Chaos Rises (2 page)

And then, with a wrench to the gut, she
realized that the shadows writhing before her weren't shadows, but
people. Human forms waving their arms in desperation, scratching at
thin air, pulling each other one way then the other.

And right at the edge of the field, on the
road that led straight into the village, stood a figure, a dark
silhouette against the flames, tall and still.

"Help!" she tried to call to him, but her
voice lay trapped inside. Her mother was in there somewhere. Her
father. Her little brother. Epi. Uncle Nak. Kreg. Why didn't they
just run? Run straight out into the field where she huddled like a
rock? But they remained among the burning buildings, scrambling all
directions but outward.

She turned again to the figure on the road,
the figure who stared, unmoving, into the fiery chaos before
him.

"Sir!" she cried, and this time her voice
escaped and crossed the distance between them. He spun. She
stumbled forward, toward him and the village.

She could hear the crackle of the fire now,
and make out words shouted in terror.

"I see the woods," someone yelled.

"Papa!"

"Run to the woods!"

The dark figure's shoulders drew back and the
field around her burst with blue-purple flames that rose high into
the night and then disappeared, the light blinding, the flash of
tremendous heat sucking the breath out of her. She toppled sideways
into the stubbly charred stalks of Farmer Torik's fields and pushed
herself to her knees in time to watch the figure stretch out his
arms, as if holding a giant ball of wool between his hands. She
could feel the utter strength of his concentration, almost as if
she were an empath, not a powerless weasel-summoner. Then he raised
his head to the sky and lowered his arms.

The screams changed timbre. "It's gone
again," she heard.

"Which way?"

"Papa!"

From her knees she watched as a beefy
man—Butcher Yul?—neared the field that would mean his salvation,
and began to swat at the empty air with a blanket, as if hammering
at a wall. Another figure began to run toward freedom, then swerved
off and circled back into the flaming center of the village.

What was this? It couldn't be…she'd
never…could it be an enchantment of some sort? A dark, ugly, deadly
spell like nothing she'd ever seen, not from the blacksmith, not
from the healer, not from the travelling mages who came through
every so often.

"Reveal yourself!" the stranger's voice
boomed out, and for a moment she wanted nothing more than to
obey.

"No," she whispered to herself. "No, no, no."
She crawled away from him, trying to clear her mind, trying to
think.

He was her rescuer. He would make everything
better.

No. He'd trapped everyone she loved inside a
burning village.

He could help save her family.

He'd done this to her family.

The rough ground dug into her knees. She
focused on that and kept crawling, away from him, toward her house,
which she couldn't see beyond the flames, but which must surely be
burning too. As if summoned by her imagination, mage fire burst
from the ground to her right, not five feet away. She switched
direction but the brief columns of flame followed her. Could he
sense her? If so, she'd never be able to hide from him.

But magecraft took concentration, especially
this much at once.

She closed her eyes and focused her thoughts
like the healer had told her to. She formed a picture in her head
of the most vicious, biggest hill tiger she could imagine. Hungry
and territorial. She aimed her thoughts at the hills behind her,
calling, pleading. It had never worked before, with anything but
Patchy and some of the other more pliant members of her flock. She
didn't know how it could possibly work now. But she tried.

Pain streamed through her, heat like knife
blades. Her hair lit up the sky with fire. She beat at her head
until the flames went out. A sick sweet odor choked her as she
crawled off again, dizzy.

Hill tigers were too solitary. Too rare. She
focused then on the mice and bats that plagued her so often when
she didn't want them. Of course they wouldn't obey her summons now.
The air remained empty of wings, the ground free of scurrying feet.
She zigged and zagged across the field, bloodying her knees and her
palms, only a few feet ahead of the fire he called down on her.

Finally she thought of her sheep, heading
slowly home somewhere behind her. Patchy's mottled face. Beetle's
moist nose sniffing her hand. Applesauce and Stinky and Carpet. She
called up a picture of Stumble, who hardly stumbled anymore,
running toward her like a deer.
Be specific in your
thoughts,
the healer had told her. She pictured Stinky's one
black leg, Onion's torn ear.
Find the calm inside you
. She
forced her heart to slow down and pushed her fear down into her
feet.
Search for your essence. Your power will be there.
The
healer described her own essence "like ferns I can't see, and
mint." One traveling mage, after admonishing her on the rudeness of
the question, relented and said that his sounded like water
crashing on rocks. The blacksmith had laughed. "Fire, of course."
But the only fire she felt now was mage fire, and it was on her
skin, not inside her. The flames were gone by the time she opened
her eyes, but the pain remained, searing deep into her left arm,
still burning. She dove behind a tiny tool shed, put her sleeve to
her mouth to try to block the smoke, and took three long breaths,
all while pleading with her sheep to come home, begging them with
tears, tempting them with treats, petting Patchy's head. The pain
was so bad she thought she might faint. Something hit the tool shed
and the voice of the dark stranger cut through the night. "You'll
never get away, girl." The screams from the village echoed inside
her, where she was supposed to be finding the calm, finding her
essence. All she felt was a swirling love for her family, her
friends, and the boy whose lips she had not yet touched. That
wasn't her essence. But she seized on it and called with it to her
sheep. The fire-lit night wavered around her, and just as things
were going dark before her eyes, she heard a bleat. The stomping of
little hoofs. Dozens of them.

"Patchy," she shouted out loud.

"Come out, girl," yelled the stranger, "or
I'll make you regret it."

The stomping grew louder. Then they appeared,
their wool glowing in the light of the giant flames. She peered
dizzily around the tool shed, which was now on fire too, and for a
moment couldn't see the man. She'd expected him to be much closer,
following her with his bursts of flame, but he hadn't moved from
where she first encountered him. She knew it. He was concentrating
too hard.

Something moved behind her and she swung to
see Patchy, who reached out as if to lick her face. She stood.
Nearly her whole flock jostled each other in confusion behind
Patchy. Now it was just shepherding tricks, not magic. She
staggered around behind them, beating at their rumps, clapping her
hands, herding them around the shed and toward the stranger.

Fire burst across the flock. They squealed
like pigs but she shouted "yah" at their backs and ran straight at
the mage, herding them in front of her. The stranger let off
another volley of flame, and then an icy blast of pure terror
crashed over Hala, like something external, pushing its way in. The
sheep bleated but kept on going, like sheep tended to do once
they'd started. Hala gasped for air and nearly turned away, but she
grabbed the tail closest to her and let the sheep drag her along.
After a moment, the fear eased and she yelled "yah" again.

The man backed up a few steps, then kicked at
one of the sheep. By then he was surrounded, their dense sheep
heads butting against his legs. He stumbled a little and the sounds
from the village changed again, like during her summer swims at the
lake, when her head came above water and the noises that had been
blurred before became words, voices she recognized.

"There's the road!" someone yelled.

"Straight up there!"

"Run!"

One of her sheep fell over. Then another. The
stranger, face still in shadow from the hood he wore, kicked at
another sheep and then let out a boom of laughter. "Very clever,
girl. I'll have to add anti-livestock measures. My thanks for the
highly instructive evening." Then he flung his hand toward the sky,
and a pillar of blue-purple mage fire shot twenty feet in the air.
When she tore her eyes away from the fluttering tips of flame, he
was gone. The fire blazed and the sheep milled and she should have
seen where he'd gone, but the flaming village pulled at her
attention. This made Kreg's look-away enchantments look like
child's play.

As soon as he was good and truly gone, taking
with him his magic, the villagers started streaming out of the
flames.

"Here," Hala yelled, throat raw. She waved
her arms. "It's safe here!"

Butcher Yul reached her first, carrying his
son in his arms, dragging his daughter behind him. The girl called
for her mother and tried pulling away, but the butcher just sank to
his knees, wrapped his children in his arms, and wept.

"Mama?" Hala called as she helped the
villagers stumble to safety. "Papa?" She found them in the crowd,
wild-eyed and singed, but alive. Her brother didn't even have a
shirt on, or shoes, and he was looking around as if he'd lost
something. She pressed them all into her arms, though her burns
flared at the faintest touch.

"Circles," her father mumbled.

"What?"

"Couldn't see the way out. We were just
turning in circles."

"Like a bug in a mixing bowl," her mother
added.

Hala looked at where the stranger had been
standing. "There was a man…" she tried to explain. "He was holding
you in somehow. He…he laughed." The echo of that laughter chilled
her, despite the flames roaring where once the village had stood,
despite the heat of her own damaged skin. Had her sheep's
disruption actually amused him? What kind of monster would take
pleasure in this? Butcher Yul was still weeping, and someone
shrieked in pain nearby.

"Where's Epi?" she demanded of her
parents.

Her mother shrugged helplessly and wrapped
her brother in her arms.

"Epi?" She pushed into the crowd of villagers
and soon spied her best friend. "Epi? Are you hurt?"

Epi shook her head, but in the darkness her
eyes gleamed wildly.

"Have you seen Kreg?" Hala asked.

"He saved my grandpapa. Broke the door and
everything." Epi coughed and bent over, arms braced on her knees.
"I was screaming for grandpapa and Kreg was looking for you and he
found me and it was glowing everywhere, stripes of flame in the
air, no one could find the way out. Kreg broke in and dragged
grandpapa outside. It was horrible."

But there behind her Hala could make out
Epi's parents and her grandpapa, huddled together, alive. Kreg
would be unsufferable now, repeating his heroics to anyone who
would listen, pushing the tale of her hill tiger out of his
repertoire. She had to smile, despite everything.

"I think he's over there." Epi pointed.

"Kreg!" She could see his head now, hair
sticking out all over like a thistle. When she made it to him, she
held him tight. He was breathing fast, and for a moment she thought
it a sign of his happiness to see her. He pulled away, stumbled two
steps sideways, and put a hand out for balance. She grabbed his arm
to steady him. "Sit."

They settled on the ground, but his shallow
breaths still beat a frantic rhythm.

"I heard what you did for Epi's grandpapa,"
she said.

"Yes. He…" Kreg blinked. "He couldn't trap
that pesky mouse."

"Mouse?"

"I got him, though. The bucket trick."

"Kreg, I'm not talking about your famous
mouse victory." That was weeks ago. "Tonight…you saved him from the
fire."

He coughed, gagging for a moment, and a trail
of spit snaked down his chin. In the faint light it looked almost
black. He wiped it away. "Yes, the fire," he said, every word
punctuated by a quick breath. "Do you think we should go back
in?"

"Of course not. Kreg, can you breathe more
slowly? It's over. You're safe."

He just shook his head, shaky bursts that
matched his breathing. "Can't." He put a hand to his chest and
pushed on it.

Her own breath started to match his, as she
tried to think, dizzy with fear and the throbbing pain of the
burns. She yelled for his parents. She yelled for the healer.

"Drowning," Kreg gasped. He took her hand and
started making wobbly swimming motions in the air.

"No," she whispered. "There's no water here.
We're not drowning."

His eyes darted back and forth. "The
lake?"

"No, we're not at the lake."

Then his parents appeared, and the healer,
who pushed her aside, telling Kreg to count to three with each
breath. He tried, but the wheezing only came faster. His mother
began to cry. The healer scrambled in her satchel for a pungent
cream she rubbed under his nose, and for a moment she thought it
was going to work. But only for a moment.

Someone else called for the healer, terror in
the plea. She looked back and forth, then closed her eyes and put
her hands around Kreg's neck, lightly, where Hala knew a mage like
her could sense his essence. When the healer opened her eyes, she
shook her head, closed up her bag, and rose.

"Wait!" Hala grabbed at the healer's arm.
"Please."

"There's too much damage." She wouldn't look
at Hala, but ducked away toward the other voices in the darkness
that needed her.

Kreg's father scooped him up, though Kreg was
almost as tall as his father now, and carried him farther away from
the smoke still billowing behind them. Hala followed, step after
step, and so did Patchy, bleating soulfully as Kreg coughed and
gagged. Finally, surrounded by woods, Kreg's father's strength gave
out.