Serpent of Fire by D. K. Holmberg

hovered, focusing on the ground below. He needed to find the Par-shon shapers and some way to keep them from capturing golud. In Doma, he had used a combination of elements, binding them together and adding spirit to the shaping to reveal the earth shapers, but maybe there was another way that wouldn’t depend on his ability to detect Par-shon.
    He needed to keep them from succeeding now. That meant doing whatever it took to stop Par-shon.
    Tan worked a shaping, binding it with spirit. He pulled this shaping to the ground, slamming it into the earth, where it struck and spread widely.
    To the east, he sensed an emptiness where the shaping should have held.
    Ferran’s head snapped up and his brow furrowed. He lifted on a shaping of earth and raced alongside Tan.
    Rather than a shaper, they found a deep hole shaped into the ground, almost perfectly round. A long, slender rod of black metal plunged into the hole. Runes etched along the surface of the rod caught and reflected the moonlight.
    “We must remove this,” Tan said.
    “This is meant to force a bond?”
    “I think so. These runes,” Tan said, pointing to the ones he could see. From what he could tell, the runes extended all along the rod, “they mark earth, but there is something to it I don’t understand. A binding of sorts.”
    Ferran studied the rod and started shaping.
    Tan grabbed him, and without thinking, pulled the earth shaping away and sent it into the ground. “Careful!”
    Ferran eyed him. “What would it have done?”
    “You’re bound to golud?” Tan asked. “When I was in Par-shon, there was a room there. Runes like these covered the walls. Really, runes like these covered the walls everywhere throughout the obsidian palace. They prevent shaping, but they’re for more than that, I think. At least the ones in the testing room seemed to be for more than that. They separate the bonded from the elementals.”
    Ferran pulled away from him and crouched in front of the rod. He touched it carefully, running his hand along the metal. Tan doubted that simply touching it would do anything. From what he could tell, the runes only responded to shaping.
    “These are what they use to separate the elementals from the bonded?” Ferran asked.
    “These are what they use to force the bond,” Tan said.
    He didn’t tell Ferran that the same runes were found in the lower level of the archives, in books and texts from over a thousand years ago, when the kingdoms’ shapers had used similar techniques to bind elementals. It no longer mattered that the ancients had done what Par-shon now did. What mattered was that Tan was determined to stop it.
    “This must be destroyed,” Ferran said.
    “Yes.”
    Augmented by earth shaping, Ferran pulled the rod out of the earth. The rod was nearly twenty feet long, and runes continued all along it. Once free of the hole, Ferran set it on the ground.
    Tan studied it. As far as he knew, it was still active. The only thing he knew to do with items of power like this was to use spirit, but he’d never attempted to do it on things meant to steal the elemental power. He’d broken bonds and he’d destroyed the runes in the Par-shon palace, but this seemed different. If he was wrong, would he be somehow bound?
    He had to try. The longer he waited, the more likely it would be that Par-shon would manage to steal a bond to golud.
    Tan took a steadying breath. As he did, he sent out a warning to those bonded to him, to Asboel, Honl, the nymid, and Amia. Be ready.
    With a shaping of spirit, he probed the rod. It struck the metal and vanished. Tan could all but hear a slurping sound as it was sucked in. Tan attempted a different shaping, avoiding earth, choosing fire—the counter to earth—and mixing spirit. Again, he sensed the runes simply absorbing his shaping. He added water and air, fusing them together, but nothing changed.
    Tan released the shaping. The silence from golud left him anxious, knowing that he needed to hurry.