The Purifying Fire: A Planeswalker Novel (24 page)

She gasped and slapped her palms against the window.

Gideon grimaced and closed his eyes for a few moments. He lowered his head, and even from here, Chandra could see his chest heaving with his rapid breaths as he tried to master the pain.

“I’ve sometimes wondered the same thing myself,” Velrav said somberly. “Why go on? Why not just end it? The weight of my boredom sometimes becomes so
unbearable
, I think I’ll go mad.”

“You
are
mad.” She couldn’t take her eyes off Gideon.

“I have indeed wondered, from time to time, what could possibly make my life worth living again.”

Gideon tilted his head up again and looked for her in the window. She balled her hands into fists against the glass and didn’t bother to try hiding how enraged and upset she was. Velrav knew, anyhow. Of course he knew.

“And then you both arrived,” Velrav said, “and now I know.”

“Know what?” she asked absently as she leaned her throbbing head against the window. Her heart was beating like it wanted to escape her chest.

“Know what would make this existence bearable again,” the dark prince said. “Know what can make this tedious life as exciting as it used to be, long ago.”

She tore her gaze away from Gideon and turned to frown quizzically at the prince. “Not that I care,” she said, “but what are you talking about?”

“Now I know there is more beyond Diraden.” he said. “So much more, in fact, that I am eager to explore it. And somehow, you and your bounty hunter will help me.”

T
hat’s his plan? To become a planeswalker?” Gideon’s voice was weary.

“Yes,” Chandra said.

“What have you been telling him?”

“He kept pressing me about things and really I just got tired of it. I felt like if I told him the truth he would leave me alone.”

“Well, it’s really the least of our worries. It’ll never happen.”

“Well, there’s a little more to the plan. He’s going to use you to do it. He has some blood ritual that he’s preparing with the court magi. He thinks he can transmute your essence, or something.”

They were talking through the door of Gideon’s dungeon cell. He had been moved from the scene of his public bloodletting in the courtyard once the Prince had come to a decision. That had been some days ago.

From the next cell over, an old man’s demented laughter rang out intermittently.

“Has that been going on the whole time?” she asked. Chandra had been given leave to move about the castle unsupervised. Velrav was so confident in his enchanment
that he felt he had little to fear. Nevertheless, Chandra’s feet and hands were shackled so that every where she went, she did it by taking mincing little steps. She didn’t go many places. Still, she had been able to bribe one of the castle guards with a small bit of fire quartz that Brannon had given her on her last night at Keral Keep. That a simple rock was so exotic was a testament to Diraden’s charm. She was grateful it had gotten her down here to see Gideon.

“Yes. If our man is to be believed, that’s the king.”

“Oh, yes indeed! I am the king and my rule would be absolute had my rule had not been absolved,” he said, before breaking into uncontrolled laughter.

“That’s not even a good play on words,” said Chandra.

“It’s better than some. Most of the time he doesn’t make sense,” said Gideon, over the ever-louder howls of laughter. “But the story Falia told us was more or less true. In between his laughing fits, he has told me a little about the prince’s power, and his own. It seems that magical power here is based on lineage.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure exactly, but all of this, the pall, the dampening spells, he achieves it all through rituals using the king’s blood. It seems the prince’s only true power comes from the king. That’s why he has kept him alive for all these years.

“Indeed! The whelp knows he’s nothing without me. If he ever wants total power, I must give it to him and he knows I never will.” The maniacal laughter followed again. “And if I die without passing it to him, another will be born. He will have nothing. So he keeps me here, the next best thing, prolonging my life with blood magic.”

Silence followed for a few moments, one of the rare lulls in his laughter.

“If it’s your power, why can’t you use it against him?” asked Chandra.

“He has cursed me. Imagine that! Cursed me with the help of demons. He thinks he paid with the blood of his family. He thinks he will live forever, but there is more to come, and they will have their payment.”

“Lovely,” was all Chandra could think to say. The vitriol in the old man’s voice made her skin crawl. There was little doubt for her that this was the king.

“All lovely things have an ending …
ha!”
Whatever was funny about this was lost on the two of them.

“This is how it goes,” said Gideon. “A moment or two of lucidity and then he moves from word to word. If there is a point I don’t see it.”

“Gideon, things are really looking bad. I mean, I may just be stuck here. He says the two of us will explore the Multiverse together, but he’s going to kill you. Why did you have to come after me when the Fog Riders came?” she asked.

“You were slung over their saddle like a sack of grain. There was so much blood pouring from your head, I wasn’t sure you’d live.” He gaze went to the healing wound on her temple. “It looks a lot better now.”

“It is. But why did you fight them for me? You could be on the outside trying to figure something out.”

“I guess I didn’t think. I thought they were going to kill you. I panicked.”

“You weren’t thinking?” Chandra asked, despite everything, unable to conceal a hint of enjoyment.

“You don’t reserve the right to act irrationally, Chandra. Let’s remember I’m the one imprisoned in a dungeon. You’re the one sleeping in a nice bed and being offered a life spent trapsing across the planes of the Multiverse.”

“I don’t think his offer is reliable,” she said. “He seems a little … cracked.”

“It seems to run in the family,” Gideon said dryly.

“Look, we made a deal when you got to Diraden, and you’ve stuck to your part of the bargain, so I’ll stick to mine. We’ll keep working together to get out of here.”

He looked at her through the barred opening in the door, his gaze impassive. She knew that this was the face he offered to people when he wanted to conceal something. It made her feel impatient with him, even angry. He had nothing to conceal from her, not if they were going to escape.

“Why did you risk your life twice to steal the scroll on Kephalai?” he asked.

“You knew the scroll was precious,” she said irritably. “You had it in your possession. Are you trying to tell me you didn’t even look at it?”

“I looked at it.”

“And?”

“And
what?”
He shrugged, then winced a little as his fresh wounds protested. “A spell written in a text I’m guessing you can’t read—”

“Can
you?”

“No, I can’t read it. But I know where it is from.”

“Don’t mess with me Gideon.”

“It’s old, which explains what it was doing in the Sanctum of Stars. But that doesn’t explain
why you
want it so badly.”

“What does anyone want with anything? It’s old, yeah. But it’s unique. There’s nothing else like it in the whole Multiverse, is what I’ve been told. It’s a spell, yeah. But the monks back on Regatha think it could lead to something of immense power. Something way bigger than you or me.” She paused while the king entered into another round of
hysterics. “I don’t know, Gideon. I wanted it for the glory. Something to make the Blind Eternities see.”

“Never rely on the glory of morning, nor on the smile of a mother-in-law. Ah, ha, ha …”

As they waited for this latest laughing jag to subside, Gideon considered what Chandra had said, the passion she’d showed.

“It’s from Zendikar,” he said. “A plane of some repute. It is said to be host to some of the most powerful mana sources in the Multiverse, but it is also unpredictable, irratic. Violent and pacific in the same moment.”

“Have you ever been there?”

“Never, but in my youth I searched.”

Chandra stared at Gideon without seeing him, her mind fixed on what the scroll could lead to.

She wrapped her fingers around the bars that separated them. “You’re sure the plane exisits?”

“I can’t be certain, but, yes, reasonably sure.”

“Do you know what this means, Gideon?” A light burned in Chandra’s eyes. “If we could get to Zendikar and find this thing that the monks talk about? Think of the things we could do. Think of the power! The adventure!”

“Chandra, you don’t even know what it is. It could be anything. It could be the darkest power you’ve ever known. It could kill you. It could …”

“You said it, Gideon. It could be anything. And we’ll never know until we find it.”

After a moment, Gideon looked into Chandra’s eyes. They sparkled with a clarity he had never seen before. There was hope there, to be sure, but there was something more. To say that it was fire would be obvious. To say that it was life would be an understatement.

“We can’t do anything until we get out of here,” he said in a monotone.

Chandra hung her head. There was silence in the dungeon.

“If I may say so,” said the king in a remarkably clear voice. “I believe I can help.”

T
he plan was a little crazy. So many things could go wrong, she was sure Gideon would never go for it, preferring instead to sacrifice himself so that she could live, or some ridiculous thing like that. But the king said he could help. He told them he still had some tricks up his sleeve.

This was how he told them they could beat the prince and escape the shroud that held Diraden in darkness and restricted their connection to mana. The king would need some of Gideon’s blood. Not much, maybe a spoonful and he would offer a similar amount of his own. He would use a bit of childhood magic he’d learned to confound his parents so many centuries ago. He and his siblings had often traded a bit of their blood in order to assume one another’s appearance and so get out of lessons. The king was a bit hard to stop once he started on his reminiscence. Chandra had to be diligent in keeping him focused.

The king said he could make himself look like Gideon and vice versa. The old man had been alive too long, he said. It was time for him to die, especially if his death were vexing to the ungrateful whelp sitting on his throne. He would go in Gideon’s place to be killed. When the prince
mistakenly killed him, the shroud would be lifted. The prince would be powerless before them.

“But what about this transmutation he hopes to achieve? What if he is able to incorporate your essence?” Gideon asked, still skeptical of the plan.

“If it were possible, he would have tried. Don’t you think?” asked Chandra. She had been in the dungeon for some time now. She couldn’t rely on the guard to let her stay forever, or even be at the door when she tried to leave.

“The boy knows nothing. It is impossible,” said the king. “My time has come and he cannot stop it.”

“I am not filled with confidence,” said Gideon.

“What else are we going to do?” asked Chandra. “I don’t see a lot of options.”

“Okay, but how are we going to move the blood between cells?”

“It must be in the woman’s mouth!” shouted the king before entering into the first round of laughter in quite some time.

The thought was ridiculous to Chandra. Was this all an old crank’s plan to put his tongue in her mouth? For the first time she moved down the hallway to the cell the king occupied and looked inside. What she saw nearly made her faint. Sitting cross-legged on the floor of his cell, the old man looked so pallid as to be translucent. Light blue veins covered his naked body like the veins of some gelid mineral. He was unbearably thin. He laughed with his toothless mouth wide, his tongue dryly avian. His black eyes were as lusterless as the surrounding stone.

“Gideon. We have to do this, but I’m not using my mouth.”