by Jak Koke
Duvan nodded. “Nonetheless, I think you should let me go in alone.”
“No.”
Duvan pressed on. “I can find the plaguegrass as easily as we both can, probably faster. Nobody goes very far past the border. The pilgrims merely wait near the edge or just inside until they are exposed, hoping for a minimal wound.”
“I will not let you go alone.”
“Most people don’t go inside for more than a few minutes, and I’ve only been deep inside once …” Duvan trailed off. The nightmare journey of his one and only trip across the changelands came back to him in staccato flashes. Gossamer scythes of blue fire burned precise cuts across the land. Dirt, rock, and plants obliterated all around him.
Duvan had walked into the hell wanting to be taken by the fire, but it wouldn’t take him. So far it never had. “There are some stable places in the Plaguewrought Land, but those areas are only temporarily safe. Eventually all the landscape bleeds and burns. I seem to be charmed or cursed when it comes to changelands,” he said. “I seem to be able to avoid the effects, so to stay safe you must stay near me.”
“I will be safe,” Slanya said. “Gregor’s elixir will protect me.” Her tone was matter-of-fact.
Duvan snorted. “I highly doubt that.”
“You heard what he said: the chances of survival are dramatically improved.”
Duvan laughed. “I heard it, but that just means you’ll be able to survive for a third of an hour instead of dying immediately. We’ll need longer than that.”
“Well, I trust Gregor.”
Duvan shook his head. “He’s using you. I bet he’s done it before, too, and because you have faith in him, you agree to being used.”
“I owe him my life,” Slanya said. “That doesn’t mean that I’ll throw it away for him, but it does mean that he has earned my trust. He has never let me down.”
Duvan guided them up out of a ravine and onto a sunny slope, heading south. “Blind faith will be your undoing, I fear,” he said. “The Plaguewrought Land is wild beyond anything you’ve ever experienced. It abides by no rules, no laws.”
“I don’t see how-”
“Spellplague cannot be tamed by a draught,” Duvan said flatly.
Slanya was silent for a few moments, and Duvan was content to let the conversation drop. If she was determined to go with him inside the borders of the Plaguewrought Land then at least she would do so with her eyes open.
“There are people behind us,” Slanya said after a long silence.
Duvan had noticed that too. “Likely pilgrims. Likely dead soon.”
“So you hate pilgrims as well?” Slanya asked.
Duvan glanced over at her to try to read her expression, which was wrinkled in dismay. “I don’t hate anyone,” he said. “I do think that many pilgrims are greedy and misinformed, and that they have a high likelihood of dying.”
“You don’t approve of following one’s beliefs?”
“Not if those beliefs will get you used or killed.”
Slanya was about to retort when she stopped herself. Duvan watched in amazement as she concentrated and willfully evoked a change in her demeanor. “Very well,” she said. “Despite the fact that you express yourself cynically, and I have a more optimistic view, I think we are mostly in agreement concerning the pilgrims.”
He had to admit he was impressed with her restraint.
“But what if those folks are from the Order and have come to take you in?”
Duvan had considered that. “If they threaten us, we will kill them.” He smirked. “Or knock them out, as the case may be.”
“Why is the Order after you, anyway? Did you kill two of their members, like Beaugrat said?”
Duvan shrugged. “I killed one of them because she and Beaugrat turned on me and tried to kill me,” he said. “The other one was eaten by a manticore.”
“Ugh,” Slanya said. “So that’s why the Order wants to take you in?” Slanya asked. “It seems like a lot of trouble for a misunderstanding.”
“That must be it,” Duvan said, although he suspected that Tyrangal was right: the Order of Blue Fire wanted him for his resistance to spellplague. Just like Rhiazzshar, they wanted to use him.
“Is there any other reason they’d be interested in you? Have you done anything to make them want to interrogate you?”
Duvan lied easily. “Not that I can think of.”
“Don’t you think it would be a good thing to find out? If you know what they want and who wants you, then you might be able to thwart their plans concerning you and avoid future incidents like the one this morning.”
Duvan blinked at Slanya. “Why hadn’t I considered that?” he said, his tone mocking.
Slanya recoiled from his sarcasm as though she’d been slapped. “You don’t have to be an ass,” she said. “I was trying to help, because frankly you seem to need some of it.”
“Look, Slanya, I’m sorry.” And he was too. He felt bad for lying to her. “There is very likely another reason that the Order wants me, but I don’t talk about that reason to anyone. It’s not personal.”
“Maybe they’re interested in why you’re so lucky around the spellplague,” she mused. “Like, how can you have been inside the Plaguewrought Land a number of times and yet you have no spellscar?”
Duvan sighed. She was going to figure it out sooner or later. “I am spellscarred,” he said. “But my scar is completely hidden.”
“Oh? What does it do?” Slanya asked.
“I can’t tell you,” Duvan said. “Like I said, I don’t talk about it.”
They walked along in silence for a while, before Slanya continued. “Well, regardless, I think you need to find out why the Order is after you.”
“Yes, well, that sounds like a good idea, but I can’t do it.”
“What do you mean?” Slanya’s eyes grew wide. “It’s not that hard. You make a plan, ask some questions, do some counterspying. Maybe interrogate someone. It seems like you’d be good at those things.”
Duvan snorted. “I don’t even know where I’m going to be living two days from now. I never make plans past a tenday.”
“By Kelemvor, why not?”
“Why think about anything long-term when I might be dead any moment?”
Sweat cooled on Slanya’s neck as she walked next to Duvan. Gravel crunched beneath her leather boots, and she relished the shade provided by the large mote overhead. The fall morning had grown hot, but her sweat was more from nervousness than heat.
Slanya had always met challenges head on. She had always been able to make a quick and impartial assessment-a logical analysis of the obstacles in her path, acceptance of what she could not change. But she found that the prospect of going into the Plaguewrought Land was provoking an unusual reaction in her-apprehension and fear.
She tried to concentrate through this unfamiliar feeling. She concentrated on the conversation with Duvan. Here was someone whom she did not immediately understand, someone intriguing. Slanya sensed pain in Duvan’s words. Real pain, not embellished or fabricated. Slanya suspected that he might even be downplaying the pain he truly felt behind the words.
She looked over at the young rogue, expertly picking a path up an ever-steepening rocky slope. “You want to die?”
“No,” Duvan said. “Although sometimes I don’t want to live either. But it doesn’t really matter what I want, does it? I merely acknowledge the fact that we have a limited quantity of tendays. We all pass through the veil into death’s realm sooner or later, and none of us know when that will be.”
Slanya nearly winced. Such hurt and loss behind those words. She found herself intrigued. What was this man’s story? Would he open up to her? “What happened to you?” she asked. “What led you to such a belief?”
“You have a different take on it, no doubt.”
She sighed, allowing the sidestep. “I do,” Slanya said. “And so do most people. We make plans about the future and strive to achieve goals. Do you have any
ambitions?”
Duvan was quiet.
Slanya let him consider. She noticed that the group behind them had veered off to the east. So they weren’t following them after all. Just some pilgrims heading to a different border spot. Slanya knew that there were several popular places for the pilgrims to go.
“My goals are all short-term. Eat, survive the day, share a bed. All immediate goals, except for the missions that Tyrangal sends me on; I have a long-term goal of repaying the debt I owe her, so I strive to achieve those missions.”
“Do you owe her a great deal?”
Duvan nodded. “She would say that I owe her nothing. I certainly don’t owe her any coin, but I am in her debt nonetheless. She saved me, freed me.”
“I’m curious,” Slanya said. “Why do you not make long-term plans? Don’t you want to accomplish something big or build something-a family or a homestead even?”
“I just don’t think about that.”
“Why not?”
Duvan let out a laugh. “Because I’ve learned that making such plans is a waste of energy. Because I see no reason to plan or hope for something when it can all be taken away in a heartbeat.”
Maybe the straightforward approach would work. “Duvan, have you ever told anyone about what happened to you?”
For a moment, she thought he might deny that anything had happened. But he didn’t. He just stared at her, the muscles in his jaw clenched. “It wouldn’t make any difference,” he said. “It would just bring back the-”
Slanya jarred some rocks loose on the hillside, and they skittered down the steep slope. She caught her balance and waited, but Duvan had grown silent and would speak no more.
“It helps to tell someone you trust,” she said.
Duvan snorted. “Perhaps, but that cuts the number of possible confidants for me to … let’s see: zero!”
“I can see that,” Slanya said. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t need your pity.”
Slanya sighed. Maybe if she reached out to him with something personal, then Duvan would be able to talk to her. Partly, she was curious about him because he was an enigma, a mystery. What had happened to make him so fatalistic and without hope?
And partly, she felt that despite their unfortunate first encounter, she enjoyed his company. He was challenging and fun to be around. Or maybe she just wanted to save him like she saved all her patients, helping them come to peace with their lives before they died.
She decided to trust him with her story. She would open up to him, and perhaps he would reciprocate. Confiding in someone was therapeutic.
As they continued their ascent of the long, stony slope, Slanya told Duvan of her life before the monastery. She opened herself up to him, telling him of the hard life she’d had without parents, of living under the strict rule of Aunt Ewesia.
Under the warm afternoon sky stippled with hundreds of rocky motes flowing up and out of from the changelands like an inverse vortex, Slanya unraveled to him the story of losing Aunt Ewesia to the fire.
“I remember hating her,” she said. “Not all the time, of course. But sometimes I did. Sometimes I wished she were dead. And after the fire, which I thought for the longest time was my fault, I regretted those feelings.”
Duvan’s black eyes narrowed on her, but he said nothing.
“She was my only kin,” Slanya said. “I don’t know what happened to my parents; Aunt wouldn’t talk about it. So after the fire, I had no one.”
Duvan listened intently without responding.
“Kaylinn and Gregor took me into the temple complex to raise me, and I’ve been there ever since.” Slanya considered her next words. “The monastery was exactly what I needed-an ordered environment where the rules were always the same.”
A gust of breeze carried the smell of carrion. The strong odor made Slanya wrinkle her nose. “I know that I wasn’t a very well-behaved child at first; I hated everyone, and I felt guilty for not dying in the fire. I was headed on a track to become a criminal or an evil person before they rescued me.”
Duvan was silent for a long stretch as they switched back to traverse across the slope on the opposite tack. The top of the long hill neared, the tenacious weeds and scrubby trees were all that remained sprouting here and there from the loose rock.
When he spoke finally, his tone seemed distant and overly harsh. “Can you remember details about the fire? What color was the nightgown you wore? What glass did your aunt use for her infusion? What did she say when she was on fire?”
Slanya said, “I don’t see what those have to do with anything.”
“Can you remember?” Duvan repeated.
Slanya’s fists clenched, and she tried to see her memory in her mind’s eye but couldn’t. Why couldn’t she? Surely she was wearing the same nightgown she always wore, but what did that look like? What about the other details; where had they disappeared to in the recesses of her mind? “I confess that I’m not sure,” she said finally. “It’ll probably come back to me eventually.”
“I’m sure it will.”
“I’m not lying,” Slanya said, aware that she was being defensive. “And I don’t know why you’re asking me those questions.”
“Listen,” Duvan said, “I believe that you were in that fire. I think all of what you told me happened. But I’ve been through trauma, and it’s never as clean as what you described.”
“Clean?” Slanya was appalled. “You think that was clean?”
Duvan nodded. “Look, I would never diminish what happened to you by claiming it’s not true, but to me, your story sounds polished, whitewashed.”
“No, I-”
“That might be the healthy thing to do, Slanya,” Duvan said. “Perhaps it’s better than the alternative.” His voice trailed off as if remembering something. “But it’s not the truth.”
“The truth,” Slanya said, trying to calm herself and really consider what Duvan was saying. “That was what happened. That’s how I remember it.”
“And maybe you remember it like that in order to organize your feelings about that traumatic event. I did that for years, but it does no good in the long run.”
Slanya bristled. “Perhaps the truth is in the stories we tell ourselves.”
Duvan looked at her, his dark eyes filled with sadness. “The truth is that life cannot fit into organized structures and stories. The truth is that the world is wild, and above all, chaotic.”
They rose above the crest of the hill just then, and the far side dropped away precipitously, sloping steeply down and down and down. Slanya’s hold on the world loosened a bit at the sight, for there just ahead was the border veil-a gauzy, fluctuating wall that rose up into the sky.
Through it and beyond the cliff, Slanya caught a vision of a nightmare panorama-a world of flux and plasma, stretching off into the distant horizon. Blobs of earth and sky, of fire and crystal, fused and parted in a constant roiling dance.
That way lay madness, Slanya knew. And yet she was drawn to it, for here was raw wild energy. Here was the fire and the salvation.
Slanya dug into her backpack, removed one of the vials of elixir that Gregor had provided, and quaffed the entire contents. The oily liquid slid down her throat, and the strong taste of anise made her wince.
Duvan led her right on through the veil, and as she stepped willfully across the border behind him, part of her mind broke, her iron lock on an organized world cracked just a little, aching to dance with the forces of chaos ahead.
Duvan felt an electric prickle pass over his skin as he passed through the border veil and carefully picked his way down the incline. The slope here was steep, but at least it was passable without using rope.
In front of him, the land splayed out like an open, festering wound-a scar gushing otherworldly light and motion. The very bedrock was unstable, a dangerous undulation of earth and light.
Duvan couldn’t help but be impressed every time he saw this awesome sight. The changelands were the most raw and wid
espread wild magic infection in all Faerun. No wonder people made the pilgrimage here.
Duvan checked to make sure Slanya was close behind him. He derived no pleasure from arguing with her. And perhaps he was projecting his own hardships on her, but the way she told of her aunt and the fire-relaying the story as if by rote-and her lack of details, gave him the impression that she had told this story over and over until it had become her truth. It seemed too pat, too clean and ordered to be the whole truth.
What had she really gone through? he wondered. What had she really endured?
“We will need to stay close together for the rest of the journey,” he said. “The instability of this place can uproot the earth anywhere, and we don’t want to be separated.”
Slanya nodded solemnly, clearly stunned by her first sight of the changelands.
Duvan considered saying something, but he refrained. He’d give her some time to adjust. He had visited the border numerous times, and the sight always brought him to his knees in awe. She should be allowed some adjustment time.
“I’m a little dizzy,” she said.
“Don’t look into the distance,” Duvan suggested. “Too disorienting. Nobody is used to the solid ground in flux like this.”
Slanya nodded.
“Pick a spot on the ground just ahead and focus on that,” he said. “Glance up frequently to make sure there’s nothing dangerous approaching, but always come back to the spot just ahead. That should help with the vertigo.”
Slanya took a slow deep breath, her face waxy and sallow. “I’ll try that.”
The ground moved, started dropping ever so slowly. Abruptly, Slanya fell to her knees behind him. Clutching her gut, she vomited on the shifting ground.
This was going to be a long trip.
Climbing back up to her, the shale surface slipping under his feet, Duvan put a hand on her back. “You all right?”
“I’d say the answer to that is pretty obvious,” she said, but her tone was wry.
