The Shape of Fire

by D. K. Holmberg

  There was something else out there. The bond existed, and it trembled with that power. What he needed was to better understand the nature of the bonds.

  What had he been teaching his students? He needed to understand himself in order to understand anything else. In this case, what he needed was to understand the power of the bonds.

  He thought he could. Wrapped in the power of the Convergence, it wasn’t a leap to understand even more. He pushed outward, focusing on the bond.

  He had to push himself along the element bond. In order to do that, Tolan was going to have to find a way to dive deeper into the bond. It involved turning inward. It involved probing and seeing if there was any sort of understanding that he might be able to grasp.

  He held onto that feeling, forcing it deep within himself.

  Gradually, he felt a surge of earth.

  Standing within the bond as he was, Tolan could feel that energy flowing within him. There was that sense of power, but it was also an understanding.

  Something shifted, and it seemed as if Tolan were dragged along a flow of power. He tried to keep track of it, and he tried to hold onto that energy, but it carried him farther away.

  The longer it carried him, the more Tolan tried to hold on and keep himself in place. It wasn’t as if his body moved. It was more his mind dragged, stretched away from where he had been. He braced himself.

  All around him was an awareness of elementals.

  There were dozens of them. Hundreds of them.

  Tolan had never attempted to reach the bonds in this way, but they were there, surrounding him, dragging him along with them. He could feel the energy of the bonds. It seemed as if they were trying to push upon him, to squeeze him, forcing a sense of awareness upon him.

  Tolan had to push back.

  He held onto the power of the Convergence, feeling it flowing through him. It was almost as if it were trying to force him into the bond itself. He hesitated, focusing on what he detected, feeling that energy. As he did, he realized he was getting pushed into the earth bond.

  Something forced him.

  Or someone.

  Tolan resisted, struggling against it. There was energy that forced him forward, pushing him down.

  Thoren, he said.

  The words came out, but through his mind.

  There had to be a sense of hyza. He was within the earth bond, and hyza was connected to it. Tolan would be able to reach the elemental, and he thought he might be able to grasp for knowledge and borrow it in order to get to freedom. He might even need to anchor to hyza in order to pull himself out.

  Thoren, he said again.

  His voice came out almost hollow, drifting around him, a muted sort of sound. Tolan focused instead on the connection that existed within him. It had to be there, but what he had to find was some way of tracing it, of connecting to it.

  Thoren was bonded to him. Tolan could use that bond, and he could focus on it, and all it would take would be to draw upon the power that existed out there. If he could continue to push out, if he could let himself connect to it, then he could reach for Thoren.

  The sense of the elemental remained, but he couldn’t connect to it.

  What’s going on? Tolan wondered. How am I being forced along the bond?

  The earth bond felt almost like a current. It was like a river of power drawing him deeper into it. Holding on to the Convergence pushed him deeper and deeper into the current of the earth bond.

  And he was forced farther away from an awareness of his body.

  The power pushing on him had a familiar feel to it, though Tolan didn’t know why it should. Something forced him along the bond, and it was something that he had felt before. Something that he recognized.

  It took Tolan a moment to realize just what it was that he felt, and why he should feel it. He could identify that energy, and he recognized the nature of that power and the reason that it swirled to him in the way that it did.

  He had felt a shaping such as this once before.

  He had felt remnants of this shaping in the years since then.

  Roland.

  Tolan started to release his hold on the Convergence, but as he did so, he realized nothing changed. If he released all of it, then he would be forced into the bond entirely.

  How was it even possible?

  He had to hold onto the power of the Convergence, as that was the only way he could track the bond. Without the Convergence, Tolan didn’t know what would happen to him. It was possible he might get stuck within the earth bond.

  It shouldn’t even be possible to enter the bond like this. It was the way the elementals were pulled into the bond. Is my body here too? He thought about what he’d remembered when he’d seen elementals pushed into the bond, the way they’d been wrapped by power, forced out of the world and into the bond. There had been pain. When Tolan had started to join with the bond, he’d used the power of the Convergence to do so, and there had been no pain. The energy had called him down, letting him glide along it, and the only thing he’d known was a sense of power.

  Maybe that was the difference. He’d shaped himself here. He hadn’t been forced down, fighting what was done to him.

  Now he had to fight. If Roland were going to force him here, he would find his way out and figure out what he intended. He would stop him.

  Tolan struggled against the current, but it was like fighting his way upstream through a river.

  Thoren!

  His voice came out louder in his mind—and more panicky. He was growing increasingly concerned about what was happening to him, and he worried he wasn’t going to be able to find his way out.

  The sense of elementals was all around him. There were dozens upon dozens of different elementals, but he moved beyond them far more quickly than he was able to slow and observe. There was the sense of jinnar, cilika, oshal, grosn, varin, yonad, and dozens more. With each one he detected, he tried to focus, straining to see if there was anything he might be able to uncover to stop what was happening, but with each one that he passed, he failed to come up with any way of latching onto them.

  He needed to connect to the elementals.

  He needed to find some way to reach them and slow himself.

  Still, he continued to be dragged along the current of earth, the sense of it pressing in upon him. It took everything Tolan was able to summon to push against it. It was almost as if he was forming a shaping, but if that were the case, then what sort of shaping did he use? Earth wouldn’t counter earth, and within the earth bond, he didn’t know if he could even summon one of the other elements.

  He didn’t know if he even should. It was possible that if he were to try, he could damage something. Given that the bond had already shown some damage, he had to be careful.

  There was a void, a nothingness, an empty space of power.

  This wasn’t anything like what he would’ve expected the earth bond to be like. He expected there would’ve been a sense of greenery, trees, life. Earth was life. But then, Tolan had known that each of the elements was life, in its own specific way. When it came to earth, there was that sense of it flowing around him; a power and energy. It was a sense of the grass and the trees in the field. It was the ground beneath his feet. It was dirt giving life. All of that was a part of earth, and all of that was a part of something that he could feel.

  Where was that here?

  If he was in the earth bond, and he thought he was, a sense of power should exist around him.

  Gradually, he continued to drift. The awareness of the Convergence grew more distant. In the distance, he saw something.

  The emptiness and the void began to shift. There was color. Green and orange and yellow. All of it began to burst in front of him, all of it starting to swirl in front of him, and it seemed as if it were calling to him, drawing him toward it.

  In the distance, the sense of the elements was even stronger.

  Not just the elements but the elementals too.

  Tolan was d
ragged forward, feeling that energy as it swirled toward him, pulling him down. As he was pulled, he held onto the connection to the Convergence, worried that if he were to lose it, he would lose everything.

  Then he burst out into a massive forest. Color swirled around him. There were trees. Animals. The chirping of insects. A jungle of life all around. Power pressed upon him. It was that of earth. It was that of the element bonds. It was that of even elementals. All of that surrounded him.

  All of that pressed upon him.

  Tolan struggled with it, trying to hold onto a sense of self and thinking that if he were to lose it, he might lose himself in this space.

  That was what Roland wanted. To remove Tolan as a threat.

  It had been a mistake to try this. He wasn’t even sure where he was, but the one thing he was aware of was that he was somewhere he had never been before.

  He was truly within the bond.

  As he remained there, the sense of the Convergence began to fade, growing increasingly distant.

  With a terrible understanding, he knew that if he didn’t get out of here soon, he would lose his way back.

  15

  Earth energy was all around Tolan. He focused on what he could see. There was the forest, unlike any other forest he’d ever been in, full of massive and powerful trees, and he could practically feel earth rising up from the ground and filling those trees. Massive vines twined between the trees, stretching from one to another. Somewhere, high overhead, there were animals prowling, watching him.

  Tolan stood upon firm ground, or at least it felt as if it were firm ground. It was possible none of this was even real.

  He was in the earth bond.

  Forced into the earth bond.

  Roland somehow had found a way to control other element bonds. He had no connection to them himself, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t learn. He had been nothing if not determined to try to gain power that he should not have.

  How, though?

  First Tolan had to escape. Then he could try to understand what had happened.

  That thought kept coming to him, and he was fully aware of the fact that he was here. The earth bond surrounded him, filling him with power. He pushed out with a sensing using the other elements, trying to probe and see if there was anything more that he might be able to uncover, using fire, water, and air—but there was no other sense out there. It was as if he had been cut off from them.

  Not spirit, though.

  The sense of spirit was still around him. As Tolan focused on what he was able to detect, he could feel the energy of spirit rumbling across the space around him. He held onto that, focusing on it, thinking about the nature of how spirit pressed around him.

  It was faint, but still stronger than he would’ve expected, given that this was an earth bond and not the spirit bond.

  It wasn’t just that it was strong—it was that spirit seemed a part of it.

  That was strange. Tolan could feel the energy of spirit, and could feel how it was flowing here, much like he could feel the energy of earth. He had to move quickly. The Convergence was still nearby, but the awareness of it grew fainter.

  He tried to hold onto the power he could detect, but he could find no way to grab it and pull himself back.

  He looked above. There was a jungle canopy, but beyond that was the emptiness. He was certain of it, even though he couldn’t see it. He could feel it.

  Why had there been elementals along that river near here?

  He thought about how they had been there, the way they had been pushing up. Not trying to plunge deeper.

  They were trying to escape the bond.

  That had to be why the elementals struggled so much to escape from the bond. This power was holding them down, squeezing on them, trying to drag them back. In order to escape the bond, they had to climb out.

  Given the power Tolan had been aware of, doing that would be incredibly difficult. He focused on what he was able to detect, thinking about the nature of that power, and he thought about just how hard it would be for anything to be able to escape from the bond.

  It would be nearly impossible for him to do so.

  Still, he wondered if there might be something he could do. He wasn’t bound only to earth. In this place, he had earth and spirit. What he needed was to be able to find a way to use the other elements in order to bring him back.

  Could he use a warrior shaping?

  The idea that he would wrap each of the elements around him in this place, trapped as he was by the earth bond, was almost laughable. Even if he could, he had no idea whether it would even work.

  If it did, where would it bring him?

  Tolan needed to try to understand what he’d been detecting. He had time, but he also needed to try to find a way out. If he could work with what he detected, he might understand what had happened.

  That was the reason he was here in the first place. All of this because he’d wanted to gain a better understanding of what was taking place in the bond, though Tolan began to wonder whether or not he could understand anything here or whether trapping him here was what Roland had wanted.

  He wasn’t going be able to get out the way he’d come. He had to try to find a different way. He headed through the forest, winding between the trees, and with each step, it seemed as if he were carried great distances.

  The landscape shifted around him. Within a few steps, he was free of the jungle and in what appeared to be a rolling grassland. The grasses stretched as high as his chest, moving in some unfelt breeze. They swayed, and for a moment Tolan thought maybe there was a wind here and that he could use that in order to latch onto one additional element, but then he realized that they were swaying by their own power. There was no sense of the wind. It was only the sense of the earth element moving.

  He took another few steps and moved beyond the flowing grassland. He stood upon barren rock. For a moment, it reminded him of the waste, but unlike in the waste, there was power all around him. It pressed up through the ground, the rock practically rumbling with it. There was a sound within that rumbling that he almost recognized.

  Tolan swept his gaze around him. As far as the eye could see, the landscape was the same unbroken rock. Somehow, he’d stepped from beyond the sense of the grassland and had reached this place.

  Another few steps and he reached mountains he hadn’t seen before. They towered impossibly high overhead. There was no snow atop them, not at all like he would’ve expected given the height of the mountain. Snow would mean water, and in this place, he doubted there would be any water. He climbed, letting each step carry him farther up the mountain, and within no more than a dozen steps, he reached a peak.

  Looking down, Tolan stared at everything around him. It was nothing more than the mountain spreading down. There was no sunlight, but there was still light around him. There was no wind, yet he was high enough up that he would’ve expected a gusting breeze pulling at him the same way as it had when he had been with the Draasin Lord. He breathed—or maybe he did not. It was simply earth.

  Through it all was the sense of spirit.

  Tolan wasn’t able to shake that sense, and he didn’t know if he even should try. Though he expected that there would be only earth here, there was a sense of spirit winding through everything, feeding it with a certain power.

  Why should that be?

  Maybe there was a spirit bond, but the spirit bond was intertwined with the other element bonds. If there were the case, then would he have some way of using that energy?

  It would explain why Roland would be able to hold him. If Tolan used spirit, that might trap him, but Tolan had a connection to the other elements.

  He let spirit carry him. He could feel the way he was dragged, and he let it carry him along the ground. When it did, he noticed something shifting.

  He slowed.

  That was unusual, though he’d used earth to travel before. He drifted above the mountain, down the mountainside, above the grassy land, towar
d the forest, and then back to the mountaintop again. It was almost as if he were heading in a circle, and yet the sense of power around him never changed.

  Through it all, there was a sense of something else.

  There were elementals here. Tolan was certain of it, though he didn’t see any of them. There was only the power of earth.

  How were the elementals here if they weren’t here? Could they all be trying to escape the bond?

  As far as he knew, the elementals were forced into the bond, and it was that forcing of the elementals into the bond that had given the shapers the power over the bond.

  He drew upon the power he could feel, and he let earth flow through him, filling him.

  There was nothing he could reach.

  Tolan strained, reaching for more power. All of it required that he dive into the energy of the earth bond. In this place, surrounded as he was, that energy was incredible. He could feel the sense of earth, and he could feel it flowing within him.

  Tolan was able to connect to earth. The element kept him here. The Convergence remained above him, still faint, though Tolan could feel the flow of it, drawing through him. Using that sense of Convergence, he held onto it, letting it strengthen him.

  The Convergence felt as if it were trying to separate from him.

  Rather, it was almost as if something tried to separate him from the Convergence.

  If that would happen, then he would be trapped here. Tolan didn’t know if that was happening intentionally or unintentionally.

  Tolan pushed out, trying to reach for Thoren, but the sense of hyza had begun to grow distant. There was still a sense of the elemental, but whatever he was able to detect was fainter than it had been before.

  There was no response.

  If only he had other connections that he might be able to use, but…

  The Guardian.

  The Guardian wasn’t part of the bond, but at the same time, he was connected to the bond via the Convergence and the bondar that tied them together. If Tolan could figure out where that power flow was and how it worked, then he might be able to use that.