Changed By Fire (Book 3) by D.K. Holmberg

a burnt orange shirt beneath. Maroon embroidery worked around the neck. “How do you end up in Incendin accidentally?”
    He shrugged. “It’s a long story.”
    “See? Now you’re stupid again. How else to explain you ‘accidentally’ end up in Incendin?”
    “That’s a different story,” he said. “But Incendin was bleak. The sun burned down. Nothing but rocks and stunted plants, some which tried to kill me, all around. And then the sound of the hounds calling all around.” Tan couldn’t imagine being there for long periods of time.
    How had Lacertin managed to survive years there?
    Cianna nodded slowly. “That is Incendin. Nara is not quite so… barren. Still harsh. You wonder why I don’t go to Incendin to learn? I would have to go there, survive the worst of Incendin to reach the Fire Fortress. And then?” She shook her head. “Lacertin might have been willing to risk it—the Great Mother only knows why—but I am unwilling.”
    “That’s why you want to speak to the draasin?”
    She turned her head toward him and smiled. “Sometimes you’re almost smart.”
    “I don’t know that the draasin teach,” Tan said. “I’m not certain any of the elementals ever teach.”
    “No? Then how do you think the first shapers learned?”
    “That’s what I intend to find out.”
    She frowned as he pulled the horse to a stop and jumped from the saddle. A cluster of fallen rubble lay across the road in front of them. Behind the rocks, men wearing the king’s colors—deep brown and a forest green like the one Roine wore when Tan first met him—worked, trying to clear the road. They nodded at Cianna and then at him but said nothing.
    He tied the reins around a loose boulder to keep the horse from bolting. He’d have to find a stable to house it, but Cianna likely knew of one.
    She waited, looking down from her saddle at him. “Why here? What do you hope to find?”
    Tan turned and surveyed the city from this vantage point. It hadn’t been long since he’d been here, but it felt ages ago. How much had changed in the weeks he had been gone? How much had he changed? It seemed each time he faced Incendin he changed even more. How much of that change had been for the good?
    Tan turned to the low, squat stone building of the archives. Fires that had swept through the city had not harmed the archives, not like the surrounding buildings. Golud had helped build the archives, and the elemental power still protected them.
    Tan sighed. What did he hope to find here?
    “Answers,” he finally said.
    Cianna frowned, hesitating for a moment as if she considered what she would do.
    Would she try to stop him? She was a Master shaper. She could stop him from accessing the archives, prevent him from accessing the hidden demesne of the archivists.
    “What do you think to find in the archives?” Cianna asked.
    Tan stared at the building. If not for his ability to sense, he wouldn’t even know golud pressed beneath him, supporting—and protecting—the archives. What he wanted to know wasn’t even in the archives, but below it. Answers had to be there, else why would the archivists work so hard to protect it?
    Cianna waited for his answer, sitting in her saddle and staring down at him.
    Tan sighed. “I don’t want to go into the archives.”
    She frowned.
    “What I want is below it.”
    A flash of understanding turned back her frown. She nodded and hopped from the saddle, barking an amused laugh. “Nothing there but more mysteries,” she said. “But I’ll go with you. Not much I can do—or you, I’d wager—but seeing as there aren’t many archivists to stop us, it doesn’t hurt to look.”

5
    Return to the Archives
    C ianna lit the small lanterns hanging around the archives. Once the flickering orange light began glowing, Tan saw how the place appeared deserted but not abandoned. Books were stacked atop tables, picked up from where they must have fallen in the explosion. A few shelves were tipped to the