Born of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 8)

by D. K. Holmberg

  “Some? What of you, Maclin?” If the Utu Tonah had forced the people to believe differently, it was possible that some remained who had not. From those, Tan would be able to reach a sense of understanding, wouldn’t he?

  “I am here to serve, Utu Tonah.”

  He bowed his head and with barely any spirit sensing, Tan could tell the fear that bubbled to the surface. Like the others Tan had encountered, Maclin didn’t trust him. They feared him, and that fear brought a certain respect, but they didn’t trust him. And Tan couldn’t blame him. What had he done other than come to Par-shon and destroy the bonds that might not even have held the elementals, and demonstrated his desire to rule? In that, how was he any different from the Utu Tonah who had come before him?

  “Thank you, Maclin.” Tan left him standing in the hall, not wanting to press any more than he had. Likely it wouldn’t work anyway. Like so many others that Tan had encountered, Maclin wanted to protect himself, and that meant not saying anything that might get him into trouble with the new Utu Tonah.

  Leaving the estate, he stopped and breathed in the temperate Par-shon wind as it gusted in from the north. Salt lingered on the air, and it was humid, reminding him of Doma in so many ways.

  What did he know about Par? Not Par-shon, but what had been here before the Utu Tonah had ruled? That was the place he needed to return these people to, not to the darkness and fear that had come with the Utu Tonah. But how, when he knew so little?

  Yet, he knew about the bonds, the runes placed on the buildings around the city. That had been Par, not Par-shon. The bonds had some meaning to the people of Par, and might even be the key to understanding what the Utu Tonah had been after, if only he could discover what that might be.

  With a shaping of wind, he carried himself to the center of the city. Dozens of people passed below. Tan stopped above the street, landing on a building. A sense of earth seemed to draw him here. Moving on, he jumped to an alley below, keeping himself shielded so that he didn’t scare anyone.

  There was a temptation to listen to those around him and observe the people of Par-shon, but as much as that might help him understand the people, it wouldn’t help him understand Par. More than anything, he suspected that was the key and the secret to understanding why the Utu Tonah had come here.

  He turned up the street and listened for the sense the runes made on buildings around him. On one, he recognized the call of fire. Though he had no bond to fire anymore, he remained as connected to it as to any of the elementals. Tan stopped at the corner of the building and studied the pattern. It represented fire, and from the smells coming off it, the building was a baker.

  The pattern felt strange. Almost rough and worn in a way that implied age and time had degraded it. But there was more to the sense than that. Not only time but something else had been done to it. Touching it carefully, he noted how the pattern only seemed to be degraded by time. There was more to it, the addition of a subtle change to the shaping that he would have missed had it been any element other than fire.

  Pushing a shaping of fire into it, he felt a strange sort of resistance. He’d sensed it before when trying to repair them and had thought that it was because he didn’t know the purpose of the patterns themselves, but this time, he realized there was more to it than what he’d detected before. Someone had placed a subtle change to the pattern, intending to damage it.

  With a surge of fire, adding earth as it called, he forced the rune back into place. With a pulsing of light, the bond took hold.

  As it did, Tan felt the way that fire was called by it. Not forced, but called. And saa, so prominent in these lands, answered willingly.

  He had seen it before but hadn’t made the connection before this. The intricacy required for these patterns, and the almost loving way that they were crafted, told him all that he needed about the way the ancient people of Par felt about the elementals. These people had not abandoned their connection to the elementals. They had revered them.

  Was this why the Utu Tonah had come to Par? Not only the convergence but because of these bonds?

  If so, why would the bonds on these buildings have remained damaged? Elanne and the other bond masters would have repaired them, wouldn’t they?

  Unless Elanne didn’t want them repaired.

  He had thought that she had been repairing bonds, but maybe he had it wrong. When he found her, she must have been damaging them. That would explain why she seemed so upset when he had appeared.

  Tan heard noise down the street and felt the pull of shaping. In Ethea, it was a common enough occurrence, but here in Par-shon, there were few shapers, so he should not detect anything.

  He started down the street, making his way toward the shaping he detected. Few others were out on the street, and Tan made an effort to keep himself shielded using his connection to earth, borrowing strength from Kota. None seemed to notice him as he hurried along.

  The commotion came from a crumbled building. Three people milled outside, looking up at the damage and speaking softly to each other. Two of the walls had simply split, letting the roof collapse.

  That seemed strange enough, but what was even more so was the way that Tan sensed earth. Something had changed here. For a moment, he thought that someone might have forced a bond, but that wasn’t what he detected. With his connection to Kota, he suspected he would know whether earth was used in a way that the elementals found distressing. This… this was as if earth had simply given out.

  Holding onto his shielding, he crept along the edge of the street and searched the stone. He thought he knew what he was looking for, but wasn’t certain that he would find it. Par-shon was an old city, and it was possible that the building had simply collapsed because of time, rather than anything more nefarious.

  But near the front of the building, he found what he had suspected. A rune—or a bond, according to Elanne—was worked into the stone. Tan touched it, tracing his fingers across the pattern and searching for the sign that it had been damaged like the others. At first, he sensed nothing amiss, but then he found it.

  The pattern had a subtle change. There wasn’t much to it, barely only enough to detect, and nothing like the clear sense that he’d had when working with the pattern for fire.

  For the building to collapse meant that earth had simply given out.

  That, combined with the shaping he had detected, suggested to Tan that whatever had been done had been recent.

  He looked around but saw no one in the street other than the three people from the building.

  Yet he detected a sense of shaping, though he couldn’t tell the direction or the target. It was near, and he had the sense that someone watched him, as if they saw him in spite of the shielding that he used.

  Tan unsheathed his sword and made his way through the street, searching for the sense of shaping that he’d detected, but it was gone. The sense faded, and whoever had damaged the building was gone.

  14

  Support For Par-shon

  The tiles thudded beneath his boots as Tan hurried through the tower. He would have answers. There was enough dancing around his questions and not enough cooperation with what he needed to know, and now there were buildings falling in the city because a faction still attempted to damage the bonds, as if they wanted to wipe away the last remnants of Par. Tan wanted to know who had attacked the rune, but he also wanted to know why.

  Worse, Amia had returned to the kingdoms, summoned back by the Aeta. Thankfully, Asgar had brought her, but that left Tan without her guidance. After what he’d seen, he needed her.

  The answer had something to do with Par, of that he was certain, and Tolman would answer him this time.

  Only, he couldn’t find Tolman.

  Rather than Tolman, Tan found Garza, wearing flowing robes that covered her bulk. The Mistress of Shapers role had diminished by placing Tolman in charge of the students, and she strode through the hall until she saw Tan. When she did, she froze and bowed deeply.

  “M
y Utu Tonah,” she said.

  “Come with me, Garza,” Tan said.

  He didn’t wait to see if she would follow, making his way through the tower until he reached the room in which he had first encountered the previous Utu Tonah. It seemed fitting that he would question Garza here since she had been the one to bring him to the Utu Tonah all those months ago.

  Taking a seat on the chair in the center of the room, he fixed her with the hardest stare that he could muster. He would not harm her, but then, he would have answers, something he did not so far.

  Garza gripped her hands together, keeping her eyes lowered.

  “You’re the Mistress of Shapers. Where is Tolman?” Tan asked first.

  “My Utu Tonah, I do not know where he would have gone.”

  Tan frowned. This would have been easier had Tolman been here. He felt that he could persuade Tolman in ways that he couldn’t with Garza. She could be intimidated, but that wasn’t what he wanted, either.

  “I would know whether you support Par-shon.”

  Garza frowned at him. “My Utu Tonah?”

  Tan leaned forward. This had been troubling him since returning after finding the blacksmith destroyed. There had to be a faction in the city that supported Par—that was why the bonds remained on the buildings, even if they should have failed over time—and there was a faction that supported Par-shon and whatever the Utu Tonah had represented to them. He would know which was which.

  “I would know if you support Par-shon.”

  She swallowed and cast her gaze back to the floor. Garza had been something resembling decent to him when he had been trapped, but she had still followed the Utu Tonah. All had. Tan had the sense that most followed willingly, searching for the power that he offered through his connection to the bonds with the elementals, but began to wonder if not all had supported him as he had thought.

  “I support Par-shon, my Utu Tonah,” she said.

  Tan layered a spirit sensing on her and detected fear and anxiety, both of which he expected. But there was something else there as well, something that she hid from him. With enough of a spirit shaping, he could determine what that might be, but then, Tan had no interest in harming her. He wanted answers, preferably freely given.

  “You support Par-shon and not Par?”

  He said it softly and watched her.

  Even if he were not able to sense spirit, he noted the way her pulse bounded with slightly more force and could practically hear her heart begin to race.

  “My Utu Tonah?”

  “I have come to discover that there is a faction of people who still support ancient Par,” Tan said. “I would know if you are among them.”

  “Par has been gone for many years, my Utu Tonah. We are Par-shon only now.”

  Tan sniffed and stood. He made his way toward Garza and kept his guard up, fully aware that she was a potent water shaper. He detected nothing from her that told him she prepared to shape, but he wondered if she had discovered some way to shield her shaping from him much as he did with earth.

  He stopped in front of her and leaned forward, close enough that he could smell the distinct odor of grass and leaves, the scents of her garden. “You understand that I can shape spirit,” he said.

  Garza swallowed and nodded.

  “And you know that I can use spirit to detect whether you are truthful with me?”

  Her eyes widened slightly, and he realized that she didn’t know that.

  “Now again, Garza, do you support Par-shon?”

  She raised her head and met his eyes. “Do with me what you will, Utu Tonah.”

  Tan smiled. “Not ‘my’ Utu Tonah?”

  “The Utu Tonah was never mine.”

  Tan smiled. “Good.”

  Garza blinked. “Utu Tonah?”

  Tan turned away from her. “I am tired of everyone showing me false loyalty, Garza. You appear to be the first willing to say what you feel.” He reached the chair and faced her. “I need to know how many still support Par.”

  “You can do with me what you want, but I will not reveal that.”

  “I could simply take the information I want.” Tan had no intention of actually doing it, but he could use the threat of what he might do to persuade her. And he needed to know who supported Par and who supported Par-shon. The difference seemed minor, especially when he first came to Par-shon, but the implications were much greater than he could have expected.

  “Then do what you will,” she said.

  “I am not the same Utu Tonah as the one who came before me,” Tan said. “And from what I’ve found, the people of Par do not value the same as what Par-shon and the Utu Tonah valued.” He sighed. “It seems that Par values much of the same as me.”

  Garza met his eyes and shook her head. “You say the right things, Utu Tonah, but we have suffered much. The last Utu Tonah came to Par making similar claims.”

  “What claims are those?”

  Garza hesitated, and Tan wondered if she would answer at all. She sighed. “He claimed that he sought only the safety of the elementals and that bonding to them protected them and allowed us to understand them better.”

  Tan realized that he shared much the same philosophy, only his was born of a true connection to the elementals, one forged from the very first time he spoke to them when he nearly died and the nymid had saved him. From that moment onward, he had come to appreciate the elementals and recognized their unique potential. They were to be protected and understood, not attacked.

  “And you fear that I am no different than him,” Tan said.

  Garza sighed. “There were some who thought that you would not return. That you were content to rule the lands across the sea.”

  Tan nearly snorted at the comment.

  “And then you did return. The first thing that you did was destroy centuries of Par’s heritage. How could you be any different?”

  Not the destruction of the tiles, those runes that prevented shaping in the tower and throughout the city. That had been added and were new enough that Tan knew they had come from the Utu Tonah. But the destruction of the bonds that he’d seen the Council wearing, bonds that he had mistakenly believed represented forced elementals bonding. Had he only taken the time to ask.

  “I didn’t know,” Tan said softly.

  Garza watched him.

  “It probably doesn’t matter to you,” Tan went on, “but I didn’t know anything about Par. I knew only Par-shon. And Par-shon forced bonds, something I oppose. Since coming here, I have seen the way the bonds have been placed on the buildings throughout the city and have seen how they call to the elementals, not forcing an answer, but asking for their help. That is not the act of a people who would harm them.”

  “Not harm, Utu Tonah,” she said.

  Tan sighed. There had to be a different way to reach them, but if he couldn’t even reach out to Garza, how could he expect to be able to reach the rest of the people of Par-shon?

  “What can you tell me about Par?” he asked.

  “As I said, it doesn’t matter what you intend, Utu Tonah. You will not destroy the rest of Par’s heritage.”

  “I’m not the one you have to worry about.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Only that there is someone—or someones—placing marks on the bonds throughout the city. Whatever they do damages them.”

  Garza frowned. “There are none in Par who would do something like that. The Mistress of Bonds would prevent it.”

  “I saw it, Garza. A blacksmith with a mark for earth that had been damaged.” Tan wondered how long that blacksmith had stood. Could it be like some of the other buildings around the city and have been here for centuries? Or had it been a more recent addition to the city? Either way, the destruction of the shop was likely because of whatever damage had been done to the rune. “And what if the Mistress of Bonds was the reason it happened?”

  Garza shook her head. The folds under her chin shook with the motion. “That is impossible, Utu
Tonah.”

  “Impossible? As impossible as your Utu Tonah being defeated?”

  Garza’s wide face clouded, and Tan could tell that he was getting through to her, but not as completely as he would have liked. “You are more capable than he expected.”

  “Did you ever wonder how I managed to defeat him?”

  Would telling her help? Tan didn’t necessarily need Garza’s help, but he needed someone who understood what Par had been like to be willing to speak to him, to work with him, especially if he were to understand what it was that the Utu Tonah intended by coming to Par. And now, if there was something to the fact that these bonds were damaged, he needed to understand who might be doing it—and what they intended.

  “You were stronger than him. And he underestimated you. When you were here…” Her eyes widened, and Tan suspected that she remembered she had been a part of his capture here. “He thought only of the draasin,” Garza went on. “With that creature and his failure with what he planned here, he thought that you would be able to bring him that bond.”

  The final bond. Unity was what he called it, though Tan had no idea what that meant. The Utu Tonah had bonded to so many of the elementals, but that still hadn’t given him an understanding of them. He was connected to them, but it was forced, nothing like the shared connection that Tan possessed with them.

  With the way that he had forced the bonds, Tan wondered if the Utu Tonah would ever understand something like the fire bond. Asboel claimed that no shaper had ever reached the fire bond before, but was that because they didn’t have the capacity or because they were not willing to submit to the needs of fire?

  “What failure of what he planned here?” Tan asked, realizing that there was something more to what Garza said. That might be the most important piece of what she told him.

  “You don’t know?”

  Tan shook his head.

  “That is not for me to share, Utu Tonah.”

  “Garza—”

  “I cannot. The Mistress of—” She cut herself off, clapping her hand to her mouth, and then turned and ran from the room.