“I was within the earth bond, but as we talked about before, all of the elementals are tied to spirit as well. The bonds are all linked to spirit as well. When I came around, I found her like that,” he said, waving at the door.
“Did you do anything else while you were there?”
Tolan frowned. “I did try to help the Guardian.”
“Why would you have needed to help the Guardian?”
“Each of the Guardians is separated from spirit. They comprise only the elements, and nothing else.” They did now, though the Draasin Lord had served as a Guardian as well, and he was connected to spirit.
“That seems to be the purpose of them.”
“That’s what we think, but it seemed the Guardian was like this other strange elemental.”
“What did you do with it?”
“I brought the Guardian back to spirit.” Or maybe not back to spirit. The Guardian might not have been connected to spirit before.
The Grand Master pressed his lips together into a tight frown as he turned back toward the door leading to the hospital. “That should not have been what affected her.”
“I don’t think so, either. I don’t know what it is. Whatever struck her is potent.”
Master Minden was powerful, and she should have been able to handle any sort of strange attack.
If she didn’t come around…
He wouldn’t think like that. He would find a way to help her.
Taking a deep breath, he looked at the Grand Master. “I should return to the spirit tower”—he wanted the Grand Master to believe that he felt the desire to teach—“but I need to go to the waste.”
“To see what happened with the Guardian?”
Tolan nodded.
“I will come with you.”
He contemplated whether or not he needed to go to Ferrah, but didn’t intend to be gone for long at all. They reached the top of the tower, and from there Tolan reached for each of the elements, probing briefly into the element bonds and finding that earth was not as strangely twisted as it had once been. Tolan drew upon the warrior shaping to carry himself out to the waste.
The Grand Master did the same thing, though he held one of the orb bondars in his hand. Unlike Tolan, the Grand Master wasn’t able to shape completely out on the waste. He had grown some ability, though it wasn’t nearly as much as even the librarians were able to do. In time, Tolan believed that the Grand Master would be able to shape even more effectively out on the waste.
As with so many things, Tolan didn’t know if they had the necessary time.
When he emerged from the shaping, he looked around.
At the heart of the waste, the Guardians were situated in four different quadrants, arranged around the central Convergence deep beneath them. Small structures had been erected all around them, giving a sense of permanence to a place where there had been no life before. Nothing other than the Guardians. For a long time, none had even known about the Guardians. It wasn’t until Tolan had come here, discovering their purpose and the role they served, that anyone had ever contemplated that people could spend any time here.
Another burst of lightning struck nearby, and the Grand Master stepped free. He glanced over at Tolan. “Would you mind?”
He held out the orb bondars, and Tolan drew upon a shaping of each of the elements, refilling the orbs.
“Have you noticed anything?” the Grand Master asked.
“Other than the fact that there aren’t nearly as many master librarians here?”
“They have stopped spending time out here. After the attack on the Academy, I suggested that they might want to remain within Terndahl.” He swept his gaze around the waste. “It is difficult to defend this place.”
Tolan nodded. “And I have a feeling Roland wouldn’t know what to do with the Guardians, anyway.”
He didn’t have the sense that Roland had the necessary knowledge to break the connection. The only thing that he suspected Roland would be able to do would be to damage it, but even if he tried, Tolan doubted the other man would be successful.
He pushed out with spirit, probing to see who else might be here, but there wasn’t anyone.
Had they really all gone?
After discovering that the waste had some life to it, and that there were runes and a Convergence, there had been interest in trying to better understand this place and the purpose of the Guardians. Now that the librarians had abandoned it, he wondered if they’d given up trying to learn anything more about them.
Tolan stopped in front of the Guardians, and he looked at the earth Guardian. It had been a while since he had even seen the creature. Now that he was here, he could feel that energy building from the earth Guardian. He focused on what he could feel from the elemental, but wasn’t sure what he detected.
He held his hand out toward the Guardian. He was little more than a pile of stone, immobile the same way the Draasin Lord had once been immobile here.
“I remember the first time that I came out onto the waste,” the Grand Master said. “I was younger than you during your first time. I suppose you remember that as well.”
Tolan nodded. “I think every student at the Academy remembers their first time going into the waste.”
“I think you are probably correct,” the Grand Master said. “It can be terrifying. Especially for those who have known shaping their entire lives. For it to be suddenly ripped free…”
“Was it terrifying for you?”
“I was unique when I first came to the Academy,” the Grand Master said.
“Unique in what?”
Would the Grand Master reveal that he hadn’t been able to shape any of the elements, the same way that I had been unable to shape any of the elements when I had first come to the Academy?
Tolan doubted that would be the case, but if so, then he might have another ally.
“Unique in that I had already reached for each of the elements,” he said. “My local Academy had tried to get me tested several times, but the Terrenhal Academy had not come for us.” He smiled tightly, a pained expression on his face. “It is difficult being one of the few advanced shapers in your own Academy.” He glanced over at Tolan, shrugging. “Though I suppose you have come to understand that feeling.”
“I’m not so sure that I know what it’s like to be an advanced shaper.”
“You have an understanding of the elements and the elementals that many don’t have. That has set you apart. Your friends have stayed with you, despite those differences.”
“Not all of them,” Tolan said.
“Some of that is up to you, Master Ethar. I would expect that you need to maintain your friendships, at least those that are important to you.”
“Did you have friends in the Academy that you lost over time?”
“As I progressed through the Academy, passing tests more rapidly than almost anyone else, I found that I was set apart. There were only a few who understood what it was like.”
“Master Minden?”
“She was already a Master Librarian by the time I was a student,” the Grand Master said.
Tolan frowned. That surprised him. “She taught you?”
The Grand Master smiled. “I suspect she has taught many students over the years. The real question is whether or not they have paid attention and learned from it.”
Tolan wondered what it might be like to have known Master Minden when she was younger. She seemed powerful, almost impossibly so, and in the time that he had been at the Academy, he had learned so much from her. Less so from the Grand Master.
“She was the first one to help me understand the elementals, much like I suspect she was the first one to help you understand the elementals,” the Grand Master said. “In my time, we were taught to fear them. She helped me see that we should not fear something we didn’t understand. Given that we did not understand the elementals, there was no reason to fear them.”
“Why has she always stayed as a librarian? Why hasn’t she ta
ken a more central role within the Academy?”
The Grand Master looked over at Tolan. “What makes you think that she has not?” He smiled slyly. “We should get on with what we were planning.”
Tolan stared at the creature for a moment. “It’s almost as if I should be able to feel something from him, but I don’t…”
“You’ve been here with him before.”
He stared at the creature, thinking about the energy coming from the Guardian. This time, there was a sense of earth and there might even be spirit, though that might only be what he wanted from the Guardian.
“Do you detect anything?” he asked the Grand Master.
The Grand Master used a shaping through the orb bondar, drawing power from it, and frowned. He shook his head slowly. “There is nothing other than earth. Perhaps…” He shook his head again. “No. Nothing more.”
Using earth and spirit, Tolan mixed them together to reach for the Guardian. “What changed within the bond?” he whispered, though it was more to himself than directed at the elemental.
That seemed to Tolan to be the key. The more that he understood about the change to the bond, the more he would be able to understand what he had done, and whether there was anything dangerous to it.
There was no answer. No response from the elemental.
Tolan glanced over at the Grand Master. He held onto his shaping, continuing to pour that energy out. “There was something within the bond. I don’t really know what it was, only that I felt a threat. I did what I could to remove it, but I don’t know if it was enough.”
As he said it, there was a response from the elemental.
It happened gradually, but the sound came to Tolan like a rumble of thunder, as if boulders were rumbling away, heading downhill.
Power burst from the Guardian. Nothing more, though.
After waiting, he reached toward the elemental again, his hand stretched out. “Please,” he said to the elemental.
He needed an answer.
Gradually, the rumbling came again.
This time, the rumbling echoed all around him. Tolan could feel it. He could feel that energy; he could feel that power and the surge of the earth flowing into him.
Once again, there was a sense of something.
Power.
“I feel something changing,” the Grand Master said.
Tolan tried to push earth and spirit, using the combined effort to reach for the knowledge he needed. Power. That had to be the first thing that he had to focus on. It had to be with earth, as well.
Tolan thought about his experience within the earth bond, and he thought about the power that he had felt there, and he thought about his connection to the Guardian and the way that he had felt that power when he had been within the bond. Through that, Tolan could detect something more.
The bond. That was what he needed to use.
Out here, he couldn’t reach the bond on his own. He needed help.
The elemental connection to Thoren might help.
Tolan reached into the bond slowly, feeling the power seep into him, and then out and beyond. By holding onto that, he could push even more through.
Then he felt the power within the Guardian.
It was there. Blazing brightly in his mind.
He waited for a moment, and then pushed the same question through.
Now that he was standing in front of the Guardian, connected through the earth bond as he was, he felt something more.
What he detected was different. More powerful.
He let that energy explode outward, and there came a rumbling sense, but this time within the rumbling, Tolan was aware of the source of it, much as he was aware of what he could do to use that.
“I need your help.”
“What do you need?” The answer came through the bond.
“I need to understand what happened to the bond.”
“The bond remains intact.”
“What about what happened to you?”
The Guardian didn’t turn toward him, but he could feel something about the Guardian shift toward him, veering closer. “You’re concerned about how you placed spirit into me.”
The earth Guardian spoke much more clearly than he ever had before. What would that mean for the Guardian? “Shouldn’t I be?”
“Perhaps. I am uncertain what this change means for me.”
Tolan probed, sending energy outward toward the elemental. “I don’t detect anything different from you other than I can actually speak with you this time.”
“It feels almost as if I should have been like this,” the elemental said.
“Should have?”
“Yes.”
For whatever reason, there was a strange rumbling that persisted from the elemental, almost as if he wasn’t able to communicate anything more to Tolan. He had something more that Tolan could detect from him, something that seemed to radiate out from the elemental, almost as if he wanted to share more but wasn’t able to.
“The other elementals were bound within the spirit bond. Earth and spirit. Fire and spirit. Water and wind, both combined with spirit. Why aren’t the Guardians?”
He probed, pushing that question outward, praying for an answer, but even as he pushed, there didn’t seem to be an answer from the elemental. It was almost as if the earth elemental didn’t know.
Would the other Guardians know?
They weren’t joined with spirit, either.
Tolan had focused on heading into the earth bond, using that to try to figure out what had happened, and in doing so, he had been able to uncover that there was something missing for the Guardian.
What if I were to do something similar with the other elements? Would it change something in the wrong way for each of the other Guardians?
That was a question that he needed to have answered, but with what he detected from the earth Guardian, he didn’t know if this elemental would even have any idea.
“I want to do anything that I can to help.”
“I will do what I can,” the Guardian said.
“I know that you will. It’s just that whatever else has happened seems to be tied to the elements in a way I don’t fully understand.”
A series of images, one after the other, flashed within his mind. Tolan held onto them, using a shaping to hold the images together, thinking that he needed to hold onto them so that he could better understand just what it was that the elemental wanted to show him.
The Guardians.
What was it about the Guardians that I needed to understand?
If it was about the element bonds and the connection to spirit, then Tolan had already known that. Even as he focused on what he might learn from the earth Guardian, there came a sense of something else.
He wasn’t going to have the time he needed to get answers. He remained deeply within the earth bond, drawing through hyza, but as he did, there was a fading. Tolan wasn’t going to be able to hold onto that connection for too much longer.
Suddenly, the Guardian gifted power to him.
Tolan had a surge of the connection to earth. That power slammed into him.
Understanding of the Guardian came to him.
He backed away, releasing that hold.
When he did, he looked over at the Guardian. It wasn’t just about bringing the Guardians to spirit. What he needed was something more. What he needed was to find a way to connect to the Guardians.
At least, that was what it seemed the earth Guardian wanted from him.
Why, though? What would the earth Guardian gain by having me connect to the other Guardians? Or perhaps the better question was what I would gain…
Roland had been in the waste—which meant he’d been after something. Tolan just had to understand what that had been.
12
As Tolan headed toward the park outside of the Academy, a familiar figure made her way toward him along the street. Her dark hair and dark complexion were distinct within the Academy. She flashed a broad smile as s
he came toward him, and a sense of spirit surged from her, streaking toward Tolan.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you out today,” Kerry said.
Tolan shrugged. “I’ve been trying to work on my teaching,” he said. “I don’t want to make the Grand Inquisitor feel like they need to take over for me.”
She glanced over at the Academy. “I wouldn’t be too concerned about him. He’s a lot easier to get along with than the previous Grand Inquisitor.”
Tolan chuckled and moved off to the side of the street so that he wasn’t quite out in the open. Kerry followed him. She was about a hand shorter than he was, tall for a woman, and had a sweet, floral fragrance to her. Rose or jasmine, he couldn’t quite place which. “She was my grandmother.”
Kerry’s eyes widened. “Irina was your grandmother?”
Tolan nodded. “We weren’t close, if you are concerned about that. I first met her when she came to my Selection.”
“That was in Ephra?”
Tolan nodded again.
“I was there on a Selection once. It was quite a few years ago. It’s an interesting city. It’s so close to the waste that I remember spending time at the waste, trying to get comfortable with it. It wasn’t until much later that I…”
Tolan frowned. “That you what?”
“Nothing,” Kerry said, glancing over at the Academy again. He detected a hint of spirit coming from her once again, but it wasn’t targeted at him. “The Academy in Ephra was quite a bit different than the one I trained in.”
“Where was that?”
“A small village outside of Parashan.”
Tolan searched his memories of the times that he had visited there. He had suspected that Kerry would be from there, given her appearance. “The only village I know outside of Parashan was Olanth.”
Kerry frowned at him before laughing softly. “Exactly. I can’t believe that you have heard of it.”
“I’ve traveled quite a bit.”
“Why would you have traveled out there?”
Tolan shrugged. “Roland.”
Her brow furrowed. “He hasn’t shown himself again. It’s been a while now; do you really think that he will appear?”
“I don’t know.” It was the easiest answer. He believed that he would, but others did not have the same faith in Roland’s desire for power. They didn’t know him the way that Tolan did. They hadn’t connected to spirit the same way that Tolan had. “I just have to prepare as if he will,” he said.
A Fading Fire Page 14