Darkness Rising (The Endless War Book 2) (12 page)

And it
had
brought her to this place, almost as if it wanted her to be a part of… whatever it was that happened here.

At the edge of the village, others joined the man. He spoke quickly, his hands waving about as he did, and pointed in her direction. Ciara watched for a moment and then started toward the village.

Ciara approached the village warily. The man stood in the middle of a group of others, each dressed in heavy robes that were much the same. The men had shaved heads while the two women she saw each had long braids hanging to the middle of their backs. They paid no attention to her until she was only a few steps away.

The man turned to her and gave her a serious nod. “This is the rider,” he said to the others.

One of the women stepped forward, moving hesitantly. Why did she walk so carefully around her? Ciara might have ridden here on the draasin, but that didn’t make her a rider, regardless of what the man thought.

“You have come to K’ral?” the woman asked carefully. She gripped the waist of her robe and glanced over at the others waiting back by the man.

“I am Ciara S’shala,” she said.

“Where is your draasin?” the woman asked.

“I don’t—” She looked to the man, wondering what he might have told them. If she was to be a rider, if that was what they expected of her, what would happen if she proved she was not? Hadn’t the draasin brought her here? But why? What purpose would there be in bringing her to lands so far from those she knew, so different from her home? Hadn’t her people lost enough already?

“He hunts,” she said. Let them think her a rider. Let them believe it to be true.

The woman’s eyes widened. “You loosed the draasin to hunt in Tsanth?”

Ciara realized that she should have been more careful. “I don’t control where the draasin hunts,” she said. At least that much was true.

“But you are its rider!”

Ciara considered what she should say. If she let them continue to believe she was some sort of draasin rider, she might never learn the reason she’d been brought here. There
had
to be a reason the draasin thought it necessary.

The woman pinched her lips together as she studied Ciara and then turned toward the others. They simply stood and watched, saying nothing. “You would allow this?” the woman asked.

Ciara wondered to whom she spoke, but then the circle of people parted and a short woman stepped forward. She wore a dress striped with bright colors, each stripe a different shade, and carried a slender staff with her. Ciara’s eyes widened as she realized the carvings on the woman’s staff resembled those of a j’na. No osidan tipped it, but the carving was much like what her father had made on her own.

“She is of Rens,” the woman said. She was older, and age had bent her back. Filmy eyes somehow managed to fix Ciara with a hard expression, as if she still saw her.

“I am of Rens,” she agreed.

“Why would you come to us, Rider of Rens? Have your people not taken enough from Tsanth?”

“My people?” Ciara asked. “We take nothing. We struggle to survive, and—”

“The Riders. They have taken. And now you return. Bold, this one is,” the woman said, turning to the others with her. “She comes without her draasin, as if she were able to call upon fire herself, but none of Rens call fire. For what her people have done, we should stake her. Leave the remains for the draasin to find. That would be a just sentence.”

Ciara struggled with finding an answer. Hadn’t the man promised that K’ral would treat her well? “My people have done nothing.”

The old woman scanned the sky as if seeing something there that others could not. “Nothing? Tsanth once was a proud land. Now we fear. Riders are to blame.”

She turned her back on Ciara, and as the others approached with thick ropes now in hand, she didn’t have the strength to resist as they restrained her.

N
ight had come and
, with it, cold unlike anything Ciara had ever experienced. She shivered, her arms straining against the ropes binding her to the post, but she could move. The thin fabric of her elouf, so perfect in Rens, did nothing to protect her here. Her j’na was speared into the ground, tip first, only a few paces from her, as if taunting her.

The woman—the leader of the town—had not spoken to her again, leaving her to her fate and to struggle against the cold and darkness. It was the darkness that bothered her the most.

Ciara felt her head grow heavy. After surviving all she had, for her to die this way, out here, so far from home without understanding why? Why would the Stormbringer do this to her? She had been nothing if not a faithful servant, listening for water, helping her people. She had risked crossing the waste for her people and had nearly died. Now, for the draasin to bring her here and for the draasin to be the reason she would die, it seemed a cruel fate.

Her father would never know what happened. Perhaps it was best that he should think on her with pride and believe she had ridden the draasin and she might somehow find help for the people rather than death. But he would live, thinking that help was coming, that she would find a way to rescue those lost. Instead, she would die here in lands surrounded by more water than she had ever sensed.

The sense of the K’ral was distant. She’d been strapped to this post too long already and had nothing to drink all day, pulling her from her connection to water. She felt it within her, but it was a weak sensation, only from her pulse threading along.

In spite of the cold, she detected a streamer of heat much like she had earlier in the day when she’d followed the man toward the village. Ciara didn’t know what she sensed or how she could sense it, but it tugged at her distantly.

Her eyes dipped closed again.

Flashes of color came to her as she slept, deep greens and orange that hovered at the edge of her vision. She had no true dreams, nothing like the memories of her mother and dead brother that used to haunt her, but still she rested.

After a while, she came around again. The strange green light shimmered distantly, as if the dream had burned itself into the back of her mind, leaving her with memories of fading light.

Ciara lifted her head. The cold had left her numb, she no longer felt her hands, and her legs were like stone weights threatening to pull her down, but the ropes bound around her wrists held her in place, keeping her from sagging to the ground.

The distant green changed, steadily growing brighter.

She shivered, this time for a different reason. The color reminded her of what she’d seen when she followed the shadow man across the waste, before she’d decided to return to her people.

Green light flashed brighter and then faded suddenly, leaving her in darkness so bleak, she couldn’t even see herself.

“I could free you,” a voice called from the darkness.

Ciara trembled, recognizing the shadow man. How had she ever found that cold voice welcoming? “I will be free soon enough.”

There came a steady laughter, dark and painful, sounding like the tearing of roots from rock. “You could be so strong, Ciara S’shala. The potential is within you; I sense it.”

“You think I am not strong enough already?” She was nya’shin. Regardless of what happened to her, she had already proven herself to her people.

Laughter came again. The darkness changed and the shadow man stepped forward, a blanket of night unfolding toward her. Somehow, she could see the deep smile etched into his face and the way his eyes looked her over, surveying her with amusement shining within them.

“You are strong. Otherwise, I never would have come.” A hand darker than the night reached toward her, and she felt it brush her cheek. She jerked her head back and slammed it into the post holding her. “You are without your spear this time. It is a shame, but at least I can touch you.”

Ciara tried kicking, but her legs didn’t work as they should and she thrashed uselessly, only her torso trembling, as if she were nothing more than a snake trying to find its way back to the shade. “What do you want with me? Why have you come to harass me?”

“Harass? Ah, Ciara S’shala,” he said, holding her name strangely on his lips before it released into the wind, “I think you are mistaken. I would see you find strength. I would see your people restored to the power they possessed when they worshipped me. You, who should be so much more, can learn. Is that not what you have always wanted?” He reached toward her again.

This time, Ciara couldn’t move. Her body was frozen and all she could think about was the way his touch sent ice shooting through her. The night already left her cold, but his touch was different, painful, in a way she had never imagined.

As he leaned toward her, she imagined his breath in her ear, a sound like nails scratching at rock.

“You continue to refuse the offer. Your people once sought the night, but now you think to pursue the sun. You have lost so much that should be yours.”

Ciara turned toward his voice, searching for eyes that weren’t really there. “Why do you care? Let me die here, away from my people!”

“Ah, Ciara S’shala.” Again, he said her name in such a way that made it seem like he tried to claim it, to possess it, before the words caught the wind and blew into the night. “You will not die. I have seen greatness for you, but you must embrace it.”

He leaned toward her again, and cold surged in her veins, slowing her heart. “In time, you will see.”

She shivered again. It took all the strength she could summon to form her next words. “Leave me,” she managed to whisper.

The shadow man laughed again. Cold seeped into her, slowly and unrelentingly.

Ciara wished for the warmth she had sensed earlier, praying that the Stormbringer could bring her even a hint of that comfort.

The wind shifted and gusted from the west. With it came a momentary warmth, enough to remind Ciara of the desert and the sun and the heat of her home. She gasped with it and held it within her.

The shadow man laughed again and reached toward her, but she jerked back and away. This time, his touch missed her. He leaned in, and then withdrew. As he withdrew, so did the darkness, like a fog receding. His laughter trailed behind him, leaving her with only a memory of it.

For long moments, she couldn’t breathe, not daring to release the warmth that had come on the wind, the warmth that had reminded her of Rens, of home, and of the reason she had risked summoning the draasin.

The wind shifted again, this time blowing away from her, catching the easterly cold once more, tearing at her elouf as it bit her skin. Ciara shivered.

At least the shadow man had left her. Now would death claim her?

She tried to sleep, to drift, hoping she would fade from there, but sleep would not come again. Her mind raced, thinking of the shadow man and what he might be, and the battle between light and dark that priests had once told her father about, but eventually that faded, leaving her with nothing.

After a while, the sky began to change, and she wondered if the strange green light on the horizon would return. She’d seen it twice before, and each time it had come with the shadow man. Ciara didn’t think she’d be able to survive him again.

Streaks of orange and faint red touched the distant sky. Not the shadow man, but the coming of another day. Her arms ached where the ropes held her, and her legs no longer supported her, leaving her to sag toward the ground, nothing but heavy weight that pulled her down. With the coming light, the tall green grasses became visible, and she saw the way water formed on the leaves. Had there been rain and she’d missed it? How would the grasses have so much water?

Even with all that water, she had no sense of it, as if there was no water around her. She felt nothing; cold and empty.

But not even cold. The wind still swirled around her, pulling at her elouf and sending it slapping at her wildly, but she had no sense of it, as if her skin had been deadened by time spent strapped to the post. Only the strange pull of warmth running through the grasses was different.

If she could only reach her j’na. She might be able to pry it from the ground, tip the draasin glass end up so that she could use the sharp edge to cut her bindings, but it was too far from her. Were her legs to work, she still wouldn’t be able to reach it.

Footsteps pressed softly, coming toward her slowly and steadily. Ciara didn’t even have the strength to lift her head to see which of her tormentors had come.

“You remain in spite of the night.”

She recognized the voice. It was the man who had brought her to K’ral, claiming that the people would welcome her. Had she known what was to happen, would she have said something different? Could she have said anything that might have kept them from setting her out in the night like this?

The man took a few more steps. The ground crunched softly beneath his feet with each one. “You are a rider. Do you not welcome the night?”

Ciara turned so that she could see him but was able to see only his feet and the bottom of his robe. He stood a few steps from her, next to her j’na.

“I hate the night.” Her voice came out hoarse. She needed a drink but doubted they would offer her anything. Maybe it was time that she died, return to her mother and brother, reuniting her family… but no. She couldn’t think like that. She would return and help her people.

The man slid forward another step. “How can the rider hate the night?”

There was something to the question, but Ciara’s mind wasn’t working as it should. “Cold comes at night,” she said. “Shadows come.”

The man said nothing, and for a while, Ciara thought he might leave her. She would welcome the solitude.

“Did shadows come last night?”

“They came. I refused to answer. You can tell the shadow man that he will not have me.”

The K’ral man took another step and now was standing directly in front of her. He smelled of grass and damp earth, neither of which was unpleasant, but both so foreign to her. This close, she could sense the way his heart fluttered.

“What did you say?” he whispered.

Ciara breathed out and debated whether she would give him the satisfaction of hearing it again. The man leaned in, and in that way, he reminded her of the shadow man. “Get away from me. I told him he can’t have me, and neither will you.”

The man reached for her arm. Ciara pulled on the ropes, straining to get away from him, the memory of the shadow man’s touch too much for her. She didn’t think she could stomach that cold returning.

The ropes holding her left wrist fell away, and she started to fall. Those holding her right wrist were cut, and she dropped. The man caught her and lowered her to the ground more gently than Ciara would have expected.

Rather than cold, his hands burned where they touched, so warm that they were nearly hot, reminding her of the way the sun baked the rock. When he let her go, the imprint of his warmth remained, leaving her skin tingling.

“You are not of the dark,” he said to her, backing away so that he could look at her.

Ciara blinked and slowly looked up. “I am from Rens,” she said. “There’s nothing but heat and desert.”

“That is not Rens,” he said.

She laughed bitterly. Wetness from the water coating the blades of grass soaked into her elouf, leaving it damp. She shivered against the cold, somehow more uncomfortable than she’d been, but at least she felt something. When she’d been suspended from the post, she had gone numb, leaving her without any sense of herself. Now pain shot through her. Her arms burned where the rope had been, and her sides ached.

Ciara focused on the burning in her arms. At least there was warmth there. As she focused, it spread, working through her, being pulled along through her veins, gradually reaching her stomach and then making its way to her feet. She sighed softly.

“What do you know of Rens?” she asked. “You live in wetlands, surrounded by water and life. You know nothing of the struggle to survive.”

“Nothing?” the man said. “We have chosen these lands
to
survive. The draasin do not bother us here, and your riders have not found us. These are good lands, a place where we can survive, but they were not always ours.”

“They are not my riders,” Ciara said, her head sagging back to her chest. What did it matter if this man thought the draasin riders that attacked his people were hers? He believed that she was a rider, and she had only managed to summon the draasin once. That didn’t make her a rider, did it?

Had her people attacked those of this man? Were they to blame? She knew only of the reason the people of Rens had moved deeper into the desert, about how the shapers of Ter attacked, relentlessly fighting along the border, pushing their people away, but what if there was more to it? Hadn’t she seen her father use his j’na to calm the draasin when the village had been attacked? Hadn’t
she
used her j’na to summon the draasin? Maybe the people of Rens
had
attacked here.

The man scooted toward her, close enough that she felt the heat radiating from him. “You are of Rens. That is what you said.”

“That’s what I said.”

“But you fear the shadows.”

It was a statement, and one that Ciara once would have found strange, but after meeting the shadow man and after learning of the way he attempted to draw her, as if summoning her to him, she no longer found the question strange. “We have always feared the night and what comes with it.”

Ciara and the people of the village knew what prowled in the night. Dangerous creatures, lizards and fox, came out at night to hunt. All had eyesight much better than theirs. Fear of the night had kept her people alive.