Fortress Of Fire (Book 4)

by D. K. Holmberg

  “I don’t think so. We haven’t had a warrior shaper in a generation, and then you appear. Not only able to shape all the elements, but able to do so with spirit, like the ancient warriors themselves. And beyond that, you can speak to the elementals. How much of an advantage does this give us? Even if we lose all of our shapers, we can’t afford to lose you, Tan. What you can do is irreplaceable.”

  Tan stared from Roine to his mother. Roine nodded slowly, and Tan began to think that Roine hadn’t shared everything about his plan for Tan with Zephra.

  “What is this? What happened to you?” his mother asked. “When Ferran sent word, he said there was an uncontrolled shaping.”

  “That’s just it. I don’t know.” The pain seemed to be easing. “I’m having some sort of pain tied to the draasin.”

  “Are you certain it’s the draasin?” she asked.

  With a deep breath, he pushed away the sense of the pain as he so often did when Asboel tore through his mind. The effort left him feeling tired, but the agony he’d experienced receded, as if pushing away his sense of Asboel pushed away the pain. He listened for the other elementals for a moment, searching to see if he could still reach them. Ara fluttered nearby, but so did ashi. Now that he’d used the other wind elemental, he could identify the difference.

  “I’m certain,” said.

  Amia studied him and then rested her hand on his forehead. Her shaping built and washed over him. “What did you do? It’s changed.”

  “It started when I reached for—” he caught himself before revealing Asboel’s name “—the draasin. I felt something in the back of my mind, but wasn’t sure what it was. So I tried reaching to him. When I did, that’s when the pain started. It’s better now.”

  “You closed him away from you,” Amia noted.

  His mother frowned. “You can do that?”

  “I’ve had to before, otherwise he would destroy my mind. The draasin are simply too powerful. When he speaks to me, if I had no way of pushing him away, I think my mind would be torn apart.”

  He needed to find Asboel. Whatever had happened was because the draasin was in trouble. That meant something had happened during their attack on the lisincend. Tan felt certain of it. “I need to find him.”

  “That wasn’t what we discussed,” Roine said.

  Tan glared at him. “You would have me leave an injured friend?” He shifted his attention to his mother. “And you? You know what it’s like to lose such a connection. You think I should ignore what I feel?”

  “It is too dangerous, Tannen,” she said. “You’re talking about risking yourself for an elemental power who—”

  “Who has done nothing but help every time I asked,” Tan said. “And I won’t do anything but help if he needs. Roine said the kingdoms need allies. The draasin are our allies. If we let anything happen to them, Incendin will already have won.”

  He stood, shaking off Amia, who was trying to hold him down, and ignoring the hard stares coming from his mother. Master Ferran watched him silently, simply leaning against the massive stone support. His mother looked from Tan to Amia before turning away, her eyes giving away the irritation she felt. Tan took that as his cue to leave.

  He stepped into the street, pausing long enough to get a sense of the other elementals. Asboel was a distance sense of pain in his mind. Were Tan to draw him forward, his mind would explode with pain once again. Ara swirled around his mother, drawn to her in a way he would never be able to replicate. Golud rested beneath his boots, filling the stones of the city. Mixed with golud was the nymid, mingling earth and water, the two building the city’s bedrock stronger than either would have managed alone.

  He reached the university and pulled Amia toward him. She waited, arm linked in his. Roine might have taught him how to shape and travel like a warrior, but Tan had never attempted it. Now, with Asboel in danger, was not the time.

  There was another way for him to travel, if only it would respond. He reached for ara, asking for the wind to aid his shaping.

  “This is foolish, Tannen,” his mother said. “Stay and learn. The elemental will—”

  “Will what? You think I should let him die?”

  “Please…” she said.

  “I will not lose him,” Tan said, but the wind elemental didn’t answer.

  A satisfied smile came to his mother’s face. The translucent face of her elemental slipped around her as if hiding from Tan. “I will not help you in this.”

  Fine. If ara wouldn’t answer, then he would shift his focus. He had already discovered that he needed to learn more about the other elementals. If he could speak with them—if he could use their energy—he would be even more powerful.

  This time, he asked of ashi. Ashi answered, blowing around him with a warm gust out of the south, swirling around his head.

  His mother’s eyes widened slightly.

  “You won’t keep me from him, Mother,” Tan said.

  The wind lifted him. Adding a hint of fire drawn from saa, they shot into the sky on a cloud of shaped air. They streaked south and east. Asboel was out there, though Tan didn’t quite know where. The pain tearing through his mind kept him from knowing.

  Amia tensed. “Are you certain this is what you should be doing? You know what Asboel warned. If what Enya did withdraws fire from you—”

  “Asboel needs me. He might not ask for it, but the pain was his way of calling for help.”

  She gripped his arm tightly as they soared toward the draasin. Tan hoped they would be in time.

  12

  A NEW BOND

  Tan held the shaping of wind for as long as he could. From what he could tell, Ashi fueled the shaping, giving him the strength he needed to pass over Ethea, and across Ter, but he wouldn’t be able to hold on much longer. Tan sensed the strength in the elemental, but he wasn’t attuned to it well enough to use it with any skill or precision. Instead, he asked the wind elemental to carry them.

  With ashi, the farther they went to the east, toward the warmer air, the stronger the elemental seemed to become. Tan needed to use less and less focus to guide them.

  As they crossed into Nara, he steered toward a small rocky area and back down to the ground. They touched down on dusty, brown rock. The air held the shimmer of heat, but not quite the oppressive heat he remembered of Incendin. The outcropping had shadows coalescing and a small pool of water beneath it. Had he been drawn to this?

  Maybe, but it was more than that. He’d seen it before. Asboel had been here.

  Tan looked up at the wind and tipped his head. It blew around him in warm, steady gusts. Thanks, Tan sent to ashi.

  Something like streaks of color swirled around him. There was a quiet sense of a voice, so distant he almost wasn’t sure what he heard. Had he not pushed the sense of Asboel away, he might not have heard it. As it was, the sense was distant and faded, barely more than a quiet humming.

  Tan reached for it, straining toward the connection. He wasn’t certain it would work, that he could pull the sound toward him. Part of him feared what would happen if he did. Would it be like what he’d experienced with ilaz? But if he could reach for ashi, if he could speak to the air elemental as he spoke to ara, how much more effective would his shapings become, especially now that they were away from a place of convergence?

  The sense of words and the voice came closer. Tan realized that he somehow shaped spirit as he pulled it toward him, not weaving together each of the elementals to do so. The First Mother would be pleased. It had only taken him to lose the connection he shared with Asboel to find it.

  A voice boomed in his head, reminding him of how he spoke to Asboel.

  This land is dangerous.

  Tan pressed the voice to a manageable level as he’d learned to do with Asboel. The voice wasn’t ara. There was nothing of the great wind elemental to the way it spoke. Ashi?

  Ashi, he says. I am of the ashi, but I am more. I am Honl.

  Tan hesitated. Other than Asboel, none of the element
als had ever named themselves. Honl was one of the ashi elementals. I am Tan.

  I know you, Tan.

  There was a welcoming sense of warm wind power from the elemental, a power that Tan had felt before without really knowing what it was. Honl had given him the strength to float above the city when he first learned of ashi. But it was more than that. The swirls of color reminded him of what he’d seen coming off Asboel as he flew. Had it not been ara as he always suspected?

  Has it been you, not ara?

  Honl seemed to laugh. Ara helps when it wishes, but they prefer to serve Zephra.

  How long have you…

  Tan trailed off, uncertain how to ask the question. How long had Honl been with him? Ever since he’d learned to speak to the other elementals?

  Since you summoned, Honl said.

  Tan tried to think back to when he might have summoned the wind. Since learning of his connection to the elementals, there had been many instances when he had. When did I summon?

  Honl swirled around him. The device was too powerful. Ara helped Zephra. You summoned.

  How had Tan not known he summoned a different elemental? With wind, the sense was different. And ara was more interested in serving his mother. That was how she had managed to restrict his shaping the wind at first. Without Honl, she would have kept him in Ethea.

  “What is it?” Amia asked. “I can almost hear you, but it’s different.”

  After what happened with Asboel, this almost made up for the terror he felt for the draasin. “What do you know of the wind elementals?”

  She turned to let the warm air gusting out of the north blow against her face, swirling in her golden hair. “Ara? Less than you, I imagine.”

  “Apparently I know less than I thought,” Tan said. “Not only ara, but the other elementals.”

  “I know little of the elementals, Tan.” She studied the ground around them, shifting the pack she carried.

  “This wasn’t ara who brought us here.”

  “You shaped us yourself?” Amia asked. “I thought you struggled shaping wind.”

  It sounded like what his mother would say to him. “I’ve improved, but I still don’t have the strength to shape us this far. We would’ve ended up somewhere in Ter, and that’s if I managed to reach the wind in the first place. Zephra enjoyed making it difficult for me to reach for wind. She considered it a training technique.”

  Amia bit back a smile. “Then how?”

  “Another wind elemental. Ashi. I thought ashi a lesser elemental, but I’m not sure. A lesser elemental shouldn’t have been able to bring us this far so easily.”

  “Lesser like the nymid?”

  That had been his thought, too. “Apparently what I know of the elementals is wrong,” he said, wishing he’d had the time to better understand the elementals. “At least, that’s what it seems like from talking with Honl.”

  Amia turned toward the breeze blowing toward them, studying it as if to understand.

  How many elementals are like you? Tan asked Honl.

  The wind elemental swirled around his head. Like me? I am me. There is no other Honl.

  Tan surveyed the hot land around him. Why did you say this is a dangerous land?

  Wind kicked up dust and sent it swirling around Tan. He coughed and covered his mouth.

  Can you not taste it? There was pain here. Great pain.

  Tan removed his arm from his mouth and let the dust settle in his nose and mouth. As it did, he could taste the pain. It was hot and angry… and familiar. The draasin had suffered here.

  This was where the hatchlings died?

  Honl swirled around him, reaching the ground before flipping back and righting himself. As Tan watched, he had a sense of direction from the elemental, a head and foot. There was a definite sense of a mouth and, if Tan twisted his head just right, almost a face.

  Not dead. Broken. Taken.

  Tan frowned. Hadn’t Asboel told him the hatchlings were killed by the lisincend? They were dead.

  Not dead, Honl repeated.

  Where were they taken?

  Honl swirled toward the sky for long moments before returning to the ground. Toward Fire.

  Fire. Tan had an unsettled feeling. Did Twisted Fire take the draasin?

  Honl slipped around him again, sliding in a flickering sort of movement. Twisted Fire? Like Fire when you summoned?

  Tan created an image of the winged lisincend in his mind and pushed it to Honl.

  Not Twisted Fire. Fire like this.

  A different image came and Tan gasped. “Fur?” In his surprise, he spoke the name aloud.

  Amia jerked her head toward him. “What about Fur?” It was because of Fur that Amia had lost everything. The lisincend had destroyed her family, all under the direction of Fur.

  “Asboel thought the hatchlings dead, but Honl says they were taken by Fur.”

  “But Asboel hunted him.”

  “He did, but Fur escaped. When Alisz gained power, I assumed she’d taken care of Fur. From what Lacertin said, there was no love lost between them.”

  She looked to the east, toward Incendin. “What does it mean that Fur has the hatchlings at the same time the Fire Fortress burns more brightly?”

  “And at the same time as the draasin attacked the lisincend and Asboel now suffers,” Tan added.

  He crawled under the overhang and stood, letting his earth sensing stretch out. For too long, he’d been dependent on fire. For too long, he’d been dependent on fire. He was startled again to realize how his tie to Asboel had created that dependence.

  He sensed where the hatchlings had been. Shards of their thick shells mixed with the sand. Droplets of blood from the attack burned deep into the earth. The tiny insects that crawled along the sand did not dare reach into the outcropping of rock, as if the presence of the draasin kept them away.

  Tan paused and took a drink of water pooling beneath the rock. It was stale and had a thin film over it, but tasted cool and refreshing. Even the water held the memory of the draasin.

  Could they have lived?

  And if they did, what would Asboel have done to get them back? Tan didn’t really have to ask; he remembered well the anger Asboel had when he thought the hatchlings gone. If he had learned from the lisincend that they lived, it would explain an attack on the Fire Fortress. It might even explain why Tan couldn’t reach him.

  But what if Asboel didn’t know? What if Asboel’s silence had to do with what Enya did, withdrawing fire? Nara showed no signs of anything, but what would it be like when they crossed into Incendin? Would the draasin have changed the land in such a way that the lisincend—and fire—were weakened?

  Do you know where the Eldest has gone?

  Honl flickered around him again, twisting in a spiral from the ground up to Tan’s face. As he settled, features of what seemed a fluid face emerged. It wore a grim expression but didn’t answer.

  The draasin? He sent an image to Honl of Asboel.

  Honl swirled around him with an agitated flash of colors. Dangerous. Do not follow.

  For a moment, Tan had an image of the Fire Fortress, and then it was gone. He tried to focus on Honl, but couldn’t. The wind elemental moved around him too quickly to follow. Tan crawled out from under the outcropping of rock, back into the heat. Amia waited, her brow furrowed in a worried frown.

  “What did you learn?” she asked.

  “Nothing I didn’t know already.”

  She met his eyes and started shaking her head. “I still don’t think you can go into Incendin after the draasin by yourself, Tan.”

  Considering the pain he’d felt, Tan didn’t know if he had any other choice. He needed to go after Asboel, if only to ensure that the pain went away. “If I don’t do this, who would help? Who else would risk themselves for the draasin? Roine has already said he needs to remain in Ethea to ensure stability of the kingdoms. And my mother? She disapproves of me even leaving the city. The other shapers? After the draasin attack on Ethea, how many
would risk themselves like this?”

  “They did before.”

  “Roine shared with me the need to find allies. For the kingdoms to find help. Asboel is our ally. They’ve proven it over and again. And if he’s injured because he’s attacking the lisincend, the kingdoms need to help.”

  Amia grabbed his arm and forced him to face her. “What if he’s not there? You don’t know that he is. For all you know, he’s somewhere far to the north of here.”

  “I’d know if he was.”

  “The same way you know what happened to you when you started having pain in your head?”

  “It’s connected,” he said. “I don’t know how, but it is. Incendin attacked the hatchlings and now I find out they might not have died. The draasin attacked the lisincend. If Asboel learned of the hatchlings, I know where he would have gone. It’s the only place that would pose a risk to him. Even if he didn’t, then whatever Enya has done has injured him. I can’t leave him like that, Amia.” He held her eyes. “He’s a creature of great power, but he’s more than that. You know that; you feel the connection as well.”

  “You continue to view everything as fixable. Maybe this is something you can’t fix.”

  “This is different than what happened with the lisincend. This is Asboel.”

  Something more troubled her. He sensed it as mixture of emotions surging through their shaped bond.

  Tan shaped wind and earth and fire and water, combining them into spirit. This he layered over Amia as she had taught him. A sigh washed over her.

  “I’m a fool,” he said, understanding coming to him through the shaping. “I shouldn’t have brought you.”

  “You would have left me behind in Ethea? Now you think to treat me as your mother treats you.”

  “That’s not it. It’s Incendin. I understand, Amia, and you don’t have to come with me,” he said gently. “I know how you fear facing Incendin again. After what you’ve been through, I can’t blame you, but I need to do this. He’s not just an elemental. The draasin are different than the others. At least, Asboel is different for me.”

  Amia stared at him for a long time. “You’re not going without me. I’m bonded to you as much as you’ve bonded Asboel.”