Born of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 8) Read online

  Ferran turned back to him and chuckled. “You would be an interesting case, I believe. Most shapers don’t have a lineage where they descend from shaper after shaper, let alone two of the strongest shapers the kingdoms have known in years.”

  Tan glanced over at the university. “Speaking of my mother, is she here?”

  “You look in the wrong place to find Zephra. She will teach, though not as often as I would like. But most of her time is spent in the palace.”

  Knowing that his mother wasn’t alone brought him a measure of happiness. They had mourned his father, but Zephra deserved to know a sense of contentment, as did Roine.

  “I would also have you teach, Athan,” Ferran went on.

  Tan nodded absently, his mind going back to Par-shon and the students that he’d met there. When he returned, he would need to teach them as he promised, to determine which of the students he could use and which would need additional time so that he didn’t have to fear them chasing after the elemental bonds again.

  “I’ll come by later,” Tan said.

  The comment seemed to placate Ferran, who nodded. He raised a hand toward the children, settling them with little more than a look. “That would be appreciated, Athan.”

  With that, Ferran left him and hurried back over to the group of children, who he ushered out from the university and onto the street beyond.

  Tan stood for a moment, debating what he would do, before drawing on a shaping of wind that brought him to the archives.

  There was a time that he would have pulled on the wind elemental, but Honl had changed since he’d rescued him from kaas, and even more in the weeks following. Now, Honl was something else. Tan no longer knew if he was even a wind elemental, or if the rescue, and the need to use spirit in Honl’s saving, had changed him.

  It had been weeks since he’d seen Honl. That time, the wind elemental had asked him questions, querying him about the connections he shared with the elementals, and then had disappeared again. If he searched for him, reaching through his connection to wind, he could probably find him, but Honl was little more than a vague awareness on his senses.

  Landing in front of the archives, Tan found the door closed and locked. He frowned. In his time in Ethea, the archives had never been locked. They had been damaged during one of the attacks on the city but never blocked. Had Roine changed something since he’d been away?

  Tan had another way that he could reach the archives but hadn’t expected to need it. Doing so would take him through the palace and might force him to answer questions about what he had done, and why. Neither of which he was entirely prepared to answer.

  He pushed on the door again, but the lock was stout. He could force it open, but that wasn’t the message he wanted to send.

  No, he needed to reach the archives another way. And that meant through the palace.

  At this time of day, the palace was full of activity. Servants hurried in and out of the wide open door, some carrying bundles, others with baskets for items that might be needed inside. Tan stood on the edge of the lawn, watching for a moment. In some ways, the activity was no different than what he’d seen in Par-shon, but there had been an undercurrent of fear mixed in. Here, there was nothing other than a sense of purpose.

  A few of the servants saw him and nodded. Tan had become well known around the palace, at least enough where they recognized his face and made a point of addressing him. Partly that was because of the amount of time he spent with Roine, but some of that was because of the ring naming him Athan. It carried the weight of his title and within the palace especially, that title carried the most weight.

  But it had been weeks since he’d been here.

  Tan sighed and made his way into the palace, pausing again in the entryway. Portraits of past kings lined the hall to his right, and a familiar voice came from a room at the end of the hall.

  All he’d wanted to do was to reach the archives and have some time there, but if Roine discovered that he’d come to the palace and not stopped, he’d be disappointed. Worse than Roine, if Zephra learned that Tan hadn’t stopped, she’d be angry.

  Neither appealed to him.

  As he made his way along the corridor, Roine’s voice grew louder. Tan stopped outside the great hall to wait. The line of portraits hadn’t changed since he’d been here last, but there was an addition that surprised him: Althem.

  Stopping in front of the portrait, he studied the hardened face and the intense eyes of a man who had nearly destroyed the kingdoms. Tan had only met him a few times. The first time, Althem had seemed warm and friendly. Now, he wondered if Althem had been shaping him, though it was possible that Amia’s shaping had protected him. The second time had been when he and Asboel had confronted Althem as he tried to use the artifact. It was a dangerous creation, and one that Tan still didn’t understand. Had Tan not had full command of his abilities, he would have failed. As it was, he had nearly lost Asboel and had used the trapped power of the artifact to save his friend that time. If he only still had it…

  But he couldn’t think like that. Doing so didn’t help him today, and it didn’t honor the memory Asboel would have wanted him to maintain.

  “Tannen.”

  Tan turned to Roine, who now stood in the doorway to the great hall. He hadn’t sensed him approaching. “You’ve added another portrait.”

  Roine glanced at the portrait. “It seemed fitting that he be added.”

  “Even after everything that he did?”

  “Do you think that all these kings and queens ruled as you would have?” Roine asked, pulling his eyes away from the portraits. He motioned down the hall, to the dozens and dozens of portraits, some faded by time, leaving little more than a blur of what the image should be. “They are a reminder—good and bad—of the kind of rule the kingdoms have known. Some… some have been better than others.”

  “And some thought to shape the kingdoms and force an image of what they wanted.”

  Roine chuckled. “That might have been the worst. Better to have the reminder of his rule than to remove it and forget. After everything that he did, the hidden atrocities,” he said, shaking his head as he touched his temples, “some we may never fully understand, we need to maintain the reminder. Without it, it might be too easy to forget.”

  Tan studied the portrait of Althem. At least the artist had cast him in a dark light, leaving his eyes with an awful intensity. “When will yours hang alongside his?”

  Roine smiled, and deep wrinkles formed at the corners of his eyes, showing his age. They had been through so much over the last year, and it had aged him prematurely. “Mine should never hang next to Althem’s. I am nothing more than a placeholder.”

  “Are you so sure? I think most would argue that you’ve handled the transition from warrior to ruler well. There would not be any argument were you to remain king.”

  “Regent, Tan. King Regent. And I will not be party to a silent coup.”

  “Why must it be silent?” When Roine started to protest, Tan pushed on. “There is no one else fit to rule. You were Athan at the time of Althem’s death. The line of succession would be satisfied.”

  Roine considered Tan for a moment, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Either you have been speaking with your mother, or you have come to the same conclusion. I’m not sure which worries me more,” he said with a laugh.

  “I’m not trying to worry you. I only want what’s best for the kingdoms.”

  “Only the kingdoms now?” Roine asked. He cocked his head and stared at him. “Not Incendin, and Doma, and Chenir…”

  “And Par-shon,” his mother said, coming up behind Roine. She fixed Tan with an expression she likely meant to be withering, and to many others it likely would have been, but Tan had grown up around her and knew her moods. “Ara tells me that you journeyed across the sea, bringing one of the draasin with you. I thought that we’d talked about that foolishness and the claim that you were Utu Tonah—”

  “Foolish to you,
” Tan said. “But the elementals speak to me, Mother, and have made it clear that Par-shon had not changed. That was why I returned.”

  Roine motioned them into the hall and out of the corridor where servants moved past, trying and failing to give them a wide berth. Once in the hall, Roine shaped the doors closed and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “You’re the Utu Tonah?” he asked.

  Tan glanced at his mother and realized that she hadn’t said anything to Roine. “When we brought the body back to Par-shon…”

  “They named you ruler?” Roine asked. “And you didn’t feel it appropriate to share this with me? Tan, you’re my Athan. You speak with the voice of the throne.”

  Heat rose in his cheeks no differently than when his father had chastised him as a child when he’d forgotten to cover the firewood, or when he hadn’t paid enough attention while tracking. As he had then, he struggled to find the right words. There wasn’t anything that he could say. Certainly nothing that would make it better. He should have shared with Roine.

  When Tan didn’t answer, Roine turned to Zephra. “And you. I would think that you would tell me about Tan. It’s bad enough that he keeps getting it in his head that he has to serve the elementals over the kingdoms, but at least you’ve usually backed me up when it came to him.”

  Zephra took the chastising without saying a word. Some might think that meant she was appropriately chagrined, but Tan knew better. With his mother, silence often meant that she was biding her time, waiting for the right moment—usually when he was alone—to share her irritation. This time, he didn’t worry about what she would say to him. It was Roine who had to fear.

  The King Regent turned back to Tan. “Why you didn’t let me know that we essentially rule in Par-shon—”

  “You would have him rule?” Zephra asked.

  “We’re the victors, Zephra. We get to decide what we do with Par-shon.”

  “Are you certain that’s wise? We’ve got enough trouble in the kingdoms, especially with the unrest in the west.”

  Roine cut her off with a shake of his head.

  Zephra glanced over at Tan and nodded. “Regardless, we have enough going on trying to understand the new political dynamics. Incendin still claims that we should reunite Rens, Doma wants help with rebuilding following the Par-shon attack, and Chenir…”

  “I know what we face,” Roine said.

  “Not if you intend for us to provide rule over another nation. And I know that Tannen might think he’s doing what’s best, but he should not be the one—”

  “I am the one who defeated the Utu Tonah.” Tan stepped forward as he spoke, placing himself between his mother and Roine. “You may think we are the victors, but in Par-shon, I am the victor.”

  “You can’t think—” his mother started.

  “I can,” Tan interrupted. “You would have shut down the borders, you would have barricaded the kingdoms and abandoned Incendin and Doma, thinking that Chenir had already been lost. So please do not presume to tell me what to do.”

  He took a deep breath, already regretting the way that he’d spoken to them and fearing the way that his mother would react. Since the destruction of their home village to the lisincend, she had been an angrier person, fueled by a drive to defeat Incendin, but also one who wanted to protect Tan as much as she could. The problem was that there wasn’t anything that she could do to protect him, not as she wanted to. There were things that he had to do, and learn, on his own. They were the things that had brought him the knowledge and skills needed to defeat Par-shon. Without his connection to the elements and the elementals, everything and everyone would have been lost.

  Roine started laughing.

  His mother shot him a hard glare, but Roine shook his head and nodded to Tan.

  “Whenever I think I know what I’m doing, Tan comes along and shows me how little I’ve figured out,” Roine said. “The boy is right, Zephra. We would have lost had it not been for him. Maybe not yet. We would have secured ourselves behind the barriers, but eventually. It would have been slow, and painful, and many others would have suffered before we fell. And now he’s no longer my Athan. He’s my equal.”

  Zephra studied Tan, her head shaking slightly as she did. “And he’s not a boy,” she said softly. “So I must stop thinking of him as one.”

  Roine chuckled. “I think you’ll struggle to see him as anything different than the child you raised, but I can see him as the man he’s become. Much greater than anything I had ever thought to find when I came to Nor. It seems so long ago that I came looking for the artifact. What I found was so much more.” he sighed. “So Tannen. You are the Utu Tonah. Is that what you came to share with me?”

  Tan struggled to process the sudden change. “I don’t want to be Utu Tonah,” he answered.

  “And I don’t want to be King Regent, so I guess we are well matched, then.”

  “Which means you both are better suited for the job than most,” Zephra added. “I would be more concerned if either of you wanted the job.”

  “I don’t want to be Utu Tonah,” Tan repeated, “but I don’t know that I can trust anyone else to rule in Par-shon until I understand their lands.”

  “You won’t find those answers here,” Roine said.

  “There was something else I discovered. I intended to see if I could find answers in the archives.”

  Roine nodded slowly. “You didn’t intend to come to us at all, did you?”

  “I would have eventually. But the archives were locked.”

  “Until we come up with a plan for all those texts, I thought it best to keep it locked. There are some who have come forward, wanting to resurrect the archivists, but I’ve been careful with them so far.” Roine paused and glanced to Zephra. “Besides, it is good that you’ve come. We have news to share with you.”

  Tan readied himself for whatever awful news they might have, but what his mother said next still surprised him.

  “Theondar has asked me to marry him. And I’ve said yes.”

  Tan looked from Roine and then to his mother, smiling. “Good. Maybe then we can have a joint wedding.”

  Roine smiled, but his mother’s mouth twitched, and whether from irritation or another emotion, he couldn’t tell.

  6

  Honl’s Search

  The lower level of the archives appeared no different than the last time Tan had come here, but in a way, it was very different. When he’d been here last, the kingdoms had been on the verge of defeat to Par-shon, and he had sought answers, possibly even the kind that would allow him to somehow rebuild the artifact and discover a way to use it that the ancient shapers hadn’t considered. Except, he’d damaged the artifact attempting to shape it. Now it would never again be used.

  In many ways, Tan knew that was good. The artifact, a long metal cylinder that had been formed using a combined shaping of each of the elements, somehow binding elementals into it, had been a creation of such power that when he held it, he thought he would be able to shape the world, that he would be able to do anything that he wanted. Such power was dangerous, even to him.

  Maybe especially to him. Tan had shaping ability, or else he wouldn’t have been able to use the artifact, but it was more than his ability to shape. Althem had had that, or he wouldn’t have been able to use the artifact. Rather, it had been Tan’s ability to reach the elementals, his connection to powers more ancient than him, that might have proven dangerous. They had given him a connection and grounding, but would he have been able to maintain that grounding while controlling power like the artifact allowed?

  Tan liked to think that he could, but what if he were wrong?

  He stared at the wall of books. All around him were the ancient volumes brought and kept here by the shapers who had come long before him, knowledge that should be enough to answer any question that he had, but much like the portraits on the wall in the palace, some of the books served only as reminders of what should not be. The harnessing of elementals had been d
one out of ignorance, not out of a place of knowledge.

  How much else was there like that?

  Then there was the hut within the swamp outside of Doma. He pulled the book that he’d discovered there from his pocket and set it on the table next to him. He’d left it in the home he’d once shared with Amia, setting it aside for a time when he would have the opportunity to study its contents, but there never had seemed to be the right time. And then he’d taken to staying with Amia in the wagon with the Aeta and had forgotten about it entirely. Maybe there was something in it that could help.

  Stamped into the cover was a rune for each of the elements. The thick leather had the sense of age and Tan folded it open carefully, knowing that this book was older than most books within the archive. He remembered the first time he’d read it, translating the Ishthin and realizing that he had found not only an ancient book but one that promised to hold secrets that he needed.

  All the time that he’d spent becoming disenchanted with what the ancient shapers had done, only to find this.

  Tan flipped the first few pages, skimming them. A journal, or letters. The writing seemed directed to someone, almost as if whoever had kept the record had intended it for someone else. Had this other person been the one with the hut in the swamp, or was there someone else? Maybe the person who had written this had been the person in the swamp and the book had never reached its target.

  Unlike many of the texts that he’d read in the archives, this one interested him on a different level. Not only could he learn from the past, but he thought that he could begin to understand some of the ancient shapers, and maybe he could understand what they knew and why the elementals had been harnessed, or why there had been a desire to attempt the crossings of elementals, the same crossing that had formed creatures like kaas, or the hounds.

  Wind swirled quickly, fluttering the page that had caught his attention.

  Tan slapped his hand over the cover to protect it. Had his mother come to the archives to find him? The Great Mother knew she rarely had come down before. Roine visited often enough, but his mother preferred to leave him alone. Or maybe she didn’t care for the reminder of the archivists. Tan had never learned.