The Purifying Fire: A Planeswalker Novel (2 page)

With the elementals occupied, the mind mage made a move to recover the scroll himself, but Chandra was on point as she raised a wall of fire between him and his quarry.

“You’re going to have to work for it, mindbender.” Chandra was just starting to have fun.

Still, the stranger was undeterred. He ran down the wall to where he had last seen the scroll and stepped through the flame, an icy corona surrounding him. Chandra was waiting, though, her fist cocked, blazing hot. She hit him
with a left cross that had the weight of the world behind it, and sent the mage flying backward, his body like a rag doll’s as he tumbled over the rocks.

As the flames died down, Chandra surveyed the scene. She had done well. The elementals had died fighting and there was plenty of scorched earth, but she had done well.

“Chandra, that was amazing!”

She turned to see Brannon. “You shouldn’t be out here, kiddo.”

“What happened to him?”

“He took a nasty spill. He won’t be back again.”

“Are you sure?” he asked pointing in the direction of the mage. There were several cloaked figures, all exactly alike, moving in different directions.

“He’s just trying to trick me. He doesn’t want me to know which one is actually him,” said Chandra pointing to the illusions. “Look, he’s running away.”

“I don’t think so,” said the boy in a strange voice. “I think he’s going to get that scroll.”

When she turned back, Chandra saw the familiar eerie blue glow in Brannon’s eyes and she knew … But right in that moment of realization, the mage hit her with a mental attack that caught her completely off-guard. She crumpled as her vision faded to black.

“Chandra, are you all right?” The real Brannon reached her side and started helping her rise from the ground. “What happened? I saw your fire elemental. Wow, I’ve never seen anything that big! Not even Mother Luti can make ’em that big.” The boy was nearly ecstatic. “And then there was a sort of … a blue wave of light or something. What
was
that?”

“That was the stranger,” Chandra said grumpily. “Being …
clever.”

“The scroll!” Brannon said, seeing that her hands were empty. “Where’s the scroll?”

“What are you talking about, Brannon?”

“He got it. He must have taken it!”

“The scroll?”

“I know you said the monks finished their work. But don’t we need it any more?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Did they copy it in their workshop? Is that what you said?”

“Kiddo, this is crazy talk. Everything is all right. He’s not coming back,” she assured him.

“Well I hope so, ’cause he was creepy.” Brannon asked, eyeing their surroundings a little anxiously.

“Yes,” she said. “But he’s gone.”

Chandra tried to clear her head. Something was missing. Why did that fight just happen? Who was that guy?

But the more she tried to think about it, the more it hurt. What is that kid talking about with the scroll?

C
handra was mad. And when she got mad, she liked to set things on fire. Call it her little weakness.

She felt heat racing through her, turning her blood into curling flames of power that sparked out through her fingertips, her eyes, and the auburn tendrils of her long hair.

“You’re saying you copied down the scroll
wrong?”
she demanded of Brother Sergil. “After all the trouble I went through to steal it? After how important I told you it was? You’re saying that you and the other brothers made a mess of
your
part of the job? After I nearly got killed doing
my
part right?”

Brother Sergil, who evidently didn’t feel deeply attached to his mortal existence, snapped, “Perhaps if you hadn’t let someone steal the scroll
back
so soon after you brought it here, we wouldn’t have a problem now!”

“Oh,
really?”
Chandra could feel her skin glowing with the power that her anger unleashed. True, she had lost the scroll, but that mage had been good. “And if anyone had bothered to
help
me fight off that mage, maybe the scroll would still be at the monastery, instead of who-knows-where?”
Her memory of the scroll had not come back. The mind mage had been thorough in cleansing it from her mind. She remembered everything she had done retrieving it, everything about the fight … But he had cut the scroll out with artisanal precision.

“All right, that’s enough,” said Luti, the mother mage of Keral Keep. “From
both
of you.”

Chandra said, “What’s the point of my bringing you something so valuable if you can’t even—”

“Stop,”
said Luti.

“We’ve done our part as well as anyone could expect!” Brother Sergil said. “All I’m saying is—”

“Not as well as
I
expected! How did you—” Chandra stepped back with a sharp intake of breath as a small fireball exploded between her and Brother Sergil. The monk staggered backward, too, stumbling on the rough red stones that paved the monastery courtyard.

They both looked at Mother Luti in surprised silence.

“That’s better,” Luti said, her fingers glowing with the lingering effect of forming and throwing that fiery projectile between them. Her glance flickered over Chandra. “Quench your hair, young woman.”

“What? Oh.” Chandra became aware of the haze of fiery heat and pulsating flames surrounding her head. It wasn’t a roaring blaze, but it was certainly a loss of control. She took a calming breath and brushed her palms over her hair, smoothing the dancing flames back into her auburn mane until Luti’s nod indicated they had disappeared altogether.

“Until you can master your power better,” Luti said, “it would be a good idea to learn to manage your temper.”

Chandra let the comment pass without protest. She didn’t like orders or reprimands, but she had come to the Keralian Monastery to
learn
to master her power, after all.
And she had once again just demonstrated how little control over it she had.

“You have an extraordinary gift,” Luti said. “Tremendous power. But as it is with our passions, it is with the fire you wield; they are good servants, but bad masters.”

“It would help,” Chandra said, glaring at Brother Sergil, “if people wouldn’t—”

“Nothing will help,” Luti said. “Certainly not other people. Only you can change the way your power manifests. Only within yourself can you find a way to master it in a reality which will, after all, always contain annoyances, distractions, fears, and sorrows.”

“Right.” Hoping to avoid another of Luti’s lectures on the nature of life, Chandra hastened to change the subject. “Now what about the scroll?”

The pyromancers, scholars, and initiates at Keral Keep had no idea where the scroll had come from. And neither did Mother Luti, for that matter, but she alone did know where Chandra got it. Luti ran the haven for pyromancers and firemages, who came to study and practice in the monastery on Mount Kerlia, a potent source of power. She knew a lot.

There was wisdom to be learned from her, to be sure, but the great stone walls of the fortress that crowned the summit of Mount Keralia pulsed with mana as red as the rock it was built upon. This was why mages came from all over Regatha.

The most skilled fire mages on the entire plane dwelled within the stony halls of the monastery, but none of them, including Luti, were as powerful as Chandra.

Perhaps Luti would have suspected the truth about Chandra even if she hadn’t been told: Chandra was a planeswalker.

Luti was well-versed in the legend of Jaya Ballard, the bombastic fire mage whose long-ago sojourn on Regatha had inspired the founding of this monastery. Jaya was a planeswalker, too. And planeswalkers were … different.

When she witnessed, first-hand, the magnitude of Chandra’s power, Luti could only think of the celebrated pyromancy of Jaya Ballard, stories she assumed had grown like mushroom clouds with the passage of time. In any case, Chandra chose to privately reveal her nature to Luti soon after coming to Regatha, after deciding it wouldn’t make sense to seek instruction in controlling her power while concealing what she could do.

It was a choice, Luti later told her, that demonstrated Chandra was capable of reasoned decisions when she applied herself.

Luti kept Chandra’s secret mostly out of a desire that fire remain the most tangible of the visible mysteries on Regatha. She feared the acolytes at Keral Keep would look for answers in Chandra, rather than find their own path. To everyone else at the monastery, Chandra was simply an unusually powerful young mage who came from somewhere else. And since Chandra, like so many others, didn’t want to talk about her past, no one pried.

Apart from Luti, none of the Keralians knew that Chandra had traveled the Blind Eternities, bridging that chaotic interval between the planes of the Multiverse, to steal that scroll on Kephalai, a world they’d never heard of and could never visit themselves.

Chandra had heard of the scroll in her travels, and she was intrigued by its reputation. So, after some time studying and practicing at the Keep had improved her erratic control of pyromancy, Chandra decided to find and steal the scroll, which turned out to be a little better guarded
than she had anticipated. That was a wild ride, to be sure. Still, she made it out with the scroll.

Since the scroll was fragile, the brothers’ first act had been to make a few working copies of it. They had laboriously replicated the ancient writing by hand on fresh parchment.

Consdiering what had happened next, it was lucky they had done so. If she ever saw that mage again, she told herself, she would be ready. He would not trick her again.

Meanwhile, she knew from Luti’s expression that she had better remain silent while Brother Sergil explained the problem the monks were having with their copies of the scroll.

“The script is archaic, a variant we have not seen before, so it’s taken us some time to interpret its meaning. We are
sure
, though,” Sergil said, with a dark glance at Chandra, “that we copied it correctly. The value of multiple brothers each making a copy means, of course, that we can compare all our results from the process and arrive at a consensus on the exact contents of the original. Right down to the tiniest brushstroke.”

“Uh-huh.” Chandra folded her arms and didn’t attempt to conceal her boredom.

Mother Luti, who was a full head shorter than Chandra and triple her age, gave her a quelling look.

“The language of the scroll is a variant that our scholars haven’t encountered, so our conclusions aren’t as firm as one might wish. But it seems to be describing something of immense power, much as Chandra believed.” Brother Sergil made the grudging concession to her with a little nod.

“An artifact? A spell? What?” Chandra was surprised.

“It could be either … or something else entirely.”

“I could have told you that,” said Chandra exasperated.

“You mean you could have told us that had you a memory—”

Mother Luti raised a hand to stop Brother Segril from going further, her head tilted in a gesture of contemplation. Her white hair shone brightly in the sunlight of the monastery courtyard where the three of them stood. “What kind of power?” she asked when she had their attention.