Serpent of Fire

Copyright © 2015 by D.K. Holmberg

Cover by Rebecca Frank

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T
he loud cry of a draasin echoed across the rolling hillside, leagues away from the capital of Ethea. Tannen Minden turned toward the sound, his eyes briefly catching on his bonded draasin, Asboel, sitting nearby, head bowed as he chewed slowly on the deer he’d caught. At the sound, Asboel lifted his head and his tail twitched. Steam hissed off his back, leaving a faint shimmering to the cool air around him that reminded Tan of the mist elemental his cousin Elle had bonded.

Sashari?
Tan asked, touching the warrior sword sheathed at his waist.

Asboel snorted, massive golden eyes catching the light of the sun high overhead.
She has found something.

One of the great fire elementals, he spread his thick, leathery wings and took to the air. He didn’t wait for Tan as he once would have; Tan no longer needed the draasin to wait for him. Now Tan could follow on a shaping of his own.

As Asboel streaked into the sky, quickly becoming little more than a dark shadow against the crystal blue sky, Tan used the draasin’s sight as he so often did these days, reaching through the connection they shared to study the ground and search for what had set Sashari on edge. He saw the land as flashes of color: reds and oranges all melding together, the patches of brighter color the draasin managed to see. The hatchlings should appear as intense surges of color, brighter even than what Asboel saw from Tan and Cianna standing together along the ridge. In the distance, he caught sight of a caravan moving, but it was too far away to see clearly, and nothing that indicated anything to do with the hatchlings.

His connection allowed more than just sight. Tan sensed the urgency and anxiety that Asboel felt; he experienced the cool wind as it buffeted against his wings and the warmth of the sun across his scales. Tan wondered if his new connection to water had anything to do with the change, or whether it was simply the bond evolving.

They were along the border of Doma, near the mergers of the boundaries with Incendin and Chenir. They had spent the better part of the last week searching the countryside for the missing hatchlings and each day, the chances of finding them grew slimmer. Tan sensed Asboel’s growing fear that they wouldn’t.

“It is cruel of the Great Mother to toy with them like that,” Cianna said.

The fire shaper stood staring at the sky, her connection to Sashari likely granting her the same ability to see through the draasin’s eyes. Sashari hunted with a different urgency than Asboel, and the intensity she’d shown searching for the hatchlings matched the expression on Cianna’s face.

“You blame the Great Mother for what happened?” Tan asked.

Cianna pulled her eyes away from the sky and ran her hand through her bright red hair, pushing it down. The silky orange shirt she wore clung to her, leaving no curve to the imagination. “I blame nothing, only that the draasin barely managed to have the hatchlings back before they were spirited away.”

Asboel had thought to keep them safe.
Tan
had thought to keep them safe, but somehow the Par-shon shapers had discovered them. He still didn’t know how. The time he’d spent searching through the tunnels beneath Ethea hadn’t given him any clues, and it had taken a full day before Asboel finally agreed to show him the way he’d accessed the tunnels, bypassing the city. By that time, the hatchlings had been missing for long enough that they might never be found, or if they were, it would be too late.

“The draasin seem to believe they’re still nearby,” Tan said.

Cianna nodded. “The fire bond.”

Tan turned his focus back to Asboel. The fire bond pulled the draasin together in the same way that the spirit bond had drawn he and Asboel together. Tan wasn’t certain whether spirit had always been involved. When he’d first bonded Asboel, he hadn’t known anything of shaping spirit. After nearly losing the draasin, the connection they shared had changed. They were bound more tightly now, the reforging of the bond done through a combination of spirit mixed with fire, making it stronger and something more than it had been before. Without that connection, he might have lost Asboel.

“What exactly is it?” Cianna asked.

“The fire bond?” he repeated, and Cianna nodded. “I don’t think any shaper can really know. It brings the draasin together, bridging them in a way that only those bonded to elementals could ever understand.” Or those bonded as Tan was to Amia. That connection gave him a sense of reassurance, even as they were separated, kept apart as Tan helped Asboel hunt for the hatchlings. Amia remained within Ethea, once again among the Aeta, now serving as the First Mother. They had yet to understand how that would impact their relationship other than simply keeping them apart.

“Shouldn’t they know where they are then?” Cianna asked.

Tan had the same question, but somehow Incendin had managed to mask the hatchlings from the draasin as well. He still didn’t understand how that had been possible. “As I said, I don’t think a shaper can really know. I don’t understand the fire bond any more than you,” he admitted.

Cianna laughed. “You’ve been bonded to the draasin for nearly six months.”

“You’ll find that the draasin provide only the knowledge they want you to have,” Tan said. The connection with Asboel had grown over time, now rivaling what he shared with Amia, but if Asboel wanted to keep something from him, he would not hesitate. The closer they became, the tighter the spirit and fire bonds bridging them, the less Asboel managed, but the great elemental had lived far longer than Tan could even imagine. In that time, he had seen more than any other creature alive. Tan hoped that experience would be able to help with Par-shon and the Utu Tonah, but before his capture, Asboel had intentionally kept himself apart from mankind. Given what Tan had learned of the ancient shapers, how they had once harnessed the elementals, forcing them to serve much like Par-shon forced bonds upon the elementals, he understood why.

“Sashari… she is distant at times. It is worse now.”

“They’re distracted,” Tan said. “When we find the hatchlings, I suspect your bond will return to what it was.”

“She still questions the benefit of the bond.”

This time, Tan laughed. “He was much the same with me. At first, he claimed only I benefited from the bond. I think I’ve shown him that the benefits go both ways.”

Cianna turned back to focus her attention skyward again. “And the other? What of the youngest?”

“She still helps.”

“Not the same as Sashari and Asboel.”

Tan hesitated. He hadn’t known that Cianna knew Asboel’s name. Names had power to the draasin. It was one of the first things he’d learned of the draasin and other than him, only Amia had known Asboel’s name. Now Cianna did. Perhaps bonding
did
place the draasin at greater risk, and probably for reasons other than what Tan understood.

“She has been through her share of difficulty. I think the bonding was an important step—possibly a necessary one—but with everything that has happened to her, she has no reason to trust us.”

“Yet she bonded.”

Tan nodded. “She bonded.” He still couldn’t believe that Enya had, and that she’d chosen Cora. The Incendin shaper was nothing like other shapers from Incendin, but Enya had experienced a different type of torment at the hands of Incendin shapers. Not only having Amia’s shaping twisted and used to force her to attack Ethea, but she had been forced to attack Asboel, to betray the draasin. Like Asboel, Enya wanted vengeance. Bonding to an Incendin shaper was the last thing that Tan had expected.

At the same time, the bond made the most sense. Cora might be from Incendin, but she was different. He wondered how much of that was due to her time trapped in Par-shon, and how much was the influence Lacertin had when he taught her. To survive Par-shon, they would need to bridge the remaining differences between their peoples. Maybe the draasin could help.

“Have you seen her?” Cianna asked.

“Not for days.” Tan still didn’t know where Enya had gone. Cora remained with her, and that was likely the best thing that could have happened. It helped to solidify the bond, build it into something more than necessity created by the Utu Tonah’s appearance near the place of convergence.

Maelen. You are needed.

Asboel’s summons thundered through their connection.

Tan shaped himself into the air and grabbed Cianna, dragging her with him. Shaping wind and fire, adding earth for strength and water to stabilize the shaping, he streaked toward Asboel. The shaping of spirit that Tan added made the travel nearly instantaneous, sending them from the ridgeline they’d been standing on to the draasin in a matter of heartbeats. They appeared on a bolt of lightning, drawn to the draasin by their connections.

Tan landed atop Asboel, slipping between the sharp spikes on his back. Cianna settled in, the tight grip she used on the spikes revealing that she was a little less comfortable than she’d be on Sashari. She leaned forward, not at all bothered by the heat coming from the elemental. Wind whipped around them, the air hot and nothing like the cool breeze found closer to the ground. The wind elemental ashi preferred the draasin, swirling around the elemental. Tan’s bonded ashi, an elemental named Honl, swirled among it.

What have you found?
Tan asked.

It is Sashari
.

Tan glanced over at Cianna.
What happened to Sashari?

Not happened. It is what she found.

The hatchlings?

Asboel breathed out heavily, filling the air with hot steam. Tan knew to let the question rest, and that Asboel would show him what he needed soon enough.

“You could have warned me first,” Cianna said.

The question was a welcome reprieve from the questions that filled him. “You would rather I left you behind?”

“I would rather you not drag me along your terrifying shaping. There is nothing natural about traveling like that.”

Tan chuckled softly. “And flying with the draasin is natural?”

Cianna tipped her head back. The wind caught her hair, blowing through it. “This is as natural as breathing, Tan. This is the reason the Great Mother created fire shapers.”

Tan focused through Asboel’s sight as he surveyed the land around him. The last week had taught him much about these lands, but seeing it through the draasin’s eyes made it clearer in some ways.

Mountains rose high into the sky to the west, the distant snow-covered peaks reaching to the clouds. Part of the Incendin waste ran along the east. Asboel saw Incendin more brightly than the greenery of the mountains. Fire was drawn to the Sunlands.

Yet they flew north. Tan hadn’t spent much time in the north, not having a chance to visit Chenir; his focus was first on Incendin, and then on Par-shon. Chenir was rumored to have shapers as well, though fewer than the kingdoms, and less skilled than even those of Doma. At some point, he would need to visit Chenir and learn what he could of their shapers. Perhaps they could offer support for the coming war with Par-shon.

Not only shapers, but they would need those able to connect to the elementals. Tan refused to harness the elementals as the ancient warriors once had done—as Par-shon had done—but if they would bond voluntarily, they would be much more powerful. Bonding to the elementals provided insight and knowledge, but it was more than that. Tan no longer fatigued while shaping as he would have without the bonds. He drew strength from the elementals, strength that even Par-shon, bonded as they were, could not replicate.

Asboel settled to the ground, his massive claws raking across the rocky ground, his talons squeezing as he landed. Sashari stood on her hind legs not far from them, wings outstretched as if poised for flight. Her head swiveled, bright eyes attempting to take everything in as she did. Tan couldn’t speak to her as he did Asboel, but he sensed the draasin’s unease.

Cianna leapt from the back of the draasin as they landed and raced toward Sashari.

What is it, Asboel?

She would not share.

Tan floated to Sashari on a shaping of wind. The draasin eyed him warily but allowed him to approach. His bonding to Asboel meant that she would trust him, but it did not carry quite the same weight with her as it did with Asboel.

As he neared, he noted how her tail curled around a shape lying unmoving on the ground. Deep blue scales caught the light from the sun.

Tan’s breath caught. One of the hatchlings.

His bonded draasin stretched his head forward, pressing beneath Sashari to sniff at the hatchling. Asboel’s tail slapped at the ground, a measure of his anger, sending rocks flying.

What happened?

When Asboel didn’t answer, Tan pressed forward, sliding beneath Sashari. Asboel’s nose pressed up against him and heat steamed from his nostrils, billowing over the hatchling. The tiny draasin still didn’t move. Dried blood caked the ground nearby, staining the rock maroon, but Tan couldn’t see any injury to the draasin. The air held the stink of rot, permeating the air with an almost moist scent, like that of rotting logs.

“Is he dead?” Cianna whispered.

Sashari loosed a horrible cry, turning toward the sky and spouting a streamer of flame from her nostrils. She stepped to the side, letting Asboel closer to the fallen draasin. He nudged the hatchling with a certain tenderness, turning him over. A large gash across his underbelly became visible.

Cianna gasped.

Tan didn’t need the fire bond or water sensing to know that the hatchling was gone.