The Edge of Chaos Read Online Free PDF Page B

and standing in the shadow of the billowing black cloud rising from the funeral pyre off to the right.
    “Brother Gregor,” Vraith said, handing the wooden box
    to the dwarf cleric, “thank you again for undertaking such important work.” Gregor nodded.
    “I look forward to your attendance at our ritual tonight, and I am hopeful that with your elixir we shall be successful.”
    “I wouldn’t miss it,” Gregor said.
    Vraith smiled. “Perfect.” Then with a slight bow, she said, “May the Blue Fire burn inside you “
    The elf priestess turned and picked a path through the vast disarray of pilgrims’ tents, which filled the fields between the monastery and Ormpetarr’s main gates.
    Standing next to Gregor, Slanya looked over the broad plain. The camp outside the monastery sprawled like an infection, and all attempts at establishing organization among the tents had been futile. So many new pilgrims arrived every day.
    Slanya glanced across the distance at the wild city into which she rarely set foot. Unlike its ancient namesake, modern Ormpetarr was a frontier city—ruled not by a hierarchical leadership or a figurehead but governed instead by a loose alignment of power brokers.
    A blue-brown haze cut a swath through the city. This was the veil—the Plaguewrought Land border that the pilgrims came here to cross, if only briefly. There was a steep drop-off just through the hazy veil, and rumor said that the terrain inside the changelands was as inconstant and volatile as a storm-wracked ocean.
    The once-mighty city told of a rough history, of a glorious past now worn down by the ravages of time and the Spellplague. Ormpetarr may have once been a monument to order and to the rule of law, but the monument had shattered, and the only order or law that had arisen from the wreckage was survival of the cunning and the strong. “We are here to help establish order on the edge of chaos,” Kaylinn had told her, “where it is most needed.”
    But Slanya, who preferred the quiet and ordered life in the monastery, found it hard to avoid openly gagging from the smells drifting across the fields—the aroma of food cooking mingled with the charred smell of the roasted dead from the funeral pyre. And beneath it all was the summer stench of the Plaguewrought Land itself, like rotting flesh crammed with sour oranges.
    The vast encampment was no more than a disorganized jumble of tents and makeshift shelters that served as a refuge for the grotesque plaguechanged who had come for hospice care. It was also a last stop for pilgrims without the means to afford lodging in Ormpetarr.
    Pilgrims! To purposefully expose the sanctity and wholeness of their bodies and minds to the destructive chaos of the Plaguewrought Land—it was insanity.
    Slanya shook her head, chiding herself for the derision she felt for the pilgrims. These people came from all over the world in search of improvement, and most of them met with death or illness. She should admire their courage.
    Still, as much as she tried, the most she could summon for them was pity. The lucky ones walked away alive, with some Unforeseen and unearned magical power to counterbalance some physical or emotional deformity. And, she thought, the very lucky ones die quickly and in little pain. They go to Kelemvor.
    Gregor sighed. “So very many souls come here looking to better themselves,” he said. “It is part of our mission now to help them accomplish that goal.”
    Slanya nodded.
    “And in that light, I have an important task for you,” Gregor said. He wasted no time getting to the point. “This task will require you to face chaos beyond anything you’ve ever experienced.”
    Slanya felt a chill despite the afternoon sun. Over the years, Gregor had changed from the nurturing father figure
    who’d rescued her off the streets when she was a girl. He was no longer the man who had brought her into the fold, who had mentored her, who had treated her like his own daughter for so many