Chaos Rises (3 page)

"The air's clear here, love," Kreg's mother
whispered. "Breathe deep."

He only clutched at his chest again. Hala
couldn't see much in the darkness, but his eyes caught the light of
the stars every time they fluttered open. Hala took his hand.

"Remember the stag you summoned?" he wheezed.
"In the green? Fifteen points. Magnificent. I'll never forget."

Hala nodded in the darkness, but couldn't
speak. She closed her eyes. Like the healer advised, she tried to
find peace within, stillness beyond the throbbing of her heart, the
sound of Kreg's life ebbing away. She pictured a stag, taller than
the biggest horse she'd seen, antlers forked like lightning, nose
black, eyes big and glossy. She tried harder than ever, because now
she knew she could do it. The sheep had answered her summons, after
all, and driven away the monster who had done this to them all. She
focused inward. Her essence had always danced away from her, like a
name she couldn't quite remember. Nothing danced now. Instead, some
part of her drifted, swayed. Could her essence lie within the
motion itself? Eyes pressed closed, mind on the stag, she let
herself drift.

"Look!" Kreg exclaimed, his voice stronger
for a moment.

Hala opened her eyes. There, not twenty feet
away, regal between two straight trees, stood a stag, ghostly in
the darkness

"Bigger than before!" Kreg gasped. It wasn't
true. He was smaller, younger, but maybe that made him curious,
because he didn't bolt. He sniffed the air, then stepped carefully
toward them, out of the shadow of the trees to where the starlight
illuminated him. He shook his antlers, but not in challenge, then
stepped closer. They all stared. Kreg's mother's tears stopped. The
stag looked at Kreg, and Kreg looked at him. For long moments all
was still. Then the great animal made a huffing noise, turned, and
ran gracefully back into the darkness and the woods.

Kreg's breath no longer came in ragged
gasps.

It no longer came at all. But his lips had
curved into a smile of awe.

Hala lay her head on his chest and cried,
huddled there with his mother and father, as Kreg's essence slipped
away through the night, carried on the back of the stag she had
summoned.

They buried him, along with four others, in a
dawn laced with scarlet, while the village still smoldered. Beetle
and Stinky were dead too, and many of the villagers couldn't yet
breathe normally. The healer wasn't sure they ever would. Burns and
cuts scored swaths of exposed skin, and several people's heads
remained in a fog that went beyond the fear and the grief and the
thinning smoke.

The villagers said their words of goodbye,
and then began drifting away into silence.

The healer laid her hands on Hala's
shoulders. "You found your essence. You used it for good. We all
owe you our lives."

Hala stared numbly at the graves. "I couldn't
help
them
."

"Oh, but I think you did. Easing death is a
gift too."

Hala wished she could blot out the
beekeeper's tears of relief that her children were safe, even as
she lay dying. She wished she wouldn't see Kreg's face everywhere
she turned, even if he
had
smiled, there at the end. She
wished the stag had stayed, because if it had, maybe she could have
remained forever in that moment with Kreg. Hala wished many things
that could never be.

"What of the man who did this?" she
whispered. "What if he tries it again?"

"I don't know." The healer pulled Hala close.
"Maybe the baron's men can find him. Stop him." Smoke floated into
the sky, just like her
maybe
.

"Hala?" Her brother had appeared out of
nowhere, his voice small, lost.

Hala shook herself and focused on her
brother.

"Tell it to me again," he said. "The story of
the hill tiger."

Hala held her brother's hand and took a deep
breath. "I was picking rumpelberries that day. I had two buckets,
almost full…"

* * *

Far away in the capital, in the King's great
palace, in the houses of mages and soldiers and commoners, in the
streets busy with life, people began speaking of a mage so
powerful, so dark-hearted, that he would burn an entire village
with mage fire while he trapped the people inside.

Within that city, two young apprentice mages
studied their art and heard the rumors. While one cried for the
victims and begged her mistress to begin teaching the healing
transmutations, the other plotted and schemed how the kingdom's
army could bring this man to justice. But neither imagined that
they would one day face him in all his deadly power.

THE END

Don't wait to find out more about the two young
apprentices and the ruthless mage who burned Hala's village, whose
dark magic has earned him the name of Chaos Mage.

Read the first chapter of
Far-Knowing
below.

Melinda Brasher loves the sound of autumn leaves
crunching beneath her feet and the smell of brownies baking. She
has lived abroad in Spain, Poland, Mexico, and the Czech Republic,
studying or teaching English as a second language. Her short
fiction appears in
Ellipsis Literature and Art, Enchanted
Conversation, On the Premises,
and others. To see more of her
work or contact her online, go to
melindabrasher.com

If you liked this story, please show your support by
recommending it to friends or writing a review on Goodreads,
Amazon, or Smashwords. Thank you.

And now, for a sneak peek of
Far-Knowing:

By Melinda
Brasher

Chapter I

I

Kallinesha

The silence was alive, the way stalker
spiders are alive even if you never see them, the way their fangs
feel real even if they're gone by the time you reach down to swat
them away. Kallinesha could just make out the flicker of
candlelight under the door, but the silence stood guard and she
dared not disturb it.

This was probably just her guilt playing
tricks on her. It wasn't fair, this guilt, not when she had finally
won an argument with Mistress. She should have been basking in the
moment, but instead she'd come here. Guilt, her father always said,
was a weakness. If you did something wrong, you fixed it. You
wasted no energy on remorse. So she'd come here to apologize, no
matter how it galled her, because once the heat of the argument
cooled, Kallinesha realized how low a blow she had struck. Besides,
one of these times she would go too far and Mistress would send her
away. No small moment of victory was worth that. But the silence
had crushed the apology from her mind, and she stared at the door,
entranced, trying to understand this something that danced angrily
around the edges of her awareness.

Kallinesha could only feel others' magic when
it was strong enough to set the air tingling like sand thrown
against her skin by a sudden wind. The magic behind the door was
different: a darkness that pulled at the hairs on her arms.
Mistress had told them never to interrupt her when she was
far-knowing. If that's what she was doing now, spurred on by
Kallinesha's words, then perhaps Kallinesha had underestimated
Mistress's powers. Because this was strong, whatever it was.

She reached out to the door, ready to snatch
her hand back if the wood…what? Bit at her? She turned the handle
gently. It wasn't locked. If she interrupted Mistress, it might
really be the end of her apprenticeship, but what if Mistress was
in trouble? She eased the door open.

Mistress lay twisted on the floor in the
middle of the ring of glass shards and fox fur and whatever other
enforcements she used for far-knowing. She'd flung one arm outward,
smudging the ring, breaking the circle. Skin white as linen. Eyes
open and unseeing. Kallinesha jumped into the circle and knelt
down.

"Mistress? Wake up." Kallinesha put an ear to
her mouth, felt the slight disturbance of breath, and placed her
hands on Mistress's neck. Unable to feel any trace of life force,
she yelled for Ista, who never had trouble sensing such things.
Silence smothered the cry. She tried to concentrate, searching for
her own essence past the fever of her fear. It kept slipping away,
taunting her. Finally she caught hold of it and tried to convince
it to share a part of itself with Mistress. She'd never been good
at transfers, not even when they practiced in complete calm, but
now she felt her limbs growing heavy, her head beginning to ache.
It must be working.

Mistress jerked, dislodging Kallinesha's
hands.

"The Chaos Mage," Mistress gasped, her eyes
watery now, but alive.

"He did this? How?"

"The trance. Couldn't. Break."

The far-knowing trance. Kallinesha knew it.
She'd goaded Mistress into action before she was ready. This was
all her fault. She could hardly look Mistress in the eye. "He's
very powerful," she muttered. "You couldn't have predicted
this."

"But I should have," Mistress whispered.
"He's hidden his identity so well. I should have taken more
precautions." Her lips, the color of ash, barely moved.

"Mistress?" The cry came from Ista, standing
in the doorway, big-eyed.

"Where have you been?" Kallinesha hissed.
"See if you can feel her essence. Hurry up."

Ista sobbed the moment her hands touched
Mistress's neck. Then she closed her eyes. Trying to transfer her
essence. Maybe she would succeed where Kallinesha had failed. And
this time Kallinesha wouldn't mind.

"Ista, my pet, stop," Mistress said finally.
"It's not working."

Ista had gone almost as pale as Mistress.
Tears streamed down her cheeks as she helped Mistress shakily onto
the bed. Kallinesha stood back, unsure where to lend a hand. "What
should I do?" Ista begged.

"Leave us for a moment, lamb. I need to talk
to Kallinesha."

"No. Please," Ista begged.

Mistress caressed Ista's hair. A trio of
candles glowed behind her, and Kallinesha could almost see the
light through those blue-veined hands. "My pet, obey."

Ista crept off, whimpering like the child she
still was, even at fifteen years, and Kallinesha stood up
straighter as the door swung shut, leaving them alone.

"You must find the Chaos Mage, Kallinesha.
Find him and destroy him."

"What?"

"You and Ista."

"But—"

"I know where he is."

"You do?" He'd eluded everyone for so
long.

"The far-knowing showed the truth before it
took hold of me. He's in Baron Selkimear's castle."

"But shouldn't we tell the King and the High
Mage? Let them send their best men?"

"The High Mage entrusted me with the task."
The veins on her neck stuck out like a choke-vine on a tree trunk,
slowly sucking the life out of its host. "Listen. The Chaos Mage
has supporters inside the mages' guild, in the army, everywhere.
Yes, even in your perfect father's army." Kallinesha stiffened.
"They're everywhere, seeking the downfall of the King. The High
Mage trusted me alone." Her eyes were impossibly wide now, like
crazy old Robbila down the street, who was always talking about
ghosts and poisoners in the shrubs, and animals who gave her news
of the future—almost always wrong. "You and Ista, I trust you, just
as the High Mage trusts me. You have to destroy the Chaos Mage.
He's developing powers we don't understand. Powers that will kill
the King."

"I know," Kallinesha said. Mistress had
spoken of little else for weeks. King Tykell was a good man, a
noble man. Kallinesha's father had spent most of his career
defending the King's mother, and now he served King Tykell with the
same dedication. Queen first, self second her father always said,
when Kallinesha was younger and complained that he was gone too
long on campaigns. For three years now, the King had sat on the
throne of Andalinn, and already they were calling him Tykell the
Just, and Tykell the Wise.

The last few months, however, he'd grown
preoccupied, distant. Her father had mentioned it too, not just
Mistress, not just rumors on the streets. Ista thought maybe it was
worry over his wife's failing health. Mistress believed, as did the
High Mage, that it stemmed from worry over the Chaos Mage's growing
powers. Nearly every week some report of his evil reached the
capital: a summoned wind destroying one village, mage fire another,
travelers found dead on the road with no signs of violence, all
their gold still in their bags, entire families disappearing from
their houses, unexplained waves of illness, livestock going mad and
stampeding off cliffs, unexpected floods. All this was the work of
the shadowy Chaos Mage, who no one had ever clearly seen.

"You must destroy him," Mistress pleaded, her
voice growing weaker. How much of her life essence had the
far-knowing drained? "King first, self second. Your father will
finally realize how brave his daughter is."

It was crazy to think she could defeat
someone the King and her father hadn't even been able to find. But
if she put a stop to the Chaos Mage's evil, her father would have
to recognize how hard she had worked, what courage she had shown.
My daughter, she saw him say, tears in those ever-strong,
ever-tearless eyes of his. Defeater of the Chaos Mage. You are
truly my daughter. Her mother would ride from Eslamyst province and
throw her arms around her, as she hadn't done for years, forgetting
solemnity and propriety. One day you will be high mage. And the
King: Kallinesha would kiss his royal hand, but the King, overcome
by gratitude, would kiss her hand.