Cycle of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 11) Read online

  There came a soft braying, just enough that he knew they agreed, and he took to the air once more.

  His heart sank as he did.

  There were over a dozen disciples of the dark making their way toward the place of convergence, and so far, none of the shapers had snapped out of his forced connection to spirit. He didn’t want to think about what he might have done and whether he had left permanent damage to them. Spirit could heal if he had, but only if he had the time to reach them. Not only the time, but the strength as well.

  Two of the draasin—Wasina and Enya, he realized—fought a pair of the disciples on the far side of the lake. Both twisted and spun in the air, avoiding the attempt at sending shadows their way, narrowly missing them both. Sashari shot from the sky, streaking toward the ground with her wings wrapped around her body, her tail extended behind her and flames shooting from her nostrils. Even the two hatchlings that had dared come, not yet even named, nipped at one of the shapers of the dark.

  Only Asgar did not.

  You can help, he prompted.

  If the darkness reaches me—

  A powerful voice interrupted. You are protected by the Voice of the Mother. You should not fear.

  Asgar breathed out in a powerful streamer of flame and, with a flicker of his tail, shot toward the two shapers Wasina and Enya faced. The three of them dispatched the shapers quickly.

  Tan looked around, wondering where the power of that voice had come from. There was a strength to it, and a warmth, and it had seemed someone had just claimed a title.

  He found Alanna in the middle of the lake, hovering.

  She did not shape, at least not as far as he could tell, but power flowed from her. It streaked from her, touching each of the draasin as they fought. When a strand of dark shaping snuck through, her shaping of spirit—or whatever it was, as Tan wasn’t completely convinced it was a shaping—reached out to them and touched them, calling them back to the Mother.

  She protected them.

  She was the Voice of the Mother.

  How long have you known? he asked.

  Awareness awoke in me when you reached the pool. You opened it within me, connected as we are. That is my purpose.

  What happens if—

  He didn’t have a chance to finish.

  Five shapers converged on her. They hesitated a moment when they realized that she was a child, but then quickly pressed their attack once more.

  Alanna barely moved.

  Power exploded from her, a ring of light that layered over the dark shapers.

  The strange snake that often wound itself around her uncoiled from her body and lashed out in a spiraling motion, striking each of the shapers as it did. That wasn’t a spiral—it was a rune. The elemental created a rune as it struck the dark disciples, and drew power as it did.

  It made no sense to him. Alanna was somehow almost an elemental, but she had a bonded creature, one that was an elemental, only an elemental that was nothing like any that he’d ever experienced. It rarely left Alanna’s side and usually couldn’t even be seen.

  The serpent reached her and quickly coiled around her waist again.

  Throughout all of that, Alanna continued to stretch out her power, sending spirit to the draasin and to the hounds in the woods, and even to the nymid and ara. Tan could feel how she drew upon spirit, from some depths of the bond that even he barely understood.

  With another explosion of light, spirit washed once more away from her, this time stretching toward the stunned shapers. The connection was nothing more than a touch of spirit, a simple connection, and one that Tan would have been able to do, but it revived them.

  The shapers woke and Tan was no longer alone.

  Cora joined him first, holding herself in the air on a current of fire that Tan could not see. “She is precocious, Maelen.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “With her involvement, I feel like we might have a chance.”

  Tan had begun thinking the same way.

  “What is it like?”

  “What?” he asked.

  “To finally meet someone who might be more powerful than you?” Cora asked, nothing more than a hint of a smile crossing her lips.

  Tan laughed. “At least I know she will do everything she can to help ensure our success.”

  “She is part elemental,” Cora noted. “Enya tells me that she sits within the spirit bond, but she also sits within fire. I suspect she sits in the other bonds as well?”

  “I am not certain.” Amia came toward him, carried by Roine and Zephra on a current of wind. “She called herself the Voice of the Mother. I don’t know what that means, but there is a title there that we have not possessed before.”

  Amia’s eyes narrowed. “You heard that?”

  “She told one of the draasin that the Voice of the Mother would protect him when he hesitated. And then she did.”

  Alanna had returned to the shore and sat, arms resting in her lap with her hands folded together, looking like nothing more than a small child, but inside his mind, he heard her still. The maturity and power she possessed continued to increase, as if she fed upon spirit.

  Was that what she did?

  Could she feed on spirit?

  It would change her, and it would explain the maturity she possessed, but if that were the case, then she would never return to the child he and Amia had wanted. If she was the Voice of the Mother, she would never have a chance to grow and experience the world in the same way that he had.

  She will be more than we are, Amia told him. Isn’t that all our parents wanted for us?

  Knowing that did nothing to make him feel better. She would be more than him—she already was more than him. And it was possible that she didn’t even understand what was changing for her, or what it meant.

  “What happened?” Roine asked. “I feel… something. I don’t know what it is. You were speaking within our minds like when you allowed me to connect to the draasin, and then you sent a suggestion. Now… now it’s like there’s a whispering, only it’s not the same as when I spoke with the draasin.”

  “What is it like?” Tan asked.

  His mother shook her head. “That’s what it is, isn’t it? You showed us the bonds. I thought my connection to wind seemed more potent, but didn’t know why that should be. Now I feel not only my bonded, but all of the elementals around us.” She closed her eyes, turning slowly in place. “There are so many. How is this possible, Tannen?”

  “We all will need to be connected to a greater power when we face the disciples. If we are to survive the darkness, and if we are to defeat Marin, we will need the capacity to reach for more than what we had been.”

  “You let all of these shapers reach Issa?” Cora asked.

  “Not Issa, at least not for them. Some will reach for wind, some water, some earth, and some—yes—will reach fire. There will be an understanding of the fire bond.”

  He turned toward Ciara, who had reached Sashari and sat atop her, now leaning toward her neck, pressing her head toward her spikes as if listening—which she probably was. There was no surprise that Ciara would be able to reach the fire bond so quickly; she might have been able to do so even without his intervention. That was what he hoped, that he had only pushed forward what would have happened eventually. He thought about shapers like Ferran, so strong with earth and able to reach golud. He had worked with the elemental well. Tan wouldn’t have been surprised that he would reach the bond without him.

  “What now?” Zephra asked. “Now that you have shown the bonds, and some appear to have bonded, what will happen with us?”

  “I don’t know,” Tan answered. “The disciples will continue to attack, but I don’t know when they will come again. I think they tested us here, thinking that they would have an opportunity to hurt us and our shapers. They were not expecting the Voice of the Mother.”

  “None of us expected that,” Amia said.

  Tan nodded toward his daughter. She traced in the s
and, and it took him a moment to realize that she formed runes of power. How would she know that without being shown? As he watched, he realized that she tapped her feet with a certain rhythm. Had she always done that?

  “I think,” he started, “that maybe she expected it.”

  17

  After the Attack

  The lakeshore had a somber feel to it in spite of the fact that so many now had the ability to reach the element bonds. Tan could feel people flickering into the bond, more with every passing hour. There was a connection, but it was more than that. Those who reached the bond held onto the connection but didn’t delve too deeply into it. They didn’t pull upon the power of the bonds—though Tan suspected they would in time.

  Amia walked with him, holding his hand as if neither of them had a care in the world. Alanna remained with Asgar, the draasin watching over their daughter as if she were one of the hatchlings in the cave. Tan suspected he didn’t really need to have Asgar watch her, especially if she was as powerful as she seemed, but he felt a parental comfort in allowing it. There was darkness surging; he could practically feel the power of it flowing around him, but for now, he would not fear it.

  “I think back to when we first came here,” she said after a while. “Those first days.”

  “We were much younger then,” he said.

  “Not much.”

  Tan smiled, squeezing her hand. No, it hadn’t been that long ago that they had been here. “I was a different person then.”

  “As was I.”

  He glanced over at her, noting the way the sunlight danced off her golden hair, reflecting almost as much from the band around her neck as it did from her hair. Tan could still see the girl he’d been so taken by when they arrived at his village, the one who had caught his attention even before needing to use a shaping to draw him to her. “You’ve changed somewhat,” he decided, “but now that I think of it, not as much as others. I think having you remain so steadfast has allowed me to grow and change.”

  “You don’t think I’ve changed?” There was a note of disappointment in her voice, and he wondered what bothered her.

  “You’ve grown stronger, more skilled with spirit. You’ve become the First Mother, and taken on all the leadership that entails. And now you are the mother to our child. I think you were heading toward all of those things regardless of what happened.”

  “Is that what’s bothering you, then? I wouldn’t have expected the change you’ve instigated to trouble you this much.”

  “I’ve never had trouble with change. Without it, I would never have become the man I am. But it’s transformation we’re talking about, not only change.” He motioned toward the lake, remembering what it had been like when the northern end had been completely shaped frozen. Maintaining a shaping like that would have been incredibly difficult, and Tan realized now that the elementals had been a part of it, whether or not they had wanted to be. “Freeing Asboel, that was change. Stopping Althem and recognizing Incendin was not our enemy, that was change. Even stopping the Utu Tonah and helping lead their people was a kind of change. This… where I have now shown people the element bonds… this feels different.”

  Amia pulled him toward her and wrapped her arms around him. “It’s not them that you fear, Tan. You forget that we’re bonded, and I know you as well as you know yourself.”

  He arched a brow at her. “If that’s not it, then what is it?”

  Amia turned him so that he could see the three draasin arranged along the shore. Asgar crouched with Wasina and Enya, all three of them surrounding Alanna, protecting her. “You fear what’s happening to her.”

  Could that be all that it was?

  Maybe Amia was right. He did fear change to his daughter more than he feared what had happened to himself, but only because he’d had the chance to grow and develop. Alanna had not had that chance, and if these attacks persisted, she might never have the chance.

  Yet even that was not what troubled him.

  It was that she was forced to develop as quickly as she had been. Now she had demonstrated her connection to the Mother, and if what she had said was true—and he had no reason to believe it wasn’t—she was connected to the Mother in ways that even Tan couldn’t understand.

  “I fear that she hasn’t had the choice,” he said with a sigh.

  “Are you so certain? What I can tell from her is that she has had a choice. She is precocious, but she gets that from both of us, as she does the ability to shape.” Amia hugged him. “You forget that I was shaping when I was barely four. She started earlier, which tells me that she will be powerful, but that doesn’t mean she was not born for this. The rest—the connection to spirit and to the elementals—I think she got from you.”

  She rested her head upon his chest and he breathed in the scent of her, the comforting awareness of her. She was his home, more than anything else. Through everything, she had been stable.

  “I don’t want anything to happen to her,” Tan said.

  “Neither do I. I suspect your mother felt the same, wanting to keep you safe in Nor. My mother wanted the same, which was why we ran from Incendin. Our parents wanted to protect us, much as we want to protect her, but think about how we felt, and think about what we have needed to do. There comes a time when we have to trust that they will be able to take care of themselves.”

  “I thought it would come a little later than this. She’s only two—”

  “In human terms, Tan,” Amia reminded him, “but she is partly elemental, which makes her… I don’t know what it makes her. Something more. I don’t think we were ever meant to protect her for long.”

  “I know. I think I just wanted to hold onto it longer.”

  “I want the same, but I think the Mother is showing us that we aren’t able to hang onto her anymore, much like she showed Zephra that she couldn’t hang onto you.”

  “That was the Mother, and not me?” Tan asked with a smile. “Now I have a different argument to make when she gets angry with how I ignore her.”

  Amia didn’t move, and Tan didn’t want to separate from her. He needed the closeness, needed the time with her. It had been so infrequent these days. Even connected as they were, there was a distance that had grown, but maybe it was one that he had allowed to grow. Had he only been less focused on chasing Marin and more focused on maintaining his connections, he might have been able to avoid it.

  “What now?” Amia asked. “Now that you’ve changed these shapers, what will happen next?”

  Tan closed his eyes, focusing on the bonds. They were there, so close that he could almost reach them, and he trailed his consciousness just over the top of that connection, wanting to listen to the bonds but not wanting to intervene and disrupt the growing connections the shapers were making.

  “I don’t know what will happen next. It felt like something that needed to be done.”

  “Then it needed to be done,” Amia agreed.

  “We have to find where Marin is hiding and what she has planned. She still wants to release Voidan, and has grown enough in power that she might be able to do it, but so far, I’ve only managed to come across her a few times. Mostly it’s her disciples.”

  “If only there was a way to draw her out,” Amia said.

  Could there be?

  The disciples had come here, as if they had known what Tan planned. He didn’t know how they would have known, only that Marin must have been able to determine it through her connection to spirit. Did that mean she had some insight as to what he did? Had she been granted a connection to the bonds by what he had done?

  If she had, did it matter?

  Tan had sealed the element bonds with spirit, protecting them. If one of her dark disciples—or even Marin herself—attempted to reach the bond, they wouldn’t be able to taint it, would they?

  What he needed was something that would interest Marin.

  What would that be?

  He thought he knew. Anything that risked drawing out the darkness, or tha
t would allow her to draw out the darkness, would appeal to her. She hadn’t attacked the bindings he’d replaced in Norilan. So far, she’d focused on the places of convergence, as if undermining them would undermine the entire suppression of Voidan. And she had sent disciples here when he’d been trying to connect shapers to the bonds, though she must have known that he would succeed—and that her disciples would fail.

  Had he made a mistake?

  Tan had made plenty, but had he been mistaken in not protecting Norilan more than he had? Or had Marin only been testing him, determining whether he could discover what she attempted?

  He didn’t have answers and hadn’t been able to get them from the shapers they had captured, but he hadn’t subjected them to a weapon he doubted Marin even knew about.

  It was time. They would get answers, and he would learn what Marin planned.

  “You’ve made a decision,” Amia noted. “Why do I get the sense that it troubles you?”

  Tan sighed and looked toward his daughter. “Because even though I know what the Mother seems to be telling me, it means bringing her more deeply into this than I want.”

  18

  Questioning the Disciple

  The lower chamber within the tower of Par had a dank odor, one that spoke of the power of water and earth mingling here. Heat hung on the air, as did a slight flickering of wind, all shaped. This was a place of power, a place Tan had created to prevent the captured disciples from escaping, protected by elements and the elementals that the shapers would not be able to reach.

  Tan walked through the invisible barrier without lowering it, Alanna clinging to him. She had been silent on the return to Par and had not questioned him when he told her what he needed.

  They had gone to three different enclosures without answers. None of the shapers would answer, and when Alanna had used her ability with spirit on them, she had not discovered anything, either. Now they were at the one disciple who had challenged him while facing them in Vatten, and Tan didn’t think he would get anywhere with her either, but he had to try. They needed answers, even if he was no longer certain what they might be.