Jak Koke - The Edge of Chaos

“Look, Slanya, I’m sorry.” And he was too. He felt bad for lying to her. “There is very likely another reason that the Order wants me, but I don’t talk about that reason to anyone. It’s not personal.”

“Maybe they’re interested in why you’re so lucky around the spellplague,” she mused. “Like, how can you have been inside the Plaguewrought Land a number of times and yet you have no spellscar?”

Duvan sighed. She was going to figure it out sooner or later. “I am spellscarred,” he said. “But my scar is completely hidden.”

“Oh? What does it do?” Slanya asked.

“I can’t tell you,” Duvan said. “Like I said, I don’t talk about it.”

They walked along in silence for a while, before Slanya continued. “Well, regardless, I think you need to find out why the Order is after you.”

“Yes, well, that sounds like a good idea, but I can’t do it.”

“What do you mean?” Slanya’s eyes grew wide. “It’s not that hard. You make a plan, ask some questions, do some counterspying. Maybe interrogate someone. It seems like you’d be good at those things.”

Duvan snorted. “I don’t even know where I’m going to be living two days from now. I never make plans past a tenday.”

“By Kelemvor, why not?”

“Why think about anything long-term when I might be dead any moment?”

Sweat cooled on Slanya’s neck as she walked next to Duvan. Gravel crunched beneath her leather boots, and she relished the shade provided by the large mote overhead. The fall morning had grown hot, but her sweat was more from nervousness than heat.

Slanya had always met challenges head on. She had always been able to make a quick and impartial assessment-a logical analysis of the obstacles in her path, acceptance of what she could not change. But she found that the prospect of going into the Plaguewrought Land was provoking an unusual reaction in her-apprehension and fear.

She tried to concentrate through this unfamiliar feeling. She concentrated on the conversation with Duvan. Here was someone whom she did not immediately understand, someone intriguing. Slanya sensed pain in Duvan’s words. Real pain, not embellished or fabricated. Slanya suspected that he might even be downplaying the pain he truly felt behind the words.

She looked over at the young rogue, expertly picking a path up an ever-steepening rocky slope. “You want to die?”

“No,” Duvan said. “Although sometimes I don’t want to live either. But it doesn’t really matter what I want, does it? I merely acknowledge the fact that we have a limited quantity of tendays. We all pass through the veil into death’s realm sooner or later, and none of us know when that will be.”

Slanya nearly winced. Such hurt and loss behind those words. She found herself intrigued. What was this man’s story? Would he open up to her? “What happened to you?” she asked. “What led you to such a belief?”

“You have a different take on it, no doubt.”

She sighed, allowing the sidestep. “I do,” Slanya said. “And so do most people. We make plans about the future and strive to achieve goals. Do you have any ambitions?”

Duvan was quiet.

Slanya let him consider. She noticed that the group behind them had veered off to the east. So they weren’t following them after all. Just some pilgrims heading to a different border spot. Slanya knew that there were several popular places for the pilgrims to go.

“My goals are all short-term. Eat, survive the day, share a bed. All immediate goals, except for the missions that Tyrangal sends me on; I have a long-term goal of repaying the debt I owe her, so I strive to achieve those missions.”

“Do you owe her a great deal?”

Duvan nodded. “She would say that I owe her nothing. I certainly don’t owe her any coin, but I am in her debt nonetheless. She saved me, freed me.”

“I’m curious,” Slanya said. “Why do you not make long-term plans? Don’t you want to accomplish something big or build something-a family or a homestead even?”

“I just don’t think about that.”

“Why not?”

Duvan let out a laugh. “Because I’ve learned that making such plans is a waste of energy. Because I see no reason to plan or hope for something when it can all be taken away in a heartbeat.”

Maybe the straightforward approach would work. “Duvan, have you ever told anyone about what happened to you?”

For a moment, she thought he might deny that anything had happened. But he didn’t. He just stared at her, the muscles in his jaw clenched. “It wouldn’t make any difference,” he said. “It would just bring back the-”

Slanya jarred some rocks loose on the hillside, and they skittered down the steep slope. She caught her balance and waited, but Duvan had grown silent and would speak no more.

“It helps to tell someone you trust,” she said.

Duvan snorted. “Perhaps, but that cuts the number of possible confidants for me to … let’s see: zero!”

“I can see that,” Slanya said. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t need your pity.”

Slanya sighed. Maybe if she reached out to him with something personal, then Duvan would be able to talk to her. Partly, she was curious about him because he was an enigma, a mystery. What had happened to make him so fatalistic and without hope?

And partly, she felt that despite their unfortunate first encounter, she enjoyed his company. He was challenging and fun to be around. Or maybe she just wanted to save him like she saved all her patients, helping them come to peace with their lives before they died.

She decided to trust him with her story. She would open up to him, and perhaps he would reciprocate. Confiding in someone was therapeutic.

As they continued their ascent of the long, stony slope, Slanya told Duvan of her life before the monastery. She opened herself up to him, telling him of the hard life she’d had without parents, of living under the strict rule of Aunt Ewesia.

Under the warm afternoon sky stippled with hundreds of rocky motes flowing up and out of from the changelands like an inverse vortex, Slanya unraveled to him the story of losing Aunt Ewesia to the fire.

“I remember hating her,” she said. “Not all the time, of course. But sometimes I did. Sometimes I wished she were dead. And after the fire, which I thought for the longest time was my fault, I regretted those feelings.”

Duvan’s black eyes narrowed on her, but he said nothing.

“She was my only kin,” Slanya said. “I don’t know what happened to my parents; Aunt wouldn’t talk about it. So after the fire, I had no one.”

Duvan listened intently without responding.

“Kaylinn and Gregor took me into the temple complex to raise me, and I’ve been there ever since.” Slanya considered her next words. “The monastery was exactly what I needed-an ordered environment where the rules were always the same.”

A gust of breeze carried the smell of carrion. The strong odor made Slanya wrinkle her nose. “I know that I wasn’t a very well-behaved child at first; I hated everyone, and I felt guilty for not dying in the fire. I was headed on a track to become a criminal or an evil person before they rescued me.”

Duvan was silent for a long stretch as they switched back to traverse across the slope on the opposite tack. The top of the long hill neared, the tenacious weeds and scrubby trees were all that remained sprouting here and there from the loose rock.

When he spoke finally, his tone seemed distant and overly harsh. “Can you remember details about the fire? What color was the nightgown you wore? What glass did your aunt use for her infusion? What did she say when she was on fire?”

Slanya said, “I don’t see what those have to do with anything.”