Light of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 10)

by D. K. Holmberg

  “How can I speak to Issa if I don’t even know what she is?”

  “Issa is fire. She is life.”

  Tan frowned. “You mean the fire bond?” He reached through the bond, wondering if the San had managed to reach it. There was no reason that another shaper couldn’t reach the fire bond, only that Tan had thought that he had been the first. But then, he thought that he was the first because Asboel had suggested it. Asboel may not have known, or if he knew, he might not have understood what it was that the priest had managed.

  “I mean Issa.”

  Tan sat back and took a drink of water. As he expected, the water was cool, and tasted slightly metallic. “If you speak to Issa, why did you not restore the lisincend to the fire bond?”

  “That is not within my power.”

  Tan focused on the shaping that writhed through the walls and through the door. Every bit of it came from this priest, a shaping of much more control than Tan could ever imagine anyone not connected to elementals capable of performing. He wasn’t sure that he could even craft such a delicate shaping. And yet, he had little doubt that it came from the San.

  “I came to the Sunlands seeking Cora,” Tan said, deciding that he needed to share so that he could discover what he needed about Issa. More than even Cora, the priest would be able to help Tan understand what he needed to know about the Incendin god. And from there, Tan would continue to search and see if he could understand what had happened to Honl, and if there was anything that he needed to do to help his elemental.

  “You came searching for Issa,” the San said.

  Tan nodded. “I came to ask Cora about Issa, that is true.”

  “Why, Maelen? What has changed for you that you suddenly seek enlightenment?”

  Tan sighed and took another drink of water. “There has been a change in shaping,” Tan admitted. “An attack that I do not understand. Darkness has been unleashed on the world, and I need help understanding how to subdue it again.”

  The San frowned, and his glasses slipped down his nose again, where he ignored them. “And you think that Issa is the key to learning how to subdue this darkness?”

  “I don’t know. There is one who claims learning about the ancient gods will help me understand.”

  The San smiled. “And you believe Issa is an ancient god?”

  Tan suppressed his frustration. What he needed was easy answers, not to waste time with the priest as he attempted to teach Tan about his god. “I don’t know what to believe about the ancient gods,” Tan answered. “I didn’t know that the Sunlands worshiped the goddess Issa before recently. But I thought that I could learn, and try to understand what it is that you worship.”

  The priest stood and motioned for Tan to follow. “Then come with me, Maelen. We will learn about Issa together.”

  5

  Search for Fire

  The San led Tan through the Fire Fortress, guiding him up a different flight of stairs. The priest said nothing as they walked, quietly leading him onward. The higher that they climbed, the more Tan felt the pull of the fire shaping above him.

  He was surprised to note that the stairs were otherwise empty. Lanterns flickered periodically along the walls, set into the stone in such a way that they burned brightly, fed by an unseen shaper. Tan felt the effect of the shaping, and the way that it pressed against him, simmering at the edge of the fire bond, but couldn’t track it to any particular person.

  They stopped on one of the landings, and the San took him to a wide, circular room. Chains were set into the stone, leading to bracelets that appeared designed for wrists or ankles. No one remained chained here, but scorch marks on the stone appeared as if there had been.

  “What is this place?” Tan asked.

  A part of him worried what the San intended by bringing him here, but then, Tan doubted that even the shapers of Incendin were strong enough to contain him completely. They might be able to bind shapings together, and he recognized the strength possible from them as they did that, but he could shape each of the elements. And more than that, he could pull on the spirit bond. Even here, he felt it strongly, filling him with the strength that he only had to focus upon in order to draw from.

  “You asked to understand Issa, Maelen. To understand Issa, you must understand all of what it means to serve her.”

  “And this is how I will understand?”

  The San took one of the nearby chains and lifted it. He held it out to Tan and waited. Tan considered refusing, but removing the chain would prove little challenge, so he offered his wrist to the San. When the cool metal closed around his wrist, the San stepped back.

  “This is a place of testing. Most who come here do not know if they are meant to reach Issa. You do not have the same questions.”

  “What questions do I have then?”

  “You would know whether Issa will speak to you. I cannot answer that for you, Maelen. None can. Only Issa decides whether she speaks to you.”

  Tan pulled on the chain, testing it with earth shaping and recognizing that he could shape the cuff from his arm.

  “Tell me about this place of testing,” Tan said.

  “I cannot tell you. I must show you.”

  Tan frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “That is why I must show you.”

  Light jumped from Tan’s shoulders and landed at his feet, curling around him.

  Fire suddenly surged through Tan, a painful, searing sense.

  Tan jerked, trying to free himself from the chain at his wrist, and finding that he could not. Attempting to shape earth did nothing. Wind and water were no better. The pain pulled him from his awareness of the bonds, and Tan found himself trapped.

  “What is this?” Tan shouted through clenched teeth.

  The San didn’t answer.

  The pain shifted, sliding along his arms, lacing around him in a way that Tan had never experienced. Fire slithered across his skin, burning, leaving an agony. Tan expected that his skin would melt, tearing from his bones, but there was nothing, almost as if the burning came from within him.

  “Priest?” he said again.

  The San didn’t answer.

  The burning changed, shifting so that it pulsed in some ways, writhing along his arms, and then his legs. Fire itself seemed to torment him.

  Tan struggled against it, but fire only worsened, the pain only worsened.

  But this was a test.

  And it was fire. Tan knew fire, had nearly embraced it himself.

  As the shaping changed, he allowed himself to welcome the burning as it raced along his skin, and welcome the pain that he felt. That pain was no different than any others that he experienced. And Tan reached the bond, detecting the flows of shaping that wrapped their way around him.

  As he did, he unraveled them, releasing him from the shaping.

  With a surge of earth, he loosened the cuff, and the chain fell noisily to the ground.

  You would allow this? he asked Light.

  You were never in danger, Maelen.

  Maybe not danger, but even that brief moment of suffering had seemed an eternity. Fire normally did not harm him, splitting harmlessly away from him, but this had burned deep within as if the fire boiled his blood.

  The San stepped forward, tapping the book between his hands. “Had I any doubt about your connection to fire, that alone would have ended it.”

  “Why?”

  “As I said, this is a place of testing. This is where those with the potential to serve Issa will come. Once they pass, they can move on.”

  “Move on to what?”

  “To the rest of their training.”

  Tan rubbed his arm, still able to feel where the cuff had clamped around him. The metal had not grown hot, and his arm actually felt cold where it had touched. “How does this prove anything? How does tormenting someone prove anything?”

  “Another called it torment as well. But it is testing. Do you not do the same at your university?”

  “This is
where you bring those who can shape?”

  “Those who can serve Issa,” the San corrected. “If they can serve, then they will continue their training. Now. Come with me.”

  They stepped out of the room and into a different stair. This led up and up, and the shaping atop the Fire Fortress began to draw on him.

  When the stairs ended, the San led him forward, guiding him into a wide hall. Tan realized that he’d been here once before, but had come a different way. The door at the end of the hall radiated heat, and the San pressed his hand upon it, sending it sliding open silently.

  Inside, three shapers stood, wrapping shapings of fire together, sharing the shaping in a way that Tan hadn’t known was possible. Two were lisincend, and one of the lisincend was winged. The third was an older woman who stood with her back to the door, staring out the bank of windows that overlooked Incendin. Tan was surprised to note that she led the shaping, controlling what the others created, and combining it in such a way that she sent it washing over the Fire Fortress and then out.

  The San stood silently for a moment and then turned to Tan. “This is Issa.”

  “This is your shaping. I have felt it many times before.”

  The San nodded. “And before you healed the lisincend, they were never able to participate in this shaping. Now they are a part of fire, they work within fire, serving Issa.”

  “That is what you wanted to show me? That your shaping brings you closer to your goddess?”

  The priest stepped forward and waited for Tan to join him. Tan hesitated, focusing on the way that the shaping felt around him, the steady, building energy. There was power here that rivaled any shaping that he would ever be able to create, at least on his own. Connected to the fire bond, Tan thought that he would be able to manage a similar shaping, though perhaps not with the same complexity.

  As he stood there, he felt the calling of fire, as if it compelled him forward, drawing him into the shaping. At first, he resisted. Allowing fire to seduce him was how he had nearly transformed into one of the lisincend and Tan couldn’t risk the same happening again, but the longer that he felt the drawing energy of the shaping, the more that he realized that it did not try to seduce him, only to share with him.

  There is no danger in this, Light told him.

  She had been mostly silent since their arrival in the Fire Fortress, almost as if she had been sleeping. Tan hoped that she had been absorbing knowledge and understanding from everything around her, including the San. What he knew might be helpful in understanding what Honl wanted of him.

  Tan stepped forward, and the shaping washed over him.

  He pushed against it before realizing that doing so altered it in some way. Instead, he grasped onto it, worked with it, and felt the way that the threads of fire came together from each of the shapers. Tan added his own shaping to it, paying attention to what the lisincend created, as well as the fire shaper, and modified it. Reaching into the fire bond, he pulled the strands to him, assuming control of the shaping. At first, he wasn’t certain that he should, but he detected the acquiescence of the shapers and somehow knew that was why the San had brought him here.

  Tan let the shaping build. What had seemed complex was not. The shaping filled him, drawing him to be a part of it, and he understood how the shapers created it. Tan built upon it, adding his own touch, and then… then there came the urge to pass the shaping on.

  He relinquished control, letting it slide back to the lisincend. Tan remained within the shaping, letting it build and build, adding his strength, but he no longer led the shaping. When it passed to the next lisincend, Tan stepped away from it altogether.

  Standing behind the shapers, he watched them, letting the shaping wash over him but not pulling on it. The shaping had changed, and he could detect his influence within it, the way that he had added his touch to the shaping, and that had been maintained, carried on by the lisincend.

  When the priest approached, he looked over at Tan. “Did you feel Issa?”

  “What was that?”

  The San smiled. “You ask questions that I can see you already know the answer to.”

  “That was a shaping,” Tan said, “but it wasn’t anything like I’ve ever experienced before.”

  “That is how we reach Issa. We know her through her gifts, and we celebrate the connection, sharing of it. Each shaper adds their connection to it.”

  Tan focused on the shaping, realizing that the complexity that he detected from afar really came from the fact that each shaper had added a part of themselves to it. While within the shaping, while holding onto the connection of it, he had understood it, and even now thought that he could recreate it if needed. But others now would carry on the addition that he had added.

  “Am I the first from outside of Incendin to add to the shaping?”

  The San smiled. “Not the first, and perhaps not the last, if Issa chooses. A man named Lacertin Alaseth came to us many years ago, and he added his touch to the shaping as well.”

  Lacertin. Tan still wished that he would have had more time to get to know Lacertin before his death. He had served the kingdoms even while coming to Incendin, always trying to find a way to understand what King Ilton had wanted of him. Cora had a special relationship with Lacertin, and he wondered about what she’d lost through his absence.

  The San guided him from the room and then took him to another stair, a different one than what he’d led Tan up. This stair was narrower than the other and appeared to have been hewn from the rock by hand, leaving ragged stone behind. The steps had been smoothed over time from Incendin walking across them over the years, leaving depressions that Tan’s feet slipped into, almost forcing him down. Unlike the other stair, no lanterns flickered along the walls. Instead, the stone on either side of the stair appeared to glow, as if taking on the energy of the shaping.

  Tan had been down this stair before, having come this way when Fur had brought him to the dungeons. What would the San want to show him in the dungeons? Were there lisincend he hadn’t healed or had others embraced fire since then?

  But they passed the dungeons, and descended deeper, reaching a point far beneath the ground level. The air became thicker and smelled faintly of smoke. Pressure from the stone built around him, something of a shaping, or elemental power. Tan reached into the earth bond to determine which it was and found that it was a combination of both.

  And he had thought that Incendin only knew fire, but this was more than fire. This was strength and understanding of earth.

  He wanted to ask the San where they were headed, but the San hurried ahead. Tan had to move more carefully down the rough steps and began shaping himself along, using wind to guide him so that he didn’t slip.

  Then the San disappeared, fading beyond where Tan could see. The stairs ended, and he stepped out into a wide, open room. A faint, steady burning in the center of the room cast the only light here. Shadows danced around, and Tan tried to understand where the San had brought him, but couldn’t tell. It was far beneath the Fire Fortress. Far enough that he couldn’t detect the shaping overhead the same way, nothing more than a strange, steady pulsing. The burning flame in the center of the room seemed to move in time with the shaping.

  “You would know Issa?” the San asked in a hushed whisper.

  He stopped in front of the fire and stood with his hands clasped on either side of his book, staring at it.

  Tan stood next to him, looking into the flames.

  It pulled on him with sudden strength, as if recognizing him. And Tan recognized it.

  This was Fire.

  The San might call it Issa, but Tan knew it by another name and realized that he had known what the San had been saying all along. Everything fit with his understanding of Fire. But he had never known Fire to burn openly like this. Fire existed in the elementals, in the fire bond, and occasionally within shapers, but he’d never seen it burning like this.

  Yet here it did.

  6

  Finding
Issa

  The flames surged a moment, and the San stepped forward, joining it.

  Tan gasped, but the San remained unharmed. Even his clothing didn’t burn. Within true Fire, that level of control impressed Tan. He wasn’t sure that he would be able to withstand burning when subjected to true Fire.

  “You must join Issa, Maelen. I hear her calling to you.”

  Tan listened through the fire bond but heard nothing that told him Fire called to him. Light licked his face as if to reassure him, and then jumped from his shoulders the same way she had when he had placed the chains on his wrist. If that were any indication, then Fire would not harm him.

  The power radiating from this flame pressed on him. Tan could feel the connection to Fire and knew enough to fear it, but he also understood it. He had known fire long enough that he didn’t fear the effect of fire, and didn’t fear shaped flames, so why should he fear Fire?

  Taking a deep breath, Tan stepped forward.

  He let go of connections around him, letting go of all other shaping sense. With Fire, devotion would be key. Tan welcomed the heat and warmth, welcomed the way that it wrapped around him, filling him with the energy and strength of the element. And Tan knew that he stood within the fire bond.

  There was no pain. Nothing like what he’d experienced when the San had placed the chains on his wrists. There was power, and understanding that burned through him, but no pain.

  He could almost appreciate why the San called this a goddess.

  But he knew this as Fire.

  The connection to the fire bond burned closely here, close enough that Tan felt a part of it in ways that he had not before as if he could stretch through the fire bond and reach for anything he desired. There was no question what he wanted most.

  And here, surrounded by this power, Tan knew he could reach it, that he only had to stretch through the Fire for Asboel.