He squeezed his hand around the furios. While he felt as if he belonged at the Academy, it was something of a shame his friend wasn’t able to join him there. Worse, Tanner probably wouldn’t even remember Tolan had returned.
He glanced up at Master Irina as they walked, needing to know. “Will he remember I visited?”
“We couldn’t take that risk,” she said.
“When am I allowed to return?”
“When your time at the Academy is done.”
5
They reached the city late in the day. Tolan and Marcella stepped back and watched the group of new first-year students jump off the Shapers Path, into the courtyard outside the Academy. There they would meet with the Grand Master, beginning their journey.
Master Marcella looked over at him. “We should study together later. I would like to see how much you’ve learned over the last few weeks.”
Tolan nodded. She jumped from the Shapers Path and departed, heading off into the city and disappearing quickly. Tolan waited a moment before descending from the Path, himself. The city was awash with energy, as it often was, and he watched as several carts rolled past him, He peeked through the bars on the windows, wondering if he could see inside.
When would Jonas and Ferrah return?
He and Marcella had only been gone for two days, so he suspected they were among the earliest to return. Ferrah had the farthest to go, traveling all the way to Par, so her journey might be days or weeks just to reach Par, and that was not accounting for the Selection.
Rather than wandering the city, Tolan headed toward the library.
Since coming to the Academy, the library had become something of a second home to him. He felt comfortable there, and as he had spent quite a bit of time studying the elementals, he had found there were others who shared his interest. Master Minden always was willing to work with him, and because of that, Tolan had come as often as his schedule allowed. It had been at least two weeks since he had spent much time there because most of that time had been spent celebrating the promotion to the second level.
The library was quiet today.
Tolan made his way inside, looking around at the stacks of books stretching high overhead. He marveled at them the same way he often did. A particular shelf drew his attention today; there were some books on elementals there that he had yet to study.
He wandered along, his gaze drifting from book to book, taking in a variety of volumes he had not seen before. Most were old, many pre-dating anything he had read by a considerable amount. These weren’t even the restricted sections of the library.
Master Jensen wandered between the tables, picking up books before returning them to the dais at the front of the library. The other librarian was Master Kelly, a youngish-looking man with sagging cheeks and ruddy skin. Tolan didn’t know him as well as he knew some of the librarians but didn’t feel intimidated by him the same way he did with Master Minden.
Tolan still had much research to do on the elementals, but now he had the earth bondar, he supposed he should try to understand more about them.
His father had obviously known some secret to making bondars. It was a secret Tolan had tried on his own to understand—and failed. There had to be something to the making of them.
“Shaper Ethar. Is there anything I can find for you today?”
Tolan turned to Master Jensen and forced a smile. He looked around the library, searching for anyone he might recognize, but most of the people here were all upper-level students. Soon the library would be occupied by the new first-year students, all looking to see what they might be able to uncover in their studies, the same way he and his friends had come searching for answers.
“I was wondering if there was anything about the Selection I might be able to read about.” It wasn’t what he was thinking about, but there certainly would be some value in reading about the Selection, as he had now seen it from the other side.
“The Selection? Normally, that information is kept until you have been raised to master shaper level, but…” Tolan waited, wondering if he would tell him no, but instead, Master Jensen only shook his head. He rubbed a knuckle against his forehead and smoothed back his thinning hair. “I suppose as the students have been brought out into the Selection, the Grand Master has decided you should be included now, so perhaps the details on the Selection process should not be quite so mysterious.” He hurried away, heading toward the stairs leading up to one of the upper levels, and Tolan stood frozen.
Had he ever been given one of the books from the restricted section? He didn’t think so, but that was certainly where Master Jensen was heading.
He didn’t have to wait long. When Master Jensen returned, he carried three books, each slender volumes and all bound in some crackling black binding.
“These must not be taken from the library,” he said.
“I wouldn’t.”
Master Jensen arched an eyebrow at him. “I understand you and Master Minden have an arrangement when it comes to certain works, but when we are dealing with the restricted volumes, I must remain adamant these remain here. You may read through them, and if you are finished, you can have them reserved for you up at the desk, but if you take them from the library, I will know.”
Tolan nodded, and the intensity in Master Jensen’s voice left him quite certain he did not want to upset the man.
Tolan took the books, surprised by how much they weighed considering how slender they were, and took a seat at one of the unoccupied tables. He stacked them in front of himself before pulling the top volume off and flipping open the binding. For a moment, he worried it would be written in a language he wasn’t able to read. Many of the works within the library were written in some of the ancient languages. He didn’t have enough experience with many of those ancient languages to be able to easily interpret them. Ferrah had an easier time, as she spoke—or at least read—the ancient Par language, something Tolan found incredibly complicated. There were a half dozen other languages written in many of the unrestricted books, and that said nothing about those that were restricted.
Surprisingly, this was written in the modern tongue. More than that, the ink was not nearly as faded as he would have expected. Some of that might’ve come from the way the book had been shaped, preserving the writing through the shaping of the ink onto the pages, but even when done, there were some of the older books that obviously had been shaped, trying to preserve the knowledge within, but that had not been successful.
It was an explanation on shaping. At first, Tolan thought that odd, but the more he continued to read through it, the more he understood the reason why the explanation on shaping was so important.
It described shaping itself.
Strangely, it wasn’t so much of a description on how to contact the element bonds. There were quite a few volumes within the library that would go into what was required to reach the bonds. This instead talked about connecting to the elements in general terms, speaking to both the bonds and shaping and elementals as distinct things, but as he scanned the pages, he found a remark on the runes as well.
It was the first book he’d ever had the opportunity to read through that had directly referenced the runes. None of the others he’d been given access to had said anything about them, or if they had, any reference to it had been scrubbed from them over time.
For the most part, Tolan understood. Learning about the runes posed some dangers. He didn’t understand all of what was involved in those dangers, but he did recognize the power from the runes, and the way they somehow sealed to the element bonds—and the elementals.
He glanced up at Master Jensen. He had asked about the Selection, but rather than giving him something that described the reasoning behind the Selection, he had given him something that described the connection to shaping in general.
Tolan continued to flip through the pages, skimming them. The entire volume spoke of shaping, and it did so almost on a philosophical basis. There was one part where he fo
und himself dragged deeper into the writing, trying to understand what the author of this book was saying about the interrelatedness of power, when the soft sound of footsteps near him caught his attention.
Tolan glanced over his shoulder and saw Master Minden approaching. Her gaze took in the stack of books on the table, and he had no doubt she immediately knew what he was studying. There had to be thousands upon thousands of volumes in the library, and he suspected she knew each and every one of them.
She turned her milky gaze on him, somehow seeing through that film. “Shaper Ethar. You must have returned from your Selection.”
“I did. I don’t know I understand the process any more than I did when I was on the other side of it, but I thought…”
She approached the table, resting her gnarled hands on its surface. He’d seen her writing, documenting as most of the librarians did, either studying or making observations or analysis of things she had studied, and wondered how she managed to do so with her hands as destroyed by time as they were.
“You thought to understand the Selection process.”
Tolan shrugged.
“There aren’t many who have gone through the Selection process who have looked for an understanding of what they experienced.”
“I’m sure most of the master shapers who go out as Selectors come back to understand what their role in the entire process was.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“What of the Inquisitors?”
“Most of the Inquisitors follow what they’ve been taught.”
That surprised Tolan. He could see how they could learn the particular shaping required for the Selection, as he suspected the first two shapings were consistent, though the reactions to them might vary. It was the final shaping he thought to be the most significant. He had no idea what was involved in it, other than some shaping of spirit.
And if it was some way of sussing out whether people had a connection to spirit, maybe it was nothing more than searching for a reverberation with spirit.
“You should continue to question, Shaper Ethar. As you question, you will find the answers are often different than the ones you thought you were looking for.”
He watched as she made her way toward the dais, where she spoke softly to Master Kelly.
Tolan turned his attention back to the stack of books and couldn’t help but feel like he was something of a fraud even in this. He hadn’t really wanted to understand anything. It had only been a desire to avoid other questions he had asked about the Selection, but now he had the books, he found himself reading through them and still not understanding anything more than what he had experienced. There might be knowledge of the process that he could glean, but even that was not entirely what he had expected.
Putting away the first book, Tolan grabbed the next one. This one was different than the last. It spoke of the type of person necessary for shaping ability. Even the first paragraph called that out, leaving Tolan staring at the page and the words written upon it.
We search for those who have the strength to connect to the elements. It is through that strength we can know the power the Great Mother has granted us. We search for those who have the courage to understand the elements. It is through that courage we will gain new insights. Finally, we search for those who are fearless. Only through fearlessness can we have the capacity to grow with the knowledge we obtain.
To Tolan, that sounded like three aspects to the Selection, though how did they fit with what he had gone through and with what he had now seen?
He stared at a page for a long moment, trying to decide what he thought the words meant. Maybe it was nothing more than a philosophizing over what was involved in becoming a shaper, but he couldn’t shake the idea this reminded him of what went on during a Selection.
Tolan continued to flip through the pages, going one by one now. There was more of the same throughout this book, and as he looked, he didn’t come up with anything more that would help him.
He pushed the book away, grabbing the third one. The first book Master Jensen had brought him had involved information about shaping in general. The second involved a theoretical approach. Would this one describe the actual shaping involved?
Tolan pulled it toward him and flipped open the page. A rune marked the first page.
His breath caught. He recognized the rune. It was one for fire, and he had seen it often enough he had it memorized. It was one of the many runes on the furios. He could reproduce this rune and, in particular, do it in his mind.
Flipping the page, he found a flowing script. This was different than the other two in that it was almost like a journal, not the same as the others, and within the pages of the journal were attempts at shaping. Whoever had documented here described the way they had demonstrated various shaping techniques.
As he continued to flip through the pages, he came across another rune. This one was for earth. His hand went into his pocket, running his thumb across the symbols he could feel there, the symbols suggesting his father had known how to make bondars, and found they were the same as he’d found on this page.
There was more information within these pages, though all of it referred back to an understanding of earth and trying to get a handle on how one would shape it. Whoever had written this had an incredibly clear train of thought when it came to the element bonds. Tolan marveled at the understanding the person must have had. Was this what he would gain over time? The master shapers he had been working with all seemed to have a high level of knowledge, but nothing quite like this.
As he continued to flip, he reached a symbol he knew to be water. It was similar to those he had seen on the water bondars. Much like the other two sections, he found the description on reaching the element bond with water was the same…
None of this described shaping through the element bonds.
Tolan sat up, staring down at the book. Surprisingly, all of this described shaping, but it described shaping in a different way than how the master shapers he worked with described it. The ones he worked with described shaping as pulling something from deep within you, connecting to the element bond, and drawing upon that power. Whoever documented here described pulling upon the power within the shaper.
Tolan frowned, feeling as if he were close to reaching some sort of understanding. He had to be. How long had he searched for information about how he was different? If the shapers of old didn’t connect to the element bonds, then how did they shape? Could they be more like him?
The idea they had, that there was a different sort of power than what he had been taught, left him excited.
When he reached wind, he flipped through the pages, searching for any sort of information that matched what he was finding on the others, but there was nothing different.
And then the last. Tolan had half expected the book to end, but it didn’t.
Spirit.
The symbol wasn’t one he had ever seen before, but it strangely seemed a combination of aspects from each of the other runes, markings he could piece together, and he could see how the marking for spirit came from it.
That was odd. Odder still was the fact the book continued to go on, sharing insights about the shaping of spirit, describing what was involved when one would reach spirit, and Tolan sat back, wondering if there might be some way to use it.
These shapers didn’t require latching onto some element bond. The connection to spirit came from within them, not some ability to reach the nebulous bond.
Could he have that ability?
If he did, it would explain why he wasn’t able to be spirit-shaped—at least not easily.
Tolan continued to flip through the pages, and he kept looking for something that would give him insight about what sort of shaping was involved in the Selection, but there was nothing. The only thing that came close was the second book, and in that one, it was only the first paragraph or so.
He flipped the book closed. Why were these restricted?
He understood
why the last book might be restricted, especially if it described a way of shaping that did not involve the element bonds. The others seemed much less dangerous to have shared, and he couldn’t understand why they would not be allowed out.
He rubbed his eyes, realizing he was far more tired than he had known. The journey back to the city had taken quite a bit out of him, and now he would begin his sessions for the second level, it was time to get some rest and prepare. Besides, he still had to settle back into the new quarters.
Tolan didn’t want to give these books up quite yet, but if he attempted to take them from here, Master Jensen would find him. He would be angry. And it was possible Tolan would not be allowed to borrow anything like this ever again. Having the master librarians allowing him access to works like this was a privilege, and it was one he wasn’t about to take lightly.
Tolan got to his feet and headed toward the front of the library, where he glanced up at Master Minden. For some reason, he wished it was Master Jensen, especially since he was the one who had allowed Tolan to borrow these works in the first place.
“Are you done for the day?” she asked.
“For now,” Tolan said. “Master Jensen suggested I could keep these volumes here and continue to study.”
She glanced down at them, nodding slowly. “They are an interesting choice for you to use. Do you think they’ve given you any insight?”
“I’m not really sure. I haven’t had an opportunity to dig into them. Mostly, I was trying to see what Master Jensen thought I might gain from them.”
“There is much we can learn from those who helped us understand shaping as we know it.”
Tolan glanced down at the book she’d set on the desk. “How did these help the shapers understand shaping as we know it?”
“This one,” she said, pointing to the book he felt was nothing more than a basic description of shaping, “came from one of the founders of the Academy. The first Grand Master, Joseph Olian. Some have regarded him as dry, but he has a way of explaining things few today can even match. The knowledge within it is still considered basic, but considering it came from the first Grand Master, there is incredible value to it.”
The Water Ruptures Page 6