“Did you come to examine the portrait gallery?”
Tolan jumped, cursing to himself and turning to see Master Minden. Somehow, she’d managed to sneak up on him. He shouldn’t be surprised, but she was old, frail, and with her milky white eyes, he didn’t think that she saw much—while at the same time, she always managed to see everything.
“I was just trying to find you.”
“Yes, so I have heard.”
Tolan cocked his head to the side. “You heard?”
“My eyes might not be as strong as they once had been, but my hearing is just fine, Shaper Ethar.”
There was a soft rebuke in it, and yet there was something more. Could she have heard through his wind-shaping barrier?
He hadn’t said anything to Ferrah that he needed to conceal, but the idea she would be able to listen through the shaping surprised him.
Should it? He’d already learned that Master Minden was more than she appeared. She had power and knowledge, and a skill with shaping that he thought she hid from others, as if she wanted to prevent them from knowing just how powerful she was.
“The last time I saw you, I was—”
“Getting chased by the Inquisitors. I recall that.”
“You knew others were coming for me.”
She turned slowly, nodding down the hallway. A shaping built from her, sweeping in either direction. As it did, he realized she’d sealed off the hallway. Not just one section of it, but the entire hallway. The power of the shaping was unlike anything he’d felt from any shaper other than the Grand Master.
Not for the first time, he found himself wondering who Master Minden was. How was it that she had as much power as she seemed to possess?
“This is not quite the place for such conversations.”
“Why not?”
“Do know where you are?”
“I’m above the main level of the Academy.”
She tsked. “A basic answer for someone who is anything but basic. Yes, you are above the main level of the Academy, and in that you are quite right, but the answer is a bit more complicated, as I suspect you already know.”
“Where are we?”
“There are many things from the past that we can learn.”
“That’s why you study the books.”
“That’s why we study the past, Shaper Ethar. The more we can learn, the better equipped we are for avoiding the same mistakes made before us. We aren’t the first shapers, and it’s unlikely we’ll be the last.”
Tolan glanced over at her. She stood in front of one of the paintings—the same one that he had been staring at, he realized. She looked at it, though he wondered just how much she would be able to see.
“Unlikely?”
She nodded. “It is possible we destroy shaping.”
“I didn’t think there was any risk of destroying shaping.”
“Perhaps not quite the way you think I mean. The element bonds are intact, which means they hold the elementals within them, but there is something else we must be concerned about.”
“What?”
She glanced over at him. “We have talked in the past about how you reach for shaping in a different way.”
He tensed. It was like the conversation he’d started to have with Ferrah. “We haven’t talked all that much about it.”
“Because you have failed to ask the right questions.”
“And what questions are those?”
“Questions about how. Why. And if you are the first.”
She smiled at him, and when she did, she turned away, making him follow her as she headed down the hallway. She didn’t go very far, pausing in front of another painting. When she did, she studied it much like she had the last. Tolan found himself studying it with her. There was something different about this than the last. For one, it seemed even older, if such a thing were possible. The last had been ancient, the paint at risk of fading, were it not for the shaping around it. This one had faded too, and that was even though he could feel the shaping upon it. There was nothing more than a blur of soft colors.
“What do you see on this canvas?” she asked.
“I don’t see much of anything.”
“No? Perhaps it’s only my memory, then.”
“What do you see?”
“I see the draasin. Three of them, flying overhead, with a shaper below.” She smiled, and it was almost as if she could see it.
Tolan had never questioned her mind before, and probably shouldn’t now, but the way she looked at the canvas, the way she stared at it, left him questioning whether she was all there. “How old is this one?”
“Old,” she said softly.
“As old as all of them?”
She took a deep breath, raising her hand to the painting. She motioned to it, and he looked at where she pointed. “If you track the colors, you might be able to catch sight of the draasin, too. The artist depicts them as well as any has ever depicted them.”
He stared, wondering if he might be able to make something out, but even as he did, he couldn’t find anything in the painting that would help him see what Master Minden was seeing. There wasn’t even a hint of the draasin on the page. It was little more than smears of brown and orange, though there were hints of red within it.
“I don’t see it.”
“Imagine a draasin, if you can.”
Tolan fixed the image of the draasin in his mind. He had seen one near the Keystone one time. It had been made entirely of flames and looked powerful. It was the one elemental he was most terrified of summoning, though he had attempted to do so when back there with Aela.
“Are you imagining one?”
“As much as I can,” he said.
“Good. Now imagine three. If you can, then perhaps you can make out the image on the page.”
Tolan continued to stare, thinking that he needed to do so in order to satisfy Master Minden, but even as he did, there was nothing about the painting that he could discover. There was nothing there that would help him see the draasin like she saw them. Even if he did, imagining one draasin was one thing, but three? The idea there could be three of those creatures out in the world, unleashed and flying freely… terrified him, if he was truly honest with himself. There were times when he still questioned whether the bond made sense, and whether it served a purpose. When it came to the draasin, Tolan couldn’t help but think that perhaps it did serve a purpose, only because the draasin were so powerful and terrifying.
“Are you able to imagine them?”
“I don’t know that I want to.”
Master Minden pulled her gaze away from the portrait and turned to him, shaking her head. “You fear the draasin.”
“Should I not?”
“Why fear what we should honor and revere?”
“You would have us honor and revere the draasin?”
“I would have us honor and revere all the elementals, certainly more than we do these days.”
“Master Minden?”
“Oh, Shaper Ethar, I’m sure others would accuse me of sympathizing with the elementals, but I can assure you I understand that in the current form, the elementals cannot be freed from the bond. I also recognize there is something about shaping that has changed for us. We’re losing something of ourselves these days.”
“What are we losing?”
“Shapers like you.”
Tolan smiled, but realized she wasn’t joking. “What do you mean?”
“I detected your shaping in the library, Shaper Ethar.”
Tolan felt a flush working up, starting in his neck. “I wasn’t trying to do anything that would damage the library,” he said quickly.
“Of course, you weren’t. I would have acted differently had I detected anything like that. You used wind, and created a bit of a barrier around yourself and your friend. Your conversation was quite interesting.”
“You did hear it.”
“There’s not much that takes place in the library that I don’t hear.�
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“How?”
Tolan looked around. As earlier, he felt the presence of her shaping, the barrier that she sent up and down the hallway, the sheer power of it. It didn’t even appear as if Master Minden was straining. Was she using a withering? That would explain how she was able to draw more power than he would’ve expected, but he didn’t see her holding onto anything. Both of her hands were clasped in front of her, smoothing down the long black robe that marked her as one of the Master librarians.
Was there a way of using a bondar without holding onto it? It had been Tolan’s experience that he had to hold one of the bondars in order to effectively utilize it, but maybe that wasn’t necessary.
“As I said, my understanding of shaping is a little bit different. All of the master librarians’ understanding of shaping is different.”
She motioned along the hallway.
“This is the master librarian section of the Academy, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “It is. It’s designed to be difficult to find, and only those who can shape in a specific fashion are able to uncover it.”
“I didn’t shape in any sort of fashion.”
“No? And then what was it that I felt you doing as you trailed me? Were you not using earth and wind?”
Tolan stared at her. How had she known?
“How powerful are you?” he whispered.
“Always with the wrong questions. That’s quite different for you, Shaper Ethar.”
“What are the right questions?”
She turned away from him, making her way along the hallway. Tolan could do nothing but follow. There was something he thought he might learn here, though he had no idea what it would be. She left him feeling unsettled, partly by the fact that she seemed so powerful, but partly by the fact there were things she knew and understood yet she was not sharing with him, but they were things he thought she would share with him if he were only willing to ask the right questions.
She stopped in front of another painting. This one had a bit more color in it, but the edges were charred, it started to curl down. The shaping holding it in place was incredible. It was a mixture of earth and water, of all things. As he focused on the shaping, he realized water was used in order to try to heal the canvas.
“Why would water be used on a canvas?”
She glanced over at him before turning her attention back to the page. “There aren’t many who even recognize water is utilized on this canvas.”
“I thought you said there weren’t many who came here.”
“The master librarians. And the Grand Master, along with some of the master shapers, have been brought here, but it’s doubtful they would be able to find it on their own.”
“The Grand Master couldn’t find this place on his own?”
“I suspect the Grand Master could, as he is a bit more powerful than he lets on. He hid the fact he could shape spirit for years; his way of avoiding becoming an Inquisitor.” A hint of a smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “Not that I could blame him. Knowing the Inquisitors as we do now, I think had he gone to them, there might have been a very different outcome.”
“I doubt the Grand Master would have done the same thing that Aela did.”
“Just what do you think Master Aela did?”
“She turned the Inquisitors against the Academy.”
“No. She intended to try to find information about the Draasin Lord. Nothing more than that.”
“If it was nothing more than that, why would the Grand Master have gone after her?”
“She made the mistake of attacking him, and then she made the secondary mistake of trying to reach for power she shouldn’t have. As far as the Inquisitors are concerned, she did nothing wrong.”
“I was there, Master Minden.”
“I’m well aware you were there. You could have been elsewhere.”
Tolan glanced behind him again, looking along the length of the hallway. Was anyone here who could listen? He believed that Master Minden had sealed off the hall, but what if there was someone here who could listen to them? Maybe this wasn’t the right place for this conversation.
“Did you know?”
“Did I know what?”
“About my father.”
“There are many things I can’t see, Shaper Ethar.”
“You knew they were coming for me.”
“I know those who call themselves the disciples of the Draasin Lord aren’t quite what others within the Academy would have us believe.”
“And what are they?”
“There’s only one way for you to gain that knowledge.”
“By going with them?”
She shrugged. “That would be the way.”
Tolan shook his head. “I thought I wanted to go with them but doing so means I abandon the Academy. I’m not ready for that.” He said nothing about the hesitation he felt over how they attacked and the violence they had shown.
“Even if it means you will gain an understanding?”
“Not if it means I betray the Academy.”
“And what exactly do you think the Academy is?”
“The Academy serves Terndahl.”
“The Academy trains shapers for Terndahl. The people of Terndahl have decided that means that our shapers protect them, but that hasn’t always been the case. Much like it hasn’t always been the case that the elementals have been spirited away, hidden from the rest of the world.”
She pointed to the portrait. As she did, shaping streamed out from the end of her fingers, smoothing back the curled edges of the page.
“What do you see?”
“There’s a little bit more color on this one than the last one, but I think it’s too faded.”
“Perhaps you’re right, Shaper Ethar. It’s a shame. There was a time when these portraits were magnificent.”
“What does this one depict?”
“The elementals.”
“Do all of these depict the elementals?” He glanced back down the hall, looking toward the one portrait that he had seen, that of the man who had seemed to look at him with a bright intensity burning within his eyes. There was a purpose to him, the same kind of purpose Tolan wished he could find.
“Not all. Many of them are portraits of the earliest librarians at the Academy. We are as vain as any, wanting to ensure we have ourselves preserved for the future.”
“Is there a portrait of you?”
“Unfortunately.”
“And all of the master librarians?”
“As I said, unfortunately. Not all of them make it into this hallway, but each of us has our likeness depicted by an artist of considerable skill once we are promoted to master librarian. Many are simply in storage. If you ask me, that is for the best.”
Tolan found himself laughing. It was always so easy to be with Master Minden. There was an affability to her, and despite the fact she knew so much about him, and that he felt as if he didn’t know much about himself, being around Master Minden seemed to make everything easier.
“What does this portrait depict of the elementals?”
“In this case, it is one of the earth elementals.”
“How did it get burned?”
“As you undoubtedly know from your lessons, fire and earth don’t always get along.”
“What does that have to do with why it’s burned?”
“One of the fire elementals was angry earth was depicted in the light it was.”
“And what light was that?”
“As more important than fire.” She smiled as she said it, and softly. “The elementals can be as foolish and petty as us, Shaper Ethar. Despite what we know of them, and despite the fact they have their own unique type of power, they aren’t above a little pettiness. Then again, neither are we. I suspect others would attempt to do the same as the so-called Draasin Lord has done, and would try to gain subjugation over the elementals, to see if they couldn’t use that sort of power.”
“Why do you call him the so-
called Draasin Lord?”
“There has been the threat of a Draasin Lord for far longer than there could exist a Draasin Lord.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you must find those answers on your own, Shaper Ethar.”
She continued down the hallway, and when she stopped in front of another portrait, she smiled at it. This one had wisps of lines, but nothing more. It was better preserved than most of them had been, and as he looked at it, he thought it might be newer. Then again, if it were newer, why would it have basically nothing on it?
“What do you see on this one?” she asked.
Tolan looked at the painting, staring at it as he tried to come up with an answer, but there wasn’t much of anything on it that made any sense to him. It was little more than faint lines scrolled across the page.
“Not much of anything. Is there something I’m supposed to see? It looks almost like someone had started their artwork but then never finished.”
“It is difficult to depict wind,” she said.
“This is meant to depict wind?”
“I’ll admit, it is a difficult thing for one to see and visualize, but when you do, you start to understand what the artist was trying to show. In your time working with your shapings, have you not seen the wind elemental?”
It was a more direct question than he was accustomed to when it came to Master Minden. Most of the time, she was more round-about with her approach, not quite so direct, but she said it so matter-of-factly, he suspected she knew the answer even though she asked.
“I’ve seen the wind elemental,” he said.
“And how would you draw it?”
“I’m not much of an artist.”
“One doesn’t need to be an artist to know how they would depict such things, Shaper Ethar.”
Tolan tried to think about how he would have depicted the wind and realized that there wasn’t much to show. Wind, when visible—which wasn’t very often—was difficult to see. It was translucent. When he had a sense of it, it was vague, and he had a sense that it was supposed to be. It was the way wind lived. It wasn’t easy to see, not the same way fire or earth were easy to see. When he shaped wind, the sense of it came from a place deep inside of him, a place that came out with each breath, an extension of himself. With wind, there was nothing—and everything.
The Wind Rages (Elemental Academy Book 4) Page 11