A Fading Fire

by D. K. Holmberg

  Tolan thought about his encounter with the various elementals, thinking about what he’d experienced and whether there was something within those memories he could use. As he thought about the elementals, the mixture of spirit in each of the other elements, he shaped himself, letting spirit roll through him in order to try to piece together what was real and what was forced upon him by Roland.

  The answer was there. It was buried, but within the back of his mind.

  Everything prior to the attack had been real. Everything he’d experienced with Rory, and with the other elementals, had been real.

  That was how Roland had managed to influence him. It was easier to shape spirit when somebody already had something upon which to build an encounter. Creating an entire image was far harder. Now that he had borrowed from Roland’s knowledge, Tolan could see how that was the case.

  He stepped back from the wall and looked all around. There had been the presence here that had trapped him. There had been others here with Roland.

  That was what he had to study now.

  Tolan held onto Ferrah’s hand as they headed down into the tower.

  A sense of energy surrounded them as they descended.

  Tolan stopped at one point and crouched down to look at the wall. He traced his fingers over the runes. This wasn’t the work of his mother or Roland. They didn’t have the knowledge of runes and bondars. She had come to Terndahl in order to try to find that knowledge. Which meant this was something else.

  If not Roland and my mother, who was responsible for the creation of this tower?

  Tolan wondered if he might be able to find answers within the tower itself. He had come here thinking that there might be something that would reveal more about Roland, but perhaps this was merely a physical place to him, not his home.

  Getting to his feet, he headed along the hallway. He found the stair leading down. This one was narrow and there were no signs of markings along the wall, though Tolan could feel energy within the walls around him, so he knew there had to be something. Every so often, he would pause, resting his hand on the wall, thinking about the power there. He let that energy fill him, aware of it and of the power that existed.

  “I sense earth all around us,” Ferrah said softly.

  “There is earth all around us, but I don’t know how much of it is from the building itself and how much of it is from runes that lock in power.”

  “How is it that Roland and your mother were able to do all of this?”

  “I’m not so sure that they did,” Tolan said, stopping at the bottom of the stairs. From there, he swept his gaze along the stone hallway, taking in the sight of gray blocks stretching out in front of them, the hall opening up before them. Runes marked on each stone gave off more of the feeling of earth. The air shifted here, and not only was there the sense of earth, but there was a sense of wind.

  That had to be shaped as well, though what purpose would there be in it?

  “If it wasn’t them, then who was responsible for it?”

  Tolan shook his head, pausing again in the hallway. From here, the hall was much wider, and there came a presence, the sense of energy that he detected all around him. It pressed against him, an amazing sense that told him how much of this was shaped.

  “When we were in the waste the first time, before I had fully connected to hyza, I had an image of someplace like this,” he said. Even with Ferrah, he didn’t reveal Thoren’s name. He had long ago realized that the name was something almost magical to the elemental, so he kept it between himself and the elemental. “Hyza told me that it was the way that things could be.” Tolan turned to Ferrah. “It’s almost as if this is the way that things looked before everything took place. Almost as if it was before the element bonds were formed.”

  “Tolan, there wouldn’t be a time before the element bonds were formed. Element bonds have existed for as long as there have been shapers.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “Shapers couldn’t have created energy like that. We might have created access to it, but the actual power itself…” She shook her head. “That has always been here. Nothing that we have done has created something like that.”

  Tolan wondered how much of that was true or not. He didn’t really know. For all he knew, shapers had been responsible for the creation of the bond. That was what he guessed Roland was after. He needed to create a spirit bond to have access to that power. If he would reach spirit, if he would have come across a way of controlling the spirit bond, there would have been far more danger to them than there already had been.

  So far, Tolan had done everything in his power to try to stop Roland, but he wasn’t entirely sure if what he had done was enough. It was possible Roland had uncovered the key to accessing the spirit bond.

  “I see the look on your face,” Ferrah said.

  “There’s no look,” Tolan said.

  “There is. You’re bothered by something again.”

  “It’s just Roland.”

  “We will find him.”

  “Even if we do, I don’t know if we are strong enough to stop him.”

  “With all the shapers the Academy has, and with everything you’ve done to help protect them, we would have to be strong enough.”

  He wished that he had her confidence. Roland had already proven how a single man could gain control over the Inquisitors. His mother had done the same thing, but Roland and his attack were far more direct—and faster. Whereas Tolan’s mother had required time with which to enact her plan, Roland had come into the Academy, pretended to be someone he was not, and gained access to the Inquisitors so quickly that he had nearly undone everything that Tolan had tried to secure.

  Even with the lessons Tolan had shared with the Inquisitors, it was possible that Roland still had more knowledge than they could counter.

  “We should keep looking,” he said.

  “What is it that you think that you’re going to find here?” Ferrah asked.

  Tolan shook his head as he looked around. He wasn’t entirely sure what was here. All he knew was that he needed to try to find some answer. It had to be tied to whatever reason Roland had chosen this place.

  “When he shaped spirit at me, he gave me knowledge.”

  “I know,” Ferrah said.

  “But within that knowledge, I haven’t been able to detect anything that would explain why he chose this place.” He looked over at her. “It’s almost as if he tried to keep that from me.”

  “I thought when he connected to you with spirit, you were given access to everything that he knew.”

  “I was given access to what he wanted me to know. I think that he knew what would happen.”

  I was difficult for Tolan to acknowledge, but there was no doubt in his mind that Roland had wanted him to know specific things. He had risked it, willingly sacrificing a certain aspect of knowledge in order to try to defeat Tolan, which meant Tolan had to question whether he’d done so as a way of trying to prevent him from accessing something else, or whether there was some other reason behind it.

  “I don’t think he intended for us to come here,” he said. “This was a mistake. When we found this place, I think he wasn’t ready for us.”

  “You think that whatever he was planning here is important?”

  “I think this land is important,” Tolan said. “I don’t really know why, but there is a reason he stayed here rather than coming to Terndahl sooner, rather than coming to the Academy.”

  “I thought he couldn’t come to Terndahl.”

  Tolan had initially thought the same thing, but the more that he learned about Roland, the more that he questioned. The other man had encountered Tolan’s mother in some way, and that must have been out on the waste. For him to have done so suggested that he knew how to cross the waste, whether or not he chose to do it.

  Tolan had tried sifting through his memories, tried sifting through the knowledge he’d acquired from Roland, but when he did so, he wasn’t able to come up w
ith anything that would explain what the other man had been after. The only thing he could come up with was more questions.

  “Let’s keep looking,” Tolan said.

  “What exactly do you think you will find here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They made their way along the hall and encountered a set of wide double doors made of a faded and weathered wood. Two massive iron rings were set in the middle of the doors. Tolan paused, tracing his hand along runes marked on the doors. They were markers for each of the elements, and the markings were such that Tolan was familiar with them, though he wondered if they were truly for elements or whether they were something else. In this place, Tolan no longer knew what he was truly finding.

  “What do you think of those?” Ferrah asked.

  “Runes.”

  Ferrah leaned in closer to the door, pressing her head up against it. “We’ve both seen these before.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look at them. Look at the patterns that are here.”

  Tolan frowned, trying to understand what Ferrah was seeing and what she thought he should be able to see. He studied the patterns but didn’t come up with an answer.

  Then he shaped upon them.

  Some runes were only activated when they were shaped, and in this case, as he pushed power out through them, there came a burst of energy, and within that energy was a sense of power.

  It was a binding.

  Within that binding was something that was familiar.

  That was what Ferrah was getting at.

  “It’s like the library,” he whispered.

  She nodded.

  He pushed on the door, opening it, and when he did, a massive room stretched in front of him. Rows upon rows of shelves lined the walls. Books were stuffed into them. There was a sense of age here, one that reminded him all too much of what the library within Amitan felt like.

  Tolan stopped in the middle of the room. He swept his gaze around, his eyes gradually adjusting, and turned back to Ferrah. “This was why he was here,” Tolan said.

  “He wouldn’t have left the library if this was the reason.”

  Tolan wasn’t entirely sure. There had to be something here that had compelled Roland to stay here.

  But what?

  A soft glowing light caught his attention, and Tolan turned toward it.

  It was near one end of the room, and it moved.

  They weren’t alone in the library.

  6

  Tolan pulled on a sense of each of the elements. He felt resistance, almost as if he were trying to shape within the library in Amitan, but he had experience shaping beyond those barriers, using his power when he wasn’t supposed to. He called upon that shaping, letting that power fill him.

  “Careful,” he said in a whisper of wind.

  Ferrah stepped toward him. She reached for another orb bondar, clutching it in her hands. At least with those, she wouldn’t be restricted within this library. She would have enough power that she would be able to overwhelm any sort of shaping.

  But what was it that we’d seen?

  Tolan moved forward. He doubted it was Roland.

  If it were him, why would he have returned to the library?

  He would’ve known that Tolan knew about this place, and unless he didn’t fear Tolan—which was entirely possible—he wouldn’t have come here again.

  Besides, if it was Roland, the man wasn’t about to reveal his presence. He had ways of hiding himself, masking himself within his shaping, so that he didn’t need to reveal anything.

  That suggested it wasn’t Roland.

  Who, then?

  They headed across the library. Unlike within Amitan, where there were desks with chairs all around, this was an enormous empty room. Other than the shelves and the books, there was nothing else here. No carpet covered the dusty stone floor. No lanterns to light their way. Only a hint of dirty light that streamed in from windows along the far wall.

  It was a place that had once been prominent. From the runes on the door to the sense within the room, Tolan could feel how important this place had once been. Perhaps it still was. Despite the importance, he couldn’t help but wonder why it had been abandoned.

  Why hadn’t the books gone with whoever had left it?

  He reached the far side of the room where the light had been. It was gone now.

  Tolan pushed outward, sweeping his sense of spirit, probing for something.

  With what he’d learned from Roland, he thought he would have known whether there was someone here, even Roland. He doubted that the other man would to be able to hide himself as effectively as he once had. He didn’t feel anything.

  Tolan reached for the spirit bond, probing for the various elements before remembering he didn’t have access to them in this land. He could indirectly reach them, flowing through the elementals and borrowing that power, but doing so was more difficult than accessing them directly. Attempting to reach spirit in that way was far more challenging.

  It was possible to do, he suspected, but it meant that he was reaching for spirit—and the bond—through Thoren or one of the other elementals.

  Tolan didn’t want to do so. He didn’t think that it would weaken Thoren, but he didn’t know with any certainty. It was entirely possible that by borrowing spirit from Thoren, he would be calling upon more power than the elemental could loan him. It meant that he was going to have to pull upon his own spirit and nothing more than that.

  “Try a shaping of fire through the orb,” he whispered to Ferrah.

  “We don’t need to deplete them.”

  “If it depletes them, I can refill them,” he said.

  Ferrah glanced over before nodding. She used a shaping, calling that power forward, and the orb began to glow softly. Light flowed from it, and it began to illuminate the inside of the room.

  Now that it did, he could make out more details of the library. It was even more impressive than he had realized. The shelving was made of well-oiled wood. It had either been maintained or shaped in such a way that it was protected. He glanced at the walls, and from there he could make out something more. Not only was there the shelving, but he noticed something else. The markings of runes all along it.

  There was power to that.

  Tolan stared. Within the Academy, he had no idea where to find the markings that created the power within the library, but here he thought that he understood. The markings that he saw on the walls—and even upon the ceiling—would be incredibly powerful. Within those would be the energy that created a sense of the shaping power he detected.

  Tolan swept his gaze around, searching for the sign of whatever it was that he’d seen. There had been something here. He didn’t know what it was, and he didn’t know what had caused it, but he was certain that there had been something.

  He saw nothing. More than that, he felt nothing.

  “Are you sure that you saw something?” Ferrah asked.

  “I thought I did,” he said.

  “Maybe there wasn’t anything here.”

  Tolan frowned, thinking about what he had detected, the power that he had seen. There had been a light, but he didn’t have any idea as to the purpose behind it.

  “Maybe,” he whispered.

  Ferrah watched him, saying nothing.

  Tolan let out a frustrated sigh, turning back around.

  “Don’t you want to explore the library a bit more?” she asked.

  “I don’t know that there’s anything here for us to explore,” Tolan said.

  “The books.”

  “Even if we had endless amounts of time, I’m not sure we would find anything here.”

  “If this was important to Roland—”

  “We won’t be able to know why, though.”

  Tolan stood in place for a few moments, looking around before shaking his head and turning away. Heading back out into the hallway, Tolan paused along the stretch of the hall, focusing on spirit.

  Using s
pirit, he thought that he might be able to detect whether there was something else here. The faint light he’d seen was important.

  Regardless of anything else, Tolan had seen something. He had no idea what it was or what it meant, only that there had been something.

  He and Ferrah headed along the hallway. Pausing at another door, he strained, trying to feel what might be behind that door. There was nothing.

  Perhaps this place truly was empty.

  He paused at another door.

  At this one, he could feel the power of the elements.

  Ferrah stayed close, but she said nothing. Every so often, she would hold the orb up, using that to let light flow from her, illuminating everything around them. Then she would set it back down, following Tolan.

  “Be ready,” he whispered, then pushed the door open.

  Tolan wasn’t sure what he expected, but certainly not what he encountered on the other side of the door. There was a wide room, with a table and rows of desks. A layer of dust hung over everything, a sense that this had once been a place of importance, but now had been abandoned, left with nothing. He paused at one of the desks, running his finger along the surface, disrupting the dust. Ferrah watched him, sweeping her gaze around the inside of the room but saying nothing. Tolan took a deep breath and focused on the elements, then pushed out briefly with his connection to those elements, straining to see if there was anything here that he might be able to understand about why this place had been abandoned, though he had no obvious answer.

  He paused in the middle of the room, looking around him. Dark stone walls pressed upon him, but there was no sense of earth from them. The air was still and heavy, no wind. The air was cool; not nearly as warm as it was outside the tower. It seemed an absence of the elements here, though Tolan doubted that was the case. This wasn’t isolated the way that the waste had been. Instead, he thought that this represented the strangeness of this land the same as outside.

  Something gleamed on the back wall. Tolan headed over to it, lifting it. It was stone, but more than that, there was something about it that struck him as familiar.