Plague of Spells

CHAPTER SIX

The Year of the Secret (1396 DR) West of the Ruins of Starmantle

The rain sputtered a while longer, then stopped. It hadn't been enough to douse the wildfire that blazed to the south, burning a swath through the seedling pines of Gulthmere Forest. In some places, the fire flared so bright it cast orange highlights on the low clouds. Winding columns of smoke and soot twisted up toward those same clouds, merging into a single, ashen morass.

Raidon Kane coughed in the damp, sooty air. He wondered how far he had traveled. Not far, given his condition. Then how long had it been since he staggered west from Starmantle's crazed gates? Plaguechanged ghouls nearly ended him there. One tried to eat his leg. Raidon worried more about the creature's claim, that the monk was "spellscarred."

His exhaustion was a physical weight lying on his back. He was feverish, and his damaged foot had at last gone numb. His body's overwhelming fatigue tried to convince his mind that an immediate nap was the best possible choice.

Raidon struggled to crawl onto a large outcrop. He imagined it would be more defensible than the plain. He'd seen jackals sniffing around, and he worried other predators might be trailing him from Starmantle. Undead predators with too many mouths.

The rain made the outcrop slick. He kept losing his grip. Even when he found a good hold, the piece crumbled, sending him sliding back toward the ground.

Once a small ledge broke under his weight to reveal a cyst of red spiders, each the size of one of Raidon's hands. The wildfire gleamed ominously from their scarlet carapaces. The arachnids clacked oversized fangs at Raidon, and then scurried away in a single line like a tendril of blood.

He was nearly to the top. Then a spasm in his acid-burned foot caused him to backslide. He slid down half the distance he had just so laboriously climbed.

"By Xiang's seven swords."

Raidon's concentration was absent. He couldn't summon the mental discipline necessary to heal his wounds. The skin from his foot and leg was peeling away, and blood constantly oozed from the raw wound. Dirt crusted everything. Infection had likely already set in.

Raidon tried to push aside concerns over his injury. He couldn't worry about that now. He needed sleep, and a safe place for it.

A new pain seared. The nerves in his lower leg were not quite dead. The sting sawed right through the shreds of his focus. Raidon slid all the way back down to the outcrop's base, scraping skin from his fingers and forearms.

He lay face down in the mud, coughing into the cruel earth that apparently had decided this day was to be his last.

Would that be so bad, he wondered?

"Try again, Raidon," came a voice from nowhere. "You have nothing more to lose."

The monk raised his head from the mud to glance weakly around. He was alone.

Of course. As his mind gave up its sovereignty over reason, he supposed chimeras would appear to bedevil him.

But the phantom voice had a point.

Unless he discovered the strength necessary… well, death would claim him. So why not try again? One more hard effort, he told himself. After that, he could rest, hopefully enough to lift the exhaustion that hung on his limbs and eyelids like ballast.

He endured another fit of coughing that threatened to scrape his lungs right out of his chest.

What was it the elders of Xiang Temple taught?

"The usefulness of a cup is its emptiness," he whispered.

Nothing could help him now but his own force of will. Anything was possible, or nothing.

He prepared for a final effort.