Free Fortress Of Fire (Book 4) by D.K. Holmberg Page A

that knowledge to help him find the shaping he needed?
    The shaping didn’t come. As much as he wanted to pull from inside him, the shaping wasn’t there. Tan could feel the draw of ara: were he to speak to it, there would be power at his fingertips, but the shaping wouldn’t respond to him.
    “I can’t reach it,” he said.
    His mother sniffed. “Can you reach fire without speaking to the draasin?” Tan nodded and she frowned. “Why must it be different with wind?”
    “I don’t know. You’re the Master shaper. Why can’t you tell me why it’s different for me? I hadn’t even known how different my shaping was until I realized that almost everything I did was powered by the elementals. That was the only way I was able to stop Althem.”
    She ignored his frustration as easily as she had when he had been a child. “Try again. This time, focus on your breathing. Listen to the sounds of the wind around you.”
    “There is no wind around me.”
    “No? Then why can I hear it in every breath you take? How can I hear the way the leaves rustle softly? How can I hear the blades of grasses bending ever so slightly? Wind is always around us. More than any of the other elements, it is wind that gives us life.”
    Tan focused on his breathing. At least he could control that. At first, there was nothing but the steady sounds of his breathing. But with each breath, he recognized more. Slowly, he began to feel the air moving in and out of his lungs, the way it moved through his nose and mouth, sliding across his teeth. There was an almost imperceptible sound it made as it whistled through his nose.
    He listened for other sounds of wind as his mother asked. There was the sound of her breathing, different than his. Her breaths were slow and steady, but he recognized the pattern from growing up around her. He shifted his attention to the sound of the wind in the trees. The air around him felt still, but was it? If she could hear the way it pulled at leaves, could he?
    At first, no. Then, slowly, he noticed a distinct faint shimmering sound to the air. Tan focused on this, on the wind that might not be moving around him but that nevertheless moved.
    With a breath of a shaping, he pulled through him, tying the connection to his breathing to the wind rustling around him. Leaves fluttered with a little more force and then the wind returned, blowing steadily.
    He turned to his mother and smiled. “Like that?”
    “That’s better, but you take too long with your shaping.”
    “It’s not natural to me to focus on my breathing before forming a shaping.”
    “And it’s natural for you to simply push fire from yourself?”
    “There’s the bond with the draasin,” he said. “That’s why I can use fire.”
    “Hmm. I’m not certain it’s quite so simple. You use fire easily, Tannen. I’d like you to have the same skill with one of the other elements. I can teach you wind. You understand the concepts, so I think you’ll be able to reach for it more quickly each time you do. After a while, you’ll gain enough practice that you won’t rely on the elementals. There may come a time when they don’t respond as you’d like.” She took a leaping step on another gust of wind. “Now. Try again. This time, you will need to hold your focus while I try to prevent the shaping.”
    “You weren’t preventing it before?”
    She shook her head. “I simply caused the wind to fail. This time, I’ll work against you. For you to gain strength, you’ll need focus and speed. Failure of either around a more skilled shaper could put you at too much of a disadvantage.”
    “But I can shape all the elements.”
    She fixed him with a strange look. “Then show me. Stop me using any of the elements.”
    A sudden gust of air caught him off guard. She wrapped wind around him, holding him tightly. Tan pulled fire through him, burning the wind away. His mother glared at him and with a renewed shaping, lifted him to the air. Tan shifted his focus,