A Keystone. That was what his father was getting at.
And he had felt the elementals within the Keystone, and knew exactly how they were there, the power they were holding.
“I’ve seen one of those places.”
His father looked at him, reaching out toward him. “You know where they are? Then you should show us.”
“I only know where one Keystone is.”
“Keystone? Is that what they have taken to calling them?”
“Do you have another term for it?”
“Probably not that’s any better. We’ve been looking for these places. Searching, knowing the power of the elementals is trapped within them, and if we could free them—”
“Then Terndahl would look like the waste?”
“No. Then the waste might begin to return to the way it should be.” His father stretched his hands out in front of him, motioning to the vast expanse of the waste. “Everything here is artificial. It might look as if it isn’t, but the fact of the matter is shaping has changed this place as much as it’s changed any place. By pulling the elementals free of this land, by forcing them into the bond, the waste has been changed, diminished. The power within it has been altered, and the people who once lived here have suffered.”
“There were people in the waste?”
“A great many people.”
Tolan stared out at the waste. There was no sign of life, no sign of anything, and he found it difficult to believe anyone had ever been here, and yet, the things his father said resonated with him.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“We wouldn’t have told you before now. Had you not experienced what you had at the Academy, we probably wouldn’t have told you even now.”
“How are you aware of what I experienced at the Academy?”
“The protections placed around you are missing.”
Tolan looked at his father. “What protections?”
“Your mother and I wanted to ensure your safety. Living in these lands as we were forced to do, we didn’t want you to have to experience the danger existing here. Not before you should.”
“So, you protected me.”
“I know it doesn’t feel that way.”
“You don’t know anything about how it feels.”
“Know that had they understood what you could do, they would have taken you, and would have forced you into a different kind of service.”
“And what kind of service is that?”
“That of an Inquisitor.”
Tolan turned away. Spirit shaping. His father had known.
Stranger still, he had attempted to protect him from it.
“Why would you keep that from me?”
“We intended to teach you ourselves. We never expected to be called back quite so abruptly, but…”
“But what?”
“But there was a need.”
“What need was that?”
“If you come with me, I can ensure you know. You might not be ready yet, but perhaps it doesn’t matter.”
“What if I don’t want to go with you?” Even as he said it, he knew what he needed to do. In order to return to the Academy, he would need to do this, to know what might come next.
A flash of pain worked across his father’s face. “I won’t force you to come. You might not understand this, but the Draasin Lord doesn’t force anyone to serve. He doesn’t force the elementals to serve him, either.”
“What does he do if he doesn’t intend to have the elemental serve him?”
“What he does is try to free them. He wants to restore the world as it was.”
“Why?”
“Because we recognize a greater danger will occur.”
Tolan remained within the waste, standing there. Part of what his father said felt true, and he thought he could believe, but part of it didn’t fit. He’d seen followers of the Draasin Lord and the way they’d attacked Amitan. That wasn’t the kind of man his father was describing.
“How do you cross the waste?”
“What?”
Tolan motioned to the waste. “How do you cross it?”
“I don’t know what that has to do with anything.”
“It has to do with everything. How do you cross it?”
“Tolan, there are things you can’t understand.”
“So you keep telling me, but I wonder if that’s true or if you only want it to be true.”
“Why would I want it to be true?”
“You’re trying to use me.”
“I’m your father. I wouldn’t try to use you.”
“The same father who abandoned me to follow the Draasin Lord. The same father who left me in Ephra, letting them believe you were abducted by the Draasin Lord. The same father I had to defend to others in Ephra, and yet, shouldn’t have.”
Tolan took a step back toward Terndahl. He wouldn’t be able to do anything until he reached it, and now they had this opportunity to talk, he wasn’t sure he wanted to—or could—remain.
His father continued to watch him, and a frown deepened on his face. “I’d like you to come to take the next step in your training, but I won’t keep you here.”
“You brought me to the waste, where I don’t have any connection to power. You are trying to hold me here.”
“You’re not seeing things correctly,” his father said.
“Maybe not, but I recognize what you’re doing.”
He took another few steps, and as he did, his father took a step toward him.
Tolan ran.
When he was nearly to the edge of the waste, he felt his father behind him.
Tolan lunged.
The moment he crossed the border of the waste, he felt the return of his shaping ability. He wrapped earth and wind around him, a barrier he held, turning to face his father.
What was he thinking? His father was a disciple of the Draasin Lord, and because of that, he was likely a very powerful shaper. What did Tolan think he could do against someone like that?
Nothing. That was what.
“You’re making a mistake,” his father said.
“I’d be making a mistake if I went with you.”
“We can’t protect you if you return to Amitan and the Academy.”
Tolan stared out at the vast expanse of the waste. “And you can protect me if I stay with you?”
“Better than we could otherwise.” His father stood, his hands clasped behind his back. “Let me show you. Once I do, you can decide what you want to do.”
Tolan glanced over at the disciples. They had made no move toward him, and despite the violence he had seen from them before, this was still his father.
That was the hardest part to wrap his head around. Why would his father be like this? Why would his father attack like this?
It didn’t make any sense.
If he turned away now, he would never know why his parents abandoned him. He would never understand what reason they had for leaving him in Ephra alone. Potentially tormented. He would never know why they had left him.
If he went with them, he would be everything the Academy feared. He would be going and potentially serving the Draasin Lord.
That was something he would never do.
Yet he couldn’t shake the sense he needed to go with his father. He needed to know.
“I’ll go with you, but I’ll return if you’ve been lying to me.”
He said it with far more confidence than he felt. It was possible he wouldn’t even be able to return, but his father nodded nonetheless.
2
Although he followed his father, Tolan had no idea where they were going. He had suspected they might cross the waste. The rumors of the Draasin Lord and those who followed him suggested he would be found there, though when his father had taken him to the edge of the waste, the other disciples had remained within Terndahl, almost as if they had no interest in crossing the waste.
There had been hesitation. Not just hesitation—almost a sense
of fear.
That wasn’t the sign of anyone willing to cross the waste in order to find the rest of their people.
And if they weren’t on the other side of the waste, where would the disciples hide?
In his time within Amitan and while working at the Academy, Tolan had experienced attacks from the disciples several times. Wherever they hid had to be someplace reasonably accessible.
As he watched his father while they headed north, skirting along the edge of the waste, Tolan couldn’t help but feel as if this was a mistake.
He had left Amitan. There had been only a little choice on his part, and as much as he had wanted to remain, he no longer even knew if he could.
This was safest.
That was what he told himself, despite the fact he no longer felt that way.
His head spun, trying to wrap his mind around everything that had taken place, trying to grasp the strangeness of his father being with him once again. Even harder was the idea his father truly had served the Draasin Lord. All the years he’d defended his parents had been for nothing.
It made him feel like a fool.
In the back of his mind, the taunts he’d heard over the years, those from people like Velthan and others within Ephra, came crawling back.
How could they not? For every attempt he’d made to deny his family’s connection to the Draasin Lord, they actually had been his servants.
And now Tolan was heading in that direction.
His father turned back to him, watching him. It was almost as if he recognized the hesitation within him, and Tolan couldn’t deny there was significant hesitation on his part.
“We need to keep moving,” his father said.
“I’m coming with you, aren’t I?”
“Tolan—”
Tolan took a deep breath and picked up his pace. They no longer were shaping their way along the edge of the waste, preferring to go by foot. Somehow, he suspected that mattered. They had traveled as far as they could, farther than Tolan had ever gone, and in a different direction than he had traveled before. By following the Shapers Path this way, they had skirted north of Ephra, heading to a desolate part of Terndahl. There were no cities here. No towns or villages. Nothing.
And yet, the Shapers Path had carried them all the way out here.
That surprised him. There had to be a reason for it. Everything he knew about the Shapers Path suggested there was a purpose to them. The people of the Academy had formed them over the years, often to make it easier to travel from place to place. Why would they have needed to travel out here?
Glancing back toward the distant sign of the Shapers Path, he tried to understand. They had moved far enough away from the Paths that he could no longer feel the energy used upon them. As he focused on that absence, he wondered if there was anything else he could detect from it.
“We need to keep moving,” one of the other disciples said.
He was a dark-haired man, older than even Tolan’s father, and wore a dark cloak and, surprisingly, heavy leathers more suited for colder climates.
“I’m coming,” Tolan said, nodding to his father.
A part of him didn’t know if he was making a mistake or not. Leaving the Academy, regardless of what had happened and how he was doing so, pushed him away from everything he knew. It pushed him away from everyone he knew, and from the opportunity to continue to learn how to master his shaping.
And now he would have to learn something else.
Then again, Master Minden had suggested he go. She claimed he would continue to learn, but what could he learn?
The elementals. That was the only other aspect of his training he wouldn’t be able to acquire within the Academy and in Amitan.
One of the disciples in front of him started to shape, and there was a strange sense to it. It was different than the kind of shaping he often encountered within Amitan, and yet there was something distinctly familiar about it.
Why was one of the disciples shaping?
That was the part of all this that Tolan needed to better understand. The more he focused on the way the disciples shaped, the more certain he was that there was something off, but why?
“Regan?” one of the disciples said.
Tolan looked at his father. What was taking place?
His father drew upon power. It was incredible, a mix of shapings, far more strength than Tolan ever would’ve expected.
Bondars. That was what he was using. Then again, Tolan had known his father had the ability to make bondars. He’d used one himself.
It made sense his father would have bondars with him, and it made sense he and the other disciples would be able to use them.
It was a wonder anyone from the Academy had ever been able to overpower the disciples of the Draasin Lord. If they all had access to bondars, then it seemed even more surprising the masters from the Academy would have been able to stop them.
Tolan pulled upon a shaping, drawing upon earth. If there was something to be worried about, he’d want to use earth in order to sense it.
He pushed that sense out from him, letting power flow through him, connecting him to the ground, to the grasses, to the trees, and everything nearby.
He didn’t often use his connection to shaping in such a way, but in this case, he thought it necessary.
The more power he pulled, the more he felt something off.
Not just something off. There was someone.
And they were shaping.
Tolan recognized the nature of the shaping, if not who was doing it.
He looked at the other disciples, at his father, and couldn’t help but feel as if they had no idea there was something out there.
“Father?”
His father glanced over his shoulder but continued to head along the border between Terndahl and the waste. The waste was only a dozen or so steps off to their right, far enough that he didn’t have to worry about the separation from his bonds but near enough that he was acutely aware of just how it would happen if he stepped over the border.
“What is it?”
“Do you detect anything?”
His father frowned, closing his eyes, and a shaping built from him. It swept outward. As it did, it radiated through the ground. An earth shaping, but unlike most earth shapings he had experienced.
“You detected this already?”
Tolan nodded. “I can feel it.”
And as he did, he realized not only weren’t they alone, but there was someone shaping nearby.
His father made a motion to one of the disciples, and they started off. Tolan veered toward them, but his father grabbed his arm. “You shouldn’t go with them.”
“I’m the one who detected it.”
“Just because you detected it doesn’t mean you should accompany them.”
Shaping built from the disciples who started off, and Tolan watched as they disappeared. It troubled him, and he didn’t care for the fact he was being left behind.
“I’m going,” he said.
He raced forward and chased the sense he detected. There was only one shaper, he was certain of it, but couldn’t tell who they were and what they were doing.
This far outside of Amitan, this far outside of any place, it wouldn’t make sense for anyone to be shaping out here. The fact there was someone out here, and there was the sense of shaping he’d detected, suggested there was something more taking place.
And then he saw it.
It was the dark robe of an Inquisitor.
Tolan’s breath caught.
Why would an Inquisitor be all the way out here?
The disciples had the Inquisitor surrounded, power pulsing away from them, wrapping around the Inquisitor.
They were squeezing. With enough power, they’d crush the Inquisitor. He could feel the power the Inquisitor used to resist, the way he pushed against the shaping, but would it be enough?
The Inquisitor glared at them, shifting his gaze to Tolan. “You are with them.”
Tolan ignored him and frowned. There was something wrong—more than just what he detected.
“What is it?” his father asked.
“Why would he be all the way out here?”
His father shook his head. “He probably chased us.”
That didn’t make sense. There had been no sign of the Inquisitor. Had he chased them, he would have caught up to them by now. They had taken enough time at the waste for him to have caught them.
Tolan headed toward the Inquisitor. “What are you doing out here?”
“We are doing nothing but protecting Terndahl from those like yourself who would harm it. That is the purpose of the Inquisitors.”
Tolan grunted. “It seems to me your purpose was to torment students at the Academy.”
“Only those who are deserving.”
Tolan couldn’t take his gaze off him, and there was a part of him that was troubled, bothered by all of this, and he couldn’t help but think there was something more he wasn’t understanding.
The Inquisitors had to be up to something.
They hadn’t chased them all the way here. Tolan would have seen them by now.
He probed with earth. Using that shaping, he let it flow out from him, striking the ground near the Inquisitor.
In doing so, there came a surge of energy, a reflection of something familiar. The more Tolan pushed on it, the more certain he was of what he was feeling.
Something was off.
“Tolan,” his father said, grabbing for him.
Tolan shook him away. He had lived on his own for long enough, away from his parents for long enough, he no longer needed his father’s approval for anything, certainly not for this. In this case, he was determined to understand what was taking place here.
If he was going to go with the disciples, he wanted to know whether there was some reason for the Inquisitors to be out here before he went.
And Aela had attacked the Grand Master. She had attacked him.
That was not serving the Academy.
“What are you doing out here?” Tolan asked, leaning close to the Inquisitor.
The Wind Rages (Elemental Academy Book 4) Page 2
