Pain worked through her chest as she fought against the urge to take a breath. In another moment, it would not matter. In another moment, she would breathe in her last, taking in a lungful of the salty sea and sink to the bottom as a sea wife. Perhaps it was not the worst way she could go.
Water splashed around her in a misty spray. Why would you be saved?
The voice filling her head startled her. Elle kicked with renewed energy and sucked in water without intending to. Instead of drowning her, it filled her with energy. The colors swirling around her changed, now solidifying into streamers of green.
Udilm?
You summoned, shaper. What have you to offer?
Offer? Elle couldn’t hide the confusion she felt. The first time she spoke to udilm, it had been different, there hadn’t been a same demand. But then, she’d been dead. If not for Tan, she would have been dead. Had he made an offer?
You would join with the sea? The elemental seemed different than the last time she’d spoken to it.
Waves washed over her, slowly swirling around her. Elle had no sense of where she was or how far she was being drawn away from the shore. Now that she had reached udilm again, would she be drawn so far away that she would not be able to save the village?
Considering the contemptuous way they had treated her since she washed ashore, Elle wondered if she even wanted to. But that was Doma tradition. It was the same she would once have expected.
How long had it been since any spoke to the udilm? A generation? More? And even then, those who could were rare and never seen. Perhaps they stayed in the sea, swimming alongside the elemental as Elle did now.
We need your help. The lisincend—Elle cut herself off, remembering how Tan had used a different term for them with the elementals—Twisted Fire has attacked. We cannot stop them without your help.
Water swirled around her arms and head, giving her the sense that udilm was agitated. Other than that, the udilm didn’t answer her.
Why have you not answered before now? Elle asked.
She shouldn’t push. She should be pleased udilm chose to speak to her again at all, but had they answered before now, Elle wouldn’t have been treated quite as unkindly as she had. Udilm could have helped her.
The water elemental remained silent. The water enveloped her, wrapping around her arms and legs and head. She floated, aware of the current drawing her but unable to do anything about it.
Please, Elle begged.
You would have this place protected?
Had udilm known how conflicted she felt about helping the village? Had that been the reason the elemental had not answered her before, or could there be another explanation? Either way, she didn’t want others to suffer simply because she had suffered.
Yes.
Water splashed around her in a spray of mist. Sand and rough rock brushed against her back. Light filtered through the top of the water, shimmering through the black water overhead.
We will help.
A wave pressed on her, sending her tumbling.
Pain and pressure built in her chest. Elle coughed, and water poured from her lungs. As she struggled to take another breath, she was tossed again up and out of the water, cool air now caressing her cheeks. Elle breathed, drawing in the salty air.
Waves crashed around her. Rocks climbed from the sea, leading to a peak high overhead. Widows Ledge. That was where the elemental released her once again.
Elle dragged herself along the rocks, unmindful of the way it scraped at her flesh, leaving a trail of faint blood. Salt stung fresh wounds, but she ignored them as she climbed. Water sprayed around her, leaving droplets of mist in the air.
And then she reached the peak.
Atop the rock, she saw how flames raced toward the village, driven by the power of the lisincend shaping and the twisted wind pushing toward the sea. Heat and smoke pressed on her. She watched, horrified, knowing there was nothing she could do. Any help the udilm could offer would be too late. The village would burn.
A gust of wind threw her to the rocks, pressing on her from behind.
Elle pushed away and twisted in time to see a storm cloud racing in from the sea. Wind and rain and the sea had all mixed into a violent spray. She had no time to react.
It struck, driving her. Elle clung to it, determined not to lose her grip.
An eternity seemed to pass as the storm roared against her before the wind changed again and it finally receded.
Elle slowly managed to stand. The village still stood, designed to withstand the force of the sea. The flames that had been racing toward it had been quenched, leaving nothing but glistening grasses and trees where fire had burned. Even the smoke that had hung in the air had dissipated.
She turned back toward the water and, not knowing whether they would hear, sent a message to the udilm. Thank you.
There came no answer.
Elle made her way down the rocks, moving more carefully this time. A thin slime coated the rocks, making each step more difficult, leaving her to cling tightly so that she didn’t careen back out toward Widows Ledge. Not that the women in the village would mind. As likely as not, they wouldn’t know she had been the one to speak to udilm. Maybe she should have let the lisincend destroy their homes.
She forced away that thought, feeling a surge of guilt that it had come to her at all. How could she not want to save the village, even after what they had put her through?
Elle took the path back toward the village. When she got there, she saw a mess of commotion. The women who had been working their wash were now up and hurrying about the village, cleaning sand and debris from wind-damaged houses, dragging it toward the edge of town, where it could be burned later. Ridges of sand pressed up to the nearest row of houses. One woman worked a long-fingered rake through it, pulling it away, dragging the sand back toward the beach. Seashells littered the village, glistening in the fading sun like stars in the sky. Seeing that actually made Elle smile.
“You!”
She spun. Vina pointed at her, one hand clutching a long streamer of thick seaweed. Elle suppressed her grin.
“This is your fault!” Vina said. Her voice went higher as she screamed and took a step toward Elle.
“My fault?”
“You!” Vina stormed toward her, waving the seaweed like something alive. “You come to this village and tell of udilm. Now look at what’s happened!”
Elle paused, trying to tamp down her temper. Too often had they taunted her as a sea bride. Too often had they threatened to row her out to deep water and throw her overboard. Too often had they ignored her request to be brought to Falsheim. It had to stop.
After what Elle had been through, it would stop.
“Enough!” she shouted. She stepped toward Vina and grabbed the seaweed, yanking it off her arm. Vina stared at it dumbly. “You would have me taken to the sea? Well, go ahead and try! The sea saved your village today. If not for the elementals, flames from the lisincend would have reached the village. And then what? Would you have cowered in the sea until they burned themselves out? Trust me when I tell you it can take days for flames to tamp out. But if you would like to experience it, then I’m certain we can track down one of the lisincend to accommodate you.”
Vina glared at her, too shocked to speak at first. Then she laughed. “Foolish girl. You think lisincend has reached all the way here? Falsheim shapers would stop them.”
“Not if they fly,” Elle said.
Vina snorted. “Fly? And you claim you’ve seen the lisincend, then you go and make foolish statements like that! The lisincend do not fly.”
Elle took a deep breath, settling the irritation that raged through her. Let Vina suffer if the lisincend returned. It would not be her fault.
“Then explain the fires,” Elle said. “And when you do, I will listen.”
With that, she stormed away, fully aware of the way Vina’s eyes lingered on her back.
She stomped to the top of the hill leading away from the vil
lage. In the distance, Falsheim was achingly far away, the capital too far to even see. Elle could no more reach Falsheim than she could any cloud in the sky. Worse, if there were now winged lisincend, would it matter if she could reach Falsheim? There would be no finding safety if the lisincend could travel as quickly as the draasin.
And, until she could consistently speak to the udilm, there was nothing she could do.
Elle sighed as she stared. A flicker of color in the distance caught her attention. At first, she thought it reflected sunlight, but she knew better. She’d seen it before. She’d lived it before.
Flames flickered like a distant candle, dancing through the darkness as Falsheim burned.
3
Elle stood in the village, her legs still covered with a coating of sand. The sea slapped noisily in the distance. Winds whipped around her, sending her thin cotton dress flapping. Even her hair lashed painfully at her face, loose strands of dark hair like whips against her neck.
She ignored it, as she ignored the heated stares Vina gave her. The old woman still hadn’t managed to settle her home again in the days since the Incendin attack. It had taken the return of Kodan for the rest of the villagers to believe her. Elle wanted to scream in frustration at their idiocy. How could they not see that Incendin had attacked?
“Tell us again, Elle Vaywand. You claim to have seen one of the lisincend? And you think we should believe that Falsheim itself burns?”
She turned and glared at Rolf. He was old—older than her grandfather had been when he passed—and what might have been comforting gray eyes under other circumstances now looked at her with disdain. Like Vina, Rolf assumed she should have been a sea bride.
“Go and see for yourself,” she urged. “You can see the flames around Falsheim.”
“We’ve gone, Sea Bride,” Vina said. “There is nothing but the usual fog around Falsheim. If you think this enough to compel someone to bring you to Falsheim—”
“Can you not feel the effect of its shaping?” She kept her voice more controlled this time. The last time she’d gone through this, she’d nearly yelled at Kodan. Screaming wouldn’t serve her at all, especially not when she had no real proof of what she’d seen. Even the udilm could be a lie. Those who chose not to believe thought the sudden storm nothing more than the changing winds. Elle was almost starting to believe it herself. “And you saw what happened on the plains. What other than the lisincend can bring fire like that?”
Rolf leaned forward in his chair, wringing his wrinkled hands. Splotches of color on the back of his hands stretched and twisted as he did. For some reason, Elle couldn’t take her eyes off them. “Your grandfather was a great man,” Rolf said.
It was the first time any of the villagers had mentioned her grandfather. She hadn’t known if they even knew of him, especially the way they had almost seemed to pointedly ignore her, but her grandfather had been a great man within Doma. At least in her home, his name carried with it a measure of respect.
She glared at Rolf. “And what of him?”
He sniffed and ran his hand across his chin, squeezing the folds of skin together. “Only that you do not seem very much like him.”
The comment stung more than it should. Elle took a calming breath and focused on Vina, standing next to Rolf. They had some relationship, though she hadn’t discovered what it was. Not a couple, but they shared alignment with decisions. “And you do not seem very Doman,” she said. She made a point of fixing Vina with a hard expression and then turned to Rolf. “You asked what I saw? How I knew it was lisincend that attacked? The creature flew past and sent a shaping of flames across the plains. What other creature can do that?”
Rolf’s condescending smile caused another surge of anger through her. “There are many things in this world we have yet to understand. Fire is particularly difficult to know. How can I say with certainty that it was lisincend that attacked? What of fire itself?” He leaned toward Elle, his wrinkled eyes drawing tighter, making him look like he had little fish eyes. “We have heard the rumors out of the west. Ancient fire elements long lost and now returned.”
Elle tensed. She hadn’t known the rumors of the draasin reached quite this far. Only, she knew they were more than rumors. Would Rolf believe her if she admitted she had ridden to the sea atop a draasin? No more than they’d believed she spoke to udilm, she suspected.
“The sea forgets easily,” Rolf went on, “but some things cannot be forgotten. The days when Doma feared the draasin were long ago, but not so long ago that we’ve forgotten.”
Rolf pushed himself up, tottering on a thick cane of beachwood. He pointed a long finger at Elle, jabbing at the air before turning and making his way down the muddy street. Vina offered Elle a satisfied smile and followed after him.
Elle wanted to scream. How could they not understand? It was almost as if they chose ignorance rather than searching for understanding. But she knew what she’d seen. The only question in her mind was how had Incendin managed to change the lisincend into that horrible winged creature. That and what was it doing here.
Elle needed to know.
She stomped up the street, making a point of splashing mud as she passed Rolf and Vina, unmindful of how much she splattered on herself as she did. She gripped the edges of her thin dress and made her way out of the village, only stopping when she reached the high point on the road where she could turn and look back.
From here, the village looked small, nothing more than a whitecap on the massive expanse of the sea. Only the ocean had any real size, any real permanence. It would take only a single wave, one massive surge from the ocean, and the village and everything in it would be called back to the sea. Only through their connection to water had they survived, but even that had faded over time, like so much else.
She turned away from the water and hurried onward. Were she a powerful shaper, she might be able to call on the tiny droplets of water in the air and surf along the way, but she was most decidedly not a powerful shaper. Sensing was coming for her, but shaping still eluded her. Back when she’d studied in the University, Master Nels claimed the shaping would come once she learned to listen to the waves within her. Elle never really understood, but maybe that was because she’d never really listened to the waves. She preferred making them.
The fields of wheat that the village depended on were scorched. Some was salvageable, but Elle was not a skilled enough farmer to understand what could be saved. A few men worked in the distance, backs stooped as they clawed at the earth with hoes and shovels. Not much that would do now. Only time would help regrow these fields. Time and luck.
Her hand lingered on one of the burned stalks. It crunched beneath her fingers. How could this be anything but the lisincend?
But hadn’t she seen the draasin attack Ethea? Maybe Rolf and Vina were right. Who could really know when the ancient elementals were involved? Tan might think he could convince the draasin not to attack the city, but Elle had no such control over the udilm, and the great water elemental left them mostly alone. The draasin had to hunt, to feed.
A little farther up the road, she saw a woman and two children still working at the ground. The woman paused and wiped her brow, looking out toward the sea with eyes begging for answers. Like so many others, she looked lost.
You came too late.
She sent the admonishment toward the udilm without thinking, knowing they wouldn’t answer. There was nothing the sea could do to help with what had happened, not more than was already done. At least the fires no longer burned. Had the elemental not answered her call, the flames would have pushed all the way to the shore, eventually destroying the village, not that they would thank her for trying to stop that.
Even saved, the rest of the village would suffer. Elle didn’t care if Vina suffered, or even Rolf, but there were those in the village who had shown her some measure of kindness, men like Kodan and some of the younger people in the village. The fact that they’d given her a place to sleep and food to eat showed
kindness. Now, regardless of whatever else happened, they would not have enough grain for bread. The village could catch fish, but they couldn’t live on fish alone.
Elle twisted the shaft of wheat in frustration. Why couldn’t she be able to shape? If only she could, she might have been able to do something—anything—to stop the flames. Maybe enough to save part of the crop.
Frustration surged through her and she let it wash over her, wishing she could do something. She stared at the lost wheat and sighed, releasing the building frustration. The feelings did nothing to help and rolled away from her, leaving her feeling empty and tired.
Elle turned up the path and continued away from the village, winding through even more scorched areas. The few trees that had grown here were burnt as well, once long green leaves now blackened. She turned away from them as well.
The path banked, twisting toward the mountains. This was as far as Elle had ever gone. Much farther led too close to Incendin and the mountains rising away. Few of the villagers ever traveled beyond the lower slopes.
To the north was greater Doma. The peninsula she was stranded on was detached from the rest of it, separated by a wide swath of sea. If not for the mountains, all of this might be Incendin lands.
Elle stopped and stared east again, toward Falsheim. A haze hung over everything too far to the east, making it difficult for her to clearly see, but she knew what she’d seen before. There was no doubt that Falsheim burned. Regardless of what Vina claimed, she’d seen fire, not fog. After hundreds of years standing as the stronghold of Doma, what did it mean that Incendin attacked now? What did it meant that they had left it burning so easily?
But what if Rolf was right? What if it wasn’t lisincend, but the draasin? Falsheim had stood for hundreds of years without Incendin managing to reach it. The waters of the Varshand Bay protected it. And Falsheim still knew water shapers. They should be able to repel any Incendin attack, even one by the lisincend.
Elle hesitated, wishing she knew for sure. If only she could reach Falsheim, she might be able to understand, but the bay was too wide for the village’s fishing boats to safely cross. None of the fishermen would venture far from home for fear of storms and winds. She would have to wait for the passing of a deep-water ship, but even that did not offer any guarantees that she’d be allowed passage.
Shaper of Water: The Cloud Warrior Saga Page 2