Endless Night by D.K. Holmberg Page A

her steps, the dance, as Cheneth had called it. Could she replicate it? “I thought I was repeating what I had done before.”
    “Before, you summoned the draasin. Do you remember what you did then?”
    She thought of the steps. When she had been with Olina, and then with Cheneth in his small building, the pattern she’d used hadn’t been the same as when she had been with her father. Was it because she had been in Rens? Or was there something about the location that mattered?
    “I… I don’t know.”
    “You have summoned draasin. Nobelas. Golud. And now ara. Each should have a different signature for you. You have only but think about what it was that you did and you should be able to repeat it.”
    Did they have a signature as he suggested? There was a different pattern to each, and a different way that she used her j’na when summoning each, wasn’t there? So far, she hadn’t been able to repeat any of the patterns. When she thought she was using the same pattern, it ended up changed, and she ended up with a different summons than the one she expected.
    What did it mean that she would be able to summon elementals? It had been strange enough when she had learned she could call to the draasin, and then to the lizard, but to earth and wind as well? What did that mean for her?
    Cheneth seemed to understand her concern because he smiled reassuringly. “In the barracks, this place where you have come, we have shapers able to reach the elementals. They can learn to speak to them. That is why we have brought them here, knowing we must train them, protect them so that Tenebeth doesn’t reach them and twist them. But you… you have another gift, one that is unlike any that we have here.”
    “What?” she asked, already suspecting the answer.
    “We have shapers able to speak to the elementals, but they can only reach one. Alena speaks to fire. Eldridge to the wind. Wyath to earth. Volth to water. There are others with potential, but they have not shown the extent of that potential yet. In time, that will change. That must change, or we will lose.”
    Volth. That was the powerful water shaper she’d seen. He had strength to him, but anger as well. He was a powerful man, and if she were honest with herself, was alluring as well.
    “Is that what you think I will be?” she asked.
    Cheneth met her eyes. The bright intensity that shone back nearly made her step away. She set her j’na to the ground, but there was no power to it this time. “You are more than nya’shin,” he said. “You may be more than ala’shin. That is something we will need in the days to come.”
    “I don’t understand.”
    Cheneth shook his head. “No. But you will. You must, nya’shin, so you will.”

12

Ciara
    Could it be that the College of Scholars is responsible for what happened in Atenas? I would not have believed they had such connection to spirit, but then I would not have expected that they would have sealed away such knowledge with spirit. Why hide what might be essential to survival?
    —Rolan al’Sand, Enlightened of Hyaln

    T he air crackled with the energy of her j’na striking the ground. Ciara stood in the mountains again, alone as she was so often these days, with nothing but the trees surrounding her. In the time since she’d last worked with Cheneth, she had managed to summon other elementals, but never had she repeated a summons. That was the task assigned to her.
    Today was no different. She fixed in her mind the idea of summoning the draasin, of drawing one of the massive creatures to her, and focused on the steps she had used when summoning him while in Rens. Her feet followed those steps at first, but then she stopped. Not by choice, but because she began shuffling into another pattern, and her j’na began to leave her hand with a different angle or level of force or even the bounce, enough that it changed the sound as it struck the ground. Between that and the steps she took, the intent shifted.
    She had