Servant of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 7)

by D. K. Holmberg

  Asboel moved farther out to sea, pulling him past a series of islands peaked with wide, sloped mountains. Fire burned within them as well. The draasin followed the fire bond further, and Tan began to feel a strain as he struggled to maintain the connection. Asboel might be able to trace along the fire bond, but he didn’t have the same strength as the draasin, nor the experience to know how to search the way the draasin did. He’d done something like this before, but hadn’t that been spirit?

  Tan pulled on fire and spirit, shaping more strength to keep up. The sense of the draasin grew increasingly distant until he faded almost completely from Tan.

  Tan pushed out, questing as far as he could with the fire bond. It felt vague and indistinct, almost like something he was never meant to reach. As he considered releasing the bond and returning to the den, he sensed another draw on fire.

  It came to him distantly, an indistinct sense of fire burning far from him. Something about it seemed different, though Tan couldn’t quite place what it was. Tan focused on it, letting the sense of fire draw him, but he could not go any farther along the bond. This was his limit.

  Do you sense it?

  This came from Asboel, though Tan had the sense that his voice came from all around and filled his mind. The draasin was not limited in reaching the fire bond.

  I sense something. What is it?

  You sense the crossings.

  Crossings? Like kaas and the hounds?

  Asboel pulled back toward him, becoming a more distinct sense along the bond. The sense of him surged all around, powerful and full of the might of Fire. Kaas should not have returned. I thought it banished, or that it had perished in that time.

  Kaas is no longer a threat, Tan reminded him.

  Only because of you, Maelen. My time in the den has allowed me to explore the bond more fully than I have ever attempted. I see now why kaas returned, as I see that there are now others, much like kaas and equally dangerous.

  I don’t understand.

  Let fire show you, Asboel instructed.

  Tan turned his attention back to the fire bond, straining through it and drawing on fire and spirit with everything that he had remaining. Asboel lent him strength, as he had so often done, giving him the additional power that he needed to push outward. As he did, he felt what Asboel intended him to find.

  Fire burned, but fire that was not pure, fire that was like the lisincend and the hounds had been, twisted from the source of Fire. It was dangerous and unstable. And it sensed him watching.

  Par-shon has created these crossings, haven’t they?

  That is the only reason I can learn that kaas returned. Kaas was a difficult crossing in your ancestors’ time, and one that nearly destroyed everything. The draasin did what we could, but we were hunted.

  Is that why the artifact was created? Tan asked.

  I don’t know. The Mother aided in its creation for a reason. It’s possible that it was because of the crossings.

  Asboel pulled back, dragging Tan with him, receding from the connection and back toward the kingdoms. Tan resisted a moment, letting his sense of the fire bond pull on him a little longer as he tried to understand what it was that he sensed out there, but Asboel was too strong and forced him back.

  They skimmed across Incendin, where Tan sensed the Fire Fortress burning, the shaping the lisincend worked still compelling him to join, and then deeper into Incendin, where he sensed kaas burrowed far underground. There were other elementals that caught his attention, but nothing like kaas or even the scattered hounds that he detected. And then they were back in the kingdoms, where the draasin flew high over Galen, when saa joined with fires scattered in homes and cities, and the single hound still watched from just outside Ethea.

  Then they returned to the den.

  The effort of the shaping left him exhausted. Asboel watched him with his deeply intelligent eyes, the golden color almost glowing with an inner light. Tan’s shaping of a ball of light had failed, leaving them otherwise in the dark.

  He should move and return to Amia, or any number of the dozens of other things that he knew needed doing, but the effort of stretching that far along the fire bond had taken too much out of him.

  Asboel snorted as he shuffled to the side. His long tail wrapped around Tan. Rest, Maelen. I will watch over you.

  11

  A Complicated Responsibility

  Tan pressed on his ring, which vibrated on his finger. Its summoning had surprised him; Roine rarely used it. Roine was usually too busy with the daily requirements of keeping the kingdoms running to worry about what Tan was doing. Most of the time, Tan made a point of coming to Roine if there was anything that the king regent needed to be informed about.

  He was better rested after a night spent in the draasin den. Lying on the hard stone shouldn’t be comfortable, but curling up next to Asboel and feeling the warmth radiate off the draasin had helped him sleep more soundly than he had in days. For the first time in a while, he hadn’t worried about what would become of Incendin or how he would reach the Chenir shapers to convince them to work with the kingdoms. He hadn’t had one of his recurrent dreams where he saw the Utu Tonah descend from the sky, surrounded by dozens of elementals, all bound to him and filling him with incredible power. Tan had simply slept.

  When he’d left the den, Asboel had been sleeping. The other draasin hadn’t returned from their hunt, or if they had, they didn’t bother Tan and Asboel. The great draasin had barely moved, only his massive sides expanding with each breath. Tan used a combination of earth, water, and spirit, combining them in a sensing to try and determine what else might be wrong with him, but he was not skilled enough to understand what he sensed. He’d left Asboel there with a request to the nymid to do what they could to heal him, knowing that the water elemental had been unable to do anything so far.

  The summons drew him toward the university grounds. The last few weeks had allowed the kingdoms’ shapers to make significant progress on the repairs to the university. Stone rose three stories high in most places, with the central tower already six stories tall. Tan hadn’t been involved in the plans for the repairs and didn’t know how tall Ferran intended to make it. Before, it had been a massive and sprawling expanse, but when the destruction from the draasin and lisincend attack had left much of it broken into rubble, the masters had taken the opportunity to redesign it. Golud was strong within the walls of the university, filling the stone with nearly as much strength as what Tan had sensed deep beneath the city, drawn by Ferran’s request and his connection to the elemental. With golud, the air was left with an earthy scent, like a mixture of fresh rain and dirt, and—strangely—a hint of pine.

  Shapings went on all around him, the strength of their work putting pressure within Tan’s head. When he’d first started noticing the pressure from shapings, he hadn’t known what it was. Over time, he’d grown accustomed to it and barely noticed anymore, other than to recognize when shapings took place around him. That he’d pay attention to it now told him how powerful the shapings were.

  The rebuilt university spread out around the grassy plaza, where the shaping circle remained. It was one of the few things that had survived the attack on the university, and a remnant from a time long past, back when dozens of warriors used it to travel to and from the city. The walls of the university arched around the circle, like arms on either side, with the massive tower rising from one end. An archway led away from the university and out to the street.

  Ferran stood atop one of the arms. He worked with a dedicated focus, shaping stone up the sides of the building until set in place and sealed with another shaping. The power from his shaping was more than Tan had ever known him to use, and he managed it with ease. The connection to golud had made him incredibly strong.

  A few other shapers—all earth shapers, Tan noted—worked with Ferran, though Tan didn’t recognize most of them. Together, they drew up the university, one enormous block of stone at a time.

  “They harvest
stone from the hills to the west,” Roine said, stopping and following the direction of Tan’s gaze as he watched the earth shapers.

  “The entire thing will be more impressive than before,” Tan noted.

  “A chance for a new start, I suppose.” Roine pulled on the hem of his dark green jacket, letting his fingers linger on the embroidery that ran along the edge. “How are you feeling today, Tan?”

  Tan noticed an unusual hesitancy in Roine. Normally, the king regent was a confident man, and he’d always displayed a certain bravado from the moment that Tan first met him in the forest outside of Nor. He had to, in order to search for the artifact despite the risk to himself.

  “What is it, Roine?”

  Roine forced a smile, though it appeared pained. “I wanted to keep you from leaving the kingdoms again, especially after you have only now returned. It seems you’ve been spending so much of your time traveling outside of our borders lately. First to Doma to help Elle, then chasing all over after the elemental, and now you’ve only returned from Incendin a few days ago.”

  “I do what I’m supposed to do,” Tan said.

  “Yes. And as Athan, I think you’ve been asked to do more than most in your position. Not that I’m complaining. I can’t, not really, because if you didn’t follow your heart and do what you knew was right, you wouldn’t be the man that I know you to be, the man who has made his mother proud.”

  The way that Roine said mother told Tan that something more was going on than Roine let on. Only the other day, Roine had not wanted Tan to leave the kingdoms, thinking that Tan needed to remain in Ethea to help provide stability for the people.

  “What is it?” Tan asked. “What happened with Zephra?”

  “Zephra,” Roine started before sighing, “sent a summons. You know your mother, Tannen. You know that she rarely asks for help. That she would call to me when she is in Chenir, especially since we know that Par-shon continues to move, tells me that she has found something that worries her.”

  Possibly more than worried her, if she had summoned. Tan noted that she hadn’t summoned him, only Roine. But his mother didn’t like asking for help, no more than Tan did. In that way, they were much alike.

  “She’s still in Chenir?” Tan asked.

  “She went with the Supreme Leader. They offered to help demonstrate their shapings, and she thought she could learn what else was happening there.”

  The fact that his mother had gone and now summoned told him all that he needed to know: Par-shon had attacked. Chenir had shapers and the ability to call to the elementals that shapers in the other kingdoms had never learned, but they didn’t have numbers. If Par-shon attacked, they would be in real danger. Zephra was a powerful shaper and bonded to one of the wind elementals, but she had limits, the same as other shapers.

  “What did her summons imply?” Tan asked.

  “It’s not clear,” Roine said. “The rune doesn’t work quite like that.”

  “It could, if she wanted it to.” Tan had learned much of runes since working with the First Mother. Runes were at the heart of what Par-shon did, the power that they manipulated, the way they forced the bonds onto the elementals. Without the runes, there would be no bond. There was much power to them, and Zephra had learned nearly as much about the runes as Tan.

  “Now isn’t the time for your frustrations with your mother,” Roine said.

  “That’s why you summoned? You want me to find out what happened to her?”

  “There is no one else, Tan. I can’t risk you, but I can’t risk losing Zephra, either.”

  With their growing relationship, Roine worried more about Zephra than he would another shaper. And if there was anyone who could travel to Chenir and find out what Zephra had discovered without being in too much danger, it was Tan. He could reach Chenir and be back in moments, if needed.

  “If I do this, you will meet with Incendin,” Tan said.

  “Tannen—”

  Tan raised his hand and shook his head. “No, Theondar,” he started. “You hate Fur. I understand that emotion as well as any. But I know that he will be needed to defeat Par-shon.” More so, now that he’d had the vision of the fire bond while with Asboel. “We can’t do it alone. If what I’ve learned is even remotely real, then neither can Incendin. Doma and Chenir will be afterthoughts, destroyed along with the rest of us. We have to find a way to work together.”

  “Fur can’t be trusted,” Roine said softly. “You know about the last peace treaty we had with Incendin. I told you how long that it lasted.”

  Tan remembered what Roine had said. That the treaty had lasted barely more than a month before Incendin attacked again. “This is different.”

  “That was Fur, Tan. He was the reason the treaty failed. Do you really think that your shaping changed so much about him that he can be trusted? What happens if he chooses to forge a treaty with Par-shon? What happens if he decides that he will simply let Par-shon claim the kingdoms in order to keep Incendin safe? Do you really think that we can trust a creature like that?”

  “Yes.” Tan had seen the intensity of Fur’s desire to keep Incendin safe. In that way, Fur and Theondar were much alike. Both recognized the threat that existed. Both understood that they needed to do whatever was necessary to keep their people safe. And neither was willing to accept the possibility that the other could be trusted.

  Roine turned back to the university, his gaze lifting to where the earth shapers pulled rock high onto the wall. “The university will be stronger now than it was before it fell. Ferran tells me that golud answers his request to give strength to the stone. In another few weeks, the students can return. The university will once more be an example of the power of the kingdoms.”

  “Roine, I fail to see—”

  Roine turned and started toward the street, motioning for Tan to follow. When they reached the stone archway that led out into the cobbled street in front of the university, he paused, pointing in either direction. “The kingdoms need a place like the university. Knowing that our shapers watch over the city, knowing that the masters are unrivaled in their skill, gives the people a sense of peace.”

  “But we’re not unrivaled. Not anymore.” And perhaps not ever, though Tan didn’t think that Roine wanted to hear that.

  “My role as king regent is to provide stability. What will happen if word spreads of a treatise with one of the lisincend? What will happen if others learn that I have bargained our safety on the word of Fur?”

  This street had been as damaged as any in the attack. Rock had heaved, leaving piles scattered throughout, forcing anyone who wanted to reach the university to do so by shaping or by crawling over the debris. Some of it had been shaped back into place, but not all. Hundreds of men had worked to clear the rubble. Now, dozens of people made their way along the street. Most paid Tan and Roine little mind. A few glanced their way, though few recognized Roine, and those who did simply bowed and scurried on their way. Carts loaded with supplies traveled along the street, something that would have been unthinkable only a month before. The city had finally returned to what it had been before all the destruction hit. There was a sense of normalcy that had returned, and with it, a sense of purpose.

  “What happens when Par-shon attacks?” Tan asked. “What happens when they lose another crossing?”

  Roine arched a brow at the question.

  “Kaas was their doing. At least, it was theirs as much as it was ours. The ancient shapers thought to breed elementals, forcing them to combine.”

  “That isn’t possible, Tan.”

  “You’ve been in the tunnels beneath the city. What do you think they were used for?”

  “You told me the ancients harnessed the elementals.”

  There was a hint within his tone of voice that led Tan to wonder if Roine had considered harnessing the elementals as well. “Harnessing led to other things, worse things. I called it an experiment and had thought that kaas was the only one, but there have been others. The hounds. Probably mo
re. Now Par-shon replicates the mistakes of our past.”

  Roine stood straighter and turned to Tan. “Mistakes? Look around you, Tannen. All of this, the entirety of the kingdoms, is built upon those mistakes. Think about the life you’ve been afforded because of those mistakes.”

  “It’s one thing to make mistakes, Roine, but you should learn from them, not make the same one over and over again.”

  His friend smiled at the comment. “And how is trusting Fur and the lisincend any different? We have tried that once before and failed. We lost many shapers because we believed they were willing to make a real change. If they have truly changed as you say, I am willing to let Incendin prove themselves against Par-shon. Let Incendin be the barrier that keeps our peoples safe.”

  Tan said nothing. He could think of nothing that would sway Roine, that would convince him that he was not thinking clearly. When it came to Incendin, Roine struggled to look beyond what had happened decades ago, letting it cloud his judgment. Tan wouldn’t make the same mistake.

  “I will go to Mother,” Tan began. “But then you will at least meet with Fur.”

  “I make no promises. My duty is to the kingdoms.”

  “As is mine,” Tan said.

  Roine smiled sadly and shook his head. “Tannen, we both know that yours is more complicated than that.”

  12

  Into Chenir

  Following the summons took Tan well beyond the Gholund Mountains. He traveled on a fury of lightning mixed with the flash of bright white that always accompanied a shaping of spirit. The summoning rune given to him by Roine vibrated with the rune for wind stamped onto it.

  When Tan landed, a wide, rocky plain spread all around him. Tents were spaced with regularity, several hundred in total, and the chaotic sounds of the settlement rang out around him. Someone screamed nearby, and Tan realized that there was the stink of blood and death, mixed with the heat and char of fire shaping. Over all of it was the steady beating of drums, the rhythmic calling that he’d learned was part of the way Chenir had learned to shape.