Fire & Chasm

by Chelsea M. Campbell

  Leora gasps in surprise and steps back.

  I open my eyes—I don’t remember closing them—and focus on using only my own energy.

  “Sorry,” I tell Leora when it’s over.

  “It just felt weird,” she says. “That’s all.”

  “Please, don’t anybody ask me how I’m doing,” Hadrin mutters. His face is still pale and shiny with sweat.

  I reach for his arm, to heal the tattoo. It should work again, if I heal it. I’m the one who broke it, and . . . he’s going to need it.

  But he jerks his arm out of my grasp. “Save your energy.”

  “What happened?”

  “It was Endeil.” He puts a hand to his head, wincing, and I can’t tell if he has another injury or just a headache. He makes a face as he stands up, gingerly testing out his foot, seeming almost shocked that he can put his weight on it. He eases into a chair at the table. “The High Priest came to the guild. He had a royal decree from the king and queen to—” He coughs and tries to clear his throat. I move to go get him some water, but he shakes his head. “Listen to me,” he says, his voice still slightly hoarse. “He had their permission to take over. To come inside and throw us out. Endeil convinced the king and queen that he was afraid we would retaliate, after what you did—what the other wizards believe the Church did. He’s the one with the power now. Whether they believed him or not, they granted him permission to attack us. He came there with his army.”

  “His what?” I say.

  “The people he’s turned into . . . that he’s given new powers.”

  I picture a whole army of Rathes, ready to use the Chasm’s magic. “How many?”

  “Enough,” he says, wincing again as he sits up straighter. “They came in fighting. We fought back, of course, but they didn’t even ask us to leave, they just—”

  I raise an eyebrow. “You think the wizards would have abandoned everything if only they’d asked first?”

  “No, of course not. For the Fire’s sake, boy, don’t be an idiot! Try and pay the least bit of attention. It’s bad enough you nearly killed me. That you nearly got yourself killed. Then the High Priest’s army throws me out of my home, severely injuring me in the process. And I drag myself all the way down here, in excruciating pain, and now I have to deal with your stupidity on top of everything else!”

  I flinch. “I didn’t mean—”

  There’s a loud smack of skin on skin as Leora slaps Hadrin across the face, startling both me and him. “Don’t you dare talk to him like that!”

  “Leora . . .?” I can’t believe she just did that.

  “And don’t you dare apologize to him, Az.” She doesn’t take her eyes off of Hadrin as she says it. “Not after everything he’s done.”

  Hadrin touches his cheek, stunned.

  “You tortured him for years. You made his life a living nightmare. You’re lucky he didn’t kill you, then or now. For the Fire’s sake, he just healed you. That’s more than you deserve, but he did it anyway, and you act like you don’t even care!”

  “Are you quite done?” Hadrin says.

  Leora’s eyes flash. “No, not even close. You knew, didn’t you?”

  “Knew what?” he asks, but his eyes dart toward mine, guessing what she must mean, or something close to it.

  “What he was. Is. He kills people.” She makes a point of not looking at me, avoiding my reaction. “You knew,” she tells Hadrin, “and you didn’t think to tell me.”

  “Last I checked,” he says, “you weren’t a wizard. You weren’t in any danger.”

  She doesn’t correct him. “You should have cared enough to want to tell me. To worry about me!”

  “If you’ll remember, I wasn’t crazy about the two of you getting together. I did tell him to stay away from you, as much good as that did.”

  “Don’t pretend like you don’t know what I’m getting at,” she says. “You’ve always cared about him more than me. Always. And now I discover you’re more worried about someone finding out the truth about him than you are about my safety. If you really cared, if I was in any way as important to you as he is, you would have said something. To me, not to him. Even if you thought he wouldn’t hurt me, how could you keep a secret like that from me? From your own daughter? Once you knew we were together . . . And you should have known I could keep this secret. You should have trusted me with it.”

  Her words sting. She says them to him, but they’re meant for both of us. And no matter who she says them to, they still cut me.

  “I care about both of you.” Hadrin doesn’t look at either of us as he says it, as if admitting it is too much for him, even though he told me the same thing the other day. “And now isn’t the time to discuss this. We’ve got—”

  “No. If I had been the dangerous one, if I’d been the one hurting people, then, Chasm take you, you would have told him. You would have done anything to keep him safe!”

  “First you accuse me of treating him badly,” Hadrin says, speaking slowly. “And now you accuse me of putting him above you? What kind of argument is that?”

  “It’s the truth.” A tear slides down her cheek.

  I try to put my arm around her, but she steps away. “No.” Now she’s furiously wiping away tears with her sleeve, as if no one will notice she’s crying as long as she keeps up with it. “I can’t . . . I can’t be here right now.” She turns away, running for the door.

  “Leora, don’t!” I shout. Even though only minutes ago I was telling her she should stay away from me.

  But she doesn’t stop, and I hesitate, not sure if I should go after her. She’s mad at Hadrin for keeping secrets, but it’s not like I was honest with her this whole time, either. Maybe she’s not as okay with that as she said. Or maybe it just hadn’t caught up to her yet.

  “She’ll be back,” Hadrin says, his voice quiet. Ashamed. “She’s never liked letting me see her cry.”

  “It’s more than that.”

  “She’ll get over it.”

  But I hope she doesn’t, for her sake. I sit down at the table, running my hands through my hair. “She has a point, though. Why didn’t you tell her?”

  “As if either of you would ever listen to me.”

  “She might have. She knew I was your experiment, but she didn’t know what that meant. What I’d done.”

  “And take the one thing she loved away from her? I’m not as heartless as she might think. Besides, I was under the impression you only killed wizards. That you had at least a little bit of control over yourself. Was I wrong?”

  “No,” I lie. “But—”

  “It’s not as if you were in any hurry to tell her yourself.”

  “I should have told her a long time ago.”

  “You can berate yourself over that later. Right now, you have to get ready to fight Endeil.”

  “What, now?” Not now. I’m not ready. I said I’d do it, but . . . By the Fire, I thought I’d have more time.

  “Yes, now. He overthrew the High Guild. He marched in there and started attacking. Like someone else I know. The entire guild tried to fight him and his army, to protect what’s ours, and we failed. Did you think I showed up like this, all battered and broken, because I tripped down the stairs? I woke up in the middle of the night to a battle going on. I barely escaped with my life!”

  “So he wants to destroy the wizards. I can’t say that I blame him.” Even if I know what he’s doing isn’t right. And even if I know it won’t end there. He’ll corrupt everyone with his magic, until they’re all touched by the Chasm. Until they’re all shadows of who they used to be.

  “He’s gotten more powerful. You know he’s not going to stop, that it’s not about us or the Church anymore. You need to fight him now.”

  “I didn’t get to say good-bye to her. I didn’t—I can’t”—I rub sudden tears from my eyes—“I can’t go while she’s mad at me. I can’t leave and never come back without saying good-bye!”

  “You don’t know that you won’t come
back from this,” Hadrin whispers. But he doesn’t sound at all sure about it.

  “The whole guild tried to fight him, and they lost. The whole guild. So, no, I’m not coming back. I’ll just wait. Until she comes home.”

  “And tell her what? That you’re leaving? You think she won’t be mad at you when you tell her she’s never going to see you again?”

  “I . . . Fire take you, why does it have to be now?”

  “Because he’s there, at the guild. He’s just fought a long battle. We can take advantage of that.”

  “I’ll lose myself.”

  Hadrin closes his eyes. “I would take your place if I could.”

  “But you weren’t the one in the chair. So it has to be me. I’m the one who has to go in there and not come back, because of your mistakes.”

  “This is your chance to stop him, Azeril. It might be your only one. You have to take it.”

  I get up from the table. My hands are shaking. I turn away, so Hadrin won’t see. “I can’t. I’m not ready to not be me. I’m not ready to forget her. I’ll never be ready for that, but, damn it, I don’t want to go. Not yet. Can’t I have one more day with her? Just—”

  “Azeril.”

  There’s a hitch in his voice as he says my name. He’s staring at something. At my right arm. I follow his gaze, looking down at the flesh, and what I see turns my whole body to ice and makes my hair stand on end.

  Because there, written in blood, are the words, I’VE GOT HER.

  And then we both watch as more letters appear. I hold my breath, not daring to move the entire time. The first message was bad enough, but the second . . . The second makes me glad, for once in my life, that I was made to be a weapon. The only one that can stop him.

  Because the second line says, IN THE CHAIR.

  And I know, with more certainty than I’ve ever known anything, that Endeil is going to die today. No matter where I have to go to find him.

  No matter who I have to become.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I don’t look this time as we approach the guild. I keep my head down, telling myself it’s so there’s less chance of someone recognizing me and trying to report me to the High Priest. They wouldn’t know that he’s already got me right where he wants me, walking up to his new front door. Or what’s left of it. But really it’s because I don’t want to think about what’s going to happen when we get there. I don’t want to think that these are my last moments as myself.

  So instead I think of Leora, as painful as that is, remembering how she came up to me on my first day of school when no one else would. Everyone was talking about me, the new kid that Father Moors brought in from the streets, ragged and wild. They whispered about me in the halls, but no one had the guts to actually speak to me. No one except her. Rathe wasn’t there yet, though I like to think he would have been another exception. And maybe Leora did it just to show everyone up, not expecting to become my friend. Or maybe we really were drawn to each other, because of the spell Hadrin had cast years before.

  “Is there any chance you can lift the bond between us?” I ask Hadrin. “Because if you can, now might be a good time.”

  “Lift it? You’re asking for miracles. I don’t know how to lift your curse—and don’t look at me like that, because it is a curse—any more than you do.”

  “Okay, but you could do what you did before. To block the link from working.”

  “I needed her mother’s energy for that, and she’s no longer here. She was”—he clears his throat—“she was never sickly before I cast that spell.”

  I stare at him. “You ki—”

  “No. My actions might have ultimately led to her . . . illness. It was a powerful spell, but I had no idea it would have that effect on her. I would have at least warned her if I could. But she saw Leora covered in blood that day and she would have done anything to fix it. Both of us would have. She was a willing participant. But after that . . . I saw what it did to her. What I had done to both of them, and I couldn’t stay.”

  “And then I undid it. By kissing her.”

  He scoffs. “Oh, I think you did plenty more than that. But, yes. The two of you made a connection, and that counteracted it. And if I’d ever dreamed she would take up with you, with my experi—With the one boy I was trying to protect her from. If I’d known that, I would have . . .” He rubs his face, looking tired. “I don’t know what I would have done. Probably any warning I gave her only would have driven her right to you.”

  I can feel the wizards’ guild looming above us. This is where we were before, on Market Street, when I noticed the spire. And I know it’s there now, a long gray spike towering in the sky, like a beacon for lost souls, trying to draw them back inside its clutches. Calling back all the monsters. Or at least just this one.

  We reach the top of the hill, turning a corner, and there it is. The sight of the guild hits me full-on. It’s a giant gray stone building, several stories high, and spans the entire block. Ivy grows across the walls. It looks like a school, or a place for stuffy old men to sit in cushy chairs and decide how the world should be. Unpleasant, maybe, or boring. But ultimately harmless, and not somewhere where people get tortured in the basement.

  No, not people. Person. Me.

  Hadrin glances over, watching to see what I’ll do. I get the feeling he’d go in alone if he had to, even knowing what the outcome would be. At my most powerful, I stand a chance against Endeil. Hadrin wouldn’t last five minutes.

  And we’re still a few streets away from actually being there. No one’s noticed us or recognized us. A small voice in the back of my head whispers that we could still turn around and not do this. While I’m still me. While I can still make that decision. We’ll figure out some other way to save Leora and stop Endeil.

  “You’ll go around the side,” Hadrin says. “Not the front entrance. He’ll be expecting that. There’s another door on First Street, down a little set of stairs. I think you’re familiar with it—it’s the same one you escaped from.” He reaches into a pocket of his robes and pulls out a tiny golden key. “You’ll need this.”

  I tell myself to hold out my hand and take the key, but nothing happens. A tremor of fear runs up my spine. Then something in me crumples, and I know—I know—that I’m going to run. My teeth clamp down on my tongue. And this is what it comes down to. Either I’m too terrified to even approach the building, or I’m the ruthless killer, carving out a path of destruction and murdering anyone who gets in his way without a second thought.

  But I won’t become him until I have to. I won’t let that part of me take over until there’s no other choice. I can make it a little farther, I can stay me for that much longer, because it has to be me who goes into that basement. It has to be me who saves Leora. Even if that’s not who comes back out.

  Hadrin must see how scared I am. I expect to hear him snap at me at any moment. But he waits, saying nothing. And then a minute later the wave of fear has passed and I’m still here. My hand shakes as I finally hold it out for the key.

  “The stairway won’t be guarded,” he says. “Not many of us had access to it. And if it is . . . Take out anyone who gets in your way.”

  “The side entrance,” I repeat numbly. The path of my escape. “And where will you be?”

  “At the front of the building. Creating a diversion.”

  “A diversion?”

  “I’ll demand an audience with the High Priest. He’ll refuse at first, but I know a few things about him and his so-called gifts and where they come from. Things he doesn’t want anyone shouting at the entrance to his new palace for everyone to hear. Not,” he adds, “that anyone here will listen to a wizard who’s obviously bitter about being cast out of his home. But it will be enough to attract his attention for a few minutes at least. The less focus he has on you and her, the better. Leave the door unlocked behind you. I’ll catch up, one way or another.”

  “That might not be a good idea. Hadrin, if I don’t see you again—”
/>
  “You’ll see me,” he says. “You know what you have to do?”

  I nod. And despite what he said, I know this might be my last chance to say something to him, while I’m still me, though I’m not sure what. I can’t forgive him. I can’t forget what he’s done to me, even if . . . “It’s not a fairy tale,” I tell him. “Redemption. It’s real.”

  He makes a hmph noise in disbelief, but he smiles a little. “Good luck, Azeril,” he says softly. Then, without looking back, he walks off toward the front of the guild.

  “Good luck,” I say, though he’s already too far away to hear me. “We’re both going to need it.”

  The stairs aren’t hard to find, even though all I can see from the street is a bit of railing that descends below ground, to the sunken basement. The narrow staircase and cramped entryway look forgotten and unimportant, a place you’d never go unless you had business there. They’d be easy to miss, but I remember exactly where they are. Now my hand shakes and my chest feels tight as I fumble with the key, trying to unlock the door.

  This feels so wrong. I should be going the other way. Out, not in. This entrance leads directly to the basement, the home of all my nightmares. The place where they broke me, where I lost myself before. Where I’m going to lose myself again.

  The key clicks in the lock. It’s so dark in the basement that I can almost pretend this isn’t happening, that I’m not here, in the place I said I’d never go back to. And it’s a good thing this entrance isn’t guarded, because if there was anyone here, surely they’d hear the ragged way I’m breathing, or how clunky my footsteps sound, even to me.

  Normally I’d be moving silently, a killer lurking in the shadows, but I keep imagining things in the darkness as I creep through the hallway. A flash of blue robes. Someone darting away as soon as I look in his direction.

  Hallucinations. There’s no one in blue robes left, not after Endeil took over. And if there are and they’re hiding down here, then they have no interest in turning me in. Though if they do . . .

  I put a hand to the rough stone wall to steady myself, to stay grounded in reality. I could cast a light to banish the imagined visions, but if there is anyone down here, it would give me away. Plus, I don’t need light to find where I’m going. My fear makes my thoughts scatter, but I focus on a couple of spells, ready if anyone jumps out at me, wizard or priest.