“So it’s not the oufes you were worried about, after all,” Chandra said.
“Oh, I’m worried about them, too,” Luti said. “Never underestimate just how vengeful an oufe can be.”
There actually is a mission I’m asking you to go on for the monastery,” Luti said to Chandra as they strolled through the herb garden, having just said farewell to Samir at the eastern gate. “Considering the danger that I suspect is involved, I’d be reluctant to send you, under normal circumstances. But since it’s obviously a good idea for you to be absent for a while…”
“You want me to planeswalk?” Chandra guessed. “That’s not dangerous.”
“According to Jaya,” Luti said, “it is rather dangerous. There aren’t roads or signs or maps among the planes of the Multiverse, are there? There are no convenient doors indicating where to enter and leave the Blind Eternities. And I assume there aren’t any heralds helpfully crying things like, ‘Welcome to Regatha!’”
“Well, I guess it’s a little dangerous,” Chandra said with a shrug. “But nothing I can’t handle.”
“A place without time or logic. Without physical form or substance. No ordinary person can survive in the?ther that exists between the planes. Only a planeswalker can,” Luti mused. “And they say that a planeswalker can only survive there for a limited time. If you become disoriented and get lost in the Blind Eternities, you might never emerge. Before long, you’d be consumed there and die.”
“They say? They, who?” Chandra said dismissively. “Besides you, who around here knows anything about planeswalkers?”
“Is it true?” Luti demanded.
Chandra looked out over the vast forest below the mountain, and to the plains that lay further east. “All right, yes. I could get lost and die in the Blind Eternities. So what? You, or Brannon, or Samir, could get lost and die in the mountains. The first time you sent me to meet with Samir, I thought I’d get lost and die in the Great Western Wood!”
“Yes, I remember. When you finally made your way back here, you were… irritable about your misadventure in the woods.”
“But the only alternative to taking that sort of risk is to stay home all your life.”
“And staying home isn’t that safe these days, either,” Luti said dryly as she sat on a bench under one of the garden’s ancient olive trees. Her glance surveyed the vegetation. “Goodness, that rosemary really needs trimming! It’s taking over the whole place.”
Not remotely interested in gardening, Chandra sat next to her and asked, “So where do you want me to go?”
Luti folded her hands in her lap. “Kephalai. Which is also part of the danger I’m worried about.”
“Keph…” Chandra laughed. “I get to steal the scroll again?”
“That all depends.”
“On what?”
“On you, I suppose.” She frowned again at the overgrown rosemary, then said, “Brother Sergil and the other monks working on the scroll believe they’ve solved the riddle. I don’t suppose you remember the decorative border surrounding the text in the original scroll?”
“No. Like I said…”
“Yes, the planeswalker who stole it from us played tricks on your memory.” Luti nodded. “Well, after more days of studying the text, the brothers believe that the decorative border-which they did not copy or study during the brief time that we had the original here-contains the clue to where the artifact can be found.”
“The border? In what way?”
“They’re not sure. It may be a map, it may be hidden text, it may be a spell…” Luti shrugged. “So if you can look at the scroll again, you may be able to see the information concealed within the decorative border.”
“And to look at the scroll, I need to go back to Kephalai.”
“If it’s still there. If the planeswalker who stole it from us didn’t take it somewhere else entirely.”
“Even if the scroll is back on Kephalai now, I might not be able to interpret what’s in the border,” Chandra said.
“In that case, the monks would like an opportunity to study it themselves. So you’ll need to bring it back here again, if you can.” Luti looked at her. “If the scroll is back in the Sanctum of Stars now, it will certainly be under increased security. Stealing it a second time will be very dangerous.”
“Fortunately,” Chandra said, “I enjoy a challenge.”
“Yes, I thought you’d say that. Even so, please be careful. If only for the sake of an old woman who has become rather fond of you, even though you’re an awful lot of trouble to have around.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“I think it would be-” But Luti’s comment ended on a shocked gasp as the rosemary plant lifted itself from the soil and attacked them.
Chandra saw claws and fangs hiding amidst the plant’s spiky leaves as it suddenly turned into a tall, moving creature, with arms and legs that ended in the same spikes.
Heat flowed through her in immediate response to the danger, and she amputated one of the plant’s attacking limbs with a bolt of fire that she swept downward as she was assaulted. The creature hissed in pain, swayed, then doubled over and re-formed itself into some sort of small, leafy wolf-looking thing.
“How did it do that?” Chandra blurted, staring in surprise.
Luti gasped again. “Watch out!” She hurled a fireball at the creature as it crouched to attack. The projectile hit the growling four-legged bush in the face, but the leafy wolf easily shook off the blow and leaped for Chandra.
Her fireball was considerably more powerful than Luti’s, and when it hit the creature, the thing fell back with a screech, rolled over into a ball, and reshaped itself into the form of a giant spider.
“I hate spiders,” Chandra said with feeling.
She raised her hands to call forth a hot flow of lava, and dumped it all over the disgusting creature that was scuttling toward her with murderous intent. The massive spidery thing was smothered beneath the lava and incinerated by the liquid fire.
The two women stared at the glowing pile of cooling lava that had destroyed their attacker.
“Well.” Luti was panting. “That was… different.”
“Ugh! Did you say you know what that thing was?”
“Yes. I’m pretty sure it was a woodland shapeshifter,” Luti said, still breathless. “I’ve heard of them… but this is the first one… I’ve ever…” She sat down shakily on the bench again. “I’m too old for a shock like that.”
“Even I’m too old for a shock like that.” Chandra’s heart was pounding after the brief fight.
“No wonder the rosemary looked so overgrown,” Luti murmured.
“That was pretty clever, I have to admit.”
“Not that we won’t miss you, Chandra,” Luti said, her hand resting over her heart on her heaving chest, “but how soon can you go?”
Chandra talked with Brother Sergil that evening, trying to get some idea of what to look for in the decorative border if she saw the scroll again. She didn’t learn much. As Luti had already told her, it might be a pattern, it might be artfully concealed text, it might be an ornate map. Or it might be none of those. But he did tell her enough so that she would be able to identify the scroll, considering she had no memory of it.
Wonderful.
She decided to go to Brannon’s room while he was getting ready for bed to tell him she was going away again, but that she would be back before long.