“You should present yourself to the Grand Master,” Tolan said.
“I was told I had to present myself to any master shaper.”
“Seeing as how I’ve never instructed you, I think it would be better if you presented yourself to him.”
“But I want you to be involved,” Draln said.
Tolan didn’t like how that sounded. “I will—”
“We will pass on the word of your request, Shaper Sar,” Ferrah said.
Draln smiled again, and he watched them as they turned, heading out of the Academy.
“I’m not excited about that,” Tolan said. “I thought we would have more time ranking higher than him. I don’t know why he made a point of presenting himself to us other than to prove he knew what was needed.”
“It’s because by doing so, we have to be part of the testing.”
“What?”
Ferrah nodded. “By presenting himself to us in that way, we’re obligated to be a part of the testing.”
“Then we should put it off.”
“There are expectations about how long a testing can be put off,” Ferrah said.
“Great. Now we have to deal with that.”
“We can go back to the Grand Master…”
Tolan shook his head. He didn’t want to go back the Grand Master just yet, and anything Draln might want from them would have to wait. There might be expectations of his testing, and given what Tolan knew from when he had presented himself, those expectations meant a testing would be done within a short period of time, but he didn’t have to rush off and do it for Draln.
Using a shaping of wind, he took to the top of the Academy. Ferrah followed. They stood on the stones comprising the tower, looking out over the distance and over Amitan. The Shapers Path was barely visible, the translucent surface catching a little bit of the sunlight. There was activity down in the city, that of people moving, and shaped energy, and the overall sense of life. Tolan breathed in the familiarity of it. Everything about Amitan was pleasant, at least these days. Tolan had been within Amitan long enough that he had begun to feel it was home.
Turning his attention to Ferrah, he locked eyes with her. “Are you ready?”
“I don’t think I’m ever ready for this, but…” She reached into her pocket, pulling out the bondar. She pushed power into it, storing it within the orb. It started to glow, taking on a sense of power. They had tested how long that power would remain within it and had learned it could be stored for the better part of the day before it would begin to fade. Ferrah had worked on trying to hold more and more power within the orb itself and had discovered there was a certain technique that would allow her to hold more power within it.
She nodded to him.
Gathering the other elements, including spirit, Tolan created the spirit shaping. With a burst of lightning called down from the sky, they traveled out to the heart of the waste.
2
The sudden change from all the life within Amitan to the absence of it within the waste was jarring. Even now, when Tolan knew how to reach for the power of the elements out here, the suddenness of it and the sense of what he was able to detect was almost too much for him. He gathered his connection to the elements, trying to hold onto that sense so he wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the absence of what he was able to detect, but there was a weakness to his sense of the elements.
A rocky landscape greeted him. The sun baked down, hot and unpleasant. The stone was dry and cracked, and there were sections where massive gashes had opened up in the ground. He stood in place for a moment, getting oriented. In the distance, he could make out a bit of movement. Some of that came from the Guardians, elementals supposed to be bound in this place to hold the power of the Convergence here, but some came from the villagers from the free elemental village who were working on the bondars.
“You never take us all the way to the heart of the waste,” Ferrah said.
“I never want to appear where others are working.”
“What would happen if you did?”
Tolan glanced at the sky. It was cloudless, and every so often, he thought he might catch a glimpse of the Draasin Lord flying, but he never did. The Draasin Lord remained absent, though he thought he could detect a hint of their connection.
Tolan didn’t know where he had gone. The draasin was one other thing he was looking for. In the time since they’d rescued the Guardians, saving the wild elemental separated from its bond here, he had thought he would have more time to spend with the Draasin Lord, but the draasin had remained distant.
For a creature that had lived a thousand years, Tolan suspected the Draasin Lord didn’t think it was gone all that long. For someone like himself with a limited lifespan, he thought the Draasin Lord had been gone an incredibly long time.
“I don’t know what would happen if I called on the lightning. I think others would be safe, but I never really know.” It was part of the reason he was careful when he used the warrior shaping. He always did it from the top of the Academy tower. There weren’t many others there, and thankfully, there also were not any Shapers Paths they had to worry about his bolt of lightning carving through.
Coming out to this place in the waste, he could direct himself to the center, directly toward where they had uncovered the sense of the Convergence and situated within the heart of the four Guardians—but doing so meant he might harm someone. Even his father. They started forward, and when they reached the outer edge of this section of the waste, Tolan again remarked upon how much everything had changed.
When he had first come out here, there was no sense of anything. There had been no life. There had been no sense of even the Guardian elementals. He had tried to focus on them, hoping he might be able to uncover something, but as much as he focused on them, he still hadn’t been able to reach for them—or for their power.
These days, the activity out here was considerably different. Makeshift structures had formed, giving people the opportunity to survive out on the waste. There was energy here coming from the elements trapped within the orb bondars, and that gave a sense of activity and energy here that wasn’t present before.
The shuffling of the Guardians, staying in place for the most part, staying near their traditional locations, was different. Every so often, he had learned, the Guardians would leave, departing for hours at a time before returning. The first time it happened had caused quite a commotion for those working here. They’d worried something had happened and they had somehow angered the Guardians. The villagers working here were not intimidated by the idea of working with elementals. Having lived in the free elemental village as long as they had, they understood and recognized the need to work with the elementals. When the Guardian had returned, refreshed and restored, Tolan had understood. They had to have that connection to their bond.
As far as he could tell, the bondars they needed to form tied them to the Convergence in the free elemental village. That was the connection that needed to reform, and it was difficult for them to restore.
A gray-bearded man strode toward Tolan, coming from one of the buildings erected within the center of the waste. Flat eyes shone within his wrinkled and suntanned face. “Tolan. Ferrah. I was not expecting you to come so early,” his father said.
“I just wanted to check on the progress,” he said.
“Well, we are getting a sense of the bondars, but it is not so easy. Knowing what the bondar is and being able to re-create it are different things.” His father sent his gaze sweeping around the waste. “We always like to think we know more than the shapers who came before us, and perhaps in many ways we do, but aspects of what they were able to do are different.”
Tolan understood. When he had first been at the Academy, learning about what he could of the elementals, he had felt much the same way. The master shapers had known quite a bit about the elements and the elementals, but there were things he thought they were mistaken about. As much as they knew, there was still quite a bit they didn’t.
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“We just need to start with one,” he said.
“That was our thought as well, but when we started to hold a single bondar, it was ineffective. We placed it—at least we thought we had done—but it never held.”
“What do you mean, it didn’t hold?”
When Tolan had been here the last time—and, granted, it had been several days—there had been no attempt made at forming a bondar. They had begun the process, but it was intricate work and he would’ve expected them to include him.
Then again, the people of the free elemental village didn’t really need him. They didn’t really know him, for that matter. They had been working on bondars their entire lives, and many of them were amazingly skilled. They knew aspects of creating bondars greater than some within the Academy. Most, really.
His father motioned for them to follow but stopped near the fire Guardian. The serpent lay curled along the surface of the ground, part of it buried underground. There was a sense of the elemental, a rumbling sort of energy coming from earth and fire, two of the element bonds the Guardian was tied to. Through that connection, Tolan could feel how the elemental pressed against him.
“This is the bondar we tried. We thought we would try this one first, mostly because the fire Guardian has been separated for so long.”
Tolan crouched down in front of the remains of the bondar. As his father had said, it had crumbled. There was still a hint of what had been there, the intricacy of the design, but within it was nothing more than cracked stone.
Tolan traced his finger along the runes used. They were the key to forming a bondar, but in the case of a bondar, the runes were needed to tie into something greater, latching onto energy filling the stone, almost as if they were trying to tap into the element bonds themselves.
In this case, Tolan wasn’t entirely sure if that was necessary. They needed to tap into the Convergence, using what they had learned from the Convergence within the free elemental village.
“It’s almost as if the waste doesn’t want us to form these bondars,” his father said.
“I don’t know if it’s the waste or something else,” Tolan whispered.
“We’re continuing to work. Our next thought is we have to form all four of them at the same time. Perhaps doing it in that way will allow us to connect to the bondar in such a way it won’t crack.”
He had a sense his father wasn’t entirely convinced.
Tolan leaned over, running his hand along the surface of the stone, feeling the energy within it. There was a subtle sort of sense, a pressure building up in his hand as he pushed up against the stone, but he didn’t know if he would have any more answers than his father. For that matter, his father had been working with bondars for as long as Tolan could remember. Those memories were real. Tolan was convinced of it. Within those memories, he thought his father had used the bondars to create connections to power. He still struggled with the idea his mother had used his father’s ability with the bondars, but she had. She had used all of them.
“Don’t worry. We’re going to keep working.” Someone hollered, and his father looked up. “I need to work on this, Tolan.”
“I can help,” he said.
His father smiled. “I’m sure you can. I saw what you did when we were in the village. This is different, though.”
With that, his father hurried off, joining the others.
Tolan stayed crouching near the bondar, focusing on what his father had done. There was a sense of energy within the remains, and it reminded him of what he had detected when he had found the remains of the bondar beneath the fire elemental.
“What is it?” Ferrah asked, crouching down next to him. She didn’t use any of the orb bondar; there was no need to do so. She wasn’t going be able to detect anything from the bondar itself. That wasn’t one of Ferrah’s gifts.
“I think they have some of the connection right, but I’m not sure they have all quite right.”
“They know what they’re doing when it comes to bondars,” she said.
Tolan looked over, nodding. “I know they do, it’s just…”
He took a deep breath, focusing. It was just he also didn’t know if they were approaching this the way he thought they needed to. They did know about the nature of shaping, and they did know about the nature of the bondars, but he had been the one to help restore the Convergence. Shouldn’t they be asking him for help?
Tolan didn’t want to think like that. It was a pathway toward arrogance. He had a different connection than many of these others. His was a natural connection to shaping, but also a natural connection to the elementals. His connection to the element bonds was through both of those pathways, not reaching directly toward the element bonds.
“I think there are things I can help them with.”
“Then make yourself more useful,” she said.
“That might mean I have to stay out here longer.”
“If it means you get this over with, then do it.”
“I still need to see if I can find Irina. I need to help Master Minden find the others of the Circle.” Several members of the Circle had been missing for the last few months, and now knowing what they did about the way his mother had operated, Master Minden believed his mother had been responsible for that. “And there is the issue of trying to figure out what’s beyond the waste.”
“You have to prioritize.”
“I’m trying to prioritize.”
She shook her head. “You aren’t. You try to do everything all at one time but trust me when I tell you that you simply can’t. When I first came to the Academy, I was trying to focus on learning as much as I could about all the elements, thriving in my classes, and learning about as much as I could about Par.”
“You don’t think I was studying as much as you?”
“You were studying differently. You weren’t focused on trying to reach the elements. You didn’t think you could, so anything that happened with one of the bondars was by chance. It was a benefit to you, but it wasn’t anything you really thought was helpful. You were more concerned about what you could learn about the elementals, and what was taking place within the Academy.”
“Well, we were attacked.”
“We were, but…” Ferrah shook her head. “You still need to prioritize. What is the most important thing you could do?”
Tolan looked around the waste. He thought he knew what the most important thing was, despite the need to search for his grandmother, and despite wanting to look beyond the waste. Getting this solved, reconnecting whatever power had been separated by his mother here, was critical. Until they did that, it was possible his mother would be able to press inward. The waste served as a measure of protection others hadn’t known about, and having that protection severed put Terndahl in danger.
He breathed out.
“See? You already know what you need to do.”
“It means I’m not going to be at the Academy. Draln won’t have his testing.”
She shook her head. “Oh, no. You don’t get off quite that easily. He came to us. Not just to me. When he presents himself for testing, you have to be there.”
“I don’t really want to be there.”
“And you think I do?”
“I think you would enjoy the process.”
“My testing was quite a bit different than yours, Tolan. I don’t know what the Grand Master wants to do when it comes to Draln.”
Tolan didn’t either, and knowing what they did about the need for more master shapers, he had to believe the Grand Master wouldn’t go quite as hard on him. How could he? They needed access to those who had power and connection, especially if there was going to be another attack.
This was something he could do. His father may not think he had enough knowledge of the bondars, but having borrowed the knowledge from all the villagers, using spirit as he had, he did have knowledge. It wasn’t his own, and it wasn’t even something he was able to draw upon without latching onto spirit again, but he
thought if it came down to it, he should—and could—find a way to work with them to uncover the key to sealing off these bondars again and tying the Guardians to the waste.
“Let’s get to it,” he said.
“Us?”
“You’re out here. If I’m not going to get out of the testing, then you’re not going to get out of working here. Besides, you know as much about Convergences as anyone.”
“I know about the Convergence within Par. That’s the only one I really ever studied.”
“You studied the idea behind it, and because of that, I think you do know more than you are admitting to.”
Ferrah frowned but shrugged.
They began to move around the perimeter, stopping at each of the four Guardians. After moving on from fire, they moved to wind next. The wind elemental that was bound was unusual. The shape was almost visible, and surprisingly, there was something almost humanlike to it. Tolan leaned toward the elemental, whispering something on the wind, but as usual, it did not respond.
He had spoken to the elementals here many times. Each time he tried, he used spirit, mixed with the primary element, to see if there was any way they could communicate, but in all the time he’d tried, there had been no response. It was unusual, especially as Tolan had experience with the other elementals and had been able to speak to them when he attached spirit to his attempt to do so.
He looked out across the ground, focusing on the remains of the bondar. This one was fresher than the one for the fire Guardian, and he thought he might be able to uncover something about it. But as he studied it, there was nothing within the bondar he was able to determine.
“I recognize some of these runes,” Ferrah said.
“We should recognize most of the runes,” Tolan said.
“These, in particular,” she said and tapped on the ground, motioning to a series of patterns. “They aren’t for wind.”
The Elements Bond (Elemental Academy Book 7) Page 2
