The Edge of Chaos (6 page)

“That’s a very generous offer,” Beaugrat scoffed. “But we seem to have the advantage here.”

Duvan held up one hand. “Hold it,” he said, taking a step back toward the relative safety of the deeper jungle. “You do understand that you can’t take Tyrangal’s property. She won’t allow it.”

“Tyrangal’s power is waning, Duvan. Soon the accordant of the Blue Fire will reign.” Beaugrat’s voice had grown dreamy and reverent.

Duvan edged one more step back. If he could get close enough to dash—

“Stand still, or Seerah will shoot you.”

Duvan stopped and gave a conciliatory nod in Seerah’s direction. The ranger smirked back. Yes, she would shoot, Duvan knew. Any hesitation on her part would be brief. But while she was distracted with the exchange, her aim drifted ever so slightly—down and to her right.

Now! As soon as he formed the thought, he was in motion. His left hand, held in front of him to signal “wait,” served as a distraction for his right hand, which was already in his flash powder pouch. A smooth motion pushed a pinch

airborne, and with a flick of his fingers, two of his rings chimed together, one flint and one steel.

Duvan dived right as the spark ignited the dust, blinding in the dim light. And by the time the ranger brought her crossbow back to where his chest had been, her quarrel missed him by a good six inches.

He hit the ground and rolled once, then used the momentum to hop back on his feet. They would expect him to bolt into the jungle, and that would be the prudent thing to do—try to lose them amid the dense undergrowth, wait them out, then later make his way back to Ormpetarr on foot.

Instead he decided to attack, quickly and decisively. An enemy dead was always better than him dead.

Duvan plucked one of his paralytic-coated daggers from his sash and flicked it with dead-on accuracy toward the shoulder gap in Beaugrat’s plate armor. Before that dagger landed, Duvan hurtled the next dagger, also coated with poison, at the twisting torso of the ranger. He finished his throws while both were still dazed by the blinding flash.

The first dagger was aimed perfectly and flying too fast for Beaugrat to dodge. It hit home, buried deep in the fighter’s spellscar, and should have dropped him mid-motion. Instead, the dagger vanished in a burst of blue fire.

The second dagger wasn’t aimed quite as well, but Duvan could tell it was enough. The point barely made it through the skin of Seerah’s thigh. But that would be enough; the poison would eventually lock up her muscles. The ranger was already stumbling, and after a moment she lay still on the ground.

Instinct prompted Duvan to dive to his right again, and he’d learned to trust that feeling. Just in time, too, as one of Beaugrat’s steel-covered gauntlets, barbed with sharp extensible spikes, swept past Duvan’s cheek. If it had

been any closer, it could’ve taken his three-day stubble with it.

Duvan stood, now having circled so that he was between Beaugrat and the horses. Taking on the barbarian directly would be folly; Duvan would be giving up any advantages he had and would be playing into the other man’s hand.

Beaugrat wore plate armor and was no doubt at least half-again stronger than Duvan. The openings in his armor were limited to his face and the spellscar.

But Duvan was faster, more agile, and smarter. Well, he hoped he was smarter. That would be determined by the outcome.

Beaugrat gave a quick glance at his fallen cohort, and it registered on his face that she was out of the game. She would be dead shortly if an antidote wasnt delivered.

“You should’ve taken the deal,” Duvan said, breathing heavily in the humid jungle air. “Now it’s even odds, and you’re about to go down.”

Beaugrat grinned again. “I don’t think so,” he said. Then he extended his arms and pressed his wrists together, palms out toward Duvan. Immediately, his right arm erupted in gauzy blue-white flames. Spellscar.

“My master and I were hoping it would not come to this,” Beaugrat said, “but I see no choice now.”

“Your master?” Duvan said.

“Not that it matters to you anymore, but the Order has plans for Ormpetarr and the changelands. Tyrangal has been a consistent impediment and is standing in the way of unity and progress. She must be eliminated.”

Duvan spread his arms. “All right, but what does that have to do with me?”

“We’ve been interested in you for quite a while, Duvan. You are Tyrangal’s darling, but we can’t figure out why. She sends you to find things, but we don’t know what they are

and why she wants them. You are a mystery, and we don’t like mysteries.”

“I am happy to fade away. Disappear.”

“Enough talk,” Beaugrat said. “Time to die.” The fire engulfing his arm shot from his hand toward Duvan. The big man screamed in rage as the blue energy fire swirled like a tornado around Duvan.

But it did not touch him. It did not affect him.

Duvan felt a weakening in the base of his gut, like the whole of his being was transforming into liquid. It was a feeling he’d had before, many times—a feeling which brought back flashes of torment at the hands of the elves—memories of long, painful nights caged inside the plaguelands.

Duvan had always tried to keep his resistance to spellplague secret. It had been the source of more pain in his life than anything else. The fire’s energy dissipated the closer it got to Duvan, all of its potency gone by the time it reached his body.

Beaugrat lowered his hands, his eyes going wide in disbelief. The big man’s shoulders and back slumped from the exertion.

It was Duvan’s turn to grin. His gut and body felt solid once again, and he sized up his angle of attack.

Abruptly, Beaugrat lunged, directly for Duvan.

By reflex, Duvan sprang sideways to dodge the onrush. He simultaneously drew one of his daggers from a scabbard on his thigh.

Beaugrat, however, didn’t attack. He kept running, past Duvan and into the cluster of horses. Duvan looked on as the big man pulled himself, plate armor and all, up onto his war horse.

Duvan watched the barbarian ride off, and decided not to go after him. Their paths would no doubt cross again, and Duvan would deal with Beaugrat then. The present crisis was past, and that was all that mattered at the moment.

“Kill me,” said the ranger, Seerah, in her northern dialect. “It’s burning me up on the inside.”

Duvan looked over at her. She had dragged herself a few yards, although it wasn’t clear where she’d been trying to get to. The skin around her mouth and eyes had turned blue; it was too late to administer the antidote. Seerah would be dead shortly.

Duvan had miscalculated. “I’m sorry it had to be this way,” he said. “Life comes and goes. Death will take me one day, just as it has taken you and your sorcerer friend down in the chasm today.”

“Not my friend,” she croaked. “Just—” She gave the hint of a shrug. “Just someone else from the Order.”

The Order? Duvan wondered. Beaugrat had also mentioned the Order. The Order of Blue Fire concerned itself with the running of charitable works in many cities and towns. It was headquartered in Ormpetarr, though, and held a comparable amount of power in the city to Tyrangal.

“And Beaugrat?” Duvan asked, retrieving his dagger from the dead mage. “Was he your friend? Was he part of the Order?”

“Order, yes,” she said. “But… not my friend.” Her breath came in shallow gasps. “He left me here to die alone.”

Duvan nodded. “He is a coward,” he said. “And you are not alone. I am here to bear witness to your passing. May you find something better on the other side.”

Her eyes showed deep gratitude as he cut her throat to relieve the pain. Or maybe he imagined it. He didn’t know what awaited her on the other side. But Duvan knew for certain that prolonging her pain was cruel, and contrary to what some people believed, he was never cruel.

He built a fire and burned the ranger’s body, first sifting through her belongings for things of value that might make his life a little more comfortable. She wouldn’t need them where she was going.

Duvan did not rush, but he wasted no time, for he didn’t want to be here if Beaugrat came back with friends. Somewhere on the periphery of his awareness, he was starting to realize that letting Beaugrat live had been a mistake. A big mistake.

The Order of Blue Fire was a powerful organization in Ormpetarr, and Duvan was now quite squarely on their hit list.

The night swirled around Gregor, spellplague traces flickering like blue and white ghosts. He couldn’t look directly at the remnants of spellplague—at the hell of chaos that was the core essence of that energy—without losing exacting control over his body.

The blue fire was pure and random violence, destruction in its most wild and primal form. For Gregor, whose entire life had been about achieving and maintaining control, such force in close proximity caused an uncontrollable nausea to flow through,him. Vertigo teased the edges of his mind.

In the presence of Vraith and her entourage from the Order of Blue Fire, however, Gregor was determined not to show any outward signs of discomfort

or fear. His invitation to be here, he realized, was more than a courtesy. He supplied a critical component to make this ritual possible, or so they hoped. But it was certainly clear that Vraith wanted him to agree to what they were doing, to support it, and perhaps even to devote his resources and those of the monastery to it.

Gregor was flattered by the attention, and if this ritual worked, the possibilities for containing spellplague across all of Faerun would make it all worth it. But his informal arrangement with Tyrangal would make working with Vraith risky. He didn’t understand exactly why, but the two women—probably the two most powerful figures in Ormpetarr—did not get along.

Squinting to avoid swirling dust particles in the air, Gregor stood at a safe distance and watched Vraith perform the trial ritual. Even three hours after the sun had set, the wind was warm and fickle. It switched direction seemingly at random, kicking up sand and dirt in the process.

Gregor stood with a small group of observers, about thirty yards from the sharp drop-off that marked the border to the changelands. The sky above was dappled with high, gray clouds and darker spots where motes floated silently. The sky seemed positively serene compared to the ground, which Gregor felt could buckle and shake at any moment, and it was only the knowledge that the border had been stable for nearly a hundred years that allowed him to remain calm-There was a veil of sorts at the cliff—an almost imperceptible translucent curtain that held the storm of spellplague in check. Vraith had told him that she’d been studying how the border worked, and how that magic might be manipulated—controlled even.

Vraith took the pilgrim volunteers and spaced them out evenly in a semicircle facing the border. Gregor counted nine of them, and each held a vial. His elixir would hopefully be

able to help the pilgrims maintain the integrity of their bodies against the wild nature of the spellplague.

“Drink the elixir,” Vraith commanded, her voice like slate. “It will protect you.”

This would be her second trial, Vraith had claimed. The first one had failed because the blue fire killed the pilgrims before the ritual could be completed. Gregor hadn’t asked how they had died, those pilgrims, but he suspected that it had been fairly painful and gruesome.

The pilgrims who came back sick from their pilgrimage to the border of the Plaguewrought Land were only exposed to tiny amounts of spellplague—mere brushstrokes on the canvas of their souls. Many of those were ill for tendays and often didn’t survive even that much exposure.

Gregor did not understand the pilgrims who came to the Plaguewrought Land. Too often, they were unpredictable and driven by unquantifiable forces—it wasn’t logical or even comprehensible for them to risk the integrity of their bodies and their lives by purposefully seeking exposure to the spellplague in hopes of gaining a spellscar and the ability that went with it.

His spellscar had happened by accident. He had not sought it out, and it had nearly killed him. He understood the power that came with the spellscar—the incredible clarity and vision he now had with potions and alchemical concoctions. Still, he would counsel none of these fools to follow his path.

In front of him now, Vraith had started casting a complicated and powerful ritual. She held a small, bejeweled dagger in her hands, pressing its shimmering blue blade to the palms of each pilgrim to make small cuts.

“Join hands now,” she instructed. “Blood to blood, you will form a seamless entity.”

The pilgrims happily obliged. Under her spell, Gregor presumed, they would do almost anything.

“Now, take one step forward in unison.”

Fascination and dread welled inside Gregor as he watched the half-circle move toward the border veil. The pilgrims at either end of the arc nearly touched the spellplague that undulated like liquid fire on the other side of the veil.

Abruptly, wispy tendrils snaked out from Vraith’s chest like red-tinged fog. Standing outside the ring, the wizard’s eyes went milky, and her body swayed in rhythm to her chant. The red tendrils snaked through the pilgrims and wove them all together with their magic. Vraith sang in a language that Gregor did not know. Her voice rose and fell, rose and fell, and as she sang, the acrid odor of the Plaguewrought Land in summer swelled until Gregor felt he was going to retch. He clamped down on his gag reflex, using all his self-control to remain stoic and anchored.

The veil moved, then the swirling magic inside the border jumped to the nearest pilgrims. Like flames to tinder, the blue fire leaped from pilgrim to pilgrim, burning through their bodies. Their clothes evaporated. Their hair and skin glowed with translucent energy of the palest blue. Like the finest gauze, spidery and ethereal, the spellplague engulfed the semicircle of pilgrims.

The vision returned then, the vision he’d experienced when the spellplague had first come to him, haunting him like it always did. Gregor reached out for support as his head split in pain for a moment. The world vanished around him. Even the stench was gone.