“When?”
“During the attack. She said I was summoned, and she was helping me escape.”
The Grand Master started to laugh, at first softly, but then with more vigor. “Sometimes, she has plans she should share.”
“What sort of plans?”
“Let’s just say the Grand Master Librarian has not been the most concerned about the Draasin Lord’s disciples.”
“Even though they’ve attacked the city?”
“She views their attacks a bit differently than most, but then, that’s probably why she is the librarian and I am the Grand Master. She’s able to concern herself with things that involve thinking and planning, whereas I have to be involved in recognizing the dangers to our people.”
“What sort of things does she think we should do?”
The Grand Master shrugged. “If it were up to her, we would invite the Draasin Lord’s disciples to the Academy. Many of them studied here, so we would be basically welcoming them home.”
“You disagree?”
“I disagree with the approach, not with the sentiment.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I think we have an opportunity to better understand the disciples of the Draasin Lord.” He looked up, meeting Tolan’s gaze. His eyes bore into Tolan. “I’m sure you have no desire to leave the Academy, and yet at the same time, I suspect you question why the disciples came for you.”
Tolan hesitated before nodding. “My father was with them.”
“As you said.”
Did he? “I want to know why they abandoned me.”
“And I would like to know why they keep attacking in Amitan.”
“We know why they keep attacking. They want to release the elementals and…” He almost said control them, but he didn’t have that sense from the disciples when he had traveled with them. He didn’t know what they were after, only that it didn’t seem to be about controlling elementals. Had he stayed with his father, he might have learned, but staying with his father meant that he would be leaving the only place that had felt like he belonged.
“Perhaps, but what we need is someone on the inside. We’ve never been able to accomplish that, and if we could find some way to get someone inside the disciples of the Draasin Lord, we might be able to find not only where they hide, but to find some way to stop them for good.”
Tolan thought about what the Grand Master was saying, and he realized what he was asking. He wanted Tolan to be that person. The only problem was, he didn’t know that he could be. If he did, it meant he was betraying someone. If he went with them, did what the Grand Master asked of him, he would be betraying his father. If he went with his father and mother, then he was going against the Academy.
“I don’t know if I can,” he said.
“Just think about it.”
Tolan nodded and turned away. What else could he do? There was no other choice but to at least consider it. And for the Grand Master, wouldn’t he?
As much as he might want to avoid betraying both his friends and his family, he was going to be forced into deciding, and either choice he made would end up hurting someone.
“The Inquisitors are planning something,” he said. In the time he’d been back, he’d forgotten about it, but now seemed to be the time to bring it back up. The Grand Master needed to know.
“What are they planning?”
He shook his head. “When I was with my father, they encountered an Inquisitor.”
“They were chasing the disciples, Tolan. Nothing more nefarious than that.”
“I’m not sure that’s right. They’re doing…” What, though? He had no idea, only that something had felt off when he’d been there.
The Grand Master offered him a hint of a smile, though it was little more than placating. “Perhaps you leave the spirit tower alone for a while.”
“I will. If you hear anything of Aela…”
“I can’t promise I will alert you. If it comes down to it, I would prefer to prevent her from harming any more within the Academy, but at the same time, she has served Terndahl over the years, and I cannot overlook that service. Nor can you.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying if it comes down to it, Shaper Ethar, you might have to find it within yourself to forgive if it turns out she was acting on behalf of Terndahl.”
With that, the Grand Master reached the edge of the spirit tower and disappeared with a shaping. He left Tolan alone, staring at the rune. There was something within the rune that held a trigger, a warning. Only the Grand Master would know if someone came here to shape, and he had to wonder if he could place something similar.
Doing so would be foolish, but at the same time, wouldn’t he like to know if Aela returned?
Regardless of what the Grand Master might say, he couldn’t trust the woman. She had already betrayed him—and others. She had told him exactly what she intended, and in doing so, had lost any credibility as to her service within Terndahl.
The only problem was that Tolan might be the only one who saw it that way.
More than that, he knew the Inquisitors were doing something, but not what that was. How could he uncover that secret?
Standing at the edge of the rune, he closed his eyes. For a moment, he squeezed his hand around the ring he’d claimed from his parents’ home, the spirit bondar. As he did, he focused on spirit and pushed it out, letting it touch the rune but not trying to power it. Rather than that, he wanted nothing more than to leave a trace of a shaping. He would like to know if someone else came here to attempt to use the rune.
With that being done, Tolan jumped, dropping back down out of the spirit tower and back into the rest of the Academy buildings.
13
Starlight twinkled overhead as Tolan rested on the Shapers Path, sitting with his legs crossed, focusing on the way the wind swirled around him. He’d stopped back after visiting with the Grand Master to find Ferrah and Jonas in the library, but didn’t feel like staying. He needed to clear his mind, which brought him here.
At night, the city was quiet. No one was out, giving him an opportunity to be alone. He enjoyed the vantage, sitting above the city, getting an opportunity to look outward, to simply focus on everything around him.
The lights in the city cast a gentle glow, as many of them came from candles or lanterns, not shaped light at all. Those that were from shaped light were a purer light, orange or white, sometimes even a faint blue. They were easy to pick out, and all of them cast an additional glow throughout the night, almost like starlight on the ground.
He focused on his shaping, choosing wind to spin in a tight spiral. He did so quickly, focusing on the column of wind before releasing it. Practicing like this would bring him closer to what the master shapers wanted from him, and he would need to have this practice if he were ever to achieve the skill that would allow him to pass on to the next level.
There was no one else around him. He was by himself, alone, and it was pleasant being like this. He enjoyed the solitude, the quiet, and the slight haze hanging in the air. Smells from the city drifted up to him. Most were pleasant, that of baking bread or the heat from a blacksmith forge that sent the metallic odor rising, and the smell of burning firewood. Those smells reminded him of Ephra, a familiar odor, one that seemed to be home, which surprised him considering how little he considered Ephra home these days.
Shapings throughout the city reverberated around him. They were steady, the rise and fall of specific beats of power, earth or fire or wind or air. Never spirit, though Tolan wasn’t sure if he would be able to pick out the use of spirit if it came down to it. Often, the elements were mixed, and when they were, he suspected those shapers had much more skill. Typically, those shapings came from deeper within Amitan, near the Academy.
As his shaping column built and then collapsed, Tolan once again focused on the elemental. He added a hint of power, thinking about how the elemental had been, the way it granted him an additional
connection to shaping and a focus to what he was able to do.
After a while, Tolan got to his feet. He needed to practice with the other elements, not just wind, but with earth and water. Fire was one he thought he could use reasonably well. He was less concerned about coming up with the necessary shaping that would be used in his test, and yet, he probably shouldn’t be quite so confident with fire. It was a difficult element to master, and if he somehow lost control of it, if it somehow collapsed upon him, then he would find he would fail no differently than if he shaped one of the other elements incorrectly. Just because he had a familiarity with fire didn’t mean he was guaranteed to pass through with it.
“I thought I would find you here.”
Tolan looked up as Ferrah approached. She had a flowing cloak covering her, the hood thrown back, and the wind tousled her red hair. In the starlight, she was especially lovely.
“I’m not trying to hide from you, if that’s what you think. I saw you in the library and I… I wanted some time out of the Academy.”
Ferrah frowned at him. “Why would I think you were hiding from me?”
“I just didn’t want you to jump to conclusions.”
“Now I’m jumping to conclusions.”
“That’s not—”
Tolan cut off with her laughter, realizing she hadn’t been implying anything.
“Why up here?” she asked.
“Up here is where the wind is,” he said.
“You realize they are going to test us where the wind isn’t.”
He hadn’t really given it much thought, but it made sense for them to do so. Why test them where it was easy to reach the wind? If they were supposed to be master shapers, they should be tested in a way that proved that.
“Then I should be practicing underground?”
“You’d be surprised at what exists underground.”
“I don’t know what to do,” he said.
He had shared with Ferrah what the Grand Master had asked of him, and yet he hadn’t shared with Jonas. There wasn’t much reason to do so. Jonas wouldn’t really understand the requirement the Grand Master asked of him, and if he did, he’d probably tell him to go ahead and do it.
Jonas didn’t understand that if he did, if he went along with what the Grand Master wanted, he would be proving everyone right after all these years.
“It was a request, not a demand.”
“I know, but it was request from the Grand Master.”
“Which is basically the same?”
“What would you do?”
“I don’t know,” Ferrah said.
“You can see why I’m struggling.”
“I knew why you were struggling,” she said. “I would be as well. I’m just reminding you it was a request and not a command.”
He smiled briefly. “I’m not even sure if I would be able to find him again.”
“Do you think he left?”
“I don’t know. I thought so, but every so often, I pick up the sense of a strange shaping.” It had been like that ever since the uprising. There was the periodic sense there was something—or someone—out there, shaping in a way reminding him of his own power, and when they did, he couldn’t help but question whether or not it was his father or other disciples of the Draasin Lord. Now he knew his father was with them, he didn’t know if he should be more willing to go with them or more concerned about them as a whole.
“You want to know what happened to them, don’t you?”
“I do, but…”
“But you fear they had a good reason for going.”
Tolan looked over at her. “What if they did? What if I start to turn?”
“Tolan…”
“I know you don’t want to think like that, but I didn’t think my parents actually served the Draasin Lord, either. Now I don’t have any choice in the matter.”
“They probably had a good reason. Maybe they were acting like you.”
“You think the Grand Master or someone else sent them to the Draasin Lord in order to find information?”
“It’s possible,” she said.
“I suppose.”
Tolan stared out into the darkness. It would be better to believe that than to believe what he had seen.
“It’s more than that, isn’t it?”
Tolan nodded. “There’s something to the elementals,” he said.
“What do you think there is?”
“I don’t really know, only that there is something I can detect about the shaping that reminds me of how I shaped by focusing on the elementals first.”
That had to be significant.
“There’s even more reason for you to go, then.”
“To find out about myself? I think the Academy would suggest that’s why I’m here.”
“Do you think you can learn about yourself at the Academy?”
Tolan took a deep breath. The answer was easy, and it came to him quickly, but it was painful. As much as he hated it, he didn’t think he could learn what he wanted to know about himself. Not here. Not when it came to the elementals. And yet, if he went anywhere else, if he did what the Grand Master asked of him, it was possible he would find himself becoming something else.
“I don’t know.”
“The fact you can’t answer that quickly and easily tells me all you need,” Ferrah said.
“You think I should do it.”
“I think you should consider it,” she said softly.
“What about the Inquisitors?”
She shook her head. “We don’t even know what they were after.”
“The Grand Master thinks we should be open-minded about welcoming them back.”
“Would you?”
Tolan took a deep breath. “How can I?”
If they did come back, there was no way he would be able to welcome them the way the Grand Master wanted, and he didn’t even want to try.
Then again, for the good of the Academy, perhaps there was no choice in it.
“I can’t be a spy,” he said.
“I don’t think they want you to be a spy. They want to know how to find the disciples of the Draasin Lord.”
“Which means I would be a spy.”
“That’s not quite what that means.”
“Fine, but—”
Tolan didn’t get the opportunity to finish. Power bloomed near him, in several different places all at once. It was a steady pattern, and it was filled with multiple shapings, all of them overwhelming. He sat upright, looking out into the night, searching for the source.
“Is it the disciples?”
The fact that Ferrah no longer questioned how easily he detected shaping was probably good. There was no longer the need to justify what he was detecting, no longer a need for him to prove he was able to detect what he claimed he could.
“Not a shaping like that. There was a distinct signature to it, and this…”
It was spirit.
If there was spirit shaping, that meant Inquisitors.
“We should get back to the Academy,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
Tolan focused on the sense of shapings all around him. What choice did he have but to return?
“I’m not going to be banished from the Academy because of the Inquisitors.”
She helped him to his feet and they followed the Shapers Path as they made their way back toward the main part of the city. When the Academy came into view, Tolan focused on the sense of shaping he had detected all around him. It bloomed continuously, a steady rhythmic sense, and he knew he wasn’t imagining it. Not only was it there, and not only was it spirit shaping, but it continued to pulse, a rhythm.
A message.
“Can you tell what they’re trying to shape?”
“Why would I be able to tell that?”
Tolan continued to stare at the Academy buildings, but he didn’t have the sense the shaping came from within them. There was no sense of the shaping causing his connection to what he had pla
ced around the spirit tower, either. If they were approaching that, they had done so quietly and not attempted to use power on the spirit rune.
“There’s a message within their shaping. I can’t quite make it all out, but it’s definitely there.”
“What sort of message?”
Tolan shook his head. “I can’t tell. It’s out of spirit, though, so I wasn’t sure if I was somehow immune to it or not.”
“If it’s out of spirit, then maybe you’re one of the only ones who can hear it.”
Tolan hadn’t considered that.
He stayed on the Shapers Path, letting the sense of the spirit shaping wash over him, the steady beating coming one after another, a tickle at the back of his mind.
Was there any way to open himself up to the message without being overwhelmed by it? He didn’t think it was intending to spirit shape everyone in the city, and Ferrah’s suggestion it could be a message only for spirit shapers had quite a bit of sense.
What if he spirit shaped?
Tolan began to pull on spirit, opening himself up to it. When he did so, it pulled on some distant part of him, requiring he open himself and give himself over, and as he did, he found he was able to gradually draw more and more power.
Spirit was finicky, different than his connection to the other elements, though possibly because he didn’t know if there was an element bond. If there was, then the reason it was different was probably because there were no elementals forced within the bond. As far as anyone knew, there had never been a spirit elemental.
As he drew on the sense of the shaping, he didn’t detect anything. It was there, regular and more powerful than he would’ve expected, but there wasn’t anything else within it that he could detect.
“We need to go find the Grand Master,” Tolan said.
“Tolan, I don’t like you getting involved in this.”
“I’m already involved,” he said.
“That’s not the point. I don’t like you getting more involved in it.”
“Then just come with me. We can tell the Grand Master, and then we can go back to the student quarters.”
The Wind Rages (Elemental Academy Book 4) Page 14