Free Born of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 8) by D.K. Holmberg Page A

level of the archives appeared no different than the last time Tan had come here, but in a way, it was very different. When he’d been here last, the kingdoms had been on the verge of defeat to Par-shon, and he had sought answers, possibly even the kind that would allow him to somehow rebuild the artifact and discover a way to use it that the ancient shapers hadn’t considered. Except, he’d damaged the artifact attempting to shape it. Now it would never again be used.
    In many ways, Tan knew that was good. The artifact, a long metal cylinder that had been formed using a combined shaping of each of the elements, somehow binding elementals into it, had been a creation of such power that when he held it, he thought he would be able to shape the world, that he would be able to do anything that he wanted. Such power was dangerous, even to him.
    Maybe especially to him. Tan had shaping ability, or else he wouldn’t have been able to use the artifact, but it was more than his ability to shape. Althem had had that, or he wouldn’t have been able to use the artifact. Rather, it had been Tan’s ability to reach the elementals, his connection to powers more ancient than him, that might have proven dangerous. They had given him a connection and grounding, but would he have been able to maintain that grounding while controlling power like the artifact allowed?
    Tan liked to think that he could, but what if he were wrong?
    He stared at the wall of books. All around him were the ancient volumes brought and kept here by the shapers who had come long before him, knowledge that should be enough to answer any question that he had, but much like the portraits on the wall in the palace, some of the books served only as reminders of what should not be. The harnessing of elementals had been done out of ignorance, not out of a place of knowledge.
    How much else was there like that?
    Then there was the hut within the swamp outside of Doma. He pulled the book that he’d discovered there from his pocket and set it on the table next to him. He’d left it in the home he’d once shared with Amia, setting it aside for a time when he would have the opportunity to study its contents, but there never had seemed to be the right time. And then he’d taken to staying with Amia in the wagon with the Aeta and had forgotten about it entirely. Maybe there was something in it that could help.
    Stamped into the cover was a rune for each of the elements. The thick leather had the sense of age and Tan folded it open carefully, knowing that this book was older than most books within the archive. He remembered the first time he’d read it, translating the Ishthin and realizing that he had found not only an ancient book but one that promised to hold secrets that he needed.
    All the time that he’d spent becoming disenchanted with what the ancient shapers had done, only to find this .
    Tan flipped the first few pages, skimming them. A journal, or letters. The writing seemed directed to someone, almost as if whoever had kept the record had intended it for someone else. Had this other person been the one with the hut in the swamp, or was there someone else? Maybe the person who had written this had been the person in the swamp and the book had never reached its target.
    Unlike many of the texts that he’d read in the archives, this one interested him on a different level. Not only could he learn from the past, but he thought that he could begin to understand some of the ancient shapers, and maybe he could understand what they knew and why the elementals had been harnessed, or why there had been a desire to attempt the crossings of elementals, the same crossing that had formed creatures like kaas, or the hounds.
    Wind swirled quickly, fluttering the page that had caught his attention.
    Tan slapped his hand over the cover to protect it. Had his mother come to the archives to find him? The Great Mother knew she rarely had come down before. Roine visited often