“What excesses?”
“Summoning dangerous creatures, engaging in deadly tribal feuds-”
“How is any of that Walbert’s concern? Or yours?” Chandra challenged.
He said tersely, “It became Walbert’s concern when some of those creatures-which, hard as this may be to imagine, Chandra, aren’t always well supervised after they’re summoned-started terrorizing farmers and villagers on the plains.”
“If their farms and villages border the woodlands, then they’ve got to expect-”
“What do they have to expect, Chandra? To see their children stolen? Their crops destroyed? Their livestock eaten? Their villages rampaged?”
“Problems like that don’t give the Order a right to interfere in the forest!”
“Of course it does! But what gave you the right to interfere here?”
“I was protecting the woodlanders!”
“That’s your idea of protecting them?” Gideon unleashed his anger. “Killing a harmless creature that was summoned here for their own good, and setting fire to their forest?”
“For their own good?” she shouted.
“If the excesses practiced in the forest don’t cease, what do you suppose the farmers and townspeople will do, Chandra?” He didn’t give her a chance to respond. “It will be a bloodbath!”
“And you think that gives Walbert a right to try to dictate how people live in the woodlands? And in the mountains?”
“Yes.” Gideon looked tired again. His voice was calmer when he said, “Look, do you think you’re the only person that the woodland oufes have decided to kill lately because they got angry about something? You’re not.” He added irritably, “You just happen to deserve it. But it goes on all the time now, Chandra.”
“So?”
“You must have noticed how often innocent people wind up in harm’s way when the local oufes decide someone has to die?” he said. “It’s too dangerous.”
Chandra thought of Mother Luti, Brannon, and the others at the monastery who’d been endangered by the attempts on her life. But she just glared silently at Gideon.
“Things have to change on Regatha,” he said. “Walbert’s trying to bring peace and order to this plane. Life has become dangerously chaotic here. It can’t go on any longer.”
“Things were fine here until Walbert started interfering in lands where he has no right to intrude!”
He sighed. “So after the mysterious pyromancer that Walbert was concerned about incinerated a ghost warden, burned down part of the forest, incited a call for assassination from a tribe of hysterical oufes, and attacked four peacekeepers, I agreed with Walbert when he said you had to be contained.
“After that, this wasn’t just about the Purifying Fire for me,” Gideon said. “Not anymore. Because I realized you were too dangerous to leave on the loose here.”
“So Walbert sent a letter to Mother Luti demanding she turn me over to him? Did he really think that would work?” Chandra said contemptuously.
“No,” Gideon said. “He thought it might determine for certain whether you were a planeswalker.”
“What?”
“All things considered, he thought his demand might be the final push that the mother mage needed to decide that you should disappear for a while.”
For a moment, Chandra felt as if she couldn’t breathe. “It was a trick? To get me to planeswalk?”
“Yes,” he said. “It was the only way I could be sure you were exactly what Walbert feared you were.”
A red blaze of fury burned through her. “You manipulated me!”
“Chandra.” His gaze followed the glow of flames moving along her skin as rage coursed through her, turning her blood into fire. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t make me fight you.”
“Whyever not?” she snarled.
“Because I don’t want to,” he said wearily. “A lot has happened since we each left Regatha.”
His gaze locked with hers.
She remembered that he had turned her over to the Prelate’s soldiers, to be violated by the Enervants and probed by mind mages. She should kill him for that alone!
And then she remembered that he had hidden the scroll from them, to buy her time to escape…
“Please stop,” he said quietly, remaining motionless while fire raced down to her hands and through the tendrils of her hair.
She remembered that, without his power to protect him, he had fought the Fog Riders for her.
“All so you could bring me back to Regatha?” she breathed.
“No.” He thought it over. “Well… On Kephalai, yes,” he admitted. “Walbert seemed certain you’d come back here. I was supposed to make sure you came back to him, incapacitated, instead of returning to the monastery to cause more trouble.”
That renewed her rage. “If Walbert wanted me to stop causing trouble, then why didn’t you just let me die on Kephalai?”
“If it had been strictly up to me,” Gideon said, “I would have.”
His honesty disarmed her. She was still furious… but she felt the flames of uncontrolled rage subsiding.
And in truth, looking at him, she knew she couldn’t bring herself to kill Gideon. Not after everything that had passed.
“I don’t know why,” Gideon said, “but Walbert wanted you back on Regatha. In his custody, rather than roaming free.”
“So that’s why you created circumstances for me to escape from the Prelate’s prison?”
He nodded. “That’s why I followed you to Diraden, too.”
“And then?”
They looked at each other for a long, silent moment. “Things changed,” he said at last. Yes. Things had changed.
Chandra shifted her gaze away from him. “And then, when we escaped, I said I wanted to come back here.” Her tone was sullen. “That certainly made things easier for you.”
“I wasn’t thinking about that,” he said. “I was thinking about being alive and together and getting away.”
She glanced at him.
A slight smile curved his mouth. “I never mentioned it, but I thought all along that the chances of getting out of there alive were pretty remote.”
Feeling suddenly exhausted, Chandra sat down on the other wooden stool in this humble hut. “So we’re alive and both back on Regatha. Now what?”
“Now… I don’t know.”
They were silent again.
Chandra heard footsteps approaching and she stiffened with tension for a moment, but relaxed when Samir came bustling into the hut.
He set down a pitcher of water, a basin, two small clay pots, and some soft cloths. “My wife has taken the children to stay with another family while you’re here, so that there won’t be any risk of them seeing Chandra. They’re good children, but they’re too young for me to be sure they’ll remember not to say anything to anyone.”
“It’s risky for you to have me here,” Chandra realized. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, Chandra,” Samir said, pouring water into the basin. “I spoke against Walbert and the Order… Er, no offense intended,” he said to Gideon.
“None taken.”
“But I failed to persuade the other members of the council. Most voted in favor of cooperating with Walbert.”
Gideon asked, “What’s been happening here?”
Samir picked up one of the two small pots he had brought with him and poured some pale yellow powder into
