Darkness Rising (The Endless War Book 2) (9 page)

When they were in the room, he slammed the door shut with a shaping of water, sealing it once more. Oliver motioned to a cot along the wall, and she carried Wyath to it, setting him down. Oliver quickly reached for Wyath and ran his hands over his face and down his sides, probing expertly.

“Who shaped him?” he said, keeping his focus on Wyath.

“There was an explosion,” Alena said. Oliver didn’t need to know how it happened, she decided, and she would try to keep Eldridge from saying anything that might lead to more questions. “A training accident.”

Eldridge eyed her askance and Oliver sniffed to himself.

“Training accident. Seems the old man shouldn’t be involved in too many training accidents anymore, should he?” Oliver directed the question to Eldridge, ignoring Alena. “But that wasn’t what I wanted to know. Who performed the first shaping?”

“I did,” Alena said. “Does it matter? I needed to staunch the bleeding, or he wouldn’t have made it even this far.”

Oliver looked up then. As he did, Alena realized that she hadn’t sensed him shaping, but there was no question that he was. Traces of color had returned to Wyath’s face. He was still cool and pale, but his blood flowed with a little more force than it had before.

The trick of masking shapings was not unique to those who trained in the barracks, but she hadn’t met anyone within Atenas who managed to do so with such skill. She couldn’t detect a thing as he worked, hiding his shaping with such precision that he might as well have been sitting in a garden.

“Of course it matters,” Oliver snapped. “The first shaping is the most important. If you can’t steady the body, there might not be anything that can be done. Depending on what you did, I might have to remove the shaping, but that runs the risk of him bleeding out completely. He’s far enough gone that he might not survive that.”

“Can you help him?” Eldridge said.

Oliver opened his mouth but closed it at Eldridge’s intense stare. “Damn it,” he whispered. “I will try, but I can’t do it alone, and I’m not sure he’s willing to help. There’s a part of him that doesn’t accept what he can do.”

Alena was frowning, wondering who Oliver meant, when she realized they weren’t alone in his room.

She stood and took a step back and saw the shadow looming along the far wall, watching them. Flickering light from the hearth played across his face, casting it in darkness, but not enough to mask the anger on Jasn Volth’s face.

“Will you be a part of this?” Oliver asked. The water shaper didn’t look over, but Alena knew the question was intended for Jasn.

He hesitated long enough that Alena feared he wouldn’t answer. She didn’t know why the greatest healer in Ter wanted Jasn to help, but she sensed that an important question was asked, even if she didn’t know quite what it meant.

Jasn stepped forward, his eyes lowering to Wyath, and sighed. “I will help.”

A
s Jasn stepped
out from the shadows, he wondered what he was doing, but someone needed help. Not only someone, but Wyath. The old man had helped him often enough since he came to the barracks, even if Jasn didn’t know everything that took place there.

“How did it happen this time?” he asked. The last time Wyath had been injured, the draasin had attacked, catching him in the stomach. Jasn had healed it as well as he could, at least as well as he had been willing to before bringing him to Cheneth.

Alena met his eyes and looked down. Damn, but she was lovely, even sweating and covered in Wyath’s blood.

He shoved the thought aside. This was the woman responsible for Katya’s death. No, not her death, not if what Oliver said was true, but at least responsible for the fact that she was missing. Did he dare believe that she still lived? Could he not?

“Training accident,” Eldridge said, repeating the phrase Alena had used.

Jasn didn’t know the thin scholar well, but when he’d gone with him to find Alena, there was no doubting his skill. Even as a wind shaper, he was impressively capable.

“What kind of training accident?” Jasn asked.

Oliver frowned, and Jasn ignored him. Did it matter if his old mentor knew what took place in the barracks? From the sound of it, he and Eldridge knew each other, even if Jasn didn’t know how.

“The kind that ends with him injured,” Eldridge said. “Now. Are you going to heal him or keep talking?”

“Oliver—”

“Doesn’t have the same capacity when it comes to this,” Oliver said.

Jasn looked over to him and frowned. “You’re the greatest healer in Ter.”

Oliver smiled and shook his head. “Perhaps I once could make that claim, but that was before.”

“Before what?”

“You.”

Jasn’s breathing quickened. Could he do what they wanted of him? Was it possible to reach for that level of control with water? When he’d healed Thenas, he had been near the stream. Always before when healing like that, when he lost control, there had been a source of water. Even when he was in Rens and
trying
to die, there had always been a source of water.

He looked from Alena to Oliver, but it was Eldridge who held his gaze the longest. “If you’re what Oliver suspects,” Eldridge said, as if making a point of not including Alena or himself, “then you can do this.”

Jasn didn’t know whether he could or whether it would work in Atenas. When he’d managed healing like was needed in the past, he had never been in the tower. Blighted stars, he’d never even been in the city! What if there was something about Atenas that made this shaping difficult?

There was only one way to know. And he needed answers. If he did this, they would owe him the answers he sought. Not only about Katya, but about the elementals as well. Maybe more than anything, he wanted to understand what that meant.

Jasn placed his hands on Wyath’s chest. As soon as he did, he felt the thready pulse and the way his life faded. The old man didn’t have another minute.

“Can you do this?” Oliver asked softly. “I’m holding back what I can, but this is nearly beyond my limit.”

He spoke in such a calm manner that it soothed Jasn, reminding him of the times when he had first come to train with the healers.

“There are multiple injuries,” he said, starting the report as he had been trained. “One lung is collapsed. His intestines are pierced.” That alone would be deadly if he did nothing. “Three… no, four major fractures.” Any one of the fractures would be enough for Wyath to bleed uncontrollably. “Overtop it all is something else,” he said, puzzling through it.

“I concur with your assessment,” Oliver said, “and what you sense is another shaping. It’s blunt and raw and—”

“And you need to remove it,” Jasn said, not taking his eyes off Wyath. The dim light from the hearth flickered, barely giving much light for his assessment, but years of training had kicked in, sending Jasn back to a time when he’d known the healing art of water, long before he had ever sought to purge himself.

“I need to remove it,” Oliver agreed.

The shaping held everything in place, but he wouldn’t be able to enact any sort of healing with it there. Once it was gone, he would need to act quickly, possibly more quickly than he’d ever attempted, and even then, there was no guarantee that what he tried would work.

Oliver shaped. It was soft and slow, but he peeled away the water shaping carefully, drawing it first from the least serious injuries before moving to the more serious ones. He hesitated near the chest, and then with a nod to Jasn, Oliver removed the shaping entirely.

Wyath gasped softly.

Blood pulsed, pouring from suddenly opened wounds. Jasn shaped water, using the techniques that Oliver had taught him, techniques that he had long ago attempted to master but had never felt capable of doing. Always, he had struggled with the complexity of water shaping that Oliver managed to so easily demonstrate. It was clear that water shaping—
his
water shaping—wasn’t going to be enough.

“You need to do this,” Jasn said.

“Water shaping will not save him,” Oliver answered, his voice still that controlled, soothing sound.

Water shaping wouldn’t, but what Oliver asked of him was to try to access that deeper ability, but it was one that he didn’t know how to find consciously.

“You must surrender to it,” Eldridge whispered, his voice like the calling of air. “It must come to you, and then you can use it.”

Jasn pulled his eyes away from Wyath and saw the scholar looming over him, his face a blank mask. He didn’t know how to do what Eldridge wanted, but if he couldn’t figure it out, he wouldn’t be able to save Wyath.

What had he done when he healed Thenas? Hadn’t he surrendered then?

Jasn wasn’t sure that he had. He had been in the water and felt the steady pulling of it, drawing at him, lapping at his ankles, flowing around him, almost a constant rhythm, like the pulse of the river…

He felt a flutter that started deep inside him. It seemed to move in a familiar pattern, a rhythm that Jasn could almost recognize.

“Surrender,” Eldridge whispered again.

Surrender to
what
? Always when he’d used healing like Wyath needed, he’d been around massive water. Like Thenas and the river, or the time he’d saved Helena near the lake after she’d fallen from the rock, even the time when he’d healed Lachen after he burned himself attempting to light a fire. It was after the accident that Renis had come for them and brought them to Atenas.

But he had healed himself without needing a source of water, hadn’t he? Wasn’t that what he’d been doing while in Rens? The healing hadn’t been anything conscious. If he had any control, he would have let himself die. That had been the entire reason he’d gone to Rens in the first place.

“Surrender,” Eldridge urged.

Wyath needed him. Life drifted away, slipping out with every drop of blood that oozed from him. The blood didn’t flow with any strength; there was none remaining within the old warrior.

The only thing that Jasn could sense was blood pulsing through his own veins. It moved with a quick rhythm, a steady tapping that bounded through him, calling to him, reminding him of the way the water had lapped around his legs when he’d been healing Thenas.

That fluttering sensation came again, this time stronger than before.

Jasn reached for it, but it slipped away as he did.

Wyath’s heart stopped.

Jasn relaxed, releasing himself to the connection, removing the barriers he’d placed that blocked access. Water surged through him in a torrent, overpowering him, filling him. All he had to do was let it pass through, to surrender as Eldridge suggested.

When he did, it washed over Wyath.

The shaping—if that was what he could even call it—moved with such strength and such power that it exploded from him, wrapping Wyath in waves of water. Jasn held on, clinging to it, but as he so often did when this surged in him, he lost control and was swept away.

Wyath bent in half by the strength of it, as if convulsing.

Jasn watched, waiting to see what would happen to the old warrior, doubting his shaping could save him. Could it, even if it was somehow tied to elementals that Jasn didn’t know how to reach?

As water continued pouring through him, Jasn released the last of his walls, releasing water from him in a torrent. But, he realized as it poured into Wyath, water didn’t come
from
him, only through him. This wasn’t his shaping at all, only channeled by him in some way.

He had the vague sensation of waves crashing combined with water burbling over rocks in the river as if they competed for his attention. Jasn tried listening more closely, straining for the connection, but another gasp came from Wyath and destroyed the weak thread.

Jasn staggered back, away from the cot.

Oliver watched him, his dark eyes unreadable, his wide mouth pulled into a tight line.

“What… what happened?” Wyath asked in a weak voice.

“Apparently,” Oliver said, “you had a training accident.”

J
asn sat
in a small room in one of the upper levels of the tower. These rooms had traditionally been reserved for the masters within Atenas, but Oliver had brought him here and hadn’t bothered checking whether anyone else was present.

“Rest,” Oliver had suggested, waving Jasn to the thin bed that occupied most of the space in the room. The walls were bare and there was no carpet like there was in Oliver’s room to provide a sense of warmth.

Jasn had wanted nothing more than rest, but his mind wouldn’t stop rolling over what had happened. He had always been a skilled water shaper; that was what had brought him to Atenas in the first place, and had demonstrated the ability to heal not only himself but others on countless occasions, but what had happened with Wyath had been more intentional than he’d ever achieved before. Had he spoken to one of the elementals? Was he somehow able to use their power?

Cheneth had tried explaining the elementals to him, but Jasn didn’t really understand. The concept was hard to fathom, regardless of knowing about the draasin and how powerful they were.

The door opened a crack and Eldridge peeked in. A part of Jasn was disappointed that it wasn’t Alena. He had questions for her that couldn’t be answered by Eldridge.

“You’re awake,” Eldridge said. His tone suggested that he hadn’t really expected Jasn to be sleeping.

“Yes.”

Eldridge motioned to a simple wooden chair next to the door, and Jasn nodded. Did it matter to Eldridge whether he agreed? The scholar would likely do whatever he wanted regardless of what Jasn asked. Besides, Eldridge had answers, too.

“What did you feel as you shaped?” Eldridge asked, leaning back against the wall and crossing one leg over the other. He looked as if he were lounging at a cook fire or sitting in a tavern telling stories to friends.

“I’m not so certain that I shaped anything,” Jasn said.

“No? Did you not use water?”

Jasn sat up and rubbed his eyes. He felt exhausted, but not as he should, especially considering how much energy he would have used on such a shaping. That, more than anything else, told him he hadn’t been the one to shape. “Water, yes, but that wasn’t me using it.”

Eldridge sighed, his breath coming out something like a gust of air. Wind swirled in the small room, kicking up dust, leaving trailing motes hanging in the air. “Who is to say who used whom? Water called to you, and you answered, or perhaps you called to water and it answered. Either way, does it matter?”

“What is this?” Jasn said.

Eldridge frowned. “I would say that this is Atenas, and you are within the tower, but that’s not what you want to hear, is it, Jasn Volth?”

“Why did Lachen send me to the barracks?” He didn’t couch his familiarity with Lachen behind a title, not as he usually did.

“Lachen, is it? Not Commander?”

“It seems to me that you know already,” Jasn said. There hadn’t been even a hint of surprise, not that Jasn had really expected it. Eldridge
was
a scholar, after all.

“I know that you knew him.”

Jasn snorted. “Knew. I suppose that would be the way to put it.”

“But not anymore?”

“Does anyone know him?” Jasn asked. “Can anyone?”

“I think the commander chooses what people learn about him. That you have some history makes you unique. I was surprised that he was the reason you came to the barracks, especially given that fact, but I suspect even he didn’t know about your ability, did he?”

Jasn sighed and stretched his legs. The small room felt cramped, and he wanted to get up and pace, but more than that, a part of him still wanted to fight. All those months spent battling had made him a different man than the one who had trained in Atenas, the man who had spent hours poring over texts, memorizing anatomy, and learning the art of healing. That man was gone, but Jasn still didn’t know who remained.

“I don’t know what Lachen knows about,” he said. “It’s possible that he did.” He paused, his hands absently playing with the fabric of his pants. “What is it? What am I?”

“You are no different than you were before. You are a conduit, chosen by the elementals and gifted with the ability to borrow from their power.”

“How is that different from shaping?” Eldridge was one of the scholars, so Jasn expected more of an answer than that, though he wasn’t entirely sure what more Eldridge would tell him.

“With shaping, you tap into the power of the elements drawing through yourself. Think of how you learned to shape wind.” He smiled and spread his hands as another gust of wind swirled around the small room. “I’ll admit that I’m biased and don’t have experience with the other elements, but they are similar. When you first reached the wind, how were you instructed to do so?”

“The wind comes when it’s called. I simply think of the air, and—”

“That’s
not
what you do, nor how you were instructed,” Eldridge said. “When you summon, what did you learn? How did you need to reach it?”

Jasn closed his eyes and thought about those lessons. They were so long ago that he had nearly forgotten, but hadn’t he been instructed to focus on his breathing, on the way air and wind moved through him? Once he found that focus, he was able to pull on it, to use that to draw on greater effect to the point that now when he attempted to shape wind, he did so without thinking, making it nearly as easy as breathing.

Eldridge smiled. “I see you remember.”

Jasn realized he had been shaping wind without intending to. He released it, letting it flow back on another breath of air. “It comes from within,” Jasn said. “I was asked to focus on my breathing.”

“
Your
breathing, yes. That’s how you use wind when you shape. The power comes from you, drawn on your connection to the elements.”

“But the elementals are different.”

“They are different. Just as some shapers have greater strength with the elements, so too are elementals stronger. You have seen the draasin. They are great elementals of fire and different than many of the others, but man has long known of other elementals.”

“I haven’t heard of any others,” Jasn said.

“No? You’ve never heard of terrible storms that blow through, destroying homes and cities? You’ve never heard stories of ships lost at sea, as if the water itself were angry? Have you never heard of rock slides destroying an entire face of a mountain, everything below lost?”

“What are you saying? That is all the elementals?”

Eldridge leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His sharp nose pointed at Jasn and he smiled tightly. “What you did with Wyath was different. You might not know how to describe it, not yet, but in time, you should be able to.”

Jasn closed his eyes, remembering the way water flooded through him. What had flowed through him had been different than shaping, an energy more powerful than anything he could shape. “The elementals healed Wyath.”

“Yes.”

He opened his eyes and saw Eldridge staring at him with an intense expression. “Why?”

Eldridge opened his mouth to answer and then closed it with a sigh. “We… we don’t know. They need our help, we think.”

“For what?”

“For something we don’t fully understand.”

Jasn thought about what Lachen had asked, the way he described a coming fight. Did Lachen know the same? Could
he
speak to the elementals?

“The same battle we fight in Rens?” Jasn asked. “The same reason the draasin attack our people deep within the waste? Bad enough that they come at us along the border, but why there?”

“We don’t know why they attack us there.”

“I thought you spoke to the elementals?” He suspected that Eldridge did, that he could speak to the wind, granting him greater control than most wind shapers he’d met, greater than any of the order.

Eldridge smiled tightly. “We do. I do.”

“They don’t tell you? How do you know that you’re helping the right side?”

“The only example I have is the one I’m most familiar with.” He leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “Have you ever felt the way the wind pulls on your face, that gentle sensation that brushes against your skin like a lover’s kiss, playfully tugging at your hair or your clothes?”

Jasn sniffed. “Yes.”

“And have you ever known the harsh, painful wind, scraping across your flesh as if trying to tear the skin from you?”

Jasn nodded. There had been times in Rens when it had felt that way.

“Then you know which you prefer.”

“That’s no answer,” Jasn said.

Eldridge stood and reached for the door. “Thank you for healing Wyath. He’s more important than you realize.”

“You still didn’t answer me.”

“No? Then you will have to come up with your choice on your own. None can do that for you, but know that there are others like you, and they are willing to help.”

As Eldridge pulled open the door and stepped through, Jasn shuffled to the edge of the cot. If he said nothing, he might never get the answers he needed. “Like Alena helped with her student who died?”

Eldridge turned back, brow furrowed in a puzzled expression. When it relaxed, he nodded slowly. “That’s it then. You knew her.”

“I knew her.”

Eldridge studied him for a moment. “You cared for her.”

Jasn didn’t blink, didn’t breathe.
Cared
seemed such an understatement about his feelings toward Katya, and he’d never had the chance to really show her the depths of his emotions.

“You’ll have to ask Alena about what happened with her.”

“Oliver says she still lives.”

Eldridge took another step into the hall. “Oliver knows many things, but this is not something that he understands.”

“What happened with her?”

“I don’t know. It’s possible Rens claimed her, and if they did, then she is truly gone. As to the rest… that is what we must understand, the reason I have come to the barracks, and the reason I remain. You must find
your
reasons.” His mouth tightened into a thin line, and he nodded before closing the door again, leaving Jasn sitting alone in shadows.