Endless Night Read Free Page B

did, she realized he had a large gash in his head that oozed blood.
    Ciara leapt to her feet and hurried to him. “You need bandaging and a poultice.”
    “I’ll be fine.” The man’s voice had more strength than she would have expected. He touched a callused hand to the side of his face, and the bleeding from the wound began to ease. “Healing can be helpful, but it’s not predictable here.”
    As she watched, the wound slowly bound together. Did he shape himself ? Ciara hadn’t known such a thing was possible. With the nya’shin of her village, even those with the ability to control water weren’t able to press their shaping or their control over themselves.
    “Who are you?” she asked in a soft whisper, stepping back. If he was powerful enough to heal himself, then he was more than powerful enough to harm her as well. Wyath might not have any interest in harming her, but that didn’t mean the others in these lands weren’t interested in it.
    The man smiled and pushed his glasses back on his face. “Who am I? I could ask you the same, as you’re in my office.”
    Ciara clasped her hands in front of her and turned her gaze to the ground. “Cheneth?” If this was Cheneth, then he was the reason Olina had suggested she come to Ter, the reason she had suggested Ciara work with these shapers. Ciara had been here for days… maybe a week… and hadn’t seen him in all that time. “Where have you been?”
    He took a seat in the plain wooden chair behind his desk and leaned forward on his elbows, fixing his gaze on her. He tapped one slender finger against his lips, frowning as he did, while seeming to consider what he would do with her. “Yes, I am the one called Cheneth. You must be Olina’s student.”
    “Not student. She sent me here.”
    “Only because she thought that she couldn’t teach you as you needed. There is no shame in recognizing your strengths or understanding your weaknesses. Olina might be one of the most skilled of the wise, but even she knows a difference to her expertise.”
    “You studied with her? You… you are enlightened?” Ciara still didn’t know what that meant, but there was something to the title that made him more in Olina’s eyes than one of the Wise Ones of Hyaln. And if he was enlightened, then he would be able to teach her, to work with her, so that she could learn to master the draasin call. Wasn’t that why Olina had sent her?
    “I studied with her for many years. Olina rarely takes on students these days, so she must have seen something in you.”
    “She thinks I can call the draasin,” Ciara said.
    Cheneth tapped his lips again. “Hmm. And what do you think you can do?”
    Ciara ran her hand across her j’na, feeling the carvings placed there by her father. He had guided her through the first dance, helping her as she tapped the j’na along the hard rock of Rens. As she did, the draasin had responded, had come to her. But then it had taken her to Tsanth, where she had found the village, almost as if the draasin had known she needed to find Olina. But Olina had sent her here. What did the old woman intend for her to learn?
    “I think I can sense water. Other than that, I don’t know if there’s anything I can do.”
    Cheneth eyed her j’na. “You are one of the nya’shin, are you not?”
    She hadn’t realized the shapers of Ter knew so much about her people. Wyath had known some, but Cheneth seemed to understand immediately what her spear meant. “I am nya’shin.”
    “All of the nya’shin are water seekers.”
    “Seekers, yes.”
    His eyes narrowed and he frowned. “But not seekers only. Most have the ability to call water as well. You are saying that you do not.”
    Ciara gripped her spear. “I am nya’shin.”
    Cheneth laughed. “I wouldn’t claim that you aren’t. You hold the j’na, and one which appears well carved, at that. So it seems you are nya’shin. Who am I to argue with the wisdom of your ala’shin?”
    “You understand the