“We found Marin.”
“We? I thought the elementals found her.”
Tan nodded. Since he’d bridged the connection between the element bonds and spirit, using spirit to protect the bonds, and in effect, protect the elementals, she had been able to hear much of the same conversations as he had. Even without that, she had her bond to him, one that connected them in such a way that she could listen to him.
“Wind found her. She was creating something they called an Undoing.” Alanna stopped wiggling in his arms and studied his face. Her fingers traced his cheeks as she frowned. Tan detected a soft buildup of pressure from a shaping, but couldn’t be certain that it came from her. Could she already be that subtle with shaping that he couldn’t even detect it anymore? “It’s a terrible thing, one where everything the Mother had created was destroyed, pressed away from the land.”
“And you couldn’t return our daughter to Par before taking this on? You couldn’t bring other shapers with you? If you were willing to take others who could use spirit—”
He shook his head. She had tried getting him to work with the archivists, but he still struggled with them. Amia trusted them, which should be enough, but for some reason it was not. “The draasin didn’t think we had the time.”
Amia glanced over his shoulder and he turned, noting Maclin standing there. The man had an unreadable expression on his face. “Is there anything we can help you with, Maclin?” Amia asked.
“Now that the Maelen has returned, there are a few who would speak with him. I can give you a few minutes, but they would really appreciate a few moments of your time.”
Tan expected Maclin to tell him who waited, but he didn’t. A hint of a smile tugged at Amia’s mouth, and she nodded.
The door closed behind him, leaving them alone. Amia took Alanna from his arms and set her onto the ground. She walked to the fire and pulled on a brick, lowering the stairs that were recessed into it, revealing a hidden passage that ultimately led to the massive tower.
“When did she discover that?” Tan asked.
“I think she’s always known.”
A small shape slithered out, something like a snake, only thicker. It had the snout and eyes of the draasin, and stubby legs the creature didn’t use. There were no wings on it. Since hatching, Tan hadn’t known what to make of the creature, but it clearly had bonded to his daughter. The creature climbed around her legs and wound up and around her torso, settling in. Alanna giggled, and the creature’s skin glowed a soft orange.
None had known what to make of it. Even more than Light—and where was the lizard, now that he thought about her?—no one really knew what to make of this elemental. She had been nearly broken, healed only because of what Tan had done and how she had been shifted, but that had changed something about her, much as he seemed to often change things about the elementals.
Alanna took a seat near the fire and her mouth moved, as if speaking to the snake. The creature’s head bobbed and its mouth opened and closed, a long tongue sliding out as it responded.
It wasn’t quite like kaas. That elemental was both fire and earth. This one was more a combination of many elementals, though Tan couldn’t quite determine what that meant. He could hear the creature within the bonds, but had not ever managed to get it to respond to him. So far, it only spoke to Alanna. It would trouble him if he didn’t know what he did about the elementals.
He pulled his attention away from Alanna. “She was as safe as the draasin could make her. You know they would never do anything to put her into danger.”
“Are you certain?”
He nodded, but a growing sense of doubt rose within him. He hadn’t thought that the elementals would lead his daughter into harm, but with the comment that Asgar had made, a suggestion that Alanna be used in the fight against Marin, he wasn’t certain. Would they press her to fight, thinking that she was more like them than like a human child?
“Wasina brought her back safely,” he said.
Amia nodded. “She did, but that doesn’t change the fact that she shouldn’t have been out there with you in the first place. She’s too young to be riding on the draasin. What would happen were she to fall? What would you do then?”
“I would shape myself to her.” He worried less about that happening than about the possibility of the draasin getting ambushed by Marin or her disciples.
Amia turned away, fixing her attention on Alanna. Through the bond between them, he could tell the mixture of annoyance and relief she felt at having Alanna back. She didn’t really think that anything would have happened to her, just as she didn’t think that Tan would have left her where any harm could come to her.
He went and took her hand in his, squeezing. “We’ve been through so much together. We shouldn’t let the stress of this drive a wedge between us.”
Amia took a deep breath. “You’re right. I know that you are, but that doesn’t change the fact that all I think of when she leaves with you is what other danger she might face. With you, it’s bad enough. I know you can defend yourself and even if you can’t, the elementals will fight on your behalf. With Alanna… she’s helpless.”
It was the same thing his mother had tried to do with him. She’d wanted to protect him from the Incendin threat for as long as she could, preventing him from even realizing that she had been one of the more powerful shapers who had been helping protect the wall until she was forced to reveal herself.
With the thought, a smile crossed his face.
“What are you grinning at?”
Tan shook his head. “Just… just thinking of Zephra and how she attempted to protect me.” He squeezed her hand again and smiled. “What was it like for you? Did the Mother try to keep you out of anything that might be dangerous?”
Amia stiffened for a moment. “She thought to keep me from harm. It was part of the reason we wandered. Keeping moving prevented anyone from discovering our connection with spirit.”
“Incendin discovered.”
“They did. Others suspected, but we had always been so careful with who could shape.”
“To the point that the men who could shape were sent away.”
“I didn’t know about it. I don’t disagree with what the First Mother did. They might have betrayed our people, but there was no place for the archivists among the people. With the ability to shape, they deserved more than they were allowed.”
“Is that why you have granted them such freedom now?”
She glanced over at him. “They pose no risk, especially as we know what they are capable of doing. And they can serve in other ways. You’ve already found a way to use them. What other uses do you think we might come across? The People have maintained much knowledge over the years.”
“There is something else we may need of them.”
She arched a brow at him. “What?”
“I haven’t thought it through completely yet.”
She laughed softly and Alanna glanced back at them, the snake creature pulling its head away from her body and fixing both Tan and Amia with its bright, almost knowing, eyes. “You have some idea. I know you too well, Tannen. Whatever you’re thinking about makes you uncomfortable.”
“It makes the elementals uncomfortable as well.”
“Then that should be answer enough of the reason that you should not do this thing, whatever it is.”
“When I faced Marin, I faced someone connected to a dark power more strongly than anything that I have ever encountered. Even able to use the bonds that I am, even able to summon the elementals, there was still a part of me that suspected that we wouldn’t be able to finish her. If she succeeded in trapping me”—and she very nearly had, something that Tan didn’t know what would have happened to him if it had—“there wouldn’t have been anyone left who could use the true connections to the elementals to defeat her.” And maybe they still couldn’t, but he had to use everything that he could think about that might give them the chance to defeat her.
“Y
ou think there’s a way for others to use some of the same power that you can reach.” When Tan nodded, she continued. “Spirit lets me connect to you and know what you know, often letting me connect as if I were there in person, but I have to be receptive. I don’t know everything that you know, and I don’t know that you would want me to know everything.”
“There are no secrets from you.”
“Not secrets, but there are things you would prefer to think through before sharing them. This, I can tell, is one of them.”
He sighed. “I started thinking about Asboel.”
“You think of him often.”
Tan smiled sadly. “I do.”
“You’ve told me that he’s back with fire. That you’ve spoken to him in fire.”
“I have. And Asgar tells me that fire will be reborn, so I have hope that Asboel will return, at least a memory of him. But that’s not what I’m thinking of. When we first discovered him, he had been bound in ice. We had always assumed the people of that time had frozen him to protect the artifact because it was too powerful for anyone to possess.”
“We saw that with Althem. He wanted to use it for power.”
“He did, but we haven’t really spent any time trying to understand why they had created the artifact. Why would they risk that much power?”
“You think it has something to do with this darkness?”
“I don’t know if it did, but I recognized that when I held it, I was able to use power of the Mother almost like nothing else I’ve ever encountered. That kind of power could have been used to help restrain this darkness.”
Amia pulled in a sharp breath. “They were powerful shapers, but they didn’t have your ability to reach the bonds, did they?”
“I don’t think they did.”
“And you… you would recreate it? Would you make more of these artifacts so that others would be able to counter what Marin can do?”
“I think we need to consider it.”
Alanna had come over to them and looked up at her mother, holding her arms outward. The snake had climbed off her and curled around a vase near the fire. Amia lifted her and she wrapped her arms around her neck. When they were together, Tan detected a surge of spirit, a shaping such that he wondered if either of them recognized what the other did. Maybe they did. Maybe that was how the Aeta communicated with others able to shape spirit, using a shaping that washed over the other person, much like the fire shaping used within Incendin.
“What do the elementals think of your suggestion?” Amia asked over Alanna’s shoulder.
“They worry about the wisdom of it.”
“I would share their concern. We know what was done the last time when the artifact existed, what extent others went to in order to acquire it.”
Tan patted his daughter on the head and she giggled at him. Normally, he loved that sound, but now it only made him worry. Everything that he did was for her, to ensure that she had the future she needed. Really, when it came to the darkness, any future. If he didn’t fight, there would be the Undoing, and if he didn’t find a way to stop Marin, and to suppress the darkness entirely, more than an island would suffer. The next time, they would face a challenge where people were at risk as well, where everything that they had would be unmade.
“I’m not even sure that I can figure out how to make these things. I think the elementals went into their creation the last time, and I’m not willing to do that to the elementals. Anything that we do needs to be to protect them.”
“We’ll find a way, Tan. We always do.”
He forced a smile, suspecting Amia knew he did. It was more for Alanna than for Amia, though he began to wonder how much she could be convinced by a fake smile. With her connection to spirit, she would likely know as easily as her mother.
His daughter watched him, an intensity in her eyes that made him nervous. The fact that she could connect to the elementals and seemed able to speak to them made him proud, but there was the ongoing worry that Asgar might be right, and that he might be forced into letting her be a part of the fight with Marin and the disciples.
Light appeared on the hearth, and he wondered if she had been hiding in the lower level. She could have been studying there, gaining knowledge the way she knew how, licking everything. What did it mean that she had been down there with the snake?
She is so young.
As am I.
Tan looked over at his bonded. She was a mixture of fire and spirit, but mostly spirit. She was barely older than Alanna, and she had already saved his life at least once. And Tan hadn’t hesitated to involve Light in the fight before. Was that the point that Asgar was trying to get across?
She is but a child.
Perhaps to you. You need to see her the way the Mother sees her, Maelen. In that way, she has already grown wise.
Tan looked upon his daughter, noting the long blond hair, the chubby cheeks, and the glitter to her blue eyes, one that was so much like her mother’s. She was only a child… wasn’t she?
He’d avoided reaching through the bonds to her, much like he had avoided listening to conversations with the elementals through the bonds, but maybe it was time.
She watched him, as if expecting him to do something, when a voice intruded in his mind.
Maelen.
What is it, Honl?
The Undoing. You should come.
Tan glanced over at Light, then at his daughter, and nodded. He would reach for Alanna another time.
I will come.
5
Understanding the Cycle
The air north of the kingdoms had a hint of cold to it, the same cold northern wind that gusted through Par, though this had less of the crispness to it and more of the slimy and foul notes that he’d detected in Xsa. They were in a part of the kingdoms Tan had never set foot in, a long finger of land that stretched into the sea as part of Vatten. He didn’t know what it had once been like, but with the Undoing, the land had a rocky and angry appearance.
Honl floated above the ground, his form almost as solid as Light’s, who draped around his neck. She hadn’t wanted him to come alone, worried about what he might face, and the draasin hadn’t been willing to enter the area where the Undoing had begun taking hold. Tan was thankful for her presence.
“This is wrong, Maelen.”
“This is Marin and the disciples,” Tan said. “I’ve encountered it earlier on Xsa.”
Honl looked over at him, the gesture slightly unnatural. “Were you able to counter it?”
“Can’t you detect what I was able to do?” Usually, Honl would remain connected to him, not only through their bonding but through the connection they now shared through the wind bond. Why wouldn’t Honl know what he had done?
“There was… something. Then there was not. I do not know what it meant.”
The wind elemental soared across the ground. He had appeared in a form of a man, this time an older man with dark gray eyes the color of storm clouds and a face that reminded Tan of his father. He wondered if Honl had done that intentionally. His father had broader shoulders, and he had been more heavily muscled than the appearance Honl created, but they had a similar height and the same grizzled beard and concerned expression.
Tan remained stationary over the ground, not wanting to get too close. He still didn’t know what would happen were the Undoing to touch him, but feared that it might begin unraveling his connections. When he’d faced Marin, she had nearly overwhelmed him and the bonds had begun to separate. Would that happen here, even if she were not present?
But someone had to be here for this to work, didn’t they?
That meant the disciples.
Tan knew there were Disciples of Darkness somewhere, but he hadn’t been able to learn where they studied. If he could find them, if he could trace them back to Marin, he might be able to bring the fight to her, though he wasn’t sure that he wanted to.
“Have you noticed anyone here?” Tan asked.
Honl shook his head, a st
range gesture for an elemental, and one that looked so… human. Each time Tan saw Honl, the elemental had become more and more solid. Even his form—the man who looked to be about the same age as Roine—had barely changed the last few times Tan had seen him. Perhaps the beard was longer, but that shouldn’t matter, not since Honl could take on any shape that he wanted.
“From what I can tell, there is no one else here. There is nothing. The land is broken,” Honl said.
Light perched on Tan’s shoulder, wrapping her tail around his neck for support, and swiveled her head around as she studied the ground. Tan was surprised to note that she didn’t jump from his shoulders as she often would. She remained where she was, stationed atop him, unmoving. If anything, she was rigid, her body tensed. The Undoing unsettled even her. That said quite a bit, considering the way that she had often thrown herself into situations before.
“Marin is using the darkness to unmake the work of the Mother,” Tan said.
“She should not be able to unmake it,” Honl said. “The element bonds power the world, and the rest of the elementals and human connections join together, binding creation.”
Tan glanced over at Honl. “That’s an interesting turn of phrase. Did you use binding intentionally?”
“It’s not a binding the same as what you have made, Maelen. This is…” He shook his head and took something that resembled a breath. That was a new gesture for him; the wind elemental should have no need to actually breathe. “Finding the words is difficult. The knowledge is there, but it changes on me.”
“Why would it change?”
Honl took a step away, walking on a cloud of air, keeping himself above the ground. Since rescuing him from Jorma, Honl had remained distant, though that wasn’t unusual. He had been distant in the time before his capture as well, something that was tied to trying to understand the darkness and how to bind it.
Cycle of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 11) Page 4