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 spellscarthe 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.
In his vision, Gregor walked through a landscape of fiat green fields covered at regular intervals by archways of blue fire. The spellplague was under perfect and exacting control, forming a lattice threadwork of geometric patterns through the flat, grassy plain.
Here was the possible futureone which was organized and controlled. One in which wild magic interwove with the plane in knowable and predictable ways. No more random and irrational tragedies.
Just as suddenly as it had come, the vision faded, and Gregor found himself back at the trial ritual. This was first step to achieving that vision, one possible way that the changelands could be ordered.
The veil that marked the border of the Plaguewrought Land shifted then, moved to encapsulate the new bulge and the pilgrims with it. That border had not moved in years, but Vraith had moved it.
“Now!” Vraith screamed. “Break the circle now!”
The pilgrims let go of each other and flung themselves out of the borderinside which the earth was already collapsing and breaking up, flying into the sky like an inverted waterfall of rock.
Or most of them did. Gregor caught sight of two who didn’t make it out in time, whose bodies went flying up with the earth, and who did not come down. They disappeared into the vastness of the Plaguewrought Land.
Clerics rushed to the pilgrims who had made it, examined them, and pronounced them all alive. Not well, but alive. They would require healing for many, many days, and might not make it.
But they had survived the initial exposure, every one. The elixir worked!
Vraith would certainly want more for her full-scale ritual. Much more. All that rested on Slanya now, and the guide Tyrangal said she could get.
Gregor smiled broadly. His head pain was gone, and he felt renewed. His path was clear.
Letting the blanket that served as a curtain fall into place behind him, ten-year-old Duvan stared at what remained of his village. The houses and barns had been leveled and burned to the ground by the spellplague. Smoke still rose from the ashes. Partial skeletons and scattered bones littered what remained of the single road.
Duvan staggered away from the house, razed except for Duvan’s small room. Some of the bodies were more fully recognizable as people. There was Trelthas, an older girl who had just announced her intention to marry Erephus. Duvan had liked her, and there she was providing a fertile bed for maggots.
His stomach heaved at the stench coming from the corpse, and his knees buckled. He vomited bile, the acid burning his throat.
When the nausea passed, he wiped the tears away angrily and continued his search. He found no one alive and many more bodies, all maggot-riddled and decomposing.
Everyone was gone, including Papa. He searched for Papa’s body, but he never found it. What he did find was a food cache, near one of the huge holes in the ground, over by what was left of Elder Lindraut’s barn. Duvan stared into the jagged scar in the ground and caught sight of the food cellar about ten yards down.
One wall and part of the ceiling had been ripped away like the skin of an orange, and inside he could see shelves of dried fruit, hard bread, and bottles of wine. As with other places in the destroyed village, here and there, patches of the blue gauzy web still flickered like the last clinging remnants of fire to a cinder. There were several small but active patches down in the scar, between him and the store of food.
Still, this was the only food he had found, and his hunger drove him to get it. He climbed down the jagged rock wall, managing to avoid the pockets of spellplague, and slipped into the cellar. He found an empty burlap sack and filled it with as much food as he could lift.
Then he climbed back out. He’d always been good at climbing. He hurried back to Talfani to share the food. “Hey, ‘Fani!” he said, pushing the heavy blanket aside. “It’s eating time!”
Talfani rolled in the bed and stared up at him, her tired eyes full of grief. All color had drained from her face, her normally dark skin pale and her lips almost translucent. Clearly she’d been exposed while he had been searching for food.
Talfani’s illness had worsened after he’d come back with food. He’d tended to her over the next few days as she faded away. He had tried to save her and care for her as best he could. He remembered it like it was yesterday; her soul’s light had dimmed, guttered, and then finally, when it went out, it was a relief for her.
But for ten-year-old Duvan it was no relief. He could not bear it. Talfani had been a joined soulhis twin. He had depended upon her, and with her gone it was as though half of his spirit had been ripped away. When she finally gave up and let go of her body, young Duvan had stopped eating. He’d stopped caring and had just lay with her emaciated corpse for days or tendays. He had no recollection of time passing.
Duvan might’ve died back then, but for a travelling company of elves bound for Wildhome. They had wandered up to see if they could salvage anything. Ageless and graceful, these noble people had saved Duvan from the wreckage.
He had always wanted to run away and join them, but when they had finally come for him, he didn’t care. He never forgave them for rescuing him… and for what they did to him after.
Lying on the ground, Duvan shook himself and yawned. A hot wind gusted through his hair, drying the sweat on his forehead, and cut the humid jungle air. A magic ring one of Tyrangal’s treasureshad brought him halfway back to Ormpetarr before depositing him and his horse in a clearing in the middle of the Chondalwood. He had ridden the better part of the remaining distance in the last day, but he still had some time to go before he reached Ormpetarr.
Tendrils of memory clung to him like spider silk. Duvan angrily wiped his eyes as he saddled up his horse. Selune was high, and it was hardly midnight, but if sleep meant the same nightmare remembrances, he’d rather ride than sleep.
Duvan finished packing his saddlebags and mounted up. He spurred the horse into motion and pushed out in the deep blue dark of the half-moon, as the horse slipped as fast as it could toward Ormpetarr, Tyrangal, and the completion of this botched mission.
Not home, Duvan thought. I have no real home.
But he did crave a deep, sound sleep and a long, hot bath. All in the company of his favorite girl-the inestimable Moirah. Well, Duvan thought with a chuckle, she actually was estimable; he knew exactly how much she charged.
