Broken of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 9)

by D. K. Holmberg

  Amia stared at the fire, a troubled expression on her face. Tan wished the connection between them hadn’t changed and that he would be able to understand what she was thinking. For now, she was closed to him. Would that bond recover after the pregnancy?

  “There’s another reason, Tannen. I may not have the same connection to you since this,” she patted her stomach, “happened, but I like to think that I understand you well enough.”

  Tan sighed. “There is another reason,” he admitted. He pulled one of the chairs away from the wall and offered it to Amia, waiting for her to sit. “There’s many, actually, especially with what’s going on around us, but this is mostly about her. She shapes—the draasin tells me that she shapes and I can see it in the flames,” he said, pointing to the fire, “but I can’t feel it, not as I can when you shape, or others.”

  “Is it something that’s changed for you?” Amia asked.

  “Not for me, and not with others when they shape.” He had the same question and had worried at first that something had changed within him. Knowing when shaping took place around him was valuable, so if that suddenly went missing, he would be weaker for it. He could feel the pressure in his head from Amia, who was currently attempting to shape. “This is something that she does. I don’t think she’s even aware of what she’s doing,” Tan said. “But the shapings… the shapings have potential.”

  “So you want to teach her.”

  “And learn from her.” Only, he didn’t have time to learn, not if he intended to understand this darkness that had attacked Asgar, the temple that Sani had uncovered, and also try to learn where Marin had gone.

  “Are you certain that you’re the best teacher for her? You can reach fire, but you’ve always been a bit… different with your connection to it. Even now, you’re connected to the fire bond, which helps you shape.”

  “I’ve thought about that,” Tan said. “I’m not sure that I can teach her as much about shaping as others could, but that’s not why I brought her here. I think that I can teach her about the elementals. Maybe I should have focused on that when I first met her.”

  A knock at the door interrupted them.

  Maclin stood on the other side of the door and glanced over at Molly, the draasin cradled in her lap. He nodded to Tan. “The Mistress of Bonds awaits you, Maelen.”

  Tan let out a breath. “About time,” he muttered. “Will you remain here with Molly?” he asked Maclin.

  “Of course, Maelen.” He studied her for a moment and then smiled. “She has a way with that creature, does she not?”

  Tan sniffed. “I wonder if maybe it’s not the other way around.”

  The draasin looked over at him with a sparkle in her eyes. She snorted, letting out a small streamer of smoke and flame, before jumping after the bone Molly held above her again.

  Maclin laughed.

  “Amia?” Tan asked.

  She grabbed his hand and they made their way down the hall to the main entrance. Elanne waited for him there. She was dressed in a long brown cloak that had droplets of water falling from it, leaving a small puddle on the floor. Tan pushed the puddle away with a shaping and wrung the rest of the water from her cloak. Elanne looked up as he approached and nodded to him.

  “Maelen. You have summoned me?”

  “Nearly a week ago,” Tan said.

  She frowned. “A week? I would have answered had I known. Are you certain that you sent the message?”

  Tan had asked both Tolman and Maclin to help him find Elanne. Neither had managed it. But then, during that time, he had been gone as well. “Where have you been?” he started before noting the ink staining her fingers. Then he thought that he understood. “You’ve been studying the Records.”

  Her cheeks reddened. “I know that I should be restoring bonds, and that I’m the Mistress of Bonds, but the Records… they have been lost for so long that I only thought—”

  Tan raised his hand. “I think it’s good that you’ve been studying them. That’s actually why I asked you to come. There are questions that I have about the Records that only someone who knows them well can answer.”

  She frowned and glanced around the hall. “What questions about the Records?”

  “The kind that can help explain what happened to us with Marin. I still don’t understand why she attacked and what she was doing with the bonds. Until I do, it puts me in an uncomfortable position of trying to catch up.” These days, with everything else that was happening, he felt that he was trying to catch up to what happened around him far too often.

  “The Records are incomplete, Maelen. Even if you manage to decipher some of what is there…”

  “They’re runes, right?” Amia asked.

  Elanne glanced at Amia and bowed her head. “They are runes, but describing them only as runes is too basic. They are much more than simply runes. There are entire histories scrawled on those stones, hidden by the Seals. That is why the Records were valued. Even the Utu Tonah understood that.”

  Tan tensed at the mention of the Utu Tonah but realized that he shouldn’t. “They’re incomplete,” Tan agreed. “Or were.”

  “Were? What do you mean?”

  “I think it’s time I show you.”

  They stood in the entrance to the cavern, a faint wind gusting down into the lower reaches. The air from above was cool, but below, he sensed the warmth of the draasin and the draw of fire.

  “What is this?” Elanne asked.

  “This is the secret that Par hid,” Tan answered.

  He carried her into the cavern. Amia had remained behind with Molly, choosing to watch over her. Tan strained to connect to Amia, using the spirit bond between them, but felt her only as a vague sense in his mind. That sense diminished with each passing day. Soon, he suspected, it would disappear altogether, as if the baby absorbed their bond.

  Tan shook away that thought. Now was not the time to worry about the nature of his relationship. Amia and he were still connected, and with their coming child, they shared a lasting connection.

  “What secret? What does this have to do with the Records?” Elanne asked.

  Tan lowered them to the ground on a shaping of wind. Using fire, and with saa drawn to it, eagerly claiming the flame Tan shaped into existence, he lit the cavern.

  The two draasin rested amongst the eggs. The larger of the two, the first hatchling, had grown even over the last few days and now propped his head on top of one of the eggs. As Tan appeared, he lifted his head and snorted fire. The other draasin wrapped her tail around another egg and barely moved when he entered. A pile of bones and the remaining meat that Balsun had acquired for the draasin lay nearby. In that, the cavern had already begun to remind Tan of the draasin den in Ethea.

  Elanne gasped. “What is this place?”

  Tan approached the draasin but Elanne remained back, standing near the entrance to the cavern. “This is the fourth Seal,” he said.

  She looked around before focusing on Tan—or rather, the draasin—again. “I see nothing of the Seal.”

  Tan stopped in the middle of the draasin eggs. The eggs circled the Seal, as if creating a barrier around them. “Nothing?”

  She shook her head.

  The first hatchling stood and jumped at Tan. Elanne gasped as he wrapped himself around Tan’s shoulders and then rested his head on top of Tan’s. With the draasin growing as he did, it became less and less comfortable for him to do this. Soon the hatchling wouldn’t be able to ride him as he did. There was a part of Tan that realized he would miss those times. He hadn’t been around Asgar and his sister much when they were little. After hatching, and then getting abducted by Incendin, the hatchlings had been much larger by the time that Asboel had allowed Tan around them much. But these draasin were still small, though they wouldn’t remain that way for much longer.

  “When I first found this place, I thought the eggs were the only reason that it was protected,” Tan said. “Tolman brought me here and showed me the secret of Par. I don’t th
ink that he expected me to be able to reach it,” he said with a laugh. “But there is a connection here, one I think I was meant to find.”

  Elanne managed to come forward a few steps. “There are so many!”

  “Nearly two dozen,” Tan said. “I didn’t realize there were any eggs remaining. Hatching them has been… interesting.”

  “And two have hatched?”

  “Three.”

  She sucked in a breath. “Three draasin of Par. Had he found them…”

  Tan nodded. That was what he had feared, but then, now he wasn’t sure that the Utu Tonah had been entirely after the draasin. He had wanted to bond the draasin, but there seemed another reason for his coming to Par, one that wasn’t completely about the draasin and the bonds. Maybe Tan would never understand, and maybe he wasn’t meant to, but he suspected that the Utu Tonah viewed the Records as nearly as valuable as the draasin eggs.

  “Here,” Tan said, stepping aside so that Elanne could see the Seal.

  She approached slowly, lowering her eyes when the first hatchling hissed at her and pushing with a wind shaping as he sent steam her way. Tan touched the top of his head, trying to soothe him. The draasin growled low in his throat and nipped at Tan’s finger.

  When Elanne reached him, she stared at the seal and gasped again. She dropped to her knees and started running her hands over it.

  “How did you find it?” she asked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Tan shook his head. “I found it when I found the draasin. I didn’t know what it was at first. Then you helped me with the others, and we managed to stop Marin. But there is something about this Seal that makes it more important. The draasin here tell me that the ancients of Par viewed this Seal differently than the others.”

  “That makes it even more essential that the Mistress of Bonds have access, Maelen.”

  “I wanted to see if there was anything that I could learn about it first. I needed to know if there was anything dangerous here.”

  She sighed and then stood, dusting her hands off. “And what did you find, Maelen? Were you able to uncover the secrets of Par? Were you able to decipher some danger from our Records that you thought to hide from the people who should possess them?”

  “I haven’t been able to figure out anything,” Tan admitted. “And that’s the problem. I need answers, Elanne. Something is happening that I think the ancients knew about, something that I fear Marin might be connected to.” He hadn’t told Amia that yet, but then, he wanted to protect her as much as possible from whatever he could. Maybe he shouldn’t even have brought her to Vatten. The archivist might be one of the Aeta, but if he were anything like the other archivists, he might serve a different master. Tan hoped that he truly was committed to Roine, and at least this time, the King Regent knew about spirit shaping and could protect himself from it, but that didn’t mean that Tan had completely forgiven them for all that had happened because of their desire for power.

  “What kind of things?” she asked.

  He told her about what happened to Asgar, and how the darkness had seemed like it was something alive, and he shared with her his concern that the darkness wanted to change the elementals.

  “You are the Maelen. You will protect them,” she said.

  “I will do what I can to protect them,” Tan agreed, “but I need to understand. Have you found anything in the Records?”

  Elanne glanced down again at the Seal. “Are there any others that you’re hiding from me?”

  Tan shook his head. “I should not have. I should have trusted you. Without you, and your Bond Wardens, I’m not sure that we would have fended off whatever Marin attempted the last time.”

  Elanne looked at the draasin curled around his neck and then shook her head. “And I should not remain angry with you, Maelen. You have done nothing but serve the people of Par since your return. I… I think that surprises me most of all.”

  He stuck out his hand. “Work together?”

  Elanne nodded and took his hand. “I would like that.”

  “Good.” He turned and swept his gaze around the room. “Now, I need your help to understand not only these Seals, but what else might be stored in the Records. Do you think you can help with that?” She nodded. “If you find reference to an Alast Temple, that would be helpful as well.”

  Her breath caught. “Temple?” When he nodded, she said, “I might be able to help with that. Come with me, Maelen.”

  They landed near the Seal in the middle of the city, where Tan had first discovered Marin hiding. Sunlight streamed through gaps in the buildings and burned down on his neck. He shifted his loose cloak, feeling too warm for it. Elanne, dressed in a thin wrap that she draped around her neck, didn’t seem bothered by the heat of the day.

  Voices from the city called around them. Many came from children running through the streets, and Tan heard the sound of dogs barking, and even a few cats. Other, more exotic animals moved along the streets as well, often carrying people as they went, but they were silent. Tan realized that he would need to spend more time in Par to understand the people, especially if he remained committed to leading here.

  “When you mentioned that,” Elanne said, grabbing his arm and pulling him along, as if she forgot that he was the Utu Tonah and that she should fear him, “there is something here. It is faded, barely more than a reference.” She paused at the runes marked along the walls and then tapped on one. “Here. This is what I remembered seeing. The rune here, you see this?” she asked.

  Tan leaned forward, studying the mark as well as he could but saw nothing but a series of faded lines that made little sense to him. His knowledge of runes was a combination of knowledge gained working with the First Mother and knowledge that he’d taken when using a spirit shaping on a rune master when they thought to attack in the kingdoms. But that knowledge was not enough to help him decipher what had been lost to time. Elanne, though, seemed to be able to work through it.

  “What does it say?”

  She tapped the runes and traced her fingers along them. “You mentioned a temple by name.”

  “Alast,” Tan said. He still couldn’t shake the uneasy sense that he had from the temple itself, the way that the bright white stone seemed to push back shapings, as if refusing to acknowledge the elemental power that surged around it.

  Elanne frowned and leaned forward. “This does not say anything about a particular name,” she said. “This speaks of temples of power. Light and dark. But…” She sighed. “I thought that perhaps I might have something of use to you.”

  Tan studied the runes that she had pointed to. “Light and dark?”

  She nodded. “It is… vague. The language of that time is different than what we use. Their terms for light and dark are not the same as ours. It could mean many things.”

  Tan couldn’t help but notice the connection to what Honl had told him. There had been comments about how he would have to be the light. That, combined with what he’d seen attacking Asgar, left him wondering if they were all tied together. But if that was the case, what did it mean?

  He stepped back and surveyed the runes arrayed around him. “You have this place protected now?” he asked.

  “I am the Mistress of Bonds. These are the most sacred bonds that our people possess.” Tan glanced at her. “Yes, Maelen, I have these bonds protected. The Wardens see to it that none enter here. These will not fall into any further disarray. If I can, I will restore them to what they were before.”

  With as faded as most of these were, Tan wondered if that would be possible. Some of the runes were cracked, and whatever intent had been behind them had been lost to time. Others he thought might be able to be restored, but they would take enormous amounts of time. And if there was something more taking place, if there really was darkness coming, Tan didn’t know if he had the time to wait.

  It was even more reason that he wanted Honl to arrive. The elemental could sweep through here and would likely be able to interpret everything within
the records within moments. With him gone… without his connection to the evolved wind elemental, Tan would somehow have to find the answers on his own.

  “Search the Records,” Tan said. “See what you can find that might help.”

  “I will do what I can, Maelen.”

  13

  TEACHING FIRE

  Tan sat in a small room within the tower, legs crossed in front of him and Molly opposite him. The hearth next to them was dark and cold. He tried to keep his mind on the task in front of him, but his mind wandered.

  The third hatchling crawled along the wall behind them both, sniffing along the cracks, and occasionally would lick the wall, running her tongue along the stone. Where she did, the stone was left blackened and, with what he could tell from earth sensing, changed.

  What do you do to the stone?

  This girl will be reckless until she learns control, the stunted hatchling said.

  Tan noted again how mature the draasin seemed, much more than she should be given that she was barely more than a few weeks old. That had to be from the spirit shaping that had been required to keep her alive, but he still marveled at the difference between her and the other two hatchlings. Whereas they wanted nothing more than to eat and remain in the den, content to grow and chew on bones and stay with the eggs, this hatchling preferred company and sampling the world around her.

  How will what you do prevent her from being reckless?

  The draasin snorted at him, producing more flame that she had before. Not prevent. Protect. With that, she continued to make her way along the wall, running her tongue as she did. Power radiated from the small draasin, surging into the stone and blackening the walls.

  Tan also noted that she hadn’t changed size in the last week, not as the other hatchlings had. She had fed, but her appetite was different.