Cloud Warrior 05 - Forged in Fire

by Holmberg, D. K.

  When she didn’t answer, he tried again. Elle!

  Tan waited for an answer, but there was none.

  * * *

  Much of the night passed with him sitting atop the rocky shoreline, staring out at the sea as he continued to attempt reaching Elle. Cora rested nearby, keeping quiet for the most part. Now she slept soundly, her steady and rhythmic breathing mixing with the crashing waves along the rocks beneath him.

  He didn’t know what to make of the fact that Elle hadn’t answered. Maybe it was nothing. She could be sleeping or simply unable to hear him, but he had the feeling that something blocked their communication. Par-shon knew some secret of using runes to prevent shaping and communicating with bonds, so if she had been abducted by Par-shon, then it was possible that she couldn’t reach him. But why now? Earlier, she had spoken to him, why had Par-shon only now blocked her reaching him?

  The other possibility was equally dire for her. What if Amia was right and that she spoke of Incendin shapers? If Incendin attacked—if Incendin were the reason for Falsheim burning—then Elle might have been caught up in it. If so, and if Falsheim burned, he had to prepare for the possibility that she had died with it.

  Morning came slowly as he continued to toss through the possibilities of what had happened, never coming up with anything more likely. The sun rose in streaks of orange and red skimming across blue water. Swells peaked with white crested before slamming down on the rocks below, the steady rhythmic washing of the waves rolling over him.

  He sat up and breathed out heavily. Cora was already up and letting her legs dangle from the rock as she stared out at the sea. A cool breeze blew in off the water, a mixture of ara and wyln. He recognized the wyln now that he felt it. Honl was there with him, swirling around him, flowing through each breath, but ashi did not blow here.

  Cora cleared her throat and looked at him with a pained gaze. “Did you reach her?”

  “No.”

  “Will you return to Ethea now?”

  The hard edge that she had worn since awakening from healing had softened the longer they were away from Ethea. Tan thought it possible that had nothing to do with it, that she had struggled with what had happened to her, but couldn’t know. Her bond was gone, possibly never to return. When he’d sealed off the injured end of it, there had seemed no way to do it without opening her to other injury. For all he knew, she would never be able to bond to elementals again.

  “Not yet,” he decided. “She said Falsheim burned. If that’s true, then I need to see it.”

  “And then you’ll return.”

  Tan nodded.

  They sat together in general silence, only the sound of the breaking waves between them.

  “Tell me about your bond,” Tan said. The sun touched the top of the water in the distance, making it appear that even the vast expanse of water burned. It was times like these that he wondered if Asboel were right when he claimed that without fire, there would be no life.

  “What is to tell? You know that it is no more.”

  “I’m sorry that I couldn’t do more to save it,” he said.

  Cora sat straighter, and tipped her head as she studied him. “You actually mean that.”

  “Yes. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “You know that I’m from the Sunlands, and I’ve heard the horrors you blame upon my people, horrors that I cannot deny, yet you still claim that you feel sorry for the fact that my bond is gone.”

  Tan sighed. “It’s my fault that you can’t reach your bond anymore. You were injured, and had I not sealed it off, I think you would have died, but that doesn’t change the fact that I couldn’t fix it.”

  Cora laughed bitterly. “There were times I wish I would have died.” She met his eyes. “This is not one of them, Tan, and you are not to blame for the loss of my bond. That is entirely Par-shon.” She rested her hands in her lap, playing with her fingers. “Saldam. You asked about my bond. It was to saldam.”

  “Can you tell me about saldam?” he asked. Saldam was an elemental of fire, and one that he had not reached. Like so many of the elementals, they remained mysterious to him.

  She chuckled. “You are bound to the draasin and you would ask about saldam?”

  “I have learned that each elemental has different power. I’ve seen saa draw incredible strength. I’ve asked ashi to overpower ara. So I know that there is something to saldam.”

  She paused, lips pursed in thought. “Saldam is different than saa,” she said at length. “It is not drawn to fire in the same way. It must be called.”

  “What does it look like?”

  “Look? There is no way to describe it, really. They are a part of the world, but different from it. They are fire.” She stared out at the sea and fell silent again.

  “What happened to you? How did you come to be captured by Par-shon?”

  Cora’s answer came slowly, and she spoke softly at first. “I am much like your warriors, so I was chosen. It was an honor I could not refuse. Answers, scouting. That was all it was to be. When I traveled across the sea, Par-shon waited for me. They captured me and brought me to a room where they claimed I would die. When I did not, I was brought somewhere else. After that…” She trailed off, a distant look coming to her eyes. “I remember little after that. Pain. Awful and all-consuming pain. And then nothing until I awoke to see you passed out on the ground. And you were not of Par-shon.”

  “No. I am not of Par-shon.”

  “You haven’t told me how it is that you escaped.”

  Tan thought back to what it was like when he was trapped in the place of separation. There had been a moment when he thought that he might die, when he thought that shaping would be stolen from him forever. Had he not learned how to reach for spirit, he might still be trapped there. And Asboel would be lost, Honl would be lost. Possibly even Amia.

  “Spirit,” he said. “The Utu Tonah did not plan for spirit. I was able to shape it, to press through the runes he placed on the walls all around the obsidian tower blocking my shaping, and destroy them. I think that it’s because there’s no elemental for spirit that he failed.”

  Cora arched a brow at him. “Are you so certain?”

  “I’ve summoned spirit, but it’s different than the elementals.”

  Her eyes widened slightly. “Yet there are those who shape spirit more strongly than others. Shapers like your woman. It seems to me the Great Mother created elementals of spirit in her own image.”

  Tan smiled but Cora didn’t mirror it. He figured she hadn’t meant her words as a joke. He could only imagine Amia’s reaction if he suggested to her that she was an elemental who was bound to him. What would she say then?

  The sun was well above the horizon now, and bright in his eyes. He stood and turned to the east, toward where he thought he remembered seeing Falsheim on the maps he’d studied. “It is time,” he said.

  “You will shape us the same as last night?”

  He nodded.

  “Then perhaps I should have remained behind. You have saved me only to bring me to my death.”

  Tan laughed and prepared the shaping, drawing on fire and wind, pulling strength from the earth, and then lifting them on wind. They streaked across the sky, moving quickly. It was different in the daylight than it had been last night. There was the same sense of movement, the same loud whistling in his ears, the thundering through his bones, but he could see where they were traveling, and moved quickly to the east. Then he saw it rising out of the distance: the walled city of Falsheim.

  As Elle had said, the city burned.

  11

  As Fire Burns

  Tan lowered himself and Cora to the ground outside of Falsheim, hiding them in a clump of burned trees. The city sat at the edge of the sea, a wide mouth of water seeming to rush toward the city itself, waves visible from overhead as little more than white capped swells. A massive wall rose up and around the city. From where he stood, it appeared as if the wall went all the way around, even across the sea. Buildi
ngs rose over the top of the wall, but none quite so high as the palace in Ethea, or the Fire Fortress in Incendin. A flat expanse of land stretched from a nearby river, the ground around it scorched and burned.

  The wall itself had been blackened. Patches looked unharmed, but most of the wall had a layer of dark crust. Stone crumbled in places, supported by the surrounding wall to keep the entire thing from collapsing. A line of fire raced along the top of the wall, held there as if by a shaping. Something about the shaping pushed against Tan, as if to hold him out.

  “This is not Incendin,” Cora said. “The lisincend would not do this.”

  Tan didn’t know. It reminded him more of the attack on Ethea than the attack on his home village of Nor, but both had been done by the lisincend. Why would this be different?

  “There are new lisincend. They have wings and their power is twisted differently.”

  Cora sucked in a breath and her back stiffened.

  “You expected something like that,” Tan realized.

  Cora clasped her hands together as she turned to him. “Shapers have attempted to grow closer to fire for as long as the Sunlands have been in danger.” She studied the walls, her gaze skimming along the flames. Tan sensed saa within the flames, but something else as well, an elemental he didn’t recognize. “It was from this desire that the lisincend were born. A small faction of the fiercest fire shapers wanted something different. They didn’t want to simply embrace fire. They felt Fur and the others did not go far enough. They wished to become fire.”

  “They attempted a shaping using spirit, sacrificing the shaper to combine their shaping with spirit. It created this new lisincend,” Tan said.

  Cora let out her breath slowly. “Were they powerful?” She didn’t hide the naked eagerness in her voice.

  “Very.”

  “Do you know who was the first?”

  Tan could still see the transformation of the fire shaper Alisz if he closed his eyes. He remembered all too well the power of her shaping as she drew it through the artifact, stealing the archivist’s blood, his spirit, as she performed the shaping. “Her name was Alisz. There were others, but she was the first.”

  Cora’s eyes tightened and her breathing quickened.

  “You knew her, didn’t you?”

  “I knew her,” Cora said softly. “What happened to her?”

  Tan watched her reaction as he said the next words. “She attacked the kingdoms. And she made the mistake of making it seem as if she killed the draasin hatchlings. The draasin did not feel remorse when he destroyed her.”

  “She went too close to fire,” Cora said, mostly to herself.

  “She was a fool to taunt the elementals,” Tan said. “Who was she to you?”

  It didn’t seem like Cora would answer at first. Then she sighed. “She was my sister.”

  Sister? And here he had told her about the way the draasin had destroyed her, describing it in more detail than someone who’d lost their sister deserved. What would it have been like for him to hear about how his father died?

  “I’m sorry, Cora.”

  She rubbed her hand over her arm and sniffed. “You have lost those you care about to the Sunlands. Do not pretend you were not pleased to see her go.”

  Tan stared at the flames burning atop the wall surrounding Falsheim and his memories turned to what had happened in Ethea and Nor. “I won’t deny that I shared in the draasin’s pleasure of her death. She was dangerous,” he said. “Fire burned too brightly within her. But that doesn’t mean I can’t mourn for you.”

  “You are a strange man, Tan.”

  He grunted. That was better than what some considered him. “Why did you say this wasn’t Incendin?”

  “This is not a shaping of the Sunlands. And we would not attack Falsheim. We’ve taken shapers from these lands, but that was to aid in our protection. There are few enough shapers born to the Sunlands, and most of fire. To hold Par-shon at bay, we needed other shapers of power. Were Falsheim destroyed, we would lose even that.”

  “How many warriors were there?”

  “I was the last in a generation,” Cora said.

  Much like with the kingdoms. Even Incendin had experienced a change in their shapers. “Have you learned why?”

  She shook her head. “There was one among us who sought that answer.” She paused, turning to him. “He was once of the kingdoms as well. I learned much from him.”

  Tan felt as if his heart stopped for a moment. “Lacertin,” he said, his voice catching as he remembered Lacertin’s sacrifice, everything that he’d done to protect the kingdoms. All in service of the king who had died long before. He had forgotten to ask whether she knew him, but of course she would have known him.

  “You know?”

  “He returned to the kingdoms. That was always his plan.”

  Cora laughed bitterly, a low and harsh sound. “His plan?” she repeated. When Tan nodded, she laughed again. “All that time spent in the Sunlands, all that time he spent isolated in the Fire Fortress, and he worked against us the entire time?” Her voice carried with it an edge of respect.

  Tan hadn’t had the chance to ask Lacertin much about the time he’d spent in Incendin. He had died too soon. But he believed that Lacertin had loved his king, and he believed that Lacertin had worked on behalf of the kingdoms the entire time. “That’s what he said.”

  “You believe him, even after everything he did?”

  “I don’t know all that he did, but I believed him,” Tan said.

  “Believed. That means he… he is gone?”

  “Althem was a spirit shaper. Lacertin had served King Ilton as closely as anyone could. When he learned that Althem used his spirit shaping, that he might have been responsible for his father’s death, there was nothing that would have stopped him from trying to repair what was done.”

  “How did he die?”

  She spoke in a whisper, and Tan realized that Cora had cared about Lacertin. Knowing that he’d had that effect on someone else, even someone from Incendin, helped him understand Lacertin a little better. He had sacrificed so much on behalf of the kingdoms, more than any.

  When Tan took too long to answer, she went on. “It was Alisz, wasn’t it?”

  He nodded numbly.

  “You cared about him?” she asked.

  “I didn’t know him well,” Tan said. “But I know what he went through, the sacrifices he made for the cause he believed so strongly in. He spent twenty years living in…” He trailed off, catching himself before saying something he might regret. Besides, he didn’t know what experience Lacertin had living in Incendin. He had known Cora, had trained her, so it was possible that much of it was happy. “Anyway, he was incredibly brave.”

  “I didn’t know him when he first came to the Sunlands, but there are stories of what he had to endure. The Fire Fortress can be a dark place and he was tested—some would say punished—forced to prove that he’d given up his allegiance to your kingdoms.” Cora’s eyes closed and she shook her head as she spoke. “He never spoke much of that with me. He was patient and particular about how things should be done, and the most skilled shaper I have ever met.”

  There was something to the way she spoke told Tan that they had been more than close, maybe as close as he and Amia were. “I wish many things could have been different.”

  Cora opened her eyes. Tears swelled within them. “I worried what he would think of my disappearance, but now I learn that he disappeared from the Sunlands as well.” She forced a smile. “It’s possible I didn’t know him as well as I think I did.”

  Tan placed a hand on Cora’s shoulder and squeezed as reassuringly as he could. “I would like to hear more about him when we’re through with this.”

  She blinked away the tears, took a breath, and drew her back up straight. “I doubt there is much I could teach you, Tan. He did not speak to the elementals as you do.”

  “Not about that. I would like to know Lacertin. I didn’t have the chance when h
e was alive.” He hoped he could convince Roine to sit with him as well. It had taken until Lacertin’s death for him to realize that he had the wrong enemy all along.

  “Then you will hear of it.”

  Tan squeezed her shoulder again and then turned to the wall surrounding the city. The fire was important, he suspected, but why? What purpose would it have?

  “You said saldam was not drawn to fire like saa?” he asked her.

  She had to shake her head at the sudden change in topic. “Not like saa. I know little about saa, only that it comes to fire. It is a weak elemental. Saldam might not be as powerful as the draasin, but it sits above saa and inferin.”

  “I think you might be surprised. Did you see saa in Par-shon?”

  “I had barely any awareness of my time in Par-shon,” she said.

  “Had you been able, you would have seen that saa is a powerful elemental of fire in those lands. So much so that it helped me escape.” There, the power of saa had filled him, lending him strength, much like the elementals had when he had shaped through the sword while trying to find Elle.

  “You think they try to call saa?”

  “I’m not certain. If it’s Par-shon, they have bound most of the elementals. I wonder if they think to summon the draasin using fire.”

  Cora’s mouth tightened as she glanced to the wall and then to the sky. “Or maybe they attempt something different. Maybe they have used fire as a way to draw the draasin’s bond to Doma. If they have you, they can separate the bond.”

  That could be possible, but he sensed nothing like the separation that he’d known while in Par-shon. Whatever they intended in Doma was different.

  Honl, he said, calling to the wind.

  The wind elemental flittered through the air and coalesced in front of him in the shape of a slender, translucent figure. Tan. There is fire here. Not draasin fire.