Pathway

"You have to untangle yourself from this," said a voice Chang Chang did not, at first, recognize.

She looked up, and for some reason was unsurprised to find Tau standing in the shadows of the tower. "I didn't think you could weave yourself into memories," Chang Chang said.contemporary romance

"Only yours, it would seem," Tau replied. "But I would rather not be here. This is a foul place, and you're needed elsewhere."

"I don't know how to leave," she said. "What if the plague won't let me?"

Tau made a motion with his gnarled hand, and his staff appeared in the clawed grip, as if it had always been there, invisible.

"To weave magic requires discipline," he said. "At the best of times, anything can go wrong, because the Art runs unchecked. We are its only shepherds now." He held out his staff to her. "To be a weaver requires a focus," he said, "a tool to channel your energy. You should never rely on such a thing completely, but in the worst of times it can help you endure the wildness of the raw Art."

Chang Chang touched the staff and felt a pulsing energy. The Art ran through the staff like blood in wooden veins. She could feel the contained power, frightening and pure.

"What if it gets away from me again?"

"It surely will," Tau said. "Such things are inevitable. The only thing you can do is focus on what is most important to you—what's worth saving."

"Ju Feng." She remembered his name as if he had been the dream, and this her only reality. She stood up, and her body was an adult's, though weak and fragile.

The tower melted around her. The black stones faded, as if all the filth was being drained from her memory. She closed her eyes against the swirling, turbulent cleansing.

She smelled the harbor, but when she opened her eyes, the scene had changed. Her mind couldn't process it at first.

Ju Feng stood thirty feet away, fighting two men at once. A third man floated in the water, his right arm and chest contorted at an odd angle in the water.

She was lying on Ju Feng's raft. Cerest crouched over her. His crumpled face showed concern, but Chang Chang noticed he held a dagger slackly in his right hand.

"Are you well?" he asked.

She licked her lips and tried to speak, but she'd been in her mind too long. The words came out as incoherent mumbles.

Cerest leaned closer. "Say it again, Chang Chang. I didn't hear you."

Chang Chang didn't repeat what she'd been trying to say. She brought her knee up and crushed it into Cerest's stomach.

He lurched back onto his right elbow, losing his balance when he tried to bring the knife to bear. He pitched over the side of the raft into the water.

Chang Chang sprang to her feet and immediately saw that Ju Feng was in trouble. He held off the two men at his right and left flank, but the man on the crow's nest was frantically cranking a crossbow into position. He propped it on the lip of the nest to steady his aim.

Cerest thrashed in the water. He grabbed for the raft. Chang Chang kicked him in the face. Blood exploded from his nose; her heel had knocked it out of position. The elf cursed and backstroked, putting a safe distance between them.

Lifting her arms, Chang Chang chanted a spell and brought her hands together, as if she were cupping them around the crow's nest. The basket of rotting wood burst into flames that rose up around the man with the crossbow.

The man shrieked and dropped the weapon. It landed in the water and sank. The man dived from the nest, fistfuls of flame eating at his clothing. He hit the water belly first.

The men fighting Ju Feng had their backs to the crow's nest. They tried to turn to see their companion's fate, but Ju Feng wouldn't give them a respite. He clipped the shorter of the two in the jaw, spinning him half toward the water and upsetting his balance on the bones of the leviathan.

It was all about balance. He kept them both at bay because they couldn't keep their feet. If they'd been on level ground, Ju Feng would have had several of his bones crushed by now.

While the shorter man steadied himself, Ju Feng dodged a roundhouse punch from a man wearing a mail vest and thick gauntlets. Built like a brick, this man would be harder to move with simple punches.

Chang Chang picked her spell carefully, focusing on the chain links pressed tight against the man's body. She could feel the trembling in her fingers as she worked through the complicated gestures.

Two spells, by the gods. Give me two spells without pain, Chang Chang pleaded. Lady Mystra, I can't pray to your memory. I never knew you. But if any goddess can hear me.

She flexed her fingers and released the spell. Her vision blurred. Nausea rose in her gut, and she felt cold, sticky sweat clinging to her forehead. She forced past the sickness and concentrated on the brick man's mail vest.

There was no visible change. Ju Feng took a glancing punch to his shoulder from the shorter man. He answered with a kick that took the man's right leg out from under him. The short man grabbed an overhanging bone, perhaps a rib of the long-dead creature. The bone snapped off. The man grabbed wildly for his companion and buried his fingers in the mail links.

The brick man roared in pain, and the shorter man cried out as well. Smoke rose from the brick man's clothing where it had pressed against the metal links.

Wide-eyed, the brick man patted his chest, touching hot links wherever his hands rested.

Ju Feng shot a quick glance at Chang Chang across the water. He jerked his head in acknowledgment.

"Let me help you with that," he told the brick man. He aimed a kick to the man's midsection. The brick man howled and fell backward into the water. A chorus of snakelike hisses rose from where the hot metal touched the cold water. The brick man sank to his chin, a look of relief crossing his face.

"Get back up 'ere!" cried the short man. He dodged a second kick from Ju Feng. "Help me!"

The brick man shook his head and swam away. He was obviously done with the fight.

Chang Chang turned her attention from Ju Feng to Cerest, who was climbing onto the raft behind her. His knife was gone, but he looked furious enough to kill her with his bare hands. His nose was a red, twisted mass on his face. The blood seeping into his scars made him look like a demon. Chang Chang remembered the scene outside the tower, when the newly scarred elf had looked up at her young self in agony.

"I remember now," she told him. "The tower. My parents. Chang Wei. Did you really think it was safe for us to go in, Cerest? Or was that just what you told yourself? The same way you convinced yourself it wasn't your fault that they died?"

"I had to weigh the risk and reward," Cerest said. There was no remorse in the words. "The knowledge and artifacts we might have found would have enriched all our lives, including yours."

"Oh yes, my life has been enriched indeed," Chang Chang said.

"I was more than willing to take care of both of you afterwards," Cerest said. "Chang Wei could have used his scar to unearth treasures unimaginable. He'd become just like my father, a god of magic—the very aberration I never thought to see again. But he refused to help me. He forced me to look to you."

"And here we are," Chang Chang said, "in another plague den." She listened to the sounds of fighting behind her, Ju Feng's muffled cry of pain as he took a blow to some vulnerable part of his body.

"I'm sorry," she told Cerest as she came to a silent decision. "You named me, Cerest, but you were never my family. I thought my family was WaterWay and a sundries shop. That would have been more than enough for me. But my family is everywhere: WaterWay, the Dalelands, Aglarond, Luskan—even a burned-out tower. Their footsteps can be heard in the tombs and lost places of Faerûn."

"You can be more than they ever were," Cerest said. "You survived, when Chang Wei did not."

"I survived because my gift is different," Chang Chang said. "Poor Cerest, I share your curse. I don't have Chang Wei's sense of magic. I only know memory."

She took a step toward him and lifted her hands, the palms facing each other. Cerest flinched, but only for a breath. His eyes reflected the blue glow illuminating her fingers. He was transfixed, watching the power swirl in the empty air between her hands.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Protecting what I have left," Chang Chang said. She felt the cold touch her palms. She thought it was the first taste of the frost ray forming, but the sensation spread up her arms and lingered around her shoulders.

Chang Chang looked up and saw the wraiths swirling silently, less than ten feet above their heads. Like Cerest, they seemed transfixed by the radiant glow that was now climbing her arms. Her flesh glowed cerulean, far beyond the scope of the attack spell.

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