“The clerics and monks of my order sometimes spend tendays doing nothing more than meditation and training,” she said. “Learning how to master oneself.”
“I’m no cleric.”
Slanya laughed. “Clearly,” she said. “But my point was that perhaps you could learn something from me just as I have learned from you.”
“As far as I can tell, I have taught you nothing.”
“Well, you many not think so,” Slanya said, “but your calm has helped me cope with the randomness of the changelands. While you may be a tempest in the city, you’re like a rock in this stormy sea. Just being in here has helped me understand more about chaos-and fear it far more-than I ever have.”
Duvan looked her, the lines of his face bunched in puzzlement. His eyes reflected the fire as the sky continued to darken overhead.
“I am intensely uncomfortable with so much chaos,” Slanya continued. “But with your guidance, I have been able to stay sane in the midst of it. I consider that a gift.”
Duvan seemed to absorb her words, but his face was impassive. His blank expression was neither questioning nor dismissive, as though he merely accepted what she had said, but had no opinion of it. At least not yet.
Slanya stared at this enigmatic man, his strong, dark features limned in the orange glow of the fire. She wanted to heal him if she could, help him heal himself.
“All right,” he said. “Although it feels like a stretch to me. Now, what would you teach me?”
Slanya smiled. “Simple things at first-breathing and meditation. But with those will come mind balance and perhaps the discipline to confront your demons. The ultimate goal is peace with yourself.”
Duvan frowned. “From where I stand, I don’t see the benefit of inner peace.”
She laughed. “Well, it’s liberating. Healing your scars and wounds will help you resolve your past. You are a remarkable person, Duvan, capable of so much. But you are held back by … I’m not sure what-guilt or regret, perhaps? Discipline can emancipate you from that, by resolving issues instead of burying them.”
Duvan’s eyes narrowed. “And why do you care so much?”
It was an appropriate question and one that had already occurred to Slanya. “Balance,” she said. “Because you’ve helped me.”
Duvan seemed to accept that, nodding.
Looking across the fire, its temptation dulled at the moment, Slanya watched Duvan’s dark shape. He was gazing into the glowing orange coals, his expression melancholy.
And of course he had saved her life. She had trusted him, and he had lived up to that trust. He had proved himself worthy. That too was a gift.
“What happened to make you so cynical?” she said.
Duvan remained quiet, but his expression in the firelight grew soft, pensive. And beneath, Slanya thought she detected some vulnerability, which was immediately endearing.
“By telling someone,” she said, “by sharing your story with another soul who will not judge you but will simply listen and validate what has happened to you … by doing that you take the first step to resolving it.”
“It can’t be resolved away,” Duvan said.
Slanya nodded, but she wasn’t ready to back down just yet. “Maybe not, but talking about it can let someone else share the burden.” She stared directly into his eyes.
He held her gaze for a moment then shook his head. “I can’t lose it,” he said. “And you don’t want to share this burden. You have no idea what you’re asking.”
“Lose it?”
“This cannot be washed away,” he said. “Like you’ve done with your past.”
Slanya bristled at that. “I have not washed away anything,” she said, then admitted, “Although it is possible that my memory of what happened isn’t accurate. But then yours might not be either.”
Duvan snorted. “And how would you know?”
“Exactly,” Slanya said. “It’s what we remember and the lessons we draw from those memories that are important.”
“No disagreement there,” he said.
She thought back to the fire in her aunt’s house. There was more to the story than what she had revealed to Duvan, but even beyond that, some of her recollection of it was fuzzy, the details indistinct. That bothered her.
“To be honest,” she said, “I don’t remember everything about the night of the fire-about my Aunt Ewesia’s death.”
Duvan’s dark eyes glimmered in the firelight. “I sometimes wish I didn’t remember, but I can’t help it.”
Slanya shivered and moved a little closer to the fire. “What happened?”
“I don’t want talk about it,” he said.
“I will trust with you with my story,” she said, “if you trust me with yours.”
Duvan chuckled. “Convenient,” he said, “since you don’t even know your complete story.”
Slanya smiled. “I will try to remember what really happened, but in any case, I never claimed the deal was fair.”
Duvan’s dark, grinning face reflected firelight for a moment before growing somber. And then, against the backdrop of the approaching storm-the sound and the fury of which surpassed every other phenomenon of Slanya’s experience-he surprised her when he began telling his story first.
“Until I was ten, I lived in a small farming village with my father and my sister, Talfani. My mother had died giving birth to us. I never knew her. Talfani and I were inseparable.”
Standing, Duvan brushed the dust from his leathers and walked around the fire. The sky had darkened to a midnight blue, laced with threads of vibrant purple and punctuated by occasional explosions of blue. He noticed that the mote had stopped rising, which was good because the air was already cold enough up this far. But they were still floating toward the ’plague storm, caught like a leaf in a whirlpool. And soon they would be in the midst of a spellplague storm as nasty as Duvan had ever encountered.
He knew well that the mote could descend any time so the best option was to wait.
For the moment.
“We lived in a small house on the edge of the village, next to our fields and the olive orchard we tended. Talfani and I shared a room and the chores, helping Papa with the fields.”
The mote had found an island of calm in the turbulent sea of chaos. Over the edge, Duvan could see boiling destruction. Explosions of molten rock and flickers of crisp blue magic punctuated the swirling plaguestorm. Pinpoints of light far, far below what could be ground level shone like stars in an upside down world. Perhaps he was seeing down into the Underdark.
“I was awakened one night by a light-a glimmer of the palest blue. There was the overwhelming stench of the plaguestorm, although I didn’t know what it was at the time.” Duvan turned to look at Slanya, “Do you know that smell-the rotten oranges and corpse odor-that only comes in late summer and fall?”
“Yes,” Slanya said.
“I remember the smell vividly. I remember that it was the end of summer and the harvest had gone into full swing. Everyone was happy. Harvesttime was a good time for the village.”
Slanya remained silent, listening attentively from across the waning fire. Her pale skin reflected red in the light of the campfire, and her fine features seemed frail against the violence of the storm. Slanya sat crosslegged with her hands resting in her lap, her sideknot hanging delicately by her ear with the end just touching her shoulder.
Duvan had wanted to tell someone this story-the true events of what had happened-for years. And he had tried a few times, but people never understood. People never wanted to understand.
Slanya seemed different in that regard. And perhaps his story could help her to realize that cynicism and mistrust was the only way to make it through life. She was far too trusting, especially of Gregor, who Duvan thought was vastly overestimating the efficacy of his precious elixir. Gregor was playing with Slanya’s life and lying about it.
Duvan shook his head. There was nothing for it but to leap into the telling. Duvan had to just take the plunge if he was going to go there at all.