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.”
“Can you remember?” Duvan repeated.
Slanya’s fists clenched, and she tried to see her memory in her mind’s eye but couldn’t. Why couldn’t she? Surely she was wearing the same nightgown she always wore, but what did that look like? What about the other details; where had they disappeared to in the recesses of her mind? “I confess that I’m not sure,” she said finally. “It’ll probably come back to me eventually.”
“I’m sure it will.”
“I’m not lying,” Slanya said, aware that she was being defensive. “And I don’t know why you’re asking me those questions.”
“Listen,” Duvan said, “I believe that you were in that fire. I think all of what you told me happened. But I’ve been through trauma, and it’s never as clean as what you described.”
“Clean?” Slanya was appalled. “You think that was clean?”
Duvan nodded. “Look, I would never diminish what happened to you by claiming it’s not true, but to me, your story sounds polished, whitewashed.”
“No, I-”
“That might be the healthy thing to do, Slanya,” Duvan said. “Perhaps it’s better than the alternative.” His voice trailed off as if remembering something. “But it’s not the truth.”
“The truth,” Slanya said, trying to calm herself and really consider what Duvan was saying. “That was what happened. That’s how I remember it.”
“And maybe you remember it like that in order to organize your feelings about that traumatic event. I did that for years, but it does no good in the long run.”
Slanya bristled. “Perhaps the truth is in the stories we tell ourselves.”
Duvan looked at her, his dark eyes filled with sadness. “The truth is that life cannot fit into organized structures and stories. The truth is that the world is wild, and above all, chaotic.”
They rose above the crest of the hill just then, and the far side dropped away precipitously, sloping steeply down and down and down. Slanya’s hold on the world loosened a bit at the sight, for there just ahead was the border veil-a gauzy, fluctuating wall that rose up into the sky.
Through it and beyond the cliff, Slanya caught a vision of a nightmare panorama-a world of flux and plasma, stretching off into the distant horizon. Blobs of earth and sky, of fire and crystal, fused and parted in a constant roiling dance.
That way lay madness, Slanya knew. And yet she was drawn to it, for here was raw wild energy. Here was the fire and the salvation.
Slanya dug into her backpack, removed one of the vials of elixir that Gregor had provided, and quaffed the entire contents. The oily liquid slid down her throat, and the strong taste of anise made her wince.
Duvan led her right on through the veil, and as she stepped willfully across the border behind him, part of her mind broke, her iron lock on an organized world cracked just a little, aching to dance with the forces of chaos ahead.
Duvan felt an electric prickle pass over his skin as he passed through the border veil and carefully picked his way down the incline. The slope here was steep, but at least it was passable without using rope.
In front of him, the land splayed out like an open, festering wound-a scar gushing otherworldly light and motion. The very bedrock was unstable, a dangerous undulation of earth and light.
Duvan couldn’t help but be impressed every time he saw this awesome sight. The changelands were the most raw and widespread wild magic infection in all Faerun. No wonder people made the pilgrimage here.
Duvan checked to make sure Slanya was close behind him. He derived no pleasure from arguing with her. And perhaps he was projecting his own hardships on her, but the way she told of her aunt and the fire-relaying the story as if by rote-and her lack of details, gave him the impression that she had told this story over and over until it had become her truth. It seemed too pat, too clean and ordered to be the whole truth.
What had she really gone through? he wondered. What had she really endured?
“We will need to stay close together for the rest of the journey,” he said. “The instability of this place can uproot the earth anywhere, and we don’t want to be separated.”
Slanya nodded solemnly, clearly stunned by her first sight of the changelands.
Duvan considered saying something, but he refrained. He’d give her some time to adjust. He had visited the border numerous times, and the sight always brought him to his knees in awe. She should be allowed some adjustment time.
“I’m a little dizzy,” she said.
“Don’t look into the distance,” Duvan suggested. “Too disorienting. Nobody is used to the solid ground in flux like this.”