Asunder: A Gathering of Chaos by Cameron Hopkin (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

absently, getting to her feet. A monochrome vista spread before her, black on black on black. They stood on a gentle slope of black sand overlooking a valley of black earth, with black mountains rising sharply in the middle distance. Dark gray lichens growing in sparse clumps along the rocks provided the only contrast. The sound of the sea beckoned at her, and she turned around to see that their hill peaked and fell away in a sheer cliff only a few decameters away. The deep blues and greens of the ocean felt like an assault on her senses in contrast to all the black around them. “Who could live in this hellscape?”

“My people,” replied the savage king, pride in his voice. “Our home is a harsh place where only the strongest survive – and that was before Bakal was unleashed. I don’t know how many of the clans survive.”

“That fat little moron brought us here? How?” She couldn’t quite wrap her mind around it. The Black Isle was more than a thousand kilometers from the Naga swamps of the eastern mainland, and most of that distance was ocean. To be suddenly, abruptly here… it defied understanding.

“He reshaped reality,” Gamarron said. “That’s how the Chaos works, I’m told. One decides how they want things to be, and they exert their will on the raw forces of creation. I suppose if anyone had been left alive to see it, we would have simply disappeared from the tunnels and appeared here.”

“I’d pay good money to see something like that,” Nira interjected from where she sat on the sand. A dark wet patch stained the sand beside her, and Renna was fiercely glad that she hadn’t been the only one to lose the contents of her stomach.

“You’d risk more exposure to the Chaos just to see something new?” she said. “I continue to underestimate your stupidity.”

“Call me stupid again, you hag,” the dark-skinned girl said, smiling. She let her fingers play over the lump of her pocket, holding Renna’s gaze.

Renna swelled with indignation, opening her mouth to skewer the mentally-deficient country whelp.

“Enough,” Gamarron said, stepping between them. “The Shard is not a toy, Nira.” The girl huffed in displeasure and spat in the sand. “And you, Renna,” he continued, turning to her, “should be wise enough to not provoke someone with more power than you.”

“More power,” she scoffed, turning away, but a cold certainty of the truth of that statement stole through her. I’m no Hand of Gaia anymore; I can’t claim the respect due to the priesthood. I had to do it, but… where lies my power now? She shouldn’t provoke the girl, but the thought of backing down was galling. Every word out of the hussy’s mouth itched at her like powdered sumac leaf. And now she holds power. Unbearable! It was more vital than ever for her to stay close to Gamarron. She clung to that first vision tenaciously. He will lead me to greater power than I could ever attain otherwise.

“This is your country, then,” she said loudly, to change the subject as much as anything else. “Tell us, King Gamarron, where we are.”

“I have said I am no king,” he said mildly. “A leader I was before I left, it’s true, but we bow to no one here. Only strength has value, not the accident of birth.”

If only strength rules, then you are the strongest of them, Renna thought, and it made her glad.

Gamarron helped Kest to his feet. The once-beautiful boy listened as the older man spoke. “Our chaos wielder very nearly hit his target. My holdfast is less than an hour’s walk into the hills just north of here. These cliffs are where I brought my wife when I asked her to be my mate.” He looked out over the waves. “It seems so long ago.”

“And once we reach your holdfast, then where?” Nira asked, pointedly not looking at Renna. Even that seemed calculated to annoy.

“Somewhere a tad warmer, please?” Tychus sighed, rubbing his bare arms.

“From there, we track the demon lord,” Gamarron said, looking at the black mountains, sea breeze catching his black robe and making its edges snap. “I know he was there, and the earth burns at his passing.” He paused, looking at his feet. “I’ll never forget it,” he added softly.

Renna recalled his tale of the fearsome Bakal murdering his entire holdfast and setting it ablaze. Once they’d killed the thing, it would make the perfect story to draw followers to his cause.

Gamarron pointed inland. “I hope to follow his trail to wherever he keeps his lair. Most likely it lies in the Great Scar; that is where the demons originate. It will not be easy to reach.”

“We can handle it,” Nira said confidently, patting at her pocket.

Gamarron looked at her gravely and crossed to where Guyrin lay, still deeply unconscious. “Look at him,” he commanded her. “Look at this.” He pointed to the swollen, angry tumor that pulsed on his spine, sticking out of the rent in his clothes. “This is what using the Chaos brings. He may not survive it. Do you want to look like this? Do you want to end up dependent on drugs to stay sane and keep you from using the Chaos until you explode?”

“You tell me,” the girl said in an ugly, bitter tone. “You’re the one who made me take it.”

Gamarron sighed, and his shoulders slumped. Renna watched him carefully. Only weeks before he’d been able mask his emotions in the face of far greater provocations. He is under too much strain. He is at his limits. She wanted to slap the girl for bothering him.

“I didn’t want you to take it,” the graybeard said. “It was the only choice I had available. Regardless, I beg you: don’t use the Chaos unless you must. Only when we face Bakal, only when you see a chance to destroy him. Then we can throw that cursed glass in the ocean and never trouble ourselves again.”