After taking a moment to focus on the nature of that shaping, Tolan turned away, heading toward the back of the room and his long wooden desk. He settled down, running his hands along the faded stained surface, feeling the imperfections as he wondered which ancient shapers had once used this desk before him. He smiled at the idea that the shapers who’d once used it had known shaping and the elementals in a way that most in the Academy didn’t.
He probed through his connection to Thoren, focusing on it. The elemental was there, distant and in the back of his mind. The elemental would come forth and speak to him, but Tolan had a sense he didn’t want to.
Instead, he remained in the back of Thoren’s mind. Tolan had a vague sense of him moving. Hyza had speed, and Thoren in particular seemed to move more quickly than some of the elementals that Tolan had encountered. Perhaps that stemmed from Tolan’s connection to the elemental, or perhaps that came from something within Thoren himself. Either way, he could see the landscape blurring past him. When Thoren stopped at the edge of the waste, Tolan joined the elemental as they looked out upon it. There was an emptiness there. He could feel the way Thoren hesitated to cross the waste. He could do so, though it taxed the elemental in ways that made it so that Thoren was reluctant to cross. It was almost as if Thoren tried to remind Tolan that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for Roland to cross the waste.
He grunted to himself, shaking those thoughts away, separating. Tolan shaped himself back down, dropping to the main level of the tower, and he strode out of the hallway. He nodded to some of the students he passed before heading out. Once outside, he turned toward the park. He could feel the energy of the elements there.
He reached the park, stepping between the trees, feeling the sense of fire and wind and water and earth embracing him, the elements all around him. Tolan made his way toward the small pond at the center of the park. With each step deeper into the park, his sense of unease began to retreat. He stood there for a few long moments, soaking in the energy of this place, focusing on that power of the elementals and the elements, as well as the element bonds.
Tolan lost track of how long he stood here. He enjoyed the sense of the elements. It helped him feel as if he were someplace different. He could get a similar experience if he went deep beneath the Academy and entered a pool of liquid that they called the Convergence—a direct connection to the power of the elements and their bonds—but there was something to be said about being out in the open and letting the sense of everything fill him.
A strange irritation rushed through him.
The sense of some elemental was there, and Tolan focused on it, trying to understand whether or not it was anything he needed to be concerned about. It pressed upon him as if to alert him.
The sense came again.
He headed through the park, following what he detected. There was a vague awareness of the elemental, and a vague feeling of what he was picking up on. Tolan reached the edge of the park, and from there he could feel something, though he wasn’t entirely sure what it was. It was still the elemental, but there was something else to it that troubled him.
He hurried forward, racing out into the streets of Amitan.
Tolan followed that strange irritant within him. He was drawn out into the city, between shops and then farther away, toward homes. As he went, he looked all around, searching for a shaper or an elemental or some reason he would detect this.
When he reached the outskirts of the city, he paused. From here, a rolling grassland headed toward the forest. As he looked at it, he detected that strangeness. Turning, facing the city itself, Tolan stared, trying to get a sense of what he detected.
There was something all around him.
It wasn’t just out here as he had thought. It came from all around.
Tolan moved onto the Shapers Path, focusing on what he had detected. From here, he didn’t pick up on anything. It had to be more than just his imagination.
He pushed outward with spirit.
He felt a twinge of response.
Nothing more than that. It was subtle. Soft. Definitely there.
Tolan frowned again, pushing again as he swept spirit out away from him. It echoed. There was nothing more than that; just an echoing. As Tolan focused on that echoing, he listened, struggling to comprehend what it meant.
He continued to push with spirit, deciding to add a hint of each of the other elements. He started with fire, probing with spirit and fire. He shifted it, adding wind and spirit, holding onto fire. He added the other elements one at a time, first water, then earth.
By the time he reached the last, there was another surge of power.
Focusing on that shaping, he detected something else far below the ground.
With a start, he thought he understood what was taking place.
Tolan used a warrior shaping, combining each of the elements before adding spirit and calling the bolt of lightning that would carry him to the top of the tower. When he did, he raced inside, heading down the stairs, pushing past students who were in his way before darting into the library. He raced to the back, heading behind the dais where the master shapers were found, and he paused.
It was from the place of Convergence.
The stairs behind the raised dais where the master librarians lorded over the library were closed to most. Tolan had long ago discovered the way down, and now as the Master of Spirit, he was permitted access. Using a shaping of each of the elements, he opened the door to the stairs and hurried into the darkness.
He looked around the inside of this cavern. Pushing open the last door—again requiring a shaping of each of the elements—he stood before the Convergence.
The Convergence was a pool of silvery liquid that occupied a space deep beneath the Academy. Runes that covered the walls around the Convergence, pressing power into it, were used to mask the power that was here. Somehow during his earliest days at the Academy, Tolan had still found the Convergence and had uncovered the power that existed. At the time, he hadn’t known what it was or what it meant for him, only understanding the power within the Convergence.
Power slammed into it from somewhere deep beneath him.
When it reached the Convergence, there was an explosion.
Tolan staggered back.
Master Minden appeared. She used a shaping to carry her here that Tolan had never truly understood. She scanned the inside of the cavern, her gaze settling on Tolan. “What happened?”
He licked his lips, probing with spirit, finally understanding what he detected.
He looked over at Master Minden. “It’s hashin.”
“What about hashin?”
“I think hashin just entered the element bond.”
11
The rolling landscape surrounded him. Tolan stood well beyond the borders of Amitan, letting the awareness of grasses and trees and wind and the sun along with the nearby burbling stream all flow around him. There was an understanding to it, and a feeling of something he could almost grasp if he were to reach for it, straining to gain a better understanding.
What happened?
As he focused on the earth bond, he could feel hashin there.
It was faint, subtle, but Tolan was fully aware of it out here, surrounded by all of the trees and grass and life.
Ferrah watched him, the sun shining off her pale skin and an unreadable expression on her freckled face. “Are you sure of this?” she asked.
“I’m sure about what I feel,” he said. He wouldn’t have asked her to come with him, but he feared that if he didn’t, they would grow even further apart than they had. There was enough distance between them and he wanted to do what he could to fix it.
“I thought you said the elementals didn’t care for the element bonds.”
Tolan nodded. That had been his impression all along. For as long as he’d known the elementals, he’d had an understanding that most of them didn’t care for being forced into the bonds. They feared it, and for good reason. Being forc
ed into the bond had changed something about them, tearing them from power. It had separated them from the world.
Having seen the elementals in the hall of portraits, Tolan thought he had a better understanding of it. Having known the nature of those elementals and knowing they had once lived free, there was a sense of something else. Why would the elementals—especially one who had avoided entering the bond—suddenly change that?
That was an answer Tolan didn’t have.
Thoren hadn’t been able to provide much of an answer, either. The elemental was aware of what had happened. From what Tolan could tell, all of the elementals were aware of what had happened, not only those that were bound to earth.
“The elementals don’t like the bond,” Tolan said.
“What do you know about hashin?” Ferrah asked.
“Not much. The records about hashin are scarce. Even the elementals I’ve been able to reach from here”—fewer than he would be able to reach were he to leave Amitan—“don’t know much about hashin. Either that, or they won’t speak of what they know.” That would be less common. He closed his eyes, focusing on what he had learned about hashin over the years. He remembered something, though it was vague. “There has never been any depiction of the elemental in the books I researched. Just a passing reference.”
“And it hasn’t been a part of the bond?”
Tolan shook his head. “Hashin wasn’t a part of the bond. According to hyza, hashin stayed free of the bond.”
“How can an entire kind of elemental choose to stay free of the bond?”
“I don’t know if it’s all of hashin, or…” Tolan didn’t quite know the way to frame it. As far as he knew, hashin was a connected elemental, a surge of power that had bonded the elementals together. And from what he had uncovered—the way the elemental was described—he thought he understood, but he still didn’t know why hashin would have been so connected.
“So let’s say that this elemental chose to go into the bond,” Ferrah said. “Let’s say he used the Convergence in order to do so. Let’s say that—”
“All of what you are saying is true,” Tolan said.
“I’m not trying to upset you,” Ferrah said. “I’m trying to understand why you’re convinced there’s something nefarious going on. And how you think Roland is involved.” When he started to object, she shook her head. “I know you aren’t saying it outright, but I know you, Tolan Ethar. I know what you’re getting at. You think there’s something more here, whether you want to admit it to me or not. I’ve been hearing from the Inquisitors how irritated they are with how you have been disappearing.”
Tolan frowned. “Let me guess. Carson has been complaining about me again.”
She shrugged. “Complaining. Reporting to the Grand Master.”
“He wants to be the Master of Spirit,” Tolan said.
“If you don’t, then perhaps you should let somebody else take over.”
“It’s not that I don’t.”
“What is it, then?”
Tolan sighed, letting it out in frustration. “It doesn’t matter. How have Jersan and Kelvin been settling in?” He had heard from Velthan, but as the Master of Students, Ferrah might have a different perspective.
“They have been doing about as well as possible.”
She frowned a moment, her eyes wrinkling the way they did when she was deeply thinking. “What if these shapers that you brought here and Selected wanted to be here because of hashin?”
Tolan had given that some thought. It was possible there was an ulterior motive to the shapers he’d Selected, but he didn’t really think so. At least when it came to Jersan, he didn’t think so. With Kelvin, there had been a sense that he’d wanted power. With Jersan, he’d only felt as if wanted to be anywhere but surrounded by the sense of the elements and the elemental. More than that, they hadn’t known he would come. They hadn’t known there would be a Selection. They couldn’t have planned for anything.
“There might not be anything else we can do,” Tolan said. “With this, and what I detected of the elementals moving—”
“Let’s go through this again. What exactly did you detect?”
He could tell she didn’t believe—or didn’t want to believe. The effect was the same. “The elementals in the North were moving. I don’t know what it means, only that there was something happening there. And it’s tied to the bond.”
“And now with this hashin change, you think it’s connected.”
Tolan nodded.
“Have you asked the two you brought here?”
“I haven’t.”
“Have you shaped spirit?”
Tolan shot her a sideways look.
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m asking a reasonable question. Given what we know about them, and given what they might have been capable of doing, it’s a reasonable question to ask. You know it is. You would have asked the same thing, only—”
“You think that I’m biased because of their ability to speak to the elementals.”
“I know you’re biased because of that, Tolan. I want you to keep your mind open; aware of your own natural biases. I want you to be thinking you need to protect the Academy nearly as much as you think that you need to protect the elementals.”
She hesitated as she said it and Tolan looked over at her. “I’ve never done anything that would put the Academy in danger.”
“Never?”
“Well, almost never,” he said.
“That’s what I’m getting at. You need to continue to ensure the safety of the Academy.”
“Even if that means I need to go away from here?”
“Why would you need to?”
“If this has to do with the elementals and some sort of connection to the bond, I need to better understand the elementals.”
“Tolan—”
“I haven’t said I’m going to leave.” He hadn’t said otherwise, either. It was long past time for him to gain a different understanding of the elementals. One that involved him going someplace he’d avoided for quite a while. Perhaps that had been a mistake.
“Good. I would hate for you to have to leave without taking the opportunity to question the one person—or people—who might have an answer for you without needing you to go beyond the Academy.”
“I’ll question them.”
“Do you need me to bring them to you?”
Tolan shook his head. “If Master Ferrah Changen brings them to me, it’s only going to make them concerned.”
“They should be concerned,” Ferrah said.
“Now you want to threaten them?”
“It’s not a matter of threatening them, it’s just a matter of trying to understand if they have any connection to what happened here. Besides, didn’t you tell me the elemental was left free within Telfair?”
Tolan nodded slowly. That had been the case, but what would’ve happened had Tolan left the elemental to remain free?
Perhaps he needed to go back to Telfair and not harass these two shapers from there. The answer for what he needed might be found there.
He hadn’t spent that much time studying Telfair, trying to understand the nature of the pits, or the bondars used to suppress the sense of hashin. Perhaps that was where he needed to start.
There was another possibility, but Tolan didn’t even know if it would work. He thought he might be able to delve deep within the element bond, but reaching it and understanding it were very different things. He was connected to the power of the bonds, and connected to that because of his understanding of the elementals, along with his understanding of the elements, but reaching for the sense of the elementals was very different.
“You don’t believe what I think.” He glanced north, toward the distance sense of heat and fire and a connection he couldn’t quite explain. Tolan could practically see what the Draasin Lord saw, the rocky ground around him, and he could practically feel the wind whistling past him, as if the Draasin Lord wanted him to know just where he
was. There was a hint of cold whipping around, though not so much as to make the Draasin Lord uncomfortable. “I think we need to speak with him.”
“Him?” She frowned. “The draasin?”
“The Draasin Lord would know something. Given his age and everything that he’s done over the years, if anyone is going to know anything—he will.”
“Tolan—”
“If I don’t do this, I’m not going to have the answers I need to convince you or the Grand Master.” He should have gone to the Draasin Lord in the beginning, but he’d thought that he would find answers from the elementals themselves. This time they hadn’t shared.
“The Grand Master won’t like it if we’re gone too long.”
“The Grand Master will understand.”
“Will he?”
She took his hand, waiting.
Tolan looked around the clearing. This was a place where the students were tested. When Tolan had been a student here, he remembered coming for the first time, remembered the sense of energy and excitement and fear. He could still recall the testing he’d gone through, the way he’d been forced to prove himself, the nature of the shaping he’d been asked to use. Now that he was here, he could practically feel that energy still here.
In the time since he’d been a master shaper, Tolan had come for very different reasons. He’d been a part of testing other students; promoting them through the ranks. As the Master of Spirit, Tolan had been part of the core group of testing, and he was involved in testing each of the students, offering them the chance to prove themselves. Tolan was also part of testing those for master shaper. There had been successes here, but there had also been failures.
He wrapped the elements together, binding them briefly. When he was done, he pulled upon them, sending a surge of spirit through it, and with a crackle of lightning, the shaping carried them up and away.
When it shot them back down, it did so on a surge of power.
Tolan never got tired of the power that came from the warrior shaping. He never got tired of how interesting it was as that shaping wrapped around him, carrying him from one place to another in a mere moment. It was so much faster than any other way of traveling.
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