Light of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 10)

by D. K. Holmberg

  Reaching the spirit bond took a greater effort. Tan had done it once, and when he had, he had accessed much more power than he had ever imagined possible alone. Now that he knew that he could, straining deep within him for the spirit bond came easier, but it was still a stretch.

  As he did, he heard Logan gasp. “Great Mother, look at him!”

  9

  Shaping the Light

  Tan didn’t need to look down at himself to know that he glowed. When shaping spirit like this, pulling deeply on a connection that felt as if it came from the Mother herself, he knew that he glowed with the power that he drew. Tan released it with a sigh, sending it at the stone, with only enough strength to push the door open, not wanting to destroy the temple, if he even could. The door opened with a hiss.

  Roine looked over at him. “What was that?”

  Tan felt drained in a way that he rarely did these days now that he had learned to pull strength from the elementals. But with the spirit bond, there was a need for more strength than what even the elementals could supply. He had to pull on his own connection, on the strength that only he could reach.

  “There are bonds to each of the elements,” Tan said.

  “You’ve told me about the fire bond,” Roine said.

  “Fire, yes. And I’ve learned to reach earth, wind, and water.”

  “So which was that?” Roine asked.

  He shook his head. “That was none of them. Or maybe all of them.” He wasn’t sure how to explain what it was that he did, only that he could reach for spirit.

  “That was the Mother,” Logan said.

  Tan nodded. “Spirit.”

  “You can access the Mother directly?” Logan asked.

  “I don’t know what it is that I do, only that I am able to shape spirit. With a deep enough connection, I’m able to reach into the spirit bond, and that gives me…” Tan didn’t know what that gave him. Strength that he didn’t have otherwise. But more than that, it gave him a sense of understanding.

  “There shouldn’t be a way to connect directly to the Great Mother,” Logan said. “The People keep records of attempts. And there is no known way to connect to her.”

  Tan chuckled, glancing under the door to peer into the temple. He hadn’t opened it completely, not wanting to risk something escaping that shouldn’t. He wasn’t exactly certain what that might be, but his experience with the temple made him cautious.

  “You will have to ask the First Mother about what connections are possible,” Tan said to Logan. Amia had stepped in the pool of the Mother and come out alive. And Tan had stepped in it as well, but then, he had done that before knowing that he could shape spirit, had done that when all he had wanted was to save Amia. So regardless of what Logan and the People thought was possible with spirit, Tan knew that there were other connections. Why should it be surprising that he was able to reach the spirit bond?

  “The First Mother?”

  Roine answered for him. “I have seen it. There are places where power comes together, where spirit burbles to the surface. I experienced one firsthand.”

  Logan frowned. “I will have to think on this. But what you describe means that there is a way to access the Great Mother directly. There are none who have ever done… there are none who have been known to do this,” he corrected himself.

  Tan ducked underneath the door and crawled into the temple. Darkness threatened to swallow him, and he attempted to shape but found that it was difficult. Had it been the same the last time that he had come to the temple?

  He reached through the spirit bond, using that connection to pull on power. Through it, he continued to glow, the light and strength from the bond spilling from him. Tan could no more suppress it than he could stop breathing.

  The air inside the temple was still. The ground smooth, and thankfully, nothing moved.

  “There is nothing here,” Roine whispered.

  “You’ll lose your connection to shape,” Tan warned.

  Roine clenched his jaw and nodded. “How is it that you still manage?”

  “Spirit.”

  Logan came through the door and gasped softly. “It is gone!” he whispered.

  “The temple suppresses shaping.”

  “Why would they have wanted to do that?” Logan asked. “What purpose would there be to lose their connection to shape?”

  It had been a question that plagued him as well. “I don’t know why they would cut off shaping, only that the temple itself seems responsible for it.”

  Roine appeared tense, and Tan understood what he must be feeling. It was an awful thing to lose the connection to shaping, leaving him feeling cut off from a part of himself. That had been the sense that he’d had when in Par-shon when the Utu Tonah had attempted to separate him from his ability to shape as well as separate him from his connection to the elementals.

  He continued forward, the light from his shaping guiding him as he went. Can you help? he asked Light.

  The lizard licked his face, a gesture that Tan had come to take as some sort of reassurance, and then scampered down Tan’s shoulder to the ground. There, she used her connection to spirit to spill out from her body, the same way that he had when they had first come here.

  Inside, the temple felt different than the last time that Tan had been here. Then, there had been his desire to find Amia and learn what had happened to her, and he had a sort of single-mindedness that had driven him. This time, he had an opportunity to look around.

  Smooth walls rose up, higher than the light that flowed through him or through Light, leaving the upper stretches of the temple in shadows. Considering what had come through here the last time that Tan had been here, those shadows left him troubled.

  He unsheathed his warrior sword, held it above his head, and pressed the spirit shaping through it. Tan wasn’t entirely certain what would happen as he did, whether the sword would connect to spirit the way that it did when he shaped the other elements or whether the temple would somehow inhibit his connection in ways that he still didn’t fully grasp, but brilliant white light erupted from the sword, casting away the shadows overhead.

  As it did, carvings in the wall became visible.

  Many were familiar, but one in particular stood out, a carving that took up most of the top of the temple, and one that Tan had seen before.

  “What is it?” Roine asked, looking upward.

  Tan pointed overhead with the sword. “That pattern. In Par, they call them a Great Seal. The elementals refer to them as the Mark of the Mother.”

  But the ones that he had seen in Par had been tied to each of the elements. When Tan had restored them, they had required his ability to call through his connections with the elements to repair. This one did not have the same strength to it.

  “That is known as the evayanth,” Logan said.

  Tan recognized Ishthin, but not what the word meant. “I’m not familiar with it.”

  “I would say that few are, Athan. That is a marking that the People use for the Gathering. It is meant as a place for spirit, a way to call for the guidance of the Great Mother.”

  Tan frowned and pushed spirit through the sword, reaching that connection toward the rune carved in the upper portion of the temple. Could it be that the pattern represented spirit? That might explain why he could not shape the other elements and why only his connection to the spirit bond allowed him anything here, but why would spirit be here for this bond, and not in Par?

  Unless he had overlooked a spirit bond in Par.

  Could that be the key to the bindings?

  I don’t know, Maelen. There is power in that Mark. The Mother granted great power here, lingering in that Mark.

  Is it still intact? If the darkness—if that was Nightfall or something else—had managed to escape, was it possible that the rune had been damaged? But his shaped connection told him that the rune was intact.

  Then there had been some other damage, but how would he find it?

  Use the connection to the
Mother to determine what might have been damaged, Light suggested.

  Tan focused through spirit, reaching not for strength or the ability to shape, but for understanding. That was one of the gifts that spirit offered, and perhaps the greatest. It was because of the connection to spirit that Honl could learn as quickly as he could. It was through the connection to spirit that Light managed the understanding that she possessed.

  Tan might not be an elemental, and might be connected differently to the Mother than they were, but he could still use the connection to spirit to help him gain understanding.

  He held himself in the connection to the Mother.

  As he did, there came a sense that time stopped. Was it time itself that stopped moving, or was it that his understanding of time simply stopped? He’d had a similar sensation before, and each time had come when he had been particularly tied to the Mother. First when he had stepped in the pool of liquid spirit. There had been a sense of knowing, and through that, everything else had simply stopped mattering. Then there had been the experience while holding the artifact, the time that he had shaped through it when he had felt so much power, as if he could do anything, that he could shape anything that came to his mind. Through that connection, he had healed Asboel—and could have done more. He had considered bringing back his father and thought he would have been able to do it. And had he known Lacertin’s fate, he might have restored him. How much easier would everything they had to face been had Lacertin only lived?

  And then, when facing the Utu Tonah, Tan had the sense that he could truly reach power. He had been able to separate every bond forced by the Utu Tonah, allowing the elementals their freedom once more.

  But now… Tan had a sense that he only had to pull on the strength of spirit, that he could practically enter the flows of spirit, and he would be able to accomplish whatever he wanted. The power was there if he only reached for it.

  And he had thought having access to the artifact would have been tempting. This, a connection and a power that he did not need any external device to reach, filled him with even more strength and power than he could ever have imagined. But power was not what Tan wanted. No, he wanted understanding.

  He reached through the connection, through spirit, and strained for a sense of understanding.

  At first, it was as if he clutched at the wind, reaching without the ability to shape, but then, slowly, the understanding that he sought, the knowledge that he needed, began to come to him.

  The temple was no different than the tower in Par. There were Great Seals, much like there were in Par, Marks of the Mother that tied spirit to the elementals of the temple. And these had been damaged, but the damage was not a new thing. That damage had been here for many years, long enough that the temple had been buried by time or an intentional shaping, leaving the Temple of Alast lost. The binding had remained intact, but that was because the Mark above him remained intact, even though the others had failed.

  Through the connection to spirit, Tan could repair these Marks, so he did. With a surge of power, the barrier that restricted shaping suddenly faded. Power leaped through Tan, filling him with the energy of each of the element bonds.

  Roine sucked in a breath. “What happened?”

  Tan ignored the question, remaining focused on the understanding that he could gain through this connection to spirit. Would he be able to know where to find Marin because of the connection? Would he be able to understand the darkness?

  But the understanding did not work that way for him. He had understanding of shaping, and the elementals, and even of the bonds, but he did not gain understanding of what he needed.

  Yet he recognized that there were places within the temple that might help. Places much like the Records in Par, if he could ever understand them, that might give him what he needed.

  Tan waited, hoping that even more understanding would come to him, but it did not.

  Reluctantly, he released his connection to spirit. The bond remained accessible, but no longer did he sit within it. Now that he could reach the other elements, Tan did not need to. He shaped fire, sending light streaming through the temple. Lanterns staggered throughout the temple jumped into light through his shaping, pushing back the shadows that had returned when Tan released his connection to spirit.

  “Come with me,” he said to Roine and Logan.

  He guided them through the temple, the knowledge gained through his connection to spirit leading him. As he did, Tan realized that they made their way through one of the spiraling arms that formed the binding rune when seen from above. The stopped in a circular room when the tunnel ended. Tan knew what he would find here.

  Fire and spirit combined here, forming the Great Seal pressed into the ceiling of the room, much like the spirit bond had been formed on the ceiling of the temple. It was the same seal that he had found in the draasin cavern in Par. Tan shaped through the seal, light flooded into the room, and the patterns that he knew would be found on the walls suddenly appeared.

  “How…” Logan began. “How did you know that this would be here?”

  Tan motioned to the Seal. “There is another in Par. They call theirs the Records, and think that it stores the archives of the earliest days of Par.” Now that Tan had seen this, he wasn’t sure that was actually the case. What if the Records were really a way of detailing what had happened to require the need for the Marks and the bindings?

  Logan went to the wall and studied the runes there. Tan didn’t expect much. Even Elanne had not been able to understand the runes there.

  “These are old,” Logan began.

  “The temple is from Vethansa,” Tan said, “so the runes here would be at least that old.” And, he suspected, much older. The temple would have been created before Vathansa failed, and before Vatten was claimed from the sea. How long ago had that been? How old could the temple actually be? The kingdoms were at least one thousand years old, which meant that this temple would be older than that.

  “But these are preserved. They are from before Ishthin.”

  “They aren’t able to read all of them in Par either,” Tan said.

  Logan looked over. “I can read them, but it will take some time.”

  “You can read them?”

  “The archivists have kept the knowledge of other languages, Athan. That has been our purpose.”

  Had Amia known?

  “There are many that have been lost over time, many that we still retain or else too much would be lost. Ishthin, old Rens, Ter, runes much like these. A dozen others. All of them the archivists continue to maintain.” He made his way around the room, peering at the runes along the wall. “It will take time, but I will be able to translate this.”

  “How long?” Tan asked.

  “These are among the oldest known language, Athan. I cannot tell you how long it will take.”

  Tan didn’t know what to do. Did he leave Logan here, trust that he would translate what he found and that he wouldn’t disturb anything else that might be here?

  At the same time, Tan had already found something else in the temple that he needed to understand better, but something that he wouldn’t be able to do here in Vatten. It required that he return to Par, to see what else there might be there.

  Roine seemed to understand Tan’s struggle. “I can assist here if you’d prefer,” he said. “I might not be able to translate, but there is value in having a warrior shaper search someplace like this.”

  “That would be enough,” Tan said.

  “I can’t say that I understand any of this, Tan. What we’re dealing with, what you’re now dealing with, is different than the battles that we faced. It was one thing when we fought against Incendin, or then Par-shon, but this?”

  And Tan knew how hard it had been for Roine to recognize that Par-shon was a real threat. It had taken quite a bit of convincing to prove that Par-shon, and the Utu Tonah, deserved their fear more than Incendin.

  Now Roine admitted much the same as Tan’s mother. In th
at, they had strength in shaping, but if he needed their help with any of this, would they be able and ready to help him?

  “I’ll have Zephra join you,” Tan said. “Work with Logan, see what he can discover.” Turning to Logan, he said, “If you find anything that speaks of Nightfall, or anything that would make you think they described gods, please have Roine summon me.”

  “I won’t have to,” Logan said. When Tan frowned, the archivist smiled. “You share a connection to the First Mother. I can alert her.”

  Tan left them in the temple. As he readied the shaping that would bring him back to Par, he couldn’t help but feel a rising sense of anxiety. The last time that he’d left the temple under the control of one of the archivists, Marin and the darkness had managed to take over, allowing the darkness to seep out. What, if anything, would happen this time?

  10

  What the Utu Tonah Knew

  Tan stared up at the ceiling of the tower, searching for signs of the Mark of the Mother bound to spirit. If the tower and this binding were the same as the one in the Temple of Alast, there would have to be another rune.

  But so far, they had found nothing.

  Amia carried Alanna, who looked around with bright eyes, smiling whenever her gaze fell on Tan. Returning had filled him with happiness to see both Amia and Alanna again, but his heart nearly broke knowing that he would have to leave soon. If he were to understand what they faced, he would have to leave.

  Light curled around his neck as she always did, and when Tan stood next to Amia, their daughter reached for Light’s tail and pulled on it, giggling as she did. Light didn’t react, only stuck out her tongue and licked Alanna on the face, which made her giggle more.

  “You’re certain there should be another bond here?” Amia asked.

  “In the temple, there was a Mark of the Mother that comprised only spirit. That was the only rune that remained, and somehow, that prevented shaping within the temple. When I repaired the others, the sense of the elements returned.”