Fire & Chasm
Page 26
Leora kneels beside him, trying to stop the bleeding and muttering incoherently.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I tell Hadrin, my voice choked.
“But I did,” he says softly. “I always knew I’d die by that knife.”
If I still had my spells, I could heal him. But I gave them up, and now I can’t do anything to stop this. It’s not fair. Except that it is.
Leora’s sobbing now. Covered in blood and sobbing. Just like in the vision the Fire showed me of her.
I’d assumed it would be because of me. And maybe it could have been. It came so close to being me.
Hadrin glances up at her. His eyes are glassy, the light in them fading. “I’m sorry,” he says. His voice is so weak, I almost don’t hear it. But I know Leora does.
She nods. “It’s going to be all right. Do you hear me? You’re going to—” But she doesn’t finish. The light in his eyes goes out completely.
Leora’s shoulders heave. Tears pour down her face while blood soaks her clothes. I put my arms around her, trying to hold her while she clings to him. To the father she thought didn’t love her. To the one I thought didn’t love me.
“How could you do this?” she says, shaking him, her voice thick from crying. “You weren’t supposed to leave me!”
He wasn’t. I was. He was supposed to keep her safe, because I was never coming back. But I lost myself and I still came back, and now he’s the one that’s gone.
He said he would take my place if he could.
Hot tears flood my eyes. I never thought I’d be crying over a wizard. Especially not him. I let go of Leora and take his hand. Lifeless but still warm. He survived my visit the other night, only to still die by my knife. At least it was quick. At least it wasn’t what I’d planned for him.
“I’ll miss you,” I whisper, because it’s true. Even though it’s too late.
I let go of Hadrin’s hand and put my arms around Leora again, and this time she lets go of him and buries her face in my neck.
Then there’s a groan. Coming from the crack in the floor behind us. Leora glances up, hearing it, too. And I see Endeil’s hand, clinging for dear life to the edge.
And I think there’ll be plenty of time to comfort her after I kill him.
“Az, no!” Leora shouts as I get up and take a step toward him. She jumps up, putting a hand on my arm. “Don’t do it.” Her face is red and wet with tears. Smears of blood cover her hands and the front of her clothes. “You chose mercy. That’s why the Fire gave you that gift, isn’t it? Don’t ruin that. Not for him.”
“Yes,” Endeil says. He struggles to keep his grip on the edge of the floor. “Help me up. Be merciful. Listen to her.” As if he didn’t choose to attack me, even after I’d purged him of the Chasm. This was all his choice. He was corrupt from the beginning. I think back to the first day I met him and how eager he was to get inside my head.
I peer down, seeing only a vast darkness beneath him.
“I didn’t say he should help you,” Leora tells him, anger burning in her voice. “I just said he shouldn’t be the one to end you.”
Endeil’s eyes go wide as Leora’s foot comes down on his fingers with a loud crunch. He screams and slips from the edge, disappearing down into the blackness.
I stare at her, a little shocked, a little amazed.
“What’s the matter?” she says. “You’ve never seen a killer before?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The scents of pine needles and fresh earth fill my nose as Leora and I make our way up the narrow path that leads to the mausoleum in Ashbury. It’s the same path we walked a few weeks ago, when we went to visit her mother’s ashes. Only now we’re here during the day. The graves we pass on the outskirts of the church grounds, the ones with wizards buried in them, are no longer new. The wizard killer has officially retired. Even my obsidian is gone. I tossed it into the same crack Endeil disappeared into. I hate that it’s gone—I still long for it—but I made my choice. And with my spells and the knife gone, maybe I can be a normal person, leading a regular life.
Word has also spread that Endeil wasn’t the High Priest everyone thought he was, making what he said about me being the wizard killer less credible. Everyone knows he had a grudge against me, his apprentice trying to expose his evil, and it doesn’t hurt my case that I’ve been using my ability from the Fire to purge away all the “gifts” Endeil gave everyone.
I mean, I’m still not the innocent apprentice people think I am. But I’m working on making up for it.
I took Hadrin’s advice and got out of the capital. Father Moors was kind enough to let us stay at the church while we’re in town, even though we’re not students anymore. I think he feels guilty for the part he played in all this. He knew Endeil, back when he was an acolyte here. And it was here, in the Church of the Sacred Flame, that the High Priest’s corruption started to spread. Father Moors might have known my secrets, but he didn’t know what Endeil was truly capable of until it was too late.
The king and queen are officially funding the High Guild’s renovation, though they’re not admitting any fault for giving an insane high priest so much power. The Church has its seats in court back, too. They’re also in the process of naming Endeil’s successor from one of the other priests, who all claim they had no idea what he was doing, of course. And the Guild is too busy recovering from the attack to continue their search for me. It seems that the war between the wizards and the Church is over, at least for now.
Leora holds an amber-colored urn with Hadrin’s ashes in it. He should have been buried in the Fire-forsaken ground. He was a wizard, after all. But in the end, I’m not sure he deserved that. Not that his sacrifice erased all his sins or all the hurt he caused, but . . . it certainly went a long way. He died so I could live. Maybe to make up for what he’d done to me, or maybe because he really did care. About me and Leora.
The graveyard looks so different during the day. The smells of earth and pine are the same, but the path looks like just any normal path, nothing sinister or creepy about it.
“I know he and my mother didn’t always get along,” Leora says, “but I want them to be in the same place. Is that crazy?”
I shake my head. “Of course not.”
“Do you think the Fire will . . .” She trails off. The Fire might not let him be laid to rest inside the mausoleum. We might have to bury his ashes.
Leora glances at the graves of wizards as we pass. Last time we were here, she was wondering if one of them was her father’s. Not realizing that I was the one who’d killed them. “Az,” she says, “what the High Priest said—”
“Don’t call him that.”
“He did look into my thoughts, and what he said about me being afraid of you . . . That was true.” She bites her lip. “He made it sound worse than it was, but I had those thoughts, Az. Those doubts. Just for a moment, but—”
“You don’t have to tell me. I can’t blame you for having doubts.” Or for being afraid.
“I want you to know that I might have thought those things, but that’s all they were. Just thoughts. I trust you. I’m not afraid of you.”
“Or of anything,” I add.
She punches my arm. “I might have exaggerated when I said that. The truth is, I’m terrified of losing you. When he put you in that chair, I thought . . . I knew he was going to kill you, Az. And nothing else mattered. By the Fire, if you had died, I would have, too, even without the curse.”
My chest feels warm and kind of achy. But it’s a good ache. Not the longing for something you can never have, but the feeling of loving someone so much that no matter how close you are to them, it can never be enough. “You don’t care who I was? I mean, do you really think a person can change?”
We arrive at the door to the mausoleum. Leora hugs the amber urn to her chest and doesn’t answer me. She holds her breath as she prepares to cross the threshold. Hoping—praying, like I am—that the Fire will allow Hadrin’s remains inside.
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br /> I slip my hand into hers. We step inside together. At first I feel empty and cold. There’s nothing, and I think we’re going to be rejected. There’ll have to be one more grave, after all. And then a gentle warmth washes over us as the Fire gives its approval.
Leora finds her mother’s urn on the shelf and sets her father’s next to it. She smiles at them. It’s a bittersweet smile, remembering the good times along with the bad.
She takes an unlit prayer candle from the box on the floor and hands me one, too.
“Please, protect him from the darkness,” she says.
I say it along with her. Thinking about Hadrin. About the darkness that he gave me, and that he tried to save me from. Because of him, I’m alive. And I have Leora.
And when I look down, flame flickers to life on her candle. And on mine.
She smiles at me. “Not defective this time, I see?”
“Funny, now that I’m not an altar boy, it works just fine.”
“You asked if a person can really change, Az. Well, I think you have your answer. But you know what?”
“What, Leora?”
She takes my hand again, her fingers interlocking with mine. “I wouldn’t change a thing.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wrote the first version of this book about eight years ago. It was all I talked about back then, and I’m pretty sure I was completely insufferable. Thanks to all my friends who put up with me anyway. And thanks to everyone who read and loved this new version, especially Chloë Tisdale, who never gave up on the story; Karen Kincy, who helped me with endless problem solving; Jennifer Cervantes, who saved me from having no title; and Kevin Wolske, who liked all the really dark parts.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2010 Chloë Tisdale
Chelsea M. Campbell grew up in the Pacific Northwest, where it rains a lot. And then rains some more. She finished her first novel when she was twelve, sent it out, and promptly got rejected. Since then she’s written many more novels, earned a degree in Latin and Ancient Greek, become an obsessive knitter and fiber artist, and started a collection of glass grapes. Besides writing, studying ancient languages, and collecting useless objects, Chelsea is a pop culture fangirl at heart and can often be found rewatching episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Parks and Recreation, or dying a lot in Dark Souls. Visit her online: www.chelseamcampbell.com.