by Jak Koke
“And then the surging wave of blue fire washed over me and blotted out the world. And in its wake …”
Duvan remembered the young elves and the elders yelling at him to run away. The fire would kill him or change him into a monster. He remembered feeling …
“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing had changed. My gut slowly returned to normal. My chest etching remained untouched by the spellplague, and I emerged unharmed.
“After that my life took a completely different course. A more treacherous and sinister course.”
Slanya stared silently into the fire. Her own history of chaos flickered on the edges of her memory. Elusive.
She looked up, watching Duvan carefully as he paused in telling his story. He had packed and repacked their backpacks, had organized the firewood, and he kept looking out over the edge of the mote at the swirling vortex ahead. Now he paced, having nothing more to occupy his attention while he considered how to continue.
After a minute, Duvan went on, “They were surprised that I emerged from the Plaguewrought Land whole and untouched. And soon after, it became apparent that some of the elves were afraid of me. I was already a social outcast because of my race, but now I was alien.
“Boys and girls died during the fire-etching rituals. Not all, of course, but a goodly number. The rest were marked by the changelands-etched. Nobody came away untouched. It had never happened before.
“I found myself shunned. Friends I had worked so hard to make avoided me. Everyone whispered about me as I passed. They didn’t know what to do with me. And then Rhiazzshar came to me and made everything right. She was a young priestess of Silvanus-very beautiful, very kind. She befriended me and held me while I cried in her arms. I was desperate for some affection, and she was very comforting.
“Rhiazzshar told me that the others were afraid of me, that they didn’t understand why the changelands had had no effect. She wanted to know if I knew. But of course I had no idea. She said that we had to find out why so that we could convince the others that I was no threat. Then I would be accepted, perhaps even regarded as a hero.
“I asked her how I could do that, and she suggested I start by seeing what my limits were. How long can I resist the Plaguewrought Land? Is it just avoiding me, or am I impervious to it?
“I considered what she said, but I was afraid to try any of that. She held me and said it was all right.”
The emotion in Duvan’s voice tore at Slanya’s heart. Rhiazzshar had clearly meant something to him. She also realized that Duvan was revealing a great secret about himself. His ability to avoid the effects of the changelands wasn’t luck at all, and it was only partially rooted in knowledge. If what he had told her was true, Duvan was resistant to spellplague.
Around them, the sound of the storm had grown-a keening, scratchy wail, like an orchestra of sand rubbed on tin, punctuated by the booms of earth cracking apart and smashing together. It was close now, and Slanya needed to not think about it. So far, this mote had been drifting through a patch of calm, but it felt like it could pass into the storm at any moment.
“I fell in love with Rhiazzshar. She was my coming-of-age, really. After my failed fire-etching ceremony, she and I spent all our free time together, mostly isolated from the others. And the elders allowed it, which I suppose should have given me warning signs. But I was blissfully in love.
“Finally, one day, lying in bed after making love together, she convinced me to go back through the border veil. To be fair, I wanted to know what the limits of my ability were. But I wouldn’t have gone without her encouragement.
“At first I just went in for a minute, and then it was two, then five, until I was remaining inside the border of the changelands for an hour or longer, just coming out when I got so tired I couldn’t see clearly. And while the blue fire didn’t seem to be able to touch me, exposure to it made me exhausted.
“Every time when I would come out of the Plaguewrought Land, Rhiazzshar would hold me, caress me, and make love with me. We got into a cycle, and eventually I started to suspect she was manipulating me. I didn’t see it for such a long time. A woman like that can blind a man. Plus she was my only friend, and if she wasn’t really my friend, then I had no one. That prospect was too terrible to believe.
“I had to know for sure. So I decided to stop going in. I hadn’t tested the full limits of my spellplague resistance, but I knew enough to be content for a while. Rhiazzshar wasn’t happy with that decision. At first she tried to persuade me to keep learning more about my abilities, and when I refused, she tried harder. Her methods of persuasion were very enjoyable.” Duvan laughed wryly. “But when it became clear to her that I wasn’t going to keep testing myself, she changed. She told me that she wished it hadn’t come to this, that our pleasant fantasy could have continued indefinitely. But the safety of Wildhome and the Chondalwood was paramount. They needed to understand my ability fully. They needed to make sure I was no threat, and to find out how they could use me to protect them.
“At first I was hurt. Betrayed. But I didn’t fully comprehend the extent of the betrayal until later. My life changed completely yet again. Rhiazzshar kept coming to see me, but we were no longer lovers. I learned that she had been keeping a record of my excursions in the changelands-a log of my exposure.
“The experiments continued every tenday or so. They put me in a cage and pushed it across the border then left it there-longer and longer each time, until I was inside the cage swallowed by the Plaguewrought Land for three days.”
Duvan gritted his teeth in firelight. “Rhiazzshar said she was sorry. She said she still loved me, but that she loved her people more. She came to me several times. And at first I just wanted company, I needed caring, and so I accepted her. But over time, I hardened and grew jaded, cynical, and solitary. She never offered again.
“About a year later, I think, a burst of blue fire destroyed part of the cage. I had learned how to control my ability, just a little. Some things near me are protected, and with practice I had learned how to extend or shrink the area within limits. I shrank it as much as I could and huddled in a corner of the cage, and when the wave of spellplague came near me, it vaporized the opposite side of the cage.
“I walked out and into the heart of the Plaguewrought Land, straight into the hell that you’ve now seen with your own eyes.” He gestured toward the center of the storm vortex that they drifted toward.
Slanya wiped away a tear and felt the urge to reach out to him, to offer some comfort, but she didn’t know how. The fire had died down, but Duvan stoked it with more wood. Slanya was glad; the air was chilly this far up.
“That journey across the changelands was a nightmare. I was alone. I was weak. I was confronted with an unknown chaos. Once again, I didn’t care if I lived or died. Quite frankly, I expected to perish.”
Duvan paced at the edge of the halo of firelight. “But an unexpected thing started to happen; I started to feel the faintest stirrings of hope. I had escaped my long captivity. Perhaps I could remain free. Perhaps I could reinvent myself. I had no idea how I would accomplish that, and it seemed so distant, so remote, that it was nigh impossible. But that dim ray was still there and growing stronger each day I survived.
“Several times I nearly fell through the perforated fabric of the world and into the Underdark. Ultimately, however, I made it across. I was scraped up from a number of falls, and bruised from many a battle with the changelands, but otherwise whole.”
Duvan gave a wry laugh. “After I passed out of the Plaguewrought Land, I was starving and weak, so parched that I nearly died of thirst. And ironically, it was a group of feral elves who found me. They gave me food and water. They had been searching for me, so they could take me back to Wildhome.”
“Oh, no!” Slanya blurted out. Her chest hurt in sympathy for him. “I’m so sorry.” It had been a long time ago, but she understood that level of futility. She understood. She’d spent a long time planning to escape from her aunt, only to be caught again once she did,
returned home, and punished with beatings.
Duvan stopped his pacing and glanced at her. “Thank you,” he said. “When I realized who had found me, I lost all hope. And frankly, I started looking for opportunities to end my life.” He began pacing again, like a caged beast, at the edge of the firelight.
Slanya was silent, staring at the deep orange-red glow of the coals, watching the occasional spark fly on the waves of heat up into the sky. Suicide was not anathema to her. Kelemvor wasn’t unambiguously opposed to it. Under the right conditions, a life could be ended voluntarily and by choice. Still, in her philosophy those circumstances were very narrow.
“The elf group camped on the edge of the Chondalwood for several days, waiting for me to recover a little before taking me back to the forest city.” Duvan’s voice seemed to drift out of the darkness. “However, early on the second evening someone came with a group of armed fighters-Tyrangal and her Copper Guard.
“Tyrangal had gotten news, she told me later, of a human who was resistant to the plagueland’s effects. She had spies in Wildhome apparently. And while she hadn’t been prepared to take on the entire elven city, she was perfectly willing to go up against a small reconnaissance group. The elves were charmed by her golden tongue. They were also afraid of her, so they eventually left without me.
“Tyrangal took me back to her mansion and offered me a place of distinction in her organization. She offered to continue my training: weaponry, woodcraft, mastering my spellscar. She helped me in so many ways. I had never met anyone like her.
“I stayed for several months before testing out my freedom. Tyrangal had told me that I could come and go as I wished, but she had also made the argument that she could protect me more effectively if I stayed close. Eventually I needed to make sure I really was able to leave.”
Duvan approached the fire with some more sticks. He started breaking them and setting them on the dying fire. “She let me go,” he said. “I wandered for months, mostly thieving to make my way. But I was on my own! I was anonymous and not bound to anyone. I traveled north from port to port for the better part of a half-year.
“Eventually I returned on my own, and Tyrangal welcomed me back. She said that she had a job for me, that it would be challenging and lucrative. Would I take it? Obviously, I accepted. I’ve been with her for a few years now, but I am free to make my own choices, and the benefits have been quite substantial.”
Duvan stood in silence for a while, staring into the fire, his story seemingly at an end.
Duvan’s tale had brought back cascades of memories for Slanya. Her own childhood had been filled with manipulation and horror. Aunt Ewesia had not only been strict, she used to change the rules arbitrarily and punish Slanya when she broke them.
Slanya understood what it was like to never be able to win. She had never known when she was doing something that would get her the strap or the paddle or the hot iron on the backs of her thighs. Slanya shuddered with the remembrance. How could she have forgotten about that?
“Thank you for sharing your story with me,” she said.
He gave her a solemn nod.
“Now, I can help you share your burden.”
Duvan glanced up at her. “What?”
“What you’ve been through was horrific,” Slanya said. “But you don’t have to be alone with your pain.”
“Exactly how can you help share my burden?”
Slanya sensed danger in his tone but felt she should explain. “I can sympathize with what you went through.”
The keening of the storm suddenly grew louder, and wind gusted around them. Blue The gauze of clouds above flickered blue. The storm was closing in on them.
Duvan seemed unfazed. “You think you understand what I went through by hearing me tell it?”
“No, I don’t fully understand,” Slanya said. “But I do know you better. And I feel confident that if you’d met different people after the attack on your village-if you’d met people who had nurtured you instead of exploiting you-you would have been able to trust them and they would have taken care of you.”
“And what? Losing my twin sister to a spellplague storm would’ve been easier for me? Finding out my true love was using me would have been all fine?”
Slanya knew the question was a trap, but by Kelemvor she was right in this. “No, but living with those losses and betrayals would have been less traumatic.”
Duvan’s sadness had grown into full anger now. “You think everything can be solved by order and a society based on trust, but it can’t. Some things can’t be solved.”
Slanya was about to say something but a loud crack from the plaguestorm filled the air. There was a brilliant flash and when her eyes adjusted to the light, Duvan was gone.
No, there he was, walking away. She watched as he strode out of the light cast by the fire and passed into darkness.
Into the storm.
The air rang like a thousand tiny bells around Duvan. He didn’t know where he was going and he didn’t care. He just needed to get away for a moment. He needed to escape Slanya and her persistent prodding, her false compassion.
He needed to escape his memories.
There was a reason he’d never told anyone the full story. He couldn’t bear to remember it. He felt guilty for surviving the attack on his village. And he hated himself for succumbing to Rhiazzshar’s manipulation.
Talfani’s face, ashen and hollow, filled his mind. Her green eyes dull from fever and milky from the burns. That was how he remembered her-how she haunted him.
Where did you go, ’Fani? Duvan had hoped for years that she had gone to a good place in her next life, but the more he saw of the hardships that the gods allowed to happen, or-if some were to be believed-even caused to happen, Duvan was more and more convinced that there was no hope of anything better after life. Nothing but the end of living. Death was perhaps not a door at all, but an end.
Duvan fought the urge to run. He wanted to flee straight into the storm, until the storm grew so intense that it took him finally, or until he fell off the edge of the mote. Death, whether it was nothingness or something brand new, would be a welcome relief from this agony.
At least perhaps he wouldn’t know what he had lost then. Oblivion would be an improvement.
But he did not run. He did not flee. He couldn’t get too far from Slanya. Even now, as he circled the camp, hiding in the shadows, he made sure that he was still close enough to shield her from the blue fire.
A gossamer blade of spellplague sliced up the ground right in his path, approaching like a fiery scythe harvesting the sick earth. Duvan ducked his head and clutched his roiling gut. His stomach grew heavy and seemed to melt as the wall of blue fire passed over him.
He felt nothing in its wake.
The night swirled around him-a maelstrom of power and light, underwritten with a cacophony of violent grunts and belches as the land itself groaned with pain. The wild magic was angry tonight, and the universe protested.
Duvan tripped and fell forward. He instinctively tucked and rolled, coming back to his feet. He took a moment to steady himself and regain his balance on the undulating stone. Part of the mote had fallen away here, and he now stood at the very edge.
Far below him, the blackness of the Underdark yawned. The land was perforated by hundreds of holes, the spaces created by a haphazard lattice of solid land and drifting motes the size of cities.
Spellplague tore the universe in twain here at the center of the changelands. For that was where they were, certainly. Duvan had never been here before, to the place where it was said that the gods themselves could not come without fear, and that pantheons of darkness battled those of light.
Duvan didn’t know what to believe. He knew with certainty, however, that were he to take one more step and hurl himself into the abyss that he would die and would bid farewell to the pain of living.
But so too would Slanya die. Almost certainly, she would not make it back out of the changelands alive without
his protection. And Duvan had made a vow-a promise to guide her and protect her if he could. He had told Tyrangal he would do his utmost to keep Slanya safe.
Slanya had gotten to him, he realized suddenly. She had cared and had offered to hear his woes. And he had trusted her, just for a moment, and that moment had felt wonderful. That moment had dissolved in a flash, but he was happy to have had it.
Duvan took one long, slow breath.
And yet, Slanya was no Rhiazzshar. She could not really understand him. Her assertion that she could sympathize was too dangerous to entertain. But she wasn’t malicious. She wasn’t manipulative.
He exhaled.
Slanya was being a friend.
Duvan knew then that he couldn’t abandon Slanya. That she cared for him was part of it, but more than that, he felt connected to her. She didn’t understand him half as well as she thought she did, but despite their short time together, she knew him better than anyone else in all of Faerun. She knew him, and she still wanted to help him.
Duvan carefully took a step back away from the edge of chaos. He turned and looked back toward the campfire, at Slanya’s silhouette huddled by the flames looking around, no doubt for him.
He knew he should get back, but he needed a few more moments alone. Just a little longer. To calm himself.
Abruptly, a wave of nausea washed over Duvan. His stomach lurched and grew heavy. Suddenly blue flames lit up the ground and air, stirring both like a titanic, prowling beast, waiting to strike.
Duvan saw Slanya glance around her, frantic, like frightened prey. She didn’t deserve this. He had to make sure she was safe.
Spellplague struck the ground under him. Like thousands of earthworms, tendrils of blue gauze ate away the earth beneath him. The rock crumbled and fell away.
Duvan fell. Holes opened up in the mote’s foundation. Through them, he could see the air beneath the mote. He dived toward what looked like solid ground to his left.
When he hit the rocky earth, he tucked and rolled, somersaulting back to his feet. Duvan used the momentum to run. Behind him, the blue fire chewed the ground like meat. A short burst of speed, and Duvan found himself on safer ground, at least for the moment.