The Fire Chronicle

by John Stephens

  The next instant, he was a man, lean and hawk-featured, but with the same startling green eyes, living in a dusty, war-torn land. The man was a village sorcerer; he was hard and proud, but Michael felt his love for the people he protected, and for his own young family, his wife and child, and indeed, Michael felt that they were his people, his family. And when the man returned home to find his village burned, his family murdered, it was Michael’s heart that turned black with hatred and guilt. Together, Michael and the man hunted down and punished the men responsible, and Michael reveled in the suffering the man caused, that he caused; and when their revenge had been taken, the man’s rage then turned upon all men, all humans, and Michael felt himself burning with the same anger.…

  Michael gripped the stylus tight in his fist; he was trembling badly, struggling to hold on to himself.…

  The magic pulled him down once more.…

  He was old. He had traveled far, learned much, gained more power, and now he was dying. It was night; there was a fire, and Michael stared across the flames at a boy with emerald-green eyes, and heard himself, in a hoarse, wavering voice, speak of three books of unfathomable power, and tell the boy that they, that he—for the man and boy were one—would use the Books to change the world. Then the man took a knife and drew it across his own throat, and Michael became the boy.…

  More time passed. The boy who had sat across the fire was long dead, his bones dust. Yet still he was alive, just as the first man was alive, as Michael was alive, in the body of another, a man with the same blazing green eyes. The man was whispering in the ear of a youthful conqueror as they sacked a city on the sea; and Michael stalked through streets filled with fire and screaming, and he felt a terrible, high joy at being so near his goal. And then Michael and the man descended to the vaults below the tower and found the Books already gone, and Michael felt a thousand years of anger rise up and consume him.…

  Michael felt himself falling deeper and deeper into darkness, and there was nothing he could do to stop it, no part of himself he could cling to.…

  Centuries passed. The world changed. Michael died and was reborn, died and was reborn. The Books eluded him, but he gained power, and with power, followers. And with every year that passed, Michael felt the faces of the first man’s wife and child becoming more and more blurred and indistinct.…

  He was another man, this one tall and fair-haired, but with the same emerald eyes, carrying inside himself half a dozen lives, half a dozen deaths, and he was listening to a prophecy about three children who would find the Books and bring them together. Three children who would be sacrificed so that a new world might come into being.…

  And more deaths, more lives. Michael became aware of a strain inside the man, inside himself, as each life was coupled to the one before.…

  Then Michael was an old man, older than he had ever been. His bones were twisted, his breath weak and watery. He stood in a candlelit ballroom, surrounded by dark figures. Then the crowd of figures parted, and a boy stepped forward. Michael recognized Rafe, and saw he held Kate in his arms, and a forgotten part of Michael came alive at the sight of his sister; she was wounded, bleeding, and Rafe was trading himself for Kate, his life for hers, and there was anguish in the boy’s face; then suddenly Kate was gone, and it was happening again, Michael was dying, and he felt the Dire Magnus’s spirit attaching itself like a cancer to the boy’s soul.…

  But something was different from all the times before, and the difference, Michael realized, was in Rafe.

  “That will do, I think.”

  The stylus was plucked from Michael’s hand. He collapsed against the desk, gasping and covered in sweat. He felt as if he’d been poisoned. Hatred and anger still coursed through his body. He struggled to stay on his feet.

  The boy’s green eyes glittered. “Did you enjoy your trip through my various lives? I imagine it was a bit overwhelming. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this, Michael. But before I go—” He clenched his hand, and the stylus snapped.

  “What’re you—”

  “Oh, I fully intend to let you bring Kate back to life. Just not today. I need to take care of a few things first, and I can keep a closer eye on her down here. You, however, should leave. I would say that you’ve already stayed too long.”

  The boy was fading from sight, becoming misty and insubstantial. Michael lunged forward, but his hand passed through the boy’s arm. “Stop! Please!”

  “Goodbye, Michael. We’ll meet again soon.”

  The pieces of the stylus clattered onto the floor, and Michael was alone. He scrabbled at the fragments, but the tower shook, and one of them rolled away, disappearing between the boards of the platform. Michael let the remaining shards fall from his hand. It was hopeless. He looked and saw the mist rising up and rolling in waves toward the church. He’d failed. More than that, he’d made things worse. And how could he bring Kate back now? What would he tell Dr. Pym? What would he tell Emma? He turned to the desk and took Kate’s hand. It was cold.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I tried. I really did.”

  Michael felt a darkness welling up inside him, and his despair turned to rage. This wasn’t fair! This shouldn’t be happening! Not to Kate! Not to him! It was Dr. Pym’s fault! It was their parents’ fault! They should be the ones here! He wished they were dead, not—

  A voice spoke inside his head: The book will change you. Remember who you are.…

  That’s … not me, Michael thought. That’s the Dire Magnus. It’s not me.

  And he looked at his sister’s face, focused on her, and he felt the rage and the darkness recede. It was still there, deep inside him, the same way the other memories were there, Emma’s and the Guardian’s and Wilamena’s, but he remembered who he was.

  Seconds passed. Michael knew he needed to go, but he wouldn’t leave his sister. Indeed, he couldn’t. He’d used the last of his strength beating back the Dire Magnus’s poison. That, on top of everything else—the loss of Kate, the meeting with his father, Michael’s simple, human exhaustion—it was too much; he was finished; and something in his chest seemed to crack open, and all the feelings he’d been bottling up for months, all the guilt and the sadness and the shame, came surging forth.

  Michael rested his head against the still-open book and sobbed.

  Sometime later—a few seconds, an eternity—he heard a strange sort of hissing. Michael rose up and wiped his eyes. His tears were sizzling on the page. Nor was that all. The book itself was on fire. Flames licked around the edges of the cover; they crawled across the page, but the book, and Michael’s hand that rested on the book, remained unharmed. Michael pulled his hand away, and the flames died.

  For a long moment, he was too stunned to have any thoughts at all.

  Then the tower shuddered, the bells clanged, and his brain jolted to life. He thought about the pattern of flames carved into the book’s cover, the way the letters would bubble and smoke when he wrote someone’s name; he thought of the wizard saying, You have a fire inside of you.

  Did that mean he had caused the flames? Or had the book sensed something in him and the flames were its response? Either way, somehow, without using his blood, without the stylus, he’d tapped into the power of the Chronicle. And he’d done so, he sensed, at a deeper level than ever before.

  But what good did it do him? Without the stylus he couldn’t write Kate’s name.

  Another memory came to him. He was in the elf village, and Dr. Pym was saying that the stylus was a crutch, nothing more. At the time, Michael had had no idea what he’d meant. But what if—Michael felt the excitement of the idea surging through him—what if the stylus was like the photos they’d first used to tap into the power of the Atlas? Eventually, Kate had been able to command the Atlas at will. Could the same be true here? Could the stylus be just a means of accessing the Chronicle’s power until one had mastered its workings? He thought about the fact that the Dire Magnus, having broken the stylus himself, still meant to bring
Kate back to life. The stylus couldn’t be the only way of using the Chronicle!

  The tower shook. Fingers of gray mist slithered over the lip of the platform.

  Michael placed his hand on the open page and focused all his attention on his sister. He was seeing things with an eerie, perfect clarity. He realized that all the time the Chronicle had flooded him with the feelings of others, of Emma and the Guardian and Princess Wilamena, it had wanted his feelings, his heart. On some level, Michael suspected that he’d known this all along, that this was the reason he’d tried so hard to push the Chronicle away. Except that the Chronicle was his responsibility; Michael understood that now and accepted it. Remember who you are. I’m Michael Wibberly, he thought. I’m the brother of Kate and Emma. And he reached down to the feeling that formed the very bedrock of his life, his love for his sisters, and offered it up.

  His eyes were closed, but he heard the whup of flames.

  Suddenly, Michael found himself in a high-ceilinged, narrow-windowed room filled with twenty or more beds in neat rows. There were Christmas decorations on the walls, and Michael recognized the dormitory of the orphanage in Boston where he and his sisters had lived just after their parents had disappeared. Kate held Emma in her lap, and Michael saw himself, three years old and already wearing glasses, sitting at the end of her bed. Kate was telling them that one day their parents would return and they would all have Christmas together but that Michael and Emma had to believe it would happen, that only then would it come true. Kate was five years old, and Michael marveled at her strength.…

  He was in Richmond, Virginia, the orphanage in Boston having burned down years before. Their parents still had not returned. Their Richmond orphanage was in an old tobacco warehouse on the banks of the James River. It was summer, and Kate had taken her brother and sister to the river, and they were splashing each other and leaping from high rocks into a deep pool, and Michael felt Kate’s own happiness at seeing her brother and sister happy and carefree.…

  Then they were in a different orphanage, this one next to a fancy private school, and Kate was sneaking them into the school’s library to read them stories in the dark, empty corners of the stacks.…

  And he was with Kate as she fought with one orphanage director after another who tried to split them up; he stayed up with her half the night before his and Emma’s birthdays, putting together presents that she had worked on and saved for month after month, all so that he and Emma would have something special to open; Michael saw the million small ways she tried to make their lives a little better, most of which he’d never acknowledged or had taken for granted; and though the orphanages changed, and they all grew older, Michael felt how Kate’s love for her brother and sister remained as strong and constant and fierce as ever, and he understood that there was nothing he could do to lose it, and when he took his hand away from the book, his vision was blurry with tears, and he watched as his sister’s body grew faint and ghostly and, finally, disappeared.

  He stood there taking long, ragged, trembling breaths. He felt emptied out, but also complete. The Dire Magnus’s darkness no longer threatened to rise up and consume him. His sister had given him new strength; more than that, she was his strength.

  The tower swayed and shuddered. Mist clawed at his ankles, and Michael knew he had to go. Snapping the book closed, he raced for the trapdoor. He leapt down the tower stairs three at a time. When he reached the bottom, he heard a crashing and splintering from above and knew that one of the bells had broken free. He didn’t look up but kept running and was already in the great hall when there was a deafening clang and the floor shook beneath his feet. The church was disintegrating, the walls and ceiling fading into mist. On either side of him, past the rows of cots, there was nothing but fog, stretching on and on. He could still see the doorway that led to the tunnel, and he raced toward it as the floor turned to smoke.

  Michael dropped to his knees just beyond the mouth of the crevice, taking gulps of cool, clean air. He had stumbled along in darkness, tripping again and again on the rocks that jutted up from the tunnel floor. Finally, there’d been a light in the distance, and he’d made for it, knowing what it was, knowing who it was. Now the golden glow was all about him as the elf princess leaned close and her shining hair fell forward.

  “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

  Michael felt her hand on the back of his neck, and he sensed the other elves waiting nearby. He stood slowly, uncertain of his legs.

  “Yes. I’m okay.” But his hand trembled as he adjusted his glasses.

  “Did you find your sister? Did you bring her back? Where is the stylus? What happened? Speak to me.”

  Michael looked down at the Chronicle. His fingers were curled tight around the spine. Yes, the stylus was gone, but his connection to the book was stronger than ever. The Chronicle was a part of him now. He looked at the elf princess.

  “I need to see her.”

  Hand in hand once more, Michael and the elf princess hurried through the forest. The ferns were still wet from the rainstorm, and Michael was drenched all over again. When they reached the elf village, there were lights moving in the branches far above. The princess led him to his sister’s tree and up the spiraling stairs. Just outside her room, Michael stopped. The elf princess turned toward him, her face illuminated in the candlelight shining through the doorway.

  “What is it?”

  “What if …,” Michael whispered. “What if she’s not …”

  Wilamena squeezed his hand and smiled. “Come.”

  Two more steps brought him into the room, and there was Dr. Pym, bent forward over his sister, speaking softly; and there was Kate, sitting up, her eyes open, nodding as she listened; and Michael didn’t hear the cry that erupted from his throat, he only knew that a moment later, he was in his sister’s arms, sobbing; and he could feel Kate’s cheek against the top of his head, and he could hear the beating of her heart, and he could hear her voice saying his name, over and over.

  Michael wanted to tell her how much he’d missed her, how much he loved her, that he had kept his promise, that Emma was safe, but he couldn’t speak; and finally, it was Kate who drew away. She put her hands on the sides of his face and lifted it so he was looking into her eyes. There were tears on her cheeks, but she was smiling.

  “Michael, did you bring me back? Dr. Pym said you were the only one who could. How did you do it?”

  Michael took a deep breath and wiped at his eyes. He could feel the wizard watching him. Kate was back; she was alive. It was time to face the consequences of what he had done. And he opened his mouth to tell them about the green-eyed boy, about the Dire Magnus, when the wizard said:

  “I also am eager to hear the story. But let us save the explanations till Emma arrives. I sent for her as soon as Katherine began to stir. She should be here in a moment.”

  “No. She is gone.”

  And Michael and Kate and the wizard all turned to see Gabriel enter and step past the elf princess.

  “I went to her room, but it was empty. She is gone.”

  “Gabriel, are you sure this is the right place?” Emma asked.

  “There’s no one here.”

  “I am sure.”

  They were at the edge of the clearing where, two nights before, Emma and Michael had watched the elves have their picnic, where Emma had been abducted by the dragon Wilamena, and where Rourke had built the portal to bring through his army.

  The portal, its fire quenched, stood in the center of the clearing, half a dozen felled trees fashioned into a rough arch.

  “We must be patient,” the man said.

  Since leaving the elf village, Emma had several times been on the verge of mentioning her fear that no matter what they did, Kate was lost for good. Mostly, she just wanted to be reassured. But each time she thought of her sister, lying there so pale and still, it took all of Emma’s strength to keep from crying. And beyond that, there was something in her friend’s silence, some new unsettling qual
ity, and it kept her from speaking.

  Without warning, the wooden archway burst into flame.

  Emma gasped. “Did you know that was going to happen?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s it mean?”

  “This portal leads to a stronghold of the Dire Magnus. It was from that stronghold that the army came through yesterday. And it is where, for decades, the body of the master has been preserved.”

  Emma wanted to ask what master he was talking about, and what did some stupid portal have to do with bringing back her sister—she was confused and starting to feel a little bit scared—when, from deep in the forest, she heard shouting. Emma listened. Someone was calling her name. But the voice … It couldn’t be.…

  Then a hand gripped her arm. There was a shimmer in the air.

  And Emma saw that the face beside her was no longer her friend’s, and screamed.

  Afterward, they put together what must’ve happened, how Rourke must’ve survived the fall from the fortress tower, how he must’ve entered the village under the cover of a glamour, disguised as Gabriel, and lured Emma away. It even came out that the pair had been seen heading into the forest.

  But that was all later.

  Immediately after Gabriel failed to find Emma, Wilamena roused the village, and elves streamed out into the valley. Word soon came back that the wooden archway in the clearing was on fire once again.

  They were too late, of course. By the time Kate and Michael and the wizard arrived at the clearing—Gabriel had sprinted ahead with the elves—Emma was gone, and the wooden arch had collapsed into a smoldering jumble. Anton, the blue-eyed elf captain, had gotten there first, just in time to see Rourke carry a screaming, kicking Emma through the portal. He said there had been another figure as well, but it was strange, for at one moment the figure had seemed to be a man, and the next a boy. Both man and boy, the elf captain said, had the same startling green eyes.

  Then Kate grabbed at Dr. Pym, crying, “It was him, wasn’t it? It was Rafe!”