Chaos Rises (4 page)

"Kallinesha," Mistress whispered. "You will
succeed because he's not expecting you. Take Ista. You'll need her
raw power. Go to Baron Selkimear's castle. The Chaos Mage, he's
tall. There's a gold chain he wears."

"The far-knowing showed you this?"

"Yes. And there's fear in him. Power, but
fear. Use it. And use your wits. Don't fail your king."

Kallinesha took a deep breath. This was her
chance. All those years of her childhood she watched her father
march off to battle and return victorious. After he was raised to
high commander, she watched him counsel his queen, then his king,
giving his all for Andalinn. Her mother too, governor of one of the
richest, fastest-progressing provinces, and her oldest brother,
about to become a commander in her father's army—they'd all had
their chances, and she, she'd only slaved away here, seven years
trying to learn magecraft, trying to prove herself worthy to carry
her family name. Now was her chance. Could she live with herself if
she passed it by? "I'll find the Chaos Mage," she promised. "I
won't fail my king."

II

Ista

Ista prepared a draught, hands trembling. Why
hadn't the transfer worked? Was Mistress's life essence too far
gone? Maybe time and rest would restore it. Of course time and rest
would restore it. Of course they would. And this draught would help
her rest deeper, recover faster. Tears wet the slivers of birch
bark, and she hoped they would only make it more effective. She
tossed in some mint, just to disguise the bitterness of the bear
thistle, and stirred it all together with a silver rod. What were
they talking about so long? Why couldn't she go in? It wasn't fair.
Kallinesha didn't even like Mistress. What if she died in there,
with no one who loved her at her side? No, Mistress couldn't die.
She was too wise, too powerful. She'd taught Ista so much. Not just
about magic. And Kallinesha—Cold Kalli—didn't understand that,
didn't understand the bond they had. Kalli never took time to
simply sit and listen to Mistress. All she wanted were straight
answers on how much essence of rock you needed for an ice-to-marble
transmutation, or how long a look-away enchantment would last on a
wooden chest with an iron lock, before it began destroying itself.
She never just felt for the power within her, felt for it, embraced
it, and used it.

Ista paced up and down the workshop, the
draught warm in her hands. Why hadn't she stayed here tonight,
instead of visiting her family? She would have felt the Chaos
Mage's magic, felt Mistress's distress. Even after Kallinesha had
broken the link, Ista could feel it. How could Kalli possibly miss
something so strong? She'd only been in the other room. But Kalli
was a mole, always digging, digging, working away at her little
tunnels, trying to move the earth. Completely blind. She wouldn't
notice the sun if it fell out of the sky.

The door opened and Ista ran through.
Mistress smiled, but her skin still looked papery thin, her body
limp. "Here, Mistress." Ista put the draught to bloodless lips and
watched her take two swallows, three, then push it away, the
movement almost too much for her.

Kalli was gone, the door closed.

"Ista, dear," Mistress said. "You know what
the High Mage asked of me?"

"Yes, Mistress. And you will succeed." It
meant everything to Mistress, the esteem of the High Mage, the
honor of his trust.

"I will, but only if you help me."

"Of course."

"You must find the Chaos Mage and bring him
to justice."

"Me?"

"Yes. You. The connection he used to drain my
essence, I think it's still working. I feel weaker now than
before."

"Rest then. Take this." Ista held up the cup
again. She slid a hand to rest on the side of Mistress's throat and
closed her eyes, feeling inside herself for her own essence. It was
still so full of energy, so quick to rise to her summons. Why
couldn't Mistress take strength from it?

"Don't, love. It's no use. But if you find
him and destroy his power, I believe his hold over me will be
broken."

"Yes, Mistress. I'll try." But Ista's hand
trembled and the draught sloshed in the cup. How would she fight a
man so powerful the High Mage hadn't been able to defeat him?

"You have the gift, Ista. Haven't I always
told you? You'll find the strength. Be careful. Half the protectors
are corrupt. Even Kallinesha's father. But don't tell her that. You
need her. She knows more about the world than you do, pet, and more
about magic, though she doesn't have your gift. And she's got
clout. Protectoressa Kallinesha Rhaelenor of Gaidella and Illandri,
daughter of the High Commander. Just say half that and doors will
open. Unfair as it is, you need her."

Ista could hardly stand to spend an afternoon
alone with Kallinesha and her snide comments about commoners and
her accusations that Ista was only trying to curry favor with
Mistress. "But—"

"Do it for me."

"Yes, Mistress. If you ask it."

"Trust no one but the High Mage. And
Kallinesha. I know she's hard on you sometimes, but she knows how
to find the Chaos Mage. Now let me rest."

Ista didn't stand until Mistress fell asleep,
her shallow breaths peaceful. When finally Ista opened the door to
the workshop, Kalli wasn't there. She found her in her bedroom, the
one Kalli had insisted she keep for herself when Ista came to the
house. I'm a protector, she'd said. I don't sleep on the ground
like a pig with the other piglets.

"Kallinesha? Did Mistress ask you to—"

"Of course. Do you think you're the only one
she confides in?"

"No."

"Then pack."

"What?"

"She charged us to finish her task. If the
Chaos Mage knows that she found out where he is, he'll leave. It's
only maybe a six-hour ride. Get packing."

"I won't leave her like this."

"I've already called for her sister. Do you
think you can find a better healer, or one who cares more for
Mistress? She'll be taken care of. So pack."

III

Kallinesha

By the time Kallinesha left, dragging a weepy
Ista behind her, Mistress had fallen into a sleep from which she
could not be roused. An enchanted sleep, her sister confirmed,
caused by the far-knowing gone awry. Until they found the caster of
whatever magic had done this, Mistress's sister feared there would
be no waking her.

Nearly four hours remained until dawn. The
best far-knowing happened after dark. "That's when sight is
dulled," Mistress had told Kallinesha once, her voice low and
earnest, full of awe at the power she wielded.

She and Ista didn't say a word, just rode in
the dark. Kallinesha's mother was a famed horsewoman. She'd won
races in her youth, daring tests of skill and bravery. She'd
laughed at a younger Kallinesha's fear of the fences she was
supposed to jump, the sharp poles she was meant to dodge. But it
had taught her courage. And horsemanship. Her father and oldest
brother, both expert riders, had never demanded any less of her in
their long rides than they had of themselves. So Kallinesha had
hardly broken a sweat, hardly begun to feel the hardness of the
saddle, when Ista begged for a rest.

Kallinesha allowed herself a smile. Ista
might be able to do magic she couldn't, even at fifteen to
Kallinesha's seventeen, even with only three years of training to
Kallinesha's seven. But Ista couldn't ride worth anything, held a
dagger as if it were a kitchen knife, and was a coward, plain as
that. Snakes scared her, and heights, and the tales Mistress told
in the dark some nights. Tales of murder and intrigue and danger.
She cried at the smallest provocation, but Mistress just said that
was a sign of how close Ista was to everything around her—in tune
with the essence of life in all things—and that made her a great
mage. Mistress had never said that about Kallinesha. The one time
she'd cried in front of Mistress—the one time—Mistress had
sneered.

"What would your father think of your tears,
child?"

She'd been ten years old, and she hadn't
cried since, not in front of Mistress, anyway. She hated the way
Mistress spoke with such sarcasm of her "great father, His
Greatness, His High, High Commandership."

"Why do you hate him so much?" she'd asked
once, in her third year, when she'd lost a little of her fear of
her mistress.

"I don't hate him, child, but the sun does
not rise because he tells it to, as you seem to think it does. And
there are some qualities of his you'd best not emulate."

"Like what?" she'd challenged.

"His conceit, and the price others pay for
it. His belief that the kingdom owes him. He's a hero all right,
child. Kept the Vorittians at bay, won us the war with Usktan,
caught that plot against the High Governor last year. But hero
worship is a dangerous thing—for the hero as well as the
worshipers. And a very dangerous thing for the truth. Remember
that."

Kallinesha hadn't talked so much of her
father since then, or her mother either, although she had recently
been appointed governor of Eslamyst. Stray comments still escaped
now and then. And yesterday, when Mistress began rhapsodizing again
about the trust the High Mage had put in her, and this crucial task
he'd given her, Kallinesha's patience wore out. "Then go find the
Chaos Mage," she snapped, though she burned with the shame of it
now. "If the High Mage had entrusted my father with the knowledge
he gave you, the Chaos Mage would be dead by now."

Mistress, for once, had no answer. And that
very night she'd tried the spell of far-knowing. She hadn't been
ready, hadn't performed all the precautionary rites, and now she
lay in a deathlike sleep, all because of Kallinesha. No time to
think of that now. She had to think of the King, of the kingdom, of
ridding Andalinn of the Chaos Mage's evil. When you do something
wrong, you fix it.

In the spring she had accompanied her father
on a ceremonial visit to the site of a major battle twenty years
before, to commemorate those who had died there defending the
kingdom. Despite the noble nature of the trip, and the honor of
being invited, it had been a misery of constant cold rain and
slippery country roads that wound up and down through endless steep
hills. The ceremony would have been stirring if it hadn't been so
watery and gray. They spent two more days in the village nearest
the battlefield, while her father's men performed honorary guard
patrols, like the ones that had discovered the enemy twenty years
before.

The second afternoon, Kallinesha was studying
her books of magecraft, reading up on secondary summonings and how
to avoid their unwelcome effects, when a dull rumble, longer and
deeper than thunder, shook the candlestick on her wobbly desk. She
went downstairs to the common room, where the innkeeper and a
cluster of her father's men were huddled around a broken pottery
bowl behind the bar, rubbing chins and murmuring. When her father
entered, they all stood to attention. His sharp eyes scanned the
place, as if to find the source of the rumblings. Kallinesha
couldn't help but shrink away from those eyes. He quickly put an
end to the idle puzzlement of his men and sent them to make sure
the rest of the villagers were unharmed.

After they left, Kallinesha stood in the
doorway, watching the rain and listening for thunder. After a while
she heard something, but not thunder. The clomp of a horse,
approaching from outside the village. When it thumped into the
courtyard, one of her father's men toppled off, covered head to toe
in mud. His hat was gone and a bloody scrape down one arm darkened
the mud to black.

"High Commander," the man shouted. "Mud
slide. Northeast. Half the patrol's buried."

Kallinesha's father made her stay at the inn,
but she saw the battered men they carried back near dark, one with
a leg so badly crushed it had already turned a puffy gray.
Kallinesha could still hear his screams sometimes, when she was
alone in Mistress's house, studying in the quiet. It was the men
they didn't bring back, however, that truly haunted her. Five dead,
including the one with the blue eyes, the one she'd flirted with a
little when her father wasn't looking, a clever, dutiful, perfect
example of what a defender of the kingdom should be. Dead. For no
reason.

The survivors claimed that the last downpour
had come when the clouds seemed to be lightening, and they all
agreed that the rain smelled strange just before the hillside
sloughed off. One of the wounded—an empath—didn't come around until
later that night. Kallinesha was crushing some herbs for the healer
when the man gasped awake and called for the High Commander, his
eyes wide and fearful.

"Sir," he said as soon as Kallinesha's father
could be fetched, "I felt something. Before the slide."

"What?"

He struggled for the right words. "Glee.
Cold, malicious glee. It was him, wasn't it?"

Her father didn't deny the possibility.

"Afterwards, I was clawing around in the mud
and the rocks, trying to get out, and I felt magic, sir. I know it.
Strong magic. And then everything went black."

Her father questioned the man a bit further,
then thanked him and bade him rest.

The patrols he sent out that night weren't
ceremonial. One of his best trackers headed each team, accompanied
by locals who knew the terrain.

"Do you think it was the Chaos Mage?"
Kallinesha asked when she got him alone later. "Summonings often
take on strange effects, like—"

"I know," he snapped. "And yes, I think it
very likely. But if he's left a trail, we'll find him."

He didn't leave a trail. They didn't find
him. But they found the recent remains of a camp, where someone had
left behind an enforcement bag, just like one of Kallinesha's, made
of fine leather and full of small milky stones Kallinesha couldn't
find names for in any of her books. Back in Goldhall, the High Mage
carefully studied the enforcement bag and declared that indeed it
had come from the Chaos Mage. Kallinesha's father cursed the rain
that had washed away all traces of his path.