Endless Night (26 page)

T
he draasin carried
them beyond the waste. Ciara kept her gaze fixed on the ground as they flew, staring at the flowing dunes of sand. From above, and moving as quickly as the draasin managed, she found them beautiful in a strange sort of way, much different than the harsh and painful heat she experienced when down in the waste.

“What are you looking for?” Jasn asked.

“Not looking
for
anything.”

“Nothing lives there.”

Ciara smiled to herself. “You would be surprised, Jasn Volth, at what lives there.”

They continued flying, soaring south, the dry heat shifting, cooling somewhat, as they made their way beyond the waste. Ciara frowned as they crossed over the massive crevasse and stared at the wall and the drop into the ground far below. Even from here, the drop seemed impossibly steep. How had she survived?

Jasn put his hands on her hips, and she resisted the urge to turn back and face him, not wanting him to see the way she flushed every time he touched her. But then, as a water shaper, it was possible he already knew.

“How do you know where to find Hyaln?” he asked her.

“I don’t.”

“Then how are we supposed to find it?”

“I don’t think
we
are.”

That had to be the reason Cheneth had wanted her to bring Jasn to Hyaln. Only the draasin would be able to find the way. Ciara had sent an image of what she wanted, and from there had asked the draasin to bring her there.

They soared, catching a heated current of wind that blew against her face. Ciara closed her eyes, surprised to find that she
enjoyed
the flight with the draasin, that it was less terrifying than she had expected. Each time she rode with the draasin, she felt a different set of emotions, this time more wistful than anything.

After a while, the draasin began to descend and landed on the hard rock. The sun had started to set, leaving streaks of orange in the sky. Ciara wished they had waited until the morning to leave, giving them a full day to travel, but she didn’t know how far they had to go to reach Hyaln, and the draasin wasn’t giving her any clue either.

“This can’t be Hyaln,” Jasn said, looking around.

Ciara was surprised that she recognized where they were. This had been the place where she had seen Ter shapers attacking the draasin—maybe the same Ter shapers that she now worked with. “Not Hyaln,” she agreed.

The draasin waited for them to climb down and made her way to the deep pool of water, lapping at it. Ciara and Jasn waited until she was done before drinking what they needed.

Jasn wiped his arm across his mouth when he finished. “I should have brought a waterskin for this trip.”

Ciara hadn’t thought of carrying a waterskin with her for weeks. Water was prevalent throughout Ter, and she didn’t have to struggle as she once had, not suffering with the constant thirst as she had while growing up in Rens. But now that she was back, she found that she had gotten softer. Would she still survive in Rens if she returned, or had she changed so much in such a short period of time that she was no longer fit to be nya’shin?

She wandered away from the water and smiled when she saw a shriveled brown husk lying on the ground. Ciara lifted it and shook the gourd, listening for the sloshing of water within.

“What is that?” Jasn asked.

“It’s called a water flower. These kept me alive when I crossed the waste.”

“You crossed the waste? On foot?”

“Not everyone can travel as your shapers can,” she said.

Jasn looked at the draasin and smiled. “No. You get to travel in a much better way.” He sighed. “Strange, thinking that I once wanted nothing more than to kill the draasin. And now here I am, riding one and wishing I could be more like you so that I could summon the draasin myself and learn to ride them as you have.”

Ciara tapped her j’na and the draasin looked up, eyes catching the glowing light of the end of her j’na. “And I have longed for the ability of a shaper, to be able to control the elements and know that power.”

“I think your ability is better in some ways,” Jasn said.

“And I yours.”

They fell silent, almost as if neither wanted to say anything more. He stared at her, his eyes fixed in that intense, bright-eyed way that he looked at her, and she looked back at him, forcing herself to meet his gaze. Energy seemed to course between them, and neither wanted to move or risk breaking the strange, building power that rose, almost like lightning preceding a storm. Even the cool breeze reminded her of a storm…

“Tenebeth,” she whispered.

Jasn unsheathed his sword and spun, as if expecting the dark to attack. “Where?”

“Not here yet,” she answered. But she could feel Tenebeth coming. That was the surge in energy that she’d detected, that power she had felt. The wind and the distant rumble of thunder only confirmed it.

“We should go,” Jasn said.

Ciara looked around the hard landscape. Other than the rocks and a few plants growing throughout, there was nothing here. “Where would we go? Do you think we can outrun Tenebeth when he comes for me?”

Jasn looked over to her. “This is not your fault. He wants your power, your ability, but you have refused him. I’ve seen that strength in you, Ciara. You have not let him reach you, and you will not let him do so now.”

“No? When Tenebeth chases me wherever I am, you think this is
not
my fault? I think he’s come for me again, Jasn Volth. He wants—”

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, burning 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.