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

  He didn’t take energy from them. That wasn’t the reason for his connection. His was about touching the power and focusing to see if there might be something more to it, especially in a place where he suspected there was a connection to something deeper.

  As he did, he noted the bonds surging against him.

  Tan reached into them.

  Power flowed there, running over him like a river. Wrapped as he was within the connection of each of the bonds, he felt the power more strongly than he had before. He felt drawn down, as if pulled into the ground.

  Spirit swirled around him, though not from the spirit bond. It came from the connection he shared with each of the individual element bonds. Now that he’d shifted them toward spirit, in effect combining them with the spirit bond, he no longer really needed to reach into the spirit bond itself. It came to him easily, and with the augmentation of the different elements swirling together to grant even a greater connection to spirit.

  The power of the Mother filled him, overwhelming him.

  Tan could almost feel it like a vortex threatening to draw him downward.

  If he remained connected to it, he would be overwhelmed. As he stayed here, he felt staggered by the power of the Mother, filled with a certainty that he had been given gifts meant to help the elementals and the world, if only he could use them.

  Tan stretched the connection toward Par, reaching for the binding. He felt the connection of the binding and the way it drew from this place, and knew that he’d been right. This was a place of convergence, a place with much power.

  How had the ancient shapers moved a place like this?

  He had thought he understood what they were capable of doing, but maybe he’d been wrong. If they were able to shift the lines of power, the deep connections within the world, then they were more powerful than he’d known.

  They would have to have been, in order to understand how to connect the places of convergence to the bindings. Tan barely understood, though the longer he remained connected as he was, the more he thought he could understand. The longer he remained here, the more he thought he might be able to counter some of what Marin had done. Maybe he wouldn’t even need to use the bindings to restore the land if he could tap into this power.

  And connected to it as he was, he could see the connections to the elementals. Some were old—like that of the draasin and to the udilm crashing into the shores of the island—though some were newer connections, those that had been created at a time when the Utu Tonah had forced crossings, creating elementals that never had existed previously.

  Within the connection, he detected Honl, another elemental that had never existed, though his connection to this was different, less substantial than some of the others, as if he touched the bonds in a different way. The longer he focused on Honl, the more he thought he could understand him, and perhaps understand what changes had happened to him. Threads of wind and spirit wove together, bridged in a way they had not been prior to his healing.

  Honl wasn’t the only elemental like that. Drawing on this power, Tan felt a stronger—and closer—presence to him.

  Light.

  She was of fire and spirit, but wrapped as he was in the bonds, tied to this place as he was, he noted wind and a hint of earth—something that made sense given what he’d seen from her—and even water. In some ways, Light was a strange mixing of each of the elements, some sort of warrior elemental.

  He could see all the nearby elementals, could even see how those he detected could be modified, made into something greater, if he were willing to mix the power he drew from here. Not only the elementals could be changed, but many things about this place, many different powers, even the land itself…

  Tan caught himself.

  That was how the ancients had moved the place of convergence.

  They would have tapped into it somehow, and they would have used that power to create.

  It would have been dangerous, and it would have risked unsettling other things the Mother had created. Had they known and risked it anyway? Or had they simply touched the source of power and thought that they knew better than the Mother?

  Only, why have places like this? Why allow for shapers with power to be able to reach into such a source of power if not for them to use it? He might be the only shaper now to be able to touch all the bonds, but he was hardly the only shaper able to reach them. Within Incendin, there were two able to touch the fire bond. It wouldn’t surprise him to learn there might be other shapers who were able to reach the other bonds. At least in Incendin, those connections came from shapers with an appreciation of the power of the bonds and an interest in preserving them, of keeping the element bonds protected.

  Power surged through him and he held onto it, filled by it.

  There was temptation, much like there had been temptation when he’d used the artifact. Then, he’d had Asboel to help guide him. When he’d connected to all the different shapers to defeat the Utu Tonah, he’d possessed a different sort of power, and Asboel had guided him again, that time through the memory of Asboel in the fire bond, warning him away from what he’d been tempted to do. There was no such guidance this time.

  It had to come from him.

  Tan thought of all the things he could do were he only to risk it… but that was the problem. Doing so would be a risk, and he would place the connections he’d made and the people he cared about in danger, all because he thought he knew better.

  The Mother had given him access to her power, but not for this purpose. He was meant to protect, to heal, but not to change what she’d created. He’d done enough of that accidentally. He would not make the same mistake again.

  Slowly, Tan released his connection, letting it slip from his grasp.

  As it did, he shivered with a longing. Were he to have remained connected, he wondered if he would have been able to withstand the temptation that he’d felt while holding it. Perhaps that was why the ancients had protected the artifact—they had seen how easily it was to be drawn toward that power, to feel compelled to use it, and maybe wanted to prevent others from abusing it.

  “What is it?” Roine asked. “You look like you’ve just seen a friend die.”

  Tan took a deep breath and looked around. Even though he was no longer connected to the bonds, he still felt the pull, almost as if the act of reaching it had connected him to the place of convergence. He had to force his focus away or risk getting drawn back to it.

  “This is a place of convergence.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know.”

  Roine studied him. “Is that what you saw? Is that why your face is ashen?”

  Tan touched his cheek before scrubbing his hand through his hair, trying to clear the memory of power. Knowing it was there and knowing that he could reach it made that difficult. He didn’t want the temptation, much like he hadn’t wanted the power.

  Only… with that kind of power, he wondered if he could trap the darkness. He had used bindings before, but would he be able to trap it completely by reaching the depths of the power he could detect here, or would that be more than even he could manage?

  “I saw,” he said, shaking his head, “I saw the power of the convergence. The Mother is here.” Not only that, but he detected the way this was connected to the bindings. The ancients had tried to use the power of the convergence to trap the darkness, and it hadn’t worked.

  Why hadn’t it worked?

  Was it only because they had failed to fully secure the third binding? Knowing that he could reach into the convergence, and that there was more power there than he could ever imagine, he wondered if he might be able to use that and finally hold that binding. If he could, and if the flows of power could connect between the different bindings, maybe he would be able to accomplish what those ancient shapers had once attempted. He could complete their work.

  “Did she do anything to… I don’t know, change it?”

  Tan shook his head. “The power wasn’t tainte
d. With as much power as I can feel here, I don’t know if it’s even possible for it to be tainted.” He looked around, scanning the rocks and trees, feeling the wind across his face, and listening to the sound of the waves crashing along the rocks. “There’s so much power here, Roine. The Mother shouldn’t be able to be corrupted by the darkness.”

  “Maybe that’s not what they’re after. They don’t want to corrupt the Great Mother, only what she created. If they can destroy those things, then they can destroy her power. You’ve seen it, Tan. You’ve seen what happens when the elementals are drawn away from the land, even what happened when we’d made the mistake to create the barrier. That creates a separation that is not meant to exist, and it’s one that damages creation.”

  Striding across the ground, his boots crunching along the soil, Tan wondered if perhaps Roine were right. Would corrupting the Mother’s creation disrupt her as well?

  If that were the case, and if for some reason he couldn’t suppress the darkness once more, how would he ever stop it?

  Was that even enough?

  Stopping the darkness, suppressing it, was what he thought he needed to do, but that only delayed the danger. If he was right, and if the ancient shapers had faced it using the artifact, then suppressing the darkness only delayed another attack. Would there be another like him to face it? He could see to it that shapers were trained, leave records like were found in the archives, even leave walls decorated with runes, a way for shapers who came after him to understand the risk and perhaps carry forward the knowledge about how to defeat it, but was there another way?

  Would he be able to contain the darkness forever?

  If he could, he would truly be able to bring lasting peace. There might be wars between man and shaper, but they wouldn’t have to fear a power greater than any of them, and they wouldn’t have to fear the corrupting effects of Voidan on the elementals. Maybe they could maintain their connection to the elementals as well.

  “What now?” Roine asked. “You wanted to prove that this was a place of convergence and you seem convinced that it is.”

  “It is.”

  “Then what now?”

  He looked toward the north.

  What they had to do next involved understanding whether Norilan possessed a similar place of convergence, but he needed to know more than that. He needed to know what those Order of Warrior knew.

  “You said you wanted warriors to teach the students at the university,” Tan said.

  “Norilan? I can’t reach Norilan without help… No.” His gaze drifted toward the sky, where the draasin circled. “I don’t want to ride them again.”

  Tell him I don’t want him to ride either. Maybe I can carry him in my talons.

  Tan smiled at Asgar, the image of Roine clutched in the draasin talons like some prize as they flew across the sea making him almost laugh.

  “What?” Roine asked.

  Tan shrugged. “The draasin suggested another way to get you there, though I doubt you’ll like it any better.”

  Roine sighed and shook his head. “That damn mother of yours,” he muttered under his breath. “I think she knew this would happen.”

  Tan laughed. Knowing his mother, it was possible that she had.

  “Come on. Your steed awaits.”

  Asgar snorted flames, and this time, Tan did laugh.

  9

  Return to Norilan

  Norilan maintained an edge of cold, though the shaping that had prevented others from reaching it no longer surrounded the island. The chill came from the north, a deeper cold than Tan felt in Par, and one that spoke of snow and ice. Riding atop Wasina protected him and he leaned into her spikes, enjoying the comfort of her gliding way of flying. Each of her breaths steamed in the air, creating something of a fog as they flew.

  Asgar flew with the same grace as he always did, though his was a powerful beating of his wings compared to the steadying gliding that Wasina managed. Tan would never tell his friend, but in that way, he preferred riding with her more than he did with Asgar. In some ways, he preferred it even to riding with Asboel, though there had been something about the brute power that his old bonded had possessed, a strength that even Asgar couldn’t replicate.

  Light licked his neck, and Tan smiled. She traveled with them, curled around him as she often did, now so comfortable on him that he often forgot that she was there, if not for the constant licking. It had annoyed him at first, but now he only viewed it as something particular to her and nothing more. He suspected there was more to it, another reason that she continued licking him, but he hadn’t been able to determine that yet. Eventually she would share.

  You could know if you used our connection, she told him.

  You think I should delve into your mind to know why you lick me? You mean, there’s a reason other than to annoy me?

  She squeezed him with her tail and Tan laughed, his breath pluming out in the cold air. As it did, she licked him again, forcing another laugh out of him.

  They soared over the flat landscape of Norilan. Beneath him, he could make out the hard rock and detected where the elementals had once been pulled into the bonds, trapped within rock and dirt and used to create. Many of the elementals were still here, though they had retreated. With his return, they perked up, in some ways noticing that he had returned. At least they didn’t try to hide from him as they once would have.

  “How many times have you been back since…”

  “Since we trapped the darkness?” Tan asked.

  Roine nodded, careful to clutch Asgar’s spikes in a way that wouldn’t damage his hands. He was able to shape fire, and so would be protected in some respects, but Tan sensed the shaping of wind and water that he used as well, a barrier of elements to protect his skin.

  “Only a few,” Tan said. “I’ve come back to ensure that the barrier holds, and I’ve returned to check on the people.”

  “The people?” Roine asked.

  Tan shrugged. “Fine. The elementals. Does it matter that I come back to check on them?”

  Roine laughed, lines forming in the corners of his eyes as he did. There was joy in him since leaving Ethea, something about venturing away from the city, away from the kingdoms, as if he’d been freed. Tan thought he understood. In many ways, he felt much the same about leaving Par. He was needed in Par, but getting out and getting away was freeing. He didn’t have to worry about what the council might do, and he didn’t have to worry about how his actions might be perceived. He could act as he thought fit.

  That is what kings do, Light said, licking his face.

  What do you know about kings?

  Your lands have known many. The memory of them is buried in the stones and in the air. You are different than most.

  Because I am no king.

  She licked him again. Perhaps not. You are Maelen. That is much different.

  Tan shook his head.

  “Only that I’m not surprised that you would return for the elementals,” Roine said, oblivious to the thoughts that had gone through Tan’s mind. Not only to his thoughts, but to the conversation that he shared with Light.

  There were times when he was thankful that no others could know about those conversations. If they could, what would they think of some of the things he shared with the elementals? They were more than bonded; the elementals were some of his closest friends. Would they find it strange that he felt that way, often about creatures they wouldn’t even be able to see?

  “The elementals suffered the most in Norilan.”

  Roine sighed. “What I wouldn’t give to know what you heard when you spoke to them. What’s it like knowing these powers?”

  “You haven’t asked my mother?”

  “Zephra doesn’t speak about what she knows with ara. I know it makes her powerful, but then your mother was powerful even before she ever made a connection to the wind. She has always been Zephra, a force of nature.”

  “She’s been something,” Tan said, laughing.

  A
s they flew toward the valley, where the city would be found far below, Roine glanced over at him again. “Do they still teach you?” he asked.

  “The elementals?” Tan asked.

  Roine nodded. “You grew more powerful when you began connecting to them. I think of Ferran, and of Wallyn. They have grown since learning to speak to the elementals. It’s made them powerful in ways most shapers would never know.”

  Tan understood where Roine was going with the line of questioning. He was a warrior shaper, and that gave him incredible strength, but he wasn’t able to reach the elementals. Roine would never know what it was like to be able to communicate in the way those who could reach them. He would never be able to understand why Tan felt so convinced that he connected to the Mother when he spoke to and connected with the elementals. Roine would never have that.

  But Tan could give him a hint of it, couldn’t he?

  Shaping spirit, he sent it to Roine, layering it through him. As he did, he forged a brief connection to Asgar, using the connection of spirit to the fire bond.

  Roine gasped.

  “I hear something.”

  “You hear the draasin.”

  Roine’s eyes widened. “How? How is it possible for you to do this?”

  “I hadn’t considered it before, but you’re right. You should know what it’s like to speak to the elementals. You’ve been involved in seeing them to safety and protected as much as anyone. What’s he saying to you?”

  Roine laughed. “He’s telling me he’d rather eat you than talk to you!”

  I wouldn’t taste that good, he told Asgar.

  No, but then you wouldn’t be able to allow him to bother me again.

  A man should be able to speak to his horse, don’t you think?

  Asgar twisted his neck and shot a streamer of flame that parted around him. Tan laughed.