A Fading Fire

by D. K. Holmberg

  He wasn’t the only one who needed to be able to shape effectively here. It would be Ferrah, any of the master shapers from the Academy. Anyone who would come from Terndahl over to these lands.

  “I will watch over you,” Ferrah said.

  Tolan nodded and began to focus on the power within him. He could shape here, much like he could shape out in the waste. That was one constant for him. Ferrah could sense here, though she couldn’t shape. He believed that it was tied to her dependence on the element bonds. With what he had experienced with Master Minden, he had to think that the separation from the element bonds was similar here as it was to what had happened to her.

  Kerry performed a gentle shaping, using each of the elements, almost as if she were trying to test whether or not she had the ability to do so. As she did, she looked around, frowning to herself.

  Tolan chuckled. It was difficult connecting to shaping here. Almost painful.

  He closed his eyes, feeling for that power.

  He started with spirit.

  Even though spirit didn’t have a separate element bond, it was tied in with the other bonds. By focusing on spirit and the energy within it, he thought he could call that power outward.

  It filled him.

  At first, Tolan thought the spirit he drew upon was from himself, but he could feel more energy coming from him. It seemed to come from someplace deeper within him.

  Not from him. From the element bonds.

  Perhaps not even the element bonds. Elemental power. He was drawing upon the lizard. That wasn’t what he needed to do.

  Releasing the power, he shifted the shaping, turning it upon himself. When he’d helped Master Minden, he’d noticed how she’d been cut off from the element bonds.

  He was cut off from them as well. His ability to shape here was tied to him and him only. There should be another way to reach for power, but it had to be tied to him being able to reach for that power and to reach for the element bonds. If he could bridge that connection…

  There was resistance.

  Tolan focused on that, thinking about the elements and the elementals and the power that existed between them. He thought about the element bonds and how that power poured from him.

  He couldn’t overpower the resistance. He attempted to fight his way through, but there was a barrier.

  Tolan retreated. He opened his eyes, looking over at Ferrah. “I can’t do it. I’m not able to force a connection here.”

  “Maybe these lands are different,” Ferrah said.

  “These lands are strange, though I can almost feel something familiar about them.” Kerry pressed her lips together and ran her fingers through her dark hair. Ferrah glared at her. “You can feel it, too,” Kerry said to him. “I can tell through spirit that you do.”

  He glanced over at Kerry. He hadn’t noticed that she was shaping spirit toward him.

  Why would she feel the need to do that here?

  He nodded. “I can feel that, but I don’t know why. It doesn’t really make any sense why these lands would be so different than other lands. Shaping is the same. The power is the same. The elements are the same. Everything else should be the same.”

  “But you told me the elementals weren’t the same,” Kerry said. She created a faint tracing of spirit, adding a hint of the other elements to it.

  Maybe that was what he needed to do. He had resisted the idea of going to the elementals, but that was because he didn’t understand them.

  What if I tried to better understand them?

  Ferrah might be in danger without being able to shape, and without having any power of her own. The elementals had come at him the last time because they thought that he was tied to Roland, so he would have to convince them he was not. He had gotten to one of them. It was tied to the warrior shaping. That was significant in some way. Tolan held his hand out.

  Ferrah took it, shooting a glare at Kerry, probably because she didn’t need Tolan’s help to travel. “Where now?”

  “We need to go to the elementals.”

  Kerry’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Are you sure that’s safe? You’ve warned me about coming here, dealing with the elementals.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You know what happened the last time,” Ferrah said.

  Kerry frowned. “What happened the last time?”

  “The last time we were here, the elementals attacked. We faced Roland, and my mother—who had been spirit shaped by Roland—had captured us, along with Irina, and attempted to force us to help her.”

  Kerry stared at him for a moment. “And I thought I had a strange childhood.”

  “How was yours strange?” Ferrah asked.

  “My father took his life when I was three. My mother raised me and my younger brother, though never took advantage of her own connection to wind as well as she should have. We struggled. When I developed my affinity for shaping, she pushed me toward the Academy. It was more expensive than what she could afford, but she made a point of trying to ensure that I had as much of an education as I could.”

  Ferrah watched her for a moment before turning away and reaching into her pocket, pulling out the orb bondars. She had several. Tolan suspected she had brought more than she thought she might need.

  He used a shaping, drawing upon wind and fire, mixing them together. The combination lifted them into the air. He didn’t want to take the warrior shaping. It would travel too quickly, and in this case and in this place, he needed to move more slowly.

  Tolan guided them forward, with Kerry following on wind and fire. They swept along the land, leaving Tolan looking down below them. The landscape was both familiar and foreign at the same time. Everything about it was similar to what he might find in Terndahl, but there was the foreign sensation within him as he focused on the power below him.

  In Terndahl, he would feel the power and energy of the land reverberating against him. In this place, there was none of that. There was nothing other than a sense of emptiness. Tolan swept his gaze around, watching for signs of the elementals. They floated above the ground, moving quickly. There was power in the distance, though it was faint and vague. That was what he had to hold onto.

  When he had come through here before, he had recognized the elementals were difficult to detect. There was something about the elementals that made them hard for him to uncover. It was tied to how they were separated from the bonds.

  Which made them not nearly as potent as they would be otherwise.

  There was a sense of energy near him. Tolan hesitated, looking around and searching for the elemental before glancing at Ferrah and then Kerry. “Pay attention to what you sense of the elements here.”

  “What should I detect?” Kerry asked.

  “I’m not entirely sure. There’s something here.”

  He hovered for a moment. Tolan could feel something from them, though he had no idea what he was detecting. There was that power that swirled around him, and…

  Power swirling around him.

  Wind.

  Tolan hesitated.

  He focused on wind, adding spirit, mixing the two. When he did, the awareness of wind came to him far more clearly than it had before. He turned toward the elemental, feeling the wind elemental pressing awareness upon him.

  “I can tell you’re there,” Tolan said.

  He directed the words toward the elemental.

  He couldn’t see it, and he couldn’t even feel it nearly as well as he could normally. In this case, there was power, and that was it.

  Wind swirled around him, though it seemed more than just what the elemental did to him. It was what the elemental tried to convey to him. When he’d been here before, the elemental had struggled to communicate effectively.

  Was the same thing happening now?

  Tolan had some experience in restoring elementals, bringing them back to spirit, but though he could feel spirit within the elemental, he didn’t know if there was anything damaged about it.

  “I ca
n help. That’s why we came here.”

  Kerry looked at him, watching him. “You can help?”

  Tolan held his connection to the elemental. “The elemental is separated from spirit. Whatever has happened has kept him from it.” He focused on the elemental. “I can help. I can bring you back to spirit.”

  Tolan lowered to the ground. It was rocky, with the occasional sparse shrub around him. He felt the breeze from wind, but nothing else pressed in upon him with the same sense. He didn’t feel any other sense of the elementals. It was only the wind elemental.

  The elemental spun the wind around him, spiraling in an angry pattern.

  Tolan pushed out with spirit.

  He used only a touch of wind, primarily holding spirit. That combination was such that he would try to communicate with the elemental, letting the elemental know that all he wanted to do was try to reach him. As he focused on spirit to reach the elemental, he sent a soothing wave outward. Doing so was a lesson he’d learned from the memories of his mother.

  Strangely, he had a memory of what she had done with this similar shaping. She had used it on the elementals as a way to try to soothe and control them. Tolan had no desire to control. He had no desire to do anything other than calm the elemental.

  Gradually, the wind elemental started to settle, and he took form in front of Tolan.

  He was humanoid in appearance. As he took form, he solidified, standing in front of Tolan, who realized with a start that it was the same elemental he had spoken to before.

  That didn’t surprise him. It shouldn’t, at least. Having had a conversation with this elemental before, he now had some sort of connection to it.

  He continued pushing with spirit. “I think if I use spirit on you, I can restore some aspect of your connection. There are other elementals similar to what I detect from you.” He took a deep breath, focusing on spirit. “I think I can bring you back to spirit.”

  The elemental took a step toward him. Ferrah tensed, squeezing his hand, but Tolan didn’t move. He needed the elemental to trust him, and he needed be able to show confidence.

  The elemental stopped in front of him and gave a slight nod. Tolan pulled upon a shaping.

  Kerry gasped at the side of the elemental, and immediately began to pull upon a shaping of each of the elements, adding spirit. She stretched that toward the elemental.

  What was she doing to the elemental? Had I made a mistake bringing her here? She was connected to spirit. Could Roland have influenced her?

  Tolan should have attempted to test her before now, and even as he did, he couldn’t help but feel her brush off his attempt.

  He needed to focus on the elemental for now. He started with spirit, and then he added more and more wind. While doing so, he realized that he needed to add a touch of each of the other elements. By combining the elements, he could feel the building of power. It was a warrior shaping, but it was something else. Not the shaping he’d used on the wall of portraits. This was something different.

  The knowledge of it came from someplace deep within him.

  Could it be the lizard?

  Even though the spirit elemental claimed he didn’t have knowledge of any time since, there seemed to be knowledge that rolled through Tolan just now. The power was there as well. He continued to mingle those elements together, adding them in a way that would help him bridge a connection. Then he added spirit.

  When he did, he directed it toward the elemental.

  He called on spirit within him, using his connection to the lizard, to the element bonds because of the lizard, and bridged to each of the elements. It bridged him to each of the element bonds. He tapped into that strength and power, and surprisingly, what he found was that he could hold the elemental within the wind bond.

  A torrent of power flowed through him.

  Ferrah held onto him, saying something Tolan couldn’t hear. The only thing he heard was the sound of wind rushing through his ears. It was overwhelming.

  He squeezed out that power, letting it pour free from him, trying to direct it toward the elemental. What he needed was to maintain that connection, to hold onto that control, and nothing else.

  Something shifted.

  Power exploded into the elemental.

  Tolan opened himself to it. Somewhere distantly and deep within him, he could feel the way that the lizard poured power out from him using the connection to spirit and the wind bond to connect to this elemental.

  Then it was done.

  Tolan breathed out a shaky breath, studying the elemental.

  There was a shimmering, and gradually the elemental took on a more solid form.

  “Did I hurt you?” Tolan asked.

  The elemental blinked. “That is unusual.”

  “I heard him,” Ferrah said.

  Kerry glanced from Tolan to the elemental. “What did you do? How could I hear him?”

  “I think that you can hear him because I somehow connected him to the spirit bond.” Tolan wasn’t entirely sure if that was the case, but it felt right. It felt as if he had somehow bridged that connection, bringing the elementals to some aspect of the bond, though not entirely. It wasn’t nearly as natural a connection as what was found in Terndahl, though through that connection, he could feel something had formed.

  “How? You weren’t able to do that with us.”

  Tolan looked over at the elemental. “I think it’s the Guardians.” He wasn’t entirely sure, but having brought the Guardians to spirit, that had connected something, and that connection granted him the ability to do something more as well. He had found a way to link these elementals by using the Guardians, and called upon power that he wouldn’t have otherwise.

  “What we do now?” Ferrah asked.

  The wind elemental turned to him. “Now you must help the others.”

  22

  Tolan rested near the black tower. The warrior sword rested on his lap, power drawn through it so he could summon the strength that he needed to connect across the waste, bridging these elementals to some aspect of the element bonds. He didn’t think that he had done it nearly as completely as he wanted, but it was enough that he thought he had succeeded. Everything within him was sore and tired. He had been pulling on power for the better part of the day using his connection to spirit—and because of that to the element bonds—in order to help these elementals.

  Some distant part of him questioned whether or not this was the right thing, but with each elemental he helped, a sense of peace and calm came from them. He couldn’t help feel as if what he was doing was necessary and right.

  Ferrah stayed with him.

  Kerry was there alongside Ferrah, and it seemed as if Ferrah made a point of not looking at Kerry. She held on to a shaping of each of the elements, mixing spirit with it, and with each elemental that Tolan helped, Kerry pressed some aspect of herself upon them. It was strange, and Tolan didn’t know what she was doing or why.

  There were still dozens and dozens of elementals he hadn’t helped. With each one that he helped, he found himself drained. There had to be an easier way.

  “I need to rest,” he said.

  The wind elemental—Rory—stayed near him. Thankfully, the wind elemental had been the one who had helped him the most. Without him, Tolan thought he might have been overwhelmed by the requests from the elementals. There was an agitation from within them, at least until he bridged them back to spirit.

  He looked up at Rory. “How are there so many?”

  “What you’re doing has never been attempted,” he said.

  “When we were here before, I sensed something was amiss with the elementals, but I wasn’t I was sure what it was.” Even now, Tolan could close his eyes and feel the changed energy in the air. There was something about how he had modified the elementals, the way he had helped bring them back in line with where they needed to be. He could feel that energy and that power from within them.

  “We have lived a long time like this. Incomplete.”

&n
bsp; Tolan could tell that the elemental seemed to scramble for the right word.

  “What was incomplete?”

  “We were incomplete.”

  “Do you feel that way now?”

  “I feel…”

  There came a surge from within Tolan. It took a moment to realize where that came from. It was through the sense of spirit, coming from the lizard and binding him to the other element bonds.

  It was unusual to detect the other element bonds in such a way. When he had been here before, he had used hyza in order to connect to the other element bonds, but what the lizard allowed him to do was to reach for each of the element bonds at the same time and with the same potential. Being a creature of spirit, and tying him to the spirit bond in that way, and given that the spirit bond was tied to each of the elements, Tolan had a far greater reach than he would’ve before.

  “I can feel what you did,” Tolan said.

  “I can feel what I did as well.” Rory stood near the edge of the tower. Every so often, something about him would phase and shift, as if his translucent nature would alter. Tolan watched him, realizing that it seemed to be him coming to terms with his power, as if he were trying to grasp just what he was capable of doing.

  It seemed so strange to see, but at the same time it seemed remarkable that they would have lived as long as they had, separated from their power.

  “How many other elementals are like you?” Kerry asked, approaching carefully and glancing from Tolan to the elemental.

  “Many.”

  Tolan closed his eyes. Now that he had helped some, he could feel them nearby. Strangely, by helping and healing them, it connected him to them in a certain way. Not quite as potently as it did to Thoren, or to the lizard, but there was a faint connection between him and those elementals. Even those that had remained somewhat agitated after he had done everything that he could to heal them.