The Purifying Fire: A Planeswalker Novel (26 page)

“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.”