The Edge of Chaos (18 page)

“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. IVe 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.

5 -Ž-

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.

Panting, Duvan got his bearings. Where was he? Was he actually safe? Yes, seemed to be for the moment. Good.

Where’s Slanya? he thought.

Abruptly, dread filled him. His flight to safe ground had taken him away from the campfire. Slanya was far outside his protection now. With the plaguelands erupting so close, she was sure to be exposed. And that much exposure could easily kill her. He needed to get back.

He needed to get back now.

O—

After Duvan disappeared, Slanya instinctively moved closer to the fire, not for warmth but a needfor protection. She knew that the fire could not protect her from anything in the spellplague storm, but it felt safer.

Spellplague lit up the air around the camp. Like a spiderweb, strands of magic hung glowing in the air. The small cocoon that had been their camp grew smaller and smaller until Slanya felt the universe coming apart around her.

Chaos.

Tiny filaments of shimmering magic sliced through the air and the ground and the haversacks. And Slanya. In their wake they left a vortex of randomness. There was no pain as they cut through her, only the sensation of dissociation between her mind and her body.

The pain only came in the aftermath, in the wake of

turbulence caused by the crystals. And when it came, it started small—a pinprick on her shoulder and a tiny burn on her toe. But then there was another and another, each small, but adding to the others until she was besieged with a thousand pinpricks, ten thousand tiny burns.

Duvan would return. She had never seen him so angry, but she felt strongly that he would come back, that he would not leave her alone. Although even with his ability, what could he do against anything this intense? She did not know, but his companionship would be a comfort now.

Slanya had been trained to focus her mind, to use the power of her thoughts against material pain, and she tried to use it now, tried to concentrate to keep the unity of her body and mind. But in the wake of each filament, the onslaught of pain made it impossible to focus, and her mind grew disoriented.

The elixir would protect her. Gregor’s concoction would keep her alive through this. She had to trust him.

She did trust him. Didn’t she?

The last segment of her right pinkie finger spun away like a tiny fleshy mote. She watched it in silent fascination. This time there had been no pain when the churning magic had severed it from her hand. And as she looked down now, she wondered in amusement at the blood.

So unpredictable. So incomprehensible.

Screeching leather on steel filled the air, and Slanya was suddenly upside down, floating. How was it possible? It was as though the storm had picked her up and was examining her like a trapped insect before squashing her. Slanya found herself floating toward the campfire, which had grown to the size of the monastery funeral pyre. Blue mist and white fog burned gauzy sheets across her vision.

Was it her imagination or did she smell burning bodies? An intricate weave of palest blue gauze blanketed the camp, permeating all things. Slanya could not help but breathe it in—inhale disease and exhale fire.

The rational, objective part of her mind knew that this was too much exposure. Pilgrims to the changelands tried for the briefest of touches—a kiss of spellplague, an oblique lash of blue fire.

But this … this was like bathing in it. Drawing it in, spellplague permeated her whole being, and she could not run. She could not escape or withdraw. She had to endure, merely endure the choking and the disintegration.

The campfire’s yellow and red flames belched black smoke as they beckoned to her. Give in, they said. Abandon reason.