracks, dragging a long, bloody draasin foreleg with him. When he saw Ifrit and Alena, he stopped. “Damn creature nearly took my head off,” he said. “But I got her in the end.”

Alena felt like she might get sick. From the size of the leg, the draasin would have been enormous. Large enough that she—and she didn’t doubt that the draasin had been female, as Calan knew the difference—would have proven a formidable challenge for him.

“You hunted alone?” Ifrit asked.

“This beast attacked near Pa’shu. When Cheneth sent me, I couldn’t find my partner.” He said the last without much accusation.

He didn’t have to. Alena was supposed to hunt with Calan. Cheneth had set that up for several reasons, not the least being that she could keep an eye on Calan and possibly delay him with the draasin. How many had she prevented him from killing? Probably a dozen. Each had lost a talon, but not their life.

“I had another task,” Alena said.

Calan nodded as if it didn’t matter to him, and it probably didn’t.

Ifrit glanced from Alena to Cheneth. “None are supposed to hunt alone.”

“Careful, Ifrit,” Calan said.

She met his eyes. “I thought that was the policy of the barracks. None were to hunt alone.”

Calan pulled on the draasin leg and drew his back straight. “Next time, then. You may come with me on the next hunt, especially if this one is unavailable again. Some hunts can’t wait.”

He left them standing there, Alena staring after the remains of the draasin leg. When she turned, Ifrit was watching her with a curious expression. She said nothing more before hurrying off after Calan.

Damn that woman.

Alena couldn’t spend too much time thinking about it, though. Now she needed to find Cheneth for another reason. Did he know what Calan had done? Had he known Calan had gone on a hunt, and alone? It was bad enough if he had killed one of the twisted draasin, but if he had killed one that had
not
been twisted… There were few enough females as it was. Losing even one more was dangerous.

As she hurried to Cheneth’s dorm, she paused near Volth’s. Again, she sensed that he was not alone. She glanced at the sky, noting that the sun had barely begun to clear the trees. Not alone, and so early in the day.

She sniffed. And here she thought he mourned Issa. Perhaps his mourning time was over.

Who would it be? She thought of all the women in the barracks. Most were students, trainees who worked with some of the other hunters. When would he have found the time to meet them? Well, more than meet them? Hadn’t he been busy enough working with her?

She shook away the question. It was not her concern. She could be responsible for seeing him trained, but other than that, it didn’t matter. The blasted man could do what he wanted.

Reaching Cheneth’s dorm, she paused to sense whether he was there. Always before, she’d never felt anything unusual, but since learning of his abilities, at least since he no longer had to hide them from her, she had noticed that there was something like a void when she tried to detect his dorm. The harder she pushed, drawing on strength she really couldn’t spare, the less that void seemed to exist until it essentially disappeared.

She raised her hand to knock, but the door swung open.

Cheneth peeked his head out, saw her standing there, and pulled her quickly into the room. “Didn’t expect to see you today.”

“What do you mean by expect?”

Cheneth glanced at his desk and, with a flick of his wrist, the books that were spread open all flipped closed on a controlled gust of air. More controlled than she would have managed, even were she well.

“What is it?” Cheneth asked.

“Did you know that Calan went on a hunt?”

Cheneth frowned. “He was to have brought you. I thought it would do you good to get away from the barracks for a while. And you might be able to soothe the draasin long enough to convince him that it had died.”

“She.”

Cheneth frowned.

“The draasin. A female. And Cheneth said that he searched for me but didn’t find me, so he went by himself. And now he’s brought himself back a prize.”

“What kind of prize?”

“The kind that involves him carrying a damn draasin leg through the camp. It was one thing for him to take a talon. I could convince the draasin that they needed to suffer long enough for that. Most understood.” Alena still didn’t know why the draasin would simply allow it. Most of the draasin were strong enough and swift enough of wing that they could fly away. Calan might be able to give chase, but he was a shaper and his strength had limits. But the draasin never attempted to escape.

Was that because
she
was there? Did they trust her and her connection?

If that was the case, then how would Calan have managed to attack this draasin?

“Yes, I agree this is more distasteful,” Cheneth said.

“Distasteful? I won’t be able to stop him if he thinks to take an entire
leg
each time he hunts, Cheneth.”

Cheneth pushed his glasses up onto his nose and frowned. “Why weren’t you with him?”

“I don’t think that matters.”

“It matters, Alena. There is a reason I have paired the two of you. Why weren’t you with him? Had you been there, Calan’s baser urges would not have been so… prevalent. I doubt very much he would have attempted to defile the draasin with you there.”

“I’m not certain I would have managed to suppress him.”

“You have more influence with him than you realize.” Cheneth sighed and took a seat on one of the hard wooden chairs he kept in his dorm.

Alena glanced around before taking the other on the opposite side of his desk. She looked across at him, meeting his eyes.

“Why else did you come for me?” Cheneth said. “You might have come because of Calan, but what was the reason you weren’t able to hunt with him?”

“You know my situation.”

“Yes. I understand that you perceive limitations. I also understand that you still are more capable than most. You would have found a way to travel with Calan had you known.”

She sighed. Cheneth was right. She
would
have tried to find a way to go with him, but how much would that have cost her? Even small shapings weakened her. What would attempting to travel have required? And not only traveling, but then facing the draasin, trying to soothe her once they found her, and that’s
if
she could have been soothed.

“Was she twisted?” Alena asked. When Cheneth didn’t answer, she pressed. “Did Tenebeth control her?”

Cheneth closed his eyes before answering. “I don’t know.”

Alena let out a frustrated sigh. “That’s the reason you wanted me to go. Damn you, Cheneth, but you could have said it.”

“I could have. Would it have mattered?”

“You wanted me to find another female.”

“Finding an alternative would provide you with some protection. If you can coax another to hatch the egg…”

Then she wouldn’t have to worry about first reaching the female she had in the forest. It might have worked. And now she wouldn’t know.

She leaned back in the chair, feeling more tired than she had in days. How much longer would she be able to withstand the effect of the egg? Even now, she felt the way it pulled on her ability with fire, drawing on her from a distance, through the fortified stone of the pen, as if trying to drain every last ounce of fire from her.

Something inside her resisted. Not her, she didn’t think. The resistance came from Volth, she suspected. It was because of him that she’d managed to survive as long as she had. When his ability failed?

“Why did you come to me today?” Cheneth asked again.

She took a deep breath and blinked. “The draasin.”

“The draasin.”

She nodded. “I’m… I’m trying to get through to the female. If I can, I might be able to convince her to help me with the egg.” With each passing day, that seemed less and less likely.

Cheneth’s frown deepened. “You will do what you must. As will I.”

Alena worried about what that meant. Would Cheneth make a move to go after the draasin egg? If he did, would she be able to stop him? The only protection she had now was that no one else was able to even handle the egg. If they attempted to touch it, they risked it doing the same to them as it had done to her, connecting to them and drawing their fire. If anyone would have a way around that, it would be Cheneth. And he
might
attempt to destroy the egg if he thought it meant saving her.

“Did you know that there are different types of draasin?” she asked him.

“There are only the draasin, Alena. They are different from the other elementals, but there is nothing else that is different about them.”

“The female,” she began. “She shared with me that there are different types of draasin. Rens was not her homeland. That was another place, far across the sea. And she says there’s another home for the draasin to the north, in a land of ice and snow.”

Cheneth pushed his glasses farther up on his nose. As usual, his face changed when he did, seeming to gain wrinkles and lose some of the intensity of his gaze, almost as if the glasses shielded him in some way. “She told you this?”

“That, and something else. She claims she was summoned to Rens.”

“Summoned? She used that term?”

Alena shifted on the chair. It was almost as if the chair was made to be uncomfortable. At least it kept her awake. After spending the night lying next to the draasin after drifting to sleep, she was just as tired as she’d been before. The chair pressed against her back and her buttocks, preventing her from drifting off.

“Summoned. That was what she said. But Cheneth, if there is someone who can summon the draasin, wouldn’t they be useful to this Tenebeth? Wouldn’t that put us in danger?”

He glanced down at one of the books on his desk and flipped it open. “There are some with the ability to summon the draasin.”

“You know of this?”

He nodded. “I would not have thought a summoner responsible for this,” he said softly.

“Do they speak to them?”

“Not like you do, Alena. Your particular talent is unique enough, and rare enough, that few share it. But they are able to speak to them in a way, sending a sort of calling through the summons so that the elementals know they are needed.”

“How is it you know this?”

He met her eyes with a hard gaze. “Because they come from Hyaln.”

“
W
hat are you doing
, Oliver?”

Yanda studied him with a sour expression, her eyes darting around his room but always settling back on the slender rod Cheneth had given him. Oliver had shaped through it, practicing until he managed to get the engravings along the sides glowing. As Cheneth had suggested, it didn’t require much shaping skill at all, but with fire at least, it was the edge of his limits, almost beyond his skill.

“I need to test this,” Oliver said. He didn’t know if Yanda had been compromised as well, but she was one of the senior healers and of high enough ranking in the guild that she would be a target as well. She was also his closest friend.

“Tell me again what you think this will do? Because it looks to me like a weapon.”

“Maybe it is, but the man who gave it to me said it can be used to protect myself and others.” That wasn’t exactly what Cheneth had claimed, but close enough that he figured it didn’t matter.

Yanda eyed the device, shifting her robe. She was as petite and slender as Oliver was tall and fat. Quite unlike most healers in that. Water often attracted those with certain body types, though both Yanda and Jasn were not like him, and both were incredibly skilled shapers. “And this is some sort of spirit stick?”

Oliver laughed, releasing some of the tension that he felt at practicing on Yanda. Spirit stick seemed as good a name for it as any. “That’s what I was told.”

“I don’t like the idea of your trying it on—”

He didn’t let her finish, shaping through the spirit stick. The marks began to glow, the shaping building, and Oliver pointed it in her direction. He didn’t know if he
needed
to aim the stick, but it seemed logical.

As the shaping struck Yanda, an awareness of her filled him.

He recognized her anxiety and the fear she felt with him pointing the stick in her direction. He detected her willingness to even let him attempt this because of the friendship they shared. There was more, but Oliver feared holding the connection any longer and released the shaping.

Light in the marks on the stick fizzled out, fading to nothing.

“Thanks for the warning,” Yanda said, glaring at him.

Oliver stared at it. Balls! The damned thing worked.

“You’re looking at it like you’ve found a new way to use water,” Yanda said.

Oliver let out a soft whistle. “Not water, but maybe something better. Did it hurt?”

Yanda shook her head. “I felt a warmth, but nothing else. Not unpleasant, only unexpected. Like I said, a warning would have been nice.”

“Consider this your warning.”

Oliver shaped through the spirit stick again. The device might limit him more than his own shaping ability. Fire was weakest to him, and he added that last, pushing it through the device.

The marks on the side started to glow softly once more.

When he pointed it at Yanda, he released the shaping. The release was easier this time, and he felt as if he could control it better. As before, he had a sudden awareness of her, a recognition of emotions he did not possess. This time, there was not the fear and trepidation he’d detected the first time. There was more curiosity and a hint of eagerness.

He maintained the shaping, continuing to push it through the spirit stick.

Emotions turned to something else. He had flickers of memories, but they were not his. He saw as Yanda must have seen, memories of coming to his room, of her time in the guild, and even deeper memories—the first time she had shaped water and when she had come to Atenas, scared and alone, worried she would not be able to learn…

“Enough,” Yanda whispered.

Oliver released the shaping.

“You could feel what I did that time?”

“I had memories I haven’t thought of in years,” she said softly. “It’s as if that dredged them up.”

“I saw them,” Oliver said. “As if I were there.”

Yanda blinked. “You
saw
them?”

Oliver considered the spirit stick. Having possession of it was much more powerful than Cheneth had let on. And it was something he needed to fear losing possession of. If someone else used this, or understood what it could do…

“Let me try it,” Yanda asked.

Were it any other person than her, he would not. But he trusted her as she had trusted him.

She held it, rubbing the pad of her thumb over the etchings along the side. “Do you think these give it the power?”

“I don’t know what they do. I think them similar to what others do with their swords.”

The Guild of Healers didn’t use swords. Those from the order each had one—they
were
of the order after all—but none in the guild ever carried theirs.

“You said you shape through it?”

“Each element. You don’t need much.”

Yana smiled. “Probably good for you,” she said with a laugh.

Her shaping built. As a water shaper, he was naturally attuned to other shapings, but as the head of the guild, he was even more so. He wondered what would have happened had he not noticed that the Seat attempted to shape him. Perhaps that was why they had gone after him first.

The patterns on the side of the spirit stick began to glow.

“Now what?” Yanda asked.

“I pointed it at you, but I don’t know if that matters. It’s not really all that different than any other shaping, only that you need to direct it through the stick first and then to your target.”

He could tell when she released the shaping.

Warmth washed over him. As she had said, it was not an unpleasant sensation, but one whose effects he could feel. It would not be something he could hide, even if he knew how.

Yanda sucked in a breath. “You’re afraid.”

“You would be too if you had been called before the Seat and they tried to shape you.”

The memory came into focus, almost as if he were reliving it. He saw the faces of the council as they stared at them, could once again feel the pressure of their shaping as they attempted to reach him. In the memory, he could shift his attention and saw the way that Margo watched him, the pattern that she drummed with her fingers on the table…

Then it faded. His thoughts drifted back to the first time he saw Volth, and the raw
power
the man possessed. They were both younger then, and Volth still new to Atenas but willing to learn,
eager
to learn, and not the hardened soldier who had come to him recently. Oliver remembered the way he had asked Jasn if he wanted to learn of water and the way water could be used to heal and help. That Jasn Volth had a light of excitement in his eyes, not the drawn darkness, the anger he had seen…

The next memory was of Oliver’s arrival in Atenas. How many years ago had that been? More than thirty? Enough that Oliver no longer thought about it, but the city had been different at that time, simpler in some ways, a place before the war. The warriors who taught had welcomed him, but they had required hard work and diligence. Oliver had come to water soonest, which he had known he would. Water sensing had come to him from an early age, a time before he had felt welcomed, back when his parents…

“Enough,” he said.

The shaping eased and then faded, and Oliver was taken out of the memories.

Stars, but the thing was powerful.

Yanda passed the stick back over to him, and he tucked it into his pocket, feeling guilty about the fact that he possessed it at all. Something with the ability to force people to have memories could not only be useful to understand what the Seat might be after, but dangerous as well.

“I saw your memories,” Yanda said. “It was like I was there, like I was looking through your eyes. How is that possible?”

Oliver took a steadying breath. Getting back to those earliest memories of when he had come to Atenas was painful. His time in the city had not always been happy, or easy, but more so than before he had come here. More than anything, that was the reason he had to stay and had to do what he could to determine if there was something more taking place with the order.

“I didn’t think it was possible. But this,” he said, patting his pocket, “this makes it possible.”

“You said this came from a man you knew?”

He hated that he had to deceive Yanda about it, but he didn’t want to expose Cheneth. “A scholar named Eldridge.”

Her eyes widened slightly. “The bishop.”

“I’m not so sure he appreciates that title.”

Yanda laughed softly. “He’s earned it, don’t you think? That would be like you not wanting to be called Master Bestrun.”

“Eldridge is… Well, he’s different.”

And that was the reason he had departed Atenas. Part of it. Eldridge had always been an eager learner, but when he received the promotions Oliver had thought he wanted, something had changed in his friend, and he had departed the city. For a man who could have risen high within the college, Eldridge chose a different route.

“And he gave this to you because of the memory that I saw? The one with you in front of the Seat?”

Oliver nodded. “That’s why he gave it to me. He thought it important for me to be able to defend myself if needed. And I think he wanted to know the extent of the change to the council.”

“You will do this? You will try to determine what happened?” When he nodded, she tapped him hard on the chest. She might be small, but she wasn’t weak. “You will be careful, Oliver Bestrun.”

“I won’t put the guild in danger.”

“It’s not the guild that I fear for,” she said. “The guild is a part of the order, but we’re old enough that we won’t fall simply because the order demands it of us. No, what I worry about is you. If you do this, make certain that you’re safe. If that memory I saw was true—”

“It was.”

“—then you need to be careful.”

Oliver forced a smile and created a shaping that obscured his face, making him appear more like a reflection of Yanda. After seeing Cheneth create the shaping, he had practiced with that as well. He couldn’t modify his height, and he still didn’t know what to do about his girth—both of which identified him nearly as well as his face—but he could hide his face now and maintain the shaping with barely more than a trickle of water. He couldn’t
hide
the shaping, not like Cheneth had demonstrated, but with all the shaping that took place within the tower, that might not be necessary.

“I can be careful,” he said, releasing the shaping.

“That… that might just be useful,” Yanda said. “But you’ll have to keep working on it. No one will ever believe I’m quite that tall.”

He laughed. If he was going to do this, at least he had Yanda on his side.