Free Cloud Warrior 05 - Forged in Fire by D. K. Holmberg Page B

connection.”
    He felt her agree without her needing to say anything.
    Tan unsheathed the sword. What they would do might work with the sword sheathed, but there was a reassurance to being able to see the runes along the surface as they shaped. He placed the tip into the stone of the floor and stood over it. He drew a spirit shaping through the blade, feeling how the weapon added to his own strength.
    Then he pressed through the connection he and Amia shared. She gasped softly but quickly took control. She guided the shaping, adding her touch to spirit, twisting and weaving it so that it layered over Cora. As she worked, Tan began to recognize some of what she did, almost as if holding this much spirit gave him insight. It was healing, but it was more than that. There was a questing to what she shaped, a search for understanding.
    He felt the shaping as it moved through Cora. There was resistance at first and then he detected a void, a sense of nothingness that should not exist. Wrapped around the void, he sensed a shaping of spirit, layered many times, built by Amia and the First Mother.
    Tan recognized the emptiness, and saw how to heal Cora, suddenly understanding that Amia and the First Mother would not be able to do it alone. Drawing through the sword, he pulled on each of the elements, mixing them together and adding this to spirit. He sent this shaping through the connection, through Amia.
    “No, Tan—”
    The shaping settled in Cora, filling the void. There was a flash and she moaned. Her breathing stopped and, for a moment, it seemed her heart stopped. The emptiness filled, expanding with the addition of the elements. Amia lost control of the shaping—she could handle spirit, but the others were more than she could manage—and Tan took over, recognizing what needed to be done.
    He pressed the shaping directly now. The void began to disappear, filled with elemental power, until only the shaping around the remnants remained. Drawing on spirit, he peeled the layers placed by Amia and the First Mother away. Spirit flooded through her, expanding outward, pulled by the draw upon the sword.
    Tan lost control and spirit flooded from him. Awareness filled him, reminding him of the day he had stepped in the pool of liquid spirit.
    What had he been thinking? He didn’t know enough to control this shaping. Amia might not even know enough to control this shaping.
    Spirit continued to expand away from him, drawn by the sword. It exploded outward, flooding through Tan, through the sword, everywhere, until it faded.
    Cora gasped.
    Tan released the shaping. As he did, there was a familiar and distant sense, one he hadn’t heard in months. Tan wasn’t even sure he heard it correctly, but then it came again, echoing with his name, a sense of terror mixed in.
    Elle?
    He was certain it was her. As he thought he heard a response, he collapsed.

7
    Warrior’s Return
    T an awoke on the hard floor. His back throbbed, and pain that hadn’t been there before pulsed in his mind. Flashes of light swam around him, almost like elementals. A strange woman leaned over him, looking down at him through deep brown eyes. It took him a moment to recognize Cora.
    “You’re alive,” she said.
    Tan grunted and rolled over, pushing to his knees. Amia lay next to him, her breathing slow and steady, his connection to her telling him that she was simply asleep rather than injured more seriously.
    “I could say the same about you. What happened?”
    Cora still sat on the bed and Tan surveyed the rest of the small room. The fire had faded to little more than nothing. With a soft shaping—one that came from her—flames suddenly leapt and danced, and saa was drawn to it. “Where am I?” she asked.
    “Ethea. The kingdoms.”
    “Ethea?” She said the name with a strange inflection, and her mouth pinched. “How? The last I remember, I was in Par-shon. There was pain… death… I…”
    Tan breathed out slowly. His head hammered and throbbed. He