Broken of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 9)

by D. K. Holmberg

  How unlike the other draasin would she be? What effect would his adding spirit to her be? And in doing that, how was what he had done that much different than what the darkness had intended for Asgar?

  He pulled his attention back to Molly, needing to work with her. That was what he had promised by bringing her here. But he couldn’t shake the concern that he felt, or the dark thoughts that rolled through his mind.

  That sought to change him so that he could be used. Your intention is to help. The Mother sees the difference, even if you do not.

  Tan glanced back at the hatchling. She sat on her back legs, watching him. Her tiny eyes practically glowed. You know what happened?

  I do not know more than you. Asgar hides from the fire bond. He fears reconnecting.

  Tan hadn’t shared the draasin’s name with her before, he was certain of that. And he didn’t think that the draasin shared their names in the bond with the hatchlings, at least not until they were ready.

  What can you tell me? Tan asked. He hadn’t considered this draasin as a resource, but she was bonded with spirit, and in that way would be more like Honl than the others. She might be able to help him understand what had happened.

  I do not know. I have not been aware for long.

  Tan laughed and Molly glanced over at him. “Keep trying to reach fire,” he said. “Feel it burning and call to it.”

  She smiled and nodded.

  Tan returned his attention to the hatchling. Were you aware when Asgar was attacked?

  Aware, but not. I don’t know how to explain it better than that. When the attack came, Asgar pulled away from the bond.

  That would explain why Tan lost the connection to him. Why would he pull away from the bond?

  He thought to protect it.

  Tan wondered if the attack on Asgar could even have reached into the fire bond. Would the darkness have managed to penetrate it? And if it had, what could have happened?

  I need to understand the darkness, Tan said.

  Yes, Maelen, you do.

  I have asked others for help, but there is only so much that they know. The others, the Mistress of Bonds and the archivist, do not have the same appreciation for the elementals.

  The draasin snorted. There are few with your understanding, Maelen. The Mother chose well when she laid her hand upon you.

  Can you help?

  It felt strange asking a hatchling draasin for help, but she was more than a hatchling. Tan could see that already. In some ways, she appeared little more than a hatchling, but it others… in others, she seemed wise beyond what she should, as if the bond with spirit granted her an understanding. And maybe it did. Honl had gained understanding through the connection with spirit, enough that he became even more aware than the typical elemental, if such a thing were even possible.

  That is why I am here, she answered.

  The comment seemed to carry a great implication than her answer, but Tan didn’t have the chance to question more.

  Molly drew his attention by laughing as a smolder of flame began in the hearth.

  As it took hold, saa leapt toward it, joining with the smoldering beginning and building it quickly into something more. Once burning brightly, the flames leaned toward Molly, as if they wanted to touch her.

  Tan pushed back on them, tamping them somewhat. Molly might have potential, and would be able to speak to the elemental, but he wasn’t sure that she would be immune to flame yet. In time, much as Tan had become immune to fire, he suspected she would gain that ability. But not now.

  “Excellent,” he said. “What did you do differently?”

  He tried thinking of how he had learned to shape fire, but his connection to it had always been different. First through the draasin, and then through the fire bond. Would he even know how to reach fire as a mere shaper?

  Molly lowered her eyes and turned away from him. “You don’t want to know.”

  “I asked, didn’t I?”

  “I… I got mad at it. When it didn’t work, I got mad.”

  Tan laughed. “Fire can be different than other elements,” he said. “It responds to emotion, and induces emotion, where the other elements might not.” He thought of Cianna and the way she oozed something like seduction. And he thought of the anger that had burned in him when he had nearly turned into one of the lisincend. There had been nothing but emotion then.

  “It’s okay that I got mad at it?” she asked.

  Tan smiled. “I think you have to reach fire whatever way you can. Once you make the connection, and once you can reach it easily, every time that you want to, then you’ll be able to figure out which way is the best for you.”

  “How do you do it? Do you get mad at it?”

  Tan studied the fire and pulled on it with a shaping. As he did, he focused on how he shaped fire. It came through him, burning within him, but he also pulled on the elementals around him, often without even realizing that was what he was doing. Even now, he drew upon saa and the hatchling, surprisingly enough.

  “Not mad,” he said. “But I have a bond to fire that is different than what you will reach. You will either speak to the elementals or you will master fire. I spoke to fire first and learned to shape second.”

  “But you bonded the draasin.” She fixed the hatchling with a longing expression.

  “I did, and it’s possible that you will too. Or maybe you will bond with saa. Here, in Par, saa is a very powerful elemental.” He thought saa more likely for Molly, especially with the way the elemental had commented on her potential.

  “It is?”

  Tan nodded. “Think of how quickly the fire took hold, with nothing more than a spark. In the kingdoms, saa might be there, but saa wouldn’t be drawn quite the same.”

  “I… I only managed to spark it a little,” Molly said.

  “And from a tiny spark can come a great flame.” He pulled fire away, directing it down and into the stone. As he did, he realized that the hatchling pulled on the connection to fire and drew it from the stone and into her. Tan sent a flicker, barely more than that, into the hearth, and held it there. “See how the spark glows? Watch it. And know that this can become much more.”

  He released the spark and saa raced to the flame, filling the hearth with the glow from the fire.

  “When you begin to accept the control, you’ll be able to accomplish much more. You can start with this,” he said, reducing flame to almost nothing, “and make it into this,” he said, pushing power and shaping into the fire, leading to the heat surging and the flames leaping bright.

  Molly gasped and laughed. The flames bent again, this time faster than Tan could react.

  They touched her, wrapping around her. She screamed.

  Tan pulled on the fire and drew away the flames, afraid that she had been burned.

  The draasin leapt onto her lap and ran her tongue across the girl.

  But Molly had been unharmed.

  She looked up at Tan, a question in her eyes. Her clothes were signed, but not as much as they should have been with the way that fire had just burned her. None of her skin had been harmed, leaving her no more injured than she had been before the shaping.

  “I’m sorry, Molly,” Tan said. “That shouldn’t have happened. It was my fault.”

  His—but then, Molly had influenced the flames as well. Her joyful clapping had caused the flames to fold toward her, and thankfully she hadn’t been harmed. Maybe she really was better connected to fire than he realized.

  Saa protected her, the hatchling said.

  Saa?

  Saa wanted to show its strength. That’s why the fire changed as it did. But saa can be overly eager. This one will be potent in these lands, Maelen, but she will need guidance or fire will pull her too strongly.

  Tan had wondered whether Molly would be able to bond the draasin, or whether her connection tied her to saa, and this answered the question.

  Molly watched him, waiting for him to say something more. He forced a smile, not certain
what it meant that she would be so potently connected to saa but determined to understand. What did it matter if it was one more thing for him to worry about?

  “Let’s try again,” he said.

  Standing atop the tower gave Tan a clear vista of all of surrounding Par. The city spread outward around the tower, with all roads leading toward it. In that way, Tan knew that the tower had preceded even the Utu Tonah and represented the oldest of Par.

  Runes worked onto the sides of the tower had been left by those ancient people. Those runes—or bonds, as the Par people called them—were tied to the Records. Tan was certain of that, only he didn’t know quite how they were tied. More questions.

  Wind whistled around his head, sending his hair flying wildly. It needed cut, having grown too long with a beard to match, but the length as well as the beard fit in here in Par. Not in the kingdoms. There, clean-shaven was the norm.

  It felt strange not to have Asgar sitting next to him atop the tower. The draasin had claimed this space as a way to watch over Par for Tan, and the bones resting in the corner were proof. With a shaping of fire and pressing earth, he pulverized the bones, leaving them as nothing more than dust to float into the air.

  Tan’s connection to the fire bond told him that Asgar was awake and moved more than he had in days. Sashari remained with him, though he sensed a growing unease from her about remaining in these lands too long. She was more like Asboel in preferring her home. Asgar didn’t mind the change and welcomed the challenge within Par.

  The hatchlings in the cavern touched on the fire bond as well. They were fed and full, nestling around the eggs. Surprisingly, Tan recognized a hint of something from the eggs as well. Should they touch on the fire bond already? He had expected them to need to hatch first, but there was the lightest touch, barely anything. Had he not been so attuned to the fire bond, he doubted that he would even detect it.

  Maybe he’d have to work with the other eggs sooner than he realized. The idea of hatching too many too soon worried him. Each hatchling had to feed on the fire bond, and he worried that it would weaken the bond. With so many eggs remaining, what would happen to the bond if they all fed at the same time?

  Probably nothing. The fire bond represented the purest connection to Fire, and it would not allow the draasin to consume Fire, but Tan still worried.

  Then there was the third hatchling. She rested on his shoulder today, her claws digging into his shoulders and her tail pressed down his shirt and along his spine. Since the end of their work with Molly the previous day, the hatchling had refused to leave his side. Had it been either of the other two hatchlings, he might have simply left her in the cavern and been done with it. That was how Asboel and Sashari had raised Asgar and his sister. But this hatchling was different.

  She looked at him and ran her tongue along his face. Where it touched, a thick, sticky saliva clung to him and dried quickly.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  Her tail twitched.

  She remained tightly entwined in the fire bond, but had not changed in size. At first, he thought that imagined, but the longer the draasin remained with him, the more certain of it that he was. She ate, but not with the same eagerness that the other draasin possessed.

  Do not worry for me, Maelen.

  You should be larger by now.

  She snorted and stuck her tongue out, running it across her lips. Her thin wings unfolded and then curled back against her body, as if she decided against using them. Perhaps. Or perhaps I am as the Mother intended.

  Tan patted her on the head, wondering if it had more to do with the Mother or what Tan had done. By healing her, by using spirit as he had with Honl, he had changed her. There would be consequences. With the elementals, there were always consequences when things were changed.

  Why are you here, Maelen?

  To clear my head.

  You would have it emptied?

  Tan frowned as a pressure built, and he felt something working through his mind. Spirit, he had no doubt, and coming from the draasin. As a spirit shaper himself, he should not be influenced by spirit, but then the draasin was nothing like she should be.

  Unless she was everything that she was meant to be.

  She licked his face again.

  Tan wiped it away and shifted her so that she didn’t dig so deeply into his shoulder. He kept expecting to bleed where the draasin sat on him, but he never did.

  I need to take care of some of these problems, Tan said to the hatchling. And I can do them only one at a time.

  He thought about the different issues that he had to understand. There was finding Marin and learning whether she remained a threat. There was the buried temple in Vatten that made him uncomfortable. There was the darkness that had attacked Asgar and posed a risk to the elementals. And then there were the draasin eggs. On top of that, he had to figure out how to rule in Par while working through each of these issues, and find a way to reconnect with Amia. The pregnancy should have brought them closer together, but instead, it only seemed to push them slowly, and steadily, apart.

  He needed guidance but no longer had anyone to guide him. Once it would have been Roine, and then, after their bond strengthened, it had been Asboel. Normally he would think to go to Amia, but she had worries of her own, worries that had grown stronger since Asgar’s attack. Tan didn’t need to have the spirit bond connection to know that she worried about their unborn child and what it meant to bring a child into such a dangerous world. After defeating the Utu Tonah, it was supposed to be easier. They were supposed to have peace. But now… now they had nothing of the sort, only more uncertainty.

  The wind shifted, carrying a hint of the sea. Tan stood more upright, looking into the distance, but he saw nothing.

  What do you expect to find? the hatchling asked.

  When would Honl return? Eventually, he suspected the wind elemental would need to come back to him, or at least, would want to come back, but he hadn’t been able to even reach Honl well enough to ask for his help.

  A friend, he answered, still hopeful that Honl would appear, but the wind shifted again, bringing only the scents of Par, and nothing more.

  14

  MASTER OF WIND

  Tan stood in the open room that had housed the Utu Tonah when Tan had first come to Par-shon. Unlike when he had first arrived, when there had been dozens of bonded shapers, each currying favor with the Utu Tonah, now the men and women before him had a different purpose. Tan intended for them to rule, but he wanted them to do so as they once would have in Par, not under his hand as Par-shon.

  Tolman stood behind Tan, clutching a roll of paper. “They have all come as you requested.”

  The assembled council was missing one person since the last time he had convened them, but then, when he had done that, he had made a point of destroying the bonds they possessed before he understood the purpose of them. At least that was one mistake he would not—and probably could not—make again.

  Without Marin, there was a void, one that the others seemed to sense as well as Tan. Almost as if missing the Mistress of Souls left a gap. Given how she had served, Tan wasn’t sure that filling her post made sense. Did he dare risk another trying to claim the same level of authority? The Mistress of Souls had more weight with the people of Par than most, in some ways more than even Tan would manage. Did he risk another?

  Elanne stepped forward and tipped her head in a deep bow. The others copied her, and one—Leon, the Master of Coin—bobbed his head so low that he almost fell over. Elanne stifled a smile.

  “Please stand,” Tan said.

  “Yes, Utu Tonah,” most of the assembled council said at once.

  Not Elanne. She had said nothing, and watched him with a curious expression. She knew what he intended, but Elanne had made it clear that she wasn’t certain how well it would be received. She worried that the others might think him insincere, warning that there had been enough danger with the Utu Tonah playing his council and favored bonded off each other.r />
  “I have asked the council to join me to discuss the rule of Par.”

  He paused, letting the words sink in.

  “Par-shon is yours to rule,” Helles, the Master of Trade, said. He was a thin man, with intelligent eyes that stared out from behind thick spectacles.

  “Par-shon, perhaps,” Tan said. “But I would see Par returned.” A soft murmuring started between a few of the council representatives standing toward the back. “I have learned much of your people in my time in these lands. Par was not Par-shon. And I would see Par returned.”

  Tan glanced at Tolman. He hadn’t shared the next part with him, but it was the part that made the most sense, especially after what he had learned.

  “The council once guided Par,” Leon said.

  Tan nodded. “The council did. And before the Utu Tonah came to these lands, they offered their guidance, leading the people wisely. Do you think that you can serve as your predecessors once did?”

  “What of you?” Elanne asked. Tan suppressed a smile. She was always so blunt. That made her more valuable than she realized, and much like him in some ways.

  “Me?”

  The others of the council all nodded.

  “You have right of Utu Tonah,” Leon said. “You have claimed his estate. You have ruled in Par-shon.”

  “I have wanted nothing more than to guide the people of Par toward an understanding of the elementals and the power that we share with them when we shape.”

  “That is the role of the Mistress of Bonds,” Ifrin said. She was a wide woman, and Tan had learned that she was the Mistress of Learning. In some ways, he wondered why she didn’t work with Tolman to help with the students in the tower.

  “The Mistress of Bonds still serves in that role, but she is preoccupied these days now that she has recovered the Records of Par.”

  That had the desired effect. Everyone began talking and turned to Elanne. She shot him an annoyed look, and he shrugged. At least the council had turned away from him.

  “The Records?” someone said. Tan couldn’t hear who it was, but recognized the sense of awe in their voice.