Then I will expedite what must be done.
Tan wasn’t sure what to make of that comment. From another, it would have the sound of a threat, but then, he had never felt threatened by the hatchling.
What of the others? Asgar asked, oblivious to what had passed between Tan and the hatchling.
They will need guidance. I had hoped that you—
No. Not with what happened. If I’m not strong enough to stop it once…
You will at least recognize what happened. You can do more than you realize, Asgar.
The draasin shuffled against the wall and came eye to eye with the third hatchling. Given her rapid development, Tan expected her to claim a name any time, but so far either she had not or she had chosen not to share. From the way that she twitched her tail, he wondered if maybe she had.
The hatchling stared at Asgar, and something passed through the fire bond between them. Without forcing himself between it, he wasn’t able to know what they shared, only that something passed between them.
I will work with these hatchlings, Asgar finally said.
Thank you.
He snorted and then settled back against the wall, turning his head away from Tan.
What did you say to him? he asked the third hatchling.
Only what was needed, Maelen. Much as I fear I will need to do with you.
I have never shown an unwillingness to do what is needed.
Good. Because I fear you will be challenged in the days to come.
When Tan arrived in the draasin cavern to bring the other two hatchlings to Asgar, he found Elanne sitting in the middle of the floor, staring at the walls. Wind whistled around her and her lips moved, as if she were speaking to herself. She glanced up as he appeared, and stood.
“Maelen,” she said, a flush coming to her cheeks. “I didn’t expect to see you here. I… I am sorry if I intrude.”
The draasin along the back wall seemed bored by her presence. The first hatchling had grown even larger in the last few days, as if he devoured all of the food that had been brought and was keeping the other hatchling from having any, but she seemed to have grown nearly as much. Their long tails curled around the eggs, leaving the tips of the barbed ends only barely visible.
“This is one of the four Records of Par. They don’t belong to me.” This one he felt a certain possessiveness toward, if only because he wanted to protect the draasin eggs. Were other Bond Wardens to come here, he feared whether they would have the same respect for the draasin as Tan. In this state, the eggs were more fragile.
“I would not intend for any others to come,” she said, stepping toward him. “You do not need to fear that I will reveal this place before you are ready. I,” she hesitated, looking back at the draasin, “I understand what it is that you protect, Maelen.”
“Thank you.” Tan looked at the runes worked into the walls of the cavern. Unlike the other Records, those on the walls here were not damaged, at least not in the same way that the others had been. Some had degraded over time, and a few appeared as if the draasin had attempted to chew through them, but most were intact. “Have you found anything here?”
“About the temple?”
He nodded.
“There is nothing about a temple in the Records that I have found. I think… it’s possible that searching longer may yield more, but what you ask is very specific, and these runes are ancient. It is difficult for me to interpret many of them.”
He sighed, but had known that would be the case. The Records were remnants of ancient Par, and he didn’t even know what they would consider important. It was possible that those ancients would not have recorded anything that didn’t pertain to Par, and Vathansa was far enough to the north that it was possible the two did not interact.
“What have you found?”
She made her way to the nearest wall, her eyes slipping to the draasin. From the way that she did, Tan suspected that she’d grown accustomed to watching out for them, as if either afraid that they might attack—and Tan didn’t think they had matured enough to hunt on their own, and would certainly not hunt people—or ready to move out of their way.
“These runes are all ancient. As you know, they come from Par, and even when Par last existed, the Records were considered old. I think these are hundreds, if not thousands, of years old.”
“And?”
“And these records are not clear. Many detail the politics of the time, the laws to counting grain, and how land would be passed on.”
“So not much useful.”
“On the contrary, it’s all incredibly useful. Everything that is here tells about the people of Par from that time, if only indirectly.”
Her excitement made him suppress a smile. When he had first met Elanne, he had thought she would be the one most likely to oppose him in Par-shon. That she was one of his strongest allies still amused him, but not nearly as much as seeing her passion for the histories of Par.
“Is there anything that you’ve found about the elementals?”
She pressed her lips into a line. “Not about the elementals. And not even about shaping. I would think that these ancients did not know much about the elementals if not for the fact that—”
“That we found the Records in a cavern full of draasin eggs?”
She smiled and nodded. “That’s about it.”
Tan turned in place slowly, surveying the walls around him. If the Records really gave no clue about anything more than the politics of Par, then there had to be another answer, but what would that be?
He stopped at the Great Seal, the Mark of the Mother. In this place, it was spirit and bound to fire, much like in the other places it was the other elements, tied to spirit in each place. That told him that those ancient shapers of Par knew much more than the Records had so far revealed.
The problem now was finding it.
The Seal here had not required anything on his part to restore it, not like those elsewhere in Par. Because of that, Tan had not shaped into this Seal. With the others, he had shaped, but had done so to restore them. What would happen if he shaped into them simply to understand?
He sighed. Probably nothing.
Tan traced his fingers across the Seal and felt it tingle beneath his fingertips. The sensation was much like the others had given off when he touched them. There had been a level of guidance necessary for him to repair them, and with this one… he had assumed that it was intact. What if it was not?
Tan pulled on a shaping of fire and combined the rest of the elements to join into the shaping. He took that connection and let it surge into the Seal. As it did, there was a sense of resistance. Had it been there before with the other Seals? He didn’t remember. Pushing more of his shaping into the Seal, he felt a surge, mostly of spirit, that then pushed back against him.
Nothing changed. There was no sense of anything else from this Seal, which meant that it was likely intact, as he had believed. Not that it would be anything else. The cavern had been undisturbed when he found it, hidden and buried for countless years. But the Seal, and the runes along the wall, meant that it had not always been that way.
And Tan suspected that the Utu Tonah had known about the cavern, at least enough to search for it. Had not those of Par been steadfast, he might have discovered it. Would he have been able to hatch the eggs? Even if he had reached the lost Record, Tan doubted that he would have been connected enough to fire to hatch the eggs. Bonded to saa, or any of the other elementals didn’t mean that he would have been able to reach deep enough to help guide the hatchlings, but how could he have known that? The Utu Tonah had been primarily about obtaining power, hadn’t he?
Yet it troubled him that the person who seemed most intent on destabilizing these Seals had not been the Utu Tonah, but Marin, the Mistress of Souls.
“What is it?” Elanne asked.
“Probably nothing.” At least, he hoped it was nothing, but he had a growing concern that he needed to know more about what had brought the Utu Tonah
to Par in the first place, and why he had sought power as he did.
“I will continue to study the Records,” Elanne said. “If I find anything…”
“Please come for me if you do,” he said.
He left her studying the runes on the walls and turned to the draasin. First, he would bring them to the cavern with Asgar. Let that be their den. It would serve them better as they grew anyway, with better access to the outside and easier hunting for them as they grew. With them gone, he would need to find a way to keep this cavern protected, but he thought that he had a way to accomplish that—if Kota would agree to serve as something like his guard dog until he came up with a better solution. Leaving the eggs here for much longer, especially if he wasn’t able to see them hatched immediately, placed them in danger.
But those were concerns for later. For now, he needed to return to the estate and see if there might be something that he could discover from the journals the Utu Tonah kept. And maybe, if there might be more that Tan could learn from others who had served around the Utu Tonah.
18
MASTER OF SOULS
Tan sat at a small table tucked away in one corner of the room he shared with Amia. This place, the one that he’d dubbed the Utu Tonah’s workspace, had a space where he’d discovered the journals from the Utu Tonah. From those, he had discovered that the man he had grown to fear had come to Par with a different agenda, but one that was not all that clear from his writing.
The small draasin curled underneath the table. She rested her head on his feet and occasionally would wake to lick him. Tan had given up on wiping away her saliva. Let her win whatever game she played with him.
He left the two journals that he had discovered propped open, flipping through the oldest of the two, searching for answers as to why the Utu Tonah had come to Par. That was the secret he had to discover. The Utu Tonah had sought power, but he had sought it with a purpose. Tan needed to learn why.
Only, so far, there had been nothing in the journals that explain the reason that he had. The second journal had as detailed a description of the elementals as any Tan had ever seen, from names and types to ways to force the bond. In the wrong hands, something like this would be dangerous. Tan could not allow anyone else access to it. Though, in Par, there were enough who had lived through the Utu Tonah’s regime who would also know his method of bonding the elementals that it likely didn’t matter.
The clinical way that he described the elementals appalled Tan, but at the same time, he had actually learned something that he would not have found otherwise. Names for elementals that he had only known as hints or suggestions. Now he had names for earth in Par—that would be eylan—among the other names that he had never learned. Holding onto spirit when he had defeated the Utu Tonah had given Tan a glimpse of that knowledge, but he had not possessed it directly. The Utu Tonah had collected the knowledge in the same way that the ancient scholars had detailed their studies, documenting it much the way that he’d found in Ethea’s archives.
But Tan still didn’t know why he had come to Par. Was it simply because there were elementals that were not found in his homeland, wherever that might be? Or was there another reason?
If he thought that he might come to understand, the journals so far had provided no clues.
A knock at the door drew his attention away from the journals. He closed them and tucked them away in a drawer, careful to keep them hidden. There weren’t many even able to read the Ishthin they were written in, but the contents of the Utu Tonah’s journals were potentially dangerous.
The draasin didn’t move as he stood, but she gave an annoyed snort that he dared to shift her head. He shook his head in amusement as he went to the door.
Maclin waited for him. “Brenna said that I should find you, Maelen.”
Tan nodded. Brenna had been the only servant of the estate that he’d been able to find when he returned from the caverns, and she wasn’t the one who Tan needed to speak to. Maclin had the quiet understanding, and the observant eye, that he sought.
“Good. Come in.”
Maclin’s eyes narrowed. “Here, Maelen?”
Tan hurried back to the workspace, pulling the two chairs with him. “Here. We could go to the library if you would be more comfortable, but here is fine for me.”
In the library, he would have to contend with Amia listening in to the conversation, as well as possibly his mother. So far, she remained in Par, apparently determined to stay as long as necessary to see that Amia had the help she needed.
“Then this will be fine for me as well.” Maclin took a seat and sat with a rigid back. He held his hands cupped in his lap and at first stared at the walls before turning his attention to Tan. “What is it that you need from me?”
Tan cursed himself softly for making such a show with Maclin. He could simply have asked him while standing, and then taken a seat if it were necessary. Doing things this way only created formality when he had not wanted any.
“You served the Utu Tonah,” Tan began.
Maclin’s eyes twitched slightly. “You know that I did.”
“How long did you serve?”
Maclin closed his eyes briefly. “The Utu Tonah was in Par for many years before I was offered a position in his household.”
Then he hadn’t been here the entire time that Utu Tonah had been in Par, but hopefully long enough that Maclin knew more about the Utu Tonah than most. “You were head of his household?”
“Not the entire time.” Maclin pressed his hands together until the knuckles turned white. “What is this about, Maelen? If you are dissatisfied with my service, then I will see that another can take my place.”
Tan suppressed a smile. “Not dissatisfied. I think that without you, I wouldn’t have known the extent of Par, and the efforts that went into maintaining the connection to ancient Par while the Utu Tonah ruled.”
“If you are asking whether I was placed—”
“I suspect that you were placed, but that’s not what I’m asking about.”
“Then what?”
“I would know how much you were able to learn about the Utu Tonah in the time that you served here. Where was he from prior to coming to Par? What did he want by coming here? Was there anything other than the draasin eggs that he sought?”
Maclin took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “When you live near enough to a man to serve him, you come to know him in a sense,” he started. “What he wanted was clear the moment that he came to Par. He wanted power. I cannot say what else he might have wanted, because he was careful not to discuss that in my presence, or with anyone that I had ever seen. As to where he was from…” Maclin shook his head. “There are things that we were not to speak of, Maelen, and that was one of them. Tell me, what is your interest in the Utu Tonah? He is defeated. There is nothing more to learn from him.”
Defeated, yes, but was there really nothing more that he could learn from the Utu Tonah?
“The man had an understanding of the elementals that had allowed him to bond to countless numbers of them. Without that understanding, he wouldn’t have been nearly the threat that he was. And he wouldn’t have managed to subdue Par so easily.”
“That’s why you ask?”
“No. I only wanted to understand why he came here,” he said.
“I thought you’ve said that you’re interested in keeping Par free.”
“That is what I’m interested in,” Tan said, “but there is still much that I could learn from him.” Especially if it had anything to do with what Marin did, and the strange attack that he’d experienced and the rune that had been atop the tower. Without knowing that, would he be able to find a way to keep her from attempting it again? Would he know what he could do to stop this entity that he’d detected?
He didn’t know.
And from watching Maclin and the reaction he had to Tan’s request, it was obvious that he worried about Tan’s intentions toward trying to understand the Utu Tonah. Not that Tan could blam
e him. The Utu Tonah had destroyed Par and had turned their heritage into something else, twisted, as they forced the bonds and pulled away those who could shape. A generation, maybe two, had been lost.
“I haven’t told you what happened when I discovered the Records,” he said. Maclin stiffened at the mention of the Records. Most who were loyal to Par had felt a certain protectiveness about the Records and seemed to fear that Tan might attempt to destroy them.
“You are said to have restored the Great Seals,” Maclin said carefully.
“I restored the Seals,” Tan agreed. “My connection to the elements and to the elementals allowed me the ability to understand how the Seals had been formed, and I could use that to restore them.”
“Maelen, I know this. That is why the faithful of Par do not deny your rule.”
Tan leaned forward. “The Utu Tonah did not destroy the Records either.”
Maclin frowned. “I have not said that he did.”
“No. But from what I have been able to determine, the Utu Tonah wanted to destroy as much of Par culture as he could, only he never went after the Records. Why do you think that was?”
“The Records were protected by the Mistress of Souls.”
Tan shook his head. “The Mistress of Souls attempted to destroy them. She was only able to succeed after he… after I defeated him. Marin is the reason that the Records were damaged and that I had to restore them.”
Maclin stared ahead, blinking slowly as he worked through what Tan had told him. “I had not considered that. If true, then much of what many of us know is faulty.” He turned to Tan. “The Mistress of Souls served to guide us and to offer words of advice. In that way, she served as something of a way for us to resist what the Utu Tonah did to Par, and how he turned our people against themselves. At least… at least, that is what I always believed.”
Tan formed a shaping of spirit and layered it gently over Maclin, but found no evidence of a spirit shaping buried within him. He had checked before, but there remained the concern that she might have returned and that she might have attempted to shape those around him. If that happened, who would Tan be able to trust?
Broken of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 9) Page 15