Fortress Of Fire (Book 4) (21 page)

It would explain why they had taken shapers from Doma and why those shapers had never truly attacked the kingdoms, even now that the barrier had fallen. They were taken not to attack the kingdoms, but to keep Incendin safe.

Was that what the twisted lisincend had meant when he claimed that freeing the lisincend placed the kingdoms in greater danger? Was that why Tan had failed when he tried to restore him?

What did it mean that Asboel and the draasin had attacked the lisincend? Could they have inadvertently weakened Incendin to the point where Par-shon could attack?

Even if true, it didn’t make what Incendin had done any better, but there was a certain sort of sick sense to it. What would the kingdoms have done to keep themselves safe?

Tan knew the answer. The ancient warriors had provided it. They would trap elementals in a place of convergence. They would force them to power an artifact that could draw more power than any shaper was meant to control. That was what the kingdoms’ shapers had done. Wasn’t that just as twisted as what Incendin had done?

“Where is Zephra?” Vel asked, dancing around the outside of the tower. “Come out, come out!” he called in a sing-song voice.

“Quiet,” Tan hissed.

But the Doman was right. They needed to find his mother. That might even be the easiest part. Rescuing her would be the real challenge, especially if the Utu Tonah had taken her. There was one way he could find her, only he wasn’t certain it would work: the summoning rune coin.

Tan pulled it from his pocket and held it in his hand, flipping it between his fingers. With Zephra, wind would summon, but he needed something more than wind, especially if he needed to penetrate the barriers of the fortress. Tan mixed spirit with a shaping of wind drawn through Honl and shaped it into the coin.

The rune on the coin glowed softly. Tan focused on it, wondering if it would let him trace her location, fearing that she might be in the fortress. If his mother was there, he might not have enough shaping strength to reach her. Even with Vel, the two of them wouldn’t be enough to keep them safe when dealing with the Utu Tonah.

The rune on the coin pulled on him, but away from the fortress, leading him away from the city in the opposite direction from Amia’s route.

There was a risk that the coin had been dropped. That by following the rune, he wouldn’t find anything and would instead lose time that he might need. But Tan had no other way of knowing where to look.

Vel stood on his toes and peered into Tan’s hand. His face flattened and he tugged at his beard again. “That is Zephra’s mark,” he said.

Tan studied the water shaper for a moment. “How do you know Zephra?”

Vel smiled, flashing his yellowed teeth. “Does anyone really know Zephra?” he asked.

Tan cocked his head, trying and failing to think of an answer.

Leaving the city presented a different type of challenge. Without Honl, Tan wasn’t sure he had enough strength to take to the air. There was one way he might be able to do it, but he hadn’t watched Roine travel enough to know if he could. The warrior had warned of the dangers to him if done wrong, but there was no other choice.

Fire and wind. Water to stabilize. Earth for strength.

Tan shaped the first two easily. Water came more slowly, but he found the stability needed to hold the shaping. Then earth. He grabbed Vel and pulled the shaping to him as Roine had instructed.

All the practice working with the other elementals gave him the necessary strength. At the last moment, Tan pulled a mix of spirit into it. Blinding white light struck and they were lifted into the air.

For the first time, he truly felt like a cloud warrior.

Tan didn’t know what he had expected. Pain. Fire. Something. Not this.

They were standing in the open near the base of the fortress when the bolt of lightning struck, then he was soaring in the sky. There was no wind, barely a sense of movement. He focused on the rune, letting it draw him. And then they were there, landing with a split of lightning, just as bright as the first.

Tan had been brought to a wooded area, the trees newly singed by the lightning Tan had traveled on. His earth senses told him that a stream ran nearby and the air smelled of mold and dirt mixed with the bitter taste he’d smelled when Roine had traveled by storm before.

Vel eased away from him, stumbling toward a tree and clinging to it for support as he took in their surroundings. He built a shaping, as if he expected an attack to come at any moment.

“Where is she?” Vel whispered.

Tan stretched out with his earth sensing. The rune had brought him here. That meant his mother was here—or at least the summoning coin was. “I don’t know.”

The coin pulled on him and he turned, following it.

Tan didn’t really need the coin to guide him. Touching base with his earth sensing allowed him to practically feel the person lying on the ground.

A moan drifted through the trees.

Tan ran toward the sound, instinctively avoiding loose branches strewn across the ground and roots that tried tangling his feet. The earth was soft and spongy, but the faster Tan ran, the more it seemed to firm up beneath him.

He saw her lying near the base of a tree. Wind swirled around her, but weak and thready.

“Mother?” he called.

Behind him, Vel sucked in a breath. “Zephra is your mother?”

Tan ignored him. Her face was a mass of bruises. Her dark hair was wild, dead and dried grasses tangled within it. She looked up at him weakly when he lifted her.

“Tannen? You shouldn’t be here! This place is dangerous for those bonded.”

“What happened?” he asked.

Vel pushed Tan aside and ran his hands over Zephra. A water shaping built, strong and confident. As it did, his mother breathed in deeply before trembling and falling back to the ground. Her eyes fluttered open and then closed, losing focus as she did. Wind whispered up in a weak shaping, spinning around Vel before fading again.

“Vel?” she whispered.

“Shh, Zephra, easy.”

“But you’re gone—”

“Not gone.”

Tan looked over at Vel. “Seems you haven’t shared how well you know her.” He laid his mother back on the ground near the tree, propping her up so she could look at him. “What happened with ara?”

She shook, her body convulsing for a moment. Vel smoothed her hair.

“Can you heal this?” Tan asked.

He looked over at Tan. The hollow expression that had been in his eyes when Tan first met him returned. “There is no healing this. It comes from losing the bond.”

Zephra convulsed again, this time stronger. Her legs kicked wildly, flailing out from her.

“Will it pass?”

Vel didn’t answer. Tan should have known that he would not.

“Vel? Will this pass?”

He looked over at Tan. “When the Great Mother calls her home.”

T
an held his mother
, cradling her against him. He’d already lost her once, but since getting her back, their relationship had not been the same. Tan’s growing affection for Amia was part of it, but not entirely. He missed the carefree way his mother had been before Father died, the way she had seemed content. Would he ever sense that from her again?

“There’s nothing that can be done for her?” Tan refused to believe that; there had to be a shaping that could help.

Vel crouched next to Zephra. The wild look to his face had softened and he seemed the sanest he’d been since Tan had met him. “I’ve seen this before. It happens with most. First the shaking, then it stops.”

“What stops?”

Vel shook his head. “Everything. Breathing. Heart. That’s when the Great Mother calls them back. It’s peace.” He looked at Zephra with wide, sorrowful eyes. “For someone as bound to an elemental as Zephra, it’s not a surprise that she should suffer when separated from ara.”

Tan held his mother, unable to believe there was nothing he could do. She had survived it once before; why not now?

But this time was different. From what she’d said, the last time had been because her elemental died. This time, the bond was stolen
from her.

“You have to know a shaping that will heal,” he said to Vel. “You’re a water shaper once bound to udilm!”

“Water can’t heal spirit,” Vel snapped.

Water might not be able to heal spirit, but maybe spirit could. Was there anything he might be able to do?

He took his mother’s hands. They were already growing cold. She trembled, the convulsions coming more frequently now.

I will need strength. Zephra needs me to have strength.

He sent the request to all the elementals he could: Asboel and Honl, to the earth and water that he couldn’t reach well here, and on to the lesser elementals that he didn’t expect to respond, saa and wyln.

Strength flooded into him and Tan pulled on it, drawing it toward him as he focused a shaping while pulling on spirit. He filled himself with power, drew all that he could of spirit, weaving into it the shaped power that he’d summoned. It was immense, more than he’d ever attempted before.

This time, he would have no connection to follow. Unlike with Amia and the elementals, where he could track along the connection they shared, what he did now would have to come entirely from him. He didn’t have the skill or experience, but Zephra didn’t have time for him to gain what he needed. He
had
done something like this before except ara had guided his shaping that time.

Tan pushed the spirit shaping onto his mother. Her back arched and she sucked in a breath, but nothing more.

There was a barrier, as if she blocked him. With a surge, Tan pressed through it, using the draw of spirit to guide him. Water shaping washed from him, and he used that to probe her injury. Earth and wind mixed in, even a touch of fire. All helped him understand her injuries. Then, like a distant gust of wind, he sensed what was wrong.

The connection to ara felt like a jagged shard in her mind. Tan pressed through it, pushing along the connection like he had so often done with the connections he shared with Amia and the elementals, and came to the severed end.

Could he heal this? Could spirit let him seal it off?

Doing so would separate her completely from ara. Would his mother want to live like that?
Could
she live like that?

Maybe there was another way. Might he be able to reestablish the connection? Ara may not respond to him the same way it did to Zephra, but Tan could reach the elemental, even severed as this was.

With a spirit enhanced shaping, he sent out a request to ara. Then he waited.

Nothing came.

There had to be more to it. How did he know which of the elementals to call?

The same way he reached Asboel and now Honl. He needed the elemental’s name.

Asboel responded differently than Enya. Honl was different than other ashi elementals. If he ever learned enough of the nymid, he might bond there as well. Maybe one day, he would understand the earth elementals enough to bond. The name was the key.

“I need his name,” he said to his mother.

Her eyes fluttered. Her mouth opened. No words came out.

But he heard it anyway.

The name drifted to him, faint and playful, conjuring up an image of a face to match:
Aric
.

The name went out on a spirit-strengthened wind shaping. This one had force and direction and floated through the jagged separation, at first unanchored, simply waving in the wind. Then it was drawn, as if summoned, pulled toward something.

Tan readied a shaping of spirit and wind. If he were right, he would need both to fix the connection. Then he met resistance.

Wind fought him, a mixture of ashi and wyln and ilaz. Even ara, Aric now bound to the Utu Tonah or another, fought against Tan. Had Tan been healing anyone else, he might not have been strong enough. He might have given up, receded for a different fight. But this was Zephra. This was his mother.

Zephra had lost the wind once. He would not be the reason she lost it again.

Calling on spirit, Tan shaped through the elementals strengthening him and pressed out with even more spirit than before.

Aric.

The wind elemental hesitated. As it did, Tan sensed what he needed to do. A shaping of added wind and, surprisingly, water. This pierced through the wind elemental.

Something changed. The elemental floated free for a moment, and then Tan shaped it again, drawing it toward the broken connection.

Aric gusted toward her willingly. Tan used spirit and air and bound them together, sealing the broken connection. Wind suddenly swirled around his mother in an agitated storm.

You healed her.

This from ara. Not simply ara, but Aric. Tan could tell.

She is Zephra.

Aric sighed and the wind around Zephra eased.

What will happen to her?
Tan asked.

The bond is restored.

Will she live?

Aric danced around her, floating first above her, then, on a captured breath, through her.
She will live.

Tan settled to his knees, relaxing next to his mother. His head pounded with the effort of what he had done, but not as it once would have. The elementals had gifted him with increased stamina. Tan still hadn’t discovered what the elementals received from the shared connection, but he trusted that one day, he would. Right now, he needed to rest. They weren’t done in this land yet.

He rested. Vel leaned against a nearby tree, saying nothing. Both of his hands gripped his long beard. His eyes flickered around the trees, watching for imagined—or maybe not so imagined—threats.

After a while, his mother began to stir. She sat up on her own. She looked from Tan over to Vel, staring at him for long moments, before turning her focus back to Tan.

“How was this possible?” she asked.

“Mother,” Tan sighed, relieved to have her back. “How are you?”

“Better than I should be.”

“What happened?”

The bruises that had been on her face were gone, fading during one of the healing episodes, though Tan wasn’t certain it if was his doing or Vel’s.

“I came to Par. I shouldn’t have.”

“Did you know what was here?”

She let out a shaky breath. “Nothing. Only that Incendin was known to attack the island. We’ve never known why.” She closed her eyes, and Tan wondered if she needed the rest or if she spoke to her elemental. “You weren’t the only one Theondar sent searching for allies. There have been stories, but we’ve never really understood. None from the kingdoms have made the journey. Only warriors or…” She trailed off and shrugged. “Others able to shape with their elementals. We’ve been too busy fighting Incendin.”

Tan glanced at Vel. He seemed oblivious to their conversation, his eyes unfocused and staring straight ahead. Tan had expected him to ask for help restoring his elemental, but he had not. At least, not yet. In time. Maybe by then, Tan would have enough strength to do what he asked.

“He says Incendin provides protection from Par-shon,” Tan said, motioning to Vel.

His mother twisted and stared at the water shaper. For long moments, she said nothing. “You were dead,” she whispered.

The Doman blinked. The hollow eyes looked over to Zephra, meeting hers. “Not dead. Stolen.”

“We thought the sea…” She dragged herself to her knees and crawled to him, touching his hair and his face. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw you. I thought it a vision from the Great Mother as I died.”

Vel laughed. “A vision. Look at this,” he said, tugging on his beard. There was still an edge of madness to the sound. “And this is your son?”

Zephra nodded. “This is Tan.”

Tan shifted to watch them, feeling vaguely uncomfortable. “Who is Vel?”

His mother looked over to him. “A man I knew once, long before meeting your father. When I went to the university to train, he remained in Doma. There weren’t many with his gifts. I was stationed along the barrier when I heard he’d been lost to the sea.”

“And Father?”

His mother closed her eyes. “Grethan knew of Vel, but Grethan… He was a wonderful man. Strong. He kept me grounded.”

Tan swallowed as thoughts of his father rolled through him.

“Where did you find him?” Zephra asked.

Tan shook his head. “There is a place in the city. Walls of black obsidian. Runes marked upon the walls. It is a place of separation.”

Her eyes widened. “How is it you didn’t lose your connection to the draasin?”

“Not only the draasin,” Tan said. “I have bonded a wind elemental. And Amia.” She gave no reaction. “I could feel what they did, how they used the runes to separate me from them. They would steal the natural bond, transfer it to one of their shapers.”

She shuddered. “How did you not suffer that same fate?”

“Spirit.”

She frowned. “But you shape spirit differently. That’s what she said.”

“You were speaking to the First Mother.”

“I had to know. Most of the ancients shaped much like you. They could bind the elements together, twist them, and form a semblance of spirit. It was not true spirit, but served much the same. Somehow, the understanding of that shaping was lost over time, not the ability. The ability to shape spirit—to
truly
shape spirit—has always been rare. The First Mother thought that was all you would be capable of doing.”

“She thought I came at spirit shaping too late,” Tan said.

“That’s what she told you?”

“Because she was unwilling to see that I’d already formed a connection with spirit. That was why Amia’s bond has been so solid. We are shaped together, spirit to spirit. It was because of her I learned to reach for spirit.”

His mother let out a frustrated sigh, her eyes drifting to stare at the sky. “I’ve been a fool,” she said softly. “I feared that she shaped you, that were unwilling to protect yourself around her. Instead, you have shaped each other.” She sat staring for long moments at the clouds before turning and taking his hands. “Can you forgive your mother?”

“If you will give Amia a chance. That’s all I ask.”

“Where is she now?”

“Somewhere safe. Away from here.”

Tension eased from Zephra. “Spirit. And did you mix it with the elements?”

Tan nodded. “How did you know?”

“The ancients. There are some works that reference what happens when mixing spirit with all of the elements. It creates a powerful shaping, something unlike any other.”

“He destroyed the runes,” Vel said.

His mother studied Tan. “When the runes were destroyed, what happened?”

“I could reach through the connections I’d formed. Like I did with you, I used spirit to heal the connection, to bind us back together.”

“Had he not been here, Zephra, you would have died,” Vel said.

She sat quietly, watching both Tan and Vel, but finally got to her feet, wiping her hands down her legs as she caught her balance. She took a moment to spin a finger through her hair, fixing the black hair into a tight bun atop her head. Strength had returned to her eyes. Tan understood now where it came from: ara filled her.

“You haven’t said what you found when you came,” Tan said.

“No.”

There was something to the way she said it that gave him pause. “Why?”

“I wasn’t certain I should tell you before.”

Tan frowned. “And now?”

His mother smiled tightly. “I should not have doubted you. That was my mistake. I have made many, but that might have been the greatest.” She touched his heart and his forehead with the tips of two fingers. “You are what the kingdoms has needed for generations. Perhaps centuries. You have struggled to find someone to teach you, to help guide you in your shaping, but the answer is that there simply is not anyone able to show you what you need. For one like you, there might never have been another able to provide much more than guidance. You are a warrior, Tannen. A true warrior.” Pride filled her voice. “As to why I’m here, I followed a trail. I wasn’t certain what I would find, if anything. When they caught me, I don’t think I was the target. There are other elementals of ara captured. I can sense them.”

“What did you find?”

“A Par-shon shaper near the kingdoms. I didn’t think he’d realized I saw him. Now, I know I was mistaken. I didn’t know what he wanted or why he was there.”

“Where?” Tan asked, already suspecting he knew the answer.

“Nara.”

Nara. When Tan closed his eyes and focused, he could sense Asboel in Nara. The draasin was there, healing, slowly recovering from the attack only days before. The shaper had likely intended to draw the draasin away.

Had it really only been days? It seemed like forever. And the draasin hatchlings were still missing, taken by Incendin. Strange that Incendin might be the safest place for them right now.

“He knows of the draasin. The shapers attacked him once before. They must have learned where he is.” Asboel had been lucky to escape with his life the first time when he’d faced four shapers. What if the Utu Tonah sent more? A dozen? What if the Utu Tonah went himself?