Plague of Spells (24 page)

That name drew smiles and nods of happy assent from many others present.

Raidon cocked his head to signal his unfamiliarity with the name.

“You don’t know much, do you?”

A thread of heat urged Raidon to grasp the man’s head and bang it hard against the table. Slightly shocked to even entertain such a thought, the monk outwardly revealed his discomposure by narrowing his lips. He requested, “Explain.”

The grandfather laughed. “Well, Madruen entered the Plague-wrought Land, and unlike everyone before him, Madruen returned. Of course, it was an accident he’d fallen in at all, and the rest of us figured he was dead. A day later he walked back into town, his skin aglow with blue fire and a smile plastered across his face. He was touched by the spellplague. He was the first spellscarred anyone ever heard about.”

More nods from the clientele and even a couple of cheers. Raidon said, “Why did Madruen smile? Why did his skin glow?”

“He smiled because he wasn’t dead. His skin glowed because he soaked up the wild magic of the Plague-wrought Land, and it remade him. His skin was like iron—almost impossible to cut through. He could withstand daggers, swords, even ballista! Madruen was a walking palisade!”

Raidon took a deep breath and found his focus again. The image of the Cerulean Sign tattooed on his chest flashed before him, and he supposed, indeed, he was spellscarred like Madruen, but with a different outcome.

“When his story spread, others started coming here, hoping to share in Madmen’s good luck.”

“How many who enter the Plague-wrought Land return?”

“Well, at first the survival rate wasn’t too good. We’re a few years in now, though. Pilgrims got a chance to get in and get out without dissolving into slime or blowing away in a puff of wind.”

“And how many come back spellscarred?” pressed the monk.

“One out of every ten who survive in the first place,” pronounced the grandfather as solemnly as if he were relaying news of a new king in Cormyr.

“And how many survive?” prompted Raidon.

“Not always the same. Sometimes it’s one out of five, other times one out o’ twenty.”

Nearby patrons blanched.

“So Kiril Duskmourn entered the Plague-wrought Land,” said Raidon, “and never returned.” He uttered the last as a statement, not a question.

The old man nodded. “Yes. She was with a dwarf; his name I don’t recall. He said he was a geomancer who wanted to study the Plague-wrought Land from the inside.”

“His name was Thormud. But a geomancer? What’s that?”

The old man shrugged. “Who knows? He said he was seeking something. A… a ‘chalk horse,’ I think. The dwarf and Kiril went in, and…” The old man shrugged again, then called loudly for another drink.

The barkeep complied. As she passed Raidon with another sloshing tankard, she said, “I sell safe routes into the Plague-wrought Land. How much you willing to pay?”

*****

Raidon examined the map penned on rough parchment. A trail called the “Pilgrim’s Path” was crudely marked. It snaked past Onnpetarr’s gates and on into the hazy edge of the Plague-wrought Land. The path meandered relatively straight for a few miles until it rounded a landmark labeled “Granite Vortex.” The route zigged and zagged between several more unlikely sounding locations, slowly wending toward the heart of the discontinuity. The last portions of the map contained several alternate routes, all marked with a symbol indicating ignorance of what lay beyond it.

The barkeep had assured the monk that if he stayed on the path, there was a better than even chance he’d survive. At least until he got closer to the center, at which point it was anyone’s guess. But only those who pressed forward at the last were rewarded with a spellscar. Well, the handful who were not caught up and consumed. It seemed a mad gamble to Raidon. He hoped his own previous contact with the spellplague would offer him some protection now.

The pack burro to Raidon’s left issued a complaining bleat. A gray-haired woman was hanging another waterskin to its already prodigious load. The woman’s name was Finara, and she was a mage, or had been, before the Spellplague. She’d lost her way since then. She had not been able to learn the new weft of the Weave, and thus could no longer perform magic. Upon losing her spellcasting ability, followed soon by her wizard tower and livelihood, hard times found her. Finara explained she was a pilgrim now because it was the only option remaining. If she couldn’t find a new understanding of magic in the Plague-wrought Land, she was happy to accept death in its stead.

To the monk’s right stood a young man in simple leathers. An old long sword in a battered sheath hung on his belt. The man said his name was Hadyn. He’d traveled far to become a pilgrim. All the way from Waterdeep, he had earnestly explained. Even after the rest of his party had fell to gnoll marauders in the Greenfields, Hadyn had pressed onward. He said his journey took him the better part of a year. He said a dream sustained him. A dream of wielding a piece of the Weave, like a god of old.

When Raidon bought the map from the barkeep, she’d explained that a small party of pilgrims was readying for a trip into the Plague-wrought Land the very next morning and that he was welcome to join them. The barkeep explained groups had a better success rate for bare survival than lone explorers. Raidon thanked her and agreed to join the foolhardy band.

“Are you ready?” inquired the monk of his chance-met companions.

Hadyn smiled and gave a firm nod.

Finara looked worried but said, “Of course.”

Behind them stood a small crowd, mostly would-be pilgrims who had yet to gather the courage for their own try at a spellscar. When Raidon, Hadyn, Finara, and the burro started forward, they loosed a ragged cheer.

Before them was the steep precipice that divided the surviving half of Ormpetarr from the cloud of churning color that consumed the southern portion of the city. An enterprising carpenter had rigged a wooden ramp down the least steep portion of the slope, held in place by rope and iron pitons. The ramp descended into the mist. The rickety platform marked the beginning of the Pilgrim’s Path.

They descended the wooden ramp, its boards creaking with each step. The burro complained loudly, but Finara managed to yank it along.

They paused at the interface’s edge. From a distance, it looked like bluish fog. This close, it was more like gazing down into a rippled, partly murky pool. Everything outside was sharp-edged and clear, and everything within was blurred and wavering. Shapes and colors writhed beyond the boundary, but from this side, it was impossible to determine what they were.

Raidon concentrated on the Cerulean Sign blazoned on his chest. Despite his fears, it was quiescent. It detected nothing blatantly aberrant in the Plague-wrought Land, at least here.

Taking a deep breath, Raidon plunged through.

A cold, tingling wave prickled across his skin, tugged at his clothes, and pulled his hair out straight. Hues he’d never seen or imagined danced across his vision. He blinked, trying to clear his eyes, and finally succeeded. Before him lay the Plague-wrought Land.

A warped, quivering vista spread away south. Land slid and mixed like slowly boiling mud. Not only land, but rivulets of blue fire, ruins, trees and foliage, and even the sky itself dipped down here and there to touch the ground. It all flowed together as if contained in a cream churner whose edges were the horizon. The earth, streamers of blue fire, air, and half-glimpsed items of incomprehensible aspect mixed, melded, then separated, emerging from the morass as some new, more bizarre feature of the landscape.

To the ramp’s left, an object, half stone, part color, and perhaps partly living—slowly heaved up out of the undulating earth below. It was the size of a city building, and it blazed like an azure bonfire. It groaned and shrieked, reached a hand-like appendage for the pilgrims. It dissolved into a cacophony of screams, gleams, and flowing liquid before it could reach them.

“Gods!” Hadyn burst out. He backpedaled but was blocked by the burro.

Finara grabbed Hadyn’s shoulder and yelled loud enough to be heard above the roar of the subsiding object, “Wait! Stay with us!”

The young man struggled in her grasp. Finara spun Hadyn around and said, “We knew we’d find something like this! We knew the spellplague still cavorted here! We can’t turn back now!”

Finara’s eyes sought Raidon’s. Despite her words, her tone and glance seemed to be asking Raidon: or can we turn back after all?

Raidon studied the wooden bridge, which stretched forward across and through the tumult. Somehow, the wooden construction remained inviolate. At least as far as he could see, though a bend in the path took it behind a glimmering indigo mound and out of sight.

The monk said, “I intend to press onward.”

Finara let go of the young man. He released a shuddering breath, then he said, “Sorry about that. I—I was caught off guard. I want to keep going too. I want a spellscar.”

They started again. Raidon tried to keep his eyes on the wooden planks before him, but flashes of light, roars of outrageous sound, and sudden winds kept flicking his attention up to one side or the other. Each time he did so, his focus trembled.

A hundred paces farther on, Hadyn stopped, bent over the side of the wooden bridge’s railing, and was noisily sick.

They waited, saying nothing, eyes averted. Raidon suspected the wavering perspective was confusing the young man’s senses as much as it tried to disrupt his own. Raidon’s martial focus provided protection, and by the smell of Finara’s breath, spirits apparently provided her some insulation from the mad panorama. The young man had to rely on willpower alone to keep shuffling forward.

“What keeps this bridge safe from the spellplague?” Hadyn gasped, wiping his mouth.

Finara squinted at the wooden struts, then shook her head. “I’ve lost my sensitivity to magic. Perhaps it is enchanted? I can’t tell.”

Raidon had wondered the same. Hopefully it wasn’t some quality they needed to know about to survive.

Hadyn signaled he was feeling better by taking the lead. Raidon allowed it. Finara and her burro brought up the rear.

They rounded the great mound, and Hadyn pulled up short. The monk looked up and saw the object of Hadyn’s fear. The wooden bridge extended out over a great pit, without apparent support. A grinding, splintering sound emanated from the hole, and rock dust blew into the air. The bridge vibrated with a terrible rending sound. Raidon edged forward, past the still motionless Hadyn, until he too paused when the trembling planks beneath him grew worrisome, as if they intended to fly apart, leaving behind their former unity as a bridge.

Even from where he stood, Raidon could see some distance into the pit. Great slabs of stone, all in motion, swirled around a central column of sapphire flame. Each slab stretched a hundred feet or more in length. When the slabs slammed into each other, a booming crash rang out. From above, the sound was so loud it threatened to collapse the monk’s eardrums.

A hand touched his shoulder. It was Finara. She yelled into his ear, “This is the Granite Vortex. This is the first landmark on the Pilgrim’s Path!”

Raidon produced the map and studied it. Yes, that must be what this was. Unfortunately, the vortex had apparently shifted somewhat since the map had been drawn—the path wasn’t supposed to pass right over it.

“We should consider leaving the bridge here,” Raidon yelled back. “It looks like the burro will be able to just make it down too—”

“But then we’ll be off the path!” protested Hadyn. “We’ll be vulnerable!”

Raidon shrugged and returned, “Whether here or five miles farther on, we were destined to leave the marked path. I dislike the look of this vortex. You must choose.”

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Taunissik, Sea of Fallen Stars

Captain Thoster studied the distant mote on the horizon through a tube of black iron. He stood at the Green Siren’s bow with the kuo-toa priestess, Nogah, at his side. Her skin was mottled with saltwater droplets.

Japheth watched the two, wrapped in his cloak against the direct light of the sun. He was trying to figure out what Behroun was up to, how and why he had allied with an eladrin noble out of the Feywild, and just what was in it for a creature of her power to throw in with a mortal.

Nogah croaked, breaking the warlock’s reverie, “Do you see it? Can you see Taunissik?”

“Aye, I see it, your fishy greatness,” replied Thoster. “Don’t get your scales in a twist.”

Japheth shaded his eyes with a hand and squinted into the glare. A smudge was still several miles off, just above the horizon. But even so far, and without a spyglass, he could just make out regular planes and angles that bespoke a city of some sort.

Seren lightly elbowed Japheth in the side, murmured, “What do you think of our chances, really? I am not without power, and my foes would not call me a coward. But a great kraken! Are you not concerned?” Seren was companionably close, even though he’d edged away twice. Each time he’d done so, she’d bridged the distance again. Was she needling him purposefully?

Japheth rewarded the woman’s persistence with a nod. He said, “Our task will not be easy. But I have no choice. I must see this through to the end.”

Seren smiled suddenly and said, “You are a noble one, aren’t you? You come off all hard and nasty, but it turns out you have a soft spot running through you a mile wide.”

The warlock frowned, uncomfortable in the woman’s overly wide smile and eyes that kept trying to meet and hold his own.

He looked away, only to feel the wizard’s hand on his shoulder. She said, “It’s an endearing trait, you know. Thoster, here, he cares for nothing but himself. But you! You have a heart large enough to care for others. That is something I could come to admire.”

Seren’s hand remained on Japheth’s shoulder and squeezed lightly. Even through his thick, batskin cloak, he could feel the warmth of her palm.

Japheth took a step away, so that her hand fell loose. He said, “If you think I am softhearted or noble, you have woefully misjudged me.”

Seren gestured so that both palms lay open and empty, a gesture of entreaty. Her wrists were thin and shapely, her hands well formed. Japheth looked up to her face. She asked,