Prelude to Fire: Parts 1 and 2 (5 page)

T
he shapers circle
in the center of the university was made from thick black stone. A rim of gray block surrounded the black. Both had proven impervious to shaping over the years. Not even earth shaping had managed to damage them. Like most, Lacertin suspected that the ancient shapers who had designed and built the university had somehow coaxed the elementals into the rock, but none alive had the ability to speak to the elementals, at least none that he knew.

Lacertin stood in the center of the circle, his boots planted firmly in the middle of it. Veran stood next to him, his long, blond hair catching the shaped wind fluttering around him. He glanced over to Lacertin and nodded.

“Are you ready?” he asked, speaking more loudly than needed, as if trying to yell over the wind instead of simply shaping his voice through it.

Lacertin glanced around the university. Partly, he felt as if he’d only just returned to Ethea and that he should remain within the city longer, to see if there was anything that he could do to help Ilton, but warriors were needed along the border and he needed to understand what had happened with Pherah and Roln. The barrier had been his idea, and maintaining it was important, so he would go, regardless of the fact that it was Theondar who had asked.

“I’m ready.”

He readied his shaping, mixing earth, wind, air, and fire, pulling on each in the needed shaping to carry him across the kingdoms. This shaping, the hardest skill that most warriors had to master, required focus and strength but gave the warriors the ability to travel great distances on storms of lightning and thunder.

As he finished his shaping and pulled it toward him, he glimpsed a slender girl with dark hair watching him from the corner of the university. He hadn’t searched for Jayna since meeting her in the library, but from what he had managed to determine, she was likely nothing more than a student. Why did she intrigue him so much?

Then the shaping pulled him away from the city.

Traveling on this shaping was like fighting a storm. He controlled great power, using each of the elements that he’d mastered to guide him, mixing them together with as much control as he could manage, but doing so still required incredible concentration. With a single misstep, he could float too far to the east or west, or possibly slam himself into the ground.

Wind whipped around him, threatening to distort his shaping, and he added a surge of fire to strengthen it. Lightning flashed and thunder rolled as if a storm cloud moved through.

Far below, he could barely make out definition along the ground. Streaks of green from the fields around Ethea made it through the shaped cloud and changed to the trees and steadily rising mountains of Galen. Lacertin turned toward the south, moving past Galen, his shaping carrying him into Nara and the lands of his youth.

The wind changed as they moved from the cool mountain air of Galen to the heat of Nara. His shaping faltered as it always did, requiring him to shift his effort, drawing less on fire and more on wind to compensate. The crackle of lightning nearby told him that Veran did the same.

They descended, letting the shaping draw them down to the ground. Lacertin didn’t need Veran to guide him, but having the man with him was helpful and he could follow the direction of his shaping. With all the time that Lacertin had spent searching for the box, he had been too long away from the borders.

The barrier pulled on him. It wasn’t a physical presence; rather, it was shaped to push energy away from the kingdoms. The combination of each element was required to form the barrier, and even then, it was not something visible. He could feel it as they neared, like something tingling against his cheek, almost a vibrating sense of power.

Lacertin was surprised to note that the barrier had receded from where he expected it. Had the kingdoms given land back to Incendin or was it simply the way the barrier was constructed that made it seem like that?

Veran landed next to him with a spray of dirt and a streak of lightning. Strands of his long hair stood on end, still charged by the energy of his shaping. He glanced around him, his nose already wrinkling.

“You could at least look like you don’t mind being here,” Lacertin said.

Veran grunted. “I understand these lands are important to the kingdoms, but I don’t understand why Incendin would be so interested in taking them.”

Lacertin reached toward his sense of the barrier and ran his hand across the energy that he detected. The shaping still amazed him.

“It is impressive work, Lacertin,” Veran said. He managed to sound sincere as he said it.

“I can’t take the credit.”

“No? Then you would give it to Ilton?”

Lacertin shook his head. “The idea might have been mine, but without the archivists and the help of Pherah, I’m not sure this would have worked.”

Veran’s face clouded at the mention of Pherah. “She was nearly as passionate about the barrier as you,” he said softly. “It’s a shame she didn’t live to see it at full strength.”

Lacertin pulled his hand back. The barrier didn’t filter everything—or everyone—out of the kingdoms, but it managed to keep shapers from crossing. “How much longer?” he asked.

“You don’t know?”

“I stopped paying attention to the barrier when Ilton sent me…” He shook his head, cutting himself short. He trusted Veran, but not enough to share what Ilton had asked of him. He didn’t trust anyone enough for that, not until he understood
why
. “It doesn’t matter now, so long as it keeps their shapers from passing. The Great Mother knows we’ve lost too many shapers to Incendin as it is.”

“Their shapers no longer can pass. The lisincend still manage to make it across—losing Pherah and Roln is testament to that—but even that has become more difficult. Soon, we will be secure. The war will be over.”

Lacertin could hardly believe it possible. The kingdoms had been at war with Incendin for so long that he barely remembered a time when there
hadn’t
been war. “All because of these lands,” he said softly, scraping a boot through the dust.

Veran snorted. “Has it been worth it?” he asked. “Would it not have been better to let Incendin have Nara?”

Lacertin didn’t look over as he answered. He thought of how many he knew lost to Incendin over the years, and how many more had crossed the waste, thinking that it was better than dying in the war. So many bought the promise of the Fire Fortress, the claim that Incendin could draw fire from sensers when the university failed to do that. Knowing what he did of shaping, he wondered how many regretted their decision.

“Would you have had me leave the kingdoms?” Lacertin asked.

“You know I would not.”

“Then what kind of question is that?” He turned to Veran and frowned. “These are
my
people, and we are
not
of Incendin.”

None would ever claim to be of Incendin, but how many would argue that they should be of Rens? The ancient nation had long ago been divided, split into the halves that were Incendin and Nara, but there were many who thought they should be reunited, even knowing what they did of Incendin and the lengths the shapers would go to find power.

Veran looked at him as if uncertain what to say.

Lacertin shook his head and started off across the hard rock, ignoring him. Continuing to press would do nothing more than anger a man who had been something of a friend. Lacertin knew there were other reasons for the war, but none that made any more sense. Ilton had once attempted to explain the political and trade reasons behind the initial attack, but Lacertin had never been able to move past Incendin’s claim that they were entitled to a unified Rens.

“My brother made the crossing,” Lacertin said as he stared out over Incendin. “Left my mother and me and started into the waste.” He remembered calling after Chasn, but his brother hadn’t even looked back.

“I didn’t know,” Veran said.

Lacertin shrugged. “It is not something one speaks about, is it?” he said.

“What happened to him?”

“I don’t know. He might have made it all the way across. He had some talent with fire, so he would have been welcomed.” Or he could have died along the waste.

“Have you…” Veran didn’t finish.

Lacertin didn’t need him to. “I’ve not seen him.” He still wasn’t sure what he would do if he encountered Chasn. Lacertin had changed since the boy growing up in Nara, but Chasn would have changed as well.

He made his way along the barrier. Veran trailed behind him, letting the silence grow. Even if he closed his eyes, he’d be able to track it, to feel the way that it pressed against him. “How hard is it for our shapers to cross?” he asked as they approached a towering stack of rock.

To the west, a small village with buildings made of stone and mud nestled beneath the shadow of the rock. Lacertin knew a small pool of water burbled from the ground there, enough to keep the village alive. It was a hard life living this far out in Nara, but the people of the village were a hard people. Earth sensing told him that the village was empty.

How many years had the village survived along the border with Incendin only now to fall? The barrier hadn’t protected these people, and the shapers hadn’t managed to help, either.

“Our shapers can cross, but returning is difficult,” Veran said. “Pherah thought that soon, only the strongest would be able to return.”

Lacertin had wondered if that would happen, but had been sent on another task before learning the answer. The barrier would not be—maybe it
could
not be—selective about what shapers it excluded. If shapers of the kingdoms crossed, they would be effectively banished from the kingdoms, trapped in Incendin.

“Was that why she died?” he asked.

“Lacertin—”

“Did the barrier prevent her from returning?” Lacertin pressed. No one had been able to tell him how she died, other than that the lisincend had attacked, but Pherah was a powerful warrior and Lacertin had seen her hold her own against three lisincend. With Roln with her, they should have been strong enough to survive the lisincend.

“I don’t know,” Veran said.

“What of the shapers with her?”

There was no sign of additional shapers, but then again, once the barrier was in place, the shaping required to hold it became much easier, barely needing more than a single shaper to maintain it. For that reason, Ilton felt the barrier could be maintained indefinitely. Shapers could be brought to the barrier and asked to maintain it. From what he understood, some would rotate, while others, men like Grethan, who had volunteered to serve along the border in Galen, would remain.

“They have moved on. The attack is over, Lacertin.”

He licked his lips, trying to draw moisture to his mouth. When he’d been young, he’d been accustomed to the desert and the heat. Now that he was older and had been away for years, it affected him in ways that it wouldn’t have when he was a child out playing along the dunes and climbing the hot rock with his brother. Chasn would have laughed and called him soft, but then, his brother had always been harder than him.

“Was it here?” he asked, stopping near a tall finger of rock.

It rose from the ground like a shaped tower, as if an earth elemental reached a hand from beneath Nara and stretched for the Great Mother. Dholund Rock served as part of the boundary between Nara and Incendin, an easy and unmistakable marker between the two countries.

As a child, Lacertin had climbed the rock, scrambling up the surface using handholds that had long ago been dug out or shaped. Most children growing up in this part of Nara used Dholund Rock as a way to prove their strength, and Lacertin had been no different. Now, climbing to the top of the rock would be no more difficult than drawing on the necessary shaping.

Veran pointed toward the base of the rock. “There.”

Lacertin said nothing more until he reached the place Veran had indicated. A shaping of water and wind told him that blood had been spilled here, but he couldn’t tell how long ago or what type. Rains were too infrequent to wash away the effects of the battle, but the sun was strong and burned away life as easily as rain would wash it away or the wind would wear it down.

He ran his finger along the stone, using earth sensing to strain for what had happened. He sensed the echoes of what had come before, of the men and women who’d been there, but it mixed with the countless others, the children of Nara who climbed the rock.

“I used to climb this rock as a child,” he said as he knelt on the ground.

Veran slapped a hand against the stone and frowned. “You were a shaper then?”

“Not a shaper. This was before. Many children did.”

“The children of Nara would climb this?” Veran asked.

Lacertin made his way around the base of the rock, moving back into Nara rather than out toward Incendin. The barrier might prevent him from crossing had he gone the other way. He stopped where a single mark had long ago been scratched into the stone and reached above his head, feeling for the first handhold. This was the only mark for the climb.

Pulling himself up, he reached for the next handhold, and then the next, pausing when he was twenty feet in the air and hugging the stone to glance down at Veran. Then he let go, softening his descent with a shaping of air and earth, landing next to Veran with a thud.

“The children are the only ones who climb it,” Lacertin said.

Veran craned his neck to peer toward the top of the rock. From this angle, it seemed to stretch impossibly high above them. “You would do this with ropes?”

Lacertin shook his head. “Not ropes, and the climb was always done alone.”

“Why do you do this?”

“For answers,” Lacertin started. “There is something about sitting atop Dholund Rock, with nothing but Incendin to the east and the rest of Nara to the west, to make you feel like you are a part of something greater.” Growing up in these lands, that was a sentiment that most needed.

Veran snorted. “And the fishers of Vatten are chastised for bringing our children aboard the ships at the age of seven. How many are lost to the climb?”