Endless Night Read Free Page A

Atenas. Don’t know what it was called then, but we always just called it shaper’s stones.”
    “I’m not a shaper,” she said softly.
    Wyath looked from her j’na to her with a frown. “No? Thought that all nya’shin have some shaping ability. And back in that village, you seemed to direct fire pretty well.”
    “That wasn’t a shaping.”
    Wyath smiled. “No? What would you call it then?”
    Ciara didn’t know what she would call it, only that she couldn’t shape fire. Her father had demonstrated a way for her to summon draasin, and perhaps she had used that to summon the other elemental, that strange lizard she seemed able to speak to, but she had no control over fire.
    “I… I don’t know what it was.”
    “Hmm,” Wyath said. “Seems to me that you were the one to control the shaping, and you pulled fire into it. Without you there, I’m not sure we would have managed to help that draasin.”
    Ciara tried to force herself to relax, but struggled to do so. Tension filled her at the mention of the possibility that she might have shaped. Wasn’t that what she had always wanted? Hadn’t she wanted to be able to shape, to use that to help her people? But the nya’shin were water shapers; they could use that power to help the people. What did it mean that she could sense water, but she could call fire?
    “Anyway, it’s because of your help. Not such a good thing that we have you here like this, but I had hoped Cheneth would have been here by now. Soon enough, though. Soon enough. Then he can begin your education.”
    Wyath swept the stones back into his hand and shook them onto the ground. This time when he shaped them, leading to dark blue lines on them, she felt the way he did it even if she still didn’t understand what exactly it was she felt.
    Wyath looked over at her and smiled. Ciara swallowed, knowing she should not trust these shapers. They were Ter. The same people who had attacked throughout Rens. The same people who had attacked her village! But how could she not at least try ?
    And if she could learn to shape something other than water, even if it was fire, maybe she would be able to help her people in another way. And maybe she could do something to prevent the shadow man from returning, from attacking again. If she could, then she needed to remain and see if there was anything she could learn.
    Not only for herself and the power she had long desired but for her people, to protect those who had been lost and to prevent another attack.
    When Wyath handed her the stones, she took them and tossed them to the ground. She touched them as he demonstrated and felt a surge of pressure before colors spread across the stones. Wyath smiled, and she didn’t know if he had shaped the stones or if it had been her.

3
    Ciara
    Eldridge should have returned. I know that he would agree, though reluctantly, and he would likely find more than I have managed. I have discovered several pieces that are helpful, but there is more than I cannot learn without access from a bishop or someone higher.
    —Rolan al’Sand, Enlightened of Hyaln

    W hen the door opened again , Ciara looked over, expecting Wyath. He had been back to the room a few times, each time to play stones with her. Each time he did, she began to wonder how much of the game he shaped and how much was because of something she managed to do. The game itself wasn’t all that difficult to play, requiring chance with the toss, but there was something about the shaping that mattered. So far, she didn’t think she had done anything that assisted with the shaping, but maybe there was more to it than she realized.
    At the door, a thin, stoop-backed, elderly man paused and pushed up a pair of wire-framed glasses that he peered through. A smudge of blackness—likely ink, she realized—smeared across his cheek. Heavy lines around his eyes made him appear more weary and aged than she suspected he was.
    He made his way toward the desk and leaned on it. As he