Born of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 8)

C
opyright © 2016 by D.K
. Holmberg

Cover by Rebecca Frank

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T
he massive tower
of black stone dwarfed Tannen Minden. Shadows streaked from the stone's base, stretching out like some wispy finger that strained to touch all of the lands. The shadows might not reach him, but the effect the tower had, the soft chill in his heart, managed to reach him.

“I’ve avoided this long enough,” he said softly.

Amia squeezed his hand. She didn’t need for him to say anything more. The shaped bond between them, at once stronger and deeper than any bond he shared with the elementals, allowed her to know exactly what he felt.

“It does not have to be now,” she said.

He glanced over at her. Sunlight reflected off the band of gold at her neck, and her blond hair shimmered. He resisted the urge to run his hand through it.

“That’s not what you’ve implied before,” he said, and she smiled. “With everything that I’ve done, I’ve put it off more than I should. And besides, you said the wedding couldn’t take place until—”

“After,” Amia said with a smile.

After. The bond between them was more than any ceremony could create but was a formality expected of her as First Mother. Not to mention Tan's own mother's expectation.

Amia touched his nose with the tip of her finger. “Not only your mother wants this wedding.”

Tan touched the sword at his waist as he straightened. They both wanted the wedding as well. After everything that they’d been through, they deserved it. Now there was peace, but both knew they had to do this before they celebrated.

His sword had a reassuring weight, even more so over these last few months, as he had finally taken to learning how to wield it properly. There was only so much that shaping could do to keep him safe. If needed, he wanted to be capable of fighting in other ways.

A Chenir swordsman had taught him the most. He had a graceful way of moving that Tan still hadn’t managed to master, and one that likely came from the emphasis on movement and rhythm that began in the cribs of Chenir. That was how they spoke to the elementals.

Tan sighed. Thinking of Chenir only reminded him of how much had changed—and how much hadn’t. With the threat of Par-shon gone, old animosities had returned. None with the same fervor as before, but how would they ever learn to serve the same purpose if they couldn’t remain united after defeating a common enemy?

Amia studied him and took his hands in hers, trailing her fingers over the back of it. “You need to stop thinking about what you can’t control.”

“Control would be nice,” Tan said with a laugh. “What I’d like is consideration. None of them would still be there if not for the others.”

Amia smiled and rose onto her toes to kiss his cheek. “You act as if they have always been able to see beyond their borders.”

“You can.”

She tipped her head in a shrug. “I’m Aeta. We have wandered so long that the borders no longer are meaningful.”

“Those who have taken to traveling again, what have
they
found?”

Amia laughed. “Better than before, if that’s your concern.”

“Even knowing…”

She nodded. “Even knowing.”

The Aeta were spirit sensers, and some could even shape it, manipulate the element of spirit to force connections. The connections weren’t what people feared: it was the possibility that the Aeta might force something against their will, push them to act in ways that they otherwise would not. Control them.

Too many had survived such control already.

And that was why they had come here. “These people deserve…” Tan still didn’t know
what
the people of Par-shon deserved. Those who had crossed the ocean, using bonds forced upon the elementals, were gone. Many had died, and those who had survived had lost their bonds, leaving them without the same strength.

But that wasn’t the reason he had avoided making the crossing.

“I know,” Amia said.

Par-shon was a city-state. A place unlike any other that he had visited, and isolated for so long that they were different than other nations, strange and unfamiliar in ways that Tan still didn’t understand.

And he was to rule them.

“They will know that I’ve come,” he said, nodding to the peak of the tower.

The draasin Asgar had come ahead of him at Tan’s request, and the black and scarlet-scaled elemental now perched atop the tower, sending streamers of flame down along the sides as a warning to Par-shon. He had not asked the draasin to refrain, wanting the people of Par-shon to know that he had returned. And, if he were honest with himself, to fear that he had come. He still didn’t know whether to trust their submission, even though Amia sensed no animosity from them, only fear. After defeating the Utu Tonah, Tan should not have expected anything else.

“I think you’ve announced that as well as you could,” she agreed.

He smiled. “I could have announced it
better
. Think of what if I had asked Sashari and Enya to come as well.”

Amia’s eyes narrowed as they watched Asgar. “I think one draasin is enough, don’t you?”

It wasn’t only one draasin, but she knew that as well. Tan had other bonded elementals and never really traveled alone. Asgar had transported Kota across the ocean, bringing the great hound with him. Tan could sense her distantly, prowling across the Par-shon countryside, waiting for him. When this was over, they had other tasks ahead of them. That, more than anything, was the reason that he’d come.

“Maybe for now,” he said.

He took her hand and lifted them on a shaping of wind and fire, stabilizing it with earth as they soared down the valley toward the city and landing at the base of the tower. Months had passed since he last came to Par-shon, and in that time, much had changed. Not as much as he would have wanted, but the world was different. In some ways, he thought it better, but without Asboel flying with him, hunting with him, he didn’t know that he could truly say that.

Amia squeezed his hand.

Tan made his way into the black stone Par-shon tower. When he had come the last time, they had named him Utu Tonah for defeating the previous Utu Tonah, a man who had forcibly bonded the elementals and nearly destroyed all the lands across the sea. It was a title Tan did not want, one that he did not deserve, but he could no longer hide from the responsibilities placed on him, responsibilities that he had claimed by working with the other nations to unite them against Par-shon. And now, if he
was
the leader of Par-shon, he ruled over a defeated people who no longer had the same identity or ability to defend themselves, much less so now that he had forbidden forced bonding.

“That is why we’re here,” Amia reminded him.

“And then we’ll celebrate.”

She smiled. “Then we will. After.”

Could he really have come to claim his title?

Tan didn’t think he could avoid it any longer.

Walls that once held runes designed to impede shaping had long since been repaired. Surprisingly, the panels that replaced the damaged runes depicted the elementals, almost as if it were intended to honor them, something that he would never have expected from Par-shon. The halls were otherwise empty, and the one person that they encountered as they reached the wide stair leading to the upper levels of the tower scurried away as soon as Tan and Amia were seen.

Each step echoed hollowly on the tile, giving the entire place an empty sort of feel. “Where is everyone?” he asked aloud. Even his voice seemed to echo strangely along the walls before falling mute.

“You set a draasin on the top of the tower. Where do you think they have gone?” Amia answered.

They reached the landing leading toward the wide hall where he had first met the former Utu Tonah. Tan remembered that visit well; it was scarred into his mind as a time when he had not known if he would escape alive. He remembered all too well the fear he had known as he worried about Amia, uncertain whether Par-shon would do anything to her.

When he’d returned, he had done so as conqueror.

And now he came as ruler.

If he didn’t, he risked someone else coming to claim the title and ruling in his stead. He would not accept another attempting to become the next Utu Tonah, especially not if they intended to rule in the same way as the last and force bonds onto the elementals. In some ways, he
had
to lead.

Tan could almost imagine Asboel laughing at him, the draasin’s voice faint in the back of his mind. He knew it wasn’t real, that the only way to reach Asboel—or at least the
memory
of Asboel—was to reach through the fire bond, and he had not done that.

At the end of the hall, he stopped. A wide woman stood in a doorway, her hand pausing on the door handle. When she saw him, she froze. Tan half expected her to run, much like the last person they had seen, as she had the last time Tan had been in Par-shon. This woman knew him, though, and had met him before he had defeated the Utu Tonah. She had been a part of his torture.

Water swirled around her, shaped by her without the need for a bond. It had not surprised him that others still possessed the ability to shape without the bonds forced on them, especially given what he’d learned of some of the bonded shapers that he’d encountered while fighting Par-shon.

“Garza,” he said.

She bowed deeply to him, her forehead dropping below her waist as she genuflected. “Utu Tonah,” she said in a hushed whisper.

Tan tensed, resisting the urge to snap at her, knowing that would not do anything, not even make him feel better. Garza had been a part of what had happened to him here, but she was not to blame for what the Utu Tonah had required.

Amia sent a relaxing wave of spirit sweeping over him.

He squeezed her hand and cleared his throat. “You may stand,” he said to Garza, who straightened and kept her eyes fixed on the ground.

“Where can I find Tolman?” he asked.

She pointed without saying a word.

Tan waited for her to say something—anything—but she didn’t. He guided Amia toward the end of the hall and then up the stairs, into a wide, open space. It was the room where he’d first met the Utu Tonah. Now it was empty, a space where there once had been dozens of people. Now there was no one.

“I sense him,” Amia started.

Tan did as well but couldn’t see him until he found a doorway at the end of the room that he hadn’t seen before. The door didn’t require him to shape it or do anything more than simply twist the handle.

The other side led out the top of the tower.

Asgar craned his neck to look at him, his wide golden eyes reminding Tan of Asboel, as did the massive spikes protruding from his long neck and back. Leathery wings were furled in, making him even more imposing in some ways.
Maelen,
he started.
These fools think to bow before me. Shall I eat them?

Six people lay prostrate in front of Asgar. A soft murmuring came from them, something like a chant. He watched, curious what they might do, but they didn’t seem to notice him.

He was surprised to note that one of the draasin worshipers was Tolman. The older man bent his neck to the ground, leaving his back exposed.

I think you would find others more satisfying.

Asgar snorted.
You might be right, Maelen. No sport in this.

Tan smiled.
No sport, and you wouldn’t want to kill your worshippers.

Asgar regarded the Par-shon lying in front of him with amusement burning in his eyes.
Yes. It is only right that the draasin be honored like this.

Tan laughed again.

“What is it?” Amia asked.

Tan leaned and whispered what Asgar had said. She started to smile as he did.

“I imagine Asboel would have thought differently about having worshippers,” she said.

Tan could imagine Asboel’s reaction. His friend would have snapped and might
have
eaten them, but then, Asboel was one of the ancient draasin, so old that he had a different perspective on the world. Asgar had been born into a world where Tan lived, where he could guide the interactions with the elementals, and where the draasin had never been attacked the same way, hunted as they had been centuries ago. He never had to fear shapers seeking the draasin simply because they were creatures of fire, or hunting them because they could. In many ways, the world Asgar knew was a better world than the one Asboel had known. And if Tan had anything to say about it, Asgar would never know the torment that Asboel had experienced, the thousand years frozen in a lake, all for the benefit of protecting something the kingdoms had created.

“I think Asboel would have made it clear that he had no interest in such worship,” Tan said. He stepped forward and used a shaping of wind to lift Tolman to his feet, drawing him up.

The thin man gasped, and then realized that it had been Tan who shaped him. His bow was nearly as deep as the one that Garza had demonstrated.

“You can stand,” Tan said.

“Utu Tonah. You have returned.”

Tan suppressed a sigh. “Will you attempt to worship each of the elementals that I show you?” he asked.

“We do not worship—”

“You’re lucky he has a sense of humor. He wanted to eat you.”

Tolman’s eyes widened.

“I suggested that he might find another meal more appetizing,” Tan went on.

Tolman took a step back before catching himself. “You are generous, Utu Tonah, and your compassion is unrivaled.”

Tan shook his head. “We won’t be able to work together if you bow like this.”

“You would… work with me, Utu Tonah?”

“Tan,” he said. “Please call me by name.”

You should have them call you Maelen. That is a more suitable title than the one that they have chosen for you.

I don’t think they would appreciate the name the same way the draasin do.

The Great One named you well.

And Maelen named you well.

Asgar chuckled within his mind, although it sounded something like a snort aloud. The Par-shon bowing in front of Asgar all took a step back, away from the draasin.

“You have to be direct,” Amia said softly. “They will expect you to lead, so you will need to lead.”