Light of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 10)

by D. K. Holmberg

  The source of what?

  Of the Mother. Of life.

  I reach the element bonds. Is that what you mean?

  Light made her way toward him, her tongue running along the table, catching the rune that bound the element within it, and the table disappeared, releasing fire and earth. With each elemental freed, Tan had an increasing awareness of them, a growing connection. They remained distant within his mind, as if uncertain from countless years trapped, but they were there.

  You reach the element bonds, but also the source, Maelen.

  How are they different?

  But he knew there was something different. There were shapers who tapped into some innate power, elementals who shared in that power, but then, Tan had discovered that there were element bonds that were different. Within those bonds, at least within the fire bond, there was a connection to true Fire. He suspected that it was the same with other elements, but he hadn’t reached the same connection to earth, wind, or water that he had with fire. Even with spirit, when he reached into the spirit bond, there was a different level of power there than when he had stood in the pool of liquid spirit. Then he had felt connected to the Great Mother and all of her power in ways that he had rarely achieved before.

  You have touched the source, Maelen.

  Light licked him, and this time when she did, Tan had a flash of memories. When he stepped in the pool of spirit. When he had held onto the artifact, shaping through it. When he had used the combined shaping to defeat the Utu Tonah. Each of those memories flooded through him, a connection to the source.

  Could the power that he had touched those few times have been enough to create everything that he saw around him? It was possible, he decided. He remembered feeling like he could even turn back time, bring his father back from the grave. Using that power, he had healed Asboel the first time but had been too late to heal him a second. When he was connected the second time, could he have pulled Asboel back to life? The power that he had reached seemed to make him think so, but that wasn’t what Asboel wanted.

  So the source, that power that he attributed to spirit, that energy that flowed through everything, could have been enough to create all of this, shaping it into existence. But Tan wouldn’t have tied the elementals to it. That implied a different sort of intent.

  Stepping out of the building, he stood again in the street. Light stopped next to him and stood on her hind legs before running her tongue along the house. With a burst of elemental power, the entire building faded, disappearing as the bound elementals were released.

  What else would he find here? Something had created all of this, but so far, Tan hadn’t found anything that could. The two homes that he’d entered were both as empty as the streets. Could it be that no one still lived in Norilan?

  They made their way along the street. Light paused from time to time to free elementals, leaving the destruction of the buildings behind her. Awareness of the released elementals began to come to Tan with increasing strength. He felt their soft presence through the element bond and reached for them with each release, simply to let the elementals that he sensed know that he meant no harm.

  After a while, the road stopped, leading to a tall gray stone wall. Much like the houses and everything inside, the wall appeared to have been shaped into existence. Light started working her tongue along the wall, tracing a pattern. The stone comprising the wall faded, leaving gaps in it. Through those gaps, Tan could see different shades and shapes, and none of the bright, vibrant colors that he saw on this side.

  He peered through. Even the air on the other side felt different. More stagnant in some ways. The road continued on the other side, but darker, and covered by dirt and decay. None of the stones seemed to have runes pressed into them, and he doubted that any of the elementals had been confined here.

  The buildings visible from where he stood were more run down. Stone sagged and faded. Wood peeled. Whatever paint had been on them had long since disappeared.

  What is this place?

  I do not know, Maelen. There is none of the same elemental connection here.

  Tan stepped back, frowning at the wall that had been shaped into place. On one side, everything was shaped creations, but on the other, nothing appeared to have been shaped. This side, there was a brightness and vibrancy, even with the trapped and bound elementals. On the other, he saw darkness and shadows.

  He shivered. Could Nightfall have made a home on the other side of the wall?

  The possibility was there. The shaping might have contained it, he realized, and the barrier, the one that he’d made such an effort to pass through, could have held it as well.

  But why? If the bindings were in place…

  Unless the binding was not in place on this side.

  Tan stared at the emptiness on the other side, knowing that he would have to cross but feeling a growing uncertainty about whether he wanted to.

  But as he stared at it, and as he considered what he would do, he felt a stirring through the wind bond. The connection to Honl that had been faded and distant, nothing more than a vague presence deep within him, fluttered back into existence, and he knew what he had to do. Tan would need to cross through to the other side because that was where he would find Honl. And with Honl, there were answers.

  20

  An Elemental Mistake

  The air on the other side of the wall was as dreary and oppressive as the shaped side had felt artificially bright. A humidity filled the air, dank and unpleasant, that left his skin slick. A cold pressure settled around him as well, and each step felt like he took it through a thick mist.

  Light trudged next to him, not running her tongue across anything more. That she wouldn’t worried Tan more than anything else in view.

  The buildings that they passed all had a sort of greenish mold growing on the decaying stone. Brownish-colored weeds sprouted in cracks between the stones, and windows on the buildings appeared to have fallen off.

  Tan paused at the first of the buildings, a square-shaped building with none of the curved lines that had been shaped into those on the outskirts of the city, and peered into the cracked wood framing that had once been a window. He was careful to keep his face away from the mold bubbling along the cracks, not even wanting to touch it. Through earth sensing, he could tell that it had a certain toxin to it, poisonous in ways that were more like he would once have found in Incendin. He shaped a layer of water over it to protect him while he looked inside.

  The interior of the building was sparse. A table, but one made from stout wood and clearly rotting. A few chairs, though most had fallen to the side. Broken pieces of pottery scattered across the floor.

  Tan didn’t even want to risk entering the space. Doing so would put him too close to the strange sense of decay that he picked up from the building.

  Stepping back, he continued down the road that he’d been following. The farther that he went, the more certain he felt that the connection to Honl increased. In the back of his mind, distantly, he was increasingly aware of the elemental. Tan tried communicating to him, searching through the bond, but he could not.

  What had happened to Honl? Had there been something like this decay that he saw everywhere around him? Or were there people who lived here who had captured him?

  What do you sense? he asked Light.

  I sense uncertainty, the lizard told him. The elementals who remain are not certain about your intentions.

  What do they fear?

  They fear the only thing that they have known.

  Tan glanced back, but the wall that separated the bright side of Norilan from this had disappeared. What have they known?

  Darkness, Maelen. They have known darkness.

  Nightfall?

  I… I cannot tell.

  Tan lifted Light and set her around his shoulders, not wanting her to walk across here any more than necessary. He didn’t even want to have to walk here, but he wanted to save his energy were he to need to shape. He trailed after
the connection that he had with Honl, holding onto the bond, and hoped that he wouldn’t be too late.

  The road led them deeper into the city. As they did, Tan noticed another wall, this one slightly taller than the last. It circled in a tight radius. Leaping on a shaping of wind, he noted that it wasn’t a wall at all, but a low-rising circular building.

  He paused and then used his shaping to take him higher into the air, where he could look down upon the city. There he saw the shape of the flat-roofed building. Would there be the same spiraling arms around it as were found in Alast and in Par?

  But he saw nothing. Squat buildings much like the homes that he had first looked into when crossing to this side of the wall butted almost up against the building, but without any sort of pattern, nothing like the binding rune that he thought that he might find.

  He dropped to the ground again, frustration setting in.

  Where is the binding? he asked Light. I thought that I would find it here.

  And he had thought that he might find Honl here, but he found no evidence of him either. There was the sense of the elemental, but now that he had reached this part of the city, Tan lost the connection. Even reaching through the wind bond didn’t help.

  I cannot tell, Maelen. These lands are distorted.

  All of it?

  Everything that we have reached. I thought that freeing the elementals would help, but they have provided no answers.

  Not to Light, but would they answer Tan?

  Earth had seemed the most common component of the bonds that they had freed, so Tan started there, reaching through the earth bond and listening for the elementals. It occurred to him that he did this differently than he once would have. Before learning of the earth bond, Tan would have focused on the elementals and would have been able to reach for the strength that they could lend, and possibly even be able to speak to them, but he would not have the same awareness of each individual elemental that he now possessed when using the element bond. It was a finer awareness, but one that he had only been able to use to reach for greater strength with earth, not to speak to individual elementals as he had with fire or wind.

  Maelen seeks the help of the elementals of this land, he sent through the bond. I search for a bonded elemental, one I fear requires my help.

  He listened, focusing on the elementals, straining through earth, for the connection he knew must be there. Other elementals had been freed, but not quite so many as with earth, severing the rune that had held them in place as they formed the road to the city.

  Distantly, Tan heard a murmuring. It was a vague sound, one that he wasn’t sure at first whether he really heard. As it increased in intensity, and agitation, he realized that he did.

  It was a warning.

  Maelen.

  Light intruded on his connection to the earth bond and Tan pulled away from it, looking at the lizard as she was wrapped around his neck. What is it?

  Can you not feel it?

  Feel what?

  Listen to spirit.

  As she instructed, Tan used a spirit sensing, but found nothing that he thought that Light would have wanted him to discover. Pulling on a shaping, he stretched through spirit, and then reached for the spirit bond. The connection surged within him.

  When it did, he felt the strangeness that Light indicated.

  A presence pushed upon spirit. Tan had no other way to describe it, only that it seemed to push with a painful sort of urgency. As Tan focused on it, he realized that he’d felt something similar, and it took a moment to realize where he had felt it.

  The island.

  When they had found the sculptures and been attacked, Tan had found something similar, but that had been the darkness, Nightfall in a different form, attacking. Was that what this was? That time, he had somehow triggered the attack with his shaping. But hadn’t he done something similar this time? Connecting to the elementals—the Great Mother knew that freeing the elementals—might have been enough for him to trigger something in this place, especially in a place of such darkness.

  Where is it? he asked.

  It comes. Maelen. It comes.

  A surge of power seemed to come from all around but centered on the tall circular building that he had thought would have been the center of the binding but was not.

  The ground rumbled, and the elementals that he had freed and connected to within the bond retreated from him, afraid of what was coming. The wind fell even more still, if that were possible. The humid and stink on the air changed, growing thicker than it had been before. And the temperature dropped. All signs of the elementals retreating from whatever came.

  Light squeezed with her tail, pulling tight around him as she settled into his shoulders.

  The lizard didn’t leave him. Thankfully.

  Tan pulled on spirit and reached for Honl as he did, and suddenly realized that he detected him nearby, but not aware, as if the spirit that he’d bonded to through what he had done as part of the healing had been severed.

  Maelen—

  Tan attempted a shaping, drawing on spirit, through the spirit bond, but knew he would not be able to summon enough strength. Trying to reach through the element bonds didn’t help, either. The power that he detected surpassed what he could summon, exceeding it much as he exceeded that of another warrior like Roine.

  If this was the power of the darkness, of Nightfall, there was nothing Tan would be able to do.

  Power bulged the stone of the circular building. Tan could feel it pressing through him, threatening to attack. When he had confronted the Utu Tonah, he had known a power that he felt overpowered by but never overwhelmed. This… this power overwhelmed him much like the power of the Mother would overwhelm him.

  There was nothing that he would be able to do to oppose it. He knew that with certainty.

  The shivering sense of Light clinging to his neck told him that she felt the same.

  Tan leapt into the air on a shaping of fire and wind. He met resistance but drew through the element bonds, sending himself back toward the wall. As he reached it, he crawled through the opening he had made and paused to look back.

  Stone exploded from the central structure, and then a nightmare emerged.

  Light trembled.

  Tan felt a surge of uncontrollable fear. He had made a mistake coming here, a mistake in opening the wall to find a way through. Maybe a mistake in coming to Norilan in the first place. Honl had needed him, but at what cost?

  You must restore this, Light instructed.

  Tan knew of no way that he would be able to restore the damaged wall other than a binding.

  Drawing on the element bonds, pulling much the same as he had when they faced the sculptures off the Xsa Isles, he quickly crafted the binding, working it over the new gap formed when Light had removed the runes that held the wall in place.

  He worked quickly, but almost not quickly enough. The darkness surged against the wall, against Tan’s binding.

  A burst of light emerged as it finished and the binding took hold.

  Tan took a step back and held his breath.

  When the darkness struck the binding, Tan felt the way the power bulged against him, against what he had shaped, but it held. For now.

  How much did it matter that he and Light had removed the runes that had shaped the city into existence? If that were some sort of modified binding, and the reason that the darkness had not been able to spill out before now, was it possible that he might be the reason that the darkness escaped?

  And what of the barrier? Would the fact that he had shaped his way through have weakened that in some way?

  Tan realized his ignorance might be the reason that darkness escaped, and Nightfall attacked again.

  As he shaped his way back toward the barrier, he felt the pressure building behind him. How long would the binding hold? Would it be enough to suppress the darkness?

  Tan didn’t know whether it would.

  And if it didn’t, would the darkness fully escape?<
br />
  There might not be anything that they could do if it did.

  He reached the barrier and found where he had come through. Drawing on the power of spirit, he shaped his way through, sliding through slowly, and then burst back into the cold air.

  Wasina howled as he did.

  Tan ignored her and turned back to the barrier, sending a shaping of each element into it, adding spirit as he tried to repair it. The repairs happened slowly, too slowly, but the opening in the barrier sealed once more.

  Only then did Tan dare to breathe.

  21

  Decisions

  Wasina carried him back to Par with the same strange undulating way that she flew, gliding in the currents as she swept up and then down, switching between warm air and cold. Cora said little as they flew, remaining on Enya, occasionally looking over with a troubled expression.

  They had remained long enough to make certain that the barrier didn’t fall. Tan had wanted nothing more than to see the barrier fall when he’d come to Norilan, but now he wanted only to see it remain intact. If it fell, the darkness could escape. He had no illusions that it would not, not after seeing the way that it pressed against the stone and the way that it bulged on the binding that he’d placed.

  But Honl had told him that the binding had remained intact. He wouldn’t have told Tan that if it weren’t the case.

  Unless he had somehow been influenced.

  Tan thought about the way that the darkness had overwhelmed Asgar. Had Tan not been there, the draasin would not have been able to escape from the attack. And then what would have happened?

  When they reached Par, Wasina tipped her wings and guided him past the city, leading him toward the hidden caverns. Tan didn’t have to tell her where to go. The connection through the fire bond would have told her where to find the other draasin.

  She glided through the opening in the cavern, leading Tan toward the Records, folding her wings against her body as she drifted in.