“You shaped our way through the mountain?”
“If only I could take credit for it,” his father said, smiling. “Others performed the shaping first and made it easier for the rest of us to do it. We merely borrow from that shaping, and we create a way through. A pathway, if you will.”
“That’s how they have never found you?”
“As far as Terndahl and the Academy is concerned, there is nothing but mountains upon mountains stretching in the north.”
“But…”
“Come with me, Tolan,” his father said.
He guided him forward, and Tolan stared around him. There was no sign of the disciples who had left, which meant that they had shaped themselves off to wherever they were going to go. Then again, they would’ve had to open the doorway themselves in order to reach this place. As he looked back, he wondered if he would be able to shape open the doorway if he wanted to return or whether he was at the mercy of his father being willing to open it once again.
Turning his attention back to the meadow, something strange occurred to him.
Not only was there grass and flowers and the normal life that he would expect within the meadow, but there was movement down there.
Elemental movement.
He noted ara as it brushed against his skin, a fluttering sensation in the wind elemental. There was the soft pressure from an earth elemental, and he struggled to think through the list of elementals that Master Minden had shared with him, trying to come up with a name for what he detected, but for the first time, he failed. The air was warm, and he recognized the sharl elemental, that for heat and humidity. Distantly, he noted a sense of water. There had to be elementals in there, too.
And despite the fact he detected those elementals, there were others. Countless others. He could feel them pushing against his awareness, pushing against his connection to the element bonds, and all he had to do was reach out for them and he thought he might be able to grasp that power.
Tolan resisted the urge. Doing so would be dangerous, and he didn’t want to risk the elementals for the sake of grasping for more power.
“You detect them, don’t you?” his father asked.
“How can I not?”
“Many who come here cannot. It takes time to recognize the elementals who are free.”
Free—and not wild. Not dangerous. And not coerced to follow.
Perhaps his father had been telling him the truth about the Draasin Lord.
If that were the truth, then what other truths could he learn?
What more could he uncover studying here, where a connection to the elementals existed? Looking around, Tolan knew this was exactly what he had wanted. He had wanted to better understand the elementals and had wanted to know whether there was something more to them than what he had already discovered. There had to be something more than what the Academy believed about them. Everything he had seen told him there was.
And this was the temptation he feared.
Regardless of what the Grand Master said, he didn’t know if he’d be able to spy as they wanted. Not if the elementals were freed in this way.
“How is this possible?”
“The more you’re here, the more you will understand.”
“What should I recognize?”
“You should begin to recognize the elementals are not controlled the way you have been taught to fear.”
The made their way through the meadow. As they went, Tolan couldn’t help but detect the sense of ara flowing around him, swirling as if in order to draw his attention. It seemed almost like the elemental was playing with him. He focused on it, recognizing that sense, and reached outward, attempting to connect to it.
There was a brief stirring, little more than that, and then it faded. Whatever had been there was gone. Tolan didn’t think that he’d imagined it, though. The sense of the elemental had been real.
He wanted nothing more than to stand in place, to use his connection to the elementals to see what he could understand, and perhaps recognize whether there was anything that he could do to help them.
In this place, it didn’t seem as if help was even needed. The elementals were free in a way that they weren’t in Terndahl.
“You should keep coming,” his father said.
“I’m sorry. It’s just that—”
“I understand.”
Tolan stopped. “That’s just it. You don’t understand. You left me behind for you to have this experience, but you kept it from me.”
Now he was here, Tolan began to wonder if perhaps this was a mistake. He had questioned it before, but seeing this place, seeing the elementals as they were, he couldn’t help but wonder if there was something more that he didn’t fully understand. Why would his parents keep something like this from him? Why would they hide the potential of a place like this?
“It was kept from you for a reason.”
“You keep saying that, but I still haven’t seen a good one.”
“Perhaps you haven’t,” his father said.
Tolan thought he might explain more, and yet he did not. He meandered through the meadow, reaching a hardpacked path. Tolan didn’t see anything in the distance that would suggest a place where they would find the Draasin Lord—or his mother.
“There aren’t many Shapers Paths here?”
“The Shapers Paths come with a cost,” his father said.
“What cost is that?”
“It comes with the cost of putting power out in the open. We don’t have so much we can risk.”
His father continued onward, saying nothing. Tolan followed, glancing around as he went, looking for any sign of other shapers. He didn’t detect anything. There might be others out here, but if there were, there was no sense of them pushing upon him. Any sense that he had came from the elementals.
There was an odd thing to be aware of.
“Where are all the shapers?” Tolan asked.
“You will have your answers soon,” his father said.
“Where are all the others?”
His father glanced over. “Like I said, you will have your answers soon.”
Maybe there was something he was missing. He had believed he was being brought someplace where he would learn about the Draasin Lord.
The path led up a gentle slope, and in the distance, Tolan began to catch sight of buildings. They were nothing like those found in Amitan. Many of the buildings in Amitan had been shaped into existence, the spires and structures all created with power. These had a similar sense to them, but they were smaller, closer to the ground, and there was no sense from them that power had been wasted.
Tolan stopped, staring. Some of them were of a pale white stone that seemed to gleam in the sunlight. Others were of a grayish, almost black stone, and those drew his eye almost as much. In the distance, near the city, he could feel the sense of shaping, the first time he had detected anything like that since emerging on this side of the mountain.
“What is this place?” Tolan asked.
“This is where you wanted to see.”
“This is the rebellion?”
His father smiled slightly. “It’s not quite a rebellion. It’s more a collective of like-minded people.”
“Like-minded people who seek to overthrow the rule within Amitan.”
“A rule that is damaging.”
Tolan wondered if that was true or not. It was hard to know whether that was the case. In Amitan, the Academy had existed for a thousand or more years, long enough that the shapers had helped establish peace and prosperity. Shaping had made all of Terndahl powerful. Through shaping, they had maintained peace, other than with the Draasin Lord. That peace extended between Terndahl and neighboring nations, allowing the nascent empire to continue to spread. There were other parts of the world, but the empire hadn’t spread their influence to them quite yet. Tolan never really understood why.
“It still sounds like a rebellion to me,” he said.
“I suppose it would.”<
br />
As they approached the city—and it was a city, far too large to be merely a village—he began to slow. “Will I meet the Draasin Lord?”
“Only if you want to.”
Tolan frowned. “Why wouldn’t I want to?”
“There is a price to knowing the Draasin Lord, Tolan.”
“What price is that?”
“A commitment to serve.”
Tolan started to smile when he realized his father wasn’t joking with him.
“You will notice that everyone here has agreed to their service. Everyone follows the Draasin Lord. In doing so, we serve a higher purpose. You might not believe it—not yet—but the rest of us do.”
“That’s why you didn’t bring me here?”
“We didn’t bring you because it was dangerous to do so. With the way the Academy and Terndahl treat us, there is danger to anyone who follows the Draasin Lord. It was better for you to believe we were abducted.”
“I don’t think it was better for me.”
“And yet, because you remained, you were able to learn from the Academy. You were able to continue to train, to gain an understanding of your abilities.”
Tolan studied his father, and he thought he understood. He hadn’t been left behind because they didn’t want him. “You wanted me to be trained by the Academy.”
His father held his gaze, not blinking but not looking away.
“Why?”
“Because there are things we have been unable to learn. Things that one like you would be able to learn.”
“One like me?”
“A shaper of power, Tolan.”
“But I wasn’t a shaper of power.”
“You weren’t, but you were always destined to be.”
16
The building at the center of the city had a gently domed roof. It was different than many of the others, made of the gleaming pale stone with a roof of darker stone, almost as if they had been joined together. It was the only one within the city that looked as if it had been built here rather than shaped. There was something about that which made it even more out of place, and left Tolan recognizing its significance.
“When we go inside, you will have an opportunity to decide.”
“Decide whether I want to be a part of all of this?”
His father studied him for a moment before nodding. “As I said, none of this will be forced upon you.”
“What is inside?”
“Perhaps answers, or nothing.”
“This seems something like a Selection,” Tolan said.
“In some ways, I think that analogy is accurate. What was your Selection like?”
“Surprising.”
“Because you didn’t expect to be Selected?”
“Because I’d never thought I should be Selected. I went out of support for a friend, and for no other reason than that.”
“What we have come to understand about the Selection is that it is not always tied to one’s ability. There is something to it that is tied more to—”
“Who they are,” Tolan said. He nodded. “When I was Selected, I spent quite a bit of time trying to understand why.”
“I suppose you did.”
His father led him inside the door. Light glowed all around, flames that seemed to dance in place, and Tolan couldn’t tell if they were shaped or whether they were elementals. Either way, the nature of the power here was considerable.
It was a wide room, with a ceiling stretching high overhead, curving into the darkness. Tolan searched for signs of anyone else who might be here, but right now, it seemed only to be him and his father.
“Why here?” Tolan asked.
“For someone who has come to this part of the world, this place represents an important first step,” his father said.
“Why?”
“To understand yourself and why you have come.”
They headed to the center of the room. From here, the flame surrounded him, almost in a ring. Tolan couldn’t take his eyes off it, and he wondered if there was something more to it than simply illumination. There was a way to find out, and he could do so by focusing on power around him, on the elementals, and on whether or not he could detect any shaping. While approaching the city, he had been more and more aware of the sense of shaping, but he hadn’t seen anyone shaping as they had reached the city. It was almost as if his father had tried to protect him from it, to shield him from a shaping, preventing him from knowing whether there were others here.
Reaching for the power of the elementals, Tolan detected it in the flames. It wasn’t a fire elemental, but there was part of that within the flame, enough that he didn’t know whether the elemental was confined here, trapped so they could provide power to this shaping, or whether it lent itself to this place.
Earth was here, though that was less surprising. When he had approached, seeing the gleaming stone mixed with the dark roof, he had known that there would be an element of earth mixed within it, though it was here quite powerfully, perhaps as powerfully as the fire, though in a different form.
What about wind? There was no breeze, but there were other forms of wind—and wind elementals—than simply a breeze gusting around. He could feel the presence of wind, though he wasn’t sure what elemental was represented.
Water was there, mingling with the others, and with the presence of all four of the elementals, he couldn’t help but think that the power present here had purpose.
Was there any sense of spirit?
Reaching for spirit came to him in a different way than reaching for the other elements. While he often did so by straining to grasp at the other elements, now he used an understanding of the elementals.
“You will wait here.”
“What’s going to happen?”
His father studied him. “Something very much like your Selection, I presume. I will be back,” his father said, leaving him.
Tolan stood in place, looking around. He was missing something, though he didn’t know what it was. As much as he wanted to trust his father— and regardless of the way his parents had abandoned him, he did want to trust him—there was a nagging part deep within him that left Tolan wondering if he truly could trust the man.
It was strange to focus on elementals in a land where reaching for them didn’t feel forbidden. There was no shame in his ability to reach out to them, to try and speak to them, to call to them.
Not command them.
If he discovered that was what his parents were intending, regardless of what they might say, what would he do? He was determined that he wouldn’t abuse the elementals the way that he had heard the Draasin Lord intended, but at the same time, he didn’t want to force them into the bonds, either.
Standing here, the power of the elementals swirled around him.
If only the elementals were able to share with him more of what they needed. The only time that he’d really had a sense of the elementals, feeling as if he had some semblance of understanding what they might want, was when he had released them in the Keystone and they had followed him. When they had done so, there had been a sense of understanding from them, a connection to emotions. That hadn’t been faked. There was no way that it could have been. What he had detected had been real, but it didn’t make much sense.
The one elemental he was least aware of here—wind—began to stir, swirling around him. Tolan smiled, tipping his head to the way that the wind began to pick up, increasing in its intensity. “You’ve been hiding from me,” he said.
The wind spun again, twisting around him, and Tolan smiled to himself. It seemed almost as if that was the way the wind would answer him, and in doing so, he couldn’t help but feel as if there was something more he should know, but didn’t.
“What is this place? They tell me they don’t control the elementals here, but I don’t know if I can trust that.”
The wind twisted, spinning. It brushed up against Tolan gently, twirling his hair slightly.
“Is that your way of t
elling me I should have some faith?”
Tolan looked around. The flames continued to dance, though did they do so with more intensity?
“Are they hurting the elementals here?”
There came a faint sighing of the wind. As it departed, Tolan could practically hear a word whispered within it, though he knew that was his imagination. It had to be.
“No…”
If that was real, how would the wind communicate with him?
Then again, how would he have an awareness of the emotions of the elementals? There had been little doubt that was what he had experienced.
Breathing out a sigh, he finally began to relax. If the elementals weren’t harmed, perhaps he didn’t need to be worried about them in quite the same way. “Why did they have me here?”
He waited, hoping the wind would whisper to him again and that he could get a better understanding as to what his father had intended by bringing him here, but the wind said nothing.
What of flames? Fire was difficult, if only because it burned and destroyed, but he had a sense he could reach it, perhaps communicate with it. If he did, what more could he learn?
Tolan looked at the fire, studying the way it twisted and burned. It was saa, an elemental of some power, but it wasn’t just saa. There was a shaping mixed in with it, and that shaping allowed the elemental to remain, almost as if it was here for a purpose, as if serving in some way. If only there was some way for him to reach the elemental and communicate, but in all the time that he had been summoning the elementals, he had never figured out any way of sustaining that conversation.
If he were to try earth or water, he suspected he would come up with the same thing. There would be no way to reach those elementals, no way to be able to communicate with them.
“You seem to have some familiarity with them,” a voice out of the darkness.
Tolan couldn’t even tell if it was a male or female voice, only that it came from somewhere nearby. Turning around, he looked to see if he could make out where it came from, but there was nothing.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
Laughter echoed off the walls, a muted sound that drifted to him. Mixed with the laughter was a sense of shaping, though he didn’t understand why anyone would mix shaping into a laugh.
The Wind Rages (Elemental Academy Book 4) Page 18