The Shape of Fire

by D. K. Holmberg

  “That’s not a good idea,” Tolan said.

  Not only did he not want to bring his father and Liza, but he grew increasingly concerned about what Roland had placed there. It was tied to hashin and forcing the elemental into the bond—and changing the bond.

  Everything had begun in Telfair. To stop Roland, Tolan would have to return there.

  20

  Wind caressed him as Tolan stood on the edge of the mountain. The valley stretched in front of him. He had used a warrior shaping, and thankfully the shaping had not gone awry, but he’d felt a waning sense of strength which had forced him to redirect. It was the second time since detecting the change in the earth bond that he’d been forced to change how he used the shaping.

  He feared it wouldn’t be the last.

  Tolan looked down upon the valley, focusing on what he could see. From here, the buildings of Telfair were obvious. They blended into the landscape, but there was something about them that carried a specific sort of energy.

  They had runes worked within them, bondars, and those markings added to the power of the village itself. While standing here, he could almost see what the village had looked like before.

  Why would those bondars be designed to focus the power of spirit?

  There was one way he might be able to discover the answer, but that involved triggering the bondars in a way that he could reveal spirit. Tolan wasn’t sure he wanted to do that. There was no one else here, though, and until he better understood what was taking place, he couldn’t return to the Academy.

  When he’d been here before, there had been the sense of the free elementals. All of that was gone, too. Tolan hadn’t paid any attention to that before, but now that he recognized it, he realized that not only were the villagers gone, but with the absence of the elementals, he had to wonder whether that was all connected.

  The villagers were tied to earth. That was what Jersan had said. They’d been here for generations—or so he’d believed.

  Great Mother!

  He hadn’t tested him for spirit. When he returned to Amitan, he would have to do that. And Kelvin. That way, he could figure out whether Roland had shaped them, or whether he had only presented himself as the Golan.

  Tolan used a shaping of wind along with fire to travel down to the village.

  He wandered through the buildings, making his way from one to another, thinking about what he could detect. The buildings themselves were all simple. None of this seemed to him the way anyone could—and should—live.

  Tolan focused on spirit. The village was empty, but there was the awareness of the buildings. Tolan paused before one of them, looking at the runes. He pressed power into them, focusing on what he was able to uncover. There was a hint of power within it, and it washed over the building, fortifying it. It was one of the old kind of runes with power that provided protection for the buildings. He had started to get up when something caught his attention.

  The rune might be old; at least the nature of it. Tolan had seen it on ancient buildings all throughout Terndahl. The nature of the rune was such that it offered a level of protection from the elements, though many of the buildings with that protection didn’t necessarily need them. This rune, though the shape of it looked older, was not old itself.

  He reached down, running his fingers along the surface of it. The marking was deep, the symbol formed relatively recently.

  Tolan focused on it, thinking about what he could uncover from it. There was power within it. As he probed it, he detected power—the way that it flickered for a moment, fortifying the stone.

  Maybe they’d been forced to rebuild these buildings.

  If there were the case, it would explain why this marking was relatively new. It had been placed within the last few years. Not any older than that, and yet, there wouldn’t be that many people who knew about markings like that. Most who did would have come from the Academy.

  Tolan moved on, and he paused at one of the next buildings. While there, he traced his fingers over the markings, focusing on the runes. There was the same sense of power. As before, he had a sense of what these markings once would have been like, the feel of age that should have come from them.

  Even though there should be a feeling of age from them, he didn’t detect anything like that. They weren’t all that old.

  He headed through the village, testing each of the buildings.

  It was something he hadn’t considered when he had been here before.

  He took to the air, using fire and wind, hovering. He looked down at the buildings, focusing on them from this vantage. There was nothing particular about them; nothing other than the shape of the structure.

  There was power from within them. And they weren’t old. If they weren’t old, then all of them had been built with a purpose. Likely, Roland’s purpose. Tolan had to look at one of the bondars.

  He dropped to the ground, heading into one of the buildings, choosing at random.

  The room was empty, like all of the homes had been empty. He reached the ring of stone. Crouching in front of it, he focused on the bondar and decided he had to know what it might do.

  He pushed spirit into it.

  There was resistance, but then the shaping flowed outward, focusing toward the center of it. Something was missing, though.

  Tolan focused on earth.

  As he did, he could feel the energy surge, shifting. It was a strange sensation, but he still didn’t know what he detected.

  What about the other elements?

  Tolan had presumed that it was only earth, but if there was spirit in here, there was also the possibility that there were other elements that he hadn’t noticed before.

  Five patterns. Five elements.

  Tolan shifted to fire, focusing on that. It erupted through the bondar, and with the addition of spirit, there was a shimmering nature to it.

  In the back of his mind, he could feel Thoren crying out. Tolan released the shaping.

  What was that?

  He shifted, trying wind, then water. All of the elements worked. All of them were tied to spirit. The bondar was surprisingly powerful.

  He headed back out in the street, taking to the air, and pushed upward. He hovered there, staying in place. There was considerable power here. It came from the buildings, but it also came from the bondars. Power like that typically meant a Convergence.

  How had I overlooked that?

  There had been free elementals here before. He’d felt them when he’d first come. Elementals were tied to the Convergences, drawn to them. Tolan and the others within the Academy had gone looking for the Convergences to find as many as they could. He thought they knew all the Convergence locations, or at least those within Terndahl’s borders.

  Tolan pushed downward, probing with spirit.

  Probing in this way, he normally would be able to detect the sense of a Convergence. There was a distinct feel to it, and using spirit in this way, he should have been able to uncover what was down there.

  He didn’t really expect to find a Convergence. Had there been one, Tolan would’ve been aware of it sooner. His probing struck something deep beneath the ground. He added a hint of earth and fire and wind and water. By combining each of the elements, Tolan was able to generally detect Convergences. That was how the others had been uncovered, but these days, there weren’t all that many Convergences remaining to be found.

  The energy that was down there was similar to what he would’ve expected with the Convergence, but different.

  He shaped himself higher into the sky, focusing on what he was able to uncover from far below. The feeling from the ground grew more distant. The power that he knew was there grew fainter. As he traveled, he watched the ground below.

  There came a shimmering.

  It was subtle. When it swept across the ground below him, he wasn’t even sure what he was seeing. It was something that Tolan hadn’t seen in quite some time. It had been years, actually. Long enough that Tolan had thought he wouldn�
��t see it again. That shimmering swept across the ground and left everything looking only a little bit different.

  Tolan lowered himself again. When he did, he saw a shimmering once again. Each time that he shifted positions, the shimmering came again. His heart pounded.

  He dropped back to the ground.

  He paused at one of the outer buildings and traced his hand along the runes. There was a series of them all around the building and he tapped them, using a hint of power to destroy them. The knowledge he had of destroying the bondars came from his mother; the gift she had provided him before she had died.

  As the rune shattered, the building began to collapse.

  It happened quickly, a brief rumbling, but then it disappeared.

  It was almost as if it wasn’t there.

  Could the building have been nothing more than a skilled shaping?

  He went to the next building and did the same thing, shattering the rune.

  When it disappeared, he realized where the rune had been placed.

  The markings formed a circle, and as far as he could tell, there was no actual structure. The ground still bore the circle of the bondar, and that power was focused downward, but everything else was shaped. The people that he’d detected…

  Was it possible they weren’t even real?

  He remembered when he’d first come here; what he’d detected. He remembered pointing out the people to Velthan and then to Master Minden. There had been two powerful people here. He had brought Jersan back and had been certain that Jersan had not been a part of a shaping. The only other person who had been here was Kelvin, and everything within him told him that Kelvin was young and inexperienced. While he might be able to reach for the elementals, there was nothing else about him that would make him dangerous.

  Unless that had been a shaping.

  He walked through the village, destroying the bondars as he went, the illusions disappearing in a burst, leaving no evidence that they had ever been there; nothing that would suggest to him that there was any sign of stone or anything else. When he was done, the village was gone. There was nothing other than the series of bondars.

  Even those were troubling to him.

  He needed to get back to the Academy. He needed to find Kelvin. Then he needed to figure out what else Kelvin might know about Roland’s plan.

  Both Kelvin and Jersan might have been spirit shaped. Worse, Tolan might not even have known. He thought himself protected, but Roland was so skilled with spirit that his protections didn’t matter. Coming here had been done as part of the Selection, pursuing shapers who had potential for the Academy. He hadn’t focused on protecting his mind. He’d been focused on using spirit to test. What if someone had used that shaping to reach for him?

  Tolan had to get back. And quickly.

  21

  When he returned to the Academy, Tolan didn’t detect anything unusual. Everything had the same sense it had normally, and despite what he’d just encountered, and what he thought was taking place, he didn’t feel anything unusual here.

  That didn’t mean that there wasn’t anything here to be concerned about. During his return journey to the Academy, Tolan had realized there was another aspect of all of this that he had yet to focus on. If someone—or something—had begun to target the earth bond, there was still a possibility they were doing the same thing with the other element bonds.

  Carson waited for him outside the spirit classroom. Students were moving in and out of the classroom. Had he been even a little later, he would have missed his class, which unfortunately was exactly what he thought Carson wanted. “Master Ethar. It’s good that you have come for your class.”

  Tolan glared at him. He looked past Carson and into the classroom. “Of course I was going to come for my class.”

  “Unfortunately, the Grand Master doesn’t share your confidence. He asked that I ensure that your classes had the necessary instruction.” Carson tipped his head, and a hint of a spirit shaping came from him. “Perhaps you wouldn’t mind if I observed.”

  Tolan knew that he could object, but if he did so, it would only antagonize Carson even more. Worse, he couldn’t deny that it would be beneficial for the students to have an alternative working when he was not available. Velthan would work well for the lower-level students, but the upper-level students needed somebody who understood spirit in ways that Velthan had yet to do.

  “Of course not,” Tolan said.

  He looked around the students.

  They all looked back at him. This was a high-level class, and the students were all older, and all of them had a considerable ability to shape.

  He scanned the room. He knew all of them by name and had been working with them for the last few years, ever since he’d taken up his post. In that time, he’d tried to teach them to reach spirit. While some of them had a hint of ability with spirit, not all of them did.

  Of course, he didn’t need all of them to have an ability with spirit. Today he decided there was something else he could teach. It was something he’d focused on before, but not many of them were able to grasp the concept nearly as well as he liked.

  “Today we’re going to talk about protecting yourself from a spirit shaping,” he said, looking over at Carson. “If you recall, you will have heard me talking about how spirit naturally protects one from spirit shaping, but not all of you have the ability to reach spirit, so we need to learn how to defend yourself against a shaping.”

  Velthan watched him, a strange expression on his face. He glanced at Carson, frowning. Tolan wondered what Carson had shared with him about his absences.

  “In the past, we’ve talked about using a shaping of one of the elements in order to protect yourself.”

  Using a single element allowed for some protection against spirit, but it was incomplete. It was an easy way to start the conversation. In order for these shapers to be able to master the nature of offering protection to themselves, having any sort of protection was better than none. Within the Academy, they didn’t face much in the way of spirit shaping. It was mostly Tolan, and there weren’t many other shapers of spirit who knew more than him.

  “Today we’re going to talk about something much more complicated. We need to focus on how many of you are able to use each of the elements.”

  At this point in their training, all of them would have to be able to use each of the elements—other than spirit. In order to remain within the Academy at this point, to continue their studies, they had to be masters of each of the elements, at least while holding a bondar.

  “The nature of the shaping is such that you need to twist it. Each of the elements need to wrap together. Once done, you can add it, layering it over your own mind. The shaping is difficult, and so I’m going to go around the room and show you the shaping.”

  It wasn’t the way he usually liked to teach, but with the threat of Roland present in his mind, he needed to do so.

  Tolan started in front of the classroom, drawing power from the rune, and therefore through the Convergence, as he tapped on each shaper. When he did, he created the shaping within their mind, showing them what they needed to know. It was a way of giving information, but it was a way that carried with it some challenges. Having knowledge but not having experience with how to use it meant that they might attempt to draw upon that power when they shouldn’t.

  That was part of the reason Tolan didn’t attempt to teach this way very often. Not only that, but there was value in being able to try to find the knowledge on their own.

  He walked through the classroom, looking at each of them. When he reached Velthan, he paused. He watched Tolan, a look of suspicion in his eyes, though that was not unusual for him.

  Tolan was curious. They’d traveled to Telfair together. It was possible Velthan had been shaped. Glancing to see Carson watching, he drew upon the power from the rune; from the Convergence. Then, rather than showing him the shaping, he swept spirit through him. It was a way of drawing power; looking for any sort of i
nfluence that might be there. There was something there. A hint of power remained dormant in the back of his mind.

  There was a sense of power Tolan had felt before, similar to what had been layered upon him when he was younger. A spirit shaping.

  Tolan used the rune, letting power flow out and into Velthan. He swept the spirit shaping away, pulling it free from his mind. Then he showed Velthan how to shape.

  The other man sucked in a sharp breath.

  “What was that?”

  The influence would be gone. Tolan didn’t know what Carson would remember. Possibly nothing. He leaned forward, using a shaping of wind to carry his words to Velthan only. “There has been an attack. There’s a dangerous man who controls spirit and has influenced Telfair. I need to find the two students we brought from there and make sure they haven’t been shaped. The way that you were shaped.”

  Velthan looked up, locking eyes with him for a moment. He nodded.

  He finished making his way through the students, tapping on each of them. When he was done, he went back to the center of the room, standing within the circle of power that allowed him to reach for the rune. “Now that you each have the knowledge of the shaping, what I want you to do is practice. Wrap each of the elements and bind them together. When you have done this, you pull it down upon your mind.”

  It would be a stronger shaping if he were to add spirit, but at least this way there was still some strength to it.

  “How will we know if this works?” Hira asked. She was slight, a wind shaper primarily, and she sat in front of the class. Though she was a powerful wind shaper, she was gifted with each of the elements.

  Tolan probed, pushing upon the barrier that she formed.

  It was potent. Even though he had a gift with spirit shaping, a gift given to him by his mother before dying, he still wasn’t able to push past what she used to protect herself.

  “You did a good job. I can feel your mind is protected.”