A Fading Fire

by D. K. Holmberg

  “What is that? It looks almost like—”

  “A bondar,” Tolan said.

  “Why would there be a bondar here?”

  Tolan looked at the desk, thought back to the library, and hurriedly headed back into the hallway, opening a door on the other side. When he did, he found a similar room, with another row of desks.

  “An Academy?” Ferrah asked, stopping behind him.

  Tolan grunted. “That’s what it looks like.”

  “Why would they have started an Academy?”

  Tolan shook his head. “I don’t think they did. I think this was here before them.”

  “Why would they need a bondar if they don’t have access to bonds?”

  Tolan held onto the bondar and focused on it, thinking about the power that might be within it. Bondars could grant access to the element bonds, though in this case, without knowing which particular bonds it was designed to reach, he didn’t know if it would even be possible.

  He strained to connect through the bondar, focusing on the power that could be there. There was no sense within it, though it reverberated in his hand, a feeling as if there should be something within the bondar.

  “Why don’t you try?” he said.

  “I can’t shape in these lands,” Ferrah said.

  “Maybe it doesn’t have to do with shaping in the same way as we do at the Academy.”

  Ferrah took the bondar from him, holding it carefully. She frowned as she did so. “I don’t really know what you expect for me to be able to do.”

  “I don’t either, but just try it.”

  Ferrah rolled the bondar over in her hand. She studied it, frowning. “I see some of the symbols that look almost as if they should be similar to the ones we use in Terndahl, but there’s something about them that isn’t quite right.”

  Tolan nodded. “That’s what I thought as well, but I don’t know why they should be familiar.”

  “Maybe they use a different way of connecting to the elements here?”

  Tolan frowned. If they were using a different way of connecting, then the power that existed within the bondar might be different.

  She shook her head. “Maybe if we understood these runes, then we would be able to shape through it, but until then, I don’t know that there’s going to be anything that we can use this for.”

  “That’s probably why my mother and Roland left it.”

  “Unless they wanted you to find it,” Ferrah said.

  He had started forward again and froze, looking over at her. “Why would you say that?”

  “When it comes to those two, I feel as if everything is somehow planned. Especially with Roland.”

  “I don’t think planned so much as he influences it. With his spirit shaping, his touch is so subtle that you almost don’t even know that he’s there.”

  Ferrah nodded. “With that being the case, then how do we know he doesn’t want you to have this? What if he wanted you to come back here and uncover the key to shaping through it?”

  It was possible, though Tolan thought that it was unlikely. If Roland had wanted him to find it, he would have kept it on him, maybe finding a way for Tolan to uncover it that would seem more accidental. In this case, there had been no sense of that accidental nature of finding it. Tolan had simply found it.

  “Let’s keep looking through here,” he said.

  “If this ends up being an Academy, then who do you think was once here?”

  “Beside the people who built it?”

  Ferrah arched a brow at him. “Obviously.”

  “I don’t know. There isn’t anything here. There’s a sense of power, though that’s probably from the building itself, but nothing more than that.”

  That was what bothered him.

  If this was meant to be some sort of powerful place, then why were we able to detect it now? Why hadn’t it been noticed before now?

  He stopped in each of the rooms, looking all around, but he didn’t find anything else. Other than a few desks, there wasn’t another bondar. Nothing else that would suggest that there was anything of value or power here.

  After they searched this entire level, Tolan reached another stair that led down.

  “Where do you think this leads?” Ferrah asked.

  “When they had us trapped, we were in a different section of the tower.”

  It was strange that the prison rooms were higher up.

  They started downward. Now they were below the main entrance, below the level of the ground. Tolan pushed outward with spirit, probing. If this was an Academy, maybe it had been built upon a Convergence.

  If it was, then where was the sense of power from it?

  Tolan would’ve expected to have detected it by now, but there wasn’t anything here. The only thing that he could detect was the power of the building.

  The stairs narrowed as they continued down them.

  There were no other markings on the walls. The deeper that they went into the earth, the less there were runes upon the walls. There was less of the sense of energy here as well.

  “This isn’t right,” Tolan said.

  “Why?”

  “There’s nothing else here.”

  “The stairs would suggest otherwise.”

  “Use earth sensing,” he said. “I know you can’t shape here, but you can sense, and you should be able to detect something.”

  Ferrah paused, her mouth pressing together in a frown of concentration. “There isn’t anything here.”

  “That’s my concern, too. There should be something, shouldn’t there?”

  He didn’t know exactly what there should be, but as he looked around, he didn’t encounter anything. There was the sense of energy here, the sense of the shaped power that was in the wall, but even that was faint and growing fainter.

  What was farther underground? The stairs would lead somewhere, but where—and why?

  He continued down.

  “I thought you said that we wouldn’t find anything down here,” Ferrah said.

  “I don’t think we will, but I want to check.”

  “And if there’s not?”

  “And if there’s not, then we head back up,” he said.

  As they went, the sense of the pressure all around them continued to fade. Eventually, there was nothing. Tolan paused, looking at the walls. That wasn’t entirely true. There were still markings upon the walls, runes that suggested power, but as he studied them, he didn’t see anything that would tell him their purpose.

  They continued down the stairs.

  Near the bottom of the stairs, Tolan paused again.

  From here, he could feel the sense of energy, but nothing more.

  There was nothing else beyond the bottom of the stairs. It was as if the stairs simply ended.

  “This is unusual,” Ferrah said. She pushed past him, running her hand along the stone, probing it.

  Tolan joined her, focusing on the stone, and tried to feel whether there was anything within it, but he didn’t sense anything.

  It was an emptiness.

  Almost as if the stone had the same absence as the waste.

  “This is strange,” he said.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “It’s strange for a different reason than just that. Feel what’s here.”

  “That’s what I’m saying. I don’t feel anything,” she said.

  “Did you detect anything the higher you went?”

  She frowned. “Up higher, the stone had some sense to it, but…” She turned and looked up the stairs, but when she turned back around, her hand held out, she frowned again. “There should be something here, shouldn’t there? And if there’s nothing, then… Why would it be like the waste?”

  He had no idea. It was as if this place had been built above something that left a sense of emptiness.

  But why would that have been the case?

  “We should go back,” he said.

  “And see if there’s any reason this was here,” s
he said.

  “How?”

  “The library,” she said. “There has to be some reason they left it like this.”

  “Unless they were digging and they just gave up.”

  What if this was the reason that Roland had wanted this place, and not the library?

  Tolan grabbed Ferrah and, using a shaping of wind and fire, he carried them up the stairs. When they reached the top, they paused. He breathed in and out heavily, focusing on the sense of power that was here.

  It wasn’t until he returned to the top of the stairs that he realized that he had been feeling off. The emptiness he’d detected, that vast nothingness that was far below, had left him uncomfortable. Now that he was back up here, he no longer felt the same tortured sensation.

  “How much longer do you want to stay here?” Ferrah asked.

  “I don’t know. I thought that we might find answers, but maybe all we can find here is more questions.”

  “That could be part of the reason that Roland wanted to have you come back here.”

  Tolan grunted. “You’re right.”

  “What was that?” she asked, grinning at him.

  He shook his head. “I said you are right.”

  “That’s what I thought. It’s nice for you to admit that.”

  “We could take some of these books back to the Academy.”

  “I think we should probably take all of them back to the Academy,” she said.

  “I’m not sure that I would be able to do that.”

  “Maybe not yet, but over time. And the bondar. Along with anything else you think might be beneficial.”

  “What if it’s not beneficial for us?”

  “Why would that matter?”

  Tolan looked along the hallway. “This isn’t our Academy. What if things were different in this land?”

  “Things shouldn’t be so different that the connection to the elements has changed.”

  “They shouldn’t, but I wonder if maybe they are. Think about your ability to shape. Here in this land, you don’t have the same ability to shape as you do in Terndahl. You don’t have the same connection to the bond. What if there are other things like that?”

  “I don’t see how that would even be possible. The elements don’t change.”

  “The elements don’t, but the elementals do.”

  It was something that Tolan hadn’t considered as much as he should have. He knew that there were strange elementals in this land, and he also knew that they were connected in a different way to the various elements. Not necessarily through the element bonds, mostly because the element bonds were unavailable here. There might be other elementals he had yet to uncover.

  Tolan glanced down at the bondar. The symbols might represent different elementals. If that were the case, then what he needed to find was a way of reaching them.

  Maybe there were element bonds here, but it was possible the bonds in these lands were different and the connection to them was different. It might involve needing to find a different way to reach them.

  He let out a soft sigh, turning to Ferrah.

  “I know that look,” she said.

  “There’s no look,” he said.

  “There is. You intend to do something.”

  “I think we need to stay a little bit longer.”

  “To see if there’s something to these elementals here?”

  Tolan paused at the door to the library. “To spend some time in the library.”

  “Great. Now we’re going to be just like first-level students again.”

  7

  Tolan looked up from the stack of books. Most of them were unreadable, at least to him. They were written in a different language, and though he had tried to piece it together, so far he hadn’t been able to find anything useful. He’d spent hours pouring over the books, trying to find answers, mostly to see if there was something that would explain the elements and the elementals in this land.

  If nothing else, Tolan knew the elements themselves were the same. He could shape, and his control over those elements and his control over the connections was the same as it was in their land. Which left only the bonds that might have changed.

  Ferrah was looking through a completely different set of books. She had more experience with some of the different languages, having come from Par. Tolan hoped she would be able to find something he couldn’t, but in the time they’d been looking, they’d found nothing.

  Not exactly nothing. There were histories of these lands. If he could piece together the language, if he could try to dig through the knowledge that existed here, he might be able to find things that would help him.

  Some of those histories were written in a language that he could almost understand. Aspects of it were familiar to him. Having worked through the library within the Academy in Amitan, Tolan had experience with strange languages, and had typically been able to break them down so that he could try to work through some of the various ancient texts that he had encountered. In this case, he struggled with them more than he had before. Master Minden would be disappointed in him.

  He studied the shelves. They had started in one section, figuring that they could at least flip through the books to find something written in a familiar language, but in all of the books they’d gone through, they’d found no answers. The only books that they had found in their language were not helpful. They described various stores of food, nothing else.

  Ferrah closed the book in front of her, looking up at him. “I’m afraid we aren’t going to be able to uncover anything of use here. Without having any way of reading this, I don’t know how you expect us to come up with anything.”

  Tolan sighed. “I don’t know, either. There should be something here, but…”

  They’d been searching for a long time to come up with answers, but neither of them had found anything of use.

  “Maybe Master Minden would know something,” she suggested.

  He had considered that. If anyone would have the ability to determine what was here, it would be her. Getting her here would be the challenge. “Possibly,” he said.

  “We can gather the ones we think are likely.”

  “We could, but I keep thinking that there has to be something like what our Academy had. Some sort of record of the elementals. If we can find that, then maybe we can uncover the elementals here.”

  “It’s possible they don’t keep a record like that here.”

  Tolan shook his head, frustrated.

  “Roland wouldn’t have any easier time looking through here,” Ferrah said, turning her attention back to the book she was working on.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Roland spoke our language.”

  Tolan rested his arms on the table, looking over at her. That was something he hadn’t even considered. Roland did speak their language, but he had a knowledge of spirit that Tolan didn’t. Possibly even knowledge of these languages.

  Tolan studied the books, thinking about what he’d borrowed from Roland, the knowledge that had come from him. That connection should allow Tolan to access aspects of his knowledge. He still believed Roland had controlled what he had given up, sharing only so much as he thought would have been beneficial, and nothing more.

  Sighing in frustration, he knew it was time that they returned to the Academy.

  Ferrah watched him. “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

  “That I wished I had a way of tapping into Roland’s mind better so I could read these books. Either that or find someone who could read them.”

  “I know your mother shaped knowledge to you that way, but generally knowledge isn’t transferred by shaping of spirit,” she said.

  Tolan frowned, focusing on spirit, focusing on what he had borrowed from not only Roland, but also from his mother. Maybe she had given him some of that knowledge as well.

  “I feel as if we should try to better understand things that came before us, but I’m afraid that with Roland, we don’t have the luxu
ry of time to gain that experience,” he said.

  He gathered the stack of books, pulling them toward him. It was such a small subset of the books within the library, but even as he gathered them, he couldn’t help but feel that there might be much more that they needed to try to understand. There had to be something else that they could take from here.

  Ferrah gathered a handful of books as well. As they headed toward the edge of the library, Tolan swept his gaze back around. They had used a shaping of fire to illuminate everything in the room, and as he extinguished it, there was a strange fluttering.

  For a moment, Tolan thought that he recognized the fluttering. He headed across the room in the darkness. Ferrah called after him, but he ignored her.

  This was where he had seen the lighted shape initially.

  Tolan pushed out with spirit, focusing on the room. He thought about the other elements, adding each of them to it, shaping one after another, using that to gain a certain connection here. Even as he did, there wasn’t anything that he could uncover. Tolan continued to push outward, probing, searching for something that would explain what was here.

  He found nothing more. Maybe there wasn’t anything else here. He released his hold on shaping. He could borrow from Thoren.

  He hadn’t done so in quite a while, and certainly not since coming to this land. Doing so here put the elemental in a different sort of danger. Using his connection to hyza, he could reach into the bonds. Tolan probed, drawing upon fire, then earth, and using that to reach the bonds. Earth was still off, but he was still able to feel the bond; the power that wove within it. He held onto that, focusing and drawing through it.

  As it filled him, he let it roll outward.

  There was nothing for fire. Nothing for earth.

  There was one other aspect of the bond he could draw upon. Tolan probed gently, drawing upon the sense of spirit. Within each of the bonds was a connection to spirit. It was woven within the bonds, and Tolan had seen how he could unwind it, drawing on spirit alone, connecting to something greater than he had ever known before.

  Holding on to spirit as he did, he felt a reverberation near him.

  It was an echoing sense of power. As he held onto that sense, he could feel the energy within it. He swept spirit out from him. Using it in this way, there was a sense of spirit not only from him, but from the bond. It gave him far more strength. Maybe he could find the key to whether there was anything here.