Broken of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 9) (11 page)

“Have your men step back,” Tan instructed.

When they did, he began his shaping, pulling earth and rock away from the temple. Every time that his shaping came too close to the white stone, he felt the strange emptiness, a void of shaping. The more that he sensed it, the more that it unsettled him.

Slowly, the door to the temple began to emerge. At first, it was only the topmost part of the door, but then long, dark lines ran perpendicular to the first, spaced nearly twenty paces apart. Other than that, there was no change to the stone or the temple, and there still seemed no entrance.

They reached the bottom of the doorway, and, it seemed, the bottom of the temple. No more white stone appeared, only more black earth.

Tan sagged back against the wall of the pit, looking up at what they had uncovered. In the fading light of the sun, shadows slipped along the edge of the temple, almost shimmering. A cool wind gusted from above, and Tan shivered.

“You will stop?” Sani asked.

“I think this is all of it.”

“But we have not found a way to enter.”

“I don’t know that I can help with that,” Tan said. “I uncovered the temple, but more than that…” He shook his head. “More than that might be beyond me, at least right now. This shaping has exhausted me.”

Sani opened her mouth as if to say something more before clamping it closed again.

Assan made his way to Tan. “You have served well, Athan. Much more than King Theondar promised.”

“I’m not sure that he should have promised anything.”

“Only that you would do what you could to help.”

“What now?” Tan asked.

Assan looked at Sani and then at the temple. “Now? Now we must study and see what we can learn from the ancient texts. This is a great find, Athan. Thank you for what you have done.”

Assan returned to Sani and they pulled their heads together, talking quietly.

Tan shaped himself to the surface and stood next to Amia and the dark-eyed hound.

“You’ve finished?” she asked.

“For now.”

“You don’t sound pleased.”

“I… I’m not sure what to feel. Sani spoke of the temple having power, and seeming to be heated by the sun. There is no heat, but I don’t deny that there is some power to it. Within the stone, there’s an absence of elemental energy.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what it means.”

“Nothing that will help you understand what you came here for.”

“No,” he said with a sigh.

“Then we should return. Check on Asgar. And you have a nation to rule.”

Tan laughed.

After he thanked the hounds, they departed, disappearing in a flash of brown fur, moving more quickly than Tan could believe possible. He pulled a traveling shaping, drawing Amia to him, and readied to depart. As he did, he cast one more glance at the temple, trying to understand the uneasy way that it made him feel, but came up with nothing.

He sighed and then shaped them back to Par.

T
he cavern was
dark when they returned, and Tan shaped fire into existence in order to see. Saa swarmed to the shaping and took control, holding fire in something like a tightly controlled ball of light, pushing back the darkness.

Asgar lay along the back wall of the cavern, though he had moved since the last time Tan had seen him. One wing rolled underneath him, and the other was folded against his side. His chest rose and fell regularly. Heat shimmered around him, more than had been there before. From that alone, Tan knew that he would be alright.

“He’s awoken a few times,” Cianna said, stepping into the light. Her red hair stood wildly on her head, and soot stained her forehead. Tan doubted that she’d left the cavern in the time that they’d been gone.

“Where is Sashari? And the hound?” Tan doubted that Sashari had revealed Kota’s name to Cianna, but didn’t actually know whether Sashari even knew it. The connection to the fire bond would let her know much about the hounds, but the hounds were more of earth than of fire.

“They hunt.”

“Together?” Tan asked.

Cianna shrugged. “Don’t ask me. They disappeared and Sashari told me that I was not needed for this hunt.” She couldn’t hide the hurt in her voice.

That was strange, but he would need to focus on understanding that later.

For now, his attention was all for Asgar. He approached the elemental and rested a hand on the draasin’s side. Heat radiated reassuringly from him once more.
Asgar.
Tan reached for him gently, not wanting to disturb his rest but needing to know that he would be well.

The draasin moved, dragging his head across the stone of the cavern, and propped open one eye.
Maelen. You have returned.

I have returned.

You left.

You were with Sashari. With Kota. I went to search for answers.

Asgar blinked his eyes closed and pulled his head back, looking away from Tan.
What did you find?

Only more questions.
He made his way around to Asgar’s head and stood near his friend.
Do you remember what happened?

I remember falling. Something caught me.

That was me.

You should not have needed to catch me. If I cannot fly, what will I become?

You will recover. There is nothing wrong with your body.

No.
Asgar folded his wings over himself, as if trying to hide from Tan.

What else do you remember?

Darkness. Hatred. Cold.

What was it?

I do not know.
Asgar opened his eyes and fixed Tan with a golden-eyed stare.
Had you not been there, Maelen, I do not know what would have happened. I fought as long as I could, but the darkness… it wanted to come inside of me. It would have changed me. I
felt
its desire.

Tan would have thought that impossible, but then, he had seen how elementals could be changed. Hadn’t he been responsible for changes that happened to Honl and other elementals? Hadn’t he brought the hounds back into the fire bond? Hadn’t he brought kaas back into the fire bond? If
he
could change the elementals, then what stopped another creature from doing the same?

I will discover what this was,
Tan said.

You should not.

If it can attack the draasin, it can attack other elementals.

Asgar sniffed out a streamer of heat laced with only a hint of flame.
Then it can also attack Maelen. The draasin are strong, but we are fire only. You, Maelen, you would be a greater prize.

Tan shivered.

He patted Asgar.
Rest, friend. We will hunt together soon.

Asgar’s tail twitched once and then fell still.

Tan turned back to Cianna and Amia. They spoke quietly to each other, and Amia looked up when he approached.

“Did you find anything?” she asked.

“Only another thing to fear.” When Cianna frowned, Tan explained, “He says that whatever attacked him attempted to work its way into him. It would change him.”

“Can that happen?” Cianna asked.

Amia covered her mouth with one hand and rested her other on her stomach. “Given what Tan has done with the elementals, and the look on his face, it seems that he thinks the answer is yes.”

“I… changed the wind elemental. I added spirit to him, and that turned him into something more than simply wind. Now,” he thought of Honl, sending another request for his bonded elemental to join him, “he is different. A combination of spirit and wind. An elemental that did not exist before. And may not exist again.” Tan sighed. “So, yes. I think that it can happen.”

“Would you be able to change them back?” Cianna asked, looking toward the opening in the cavern. Tan suspected that she called to Sashari as she did.

“I don’t know.”

That bothered him the most. Both the not knowing and the possibility that the elementals could be changed and influenced by whatever that darkness was.

And why now? Why had they not seen it before? What had changed?

If anything, the elementals should be safer. He had rescued the draasin, had helped hatch three new of the fire elementals, and he had prevented the other elementals of Par from being forcibly bonded. Even in the kingdoms, the elementals had begun to return and bind to shapers once more. Wasn’t that a good thing? Shouldn’t the shapers be able to keep the elementals safe?

But if the draasin could be attacked, others could be as well. And if it wanted to change him, if it wanted to turn the draasin into something else, Tan couldn’t allow that, could he?

He looked at Amia, thinking to ask her the same, but she stared into the distance, her hands wrapped around her stomach.

“
A
re
you certain that you should have brought her back here?” Amia asked Tan.

She had been mostly quiet since they returned to Par. Even knowing that Asgar would recover hadn’t brightened her spirits. Strangely, she had been spending time with Cianna, someone she had always made a point of avoiding.

“She speaks to the elementals,” Tan said, looking at Molly, who sat near the fire in the library at the estate. The flames bent toward her, though Tan could feel no shaping and sensed no communication with saa. The youngest hatchling crawled across her lap, jumping after the plump chicken leg that Molly held in the air, forcing the draasin to jump. Every so often, the hatchling would flap her wings and nearly had enough force behind the attempt to fly. When she did, Molly giggled and handed the meat to the draasin as a reward. “She’s the only one that I’ve found so far. I think I
needed
to bring her back here.”

Amia stared at the fire, a troubled expression on her face. Tan wished the connection between them hadn’t changed and that he would be able to understand what she was thinking. For now, she was closed to him. Would that bond recover after the pregnancy?

“There’s another reason, Tannen. I may not have the same connection to you since this,” she patted her stomach, “happened, but I like to think that I understand you well enough.”

Tan sighed. “There is another reason,” he admitted. He pulled one of the chairs away from the wall and offered it to Amia, waiting for her to sit. “There’s many, actually, especially with what’s going on around us, but this is mostly about her. She shapes—the draasin tells me that she shapes and I can
see
it in the flames,” he said, pointing to the fire, “but I can’t feel it, not as I can when you shape, or others.”

“Is it something that’s changed for you?” Amia asked.

“Not for me, and not with others when they shape.” He had the same question and had worried at first that something had changed within him. Knowing when shaping took place around him was valuable, so if that suddenly went missing, he would be weaker for it. He could feel the pressure in his head from Amia, who was currently attempting to shape. “This is something that
she
does. I don’t think she’s even aware of what she’s doing,” Tan said. “But the shapings… the shapings have potential.”

“So you want to teach her.”

“And learn from her.” Only, he didn’t have time to learn, not if he intended to understand this darkness that had attacked Asgar, the temple that Sani had uncovered, and also try to learn where Marin had gone.

“Are you certain that you’re the best teacher for her? You can reach fire, but you’ve always been a bit… different with your connection to it. Even now, you’re connected to the fire bond, which helps you shape.”

“I’ve thought about that,” Tan said. “I’m not sure that I can teach her as much about shaping as others could, but that’s not why I brought her here. I think that I
can
teach her about the elementals. Maybe I should have focused on that when I first met her.”

A knock at the door interrupted them.

Maclin stood on the other side of the door and glanced over at Molly, the draasin cradled in her lap. He nodded to Tan. “The Mistress of Bonds awaits you, Maelen.”

Tan let out a breath. “About time,” he muttered. “Will you remain here with Molly?” he asked Maclin.

“Of course, Maelen.” He studied her for a moment and then smiled. “She has a way with that creature, does she not?”

Tan sniffed. “I wonder if maybe it’s not the other way around.”

The draasin looked over at him with a sparkle in her eyes. She snorted, letting out a small streamer of smoke and flame, before jumping after the bone Molly held above her again.

Maclin laughed.

“Amia?” Tan asked.

She grabbed his hand and they made their way down the hall to the main entrance. Elanne waited for him there. She was dressed in a long brown cloak that had droplets of water falling from it, leaving a small puddle on the floor. Tan pushed the puddle away with a shaping and wrung the rest of the water from her cloak. Elanne looked up as he approached and nodded to him.

“Maelen. You have summoned me?”

“Nearly a week ago,” Tan said.

She frowned. “A week? I would have answered had I known. Are you certain that you sent the message?”

Tan had asked both Tolman and Maclin to help him find Elanne. Neither had managed it. But then, during that time, he had been gone as well. “Where have you been?” he started before noting the ink staining her fingers. Then he thought that he understood. “You’ve been studying the Records.”

Her cheeks reddened. “I know that I should be restoring bonds, and that I’m the Mistress of Bonds, but the Records… they have been lost for so long that I only thought—”

Tan raised his hand. “I think it’s good that you’ve been studying them. That’s actually why I asked you to come. There are questions that I have about the Records that only someone who knows them well can answer.”

She frowned and glanced around the hall. “What questions about the Records?”

“The kind that can help explain what happened to us with Marin. I still don’t understand why she attacked and what she was doing with the bonds. Until I do, it puts me in an uncomfortable position of trying to catch up.” These days, with everything else that was happening, he felt that he was trying to catch up to what happened around him far too often.

“The Records are incomplete, Maelen. Even if you manage to decipher some of what is there…”

“They’re runes, right?” Amia asked.

Elanne glanced at Amia and bowed her head. “They are runes, but describing them only as runes is too basic. They are much more than simply runes. There are entire histories scrawled on those stones, hidden by the Seals. That is why the Records were valued. Even the Utu Tonah understood that.”

Tan tensed at the mention of the Utu Tonah but realized that he shouldn’t. “They’re incomplete,” Tan agreed. “Or were.”

“Were? What do you mean?”

“I think it’s time I show you.”

* * *

T
hey stood
in the entrance to the cavern, a faint wind gusting down into the lower reaches. The air from above was cool, but below, he sensed the warmth of the draasin and the draw of fire.

“What is this?” Elanne asked.

“This is the secret that Par hid,” Tan answered.

He carried her into the cavern. Amia had remained behind with Molly, choosing to watch over her. Tan strained to connect to Amia, using the spirit bond between them, but felt her only as a vague sense in his mind. That sense diminished with each passing day. Soon, he suspected, it would disappear altogether, as if the baby absorbed their bond.

Tan shook away that thought. Now was not the time to worry about the nature of his relationship. Amia and he were still connected, and with their coming child, they shared a lasting connection.

“What secret? What does this have to do with the Records?” Elanne asked.

Tan lowered them to the ground on a shaping of wind. Using fire, and with saa drawn to it, eagerly claiming the flame Tan shaped into existence, he lit the cavern.

The two draasin rested amongst the eggs. The larger of the two, the first hatchling, had grown even over the last few days and now propped his head on top of one of the eggs. As Tan appeared, he lifted his head and snorted fire. The other draasin wrapped her tail around another egg and barely moved when he entered. A pile of bones and the remaining meat that Balsun had acquired for the draasin lay nearby. In that, the cavern had already begun to remind Tan of the draasin den in Ethea.

Elanne gasped. “What is this place?”

Tan approached the draasin but Elanne remained back, standing near the entrance to the cavern. “This is the fourth Seal,” he said.

She looked around before focusing on Tan—or rather, the draasin—again. “I see nothing of the Seal.”

Tan stopped in the middle of the draasin eggs. The eggs circled the Seal, as if creating a barrier around them. “Nothing?”

She shook her head.

The first hatchling stood and jumped at Tan. Elanne gasped as he wrapped himself around Tan’s shoulders and then rested his head on top of Tan’s. With the draasin growing as he did, it became less and less comfortable for him to do this. Soon the hatchling wouldn’t be able to ride him as he did. There was a part of Tan that realized he would miss those times. He hadn’t been around Asgar and his sister much when they were little. After hatching, and then getting abducted by Incendin, the hatchlings had been much larger by the time that Asboel had allowed Tan around them much. But these draasin were still small, though they wouldn’t remain that way for much longer.

“When I first found this place, I thought the eggs were the only reason that it was protected,” Tan said. “Tolman brought me here and showed me the secret of Par. I don’t think that he expected me to be able to reach it,” he said with a laugh. “But there is a connection here, one I think I was meant to find.”

Elanne managed to come forward a few steps. “There are so many!”

“Nearly two dozen,” Tan said. “I didn’t realize there were any eggs remaining. Hatching them has been… interesting.”

“And two have hatched?”

“Three.”

She sucked in a breath. “Three draasin of Par. Had he found them…”

Tan nodded. That was what he had feared, but then, now he wasn’t sure that the Utu Tonah had been entirely after the draasin. He had wanted to bond the draasin, but there seemed another reason for his coming to Par, one that wasn’t completely about the draasin and the bonds. Maybe Tan would never understand, and maybe he wasn’t meant to, but he suspected that the Utu Tonah viewed the Records as nearly as valuable as the draasin eggs.

“Here,” Tan said, stepping aside so that Elanne could see the Seal.

She approached slowly, lowering her eyes when the first hatchling hissed at her and pushing with a wind shaping as he sent steam her way. Tan touched the top of his head, trying to soothe him. The draasin growled low in his throat and nipped at Tan’s finger.

When Elanne reached him, she stared at the seal and gasped again. She dropped to her knees and started running her hands over it.

“How did you find it?” she asked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Tan shook his head. “I found it when I found the draasin. I didn’t know what it was at first. Then you helped me with the others, and we managed to stop Marin. But there is something about this Seal that makes it more important. The draasin here tell me that the ancients of Par viewed this Seal differently than the others.”

“That makes it even more essential that the Mistress of Bonds have access, Maelen.”

“I wanted to see if there was anything that I could learn about it first. I needed to know if there was anything dangerous here.”

She sighed and then stood, dusting her hands off. “And what did you find, Maelen? Were you able to uncover the secrets of Par? Were you able to decipher some danger from our Records that you thought to hide from the people who should possess them?”

“I haven’t been able to figure out anything,” Tan admitted. “And that’s the problem. I
need
answers, Elanne. Something is happening that I think the ancients knew about, something that I fear Marin might be connected to.” He hadn’t told Amia that yet, but then, he wanted to protect her as much as possible from whatever he could. Maybe he shouldn’t even have brought her to Vatten. The archivist might be one of the Aeta, but if he were anything like the other archivists, he might serve a different master. Tan hoped that he truly was committed to Roine, and at least this time, the King Regent knew about spirit shaping and could protect himself from it, but that didn’t mean that Tan had completely forgiven them for all that had happened because of their desire for power.

“What kind of things?” she asked.

He told her about what happened to Asgar, and how the darkness had seemed like it was something alive, and he shared with her his concern that the darkness wanted to change the elementals.

“You are the Maelen. You will protect them,” she said.

“I will do what I can to protect them,” Tan agreed, “but I need to understand. Have you found anything in the Records?”

Elanne glanced down again at the Seal. “Are there any others that you’re hiding from me?”

Tan shook his head. “I should not have. I should have trusted you. Without you, and your Bond Wardens, I’m not sure that we would have fended off whatever Marin attempted the last time.”

Elanne looked at the draasin curled around his neck and then shook her head. “And I should not remain angry with you, Maelen. You have done nothing but serve the people of Par since your return. I… I think that surprises me most of all.”

He stuck out his hand. “Work together?”

Elanne nodded and took his hand. “I would like that.”

“Good.” He turned and swept his gaze around the room. “Now, I need your help to understand not only these Seals, but what else might be stored in the Records. Do you think you can help with that?” She nodded. “If you find reference to an Alast Temple, that would be helpful as well.”