Fire & Chasm

by Chelsea M. Campbell

  “And leave her alone with you?”

  “Dad! For the Fire’s sake, he’s not psychotic. And he’s unarmed. What more do you want?”

  “He’s never unarmed,” Hadrin mutters, but then he shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. I’m not going anywhere.” He looks me right in the eye as he says it, making it not just a statement, but a threat.

  “Great,” I tell him. “You do that.”

  Leora squeezes my hand. She leans in close and whispers, “You’re sure about this?”

  “I’m sure that this is the only way to stop Endeil.” Which isn’t exactly what she asked, but at least it’s not a lie. “Let’s do this.”

  She nods, not looking all that ready, but she steels herself and puts her hands on either side of my head.

  And then I feel it. It’s not like when Endeil’s magic ripped through me, shining a bright, intrusive light on all my shadows. It’s more of a probing feeling. Like someone’s tinkering with my thoughts and making them not fit together the same way as before. A wave of dizziness passes over me. I shut my eyes.

  The feeling stops. Leora pulls her hands away. “Az, are you—”

  “I’m fine. It just feels weird, that’s all.”

  She looks skeptical, but she puts her hands back where they were and keeps going. As soon as she does, the feeling returns. My thoughts shift again, and then it’s like my mind is being torn in all directions. I grit my teeth, trying not to show how much it hurts.

  But Leora’s eyes are closed, not watching me. Her mouth slips open, her forehead wrinkling in deep thought. She always says the process is like solving a maze. I imagine the hedge maze in my brain being so overgrown that not all of the pathways are still open. Brambles grow along the ground and through the bushes.

  A sharp pain in my head. Leora, tripping on one of the brambles and snagging her sleeve.

  A dull ache. Leora hitting a dead end.

  A white-hot poker stabs through my thoughts. It’s Leora, tearing through an overgrown path.

  Except the burning feeling doesn’t go away like the others. It flares hotter instead.

  And then I forget all about the maze because I’m in the chair. I don’t know how, but I am. My feet are numb, and I feel the leather straps chafe against my wrists. Hadrin’s here, the worst of my tormentors. The one who’s responsible for all of this. He’s the one the others listen to—the one who could make this all stop. But he doesn’t. He never does. He wants me to hurt. It’s the only way they can get the spells in.

  He’s staring at me now, as if he doesn’t know who I am. Like he wandered into the wrong torture chamber. Maybe he could forget me, but I could never forget him. Just the sound of his footsteps fills me with dread.

  And then another wizard puts his hands on me. I jerk away and find that my hands are free. I don’t know how or when that happened, but I’m not wasting what might be my one chance to get away. Or to at least do some damage before they can lock me up again. The words to a spell are ready on my tongue. A spell that will turn his skin inside out, and I’m praying this wizard isn’t part of Hadrin’s team, the ones with the tattoos that keep them safe—

  “Az!”

  The wizard shouts in my face. No, not a wizard. “Leora?”

  She smiles in relief. “For a second there, I thought maybe I messed up. Something changed, in your eyes, and then it was like you couldn’t even see me. Like I wasn’t here at all.”

  Or like I was somewhere else. I realize I’m still sitting on the bed, safe and sound and not anywhere near that chair and its straps. “You solved the maze?”

  “Part of it. I couldn’t find the way. There were so many paths. I made a lot of wrong turns, but then I finally found a . . .” She holds up her hands, squeezing the air, as if she could shape the word she’s looking for. “Okay, it was like there were all these different paths, only none of them went anywhere. As if they’d all been blocked off. But then one of them was like a door. It was locked, too. A maze within a maze. But then the— I got it open. Just one path, and I don’t know where it led, but that’s when something changed in you. Like you weren’t here anymore, and you were mumbling something. I thought at first I’d opened the wrong door and screwed something up in your brain. I had to stop, Az.”

  “But you opened up something.”

  Images flash through my mind. Hadrin bringing me to live at the High Guild when I was really young. An orphan, only a few years old. They didn’t put me in the chair then. The experiment was still hypothetical.

  “So, it worked?” Leora asks.

  Hadrin’s standing behind her, frowning. The image of the chair might not have been real, but he is. “It worked,” he says, not waiting for me to answer. He exchanges a look with me, then glances away guiltily. Things have changed. I’m his tormentor now.

  “I think so,” I tell Leora, ignoring Hadrin. She meant to open a floodgate, but instead it’s like she poked a hole in a dam, letting out a trickle. Spells lurk beneath the surface of my thoughts. I can feel them, heavy and strange, but at the same time so familiar.

  More memories fill my head. The cramped room where I slept. No, not a room so much as a cell, where they locked me up at night. The way they had to bind a cloth around my mouth once I started learning the spells, to keep me from using them. I smile a little, remembering the wizard I took by surprise one day. He was one of my torturers, until I turned his lungs to ash. That’s when they gave me the tattoo on my wrist, and when Hadrin and the others got ones to match.

  “And you’re . . . you?” Leora asks.

  “I’m still me.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Seriously. I’m fine.”

  I remember what happened at the High Guild. The way they used me as a vessel for the Chasm’s spells. The Chasm feeds on violence and pain, so they made sure I got plenty of both. But the joke was on them because the spells they summoned and put inside me were so old, they couldn’t even understand the language. The spells were useless to them. But not to me.

  “Wonderful,” Hadrin says. “You’ve just had your mind turned upside down and rearranged, had who knows what dredged up, including spells you don’t know the first thing about, but you’re fine. You expect us to believe that?”

  I shrug. “You’d rather I totally lost it? If I was huddled on the floor, crying and inconsolable, would that make you happy?”

  “No. But . . . I’d have an easier time believing it.”

  Leora rolls her eyes at him. “It was your idea for me to unlock his memories, and now that I have, you’re upset that nothing went horribly wrong?”

  He ignores her and looks me in the eyes. He and I both know all the awful things that happened at the High Guild.

  “I know what you were worried about,” I tell him. “What we were all worried about. That I wouldn’t be me anymore. But it’s not like that.” I’m both the boy and the monster. We were never different people—always one and the same. “I’m starting to remember everything. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  Hadrin nods, but I know that, deep down, part of him hoped this wouldn’t work. “You’re going to need training, to master your spells and reach your full potential.”

  Leora makes a disgusted sound, clearly not liking that idea any more than I do.

  “I don’t think so.” I hold out my injured hand. “I’ll be taking my knife back now.”

  Hadrin glances at me, then at the drawer. “You don’t need it.”

  “I always need it.”

  He snorts. “Forgive me if I don’t go rushing to give it back to you. Perhaps when I don’t feel you’re in such a hurry to use it.”

  “I’m not. Like you said, I’m never unarmed.” I grin at him, getting up from the bed and flexing my fingers. “And I don’t need the knife for this.” It would just make it that much more fun.

  Hadrin’s eyes go wide. He inches forward, as if he’s going to plant himself between me and Leora. Like he thinks she needs protecting from me.

 
Clearly she doesn’t agree, because she gets up from the bed to thwart him.

  “And what, exactly, don’t you need it for?” Hadrin asks, never taking his eyes off me, like I’m a snake about to strike.

  And I am, but he’s not my target. “Why, wizard, can’t you guess?”

  He shakes his head, and now he really does move between us. As if he believes I’ve completely lost it.

  “The reason we did this in the first place,” I tell him. “I’m going to stop Endeil.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “You will do no such thing,” Hadrin tells me.

  “And why not?” I ask him.

  “You’re not ready. I could count on one hand the number of spells you’ve cast in your entire life.”

  The few times he couldn’t stop me, he means. “I healed my arm, didn’t I?”

  “And what is your plan? Waltz into that church and take him prisoner? Or are you going to kill him in front of everyone? You think you’ll waltz back out so easily?”

  “I’ll get him alone. In his office. It won’t be hard—I’m his apprentice, remember?”

  “Az,” Leora says. “Maybe you should think about this.”

  “I said I’d make him pay,” I remind Hadrin. “And if I take him out now, then there doesn’t have to be a war.”

  “Right. And when some acolyte finds his body and it’s obvious he was attacked with wizard magic, do you think the Church will really let that go?”

  “But without the High Priest, no one else will have powers from the Chasm.” No one but me.

  “So the Church will be on the losing side, but there will still be a war.”

  “Fine, maybe I can’t stop the fighting, maybe it’s inevitable, but I can at least stop him.”

  “Can you?” Hadrin asks. “Your technique is sloppy. Powerful but unfocused. And when you healed your arm, you took energy from yourself to do it. Are you going to do that now? Will that even be enough? Or will you merely end up killing yourself?”

  “Give me the knife back and I won’t need to cast anything.”

  Leora’s fingertips brush against my elbow. “Az. You just got your memories back. We don’t even know if you’re . . . I think you should listen to him.”

  “The knife,” Hadrin mutters. “You can barely hold it with those stitches in your hand. Let me put it this way. If you start a fight and lose, what happens to my daughter? Like it or not—and I don’t—your lives are intertwined. If you bleed, so does she. And if you die . . . I haven’t come this far just to have you run off prematurely and get both of you killed.”

  I hadn’t thought about what might happen if I failed. Losing hadn’t crossed my mind. I can take on Endeil—with all these spells that are coming back to me, I know I can. But what if Hadrin’s right? What if I’m not ready?

  “You’re untested,” he goes on. “And you’ve had no training. You might have cast spells before, but you don’t know the first thing about it. And if you think you’re going to battle someone like Endeil, and possibly everyone in that church, alone, then—”

  “You’re right, okay? It’s too dangerous. And as much as I want this to be over, it’s not worth the risk. Not to me or to Leora.” I slip my hand into hers. And even that’s enough to make my wound flare up, tender and sore. If I can’t even hold Leora’s hand, how am I going to wield the knife?

  “Well . . . good,” Hadrin says. “I’m glad you’ve come to your senses.”

  Leora reaches up and flicks me in the forehead.

  “Ow!”

  “Don’t get yourself killed, Az. And don’t do anything stupid. If you do, there’s more where that came from.”

  I wait until the middle of the night, after they’ve both fallen asleep—Hadrin in his bed and Leora on the couch—before getting up from my pile of blankets on the floor and sneaking out of the room. I make my way across town, back to the Church of the Sacred Flame. I meant to stay put, to not do anything stupid, like I promised. But I can’t stop thinking about the way Endeil nearly killed Leora, just to prove a point to me. And the way he tore through my mind, greedily seeking out the dark places.

  I might have been the one who hurt Rathe, but Endeil’s the one who ruined him. And he did that, like he did everything else, without a second thought. So why should I hesitate to take my revenge? When I have all these powerful spells coming back to me, begging to be used, and I know exactly where he sleeps?

  The church is quiet when I arrive, the halls empty. There’s a twinge in my hand as I remember being caught here, alone and vulnerable. That’s not going to happen again—I won’t let it—but I still feel a flicker of dread as I move through the darkened hallways.

  My hand might be injured, but there’s no reason for it to stay that way now. I pause in the shadows, only needing to think of the healing spell before the words are falling from my mouth. I have no idea what they mean or where they come from, only what their effects will be. An electric feeling builds up in my arms and legs as I recite the spell, a surge of energy flowing into my hand to heal it. It hits me hard, stealing my breath and sending a dizzying wave of nausea through me. But the feeling doesn’t last and at least my hand is healed and is no longer a distraction. I flex my fingers, half expecting searing pain to flare up in my palm under the bandages. It doesn’t, and I think maybe I could have taken the knife, after all. Not that it matters—I’m going to kill him either way.

  There’s no one around to stop me when I silently open the door to Endeil’s bedroom—not that anyone would. I’m his apprentice still. No one here knows that I’ve defected and joined forces with a wizard. But maybe once Endeil is gone, I can come back to the Church. No one has to know I killed him. And who would ever suspect me of using wizard magic? Of casting dark spells even more powerful than the wizards’?

  Hadrin thinks I don’t know how to cast properly, but that’s just something he tells himself so he can still feel in control, like he has something I don’t. But he doesn’t—none of those Fire-forsaken wizards do—and how can he possibly teach me anything about magic when the spells I have floating around in my head are so far beyond his comprehension?

  Several spells come to mind as I creep into Endeil’s room. It’s too dark to see, and I pause to listen for his breathing. But there’s nothing, only silence. I mutter a spell, again not comprehending the words, yet still knowing exactly what they will do. I feel a spark of energy run through my arm as a little ball of light appears, casting a pale, sickly glow over the bed.

  I hold my breath, but the bed’s empty. I wonder for one awful moment if he anticipated me and what I’ve come for. He could be standing right behind me.

  I whip around, my heart racing. But I’m alone. I douse the light—though not before moving to the door and putting my hand on the knob, ready to bolt—and make my way to his office instead.

  Torchlight peeks out from under the door, and I know this time I’ve found him.

  He glances up from his desk when I come in, his head in his hands. His eyes look almost sunken. “Azeril,” he says, blinking and taking in the fact that I’m not wearing my red acolyte robes. Then his gaze flicks away, as if he has more pressing matters to think about than why I’m here.

  I shut the door behind me. He’s off his guard. All I have to do is make my move and cast something before he knows what hit him. So why don’t I? But I just stand there, silent and afraid, both of him and of myself and what I’m about to do. He deserves it, I know he does, but I can picture Leora’s face, disappointed, hating me for being a cold-blooded killer. I could still turn around and go back to them. I could go back to the inn and fall asleep and no one would ever even know I’d been out.

  But I don’t do that, either. I stand frozen in the doorway, too unsure of myself to move forward or go back.

  “I’ve been wondering when you’d turn up,” he says. When I don’t respond, he adds, “And my apprentice doesn’t lurk in doorways.”

  I take a breath and step inside his office.

/>   He steeples his hands. “The Fathers wanted to know where you were today. You didn’t show up for your duties or for class. Father Gratch, in particular, was ready to have you expelled, but I stepped in. I told them you were absent because of your injury.” He pauses, waiting for something. “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  He sighs. “Well, come here and let me fix it. Obviously it’s more serious than you wanted to believe if you had to miss an entire day.”

  I curl my fingers, pressing them against the bandage on my palm, where my injury used to be. There’s no way I can let him see it now. “It’s fine,” I tell him. “That’s not why I was absent.”

  “Oh.” He presses his fingers to his temples. “So this is about Rathe.”

  “Don’t sound so surprised. He did try to kill me. And I’ve been thinking. When you looked into my head, when you saw everything and got that new power . . .”

  Endeil stares down at his desk, as if he knows what I’m going to say and doesn’t want me to go on. But then he looks up, his green eyes meeting mine. “Yes?”

  “You said once that you knew where my ability with obsidian came from. That you saw it. And if that’s true—”

  “I assure you, it is.”

  Then he knows. He must know that the Fire didn’t have anything to do with his new power. That it was just the opposite. “I want to hear you say it.”

  “What?”

  “Tell me where the power came from.”

  “Mine or yours?”

  “Both. Just tell me. I’m ready to hear it.”

  He gets up from the desk, combing his hands through his hair, smoothing it off of his forehead. “Why aren’t you in your robes, Azeril? The High Priest’s apprentice can’t be seen skulking around in black. It gives the wrong impression.”

  “But I think it suits me. And, anyway, my robes were covered in blood.” I almost hold up my hand to remind him, but I don’t want him getting any more ideas about trying to heal it. If he looks under the bandages and sees what a miraculous recovery I’ve made . . . “You said you saw darkness, when you looked inside my head. That it was divine. But what happened to Rathe . . . That’s not how the Fire bestows its gifts on people. With pain and violence? And it doesn’t corrupt a person like that. So I think you’d better tell me where the power really came from, because—”