First, he turned to Ferrah.
“What happened?” she asked, whispering.
“It’s over.”
“What is?”
“This. All of it.” He crouched down next to his mother, using a shaping of water and sweeping it through her. All this time, he had been angry at her. If he were honest with himself, he was still angry with her, but she had also saved him. Had she not done what she had, had she not given him that last bit of energy, he wouldn’t have survived.
Tolan felt nothing. She was gone. Truly gone.
Irina was gone too.
Too many of his family now dead.
He let out a heavy sigh. “I don’t even know how to feel.”
“That’s understandable,” Ferrah said, crouching down next to him.
“She gave me a gift before she died.”
When he told her about what his mother had done, the way she had pushed out spirit shaping, showing him what he needed, Ferrah frowned.
“That shouldn’t be how knowledge is passed.”
“Perhaps not the other elements, but spirit is different.”
“Maybe in her own way, however twisted it might’ve been, she did care about you.”
“Maybe.”
“What now?”
Tolan got to his feet. There was a sense of energy down below. It came from the elementals. They were scrambling to attack the tower. The shapers within were trying to fight, but there was only so much they would be able to resist. It was possible they wouldn’t even be strong enough.
“I think it’s time for us to go.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“I’m going to have to return. I have to figure out if there’s anything I can do to help these elementals return to their connection to spirit.”
“Tolan—”
“Not because I have to. But because I want to. If nothing else, I think there needs to be some good that comes out of this.”
“Is that going to be safe for you to do?”
Tolan looked around. “I can use a warrior shaping. You can bring me beyond the waste. I don’t think it’s unsafe.”
“Then take me back.”
“Are you sure?”
“I think it’s long past time that you and I return.”
Tolan looked down again. When he did, there was a shimmering sense, and a stirring of energy, something familiar down below.
Rory was there.
It happened briefly, long enough that Tolan wasn’t even sure if that was what he saw. Then it faded.
He gathered the shaping together, pulling on the warrior shaping. Before transporting them back to Terndahl, he reached for his mother and Irina, before realizing there wasn’t enough of her remaining to bring back with him.
Pausing a moment, sadness washed through him. Much like his mother, he’d never really had a chance to know her. Not the way he wanted, and now he wouldn’t have that chance.
“Tolan?” Ferrah whispered.
“I just realize how little I know of my family.”
“Does it change anything?”
He sighed, thinking about it, not certain whether knowing them would have changed anything or not. “I would have liked to know Irina, I think. I would have liked to learn more about how she’s served the Academy.”
“Why?”
Turning to her, releasing his connection to fire—and one what had happened to Irina—he sighed again. “Because I think I’m going to have to serve more than I have before.”
Ferrah smiled at him. “I’m glad you finally see that.”
When the warrior shaping he summoned finally struck, he carried himself, Ferrah, and the remains of his mother. The lightning bolt surged, bringing them up and away, guiding them back to Terndahl.
22
The energy of the waste was different this morning. Tolan stood before it, letting the pressure coming off the waste wash over him, a sense of emptiness, but also a sense of power. That emptiness and power had protected Terndahl.
Everything about the waste from this side was familiar to him. It was almost as if Tolan had never left. Now he was back, there was something almost pleasing about it.
Ferrah watched him and he looked over at her, trying to gauge what she might be thinking. “It feels different,” she said.
“Does it feel different because you are able to shape when you step across?”
They were at the edge, not deep into the waste, and not at the heart of it. Tolan needed to return, if only to better understand the nature of the bondars and the Guardians there. With the way his mother had used those Guardians, and the way she had attempted to free them, he still didn’t fully understand what Roland had been after. Those were answers he needed.
There were many answers he needed.
“I have to admit that returning here does feel better,” she said.
“I still think you would be able to shape there.”
“Maybe,” Ferrah said.
“You don’t believe it?”
“It’s strange. Over there, I feel almost as if you must’ve felt when you came to the Academy.” She looked up at him, smiling. “I can feel the elements. It’s not like the waste, not like when we’re here.” She stepped across the border, and something within her faded. Tolan could almost see it as it did. Ferrah clenched her jaw, taking a few breaths before stepping back across the border once more. “It’s not an emptiness. Within the waste, it’s torment. At least, it used to be.” She pulled one of the orb bondars from her pocket, holding it in her hand. It glowed softly. “Even with this, even though I’m able to shape with it, there is some part of me that feels uncertain. I think it’s because I know I shouldn’t be able to shape.”
“He wanted me to create a connection to the elementals.”
“Which means he thinks a connection like that is possible. Do you?”
Tolan frowned. “I don’t know. I have a hard time thinking there’s no connection whatsoever to the bonds there. When I was there, I could still reach fire and earth, though the connection to those bonds was weakened. I had to bridge it.”
“How did you bridge it? Did you reach for the Convergence?”
Tolan shook his head. He wasn’t even sure if something like that would be possible. The idea he might be able to borrow from the Convergence had some appeal, though. If he were able to, they might be able to learn something more.
“It wasn’t the Convergence. It was the elementals.”
“The elemental shouldn’t allow you to reach for the bond,” she said. “They’re trapped within the bond.”
“Some of them are.” Tolan stepped back across the waste. They were near Ephra, near enough he could practically feel the energy of his old hometown. He focused on it, using a shaping of spirit and earth, letting that sweep away from him. His shapings for spirit had changed in the short period of time since his mother had passed. Now he had a greater control. There was an understanding of the way he could use spirit, and an understanding of various techniques he never would’ve considered on his own.
A gift. One that came from his mother.
For the first time in all of the memories he had of her, it was a gift he knew she had truly given him.
“Not all of the elementals are trapped,” he said. “Hyza lets me connect to him, and because of it, I’m able to use that to reach for the element bond.”
“You can’t reach for the element bond otherwise?”
Tolan breathed it in, focusing on the sense of the elements and the sense of the element bonds. They flowed within him. Here within Terndahl, even at the border of the waste, the sense of both of them filled him. It was easy enough to reach. Tolan didn’t have to strain to grab those energies.
Probing for the elementals was far easier. They were here, filling his mind. Hundreds of them. When he delved deeper into the element bonds, there was a sense of even more than just the hundreds of free elementals he was aware of. There were thousands of elementals within the element bonds. Far
more than he had ever known.
Was that because of his new connection to spirit as well?
It was difficult for Tolan to know whether or not that was tied to it. All he knew was that something had changed.
“That’s not it. I think I can reach element bonds even without the elementals, though when it comes to me and the way I shape, I wonder if anything is really separated from the elementals.”
“Do you think you could have done it?”
“Form an element bond?” When Ferrah nodded, Tolan looked out across the waste. He had no sense of anything beyond it. The distance was enormous. The people of Terndahl had always wondered what was beyond the waste. For years, decades, and centuries, shapers had attempted to venture beyond the waste. The separation from their shaping ability made it difficult. The waste itself made it difficult.
Having traveled across it, Tolan understood just how expansive the waste was. It was enormous. He could not imagine what it must’ve been like for shapers who had attempted to venture out over it without having any ability to shape. He understood how so many had been lost, shapers who had attempted to cross it, taking only food and water and no ability to shape. Even when Ferrah and he had headed across the waste, trying to find answers, he had known the pain and suffering from that attempt.
There was an emptiness beyond.
If only he were able to probe and shape what existed beyond the waste, but he could not.
“The Guardians were placed by ancient shapers to separate us from that land,” he said softly. He pushed outward with spirit, and from where he stood, he could feel the Convergence, the bondar that formed around it, and he could feel the nature of it.
It was a strange sensation to be aware of.
That energy flowed outward from the Convergence, washing not only toward the heart of the waste but also pressing inward, toward Terndahl.
That was a new sensation. He hadn’t been aware of that before, but now he was, he recognized the sense of it.
Following that sense of power, he felt the way it flowed. There was considerable energy within it, and it washed toward Ephra, toward Par in the distance, and even to Amitan.
All places of Convergence.
He could trail after those Convergences and, understanding spirit as he now did, and understanding each of the elements—something Tolan suspected was key to being able to detect the Convergences, something his mother wouldn’t have been able to do—he thought he might be able to find the remaining Convergences.
“Maybe they understood what was over there.”
“Maybe,” Tolan said.
“Why do I get the sense you’re going to try to understand?”
He smiled at her. “You know me too well.”
“The last time you went digging for something like that, you—”
“Uncovered the elementals weren’t what the people of Terndahl believed.”
“I suppose you did. You still haven’t answered the question.”
“About whether or not I could create an element bond?”
She nodded.
Tolan sighed, focusing on the energy all around him. The connection to the elements, and the element bonds, was enormous. By drawing upon that power, by holding in that sense of energy, he could feel the way that power flowed within him.
“I don’t know. It’s possible I could, but… I don’t know. It might involve having access to a Convergence, and at least along the edge of that land, I didn’t detect any sense of Convergence.”
“Do you think they would be isolated here?”
“No.”
“Neither do I.”
“Which means that if there is another sense of Convergence, then it was inaccessible, at least to Roland and my mother.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“Roland was afraid of something. He wanted power.” Tolan wasn’t convinced of many things during his time encountering Roland, but he was certain that the other man had feared something there. He’d detected that much. It was what drove him. He had been motivated by searching for power.
“There’s something else within that land. It’s more than just those strange elementals. I don’t know what it is, but maybe that’s not for us to understand.”
Ferrah started to laugh.
“What is it?”
“I just think it’s funny you say that there’s something that’s not for us to understand.”
“I don’t know it is for us to understand.”
“Probably not. How long have we lived in isolation here, having no idea that there was anything beyond the waste? Now you know there’s something beyond there. Now you know there are shapers, and elementals that you are still determined to try to help, and you want me to believe you aren’t going to go and look to see what’s there.”
“Not at first.”
She took his hand, squeezing it. “You’ve been delaying.”
“Not entirely.”
“You’ve been delaying.”
Tolan took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “I still feel conflicted.”
“I suspect you always will.”
“She saved us. Maybe not directly, but had she not intervened and given me the gift of knowledge, I wouldn’t have known what I needed to escape from Roland. She saved us.”
“I know.”
“I wish I knew why.”
“I do.” Ferrah pulled on a shaping of wind, and it carried her up into the sky. From there, she headed toward the forest at the edge of Ephra. Tolan followed, choosing fire and wind for his shaping, though he added a bit of spirit. In doing so, it moved him more quickly, speeding him along the ground. He streaked as he went, joining Ferrah, and then slowed by removing his touch of spirit from the shaping.
From up here, his vantage was such he could see the city of Ephra in the distance. The early morning sunlight reflected on some of the buildings, and there was an occasional sense of shaping, though not nearly as much as there would be later in the day. There wasn’t nearly as much as there would be even in a place like Amitan. Behind him, he was distantly aware of the waste. He would always be aware of it, he suspected. The sense of the waste pressed upon him, a sense of energy, of the power that existed there, a sense of everything he had struggled with for all the time he had spent within the Academy.
Ferrah began to descend, her shaping carrying her to the edge of the forest. Tolan hesitated. From here, there was a swathe of the forest slowly starting to recover, but it had been burned away. It was almost enough for him to smile at the memory of hyza tearing through here, the first elemental he had ever encountered. Having seen hyza at that time, Tolan had been terrified, thinking the elemental wild and uncontrollable.
It certainly was uncontrollable, but wild was something else.
He lowered down to the ground. A block of stone that had been raised on an earth shaping rested in the middle of the clearing. His mother’s body rested on top of it. Other shapers were there, waiting on Tolan. The Grand Master. Master Minden. His father.
There were no others. Tolan didn’t expect that there would be.
“We’ve not been able to find others of the Circle,” the Grand Master said as Tolan approached.
“Then maybe they are gone,” Tolan said.
“We will look. I was hopeful that because your mother seemed to have a change of heart with you, perhaps she wouldn’t have been quite as heartless with her own mother.”
Tolan didn’t know. His mother’s change of heart had come because she had been dying. Up until that point, she had been under the influence of Roland, though perhaps not entirely. Tolan didn’t know just how much he had controlled her, only that the sense of it had been that she had welcomed that level of control.
As a powerful spirit shaper, she should have been able to withstand some of what he was doing. She had given him the knowledge about how to do so, after all. She had access to bondars, and she had access to shaping, and with those, she should have been able to protect her mind.<
br />
That was the other challenging piece for him to come to terms with. It was the idea that his mother had actually wanted to be controlled by Roland.
Now she was gone, and he would never have an opportunity to ask her.
“I can help,” Tolan said. “I can go to the Convergence, I can use spirit, and I can—”
Master Minden pushed out with a surge of spirit, washing over Tolan. “You could do all those things, but the question is whether you should,” she whispered. “There are others who can search.”
There was a sense from her that she didn’t expect to find anything.
Tolan sighed. He wanted to know what had happened with his mother, but he wanted to know what had happened to the rest of the Circle.
He had lost so much.
“Are you ready?” the Grand Master asked.
Tolan shook his head. “Not yet. There’s one more we need to arrive.”
His father looked over at him. “Another? I didn’t realize you’d requested another shaper to join us.” There was a mixture of emotions on his father’s face. Disgust, for most, but as his father looked upon Tolan’s mother, he could see the affections still shining within his eyes. He struggled with what she had done, but there was still the same care for her.
She had shaped him, the same way she had shaped Tolan, and the same way Roland had been shaping her. All of it had been a level of influence upon them.
Strangely, despite that shaping, there was a part of Tolan that recognized that what she had done and the way she had shaped them had only pressed upon something they would have done on their own.
It meant Tolan would have stayed connected to his mother regardless. Even with everything she had done, he had wanted to maintain that connection.
It took a moment, but there was a hint of movement high overhead. Tolan barely noticed it. It was like a cloud drifting toward them, a shadow that approached, and had he not known what to look for, he wasn’t sure he would’ve seen it.
It was possible the draasin wanted him to see it.
His energy came toward Tolan. A sense of heat and fire and power, all of it stretching across the distance as it came toward him.
The Elements Bond (Elemental Academy Book 7) Page 26