But how?
He had no idea what he was trying to do, only that he was drawing upon the power of the portrait. Tolan pushed back, squeezing against what Roland was doing.
“What is this?”
Master Minden appeared from a door at the end of the hallway. She was dressed in a robe and surprisingly had a sword strapped to her waist.
“Get back,” Tolan said.
She glanced down the hall toward Tolan before looking at Roland.
Something flickered across her face; an expression that almost seemed like recognition.
“This is Roland Var. He’s been in the Academy the whole time.”
Roland turned his attention to Master Minden, smiling widely at her. He shifted his shaping. Tolan started forward, trying to get to Roland before he did anything to Master Minden, but Roland used some sort of power and pressure and pushed Tolan back. He struggled against it. Somehow, Roland was able to prevent him from heading forward.
It wasn’t a shaping of any of the elements other than spirit.
He was using spirit against him, even though Tolan had his mind protected.
Unless he didn’t have his mind protected.
Did I only think it’s protected?
When it came to Roland, there was so much Tolan began to question, and so much he didn’t really know. Roland was incredibly powerful. Roland was not only using a shaping of spirit, but he was drawing something from the portraits.
That was unusual, and it was different than any of the other shapings Tolan had encountered before. Different even than what he’d seen from Master Minden.
She reached for something nearby—Tolan’s sword.
How had she gotten it from my room?
Roland darted forward, grabbing for the sword, and jerked it away from her.
“No!” Tolan shouted.
Roland cried out and held it up.
It was a bondar; a powerful one. Made in the way of the old warriors, the sword was designed to allow him to connect to each of the elements, including spirit.
Roland would be able to use it.
He sliced Master Minden with it.
She grabbed at her belly, cupping her hands as blood poured down.
Tolan screamed, trying to race forward.
He couldn’t move.
Whatever Roland was doing was holding him in place.
Tolan remembered the nature of that shaping. He had felt it before. He thought about the knowledge his mother had given him, the way she had shown him how to avoid a shaping like this.
How could I access those memories?
There was only one thing he thought would work. He shaped through himself.
The shaping unlocked knowledge. He held on to spirit, washing it through him, turning it inward in a way that allowed him to understand things that he had not before. He could feel that energy and he recognized that power, and he used it to hold onto himself, sweeping it all the way through him so that he could defend against what Roland tried to do. It was a shaping that granted him knowledge and understanding, a shaping that showed him aspects that he could not have accessed otherwise. He was able to hold onto that knowledge, and it seemed as if Roland had tried to prevent him from reaching it, as if he had wanted Tolan to forget the lessons his mother had granted him.
Then Tolan realized what Roland was doing.
Tolan pushed on the shaping, sliding it free from his mind.
That was the only way he could do it. He couldn’t simply block him. Roland was far too skilled with shaping spirit. The shaping slipped off Tolan’s mind, and he was freed.
He staggered forward and headed toward Roland. Roland pointed the sword at Tolan. A shaping began to build from it. The blade started to glow.
Tolan hesitated. He focused on the runes scattered around the Academy. The Convergence. He honed that power, sending it toward Roland.
That power blasted into him, but Roland deflected it, drawing it through the sword and then outward.
A mistake.
All of this was a mistake.
He was calling upon power, and Roland was redirecting the nature of that power.
He was feeding the bondars. By drawing that much power to the bondars, Roland empowered himself. Everything Tolan poured into the other man, everything he did was giving him more and more strength.
Roland laughed. “In all the time we’ve been apart, I would’ve expected you to have learned more than you have. Instead, you use the same tricks. They aren’t any more effective now than they were then.”
Tolan tried to ignore him. He had to find an answer. He could feel the energy Roland used; the nature of what he was doing. That energy was potent. It was so potent that Tolan didn’t have any way of countering it. That was what Roland counted on.
He had to move. Master Minden needed him.
Tolan struggled, taking a step. Master Minden was down. Bleeding.
He needed to get to her. She needed shaping.
He focused on her, focusing on what he could sense of her and on what she needed from him.
She needed power.
Could he give her the power she needed?
He tried to shift the nature of the shaping, trying to pour water and spirit into her. Seeing her bleeding out on the ground like this, seeing the way she suffered, was almost too much for him to bear.
Tolan pushed again, straining against what Roland did, straining to reach Master Minden. All he wanted was to offer her healing.
Roland laughed.
“You don’t even know what I’ve been planning. You cannot know.”
“You won’t succeed.”
Roland tipped his head to the side, studying him, and jabbed out with the sword. “What makes you think that I haven’t already?”
There came a burst of power. It swirled around and tossed Tolan back, throwing him out of the hall. Roland had planned on every reaction he had.
Tolan scrambled to his feet, trying to get to Master Minden. When he reached the hall once again, she was gone. So was Roland.
Tolan threw open the door at the end of the hall, heading up the stairs that would take him to the top of the Academy. He focused on the power of the Convergence, focusing on the runes, calling that power up through him. He shaped, letting that power sweep outward, searching where Roland had gone.
He shouldn’t be able to use a warrior shaping.
But then, hadn’t I given Roland just what he needed?
He would have been able to access Tolan’s thoughts. He would have known the warrior shaping. Tolan pressed out hurriedly with each of the elements but found no sign of them. There was nothing.
He hurried back downstairs, back into the library, and looked around. He paused where Master Minden had fallen.
Her loss struck him in a way that surprised him. He’d grown close to her in the time he’d been at the Academy. She’d served as an advisor, guiding him toward his shaping, helping him understand he was more than he had believed. It was because of Master Minden that he had come to know the elementals. It was because of Master Minden that he had come to believe in himself and his ability to shape.
Now she was gone. Roland didn’t even leave her body behind for him. Tolan frowned.
Why would he have taken her?
A shaping.
He focused on the stones, and he saw no sign of blood. With how Roland had carved through her belly, she should have bled out over the stones. There was no sign of that.
He focused instead on spirit, probing the area. There was a considerable use of spirit here. All of that had been used on Tolan.
That was what Roland had done.
He had made it seem as if he’d killed Master Minden.
Tolan didn’t even know whether or not the other man had actually attacked her. It was possible he hadn’t and that he had done nothing more than simply create the illusion of an attack.
Why, though? Was it only to mess with my mind?
Roland would have used spirit upon Tolan
. There was no doubt of that in Tolan’s mind. And because he had used spirit, he would have known what Master Minden meant to Tolan, even if Tolan didn’t fully understand it.
He would have known she was valuable to him.
Which meant he still needed to find Roland.
He got to his feet, looking around.
The portraits were untouched. Roland had done something here. It had to do with spirit, as everything that Roland was able to do had to do with spirit, but he’d hidden the nature of his use of spirit, making it so that it was difficult for Tolan to understand.
Tolan continued to probe, forcing himself to find the answer.
What would Roland have been wanting from the portraits?
That was the key.
Tolan hurried along the portraits, focusing on the images within them. When he was here, he thought about what he had seen over the years, the way he’d seen power shifting, and the way he’d seen the images along the wall shifting.
Racing through the hall, he skidded to a stop when he noticed something off about one of the portraits. It was the one of the younger girl with the lizard.
Always before, there had been a sense of shadows behind her. It was almost as if shadows swirled, circling around her. Those shadows seemed troubling to Tolan.
Something about it was different.
The lizard.
That was what seemed different.
Rather than her holding the lizard on her lap, now the lizard seemed to have moved behind her. How was it even possible a painting would have shifted?
Why would it have shifted?
Spirit tingled along the surface of the painting.
That was what he detected.
Why would there be spirit along the surface of the painting?
He pushed out with spirit, letting it probe along the wall. Spirit had shifted here. There was no sense of what it had done, or why—only that it had shifted.
Roland had wanted this hall of portraits. He had distracted Tolan with an illusion in order to come here. That had to matter.
He stood in front of the portrait, focusing on each of the elements, mixing them together.
That was the key, wasn’t it?
Roland had wanted the knowledge Tolan had. That knowledge included the portrait, but it also included the knowledge of the warrior shaping. It was a shaping that had alerted the other elementals in that strange land as well. That shaping was unique, powerful, and because of it, he had drawn their attention, their focus. Because of that shaping, he had proven himself.
Would it matter here?
Tolan focused, wrapping that sense of power around him, and he sent it washing toward the painting with the lizard.
When he did, everything shifted around him.
23
Tolan blinked, opening his eyes. He stepped out into a cave with the musty scent of earth all around him. There was moisture, the sound of it dripping nearby, and a warmth on the wind that gusted through. Through all of it was the sense of elements, and all of it was powerful. He could feel that energy within him.
As he did, he focused on shaping.
His shaping was there.
For a moment, he had worried he might have lost his ability to shape. He had no idea where he was or how he’d suddenly moved, but Tolan suspected it had something to do with what he’d connected to within the painting.
Tolan shaped again, forming a barrier around his mind. When he did, there seemed to be a reverberation. It was almost as if the shaping bounced off him.
It didn’t work. The barrier he tried to form failed. When he’d used a shaping like that before, he’d never had a barrier fail quite so dramatically.
Why would it not work for me now? Tolan looked around. If I wasn’t able to shape a protection over my mind, could I shape spirit?
Tolan concentrated on that element; using only a single focus. Power built within him. Spirit was a unique element and came from some deep source within him. He let it flow outward.
As he pushed outward with spirit, there was an awareness nearby.
He wasn’t alone.
Tolan headed through the tunnel.
As he went, a question began to build in him. He had no idea where he was, and he had no idea if this was some sort of shaped trap that Roland had placed.
It certainly could be, but why did it appear so much like the portrait that hung on the wall?
If this had somehow shaped him into the painting, Tolan had no idea how—or even why. The only thing he knew was that he was surrounded by power. He could feel that energy, the nature of it as it rolled around him. Still, for whatever reason, he wasn’t able to shape a protection over his mind.
That troubled him.
Tolan continued along the tunnel toward the dripping sound in the distance. The air seemed to grow thicker, almost as if he were passing through some shaping of wind. The presence of earth squeezed all around him, and there was a warmth everywhere.
Each of the elements was here. Each of them was potent, as well, though spirit seemed the most prominent.
The tunnel continued into the darkness. Somehow, he sensed that was where he needed to go. There was movement up in the distance that called to him, drawing him forward.
Tolan paused.
If this was what he thought, and if somehow he had been brought into the portrait—something that seemed impossible to believe—then he wondered if he might find the girl… and the lizard.
He followed spirit, making his way through the tunnel, heading toward what he detected. He also focused on the other elements.
That was the key here. He could detect not only spirit, but also the other elements.
Ever since the change to the earth bond, Tolan had taken to avoiding delving into the bonds, focusing instead on his own power. He preferred to use what he could of the runes, and the Convergence, avoiding the bonds themselves.
Which was why he had not attempted to do that now.
Perhaps that was a mistake.
He thought about fire. That was a bond he was powerful with; one that he was well-connected with. Using his connection to hyza, Tolan had to believe there was something more he could do; some greater connection to the element that he might be able to find.
That sense was there, though it was faint. It was almost as if he were trying to reach for the bond through some great distance. Tolan tried again, focusing on it and reaching for fire through the fire bond. It was there. Faint, almost like a reflection.
Almost as if it was a memory.
Could I use it?
Tolan tried again, and this time he shifted into wind. He focused on the energy within the wind bond, thinking about what he was able to remember of it, the nature of that power. He could feel it, and he could feel the way that energy flowed.
He held onto that knowledge, holding onto that power, but there was nothing.
Tolan attempted it with water. As he attempted to reach for water, he found the sense of it was faint, much like the others.
All of them were faded.
Because he had to be in the portrait. Somehow.
Whatever had brought him here was near.
Tolan moved more carefully now, not certain what he might find. As he headed through the tunnel, energy continued to build, and he didn’t know whether there was anything more to it.
The energy around him was potent.
He followed the path of the tunnel.
Energy seemed to be near where the water dripped.
The farther that he went, the more Tolan began to think he would see the little girl and the lizard. Everything here left him troubled, but different than he’d felt when within the earth bond. Now it was fear of a trap.
Another step.
Tolan wondered if this was in his mind. Illusion or a shaping or some trick like that.
It didn’t matter.
He stepped forward—then emerged in a small cavern. Sitting in front of him was the lizard from the portrait.
It looked at him and didn’t move.
Which element would the lizard represent?
A lizard seemed like it would be fire. There were other elementals like the lizard that represented fire, but he had also seen some earth elementals similar to it.
He started with earth. If the elemental was tied to earth, and with what happed to the bond, it would explain why he had been called here. It was possible that this strange portrait was all some way of trying to help him know what he needed to do in order to restore earth.
Earth didn’t work.
Tolan focused on fire.
There was nothing.
Not fire, then. It wasn’t earth, and it wasn’t fire. What was it?
There was power coming from this elemental. Tolan could feel that. He tried with water, then wind. Neither of those elements gave him any response.
Maybe it was only because this was some sort of strange shaping with the portrait. It was possible that he wasn’t going be able to detect anything at all.
There was one other possibility, but the idea that it might represent spirit seemed unlikely.
If it did, then why a lizard?
Tolan focused on the elemental, thinking of spirit. If this was spirit, then he would have to try a different approach. He braced himself, thinking about the nature of spirit and the element. As far as he knew, there was no spirit elemental. Until recently, he’d never even known there was a spirit bond. He suspected that was because the spirit bond was somehow interwoven with the other elements, but maybe there was another answer.
Tolan focused on the lizard.
When he forced spirit toward the lizard, there was no response.
What if I connected to the Convergence to reach each of the elements? Once there, I could tie that power together to see if anything made a difference with the lizard.
Tolan reached for the power of the Convergence. The energy was distant, but he could feel something. More than a memory.
He had to find a way toward that power.
Then he had it.
He pushed power onto the lizard.
There came a flash of power, a surge of something that blasted through him, almost an understanding—and then a strange tearing that seemed to course through him. Tolan could feel it as the lizard separated.
The Shape of Fire Page 24