Light of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 10) Read online

  What did it mean that the elements had summoned?

  Not only the elements—all were bonded to elementals.

  Yet, even with that bond, it might not be enough. They could all draw on significant power, but if the darkness attacked, Tan would need to use his connection to the element bonds and to spirit to contain it. If he could. He did not know whether there was anything that he could do that would even hold back the darkness, not when it was that powerful.

  That didn’t mean he would not try.

  “I can get us past,” he said finally.

  The first step was making their way beyond the barrier. Only then would he be able to determine what they would need to do next.

  As he had before, Tan reached through his connection to spirit. There, deep within him, he detected the surging power of spirit. It connected him to everyone around him. Not only to the people around him but to the elementals as well, connections that he hadn’t fully appreciated who would have been tied to spirit.

  He focused on the barrier, uncertain whether he even attempted to pass through in the same place. Wasina couldn’t tell, and the shaping that Tan had added to the barrier had blended nearly seamlessly with it, leaving the damage that had been there undetectable.

  Spirit surged from him and struck the barrier. As he had before, he pulled on the other elements, drawing strength from them as he pressed power toward the barrier. It buckled, but unlike the last time, it resisted him.

  Amia reached through his connection, lending him strength but also guiding him. Light once again jumped, gliding toward the barrier, steadily glowing as she did. Tan didn’t fear for her safety as he had the last time. Instead, he directed Wasina after Light. For what he intended, he thought he might need all of the elemental help that he could get, not only those he managed to reach on the other side.

  Light struck the barrier, and it sagged.

  Where she touched, Tan pressed through the spirit bond, forcing forward. The elementals with him assisted, drawn not only by his shapings, but by those who were connected to the elementals and their ability to reach for fire, water, earth, and wind.

  Power pressed with him, and through spirit. Tan didn’t know whether it came from him or from those who had chosen to come along. And, he decided, perhaps it did not matter, not if they were all connected as it seemed.

  Together, the pressed through the barrier.

  This time, rather than punching through in a small space, the combined shaping, together with the draasin bunched together, reached through a massive hole that they managed to create.

  Tan turned to the barrier once they were through and used a shaping of spirit with the other elements to seal it closed once more.

  “Are you sure that’s safest?” Amia asked.

  “If something happens, I don’t want to leave the barrier open. We might be trapped, but so would the darkness.”

  Tan turned around, focusing on the ground. And froze.

  The Norilan that stretched out in front of him was different than what he had seen before. Then, he had seen wide rolling hills, long, lush grass, even the shaped presence of a forest. Here, he saw only stark rock that dropped off to the sea splashing below.

  “It reminds me of Doma,” Elle said.

  She had shaped her way over to him and stood on a thin film of greenish water. The masyn elemental gave her the ability to practically hover.

  “The rest of it won’t,” Tan said.

  “This wasn’t what it looked like when you were here last?” Elanne asked.

  “Not like this. There were fields, and trees and everything was shaped.” The rocks, at least, seemed as if they belonged. Had the release of the earth elementals, and the other elementals that he had no name for, changed something on this side of the barrier? He hadn’t taken the time to observe whether the grasses or trees had been affected when he had made his way out the last time.

  Reaching through the earth bond, an undercurrent of power surged, but it thrummed against him more harshly than what he had experienced before.

  It took Tan a moment to realize what it was that he sensed.

  The darkness had twisted these elementals.

  That’s what happened here, isn’t it? he asked Light.

  I should not have freed them.

  We didn’t know. We couldn’t know.

  “What is it?” Amia asked.

  Tan pointed toward the rock and the sea spraying around them. “All of this. The elementals that are there have been tainted by the darkness.”

  “You said that it existed beyond the barrier,” Zephra said.

  “Existed, but not like this. This is my fault.”

  Ours.

  This is mine, Light. I brought you here.

  The Mother brought us here, Maelen. What we do must serve the Mother.

  Serve the Mother. Only, Tan had no idea how he would be able to serve the Mother. The darkness needed to be destroyed, not only suppressed, especially after what he saw on the other side of that wall, regardless of what the elementals believed. If that managed to escape and if it reached the kingdoms or Par, how much would everyone suffer?

  More than he could fully grasp.

  “The elementals were bound within a shaping,” Tan explained. “That was how they created everything we saw. And when I came through—”

  “You released those bonds,” Elanne said.

  She had seen Tan do it before. When he first arrived in Par, that had been the first thing that he had wanted to ensure was done, before he understood that there might be another purpose to them. Tan had used his connection to spirit to break the bonds, thinking that what he did served the elementals, but he hadn’t understood that Par-shon was not the same as Par and that the Utu Tonah did not serve the same as those of Par.

  Tan glanced at Light. Would he have released the bonds if she hadn’t come with him? Probably, he knew, and maybe in a more forceful way. The gentle way that Light had of removing the bonds essentially peeled them back, letting the elementals slip back into the world, no longer confined by the bonds.

  But now they had been attacked. Their freedom had been short-lived.

  “I released them. I didn’t understand. I…” He frowned, realizing another connection. The bonds that had contained the elementals were much like those within Par. Tan hadn’t made that connection before but wasn’t that what Par had done, holding the elementals within bonds, supporting their buildings. For that matter, wasn’t that what the elementals had done in Ethea? Was that not why they were a part of the archives?

  Had they sacrificed themselves knowingly?

  In Par, he had the sense that many of the elementals had gone to the bond of their own accord. In Ethea, it was more difficult to know. Tan suspected that some of the elementals served as golud did when Ferran built the university, surging into the bones of the building, holding it together and strengthening it. But others, like those that had been used in the archives, had they gone willingly? Tan had thought they might have been forced, but now he began to wonder if that were true.

  And if they had gone willingly—much like the elementals that had gone into the shaping that held the artifact—sacrificing their freedom, had the shapers of that time made a similar sacrifice?

  When he first learned of shaping, he thought the ancient shapers unrivaled in their ability. Then he began to discover that there was much that they seemed not to have known. He learned of elementals harnessed, their abilities and powers stolen from them, but he also had learned that there were some shapers of that time who didn’t feel the same way, who worked with the elementals, serving them in some way. Wasn’t that what he had found in the swamp outside of Falsheim?

  “I think I’m the reason that these elementals have been tainted,” he said softly. Had he only let them stay bound, there would not have been anything that the darkness would have been able to twist. The elementals would have remained tied in the shaping. Perhaps forced. But protected. Wasn’t that worth something?
r />   Tan jumped from Wasina and took to the air on a shaping of fire and wind. All the draasin followed him, with most of the shapers remaining atop their back. Elle shaped alongside him, gliding on a current of thin green water. Elanne trailed on the other side, using the wind to guide her. Neither spoke.

  When he reached the ground, he focused on the elementals, but also on the earth bond. They were there, but faded, distant and outside the earth bond. Was there anything that he could do that would restore that connection? Would it matter if he could, or had they been damaged now, no longer able to be restored? For that matter, was there even anything that he could do for Honl? If he had been tainted like these others, there might be no helping him. There might be nothing that Tan could do.

  Holding onto earth, he forced spirit into the bond. This time, Tan recognized that spirit was already a part of the earth bond. He shifted his focus to fire and found the same. Wind and water also shared in the spirit bond. Were they all connected?

  But then, how could they not all be connected? Hadn’t Tan learned that each element was life? And if they were each life, then it made sense that the connection to them would be tied, bound together. And if that were the case, it only followed that it would be spirit that bound them.

  He reached back to the earth bond, this time not pushing spirit. Simply knowing that it existed as part of the bond gave him strength. He pressed through, reaching for the tainted elementals.

  As he did, they writhed away from him, but he was Maelen, and he was connected to the bond. Tan grasped at them and felt the darkness that attempted to overcome them. It had not, at least not completely. There was time to help.

  He tore the darkness from the elementals.

  As he did, he used the spirit that he felt through the earth bond to seal them off. He had done the same with Asgar when he had been attacked by the darkness and hoped that it would work even for elementals with whom he had not formed a bond.

  Holding onto the connection of the earth bond, Tan felt as the darkness attempted to attack the elementals again but seemed to slip past.

  Then it turned its attention.

  Not onto Tan, but onto those who had come with him.

  Amia reacted faster than Tan, layering a protective layer of spirit over the minds of the shapers with them. Tan used the element bonds and sealed off the elementals. They were safe.

  Tendrils of darkness congealed in the air around him. Tan had experience with this and shaped spirit around it, using the strength of the bond to hold it in place.

  Behind him, someone gasped. Tan didn’t take the time to learn who it was. He needed to focus on the darkness, and holding it in place.

  It surged against the spirit holding it. When he had done this before, he hadn’t been nearly as close to the source of strength as he was now. Being here, on Norilan, with the way that the darkness surged against him, he felt it press threaten to overcome the bonds that Tan held it within.

  Could he bind it?

  He hadn’t tried a binding while it was wrapped in spirit like this, but he didn’t see a reason that he couldn’t.

  Pulling on the elements, Tan crafted the binding and then, using a surge of spirit, settled it atop the spirit bubble surrounding the darkness. He started with the central circular portion of the rune and added the spiraling arms that rotated away from it. To this, he added an additional component, one that held the energy of each of the elements within. The rune sealed with a burst of white light. As it did, the bubble of spirit constricted, pulling down into nothing more than a mote of dust. Tan could feel the way that it floated on the wind, but it drifted, contained by his shaping, and so small as to be invisible.

  He reached toward it, but the mote drifted from him as if repelled.

  Good. At least that way someone couldn’t accidentally inhale the darkness.

  “What did you do?” Elle asked.

  “What needed to be done,” he said. “It’s contained.”

  “Is that it?” Elle asked.

  Elanne answered, “That was but the smallest piece of it.”

  “I felt the way that it turned,” Elle said. “It came at my mind, but then… then it was gone.”

  Thank you, he sent to Amia.

  “You’re protected now, I think,” he said. Hopefully, everyone with him would be protected now. The shaping that Amia had used to layer over their minds would safeguard them from the darkness, and Tan hoped that the shaping that he had used on the elementals, adding the hint of spirit, reconnecting them to the element bonds, would keep them safe.

  “Masyn… masyn is different,” Elle said. “Was that you as well?”

  Tan nodded. “If I didn’t—”

  “I know,” Elle said. “You did what you had to.”

  He did, and he would do it again to protect all of the elementals if needed. But at what cost? What sacrifice would the elementals make this time to suppress the darkness? What sacrifice would he make to suppress the darkness?

  Even as Tan looked up at Amia, he knew the answer. For the elementals, for Alanna, he would do whatever it took to keep them safe. Even if it meant sacrificing himself.

  23

  Those of Norilan

  They made their way across Norilan. The rocks faded into grasses, a familiar rolling hillside that Tan could tell had long ago been shaped. He shaped himself on the wind mixed with fire, staying above the ground. The others remained behind him. Only Amia was with him, holding onto his hand and squeezing it from time to time.

  He considered freeing the elementals bound here, but doing so would only put them in danger.

  Light didn’t have the same reservations. Using a surge of spirit, she released the elementals from the bonds, leaving nothing but rock remaining. Tan reached through the element bonds to protect those she had freed, quickly adding spirit to them so that the darkness could not latch on.

  At first, he wasn’t certain that the effort was worth it. Each time Light freed the elementals, the effort that he expended to seal them off increased. Tan worried that he might reach a time where the effort became too much for him. Did he dare continue, knowing what he might have to face when they reached deeper into Norilan?

  But with each elemental freed, Tan felt the surge of the connection to the element bonds. With the elementals present, there was increasing strength available to him, not filtered by the barrier. Not only available to him, but to the others with him. The connections between the elementals through the element bond meant that they were stronger as well because he continued to free the others.

  In the distance, Tan saw a collection of buildings, but they were not the same buildings he had seen before.

  Had he come at the city from such a different direction that he wouldn’t recognize it? He didn’t think so. The buildings he could see were shaped but didn’t have the same flowing lines of the others that he’d seen. They were sharper lines, more like buildings he would find in Par—or the kingdoms.

  Tan paused. Had he found another city?

  Maelen.

  Light intruded on his thoughts at the same time that Amia squeezed his hand.

  He turned to both, but Amia spoke first. “Don’t you sense it?” she asked.

  “Sense what?”

  “Listen.”

  So he did. Focusing on spirit, he heard what Amia must have heard. The presence was there in the back of his mind, faint at first, but growing louder the longer that he focused. It came from the city.

  Life. People. Shaped energy.

  Unlike the other city Tan had found, this place in Norilan was alive.

  “We can’t bring five draasin into a city that hasn’t seen outsiders in forever,” he said.

  “No. But you can’t risk going in by yourself, either. Let the others come, but have the draasin watch from above,” Amia suggested.

  It was a good suggestion and one that Tan should have come up with. But something about Norilan, about all of Norilan, caused him to have a strange disconnect with the elemental
s.

  The others quickly climbed from the draasin, and Sashari and Asgar led the rest of the fire elementals back into the sky, circling overhead, high above so that they looked like strange birds rather than draasin. The fire bond maintained the connection, and Tan was thankful for that.

  “The grass is strange,” Vel said.

  Tan hadn’t spoken much to the water shaper since he’d joined them, but there was more value to Vel than simply his shaping. At one time, he had been a scholar in Doma, a man with much knowledge. “That’s because the grass is shaped,” he said.

  With every step, Light released more of the bonds that held the elementals. And with every step, Tan did what he could to protect the newly freed elementals, joining them with spirit. Somehow, that connection protected them.

  The others flanked around him, and they walked in a tight bunch. No one shaped their way forward. Everyone gave Fur a wide berth, keeping clear of him, except for Corasha. She walked next to him, murmuring softly to him.

  Tan made his way to Fur. “I haven’t thanked you for coming.”

  “There is a price to everything, warrior.”

  “What price do you expect me to pay?”

  “Not you. This is a price that I must pay.”

  Tan waited for him to expand, but he kept his gaze fixated on the horizon. Since bringing him back into the fire bond, Fur had changed. The thickened skin and hairless features that typified the lisincend remained, but he had taken to wearing a dark leather jacket to go with the pants the lisincend favored. Heat radiated from him, but less so than when fire raged uncontrollably within him. No veil of heat surrounded him.

  “These lands. They are misleading, are they not?” Fur finally said. “They appear lush, but once you remove the shaping, they are barren.”

  “There is something to this place that we’re not understanding,” Tan said. “That I’m not understanding.”

  “Issa would say that we are not meant to understand all of this world,” Fur said. “There should remain mysteries to even the most learned.”