The Purifying Fire

Is that the scroll the monks are talking about?” Brannon asked.

“Yes, it is.” Chandra Nalaar smiled at the ginger-headed boy as she held out the scroll, neatly rolled up and encased in an ancient leather sheath. “The brothers are done with their work, so I thought I’d take a look at it, see what all the excitement is about.”

“I heard it has strange writing that only a few of the monks can read,” the boy said.

“That’s right,” Chandra said, sitting next to Brannon. “I can’t read it, but the monks will tell me what is says.”

The two of them were in a common room at Keral Keep, a place of learning and study for the fire mages of Regatha.

Brannon asked, “Where did you get the scroll?”

“Far away.” Chandra was used to dodging questions about her travels throughout the Multiverse. It was easier for most people to accept lies than to understand what it meant to move back and forth among the infinite planes of reality. “Do you want to look at it with me?”

She had looked at the scroll before, but that was on a plane called Kephalai where she had “liberated” it from the Sanctum of the Stars. Once back on Regatha, she had handed the scroll over to the monks at Keral Keep.

The scroll was said to be unique, the only record of a fire spell more powerful than any known. Its origin was utterly mysterious, and it had been fiercely protected on Kephalai. Chandra might not be able to interpret its meaning on her own, but she was curious enough to want another look.

The monks in the monastery’s scriptorium were very interested in the scroll, enough that young Brannon was curious about it too.

“Yes,” he said eagerly, “let’s look at it. Unroll it!”

“All right. But remember,” she cautioned. “It’s very old and fragile, so-”

“Uh, Chandra?”

“-we have to be careful not to-”

“Chandra.” Brannon was looking past her, his eyes wide with alarm.

She turned to look at whatever had captured his attention and shot to her feet when she saw a tall, menacing stranger standing at one end of the room.

“Chandra Nalaar, give me that scroll!” he said, his tone as much a demand as the words.

How does he know my name?

“Brannon, get out of here!” she said. “Now.”

“But-”

“Go!”

Recognizing her tone, the boy turned and ran, seeking the safety of the stone halls of the monastery and the presence of others.

“Give me the scroll,” said the stranger, “and no one gets hurt.”

Chandra’s attention was immediately drawn to the cold, cerulean intensity of his eyes, glowing in the shadow of his cowled cloak. She could sense his intrusion into her thoughts. A telepath.

Chandra had only just returned to this plane, and her comings and goings at the monastery passed without fanfare. No one on Regatha knew about the scroll unless one of the monks had renounced his vows and become loose-lipped. This stranger, she realized with a hot flood of surprise, must have come from Kephalai.

“You’re a planeswalker,” she breathed.

“I’m not going to ask again,” he warned her. “And you won’t live long enough to be sorry you resisted.”

If he had followed her?ther trail through the Blind Eternities, he must be very skilled. A trick like that wasn’t for beginners.

But he had picked the wrong person to follow.

“I see there’s only one of you,” she said, feeling her blood heat for combat.

“One is all it will take,” he replied.

With hair-trigger speed, Chandra’s fists lit up like torches as she thrust them toward the stranger, hurling a pair of fireballs like meteors.

But the mage was ready. As if he knew what she would do even before she did it, he met the fireballs with an ice-blue liquid mass that issued from his outstretched arms.

The counter attack was followed by a surge of power that flowed forth and encircled Chandra, glowing with the same cerulean intensity of his eyes. With Chandra momentarily paralyzed, the mind mage started mapping her consciousness, looking for the lynchpin he could use to disable her.

Chandra loathed mind mages. What could be more despicable than poking around in another person’s private thoughts and feelings? The violation, along with the stranglehold of the spell, kindled her rage like phosphorous.

By now, conscious thought was no longer an option for Chandra. The world around her slowed to a geological pace, and she could feel the power of the mountain inside her. Immovable, dominating, volcanic in its fury, it grew from that darkest part of herself, that diamond of rage deep in her core until…

Boom.

An incomparable concussive blast left Chandra at ground zero, leveling everything around her and blasting a hole in the wall where the mind mage had been.

An eerie quiet pervaded the room. Sparks flickered and died in the dead air. “Didn’t mean to blow my top like that,” she muttered to no one in particular, as she surveyed the damage.

Chandra was sure he wasn’t dead, though. She knew it wouldn’t be that easy to kill an experienced planeswalker.

“Chandra!” Brannon cried from beyond the hole in the outer wall.

“Brannon! What are you doing out there?” she shouted. “Get inside the monastery. Now!”

Instead of listening to her, the boy turned and ran again. What is the matter with him, she wondered.

Not daring to leave it behind, Chandra took the scroll and went after him. She couldn’t leave it unprotected with a mind mage running around.

As she stepped through the hole, she saw the stranger standing on a rocky ledge that overlooked her position, holding the small ginger-haired boy by the throat. Just like a kid to get in middle of things, she thought.

Brannon struggled to breathe, his feet dangling just above the ground.

“No!” Chandra’s stomach knotted with fear at the sight of her young friend in the planeswalker’s powerful grip.

“Don’t make me kill the child,” the stranger said.

Brannon kicked and gasped in pain even as he tried to speak. “Let me g… aaagh…” The phrase trailed off in a choked gurgle. Tears of pain and fear rolled down his reddened cheeks.

Chandra hated to lose. She absolutely hated it!

But she knew the scroll in her hand, however unique, wasn’t worth Brannon’s life. She held it up as an offering and called, “Don’t hurt him! You can have the scroll.”

Chandra heard how hoarse with dread her voice sounded. She watched the mind mage give Brannon a sharp shake, to make him stop squirming.

“That’s all I came for,” the planeswalker said. “As long as I get it right now, he’s fine.”

He looked cold, but not cruel. She believed that capturing Brannon was business, not pleasure.

So she tossed the scroll up to him.

It landed a few feet in front of him. “A wise decision. My impression is that you don’t make many.”

But before he could turn the boy over, Chandra heard her name called from the monastery. She turned to see Brannon looking out from the hole she had blasted in the wall.

“Chandra! What’s happening?” he shouted from a distance.

An illusion!

“All right, mindbender… You want to play?”

With a quickness to match her temper, Chandra leaped into the air, an aura of flame surrounding her as she recited a spell. Spreading her arms and expanding her chest like a bellows, all the air in a thirty foot radius went dead as she sapped the oxygen she needed as fuel for her fire. She paused at the top of her breath until it felt like she would explode with the effort, and when she let go, explode she nearly did. With all her might she exhaled, eyes wide, tongue extended like some primal totem. Her breath had the force of a cannon and burned with chemical intensity.

The stranger balled up, shielding his body with his cloak. The force of the blast unsteadied him, but he obviously had been able to conjure some protection. He emerged merely singed when everything around him had been reduced to charcoal. The scroll had fallen from his grasp, but lay out of both their reaches.

“Nice trick,” he mocked. “I bet you’re a big hit with the boys.”

Jokes? This guy has to go down, Chandra thought.

But he was just getting started. The mage’s eyes glowed brightly, and his skin changed, newly streaked blue-grey. Chandra knew something was coming but she didn’t know what. Still, she should have known this guy wouldn’t fight his own fights. He summoned an massive cloud elemental that swooped down to knock Chandra off her feet before veering to where the scroll lay on the ground.

Two can play at that game, thought Chandra as she summoned her own fire elemental to meet the cloud. The two titans collided with a sharp hiss, flame and vapor locked in a mercurial embrace.

With the elementals occupied, the mind mage made a move to recover the scroll himself, but Chandra was on point as she raised a wall of fire between him and his quarry.

“You’re going to have to work for it, mindbender.” Chandra was just starting to have fun.

Still, the stranger was undeterred. He ran down the wall to where he had last seen the scroll and stepped through the flame, an icy corona surrounding him. Chandra was waiting, though, her fist cocked, blazing hot. She hit him with a left cross that had the weight of the world behind it, and sent the mage flying backward, his body like a rag doll’s as he tumbled over the rocks.

As the flames died down, Chandra surveyed the scene. She had done well. The elementals had died fighting and there was plenty of scorched earth, but she had done well.

“Chandra, that was amazing!”

She turned to see Brannon. “You shouldn’t be out here, kiddo.”

“What happened to him?”

“He took a nasty spill. He won’t be back again.”

“Are you sure?” he asked pointing in the direction of the mage. There were several cloaked figures, all exactly alike, moving in different directions.

“He’s just trying to trick me. He doesn’t want me to know which one is actually him,” said Chandra pointing to the illusions. “Look, he’s running away.”

“I don’t think so,” said the boy in a strange voice. “I think he’s going to get that scroll.”

When she turned back, Chandra saw the familiar eerie blue glow in Brannon’s eyes and she knew… But right in that moment of realization, the mage hit her with a mental attack that caught her completely off-guard. She crumpled as her vision faded to black.

“Chandra, are you all right?” The real Brannon reached her side and started helping her rise from the ground. “What happened? I saw your fire elemental. Wow, I’ve never seen anything that big! Not even Mother Luti can make ’em that big.” The boy was nearly ecstatic. “And then there was a sort of… a blue wave of light or something. What was that?”

“That was the stranger,” Chandra said grumpily. “Being… clever.”

“The scroll!” Brannon said, seeing that her hands were empty. “Where’s the scroll?”

“What are you talking about, Brannon?”

“He got it. He must have taken it!”

“The scroll?”

“I know you said the monks finished their work. But don’t we need it any more?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Did they copy it in their workshop? Is that what you said?”

“Kiddo, this is crazy talk. Everything is all right. He’s not coming back,” she assured him.

“Well I hope so, ’cause he was creepy.” Brannon asked, eyeing their surroundings a little anxiously.

“Yes,” she said. “But he’s gone.”

Chandra tried to clear her head. Something was missing. Why did that fight just happen? Who was that guy?

But the more she tried to think about it, the more it hurt. What is that kid talking about with the scroll?

Chandra was mad. And when she got mad, she liked to set things on fire. Call it her little weakness.

She felt heat racing through her, turning her blood into curling flames of power that sparked out through her fingertips, her eyes, and the auburn tendrils of her long hair.

“You’re saying you copied down the scroll wrong?” she demanded of Brother Sergil. “After all the trouble I went through to steal it? After how important I told you it was? You’re saying that you and the other brothers made a mess of your part of the job? After I nearly got killed doing my part right?”

Brother Sergil, who evidently didn’t feel deeply attached to his mortal existence, snapped, “Perhaps if you hadn’t let someone steal the scroll back so soon after you brought it here, we wouldn’t have a problem now!”

“Oh, really?” Chandra could feel her skin glowing with the power that her anger unleashed. True, she had lost the scroll, but that mage had been good. “And if anyone had bothered to help me fight off that mage, maybe the scroll would still be at the monastery, instead of who-knows-where?” Her memory of the scroll had not come back. The mind mage had been thorough in cleansing it from her mind. She remembered everything she had done retrieving it, everything about the fight… But he had cut the scroll out with artisanal precision.

“All right, that’s enough,” said Luti, the mother mage of Keral Keep. “From both of you.”

Chandra said, “What’s the point of my bringing you something so valuable if you can’t even-”

“Stop,” said Luti.

“We’ve done our part as well as anyone could expect!” Brother Sergil said. “All I’m saying is-”

“Not as well as I expected! How did you-” Chandra stepped back with a sharp intake of breath as a small fireball exploded between her and Brother Sergil. The monk staggered backward, too, stumbling on the rough red stones that paved the monastery courtyard.

They both looked at Mother Luti in surprised silence.

“That’s better,” Luti said, her fingers glowing with the lingering effect of forming and throwing that fiery projectile between them. Her glance flickered over Chandra. “Quench your hair, young woman.”

“What? Oh.” Chandra became aware of the haze of fiery heat and pulsating flames surrounding her head. It wasn’t a roaring blaze, but it was certainly a loss of control. She took a calming breath and brushed her palms over her hair, smoothing the dancing flames back into her auburn mane until Luti’s nod indicated they had disappeared altogether.

“Until you can master your power better,” Luti said, “it would be a good idea to learn to manage your temper.”

Chandra let the comment pass without protest. She didn’t like orders or reprimands, but she had come to the Keralian Monastery to learn to master her power, after all. And she had once again just demonstrated how little control over it she had.

“You have an extraordinary gift,” Luti said. “Tremendous power. But as it is with our passions, it is with the fire you wield; they are good servants, but bad masters.”

“It would help,” Chandra said, glaring at Brother Sergil, “if people wouldn’t-”

“Nothing will help,” Luti said. “Certainly not other people. Only you can change the way your power manifests. Only within yourself can you find a way to master it in a reality which will, after all, always contain annoyances, distractions, fears, and sorrows.”

“Right.” Hoping to avoid another of Luti’s lectures on the nature of life, Chandra hastened to change the subject. “Now what about the scroll?”

The pyromancers, scholars, and initiates at Keral Keep had no idea where the scroll had come from. And neither did Mother Luti, for that matter, but she alone did know where Chandra got it. Luti ran the haven for pyromancers and firemages, who came to study and practice in the monastery on Mount Kerlia, a potent source of power. She knew a lot.

There was wisdom to be learned from her, to be sure, but the great stone walls of the fortress that crowned the summit of Mount Keralia pulsed with mana as red as the rock it was built upon. This was why mages came from all over Regatha.

The most skilled fire mages on the entire plane dwelled within the stony halls of the monastery, but none of them, including Luti, were as powerful as Chandra.

Perhaps Luti would have suspected the truth about Chandra even if she hadn’t been told: Chandra was a planeswalker.

Luti was well-versed in the legend of Jaya Ballard, the bombastic fire mage whose long-ago sojourn on Regatha had inspired the founding of this monastery. Jaya was a planeswalker, too. And planeswalkers were… different.

When she witnessed, first-hand, the magnitude of Chandra’s power, Luti could only think of the celebrated pyromancy of Jaya Ballard, stories she assumed had grown like mushroom clouds with the passage of time. In any case, Chandra chose to privately reveal her nature to Luti soon after coming to Regatha, after deciding it wouldn’t make sense to seek instruction in controlling her power while concealing what she could do.

It was a choice, Luti later told her, that demonstrated Chandra was capable of reasoned decisions when she applied herself.

Luti kept Chandra’s secret mostly out of a desire that fire remain the most tangible of the visible mysteries on Regatha. She feared the acolytes at Keral Keep would look for answers in Chandra, rather than find their own path. To everyone else at the monastery, Chandra was simply an unusually powerful young mage who came from somewhere else. And since Chandra, like so many others, didn’t want to talk about her past, no one pried.

Apart from Luti, none of the Keralians knew that Chandra had traveled the Blind Eternities, bridging that chaotic interval between the planes of the Multiverse, to steal that scroll on Kephalai, a world they’d never heard of and could never visit themselves.

Chandra had heard of the scroll in her travels, and she was intrigued by its reputation. So, after some time studying and practicing at the Keep had improved her erratic control of pyromancy, Chandra decided to find and steal the scroll, which turned out to be a little better guarded than she had anticipated. That was a wild ride, to be sure. Still, she made it out with the scroll.

Since the scroll was fragile, the brothers’ first act had been to make a few working copies of it. They had laboriously replicated the ancient writing by hand on fresh parchment.

Consdiering what had happened next, it was lucky they had done so. If she ever saw that mage again, she told herself, she would be ready. He would not trick her again.

Meanwhile, she knew from Luti’s expression that she had better remain silent while Brother Sergil explained the problem the monks were having with their copies of the scroll.

“The script is archaic, a variant we have not seen before, so it’s taken us some time to interpret its meaning. We are sure, though,” Sergil said, with a dark glance at Chandra, “that we copied it correctly. The value of multiple brothers each making a copy means, of course, that we can compare all our results from the process and arrive at a consensus on the exact contents of the original. Right down to the tiniest brushstroke.”

“Uh-huh.” Chandra folded her arms and didn’t attempt to conceal her boredom.

Mother Luti, who was a full head shorter than Chandra and triple her age, gave her a quelling look.

“The language of the scroll is a variant that our scholars haven’t encountered, so our conclusions aren’t as firm as one might wish. But it seems to be describing something of immense power, much as Chandra believed.” Brother Sergil made the grudging concession to her with a little nod.

“An artifact? A spell? What?” Chandra was surprised.

“It could be either… or something else entirely.”

“I could have told you that,” said Chandra exasperated.

“You mean you could have told us that had you a memory-”

Mother Luti raised a hand to stop Brother Segril from going further, her head tilted in a gesture of contemplation. Her white hair shone brightly in the sunlight of the monastery courtyard where the three of them stood. “What kind of power?” she asked when she had their attention.

“The scroll describes either an extraordinary source of mana, or it’s the key to accessing mana with extraordinary results. Either way, according to the scroll, it is something that will confer enormous power upon whomever unleashes it.” He shrugged. “It’s not clear to us if the text of the scroll declares this as a promise or as a warning. The intention of the author, like the its origin, is a mystery, Mother.”

“And does the text strike you as fact or as fancy?” Luti asked.

“Well…” He cast a glance at Chandra. “That might be easier to answer if we still had the original.”

Chandra scowled. “If you’re blaming me because-”

“No, I just mean,” the monk interrupted, “that the text seems to be saying the scroll itself contains the key to unlocking the mystery.”

“But the location isn’t in the text you’ve got?” Luti asked.

“No.”

“And you copied the entire scroll?”

“Yes.”

“So you’re saying that part of the scroll was missing?” Chandra guessed.

“I don’t think so,” Brother Sergil said. “We’re still discussing it… but the text seems to be complete. And, physically, the scroll itself was certainly complete. It was fragile, but it wasn’t torn, or singed, or moth-eaten.”

“So what are you saying?” Chandra asked.

“The purported location of this powerful artifact seems to be concealed in an internal puzzle,” the monk said. “The answer may be in the text itself, it could be obfuscated by layers of magic, but…” He trailed off, clearly reluctant to continue.

“But?” Luti prodded.

“We’ve tried multiple ways of interpreting the text, various ways of scrambling the words and the letters, and numerous methods of translating the characters into numbers, various decryption spells…” He shook his head. “But so far, we only get gibberish. Of course, we’ll keep trying, because if whatever this is does exist-if the text has any basis in fact-then this is very important information. Whoever possesses the power it speaks of could rule worlds. However… well, it’s really starting to look as if, when the text says the key to understanding is contained in the scroll itself…”

“You think it means the physical scroll?” Luti said. “The original?”

“Perhaps, yes. We are increasingly drawn to that possibility,” Brother Sergil said.

“Oh, that is disappointing,” Luti said.

Chandra said, “Look, I did everything I could to stop the scroll from being tak-”

“I didn’t mean it that way, Chandra,” Luti said. “We wouldn’t even have known about the scroll, if not for you, and we’d certainly never have seen it or had a chance to study it. Believe me, I’m well aware of how hard you fought to keep it from the, er, intruder. Indeed, the vegetable garden on the southern side of the monastery may never recover from your struggle with him. Well, not this year, anyhow.” She shrugged. “I just mean that it’s frustrating to discover something so intriguing… and now face the possibility of never solving the puzzle.

“Since the stranger who took the scroll from us did not have the courtesy to identify himself,” Luti said to Sergil, “we’ll probably never know who sent him. If, indeed, anyone did send him. He may have been a free agent acting on his own behalf, after all.”

“But we might be able to better estimate the veracity of the text if we knew more about its origins,” said Sergil. “That is to say, where Chandra found it.”

“Where she found it and where it comes from may be completely different things, Brother. That’s a subject best left alone,” Luti said, “for the sake of everyone’s safety. We have all witnessed first hand the destruction that so closely followed the scroll’s arrival,” Luti paused, letting her words sink in. “We must make do with what we have. Please continue studying the text. The answer to the puzzle may well be in our possession and just temporarily eluding us.”

Looking dissatisfied, but clearly not prepared to fight about it with Luti, Brother Sergil bowed his head. “Yes, Mother.”

After he had left the sunny courtyard, Luti turned to Chandra. “Well?”

Chandra shrugged. “If you’re wondering whether I noticed anything unusual about the scroll when it was in my possession, I can’t really answer that. And I swear by everything that burns, if I ever see that bastard again, I’ll blow him so high into the sky, his ashes won’t fall back down until people have forgotten he was ever born.”

Luti didn’t smile at her pledge. “Guard yourself, Chandra. The fire you kindle for your enemy may burn you more than him.”

“Is that Jaya?”

“No, it is Luti. Listen, the Multiverse is a very big place,” Luti said. “It is probable that you will never run into that mage again. It is better to think about what you can control…”

Chandra’s attention waned as Luti went on. She was grateful for her wisdom, but she could be tedious at times.

“In a battle with another planeswalker, it’s said that Jaya cunningly defeated her opponent by-”

“That stinking rat made me believe he was going to kill Brannon,” Chandra said.

Luti broke off. She knew Chandra had not been listening at all, but she had hoped to penetrate the planeswalker’s obvious disinterest. “As soon to kindle a fire with snow as to quench the fire of rage with words,” she said, more to herself that to Chandra.

“What does that have to do with Brannon or what I said?” asked Chandra, unable to see the relevance of Luti’s words.

Brannon lived at the monastery. His parents, ordinary peasant folk, had sent him here upon realizing they were increasingly unable to cope with the fiery power he had been exercising since early childhood. Because he needed instruction and supervision from people who understood his gift, his family had consigned him to the Keralians’ care several years ago.

Chandra had also been a powerful child with parents who’d felt ill-equipped to deal with her explosive gifts. She felt some kinship with the boy and had become fond of him during her sojourn here.

It had been a terrible shock to see him in the clutches of the other planeswalker. And it had been a relief as much as it was an infuriating surprise to discover that it was merely an illusion.

Chandra was disgusted by the subterfuge of that planeswalker’s ploys. She understood how his tactics were ultimately successful, but she didn’t have to respect them. Chandra was used to dealing with conflict openly.

“Anyway, as many times as I replay the fight in my head, I don’t even know if that jackass also managed to erase any other memories. If I had seen or felt anything special about the scroll, I have no memory of it now.” She shrugged. “I don’t even know what to think about what Brother Sergil said. I wish I remembered the scroll at all.”

“I take it, then, that you don’t even remember where you heard about the scroll? That you have no idea what you thought you were going after in the first place?”

“No.” Chandra asked. “What do you think?”

“I believe what Brother Sergil told us. I believe that it tells of a great power, and I believe that it is old. And despite its supposed age, I’m also inclined to believe that the scroll, if it we are able to interpret it, could lead to the whatever it is.”

“You really think something like this exists? That it can be found?” Chandra asked eagerly.

“Oh, yes. After all, if the text is just some ancient scribe’s fancy, or if the power it speaks of has long since been seized or destroyed…” Luti shrugged. “Then why would the scroll be kept in a place as secure and heavily guarded as you described when you returned? What was it called again? The Sanctum of Stars?”

“Yes.”

“Full of extremely valuable objects?”

“It sure looked that way to me.” Chandra was not a thief by trade, however, so the valuation of objects was hardly familiar to her, particularly in the rush of stealing the scroll.

“It sounds as if they were quite prepared to kill to retrieve the scroll-and, indeed, to tear their own realm apart to find it… Well, their behavior certainly confirms that the scroll is important.” Luti paused. “And whether the previous owners of the scroll employed that planeswalker to come after it, or whether he followed you and retrieved it for his own reasons…”

Chandra said, “I see your point.”

“Sometimes thinking things through logically is beneficial.” Luti’s voice was dry.

“Yes, Mother.”

That night, Chandra dreamed of fire.

Not the fire that exploded from her in the battle with the mind mage. And not the intoxicating heat she drew from the red stones of Mount Keralia.

The fire in her dreams tonight wasn’t the flickering seduction of a new spell. It wasn’t the spine-tingling flame of her growing skill that lapped at the edges of her mind tonight. And it certainly wasn’t the heart-pounding art of boom she loved so much, with its showers of fire and light.

This was the fire of sorrow and grief, the fire of shame and regret. This was the fire that consumed the innocent.

In her sleep, she could hear their screams, as clearly as if it were happening all over again. She could see their writhing bodies. She whimpered as the stench of burning flesh assailed her nostrils. Her throat burned with sobs that wouldn’t come out. She tried to move, but her limbs were immobile. She wanted to scream, but her lips moved without sound.

And when the blade of a sword swept down to her throat, she awoke with a gurgled scream of horror and shot upright, gasping.

She was trapped in smothering darkness. She instinctively threw up her right hand and called forth flame, to ward off danger and illuminate her surroundings.

Squinting against the sudden light of her fire magic, Chandra looked around in confusion.

Then she realized where she was; her bed chamber in Keral Keep. Her heart was pounding. Her skin was slick with sweat. She was shaking. For a moment, she thought she would vomit. Her teeth chattered a little as she focused on breathing.

In, two, three. Out, two, three. In, two, three. Out…

She shook her hand to douse the flames before she wrapped her arms around her knees.

She swallowed. She would not cry. She would not think.

She would not remember.

As she rocked back and forth, trying to calm herself, she started reciting her favorite passages from the Regathan sagas, at first just in her mind, the words flowing through her brain in a rapid tumble.

Then, as she regained some control of herself, she started saying them aloud, and after a while, it worked, as it usually did. Her heart slowed to a normal rhythm. Her hands stopped shaking. Her teeth stopped chattering. Tears stopped threatening to fill her eyes.

But she wouldn’t sleep again. Not tonight.

So she rose from her bed, removed her simple linen shift, and started donning her clothes as if the garments were armor against her dreams.

Chandra put on her leggings and her thigh-high boots. She pulled her calf-length tunic over her head. It was split from hip to hem to allow her free movement. Her clothes were reddish-brown, the material simple. They were the working garments of a woman with too much magical power and too much serious intent to waste time on fripperies and frills. But since it was nighttime and she wasn’t going anywhere, she left off her gauntlets and the leather vest she usually wore. The armor she needed right now was mental, not physical.

Her bed chamber was small and simple, like everyone else’s at the monastery. It had a narrow wooden bed with linen sheets and rough wool blankets, a small table, a single chair, and a modest trunk. And this was all she needed. People at the Keralian Monastery, whether they were visitors or permanent residents, came here in search of wisdom, knowledge, and power, not the creature comforts of material wealth.

The mountain air was cool at night, even at this time of year when the days were especially warm. Chandra welcomed the slight chill on her skin as she stepped out of her chamber, into the night air, and closed the door behind her. She moved quietly along the walkway, passing other chambers without waking anyone, until she reached the broad terrace on the eastern side of the monastery.

The moon was full tonight and shone brightly. To the west of the monastery’s mountain were more mountains, but from this terrace, she gazed across the woodlands that lay peacefully below the imposing heights of Mount Keralia. And further east, past the forests, were the plains and the city of Zinara. When the air was this clear and still at night, she could see the tiny specks of light in the distance that were the flaming torches atop the great city’s watch towers.

“Sleep soundly, little lambs,” she murmured contemptuously.

The city was completely dominated by the Order of Heliud, a sect of mages whose dedication to an ordered society and strict adherence to law was becoming dictatorial. The city was prosperous under the Order’s influence, but the number of laws had tripled under their governance so that one was scarcely able walk down a street without breaking a rule or two. And when it came to magic, licenses to practice even the simplest of spells became necessary. Eventually, the Order became so bold as to outlaw many forms of magic, deeming anything other than their own brand of heiromancy-peacekeeping magic, as they liked to say, that emphasized law and order-as deleterious to the public health. It was even rumored that the practice of fire magic in Zinara would result in imprisonment, and any violent act involving fire magic was punishable by death.

Needless to say, these stories from the city did little to foster relations between Keral Keep and the Order of Heliud.

Chandra had been told that, during Mother Luti’s lifetime, the Order had gone from being merely an influential sect in Zinara and a few other cities, to dominating the entire plains region of Regatha. Under the current rule of Walbert III and his policy of “civilization for civil welfare,” it was even said their influence was spreading across the seas. But more to the point, the Order was aggressively seeking to “civilize” the mountain and woodland regions. It was clear to all that Walbert-dwelling in the massive, marble-pillared Temple of Heliud, the heart of the Order’s temporal and mystical power-aspired to control the entire plane.

According to reports from Samir Mia Kauldi, a village chief of good standing among the many races of the Great Western Wood, Zinaran soldiers were patrolling the forests between Mount Keralia and the plains. Samir said that two human druids had recently been arrested for summoning creatures that the Order had recently declared “enemies of order.” Creature summoning-especially for the ritual combat that settled disputes among tribes-was an accepted and eons-old practice for the woodlanders, but the Heliuds believed that the path to civilization was paved with law, and that the law was equal before all. There were inviolate truths, objective standards of right and wrong, and it was for the Order of Heliud to see that all sapient beings on Regatha benefited from the application of such standards.

To Chandra, this was so unreasonable as to seem insane. How could a group of people be so blind as to not see the shades of grey between the black and white truths they held so sacred? Surely a more relative approach was needed to accommodate the breadth of racial and cultural diversity on this great plane. However, as Samir had morosely reported to Luti, it wasn’t that easy to talk sense to well-armed soldiers on horseback.

Just let them try that nonsense up here, Chandra thought. She’d send them fleeing back to Zinara with their horses’ tails on fire.

In any event, the soldiers who patrolled the Great Western Wood were lucky that Samir had not been among those arrested. It would be amusing, though, if the soldiers took an elf prisoner next time they were meddling where they didn’t belong. Chandra imagined the storm that such a move would precipitate. The elves would never allow their way of life to be compromised by the Order.

Oh, yes, that would be worth seeing.

“Don’t mess with elves,” she muttered, gazing down at the darkened forest below Mount Keralia.

Ghost warden?” Chandra said. “What’s a ghost warden?”

“Normally, it’s a spirit from the land of the dead summoned to protect the living,” said her host, Samir Mia Kauldi.

Brannon cried, “I’ve heard of ghost wardens! They’ve got flowing white hair, and white armor, and no real legs, just wispy trails of magic dust where their feet should be! They float around in silence, spying on their masters’ enemies!”

Chandra looked to Samir for confirmation of this description as they walked through the forest, the dry twigs and leaves crackling under their feet.

He nodded. “‘Spying’ might be an exaggeration. As I said, they normally serve to protect, but the Order uses them to monitor the forest.”

“They have arms without hands, and white lightning bolts shoot out of the place where their fingers should be!” Brannon said.

“I’m told that it feels more like a sharp sting than a lightning bolt,” Samir said. “It startles more than anything else.”

Samir Mia Kauldi was one of Keral Keep’s staunchest allies in the Great Western Wood. He was well-respected among his fellow elves and shared Keralian values concerning personal freedom and the right to self determination, but, most importantly, he understood the consequences of the Order of Heliud’s ever-increasing influence on the plane of Regatha. If the Heliuds were allowed to continue asserting their “civilization” agenda on the rest of Regatha, it would, sooner or later, mean an end to the elves’ way of life. Their tribes would be broken up and individuals would be relocated to the camps where they would be “trained” as productive members of society. The forests, stripped of the protectors, would become resources for the cities, the trees a commodity to be managed by ministers. Samir had heard how some of the smaller forests in the distant east had been clear-cut and used for lumber, only to be replanted in neat rows so that their next harvest might be more efficient. The geometry of their placement, and the flat grid of roads laid down, cut the living spine of those groves and all but stopped the once-rich flow of mana. The elves who were able to flee the camps and cities returned to unrecognizable terrain, pine barrens, monocultures of ash or spruce. The Order had broken these forests into pieces and made sure they would not go back together.

Samir had told all of this to Mother Luti, but for years there had only been stories from far away. Now it was becoming a reality everywhere. But Luti, however her fighting spirit raged, was not getting any younger. Because the journey down the mountain to the forest below was physically demanding, she seldom made the trip herself anymore. She did insist on regular contact with the races of the woodlands that surrounded Mount Keralia, and often sent others in her place. They had to keep the Order’s power in check, especially since the mountains seemed to be next in line for the Order’s civilizing practices.

It was true that the Keralian pyromancers and the races of the Great Western Wood led independent existences, but they all shared this desire to limit the Order’s influence to the plains and the cities of Regatha. As Luti said, they must be taught that fire and forest, much like their government, knew nothing of mercy.

Alone among the woodlanders, Samir Mia Kauldi actively agreed with Luti about this. He realized that the ghost wardens and mounted patrols were only the beginning of what was to come, but many in the forest remained unconvinced and dismissed the Order’s encroachment as border skirmishes. Most believed that the stories of entire forests razed and replanted in the east would be impossible in an area as vast as the Great Western Wood.

Samir was short for an elf, with smooth skin the color of freshly-turned soil. He had a lithe build, a soft voice, and a round face that looked older than his years, possibly because of the perpetually harassed look that he carried with him like a empty coin purse: that is to say, without enthusiasm. Although he was a respected tribal chief and skilled summoner, his exhortations against the Order were met with little acceptance by other inhabitants of the woodlands. That wasn’t to say he did not have support. Samir was known far and wide to summon the greatest beasts of Regatha. His status as chief had remained unchallenged because of this, and no tribe would dare question his authority, but might did not necessarily make right among the woodlanders. Much as it was with the Keralians, tribes-and the individuals who made them up-were given the right determine their own future, whether for good or bad, so long as it was not disruptive to the harmony of life in the forest.

Samir first came to the monastery as a supplicant. Since then the Keralians had been prepared to offer whatever assistance necessary. Chandra relished the opportunity to leave the monastery, so often volunteered to act as a liason to Samir and his loose association of druids, elves, and oufes.

It had been two days since her heated discussion with Brother Sergil about the scroll, and Chandra had decided to bring Brannon along as company on the long trek to Samir’s small village deep in the woods.

The boy was clearly excited by the news that ghost wardens had been seen in the Great Western Wood.

“So what does a ghost warden do besides float around and sting people?” Chandra asked Samir.

“It only stings,” Samir said, “if threatened.”

“Whatever,” Chandra said. “What good are they if they don’t do anything?”

“The order uses them as spies,” Samir said. “Rather than have them protect a living being, as was originally the intention of a ghost warden, they have them watch over the forest in general. The summoners share a psychic link with the warden and so are able to sense when things are out of the ordinary.”

“Its summoners? You mean the Order of Heliud?”

“Yes. It is said that the summoner, once alerted by the ghost warden, will dispatch a patrol to the area in question.”

“You’re sure about these sightings?”

“So sure,” Samir said, “that I have recently returned from Zinara, where I went to speak to Walbert himself. And I tell you Chandra, a more ridiculous place you will never find. They put plants in pots to decorate windows that look out on other windows with still more potted plants. They contrive fountains, which are absurd stone structures that trickle water in a meek imitation…”

“Wait, I know what a fountain is. The high priest of the Order agreed to see you?” Chandra asked in surprise. Walbert III wasn’t reputed to be a very accessible man.

“Only after I spent two days insisting I would not leave the grounds of the Temple until I was granted an audience. It was a harder task than you can imagine sitting on flagstones amid those tortured trees. Can you believe they top the trees to stunt their growth? Imagine the arrogance that imposes Heliudic aesthetic values on nature. Even flowers are made to look like wounds on their hideously stripped stalks.”

“So you confronted him?” Chandra said with relish.

“Yes. I demanded to know by what right the Order sent soldiers into our land to arrest us, and I said these ghost wardens must be withdrawn from the Great Western Wood.”

“What did Walbert say?”

Samir made a disgusted sound. “It was infuriating, my friend. Walbert claimed that, in the interest of ‘unity’ throughout these lands, the laws which govern the cities and the plains are being extended to govern the woodlands, too. The ghost wardens have been summoned to patrol this vast woodland for our protection.” His tone twisted the final word into an epithet. “And the soldiers are only enforcing fair and just laws that have been passed in the interest of preserving safety and… order. As if they have any understanding of protection, let alone fairness and justice.”

Chandra was appalled. “Walbert is claiming the Order has authority over the woodlands?”

Samir nodded. “And he’s enforcing that claim with the might of his soldiers and the skill of the Temple mages.”

“He can’t do that!”

“I said that to him.” Samir shook his head. “In response, he offered me some pompous title in exchange for encouraging my people to abide by the laws of the plains. That, or I could remain in violation of some law and he would jail me. I decided to retreat and fight another day.”

“So he’s trying to take over the Great Western Wood.” Chandra said in outrage. “That’s unbelievable!”

“He will find it a more difficult task than he supposes,” Samir said darkly. “The other tribes have been reluctant to enter into conflict with the Order, but if they continue to arrest druids for summoning hunters, perhaps I can bring others to my side.”

“What will they want next?” Chandra said with contempt. “Control over Keral Keep? Do they imagine that the rule of the Order can spread to the mountains?”

“That may not be beyond the scope of their ambitions,” Samir warned her. “They see the monastery as a threat. They think the Keralians are destructive and their teachings dangerous.”

“It wasn’t enough for them to outlaw fire magic in their own lands? They think they can outlaw it on Mount Keralia?” Chandra shook her head. “They’d have to be crazy to believe that.”

“Why do they hate fire?” Brannon’s red eyebrows creased in a frown on his young, freckled face. “I like it. And everyone needs it, after all.”

“They hate it because fire takes no holiday, kiddo,” Chandra said, but the boy only looked confused. Truth be told, Chandra was confused by the statement too, but she had heard Mother Luti say it so often that it seemed appropriate here.

“They don’t hate fire, precisely,” Samir said to the boy. “I’m not even sure they hate fire magic.”

“Of course they do,” Chandra said. “Why else would they punish pyromancy with death in Zinara?”

“They punish it with imprisonment,” said Samir. “You only get executed if you commit violence with your fire magic.”

“Whatever,” she said. “Either way, they obviously do hate fire magic. Or more likely, they’re afraid of it.”

“I think what they don’t like,” said Samir, “is the nature of those who wield it. The Order of Heliud believes that no one is above the law. The law equalizes.” He shrugged. “Isn’t it true that you Keralians believe there is no law greater than the will of fire? You believe fire burns the criminal and the prosecutor equally, yes? The Heliuds believe that the righteous may pass through fire unscathed.”

Chandra frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“I am talking about the Purifying Fire.”

“The what?”

“The Purifying Fire.” When Chandra and Brannon just stared at him blankly, he said, “Oh. Of course. Neither of you has ever been to Zinara?” They shook their heads. “And probably few members of the monastery have been there, either. Or know much about the Order of Heliud.”

“Mother Luti tells us that relations between the monastery and the city have been tense for years.” said Chandra. She knew that the woodlanders had been on civil terms with the people of the plains and the city until Walbert’s ambitions had become too evident to ignore any longer.

“Yes.” Samir nodded. “Those who feel the lure of Mount Keralia have little in common with those for whom order and structure are paramount. It’s a very… different sort of perspective.”

“It certainly is,” Chandra said with distaste. “So what does fire have to do with the Order of Heliud?”

“The Order’s power is said to come from something called the Purifying Fire. No one I know has ever seen it, and it is said that only a very select few within the Order have access to it, but it is believed to be a source of pure mana that dances perpetually like a flame in the ancient caverns beneath the Temple. The legend says that Heliud was a holy figure in the city of Thold across the Great Sea. He was accused of heresy, crimes against Thold, or some such thing. Regardless, Heliud was exiled along with his followers who believed his promise of a founding a shining city was indeed guidance from the Divine Will. The journey across the sea was long-they lost many of their number to sickness, and when they made landfall many more were lost to the vagaries of the wild.

“When they finally arrived at the site where Zinara was founded, Heliud’s followers were beginning to doubt his plan, or even if he had one. He was facing opposition by one of his followers, a man named Zin who believed they could go no further. They should settle. Heliud was unfit to lead them. The promised land he spoke of was a fever dream. Zin had the support of the majority and Heliud, emaciated and weak from the journey, was facing exile again.”

“You seem to know a lot about this, Samir,” said Chandra. “You got some sympathies you aren’t telling us about?” She grinned to take away the sting of the words.

“During the time I spent in protest on the grounds of the temple, an acolyte would come out and educate me on the history of Heliud. Anyway, to get to the point, Heliud returned to camp some days later. He had returned to peak physical form except that his once-lustrous black hair had gone as grey as the silver fox. When questioned about his transformation, Heliud said that he had found the physical manifestation of the Divine Will in a flickering white flame in some nearby caverns. He had thrown himself into it as penitence for failing to recognize the signs he’d been given, but rather than dying as expected, he emerged revived, stronger even than he had been before, proof of his righteousness. He claimed the fire had cleansed him of error and chosen him as the sole arbiter of Divine Law on Regatha.

“Zin still had loyal followers, many of whom believed that Heliud’s revitalization was somehow demonic in its origin. Heliud challenged Zin, saying that the Fire would be the judge of right and wrong. They had to go, one and the other, to face the Purifying Fire. As you might imagine, only Heliud emerged.”

“What happened to Zin?” asked Brannon.

“It’s interesting that you ask, Brannon, because I wondered the same thing. Heliud told his followers that Zin’s body had vaporized in the flame. The followers of Zin did not believe this explanation, but they never found his body, for as long as they searched the caverns. They were eventually mollified when Heliud named their settlement in Zin’s honor. They hold Zin sacred still, saying that his opposition was divinely inspired to test the truth of Heliud’s leadership.”

He paused, seemingly unwilling to finish the tale, but finally added, “Walbert is the successor to this legacy and the custodian of the Purifying Fire.”

“Well, doesn’t that just figure,” said Chandra in disgust. “The members of the Order have forbidden fire magic to everyone in their land while drawing their own power from fire? Or from something that’s just barely similar to fire?”

A flame that was cold and white didn’t sound much like fire to her. It sounded as rigid and deadly dull as she imagined the members of the Order were.

Chandra was passionate about the heat and fury of fire magic. She loved the gold, orange, yellow of explosions, the blood-red blazes of pyromancy. What was the point of something cold, white, and hidden underground? Surely there was no beauty in that. No glory, or passion, or thrill.

“The Order has forbidden fire magic in their lands,” Samir agreed, “and now they want to restrict our way of life in the Western Wood, too. Certain practices are still allowed, Walbert told me, because he says the laws issued by the Order are not, in his judgment, unreasonable. But now other supposedly-dangerous practices such as summoning are forbidden to us.” Samir’s normally gentle expression grew thunderously angry. “And the ghost wardens are the Order’s means of spying on us in our own land!”

“They have no right,” Chandra said. “None!” Samir rarely raised his voice, but he did so now.

“But at least a ghost warden doesn’t sound like it can be a very good spy,” Chandra said with a frown. “I mean, I’d sure notice it sneaking up on me, if it looks like what Brannon described.”

“Me too!” said Brannon.

“Actually, it’s more effective than you suppose,” Samir said. “It’s completely silent, after all. No feet or hands. We have many unusual things in the forest-”

“No argument there,” said Chandra.

“-but we’re not used to entities without any limbs. Well, apart from snakes, but you get my meaning.”

“I don’t like snakes,” Chandra said frankly.

The shadowy forest felt claustrophobic to Chandra, who was much more used to the scenic vistas of mountain living. The woods were teeming with life, much of it strange and unnerving: carnivorous flowers whose sweet scent lured the unsuspecting, poisonous insects that posed as plants, ill-tempered beasts that resembled moss-covered rocks, and monsters that looked like trees, among many others. Dirt, noise, fungus. None of it appealed to Chandra, but it did offer time away from the other Keralians, who could become quite boring in their devotion.

Even so, sitting on the dry ground outside Samir’s leafy hut, and politely pretending to drink some insipid beverage flavored with mashed plant roots, Chandra felt eager to return to the monastery and tell Mother Luti what she had learned today. If creatures of the Order were roaming the woods now, how much longer would it be before the Order tried to intrude onto Mount Keralia?

“Hardly anything moves through the forest without making a sound,” Samir said. “But these creatures do. Lately, numerous woodlanders have been surprised to notice a ghost warden watching them without having any idea how long it had been there.”

“That would be creepy,” said Brannon.

“For example,” Samir said calmly, “ever since you arrived and we sat down here together, I haven’t glanced at those bushes to our left until just a moment ago.” Now he turned his head and stared hard at the lush shrubbery. “So I don’t know how long that ghost warden has been listening to our conversation.”

Brannon gasped. Chandra jumped as if she had been bitten, leaping to her feet in the same motion as she whirled to face the bushes Samir was looking at.

She saw a white creature there, as as motionless as a rock. It didn’t breathe. Its pale eyes didn’t blink. It didn’t even react to Chandra’s sudden movement, nor to Brannon pointing at it and crying out. And its long white hair remained still, despite the breeze that made the leaves rustle gently on the bush obscuring it from Chandra’s view.

She circled around the clearing, moving to get a better view of the creature. From her new position, Chandra saw that, exactly as Brannon had described, it had no hands or feet, although four appendages were attached to its torso in a disturbing suggestion of arms and legs that trailed off into whirls of glittering white dust where toes and fingers should have existed.

“How does it work?” Chandra asked Samir.

The ghost warden turned its head toward her when she spoke. Somehow, the movement was even more disturbing than the creature’s stillness had been. Its motion was fluid and refined, like the passage of time.

“Work?” Samir, too, had risen to his feet. Now he pushed Brannon behind his body, shielding the boy from the creature.

“Can its master see through its eyes and hear through its ears?” Chandra asked, still staring at the ghost warden. “Does its creator see and hear us right now? Or does this thing have to return to its master to convey what it has witnessed?”

“I’m not sure,” Samir said. “But, as I said, they are said to trigger an alert to patrols.”

“I don’t think they can do that,” Chandra said decisively. “We should kill it to test the theory.”

Now the creature displayed an almost eerily human reaction. It shrank away from her in recognition of the threat she posed.

“Chandra…” Samir said uneasily. “That might be unwise at this juncture.”

But the very thought of a fight elevated Chandra’s heartbeat. As her pulse quickened, so did the fire inside her. She could feel it bloom in the base of her skull as her hair became a mane of flame, and moved down her spine and out to her hands, lighting like torches.

“Be careful,” Samir warned. “It has been unseasonably dry this year.”

The ghost warden pointed a wispy limb toward Chandra, and a bolt of white light shot forth from the floating, shiny particles in its fingerless tendrils.

“Ouch!” Chandra staggered backward as it hit her in the stomach. The blow was enough to quench the fire that burned around her.

She doubled over, trying to catch her breath, and heard Brannon shouting her name. A moment later, she felt a hand on her back and heard Samir asking if she was all right.

“I’m fine,” she croaked. “I feel like I’ve been… stung by the biggest wasp that ever lived, but I’m fine. Never mind me! Get that thing!”

“It’s gone!” Brannon cried.

“Gone?” Chandra raised her head and looked toward the bushes. There was nothing there now but greenery. “Damn!”

“I see it!” Samir, whose eyes were far more accustomed than theirs to the shadowy forest, had spotted the creature as it fled through the trees. He pointed. “Over there!”

“Let’s go!” Clutching her throbbing stomach, Chandra ran in the direction that Samir had indicated.

“Can we kill it?” he shouted, running after her.

“Let’s find out!” she shouted back. Ghost or no ghost, Chandra thought she should be able to turn anything into a pile of ashes if she got it hot enough.

“This way!” Samir shouted behind her, veering off to the right and disappearing into the greenery.

Chandra turned to follow him. There was a broad thicket of bushes in her way, but it didn’t look very thick. Rather than waste time going around it, she forced her way through it. This proved to be a mistake. The clinging shrubs and their thorns clutched at her clothes and scratched her skin. Within moments, she found she was stuck, unable to move forward. The harder she tried to free herself, the more entangled she became.

“I see it!” Samir cried, his voice significantly farther away now. “Come on!”

“I’m… coming!” Chandra winced as she struggled to free herself.

She was panting, she was in pain, she was falling behind, and, worst of all, she was trapped by a damn bush. Exasperated, her temper flared as a burning heat rushed through her body, erupting in an aura of flame that set the thicket alight and turned the offending bush into a charred remnant.

She had only taken a few steps when she heard shrill screeching and chattering overhead. Something heavy fell down onto her back from the overhanging branches of a tree, wrapped its limbs around her neck, and bit her shoulder.

“Agh!” Chandra dived to the ground and rolled over on top of her attacker. She struck the small, struggling combatant with her elbow and, as soon as she felt its grip loosen, leaped to her feet and turned to face it.

An oufe? Chandra stopped cold. She didn’t like the small woodland creatures, but she had no quarrel with them either.

Graceful green limbs, tiny features, and rather immodest rough clothing blurred in a tangle of movement as her attacker jumped to its feet and launched itself at her again, baring its sharp little teeth in a growl of rage.

Chandra instinctively threw a bolt of fire at the oufe. It leaped back, shrieking in fear and pain, which made her feel guilty. The little creature was barely half her size, and the bush she had just destroyed might have been its place of worship or something. Oufes were a little strange that way.

Seeing that the frantic little creature wasn’t seriously injured by her fire strike, though, Chandra said, “I’m sorry about your bush! But I don’t have time for this!”

She turned and ran in the direction of Samir’s distant shouts urging her to hurry. She heard more shrill chattering behind her and risked looking over her shoulder. Chandra saw that her attacker was being joined by two more, but tripped over a tree root and decided to keep her eyes on where she was going.

“Samir!” she shouted.

“Over here!” he shouted back.

“Chandra!” Brannon cried. “I can see it now! Hurry!”

Chandra heard more screeching behind her, but she didn’t look back again, not even when the noises got more ear-splitting. She ran through a tight-knit grove of trees, jumping over fallen branches and toppled tree trunks, following the sounds of her friends’ voices as they screamed for her to catch up.

When she catch up to Brannon and Samir, they were at the edge of a glade.

“There! Crossing the stream!” Samir cried. “It’s just ahead of us now!”

He was breathing hard, and turned to look at Chandra as she drew up alongside him. Then he looked past her, and his sweat-beaded face underwent the most astonishing transition.

“Why,” he said, “is there a load of oufes chasing you?”

“What?” Chandra looked over her shoulder. “Oh, no.”

“Gosh,” Brannon said. “They look really mad.”

There appeared to be about twenty of them bearing down on her, screeching with murderous fury as they brandished sticks, spears, and daggers. Their eyes glowed with feral rage, their sharp teeth were bared, and their skin was flushed dark green with anger.

“What is it with oufes?” she muttered.

“This could be a problem,” Samir said.

“What are they going to do?” Chandra said dismissively. “Nibble on my ankles?”

Samir said, “Well, given the opportunity…”

“I’m stopping that ghost warden!” Chandra spotted it floating above a narrow stream as it fled across the glade.

Samir said, “But what about-”

“You’re a chief! You deal with it!”

Chandra closed the distance between herself and the ghost warden, spreading her arms wide as she felt power flow freely through her, answering her summons with satisfying heat. She shaped her will into a burning projectile and threw it at the ghost warden.

The creature flinched to escape a direct hit, a sign, in Chandra’s estimation, that it could indeed be destroyed. It wouldn’t expend energy fleeing or defending itself if it weren’t vulnerable to her attacks. Chandra leaped over the narrow stream that her floating quarry had crossed only moments ago.

She heard a horse whinny somewhere beyond the glade as she threw another fireball that missed the ghost warden. Her next two also went wide into the underbrush that lay at the edge of the glade, where the tangle of dead twigs and leaves burst into flames.

“Hold still, damn you,” Chandra muttered, trying again even as she heard thundering hooves approaching her on one side while oufes shrieked noisily on the other.

The ghost warden truly seemed to fear the fire, its entire form sliding horizontally away from the flaming projectiles with only a scant moment to spare. Then it abruptly returned two beams of white light in quick succession. Chandra dodged the first one and met the other with a deflective ball of flame.

“Oh no you don’t!” She threw another fireball, and another, and another after that. The area surrounding the glade was a wall of flame by now, each successive explosion of fire adding to the blazing fury. The oufes were in hysterics, and Samir was shouting words she couldn’t quite hear.

Moving at a run, Chandra circled the glade to block the ghost warden’s only remaining escape route. It hovered uncertainly, facing Chandra, surrounded on all other sides by fire.

The approaching horses were now so close that Chandra could hear the jingle of their bridles directly behind her as she threw three more fireballs at the creature in quick succession. Its rapid, evasive movements managed to dodge the assaults, but the result was a bonfire that could not be avoided and the ghost warden was soon consumed in flames.

Over the roar of the fire and the shrieking of oufes, Chandra became fully aware of the rattling bridles and snorting horses behind her, as well as the sharp exclamations of male voices. She was already turning toward the sounds when she realized what Brannon was frantically screaming at her.

“Chandra! Soldiers! Behind you! Soldiers on horseback!”

There were four of them. Their horses were dancing nervously, frightened by the fire. The soldiers, all wearing boiled-leather armor over pale blue tunics, looked stunned as they gazed at her. Three of them had their swords drawn. One appeared to have entirely forgotten he was armed, and just stared at Chandra with his mouth hanging open.

She grinned as she raised her arms high, a mane of fire swirling around her head and shoulders. Flames licked across her skin, surrounding her body in a flaming aura. The torches at the end of her arms grew immense as she shouted, “Leave this forest! Never come back! Tell Walbert what you have seen! The Order is finished here!”

Since they seemed to need a little encouragement, she threw a fireball over their heads. One of the horses pranced sideways, its eyes rolling with fear. Another reared up, nearly unseating its rider.

When Chandra threw a second fireball, letting this one come a little closer to hitting one of the men, they all four turned and fled. The sight of their horses galloping away made her grin with exultation.

She watched until the green woodland swallowed them up, hiding them from her view as they fled, she supposed, in the direction of the plains. She felt someone tugging at her sleeve.

“Chandra,” Brannon said, his eyes wide as he looked up at her. He was still a boy, and she was tall for a woman. “Samir says we should leave before the oufes strip your flesh from your bones and feed it to wolves.”

“What?” Chandra frowned as she glanced over her shoulder in Samir’s direction. “Oh.”

The mage was holding back a mass of the woodland creatures with an undulating green net of tangled, writhing vines that he had conjured between them and the glade, Some of them were flinging themselves at the barrier, squealing as they got tangled up in it, while others were trying to climb it, in an attempt to go over the top and proceed from there.

All around them the glade burned. She had started a forest fire, one that was raging completely out of control.

“Oops.”

Oufes, she knew, could be very touchy about this sort of thing. Indeed, Samir was taking quite a risk with his own people by interceding to protect her. However, she had destroyed a ghost warden and chased away four of Walbert’s armed soldiers. Hopefully, when the oufes calmed down, they’d realize that she had acted for the best.

At the moment, though…

Chandra started toward Samir, intending to help him.

He glanced in her direction, and an expression of horror contorted his face when he saw her approaching him. “Go!” he ordered. “Go now!”

Brannon grabbed her by the shirt. “Chandra…”

Samir was right, she realized. These oufes were pointing at her and screaming. Her presence was only increasing their frenzy. She hated leaving Samir to deal with this alone, but that was the best choice available at the moment.

“All right, yes,” Chandra said, grasping Brannon’s hand. “Let’s go. This way.”

They ran across the glade together, their footsteps carrying them into a wall of fire. Knowing that no forest-dweller would follow them this way, they fled through the welcoming embrace of the flames.

The first attack came the following night. Chandra was lying awake in her narrow bed, torn between anger over Luti’s latest lecture on self-control and a certain reluctant awareness that the mother mage had a valid point.

Fortunately, Chandra’s fire-as she had been quick to remind Luti earlier tonight-had only burned down a small portion of the Great Western Wood. Samir had sent one of his many relatives to the monastery earlier to inform them that Chandra’s forest fire had been contained and quelled after nightfall. The rains had been sporadic this year, but the elves’ magic had kept the fire confined to the the glade where Chandra had destroyed the ghost warden.

“Nonetheless,” Luti had said to her earlier tonight, “you did far more damage than good, Chandra.”

“But I-”

“Eliminating one ghost warden may have been helpful-”

“May have been? That thing was a spy for the Order!” “-or it may have been ill-advised. In either case-”

“Ill-advised how?” Chandra demanded.

“In either case,” Luti said, clearly losing patience with her.

“The possible benefit of eliminating one ghost warden from the forest cannot balance the catastrophe of burning down the forest.”

More admonishments had followed. “Playing with fire is bad for those who burn themselves,” said Luti quoting some sage or another. “But for the rest of us it is a great pleasure. I want you to be able to experience this pleasure as I do, Chandra, but until you learn to control your impulses, you will continue to burn yourself and those around you.”

Chandra lay wide awake in bed thinking about that last statement and wrestling with the emotions it stirred.

She hated being reprimanded and lectured. It made her want to leave Regatha, Keral Keep, and Mother Luti far behind her. She was seething with indignation and felt like setting something on fire, even though that was precisely what had gotten her into this trouble in the first place.

On the other hand…

Chandra heaved a breath as she lay on her back, staring up into the darkness.

On the other hand, she had indeed destroyed part, however small, of the forest, enraged a tribe of oufes, and no doubt caused a lot of trouble for Samir. The woodlanders hadn’t ever done her any harm. Samir considered her a friend, and the Keralians sought cooperation with the forest races against the encroaching power of the Order. It wasn’t entirely unreasonable for Luti to say that making enemies in the woods by wreaking destruction had been a bad decision, or, rather, to quote her, “a stupid misstep.” The actual decision had been to rid the woodlands of a spy for the Order. That was a good idea, thought Chandra.

However, given the way things had turned out, it was possible that the woodlanders found a single ghost warden among many to be slightly less disruptive to their daily routine than she had been.

Chandra kept reviewing the events of that day and wondering what she should have done differently. Capture the ghost warden instead of kill it? How could she have done that? The creature was so fast and elusive, she had barely been able to get close enough to throw fireballs at it. Should she have just let it spy on her and then go its merry way? Out of the question! Instead of killing it in the woods, should she have chased it to the plains and thereby accidentally set the farmlands on fire? Would Luti be less exasperated with her now if farmers were enraged instead of woodlanders?

Chandra rolled over on her side and tried to punch some shape into her flat pillow.

And why might killing a ghost warden be ill-advised, anyway? Surely Luti didn’t think it was a good thing to have those creepy creatures roaming the woods and spying for the Order? To hear Samir talk, it wasn’t long before they started appearing in the mountains to protect the Keralians from themselves and anything they might do that the Order didn’t like.

Tired of chasing this subject around and around in her head, Chandra closed her eyes and tried to will herself to relax and get some sleep. She forced herself to clear her mind, focus on her breathing, and let the darkness absorb the clamoring voices in her head.

But then she realized the voices weren’t all in her head. She frowned irritably as she recognized the sound of whispering directly outside her door. It was very late, but some of the Keralian acolytes were night owls who preferred to study and practice until dawn and then sleep all morning. Life at the monastery was pretty unstructured, and the residents seldom interfered with each other’s habits, as long as they didn’t impinge on the rights or comforts of anyone else.

Whispering and muttering outside her door, Chandra decided, especially while she was trying to sleep, counted as impinging on her rights and comforts. She heard two lowered voices. They sounded like they were arguing. She wished they’d go argue somewhere else. She was about to get out of bed and tell them so when the door to her chamber creaked open.

Chandra opened her eyes as her body went tense. Who was entering her room in the middle of the night?

She heard the same two voices again, now in her doorway. Chandra’s room opened directly onto an outdoor walkway with a view of the mountains to the south and the sky overhead. Squinting through the dark, she saw two figures standing in her there, faintly illuminated by the moonlight.

The two intruders were short-shorter than Brannon certainly, whose head only came up to Chandra’s shoulder. They were also broad and squat, with misshapen heads, and they moved in an odd, lumbering way, as if trying to keep their balance on the deck of a ship in rough waters. But it wasn’t until Chandra saw their brightly glowing orange eyes that she realized what they were.

“Goblins?” she asked incredulously, so startled she forgot to feign sleep…

The closer one stumbled back in surprise when she spoke, careening into the other. The second goblin gave a muffled shriek, hopping around on one foot-his other, it seemed, had been stomped on by his staggering companion.

Chandra tilted her head back and blew a fiery breath straight upward. The resultant flame flew up to the ceiling and bounced tentatively there for a moment before it attached itself, burning like a torch to illuminate Chandra’s room.

She got out of bed and looked at the intruders with unconcealed revulsion. “Goblins.”

The red skin that covered their misshapen, bald heads had the texture of lumpy dough. Hair sprouted from their fungal ears and their scaly hands had claws as long as the yellow fangs that protruded from their mouths, dripping with saliva.

“You’re drooling on my floor!” Chandra said in disgust.

They also, she noticed, smelled terrible.

The goblin hopping around on one foot gibbered at its companion in a tongue Chandra didn’t recognize. The other goblin hissed at her.

“I’ll say this just once,” she told them, letting flames ripple boldly along her skin in an effort to intimidate them. “Get out of my room. Get out now.”

The goblin that had hissed at her nudged its companion, who was still obsessed with the pain in his foot. Getting no reaction, the hissing goblin nudged again. This annoyed the second goblin, who put down his aching foot and irritably swatted the first goblin. The first one growled in annoyance, turned around, and hit him back.

As if oblivious to Chandra’s presence, they were suddenly clobbering each other with vehemence, growling and gibbering. Chandra watched them for a few moments, but her amusement quickly palled, and she interrupted them with a stinging bolt of fire that got their attention.

“What in the Multiverse are you two doing here?” she demanded.

They blinked, as if startled to be reminded that they had invaded a woman’s bedchamber in a monastery where they had no business being. Although goblins practiced fire magic, they were unwelcome here. The Keralians had no interest in studying and working alongside creatures who had the manners, values, and sanitary habits of rabid animals.

One of the goblins, evidently remembering the business at hand, bared its chipped yellow fangs and snarled, “Kill woman.”

In unison, the two goblins gave a guttural little war cry, before launching themselves at Chandra.

She moved her hands forward, calling golden heat into her palms, and warded off her attackers’ claws by throwing a large fireball into their faces. However, the goblins were perhaps more competent then they’d originally appeared. It was clear they had some moderate protection against fire, whether from a charm or spell. Chandra’s opening salvo left them unsinged, though slightly disoriented.

Taking advantage of that moment, Chandra picked up the lone chair in her room, and brought it crashing down on the confused goblins. One of them screamed and clutched his bald head, staggering. Apparently rethinking his commitment to murder, he dashed out the door.

The other goblin merely seemed to be enraged by the heavy blow. It snarled viciously and, doubling over, flew straight into Chandra’s knees. The chair flew out of Chandra’s grasp as she lost her balance and fell against the wall, propelled by the speed and surprising weight of her attacker.

The goblin tried to tear out her throat with its fangs, but Chandra gouged the beast’s fiery orange eyes with one hand and pulled its hairy ear as hard as she could with the other, trying to pull its head away from her neck. While the beast was temporarily blinded, she balled her fist and transferred all her energy there. Her knuckles superheated like molten lava and she punched the goblin in the stomach. As the wind and a considerable amount of spittle was knocked out of her assailant, she pushed with her fist again, twisting it from side to side in an effort to cook the thing from the inside out.

She squirmed beneath her adversary, trying to shift her weight so that the goblin’s dripping saliva and revolting breath weren’t in such close proximity to her face.

“Chandra? Chandra!”

She risked glancing away from her opponent and saw Brother Sergil standing in the doorway, blinking at her. There were a couple of other Keralians behind him, also attracted by the commotion.

“There’s a second goblin!” Chandra shouted. “It got away! Stop it! Get it!”

“A second…” Sergil gasped, still staring at her. “Fires above! What are you doing to that goblin?’”

“Get the other one!” Chandra shouted, as the goblin took advantage of her distraction to throw its weight. She was suddenly rolling around on the floor with her gruesome opponent.

“Do you want some help with that?”

“Sergil! Get the… Agh!” She cried out in sudden pain when the beast’s claw drew blood from her thigh. “… other one!”

“There’s another one?” Brother Sergil said, sounding appalled, but he and the other monks disappeared before she could reply.

Trying to keep the goblin’s fangs away from her throat, Chandra kept pressing her molten fist into its muscular belly. Her magic was much stronger than anything claimed by this stinking thing, she knew. She just needed a little more time… And, sure enough, a moment later, she felt the goblin’s skin start to sizzle. The stench of burning cloth arose from the spot, followed by the sickly smell of roasting flesh. The goblin quivered, snarled again… then let out a howl of pain and released its hold on Chandra, intent now on getting away from her. She tried to cling to it, telling herself to take it captive, but really wanting to kill it. However, its fight or flight instinct had taken a distinct turn toward flight and Chandra released it rather than have her arm chewed off.

The goblin scrambled to its feet and ran out the door. Chandra leaped up and followed it out of the room. The claw wound on her thigh stung sharply now, slowing her down. She tried not to think about what sort of horrible, festering infection she would get from a filthy goblin claw.

On the walkway outside, the goblin barreled into a startled woman, who screamed, but the collision didn’t stop the goblin’s flight. Other Keralians were running around and shouting, apparently looking for the goblin that had previously fled. Chandra followed this goblin down the walkway and toward the eastern terrace.

“Chandra!” a familiar voice cried.

She looked over her shoulder and saw Brannon running toward her, trying to catch up. “Stay back!” she ordered.

“I’ll help you!”

“Stay back!” Chandra doubted the goblin would have any scruples about killing a child.

“Brannon!” Brother Sergil shouted. “Stay with me!”

Chandra kept after the goblin.

Moving awkwardly, but quite fast nonetheless, the hideous assassin ran across the eastern terrace and straight for the stairway that led down to the herb garden below, from which it could escape over the red stone wall and into the dark night.

Chandra stretched out her arms, incredibly angry that this whole thing was happening. But anger was good for Chandra. Anger tapped that part of her that made the fire hot. Anger was the accelerant that took fire to inferno. That little beast was not getting away. Chandra raised a wall of fire around the fleeing goblin. He tried to run through it, but the wall grew thicker, moving with him as he ran, the circle shrinking in on him so that he couldn’t escape. Shrieking in panic now, the goblin hesitated, unsure if any direction were better than another. And the flames closed in on him, no matter which direction he turned as he sought to flee the fire’s destructive hunger.

Chandra’s magic was much stronger than whatever pathetic power this lumpish assassin could claim. She only needed another moment… And sure enough, the goblin screamed in pain as he was consumed by the fire, his thrashing discernible even through the shifting wall that closed on him like a molten iron maiden.

When the glowing remnants of the dying goblin vanished and all that remained was her own fire, Chandra let go of her spell. The flames calmed, no longer moving and shifting to imprison her enemy. With nothing fueling it, the fire she had called forth began to die. Within a few moments, it would disappear altogether.

Chandra was breathing heavily, but she was no longer angry. Only her throbbing leg served as a reminder of the rage that had beaten so furiously in her heart moments ago. She wiped perspiration from her face, smoothed away the lingering flames from her long red hair, and leaned over, resting her hands on her knees as she tried to catch her breath.

Her head turned quickly when she heard footsteps approaching her, but she relaxed when she saw Luti, wearing a long, copper-colored robe. The mother mage’s white hair was loosely braided and hanging over one shoulder. Her dark eyes were alert as she gazed at Chandra’s dying fire on the eastern terrace.

“A goblin attack, they’re saying,” Luti said.

Chandra nodded. “Two of them.”

“Yes, I heard. Unfortunately, no one can find the other one. It must have got away.”

“Oh.” Chandra steadied her breathing and stood upright again. “I don’t think it’ll come back. It didn’t seem to be the persistent type.”

Luti noticed her bleeding leg. “You’re hurt.”

“Goblin claw.”

Luti grimaced. “We’ll have to clean it and keep an eye on it. Fortunately, it doesn’t look serious. But it’ll sting for a few days.”

“Chandra!” Brannon called, running toward her. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she assured him as he reached her side.

“Was that really a goblin, like they’re saying?” he asked eagerly.

“Yes.”

“I wish I had gotten a good look. I’ve never seen one!”

“They’re disgusting,” she said. “I can’t believe that female goblins actually… well… whatever they do.”

Luti asked her, “Did you know your attackers?”

“Know them?” Chandra blinked. “They were goblins.”

“You never saw them before?”

“You’ve seen one, you’ve seen ’em all, I guess.”

“I wish you’d take this seriously, Chandra,” Luti said. “But if you don’t think they were personal enemies of yours, and considering we haven’t had a goblin attack here in many years… I think we can guess who sent them.”

“Who sent…” Chandra realized what she meant. “You mean the oufes? They can sure carry a grudge for little guys.”

“Yes,” Luti said. “Even though it was, of course, only a small portion of the forest.”

“No, no,” Samir said, sitting in Mother Luti’s private workshop in the monastery five days later. “Not all the woodlanders. There’s some ill feeling about the fire among other factions, of course, but it’s only the oufes who are calling for your execution, Chandra.”

Samir, who looked more harassed than usual, had made the trip up the mountain that day to update Mother Luti and Chandra on the situation in the Great Western Wood.

“Only the oufes,” Chandra repeated, shifting her position to stretch her sore leg. The claw wound was healing well, but it still ached a little.

Luti said, “I suppose we can regard that as good news.”

“Actually, it’s one particular tribe of oufes.” Samir added wearily, “A big tribe.”

“Presumably the tribe in whose territory the fire occurred?” Luti said.

“Yes. I’ve tried reasoning with them. To explain that Chandra was fighting a ghost warden who had invaded our lands to spy on us.” Samir sighed. “But you know what oufes are like.”

Luti said, “Not amenable to reason.”

“Not really.” He shrugged and added, “To them, the forest is sacred. What happened in the woods that day has offended them deeply. Imagine what the Keralians would do if some came in and set your monastery on fire… Okay, bad example, but you get what I mean.

“They insist that nothing less than Chandra’s death will atone for the destruction of the forest. They’re calling for her assassination.”

“We supposed so,” Luti said, “since as of now there have been three energetic attempts on Chandra’s life.”

Samir said, “And since those attempts failed, this morning the tribe increased the size of the reward they’re offering for her death.”

“What sort of reward do oufes offer?” Chandra said with a frown. “Most of the killers I’ve met aren’t so keen on pussy willow trees.”

“Well, I wouldn’t know what they are offering,” Samir said. “But you’ve seen the caliber of assassin they are attracting.”

“Thank goodness for small mercies,” Luti said dryly. “Even so, we must resolve this matter.”

Chandra said, “Maybe if I talked to them-”

“No,” said Luti and Samir in unison.

Chandra blinked.

Samir said more gently, “Oufes don’t leave the forest, so they certainly won’t come here. And if you entered the forest, my friend, there’s nothing I can say or do that would protect you from the tribe’s wrath. Not in their current frame of mind, anyway.”

“I can handle a little oufe wrath,” Chandra said dismissively.

“And burn down more of the forest?” Luti said. “No.”

“Mother Luti is right, Chandra,” said Samir. “While the tribe remains this angry, I feel sure that a confrontation would only worsen the situation. We don’t want that. Especially not at a time when cooperation between the monastery and the woodlanders is vital.”

“So what’s the solution?” Chandra said in frustration. “I just keep fighting off the assassins that come after me every day or two?”

“No, of course not,” Samir said. “We must find a way to resolve this matter peaceably. You mentioned there were other attacks?”

“Yes,” Luti said, “and you know about the goblins. But there was also a very large man with an axe outside the walls of the monastery. Luckily, he was more accustomed to chopping wood than people or he might have hurt Brannon.”

“Brannon was attacked?” Samir repeated, clearly horrified.

“Perhaps not intentionally, but he was with Chandra when the idiot tried to take her down. Then, most recently, an archer sent a few arrows from that rock outcropping near the west wall. Fortunately,” Luti said, “the archer had poor aim and lacked stealth, so he didn’t survive even until midday. But what next? How many attempts on her life must Chandra endure? And how long before someone else gets injured in one of these attacks? Or even killed?”

“That’s an excellent point,” Samir said with a nod. “I will appeal to the tribe on the basis of justice. If they persist in their quest for vengeance, they could be responsible for the death of an innocent person. Even a child!”

“Will that argument sway them?” Luti asked.

“Not immediately,” Samir admitted. “Empathy is not an oufe characteristic.”

Luti shook her head in exasperation. “Oufes. Even the smallest spark left unattended can make a fire.”

“Have patience for now,” Samir urged, “and give me time. I believe I can persuade them to call off these attacks. Oufes also tend to have short memories.”

Luti sighed, then nodded. “All right, Samir. I have faith in your leadership and your powers of persuasion. We will try to be patient. Meanwhile…” She frowned down at her folded hands.

“Meanwhile?” Chandra prodded.

“Meanwhile, inform the tribe that Chandra has left the monastery.”

Samir shook his head. “If I tell them a falsehood and they find out, then I will lose-”

“It’s not a falsehood,” Luti said. “At least, it won’t be by this time tomorrow.”

“I’m not running away!” Chandra said.

“Of course you’re not,” said Luti. “You are, at my request, leaving on a mission on behalf of the monastery.”

“I am?” Chandra said suspiciously.

“Yes. A mission that only you can accomplish.” Their eyes met. “We’ll discuss the details later.”

A mission that only you can accomplish…

Did Luti want her to planeswalk? Chandra’s curiosity was kindled, but planeswalking wasn’t something they could discuss in front of Samir, so she nodded in acceptance of Luti’s statement.

“So…” Samir looked from Luti to Chandra, then back to Luti. “If I tell the tribe tomorrow that Chandra has left the monastery, I will be speaking the truth?”

Luti nodded. “And if you think it will help cool their rage, tell them Chandra has been sent away as punishment for what happened. That’s not our way here, of course, but I rather doubt that oufes know-or care-what our ways are.”

“Tell them I’m being punished?” Chandra was insulted. “I don’t want a bunch of oufes thinking-”

“Does it really matter what oufes think of you, Chandra?” Luti said impatiently. “If it means these disruptive attacks cease, so be it. I just want to resolve this matter as quickly as possible, so that we can give our full attention to dealing with the Order!”

Chandra shrugged and folded her arms. She didn’t like it, but Luti had a point, so she let it go.

“And speaking of the Order,” Luti continued. “Killing that ghost warden has attracted Walbert’s attention.”

“What?” Chandra said in surprise.

“How do you know?” asked Samir.

“The soldiers from Zinara who saw you in the forest,” Luti said to Chandra, “reported what they saw. And the tale was carried all the way to the ears of the high priest of the Temple.”

“To Walbert?”

Luti nodded. “I received a letter this morning from Walbert himself, brought by courier.” She gestured to a sheaf of papers sitting on the table next to her. “A long letter.”

“What does he want?” Chandra asked.

“His ultimate goal is to shut down Keral Keep and to outlaw fire magic as we practice it throughout Regatha.”

“He wants what?” Chandra said in outrage.

“Of course that’s what he wants,” Samir said. “The rule of the Order can’t spread to the mountains while Keral Keep stands.”

“Precisely,” said Luti. “Oh, Walbert’s letter-which is so long-winded that one can only pity his scribes-he goes on about wanting peace, harmony, and unity; seemingly harmless aspirations. But his righteous language can’t hide the fact that what he really wants is unchallenged rule over all the lands of Regatha. What he wants is total power.” Luti scowled as she added, “He wants power over us.”

“And us,” Samir added.

“Yes,” Luti agreed. “Over everyone.”

“And to have such power,” Samir said, “to rule over all of Regatha unopposed, to ensure that the Order holds sway over the forests and the mountains, as well as the plains… Walbert must eliminate all other power. Or at least nullify it.”

“Particularly fire magic?” Chandra guessed.

“Yes,” Luti said. “If Walbert can quell fire magic, then all the other undesirable practices-the ones he doesn’t like-will become easier for him to control, too.”

“What about this Purifying Fire that you told me about, Samir?” Chandra asked. “Is it really that important to the Order?”

“So people say, in Zinara.”

“Can it be… I don’t know-destroyed? Damaged? Eliminated?”

“What is created that cannot be destroyed? I suppose the answer is yes, but that would mean entering the Temple of Heliud and infiltrating the caverns. One would assume that it is heavily guarded. I can’t imagine they let just anyone in there.”

“It was just a question,” Chandra muttered.

“You’re not going to Zinara,” Luti said firmly.

“What else does the letter say?”

“Exactly what you might expect. Walbert decries the ‘irresponsible’ teachings of the monastery and the ‘dangerous reign’ of pyromancy in the mountains.”

“All because I killed a ghost warden?” Chandra said.

“His letter goes on at some length about the undisciplined nature of fire mages and the destructive influence of pyromancy in magic.” Luti scowled, her intonation emphasizing those of Walbert’s words that she particularly disagreed with. “Well, if I may paraphrase the great Jaya Ballard: others have criticized destruction, and you know what? They’re all dead.”

Chandra asked, “Is Walbert’s reaction what you meant when you said that destroying the ghost warden might have been ill-advised?”

“Yes,” said Luti. “I’ve never seen one, but I know those creatures are supposed to be hard to eliminate. I thought you might attract Walbert’s attention when you killed it. But I’ve changed my mind about that being ill-advised.”

“Why?”

“Walbert has been looking for an excuse to confront the Keralians openly.” Luti shrugged. “Now that he has found one… I realize that it’s a relief. The growing tension has been exhausting. I, too, am ready for confrontation.”

“But will this…” Chandra frowned. “Mother, have I endangered the monastery?”

“No. Oh, you’ve burned down part of the Great Western Wood, turned the monastery into a target for inept assassins, and made Samir’s life a nightmare of frenzied oufes and disgruntled woodlanders,” Luti said. “But if Walbert didn’t have the destruction of that ghost warden to use as an excuse, then he’d find something else. So I don’t believe that this-” Luti picked up Walbert’s letter from the table beside her and waved it at Chandra. “-is your fault. It was going to happen eventually.”

Samir said, “I agree, Chandra. Walbert has been preparing to challenge the monastery for years. If he didn’t feel ready to try to impose the rule of the Order here, he wouldn’t have used the ghost warden’s demise as an excuse.” He added, “Remember, I’ve met Walbert. Nothing he does is done without a great deal of thought.”

“What’s he like?”

“He’s about Luti’s age, tall, gray-haired, thin. He holds himself erect and is very well-groomed. His smile is cold, like his eyes. He speaks in a calm, civilized tone, yet manages to be threatening.” Samir thought for a moment. “The things he says are outrageous and self-serving, but listening to him talk, I’m sure he really believes what he’s saying.”

Luti made a sound of disgust. “Then he must believe that that I can be moved by the transparent posturing in his letter. Does he imagine that the mountain cares, for even one moment, about the shade it casts on the plain? If he supposes that his absurd rhetoric will somehow curb our belief in the power of fire, then he is in for a rude awakening.”

“Oh, I doubt Walbert thinks a letter will cause you to cooperate with his demands,” said Samir. “Instead, I think he hopes the letter will incite you to rash behavior.”

Luti’s angry frown changed to a look of surprise. And then she smiled ruefully. “This is why you’re such a valuable friend, Samir.” She nodded. “Yes. Of course you’re right. Walbert isn’t just arrogant and power-hungry. He’s also shrewd and manipulative. He will need popular support so he is trying to provoke us.”

“But it’s important,” Samir said, “to give careful thought to your next move. Because careful thought is not what he’s hoping for.”

“Actually, my next move doesn’t really call for that much thought,” Luti said.

“Oh?”

“Walbert demands that I turn over Chandra to him-or, rather, ‘the red-haired female pyromancer who attacked four soldiers of the Order after criminally destroying a ghost warden.’” Luti looked at Chandra as she added, “Which is why I think the first thing I should do is send you away for a while. Someplace where Walbert won’t look for you.”

“So it’s not the oufes you were worried about, after all,” Chandra said.

“Oh, I’m worried about them, too,” Luti said. “Never underestimate just how vengeful an oufe can be.”

There actually is a mission I’m asking you to go on for the monastery,” Luti said to Chandra as they strolled through the herb garden, having just said farewell to Samir at the eastern gate. “Considering the danger that I suspect is involved, I’d be reluctant to send you, under normal circumstances. But since it’s obviously a good idea for you to be absent for a while…”

“You want me to planeswalk?” Chandra guessed. “That’s not dangerous.”

“According to Jaya,” Luti said, “it is rather dangerous. There aren’t roads or signs or maps among the planes of the Multiverse, are there? There are no convenient doors indicating where to enter and leave the Blind Eternities. And I assume there aren’t any heralds helpfully crying things like, ‘Welcome to Regatha!’”

“Well, I guess it’s a little dangerous,” Chandra said with a shrug. “But nothing I can’t handle.”

“A place without time or logic. Without physical form or substance. No ordinary person can survive in the?ther that exists between the planes. Only a planeswalker can,” Luti mused. “And they say that a planeswalker can only survive there for a limited time. If you become disoriented and get lost in the Blind Eternities, you might never emerge. Before long, you’d be consumed there and die.”

“They say? They, who?” Chandra said dismissively. “Besides you, who around here knows anything about planeswalkers?”

“Is it true?” Luti demanded.

Chandra looked out over the vast forest below the mountain, and to the plains that lay further east. “All right, yes. I could get lost and die in the Blind Eternities. So what? You, or Brannon, or Samir, could get lost and die in the mountains. The first time you sent me to meet with Samir, I thought I’d get lost and die in the Great Western Wood!”

“Yes, I remember. When you finally made your way back here, you were… irritable about your misadventure in the woods.”

“But the only alternative to taking that sort of risk is to stay home all your life.”

“And staying home isn’t that safe these days, either,” Luti said dryly as she sat on a bench under one of the garden’s ancient olive trees. Her glance surveyed the vegetation. “Goodness, that rosemary really needs trimming! It’s taking over the whole place.”

Not remotely interested in gardening, Chandra sat next to her and asked, “So where do you want me to go?”

Luti folded her hands in her lap. “Kephalai. Which is also part of the danger I’m worried about.”

“Keph…” Chandra laughed. “I get to steal the scroll again?”

“That all depends.”

“On what?”

“On you, I suppose.” She frowned again at the overgrown rosemary, then said, “Brother Sergil and the other monks working on the scroll believe they’ve solved the riddle. I don’t suppose you remember the decorative border surrounding the text in the original scroll?”

“No. Like I said…”

“Yes, the planeswalker who stole it from us played tricks on your memory.” Luti nodded. “Well, after more days of studying the text, the brothers believe that the decorative border-which they did not copy or study during the brief time that we had the original here-contains the clue to where the artifact can be found.”

“The border? In what way?”

“They’re not sure. It may be a map, it may be hidden text, it may be a spell…” Luti shrugged. “So if you can look at the scroll again, you may be able to see the information concealed within the decorative border.”

“And to look at the scroll, I need to go back to Kephalai.”

“If it’s still there. If the planeswalker who stole it from us didn’t take it somewhere else entirely.”

“Even if the scroll is back on Kephalai now, I might not be able to interpret what’s in the border,” Chandra said.

“In that case, the monks would like an opportunity to study it themselves. So you’ll need to bring it back here again, if you can.” Luti looked at her. “If the scroll is back in the Sanctum of Stars now, it will certainly be under increased security. Stealing it a second time will be very dangerous.”

“Fortunately,” Chandra said, “I enjoy a challenge.”

“Yes, I thought you’d say that. Even so, please be careful. If only for the sake of an old woman who has become rather fond of you, even though you’re an awful lot of trouble to have around.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“I think it would be-” But Luti’s comment ended on a shocked gasp as the rosemary plant lifted itself from the soil and attacked them.

Chandra saw claws and fangs hiding amidst the plant’s spiky leaves as it suddenly turned into a tall, moving creature, with arms and legs that ended in the same spikes.

Heat flowed through her in immediate response to the danger, and she amputated one of the plant’s attacking limbs with a bolt of fire that she swept downward as she was assaulted. The creature hissed in pain, swayed, then doubled over and re-formed itself into some sort of small, leafy wolf-looking thing.

“How did it do that?” Chandra blurted, staring in surprise.

Luti gasped again. “Watch out!” She hurled a fireball at the creature as it crouched to attack. The projectile hit the growling four-legged bush in the face, but the leafy wolf easily shook off the blow and leaped for Chandra.

Her fireball was considerably more powerful than Luti’s, and when it hit the creature, the thing fell back with a screech, rolled over into a ball, and reshaped itself into the form of a giant spider.

“I hate spiders,” Chandra said with feeling.

She raised her hands to call forth a hot flow of lava, and dumped it all over the disgusting creature that was scuttling toward her with murderous intent. The massive spidery thing was smothered beneath the lava and incinerated by the liquid fire.

The two women stared at the glowing pile of cooling lava that had destroyed their attacker.

“Well.” Luti was panting. “That was… different.”

“Ugh! Did you say you know what that thing was?”

“Yes. I’m pretty sure it was a woodland shapeshifter,” Luti said, still breathless. “I’ve heard of them… but this is the first one… I’ve ever…” She sat down shakily on the bench again. “I’m too old for a shock like that.”

“Even I’m too old for a shock like that.” Chandra’s heart was pounding after the brief fight.

“No wonder the rosemary looked so overgrown,” Luti murmured.

“That was pretty clever, I have to admit.”

“Not that we won’t miss you, Chandra,” Luti said, her hand resting over her heart on her heaving chest, “but how soon can you go?”

Chandra talked with Brother Sergil that evening, trying to get some idea of what to look for in the decorative border if she saw the scroll again. She didn’t learn much. As Luti had already told her, it might be a pattern, it might be artfully concealed text, it might be an ornate map. Or it might be none of those. But he did tell her enough so that she would be able to identify the scroll, considering she had no memory of it.

Wonderful.

She decided to go to Brannon’s room while he was getting ready for bed to tell him she was going away again, but that she would be back before long.

“You’re not running away from oufes, are you?” he demanded.

“No, of course not,” she assured him.

“Because we’re better sorcerers than a bunch of elves and weird woodland creatures.”

“Yes, we are.” She tucked him into bed and said, “But the brothers want to know more about the scroll I brought back-you remember the scroll?”

“Yes. The one that the stranger stole.”

“Right. So Mother Luti asked me to try to find it.”

“I should come with you.” He started to get out of bed. “I can help you!”

“I need you to stay here and protect the monastery,” she said firmly, nudging him back onto his narrow cot. “There was another attack today. That’s the fourth one. And if I hadn’t been there, something awful might have happened to Mother Luti.”

“I heard! A woodland shapeshifter!” Brannon’s eyes glowed with excitement. “I kind of wish you hadn’t killed it right away, Chandra. Mother Luti’s never seen one before, and she’s really old, so maybe I’ll never get another chance to see one.”

“I’m sorry about that,” she said. “It was pretty interesting.”

“But you weren’t scared?”

“I was a little scared,” she admitted. “Especially when it shaped itself like a spider.”

“Ooh! I wish I’d seen that! Was Mother Luti scared?”

“Yes, I think she was pretty scared. And now, even though I won’t be here after tonight, it might take Samir a little while to convince that oufe tribe to stop sending assassins to the monastery. So who knows what could happen next?”

“They might even send a spitebellows!” he said eagerly.

Chandra didn’t know what that was, but she said, “Exactly. So while I’m away looking for the scroll, I need to know that someone is here protecting Mother Luti and the monastery. Someone I trust. Someone I can count on.”

Brannon sighed, the weight of the world on his shoulders. “Oh, all right. I’ll stay.”

“Good. Thank you.”

“But just this time. Next time, I’m coming, too.” “We’ll see, kiddo.”

“Chandra.” The unfairness of her equivocation clearly incensed him.

“It’s getting late,” she said hastily. “Try to get some sleep.”

“When will you be back?”

“Soon,” she promised. “Goodnight.”

“Here, take this.” Brannon handed Chandra a small piece of flame quartz on a string. “It’s for luck.”

“Thanks, kiddo.”

Chandra left Brannon, knowing he’d lie awake for a while thinking about the exciting things that had happened and that might happen again. She went back to her own room and began preparing to planeswalk.

Ideally, she’d rather do this outside, alone in the mountains. That was where she felt the most centered and focused, the best prepared for planeswalking. But it would be a little difficult to concentrate on entering the?ther if she had to keep both eyes peeled for assassins outside the comparative safety of the monastery walls.

Even inside the walls, she needed to be alert, considering that goblins had invaded her room and a small bush had tried to kill her in the herb garden.

A death sentence from oufes was a nuisance, she decided.

But alone in her room, with the door closed and the table pushed in front of it to keep out intruders, she could prepare in safety and depart unseen.

Of course, in an emergency, she could planeswalk without as much preparation, but it was dangerous. Also pretty nauseating. The first time had been like that. She hadn’t known what was happening, and the disorientation had been like some horrific combination of being poisoned, beaten, dropped down a well, and scalded. With no idea what was happening or where she was going, she’d thought she was dying. Indeed, she nearly had died. It was just luck, survival instinct, and some innate, previously unrecognized talent that had led her through the Blind Eternities to find the relative safety of another plane.

There, she learned what she really was, and had also learned how to travel more safely between the planes of the Multiverse. And, with practice, she was getting better at it.

She sat down on the floor of her dark room and began by focusing on her breathing.

In, out. Slow. Even. Relaxed. Inhale, exhale.

Each time a thought intruded, she banished it and focused again on her breathing.

Innnnnn. Outtttt.

With each cycle of her slow, rhythmic breathing, her bond grew stronger with the eternal flow of mana throughout the Multiverse and its infinite planes. Her bond to mana, that ethereal fuel for all magic, was strong on Regatha, and she would use it to carry her through, but there were other planes and other sources of mana ready for those who understood the use of the power.

Chandra felt a welcome tingle of heat begin to flow through her. She opened herself further, accepting the intense flow. She felt fire in her blood, in her bones, in her belly. She heard the roar of flames around her, and she felt their glow all through her body.

Still concentrating on maintaining a deep, relaxed breathing pattern, she sensed her physical presence on Regatha beginning to dissolve into flames as she slipped into the Blind Eternities. As she disappeared from her humble bedchamber into the hot blaze of a fiery chasm, she recognized the formless void that existed outside of time and space.

Green, blue, white, red, black. Undulating rivers of vibrant, multi-colored mana swirled around her in a dizzying whirlwind. Overhead. Underfoot. On all sides. Tumbling like waterfalls, twining like ribbons. Vibrating like the strings of a harp, filling her senses, flowing endlessly…

She moved as if swimming in invisible lava, pushing her way through something rich and heavy that she could neither see nor touch, but which surrounded her, engulfed her, and melded itself to her. Its fiery heat both energized and drained her, consorting with that Spark inside her, that innate quality that kept her from being devoured by the void.

She spread her hands wide, palms facing outward, and concentrated, trying to sense the energy of the planes echoing throughout the Multiverse. She had been to Kephalai once before, so this journey was easier than the other. Even though there was no path, she recognized the way. She sensed where Kephalai lay in the tumult of her surroundings, and she willed herself to journey toward it. There was no herald, no marker. She sensed the energy flowing from a particular source, and she recognized it with comforting certainty as Kephalai.

She sought entry to the plane, a way through the shifting veils in her path, coming between her and her goal. Calling on all her power, she propelled herself toward the plane like a flaming arrow, shooting herself into physical reality once more.

“Ungh!” Chandra grunted as she was flung physically against something very hard, flat, and broad. She bounced off it and fell down to an equally hard surface. She lay there limp, breathless, trying not to pass out.

All right, the journey had gone well, but the arrival was a little bumpy.

She lay facedown on the stony ground, her ribs heaving as she gasped for breath, and a chill creeping across her sweat-drenched back and arms as the cool air of Kephalai washed over her.

She opened one eye and saw that she had bounced off a stone wall. No wonder it had hurt. The building nearby and the stone paving beneath her cheek were both a cool, pale gray. She thought she smelled dead fish, an odor so rank that even the gulls she saw circling overhead might decline a free meal.

“Mummy, look!” cried a child.

“No, dear, stay away from her,” said a woman’s voice.

Chandra rolled over and looked up at the woman and small child who were walking past her. They were both fair-skinned, with the blonde hair and blue eyes that were common on Kephalai. The woman was holding the little boy’s hand, and she had a well-bundled sleeping baby nestled in her other arm. She and the boy both wore cloaks over their clothing.

“Is it morning or afternoon?” Chandra asked, shivering a little. The cloud cover made it impossible to tell.

The woman scowled at her. “Women like you should stay off the streets by day and leave them safe for decent folk and innocent children!”

Chandra stared after the woman as she stomped away, dragging her little boy with her. “Some things don’t change, wherever you go,” she muttered.

She took a steadying breath and slowly hauled herself to her feet, wincing a little as she did so. She’d definitely have some bruises as souvenirs of her arrival on this plane. She rubbed a hand over her thigh and was glad that the claw wound there hadn’t split open as a result of her crash landing. It might leave a scar, but it was still healing well.

Chandra looked around to get her bearings. She recognized the place, having been there before. Rising above the water on the other side of the harbor was the bridge where she’d had to seriously blow some things up so that she could leave Kephalai. She grinned when she saw there was still a heap of tumbled stone from the damage she’d done, including some hideous statue she’d destroyed. That hadn’t been intentional, but there was no denying that Kephalai was a better looking place without it.

Chandra tensed when she heard screeching overhead. Looking into the sky, she relaxed when she saw only birds flying above. One of the nastier surprises of her previous adventure here had been the gargoyles from the Prelate’s palace. Two of them had captured Chandra and carried her above the city, hauling her off to captivity. If she was going to steal the scroll again, she’d need to do something about those creatures.

Getting her bearings, Chandra turned away from the harbor and started making her way along the city’s crowded flagstone streets. The first order of business, obviously, was to see if the scroll was back in the Sanctum of Stars. Then she could decide what to do next.

The Sanctum of Stars was a sort of combined museum and treasury in the heart of the city. It was a repository of such rich, diverse, and rare objects that its renown extended beyond the plane. She spotted the Sanctum easily, though she was still some distance from it. Its pale stone spire rose majestically above the domed buildings surrounding it. Chandra crossed another bridge that stretched over one of the city’s many canals. While walking in the direction of her goal, she considered how to approach this situation.

She had been seen by some of the Prelate’s guards when she eluded capture during her previous visit there. And for all she knew, that tricky mage who’d followed her to Regatha could be lurking under a rock somewhere near. Obviously, she should avoid being recognized by anyone who had seen her before, or to whom a description could have been circulated. The problem was how to know who that might be. Chandra’s appearance was distinctive, especially on Kephalai. She was taller than most of the inhabitants of Kephalai and her red hair, golden skin, and amber-flecked eyes stood out in a society where most of the people were fair-skinned, blue-eyed, and blonde-haired.

Since the air was chilly, she decided to confiscate a hooded cloak. If she covered her hair with a hood and kept her eyes shyly downcast, she ought to be able to enter the Sanctum of Stars without arousing much suspicion. It was a much-visited place, after all-and although her height and coloring were unusual here, Chandra didn’t think these features alone would attract attention.

She found the garment-makers’ district by asking a passing stranger for directions. Once there, she soon found her opportunity to acquire a cloak when a couple of careless lads took a break while loading up a cart with garments. Chandra didn’t want to waste a whole day earning enough local coin to buy a cloak by performing fire tricks in a city square. With silent apologies to the merchant from whom she was stealing, she stealthily took a cloak from the back of the cart.

As she approached the Sanctum of Stars on foot, Chandra scraped the hair away from her face, tucked it under her collar as best she could, and pulled the hood of her cloak over her head. She was glad for its warmth in the chilly air.

If there were extra security here now, it wasn’t obvious from the outside. The building still looked exactly the way it had looked before. Chandra admired the round stained-glass window in the center of the pale gray spire. The sapphire-blue glass had a large, glowing, eight-pointed white star embedded in it. She looked warily at the gargoyles squatting strategically around the spire, since it seemed likely that they, too, could turn into dangerous pursuers if given the command. But at the moment, at least, they were still.

She knew from previous reconnaissance that admission to the Sanctum of Stars was open to all by day, though visitors were prohibited from bringing weapons into the building. There was no body search at the door, just a death penalty and prompt execution for anyone who violated the rule, a deterrent that had kept the Sanctum murder-free for nearly a century.

Keeping her eyes downcast, Chandra added a slight stoop to her posture and started limping a little. Overall, it was a weak diguise, but her hair was covered and she might be taken for an invalid of sorts.

She limped up to the entrance and, with her gaze on the stone steps at her feet, spoke in a bashful, age-weary voice to ask for permission to enter to the museum. The bored guard at the door granted it and let her enter. She went inside and, rather than make a beeline for the display case where she hoped to find the scroll again, she made herself meander around the exhibits for a while, pretending to admire the many exotic objects and rare artifacts in which she had no interest.

Moving slowly and maintaining the outward appearance of a bashful invalid, she gradually made her way to the big glass case where, on her last visit, four precious scrolls had been displayed. Originally, she had simply smashed the case and removed the scroll she’d wanted. She could see as she approached that the case had been replaced and that there were four scrolls inside it.

Chandra’s heart thudded. Yes. The scroll was there! With Brother Segril’s description, she could identify it easily. There was also a distinctive scorch mark on the leather casing, and a big dent in the gold end piece.

Unfortunately, she still had no idea what it contained. Given that it was rolled up, its contents firmly hidden, she could not understand why it was displayed to the public. What was interesting about a rolled piece of paper? It could be some scribe’s to-do list for all anyone knew.

Still, there was no question: she’d have to steal it a second time.

She was still gazing at it, trying to think of a plan, when two pairs of strong hands seized her from behind-one assailant for each arm-and a deep, booming voice said, “Chandra Nalaar, by the authority vested in me, I arrest you for crimes against the Prelate, the Sanctum of Stars, and the people of Kephalai!”

Chandra was stunned speechless. She raised her head as her two captors whirled her around with brute force; her hood fell back, and a rough hand yanked her long red hair out of her collar so that it fell freely around her shoulders.

There was a fairly good-sized crowd of visitors here. Most of them were staring in surprised fascination at Chandra, who was held firmly by two guards, one of whom had pressed the blade of his sword against her throat. She stared in bemusement at the third guard, a stocky, middle-aged man who didn’t look remotely familiar. He had just used her name when arresting her.

How could he possibly know…

Oh, no.

The planeswalker who had come to Regatha! He had known her name, too. Had she really thought he’d have just returned the scroll and left again?

She looked quickly around the Sanctum, but she didn’t see the planeswalker. She froze in appalled surprise, though, when she did see …

“Telepaths?” she guessed.

There were two of them. Both women. They emerged from their concealment walking arm in arm. Their bald heads reflected the lights of the Sanctum as their hairless brows cast shadows over unnaturally bright eyes. She saw that their skin was eerily white, and they wore identical pale blue robes with an unfamiliar dark blue symbol embroidered on the left shoulder. They stared hard at Chandra. She nodded, answering her own question. “Telepaths.”

Chandra realized that her physical disguise had been pointless. These two had probably been reading everyone who entered the building!

Fine, read this: drop dead you creepy, bald hags!

The two women blinked in unison.

Well, this was just great. The intruder had returned the scroll to the Sanctum of Stars, told them her name, and told them she might be back. They had obviously prepared for this. She had just as obviously walked into a trap.

That fact became even clearer as about two dozen soldiers now poured into the hall, moving with swift, well-rehearsed efficiency.

Damn, damn, damn.

Eight of the soldiers took charge of organizing the departure of the gawking visitors. The rest of them surrounded Chandra, weapons drawn. In addition to swordsmen, there were six archers among them who drew their bows and pointed their arrows directly at her.

“Now, now, let’s all stay calm,” she said. “I’m sure we can discuss our differences like reasonable adults.”

One of the mind mages warned the guards, “She intends to fight.”

Chandra scowled and tried to block their probing. She knew she was stronger, if she could concentrate. But for Chandra it was actually the opposite. Her mind was racing with possibility. Thoughts were moving in her head with such imprecision, that she barely knew she was thinking. She did know, however, that this whole situation was making her very mad.

They sensed it, or rather they sensed that Chandra’s fuse was short. The telepath who had spoken before told the head guard, “We can’t read her. She’s too erratic.”

The other one said, “Keep hold of her.”

The head guard said impatiently to one of his men, “Where are the Enervants? They’re supposed to be here!”

“Enervants?” Chandra said. “That’s some nerve showing up late for the party.” This was no time for jokes, but she couldn’t help it.

“The Prelate told me you’d be back,” the head guard said. “I said no one was that reckless, but she said that you might be.

So the Prelate of Kephalai had indeed enlisted the planeswalker to retrieve the scroll from Regatha. And he’d reported to the Prelate.

“All right, so I’ve come back,” Chandra said, assessing the situation. “Now what?”

“Now I turn you over the Enervants.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Actually,” the guard said, “I don’t think you’ll like them. They are particularly suited to breaking the will of even the most headstrong. It is said they enjoy torturing their subjects in the way most would enjoy a fine meal. They savor it. They take time over the courses, but are not so gluttonous that they don’t leave a helping for the rats. I should imagine they will have a particularly good time with you.”

There were more than twenty armed guards, a closed space, no visible exits, a scroll to liberate, a couple of mind mages who might have other tricks up their floppy blue sleeves… And whoever the Enervants were, they didn’t sound like a crowd Chandra really wanted to meet.

“You’re right,” she said. “The Enervants are late. I don’t like anyone who isn’t punctual.”

She was worried about the fragility of the scroll. She hadn’t come all the way to Kephalai to destroy it by accident. However, like it or not, she only saw one viable option now.

“Have you ever heard of Jaya Ballard? No? No, of course not. My teacher’s always quoting her, and I get a little tired of it. But I have to admit, once in a while, there’s some good advice there.”

She made her decision. Fire, scroll, fire.

“For example,” Chandra said, feeling heat pour through her. “Jaya said, ‘when in doubt…’” Fire licked her veins, her skin, her fingertips. “‘Use the biggest boom you know.’”

The sound of steel being drawn from scabbards was decisive. The guards were poised for attack, arrows were knocked and drawn, but they hesitated as a small ball of white-hot flame emanated from Chandra’s core. It didn’t seem like much to them.

Chandra, meanwhile, concentrated on the on the ball as best as she could. As magical energy flowed into her, the ball expanded rapidly to the size of a human head and Chandra sagged a bit, as if the spell had failed. The ball remained where it was, quivering impotently like a mass of gelatin.

“That’s not much of a boom,” said one of the guards and the tension drained from the room, as many lowered their weapons laughing.

As they did so, Chandra sharpened her focus and the ball collapsed into an infinitesimal point before exploding with such force that it knocked everyone in the room off their feet. Arrows were incinerated, clothing set afire, and the swords of the guards were suddenly searing the flesh of their palms. Luckily the telepaths had no hair to burn, but the stench from the others in the room was more than Chandra had bargained for.

Immune to the blast herself, Chandra turned to smash the glass case but saw that her blast had already done so. She reached inside and grabbed the scroll, which seemed unharmed.

She heard screams all around her. People in panic, burning. People in pain.

“Kill her! Kill her!” someone shouted hoarsely.

Calling on all of her power, on everything she had left, Chandra formed another ball of fire in her free hand and cast it at the wall. The fiery explosion blew out an entire wall of the Sanctum. She squinted against the flying dust and debris, coughing as she inhaled. She ran through the burning chaos and out of the building. Four guards who had survived the explosions were hot on her heels, shouting, “Stop that woman!”

People in the crowded streets were screaming, too terrified by the explosion to pay any attention to one fleeing woman and the bloody, dirty soldiers running after her.

The Sanctum’s structure was more precarious than it looked. Without that wall supporting its fourth side, the building began to cave in on itself.

Chandra heard the tremendous crack of splintering stone and the crash of collapsing walls and floors. Despite the soldiers right behind her, she turned to look. What she saw was so startling, she stopped running and just stood there and stared in shock at her handiwork. So did the soldiers who, moments ago, had been so intent on killing her.

The tall spire of the Sanctum, high overhead, had started to sway. The gargoyles that squatted around it reacted slowly, their wings shuddering uncertainly as they unfolded from their hunched positions and prepared to take flight. Inside the building, all the soldiers and both mind mages were probably already dead; if not, then they would die within moments.

The massive spire toppled and fell. The Sanctum of Stars completely collapsed. It seemed to happen with a horrific slowness. The immense weight of cracking, falling stone created a terrifying roar. People in the streets were screaming in panic and fleeing to safety. Chandra turned and fled, too.

The enormous impact of the Sanctum collapsing on itself hurled rocks, flames, ashes, dust, and debris across the main square and down the length of every surrounding street. Chandra was knocked off her feet when the ground shook and a wave of rock and ash hurled her forward. Someone trampled her prone body as they ran headlong from the disaster. Winded and in pain, Chandra was lying face down in the street, debris still showering down on her as the dust of pulverized stone filled her lungs.

Coughing and bleeding, she lay there in a daze.

Fire above, the whole thing! The whole building! I didn’t mean to do that.

The screams of children filled her ears. She heard a woman wailing. A horse was whinnying in terror.

She had just wanted to escape alive with the scroll.

Dead soldiers? Sure. Dead telepaths? Fair game.

But she hadn’t meant to destroy a whole section of the city, terrorizing all of its citizens and perhaps killing innocents.

Pull yourself together. Come on! Get up. Get out of here-or you’ll be joining the dead.

Coughing and shaking, she rose to her feet. The scroll was still in her hand. She looked down at it, trying to think.

She couldn’t planeswalk. Not under these circumstances. And not with her strength so depleted. She didn’t have anything left right now. She needed to regroup and get a handle on things.

Still coughing, she staggered down the street, away from the Sanctum, going in the same direction as the fleeing crowd. By the time she felt she really needed to sit down, she was well beyond the dust, debris, and milling panic. Many people were filling the market street where she stopped to rest. News of the disaster, as well as varied explanations for it, circulated quickly.

Someone who saw her sitting in a dazed slump on the street kindly offered her food and water. Chandra realized she was shaking with fatigue, and accepted gratefully. She hadn’t really thought she was hungry, but once she started eating, she discovered she was ravenous. She consumed the food as greedily as a growing boy who hadn’t eaten in two days. She was thirsty, too, after all the dust that had coated her throat when the Sanctum collapsed. She drank her fill, then poured water over her head, neck, and hands, washing away blood, dust, and filth.

Only then did she look skyward and realize that the hunt was already on for her.

She saw gargoyles flying overhead, their big wings spread wide and their spindly legs trailing behind their pudgy bodies as they patrolled the sky. She could see two of them directly above. Just as one would expect from creatures made of stone, they were remarkably thorough and methodical in their work. The two of them moved back and forth across the sky in an even, intersecting pattern, switching each other’s route to double-check a section of ground with another implacable set of eyes.

Chandra moved slowly, so as not to attract their attention as she scooted beneath a street merchant’s canopy to shield herself from their view.

She wondered just how well those gargoyles could see; if they could spot her red hair from overhead. She needed to cover it up again even if they did they have some other means of detecting her. How many of them were hovering over the city? She was too weak right now to deal with them if they plucked her off the street.

Within moments, she noticed something even more alarming. The woman who had given her food a little while ago was now pointing her out to a man. Or, rather, pointing to the spot where Chandra had been sitting a moment ago. The woman was frowning in perplexity as she scanned the street, looking for where she might have gone.

“She was just there, so she can’t have gone far,” is what Chandra guessed the woman said to the man as she searched the street with her eyes.

He wasn’t wearing the uniform of a Sanctum guard, or of the Prelate’s soldiers, but he looked far from innocuous.

He was older than Chandra, but he was still young, late twenties, maybe thirty. He was taller than average, but only by a little. He had fair skin, blue eyes, and black hair. When he turned his head, she saw that his hair was long and wavy, and tied neatly at the back of his neck. He was dressed simply-tan pants and top, with scuffed leather boots and a well-worn dark leather vest. There was a small coin purse attached to his belt, along with something else that looked like a tool or a weapon. It was shiny, like metal, and coiled like rope-or a like a whip.

He looked lithe, agile, and fit. More than that, he looked as alert as a wild animal scenting prey. His movements were economical-even something as simple as the turn of his head, when his gaze sought her out under the merchant’s canopy. He didn’t waste motion or squander energy.

And his face didn’t give away any reaction when he saw her.

He nodded politely to the other woman without taking his gaze off Chandra, as if aware she’d use the slightest opportunity to bolt. His eyes held hers as he approached her. He didn’t hurry, but his walk was direct and purposeful.

She rose to feet, her heart racing as she tried to summon the power to defend herself. But she was still too weak right now. She hadn’t paced herself or conserved any strength. Back there in the Sanctum of Stars, she had thought only about living through her confrontation. She hadn’t thought about what she would do afterwards.

Several oft-repeated lectures of Mother Luti’s floated briefly through her mind. She needed to pace herself, control her power, and manage her emotions with more discipline. She needed to learn the limits of her strength and ration it intelligently in her magic.

And not just the limits. She needed to learn the extent of her power, too, and how to master it. She thought of the collapsing Sanctum and the chaos in the streets of Kephalai, and she felt the weight of that deed.

Chandra’s gaze remained locked with that of the approaching stranger. She couldn’t enter the?ther and escape him that way. She couldn’t call forth fire and fight him. She felt naked as he stopped and stood before her.

His gaze released hers as he took in her appearance, looking her over from head to toe. It wasn’t insolent, insulting, or sympathetic. He simply seemed to acknowledge her bedraggled condition and the event that had caused it.

Then he said, “Chandra Nalaar.” It wasn’t a question.

She shifted her weight. Since he was obviously looking for her, she wasn’t really surprised that he knew her name. It seemed everyone did these days. But it made her uneasy, even so.

She asked, “Who are you?”

“My name is Gideon.”

“And what’s that to me?”

“I think we should get you out of here.”

“What?” she said.

He glanced around. Just a slight turn of his chin, a quick flicker of his eyes to encompass the street scene and the gargoyle guardians overhead. “This situation is volatile. We should leave.”

“Who are you?”

“We have very little time.”

“Then answer my question quickly,” she snapped.

“What happened back there,” he said quietly, tilting his head to indicate the disaster at the Sanctum of Stars. “That was you.”

She didn’t respond.

He prodded, “Wasn’t it?” When she remained unresponsive, he said, “Of course it was. Who else could have done it?”

“You’d better back up and tell me how you even know who I am.” She was starting to think he wasn’t working for the Prelate, or the ruined Sanctum.

“You’ve been making yourself conspicuous,” he said.

“Maybe so. But you haven’t. So I suggest you start explaining.”

“What was it?” He lowered his voice so they wouldn’t be overheard, but some emotion showed now. Tension? Disdain? She wasn’t sure. “A explosion of that size? Inside the Sanctum?” She didn’t deny it, and he whispered, “What were you thinking?”

She admitted wearily, “I was just thinking about surviving.”

His gaze dropped to the scroll clutched in her hand. “And also about stealing?”

“All right, fine, so I’m a bad person,” she said. “I had a troubled youth.”

“You’re still having a troubled youth.”

“All the more reason to stay away from me, Gideon.” She turned to go.

His grip on her arm stopped her. “Hunting you down has been troublesome. I don’t intend to go through it twice.”

She stared at him. “Why have you been hunting me down?”

He looked past her and, though he didn’t move, she sensed his tension increase sharply. “Never mind that now. I think we both know why they’re hunting you down.”

She turned to follow his gaze and saw half a dozen soldiers heading this way. She turned to escape in the other direction, only to see soldiers approaching from there, too.

“Are you their scout?” she demanded.

“No, I was hoping to avoid this.” He looked up at the gruesome sky patrol. “And I think you may have been spotted from above, as well.”

“Now what?”

“They’re going to take you into custody.” He added, “I hope you have a high threshold for pain.”

Adrenaline surged through her, and she felt herself getting her second wind. “I think I can fight.”

“No!”

“Will you help?”

“No”

“Then get out of the way!”

Chandra felt stronger. She was thinking about survival again, and fear had a wonderfully energizing effect.

As the soldiers approached her from both sides in the crowded street, she felt heat start to flow through her, welcome and inspiring. She felt the fire moving through her blood once more.

Gideon moved swiftly. He grabbed the thing hanging from his belt-that coil of metal. It unfurled in his hand, glowing so brightly that Chandra was distracted. He swung his arm, and then the thing was twining around her.

“No!” she said, shocked and caught off guard. “Stop!”

It had broad, flexible blades and sharp edges, and it was cold… so cold. It tightened around her, constricting her, stifling her breath. And its terrible cold trapped her fire, contained her heat, smothered her rage… As she struggled for air and shivered with cold, the weapon robbed her of consciousness.

But just before everything went black, she thought she heard him say, “I’m sorry.”

When Chandra opened her eyes, she found herself staring into the beady eyes of a black snake. Its tongue flicked out at her. She flinched and tried to move back, but couldn’t. Her back was flat against a wall, her limbs uncomfortably chained in a spread-eagle position. Bound by her wrists and ankles, her movement was almost totally restricted.

As the snake’s big face moved even closer, Chandra turned her head and made a stifled sound of protest. She really didn’t like snakes.

“Ah.” Someone spoke in a low, breathy voice. “It’sss awake.”

She gaped at the snake. “Excuse me?” Her voice was a dry croak.

But the snake said nothing more for the moment.

Chandra blinked and tried to focus her vision. That was when she realized the “snake” was standing upright on a set of legs and wearing a black robe with a hood.

“Oh.” She groaned as the realization penetrated her confusion. “You must be one of the Enervants I’ve heard so much about?”

“Yesss.”

Her mistake was understandable. It was standing so close to her that its head almost entirely filled her field of vision. And from the neck up, this thing looked exactly like a snake. A big one.

She looked down and saw that it had hands; hands that were thin, almost delicate, and scaly black with long wrinkled fingernails. Strangely a snake with hands made sense to Chandra at this point. Actual snakes were pretty limited in their activities, after all; and none, so far as she knew, spoke or practiced magic.

Chandra wasn’t sure what to make of these creatures, but she was sure they wouldn’t like the inferno she was going to bring. But as she struggled against her bonds, she realized that she could barely move. And it wasn’t because the chains were that tight. She felt absolutely exhausted, as if she hadn’t eaten or slept for days.

Blinking a few times to clear her foggy vision, she looked at her surroundings. She was clearly being held in a dungeon. Stone walls, floor, and ceiling. No windows. No torches, either. No candles, no fire, no flames of any kind.

The only illumination in the room came from slimy-looking phosphorescent things clinging to the walls here and there. Chandra guessed that the snakelike sorcerers had brought them here from whatever swamp they called home.

With such faint light and no windows, the room was dark, stuffy, and dank. And it stank.

The odor of damp decay, she suspected, was coming from her companions. There were seven Enervants in the room with her. One was still peering into her face; its tongue flicked in and out every few moments, as if testing Chandra’s scent. The other six, who all looked just like the first one, were gliding silently around the room in a figure eight. Their bodies were evenly spaced as they followed the pattern at a steady pace. Their paths steadily intersected without ever bumping into each other or pausing in their flow.

Chandra found it eerie. “What are they doing?”

She coughed a little as she spoke. Her throat was dry and she was dying of thirst. But she’d be damned if she’d ask for anything.

To her surprise, her captor answered her. “Gathering ssstrength.”

“Oh. Can’t they do that elsewhere?”

The Enervant didn’t answer. It just kept staring at her.

She tried another question. “Where am I? The Prelate’s dungeon?”

The snake nodded, its head moving on its muscular neck in a slow, sinewy motion.

She tried to think of what else she wanted to ask, but she was so tired. It was hard to pull her thoughts together or make the effort to speak.

Chandra tried to remember what had happened to put her in this position.

She remembered the man, Gideon, and his weapon. She had never seen anything like it, but she was reasonably certain that he had used some form white-mana based magic to subdue her. Even in her weakened state, the weapon alone could not have pulled her into unconsciousness like that.

As if the Order back on Regatha weren’t burden enough, she was in a dungeon on Kephalai because of some interfering heiromancer? But why would he be in league with these creatures? It didn’t seem right.

Chandra remembered the feel of those coldly glowing white blades wrapping around her, constricting her, and trapping the flow of her fire. Imprisoning her power within her, so that she couldn’t fight or defend herself. Or even breathe…

It surprised her that this Gideon wielded magic. She hadn’t taken him for a mage. He looked like a warrior to her. Or maybe a tracker of some kind; one with special skills for an unusual quarry.

Chandra frowned, puzzled.

In that case, where was he now? Had he given her over, or had he abandoned his prey to superior forces?

Admittedly, Chandra hadn’t been at her best just then, but Gideon’s strength was impressive. Given that he was powerful, as well as quick with his hands, surely he didn’t have to back down in the face of a few soldiers?

Perhaps he had decided he couldn’t take on the soldiers and the gargoyles at the same time.

As Chandra watched the Enervants silently gliding through their pattern over and over in the dark dungeon, she realized that if Gideon had been ordered to kill her, then letting the Prelate’s men have her might accomplish his goal.

But she wasn’t sure he would leave such a thing to chance.

Chandra tugged against her chains, testing their strength as well as her own, and started thinking about how to get out of there.

She reached out with her senses, hoping to tap into the flow of mana. Even though she could feel its presence, she was having trouble concentrating enough to establish a solid bond.

What was wrong with her?

The Enervant who was guarding her suddenly hissed and turned its head away from her, which was something of a relief. She didn’t enjoy being the object of its unwavering, beady-eyed stare. Its attention was focused on the narrow metal door across the room. Chandra looked that way, too, wondering what had drawn its interest.

A moment later, the hinges whined a little as the door opened.

“Oh, goody,” Chandra said. “Visitors.”

Two of the Prelate’s soldiers entered, accompanied by another who she assumed was a telepath. Based on her physical appearance, Chandra assumed the woman belonged to the same order as the two mages who had died in the Sanctum of Stars earlier that day. Or had it been the day before? Come to think of it, Chandra had no idea how long she had been chained unconscious in this room, although the stiffness in her limbs suggested it had been a while.

The Enervants didn’t look up at the newcomers, didn’t even pause in their perambulations. They just kept moving back and forth silently, tracing their figure eight on the floor, over and over and over.

“Just watching them makes me tired,” Chandra said as the mage, moving around the snake-headed wizards, approached her.

“No,” said the woman. “It is not the watching. It is what you are watching.”

“That is not a very encouraging start to this conversation,” Chandra muttered.

“We are not here to encourage. Quite the opposite, really.”

Chandra eyed her.

“They are Enervants.” The mage nodded toward the six individuals moving steadily in their pattern. “This is their work.”

“Yes, I’ve been told. They’re gathering sssstrength,” said Chandra imitating her captor. “I don’t see why they have to gather it here, though.”

The woman nodded. “They are gathering your strength.”

“I thought they were having a little snake dance in my honor.” Chandra scowled.

But Chandra understood. This was dark magic. These strange creatures were sapping her strength. She could feel the direct assault on her energy now that she knew about it.

And they were effective. Considering how exhausted she felt, she suspected they could quickly turn an ordinary mage into a useless husk.

Chandra glared at the telepath. “Your friends tried to read me, and they died for their efforts. Quit while you’re ahead.”

“I can be patient,” the woman said coldly. “You may still be strong enough to resist now. You may even be strong enough to resist on my next visit. But you’re much weaker now than you were yesterday, and tomorrow you will be weaker still. And when you are weak enough, we will succeed. You will not be able to conceal it from me then. I will find out what you did with the scroll.”

“The scroll? That’s what you want? I don’t…” Cold surprise washed through Chandra.

The scroll.

“I don’t know where it is,” Chandra said, baffled by how they couldn’t know this.

“You seem convinced of that, yes. But there are many corners in the mind, many places for things to hide,” said the telepath, her clear blue eyes radiating in the dark of the room. “You didn’t succeed in killing everyone who was in the Sanctum of Stars, you know. Four soldiers survived. They saw you flee into the city streets with the scroll.”

“Uh-huh.” She wouldn’t let herself think about what had happened. Truth be told, she was too tired to think about it, anyway.

“If you want the scroll back,” Chandra said, “why not talk to the man who got it back last time?”

“The Prelate says he’s gone.” It was obvious the woman was only answering because she was curious to see what Chandra’s reaction would be.

“Gone where?”

“I do not question the Prelate.”

“No, of course not,” said Chandra, using the same tone of voice the telepath had used moments before.

“Where is the scroll?” the mage demanded, realizing she was being mocked.

“Why does it matter so much to you?”

“You risked death twice to acquire it. Why does it matter so much to you?’”

“If I tell you where the scroll is,” Chandra said, “what then?”

“You destroyed the Sanctum of Stars, a holy place filled with Kephalai’s most precious artifacts. You killed soldiers, guards, and mages dedicated to its protection. You damaged more than property. You damaged the will of the people of Kephalai. You created a city-wide panic. The death toll has not yet been measured.” The mage’s gaze was hostile. “But if you cooperate now and tell us where the scroll is, your sentence will be lenient.”

“How lenient?”

“You will be executed. Quickly and humanely. Otherwise, we will leave you to the Enervants, and they are not know for their humanity.”

“Well,” Chandra said. “It’s always nice to have choices.”

“If you do not cooperate,” the mage said, “if you force me to wait until you are weak enough for me to probe your mind for the answers we seek, then you will no longer have a choice. We will learn all that we want to know. I, personally, hope you decide to help us find the scroll. The Enervants’ ways are are repellant to me. No one deserves what they have in store for you.”

“All that you want to know?” Chandra said. “What answers are you looking for, besides the location of the scroll?”

“For starters, who are you, and what did you plan to do with the scroll?”

“I don’t really like to talk about myself,” Chandra said.

“Where were you born? Who are your people?”

“And I especially don’t talk about my past.”

The mage looked at her for a moment longer, then said, “It doesn’t matter. Soon, I will know all that I want to know.”

“You won’t find out where the scroll is,” Chandra said truthfully.

“Yes, I will. But, in any event, you have made your choice. I will inform the Prelate: death by slow torture.”

“I look forward to it.”

“I’m sure you do,” she looked at Chandra with what seemed to be pitty. “These guards will remain outside the door should you decide to give us the answers we seek.”

“How will they know when to come in?”

“This one is Dirk,” she said indicating one of the guards. “Call his name, and he will come.”

Only after the mage left the dungeon did Chandra risk dwelling on what the woman had told her.

They don’t know where the scroll is.

It had been in Chandra’s hand when she lost consciousness in the city streets, and she had woken up in captivity. She had assumed her captors had reclaimed possession of the scroll.

There was obviously more to Gideon than she thought. She’d seen for herself that he was fast, that he moved quickly. So he must have had time to conceal the scroll from the soldiers after incapacitating her.

Things were in chaos at the time, after all. Perhaps Gideon had claimed, when turning her unconscious carcass over to them, that she didn’t have the scroll on her, and had planted the notion that she had hidden it somewhere.

Was that why he had let them capture her? So he could make off with the scroll?

I will kill him for this.

The rage felt good. It woke her up, cleared her head, and refreshed her senses.

She focused on her anger, on the fury in her heart at being duped by that man. She berated herself for the way he had taken her by surprise and overpowered her. She imagined him enjoying himself somewhere now, with her scroll, having a good laugh over her predicament.

Because of him, she was chained to a wall in a dungeon and being drained of energy by these snakes! Get mad, this is good. Anger is accelerant. Rage is fuel. Fury is fire.

She had to escape. Death by slow torture was no way for a planeswalker to die. More to the point, she couldn’t hunt him, she couldn’t get revenge on Gideon, if she died here.

A big boom would go a long way toward solving her current problem. But even with the reassuring glow of rage coursing through her now, she knew there was no way she could summon that kind of power. Not until she recovered from the sapping sorcery of the Enervants. And she’d only start recovering once she got away from them.

She had to act now. Immediately. The longer she was in their custody, the weaker she would get.

Chandra closed her eyes and focused on her breathing, concentrating, centering herself on the rage. She embraced the anger, nurtured the hot thirst for retribution. With each steady inhalation, she felt her tenuous mana bond become a little stronger, a little more within her reach. With each inhalation, she felt power coil firmly within her.

She targeted her attention on the seventh Enervant. He had moved to the side of the room where he was reaching into a box. From it he pulled what seemed to be a black, wriggling string. It was about a foot long and thin. He held it out with one hand and came close enough that Chandra could see that it was actually a snake.

“What are you going to do with that?” she asked.

The Enervant’s eyes seemed to glitter in response.

“It’s going to take more than that to crack me.” Chandra was trying to put up a brave front, but, truthfully the snake was terrifying. Suspended by its tail, it moved purposefully, as though it was slithering toward the ground, its sharp head intent on reaching a target. The Enervant held the snake higher and pinched it again beneath his other hand. He slowly drew his hand down the snake, stretching it taut. When he got to the head and let go, it remained as straight and stiff as a splinter of wood.

The black wizard held it out again, showing Chandra what he had done, perhaps taunting her with it, the dim phosphorescent light reflecting sickly in his eyes.

“Now we begin,” he said with obvious pleasure.

Chandra steeled herself, not knowing what to expect. The Enervant went to her right hand and inspected it for a moment, his tongue flickering gently from his mouth. Chandra balled up a fist in response, but in retrospect it was the wrong thing to do. The creature leveled the straightened snake at her knuckles, placed its head directly between her index and forefinger, and pushed. The thing’s head cut into her flesh easily, burning with a pain more intense than anything she had ever known.

Chandra screamed as the entire snake went into her hand, its form bulging beneath her skin as it began to slither up her arm. The pain was like nothing she had ever known.

“Dirk!” she screamed as loudly as she could. “Get in here now!”

Without any further promting, the two guards entered the room. “Get this thing out of my arm,” she cried. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

The guard called Dirk gave the command to the Enervant to do as she said. He produced a knife and made a small inciscion just above the snake’s head, which emerged without prompting. The Enervant took hold of it with his withered nails and pulled it out, spilling blood and interstitial fluid heedlessly. Both guards’ faces went ashen. Chandra was sure the one behind Dirk was on the verge of fainting. For her own part, the only thing that kept Chandra conscious was a fury as pure the heart of the volcano. But she knew she could not let this show. Instead she let her head drop as though she’d fainted.

The guard called Dirk collected himself. “Well, out with it, then. Where’s the scroll?” When Chandra didn’t answer he nudged her, but she still gave no response. “Get some water,” he told the other.

Dirk unshackled her right wrist and let her wounded arm hang. Although it was throbbing, Chandra didn’t feel like there was lasting damage. She remained motionless with her head hanging until the guard came back with a pail and ladle. At that, Chandra raised her head weakly and looked at the guard. He held the full ladle out to her and she cupped the bowl in her hand, bending her head over it as though to drink, her hair falling around it to obscure the ladle from view.

Chandra focused her rage on the water and called on her power to heat it. Within seconds, the small amount of water had come to a boil, and she threw it into the guard’s face, blinding him and scalding his flesh. He stumbled back into the Enervant, who dropped his knife and fell back, disrupting the path of the other enervants. The effect was immediate. Chandra could feel her strength returning, her power blossoming like a flower at the base of her skull and racing out to her extremities.

When the fire came to her like this, it was as if time slowed for Chandra. Everything around her moved in slow motion, while she was able to think and move freely. Even as the others in the room were still trying to make sense of what was happening, Chandra grabbed the knife on the ground with her free hand and used it to pry the shackles on her left arm loose. Before the Enervant knew what was happening, she had released herself and was on top of it, driving the knife into his neck in the soft spot beneath its jaw. The snakeman went slack like a bag of grain.

She turned to deal with the other soldier, but he was was on his knees like a penitent, pleading for his life. Chandra ignored him and shifted her attention to the remaining six Enervants.

They were hissing noisily, their heads weaving and bobbing on necks that were much longer than they had originally seemed. They were moving to surround her, but Chandra noticed they were regulating their spacing and their movements were synchronizing again. She sensed they were trying to begin another ritual to drain her of her power. She had to act fast.

Chandra realized she was sweating and panting. The brief use of her power had already tired her far more than it should have, thanks to the Enervants’ work. Searching for one act that would affect six adversaries, Chandra called on her remaining power to produce a sheet of fire between herself and the hissing snakes. As she had hoped, it halted their advance toward her.

However, they were still between her and the door. Not only could they prevent her escape, they could also leave the room and summon help. Fortunately, they were wholly focused on her, and they were obviously unwilling to pass through her fire. She needed to move quickly, though, before they were able to act in concert again to sap her strength.

Fighting exhaustion and struggling hard to call forth more power in her weakened condition, Chandra spread her arms, then uttered a short spell that Mother Luti had taught her. She simultaneously clapped her hands together as she stared hard at the six wizards, keeping them all in focus. Her sheet of fire sprang around them like a trap, coiling to encircle them.

Their menacing hissing grew panicky as the fire closed in on them. Chandra clasped her hands together and squeezed hard, commanding her flames to embrace and consume her enemies. As the giant hooded snakes and their robes caught fire, their bodies writhed frantically. They clawed at each other, and their gaping jaws opened wide in agony, exposing their terrible fangs. The stench was unbelievable, and Chandra found it somehow disturbing that they didn’t scream or make any noise beside that tortured hissing.

The burned soldier was still howling in pain, and the cowed one wept, openly terrified. The Enervants were still alive, but writhing in their death throes as the flames consumed them.

With her captors all but vanquished, Chandra fled past her fatal fire and out the door of her cell. Fortunately, the soldiers had left it unlocked when they entered.

Beyond the door was a narrow corridor that led in two directions. She looked to her right and could see a dead end. She had no choice but to go left. When she reached a corner, she was spotted by two soldiers standing guard in the intersecting hallway.

“Prisoner escaped!” one of them cried.

She ran straight into them, hurtling her full body weight at them before they could unsheathe their swords. Her best chance of staying alive now was to planeswalk out of Kephalai, and she needed to conserve what was left of her power if she was to enter the?ther. She knocked one of them against the wall as hard as she could, and stomped on the other’s stomach when he fell. Hoping that would at least slow them down, she ran onward.

She saw a stone staircase at the end of the corridor where four more guards waited.

Behind her, the soldiers she had just knocked down were shouting, “Prisoner escaping! Prisoner escaping!”

The soldiers she was approaching clearly heard. One of them, at the top of the stairs, shouted this same phrase through the bars of the door up there and called for help.

Another of the soldiers guarding the stairs saw her and warned her in a loud voice, “Within moments, thirty soldiers will come through that door! Surrender now!”

He was wrong. It didn’t take moments. He had barely finished speaking when the door opened and armed soldiers began pouring through it.

And, if anything, he had underestimated their number.

Chandra turned around and ran back the way she had just come.

Fortunately, the two soldiers she had just knocked down hadn’t expected her to turn back and trample them again. This time their feeble interference barely slowed her down as she dashed past.

Chandra knew she couldn’t deal with all those reinforcements. As Gideon so obviously had understated, she had made herself conspicuous. She had to assume this was just the first wave. Now that the alarm had been sounded, the Prelate’s entire army would be devoted to keeping her a prisoner or dispatching her. And in her current condition, they would succeed-not immediately and not without pain, but they would succeed.

She didn’t have time to search for another way out of the prison. There might well not be one. And even if there were another way out, she had no chance of evading dozens of soldiers while she looked for it.

Her only remaining choice wasn’t a good one, but at least there was a chance she would survive.

She turned a corner and ran back to the large cell where she had been held captive. Behind her, she could hear the footsteps, rattling swords, and shouts of a lot of soldiers.

In front of her, blocking the door to the cell, were the the two original guards, the coward supporting Dirk. When the coward saw her, a new look of horror washed across his puffy, sweating face.

“Out of my way!” Chandra snapped as she moved forward. They might have fully obliged had she not reached them before the two could move, shoving them to the floor outside the door.

Once inside she slammed the door shut. No lock on this side. Of course not. Dungeons were built to lock prisoners in, not to lock soldiers out.

A fetid cloud of smoke hung in the cell. The Enervants were dead, but their smoldering remains filled the room with an odor so foul Chandra could scarcely bear to breathe.

Coughing as the smoke and stench assaulted her, Chandra pressed her back against the door and heard heavy footsteps approaching. She had only moments now. A short controlled burst of fire welded the door to its jam. It wouldn’t hold for long, but it would have to do.

She concentrated with all her might as she forged a path to the?ther. The soldiers were pounding on the door, but Chandra was able to reach the meditative state she needed. Breathe steadily and regularly. At her first glimpse of the void, she hurled herself recklessly into it.

Behind her, on Kephalai, two guards-one an emotional wreck, the other gruesomely burned-would insist they had seen her enter the chamber. Their account would be dismissed as attempt to cover up incompetence when she wasn’t found inside the cell. Nevertheless, there would be a thorough search of the whole prison, and that would take time. In the end, they’d never know how she had disappeared. And when the Prelate received the report of Chandra’s escape, she’d only be able to guess what had happened. In any case, without the mage who had followed Chandra back to Regatha last time, they’d never find her. She was out of their reach the moment she entered the?ther.

Which wasn’t the same thing as being safe.

Chandra fell through a tunnel of flame. And, having had no time to prepare herself for planeswalking, she was unprotected from the raw, red, furious force of this fire. It scalded her so brutally that she cried out in agony, feeling it burn through her flesh, her blood, her bones, and sink into her soul with angry, destructive heat.

Disoriented and in pain, she kept plummeting through the endless reaches of the void between the planes of the Multiverse. Her whole body felt consumed by fire and torn apart by her relentless fall. She had entered the Blind Eternities in sudden desperation, without sufficient power or focus, and now she was paying the price for such a rash act.

She had only entered the?ther without preparation once before-the very first time she walked-and it had come close to killing her. Then, as now, she was fleeing death. But now, at least, she knew what was happening. This time, she didn’t feel the blind, animal terror she had felt then. This time, she struggled to take charge of her planeswalk, rather than simply succumbing in helpless fear to its effects.

Chandra tried to focus on her breathing, her heartbeat, her body’s rhythms… but the air in her lungs felt like boiling water, fire scorched her belly, and ice filled her veins. She tried to concentrate on her mana bonds to maintain her power, but the Blind Eternities flowed around her with the brilliance of a billion suns, blinding and stunning her, while at the same time soaking her in dark fatigue. She tried to reach out and sense the energy of different planes, to seek out a physical reality where she could anchor herself, but everything around her tumbled in a multicolored chaos.

The channel through which Chandra plunged became fearfully black, an entropic void sucking at her life force. Just as she thought she would lose consciousness, fire became water, cold and viscous. Chandra panicked as a drowning sensation enveloped her before everything became white, binding and smothering, and surrounded her like an unbearable weight. A shift to green created pain she didn’t understand, as if her bones were trying to push through her skin. And when fire engulfed her again, she welcomed the familiar agony.

When the pain became so familiar that it ceased to register, Chandra was so disoriented and exhausted, she couldn’t move or think or react. She floated erratically in the whirling mana storm that surrounded her, dazed and inert for what seemed a very long time. Consciousness had become a relative state: it was becoming harder for her to separate herself from her surroundings. She told herself many times to gather her senses and find a way out of here before she died, yet she remained still, unable to move, as if her mind had become disconnected from her body. She had to focus on something tangible.

Kephalai…

Memory penetrated the haze of chaos. Chains on her hands and feet. Combat with other beings. Running. Panting.

She focused on these memories, coaxing them into vivid life in her scattered, confused mind. Kephalai… Sanctum of Stars…

Knowledge of her physical reality, of her life on the planes of the Multiverse, started returning to her. And with this knowledge came the fervent, forceful desire to rejoin the dimensions of physical existence. To overcome her gradual absorption into the?ther. To escape the Blind Eternities and find a plane on which to reclaim her power, her physical life, and her mental coherence.

She concentrated on the most vivid of the memories that were dancing around the edge of her consciousness. Memories of fear, anger, pain, urgency. She didn’t remember the details now, but she vaguely knew she had lost the scroll, had failed to achieve her goal. This infuriated her, and she welcomed the rage, letting it warm her blood and sharpen her senses.

But she still wasn’t strong enough. She instinctively recognized that she needed even more visceral connection to her physical life. So, with foreboding, she opened herself to the old memories, to her past, to the sensations she had banished to the realm of nightmare, to the events she never thought about, recalled, or acknowledged.

She opened herself to the fire of sorrow and grief, of shame and regret, to that which consumes innocence.

In the echoing corridors of her memory, she listened to their screams, hearing their agonized cries now as clearly as if it were happening all over again. In her mind’s tormented eye, she watched their writhing bodies now, just as she had watched them then. Helpless. Horrified. Consumed by guilt. She forced herself to dwell on the memory of what their burning flesh had smelled like. She felt the pain of the sobs that wouldn’t come out of her mouth.

And when the blade of a sword swept down to her throat, to end her life…

Chandra sprang into awareness.

How long had she been wandering here, falling and floating between the physical planes of the Multiverse?

She banished the question. All she must think about was escaping the chaotic, sense-warping maze of the Blind Eternities. Until she was safely on a physical plane again, nothing else mattered, and no other thought could be allowed to penetrate her vulnerable focus.

She spread her senses and tried to find something familiar to orient her. She felt the flow of mana, which was reassuring, but it mingled with so many other forces in a bewildering whirlwind of color that she felt wrung out and frustrated as she tried to bond with it. Still, with no other way to survive and escape, she concentrated, summoning all her will, all her rage and heat and passion, and focused on channeling the magical energy.

When she finally felt ready, Chandra propelled herself through the undulating, swirling colors that consumed her, seeking the solid energy of a physical plane. She was vaguely aware that there was someplace she wanted to return, a place where she had a community and a purpose… but she couldn’t even recall it well enough to look for it, let alone control this planeswalk to that extent. Right now, all that mattered was finding a plane, any plane at all. Later, she would think about where exactly in the Multiverse she wanted to be.

Then she sensed it. A dark, bitter energy… but blessedly physical, solid, and tangible. And because she could sense it, because her will drew her toward it, a path to it began opening before her in the?ther.

She hesitated. The plane she was approaching didn’t feel at all familiar, and it certainly didn’t feel welcoming.

Should she travel further? The next plane might be a better choice.

No. The next plane she encountered might just as easily be a worse choice. Or, in her weakness and confusion, she might not find another plane at all. Not before she succumbed to the consuming whirlwind she was trying to escape.

It must be now. Here. Go.

She moved through the?ther, following the path that beckoned her to the physical plane she sensed. She let the plane’s sullen energy lure her forward as she focused with all her might on making the transition away from the eternal flow surrounding her to the finite, solid reality that lay ahead of her.

Her body, her senses, her mind, all felt torn apart, stretched to the breaking point between two realities. She fought fear and struggled for control. She reached for the dark plane she sensed, stretching toward it with all her will.

Chandra’s feet touched solid ground.

The sensation was so startling, the weight of her own body so unexpected, that she fell down, collapsing into an awkward heap with a choked gasp.

Then she lay there, eyes closed, her face pressed into the damp earth with grateful relief. She spread her palms against the ground, reveling in its solid, unyielding presence.

I’m alive. Alive!

The worst was over. She had escaped Kephalai and the Prelate’s dungeon; escaped death by slow torture at the hands of the Enervants.

Right now, being lost on some wholly unfamiliar plane that radiated dark energy didn’t matter. Even losing the scroll to that mage didn’t matter. She was just very, very happy she wasn’t dead.

Lying on the ground, soaking up the wonderful feeling of being alive, Chandra gradually became aware of a scuffling, scurrying sound nearby. When she opened her eyes to see what had made the noise, she realized that it was nighttime. She pushed herself to a sitting position and looked around, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the dark shadows of her surroundings.

High overhead, a full moon glowed white in the endless, starless black of the night sky. Its cool, silvery light shone down brightly on an eerie landscape of twisted trees, squatting bushes, dark expanses of emptiness, and the tumbled ruins of crumbling stone structures. The trees and bushes that Chandra could make out in the moonlight looked strangely stark and bony.

She realized none of them had any leaves.

That seemed odd. The temperature was mild. The air was cool, but not uncomfortably so-certainly not enough to suggest winter or a season of dormancy. The damp ground suggested preciptation. Indeed, the air itself felt humid. Obviously, drought hadn’t caused the absence of leaves on all of the trees and bushes around here.

She wondered what had caused it. Had there been a fire here recently?

Curious, she rose to her feet, intending to examine some of the denuded branches more closely. The act of rising, however, made her so dizzy she almost fell down again. Her vision swam darkly, and she felt lightheaded.

That was when she realized she was desperately thirsty. She recalled now that she had been thirsty even back in the dungeon on Kephalai. And who knew how long ago that was? What seemed like days could also have been minutes-or even longer. Regardless, her physical needs were reasserting themselves now.

Chandra took a steadying breath and realized she must find water. Her stomach rumbled, and she realized that finding something to eat would be a good idea, too.

The air was heavy with damp and decay. Not the fetid odor of the Envervants in her cell back on Kephalai, but the rich, dark smell of sodden soil, of decomposing vegetation mingling with fog. This seemed like a plane where quenching her thirst shouldn’t be too difficult. There must surely be substantial water here.

She heard scuffling again in the nearby undergrowth. The rustling sound of dead plants being brushed aside by some small creature’s passing struck her as strange. Like the barren trees and naked bushes, the rustling of dead vegetation didn’t seem to go with the damp richness of the soil and the air.

With her curiosity reawakened, Chandra walked past the tumbled, moss-covered stone walls surrounding the spot where she had entered this plane, and went over to a dark, twisted tree that was silhouetted by the moonlight. Her feet encountered a denser, softer surface as she got close to the tree, and she looked down.

Mulch, she realized, all around the tree where the leaves had once fallen. She wrapped her fingers around a slender tree branch and gave it a slight squeeze. She was no expert, but the wood didn’t feel right. It was slightly soft, as if the tree were rotting.

Chandra wondered whether the tree had become diseased and shed its leaves in its initial stages of dying.

She looked around at the moon-swept landscape, where all she saw were bare branches drooping in the silvery light.

It seemed that all the trees in the area had become infected with the same disease. Chandra started to wonder whether this was a local phenomenon, or whether the whole plane was covered with dying vegetation.

She started to feel uneasy, increasingly aware of the dark, bitter energy that permeated this place. Instinct warned her that whatever was killing the plant life here, the cause was more likely magical than mundane.

With her senses restored and her mind functioning again, Chandra realized that she was more than ready to return to Keral Keep. She would report that she had failed to get the scroll and didn’t even know where it was now.

Well, presumably it’s in the hands of some opportunist on Kephalai, she thought with a scowl.

She found this infuriating.

It would also be difficult for her to return to Kephalai and hunt down Gideon. Impossible, really. She might not be a shrewd strategic planner, and she hated losing, but she wasn’t a fool. She knew that she had very little chance of moving freely on Kephalai ever again. No chance, actually. She had destroyed the Sanctum of Stars, wreaked havoc in the city, and stolen the scroll a second time.

Because of her actions, she would be hunted on Kephalai for a long time. There would certainly be a price on her head. Descriptions of her would circulate. If there were any tall, red-headed women in the Prelate’s realm, they’d be harassed. She might even become the most notorious criminal they had ever known. In spite of what she knew was right, this gave Chandra a giddy feeling. She would go down in legend, or at least she hopped so.

Chandra moved over to a hedge of bushes and absently examined their branches, wondering whether she could have escaped with the scroll if that black-haired mage with his glowing, daggertail whip hadn’t interfered. She’d never know for sure, but it was easier to blame him for the way things had gone. And she reveled for a few moments in a vision of roasting him alive in the fires of retribution.

Acknowledging that this dream would likely never be realized, she sighed. Meanwhile, her examination of the bushes revealed that they, too, were dying.

She decided that, ravenous though she was, if she came across any trees or bushes bearing fruit, she wouldn’t eat it. Whatever was killing these plants could have easily infected other, seemingly healthy, foliage.

Chandra gazed around the darkened landscape again and realized that, in fact, she was skeptical about finding any healthy-looking plants, at all. The sullen shroud of dark magic she sensed earlier seemed to stretch far and wide across this place.

She needed to get out of here and return to Regatha. There were problems to be faced and solved back there. Hopefully, the oufe tribe that wanted her dead had calmed down a bit by now. And as for the Order of Heliud, and Walbert’s demand that Chandra be turned over to his custody… Well, just let Walbert’s soldiers try to come take her from the mountains. She’d make sure it didn’t take long for them to rethink that plan.

Even so, as much as she wanted to leave this plane immediately, she knew-particularly after her recent experience-that she needed to recoup some of her strength before trying to re-enter the Blind Eternities. She had to search for some water, then get some rest. The syrupy darkness of the night sky and the full brilliance of the moon suggested that morning was still a long way off. By then, Chandra should be ready to planeswalk back to Regatha.

“All right,” she said, looking around at the eerie landscape. “Water.”

Despite her driving thirst, her surroundings were so creepy that it was with some reluctance that she set out in any direction. Although it was unquestionably better than being chained to a wall with her power being sucked away by seven giant snakes as a prelude to death by torture, wandering alone through the darkness was still a less-than-enjoyable endeavor.

She had not gone far when she heard noise coming from a cluster of bushes that she was passing, the rustle of dead vegetation under stomping footsteps, some faint, high-pitched squealing, some growling.

Chandra crouched down and crept closer to the commotion. The intensity of the squealing increased sharply, scraping at her senses. The growling was replaced by satisfied grunting and the noisy smacking of… robust chewing?

Chandra pushed further into the thicket, taking care to move silently. Peering between leafless branches, she spotted her quarry.

She found herself looking at some sort of goblin. It was squat and ungainly, with lumpy gray skin, hairy legs, and arms so long they would surely drag along the ground when it stood up and walked. Its bald head was immense, and its long, pointy ears flopped sideways in a ridiculous manner. It was hunched over and grunting, while something in its grasp squealed. Chandra saw a tail and flailing little paws…

When she realized the beast was eating a small animal alive, she gasped aloud in revulsion.

The goblin heard her and whirled around to face her. Its fangs dripped with blood and entrails as it growled at her. The little animal in its grasp continued squealing in agony. Chandra’s appalled gaze flashed to the animal’s eviscerated torso and wiggling paws.

“Ugh! What are you doing?” she demanded. “Even for a goblin, this is unbelievable!”

The goblin stared at her for a moment, crouching frozen while its agonized prey flailed and squealed. Then, as if afraid Chandra would try to steal its treat, the creature stuffed the entire mole into its mouth and crunched down hard. Chandra winced at the mole’s final, shrill scream, followed closely by the sound of its splintering bones. The goblin’s cheeks bulged as it chewed, still staring at Chandra.

Then the creature swallowed its meal in one huge gulp and went completely still. The goblin and Chandra stared at each other in silence.

“Well,” she said at last. “That may not be the single most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen, but it’s definitely on the list.”

“List?” The goblin’s voice was deep and husky.

“Never mind.”

“Don’t kill,” it said.

“Agreed. You don’t kill me, and I won’t kill you.”

It nodded. Its ears flopped a little.

“Where are we?” Chandra asked.

The goblin looked around for a moment, then returned its gaze to Chandra. “Bushes.”

“I meant, what’s the name of this realm?”

“Diraden.”

“Never heard of it.”

The goblin pointed at her. “What name?”

“Chandra. And you?”

“Jurl.”

“Jurl, show me where there’s water.” When the goblin didn’t move, just continued to stare at her, she added, “I don’t like to brag, Jurl, but I’m a powerful fire mage. If you take me to water, I’ll be nice. If you don’t, I’ll be mean.”

“Water.” The goblin looked over its shoulder. “Maybe not safe.”

“Not safe? Is the water bad?” That might explain why everything around here was dying.

Jurl shook his head. “Water good.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Maybe guarded.”

“By who?”

“Prince Velrav. Sometimes.”

“A prince guards the water?” Chandra said skeptically.

“Servants.”

“Oh, servants of the prince guard the water.” That made a little more sense. But not much. “Why guard water in a place as wet as Diraden?”

“See who come. Maybe take.”

“Take? You mean, the prince’s servants capture those who come to the water?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do they take everyone? Or just goblins?” “Everyone.”

“So far, you’re the only, er, person that I’ve met. Who else lives on Diraden?”

“Some like me. Some like…” Jurl shrugged. “Others. Many others. And some like you.”

“And Prince Velrav’s servants take them all?”

“Take some of all.”

“Why?” Chandra asked.

“Hunger.”

That was disconcerting. “They’re taken when they’re near the water?”

The goblin shrugged. “Near water. Near wood. Near ruins. Near hill. Near village. Near castle. Near-”

“So you’re saying that the prince’s servants have taken individuals from everywhere?” What a lovely plane she had stumbled onto.

“Yes.”

“In that case, I might as well get water.” And then maybe she’d try leaving Diraden straight away, without bothering to pause for rest. The situation here sounded deranged and deadly-and perfectly in keeping with the atmosphere she had sensed. If she felt better after drinking her fill, then perhaps leaving while she was still fatigued-but with proper preparation this time-would be better than sticking around here until she felt stronger. “Jurl, I’ll bet you know this place well. Do you know how to get water without being bothered by Prince Velrav’s servants?”

The goblin stared at her silently. Although its grotesque face showed no expression, she sensed it was suspicious of her request.

“If you take me there,” Chandra said, “I won’t tell anyone. I won’t betray you. I’m thirsty. I just want to get water, and then go away.”

“Go away?”

“Yes. You’ll never see me again.” It was a promise she intended to keep.

Jurl studied her. “Go away soon?”

“Very soon.”

“How soon?”

“By morning.”

“No.” The goblin shook its head.

Chandra frowned. “Why not?”

“No morning.”

“What?”

“Morning never come,” Jurl said. “Not here.”

After some discussion, Chandra guessed that Prince Velrav was some sort of necromancer who had pulled a veil of eternal night across this plane. There was presumably a good reason for this, but Jurl didn’t know what it was. Nor did Jurl remember an era when things had been different, so this had apparently been going on for quite some time.

When Chandra asked how long the trees had been naked and dying, he said, “Always.”

She supposed perpetual darkness explained why they were dying. And black magic probably explained why they were dying so slowly that, as far back as Jurl could remember, they had looked exactly the way they looked right now.

But it was possible that this was just what normal trees looked like on the dark plane of Diraden, swamped in black magic and ruled by a demented mage who occasionally had his subjects captured and brought back to his castle to satisfy “hunger.” Jurl seemed to know no more than that about the “taking” of various individuals over the years; nor did he seem to think anything more needed to be known about it.

A goblin’s life revolved around pretty simple interests, after all: hunt, eat, drink, reproduce, make merry, fight, kill, be killed. It seldom got more complicated than that.

It was a welcome relief that the water that Jurl led her to wasn’t far away. They passed through a moonlit copse of tall, thin, trees with thick, spidery roots that had snaked across the surface of ground, covering the path in long, lumpy twists of rotting wood and thick, sickly vines. Beyond the wood, they came to a lagoon. Silvery light from the moon glinted off the still surface of the water, which was rimmed by a dense thicket of vegetation.

Chandra surveyed the sinister-looking pool of water. “How long have you been coming here?”

“Always.”

Because some species of goblin matured fast, growing to adulthood within a couple of years of their birth, “always” might only mean a year or two. On the other hand, some goblins lived a very long time. Chandra was unsure which category Jurl fell into, but couldn’t bring herself to ask.

“Water good,” Jurl said encouragingly. He lay face down beside the lagoon, stuck his head into the water, and began drinking.

Chandra walked a few judicious steps away from his noisy gulping, then knelt down, reached a cupped hand into the lagoon, and scooped up a small quantity of water, which she studied in the moonlight. It was clear and cold. When she brought it close to her nose, it had no odor. She bent over her hand to cautiously take a sip. It tasted fine.

With a shaky sigh of relief, she lay face down at the edge of the lagoon, bracing her hands by her shoulders, and drank her fill. After slaking her thirst, she rested briefly, then drank some more. When she was done, she realized how dehydrated she had been. Already, thanks to the water, Chandra’s thoughts felt clearer, her body more responsive, her senses sharper. She was still tired, but she was in complete command of herself again.

Suddenly, the goblin made a hissing sound.

Chandra glanced at him and saw that he was frozen in position and staring across the lagoon. She followed his gaze, but she didn’t see anything, which wasn’t surprising. Jurl’s eyes were probably better accustomed to this dim light than hers.

She whispered, “What’s wrong?”

“Bog Wraith,” the goblin growled. “Bad.”

Chandra froze, peering into the darkness and trying to see the creature that Jurl saw. “Is that what takes people?”

“No. Can’t take. Can tell.”

“Can tell?” Chandra repeated. “It will tell its master it saw us here?”

“Yes.”

And presumably its master was Prince Velrav. “Great.”

“Kill,” said Jurl.

“Kill it? I can’t even see it.”

“There.” One long, lumpy arm pointed to a twisted tree that leaned out over the water, its barren branches touching the surface of the lagoon.

Staring hard, Chandra was able to make out something that looked like pale white skin gleaming in the moonlight. Then she realized that some of the shapes she had assumed were branches were actually the long, dark tendrils of the Bog Wraith’s hair, floating eerily in the still air. The creature itself floated, too; a pale, transparent figure veiled in black shadows.