The Edge of Chaos (2 page)

As Jahin, the genasi wizard who currently served as captain of the guard, moved to obey her, Vraith took a few deep breaths. The noxious aroma of singed flesh coiled in the air, contaminating it. She needed to think. How had the ritual failed? It was the first test; some degree of failure was to be expected. But the deaths of all five pilgrims was catastrophic.

These pilgrims were too frail. The blue fire was discriminating of course—it would not spare just anyone. She couldn’t count, it seemed, on the pilgrims lasting long enough for the ritual to complete. If only there were a way to give them strength so that they could remain exposed to the blue fire a little longer without dying.

Vraith drew herself up and turned away from the remnants of the pilgrims. The entourage of Peacekeepers—the Order of Blue Fire militia—was busy cleaning up the smoking remains, but she didn’t have to oversee that. And as she walked toward her carriage, Vraith’s mind was already concentrating on the next test ritual, on how she would change things.

She turned to her assistant, Renfod—an ebony-skinned human cleric in the pale blue robes of a Loremaster Accordant of the Order. His short, graying, black hair receded over his forehead, and cataracts dulled his brown eyes a little.

“We need to pay a visit to the monk,” she said.

Renfod arched his brows. “Brother Gregor?”

Vraith nodded. “He’s been working on something. The pilgrims whisper he has a potion that will grant them safe passage through the Plaguewrought Land.”

“Gregor hasn’t been eager to join the Order,” Renfod said.

Vraith climbed into the coach and sat on the blue silk cushions. At least she was permitted some degree of comfort in this otherwise revolting backwater of a place. “We don’t need him to join the Order,” she said. “We just need enough of his draught to protect our volunteers.” She gestured toward the blackened remains on the ground.

Renfod grimaced. “Quite so,” he said. “And yet, such reliance on an unbeliever is risky.”

“You leave that to me,” Vraith said. “I am all too familiar with such risks.”

Renfod leaned in close, his masculine odor almost palpable as he whispered, “Indeed you are.”

Vraith smiled at the remembrance of their intimacies. He had used her for advancement, and she had been quite willingly used.

Renfod stepped back from the carriage and said, “As you wish, Commander. We shall persuade the monk to join in our cause. I am sure he will be made to understand our need.”

“Duvan?”

From the recesses of his consciousness, Duvan felt someone shake his shoulder.

“You said to wake you when the manticore flew off. It’s gone now.”

Chills from the dream memory shivered across his skin as he came awake, dreams of the Blue Fire fleeing his mind. It had been more than ten years since his village had been hit by the plaguestorm, and still it haunted his dreams. His unfortunate decision to leave Talfani to find food made him shudder with anguish. He missed her still.

Duvan yawned and tried to shake off the remaining images of nightmare death from the cobwebs of his mind. “Thank you, Beaugrat. Get the climbing gear ready.”

Duvan heard the plate mail-clad warrior retreat and begin barking orders to the other hirelings—Seerah and the mage whose name Duvan could never remember. Duvan wasn’t good with people, which was why he’d let Beaugrat pull the team together. Beaugrat was a part of Tyrangal’s security force, and though he was new, he knew to listen to Duvan.

Brushing dirt and jungle insects off his black leather pants and tunic, Duvan stood and stretched. Duvan had tanned all of his leather himself, and he had inlaid the hide with fragments of broken dragon scales, which Tyrangal had managed to obtain for him. The result was remarkably supple for its strength, despite the armor’s current travel-worn state.

Stepping through the jungle undergrowth and out into the bright sunlight, Duvan squinted as he approached the edge of the Underchasm. Even the dense Chondalwood foliage receded slightly from the cliffs edge as if the thick jungle growth, normally a force of nature so daunting and formidable, knew when it was overmatched.

Shading his dark eyes with his hand, he stared out over

the cliffs edge. The jagged hole in the world was narrow here, the span speckled with motes—the islands of rock that floated in the air like stone clouds. Duvan could see the other side in the misty distance to the north. The bottom, on the other hand, could not be seen. The chasm merely disappeared into darkness far below.

It’s not really bottomless, Duvan reminded himself. The chasm ended in the Underdark— the homeland of the vile and truly monstrous, including the cities of the drow. Luckily, he wasn’t seeking the bottom. Not nearly. If Tyrangal’s maps were accurate—and they always were—there had been a citadel here, just along this edge.

There were telltale signs of an ancient structure along the ground by the cliff edge—mason-cut flagstones and a ruined stone wall pulled apart by years of jungle overgrowth. But the actual citadel had fallen into the Underchasm, landing on a ledge below where they now stood.

Duvan grabbed the rope he’d earlier tied to a sturdy banyan root thicker than his waist. He tested its fastness and, satisfied that it held secure and fast, he leaned out over the cliff edge and looked down. The citadel was still there, clinging to a ledge about two or three hundred feet down. The tower hung precariously on the broad ledge, its top jutting at an angle out over the fall.

Earlier, however, a manticore had been circling nearby, eyeing its territory for intruders and prey.

“Excellent,” he said. “Are we all ready to drop down?”

There was murmuring among the hired help behind him.

Duvan pulled himself back from the edge, pushing his long black hair from his face. “Well?”

Seerah, the pale, blonde woman in worn leathers, grinned. She didn’t speak much, and when she did, her northern dialect was difficult for Duvan to follow, consisting mostly of curses in a language that he only partly understood. She wore a crossbow on her back and a short sword at her hip.

As Duvan considered Seerah, the third man asked, “Do we really have to go dowri into the chasm?”

Duvan stared at the man who had spoken. Black eyes met his for a second before looking away. “Yes,” Duvan said. “I know it sounds crazy, but it’s really not. We’re just going to the ledge to search the citadel tower.”

He regarded the slight and aging man. His deep brown skin was almost as dark as Duvan’s, and he was shorter than the woman next to him. Of the three, Duvan had pegged him as the most dangerous. His robes and the wand lashed to his belt named him a spellcaster even though he hadn’t yet performed any obvious magic.

Beaugrat scowled down at the man as if disgusted by his hesitance. Taller and heavier than Duvan, Beaugrat had a reputation for being quite the brawler in a scrape. His large frame carried plate armor as easily as Duvan wore his leathers. There was a custom-crafted gap in the right pauldron. It allowed the deep and jagged spellscar in Beaugrat’s flesh, which emanated heat, to cool in the air.

Duvan glanced at the spellscar, noting the blue tinge to the semitranslueent muscle there. A spellscar was caused by exposure to spellplague remnants. Only the extremely lucky escaped from the plaguelands with a spellscar. More often it caused another condition: death.

“Very well,” the sorcerer said. “If we’re all going down, I will go too. But just as far as the ledge.”

A few minutes later, Duvan and company were rappelling down the cliff face. Hot wind, laced with moisture, whipped up out of the Underchasm, carrying the smell of decay. Duvan looked up for a second as he let the rope slide under his hands to allow a controlled fall.

Above him, the bodies of his three hirelings descended with various degrees of awkwardness. He just hoped none of them fell on him. Making sure his feet were steady and solid against the pitted and jagged cliff wall, Duvan pushed off and rappelled down. Then he turned his attention to the approaching ledge below.

Thick wisteria vines covered the pitted black rock of the cliff face, runners from the jungle above seeking to invade the Underdark miles below. Pushing off of the black basalt, Duvan’s boots crushed green leaves and fluted purple flowers. Wind cooled sweat on Duvan’s neck as he let himself slide deeper into the chasm.

The cliff fell away as far as he could see, disappearing into blackness miles below. Pocks and hollows marred an otherwise sheer wall, but according to the old maps that Duvan had found in Tyrangal’s library, the treasure he sought should be in the ruins of the citadel perched on the ledge below.

The citadel below had long ago been part of a larger castle, according to the map—a castle belonging to one Baron Ryseleth at the time of the Spellplague. Built from granite bricks as tall on one side as Duvan, the structure looked only tenuously intact, having since mostly fallen into the chasm.

Slipping down along the rope, Duvan surveyed the ruins. The base of the main tower clung to the cliff face like a mushroom to rotting wood. The top of the tower canted dangerously, jutting away from the cliff wall like a finger sticking out over the chasm.

Duvan touched lightly down on slanted flagstones that used to be a courtyard. Up close, the ledge was much less substantial than he’d assumed from above. He tested his footing on the stone surface. The rock was damp with the windblown spray of the waterfall on the far side of the chasm, but vines and roots interlaced through the flagstones and provided purchase as well as structural support.

“Baron Ryseleth,” Duvan said, “what a charming home you have. I presume you won’t mind me taking a souvenir or two.”

It looked to Duvan as though about half of the original citadel had fallen away, but as the central tower remained, he figured their chances were good. He would just have to find Ryseleth’s own offices. The rest of the treasure hunters slid to the ledge beside him.

“Come on,” Duvan said, creeping across the courtyard to the archway that led into the crumbling tower. Ivy formed a disorganized crisscross weave up the side of the tower, blackening the large blocks where the vines had anchored themselves.

Behind him came the sound of stone grinding against stone. Turning, he saw Beaugrat and Seerah stumble off-balance as the flagstone under them loosened and shifted. Seerah leapt lightly to the side and landed on a more solid flagstone, but there was nothing agile about Beaugrat. He fell to his knees and waited for the rock to stop shifting.

Duvan looked up at the tower, leaning precariously out over the abyss. “You’d better hang back here, Beaugrat,” he said. “Seerah, you stay with him. The sorcerer and I will explore the tower.” To Duvan’s disappointment, the other man merely nodded, showing none of his earlier eagerness.

Pausing just outside the entrance, Duvan listened for the sounds of the manticore or other creatures whose intentions would be less than charitable. He also took a moment to check the masonry for the telltale signs of embedded traps. This building hadn’t been created as a vault, but checking for snares and triggers had saved him from pain or death on numerous occasions.

Even though Duvan did not fear dying, he was afraid of pain. Oblivion was far preferable than torture.

No danger here. Duvan slipped inside and waited in silence and darkness for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. When they had, he and the sorcerer made a quick tour of the four rooms at the base of the citadel.

One of the many things Tyrangal had taught him was how to make a quick assessment of the value of things. Duvan’s mentor and benefactor, Tyrangal was an unusual, copper-skinned woman of remarkable influence in the city of Ormpetarr. It was at her behest he had traveled across the Vilhon Wilds to the Underchasm, in search of Baron Ryseleth’s citadel.

“Let’s head up,” he said, finding nothing of value in these rooms. He sprinted up the spiraling stone steps, coming to an abrupt halt when he came across a hole in the wall where a chunk of the tower had fallen away to reveal a fathomless drop into darkness below.

Duvan made sure the sorcerer had caught up before deftly skirting the opening and showing the man how it could be done. Up and up they went, until they found what must have been the baron’s offices. “We must be nearly to the top,” he said. “We’re looking for anything of value, but particularly any tomes or scrolls.”

The remains of purple velvet curtains still hung on the walls, tattered and moth-eaten. A quick scan of the remaining desk revealed nothing more than rusted styli and mold-eaten parchments. No books or scrolls of value here.

A sudden roar from outside sent a shiver up Duvan’s back. The manticore, from the sound of it, about two hundred yards to the south and slightly above them, likely riding a thermal out of the Underchasm. Duvan just hoped it wasn’t headed for this ledge.

“This place is cleaned out,” the sorcerer said. “Ransacked years ago, probably before it fell into the chasm.”

“Unfortunately true.” Tyrangal had been wrong. Still, if the book was going to be anywhere, this was the room it’d be in.

Duvan decided to make a thorough check for secret compartments and hidden doors the baron might have kept his treasures in. He ran his fingertips along the stone walls, ceiling, and floor, searching by touch and by sight. There was a window that looked toward the cliff face and through

which shone the midday sun. A thorough search would take some time, especially since decay and time had cracked and crumbled the stones and masonry to the point that any unusual feature might just be a product of age and not design.

Outside the manticore roared again, closer this time. Too close.

Abruptly, the sky darkened as the great winged creature filled the window. Immediately, Duvan signaled to the sorcerer to hide, and while the man. cast a quick spell, Duvan slid into the shadows of the tilted room.

As the mage faded from sight, Duvan fought against the natural instinct to panic. His heart leaped into his throat, but he focused on calming it and on taking steady, silent breaths. In moments, his calm returned, and he was hidden from sight. Both of them were hidden.