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

  6

  Wind Elementals

  Tan sat on the street alone, exhausted from working with his mother. He knew he should return to the room with Amia and get some rest, but after the repetitive practice with wind shaping, he needed time to get his mind right.

  Firelight danced in a few windows, and a few lanterns were lit along the street. A cool wind blew in from the north, but there wasn’t much bite to it. Cold didn’t bother him as it once did. Was that the connection to Asboel or was that from the fact that he’d learned how to shape? A hint of the moon peaked from behind dense clouds. The haze that hung over the city remained, but less intense than before. At least now, the stink of everything burning no longer overwhelmed him.

  He couldn’t shake the unease he felt at what was happening in Incendin. Even the practice with his mother hadn’t shaken his concern. For the first time, he wasn’t sure he should be the one to go into Incendin. He might be able to speak to the elementals, but when his mother took him from Ethea, he had lost much of that connection. Only fire had responded. What would happen in Incendin when only fire could respond and he met shapers much more capable than him? What advantage did he have?

  He sighed, letting out a breath of air, focusing on his breathing as his mother had instructed. This time, with a whisper, he called to ara. The wind elemental ignored him. That was always the chance he took with his type of shaping, the reason his mother wanted to teach him to master his shaping rather than depend on the elementals for assistance.

  Tan still questioned his connection to the lesser elementals. Saa seemed to respond to him. With a quick shaping, he pulled forth a finger of fire, letting it dance over his hand. Once, this type of control would have been beyond him. This time, he actually saw saa flickering through the flame, adding to it. With an easy request, saa sent the flame swirling higher. Likely this was how he had shaped when working with Cianna so long ago. At the time, he thought maybe Asboel helped, but the distant sense of the draasin wouldn’t have been enough to help guide his control.

  Tan released the connection and then reached for it again, drawing forth fire, letting it flicker on and off. The dancing flame came without a challenge.

  Why fire? Earth should be the easiest of the elementals for him. He’d known he was an earth senser first, long before ever learning that he could speak to the nymid or draasin. Earth should be the element that he shaped most easily. With wind, he never quite knew if it would respond. Ara treated him with a hint of respect, but nothing like what he sensed for his mother. Zephra was practically revered. Other than with Asboel, the only elemental he’d actually spoken to easily had been the nymid. After the evening of lessons, wind came easier, but still not easy. Would he ever manage the casual ability with the wind that his mother had?

  Tan glanced up at the house. Amia would be there. He sensed her resting, warm by the hearth. He imagined her with a book spread across her lap, taken from the lower archives, one that she studied and tried to better understand.

  After working with his mother, he had the urge to understand the elementals, all of them. The greater elementals might not respond to him outside Ethea, but would the lesser? If he could speak to them the same way he spoke to the greater elementals, he wouldn’t need to depend on being in a place of convergence. Regardless of what his mother intended with her instruction, Tan wanted to ensure he could reach any of the elementals if needed. They would augment any shaping ability.

  Tan started down the street, listening to the wind as he went as his mother had taught him. Ara was there, he was certain of it. The wind elemental might choose not to speak to him tonight, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try.

  He closed his eyes as he felt a particularly strong gust. Ara, he called to the wind elemental. Has Zephra forbidden you speaking to me?

  It whistled along the street before coalescing into a translucent face. Son of Zephra.

  Were you watching today?

  Ara seemed amused. You have much to learn from Zephra.

  She thinks to teach me control so I don’t need elementals to shape.

  You have much to learn to match Zephra’s control.

  Tan laughed bitterly as he continued down the street. Another gust of wind hit him, this time a little warmer than the others. He focused on the way it played across his face and how it blew along the street. A hint of different aromas mixed on this wind.

  Are there are other elementals of wind? Tan asked.

  He worried about being too direct. With ara, there was always the risk of offending the elemental and losing the connection, but if he didn’t try anything direct, he could spend the entire night simply trying to get a reasonable answer.

  You don’t want to speak to them, ara said.

  At least that was answered. They don’t listen anyway.

  No, ashi and wyln are too serious. Ilaz should not be trusted. The face twisted, swirling around his head before settling alongside him.

  Tan wondered what would make wind too serious or what might make an elemental untrustworthy, but couldn’t come up with anything. What he needed was answers. If ara wouldn’t provide them to him, he might need to find them on his own. That meant going to the archives. He should be exhausted after everything today, but he was too alert to be able to sleep.

  Can you take me to the archives? Tan asked.

  Ara pulled at his jacket for a moment and then leapt toward the darkness overhead. You don’t need ara for that, son of Zephra.

  Then ara disappeared, leaving Tan standing with wind drawing around him.

  He tipped his head, focusing on the soft breeze and thinking of the lesser elementals ashi and wyln. Could he reach to them as he had with saa?

  Tan whispered into the wind, murmuring for ashi, focusing as his mother had taught him earlier to use the steady swirls he felt within the wind and asking for the gusts to pick up. If they were anything like saa, they wouldn’t be able to draw the same level of power as ara.

  A sudden burst of warm wind struck him, lifting him off his feet so that he hovered in the air. Tan had the faint impression of a voice, almost as if talking to him. That was different than when he spoke to saa.

  He whispered a request to be lowered to the ground. The wind elemental lowered him slowly and he stepped back onto the street. The breeze working around him shifted, now coming from the south. It felt a touch warmer, though that might only be his imagination.

  Would it be the same with wyln? He let out a breath of a request, trying the same as he had with ashi. At first, nothing happened. Tan wondered if wyln would even bother answering. Maybe it was too weak to offer much assistance. No answer came. Finally, he tried the other wind elemental ara had mentioned, ilaz, not knowing what to expect. Probably nothing.

  A steady, sharp wind tugged at him as it blew in from the east, hissing in his ear. It was a painful sound, almost angry. Tan sent a request for it to stop, but it didn’t. Instead, it increased, pulsing against him.

  Tan grabbed his head. Ara, he breathed.

  The hissing, painful sound continued for another moment. Then it began to taper off, pushed back by a gust of cool air. A translucent face appeared briefly, as if admonishing him, and then disappeared.

  With a shiver, he continued down the street, wondering if the other wind elementals served different purposes than ara. He would need to take the time to study and understand. Why was it that ara helped him and his mother, but ilaz seemed interested in tormenting him? Why had ashi lifted him but wyln did nothing?

  He hadn’t tried reaching the other lesser fire elementals to compare. Saa responded to him, but would inferin or saldam? Maybe they weren’t even found around the city, though in a place of convergence, he expected to find all the elementals here.

  Then there was golud. The earth elemental barely spoke to him. It rumbled responses but never really gave him reason to believe it did much more than answer him. Golud had helped several times, though. Using the earth elemental, Tan had managed to hide Asboel fro
m the kingdoms’ shapers. He had managed to ask golud to help put out the flames throughout Ethea. But could he actually speak to golud as he did the other elementals, or would he always be left with nothing more than the rumbling sort of response?

  Tan reached the archives. He hadn’t really intended to make his way here, but the questions coming to him seemed to guide his feet, drawing him toward the only place he might find understanding. He hurried through the upper levels of the archives, quickly lighting a few shapers lanterns as he went, before reaching the stairs leading down to the lower depths. He followed them down as they descended beneath the city. At the bottom of the stairs, he considered the doors, almost opening one only someone able to shape with all of the elements could open, but turned instead to a door that remained a challenge to him.

  Made of a rich, dark wood, it took up most of the center of the hall, filling it. Tan had never managed to figure out the secret to opening it. It didn’t respond to his shaping each of the elements, nor had it responded when he had pulled on the elementals he could reach.

  Tan rested his hand on it. Runes were carved into the surface and up to now, he hadn’t managed to get even a single one to glow. He tapped on the surface, hearing the dull thunk as he did before turning away. Now wasn’t the time to go and try to understand how to open doors in the archive that failed to respond to him.

  He debated going into the separate archive, the one where he had to bind the elements together to enter, but he wasn’t much in the mood to read through the book there. Instead, he turned to the door leading to the underground tunnels beneath the city. With a shaping of spirit, Tan opened it and stepped inside.

  Using a shaping of fire, he held a glowing light in his hand and made his way through the tunnels. He’d explored part of them since Althem’s death, making his way to and from the palace through them, but hadn’t really felt compelled to search how far they went. From what he’d seen, the tunnel extended past the palace, reaching deep beneath the city. Tan passed the pool of nymid where Roine had been destroyed, and barely glanced at the door which would take him into the palace dungeons.

  The tunnel began to curve around. Smooth stone arched overhead. The ground was slick with green-tinted water. The constant sense of elemental power pressed on him, that of golud and the nymid. Here, beneath the earth, it was a constant sense.

  At one point, another door opened off to the right. Tan paused and looked at it. He’d seen it before. Like the one leading into the palace, it was made of a plain oiled wood. The rune marking for spirit was carved on the surface. Tan touched it but did not shape it open. This led to an empty basement and out into the city. It was nothing more than a way for the archivists to move unseen.

  He went on, following the slow curve. Darkness stretched before him, pushed away by the fire he held out in front of him. Tan pulled this shaping from himself, but it would have been a simple thing to ask saa to maintain it. As soon as he started the shaping, he felt saa drawn to it.

  Was it like that with all shapings? Were the elementals drawn to them like saa was with a shaping of fire? He hadn’t paid attention in the past, but then, he hadn’t known enough about his abilities before. But how could elementals be drawn to all shapings? As far as he knew, spirit had no specific elemental, nothing but the pool drawn by the presence of all the elementals.

  With a quick thought, he sent a request asking for saa to hold the shaping and released the effort he pushed into it. The elemental took it over willingly, holding fire in place without objection, almost as if it had only been waiting for the chance.

  A steady breeze pulled through the tunnel, rustling his hair and sending the flame flickering slightly. He thought about asking ashi to draw along the wind, but he didn’t know what would happen were he to ask that of the wind elementals. The power was so different than what he knew with fire. When his mother returned, he could ask her.

  A little farther down the tunnel, he came across another door. This time, it was on the left side of the tunnel. Tan paused and studied the dark wood, reminded of the one back in the archives. A massive rune was carved into it, but not one that he recognized. The door was wide—much wider than any of the others—and taller than him, almost as if made for some massive person. Tan ran the hand not holding the flame overtop the surface. The wood was smooth and slick, as if the dampness beneath the earth left it saturated. There was no handle or any way that he could find to open it.

  He turned away from the door and continued down the tunnel. The ground sloped slightly, leading him lower, though the ceiling appeared to remain at the same height. Tan frowned, pausing to glance up, but not finding any real reason for the changing slope. A few bits of rusted iron hung from the wall in places. He stopped at one of them and ran his finger around it. It crumbled as he touched it. There was a familiar sense to it, though it couldn’t place what it was.

  Further down the tunnel, there was another door, this one as large as the other. Like the other, only a single rune marked its surface to give any clue as to how to open it. Tan rested his hand on it, trying to listen for elemental energy, thinking there had to be some way for the door to open, but he sensed nothing.

  He went onward. Gradually, a soft hissing mixed with the steady thud of his feet on the stone. Tan saw nothing that would explain the sound, but it reminded him of the uncomfortable sound made by the ilaz when he’d summoned it. As the sound intensified, Tan finally stopped, unwilling to go on any further.

  How far had he walked beneath the city? How much farther would the tunnels reach?

  He’d need to take more time. And perhaps not come down here alone.

  The hissing came louder, as if sensing his unease. Tan stared into the darkness, looking for some explanation, but saw nothing. Debating whether he should continue onward and explore, he decided that he should not. As he turned, starting on the long walk back toward the lower archives, it seemed the steady hissing taunted him, a reminder of how little he knew of the elemental power he sought to control.

  7

  Withdrawing Fire

  Late the next day, Tan sat in the archives, staring at the stack of books around him. A shapers lantern gave the room a soft light but he rubbed at his eyes, debating whether he should try another shaping of fire. He was tired from another lesson with his mother, and reminded again of how little he really knew. He’d managed to shape more effectively this time and had even whispered a silent request to ashi, wondering if his mother would notice him using a different elemental. Tan wasn’t sure whether she did.

  Why should he be able to open this door and not some of the others? He hoped he would find some way to understand the runes on the doors, but so far had not. The First Mother had taught all that she knew of the runes. That meant there was something else he hadn’t discovered, whether it had something to do with the elementals or something else. The shelves around the room held texts—most older than anything he’d ever seen—that had somehow survived their time locked in the archives away from anyone else, but none that he’d gone through had anything that he could use to explain what he’d found.

  He rubbed his eyes. How long had he slept? An hour or two, long enough to feel a little more alert but not enough to feel rested. He should return to Amia, but there should be something—anything—in the archives that could help him.

  He sighed, listening as he did to the sound of his breathing. It was different from his mother’s, with a unique rhythm and pattern all its own. Tan had no other way to explain it other than that. He reached for ara, but the wind elemental ignored him. It was there—he was certain of it—but it simply chose not to answer.

  What of the others? He wouldn’t try ilaz again, not without better understanding that particular elemental, but what of ashi? It had responded each time he reached for it, though it might not have spoken to him like ara did. As far as he could tell, none of the lesser elementals spoke to him, though that might simply be from lack of trying. Tan had learned how to speak to the greater el
ementals out of necessity, but couldn’t the same be said for what he needed to do with the lesser elementals now?

  Ashi.

  Tan whispered the name. It came out on a soft breath, tied to the memory of how the wind elemental had felt. For a moment, Tan didn’t think anything would happen, but then a soft tugging of a breeze flowed around him. It was warmer than anything he’d ever recognized with ara, reminding him of the warmth he felt when soaring with Asboel.

  He waited, thinking the elemental might speak to him, but it didn’t.

  Tan sighed and shook his head. The wind eased before dying completely, leaving him sitting in silence once more.

  He stood with a groan and shuffled, stiff, over to the shelves. There, he found a solid box made of marble and etched with runes. It had originally been in the lower archives when they had first opened the door. A soft lining of red satiny fabric lined the inside of the box. Tan had chosen this box to hold the artifact, laying it at an angle.

  The top of the box was heavy and he shifted it to the side, setting it carefully down so as not to break it. Inside, the artifact rested, the runes along its surface glowing with a faint light. Since Althem had used it, the runes glowed constantly. Tan still didn’t know the purpose of them all, but he knew that most tied the artifact to the elements used in powering it, but not all of them could be explained that way. Some were strange, even to the First Mother. He’d hoped there might be answers in the books in the archives, but he hadn’t found any answers yet.

  He stared at the artifact, resisting the urge to lift it and use it. Its power wasn’t meant for him. It might not be meant for anyone. Why had the ancients made it? What did they know? Had there been something they hoped to save, or were they simply like Althem and the lisincend, driven by power?

  With the artifact, Tan would have answers to any question he might ask. He could do anything, but that was the way to corruption. He already knew what would he do to protect those he loved: turn to fire for power enough to save them, practically change into one of the lisincend for it.