Aela got to her feet, shaking herself free, shaping building from her. Tolan tried to create a barrier, but it was all he could do to hold onto the barrier around his mind.
She stalked toward him.
“Do you think you will be able to stop this? Do you think I am acting alone?”
“You aren’t going to succeed.”
“You don’t even know what we’re trying to do.”
There was movement behind her and the power of shaping, but Tolan couldn’t take his eyes off her to focus on it.
“What are you trying to do?”
“There is power in the world greater even than that of the element bonds. Those of us who have discovered it will use it.”
Tolan shivered at the way she said it. Having felt the effect of her spirit shaping, he had little question as to the way she would use any sort of power. It meant whoever she intended to use that power on would be subjugated the same way she’d just attempted to subjugate him.
And it meant the elementals would be forever trapped, held within the element bond, or perhaps worse, forced to serve.
“The others will stop you.”
“Others? By that, you mean the disciples?” She smiled. “I admit I’m surprised you were able to withstand the Inquisition as long as you did, and yet now you reveal yourself.”
“I didn’t serve the disciples. I still don’t.”
“And yet you’re hoping they will be the ones to stop me?”
“You’re attacking Terndahl. Even if the disciples don’t stop you, when the Grand Master learns—”
She lashed at him with a surge of power. He was thrown away from her and landed on his back. He looked up as she stormed toward him, power flowing from her, and Tolan tried to hold onto the barrier around his mind, but he was failing.
“The Grand Master has served his purpose. He will serve no more.”
“He will stop you.” Tolan scooted back, trying to get away from her, but there didn’t seem to be any way to do so. He scrambled back, moving along the ground. As he did, the earth scraped across his back, painful and biting. “When he learns you attacked Terndahl, he will stop you. The Academy will stop you.”
“The Academy will soon be under different authority.”
She took another step toward him and Tolan squeezed his eyes shut, focusing on hyza. As he did, he sent a single request.
He didn’t want the elemental harmed. Regardless of what happened, the elemental needed to get away. He didn’t deserve to suffer simply because he had stayed, thinking to help him.
Run.
The thought surged toward the elemental, and Tolan prayed it was enough.
As Aela’s shaping built, Tolan braced himself. He opened his eyes, looking up at her. He would force her to meet his eyes as she shaped him, forcing her to know what she did when she destroyed his mind.
She didn’t seem to care. She sneered at him, power building, spirit flowing through her. One like her didn’t deserve that kind of power. Spirit should be held by those who understood it.
Her shaping began to sweep toward him. It was all Tolan could do to hold her off.
And then his barrier began to collapse.
26
As Tolan felt his barrier collapse, he braced himself for the inevitable impact.
It never came.
Instead, a roar exploded, heat blasted around him, and a blur of flames slammed into Aela. She cried out, trying to redirect her shaping, but hyza overpowered her, ripping through her shaping—and her.
It was a brutal and bloody end, but it was an end.
Tolan got to his feet. He could barely stand, and hyza approached. After a moment, the elemental dropped to his haunches, looking up at him.
“Thank you.”
The elemental turned his head, studying him, and seemed as if he was going to say something, but a shaping built near Tolan and he turned, half expecting to find something dangerous. Instead, it was a familiar shaping.
“Father,” Tolan said with a nod.
His father looked around. “What happened?”
“I had help.”
His father looked around, frowning. “What sort of help?”
Tolan shrugged. “The kind of help that mattered.” He studied the fallen form of Aela. He had a hard time feeling any sympathy for her. Still, he didn’t know he completely understood what she’d been doing. There was something she was after, and she had been working with someone else, though Tolan didn’t know who that might’ve been.
“Are you ready to return with us?”
There was another sign of movement in the distance, followed by a shaping. This one came almost like a warning. The Grand Master.
Tolan turned his attention back to his father. “I can’t.”
“I told you what the price of your visiting our lands would be.”
“I understand the price, but I can’t. I won’t betray you. But I need to return to the Academy.”
“We can’t take that chance, Tolan. Even for you.”
Tolan took a deep breath. Would he have gotten this far, and have seen everything he had, only to have his father be the one who dragged him away?
“I can serve better here,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
Tolan motioned to the edge of the waste. “They’ve been doing something. Some attack. Whatever it is caused the waste to move. I can help remove the runes, but I think I need to head back to the Academy to understand what else is taking place.”
“They won’t allow it.”
“Who they?”
“The rest of the disciples.”
“Did they think I’m going to betray the Draasin Lord? I’ve met him, and won’t betray him.”
His father stared at him for a moment. “What do you mean, you met him?”
“The Draasin Lord.”
His father studied him. “You met what you were supposed to see in that place. It’s a vision, nothing more than that.”
“That’s not what I mean. I met him.”
“You met him?”
Tolan nodded. “I understand not many do.”
“No,” his father said with a whisper. “And none of us have.”
“None?” He found it difficult to believe none of the disciples of the Draasin Lord would ever have met the Draasin Lord, but the way his father looked at him suggested that was the case.
“We’ve seen evidence of his passing, and we can communicate with some of the elementals who suggest he’s out there, such as the elementals you met when you were with your time in our Selection. Other than that, we have not been able to find him.”
Tolan smiled to himself. “I think he has to choose to reveal himself. He’s the reason I’m back here. The Draasin Lord returned me to Terndahl.”
His father’s breath caught. “Not only did you see him, but you rode him?”
“How else would I have returned?”
“I didn’t know. I thought perhaps you had more potency with shaping than we had realized. That or bondars. Though the Academy bondars are weaker, they still can have some potency.”
Tolan smiled. He had seen that firsthand. “If only I did.”
His father looked along the line of the waste. “If you show us these runes, then you can return.”
Another burst of shaping came. Closer this time.
“Use this.” He drew out the runes he’d used, shaped into them, and let power flow. “Is that enough?”
“It should be. You have gained more skill than we expected.”
Tolan glanced behind his father. “I…” He shook his head. “What will you do?”
“Remove them. And then, perhaps we can understand what we can do to prevent others from forming.” He took a deep breath. “We have been searching for the key to the waste for many years. Perhaps that can be your contribution.”
“It’s not just that there is an absence of the elementals?”
“It’s more than just an absence of the elementals. There�
��s something that has changed. We’ve tried to return elementals to the waste, but even when we do, they either can’t or won’t remain.”
Tolan focused on what he could detect of the runes and guided his father to one of them. They crouched down next to it, and he studied it for a moment before getting to his feet.
“You did well, Tolan.”
“You’re not going to bring me back. I get to choose my fate.”
“You’re right. Much as I chose mine and your mother chose hers.”
He still didn’t know what had happened with his mother, only that his father hadn’t talked much about her.
“Is that why you left me behind?”
His father smiled. “It’s complicated, but we knew if we brought you to the other side, we would be committing you to a path. It’s one you need to choose for yourself, not to have chosen for you.” He reached out a hand as if to shake Tolan’s, and rather than shaking it, Tolan pulled his father toward him in a hug.
“Be safe. Know we will keep an eye on you and know you are welcome to return when you have finished with whatever you need to do,” his father said.
Tolan looked around the edge of the waste. There were several other disciples making their way along the border, but none focused on him. Instead, they were wandering along the edge, and his father went to talk to the nearest of them before making his way back toward Tolan.
When they were gone, Tolan remained where he was. It didn’t take long for the Grand Master to appear. There were other shapers nearby, but they spread out, searching. Hopefully, they wouldn’t find any of the disciples.
When the Grand Master saw Aela, he frowned. “I hoped things would turn out differently,” he whispered. When the Grand Master looked up at him, he frowned. “Was this their doing?”
He shook his head. “She attacked me.”
“You would not have killed, Shaper Ethar.”
Tolan wasn’t so certain what he would do anymore. All he knew was that he had survived. “I didn’t.”
“That is all you will tell me?”
“The Inquisitors were placing something like Keystones to trap elementals and their power. I don’t know what they intended to use it for, but I don’t think Aela was acting alone.”
The Grand Master eyed him for a long moment. A shaping swept away from him and toward Tolan. He wrapped himself in a shaping of each of the elements, protecting himself.
“She was not.”
“You knew?”
“Why do you think we wanted her to return? There is more taking place than you know, Shaper Ethar. We lost the opportunity to discover that now.”
Tolan looked down at Aela. The sense of the waste was shifting again, moving back to where it should be. “Maybe, but we prevented something too.”
Not we, but he. Without him—and the draasin urging him—the elementals would have remained trapped.
“I can see why she chose you.”
“Who?”
The Grand Master tipped his head to the side a moment before turning his attention back to Tolan. “Master Minden. When you return, be sure to tell her I know she’s using you.”
“I can return?”
“Don’t you want to?”
The sense of other shapings built all around him, though he had no idea where they came from. Were the master shapers attacking the disciples—or was it about the Inquisitors?
“Shaper Ethar?”
Tolan tore his attention away, meeting the Grand Master’s eyes. “Very much.”
“Good. Then I would suggest you go. And don’t make the mistake of shaping me again.”
Tolan sucked in a sharp breath. The Grand Master knew he had shaped him.
“I won’t.”
With that, he hurried away and took the opportunity to jump to the Shapers Path and started along it. It wasn’t long before he reached Amitan. When he did, it was late in the day and he entered the main door, heading to the student quarters, and to Ferrah.
He found her in the library, as he suspected he would. She was bent over the table, looking at a book, and when he came in, she jumped to her feet.
Tolan hurried over to her, wrapping his arms around her and giving her a quick kiss. “I’m sorry I left when I did.”
“You don’t have to explain. When the Inquisitors returned, I understood.” She looked around the library. “The Grand Master came to me. He said you were going to take his assignment.”
“I tried. I failed.”
He would tell her more later. She deserved that from him. For now, that was all that mattered.
And when it came to the Grand Master, perhaps that was the only answer he needed, too. When the other man returned, Tolan didn’t know how he would react. Now he knew the Grand Master was aware he’d shaped him, he feared… What, exactly? The Grand Master could have punished him outside the city. It was almost as if he didn’t exactly mind that Tolan had done what he had.
Why was that?
Tolan scanned the inside of the library. It only been a day since he’d been here, and yet with the exhaustion, he felt as if it was much longer. Master Minden sat upon the dais, looking down at her books.
“I’ll be right back,” he started. “There’s quite a bit more I want to tell you.”
“You’re not going to keep anything from me?”
“No.”
Ferrah smiled, taking a seat and pulling her books back toward her. Tolan started toward the dais, and Master Minden climbed down, making her way to the row of shelves. He followed her, and when he joined her, she glanced over.
“Did you succeed?”
“I found what they were doing.”
“They?”
“The Inquisitors. They used some strange runes on the border of the waste. They were changing it.”
“Did you see these runes?”
Tolan nodded. “I saw them. I destroyed what I could and the disciples were going to take care of the rest. And I think I can repeat them.”
“Great Mother,” the master librarian said. “Could you have finally uncovered the key?”
“What key?”
“The key to everything.”
“I don’t understand?”
“Not yet, Shaper Ethar, but you will.”
“How?” Tolan looked around the library before settling his gaze back on Master Minden. “The Grand Master followed us. He knows you were involved.”
“Of course, he did. Which is why he told you to come to me. Now you and I must take on a different task.”
“What task is that?”
“Discovering who the Inquisitors serve.”
Grab book 5 of Elemental Academy: The Spirit Binds
The Inquisitors have been stopped, but the one who leads them remains at large.
Tolan discovers a dangerous plot against the Academy—and all of Terndahl—the Inquisitors have planned for far longer than any have suspected. The power involved is unlike anything ever encountered by those within the Academy. Tolan isn’t sure he’s capable of understanding what has happened, but with his connection to the elementals, he might be the only one able.
The key to what’s happening is tied to something in Tolan’s past. For him to stop the one who leads the Inquisitors, and to understand what they’re after, requires him to know more about where he came from and why his parents left him in Ephra.
Stopping the Inquisitors is only the beginning, not only for to save Terndahl, but for Tolan to finally know himself.
Author’s Note
Dear Reader,
Thank you so much for reading The Wind Rages. I hope you enjoyed it. If you would be so kind as to take a moment to leave a review on Amazon or elsewhere, I would be very grateful.
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D.K. Holmberg
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Also by D.K. Holmberg
Elemental Academy
The Fire Within
The Earth Awakens
The Water Ruptures
The Wind Rages
The Spirit Binds
The Cloud Warrior Saga
Chased by Fire
Bound by Fire
Changed by Fire
Fortress of Fire
Forged in Fire
Serpent of Fire
Servant of Fire
Born of Fire
Broken of Fire
Light of Fire
Cycle of Fire
The Endless War
Journey of Fire and Night
Darkness Rising
Endless Night
Summoner’s Bond
Seal of Light
The Elder Stones Saga
The Darkest Revenge
Shadows Within the Flame
Remnants of the Lost
The Coming Chaos
The Shadow Accords
Shadow Blessed
Shadow Cursed
Shadow Born
Shadow Lost
Shadow Cross
Shadow Found
The Collector Chronicles
Shadow Hunted
Shadow Games
Shadow Trapped
The Dark Ability
The Dark Ability
The Heartstone Blade
The Tower of Venass
Blood of the Watcher
The Shadowsteel Forge
The Guild Secret
Rise of the Elder
The Sighted Assassin
The Binders Game
The Forgotten
Assassin’s End
The Dragonwalker
The Wind Rages (Elemental Academy Book 4) Page 28
