Born of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 8) (12 page)

“What do you remember of the time before Par-shon?” Tan asked. “What can you tell me about Par?”

Tolman flicked his eyes to the wall briefly before looking away and staring at the ground in front of Tan’s feet. “There is nothing that I can tell you, really, Utu Tonah. That was a difficult time for all of us. Better that we simply forget.”

“You would forget your history?”

Tolman’s brow wrinkled in a pained expression. “We would forget the torment, my Utu Tonah. We would forget what was done to our people, and how many were lost. We would forget what it was like before—” He swallowed. “I am sorry, Utu Tonah. I get ahead of myself.”

Tan studied Tolman. Here was a man who could shape, one who could use earth with reasonable strength, but he feared what Tan would do to him. “What do you know about him?” Tan asked.

Tolman looked up. “Who?”

“Him. The Utu Tonah.” Tan inhaled slowly, thinking of what he’d seen of the previous Utu Tonah. He’d been so determined not to be killed—and not lose his bonds—that he knew nothing other than that the elementals referred to him as the Bonded One. The title suited him as well as Utu Tonah, two words that had some vague meaning in ancient
Ishthin
, but not so much that Tan could translate them easily enough to understand why the title had been chosen. Maybe Amia could help; all of his knowledge of
Ishthin
came from the shaped gift of knowledge that she’d shared with him. It was possible that she’d shared everything that she knew, but Tan figured it was also possible that there was more than what she had shared. “What can you tell me about where he came from before he came to Par?”

That much he had worked out, as well as some of the events after the Utu Tonah had come here and begun forcing bonds. As he gained power, there wouldn’t have been anyone able to withstand him, letting him grow even more powerful and forcing more and more bonds. But there had to have been something before he came to Par. The more that he considered it, the more certain he was that was the key to understanding the Utu Tonah.

“We never learned much about who he had been before,” Tolman said. “When he came… He showed strength with fire, much like you, summoning flames and performing shapings of such strength that many struggled to believe that what he did was possible.”

Tolman glanced up and met Tan’s eyes.

Maybe that was the reason they feared him as much as they had feared the previous Utu Tonah. Didn’t Tan come with the same connection to fire? And wasn’t what he was capable of doing just as impossible, especially given the connection he shared with the elementals?

Had he gone about reaching the students the wrong way? He thought that by demonstrating fire and showing his connection to the elementals, they would understand that there wasn’t a need for a bond, but maybe they feared him even more because he didn’t require the same type of bond as the Utu Tonah. At least with him, the bonds were visible, and they could see how heavily bonded he was, even if they didn’t know what it meant.

“Do you know why he came to Par?” Tan asked.

Tolman shook his head. “Perhaps some of the council will have known, but most lost their lives in those early days.” Tolman forced a smile and nodded to Tan. “He brought order, and Par-shon was better for it.”

Tan sniffed. “But Par was not.” He nodded to Tolman. “Thank you. You have given me much to think about.”

Tolman bowed his head as he took a step back. “Of course, my Utu Tonah.”

T
an sat alone
in the home that had once been the previous Utu Tonah’s. No fire burned in the hearth, and he pushed away the sense of the elementals, searching for a sort of silence and solitude, wanting nothing more than a sense of emptiness around him.

He needed to understand what had brought the Utu Tonah to Par-shon. There had been
something
that was more than about the elementals here, though he couldn’t find it in the journal.

The journal lay open in front of him, and he had pored over it again, searching for answers and thinking that they might be found within the pages of the text that the Utu Tonah had left behind, but the only thing that he found was the detail of his desire to reach for the elementals. Not so much desire, he realized, but a need for the connection, for the power that came from it, though Tan had not been able to understand what more the Utu Tonah had wanted other than power.

Closing the book, he leaned back in the chair. There had to be something more. The Utu Tonah had chased power—that much was true and undeniable—but there was something more to it than what Tan had discovered. Why had he come
here
? From what Tan could tell, the Utu Tonah had already forced several bonds even before he had come to Par-shon. To Tan, that meant that he’d come seeking bonds, but possibly something else as well.

Searching the tower yielded no clear answers, not where Tan thought they would have been. When he had been trapped here in Par-shon, the Utu Tonah had occupied the tower. But that wasn’t the sense that he had now that he’d returned. The Utu Tonah might have spent some time in the tower, but it wasn’t the only place he had occupied.

That had been this home.

Would he find any answers here, or would there only be more questions?

With a sigh, he left the room and made his way down the hall. The need to understand his predecessor drove him, even thought he recognized that he might not be able to. The people of Par-shon—most of them at least—didn’t necessarily
want
him to remember. But Tan needed answers.

The longer he searched, the more he began to wonder if he should have left the former Utu Tonah alive. At least then Tan would have been able to question him. With the man gone, there was no way for him to know—to really know—what his goal had been.

What did the runes scattered all around the city mean? Were they tied to the reason the Utu Tonah had come or was there something else? And why were so many in a state of disrepair?

The sprawling estate was massive compared to the small home that he shared with Amia in Ethea. There were dozens of rooms, many for the staff assigned to serve them, and a massive kitchen. Tan had searched all the rooms in the estate, but so far had not found anything that would help him understand.

As he passed another servant in the hall, he paused. “Maclin,” Tan said, turning to face the man.

The servant stopped, his back straightening with tension. “My Utu Tonah,” he said carefully. All of the servants moved cautiously around him now, especially since he had destroyed the runes in their jewelry and their clothing when he’d first arrived. He began to suspect that had been a mistake, but how could he do anything to repair that?

“You served here with the previous Utu Tonah.”

Maclin nodded. “Yes, my Utu Tonah.”

“What was he like?”

Maclin finally turned to face Tan. He kept his eyes lowered, and his chubby cheeks were flushed. Like all of the servants in the estate, he wore a long, gray robe cinched at the waist with a length of black silk. “I am sorry, Utu Tonah. I do not understand the question.”

“The previous Utu Tonah. What was he like? What did he do when he wasn’t at the tower?”
Or off trying to steal bonds from the elementals
, Tan chose not to say.

Maclin’s head bobbed, and he gripped his wrist in front of him and swayed slightly. “He was a powerful man, much like you, my Utu Tonah. As you said, he spent much of his time in the tower, but not all.”

“Where else did he spend his time?”

Maclin shook his head. “We never learned. He would leave Par… Par-shon,” he corrected himself.

Tan suppressed a smile. There weren’t many who still referred to the island as Par, which meant that maybe Maclin was older than Tan even realized. If that were the case, he would have a different understanding about the Utu Tonah and what had changed once he came.

As far as Tan knew, the Utu Tonah had others he trusted, some nearly as bonded as he had been, who had been responsible for securing Doma and Chenir. They likely acted on his behalf, but Tan doubted they had done so under his direct guidance. Would Maclin know who they might have been?

“What can you tell me of Par before?” Tan asked Maclin.

“Before, my Utu Tonah?”

Tan nodded. “Before the Utu Tonah. Before Par-shon. What was it like here before all of that?”

Maclin’s eyes narrowed slightly, and Tan sensed a growing distrust at the reason behind the question. It was the same distrust that he sensed from Tolman, though why would Maclin feel the same way? Tolman had lived the Utu Tonah’s rule, had experienced the torment firsthand, but Maclin? How had the Utu Tonah treated his servants?

“Why would you ask of what is gone, my Utu Tonah? There is nothing remaining, not that matters. He took everything. Our temples, the protection of the land, and even the hearts of the people. Now we are Par-shon. Some say that it is better.”

“Some? What of you, Maclin?” If the Utu Tonah had forced the people to believe differently, it was possible that some remained who had not. From those, Tan would be able to reach a sense of understanding, wouldn’t he?

“I am here to serve, Utu Tonah.”

He bowed his head and with barely any spirit sensing, Tan could tell the fear that bubbled to the surface. Like the others Tan had encountered, Maclin didn’t trust him. They feared him, and that fear brought a certain respect, but they didn’t trust him. And Tan couldn’t blame him. What had he done other than come to Par-shon and destroy the bonds that might not even have held the elementals, and demonstrated his desire to rule? In that, how was he any different from the Utu Tonah who had come before him?

“Thank you, Maclin.” Tan left him standing in the hall, not wanting to press any more than he had. Likely it wouldn’t work anyway. Like so many others that Tan had encountered, Maclin wanted to protect himself, and that meant not saying anything that might get him into trouble with the new Utu Tonah.

Leaving the estate, he stopped and breathed in the temperate Par-shon wind as it gusted in from the north. Salt lingered on the air, and it was humid, reminding him of Doma in so many ways.

What did he know about Par? Not Par-shon, but what had been here before the Utu Tonah had ruled? That was the place he needed to return these people to, not to the darkness and fear that had come with the Utu Tonah. But how, when he knew so little?

Yet, he knew about the bonds, the runes placed on the buildings around the city. That had been Par, not Par-shon. The bonds had some meaning to the people of Par, and might even be the key to understanding what the Utu Tonah had been after, if only he could discover what that might be.

With a shaping of wind, he carried himself to the center of the city. Dozens of people passed below. Tan stopped above the street, landing on a building. A sense of earth seemed to draw him here. Moving on, he jumped to an alley below, keeping himself shielded so that he didn’t scare anyone.

There was a temptation to listen to those around him and observe the people of Par-shon, but as much as that might help him understand the people, it wouldn’t help him understand
Par.
More than anything, he suspected that was the key and the secret to understanding
why
the Utu Tonah had come here.

He turned up the street and listened for the sense the runes made on buildings around him. On one, he recognized the call of fire. Though he had no bond to fire anymore, he remained as connected to it as to any of the elementals. Tan stopped at the corner of the building and studied the pattern. It represented fire, and from the smells coming off it, the building was a baker.

The pattern felt strange. Almost rough and worn in a way that implied age and time had degraded it. But there was more to the sense than that. Not only time but something else had been done to it. Touching it carefully, he noted how the pattern only
seemed
to be degraded by time. There was more to it, the addition of a subtle change to the shaping that he would have missed had it been any element other than fire.

Pushing a shaping of fire into it, he felt a strange sort of resistance. He’d sensed it before when trying to repair them and had thought that it was because he didn’t know the purpose of the patterns themselves, but this time, he realized there was more to it than what he’d detected before. Someone had placed a subtle change to the pattern, intending to damage it.

With a surge of fire, adding earth as it called, he forced the rune back into place. With a pulsing of light, the bond took hold.

As it did, Tan felt the way that fire was called by it. Not forced, but called. And saa, so prominent in these lands, answered willingly.

He had seen it before but hadn’t made the connection before this. The intricacy required for these patterns, and the almost loving way that they were crafted, told him all that he needed about the way the ancient people of Par felt about the elementals. These people had not abandoned their connection to the elementals. They had revered them.

Was this why the Utu Tonah had come to Par? Not only the convergence but because of these bonds?

If so, why would the bonds on these buildings have remained damaged? Elanne and the other bond masters would have repaired them, wouldn’t they?

Unless Elanne didn’t want them repaired.

He had thought that she had been repairing bonds, but maybe he had it wrong. When he found her, she must have been damaging them. That would explain why she seemed so upset when he had appeared.

Tan heard noise down the street and felt the pull of shaping. In Ethea, it was a common enough occurrence, but here in Par-shon, there were few shapers, so he should not detect anything.

He started down the street, making his way toward the shaping he detected. Few others were out on the street, and Tan made an effort to keep himself shielded using his connection to earth, borrowing strength from Kota. None seemed to notice him as he hurried along.

The commotion came from a crumbled building. Three people milled outside, looking up at the damage and speaking softly to each other. Two of the walls had simply split, letting the roof collapse.

That seemed strange enough, but what was even more so was the way that Tan sensed earth. Something had changed here. For a moment, he thought that someone might have forced a bond, but that wasn’t what he detected. With his connection to Kota, he suspected he would know whether earth was used in a way that the elementals found distressing. This… this was as if earth had simply given out.

Holding onto his shielding, he crept along the edge of the street and searched the stone. He thought he knew what he was looking for, but wasn’t certain that he would find it. Par-shon was an old city, and it was possible that the building had simply collapsed because of time, rather than anything more nefarious.

But near the front of the building, he found what he had suspected. A rune—or a bond, according to Elanne—was worked into the stone. Tan touched it, tracing his fingers across the pattern and searching for the sign that it had been damaged like the others. At first, he sensed nothing amiss, but then he found it.

The pattern had a subtle change. There wasn’t much to it, barely only enough to detect, and nothing like the clear sense that he’d had when working with the pattern for fire.

For the building to collapse meant that earth had simply given out.

That, combined with the shaping he had detected, suggested to Tan that whatever had been done had been recent.

He looked around but saw no one in the street other than the three people from the building.

Yet he detected a sense of shaping, though he couldn’t tell the direction or the target. It was near, and he had the sense that someone watched him, as if they saw him in spite of the shielding that he used.

Tan unsheathed his sword and made his way through the street, searching for the sense of shaping that he’d detected, but it was gone. The sense faded, and whoever had damaged the building was gone.