“If we keep going, we run the risk of the elementals being drawn toward the Convergence pit the same way I was. I don’t know if they will be able to withstand it.”
She watched, looking at him, and yet he could tell that she didn’t seem to feel the same drawing that he did. It continued to pull upon him, even in this form.
“There’s too much power pulling on me,” he said.
“What kind of power?” Kerry asked.
“I can feel it even more strongly now than I could before.”
“Why should that be?”
“I don’t really know. By getting separated the way that I was, everything seems to have changed for me. It’s strange.”
Ferrah regarded him a moment. “You look different. Almost younger.”
“Younger?”
“I don’t know how to describe it. You have something of a more youthful appearance to you, but there’s also something of age. It’s strange, like I said.”
“I’m holding onto this form as best as I can. It requires me to maintain spirit, but spirit seems to connect me to the other elements.” He glanced down at himself. With a thought, he could change his appearance, changing his clothing.
Ferrah gasped. “That is quite impressive.”
“I don’t know what will happen when I go back to my body.”
“I don’t even know how you did this.”
“I became separated by going through the element bonds.”
“By doing what?” Kerry asked.
He told her about how he had gone into the element bonds, and how this felt similar.
He realized he had risked quite a bit by going into the element bonds, but it had been necessary. Now that he was here, going through the element bonds might be the only reason he still lived.
Ferrah tried to reach for him but went through him. He wanted to take her hand. She watched him, looking at him with a strange expression.
Was it sadness? Was it something else?
Tolan couldn’t read her expression well enough to know. The only thing he really understood was that she seemed worried.
“Tolan?”
“I’m here.”
“You seem to be fading. Almost as if you’re drifting away from me.”
Fading. Like the power of this land.
Like the waste.
Could that be the key?
It would be different than what they had done at the heart of the waste. It would be different than the Guardians.
He looked like an elemental. In this form, that was all the power he had. And now Roland was using this construct to pull the elementals.
“We need to get the elementals to circle the pit and focus the elements inward.”
“How would that work?”
“Each of the elementals representing each of the elements needs to encircle what he’s doing.” When she frowned at him, he shook his head. “It’s like the waste.”
Her eyes widened as understanding seemed to take hold. “You intend to be a Guardian?”
“Not Guardians like in the waste. I intend to undo it.”
“Will it work?”
“I don’t know.”
The sense of the lizard remained.
If Rory was right and if the lizard were somehow influenced, then he was going to have to deal with him as well. After. First they had to deal with Roland. Then he would deal with the lizard.
He passed the word around to the other elementals. Rory helped, using the wind to send to the others. It didn’t take long before the elementals understood what Tolan wanted. When they had all formed up, he stood next to Ferrah and Kerry, Rory near him, a few of the other elementals nearby. The pressure pulling him forward seemed almost inevitable.
“What now?” Kerry asked.
“Once we take up our positions, I think—”
Tolan didn’t get a chance to finish. Anguish cried out near him, a horrible sound.
It was the sound of elementals crying out in pain.
Roland had begun his attack.
26
Tolan knew he couldn’t march forward. The key was holding his position and trying to convince the other elementals to hold theirs. He didn’t know if he would be able to do that or whether they would somehow try to react in a way that would lead to them getting drawn forward.
Impressively, the elementals for the most part remained near him, and power continued to explode from them, surging toward the pit they circled. There were dozens of the strange elementals, all in various humanoid shapes that were so different than the elementals in Terndahl. Some were colored, others earthlike, and still others almost translucent. He could tell which element they favored by looking at them. He could feel the way something was changing, and though it was changing, he didn’t know what it was doing or why it would be changing.
“We need to move,” he said to Rory. “Take up our positions and secure this in any way we can.”
Rory sent word around. With his control over the wind, Rory could communicate much more effectively than Tolan would be able to. The elementals continued to cry out. Tolan thought it was because of the pressure pulling upon them, but realized it was something else. There was a direct attack on them.
Kerry could help using spirit, connecting to the elementals. They had a way of succeeding. They just needed more time.
Could I do anything?
It wasn’t that he was completely powerless. He was connected to the element bonds, the same way the elementals were connected.
Only… the elementals of this land were not connected to the bonds. At least not well. Tolan had helped start that connection, but it was incomplete. He needed to add to it.
He needed to give them power.
No!
That seemed to come from the Light, but why would Light oppose him connecting the element bonds to the elementals? Because he was corrupted somehow. Tolan surged through the element bonds and probed deeper and deeper, drawing that connection outward. The sense of the lizard was buried deep within his mind, struggling against what Tolan was doing.
He hesitated.
Was it what he felt of the lizard… or was it something else?
When he had confronted Roland, he’d been exposed to him. Tolan believed he had freed himself from what Roland had done. Perhaps he had not.
As Tolan focused on that power in the back of his mind, he felt something familiar.
He tore that free.
Strangely, it wasn’t even within his mind. It was over his control over spirit. Roland had influenced him, influencing his connection to spirit. With that influence torn free, power exploded from him. Tolan sent power from the element bonds toward the other elementals.
They connected.
Tolan was connected to them.
Pressure began to build, and it was pulling on him.
“Tolan, you’re getting—”
Tolan could barely hear Ferrah. The pressure that was building on him, dragging on him, forced him forward. He strained against it, but he couldn’t fight it. That pressure tore at him, dragging him forward.
And then he was pulled into the new waste.
As soon as he was, his power faded.
He began to lose form. He became insubstantial.
He was ripped toward the center of this waste. Toward the pit. Darkness filled his vision. A figure stood near the pit. For a moment, he thought that figure was the same darkness that he had seen before, but there was more of a shape to it.
When he had been here before, holding onto his warrior sword, trying to connect to whatever was out here, he hadn’t known what it was, and he hadn’t known whether what he had detected was real.
This time, he could feel that something was real. This time, he could see what was out here.
Roland.
Shaped power filled him.
Roland had never been this powerful before. Standing in the center of his makeshift waste, the power of elements flowing from him, Tolan couldn’t help but feel a hint o
f trepidation and fear at the power Roland had called upon.
Roland laughed.
“Look at you. Your mother never would have believed what happened to you.”
Tolan tried to fight. It was a matter of struggling against the power that pulled on him.
“I never expected this would’ve worked on you.”
“This wasn’t for me?” Tolan said.
“Not for you, but the benefit is the same.” He laughed. “And now I have finally succeeded.”
“Succeeded in what?”
“You have stopped me a few times, but this time, you will not. I tried holding you when you entered the bonds”—at least now Tolan knew what happened to Master Minden—“but you managed to avoid it. You won’t this time.”
“You aren’t able to make it work in Terndahl.”
Roland’s face flashed with anger. “Terndahl is too well connected to the bonds. I am determined to stop that, though. Then all of this is over!”
Tolan focused on the bonds, but struggled. There should be some way to still reach for the energy of the elements. He was connected to them. That connection was within him. That connection was him.
“You recognize what’s happening here, don’t you?”
Tolan looked around, and he tried to ignore just what the other man was doing, but it was difficult to do so. The power around him was almost too much. Tolan could feel the way that it was squeezing in upon him. Soon, this form would be dragged toward the Convergence.
If I’m pulled in, what will happen to me?
When he had come in his body, he had fallen, but the fall had allowed him to separate, to let the element bonds strip him free. This way, he doubted that he would be able to escape. He feared he would lose everything. He feared he would suddenly find his form destroyed.
Tolan would lose himself.
That wasn’t what scared him the most. What scared him more was not just losing himself, but what would happen to the others when he was pulled away.
He tried to fight, but he was pulled forward.
“When this is done, you won’t pose a threat to me anymore.”
Shaping built from Roland, but for the first time, Tolan was aware that he wasn’t able to influence him. He tried. Tolan could feel the way he attempted to use spirit on him, but connected as Tolan was, the sense of spirit flowing through him, Roland couldn’t do anything.
“I’m going to stop you,” Tolan said.
Roland took a step forward. “No. You won’t.”
With that, he moved off to the side. The strange darkness filled him. That darkness was there, filling him, swirling around him. It was a darkness he recognized.
It tried to reach for him.
The power of a waste.
That pressure was almost too much.
Tolan attempted to reach for spirit, but something blocked him.
The lizard. Within the lizard, Tolan felt spirit.
“Fight whatever he’s done to you,” Tolan said.
The lizard didn’t respond.
“I need your help.”
Tolan scrambled for the connection to the lizard, hoping the elemental would give him the assistance he needed, but even as he focused on that sense, he wasn’t sure it would work. There was something else there. It was almost as if there was something within the lizard…
Could I have been wrong? I thought the lizard had been influenced by Roland, but what if that wasn’t the case?
That dragging sensation called him downward, deeper and deeper into the pit.
Tolan ignored it and focused on what he could of the lizard.
Elementals all around him were crying out. He could feel that, the connection to the element bonds giving him an awareness of what was happening to them, and Tolan wanted nothing more than to be able to offer them safety, but even if he did, he had no idea whether it mattered.
The only thing that mattered was what he detected.
It was all tied to the lizard.
Tolan had thought the lizard had helped him. He had thought the lizard was connected to spirit, but perhaps that was not it at all. Tolan pushed through the connection to spirit, pushing through what he could detect of the lizard.
Within that, he recognized something else.
There was that edge of darkness. There was something more to the elemental. Not only was the elemental connected to spirit, but there was some aspect of that same darkness that seemed to be tied to the elemental. It was almost as if the lizard was tied to this chaos.
Tolan could feel each of the elements.
That sense was fading, but as he drifted downward, absorbed by the pit, he held on. Insubstantial as he was, he could feel the drawing sensation of each of the element bonds. Strangely, it reminded him of what the Draasin Lord had said.
There was a cycle.
Tolan was caught up in that cycle. If he was pulled down into the elemental bonds, then he would be able to free himself. He would be able to cycle back out, back into whatever form he chose.
Only, because of his connection to spirit and because of his connection to the other elements, he would know what had happened to him. He would know the power within him. There was something there with him.
“Why did you do this?” Tolan whispered.
“You freed me.”
“I did. Why would you do this?”
“You don’t understand what you have done,” the lizard said.
All of it was tied together. He had been a fool.
Tolan thought he had been serving the elementals, and thought he’d been serving the power he needed to help, but couldn’t help feel as if perhaps he’d made a mistake.
“Please. You don’t have to do this,” Tolan said.
“You did not find the understanding I demanded.” The lizard pushed on him.
Tolan could feel himself getting forced deeper into the bond. The lizard was trying to bury him. It would trap him.
Feeling the elementals crying out, and the pain within them, he didn’t think he had much time.
I had to fight, but how could I fight an elemental of spirit?
Spirit was bonded to him, but it was also bonded to each of the elements. When he had tried to use that before, it hadn’t been enough, but this time, Tolan had a different idea.
The lizard was connected to spirit, but the lizard was connected to spirit in a way that left him tied to it but still separated from the other aspects of power. Tolan was connected to spirit, but he was also connected to something more. He pulled on each of the element bonds, upon spirit, and power rolled through him. Tolan pushed outward.
The lizard faded away.
It wasn’t gone completely. He didn’t know if he would be able to stop it altogether, but if nothing else, by being aware of what the lizard attempted to do to him, and by being aware of the power within the lizard, he had a possible chance of stopping him.
Tolan focused instead on his connection to the element bonds.
He wrapped himself in it and exploded.
He didn’t want to stay in the bond. He didn’t want to be absorbed by this power. He didn’t want the Convergence to hold him down.
There was no reason it would have to. He had the power of the element bonds. He was the power of the element bonds. Surging forward, he felt something near him, and drifted toward it.
Surprisingly, he thought that he knew what it was.
For a moment, he debated whether or not he would use it, but decided that he couldn’t stay in this form indefinitely. It would mean that he had become something else.
That wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to be Tolan, not a power of the elements.
He reentered his body. With a burst of spirit, Tolan came back around.
27
Power lifted him up and out of the pit. All around him, he was aware of the elementals. There was something about them that seemed to be suffering. They were drawn into the pit. Tolan came to land across Roland.
“This is over,” he said to
Roland.
Roland sneered at him. “Look at you. I wouldn’t have expected you to make it back out.”
“The lizard doesn’t have any influence over me.”
“The lizard?”
“The spirit elemental guiding you.”
“What makes you think anything has been guiding me? When this is done, I will have created a way of entering the bond—much like you did. I will have a way to reach that power in this land. All it will take is the elementals.”
So that was what he’d needed the elementals for. That was what Tolan had seen him doing in the waste. That was the purpose of the waste here—to draw the elementals somehow. Tolan would have to stop him. He focused on what he could feel of the spirit elemental, and he pushed that toward Roland. The other man’s eyes widened.
“You’ve lost.”
“I haven’t lost. You can’t stop me.”
“I don’t have to stop you. The elementals will stop you. All I have to do is help them connect to power.”
With that, even in his body, Tolan could connect to the elements and the element bonds, and he let power surge out from him. The elementals began to burst with power of the element bonds. They were all interconnected.
They created a bonded ring around the clearing. The power of the element bonds was now different than it had ever been before. Strangely, there was another sense out there that he thought he needed to connect to. It was vague, but as he probed, aware of it, he pushed on that sense, giving another hint of power to it.
Kerry helped the elementals, linking them in some way with spirit. He could feel the way that spirit flowed from her to the elementals and swirled around. It surprised him that she would be so fearless in her use of spirit, but also so fearless in her willingness to work with the elementals. If only Ferrah could get past some of the fear and jealousy that she had, she might see that Kerry could be an ally.
Ferrah joined his connection.
He could feel her, and could feel the sudden shift within her.
Holding onto power like this, connected to the elements as he was, he recognized how he could connect her to the elements, and he shifted something within her.
A Fading Fire Page 28