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 timesa feeling which brought back flashes of torment at the hands of the elvesmemories 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.
CHAPTER THREE
The night swirled around Gregor, spellplague traces flickering like blue and white ghosts. He couldn’t look directly at the remnants of spellplagueat the hell of chaos that was the core essence of that energywithout 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 womenprobably the two most powerful figures in Ormpetarrdid 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 cliffan 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 manipulatedcontrolled 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 spellplaguemere 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 forcesit wasn’t logical or even comprehensible for them to risk the
