Then she sensed it. A dark, bitter energy… but blessedly physical, solid, and tangible. And because she could sense it, because her will drew her toward it, a path to it began opening before her in the?ther.
She hesitated. The plane she was approaching didn’t feel at all familiar, and it certainly didn’t feel welcoming.
Should she travel further? The next plane might be a better choice.
No. The next plane she encountered might just as easily be a worse choice. Or, in her weakness and confusion, she might not find another plane at all. Not before she succumbed to the consuming whirlwind she was trying to escape.
It must be now. Here. Go.
She moved through the?ther, following the path that beckoned her to the physical plane she sensed. She let the plane’s sullen energy lure her forward as she focused with all her might on making the transition away from the eternal flow surrounding her to the finite, solid reality that lay ahead of her.
Her body, her senses, her mind, all felt torn apart, stretched to the breaking point between two realities. She fought fear and struggled for control. She reached for the dark plane she sensed, stretching toward it with all her will.
Chandra’s feet touched solid ground.
The sensation was so startling, the weight of her own body so unexpected, that she fell down, collapsing into an awkward heap with a choked gasp.
Then she lay there, eyes closed, her face pressed into the damp earth with grateful relief. She spread her palms against the ground, reveling in its solid, unyielding presence.
I’m alive. Alive!
The worst was over. She had escaped Kephalai and the Prelate’s dungeon; escaped death by slow torture at the hands of the Enervants.
Right now, being lost on some wholly unfamiliar plane that radiated dark energy didn’t matter. Even losing the scroll to that mage didn’t matter. She was just very, very happy she wasn’t dead.
Lying on the ground, soaking up the wonderful feeling of being alive, Chandra gradually became aware of a scuffling, scurrying sound nearby. When she opened her eyes to see what had made the noise, she realized that it was nighttime. She pushed herself to a sitting position and looked around, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the dark shadows of her surroundings.
High overhead, a full moon glowed white in the endless, starless black of the night sky. Its cool, silvery light shone down brightly on an eerie landscape of twisted trees, squatting bushes, dark expanses of emptiness, and the tumbled ruins of crumbling stone structures. The trees and bushes that Chandra could make out in the moonlight looked strangely stark and bony.
She realized none of them had any leaves.
That seemed odd. The temperature was mild. The air was cool, but not uncomfortably so-certainly not enough to suggest winter or a season of dormancy. The damp ground suggested preciptation. Indeed, the air itself felt humid. Obviously, drought hadn’t caused the absence of leaves on all of the trees and bushes around here.
She wondered what had caused it. Had there been a fire here recently?
Curious, she rose to her feet, intending to examine some of the denuded branches more closely. The act of rising, however, made her so dizzy she almost fell down again. Her vision swam darkly, and she felt lightheaded.
That was when she realized she was desperately thirsty. She recalled now that she had been thirsty even back in the dungeon on Kephalai. And who knew how long ago that was? What seemed like days could also have been minutes-or even longer. Regardless, her physical needs were reasserting themselves now.
Chandra took a steadying breath and realized she must find water. Her stomach rumbled, and she realized that finding something to eat would be a good idea, too.
The air was heavy with damp and decay. Not the fetid odor of the Envervants in her cell back on Kephalai, but the rich, dark smell of sodden soil, of decomposing vegetation mingling with fog. This seemed like a plane where quenching her thirst shouldn’t be too difficult. There must surely be substantial water here.
She heard scuffling again in the nearby undergrowth. The rustling sound of dead plants being brushed aside by some small creature’s passing struck her as strange. Like the barren trees and naked bushes, the rustling of dead vegetation didn’t seem to go with the damp richness of the soil and the air.
With her curiosity reawakened, Chandra walked past the tumbled, moss-covered stone walls surrounding the spot where she had entered this plane, and went over to a dark, twisted tree that was silhouetted by the moonlight. Her feet encountered a denser, softer surface as she got close to the tree, and she looked down.
Mulch, she realized, all around the tree where the leaves had once fallen. She wrapped her fingers around a slender tree branch and gave it a slight squeeze. She was no expert, but the wood didn’t feel right. It was slightly soft, as if the tree were rotting.
Chandra wondered whether the tree had become diseased and shed its leaves in its initial stages of dying.
She looked around at the moon-swept landscape, where all she saw were bare branches drooping in the silvery light.
It seemed that all the trees in the area had become infected with the same disease. Chandra started to wonder whether this was a local phenomenon, or whether the whole plane was covered with dying vegetation.
She started to feel uneasy, increasingly aware of the dark, bitter energy that permeated this place. Instinct warned her that whatever was killing the plant life here, the cause was more likely magical than mundane.
With her senses restored and her mind functioning again, Chandra realized that she was more than ready to return to Keral Keep. She would report that she had failed to get the scroll and didn’t even know where it was now.
Well, presumably it’s in the hands of some opportunist on Kephalai, she thought with a scowl.
She found this infuriating.
It would also be difficult for her to return to Kephalai and hunt down Gideon. Impossible, really. She might not be a shrewd strategic planner, and she hated losing, but she wasn’t a fool. She knew that she had very little chance of moving freely on Kephalai ever again. No chance, actually. She had destroyed the Sanctum of Stars, wreaked havoc in the city, and stolen the scroll a second time.
Because of her actions, she would be hunted on Kephalai for a long time. There would certainly be a price on her head. Descriptions of her would circulate. If there were any tall, red-headed women in the Prelate’s realm, they’d be harassed. She might even become the most notorious criminal they had ever known. In spite of what she knew was right, this gave Chandra a giddy feeling. She would go down in legend, or at least she hopped so.
Chandra moved over to a hedge of bushes and absently examined their branches, wondering whether she could have escaped with the scroll if that black-haired mage with his glowing, daggertail whip hadn’t interfered. She’d never know for sure, but it was easier to blame him for the way things had gone. And she reveled for a few moments in a vision of roasting him alive in the fires of retribution.
Acknowledging that this dream would likely never be realized, she sighed. Meanwhile, her examination of the bushes revealed that they, too, were dying.
She decided that, ravenous though she was, if she came across any trees or bushes bearing fruit, she wouldn’t eat it. Whatever was killing these plants could have easily infected other, seemingly healthy, foliage.
Chandra gazed around the darkened landscape again and realized that, in fact, she was skeptical about finding any healthy-looking plants, at all. The sullen shroud of dark magic she sensed earlier seemed to stretch far and wide across this place.
She needed to get out of here and return to Regatha. There were problems to be faced and solved back there. Hopefully, the oufe tribe that wanted her dead had calmed down a bit by now. And as for the Order of Heliud, and Walbert’s demand that Chandra be turned over to his custody… Well, just let Walbert’s soldiers try to come take her from the mountains. She’d make sure it didn’t take long for them to rethink that plan.