“There are?”
“I use fire. I think other elements would work just as well, but it’s the one that’s come easiest to me, probably because I had the furios for as long as I did, getting a chance to be familiar with fire.”
“How do you use fire?”
“It’s a shaping I wrap around myself. Nothing more than that, and I don’t even wrap it around my entire body, just my mind. When I place it, I twist it inward, inverting it.”
Heat began to wash through him as he said it. He realized how foolish it was to be trying to explain a shaping to Ferrah—one of the strongest shapers in their level.
“I don’t understand how you would invert it. Are you shaping yourself? You know how dangerous that can be.”
“I don’t think I’m shaping myself, though it’s possible I am a little bit.” Then again, he didn’t think he was. If he was shaping himself, the nature of the shaping would be a little bit different. There was never a time when he’d pushed on himself. It was always a matter of this shaping simply being held above the surface of his mind, the connection to fire allowing him to know how to do so, and when he inverted it, he twisted it in a way that it angled toward him, but it also shielded itself from the other shapers knowing what he was doing. The Grand Inquisitor had seemed surprised when he’d done it.
“Can you show me?”
“Maybe when I have more strength back.”
“I’m sorry. I should have known.”
“No. I want to show you.” Tolan took her hand, squeezing it before letting his hands fall off to the side. “I just don’t know that I can do it right now. With as much as we’ve done, I don’t know that I have the strength to shape. If I use it and do something uncontrolled, I run the risk of…”
The thing was, he didn’t know what he ran the risk of. Possibly losing control of the shaping. When it came to his shaping, that was the biggest danger.
“Can you tell me more about your parents?”
“I don’t know what there is to say. If my father is a disciple,” he said, lowering his voice, turning his attention toward the door. He didn’t need anyone out there knowing that was his fear. If Draln were to discover it, he could easily imagine the endless and unrelenting taunting the other man would give him. “Everything I thought growing up would be wrong. I defended them for so long, thinking they couldn’t be disciples of the Draasin Lord. Why would I ever believe they could be?”
“I think everyone wants to believe the best of their parents.”
“You don’t have an experience like that.”
“I don’t, but my parents had a different obsession.”
“The same one you have?”
“It’s not an obsession. It’s a matter of trying to understand the nature of places of power.”
“Like the Convergence you’re convinced is in your homeland.”
She took a deep breath, her gaze drifting to the other side of the room. Tolan followed it to see her books rested there. “That’s part of what I hope to learn here. I was thinking if I could uncover anything, I might be able to understand the nature of why Par is what it is, and I never expected to find a similar sort of power here in Amitan.”
“It makes sense that there would be,” he said.
“It does. Which is why I should have considered that before.”
“Maybe you’ve been spirit-shaped before.”
He said it with a smile, but as he did, a look of horror dawned across her face. “What if I have?”
“I don’t know that we would even know.”
That was one of the dangers of a spirit-shaping. It could be done with such skill that no trace of it remained. When his friends had been spirit-shaped to forget about the place of Convergence, they had been no different than before. They had no memory of that time, almost as if the events leading up to their finding the Convergence had been wiped from their minds. Everything else remained. The level of control required for shaping like that had to be incredible, and Tolan couldn’t help but think if they could better understand how that shaping had taken place, they might be able to discover if they’d been shaped before.
“What makes you think you can’t experience a spirit-shaping?” Ferrah asked after a while.
“When the Grand Inquisitor tried to shape me, she failed.”
“What if she didn’t want you to be spirit-shaped?” Ferrah looked up, meeting his eyes. “I mean, what if it was never her intention to take those memories from you?”
“Why would she want me to keep them, but not you and Jonas?”
“I don’t know.”
He thought about his experience with the Grand Inquisitor when he had been in the Inquisition. There’d been a strange sense of familiarity with her. She had seemed to know him, but why would that be?
Then again, she was a powerful spirit shaper, and with that power, she would be able to reach deep inside his mind, drawing away all traces of information, and in doing so, she could reach for secrets he had intended to keep. Perhaps she had uncovered something about his parents. Maybe she had used a memory—a memory like the one he’d had while in the Inquisition—to get a better understanding of who he was and where he came from. And with knowledge like that, he could see her trying to use that against him.
He needed to be careful. The other Inquisitors might be gone, but the Grand Inquisitor remained. She was powerful, and she might pose as much of a threat as any.
“What if we’re wrong about the Draasin Lord?”
Ferrah frowned at him. “Why would you say that?”
“I don’t know. It’s just…”
“You think that because your parents went to serve the Draasin Lord, we’re suddenly wrong? Think about what we’ve seen. What you’ve seen. The Great Mother knows that you of all people at the Academy have as much experience as any student. You’ve seen the way the Draasin Lord’s disciples are willing to attack, and the violence they are all too eager to inflict. And you’ve seen the way the rogue elementals attack. They’re dangerous.”
Tolan was probably alone in feeling the elementals weren’t as dangerous as most believed. And he’d already shared with Ferrah that he doubted they were what most believed.
“It’s good you were rescued from the disciples,” she said.
“You mean my father.”
“The disciples,” she said. Ferrah glanced at the door, then at Tolan. “I imagine you’re tired after everything that took place. You can rest, and I’ll do a little bit of reading.”
“Thanks. That would be nice.”
“If you want, I could sit by you?”
He met her eyes and smiled. “That would be even nicer.”
She gathered her books, coming to take a seat next to him. As he settled onto the bed, resting his head near her, a mixture of emotions flowed through him. He was thrilled by the idea of the closeness with Ferrah, and yet there was a part of him that remained uncertain. He couldn’t help but feel as if some part of him was different, wrong, and because of his belief about the elementals, he worried he would never fully fit in at the Academy. As he drifted to sleep, the memory of his father and the shaping pulled at him, a promise of power, but it was also a question that rolled through him.
What if he was meant to be somewhere else? What if he was meant to learn somewhere else?
As he drifted off, a sense of shaping came to him distantly, reminding him of his power, a twisting of the elemental energy within the shaping, and his heart skipped a beat before he drifted off to sleep.
7
Sitting in the fire tower was a strange experience. Tolan sat near the back of the room, longing for the furios, wishing he had the bondar as he had ever since coming to the Academy. He felt naked without it, empty, and almost as if he would be helpless, yet he knew he wouldn’t be. He no longer was quite so dependent upon it, so he needn’t be concerned about not having it. At the same time, it was something he’d grown accustomed to having with him. Its absence left him uncomfortable, unsettled
, as if he wouldn’t be able to perform the shapings he needed in order to satisfy Master Sartan.
Ferrah joined him at the back of the room, and he smiled at her. “You don’t have to sit back here with me.”
“That’s okay,” she said.
“It’s not. I know you like to sit toward the front.”
“I thought I should get a better sense of what it’s like to see the tower from this perspective.”
“You mean back here with me? You don’t need that perspective.”
She smiled at him. “It’s not that I need that perspective, but I thought you could use the company.”
Looking around the room, Tolan wondered if Jonas would sit by them. In the days leading up to his Inquisition, Jonas had been avoiding him after an argument they’d had. He had done so as his way of protecting himself to avoid conflict, but Tolan needed his friends. Losing Jonas had made the Inquisition all the harder.
Master Sartan came into the room from an area in the back, and swept his gaze around the students. “It seems some have decided not to attend class today.”
There were fewer students than usual, and Tolan didn’t know if it was because of what had recently happened, or if there was something else.
“Perhaps others decided they knew enough about fire shaping, and they don’t need to attend my lectures any longer.”
Near the front of the class, Draln snickered. Tolan wasn’t surprised to see he was here, and even less surprised he was surrounded by his usual cadre of people, all of them looking to try to get in his good graces.
“Today, we are going to talk about the use of fire on oneself.”
Tolan frowned. The timing couldn’t be coincidental, could it? He resisted the urge to glance over at Ferrah, but could feel her stiffen. Had she gone to Master Sartan and asked? It wouldn’t surprise him that she would. She would probably think it was her way of trying to protect him, and in doing so, she would think she was finding out information useful to Tolan when he was performing his shaping. Instead, he felt as if it was setting him up for questions he didn’t want to answer.
He didn’t feel any danger using the shaping the way he had, and though he knew Ferrah worried about it and didn’t like that he had placed a fire shaping around his mind—
inverting it in a way to protect himself from spirit—he knew it wasn’t dangerous.
“There was a time when shapers experimented with their abilities. It was a dangerous time, and too often, people would become far too confident with how they used shapings, thinking they could manage the power. Rarely were they able to manage it in any way that gave them control. When it comes to shaping, particularly when shaping upon oneself, control is an illusion.”
Master Sartan began a shaping of fire that swirled in front of him. It created a sphere, a circle of power, and he held it in place. The control that Master Sartan used amazed Tolan. He knew just how much power it took to hold a shaping like that and understood just how difficult it was to keep it from collapsing in on itself. It was the kind of shaping he wished he was better able to do.
“Fire can be dangerous. Fire is both constructive and destructive. It is what makes fire unique among all of the elements, and perhaps the most powerful.” Master Sartan smiled, releasing his hold on the ball of flame. “I imagine you will hear the same from the other master shapers. When it comes to water, they will claim it gives life, and that without water, there would be no healing. The earth shapers will claim that earth is the most powerful of the elements, and that one must have earth for food and that we spring forth from the earth. The wind shapers will claim that without wind, there would be no breath and without breath, there would be no life. I would argue all are true, and yet, through them all, fire burned the brightest. Without heat, we would die. Without fire, there would be no growth, no crops to feed us. Without the flames, there would be no… Yes, Shaper Changen?”
Tolan glanced over and realized Ferrah had her hand in the air. He hadn’t realized she was sitting there like that, but she leaned forward, and when Master Sartan called on her, she flashed a smile.
“What about spirit?”
“Yes, well, spirit is different from the other elements.”
“Is it not equally powerful?”
“Spirit is powerful, and much can be done with it, but scholars over the years have viewed spirit as something of a higher-level element. It isn’t quite necessary for life, not the way that other elements are.”
“What you mean by higher level?”
“Do you intend to continue to question me during my lecture, Shaper Changen, or do you intend to allow me to have my time? You can speak to me after the lecture if you have additional questions.”
Ferrah leaned back, pressing her lips together in a tight frown. He could sense the irritation radiating off her.
“You shouldn’t push him like that,” Tolan said to her.
“I was asking a question. I’m not pushing at all.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t ask him so many questions.”
She frowned at him but made a point of looking away, as if making a show of ignoring him. If she wasn’t careful, she’d return to her usual location at the front of the class, and he enjoyed having her near him like this.
“Ages ago, there were shapers who sought to try to become closer to power. Given the nature of fire, an attempt was made to use this element to help them gain a greater understanding of it,” Master Sartan went on. “A shaping was used, power poured upon the shaper, and they did so with the intent of trying to gain an increased sense and understanding of fire. What we know of it tells us that it was a dangerous and destructive type of shaping, but more than that, it changed the nature of the shaper. No longer did they have the same ability to shape.”
“What did they have?” someone near the front asked.
Master Sartan smiled, as if he had been hoping someone would question him like that. “We have lost their records. All we know is that a shaping like that twists the individual, turns them into something different.”
“Did it work?” This came from Jason, one of the shapers who hung around Draln. He leaned forward, and Tolan could almost imagine him calculating how to use a shaping like that in order to gain access to increased power.
“The reports are that those who did commit themselves to fire became more powerful, yet there was a cost. With fire, there’s always a cost. You see, with fire, it is essential to maintain control of the shaping.” Once again, Master Sartan held onto a shaping of fire, a ball that glowed in front of him. It twisted, spiraling slowly before he released it. “If you lose control, the shaping can consume you. That is the nature of fire. It wants to be released. It longs for that. If you can maintain your hold over it, you can use it, manipulate it, but you must always maintain that connection. It’s why we have spent so much time focusing on small shapings in the time we’ve worked together. You build upon each shaping, gaining increased ability along with increased control.”
He fell into a silence, and no one spoke.
What would someone be like if they committed themselves to fire the way Master Sartan was describing? That wasn’t what he was doing when using fire on himself, regardless of what Ferrah might think. He was using it as a shield, and though he inverted it, he wasn’t shaping himself. They had been warned that attempting to shape oneself was dangerous, and he had no interest in risking himself, as he was not nearly as powerful a shaper as he needed to be in order to control it.
“What we understand is that those who attempted this shaping lost control. In doing so, they lost themselves. Records, as I have said, are sparse, making it difficult for us to know whether other attempts were successful, but we have enough records of the time that tell us the creatures they became were horrible and far too connected to fire, letting it rage out of control within them.” Master Sartan paused, sending his gaze sweeping around the classroom. “This is why we caution you against using shapings on yourself. Doing so poses dangers. Not only could
you destroy yourself, but you could lose yourself. That is perhaps a worse fate than death.”
He looked around the room again, and smiled. “Today, I would like you to practice this shaping.” He held onto the ball of fire, letting it twist around him as it spiraled. A shaping like that wouldn’t have much use other than in an attack, but it would allow a level of control, and in his case, Tolan thought having an increased level of control wouldn’t be a bad thing. “Working with the shaping like this will require that you have a level of control. If you lose control of it, you will find fire unforgiving. It’s best you attempt this shaping here rather than someplace else where you won’t have the same opportunity for protection.”
Tolan glanced over at Ferrah. She was already beginning to shape, using fire as it began to build, the heat of it rising more and more. Her circle of fire was small and compact, and the flames glowed with an orange intensity. She held onto it, twisting it from side to side much like Master Sartan had done, and as she did, she stared at it, focusing on the power. Tolan watched her, noticing how she was pulling on the power within the shaping, and wondered whether he would be able to do something similar. He had never had the same level of control as Ferrah, even when using the furios.
“Now see if you can make it larger,” Master Sartan said to her.
She released her shaping, the ball of flame disappearing. She looked up at him. “I’m not sure I can control it quite as well.”
“You won’t know how well you can control it until you begin to push yourself.” Master Sartan glanced over at Tolan. “What about you, Shaper Ethar?”
Tolan took a deep breath, focusing on fire. As he did, he created a small ball of flame. It was compact, no larger than his fist, the heat glowing from it radiating with a powerful force. It threatened to overwhelm him even in such a small shape, but Tolan squeezed down on it, trying to force it toward himself. He attempted to spin it the same way Ferrah did, but it began to pull apart, the flames tearing away from him.
Tolan stopped the spinning, holding onto his focus, trying to restrict the ball of flame so it didn’t manage to burst free.
The Wind Rages (Elemental Academy Book 4) Page 7