Broken of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 9) (10 page)

“You would be incorrect, Athan. I work under the archivist’s guidance.”

“But you’re not of the kingdoms,” Amia said. “You’re from Xsa.”

Xsa? Tan had thought that she looked and dressed differently than most within the kingdoms, but then, he’d spent precious little time in Vatten. She had an accent that he hadn’t managed to place, and now, that made more sense. If she were from Xsa, of course she would have an accent. But why would she be here and working with Assan?

Sani shrugged. “Does it matter where I’m from?”

“It matters when one of the People are involved,” Amia said. “It matters for the Athan when the kingdoms are involved.”

Sani glanced at the men excavating, and Tan realized that most of them shared features with Sani. Were they
all
from Xsa?

If that was the case, what were they trying to find here? Assan claimed that this had to do with dormant elementals and was tied to ancient Vathansa, but why would Xsa be interested in that?

“We search for relics,” Sani answered, “and your archivist searches for the same.”

“Why here?” Amia asked. “You’re from Xsa.”

“Xsa now. But our people came from Vathansa. When these lands were claimed, our people moved, migrating as we often did.” She pulled herself up and locked her hands behind her back. “As Aeta, surely you understand what that means.”

Amia nodded. “We are the Wandering People. We understand.”

“What are you expecting to find?” Tan asked.

Some of Sani’s confidence faded. “I do not know. This place was once the heart of Vathansa. The great Temple of Storms had been here. There are many relics that would have been here, lost to time.”

Amia glanced over at him, and he knew what she was thinking. Could he somehow find what Sani sought?

Tan focused on earth, using his connection to sense deep below the surface, pressing through the rock and dirt to see if he could find anything that might be a lost temple, but detecting anything other than the rock and depths of the earth wasn’t easy.

Would the elementals be able to help?

With a rumbling connection, he reached for golud, sending a request. No answer came.

Tan shook his head. Golud might be the prominent elemental in the kingdoms, but wasn’t found everywhere. And might not even be found in Vatten, especially if it had once been Vathansa and a place of convergence of its own.

“Why do you search here?” he asked. “How do you know this is where you’ll find the remains of your temple?”

“You aren’t the only one with abilities, Athan,” Sani said.

He waited for her to explain more, but she didn’t.

“What is it about your temple that you want to find?” Amia asked. “Why did you imply that you would find dormant elementals?”

“I made no implication,” Sani answered. She tugged on her hair, pushing it back over her shoulder. “And the temple holds the history of the Vathansa people, a history of a time before we migrated and settled the Isles.”

“And the king knows that you search?” Tan asked.

“Your king knows what your archivist seeks. Does it matter if they are the same? Should we not work together? My people lost so much. Finding the temple and the records that we stored…”

Wasn’t that the same reason that he’d come here? He needed to understand what might have attacked Asgar, and Kota suggested asking the Old Ones, but Sashari didn’t know and the nymid weren’t old enough. He could ask udilm, but the water elemental could be fickle with him. Besides, even udilm might not know what had attacked. But if they could find something from a time before, maybe there would be something there that would help.

Tan took a deep breath. “What can I do to help?”

T
he ground had been heaped
to each side, revealing a massive pit. The dozen Xsa excavators worked inside the pit, moving rock to the side that Tan then shaped to the surface, pulling it out and leaving a gaping wound behind. Sani had asked that he shape carefully, not wanting to harm the temple remains.

He still didn’t know why she was convinced that the lost temple would even be found buried here, but the more that he worked, and the longer that Amia talked with her—always off to the side and out of his earshot—the more that he believed that she knew something.

In the two days that they had been here, the hole had grown wider and deeper. A pack of hounds, seven in total, had come to watch, startling the workers until Tan reassured them that he shared a connection to them. Having the hounds nearby bolstered his connection to earth, which was likely the exact reason that Kota had sent them to him. She would have sensed the effort that he exerted and wanted to help, but he’d left her in Par, watching over Asgar so that he could have updates.

Overhead, the bright sun burned down and Tan wiped a bead of sweat off his face. “How much deeper does she think that we need to dig?” he asked Amia as she approached.

She had grown stronger in the last two days, no longer needing to lean on him for support as she had in the day or two following the shadow attack on Asgar. One hand rested across her stomach and she smiled at him.

“She does not know.”

“And she’s certain this is the right place?”

Amia nodded.

“How does she know?”

“Can’t there be any mysteries in the world, Tannen?” Amia asked.

He grunted. “It seems like every time there’s some sort of mystery, I end up pulled into it.”

“And it seems to me that you like the fact that you’re pulled into every mystery that arises.” She smiled. “But your connection to the elementals and our ability to shape aren’t the only forces in the world. The people of Xsa have other talents, ones they have honed over the years.”

“Different than the elements?”

“I’m not able to explain it, and Sani does not share.”

Tan glanced over at the woman, who was bent over the pit. She kept her feet away from the edge and one hand gripped her hair in a tight fist.

“What do you think that
you’ll
find?” Amia asked.

Tan sighed, pulling a shaping of earth to the surface. A huge mound of rock and loose soil spilled onto the growing pile as he released the shaping. “I don’t know that I’ll find anything. I’m not convinced that there’s anything below here, but I’m willing to search.”

“Because you think that a temple might help you uncover other secrets?” Amia asked.

“Something like that.”

“You’ve given up on understanding the Records?”

He shook his head. “Not the Records, but I need Elanne.” He paused and focused on his connection to the elementals. “No. What I really need is to find Honl. The last time he was here, he knew about something that had changed. And with how
he
changed, I think he might be the only one able to help us understand the Records and how they tie into the archives, and maybe into whatever might be found in this temple.
If
we find it.”

One of the excavators shouted from deep in the pit, and Tan hurried forward. Amia remained back, intentionally staying away. For that, he was thankful. He didn’t want to risk anything happening to her while she stared over the edge. Even Sani, as she peered into the growing depths they dug free, made him nervous.

At the edge of the pit, Tan shaped himself into the air. With all the digging that they had done over the last few days—with his help—they had managed to dig nearly twenty feet down, and dozens of paces in circumference. Had Tan not been here, he wouldn’t have thought that it would have been possible to move so much earth without shaping it away. But then, he
had
been shaping some of it away.

“What is it?” Amia asked.

Tan couldn’t see anything in the darkness. He lowered himself and noted that Sani had flung a rope over the edge and slid down it, moving nearly as quickly as he shaped, reminding him in some ways of a sailor moving along lines of a ship.

“Mistress,” one of the excavators said as they reached the bottom of the pit.

“What did you find, Benjan?” she asked.

He pointed to a place on the ground near his feet. Tan leaned close, pushing between the other men clustered around Sani, ignoring their stares. A single piece of pure white stone protruded from the ground.

“Could be coral,” Sani said. She pulled her hair behind her head and leaned toward the white stone, tracing a finger over it.

“Or Alast,” Benjan said. “Pure white, it is. Just like the texts claim.”

“Not Alast. This is probably marble,” another man said, leaning near. He wore a single hoop in one ear and his hair was shorn close, revealing a jagged scar atop his head. “Too cold for Alast, mistress. This is probably nothing more than ornament, not the temple. You know how that—”

She cut him off with a glance.

“How it what?” Tan asked. “What is Alast?”

Sani clasped her hands behind her back as she stood and motioned for the men around them to give her space. Her eyes remained fixed on the ground, staring at the piece of stone protruding from the ground, freed from the surrounding dirt.

Tan used earth sensing to probe how deep this piece of stone went, but it seemed to resist his attempts.
Hounds?
he asked.

Three of them came to the edge of the pit and stared down. Tan heard the ground rumble slightly from the effort of the hounds before falling silent once more. He didn’t know what they did, but there was a mixture of earth
and
fire to it.

This resists us,
the nearest hound told him. He was a large creature, nearly as large as Kota, and she was the largest hound that Tan had encountered. Dark black circles ringed his eyes, giving them a haunted appearance, and streaks of black went down his back.

Resists?
Tan repeated, turning back to the stone. How would something resist the elementals, especially elementals of earth?

“This is what you search for, isn’t it?” Tan asked.

“I… I do not know,” Sani said.

“You don’t know, or you don’t want to tell me? What was—is—the Alast Temple?”

Sani looked over Tan’s shoulder to the excavators of Xsa before pulling her attention back to him. “Little is known about the temple,” she said.

“You seem to know something. Your men seem to know something.”

“They know as much as I do. The Alast Temple was lost to Vathansa over a thousand years ago. Only the memory of its existence remains, but even that has faded over time. The people of Xsa, those who descend from ancient Vathansa, know of the temple. It was a place of power. That much is remembered. As is the stone. Pure white, and warm throughout the year, as if heated by the sun.”

Sani leaned to the white protruding from the ground and ran her hand over it. She shook her head slightly. “This… this is cool. This is not Alast.”

Tan crouched next to her and shaped the earth away from the white stone. As he did, more of it became clear. He touched the surface and found it cool as she suggested. “Maybe centuries in the earth have weakened its power,” Tan suggested. “Maybe there was never any real heat to it at all, only that which would have been reflected.”

Sani’s eyes narrowed. “Perhaps it is as you say, Athan, and that is all there is to it. Or maybe Jenis is right, and this is nothing more than a lost sculpture. There would be value in even that relic.” She stood and dusted her hands on her dark pants. “We will continue to clear the stone and see what we find. Will you continue to help?”

Tan stared at the white stone, his hope for what they might find fading. Maybe there would be nothing here, and his time would be wasted. From his connection to the fire bond and to Kota, he knew that Asgar grew stronger. Soon he would need to return and find what the elemental knew, or at least remembered about what had happened to him.

But, seeing Sani’s face, for now, he would remain in Vatten. He nodded.

* * *

T
he pit stretched deeper
than before, and Tan still stood near the base, shaping as he went, pushing earth up and over the edge of the pit, drawing on the strength of the hounds to help. By now, a dozen hounds had gathered, each standing at the edge, watching as he shaped. They lent their strength and Tan shamelessly pulled from it, able to shape much more than he would have otherwise.

The excavators, those men from Xsa, worked with him, but now that the white stone continued to emerge from the ground, he needed less and less of their cautious approach. Sani had wanted the men of Xsa to begin the process, fearing that Tan might shape wildly and without any real focus, potentially damaging anything that they found, but he remained careful as he went, using the strange absence of sense within the earth to guide him as he pulled dirt and stone away.

Amia stood upon the edge, one of the hounds nearby, blocking her from getting too close. Tan smiled at that. He hadn’t even asked the hounds to help keep her safe, though he suspected Kota had. They chose to protect her at the same time as they lent him their strength. What he sensed of her through the bond told him that she understood and didn’t resent the effort.

Assan had returned from Ethea and now stood next to Sani, too close to the emerging white stone for Tan to work easily. He’d already asked them to step aside nearly a dozen times, but they continued to get closer, especially once the shape of the temple began to emerge from the rock.

Tan no longer doubted that this was the temple that Sani sought. And with the strange resistance to shaping that he and the hounds detected, he understood that there was something more to it. Maybe it was only the power that Sani suspected. Or maybe there was more to it.

“Could you move back?” Tan asked again.

Sani pulled her hand back from the wall of the temple and shuffled a few steps toward him. When Assan didn’t move, Tan pulled him back on a shaping of earth, sliding him across the ground.

Tan hadn’t known what to expect when Sani had mentioned trying to find a temple. What emerged was nothing like he would have expected. Shaped like a pyramid, the sides sloped outward, forcing him to expand the pit as they went. Thankfully, there were no cities in this part of Vatten. There were barely any other people here, which surprised Tan, given how close they were to the shore.

With each shaping, he had to step back as well. The hounds aided the shaping, no longer needing his guidance, understanding what he intended. Even when Tan’s shaping eased, the hounds continued to move earth, pulling it aside. Always there was the strange absence of any elemental energy as he neared the temple. At least he understood why he hadn’t been able to detect the elementals when he’d first come here.

And now the temple towered over him, easily fifty feet or more over his head. The walls of the pit sloped away, letting more and more sunlight into the pit, so that the white stone of Alast caught the fading light of the sun, making the temple itself almost seem to glow.

“Has the stone warmed at all?” he asked Sani.

She shook her head. “It is the same.”

“How much deeper do you think we have to go?” Tan asked.

Sani frowned. “Already this is more than I would have imagined. This temple… this is magnificent. And so well preserved.”

“There is no way to enter,” Assan remarked.

“The way will come,” she said.

Tan wondered how deep he would have to dig to reveal a way into the temple. A part of him wanted to shape his way in, but given the way the stone resisted shaping, he wasn’t sure that he would even be able to do that. Curiosity as much as anything continued to spur him onward.

The other men of Xsa worked to clear stone away from the edge of the temple, running their shovels along the sloped walls of the pyramid. As they did this, Tan thought that maybe it was unnecessary, that he would be able to shape the stone away from the wall, but he found it simpler to use the leading edge they created and pull the earth away from the temple.

One of the men on the far side of the pit shouted.

Tan stopped his shaping and followed Assan and Sani as they made their way around to the other side of the temple. With the massive pyramid emerging from the earth, he considered shaping himself over and carrying the others with him, but he needed to conserve his energy. How much longer would he need to shape before they managed to find either the lowest part of the temple or some way to access the inside?

When they came around the edge and Tan saw the other excavators, he realized that they
had
found the way in. Where the rest of the temple appeared carved from a single piece of this pure white stone, a long, perfectly straight line ran where the excavators worked.

“Could this be the doorway?” Assan asked.

Sani ran her finger along it. “It is possible,” she said. Looking to Tan, she asked, “Could you focus your shaping here, Athan?”

Tan sent the image to the hounds, showing what he needed of them. The ground groaned in response.