Calm down, she told herself. Breathe. She took a moment to center herself, anchor her body and mind together.
“You make a powerful argument,” Gregor said.
“Excellent! If this next ritual proves successful,” Vraith said, “we will need thousands more doses. The festival is a few days away. Can you provide that many?”
The festival? Slanya considered for a moment. Vraith must be referring to the Festival of Blue Fire. Thousands of pilgrims were gathering in and around Ormpetarr that tenday to participate. It was one of the reasons the numbers of sick and dead had increased.
Gregor said, “I will need more reagents to produce that much. But I’m already working on getting more.”
“How long will it take?” Vraith’s benevolent tone gave way to one of commanding urgency. “If the next test works, I’ll want the elixir ready to distribute.”
“Several days at least,” Gregor said. “One of the ingredients is very difficult to acquire.”
“Get started right away. This is critical.” The sharpness in Vraith’s voice made Slanya wince.
When Gregor spoke again, there was a warning in his tone. “Let me do my job and you do yours. I am provisionally committed, because this ritual of yours seems to be the key to containing spellplague. That is a worthy goal, and one which can make a profound change in the world. But do not take that tone again with me. I do not take orders from you.”
“Can you create more elixir or not?”
Gregor paused. “Yes, I don’t expect it to be a problem.”
Vraith’s tone was back to sweet and peaceful, “Perfect. I’ll let you get to it then.”
Abruptly there were footsteps and the sounds of movement. They were headed this way, toward the door where Slanya was standing. Getting closer.
Slanya’s heart shot into her throat, and in her panic she missed the next part of the conversation. She was about to be discovered, and the punishment would no doubt be the switch across her back. Memories threatened to overwhelm her.
Stop it, she told herself. There were no punishments like that in the monastery. That fear came from a long- ago life she hardly remembered. That was in a past that could never hurt her again.
And with that thought, some of the adrenaline fog lifted. She focused and relaxed her breathing, calmed her heart. And she knew what to do.
She knocked on the door. After all, she had been summoned. She was supposed to be on the way.
The door opened almost immediately, revealing Gregor with his silver-dusted black hair and neatly trimmed beard. A patch over his left ear where, his spellscar had bleached his hair and skull to the pale, milky blue color of moonstone lay bare.
Gregor gave Slanya a warm smile, “Ah, Sister Slanya, prompt as usual. Thank you for coming.”
Slanya’s heart warmed slightly at the sight of Gregor’s pleasure with her, and then she became aware of how irrational her response to Gregor was. She wanted to please him; she had held a special affinity for him ever since he’d saved her; he’d judged her and found her worthy. She knew that her reaction was less than objective, but it didn’t hurt anyone but herself.
“I am just escorting our guests here, including Commander Accordant Vraith of the Order of Blue Fire, to the gates.”
Gregor indicated a diminutive elf woman holding a wooden box, who radiated power and confidence. “Just ‘Vraith’ is fine,” she said with a slight nod.
Gregor continued, “Our business has concluded. Please walk with us.”
Slanya stood to the side as Gregor and Vraith stepped into the hallway, followed by four others who apparently did not merit introduction. Vraith wore sky-blue wizard’s robes, which shimmered in the dim light, the embroidered Order symbol of a flaming blue iris glittering on her heart. Her blonde hair was cropped short in back and straight across her brow in front, giving her an angular look.
Two of the four others, well-muscled human men in plate armor displaying the Order symbol on their chests, flanked Vraith and walked just slightly behind her. Trailing in the rear was a dwarf woman with curly red hair and glowering eyes under bushy red brows. She sported pale blue clerical robes, a faded copy of those worn by Vraith, bound at the waist by a white rope.
Next to the dwarf walked a genasi woman, wearing the bright robes of a wizard, which served to accentuate the aquamarine color of her skin. The genasi looked to be a mage to Slanya’s eyes, and considering the hydra- shaped spellscar that seemed to drip like a liquid crystal stain over her left ear, she was bound to be quite a dangerous one.
Slanya brought up the rear, grateful that her anxiety hadn’t been noticed. She would wait until she was called upon. Following Gregor and Vraith out into the late afternoon heat of the monastery courtyard, Slanya listened as their conversation shifted from business to superficiality.
“Your orders have accomplished a great deal in the short time you’ve been here,” Vraith said. “You’ve built the bulk of your temple in such a short time. It’s most impressive.”
Gregor smiled and nodded, apparently appreciative of her compliments. After a few more moments, they were at last out through the main entrance and standing in the shadow of the billowing black cloud rising from the funeral pyre off to the right.
“Brother Gregor,” Vraith said, handing the wooden box to the dwarf cleric, “thank you again for undertaking such important work.” Gregor nodded.
“I look forward to your attendance at our ritual tonight, and I am hopeful that with your elixir we shall be successful.”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” Gregor said.
Vraith smiled. “Perfect.” Then with a slight bow, she said, “May the Blue Fire burn inside you “
The elf priestess turned and picked a path through the vast disarray of pilgrims’ tents, which filled the fields between the monastery and Ormpetarr’s main gates.
Standing next to Gregor, Slanya looked over the broad plain. The camp outside the monastery sprawled like an infection, and all attempts at establishing organization among the tents had been futile. So many new pilgrims arrived every day.
Slanya glanced across the distance at the wild city into which she rarely set foot. Unlike its ancient namesake, modern Ormpetarr was a frontier cityruled not by a hierarchical leadership or a figurehead but governed instead by a loose alignment of power brokers.
A blue-brown haze cut a swath through the city. This was the veilthe Plaguewrought Land border that the pilgrims came here to cross, if only briefly. There was a steep drop-off just through the hazy veil, and rumor said that the terrain inside the changelands was as inconstant and volatile as a storm-wracked ocean.
The once-mighty city told of a rough history, of a glorious past now worn down by the ravages of time and the Spellplague. Ormpetarr may have once been a monument to order and to the rule of law, but the monument had shattered, and the only order or law that had arisen from the wreckage was survival of the cunning and the strong. “We are here to help establish order on the edge of chaos,” Kaylinn had told her, “where it is most needed.”
But Slanya, who preferred the quiet and ordered life in the monastery, found it hard to avoid openly gagging from the smells drifting across the fieldsthe aroma of food cooking mingled with the charred smell of the roasted dead from the funeral pyre. And beneath it all was the summer stench of the Plaguewrought Land itself, like rotting flesh crammed with sour oranges.
The vast encampment was no more than a disorganized jumble of tents and makeshift shelters that served as a refuge for the grotesque plaguechanged who had come for hospice care. It was also a last stop for pilgrims without the means to afford lodging in Ormpetarr.
Pilgrims! To purposefully expose the sanctity and wholeness of their bodies and minds to the destructive chaos of the Plaguewrought Landit was insanity.
Slanya shook her head, chiding herself for the derision she felt for the pilgrims. These people came from all over the world in search of improvement, and most of them met with death or illness. She should admire their courage.
Still, as much as she tried, the most she could summon for them was pity. The lucky ones walked away alive, with some Unforeseen and unearned magical power to counterbalance some physical or emotional deformity. And,
