"Yagh!" Mirabar shrieked.
"What?" Elelar cried.
"Blegh! Oh, yuck!"
"What?"
Mirabar wiped her boot on the damp lava stone underfoot, her heart thudding with disgust. "I just stepped on some fat, glowing, slithering thing." She shuddered with revulsion and added, "It's dead now. Whatever it was."
"You're nearly here. I can tell. You sound very..." Elelar moaned loudly. "Oh, what's happening? Why does it hurt so much?"
"I don't know." Mirabar snatched her hand away from the tunnel wall an instant before touching something else disgusting. "What does it feel like?"
"It's like exploding lava inside of me. Do you think I'm losing the baby?"
"You can't lose this baby!" Mirabar insisted.
There was a short silence, and then Elelar asked, "Are you saying he's right? This child is... the one you've seen in your visions? The one you've prophesied will rule Sileria?"
"Yes, he's right. So we've got to get you out of here and to a Sister right away."
Mirabar turned a sharply curving corner and gasped as she found herself on the threshold of a vast cavern of fire and water, identical in every way to the one she'd seen so often in her visions. With one significant difference: a small river of lava flowed through this one.
"Fires of Dar," she murmured.
"It happened recently," Elelar said. "Yesterday? Today? I'm not really sure. Lava broke through that wall."
Mirabar looked for her in the dim, steamy air. Across the river of lava, she spotted out a form huddled on a ledge of rock along the far wall. "Elelar?"
She wouldn't have recognized the torena if she had not been expecting to find her. Elelar was pale, wet, filthy, and haggard. She bore several nasty bruises and cuts, and streaks of dried blood marred her skin and clothing. No one would recognize her as an aristocrat now.
They stared at each other in mutual astonishment.
"You're pregnant," Elelar said slowly.
"Does it show?" Mirabar asked in surprise. She looked down and saw how wet she was. Ah, that explained it. Her normally modest clothing was plastered to her body, revealing the small but distinct bulge which it usually concealed.
"Is it Baran's?" asked the torena.
She glared at Elelar. "Of course it's Baran's."
"Oh. I didn't mean—" Elelar's face contorted with agony. "Oh, this pain, Mirabar," she gasped out after a few tormented moments. "Is this my punishment? For the things I've done?"
"Perhaps," Mirabar said, hoping it would forestall panic. She herself had suffered nausea and dark moods in her pregnancy, but no pain. She had a feeling Elelar's agony was, in fact, a very alarming sign; she just didn't see that it would help matters to say so. "Can you walk? We have to leave before Cheylan returns."
"Yes, I think..." The torena pushed herself away from the rock and started to ease herself down to the cave floor. The mountain rumbled menacingly, the cave moaning and creaking all around them as the cavern shook and lava roared through the mountain. Elelar screamed, doubled over in pain, fell off her perch, and tumbled down to the hard cave floor.
"Elelar!"
Mirabar gathered her strength, shielded herself with the fiery power she commanded, and then plunged into the lava flow that separated her from the torena. The melting liquid heat was overwhelming, and the child of water in her womb convulsed painfully in response to it.
Don't be afraid, she urged the child, I can protect you. We must trust each other.
Worse than the heat was the strength of the current, moving hard and fast. This must be a tributary of the caldera, flowing with fierce energy to the very heart of Dar's power.
Mirabar dragged herself through it, resisting the force with which the flow tried to propel her out of the cavern and into another tunnel. She emerged from the river of fire unharmed but briefly exhausted. She paused for a moment, her heart pounding, and then staggered over to the prostrate torena. Seeing that she was unconscious, Mirabar dragged her to the river of water also flowing through the chaotic cavern and started splashing the fluid onto her face. Elelar coughed and opened her eyes.
"I don't know how I'm going to get you past that lava flow," Mirabar admitted. "Can we find another way out of here?"
"I've tried," Elelar said weakly. "He always prevents me. But now that you're here... Maybe we can get past the fires he uses to block the way. Even so... We may..."
"Get lost?"
"Yes." Elelar laughed weakly.
"What?"
"Well, you have to admit. The irony of this..."
"Oh."
"You here. Risking everything... to save me, of all people."
"Let's not dwell on the irony right now, torena," Mirabar said, trying to help her to her feet.
"I know you sent him to kill me."
"No, I sent him to bring you to Belitar, where I could protect—"
"I mean Tansen," Elelar rasped. "I know you sent him to Chandar to kill me after Josarian died. I know how much you wanted me dead."
"Well, aren't we lucky Tansen couldn't bring himself to do it?" Mirabar said dryly. "Otherwise, you and I might never have had this heartwarming reunion."
Elelar sputtered with laughter. "You're starting to sound like Baran."
"There's no need to be insult..."
She felt it then, like a sharp shock to her system. That blood-tingling mingling of hot and cold power she always sensed when he approached. She had just never before realized what it meant. Apparently no one had—not Kiloran, not anyone. Because none of them had ever felt it before, and so they had no way of understanding it. Because the truth about Cheylan was too improbable for anyone to suspect.
Fire and water, water and fire...
"Mirabar?" Elelar prodded. "What is it?"
"Cheylan's here," she warned.
Elelar quivered in her supportive grasp. "How do you know?"
"I can feel him. He's here."
"Can we hide?"
"It's too late," Mirabar said, dread and resignation sinking into her. "He knows I'm here." If she felt Cheylan's power nearby, then he felt hers, too.
"What do we do now?"
"We make our stand," Mirabar said. "Here. Now. Against him. There is no other way." Elelar was clearly too weak to run, even if they had any idea where to go. The one escape route Mirabar could follow—the one she had marked with her own torches—was on the other side of that lava flow.
"No, you get away," Elelar urged. "Go! You know he won't kill me. He can't. So—"
"He'll just take you away, and I'll have to start searching for you again."
"But—"
"And he won't leave you alone and unguarded again. Not after this. I'll have to face him sooner or later. So I'll do it now."
"Mirabar..." Elelar made a helpless gesture and then, as they awaited Cheylan's approach, said the last thing Mirabar would have expected under the circumstances. "Tansen loves you, not me."
"I know." Mirabar pushed Elelar behind her. "But he'll be very unhappy, even so, if you die."
Mirabar.
Cheylan knew who was here the moment he felt that bright, golden, wave of power emanating from her. She was here. And if he felt her, then she felt him.
How had she gotten here, through the maze of tunnels it had taken him years to learn? Had her visions led her here to challenge him? How had she gotten past the water warding these caverns? Was her fire magic even more powerful than he'd realized?
Cheylan braced himself. She would be hard to kill. He had always known that. But there were things about him which she didn't know, aspects of his own power which she couldn't fight.
He entered the cavern, prepared for what he must now do.
"Cheylan," Elelar hissed, her voice full of hatred.
He ignored her, momentarily shocked by what he saw. A lava flow had broken through one wall.
Cheylan stared at it, feeling betrayed. Dar should protect the offspring which Her power had blessed at the moment of conception. Ins
tead, She had come close to killing it. Even with one sweeping glance he could see it was very lucky that Elelar had survived.
The torena was a filthy blood-streaked heap on the ground behind Mirabar. She had obviously been injured during an earthquake. That sense of Dar's betrayal, Her recklessness, washed through him again with a cold shock.
Standing protectively in front of Elelar, Mirabar gazed at Cheylan with those bright golden eyes so like his own. Her filthy wet clothing clung to her body, revealing more of her than he'd ever seen before... Revealing her belly swelling with Baran's child.
The sense of betrayal was hot this time. "It didn't have to be this way," he told her, knowing there was really very little for them to say to each other.
"Didn't it?" she said coldly.
"You chose Baran. You chose Tansen. If only you had—"
"Oh, no," she said. "This isn't about me, Cheylan. If it had been, you wouldn't have told me so many lies."
"If you could have trusted me, then—"
"I trusted you, and you had Verlon kill Semeon. I trusted you again, and you had Kiloran kill Jalilar."
His brows lifted as he realized how much she had guessed.
"I trusted you," she continued, "and you've done this to the torena."
"You made it clear you would oppose me if you knew the truth," he said. "I had no choice."
"If I had trusted you even more, who else would have died?" Mirabar shook her head. "You've betrayed everyone. There is no one who hasn't been hurt by trusting you. No, this was never about me, Cheylan. This is just your nature." Her glowing eyes narrowed. "I'm ashamed I let you fool me, even though I know now that you've fooled everyone for a long time and are very good at lies and deceit, at gaining trust from those whom you mean to use and betray."
He reached out with his senses to caress the flowing water while she spoke, lecturing him as if expecting him to apologize and hand over the torena to her. Mirabar stood recklessly close to the stream, ignorant of the power he wielded over it. Unaware that he would use it to kill her. She expected fire and was braced for the attack of another Guardian. She was no doubt planning her own fiery assault, thinking he would fight back with a power that she understood and commanded as well as he did.
He would fool her once again. For the last time.
"I know how hard your life was," Mirabar continued. "The superstition, the rejection, the loneliness. But it's because I know that I can never excuse what you became. I lived with the same burdens, and I didn't become like you."
The water bubbled gently in the grasp of his power, flexing boldly as it came to life in the embrace of his sorcery.
Mirabar said, "Semeon lived with those burdens, too, and you helped murder him." She nodded slowly. "You are exactly as Daurion described you, and I know what I have to do."
"So do I, sirana," he murmured, launching his attack.
Elelar screamed, "Mirabar!"
Mirabar burst into flames as the stream rose and engulfed her from behind. Great writhing tentacles of water came around her, cold enough now to kill her flesh upon contact. Her controlled self-immolation would protect her from the deadly chill. Cheylan was disappointed she'd reflexively chosen such a defense when Elelar screamed. Still, it wouldn't save her. It just meant he had to try a little harder.
Moving forward, he commanded the watery arms fighting their way through Mirabar's fire to embrace her tightly enough to capture her, then drag her into the stream, under its surface, and drown her.
"Mirabar!" Elelar scrambled to her feet and moved toward the frantically writhing mass of fire and water.
"No!" Cheylan leapt forward and grabbed the torena, hauling her away from the struggling Guardian whose leaping flames fought wildly with the shifting water that sought her weaknesses.
"Stop it!" Elelar screamed, fighting him as he held her back.
"Do you want to die with her?" he snapped.
She twisted in his arms, and when she aimed a blow at his eye, he lost patience and hit her—the first time in his life he'd ever struck a woman. Elelar fell to the ground, but then immediately began crawling toward Mirabar. Exasperated, Cheylan seized her long hair and yanked on it.
"No!" Elelar screamed.
Cheylan watched with satisfaction—and, if truth be known, some relief—as the whirl of lava and fire protecting Mirabar was slowly, inexorably dragged under the water's surface. It wouldn't take long now. Shooting flames pulsated frantically in the river, but it would soon exhaust her to keep generating that much fire underwater. Few Guardians could do it at all, and he doubted even Mirabar could do it for long. Especially when she couldn't breathe. Yes, one way or the other, she had only moments left. Drowning her might not be very original, but it was effective, and that's all that—
He gasped as some new intruder suddenly flooded his river with icy fury, fighting back. Wild, undisciplined, immensely talented, it was a power that careened against his senses as it sought a relationship with the water in which it had just sprung to life.
What is that?
The water started pulling away from his will, ignoring his coaxing, resisting his seduction.
"No."
It wasn't possible!
Cheylan clenched his teeth and fought it, focusing all his strength on keeping the underground river within his control. It didn't matter. Drop by drop, something was challenging him, fighting with such reckless desperation that he could only conclude that it was Mirabar herself.
Or...
Fires of Dar...
Something inside of Mirabar. Something which would die if she died. A power so bound to Mirabar's life that it would commit everything to saving it.
"Baran's child?" he breathed.
Water geysered up around Mirabar, and Cheylan felt his fluid death-grip pushed away from her with tremendous force. The release was so sudden that her combative fire shot into the air, hissing as it mingled with the water and filling the hot cavern with more steam.
"What's happening?" Elelar cried.
"No!" Cheylan shouted, fighting back.
As was so often the case when two water wizards reached a stalemate, the river went strangely calm, looking as if no one controlled it.
"Mirabar?" Elelar choked out, crawling past Cheylan.
He lifted Elelar to her feet and shoved her out of harm's way, realizing what would happen next. Elelar staggered backward into a rough stone wall and stayed there, her face stupid with astonishment as she watched Mirabar rise out of the river, soaked, coughing, and already blazing with offensive fury.
Cheylan called spears of fire out of the nearby lava flow and sent a shower of them flying straight at her. Water rose up in a sudden wave to shield her, and the lava spears sizzled as they met it, then fell like dead birds into the stream. Mirabar flung balls of fire at him which he deflected with his palms.
"You knew!" he snarled, stunned by her trick. She'd let him drag her into the river, disarming him and giving her child a chance to use the physical immersion to wrest it away from him.
"You think I stood there talking your ears off because it gave me satisfaction?" she snarled back. "I had no idea it would take you so long to gather your power. You're not as strong as I feared."
Cheylan recognized her tactics and ignored the insult. "You did stumble into my water traps," he guessed, stopping the bolts of fire that she hurled at him. "That's how you found out the truth."
She came closer. "You can't kill me with water, and I think you already knew you couldn't kill me with fire."
"You can't kill me, either," he warned.
Drenched from the river, her skin still shimmering with defensive flame, she stared at him for a long moment, panting breathlessly. Then she nodded. "What do we do now?"
"I take the torena and leave."
"Cheylan." She staggered forward, her steps weary, her expression wary. "Even if you think you can leave me here to die..."
"I didn't say that."
"Do you have to keep lying?" she said
irritably. "You'd douse my torches and leave me to wander here lost until I starved or died in an earthquake or eruption."
"Is there any reason I shouldn't?"
She came closer. "It's over, Cheylan. Surely you can see that?"
"No, Mirabar," he said, "I don't see that at all. I see that I've got the two most important women in Sileria captive here, as well as their offspring."
Mirabar shook her head. "The Emeldari and all their allies want you dead because of Jalilar. Kiloran will come after you because you've betrayed him. Tansen will hunt you down. Even if Verlon trusts you now, he won't for long."
A few steps closer, and he might be able to kill her with his bare hands. He'd never done anything like that before, and she'd defend herself—so they might wind up in precisely the same stalemate they'd just experienced. But it was worth a try, since he was running out of options.
"Give this up, Cheylan," she urged. "Let me take the torena out of here. It's your child. It will always be your child. He'll rule Sileria."
"And me?" he prodded.
"Leave Sileria. Promise me you'll never come back."
"The stud who has fulfilled his purpose?" he said scathingly.
"You'd get to live. It's more than you'll get if you stay in Sileria." Mirabar came so close he could have touched her.
"Leave Sileria and live?" he murmured as if starting to consider the suggestion seriously.
"Yes," she urged, taking another step forward.
He seized her throat. Her leg came up, her knee jabbing into him. He thought for a moment that she was trying to land a blow to his groin—and then the pain in his belly! Bitter cold, sharp, brutal, deadly. Unlike anything he'd ever known.
He lost his grip on her throat as agony sent him reeling and drove him to his knees. Instead of escaping, she clung to him, sinking to the hot stone floor with him. She roughly yanked sideways with her arm, gutting him, splitting him open, and the horrific pain made him scream. The sound echoed around the cavern, and the mountain rumbled in response.
"No!" he shouted, furious, betrayed, incredulous.
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