Broken of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 9)

by D. K. Holmberg

  “We fought alongside them,” Tan said. “We would not have been able to defeat Par-shon were it not for Incendin.”

  “Tannen,” she said, “can you not do this today? Let this be my day.”

  As Amia squeezed his hand, he took a deep breath and lowered them to the ground. “I… I’m sorry. You’re right. This is your day.”

  She hugged him and then turned to Amia, pulling her into a hug as well. As she did, she hesitated and then stepped back. “When were you going to tell me?” she whispered to Amia.

  Amia looked at him, and he felt a flush come to his cheeks.

  “Well,” Zephra said, “it seems we have more to talk about than I realized.” She squeezed Amia’s arm, and then Tan’s, before a smile spread across her face. “And more to celebrate.”

  With that, she swept away from him on a shaping of wind, landing next to Roine.

  Amia’s mouth puckered in sharp concentration as she stared after his mother. “There is something she conceals from us.”

  “As you said, there’s always something that she keeps from us.”

  Amia frowned. “This… this is different. I can almost detect what she hides.” A shaping built from her, and Tan shook his head.

  “Don’t. She’ll grow angry if she knows that we shaped her, especially today. Besides, I think she knows how to shield herself from spirit.”

  Amia sighed. “Since I discovered it, my ability has changed. It’s… more potent in some ways, but less controlled, if that makes any sense. I’m not sure how to explain it any differently. But I’ve found that certain things I would not have managed before I do without difficulty. I think that’s how I survived what happened on the tower.”

  “Have you noticed that our connection is different?” He had been meaning to ask about that but something seemed to come up whenever he thought about saying anything.

  “Our connection is different,” she said. “But I don’t know how much it’s due to the pregnancy.”

  “What else would have changed?”

  She patted his hand. “You, Tan. You have changed. And I think that is why the bond has shifted.” She smiled. “Don’t worry. We still share a connection. I think we always will share that, regardless of what happens.”

  “You make it sound like something will happen to us.”

  She smiled, but it was forced. “The only one who knows what will happen is the Great Mother.”

  As the music started, signaling the beginning of the celebration, Tan couldn’t help but think that not only his mother, but also Amia held something back from him.

  “Congratulations,” he said to Roine. Now that the ceremony was over, Tan thought he might have a chance to talk to both Roine and his mother, but they were both preoccupied with everyone around them, all clamoring to reach them to congratulate them. When Tan managed to reach Roine, he couldn’t think of anything else to say other than congratulations.

  “Tan,” Roine said with a smile, guiding him to a quiet corner in the massive banquet hall, a place Tan had never been in all the time that he’d been in the palace, “there’s something that I’ve wanted to ask you since… well, since you knew about Zephra and I.” When Tan didn’t say anything and waited, Roine took a breath and nodded, as if steeling himself for what he might say next. “You and I have always shared a unique connection. Ever since I came to Nor searching for the artifact, I’ve felt as if I had been destined to mentor you, much like you were destined to help save me.”

  “Roine—”

  Roine raised his hand. “No. You did help me. Without you, and without what you have done for me, and the kingdoms, I don’t know where I would be. Perhaps no place different than I am now, but I think that without you, I would never have learned what Althem… what Althem intended. How he used me. I would have returned to the Great Mother thinking that Lacertin was a traitor. And I would never have known the extent of our connection to the elementals. You have taught me that, and you saved me.”

  Roine slipped an arm around Tan’s shoulders. “But what worries me is the friendship that we have. I don’t want my marriage to your mother to change that. I value your friendship more than I have valued any in my life.”

  Tan swallowed. “I feel the same way, Roine. You don’t have to fear that changing.”

  Relief washed over Roine’s face as he took a deep breath. “Good.”

  “Is that what you’ve been hiding from me?” Tan asked.

  “I’ve not been hiding… Were you using spirit—”

  “Roine, I know you well enough that I don’t need to use spirit to know when you’re hiding something from me.”

  The old warrior nodded. “You do at that, I suppose.”

  “Then what was it? What are you keeping from me?”

  Roine glanced over his shoulder and seemed to look around the hall, before turning his attention back to Tan. “When you came back from Par-shon—”

  “It’s just Par now. Par-shon was the creation of the Utu Tonah.”

  Roine frowned. “Well, when you returned from Par, you started asking questions and searching for answers in the archives.”

  “And?”

  “I’ve learned to trust your instinct, Tan. If nothing else, you’ve shown me that my first reaction might not be the right one. So when you returned, I realized that I had to better understand what we possessed in the archives. All of the archives.”

  Tan understood the implication. Roine meant the lower archives, the place the archivists had once kept secret and only for them. “You studied the archives?” When Roine didn’t answer, realization dawned on him. “You didn’t study in the archives.”

  Roine shook his head.

  “But you sent someone else.” Why would Roine keep that from him? The lower archives weren’t his, as much as he might feel that way. After the archivists had been expelled from the city, there hadn’t been anyone else able to access them, at least the area where spirit shaping was involved.

  “I sent someone else,” Roine agreed.

  “Who? Why would it matter that you sent someone else?”

  Roine sighed. “I thought Amia would have told you.”

  Tan looked over his shoulder at Amia. She stood off to the side of the hall and spoke to Elle. One hand went to her stomach every so often, and Elle met his eyes across the distance, a smile on her face. She knew. Of course a water shaper would know, especially one as skilled as Elle.

  “What would Amia have told me?”

  “To access the archives, we need someone able to shape spirit.”

  Tan jerked his head around. “You can’t be serious, Roine. You asked her for the Aeta help?”

  He shook his head. “Not exactly.”

  “How not exactly? How else would you access the archives if not for the…” His eyes widened. “Wait, you don’t mean to tell me that you welcomed the archivists back!”

  Roine nodded slowly. “It was a difficult decision, but we needed someone with knowledge of Ishthin. Other than the archivists—and you—who knows Ishthin well enough for what we need?”

  “Don’t you remember what they did?”

  “I remember as well as any, Tan. I was here for it, much like you. And I experienced it firsthand.”

  “Well?” he asked.

  “Well what?”

  “Since you allowed them back into the archives, did they find anything?”

  “You should know that I set very specific requirements on their return. The archives will not be closed as they were. And the lower level can be accessed by anyone with the ability to use spirit.”

  Tan doubted that the archivists would be able to exclude him from the archives were they to want to, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t attempt to hide something, especially if they had the ability to shape spirit. They would never really know. Spirit would protect them.

  “They must have found something, or you wouldn’t make a point of telling me what you’ve done,” Tan said.

  “They found something. And t
hen when you came here, with that draasin, I knew that it might be more important than I had even thought.”

  “What is it?”

  “When you mentioned the draasin, and how you found eggs.” Tan nodded. “Within one of the volumes in the archives, we found something similar, a reference to dormant elementals.”

  “Dormant? The elementals don’t simply remain dormant.”

  Roine shrugged. “What do we really know about the elementals?”

  “I know more than anyone,” Tan said.

  “You do. Now. But there was a time when our people knew much about the elementals. It was in one of these journals, one that Assan thinks is nearly twelve hundred years old. In it, the journal describes collections of elementals. Assan thought it only a passing reference, but now that we don’t have to focus on the barrier, and on defeating Incendin, I thought it time to focus on the elementals again, and use it as an opportunity to try to understand them better.”

  “You went looking for these dormant elementals?”

  Roine nodded. “In Vatten,” Roine said. “Assan went—that’s why he’s not here—and has been sending reports.”

  Tan suppressed the irritation surging within him. Roine had every right to try to understand the elementals, but it bothered Tan that he would choose one of the archivists to help with the search. Then again, Tan had been in Par, focusing on what happened there. Why should he blame Roine for finding someone else to help him?

  “What kind of reports?” Tan asked.

  “The kind that tell me there really was something to the journal that he found in the archives. The kind where I would have asked my Athan to go…”

  “You could have asked.”

  “Could I? Your focus is on Par now. You don’t need to deny it, even if I don’t fully understand. But I could use my Athan to go, if he would, and see what this means.”

  This was what he had walked in on when they had returned to Ethea. And Tan was tempted to refuse. He might be Athan, but he had a role to play in Par as well, one that he couldn’t do if he remained in Ethea. He also had an obligation to the elementals. If there were dormant elementals, wasn’t he the person who needed to go, to see what there might be, and what they might mean?

  With a reluctant sigh, he said, “I will go.”

  5

  AN ENEMY RETURNS

  Vatten was a wide expanse of land intersected by countless waterways, all leading to the sea. Tan hadn’t spent nearly as much time in Vatten as he had in other places throughout the kingdoms, but enough to know that the people were mostly fishermen and traders.

  He traveled on a shaping without spirit. With spirit, he had to know where he went, but for this shaping, he simply had to guide himself along. In some ways, it was better, if not less controlled, than what he managed when traveling with spirit.

  A familiar cool wind whistled past him, guiding him as he made his way. He traveled alone, having left Amia in Ethea under the guise of her needing to check on the Aeta, but she had been annoyed at his suggestion that she remain behind. It was hard enough convincing her of what he needed to do to help Par, but at least there, she saw the eggs and knew that he had a responsibility to help them. Here—and especially after he questioned her role in helping Roine gather the remaining archivists—she felt that he needed to let others handle it regardless of the fact that he was Athan and there weren’t any others who should take care of it.

  Trailing the summoning rune on the coin that Roine used to connect to Assan, he found himself drawn almost to the sea. The air shifted, gaining some of the salt and even more cool than was found in Galen. Clouds filtered the bright sun, and the stink of fish cloyed in the air.

  When he landed, Tan looked around, not sure what to expect. There was nothing here that would indicate dormant elementals. His connection to the other elementals around him didn’t share anything that indicated some hidden stores, either. Had it not been for the fact that Tan knew Roine knew how to protect his mind from shaping—and that Tan had checked to see if he had been shaped—he might have worried that Roine had been shaped.

  Voices drifted over the hillside, and he made his way toward them. He kept his hand on his warrior sword, mostly for reassurance. The sword helped him stabilize his shaping and draw more than he could otherwise, but also helped connect him to the elementals more strongly. Tan had learned how to use a sword as a weapon, though he was not yet as skilled as others.

  When he crested the rise of the hill, he paused. An excavation of sorts took place here, with nearly a dozen muscular men digging, all under the guidance of a young, thin man with a shorn head. He wore a dark robe, much like the archivists before him, tied with a belt of red silk. That, at least, was different. Still, Tan despised him on sight.

  The archivists had nearly destroyed the kingdoms. They had abducted Amia. And they had shown a willingness to use her—one of the People—in a sacrifice for Incendin to become even more powerful.

  The man—Assan, he presumed—worked with another person, a younger girl, with raven black hair that she tied behind her head with a length of indigo ribbon. She wore dark pants and had a matching shirt that flowed over her hips. She looked up as Tan approached.

  “This is a closed site,” she said. “Here on work of the king.”

  King? Did he bother correcting her and telling her that the kingdoms had no king? Roine served as the King Regent, and so far didn’t appear to have pressed for any more power than that, though maybe he had, especially if he moved his quarters to those Althem had once claimed.

  Tan partially unsheathed his sword with one hand and made a point of displaying the ring on the finger of his other. “As am I.”

  The woman—girl, really—widened her eyes. “Athan?”

  Tan nodded.

  Assan straightened and turned to face Tan. Tan didn’t recognize the man, and thought that he should have. If Assan were one of the old archivists returned to power, wouldn’t he have been among those who returned to the Aeta seeking protection?

  “The kingdoms have no Athan,” Assan said. He had a deep voice and a deliberate manner of speaking, as if ensuring that he was heard.

  “The same way they have no archivists?” Tan asked. “It seems to me, the last time I encountered any of the archivists, I was forced to expel them from the kingdoms. At least, those who survived.” He shrugged. A shaping built and Tan smiled darkly at Assan. “I will warn you against attempting to shape me, archivist. I shape spirit, and probably more strongly than you.”

  Assan’s eyes narrowed and Tan realized that he should have been less forthright with how he felt about the archivists. Had this man done anything to him? Tan didn’t recognize him, so doubted that he had, but he was still one of the archivists. They had wanted power for the sake of power and had been willing to do anything to gain it. In that way, they were worse than Incendin. Incendin, at least, had only wanted power to protect their people.

  “I have heard of a man with such strength. He is said to have abandoned the kingdoms.”

  Tan sniffed. “Then you heard wrong.”

  “About which part?”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?” Tan asked.

  Was this really what Roine wanted him to see? Roine should have known what would happen when Tan encountered the archivist. And Tan should have known how he would react. Maybe it would have been better not to have come, or at least to have brought Amia with him. She was First Mother, and that was a title even the archivist would have to understand.

  “So you are he,” Assan said.

  Tan nodded.

  “Where is the First?”

  Tan suppressed a smile. So he did know who Tan was. Had Assan tested him? What would that serve… other than to learn of Tan’s irritation? Assan might not be able to shape him and use spirit to know him, but he had found out enough simply by pressing him. In some ways, Tan found that even more impressive.

  “She remains with the People.”

  “You are said to be… connected�
�� at all times. Is that true?”

  Tan smiled, thinking of his connection to Amia and wishing that it hadn’t changed with the pregnancy, and then nodded.

  “You will pay my respects to her?”

  “Respects?”

  Assan clasped his hands in front of his waist and nodded. “She ensured that I be allowed to serve. Without her, I do not think the king would have entrusted me with this.”

  It seemed that Amia had been more instrumental than Tan had known. But why had she hidden that fact from him… unless she knew how he would react.

  Tan sighed. “Tell me, Assan, what exactly is this?”

  Assan glanced at the woman and then nodded. “Come with me, Athan.”

  They sat in a wide tent out of the wind and the steady drizzle that had fallen since he arrived in Vatten. Assan sat on a high stool, his legs straddling either side of it, with a thin leather bound book folded open on his lap. His finger trailed along the page as he read, and then he stopped, turning the book around so that Tan could look at the page.

  “This is why King Theondar sent me,” Assan said.

  Hearing Roine referred to as king sounded less strange the more he heard it, Tan decided as he scanned the page. It was all in Ishthin, and it took him a moment to decipher what was written. When he did, he understood why Roine would believe that there was something to find, if not why they thought to search here. What was in Vatten that made them think there would be dormant elementals? And why dig? There would be other ways to reach the elementals that didn’t involve digging through the ground and trying to pull these dormant elementals free.

  “How did you decide to come to Vatten?” Tan asked.

  Assan stared at the woman. She sat tending to the small fire, moving the logs so that smoke curled up from within and drifted toward a hole cut in the ceiling of the tent. “Sani has provided guidance.”

  Tan looked over at the woman and studied her—really studied her—for the first time. She had high cheekbones and full lips, with a complexion darker than most in this part of the kingdoms, almost dark enough that she could be from Incendin, or at least from Nara. Her simple pants and flowing shirt didn’t give him any more clue as to where she called home.