He could sense the animals around him. His connection with the world was strong enough that even if he closed his eyes he could feel where living things were around him. He knew that he was nearing her and her fox before he actually saw them. He could only describe the way he sensed life and the different way he sensed others as auras. The aura that each species put off was unique, and the more familiar with an aura he was, the easier it was for him to recognize it. Horses, for instance, he could sense from very far away. Dwarves and humans he could also identify readily without even thinking about it. The woman’s aura ahead of him he sensed easily, especially out here, where she was the only druid. The fox’s aura he wasn’t very familiar with, but he sensed the connection between the two and so he surmised that was the aura of the animal close to her. He walked another thirty paces and then stopped. She was standing next to a tree about ten paces away. He couldn’t actually see her, the tree was too big, but he sensed her there.
“I came,” he said in the direction of the tree.
She walked out from behind the tree and smiled at him. She had been testing his connection and they both knew it. “Your friend really cares about you. I am surprised you let the pony go, though.”
“You were listening?” he asked, even though he knew that she had stayed close until Grundel had begun flying over the water dangling from one of his axes.
She just shrugged her shoulders. “Are you really only staying a couple of days?”
“I am. My friends will need me soon. I will have to return to them. I can only give you four days at most.”
“How much training have you had with your connection?” she asked him.
“None. When I came out of the fairy forest I felt the connection. Kalise appeared to us and I committed myself to her. I knew another druid but she wasn’t able to leave the fairy forest. Her connection had been too complete there.” He could see that she was trying to determine if he was telling the truth. He knew it sounded completely ridiculous, but it was the truth. Apparently she decided to believe him though, since she didn’t argue the validity of the story.
“How long ago did you establish your connection, then?”
“It has only been a couple of months,” he answered her honestly.
“You are a lot older then most druids when they establish their connection. What have you figured out so far?”
“You already know I have linked with my pony. I have also linked with the hawk that you saw earlier. I can look through their eyes. I can give them an idea of what I am thinking. I can’t actually speak with them, but they understand what I’m thinking. The hawk was originally linked to the druid I told you about. She also gave me a staff and with that staff I have been able to summon an earth golem to help me fight an orc army. Other than that, I can sense life around me and I can tell what that life is by its aura. I can also sense if the living thing is hostile. I killed a snake that attacked my friend right after I initially established my connection with the earth. I hadn’t even seen it; I just sensed the danger and threw my knife. It wasn’t until afterward that I realized I might have been able to dissuade it, but I hadn’t understood the link well enough. I still don’t, really.”
She considered his words for a second. “First, I should tell you my name. I am Evelyn. It sounds like you have two gifts. That is very rare. What you have figured out on your own in such a short time is amazing. It takes most druids years to accomplish some of the things you have described. If you are only going to be with me for a couple of days I think it is best if I first explain to you some of what it means to be a druid, then I think we should focus on the skills you already know. I can introduce you to some new things you can practice later, but in the short time we have I won’t be able to teach you anything new. The best I can do is teach you more about what you have already figured out.”
“You’re the teacher. You have me for four days. I’ll do whatever you say for that amount of time. I just want to learn as much as I can. Hopefully I can come back someday soon. That is, if you still want to teach me after I leave.”
She smiled. “A completely dedicated student. What more can a teacher ask for? We can talk about further training after this is all over. We don’t have much time left tonight, so for now we will concentrate on familiarizing you with some things. Follow me and we will go somewhere more comfortable.”
A few minutes later Rundo was sitting on a log in front of a tree that was twice as wide as he was tall. The bottom of the tree had rotted out on the inside, and it was apparently where Evelyn had been sleeping. She bent down and started a fire inside the ring of rocks by placing her hand next to the wood. She hadn’t used anything to start the fire. She sat down on a log across from him. She smiled. “You want to know how I did that, don’t you?”
“I do. That was magic. I know a wizard who could do that,” he told her.
“No. You know a wizard who could make a flame out of magic. What I just did was create fire. I used the element of wind to force the small pieces of wood back and forth against each other very quickly. That heated them up until they caught fire,” she told him as she watched his reaction.
For some reason the way she had explained it made perfect sense to him.
“I can tell that you understand,” she said. “I said earlier you have two gifts. The first is obviously your connection with animals. All druids have a connection with nature, so we can all sense life. Some can sense it much more strongly than others. Some can sense plants and even sense what a plant can do. They could feel, just through the aura, as you call it, that a plant is poisonous or that it will soothe a stomachache or heal a cut. My gift is shifting. I can connect with animals like you can, but I can also shift into any animal that I have become familiar enough with. As you saw today, I wasn’t that familiar with the fish and so I wasn’t able to complete a full shift. I was able to accomplish it enough that I could breathe through gills, though. There are many other abilities we can borrow from animals, but we won’t go into them all. With practice all druids can learn all the skills to an extent. You have a strong connection with animals, so learning to shift would be easier for you than others. If you grow up in a druid community you are forced to practice as many skills as possible. I have very little connection with plants. I can sense the life in them, and even feel the connection, but that is about it. Your other skill is elements. You said that you used a druid staff to make an earth golem. The druid staff is only a conduit. It is an item with a strong connection with the earth; through that connection a druid is able to enhance their own connection, therefore enhancing their own abilities. You seemed to be fairly capable of figuring out your connection with animals, so I think that we should focus on your ability with elements. We can start on that in the morning. Tonight I want to talk to you about the guidelines of a druid, and your responsibilities as a child of Kalise.”
“I am here to learn,” was his only response. He was content just to listen. It was a lot of information all at once, but he was excited to learn it.
Over the next few hours he listened as Evelyn explained to him that a druid had a responsibility to protect any living thing within their power. That included humans. They weren’t to destroy anything or take the life of anything unless it was a necessity. She explained that often druids chose to be vegetarian, but just as many weren’t. When you were connected to the earth, eating a plant wasn’t that different from eating an animal. Since they were eating a rabbit stew while she talked he surmised that she wasn’t a vegetarian. She went on for hours explaining what it was to be a druid. Most of it really just came down to being a good person and not being wasteful, really. Kalise didn’t require any crazy rituals. Most druids prayed to her. They asked her for guidance or help or called on her for strength in a crisis. That was a common practice in any religion really, though. He appreciated that after all of his years of not choosing a religion, he had chosen a goddess that didn’t require complete subterfuge. He was free to be his own person as long
as he was a good person. There were no requirements that a druid had to live in nature or isolate themselves from society. Most just found the lifestyle of society upsetting, and the connection to nature was diminished in populated areas where there wasn’t much nature to connect with.
After hours of her explaining and answering his questions she finally went into the tree and lay down. She had offered him a place in the shelter but he chose to sleep on the ground out in the open. Messah was perched on a branch that hung over the small opening. He could sense Bumbo not far away. He was content, knowing that Bumbo was content, which meant that his friends were okay.
Rundo woke up in the morning being bombarded with wind and dirt. He rolled over onto his stomach and crawled toward the log. All of a sudden it was over. He rolled over and looked around. Evelyn was standing there. She had been the one doing it. “Air, the most underrated of the elements. With air you can control water. With air you can start a fire, feed a fire, or blow out a fire. Even stone gives way to wind over time. With a strong enough wind you can use the other elements against each other.”
Rundo got to his feet. “So what do you want me to do?”
“For now, just feel. Feel the air. It has an aura, too. It is all around us. It is something that is there from the minute you feel your connection. It is easy to overlook. Feel the air. It is the greatest life force. You can go weeks without the life force of food. You can go days without the life force of water. Without air you will be dead in minutes.”
Rundo tried to feel the wind. He wasn’t feeling it when he remembered how he had learned to focus his senses. He had pushed everything else to the back of his consciousness. He opened himself up to all of that. It took him a few minutes to push all the plants to the back of his consciousness. Finally he found it. It had always been there, but it was so subtle he had always overlooked it. He focused on it familiarizing himself with what it felt like. It was something that had always been there, so it didn’t take long to become familiar with it. “I have it,” he told her.
“Okay, now you have to manipulate the wind. Just like you did when you made the earth golem. Just try to establish a connection with the air. Don’t try to make a golem right now. Just try to move those leaves with air,” she told him, pointing to a smile pile of leaves a few feet away.
He wasn’t sure how to manipulate the air, so he just focused on what he wanted to happen. He opened himself up to that aura like he opened himself to Bumbo and Messah when he wanted to link with them so he could use their eyes. The second he opened himself to the aura of air, the pile of leaves blew away.
Evelyn had him moving things for hours after that. By the middle of the day he could open himself to air without even thinking about it.
“Okay, I think you understand air well enough. Now we go to fire. Before you can make fire you have to understand what you need for fire. Remember, we’re not wizards or mages. We can’t just summon fire. If there is fire around you then you will be able to sense it and link with it just like the air, but if there isn’t you can still make fire. In order to make fire you need air, fuel, and heat.” She handed him two sticks and a handful of dead grass. “Move the sticks back and forth until they are smoking. That means they have heat. Then put the glowing part of the stick against the dead grass, or the fuel. Finally, you have to add air.”
It took two hours of him practicing and her coaching before he got his first ember on the end of one of the sticks. He put it to the bundle of dead grass and blew on it, but he blew the ember out. It only took him a few minutes to get the ember this time. He was doing everything by hand and his forearms were burning from rubbing the sticks together. This time he was able to get the pile of dead grass to start smoking. He saw the red as the grass was burning but not catching flame. He thought about what she had said. He had heat and fuel so he needed more air. He gradually began to blow a little harder and a little harder. The bundle of dead grass was smoking a lot now, so he blew harder. Then the whole thing went up in flames in his hand. He tossed the ball of fire onto the ground.
“I did it!” he shouted in excitement.
Evelyn just stood there smiling at him. “Good! It feels good, doesn’t it? That was actually the hard part. I made you do it by hand so you would understand it. Now that you do, you can tap into the air and move one stick really fast and have the fire started in seconds.”
Rundo spent the rest of the day starting fires. It was nearly night by the time she taught him how to open up to the fire, how to feed the fire with air. The more air you fed it the more fuel it needed, though. By the time they stopped for the night Rundo was exhausted. His body was sore from rubbing the sticks together for hours as hard and fast as he could. His mind was exhausted from the hours of concentration. He could control air and fire now, though. He had learned so much in only a day. It was amazing. He couldn’t imagine what he could learn with more time. He decided then that when he was done helping Grundel he had to come back and learn as much as he could.
Rundo didn’t even remember falling asleep, but the next morning he woke up underwater. No, the water was just around his head. Instantly he linked with air and pushed the water away from his face. The small amount of water that Evelyn had spinning around his head splashed on the ground as he caught his breath.
Evelyn took him down to the river where she had him link with the water. After spending all day yesterday linking with air and fire it wasn’t hard to link with the water. It was hard to control, though. It wouldn’t do anything he wanted.
“You can’t control the whole river. You have to focus your link on a specific area, a specific amount of water,” she told him.
He reached into the link and single pillar of water rose out of the river. He didn’t have anything specific in mind other then to get it out of the flow of the river where he could control it. Now that he was linked to only this specific amount of water it seemed as easy to manipulate as the air. Fire had been harder than this. With the fire he had to constantly feed it. The water and the air were just there. Just like his earth golems. Then he realized it. This was exactly what he had done. He had thought the staff was doing it for him, but it was just the conduit making it easier for him. He had seen Navaeh make an earth golem; that was why he had been able to. Before he even registered what he was doing, more water was lifting out of the water into his column. He looked at the column of water as he pushed his will through the link. Seconds later the water was in the shape of a pony and running across the surface of the water toward them. Before it made it to land though, it collapsed into the water. Rundo looked back at Evelyn.
“Remember, if someone else can establish a stronger link with your golem, they can control it. If you can establish a stronger link with theirs you can take it. Sometimes it’s best to destroy your own creation so that it doesn’t get used against you, or keep you distracted while you’re fighting over control. Don’t forget about air, either. Air and earth are the two things that you can always tap into. We started with air so let’s finish with earth. You have already made an earth golem before so it shouldn’t be hard for you to establish the link. Take a few minutes to get familiar with it. The aura will be slightly different depending on what the substance is. Iron is going to seem different than stone, which will feel different than soil. It will all be similar, and it can all be intertwined. It is a rarely used or studied skill, but there were and still are a few druids who could mold and meld metal ores without a furnace. Your link to the earth is strong, and because you were able to create an earth golem without any training I waited to work on earth until the end. Your link with the earth is likely your greatest link. Go ahead and study the link. Walk around and feel the difference between dirt and stone and whatever else you find. Don’t try to manipulate anything, just take a while to explore the link.”
He walked around the woods. Plants he was used to. The earth itself he had drowned out the way he had with air. He knew Evelyn’s assessment was correct. His link with the earth
was stronger then everything else. He could feel every change. Once he opened himself up to his link with the earth he could tell which dirt was harder packed, which dirt had more sand in it. He could feel the places where there were different minerals. He walked around for hours just feeling. When Evelyn came to him the sun was already setting. He had been so engrossed in what he was doing he hadn’t even realized he had lost half the day.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wander so far. I just got caught up, I guess. It’s fascinating.”
Evelyn just smiled at him. “It’s fine. We can sleep here tonight. I will go find us some food if you start a fire.”
Rundo gathered up some stones to surround the fire. He realized that he could easily snuff out the fire now using his abilities, but it was still better to be safe. The last thing he wanted to do was catch these woods on fire. He had a responsibility to protect them, after all. Waiting for Evelyn to get back, he decided to work with his links. First he opened himself to his link with the earth. He pictured two chairs on opposite sides of the small fire. Joining his will with the link he watched as the two chairs essentially grew up out of the ground. He sat down and stared into the fire. He opened himself to the link and felt the fire’s hunger. He pictured a very small golem no bigger than his hand jump out of the fire onto the rocks. A second later he had a humanoid-looking fire golem dancing on the stones for him. Then another golem jumped out of the fire and joined hands with it. He turned and looked at Evelyn standing behind him with a huge smile on her face. The two little fire golems danced around the fire for a few minutes,, merging their wills.
“You really are good with elements,” Evelyn said sitting across the fire from him on the other chair. “I have never seen anyone become so comfortable with their abilities so quickly. I was only hoping to introduce you to the elements in the few days that you were here, but you have already far exceeding anything I had hoped to achieve. There is still a lot you could learn, but you will have to figure it out on your own or find someone with the ability. I am not extremely gifted in the area. Tomorrow, if you like, I can work with you on shifting. I won’t be able to teach you to shift completely, but I can show you the basics. We might be able to accomplish something in two days. Your affinity for animals might make shifting somewhat easier,” she told him as she lay on the ground, rolling up her vest under her head. Her fox came over and rested her head on Evelyn’s leg.
The Half Dwarf Prince Trilogy Page 10
