The Edge of Chaos (16 page)

The mote they were on was a good three hundred feet above the rest of the land. And it was rising. Fortunately, it seemed to be heading toward a swath of the changelands that was relatively stable, for the moment. Duvan breathed a little relief; it looked like they’d have clear sailing on still waters, for a short while at least.

Ahead, however, they would run into trouble. If the mote stayed on course, it was headed directly into the center of the changelands. Still a good distance away, but definitely in their current path, was what Duvan recognized as the vortex of a spellplague storm.

A dark blue sky streaked with purple made the backdrop for a swirling whirlwind of destruction. Gossamer threads of white and blue entangled with flames of red and yellow in an angry and wild display of raw nature. It was beautiful and terrible, awesome and indiscriminately perilous.

And they were heading directly into it.

A. hot, grassy meadow stretched out around Slanya, an illusion of peace in this landscape of unpredictability and turmoil. Beyond the edge of the meadow-mote, she knew the Plaguewrought Land boiled with the rising blue fire.

Still, the smell of flowers and the warm tranquility of the meadow in the hot sun lulled her. The peace of the here and now was a pleasant anomaly. A vision of how life could be, how life should be despite the larger landscape of danger and chaos. It was too easy to forget the world beyond—the world that would rapidly intrude without warning.

“It’s going to be calm for a little while, I think,” Duvan said, shading his eyes from the last rays of sunlight slicing down through the clouds and the constellation of smaller motes above them.

Looking over at Duvan, so confident and reassured amid the surrounding hysteria and flux, Slanya thanked Kelemvor for Duvan’s presence. The man could be infuriating and pig-headed, but he was proving strong and knowledgeable. Indispensable. Slanya would be dead without him. Right now he was staring into the distance, his brow knitted in consternation.

Duvan’s black eyes sparkled in the light. His broad nose and boyish face were at odds with the three-day beard and straggly mane of hair. When he turned to look at her, his gaze was gentle. “Gather up as much as you can while we have time,” he said. “I’ll try to figure out how to get us off this rock and out of here.”

Slanya tried to quiet her mind, but in the recesses of her consciousness a little girl couldn’t stop screaming. She needed the quiet seclusion of the temple to order her mind and regain control over her body. Or perhaps she just needed to surrender to the fire. Maybe she could let chaos overtake her, move inside her.

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 tend ays 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, 1 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?”