Darkness Rising (The Endless War Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

that he was more attuned to shaping? That seemed unlikely, but then so too did some of the control and skill that he’d witnessed from the hunters at the barracks.
    “What sacrifices has the commander of the order been asked to make?”
    “The kind that made me commander.”
    Jasn shook his head and looked away. Few knew how Lachen supplanted Nolan as commander, and Jasn wasn’t about to ask. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
    He glanced at the landscape around him. Here were the sloping hills where he’d first learned to reach earth, learning to first sense and then control the powers of the land, using it to create barriers and dig trenches, all the techniques that warriors of the order were expected to know to prepare for their role in the war with Rens. Now that war was winding down, shapers had less need to know how to disrupt the earth, to destroy buildings and level entire cities with little more than a thought. Jasn had once thought himself a skilled earth shaper, having mastered all that he could learn in Atenas, but he’d been wrong. From the first time he’d worked with Alena, he’d learned how little he knew and how skilled the damn woman was.
    And now he knew something more about her. Now he knew that she had been Katya’s instructor in the days before she died. Why hadn’t Alena mentioned that fact?
    Lachen smiled again, as forced as before. “Tell me, my friend”—Jasn found his heart clenching when Lachen called him friend—“Have you felt the stirring power in the darkness? When you sit under the blanket of night, have you felt the power all around you, that power that drives the world, and known that you can only touch a portion of it? Have you felt the way that power surges beyond your reach and known that others can touch it?”
    Jasn turned to him, and for the first time when speaking to Lachen, saw an earnest expression that he recognized. He spoke with an intensity that burned within him and a longing that hung on his words, Lachen’s desire for that power clear.
    “What kind of power are you talking about?” Jasn asked.
    “The kind the draasin possess. The kind others possess.”
    Jasn tensed and was careful what he asked next. Alena might have hidden the truth of what happened to Katya from him, but there were other things that had been shared with him. Cheneth had called the draasin elementals and explained that they were creatures of power, of pure fire and wind. “Not the order?”
    “The order touches barely the edge of the elemental power,” Lachen answered.
    Had he used the term elemental intentionally? Maybe Jasn needed to share with Lachen what he’d learned, but he still wasn’t sure that he should. He could return to the barracks. That was what Lachen wanted of him, so that he could discover what Cheneth had planned, but Jasn didn’t need to return to know that. He’d seen the way Alena deferred to the draasin, had heard her claims of the ability to speak to them. Wasn’t that enough to share with Lachen?
    But he didn’t. Jasn kept that fact to himself, hadn’t shared that even after learning about Alena’s role in Katya’s death. He still didn’t know why.
    A shaping built from Lachen, powerful and complex, more than Jasn could follow. Had he not spent as much time in the barracks as he had, time spent learning from shapers like Alena and Wyath, shapers who possessed more shaping ability than he thought possible, he might not have understood just how complicated was Lachen’s shaping. But he’d learned to watch for the subtle twisting of power and noted the way Lachen wound it together, binding the different elements in a pattern of incredible complexity before casting it out and away from him.
    Lachen held his breath for a moment and then released it in a soft huff. “Power builds, Jasn,” he said softly. “Power that will change the world. We must be ready. You must be ready.”
    “You speak of things that I don’t understand and choose not