Fortress Of Fire (Book 4) (19 page)

T
he 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.

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.

M
ovement 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?

T
an 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.

Not just his elemental bonds would be severed, but the connection he shared with Amia.

His breathing became erratic and he did not fight it. Not this time. Anger simmered in him. Tan felt it as a hot, physical thing. Maybe his mother had been right. Maybe fire
had
changed something about him, leaving him more like the lisincend. But if it would help him keep Amia safe from Par-shon, he would use that anger and let it fill him.

He stared at the runes. Through the rage, they seemed to shimmer and writhe, almost as if alive. They were the reason he was cut off from Amia. It was because of them that he couldn’t reach Honl and Asboel. It was because of them that Amia would suffer.

Tan reached within himself and found the well of spirit. This time, he plunged into it, wrapping himself in the sense of it. He pulled each of the elements to him, and rather than binding them together, he used them to increase what he could draw of spirit. Pain flashed through his mind briefly but then was gone, burned away by the spirit shaping.

The runes taunted him.

With a burst of shaping, he sent spirit mixed with each of the elements at the runes. They pushed against his shaping, as if made to hold him back. Tan focused, drawing on saa and wyln and reaching toward the earth and the water in the air all around him. Powered by spirit, the elementals answered, almost as if drawn to him, like saa drawn to fire. With the shaping, he pushed
through
the runes.

There came a loud
crack
and the runes stopped glowing.

Tan released his shaping. Weakness flooded him, but the elementals refilled him, granting him their strength. He turned toward the door.
Amia!

The sending went out like a booming shout. He expected pain, but there was none. Only silence. Had the bond already been lost?

The anger surged through him anew. Tan pulled on spirit, drawing on the power of the elementals, filling himself much as he had once filled the artifact. He pressed this shaping through him, through Amia, forging the bond between them and solidifying it. No one would sever his connection to her.

She sighed. He felt or heard it, no longer certain of which.

Be ready
.
I am coming.

Tan shifted his focus to Honl. He had asked the wind elemental to help but didn’t know if he had answered. Maybe he had been unable, severed from his connection to Tan. The sense of him was fading. There was no pain, not as there had been with Asboel when the shapers tried to separate the bond.

As he had with Amia, he sent a surge of spirit through the connection. It was thready, weak, but Tan pulled from stores deep inside of him, augmenting them with power lent by the elementals of this place. Part of him wondered why they would help, but the bond the Utu Tonah forced upon them was not of their choosing. He suspected the elementals suffered with what was done to them.

The connection to Honl strengthened, then surged in his mind.
Help Amia
, Tan said.

The wind elemental gusted away, suddenly freed.

Tan focused a shaping on the obsidian walls around him, meaning to create a way to freedom. In spite of the strength coursing through him, the shaping failed. The only way to freedom would be through the doors.

And now the Utu Tonah would know that Tan was not confined as expected.

The Doman man stood watching Tan with wide eyes. “How did you…” He tipped his head. “A warrior? Could it be? None for decades, and none with such power. No no no. Not like that. Not with spirit.” He spoke mostly to himself, twisting around as he did, practically dancing.

The man knew of warriors and somehow knew that Tan could shape spirit. What else might he know? Could he help Tan find Amia? Could he help him get free from Par-shon?

“Can you shape?” Tan asked.

The man closed his eyes. A sickly smile crossed his face. Then he nodded. “Water returns. Not as strong as before the separation, but it is there.”

“Good. We’re getting out of here.”

The man looked at the walls and waved a crooked hand. “Out? Out? Where do you think we can go? These walls confine. There is no out.”

Tan tipped his head toward the doors. “We go out the way we came in.”

“And face the Utu Tonah? You might be a warrior, but you’re a fool.”

“I’m a fool,” Tan agreed. “But no longer a trapped fool.”

Tan started toward the door. As he did, it opened a crack and then smashed open with a shaping of wind. Wes floated in on a gust of wind. He spied Tan and turned to him, an angry expression on his face. The last Tan had seen of him had been when separated from his body during the testing. Wes had been going toward Amia then.

“He is displeased with what you’ve done here.”

A spiral of wind caught Tan. Tan pushed out with a shaping of fire, mixing it with water and the wind grew heavier, lowering him to the ground. Tan drew on saa, forming a ball of fire, a shaping he copied from Cianna, and flipped it at Wes.

His eyes grew wide as Tan pushed it with increasing speed augmented by a wind shaping. Wes lifted to the air, flying above the fireball that crashed harmlessly into the door in an explosion of sparks.

“Not just fire,” Wes whispered.

Tan breathed in, unable to tell if it was ashi or wyln. Both responded to him. Tan pulled on the power lent by the elementals, mixing it with his own shaping, and lifted to the air to hover before Wes. “Not just fire,” he agreed. “And for me, it’s not stolen.”

With a silent request, he called to both ashi and wyln, using what he’d learned of speaking to them to ask for their help. He might have only spoken directly to Honl, but the others of the elementals were there, drawn to him by his shaping.

Had he only been a shaper—had he been unable to reach the elementals—he would not have been able to free himself. Wes might even have been strong enough to stop him. But with their help, the elementals swirled around Wes, separating him from his wind connection.

His wind shaping faltered and Tan attacked, wrapping him in swirls of fire that pulled him down to the ground. With a tap beside the man’s now-prone shoulder, he sent a shaping through the earth. It separated, pulling Wes inside, wrapping him with bonds that he couldn’t escape.

Wes glared at him. “He is more powerful than you. He will soon have the bond he desires, and there will be none who can stop him. Then we will destroy Incendin and keep them from ever attacking again.”

That meant the draasin, Tan was certain.

“We want the same thing!” Tan shouted.

Wes didn’t have the chance to answer.

A powerful water shaping surged from the Doman man and poured into Wes’s mouth, flooding him. Wes’s eyes went wide as he struggled to breathe and failed. He flopped on the ground, confined by the shaping of earth.

A buzzing drifted past him, swirling through the air, before disappearing.

Tan looked away from Wes. “Why? There was nothing he could do to us!”

The man stared proudly at Wes, eyes glaring at the once-bonded shaper. “
Now
there is nothing he could do.” He looked over at Tan. “You think you would have reformed him? You think he would have willingly abandoned his bond? Even if it were possible. Better to let the Great Mother decide his fate.”

Tan turned away from him in disgust.

Flames crackled along the edge of the door from his shaping. Others would be coming. He needed to hurry. He glanced over his shoulder at the three who had been trapped with him. Only the Doman seemed to have returned in any meaningful way.

“Come on,” Tan said. “Grab the others.”

“There’s nothing left of them. They should stay.”

Tan thought of how he’d nearly lost his bond to Asboel. To Honl. To Amia. How would he have felt? Would he have survived as long as they had?

How had his mother survived the loss of her bond before?

“No,” he decided. “They come.”

The Doman took another look at Wes before touching both the woman and the other man on the shoulder. They looked at him with blank expressions but followed him through the doorway.

Lanterns glowed with orange light. Inside this building, Tan’s sense of the elementals faded, suppressed by runes placed along the walls. Was that how the Utu Tonah maintained his power? Others might not be able to shape, but with enough bonds, even the suppression wouldn’t matter.

Tan found the stairs and hurried down. Amia would be this way, but first, he had to wait near the bottom. They moved slowly, the halting way they walked telling Tan that they were unaccustomed to much activity.

Power surged somewhere overhead. Was it the Utu Tonah or one of the others? There were too many bound shapers for him to take on by himself. Once he reached Amia and knew that she was safe, he could figure out what they needed to do next. He would have Honl bring her to safety, even if it meant that he remained behind.

The woman stumbled and slid past him on the stairs.

Tan lifted her back to her feet. She was light and smelled of stale urine. When she looked at him, there was barely a flash of humanity in her eyes. With more time, he would see what he could learn about her, determine if there was anything he could do to help bring her back. He’d try with the other man as well. The Doman had recovered quickly enough.

“Warrior!”

Tan spun. The Doman was lifted in the air on a shaping of combined fire and air. He writhed, kicking at the air, trying and failing to shape. Whatever protections had been placed around the building by the Utu Tonah prevented the Doman from shaping.

A pair of bonded shapers stood on the top of the steps, looking down at them. Power flowed around them. How many bonds did they have?

Here in this place, Tan wasn’t sure he would be able to do anything to help, either. He reached for fire and saa, the easiest of the elementals for Tan to reach in this place. Power flowed through him, the fire elemental adding to what Tan could draw. He tried a shaping but like it had in the courtyard, it faltered. He pressed out with even more, drawing from spirit. This solidified his connection to fire.

Tan drew the flames away from the Doman, pulling them toward himself, but not
into
himself. He’d made that mistake before, learned what happened when he attempted to draw elemental power into himself. Fire practically begged for him to draw it in, but Tan ignored it and diverted it so that it crashed in a barrage of sparks and sputtering flames along the walls.

With a quick shot of spirit mixed with fire and air, Tan knocked the shaper to the ground against the nearest rune, shattering it. The man remained unmoving.

The wind shaper was powerful. More powerful than Wes. Drawing spirit as he did, he could almost see the runes of power glowing through his shirt, as if tattooed on his chest and forming the bond with the elementals. There were two, one for wind and one for…

Earth surged beneath him, throwing him off his feet.

Tan landed atop the woman and rolled to the side, afraid that he had crushed her. She blinked and stared up at him with an unchanged glazed expression.

The steps heaved in another earth shaping. This one was even more focused, drawing more power than the last. Wind mixed with it.

The runes worked along the walls were designed to keep him from shaping, but spirit allowed him to override them. Could he do the same to the bond marks on the shaper?

With a shaping of spirit and wind, Tan sent a flicker of power at the rune for wind on the shaper. As it struck the rune, an explosion of air shot came from it, knocking him back. The shaper staggered. Tan didn’t wait for him to attempt another shaping. Wrapping earth and spirit, he sent this toward the other rune. The ground shook and split, knocking the man off his feet.

The Doman started toward the fallen Par-shon, a shaping already building, the shattered rune freeing him to shape.

“No!” Tan shouted. He pointed at the fallen shaper. “Can’t you see?”

“See? I’ve seen far more than you what they will do for power,” the Doman said.

“The bonds are broken. Without them, he can’t shape anything.”

The Doman looked at Tan with a haunted expression. “You don’t know what it’s like, warrior. You haven’t seen what they’ve done…”

Before Tan could react, the Doman sent a shaping of water at the man, drowning him as quickly as he had Wes. The man kicked once and then fell still.

Tan turned away, sickened, and knelt next to the woman, making a point of ignoring the Doman shaper. “Are you okay?”

She blinked, nothing more.

Tan glanced back at the Doman. He helped the other man to his feet and slipped an arm around his waist, helping him down the reminder of the stairs. At the bottom, the man looked at Tan, defiance in his eyes.

“Where now, warrior?”

Tan focused on the connection to Amia. She was out there, not far from him. He pointed and started toward the door he indicated. How many more shapers would he have to face before they managed to escape? Once he reached Amia, he would have to get them to safety, if such a thing was possible here. And then?

They needed to get away. This land was dangerous for shapers. Had Roine known? Had his mother? More than any of the other shapers, Zephra would be in danger.

Zephra…

Honl called her name in the back of his mind.

What is it about Zephra?

Ara is here.
She
is here.

At the door, Tan froze, unable to move. His mother was here? Why would she have come here? What would drive her to this place?

The same thing that had driven him. Help with Incendin. What had she found when she went to Doma?