Serpent of Fire (15 page)

T
he border of Incendin looked different than it had earlier. Tan stood along the border, staying along the Galen side. The summoning rune he held in his hand glowed softly with each of the elements, though fire burned the brightest. It was the only way he had to reach Cora.

He still wasn’t sure that she would answer. Since she’d bonded Enya, he hadn’t seen her. Enya hadn’t offered to help in the search for the hatchlings, though Tan didn’t think that was out of anger but out of need for Cora and herself to understand the bond. From what Tan knew of bonding, Enya might almost be too young to share the bond. She had forged it out of necessity, but it would take time for her and Cora to understand each other.

Maybe coming here wasn’t his best idea, but he had nothing else that he could think of to do. Asboel wouldn’t answer, and Tan was not interested in reaching out to Chenir as Roine asked—not yet, at least—but there was one place he
could
help.

Tan tried not to think what it meant that the artifact was damaged. Nothing had changed, really, only the fact that he’d always had it in the back of his mind that he’d be able to use it if needed, but now that wasn’t an option.

And he needed answers but didn’t know where else to get them. It wasn’t only the kingdoms in danger, but the elementals as well.

And not only the kingdoms. Other places risked suffering if this elemental kaas was as bad as Asboel indicated. That was why he needed to reach Cora. He needed her to understand, but more than that, he needed her help to discover what Incendin might know about kaas.

As Tan waited, Honl blew around him, slowly recovering from the attack. The nymid still clung to him, wrapped around him more for their protection than for his. Once, Tan had worn the nymid like armor. Of his bonded elementals, only Asboel remained unharmed, but how long would that last with this new threat?

As he began to give up hope Cora would come and was thinking that again, she would ignore his attempt to summons, a dark shadow circled over his head. Wind whipped around him and Cora leapt to the ground on a bolt of lightning. Her bonded draasin remained in the air, circling overhead.

She wore dark leathers that reminded Tan of a mix of the Par-shon shapers and the lisincend, though the cut was distinct, close to her skin and high up around her neck. A slender sword hung from her waist. Tan didn’t need to see it to know that she had a warrior sword much like his.

She frowned at him as she landed. “A summons? You think a kingdoms shaper can summon me?” Her tone was light, but there remained a hard edge to it.

Tan studied the sky for a moment. “She chooses not to land?”

Cora frowned and thankfully chose not to comment on Tan letting her first comment go unanswered. “She remains skeptical of the bond. It is nothing like when I bonded saldam.”

The fading daylight caught Cora’s brown hair. Her eyes were a matching brown and more youthful than when Tan had first found her, mute and captured in Par-shon. It wasn’t until she had nearly died and returned that she showed her true age. Even then, Tan wasn’t certain how old she really was. She could be ten years older or younger than what he suspected.

“You haven’t secured the bond with her?” he asked.

“It is different than what you experience, I think. She fears the Sunlands, though she knows that’s my home.”

“You know what happened to her?”

Cora glanced up and then returned her attention to Tan. “I know what you have told me. She shares… some… but even that is restrained. The bond is not open as it was with saldam.”

“You know her name.”

Cora tilted her head. “I do not think I could have bonded had she not shared that much,” she said. “But I do not know about the others, what they are called. She keeps that from me. There is much that she keeps from me.”

Tan sighed. It would be easier if Enya were able to share with Cora. They would need each other, though of the draasin, Enya had been the most tormented since freed from the ice. “Do you know that one of the hatchlings has been found?”

“I suspected, but didn’t know with certainty. A few days ago, she was pleased but did not want to share with me the reason. I think she fears I might go to him and steal him away. There are times when I think she still even fears me. Other than the draasin, the only person she does not fear is this Maelen. I do not know who—or what—that is.”

Tan studied Enya. Would they have time to help ease her transition, or would they have to force the connection? He didn’t like the idea of forcing anything with the draasin, not after what they had been through. Cianna might have quickly bonded to Sashari, but Tan and Asboel’s connection had taken time to form. The bond had been quick, but the rest? That had taken trust.

“To the draasin, I am known as Maelen,” he said softly. “It was a name I was given. Perhaps in jest, perhaps not.”

Cora glanced up at Enya. “Of course it would be you,” she said. She drew herself straight and looked away from Enya. “What did you call me here for? I nearly came myself, but then she agreed to come with me. Normally, she remains on her own, only the distant connection to her telling me where she might be.”

“Do you regret the bond?” Tan asked.

Cora took a moment to answer. “Regret? No, there is no regret. I have been gifted the chance to ride the ancient draasin, to know some of their mind, even if it is less than I would like. But it is a different bond than I had before. That was a shared connection, freely sharing knowledge between saldam and myself. We worked together.”

“It will get there,” Tan said.

“I know, but it is… frustrating that it takes so much time. Now that I have returned to the Sunlands, there are many who seek to challenge my position, including Fur. Others see that I have gone to Par-shon and returned. They support me.”

It was the first confirmation that Fur lived. What would he do with her bonded draasin? “How many know of Enya?”

Cora shook her head. “Not many. There aren’t many I trust with such information, not until I know the mind of the Sunlands. I have seen how they would use the draasin, wishing to see them serve the Fire Fortress, but I don’t think that is what the draasin would choose.”

Tan remembered what he had seen of Asgar, the way that he had not feared what Incendin had asked of him. That had surprised Tan somewhat, knowing that the draasin was not afraid of the Incendin, but they had given him the chance to use fire. To the draasin, that was everything.

“There was an attack today,” Tan said.

Cora frowned. “From the way you say it, I presume it was not Par-shon.”

“The attack came on the border of Nara and the Sunlands. Two kingdoms’ shapers were attacked by hounds and under a veil of heat.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You think this the lisincend.”

“No.”

“But you said there were hounds. That there was the veil. There are no shapers with the strength to summon the veil, and only a few with the strength to control the hounds.”

“This was elemental power, Cora. One that I have never seen before.”

“Then it was Par-shon.”

“That is what I thought as well, but I have learned how to sever the forced bonds between shaper and elemental. It didn’t work when I attempted this today.”

“You think this was a true bond?”

“I don’t know.” That was the only way he wouldn’t have been able to sever such a bond, but that wasn’t Par-shon’s way of reaching the elementals. Roine had suggested a wild elemental, but the other possibility was even more dire for the kingdoms. If kaas had bonded a Par-shon shaper by choice, Tan would not be able to stop them.

Cora crossed her arms over her chest. “What was the elemental?”

“That’s the reason I summoned,” Tan admitted. There were archives in the Fire Fortress that Cora had studied, and Tan remembered how Lacertin had referenced studying those texts, hoping to learn more about the lost artifact, but why should he have been able to find anything in those texts if the artifact was a work of the kingdoms?

Unless it was something more than that.

“It was called kaas. Does that mean anything to you?”

Cora furrowed her brow, and her eyes narrowed in thought. “It does not. I know only the basics of the elementals, Tan. We are taught fire. Saldam. Inferin. Saa.”

She said the last with an annoyed tone, making Tan wonder what torment Incendin had experienced from saa over the years. It was bad enough that those in the kingdoms viewed saa as a weak elemental, but what reason did someone from Incendin have to be annoyed with it?

“The draasin are mentioned, but only as what once had been.” Cora smiled. “Perhaps now that the draasin have returned, they will ask me to teach.”

“You would teach?”

She shrugged. “The Sunlands have something like your scholars, but they are different. Few have any talent. When Lacertin was there, he thought to change that. He claimed that those who connected to the elemental powers could best understand the accumulated knowledge. He was the first shaper able to access some of the oldest works. Others came after him. I had some limited access, but only because of my connection to Lacertin.”

Not for the first time, Tan wished Lacertin still lived. What would they be able to do if they had his experience and knowledge? How much had been lost when he’d been killed fighting for the kingdoms?

“What was this kaas?” Cora asked.

Tan shook his head. “I didn’t see it.”

Cora snorted. “You cannot see most of the elementals, Tan. The draasin are unique in that those not bonded can see them. The others? They require the bond to see and understand.”

“Kaas, I think, is different. It is powerful. The shaper nearly overwhelmed me.” Cora’s eyes widened slightly. She had traveled with him when he had tried finding Elle, and she had been there during the battle with the Utu Tonah. A single shaper would not be able to overwhelm a warrior shaper, and certainly not one bound to the elementals.

“There is more, isn’t there? You keep something back.”

Tan sighed. “There’s more. When I shared what happened with the draasin,” he made a point of not sharing Asboel’s name yet, especially if she hadn’t learned it from Enya, “I sensed fear from him. Enya knows fear from everything that she’s been through, including being shaped and forced to attack, but the others are different.”

“Even Enya’s fear is not the same as what I might fear,” Cora said. “There is a casual arrogance to it.” She hesitated, studying Tan. “Why would the draasin fear this kaas?”

“He said they are creatures of earth and fire, much like the draasin are creatures of fire and wind. They are some sort of serpent-like creature and were supposed to have been banished from these lands long ago.”

Cora’s eyes widened slightly. “You speak of a child’s tale.”

“You know them?”

She began pacing, moving between the trees and occasionally glancing up at the sky, where Enya circled. “Not by anything more than myth. Nothing more than a story, told to our children. I doubt there’s any truth to it.”

“What do you mean?”

She paused and turned her attention to Tan. “What I will tell you is a story of my people. Long ago, when the sun first blessed our lands, a great serpent was said to swim just beneath the surface of the sand. This serpent swallowed the sand and rock and everything that it came across and then spit it back out. The Sunlands were barren. A lost land. Nothing could live where the serpent crawled. Nothing dared attempt to live where the serpent called its home.” She looked over at Tan. “Then King Ashiss, First of his Name, came to claim the Sunlands as his own. He brought with him his mighty sword Inless and rode across the sand on a beast of fire, searching for the serpent. They battled for one hundred nights before King Ashiss emerged victorious. The serpent was weakened, and scared, and sent from the Sunlands, but cursed them as he did, leaving them forever burnt.”

Cora shook herself and turned back to Tan. “That is the story of the Great Serpent. A myth, told to children of how the Sunlands came to be. We are stronger because we can face the serpent and because we have lived in spite of the curse.”

“Well, if the draasin are right, and the serpent is real.”

“It is but a fable, and in it, the draasin were not responsible for chasing the Great Serpent from the Sunlands. That was King Ashiss.”

Tan wished there was a way to know how to stop kaas, and how to help the draasin find the hatchling, and how to stop Par-shon….

So many things needed to get done, and Tan felt that he was at the center of it all. And now, he’d damaged the artifact, the one thing that would have given them a chance at success.

“What can I do, Tan?” Cora asked.

Tan stared up at the sky, at Enya moving steadily through the clouds. “You need to understand your bond. Gain her trust. And then I will need your help hunting the kaas.”

Cora met his eyes and nodded.

“We will have to bring our peoples together, Cora,” he said. “Not only to protect ourselves from kaas, but to defeat Par-shon and the Utu Tonah. I don’t think either country can do it alone.”

“I think that you have the harder task of convincing your people.”

“Mine will be challenging,” Tan agreed, “but you will have to get the lisincend to work with us.”

“They have not attacked.”

“Not yet,” Tan said.

“And they obey the king. Do not fear the Changed.”

Tan grunted. “Are you certain that they obey the king fully? We’ve seen different sides of them, I think. My home was attacked by the lisincend. My people. They attacked Ethea, bringing fire down upon our people.”

Cora’s brow furrowed. “There are some differences with the winged Changed.”

Tan inhaled deeply. “And we will struggle to find common ground if they attack. We need to be able to work together.”

She tipped her head toward him. “I will do what I can. I have a different place now that I’ve returned. Much of my influence has slipped. But I will try.”

Tan nodded again. “That is all that I can ask,” he said.

Cora leapt to the air and onto Enya’s back. With a breath of hot flame, Enya circled again and then turned away, flying quickly to the south before fading from view and leaving Tan debating what he needed to do next.