Prelude to Fire: Parts 1 and 2

by D. K. Holmberg

  Ilianna pulled a single book from the shelf and tipped it open. Lacertin couldn’t read the writing. “What is it?” he asked.

  “This,” she said, running her finger along the page, “is in Ishthin.”

  Few still read the ancient language. The archivists could read it, but they studied years before they managed to master it. Shapers were taught some snippets, enough to make out certain words, but not enough to read an entire book written in it.

  “I recognize the language” Lacertin said. “I can’t read it.”

  “Only because you haven’t tried. There is much about the language that’s shared with ours. This,” she said, pointing to a section, “speaks of fire and the shaping the ancients did using fire.”

  “Is this from the archives?”

  “These have never been a part of the archives,” Ilianna said. “They remain in the palace, held by the ruling family.”

  “Do the archivists know that you have them?” He could imagine the reaction Ilton’s archivists would have if they learned there were texts they would feel should be returned to the archives. Most of the archivists he’d met felt that only the archivists could manage and secure the ancient works.

  “Only his closest advisor,” Ilianna said. She leaned over the book, running her finger down the page, slowly flipping through to another. “Traditionally, my family has never been able to even read these works. We might possess them, but they do us no good without a means of interpreting them. Nissa claims there is nothing within these works that isn’t found in the archives.”

  From her tone, Lacertin suspected that Ilianna felt differently than her father’s chief archivist. “You disagree?”

  “It has taken me years to learn to fully understand what’s written here. Althem always felt I was wasting my time, but Father understood. He pushed me to learn Ishthin so that I could understand, so that I wouldn’t have to rely on another to translate. Lacertin,” she said, pointing to the book, “why do you think my father sent you searching the last few months?”

  He shook his head, thinking of what he’d gone through to obtain the parts to the box, how he’d suffered. “I often don’t know why your father asks the favors of me. Why send me to Doma for two months a year ago to observe their borders? Why attempt to send me to Chenir?” They had been less than welcoming of a warrior visiting, keeping him restricted to a few places within their capital. “Why send me to Norilan? I think your father has reasons for everything that he asks, but I’m not always privy to them.”

  When Ilianna smiled at him, it reminded him of the times when he’d known her before she met Theondar. She had a warmth to her then, whereas now she was more guarded. “You’re privy to more than most.”

  “Then why did he send me from the city? What are those plates?” Lacertin pointed toward the desk on the other side of the room.

  Ilianna stiffened but didn’t look over. She turned a few more pages in the book until she found a single diagram. He had seen the diagram before, just like he’d seen what it depicted. A line of text beneath it was written in a tight hand. There was a rune within that Lacertin recognized, and that he’d stared at for the last few months. Fire.

  “That’s the first piece I found,” he whispered.

  Ilianna nodded. She turned a few more pages until she came to the next diagram. Like before, there was a line of text beneath, with another rune that he recognized. Wind. Lacertin had seen this diagram as well.

  She continued to flip pages in the book, and Lacertin knew what he would find. There would be a panel for earth and another for water.

  “This is where you learned about the plates,” he said.

  Ilianna nodded. “This text describes the separation and how the pieces must be brought together.” She closed the book, letting it rest on her lap.

  “There is a fifth side,” Lacertin said. That was the one he hadn’t managed to find, and the one rune he hadn’t known before beginning his search. He assumed it was for spirit, but then, there hadn’t been a spirit shaper in a very long time.

  Ilianna set the book to the side and reached onto the shelf to grab another. This was a smaller tome than the last. It had a faded brown leather cover stamped with the rune he now knew was for spirit. She traced her fingers around it and smiled to herself.

  “That was the key,” she said. “Anytime we’ve searched for information about this, there was always something missing. This talks about how to find the piece for spirit.”

  “You’ve already found it, then.”

  Ilianna looked up at him. “It was never missing.”

  She held the cover of the book open carefully and slipped her hand inside a flap in the back, pulling out a rectangular piece of gold. The rune for spirit was etched into the surface. It was a match for the others.

  “You had it the entire time,” Lacertin said softly. How long had he searched for that piece? Weeks? Nearly a month? Without any way to search for it, he’d been forced to come back to Ethea with an incomplete assignment. He had never disappointed Ilton before, and hated that he had come back without all the parts to what he’d been asked to bring. “Why didn’t he tell me?”

  “He didn’t know,” Ilianna said. “When he sent you, he didn’t know where it was. You don’t understand, Lacertin. I’ve been searching through these books for years, trying to understand. Had it not been for dropping the book,” her face flushed briefly and he realized that she had done so unintentionally, “I might never have learned there was something else in here. Look.”

  She handed him the book. The first thing that he noted was how heavy it was compared to what he expected. The front cover was weighted, and now that she’d slipped the gold out of the back of the cover, there wasn’t a matching weight. He opened to the back, where the missing piece of the box had hidden, and ran his finger along the leather. It had been cut open.

  “Now what?” he asked. When she frowned, Lacertin went on. “I imagine that you’ve brought all the plates together. What do they do?”

  After months spent searching for the individual parts, he wanted to know that the time had been useful; otherwise, he might as well have remained in Ethea. He had nearly died obtaining the water and wind pieces, and the other two had been nearly as difficult.

  Ilianna stood and went to her desk. Lacertin glanced at the texts before standing and following her. “I thought it was something like a puzzle,” she said, lifting the plate for earth and touching it to the one that was hidden in the book. Nothing happened. Then she tried water, and the same. Wind and fire were no different. “But that doesn’t seem to be the case. Since you’ve returned, I’ve spent nearly every moment trying to understand what these plates do but haven’t found the secret.”

  Lacertin took one of the gold plates off the desk. Wind, he noted from the rune. The way the runes were carved into the surface reminded him so much of the strange bowl that he long ago had found. “I’ve seen something like these before,” he said softly. Her eyes widened slightly. “Shortly after I became your father’s…” He swallowed, unable to finish.

  “First?”

  He nodded. What would he become when Ilton failed? Who was he meant to be then? Not the First Warrior. He would remain a warrior, but Althem and Theondar would not use him in the same ways. The mission to the border had already proven that. “We were beyond the border in Incendin,” he went on. “This was long before I ever suggested the barrier, when the borders were different. I came across a decorated obsidian bowl.”

  “Obsidian?” she asked. When he nodded, Ilianna looked at him with a bright intensity. “The ancient shapers of Rens worked with obsidian. If you have something like this, it might have the same power as the plates. Maybe we could—”

  “It is nothing but an old trinket from Incendin,” he said. “The carvings were decoration, nothing more. Not like these.” There was no question that the plates had a purpose, if only he could understand what that was. “Do you know what they do?” he asked.

  Sh
e shook her head, clutching the book to her chest.

  “You sent me searching for these without knowing what they were for?”

  “The texts say—”

  Lacertin looked over to the books resting on the ground. “The texts are in Ishthin, Ilianna. I don’t know everything about the language, but the translation is not always accurate. What if these are nothing more than ancient artwork, no different than the bowl?” The trouble he had finding them made that less likely, but seeing that Ilianna didn’t even know what they were for made him wonder if that might not be the case.

  “Have you shaped into them?” she asked.

  “Have I what?”

  She met his eyes. Deep within her eyes, he saw the thread of hope she felt. “Have you shaped into the plates?”

  “No. That wasn’t the task I was assigned.”

  She laughed softly and started to reach toward him before lowering her hand. “Your task. Didn’t my father ask you to find something that could save him? Possibly save the kingdoms?”

  “And you think these plates could do that?”

  “If what’s written is accurate, and if my translation is accurate,” she admitted, “then this is something incredibly powerful.”

  Lacertin sighed as he set the piece back down on the desk. “If it’s so powerful, why would it be hidden like that? Why disguise it by separating the parts?”

  “I believe that whatever these are meant for is incredibly powerful,” she said. “The ancients intended for it to be difficult to find so that power could not be so easily used.”

  “If that’s the case, Ilianna, then what makes you think we should use that power? Our shapers aren’t like them. We can’t use the elements the same way they once did.”

  She turned to him, clutching one of the plates to her chest. “I can.”

  Lacertin frowned. “I don’t understand. Are you saying…”

  He looked to the plate she held, noting spirit marked on the plate.

  She nodded. “I can shape like the ancients, Lacertin. I can reach spirit.”

  For a moment, Lacertin didn’t know what to say. For her to claim to shape spirit seemed impossible, but then, he would have felt it was also impossible that she could shape at all. She’d hidden that fact from everyone, including those closest to her. How else would she have managed to hide it so easily, if not for the ability to shape spirit?

  “How?” he asked.

  Ilianna held the plate out from her and turned it in her hands. “Not well, at least, not yet. I think with more time and practice, I’ll manage to control it better.”

  “But how are you able to shape spirit? There hasn’t been a shaper with that ability in…” Lacertin tried to remember what he could of the history of the shapers, but couldn’t come up with when the last spirit shaper had existed, “centuries. How did you manifest it?”

  “It’s not like the others,” she said. “I can borrow from each of the other elements and bind them together.”

  “Bind them?” He’d never considered attempting anything like that before. He used each of the elements in his shaping, and the warrior shaping that allowed for travel required him to use each, but he didn’t know what she meant about binding.

  Even that didn’t make complete sense. There had been spirit shapers unable to shape other elements. Those shapers were gone, faded by time. What Ilianna described didn’t fit with what he knew.

  “Pull the shaping together. Twist it,” she said, using her hands to demonstrate by joining her fingers together. “Then you have to pull it onto yourself.”

  “Ilianna, that kind of shaping is dangerous. What you’re talking about involves shaping yourself.”

  “Not myself, and not dangerous. At least, it’s no more dangerous than any other shaping I’ve attempted. It’s merely more complicated.” She led him away from the desk, setting the fifth plate on top of it, and went back to the stacked books. She pulled another from the shelf, this a slim volume bound in a strange, scaled leather. “This describes the process,” she said. “The ancient shapers used something much like this. It allowed them to reach spirit as well.”

  Could that really be all there was to it? Had the ancient shapers simply known something about shaping that they did not?

  Most felt that they had different abilities, that the gift of shaping spirit had been lost over time. From what Lacertin had learned, even the archivists felt the same way. What Ilianna described went against that belief.

  “Can you show me?” he asked. How much more could he do if he were able to shape spirit? How much more could all of the warriors do if they could shape spirit?

  Ilianna nodded. “When I described this to Father, he thought that you should know.”

  “Not Theondar?”

  She hesitated. “Theondar is a wonderful man,” she began, “but there is darkness within him. It… It frightens me.”

  He had always considered Theondar to be a skilled warrior. Some of the feats he had accomplished spoke to that. But he’d thought that the fact he and Theondar didn’t get along was the reason there was a distance between them.

  “Does spirit shaping tell you that?” he asked.

  “I don’t need spirit to know,” she answered.

  She pushed her hair behind her ear and met his eyes. How much would have been different had he not needed to leave the city when Ilton attempted to establish the arrangement? Would he have been with Ilianna now? He knew the question didn’t matter. Not anymore. Too much time had passed between them, and Lacertin had changed. He wasn’t the same person he had been when he first went to Ilton.

  She might think there was darkness in Theondar, but there was darkness in him, too. There were things that he had done in the name of Ilton that Lacertin couldn’t tell anyone, things he hadn’t even dared to share with Ilton.

  But if she shaped spirit, she might already know.

  “What happens now?” he asked.

  Ilianna shook her head. “I need to understand how to use the plates. Whatever power they can access might be enough to stop Incendin. But these… these are only copies. The originals will have notes that we can use, more than what we have. The only original volume is this,” she said, showing him the one that had held the plate.

  “Is that the reason he sent me for them?”

  She sighed. “He sent you for them because I asked it of him. I want to save him, Lacertin. I will do anything to save him.”

  He took her hands, feeling uncertain as he did. Her eyes were so much as he remembered, but the strength behind them was new. He had thought that her time with Theondar had changed her, but that wasn’t it at all. It was learning that she could shape, that she didn’t have to depend on warriors, that she was a warrior, that would have changed her. And she had done all of it without formal training.

  More than ever, she amazed him.

  “I…” he started, but didn’t know how to finish.

  “I know,” she whispered.

  They stood for a moment, holding hands, Lacertin uncertain what to do next, when a knock came at her door.

  She glanced over at him, pulling her hands free. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said.

  “I will go,” he said, starting toward the door.

  “No,” she whispered. “Not that way. Through the wall.”

  She guided him toward the spot she’d shaped the opening in the wall and pulled on a quick shaping, forming the hidden doorway once more. She pushed the door open and sent Lacertin through as another knock came at her door, this one more intent than before.

  “Ilianna?”

  Lacertin’s heart thumped heavily. It was Theondar.

  “Go,” she said, pulling the door behind her. She glanced over her shoulder at the door. “I need your help understanding how to use the plates,” she said. “I’ve not found anything in these texts. Help me find the originals.”

  “Where can I look?”

  “The archives. They won’t let me access the restricted section, not wi
thout Father, but you’re a warrior. They’ll let you pass.”

  “You’re a warrior too,” Lacertin said.

  “They can’t know that,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “They just can’t. Will you help?”

  She started pushing the door closed before he had a chance to answer, not that she needed him to say it. For Ilton, he would do anything. “I’ll help,” he said.

  Then the door sealed closed, shutting him in the darkness.

  CHAPTER 16

  Lacertin knew that he should get moving, that remaining hidden behind the wall would only end with being discovered and possibly risk the revelation of Ilianna’s secret, but he felt almost compelled to remain. The walls were thick, probably too thick for him to be able to listen through, but he remained anyway.

  He pressed his head against the wall, straining to hear. As when he’d tracked Ilianna to Ilton’s room, the thin crack remained, though it slowly faded. A fluttering whistle of wind worked through the crack, and he used this, straining with a sensing of wind. He didn’t dare shape. Theondar would know if he did.

  “When you didn’t answer, I was worried.” This came from Theondar, his deep voice edged with more emotion than Lacertin had ever heard from him. There was compassion in it as well, none of the usual bluster that Theondar seemed to possess around everyone else. Could it be that Theondar was actually good to Ilianna?

  “After everything that I’ve been through, I needed to rest,” she said.

  “I wish there was something we could do for your father.”

  Ilianna answered something too soft for Lacertin to hear. Could she know that he remained in the walls? If she managed to shape spirit, he supposed that it was possible that she knew.

  “Althem intends to strengthen the barrier. Now that we’ve lost Mal and Issan, there is even more urgency.”

  The sudden change seemed jarring, unless it came from something that Ilianna had said. Lacertin hadn’t realized that Althem appreciated the barrier. He thought the prince only tolerated it because his father had wanted the barrier in place, but what if there was more?