The Girl Born of Smoke

by Jessica Billings

He leaned back in the chair, his hands crossed in front of his chest. “We plan to have a ceremony tomorrow to announce your arrival. You are encouraged to speak, to let the army know your plans for them; I am sure they are all anxious to hear what you have to say. As you might have noticed, the city is swarming with others who have come to see you. Do what you will with them. The entire Wizard’s Army has been assembled here in the stronghold and is prepared to deal with any protestors. I suggest you simply ignore the others and encourage them to leave before it gets too…messy.”

  Tarana looked calmly back at him. “Messy?”

  “Well yes,” he continued delicately, “so many people of differing views crammed into one place…things are bound to snap.”

  Sighing, she ran a hand through her hair. “So, tomorrow, huh? We’re certainly on a tight schedule.”

  He shrugged. “Well, we have been waiting for a great many years, Tarana. The sooner we get this matter taken care of, the better.”

  “Well, I had better go get ready for things then,” she replied tiredly, turning around to leave.

  “Yes,” Kendall called after her. “We certainly expect a lot from you, Tarana. You had best prepare something quite convincing.”

  Rolling her eyes where he couldn’t see, she turned back to the female soldier, who reopened the door. “This way, please,” the woman said curtly, leading Tarana at a slightly slower pace through the halls to another room. “You will be staying here,” she said with a gesture toward the door. “Please let us know if you require anything. I will come for you tomorrow morning.” She started to turn away, then glanced back, her face suddenly softer. “And um, good luck.” Turning back away, she hurried off.

  With a soft sigh, Tarana slowly pushed open the door and let it close solidly behind her. Giving the room a quick glance, she jumped slightly when someone moved near one of the tall windows. Wondering incredulously if they had given her a roommate at last, she raised a hand awkwardly in greeting. “Uh, hello?” The sun had begun its descent to the horizon and shone brightly through the window, making it difficult to see the other person. It wasn’t until the figure stepped forward that Tarana saw who it was. “Roxanne!” she shrieked and flung herself forward, hugging Roxanne tightly.

  “You know,” Roxanne said, her voice muffled as she leaned down to return the hug, “I always suspected there was something a little strange about you, Tarana. You know I would’ve helped you if you had told me.” To Tarana’s surprise, her voice sounded slightly hurt. Stepping back, she looked at Roxanne and noticed that her curly auburn hair had grown much longer and had to be pulled back into a ponytail. Her face looked thinner, her cheekbones sticking out more than they used to.

  Tarana cocked her head. “Well, your idea of helping and my idea might have been a bit different,” she pointed out.

  With a quick shrug, Roxanne brushed away the comment. “It doesn’t really matter now, anyway. You’re finally back. Everyone’s talking about you right now, you know. Lots of people saw you rushing through here and as soon as I heard, I asked around and found out where they were going to keep you until tomorrow. Not just anyone could get in here, you know.” She grinned cockily.

  Tarana looked worriedly at her. “Roxanne, I’m not entirely sure what’s going to happen tomorrow. You’ll be careful, won’t you?”

  “What in the world are you planning?” she blinked, a strange expression on her face.

  Her face twisted in anxiety, Tarana threw up her hands. “I don’t know! I don’t know what I’m going to do and I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I want you to be careful, alright?”

  Still looking confused, she finally nodded. “Sure, I’ll be careful.” There was a long silence, finally broken by Roxanne as she glanced toward the door. “Well, I guess I should let you prepare and get some rest. I’ll be watching tomorrow, so don’t do anything too crazy.” She looked at Tarana carefully for a reaction, but found none. “Good luck. Make us proud to serve you.”

  Waiting until Roxanne had left the room, Tarana finally sighed heavily and plodded over to where the window looked out on the town. Watching the sifting mass of people below her, she thought about how easy it would be to make a rousing speech, vindicate the Wizard’s Army, perform a little showy magic, and relieve all their minds.

  She knew Roxanne would be proud to tell everyone how she knew her and with the Wizard’s Army satisfied, she could get them to cease their attacks. Rupert would help her stop the griffins and all would be peaceful for awhile. Biting her lip, she knew she had hit upon the weak point of that particular plan. Things would be peaceful, but only temporarily. Once the Citizens’ Army regrouped, they would do everything in their power to defeat and kill her. She doubted they would succeed, but the violence would be reignited and she also doubted she would be able to stop the Wizard’s Army from fighting back.

  Kicking off her boots, she sprawled out on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, trying to figure out how to solve the problem. She knew she was beginning to see deeper into the structure of the armies and using her finger, she began to trace out exactly how they were connected, much like the structure of a molecule, with bonds that connected the different fundamental elements. They all traced back to one point. As the sun set, she lay in bed, exhausted from the long trip, but unable to sleep as she thought about the next day. With moonlight glittering in her hair, she knew she would need all her energy for the next day and she finally turned over and forced herself to clear her mind so she could sleep.

  She awoke the next day to a pounding at her door. Fully alert and her mind racing, she flung herself out of bed, getting tangled in the blankets and almost tripping. As she stumbled to the door, it opened in front of her and a train of people entered, carrying clothes, jugs of water, soaps, scissors, and other materials piled in their arms.

  Overwhelmed by the sudden entrance of so many people, Tarana let herself be led to a chair and submitted to the others. They seemed to work as one mass of arms, simultaneously cutting her hair, measuring her limbs, and cleaning the dirt from her body. Glad the others didn’t attempt to talk to her, she was left to her own thoughts and trying not to focus on her upcoming speech, she wondered how Djerr was doing and where he was.

  Her mind wandered to Kirian and she realized sadly that he had probably heard about her re-emergence as the Wizard’s Army’s leader as well. She knew he would be sorely disappointed with her and she feared Roxanne would be as well, after her speech. In fact, Djerr might be the only one who would support her, no matter what she said, but he was already disappointed in her for entirely different reasons.

  Feeling incredibly alone and terrified, she realized the others were finishing up with her and she let herself be led away from the chair and dressed in far finer clothes than she had ever worn in her life. A flowing navy-colored shirt was pulled over her head and a matching navy skirt was pulled around her waist. The entire outfit was covered in silver-threaded swirls. The fabric was soft and light against her skin and her hair blended in with the dark color.

  Her heart beating quickly, she watched as the others wordlessly left the room and the woman from the previous day entered. “Come along,” she said briskly, all of the awkwardness from the previous evening gone from her voice. “Everyone is assembled,” she continued, quickly ushering Tarana out of the room and down the maze of hallways. “Is there anything else you require?”

  Her entire body shaking, she shook her head no and began seriously considering transporting herself out of the mess. “Um no, I’m fine, thanks.” The hallways passed entirely too quickly as they rushed along and Tarana desperately tried to figure out what she would say when the time came. Her mind a complete blank, she felt panicked as they came to a halt outside a door on the upper level of the stronghold.

  “Well,” the woman said, “here you are, then.” She firmly pulled open the door and sunlight came dazzling into the dark hallway. Temporarily blinded by the bright light, Tarana squinted her eyes and emerged to a dea
fening sea of cheering.

  Chapter 16

  Trying desperately not to hyperventilate or pass out, Tarana looked out at the crowd. She was standing atop a balcony and could see the entirety of the Wizard’s Army beneath her, standing in the vast courtyard of the stronghold and sprawling out into the surrounding city.

  Behind them were the other people, making up an even larger crowd that reached past the buildings of Ralinos and out into the surrounding valley. She hazarded a guess that there were more people standing in front of her, waiting to hear her speak than she had ever seen in her lifetime.

  Sizing up the size of the crowd, she also realized that there was no possible way more than a small handful of people would be able to hear her, even if she screamed as loud as she could. Her mind going deathly calm, she quickly realized she could use a small trickle of magic to amplify her own voice, making it reach farther so even the stragglers around Ralinos would be able to hear her speak.

  Trying it out, she waited until the yelling died down, then gave a small smile and waved, “Uh, well, hi.” To her satisfaction, she could hear her voice bouncing off the hills around Ralinos and she could see the people farther off in the crowd, waving and jumping around excitedly. Waiting again until the cheering softened, she took a deep breath and began her speech, completely unprepared and unsure what she was going to say until she began.

  “Look,” she started, tucking her hair behind her ears. “All of you out there, every one of you has an idea of what this long awaited wizard was supposed to be like. Some of you had visions of this powerful wizard leading you into battle and some of you were afraid of this wizard ruling over you and denying you basic necessities and destroying your lives, simply because he could. We’ve all heard the stories of what wizards were like in the old days.

  “But look,” she repeated, “everything you’ve expected and envisioned, that’s not who I am. I’ve served in the Citizens’ Army and I’ve served in the Wizard’s Army.” She heard a slow rumbling in the crowd, but continued on. “I hated both armies. I hated following the Citizens’ Army around, scavenging the few survivors of destroyed towns and I hated the Wizard’s Army just as much for destroying the towns.”

  She looked down and could see many of the soldiers talking amongst themselves, gesturing up at her. “It’s not that I hate the people in the armies,” she said desperately, her nervousness growing again. “Some of the people I love most dearly in the world are committed to one side or the other. It’s just that you’re not accomplishing anything. You’re going in circles, chasing each other, only managing to occasionally nip at the other and circling endlessly as more and more people get caught up in your tangle and I’m stuck in the middle watching you go around and around. I don’t want to support that!”

  She saw the anger in the crowd and she began to feel angry herself as she realized they were too stuck in their ways to understand what she was trying to explain. “Don’t you ever wonder why neither side of the war ever seems to grow any stronger than the other? Don’t you wonder why the Citizens’ Army is always just a little too late to catch up with the Wizard’s Army? Am I really the only one who wondered why it seemed like there must be someone in charge of coordinating both armies, making sure they both stayed strong with only minor encounters with each other? Even when there was a big battle, both sides came out fairly even. It’s not normal for a war to last this long when you’re both so eager to destroy each other and you’re contained in such a small area!” If anything, the crowd only seemed angrier and the sound of their voices started to drown out her own. She raised the amplitude of her voice slightly.

  “Fine,” she said in disgust. “Maybe I am the only one who questions things like these. You’re all too self-involved and blinded by ideals to see the obvious truth. There is someone commanding both armies, telling them where to go and when to fight and the only person who can do that is a wizard. And no, it’s not me. The wizards from so long ago, they left one behind to make sure things went according to plan. He’s been watching me since he sensed my own magic and he’s been teaching me how to use it. He’s also been keeping this war going, commanding both sides to keep you all angry and anxious for a new wizard to arrive. Without all this fighting going on, you might have actually forgiven and forgotten the old wizards’ actions and let me decide for myself what I wanted to do. We might have gone back to the even older ways, when the wizards roamed the world and tried to help the people.

  “But this wizard, he held a grudge against all of you for the way he was treated during the uprising against the wizards. You all know the stories; how the wizards retreated to their school and were mobbed by the people. He watched his entire family, because that’s how the wizards thought of each other, killed by the non-wizards.

  “Of course he was angry and I can only imagine he grew angrier still when he was left all alone, forced to hide or be killed. And the place he chose to hide? A giant cavern, buried within the planet. Dark, damp, and terribly secluded. It must have been difficult and time-consuming, but he managed to create a network of contacts in the upper world that he could trust.

  “He slowly infiltrated both armies until he commanded both and could keep them in eternal conflict until a new wizard, me, was ready to take over. And with an entire army behind me, he expected me to exact revenge on the ones who hated and distrusted wizardry the most, the Citizens’ Army. It was something he could not do himself because he contained only a tiny fraction of the magic in the world.

  “The wizards buried the entire reserve of magic deep within the world, intending for it to surface all at once in a single wizard who would possess what they lacked: a powerful magic that could not be splintered apart like they were. Sure, maybe the Wizard’s Army would have been able to defeat the Citizens’ Army on their own, but that wasn’t good enough for him. He wanted a Wizard, containing all the old magic of his family and friends, to lead the attack.”

  She paused, overwhelmed by the enormity of the situation she was trying to explain to such a large group. She realized the crowd had gone silent again and was finally listening. “But I refuse to exact revenge for something that was done so long ago, out of understandable anger by the people. It wasn’t something that was done to me and it wasn’t done by most of you. This is a battle started by our parents and grand-parents and it should have ended with them.”

  “Well-spoken,” a voice boomed out from the crowd, as loud as her own. Searching the mass of people beneath her, she finally saw a familiar face standing near the back of the Wizard’s soldiers.

  “Rupert…” she murmured, watching as the people around him moved back cautiously, creating a bubble of space around the old man’s body.

  “It’s true, I am the last survivor of the old wizards.” His voice echoed off the buildings and people turned toward him. “I was the youngest in the school and the others hid me away to avoid my certain death. Not out of any duty toward any future wizard,” he spat the word, “but because they loved me as a young boy, too young to die in their war. After the attacks ceased, I expected to find other survivors, perhaps even other young boys or girls that had not yet been detected as wizards, but if they existed, they were quickly killed as they were discovered.

  “I was truly the last one left and I spent my entire life preparing for the emergence of a new wizard. I made sure the environment was perfect, that this new wizard would have the protection of an entire army of non-wizards, something we did not have. The thing I feared most was for the newly-born wizard to be quickly killed off, like so many were from my time.”

  He glowered at Tarana, his bushy gray eyebrows narrowing. “And yes, I desired revenge for the ones that were killed simply because we wanted to keep to ourselves and learn from each other. Together, we found a family, something few of us had ever really experienced before. And those non-wizards took that from us, destroyed everything we had.” He raised his hands into the air and with a pang of fear, Tarana saw something glitter in the air above hi
s hands. “But if this young wizard, who understands nothing of our time, refuses to show you all the pain we experienced, the pain of losing everything and everyone in life that you love, let me try to explain it to you.”

  “No!” she screamed, sensing the destruction that was about to follow. Without pausing to think, she threw out her hands and erected a barrier over the entire crowd, except Rupert. A slight shimmer, like the wavering vision of heat rising from the ground, spread out over the heads of everyone around the stronghold, arcing to the ground around Rupert. A split-second later, lighting tore down from the tall, thick clouds overhead that had begun to obscure the clear blue sky.

  The lightning was accompanied by immediate thunder that crashed and boomed across the crowd. The shock-wave knocked Tarana back a step and she saw many beneath her fall to the ground. Holding her breath, she saw them all rise back up, unhurt. Slowly letting out her breath, she kept the shield erected, trembling slightly with the effort and watching Rupert carefully. The people below seemed too shocked to move. A few tried to push their way out of the crowd, but the rest pushed more tightly in around them to see what would happen next.

  “Well, I certainly never taught you to do that,” Rupert glanced around at the shield. “Decent for a first attempt, but far too energy-consuming for such a large area. You see, Tarana, what I might lack in power, you lack far more in experience.”

  She glared down at him, fear turning to anger. “Why are you doing this? You’ve been the cause of so much hurt and suffering in the world, isn’t that enough? Just leave us to figure this out ourselves. I’m not letting you hurt anyone else.”

  In response, Rupert raised a hand and a strange noise began, almost like the wind but she felt no breeze. Watching below, she saw in horror as a wind seemed to be sweeping through the crowd and people began dropping to the ground, clutching their throats. Reaching out a tendril of magic downward, she quickly saw the problem. Rupert was moving all the air away from the people, leaving them without enough to breathe.