A Fading Fire

by D. K. Holmberg

  “What do you mean?”

  “What I mean is that the elemental didn’t react the way I was expecting. I don’t really know what was going on with it.”

  “Do you think it was influenced by something Roland did?”

  Tolan shrugged, taking a seat at his desk. “I don’t know. It felt as if he had used something, though even with that, I can’t answer you with much certainty. He could’ve pulled spirit off it, changing the elemental in a way, or he could have simply tormented the elemental within the bondar.”

  “Or it could have been a different elemental.”

  Tolan looked over. “What was that?”

  Ferrah shrugged. “It could have been a different elemental. Think about it. Roland comes from the land Beyond. What if he used one of those elementals?”

  Tolan frowned. “I suppose it’s possible.”

  “The elementals were different. You said that yourself.”

  Tolan nodded. “The times I’ve gone back, I haven’t found any sign of the elementals we encountered when we were first there.”

  “How many times have you gone looking?”

  Tolan shrugged. “Perhaps not that often.”

  “Do you think you should go back?”

  “Would it make a difference?” he asked.

  “If it helps you understand what Roland intends, then I think it would.”

  Tolan smiled, and he shook his head. “Even if I knew which elemental he had used, I’m not so sure that it would make a difference.”

  Ferrah took a seat next to him, settling onto the ground, as there wasn’t another chair. She looked up. “You know, the Grand Master did give you permission to go and see what more you can find in the land Beyond. Not look at Convergences, regardless of how that might help you understand Roland. Maybe it’s time that we do that.”

  “We need to do that. We need to find a way to know what he intends with the bond. We need to prevent him from attacking the other bonds. We need to—”

  Ferrah took his hand, squeezing it. “We need to do all those things. We should start with one, though.”

  “I don’t know if I have it in me to bring somebody else with us.”

  Her brow furrowed as she studied him. “If you’re not willing to have somebody else come with us, then let me make a few preparations.”

  “What preparations do you need to make?”

  “Wait here.”

  He only nodded.

  She got to her feet and hurried away. Tolan sat, looking out across the spirit tower.

  Times like these made him wish he didn’t have to teach. Not that he disliked teaching. There were aspects of it that he absolutely did enjoy. He liked the fact that he was willing to teach aspects of subjects that he had not learned from the Academy and had been forced to uncover on his own. He liked that he could discuss the elementals with the students, and that he gave them accurate information about those elementals, unlike some of the lessons he’d had when he had been student. Too many of his instructors had not known the truth about the elementals. He liked that he offered aspects of the runes and that knowledge to the students.

  But he felt conflicted because there were other things that needed his attention.

  He shuffled through his papers. There were no answers there. He had surveyed all of Terndahl and had not come up with anything to explain where Roland might attack next.

  Having visited as many of the Convergences as he had, he still didn’t know what Roland had been after.

  He closed his eyes, focusing on the power of the Convergence here, and used the spirit rune to guide him. As he did, he could feel the energy flowing from the Convergence, directed.

  He opened his eyes, frowning.

  He knew the Convergences were tied together, a connection formed as they flowed toward the heart of the waste and the Guardians that were there. What he didn’t know was why the Guardians were there. He also didn’t know what purpose the ancient shapers had in creating something like that.

  If it was all about suppressing some dark energy, the Chaos that they had battled before, then Tolan wondered why the land Beyond was so different. There didn’t seem to be a Convergence there. There was no connection to the element bonds. Even shaping felt different. Those were the questions he needed to be asking, and the understanding he needed to have.

  By the time Ferrah returned, he was making a circuit of the spirit tower, pacing in place.

  “What did you do?”

  She held out a bondar. “I filled as many as I could. If we’re going to travel to the land Beyond, I wanted to make sure that I’m ready for whatever we might encounter.”

  “I don’t think we’re going to come across Roland.”

  She shrugged. “Even if we do, I want to be prepared. He can shape spirit, but I have experience shaping the other elements. He’s not going to trap me again.”

  They headed out of the spirit tower, up to the top of the Academy, and with a warrior shaping, Tolan carried them to the edge of the waste.

  A sense of emptiness stretched all around him. Out here upon the waste, with nothing but heat and the expanse of rock around him, that sense of emptiness was almost a physical presence. That feeling of presence pressed in upon him, forcing him to acknowledge it. He focused on that sense, breathing it in, aware of it but also reassured by it. Having that emptiness around him gave him a certain familiarity.

  “Why does it seem as if you enjoy being out here?”

  Tolan turned to Ferrah. The sunlight shone upon her red hair, and without much of a breeze, it hung around her shoulders; she hadn’t bothered to tie it back. Her deep blue eyes scanned the entirety of the waste, and her lips pressed together in a harsh frown. She couldn’t hide her discomfort in being here. She no longer tried.

  “It’s not a matter of enjoying being out here, it’s a matter of this feeling the way it’s supposed to.”

  “It doesn’t feel the way anything is supposed to,” Ferrah said, pulling out one of the orb bondars, a device that held a shaping inside and allowed her to use it while on the waste, and holding onto it. She used a shaping from that bondar, letting power flow outward. The wind began to stir, spinning up a little bit of dust, debris starting to spiral around them. Nothing else moved.

  “I keep worrying Roland is going to change even the waste. Coming out here, feeling the way it does now, the emptiness that’s supposed to be here, I’m reassured nothing more has changed.”

  “He won’t be able to move the waste.”

  “I’m not so sure that he won’t. My mother was almost able to alter it.”

  He turned his attention back toward the center of the waste. From here, the far north edge, he wasn’t even able to feel the sense of the Guardians near the center. There was nothing. It was almost comforting, if that emptiness could ever be comforting.

  “If we’re going to do this, then shouldn’t we travel all the way beyond the waste?” Ferrah asked. “We’ve done it before. We know what’s out there.”

  “We know what’s out there, but I’m testing before going any farther,” he said. “Ever since Roland escaped, I’ve been trying to find where he’s gone. We’ve looked all through Terndahl, and we haven’t found any evidence of him. More of the attempts to isolate the bonds, but nothing else. He has to be somewhere.” Tolan sighed deeply. “I thought by coming here, I could see if there was anything he’d begun to influence.”

  He didn’t really expect he would have come out to the waste to implement it. It didn’t seem the kind of thing Roland would be interested in. He was far more interested in the idea of shifting and moving power around, rather than anything that had to do with the waste itself.

  If Tolan were honest with himself, he suspected that Roland wouldn’t come here, and that was part of the reason Tolan found it so appealing to come here. There would be no evidence of the other man, and there would be no reason to be afraid of him.

  “If he’s not in Terndahl, then he’s in the Beyond.”

&nb
sp; That was what they used to describe the land past the waste. They’d spent some time there, though not as much as Tolan wanted. He needed to understand that land, to know what was there.

  “Which is why we’re taking our journey today,” he said.

  Tolan held his hand out, waiting for Ferrah. When she took it, he called to the elements, binding them together in the warrior shaping before adding spirit. A bolt of lightning streaked from the sky, carrying them up and then forward.

  He didn’t use a powerful tug of energy. It was enough to carry them out of the waste and into the green lands of the Beyond.

  They didn’t have a name for these lands. All he knew of it was that it was beyond the waste. There was a time when he would have said that traveling here, reaching any place beyond the waste, was impossible.

  These lands were so different than those within Terndahl, and strikingly different than the waste. At the edge of the waste, a grassy plain stretched forward, eventually turning to a dense forest—at least in this section of these lands. Tolan had not visited this area often since defeating Roland the first time, though he knew that he needed to spend more time here. There were answers that he had yet to find, an understanding of the strange elementals who lived in this land; elementals who were so strikingly different than the elementals of his own land. As far as he had been able to determine, they were elementals who wanted nothing to do with any connection to mankind, behavior that was quite different than the elementals within Terndahl. Despite having been forced into the element bonds, those elementals still wanted contact with humans.

  The energy here was different, though. There was power, though Tolan could not reach it as easily as he could within Terndahl. Still, he could reach it, something that others like Ferrah could not.

  He breathed in heavily, calling upon more power. They were out of the waste, and out of lands that were designed to separate shapers from their bonds, to keep them from being able to move easily across it, but even here, there was a separation. Ferrah looked over at him. “I still don’t like this place.”

  “You can sense the elements.”

  “I sense them, but I can’t use them. If it weren’t for this,” she held up the orb, and it glowed slightly, showing off the power within it, “then I wouldn’t be able to do anything. You’d better not let me get captured again.”

  He started to laugh. “I’ll do my best.”

  “I’m not kidding, Tolan.”

  “If there is any sort of threat, I’ll return us to the Academy immediately.”

  That seemed to placate her, though if there was any sort of attack, Tolan wasn’t entirely sure he would have the necessary strength and control in order to be able to return them to the Academy as quickly as they might need. Out here, the sense of energy was considerable, and he might able to use it to connect to the element bonds—though not the way that he traditionally would—but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t call upon power. He wasn’t the only one out here who could do that.

  They took to the air, a shaping of wind and fire lifting them and sweeping low above the ground. Tolan didn’t want to travel on the warrior shaping here. It would carry him too quickly, and he wouldn’t be able to see anything. What he needed now was to find an answer as to whether there was something more that he might be able to understand. What he needed now was to see if his newfound connection to the spirit bond would be beneficial.

  “It looks the same as when we were here the last time,” she said.

  “The last time we were here, I was more concerned about the draasin, you, and these strange elementals to pay much attention to the landscape.” The elementals had a connection to spirit—the only elementals that he had known to have one, at least at the time. Now there was the lizard, though Tolan wasn’t sure what to make of it. The elementals here were troubled, or had been until he had helped them.

  “I remember thinking that it was similar to the Varden Isles. One of the islands is quite a bit larger than the others, and it’s flat and grassy like this,” Ferrah said. “It’s not too far off the coast of Par, and from there, there are other places like it.”

  It still amazed Tolan that there were so many places in the world that Terndahl didn’t fully influence. These islands sounded like one, though even from Par, they were difficult for anyone from Terndahl to fully access. Were it not for the Shapers Path, they might not have had much of an influence there at all.

  “Is there anything else it reminds you of?”

  “Nothing other than the landscape.” She glanced over, smiling. “On the islands, there were wild goats.”

  Tolan chuckled as they soared above the ground. Wind whipped around them, but they used a shaping of wind in order to be able to speak. “Goats?”

  “The goats keep the grass in check. There are other creatures. Birds and insects and a few species of squirrels. Nothing that really hunts the goats, though.”

  “How you keep the goat population from exploding?”

  “There’s only so much grass for them to eat.”

  Tolan readied other questions, but he didn’t have an opportunity to ask.

  In the distance, the dark image of the tower they had seen when they first came here came into view. From the air, the tower was a smear of darkness, but even with it only a smear of darkness, he could feel the energy within it. There were earth shapings all throughout it. A bondar of sorts, and the shapings penetrated the stone, binding it together. This was where his grandmother had died. This was where his mother had died.

  And this was where he had thought Roland had died.

  From here, Tolan could feel the way the bondar pressed outward, and was fully aware of power that existed within it.

  “Can you feel it?” he asked.

  “I feel something,” Ferrah said.

  “The pressure of the tower,” Tolan said. He stared, trying to focus on what he could make out, but he wasn’t able to see or understand the contours of the building from here. He could feel it, and he could feel the pressure of the earth, but he wasn’t able to see anything. He could use wind, sweeping it in such a way that it would magnify his vision, creating an enhancement. Even with it, he didn’t know that he would have the full details of the tower. The only way he could do so would be to travel there and visit.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Ferrah said, holding onto his arm.

  “I know.”

  “You say that you know, but I want you to truly know that you don’t have to do this. I know your mother was lost there, and I know that with what happened to Roland—”

  “That’s just it. We don’t really know what happened to Roland. We thought we did. At least, I thought we did. He didn’t really die here.”

  His mother had, however. There had been no illusion about that. Her death had been real, as had been the way that the draasin had cremated her.

  The finality of that was surprisingly reassuring. If it came down to being about Roland, perhaps that same finality would be beneficial to Tolan.

  If only the Draasin Lord was willing to stay with them now. Tolan didn’t know if they might be able to do more with him than without him. It was possible that having the Draasin Lord with them would only confuse things, especially considering the illusion that Roland had used in this land. He had created the illusion of a draasin, using that in order to try to control the elementals. Having a real draasin could backfire on them.

  Tolan took another deep breath, focusing on the distant sight of the tower, and he used a shaping of wind and fire to carry them to it. Once above it, he lowered slowly, focusing on the sense of the tower itself, on the energy within it he might detect. He didn’t want to be caught unaware. He didn’t feel anything, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something here.

  As they descended, Ferrah held tightly to his hand, squeezing it.

  When they reached the rooftop, he held onto her. Memories flashed back into his mind. Not only had his mother died here, but it was here that she had gifted hi
m the knowledge of spirit shaping in the moment before she had died. It was here where he had thought he had been successful in ending the threat of Roland.

  Even as he focused on what he could detect, he wondered what of those memories had been real and what of them had been falsified.

  “Something’s troubling you,” Ferrah said.

  Tolan looked over at her. “I thought the elementals were attacking the tower, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “I saw it, too. I know what was here.”

  “When it comes to Roland, I’m not so sure we do know what was here. With the way that he’s able to place images and memories and thoughts into our heads, he might have made us believe there was something here, but…”

  Tolan stopped at the edge of the tower, remembering the attack and what he had known at that time. He thought about the energy that he had detected, the sense of power that had exploded outward and filled him. As he focused on that, he tried to piece through what had been real and what had been imagined.

  It was difficult.

  If it wasn’t real, and if what I believed I’d seen was not real, then what exactly had happened?

  He needed to understand that. He might be able to piece together what Roland intended. The image of the attack flashed back through his mind. While it did, Tolan held onto spirit, letting that roll through him as well.

  He remembered what he had seen—how the elementals had slammed against the stone of the tower.

  Hadn’t they?

  Tolan closed his eyes, focusing. He could use spirit and let that flow through him, trying to piece together what he’d seen when he’d been here. There had been the elementals… only not at the tower.

  Tolan grunted.

  There was no attack. No sign of elementals.

  That had all been shaped by Roland and he hadn’t even known.

  Some of it had to have been real. Tolan had detected the elementals when they had attacked, and he was certain that they had been there. He wouldn’t have known about the elementals otherwise. Just because the attack hadn’t been real didn’t mean the elementals themselves weren’t real.