What use could they have for spirit at a place where the elementals gathered?
“What do you think it does?” Amia asked.
Lacertin turned toward the mountain peak, the place where the protections once hid the artifact, a place he had once battled Roine and then the Incendin shaper. “A place of convergence,” he repeated. “A place where pure spirit can be found. I have found no other place like it in all my years. For all I know, there is no other place like it, where spirit burbles from the ground, summoned by the great elementals.”
Tan noted how he emphasized the word summoned.
And he thought about what the world might have been like one thousand years ago. It was a time when shapers were more powerful, when many spoke to the elementals—learned from them. It was a time when the draasin still roamed and, at times, hunted. Most of the ancient warriors feared the draasin, and for good reason. But Amia had shown a way to control the draasin, to shape them.
Had she only been able to do so in this place? Was that why the archivists could only twist her shaping, not recreate it?
“Does the artifact control the elementals?” he whispered.
Lacertin met his eyes. “That is my fear.”
“But Incendin has it now. The lisincend… or whatever she is… took it.”
“And we should fear what they will use it for.”
“Without access to spirit, is there anything they can do with it?” Amia asked.
“I don’t know. As I said, the artifact is not well documented. I found what I could in the archives of Ethea. Incendin kept their own records from a time before they separated from the rest of the kingdoms. Between the two, I still couldn’t find what I needed. There might be more, but I could not discover it.”
Tan thought of the lowest level of the archives, the place where he and Roine had found the dead archivist, rooms where no shaper could reach. Could the archivists hide additional records there? If so, it made sense that Incendin would want to work with the archivists, or at least make a show of working with them. Now the oldest of the archivists were dead. How many remained who knew the answers?
“Do they need spirit to shape more of…” Tan trailed off, uncertain what word to use to describe the creature. She wasn’t a lisincend, at least not like Fur or the others. She was something different, twisted in an altogether new way. A threat to the draasin.
Lacertin nodded slightly. “A form of spirit has always been needed to create the lisincend. It is why the Aeta refuse to travel too deeply into Incendin.”
Tan shot Amia a look. When he first met her, the Aeta had returned from Incendin after risking a deeper run. Had the Mother known the risk?
“How do they use spirit?” Amia asked. Her voice lowered to a whisper.
“That is a secret Fur kept closely guarded. Only those willing to make the change—Embrace Fire, as they called it—were given the secret of the shaping.”
“I thought not many succeeded.”
Lacertin nodded. “Failure is high. Those who don’t succeed are considered unworthy to fully embrace fire. It is why the lisincend are so revered within Incendin.”
“Did that shaper know the secret?”
“No. Alisz sought to embrace fire for nearly a decade, but Fur always refused. I think he sensed in her too much like him, one who might eventually challenge him for supremacy over the lisincend. Even after he was injured, he still didn’t share that secret with her, though he did with several others, none of who succeeded in embracing fire.” Lacertin frowned. “How did she transform?”
Tan wished he could forget what she’d done, but the image burned into his mind. “She used the artifact. She… cut… the archivist, and he bled into that bowl of hers. Then she used his blood in some shaping. I thought it was the same as Fur used.”
Lacertin’s eyes closed as he considered. “Perhaps she learned more of the shaping than I realized. Alisz has always been dangerous, even for a fire shaper. And now—”
“Now she’s more than even one of the lisincend, isn’t she?”
“It seems she drew her inspiration from the draasin. Perhaps that was where Fur went wrong, thinking to shape himself into something more akin to saa.”
Lacertin made a point of meeting Tan’s eyes. He wore a hard expression, but mixed with it was pain. Tan couldn’t help but wonder what he had seen while in Incendin. What must it have been like, being so close to the lisincend?
“You understand why I must return?” Lacertin asked.
“But you don’t. You’ve shown that you don’t work for Incendin. You can return to the kingdoms, help fortify the barrier—”
Lacertin shook his head. “The barrier will fall if it hasn’t already. That has always been the plan, the reason so many are taken from places like Doma and Chenir. Even after all the time I spent in Incendin, they kept them from me. I know little of what they do—or their strength—but with enough numbers, they can overwhelm the barrier.”
“It’s held for so long!” Amia said. “Even my people recognize the value of the barrier.”
Lacertin turned and stared again over the valley. “Like so much else before it, the barrier will fall.”
“How can you be so certain?” Amia asked.
“Because I helped build it in the first place.”
“What will you do?” Tan asked. “If you won’t return to the kingdoms, what then?”
Lacertin sighed. “The kingdoms were my home for many years. Ilton was my king. Althem?” He shook his head. “He is nothing like his father. He thinks to use those around him and refuses to listen. No—I can’t return to Ethea even were I to want to. Besides, there is much I have yet to do. Which is why I need your help, Tan.”
Tan frowned. “What do you think I can do? I’m no warrior.”
“No, you are more than a warrior. And you are not pledged to Althem, freeing you to do what is needed. The kingdoms have a warrior who serves willingly, though he might call himself by another name. Theondar would have failed. Yet you, a boy with minimal shaping, managed to handle Incendin not once, but twice. I think you are exactly what I need.”
Tan started to shake his head, but he couldn’t deny the truth. He might have shaping skill, but that was not where his gifts truly lay. He could speak to the elementals. And they answered his call. Without the elementals, everything would have been lost.
“What is it that you plan?” Tan asked.
Lacertin fixed Tan with his stare, his back turned on the kingdoms. “The barrier will fall. When it does, Incendin will attack. Their shapers may be weak, but they have more of them than the kingdoms. As long as there is the threat of the lisincend, those stolen shapers will answer.”
Tan blinked. “You plan to go into Incendin and attack the lisincend?”
“If I don’t—if no one does—there is a real possibility that the lisincend will succeed in their plan. And if they become one of the greater elementals, there is no stopping Incendin.”
2
An Argument Renewed
Amia held Tan’s hand. After the connection they shared in the pool of liquid spirit, the physical touch seemed both inadequate and comforting. A soft breeze caught at her hair, pulling it from behind her ears so that strands flicked into her face, almost as if ara played games with her.
“You didn’t ask about her,” Amia said, looking down the trail where Lacertin had disappeared. She kept her eyes fixed straight ahead, but tension simmered through the shaped connection.
Her. His mother. He should have asked Lacertin more about her, maybe learn why she hadn’t come to him when she survived the attack in Nor, but did it matter? “What would he say?”
“You don’t want to know where she is or why she didn’t come to you?”
Tan swallowed back the lump rising in his throat. He had thought of little else at first, but what would Lacertin say if he even answered? Would he explain where Tan’s mother had gone? Would he know why she didn’t come searching for him? Or would he not care, so
focused as he was on what he needed to do?
Perhaps Ephra truly had died in Nor. Only Zephra remained.
“Had she found me in Ethea, what would have happened?” Tan asked. Would he have gone to help Elle? Would he have sought the draasin, or spoken to udilm, or even found Amia, had his mother found him in Ethea? Or would he have stayed, letting her continue to protect him?
“You wonder whether you would still have learned what you did.”
Tan nodded.
“When I think of losing my family, I have the same questions. Then I hate myself for the thoughts. Had our caravan not been attacked, had we never gone through Incendin? What would have become of me?” She squeezed his hand. “In time, I would have become Mother. Being blessed by the Great Mother would have given me much standing among the People. Possibly enough to direct another caravan. Maybe I would have been one of the few who settles.” A faraway look crossed her face.
Through their connection, Tan felt none of the contentment he would have expected from the look on her face. Instead, there was anxiety. “The Aeta settle?”
She blinked, the lost expression clearing, and turned to him. “Some. There is a place where those who cannot travel will go. It was…” She swallowed. “It was where I thought I would find healing.”
“I thought the Aeta were wanderers?”
She nodded. “Most are. Even in this place, the wagons can be moved… only they never are. We would visit once a year in a gathering of Mothers. It is where I saw the only other of my people blessed by the Great Mother.”
“Did you ever find out why they betrayed you?”
One hand slipped up to the band of silver around her neck and fidgeted with it, running her fingers around it. “The archivist,” she began. “He was Aeta. What he chose did not serve the Great Mother. He traveled with them, using the caravan as a way for him to chase his studies. With it, he could pass through any border. But he was no longer Aeta.”
“Why would the Mother allow it?”
Amia swallowed. “When I learned, that was when they… restrained me,” she began. “They are blood. More than simply of the same caravan. He was her brother, I think.”
Tan let out a slow breath. It would explain why the Aeta would allow the archivist to travel with them, though not why the Mother would allow him to capture Amia. As one of the Aeta—and one blessed by the Great Mother—she should be revered among her people. Instead, she was treated with violence.
“Will you go there now?” he asked.
She pulled him toward her, standing on her toes and kissing him on the mouth.
The suddenness surprised him and it took a moment for him to kiss her back. When he did, his mouth covered hers with hunger.
“There was only one reason I would have gone,” she said. “And I no longer have that need.”
He smiled and kissed her again, gently this time. “But the others need to know of the archivists. There were others. How many of the archivists were born of the Aeta? How many would use the caravans in such a way?”
A troubled look crossed Amia’s face. “I…I don’t know. I hadn’t thought it possible.” She forced a smile at him. “You could come with me. Learn what it means to travel like the People.”
Once, Tan would have welcomed an invitation like that. So much had changed for him. “I’m not certain what I should do.”
He could search for his mother—as much as he tried to deny it, he wanted to see her, to know she was well, and for her to know Amia—but there were other things he should do.
They made their way down a narrow path leading toward the lake. All around him, the woods were quiet, none of the usual life active in the forest. Distantly, he sensed the kingdom’s shapers lingering around the water, fewer now than there had been earlier. Many had already begun to return to Ethea.
One shaper stood out and was nearer than the others, as if waiting for Tan and Amia to make their way back down. When Roine stepped onto the narrow trail, Tan was not surprised.
His face had aged since they were last in Ethea, most since the Incendin shaper attacked. Lines wrinkled the corners of his eyes and his mouth twisted in a pursed line. He stepped toward them hesitantly. “Tan,” he said in greeting.
“I thought you would have returned to Ethea by now.”
“I need to return. After what happened here, the king needs to know.”
“You think he’ll listen?” Tan asked. One of the king’s Athan—advisors he kept closest to him—had been an archivist. And Incendin had sacrificed the archivist Jishun to create a new lisincend.
“That’s why I’ve come to you,” Roine said.
“We found the other archivist,” Tan said.
“Does he still live?”
Tan shook his head, moving along the trail. Roine followed. “He did.”
“What did you do?”
Tan stopped and turned to face Roine. “Me? You think me capable of killing him?”
Roine gave Amia a pointed look. “There are many reasons men kill, Tannen.”
Tan followed Roine’s gaze to Amia. He raised his chin, refocusing his attention on the warrior. “No. I didn’t kill him.” He had tried. When it meant saving Amia, Tan had been willing to do anything, even kill. “Not that he didn’t deserve it.”
“Did he say anything?”
“He said a plan was already in place. Lacertin thinks it is the same as Incendin’s plan.”
Roine grunted. “About Lacertin…”
“I know you don’t trust him.”
Roine went still. “That’s an understatement.” He took a deep breath. A shaping built as pressure in Tan’s ears before releasing softly. “You don’t understand what happened, what I have seen of Lacertin. He comes and tells you that he’s worked against Incendin all this time and makes claims about your mother, but he can’t be trusted, Tan. I remember what he was like before he left Ethea. Even then, he wasn’t to be trusted.”
Tan met Roine’s gaze. “He said he has always served King Ilton.”
“Does he? And how much do you know about King Ilton?”
His father used to tell him stories around the hearth at night, tales he later learned must have come from his time in Ethea, but none of them were about King Ilton. “Not much.”
Roine grunted again. “Probably kind of your father to leave those out. Ilton was a reasonable king. At first. He bargained with Ylin for control of the fishing lanes and made a point of welcoming trade from Doma. That hadn’t always been the case. As he aged, something changed. He developed a hardness to him. There was an uprising in Nara, and he sent warriors to contain it. Many died. And then his mind began to slip. He started making outrageous claims, drawing only a select few to him.”
Tan wondered what kind of outrageous claims. Would it not once have been outrageous to claim the archivists attempted to shape him? “Lacertin was one?”
Roine nodded. “Lacertin had always been one of Ilton’s closest advisors.”
“But Lacertin fought alongside you. Without him, Incendin would have won.”
“Are you so certain Incendin did not win? That everything that happened here was not part of their plan?”
Tan frowned.
“She escaped with the artifact. The archivists are gone. And Lacertin has practically convinced you that he has always worked on behalf of the kingdoms.” Roine fixed him with a determined stare. “I would say that is success for Incendin.”
“He spoke the truth,” Amia said.
Roine looked over to her. “Can you be sure? After everything you’ve been through, you’re so confident in your sensing to know he spoke the truth?”
“Yes.”
A dark smile twisted Roine’s mouth as he studied Amia. “I wish I felt the same. Too much has been lost fighting against him over the years.”
“Is that why you came here, Roine? You wanted to warn me against trusting Lacertin?” Tan asked.
Roine took a deep breath. “No. You must decide that on your own. I only
ask that you learn as much about him as you can before trusting him with something important. Like your life.”
“Why do you hate him so much?” Tan asked.
“Hate is not a strong enough word.” Roine’s eyes blazed with the heat of his comment. He took a breath and looked back to the lake, staring over the water.
“Has it always been like this between you?” Tan asked.
Roine shook his head slightly. “We were friends once. Back when we first studied. There was always competition between us, always a rivalry. Both of us wanted to be the best, each reaching for the next shaping. When we both managed to become warriors, it continued.”
“If you were both warriors, why didn’t you help each other rather than competing?”
Roine snorted. “To answer your question, you need to understand what it was like back then. This was nearly forty years ago, Tan, and the kingdoms were a different place. The king—Ilton—loved his warriors, and each warrior strove for his attention.”
“And Lacertin managed to get his attention?”
Roine turned. With his eyes closed, a slight smile crossed his mouth. “Lacertin managed to get everyone’s attention. That was how he was. Not just the king, but within the palace as well and among the other warriors.” Roine’s smile deepened. “He was… powerful and confident. Not much different than he is now, to be honest, only then, he clearly served the kingdoms. It was captivating, even to me.” He inhaled deeply. “I can honestly say that without Lacertin, I would never have been pushed to be the warrior I am today. We challenged each other. Most of the time, that was a helpful thing.”
“Until it wasn’t,” Amia said.
Roine paused, his eyes narrowing as he studied her, as if expecting her to shape him. Any spirit shaping would likely set Roine off after how the archivist had used him.
“Until it wasn’t,” he agreed. “He took the competition too far and someone got hurt.”
Amia stepped alongside Tan. “Who got hurt?”
Changed by Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 3) Page 2
