Changed By Fire (Book 3) (11 page)

As much as he hated the idea, he
could
reach toward fire. The massive flames reaching high into the night wouldn’t take much for him to shape, barely more than a flick…

Tan frowned. For some reason, he felt a desire to reach toward the fire, but it had never been like that for him before. The rare time he had shaped fire, it had required focus, as if he attempted to speak to the draasin. This felt as if he were drawn to use fire, almost as if he were compelled.

Tan narrowed his eyes as he studied the First Mother and then the Brother. The pressure of a shaping remained, though it was almost too soft for him to recognize. Had they shaped him, compelling him to use fire, without knowing? But how had it slipped beneath the protections he placed around his mind… unless they had shaped him before he placed them.

If there was a shaping upon him, was there anything he could do about it now?

Tan shifted, standing and putting himself in front of Amia. Through their connection, he recognized the concern she felt over his actions. He tried pushing reassurance, but to send more than that required lowering the mental barrier he held in place. Without knowing what the First Mother—or the Brother—intended, he was unwilling to do so.

Tan stared at the First Mother before making a point of doing the same to the Brother. He couldn’t tell which of them shaped, but
someone
held it. “Release the shaping,” he said.

The First Mother blinked slowly. She attempted to see around Tan. When he wouldn’t move, she seemed to try to see
through
him. “The Daughter should not have brought you here.” She spoke softly but her words carried nonetheless, as if shaped.

The urge to shape fire intensified, pressing on him. The flames dancing behind him created a sense of warmth, almost welcoming in a way. All he needed to do was reach for it, shape it toward him, and fire could wrap around him.

Tan clenched his jaw, pushing away the strange desire.

He held onto the shaping of wind and water, wishing he knew how to heal himself. Roine must know; he’d seen him heal injuries when returning to Ethea in the past. Could he push the water shaping more strongly upon himself?

Doing so risked injury. Instead, Tan made certain to hold onto the shaping, careful not to release it.

Through the shaping came the strange compelling drive to shape fire. He could call to the draasin, use the great elemental to fuel his shaping…

Tan squeezed the thought away.

“I know what you’re doing. It will not work.”

The First Mother pursed her lips in annoyance. “I do nothing, son of Zephra.”

He tensed. She knew who he was. He nodded toward the Brother. “Then he does. Either way it needs to
stop
.”

Pressure built again as he spoke, releasing with a pop.

The First Mother tilted her head. She had sharp green eyes that stared intently at him. Her mouth pursed in a tight line. “The Daughter has shared what she should not have shared.”

Amia started to stand. The other Aeta nearby, those working the spit near the fire and a few the First Mother had passed on her way toward Tan, turned to watch. They stood silently, eyes fixed on him, as if waiting for something to happen, almost as if they
knew
he was being compelled.

Had he been wrong? Had it
not
been the First Mother or the Brother shaping him?

Could there be others of the Aeta, those he thought were simply members of the family, able to shape spirit? If so, had Amia known?

“She shared what needed to be shared,” Tan said. He spoke with more force than needed, but he grew irritated. After everything Amia had been through—losing her mother, her people and then being
used
by another family—for her to suffer through the same again bothered him with a raging intensity. And if the First Mother refused to help the king, what then?

He knew what he would do then. Tan would leave, reach for the draasin, and travel to Incendin as Lacertin had suggested. The other shapers would need his help.

The First Mother frowned. “Needed to share? Are you so certain, son of Zephra? She shared to prevent Incendin from acquiring a dangerous artifact, but did she stop anything? Did her sharing do anything but delay them?”

In spite of everything, Incendin now possessed the artifact. Whatever they would use it for—however the new winged lisincend would use it—Incendin now possessed the very thing they had tried to prevent.

But not everything had been a failure. Hadn’t Tan learned he could speak to the elementals? Hadn’t Amia shaped the draasin to prevent them from attacking people?

“And now she brings you to our place of gathering.” The First Mother shifted to stare at him. “A dangerous decision, especially bringing one such as him to this place.”

“What do you mean ‘one such as him?’” he asked.

The First Mother fixed her gaze on Amia. “You would see him trained. That is why you brought him here?”

Amia took Tan’s hand and studied the First Mother. Her face flashed with a hint of defiance. “There is another reason.”

The First Mother shook her head. “You think I should interfere in the politics of the kingdoms?”

Amia took a sharp breath. “You will not help, even when our people were involved?”

The First Mother glanced at Tan, her eyes narrowing. “You brought the son of Zephra to the Gathering. Of all the outsiders you could have brought…”

“Zephra traveled with the People for nearly a year. She learned many secrets, yet never shared them.”

The First Mother’s eyes narrowed. “You claim the Mother shared what she should not have shared with Zephra?”

Amia shrugged. “I don’t know. Only that the Mother spoke highly of Zephra, even years after she was gone. Zephra was a trusted shaper, one who protected the interests of the People. And Tan has done the same.”

The Brother stepped closer to the First Mother, standing nearly alongside her. “It is too dangerous, Eldest.”

Tan frowned, suddenly remembering where he had heard the term used before. It was the term used by the udilm for Asboel, a term the draasin had not fully embraced. Was that significant somehow?

“As dangerous as Aeta serving as archivists in the kingdoms? As dangerous as them shaping the king and the kingdom’s shapers as they worked with Incendin?” Tan asked.

This time, he fixed the Brother with a hard glare. The shaping emanated from him; he grew increasingly certain of that.

The First Mother shook her head. “You are mistaken.”

Tan nodded to Amia. “Am I? See for yourself what was done to her, how Incendin treated one of your people. Come to the kingdoms and see what happened to the king.”

In that moment, he released the shaping held on Amia, leaving her exposed.

The First Mother studied him a moment, the frown on her face deepening, and then a soft but powerful shaping built. It washed over Amia, layering atop her.

Tan could almost make out what the First Mother did, but the complexity to it astounded him. Roine spoke of the shapings Zephra made as something of immense skill. From what he’d seen—the way she used air to mask her appearance and how she could travel on a gust of wind—she had every bit of ability Roine remembered. This seemed similar to what he imagined his mother was capable of creating, only with spirit.

When it ended, Tan could only stare. There might not be anything he could do against a shaping like that.

And it made clear the other shaping he’d been feeling was not the First Mother.

Tan looked past the First Mother, holding the Brother with his gaze. “How is it Amia didn’t know? How is it you’ve kept him a secret?”

The Brother frowned. His body stiffened slightly.

The First Mother watched him, waiting.

Tan sniffed. “How many here shape spirit? How many are blessed by the Great Mother?”

Amia’s eyes widened slightly.

Now that he felt the First Mother’s shaping, it was clear there was a difference between the various shapers. He could identify at least two distinct shapings right now, probably another. All were of spirit.

Which meant spirit shapers within the Aeta were not as rare as Amia had led him to believe.

T
he First Mother
sat in front of a faded wagon on a narrow chair made of brightly colored slats. Paint peeled off the wagon and where wheels had once been, there was nothing more than broken spokes. A thick log was placed underneath the wagon, as if to keep it from rolling away, but there seemed no way for it to go anywhere. As much as the Aeta could settle, this was a place of permanence.

Amia sat next to Tan, arm folded under his. The Brother had left them alone to talk and had returned to make his way around the fire. As he did, the soft presence of his shaping built. Now that Tan knew what to focus on, he sensed it easily. Others mixed with it, few with much strength, but enough that he recognized how many shapings occurred here.

The First Mother studied Tan. One hand ran alongside a long piece of dark stone. Runes were worked into it, reminding him of the obsidian bowl used by the Incendin shapers.

“Sensing another’s shaping is a difficult skill,” she said.

“I have sensed shapings long before I ever managed a shaping of my own.”

The First Mother frowned. She sat silently, tapping the long stone with one hand. Behind her, the Aeta music had returned. There was merriment to it, but mixed in was a hint of sorrow. Voices murmured underneath the music as the Aeta spoke.

The flames no longer called to him. Whatever shaping had been placed on him had either been removed or did not act with as much urgency.

Tan reached out with earth sensing; a large caravan made its way toward the Gathering. There would be others after it. Had Amia’s people not been killed by the lisincend, she would have come here. Tan found it sad that she came under these circumstances, without a caravan of her own and everyone she cared about gone.

“You have strength but there is no control,” the First Mother said. “The Daughter brought you here thinking you could learn control.”

“He is blessed by the Great Mother,” Amia said. “But that is not why we came.”

“What you ask cannot happen. It risks too much for the People if I were to leave here.”

“Even if the People were responsible?” Tan asked.

The First Mother’s eyes hardened as she fixed Tan with a firm gaze. “The People are not responsible. Once, your people would have called you a warrior. Those who claim that title now are nothing like those who preceded them. They use wind and water and air and earth but cannot hear the Great Mother and cannot speak to the elementals. Most don’t bother to try.”

Tan wondered how much to tell the First Mother. He wanted her teaching—after seeing the control she exerted over spirit, he knew she had much to teach—but did he trust her enough to do so? Did he dare not trust her?

“I have spoken to the elementals.”

“As I said, complicated,” the First Mother said.

“You know?”

She laughed softly. Light danced off her green eyes. “There is little I don’t know, son of Zephra.”

Tan shifted in his seat. “When did you learn?”

The First Mother leaned forward. “When you awoke the draasin.”

Tan swallowed, thinking of everything that had happened to him since they freed the draasin, everything that had happened to Amia. All this time, the First Mother had known about the elementals, how could she
not
have known about the archivists? How much could she have stopped? “But you didn’t know of the archivists?”

She turned away. “The Great Mother has gifted me with insight, son of Zephra, but there are limits to even my abilities.”

“Why would they have gone to Ethea?”

Silence built between them before she answered. “Because I sent them.”

If that were true, then the First Mother was responsible for everything the archivists did… and she seemed to have no remorse. “Did you know what they would do?”

“Some of this you would not learn until you were raised to Mother,” she said to Amia. “I chastised you for sharing secrets of the People, and now here I am, about to do the same.” She closed her eyes. Fingers drummed on the long stone, running over a few of the runes. “Our people are blessed by the Great Mother. Some have a greater blessing than others, but all have some element of the gift.”

Tan nodded. “Spirit sensing.”

The First Mother tipped her head. “A crude term for something so precious, but yes. We are blessed with the ability to sense what you call spirit. Some can touch it and shape it. Those who can are rarer, and those with any real ability with it rarer still.” She smiled at Amia. “You would have served your people well, Daughter.”

Amia didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. Tan felt the sense of loss through their connection.

“I thought only the women of your people are shapers,” Tan said.

The First Mother sniffed. “Are only the women of your people able to shape? Women lead the People. It is how it has always been. The men serve in other ways. Those with ability are tested at the Gathering. If they have aptitude for shaping, they remain, protected, here.”

“If they remained at the Gathering, how did some end up as archivists?” he asked.

“Those with particular strength are sent to the university to learn. The First Mother has taught for as long as the People have wandered. But there are limits. Many have gone to learn, study in a place where it is welcomed.” She glanced toward the fire, where the Brother continued to walk among the Aeta. “In time, and when I have found a suitable replacement, the Brother would be among them. Like the others, he will go and learn from those who’ve gone before them, serving both the People and your kingdoms in a way, maintaining our connection to the ancient stores of knowledge we were once responsible for.”

There was so much about what she said that he wanted to question. “Did you know about the artifact?”

The First Mother hesitated before nodding. “We have known since the beginning.”

Amia gasped.

If the First Mother knew, how much could have been avoided? How many of the Aeta could have been saved? Could Nor have been saved?

“You have held it, have you not?”

Amia nodded.

“Which means you were the one to wade through the pool.”

“I have seen the pool,” Amia said carefully. “We both have seen it.”

The First Mother shifted her attention from Tan to Amia. “You understand what it is?”

“It is the Great Mother,” Amia answered quickly.

As far as Tan could tell, it might have been more than that. When he had been in the pool of liquid silver, he had experienced an understanding of the world that had lasted only as long as he had been there. He had undone the twisted shaping on the draasin Enya and freed Amia’s mind from the torments she experienced. Had he more time, he might have managed to stop all of Incendin, but he had the sense that wasn’t what the liquid pool of spirit was meant for.

“It is power,” the First Mother breathed. “And the device was created from that, made solid by an infusion of elemental power. It was Aeta scholars who first suggested its creation. Without the Aeta, there would have been no artifact.” There seemed a measure of pride in her comment.

“Do you know what it does?” Tan asked.

“None but those scholars knew with certainty.”

“But you suspect.”

He needed to know. If the Aeta were responsible for the artifact, the First Mother must know what it did. Could it control the elementals, as Roine suspected, or was there another purpose for it, something greater than they yet knew?

The First Mother let out a shivering breath. “I don’t know.”

Tan grunted. “Theondar suspects it is meant to control the elementals.”

She blinked at the mention of Roine’s real name. “Elemental power infuses the device. It is possible that by lending strength to it, the ancient elementals sacrificed something.”

“But why?”

The First Mother leaned back. “To ask why is to seek and understand the world of that time. None of us today truly understand what it would have been like in a time when draasin flew freely across the sky, or when udilm crashed against the shores, or when eyris and tolmud still served as the great elementals.”

The last two names struck a memory with Tan, a sense of recognition he suspected he had gained when Amia had shaped understanding of the ancient language into him.

“Ara and golud were not the great elementals of the time?”

“They were by then, but that had not always been the case. Elemental power flows through time, some increasing through generations while others lessen. The lesser can become the greater. And vice versa.”

Tan nodded. “That’s what Incendin hopes.”

The First Mother tapped her pursed lips. “Why do you say that?”

“The lisincend. They are Incendin’s first attempt to create the power of an elemental, shaping a closeness to fire they could not possess simply as shapers.”

Her eyes closed. A powerful shaping built. When it released, it radiated past the Aeta, as if not intended for them.

The First Mother opened her eyes. “You said ‘first’ attempt.”

“There is another, created at the place of convergence using the artifact.”

“You saw the transformation?”

Tan nodded.

“What did it involve?”

Tan held her gaze. “She sliced the archivist’s wrist and his blood pooled into an obsidian bowl with runes like the one on your stone. She performed a shaping, drawing through the bowl. As she did, she turned into—”

“One of the lisincend,” the First Mother interrupted.

“Not the lisincend. At least, not as we know them. Whatever she became was different. She had much the same leathery skin and control of fire, but she had wings.”

The First Mother stared thoughtfully past them. “We have often wondered what the lisincend intended. They are powerful, but not so powerful that the risk of the shaping made sense. So many are lost as they attempt to transform. If they think to gain the power of an elemental…”

“There are some who fear it will work,” he said.

The First Mother took a deep breath. “There are other elementals of fire. Saldam, inferin, saa. Each with their own strengths.”

“But fire is different,” Tan said. It was what the draasin had told him. The elementals of fire did not do things the same way as other elementals. There was no guarantee that saa or inferin would ascend if the draasin disappeared.

“Fire is different,” the First Mother agreed. “Where are the draasin now?”

Tan hesitated. He knew generally where the draasin had gone, but he couldn’t pinpoint them with any accuracy. “Safe, I think.”

An amused smile turned her mouth. “Strange to think we refer to the draasin as safe.”

“Were they really so terrible?”

“Who is to know? It was a different time. The elementals spoke to man freely then. Not as it is today.” She looked at Tan. “Where is the artifact now?”

“Incendin has it. The new lisincend took it with her.”

The First Mother avoided the accusation in his gaze. “I don’t think she will succeed in using it. Doing so should require shapings of each element.”

“But others could use it to transform?” Amia asked.

“It… it is possible.”

But there might be another reason Incendin wanted the artifact, Tan thought. If they could make it work, they could use its power for whatever purpose they planned. And Roine—his mother—would be unprepared.

“Would it work if it’s shaped by several at the same time?” he wondered.

The First Mother frowned. “I don’t even know what it will do when shaped. To answer what might happen when many shape it…”

“I understand, but do you think it requires a warrior shaper?”

“Since Incendin possesses the device, it matters little. Only fire shapers emerge in those lands.”

“There might be another way Incendin could use the device, another way they might succeed in using it. They have other shapers. Stolen shapers,” he said. “Men and women taken from Doma and brought to Incendin.”

The First Mother shifted in her chair.

“You know about them,” Tan said.

Amia looked from Tan to the First Mother.

“There is nothing that can be done for them. They must trust their people will protect them,” the First Mother said.

“What people? Shapers taken by the lisincend, depriving them of anyone who might be able to help?”

The First Mother raised her head proudly. “There is nothing that can be done.” She hesitated, and then addressed Amia. “I cannot do what you need. If Incendin has the device, I need to protect the People.”

“But—” Amia began.

The First Mother crossed her arms. “You know I cannot.” To Tan, she said, “And you will learn nothing here, son of Zephra. You are not of the People and will never understand the reasons for what must be done.”

Tan inhaled slowly and stood. “This was a mistake, Amia. We should go and return to Roine. We can reach the kingdoms and then decide what needs to be done. Maybe with enough time, you can help the king.”

Amia hesitated. “First Mother?”

There was hurt in her words, but it also came through the shaped connection. Amia didn’t want to believe the Aeta could be responsible for the archivists—that the First Mother had known what they were doing and still did nothing—but as much as she might claim Tan wouldn’t understand, he thought he did. She protected her people.

The First Mother turned. The hard edge had returned to her eyes. “You are one of the People, Daughter. And blessed by the Great Mother. You should stay with your people. Retake your place. Establish your family.”

“I have stood by while my family was destroyed by the lisincend. I watched my family—my
Mother
—burn in front of me. And then, when I returned to the People, I was treated—” she choked back a sob “—treated as if I was no better than a dog, chained into the Mother’s wagon while those who should have protected me used the gifts of the Great Mother to torment me, twisting my mind. And then, when I thought everything lost, it was Tan who came and rescued me.” She stood with hands on her hips, golden hair slipping down and around her shoulder. She touched the back of her neck and there came a soft
snick
. The wide band of silver fell apart. Amia tossed it at the First Mother. “You claim he is not of the People and that I should establish my family. Well, I
have
established my family.”