“I suppose this is how I would do it, too,” he said.
Master Minden nodded, as if there was never a debate. “The artist was considered one of the most skilled in his time.”
“I’m surprised there are so many depictions of the elementals,” Tolan said.
“You are only surprised because in this time, the elementals are viewed differently than they were long ago. There was a time when the elementals were viewed with far more welcome, and the artists wanted to depict them as accurately as possible, no differently than they wanted to depict the master shapers as accurately as possible.”
She said it almost with a sense of knowledge, and though he doubted it was possible she could be old enough to remember, he looked at her for a moment, wondering if maybe…
Tolan shook away that thought. That was as impossible as anything.
“What are you trying to get at?” he asked.
“I’m trying to encourage you to open your mind, nothing more than that. It’s the same thing we would ask anyone who has the potential to be a master librarian.”
Tolan blinked. “You want me to be a master librarian?”
“You would refuse?”
“It’s just…” It was what he suspected Ferrah wanted, but it wasn’t what he had wanted. Then again, Tolan hadn’t given much thought to what he did want. Eventually, he would have to figure out what role he would take on when he finished with the Academy—if he were able to finish with it at all. Until that time, he didn’t know what it was he wanted to do.
“You don’t have to feel as if you need to make a decision now, Shaper Ethar. I brought you here for you to know that the possibility exists.”
“I didn’t realize you brought me here at all.” Hadn’t he followed her?
“You would never have found this place had I not wanted you to,” she said, smiling at him. “And now, I think it’s time for you to return to your studies.”
“That’s it?”
“What more would you have?”
“I guess I thought you might know something more about why the disciples of the Draasin Lord were after me.”
“Not the disciples of the Draasin Lord,” she said. “Your father.”
“Did you know him?”
She smiled again, meeting his eyes with her milky white ones. “Like I said, I can see many things.”
With that, she turned, heading back down the hallway, and Tolan had no choice but to follow her. As he went, his gaze lingered along the portraits, searching for understanding about what she was showing him, but he didn’t come up with anything. There were dozens upon dozens of portraits here, and all of them were difficult to make out. Toward the end of the hall, they came to the portraits of people. There was the man he had seen when he first came here, but there was a woman next to him that he hadn’t noticed before. It seemed almost as if she was watching him. The sense of it left him unsettled.
He hurried after Master Minden, reaching her on the stairs, and when he did, he cast one last look along the hallway, wondering if he would be allowed to return here again if he didn’t choose to become a master librarian.
“Come along, Shaper Ethar.”
Tolan followed her down the stairs, away from the quarters of the master librarians, and for some reason, he couldn’t help but feel as if he was leaving a place he was supposed to know.
11
Wind whistled around him, his shaping growing, power flowing through him as he summoned the wind as Master Rorn instructed. Tolan focused on it, determined to follow her instruction as closely as possible. He needed to better understand how to shape, and he needed the level of control the master shapers taught.
Much like the fire-shaping class, this class and the wind shaping were all about control. Master Rorn wanted them to focus on shaping as well as they could, using a level of control to ensure they managed to hold onto their shaping, avoiding wind slipping from their grasp. She didn’t speak of wind the same way Master Sartan had, and there was no dire warning about the destructive nature of the wind if they were to lose control of it, but she did caution them that they needed to understand control.
Had it ever been any different?
His earliest experience with the classes hadn’t been productive enough to know whether she had issued the same warning or not. He had been far more focused on simply trying to reach the ability to shape. It was possible the master shapers always warned about control.
He looked around. Jonas was across from him, and his wind shaping built with skill, a spiral of wind lifting off the ground before retreating. Tolan was able to copy that, but he didn’t have the same level of skill that Jonas managed, though the more he practiced, the more he felt as if he could eventually reach it.
“Very good, Shaper Golud. Now I would like to see if you can’t tighten the spiral,” Master Rorn said, taking a place next to Jonas.
Jonas nodded, and when she was gone, he lowered his voice and leaned toward Tolan. “Tighten it? It’s about all I can do to keep this one as tightly controlled.”
“She sees potential in you. She’s probably going to want you to study with her in the wind tower,” Ferrah said. She was on the other side of Tolan, and her tower of wind wasn’t nearly as tall as Jonas’s, but she held it more tightly-controlled than Jonas did. It was a narrow band of wind, no taller than her midsection, and spiraled right in front of her. “You just have to keep pushing yourself.”
“This is pushing myself,” Jonas said, shaking his head. “I’d like to see you extend your column of wind.”
Ferrah made a face at him and her shaping expanded, the column of wind growing just like Jonas had wanted. It elongated, stretching taller than her and then doubling in size. The entire time, she held it in the same tight spiral.
Tolan smiled. She still had the wind bondar.
He waited to see if Jonas would realize what she was doing, but she collapsed the column of wind before he had a chance to question her. When it was done, he leaned over to Ferrah. “You were the one who warned me about using a crutch.”
“It wasn’t a crutch. It was my way of harassing Jonas. Besides, he knows I don’t need the bondar in order to shape.”
“I don’t know. You’ve been giving me a hard time about using the bondar, and now you’re not doing anything different.”
“Fine.”
She pulled her hands out of her pockets and focused on a wind shaping. As it built from her, the spiral grew, increasing in size and stretched outward, taller than her. It was tightly controlled, far more than Tolan was able to do, and as it stretched, she glanced over at him.
“Are you going to do the same?”
Tolan started on his wind shaping. It built slowly, and with an increasing speed. As it did, he focused on the nature of the shaping, drawing it out, trying to keep it tightly controlled as he did. He should be able to hold onto it, and he had enough experience with wind that it shouldn’t escape his ability to hold it, but somehow, it started to unwind on him. The column of wind began to grow taller and taller, and his ability to hold it became strained. The more he tried, scrambling to hang onto the sense of the wind, the less he found he was able to do so.
And then he lost control.
Wind burst out from him, the overall sense of control faded, and Tolan was thrown back under the force of his shaping.
He shook himself, getting back to his feet, looking around. Unsurprisingly, Draln had a tight control over his wind shaping, his column spinning in front of him, and he sneered at Tolan, laughing as he said something to one of the shapers near him.
Tolan got to his feet and Master Rorn joined him. “Shaper Ethar, you must hold onto your control before you expand the column. If you don’t, you run the risk of… Well, this.”
“I’m sorry, Master Rorn. I know.”
“If you would like to use a bondar, you certainly may.”
Tolan glanced at Ferrah. The reason he had lost control was because he was trying to show off for her, and he
should have known better than to do so. “I think I’m okay.”
“It hasn’t been all that long that you have been able to reach the element bond on your own. Don’t try to exceed your capabilities, Shaper Ethar.”
With that, Master Rorn made her way through the line of students, pausing and speaking words of encouragement to Draln and the others around him before continuing onward.
“Do you want to use the bondar?” Ferrah whispered.
“You know I don’t.”
“You were more than eager to use the bondar at other times.”
“I’m going to master this shaping if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Don’t let it be the last thing you do,” she said.
He smiled at her, then began to shape again, pulling on his sense of wind. He needed to master these shapings. The ones all about control were the ones he needed to master most of all. If he could get a handle on them, he should be able to deal with more complicated shapings. He was determined to get to the point where he could handle complex ones.
This time, he focused on the spiral of wind, keeping it confined in front of him, using a small shaping, barely enough to twist the wind in front of him. Rather than trying to grow a tall column, Tolan focused on a tight spiral of air. It reminded him somewhat of the wind elemental tornas. He focused on it, putting that image into the shaping, holding it tightly in place the way he would have done were he to have a bondar. That seemed to be the key. As he focused on the elemental, the shape of it held much better than it did otherwise, and gradually the form took hold.
This one spun rapidly. As it did, he began to stretch it outward, elongating it while also keeping it narrowly confined. There were ways a shaping like this could be useful, though for the most part, such a shaping was meant only to demonstrate his prowess. He needed to get to the point where he was getting to use shapings that were beneficial.
“How are you doing that?” Ferrah asked.
“Doing what?”
“That. It’s barely wider than my fist.”
“I started small.”
“When I start small, it is not like that.”
“I just tried a different approach.”
Ferrah frowned. “Are you sure you aren’t using a bondar?”
Tolan looked over at her. “If I was using a bondar, don’t you think I would’ve had better control with the last one?”
“I guess. I just…”
Tolan continued to elongate the shaping, holding onto it in a way that continued to have the sense of tornas within it. It wasn’t quite the elemental, but he used what he knew about the elemental, his experience in having drawn it out, to power the shaping.
When the column of wind was as tall as him, he paused. If he stretched too much more, he had a feeling he’d lose control. There was a stirring within it, almost a sense that he was nearly reaching into the wind bond. If he did that now, it was possible that he would free the elemental.
Not here. Doing that would be far too dangerous, not only for him but for the wind elemental. He didn’t want to free the elemental, and he really didn’t want to feel the pain from the elemental as it was forced back into the bond. Having that sensation once was enough. Tolan continued to squeeze it down, narrowing the column once again, waiting for it to compress. It happened slowly, gradually, and eventually he pressed it back into nothingness, little more than it had been before, and then he released the shaping.
When he was done, he breathed out. It had been far more work than he had expected. He gathered himself, focusing on the wind shaping, and considered repeating it before changing his mind. It was possible he wouldn’t have enough strength to control it the next time.
“I haven’t seen a shaping like that before,” Ferrah said.
“Maybe I have a talent with wind.”
“You have a talent with something, alright.”
“Release your shaping,” Master Rorn said.
The students all along the top of the tower released their shapings, and Master Rorn headed to the center of the tower and swept her gaze around them all. Her long, flowing white robes gave her a look that suggested she served the wind. She was thin, like most who were prone to shaping the wind, and her sharp jawline jutted out as she looked at them.
“I would expect you will continue to practice these shapings. Your goal would be to have a column of wind twice your height by the time you reach your next testing. If you cannot do that, then wind will not be in your future.”
“That’s the only test?” someone near the front asked.
“That’s not the only test, but it’s one of them. As you will learn, many of these shapings will branch off this first. This is a complicated shaping designed to test your control. The others will test your connection to wind, and from there, you will continue to push yourself. As I said, practice will be essential.”
“Do we need to worry about harming ourselves?”
“Not like with some of the other elements. Wind will be released, and as Shaper Ethar has so kindly demonstrated, it can be painful to lose control of the shaping, but it will not harm you, nor will it change you.”
Heat worked up Tolan’s cheeks and he could hear others near him chuckling, but he did his best to ignore it. It was difficult.
“That is all for the day.”
Tolan headed toward the stairs leading back down out of the wind tower. He didn’t wait for the others but Ferrah followed him, grabbing onto his arm.
“You don’t need to be so sensitive about things like that. She was giving you no harder time than she has other students.”
“I realize that, but it’s more about what I’ve gone through to get here. Well, to stay here, really.”
“I know what you’ve gone through but keep pushing yourself. Besides, you already demonstrated you have the kind of control she was trying to have us demonstrate. Sometimes with you, I get the sense it’s not so much the shaping but it’s how you approach it. You have the necessary strength, but you don’t always have the same control.”
When they reached the main part of the wind tower, Draln and a few of his friends shoved past Tolan, looking back at him. “Nice job back there, Ethar. Thanks for demonstrating how to avoid releasing your wind shaping.”
“Anything for you, Draln.”
Draln’s friends glared at him before following Draln.
“What are you going to do with the rest of your day?” Ferrah asked.
It was early enough that they still had quite a bit of time left in the day, several hours before the evening meal. He considered practicing shaping but holding onto the last one had taxed him more than he had expected. If he were to continue to practice, he would need to do so with some sort of assistance.
They reached the main part of the Academy, and he frowned. “You know, I still haven’t gone back to the spirit tower to see if my bondars were there.”
“You want to do that now?”
“I guess.” He didn’t, not really, but also thought he needed to face it. Jonas was right when he said that something about Tolan having changed ever since that day. He had become far more tentative. He was determined to push past it, to become the person he’d been before, to avoid that tentativeness. “If we have quite a bit of the afternoon left, what better time to do it than now?”
“We should see if Jonas—”
“We should see if Jonas would what?”
Tolan turned and Jonas jumped down the remaining few steps, landing on a cushion of wind. He flashed a smile.
“What are the two of you wanting to see if I would do?”
“Tolan is thinking about returning to the spirit tower.”
“Now? Have you seen how beautiful the day is outside? We don’t have anything for hours, and…” Jonas glanced from one of them to the other before shaking his head. “Fine. I’ll go with you but let me lodge my dissatisfaction with it now.”
“You don’t have to go,” Tolan said.
“Sure. I don’t have to g
o, and if I don’t, then you will go off and have some crazy adventure again without me. No thanks. I don’t like hearing about these adventures secondhand.”
“Sometimes, secondhand is better than experiencing them directly.”
“Says the guy who remembers everything.”
Tolan shrugged, and they all started toward the spirit tower. They passed several others of their class; most were streaming out the main door rather than staying in the Academy building. Under different circumstances, Tolan would have wanted to be outside as well, anywhere but in here, but he needed to do this. It was well past time that he dealt with this issue.
Reaching the spirit tower involved going up a flight of stairs, and from there, he looked around, noting the markings on the wall and focusing on one in particular. The rune was one for spirit, and it wasn’t one he knew all that well, but he knew it well enough to recognize the power within it. He had sat in the middle of something similar and had felt the way that a skilled spirit shaper had been able to use their control over it in order to confine him, trying to break into his mind.
A tap landed on his arm and he looked over. “Come on,” Ferrah said.
He took a deep breath, focusing. He needed to move past this. It was unlikely they would find anything in the tower, but he needed to look, didn’t he?
Looking toward the opening in the tower, Tolan focused on wind, adding a hint of fire, and shaped himself up.
It was easy to remember how difficult such a shaping was the first time he’d come here. The idea that he would be expected to have enough control to carry himself to the next level of the spirit tower had seemed a far-off goal. Without the furios, he wouldn’t have been able to do so, and even with it, he’d barely been able to manage. His level of control had been such that he had exploded himself upward without any real control.
The Wind Rages (Elemental Academy Book 4) Page 12