Journey of Fire and Night (The Endless War Book 1) Read online

  Bayan stepped to the side, leaving Jasn with Alena. He considered telling her he was too tired, that he’d shaped all day with Wyath and needed to rest and to eat, but there was no compassion in her eyes, nothing but the hard expression that told him how little she cared about what he might say.

  “I never feared the draasin,” Jasn said.

  Alena tapped her sword, and her braid flipped over her shoulder. “You should. Maybe I was wrong.” She glanced at Bayan. “Have you finished what I asked of you yesterday?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then you shouldn’t be standing here with a warrior barely able to find his way out of the forest, should you?”

  Bayan offered Jasn a look that attempted to comfort him before hurrying away.

  Alena led him to the edge of the camp. “Wyath tells me that you’ve been shaping with him today.”

  The way she asked made Jasn wonder if that upset her. “The draasin you captured. It was attacking the pen and nearly escaped.”

  She pinched her mouth as if tasting Wyath’s tobash. “That won’t happen.”

  “He let me help. Thought I could learn with him,” Jasn said.

  Alena’s hand gripped her sword but she stood otherwise motionless. “What did you learn?”

  “There is power in the letters used on the pen. Somehow, they seal the shaping into the stone.” He’d like to know the secret of how Wyath had done that, but the old man hadn’t been interested in sharing. From Alena’s expression, she wasn’t either.

  “Yes. And they hold the draasin within,” Alena said absently. She nodded, almost as if to herself, and pointed into the trees. “You were to have the day to recover, but it seems you don’t require that time. If that’s the case, then we will continue to work. I’ll admit, I didn’t think you were quite ready.”

  “Ready for what?” Jasn didn’t think he’d like what she had in mind, especially as tired as he was.

  “You’ve failed with the life around the barracks, so now we’re going to try a different approach. Given what I’ve learned of your time in Rens, maybe that’s the better way.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  A rumbling roar echoed through the mountains, a sound Jasn had only heard a few times before. He listened, thinking he’d somehow heard the draasin through the stone, but that wasn’t it. Wherever it was, it was out in the forest.

  “You will find the draasin. That is your task.”

  10

  Jasn

  Some thought to hunt the draasin, but can you really hunt fire? Control is an illusion with fire, much like the illusion of control with any elemental.

  —Lren Atunal, Cardinal of the College of Scholars

  Jasn stalked through the trees, keeping his gaze moving all around him, his eyes searching for anything that would tell him where the draasin might be hiding. His heart raced, though he didn’t know whether that came from nerves or if it was from his fatigue. Every attempt to reach out with a shaping had failed him, leaving him fearful that even if he found it, he wouldn’t be able to do anything with it. As tired as he was, he was bound to fail.

  But just because he was too tired to shape didn’t mean he was helpless. He held his sword unsheathed, sweeping it ahead of him as he moved. Years of training had made him a dangerous swordsman. Maybe not as skilled as some in Atenas, but he was more than competent with his sword. The longer he walked, the more his shaping strength returned. By the time he needed to shape, he would be ready.

  Jasn listened through earth, straining for indications of the draasin, but came up with nothing clear. The creature could be anywhere, but surely there would be some sign of it.

  By the time he reached a small peak, he’d begun to feel frustrated more than anything else. This was another test he was meant to fail. It was what Alena wanted, an excuse to prove he didn’t belong in the camp and possibly a reason to have him sent away. That might not be what Lachen wanted for him, but the commander didn’t rule in the barracks.

  The ground fell away into a valley. In all the times he’d been through the forest, days wasted with Alena as he searched for deer and squirrels and everything useless, he didn’t remember having come this way. He hadn’t followed any particular sense this time either, wandering more than anything. With each step, and with each passing moment that he failed sensing any sign of the creature by earth, water, wind, and even fire, he stopped caring about finding it and simply walked.

  Where was Alena? Usually he knew that she was out in the forest with him, but this time, he didn’t know if that was true. If he were to find the draasin, would she expect him to manage the beast on his own, or would she help him capture it? The other option—killing it—appealed to him more, but as tired as he was, he didn’t know if he could do it, even if the creature was a small one.

  And then what if it escaped? A draasin roaming in the mountains of Ter would be dangerous.

  Jasn started down the other side of the slope. Tall oaks and pine trees clustered together, making seeing anything difficult, but Jasn reached out with earth sensing as he walked and detected a clearing far below. He headed toward it. Darkness fell around him, leaving only a hint of light coming through the trees, but the thick canopy swallowed most of it. Once darkness fell in full, he would need to head back.

  He stopped at the edge of the clearing, at first concerned that he’d walked in circles. A long, low stone building filled the center, but it was different than the others in the barracks. The same simple design, and like the barracks, he realized how it was masked from detection. Had he not happened upon the clearing, Jasn wouldn’t have found it.

  Was anyone even here?

  He detected nothing, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t anyone else present. Moments of waiting gave him no sense of anything—or anyone—else, and he stepped out of the trees. A cold sense washed over him, almost like water thrown over him, and the air shimmered briefly, suddenly building to massive heat.

  “Don’t.”

  Jasn jumped and swung his sword.

  Another sword caught it, deflecting it easily. Alena, cloaked and eyes flashing with anger, flickered from him to the building.

  “What is this?” Jasn demanded, lowering his sword. Alena had stopped him fairly easily. Fatigued, and without the ability to add earth shaping to his movement, fighting with him would be like fighting a child. Given her apparent strength with shaping, he wasn’t sure it would be any different were he fully rested.

  “You were to find the draasin.”

  Jasn glanced over his shoulder, feeling heat rising around him that he hadn’t felt near the trees, heat that must have been contained with a masked shaping. “It appears that I did.”

  “This wasn’t your task.” Alena sheathed her sword and turned him away from the clearing, pushing on him with a shaping of wind. “Your task was to find the chained draasin, and in that, you failed.”

  Back under the protection of the trees, the air temperature dropped, as if he’d stepped away from a stove. A cool chill worked through him and a shaping built from Alena, sweeping away from her. When it was gone, so was all sense of the clearing.

  “What are you hiding there?” he asked. “What don’t you want me to see?”

  “You think that I hide anything from you?” She eyed his sword with a flash of irritation. “Ask questions when you’re ready for the answers. You’re barely able to find your way through the forest and can’t even catch the smallest of creatures when a meager attempt to hide them is made. Still, you want to hunt them, a right you have to earn when you study at the barracks.”

  “I’ve faced enough draasin to have earned that right.”

  “Indeed? And how many have you captured? How many have you killed? I assure you, it’s far easier to do the second than the first.”

  “I wasn’t going to find anything tonight,” he snapped. “Wyath had me helping him all day, and I’m too tired to shape effectively. I’m hungry and thirsty, and I could lie down right here and sleep. So
if you think I should know how to find one of the draasin, then maybe you should teach me rather than scolding me like I’m nothing more than a novice trainee freshly arrived in Atenas.”

  “I would say that at least then, you probably had the sense to realize how little you actually knew, but from what I’ve witnessed, that might not have been the case.”

  They reached the top of the rise, and Jasn’s anger continued to build. Why did Alena dislike him so much?

  “Do you think they care about your fatigue?” Alena went on. “Do you think they care about how much you shaped during the day, especially when the reason was to contain them? You claim I haven’t taught you anything, but if nothing else, you should have learned that you must be ready at all times. If you’re not, if you’re focused on how tired you might be, or how hungry you are, or whether someone has slighted you, or about some girl you’re trying to woo, you’ll be dead.”

  They continued through the trees as Alena berated him. He almost laughed when she suggested he might be wooing some girl. Which girl would he be after in the barracks? The only one he could think she meant was Bayan, and there was nothing but friendship between them. Were Alena not so damned irritating and were he still not grieving Katya, he might have an interest in her. She was certainly attractive, but with her attitude, any attraction faded.

  The forest thinned as they neared the edge of the barracks. Alena stopped near a massive oak thick with moss. Roots pressed up out of the ground before they plunged deep into the earth.

  She turned to him, eyes determined. “What do you sense?” she demanded.

  Emotions flashed through Jasn’s head. Did he tell her that he sensed annoyance and anger and a dozen different variations? Saying anything like that would only push her further from teaching him, but maybe that wouldn’t necessarily be negative. Would it be possible for him to be assigned another instructor? Wyath might not teach anymore, but there were others. Calan worked with Thenas, and he’d seen how competent Calan was. Jasn didn’t relish the idea of working with Thenas any more than he needed to, but if he was going to learn how to really hunt the draasin so that he could return to Rens, and not simply how to chase warriors through the forest, he needed someone willing to train him.

  Alena arched a brow as she waited for him to answer.

  “You’ve been bellowing at me so long that I don’t sense anything,” Jasn said.

  As soon as he spoke, he knew that had been the wrong answer. She shook her head and breathed out in disgust. “So unwilling to listen, aren’t you? Think you know everything because the commander brought you here and you don’t need to know anything more. You know what you’re training here to do, and if you can’t focus on what’s asked of you, you’ll die. I’ve tried to make that as clear as possible.”

  “You haven’t made it clear. What have you done to teach?”

  “What have I done?” She waved a hand and a shaping burst from her, hitting the trees around them, and Jasn’s heart sank.

  Barely ten steps away, chained to the massive oak, was the creature. The roots he’d seen were the chains, somehow shaped in such a way that they were masked. The draasin watched him, darkness swallowing its eyes, heat pressing out and away from its body.

  The damn thing had been here the whole time.

  Jasn would have walked past it as soon as he entered the forest. And now Alena made a point of bringing him back to it, showing off as she unveiled it. It strained against the chains, but the tree was old and stout, and even the draasin couldn’t uproot it.

  “You concentrated all your energy on being mad at me and missed the opportunity to detect the draasin. A waste of focus. You say that I won’t teach, but you won’t learn. You use your time in Rens as a crutch. You learned nothing there, and you refuse to learn here.” She jabbed him in the chest with a sharp finger. “You claim you were too tired to shape, and that is exactly my point. You didn’t need to shape to find it.”

  She pointed to the tree and the shaping hiding the draasin shimmered back into place. “Did you even bother to notice a tree that shouldn’t have roots as it did? If you think this a difficult test, then training here is not for you. The tasks only get harder, and the consequences of failing only get more severe.”

  Without waiting for his response, she raised her hands, shaping as she did, and approached the draasin slowly. The creature didn’t move but fixed her gaze on Alena, breathing steadily as Alena’s shaping washed over her.

  Alena removed the chains from around the tree and dragged the creature with her as she made her way out of the trees and back toward the barracks. Jasn hurried after her, keeping as close as he could but realizing how foolish he had been. Could she be right? Had she been teaching, only in her own way?

  Damn Lachen for bringing him here when all he wanted was to remain in Rens, where at least he might finally die as he had wanted to do for so long. And damn the draasin for not helping him succeed before now.

  11

  Ciara

  Rens did not have the might of shapers for support, and eventually, the ability to control the draasin seemed to fade. When Ter attacked, they fell back into wild lands they believed Ter would not want, attempting to establish a home there. Those lands were never meant for men, and the elementals often pushed back.

  —Lren Atunal, Cardinal of the College of Scholars

  The explosion lifted Ciara from her feet, sending her sprawling across the sand. She rolled to her back, throwing the spear in front of her, ready to attack—as if there was anything she could do if shapers attacked her. Next to her, Fas leapt to his feet more quickly. He moved with a fluidity that told her that he shaped himself up. His j’na spun in the air, the tip already taking on his building water manipulation.

  “Don’t waste the water stores!” Ciara said.

  Fas jerked his head around. A jagged gash ran along the side of his face. It was already beginning to seal closed with his shaping. “The water stores won’t matter if we don’t survive,” he snapped.

  His skin took on a light sheen with the power he manipulated. In the desert of the waste, Ciara rarely had the opportunity to see Fas or Eshan attempt their shapings. Eshan had been the more skilled of the two, but Fas was more powerful. From what he had told her, power didn’t always matter. Sometimes it was the skill of the shaper, which was why Eshan had often managed to outmaneuver Fas when it came to manipulating water. Fas could use his greater strength in other ways, though, and often detected water far sooner than Eshan. Or had, until Ciara began working with them. Then she had been the first to sense water.

  Besides the wasting of the water stores, the attack and Fas’s shaping had another consequence: Ter shapers would know they were there.

  The ground exploded again, this time heaving beneath her feet, once again sending her flying into the air. Dirt and sand swirled around her, scraping against exposed skin, leaving her face feeling raw and her mouth coated.

  When she landed, the slender spear caught the ground and went flipping away from her.

  Ciara scrambled after it. She had waited years to begin her j’na; she was not about to lose it now.

  The air sizzled with heat and the sand grew hotter than it had been, leaving her palms burning as she crawled. Heat softened the sand, and she left deep impressions.

  “Fas?” she said.

  The last explosion had come closer than the one before and had struck with more power than the first. The first one had left him injured, but he was able to heal himself with his water shaping. Ciara didn’t think she’d been seriously injured, but if she was, there wasn’t much she would be able to do. Unlike Fas, she had to wait to heal naturally.

  When he didn’t answer, she rolled to her back. Her hand reached the smooth end of her spear and she pulled it around with her. Fas lay sprawled across the ground, his arm bent awkwardly. A small pool of blood seeped around his stomach, soaking into the sand.

  Ciara ran to him. His eyes were open, and a glazed expression crossed them. />
  “Ciara?” he said as she touched his arm.

  “Quiet. You’ve a broken arm. Something hit your stomach.”

  He grunted. Blood burbled to his mouth. “My j’na. Blasted thing caught my gut as I was readying water.”

  Injury from a j’na would be brutal. The spiral tip would cut deeply and make it difficult to pull out, but she didn’t see any sign of his spear. Like Eshan’s after he’d fallen, the spear was gone.

  The air built with the sense of another shaping. Ciara crouched low, ready for the ground to erupt again, and gripped Fas so that they wouldn’t be thrown apart again.

  “Go. You’re nya’shin. Help the village, Ciara.”

  “I won’t be nearly as much use as you. We need to get you help.”

  Fas moved the hand cupping his stomach. Blood seeped around a deep gash in his elouf, and the flesh beneath looked angry and blackened. She wanted to apply pressure, wished that she could shape so that she could heal him, but there was nothing she’d be able to do to help him.

  “Can you heal this?” Even as she asked, she knew it unlikely.

  “Healing something like this would take all the remaining water stores,” Fas said. His hand slipped back into place, covering the open flesh again. He winced as he did.

  “But if—”

  His eyes cleared for a moment, nothing but the briefest time. “The village, Ciara. Help the village.”

  Then his eyes fell closed once more.

  The shaping split the air with a loud explosion, but this one came farther from her, leaving them unharmed. For a moment, she thought the attack over but then realized it was striking nearer the village, close enough that all the villagers would be in danger.

  Without Fas, what could she do?

  Maybe nothing, but she was nya’shin. She needed to try.

  Leaving Fas lying on the ground to die was the hardest thing she had ever done, but she would be of no use to anyone if she remained where she was. If she went into the village, she might die the same as Fas, but she might give the village a chance to survive. As nya’shin, that was her task.