But it wasn’t his mother.
A dark shape coalesced in the chair across from him, taking on the shape of a man about his age, with jet black hair and a cloak that hung limp in spite of the wind. Honl looked at Tan with enough clarity to his features that Tan believed him real.
“You are no longer across the sea,” Honl said. His voice had deepened but still had something of an airy quality to it. The wind around them settled, and Honl leaned back in the chair, trying to take on a casual stance.
“I came here for answers,” Tan said.
“You think you will find answers here that you cannot in that place?”
Tan swept his arms around him. “There is a thousand years of knowledge here, Honl. There is value in learning what I can from here.”
“What of the land across the sea? How many years of knowledge are stored there?”
Tan shrugged. Par-shon didn’t strike him as older than the kingdoms, and certainly the buildings that he’d seen didn’t appear any older than the kingdoms, but those with elemental support might be more ancient than he realized. The connection to the elementals would make them stouter than any others without, perhaps stout enough that they could survive a thousand years or more without falling.
Hadn’t the archives lasted that long? Even when everything else within the city fell, the archives remained. With the elemental’s influence, the ancient structure had stood tall.
Tan set the book to the side and leaned forward as he considered Honl. The elemental had changed much in the months since he and Tan first met, and since they first bonded. Honl claimed that he had been there when Tan first used wind to defeat Althem, and then had helped when he needed the assistance of wind to reach Asboel. That had been the start of learning about the Utu Tonah. Without Honl, Tan might not have managed to reach the draasin, and he doubted that he would have escaped from Par-shon. In many ways, he owed everything to the wind elemental.
But the connection to him was different than the other elementals. Each was unique, as they should be, but Honl in particular had been hesitant at first, not wanting Tan to pull him into the attack with Par-shon. Once Honl had overcome that resistance, he had become useful in ways that even Asboel had not been able to expect.
And now… now Honl had become something else. The wind elemental regarded Tan with curiosity, and his dark eyes took on a scholarly appraisal as he stared at Tan.
“What do you know, Honl?” Tan asked. “What have you learned in the time since we last saw each other?”
“We have never truly been apart, Maelen.” Wind still circled him, touching the bottom of his cloak and making it undulate softly. The cloak itself was no more real than the form Honl had taken. He had once demonstrated that he could take any form he chose and, for some reason, preferred this figure. Each time Tan saw him, his features were more distinct, almost as if Honl were becoming this figure. “The bond connects us even when we are not physically together. It is much the same with the Daughter.”
Tan smiled. “Not truly apart, but distant enough, don’t you think, Honl? I haven’t seen you since…” He thought about how long it had been, and how much had changed. “It must have been since we defeated the Utu Tonah.”
“You have not needed me.”
“And I do now?”
Honl sat, studying Tan for long moments. When he spoke, he did it with a smile. “Like me, you are… unique… among your people, are you not, Maelen?”
“I’m the only one I know of who can speak to all of the elementals. Is that what you mean?”
“That, but you do more than simply speak to the elementals. You can borrow strength as well, draw strength and focus it. Without that ability, you would have failed countless times by now.”
“I can,” Tan agreed. Without that ability, he would not have been able to rescue his mother in Chenir, or stop the Utu Tonah. Tan could pull strength from the elementals, but he could also shape it without that connection, though his strength was severely limited when he did that.
“I have been searching for a reason for my uniqueness.”
Tan leaned back in his chair and sighed. “What if there is no reason for your uniqueness? What if it’s simply because of what I did to save you?”
“There has to be a reason, Maelen, much like you had a reason for your uniqueness. The Mother brought you at a time when such connections were needed. That is why you are here.”
“What if the Mother had nothing to do with the fact that I am here?”
Honl reached toward him, as if trying to touch his hand, before sitting back. “I think of everything that you have demonstrated in the time that I’ve known you. You have a connection that is unusual. There must be a reason for it.”
Tan was no longer sure of any reason he might have been given the ability to reach the elementals. And maybe there wasn’t one. Stopping the Utu Tonah had been the only explanation that he had come up with, but could the Mother have cared so much about the Utu Tonah? Or had there been another rationale?
The alternative was that there wasn’t. As much as Tan wanted to believe that there was something more about him that made him special, maybe the fact that he had the abilities he did was nothing more than chance.
“And your uniqueness?” Tan asked, pulling the focus back to Honl. “Have you discovered a reason for that?”
Honl paced the perimeter of the room. Honl didn’t walk, though his feet appeared to touch the ground. He floated, hovering slightly above the stone. Had Tan not had the connection to wind, he wouldn’t have recognized it, but then, Honl didn’t move his legs as someone who walked, either. As much as he’d learned and attempted to become human, he still had areas where it was clear that he was something other.
Every so often, Honl paused and looked at the shelves filled with ancient texts. He reached for one and Tan was surprised that he managed to pull it from the shelf and flip it open, scanning the pages before sliding it back on the shelf.
“There is much in this archive. Some of what I’ve discovered raises new questions, while some answers questions.”
Tan frowned. “You’ve read these books?”
Honl didn’t turn around to face him as he answered. “That is a gift that I now have. I have only to… touch… these tomes, and I gain the understanding from within their pages.”
Tan stood and stopped behind Honl. Had he simply read the book that he’d pulled off the shelf? Having that kind of ability would be valuable, especially as he searched for answers.
“How can you do that?” Tan asked.
Honl twisted to face him. “How can I do any of this, Maelen? How can I speak to you, or take on this form, or simply know as I touch these texts? These are questions I have not found answers to.”
“What answers have you found?”
Honl swept his hands around him, and the wispy form of his arm swirled through the books on the shelf, passing through them. Honl cocked his head to the side at a strange angle, giving him an unnatural appearance, and then he blinked his eyes and breathed out softly.
“Nearly as many answers as I have questions, but new questions arise.”
“Can you tell me about Par-shon?” Tan asked.
Honl’s features shifted, flowing into something resembling a puzzled expression. “Par-shon? Nothing of Par-shon, but Par… From what I can tell, that is a place much like this.”
Tan’s heart skipped a beat. What might Honl have learned? If he did have the ability to touch a book and know the contents, it was possible that he knew everything contained in the archives. Having access to that knowledge, to all of that understanding, would be incredibly valuable.
More than that, could he draw on that knowledge using the connection between them?
Tan reached through their bonded connection. The connection had shifted and changed in the time since the bond first formed. Now it was augmented in a certain way but shaded as well. Tan couldn’t simply access Honl, as much as he might like to be able to.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
Honl swept his arm through another shelf. “This place, this archive, is built on a site of much power.” Honl turned to him with his head angled strangely. “You have recognized that, Maelen.”
“This is a place of convergence.”
“Gatherings,” Honl agreed. “Places where the Mother can be felt, if only you know to listen. In some ways, this archive was created to mask this Gathering.”
Tan studied the walls, thinking about what he knew about places of convergence. When he’d first discovered the lower level of the archives, he had realized that this was such a place, much like the one in the mountains. The elementals drawn here made this place powerful and made his abilities more potent. He could pull on the strength of the elementals and could use that strength—especially when combined with his ability to speak to the elementals—to create amazing shapings.
The ancient shapers might have been the same. That would be the reason for shielding these places, he suspected, unless they had a different goal. Maybe they had created the archive here to better trap the elementals.
Couldn’t the ancients have used these gatherings, these places of convergence, to harness the elementals drawn here?
Tan knew that they could.
What of a place like Par-shon, where they similarly trapped the elementals?
“Are you saying that Par-shon is a Gathering as well?” he asked.
Honl leaned forward and swept his arm through another shelf of books. He sighed softly as he did, and he blinked. Could he process all of the books that he touched? Was he able to organize everything that he learned—and actually be able to use it?
“There is… or was… a Gathering there,” Honl began. “I think that is how that one became as powerful as he did. Without the connection to the elementals, he would not have been able to force the bonds.”
Tan glanced at the books arranged on the shelves and wondered if he would find a similar type of archive in Par-shon, or was there nothing like this?
“Are you certain?” he asked.
How would he not have known? At the place of convergence within the mountains, he had sense of the distinction and the way the elementals were drawn to the land. Here in Ethea, he had noted the power of the elementals, but in Par-shon, not only had he not spent much time there, but the elementals had been bonded, forced away from the convergence. If it was a gathering, that would be the reason that he hadn’t detected the strength of the place.
Honl turned and cast his gaze around the lower level of the archives. “Synthesizing everything that I learn is difficult,” Honl said, “but that much is clear.”
“What do you mean by masking the Gathering?” Tan asked.
“This place.” Honl floated around the room. The heels of his boots seemed to drag across the ground, but they did so soundlessly. “This building is meant to shield the Gathering, much like the tower in Par-shon is meant to shield it.”
“Why would it need to be shielded?”
Honl stopped moving and turned back to Tan. “There is something that I discovered while I was gone, and it’s the reason that I returned to you, Maelen. I don’t know when, but you will be needed again.”
“What did you discover?” Tan’s thoughts went to others with the ability to bind elementals, and he worried that perhaps Honl had found someone else like the Utu Tonah. He wasn’t sure that he was ready to face that again. It had taken a unified effort to stop him, and he saw nothing that made him think that he could convince Roine or the other rulers to come together again. Not without a clear threat.
“There was a darkness before,” Honl said. “And then there was light.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
Honl’s eyes narrowed. “No more than I can, Maelen. Defeating the darkness required great strength and power, and ultimately, it was not defeated.”
“Do you mean shapers like Par-shon?”
Honl shook his head. “Not like Par-shon. Nothing so mundane as that.”
“Mundane? The Utu Tonah was a threat to the elementals, not only to these lands.”
“And had he succeeded, had the Utu Tonah grasped the power he sought, what do you think he would have accomplished?”
Tan didn’t know. Perhaps nothing more than acquiring the elemental power of the land, but he would have destroyed the essence as he did. Tan had witnessed that change, and it made what had happened in Incendin appear small in comparison.
“What is this darkness?”
Honl appeared to take a deep breath. “I do not know.”
“Then how was it defeated?”
“As I said, it was not defeated. Stopping the darkness required great effort, but even that was not enough. A way to contain it was devised, an item of such power that even the darkness could not escape.”
“You mean the artifact. Is that what it was for?”
“Elemental energy was required, but so too was shaped energy. Both man and elemental, coming together to contain a darkness that separately they could not defeat. Even together, they could not defeat the darkness, only slow its spread.”
Tan glanced at the shelf bearing the felt-lined box. Inside was the artifact, damaged by Tan’s attempt to use it and now nothing more than a broken bar of metal. “Honl?”
“I am sorry, Tan.”
“But it’s damaged now—”
Honl floated to a stop in front of him. A chill worked up Tan’s spine at Honl’s next words. “And worse. I suspect that the darkness has been freed.”
7
Par
“What does he mean that darkness was freed?” Amia asked.
They were back in Par-shon. Not only did the air feel different, almost a tingling sort of energy that slid across Tan’s skin that mixed with the distant hint of sea salt, but the energy of the land changed. Was it only because he had been back in the archives that he sensed it as he did, or was there another reason?
They made their way through the tower, stopping in each of the rooms along the halls, searching for something like the kingdom’s archives. He could ask Tolman but hadn’t found him, either.
A few servants scurried past but fewer than he would have expected in the palace within Ethea. Those he did see hurried onward when they saw him, bowing briefly before moving on.
“I don’t think Honl even knows,” he answered. The wind elemental had disappeared again, shortly after their talk, claiming a desire to search for answers. Where would he go that he would find better answers than he had access to in the archives?
Tan had refrained sharing with Amia until they returned to Par-shon, not wanting to worry her, but he suspected that she knew anyway. The shared bond gave her access to much of his fears and worries, a loss of privacy that Tan didn’t mind. It was much like he once had with Asboel.
“We don’t know if there is anything to worry about,” Amia said. “You’ve said that the artifact was designed to draw power, not trap it.”
Tan pushed open a door. Nothing but a supply closet. “I don’t know what the artifact was for. There was power to it, but what if that power was for a different reason than we knew? I always assumed it was because the ancient shapers had created it to access even more shaping power, but…” It was possible that it could have been designed as a way to contain something else.
Tan thought of all the steps that had gone into securing the artifact. Not only had it been created by shapers with such strength and skill to be able to pull elementals into its making, but it also had been secured in a place of convergence, protected by the elementals.
What if his assumptions had been wrong? What if the elementals at the place of convergence had protected and secured the artifact for a different reason, one in which they were needed to ensure containment of the darkness?
“Tan,” Amia said, setting her hand on his arm. “You’ve been distracted since speaking to Honl. I know that you worry about what he said, but he doesn’t know, does he?”
“He
can read with a touch,” he said. “He absorbs the information in that way.”
“Tan—”
He sighed. What Honl said troubled him, but for reasons more than simply the fact that he might have released an ancient darkness into the world, a darkness that had been trapped by ancient shapers with power that rivaled his. “All I want is peace,” he said softly.
“And we’ll have it,” she said.
“What if he’s right? What if this is something bigger than even the Utu Tonah?” He lowered his voice as he looked around the empty halls of the Par-shon tower, but he still didn’t see anyone else around. “Coming here is hard enough. These people do not want me here.”
“No more than they wanted the previous Utu Tonah,” she said.
“But he was from here.”
Amia frowned. “That’s just it… I don’t think he was. When we were here before, I spoke with others, and those willing to share mentioned how he came to Par-shon and changed the way they were ruled. Before the Utu Tonah, there had been—”
A massive shaping exploded down the hall, cutting her off.
Tan grabbed her hand and pulled her down the hall, in the direction of the explosion. Leaving her here might be safer, but he didn’t want to risk separating from Amia, not while in Par-shon with people that he didn’t trust.
They rounded a corner in the hall and found a young boy standing there, his eyes wide and his hand on the wall. Tan had seen him with the other children in the garden outside the tower when he first spoke to them about learning to shape.
“What happened?” Tan demanded.
The boy spun to face him, his eyes growing even wider, practically swallowing his face. “Utu Tonah. I… I don’t know.”
“Who was shaping?” Tan asked.
He saw no one else in the hall. The wall across from the boy had a large chunk missing. Tan detected shaped energy from it but saw nothing that would explain what happened.
Born of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 8) Page 7