Born of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 8)

by D. K. Holmberg

  He hadn’t given much thought to it yet, but if he managed to succeed, he could see the draasin returned to the world. Not as three that he’d returned after thawing them from the ice, but truly returned, with the skies filled with them, something that had not been seen for over a thousand years.

  If he did that, there would be no way that he could keep them all safe. He would have to relinquish the thought that he could even try.

  The draasin crawled along his neck, nestling in as he tried to get more comfortable. He stirred long enough to try to bite at Tan’s neck and ears before drifting off again. Tan would like to laugh at the draasin, but he felt too much obligation to the creatures to laugh. The elementals depended on him, and if he couldn’t understand the dynamics in Par-shon, then he would have to worry about something more mundane than not managing to help the draasin: he wouldn’t be able to help the people of Par-shon.

  As he made his way back toward the estate, he wished he better understood how to help these people. If he could, and if he understood who might be working against his attempts, he might be able to figure out just what he was supposed to do.

  It was the reason he looked forward to Amia’s return. Until she did, he would wait, and feed the draasin, and try to come up with a way that he could help the people of this country, including those who might not want his help.

  20

  Room of Testing

  The room of testing had not changed since Tan was last here. After returning the Utu Tonah’s body, he had made a point of coming to this room and destroying each of the tiles with runes that would prevent shaping. Now they were all cracked but remained in place, untouched for months. A layer of dust hung over them, with nothing but his footprint to tell that anyone had ever been in this room.

  He stood in the doorway, looking inside. The other tiles had all covered runes; would this be the same?

  Using a shaping of earth and fire, he burned the remains. The char left a bitter stink in his nose which he swept away with a shaping of wind. Beneath the tiles were runes much like those he’d been seeing around town, the ones he was concerned that Elanne had broken.

  “Did you know that they would be there?” Amia asked.

  “I thought they might.”

  Tan started to step into the room but decided to carry himself on a shaping of wind instead. He wanted to see the runes and didn’t want to risk further damage to those that had been hidden by the tiles the Utu Tonah had placed.

  Amia stayed at the door watching him. “What do you see?”

  The runes in this room were different than those on the buildings around the city. There he had found patterns that were tied to the elementals, a promise of something more in them, but these were not shaped like the elementals at all. These were sequences set into a pattern. Words written. A record.

  Many of the shapes made sense, but not all of them. These weren’t the same as what he’d seen of Ishthin, and the pattern was different than what he’d used for the elementals in the past. Tan didn’t know what this spelled out, but it was clear there was something here.

  “You should come in here,” he said.

  Amia surveyed the room before taking a step inside, sticking to a narrow path along the wall where there weren’t any marks laid out. “This is older than Ishthin,” she said in a breath.

  “You can’t read it?” Tan asked.

  She shook her head. “Many are the same as the runes you’ve used for the elementals,” she began and looked up at him, “but you knew that.”

  Tan nodded. “They’re similar, but not the same.”

  When they had faced Par-shon, a Rune Master had been part of the Utu Tonah’s forces. When Tan stopped her, she had taught Tan about the ancient shapes required to trap elementals, but that was all she had been able to teach him. What was in this room was about more than trapping elementals, of that he was certain.

  Thinking of the Rune Master left him wondering how there could have been so many who sided strongly with the Utu Tonah when now he found only those afraid of him.

  “What is it?” Amia asked.

  Tan looked around the room. Elanne might be able to help him understand, but he’d have to convince her that she wanted to help. “There were some who were committed to the Utu Tonah,” Tan said. “One man had bonded nearly as much as him or the Rune Master.” He shook his head. “Some might have been forced or coerced, but not all were.”

  “You knew that before.”

  “But that’s not the sense I’ve had since we’ve been here,” he explained. “There might be those who were coerced, but there is a sense of anger at what happened to them.”

  “Even if he forced others to follow him, some still did gladly. Those are the ones you need to worry about. They’re the people who derived joy from what they did.”

  He lowered himself to the ground, studying the patterns. He didn’t understand the runes but knew that learning how to decipher them was important. And understanding the Utu Tonah was important as well, mostly because he saw the impact he had on the people of Par.

  “I don’t know how to find them,” he said. “I came to Par-shon thinking that everyone followed the Utu Tonah and that no one disagreed with him, but that hasn’t been what I’ve found at all.”

  Amia leaned forward to study the runes. “If only there were some way that we could discover who to trust,” she said, smiling as she turned to him.

  Tan shook his head. “I’ve already tried spirit sensing. That hasn’t helped any more than reading through the Utu Tonah’s journal. Even the people who seem like they support me can change their mind, and those who deny that they supported the prior Utu Tonah could change their minds. Short of simply shaping them with spirit, it’s unreliable.” He sighed and turned away, leaving the testing room and waiting for Amia before pulling the door closed behind them.

  “I feel like I need more than what I’ve been able to learn so far,” Tan said as they started down the hall. They reached the roof of the tower; the city spread out below them. It was a different vantage than he had even when shaping himself in the air. From here, he was not so high up that he couldn’t see people moving through the streets, and not high enough to view the distant ocean. From here, there was only the city.

  Wind whipped around him, fluttering his jacket and pulling at Amia’s hair. She held it in place. Tan refused the urge to shape the wind and control it, letting the natural gusts blow over them.

  Making his way around the top of the tower, he realized that there were four runes set into the stone sides. Each had crumbled, damaged by time or by the actions of the Utu Tonah. Tan thought about calling Elanne to repair these as well but decided that he could repair them just as well as she could. He might not understand what purpose they had, but at least he could restore the patterns.

  Stopping in front of the one most like wind, he ran his fingers across it. The stone forming the etched shape had cracked, leaving barely enough for him to detect. Power still trickled through it. Tan used a shaping of wind and added a touch of earth to fix the rune. As he did, he felt the shape correct itself, practically not needing his guidance.

  The wind around them fell still.

  “What did you do?” Amia asked.

  “Nothing more than what I learned earlier.” He traced his hand across the repaired pattern, feeling the pull of wind through it. This was not a forced bond, nor one that trapped the elemental within it. Adding a small shaping of wind, he strained for understanding before the answer hit him. “This is how they spoke to the elementals,” he gasped in wonder, turning to Amia to share the discovery.

  “What do you mean?” She crouched next to him, studying the pattern. It was for wind, but much like the others, there was something else written within it, though Tan couldn’t decipher it.

  “There’s the calling for wind,” he said, pointing out the pattern, “but then there is the extra, what I haven’t really understood. It’s bothered me since I first realized the patterns meant som
ething more than a way to trap the elementals, but I haven’t known what it was. But I do now. These speak to the elementals.”

  “If you know what it says, maybe we can figure out how to read those runes in the testing room.”

  Tan made his way to the next rune, one for fire. Much like he did with wind, he shaped fire and added water to it, the shaping guiding him which element to add to fix the rune. With something like a hiss, the pattern was repaired.

  “This one is fire,” he explained. “Wind is harder for me to reach in Par-shon. Wyln is the prominent elemental. But saa… I can reach for saa.”

  Tan shaped fire and called to saa.

  The elemental of fire responded, surging toward his summons. Saa. Does this pattern speak to you?

  Maelen, saa answered with something like the crackling of flames within his mind. These are the voice of the ancients.

  Tan stared at the rune. This was different than some of the others he’d found in Par-shon, but the differences were subtle and hard for him to decipher. What does it say to you?

  These were requests, Maelen, made before any learned to speak to us.

  What kind of requests? There are others like this, and I would like to know how to translate them.

  Translate?

  Read them. Understand the ancients.

  Flames surged around the pattern, not harming it. This one is a call for warmth.

  Why warmth?

  These lands have not always been warm, Maelen.

  What of the place of convergence? A place the Mother calls to you.

  This is such a place, saa answered.

  Tan sighed. That fit with what Honl had shared, and he thought it was at least partly the reason the Utu Tonah had come. Tan turned to the other runes and stopped before the one for earth. Like the others, he used a shaping to repair it and was surprised to learn he needed to add fire as he did. Once the rune was repaired, the tower itself rumbled softly.

  The last rune was for water. Tan managed to fix it much like he had the others. A sense of rolling waves washed over him as he completed it.

  Then he stood and looked all around the top of the tower. Other than the wind fading, nothing else had changed meaningfully. Amia trailed around the tower, studying each of the runes before moving on to the next.

  “These are for each of the elements,” she noted. “What of spirit?”

  Tan hadn’t really thought of that, but Ethea had runes for spirit. So had the place in the mountains around Galen. “Do you sense anything here?”

  She stopped at the last pattern she studied, her fingers trailing across the pattern for earth. A shaping built from her, massive and more complex than any shaping of spirit that he could create. He had strength with the elements, and the ability to use each of them, but Amia had finesse with spirit in a way that he couldn’t begin to replicate.

  The shaping released from her with something like a sigh and settled over the tower itself.

  For a moment, she stood without moving, her eyes closed as she appeared to listen. Then she stood.

  “Take us up,” she said to Tan.

  “Up where?”

  She pointed into the sky. “Up.”

  Tan obliged and used a shaping of wind and fire to lift them above the top of the tower, where they floated. Wind buffeted around them, but Tan ignored it, pushing back with a shaping of air. “What did you want to see from here?”

  She pointed toward the top of the tower.

  Its stones had a certain pattern that came from variations in color. What seemed random and simply due to time or the choice of stone had a distinct shape from up above.

  How had he not seen it before?

  But then, he hadn’t been looking before. This time, he came with the frame of mind that he wanted to find what patterns the ancient people of Par-shon might have placed. And this, the largest that he’d found, was clear.

  A rune for spirit. The shape was slightly different than those of the other elements, as if it had been added later.

  “There’s something about it,” Amia started before trailing off.

  She began a shaping that Tan could tell was meant to probe into the rune.

  He copied her shaping but added each of the elements to his. Doing this saved him because Amia gasped as her shaping struck the pattern. She convulsed in his arms.

  Tan nearly lost her. Only through his connection to the elementals was he able to hold onto her. He dropped back to the top of the tower and lowered her to the ground.

  “Amia?”

  She didn’t answer.

  With a shaping of water, he reached through her, searching for what might have injured her. He detected nothing.

  Tan switched to spirit. She had been shaping spirit when she had suddenly started to tremble. Whatever happened to her was tied to that, but Tan didn’t know what that could be. His connection to spirit was strong, but hers was stronger.

  Still, he could trace the shaping that she’d used and how it had probed the rune. A connection had formed, one that threatened to overwhelm her.

  Was there anything that he could do to help?

  Not without risks. He’d tried using spirit in the past and had nearly killed Cora when he had. If he attempted something similar and failed, Amia would suffer.

  She started convulsing again.

  Tan couldn’t do nothing.

  Using spirit, but layering each of the elements into it as well, he created something of a shielding around her mind, separating her from the connection she’d shaped to the rune on the tower.

  The convulsions stopped, but she didn’t open her eyes.

  Tan smoothed her hair, struggling for answers, but none came.

  Shaping—at least his shaping—would not be able to help her.

  21

  An Injury and a Call

  Tan placed Amia on the bed in the sprawling home of the former Utu Tonah. She still breathed, but the color in her cheeks had faded. Even some of the luster to her hair was diminished. Worse, she hadn’t woken up.

  He had used water but hadn’t been able to find anything else wrong with her. Whatever had happened was from spirit and her attempt to probe the rune. The shielding that he’d placed over her mind seemed to help, but it did nothing more than keep her mind safe. It didn’t fix the problem.

  Without answers, he wouldn’t be able to help her, but where would he get the answers he needed?

  Not here, and he didn’t want to risk carrying her across the sea and back to the kingdoms. He could summon Aeta spirit shapers, but he had learned as much of spirit as most of them. Water shaping might be helpful, but his sense of water told him that nothing was amiss.

  Honl.

  Tan sent the request on a shaping of wind, summoning a deep strength and drawing on the elementals around him. He needed Honl’s knowledge. There might not be anything that he could do, but he could help Tan understand whether there was anything that could be done.

  Maelen.

  The response came as a distant call.

  I need you. The Daughter needs you. She is injured.

  There was a pause. Then, I will come.

  Tan sank back into the bed, cradling Amia against him. The connection that had formed as she shaped the rune on the top of the tower moved with her, almost like something alive. Tan felt the connection but didn’t understand what that meant or why he should be able to.

  Anger threatened to well up inside him. Had they not come to Par-shon, she wouldn’t have been injured. Had he not wanted to understand, she wouldn’t have attempted to shape the rune. Like so much else, this was his fault. Because of him, and because of his desire to believe there might be more answers than what they had seen, Amia was injured.

  “This is not your fault.”

  Tan looked up and saw Honl standing at the edge of the bed. He had taken on even more form than before, as substantial as Tan. Only his floating above the ground revealed the fact that he wasn’t.

  “She shaped spirit into a rune
,” he explained.

  “Shaping into the ancient patterns can be dangerous, Maelen.”

  Tan smoothed her hair. A sheen of sweat had broken out on her face, and he wiped it away. “I had done the same. There are… patterns set throughout the city,” he explained. “At first, I thought they were bonds like the Utu Tonah used, but they aren’t. They call to the elementals and speak to them. Saa claims they are the way the ancients spoke to the elementals before anyone could truly speak to them.”

  “What of the pattern that struck the Daughter?”

  “I don’t know. We had repaired the patterns on top of the tower, and she was determined to find one for spirit. When we took to the air, we saw it. She tried shaping into it…”

  Honl stretched a wispy arm toward Amia and brushed through her body, as if reaching into her mind. He stood for long moments like that, and Amia’s breathing sped up as he did. Then he withdrew his arm.

  “There is something very powerful to her shaping,” Honl said.

  “It seems like she’s connected to the rune, as if her shaping did…” He didn’t know what the shaping had done, or how the rune had connected to her. “Had I not wrapped her mind in this shaping, I wouldn’t have been able to stabilize her. She kept convulsing.”

  “I think you did what was needed. But I need to see this rune.”

  “I don’t want to leave her here.”

  “Maelen, she is stable. You can show me and then return.”

  Tan touched her hair and sent a shaping of water through her again before standing. Nothing had changed for her. The shaping that had taken her, and connected to her, remained unchanged. Somehow he needed to find a way to separate that connection.

  He sealed the door to the room with a shaping using each of the elements, and then led Honl to the top of the tower, taking to the wind once outside. It felt strange and comforting to have his bonded wind elemental with him again.