“How would you propose it?” The Grand Master asked.
“We need to visit the only other place that has free elementals.”
18
The energy of the mountains was all around him, and Tolan marveled at the sense of it. He could feel the source of elemental energy, that of the elements, the powers mingling in a way they didn’t anywhere else all throughout Terndahl. There was an overwhelming sense of it, reminding him of the suddenness of power that had assaulted him when he had returned to Amitan following his time in the waste.
Pushing out with each of the elements, Tolan sent a shaping sweeping around him. It was slow, subtle, but the energy began to build, rolling away from him. When it did, he focused on what he could detect. He wasn’t certain if his suspicion was accurate, though he thought it had to be. All of this made more sense if that were the case.
He turned to Ferrah, taking a deep breath. She scanned the horizon, her eyes widening as she looked at the mountains, likely detecting the elemental energy.
Irina stood stiff. Tolan had to wonder how his grandmother might respond to coming to a place like this, a place filled with the power of the elementals, but he began to be satisfied their coming here had been necessary.
“This is it?” Ferrah’s voice was a whisper as she looked all around.
“I thought you said there would be free elementals here,” Irina said.
“There will be,” Tolan said, guiding them forward.
He had brought them all here on a shaping of power, using the warrior shaping to carry them. Now they were here, and now Irina was looking all around, he worried he was making a mistake. Revealing this place to anyone else within the Academy placed a danger to the people and the elementals that were here. There was a sense of peace and safety here otherwise, and by bringing others here, he ran the risk of sacrificing that safety.
It was necessary. If what he began to suspect was accurate, then it meant there was a greater danger than he had expected.
Tolan started forward. He used a hint of wind, mixing it with water, holding himself above the ground as he drifted along the road. It was a rocky path that would lead toward the village in the distance.
“Why here?” Ferrah asked.
“I thought this was a place of freedom for the elementals, but I start to wonder if perhaps there is something else here.”
“What is it?”
“A test.”
As they started forward, he began to see evidence of the elementals.
Part of it was in the way that ara floated, the wind elemental barely visible, nothing more than a hint of translucent energy. How many others would see that? Tolan did because he had summoned the elemental enough times and had a sense of just what was involved in bringing that elemental here, but part of it was related to his familiarity with the elements and the elementals.
Throughout the land, there were other aspects of elementals. He could see earth elementals, that of grosn and jinnar and cilika. All of them were free, and all of them were mingled within the landscape. Water and fire were there, equally present, equally free, and so different than what he found within Terndahl.
“What is that?”
Tolan glanced over at Irina. She had frozen in place and was pointing in the distance. There was a mound of heaped rock, but it was moving slowly.
“That is jinnar.”
“I have seen jinnar, and that is not one of the jinnar elementals.”
Tolan motioned for her to follow, and the three of them headed toward jinnar.
They took to the air, floating, and from above, the contours of the earth elemental were far easier to determine. Jinnar was a strange elemental, a stack of stones somehow able to move, sliding along the ground. When it released its energy, it would settle down, and it would appear as if it was nothing more than a pile of rock.
“That is jinnar.”
“Why is it moving so slowly?” Ferrah asked.
“How would you expect it to move?”
“I don’t know. When we encountered a jinnar elemental in the Academy, it was wild and violent.”
“It was,” Tolan said.
“And this one?”
Tolan looked at the other two. They shared all of Terndahl’s view of the elementals. It was one Tolan had learned to move past, a view of the elementals he had evolved beyond.
He could only think of one way that would help them see the truth about jinnar.
He lowered himself to the ground.
Ferrah called after him, but Tolan ignored her.
He paused in front of jinnar. From this vantage, the elemental was massive. From above, it was easy to believe the elemental was smaller, but up close, it towered nearly three times his size, looking like some giant of a creature.
Tolan pushed out, holding onto a sense of spirit and earth, using that in a combination as he wrapped it together, letting that sense of energy flow through him.
In doing so, he connected to the elemental.
There was a faint sense of rumbling.
Tolan recognized that sense. He had felt it often enough that he thought he could use it but wondered whether or not he would be able to speak to the elemental.
It was possible he could. Many of the elementals he’d connected to had a way of speaking to him, but there were some that didn’t seem to have that voice. It might only be his inability to reach them, and it might be that until he had a better understanding of his connection to the elementals, and a better understanding of whether there was any way for him to reach for the power that would allow him to delve into their minds, he wouldn’t be able to speak to them.
“I’m Tolan,” he said, standing in front of the elemental, pushing out the thought with earth and spirit. The connection was the key. All he needed was to be able to reach for that connection, to push across that distance, and try to latch onto the elemental. “Do you understand me?”
There came a rumbling. It was soft at first, but it built with a surge of earth that came across the distance toward him.
Within it was something deep. The earth itself shook, but that wasn’t all he recognized. There were words within it.
Tolan had suspected he would be able to connect to jinnar, but he hadn’t been certain.
“You do understand me,” he said.
Jinnar rumbled again and settled lower, looking toward him.
“I’m not here to harm you. I just wanted to prove you aren’t what they believe.”
The elemental straightened, and Tolan looked overhead. He focused on both Ferrah and Irina; both seemed to tense. He recognized it across the distance, through his sense of spirit and he had to wonder if perhaps something had changed for him in his time within the waste. He never would have been able to detect that much with spirit before.
Irina dropped to the ground. “What are you doing with it? I can detect a shaping.”
“Earth and spirit,” Tolan said, keeping his eyes on the elemental. “By using the two of them, I can connect to him, but…”
She started to shape, and the two elements burst out from her, heading toward the elemental.
Tolan intervened, throwing himself in front of her shaping.
When it struck, it threw him back, slamming him into jinnar.
The elemental rumbled, and an angry sense began to come from it.
Tolan took a deep breath, using a shaping of water, and set it washing through the elemental to restore as much as he could, not certain whether or not he had enough energy with which to do so, but needing to try something.
Getting to his feet, he glowered at Irina. “Not like that.”
“What were you thinking? I could’ve killed you,” she said.
“I was thinking you were trying to kill the elemental.”
“I thought you said you used earth and spirit?”
“I used earth and spirit, but I used it as I tried to communicate with him. I used it as I was attempting to speak to him, not in some way to try to bind him or harm him. That’s how y
ou speak to the elemental. You have to focus on the element form, use spirit…”
Tolan had no idea whether she would even try what he suggested, though it didn’t matter so long as she didn’t attempt to attack.
The elemental continued to rumble.
Tolan turned toward him, holding his hands up. “She is still learning.”
The elemental rumbled again, and though he questioned whether or not the elemental would recognize what he was doing, he felt the shifting, the way the energy started to change and the stirring of agitation began to fade.
“There are going to be many other elementals here. The longer you’re in this land, the more you’re going to have to recognize there are these creatures of power. Most of them are like this jinnar. They are free and separated from the bond, but that doesn’t mean they don’t remember what it was like.”
“What are you getting at?” Irina asked.
“I’m getting at the fact the elementals don’t care for the bond.”
“Don’t care for it? What makes you think that? The elementals are meant for the bond. Safer for them—and us.”
“What do you see when you go to the hall of portraits?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“It’s just a question. What do you see?”
“I see blank canvases. A few have elementals on them, so I know what Master Minden is getting at when she tells me the hall of portraits does represent a time before we separated ourselves from the elementals.”
“What do you think is the purpose of the free elementals in those paintings?”
“There is no purpose,” she said.
“But there is,” he said. “There was a time when our people were connected to the elementals, and that’s a time most have forgotten.”
“Not those who study at the Academy,” Irina said.
“I would argue that most who study at the Academy have absolutely forgotten that time. Think about your experience and what you know of the elementals. You believe they need to be within the bond. You believe they are dangerous.” Tolan swept his hand around them. “You may not see them, but there are hundreds of free elementals here. How many of them do you see acting dangerously?” He let the words hang in the air. “How many of them do you think are violent?”
Irina frowned. She pushed out with spirit, though Tolan wondered if she would be able to detect anything using the single element alone.
As the shaping of spirit swept away from her, her eyes narrowed.
She must have detected something.
“How are there so many?”
“This is a place of safety for them. I don’t know that it still is.”
“Why would you say that?”
“What else do you detect within them?” Tolan looked at her, locking eyes with her. “This place is more than just a place of free elementals. I’ve been trying to piece together what I know of my mother, and while I can’t be certain of all of the facts around her, especially as I have no idea what is real and what is not within my memories, there are certain pieces I know are accurate. There are certain things I am sure happened.”
“You can piece through your memory and then determine what was real and what’s not,” Irina said.
“I’ve tried, and even as I do, there are aspects that feel as if they were touched by spirit. Everything in my mind is touched by spirit.”
Irina looked at him, frowning. “That is unfortunate.”
If he was hoping for some sense of warmth from her, he wasn’t going to get it. She might be his grandmother, but in that regard, she was no more family to him than his mother was at this point.
“Instead of trying to use memories, I’ve started to focus on what I know of the facts around my mother. There are certain things that are undeniable. She left Ephra. She came here. Eventually, she left here, disappearing beyond here. She chased power.” He glanced at Irina. “And then she attacked Amitan. Those are facts.”
“How does this fit into it?” Irina asked.
“You think there’s a Convergence here,” Ferrah said.
Tolan nodded. “When I first came here, there was a sense of power. I thought I saw my mother, but it was a shaping. Energy. It’s that sense that I think is here. But it’s that sense that I think would have drawn her. She wanted to know if what she intended would even work.”
“Why do you think this has anything to do with the elementals?”
“Feel them,” he said.
Irina pushed out with spirit again, and she waited.
Tolan didn’t need to say anything. There was nothing to say. The energy she was sweeping out would give her all the answers. Irina was incredibly gifted when it came to spirit, much more so than Tolan was, and Tolan had a growing skill with it.
Her breath caught. “There is an influence here.”
“There is.”
“When did you discover it?”
“Not until we returned. I didn’t even think there would be. I thought the elementals here were protected. That they were safe, but now I don’t know.”
As he looked around, he began to wonder if perhaps there was something more he could understand. It would involve going to his father. After the time within the Academy, within Terndahl, his father had returned here. It was safer for him. It was the only place he knew.
Tolan motioned for them to follow and they did, though Irina moved more slowly. She held onto a shaping, wrapping considerable energy around herself as if she was worried one of the elementals would suddenly attack her. Even though the elementals might be influenced by something, that influence was subtle. As he looked around, none of the elementals seemed to suffer from it, not the way he would have expected.
It was that subtlety he needed to understand.
With a shaping of earth and wind, he carried himself to his father’s home. Ferrah and Irina followed, landing alongside him.
It was a simple stone building, though there was a powerful sense of earth to it, along with runes running on the side, as if the building itself had been created to be a bondar. Knowing his father’s connection to the bondars, Tolan had to wonder if that was the case. If so, he thought it interesting his father would have used such power on a simple building.
Something else about those runes struck him. They reminded him of what he had seen in the vision with hyza—along with what he had seen within the Academy and the nature of the runes that were there, representing whatever power the Circle served.
“This is the place?” Ferrah asked.
Tolan nodded, taking a deep breath before knocking.
When the door opened, his father stood there. He had a thick, graying beard and his eyes were dark. Lines around them suggested fatigue. He glanced from Tolan to Ferrah, finally to Irina, his mouth tightening with each shift of his gaze. After a moment, he merely nodded and stepped to the side, motioning them in. Tolan did so, and when he reached the inside of the home, its warmth washed over him.
“I wasn’t expecting a visitor today.” His father glanced at the other two. “Or three.”
“Is this not a good time?”
Irina frowned as Tolan spoke, and he could imagine just what she might have said were she the one doing the questioning. As the Grand Inquisitor, she was accustomed to asking the questions. Perhaps he should have allowed her to take control.
“Of course not. You’re always welcome. I didn’t realize you were going to reveal the presence of this place to those from the Academy.”
“I wouldn’t unless it was necessary.”
“Why?” His father turned to the flame crackling in the hearth, heading to a pot and pouring several cups before carrying them over.
Tolan took one and held it, though he wasn’t entirely sure what was in it or whether he could trust it. Had it been only a month ago, he would have willingly drunk from the cup, but now, and with what he had detected coming here, he had to wonder.
“We lost Mother,” he said.
“You lost he
r.” His father glanced at Irina. “I thought the Academy would have adequate containment for someone even like her.”
“She had help,” Tolan said hurriedly, speaking before Irina became upset. He could feel the rising irritation within her. Maybe it was only because she wasn’t leading the conversation, but he suspected there was more to it, though he didn’t know what else would trouble her. “Daniels, along with others, came for her. She used my testing as an opportunity to escape.”
Testing?” His father cocked his head to the side, frowning, then glanced from Tolan to Ferrah. “I see. You’re both master shapers now. I suppose congratulations are in order.”
“It was necessary.”
“Were you ready?”
“We passed.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“I was ready. For me to do what I wanted to do—what I thought I needed to do—I had to be more than just the student.”
“Once you become a master shaper, it limits what you are able to learn.”
“Do you believe learning ceases the moment the student becomes the teacher?” Irina asked, stepping forward. “There are many things that still can be learned, even though you move beyond the classroom.”
His father regarded her warily. “I’m aware of lessons life can teach, but there are certain protections available within the Academy that aren’t available elsewhere. By allowing him to test for master shaper, he no longer has those protections.”
“It was my choice,” Tolan said.
His father turned toward him, locking eyes. “Yours?”
“That’s how testing for master shaper happens. The student must decide when they’re ready. I asked to be tested.”
His father took a deep breath. “Then perhaps you truly were ready. Is that what you came to tell me?”
“Not entirely.” He wouldn’t have come if it was not necessary, and he certainly wouldn’t have come to tell his father he had passed testing for master shaper. His father might appreciate that, but there was so much more that was necessary other than just revealing his new status. “I came because of the question I have about the elementals.”
Tolan closed his eyes and could feel the energy of the elementals all around him. Even within this place, he could feel them.
The Chaos Rises (Elemental Academy Book 6) Page 18