Fortress Of Fire (Book 4)

by D. K. Holmberg

  The wind elementals conflicted in this place. Tan thought Honl afraid to follow him here, but maybe that had not been the case. He had gone inside of Tan, hiding within him, within each breath. The elemental swirled around the room, moving protectively around Tan.

  You must be strong, he said to Honl.

  Then even the elemental movement ceased. Time stopped altogether with Tan suspended above himself. He drifted up, the room no longer opposing him, and passed through walls, moving up and through the ceiling to the Utu Tonah, sitting upon his dais. Like with the lower floor, nothing moved. The shapers surrounding him stood in awkward positions, frozen with whatever it was that Tan had done. And perhaps he had done nothing. Maybe this was death, and he was granted one last image before fading.

  Tan stared at the Utu Tonah. His bald head and thick scar around his face twisted grotesquely, frozen in place. Oddly, his eyes seemed to move, flickering past the shapers around him, as if seeing Tan. Runes appeared around him, glowing with soft light. It took Tan a moment to realize what it was that he saw. The runes held the bond to him. His body practically glowed with them. How many elementals had he bonded? How many remained for him to bond with?

  With the connections to the elementals, the man would be even more powerful than Tan suspected. If he managed to bond one of the draasin, his power would increase that much more.

  Now that he saw the runes on the Utu Tonah, Tan realized that the other shapers around him each had one glowing on them as well. Did everyone have an elemental bond? Was that how they shaped in Par-shon?

  Tan thought of Amia and was drawn quickly through wall, rapidly reaching her cell. Three shapers stood outside, each with a glowing rune pressed into them. One was the wind shaper, Wes. Connected to spirit as he was, Tan sensed darkness from them and knew Amia was in danger.

  Passing through the wall, he found her sitting atop her small bench. She clutched her hands together near her forehead. Her eyes were unfocused. Thankfully, she shaped.

  She would need to understand that the three shapers outside her cell intended her harm. Could he grant her that knowledge in his insubstantial form? Tan pulled through spirit and the shaped connection to Amia, sending her all that he could about what he saw. Mixed with it, he shared what he learned of the Utu Tonah, how he bonded elementals. There was nothing more that Tan could share. He moved on.

  What of the draasin?

  The sense of the elemental was there, distant in the corner of his mind. Tan pulled on the sense and felt Asboel. Through the connection, he felt Asboel healing, the slow recovery. The other draasin rested around him.

  They must bond, Tan sent to Asboel. There is one here who will force it otherwise.

  It was a warning sent in case he didn’t survive. He didn’t know if Asboel even understood.

  The shaping began to fail. Tan floated through the obsidian walls, pulled back into his body. Back in the room, only a single rune glowed in the middle of the floor, this pulsing in time with his heart. The specter that was Tan floated back into his body, pulled back into his flesh. As it did, he felt again.

  He took a gasping breath. Honl swirled into his lungs, warm and welcoming, drawn in so that he could protect Tan.

  Time lurched forward. The shaping failed completely.

  Pain shot through Tan’s chest. It took a moment to remember how the elemental ilaz had pressed on him, how the earth elemental had rumbled beneath him. Neither harassed him now. Only the single rune in the center of the floor glowed.

  Then it too flickered out.

  Tan was left in darkness and silence. He struggled to breathe. Fatigue overwhelmed him from the effort of shaping spirit. What kind of shaping was that? What did it mean that he had bound spirit to the other elements? He had thought spirit came from the binding of the others.

  Fear for Amia filled him. The shapers had been near her cell. He did not doubt that much had been real, but now he was too weakened to do anything to help.

  Maybe there was something he could do. He let out a breath, releasing Honl. Help her, he breathed. The elemental hesitated, then swirled away, disappearing through the crack beneath the door.

  The pain jolting through him made his arms and legs stiff and sore. Tan shuffled across the floor, moving toward the door. His head throbbed from the effort of his shaping.

  The door hissed open.

  Garza looked inside. Her beady eyes widened when she saw him. She grunted and stepped into the room. With a quick shaping of water, she lifted him and dragged him out, letting the door seal shut after him.

  “Garza.” His voice came out in a grunt.

  She shushed him with a wave of her hand. “You live. Utu Tonah is pleased.” She looked at him with something that might have been compassion. “It might have been better for you had you not.”

  21

  A PLACE OF SEPARATION

  The massive water shaper dragged Tan through the obsidian building, pulling him down the hall and toward the stairs. She lifted him on waves of water shaping. After what Tan had seen while in the room, he wondered if she was bonded to one of the elementals and if that was how she shaped. Did she shape anything on her own? Did anyone in these lands? Had he any strength remaining, he would attempt a spirit shaping to see, but he couldn’t manage anything in his condition.

  “Few survive the test,” she said softly. “Usually, that is for the best.”

  “Can you shape anything on your own?” Tan asked. His strength began to return, but it seeped into him slowly. When he felt the pull of fire, he drew the strength of saa toward him, readying a shaping if needed. He stared at the walls, realizing that runes were marked along them. Garza didn’t give him the chance to determine their purpose.

  “Quiet,” she said.

  “I saw his bonds,” Tan said.

  Garza hesitated and turned to Tan, holding him in the air with a shaping he could only just begin to fathom. The forced connection to the elementals made them powerful and gave her abilities the kingdoms’ shapers would not be able to replicate. “Then you saw how powerful the Utu Tonah is. That was the gift he gave to you.”

  She continued onward, drawing Tan along with her. Down the stairs, she turned toward one of the doors. He couldn’t be certain, but it seemed a different door than she’d used when entering the building the first time. She paused long enough to form a shaping and push the door open.

  Sunlight blinded him. Tan raised his hand to his eyes to block the sudden brightness. Garza pulled him forward, not concerned by the change. Smells assaulted his nose. There was the stink of sweat mixed with the coppery salt of blood. Beneath it all was the undercurrent of rot.

  As Tan’s eyes adjusted, he saw that he was in what looked to be a wide, open courtyard. High walls of black obsidian surrounded him on all sides, arching overhead. Runes etched into the walls nearly twenty feet over his head glowed softly, reminding him of the testing room. Pressure radiated from them. The runes were shaped differently than any that he’d seen before.

  He was not alone in the courtyard. Others dressed in rags and tattered clothes glanced at him as he entered. Two were men with long, graying beards. One of the men was thin and frail, his back stooped and leaving him looking as if he might topple over. The other man turned toward Tan with a wild look to his eyes. A woman, her ragged hair snarled and jagged, stared at him through hollowed eyes. She wore little more than wraps of cloth around her chest and abdomen.

  Garza released him. “You will stay here until he decides what he will do with you next.”

  Tan considered the others. How long had they been here? “What of my friend?”

  Garza’s eyes flickered. “She is Aeta.”

  Tan waited, thinking there had to be something more, but Garza said nothing as she turned back to the door, quickly disappearing behind it, leaving him shut in this strange place.

  Amia.

  Pain arced through his head as he tried reaching for her. Tan crumpled to the ground, grabbing at his head.

&nb
sp; It had been the same in the testing room, the same where the Utu Tonah had been as well. Something about the obsidian or the runes kept him from connecting to her. It also blocked him from reaching Asboel and Honl.

  Given what he’d seen with the runes, he feared the reason: the Utu Tonah sought to separate him from his bonds. At least in the testing room, he had managed to reach through spirit to call Amia.

  Could he do the same now?

  Tan stretched deep within himself to draw upon spirit. He dipped into it and formed a shaping, wrapping himself in it. He pulled this shaping toward the connection he shared with Amia and tried pushing through it. Pain again raced through his mind, blocking him.

  Tan released the shaping. He dragged himself to his knees and looked around. Panting breaths seemed to help with the pain, at least enough to push it deeper down inside him. He couldn’t reach Amia.

  Another, then. Could he reach the wind elemental?

  Honl, he called. This time, the pain was not as severe. Tan wasn’t forced to his knees, though he wobbled from the effort of sending the communication.

  There came no response.

  What of Asboel? He would be farthest from here, the hardest to reach, but could their connection make it possible?

  Tan focused on the thought of the draasin. Even that sent streamers of pain through his mind, like hot knives stabbed deep into his eyes. He wiped tears away.

  His elemental connections would fail him here.

  That didn’t mean he was powerless. He could still shape, couldn’t he?

  He focused on his breathing. The air flowing in and out of his lungs felt different than it did in Ethea, though there was familiarity to it as well. What had he seen in the testing room? The wind elementals battling? Ashi might not be the dominant wind elemental here, and he was certain it wasn’t ara. That left wyln or ilaz. Tan focused on the calling of the wind. It didn’t buzz to him, not as his experience with ilaz had shown him.

  Wyln, he whispered softly to the wind.

  Pain tried piercing his mind, but Tan breathed through it. The elemental was close here. It was in him, breathing through him.

  The wind elemental didn’t respond. Perhaps Tan was wrong. Elementals were not found everywhere, only in places of convergence, though from what he’d seen of Par-shon, the elementals were frequent here. Maybe this was a place of convergence.

  How had it worked before? He stared at the runes glowing on the walls around him. They had to be important.

  Tan tried again, this time focusing on the form of the wind, holding in mind an image of the rune he’d seen in the testing room as he did. Wyln.

  A soft murmuring came to him, faint and distant, but there. The elemental was here. Tan breathed it in, trying and failing to call its power.

  What of saa? Fire had always answered him before. Would it now?

  Tan tried it and saa flooded into him with only a hint of the pain he’d felt before. Tan focused on an image of the rune for fire used in the testing room, and even that faded. Warmth surged through him and with it came a sense of strength.

  Saa. Tan hissed as he spoke this, trying to reach the elemental. In Ethea, saa was a weak elemental, but it was found everywhere. Here, saa seemed different, stronger. Could he speak to saa as he did to the draasin?

  Fire swirled within him. There was strength but no sense of substance.

  Tan shifted on his feet, looking around the courtyard. He needed to be free of this place, needed to find Amia and make certain she was safe. If Honl failed, what would happen with her?

  Please help the Daughter, Tan hissed.

  He didn’t know if it worked. The sense of heat and fire remained buried within him, unchanging. If only he could speak to saa the same way he spoke to the draasin.

  Tan tried again, wrapping himself in another shaping of spirit. After everything he’d been through, he had little strength remaining. Find safety, he sent to Amia.

  Pain stabbed through him and he sunk to his knees, his vision going black as he did.

  * * *

  Movement caught his eye and he rolled over. How long had he been out? One of the men—the healthier-looking man—shuffled toward him, crouching as he made his way. He tugged on his beard, pulling on strands of hair and twirling them. Sunlight had shifted in the sky and now reflected in the man’s eyes, giving him a strange light.

  “You’re a shaper, not one of the bonded,” the man said. His voice was gravely and soft, as if accustomed to screaming.

  Tan attempted to ready a shaping of fire, uncertain what to expect. He mixed in a shaping of wind, unconsciously combining them. Pain pulsed in his head as he did; it receded when he mixed another shaping of spirit. “Who are you?”

  The man smiled, showing a row of jagged and broken teeth. “Who am I, he asks? Nobody. Not in these lands.”

  There was a familiar accent to his voice. “In what lands were you somebody?” Tan asked, sitting up. He wiped dirt off his hands, smearing them across his legs. If he could find his sword, he might be able to manage a strong enough shaping to reach freedom.

  And then what? How many bonded shapers were in the tower? He’d seen dozens around the Utu Tonah, too many for him to face on his own, even were he not prevented from shaping.

  The man cast his eyes at the walls nervously before shifting his attention back to Tan. “Somebody. Nobody. It matters little where he is concerned.”

  Tan glanced at the other two in the courtyard with him. Neither met his eyes. The woman stared at her hands, picking at the skin around her fingers. Dried blood caked along the nails. The other man looked blankly around the courtyard, seemingly oblivious to everything else around him.

  “Why are you here?” the man asked.

  Tan turned back to him. The man had come close enough for Tan to smell the sickly stink on him. It was the rot he’d smelled when he first came into the courtyard. He shuffled away, holding his shaping at the ready.

  The man smiled at him again. “You can’t shape here. He has made certain of that.”

  Tan wasn’t so sure he was right. Wasn’t that what he’d been doing? Saa still filled him and Tan held a shaping ready.

  “Why am I here?” Tan asked.

  The man hesitated in his approach. “You have something he wants. We all do.”

  “And what is that?”

  The man tilted his head back and cackled. “He asks what. He doesn’t know? Can’t he feel the separation? No no no. He must not know.”

  Separation? Tan’s heart fluttered. Was that the reason the Utu Tonah sent him here? For his bonds? Tan thought the Utu Tonah hadn’t known of his connections, but what if that had been the purpose of the testing room? Had Tan shown him his connection to Honl? Asboel?

  Would he be able to separate them from Tan?

  Once, Tan would have thought it impossible, but then he’d seen what had happened in Incendin. The shapers there had nearly severed the connection he shared with Asboel. But he felt no pain as he did then.

  Tan considered the man again. The accent to his words, the fluid way he walked.

  “You’re from Doma, aren’t you?” he asked. The man stood taller for a moment and Tan knew he was right. “He took your connection to the udilm.”

  The man’s face twisted in anger. He crouched low but looked as if he readied to strike. He twisted the long strands of his beard around in his fingers. “Protect the shoreline. Keep Incendin back. That was my task. That was my task!” He glanced at the rune Tan suspected indicated water on the wall overhead, apparently preventing him from shaping.

  “What happened?” Tan asked.

  He thought of Elle, of the new connection she had made to the udilm. She had wanted nothing more than to speak to the elementals and he had helped her reach them. But if shapers from Par-shon were to take her, what would she be able to do to keep them from separating her from that connection? Elle could barely shape.

  “Pain. Water stolen from me, the bond stripped. Most die, but not I!” He danced
in place, the madness in his eyes making his steps light.

  Tan looked over at the others. Were they able to speak to elementals as well? But the Utu Tonah had so many bonds. Others had them as well. Where were the rest?

  “Not all survive the taking of the bond,” the man said, as if anticipating the question. “It is painful. Most can’t tolerate it for long.” He tipped his head back and laughed again. “But I survive! He keeps me here, taunting me with life.” He touched his beard, twisting the strands into long braids.

  A renewed fear came. There was another bond that he would have revealed in the testing room, one that he didn’t think possible to sever, but what if the Utu Tonah could?

  Tan looked back to the door. They knew she was Aeta, but did they know she could shape?

  Amia needed him now more than before.

  He focused on saa and created a shaping of fire. It bubbled before fizzling out, drifting away harmlessly. The sense of saa filled him, but he couldn’t use it. Tan tried wind, but the same thing happened.

  The man tipped his head and flashed his jagged teeth. “No shaping. You will understand.”

  Tan stared at the door. How long did he have? How long did Amia have before they tried to separate him from her? And what would they do to her when they did?

  22

  WORKING WITH WATER

  Tan didn’t move for hours. Shadows began to creep over the courtyard, leaving it in long shadows. So far, the only person to come had thrown open a hidden hatch to toss food into the courtyard. The others had scrambled over to it, greedily snatching whatever scraps they could find. Tan hadn’t moved.

  Each time he attempted a shaping, the same thing happened. Worse, pain began in the back of his head, at first slowly, but now building to the point where it couldn’t be ignored. The Utu Tonah tried to take his bonds.