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

Leaving the chaos wielder on the floor – I see blood; I hope I didn’t kill him – Kest ran to the far side of the room. Nira was lying in the corner in a heap, fire edging across the carpet toward her. Her costume was charred, and her eyes were closed. He stepped over a toad that was waddling away from the flames. Was that a pet, or did he make that out of someone just now? He decided he didn’t want to know.

He took her by the armpits and pulled her clear of the encroaching flames, praying to the old ones that she was alive. She stirred and coughed, and his heart unclenched. “Kest?” she muttered. “What happened?”

“Nothing good,” he responded. “We need to go. Can you walk?”

She groaned and stretched. “Nothing broken. Got a burn that hurts like the shadow. I was playing dead, but the smoke must have gotten to me. That man’s crazy as a houseful of spore huffers. Is he dead?”

Kest shook his head. “I don’t think so. I hope not.”

She frowned at that, but all she said was, “We should leave him.”

Kest was inclined to agree, but Gamarron had been specific. Getting the chaos wielder was the whole reason they had gone through all this, and there he sat, unconscious and ripe for the taking. Gamarron knows what he’s doing. He’s the chief. He wasn’t about to go against the man’s wishes. “Where’s Kojan?” he said.

The look on her face told the story, but she pointed to the opening in the wall as she got to her feet. Kest got as close to the breach as he could with flame dripping from the ceiling and peered out. A charred husk of a body stained the pristine, manicured grass below. The burns were bad enough that it could have been anyone, but one way or the other, it looked like they’d have to make do without the master thief’s help.

Just then, a dark shape crested the wall on the far side of the gardens, nimbly avoiding the tall wooden spikes and embedded shards of obsidian intended to prevent such an intrusion. The intruder thumped down lightly amid the bushes and looked up – it was Gamarron! Kest’s innards gave the same queasy jump they always did when he saw the man now. It was anticipation, respect, dread, and resentment all rolled into a ball. He couldn’t say he liked the old monk, but he would follow him – and at the moment, his arrival was a gift. He waved to the savage, who crossed the lawn in moments, giving the burnt corpse only a brief glance.

“I’m glad to see you alive,” he called up softly. “Is Nira well?”

She stepped up to the breach. “We need to leave, grandpa. I heard someone on the stairs.” She coughed and ducked her head. Smoke was billowing over their heads into the afternoon sky.

“Where is the chaos wielder?” Gamarron asked urgently.

“He’s here. Unconscious, I hope. I may have hurt him badly.” Kest shrugged. “Sorry.”

“Throw him down; I’ll catch him.”

Kest had no doubt that the gnarled tree-stump of a man below could do just that, but still he hesitated. “He’s insane. I don’t think we should bring him.”

“Throw him down now and get yourselves out of there,” Gamarron commanded. “There’s no time.”

He was right, and Kest couldn’t make himself argue any further regardless. Nira threw him an incredulous look as he went to collect the fallen chaos wielder, but he avoided her eyes. She doesn’t understand.

Guyrin was still breathing, but the back of his head was soaked in blood, and he was totally limp. Carrying the fellow wasn’t difficult – he was small of frame despite his paunch. The hardest part was not touching those lesions on his back. They smelled bad. I hope he doesn’t die. He wasn’t sure he could take the weight of Gamarron’s disapproval.

Kest returned to the hole and spotted Gamarron below, who motioned with one hand to throw his burden down. With as much care as he could manage, Kest lifted the chaos wielder out and away from himself, trying to heave him out away from the building as far as he could. It would all be for naught if their man split open on the ground a meter shy of the one waiting to catch him.

Gamarron stutter-stepped back and then forward, gauging the trajectory of the body from three floors down. Kest had tried to pitch the body out as close to horizontal as possible, but Guyrin’s feet pitched downward before his head, leaving the nude man plummeting feet first like that crazy cliff diver he’d once met back on Pacari.

Gamarron placed himself perfectly, and he clamped Guyrin’s legs to him at just the right moment while stepping forward in a lunge, letting the man’s torso slam into his shoulder and his upper body drape across his back. He stumbled to his knees and went down sideways in a heap as the lateral force of the fall knocked him askew. The nude chaos wielder lay athwart his rescuer, no worse for wear than before. “I don’t suppose there are any clothes handy up there?” Gamarron asked, grimacing.

“Hey!” came a cry from the doorway. The other guards had arrived. There were at least five of them advancing into the room, clubs and spears held at the ready. One had a nasty-looking hooked mace made of some kind of bone knobs. Nira, who had been nearly across the room, backed away warily. “Get on the ground and stay there,” growled their leader, “or this is gonna get ugly.”

Kest laughed wearily. These men would kill him whether he laid down or not. He glanced back out of the breach at the gardens below. Gamarron was hauling Guyrin away as quickly as he could, and the ground was too far away to jump with any safety. They’d break a leg, at least, and that