Servant of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 7)

by D. K. Holmberg

  The hound stopped circling and sat in front of Tan. She was massive, her head nearly coming to the height of his shoulders, and she looked something like a small horse. Jagged claws jutted out of enormous paws, and her dark brown fur had streaks of black running through it, making her look as if she’d streaked herself with soot.

  Do you have a name? Tan asked.

  She sniffed at him, turning her head from side to side. Name?

  What can I call you?

  Honl solidified, becoming more distinct, and stepped between Tan and the hound. “You know the power of names,” Honl warned. “If she is new to the world, then she is too young to take a name, Tan.”

  The hound flashed her teeth at Honl and nipped at him, her jaw passing harmlessly through where his arm should be. Honl patted her head, as if she were nothing more than a dog.

  Tan thought about the meaning of names and what he knew of the draasin. Asboel hadn’t wanted the draasin named before they were ready. Honl, too, had made mention of how ashi had not come to know names until they had existed for longer. In some ways, the nymid still didn’t have a specific name. They were more like a community, all interconnected. If the hound truly was new to the world, he couldn’t force a name upon her.

  I will call you hound until you choose a name, Tan said.

  When will I choose?

  Surprisingly, it was Asboel who answered, reaching through the fire bond, using Tan as something of an intermediary to reach the hound. You will know. Fire will guide you.

  The hound sniffed at the air, turning toward Ethea. What if Fire is not meant to name?

  Asboel remained silent, leaving the question for Tan, but Tan didn’t know what would happen if fire wasn’t meant to name. Would earth?

  Tan didn’t have a strong enough connection to earth to know the answer. Where will you go now? Tan asked instead of answering her question.

  Asboel answered again. Hunt. You are fire and earth. Let them burn through you. And prepare.

  The hound stood and circled Tan a few times, then she barked once and bounded off, streaking along the border of Nara and Incendin before finally fading from view.

  Tan faced Honl, but the wind elemental didn’t seem to notice. He hovered a few feet off the ground, staring after the hound.

  “What will happen with her?” Tan asked.

  Honl let out a warm breath that left wind swirling all around them. “It is different for each,” he said. Honl turned toward Tan. “Fire burns within her, but there is earth. They must find the balance and understand what it means.”

  “Like you?”

  Honl seemed to smile, though in his current form, it was difficult to really tell. “I know what it means when wind and spirit have joined.” He drifted away from Tan, moving on a shaping of air before facing Tan. “There are many whom you’ve healed. Only a few of the twisted remain. It will be better when you heal them too.”

  Tan took to the air and stood next to Honl, staring out into the distance much like the wind elemental. He let his focus wander, sensing along the earth until he found the hound. She was out there, not far away, almost as if she were still watching him. He couldn’t shake the sense that something momentous had changed, or a nagging sense of worry that he might have done something he should not have, much like what had happened with Honl.

  Tan wasn’t the Great Mother. He wasn’t meant to have the power to create elementals, but Honl was something different than he had been before: no longer ashi, but not completely foreign, either. There was much about Honl that was the same as the elemental that he’d always known.

  Was that what it was like for the hounds? They were fire, but they were earth as well. Tan had done nothing more than restore them to fire, hadn’t he?

  Yet the sense of effort required for the healing nagged at him. He had needed the strength of earth, found only in the power he’d borrowed from golud and the Incendin earth elemental. What if Tan was responsible for the hounds?

  Honl remained next to him, occasionally becoming more indistinct, before returning to a more solid form. Tan waited for the wind elemental to say something more, but he did not. Eventually, they made their way toward Ethea.

  8

  Return of the Athan

  The palace was a welcome change after the dry heat of Incendin. Tan’s boots echoed across the tile as he marched along the hall, searching for Roine. The king regent would be here somewhere, though Tan had no idea where.

  A group of small children scurried across the hall, forcing Tan to stop as they ran through wide double doors that led to a room that had once been designed as a ballroom. Now it was used as a place of study, where master shapers worked with the children of Althem, guiding them through lessons meant to strengthen their ability to shape. A few already managed faltering shapings, attempting them as they ran. Tan smiled when he saw them.

  “There are a few who will be skilled in time,” Roine said.

  Tan’s earth sense had told him that he approached. “Any with the ability to shape more than one element?” They would need more warrior shapers to rebuild what had been lost.

  “It’s much too early to know,” Roine answered. He wore a simple navy jacket and dark green pants. A warrior sword hung from his waist, the only remnant of the time before he’d assumed the title of King Regent. As with Tan, much had changed for Roine. It suited him. After decades spent hiding from his name, he now embraced it. “You went to Incendin?” he asked.

  “Fur summoned me.”

  “So you didn’t go as Athan.” Roine raised a hand before Tan could object. “I know that you serve more than one role, Tannen. You might be Athan to the kingdoms, but that responsibility pales before what the Great Mother has asked of you.” Roine started down the hall, motioning for Tan to follow. “You know, meeting you has made me a man of faith,” he said with a smile. “Once, I would not have felt that the Great Mother asked anyone to serve, but once I’d never seen the draasin, never known the strength of the nymid, or heard of ashi. Or met you.” Roine opened a door leading to an unadorned hall and sighed as he continued onward, finally stopping at a small door that opened into Roine’s private study.

  Tan took a seat and waited for Roine to do the same. “Fur wanted me to heal the lisincend.”

  Roine leaned on his elbows across the desk. “And you agreed?” Roine’s eyes narrowed slightly as he took in what Tan imagined to be his weary expression and the way his shoulders slumped forward. He was too tired to put on a better face in front of his old mentor.

  “They would be a threat otherwise. I would have you meet with Fur. Discuss how we can work together—”

  Roine shook his head. “No, Tan. Some things do not change simply because you want them to. I know what Fur is. I have for far longer than you.”

  Tan sighed. “We will need them if we want to stop Par-shon.” He thought about the shaping that he’d seen the lisincend working, and the way that they held back the oncoming Par-shon attack. “Without the lisincend, Par-shon would already be on our shores.”

  The corners of Roine’s eyes twitched, pulling tight. “I’ve been waiting for your return to tell you this,” he started, “but I think they will soon reach Chenir.”

  Tan’s breath caught. Would he have known had he not spent his time healing the lisincend? “And their shapers?”

  “They fear Par-shon, and they are outnumbered.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Zephra sends word.” Roine’s eyes tightened again when he mentioned Tan’s mother. Roine and Zephra had grown close over the last few months in a relationship they thought to hide from him, as if Tan would mind.

  “I will go,” he said. He was still weary and hadn’t taken nearly the time that he needed to recover. He should visit Amia first, but now that he was in Ethea, he sensed her easily and knew that she was occupied elsewhere. He would go to her soon, but Roine needed to know what he’d seen. They had their own responsibilities now, and that sometimes kept them apart.


  Roine shook his head. “Not on this. You are valuable here.”

  “Roine,” Tan started, “if Par-shon manages to build much strength in Chenir, it won’t be long before they reach the kingdoms. It won’t matter what Incendin does.”

  Roine set his hands down onto the desk. “You know that I’ve asked that the barrier be abandoned?”

  The barrier had once been designed to keep Incendin from crossing into the kingdoms, giving the people and shapers of the kingdoms a measure of safety, but it had done something else that Tan did not think was expected: the barrier had also prevented the elementals from passing through.

  Not all. The draasin were able to cross, but they were different in some ways than the other elementals. Wind would blow across, but it weakened as it passed through. Tan hadn’t learned what happened to golud. And now the hounds. She had managed to cross without much difficulty, but if the barrier were lowered, it would no longer block the elementals from traversing the border.

  “If the barrier is gone, I need assurances that my warrior remains. The people need to know that you will be here. That the elementals will answer a call for help.” Roine grabbed a roll of parchment and flattened it across his desk. It was a map depicting the entire continent, with the kingdoms in the middle. Chenir jutted off to the north and Roine pointed toward it, making a motion toward the mountains that separated the kingdoms from Chenir. “Others can help in Chenir, Tan,” he said.

  Tan leaned back in the chair and stared straight ahead. His mother would let him know if he were needed, wouldn’t she? And Chenir had shapers as well, so they weren’t helpless. “There’s another thing,” Tan began. Roine tilted his head to the side to listen without raising his head from the map. “I discovered a new elemental.”

  At that, Roine lifted his gaze from the page to meet Tan’s eyes. “While you were in Incendin?”

  “While I was healing the lisincend. Other creatures were separated from fire that I managed to bring back to the fire bond.” Tan didn’t know if he’d spoken to Roine about the fire bond before, but he needed to know why Tan felt compelled to help the lisincend and the hounds.

  Roine blinked and slowly sat up, letting out a slow breath. “The hounds?”

  Tan nodded. “As I healed the lisincend, some called the hounds.”

  “The same hounds that have been hunting and killing everything that they can? The same hounds that the lisincend used to hunt with? Those hounds?”

  Tan sighed. After everything that he’d learned, there still seemed to be so much that he didn’t know. The hounds were like kaas, created by the ancient shapers as an experiment, determined to fuse together fire and earth, elements that should not have gone together. Would he ever know what elementals were used to create kaas or the hounds? The archives might have records, but would he even want to know?

  “The same hounds created by our ancient shapers,” Tan said. “The same shapers who created an elemental that very nearly destroyed the kingdoms.”

  Roine worked his tongue over his lips. His hands splayed across the top of his table. “The hounds were created by kingdoms’ shapers?” he asked softly.

  “As far as I can understand.”

  Roine leaned back, letting out a whistle of air as he did. “Why? How could they have thought that such a creation could—”

  “I think I’m the wrong person to ask why the ancient shapers abused the elementals. We thought they understood them, that they worked with them, learning together. But those shapers simply used the elementals. They didn’t work with them at all. They wanted their power, no differently than the Utu Tonah.”

  “They couldn’t have all been like that, Tan,” Roine said. “Were they all like that, then we would still have harnessed elementals.”

  “Don’t we?”

  The corners of Roine’s eyes tightened, drawing them to narrow slits. “Not in the kingdoms, we don’t.”

  Tan nodded slowly. “The hounds are different now.”

  “If you brought them back to fire, I would hope they aren’t nearly as deadly.”

  Tan thought about the hound and her massive form. She could still be deadly, though whether she would be was a different matter. “They’re larger—at least the last one I saw was,” he said.

  Roine chuckled and ran a hand through his hair. “Weren’t the hounds bad enough when they were the size of a wolf?”

  “I’m not sure they’re really even hounds anymore.” He didn’t know what they were, but calling them hounds felt wrong somehow. If they were truly different, if he’d really pulled them back toward fire, then maybe he should find a new name for all of them.

  “Get some rest, Tan. We have much work to do to keep the kingdoms safe, and I fear you will be critical in making certain we succeed.”

  Tan paused at the door as Roine continued staring at the map. He watched his friend and the way that he frowned while poring over the map of the kingdoms and everything around it. Worry pinched his eyes, an expression that had been there for as long as Tan had known him. Only when Roine was with Tan’s mother did the lines at the corners of his eyes fade. After everything they had been through, both of them deserved that measure of peace.

  9

  Reunion

  Tan found Amia in the house that they shared. It was small compared to some within the city, but cozy and comfortable. They’d claimed it after the attack that had left much of this part of the city destroyed. This house had been one of several untouched by the flames that had leveled more than Tan could fathom, even now. After the months that they’d been here, it was as much his home as anyplace.

  Amia waited for him near the window overlooking the street. She’d left it open, probably to watch for him as he made his way back to the house, and it let a cool breeze into the room. Once, Honl had blown everywhere Tan had been, and the ashi elemental had left a warm breeze trailing after him, but since his healing, he no longer did. Ara sent gusts throughout the city, bringing the scents of the street—those of bread baking, the fragrant scent of the florist along the street, or the smoked scent of meats—and even the joyous sounds of life throughout the city, sounds that had faded for a time after the attacks that Ethea had faced.

  “I didn’t think to find you here,” Tan said, closing the door behind him.

  Amia hurried over to him and threw her arms around his neck. Her long, golden hair was braided and hung down her back. Ribbons of different colors had been twisted into the braid. She wore a bright dress, striped with orange, red, and green, and she smelled of lilacs.

  He hugged her tightly, not wanting to let her go. The bond formed between them, the long ago shaping that had connected them, told Tan that she felt much the same way.

  “You didn’t come to the wagons,” Amia said. She stayed close to him, sliding her arm behind his back.

  “Roine needed to know what happened.” Tan explained to her the lisincend and the hounds. “I’m not sure what it means that the hounds are elementals,” he finished. “Or if it was something I did, or whether I only healed what had already been done.”

  She closed her eyes and her fingers went to her neck, running along the gold band she wore there. Once, it had been a silver band that marked her as Daughter of the People, but Amia had discarded that when she felt as if the People had abandoned her. Roine had given her the gold band as a way of thanking her for the service to the kingdoms. She still wore it, even though she now served as First Mother.

  “The hounds?” she said.

  “I need to go to the archives and see if I can learn anything there,” he said. “I thought the hounds a creation of Incendin, that the lisincend had somehow used their shaping to twist them into what they were, but if they were never Incendin . . . ”

  Tan didn’t know how to finish. If they were never Incendin, then it meant that the kingdoms were responsible for the hounds, much as they were responsible for kaas. Even the binding of elementals that Par-shon forced upon them was reminiscent of the harnessing the ancients once
did to the elementals. Could it all be their fault? Was this war nothing more than repairing the mistakes that had been made long ago?

  “And the lisincend?” Amia asked.

  “As far as I know, they have all returned to the Fire Fortress. The shaping that makes the fortress burn keeps Par-shon away. It used to be their shapers responsible for it, but now the lisincend can join. Their shaping is even more powerful than what those shapers were able to manage.”

  Tan went to the window and looked out. The street below had been fully restored. Buildings that had once been built of wood were now made of brick and stone, as if the shaped fire that had attacked the city would not be able to tear through the brick just as easily as it had the wood. No part of the city was ever permanent. The university, once a place that had stood for centuries, had fallen during the attack. It had been rebuilt by the master shapers to again house and teach those of the kingdoms with the potential to become the next warriors, but it was different than it had once been.

  “There was a hound that came to me as I crossed into Nara,” Tan said. “She was different from the others.” He squeezed the windowsill, thinking of the intelligence in the hound’s eyes. “Or maybe she was the same. I don’t really know what happened to the hounds after they were healed. They are fire and earth, like kaas, but different, more attuned to earth. She followed me through Incendin, and probably through the kingdoms.”

  “There’s a hound in the kingdoms?” Amia asked. There was an edge of fear in her voice.

  Tan turned away from the window. “If the hounds are healed, does it matter?”

  Amia touched his cheek. “Tan, how quickly you forget what the rest of the kingdoms have gone through because of the lisincend and the hounds. You know they’re different because you healed them, but others—even other shapers—won’t understand. I hope you warned her to remain out of sight.”