“Step through,” Kaylinn said. “Come back into the light.”
And so he did.
Commander Accordant Vraith strode purposefully through the throngs of revelers who had arrived for the Festival of Blue Fire. Pilgrims young and old had come to this broad, grassy field on the boundary between the mundane and the glorious. Entire families celebrated here along the border of the Plaguewrought Land.
The pilgrims had brought their wagons full of supplies and had built huge bonfires whose flames licked the sky. Here and there, pilgrims danced to music and singing. They feasted on roasted food and drank wine and ale without restraint. Many children joined in the festivities, and Vraith noticed more than a few coming-of-age rituals under way.
They smelled of joy and intoxication. Chaos and abandonment.
Vraith felt the stirrings of her spellscar beneath her sternum, eager to pull the threads of their souls and weave them together. If her ritual worked, some part of each of these lucky volunteers would end up locked inside the new border.
Vraith’s deputyRenfod, himself a Loremaster Accordant came up next to her, joining a handful of others here to carry out her instructions. The chaotic crowd would have to be at least minimally structured, which she knew might prove more difficult than performing the actual ritual. It was one thing to arrange five or ten people, and quite another to organize a thousand or so.
The evening sky reddened overhead as she neared the border veil. Like a sheen of oil on water, the barrier reflected an undulating rainbow, stretching like a semi-translucent curtain as far as she could see in all directions. Most of the pilgrims gave the barrier a wide berth.
“Has anyone seen Brother Gregor?” Vraith asked nobody in particular. “He’d better have brought his elixir.”
Renfod nodded, then said, “He’s here, Commander. At the edge of the festivities.”
Vraith smiled. “Excellent. We’ll start with him. Lead on.”
Renfod’s dark form angled away from the border veil and through the crowds of drinking and dancing pilgrims. Vraith appreciated the man’s efficiency, his obedience, and willingness to serve.
Still, there was no need to get sentimental. He was just one filament in the tapestry of her rise to authority and power. A willing filament to be sure, but nothing more. Her ascendancy would culminate, ultimately, in her raptureher melding with the sharn. She would become one with the transcendent collective minds of the sharn; she would live in the Blue Fire and across many universes simultaneously.
Unfortunately, while Renfod bent over backward to help her further her cause, the same could not be said for Brother Gregor.
She hated that she needed him. But there was nobody else who could work the alchemical magic that he could. The man had a gift. She’d had to resort to non-magical forms of manipulationpersuasion and cunning. That was all right with Vraith, however; she was good at those talents too.
Renfod and his entourage cleared a path to the periphery of the festival throng. They passed a wedding ceremony underway. The tall bride was all smiles in her lace finery, while her portly groom looked nervous behind his well-clipped beard.
“There he is,” Renfod said as they circumnavigated the wedding, pointing a little ways ahead at Gregor.
The monk’s shock of white hair was a beacon tinged with red in the light of the waning sun. He stood with several other monks and clerics from the monastery, all surrounding a large metal cauldron. Vraith could see as she approached that the cauldron was full of dull green liquid.
“May the Blue Fire burn inside you,” Vraith said.
“Pray Oghma grants you wisdom,” Gregor replied, his tone icy.
Vraith pretended to ignore Gregor’s cold attitude; she gestured at the cauldron with her hand. “I trust the elixir is ready?”
“It is,” he said. “Now I just need to get people to drink it.”
“I can help,” she said. Then, turning to Renfod, “Let’s get our militia to arrange everyone in a long line. Tell them that I will come by and bless them each individually with a small cut on their palms and a drink from the cauldron. The ritual can begin only when this is completed.”
Renfod nodded and then strode away, barking orders.
“This thing you do,” Gregor said. “I have your word that it will be used to tame and capture the spellplague in all its forms across Faerun?”
Vraith stared hard into Gregor’s gray eyes. “Don’t start having second thoughts now, monk. You’re in too deep to swim to the surface on your own.”
Gregor refused to back down. “You didn’t answer the question.”
So he was going to need her to lie. That was fine with her; lies came easily to her. “Someone’s word,” she said, “is as fickle as the next famine or plague or war. I give you my word, for whatever that is worth to you.”
Gregor’s brow knitted in puzzlement.
“But,” Vraith said, “nobody’s word is worth what you think it is. The only thing that you have of value is your own internal compass, your own faith. Gregor, you either trust me to do what you believe needs to be done, or you do not. My word cannot change that.
“And,” Vraith continued, “as I just said; you are in too deep to be having doubts now.”
Gregor shook his head slowly. “I have many options,” he said.
Vraith forced herself to bite back an angry retort. She smiled. “Well, you do what you need to do. But I assure you that you have nothing to worry about. The truly great have to make hard choices, and oftentimes lesser folks get caught in the way. It is the price of vision.
“We will change the world, you and I,” she told Gregor. And she believed it.
Duvan came to life with a shock. His back arching in spasm, he gulped air. Again, shocks shot through his body, and his chest seemed to be filled with broken glass. A violent exhalation seized him, as though a giant invisible hand clamped down on his chest. He rolled on his side and coughed-up blood and phlegm. Then the pain hit. His back burned where Beaugrat’s blade had pierced him. His head felt like it had been wrenched off and then jammed back into place.
Darkness and silence surrounded him. Me could see nothing, hear nothing. The iron tang of blood that filled his nostrils stank so powerfully that it blocked out all other smells.
Then, filtered through the black cotton in his head, he heard a voice he recognized. “He’s alive,” Kaylinn said. “Welcome back, Duvan.”
Liquid against the back of his throat blazed a trail down to his chest, somewhat dulling the ache that pervaded his muscles and joints. His eyes were open, but he could not see any light. Only tiny pinpricks of light showed in the vast dark gray in front of him.
“Thank you so much, Kaylinn.” That was Slanya’s voice, and he heard tears in the utterance. His heart opened with the sound. Slanya had not betrayed or abandoned him. On the contrary, she had come to save him.
“Thank Kelemvor,” Kaylinn said. “For he allowed Duvan back among the living.”
“His time is not over,” Slanya said, and her voice was not the stoic and rigid Slanya he rememberedthe combat cleric who challenged him, who stood by him and fought. No, there was a deep vulnerability in that voice, a touching quality that melted Duvan.
“Where am I?” he asked, but no one seemed to hear him. He couldnt even hear himself. His mouth wasn’t working right.
“He’s trying to talk,” Kaylinn said. “It will take a few hours for him to completely recover all his senses. But he can hear you now.”
Slanya’s voice was in his ear. “You rest now, Duvan,” she said, and her breath smelled of almonds. “You have no cares in the world.”
If the voice said rest, then that’s what he would do.
Some time later, though he had no way of knowing how much, he awoke. His vision came back slowly and in patches. And he could sense that he was lying flat on his back, but the pallet that held him was soft, and the sheets under and over him were elegant and clean. He was naked, he realized then, and had been scrubbed free of dirt.
