1
The subtle pull on spirit drifted toward Tolan; a gentle tug that was like a musician pulling on a string. He was aware of it in ways that he normally would not have been and could feel that drawing of spirit coming to him as he paced around the inside of the spirit tower. The spirit tower was filled with students, more so than it had been in the last few years since he had become Master of Spirit. Now they came to him willingly, believing that if they had some inkling of a connection to spirit, Tolan would find a way to connect them to it. They weren’t wrong, but where they were wrong was in the belief that he would somehow grant them knowledge before they had the experience to use it.
He paused in midspeech, focusing on the strange sensation that tugged through spirit. It was subtle, but the more that Tolan focused on it, the more certain he was that whatever he was detecting was real. Something had pulled upon spirit.
“Master Ethar?”
This came from Norant, a skilled student who tended to sit in the front of the classroom. He had taken to following Tolan around, watching him a little bit more closely than he had when he had first come to learn about spirit. Ever since Tolan had revealed the presence of Roland, then defeated him, his life had started to change.
In part that change had come from how the Inquisitors viewed him, but partly it came from the fact that he had continued proving himself with spirit.
After all this time, Tolan still struggled to prove himself.
“I’m sorry,” he said, blinking and pushing away the sensation. There were many shapers within the Academy who had the ability to reach spirit, and so the strange tug, the pulling on a string that he detected, could be anything. “Where was I?”
“You are talking about the early days of the Academy,” Mara said.
Tolan smiled at her. Her blonde hair was brushed back, bound with a pink ribbon, and she sat awfully close to a young man named Johnal who Tolan had seen her friendly with. He had dark hair, a sharp jaw, and was a good student. In Tolan’s mind, that mattered more than anything else.
“That’s right,” he said, smiling and sweeping his gaze around the gathered students. He reminded himself that this was the reason he was here. His goal was to teach, to instruct the students, to provide them with lessons that they couldn’t get from any of the other instructors. All could teach their element, but Tolan was one of the few who decided to take it in a different direction. Not only did he attempt to give them lessons on spirit, but he thought it important to give them a bit more history than they got otherwise. He mixed that with his discussion of the elementals. It was the only way that he thought he could continue teaching. The elementals deserved his protection, and Tolan was determined to offer whatever help he could give them.
“The early days of the Academy. We don’t often speak of that, do we?” He started pacing and glanced down at the rune for spirit on the floor. The students were arranged around the rune, though very few of them truly understood what it was they sat upon. “The earliest shapers who founded the Academy are beyond us,” he said. “We do have some records of their time. Every Selection is a memory of that time. As you come to know spirit, you will come to understand how connected the ancient shapers were to not only shaping, but to the world itself.”
“How is the Selection tied to those ancient shapers?” Desiree asked.
She played with her dark hair while she leaned off on her side, tapping her fingers on her leg. There was a pattern to it, and Tolan wondered if she had any idea that the pattern she tapped out on her leg might offer her access to the elementals. Everything had a connection to the elements.
“The way that we shape is tied directly to those ancient shapers. They brought their heritage to the Academy, wanting to use spirit to bind those who had the benefit of learning shaping, but of course, as you can imagine, what they brought to us was more than just an ability to shape. It was how they chose to shape. It was the way they chose to shape.”
Tolan paused, glancing over at his desk. He’d made several maps in the years he had been the Master of Spirit, and they were still stacked on top of his desk from his search for Roland. Now that search had shifted, becoming a search for a particular elemental that he no longer knew if he could ever find again.
“Those shapers believed in the power of spirit.” He smiled, sweeping his hands around. He had a bondar on one finger his father had made that connected him to spirit, binding him in ways that allowed him to reach for even more spirit than he would’ve been able to on his own. In this room, connected as he was to not only the rune near the center of the Academy but to the Convergence as well, he didn’t really need the bondar, though he still valued it. It was something his father had made under the direction of his mother. For whatever reason, the thought mattered to Tolan, though he knew it should not, given what he had gone through with his family. “They believed that through spirit, we could find shapers destined to serve Amitan and Terndahl. They believed that we could use spirit to find those who could train the next generation.” He smiled as he looked at everyone else gathered in the room. “Which is how you were chosen. The shaping used upon you in your Selection is the same shaping that those ancient shapers used.”
“Surely it’s changed over time,” Norant said.
“You’d be surprised,” Tolan said. “When I first learned of that shaping, I thought to explore it, asking the same question as you. I imagined that it must have changed. There would be no way that it would not have been modified over time, but what I found was that it had not. Not really.” Tolan closed his eyes, focusing on spirit. For a moment, he had a hint of a connection, something that suggested that whatever he had detected before was still out there, but then it faded. If there had been something else plucking on spirit, trying to draw his attention, it wasn’t attempting to reach him nearly as strongly as he had thought before.
“The shaping is subtle,” he said. “There are three parts to it. One involves you looking inward, facing an element of your fears. Another involves you looking beyond yourself, testing whether you were willing to work with your colleagues. And the final one is merely a matter of testing your mettle. Some think that is the least important, but to my mind, that is the most important.” He strode through the students to stand on the rune. “I find that many people can learn to shape. If there’s one thing we do well at the Academy, it’s teaching students how to shape and reach for the elements. Some will have more facility with them than others, but all can become shapers of some sort. It’s truly what we choose to do with that shaping that sets us apart. It’s what makes the master shapers of the Terrenhal Academy so valuable.”
He paused, sweeping his gaze around at the students, trying to let the words settle in. “What I’d like you to work on today is once again protecting your mind.”
There was a soft groan, and Tolan smiled to himself. It was a reaction that he had gotten several times over the last few months since he had continued his focus on protecting themselves from spirit. Many didn’t see the need, but Tolan was determined to prove to them that if they were able to protect their mind, and use a shaping that did not involve spirit, they wouldn’t have to fear anyone who could control it.
“Perhaps it would help if I shared with you a little bit more history,” he said.