Cloud Warrior 05 - Forged in Fire Read Free Page A

not. That’s why I was foolish enough to think her safe. Now where is she? Did she run off?”
    Tan pointed to Cora.
    “Is she dead?” Wallyn asked. The bland way he asked made it clear he wouldn’t have minded.
    “No, knocked out with a shaping of spirit.”
    Wallyn pursed his lips as he eyed Amia. “Spirit? Haven’t we seen enough shapings of spirit around here?”
    “ I was the one to shape spirit,” Tan said, dragging Wallyn’s attention away from Amia. “And we’ve seen entirely the wrong types of spirit shapings. There are beneficial uses to spirit.”
    “Hmm. It seems to me that the kingdoms have survived for hundreds of years without warriors who can shape spirit. It does make you wonder whether it is even necessary. Perhaps the Great Mother thought to draw it away from our shapers. She would know the dangers of spirit.”
    Tan decided against getting into an argument with Wallyn. There were too many like him who feared spirit, feared the way it could be used, even though Tan had begun to suspect that many shapers could use a form of it. In time, Roine could be taught to weave the elements together in such a way that he could shape spirit. In some ways, it was different than a true shaping of spirit, but it was through the shaping of spirit in that way that Tan had learned to reach true spirit.
    Cora started to stir, so Tan crouched next to her. She flickered her eyes open, staring at him for a moment, and then began thrashing.
    Tan looked up at Wallyn. “Can you help with this?”
    The massive water shaper grunted and lowered his sizable heft to the ground, taking the time to splay his dress out around him so that it wouldn’t get dirtied. His shaping built from deep within and washed out from him slowly, first in a trickle, then building to a steadier wave that spread over the woman. She continued shaking uncontrollably.
    Tan had seen something like it before, only he hadn’t expected to see it here, or from Cora. As far as he had known, she was already separated from her bonded elemental. That had been the reason she was confined in Par-shon.
    Wallyn’s shaping eased and he pushed himself up, lifting the edges of his dress as he did. He wiped his hands together. “There is nothing I can do. I have not seen anything like this before.”
    Tan shot him an annoyed look and touched Cora on the wrist. He might not have the same skill with healing as the water shaper, but there were things that he could do.
    He focused first on his breathing and then stretched out toward the nymid that worked through the bedrock of the city. The great water elemental infused the stone, mingling with golud deep beneath the city where the dampness and moisture still clung, down where Tan had chosen to hide the draasin.
    Nymid. Help me heal this woman.
    The calling took strength, but Tan had grown much stronger since first reaching for the elemental all those months before. Without thinking about it, he mixed the request with a shaping of water and spirit, strengthening it.
    There was a soft fluttering against his senses as the nymid came to the surface. He Who is Tan. She is damaged. There is no healing.
    Why?
    She was, the nymid seemed to search for a word that Tan would understand, connected to that which is no more.
    Yes. She was bonded. Her elemental was severed from her.
    The ground grew damp as the nymid surfaced, leaving a thin green sheen on the rock. It bubbled up and washed over Cora, leaving her skin with a faint hint of green as well. The convulsing eased but did not stop altogether.
    Was this my fault? Tan asked. Did the shaping of spirit cause this?
    Not cause, He Who is Tan. She remembers. Her body rejects. There is no healing from water.
    Tan rocked back on his heels, trying to come up with some way to help Cora. Water might not be able to heal, but when he’d attempted to save his mother, he had wondered what role spirit might play. Tan focused on the connection to the nymid, used what he sensed from the