Tolan tried to focus on spirit. It was difficult to do, but some awareness of it was there. Not within him, though. Beyond him.
“Hello?”
He tried to cry out again, but his voice was a hollow sound in his ears. He again reached for that sense of spirit. And failed.
He needed the lizard.
How had I connected to the lizard before?
The lizard had come to him. Tolan needed the lizard now. He needed the light. There had to be spirit within him. He wouldn’t lose that. Focusing on reaching it, he found it deep within him.
He held onto it. That was it. Nothing more than just holding onto spirit within himself. Then he let spirit begin to flow outward. It started slowly, gradually, and he pushed it outward with more force.
He didn’t know if he was actually doing anything. Everything around him seemed strangely empty. There was no smell. No sense of wind. No sense of even himself. There was only the darkness.
That darkness continued to squeeze, pressing upon him. It threatened to overwhelm him. As he lay there, trying to grasp just what had taken place and what he was suffering from, he had to find an understanding of that darkness.
It had to be tied to spirit. The lizard was there. It had to be. Tolan focused.
When he had connected to the lizard before, he had no idea what he had done. The only thing he was fully aware of was that the lizard had come to him. Maybe this time, he would have to find a way to go to the lizard.
He tried again.
Spirit.
Spirit worked out from him. He pushed a sense of desire and need into it.
Then he waited. Doubt began to creep in.
He remembered being stuck, hovering above the Convergence. He remembered the power that was there and not knowing what had happened to him. It was possible the elementals were upset with what he’d done to the Guardians. It was possible he’d somehow abused the power of the Convergence and was being punished.
Spirit continued to flow.
Gradually, there came a response. It was the first time that he had detected anything more. The darkness started to retreat.
“Hello?”
Tolan cried out again, not knowing whether there was anything that anyone or anything might be able to do for him. He tried to focus on the power around him.
“If you’re there, please answer.”
“You called.”
It was the lizard. His voice was distant. Faded. Tolan didn’t know why.
“I called because I have need of your help.”
“What help do you think I can offer?”
“I don’t know what happened,” Tolan said.
“What do you remember?”
“I tried to help the Guardians.”
“Did you?”
“When I was done, I couldn’t leave the Convergence.”
“The power is considerable there.”
Tolan nodded. “It’s considerable. I feel it, and…”
It was almost as if there was something more to it.
Why should I be aware of the power that was there?
“Something happened. I was held there, and I can’t get free.”
“Are you certain of that?”
“I tried to shape my way free, but I wasn’t able to do it.”
“How do you know that you tried?”
The question sounded strange to Tolan. “I’m aware when I shape.”
“Are you?”
“What is this?”
He tried to look around to find the lizard, but he didn’t see any sign of him. There was only the faded darkness around him. There was the barest hint of light.
He focused on spirit to connect to the lizard. That was the key.
“I need to get out of here. I need to figure out what Roland was after.”
“Roland was after destruction.”
“Destruction of what?”
“You’ve already seen it.”
“The elements?”
“Yes.
“The element bonds?”
“Yes.”
“Why was spirit mixed into the element bonds?” That was the other thing the lizard had wanted him to understand.
Would the lizard answer me now?
And… it hadn’t always been that way. “Spirit wasn’t always mixed like that, was it?”
“Not always.”
“Why was it?” The answer seemed important.
“By adding spirit to the bonds, it enabled the elementals to become something more.”
Would the lizard answer him?
“What more?”
“There was a time when elementals were different. They suffered. When spirit was added to the bond, the elementals were given the chance to evolve. To change. Some embraced that change, whereas others did not.”
“The elementals I’ve seen have all been unchanged. We have records of that.”
“They have.”
“What changed?”
“Others changed.”
“What others… the strange elementals in the land Beyond?”
The sense of the lizard came closer. Tolan could practically feel him getting closer, and he could practically see the light growing a little bit brighter near him. There was power coming off the lizard, and it pressed in upon him.
“They were the first change, but others realized what happened. The change was too dramatic. The elementals became something they did not want to be. Other elementals wanted something different for themselves.”
“What did they want?”
“To be what they had been.”
“What happened, then?”
“They used the power of the element bonds in order to protect themselves.”
“The elementals were forced into the bond.”
“Some were. Not all. Most went willingly, recognizing that there was something within the bond that would offer them protection they didn’t have otherwise. They did so in order to maintain their identity.”
“What would happen otherwise?”
“We don’t know,” the lizard said.
“You don’t know or you can’t say?”
“We don’t know,” the lizard said.
There was something more, but he wasn’t entirely sure just what the elemental was getting at. Only that there was something different. Some aspect of him that he didn’t fully understand.
If it was tied to the bond, that was what he needed to grasp.
“What was it like then?” Tolan asked. “I keep trying to understand that time, but I have found it difficult to truly understand what the elementals experienced back then.”
“I’m not so sure that anyone can experience with the elementals went through. Our experience now is different.”
The lizard said it as if he understood this time, though Tolan had a feeling from him that he did not.
“How strong are your memories of that time?”
The lizard watched Tolan. “My experience is different than elementals who have been trapped within the bond.”
“Because you were trapped in the portrait?”
Tolan wasn’t even sure if it was a matter of the lizard having been trapped within it, or having chosen to go into it, but either way, he felt as if the answer to what had taken place with the lizard was tied to that.
He had a feeling from the lizard that there was something more, something the lizard didn’t want to share, and Tolan suspected that it came through spirit, though he couldn’t determine anything more than that. Perhaps the lizard didn’t want him to.
It was a reluctance to share anything more.
“What can you tell me about the elementals and the bonds?”
Tolan thought that was the key. He had to better understand the elementals, the bond, and then he could figure out just what Roland thought he might be able to gain.
There was some purpose behind the bonds, something he had yet to fully understand, and until he better understood it and grasped the key to what the lizard tried
to show him, Tolan worried that he wasn’t going to be able to help the elementals.
“You know everything that you need to know about the elementals and the bonds.”
Tolan tried to turn toward the lizard but couldn’t tell where he was. “I know about the elementals, and I know what I have learned about the bonds, but there’s much I don’t know. That’s what I need from you. I need you to help me gain understanding. Insight. I need for you to help me—”
“There is only so much that I can provide, given what you’ve done.”
“What I’ve done? You mean the Guardians?”
A flash of light surged. “They were outside of spirit. You have changed that.”
Tolan had the sense that the lizard had wanted him to bond the Guardians to spirit. He’d learned what he needed from the lizard—only, that had been to repair the earth bond. Could he have made a mistake altering the Guardians?
There was nothing other than the pale light around him.
This wasn’t about what he knew. It was what the lizard allowed him to know.
What purpose would there be for the lizard holding knowledge back?
Unless his purpose wasn’t to save the elementals.
It might be about the bonds.
That had been when he had first come across the lizard, after all. It wasn’t until he had started to work on the bonds, where he had tried to understand them, that he had first encountered the lizard.
He looked over to where he thought the lizard was. Tolan focused on spirit.
“You’re still keeping something from me,” he said.
“There is nothing more I can share with you.”
“Nothing more that you’re able to, or nothing more that you’re willing to?”
He tried to find the lizard but wasn’t able to see him.
“You know everything you need to know, Tolan Ethar.”
The sense of the lizard became more distant, fading away.
The darkness pressed around him again. As it did, he became aware of something else. He didn’t think that he was alone here. It was more than the sense of the lizard, though Tolan felt that as well. There was something else here. He found a pressure building around him.
Here he had thought the lizard would be the key to escaping, but that didn’t seem to be the case. It seemed almost as if the lizard wanted to hold him here.
Could it be that the lizard was responsible for this?
That didn’t seem right. The lizard was spirit. The lizard only came when there was a need. That was what Master Minden had said.
A different thought came to him.
What if I’m the reason for the appearance of the lizard? Not because I needed the lizard’s help, but because the lizard needed to protect the elementals from me? Hadn’t I been the one who had gone into the bond and tried to reach for something more? Wasn’t I the reason that the bonds had been changed? Could that be why the lizard had returned?
He held onto spirit.
Gradually, he became aware of something more.
Spirit had covered his connection to the other elements.
They were still there.
And he would use them. He had to use them.
He wrapped each of the elements together. Then he added spirit.
With a burst of power, he was carried on a warrior shaping.
15
Tolan could feel a draw upon him, and realized as he did that it came from something that he had done. Some aspect of each of the elements, now bound with spirit, called to him, pulling on the warrior shaping.
He opened his eyes and saw a bright landscape all around him. The sun shone down, and though there was an emptiness of each of the elements here in the heart of the waste, he at least was free of the trap that had held him at the Convergence. If nothing else, Tolan thought that beneficial.
He focused on what he could detect in front of him. There was something out there. As he looked around, he could feel that energy, and the sense of the waste, along with that of the Guardians. That was where he needed to head.
The bonds formed by the various Guardians locked power to this place, forcing it from here down to the Convergence, and then even deeper, beyond this Convergence. The shape was complicated, one that had been recreated after having failed following an attack, and the effort that had gone into generating this bondar was more than Tolan would have been able to do on his own. Thankfully, that had not been necessary. There were patterns within the bondar that he recognized, though that wasn’t altogether surprising. Each bondar typically drew upon the patterns for various runes suggesting the elements, and often for the elementals. In the case of this massive bondar, the patterns all mingled together, mixing various symbols for the elements and elementals, creating something greater. The knowledge that those ancient shapers had possessed, a knowledge that had been lost over time, amazed him.
Focusing on the Guardians, Tolan strained for an awareness of the elementals. He had changed the Guardians, adding spirit to them, modifying them. He needed to know if there was something else that he had changed.
He needed to know if he was responsible for something worse.
The earth guardian was a massive tower of stacked stone, some giant of rock that lumbered when he moved, which was not often. Tolan didn’t even have a name for the Guardian, much like he didn’t have one for any of the Guardians. He knew it only as the Guardian.
Much like with earth, the fire Guardian looked immobile. An enormous lizard that stretched across the rock, unmoving. Power radiated from the Guardian, heat mixed with the air, flowing outward. Tolan wondered if he would be able to get close to that Guardian or if the energy would push him back. Perhaps it would be more than he could withstand.
Wind gusted near the wind Guardian, the translucent shape making it difficult for him to determine anything from that Guardian, other than the almost overwhelming feeling of the wind. The water Guardian was the most difficult one. It was a rippling of moisture that fluttered from the ground, almost steam, though not quite. In this land, Tolan wouldn’t have been surprised for it to have been steam, but much like wind, the water Guardian was practically translucent.
Tolan felt for earth first. It was the first Guardian that he had shifted, and now that there were others, he realized something. Not only was he aware of the Guardians here, he was aware of a connection here. That connection bonded the Guardians, tying them together.
They hadn’t been bonded like that before.
What he sensed now was a blending. He stopped in the middle of the clearing. From here, the Guardians pressed upon him with their power. The energy of them was all around him, and spirit filled him. It was the first time within the waste that he had felt spirit.
Spirit was focused here upon the heart of the waste.
Not just the heart of the waste, but at the Convergence at the heart of the waste.
He could feel the Convergence in a way he hadn’t been aware of before. He had known that it was there, and he could feel it beneath him, but he’d never been able to tap into that power. With this shifting of the Guardians, there was something here that he hadn’t known before. There was a power that he had not known here before.
He strained for the Convergence deep beneath the ground.
A shadow appeared overhead, circling, and Tolan looked up to see the Draasin Lord circling before settling down in the clearing near him. Heat radiated off his massive body, wafting toward him.
Tolan released his hold on the Convergence, though he hadn’t managed to reach for it as well as he had wanted. “That’s the most active I’ve seen you in a while.”
The Draasin Lord rumbled, turning his attention to Tolan. “I felt what you did.” His voice was a low rumble, but there was an edge to it that hadn’t been there before, a deepness that came from the Draasin Lord as he spoke.
“Changing the Guardians?” Tolan asked.
“I can feel it. I think all of the elementals will be able to feel it.”
&
nbsp; “I have a sense the lizard wasn’t pleased with what I did.”
“He wouldn’t have appeared were you to have done otherwise.”
“Did he appear because he’s upset or because he approves?”
He had a sense of the Draasin Lord reaching for the bond, a feeling of power, but Tolan wasn’t able to tell anything beyond that. It seemed as if the Draasin Lord tried—and failed at doing something.
“You don’t know, do you?”
“There is much about that one I am unable to determine.”
“Why?”
“Unlike other elementals, he is unique.”
“There aren’t others like him?”
“No. I have only glimpses of that time.”
“I wish I could help you with it.”
“I think there is nothing that can be done. Time fragments memories, changing them. Who is to say what I know and what I don’t? I have snippets of memory, flashes of a time when the elementals were free, some of them bonded shapers much like yourself. Other memories of a time when those same shapers feared us, hunting us and tormenting us.” There was a hint of rage coming off the draasin, and Tolan pushed a hint of spirit across, trying to soothe him. “And memories of nothing. That is what I have long stretches of, though those memories are some of the most peaceful. I wonder if this lizard has memories like that.”
That wasn’t surprising to Tolan. He had a similar sense from the lizard, a sense that he was unique. It seemed to Tolan that there was something about that uniqueness which he might understand if he could dive deep enough into spirit.
“I only did what I thought was necessary.” Tolan looked around the clearing, feeling the enormous sense of power that radiated from the Guardians.
“I feel it,” the Draasin Lord said.
“The lizard told me the elementals went into the bond to hide from change.”
“It’s possible,” the Draasin Lord said.
“Do you remember the change?”
“There is much from that time which is difficult for me to recall. If it were easier, I wouldn’t struggle to help you. Unfortunately, there is much from that time that I’m not able to help with, either.”
“You helped me quite a bit already.”
“I help with as much as I can, but if I had my memories, there would be more I could do.”
A Fading Fire Page 17