Fortress of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 4) Read online

  “You mentioned other conquests,” his mother said. She seemed to struggle to keep her voice even. “What conquests do you know of?”

  Roine glanced at Tan before shifting his attention to Zephra. “I knew of the serving girls. For years, I’d always looked the other way. I assumed they thought the idea of being with the king too enticing. Few ever made any noise, and I suspect Althem never gave any the reason to believe they would ever be anything more than what he used them for.”

  Amia tensed and Tan felt her irritation through the bond. “You mean he shaped them.”

  Roine’s face fell. “I understand that now. I can’t imagine the horrors he has done throughout the years without any knowing.”

  “It’s why spirit was closely monitored,” Zephra said, making a point of looking at Amia.

  “Those of us blessed by the Great Mother have been taught to use our gifts for our people. Not for something like... like this.”

  “There seem to have been many ways spirit shapers have learned to use their gifts,” Zephra started. “The archivists sought to use them on our shapers. The First Mother used them on Doma shapers—”

  “Enough, Mother,” Tan snapped.

  She opened her mouth and then closed it again, pulling her eyes off Tan and almost forcing herself to focus on Roine. “There is more?”

  Roine scrubbed a hand over his face. “That’s the part I’m having the most trouble with understanding.” He looked at Amia. “Maybe it’s good that you came. I might need your help to know exactly what happened. At some point, Althem must have become bored with servants. He seems to have moved up to those with more power. Daughters of merchants. Local land owners of power. Sensers.”

  Tan already suspected where Roine was going. “Not only sensers.”

  “I’m not certain, but I think so. I don’t have any way to prove it without Amia.” Roine looked at her. “I’ll need your help. If anyone can help me untangle this mess, it is you.”

  Tan felt a fluttering of uncertainty through their bond. “I… I’m not sure I can do what you ask. After seeing what she did, I haven’t been willing to use my ability.” She fell silent, looking down at her hands. Tan reached for her but she pulled away.

  Zephra cocked her head as she studied Amia. “He sought an heir who could shape?”

  Roine breathed out with a sigh. “I think so.”

  “Why?” Tan asked. “What would it matter if he did this to someone who could shape or not? It’s disgusting either way.”

  “Horrible, yes, and the reason for it was that we’ve always known shapers were more likely to bear shapers. And when two shapers come together?” She nodded toward Tan. “Well, much power can come.”

  Roine sat up and looked from Tan to Amia. “I don’t know how many shapers were used. Maybe I’m wrong. The Great Mother knows I hope that I am, but if I’m not and there is an heir out there, I can’t sit and pretend I didn’t know.”

  “Does it change anything?” Tan asked. “After what Althem did, why should their bloodline remain in power? Why not you, Theondar?”

  Roine shook his head. “That’s not how it works, Tan. There has been little unrest so far, but if word begins to spread that there’s an heir and I’ve ignored it, it could lead to a fight for the throne. The kingdoms have known peaceful succession for hundreds of years and without knowing what is going on with Incendin—”

  “Or Chenir,” his mother said. “I don’t understand; Chenir is active in ways I have not seen before.”

  “What of Doma?” Roine asked.

  “I didn’t reach Doma. After what I saw in Incendin,” she glanced at Tan, “I didn’t take the time to visit Doma. They have always been somewhat protected. The narrow connection between Incendin and Doma keeps them safe.”

  And, Tan noted she didn’t say, there was some hope that Elle had reached the udilm. If the water elementals intervened, she would be able to keep Doma safe, as it always had been.

  “What did you find in Incendin?” he asked.

  “The draasin attacked the lisincend. Perhaps they will do our work for us. Other than that, Incendin is afire, but what else is new?” she asked.

  “The Fire Fortress burns more brightly than it has since they created the twisted lisincend,” Tan said. “Does that matter?”

  Zephra turned to him, anger flashing on her face. “How do you know that the Fire Fortress burns?”

  Tan pushed away from the table. “You’re not the only one bonded to an elemental, Mother. Regardless of what I’ve learned of shaping, I’m not the child you still remember me to be.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “No more than you answered me.”

  “Easy,” Roine said. He set his palms on the table. “Incendin is active. We know that much. And you’re right, Tan. From what we can tell, the Fire Fortress burns brighter. Were Lacertin still alive, we might know what that means.”

  “The draasin are nervous,” Tan said. “I’m not sure what they know about the flames, but they worry that Incendin is active.”

  He said nothing about what Asboel told him of what Enya attempted. His mother hadn’t mentioned anything other than an attack, so maybe there was nothing more to it. From what Asboel said, there was nothing Tan could do, not without risking himself needlessly.

  Roine and Zephra looked at each other.

  “What do you know that you’re not sharing?” Tan asked.

  Zephra shifted in her chair and made a point of not looking at Amia. “The number of lisincend have increased. When I saw them attacking the draasin, I couldn’t believe how many there were.”

  Increasing lisincend. To create lisincend, it meant sacrificing Aeta.

  “None have tried pushing against the border, not as they once did,” Zephra went on. “We need to raise the barrier again. Without it, we’re at risk for another attack.”

  “We don’t have enough shapers to spend holding the barrier,” Roine said. “Too many died in the last attack. We’re better served with them stationed along the border. With a few good earth sensers, we can keep track of an incursion.”

  “Theondar, that’s not going to stop—”

  “It’s all we can spare,” he said, cutting Zephra off as he did. “That’s the other reason I need to find any of Althem’s heirs. If there are shapers—or even sensers capable of shaping—the kingdoms will need them.”

  Tan hadn’t seen this side of Roine before. When he first met the warrior, it had been clear that he was more than the Athan. He had knowledge and skill and insight. Without that, they wouldn’t have reached the cave. He held them together, guiding them until they reached the artifact. But there’d always been uncertainty. Now, seeing him sitting here as he was, Tan suspected this was the warrior shaper he had been, the man the world had known as Theondar. But from what Tan had learned, Theondar had been arrogant and quick to anger. This Roine was insightful and calm.

  “Our shapers have always outnumbered Incendin,” Zephra said.

  “And they still might, but we just don’t know. Not enough to risk it.”

  “And if they have transformed? You know what they gain. Enough to challenge a warrior,” Zephra said, looking at Tan.

  “That has always been the benefit of the transformation. Tan knows better than most what that means.”

  “I’ve told you what it was like when fire consumed me.” Seeing the way his mother tensed as he mentioned what happened, he made a point of expanding. “Don’t worry. Amia made certain that I was healed. The nymid restored me.”

  “You retain an affinity for fire,” his mother said. “Don’t deny it, Tannen. I’ve seen you when you don’t think I’m looking. You play with fire, as if it’s something you can touch and hold. And then there’s what you wanted to do with that creature. You tried to save it.” She looked at him, an accusation in her eyes. “You wonder why we hesitate sharing what we’ve learned of Incendin? It’s more than the fact that you’re untrained. It’s because I fear you’ll be drawn into i
t, that fire will call to you again and that we’ll lose you completely.”

  Tan stared at the edge of the table. He couldn’t deny his affinity for fire, but surely that had more to do with his connection to Asboel than anything else?

  “I’m not ‘playing’ with fire. I’m trying to understand the elementals. All of them. Why else would I have asked you to teach? Why else would I work with Ferran?”

  “And you spend free time studying with a woman who did everything possible to endanger our people. It was her fault you were nearly turned—”

  “Is that your issue with Amia?” he asked. “Don’t pretend it’s not there. I thought it was something about the Aeta, but you blame her for what the First Mother did.”

  “If you wouldn’t have been trying to save Amia, you wouldn’t have changed.”

  “Is that what the First Mother tells you, or ara?” Tan asked. “If not for Amia, I might have remained twisted by fire, but she convinced me to search for help. The nymid restored me, Mother, regardless of whether you believe me or not. And you’re mistaken if you intend to keep from me what’s happening in Incendin. Without me, Incendin would have had the artifact long before. Without me, Althem would still rule Ethea and you’d be nothing but shaped to his will. If the draasin are involved, so am I.”

  He stood and slapped his hands on the table. “Regardless of what you want to believe, I’m a warrior now. Maybe not the one the kingdoms would choose, but I am what the Great Mother made. And I will do what is needed.”

  With that, he stormed out of the room.

  10

  A Warrior’s Request

  Tan waited in the hall, staring at one of the tapestries. It depicted a vision of the elementals from a time when many people spoke with them. What appeared to be the face of udilm appeared in a wave splashing along some mysterious shore. The friendliness of udilm woven into the tapestry had certainly not been Tan’s experience. He wondered which was more accurate: the tapestry or the dour elemental he had encountered.

  “You managed to do something very few people have ever done.”

  Tan turned to Roine. “What is that?”

  He smiled. “You silenced Zephra.”

  Tan took a deep breath. As soon as he’d left, he’d felt regret for speaking to his mother that way. He’d already lost her once; now that she had returned, he needed to find some way to get along with her. “I’m sorry, Roine. She didn’t deserve what I said to her. She’s been trying to teach me but she still thinks she can shield me.”

  Roine clasped Tan’s arm and squeezed briefly. It was something Tan’s father used to do. “You can apologize to her yourself, if you wish.” Roine looked up at the wall hanging, his eyes skimming past the elementals. “You should know that I happen to agree with you. I warned Zephra that she might be wrong, but she claims she knows you too well.”

  “She hasn’t known me since I left Nor,” Tan said.

  Roine gave him a knowing look. “You’re still her son, but in her eyes, she fails to see the man you’ve become. Oh, she knows the things you’ve done, but I don’t think she lets herself understand how that’s changed you. And make no mistake, Tannen, you have changed. It might not be fire that twists you, or maybe it is. The connection to the draasin started it, I think, but it’s become more than that.”

  “You’re wrong,” Tan started. Roine cocked a half smile. “It didn’t start with the draasin. It started with Amia. None of this would have happened had I not followed her.”

  “Always a girl,” Roine said, his voice going soft. Heartache filled his voice.

  “What was it like for you?”

  Roine’s eyes scanned the wall of portraits as if searching for a memory that had been lost. “For me, the first time I saw Anna…”

  “The princess?” Tan asked.

  “You probably wonder as I did whether Althem shaped the feeling into me. I’ll admit that I spent a full day agonizing over it. It would be a way to tie me to him. But I’ve come to realize that he couldn’t. The first time I saw her—really saw her—was long before I met Althem.” Roine started down the hall and Tan followed, glancing back to see Amia watching. She waved him on. “I’d come to the city as a senser. So many came to study in those days that the university dorms were packed. We’d sleep six to a room. Only when you learned to shape were you accorded rooms of your own. It bonded us, I think. Many of us who lived together remained close. Your father, for one.”

  Tan would love to hear more about his father, but that wasn’t the story Roine wanted to tell. “How did you see Anna?”

  “She came to the university on an errand for Ilton. She would have been fourteen, no more than fifteen, and I the same age. I’d begun showing signs of nearly shaping. Wind would soon respond to me and in the coming months, I’d learn to capture it and then water.” He looked over at Tan. “Once you can shape two elements, it’s little more than a matter of time before the others follow. I would become a warrior shaper. There were few of us, even then. But before then, I saw her. I didn’t know who she was, only that her wavy black hair caught my eye. She carried herself with a confidence unlike anyone I’d ever met.” He snorted to himself. “Well, except for Zephra. And she’s always traveled by her own wind.”

  Roine nodded at the portrait they stopped in front of. “So maybe Althem shaped me, but I don’t think it mattered, not when it came to Anna. I think I’d already decided what would happen with us by the time I met Althem.”

  Roine turned to Tan with an angry light to his eyes. “His shaping was different than the archivists. More subtle. With the archivists, you knew you were shaped, only there was nothing you could do about it. With Althem…” He shook his head as if to clear the memory. “I’m not certain what he placed on me. There was the affection I felt toward him. Loyalty that I thought he’d earned. It wasn’t until the nymid healed me that I recognized the difference.” The corners of Roine’s mouth twitched. “I’m no longer certain of anything I once believed. For all I know, everything I thought about the world is wrong. Perhaps Incendin is a peaceful and welcoming place and the kingdoms are the dark and dangerous place we’ve always accused them of being.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Tan asked. “Are you trying to keep me from going to Incendin?” Not only his mother, but Asboel as well, though Asboel’s reasoning was quite different than his mother’s. What did it mean if Roine attempted to do the same? Was he wrong? Had fire changed him more than he realized?

  “Not Incendin. I’m not your mother, Tan. She and I see eye to eye on many things, but this isn’t one of them. You’ve been through too much to be excluded. Besides, we don’t have the luxury to exclude anyone right now.” Roine started down the hall again, moving past the portraits. “I see things differently in my new role. Once, like you, I focused on the biggest threat I could see. I was—am—a warrior; how could I not? But it’s different for me now. I have different obligations.”

  He stopped in front of a massive map hanging on the wall. On it were details of the kingdoms, the four surrounding lands that had joined together under a single throne: Vatten, Ter, Galen, and Nara. For as long as the university had been in Ethea, the kingdoms had been united. The map showed Incendin, but as it was, not as it is. Rens was marked along the far eastern border of Nara, stretching up and abutting the mountainous part of Galen. In the time the map had been made, Doma had not existed. It was another part of Rens. North of Rens was Chenir, a land locked away from the kingdoms by the Gholund Mountains, their massive peaks stretching from Galen all the way to the sea.

  “How do you think to hold back Incendin?” Tan asked.

  Roine tapped a thin strip of land jutting off Rens on the map. Doma. “Doma has suffered because of Incendin and the First Mother. Their people taken, tortured, and shaped to betray their homeland. I would have them returned.”

  “That means crossing into Incendin to free them.”

  Roine nodded. “And we are.”

  Tan hesitated. “As in, you�
�re planning it?”

  “Cianna and Seanan and a few others. They will free as many as they can.”

  Tan hoped they hadn’t left while Enya was trying to withdraw fire. He didn’t know what that meant, but believed it when Asboel claimed it might be dangerous for a fire shaper. And Tan had other abilities. Cianna and Seanan could only shape fire.

  “You will need a spirit shaper,” Tan said.

  “Not for this. The First Mother showed a way to use the elements to free the shaper.”

  Tan held back his surprise. He hadn’t known that Roine had gone to her as well. “Let me help.” Going after them would give him the opportunity to discover what happened with the draasin. “If what she told you doesn’t work or if there’s another spirit shaper—”

  Roine raised a hand and cut him off. “The others will be fine. I do not think the First Mother lied when she helped. She shows real remorse.” He smiled tightly at Tan. “Cianna has learned to protect herself from spirit shaping and demonstrated it to the others. They will be enough.”

  “You don’t trust me to go with them to Incendin?”

  Roine grunted. “You think that I don’t trust you to help, but you’re wrong. You could help, but you’d also be conspicuous. The hounds know your scent, and Incendin is their home. You’d be forced to destroy every hound you came across. Cianna and her team can move quickly. And from what Zephra reports, the draasin hunt the lisincend. For that, they have my thanks.”

  “So I’ll stay here?”

  Tan began to think of how he would reach Asboel. The draasin might have warned him to silence, but Asboel wanted vengeance for what happened with the hatchlings. He would attack more than simply the lisincend. How long before the draasin went after the Fire Fortress?

  “I had something else I wanted to ask of you,” Roine said. “It will take someone of your unique talents to do. Were you better trained, I might not be quite so hesitant. Were there any other options, I probably wouldn’t ask of you at all.”

  “You act as if I haven’t done anything.”