Born of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 8) (16 page)

T
he draasin curled
in front of the hearth, soaking in the warmth of the flames. Saa burned brightly, filling the air of the small room in the estate with his strength. Tan paced, watching the draasin and marveling at how
small
the creature was, but already he detected strength from him. In that, Sashari might have underestimated what it was capable of doing.

Tolman lay on a cot in the back of the room. He hadn’t moved since Tan returned him to the estate, but at least the bleeding had stopped. His injuries were severe. A deep gash across his face had bled heavily but wasn’t nearly as dangerous as the hole in his stomach, as if someone had speared him. That had required more strength to control the bleeding. Had he not fed the draasin, he might have had enough strength to help Tolman himself.

Tan looked up at the soft knock on the door.

When it opened, Maclin poked his head inside. “My Utu Tonah,” he said with a bow. His gaze swept across the room, noting Tolman lying on the cot and then the draasin curled up in front of the fire. He sucked in a sharp breath and pulled his attention back to Tan. “You summoned the gardener?”

Tan nodded. When searching for Garza, he hadn’t known any other way to reach her other than asking for Maclin to bring him the gardener. As he hadn’t seen any other gardeners in Par-shon, he thought it a safe gamble.

Garza came into the room. Tan sensed the irritation within her, but it evaporated as soon as she saw Tolman. Unlike Maclin, she didn’t notice the draasin lying next to the hearth.

“What happened to him?”

She didn’t bother with any title or honorifics, and Tan was grateful that she wanted only to get to business.

“I don’t know. He was attacked after
I
was attacked.”

Garza glanced over at him. “Who would attack you, Utu Tonah?”

Tan snorted. He wasn’t entirely certain who had been behind it, but he could think of several who might have. The first on that list was Elanne, and a desire to prevent him from reaching the draasin eggs. Once he found her, he would discover what exactly she intended.

“Can you help him?” he asked.

Garza had already set her hands on him, and her shaping built. Without looking at him, she asked, “Why could you not heal him? I assume that you’re capable, especially given the fact that you destroyed your predecessor.”

“I can heal, but I was distracted with another task that required my energy.”

Garza grunted and continued her shaping. “He was seriously injured. You must have done something to help him, or he wouldn’t still be alive.”

Tan chuckled. “I did something,” he agreed.

She continued to work, not saying anything more as she did. Her shaping was complicated and nearly as talented as what he had seen from Wallyn. Unlike Wallyn, her shaping came in waves, sweeping through him and then receding. As it receded, Tan noted how the water shaping pulled away the injury. When it crashed into Tolman, she sent healing waves through him.

Tolman’s injuries stabilized and his breathing became more regular. His cheeks were pale, but some of the color had returned to them, more than had been there before.

Garza stepped away and rested her hands on her belly. “It is done. He will live.”

“Good. Then you can send word to those for Par-shon that the attack on Par failed.”

Garza jerked her head around at the statement. “What do you mean?”

Tan stepped toward her. “The attack came when Tolman revealed the secret you alluded to, the one the Utu Tonah failed to discover.”

He moved to the side to reveal the draasin lying next to the fire. As he did, it uncurled, stretching his wings. Tan couldn’t be certain, but it seemed to him that the draasin had already grown larger than when he had hatched. He certainly produced more heat than when he hatched, radiating warmth that came from all the fire that he’d fed on.

“You found it,” she whispered. She glanced past Tan to Maclin, who stood at the door, watching silently.

“I was guided there.”

Garza looked down to the resting form of Tolman. “He took you there? He should not have!”

Tan sniffed. “Maybe he recognized that it wouldn’t matter if he didn’t share with me, that I would discover eventually. I have not lied about my abilities, Garza. I
do
speak to the elementals. I do not command them, but they listen and will often cooperate. That is the reason I was able to defeat the Utu Tonah.”

Garza started toward the draasin, but it breathed out a small streamer of fire, and she stopped, stepping back. “You should not have been able to reach that place. None has managed to do so since Par was founded.”

That would explain the difficulty that Tan had in reaching it.

“The elementals granted access.
That
is the reason I reached it. Now. You will send word?” Tan asked.

Garza pulled her gaze off the draasin. “You would really want me to share what you did?”

“Not what I did, but how one of your own was attacked. I may not know much about your heritage, but I have learned this much: Par shared many of the same values with me. If anything, I will see that Par is restored.”

Garza swallowed. “You would do this?”

Tan smiled tightly. He hadn’t known what he intended to accomplish in coming here, but now he thought that he understood. He
would
restore Par, though he might not know what that meant. In time, he would. “I will do what is necessary,” he said.

Garza watched him a moment and then nodded before leaving.

Tan sighed as looked upon the fallen shaper. He sensed Maclin’s approach, and the man bowed to him again, his gaze sweeping back to the draasin. “Would you pardon a question, my Utu Tonah?”

Tan nodded.

“That… creature. Is it yours?”

He stepped toward the draasin. He should have been more cautious about revealing the draasin here, especially knowing how the prior Utu Tonah had attempted to reach them. Even with Garza there had been risk, but with her, the risk had been greater that she wouldn’t be willing to help Tolman. With Maclin… he didn’t know what Maclin would do or what side he fell on.

What would happen if Maclin knew how to force bonds? Would he attempt to do so with this draasin? The elemental was too young to safely take a bond, and if he did, he would be powerful.

“The elementals belong to no one,” Tan said.

Maclin blinked. “Of course, my Utu Tonah. Only I… I had not expected to see one so young. You will bond it?”

Tan doubted that he would bond fire again. Since losing Asboel, a part of him missed the bond and wished to have the connection to one of the fire elementals, but now he had a connection to
all
the fire elementals through the fire bond itself. It was different than what he had shared with Asboel—there was not the guidance that he once had received from the draasin—but Tan no longer needed the same level of advice. He had changed so much since he first had bonded to Asboel, and the nature of the bond had changed during that time as well. Now Tan found his guidance elsewhere, through the fire bond or from spirit or even from the other elementals. But he doubted that he would find the same connection to fire again.

“This draasin will take no bond unless he decides,” Tan said. He put the force of spirit behind his words, wanting there to be no question to Maclin, or whoever Maclin might tell about the draasin, of what Tan’s intentions were for the creature.

Maclin remained quiet for a few moments before letting out a long sigh. “You truly are different than him, aren’t you?”

There was no
Utu Tonah
, and no fear in the way that Maclin asked, only curiosity. Tan noted how the servant no longer stood with a deferential pose but held his hands clasped in front of him, seemingly at peace.

Was the answer to his question about Par versus Par-shon in front of him the entire time?

“I am not the Utu Tonah,” Tan said. Perhaps it was time for the people of Par-shon to see that. If he were to remain here and lead—and given the need that he’d seen and the fact that there were draasin remaining for him to protect, he suspected that he needed to remain—he would take on a title of his choosing. And there was only one that he could think to use. “I am the Maelen.”

His bonded elementals responded to his statement with something that seemed almost a cheer. All referred to him as Maelen, but Tan had never really shared that openly. Why would he now, other than it simply felt
right.

Maclin nodded. “There will be others who will seek to defeat you, especially now that you have brought—” he nodded to the draasin, “—back to Par. But the Lasithan will now know you, and they will support you.”

“I take it from the statement that you lead the Lasithan?” The word had some familiarity, as if it had roots in ancient
Ishthin
, but Tan didn’t recognize it.

Maclin took a breath and nodded. “There have always been some who knew and understood. Even when
he
came, we watched, and waited, and did what was needed to keep the past safe, knowing that the future would depend on it.”

“What past were you wanting to keep safe?” Tan asked.

“There is the past that is known, and the past that is unknown,” Maclin said. “The Lasithan aim to keep both safe, though the unknown past is most relevant.”

Tan wondered what Honl would say if he had a chance to speak to Maclin. Would the wind elemental, especially with his newfound interest in understanding the past, feel as compelled as Maclin? Would Maclin know something that Honl had not discovered? Maybe Maclin would even have answers to the strange darkness that Honl seemed convinced existed.

“Then you are of Par?” Tan asked.

Maclin glanced to Tolman. “Of Par, preceding Par.” He shook his head. “Both answers would be similar, I think. The Lasithan have served.”

“Did you know?”

Maclin tipped his head to the side and frowned.

“Did you know what he intended when he made his push across the sea?”

“Ah. You still think this is all about a quest for power.”

“Wasn’t it?” Tan glanced at Tolman and felt the pull of the elementals in the room. Once, such awareness would have failed him in Par-shon, but then, the elementals had failed everyone in Par-shon.

No, he decided, that wasn’t quite right. The people of Par-shon had failed the elementals. Had they not, the Utu Tonah never would have pushed hard enough to damage them. He never would have grown strong enough to force Tan to confront him. But then, Tan would never have needed to come to Par-shon and learn about the draasin eggs here.

Asboel had often claimed that the Great Mother had a plan for him, and that was the reason that Tan was asked to do as much as he was. Tan wondered how that could possibly have been true, but then, he had been the only one to realize that the lisincend could be saved. Tan had been the only one willing to give the hounds a chance at redemption. What would have been lost had he simply attacked them like so many others had over the years? Elementals would have been lost, and so many already had been.

It was the same with kaas. Had Tan not searched for an alternative, another way to stop the creature, he would have been forced to destroy the elemental. He wasn’t even certain it was possible for him to destroy kaas, but had the twisted elemental continued to attack the people and elementals of his homeland, what other choice would Tan have had? Yet it almost seemed as if the Great Mother
had
brought him face to face with kaas, as if she
wanted
Tan to be the one to help, knowing who he was and what he believed.

And if that were the case, how could Tan
not
continue to search for what role the Great Mother might have for him?

“You saw that there was more to his plan,” Maclin said. “I can see it in your face, Maelen.”

It was strange, yet also fitting, to have someone other than the elementals refer to him as Maelen. When the elementals did it, it always reminded Tan of his connection to Asboel and the nickname that the draasin had placed upon him. With Maclin, it felt like more of a title, yet no less appropriate.

“What was this Unity that he sought?”

Maclin sighed. “You ask what others were not able to determine. As much as we wanted to know his mind, to understand what drove him, we were never able to determine what it was that he truly wanted. At the beginning, most thought it nothing more than power, but that desire changed over time.”

From reading the Utu Tonah’s journal, Tan didn’t think that it had been about power, at least not at first. It might have become about that, but when he first came to Par, there had been more of a curiosity than anything else, and a desire to understand the elementals through bonding to them. He had wanted power, but it was not power for the sake of power. To Tan, that seemed different.

But something changed for him, and Tan wasn’t sure when it had.

“Garza said he failed. And Tolman told me that he had wanted to find the draasin.”

“He knew that draasin still existed. Fire would have changed had the draasin truly been eliminated entirely. That it had not told him that somewhere, there was a potential for them. When he first arrived, and we began to suspect what he was after, the Lasithan worked especially hard to hide their existence. Some feared that he would bond enough elementals that it wouldn’t matter. I admit that I was among them. But then the draasin appeared across the sea.” Maclin nodded to Tan.

“They were restored to this world,” Tan said. “And I don’t regret the fact that I did.”

Maclin smiled. In the time that they’d been talking, Maclin had dropped his subservient demeanor and had adopted a more confident manner. This was a man accustomed to leading.

“You should not regret returning fire to this world. I think that without it,
he
would have succeeded in reaching them eventually. In that way, you and your connection to them prevented a much worse catastrophe.”

Freeing Asboel had given Tan the connection to the draasin, and through the draasin, to the fire bond. That, as much as anything, had been the way that he’d managed to defeat the Utu Tonah. “What will your Lasithan do now?”