Jak Koke - The Edge of Chaos

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.

And with a deep, bracing breath, he did.

“I woke up Talfani-she could sleep through anything.” Duvan gave a weak laugh, remembering. “Papa came in and told us to stay put until he returned for us. And if I had known that he would never come back, that I’d never see him again, I would’ve hugged him and begged him to stay with us.

“We waited for over a day for our father to return, waited until we were so hungry we had to have food. He had left me in charge. I was the elder, you see, by just a quarter hour. Talfani hated that. So I slipped out when she was asleep to go find food.” Duvan paused. The fear and loss threatened to pour over him. He took a deep breath.

“Everything was destroyed,” he went on. “Everyone was dead or had disappeared. The entire village brought down to rubble, except for the part of our house that was the bedroom I shared with Talfani. Deep ruts cut into the ground from where the blue fire had plowed under buildings and bodies. Nobody else had survived. All that I’d known was gone.

“I found food and returned to find-”

Duvan’s voice broke, and he fought back the tide of emotion. He took a breath.

“Talfani had grown pale and sickly. She died over the next few days. I had a chance to say good-bye to her, but her slow, lingering death was agony for both of us. And when she passed, I had nothing left for myself. I just lay down next to her and hoped death would also come for me.”

Duvan stopped pacing and stared into the red depths of the fire. “And I might’ve had the opportunity to meet your death god if a group of Wildhome elves who often came to trade with us hadn’t been wandering near. They found me, cleaned me up, and took me to their settlement in southern Chondalwood.

“You’d think that living with elves would be wonderful, full of merriment and joy. The wood elves are remarkable and noble, fair and fey. But they are also extremely secretive and insular. For years, after I recovered from the physical trauma of what had happened, my life was good.

“I had everything I could want except my father and sister back. The elves took me in, not as one of their own, but as a guest outsider- n Tel’Quessir . I participated in their customs and rituals. I learned their ways, but I was teased mercilessly by my peers. There were things I couldn’t do. But it was a life of luxury compared to my previous one. I often felt guilty for having survived encountering spellplague and ending up in an easier lifestyle.