Serpent of Fire (24 page)

N
ow that kaas was visible, Tan could finally see what the kingdoms’ shapers had created. It was a massive serpent with scaled sides much like the draasin. Stripes of bright orange and inky black worked around it. It turned a blunted head toward Tan, and eyes with intelligence rivaling the draasin’s turned toward him.

Tan would be trapped and quickly destroyed by kaas if he couldn’t shape. The lisincend prevented him from doing exactly that. Even the connection to spirit didn’t fully help. Until he managed to escape their rune, he wouldn’t be free to stop kaas.

Kaas turned toward him, recognition burning behind great, slitted eyes. His massive head darted and Tan pointed with his sword, knowing it would not be enough to stop the elemental.

Honl swirled around him, dark as night, and lifted him to the air and away. The great serpent circled around the ground, devouring the hounds it came into contact with. They screamed, a horrible sound, that was cut off as kaas tore through them. Overhead, the lisincend screamed but still held the rune blocking Tan.

You must protect yourself, Tan.

Anything I do and we lose Incendin,
he answered.

Do nothing and you lose everything.

A thought came to him, one that seemed impossible, but given the circumstances, he had to try.

Connected as he was to fire and spirit, Tan sensed the hounds on the ground around him and the lisincend flying in the air over his head. Twisted fire burned within them, but the fire bond showed him
how
they were twisted. The shaping had transformed them, and it took away their ability to control it, instead letting fire control them.

Could Tan do anything to change that?

Did he dare try, knowing that he needed to stop kaas? A shaping like what would be needed would take much of his strength.

Yet… Fire
seemed to compel him.

Tan reached through the fire bond, using spirit, and touched upon the lisincend. He didn’t dare take the time to work delicately, needing speed. The shaping he would attempt would be powerful, but blunt. And might not even work.

Tan shaped spirit. As he did, he felt another hand guiding him. At first, he thought it was fire, as if the elemental force worked through him, leading him. Maybe the Great Mother truly did have a hand in what he did. But then he recognized the guidance.

Amia,
he breathed through the connection.

She helped, knowing that he tried to help the lisincend.

The last time Tan had done anything like this, the lisincend had immolated rather than be healed. Then he had tried healing the lisincend, returning the creature from fire and bringing him back into the healer he once had been. This time, he didn’t try to heal the lisincend. Returning the creature from fire would not help. He wanted to repair the fire burning within them.

Guided by Amia, he shaped spirit toward the lisincend, and then reached through the fire bond, bringing the twisted connection within them back into alignment with fire. The connection flickered a moment, and then blazed within the fire bond.

The barrier preventing him from shaping disappeared.

Each of the winged lisincend faltered, dropping toward the ground.

Tan pulled on elemental power, drawing from Honl, from Asboel, and caught the lisincend before they reached the ground.

Kaas roared and shifted its focus to Tan. None of the hounds remained, each devoured by the elemental.

Stopping kaas was too much for him to do alone. He needed help. Summoning through the ring had done nothing, but that wasn’t the only way he knew how to summon.

Tan shaped spirit, pulling on pure spirit through his sword. He bound each of the elementals together and added this to the spirit shaping, making it something more than it was otherwise.

For a moment, he wished the artifact hadn’t been damaged. With it, he could stop kaas, could possibly save the elementals destroyed by it, maybe even save the elementals that had gone into its creation. With the artifact, he could even stop Par-shon. All it would take was a thought.

Tan pushed the thought away. Down that path led darkness and the same thoughts the ancient shapers had about experimenting with the elementals. Better that it was destroyed, that the artifact no longer offered temptation.

With spirit, Tan sent a request, letting it wash out from him, surging toward shaper and elemental alike:
Help.

Kaas turned toward the lisincend now on the ground. They were changed, their skin no longer blackened, but now glowing a healthy orange. None of them moved, though his fire bond and spirit sensing told him that they all still lived.

The great twisted elemental darted his head toward the nearest lisincend.

Tan streaked toward it on a shaping of wind, Honl adding strength.

For only the second time, he held the sword out to use as an actual weapon. Kaas shifted away from him, but not quickly enough. Tan sliced through his neck, the sword glowing with his shaping of spirit as he did.

The elemental roared, lunging toward him.

Tan shot into the sky on a bolt of lightning and wind.

The lisincend stirred, catching kaas’s attention.

Using the fire bond, Tan reached toward the lisincend. They needed to delay kaas before it attacked them, delay the elemental until the other shapers could arrive, but Tan didn’t know how, not without using a rune….

Form this shape,
he sent to the lisincend through the fire bond, forming a rune he’d learned from the Par-shon Rune Master before she’d taken her life.

At first, he wasn’t sure the lisincend would respond, but the transformation connected more closely to fire than any shaper. Not elementals, they had aspects of an elemental shaping ability. Tan prayed the connection would work.

One of the lisincend, the large creature who had spoken to Tan at first, turned his attention to the sky. Then he shouted to the others in a voice that was different than before, one that burned, but with pure fire, not twisted.

The lisincend took positions around kaas, each in the shape Tan had demonstrated, forming something like a star. They shaped fire, using streamers of heat more powerful than Tan had ever witnessed from anything other than the draasin, connecting to each other.

Kaas was held in place.

Tan dove toward the elemental, holding his sword out. Spirit shaping streaked from the blade as he targeted kaas.

Then it broke free of the fire shaping. Fire alone would not be enough to stop it.

Maelen!

Asboel arrived on a flurry of wings and fire that streaked toward the ground. It parted around the lisincend, leaving them unharmed. Kaas snapped at Asboel but couldn’t reach him.

Sashari arrived and saw Cianna lying motionless on the ground. She streaked forward with fire streaming from her mouth and grabbed Cianna with her forelegs. As she started toward the air, kaas snapped at her, barely missing her.

Asboel darted between Sashari and kaas. The great serpent caught Asboel’s wing and twisted it with a sickening
snap.

Asboel’s scream filled the air. Sashari raked at kaas’s back with her sharp hind legs, but kaas didn’t let go. Asboel twisted but couldn’t get free. Sashari slashed again and again at kaas but couldn’t free Asboel.

Tan tried to help but couldn’t get close enough, and each shaping he attempted bounced harmlessly off kaas. Rage built within him.

Asboel!

He could hear the draasin’s pain through the bond. Tan could feel the way his draasin suffered. There came another
snap
, and Asboel roared again.

Enya streaked toward the ground, talons ripping across kaas’s hide as she carried Cora and another shape, a darkened and twisted figure, one Tan had not seen for months. Fur.

Kaas snapped at Enya, still holding onto Asboel’s wing.

Tan’s shaping faltered. The last time he’d seen Fur, Asboel had chased him. He was scarred and his neck twisted, but he radiated power and heat, twisted much like the other lisincend. Connected as he was to the fire bond, Tan sensed just how much Fur was damaged, more than any of the other lisincend had been.

With a streak of lightning, Theondar appeared, carrying Zephra. Ferran arrived with Alan and Dolf. The Chenir Supreme Leader erupted next to Theondar, the other two Chenir shapers with him. A massive water shaping built as Elle and Vel arrived.

Almost as if one, they turned their focus to the lisincend.

Zephra leapt to the air, her shaping already building, targeting Fur and not kaas. Theondar and the Chenir Supreme Leader saw the five winged lisincend and began to attack. The other Chenir shapers readied shapings as well.

None paid any attention to the true threat. None paid any attention to the fact that Asboel was nearly being torn apart. All focused on the lisincend, fearing what had happened to them in the past more than the nightmare they faced now.

Kaas snapped his long tail and caught Dolf, knocking him to the ground. His massive mouth opened and he swallowed one of the Chenir shapers. Still, kingdoms shapers and Chenir focused on the lisincend.

Tan could not save them, not if they battled Incendin rather than the real threat.

“Stop!”

Tan pulled on every scrap of spirit, every bit of power he could take from the elementals around him, fused together into a single spirit command. It was more power than he’d ever drawn, unaided by the artifact. White light exploded from him. The command reverberated around him, and for a moment, time stopped.

It had happened to him once before when he’d been in the testing room in Par-shon, but this was different. This time, he was physically present.

In that moment, Tan knew that he would never get the shapers to work with him to stop kaas, not while they feared the lisincend, and not while they feared Incendin. And if they couldn’t get past that fear, what hope did they have against Par-shon? He sent awareness through the shapers of what he’d done to the lisincend, and of the danger Par-shon posed, letting him see what had been done to him, what had been done to Vel and Cora, and how the elementals suffered.

In that moment, he sensed the twisted way that Fur pulled on the fire bond. The lisincend raged with heat and flame, but a desire to protect the Sunlands raged within him as well. With a shaping similar to what he’d done with the winged lisincend, Tan untwisted the fire within Fur.

He felt the way kaas raged, twisted in a different way than the lisincend, but twisted, forced by the ancient shapers into something that the Great Mother never intended until it sat somewhere outside the fire bond. This was why Tan had never been able to fully sense it.

Drawing on the power of spirit filling him, drawing on the fire bond that connected him, Tan
pulled
Asboel away from kaas as he’d once pulled Honl back. As he did, he
pushed
kaas, giving the great serpent a shaped shove back into the fire bond. It happened slowly, as if he pushed the weight of the elemental through the earth himself, but then Fire pulled with him, consuming kaas, drawing the creature into the bond.

Awareness of kaas through the fire bond burst within him and Tan knew with certainty that kaas had raged too long to remain free, had become too dangerous.

But Tan could not destroy it. Through the connection, with everything paused as it was for him, he felt the urgency from Fire not to destroy the elemental.

If he couldn’t destroy kaas, then what?

The elemental
needed
to be controlled, to be guided.

Tan did something that he never thought he would ever consider. He forced kaas to bond.

Fueled by spirit and connected to the fire bond, Tan recognized that the connection required strength and purpose. Tan knew of only one who could control kaas, only one he dared bond to kaas.

Using spirit, he formed the bond from kaas to Fur.

It exploded from him, using the last of the spirit that he summoned. Tan dropped, but Honl caught him, keeping him from reaching the ground.

Time surged forward, unfrozen.

Kaas released the grip on Asboel’s wing.

Filled with understanding granted by Tan’s shaping, Roine’s shaping faltered, as did that of Chenir’s shapers. Zephra stepped away from Fur. Even Cora hesitated.

Then kaas slithered back into the ground, disappearing.

T
an stood next to Asboel. The great elemental barely moved. His chest rose and fell with laboring breaths. The broken wing was bloodied and partially torn free. Tan didn’t know if he would be able to heal it. Sashari stood protectively next to Asboel, Cianna now lying on the ground before her. Enya stood on the other side.

Go. Take him to safety,
Tan urged through the fire bond.
I will come to him and heal him.

Sashari fixed him with an unreadable expression. They would know what he’d done, how he had forced the bond. Would they understand the reason? Would they know that the bond was better than destroying the elemental?

Maelen
, Asboel said. His voice was weak in Tan’s mind.

Asboel, I am sorry.

You did not do this. Fire,
Asboel wheezed
. No longer twisted.
His head swiveled so that he could see the lisincend.

They stood grouped together, Fur standing in front of them, his skin now an orange glow much like the other lisincend. He burned more brightly than they did. Cora spoke softly to him. Tan could sense them within the fire bond, could speak to them if he chose, but he recognized their uncertainty as well.

You were right to protect fire,
Asboel went on.

I could not destroy an elemental,
Tan explained.

Asboel clucked, sounding something like a laugh.
You could not,
he agreed.
Maelen, you… are wise.

Go. I will heal you soon.

Asboel tried moving his wing, and pain surged through the bond.
You may try.

Tan nodded to Enya and Sashari, and together, they lifted Asboel into the air and made their way steadily toward the north.

Tan turned to Roine, who was looking at the lisincend and then at Chenir. Roine said a few words to the Chenir leader, and then they left on a shaping. Finally, Roine focused on Tan and shook his head. “How?”

Cora glanced at Tan, then called a shaping of lightning, pulling her and Fur away from them. The lisincend took to the air and headed east, toward the Fire Fortress. Tan didn’t know if he’d weakened them or made them stronger.

“Does it matter?” he asked.

“You will have us work with the lisincend.”

Tan swallowed. His head hurt and his body ached. Fatigue like nothing he had ever known raged through him. “I would have us survive, Roine. I would have all of us survive. If Par-shon is willing to unleash something like that,” he said, motioning to the ground, “then we need to face it together.”

“And kaas?” Zephra asked, taking Roine’s hand.

“Kaas was like the lisincend. Twisted. Forced into something unnatural,” Tan answered.

“And now?” his mother asked.

“Now it’s not.”

Roine grunted. “Can you be certain?”

Tan nodded slowly. “It is bonded. We will know.”

“Bonded?” Roine asked. “How?”

Zephra separated from Roine and came over to Tan. She took his hand, and her eyes carried sadness in them. “You did this, didn’t you?” she asked. When he nodded, she closed her eyes and let out a pained sigh. “Oh, Tannen…”

Tan turned away. “Did I have any choice?” he asked. “Did we?”

This time, Cora summoned Tan.

He stood on a shaping of wind, using fire to help stabilize him. There was the vague sense of Honl watching him, but Tan couldn’t be certain. Since Honl’s change, Tan couldn’t really be sure of anything with him, other than the fact that he continued to offer Tan protection.

Cora called him into Incendin much like Tan had called her into the kingdoms. She waited for him on the shores, standing on the rocks, her eyes drawn outward toward the sea.

“You summoned,” Tan asked wearily. He wished she had given him a chance to rest, but at least he’d recovered his shaping strength.

“There is something,” she began, but didn’t finish.

Tan turned slowly, looking around him. “What of the lisincend?”

Cora sighed. “They need time to understand the change.”

“Are they weakened?” He didn’t want to take away the ability of Incendin to protect itself.

“No. Different. Calmer,” she answered. Then she smiled. “And you? Have you recovered?” Cora asked.

“My injuries are different,” Tan said.

She turned to face him, concern furrowing her brow. “You have not recovered, then.”

“Cora…” Tan swallowed. He didn’t know what it would take for him to get over what had happened. Time. A chance to understand if he’d done the right thing by forcing the bond between kaas and Fur. “I think it will take time.”

“Fur is different too,” Cora said softly. “He won’t speak of it, but he has changed. Probably more than the others.”

Tan sighed. “He has been given a great responsibility,” he said.

Her eyes widened. “Tan—”

He nodded and took another deep breath. “There was no other way.”

Cora frowned but said nothing for a while. “Par-shon is coming.”

Tan grunted. “My draasin bond is injured. We’ve lost elementals, shapers.” He sighed. “We
need
time. Chenir is weakened. Doma was nearly destroyed by Par-shon. Are even the Sunlands ready?” he asked.

She pointed, motioning away from him and out over the sea. “We must always be ready.”

Tan studied the darkness on the horizon, wondering what Cora wanted him to see. Without Asboel, he was not able to see anything. The draasin would need time to recover, too. Sashari would protect him. So much lost simply repairing a thousand-year-old mistake. Could the Utu Tonah have known what he did when he sent kaas to them? Would he have known the effect it would have had?

Tan had to think that he did. What other reason would he have sent a shaper bonded to a creature like that? He wanted to weaken the kingdoms. And he had. Ara destroyed. Elementals of Incendin were gone. Honl changed. Worst of all, though, was the damage to Asboel.

Could they even stop the Utu Tonah now?

“What are you trying to show me?” he asked.

“Look,” Cora urged.

Tan shaped wind and water to help him see more clearly into the distance. The shaping gave him a certain clarity, bringing the far-off sea wall into sharp focus. As it did, Tan gasped, suddenly understanding what Cora wanted to show him.

A dark cloud blew toward them from the east. Lightning streaked within the darkness, and flames seemed to leap within it. Tan sensed the immense shaping holding the approaching wall together, the way that wind and water and fire all billowed toward them. Probably even earth, though Tan could not see it.

“Par-shon,” Cora said. “They are coming.”

Book 7 of The Cloud Warrior Saga:
Servant of Fire

Chenir has allied with the kingdoms. The great serpent has bonded to the lisincend. And the ancient draasin Asboel lies injured.

Tan enters the Fire Fortress, seeking an alliance with the lisincend. Doing so requires him to attempt a shaping he isn’t certain he can control, and this time without his draasin for help. The Par-shon attack has reached the mainland, pushing through Chenir, as the final battle with the unstoppable Utu Tonah approaches. Survival hinges on old friends and a new connection, but can Tan control enough power to defeat him, with one of his bonded near death?