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

  “Now you’re sounding like my mother.” He didn’t mean for it to sound like an accusation, but it came out that way regardless. “And they’re not defeated. Incendin still has its fire shapers. Lisincend remain. And the barrier no longer protects us from the hounds.” With everything they’d been through, it felt as if they were in greater danger than ever. “We don’t know anything about what Incendin will do next. Without the barrier, we’re exposed. You’ve seen how hard it is to stop even one of the lisincend. If they continue to create more—”

  Amia leaned toward him, heat flashing in her eyes. “We will stop them. And there are only so many fire shapers able to make the transformation.”

  Tan understood the draw of the power the shapers sought, but there was risk involved. From what Lacertin had shared, only about half the shapers survived the transformation. “Power can’t be enough, not for that.”

  “Sometimes there is no why, Tan. Sometimes darkness and hate comes without reason. Can there be a reason why my people were destroyed? Why my mother was burned in front of me? Why the Aeta tortured me?” She shook her head. “If there’s a reason, I don’t want to hear it. After everything we’ve been through, we deserve a chance to find peace. Both of us deserve that. You’ve lost the same! Your home was destroyed. Your father was killed fighting Incendin. Even your king—”

  Tan cut her off. “Althem was never my king.”

  Amia took a calming breath and swallowed, closing her eyes as she rested her head on her hands. “I wish we could stop running and fighting. I wish I didn’t have to feel afraid anymore.”

  Tan pulled her toward him and wrapped his arms around her. He kissed her lightly on the lips. “I’m tired of being scared, too. The thought of losing you terrifies me.”

  She hugged him back and rested her head on his chest. “And now you want to find out what Incendin plans.”

  “The alternative is worse. If we wait—if there’s something to the fires burning atop the Fire Fortress—we need to know. And Roine can help.”

  “He’s too busy with the minutia of running the kingdoms.”

  “Then the other shapers. But I’m the only one who speaks to the elementals. There’s a reason the Great Mother gave me this gift. I can’t simply choose not to use it, not if I can keep others safe from what happened to me.”

  That had to be the reason he’d been given the ability to speak so easily to the elementals. From Asboel, Tan had the sense that there was a reason he’d bonded to the great fire elemental. From the nymid, he had the sense that there was a reason he and Amia had been brought together.

  “What of my gift? I used to think the Great Mother blessed me to help the People, but now I have no people,” Amia said.

  They fell into silence, neither of them with answers.

  * * *

  The knock on the door startled him. Tan jumped to his feet and hurried to the door, pulling it open. His mother stood on the other side, her dark hair streaked with highlights of gray was pulled in a tight bun. Her gaze slipped past Tan to stare into the room, coming to rest on Amia. She sniffed silently.

  “Mother? What time is it?”

  “Time to begin your lessons,” she said. “Come.”

  She started away without waiting for Tan or saying anything to Amia. He glanced back to see Amia nod but felt the sadness through their connection. Then he hurried out after his mother, taking only the time to grab a light cloak to protect from the evening chill.

  His mother made her way down the street. The buildings here had not seen the same destruction as elsewhere in the city. Most were made of aged and faded brick and stone, though some were painted wood. A chill hung on the air and a few gusts of wind swirled around his mother’s feet, almost as if ara worked playfully with her. Light burned in a few of the open windows, enough to see occasional shadows. Tan noted that saa flickered around the flames, as if drawn to them. He could almost see the lesser elemental, not only feel its presence.

  When they reached an open area, Zephra grabbed his arm and, without a word, leapt to the wind with a quick shaping.

  Tan had traveled with his mother’s shaping before, but this time it was different. A face of ara flittered in and out, as if spying on Tan. As he watched, it seemed the face took on the same shape each time. Could she have bonded a single elemental much like he had with Asboel? He thought she spoke to all the wind elementals, but maybe that wasn’t the case.

  “Where are we going?” he asked as they traveled. Wind buffeted him, leaving him cold, nothing like when he traveled with Asboel. Then, he had the heat of the draasin’s spikes, the warmth of his back, the solid connection. He had none of that now.

  “After what happened earlier today, I’m taking you someplace where you can’t harm yourself while you learn.”

  “I think I have enough control to keep from hurting myself.”

  “Fine. Prove it.” She released his arm.

  Tan tumbled from her, the protection of her shaping leaving him spiraling toward the ground. Wind streamed past his face. Tears streamed down his cheeks. He screamed, fumbling through the terror and chill as he reached for ara and failing. The wind elemental ignored him.

  A patch of green came toward him frighteningly fast. He covered his face, praying to the Great Mother. Tan reached for golud, thinking to soften the ground, and tried for a shaping. This failed, too. Before crashing, he tried one more shaping, one of fire, attempting to press a burst of flame and steam away from him, but nothing seemed to work.

  Then he slowed, landing with nothing more than a soft thump. His mother danced to a landing, giving him a satisfied smile as she did. “What was it you said about not hurting yourself?” she asked.

  “I would have been fine had you not kept ara from me.”

  She snorted. “You think I can keep you from the elementals?” She strode over to a tree, now covered in shadows. Thin streamers of moonlight filtered through the branches of the tree, not enough to see more than shades of darkness.

  Where had she taken him? Not far enough to get away from Ethea. The city glowed softly far in the distance, far enough away that he felt isolated. The connection to Amia came to him as a distant sense, as if his mother’s shaping had severed the intensity of his connection to her.

  A few scattered trees rose around them, but otherwise, they were surrounded by brown grasses with splashes of green muted in the night. Tan reached out with earth sensing, straining to learn where she’d taken him, and was surprised to realize it was Ter. He’d been through here one other time, when returning to Ethea with the kingdoms’ shapers. Then, Ferran had led the group and Tan still had the hope that the king could be saved and that maybe he’d learn how to control his shaping.

  “The elementals choose their connection, Tannen. I don’t know how it is with fire, with your draasin, but ara must make a choice. Why do you think it took me so long to know whether I could return to help the kingdoms after the lisincend attacked Nor?”

  “I thought because you’d died.”

  She turned to him and jumped the distance between them on a breath of air. The easy way she shaped still amazed him. She had control over the wind that he only dreamed of having. The closest for Tan was his ability with fire, but even with that, he struggled compared to what he saw from his mother.

  “Must we continue to go through this?” she asked.

  Tan took a deep breath and shook his head. “You needed to reach ara before you could escape from Nor?”

  “I didn’t think ara would respond to me. Not as it once had.”

  “Why?”

  His mother tilted her head and Tan had the vague sense that she spoke to ara. Then she nodded. “I was bonded once.”

  “Once? As in before?”

  She nodded. “When I served the kingdoms. You asked me why I was allowed to remain in Nor rather than being drawn back to Ethea? My bond was severed from me. The pain of it nearly killed me. Without your father, I think it might have.” All these years later, there wa
s pain in her words.

  “How was it severed?” The idea terrified him. He’d grown so accustomed to feeling the presence of Asboel, of Amia, that he didn’t know if he could tolerate the solitude.

  “Elementals can die, Tannen. They can fight with us, but they can die with us, as we can die with them. The breaking of the bond in either way is devastating for the one who remains. Some scholars think that is why the elementals no longer bond as they once did.”

  “How? I mean, how did your elemental die?”

  His mother moved on a cloud of air, hovering above the ground. “It was a difficult time. The war with Incendin… there were shapers lost on both sides. I was lucky, if you can call it that.” She sighed, looking out into the night. “So when I learned that hounds had come to Nor, know that I understood what it meant. There was little I could do until I bonded again.”

  “You can do that?”

  She turned and seemed to talk to the air. A slight smile came to her mouth. “I had been Ephra for so long that I didn’t know, but ara remembered Zephra. I was too late to save Nor, but I can still save you. That is the reason ara allowed me claim another bond.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  She sniffed. “There is much you don’t know.” She swept her arm around and wind rustled the leaves of the trees. A steady drawing to the air told him how she shaped, as did the constant pressure in his ears. “You’ve worried that you won’t learn shaping without the elementals. And I understand that fear. Without my connection to ara, I’m not the same shaper. I would not have been able to disguise myself from you. I wouldn’t have survived as long as I did in Incendin. I wouldn’t have managed to withstand the king’s shaping.”

  “You didn’t withstand it,” Tan reminded her but wished he hadn’t, suddenly wondering if it would change her mind about helping him learn to shape.

  His mother was a proud woman, and understandably so. Few matched her ability with wind shaping. Still, Althem had used her to get to Tan. Had Althem known about Zephra, he might not have tortured her, he might not have forced her to rely upon Tan saving her, the same as he had saved Roine and Cianna.

  “I did not. You’re right. Had I more strength with wind shaping alone, I might not have been as helpless when the First Mother severed my connection to ara. I’ve become reliant upon the elemental. Once, it might not have been the case, though I’ve always used my elemental connection to help with my shapings, but now I truly depend on it.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I should like you to not be quite as dependent as I am on using your elemental. I know you can shape without them. That power is within you. Ara has told me that most of your wind shapings come from you without their aid. That is what I will teach.”

  “Not how to speak to ara consistently?” That might be even more useful to him than anything else. Were he to manage speaking to ara with a better consistency, he might not need to worry about shaping. He had come to grips with the fact that he wasn’t a shaper, not like those trained in the university. Didn’t his ability came from the elementals?

  “That might be the lesson you want, but it’s not the lesson you need,” she said. With a shaping, the wind died down.

  Tan couldn’t tell if it came from what she did or whether ara aided her. Either way, the sudden change was jarring. And impressive.

  “I would like you to focus on your feet,” she said. “Call to the wind. You may have to chase it in order to catch it, but let it swirl around your feet. I will know if you try to reach for ara.”

  Unlike Cianna, she implied. With the fire shaper, Tan had managed to replicate many of her shapings using the elemental power. What his mother expected of him was different.

  Tan wanted to learn. He agreed that he needed to learn, especially after what he’d seen in Incendin. There was a part of him that wanted to tell her what he saw, but doing so risked her trying to keep him from it. And he couldn’t deny that what he’d done so far had felt more like luck than anything else. For him to be effective and be able to help the kingdoms against Incendin, he’d need to really master his shaping. That meant knowing how to use both his shaping and that which the elementals let him borrow.

  As his mother instructed, Tan focused on his feet. Wind could be difficult for him. Often, pulling a shaping of wind meant that he had to reach for the wind elemental for assistance. The only times it had really come easy was when he attempted to bind the elements together to make a spirit shaping. Then, his intent was different. He did not want to use the shaping of wind, but to use it to make the shaping of spirit.

  The dust settled on the ground didn’t move as he focused. Tan tried pulling on the wind, attempting to draw the shaping through him as he knew he needed to do. Pulling from outside of him would only use the elementals. With his mother here, he wasn’t even certain he’d be able to use ara. Would ara respond to him when Zephra stood by, determined to have him master his own shaping, or would the wind elemental bow to Zephra’s request?

  Tan focused on what he had to do to simply speak to ara. That came on a breath of air, a delicate way of speaking that he had to be certain he didn’t push too hard or he might upset the wind elemental. There was a playfulness to the elemental, different than what he noticed with the others, but could he use that knowledge to help him find the shaping he needed?

  The shaping didn’t come. As much as he wanted to pull from inside him, the shaping wasn’t there. Tan could feel the draw of ara: were he to speak to it, there would be power at his fingertips, but the shaping wouldn’t respond to him.

  “I can’t reach it,” he said.

  His mother sniffed. “Can you reach fire without speaking to the draasin?” Tan nodded and she frowned. “Why must it be different with wind?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the Master shaper. Why can’t you tell me why it’s different for me? I hadn’t even known how different my shaping was until I realized that almost everything I did was powered by the elementals. That was the only way I was able to stop Althem.”

  She ignored his frustration as easily as she had when he had been a child. “Try again. This time, focus on your breathing. Listen to the sounds of the wind around you.”

  “There is no wind around me.”

  “No? Then why can I hear it in every breath you take? How can I hear the way the leaves rustle softly? How can I hear the blades of grasses bending ever so slightly? Wind is always around us. More than any of the other elements, it is wind that gives us life.”

  Tan focused on his breathing. At least he could control that. At first, there was nothing but the steady sounds of his breathing. But with each breath, he recognized more. Slowly, he began to feel the air moving in and out of his lungs, the way it moved through his nose and mouth, sliding across his teeth. There was an almost imperceptible sound it made as it whistled through his nose.

  He listened for other sounds of wind as his mother asked. There was the sound of her breathing, different than his. Her breaths were slow and steady, but he recognized the pattern from growing up around her. He shifted his attention to the sound of the wind in the trees. The air around him felt still, but was it? If she could hear the way it pulled at leaves, could he?

  At first, no. Then, slowly, he noticed a distinct faint shimmering sound to the air. Tan focused on this, on the wind that might not be moving around him but that nevertheless moved.

  With a breath of a shaping, he pulled through him, tying the connection to his breathing to the wind rustling around him. Leaves fluttered with a little more force and then the wind returned, blowing steadily.

  He turned to his mother and smiled. “Like that?”

  “That’s better, but you take too long with your shaping.”

  “It’s not natural to me to focus on my breathing before forming a shaping.”

  “And it’s natural for you to simply push fire from yourself?”

  “There’s the bond with the draasin,” he said. “That’s why I can use fire.”

  “Hmm. I’m no
t certain it’s quite so simple. You use fire easily, Tannen. I’d like you to have the same skill with one of the other elements. I can teach you wind. You understand the concepts, so I think you’ll be able to reach for it more quickly each time you do. After a while, you’ll gain enough practice that you won’t rely on the elementals. There may come a time when they don’t respond as you’d like.” She took a leaping step on another gust of wind. “Now. Try again. This time, you will need to hold your focus while I try to prevent the shaping.”

  “You weren’t preventing it before?”

  She shook her head. “I simply caused the wind to fail. This time, I’ll work against you. For you to gain strength, you’ll need focus and speed. Failure of either around a more skilled shaper could put you at too much of a disadvantage.”

  “But I can shape all the elements.”

  She fixed him with a strange look. “Then show me. Stop me using any of the elements.”

  A sudden gust of air caught him off guard. She wrapped wind around him, holding him tightly. Tan pulled fire through him, burning the wind away. His mother glared at him and with a renewed shaping, lifted him to the air. Tan shifted his focus, this time reaching for the earth. The shaping didn’t come and golud didn’t respond. Tan reached for fire again, shaping the wind into a funnel, but his mother released the wind, drawing it away, drawing fire away, before again wrapping him in wind. This time, it nearly suffocated him.

  “Enough,” he managed to say.

  His mother squeezed him again for good measure before releasing the shaping. “You rely on fire when another elemental would serve you better. You can fight wind with wind. You could have used earth against me. Even water would have worked. But always you reach for fire.”

  “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  She waved a hand as she laughed. “Fire can’t hurt if it can’t burn.” She shook her head and fixed Tan with another hard look. “If I do nothing else, I will break you of the belief that you can only use the single element. Now, let’s try again.”