Amia laid her hand on Tan’s arm. “We need to help the others.”
He turned away, comforted that the two warriors could handle the twisted shaper.
Ferran and Alan battled the kingdom’s shapers. Fire and water slapped against wind and earth. One shaper lay unmoving on the ground. Amia leaned over him and formed a quick shaping.
As she stood, a blast of fire shot at her from the shaped trees.
Tan jumped in front of it, the nymid armor absorbing the impact. Amia fell back, striking her head.
He turned, ignoring the others around him. Amia lay unmoving. Blood oozed from her scalp. Her eyes rolled back in her head. Tan’s heart hammered, but she moaned softly.
He touched her hair, smoothing it back. “Amia?”
“I’ll be fine. I can’t shape like this.” She swallowed and opened her eyes weakly. “I’m sorry, Tan.”
Ferran and Alan pressed back. The kingdom’s shapers still under the archivist’s influence overwhelmed them.
“Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.”
She grunted. “You can’t lie to me.”
He nodded. Even were she not a spirit shaper, she would probably know when he lied. Their spirit shaping only ensured it. “I’ll do what I can.”
She took his hand and squeezed. “You’re blessed by the Great Mother too. You can use it to end this.”
“But I’m not.”
She started to shake her head and then winced. “I saw you when you joined me in the pool. You wouldn’t have been able to do that without her blessing.”
Tan started to argue again, but stopped. Could he be blessed by the Great Mother?
Asboel seemed to think so. Hadn’t he claimed Tan shaped him during the attack with Enya? And he had managed to enter the pool of liquid spirit. Without spirit shaping, he wouldn’t have been able to do it.
With the other shapings, he’d spoken to the elementals for guidance and used that experience to help his shaping. He’d never spoken to the spirit elemental.
Or had he? Wasn’t that what he’d done when he stepped into the silvery pool? Wasn’t that what he’d done when he felt joined to Amia? Could he do it again?
Tan knelt, one hand still holding Amia’s. He closed his eyes, focusing, doing everything he could to remember what it had been like when he stood in the pool of spirit. Memories of it floated into his mind, filling him. Memories of knowledge and understanding, of the sense of being joined to Amia in a way he could never explain. Memories of strength.
Tan held onto all of this in his mind, and then he sent out a shaping.
“Stop!”
He infused the word with his shaping. It washed out of him, released with a burning energy, rolling from him so that it shook the stone, the cavern, everything. He realized he had formed this shaping before, only then, he hadn’t understood what he was doing. It was the shaping that stopped Enya and Asboel as they fought.
Everything around him ceased moving, as if time itself stopped.
Lying next to him, Amia smiled.
Master Ferran stopped his earth shaping and stared ahead. The wind shaper, Alan, floated to the ground and stood waiting. Water shapers stood motionless. Fire shapers hidden in the trees no longer threw their angry heat.
Above him, even Lacertin and Roine hesitated.
Both threw shapings at the Incendin shaper but stalled, sinking toward the cavern floor. Lacertin resisted. In another moment or two, Tan suspected he would manage to free himself from the attack. Roine blinked, as if the additive effect of so many spirit shapings upon him overwhelmed his ability to resist.
Even the twisted fire shaper hesitated. But then, with an angry roar, she spewed flames from her mouth and shot out of the cavern, disappearing into the sky, taking the artifact with her.
CHAPTER 31
Epilogue
As the twisted shaper disappeared from the cavern, Tan reached for his connection to Asboel and sent an image of the Incendin shaper.
Twisted Fire. They seek to displace the draasin.
The sending took much strength. Already, Asboel had flown far from the place of convergence, now flying alongside Enya and the other draasin. Through that vision, Tan saw the other draasin as she flew, two massive eggs clutched in her talons.
The draasin are not so easily displaced. I will hunt in time, Maelen.
Tan sighed. With the change, Incendin had just become more powerful. And if they could recreate the shaping now that they had the artifact, others would be in danger. Already, Incendin required Doma to send them shapers. How much longer would the barrier last now that Incendin attacked in full?
Whatever else, the battle with Incendin was not over. Not yet.
Lacertin landed next to him. Ash and dried blood caked his face. His dark hair hung by a twisted cord behind his head, but much had pulled free. His simple black jacket and pants looked made of a strange, familiar leather. Tan stared at it a moment before realizing where he’d seen it before. Lisincend skin.
“You have done well, Tan.”
Tan looked at him, startled. “How do you know my name?”
He snorted. “There is much I know. Why do you think I left the kingdoms all those years ago?”
Tan tried remembering what his mother had told him about Lacertin. None of it made sense now. “You didn’t sneak into the king’s chambers?”
Lacertin sighed. “So much from that time was a mistake, but I cannot change it. Had I not learned what they planned… how they intended to use the artifact…”
“You learned of the archivists,” Tan said, suddenly realizing.
Lacertin nodded. “And none believed. They came to this place to reach pure spirit. Had it not been for you, they would have succeeded.”
“But why? Why did they help Incendin?” Tan wanted to know why Lacertin helped Incendin too, but now he wasn’t sure he had.
“They never helped Incendin. They used each other. The archivists couldn’t summon spirit, not without help. They needed shapers of other elements to draw the elementals here. And Incendin has been collecting shapers for years. When they learned of the draasin…”
It had been Tan’s fault the archivists had learned how Amia had shaped the draasin. “They thought to shape the elementals?”
Lacertin’s face clouded. “I’m not certain what they intended. As much as I’ve discovered over the years, much is still unknown.”
“I still don’t know why the archivists used the Aeta.”
“Ask her,” he said, nodding to Amia.
With a quick movement, he touched her head. The shaping he used happened in a flash.
Tan started toward her before realizing what he had done.
Amia sat up, touching her now-healed head. She blinked, looking up at Lacertin. “Thank you.”
“Not me. Had it not been for Tan…”
“What about the archivists? What would Amia know?”
“Think of who shapes spirit.”
She looked at him. Sadness filled her eyes. “They were Aeta once.”
It made a twisted sort of sense. “But the spirit shapers of the Aeta are all female.”
Amia shook her head. “Not all. Only women can lead. There have always been men with the ability to sense, and I’d never known one to be blessed by the Great Mother, but there is no reason they could not exist.”
Lacertin shook his head in irritation. “Because they leave, sought out by the archivists. I still don’t know what they intended here, but it seems Incendin got the upper hand. And Alisz finally got what she has wanted.”
Tan thought of how the fire shaper had changed, twisting into something different than the lisincend. “They want to displace the draasin, don’t they?”
Lacertin nodded. “That has always been Fur’s plan. He has never understood why it hasn’t worked. When he learned of the remaining draasin…”
Tan took a deep breath. It would not be the last time Incendin attacked. And Asboel would need help.
He took Amia�
�s hand and met Lacertin’s eyes. “How did you know to come here?”
Roine finally landed and stood near Master Ferran. He watched Lacertin with suspicious eyes. Alan came alongside them. All held a shaping ready.
“Your mother asked me to help.”
“My mother?”
Lacertin nodded. “Once she learned I still lived, and once she realized why I had gone. Few shapers recognize the importance of my barrier as well as Zephra.”
His? Had it been Lacertin who created the barrier?
“But she didn’t know about you,” Tan said. If she had, wouldn’t she have warned him?
Lacertin smiled and leaned toward Tan. “She does.”
Does. Not did.
Lacertin nodded. “Yes, Tan. Zephra still lives.”
About the author:
DK Holmberg currently lives in rural Minnesota where the winter cold and the summer mosquitoes keep him inside and writing.
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Book 3 of the Cloud Warrior Saga
Changed by Fire
The archivists are defeated, but their plan was already set in place. A new lisincend has emerged, more dangerous than before. Incendin still possesses the powerful artifact. And a spirit shaping placed on the king must be released.
Tan has potential to be a warrior shaper—one who can shape all the elements—but shaping doesn’t work for him the same as with other shapers. While he struggles to control his new magic, his friends work to free the king from the spirit shaping. When this fails, a search for another who can help leads Tan to use an uncontrolled shaping, changing him into the one thing he fears the most.
Before he can save the kingdoms, he must save himself. Doing so takes him away from everyone—and everything—he knows. With his both friends and the draasin in danger, can Tan master his abilities in time to stop a decades old plan?
Book 4 of the Cloud Warrior Saga
Fortress of Fire
The barrier has fallen. The king is gone. Tan has secured the artifact, but now the Fortress of Fire in Incendin burns more brightly than it has in a generation.
To master his connection to the elementals, Tan needs to rediscover knowledge about the elemental power that has been lost for centuries. When the draasin bonded to him is injured, he must rely on everything he’s learned to save him and discovers a new threat to the kingdoms more powerful than anything he's ever faced.
The Lost Garden Series -
Keeper of the Forest
Eris Taeresin, third daughter to the king, is tired of being different. She’s wasted months searching the massive palace garden for a flower that will let her join her sisters in lessons to learn the secret language of flowers. Each day the Mistress of Flowers finds some reason to refuse, all while her sisters found theirs easily, a fact they love to throw in her face.
When she finally finds a strange flower that satisfies the stern Mistress of Flowers, Eris is told she needs to learn more about the flower before she can join the lessons, leaving her spending more days searching the garden. At least now she has Terran, a handsome young gardener, for company.
Then, while her father’s men fight a war in the north and with her oldest sister planning her wedding with the Saffra prince, Eris discovers the Mistress of Flowers might be more than she realized. After overhearing her father’s magi advisor, she begins to suspect the Mistress of Flowers is a flower mage who intends to use the garden in a plot against the kingdom. Eris soon learns the threat against the kingdom is deeper than she suspected and now she might be the only one able to save it from destruction.
And if you missed Book 1 of The Cloud Warrior Saga:
Chased by Fire
An ancient artifact that must be found...
Terrifying creatures from dark and dangerous Incendin...
And long-forgotten elementals again unleashed on the world.
As an earth senser, Tan is tasked with helping guide the king’s servant through the dangerous mountain passes in search for the artifact before Incendin can reach it first. But after losing his father to the war, Tan wants nothing to do with the king’s demands. When everything he knows is lost, he is forced to risk himself to save the one person who can find the artifact, a beautiful girl who has lost as much as Tan. In doing so, power the world hasn’t seen in nearly a thousand years is awoken, and a warrior long thought dead returns to claim the artifact for himself.
Others Available by DK Holmberg
The Lost Garden
Keeper of the Forest
The Desolate Bond
The Cloud Warrior Saga
Chased by Fire
Bound by Fire
Changed by Fire
Fortress of Fire
Assassin’s Sight/The Forgotten
The Painted Girl (novella)
The Durven
A Poisoned Deceit
A Forgotten Return
Bound by Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 2) Page 25