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."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) Taunissik, Sea of Fallen Stars