Laura Resnick: The Purifying Fire

Is that the scroll the monks are talking about?” Brannon asked.

“Yes, it is.” Chandra Nalaar smiled at the ginger-headed boy as she held out the scroll, neatly rolled up and encased in an ancient leather sheath. “The brothers are done with their work, so I thought I’d take a look at it, see what all the excitement is about.”

“I heard it has strange writing that only a few of the monks can read,” the boy said.

“That’s right,” Chandra said, sitting next to Brannon. “I can’t read it, but the monks will tell me what is says.”

The two of them were in a common room at Keral Keep, a place of learning and study for the fire mages of Regatha.

Brannon asked, “Where did you get the scroll?”

“Far away.” Chandra was used to dodging questions about her travels throughout the Multiverse. It was easier for most people to accept lies than to understand what it meant to move back and forth among the infinite planes of reality. “Do you want to look at it with me?”

She had looked at the scroll before, but that was on a plane called Kephalai where she had “liberated” it from the Sanctum of the Stars. Once back on Regatha, she had handed the scroll over to the monks at Keral Keep.

The scroll was said to be unique, the only record of a fire spell more powerful than any known. Its origin was utterly mysterious, and it had been fiercely protected on Kephalai. Chandra might not be able to interpret its meaning on her own, but she was curious enough to want another look.

The monks in the monastery’s scriptorium were very interested in the scroll, enough that young Brannon was curious about it too.

“Yes,” he said eagerly, “let’s look at it. Unroll it!”

“All right. But remember,” she cautioned. “It’s very old and fragile, so-”

“Uh, Chandra?”

“-we have to be careful not to-”

“Chandra.” Brannon was looking past her, his eyes wide with alarm.

She turned to look at whatever had captured his attention and shot to her feet when she saw a tall, menacing stranger standing at one end of the room.

“Chandra Nalaar, give me that scroll!” he said, his tone as much a demand as the words.

How does he know my name?

“Brannon, get out of here!” she said. “Now.”

“But-”

“Go!”

Recognizing her tone, the boy turned and ran, seeking the safety of the stone halls of the monastery and the presence of others.

“Give me the scroll,” said the stranger, “and no one gets hurt.”

Chandra’s attention was immediately drawn to the cold, cerulean intensity of his eyes, glowing in the shadow of his cowled cloak. She could sense his intrusion into her thoughts. A telepath.

Chandra had only just returned to this plane, and her comings and goings at the monastery passed without fanfare. No one on Regatha knew about the scroll unless one of the monks had renounced his vows and become loose-lipped. This stranger, she realized with a hot flood of surprise, must have come from Kephalai.

“You’re a planeswalker,” she breathed.

“I’m not going to ask again,” he warned her. “And you won’t live long enough to be sorry you resisted.”

If he had followed her?ther trail through the Blind Eternities, he must be very skilled. A trick like that wasn’t for beginners.

But he had picked the wrong person to follow.

“I see there’s only one of you,” she said, feeling her blood heat for combat.

“One is all it will take,” he replied.

With hair-trigger speed, Chandra’s fists lit up like torches as she thrust them toward the stranger, hurling a pair of fireballs like meteors.

But the mage was ready. As if he knew what she would do even before she did it, he met the fireballs with an ice-blue liquid mass that issued from his outstretched arms.

The counter attack was followed by a surge of power that flowed forth and encircled Chandra, glowing with the same cerulean intensity of his eyes. With Chandra momentarily paralyzed, the mind mage started mapping her consciousness, looking for the lynchpin he could use to disable her.

Chandra loathed mind mages. What could be more despicable than poking around in another person’s private thoughts and feelings? The violation, along with the stranglehold of the spell, kindled her rage like phosphorous.

By now, conscious thought was no longer an option for Chandra. The world around her slowed to a geological pace, and she could feel the power of the mountain inside her. Immovable, dominating, volcanic in its fury, it grew from that darkest part of herself, that diamond of rage deep in her core until…

Boom.

An incomparable concussive blast left Chandra at ground zero, leveling everything around her and blasting a hole in the wall where the mind mage had been.

An eerie quiet pervaded the room. Sparks flickered and died in the dead air. “Didn’t mean to blow my top like that,” she muttered to no one in particular, as she surveyed the damage.

Chandra was sure he wasn’t dead, though. She knew it wouldn’t be that easy to kill an experienced planeswalker.

“Chandra!” Brannon cried from beyond the hole in the outer wall.

“Brannon! What are you doing out there?” she shouted. “Get inside the monastery. Now!”

Instead of listening to her, the boy turned and ran again. What is the matter with him, she wondered.

Not daring to leave it behind, Chandra took the scroll and went after him. She couldn’t leave it unprotected with a mind mage running around.

As she stepped through the hole, she saw the stranger standing on a rocky ledge that overlooked her position, holding the small ginger-haired boy by the throat. Just like a kid to get in middle of things, she thought.

Brannon struggled to breathe, his feet dangling just above the ground.

“No!” Chandra’s stomach knotted with fear at the sight of her young friend in the planeswalker’s powerful grip.

“Don’t make me kill the child,” the stranger said.

Brannon kicked and gasped in pain even as he tried to speak. “Let me g… aaagh…” The phrase trailed off in a choked gurgle. Tears of pain and fear rolled down his reddened cheeks.

Chandra hated to lose. She absolutely hated it!

But she knew the scroll in her hand, however unique, wasn’t worth Brannon’s life. She held it up as an offering and called, “Don’t hurt him! You can have the scroll.”

Chandra heard how hoarse with dread her voice sounded. She watched the mind mage give Brannon a sharp shake, to make him stop squirming.

“That’s all I came for,” the planeswalker said. “As long as I get it right now, he’s fine.”

He looked cold, but not cruel. She believed that capturing Brannon was business, not pleasure.

So she tossed the scroll up to him.

It landed a few feet in front of him. “A wise decision. My impression is that you don’t make many.”

But before he could turn the boy over, Chandra heard her name called from the monastery. She turned to see Brannon looking out from the hole she had blasted in the wall.

“Chandra! What’s happening?” he shouted from a distance.

An illusion!

“All right, mindbender… You want to play?”

With a quickness to match her temper, Chandra leaped into the air, an aura of flame surrounding her as she recited a spell. Spreading her arms and expanding her chest like a bellows, all the air in a thirty foot radius went dead as she sapped the oxygen she needed as fuel for her fire. She paused at the top of her breath until it felt like she would explode with the effort, and when she let go, explode she nearly did. With all her might she exhaled, eyes wide, tongue extended like some primal totem. Her breath had the force of a cannon and burned with chemical intensity.