Fortress of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 4)

by D. K. Holmberg

  Wind suddenly whipped around him and he looked up to see his mother come in on a shaping of air. She glared at him as she landed. Ferran was with her and stood behind her, watching Tan with an unreadable expression.

  “What do you think you were doing, Tannen?” she demanded.

  Any answer would like draw her ire, so he went with the one that fueled his concern. “The draasin is in danger. When I last spoke to him, he warned me of what was happening—”

  She sniffed and waved her hand to the south, toward Incendin. “The draasin? You fear your draasin? From what I saw, the draasin is fine. The lisincend the little one chose to attack might be another matter.”

  Lisincend? Asboel would have reached out to him were the lisincend involved, wouldn’t he? And if it were Enya attacking… then maybe Asboel had stopped whatever she intended.

  “I would think that if your draasin wanted your assistance, he would have come for you. That he hasn’t means that what he intends does not require your help,” his mother went on. “And seeing how easily I managed to prevent you from traveling, I think that is for the best.”

  She turned to Ferran. “I will return Tannen to Ethea and then come for you. You and I will continue what we had begun.”

  “If you wish, Zephra,” Ferran said.

  Zephra came over to Tan and grabbed his arm.

  “Mother, I can help.”

  She shook her head. “You have been lucky so far with what you’ve managed to do, Tannen, but I will not have you getting yourself killed simply because you’re too stubborn to recognize what you don’t know.”

  They lifted into the air, the shaping of wind whistling around them and carrying them back toward Ethea. Tan didn’t even fight; it would have done no good had he tried. Zephra’s connection to the wind was too strong for him to counter it.

  “You wonder why I don’t approve of Amia, but if she truly cared about you, she wouldn’t let you attempt this either.”

  With that, they moved too quickly toward the city for Tan to answer. He wouldn’t have known what to say anyway.

  9

  Zephra’s Return

  Tan stood in the university yard, practicing wind shaping, ignoring the earth shapers struggling to repair the courtyard. Unlike the archives and the lower parts of the city, golud didn’t infuse the walls of the university, at least not with enough strength to keep it standing. But the central stone area where warriors had once landed with regularity remained intact.

  As his mother instructed, he focused on his breathing first, listening to the sound of his breaths, each one moving through him steadily. Since returning him to Ethea, there had been no more sessions with her. Days had passed and he still hadn’t learned what she had found in Incendin, and Asboel remained painfully quiet. Neither had tamped his anger with her.

  Instead, he practiced shaping on his own, determined not to let her control him again. He fixated on the way the wind flowed around him as he breathed, the sense of the breeze playing along his skin and hair. The shapings came, each time with less difficulty. He was tempted to draw on the elementals, but he would do this on his own.

  He breathed out a sigh, thinking of ashi and how the wind elemental responded to him better than ara. With the thought, a warmer breeze gusted in from the south. Tan held the connection for a moment. As he did, he could feel the control available to him, a shaping that he would only have to push away and he would have it mastered. He let it go.

  Why should this wind elemental work for him when ara did not?

  Perhaps his mother could answer, though after the way she’d been treating him, he hesitated going to her with questions about the elementals. She wanted him to master shaping without relying on them, but Tan suspected it was all tied together. Hadn’t he learned to shape fire better because of his connection to Asboel rather than in spite of it?

  Tan turned to Amia, who sat atop one of the rocks that had fallen. From its enormous size, it looked like it had come from one of the lecture rooms. She stared blankly, a distant look in her eyes. She’d been that way since he began working with his mother.

  “You don’t have to wait for her,” Tan said.

  “No. This is something you said you must do. I’ll be here with you when she returns.”

  Tan had spent the better part of two days angry with Zephra. Now he would have answers. “I will find out what she knows about Asboel.” His silence had bothered Tan as much as anything. “He’s family now.”

  He regretted mentioning anything about family almost immediately.

  “It’s fine,” she said.

  He touched her arm and tried to pull her toward him in a hug. She resisted for a moment. “You’re family, too,” he said.

  She rested her head on his chest. “You know I feel the same way. But I wonder what else is there for me? I’m a spirit shaper who was meant to lead the People, only there aren’t a people for me to lead.”

  “There are many ways you can still serve.”

  “Not where I’m trusted. If your mother won’t, what makes you think anyone else will? What will I ever do that’s useful?”

  Tan wanted to tell her that she would be useful, that there were many things she could do, but he had many of the same doubts. With Asboel telling him to stay away from Incendin, his mother treating him as if he’d never left Nor, and Roine not willing to meet with him to discuss his concerns, he felt as impotent as he had before he’d learned any control over the elemental powers. He held Amia, hoping she understood.

  Where was his mother, anyway? When he had found the rune glowing on the coin, he knew she’d be returning soon.

  Finally, a gust of wind swirled around him. Tan looked up to see her land on a thick pillow of air. Wind whipped around her, pulling at her dark hair. Wrinkles pulled at the corners of her eyes and her mouth twisted in an expression Tan recognized as disappointment. He wished she had not given it to Amia as well.

  Tan clutched the small silver coin in his hand, the rune marked across its surface distorting the image of the king’s face that had once been there. The summoning rune glowed softly. It hadn’t taken Tan long to determine where to find her. There were only a few places in the city where it was safe for a shaper to land, otherwise too much force and energy would be thrown around, leading to the sort of destruction the city had too recently faced.

  “Tannen,” she said. Ara flittered about her head, barely more than a translucent face that faded as the wind died.

  Tan studied her clothes, noting the thin wool pants she wore and the scarf she had wrapped around her neck. A leather satchel hung from her shoulder. “You left the kingdoms again.”

  “You’re questioning your mother?” she asked.

  “I’m questioning Zephra.”

  She sniffed and started down the street toward the palace. “Is that any different? I seem to recall that I’m the Master shaper. You were to be studying anyway. Is that what you’re doing here?” His mother started away from the university without waiting for his answer, and Tan followed. Amia remained silent as she walked at his side. She held his hand but fixed her gaze straight ahead, focused on the palace in the distance, unmindful of everyone they passed.

  “Have you found Elle?”

  His mother shot him a look. “What makes you think I went searching for her?”

  Tan nodded toward the satchel. “That was hers, I believe. I seem to remember the way she stuffed it full of books.”

  His mother’s frown softened. “It was her grandfather’s. I used to see him with it all over the university. He was much like Elle. Loved the archives, even if he didn’t understand why the archivists wouldn’t allow him to reach the lower levels.”

  They continued toward the palace, the streets becoming increasingly empty the closer they came. Here, in the center of the city, the destruction had been most severe. This hadn’t been done by the draasin. That attack had affected other areas of the city, leaving the university damaged, but the palace had been well protected by Ethe
a’s shapers. When the lisincend came, invited by Althem in his attempt to control the artifact, a different type of destruction had taken place.

  “You summoned Roine. What did you find?”

  She fixed him with an annoyed expression. “Yes. Roine. Not you.”

  “You won’t keep me from what’s happening in Incendin. If the draasin are involved, I need to know. Besides, I’m a warrior shaper.”

  “Not yet. You might be something else, but you are not a warrior yet.” She said it with such emphasis that it felt like a slap to Tan.

  “Then what exactly am I?”

  She hesitated as she met his gaze. The corners of her mouth tightened. “You can be too much like your father at times.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said.

  “You should.”

  She turned toward the palace. Here, the destruction was worse than in other parts of the city, even when compared to the city surrounding the palace. They were forced to climb over piles of rock to make their way. This gave a certain protection to the palace not afforded to the rest of the city. The shapers attempting to repair the city had not done much here. The rest of the city needed what strength they could offer first. Zephra lifted onto a finger of wind, drifting in a controlled fashion above the rock.

  Tan shot her a look and took Amia’s hand.

  When he caught up to his mother, he saw that ara swirled around her, aiding in her shaping. “You use ara nearly as much as I use the fire elementals,” he said.

  “Only because I know how to shape wind, even without ara,” she said. With a quick step, she took to the air and spun to face him. The translucent face of her bonded elemental again appeared near her cheek. “In time, when you master your shaping and if you bond to wind, you will learn the subtleties that it can offer.”

  Amia shook herself and turned to Zephra. “You only speak to one of ara? How is it that you can shape as you do?”

  His mother considered Amia for a moment as if debating whether to answer. “Ara can take many shapes, many forms, but the wind is powerful and my own shaping ability adds to what ara allows me to do, giving me even more strength.” She frowned at Amia. “How else do you think I managed to take on another’s face for so long?”

  Her face rippled, the translucent form of ara shimmering around her. Sarah appeared, bearing similarities to Zephra. Now that Tan knew what he did, he could see how she hid her features, but it was subtle.

  Zephra settled back to the ground and her face reappeared as they stepped into the wide courtyard surrounding the palace. The grounds had been completely destroyed here, the earth heaved by Althem’s shaping and that of the warriors chasing him, but time and Roine’s shaping had restored much of it to what it had been. It still wasn’t as Tan had first known it to be, with images and scenes from each area of the kingdoms, but there wasn’t the reminder of the death and destruction that had come through here.

  The shaping that had once prevented others from shaping within the courtyard had lifted as well. Tan wondered if the shaping had been over the courtyard or whether it had covered the entire palace. Either way, it was gone, left as nothing more than a memory.

  Servants led them inside the palace and guided them toward a narrow room on the first level, passing a row of portraits of the previous kings. Tan had seen them before, had spent time speaking with Roine about their significance. He was surprised to see the portrait of Althem hanging on the wall, eyes that once attempted to look warm and inviting now nothing more than hard and calculating.

  How much damage had been done because of his spirit shapings? Tan paused and studied the portrait, thinking of all the terrible things Althem had done. All to try to reach the artifact, to control power. It had all been rendered futile with one snap of Asboel’s jaws. Maybe the Great Mother had welcomed him back, but Tan hoped not. Let him wander in the Void, let him be claimed by the emptiness the priests spoke of for those undeserving of the Great Mother.

  Amia touched his arm. “Tan?” she whispered.

  He took a deep breath and turned away from the portrait. “I’m sorry.”

  “I sensed… darkness within your thoughts.” She kept her voice low and pulled him to the side. Zephra walked ahead but her posture made it seem as if she listened.

  Tan glanced over at the portrait of Althem. “I thought I was over what happened, but maybe I’m not.”

  Amia gripped his arm. “I’m not sure we’ll ever have the answers we want, Tan. Why did the First Mother abandon the core beliefs of the Aeta? Why would she use her abilities to force others to serve Incendin?”

  “At least she could claim she protected her people.”

  “Could she?” Amia asked, pulling him to a stop. Zephra kept going before realizing they had stopped. She turned to shoot them a look. “I’d argue that she put the Aeta in more danger because of her actions. She sided with Incendin, against the kingdoms. Far better to have made bargains with people who wouldn’t take you and torment you as part of some twisted ritual to serve fire.”

  Tan hesitated, wondering if he should tell Amia about the regret that filled the First Mother. “She wishes she had done things differently,” he said.

  “Don’t we all.”

  Tan took her hands. “You should speak to her. Maybe it will help you find—”

  “Find what? Peace? Forgiveness? The People are scattered now and there is no one to lead them. That is on her.”

  “The People should not suffer for what she did.”

  “But they do. Can’t you see that? Even were there someone able to lead them, they suffer. There is no more Gathering. There are no more Aeta.” She turned away from him and tried to let go of his hands but he wouldn’t let her.

  “Then you should lead,” he said.

  She tensed and stopped pulling. “I’m not sure I can. Or that I want to.”

  Tan didn’t need to feel the pain through the bond to know what she was feeling. It was in her voice and the way she hung her head. It was the pain that had plagued her since learning of the First Mother. “I will help you with whatever you need,” he said softly.

  She looked over and a sad smile came her lips. “I know you will.”

  They continued down the hall toward his mother. Tan held tightly to Amia’s hand. Whatever else was happening with Incendin, he had to figure out a way to help her, too. Only, he didn’t know how.

  Roine emerged from a door at the end of the hall. His hair had grayed in the last few weeks, but it gave him a more regal appearance. He wore a thick green jacket, plain and without any embroidery, and black pants tucked into his boots. A weary smile greeted them.

  “I hadn’t expected all of you. You said Tannen was taking time to learn shapings.”

  Tan shot his mother a hard look. Had she been the reason Roine had kept his distance?

  Zephra made a point of not looking over at him. “It seems that one made certain to attune to my rune.”

  “I did nothing but copy it,” Tan said.

  His mother gave him a disapproving look, one he’d seen so many times growing up.

  “How are you, Theondar? You look tired,” Zephra said.

  He motioned them into the room. High ceilings towered over walls of smooth white alabaster. A long table filled the middle. Shapers lanterns hung on columns spaced evenly throughout the room and for a second, Tan mourned the loss of knowledge of how to build them.

  Roine stood behind a wide chair carved with shapes of the elementals and pulled it away from the end of the table. It served as the throne for the kingdoms, the seat of power. And now it was Roine’s. He waved for everyone to take seats of their own. Zephra arched a brow, and he smiled back at her sheepishly. “I never wanted to sit in this chair,” he said.

  “It suits you, Theondar. Maybe it wouldn’t have suited Roine, but it does you.”

  He shook his head. “I will lead until an heir comes forward.”

  Zephra used a shaping of wind to position a different chair near enough
for her to sit in. Tan and Amia took seats on the other side of the table, facing them.

  “Do you think another will come forward? Althem was not known to have any heirs,” Zephra said.

  Roine snorted. “Perhaps not officially, but he had his dalliances, as his father did before him.”

  Zephra rested her head on her hands. For the first time, Tan noticed how tired she looked. What had she been doing that kept her away from the kingdoms? It was about more than searching for Elle, he was certain of that.

  “Ilton was devoted to Queen Asinna,” Zephra said.

  “While she lived,” Roine agreed. “But after her death, he was a little less discreet. Most in the palace knew.”

  “You weren’t in the palace. Not like Lacertin.”

  Roine’s face still clouded slightly at the mention of Lacertin’s name. “No. I wouldn’t have been, but Althem had a loose tongue and shared with me what took place within the palace.” He shook his head. “Regardless, Althem began to take after his father, sneaking serving girls to his quarters at first. From what I’ve been able to determine, he began moving on to more difficult conquests.” He said the last with disgust.

  “If Althem told you about his father, how do you know you can even believe it?” Tan asked. “Everything we know about Althem could be a lie. With his ability to shape spirit, he could have made you believe whatever he wanted and you’d be no wiser to it.”

  Roine sighed as he turned to Tan. “That’s been the hardest part of agreeing to lead. I’ve been forced to try and separate what was real and what illusion Althem had created through his spirit shaping. I’m still trying to understand.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs.

  Tan wondered if he realized that it made him seem more regal. Perhaps Theondar had never really left. Maybe he’d have to stop thinking of him as Roine.