“No. I’ve only been here a short time.” He added, “Even less time than you’ve been here.”
She frowned. “How do you know how long I’ve been here?”
“Because not long ago, someone started practicing extreme fire magic in the mountains.”
“How do you know about that?” she asked in surprise.
“You’re not exactly discreet, Chandra,” he said with a touch of exasperation. “And no one on Regatha had ever seen anything like that before. Except for one person, Walbert said. A planeswalker who was here long ago, according to legend, and whose power and, uh, personality inspired the establishment of Keral Keep.”
“Walbert knows about planeswalkers?”
“Yes. Doesn’t the mother mage of the monastery know? I mean, if it was founded because of a-”
“Yes, she knows. It’s her monastery. But how does Walbert know about Jaya Ballard?”
“That’s the name of the planeswalker who was here?” Gideon said with a shrug, “Walbert knows a lot of things. He’s well educated, well informed, and well organized.”
“He’s also arrogant, interfering, overbearing-”
“When he became aware of the spells being practiced,” Gideon said, speaking as if he hadn’t heard her at all, “he suspected that another planeswalker had come to Mount Keralia after all these years. So he kept an eye on the situation. He soon learned that there was a brand new resident at the monastery, a woman who had arrived right before all that big magic started being let loose in the mountains.” After a pause, he added, “And no one seemed to know anything about this woman, except the she was unusually powerful. She had simply… arrived one day, and she never talked about her past or where she came from.”
“How did he learn this?”
“I told you. Walbert’s well informed and well organized.” Gideon added, “Besides, gossip travels faster than galloping horses. Even if it wasn’t malicious, there was bound to be talk, Chandra.”
“Hmph. So why did you come to Regatha? To sit at Walbert’s feet in admiration?”
“I came for the Purifying Fire,” he said.
“Ah. I’ve heard of it.” She tilted her head and studied him. “You came to Regatha to increase your power.”
“Yes.” He’d evidently decided, once Samir blew his cover, not to hold anything back, and she was distantly pleased that she was going to, finally, get some honest answers from him, but more than that, she was still enraged at what he’d done.
Chandra thought it over and said skeptically, “So did Walbert simply give you free access to this mysterious source of white mana that people say is what has made the Order so powerful here?”
“He wanted something in exchange,” Gideon said.
“You mean, he wanted you to go after the planeswalker that he suspected had come to the Keralian Monastery.”
“Yes.”
“And do what?” she said, feeling her blood heat. “Kill me?”
“Just take you into custody.”
“What does that mean?”
Silence.
“Gideon?” she prodded. “What did Walbert plan to do once he had me in custody?”
“I don’t know.” There was a pause. “I didn’t ask. At the time, I didn’t particularly care.”
“Of course not,” she said. “You just wanted access to the Purifying Fire.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “But then you chased down a ghost warden and killed it for no reason-”
“No reason?” She couldn’t believe her ears.
“It was harmless,” he said. “It had minimal defenses, and it only used them when directly threatened.”
“It was a spy for the Order!”
“You also burned down part of the Western Wood-”
“Which is not your concern! Or Walbert’s!”
“-and you attacked four peacekeepers without provocation.”
“Peacekeepers? Without provocation?” Now she was truly enraged; she could feel the fire igniting in her blood. “I chased away four invading soldiers who had no business being here! And Walbert has no right to try to impose his will on the woodlanders!”
“You imposed yours there when you set fire to their lands,” Gideon pointed out. “I’d say that turned out a lot worse for them than Walbert trying to govern some of their excesses.”
“What excesses?”
“Summoning dangerous creatures, engaging in deadly tribal feuds-”
“How is any of that Walbert’s concern? Or yours?” Chandra challenged.
He said tersely, “It became Walbert’s concern when some of those creatures-which, hard as this may be to imagine, Chandra, aren’t always well supervised after they’re summoned-started terrorizing farmers and villagers on the plains.”
“If their farms and villages border the woodlands, then they’ve got to expect-”
“What do they have to expect, Chandra? To see their children stolen? Their crops destroyed? Their livestock eaten? Their villages rampaged?”
“Problems like that don’t give the Order a right to interfere in the forest!”
“Of course it does! But what gave you the right to interfere here?”
“I was protecting the woodlanders!”
“That’s your idea of protecting them?” Gideon unleashed his anger. “Killing a harmless creature that was summoned here for their own good, and setting fire to their forest?”
“For their own good?” she shouted.
“If the excesses practiced in the forest don’t cease, what do you suppose the farmers and townspeople will do, Chandra?” He didn’t give her a chance to respond. “It will be a bloodbath!”