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you were concerned about finding your Katya and doing what you can to help Alena.”
    “The girl is of Rens,” Jasn said.
    “She is of more than Rens,” Cheneth said softly.
    “What does that mean?”
    “It means that she must learn. And we must teach.”
    “Why?”
    Cheneth paused as he made his way up the path leading away from the barracks. Where was the blasted man going after he had been gone for the past week? “You ask why when you have seen that there are powers in the world beyond what you can shape?”
    “I ask why because we’ve brought someone from Rens who might have significant strength. I would like to know why .”
    Cheneth snorted. “Go see for yourself, Jasn Volth.”
    The scholar continued up the hill and reached the edge of the trees. Jasn considered going to Cheneth’s dorm and seeing if there was anything about the girl he should be worried about, but he should really be worried about everything he’d seen the past few weeks. All this was the reason Lachen had asked him to keep watch on the barracks.
    But he wanted answers of a different sort. Now that they’d managed to find some stability, even if it was brief, he needed to know the answer to the question that had brought him here in the first place.
    With a shaping of wind, he reached Cheneth before he made it to the trees.
    “I thought we were finished here,” Cheneth said.
    “Not finished. What of Bayan?”
    “You know that Eldridge and Wyath search for her.”
    “Are you sure there isn’t anything I can do?”
    “You are skilled, but this is something you are not ready for. I had my reservations about allowing them to go, but Wyath was insistent, and Eldridge… Well, he is Eldridge. Besides, Wyath is talented, even more so since your healing.”
    “And what do you hear?”
    “Speaking to the elementals is not my gift.”
    “But you’re enlightened. You knew of the elementals before the rest of us.”
    “I trained in a place where all know the elementals.”
    “Hyaln.”
    “Yes. Hyaln. The elementals are known, and I have some talent in another area, but it is not in speaking to them. Others have a greater claim to that.”
    “Then why are you the one running the barracks?”
    Cheneth flashed a bright smile. “An intriguing question, and one that I’m afraid I must defer in answering.”
    Cheneth turned as if to leave, but Jasn caught him.
    Standing as he did at the edge of the trees, with shadows drifting down, Cheneth pulled his glasses down. Piercing eyes met Jasn’s. “I can’t tell you what you want to know about your Katya.”
    Jasn blinked. That hadn’t been the question he wanted to ask, but it was one that he had.
    “Alena has shared with you what happened.”
    “No. Alena shared with me what she believes happened. She thought Katya disappeared. But there’s more to it.”
    “There is always more to the story.”
    “Do you think it was Tenebeth?” Jasn asked. Had she been taken by the darkness, there might not be anything that he could do for her. Defeating Thenas had required that they destroy him, and to do so, they’d had to combine a shaping from each of the elements. Without that collaboration, Jasn wondered if there was anything he could do to save Katya—and that was if he could find her.
    Cheneth folded his glasses and stuffed them into a pocket before letting out a slow sigh. “I don’t know, honestly. We know so little about Tenebeth. That’s the reason I leave here again. Katya—Issa—we thought had died. She was incredibly skilled, almost as if she had trained elsewhere.”
    He said it so quickly that Jasn almost missed the significance. “What elsewhere?”
    “Do you think that Atenas is the only place where the elements are studied? I think I’ve shown you that is not the case.” To prove his point, a shaping built around him, more powerful than most in the barracks would have thought Cheneth could produce.
    “You think she studied where you trained?”
    “Hyaln?” Cheneth