Endless Night Read online

  Only he didn’t know how.

  There would be time to question later. First he had to get to safety, but where would that be? Where could he go that would be safe?

  Nowhere in Atenas. The city itself was under the control of the order. Even the city watch consisted of shapers not skilled enough to join the order but who still wanted to serve. Each one of them would have to be suspect.

  What of the guild?

  Oliver hesitated. The guild might still be intact, but how would he know? The Seat had asked for him separately, almost as if knowing that they needed to pull him away from the guild. Had they come for him first… or last?

  Regardless of the answer, he needed help, and not the kind he would find in Atenas. He hated to ask, but what choice did he have? Now that he didn’t know who he could count on within Atenas, where could he go but there?

  The only question he had was whether Eldridge would answer his call.

  The tavern was in a section of Atenas near the outer edge of the city. Oliver wore loose wool pants and an ill-fitting jacket, but they were all he could find. The jacket barely covered his stomach, and the pants were much too large. Likely they did more to make him stand out than fit in.

  Except here. In this place, a dingy place with barely enough light for him to see, he doubted that anyone cared what he wore just so long as he paid. He looked up at each person who entered, wondering if the next person would be Eldridge, or the next, but so far, the man hadn’t come.

  Stars, but what would he do if Eldridge didn’t answer? He knew the scholar from his earliest days in the college, back before either of them had been raised very high. Oliver had been a different man—a much lighter man—then. And Eldridge, he had been a flurry of energy and hope even then.

  The door opened and an older man tottered in, leaning on his cane. The filth coming off the man could be smelled where Oliver sat.

  Why had Eldridge ever suggested this place to meet if they needed to meet? Not that Oliver ever expected that he would. He had thought Eldridge would be the one needing his help, sort of like the time he brought Wyath to him. Not much that he’d managed to do for him though. Without the assistance of Volth and his impressive connection to water, Wyath would have died.

  The old man made his way toward Oliver.

  Did the old man recognize him? As head of the guild, he was recognizable in the city even when he didn’t want anyone to know that he was there. Changing his clothes and attempting to disappear didn’t really suit him, and he wasn’t sure he could do much if someone did recognize him anyway. He would have to leave, he suspected. Only, the more he thought about it, the less interested he was in leaving Atenas. This was his home. And he needed to understand what happened here.

  Balls! The old man decided to sit across from him.

  Up close, his wrinkled face was covered with dirt or feces. With some of the folk from outside the city, it could be difficult to tell. Hygiene was not as important with them as it was in Atenas. He rested his cane against the table and leaned back into the booth with a groan.

  Oliver turned his attention away from the man and looked instead at his cane. Surprisingly, he noted symbols burned into it. Many he recognized, but not all.

  “Eldridge said you had a keen eye.”

  Oliver jerked his head around and stared at the old man. Balls! Had Eldridge been compromised? Was that why this man was here? Did he intend to take Oliver with him?

  “Who are you?”

  The old man grunted and waved to one of the waitresses. In this tavern, Oliver had found the service to be lacking, but the old man managed to catch her attention quickly, and she hurried over, smiling broadly at him as she brought him a mug of ale. The man flipped her a silver before she darted off.

  The man took a drink of the ale and then set it down. “Not many places brew it the old way,” he said, wiping his sleeve across his face. As he did, there was a flash where cleaner skin shone through, but then it faded. It happened so quickly and resolved so fast that Oliver realized the illusion.

  Plucking at the shaping with strands of water, he started to peel it away, but then his connection to water was cut off. It simply was not there anymore.

  He gasped.

  “It would be best if you leave that alone,” the old man said.

  With that, his shaping returned.

  “You’re him,” Oliver said.

  The old man grunted again. “I’m me.”

  “You run the—” He looked around and lowered his voice as he leaned toward the old man. Whatever else the illusion might be, the stench most certainly was not an illusion. “You run the barracks.”

  The old man took another drink of ale. “You called for Eldridge. He is away.”

  “So you came?”

  The old man grunted again. “We have an agreement of sorts. I watch for him, and he watches for me.”

  Oliver had heard of Cheneth, the scholar who ran the barracks, but had never met him. As far as he could determine, Cheneth had never been in Atenas. The College of Scholars was not situated in the city, but there were enough scholars throughout the city that it might as well be. None really knew where to find the college, and none of Oliver’s questioning had ever revealed the answer. They held a unique position in Atenas, one where they advised the council but held no real authority. Not like what he’d learned of in the barracks.

  But though he had heard of Cheneth, he had not expected this. The man sitting across from him appeared like nothing more than a dirty villager, but the power that was required to simply separate him from his ability to shape would be enormous. What scholar possessed that type of power?

  When Oliver didn’t say anything, Cheneth leaned toward him. Even his teeth had a crooked and blackened appearance. “Why did you summon Eldridge, Master Bestrun?”

  Oliver composed himself and wrapped a shaping of water around his mind, pulling it tight against himself. He didn’t want to be separated from shaping again. The slight pull of Cheneth’s lips suggested that he knew what Oliver had done. If he could tell what he did, would it matter to him?

  Maybe this was a mistake. He should have considered his options before calling Eldridge. As of now, Eldridge owed him a favor for attempting to heal Wyath. But what would he owe Eldridge for helping?

  He took a breath. He could do nothing more than explain why he had come. And then Cheneth could decide if he wanted to help.

  “The council attempted to shape me,” he said in a hushed voice.

  Cheneth blinked. For a moment, the illusion covering his features faded, but it returned quickly. “Why would they have tried to shape you?”

  “I don’t know. I was summoned to the Seat, and when I arrived, there was a subtle shaping that prevented me from leaving. I felt something”—he tried thinking of the words to describe what he felt, but failed—“something in my head.”

  “And you managed to escape?”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “Hmm.”

  Cheneth grabbed his wrists so suddenly and so quickly that Oliver didn’t have a chance to react. Something surged through him, a shaping of such force and such strength that Oliver didn’t only sense its power, he felt it, the way you could feel heat rising from an oven. Cheneth squeezed his wrists, and the power flowed over him, raged through him, and then relaxed as Cheneth released his wrists.

  “Yes. You escaped,” Cheneth said with an uneasy sigh.

  “What was that?” he demanded.

  “Watch yourself, Master Bestrun,” Cheneth said. “You told me they attempted to shape you. There are some with the ability to shape in such a way that you would lose control of yourself. What I did was only to determine whether such a shaping had been done.”

  “What you describe doesn’t exist.”

  “Trust me when I tell you that it does,” Cheneth said. “Now, describe to me exactly what you felt when you were in the Seat.”

  Oliver collected himself, rubbing at his wrists. There had been p
ain, but also a sense of helplessness, of knowing that he was in the presence of someone so much more powerful than him that he was little more than a child in comparison. It was much the same way he had felt with the commander the only times he’d seen him. The man who had sat at the head of the order before him had been a powerful shaper, but he had abilities others could understand. He had served in Atenas for nearly a dozen years. Lachen had come seemingly out of nowhere and was more powerful than anyone had been in centuries.

  “They did nothing. They called me before them and said nothing. I wouldn’t have known that they even shaped me were it not for the fact that I…”

  Cheneth tipped his head to the side. “You what?”

  “I used water to calm myself,” Oliver admitted. Shaping oneself wasn’t necessarily forbidden, but there were things that shapers didn’t do. Turning a shaping upon oneself was rightly considered dangerous. Most wouldn’t be able to control it, and even if they could, there was no guarantee the shaping would have the desired effect. It was the reason healers couldn’t heal themselves. Or hadn’t been able to heal themselves prior to Jasn Volth.

  “That would attune you, yes,” Cheneth said, mostly to himself.

  Oliver frowned. “Attune me to what?”

  “Don’t pretend you didn’t see the way Alena and Jasn shaped when they were here. Eldridge shared with me what happened.”

  “They are fully trained warriors and more powerful than me.”

  Cheneth smiled slightly. “You have no idea.”

  “There was something that prevented me from leaving. A shaping that wanted to hold me in place. And then… then I began to feel a strange crawling sensation in my mind.”

  Cheneth leaned back and took another drink of ale. When he was finished, he sat forward again and rested his elbows on the table. “You should not have recognized what they did. But then, you remained attuned. Interesting that it would work.” Cheneth fell silent, his fingers rubbing a pattern on his mug of ale before he looked up. “How did you manage to escape before the shaping took hold?”

  “I severed it with water.”

  “Hmm.” Cheneth built a shaping quickly and it sliced through the connection Oliver held to water, once again separating him from it. The effect was brief, only a heartbeat, but it made Oliver gasp once more. “Was it something like that?”

  “Would you stop doing that?”

  “Tell me. Was your shaping like that?”

  Oliver considered what he had sensed in the moment before he lost his connection to water. Cheneth had used a knife of a shaping, one so controlled that it had slipped underneath what he had managed to do to wrap himself in water. The edge of the shaping was so sharp that it had happened too quickly for Oliver to react.

  The control was more than even Oliver possessed, and he considered himself one of the most skilled shapers of water in the world.

  If this scholar could shape water like that, and without any warning, without any sign of what he did… He was much more powerful than Oliver would have expected.

  “Yes. It was much like that.”

  “Good. You see the way that I used it to pry beneath your shaping?” Cheneth asked. His voice had no condescending tone, only one that reminded him of all the teachers he’d ever had.

  Oliver nodded. What else could he do when confronted by a man more skilled than him but learn?

  “Then you can repeat it. This shaping can guide you and can give you the chance to separate others if you need it. Do you see how it can be used?”

  “I see how you separated me from water.”

  “Yes. And you can do the same with others.”

  “That’s not—” He stopped himself, realizing that it might not be what he wanted to learn from Cheneth, but it might be useful nonetheless. “Can it be used against anyone?” he asked instead.

  “You may try, but there are certain shapers where that sort of attack will not be effective. Some are too powerful for such a simple measure.”

  Simple. Oliver would not have called the attack simple. He hadn’t even known that separating a shaper from their ability was possible, but now that he did, he still didn’t view it as a simple attack. Using a sharp edge as would be required needed superb control of shaping, enough that it could slip beneath the shaper’s ability to counter.

  “That’s not why I summoned Eldridge,” Oliver said. “I’m not sure that I can return to the tower.”

  Cheneth leaned in, carrying his stench with him. “You will return, Oliver Bestrun. If the Seat of the Order is compromised, more than you realize is at stake. Darkness threatens, and we must be ready.”

  Oliver tensed. Darkness. What did Cheneth know?

  “You know of it,” Cheneth said.

  Oliver frowned. “I have seen evidence of it,” he said. “Shadows that should not be there. Power that seems to pulse in the back of my mind. I do not know what it means.”

  Cheneth finished his ale and set the mug down on the table. “It means, Master Bestrun, that you must remain vigilant. If that power has taken hold within the Seat, we may already be in more danger than we realize.”

  Oliver rested his hands on his belly. “I can’t return. I already escaped the Seat once. If they summon me again—”

  “You will remain, and if they summon you again, you will avoid the summons. It is as simple as that.”

  “I think you mistake my talents for yours.”

  “There is no mistake, Master Bestrun. If you escaped once, you are as capable as any to remain here. And you need to remain here. You have control of water. There are certain things that you can do to help disguise yourself.”

  With a wave of his hand, the old man disappeared. In his place was a young woman, her face reminding him, with her raven hair and full lips, of his long-departed sister. The woman waved her hand and changed again, this time taking on the appearance of Eldridge. Another wave of the hand, and the old man reappeared.

  Each time, Oliver had detected the barest whisper of water shaping, but it was water that he used.

  “You see that you can be more hidden than you realize,” Cheneth said.

  “How… how is it that you know these things?”

  “I know a great many things, but there are certain things that I do not know. That I have not discovered. And that is why you must remain here.”

  Oliver sighed. “I can try to do this,” he started, but then thought of the way Cheneth had entered his mind, “but what if they do something that I cannot withstand?”

  Cheneth reached across the table and handed him a slender rod. Patterns were etched into the metal that reminded him of what decorated Cheneth’s cane. “This can help you counter spirit. Use a shaping of each element—it does not take much—and you will be able to call on spirit. You can use that to defend against such a shaping.”

  Oliver took the rod. His fingers trailed along the edge of it, tracing the patterns. “What is this?”

  “There are those who specialize in forging artifacts like this,” Cheneth said. “You may use this if you remain. This can help if spirit is used against you. Carrying it will protect you.”

  “You said that I could call on spirit with it.” Even saying that seemed odd. There were no shapers of spirit, were there?

  But then, he had never met anyone like Cheneth before.

  “You can call spirit, but I caution you to practice before you have need. This might buy you time, but against a skilled shaper… Well, let’s say that even this has its limitations.”

  Oliver thought about what was asked of him. Could he really do what Cheneth wanted? Could what Cheneth claimed be real?

  But if it was, and if the Seat had been compromised, then Cheneth was right. Much more was in danger than he realized.

  “I will stay,” he said softly.

  He stared at the metal rod for a moment, and when he looked up, Cheneth was gone.

  11

  Ciara

  Atenas is compromised, but we have allies I had not expec
ted. The extent of the threat remains unknown.

  —Rolan al’Sand, Enlightened of Hyaln

  “Why don’t we start again?” Cheneth asked.

  They stood in a mountainous area, far from where Ciara had been for the past few days, brought there by a shaping Cheneth had worked, traveling leagues in nothing more than the blink of an eye, almost as if traveling on lightning, but no thunder had followed. Nothing but silence.

  When the shapers of Ter had attacked in the past, they had always come on lightning with thunder trailing. That was how her people knew they came. And if there were no way to detect them, how would the people of Rens be safe?

  “I’ve tried all that I can,” Ciara said. She grabbed a branch and pulled on it, dragging the branch closer so that she could pluck the leaves off it.

  “I think you’ve tried all that you are willing to try. There is a difference.”

  “Why? What do you think this will do? What do you want me to do?”

  Cheneth stopped in front of her. In the days since she had first met him, she had begun to see he was nothing like the thin, elderly man she had first assumed him to be. There was strength behind his eyes and in the way he watched her. In some ways, it intimidated her. In others, knowing that he had such skill and knowing that he had no intent to attack Rens, it made her feel better.

  “I want you to remember what it was that you did when you began your…” He frowned as if searching for the right word. “Your dance. Now we are here to see what else you might be able to summon. You have shown earth, draasin, and supposedly nobelas.”

  “The lizard? Why do you and Olina both care so much about the lizard?”

  Cheneth glanced behind him, eyes narrowed, then he motioned for her to follow as he made his way through the trees and up the slope of the mountain. The earth had a mixture of rock and loose dirt that she slipped over as she made her way behind him. Tall pine trees grew too close together, as if they tried to squeeze out everything else that attempted to grow here. The air was heavy with their aroma, and the dried needles crunched beneath the boots Cheneth had given her, boots so different from the thin-soled leather sandals she had worn throughout Rens.