Where am I? he wondered.
Duvan examined himself. He was whole, his body sound except for a dry cut under his ribcage. No blood there, but the scar remained open. It didn’t hurt. In fact he felt nothing-no pain, no joy. Nothing. Only emptiness.
He felt like an animated husk-a hollowed-out marionette.
Turning, Duvan caught sight of a small, gray bump on the horizon-a tiny blip on the flat landscape of gray. He started walking toward it, his progress marked only by the shape’s fractional increase in size. But whatever it was, that dull bump on the otherwise flat plane, Duvan felt drawn to it.
Deep gray and black shadows drifted like tatters of wind-driven fog all around him as he walked. He felt no fear and no fatigue as he walked and walked. For hours he walked, and the dark bump on the horizon grew little by little. Days and tendays and even months seemed to pass as he trudged forward. He had no sense of time in this place.
Fragments of memory flitted through his mind. He’d heard tell that souls passed to the Fugue Plane, Kelemvor’s home, to be judged. Perhaps that is where I am, he thought. But where is Kelemvor?
After more hours of walking, some of the whispered voices grew more distinct. One of them started talking to him, telling him that he didn’t have to go to the City of Judgment. Telling him that there were better options. The gods might not want him, but there were lords elsewhere who would accept him with open arms. He would start out at the bottom, but a soul like his could rise quickly. He would have power and eventual dominion over many others.
Duvan shook his head and marched on.
You should consider the offer, the whispers murmured. You are one of the Faithless. Your fate will otherwise be an eternity of boredom and monotony. The death god will entomb you in the walls of his city, forever.
Duvan walked on, considering. The Faithless-he had heard of that legend. No god to speak for him meant spending eternity as part of the City of Judgment. Duvan felt detached from himself, but even so he knew that he did not want to end up that way.
But the alternative? An eternity in the thrall of the demons of the Abyss. Endless boredom or endless pain.
As if on cue-although it could have been hours later since Duvan had completely lost track of time-another voice came to him. “Duvan?” It was not the low hiss of the demons’ voices. This was a voice he recognized. “Duvan?”
He turned to see a shimmering archway shining with blinding light, so bright he couldn’t see anyone through it. “I am here,” he said.
“I have come to guide you back, if you will come,” the voice said. “You must decide quickly, for the spell does not last long.”
Somewhere in the distant, hollow recesses of his mind, Duvan remembered his life-the struggles, the distrust, the pain.
There was also pleasure, he remembered. That had been part of his life. And contentment. Sadness, yes, but also humor and even joy, once or twice.
“I will come,” he told the voice-a voice he recognized as belonging to the High Priestess Kaylinn of Slanya’s monastery. Slanya had not betrayed him after all. His friend Slanya had come to save him.
His friend. Duvan liked the thought of that.
“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 deputy-Renfod, 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 rapture-her 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 manipulation-persuasion 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.”