Fortress of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 4)

by D. K. Holmberg

  He moved carefully through the stone, wondering what it had once been like to learn and study in here. This was where his mother and father had met, two of the countless shapers who had trained here over the centuries. Many had become warriors, so it was that much harder to view the pile of rock the storied institution had become. Although the draasin had done more of the damage, some had come from when Althem had let the lisincend wander freely through the city.

  A pair of shapers picked through the rock. Tan felt the pressure of their shaping and recognized that they used an earth shaping to slide rock that would otherwise have been too large and heavy to lift by hand. It was a slow and steady attempt to rebuild the university. It would take time to bring it back to what it had been, if it was even possible. So much had changed. Part of him wondered if the Masters were even the right ones to teach anymore. They focused more on where the shaper came from and the threat they might pose rather than on what the shaper might be able to learn. As the First Mother had said, they focused on gaining power rather than on gaining understanding.

  Yet, as much as Tan might want to help with the cleanup, there was little he could do unless golud helped. Earth shaping remained difficult for him. He could do little things, use a weak shaping of earth to tie into what he needed for spirit, but nothing of much strength. Not enough to help rebuild the university. Once it was done, he thought he might be able to help. Golud infused the stones beneath them, working through the bones of the city. If he could coax the earth elemental to strengthen the university, maybe it would hold better if there was another attack.

  And another attack was inevitable. Tan felt that with nearly as much certainty as he felt the need to learn as much as he could about the ancient scholars. They had knowledge that had been lost. What could he learn from them that had not been seen in the world for a millennia?

  Would he understand what it meant to bond to one of the draasin? Asboel thought the bond was all for Tan’s protection, but Tan wasn’t as certain. There had to be a benefit for Asboel as well, but he hadn’t discovered what that might be. From Asboel, he learned control of fire, how to make delicate and intricate shapings of fire. From Tan, what did Asboel learn? Not how the world was in the centuries since he’d been frozen beneath the lake. Tan had been shielded from the world of shapers and warriors by his parents so that he barely knew that world. What, then, was the benefit to the draasin?

  “Still staring like some backwoods village boy?”

  Tan turned to see Cianna watching him. Her bright orange hair spiked away from her head and she wore a shimmery shirt that nearly matched her hair. Black leather pants clung to her figure.

  “I am a backwoods village boy. And I was lost in thought, I guess.”

  “Well, I’m sorry you lost your thought. You know, I never really knew you to have one.” She laughed and waved to the earth shapers moving the stone. Only one of them waved back. The other looked over long enough to glare at her, as if the destruction of the university was her fault.

  “I don’t understand them,” Tan said.

  Cianna shrugged. “Them? They’re just mad fire burned down the city. Some are stupid enough to blame us fire shapers, as if we are strong enough to make the shapings that burned though here. The Great Mother knows I once felt power like that.” Cianna’s eyes went distant and she shivered.

  Like Tan, she had nearly been lost to fire, though in her case, the shaping had been forced upon her. Tan had welcomed it almost willingly, doing what he needed to save Amia. It had changed him, giving him power unlike anything he’d experienced. But serving fire like that had a cost. There was a loss of control when you were pulled so closely into fire, and Tan had wanted nothing more than to let fire burn. It was what the lisincend felt with their transformation. Amia had managed to save him, finding a way for water to restore him. He still wondered why the lisincend chose the transformation.

  “Do you miss it?” Tan asked.

  Cianna’s face turned serious. “I didn’t have it long enough to really miss it, but there was an ease to it. A caress of fire.” She shivered again in spite of the heat radiating off her. “But there was no control. It consumed me. I can’t imagine what it must be like for them.” Her eyes turned toward the archives, where the lisincend captured during the attack was still held. No one had wanted to move him, and three shapers were with him at all times, though golud maintained his capture.

  “They serve fire willingly,” Tan said.

  Cianna forced a tight smile. “I serve fire willingly. What they do… that is something else. They have the illusion of control.”

  Not for the first time, Tan wondered what it was like for the twisted lisincend. As different from lisincend like Fur as the lisincend were to fire shapers, they had used spirit in the dark shaping that had created them. Following her transformation, Alisz had kept some rudimentary ability to spirit shape. Using the First Mother to teach her had increased her skill, leaving her likely more capable than Tan was now. But like him, what she managed was blunt. It wasn’t natural to her, but forced.

  “We should rid ourselves of that creature,” Cianna said.

  Tan had something else in mind for the lisincend, and though he didn’t know if it would work, it would be time to try soon. Roine wanted time to try to interrogate him, as if the lisincend would give up anything useful. Tan suspected his way had the best hope of success. “Have you tried to see him?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t. Not after…” She didn’t finish. She didn’t really need to.

  He touched her arm, feeling the warmth glowing beneath her skin. She burned with it, closer to the lisincend than she let herself believe. He might burn the same way now that fire called to him.

  “What was it like before?” he asked, looking around the university. “When you studied here, what was it like?” His time had been achingly brief, only long enough to learn how little he really knew. And then the attack came and he left, shaped toward Incendin to find healing for his friend Elle. Had the Great Mother kept her safe? Had she reached the udilm, and did they keep her safe?

  Cianna’s eyes tightened slightly. “It was a place of learning. There have always been those with much power here. And then there were those who wanted power.” She shrugged. “Maybe we can do it better this time.”

  “Which were you?”

  Her smile returned and a playful light burned in her eyes. “A bit of both?” she suggested. “Though had I wanted real power, I would have gone south to learn.”

  South meant Incendin.

  Tan closed his eyes. The distant sense of Asboel was there, as it always was. Reaching for the draasin was easier than it once had been. He could pull through the connection with the draasin, reach for the power Asboel commanded, but more than that, he could see through Asboel’s eyes. Images flickered to him as he focused, those of bleak hot lands sweeping beneath him. Fire burned somewhere to the right, an orange glow in the midst of red as Asboel searched for movement while hunting. There was a contented feeling from Asboel, but a hint of worry, too. Tan wondered about that.

  “You reached for your draasin, didn’t you?” Cianna asked.

  “He’s not mine, but yes. I reached for the connection.”

  She laughed. “He’s as much yours as anyone’s. Creatures like that don’t bond, at least not that I’ve ever heard. It’s been over a thousand years since the world has seen one and you manage to make him your pet.”

  “I think he’d object to being considered a pet.”

  “Then are you his pet?”

  Tan laughed imagining asking Asboel the question. He knew the answer pretty quickly. “He’d tell you yes.”

  “You still owe me a ride,” she said. She pressed closer to him, the heat from her body making his skin dry, but not in an uncomfortable way.

  “Sometime,” he agreed. “If he chooses not to eat you, that is.”

  “Thought your girl shaped him so that didn’t happen? Wasn’t that why Theondar let him fly freely
?”

  Tan glanced to the sky. He could almost imagine Asboel soaring along near the sun. “If you think Roine could stop one of the draasin from flying freely, you haven’t seen the draasin in its full power.”

  “Only because you refuse to let him.”

  Tan looked at her. “You haven’t been paying attention if you think I control the draasin.”

  The serious expression returned and she lowered her voice. “Maybe you keep that to yourself,” she said, eyes flickering to the two working shapers. “If you don’t control the draasin, there might be some frightened people if they find out.”

  “They’re elementals—”

  “But elementals we can see. The others? We know they’re there. With saa, I see it only in the way the flames dance. I suspect ara brushes against my skin when it blows. Golud is there, deep beneath the earth. I can’t see or feel it, but I know. But the draasin? They’re different. They always have been.” She ran her hand up his arm, more a caress than anything comforting. A gust of wind caused her to look up and nod. Tan turned to see his mother coming in on a steady shaping of wind. “I would like that ride sometime,” Cianna said, then smiled broadly at him before leaving him standing alone in the remains of the university yard.

  His mother landed in a swirl of dirt. She seemed to whisper something to herself as she did—likely talking to ara—before turning to face him.

  Zephra wore a heavy grey cloak and a hood pulled over her head. She pushed it back, letting her dark hair fall loose around her shoulders. A familiar irritation in her eyes looked something like an admonishment. “Tannen. You should be helping with the cleanup.”

  Tan glanced at the remains of the university. “I’m doing what I can to help.”

  “By speaking to the prisoners?” She was small but when she pulled herself up in front of him, she seemed to tower over him as she had when he was a child. Then she’d held a spoon or sometimes a pen and had tapped it in her irritation. At least now, her hands were empty. It didn’t make her any less imposing. “I know all about the time you spend with the Aeta.”

  “Amia or the First Mother?”

  His mother snorted. “Both.”

  “What is your issue with Amia? Had she not saved me—”

  “I struggle to believe that a spirit shaper had no idea what her people were up to. Not only did you nearly die because of it, you almost became one of the lisincend.”

  “And she thought enough of my abilities to see me restored.”

  Zephra’s eyes narrowed. A flurry of emotions flickered across them. “Why do you continue to risk yourself with the First Mother? Hasn’t she done enough?”

  “I don’t risk myself. I’m using her to learn. How else will I understand the ancient runes found in the lower archives?”

  “You still haven’t managed to open the inner doors?”

  Tan shook his head. He could open some of the doors in the lower archives, but there was one that remained locked, even with his ability to shape spirit. It remained the mystery he could not solve. The runes on that door were such that he couldn’t even get them to glow as he could the others.

  “Perhaps it’s best. We don’t have the knowledge those ancient scholars possessed. I wonder if there are things we’re not meant to know.”

  “Why should we fear knowledge?”

  His mother turned to him. “I’m surprised you wouldn’t understand.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She turned and looked at the clouds. “It was a time of war, the kind we haven’t seen in centuries. Your draasin were hunted then and the shapers had power we can’t even imagine. Their scholars created the artifact. What else might they have done?” She surveyed the city, hard eyes taking in the damage as she did. “It’s a wonder we survived that time.”

  Tan had never known his mother to be scared of anything, but the way she spoke left him thinking that she was afraid and didn’t share everything she might know with him. It wouldn’t be the first time she hid things from him.

  “And now you seek to learn from her,” she went on.

  “The First Mother did what she thought necessary for her people.”

  “She’s convinced you of that? How surprising that another spirit shaper has managed to twist you to her view.”

  Anger surged in him and he pressed it back. “How little you still think of me, Mother. You don’t think I can protect myself from a spirit shaping? I’ve learned how to shape spirit.”

  She sighed and started away from the remains of the university. “Is that what it is? From what I’ve read, you shape something akin to spirit, but maybe not spirit itself. Either way, I think you’re letting your heart lead you. It places you at risk.”

  “Like your didn’t let your heart lead you with Father?”

  “That was different.”

  “Was it? I’d like to know what Althem promised you that made you think Nor was the place to settle.”

  Tan followed her as she left the university behind. He suspected she headed for the palace, but couldn’t be sure. Roine would be there. Since Althem’s death, Roine had taken command of the kingdoms.

  “I told you that we’d done our service to the kingdoms.”

  “Strange that a spirit shaper like Althem would release you like that.”

  She glanced over and shook her head in irritation. “We served our commitment to the throne, Tannen. Peace was our reward.”

  “Only Father never really had peace, did he? Why was he summoned and not you?” In the time since he’d learned of his parents’ real connection to the university, they’d never had the chance to have this argument.

  Zephra stopped and fixed him with a withering glare. “Tannen, careful with what you say.”

  “Why? You’ve found it awfully easy to accuse Amia of trying to drag me into some Aeta plot, never minding the fact that I chose to help her.”

  “Only after she shaped you,” his mother reminded. “Isn’t that what you told me?”

  “Her shaping had nothing to do with why I’m still with her. I would have helped her as much as I could regardless. The shaping has done nothing more than—”

  “Connect you to her.” She cocked her head. “Yes, I’m aware of that as well.”

  A translucent face drifted quickly out of the soft breeze before fading. Tan studied ara, wondering if the wind elemental would ever respond to him the way it did for his mother. Zephra had a connection to the wind he would never really know. And he couldn’t be upset by that. She was a wind shaper, after all, while Tan was… well, a wind shaper also, only without the same degree of ability with it.

  Why wouldn’t ara respond for him the same as it did for his mother?

  “I believe you’ve been keeping secrets from me far longer than I have with you,” he said. “Had Roine not shown up, would you ever have told me about your shaping? Would I have learned who my parents really were?”

  She reached for him, but he pulled away. The hurt on her face nearly made him reconsider. “You’ve always known who your parents were, Tannen. Learning we are shapers changes nothing.”

  Tan sighed. “Had Roine not come to Nor, there wouldn’t have been a reason for you to tell me about yourself. I would never have learned why Father was summoned to serve, why he needed to be the one to go. All that time, I’d wondered. I understand now. And Father will never know.”

  His mother closed her eyes. Wind swirled around her head, pulling on her dark hair. “You’ve said it yourself. Had you not gone with Roine, you would never have learned what you were capable of becoming. You have gifts the kingdoms have not seen in hundreds of years. All I want is for you to have the chance to develop them. Learn from the Masters, understand your shaping. Those are the things you should be doing, not risking yourself where others are better suited.”

  “I’ve only done what was necessary. And there might not be anyone better suited. Not after what we’ve been through. How many shapers have been lost? Dozens? How many of them can speak to the
elementals? How many have bonded one of the draasin?” Tan caught her eyes. “The barrier is down and those who remain are stretched thin. It leaves us vulnerable.”

  “Which is why you need to study. You’re untrained—”

  “You could train me. Teach me what you know of wind shaping. Help me speak to ara.”

  She hesitated, looking back at the remains of the university, as if imagining Tan trapped within there. “I… I’m not certain that is the right answer.”

  “Didn’t you just say I should learn to shape the wind? That I should learn to master my abilities? In that, you and the First Mother agree.”

  She let her breath out slowly. “If you’ll commit to learning from the other Masters, not only from the First Mother, I will do what I can to teach you about the wind when able.”

  Tan thought that learning from his mother might actually be good for them. After all the deceit between them, getting to know her—really getting to know her as Zephra—was needed. And she needed to know him, to understand who he was becoming. So much had changed between them since they had last spent any meaningful time together.

  And he never had a chance to study with her, not as he did with his father. His father had taught him everything he knew about earth sensing. Tan suspected that was why he had such strength and control with earth sensing, though he only wished he’d managed to learn how to shape with the same degree of skill. As it was, shaping earth remained a challenge for him. Golud helped, but would the great elemental help when he was outside a place of convergence?

  “Fine. Ferran has also offered to teach. I will go to him for additional instruction. Cianna will help with fire.” Amia might not like it, but Cianna was a Master fire shaper. “And I’m sure I can find someone to teach me water shaping.”

  His mother nodded. “It’s settled then. Now, Tannen, Theondar is expecting me before you attempt this.”