Cycle of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 11)

by D. K. Holmberg

  He brought his sword up, connecting with the surge of color coming from both. Where their strange shaping met his spirit shaping, there was a flash and then both dissipated.

  Rather than pointing his sword at them and shaping, he slid forward on a connection of wind and earth, slashing at the nearest shaper. Where his sword connected with the man’s arm, light trickled free. Tan swung again, spinning, and caught the man in the stomach.

  He disappeared in a flash of light.

  That left only the woman.

  As Tan jumped toward her, he realized that she fought differently.

  When he attempted to catch her on the arm, slicing as he did with the man, she jumped, making him miss. Tan stabbed and this time she folded, moving in ways that no person could move, but then, she was not a person. She was some sort of twisted elemental.

  He hesitated. If they were elementals—and if they were twisted—he couldn’t harm them. Had he already made a mistake fighting the one? He was meant to help the elementals, not destroy them.

  Not an elemental, Amia sent. That’s what I’ve been trying to understand. These are physical creations out of darkness.

  Marin is creating her own elementals? How? Marin had been a powerful shaper, but this was an order of magnitude more. What had changed with her to allow this? What had she discovered?

  Something like it. This would be no different than fighting Marin or her disciples.

  It might not seem like it, but it was. At least with them, he had known how to fight them. Spirit worked against them, and he could touch them with his sword. Their bodies didn’t contort in ways that bodies should not. Facing this, he would have to attempt a different approach.

  Spirit.

  It was the only thing that he’d found that was effective against the darkness. As often as he had faced the dark, it had remained effective. That would be how he would hold her.

  Not him. Amia.

  Shape her, he sent.

  Amia nodded her understanding. Tan shaped with spirit, sending it through his sword, drawing her attention. As he attacked, she folded again, bending out of the way. This time, she bent into Amia’s shaping.

  She spun toward Amia, but Amia held her with a powerful band of spirit, wrapping it around the dark woman from her head to her feet.

  Tan sliced through the shaping and struck her with the sword, driving it through the spot her heart should have been.

  The woman disappeared in a flash of color.

  Tan sighed. “How was that possible?” he asked. “Voidan doesn’t create. It destroys.”

  “I don’t know,” Amia answered. Her eyes narrowed in a troubled expression. “But you’re right. That shouldn’t have been possible.” She looked at the rock. “What happened to Light?”

  Tan jumped to the top of the rock in time to see Light slithering free from the pool below. Was it his imagination, or was the pool not as deep as it had been?

  Maelen, they siphoned off spirit to mix with the darkness. This gave them form. There will be others.

  Others?

  Tan barely had time to question.

  There was a sense of darkness mixed with something familiar—spirit, he decided—that suddenly surged around him. Now five wispy forms appeared, each in the shape of a man or a woman. He wondered why those shapes, and what they meant, but would have to question it later, if he survived.

  They pulled on power—were consumed by power—and Tan questioned whether he would be able to defeat them the way he had defeated the other two. Amia could shape, and she could draw upon enough spirit to hold one or maybe even two of them, but all five? That would be too much.

  Darkness reached toward them in strands so thick that Tan could think of only one way to protect them. He grabbed Amia’s hand and jumped.

  They plunged into the pool of spirit.

  The last time he’d been here—and when he’d had gone in before—he had taken the time to remove his clothing. In a flash, it disappeared, only his sword remaining.

  Light jumped in, joining them.

  As Tan and Amia sank, they held hands. Power surged around them.

  Tan felt filled by the connection to spirit, filled by the power that was all around him. All he had to do was reach for it… and he was not alone.

  Amia was there, shaping with him, drawing more than he could draw on his own. They were filled by spirit. Tan had an awareness of everything around him and he drew upon it, casting away the power the five dark shapers used as they created their physical forms. Surrounded by the power of spirit as he was, he could feel it as they disappeared, no longer connected to this place, no longer real.

  Tan sighed, letting the sense of spirit surround him.

  Understanding flowed into him, and he noted the warmth and brightness of Amia next to him. They shaped together, the interconnectedness of it binding them, and he felt a certain relief. In that moment, he felt as if things might work out.

  Where is Alanna?

  He sent the question out to the brightness, to the source of spirit, knowing that in this place, all knowledge could be had.

  Tan waited, expecting a voice, or a vision, but none came.

  Where is the Voice of the Mother?

  Through the bond he shared with Amia, he could feel her unease. He shared it.

  There came no answer.

  There was another question he needed to ask, but didn’t want to ask. Only, it was one he needed to have answered. For him to be able to keep fighting, and for him to keep doing what must be done, he needed to know.

  Does she still live?

  This time, light surged around him. Within the light, there was awareness of those who had come before. Tan detected people he’d known and cared about—his father, Lacertin, other shapers who had fallen fighting with him—but there was no sense of Alanna.

  She lived.

  But the Mother shared with him something more alarming, and something that shook him: she didn’t know how to find Alanna either.

  Could Marin have discovered some way to obscure her from the Mother?

  How could she hide from spirit? Tan hadn’t realized that such a thing was even possible, but then Marin had attacked without him knowing, had grabbed him with his barely having a sense that she was there. There would have to be some way for her to do that.

  If the Mother couldn’t help him find her, was there another way?

  How has Voidan been suppressed before?

  There was emptiness for a moment, and then visions came to him of the Temple of Alast, of Par, and of Norilan. They faded, and were replaced with other images, a different set of three constructs, and a different set of bindings. In this vision, he saw draasin fighting alongside men, working together, dark shapers consumed by Tenebeth opposing them, and the brightness that glowed from the center, a creature that reminded him far too much of Light.

  Nobelas.

  The name filled him.

  Light swirled around him. Her form shifted again as it had been the last time they had come to the pool of spirit.

  You are nobelas?

  I am spirit, Maelen. You have always known that. But if you were to have a name, those you refer to as the ancients knew my kind as nobelas.

  Your kind?

  There have always been nobelas. We appear when needed, when the darkness approaches. That is the only time we are needed.

  You were the key to stopping Voidan before.

  Once. There were others when nobelas was not needed, when it was the power of the shapers who managed to stop Voidan.

  More visions came to him, one after another. In each of them, shapers—men and women so much like himself—fought against the darkness. There was one where the artifacts were created, used to seal the darkness. There was one where men were the seals, binding themselves to the earth, drawing upon the power of the shapers. There were others when the elementals formed the bond, creating it in a way that had required they willfully sacrifice themselves, letting themselves be destroyed to hold ba
ck the darkness.

  They flickered through his mind.

  When Honl had called it a cycle, he had been right. There were dozens of times that Voidan had been stopped, the cycle repeating. Each time, the world changed slightly, and each time the Mother had to rebuild, as if starting anew.

  The visions stopped.

  There was only a piece of land. Nothing else.

  Beneath it, there was darkness.

  Tan could feel it, almost as if he could feel a sense of cold, but he should not detect that here. There should be only warmth when this close to the Mother. There should be only the connection to spirit.

  In that place, darkness bubbled up, much like spirit did here.

  Tan thought he understood. That was a source of Tenebeth, much like this was a source of the Mother. Marin would be there.

  It matched what he’d seen when facing Marin’s disciple. If they had seen this, then he was even more certain this was the place he needed to go.

  Where is it?

  Another image came to him.

  It took his breath away.

  Tan had thought that the pool of Tenebeth would be in some distant and remote place, but that was not where he would find it at all. This was nearby—at least it would be when he was closer to Ethea, and near enough that he should have seen it before now.

  Why hadn’t he?

  The only answer he could come up with was that the entire island had been masked from him. Maybe it had been masked from everyone, using the effect of the bindings, closing it off so that others couldn’t—and wouldn’t—reach it.

  He needed landmarks so that he could find it, and the Mother provided them as well.

  The Voice is in danger, Maelen. You must hurry.

  Tan didn’t know whether this came from Light, from the pool of spirit, or from the Mother herself.

  It didn’t matter. All that mattered was reaching Alanna and stopping Marin.

  22

  Understanding the Seals

  “Why here, Tan?”

  Honl walked across the narrow strip of land as it stretched out into the sea. On either side, waves crashed along the rock, sending spray into the air.

  Tan turned to his bonded elemental. Maybe that wasn’t the right way to describe him anymore. Honl might be bonded to him, but he was something other than an elemental. Tan no longer knew quite what that was, but maybe that didn’t matter. Honl was Honl, and that was enough.

  “We’re here because of something I saw in the vision given to me by the Mother.”

  “I thought we needed to find the island.”

  He nodded. “We do, and I think I have an idea of how to find it, but there’s something that’s been troubling me over the last year.”

  “What is it?”

  “Marin has been gaining in power and her strength has been increasing, this in spite of the seals we placed. I thought there were only three places where the bindings have held, but I think she’s discovered others.”

  Honl was shaking his head, making him appear so human as he did. “There were no other bonds, Maelen. I studied the records the Order possessed. There’s nothing there but the three, and the third they weren’t able to secure.”

  “I don’t think the third matters nearly as much as we think it does,” he said.

  “Why wouldn’t it matter? The three bindings confine Voidan in place, holding him from this world.”

  “And they do, yet she has still grown stronger. How is that possible?”

  A troubled expression crossed Honl’s face before fading. “You think there were others.”

  “I know there were others. The Mother showed them to me. From what I saw, Voidan has been released countless times over the years. Each time, shapers have succeeded in suppressing it once more.”

  “Why should this be different?”

  Tan shook his head. “I don’t know why it should be, only that it is.” The more he thought about it, the more certain he was that there was something different this time. Not only with Marin and the effort she had gone through to free Voidan, but in the power that he had been given. The flashes of memory the Mother had given him had shown him something else—that he was the first given the powers that he had been given. That meant something—if only he could understand what it was.

  They reached a tall pillar of stone and on it, Tan noted the faded image of runes. They were faint and barely recognizable, but they were there.

  And damaged.

  Something had been done to this pillar. He had a flash of memory and recognized the pillar though he also knew he had never seen it before. The pillar was older than any other structure that he’d ever come across, but the damage to it was new.

  A binding, and now broken.

  Was this how Marin had grown more powerful?

  Could she have found the other bindings and attacked them?

  It was possible that she had. He didn’t know how she would have learned of them—he only knew they existed because the Mother had shown them to him.

  Had Voidan shown them to Marin?

  It was possible that enough of Voidan had escaped that he had been able to guide her.

  It would explain how she had gained so much strength over the last few months. These seals—seals that had been in place each other time Voidan had escaped—had been released.

  They wouldn’t be able to confine Voidan again without help.

  Which meant they had to seal off all these other bindings.

  If they didn’t, then Voidan would continue to leak out, giving Marin or someone like her more power.

  Maybe that was the issue that had happened in the past.

  Could it really be that the new seals didn’t completely confine Voidan?

  Tan studied the pillar, realizing how the damage had occurred. With a shaping that required each of the element bonds mixed with spirit, he repaired it. The shaping drained him, but he quickly felt his strength return.

  Even if he wanted help, others wouldn’t be able to repair the previous seals. That was the reason the Mother had given him his ability, and the reason that she had shown him the seals that had been placed over the years.

  He had to replace them.

  “How many?” Honl asked.

  Tan shook his head. “Too many.”

  “We could trap Voidan and rescue Alanna before we do this,” Honl suggested.

  “I don’t think that’s what I’m meant to do. I think the Mother intended for me to repair them now.”

  “What of Alanna?”

  Tan swallowed. “I hope…”

  Honl rested his hand on Tan’s arm. “I hope as well. The Mother would not put you through this only to take her from you.”

  “I don’t know that the Mother is the only one with power in this situation.”

  23

  Restoring the Seals

  They reached three more seals, repairing them without any additional issues. Two were pillars, and Tan realized that they were partnered with the first pillar he had come across. Had the old shapers used trios of shapings much like they had used the last time? Was there something about three that gave power? It seemed to Tan that five would be more important, one for each element, but then those who had placed these seals had probably known nearly as much as him—possibly more. They were shapers of power. Shapers who had studied the elements for far longer than he had known them.

  As they approached the next image that the Mother had given him—this one in a clearing near Chenir where a circle of boulders surrounded what looked like a small pond—Tan hesitated.

  It wasn’t a pond at all.

  What they came across was a pool of the Mother.

  Tan frowned. How would there be a pool of the Mother here? How would others not have known?

  And, as he looked around the boulders, he decided it was possible that they had known. There were markings on the rock, and from the vague feeling Tan had as he neared, he realized the runes were intended to obscure this place, hide it from the outs
ide world. Had Tan not had the image from the Mother, he would not have found it.

  But now the runes hiding it were damaged, much like they had been in the other places they had come across.

  Tan started shaping, drawing on the runes, adding the power of the elements, when he detected a building power. This was not the power of shaping as he knew it; this was the power that came from Voidan.

  Tan looked up. Seven disciples appeared atop the rock. The grinned when they saw Tan, as if they had been waiting for him.

  Not waiting for him. They had been trying to create the constructs of darkness.

  Had they succeeded yet?

  “Maelen.” It was a petite woman with dark hair. Tan realized they all had dark hair, as if their connection to Voidan changed that about them. Even those with the pale complexions of someone who should not have such dark hair now did. “We have expected you.”

  “You think the seven of you can stop me?”

  The woman grinned darkly. “Not stop. Delay.”

  Delay. That meant they wanted to give others a chance to destroy more of the seals. Or they hoped to create the darkness. Either way, he couldn’t let them succeed.

  Tan pulled on his connection to the bonds, to spirit, and repaired the runes.

  Turning to the disciples, he sent spirit at them, directing it through his sword. Two fell quickly before they found a way to circle him. They used shapings of dark energy and surrounded him.

  Tan pulled on spirit, sending it surging, exploding outward.

  It wasn’t enough. Their dark energy was too much.

  Tan had another source; this close to the pool of spirit, he pulled on that power and sent it through his sword, through the disciples. As one, they froze.

  Tan sent another shaping and this time, it knocked them all back.

  He wrapped them in earth and used a quick shaping of spirit to remove any shaping that had been placed on them. Only two had any real shaping for him to counter. That troubled him.

  “Maelen.”

  He turned to Honl, who stood near the pool of spirit.