Perhaps he imagined it. The Academy was on the other side of that line.
Then again, he didn’t know. Tolan continued to wander along it, finding it encircled the Academy grounds.
It stretched beyond. There was a place of Convergence, a place of real power here, yet as he wandered here, he couldn’t find any sense of the Convergence, and he couldn’t detect anything suggesting real power.
Maybe he was missing something.
Tolan wandered as the day turned into night. It shifted over slowly, at first, the sun setting in the distance, streaks of color turning the sky orange and red, giving him a sense of fire fading in the sky. As the sun went down, there came a shifting, darkness rising, and with it, a strange sense of elementals with it.
Tolan suspected that was little more than his imagination.
He waited another few moments, letting the sun completely fall and darkness begin to linger, and looked around for movement in the city. At first, it came slowly, and then increased, giving Tolan reason to head toward the Academy. It was time to make his next step.
As he approached, his heart racing, he focused on shaping.
Heading toward the Academy at this time of night reminded him all too much of what it had been like when he’d been here the last time. There had been a secretiveness, a silence, and though he didn’t fear the Academy itself, it was what was inside that worried him.
Continuing on his way, he paused at the edge of the line of buildings leading up to the Academy proper. From here, he could make out the towers rising in the distance. On the ground, he couldn’t see the runes on the towers quite as well as from the air, and even at night, wasn’t sure if he would be able to see them clearly. It was better he didn’t even try.
Tolan instead wondered if he could use those runes.
He hadn’t given it much thought before, but there had to be something about them he could borrow from. In order to do so, it would require him to draw upon power he wasn’t sure he was capable of mastering. It was the kind of power the Grand Master had warned him he might not be able to access.
He focused on fire. Fire was easy, and came to him quickly. He wrapped himself in it, holding onto a sense of the shaping. This close to the Academy, he was hopeful he could hide himself if others within the Academy might be aware of his shaping. As he did, he focused on the sense of the fire tower, the rune marked on the outside. He strained, pushing outward with a shaping to reach that rune, wanting to pour power into it.
Tolan was concerned he might push too much into it. If he did, he risked harming himself.
There came a steady buildup, more than he could shape on his own, and far more than he could use even with the furios.
Tolan began to ease off his connection to those runes, not wanting to hold onto too much power. It was tempting, but at the same time, that temptation meant he was bound to do something foolish. He didn’t want to unleash fire in a way that would be damaging not only to him but to the fire bond.
How about earth? As he shaped it, he focused on the earth tower and the rune there. As with fire, it reverberated, slowly building, a rumbling starting deep within him. Tolan released it, fearful he might explode power outward.
He looked around the Academy. Something within him trembled. There was power he was able to access, and not at all what he had expected. There was no way he should have been able to reach for power that easily, and yet, by focusing on the runes on the towers, he could.
Hurrying across the courtyard, Tolan reached the main entrance. Inside, he paused, looking around. It was mostly empty, a few older students making their way through the halls, and they didn’t pay him any mind. He hadn’t been gone all that long, certainly not long enough to draw too much attention, and not at all as long as he had been when subjected to the Inquisition. This was practically easy.
Tolan debated where he would go.
He wanted to do this as quickly as possible. The library.
There was a risk of one of the master librarians being upset with his presence, but he needed to find Master Minden.
Once inside the library, he hesitated. There were more people here than he’d expected. He glanced up at the dais, noting the master librarians. They were not Master Minden. And they weren’t Master Jensen. Master Stole and Master Havern were there, both with books spread in front of them, as the master librarians often did while working. He waited, looking around and debating how much he would push into the library, when he saw Wallace.
The other man remained leaning over his book, studying by himself, as he often did. While debating what to do, Tolan made a circuit of the library. As he went, he searched for signs of Master Minden. Even if he didn’t reach the Convergence, he could tell her why he was here. He believed she would be willing to help.
He lingered along the outer wall, and as he went, he considered waiting for Master Minden, but didn’t think he had the necessary time.
Master Stole made her way down the dais and Tolan ducked behind it, wanting to, if nothing else, hide from her. It was better than to have questions asked of him.
He lingered for a moment. As he did, he searched for the door leading down to the Convergence. It was masked, but as he found the runes marking it, he pressed his hand up against them, pushing power through them, and hesitated.
The moment he opened this door, the moment he pushed power through it, someone would be aware. It would be Master Minden, most likely, and he knew she could be upset with him for this, but he needed to do it.
Tolan completed the shaping.
The door popped open.
Hesitating for only a moment, he stepped inside, closing the door behind him. As he did, darkness swallowed him.
Then a surge of shaping washed over him.
23
Tolan hesitated. The shaping that struck him was surprisingly a mixture of elements. Through it, he felt spirit placed among it, twisting and spinning, the combined effort of the other elements working with it.
Tolan had used a shaping like this before, and recognized it. A shaping like this was meant to allow the shaper access to powerful elements, and allow them to know the way they worked together.
He waited, letting the shaping slide over him, but shifted the nature of his own protection in a way allowing him to defend himself. In doing so, he kept the strange shaping from striking him. He had to turn each of the elements at the same time, using them so they resonated at the same frequencies as the shaping approaching him, but he managed to match it, finding a way to use it so he wasn’t going to be discovered.
This was the kind of shaping Master Sartan had warned of, but he wasn’t turning it on himself. He was inverting it, twisting it, but the shaping itself didn’t work over him.
That power persisted, and he held onto it.
He was sure he was meant to know about it. He continued down the stairs, determined to avoid the nature of the shaping, thinking he had to have some way of figuring out who was forming it. If he could, he could figure out where it was coming from.
Lanterns along the walls glowed softly, seeming to pulse in time with his presence, and as he descended, they glowed a little more brightly with each step. That was unlikely to be only his imagination. The more he worked, the more certain he was he detected another shaping layered beneath the first. He was sure he hadn’t imagined it. The longer he focused, the more certain he was that it was there.
Hurrying down the stairs, he reached the first landing, and from here, it wouldn’t take long to reach the Convergence.
More light glowed softly here.
Tolan looked around, thinking he was bound to come across someone else shaping, but there was no one. The sense of power continued to build, though, and he might not know where it came from, but it was down here.
Tolan approached carefully. He wrapped one hand around the ring dangling from the necklace, thankful he hadn’t given it back to his father when he’d seen him. He’d used it to hold onto his connection to spirit, knowing t
here had to be something within that shaping to help him.
There had to be something here. Had the shaper somehow hidden themselves? The sense of shaping was present here, pushing against him, creating a warning, almost as if designed to hold him back.
As he focused on the shaping, he began to recognize more within it. It was more than just a shaping designed as a barrier; it was a warning of sorts, a way of refusing a shaper’s presence, a way of keeping them from reaching this place.
And the power within it was subtle. Without having been here before, Tolan wasn’t sure he would have known to come, and might have been influenced by it.
Then again, it seemed almost as if not designed to hold him out.
He needed to figure out who was holding this shaping.
He continued through the open chamber. In the distance, the doorway blocking access to the Convergence loomed in front of him. Dozens of runes marked the surface.
This was a place of considerable power. As he stood there, holding onto his own shaping, keeping it wrapped around him so he didn’t get caught up in the power, he gently pushed back against those shapings.
When he did, it reacted.
It was a strange sensation, almost as if the shaping was alive. It came at him, attacking the way he shaped, reacting violently, thrashing against his shaping. Tolan quickly retreated, removing the effect of his shaping, but it might already have been too late. As he shaped, as he pulled on that power, he continued to feel the effect of the strange shaping. It pressed in on him, attempting to cut him off from the shaping bonds.
Tolan stopped fighting. He let it cut him off from the shaping bonds. There was nothing he needed from them. He could shape without the element bonds and reach his shaping without them.
He held onto the barrier around him, using his connection to the elements in order to do so, and stopped fighting against the shaping.
The violence of the shaping retreated.
Tolan focused instead on the runes. There had to be power within them, and he needed to use them to open the Convergence.
Standing in front of the door, focusing on the power there, he debated whether this was what he really wanted to do. If he opened the Convergence, he would release the power within. They could use that to trap even more of the elementals and would destroy all Terndahl, even if they didn’t mean to do it.
As he focused on it, he decided to shape the runes.
Power flowed out of him, hitting the nearest of the runes, and he continued to push shaping after shaping into it, using each of the elements. When he’d been here the first time, he couldn’t have imagined doing this by himself. It had required all his friends in order to shape through it, and now he was doing it on his own.
And as he did, he realized it wasn’t a particularly difficult shaping—only that it took power. It simply took access to each of the elements, and in that sense, it took considerable power with each of the elements, but it wasn’t something Tolan struggled with.
He continued to shape, sending it into the runes.
He didn’t have enough strength to open it on his own. Even with a shaping like this, as he pushed upon the runes, he still didn’t have enough energy. He tried, but the shaping wasn’t strong enough. Tolan released his connection, leaning back and looking around. Maybe that was for the best.
As he looked around, he felt the effect of a shaping once again. This time, there was something in it he hadn’t recognized before. The shaping had spirit.
Tolan focused, searching himself. That spirit shaping had been used on him.
It was subtle, but strong enough that it overwhelmed his ability to ignore it. The touch was soft, gentle in a way he wasn’t sure he would be able to recreate, and more than that, it pushed against the sense of the Convergence.
It was almost as if someone used it to hide the Convergence.
The longer he was here, the more he felt a desire to leave. Had he not recognized the sense of spirit, he might actually have left.
His breath caught.
The shaping was powerful, and more than he remembered when he’d been here before. Could the Inquisitors have learned how to find the Convergence?
Stopping them meant he had to find their Keystones—and it meant reaching the Convergence. If only the draasin had taught him how to do that.
He focused on shaping. Opening it would require a difficult shaping, perhaps more than he could handle.
He began to understand the purpose behind the powerful shaping he detected. He had thought it was strictly a barrier. While it had that purpose, there was more to it. It wasn’t just a barrier, and wasn’t just a way to prevent others from finding the Convergence. It was designed to be a defense against anyone who might find it and to prevent them from opening this door. He had felt it the moment he’d begun to attempt to shape, the way the power pushed outward from it, washing over him, and in doing so, it came as a promise of violence.
And yet, Tolan needed to reach it. He had to stop the creep of the waste. He had to stop the Inquisitors.
He started to draw upon each of the elements. He focused that power, letting it flow from him quietly and faintly at first, and then with more intensity. He didn’t focus on the door—not at first. Instead, Tolan kept his attention on the towers above and the runes within them. That was what he needed to reach.
Could he use that power from here? He didn’t know if the protections would prevent him from doing it or not. It was entirely possible the barriers he suspected the Grand Master had placed would be enough to keep him from doing it.
Surprisingly, power flowed through the shaping, emanating away. As it did, he pushed it toward each of the runes. That power sliced through the shaping, as if intended for that purpose.
Tolan continued to push, letting the shaping flow from him, and when it struck the runes, power surged within him.
He didn’t know how much time he had and didn’t want to wait. He worried that doing so would somehow diminish him.
Focusing on the door, he exploded power into it.
It began to shimmer. Colors began to swirl, filling the shape of the patterns marked upon the door. As it did, he realized there was something missing.
He hadn’t been shaping spirit.
He feared drawing upon the spirit rune, not wanting to gain the attention of the Grand Master before his actions here were complete. He didn’t doubt the Grand Master would be paying attention to what he was doing, and had little doubt the Grand Master would recognize a shaping, so he needed to be careful.
But he had a bondar.
Once again, he wrapped his hand around the ring, pulling power through it. He wasn’t sure if that was what his parents had intended for him to do, but it was effective.
The door swung open.
Tolan hurried inside, closing it behind him, and pushed his sense of elemental energy back through it. If nothing else, he wanted to seal it so no one else could reach him and use the Convergence against him.
He paused, looking around. The pool of the Convergence spread in front of him. Last time he had been here, Tolan had been so focused on survival, he hadn’t had the opportunity to fully appreciate the pool itself. Within it was a silvery liquid. Even as he looked at it from here, there was something thick about it, something unusual. It wasn’t plain water, not like he would have expected from other pools. This was something else. There was power here. He’d felt it even then, and his connection to his ability to shape had increased in the last few months, so he was far more aware of that power now.
It was almost as if he could use it, draw shaping from it, the same way he could draw shaping from a bondar. It was strange to think of it like that, but it struck him as if it were some extra-powered bondar.
That was what he needed from it. He needed the power of the Convergence, and he needed the connection to that power in order to be able to reach the Keystones.
Tolan didn’t know how much time he had before someone realized he was here. The moment they
did, he would either have to depart or he would have to hide. Considering he wasn’t sure he would even know how to hide, that might not be much of an option.
He needed to know where the Keystones were. That was the first step.
What would that involve?
Focusing on spirit. Could it be anything else?
He had learned that spirit allowed all elements to connect, and that through spirit, there was an interconnectedness.
What was the key to shaping spirit here? When he’d been here before, there had been something of a summons, an effort by Jory to pull power from the Convergence. That wasn’t what he wanted to do here. It wasn’t about pulling power out. It was about pushing power in, using that to help him connect and get a better understanding of the nature of the power available within the Convergence, the connectedness the Convergence could help him find, and the Keystones the Inquisitors had placed.
He pushed on his shaping, sending it into the Convergence. As he did, he sent a request. The shaping poured into the Convergence. It was almost as if it absorbed it, accepting it, drawing it deeper and deeper.
A singular focus remained in his mind—find the Keystones and the trapped power of the elementals. When he could do that, he would be able to stop the Inquisitors.
There was no real response.
He needed a greater draw to trigger something within the Convergence.
Using the bondar, he pulled upon power, sending that out and away from him. There came a sense of energy, a flowing sort of power drifting out from the bondar, into him, and then into the Convergence. Tolan poured more and more power into it but could tell he didn’t have enough. He needed a connection to something greater.
How was he going to reach that power?
There was another option.
If he used that option, he would most definitely draw the attention of someone else, either the Grand Master or the Grand Inquisitor, or perhaps even the Inquisitors.
Tolan reached for the spirit rune.
The Wind Rages (Elemental Academy Book 4) Page 25
