Fortress Of Fire (Book 4) (16 page)

T
he shaping
of wind augmented by the wind elemental lifted them and carried them over the sea, moving through hot and dry air. Honl lifted them higher and higher to where the air was cooler and moved easily, a brisk current that pulled them along. Tan held tightly to Amia as they flew, feeling less secure than any of the times he’d ever flown with Asboel, though Honl gave no sign of dropping them.

Asboel was a distant sense in the back of his mind. From what Tan could tell, he nestled next to heat and flame. An image of Sashari filtered through their connection and he knew the draasin were still recovering.

Amia pressed against him, face buried in his arm. Her long, golden hair whipped around her, flipped by the wind so that it lashed against his face and arms.

“Do you think we’ll find anything?” she asked.

“Cianna said they followed a shaper. If there are shapers, maybe we can find help.”

“And if there is no help?”

Tan hesitated before answering. “As soon as Asboel recovers, I need to return to him. He intends to attack Incendin. I will be there when he does.”

She squeezed him and said nothing.

Do you know where others like me can be found?

Honl swirled around him, a translucent tracing in the air.
There are no others like you, Tan.

Any other time, he might have smiled.
Shapers. Do you know of other shapers?

Let us return to your home. There are shapers there.

We need help. One of my people saw someone going this way.

It is dangerous.

Can you find them?

Honl waited a moment before answering.
I can find them, but it is not safe. You need caution.

Tan wondered if Honl was always so careful.

They moved faster and further to the east. Water was still nothing but a blur beneath them, crests of white waves breaking the sheet of blue, when they began their descent. The ground showed flashes of green, but mostly it was rocky and desolate. It partly reminded Tan of Incendin, but there was none of the same warmth to the air, nothing that would make him feel Incendin’s danger. In the distance, mountains rose, peaked with patches of snow. The air held the scent of pines and earth, but little else. As they landed, Tan reached out with his earth senses but found nothing that would explain to him where they were.

“This is where the shaper went?” Amia asked.

“This is where Honl brought us,” Tan said. “Though I’m not really sure where we are, either.”

“I think this is Par,” Amia said, pointing toward the mountain. “You can see that peak from the sea. It marks these lands. But I don’t think they have shapers.”

Tan remembered it from the maps. If they were right, Par was a massive land, separated by the sea from Incendin and the kingdoms.

Honl fluttered someplace nearby, close enough that Tan could sense him, but more like a vague presence. Tan pushed out further with earth sensing, straining for answers.
Are you certain this is the place, Honl?

As he asked, a shaping of fire lifted to the air from their right.

“Tan?” Amia asked.

He twisted to see fire spouting above the ground. The shaping was controlled, tight and strong, nothing like any shaping he’d ever experienced. It reminded him of nothing of what he’d found from Incendin shapers. This was powerful in a different way. There was a vague familiarity to it that Tan couldn’t quite understand.

Another shaping lifted to the air from their right.

“What do you think that is?” Amia asked.

Tan focused on the shaping, trying to understand what he sensed. “It’s not a shaping I’ve ever seen before,” he started, “but I don’t—”

He cut off when he felt another shaping building. This time, it was behind him. Not fire, but of earth. The ground rumbled, rolling toward them until it rippled around his feet. Tan stomped on the ground, sending out a request to golud.

The elemental didn’t answer. As Ferran had taught him, he stretched out with his senses, connecting to the earth, and had begun a shaping when Amia distracted him.

“Tan!”

He tried turning, but the shaping of earth took hold of his feet, pulling him into the ground. Tan shaped fire, softening the ground as he’d once done within the archives, and with a loud, rumbling crack, he managed to free himself.

He turned to Amia and prepared a shaping of wind, but it didn’t come. The shaping that had surrounded his feet had also grabbed her, trapping her between two massive chunks of rock.

“Release your shaping or I’ll crush her.”

Tan spun to see a man studying them. Nearly Tan’s height and as muscular as his father had once been, the man wore black leather and had a closely shaven head. A long scar ran along the side of his face, and he was missing an ear. The earth shaping radiated from him.

Amia?

I can’t…

She screamed as the shaping shifted. “As I said, release your shaping or I will crush her. I will not have her trying her shaping on me. It will not work.” He spoke with a strange inflection and anger rang in his voice.

We will have to move carefully. If there are shapers of this much power here, we might be able to use them. Honl,
Tan continued,
stay away for now. But watch us carefully.

The wind elemental was somewhere far from them, but passed on a sense of assent.

Tan released his connection to the wind. Amia let out a relieved gasp. He resisted the urge to check on her, thankful that he could sense her through the bond. “Who are you?”

The man snorted. “I do not think you’re in any position to be asking questions.”

Another shaper appeared, this time on a gust of wind. Had he been the shaper Cianna had seen? There was something about the wind that felt off. Tan couldn’t quite place what it was.

A new concern settled through him. Had he been wrong about the shapers they found in Incendin? Had they not been from Incendin?

“You found them. He will be pleased.”

The earth shaper glared at the wind shaper. “I did not capture them to please him.”

“No? Then you do it for yourself? You really are an odd one, Tolman.”

Tolman sent a ripple of earth toward the wind shaper, who quickly lifted to the air. “Enough. Bind them in wind. We’ll figure out what to do with them when we reach the city.”

“You think this is all of them?”

Tolman looked at Tan and a dangerous expression played over his face. “If not, we will soon learn how many there are. If Incendin thinks they can attack us in our homeland, they will find that they will fail.”

T
hey were floated forward
on the wind shaper’s shaping. Their hands were bound in lashings of wind. Tan was impressed with how the wind shaper managed to do it, using invisible wraps of air to hold them snugly. He couldn’t escape without a significant wind shaping.

The shapers thought them from Incendin. How would he convince them that they were kingdoms shapers? The control they displayed with their shaping was incredible. If he and Amia could convince them, they would be powerful allies.

Amia remained silent. Concern drifted through the bond, but she said nothing.

As they traveled, Tan felt a strange sense from the wind. The shaper used an elemental. Not ara. From what he could tell, ara was not in these lands. But it was a familiar and angry sense, like what he heard when he’d called to ilaz.

Any thought he had that Honl might help them was dashed when he realized that the shaper spoke to the elemental. How else would he manage such control?

Using the lessons his mother had taught, Tan listened for the wind. If he could hear what the wind shaper said—what he did with his shaping—he might be able to keep them safe. There was the buzzing, like a hive of bees swarming, but no distant voice. Without suddenly developing a mastery of the elemental, he could learn nothing.

“You are foolish to come here, fire shaper,” Tolman said as they traveled. The wind shaper drifted them just above the ground, holding them over the tops of the bushes, threatening to drag them through the barbs their feet dangled over. “Have we not warned your kind before?”

Tan looked over. They thought him only a fire shaper. If nothing else, he could use that for now. “What kind do you think I am?”

Tolman turned to him and a dark smile played at the corners of his mouth. “You think I should believe you’re not with the others?”

“We’re not from Incendin. We came looking for help against Incendin.”

The wind shaper glanced at Tolman. “The others said the same thing. They think we’ve not suffered attacks before? Now that Incendin is weakened, they think to attack here?”

Incendin was weakened? Did they know of the draasin attack on the lisincend already?

“We will learn what we need. If he lies, he suffers the same as the others.”

The wind shaper chuckled. “Look at him. He is too soft to survive the test.”

“What tests?” Tan asked. “Listen, we’re only here for help—”

A wind shaping wrapped tightly around Amia, squeezing her. She writhed and kicked but couldn’t do anything against it.

Tan studied the shapers, noting the intensity on their faces. Drawing through spirit deep within him, he shaped it through the bond to Amia. As he did, he understood her silence. She’d sensed them, using her ability. They would not be swayed, regardless of what Tan might say. Amia had sensed suffering, much like the kingdoms had experienced.

But couldn’t that shared suffering create a connection?

The shaping squeezed more tightly on Amia, and she began to fade. With a surge of anger, Tan pulled on a shaping of fire. He no longer knew if he drew it from Asboel or the lesser elementals like saa, or how much came from within himself. He made the shaping into a tight ball of energy and flipped it at the wind shaper as they all floated overtop a barren area of rock. They had moved away from the patches of greenery and were now surrounded by nothing but sheer rock. If not for the crisp bite to the air, they could be in Incendin.

The wind shaper pushed against the fire shaping with a shaping of wind, releasing his attack on Amia as he did. With control that would have impressed Zephra, he wrapped the shaping of fire in wind and held it, slowly drawing the flames away from it.

He glared at Tan. “Try that again and I’ll suffocate you.”

“You may try,” Tan said evenly. Would they react better to a show of strength? He held the wind shaper’s eyes, unwilling to look away. “You might find I’m even less soft than you think.”

Tolman let out a grunt of laughter. “Let it go, Wes. Let
him
decide what to do with these two.”

They reached a peak in the rock. Tan gasped at the sight before them.

Far below were flowering trees, the golds and reds and blues filling the valley with color. Nestled in the midst of the trees was a massive city. The trees formed the beginning of what eventually became a stone wall around the city. Buildings rose above the wall, some climbing several stories high. At the center of the town was a tower made of slick black stone that reminded Tan of the Fire Fortress.

Wes lifted them with a gust of a wind shaping, carrying them with ease. He barely seemed to notice that he carried three of them on a shaping. Tan would have struggled with such a shaping. Zephra might even have struggled.

Tolman did something with a shaping of earth, somehow suspending himself as he went so that he flew alongside them. Tan could feel his shaping but couldn’t see what it was that he did. None of the earth shapers in the kingdoms had ever managed to move like that. He strained with earth sensing to understand, but felt nothing that would explain it.

They soared above the forest. In the distance, water glistened off white caps. It would be beautiful if not for the fact of their capture.

Then they started down. The tower at the center of the city looked more like a series of spires splitting the sky. An occasional plume of fire lifted from the tops. Other shapings of the other elements followed, as if demonstrating the tower’s strength. A high wall of smooth black stone rose up out of the ground. Tolman and Wes led them to a gate in the middle of the wall and Tolman sent a shaping at it. It swung open slowly.

Wes pushed them forward. The buzzing from ilaz droned on, but there was some variability to it, some changing to the intensity that told him that if he focused hard enough, he might begin to understand. It was there, if only he knew how to reach it.

The distant sense from Asboel remained there. The farther they came in Par, the less and less certain he felt that he’d be able to reach the draasin. Amia remained silent next to him. She was scared, but the anger inside her kept her silent as well.

The other side of the massive wall surprised him. Thousands of people walked the streets, most dressed in bright splashes of color attempting to compete with the color on the other side of the wall, nothing like the dark brown and black leather the shapers wore, as if the shapers set themselves apart. The animals were equally strange. There were thick-furred creatures that looked like horses with massive sides that pulled carts and wagons through the streets. Other creatures like squat lizards slithered along, some with riders seated atop them.

The smells were different, too. The air was warm and humid and carried with it the stink of dust and dung, but also that of exotic foods and spices, things Tan had never smelled before. He sensed at least a passing familiarity from Amia.

With all those differences, some things were the same. The rows of buildings looked like any other building in Ethea, though most were made reddish brown rock. Tan’s earth senses picked up a large source of water nearby. More of the flowering trees grew all around them. Were he to reach with earth sensing, he might discover other things here that he had no explanation for, but he kept his sensing drawn tight around him.

The black tower loomed over everything.

It was like a presence, a physical sense that infused everything, as if determined to draw attention to itself. The flames spouting from the spires radiated heat and light. The other shapings came from the other spires.