The Spirit Binds

by D. K. Holmberg

  That wasn’t what he’d done last time, though.

  There was something else he’d added, and it had been the key to eliminating the shaping that had touched Ferrah’s mind.

  Could he do the same thing now?

  Tolan sent a surge of each of the elements through his shaping, adding to the spirit, twisting it so he could blast whatever he could at that shaping. Earth and wind, fire and water.

  Mixed with spirit, there came a flash of white light. A sense of agony briefly surged within him, and then it was gone.

  Tolan leaned back, gasping.

  “What did you do?” the Grand Inquisitor asked.

  “I…”

  The fallen Inquisitor blinked open her eyes. “Mother?”

  22

  Exhaustion worked through Tolan, and he struggled to stay on his feet. The longer they went, the more tired he became. He needed to rest, but with what they were dealing with, he wasn’t sure rest was a possibility.

  The first Inquisitor he’d saved sat along the wall, her back pressed up against it, staring blankly out at the room. Other than mentioning her mother, she had said nothing to him.

  She and the Grand Inquisitor had been talking quietly, and Tolan had been focused on doing what he could to help the other two. The one he thought he’d killed still lived, though she was weak, and it took a significant shaping of water, along with removing whatever chaotic elemental had influenced her, in order to bring her back.

  Then again, the shaping of water had not come from him. That had come from the Grand Inquisitor.

  “How are you, Shaper Ethar?” the Grand Inquisitor asked.

  Tolan looked up at her. “Tired.”

  “You have just performed incredibly difficult shapings. Fatigue is to be expected. The nature of the spirit shaping you performed was incredibly complex, and”—She watched him for a moment, her mouth pressing down into a thin line—“I don’t know I have the necessary bondar with which to do so.”

  Ferrah watched him, saying nothing. She’d been silent ever since he’d removed the chaos from the Inquisitors. Really, ever since reaching Par.

  Tolan took a deep breath and held out the stone ring. “It’s a spirit bondar,” he said.

  “I surmised that.”

  “My father made it.”

  “Your father was able to make bondars? I didn’t realize he served the Academy.”

  Tolan shook his head. “He didn’t.”

  “And yet he made bondars?” The Grand Inquisitor watched him. “It would be impressive for your father—or anyone—to have the ability to make bondars without specific training.”

  “I knew him as a craftsman. It wasn’t until later I began to question whether he was making bondars.”

  “And now he serves the Draasin Lord.”

  Tolan took a deep breath before nodding. “The Draasin Lord isn’t someone after power,” he said carefully. He looked at the other Inquisitors, but they all seemed dazed, no different than the first Inquisitor he’d saved. It was unlikely they were listening, and if they were, it was even more unlikely there was anything they would glean from his conversation. “As far as I know, the Draasin Lord simply wants the elementals freed from the element bonds.”

  “Such a thing is dangerous.”

  “I don’t know it’s any more dangerous than what we’ve been doing with the elementals. Holding them in the bond changes them. And…” He fell silent, unsure whether he could—or should—go on. When it came to talking about that sort of thing with one of the Inquisitors, he didn’t know.

  “You can go on, Shaper Ethar.”

  “I think it’s somehow tied to the creation of the waste.”

  The Grand Inquisitor studied him. “It’s possible. After what you described during the attack, I had to question whether or not that was the key. Though I can’t say I understand the nature of the runes used, I can say I understand the border of the waste was shifted. Even now, it’s different than it was.”

  “I didn’t even notice that,” he said.

  “I doubt anyone would. Seeing as how I have gone to the edge of the waste hundreds of times, I have a very unique familiarity with it, something not many others would have. In all that time, I have come to recognize the nature of the rock, the changing of the landscape, everything about it there. And the one thing I do notice through all of that is there’s always been one aspect of the waste that has been immutable. The border has never shifted. I have been going to the edge of the waste for the better part of twenty years.”

  “Twenty years?”

  The Grand Inquisitor smiled at him. “I am old enough to have made that claim. And old enough not to be ashamed of my age.”

  “I wasn’t trying to—”

  The Grand Inquisitor smiled at him. It seemed as if she were more at ease than he’d seen her in quite some time. “I did not think you were, Shaper Ethar. What I’m saying is that I have known the edge of the waste as well as anyone in Terndahl. Because of that, I recognized what should and should not be there. Even now, despite everything that has changed, despite the way you and others claim the border has shifted back into place, I recognize it has not.”

  “Is it still moving toward Ephra?” Could it be that despite everything he’d done, it might not have made any difference? He remembered all too well how it had seemed as if the waste were encroaching upon Ephra. It terrified him to think what would happen if Ephra were to be consumed by the waste, leaving him to wonder whether there were cities that had been swallowed by it. It was something none of the master shapers had spoken about, though he had to wonder if perhaps that was a secret about the waste, some aspect of it that no one wanted to admit to.

  “On the contrary, Shaper Ethar. It has moved inward.”

  Tolan blinked. “We reclaimed some of the waste?”

  She nodded. “Surprisingly, yes.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t have the answer, and it’s something the Circle would very much like to understand.”

  There was a silence for a moment, and Tolan debated saying something about the waste, but that wasn’t the question he wanted answered. “Is she really your daughter?”

  The Grand Inquisitor squeezed her eyes shut. “When Aela took the Inquisitors with her, my daughter Emily was lost.”

  “Is she…” He wasn’t sure how to ask whether there would be any consequences from having her mind influenced by the chaos, by that darkness, and he didn’t know whether it even mattered.

  “As far as I can tell, she should recover, but I don’t know what she might encounter because of what she has gone through. It’s possible she will be altered.” The Grand Inquisitor took a deep breath. “I thought she was lost. When you returned, I thought there would be no way of saving her. The one thing the Circle has not managed to uncover is the key to helping those who’ve been influenced by the chaos.”

  Tolan saw the way the Grand Inquisitor looked at Emily and realized he couldn’t say anything about his mother. Not yet.

  Looking at the Grand Inquisitor, he said, “There’s something I need to do.”

  “Shaper Ethar?”

  “Will you be okay with them?”

  “They’ve been saved. And now I understand the nature of what has influenced them, I think I might be able to prevent others from similar influence.”

  “We’ll return,” Tolan said.

  He stood, and before the Grand Inquisitor had a chance to stop him and tried asking the question, he drew each of the elements together, adding spirit, and lightning came for him and Ferrah, carrying them back to the top of the tower.

  He looked down at the city. He focused on the sense of power down there, the overwhelming sense of shaping energy, and knew there had to be something he could detect. It had to be somewhere out in the city, some way to find where his mother had gone, and some way to find the Grand Inquisitor, but he didn’t know what that was.

  “In your research, have you ever come across anything that would help you und
erstand where the Convergence would be?”

  “No. There’s power here, but…”

  “Where do you remember learning about the power?”

  Ferrah sighed. “That’s what I’ve been trying to study at the library all these years,” she said. “As much as I’ve searched, I haven’t come up with anything. I know it’s there.”

  “Where have you looked?”

  “There are several possibilities around the city, and I looked at all of them, thinking if I could find something, I might be able to find where it would be, but I haven’t come up with anything. Our archives are written in an ancient and lost language. Even they don’t really guide us where to find anything here.”

  Tolan wondered if there was some way to detect that power. He pushed out with a shaping, sending power from each of the elements. As he did, he waited, focusing, searching for anything he could detect, a reverberation, or something that might give him a clue about where the place of Convergence could be located. If there was something here, it had to be masked. If not, it simply wasn’t here.

  They could be wrong about this.

  What if there was no place of Convergence in Par?

  “What can you tell me about the city itself?”

  “Par is old, Tolan.” She reached the edge of the tower, looking out. “You go out into the city, you can see it in some of the buildings. Many of them have runes upon them, the same kind of patterns we find on the bondars. It suggests the people who founded the city ages ago had that knowledge. It seems to hold the city together.”

  That was similar to Tolan’s sense of Par when he’d been wandering through it, and he remembered noticing those shapings, the sense that had seemed to hold the city together. As he had noticed it, he’d felt there was a certain knowledge here, which meant that maybe there was a reason for it.

  Why else would they have knowledge of it without having a place of Convergence?

  As far as he knew, such places were rare, but they weren’t so rare as to be impossible to find.

  “Is there anything else you know about it?”

  “Other than this tower?” She smiled, sweeping her hand around. “We have stories about the tower. Most of them tell us the tower is as old as the rest of the city. Did you know there are patterns on the side of the tower, much like the patterns found in the Academy?”

  Tolan frowned, turning quickly to her. “What do you mean?”

  “The patterns. There are markings, runes, as I suppose they’re called, and they are found on the inside of the tower. When they open up the tower once a year for the festival of shaping, you can see them. They’re old, probably as old as rest of the tower, and for the most part, faded, making them difficult to fully make out. When you see them, you get a sense of the age of this place, and a sense of just how much the people of that time had known.”

  He frowned. Could it be the same?

  Tolan started toward the center of the tower, jabbing the sword down into the stone. He sent a shaping through it, using power from each of the elements.

  He wasn’t sure what to expect, but as he pushed, he detected something.

  There was a reverberation.

  It came to him as a sensation similar to what he’d detected when he was in Amitan, and when he’d shaped through the runes at the Academy.

  There were runes here, much as she said.

  Tolan continued to push, drawing power through him, and felt the ongoing sense, that echoing, and pushed even deeper.

  If this was like the Academy, then it was possible there was a reason for it, and if he could uncover what that reason was, if he could find out whether or not these runes were tied to something deep beneath the ground, another place of Convergence, then he might…

  There.

  He felt it. And it was only because of the bondar sword he’d made that he was able to detect it.

  He continued to push, holding onto the sense of it, and power flowed from him. He pushed farther and farther deep beneath the ground, detecting the place of Convergence. Much like in Amitan, the Convergence was hidden.

  Lifting the sword, he held that place in his mind. He focused, grabbing Ferrah, and drew upon the warrior shaping.

  It carried him down.

  There was a blast, a surge of lightning, but it happened even faster than before. He was drawing through the sword, and the shaping was stronger for it. It was sudden, a burst of power, and he exploded, appearing in a vast underground chamber. It was dark, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust. With a hint of fire, he sent a shaping around, using that to allow him to see what else might be here.

  “Where are we?” Ferrah asked.

  “Beneath the tower.”

  He started forward, but he didn’t need to go far to see the place of Convergence. He could feel it. It was right in front of him, the same silver liquid as in Amitan. It didn’t surprise him they were the same.

  Ferrah looked around, her eyes wide and her breathing quick. “Do you know how long I looked for this? You get to hear enough rumors, and the nature of power within Par is such that you begin to think there has to be something, but…”

  Tolan looked around. Did the Academy know this place was here?

  He doubted it. If they had known, they would have placed more protections around it, and it was possible they would’ve done more than just place protections—they would have somehow found a way to use it.

  Surprisingly—or perhaps not surprisingly—Par was at the edge of Terndahl.

  Much like Ephra.

  That couldn’t be coincidence. The more he thought about it, the more he realized there had to be something tied to it, that the connection between this place and the border of Terndahl had to be tied together.

  Tolan continued to pull on a shaping, drawing more and more power, and sent it flowing through the sword.

  It couldn’t be a coincidence that as far as he knew, Velminth had been untouched. Velminth was more central within Terndahl, which meant it may not have a place of Convergence.

  What about other places that had been attacked? Would they all have places of Convergence?

  What did his mother hope to accomplish?

  Tolan held out his sword, drawing power through it. He made it glow with a shaping of fire, letting that surge out of the tip of the sword. As it did, he continued around the place of Convergence, power flowing from him. The longer he went, the more he began to wonder if perhaps his mother hadn’t realized it was here.

  He turned back, looking at Ferrah, and his heart nearly stopped.

  His mother was there.

  “Why am I not surprised you are the one who led me here?” she asked.

  She held an item in her hand, and although Tolan couldn’t tell what it was, there was power flowing through it. As he looked at it, he could almost feel the dark energy in it.

  “I didn’t lead you anywhere.”

  She smiled, looking over at him. “Ah, but you did. I searched for this place, and unfortunately failed. I needed someone who had a different perspective, and that person is you. When you defeated the Inquisitors, I began to wonder if perhaps you might be more than I realized. Then again, I did seek out your father for his connection to the elementals, so perhaps that shouldn’t be altogether surprising.”

  “What do you mean you sought him out?”

  “I sought a pairing. I wanted to know whether the two of us could produce someone who had specific potential. And,” she said, grinning at him, “look at you. Look at the potential you have.” She took a step toward him, shoving Ferrah in his direction. “While you were given the gifts you were, you would mingle with her? You should use your knowledge, find someone who can help you create even greater offspring, who can help you create even more power. That is the purpose of understanding the nature of our abilities. That is the way the shapers of old did it.”

  Tolan didn’t know what to say. What was there to say at all? He couldn’t believe she was trying to convince him he was somehow born as an e
xperiment.

  It left him troubled. It left him angry.

  “I should thank you for leading me here, but then again, as I knew you would do so, and I planned for this, I don’t know that it’s so much of thanks as it is an expectation of what would take place.”

  Tolan stood there, holding onto the sword, but with it, he didn’t know if he had any sort of advantage against his mother. If she knew how to overpower him, if she had some way of using chaos through the bondar that she held, there might not be any way of stopping her.

  And he suspected she intended to use it on the place of Convergence.

  That was what this was all about.

  “You aren’t able to reach the Convergence at the Academy.”

  She frowned at him. “They think they can keep it from me, but they won’t for long.”

  “You thought to use the Inquisitors to find the answers, but you also thought the Grand Inquisitor knew.”

  He was not going to be the reason she found the one at Amitan.

  “Why do you need the Convergence?” he asked.

  “You can’t begin to understand. Perhaps if you will work with me, I can show you, but for now, I’m afraid you must remain ignorant.”

  “Is it because you’re afraid I can stop you?”

  She took another step toward him, and he realized she’d used a shaping on Ferrah, though Ferrah still seemed to be unbothered by it, almost as if she’d not been subjected to any type of shaping. At least, not the way she had been before.

  How would she somehow be able to ignore that shaping?

  Could it be because of what Tolan had done?

  Could his shaping somehow protect her?

  If so, it meant others who had been subjected to the darkness would also be protected.

  “All this time, you needed someone else to show you how to find the place of Convergence. Everything you thought you knew, you still didn’t know enough.” Tolan watched her, wanting to get her upset. “Why did you even need this?”

  “Look at it,” she said, pointing toward the place of Convergence, using the bondar. “So pure. A mixture of each of the elements. And people who thought they could access it, the people who thought they understood the nature of that power, have never really grasped just what it could do.”