Darkness Rising (The Endless War Book 2) (7 page)

“When I was a child in Pa’shu, the priests of the Stormbringer used to tell stories. There wasn’t the same search for water then, though the river would often go dry, and they would talk of times long past as if they had been there.” He closed his eyes, his brow creasing. “They said that there is a battle between shadow and light, of creatures of power stronger than any of us, greater than any shaper of Ter. They have battled for millennia, darkness trying to conquer the light.” He shook his head. “I always thought it nothing but stories until we retreated to these lands. Here… here I think I can
feel
the darkness at times.”

Ciara shivered, thinking of the way the lizard had spoken inside her mind. Had that been the shadow or the light? But the shadow man… There was no question about him. What would it mean that she spoke to the shadow? What would it mean if she couldn’t reach the light?

“They claimed that the draasin,” her father went on, “were creatures of light. They have long been among the greatest, battling against the shadow, burning with their heat. The priests claim that’s the reason Rens embraced the heat and fire of these lands, knowing that no shadow could live here, that only the light burns where the draasin fly.”

He turned to stare outward, looking away from the village and out over the point. “There is something out there. I can feel it but do not know what it means. From what I see of you since you returned from the waste, I know that you sense it too. Tell me, daughter, what did you experience on the waste? What is it that brought you back to us? What do you know about these old stories?”

Ciara thought about what the lizard had said, the only thing she remembered from the strange creature. Hadn’t there been some comment about darkness coming? Did that mean the lizard was a part of darkness, or was it a part of light?

“I don’t know,” she said.

She sensed it as Fas took a step closer to her, shifting his feet as he moved toward the ridgeline leading down and away from the point. His heart hammered more rapidly in his chest. Was it fear or something else that drove him?

“Don’t know? What did you see?” her father asked.

“I saw,” she began, thinking of what had happened while she was out on the waste, “draasin. They were injured, and those of Ter attacked.” She had stopped them, hadn’t she, but had she been fast enough? She had been taught to revere the draasin, that the creatures of fire deserved her respect, but she had never before known why. Maybe what her father described was the reason why.

“That’s not all that you saw, Ciara. You had help, didn’t you?”

She shook her head slowly. “There was a man all in shadows and then another, a creature that helped—”

Fas took another step, this time toward her, but his foot slipped on the rock, leaving a trail of stone falling to the ground far beneath the point.

Ciara glanced over in time to see him slip from the ledge and fall.

C
iara wasn’t fast enough
to reach Fas.

He fell, and she
heard
the sickening way his body bounced off the stone, bones shattering in his descent. He cried out with a whimper, barely more than that, and fell silent. It was his eyes that bothered her the most. They fixed her with intensity that burned into her, holding her with what she could only call regret. A black knife slipped from his hand and fell uselessly to the side.

As she started down, she swore she saw a shadow swirling around him for a moment before flittering away.

Ciara raced down from the ledge, careful to use her j’na as she went, making certain not to slip. She’d already fallen enough times recently and the lizard wasn’t around to help this time. Her father wheezed behind her, sliding along the rock more slowly than her, the steady tap of his j’na marking the rhythm of his passing.

At a lip of rock, she found Fas sprawled across the stone. Blood pooled from his face and his arm was bent to the side awkwardly. His eyes were glazed, and for a moment she thought he was already dead, but then he took a breath. Water sensing told her that his heart still beat, but it was faint, and the thrumming of his heart told her how injured he truly was.

Her father pushed past her and dropped his j’na as he crouched next to Fas. Laying his hands on him, a shaping built, swelling through Fas. One hand tapped on his chest, moving with the rhythm of his heart, while the other rested on his cheek.

“He’s been too badly hurt,” he said.

Ciara could see that and doubted Fas could survive a fall like that. Stormbringer, but she shouldn’t have survived a fall as she had and might not have without the help of the lizard.

“What was the darkness around him?” she asked.

Her father glanced up at her. “Ciara… those were just stories. There was no darkness.”

Ciara knelt alongside him and touched Fas on the chest. She might not have the same ability with water as her father, but she could sense the injuries and knew how severe they were. Bones were broken and he bled inside, enough that he wouldn’t last much longer. Her father’s shaping slowed the bleeding but didn’t stop it altogether.

“Fas didn’t fall,” she said, recognizing the way he welcomed the pain of death. There was no fear in him, nothing that should be there, only a quiet acceptance of what was to come.

“He slipped. I was there, Ciara.”

She shook her head and took her hand from his chest. “That was no slip. Fas is one of the most skilled climbers in the village. For him to slip…” She’d seen him tiptoe along ledges so narrow that he should fall, but he moved as surefooted as a fox. For him to have fallen from the top of the point seemed impossible. And for him to have hidden a knife as he made his way toward her…

“Ciara—”

She thought of the shadow that had swirled around him. Had he been pushed by the darkness? The shadow man hadn’t been truly frightening, but there was no doubting his power, especially after what she’d seen out on the waste. Maybe there was more to the stories the priests had told her father than even he knew. Could the darkness have pushed Fas? But why?

Unless Fas had jumped. That made even less sense.

“You were telling me about light and darkness,” she said. “And you said something about the draasin. What was it?”

“Now is not the time. We need to do all that we can to save him.”

“That’s just it, Father. I think Fas knows more than he admits. It wasn’t until you started talking about this that it happened.” But that wasn’t even true. It wasn’t until she started mentioning the light and the darkness that it happened. Had Fas known something more than he let on?

Stormbringer! She needed answers now, and the village had already lost so much that they couldn’t lose Fas as well.

“Nothing can help him now,” her father said. “Much like nothing can help those we’ve lost of the village.”

Ciara saw the way her father tapped on Fas’s chest and knew that wasn’t necessarily true. They might not be able to help him, but what if she could reach the lizard? Wouldn’t it be possible for it to help Fas much like it had once helped her?

But would it?

“What do you know of the lizard?” she asked her father.

He shifted where he knelt so that he could look at her. His other hand reached for his j’na. “I know nothing of any lizard,” he said.

“You said the draasin were a part of the light. That they fight the darkness and shadow.” She frowned, thinking back to before she’d left the village, and the attack that had nearly killed Fas the first time. “I saw you when the village was attacked. You commanded the draasin.”

Her father had done something with his spear, used it in some way to reach the draasin, to force them away from the village. Hadn’t he controlled them then?

When she’d asked, he’d told her that she wasn’t ready to know the answers. Was she now? What would happen if he
didn’t
tell her?

“There is no control when it comes to the draasin,” her father answered. “They are creatures of power beyond what we can understand. We can only beg for them to look past us.”

Ciara snorted. What he’d done had seemed more than that. “Can you reach them? Is that what your j’na does?”

Her father ran his hand along his spear. “I… I don’t know. The
shin
were not always trained like this. It wasn’t until the war when we learned to summon.”

“Summon?”

He nodded. “The j’na is not so much about reaching them as it is a sign that you are willing to listen. The osidan helps somehow, makes the bearer more attuned to them.”

Maybe that was the reason that she couldn’t reach the draasin. Her j’na was tipped not with osidan but with draasin glass taken from where Erash had died. If osidan helped with the connection to the draasin, then maybe she
couldn’t
reach them. Maybe that was why the lizard had been so agitated at times.

“We need their help for the village, Father. We can’t let them be gone—”

“There’s nothing more that can be done for Fas. Or the rest of the village. I have tried, and failed. This is the end. The others are lost.”

Ciara had never heard her father so despondent. “Call them.”

“Ciara…”

“No,” she said, standing. Fas would die if she did nothing, and she didn’t know
why
. Whatever had happened was tied to the shadows. “I need to understand what is happening. Why were our people taken? You tell me how others came and took the youngest and healthiest, but not why. Then you tell me about the shadows and the light, which makes me think that there is a connection, Father, but you don’t explain what that connection is. Fas either knows something or was hurt because he
might
know something.”

“I tell you stories, Daughter. That is all. And the draasin… they are a part of the war, but
that
is all. There are others who use them and force them to attack Ter. That is what Rens faces. There was a time when the
ala’shin
could fight, but that time is behind us. Now we can only survive.”

“Something is changing, Father. If you know something…”

“I can… reach them. I don’t speak to them so much as feel their presence.” He shook his head and looked toward the sun. “Not as I once did,” he said softly.

Ciara turned to the sky and frowned, wishing there was some sign of the draasin, something she could reach that would help her to understand. She couldn’t shake the sense that she was now a part of it, that by venturing into the waste and seeing the shadow man, she had been drawn into something more than she could understand, into the stories that her father had heard as a child, but why would the draasin and the lizard care whether she was injured? What would they need from her? “Can you summon them?”

Her father lifted his hand from Fas’s chest, and she saw the hesitation in him as he did. His connection to water kept Fas alive, and once that was gone… Would Fas survive, or would his injuries be too much for him to make it?

Her father tapped his j’na into the ground. The osidan tip flashed as it caught the light of the sun. He tapped it again, and again the tip flashed with light. Over and over, he repeated the movement, stepping in a small circle as he went, pressing the shaft of his spear into the ground, leaving the osidan flashing.

The steps he used were familiar, like a dance he’d led her in when she was a child. The look of consternation on his face was new. He sighed deeply and set the spear to the stone.

“It does not work,” he said. “The draasin, they no longer answer to the osidan as they once did. When our people were taken, I thought…” He shook his head. “It does not matter. I have tried to understand, but there is much about the great creatures that remains a mystery. I am sorry, Ciara.”

Losing Fas was bad enough, but even more than that, Ciara worried about losing the connection to the draasin, especially if they were some tie to the light. She had witnessed the shadows—they were real and she knew it, even if she didn’t know what it meant—and she had no interest in returning to what she had seen, to the strange, seductive draw of the shadow man. If he reached her again, would she be able to refuse? The last time had been difficult enough.

Her father continued his circuit, continually tapping his j’na into the rock. Whatever he did as the shaft of the spear struck the rock, she felt it deep within her, as if the j’na echoed with something inside her.

What would happen if she tried? She didn’t have an osidan tip, but she could try.

Watching her father for a moment, Ciara mimicked the way he stabbed the spear into the ground. The first time her j’na struck, she felt a jolt up her shoulder and winced. Her father glanced over, his gaze flicking to the draasin glass tipping the end of her spear, and nodded. She made another sharp stab into the rock, and again felt it jolt through her arm.

“That will not work,” he said.

Ciara glared at him. “Then
show
me!”

He sighed. “It will not matter.”

“Not if we do nothing, but Fas—and the others—will suffer if we don’t try something. Anything.”

A pained expression crossed his face, then he spoke softly. “Like this.”

He demonstrated the way that he flicked the spear into the ground, and she noticed that it bounced slightly, but how did he make the tip flash with light? Was there something he did to cause that, or was it simply a trick of the sunlight?

She flicked her wrist the same way he showed her, and the spear struck the ground before bouncing. The draasin glass flashed with an orange light, the sunlight playing off it as she did.

“Good,” her father said. “Now move like this.” He demonstrated the way he placed his feet, making small, shuffling steps that brought him in a small loop.

Ciara didn’t have room on the ledge to make the same loop, so she circled around Fas, hoping she didn’t do anything that would hurt him any more than he already was. With each step, she flicked the j’na to the rock and then shuffled to the side to repeat the motion. Between her and her father, the sound of the j’na cracking off the rock echoed loudly, bouncing off the hard ground. Light flashed from the tips of both of their spears though, surprisingly, most brightly from hers, as if the draasin glass was intent on reflecting more of the light, sending it spraying out and around them, bouncing off Fas.

Would the lizard see the light and return? If it did, he could save Fas. Maybe
that
was what her father taught.

As she finished the second loop around him, he groaned. Ciara almost lost her focus and skipped forward a step, the j’na catching the rock strangely and nearly flying from her hand. She jumped for it, pulling it back in time to slam it into the ground again, landing near Fas’s face. Her winced again and rolled toward her.

“What is this?” she asked her father.

He looked over at her with a pinched brow, his deeply tanned face watching her with a flat expression. “I do not know. This is not what I was taught.” s

Ciara continued her loop around Fas, with each small step slapping the j’na into the ground. The glowing from the draasin glass became constant. What was at first a flash of bright light was now a steady glowing, a blaze that burned in her eyes, making it so that she couldn’t even see. She closed them, moving with the steady rhythm, following her father and knowing only the tapping and the step. A warmth washed over her face, and she wondered how brightly the draasin glass glowed.

Then she heard a distant roar.

It was a sharp sound that echoed, filling the air more loudly than anything she and her father did. Hot wind picked up, moving around her with increasing intensity.

“Keep moving,” her father urged.

“Is that the draasin?” she asked. “Is your call working?”

He grunted, and she felt him near her. She still didn’t dare open her eyes, the brightness of the sun burning off the draasin glass coming through her closed lids.

“It is not my call, Ciara,” he said.

Her heart hammered a moment in her chest. Did he think that
she
somehow called to the draasin?

“It would seem I need a different tip to my j’na,” he said, now standing at her shoulder.

His hands touched her shoulders and she stopped, daring to open her eyes and not certain what she would see. The draasin glass glowed brighter than a lantern, burning as if dipped in flames, swirling in the shape of the glass itself. Deep within the glass, she could see the shape still there and knew that the glass itself didn’t melt.

At her feet, Fas moaned softly. She glanced down and saw him curled up, his knees bent to his belly. His breathing was easy and regular. The blood that had poured from his face had eased, leaving him pale but less sickly-looking than he’d seemed since before the attack, as if the light from the draasin glass made him healthier.

“What happened?” she asked.