by Jak Koke
Gregor’s awareness moved past the throngs of pilgrims in their tents and wagons and through Ormpetarr’s city walls. He skirted the thoroughfare, noticing that the veil on the border of the Plaguewrought Land was milky and opaque in his mind vision, like a cataract.
Gregor moved away from the border, back out of Ormpetarr, and up the hill to the ruins outside Tyrangal’s mansion. There was a haze surrounding parts of the burned-out structures.
The hard stone of Tyrangal’s mansion was woven with a magical latticework of some sort of warding-protection from clairvoyant spies and extraplanar intruders. Gregor admired the order of it, the beauty of the perfect crisscrossing web of shining copper light.
No matter. He had done this before.
Gregor pushed his awareness up to the entrance and focused. I seek audience with you, Tyrangal, he said through his mind. I have important news.
A small opening formed in the latticework of protective magic, and Gregor’s awareness moved inside.
Tyrangal seemed to uncoil in front of him like an elegant and shining metal snake. The form she had chosen to display to him was difficult to identify, so brightly did she shine. But her movements were sinuous in the smooth way she turned and rose to face him.
Gregor felt, more than saw, Tyrangal’s smirk, but it seemed more like the smile of a cobra about to strike a mouse who dared get too close. Gregor knew she was just trying to make him afraid of her, and he laughed inwardly. It was working.
Well met, young monk, she said sleepily. To what do I owe the pleasure?
And he heard the danger in her words. Do not waste her time was the subtext. Do not wake her from a nap for no good reason. Do not make her angry, for she is powerful and can destroy you. What he said was, I have news that your… friend, Duvan, is in danger. The Order of Blue Fire wants him for ‘questioning.’
In this form, Tyrangal’s head reared at the news. Gregor did not know what Tyrangal was-human wizard as she most often appeared, or something else entirely-but one thing that he knew for certain was that she was immensely powerful. In any case, she was a force to be respected.
Vraith? she asked.
Yes.
Tyrangal snorted derisively. That elf is ambitious beyond caution. I’ve watched her rise too fast in the Order. She is not as powerful a wizard as she would like everyone to believe, but she’s charismatic and knows the ancient art of manipulation exceedingly well.
Gregor remembered the ritual from the night before. He doubted he’d seen a ritual that powerful before. It seemed clear that Tyrangal underestimated Vraith.
Her spellscar is also a problem, Tyrangal went on. She has some sort of ability to see and manipulate the essence of creatures. Have you noticed? That is the true source of her power, and like virtually everyone who gains access to great power quickly and without proportionate cost and training, she abuses and misuses hers.
Certainly, Gregor said, knowing that Tyrangal was on his side.
In fact, Tyrangal said, one of the reasons I have supported your work, Gregor, is because you seemed different. You have a great ability, but you have been mostly cautious in its use. For over a hundred years, I have seen the evidence. The great danger of obtaining a spellscar is that the ’scarred lack the wisdom to use their abilities conscientiously. With great power comes great responsibility. Do not forget that.
Of course, Gregor said. Normally, a part of him thought, he would have rankled to be lectured this way. But there was something about Tyrangal … something about her voice … I have been exceedingly careful with mine.
True, Tyrangal said, for the most part you have. What else do you know about Vraith?
Gregor smiled. Confiding in her was exactly the right thing to do, he thought. It would feel so good to share this information, any information, with her.
Go ahead, came the melodic voice. Tell me everything that happened.
He told her of the ritual on the border of the Plaguewrought Land, how his elixir allowed the pilgrims to survive long enough to move the border. He still wasn’t sure of how the elixir worked-more tests needed to be done-but it was clearly powerful.
A rush of warmth filled Gregor. Confiding in Tyrangal was exactly right. She would be happy with him, and her approval was critical. He needed her to like him. He told Tyrangal everything, for she was his ally and she needed to know.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Gregor had an inkling that she was using magic on him, charming or persuading him to tell her things. But, no-he pushed that suspicion aside. Tyrangal was his friend. He wanted to tell her. Gregor didn’t do things he didn’t want to do.
Gregor told her of his visions. That Vraith’s ritual would help achieve control over spellplague storms outside the Plaguewrought Land. With this magic, all of the blue fire in Faerun could eventually be tamed!
And after he was done, Tyrangal spoke. Of course she wants Duvan, she said. He could harm her. But she must not get him. She must not be allowed to complete the next ritual.
Gregor frowned. Vraith’s magic would organize and contain plaguelands, he said. It would create order from chaos.
Tyrangal’s golden eyes flashed. This ritual might be able to accomplish that, young monk, she said. But Vraith and the Order of Blue Fire will not use it for containment. I guarantee you that that is not their plan.
What does she intend then?
A hint of anger was evident in Tyrangal’s voice, Vraith will use this ritual to move the border of the Plaguewrought Land, to expand the total area of these plaguelands. Of that I am sure. The Order wants to increase the blue fire’s reach, and if they gain control over the border, they will eventually be able to unleash the spellplague contained within.
She continued, I have been monitoring the border, and it has been stable for a hundred years now-not the longest time, but long enough to indicate that, barring some major magical catastrophe, it’s unlikely to move. This is a good thing. This is a necessary thing for the survival of most creatures.
I didn’t know what Vraith was planning, Gregor said.
So now that you do, Tyrangal said, her words dripping with honey, you will refuse to make the elixir for the festival. She must not be allowed to proceed with a larger ritual.
That sounded reasonable to Gregor. If he didn’t supply the elixir then Vraith couldn’t perform the ritual.
Perhaps.
All those pilgrims were already gathering in the valley, all preparing for the festival. Even without the elixir, they will all be heading to the Plaguewrought Land. Vraith might or might not try to proceed without enough elixir to protect the pilgrims, and if she did proceed then all those pilgrims would die. If she didn’t proceed, then most of those pilgrims would die anyway.
Gregor shook his head. No, he said. There must be another way to stop her. If I don’t make the elixir, then thousands of pilgrims will die. I can’t be responsible for that.
Tyrangal’s anger was like the lash of a whip. You will not supply her with the elixir. Trust me: you do not want me as an enemy.
I trust that, Gregor said. I don’t want to be your adversary. He felt Tyrangal’s charm dissipating fully. But I cannot have the deaths of thousands on my conscience when I know that I can prevent it. I will make the elixir to protect the pilgrims. That is why I came to Ormpetarr, and that is what I will do.
That decision is regrettable, Tyrangal said. I have supported your quest to perfect the elixir because such knowledge is critical to diminishing the impact and power of the spellplague in Faerun. I have provided you with knowledge and with Duvan’s services.
But there’s a reason it’s called a plague, Tyrangal continued. And if Vraith succeeds in her ritual, she will be set to wreak far more havoc and cause countless more deaths than a paltry few thousand pilgrims.
There must be another way, Gregor said. There must be a way to save the pilgrims.
Your concern for the pilgrims is disingenuous, monk, Tyrangal sneered. You were fine sacrificing pilgrims to serve the gre
ater good when you were experimenting on them. As long as you were going to be the hero, it was all right to lose a few hundred or a thousand ‘volunteers.’
Gregor cringed at the anger in her voice. I’m sorry, he offered.
You’re not as sorry as you will be if you enable Vraith’s plan, Tyrangal said.
But I can’t oppose her; the Order is too powerful. They will make me pay a high, long-term price.
Then you have a decision to make, Tyrangal said. You are fortunate, actually; you get to choose your enemies. Most people don’t have that freedom.
Gregor’s awareness snapped back across the distance. He was in his own body, his heart pounding and his breath coming in gulps as a sheen of sweat chilled his skin.
Gods, he thought, what have I done?
Duvan woke to wind whipping across his face and the red glow of the sun shining through his closed eyelids. He could feel the sun’s heat slowly roasting him.
Duvan’s lips cracked as his tongue-dry as a dusty road itself-pushed through his glued-together lips and tried to wet them. I need water, he thought, breathing in hot air as dry as a desert wind.
There was a waterskin attached to his backpack. His backpack was still on his chest. Slanya was still on his back. She lay beside him, unmoving. The makeshift leather straps that he’d used to attach her to his shoulders had dug so deep into his flesh that the muscles burned at the slightest movement.
First, he thought, untie the straps so that he could move.
His hands protested, pain shooting down the muscles of his fingers and forearms with the very smallest effort. But after repeated attempts, he had managed to detach himself from Slanya and his backpack.
Second, sit up.
That step proved to be far more difficult and painful. His could barely move his arms; they felt dead, numb and heavy. Yet he needed to sit up. He kept trying and falling down, trying again, only to fall down again. But Duvan knew he needed to drink, and he knew that the more he moved, the more the ache would fade. Mobility would come back.
Eventually, Duvan had propped himself against the squat boulder.
Third, drink.
Duvan rested with his back against the hard stone. He struggled with the straps, but eventually he managed to detach his waterskin from his pack. The liquid inside was warm and bitter, but it quenched his thirst ever so slightly. It wet his mouth and throat. He resisted the urge to take a second drink. Who knew how long they’d need to make it last?
Duvan examined Slanya, sprawled in an unnatural position next to him. The gentle rise and fall of her chest meant she lived. Good.
Her unconscious, open-eyed stare was partially protected from the sun by the shadow of the squat boulder. One of her arms was pinned awkwardly behind her back and looked broken, but when he checked it he found that not one of the bones was fractured.
She was anything but whole, however. Duvan had never seen anything quite like the network of spellscarring that pervaded Slanya’s body. Usually someone with so much exposure died instantly.
Duvan carefully straightened Slanya’s back, which had been severely twisted. He closed her eyes and propped her feet up as he’d been taught by the Wildhome shaman who had trained him for a summer. He dribbled some water from the skin onto Slanya’s lips and held her mouth closed.
“Come on,” he said aloud. “You can’t die. Not after I was being so nice to you.”
Duvan had learned rudimentary healing skills during his imprisonment at Wildhome. He carried some oils and ointments to help healing. They would help protect Slanya’s skin from prolonged exposure to the sun.
“I’m never nice,” Duvan said. “You should know that about me. I don’t like caring about people.” He spread healing salve over the skin of Slanya’s face and skull.
“But,” he said, “I’m going to tell you a secret: I like you. You remind me of-of people I cared about in the past.” Talfani. Rhiazzshar. “Not that things worked out so well with them,” he continued wryly. One he allowed to die, and the other betrayed him.
“And since I do care, I will bend the world for you. I’ll even try the superstitious and stupid, just on the belief that I don’t know everything, and perhaps something I don’t know can help.”
With that thought hanging in the air, Duvan rummaged through Slanya’s belongings. He knew she must have some of Gregor’s elixir left. Maybe it would help her after the fact. Maybe Gregor’s alchemy could save Slanya when he couldn’t.
Duvan found the last flask of the elixir in her smallish pack, which he had stuffed inside his own. The crystal vial was nearly empty, but surely the shimmering liquid was a single remaining dose.
He parted her dry lips and poured the contents into her mouth. He hadn’t felt such a strong bond for anyone since Rhiazzshar. Perhaps it was because he felt responsible for her well-being, as he had felt for Talfani’s. The symmetry was uncanny, and that had to mean something. Slanya did not deserve to die. She was a good person. Better than he was, that was for sure. She wanted to help people. She wanted to make Faerun a better place.
When he’d done all he knew to do for her, Duvan made the heroic effort to stand up. He needed to survey their new mote. But painful as it was, getting to his feet proved easier than he’d expected.
Smooth rock, covered in places with sharp gravel, the mote was small, perhaps only a handful of paces across. The boulder that had been shading them took up a chunk of the level land near one side. And the whole thing was moving fast, heading almost due north from what Duvan could tell.
The mote was flying lower than the previous mote, but high enough that he could see the Chondalwood far off to his right, like a dark stain against the dusty green hills in the distance. High enough, hopefully, to clear the cliff wall at the border.
They hadn’t left the changelands yet, but they were out of the vortex, which is what Duvan had hoped would happen. There was no food or water on this mote, however, and his stores were almost out.
There was also no shade except for the table-sized boulder. But at the rate they were flying, Duvan estimated they’d reach the border of the changelands before midday. The challenge then would be to figure out how to get safely off a mote moving at such speed.
Once they passed through the border veil, this mote would be relatively low to the ground so the fall might not kill them. But what the mote lost in altitude it made up for in velocity. This hunk of rock was moving mighty fast.
Duvan sat on the boulder and watched the approaching edge of the changelands. It seemed like they should be there any minute, and he knew the border zone would be concentrated with more intense blue fire. He had to be ready.
Wind buffeted his face, cooling him as he dug into his backpack and removed his glideskin in case they needed it. The sun shone high in a pale sky as he prepared his grappling hook for another throw-it never hurt to be ready for everything.
Due to the height or the distances or his misjudging of their speed, the border never seemed to get closer. Several times, he thought they were almost to the border veil, but then another quarter hour passed without the edge of the changelands nearing visibly.
This is a wild ride, he thought as the sun arced farther across the sky. One I will never forget. How many people can say they rode an earthmote through a spellplague storm?
Sometime later, he said, “Hang in there, Slanya. We’re almost out of here. Almost home.”
“Duvan?”
Slanya stirred. She rolled over and coughed up blood.
“I’m right here,” he said, instantly at her side. “We are nearly out of the changelands. Everything is going to be all right.”
Slanya gave a pained smile. “That’s an outright lie,” she said.
Duvan laughed. He was just so relieved to see her awake. “Yes, you’re right. I am lying. I have no idea what’s going to happen.”
After seeming to be perpetually on the horizon, the border veil loomed suddenly large and imminent. The heavy, liquid tugging of nausea in Du
van’s gut told him that the blue fire was particularly intense.
The mote plowed through the border veil, exploding into normal light. There was a bone-rattling boom, and then stability and order were abruptly restored. Duvan’s skin stopped tingling, and his gut settled. The air smelled of humans and genasi and dwarves, of livestock and feces and the fires of the dead. It smelled like home, and Duvan felt grounded here. A feeling of rightness pervaded all of his being.
The mote, however, didn’t act like all was right in the world. Duvan felt a shudder, deep and resonant, in the rock beneath them. The passage through the border had weakened the stone.
A large hunk of the mote tore away from the rest of it, spinning away like a satellite island in the air. The mote split into two, neither piece large enough to hold altitude. Below them, the ground just outside the border was grooved from years of fallen motes. And apparently, they were on one.
Its magic stripped away, the mote lost buoyancy and started to fall.
Pain.
Slanya’s entire being was pain. It was as if she stood in the center of the funeral pyre and burned. As if she let herself, mind and body, be consumed by the razor-sharp licks of the flames, her skin blistering and blackening, her eyes boiling.
Slanya found herself rubbing the bandage over her right pinkie. Dried crusts of blood peeled away as she scratched at it. Even Slanya’s intensive training could not cope with the anarchy that had been wrought upon her. She struggled to take stock of herself, but nothing was familiar. She was no longer the same.
Slanya tried to maintain diligence, starting with her hands and focusing on every inch of her body. Her mind recognized parts of her arm and chest and leg, some familiar fragments of herself, and she tried to use those fragments as an anchor from which she could rebuild her sense of self.
A cleric’s mind and body were a conduit of her god. She called on Kelemvor to help cure her, and perhaps he would help save her.
Or he could call her to him. She needed to prepare herself for both possibilities.
“Slanya,” came Duvan’s voice like a rock in a surging sea. “We are going to have a big problem in a minute.”