Born of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 8) (20 page)

“You didn’t damage these bonds?” Tan asked. Calling to Kota, he said,
There is something I have missed. If she didn’t damage the bonds that we’ve discovered, then I don’t know who is responsible. And if we can’t get the last bond repaired, there might not be any way that I can help Amia.

You will find a way to save the Daughter, Maelen.

“As I have said, Utu Tonah, the bonds were not damaged by me. If you had paid attention to the work that I was doing, you would have seen how I had only attempted to repair the bonds. So many have been damaged in the days since the Utu Tonah was stopped that it has kept me busier than I can manage.”

Tan released the last of the pent-up shaping that he’d been holding, realizing only now that he
had
been holding onto a shaping. “I don’t understand. I thought you were the one damaging the shapings. I came here to repair a Mark of the Mother before you attacked me.”

At the comment, Elanne jerked her head toward the building, her eyes narrowing. A soft shaping built and wind whistled through before departing. “You came to repair? The Great Seals cannot be repaired once damaged. We have tried—all of the Master of Bonds have tried—but none has succeeded.”

Tan started into the building, deciding that he needed to settle this once and for all. Whatever else, he needed to understand what Elanne had been doing. And if it involved repairing the bonds, then he needed to understand, mostly so that he could help. If it didn’t, and if there was something she kept from him, maybe it was time that he stopped worrying so much about how Par-shon saw him and do what he needed to return the Par that he could tell had once existed.

With a shaping of air, Elanne jumped in front of him. Tied to the elemental, her control was impressive. Not quite on the level of his mother, but then, Zephra had been working with the wind for as long as he suspected that Elanne had been alive.

“You may not enter this place.”

“Why? Because you don’t want me to?”

She shook her head and held her palm facing out toward him. As she did, her wind shaping continued to build. Other shapings began as well, all surrounding him. Tan had done nothing to find what those surrounding him had been doing, other than to note with spirit and earth sensing where to find them. Now he was acutely aware of them nearby. He recognized none but detected the way they used the elements. The only one able to speak to the elemental was Elanne. Shapers, and more powerful than he would have expected here, but not bonded.

“You may not enter because this is a sacred place.”

“Sacred?”

Elanne nodded. “The Mistress of Souls teaches that only those with pure lineage may read the relics of ancient Par.”

That would explain why Marin had used a place similar to this one for her preaching, and would explain why she had worked so hard to keep
him
from it when he had followed her. She had not prevented him, but her people certainly had. But his time there and finding it empty had shown him that there wasn’t anything particularly special about these places other than the series of runes on the walls. That had significance, and there was knowledge that could be handed down from there, but there wasn’t anything more spiritual there than a damaged rune. Would she think that he would harm that?

“Why would she abandon the one she occupied in the southern part of the city?” Tan asked.

Elanne frowned. “Southern? There is no other place like that. There are only three. This one, a place to the north, and one that has been lost to time.”

“Not three. Four. One for each element. This is a place of earth. The other is wind. I know that a third is damaged, but don’t know if it is water or fire.”

“The elements?” Now Elanne sounded confused.

“You didn’t know?” he started, and she shook her head. He motioned toward the building. “I can show you, but you’ll have to let me in.”

Elanne whispered something, and her face tensed. She remained silent for a while, and Tan suspected that her bonded elemental was telling her about what he’d discovered. If the elemental could do that, why wouldn’t it just tell her what he’d found near the spot of Marin’s celebration?

“You will show me,” Elanne finally said.

Tan pulled on a shaping of wind and fire and slid past her, making a point of demonstrating that he didn’t need her permission before wondering if maybe that might not be a mistake. It was possible that by showing that, he would lose the potential to work
with
her rather than against her.

Inside the room, he led her to the pillar with the Mark of the Mother. It still glowed, holding the retained energy of his shaping. The other intact runes also glowed softly. Only those that had been damaged remained dark.

“That is the Mark of the Mother.”

“A Great Seal,” Elanne whispered. “And you have restored it.”

“It was damaged. I repaired it.” He motioned to the marks all along the wall. “I was… wrong, Elanne. When I first came here, I didn’t understand the way that your people used the bonds. There was what the Utu Tonah did, and then there is what Par did using the bonds. It took me a while to understand that they were different.”

“All of this. The Records. They are recovered.”

“Not all. Most have some sort of damage.”

Elanne stopped in front of one of the walls and pulled out the long metal rod. Tan recognized it this time as she shaped the rod, sending a trickle of wind into it. She used this to scratch along one of the damaged runes until it fell into place, repaired by whatever she did with the rod. The rune flickered, then came alive.

“Ah,” she sighed. “Not so damaged. We can restore
all
of this. This is
why
there is a Mistress of Bonds.”

He had been so mistaken when he came to Par-shon. Tan had assumed that the Mistress of Bonds had been a position created by the Utu Tonah, someone who would force the bonds onto the elementals, but that had not been the case at all. Had he bothered to listen, he might have discovered this sooner. Or had the elementals not still been weak here, he might have been able to speak to them and use the elementals themselves to help him understand.

“You did this?” she whispered. “You
helped
Par-shon?”

“I helped Par. As far as I’m concerned, Par-shon is no more. Now. Will you help me with the third bond?”

“Why?”

“I don’t fully understand, but there is something tied to these bonds. And if I don’t repair the third, not only might Par suffer, but someone close to me will as well.”

Elanne cocked her head to the side as she seemed to listen again. “I will help,” she said with a nod.

K
ota led
him to the third damaged Seal on the northern edge of the city. Tan couldn’t help but note how the three different spirit bonds that he’d discovered ringed the tower. Did they match the symbols for the elements that he’d seen on the sides as well?

“The Seals do not surround the tower,” Elanne said when he asked. “They surround the city. They are a gift, a protection to the people of Par, and are tied to the Records, the oldest knowledge of our people.”

Tan didn’t argue, but these seals had something else to them other than a way to store knowledge. They
were
tied to the Records—the way that the other runes in the last archive began glowing after he managed to repair the bond told him that—but there
had
to be something more to them.

Kota crouched at an opening to a wide cavern leading down into the darkness. Much like him, the hound hesitated.

“What is it?” Elanne asked.

Tan frowned. “The last time I was near a cavern like this, I was nearly killed.”

He didn’t bother to explain and had made the comment mostly to gauge her reaction, but other than her eyes widening, she made no other sign that she had anything to do with the collapse of the cavern and the attempt to crush not only him but the draasin eggs.

You will be careful this time,
Kota warned.

I was careful the last time.

The soft clucking from the hound in his mind was echoed by a rumbling within the earth. Elanne looked down, but Tan only shook his head. “The third Seal is here?”

“The last Seal.”

Not the last. Tan was as certain of that as he was of anything. And if the third one was below ground, he suspected that meant water. There were times where he would expect to find fire burning brightly below ground, but they were uncommon.

As uncommon as draasin eggs buried beneath the ground.

His breath caught. Could
that
be the last of the Seals? The fourth and lost Seal? But… the direction was off, wasn’t it? These other three all ringed the tower—or the city—but the location with the eggs was buried deeply, and not
toward
the city, weren’t they?

At least he knew they hadn’t been accessed other than by him. That made it unlikely that the Seal had been damaged.

Elanne started down the cavern, dropping on a shaping of wind until she was no longer visible. Tan used earth shaping to track her and jumped after her.

Kota. You will watch?

The hound answered by jumping down into the cavern alongside him. She changed as she did, somehow shrinking.

I will watch next to you, Maelen.

A new trick?
Tan asked, holding out a shaping of fire as he walked. He expected saa to be drawn to it, but the elemental was not, at least not here. That should have warned him that something different took place here.

This new form allows many different abilities,
Kota said.

Tan had expected a cavern much like he’d found with the draasin eggs. What he found was nothing like it.

Elanne held a wide door open. On the other side, walls of smooth stone rose twenty feet overhead. Thick timbers crisscrossed the ceiling, as much for decoration as for holding up the rock. Shaped power existed here, but not earth, as being below ground would suggest. Instead, the water seeping through the stone, glistening from the flame he held in his outstretched hand, exuded the strength of the elementals, radiating not only udilm, which he expected from water around Par, but another water elemental, one that surprised him much like the mist elemental of water had once surprised him. This was an elemental that clung to the rock, not only mixing with it but merged, a hybrid elemental, and one that he had not seen before. This elemental was older, nothing like the young crossings that he’d discovered when tracking those that the Utu Tonah had made. This, he could hear.

“It is here, Utu Tonah,” Elanne said, pointing toward a spot in the middle of the cavern that was lower than any other. The damp around the rock seemed to collect, forming a small pool of water.

Tan touched the edge of the water. His finger tingled much like it had the first time that he’d touched the nymid and known what they were.

Beneath the water, he sensed the damaged Seal.

“You will need to shape the water away to reach this one,” she said.

Tan had thought the same at first, but the more that he studied it, the more that his finger tingled from the elemental strength that flowed here, the more he realized that the elemental did what it could to protect the bond. Moving the water would lead to a faster decay. Likely only the presence of the water kept the remnants of the bond intact.

Instead, Tan focused
through
the water, using a combination of each of the elements to sense what had happened to the bond. As he did, it was clear to him that it was the same as the others. Unlike the others, the damage was far more extensive. And, somehow, he could tell that it was intentional. With the earth and wind Seals, he could be convinced that what had happened to them had been the result of time rather than anything else. With this, there was no doubt that someone had intentionally inflicted damage.

“I am not certain that I can repair this one,” he said.

You must try, Maelen. If the Daughter depends on you succeeding, you must try.

Helping Amia was the only reason that he would even attempt it.

“You claim you were able to repair the others,” Elanne commented.

“They were different,” Tan said. It was all the explanation that he could come up with. “But I will try.” Turning to Kota, he said aloud, “Keep watch over me.”

The hound made a point of glaring at Elanne, turning her dark gaze upon the rune master. Elanne took a step away from the hound and built a shaping of wind. In Tan’s mind, he heard a steady clucking sound: Kota’s laughter.

He focused on the rune. Pulling on water would have to be first. If he used any of the other elementals, he would need to stabilize the rune while beginning the shaping, and he wasn’t sure that he could do that without damaging what had been here. He might be able to repair the rune, but what he needed to do was different. To help reclaim the records of Par, he needed to restore the original bond, that which Kota referred to as the Mark of the Mother. With Amia’s help, he thought that he could do that, but without her…

With a deep sigh, he sent a request to the water elemental pooling atop the rune. Whatever else, he had to connect to this elemental. His bond, that of nymid, was not found in Par the same way that the other elementals were. With udilm on the shore and the potential for an elemental like masyn near the rocks, he didn’t know whether the nymid flowed through the river. And he’d never seen an elemental like this one before.

Help He Who is Tan,
he said to the elemental.

With the nymid, there was a steady sort of movement to the way he had to speak. Udilm required a command of the sea, as if flowing with the crashing waves upon the shore. When he had reached masyn, that had been with the faintest of connections, a bonding to wind and water. This elemental was somehow both water and earth.

Maelen
.

The elemental called to him with something like a groan that strained through the cracks in the rock and crept through, leaving the faintest of trails connected to his mind.

I must repair this Mark.

Tan tried to mimic the way the elemental had spoken to him but wasn’t sure that he had managed with the same depth. With some of the elementals, it mattered less
how
he sent the connection, only that he did manage to send it. Others required a more precise connection, an understanding of the elemental that Tan didn’t always possess.

The Mother’s call is damaged.

I can see that you maintain it.

Not maintain. Prevent the damage from spreading.

Why would it matter?

Many will suffer if this fails, Maelen. This Seal has held for millennia.

Tan found it interesting that the elementals would use the same term for it that Elanne had used. If he had any doubt about its importance before, he no longer did.

How long ago did it fail?

The Seal has been damaged for many years, Maelen, but the greatest damage has come in the last few days.

“Days?” Tan spoke aloud. Elanne looked over with a frown. “The Seal has only been damaged for days.”

She shook her head. “That cannot be. The Records here have been lost for many years. Many have tried to restore them, but have failed.”

What would have changed? Tan didn’t doubt that they had been damaged, but maybe they had only been as damaged as the others, a combination of time and perhaps an intentional destruction that had left them inactive. But this Seal
was
different than the others, though Tan wasn’t sure why. Perhaps not in the intent behind the Seal itself, but in what would be required to repair it.

Can you assist me in the repair?
Tan asked the water elemental.
I will need to know how it should appear.

There was a long pause, but then he felt the elemental’s response.

It came as pressure seeping through tiny cracks in the walls of the cavern, the steady drip of water from somewhere near him, and the glistening of rock that had been dry before. Elanne gasped and called on the wind, but with a request to wyln, Tan silenced it. He needed this water elemental for whatever he would do.

The only problem was that he still didn’t know what that would be.

Using a shaping of water, he drew upon the strength of the elemental, connecting to it more deeply. Tan added earth to this, borrowing from the strength of earth mixed into the elemental. With wind, he summoned wyln rather than ashi or Honl, wanting to use elementals that were native to Par. Then he reached for saa and fire.

But failed.

Tan frowned. Saa was a powerful elemental of fire here, and he should be able to reach it, but for some reason, the elemental did not answer him here. Tan listened through the fire bond, wondering if he might learn something there, and was surprised to feel the pulsing strength of the young draasin hatchling. Could the draasin assist in this shaping? He was young—possibly too young—but Tan sensed that he was connected strongly to the fire bond. And there was no denying that he would be powerful.

Tentatively, he asked the draasin to assist, calling to Asgar for help as well.

Then Tan shaped.

This was a powerful shaping that required combining each of the elements together, drawing from the elementals as he did. He borrowed strength, but that wasn’t what he needed the most. From the elementals, he needed guidance to understand what this Seal should have been. He hesitated drawing strength from the draasin, using the fire bond instead, but he asked the draasin for input on the form of the bond.

That wasn’t enough, and Tan hadn’t expected it to be. Spirit was needed—true spirit—and he pushed it into the shaping.

There came a flash of brilliant white light, then the water receded.

Colors swirled along the walls, much as they had when he had repaired the last Seal. Other runes appeared, many still intact, with only a few that were damaged and needing repair.

Elanne gasped again. “You… You did it. You repaired the seal!”

“I’m somewhat surprised myself,” he admitted.

“The rest of the bonds can be repaired,” she said, making her way around the cavern, looking at the runes along each of the walls. “The Records can be restored. So many years…”

Honl would want to see this, Tan realized. This was exactly the sort of thing that he’d been looking for but hadn’t found while in Par. Maybe it would give him answers, help Tan to understand what had happened in Par, perhaps even explain the draasin eggs or why the Utu Tonah had come here in the first place.

“As I said—”

He didn’t get the chance to finish. An explosion above them caused the ground to shake, sending a trail of pebbles cascading through the cracks. Tan lifted an arm to shield his head as he called upon Kota, drawing earth strength through her. He hadn’t the need. The earth elemental reacted as soon as the explosion hit, shifting her strength through the stone and fortifying it.

You can support this?

I will not need to,
Kota answered.
There is strength here.

Good. Then come with me. We can close it from above once we determine what happened.

Drawing on a shaping of fire and wind, he grabbed Elanne and carried them out of the cavern. She studied his face but said nothing until they were free of the cavern and they landed near the entrance. Kota followed close behind, bounding quickly out and landing next to them.

The ground shook violently for a moment longer and then fell still.

To Tan, the elementals warred with each other.

Bonded, but not those naturally bound. These were forced bonds.

“Someone holds forced bonds,” he said. He didn’t bother to hide the anger in his voice.

“I thought you destroyed all the forced bonds, Utu Tonah,” Elanne said.

“I did.” It meant that others had been made.

Who, though?

Elanne had seemed the likely culprit, but that hadn’t been what she had intended at all. He thought of others he’d met, those in positions of power, but they were either loyal to Par—something that should not have surprised him, given what he now knew—or were too weak. The only person who had any strength that he didn’t know all that well…

Was Marin.

The Mistress of Souls wouldn’t have the resources for this, would she? And what motivation would she have?

Answers would have to come later. Elanne turned on him, a shaping of wind building. Spirit shaping forced her to attack, used by Marin against him.

There was no doubting Marin’s involvement now.

Tan pulled on spirit, twisting a shaping, borrowing what he remembered from Amia and the First Mother when he had watched them trying to heal Cora, and then from Amia when Tan had watched her with the rest of the Aeta. He layered it on Elanne’s mind quickly, forming a shielding at the same time that he removed the effect of the spirit shaping.