Serpent of Fire

by D. K. Holmberg

  Tan paused at a few of the rooms, looking for signs of Roine or the Chenir delegation.

  “Have you seen Zephra?” Tan asked a passing servant

  The man’s wire-framed spectacles slipped down his nose and his eyes widened as he took in first Tan’s warrior sword and then his Athan’s ring. “No, Athan,” he said, bowing low. Another servant, a younger woman with pale skin and red hair that rivaled Cianna’s, bowed as well. “Zephra is in her quarters, Athan.”

  Tan nodded and muttered a hasty thanks, feeling uncomfortable with the formality they treated him with. Maybe Roine was right that he needed to spend more time around the palace.

  He made his way down the hall and descended the stairs to his mother’s quarters. The door was closed and a rune was now fixed on the center. Tan studied it, then ran his fingers over it, recognizing the mark for wind mixed with the elemental mark for ara. Only a wind shaper bound to the elemental would be able to open the door.

  His connection to the elementals would likely allow him access, but that would likely only anger his mother. Tan knocked.

  As he waited, he reached through the bond he shared with Honl, searching for the ashi elemental. Tan found him, a distant sort of awareness. The more time that Tan had to recover, the more he recognized that Honl had fundamentally changed, but he didn’t quite know how.

  Pulling Honl back from kaas had done something, twisting him into a different form, maybe forcing him away from the wind. Tan wished there had been another way, something else that he could have done rather than altering the elemental.

  The door opened a crack and Zephra stood before him. Her graying hair hung loose around her shoulders. A simple brown robe draped around her and was cinched at her waist. Her usually hard mask of a face softened when she saw Tan.

  “Tannen.”

  “Mother,” Tan began, wondering how to phrase the question that had plagued him since forcing kaas away. “I need to speak to you about ara. Have you noticed anything different?” he asked in a rush.

  Her breath caught. “It’s real?”

  Tan felt as if his heart skipped a beat. “What’s real?”

  She glanced past him and then motioned him into the room. She grabbed a small, circular shape—the summoning rune coin, Tan realized—and shaped wind into it. When she turned back to face him, her face had resumed her usual hard expression.

  “Something happened with ara tonight, didn’t it?” she asked.

  “You didn’t know,” he said softly. Why hadn’t ara summoned Zephra? Unless ara knew there was nothing Zephra could do to help. “That’s what I came to ask you about.”

  Zephra’s eyes went distant for a moment. “Ara is weakened. Aric has… gone… for a time. I sense him still, but there is uncertainty about him.”

  Tan swallowed. “Then it’s true.” He took a few steps into the room and turned, wishing he had more space to walk, feeling a restless sort of energy burning within him.

  His mother watched him, cocking her head as she studied him. “You were there.”

  “Ara summoned. I answered.”

  “You were summoned?”

  He stopped pacing a moment and met her eyes. “I serve all the elementals, Mother. Golud summoned me as well.”

  “Theondar warned that there was a different sort of danger you’d encountered.”

  “Yes. Theondar. You were there as well, but you don’t want to believe that it’s anything other than Incendin.”

  “Tannen, I saw the hounds. I might not have been able to pierce the heat veil, but there is no one other than the lisincend who controls the hounds.”

  Tan still didn’t have an answer for that, and Cora had been surprised by the idea of the hounds being there. Finding out what had happened with the hounds would be essential to convincing the kingdoms shapers that Incendin hadn’t attacked along the border.

  “That was elemental power, Mother, not lisincend, and the kind of power that hasn’t been seen in these lands in over a thousand years.”

  “Then how do you know?”

  “How? Because of the draasin. They flew freely once, thousands of years ago.”

  “And led to much destruction,” she reminded him.

  That was what the histories claimed, but Tan hadn’t seen anything like that from the draasin. What if it had never been the draasin who caused the destruction, but kaas?

  The idea opened up several other questions. Why would Asboel have kept that from him?

  “What do you know about what happened to ara?” he asked. He needed to get his mother to focus on the elementals, not on the hatred she felt for Incendin. It was hatred that Tan had shared, but he’d also managed to move past those feelings. He’d needed to move past them or more would suffer. Standing in a pool of liquid spirit and drawing power through the artifact had shown that to him.

  His mother sighed. “Ara… has weakened. I can’t explain it any better than that, only that something happened tonight and the elemental was affected. What did you see?”

  Tan tried to keep the memories of the attack from crawling back to the forefront of his mind, but it was difficult to do. They were painful, and not knowing what happened to Honl made it even more so. “Par-shon drew ara for kaas. They set traps, much like the ones that were set for earth, only this time, they used wind traps. Ara summoned and had I not answered, I suspect many of the elementals would have been lost.”

  His mother studied him. “Something happened to you, didn’t it?”

  Even after all that had changed between them, she was still his mother. She still knew when he was hurt. “My wind elemental was nearly destroyed.”

  Zephra gasped softly.

  “He wasn’t, but in saving him, something is changed.” Tan closed his eyes. “The ashi elemental is visible now, Mother.”

  “How? What did you do?” she asked softly.

  “I did what I had to.” As he said it, he realized that he needed his mother for more than her support. He was Athan to the king regent, a position where he spoke with the king’s voice. It was time for the other shapers to remember. “As I need you to do something.”

  “I’m not certain that I like the sound of that,” she said.

  Tan wished there was another way, but he couldn’t keep chasing kaas around the kingdoms, not if he intended to learn enough about keeping the other elementals safe. But he didn’t know of any other way for what he needed to do.

  “You won’t like what I’m going to ask of you, either.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Tell me, Athan, how would you have me serve?”

  “We’ve been focused on supporting the borders, rebuilding the barrier, but that is wasted energy. We need to gather the elementals to safety. We can’t do that if there are walls that keep them out.”

  “Tan—”

  He shook his head.

  “Athan,” she said, “what you’re asking means risking the people of the kingdoms for the safety of the elementals. If you’re right—and I’m not certain that you’re right that Incendin still won’t attack us—then this other elemental is even more dangerous than anything we’ve ever faced.”

  “Not quite. I still think the Utu Tonah—”

  His mother shot him an annoyed expression and the door slammed open behind them. Roine stood there, concern wrinkling his brow. Tan quickly told him what he’d learned.

  “It seems our only protection is replacing the barriers, not lowering them,” Roine said. “With the barriers, we can keep this elemental out of the kingdoms.”

  “Or trap it inside,” Tan said.

  “Then you will need to draw it away,” Roine suggested.

  “And leave the other nations in danger?” Tan asked. It wasn’t even the idea of leaving others in danger that bothered Tan. It was the idea of leaving the elementals exposed to kaas, knowing what the fire elemental would do. “How would the delegation from Chenir would react if they heard that plan?”

  “My responsibility isn’t to the other nat
ions,” Roine said. “And neither is yours.”

  “We can’t abandon the elementals, Roine, not even if it means our safety.”

  “Tan—” he started.

  Tan shook his head. “I will do everything I can to keep the kingdoms safe, but my responsibility is to more than this,” he said, raising the hand with the ring. “It’s to all of this.” He swept his hand around the room, drawing briefly on the elementals. Power surged as he did. Wind gusted, the ground trembled, water slicked the walls, and fire bloomed in his hand. “If we replace the barriers, you will force me to choose. Please,” he said, “don’t ask that of me.”

  24

  A Shaping Demonstration

  When the morning came and he again made his way through the streets toward the archives to try and find something that might help them stop kaas, Tan felt shaping near the university.

  It was a different sense than anything he’d ever detected before. There was strength and power and control, but the way the elements wove together in the shaping was unique. There was a certain layering to them that Tan had never sensed from the kingdoms’ shapers.

  He wrapped himself in a shaping of fire and kept his hand on the hilt of his sword, uncertain what he might find. Not Par-shon. It seemed improbable—though not impossible—that Par-shon would have made their way this far into the kingdoms only to demonstrate their shapings. That meant another type of shaper.

  There was only one other explanation that Tan could come up with.

  As he reached the university plaza, passing beneath the restored arch that marked the entrance, a gathering of people awaited. A thin man of average height stood near the shapers circle, working with earth. He was dressed in baggy brown leggings and a jacket that hung open, revealing a scarred chest. A younger woman stood next to him in a matching dress, a plunging neckline revealing more than most in Ethea would think proper. She controlled water, adding it to the man’s shaping. The four others standing along with them, each with similar matching clothes, simply watched.

  Chenir shapers.

  Tan had suspected there would be shapers from Chenir, but had not yet encountered them. Their use of the elements was different than what kingdoms shapers used, different even than what he’d seen from Incendin.

  Shapers of the kingdoms stood watching, all master level: Ferran, Cianna, Alan, Nels, and Dolf. Not Zephra or Roine, Tan noted.

  Near the back wall stood Seanan. He watched with an interested expression, fire burning brightly in his palm. Tan noted the way he flickered the shaping, twirling it around his fingers, using more control than he’d seen from him yet. Every so often, Seanan would pause and twist the fire shaping again before releasing it.

  When Seanan saw him watching, he tipped his head slightly and released the shaping.

  Tan turned his attention back to the Chenir shapers. What were they doing here? A demonstration, like the drumming last night, or was this something else?

  As he watched, he noted that the man began tapping his foot. The earth shaping didn’t change, but there was a low and steady movement that came as he tapped. Had Tan not seen the performance the night before, and had Ferran not made the observation that he had, Tan doubted that he would recognize what he saw. The earth shaper summoned golud into the shaping.

  This was what he’d been sensing the last few days.

  Tan frowned. Was he speaking to golud? The music from the night before certainly had elements of it, but this was different. This was shaping, and drawing the elementals into the shaping, much like Tan did when he had saa assume control of a fire shaping.

  Using spirit mixed with earth, he searched for signs of a Par-shon bond but found nothing. That didn’t ease the anxiety rising to the surface of his mind.

  Would the water shaper do something similar?

  He noticed that one hand rested on her chest and tapped, though not with the same rhythm that the earth shaper used. Tan was attuned to water and could speak easily to the nymid. Because of this, he was able to detect something of what the tapping over her heart did, but not all of it. The rhythm was that of her heartbeat—that of the blood flowing through her veins—a steady tapping, one that could almost remind him of waves on the shore. Nymid would be drawn to it as well.

  A rising thrill came to him. Did they know how they worked with the elementals as they shaped, or was it accidental? Even if it was accidental, it seemed to Tan that the kingdom shapers could learn from Chenir.

  What of wind? And fire?

  He waited, but the earth shaper continued his demonstration. Water continued to weave into the shaping, adding to it. What they created was much more powerful than what they would have been able to do alone.

  And it reminded Tan of the way the nymid supported golud deep beneath the city. There was the same sort of combination there, the same support. Water and earth, much like fire and air. Together, they were stronger.

  That was important, Tan suspected.

  But kaas was fire and earth. They should be opposites, not working together, not able to support each other. Earth always tempered fire, but in this case, it seemed the elemental had aspects of both.

  Asboel must have known, but why keep it from him?

  The shaping slowly started to taper off. Tan realized that he’d come too close and now stood between the Chenir shapers and those of the kingdoms. Both sides watched him.

  Cianna laughed softly and covered her mouth.

  Ferran tilted his head toward Tan. “Athan,” he said respectfully.

  To Tan’s surprise, the other kingdoms’ shapers all copied Ferran’s nod.

  Tan forced a smile. “I’m sorry to interrupt. I sensed the shaping here and…” He trailed off, glancing at the Chenir shapers.

  The young water shaper watched him, her dark eyes narrowed as if trying to solve a puzzle. “You sensed the shaping? Then you are a water shaper?”

  Ferran took a step forward. “This is Tannen Minden, Athan to Theondar, King Regent of the kingdoms.”

  He spoke it formally and made a motion toward Tan with his arms that he augmented with an earth shaping.

  Tan stood in front of the Chenir shapers, not certain what he should say. The water shaper continued to study him while the earth shaper held his arms close to his chest, his foot tapping softly. Tan noticed that the water shaper continued to tap at her chest. A soft whispering floated in the air, and Tan felt the tug of a wind shaping as well. Not ara, and not ashi. There was none of the painful buzz of ilaz. That left wyln, though Tan had never spoken to that wind elemental. And then, there was the soft draw of fire, different than saa or the draasin.

  He closed his eyes, reaching for the fire bond. Once connected, he sensed the way that fire was shaped, drawn from a shaper with short black hair and a long, hooked nose. The elemental summoned was different than any Tan recognized. Not saldam. Cora had described what saldam would look like. That meant inferin. The elemental was wispy, but real, not drawn by fire—not like saa—but surrounding the heat of the shaper’s body, layered over him like a blanket. Tan couldn’t tell if there was a bond or not, but the elemental responded regardless.

  I’ve never seen inferin, he said in a whisper to the elemental. His time working with Asboel and trying to understand saa had given him an understanding of fire elementals, more than any of the others. Studying the way inferin clung to the shaper, he recognized how it added to heat, and now that Tan had seen it, he wondered if he might have seen it other places as well.

  The elemental shifted, becoming briefly brighter and then fading to a lighter yellow. Through the fire bond, Tan was able to see it, almost as if he were looking through Asboel’s eyes. The elemental tried hiding, but Tan pushed through the connection he shared with fire.

  I am Maelen, he said to inferin.

  The colors swirling in the elemental became motionless and then brightened slightly. It was only a moment, long enough that Tan knew that inferin recognized his name.

  What did it mean that all of fire recogni
zed him?

  “What is this?” a booming voice asked from near the end of the university.

  Tan pulled away from his connection to inferin. A wide man, thick with muscle his flowing robe of deep blue couldn’t hide, approached the Chenir shapers. His eyes narrowed as he approached. Before Tan completely separated from the fire bond, he recognized the way inferin pulled back from the man. Even the drawing of golud from the steady tapping eased. The wind shifted, blowing cool again, ara’s influence returning.

  The water shaper bowed her head. “We came to this place of power so that we might find him—”

  The man shot her a dangerous look and she fell silent.

  No one spoke for a moment. Tan realized that he would have to break the silence.

  “I am Tannen Minden, Athan to Theondar,” he said. “It seems our shapers were,” he paused and glanced back at Ferran, who met his gaze for a moment and then looked down, “sharing with each other.”

  The man stopped near Tan and leaned closer than was comfortable. He sniffed at the air, drawing a shaping of wind. “You are young to serve such a role. You must be Theondar’s heir.”

  Tan frowned. Already he didn’t care for this man. “Theondar has no heir,” he said.

  “You don’t know who this—” Ferran started.

  Tan silenced him with a shake of his head.

  The Chenir man grunted and pushed past Tan, bumping up against Tan’s arm, as if deciding that he wasn’t important. Tan felt strength to him, more than would be explained by his size.

  The man approached the Chenir shapers and spoke to them in hushed breaths. Wind shaping kept their words from carrying. When he was done, the shapers and turned away from the university, ushered by the man without another word.

  Alan and Nels started into the rebuilt university. Dolf stared after the Chenir delegation for a moment, and then followed, moving into the street and disappearing. Only Ferran and Cianna remained.