“What did you find, Benjan?” she asked.
He pointed to a place on the ground near his feet. Tan leaned close, pushing between the other men clustered around Sani, ignoring their stares. A single piece of pure white stone protruded from the ground.
“Could be coral,” Sani said. She pulled her hair behind her head and leaned toward the white stone, tracing a finger over it.
“Or Alast,” Benjan said. “Pure white, it is. Just like the texts claim.”
“Not Alast. This is probably marble,” another man said, leaning near. He wore a single hoop in one ear and his hair was shorn close, revealing a jagged scar atop his head. “Too cold for Alast, mistress. This is probably nothing more than ornament, not the temple. You know how that—”
She cut him off with a glance.
“How it what?” Tan asked. “What is Alast?”
Sani clasped her hands behind her back as she stood and motioned for the men around them to give her space. Her eyes remained fixed on the ground, staring at the piece of stone protruding from the ground, freed from the surrounding dirt.
Tan used earth sensing to probe how deep this piece of stone went, but it seemed to resist his attempts. Hounds? he asked.
Three of them came to the edge of the pit and stared down. Tan heard the ground rumble slightly from the effort of the hounds before falling silent once more. He didn’t know what they did, but there was a mixture of earth and fire to it.
This resists us, the nearest hound told him. He was a large creature, nearly as large as Kota, and she was the largest hound that Tan had encountered. Dark black circles ringed his eyes, giving them a haunted appearance, and streaks of black went down his back.
Resists? Tan repeated, turning back to the stone. How would something resist the elementals, especially elementals of earth?
“This is what you search for, isn’t it?” Tan asked.
“I… I do not know,” Sani said.
“You don’t know, or you don’t want to tell me? What was—is—the Alast Temple?”
Sani looked over Tan’s shoulder to the excavators of Xsa before pulling her attention back to him. “Little is known about the temple,” she said.
“You seem to know something. Your men seem to know something.”
“They know as much as I do. The Alast Temple was lost to Vathansa over a thousand years ago. Only the memory of its existence remains, but even that has faded over time. The people of Xsa, those who descend from ancient Vathansa, know of the temple. It was a place of power. That much is remembered. As is the stone. Pure white, and warm throughout the year, as if heated by the sun.”
Sani leaned to the white protruding from the ground and ran her hand over it. She shook her head slightly. “This… this is cool. This is not Alast.”
Tan crouched next to her and shaped the earth away from the white stone. As he did, more of it became clear. He touched the surface and found it cool as she suggested. “Maybe centuries in the earth have weakened its power,” Tan suggested. “Maybe there was never any real heat to it at all, only that which would have been reflected.”
Sani’s eyes narrowed. “Perhaps it is as you say, Athan, and that is all there is to it. Or maybe Jenis is right, and this is nothing more than a lost sculpture. There would be value in even that relic.” She stood and dusted her hands on her dark pants. “We will continue to clear the stone and see what we find. Will you continue to help?”
Tan stared at the white stone, his hope for what they might find fading. Maybe there would be nothing here, and his time would be wasted. From his connection to the fire bond and to Kota, he knew that Asgar grew stronger. Soon he would need to return and find what the elemental knew, or at least remembered about what had happened to him.
But, seeing Sani’s face, for now, he would remain in Vatten. He nodded.
The pit stretched deeper than before, and Tan still stood near the base, shaping as he went, pushing earth up and over the edge of the pit, drawing on the strength of the hounds to help. By now, a dozen hounds had gathered, each standing at the edge, watching as he shaped. They lent their strength and Tan shamelessly pulled from it, able to shape much more than he would have otherwise.
The excavators, those men from Xsa, worked with him, but now that the white stone continued to emerge from the ground, he needed less and less of their cautious approach. Sani had wanted the men of Xsa to begin the process, fearing that Tan might shape wildly and without any real focus, potentially damaging anything that they found, but he remained careful as he went, using the strange absence of sense within the earth to guide him as he pulled dirt and stone away.
Amia stood upon the edge, one of the hounds nearby, blocking her from getting too close. Tan smiled at that. He hadn’t even asked the hounds to help keep her safe, though he suspected Kota had. They chose to protect her at the same time as they lent him their strength. What he sensed of her through the bond told him that she understood and didn’t resent the effort.
Assan had returned from Ethea and now stood next to Sani, too close to the emerging white stone for Tan to work easily. He’d already asked them to step aside nearly a dozen times, but they continued to get closer, especially once the shape of the temple began to emerge from the rock.
Tan no longer doubted that this was the temple that Sani sought. And with the strange resistance to shaping that he and the hounds detected, he understood that there was something more to it. Maybe it was only the power that Sani suspected. Or maybe there was more to it.
“Could you move back?” Tan asked again.
Sani pulled her hand back from the wall of the temple and shuffled a few steps toward him. When Assan didn’t move, Tan pulled him back on a shaping of earth, sliding him across the ground.
Tan hadn’t known what to expect when Sani had mentioned trying to find a temple. What emerged was nothing like he would have expected. Shaped like a pyramid, the sides sloped outward, forcing him to expand the pit as they went. Thankfully, there were no cities in this part of Vatten. There were barely any other people here, which surprised Tan, given how close they were to the shore.
With each shaping, he had to step back as well. The hounds aided the shaping, no longer needing his guidance, understanding what he intended. Even when Tan’s shaping eased, the hounds continued to move earth, pulling it aside. Always there was the strange absence of any elemental energy as he neared the temple. At least he understood why he hadn’t been able to detect the elementals when he’d first come here.
And now the temple towered over him, easily fifty feet or more over his head. The walls of the pit sloped away, letting more and more sunlight into the pit, so that the white stone of Alast caught the fading light of the sun, making the temple itself almost seem to glow.
“Has the stone warmed at all?” he asked Sani.
She shook her head. “It is the same.”
“How much deeper do you think we have to go?” Tan asked.
Sani frowned. “Already this is more than I would have imagined. This temple… this is magnificent. And so well preserved.”
“There is no way to enter,” Assan remarked.
“The way will come,” she said.
Tan wondered how deep he would have to dig to reveal a way into the temple. A part of him wanted to shape his way in, but given the way the stone resisted shaping, he wasn’t sure that he would even be able to do that. Curiosity as much as anything continued to spur him onward.
The other men of Xsa worked to clear stone away from the edge of the temple, running their shovels along the sloped walls of the pyramid. As they did this, Tan thought that maybe it was unnecessary, that he would be able to shape the stone away from the wall, but he found it simpler to use the leading edge they created and pull the earth away from the temple.
One of the men on the far side of the pit shouted.
Tan stopped his shaping and followed Assan and Sani as they made their way around to the other side of the temple. With the massive pyramid eme
rging from the earth, he considered shaping himself over and carrying the others with him, but he needed to conserve his energy. How much longer would he need to shape before they managed to find either the lowest part of the temple or some way to access the inside?
When they came around the edge and Tan saw the other excavators, he realized that they had found the way in. Where the rest of the temple appeared carved from a single piece of this pure white stone, a long, perfectly straight line ran where the excavators worked.
“Could this be the doorway?” Assan asked.
Sani ran her finger along it. “It is possible,” she said. Looking to Tan, she asked, “Could you focus your shaping here, Athan?”
Tan sent the image to the hounds, showing what he needed of them. The ground groaned in response.
“Have your men step back,” Tan instructed.
When they did, he began his shaping, pulling earth and rock away from the temple. Every time that his shaping came too close to the white stone, he felt the strange emptiness, a void of shaping. The more that he sensed it, the more that it unsettled him.
Slowly, the door to the temple began to emerge. At first, it was only the topmost part of the door, but then long, dark lines ran perpendicular to the first, spaced nearly twenty paces apart. Other than that, there was no change to the stone or the temple, and there still seemed no entrance.
They reached the bottom of the doorway, and, it seemed, the bottom of the temple. No more white stone appeared, only more black earth.
Tan sagged back against the wall of the pit, looking up at what they had uncovered. In the fading light of the sun, shadows slipped along the edge of the temple, almost shimmering. A cool wind gusted from above, and Tan shivered.
“You will stop?” Sani asked.
“I think this is all of it.”
“But we have not found a way to enter.”
“I don’t know that I can help with that,” Tan said. “I uncovered the temple, but more than that…” He shook his head. “More than that might be beyond me, at least right now. This shaping has exhausted me.”
Sani opened her mouth as if to say something more before clamping it closed again.
Assan made his way to Tan. “You have served well, Athan. Much more than King Theondar promised.”
“I’m not sure that he should have promised anything.”
“Only that you would do what you could to help.”
“What now?” Tan asked.
Assan looked at Sani and then at the temple. “Now? Now we must study and see what we can learn from the ancient texts. This is a great find, Athan. Thank you for what you have done.”
Assan returned to Sani and they pulled their heads together, talking quietly.
Tan shaped himself to the surface and stood next to Amia and the dark-eyed hound.
“You’ve finished?” she asked.
“For now.”
“You don’t sound pleased.”
“I… I’m not sure what to feel. Sani spoke of the temple having power, and seeming to be heated by the sun. There is no heat, but I don’t deny that there is some power to it. Within the stone, there’s an absence of elemental energy.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what it means.”
“Nothing that will help you understand what you came here for.”
“No,” he said with a sigh.
“Then we should return. Check on Asgar. And you have a nation to rule.”
Tan laughed.
After he thanked the hounds, they departed, disappearing in a flash of brown fur, moving more quickly than Tan could believe possible. He pulled a traveling shaping, drawing Amia to him, and readied to depart. As he did, he cast one more glance at the temple, trying to understand the uneasy way that it made him feel, but came up with nothing.
He sighed and then shaped them back to Par.
11
CHANGED ELEMENTALS
The cavern was dark when they returned, and Tan shaped fire into existence in order to see. Saa swarmed to the shaping and took control, holding fire in something like a tightly controlled ball of light, pushing back the darkness.
Asgar lay along the back wall of the cavern, though he had moved since the last time Tan had seen him. One wing rolled underneath him, and the other was folded against his side. His chest rose and fell regularly. Heat shimmered around him, more than had been there before. From that alone, Tan knew that he would be alright.
“He’s awoken a few times,” Cianna said, stepping into the light. Her red hair stood wildly on her head, and soot stained her forehead. Tan doubted that she’d left the cavern in the time that they’d been gone.
“Where is Sashari? And the hound?” Tan doubted that Sashari had revealed Kota’s name to Cianna, but didn’t actually know whether Sashari even knew it. The connection to the fire bond would let her know much about the hounds, but the hounds were more of earth than of fire.
“They hunt.”
“Together?” Tan asked.
Cianna shrugged. “Don’t ask me. They disappeared and Sashari told me that I was not needed for this hunt.” She couldn’t hide the hurt in her voice.
That was strange, but he would need to focus on understanding that later.
For now, his attention was all for Asgar. He approached the elemental and rested a hand on the draasin’s side. Heat radiated reassuringly from him once more. Asgar. Tan reached for him gently, not wanting to disturb his rest but needing to know that he would be well.
The draasin moved, dragging his head across the stone of the cavern, and propped open one eye. Maelen. You have returned.
I have returned.
You left.
You were with Sashari. With Kota. I went to search for answers.
Asgar blinked his eyes closed and pulled his head back, looking away from Tan. What did you find?
Only more questions. He made his way around to Asgar’s head and stood near his friend. Do you remember what happened?
I remember falling. Something caught me.
That was me.
You should not have needed to catch me. If I cannot fly, what will I become?
You will recover. There is nothing wrong with your body.
No. Asgar folded his wings over himself, as if trying to hide from Tan.
What else do you remember?
Darkness. Hatred. Cold.
What was it?
I do not know. Asgar opened his eyes and fixed Tan with a golden-eyed stare. Had you not been there, Maelen, I do not know what would have happened. I fought as long as I could, but the darkness… it wanted to come inside of me. It would have changed me. I felt its desire.
Tan would have thought that impossible, but then, he had seen how elementals could be changed. Hadn’t he been responsible for changes that happened to Honl and other elementals? Hadn’t he brought the hounds back into the fire bond? Hadn’t he brought kaas back into the fire bond? If he could change the elementals, then what stopped another creature from doing the same?
I will discover what this was, Tan said.
You should not.
If it can attack the draasin, it can attack other elementals.
Asgar sniffed out a streamer of heat laced with only a hint of flame. Then it can also attack Maelen. The draasin are strong, but we are fire only. You, Maelen, you would be a greater prize.
Tan shivered.
He patted Asgar. Rest, friend. We will hunt together soon.
Asgar’s tail twitched once and then fell still.
Tan turned back to Cianna and Amia. They spoke quietly to each other, and Amia looked up when he approached.
“Did you find anything?” she asked.
“Only another thing to fear.” When Cianna frowned, Tan explained, “He says that whatever attacked him attempted to work its way into him. It would change him.”
“Can that happen?” Cianna asked.
Amia covered her mouth with one hand and rested her other on her stomach. “Given what Tan has done with the elementa
ls, and the look on his face, it seems that he thinks the answer is yes.”
“I… changed the wind elemental. I added spirit to him, and that turned him into something more than simply wind. Now,” he thought of Honl, sending another request for his bonded elemental to join him, “he is different. A combination of spirit and wind. An elemental that did not exist before. And may not exist again.” Tan sighed. “So, yes. I think that it can happen.”
“Would you be able to change them back?” Cianna asked, looking toward the opening in the cavern. Tan suspected that she called to Sashari as she did.
“I don’t know.”
That bothered him the most. Both the not knowing and the possibility that the elementals could be changed and influenced by whatever that darkness was.
And why now? Why had they not seen it before? What had changed?
If anything, the elementals should be safer. He had rescued the draasin, had helped hatch three new of the fire elementals, and he had prevented the other elementals of Par from being forcibly bonded. Even in the kingdoms, the elementals had begun to return and bind to shapers once more. Wasn’t that a good thing? Shouldn’t the shapers be able to keep the elementals safe?
But if the draasin could be attacked, others could be as well. And if it wanted to change him, if it wanted to turn the draasin into something else, Tan couldn’t allow that, could he?
He looked at Amia, thinking to ask her the same, but she stared into the distance, her hands wrapped around her stomach.
12
RECORDS OF PAR
“Are you certain that you should have brought her back here?” Amia asked Tan.
She had been mostly quiet since they returned to Par. Even knowing that Asgar would recover hadn’t brightened her spirits. Strangely, she had been spending time with Cianna, someone she had always made a point of avoiding.
“She speaks to the elementals,” Tan said, looking at Molly, who sat near the fire in the library at the estate. The flames bent toward her, though Tan could feel no shaping and sensed no communication with saa. The youngest hatchling crawled across her lap, jumping after the plump chicken leg that Molly held in the air, forcing the draasin to jump. Every so often, the hatchling would flap her wings and nearly had enough force behind the attempt to fly. When she did, Molly giggled and handed the meat to the draasin as a reward. “She’s the only one that I’ve found so far. I think I needed to bring her back here.”
Broken of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 9) Page 9