by Jak Koke
How good would it feel to give in and let all her control go? Could she abandon her hold on order and still survive? She had no real idea, but the temptation to lose control surged up inside her like never before.
Focusing on the ground in front of her, Slanya knelt down into the dewy grass. Her knees dampened from the moisture, and the heavy smell of grass and earth filled her nostrils.
Grab. Pull. Bag.
The long, translucent, yellow stalks came easily out of the ground, roots and all. Rich dirt clung to the rhizomes as Slanya shoved the grass into the magic bag of holding that Gregor had given her for carrying it. The bag would hold all the plaguegrass they’d need for a long while.
“How much time do we have?” she asked.
Duvan stood and looked out past the edge of the mote-the rim of which dropped off to the shifting ground far, far below. “Not sure,” he said. “The good news is that we seem to be in an eddy of spellplague for the moment. It’s not too strong or too fast.”
“And the bad news?”
“We’re heading away from the border and into the most intense blue fire I’ve ever seen.”
Slanya let that sink in. She fought against the dread welling up inside her. Stronger changelands. Wilder and more chaotic-pulling them toward madness. Slanya was not afraid of death, but she did fear insanity. Accept what comes, she told herself, but the words rang hollow.
Grab. Pull. Bag.
The plaguegrass gave off a sweet smell when the stalks broke, reminding her of the herb garden back at the monastery. She used the smell and the manual labor as an anchor. Focus on the here and now, she reminded herself.
The last rays of the sun dimmed to darkness, and the blanket of night stretched over the sky above them. The high clouds overhead were thickening. Their gray bellies glowed blue and red, flickering with the reflection of the turmoil of the fires below.
Grab. Pull. Bag.
The repetition was calming. Slanya lost herself to the act of harvesting the plaguegrass. There was plenty of light to continue to work, and she was happy to lose herself in the rhythm of the task.
“I need food,” Duvan said suddenly. “Need to figure out a way off this mote.”
The edge in his voice was less than reassuring, but eating was a good idea. They needed energy to keep going.
Grab. Pull. Bag.
As she worked, Duvan gathered up what looked like dried wood and piled it up at the inner edge of the meadow. She wondered at first what he was doing, but it soon became clear that he was building a fire. What do we need a fire for? she wondered. None of the food they’d brought with them needed to be cooked. A campfire was unnecessary-a waste of energy.
After about a half hour, she was finished filling the sack, her knees were soaked through, and her hands were numb and icy cold, covered with tiny scrapes from the sharp edges of the grass. Duvan’s fire didn’t seem so wasteful anymore.
Slanya stood up and brushed dirt and dry grass from her legs. She felt centered and focused for the first time since they’d entered the Plaguewrought Land. And famished.
“Come and eat something,” Duvan said.
“Thank you,” she said, walking over to the fire. She warmed her hands, relishing the tingle as the flames nudged away the chill from her fingers and palms. When they were sufficiently warmed, Slanya helped herself to the dried rations and fruit they’d brought and sat down on the ground across the small blaze from to Duvan. “I think we have enough plaguegrass.”
Duvan nodded. He swallowed his bite, then said, “Good. Unfortunately, I don’t see how we can get off this rock any time soon. Perhaps you should’ve hired a wizard instead of me.”
Laughing, Slanya said, “No, I can see now that you were the clear choice. Despite your inability to magic us back.”
“Well,” he said, his dark eyes soft in the firelight, “we could be stuck on this mote for a long time.”
Sitting there talking to him, the fire a warm glow next to them, Slanya felt herself relax. The searing screech of the heavens and the earth below faded to background, and all that mattered was the here and now. Her mind could contain this moment and make sense of it.
“Do you always assume the worst will happen?” Slanya asked.
Duvan smiled. “Yes, I suppose I do. In my experience the worst is more likely to happen than the best, and it’s far better to be prepared for the worst.”
So cynical, she thought. But there was practicality in that way of thinking.
“For me, being stuck doing nothing is worse than death,” he said.
“There’s not much we can do right now.”
“True, but if we’re stuck up here for hours or days …” Duvan let the idea linger in the air.
There were scars on this man’s soul, Slanya could see that in sharp relief now. But what had happened to him? He kept his past bottled up inside. How could he have turned out so bitter and jaded?
“The clerics and monks of my order sometimes spend tendays doing nothing more than meditation and training,” she said. “Learning how to master oneself.”
“I’m no cleric.”
Slanya laughed. “Clearly,” she said. “But my point was that perhaps you could learn something from me just as I have learned from you.”
“As far as I can tell, I have taught you nothing.”
“Well, you many not think so,” Slanya said, “but your calm has helped me cope with the randomness of the changelands. While you may be a tempest in the city, you’re like a rock in this stormy sea. Just being in here has helped me understand more about chaos-and fear it far more-than I ever have.”
Duvan looked her, the lines of his face bunched in puzzlement. His eyes reflected the fire as the sky continued to darken overhead.
“I am intensely uncomfortable with so much chaos,” Slanya continued. “But with your guidance, I have been able to stay sane in the midst of it. I consider that a gift.”
Duvan seemed to absorb her words, but his face was impassive. His blank expression was neither questioning nor dismissive, as though he merely accepted what she had said, but had no opinion of it. At least not yet.
Slanya stared at this enigmatic man, his strong, dark features limned in the orange glow of the fire. She wanted to heal him if she could, help him heal himself.
“All right,” he said. “Although it feels like a stretch to me. Now, what would you teach me?”
Slanya smiled. “Simple things at first-breathing and meditation. But with those will come mind balance and perhaps the discipline to confront your demons. The ultimate goal is peace with yourself.”
Duvan frowned. “From where I stand, I don’t see the benefit of inner peace.”
She laughed. “Well, it’s liberating. Healing your scars and wounds will help you resolve your past. You are a remarkable person, Duvan, capable of so much. But you are held back by … I’m not sure what-guilt or regret, perhaps? Discipline can emancipate you from that, by resolving issues instead of burying them.”
Duvan’s eyes narrowed. “And why do you care so much?”
It was an appropriate question and one that had already occurred to Slanya. “Balance,” she said. “Because you’ve helped me.”
Duvan seemed to accept that, nodding.
Looking across the fire, its temptation dulled at the moment, Slanya watched Duvan’s dark shape. He was gazing into the glowing orange coals, his expression melancholy.
And of course he had saved her life. She had trusted him, and he had lived up to that trust. He had proved himself worthy. That too was a gift.
“What happened to make you so cynical?” she said.
Duvan remained quiet, but his expression in the firelight grew soft, pensive. And beneath, Slanya thought she detected some vulnerability, which was immediately endearing.
“By telling someone,” she said, “by sharing your story with another soul who will not judge you but will simply listen and validate what has happened to you … by doing that you take the first step
to resolving it.”
“It can’t be resolved away,” Duvan said.
Slanya nodded, but she wasn’t ready to back down just yet. “Maybe not, but talking about it can let someone else share the burden.” She stared directly into his eyes.
He held her gaze for a moment then shook his head. “I can’t lose it,” he said. “And you don’t want to share this burden. You have no idea what you’re asking.”
“Lose it?”
“This cannot be washed away,” he said. “Like you’ve done with your past.”
Slanya bristled at that. “I have not washed away anything,” she said, then admitted, “Although it is possible that my memory of what happened isn’t accurate. But then yours might not be either.”
Duvan snorted. “And how would you know?”
“Exactly,” Slanya said. “It’s what we remember and the lessons we draw from those memories that are important.”
“No disagreement there,” he said.
She thought back to the fire in her aunt’s house. There was more to the story than what she had revealed to Duvan, but even beyond that, some of her recollection of it was fuzzy, the details indistinct. That bothered her.
“To be honest,” she said, “I don’t remember everything about the night of the fire-about my Aunt Ewesia’s death.”
Duvan’s dark eyes glimmered in the firelight. “I sometimes wish I didn’t remember, but I can’t help it.”
Slanya shivered and moved a little closer to the fire. “What happened?”
“I don’t want talk about it,” he said.
“I will trust with you with my story,” she said, “if you trust me with yours.”
Duvan chuckled. “Convenient,” he said, “since you don’t even know your complete story.”
Slanya smiled. “I will try to remember what really happened, but in any case, I never claimed the deal was fair.”
Duvan’s dark, grinning face reflected firelight for a moment before growing somber. And then, against the backdrop of the approaching storm-the sound and the fury of which surpassed every other phenomenon of Slanya’s experience-he surprised her when he began telling his story first.
“Until I was ten, I lived in a small farming village with my father and my sister, Talfani. My mother had died giving birth to us. I never knew her. Talfani and I were inseparable.”
Standing, Duvan brushed the dust from his leathers and walked around the fire. The sky had darkened to a midnight blue, laced with threads of vibrant purple and punctuated by occasional explosions of blue. He noticed that the mote had stopped rising, which was good because the air was already cold enough up this far. But they were still floating toward the ’plague storm, caught like a leaf in a whirlpool. And soon they would be in the midst of a spellplague storm as nasty as Duvan had ever encountered.
He knew well that the mote could descend any time so the best option was to wait.
For the moment.
“We lived in a small house on the edge of the village, next to our fields and the olive orchard we tended. Talfani and I shared a room and the chores, helping Papa with the fields.”
The mote had found an island of calm in the turbulent sea of chaos. Over the edge, Duvan could see boiling destruction. Explosions of molten rock and flickers of crisp blue magic punctuated the swirling plaguestorm. Pinpoints of light far, far below what could be ground level shone like stars in an upside down world. Perhaps he was seeing down into the Underdark.
“I was awakened one night by a light-a glimmer of the palest blue. There was the overwhelming stench of the plaguestorm, although I didn’t know what it was at the time.” Duvan turned to look at Slanya, “Do you know that smell-the rotten oranges and corpse odor-that only comes in late summer and fall?”
“Yes,” Slanya said.
“I remember the smell vividly. I remember that it was the end of summer and the harvest had gone into full swing. Everyone was happy. Harvesttime was a good time for the village.”
Slanya remained silent, listening attentively from across the waning fire. Her pale skin reflected red in the light of the campfire, and her fine features seemed frail against the violence of the storm. Slanya sat crosslegged with her hands resting in her lap, her sideknot hanging delicately by her ear with the end just touching her shoulder.
Duvan had wanted to tell someone this story-the true events of what had happened-for years. And he had tried a few times, but people never understood. People never wanted to understand.
Slanya seemed different in that regard. And perhaps his story could help her to realize that cynicism and mistrust was the only way to make it through life. She was far too trusting, especially of Gregor, who Duvan thought was vastly overestimating the efficacy of his precious elixir. Gregor was playing with Slanya’s life and lying about it.
Duvan shook his head. There was nothing for it but to leap into the telling. Duvan had to just take the plunge if he was going to go there at all.
And with a deep, bracing breath, he did.
“I woke up Talfani-she could sleep through anything.” Duvan gave a weak laugh, remembering. “Papa came in and told us to stay put until he returned for us. And if I had known that he would never come back, that I’d never see him again, I would’ve hugged him and begged him to stay with us.
“We waited for over a day for our father to return, waited until we were so hungry we had to have food. He had left me in charge. I was the elder, you see, by just a quarter hour. Talfani hated that. So I slipped out when she was asleep to go find food.” Duvan paused. The fear and loss threatened to pour over him. He took a deep breath.
“Everything was destroyed,” he went on. “Everyone was dead or had disappeared. The entire village brought down to rubble, except for the part of our house that was the bedroom I shared with Talfani. Deep ruts cut into the ground from where the blue fire had plowed under buildings and bodies. Nobody else had survived. All that I’d known was gone.
“I found food and returned to find-”
Duvan’s voice broke, and he fought back the tide of emotion. He took a breath.
“Talfani had grown pale and sickly. She died over the next few days. I had a chance to say good-bye to her, but her slow, lingering death was agony for both of us. And when she passed, I had nothing left for myself. I just lay down next to her and hoped death would also come for me.”
Duvan stopped pacing and stared into the red depths of the fire. “And I might’ve had the opportunity to meet your death god if a group of Wildhome elves who often came to trade with us hadn’t been wandering near. They found me, cleaned me up, and took me to their settlement in southern Chondalwood.
“You’d think that living with elves would be wonderful, full of merriment and joy. The wood elves are remarkable and noble, fair and fey. But they are also extremely secretive and insular. For years, after I recovered from the physical trauma of what had happened, my life was good.
“I had everything I could want except my father and sister back. The elves took me in, not as one of their own, but as a guest outsider-n Tel’Quessir. I participated in their customs and rituals. I learned their ways, but I was teased mercilessly by my peers. There were things I couldn’t do. But it was a life of luxury compared to my previous one. I often felt guilty for having survived encountering spellplague and ending up in an easier lifestyle.
“They taught me a great deal. How to climb. How to hide in shadows. How to move quickly through the forest and leave almost no trace. How to fight. I was not automatically adept at any of these things, but I wanted to fit, so I learned the skills as best I could, until I felt I had succeeded.”
Slanya’s gaze was riveted on Duvan as he spoke. Her face was somber in the firelight, as she waited for him to continue.
“If I had been paying attention to such things,” Duvan went on, “I would have noticed that I was never allowed to go on any trips outside of Wildhome, except on the rare circumstance that the chieftain went abroad. And even though I was a ward
of the clerics of Silvanus, I was required to go with the chieftain whenever he traveled.
“I was not at all sure why at the time, but they considered me good luck.”
Duvan looked away from the fire. Their mote was still caught in a tightening spiral, moving toward a hurricane of spellplague. They were closing in on the storm’s outer arms. Perhaps their path would miss the center completely. Perhaps they’d veer wide and slingshot back around. Only time would reveal that. Duvan predicted he’d know the answer in less than an hour.
“So when I was thirteen,” he said, looking back to the fire, “the elven clerics of Silvanus, with the consent of the chieftain agreed that I would be invited to become a full adult member of their society. This was something I had been hoping for. I immediately accepted and was prepared for the flame-etch ceremony.
“The clerics created the symbol of a tree on my chest-nature and harmony with the trees and all that-representing Silvanus. They used metallic inks, blended with some materials that were supposed to attract the blue fire on the edges of the Plaguewrought Land, to etch the symbol on my chest.
“They spent days teaching me how to approach the spell-plague pockets. I needed to get close for the etching to work, but not so close that the spellplague would kill me.
“On the morning of the ceremony, I walked naked to the Plaguewrought Land border, searching for the white gauze. I found it easily and danced toward it, eager to have my scar and join the Wildhome elves as one of their own-or as close to one of their own as a n Tel’Quessir could ever be.
“But the edge of the changelands wouldn’t reach out and burn the symbol of Silvanus into my chest as it should have. So I pressed in a little farther, toward bluer fire. And just then, a wave of intense spellplague pulsed along the border veil as it sometimes did.”
Duvan took a breath, remembering the event like it had happened yesterday. “They screamed at me to run out. To dodge and flee. But I wanted to join them so badly. I couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong, why my etching hadn’t activated. All I could feel was my gut grown heavy and liquid.
