The Purifying Fire

“Bad,” Chandra agreed, aware of a chill in her blood as she studied the silently watchful creature.

“Kill,” Jurl repeated.

This thing seemed familiar… She realized that it reminded her of the ghost warden she had destroyed on Regatha.

That wasn’t the sort of incident she wanted to repeat here. She intended to leave Diraden unnoticed, not create a commotion and attract attention. And she wanted to enter the?ther in a sane and steady manner, not to reenact her frantic and nearly fatal departure from Kephalai.

“No,” she said to Jurl. “I won’t kill it. All that thing has seen is a woman and a goblin drinking water. So what if it tells? Let’s go quietly now.”

As she turned to go, the goblin grunted, obviously dissatisfied.

When they had traveled some distance, Jurl said, “Now eat?”

She thought of his recent meal, which she had interrupted, and said truthfully, “I’m not that hungry.”

“Sleep?”

“No, I’m going to leave,” she said decisively. Diraden was no place to linger.

“Leave where?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Leave now?”

“Soon.” And since she didn’t want the goblin asking questions while she prepared to planeswalk, it was time to bid him farewell. “Thank you for taking me to water, Jurl. You’ve been, um, a good host.”

“Still hungry.” Jurl nodded at some nearby bushes. “Hunt.”

“Enjoy.” She tried not to think about it. “Goodbye.”

“Wait here. Jurl bring food.”

Jurl turned and entered the nearby thicket. Chandra had been wrong in her initial assumption that his long arms would drag on the ground. He walked with them bent sharply at the elbows, shoulders wide and forearms dangling at his sides, and he could move with surprising speed and silence.

Chandra turned away and continued walking as she considered her options. Not wanting to be there if the Jurl did return, she decided it would be best to return to the ruins where she had arrived, since the crumbling walls offered a little cover. It also made sense to her to open a path to the Blind Eternities at same spot she had entered the plane.

Fortunately, the journey to water had not taken her very far from the place she sought. She retraced her steps without difficulty and arrived back at the ruins before long. The crumbling, lichen-covered walls looked stark and foreboding in the eerie, eternal night.

As her gaze traveled over her stony destination, Chandra was surprised to see a flash of bright white light explode silently from within the ruins, although she couldn’t see what had caused it. A stone wall stood between her and the source of the sudden, bold flare.

She froze in her tracks. She didn’t think this source of bright light had anything to do with this dark Prince Velrav, but wanted to be cautious, none the less.

She stretched out her senses in order to call on the mana of the Keralian Mountains as a means to protect herself. A flash of panic washed through her when she realized she could scarcely feel it.

Breathe, she told herself, smothering the fear. Breathe.

She concentrated. She focused on her memory of other planes, of other sources, but she still couldn’t feel that flow of red mana. How was that possible? She was feeling stronger, better than she had a while ago, but she couldn’t establish a mana bond.

Stop. Think.

She squared her shoulders and moved forward, her footfalls silent on the damp ground. Whatever was going on inside these stony ruins, she needed this space to commence her planeswalk back to Regatha. And, if necessary, she would make her temporary claim on these ruins clear to others. With or without the use of magic.

She crept up to the walls of the ruins, stepped quietly over some fallen stones, and peered around a corner, looking to the spot where the burst of light seemed to have originated.

She saw a man rising slowly to his feet as he seemed to gather himself and reconnoiter his surroundings.

Chandra saw two dark smudges on his tan leggings where he had been kneeling in the mud. His long, tousled hair hung in his face as he turned toward Chandra.

When the man saw her staring at him, he went still.

After a brief pause, he said, “Hello, Chandra.”

Cold shock washed through her. “Gideon.”

I wasn’t sure you’d still be alive. That was some walk you took.” Gideon’s voice was dry.

“How did you…” Chandra’s heart was pounding as she realized what the answer had to be. “You followed me? You followed my trail through the Blind Eternities?”

He nodded. Just one small, downward movement of his chin. No motion wasted.

“Planeswalker,” she breathed, still stunned. She hadn’t forgotten the promises she’d made to herself about what she’d do if she ever found him again, but this revelation changed things a bit.

There was no wonder he had been able to catch her off guard and capture her so easily in that street back on Kephalai. A planeswalker! He would be at least as powerful as she was. And he was a little older than she, so he was probably more experienced, more skilled at using his power, given that he’d had more time to learn and practice.

Gideon’s gaze traveled over her. “I see that you’re all right now.”

Apart from looking like he’d taken a tumble when he entered this plane, his appearance was exactly the same as it had been.

She said, “Apparently that walk didn’t do you any harm.”

He gave a small, dismissive shrug. “I had time to prepare.”

And he evidently knew that she hadn’t.

Chandra was impressed that he had been able to follow the erratic trail of her confused wandering through the Blind Eternities. That had certainly taken skill.

Impressed-and disturbed. Why had he bothered?

She doubted she’d like his reasons, whatever they were.

“Where are we?” Gideon asked.

“You don’t know?”

“I was following you,” he reminded her.

“I got lost,” she said irritably.

“I could tell.” He looked around. “So you don’t know where we are?”

“It’s called Diraden. What are you doing here?”

He walked past her, moving beyond the ruined stone walls to look out over the landscape. “Like I said, I followed you.”

“Why?”

“Everything’s dying here,” he observed.

“Where’s my scroll?” Chandra demanded, noticing that he didn’t have it on him in any obvious place.

“It’s not your scroll.” Gideon walked over to a tree, examined the naked branches, and used his foot to brush aside some loose dirt.

“It’s not yours, either!” Chandra said.

“No,” he agreed absently as he knelt down to touch the ground. He picked up a handful of damp soil, closed his fist around it, and inhaled deeply as he looked up at the sky.

“Where is it?” Chandra demanded.

Gideon was scarcely paying attention to her, which irked her. He stood upright again, looked into the distance, and said quietly, “Everything is wrong here.”

“I asked you a question,” she said with gritted teeth.

Ignoring her comment, he brushed past her and walked back into the ruins. Chandra followed him. When she started to speak again, he held up a hand to silence her. He was circling the spot where he had arrived on this plane. There was a frown of concentration on his face.

Chandra decided she’d had enough. “You tricked me! You helped the Prelate’s soldiers capture me! You stole my scroll-”

“You stole it, too,” he said dismissively, still frowning as he looked up at the sky again. “And it’s not yours.”

“I was imprisoned because of you! Enervants tried to drain all my power!”

“Enervants?” That got his attention for a moment. He glanced in her direction. “Do they smell as bad as people say?”

“Yes.”

“Enervants,” he murmured. “That explains why your planeswalk went so badly. You were weakened.”

“In part,” she snapped. “The other part is that I had to enter the?ther just moments ahead of dozens of soldiers! They tortured me to find out where the scroll was, and they would have done it until I died because I didn’t know where it was!”

“Yes, I heard.” Gideon seemed lost in thought, his mind scarcely on the conversation as he said, “All things considered, you did well to survive. But it’s a pity you chose this place to end your walk.”

“So sorry you don’t like it,” Chandra said acidly. “But since you weren’t invited in the first place, why don’t you just leave?”

He looked at her. “You haven’t figured it out.”

His face was in shadows and his expression guarded, but something about his bland tone infuriated her.

“If you followed me to take me prisoner and drag me back to Kephalai, then you made a big mistake, Gideon!” She threw her hands out to encircle him with a ring of fire…

And nothing happened.

He stood there calmly, not moving a muscle, not reacting physically at all. His voice sounded faintly amused when he said, “Indeed.”

Chandra stared at her hands in bewildered shock, turning them over and studying her palms as if she could read the answer there to her sudden absence of power.

“But I feel much better now,” she muttered. “So what…”

“You may feel better,” Gideon said, “but surely there’s something you don’t feel?”

“I…” She frowned, realizing what he meant. “Mana.” Suddenly, her difficulty in feeling it earlier made sense.

He nodded. “Something’s blocking our access to mana.

She stared at him in surprise. “Blocking mana?”

“It’s not completely effective,” he said. “That’s why you feel something. But it’s effective enough to be a serious problem for us.”

“Us?” She realized the full import of what he was telling her. “You’re without power, too?”

“As much as you are,” he confirmed.

“I noticed it was hard to feel the flow,” she said, thinking back. “Hard to bond. But I thought that was because I was still weak.”

“No.” He shook his head. “If you concentrate long and hard, you can probably call on enough mana here to start a small cooking fire. But that’s about all, while it’s being blocked so well.”

Chandra had never heard of such a thing. “What could do this?”

“I’m not sure. Something very powerful, obviously.”

“Or someone?” She thought of the hungry prince.

Gideon shrugged. “It would take constant focus and a lot of strength. The effort would be enormous. A big drain on just one person.”

“So he probably has help,” she mused.

“He?” Gideon repeated.

“There’s a necromancer named Prince Velrav who rules here.”

“Of course,” Gideon said. “Black mana would be abundant here.”

“Is that why it’s always nighttime here?”

He looked at her sharply. “Always?”

She told him what she had learned from Jurl.

“A goblin,” Gideon mused. “I suppose you couldn’t get any sense from him of whether this phenomenon is recent or has been going on for centuries?”

“No.”

Jurl had been pretty typical of goblins, in Chandra’s experience: neither bright, nor articulate.

Gideon looked up at the night sky. “No clouds. But no stars.”

“I noticed that, too,” she said. “I’ve never seen that before.”

“I doubt that’s the normal night sky here.”

“You think Velrav pulled a…” Chandra shrugged. “A shroud over this plane?”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Gideon said.

“Is that what’s restricting the mana?”

“I don’t know. But I’ve never experienced anything like this, and I’ve never been anywhere where that had happened.” He jerked his chin skyward. “Perpetual night attributed to the local necromancer king…” “Prince.”

“My guess is, the two things are related. What else did your goblin friend tell you?”

“‘Friend’ would be an exaggeration.”

“He led you to water. He didn’t try to kill you. For a goblin, that sounds pretty friendly.”

“Yes,” she said pensively, reflecting on the encounter. Her first impression of Jurl, when she saw him eating his squealing prey alive, was that he was like all other goblins she had encountered-only more so. “He was surprisingly nice to me. I wonder why?”

“I don’t suppose you threatened to set fire to him?” Gideon said dryly.

“Oh, yeah. Maybe that’s why.”

“What else did he tell you about Velrav?”

Chandra recounted Jurl’s vague comments about Velrav’s servants abducting individuals from every race living on Diraden, in order to satisfy the “hunger.” She concluded by describing the encounter with the Bog Wraith.

Gideon said, “So you didn’t kill it and alert Velrav’s entire army to your presence?”

“No,” she said stonily.

“It’s nice to see you’re learning from your mistakes.”

“What do you know about my-”

“Before we go to all the trouble of destroying this… yes, shroud is a good word for it, we should make sure-”

“Hold on, what do you mean ‘we’?” she said. “If you’re determined to meddle in local problems, that’s your choice. Enjoy yourself! But this has nothing to do with me. All I want to do is get the blazes off this creepy plane and…” The full weight of the problem facing them hit Chandra like a physical blow. She swayed a little as she realized exactly what this meant.

“Ah,” Gideon said. “Therein lies the rub.”

“We can’t leave,” she said, appalled by the realization.

“Not until we can establish proper mana bonds. As long as it’s restricted…”

“We’re stuck here.”

Fleeing Kephalai in a weakened state, Chandra had risked dying in the Blind Eternities. And here, without access to any real power, she risked living the rest of her days in perpetual night.

“I’m stranded.” She gazed at her handsome companion in horror. “With you.”

“Well, if you get bored with me,” he said, “there’s always Jurl.”

“I suppose you’re going to suggest that you and I…” She swallowed, so revolted by the idea that she had trouble even saying it. “That we… work together. To get out of here.”

“I can manage alone, if you’d rather just give in and settle down here. But, yes, I-”

“Give in?”

“I imagine it will be easier to escape this plane if both of us are working on the problem.” His lips relaxed momentarily into what might have been a slight smile. “Together.”

She thought it over. “There are certain conditions, if you want my help.”

“By all means, let’s pause to negotiate the terms under which we’ll cooperate.”

“I didn’t ask you to come here,” she reminded him. “Your being here is entirely your own fault. You shouldn’t have followed me. While we’re on the subject, you also shouldn’t have stolen my scroll or helped the Prelate’s soldiers capture me!”

“I think we’re digressing.”

Chandra said, “My conditions are as follows.”

“Go on.”

“I won’t return to Kephalai. You will not take me back there. You will not trick me or manipulate me into going there again.”

“Agreed.”

“Nor will you inform the Prelate, her forces, or any other inhabitants of Kephalai where I go when I leave here.”

“Agreed,” he said.

“You will not betray me to Prince Velrav or his minions in order to secure your own escape, and you will not prevent me from leaving this plane.”

His black brows rose. “You do have a low opinion of me.”

“If you don’t like my terms,” she said, “that’s fine. We don’t have to work together.”

“No, your terms are fine. I agree to them.”

She searched his face to see if she trusted his word on this. His expression gave away little. But she refused to be afraid of him… and she recognized, however reluctantly, that it made more sense for them to cooperate here than to be at odds with each other.

He said, “As long as we’re negotiating our partnership…”

“We’re not partners,” Chandra said sharply. “We’re just… um…”

“I have some conditions, too.”

“Oh?”

“You will-at least, insofar as you are capable of it-think before you act, while we are here.”

“How dare-”

“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life here-and probably a very short life, at that-because you didn’t use your head.” When she just glowered at him, he prodded, “Well?”

“Insofar as I am capable,” she said darkly, “I will think before I act.”

“Good. Next condition: You will not kill anyone who isn’t a danger to us.”

“How are we deciding who is or isn’t a danger?” she asked suspiciously.

“Let’s agree you’ll trust my judgment on that.”

“No.” She turned away.

His hand on her arm stopped her. “Chandra.”

She turned her head. Their eyes met. His were very serious. To her surprise, he didn’t look angry. She wasn’t quite sure what she saw there, though.

He said softly, “We could die here.”

Gideon was a little taller than she. Chandra tilted her head up and said, “Then I’ll die because of my judgment. Not yours.”

His hand still held her arm. “I don’t want to kill any innocents while I’m trying to get out of here.”

The thought of innocents bothered her.

“I don’t, either,” she said, aware of how close together they were standing. So close that she noticed now he needed to shave. The dark shadow starting to darken his jaw would become more obvious by morning

… which wouldn’t come, of course. Not on Diraden.

Gideon said, “You can be a little… reckless that way.”

His gaze dropped, and his dark lashes lowered. Chandra had a feeling he was staring at her lips. She licked them, and she felt the grip on her arm tighten ever so slightly.

“I was trying to survive. They’d have killed me on Kephalai.” She heard the breathlessness in her voice and didn’t like it. She jerked her arm out of his hold and stepped away. “Anyhow, what makes you think we’ll meet innocents? So far, I’ve talked to a goblin, seen a Bog Wraith, and heard about a black mage with a sinister appetite.”

“The night is still young.”

He looked at her impassively, as if that odd moment hadn’t happened between them.

Maybe it hadn’t for him.

She scowled at him. “So. Are we working together?”

“Yes.”

“Fine,” she said. “Since you’re an advocate of thinking before you act, what’s your plan?”

“First,” he said, “I think we should find out who’s watching us.”

“Watching us?” She frowned. “What makes you think we’re being w-”

“Yaaagggh!”

The wordless bellow was accompanied by something big and heavy careening into Chandra’s back. At that same moment, she saw Jurl leap over a tumbled stone wall and attack Gideon, who whirled around to defend himself.

Chandra hit the ground with considerable force, and had the wind knocked out of her. She heard snarling right by her ear and felt a heavy body lying on top of her. Then a powerful grip seized her shoulders and started banging her against the ground. Over and over. Hard.

She called on fire, intending to incinerate her attacker… and then realized that she couldn’t.

Damn, damn, damn.

While she fought to retain consciousness, Chandra saw a hairy, clawed hand out of the corner of her eye. Lumpy, gray skin. Another goblin.

Jurl? she wondered in confusion.

It kept banging her into the ground, as if trying to tenderize her.

That does it!

Without enough physical strength to gain the advantage, in her current position, she tried a different tactic. “I…” Fortunately, the ground wasn’t hard: but even so, this was painful. “… surrender!” She was smashed into the ground again. “I surrender! I surrender!”

“What?” the goblin said, pausing in its assault.

“I surrender!” Now that she wasn’t being pummeled against the ground, she could hear the grunts and blows of Gideon and the other goblin fighting each other.

“Surrender?” the goblin said, breathing on her neck.

“Yes! I surrender! I give up!” Chandra cried. “You win!”

The goblin’s weight shifted. It was evidently surprised, and perhaps a little confused. Since goblins weren’t known for their mercy, it might never have encountered this reaction to an attack before. Typically, a fight with a goblin was a fight to the death.

The pause in the goblin’s assault and the shifting of its weight was all Chandra needed. She used the muscles of her legs to buck the goblin off of her with a powerful scissor kick, before she rolled over and reached for one of the rocks lying at the base of a nearby ruined wall. Rock in hand, she threw herself at the goblin and smashed its massive head. The goblin shrieked and stumbled backward. Chandra jumped up and hit it in the head again right at the temple. The beast hit the ground hard. Unmoving, blood trickling from its ear, Chandra left the it where it lay and staggered away, unsure if it was dead.

“Ugh! I hate goblins! I hate them!”

Chandra turned around, intending to go help Gideon. He and the other goblin were rolling around on the ground together, their bodies wallowing frantically in the mud around the stone walls.

Chandra picked up another rock and moved toward them. The goblin lost its hold on Gideon, who rolled away and raised his foot to kick the goblin in the face with considerable force. It fell backward, then staggered in a circle and turned toward Gideon, who rolled across the ground rapidly and stretched out his arm, reaching for something. The goblin saw Chandra approaching them and froze. It turned its head and saw its companion lying prone on the ground.

The goblin gave a shrill little cry-then turned and fled.

“Stay back!” Gideon ordered as Chandra dashed across the ground.

“It’s getting away!”

“Get down!” Gideon raised an arm to make wide, rapid circles over his head.

Chandra saw something glint brightly in the moonlight as it spun over Gideon’s head, making a menacing whooshing sound. She realized it was that daggertail of his, unfurled and swirling above them with deadly speed.

Remembering that the thing had three very long, sharp blades, Chandra threw herself to the ground and covered her head. Without his magic guiding the weapon’s steely tendrils, who knew whether Gideon’s aim was any good.

She heard the whooshing sound change to a long steel sigh as Gideon unleashed the whip. She peeked between her fingers and saw that he had released the entire weapon, letting it sail through the dark night, handle and all. The goblin was speedy and had already covered some distance, but it couldn’t outrun the flying weapon.

As Chandra rose to her knees, gaze fixed intently on the fleeing goblin, Gideon set off at a run. Chandra saw something glint briefly in the moonlight, then she saw the goblin fall down. She rose to her feet and ran after him, too.

When she reached Gideon’s side, the goblin was lying on the ground, grunting and snarling as it struggled in the sharp tangle of flexible blades that were constraining its short legs.

“I shouldn’t have doubted your aim,” Chandra said to Gideon, breathing hard from her exertions.

“Lucky shot,” Gideon said. “To be honest, I could scarcely see him.”

“Chandra!” the goblin said in a familiar-sounding voice. “Don’t kill!”

She sighed. “Hello, Jurl. We meet again.”

Gideon seized the handle of the whip and jerked it sharply. Jurl’s eyes bulged and he made a horrible groaning sound from the pain inflicted on his trapped limbs.

Chandra asked Gideon, “How did you know they were watching us?”

“The one that attacked you was casting a shadow on the stone wall near you. I realized it when he moved.”

She hadn’t seen the realization dawn on Gideon’s face. She should remember that he was good at hiding things.

Gideon gave Jurl a light tap with his foot. “But I didn’t know there was one behind me, too. They move quietly, don’t they?”

“Don’t kick!” Jurl said.

“Explain why you just attacked us,” Gideon said to the goblin.”

“Chandra go away soon.”

Gideon glanced at Chandra, then said, “You attacked her because she was leaving?”

“Because no time.”

“I think he means,” Chandra said, “he attacked now because I had told him I was leaving very soon.”

“Yes!” Jurl was apparently pleased with her interpretation. “No time.”

“Why attack her at all?” Gideon asked the goblin.

“Take to Prince Velrav.”

“What?” Chandra scowled. “You were going to turn me over to Velrav? To feed the hunger?”

“Yes.”

“Now I see why you were so helpful, Jurl. You wanted me for yourself.”

“Yes,” Jurl confirmed.

“To think I was beginning to like you,” she muttered.

“So you’re one of Velrav’s takers?” Gideon asked Jurl.

“Yes.”

“I see,” Gideon said. “Why?”

“Take gift to Velrav. Velrav give something.”

“Ah. And if you took a beautiful fire mage to Velrav,” Gideon said, “you’d get something good, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes.” Jurl looked as crestfallen as a writhing, captive goblin could look. “But not now.” He looked at Gideon and added, “Don’t kill.”

“Why not?” Gideon gave the handle of his weapon another sharp tug.

Jurl gasped. “Give me life. I give you.”

“Give us what?”

“Tell me what,” Jurl said. “I get.” “What I want,” Gideon said, “is someone who can answer all my questions.”

“Questions?” Jurl repeated.

“My questions about Velrav. About Diraden. About why morning never comes.”

Jurl thought it over, then suggested, “Wise woman?”

“Yes,” Gideon agreed. “I want to speak to a wise woman.”

“Village wise woman,” Jurl said eagerly. “Know things.”

“How far?” Gideon asked

“Not far. I bring you.”

Gideon said to the goblin, “I’m going to remove the sural from your legs.”

“What?”

“The weapon.”

“Good!”

“And then I’m going to use it to tie your hands behind your back.”

“Bad”

“If you resist or try to get away while I’m doing this,” Gideon said, “I will catch you again, but I won’t be nice.”

“You could end up like your friend, Jurl. You don’t want that, do you?” Chandra prodded.

“Not friend,” Jurl said dismissively.

“Then why did you bring him along?” she asked. “Wouldn’t you have to share with him whatever Velrav gave you?”

“Need help now,” Jurl said. “Kill later.”

“No honor among goblins,” Chandra muttered.

“I guess the prospect of attacking a woman alone was too daunting,” Gideon said dryly.

“Intimidated by my beauty, no doubt,” she said, recalling Gideon’s earlier comment.

“Maybe so.” There was no mockery in his voice. He was looking down at the goblin as he began untangling his weapon from its legs. His expression was hidden in shadows. Chandra stared at him in bemusement. Until he said, “Hold the rock where he can see it.”

Gideon finished removing the sural from Jurl’s legs. “Roll over.”

Jurl said, “Don’t tie hands.”

“Roll over,” Chandra said, “or you’ll die right now, exactly the way your friend died.”

“Not frien-”

“Shut up and do as you’re told,” she snapped.

With blatant reluctance, Jurl rolled over and allowed Gideon to seize his arms and start binding his hands together with the flexible blades of the sural.

When the goblin cried out in pain and protested, Gideon advised him to stop resisting. “This will hurt less if you cooperate.”

When Gideon was satisfied that the restraint was secure enough, he rose to his feet, holding the handle of the sural. The lengths of steel that stretched between the handle and the goblin’s bound wrists served as a sort of leash.

“Get up,” Gideon said.

“Cannot,” Jurl said.

Chandra moved to put her hands under the prostrate goblin’s shoulders, and pushed him-with some effort-up to a kneeling position. From there, she and Gideon each took one arm and hauled Jurl to his feet.

“Now take us to the wise woman,” Gideon said.

“Yes.”

“Oh, one more thing.” Gideon twitched the handle of the sural. Jurl protested as the sharp bands of steel tightened around his wrists and pulled his arms backward at a painful angle. “If you try to trick us, or betray us, or take us to anyone else…” Gideon tugged the handle again. “I’ll pull on this thing so hard, it will cut off your hands.”

“No!”

“Without hands, the rest of your life will be helpless and miserable. On the bright side,” Gideon added, “it will no doubt also be very, very short.”

“No trick!” Jurl promised. “Just wise woman!”

“Good,” said Gideon.

“This way,” Jurl said.

They left the stone ruins behind and set off in a different direction than Chandra had gone before. As they walked through the quiet, dying landscape, following their reluctant guide, Gideon said, “You’re pretty useful when there’s trouble, even without the fire magic.”

So was he. But she was reluctant to pay him compliments. Instead she asked, “Where did you get your…” She pointed to the weapon whose handle he held.

“The sural?”

“Yes, your sural.”

“My teacher gave it to me.”

“Did he…” She hesitated, then asked, “Did he know about you?”

He didn’t have to ask what she meant. “Yes.”

“Was he a…” Chandra glanced at the goblin trudging ahead of them. “Was your teacher one of us?”

“No, but he knew about our kind.”

“How?”

“His teacher was one.” Gideon added, “And his teacher gave him the sural.”

“Where did it originally come from?” She had never seen anything like it.

“I don’t know.” Beside her in the dark, Gideon said quietly, “His teacher died without telling him where he’d gotten it.”

“Do you know how he died?” For a planeswalker, there were so many possibilities.

“A pyromancer killed him.” His voice was calm, without expression.

There was a long silence between them.

The ground they were walking over was particularly damp. It squished under Chandra’s feet as she kept pace beside Gideon in the dark, neither of them speaking.

Ahead of them, Jurl trudged along, his shoulders stooped. He started to pant a little, and his steps got slower. Apparently the goblin was feeling fatigued. At one point, he asked to rest. Gideon refused the request.

The continuing cool silence between her and Gideon gradually got on Chandra’s nerves. After all, it wasn’t her fault that his teacher’s teacher had been killed by a fire mage. For all she knew, he deserved what happened to him.

“So did you know him?” she asked abruptly.

“Know who?” He sounded mildly puzzled, as if he’d been thinking about something else entirely.

“The pla-” But before she could finish the word, she recalled that Jurl could hear them. The goblin was stupid and ignorant, but nonetheless capable of plotting and scheming. The less he learned by eavesdropping, the better. “The one who owned the sural. The one who died.”

“No. He died many years before I met my teacher.”

“How did you meet your teacher?” she asked.

Chandra had encountered very few planeswalkers. In her experience, they were a rare breed, and they were loners. They didn’t congregate, and they weren’t necessarily friendly to each other.

“He… found me,” Gideon said.

“After you…” She phrased it in a way that would make no sense to the goblin, in case the creature was feigning fatigue and listening to them. “Crossed over?”

“You mean after I traveled?” Gideon sounded a little amused by her attempt to question him without being understood by their captive.

“Yes.”

“No, we met before that.”

“How did he find you?”

“Jurl, you said it wasn’t far,” Gideon reminded the goblin. “This seems far.”

“Yes,” Jurl agreed wearily. “Seems far.”

“If you’ve lied…”

“No.” Jurl added, “Don’t take hands.”

“Well, maybe I’m just little tired,” Gideon admitted to Chandra. “Does it seem far to you?”

She couldn’t see his expression. Instead of answering him, she prodded, “You were about to tell me how you met your teacher.”

“Was I?”

“Yes.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I’m bored.” When he didn’t respond, she said, “Of course, we could talk about something else. The scroll, for example.”

“Then I’d be bored.”

“So how did your teacher find you?”

“Well, you’ll identify with this,” he said. “I was a criminal.”

“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.” She asked, “What did you do? Attack women and take away their valuables?”

“Very funny. As a matter of fact, we sacrificed the cutest animals we could find and drank their blood from our victims’ skulls by the light of the moon.”

“Then this place should bring you back to your roots.”

“To be serious, we mostly broke into rich people’s homes-”

“We?”

“There was a group of us. I was the leader, more or less. We stole money, goods, valuables. And, uh…”

He seemed reluctant to continue his story. “Yes?” she prodded.

“Then we gave it away.” When she didn’t respond, he added, “To the poor.”

She frowned. “Why?”

“We were…” He seemed to search for the right word. “Idealistic.”

“That’s a far cry from drinking animal blood.”

“I was very young. I wanted to change things,” he said. “But I didn’t know how. I was good at stealing. Good at fighting. Pretty good at handling a group of wild boys my own age.”

“That’s easy to believe.”

“But I had a lot to learn.”

“Where were your parents? Didn’t they try to rein you in?” Her own parents had certainly tried, back when she was a girl.

“My mother was dead by then,” he said.

“And your father?”

“Who knows?” He sounded indifferent. “I never met him.”

They all walked in silence for a while. Chandra really started to feel, deep in her bones, how helpless she was here without her power. Even if they did get some answers from this wise woman Jurl was taking them to, what would they do to get away from this plane? She tried to stop thinking it.

Finally she broke the silence: she had to find something to distract her from these thoughts.

“Your teacher,” she said suddenly.

“What?” She could tell by Gideon’s reaction that he had been far away. Perhaps lost in thoughts similar to her own.

“How did your teacher find you?” she said urgently. “How did he get you to give up your life as an outlaw?”

There was a pause. Then he said, “What makes you think I gave it up?”

She released her breath on a puff of surprise. Then she smiled-and felt grateful to him for making her smile. “I stand corrected.”

In fact, for all she knew, he was an outlaw. She had assumed he followed her here to capture her and take her back to Kephalai. She had vaguely supposed he was some sort of inter-planar bounty hunter. The Prelate had employed someone with extraordinary abilities to go after Chandra last time. Why not this time?

But since the Prelate’s forces didn’t know where the scroll was, this planeswalker obviously hadn’t returned it to them.

Perhaps Gideon was still an outlaw. Or at least playing all the angles and working on both sides of the fence. The thought warmed him to her.

“As long as you stick to our bargain and don’t try to deliver me to the Prelate,” she said aloud, “I make no judgments about the path you have chosen in life.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

“So were did your teacher find you?”

“I was in prison,” he said.

“We do have a lot in common.”

“He was respected, and the prison wasn’t well equipped to hold someone with my abilities,” Gideon said. “So I was released into his custody.”

“And that’s how your education began?”

“Yes,” Gideon said. “More easily than he expected, I suppose. After my initial resistance-and an attempt to escape his custody-I became a dedicated student. Eager.”

“You liked the power,” she said, remembering her own obsession with it when she had started discovering some of the things she could do, things that no one in her community had understood or condoned.

“Yes, I liked the power. I liked developing and honing it. Mostly, though…” Gideon paused pensively. “Mostly, I realized that my teacher was the first person I’d ever met who could help me find what I was looking for.”

“Which was?”

“Direction. Focus. A path for my life.”

“Direction…” Chandra hadn’t thought about direction before. She had gone to the Keralian Monastery to learn more about her power. How to access more of it, but also how to control it better. And her recent experiences demonstrated that she still had much to learn in that respect.

She didn’t want to think about any of that now. Besides, she didn’t even have access to her full power at the moment. And that wasn’t a subject she wanted to dwell on, either, just now. So she asked Gideon, “When did you find out what you really were?”

“When the time came,” he said. “When my Spark was ignited.”

The Spark, Chandra had been taught, was a suffusion of the Blind Eternities within a planeswalker’s soul. It was what gave an individual protection against the entropic forces of the?ther. Although it happened differently for everyone, the ignition of a planeswalker’s Spark was the trigger for their first walk.

Gideon added, “But my teacher knew before I did.”

“How did he know?”

“Because of my power. As I dedicated myself to my training, my strength grew. To me, it just seemed to be the result of studying and learning. But later, after I knew the truth about myself, he said that he had known for some time, because he’d only ever seen one other hieromancer as powerful as I was.”

“Ah. The one who had given him the sural all those years ago.”

“Yes. A long time before it happened, he believed my Spark would be ignited and I would become… what I became.” Gideon said, “So he prepared me.”

“He told you what you were?” she asked.

“No. He told me about our kind, and about the one that he had known. He related what he knew about the Multiverse, the?ther, and the Blind Eternities. How to prepare for a walk. How to survive it.”

“So you knew what was happening?”

“Yes. I was fully conscious of what was happening.”

“Did you know before it happened?” she asked in astonishment.

“Not exactly. But when I felt my Spark ignite, I understood. It was…” He hesitated. “I killed someone,” he said quietly. “Someone very powerful. Very dangerous. I knew I shouldn’t have lived through that confrontation. Not logically. I was shocked at how much power I had accessed. I sensed a clarity in the world around me. I felt an intensity of experience, an awareness of simply being that I had never known. I had a moment, however fleeting, where I understood everything around me. I understood the Multiverse on a fundamental level, if you can imagine such a thing, so that when I slipped into the?ther I knew where to go.”

“Is it like that every time?”

“No,” he said. “As soon as I had landed on another plane, it was gone. I have tried to achieve that state of awareness for most of my life since then, but I have yet to come close.” He let out a slow breath. “But the planeswalk worked. Very much the way my teacher had described it. And also by following his teachings, I found my way back. So that I could tell him what I was.”

Chandra felt a mingled surge of wonder and envy. “I can’t imagine

…”

“Imagine what?” he asked.

“What my first walk would have been like, if I had known those things. If someone had told me.”

“You didn’t have any idea what was happening to you?”

“None,” she said. “I’d never even heard of a planeswalk.”

Chandra blinked as she realized they’d become indiscreet. She looked uneasily at the goblin walking ahead of them, its hands bound behind its back. But Jurl seemed to be paying no attention to them. Instead, he seemed jumpy, anxious, and wholly focused on their surroundings, as if expecting an ambush at any moment.

“That must have been hard,” Gideon said.

“I didn’t experience anything like you. I thought I was dying,” she admitted. “Or dead. Or… I don’t know. It was very painful. And, um, terrifying.”

She didn’t know why she was telling him this. She had never told anyone, not even Mother Luti. She’d never had a teacher except for Luti, and she had not known her long. Chandra had never even met another planeswalker before her most recent encounters. All that she knew about planeswalking, she’d taught herself, and all that she learned about her kind, which wasn’t a lot, she learned from Mother Luti.

“Some combination of desperation, survival instinct, and…” Chandra shrugged. “Sheer luck, I suppose, helped me find my way out of the?ther and onto a physical plane that first time.”

“And will,” he said.

“What?”

“Will,” Gideon said. “You have a very strong will. That makes a difference in who survives a walk like your first. And also like the one that brought you here.”

“How did you follow me?” She knew it couldn’t have been easy.

“Actually, you leave a pretty bright trail.”

She supposed that was why that mind mage with the cerulean cloak had been able to find her on Regatha.

“But the trail was erratic and seemed to…” He searched for the right word “… bounce all over the place. I could tell it had been a rough journey.” He added, “And to come here of all places…”

“I didn’t exactly choose it,” she said.

“I knew even as I approached that it was a bad destination.”

“So why did you follow?”

“Why did you steal that scroll?” he countered. “Twice?”

“Why did you steal it?”

“I didn’t exactly steal it.”

“Then where is it?” she demanded.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Now that there is no Sanctum of Stars to keep it in, I suppose it’s somewhere in the Prelate’s palace, under lock and key.”

“No, it’s not,” Chandra said. “The Prelate’s pets were going to torture me to find it.”

“That was before you escaped. Since then, the scroll has been found.”

“What?”

“Don’t even think about it, Chandra,” he said. “If it’s in the palace, you might get inside alive, but you’d never get back out. Not even you. They’ll be watching for you. And now they know they made a mistake by not killing you the moment they identified you. They won’t be that careless again.”

“You gave back the scroll?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe you!”

They walked along in silence for a few paces.

“You gave it back?” she demanded.

“Yes.”

“No, you didn’t!”

He said nothing.

Her thoughts whirling, she said, “Why did you give it back?”

“It seemed like the most sensible thing to do. You know, to calm things down after you left.”

“That’s It?”

“More or less,” he said. “More or less of a reward?”

“Well, there was a reward.”

“So that’s why.”

“Not exactly.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I didn’t precisely give it back.”

“If you didn’t give it back, then what did you do. Precisely?”

“I left it where it would be found by someone who would recognize it and turn it in for the reward.”

“I don’t understand,” she said. “You stole it from me. You didn’t keep it. You didn’t sell it. You didn’t take credit for retrieving it, and you didn’t collect the reward.”

“Actually, you seem to understand perfectly.”

“If you didn’t want it,” she said, “why take it in the first place?”

“I thought that if the Prelate didn’t have the scroll and didn’t know where it was, then she wouldn’t execute you immediately. She’d want to find it before she killed you. And since you didn’t know where it was, there would be some delays.” Gideon concluded, “I thought that would give you time to try to escape.”

“You wanted me to escape?” She felt bewildered. “Why didn’t you help me instead of manipulating me with your passive little ploy?”

“I didn’t know about the Enervants,” he said. “Or I might have been a bit more proactive.”

“If you didn’t want them to execute me, then why did you help them capture me?”

“Because you were about to start a battle with those soldiers in a street full of innocent people.”

“In a… I was…” She realized what he was saying.

“You were thinking about yourself,” he said. “I was thinking about the dozens of people who might get killed.”

“Whatever.” After a few long moments of tense silence, she said, “So you didn’t want the scroll.” When he didn’t bother responding, she said, “And you don’t want me to go back to Kephalai.”

“I think it would be stupid.” He added, “And fatal.”

“Then what are you doing here?” she demanded. “Why did you follow me? Why were you looking for me on Kephalai? Who are you?”

Jurl said, “Stop talking.”

“What?” Chandra snapped.

The goblin raised his head, his pointy ears perked alertly.

“He hears something,” Gideon said in a low voice.

Their captive raised his head and sniffed the damp night air, apparently oblivious to their presence.

Chandra looked at Gideon. The grove of twisted, leafless trees that they were walking through cast so many shadows in the silvery light that she couldn’t see his face well. But she sensed that he was as tense as she was.

Then Jurl’s demeanor abruptly changed. He flinched, crouched low, and turned toward them, panting and making little noises of distress.

“What’s wrong?” Gideon asked in a low voice.

“Riders,” the goblin rasped.

“Riders?”

A moment later, Chandra heard the distant pounding of hooves. Approaching fast.

“Bad”

Jurl said, “Hide!”

Jurl scurried toward a thicket of bushes. The steel leash prevented him from going more than a few steps before he stopped, grunting in pain.

“Hide” The goblin sounded terrified.

Gideon took Chandra’s arm. “Come on.”

Moving fast, they followed Jurl into the bushes. The thundering hoof beats were already much closer. As the three of them crouched down low behind the bushes’ naked branches, Chandra was grateful for the dark. These shrubs were thick, even without leaves, but she knew that she and her companions would be visible in the light of day.

She leaned forward and looked off to the left, past Gideon, where the hoof beats were coming from. As she swayed slightly in that direction, unsteady in her crouching position, her shoulder came into contact with Gideon’s.

He turned toward her. It was too dark to see his expression, but she could see his eyes looking directly into hers. Neither spoke. Then he, too, looked in the direction of the approaching riders.

Chandra heard a sharp whinny as the galloping horses entered the grove. Peering into the darkness, Chandra could see them faintly now. Fortunately, they weren’t coming this way. They passed through the withered grove at some distance from where they crouched in the bushes, moving diagonally away. She counted three riders… No, four, she realized, as they galloped into a pool of moonlight.

They were racing through a dense, low cloud of fog…

No, she realized a moment later, the fog moved with them, surrounding them and traveling in their company, flowing swiftly across the landscape. It made the horses look as if they were running atop a shifting white cloud, galloping through the air rather than on the ground. Yet their hooves must be touching soil, because they made a sound louder than thunder.

Watching this spectacle, Chandra felt chilled. The horses were all dark, and they galloped through the night with heedless speed. Perhaps, like Jurl, their eyes were well accustomed to this perpetual night. Or perhaps, she thought, as she watched the fog move with them, they didn’t really need to see where they were going.

The lead horse appeared to be carrying two riders, one of whom was struggling, seemingly held captive by the other. She saw pale limbs fighting for freedom and dark-clad arms restraining them. Chandra thought she could hear a terrified wailing as the horses galloped out of sight. A few moments later, the sound of the riders had faded completely.

Now she heard only the pounding of her heart and Gideon’s rapid breathing.

“What was that?” she asked Jurl.

“Fog Riders.”

“Good name,” she muttered.

“Who are they?” Gideon’s voice was low. His body, so close to Chandra’s, was still tense. “What are they doing?”

“Someone run away,” Jurl said. “They find. Bring back.”

“Back where?” Chandra asked.

“Velrav Castle.”

She listened to Gideon’s breathing and knew they were both thinking about the captive on that horse.

After a long moment, Gideon said, “Let’s keep moving.”

“Fog Riders, bad,” Jurl said with feeling.

“Yes, I think we grasped that.” Gideon rose to his feet and turned to help Chandra extract herself from the clinging arms of the thicket.

Something tugged on her hair. She winced as she pulled against it.

“Wait,” Gideon said softly. He reached out to untangle her hair from a slender branch. Then he smoothed the rescued strand over her shoulder. “There.”

“Thanks.”

Feeling somber and sickened after what she had just witnessed, Chandra turned in the direction they had been heading before hearing the Fog Riders. Jurl grumbled a bit, but then he did the same. Gideon seemed preoccupied and didn’t even bother tugging on the goblin’s makeshift leash to get him to pick up his heel-dragging pace.

After a few moments walking in silence, Jurl nodded. “Village, near. You walk first,” the goblin said.

“Why?” Gideon asked suspiciously.

“Not like goblin,” Jurl explained, nodding in the direction of the village.

“What a mystery.” Chandra said to Gideon, “I’ll walk ahead. You keep a tight hold of his leash. If anything happens to me, cut off his hands.” She added, “Did you hear that, Jurl?”

“Yes.” He sounded morose.

Chandra moved past Jurl and walked ahead of him. Within moments, she saw a thatched hut. Then several others. They were part of a small village, nestled in the side of a hill and bathed in moonlight. It looked like there were about twenty dwellings here.

As she drew closer, she saw several people standing in the doorways of their huts, peering at her. By the time she reached the first few huts, she heard gasps and excited voices exchanging muffled comments. People were coming out of their huts and standing in the moonlight.

She thought at first that the gasps and the excitement were because of the goblin entering the village. But then she realized, as she stood surrounded by people, that they were all staring at her. And she thought she could guess why.

Although no one here looked like Gideon-they were too frail and hollow-eyed to resemble him-they had similar coloring: dark hair, dark eyes, fair skin. As Chandra looked around at the dozens of people who were emerging from their huts and gathering to stare at her, she saw, even in the light of the moon, that she was the only redhead present. Perhaps the only redhead they had ever seen.

“Hello,” Chandra said, looking around at the gathering crowd. “We’ve come to speak to the wise woman.”

A young woman, a girl by some standards, stepped forward, separating herself from the crowd. She approached Chandra hesitantly, and slowly reached out a hand to touch her red hair.

Her voice was soft and shy as she said, “You’re so beautiful!”

“Thank you,” said Chandra.

Behind her, Jurl said, “Wise woman.”

“My name is Gideon. We’d like to speak with the wise woman.”

The girl said, “You’re welcome here.”

Gideon said, “Thank you.”

Jurl said, “Wise woman.”

“Yes,” Chandra said, “if someone would tell the wise woman we’ve come to see her? It’s important.”

Sounding impatient now, Jurl repeated, “Wise woman.”

“Oh.” Gideon said, “Chandra…”

“Yes,” she said slowly. “I think I understand.” Chandra looked at the girl standing before her. “You’re the wise woman?”

She smiled sweetly. “Yes, I am the village menarch. Why have you come to see me?”

The wise woman told them her name was Falia, and she led them to a hut where they could sit and talk.

As they entered the doorway of the small thatched hut, Jurl hung back, tugging a little on his leash.

“Free Jurl,” he insisted.

“So you can attack us again?” said Chandra. “And trade us to your hungry prince in exchange for goblin goodies? No.”

“Jurl bring here. Now set free.” The goblin added with reproach, “You promise.”

“No,” said Gideon, “I promised I wouldn’t kill you if you brought us here. Freeing you is a whole different subject.”

Jurl snarled in outrage.

Looking bored, Gideon tugged the leash sharply.

Jurl gasped in pain, went silent, and trudged into the hut with them. The interior was lighted by short, thick candles.

“Sit in the corner and be quiet,” Gideon told the goblin.

Jurl’s gaze searched the round hut. “No corner.”

Gideon sighed. “Sit out of the way.”

“Hungry,” Jurl said sullenly.

The wise woman said in her soft, high voice, “We can provide food and drink for all of you.”

“What food?” Jurl asked, sounding skeptical.

“Oh, don’t pretend you’re fussy,” Chandra said.

“Thank you,” Gideon said to Falia. “Whatever you offer us will be much appreciated.”

The girl’s gaze traveled over Chandra’s bloodied, smeared appearance, the mud on Gideon’s clothes, and his darkening jaw. “It seems you’ve had a long and difficult journey. After we talk, perhaps you would also like to wash, and then to rest.”

Wash, Chandra thought with longing. Since they were stuck here, rest was obviously a good idea, too, even though she didn’t relish the thought of closing her eyes on this grim and sinister plane.

“Yes, thank you,” Gideon said. “We’re grateful for your hospitality.”

Falia’s gaze went back to Gideon and lingered there. The expression of dawning fascination Chandra saw on her face belied Falia’s girlish appearance. Gideon was a handsome man, beautiful without being pretty, strong without being bulky. His predatory grace was evident in every movement, and his expression was friendly and reassuring as he returned the girl’s unwavering gaze.

But Chandra didn’t see a frightened girl in need of reassurance looking back at him. Falia wore the expression of a woman encountering an attractive stranger in her drab little village where everyone knew everyone else, and where the choice of marriage partners was very limited.

Falia gave a little start, evidently realizing she’d been staring, and said to them, “Please, sit now.” The girl stuck her head outside the door of the hut to give instructions to someone while Gideon and Chandra helped Jurl sit.

“Free hands,” said Jurl.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Chandra.

“He can’t help it,” said Gideon. “He’s a goblin.”

The two of them sat down side by side on the woven mats that covered the earthen floor.

Falia re-entered the hut and sat down facing them. Despite her frail appearance and sickly pallor, she was a pretty girl, with a delicate, ethereal quality. Her dark, hollow eyes seemed too sad and haunted for someone so young, but they gave her a world-weary hint of tragic beauty and inner wisdom.

Looking at her now, Chandra thought it seemed a bit less strange that this girl was the village wise woman.

Gideon said, “Please believe that I mean no insult or disrespect when I say that you seem very young to be a wise woman.”

Falia looked puzzled. “I do?”

Gideon asked, “How is the wise woman-I mean men-arch chosen here?”

“It’s the calling of my family,” she said. “When I showed first blood, my mother knew that I was ready. Someday I will marry and bear children. My daughter will one day assume this duty.”

“That seems like a pretty short time in which to gain wisdom,” Chandra said.

Gideon glanced at her, but didn’t tell her to be quiet. So apparently he had a little wisdom, too.

“My wisdom was passed to me by my mother. Her wisdom is mine. She was given hers by her mother, and so it has been for generations within us.”

“How do you pass it?” Chandra asked.

“We share our blood in the ritual passing of our power,” the girl said pleasantly.

Chandra decided she didn’t want details. This wasn’t what they had come here to talk about.

“Ah, here is your meal,” Falia said.

A woman entered the hut, carrying a large pot. A boy followed behind her, carrying wooden bowls and spoons. The woman smiled kindly at Gideon and Chandra as she set the pot down in front of them. Falia ladled soup into the two bowls the boy had brought, then handed the bowls to Chandra and Gideon.

The boy, who also placed his wares in front of them, paused to gape with wide-eyed curiosity until Falia put a hand on his shoulder to get his attention.

“Please give the goblin food. We must show him our appreciation.” The boy picked up the pot, and carried it over to Jurl. He set it down in front of him, turned away, and left the hut.

With his hands still bound behind his back, Jurl wiggled around into a kneeling position, then stuck his whole head into the pot and started slurping noisily.

Chandra looked down into her bowl. It contained a translucent, pale gray broth with lumpy, white things floating in it. It didn’t look remotely appetizing, not even to someone as hungry as she was.

“How nice,” Chandra said politely, trying not to let her face contort when she took a whiff. The stuff smelled ghastly. “What is this dish?”

“Grub soup,” said Falia.

Chandra focused on keeping her expression courteous. “Ah.”

No wonder everyone here was so thin! Who would ever eat more than they absolutely had to, if this was a typical local dish? She suddenly missed Regatha.

“It looks delicious,” Gideon said in an admirably sincere tone. “Thank you.”

“You’re our guests, and guests are a gift from the gods!” Falia said with a bright smile as she rose to her feet. “That silly boy forgot to bring water for you. I’ll go get it.”

As soon as the girl disappeared through the doorway, Chandra said quietly, “I don’t think I can eat this.”

“It may be all we’ll get for some time,” Gideon said, looking into his bowl without enthusiasm. “And when was the last time you ate?”

“I can’t even remember,” she said. “But suddenly I’m not as hungry as I thought I was.”

“Listen, it’s meat. More or less.” He sounded as if he was trying to convince himself. “It’ll give you strength.”

“I don’t suppose many things grow in a land of constant darkness,” she said, noting the absence of vegetables in the soup. Chandra filled her spoon with the broth, which was much more viscous than she had anticipated, and lifted it to take a sip. The closer she brought it to her lips, the harder it was was. She dropped the spoonful back into her bowl, untasted.

“Eat. We have been given this food. We can’t refuse it,” Gideon said, also lifting a spoonful of soup from his bowl.

Chandra reflected irritably that Jurl’s noisy slurping wasn’t making the soup seem any less disgusting, either. She said loudly, “I think I’d have preferred roasted goblin.”

“The village looks poor,” Gideon said, “so they probably only serve goblin on special occasions.”

Jurl gave a surly grunt before he returned to gobbling the grub soup.

Gideon said to her, “Eat.”

“You first,” she said.

He sniffed the thick, shiny, gray broth filling his spoon and evidently decided that inhaling was a mistake. Looking like he was holding his breath now, he took a sip. “It’s… fine.”

She knew he was lying, but Chandra used her spoon to scoop up a boiled grub. Gideon was right on one thing. It was meat. She needed strength. Summoning her will, she put it in her mouth and chewed on the rubbery morsel.

Falia re-entered the hut, carrying a clay pitcher and two cups. “Are you enjoying the soup?”

“It’s excellent.” Gideon took a big spoonful.

Falia smiled. “Good!”

“We have some questions, Falia,” Gideon said. “Eat first,” Falia said. “Then we’ll talk.”

“Of course.” Gideon nodded.

Chandra steeled her resolve and ate some more grub worms, washing them down with a generous quantity of water. Since Gideon was sipping the broth without expiring on the spot, she consumed some of it, too. The texture was disgusting, and the flavor could best be described as aquatic. She wondered what the grubs might have grown into.

The thought nearly made her gag, so she tried to empty her mind, and continued eating in silence-all while Jurl kept eating in noisy, voracious gulps.

The goblin finished his meal first. He gave a satisfied sigh, and shifted his position so that he could lean against the wall of the hut. After a few minutes, he fell into a peaceful doze. Chandra knew this because he snored.

When she could endure no more of the grub soup, Chandra set her bowl aside and looked at Falia, intending to thank her. That was when she realized that the girl was staring at Gideon again-this time, with a look that could only be longing.

From what Chandra had seen, there were few men in the village. Undoubtedly, Falia was evaluating Gideon’s fitness as a mate. Though seemingly young for it, Falia clearly was ready for marriage. Chandra realized abruptly that the girl could well be several years older than she looked. Who knew what effects this blood ritual for the passing of wisdom had on an individual, to say nothing of her diet.

Even supposing that Falia was the same age at which girls on Chandra’s native plane typically married, it was unsettling to see how she looked at Gideon.

Chandra wondered whether he was aware of her keen interest in him. Gideon simply ate, his gaze lowered all the while on the food. If he was aware of the girl’s perusal, he didn’t acknowledge or return it.

When he finished eating, he set aside his bowl, and thanked Falia, who seemed to awaken from a trance.

She smiled. “Now what have you come here to ask me?”

“Has it always been nighttime on Diraden?” Gideon asked. “Forever?”

“Ah.” She nodded. “You’ve come to ask about Prince Velrav’s rule.”

“Yes. Did the endless night begin with him?”

“It did.”

“What happened?”

“When my grandmother was a child,” Falia said, “there was day and night here. King Gelidor ruled Diraden. He had three sons. The youngest, Prince Velrav, was wild and dissolute.”

The girl was a good storyteller, and the tale flowed smoothly, but the heart of the story was simple. The young Prince Velrav had engaged in various scandalous and destructive indulgences until his father banished him from castle and court.

Furious over his exile, and more ambitious and vengeful than anyone had ever guessed, Prince Velrav studied black magic and consorted with the darkest blood demons of the realm to plot against his father.

“You tell the story well,” Chandra said when Falia paused.

“Thank you,” said Falia, smiling at Gideon as if he had delivered the compliment.

Jurl snored peacefully as the girl continued her story.

“When he felt ready to carry out his nefarious plan, Velrav returned to his father’s castle. He presented himself as a humbled, penitent son, reformed in his ways and seeking forgiveness. The king welcomed home his wayward son, and never thought to protect himself from him.”

“Which was evidently a mistake?” said Chandra.

Falia nodded. “In the dead of night, while the whole castle slept, the prince crept into his two brothers’ bed chambers and murdered them both, along with their wives. Then he went into the nursery and slaughtered the three children whom his brothers had sired.”

“He slaughtered the children?” Chandra repeated.

“Then he went to his parents’ chamber,” Falia said, “where he beheaded his mother with one heavy blow of his sword.”

“He killed his mother?” Chandra blurted.

“He’s very wicked,” the girl said prosaically.

“He beheaded her,” Gideon mused. “Interesting.”

“It’s not interesting” Chandra said. “It’s disgusting! His own mother!”

“And then he murdered the king?” Gideon asked.

“No.” Falia shook her head. “He fed on the king.”

“He ate his father?” The grub soup churned unpleasantly in Chandra’s stomach.

“No, he fed on him,” Falia said.

Chandra said, “What’s the diff-”

“And that didn’t kill the king?” Gideon asked.

“It might have, of course,” the girl said. “But he also fed the king of himself.”

“Fed him of himself?” Chandra said with a frown. “What does that mean?”

Gideon asked, “Is the king still alive?”

“Of course not,” Chandra said dismissively. “This happened when Falia’s grandmother was a child.” A man who’d had grown sons and grandchildren that long ago wouldn’t still be alive now.

“Yes.” Ignoring Chandra, Falia nodded, holding Gideon’s gaze. “The king lives still. And since the night Prince Velrav killed his family and turned his father into a sickly shadow of what he himself had become,” Falia said, “daylight has never again come to Diraden.”

“How can the king still be alive after all this time?” Chandra wondered.

“Blood magic,” Gideon said.

“Fierce blood magic,” Falia said, her nostrils flaring. “Wicked. Dark.” She made the words sound… seductive.

Gideon said to her, “That’s what the ‘hunger’ is.”

They looked to Falia for confirmation. She nodded.

“Why did he feed his father his own blood?” Gideon asked. “He’d killed the rest of the family. Why keep the king alive?”

“To curse him,” said Falia. “The king lives in the darkest, deepest dungeon of the castle. He is fed only blood. He is left alone, in terrible solitude. No one speaks to him or sees him, except for Velrav, who visits him once in a great while and tells him about all the torment and suffering he is inflicting on the king’s realm.”

“And this has been going on since your grandmother was a child?” Chandra asked, appalled.

“So that’s why Velrav made it perpetual night here,” Gideon mused.

“I don’t understand,” Chandra said.

“Some blood drinkers don’t like daylight,” he said.

“You mean they don’t want to be seen drinking blood?” she said in puzzlement.

“No, I mean the sunlight burns them,” he said. “Like fire. Those who choose blood magic, those who decide to embrace the power it holds must guard themselves at all cost against the powers of light.”

Fire. The word reminded Chandra of their predicament.

“They don’t like fire, either,” Gideon said. “They’re vulnerable to it.”

“So he uses the veil of false night to block sunlight and red mana,” she mused.

“And that same sorcery winds up blocking all mana, except black,” Gideon said.

Falia said, “Yes, my grandmother says there once used to be other mana here. Other colors in the?ther. Other kinds of magic.” She gave them both an assessing gaze. “You are not from Diraden, are you?”

They both went still.

After a moment, Gideon said, “No.”

“Where did you come from?”

“Someplace very far away,” Gideon said. “And we can’t go back there while Velrav’s power holds.”

“And you would like to go back there? Together?”

“Yes,” said Gideon. “We would.”

Falia said with certainty, “The prince will not help you or give you permission to go.”

“No, I didn’t think so,” Gideon said. “Tell me about this veil of night, Falia, this shroud. It blocks mana and light, but it also keeps things alive, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said. “Just enough that many things aren’t really alive here anymore, yet they don’t really die.”

“That’s a tremendous amount of power. Can he do that all alone?”

“No,” the girl said, “his companions work with him to maintain the veil.”

“His companions?” Gideon asked.

“They are the blood demons who helped him develop the power.”

“And blood is what feeds their power?” Chandra asked.

“Yes,” Falia said. “When they feel the hunger, they seek more blood to sustain them. To empower their dark work.”

“How often do they get hungry?” Chandra asked.

“Often.”

“And then people are taken.” Gideon said.

“People. Goblins. Creatures. Animals.” Falia paused. “They like people best. But any blood will feed the hunger. People, though… those thrill them.”

Gideon studied her. “Do people with power thrill them in particular?”

Falia nodded.

“People with power,” Chandra said, “such as a menarch?”

She lowered her eyes. “Yes.”

“You’re in danger?” Gideon asked quietly.

“Always,” Falia said.

Falia offered them water to wash their skin and damp cloths to wipe away the worst of the grime and dirt from their garments. She loaned them a comb and got one of the village men to lend Gideon his razor. After they were clean and tidy, she suggested they all get some rest.

She was willing to share her hut with them… but not with Jurl.

“Goblins are treacherous,” she said. “Even with his hands bound, I wouldn’t feel safe sleeping in the same dwelling with him. We should put him in a secure place.”

Chandra thought that made perfect sense, so they woke Jurl, who was cranky about being disturbed, but became more so at the prospect of being locked up while the rest of them slept in relative comfort.

One of the huts in the village had originally been built to protect livestock at night. However, most of the livestock on Diraden had long since died and now the building was empty. There was also a large, sturdy cage in the hut, which Falia said had formerly been used to keep wild boars being fattened for the annual harvest feast. There had been no harvests since Prince Velrav came to power, obviously, and it had been some time since the villagers had even seen a wild boar.

They locked Jurl in the cage. He was hotly opposed to the idea, and it took Gideon some effort to get the goblin into the thing. Afterwards, Falia took Gideon back to her hut to clean the scratches that Jurl’s claws had left on his skin.

Chandra remained behind in the livestock hut and said to the goblin, “Stop that snarling! We can’t let you go, and that’s your own fault.”

“Bad,” said Jurl.

“Nonsense. You’ll be perfectly comfortable in here.”

“Village eat goblin,” he said ominously.

“What?” She realized Jurl must have heard her dinner conversation with Gideon. “Don’t be silly. We were joking. They won’t roast you.”

“Stranger,” Jurl said bitterly. “Stupid.”

“I consider the source,” Chandra said, “and feel unmoved by the insult.”

She left him sulking and made her way back to Falia’s hut.

Predictably, perhaps, the girl had convinced Gideon to remove his tunic, and she was making a lengthy and intimate task out of tending what were only a few negligible goblin scratches on his chest. Chandra gave the two of them a dismissive glance, then went over to the bedroll that had been provided for her, smoothed it out on the floor, and lay down. While doing so, she noticed in passing that Gideon had a broad, hard, mostly hairless chest, and his arms were well muscled. There were several scars on his left arm, and another on his stomach.

At length, Falia ministered to his wounds. Then she offered to comb his hair for him, which was still rather tousled.

Chandra snorted.

Giving no sign that he had noticed Chandra’s derision, Gideon smiled kindly at Falia and assured her he was accustomed to doing it himself. “But thank you for the offer.”

Rosy-cheeked and glowing from within now, Falia looked quite different from the pale, hollow-eyed girl whom they had first met. “Please make yourself comfortable in the other bedroll,” she said to Gideon. “I must go and get another.”

“Am I taking yours?” he said. “I don’t want to deprive you of your bed, Falia.”

“Please, you’re my guest. It’s my pleasure that you should sleep in my bed!”

I’ll bet it is, Chandra thought.

“I’ll get another bedroll for myself from my aunt’s hut,” the girl said. “I’ll be back shortly.”

As soon as she left, Chandra said reprovingly to Gideon, “She’s a child.”

“Actually, she’s probably older than either of us, Chandra.”

“You think?” She propped herself up on her elbows and looked at him in perplexity.

“One of the typical effects of blood magic is that it slows or even halts the normal aging process.”

“But surely she’s not a blood drinker?” Chandra said.

“No, I think she’s exactly what she says she is: the village menarch. You heard what she said. The wise woman passes her wisdom to her successor through a blood ritual.”

“Yes, I did hear that.” Chandra lay down again and stared at the flickering light from the candles as it bounced off the ceiling. “The wise woman passes along knowledge and wisdom through her blood, and maybe some power. And part of the power involves ensuring that the next wise woman remains the exact same age she is at the time of initiation… until it’s time for her to turn the duty over to her successor?”

“It seems necessary,” Gideon said. “She remains young so that she can marry and bear children, but that could take a long time considering how few people are in the village. I imagine mortality rates among infants is high in this kind of environment.”

“I think she sees you as a potential mate.” Chandra thought it over. “How old do you think she is?”

“We’d probably be able to make a better guess if we met the aunt who was the wise woman before her.”

“Well,” Chandra said, “no wonder Falia seems so, er, ready for marriage.”

“That’s a surprisingly tactful way for you to put it. You must be tired.” He stepped over her prone body and started laying his bedroll in the narrow space between hers and the wall.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “You’re not sleeping this close to me.”

“Yes, I am. I want you lying between me and her,” he said firmly. “You’re my protection.”

Chandra snorted again. “Oh. All right. Fine.”

She rolled over on her side, with her back to him, and closed her eyes. She assumed Falia wouldn’t be pleased with this arrangement when she returned to the hut, but Chandra was much too tired to care.

She dreamed of fire.

Not the hot power that had mingled with her fear and fury when she killed the Enervants. And not the wild flames that had scalded her in the Blind Eternities as she made her escape from the Prelate’s dungeon.

The fire in her dreams wasn’t the seduction of a boom spell, or the fragile sparks of a new enchantment. No, this was the fire of sorrow and grief, of shame and regret.

“I don’t want to kill any innocents,” Gideon said in that calm, impassive voice he often used. White flames danced around him as he said it. Pure white.

And in those flames, she could hear their screams clearly. Their bodies writhed in the fire, and the stench of their burning flesh made her want to vomit, as it always did. Her throat burned with sobs that wouldn’t come out.

But the sobs must be coming out, because she could hear them. Choked, desperate, tearful gasps.

“Chandra,” he whispered, his voice cool against the heat of the agonized screams of the innocents dying in the fire.

She tried to move, but her limbs were immobile. She wanted to scream, but only a helpless moan emerged from her throat.

“Chandra.”

And when the blade of a sword swept down to her throat, she awoke with a strangled gasp of horror.

It was dark. No candles were burning. And Chandra had no fire to call upon here.

“Shhh, it’s a dream, just a dream,” Gideon whispered. His arms came around her. “Shhh.”

She struggled against the imprisoning arms.

“It’s me,” he whispered. “You had a nightmare.”

Her heart was pounding. Her temples throbbed. She was sweating. A strangled sob escaped her throat, humiliating her.

His body was pressed up against her side as she lay on her back. One hard arm encircled her shoulders, the other curled around to cradle her face. “Shhh. You’re fine. It was just a dream.”

Chandra raised her hand to the hand that cupped her cheek. She intended to reject that intrusive, offending caress. To fling off his hand… But somehow, instead, she found herself grasping it. He returned her grip and squeezed gently.

“Just a dream,” he said again.

She focused on her breathing, trying to steady it.

“Maybe going to bed on a belly full of grub worms wasn’t such a good idea,” he whispered.

A choke of surprised laughter escaped her.

Then she felt queasy. “You had to mention that,” she murmured. “I’d actually forgotten.”

“Sorry,” he breathed against her ear.

She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. She could still hear her heart thudding with terror and guilt.

Gideon said, “Do you want to tell me what you dreamed?”

“No.”

He accepted this, and they lay quietly together. After a while, he lifted his head. Then he whispered, “It’s too dark to see, but I think she’s still asleep.”

Chandra was glad she hadn’t disturbed the girl. Having woken Gideon was embarrassing enough.

He lowered his head again, letting it rest close to hers. “I can’t tell how long we’ve been asleep. The light’s always exactly the same here.”

“The moonlight, you mean.”

“Mmm.”

She tried to get her mind off the shadows of her past. It was better to think about the present-even this present. “Now that we know more about Velrav and this place… I don’t feel we’re any closer to knowing what to do about it. How to get out of here, I mean.” She kept her voice soft, so as not to wake Falia.

“Widespread rebellion would be handy,” Gideon said, “but I doubt it’ll happen.”

“Because it hasn’t happened yet?” she whispered. “In all these years of suffering?”

“And also because this whole plane is steeped in dark magic.”

“Including our hostess?” Chandra guessed.

“That blood ritual? Yes.” Lying entwined with him like this, she could feel him shake his head slightly. “They won’t unite. The different groups here won’t help anyone but themselves. And however tormented the situation may be, it’s got a sort of consistency and balance that they’re used to by now.”

“You’d think the food alone would be cause enough to rebel. Grub soup?”

She felt his soft puff of laughter against her cheek in the dark.

“If they would rebel,” Gideon said after a moment, “then the flow of blood to Velrav and his companions might be reduced. Even cut off.”

“So that’s our plan?” she said doubtfully. “Lead an uprising?”

“No. It would take too long. Years, if it worked at all. Which it probably wouldn’t.” He added, “Besides, it might also take a while for Velrav to feel the effects of going hungry and start weakening. We need a faster plan.”

“Yes. Faster is better.”

“I thought you’d think so.”

“But in our current condition,” she whispered, “how can we attack someone that powerful?”

Gideon sighed and shifted his position a little. “I don’t know.”

Instead of rolling away from him, she shifted her position, too, getting more comfortable in his arms. The feel of his body was comforting. The whisper of his breath along her cheek, his voice soft in her ear… For now, he was a safe place to hide from her nightmares.

“You said blood drinkers are vulnerable to fire,” she whispered. “Maybe we should burn down the castle. The normal way, I mean. With torches and that sort of thing.”

“We’d have to go see the place to get an idea of what it would take to burn it down without magic. But stone walls added to a damp climate…”

The prospect wasn’t promising. Chandra tried to think of another plan. “Jurl captures people and delivers them to Velrav. Actually, he probably captures goblins, too. He’s obviously not sentimental about his own race.”

“You think Jurl may know more about Velrav than we’ve learned so far?” Gideon guessed.

“But whether what he says will make much sense…”

“Well, we can try in the morning.” He paused. “Or, uh, when it’s time to get up, I mean.”

The night was so still and silent, the villagers must all still be sleeping.

His hand brushed her hair as he whispered, “Try to get some more sleep.”

Chandra’s lids felt heavy, but she was afraid to go back to sleep. Afraid of what her dreams might hold. She’d rather stay here, with him. “I’m not sleepy,” she lied.

She was sure he heard the fatigue in her voice, but he didn’t argue. Instead, he stroked her hair in silence for a while.

Finally he said, “I’m wondering…”

“Hmm?” She didn’t move or open her eyes.

“Will you…” He hesitated and again, then said quietly, “What happened to your mother?”

Chandra drew in a sharp breath and went tense all over. She knew he felt it. The stroking hand on her hair became still.

“What?” Her voice was cold.

“You cried out for her. In your dream-your nightmare. It seemed like… What happened to her?”

She sat up, tearing herself out of his embrace. When she felt his hand on her arm, she flung it off.

He sat up, too, but he didn’t try to touch her again. “Chandra…”

She started to speak, then changed her mind. Anything she might say now would reveal too much-even if only how forbidden the subject was.

“I apologize.” His voice was calm. Trying to make her calm. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

Chandra inhaled deeply. In, two, three. Then exhaled. Out, two, three.

She could feel him peering at her, and was glad the darkness hid her face, as it hid his.

When she thought she had control of her voice-of her words, and thoughts-she said, “You’re right, we should get some more sleep. I’m still tired.”

There was a pause. “Of course.”

His voice had that impassive tone he often used.

Chandra lay down on her bedroll with her back to him. She felt him move away from her, returning to his own bedroll, where he should have stayed in the first place.

She lay awake for a long time in the dark, with her eyes wide open, forbidding herself to think about anything. Anything.

Although she didn’t expect it to happen, Chandra drifted off eventually, and she slept soundly. When she awoke, Gideon had already risen and gone back out into the night. Falia said some of the men had taken him to speak to someone who could tell him more about the Fog Riders that they had seen earlier.

“The rest of the villagers are all doing their work.” Falia said to her, “There is no one to guide you to where he is. You must remain here.”

The girl’s manner toward her now was noticeably cool. It was all too easy to guess why, given where Gideon had chosen to place his bedroll when they all went to sleep. Chandra might have told Falia that she had no interest in Gideon, let alone in competing for his affections. But that seemed like too absurd a conversation to have with someone who looked so young.

Not wanting to stay on Diraden-or in Gideon’s company-one moment longer than she had to, Chandra decided to tackle a task that she and Gideon had talked about: questioning Jurl. So she went into the livestock hut to see him.

The cage was empty. The goblin was gone.

Chandra turned around, intending to go alert the villagers. She found Falia in the doorway behind her. The girl had followed her here.

“He’s escaped!” Chandra said.

“No,” Falia said.

“Then were is he?”

“Being skinned and roasted.”

“What?”

“Goblins make good eating.” Falia gave Chandra’s horrified reaction a look of cool amusement.

“You’ve killed him?”

“We’ve butchered him.”

“You’re going to eat him?” Chandra couldn’t believe this was happening.

“Of course.”

“Oh, no.” Chandra covered her face with her hands, swamped with guilt. “No wonder he was so angry at me! He knew you might do this! And Gideon and I locked him in here! We made him helpless!”

“He was a goblin.” The girl’s voice was contemptuous.

“But he was my…”

Actually, friend would be wildly inaccurate. Jurl had tried to kill her and Gideon; and they had taken him prisoner and brutalized him when he resisted their questions or orders.

Such behavior, on either side, wasn’t exactly the basis of friendship.

Chandra knew full well the goblin was treacherous, amoral, and vicious. She had no doubt that, given a chance, he’d have fed her to Velrav without the slightest hesitation or pang of regret. She had also known that a situation might arise where she or Gideon would have to kill Jurl.

But she had never intended to turn him into a helpless, caged victim that the villagers could skin and skewer at their leisure.

But that was exactly what she had done.

Chandra stared at the smirking girl in the doorway. “How can you eat someone you’ve talked to? Someone you’ve given food to?”

“I fed him because his skin looked a little too loose when you got here. A well-fed goblin is juicier.”

Chandra was aghast that she had slept in the same small hut with this revolting, sneering, deceitful child! “I think I’m going to be sick.”

She was so angry she felt dizzy. She also thought she felt a sudden headache coming on. There was a pounding in her ears, a harsh, uneven drumming that echoed around her…

Chandra frowned, realizing the sound wasn’t inside her head. And it was, she realized with a creeping chill, familiar.

“If you plan to vomit, get it over with.” The girl’s voice was hard. Her eyes were narrow and her lips tight with loathing. “The riders are coming for you.”

“What?” Chandra breathed.

“The Fog Riders are coming to take you to Prince Velrav.” Falia’s tone dripped with dark satisfaction.

Chandra heard the echoing beat of approaching horses, their hooves thundering against the ground. “Me?” Chandra felt the hut closing in on her. “But… why? I mean, how do they know I’m here?”

“Because I summoned them.”

“You?”

“I told you, people thrill him. Power thrills him. Why do you suppose he has not fed on me?”

“Power,” Chandra murmured. “Power.” She tried to call on mana. Any amount. Any feeble flow that she could use to power her fire.

“Because I trade with him for my life.” Falia looked much older than she had before. Perhaps even older than her true age. In that moment, she looked hard, ruthless, and casually cruel. “I find special things for him. A fire mage, such as you… Oh, my. Very exotic, Chandra.”

She looked at the girl sharply. “Did you drag that out of Jurl with your skinning and roasting tools?” She knew Falia hadn’t heard it from her or Gideon.

“He traded the information for his life. But goblins are stupid. He was still caged when he gave up your secret, you see. He didn’t even realize there was no reason not to kill him once he’d told us. If only more goblins were merchants.”

“So you’re one of the takers,” Chandra said, calling on her fury, calling on fire… and scarcely even able to feel her chilled blood warm a little bit.

“This is Diraden.” The girl’s voice was flat. “Everyone is a taker. Some of us are just better at it than others.”

Chandra decided they had chatted long enough. Fire magic wouldn’t work. Velrav had seen to that. She’d have to evade those Fog Riders the old-fashioned way-by running, hiding, and finding a means to fight them even without her power. And the first step was to get out of this hut and away from this smirking brat.

Chandra ran, straight into Falia, driving the flat of her palm against the girl’s face and striking upward. Falia shrieked in pain and fell backward. Chandra dashed past her… and found herself running straight into about a dozen spears.

She barely managed to stop her headlong rush into the ambush without skewering herself on the sharp metal points. She stood, frozen on the spot, looking down at the spear blades pressed against the vulnerable flesh of her throat, her breasts, and her belly.

The hoof beats were getting closer. The riders would be here in moments.

Falia arose from her sprawled position on the ground. Her nose was gushing blood. It flowed down her face and into her mouth, coating her teeth with red as she snarled at Chandra. Her dark eyes blazing with fury, the girl walked over, spat in Chandra’s face, and then slapped her, hard.

Chandra gave very serious though to retaliating… but she didn’t favor dying of a dozen spear wounds in exchange for the pleasure of hitting the brat. Instead, she demanded, “What have you done with Gideon, you warped little bitch?”

“Gideon is where I told you he was.”

“Is he alive?”

“Of course!”

Chandra studied her. “Ah, I see. You got him out of the way so you could have me carried off without his interference.”

“When he returns, I’ll tell him you disappeared. I’ll be very convincing.” Falia wiped her bloody face with her sleeve, but this only succeeded in smearing the blood all over her skin. “He’ll never know what happened to you. And he’ll forget about leaving here. Once you’re gone, he’ll stop thinking about going back to wherever you came from.”

“And, of course, you’ll comfort him tenderly while he grieves for me?” Chandra said.

“He will forget you,” the girl said with malicious satisfaction. “You are nothing.”

“I thought I was special enough to be a life-saving treat for your dark prince?” Chandra shrugged. “Listen, you sickly, demented, venomous child, if you think Gideon will ever notice you, then you’re even sillier than I thought you were.”

“He has already noticed me. I have more at my disposal than you may think. He will be mine,” the girl said furiously, her blood-smeared, sallow face going an unbecoming shade of puce. “If I am ever to be allowed to live, and better, to die, I need to produce a healthy successor. Gideon will help me do that.”

In that moment Chandra understood. Falia was as trapped as she was, perhaps even more so.

The noise of galloping hooves became too loud for further conversation, which was something of a relief.

The first thing Chandra saw was that fast-moving cloud of white fog traveling across the ground, glowing in the moonlight. Then she was able to see the riders, their looming black shapes rising out of the fog as they raced toward her.

They looked so terrifying that, for a moment, she couldn’t move. It was like being trapped in one of her nightmares. She wanted to scream, to flee, to weep, and she couldn’t do any of these things.

Then her wits came back to her in a welcome rush.

Spears! she thought. That ought to be an effective weapon against a rider.

And fire. Gideon had said that blood drinkers didn’t like it.

The four riders entered this part of the village and cantered around Chandra and her captors, circling them like a pack of predators. The thick mist swirled around the villagers and amongst them. Chandra felt as if icy snakes were twining around her knees when the fog reached her.

Perpetual nighttime worked in her favor on this occasion. Several of the men surrounding her were carrying torches.

She simulated terrified hysteria-which wasn’t that big of a leap-and staggered to her right, feigning confusion and panic as she shrieked. The men broke position, some of them falling back, others stepping to one side. She found her opening and seized a torch from one of them. She swung it around like a club, using the fire to keep her captors away.

“Seize her!” Falia shouted.

Chandra shoved the torch into the face of one of the men. He staggered backwards, lost his footing, and dropped his spear. Chandra caught it with her foot and kicked it up to her other hand. Warding off her captors with the spear, she used the torch to set fire to thatched roofs of two nearby huts. With the light wind, there as a good chance the fire would spread to more huts. Meanwhile, it was already distracting the villagers and sparking some panic among them. She hoped that, beneath the dark pall that covered Diraden, a big enough fire would be visible from far away. It would alert Gideon, if he saw it.

She had never used a spear before, but she assumed that sticking the pointy end into soft flesh would be effective. Turning suddenly, she dashed toward one of the riders and shoved the spear into his guts.

The force of her blow almost unseated him, but he was a skilled rider and clung to his mount. She could see the rider’s face as he moved away, the spear lodged in his belly. It was a bony and ghastly white visage, with black eyes, and lips so dark they looked black, too.

The villagers had backed off to the edge of the fray, but Falia was screaming for them to seize her. They apparently thought it was a challenge best left to the Fog Riders. They were more concerned about their burning village.

Chandra turned with her torch to attack another of the four riders. As he came toward her, she shoved the torch into the dark horse’s face. The animal whinnied, reared up, and danced sideways. She was about to follow up her attack and go after the rider when instinct warned her to look behind her.

The rider she had stabbed had withdrawn the spear from his guts and was swinging the long wooden handle straight toward her head.

In the moment before it hit her, Chandra thought irritably that Gideon hadn’t warned her that blades wouldn’t kill blood drinkers.

Chandra gradually became aware of a weight on her head. So heavy it hurt. Hurt terribly. It felt as if an enormous rock was pounding into her skull, over and over. It hurt to move, it even hurt to groan. She lay there in dazed silence, wishing the pain would go away.

She heard unfamiliar voices, echoing noises, laughter, growls. Sometimes she heard sighs or sobbing and felt wetness on her face.

“There, there,” said a deep, melodious voice.

For some reason, the voice frightened her. She hoped it would go away and never come back.

But it did come back.

“You look better, my dear.”

There was a groan. Chandra thought she had made the noise. To test this theory, she deliberately tried to repeat the sound.

Yes! She heard it again. She was groaning.

But the effort was exhausting, and she sank back into oblivion.

“Yes, I think you may surprise us and survive,” said the voice, some unknown time later. “I love surprises. Are you waking up?” the voice asked, dripping with amusement. “That’s it. Open those eyes wide. Surely it’s time for us to meet?”

Chandra squinted even in the dim light of the room. She heard a feeble moan and was embarrassed that she had made that pathetic sound.

Her vision adjusted and she gradually recognized that she was lying in a bed, with a red, silken canopy overhead. The opulent room was large and lighted with candles.

The pain in her head gave her a dazed feeling that she at first attributed to her unfamiliar surroundings.

“Ah, she lives,” said the deep, melodious voice that had become so familiar to her recently.

Chandra didn’t like the sound of it any more now than when she had been out of her senses. Moving carefully, she turned her head in the direction the voice had come from.

A young man stood next to a dormant fireplace on the far side of the room. He was tall, slim, and fair-skinned, with black hair that gleamed as if it had been polished, and red-rimmed dark eyes. His lips were so dark, they looked almost purple.

Chandra did not find him an attractive example of manhood.

“I’ve won,” he said.

“Won?” she tried to say.

Her tongue wasn’t quite working yet, but the man seemed to understand what she meant.

“The wager,” he said. “Some bet you would die shortly after you were brought here. Others gambled that you’d linger for a bit, then quietly expire. I, however, knew that you would make a full recovery.”

“Recover?”

“Do you remember what happened?”

“I…” Chandra had a feeling, despite the relative comfort of her bed, that this was not a good place to be.

She started wading through the debris in her mind. Abruptly, the details of her capture came back to her.

Where is Gideon?

She groaned.

“Oh, dear,” said the young man. “That tragic?”

“Price Velrav,” she croaked with certainty.

“At your service!” He swooped down in an elaborate genuflection. “May I call you Chandra?” He added, “Since you’ve been lying in my bed for so long, I feel like conventional formalities would be absurd.”

She ignored the throbbing in her head, and looked under the sheet that covered her. “Where are my clothes?”

Her throat was so dry, she choked a little from the effort of speaking.

“I had them taken away to be cleaned. They were filthy.” He crossed the room to sit on the bed beside her prone body. “I didn’t want them soiling my sheets.”

She glared at him. “This isyour bed?”

“Well, all the beds here are mine, but for now it’s yours,” he said, leaning forward as he reached out to trail his pale fingers along her naked shoulder.

“Touch me and I’ll break your fingers,” she snapped, knocking his hand away.

“There’s water on the bedside table, it sounds as though you need it. Please,” he gestured to a pitcher, his movements light, almost feline. “Drink, you will feel better.”

Chandra jerked her chin at him. “Off the bed.”

“As you wish, my dear.” He rose with an amused look on his face.

She held the sheet in place as she laboriously pushed herself into a sitting position, always aware of the prince’s red-rimmed gaze. She turned and poured herself a cup of water; she drank and felt better, pouring another glass as soon as she’d finished. Only after drinking a third glass did she look at him again.

“I like a woman who’s that concentrated on fulfilling her needs,” Velrav purred.

“I don’t care what you like.” Her voice sounded more normal now. She must have been unconscious for quite some time.

He grinned. Chandra steeled herself so as not to react to the eerily white teeth that were filed to sharp points revealed by his broad smile.

“The story the riders told me is easier to believe now.” Velrav shrugged. “Lying there unconscious, you looked lovely, despite the bruises, and certainly very, er, healthy!” His lascivious gaze traced her body up and down. “Even, one might say, robust.”

“I attribute my good health to a steady diet of grub soup,” she said sourly.

“That’s a very nasty scratch on your thigh, though it’s healing well. What did that to you?”

“A goblin,” she said.

“Ugh. Nasty creatures,” Velrav said fastidiously. “And yet you eat them.”

“I don’t, my dear.” He sounded appalled. “That’s peasant food! Goblins are brought here only to feed some of my, er, less refined companions. What about that cut on your arm? It was festering nicely when you arrived.”

She said nothing; it took her a moment to realize he was referring to the incision made by the Enervant to remove the burrowing snake.

“Hmmm, the red hair is exotic. Just as I hoped.” Velrav tilted his head, studying her. “And now that your eyes are open, I find their color intriguing. Almost amber… fiery…

“When they brought you to me I was unimpressed. Despite your unusual coloring, you seemed like any other woman offered as a tithe.”

He grinned again. “Now that you’re awake, however… Yes, now I see the woman they told me about!”

“Get my clothes,” she said coldly. “I want to get dressed.”

“A lone woman who fought off a dozen villagers and four Fog Riders? It sounded too improbable! I thought perhaps the riders were trying to save their own lives by inventing the tale.”

She frowned, distracted. “How would telling you I fought them save their lives?”

“Ah, it would satisfactorily explain the messy condition you were in when you arrived! Unconscious. Pulse faint. Breath shallow. Face bruised. Your head split open and bleeding,” he said. “Of course, I had the servants clean you up.”

Chandra ran a hand over her head and found a gash on her temple. She explored it delicately with her fingers. It was tender and swollen, but healing.

“The spear handle,” she murmured, remembering. Evidently the rider had come close to killing her with that blow.

“Mortal bodies are so fragile,” Velrav said sadly. “Yours is obviously stronger than most-remarkably strong, I would say. But nonetheless vulnerable.”

“Yes, well, why did you care what condition I arrived in? Does blood taste better to you when the victim is awake and screaming?” she said scathingly.

“My dear! Vitality is of the utmost importance! I was positively enthralled by the description of such a healthy and vivacious young woman when the Fog Riders were summoned.” He sighed. “I rarely get such a special treat. Life is so… dispirited here. Naturally, I wanted you in perfect condition. And I gave orders to that effect.” He folded his arms and smiled pleasantly at her. “The Fog Riders know how dangerous it is to disobey my orders.”

“Well, sunlight can do a lot for morale,” she said, not really interested. “You should look into it.”

“Yes… Sunlight… You do say the most interesting things. Wherever did you get such an idea? I can’t help but wonder. And wonder, I like to say, is the first of all passions.”

“Listen here, Prince,” Chandra said. “If you think I’m going to kindle anything but your funeral pyre, you are sadly mistaken.”

“I can’t tell you how happy that makes me, Chandra,” he said with true glee. “Things have been so dull here for the past half-century.”

Chandra wasn’t sure how to react to that. Velrav just stood there looking at her, smiling, waiting.

“Maybe I could have my clothes now?” Chandra asked after what seemed forever.

The Prince’s smile vanished. “How very boring,” Velrav said, crestfallen. “The conversation was going so well for a minute… Mother always told me to temper my expectations.”

“I suppose that’s why you cut her head off?”

“Ah… Witty and well informed. You are a gift, Chandra. What could I have done to deserve this?”

“I’m sure you’ll come up with something, but the clothes would be nice while you consider it.”

“Yes, in due time. But I am curious about you. A fire mage, the girl claimed, although I can’t imagine how this could be.” Velrav said with evident fascination. “Is it true?”

“No need to ask me. Just release the enchantment you have on this plane, and you’ll find out for yourself whether it’s true.”

“How rare and wonderful!” he said. “A fire mage! I haven’t seen anyone who practiced fire magic since… Well, since before I murdered my family.”

“I’d be happy to show you what I can do,” she said.

“Oh, how I would enjoy that!”

“In that case, why don’t y-”

“If only it were as easy for you as it is for me, eh?” he said with regret. “But how could I do so in good conscience? I do have to look out for my best interests, after all. And since there has been no fire magic on Diraden for quite some time,” he said, “nor anyone of such enchantingly good health here for many years… Perhaps you’d like to tell me where you come from?”

“What does it matter? You can’t go there.”

“What makes you so sure?” he said. “You came here, after all. So why can’t I go there?”

“I didn’t come here on purpose.” Staying somewhat close to the truth, she added, “And I don’t know how to go back.”

“Then fortune is mine.”

“And the past doesn’t matter.”

“Oh, but it does,” he said as he moved to a window to look out. “The past is what created who we are now, after all. But you will tell me in time. And if you don’t, then perhaps your lover will.”

“My lover?”

“The girl claims the man who came to the village with you is your lover. She saw proof of this.” He added, “I, of course, didn’t intrude on her delicate feelings by asking what she meant by that.”

“He’s a bounty hunter. I was his prisoner,” she said, hoping that Gideon was not in Velrav’s custody.

“And now you’re mine… The menarch was quite upset when we took her prize.”

“Her prize?”

“Yes, your bounty hunter,” said Velrav, still looking down at something from his position at the window. “And she objected. So forcefully that the riders considered killing her.” He glanced over his shoulder at Chandra. “But they knew they couldn’t do that without asking me first. And I certainly would have said no.”

He returned his gaze to something outside, beyond the window. “If the menarch is going to die, then I’ll be the one to kill her. But, in truth, I have no wish for that. She finds such interesting treats for me, after all.”

“Treats.” The word was flat. His arrogance was astonishing.

Pulling the sheet with her, Chandra rose slowly from the bed. She was light-headed and her legs felt shaky. She wrapped the sheet around herself.

“Besides,” Velrav said, “she’s such a puny thing, I don’t think she’d satisfy my hunger. No, it’s far better to let her live as long as she keeps giving me wonderful gifts.”

Walking on bare feet across the cool stone floor, Chandra asked, with a growing feeling of dread, “What about the bounty hunter?”

Velrav met her gaze, then he nodded in the direction of the window. “See for yourself.”

Chandra tried to brace herself for whatever was coming, but her heart was pounding and she suspected Velrav could see that she was breathing a little too fast. She approached the window and looked down, trying to see what Velrav had been gazing at.

She found herself looking into a courtyard, which was surrounded by the wings of the castle on three sides. On the fourth side was a huge gate, bordered by a gate house and stables for a dozen or so horses. There were no trees or plants in sight, and the whole area was well-lit by torches that were positioned along the surrounding walls.

The courtyard was empty apart from one man.

Chandra clenched her teeth together as she stared at him in horror, willing herself not to cry out or satisfy Velrav with a shocked reaction.

Gideon stood between two tall, thick wooden posts. His arms were stretched out and securely tied to the posts. His long black hair was tangled and matted, and his head hung down. But since his legs were supporting him-albeit just barely-she knew he wasn’t unconscious or dead. Not yet, anyway.

His torso was naked. The wounds that Jurl had left there had reopened and bled anew. The claw marks gaped wide, red, and angry, and rivulets of dried blood stuck to Gideon’s fair skin. But Chandra didn’t remember there being so many wounds, nor that they were that severe…

She drew in a sharp breath through her nostrils.

Most of those marks could not have been from Jurl, she realized. Someone had been deliberately cutting him.

Aware of Velrav’s amused gaze on her, she kept her expression stony. When she was sure she could control her tone, she said, “The bounty hunter.”

“He appeared-out of nowhere, I gather-as the riders were about to carry you out of the village. And he interfered.” Velrav made a tsk tsk sound. “Most unwise. We would have never known about him if he hadn’t.”

Chandra ground her teeth together and focused on her breathing. She knew it was too loud, knew that Velrav heard it.

“He had the most remarkable weapon,” Velrav continued. “It’s mine now, and I adore it! You’ve seen it, I assume? It’s sort of a three-bladed whip. He killed one of the Fog Riders with it.”

Since running one of them through with a spear hadn’t worked, that surprised her. “How?”

Velrav ignored the question. “After we captured him, Falia sent a message asking me to meet her. A very bold thing to do, don’t you agree? Naturally, I was curious.”

“Did she throw another tantrum?”

“No, evidently she had resigned herself to her loss. Instead, she offered me more treats.” When Chandra glanced at him with a frown, he nodded toward Gideon and said, “Information about him.”

“Ah.” So the girl continued making herself more valuable to Velrav alive than dead. And she also ensured, by telling the cheerfully vindictive prince that Gideon and Chandra were lovers, that their supposed relationship would be remade now into a source of suffering and torment, rather than comfort and satisfaction. “What a nasty little girl.”

“This man is, like you, unusually healthy and strong. Also tall.” Velrav concluded, “You both come from the same place?”

“He followed me.”

“And then he tried to rescue you.”

She suspected where this conversation was going. “Rescue? No, I guess he was trying to keep his prize.” Chandra tore her gaze away from Gideon to look at Velrav. “He’s a bounty hunter. No prisoner, no reward.”

“What crime did you commit?” the Prince asked with interest.

“It’s a long story.” She allowed herself a deep breath. “And I am not going to tell it.”

“Oh, I hope you will someday,” he said. “I suspect it must be a very engaging tale. That man down there-Gideon?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Gideon killed a Fog Rider, which no one has ever done before, and he gave the other three riders quite a fight.” Velrav sighed voluptuously as he gazed down at his bloody captive. “You must have committed a very impressive crime, for a man like that to come after you.”

“Has he been tied up there the whole time I’ve been lying in here?”

“More or less. And I believe he’s been looking forward to this moment!” Velrav knocked hard on the window.

“Don’t!” she said reflexively. The sound would carry well in the empty courtyard.

“Why ever not?” Velrav knocked harder.

As she had feared, Chandra lost control of her composure as Gideon’s head slowly lifted. She pressed her palms against the window and looked down at him, distressed and appalled.

He looked up at the window. The torchlight illuminated his face, which was pale from blood loss and darkened by a thick shadow of hair on his jaws, chin, and upper lip. His left eye was blackened and swollen shut.

Gideon’s weary, impassive expression didn’t change, but she knew he saw her, silhouetted in the candlelight that shone on her unmistakable red hair.

“You look heartbroken, my dear,” Velrav said smoothly. “I thought he was hunting you?”

“He was.” She kept her gaze locked with Gideon’s, though she doubted he could see her face clearly in this light. “That was just… business. What you’re doing though…” She shook her head. “This is disgusting.”

“I suppose it’s a little… ostentatious,” Velrav admitted. “But I assure you it’s not our normal custom. We usually have some sport with our captives-”

“Sport?” she repeated with loathing.

“-and then feed on them. On rare occasions, we might bring someone into the fold. Someone like you, for example. But the rest die soon after arriving.”

“So why is he… on display like this?”

“He killed a Fog Rider.” Velrav’s tone suggested the reason should be obvious, even to her. “So a certain amount of extraordinary treatment is expected. And I couldn’t disappoint my companions and loyal servants, now could I? They deserve this.”

She didn’t try to continue speaking.

“You know, he’s not looking at you like a hunter,” Velrav observed, gazing down at Gideon. “No, indeed. The hunt is not what’s in those lovely blue eyes of his.”

“What do you know about hunting?” she said contemptuously. “You sit in this castle and have victims brought to you.”

“Actually, I do still hunt a little,” Velrav said, not sounding at all bothered by her disdain. “But not often, I must admit. Not anymore. Like everything else, I find it so boring by now.”

“You’ve been alive for a long time.” As she gazed at Gideon, Chandra remembered what he had told her about blood magic.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, I have.”

“You’ve had total power, with no challengers, feeding on the blood of your people to stay young. You’ve had no purpose except to satisfy your own hunger.” Chandra continued staring down at Gideon. “Night never turns to morning. The seasons never change. Even the moonlight never changes.”

She could see Gideon’s gaze growing more alert and intent as his exhausted, pain-fogged mind started to focus. She doubted he had known until this moment whether she was still alive. Even so, he maintained his control. She envied him that ability.

“What could possibly make your existence worthwhile anymore?” Chandra said to Velrav. “What could make your pointless existence still worth living?”

The prince was silent.

Someone entered the courtyard below. Like Velrav and the Fog Riders, this individual was male, slim, sickly pale, black-haired, with those unnaturally dark lips. He appeared to be in a hurry, going from one wing of the castle to another. As he passed Gideon, he withdrew a dagger from its sheathe on his belt and, with a casualness that shocked Chandra, slashed the blade across Gideon’s back. He bent down and licked at the flow of blood.

She gasped and slapped her palms against the window.

Gideon grimaced and closed his eyes for a few moments. He lowered his head, and even from here, Chandra could see his chest heaving with his rapid breaths as he tried to master the pain.

“I’ve sometimes wondered the same thing myself,” Velrav said somberly. “Why go on? Why not just end it? The weight of my boredom sometimes becomes so unbearable, I think I’ll go mad.”

“You are mad.” She couldn’t take her eyes off Gideon.

“I have indeed wondered, from time to time, what could possibly make my life worth living again.”

Gideon tilted his head up again and looked for her in the window. She balled her hands into fists against the glass and didn’t bother to try hiding how enraged and upset she was. Velrav knew, anyhow. Of course he knew.

“And then you both arrived,” Velrav said, “and now I know.”

“Know what?” she asked absently as she leaned her throbbing head against the window. Her heart was beating like it wanted to escape her chest.

“Know what would make this existence bearable again,” the dark prince said. “Know what can make this tedious life as exciting as it used to be, long ago.”

She tore her gaze away from Gideon and turned to frown quizzically at the prince. “Not that I care,” she said, “but what are you talking about?”

“Now I know there is more beyond Diraden.” he said. “So much more, in fact, that I am eager to explore it. And somehow, you and your bounty hunter will help me.”

That’s his plan? To become a planeswalker?” Gideon’s voice was weary.

“Yes,” Chandra said.

“What have you been telling him?”

“He kept pressing me about things and really I just got tired of it. I felt like if I told him the truth he would leave me alone.”

“Well, it’s really the least of our worries. It’ll never happen.”

“Well, there’s a little more to the plan. He’s going to use you to do it. He has some blood ritual that he’s preparing with the court magi. He thinks he can transmute your essence, or something.”

They were talking through the door of Gideon’s dungeon cell. He had been moved from the scene of his public bloodletting in the courtyard once the Prince had come to a decision. That had been some days ago.

From the next cell over, an old man’s demented laughter rang out intermittently.

“Has that been going on the whole time?” she asked. Chandra had been given leave to move about the castle unsupervised. Velrav was so confident in his enchanment that he felt he had little to fear. Nevertheless, Chandra’s feet and hands were shackled so that every where she went, she did it by taking mincing little steps. She didn’t go many places. Still, she had been able to bribe one of the castle guards with a small bit of fire quartz that Brannon had given her on her last night at Keral Keep. That a simple rock was so exotic was a testament to Diraden’s charm. She was grateful it had gotten her down here to see Gideon.

“Yes. If our man is to be believed, that’s the king.”

“Oh, yes indeed! I am the king and my rule would be absolute had my rule had not been absolved,” he said, before breaking into uncontrolled laughter.

“That’s not even a good play on words,” said Chandra.

“It’s better than some. Most of the time he doesn’t make sense,” said Gideon, over the ever-louder howls of laughter. “But the story Falia told us was more or less true. In between his laughing fits, he has told me a little about the prince’s power, and his own. It seems that magical power here is based on lineage.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure exactly, but all of this, the pall, the dampening spells, he achieves it all through rituals using the king’s blood. It seems the prince’s only true power comes from the king. That’s why he has kept him alive for all these years.

“Indeed! The whelp knows he’s nothing without me. If he ever wants total power, I must give it to him and he knows I never will.” The maniacal laughter followed again. “And if I die without passing it to him, another will be born. He will have nothing. So he keeps me here, the next best thing, prolonging my life with blood magic.”

Silence followed for a few moments, one of the rare lulls in his laughter.

“If it’s your power, why can’t you use it against him?” asked Chandra.

“He has cursed me. Imagine that! Cursed me with the help of demons. He thinks he paid with the blood of his family. He thinks he will live forever, but there is more to come, and they will have their payment.”

“Lovely,” was all Chandra could think to say. The vitriol in the old man’s voice made her skin crawl. There was little doubt for her that this was the king.

“All lovely things have an ending… ha!” Whatever was funny about this was lost on the two of them.

“This is how it goes,” said Gideon. “A moment or two of lucidity and then he moves from word to word. If there is a point I don’t see it.”

“Gideon, things are really looking bad. I mean, I may just be stuck here. He says the two of us will explore the Multiverse together, but he’s going to kill you. Why did you have to come after me when the Fog Riders came?” she asked.

“You were slung over their saddle like a sack of grain. There was so much blood pouring from your head, I wasn’t sure you’d live.” He gaze went to the healing wound on her temple. “It looks a lot better now.”

“It is. But why did you fight them for me? You could be on the outside trying to figure something out.”

“I guess I didn’t think. I thought they were going to kill you. I panicked.”

“You weren’t thinking?” Chandra asked, despite everything, unable to conceal a hint of enjoyment.

“You don’t reserve the right to act irrationally, Chandra. Let’s remember I’m the one imprisoned in a dungeon. You’re the one sleeping in a nice bed and being offered a life spent trapsing across the planes of the Multiverse.”

“I don’t think his offer is reliable,” she said. “He seems a little… cracked.”

“It seems to run in the family,” Gideon said dryly.

“Look, we made a deal when you got to Diraden, and you’ve stuck to your part of the bargain, so I’ll stick to mine. We’ll keep working together to get out of here.”

He looked at her through the barred opening in the door, his gaze impassive. She knew that this was the face he offered to people when he wanted to conceal something. It made her feel impatient with him, even angry. He had nothing to conceal from her, not if they were going to escape.

“Why did you risk your life twice to steal the scroll on Kephalai?” he asked.

“You knew the scroll was precious,” she said irritably. “You had it in your possession. Are you trying to tell me you didn’t even look at it?”

“I looked at it.”

“And?”

“And what?” He shrugged, then winced a little as his fresh wounds protested. “A spell written in a text I’m guessing you can’t read-”

“Can you?”

“No, I can’t read it. But I know where it is from.”

“Don’t mess with me Gideon.”

“It’s old, which explains what it was doing in the Sanctum of Stars. But that doesn’t explain why you want it so badly.”

“What does anyone want with anything? It’s old, yeah. But it’s unique. There’s nothing else like it in the whole Multiverse, is what I’ve been told. It’s a spell, yeah. But the monks back on Regatha think it could lead to something of immense power. Something way bigger than you or me.” She paused while the king entered into another round of hysterics. “I don’t know, Gideon. I wanted it for the glory. Something to make the Blind Eternities see.”

“Never rely on the glory of morning, nor on the smile of a mother-in-law. Ah, ha, ha…”

As they waited for this latest laughing jag to subside, Gideon considered what Chandra had said, the passion she’d showed.

“It’s from Zendikar,” he said. “A plane of some repute. It is said to be host to some of the most powerful mana sources in the Multiverse, but it is also unpredictable, irratic. Violent and pacific in the same moment.”

“Have you ever been there?”

“Never, but in my youth I searched.”

Chandra stared at Gideon without seeing him, her mind fixed on what the scroll could lead to.

She wrapped her fingers around the bars that separated them. “You’re sure the plane exisits?”

“I can’t be certain, but, yes, reasonably sure.”

“Do you know what this means, Gideon?” A light burned in Chandra’s eyes. “If we could get to Zendikar and find this thing that the monks talk about? Think of the things we could do. Think of the power! The adventure!”

“Chandra, you don’t even know what it is. It could be anything. It could be the darkest power you’ve ever known. It could kill you. It could…”

“You said it, Gideon. It could be anything. And we’ll never know until we find it.”

After a moment, Gideon looked into Chandra’s eyes. They sparkled with a clarity he had never seen before. There was hope there, to be sure, but there was something more. To say that it was fire would be obvious. To say that it was life would be an understatement.

“We can’t do anything until we get out of here,” he said in a monotone.

Chandra hung her head. There was silence in the dungeon.

“If I may say so,” said the king in a remarkably clear voice. “I believe I can help.”

The plan was a little crazy. So many things could go wrong, she was sure Gideon would never go for it, preferring instead to sacrifice himself so that she could live, or some ridiculous thing like that. But the king said he could help. He told them he still had some tricks up his sleeve.

This was how he told them they could beat the prince and escape the shroud that held Diraden in darkness and restricted their connection to mana. The king would need some of Gideon’s blood. Not much, maybe a spoonful and he would offer a similar amount of his own. He would use a bit of childhood magic he’d learned to confound his parents so many centuries ago. He and his siblings had often traded a bit of their blood in order to assume one another’s appearance and so get out of lessons. The king was a bit hard to stop once he started on his reminiscence. Chandra had to be diligent in keeping him focused.

The king said he could make himself look like Gideon and vice versa. The old man had been alive too long, he said. It was time for him to die, especially if his death were vexing to the ungrateful whelp sitting on his throne. He would go in Gideon’s place to be killed. When the prince mistakenly killed him, the shroud would be lifted. The prince would be powerless before them.

“But what about this transmutation he hopes to achieve? What if he is able to incorporate your essence?” Gideon asked, still skeptical of the plan.

“If it were possible, he would have tried. Don’t you think?” asked Chandra. She had been in the dungeon for some time now. She couldn’t rely on the guard to let her stay forever, or even be at the door when she tried to leave.

“The boy knows nothing. It is impossible,” said the king. “My time has come and he cannot stop it.”

“I am not filled with confidence,” said Gideon.

“What else are we going to do?” asked Chandra. “I don’t see a lot of options.”

“Okay, but how are we going to move the blood between cells?”

“It must be in the woman’s mouth!” shouted the king before entering into the first round of laughter in quite some time.

The thought was ridiculous to Chandra. Was this all an old crank’s plan to put his tongue in her mouth? For the first time she moved down the hallway to the cell the king occupied and looked inside. What she saw nearly made her faint. Sitting cross-legged on the floor of his cell, the old man looked so pallid as to be translucent. Light blue veins covered his naked body like the veins of some gelid mineral. He was unbearably thin. He laughed with his toothless mouth wide, his tongue dryly avian. His black eyes were as lusterless as the surrounding stone.

“Gideon. We have to do this, but I’m not using my mouth.”

In the hours, perhaps days, following her conspiratorial meeting with Gideon and the king, she thanked that shred of humanity that allowed a cup and pail of water in Gideon’s cell.

She had ferried the blood back and forth and the the two had both drunk their portion. The king said the effect of the transmogrification would last indefinitely, but once he were killed, the effect would disappear. Putting their faith in the old man was risky, to say the least, but what other choice did they have?

Velrav had decided that he wanted Chandra present for the ritual. She assumed that was for no better reason than to enjoy her reaction to Gideon’s death.

She’d been passing the time unwillingly in her room, where she could remain unshackled, waiting. She didn’t think she had ever been this anxious. She went over all sorts of scenarios even when she had no idea what to expect. The image of the laughing king burned into her mind so that every time she closed her eyes, she saw him there, like a malevolent idol.

It was a relief when one of the nameless castle guards finally came to escort her to a wing of the castle she had never seen. He led her into an oval room without appointment save a long stone table at one end. The plane of the table slanted toward the middle of the oval at a sharp angle. Four straps were positioned at the corners, presumably to hold something, or somebody, in place. She was placed at the opposite end of the room and made to stand in a slight depression covered with a metal grate.

Her wrists and feet shackled, Chandra stood wondering what she was supposed to do as the guard went around the room lighting sconces. Next Gideon-she hoped it was the king-was escorted into the room by two guards. He was hunched slightly and his hair hung over his face; his naked torso, criss-crossed with wounds and mottled with bruises, was deathly pale. She hadn’t noticed some of the wounds before. Were the bruises new? The guards picked him up, turned him upside down and strapped him to the table so that he faced up, his head pointing toward the floor. He offered no resistance. When his hair fell away from his face Chandra could see that he wore the stony expression, the impassive look she had come to know from him.

Chandra felt a little relief. At least they had gotten this far. But just then, another set of guards entered the room, carrying the king’s body into the room. What was Gideon doing here? Did Velrav know the truth? The guards placed Gideon equidistant between Chandra and the king, at the wall so that the three of them formed a triangle, and left the room. Chandra was worried by this latest development, but there was nothing she could do.

And in walked Velrav. As tense as she felt, Chandra had to keep herself from laughing. He was wearing a lush and obviously expensive cloak, but he also wore a long conical hat with a broad brim and chin strap. The effect, though doubtlessly intended to make him look imposing, made him look like a fool, a sad minstrel imitating the pomp of royalty.

Velrav turned to Chandra. “I believe you know my father, the king? Are you surprised? No, of course not. Could you believe that I wouldn’t know about your little clandestine visit? I thought I would let you visit your bounty hunter one last time.”

Chandra couldn’t respond. Her mind was racing. The whole situation was getting really annoying. Not a single thing had gone right since she got to this forsaken plane, and by now it was really going wrong. She could feel her skin begin to flush, all the familiar feelings of anger and frustration, but there was something missing. The bloom at the base of her skull, that power that she normally felt coursing down her spine and into her limbs wasn’t there-but her blood was moving and that, at least, felt good.

“I brought him to bear witness to his only living son’s transformation.”

The old man began to laugh, that unmistakable laugh. Chandra balled her fists and clenched her jaw. Her mind raced uncontrollably. She tried to calm her mind down, tried to breathe, but she couldn’t do it. Everything she knew, everything she’d done, nothing mattered. She felt it all fall away from her as the rage took control.

“I’m sorry, Chandra. He knows,” said Gideon, from the table. “He came soon after you left and beat me within an inch of my life. With the body of the old man, I couldn’t do a thing to defend myself.”

The old man laughed still, rocking back and forth.

“Quiet, you old fool!” shouted Velrav as he pulled Gideon’s sural from beneath his cloak and whipped at him clumsily, but it did nothing to stop the laughing. If anything, it only served to make the king laugh harder.

The fire in the sconce burned more brightly as Velrav kept whipping his laughing father, and Chandra felt it. She felt the mountain inside her. She was the volcano.

Everything slowed down when she got this way. She felt like she was moving outside of time as the power bloomed in the base of her skull, as the fierce flower she’d been missing filled her head and her hair became a raging halo of fire. Her fists became torches, her feet lit with alchemical intensity. She spread her arms wide, her shackles a molten puddle on the floor beneath her as she began to levitate.

Velrav turned to look at her, his mouth agape. The king’s laugh raised to a fever pitch, his eyes gaining life as he reveled in Chandra’s inferno.

Boom! Chandra brought her hands together in a thunderous clap as her feet returned to the floor, and a blade of fire rose from her hands. She turned to her right, spinning and swinging the flaming blade in order to carry through with all her momentum. When she came full circle she struck the prince in the neck, cleaving his head and opposite shoulder from his body. The cauterized flesh smoldered as the body fell to the side and Velrav’s right arm and head landed in the laughing king’s lap. It did nothing to quiet him.

The king patted the face of his son, and moved the head to the floor. He stood and crossed to Chandra, who was beginning to register what she had just done. Her flaming sword still burning brightly, and the old man only stopped laughing when he grabbed the blade. His flesh sizzled and burned immediately, the hideous hissing sound of the water in his body boiling away. With amazing resolve he impaled himself on the blade, even as Chandra tried to pull it back, but her shock made her too slow. The flames died, but not before the king. His body slumped on top of his son’s.

Chandra turned to Gideon, who still lay upside-down on the table, blood coloring his once-pale face.

“Help me off,” he said.

She turned and went to him. “Can you feel it? Mana!”

“Yes, I can feel it.”

She wanted to revel in the flow of red mana that was suddenly there, had been there. She felt giddy, almost lightheaded. She undid the straps holding him to the table and helped him off it.

“Let’s leave. I’m sure I can planeswalk. Can you?” she asked him.

“I think I can, yes.” He was looking at her in astonishment. “Chandra, what was that?”

“It was a blade of fire. I’ve never done that before.”

“But how? I thought you were going to incinerate all of us. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

She thought about it for a moment, then laughed with pleasure. “I feel strong.” Her gaze wandered over his damaged, haggard appearance. “What about you?”

He looked down at his wounded, blood-streaked body. “I’ve been better.” Gideon’s eyes were wary, as though he was witnessing magic for the first time.

“We’ve got to get out of here, before someone comes, things are sure to be getting different out there,” she said.

“You’re right.” His face resumed the confident calm she knew. “We need to planeswalk.”

“Regatha?”

“I’m following you,” said Gideon as he went and gathered his weapon.

After several minutes of concentration they left Diraden.

They entered Regatha gently, landing on soft grass in a sunlit meadow.

Chandra lay on her back in the grass, looking up into the familiar sky. Gideon was stretched beside her. The sun came peeking through the lush trees at the edge of the meadow at an angle.

She touched his wounded, bloody chest. “Does it hurt very badly?”

His gaze dropped to her mouth. “Does what hurt?”

The trees overhead…

Chandra suddenly sat up.

Shoved aside, he lay looking up at her quizzically. “Is something wrong?”

“We’re in the Great Western Wood,” she said. “I’m, uh, not sure I should be here.”

He sat up, too, and looked around. “Ah.”

“We should go,” Chandra said.

And then she realized she wasn’t sure what to do with Gideon. She wanted to take him with her… but she thought it likely that the Keralians, though generally tolerant, would object to her bringing a mage with Gideon’s particular talent. Especially given how tense things were between Keral Keep and the Order.

Chandra stood up, looked around, and got her bearings… and then realized where she could take Gideon.

“A friend of mine lives near here,” she said. “We’ll go to his home.”

Samir would be distressed to see her in the forest, but she was confident he would nonetheless welcome them with sincere warmth and hospitality.

“This way,” she said to Gideon, leading him toward Samir’s nearby compound in the lush, green woodlands.

“Actually, Chandra, there’s something…”

His voice trailed off and they both stood still, listening intently.

Chandra heard the rustle of a bush, then the crackling of a twig underfoot.

“Someone’s coming,” she whispered unnecessarily.

Oufes rarely made that much noise when moving through the forest, but she felt tense until she saw who it was. When a lithe, familiar figure came out of the dense greenery a few moments later, Chandra relaxed.

“Samir!”

“Chandra!” He smiled and waved. “You’re back?” He looked around, as if fearing a hoard of angry oufes might instantly drop out of the trees and attack. “You shouldn’t be here!”

“I know,” she said. “And I’m leaving. But first-” Samir’s horrified gasp distracted her, as did the expression of shocked dismay on his face. “What happened?”

“What? Oh.” She realized he was looking at Gideon. And as she glanced at her wounded, bloody, bearded, unwashed, unkempt, half-naked companion, Chandra realized that Samir’s reaction was understandable.

“Chandra!” Samir said sharply, coming closer as he gazed at Gideon with appalled concern. “What did you do to him?”

“I didn’t do anything to him! It was… uh, never mind. Listen, Samir, I would appreciate it if-”

“Young man, you’re badly injured! You need healing!”

“It looks worse than it is,” Gideon said.

Samir blinked. “Wait a moment. Have we…” He frowned and studied Gideon’s face more closely. “I know you, don’t I?”

Chandra said, “No, he’s-”

“Yes!” Samir said. “Of course I do! It’s Gideon, isn’t it?”

Chandra froze.

“We met…” Samir’s face clouded with dawning realization. “We met at the Temple of Heliud.”

There was a tense silence as Chandra turned her stunned, appalled gaze on Gideon.

“Yes, that’s right,” Gideon said, his voice calm, his expression impassive. “I hope you’ve been well since then, Samir?”

You’re from Regatha?” Chandra said in blank shock. Gideon’s blue eyes met hers. She couldn’t read his expression.

“From Regatha?” Samir repeated, sounding puzzled. “Er, where else would he be from, Chandra?”

Her gaze flashed to Samir. She blinked stupidly at him, abruptly remembering that he didn’t know she was a planeswalker. Indeed, she doubted Samir had ever even heard of planeswalkers. And this was no time to start explaining the concept to him.

“I mean, you’re from here?” she said to Gideon, feeling dumbfounded. Why had he never said so?

“I’m from Zinara.” Gideon’s voice was clear and firm. There was a flicker of warning in his eyes, reminding her to guard her tongue until they had a chance to talk alone together. Then he turned to Samir and said, by way of explanation for Chandra’s puzzling remark, “As you can see, we’ve been through an ordeal. Chandra’s disoriented.”

“I am not!” she snapped.

Both men looked at her, then at each other. There was a brief, silent moment of commiseration between them that she found infuriating.

“Chandra…” Samir approached her, his expression concerned, and laid a gentle hand on her arm. “You’re covered in blood.”

“What?” Chandra looked down and realized he was right. Almost every part of herself that she could see was messily splattered with blood-most of it Prince Velrav’s, she supposed. Cutting off his head had been messy, though that had not been her concern at the time. Chandra realized how grisly her face must look right now.

“I’m fine, Samir,” she said dismissively.

“But your friend is not,” said the woodland mage. “He needs-”

“We’re not friends,” she said, glaring at Gideon.

The truth about her mysterious companion was dawning on her with a deluge of appalling implications.

“You followed me,” she said accusingly to Gideon.

The two men looked at each other again.

“We should go to my home immediately,” Samir said to Gideon. “It’s nearby.”

“I’m not going anywhere!” Chandra said.

Even after learning he was a planeswalker, she had assumed that his business with her had originated on Kephalai and had something to do with the scroll. He’d been following her all along.

She said to him, “You lying, treacherous, cowardly-”

“Chandra!” Samir shook her shoulders. “We must go to my home. We can’t stay here.”

“I’m not staying here!” she said, contradicting her earlier assertion that she wasn’t going anywhere. “Not with him. I’m going to Keral Keep.”

“You can’t,” said Samir. “Not by day.”

“Of course I can!”

“No, it’s not safe.”

Gideon looked sharply at Samir. “What do you mean?”

Samir said to Chandra, “A great deal has happened while you’ve been away. Come home with me, and I’ll explain, while you wash and I look after Gideon.”

“He doesn’t need looking after!”

“He can’t go all the way to Zinara like this,” Samir said reasonably. “Those wounds should be cleaned and tended immediately.” Samir glanced at Gideon’s pale, haggard face. “He obviously needs food and drink, too.”

“You’re going to feed him?” she said. “You’re going to feed this scheming…”

“I’m going to feed you, too,” Samir said. “Perhaps then you’ll make more sense.”

“Samir,” Gideon said, “what changes are you talking about?”

“Not here.” Samir looked around nervously. “If Chandra is seen here now, I fear she may not live until sundown.”

She said dismissively, “I can handle a few angry oufes.”

“The problem has grown much bigger than that, Chandra,” Samir said. “Much more serious.”

“How serious?” asked Gideon.

“Two days ago,” said Samir, “the inter-tribal council of the Great Western Wood agreed to capture Chandra and turn her over to the Order.”

She stared at him in shock. She’d expected the situation would blow over, not worsen.

With mingled reluctance and resentment, Chandra agreed to accompany the two men to Samir’s family compound. As soon as they reached it, Samir showed her and Gideon into a small, fragrant hut that was primarily used for drying herbs.

“Wait here,” he instructed them. “I’ll get you some water for washing and some balm for those wounds. And I’ll ask my wife to prepare some food.”

“Oh, don’t fuss over him, Samir,” Chandra said. “He doesn’t deserve your kindness.”

“He’s my guest,” the village chief said.

And that, Chandra knew, settled the matter as far as Samir was concerned. She shrugged and folded her arms, knowing it was her anger that was letting her say things that risked letting Samir know their secrets, but not caring enough to stop herself. “Fine. Suit yourself. I just hope he doesn’t give you cause to regret it.”

Gideon’s expression was so blank, it was as if he didn’t even hear her speaking.

“I’ll be back shortly,” Samir said as he left the hut.

They stood alone together in the shadowy interior, staring at each other.

“You followed me to Kephalai!” she said as soon as Samir was out of earshot.

“Yes.”

“From here!”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Maybe we should sit down,” Gideon suggested.

“Answer me!”

“Well, I’m sitting down,” he said. “I think half my blood is lying on the pavement of Velrav’s courtyard.”

“How did you know I was going after the Scroll?” she demanded, watching him ease himself onto a wooden stool.

Gideon looked light-headed, probably because he had indeed lost a lot of blood and was certainly in need of food and water. He also looked as if the pain of his wounds had returned now that the excitement of escape had worn off.

It served him right.

“I didn’t know,” he said. “I’d never heard of the scroll. I’d never heard of Kephalai, either. I was just following you.”

“Why?”

“Like I told you on Kephalai, you’d made yourself conspicuous.”

“Yes, but that was on K-”

“Actually, I meant you’d made yourself conspicuous here,” he said. “You misunderstood, of course, because you had just made yourself even more conspicuous on Kephalai.”

“Did you follow me there so you could lecture me about my behavior?” she snapped.

“I followed you there,” he said patiently, “to take you into custody.”

“Custody? For who? Walbert?” When he nodded, she said, “So you are a bounty hunter.”

“No, I’m more like a…” he shrugged. “A soldier.”

“A soldier,” she repeated.

“Yes.”

“For the Order?”

He nodded again.

“Are you from Regatha?” she asked. “Originally, I mean?”

“No. I’ve only been here a short time.” He added, “Even less time than you’ve been here.”

She frowned. “How do you know how long I’ve been here?”

“Because not long ago, someone started practicing extreme fire magic in the mountains.”

“How do you know about that?” she asked in surprise.

“You’re not exactly discreet, Chandra,” he said with a touch of exasperation. “And no one on Regatha had ever seen anything like that before. Except for one person, Walbert said. A planeswalker who was here long ago, according to legend, and whose power and, uh, personality inspired the establishment of Keral Keep.”

“Walbert knows about planeswalkers?”

“Yes. Doesn’t the mother mage of the monastery know? I mean, if it was founded because of a-”

“Yes, she knows. It’s her monastery. But how does Walbert know about Jaya Ballard?”

“That’s the name of the planeswalker who was here?” Gideon said with a shrug, “Walbert knows a lot of things. He’s well educated, well informed, and well organized.”

“He’s also arrogant, interfering, overbearing-”

“When he became aware of the spells being practiced,” Gideon said, speaking as if he hadn’t heard her at all, “he suspected that another planeswalker had come to Mount Keralia after all these years. So he kept an eye on the situation. He soon learned that there was a brand new resident at the monastery, a woman who had arrived right before all that big magic started being let loose in the mountains.” After a pause, he added, “And no one seemed to know anything about this woman, except the she was unusually powerful. She had simply… arrived one day, and she never talked about her past or where she came from.”

“How did he learn this?”

“I told you. Walbert’s well informed and well organized.” Gideon added, “Besides, gossip travels faster than galloping horses. Even if it wasn’t malicious, there was bound to be talk, Chandra.”

“Hmph. So why did you come to Regatha? To sit at Walbert’s feet in admiration?”

“I came for the Purifying Fire,” he said.

“Ah. I’ve heard of it.” She tilted her head and studied him. “You came to Regatha to increase your power.”

“Yes.” He’d evidently decided, once Samir blew his cover, not to hold anything back, and she was distantly pleased that she was going to, finally, get some honest answers from him, but more than that, she was still enraged at what he’d done.

Chandra thought it over and said skeptically, “So did Walbert simply give you free access to this mysterious source of white mana that people say is what has made the Order so powerful here?”

“He wanted something in exchange,” Gideon said.

“You mean, he wanted you to go after the planeswalker that he suspected had come to the Keralian Monastery.”

“Yes.”

“And do what?” she said, feeling her blood heat. “Kill me?”

“Just take you into custody.”

“What does that mean?”

Silence.

“Gideon?” she prodded. “What did Walbert plan to do once he had me in custody?”

“I don’t know.” There was a pause. “I didn’t ask. At the time, I didn’t particularly care.”

“Of course not,” she said. “You just wanted access to the Purifying Fire.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “But then you chased down a ghost warden and killed it for no reason-”

“No reason?” She couldn’t believe her ears.

“It was harmless,” he said. “It had minimal defenses, and it only used them when directly threatened.”

“It was a spy for the Order!”

“You also burned down part of the Western Wood-”

“Which is not your concern! Or Walbert’s!”

“-and you attacked four peacekeepers without provocation.”

“Peacekeepers? Without provocation?” Now she was truly enraged; she could feel the fire igniting in her blood. “I chased away four invading soldiers who had no business being here! And Walbert has no right to try to impose his will on the woodlanders!”

“You imposed yours there when you set fire to their lands,” Gideon pointed out. “I’d say that turned out a lot worse for them than Walbert trying to govern some of their excesses.”

“What excesses?”

“Summoning dangerous creatures, engaging in deadly tribal feuds-”

“How is any of that Walbert’s concern? Or yours?” Chandra challenged.

He said tersely, “It became Walbert’s concern when some of those creatures-which, hard as this may be to imagine, Chandra, aren’t always well supervised after they’re summoned-started terrorizing farmers and villagers on the plains.”

“If their farms and villages border the woodlands, then they’ve got to expect-”

“What do they have to expect, Chandra? To see their children stolen? Their crops destroyed? Their livestock eaten? Their villages rampaged?”

“Problems like that don’t give the Order a right to interfere in the forest!”

“Of course it does! But what gave you the right to interfere here?”

“I was protecting the woodlanders!”

“That’s your idea of protecting them?” Gideon unleashed his anger. “Killing a harmless creature that was summoned here for their own good, and setting fire to their forest?”

“For their own good?” she shouted.

“If the excesses practiced in the forest don’t cease, what do you suppose the farmers and townspeople will do, Chandra?” He didn’t give her a chance to respond. “It will be a bloodbath!”

“And you think that gives Walbert a right to try to dictate how people live in the woodlands? And in the mountains?”

“Yes.” Gideon looked tired again. His voice was calmer when he said, “Look, do you think you’re the only person that the woodland oufes have decided to kill lately because they got angry about something? You’re not.” He added irritably, “You just happen to deserve it. But it goes on all the time now, Chandra.”

“So?”

“You must have noticed how often innocent people wind up in harm’s way when the local oufes decide someone has to die?” he said. “It’s too dangerous.”

Chandra thought of Mother Luti, Brannon, and the others at the monastery who’d been endangered by the attempts on her life. But she just glared silently at Gideon.

“Things have to change on Regatha,” he said. “Walbert’s trying to bring peace and order to this plane. Life has become dangerously chaotic here. It can’t go on any longer.”

“Things were fine here until Walbert started interfering in lands where he has no right to intrude!”

He sighed. “So after the mysterious pyromancer that Walbert was concerned about incinerated a ghost warden, burned down part of the forest, incited a call for assassination from a tribe of hysterical oufes, and attacked four peacekeepers, I agreed with Walbert when he said you had to be contained.

“After that, this wasn’t just about the Purifying Fire for me,” Gideon said. “Not anymore. Because I realized you were too dangerous to leave on the loose here.”

“So Walbert sent a letter to Mother Luti demanding she turn me over to him? Did he really think that would work?” Chandra said contemptuously.

“No,” Gideon said. “He thought it might determine for certain whether you were a planeswalker.”

“What?”

“All things considered, he thought his demand might be the final push that the mother mage needed to decide that you should disappear for a while.”

For a moment, Chandra felt as if she couldn’t breathe. “It was a trick? To get me to planeswalk?”

“Yes,” he said. “It was the only way I could be sure you were exactly what Walbert feared you were.”

A red blaze of fury burned through her. “You manipulated me!”

“Chandra.” His gaze followed the glow of flames moving along her skin as rage coursed through her, turning her blood into fire. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t make me fight you.”

“Whyever not?” she snarled.

“Because I don’t want to,” he said wearily. “A lot has happened since we each left Regatha.”

His gaze locked with hers.

She remembered that he had turned her over to the Prelate’s soldiers, to be violated by the Enervants and probed by mind mages. She should kill him for that alone!

And then she remembered that he had hidden the scroll from them, to buy her time to escape…

“Please stop,” he said quietly, remaining motionless while fire raced down to her hands and through the tendrils of her hair.

She remembered that, without his power to protect him, he had fought the Fog Riders for her.

“All so you could bring me back to Regatha?” she breathed.

“No.” He thought it over. “Well… On Kephalai, yes,” he admitted. “Walbert seemed certain you’d come back here. I was supposed to make sure you came back to him, incapacitated, instead of returning to the monastery to cause more trouble.”

That renewed her rage. “If Walbert wanted me to stop causing trouble, then why didn’t you just let me die on Kephalai?”

“If it had been strictly up to me,” Gideon said, “I would have.”

His honesty disarmed her. She was still furious… but she felt the flames of uncontrolled rage subsiding.

And in truth, looking at him, she knew she couldn’t bring herself to kill Gideon. Not after everything that had passed.

“I don’t know why,” Gideon said, “but Walbert wanted you back on Regatha. In his custody, rather than roaming free.”

“So that’s why you created circumstances for me to escape from the Prelate’s prison?”

He nodded. “That’s why I followed you to Diraden, too.”

“And then?”

They looked at each other for a long, silent moment. “Things changed,” he said at last. Yes. Things had changed.

Chandra shifted her gaze away from him. “And then, when we escaped, I said I wanted to come back here.” Her tone was sullen. “That certainly made things easier for you.”

“I wasn’t thinking about that,” he said. “I was thinking about being alive and together and getting away.”

She glanced at him.

A slight smile curved his mouth. “I never mentioned it, but I thought all along that the chances of getting out of there alive were pretty remote.”

Feeling suddenly exhausted, Chandra sat down on the other wooden stool in this humble hut. “So we’re alive and both back on Regatha. Now what?”

“Now… I don’t know.”

They were silent again.

Chandra heard footsteps approaching and she stiffened with tension for a moment, but relaxed when Samir came bustling into the hut.

He set down a pitcher of water, a basin, two small clay pots, and some soft cloths. “My wife has taken the children to stay with another family while you’re here, so that there won’t be any risk of them seeing Chandra. They’re good children, but they’re too young for me to be sure they’ll remember not to say anything to anyone.”

“It’s risky for you to have me here,” Chandra realized. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, Chandra,” Samir said, pouring water into the basin. “I spoke against Walbert and the Order… Er, no offense intended,” he said to Gideon.

“None taken.”

“But I failed to persuade the other members of the council. Most voted in favor of cooperating with Walbert.”

Gideon asked, “What’s been happening here?”

Samir picked up one of the two small pots he had brought with him and poured some pale yellow powder into the basin of water. While stirring it around to dissolve it, he said, “Shortly after Chandra left on her journey, the Order’s intrusion on the woodlands increased. More soldiers, more patrolling, more spies.”

With the powder dissolved, Samir soaked a cloth in the water, then began cleaning the savage cuts on Gideon’s chest and arms. “This will sting,” Samir warned, “but it will fight infection.”

Gideon made no sound as the liquid soaked into his open cuts. But Chandra could tell from his focused expression that it was painful.

Samir continued with his story as he worked. “Most of the woodlanders blamed the escalation of these impositions on Chandra’s, er, encounter with the Ghost Warden and the soldiers. They felt we were suffering for her rash act.”

Chandra was incensed by this… but since she knew Gideon condemned what she had done, and since Samir had endured a great deal of trouble because of it, she kept her mouth shut.

“Then Walbert made his proposal to the inter-tribal council.” Samir explained, “The council has one representative from every tribe or clan in the forest. It only meets when there is a problem or decision to be discussed that affects all the inhabitants of the Great Western Wood.”

Chandra realized there was a gash on her left hand that she didn’t remember getting. She picked up one of the cloths Samir had brought into the hut, dipped it into the basin of water, and applied it to her hand.

She drew in a sharp breath through her nostrils. It did sting.

“What was his proposal?” Gideon asked.

“You don’t know?” Samir said in surprise. “When I met you at the temple, I had the impression you were in Walbert’s confidence.”

“I’ve been away. With Chandra. Whatever the proposal is, Walbert must have decided on it after I left.”

“He has offered the races of the Western Wood a treaty,” Samir said. “If we cooperate with the Order on certain matters, then all Ghost Wardens, all soldiers, and all forms of intrusion or interference will be completely withdrawn from the forest. And they will remain outside our land so long as we continue abiding by the terms of the treaty.”

“What are the terms?” Chandra asked.

“There are some restrictions on summoning creatures. There will be penalties if our way of life affects the people of the plains. And there’s a requirement that all grievances that have formerly led to violent reprisals hereafter are presented to an arbiter of the Order for judgment.”

“And the council agreed to this?” she said in surprise.

“Well, it remains to be seen how sincere some of the council members are in their agreement,” Samir admitted. “And some other members, of course, don’t habitually think long-term.”

“You mean,” Chandra guessed, “that some woodlanders think they can bend the new rules once they’re not being watched by ghost wardens and pestered by soldiers in their own territory. And the oufes are focused on getting the Order out of the forest now, rather than on what will happen next time they send assassins after someone who lives beyond the woods.”

“Indeed.” Samir finished cleaning Gideon’s wounds and now picked up the second small pot he had brought with him, which contained some green balm. “This will be soothing, and it will help prevent further bleeding until you return to the Temple-where I imagine the mages can heal you better than my humble efforts.”

“Thank you for your help,” Gideon said. “It would have been hard to make it back to Zinara without any treatment.”

While applying the balm, Samir said, “So the members of the council see a way to make all the trouble here stop… if they also agree to the final term. Which is to turn you over to the Order, Chandra.”

“I suppose that after the fire I started here, it’s not surprising that they agreed.”

“Not everyone agreed,” he assured her. “But, alas, enough of them did. And that’s why you’re not safe in the Western Wood anymore. You’re too easy to recognize, and such interesting news travels fast. So you must stay hidden here until nightfall. Then we’ll cover your hair and make our way out of the forest.”

“But why did Walbert make my capture a condition in his treaty with the inter-tribal council of the forest?” she asked in puzzlement. “I live with the Keralians, not with the woodlanders.”

“The Keralians have received the same offer,” Samir said. “Mother Luti rejected it. Rather emphatically.”

Chandra nodded. She would have expected that.

“And now that the woodlanders have decided to accept the proposal

…” Samir sighed. “It has put us on a different path.”

“Walbert probably knew the Keralians would refuse,” Gideon said pensively. “By getting your people to agree to his terms, he eliminates any alliance against the Order that might have existed between the woodlanders and the Keralians.”

“Yes,” said Samir sadly.

“He also gains partners in trying to secure Chandra’s capture, and he reduces the places where she can hide-”

“Hide?” she repeated, affronted.

“-or roam freely.” Gideon paused before continuing, “And since he knows the woodlanders have long been friendly with the monastery, he also counts on Samir’s people to urge the monastery to accept the same treaty and surrender Chandra to the Order.”

“The Keralians will never cooperate,” Samir said with certainty. “They despise the Order, and they place a very high value on independence and freedom. If Walbert is determined to capture Chandra, he’ll only succeed one way.”

“By destroying the Keralians,” Gideon said.

“Will he really go that far?” Samir asked.

The woodland mage and Chandra both looked at Gideon, awaiting his answer.

“Yes,” he said, finally.

“You seem certain,” Samir noted.

Gideon nodded. “Walbert will do whatever is necessary to achieve his goals. Including destroying Keral Keep.”

I don’t understand,” Chandra said to Gideon after Samir had left them alone in the hut again. “Walbert knows I planeswalked, doesn’t he?”

“He must. I followed you, and he knew I planned to do that.” Gideon added, “I didn’t exactly say goodbye, but he knows.”

“Then why is he trying to get others to capture me?” she said. “Why doesn’t he just wait for you to bring me back?”

“Because we’ve been gone a lot longer than he expected. A lot longer than I expected.”

“Oh. Right.” She hadn’t expected to be gone this long, either.

“He thinks I failed.” Gideon said, “He probably thinks I’m dead.”

“And that I killed you?” she said. “Yes.”

“But all this effort to capture me… He was that certain that I would return to Regatha?”

Gideon nodded. “Yes, he seemed sure you’d come back. And he wanted your return to be under his control.”

“But why was he sure I’d come back?”

“I don’t know.” Gideon’s expression was impossible to read as he met her gaze in the shadows of the hut. “But you did come back, didn’t you? And he knew you would.”

“If Walbert thinks I killed you, then he must also think I’m very dangerous.”

“You are very dangerous,” Gideon said. He didn’t sound like he was joking.

“And yet he’s encouraging woodlanders like Samir to try to capture me.” She said disdainfully, “He doesn’t seem to have a problem with risking other people’s lives, does he?”

“Neither do you,” Gideon pointed out. “How many people died in the Sanctum of Stars because of you?”

“I didn’t plan on that,” she snapped.

“How many were inside when it collapsed, Chandra?” he persisted. “Ten? Twenty?”

“I don’t know,” she said tersely. “I was fleeing for my life, at the time.”

“And the people you were fleeing from died because it was their duty to protect the Prelate’s property from you,” he said.

She was about to reply when she heard Samir’s footsteps again. He entered the hut carrying a basket that held food, as well as a fresh pitcher of water for them.

“I hope you’ll enjoy this,” Samir said to them. “My wife is a wonderful cook!”

In truth, Chandra had never enjoyed anything she’d eaten at Samir’s home, always finding the food bland and overcooked. But given how revolting the food on Diraden had been, this meal today tasted like one of the finest feasts of her life. Gideon evidently felt the same way. They both ate voraciously and spoke very little.

After the meal, Samir gave Gideon a threadbare tunic to wear, saying, “It’s old and much-mended, but it will hold together until you reach Zinara.”

“Thank you.” Gideon pulled it over his head. “For all your hospitality.”

“A guest brings good luck,” Samir said with a smile.

“Not necessarily,” Chandra said gloomily.

Samir asked Gideon, “Are you returning to the Temple?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not coming with you,” Chandra warned him.

“No.” He assured Samir, “Walbert will never know anything about today.”

Samir glanced at Chandra, then smiled at Gideon. “I don’t understand you, but I do believe you.”

“I hope we meet again,” Gideon said politely to him.

Samir glanced between them. “You two probably have a few things to say before you part. I’ll wait outside, Gideon. When you’re ready, I’ll guide you to a path that leads east out of the forest. You can find the road to Zinara easily from there. And with so many of the Order’s soldiers patrolling here now, you may encounter, er, colleagues on horseback soon after you leave here. Perhaps they’ll help you get back to the Temple.”

“Thank you, Samir.” When he was alone again with Chandra, Gideon said to her, “You have to leave Regatha immediately.”

“I just got back,” she pointed out.

“No one is safe while you’re here.”

“Given how certain Walbert is that I’ll come back, I don’t think anyone will be safe after I leave, either,” she said. “He’ll just keep looking for me.”

“This will only end if you go and never come back.”

“I won’t run away,” she said. “Not while the Keralians have to deal with Walbert’s obsession with capturing me.”

“I’m letting you go free now,” Gideon said, “but-” “Letting me?” she repeated. “Do you imagine you could possibly-”

“-this is as far as I’ll go for you,” he said. “You’ve committed wrongs, Chandra.”

“So has Walbert!”

“You’ll only make it worse if you stay,” Gideon said. “If you leave Regatha now, I’ll lie to Walbert. I’ll say you never came back here, that you died on another plane. But I won’t do more than that for you.”

“You don’t even have to do that much.”

“If you stay, I won’t help you,” he warned.

“I don’t want your help!”

“I won’t betray the Order.” He took her by the shoulders, “Do you understand me?”

“Take your hands off me,” she said through gritted teeth.

His grip on her tightened. “I won’t turn away from my duty.”

“What duty?” She frowned. “What does any of this have to do with you? You’re not from here. You’ve been here even less time that I have!”

“The Order of Heliud isn’t limited to just one plane, Chandra,” he said. “Walbert’s Order is… a local unit, you might say, of something much bigger. Something that extends across other planes of the Multiverse.”

She drew in a long breath, her head spinning as she realized what he was saying. “So that’s how Walbert knows about planeswalkers? He would have to know, wouldn’t he, if he’s part of something that exists on multiple planes?”

“Yes. Walbert knows. So does his designated successor. No one else, though.”

“And if you’re part of this thing, too, then that must be how you knew about the Purifying Fire before you ever came here. Because…” She gave him a quizzical look. “How did you put it? Gossip travels faster than galloping horses. Even across planes, it seems.”

“And to places only a planeswalker can travel.”

And as a planeswalker, she realized, Gideon would be highly important in a movement that existed on more than one plane. She asked, “So what is your duty?”

“I serve the Order. My duty is whatever is needed of me.”

“And what purpose does the Order have?” she said. “Pestering people in every dimension until they behave the way you want them to?”

“Its purpose is to bring harmony, protection, and law to the Multiverse.”

That statement awoke old ghosts. She smothered them and said nastily, “Oh, then it’s a good thing you ate a hardy meal to keep your strength up.”

He let go of her. “Well, it’s not easy to keep up with a fire mage who thinks nothing of murder, pillage, and destruction.”

“How dare-”

“I have to return to Zinara,” he said. “Will you leave Regatha now?”

“No.”

He looked momentarily sad. “Then I can’t help you.”

“I told you, I don’t want your help.”

“I won’t let your choice become my weakness,” he said firmly.

Chandra folded her arms and glared at him. “As long as you keep your word not to implicate Samir in anything, then what you do when you leave here is no concern of mine.”

He looked at her for a long moment, saying nothing. Then he raised his hand to touch her cheek.

She intended to pull away and tell him again not to touch her… but as their eyes met, she found that she couldn’t.

“Chandra…”

He didn’t say more. What was there to left to say, after all?

She remembered wanting to kill him back on Kephalai when she was imprisoned in the Prelate’s dungeon. She longed to feel that kind of rage toward him again. Chandra missed the clarity of that hot, simple hatred. She missed the familiarity and sharp-edged certainty of those old feelings so much, she almost wanted to weep for their loss.

And now, instead of killing Gideon, or fighting him, or telling him not to touch her… she listened in sorrowful silence to her erratic breathing and felt her aching heart beat too fast while they stood close together, their gazes locked, his fingers brushing her cheek so lightly that his touch almost tickled.

Then Gideon let out his breath and turned away. In the doorway of the hut, with his back to her and his hand resting on the coiled sural that hung from his belt, he said quietly over his shoulder, “You saved my life on Diraden.”

Feeling a weight on her chest, she admitted, “I may only be alive now because you were there with me.”

“Goodbye, Chandra.” He left.

With a cloak covering her red hair and with Samir as her guide, Chandra escaped the green wood that night by the silvery light of the waxing moon.

The branches of trees and bushes clawed at her as she walked, she could scarcely see where she was going, and she knew that all manner of mundane and mystical creatures roamed the forest after dark; Chandra nonetheless found the Great Western Wood by night so much more pleasant and healthy a place than Diraden had been. There was life here, in all its robust and changing variety. And even in the current situation, at least not everything in the forest wanted to kill her, eat her, torment her, or betray her. So after recently surviving Diraden, sneaking out of the forest on Regatha by night just didn’t provoke that much anxiety in her breast.

Samir, on the other hand, was extremely anxious. While Chandra was in his lands, he felt responsible for her safety. And once they reached the edge of the dense woodlands and arrived at the rocky path that led up to Keral Keep, Samir’s anxiety didn’t ease.

“You must push hard to reach safety before sunrise,” he advised her. “The forces of the Order are patrolling the lower slopes of Mount Keralia now, too. If they see you, they may attack.”

“Then they’ll be sorry,” she said grimly.

“With the Order tightening its noose around the monastery,” Samir said, “trade and communications are both becoming difficult for the Keralians.” He handed her a small scroll. “Please give this message to Mother Luti. I will not endanger my people by openly violating the decision of the inter-tribal council, but I am Luti’s friend-and yours-and so I will do what I can to help you, if my help is needed.”

“Thank you, Samir.” She clasped his hand warmly after taking the scroll from him.

“What would be best for everyone,” he said, “is for all the factions of Regatha to re-establish balance and once again live in tolerance of one another.”

Actually, Chandra thought that Walbert’s death in a raging bonfire would be best for everyone, but she said only, “Yes, you’re right.”

“Now go quickly,” he said. “You need to be inside the monastery’s walls before dawn.”

Despite recent hardships, Chandra was energized by rest, a decent meal, and the return to a plane that wasn’t warped and twisted by Velrav’s dark curse, so she was able to travel quickly as she ascended Mount Keralia.

Unfortunately, though, her speed wasn’t enough to save her from discovery. The moon’s position in the sky had scarcely changed since her parting from Samir when a sharp male voice in the dark said, “Halt! Who goes there?”

Chandra froze in her tracks, wondering whether the stranger could see her.

Another voice said, “Identify yourself!”

She remained silent and motionless in the dark, waiting to see what would happen.

A moment later, her course of action became clear. A small white orb appeared in the shadowy darkness of her rocky surroundings. It grew quickly in size. As it floated up into the air and began circling the immediate area, she saw it briefly illuminate the figures of two men. If she moved again on the rocky path, they would hear her. And in another moment, that floating orb, which was coming her way, would shed light on her, and they’d see her.

Filled with the rich red mana that permeated the mountains of Regatha, Chandra called forth fire and sent a bolt of flame flying straight at the orb, to destroy it. It exploded in a pleasing shower of mingled white and golden light, then scattered itself on the mountain breeze. The two men were shouting.

“Did you see who that is? Is it her?”

“I’m not sure!”

Another glowing orb appeared. This one came straight toward Chandra, followed by the two armed mages as they quickly advanced on her with swords drawn, ready for combat.

She moved, scrambling off the path and through a gap in some boulders nearby, praying she wasn’t about to disturb a sleeping snake or bad-tempered fox. The fabric of Samir’s cloak caught on something, and pebbles rumbled noisily as Chandra yanked it free.

“What’s that? There!” cried one of the soldiers. “Just off the path. Do you see?”

Her hood fell off as Chandra whirled around. She was bathed in the white light of the floating orb as she called flames into her hands again. She felt her hair catch fire.

“It is her! Seize her!”

One of the men fell back, screaming in agony as a huge fireball hit him in the chest and ignited his clothing. He staggered backward and fell from the path, down the steep slopes in the dark, his body consumed by flames. The screaming ceased when Chandra heard his body bouncing off rocks far below this steep path.

“Wait! No! Don’t!” the other soldier shouted at Chandra. “I’m not going to kill you!”

“Damn right you’re not going to kill me,” she said, forming another fireball.

“Our orders are to take you into custody!”

Chandra heard the fear in his voice at the same moment she realized he was backing away from her. That was when she noticed, in the light cast by the glowing orb, how young this soldier was. He looked barely eighteen. And scared.

She realized she didn’t want to kill a frightened boy.

Holding the fireball poised for deadly action, she said, “If you don’t want the same fate as your companion, then go. Go now. And don’t come back.”

He licked his lips, looking uncertain. “I have orders,” he said breathlessly. “You have to come with me.”

“Do you really want to die tonight?”

The young man slowly shook his head.

“Then go. Right now. Before I change my mind.”

Looking devastated by his failure, he turned around, moving awkwardly, and began heading down the mountain.

Chandra threw her fireball at the slowly sinking white orb he had left behind, destroying it.

Then she heard more shouts and the voices of other soldiers. They had heard the commotion here. They were heading to this spot and would scour the mountainside in search of her.

She realized with frustration that she’d have to abandon the path she was on. They’d be looking for her there and would chase her all the way up to the monastery.

Fortunately, she knew of a seldom-used, older trail that was not too far from here. But getting to it, in the dark and trying not to be heard by her pursuers, would be a laborious scramble over rough terrain.

With an exasperated sigh, Chandra turned and started making her way carefully in that direction. Samir was right. She must push hard to reach the monastery before daybreak.

Within days of Chandra’s nighttime encounter on Mount Keralia, Walbert’s forces laid siege to the monastery.

Soldiers swarmed up the mountain and established base camps nearby, just beyond the range of the aggressive fire magic that the Keralians attempted to use on the intruders in their land.

The mages of the Order surrounded the monastery with an insubstantial but efficient white barrier. No one could sneak into the monastery or escape from it without passing through this mystical ward, which would capture the individual and instantly alert the hieromancers. It effectively cut off the Keralians from all access to the world beyond their red stone walls.

To preserve their supplies for as long as possible, Mother Luti organized a system of rationing for the monastery’s food, ale, wine, and medicine. Fortunately, the deep well within the monastery walls could supply them with plentiful water for as long as the siege lasted. But, even with rationing, all other essential supplies would run out before long. The monastery had been built as a sheltered place for study and learning; it had never been intended to withstand a long siege by determined enemies.

Chandra knew this stalemate must be resolved. And soon. She just didn’t know how.

“I’ve had another message from Walbert,” Mother Luti told her one evening, after Chandra responded to her request to come to Luti’s workshop. “It arrived, rather dramatically, wrapped around an arrow that was shot into the south tower.”

“Did it hurt anyone?” Chandra asked with concern.

“Fortunately, no.” Mother Luti took a seat and gestured for Chandra to do the same. “And I suppose we’ll have to expect similarly unconventional means of communication hereafter.”

Their eyes met, and Chandra nodded. An angry pyro-mancer had killed a courier from the Order who had come to the monastery two days earlier. Obviously, Walbert wasn’t going to risk sending another one.

Luti said, “Brannon has claimed the arrow as a war prize. The boy has become interested in archery since you were nearly killed by that bowman the oufe tribe sent after you. He’s been practicing while you were away, and I must say, he’s become rather good at it.”

Chandra asked, “Is there anything new in Walbert’s latest message?”

“No, it’s the same as the previous one. You were seen ascending the mountain by night, Walbert knows you’re here, he demands that we surrender you to him. He doesn’t wish to destroy the monastery, but he will do it unless we deliver you. If we cooperate, we’ll be left in peace, so long as we abide by certain terms. And so on and so forth.” Luti sounded bored and disgruntled. “The terms he proposes are similar to the ones that Samir told you the woodlanders had accepted.”

Chandra rubbed her hands over her face and wondered what to do. The Keralians were united in their absolute, unconditional, unanimous rejection of Walbert’s demands. Mother Luti had held two meetings at which the matter was discussed and voted on; one immediately after Chandra’s recent return, and another last night, by which time it was clear how devastating the siege was going to be.

Not one single Keralian was willing to turn Chandra over to the Order.

It wasn’t personal. Well… maybe in a few instances, it was; several of the Keralians, including Mother Luti herself, as well as the boy Brannon, were fond of Chandra. But, mostly, the refusal was based in the Keralians’ way of life.

Being who and what they were, they would not bow down to anyone, give in to any ultimatum, surrender to any threat, or back down in the face of any challenge. They would not secure the safety of their monastery at the cost of Chandra’s individual freedom. And nothing could induce them to abide by rules or conditions set by the Order-or by anyone else.

“What I still find puzzling,” Luti said, “is Walbert’s obsession with you.”

“I’m puzzled, too,” Chandra said.

“I’ve been thinking about it. It has to be because you’re a planeswalker,” Luti said. “Walbert’s reasons for pursuing you-and planning to execute you, I suppose-are presumably the fire in the Western Wood, the attack on the ghost warden, and your encounters with his men. But none of that really explains all this.” Luti waved a hand toward the window, indicating the siege that lay beyond the monastery’s sheltering walls. “And since this man you’ve described to me, Gideon, is also a planeswalker…” The mother mage shook her head. “Well, it’s obviously not as if Walbert believes you’re the only planeswalker on Regatha. So whatever it is that Walbert fears or wants from you, it must be due to something about you in particular.”

“But he doesn’t know anything about me in particular.”

“Well, he knows one thing,” Luti said. “So I deduce that it must be the crucial thing: Unlike Gideon, you wield fire magic.”

“So what?” Chandra said. “I still don’t understand what he wants with a planeswalking fire mage or why he’s doing all this.”

“I don’t it understand, either. Is his obsession with you a symptom of madness? In which case, can we hope he’ll be assassinated soon and replaced by someone who’ll end the siege and go home?”

“Gideon knows him, and Samir has met him,” Chandra said, “and neither of them seems to think he’s mad.”

“Oh, well. Wishful thinking on my part.” Luti added, “You could just planeswalk out of this problem, you know.”

“No,” said Chandra firmly. “I won’t flee to safety and abandon you to deal with the consequences of my having been here. Besides, what will that accomplish? Will Walbert be merciful to you because you let me escape rather than surrendering me to him?”

“It’s very interesting,” Luti said pensively.

“What’s interesting?”

“Walbert was convinced you would come back, and you did,” the mother mage mused. “Now he’s evidently convinced you won’t leave… and, indeed, you won’t.”

That gave Chandra a chill. Did Walbert know more about her than she realized? Gideon hadn’t seemed to think so… but that might only mean that Walbert hadn’t confided fully in him.

For the first time, Chandra wondered if she should leave Regatha.

But then she thought of the Keralians, who’d be left in the middle of this mess, and of Samir, who had risked so much to protect her… and she couldn’t believe that abandoning them all was the right course of action. Even though her being here didn’t really seem to be right for them, either.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said to Mother Luti.

“Neither do I,” Luti admitted. “Not about this, anyhow. But I have come to a decision about something else.”

“Oh?”

“I have decided not to tell Brother Sergil what you’ve told me about the scroll.”

“Why not, Mother?”

“Because I don’t want the monks to pursue this any further.”

“You don’t?” Chandra said in surprise.

“No. It’s much too dangerous.” Luti frowned thoughtfully as she continued, “An ancient scroll that was that fiercely protected? A mysterious plane-which may or may not exist-where mana works differently than anywhere else in the Multiverse? And an artifact of such immense power that it will certainly be sought, coveted, and fought over by people far more ruthless than any Keralian…” Luti shook her head. “If there is such a place as Zendikar, and if the artifact described in the scroll really can be found there… No,” she said with finality. “I don’t want it brought back here. I don’t want anyone ever coming here to look for it. And I don’t want Keral Keep to be involved with an object as dangerous as I believe that artifact must be.” She gave a brief sigh and shrugged. “So I will tell the brothers that you couldn’t find the original scroll and believe it has been destroyed. They’ll study the copied text a little while longer… and then get frustrated or bored, set it aside, and move on.”

They’d only move on if they survived this siege, Chandra thought. But she didn’t say it. “As you wish, Mother.”

Luti studied her. “Butyou’re still interested in the artifact, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Chandra admitted.

“I thought so.” Luti nodded. “Fair enough. Individuals must pursue their own choices and destinies. My decision is made only with regard to what’s best for this monastery.”

“And if I someday find the artifact,” Chandra said, “you’re sure you don’t want me to bring it here?”

“Chandra, if you ever find that artifact, I don’t even want to know about it,” Luti said with certainty. “Nor would I encourage you to tell my successor, whoever that may be.”

And Chandra thought again that they were talking about the future as if the monastery definitely had one. Which wasn’t at all certain at the moment.

Chandra awoke from her nightmares sweating and breathing hard, with a scream on her lips.