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

  With that, he slipped his sword beneath the binding and into her shoulder. She stared at him, hatred deep in her eyes, and he sent a combined shaping of each element through the sword, adding spirit last. This took more strength than the others, but finally the darkness erupted from her as well, falling the same way as it had with the others.

  Tan remained in front of her, watching. “You see? I don’t have to kill.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I should thank you for attacking. You showed me something I might not have learned otherwise. The darkness inside you can be destroyed. I don’t have to kill.”

  “And if you release me, I will return to the Mistress and she will grant me the ability once more. You will suffer more than you do now—”

  “Who said I would release you?”

  He struck her on the top of her head and she collapsed to the ground, unmoving. Tan wrapped her in wind and earth shapings, preventing her from moving. He didn’t want to risk her escape.

  Then he stood and turned to the other two still living and bound within the shaping he’d used to prevent them from attacking. Both watched him. The man grabbed at his shoulder where he’d been cut and the woman clutched her stomach. Neither spoke.

  Using wind and earth, Tan wrapped both of them in shapings and released the binding. He pulled them toward him, dragging the other woman with him. He stood in the center of the original binding, studying them for a moment.

  What should we do with them? he asked Light.

  You were right not to destroy them.

  I killed two.

  The Mother understands, Maelen, Light told him.

  He wasn’t certain that she did. How could she understand? Had he known another way—had he known that he could use the sword to disperse the darkness from them—he would have done that from the beginning, but he was still learning how to face the darkness. It was the reason he needed answers; he needed something to help him understand the best way to face this kind of shaper, especially with Marin able to counter his shaping as well as she had managed so far.

  “What were you doing here?” he asked.

  Neither of the two still alert answered.

  “I don’t have to leave you alive,” he said.

  The man sneered at him. “You’ve shown too often your compassion, Maelen. It’s how the Utu Tonah nearly defeated you.”

  There was something in the way the man spoke that struck a chord within Tan. “You’re from Par.”

  “Par. Is that what you would call it now?”

  Tan wondered if Elanne would know this man. With his deep eyes the color of a storm and bald, and scarred, head, he seemed as if he would be recognizable. “It has always been Par. The Utu Tonah thought to turn the people into something else.”

  “Yes. He thought himself a Shaper of Light.”

  Tan blinked. “How is it that you know that term?” When the man didn’t answer, Tan lifted him with a shaping of earth so that he hovered in front of him. “How close to him were you?”

  And how had he survived the purging of the bonds? Most had perished, tied to the defeat of the Utu Tonah and the rest of Par-shon as Tan had cast aside the bonds, freeing the elementals. He’d seen children within Par who had suffered because their parents had been taken from them by Tan’s shaping, and it was something that had driven him to help them, to teach them why he had needed to stop the Utu Tonah, to help them understand a better way to serve the elementals.

  “Close enough to know that he was a fool.”

  Tan nodded. “Did you know he came from Norilan?” The corners of his eyes barely moved, but enough to show Tan that he had known. “Is that why Marin came?”

  “The Mistress went to Norilan to reveal the night,” the other woman said.

  Tan looked over to her. She was younger than the man and must have joined Marin more recently, unless the binding to the darkness had changed something about the shaper. “Your darkness is confined.”

  “For now,” she said with a dark smile.

  Tan glanced back to the man from Par. He fought against the bindings, his arms moving more than they should if the wind and earth shapings remained stout.

  “You’re a shaper,” he said. “Of each element. Why would you do this? Why allow her to taint you like this?”

  Tan called the elementals to assist, asking for them to help hold the man in place. Both ara and a surprising earth elemental, one he discovered was called linad, joined the shaping, holding the man in place. He stopped fighting, looking up at Tan defiantly.

  “You can keep holding me, but I will find a way free.”

  “No,” Tan said, “you won’t. I will hold you, or the elementals will hold you. Either way, without the darkness, there is nothing you will be able to do to get free.” The man glared at him before his back sagged slightly. “Now. Tell me what you knew of the Utu Tonah.”

  “Figure it out yourself if you are so wise, Maelen.”

  Light jumped from Honl’s shoulders and raced over to the man. She took a seat on his chest. He struggled again, his eyes wide as he stared at the strange lizard, and she licked his face.

  He spat, trying to turn away, but Light held him down as she licked again.

  “She’s heavier than she appears,” Tan said with a smile. “You can share it with me, or you can have her discover it in her way. Or I could simply force you to do what I need with spirit.” That was the last thing he wanted to do. The moment he started shaping spirit, the moment he started using it against his enemies like that, was the moment he became something like them. This man didn’t need to know. Let him believe that Tan would do it.

  “Tell it to stop,” the man begged.

  Maybe don’t show him quite as much affection.

  I have discovered much, Maelen. Would you prefer I share?

  Yes.

  Images flickered through his mind, those of the man and his time serving the Utu Tonah. He had been heavily bonded, carrying nearly twenty different elemental bonds, and had not cared that he tormented the elementals as he did. He was powerful then, able to use his ability as a shaper to augment his connections to the elementals. Combined as he was, he had quickly gained favor with the Utu Tonah… but had been held back because he was too interested in power.

  If the Utu Tonah feared his ambition, how had he gained favor with Marin?

  Tan shaped spirit, layering it over the man. He’d already seen how Marin had used people who had served the Utu Tonah, and had twisted them to do what she wanted of them in service of her dark plans. Was this man somehow used in the same way?

  As spirit settled into the man, he resisted.

  Not as a spirit shaper. Had that been the case, Tan might not have been able to shape him at all. This was resistance created by his shaping ability. Using a combination of elements, he cut the man off from his connection, and then probed deeper.

  Beneath the surface of his mind was a subtle shaping.

  Amia…

  She joined him as he began peeling away the layers of the shaping. It was delicate work, and something made with skill he’d only seen a few times. If Marin were this talented with spirit, had he made a mistake not searching through the rest of Par to see who else she might have touched? A shaping like this would be difficult to detect, even for him, without reaching in and making the connection.

  Slowly, they peeled the shaping away.

  Once freed, he detected the person beneath the shaping.

  Tan almost recoiled.

  What he detected was in many ways worse. Marin had softened his hatred and his anger, so that without the shaping, it surged from him, a darkness that boiled within him.

  Replace it, Amia urged.

  It is unnatural. He should not be shaped like this.

  I think… I think she did him a favor placing it. Maybe she truly served the people of Par for a time before she was tainted, using her shapings to soften those like him.

  Do you do the same?

  The First Mothe
r fills many roles.

  Tan detected that she hid something from him, but decided not to worry about it. Could Amia use shapings like this on her people or others?

  If I replace it, is there a way to… soften… him more?

  Like this…

  The shaping appeared in his mind and he slowly created it, wrapping the man’s mind in a new shaping, one that changed what Marin had done. Without the touch of the darkness, and with the modification Tan used on him, he saw the man change as he did. With a soft inhalation, he shivered and his eyes blinked open.

  Tan could see the hatred that had burned in them was gone, but at what cost?

  He had shaped a man to become something he was not. He had changed him in a way that turned him into someone else. How was that any different than what the archivists had attempted all those years ago? Tan had rebelled against that then, and now he was the one doing it.

  It is different, Amia said.

  I don’t see it that way.

  He can find happiness this way, if you let him. He can discover his connection to the Mother. He would never have been able to do that before.

  Tan pulled away from the connection with Amia. Light watched him, seeming to recognize his difficulty. She slithered over to him and brushed against his legs, nearly knocking him over, and then licked him.

  “All men change, Maelen.”

  Tan almost jumped as Honl spoke. The elemental had been silent, letting Tan work, knowing from their shared connection what he did.

  “Even the elementals change. What you did for him is no different than what you did for me.”

  Tan took a deep breath. Could that be all that it was? Could it really be no different than what he’d done for Honl, or kaas, or even for Fur and the rest of the lisincend? Hadn’t he made similar changes over and over? He’d been troubled by some of them, but not all. Pushing Fur and the lisincend into the fire bond had been the right thing, as had saving the hounds. Even with what happened to Honl, it was hard to see what he had become as anything other than greater than what he had been.

  The Mother gave you your gifts for this reason, Maelen. You need to embrace them. It is why she lets you do what you do.

  By setting apart the changes to a person, he made them somehow more important when that wasn’t necessarily the truth.

  He felt Amia’s agreement through their bond.

  Help me with this other? he asked.

  Together, they sent a shaping over the woman as well, discovering that she had been shaped much like the man. They peeled the shaping away, and then changed it. He could see how it would affect her, and what it would mean for her. Her eyes fluttered back in her head, and then fell closed.

  Tan turned to the man. Touching him with a hint of spirit, he looked up at Tan.

  “What were you doing beneath the ground?”

  Changing the shaping had distorted his ability to reach into the man’s mind, and Tan needed him to answer. He had a growing fear that whatever they had planned meant something more dangerous than he realized, especially if Marin would risk them coming here, risk leaving them here.

  “We…” He looked from Tan to Light and then to Honl. His eyes remained fixed on Honl the longest. “She had us pushing away the elementals,” he said. “We should not have, but we did. I see that now.”

  “Why push the elementals away?” Honl asked.

  Tan stared at the opening to the tunnel. The nervousness that he’d been feeling began to surge within him. Using earth, he traced the connection of the tunnel. It went down and down, descending deep beneath the earth, and headed both south and east.

  Toward Ethea.

  He began to understand why Marin intended to push away the elementals.

  She couldn’t actually do that, could she? he asked Light.

  Has it not been done before? Light asked.

  What is it? Amia asked.

  The place of convergence. Ethea is one, and if she moves the elementals, she could shift the place of convergence.

  You could simply shift it back, she said.

  That’s not the issue. The convergences connect to the bindings. Ethea to the Temple of Alast. He began to understand what she must have been doing in Xsa. The isles were close enough to Par for it to make sense. There must be one in Par and Norilan. If she shifts the convergences—

  The bindings fail, Light said.

  7

  The Athan Returns

  A shaping of lightning brought Tan back to Ethea, where he hovered above the city, choosing not to return to the shaper circle as he normally did. Before landing, he wanted to take stock of the city and understand if there was something he might have missed, something that placed the city in danger.

  Could Marin really have shifted the convergence?

  He didn’t detect anything yet, but if she had, it might have been subtle. What she attempted would not necessarily require great strength, just enough to disrupt the flows of power.

  As he hovered in the air, focused on the city, he realized that each time he returned, the city felt less and less like home. There was a brief time after he’d first come to Ethea, and then in the time after Althem’s defeat, where the city had felt comfortable enough to let him feel rooted to it. It wasn’t the same kind of comfort and familiarity he had known in Nor, but then again, there was something special about a childhood home. Even memories that had not necessarily been good at the time had softened, the edges removed, so that he no longer looked upon the torment in the way he had when he’d been there.

  Thinking of Nor brought back memories, and the more that he sorted through them, the more he realized that not everything was as he had remembered. Not all of the memories were good. He’d lost his father in Nor. He’d lost almost everyone he’d ever known there. And he never would have discovered his potential had he remained there.

  In that regard, Ethea had been a part of him during a pivotal time. He had learned he could shape here. Not only shape, but that he could be a warrior shaper, something not seen in the kingdoms in a generation. He had continued his romance with Amia here. They had made a home and found a place in the world for themselves. And he had begun to understand his bonds within the city. Those bonds were as much a part of him as shaping.

  Yet… returning no longer felt the same. The city felt different, and it was more than the way the skyline had changed. The university now towered on the western side of the city, built solidly by earth shapers and augmented by the elementals. The archives were not as impressive as they once had been, the squat, aged building still amazing for its age, but he had seen equally amazing things in his time outside the city. Even the palace, the garden once shaped in ways the warriors of today couldn’t understand, had been destroyed, and none had bothered to repair it. Those shaping were no longer quite as impressive now that he had gained his broader, deeper understanding of the elements.

  Tan realized why the thoughts troubled him as they did. The kingdoms and Ethea were a place of his childhood, but they were not home now. The stone ring in his pocket, the marker of his position as Athan, weighed heavily. He rarely wore it, though did keep it with him, simply because it was a way for Roine to summon were he to have the need. The title was no longer necessary; Tan had a greater title, and one he was equally uncertain he wanted.

  While hovering, he tried reaching through the element bonds to a few of the shapers, but there was no response. That was not unusual, only unfortunate, especially given what they faced.

  Asgar flew next to him, along with Wasina and one of the hatchlings. When he’d left Vatten and the three remaining disciples, he’d called them to him, needing their sensitive connection to the fire bond to help him determine if anything had changed. He’d called to the hounds and detected a pack roaming outside the city. The nymid should be strong here as well, and he could reach golud when he needed. Each elemental would be able to help him know what risks they faced.

  Wait for me, he sent to the draasin and the hounds.

 
; Landing in the courtyard of the palace, he hurried inside.

  When a white-robed servant stopped him, his young face scanning Tan and his gaze seeming to linger on his sword, he almost smiled. When had he last been here? Long enough that he was no longer recognized as he once would have been.

  “Can I help you?” the man asked. He had a high voice, one that warbled slightly. He clutched a stack of linens against his chest and motioned to other servants behind him.

  “I had hoped to see Theondar and Zephra,” he said. Had he said Roine, he doubted the man would know who he meant. Tan might be one of the few who still called him the name he’d chosen while hiding.

  “The king is very busy, even for the shapers. You should request a visit through the Master Scholar.”

  Tan nodded. “I should, but I was thinking I might visit with my mother.”

  The man blinked. “Your mother… Oh.” He clasped a hand to his mouth and his gaze went back to Tan’s sword before sliding up to his face. “That would make you… Please forgive me, Athan. You will find them in their quarters. They had a long night following the celebration.”

  “Celebration?”

  The man’s head bobbed in a nod. “Of course. Last evening was the Maureen Festival. As you know, most are up far too long.”

  “Of course,” Tan said.

  Had he been gone so long that he no longer remembered festivals? The Maureen in particular was a special day of celebration, a day to honor the Great Mother, to celebrate the harvest and prepare for the winter.

  As he realized that, he wondered—had Marin timed the attack in the north to the festival intentionally? There was nothing particularly powerful about the festival. Tan detected nothing different from the elementals, but she could have used the celebration to mask her movements. It was a typical time of merriment, one that would distract people… and might prevent them from realizing that anything had changed.

  “Would you do me a favor, master…”

  “Norman, Athan.”

  Tan nodded politely. “Master Norman, would you be able to summon Shapers Ciara, Ferran, and Wallyn?” He tried thinking of who else he could ask, but the three were connected to the elementals. With his mother, they would have every element covered.