Tan knew that she would, but it might not matter. She could argue and try to convince the Order to help, but they saw their duty differently than Tan saw his.
Could he reach them the same way as he had reached the others?
Doing so meant using spirit and the spirit bond, which meant that he risked the weakness that would come with it.
If he didn’t, everyone with him might suffer.
Look at this attack on your home. Look at what they would bring to the world. The Order was meant to stand above this. The Order was meant to prevent this.
Tan sent an image of the attack with the message.
When he released the sending, he started to fall. Thankfully, Elle was near enough to sweep him onto her platform, shaping her along with him.
“My turn to save you,” she said with a laugh.
She zipped along, weaving through the attack and sending suffocating attacks with masyn as she went. For the most part, she was able to hold them back almost on her own. Then a slender man jumped in front of her. Darkness struck Elle in the chest.
She fell, and Tan fell with her.
“Elle!”
She didn’t answer.
Wasina!
The draasin swooped in and caught him, soaring toward the ground so that Tan could jump free before she rejoined the elemental barrier that prevented the darkness from escaping.
Tan held Elle, but she didn’t move. She didn’t breathe. Sending a shaping of water through her, he couldn’t find anything that was wrong with her, but she didn’t move.
Light jumped onto her and began licking her across the chest. Spirit surged as she did.
Elle gasped and opened her eyes.
“What happened?”
“They changed the way that they’re attacking.”
Others had fallen in the same way. Roine. Fur. Two of the Order. Tan’s mother still fought, but she had five tainted shapers attacking. She would not last long.
Light. Help those you can.
Light licked Elle one more time and then scampered off, faster than he would have thought possible.
Tan looked at the sky. They would not be enough to stop the attack and confine Tenebeth. Already the shapers with them began to fail. And then would they attack the draasin? The other elementals? At what point would their failing become complete?
Marin appeared near Tan. She smiled. “You have done well showing me the secret to reaching this place.”
“I showed you nothing.”
She laughed a dark and throaty sound that barely seemed as if it belonged to her. “No? You showed me where the third binding would be found. I had not realized that it would be so difficult to reach. Now that we’re here, it is only a matter of time before it falls. And then there is nothing you can do.”
Tan used a shaping of each element on her, but she dodged it with a dark laugh. “You’ve grown weaker, Maelen.” She said his name more like a taunt than a title, and perhaps that was what he deserved.
And she was right. The effort to reach the Order had been too much for him, leaving him weakened enough that he wouldn’t be able to fight her off, not bound as she was to the darkness. And if he couldn’t fight her off, then there would be no way that they would be able to keep the elementals from falling. Then his failure would be complete.
He attempted another shaping, and Cora tried to help, but she had not fully recovered. Tan did all that he could to resist her, shielding himself with spirit mixed with the strength of each element, and even then he felt the power and pressure of her shaping. How would he manage to hold off the darkness if he couldn’t even fend off Marin?
Tan strained toward spirit. If he could use the connection, if he could find a way to secure the strength that spirit brought, he might be able to push back Marin.
Spirit came to him, and he could shape it, but his body was not strong enough to wield it as he had been. The cumulative effect of shaping all day, of everything that he had needed to do, finally caught up with him.
Marin smiled in triumph. “Goodbye, Maelen, Shaper of Light.”
A dark shaping built from her, and she directed it at Tan.
Wrapped as he was in the element bonds, he didn’t know if he would be able to withstand her attack. Maybe, he decided. But he would sacrifice everything to do so. He didn’t dare ask the elementals for help. They strained against the darkness enough the way that it was. Even if he survived this attack, it was unlikely that he would survive the next.
Tan braced for the release of her shaping.
When it came, it missed.
Marin screamed, and Tan turned to see Light sitting on her, licking her face with a furious speed. Tendrils of shadows spread away as she did. Marin continued to scream, shaking now, and, grasping at Light, pulling on her tail and on her head, she struggled to throw the lizard free, but Light somehow remained on top of her.
A shaping surged from Marin. With a flash, she disappeared.
Light shook, like a wolf shedding water, and scampered back to Tan, jumping onto his shoulders.
Shaping exploded all around, and he looked up to see the Order fighting with Marin’s shapers. They added three dozen warriors to those Tan had with him, including those Light had managed to heal, and that turned the tide of the attack.
A few of the Order still fell, in spite of the strength of their numbers. Tan surveyed the fight and saw that Vel and the Supreme Leader still hadn’t rejoined the battle.
Slowly, the Order regained control, and the shapers Marin had brought with her were confined. Tan would have to check on them later. Some might have information he could use.
“The barrier,” he said. Even his voice was weaker than it should be. “Rebuild the barrier.”
Cora seemed to be the first to catch onto what he wanted. She resumed the shaping with Fur, then Elle and Ferran, adding their shapings. Zephra joined quickly. One by one, each shaper with him not holding Marin’s shapers began to add their strength and connection to the barrier. It surged into place. Elementals were drawn to it as they had been before, and they squeezed.
Tan felt a moment of satisfaction when he realized that the barrier constricted beyond the wall. They continued to move, sending the shaping into a tighter and tighter space.
Calling to Wasina, Tan soared into the air, flying above as he searched for evidence of the binding. All he would need to do was restore the connection. He knew how to place the Great Seals, and he understood the binding needed to seal spirit into it as well. And he began to feel that they might succeed.
But there was nothing here that he could repair. It was as Dennon had claimed. The barrier had never existed here.
“What is it?” Elle asked. She had remained near him after the attack.
“There should be a binding, but I don’t know how to find it here.”
“Can’t you create it?” she asked.
“Not as weakened as I am.”
“What about the rest of us? Is there something that we could do?”
The barrier held, but Tan detected the growing strength that Tenebeth used pushing against it. If even a single shaper relaxed their focus, the darkness would escape. “I don’t think so.”
“Then what do you propose?” she asked.
He wouldn’t be able to create the singular binding, but could he place others in a series that would hold back the darkness so that the shapers did not have to maintain it? The strength required for smaller bindings was less. Maybe he would be able to do that much.
Tan made his way to the edge of the barrier. No longer did the shapers constrict it as they moved forward. Now the darkness began to press outward, fighting against the shaping. How much longer would the barrier hold as it was?
He started a binding. The arms were first, adding each of the elements, and then spirit last, sealing it in place with a flash of light.
Hurrying around the circular barrier, he created another binding. This one was harder than the last. The barrier shook as Tenebeth struggle
d against it, almost as if he knew what Tan attempted. With a surge of spirit, it held. Twice more, Tan did this, and twice more it held.
He had energy for one more. Would it be enough?
Starting with the arms, he sent shapings through them to create the Seals. He traced the pattern for the spirit bond and readied a spirit shaping, but he could not reach spirit. Tan tried again, but again he failed. His strength was spent.
The barrier shook violently.
Tan watched in growing horror as the shaping creating the barrier began to fail. And he couldn’t reach enough spirit to seal it.
Light!
He didn’t know whether she could help, but they had to try.
The elemental jumped on the final seal and looked up at him as if waiting.
Tan touched her back and reached for spirit. As he did, a surge of shaping energy exploded from Light, joining his attempt to reach spirit.
As the barrier failed in a violent explosion, the final seal took hold.
Tan sagged to the ground, completely spent, and waited.
Darkness surged, straining against his bindings, but they held. For now, they held.
Tan leaned back against Light, resting his head. She licked his face as he drifted out, letting sleep claim him.
Epilogue
Tan sat in the cavern outside Par, still feeling the effects of exhaustion from placing the binding. Thankfully, it still held. He didn’t know what he would have done if it did not. Well, he wouldn’t have survived, so he knew that much.
A shaping of fire cast a steady reddish light around the cavern. The two hatchlings curled along the wall, resting quietly. Asgar sat in the entrance to the tunnel as if standing watch. Every so often he glanced back, looking at Tan and then the hatchlings, before turning his attention back outside.
Alanna shimmied on her stomach toward the draasin. Tan made no effort to stop her. They wouldn’t harm her.
Amia held his hand, reading quietly from one of the Utu Tonah’s journals. Now that they knew his homeland, there was renewed interest in what he had hoped to achieve. She paused and looked up, meeting his eyes. “You’re still troubled.”
Tan nodded.
“It’s been nearly a week.”
“And no activity,” he agreed. Now that the barrier around Norilan had been lowered, the draasin took turns monitoring the bindings and were able to share with him whether anything had changed. So far, nothing had. That didn’t make him feel any more comfortable, not since he knew that Marin had escaped.
“I wasn’t there, but are you sure that she’ll return?” Amia asked.
Tan watched as Alanna reached the collection of draasin eggs. A part of him feared another starting to hatch. If it did, he wasn’t sure that he had the strength needed to see it through the bonding with fire. But if he didn’t, the draasin wouldn’t survive.
“She’s appeared twice now,” he said. “Each time more powerful than the time before. This time, I didn’t even stop her.” Had it not been for Light, and for the fact that she had jumped onto Marin’s back, Tan wasn’t sure that he would have managed to get away.
Amia held up the book and pointed to a section. “I think you were right about the Utu Tonah. He left searching for power enough to stop Tenebeth. From what I can gather, he wanted to become a Shaper of Light.”
Not a shaper, Tan knew, but the shaper. There was a prophesy that the Order possessed which made them think that the Utu Tonah would have been able to be this person. Instead, it had been Tan.
Yet even as the Shaper of Light, he hadn’t been strong enough to stop Tenebeth and suppress him the same way that the bindings in Par and the Temple of Alast had been used. He hadn’t been able to place a third binding, one that would prevent Tenebeth from returning. All Tan had been able to do had been to bind him the same way that the Order had bound him, only using runes rather than the elementals and warriors.
But he couldn’t get past the fact that the bindings that he had placed were not the same as the others. Were he to manage to place a true binding, it would communicate with the others, maybe with enough strength to suppress Tenebeth indefinitely.
What he used was more of a temporary measure. He felt the pressure against the bindings as if he were bonded to them the same way that he was bonded to the elementals. Through that connection, he knew they would fail over time. Tan might be able to repair them, and would keep replacing the failings as they did fall, but what would happen if he were not there?
As he watched Alanna, he knew he needed to find a more permanent solution. That meant returning to Norilan and studying the city left by the ancient warriors. For now, he would be content that the darkness had not escaped.
Amia squeezed his hand, knowing his thoughts. Light looked up at him and licked his feet. Tan laughed softly. At least she hadn’t changed that much.
Alanna touched the strange, multicolored egg and giggled.
Tan stood and started toward her when she touched the egg again, this time tapping it with her little fist. The egg thumped and then tilted to the side.
Alanna giggled again.
Maelen, Light said, scrambling to her feet. She scurried to the egg and wrapped her stubby tail around it.
What is it?
It is time.
For what?
Light looked at him, and her lizard mouth almost appeared to smile. Do not ask what I don’t know, she said.
Alanna tapped on the egg a third time and again giggled. This time, there was a flash of light from the egg, one that was so similar to…
Did she bond? he asked Light.
There was a bond, the lizard said.
How? The creature hasn’t even hatched!
Not hatched, but then they are both precocious it seems, Light said.
Amia stood and knelt before the egg. Alanna giggled again, and Tan felt a shaping from his daughter, one more controlled than she should be able to perform at her age. The shaping layered over the egg, combining spirit but also pulling on each of the elements. She would be a warrior shaper, and powerful.
The egg surged again with color, a flash of light that blinded him with intensity, and then it tipped to the side. A long crack formed in it.
Alanna laughed, touching the egg, and rested her head on it. Shaping built from her with more power than he would have expected.
No, Tan realized, that wasn’t quite right. Shaping came through her, but not from her. Rather, the shaping came from within the egg, perhaps given power by Alanna, but guided by whatever creature was about to hatch.
Amia glanced at him, and he could only shrug.
Alanna giggled again, the shaping surging before fading once more.
Then the egg hatched.
The Cloud Warrior Saga will continue…
Light of Fire, book 11 of the Cloud Warrior Saga, releases Spring 2017. Sign up here to find out more!
I’m excited to share with you book 1 of a new series, The Lost Prophecy: The Threat of Madness, available for preorder now!
The arrival of the mysterious Magi, along with their near invincible guardians, signals a change. For Jakob, apprentice historian and son of a priest longing for adventure, it begins an opportunity.
When his home is attacked, Jakob ventures out with the his master, traveling alongside the Magi, beginning a journey that will take him far from home and everything he has ever known. As he travels, he gains surprising skill with the sword but begins to develop strange abilities, along with a growing fear that the madness which has claimed so many has come for him.
With a strange darkness rising in the north, and powers long thought lost beginning to return, the key to survival is discovering the answer to a lost prophecy. Only a few remain with the ability to find it, and they begin to suspect that Jakob has a pivotal role to play.
A Series set over a thousand years before events in the Cloud Warrior Saga, The Endless War: Journey of Fire and Night
A warrior who cannot die. A water seeker who wants only to sav
e her people.
Jasn, a warrior known as the Wrecker of Rens, seeks vengeance for the loss of his beloved to the deadly draasin during the Endless War, wanting nothing more than to sacrifice himself in the process. When an old friend offers a dangerous chance for him to finally succeed, the key to understanding what he finds requires him to abandon all that he believes.
Ciara, a water seeker of Rens living on the edge of the arid waste, longs for the strength to help her people. When the great storms don't come to save her people, she will risk everything for her village on a deadly plan that could finally bring them to safety.
As the Endless War continues, both have a part to play in finally stopping it, but Jasn must discover forgiveness and Ciara must find her inner strength if they are to succeed.
About the Author
DK Holmberg currently lives in rural Minnesota where the winter cold and the summer mosquitoes keep him inside and writing. He has two active children who inspire him to keep telling new stories.
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Also by D.K. Holmberg
The Cloud Warrior Saga
Chased by Fire
Bound by Fire
Changed by Fire
Fortress of Fire
Forged in Fire
Serpent of Fire
Servant of Fire
Born of Fire
Broken of Fire
Light of Fire
Others in the Cloud Warrior Series
Prelude to Fire
Light of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 10) Page 23