“Maclin. You should be in bed.”
The other man scanned Tan a moment, a question lingering in his eyes, but one that he didn’t ask. “You should be as well, though I heard you took another trip to Norilan. A dangerous place.”
“Not so dangerous now.”
“There remain shapers who exceed the ability of Par’s.” Tan nodded. “Then it remains dangerous. We would work with them, of course, as I suspect you would ask.”
“I actually asked them to come to Par to teach.”
“Then we should begin to make preparations.”
“I got the sense that they weren’t interested.”
“I will prepare the same. When the Maelen makes a request, most eventually agree to it. I would not be surprised if they arrive soon.”
Tan smiled. Maclin started to turn away, but Tan spoke up. “Maclin?”
The other man turned, holding his hands together in front of him. “Yes, Maelen?”
“You haven’t said anything about my appearance.”
“It is not my place. You are touched by the light, Maelen. I think there is something of the Great Mother in that. You do not need my guidance to understand that.”
“I could always use your guidance. I value your opinion, Maclin.”
“Less and less than you once would have. When you came to Par, you were arrogant but ignorant. Both have changed. The arrogance turned out to be a deserved confidence. The ignorance has improved the longer that you rule.”
“Thanks.”
“Your family will be awaiting your return. And the people would be honored if you made an appearance. You are infrequently seen in Par these days. You have much that you can influence simply by who you are.”
“I will do what I can, Maclin.”
“As you always do, Maelen.”
They parted and Tan reached his room. When he pushed the door open, he found Amia resting in a chair, her eyes closed and the reflected light from a fire in the hearth leaving her face practically glowing. Alanna rested on the chair next to her. Even though he hadn’t been away from her for very long, she still seemed to have grown. He suspected he would feel that way about her every time he left her.
As he crossed over to them, Alanna opened her eyes.
She didn’t giggle, and she didn’t smile or speak. She hadn’t yet, though he knew she should have. Rather, there was a brightness behind her eyes that he hadn’t seen before.
Alanna had always had a certain spark about her, from her giggle to her smile to the way she grabbed at his finger and pulled at it, forcing him to pay attention to her. This was something more. This was intelligence and knowledge.
She spoke to him.
Maelen.
Tan froze.
Should he be surprised that she would speak to him this way first? He didn’t think that he should be, but then, he would have expected a different address from her.
Maelen, not Father?
Maelen has a greater meaning than Father, does it not?
Tan marveled at the way she spoke to him, at the intelligence within her words.
But should he?
He had seen the brightness glowing from her when he was in the pool of spirit. And he had seen how she was more like an elemental. Didn’t Light speak to him in a similar way?
Maelen is the name the elementals gave me. Is that what you are?
I don’t know what I am. I feel the Mother and the connections that are necessary for me to reach the Mother, but I know that I should not be anything more than a child.
You’ve changed since I left, haven’t you?
He had thought that he might have imagined it, but now he no longer knew whether that was the case. The changes were real. Alanna had grown.
The Mother has changed me, much as she has changed you.
And your mother?
Alanna gazed upon Amia and warmth radiated from her, a glow that matched what Tan felt coming off himself. It was then that he realized that the warmth was a reflection of what he saw when he had been in the pool of spirit. It was the way the Mother had looked upon him, and the way that he looked upon his daughter.
Strange that she would look on her mother in the same way.
Asgar thinks you need to be a part of what I’m planning.
He didn’t bother hiding the elemental’s name as he would with others. With Alanna, he had long wondered whether it made a difference. With her connection to spirit, she likely knew the names of the elementals anyway.
I think the Mother intends for me to be used.
Why?
In answer, her gaze flickered to his pocket and the device began to grow warm.
Tan pulled it free and was not surprised to notice that it glowed, almost matching his skin as it did. The power within it surged, flickering against him. Tan felt a slight stirring of desire to use it, but not as he would have before.
Yet, when he looked on Alanna, he saw that she had no interest in using the device, and the way that she looked at it told him that she understood what it was and how to use it.
He held it out to her.
It floated toward her and she took it.
When she did, the device surged with power, glowing with a blinding yellowish light. With a flash of colors—blue and red and orange and green and more than he could count, more colors than the rainbow—the device simply disappeared.
Tan felt a moment of panic. They needed the device to stop Marin, though he wasn’t sure how it would be used. He didn’t even know if he could be the one to use it. How much more power could he pull when he was already connected so tightly to the bonds?
What did you do with it?
The Mother wanted the contents returned.
Returned? Did you destroy it? Tan suspected elementals went into making the device, much like they had gone into making the artifact.
There can be no destruction when we use the Mother.
You changed it.
Yes.
How?
The same way you were changed.
I don’t understand.
I took the blessing as she instructed.
Tan blinked but thought he understood what she meant. She had absorbed the device. Which meant that the power within was now her power.
What will you become? he asked.
What the Mother intends for me to become, much as you were intended to become the Maelen.
I am still man.
Are you, Maelen? Have you not become something else? What man can withstand the flame of the draasin? What man can survive udilm? What man can endure the Mother when she makes herself known? The elementals understand that you are something more, and have been from the moment you first made your bond to the Eldest.
I only wanted to be Tan.
And I only wanted to be your daughter.
You are still my daughter, he said, picking her up off the chair and holding her close to him. She wrapped her arms around him and he smiled.
And you are still Tan.
There are times when I’m not certain who I am anymore. I am not a shaper, and I don’t rely on the elementals as I once did.
As I said, you are Maelen.
Now that you’ve absorbed the relic, he started, not able to believe that was what she had done. It seemed impossible, but what other explanation was there for it? Do you know what it is that we’re supposed to do?
You came here with a plan.
I came here to see my family, he said.
That is a plan, isn’t it?
Tan laughed and hugged her close.
As he did, he noticed that Amia had stirred and she looked up at him, noting the way that he held onto Alanna. Tan wasn’t sure how she would react. Would she blame him for what happened to their daughter? How could he deny that the changes were his fault? He was the reason that she had changed. Because of the connection to the Mother, she had been forced to change. Would they miss her growing up? Would they miss having the opportunity to work with her and teach her, gui
de her along the way?
Did you miss that with me? Light asked.
I think you missed out on something. Check with Asgar and with Wasina. They had different experiences of their youth.
Is one necessarily better than the other? Because Asgar bonded and gained from that connection doesn’t mean that he was lessened by it.
He wasn’t bonded.
You gave him a name. To the Mother, that is the same, Light said. And because Wasina took the time to understand the world on her own before choosing her name doesn’t mean that she had a greater experience than Asgar. They were given what they needed.
Tan looked from his daughter to Amia. Would she see it the same way?
She is the Daughter, Maelen, Light reminded.
“You really have been blessed, haven’t you?” Amia asked, sitting up. Her hand went to her necklace and she ran her fingers around the inside of it. Tan knew there were runes engraved on the metal, and that those runes matched the binding that he now used to shape and create the power that would hold the darkness.
“I went into a pool of the Mother.”
Amia smiled and joined him, holding Alanna between them. “I know.”
“I don’t know what I was thinking. I probably shouldn’t have gone, but…”
“You went where you were supposed to go, Tan.”
“Everything changed after I did,” he said.
He’d been the focus of so many people frustrated about the change that he’d brought that he hadn’t taken the time to think about what it meant for himself. He was impacted almost as much as the others. Not only what had happened to him, and to the elementals that he had bonded, but to his family and to those he cared about.
“That is the way of the Mother,” Amia said, resting her head against him. “It’s when we do not change that she grows frustrated. You have been given power to cause that change, Tan. You use your ability to shape to bring things into a different form, taking from one and turning it into another. That is all about the Mother.”
He had worried that she might be mad, and that she might be disappointed in what he had done, but then, he should have known better. As Light had reminded him, Amia was the Daughter, gifted of the Mother with great connections to spirit. He’d never really questioned what that meant, but seeing Alanna, and knowing how she had been changed, and how she was more than only a child, he thought he began to understand.
“You know what she is, don’t you?” he asked.
Amia laughed softly. “She is my child, Tan, touched by spirit the same as you and I.” She looked up and met his eyes. “I have known. From the moment she touched the bond of what had once been a draasin, I have known. She is filled with the power of the Mother.”
“The elementals think she can help in the battle that is to come.”
“I suspect that she can.”
Tan looked from his beloved to his child. “Have you spoken to her?”
Amia touched their daughter’s nose, tracing down it. Alanna smiled then, looking like the child that she was, grabbing for her mother’s finger. “Every day,” she whispered to her.
“Not like that.” Like this, he said, shifting the form of communication.
Amia smiled. Every day.
Tan sighed, wrapping his arms around his family. The glowing to his skin increased, and he realized that it came from Alanna as well. Somehow, Amia added to it, and they all stood there, holding each other, the power of the Mother filling them, and the room, with its light. In that moment, Tan thought he understood their purpose and had a flicker of hope for the future.
15
Return to the Mountains
Tan rode on Wasina as they traveled toward Ethea. The draasin caught currents of air, rising high over the ground as she did, soaring first up and then back down, her massive wings barely beating against the sky.
Two of the hatchlings flew alongside him. They were growing quickly, their bodies growing so that they were nearly the size of Enya when she’d been freed from the ice. In time, Tan could tell that they would be similar in size to Sashari. Not as enormous as Asgar or Asboel, but still giant creatures.
Amia and Alanna rode with him. They were the reason he didn’t shape himself toward Ethea, choosing instead to take the draasin, knowing that shaping all three of them would have been possible but it wouldn’t have been as interesting a trip. This way, he could see the ground spread beneath him and he could watch as the sea changed over to Incendin and then over to the kingdoms.
As they did, Tan nudged Wasina to turn slightly north.
“I thought we were going back to Ethea,” Amia said.
“We will. There’s something I want to revisit first,” he said as he pointed. The soft glow to his skin had receded. It was still there if he looked, but for the most part, it took someone who knew him well to notice.
They soared ever higher, eventually reaching a series of rising mountain peaks. Green trees rose along the sides, that of pine and oak and some elm, the fragrance filling the air. Tan could almost imagine that all of this had been shaped. Maybe it was the vantage, that of flying near the clouds, but he imagined some great shaper pulling the mountains and trees from the ground, much like he had done with the beginning of the tree in the cavern.
Wasina knew where Tan wanted to go, and she guided him toward one of the peaks. As they flew, Tan felt a strange tingling, one that reminded him of the barrier that once had separated the kingdoms from Incendin. Far below, he could see the glittering water of the lake leading toward the mountain, and he could feel the drawing of the elementals, though they weren’t as strong now as they once had been.
The place of convergence had suffered much over the last few years. After centuries left untouched, now it had been tampered with, not only by Tan, but by the lisincend and by the shapers of Par-shon, eventually being left alone. There was still a wildness to it, something unrefined, and in many ways, different than the convergences he’d discovered in other places.
“What is it?” Amia asked.
“This was once a powerful convergence.”
“I remember.”
“No, before that. When Ethea was first formed, they changed the landscape, and that shifted the convergence, pulling it toward the capital.”
Many things have changed, Alanna sent.
I’m not certain this should have changed.
The Mother exists in both places. Nothing was destroyed.
Tan stared at the ground, considering. He had long thought that drawing the convergence away from here had damaged things in some way, but that wasn’t the lesson he’d been learning. Hadn’t he been seeing that changing what the Mother created was not harmful? Only when there was an attempt to destroy was there a problem.
What about if Marin pulls the convergence away?
Voidan will be released, Alanna said.
Tan found her matter-of-fact comment somewhat disheartening, but then… she also had no fear about it. Alanna—as touched by the Mother as any elemental—did not worry about Voidan getting free.
Why?
How can you not worry about what will happen?
His daughter laughed, the high-pitched giggle so jarring compared to the maturity he heard within his mind. She touched his cheek, trailing her fingers along his jawline. How can you worry when you’ve been given so much?
Because I don’t know how to stop her.
You need not worry. She will come, and you will oppose. It is the way the Mother intended.
She intended for me to face Marin?
Alanna giggled again. Perhaps not her, but she could feel the tremblings. You can too, if you pay attention. The darkness has been gaining strength for many years. It was a matter of time before it escaped. That is the cycle, and you will be the one to end this cycle.
Images flashed in his mind, images that Alanna as his child should not possess. They were of Doma falling before Incendin. Of the barrier erected between the kingdoms. Of Par becoming Par-shon. They were flashe
s, barely more than touches of memory, but he knew them, recognizing them for what they were.
If he ever questioned her connection to the elementals, that answered it for him.
Everything that had been occurring for the last century had built up to this.
In that way, perhaps the Mother had been planning.
Was that why he had been granted his abilities?
Does it matter, Maelen?
Tan couldn’t tell who had asked the question. It could have been Wasina, or his daughter, or any of the elementals he felt through his solidified connection to spirit and the bonds. The source of the question didn’t matter. He knew the answer as surely as they did.
He tapped Wasina on the side and she turned, catching another current of air and taking them toward Ethea. Villages occasionally appeared below them, dotting the landscape. Tan had never taken the time to visit the countless villages scattered throughout the kingdoms, villages that were much like the one he had come from. How many people were isolated from the events taking place? How many depended on him doing what he must so that they could continue to have that isolation? Untold thousands, he knew as he touched upon the spirit bond. They were all there, connected in some way, though more faintly than those who could shape.
As they approached Ethea, Tan sent out a call to those he shared a connection with.
Shapers he had worked with before, shapers who had trained with him, even those who had opposed him. He sent the request through spirit, letting it flow from him.
And realized that they should not meet in Ethea.
Doing so felt… wrong.
Instead, he motioned to Wasina to return, guiding her back toward the mountains.
Where everything had begun for him, it needed to end.
It felt fitting, and he hoped the Mother appreciated the symmetry.
When they reached the mountains again, with the crystal blue waters of the lake below them, Tan stood on Wasina and grabbed Amia and Alanna, shaping them to the ground. He had thought that Wasina would soar above them, but she surprised him by diving toward the lake and plunging deep beneath the surface in a spray of white tinged with a hint of green.
Where are you going?
Cycle of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 11) Page 13