Endless Night Read Free

her regain her strength. Now the sense of water flowed through her much more strongly and she recognized the steady beating of Wyath’s heart as he approached and lowered the shaping that sealed her into the room.
    As she had regained her strength, she had regained some sensing ability, too. She began to wonder if the shaping she’d thought was to keep her in was actually to keep others out. Wyath set the food down but looked over to her with a wry smile. “Thought that I might bring something else this time.”
    Ciara watched, a familiar fear fluttering in her chest that she forcibly pushed away. Wyath had been nothing but kind to her, hadn’t he? Unless that was what he wanted her to think.
    “What did you bring?” she asked.
    He knelt on the ground across from her and pulled a stack of what looked to be paper from his pocket and set it on the ground. “This is called sapat. It’s a game I learned from Cheneth. Thought you and I could play while we wait for him to return.”
    “I don’t read Terran.”
    Wyath glanced up from the cards and shook his head with a smile. “Not to read. These are cards. This is a game.” He began to peel the top few off and turned them up. The first had an image of an older woman, long hair flowing down past her back, and she clutched a long staff. In some ways, the staff reminded her of what Olina carried. “This is the Mother. A powerful card.” He turned the next, and flames were depicted on the corners. In the center was a young woman with wild hair. “This is Isash. She is fire.” He turned another, a stout man with a rake or a hoe. “Veran of earth.” The next card had a swirling face in the water. “Neamah of water.” The last was a wisp of blackness that seemed strangely the shape of a man mixed with smoke. “Ebrel of wind.”
    As he continued to turn the cards, she realized that they didn’t repeat, but each card had a different shape, and each one was tied to the elements. “These are the elementals?” she asked.
    Wyath studied the card he had up. Rather than a shape, this looked to be a cloud, or dirt, but it reminded her of the shadow man.
    She gasped. “Tenebeth.”
    Wyath held the card out and studied it. “Not Tenebeth. This is Nightfall. It’s a card of power, but one that is difficult to play well.”
    Ciara stared at the card, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that the card he called Nightfall—a name her people had for one of the other gods—reminded her in some ways of Tenebeth. The shadow man.
    “I don’t want to play,” she said.
    Wyath tried to hide the look of hurt that crossed his face, but he failed. He took the cards and slipped them into his pocket. “Well, I thought we could pass the time with them, but I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. Tell me, nya’shin, what can I do to help put your mind at ease?”
    She narrowed her eyes. “You call me nya’shin, but what do you know about my people?”
    Wyath’s back straightened as he met her eyes. “I know that the people of Rens and those of Ter have fought for too long. I know the endless war serves the wrong purpose, but those who lead don’t see that. And I know that the draasin who attack along the border only do so by coercion.”
    Ciara squeezed her j’na. “Then why do we fight?”
    “That is a question I don’t know the answer to.”
    He reached into his pocket again and Ciara tensed, fearing that he would pull the cards back out once more. She didn’t want to see the card for darkness again, regardless of what he might call it.
    Rather than drawing out the cards, he brought out a series of smooth stones and shook them in the palm of his hand. “Maybe a different game then?”
    He tossed the stones across the floor, and she realized that shapes were placed onto them. Wyath tapped each one, and a strange sense of pressure burst from them, almost as if he shaped as he did. The stones began to glow.
    “A variation on an old game, one that I learned when studying in