Cloud Warrior 05 - Forged in Fire (22 page)

The shapers flew to him, joining him as they faced the Utu Tonah, hovering in the air over the lake.

“You are more powerful than I imagined,” the Utu Tonah said, focusing on Tan. “You were to have been captured by now to keep you from this, but perhaps it is best that falls to me.”

Tan shaped spirit and bound it to the other elements and sent this at the Utu Tonah. Theondar and Cora joined, attacking with combined shapings.

Somehow, the Utu Tonah simply caught the shapings, as if he drew them into himself.

Power exploded from him, sending Theondar and Cora spiraling away.

Tan caught the shaping with the warrior sword and twisted it toward the ground. “This is my home. These elementals belong to this land.”

The Utu Tonah smiled. “You think they are yours?”

“Not mine. The elementals belong to no one. They cannot be forced to bond.”

“You know so little of your land. Once, men like you harnessed your elementals no differently than what I would do, only they have forgotten. I have not.”

He sent a series of shapings at Tan, who caught this set with his sword, too. Tan tried to shape again, but it wasn’t enough. The Utu Tonah caught each one.

Distantly, he saw more Par-shon shapers appear and surround Enya. They were each heavily bonded, more than enough to hold her while the Utu Tonah forced the bond onto her. Each held one of the archivists.

Tan broke away from the Utu Tonah, striking at the Par-shon shapers around Enya. They worked together to push shaped waves of power over Enya, spirit mixing within each one, each one weakening her. Their shapings mixed with those forced from the archivists, rolling spirit over the draasin.

Tan couldn’t reach her in time. Another did.

Cora hovered over Enya, facing the Par-shon shapers by herself. She bound each of the elements together and the shaping surged away from her, hitting the Par-shon shapers, splitting their shaping. But it wasn’t enough.

Their shaping reached a crescendo.

Cora must have sensed it. She dove in front of the shaping, catching it. Her eyes flashed up to Tan as she did.

“No!” he shouted.

Calling lightning and fire, borrowing from the draasin and saa and possibly other elementals of fire he had no name for, he struck each of the shapers at once. It pressed them into the water where the nymid pulled them down.

The archivists dropped to the water as well. A shaping held them in place.

Tan didn’t have time to try to understand. He reached for Cora, who struggled to hover in the air, but he didn’t reach her in time. She fell, landing atop Enya in a heap.

The draasin’s eyes snapped open.

Above him, the Utu Tonah built a shaping. Tan recognized it as the same as that which the Par-shon shapers had used when trying to separate him from his bonds. The shaping began to swirl around the draasin, pulling spirit dragged from the archivists with it.

And then light surged, bright and blinding.

Tan’s breath caught. The Utu Tonah had his bond.

Asboel, you must go. He has the bond
, Tan said.
Hide with the others. I will do what I can.

Asboel breathed streaks of fire, aiming it toward the shapers near the water. Darkness circled overhead as Sashari arrived, somehow healed. It was too late, though. The Utu Tonah had what he sought.

Cora sat atop the draasin. Enya turned her. In that moment, Tan expected Enya to attack the Incendin warrior.

No attack came.

Could it be? Had the Utu Tonah
not
been the one to form the bond?

Enya roared. Fire surged from her, steam rising from her wings and her body. Her massive tail swung around her, catching two Par-shon shapers coming toward her. Then she took to the air, Cora still atop, now riding her.

Tan streaked toward Asboel on a shaping, landing atop the draasin. Sashari flew next to him, and Enya joined on the other side. All draasin stared at the Utu Tonah. The draasin bellowed as one, fire pouring from them.

Theondar and Zephra appeared. Three shapers that Tan didn’t recognize rose on the other side. It took a moment to realize that they were the Incendin shapers he and Amia had freed. Elle swirled atop the water, waves crescendoing around her.

The Utu Tonah fixed Tan with a dark expression, easily blocking the shapings attacking him, and then, with a flash of lightning, he disappeared.

T
an sat
on the shoreline next to Roine. It was the same shore where he had first learned that he had the ability to shape, not only sense, the same shore where he had first reached Asboel, and the same shore where he had nearly lost Amia. Too many memories had happened on this shore.

Now Asboel lounged near him, Sashari and Enya sitting together. Cora and Cianna spoke to each other in hushed tones near the massive draasin, the excited way they kept looking to the draasin making it clear that they exchanged information about their bond. Zephra and Elle sat at the edge of the water, Elle with her toes swirling patterns while she reconnected with her cousin.

So many had died. Par-shon shapers had fallen by the dozens. The archivists were destroyed by whatever shaping the Utu Tonah had used on them. And shapers of the kingdoms had fallen, left lifeless on the shores of the lake. For a place where the elementals convened, a place where so much good should exist, all it had known was death.

“I sensed your shaping,” Roine said, dragging Tan’s focus away from the line of fallen shapers. “It was a summons, but I’ve never known anything like it.”

Tan felt exhausted, but it was a physical fatigue. The elemental powers had restored him, giving him strength that he wouldn’t have otherwise. Now that he’d bonded the nymid—truly bonded to them, not simply known how to speak to them—he had a vague sense of all the elemental powers around him. What would he be able to sense if he were ever to bonded to earth?

“Did Amia reach the city?” he asked. He was too tired to reach through their bond to know.

“She did. I welcomed the Aeta behind the walls of the city.”

Tan nodded. They would be safe there. The Aeta might not want to be a part of the kingdoms, but they had suffered too much to continue to wander. At least Amia would see them to safety.

“Par-shon came for the archivists,” Tan said. “That’s why they wanted to control the Aeta. They wanted safety. They must have known
what was coming for them.”

“They could simply have been running from Incendin,” Roine said. Tan shot him a heated look and Roine raised his hands. “Zephra might be right—”

“Zephra was wrong,” she said, turning to face him. “And Tannen was right.”

Tan watched his mother, waiting for her to say something else.

“Par-shon hides from us,” Tan said. “I didn’t really understand until I was in Doma. But they can be everywhere. They had reached the kingdoms before we even knew. We will need more than shapers to keep ourselves safe. We will all need to work with the elementals.”

In the distance, Ferran stood atop the rocks, somehow holding himself above the ground, reminding Tan of how the Par-shon earth shapers managed to travel. If Ferran could bond to the elementals, others would need to learn.

But it wasn’t only the kingdoms, was it? The elementals were found throughout the lands. In Doma, where Elle had bonded a water elemental Tan hadn’t known existed, to Incendin, where Cora had now bonded Enya. Could these other shapers learn to bond?

“I would never have believed I would fight alongside Incendin shapers,” Roine said.

“And Doman,” Elle spoke up.

Roine sighed. “And Doman.”

Cora and Cianna had made their way over. “They chose to answer the summons,” Cora said. “There might be others, but it will take time.”

“Even the lisincend?” Roine asked, his voice harder than it needed to be.

“Someday, you will learn just how much you would sacrifice to keep your kingdoms safe,” Cora said. “You might come to understand why our brightest shapers risk the torment that is the transformation.” She forced a smile at the three Incendin shapers where they sat to the side, staring at the draasin.

Tan had already learned what the kingdoms would do to keep safe. Althem had demonstrated it all too well. And before him, the ancient shapers had once done the same. “We can’t repeat the mistakes of the past,” Tan whispered. “We must be stronger. Better. We’re part of the same land. All of us must work together to prevent what Par-shon intends.”

Roine stared at the Incendin shapers, his face unreadable. Zephra watched Tan the same way she’d once appraised the kitchen staff in the manor house. Slowly the hard expression on her face eased and she closed her eyes, nodding to herself. Elle sat and looked from Roine to Tan to Cora, as if unable to fully comprehend.

“Besides, now Incendin has a shaper who’s bonded one of the draasin,” he said.

Cora smiled.

Cianna barked out a laugh. “But we have two!”

Roine managed the faintest of smiles. Tan suspected he worried about how he would keep the kingdoms safe, especially now that he knew about Par-shon and their ability to conceal their presence. Tan didn’t have the heart to tell him that it was no longer about keeping only the kingdoms safe. They would need to keep everyone safe. They
had
to work together, or they would fail.

And he was beginning to suspect they would have to bring the fight across the sea. They needed to defeat the Utu Tonah, sever his bonds so that he could not attack again.

For now, he would rest. He was exhausted. All he wanted was to lie and listen to the soft breeze through the trees, to the water lapping at the shore where the nymid swirled, connected through each of the streams and lakes all around him, to the steady rumble beneath the earth…

Tan
, Amia sent, interrupting him.

He focused on the connection, on the urgency in the way she spoke.

You must return. Bring Asboel.

Tan looked over to the draasin. He was injured, though not as badly as the last time Par-shon had attacked him.
What is it?

Amia paused. When she spoke again, her voice was pained.
The hatchlings, Tan. They are gone.

As tired as he might be, he stood and went to Asboel.
Come, Asboel. We must hunt.

B
ook
6 of The Cloud Warrior Saga:
Serpent of Fire

Tan now serves as Athan. The draasin have bonded. Elle and all of Doma saved. And Par-Shon has been defeated. 

T
an knows
the victory is short lived. Par-Shon knows how to obscure their shapers, and they could hide anywhere. When Tan discovers Par-shon shapers within the kingdoms, a dangerous and wild elemental is released. As Tan tries to defend his bonds, he learns the terrible history of this elemental, one that the draasin would hide from him. Tan must find a way to protect the elementals, stop the serpent of fire released by Par-shon, while understanding the reason that mysterious Chenir would chose now to send a delegation to Ethea.

N
ow also available
:
Drowned by Water

A
bandoned
by water and washed ashore in a village that thinks her nothing more than a sea bride, Elle is determined to return to the university to resume her studies. When Doma is attacked, and she finds a daring way way to reach the capital, she discovers the attack isn’t what she thought. With no ability to shape, Elle must find some way to reach water, or not only will she lose her only friend, but all of Doma will fall.

T
he first of
Elle’s story, a part of the Cloud Warrior Saga.

D
K Holmberg
currently lives in rural Minnesota where the winter cold and the summer mosquitoes keep him inside and writing.

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