“You will show me.”
“Maelen, this is as far as I can—”
The way she hesitated bothered Tan, as did the fact that they had bound Honl. As a modified elemental, he had the ability to speak, something no other elementals were capable of doing. They must have known what they were doing, and still did it.
She started into the cavern and stepped to the side. Tan continued forward, and Amia trailed along next to him.
“What is it?” she asked him.
“There’s something they’re not telling me,” Tan said.
“About what?”
“I don’t know. About everything, I think. Think about it. Honl can speak. He’s not like other elementals. When he had come here, he would have been able to talk to them, so for something to happen to him where I can’t detect him anymore...”
“You think they know and are not saying.”
“I think they know—”
He didn’t have the chance to finish.
Rock started rumbling from the end of the cavern. It echoed from deep within the earth, drawn from the elemental powers that were a part of this land, and shook the entire cavern.
Tan pressed against the rock, holding it with earth, but the weight was almost more than he could manage. His shaping was not enough to hold it.
The end of the cavern began to collapse.
“Go!” he shouted to Amia. “I can hold it only so long.”
They ran, the shaping managing to hold up the cavern, but the ground rippled beneath him. Was this a shaping or something else?
Could the darkness, this Tenebeth that they spoke about, have somehow escaped?
Did he attack?
Or, more worrisome, was this something that Jorma had done?
The ground tossed him into the air, and he lost control. The shaping slipped, and Tan pulled through the earth bond, dragging his awareness deep into the earth to hold the rock in place, to prevent the cavern from collapsing.
But he missed the collapsing of the ceiling. A rock fell, landing on his leg, too large for him to lift. The pain sent every other thought from his mind. Light tightened her grip around his neck, squeezing tightly.
The end of the cavern began to fall in.
Tan focused on it and shaped it in place while Amia pulled on his arm.
“Go,” he said.
“Not without you!”
“Go. I’ll follow.”
He pushed her with wind, and as he did, he sent her through the end of the tunnel, calling to Asgar as he did through the fire bond. Help the Daughter. Protect her.
Then the tunnel collapsed around him.
26
A Warrior Rises
When the dust settled, Tan still couldn’t move. His leg was trapped beneath a massive boulder, and the pain shooting through him nearly caused him to lose consciousness. He took slow and steadying breaths, but that wasn’t enough.
Amia, he tried sending.
The pain prevented him from reaching her.
Tan sagged back, leaning against the hard rock that trapped him. What had happened here? The rumbling of earth had to have been elemental shaping, but why would Jorma have brought him here? Unless her intent was to see him trapped, and maybe killed.
Had he misread her?
Hopefully, the draasin had reached Amia in time to protect her.
Only, he didn’t know. What if she hadn’t made it free in time? Or, if she had made it free, what if Asgar hadn’t reached her in time? He tried reaching the elementals, but the severity of his pain prevented the necessary focus.
Light climbed slowly from his shoulders. At least she wasn’t hurt.
He tried reaching her, but much like with Amia, his connection to her failed. Not because the connection was not there—Tan could still feel it—but because the pain overwhelmed his ability to connect.
Light climbed along the rock and began pushing.
“Don’t,” he said. “Too heavy. Can’t even shape it.”
Light ignored him and continued pushing on the rock, but nothing changed.
She lowered her head to his leg and began licking softly. As she did, her leathery skin began to glow softly, taking on a yellowish light. Through it, Tan could see the fallen and collapsed cavern. Rock had crumbled all around him, leaving him in a small space decorated with massive boulders. He was lucky to have not been crushed.
He tried moving, but there was no place for him to go.
Light continued licking at his leg, running her rough tongue along him.
“I’m sorry you’re trapped here with me.”
Light didn’t look up as if she didn’t hear him. Was he even speaking?
But Tan realized the pain in his leg eased the more that Light licked. Her body continued to glow, now with more intensity, and as it did, the pain eased, letting up.
What are you doing?
With less pain, he was able to reach her.
You must get free, Maelen. All need you.
Even if I could, my leg is crushed.
You would doubt water?
Water? Tan had never tried healing himself with water. Each time he’d been healed, he had used the elementals, but would he be able to turn a shaping upon himself?
The question wouldn’t matter if he couldn’t get free.
Amia?
He sent the question, reaching through the connection between them, but there was no answer. The bond seemed to remain intact, but either he wasn’t strong enough to push through it yet, or Amia was unable to answer.
A surge of fear raged through him.
Tan reached for earth and the earth bond, needing to connect to it so he could move the rock. Nothing happened. The connection failed.
He tried again, the gentle sense of Light licking at his leg prodding him on so that he could do nothing else but continue to attempt to reach into the earth.
The connection came to him like a flicker of awareness. Tan reached for it, surging through the faint pull of earth that he could pick up, straining to reach the earth bond. If he could do that, then he could somehow try to free himself. One task at a time.
And then, if he managed to free himself, would he be able to shape water strongly enough to heal his leg? The pain no longer throbbed as it had, but mostly that was because of whatever Light had done by licking his leg. Her shaping, whatever it was that she did, pulled away the pain at least long enough for him to try reaching for earth.
Sensing the earth came first, and from there, Tan was able to shape, to feel the pull of earth against him, and used a shaping to try to shift the boulder. Pressing through the shaping, he quickly discovered that he wasn’t strong enough to move the rock that had fallen on him.
He needed more than shaping. Could he reach the elementals?
Many of the earth elementals in these lands had been freed as he and Light had made their way toward the hidden city. He had tried reaching them before, but they had not wanted to interact with him, almost as if they had been afraid. Could there be some reason they had fear?
Jorma claimed that the elementals had sacrificed willingly, and that they had sunk into the shapings so that they could create the bond that held the darkness at bay, but what if that were not true?
That changed more than he realized. If it wasn’t true, then he had to wonder why they would be forced into a bond, and why the elementals would fear being released. What did he think that they might do? Did they worry that he might attempt to use them again, or that he might force them into new bonds?
The elementals were there, distantly in the back of his mind, but they did not answer when he attempted to call to them as if they weren’t allowed.
Without the elementals assisting him, would he be able to get free?
That left the bond. Could he reach the earth bond as injured as he was? There was no reason that he should not be able to reach it, but the connection required concentration, and even the now, the distant pain at the back of his mind was enough that he wasn’t sure he could concentra
te well enough.
Tan focused as he long ago had learned to focus, listening first for the earth, letting that awareness flood into him. It came in the way that the stone pressed into his back and the way that the air smelled of the dust and fallen rock, and even in the heavy, oppressive sense that he had from the near suffocation. With so little light coming through cracks in the stone, nothing but what Light managed to produce, he had to imagine the connection to the earth as much as he saw it.
From there, he let the awareness of the stone, and the connection that he felt to it, flow through him. There was the way it pinched his leg. Maybe crushed, for all that he knew. Bones might be forever damaged, the skin peeled back, leaving the flesh raw and letting infection set in. But that was for later. Now he could only listen to the way that he connected to the earth and the way that it filled him. Much as his father had long ago taught him to sense.
Tan reached from there, pressing this awareness into the stone, not attempting to shape, but only to gain a greater awareness of the stone and of the earth. Through the sensing, he felt it quivering beneath him, the steady and deep sense of the earth, alive as he knew that it was, rumbling softly deep below. There, he noted freed elementals. They tried to elude him, but Tan was connected in a way that he was not often connected, and he held onto the awareness. Through it, he reached again, beyond the elementals, and instead reached for the connections between them, and between he and the element. Through those shared connections, he finally reached the earth bond.
And recognized why it had been so difficult for him.
The elementals had been working against him.
I am Maelen, Shaper of Light, he said, recognizing the importance of that to the elementals. Why do you oppose me?
The elementals attempted to elude him for a moment before they answered. There can be only one Shaper of Light.
Tan looked to Light, who continued to lick at his leg. Now it began to tingle where she licked. Having sensation in his leg had to be better than the numbness that he’d experienced up to now. And both were better than the throbbing pain that he’d gone through after the rock collapsed around him.
I am the Shaper of Light, Tan repeated.
The earth elementals trembled, and the ground rumbled. The rock shook, cracking in places. If it continued like this, it might fall on him and crush him worse than he already had been. Tan didn’t think that he would be able to hold an earth shaping in place to keep himself safe if that happened.
He pressed against the elementals to settle them, but the ground only shook even more. Somewhere distantly, but closer than he would like, he heard the soft splitting of stone. Would it fall on him?
Tan needed to soothe the elementals, but how was he to do that when he was barely able to reach them? He had managed to find the earth bond, in spite of their attempts to push him away from it.
But could he soothe them?
He added a shaping of spirit, barely noting how the shaping came easier the more that he worked with it, allowing him to forget what had happened to his leg. Sliding this through the earth bond, he sent spirit into the bond, across the elementals, but that would not be enough.
What had he done before when he had joined the elementals that he’d healed with spirit? Could he do something like that with the earth bond? But joining it with spirit might go against what the Mother had intended for the bonds.
Yet, if he didn’t, Tan sensed that the elementals would continue to fight him.
Focusing now on spirit, he weaved the bond toward the earth bond and brought them together. There came a flash, another surge of power and light, and then it was done.
Tan detected the elementals more clearly now.
He called to them, showing them what he intended, using both earth and spirit to reach to them. The elementals hesitated.
Then they flooded to him.
Maelen.
Tan heard the name called a dozen times. A hundred. A thousand. The voices of the elementals surged through him, filling him with an even greater awareness of them than he had before.
He used this connection to prop up the rock around him.
Before doing anything else, he needed to reach the other bonds as well.
Fire first. He strained through his connection, but now that he understood what happened, and how the elementals of these lands attempted to prevent him from touching the fire bond, Tan understood why it was so difficult. But he had bonded fire first. He had reached the fire bond first. And he would not be withheld from fire.
Tan shifted it, joining it to spirit, the same as he had done with earth.
The other bonds required less effort, likely because he understood what he did and why it must be done.
With the sealing of each bond to spirit, Tan had the same overwhelming understanding and awareness of the elementals. Now the sense of them flooded him, and he could practically touch those that swarmed around him.
No longer did he have to strain to reach spirit. Now, spirit filled everything, connecting everything.
With nothing more than a request to the earth, the ground shifted, letting him free.
He felt for his leg, knowing that it might be forever damaged. Where Light had licked it, there remained a thick crust. Below that crust, his leg ached, but less than he would have expected.
Tan reached through water and turned it upon himself. Would such a water shaping even be possible? Would he be able to use it on himself like this, to heal himself if needed? With fire, a shaping like that would twist him, but water understood what he wanted.
Not water, Tan realized, but the elementals that he now felt everywhere, even distantly high above him.
They answered his call, and a faint greenish shimmering pulled from the rock itself as if squeezed from it like some sort of fruit. That surrounded his leg, crawling up it with a surprising cold.
Tan gasped but let the sense work over him.
Water traced up his leg, starting by his boot and crawling along his skin. It almost slithered beneath the crust that Light had placed there, and then rose higher, from his groin to his belly, and then into his chest and lungs, rising higher with each breath that he took. Then it extended outward, leaving his chest and slipping out into his fingertips and up his neck, his face, and into his head.
The cold snapped through him, a thrumming sense that he had last felt when fighting Par-shon, back when he had nearly died during the attack, but that had been the nymid who healed him then.
His body went cooler and cooler, and then, when he was no longer certain that he could tolerate it anymore, it snapped once more, this time dissipating in a cloud of green.
The crust crumbled and disappeared. With it, Tan half-expected the pain to return, but it didn’t. The healing held.
A small gap opened between the rocks and Tan pushed through the earth bond and the elementals that he detected above him. He pushed, but there was too much earth, more than he would be able to free himself from, even connected as he was to the earth bond.
But he sensed stored power that he recognized as coming from the elementals trapped in the shapings. Tan had thought the Order had protected the elementals, but now he doubted that they did. Much like with Par-shon, the trapped elementals were only for the benefit of shapers, and not for the elementals.
Tan pressed through spirit.
The bonds all exploded.
Now that he had pulled spirit into each of the element bonds, he knew the elementals were safe from the darkness. More than that, their strength, and their awareness flooded into him with sudden and surprising power.
Tan reached for it, borrowing from them. All the elementals recognized him and called out his name in a murmuring chorus.
Maelen!
Power surged, and Tan pushed out through the rock, through the mouth of the cavern. The stone rippled, creating a tunnel, and he started through. Light followed him and then hurried ahead, her glowing skin leading the way.
In the distance, Tan could se
e the end of the cavern. I am coming, Amia, he sent to her.
He didn’t know whether she could hear him, or whether any of the others could hear him, but he would come for her, and then he would understand what had happened here and why it seemed that they had attempted to drop the rock upon him.
One more push and the rock exploded away from him. Faint shafts of light penetrated down the tunnel, enough that he knew he was nearly free.
Maelen needs you now, he sent through the fire bond. The draasin would show themselves now. They would all show themselves. And he would discover what happened to Honl.
27
The Changed Bonds
Wasina swooped toward him as soon as he was free of the tunnel. Tan jumped on a shaping of wind and detected each of the elementals that flowed through the shaping, carrying him upward and to the draasin. Tan had never been able to detect the elementals that well before, even when wrapped in the wind bond. Whatever he had done to each of the bonds had changed his ability with them as well.
What happened, Maelen? The bond.
Tell me what you detect, Wasina.
Fire. It is stronger. We have always been part of the same streams of fire, but now I can see the way that we interact. I can feel the way that fire goes from me to sanat and then onward to saa. With each elemental named, Tan could trace the flows of power in his mind and understood what Wasina would have experienced.
The bond has been strengthened, Tan said. I have pulled spirit into the bond, and now each of the elements is better connected.
Not only that, Tan began to realize, but each of the elements was more than connected to only spirit now. Because they were all connected to spirit, they were connected to each other as well.
Is that what the Mother asked of you?
I don’t know what the Mother asked of me, Tan said. I know what needed to be done.
Then it is as the Mother wished.
Where is Asgar? Where is the Daughter?
Wasina snorted. It is good that you have returned, Maelen. There were some who thought that you were dead.
Light of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 10) Page 20