The Purifying Fire: A Planeswalker Novel

by Laura Resnick

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

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

  “What?” Chandra said in surprise.

  “How do you know?” asked Samir.

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

  “To Walbert?”

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

  “What does he want?” Chandra asked.

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

  “He wants what?” Chandra said in outrage.

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

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

  “And us,” Samir added.

  “Yes,” Luti agreed. “Over everyone.”

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

  “Particularly fire magic?” Chandra guessed.

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

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

  “So people say, in Zinara.”

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

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

  “It was just a question,” Chandra muttered.

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

  “What else does the letter say?”

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

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

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

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

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

  “Why?”

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

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

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

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

  “What’s he like?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Oh?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Is it true?” Luti demanded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “That all depends.”

  “On what?”

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

  “No. Like I said …”

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

  “The border? In what way?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Yes, Mother.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “I hate spiders,” Chandra said with feeling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Wonderful.

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

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

  “No, of course not,” she assured him.

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

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

  “Yes. The one that the stranger stole.”

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

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

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

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

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

  “But you weren’t scared?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Good. Thank you.”

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

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

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

  “When will you be back?”

  “Soon,” she promised. “Goodnight.”

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

  “Thanks, kiddo.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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