Fortress Of Fire (Book 4) (18 page)

T
he stairs let
out onto a wide-open floor. Bright sunlight streamed through an opening in the ceiling and glittered off the bright white tile floor. Tan shielded his eyes at the sudden change. Next to him, Garza laughed again.

She led him toward a massive dais at the end of the room. A huge chair of gold rested at the top, surrounded by shapers. Most spoke softly and kept their heads bowed as they spoke to the man sitting in the chair. Tan could
feel
the power they shaped, though he didn’t have any idea why that should be.

“Who is this?” Tan asked as they approached.

“Quiet,” Garza hissed. “This is the Utu Tonah.” She said it almost reverentially.

Tan prepared a shaping, drawing fire and wrapping it around his connection to saa. The shaping came easily, drawn from him, almost in a flood. He had to push back the power he pulled, uncertain why it would come so easily. Was saa stronger in this land?

A soft murmuring came from the shapers around the dais. A massive man rose out of the gold chair, emerging head and shoulders above the other shapers. He wore a simple green sash over one shoulder. His head was shaved bald and a scar wrapped around from one side to the other, much like it did with Tolman. Power radiated from him.

“What have you brought me, Garza?” the man said. His voice boomed, carrying the weight of a wind shaping. There was something else to his accented inflection that Tan couldn’t quite place.

“They found this one along the border. Claims he searches for help.”

“Help?”

Garza nodded. “It is what he claims.”

“And what is he?”

“Fire. Strongly, too. Nearly took Wes. He claims that he’s not from Incendin, but with fire burning so strongly, I think that unlikely. More likely is that he came here to transform.”

The man laughed, his whole body shaking though it never reached his eyes. “Wes has not bonded long. He will gain strength in time, but he is foolish to press until he masters his bond.”

“Only if he’s not stupid enough to make a challenge until then. Considering what happened to Deysa, it is unlikely.”

The man nodded. With a shaping of wind, he floated across the distance to Tan. A wind shaper. The power coming from him was enormous, enough for Tan to feel. He’d never been around a shaper with such power.

“Why have you come? Your people are weakened. You should be there, helping protect the waste.”

A shaping built. With as much power as he felt around him, Tan didn’t know if there might be spirit shapers around. If they were this skilled with shaping, why wouldn’t they have spirit shaping? They understood the Aeta and what Amia could do. Could anyone here shape him with spirit?

Tan reached deep into himself, to where he’d learned he could draw spirit from, and wrapped a shaping around his mind, protecting it. As a shaper himself, he didn’t know if it was needed but didn’t want to take an unnecessary risk, not until he knew what these people were capable of doing.

Would they recognize a spirit shaping? If they did, the man’s face didn’t change.

“I’m not from Incendin. I’m from the kingdoms. Incendin attacks our borders and we need allies in the fight against them. Your people clearly know the danger Incendin poses. Work with us. Help us. Together we can stop Incendin. ”

The Utu Tonah considered Tan for a moment, the shaping around him building. “He is from the kingdoms?”

The large woman shrugged. “So he claims, but he shapes fire too strongly to be anything but Incendin.”

“And you’re sure it’s only fire?” he asked.

She shrugged. “What else would it be?”

“There are those in the kingdoms who shape all the elements without a bond. They call themselves warriors.” The Utu Tonah turned on Tan, darkness crossing his face. “Is it only fire? Or is it more? Is that why you were sent?”

Amia—

Pain shot through his head.

Tan felt no sense of spirit shaping, nothing that would tell him there was a reason he couldn’t reach her. He’d been able to connect with her before, but that hadn’t been in this place. He hadn’t been standing before the Utu Tonah.

The man turned to Tan, leaning close. He smelled of sweat and exotic flowers, nothing that Tan had ever smelled before. His breath stunk of hot smoke. There was strength—earthen strength—in him. He had a fluid way of moving such that power practically flowed from him.

Not just wind, he realized. This man was a warrior shaper.

“Who are you?” Tan asked.

The man’s face drew in a wide smile. “You think to question me now? If truly from the kingdoms, your people have always been fools.” With a flick of his hand, the shaping holding Tan’s wrists released. “Fortunate that Incendin is now weakened and we can finally move forward. There is much power to be claimed in the kingdoms.”

Tan rubbed along his wrists, running his fingers where the bands of air had held him. Ridges were left in his skin. Tan breathed slowly, trying to focus on his breathing as his mother had instructed, readying a wind shaping to add to fire if needed. A part of him doubted there would be anything he could do to stop this man if he attacked.

“If you control all the elements, you would have released yourself by now. A shame it is only fire. It has been many years since I last met a worthy challenge, but even he did not last long.”

Who could this man have met? Lacertin would have been away from the kingdoms long enough, but it seemed to Tan that he would have mentioned something. Roine? As Theondar, he’d traveled for the kingdoms, but even then, Tan didn’t think he wandered much beyond the confines of Doma and Chenir.

A mixture of fire and air swirled around Tan, leaving the skin on his arms dry and tight. The control this man managed was incredible. “For one of fire to reach these lands, you would have a bond pair. Tell me,” he said, twisting toward Tan, “where is your bond creature?”

Tan shook his head, afraid to share anything with the Utu Tonah. Asboel was injured, left in Incendin with only Cianna to protect him. “I have no bond creature,” Tan said.

The man snorted. Smoke hissed from his nose, almost like steam. “Hmm. You think you will find a bond pair in Par-shon?” he asked.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

The man twisted, swirling on a shaping of wind mixed with earth. With his shaping ability, Tan wondered if he would be able to escape even were he to have elemental help. Smoke spiraled in the Utu Tonah’s hand and created a wisp of a shape. It hung suspended in his hand, looking something like a snake, then twisted, turning into a figure like the lizard he’d seen in the street, before changing again into what he imaged saa would seem. Then it changed, shifting and elongating, stretching so that it had a tail and spikes jutting from its back. Wings sprouted from the sides. A draasin.

The man knew of the draasin.

“Fire. A bond pair. Do not pretend you don’t know what I mean.”

Tan couldn’t take his eyes off the shape in the man’s hand.

“You’ve seen it,” the man said.

Tan considered denying that he’d seen the elemental, but what would that accomplish? He would remain prisoner. Even were he to escape from the Utu Tonah, there were others who could recapture him. From what Tan had seen of these lands, there were many skilled shapers.

Help would not be coming from Par-shon. Tan felt suddenly certain of it.

“I’ve seen it,” Tan said carefully.

The man’s mouth twisted. “Draasin. They have been gone for too long. Others should have taken their place, but they did not. Why, I wonder, is that? Have you learned the answer to that mystery in the kingdoms? You claim no bond pair, but I wonder if that isn’t why you’ve come here. You think to find one in Par-shon? We may not know fire quite as well as the others, but it still bonds. And now draasin. I will have it soon enough. Bonded have already been sent to claim it.”

Sudden understanding rocked Tan. The attack on Asboel had not come from Doma shapers working for Incendin. The attack on Asboel had been too skilled for that.

That had been Par-shon shapers.

And he realized what the Utu Tonah intended. He would bond to one of the draasin. Before nearly losing Asboel, Tan wouldn’t have thought such a thing possible. A forced bond. But now? After what he’d seen, there was no denying that the shapers of this land had remembered much of the shapings that had been forgotten by the kingdoms. At least the Utu Tonah didn’t seem to know what had happened to his shapers yet. When he did, how would he react?

But what did he mean about Incendin being weakened? Could the draasin attack on the lisincend actually have given Par-shon the opening they needed?

“You think it safe to bond to a draasin?” Tan asked, trying to buy time until he better understood what was happening. “Saa or inferin would be better.”

The man paused and turned to him. Fire suddenly swirled around him, called by a shaping Tan had not felt.

“You think I have not already bonded to them?” He laughed as he said it. Fire suddenly died, quenched by elemental or shaped power. Tan could no longer tell with this man. “It is interesting that you arrive seeking help at the same time I learn of the draasin. I did not know those in the kingdoms bonded the elementals any longer, though I would like to know how you came to Par-shon.” He waited and Tan remained silent, afraid to answer. A dark smile pulled at the man’s mouth. “Know this, fire shaper. You will not have it.”

Tan swallowed. This man controlled too much power. If he managed to force one of the draasin to bond to him, there was little that Tan would be able to do to stop him. And then what?

“What will you do with the bond?”

The man laughed. “The same as with every bond. I grow stronger.”

“And the bond pair?” Tan’s bond to Asboel would keep him safe, but what of Sashari? What of Enya? The youngest had been through too much already, from the twisting of Amia’s shaping forcing her to attack Ethea to kingdoms’ shapers hunting her. Now for this man to want to forcibly bond her or Sashari? There might not be any coming back from such a thing.

“The bond pair serves as I demand. That is the way of the bond.” He waved a hand at Garza. “I am through with him. He claims no bond, but we will know soon. Test him. If he fails, you may destroy the other.”

“She is—”

The man waved his hand again. “It matters not. Go.”

Garza bowed and grabbed him by the wrist and led him away from the room and the man. Tan felt the shaped power long after he left the man’s presence. It trailed after him, almost as if the Utu Tonah shaped it after him. When they reached the stairs leading down, Tan risked a glance over his shoulder to see what the man was doing, but the others in the room had surrounded him again.

They reached the first landing and Garza dragged him away from the stairs.

“Where are you taking me?”

She shook her head. “No questions from you. You will be tested as he demanded.”

“And what happens after the test?”

She looked over at him. Thick jowls shook with every movement of her head. “Either you pass or you do not.”

“What happens if I pass?”

“Utu Tonah will have deemed you worthy.”

“Worthy of what?”

They reached the end of a hall. A massive black door made of some strange metal blocked their access. Garza created a shaping of water—Tan felt it pulling on him as she did and this time, he thought that he could actually detect the way she shaped—and opened the door.

“Worthy of what?” Tan repeated when she didn’t answer.

Light spilled out from the other side of the door, glimmering from dozens of runes carved into the marble along the walls. Tan stared, his mind struggling to understand what he saw but failing.

“If you told the truth, it will not matter,” Garza said.

“How many are tested?” Tan demanded.

“All are tested.”

Tan stared at the runes, wondering if he could make any sense of them. There was one that looked like it might be for fire. As he watched it, the rune seemed to swirl, drawing in a tight spiral. He blinked and the image disappeared. Another rune looked as if it might be wind, though the shape was nothing like those the First Mother had taught him. It didn’t create the same effect as the other one. There was no swirling to it, nothing that drew his eye the way the first had. Tan pulled his attention away from them.

“How many pass this test?” Tan asked.

Garza looked at him as if it were a stupid question. “From Par-shon?”

Tan shook his head.

“Not from Par-shon? None for years.” She pushed him in front of her, out into the middle of the floor. She tapped her thick arms with the flat of her palm and eyed Tan with a hint of sadness. “You will stay here.”

“And then what?”

Garza started back toward the door, leaving Tan alone in the center of the room. She paused when she reached the door and looked back at him.

“Garza? What is the test?”

Without another word, she stepped from the room and closed the door with a shaping, sealing him inside.

A
s Tan stepped
into the room, surveying the walls around him, the runes began glowing brighter. Elemental power pressed out from them. He instinctively pushed back, using a shaping of fire and grasping for wind and water to strengthen his resistance. The runes shone with brighter light.

Tan closed his eyes, focusing on what he could remember from what the First Mother had taught him of runes. The image of them along the walls, the floor, even the ceiling of his new cell burned in his mind. With his eyes closed, he could
feel
the power generated by them. It was both the same and different from the runes worked on the warrior’s sword.

The shape of the marks found here was different enough that he couldn’t be certain what they represented. Elemental power, that much he knew, but more than that? What was the purpose of the test?

The shapings pressed out, growing stronger as power built in the runes. If he let them go much longer, he would be overpowered. He feared that. Could his elemental connections help?

Asboel.

Pain shot through his mind and Tan relaxed, letting go. Maybe if he tried a connection closer to him. Not Honl. The wind elemental seemed too afraid to help.

Amia.

As before, he met resistance, and pain blossomed in his head. Tan withdrew the connection, then reached for spirit. With a shaping, he pressed into it, using the shaping to reach for Amia. There was pain, but it was different. Tan slipped along the shaped connection to Amia, finding that with spirit, he could reach her.

Amia,
he said again.

Tan. Where are you?

No time. Do you recognize any of these shapes?

He sent an image of the runes worked around the walls, mixed with a sense of urgency.

Amia took a moment to answer.
They are familiar, like what are used on the doors in the lower level of the archive. Have you found help?

Not help. Please be careful with these shapers. Use what you must to protect yourself.

I can’t…

Please,
he begged, knowing what he asked of her. She might be forced to shape spirit to survive, but if she didn’t, what would the Par-shon shapers do to her?

Power surged against him, forcing him to release the shaping. He could not keep the connection to her if he were to die during this test.

Tan opened his eyes and focused on the runes. He might not recognize them completely, but he could sense the power coming from them in waves. There was a familiarity to the pulsing sense from the rune in front of him. He could almost see the way it pulsed, gradually intensifying before receding. The shape of the rune reminded him of what was used in the kingdoms, only for the nymid. This was water.

Tan released a request to the rune as if speaking to the nymid. It flowed from him. He mixed water into it, letting the shaping flow into it. Nothing happened at first, but then he felt a surge, as if water responded. There was a distant voice in his mind, nothing like the nymid or udilm, nothing that he could even understand, but it was there.

The rune went dark. Power still pressed on him, barely changed. Had he even done anything?

Tan turned to another of the runes. This was the one that had reminded him of fire. Of all the elements, fire should come easiest to him. He could reach for the draasin. He had used saa in shapings of fire. The rune should not present a challenge to him.

As he focused, he sensed the heat pressing from it. There was the almost imperceptible hissing sound mixed in. Tan crafted a shaping of fire and pressed it into the rune. As he did, he spoke to fire, using what he knew of the draasin, what he knew of saa, to communicate his intent.

It began swirling. Colors flashed. Then heat billowed out, a cloud of steam much like when Asboel snorted at him. Tan didn’t flinch as the steam struck him. Pain burned across his skin, but he pressed a shaping through himself, using fire to heal.

The rune went dark.

Others still glowed. Nearly a dozen remained. The power in the room shifted, less pronounced than before. At least he didn’t think he’d die instantly. At least there was the possibility that he might escape with his life, if only he could manage to figure out how to shut down the remaining runes.

Water and fire. Earth and wind remained, but why so many runes?

He scanned the wall, looking for a rune that marked earth. There, near the bottom of the wall behind him, he saw it. This looked much like the mark for golud, though it was different. Tan shaped earth and sent a rumbling connection through the shaping. Unlike before, nothing happened. He tried again, pulling on a shaping of earth as he tried speaking to golud. Again, it didn’t work.

Could he be wrong? Maybe he needed to speak to a different elemental, but he’d never spoken to any other than golud. That didn’t mean there weren’t other earth elementals; he only had to figure out how to reach them.

The ground beneath him began to shake. Wind whistled through the room, swirling in a tight spiral. It pulled the air from his lungs and knocked him to his knees.

He pulled on a shaping of earth again, pressing it toward the rune, mixing another attempt at speaking to an earth elemental. Wind pressed on him, heavy and angry. A buzzing sound whispered through his ears, almost joyfully as ilaz drew away his remaining breath. Tan realized he should have tried wind before earth, but now he had no time to do it.

His vision faded and colors swirled across the corners of his eyes. Runes flickered behind his eyelids, a dying taunt.

Except… one stuck out. It was like the rune on the door he’d never opened in the archives. Similar to what the archivists used to mark spirit, but different. Would it work?

Tan reached deep within him and pulled on a shaping of spirit and sent it into that rune. Nothing happened. With all his remaining strength, Tan pressed into it, using a flood of spirit that he summoned. As he did, he mixed the other elements into the shaping. Like when he held the warrior’s sword, a blinding light shot through the room, bright enough to see through closed lids. The power bounced off the rune and slammed into Tan.

It seemed as if time stopped.

Tan tried taking a breath, but his chest wouldn’t move. He tried lifting his head, but it didn’t work. His arms and legs refused to answer. Only his mind worked.

There was a sense of great power all around him. Tan peeled away, pulling himself toward that power. It seemed as if he separated from his body and hovered like a spirit in the air.

What was this?

He looked down. His body lay atop the marble, pressed by a shaping of wind coming through the rune. Ilaz circled in the air, a physical presence, almost inky. There was a distinct malevolence from the elemental. With a thought, Tan dismissed ilaz and it receded, blowing off into a corner. With the elemental lifted, his chest rose again, filling with warm air. Ashi.

The wind elementals conflicted in this place. Tan thought Honl afraid to follow him here, but maybe that had not been the case. He had gone
inside
of Tan, hiding within him, within each breath. The elemental swirled around the room, moving protectively around Tan.

You must be strong,
he said to Honl.

Then even the elemental movement ceased. Time stopped altogether with Tan suspended above himself. He drifted up, the room no longer opposing him, and passed through walls, moving up and through the ceiling to the Utu Tonah, sitting upon his dais. Like with the lower floor, nothing moved. The shapers surrounding him stood in awkward positions, frozen with whatever it was that Tan had done. And perhaps he had done nothing. Maybe this was death, and he was granted one last image before fading.

Tan stared at the Utu Tonah. His bald head and thick scar around his face twisted grotesquely, frozen in place. Oddly, his eyes seemed to move, flickering past the shapers around him, as if seeing Tan. Runes appeared around him, glowing with soft light. It took Tan a moment to realize what it was that he saw. The runes held the bond to him. His body practically glowed with them. How many elementals had he bonded? How many remained for him to bond with?

With the connections to the elementals, the man would be even more powerful than Tan suspected. If he managed to bond one of the draasin, his power would increase that much more.

Now that he saw the runes on the Utu Tonah, Tan realized that the other shapers around him each had one glowing on them as well. Did
everyone
have an elemental bond? Was that how they shaped in Par-shon?

Tan thought of Amia and was drawn quickly through wall, rapidly reaching her cell. Three shapers stood outside, each with a glowing rune pressed into them. One was the wind shaper, Wes. Connected to spirit as he was, Tan sensed darkness from them and knew Amia was in danger.

Passing through the wall, he found her sitting atop her small bench. She clutched her hands together near her forehead. Her eyes were unfocused. Thankfully, she shaped.

She would need to understand that the three shapers outside her cell intended her harm. Could he grant her that knowledge in his insubstantial form? Tan pulled through spirit and the shaped connection to Amia, sending her all that he could about what he saw. Mixed with it, he shared what he learned of the Utu Tonah, how he bonded elementals. There was nothing more that Tan could share. He moved on.

What of the draasin?

The sense of the elemental was there, distant in the corner of his mind. Tan pulled on the sense and felt Asboel. Through the connection, he felt Asboel healing, the slow recovery. The other draasin rested around him.

They must bond,
Tan sent to Asboel.
There is one here who will force it otherwise.

It was a warning sent in case he didn’t survive. He didn’t know if Asboel even understood.

The shaping began to fail. Tan floated through the obsidian walls, pulled back into his body. Back in the room, only a single rune glowed in the middle of the floor, this pulsing in time with his heart. The specter that was Tan floated back into his body, pulled back into his flesh. As it did, he felt again.

He took a gasping breath. Honl swirled into his lungs, warm and welcoming, drawn in so that he could protect Tan.

Time lurched forward. The shaping failed completely.

Pain shot through Tan’s chest. It took a moment to remember how the elemental ilaz had pressed on him, how the earth elemental had rumbled beneath him. Neither harassed him now. Only the single rune in the center of the floor glowed.

Then it too flickered out.

Tan was left in darkness and silence. He struggled to breathe. Fatigue overwhelmed him from the effort of shaping spirit. What kind of shaping was that? What did it mean that he had bound spirit to the other elements? He had thought spirit
came
from the binding of the others.

Fear for Amia filled him. The shapers had been near her cell. He did not doubt that much had been real, but now he was too weakened to do anything to help.

Maybe there was something he could do. He let out a breath, releasing Honl.
Help her,
he breathed. The elemental hesitated, then swirled away, disappearing through the crack beneath the door.

The pain jolting through him made his arms and legs stiff and sore. Tan shuffled across the floor, moving toward the door. His head throbbed from the effort of his shaping.

The door hissed open.

Garza looked inside. Her beady eyes widened when she saw him. She grunted and stepped into the room. With a quick shaping of water, she lifted him and dragged him out, letting the door seal shut after him.

“Garza.” His voice came out in a grunt.

She shushed him with a wave of her hand. “You live. Utu Tonah is pleased.” She looked at him with something that might have been compassion. “It might have been better for you had you not.”