The Shape of Fire

by D. K. Holmberg

  They stepped free of the shaping, wind swirling around him. The air was cold, with a bite to it. Snow crunched under his boots, and he used a shaping of fire to keep himself warm. Tolan no longer needed to wear heavy clothing. As he was able to shape, he could survive the elements.

  “You could’ve warned me about where we’d land,” she said.

  “I didn’t think that it mattered.”

  “I could have prepared a fire shaping and have it in place. This way, now I am…”

  Tolan turned his shaping upon her. Warmth radiated between them, and the snow started to melt. Tolan shifted it, keeping the shaping swirling around them but not letting it stretch down toward their boots and to the snow. It wouldn’t make sense for them to sink into the snow as they tried to walk across it.

  Then again, it might not even matter. They could use a shaping of wind to carry themselves above the ground and stay above the snow.

  He nodded to Ferrah. “This way.”

  “I’ve been looking for him but can’t see him. You can find him already?”

  “He’s not trying to hide from me.”

  “I don’t see him.”

  Tolan smiled to himself. If the Draasin Lord wanted to hide from them, it wouldn’t be difficult. Tolan had seen just how easy it was for the Draasin Lord to mask his presence.

  They climbed the mountain. Tolan used shapings of earth and wind to do so. There was a twinge of strangeness against the earth bond; a sense of hashin. He couldn’t tell if it was something unsettled, some aspect of the element bond troubled after what had happened, or whether or not there was something to his shaping that just seemed amiss.

  He reached the peak of the mountain, looking out. To the south, he could practically feel the presence of Telfair. It came from the sense of spirit; the sense of his shaping he’d used before. There were other villages beyond, and if he probed farther, there were other larger cities. He’d visited all of them over the years—many of them recently.

  Tolan turned away, heading over the mountain peak. The mountains were viewed as nearly impassable. Shapers could cross over them, but most believed they extended too far to shape beyond. For most shapers, they did, though all it took was the simple matter of traveling over them. It took persistence.

  He focused on fire. Using his shaping of earth and wind, he carried himself forward, with Ferrah following him. They hurried along the ground, drifting down as Tolan trailed after what he could sense. In the distance, he saw a mound of what appeared to be rock. It was the only part of the mountain not covered in snow.

  Tolan lowered himself to the ground in front of it. “Are you going to look up at me, or am I going to have to wake you?”

  Slowly, the rock began to unfurl. The draasin was enormous. He had black scales, spikes that protruded from his back and sides, and massive orange eyes that were each larger than Tolan’s head. Steam erupted from nostrils larger than his torso, and he breathed out as he stared at Tolan. Thin, leathery wings stretched out from either side, and he radiated the feeling of energy and power. The draasin was both. Connected to fire in a way that was unlike anything else, Tolan could feel the power emanating from him.

  “I know why you’ve come.”

  “If you know why I have come, you understand we need to understand what took place.”

  “With what?”

  “Why are the elementals in the North moving?”

  “There are many reasons for a migration.”

  “A migration? That’s what it is?”

  The Draasin Lord breathed out a heavy streamer of steam. “There has been movement. I… feel… something. I do not know what it is or what it means.”

  That was surprising. The Draasin Lord was well-connected to the elementals and typically knew what was taking place regardless of which element was involved.

  “Does it have to do with what happened with hashin and the bond?” It had to be more than coincidence. Tolan was certain of that.

  “You’re asking the wrong elemental.”

  “I thought you were all-powerful.”

  The draasin snorted, and steam drifted from his nose again.

  His gaze flicked beyond Tolan and over to Ferrah. As she often did, she remained quiet. For all the time Ferrah had spent with Tolan around elementals, she still wasn’t entirely comfortable with them. She understood his desire to see them freed once more, but she also felt the same way as the Grand Master and Master Minden, in that they needed to be cautious. People had to come to accept the elementals before they were freed again. It was going to take time.

  If it were up to Tolan, he would have released the elementals, letting them roam the land. Shapers might try to pursue them, but the elementals weren’t helpless.

  The draasin snorted, steam drifting out again. “You want to know if it’s about the other.”

  “Is it Roland Var?” Tolan asked. Could the Draasin Lord have answers? He was better connected than almost any other elemental, so Tolan had to think he’d have those answers.

  “I cannot tell. I think you need to find what has happened to the bond.”

  “Because it feels different,” Tolan said.

  “It is different.”

  “I didn’t realize a single elemental returning to the bond”—Tolan wasn’t sure if it was truly a return to the bond or an entering of the bond—“would change the way it felt.”

  “Each elemental adds a certain aspect of itself to the bond. I imagine if you probed water you would find something similar there.”

  Tolan shook his head. “Water doesn’t feel the same way.”

  “Perhaps that’s only because you don’t have the same connection to it.”

  He didn’t have the same connection to water—or wind, for that matter. Earth and fire were bonded to him, but they were that way because of hyza and his connection to that elemental. If there was something more, then Tolan would have to try to understand it through his connection to earth. Maybe water had been changed.

  “I don’t have the answer as to why.”

  “I thought the elementals spoke to each other.”

  “What you’re asking is an elemental of fire to reach the earth bond to understand what took place.”

  “What I’m asking is for the Draasin Lord to help me understand what took place.”

  The Draasin Lord snorted again, and Tolan smiled. He knew pushing him like that, and attempting to question him in such a way, wasn’t going to be effective.

  “Hyza doesn’t know what took place, either.”

  “Hyza knows—but does not.”

  “What sort of answer is that?”

  “Hyza is connected to fire more strongly than to earth. For hyza to know what took place, hyza would have to better connect to earth.”

  “You’re saying that I need to go to an earth elemental to better understand it.”

  “You went to an earth elemental. That is what happened.”

  “I wasn’t trying to force hashin into the element bond,” Tolan said.

  “Were you not?”

  “I was trying to understand the elemental.”

  “Hashin has been isolated for a long time,” the Draasin Lord said.

  Tolan frowned. For the Draasin Lord to refer to something as a long time meant it was truly a long time. His understanding of time was one of power and a sense of energy.

  Tolan glanced over at Ferrah, and she watched him. He never knew how much she was able to understand of his conversation with the Draasin Lord. Not until it was over. The Draasin Lord could choose how much to allow someone else to understand. In the case of this conversation, it was possible the Draasin Lord didn’t want her to know. It was equally possible he didn’t care. Tolan never really knew.

  He focused on the Draasin Lord again. “Who would you suggest I go to?”

  “I would suggest you go to earth, see what you might find.”

  “Which earth elemental would be the one that would best understand it?”

  “You need
an earth elemental attached to the bond for a long time.”

  Tolan thought that he understood. “Do you think the Guardian would answer?”

  “The Guardian wants to see everything protected.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “I don’t have an answer. He will have to answer for you.”

  Tolan looked over at Ferrah, sighing. He’d come here thinking he might be able to get some answers from the Draasin Lord, and the Draasin Lord was only trying to send him away again. From here, it would involve heading to the center of the waste. At the heart of the waste were four elementals, one for each element, that surrounded a location of considerable power. It was another Convergence, but it was different than the one within the Academy.

  Tolan watched the Draasin Lord. “Are you comfortable?”

  “Comfortable? I am tired,” the Draasin Lord said.

  “I know you are.”

  “I intend to rest.”

  “I’m not trying to disrupt your rest.”

  “No. You could not.”

  “Will you help?”

  “I’ve helped as much as I can. It’s my time to rest.”

  The Draasin Lord had made similar comments before, and each time he did Tolan felt a pang of sadness. Tolan didn’t want to lose the Draasin Lord. But he understood. As the Draasin Lord had said, he was growing tired. His time grew short. He had lived a long and full life. Longer than most beings ever had a chance to do.

  “You can rest. You don’t need to keep fighting.”

  “I don’t need to, but I must. I can feel the need to do so,” the Draasin Lord said.

  Tolan worried about the time when they would eventually lose the Draasin Lord. He knew the day was coming, and despite how much he dreaded it, he also understood that the Draasin Lord had earned it. The Draasin Lord had served for a long time, and even elementals died.

  “What happens when you’re gone?”

  “I return to fire.”

  “How?”

  “By returning to fire.”

  Tolan smiled, and he looked over at the Draasin Lord for a long moment. “And once you return to fire, will there be another draasin?”

  “There will always be another draasin,” the Draasin Lord said.

  “Are there any others?”

  There was a moment of silence, a moment where he heard nothing, though he felt a sense of the Draasin Lord. He could feel the hesitation, almost a sense of anxiety, within the Draasin Lord.

  “I can’t tell.”

  “Are they in the bond?”

  There was a time when Tolan would’ve thought that it was impossible to push a draasin into the bond, but he had seen the way the draasin were able to be forced into the bond, and he understood that such a thing was possible, however much he found it unlikely. He’d felt the way the draasin were forced into the bond, and the way that they’d been squeezed. When it happened to the Draasin Lord, it had been done initially as a way to protect him, but there were others who would use it in a different way.

  “There were some who went into the bond, but if they remain, they are quiet.”

  “How many draasin were there?”

  “There used to be many.”

  “How many?” Much like with time, it was difficult to get a sense of scale when it came to the Draasin Lord. It was difficult to know whether many meant dozens, or hundreds. Either answer was possible, especially considering the other elementals that Tolan had experienced. When it came to the nature of the power of the elementals, Tolan could imagine that there were several, perhaps dozens, but the idea that there were once hundreds of draasin was unlikely.

  “Many,” the Draasin Lord said.

  Tolan smiled and reached out, touching the Draasin Lord on his long snout. His scaled skin was hot, though it seemed to Tolan he wasn’t nearly as warm as he once had been. It seemed that some aspect of him had already begun to retreat.

  It was part of the reason Tolan hadn’t seen the Draasin Lord nearly as much over the last few years. He remained here, lying along the mountain, occasionally flying and circling when he hunted—which had become increasingly rare over the last few years—and then returning.

  Tolan ran his hand along the surface of the Draasin Lord, feeling the heat from his spikes. Each day that passed was another day where the Draasin Lord drifted further from the world. A day when the Draasin Lord would eventually disappear.

  The Draasin Lord said nothing more. There was only silence. Tolan felt nothing other than a sense of peace coming from the Draasin Lord. After a while, Tolan backed away, joining Ferrah.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “He grows tired.”

  “He’s lived a long time,” Ferrah said. “Didn’t you tell me he was tired five years ago?”

  And he had been. Even then, the draasin had been exhausted, the energy from him draining. The Draasin Lord had fought to offer anything that he could.

  “I’m just not ready to lose him.”

  “Is he yours to lose?”

  Tolan looked over at the Draasin Lord, studying him. He had lowered his head back to the ground and he curled his wings around his body, wrapping his tail around himself. He focused on the sense of fire coming off the Draasin Lord, the sense of the energy that he knew was here, but there was only that faint sense of the connection to fire.

  “I think he’s all of ours to lose,” Tolan said.

  They backed away and he focused, thinking about where he wanted to go, the power he would need, and he held out his hand, waiting. Each time he left the Draasin Lord these days, he felt the same mixture of emotions. It was a sense he might not ever see the Draasin Lord like this again.

  Ferrah couldn’t understand. Tolan knew she couldn’t, and knew she wouldn’t be able to appreciate what Tolan knew about the Draasin Lord, or the way he and the Draasin Lord had shared experiences ever since he’d encountered him. Ferrah was willing to travel with the Draasin Lord, and had even been willing to fly atop the Draasin Lord. That had been difficult for her, and he doubted she would do it again unless it were necessary.

  Holding out his hand, he waited for her.

  “Rest well, friend,” he said as Ferrah took his hand and waited. It was strange, but her touch didn’t provide him the comfort it should. Maybe that was the constant distance between them.

  Tolan thought the Draasin Lord looked toward him, however briefly. With a blast of power, the warrior shaping struck, carrying him up and away.

  They landed at the edge of the waste.

  12

  This section of the waste was separated from the rest of Terndahl. Bleak and barren, it was little more than emptiness. Within it was a feeling of nothingness, almost as if Tolan was separated from the power that existed within the world. One side of a border leading to the waste was green and vibrant, lush grasses and trees and the sense of power that came from the elements, and the other was nothingness.

  This was near where he’d grown up. Where he’d changed. Where so much had changed for him. Nothing grew out on the waste. It was rock. Emptiness. Even the air was still, with no gusting winds. The only thing he was aware of was the ground beneath his boots, the hot sun, almost as if earth and fire wanted to make their presence known.

  “Why did you stop us here? I thought you still visited the waste regularly. I thought your father—”

  “My father hasn’t been out on the waste.”

  “Isn’t he studying the bondars there?”

  Tolan shook his head. “He and the others went away. They haven’t kept their focus on the waste. They find it difficult.”

  It was difficult enough for Tolan, and he had the ability to shape out on the waste. Those who didn’t were forced to use another kind of bondar that trapped power they could use while out there.

  He stepped across the border, feeling the sudden shift. In doing so, the strange sensation he’d been feeling; that odd tingling sense that came from the unusual nature of the element bond, disappeared. Now al
l he was aware of was the elements.

  Ferrah joined him, heading across the waste while pulling a bondar from her pocket, squeezing it briefly. Using the bondar allowed her to shape, and he wasn’t surprised she would want to have it with her as long as possible.

  It was difficult to be separated from the ability to shape. It was a strange sensation that Tolan understood. When he had first learned about his connections, he had remembered how odd it had felt when he’d come out across the waste, venturing where he wasn’t able to detect any of the element bonds. It had to be doubly so for someone like Ferrah, who’d been connected to power her entire life. At least for Tolan, there had been a long period of time where he hadn’t yet developed that ability.

  He turned to her. “Are you ready?”

  “Are you just going to take us there, or are you going to make me keep using this?” she snapped.

  “I can take us there.”

  She glowered at him. “Good.”

  With that, another warrior shaping formed around them and carried them toward the heart of the waste.

  When they stepped free of it, he was struck by the change here. There was a time when this had been nothing but a bleak emptiness. Even now, there was still that emptiness, but it wasn’t quite so bleak. Whereas most of the waste was barren, with no sense of life or activity, at the heart of the waste there were buildings.

  Shapers used the simple stone buildings erected here in order to study. There were some from the Academy who spent time out here, trying to better understand the nature of the waste itself and the purpose of the Guardians. As far as Tolan knew, no one had attempted to reach the Convergence deep beneath the ground. The Guardians—and his warning—were enough to deter them.

  He paused and looked around. The buildings were all made out of shaped stone, which were mostly designed to keep the heat out. There was no other wind or rain or any other type of element that would strike here, so there was no other reason for the buildings to truly exist. It was nothing more than basic shelter.

  They ringed the heart of the waste, creating a circle. Outside that circle were the four Guardians; massive and powerful elementals held by an enormous bondar that tapped into each of the elements and connected to the strange Convergence deep beneath the ground. Tolan could feel them the moment they arrived.