Read Online Born of Fire (The Cloud Warrior Saga Book 8) by D.K. Holmberg - Free Book Online

was Utu Tonah. Could he serve as both?
    Did he truly intend to continue to serve as Utu Tonah?
    Maybe it would be the same as Amia serving as First Mother. There were parts of the responsibility that he didn’t want, but then the alternative left him with a different set of concerns. If not him, then who? Tan didn’t think that he was any more capable than someone else, but he had been the one to defeat the Utu Tonah.
    Ferran’s eyes narrowed. “Athan?” he repeated.
    Tan sighed. “I’m not sure that I deserve that title anymore.”
    Ferran laughed and leaned in. With a whisper, he said, “I feel the same way when the students call me Master .”
    Tan regarded the students again, thinking of all that they had been through. What did they know about their heritage? Hopefully nothing. Learning what Althem had done might be devastating to some, but he could easily image others having a different reaction, one where they felt a desire for power, where they believed they had a right to rule.
    “How many have shown shaping potential?” he asked.
    “More than I expected,” Ferran said. “Though, if I am honest with you, I don’t know that I thought any would demonstrate any real potential. Possessing parents with the ability to shape is no guarantee that it will pass on.”
    Tan smiled. “Seems to help.”
    Ferran turned back to him and chuckled. “You would be an interesting case, I believe. Most shapers don’t have a lineage where they descend from shaper after shaper, let alone two of the strongest shapers the kingdoms have known in years.”
    Tan glanced over at the university. “Speaking of my mother, is she here?”
    “You look in the wrong place to find Zephra. She will teach, though not as often as I would like. But most of her time is spent in the palace.”
    Knowing that his mother wasn’t alone brought him a measure of happiness. They had mourned his father, but Zephra deserved to know a sense of contentment, as did Roine.
    “I would also have you teach, Athan,” Ferran went on.
    Tan nodded absently, his mind going back to Par-shon and the students that he’d met there. When he returned, he would need to teach them as he promised, to determine which of the students he could use and which would need additional time so that he didn’t have to fear them chasing after the elemental bonds again.
    “I’ll come by later,” Tan said.
    The comment seemed to placate Ferran, who nodded. He raised a hand toward the children, settling them with little more than a look. “That would be appreciated, Athan.”
    With that, Ferran left him and hurried back over to the group of children, who he ushered out from the university and onto the street beyond.
    Tan stood for a moment, debating what he would do, before drawing on a shaping of wind that brought him to the archives.
    There was a time that he would have pulled on the wind elemental, but Honl had changed since he’d rescued him from kaas, and even more in the weeks following. Now, Honl was something else. Tan no longer knew if he was even a wind elemental, or if the rescue, and the need to use spirit in Honl’s saving, had changed him.
    It had been weeks since he’d seen Honl. That time, the wind elemental had asked him questions, querying him about the connections he shared with the elementals, and then had disappeared again. If he searched for him, reaching through his connection to wind, he could probably find him, but Honl was little more than a vague awareness on his senses.
    Landing in front of the archives, Tan found the door closed and locked. He frowned. In his time in Ethea, the archives had never been locked. They had been damaged during one of the attacks on the city but never blocked. Had Roine changed something since he’d been away?
    Tan had another way that he could reach the archives but hadn’t expected to need it. Doing so would take him through the palace and might force him to answer questions about what he had done, and why. Neither