A Fading Fire

by D. K. Holmberg

  “As you have seen, memories can be inaccurate.”

  “You held me there,” Tolan said.

  The lizard made a circle around him and Tolan twisted, turning in place so that he could follow the lizard. His light pushed back the darkness within the chamber.

  “My mother was here for a different reason.”

  “Yes.”

  “It was more than just about freeing the Guardians.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “She was following a different set of instructions.”

  “You knew her?”

  “I know all who touch spirit.”

  The lizard paused and looked inward, focusing on Tolan. There was another surge of energy, a connection of spirit, and it washed over him.

  “If you know all who touch spirit, then you know me.”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to protect the elementals.”

  Tolan wasn’t entirely sure why he was saying that, but it seemed right. And it was more than just wanting to protect the elementals. He wanted to protect the elements, the bonds, and all those who were to reach them. The problem was that he didn’t know how he was going to be able to do so. The problem was that he didn’t know what Roland intended, only that he was after something.

  “I know all who touch spirit.”

  Tolan inhaled deeply, and he looked down at the markings on the ground. “These runes mean something different than the ones I know.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is the Convergence here?”

  “You don’t feel it?”

  “I can feel it, but I don’t know exactly what it is that I’m feeling.”

  “What do you remember about your mother?”

  It was a strange question coming from the lizard, but it was one that Tolan had wrestled with ever since realizing how much his mother had influenced him.

  “She twisted my memories.”

  “She did, but she gave you the key.”

  “She gave me knowledge. That was all that she gave me.”

  “She gave you the key.”

  Tolan shook his head. “There wasn’t a key. The only thing that I came to understand was that there are things she kept from me. Knowledge she had, memories she took from me.”

  “Is that all?”

  The lizard sat almost like a dog watching him. There was something strange about the way that his eyes glowed.

  “She placed memories as well.”

  “She did.”

  “It makes it so that I can’t trust anything that happened with her.”

  “Is that why you trust the knowledge she gave you?”

  “I can test that.”

  “Have you?”

  Tolan frowned. He had tested some aspects of the connection to spirit, using the knowledge she had given him in order to become the Master of Spirit. More than that, he had used the knowledge Roland had permitted him, piecing that together to give him even more understanding. Between the two of them, the knowledge that Tolan possessed seemed to be the knowledge they wanted him to have.

  He couldn’t shake the feeling that was exactly what they had wanted for him.

  Why, though?

  There had to be some reason behind what they had done to him. There had to be some purpose to gifting him knowledge like that, trying to force it so that he had a sense of understanding, but perhaps there was not.

  Tolan stared at the lizard. “Should I have tested what she gave me more than I have?”

  “You’ve doubted so much else that happened with her, why did you not doubt this?”

  Tolan shook his head. The answer came to him far more easily than it should have.

  He had wanted to believe.

  After everything that had happened between him and his mother, he had wanted to believe she had some good remaining in her, and he had wanted to believe that good was enough for her to change. He had wanted to believe she could still want to protect him.

  By why would she want that?

  There had been nothing else she had done that would have suggested that.

  Everything he had experienced had left him thinking that she served Roland—and she had served him willingly.

  Still, she had given me knowledge, hadn’t she?

  That knowledge had allowed him to become something else. Something more.

  “Why was she here?” Tolan asked.

  “You have not asked that before.”

  “But you know.”

  “I know,” the lizard said.

  Tolan made a circuit as he looked around, staring at the ground. The tiles and the runes all had meaning. He could feel that power and the energy there, and he could almost feel what it meant, though he wondered at the purpose behind it.

  “There’s something here.” He looked over at the lizard. “It’s the reason that the Guardians exist.”

  “The Guardians have chosen to remain here for a purpose.”

  “And is that purpose tied to the waste itself?”

  “What do you think, Tolan Ethar?”

  Tolan shook his head. He wasn’t entirely sure what to think, only that the waste and everything about it was different than any other place he had explored. Only the Convergence here was different.

  Why, though?

  There were other questions that he had to answer but couldn’t. He thought about what he had encountered when he was in the Beyond. He thought about the power there. He had access to the elements and he could shape, but the element bonds were different. The elementals were different.

  That had to matter as well.

  “Is it tied to what exists Beyond?”

  The lizard started moving again, looking through the pillars as he paused and watched Tolan. “You have stopped your pursuit of understanding.”

  “I haven’t stopped anything. I’ve been trying to understand. I’ve been doing everything that you wanted.”

  “What about what you want, Tolan Ethar?”

  Tolan hesitated.

  “You say that you have been doing everything that I wanted, but there remains the issue of what you want. Have you been doing that?”

  Tolan frowned, thinking about what he had been doing, chasing the knowledge he had been seeking. He had been doing it because he thought it was necessary. He had delved into the element bonds because he had believed that would explain what Roland was doing, and because of that, he had changed the Guardians. Tolan had no idea whether that was a change for the better or whether he had somehow harmed the Guardians. The only thing he knew was that it had felt right. In doing so, he had gained a connection to those Guardians that hadn’t existed before.

  Tolan looked at the lizard, thinking about the experiences he’d had.

  What he needed was to test the knowledge his mother had given him.

  That was the understanding the lizard had wanted him to gain.

  If that were the case, then why hadn’t the lizard said it from the very beginning? Why make it something mysterious?

  The lizard was an elemental. The lizard was spirit.

  His experience with the elementals had shown him that they viewed the world in a different way. He viewed the world in a different way than other shapers, though. In that way, Tolan believed there was some aspect of how he looked at things that was not dissimilar to the elementals.

  He needed to understand.

  He needed to know what his mother had done. He needed to find the key, to recognize the power she had tried to use on him, and he needed to see how much of what he recalled was real.

  “If she used spirit on me, is there any way for me to push through it?”

  “Spirit leaves a tracing much like any other element.”

  “Which means that I should be able to find what was done?”

  “Do you know spirit?”

  Tolan looked over at the elemental, studying him.

  Was that a real question, or was it rhetorical?

  Tolan didn’t know, but as he looked at
the elemental, feeling the sense of spirit coming off him, he thought he knew the answer. Tolan didn’t know spirit because he didn’t yet know the elemental. Not really.

  He knew how the spirit bonds were formed, and the way that they were woven within the other element bonds. He knew how to access the spirit within himself.

  All of that suggested that he should be able to find that answer.

  Which meant that the answer was somewhere within him.

  Tolan took a deep breath, focusing on what he could feel of spirit, the power he knew existed. He let that awareness flow through him. He called upon the energy of the element bonds, upon spirit itself, and finally upon the spirit elemental. As he did, he recognized there was a connection between the elemental and him. There had always been one. He had helped free the elemental, and now… now he could use that power. In order to understand just what he needed to do, he was going to have to use that power.

  Tolan turned the shaping inward.

  17

  Everything exploded in a bright white light. It was similar to what he’d experienced when the lizard was in control of the spirit shaping, but this time Tolan was acutely aware that he had been the one who had placed the spirit shaping, and he was the one responsible for power that existed around him. By holding the shaping, Tolan could feel that energy and the way it flowed through him.

  He focused on his thoughts. His memories.

  He focused on his mother.

  He turned to the earliest memories he had of her.

  Some of them, he knew, were not completely accurate. Most of them were probably not accurate.

  There were the memories of his home within Ephra. There was a time when he had believed he had a happy childhood. It was a time when he believed that everything he had encountered had been unusual, and that only after his parents had disappeared had things gone awry.

  With knowing what had happened then, Tolan could piece together something else.

  He traced through his memories, and he realized something about what the lizard had told him. Spirit left a trail, much like every element left a trail.

  He knew it did. Tolan was aware of shapings, and he could feel specific signatures to them. Within himself, he could feel the influence of spirit.

  The touch was there, subtle, and there were aspects to it that were easier to reach than others. In this case, what he wanted was to find the influence of spirit, but also to find the earliest of those influences. He dove through his memories, digging for anything that would give him insight as to what had happened. By doing so, he could feel that source of power. He held onto the earliest fluttering of spirit.

  He was young.

  Three. No more than that. A memory was there, influenced by a touch of spirit.

  Tolan traced through that memory, feeling for it, thinking about what had happened to him. He had been in Ephra at the time, and he had been happy.

  The shaping was there, and Tolan started to part that shaping, using what he knew of spirit, the knowledge that he possessed, and drew that influence away.

  He could feel how his mother had shaped him.

  It was a subtle touch.

  It was Ephra, but it was something else.

  He was tested.

  All potential shapers were tested multiple times throughout their lives to determine whether they had potential to shape. In this case, his mother had used a shaping of spirit to obfuscate Tolan’s mind, preventing him from revealing his shaping ability. She hadn’t wanted him to reveal himself.

  He could feel the influence of spirit and how quickly she placed it, the harsh effort that she used upon him. He could feel that as it squeezed his mind.

  Some part of him rebelled.

  Even now, Tolan was aware of how his child mind had rebelled against the shaping.

  He had used spirit even then.

  Had my mother been aware of it?

  The shaping had created a protection deep within him.

  That protection was what he could detect now.

  He started to move on to the next influenced memory before pausing.

  If he could trace through these memories, and if he could hold onto as much spirit as he did right now, then he thought that he needed to use it in order to not only understand himself, but also to understand the one person who had left him conflicted his entire life. If he could find some way of knowing his mother better, even if it was through memories of her shaping him with spirit, then perhaps he might know more about what motivated her.

  She wouldn’t have been as likely to have known she needed to protect her mind.

  But a spirit shaping opened the shaper up to a two-way connection. Given what Tolan knew about his own connection to spirit, and given what he could detect even now, he would have sensed something from her.

  He pushed through that, trying to see if there was something he might uncover from the shaping she’d used on him.

  Not only was there the pressure that he would not remember how to shape, but there was something buried within her mind.

  The thrill of serving Roland.

  That had been there even then.

  Perhaps it had been there most strongly when she had used it then.

  It was an obvious sensation, and as he felt that influence within her mind, that desire and longing to serve Roland, he wanted to turn away from it, but he also needed to better understand it, letting himself dive deeper into her thoughts to see if there was something more he might be able to uncover about what had motivated her.

  He held onto spirit, letting it carry him.

  Answers were there and buried within him.

  Teasing it apart involved finding whether his mind as a child had known enough to process what it had detected. Even if he didn’t know enough, that didn’t change that he was still able to process aspects of what she had shaped upon him. He could feel that energy from her and he could use it.

  It was more than just Roland. It was about what she was after.

  There was power. He could feel her longing for power. A longing to try to understand the elementals. A longing to be able to connect to them. To control them. She needed power in order to do so, and she needed more than the spirit she could connect to.

  Knowledge of spirit shaping was there. Tolan tested that, using what he could detect from this memory and comparing it to what she had given him.

  It was the same.

  Tolan went to another place in his mind, a distant time. It was a time when his mother had been a little bit older. He had been little bit older. In that time, he had believed his parents were happy.

  He focused on those memories, thinking about the shaping that had been used on him, knowing there was something within him that would reveal the shaping to him.

  He saw his mother, his father, he saw everything they had been doing together. In that memory, there was a sense of a happier time. He could almost imagine his parents were truly happy together.

  There were memories, but were they all happy?

  By focusing on his memories, Tolan could feel something between his mother and father. Even though she had wanted to serve Roland, even though she had done so willingly, there was some part of her that enjoyed the time she spent with his father.

  In one of his memories, she was baking in the kitchen. She was shaping. She shaped him, and he could feel the way she held onto that shaping around him, using spirit as it became something of a weapon, turning it against him, trying to force it upon his mind so he would not know anything other than her shaping.

  Tolan could feel that power now, and he was aware of what she had been doing. It was the kind of shaping that suggested she attempted something else. The shaping wasn’t directed only toward him.

  In each of the memories, he had been aware of the spirit shaping; he was aware of the way she held onto it. She did so almost constantly, a continuous use of spirit that radiated out from her. That sort of spirit wouldn’t affect just him. It would affect everyone around her.

/>   There was something strange about it. It was a way of masking her presence.

  That wasn’t altogether surprising. She would’ve wanted to hide what she was doing, and she would’ve wanted to hide from anyone who would’ve been aware of the way that she was using power. That use of spirit was a way for her to hide her presence and, in fact, to hide all of them.

  Within the memory, he watched his mother as she worked in the kitchen. The baking was something mindless for her. He could tell that she was content. There was something about the way that she was rolling the dough, kneading it, and humming to herself. It mingled with the sense of spirit shaping that she used, giving him a sense of contentedness.

  Why would she have left this?

  She might’ve been shaping him, she might have been using spirit to hide him, but at that time, regardless of what else she was doing, she was still content.

  Maybe that was only what she wanted him to know.

  He didn’t think so, though. In this place, and with his mind being opened the way it was, Tolan had an ability to detect more of her memories than what she had revealed before.

  She had wanted to stay.

  What had changed?

  He wasn’t going to find it in this memory.

  Tolan shifted, drawing out, switching to another shaped memory.

  Across his mind, there was a sense that so many of his memories had been shaped, and even as he dug into them, trying to uncover the keys to what had been done to him, the shaping of spirit hung over everything in his childhood.

  A part of him suspected she did it only to hide from him everything she had done over the years, her way of masking the shaping she’d used on him. That might be all that it was, but he couldn’t help but wonder if maybe there was something else.

  He plunged into another memory.

  He was a little older, maybe eight or nine, but not much older than that. His mother was talking to his father, discussing the bondars that he was making.

  At the time, Tolan had thought the only thing she was doing was trying to better understand the work that his father was creating. Even now, the memory was difficult to tease out. Wrapped in the spirit bond as he was, using what he had from the lizard, he could separate some of it. He focused on the shaping used upon him, and found something within it.