“Go!” he ordered. “Go now!”
Brannon grabbed her by the shirt. “Chandra…”
Samir was right, she realized. These oufes were pointing at her and screaming. Her presence was only increasing their frenzy. She hated leaving Samir to deal with this alone, but that was the best choice available at the moment.
“All right, yes,” Chandra said, grasping Brannon’s hand. “Let’s go. This way.”
They ran across the glade together, their footsteps carrying them into a wall of fire. Knowing that no forest- dweller would follow them this way, they fled through the welcoming embrace of the flames.
The first attack came the following night. Chandra was lying awake in her narrow bed, torn between anger over Luti’s latest lecture on self-control and a certain reluctant awareness that the mother mage had a valid point.
Fortunately, Chandra’s fire-as she had been quick to remind Luti earlier tonight-had only burned down a small portion of the Great Western Wood. Samir had sent one of his many relatives to the monastery earlier to inform them that Chandra’s forest fire had been contained and quelled after nightfall. The rains had been sporadic this year, but the elves’ magic had kept the fire confined to the the glade where Chandra had destroyed the ghost warden.
“Nonetheless,” Luti had said to her earlier tonight, “you did far more damage than good, Chandra.”
“But I-”
“Eliminating one ghost warden may have been helpful-”
“May have been? That thing was a spy for the Order!” “-or it may have been ill-advised. In either case-”
“Ill-advised how?” Chandra demanded.
“In either case,” Luti said, clearly losing patience with her.
“The possible benefit of eliminating one ghost warden from the forest cannot balance the catastrophe of burning down the forest.”
More admonishments had followed. “Playing with fire is bad for those who burn themselves,” said Luti quoting some sage or another. “But for the rest of us it is a great pleasure. I want you to be able to experience this pleasure as I do, Chandra, but until you learn to control your impulses, you will continue to burn yourself and those around you.”
Chandra lay wide awake in bed thinking about that last statement and wrestling with the emotions it stirred.
She hated being reprimanded and lectured. It made her want to leave Regatha, Keral Keep, and Mother Luti far behind her. She was seething with indignation and felt like setting something on fire, even though that was precisely what had gotten her into this trouble in the first place.
On the other hand…
Chandra heaved a breath as she lay on her back, staring up into the darkness.
On the other hand, she had indeed destroyed part, however small, of the forest, enraged a tribe of oufes, and no doubt caused a lot of trouble for Samir. The woodlanders hadn’t ever done her any harm. Samir considered her a friend, and the Keralians sought cooperation with the forest races against the encroaching power of the Order. It wasn’t entirely unreasonable for Luti to say that making enemies in the woods by wreaking destruction had been a bad decision, or, rather, to quote her, “a stupid misstep.” The actual decision had been to rid the woodlands of a spy for the Order. That was a good idea, thought Chandra.
However, given the way things had turned out, it was possible that the woodlanders found a single ghost warden among many to be slightly less disruptive to their daily routine than she had been.
Chandra kept reviewing the events of that day and wondering what she should have done differently. Capture the ghost warden instead of kill it? How could she have done that? The creature was so fast and elusive, she had barely been able to get close enough to throw fireballs at it. Should she have just let it spy on her and then go its merry way? Out of the question! Instead of killing it in the woods, should she have chased it to the plains and thereby accidentally set the farmlands on fire? Would Luti be less exasperated with her now if farmers were enraged instead of woodlanders?
Chandra rolled over on her side and tried to punch some shape into her flat pillow.
And why might killing a ghost warden be ill-advised, anyway? Surely Luti didn’t think it was a good thing to have those creepy creatures roaming the woods and spying for the Order? To hear Samir talk, it wasn’t long before they started appearing in the mountains to protect the Keralians from themselves and anything they might do that the Order didn’t like.
Tired of chasing this subject around and around in her head, Chandra closed her eyes and tried to will herself to relax and get some sleep. She forced herself to clear her mind, focus on her breathing, and let the darkness absorb the clamoring voices in her head.
But then she realized the voices weren’t all in her head. She frowned irritably as she recognized the sound of whispering directly outside her door. It was very late, but some of the Keralian acolytes were night owls who preferred to study and practice until dawn and then sleep all morning. Life at the monastery was pretty unstructured, and the residents seldom interfered with each other’s habits, as long as they didn’t impinge on the rights or comforts of anyone else.
Whispering and muttering outside her door, Chandra decided, especially while she was trying to sleep, counted as impinging on her rights and comforts. She heard two lowered voices. They sounded like they were arguing. She wished they’d go argue somewhere else. She was about to get out of bed and tell them so when the door to her chamber creaked open.
Chandra opened her eyes as her body went tense. Who was entering her room in the middle of the night?
She heard the same two voices again, now in her doorway. Chandra’s room opened directly onto an outdoor walkway with a view of the mountains to the south and the sky overhead. Squinting through the dark, she saw two figures standing in her there, faintly illuminated by the moonlight.
The two intruders were short-shorter than Brannon certainly, whose head only came up to Chandra’s shoulder. They were also broad and squat, with misshapen heads, and they moved in an odd, lumbering way, as if trying to keep their balance on the deck of a ship in rough waters. But it wasn’t until Chandra saw their brightly glowing orange eyes that she realized what they were.
“Goblins?” she asked incredulously, so startled she forgot to feign sleep…
The closer one stumbled back in surprise when she spoke, careening into the other. The second goblin gave a muffled shriek, hopping around on one foot-his other, it seemed, had been stomped on by his staggering companion.
Chandra tilted her head back and blew a fiery breath straight upward. The resultant flame flew up to the ceiling and bounced tentatively there for a moment before it attached itself, burning like a torch to illuminate Chandra’s room.
She got out of bed and looked at the intruders with unconcealed revulsion. “Goblins.”
The red skin that covered their misshapen, bald heads had the texture of lumpy dough. Hair sprouted from their fungal ears and their scaly hands had claws as long as the yellow fangs that protruded from their mouths, dripping with saliva.
“You’re drooling on my floor!” Chandra said in disgust.
They also, she noticed, smelled terrible.
The goblin hopping around on one foot gibbered at its companion in a tongue Chandra didn’t recognize. The other goblin hissed at her.
“I’ll say this just once,” she told them, letting flames ripple boldly along her skin in an effort to intimidate them. “Get out of my room. Get out now.”
The goblin that had hissed at her nudged its companion, who was still obsessed with the pain in his foot. Getting no reaction, the hissing goblin nudged again. This annoyed the second goblin, who put down his aching foot and irritably swatted the first goblin. The first one growled in annoyance, turned around, and hit him back.
As if oblivious to Chandra’s presence, they were suddenly clobbering each other with vehemence, growling and gibbering. Chandra watched them for a few moments, but her amusement quickly palled, and she interrupted them with a stinging bolt of fire that got their attention.
“What in the Multiverse are you two doing here?” she demanded.
