Aboard the Ransar's Yacht, the Lake of Steam
It had been some time since Marek Rymiit had been at sea. It wasn't exactly his preferred method of travel. The deck rose and fell at irregular intervals, but the motion was smooth, almost comforting, without any violent lurches to challenge the stomach. Though it wasn't yet spring, the air was warm with only a light wind. The smell of the lake had numbed his nose so he hadn't been able to smell it since only a little while after they'd shoved off from Innarlith. The sail on the single mast fluttered above him. He found the noise irritating.
"It is a lovely day, isn't it, Master Rymiit?" the young woman standing next to him said. He glanced at her and smiled. "And the ransar's yacht is most impressive," she added.
"Well," Marek said with a sigh, "one does have the responsibility to keep up appearances."
"Of course," said the young woman. "And I would also like to tell you again how delighted I am to—"
"Please, Senator Aikiko," Marek said with a wave of one hand. "You may not want to thank me once you've seen this hole in the ground."
The senator giggled in a way that some men might find alluring, but made Marek cringe. He spared her another glance, noting the clothes she wore. She'd dressed for an expedition, in tan tunic and trousers. Though the sky was a gray overcast, the sunlight dim and diffuse, she wore a hat with a brim. Overall she looked like a petty aristocrat on her way to a masque dressed up as a laborer.
"I can't wait, Master Rymiit," she said, her smile never wavering. "I can't wait."
She smiled. Aikiko was a pretty woman, small and
delicate with features that had a subtle hint of elf to them. She might have been a half-elf, but Marek knew she was in fact entirely human. Her father, himself a senator before his untimely death a decade past at the hands of a bitter political rival, was from Innarlith, but her mother was Kozakuran.
"Do the others know why we're here?' she asked.
Marek shrugged and shook his head. One of the reasons he'd thought of Aikiko was as a way to get rid of her. She'd become a fixture at his regular meetings for the junior senators, and her voice and cloying mannerisms irritated him.
Kurtsson emerged from below, his pale skin and bored expression somehow reassuring. When he spotted Marek and Aikiko he approached with the minimum of greetings. Any further conversation was cut short by the approach of the last two of Marek's guests.
"Ah, Senators Djeserka and Korvan," said Marek, "so good of you to join us."
Willem appeared sheepish, embarrassed, though he wasn't necessarily late. Djeserka's look was as vacant as usual.
"Djeserka," Marek said, "is it true that you once apprenticed to the man who built this vessel?"
Djeserka seemed surprised by the question, but gathered himself quickly and nodded.
Marek smiled, stomped a foot on the polished mahogany deck, and said, "Fine workmanship. Do you know its name?"
"She," Djeserka answered, "is Heart of the Heavens."
Marek laughed and said, "A strange custom that, referring to boats and ships as 'she' and 'her.' I'll never understand why that is." He looked at Kurtsson and winked. "We should start calling wands 'she.'" The Vaasan chuckled." 'She's as good a wand of fire as any created in the workshops of forgotten Siluvanede.'"
Aikiko laughed along though Marek could tell she
didn't really understand the joke. Willem looked out at the water with an unpleasant grimace. He didn't seem to enjoy being out in the water, or could it be that he didn't enjoy the reason. Marek didn't care either way.
"Well," the Red Wizard said, "on to the matter at hand, yes? We're on our way to the site of the canal that we're certain will one day link the Lake of Steam and the Nagaflow and on and on, talk, talk, talk. It's an undertaking that I argued strenuously against when it was first presented to me. It's something that I felt would have a profoundly negative overall effect on the city-state."
He paused and smiled. Kurtsson at least knew that Marek had no interest in the overall effect that anything but his own trade in magic items might have on the city-state, but the others seemed to accept his words well enough.
Of the four of them, Willem looked the least interested. He appeared unwell, his skin was pale and deep, dark bags hung under his eyes. Somehow he was no less handsome. His eyes darted around, never focusing on anything for long. Marek couldn't tell if he was drunk, frightened, or both.
"This whole thing was the work of one man," Marek continued. "For all intents and purposes he's a renegade from Cormyr who came to Innarlith with selfish designs. He had his way with our fine city-state for longer than he should have been allowed, indulging in his own desires without care for the greater good."
Marek paused again, happy to see that Willem, Aikiko, and Djeserka seemed to be caught up in his disingenuous oratory. Kurtsson was more concerned with an errant cuticle, but then he was the smartest of the four.
"I'm happy to say that as time went on I changed my opinion of the canal itself," Marek said. "I'm now of the mind that it will be a crucial part of the future of trade not only in the fair city-state of Innarlith but throughout the coastal regions of Faerun. What has changed is who will build it, and how it will be built."
Aikiko smiled and clapped her hands in front of her mouth like a schoolgirl. Kurtsson raised a disapproving eyebrow at the gesture. Djeserka stared at Marek with a blank expression, waiting patiently to hear the rest of it. Willem grew more and more upset with each passing breath.
"You will build it," Marek said. "You four—not one man alone, but a group of political-minded individuals who can bring different skills and various strengths to the endeavor. This is too big, and too important a job to be left to one man and his costly hubris."
He watched Willem squirm at that.
"How it will be done," the Red Wizard went on, "is through the careful and liberal use of the Art. Where once there was a small city of men employed to sweat and dig, there will still be some men, but alongside them will be workers of a less fragile nature. Where previously there was employed a dangerous mix of rare earth elements that but for Tymora's gracious whimsy would surely have killed hundreds of innocent laborers, there will be predictable spells cast by responsible and experienced mages supervised by Kurtsson and supplied by the Thayan Enclave." .
Marek paused one last time to take a breath and gauge their reactions. Nothing had changed, Aikiko was still the happiest, Kurtsson the most prepared and stoic, Djeserka the least intelligent, and Willem the most terrified.
"You will finish this," Marek said, "by the command of Ransar Salatis, and with the aid of the Thayan Enclave, for the good of the people of Innarlith. Don't bother to tell me you accept the responsibility. I know you do."
He smiled, fended off Aikiko, who tried to embrace him, and watched Willem run to the rail and vomit over the side.
52
17 Flamerule, the Yearof the Shield (1367DR) The Sisterhood of Pastorals, Innarlith
Warm today, isn't it?" Surero said to the girl who ladled soup into his bowl.
She glanced up at him, and he smiled as wide and as brightly as he could. The expression caught her eye, but she didn't return his smile.
"Thank you, Sister," he said.
"I'm not a sister," she replied. She spoke with a thick accent that the alchemist couldn't immediately place. "Not a proper sister, anyway."
"Your accent," he said. "You're not Innarlan."
She shifted her eyes as if ashamed, at least for a fleeting moment, and said, "I am Thayan."
"Have we met before?" he asked, before he'd even thought to say it. She didn't really look familiar, but there was something about her....
She shook her head, her blue eyes narrowed, and she seemed to try to place him but couldn't.
"My name is—" he started, but was interrupted by a nudge to his shoulder.
The man behind him in line, a rough-looking middle-aged sailor with skin like centuries-old leather was impatient for his soup.
The girl handed Surero his bowl and said, "Please accept this with the prayers of the Pastorals that you will find your way under the blessed eyes of the Earth Mother."
He'd heard her say precisely the same words to the men in line in front of him.
Surero took the soup and said, "May I have one more, for my friend?"
"Aye, missy," the old sailor grumbled, "and I'll be needin' a dozen fer me crew."
The old man broke out in gales of toothless laughter,
and Surero laughed a little with him. The girl appeared
embarrassed.
"I'm sorry," Surero said, "but it really is—"
She silenced him with a wave of her hand and poured
another bowl of soup for him. When she handed it to him
she smiled.
"Thank you, Si—" he stopped himself—"sorry."
"Halina," she said. "Please accept this for your friend with the prayers of the Pastorals that he will find his way under the blessed eyes of the Earth Mother."
"Halina," he replied, "thank you."
"Aye," the old sailor cut in again, "thanks be to ye an' yers, and now maybe the rest o' us can sup a bit, eh?"
Surero shared another smile with the pretty Thayan girl, took the two bowls of soup, and made way for the rest of the hungry men. As he walked back to the table he tried to imagine that she was watching him go, but in truth he couldn't feel her eyes on him. The exchange had lifted his spirits some, and he was still smiling when he set the soup bowls down on the table.
"Thank you," Devorast said as Surero sat. "I could have gotten my own."
"Think nothing of it," the alchemist replied. "I thought I'd spare you the blessing. I know how you feel about gods, priests, and prayers."
"Why the smile?" asked Devorast.
Surero blinked. Though it would have been a perfectly normal question from just about anyone else in Faerun, from Devorast it made Surero's head spin.
"Why the smile, he asks me," Surero said. "All right, then, Ivar, it was a girl."
Devorast began to eat his soup, giving no indication that he was listening at all.
"You know, like people, only female?" Surero said.
"I'm familiar with the species," Devorast replied between bites.
Surero wanted to laugh, but it caught in his chest. He took a deep breath as a wave of anguish washed over him. Sweat broke out in strange places on his body. When he looked down at the soup, his stomach quivered, and he couldn't imagine eating it.
"This is it, then," he said.
He paused, hoping Devorast would say something, but he didn't.
Surero looked around himself at row upon row of crude tables that had been cobbled together, perhaps by the sisters themselves, from scraps of salvaged lumber. The tables were scattered with dented tin bowls and spoons of one sort or another. The men who sat at the tables were the same: dented, old, salvaged, scattered.
"The fact that they've beaten me is easy enough to believe," Surero said. "I expected it all along. But they didn't really beat me, though, did they? Who was I? All I did was mix a few common elements together to help you dig faster. It's you they've defeated, and that just... I really didn't think it was possible."
"All you've talked about for months is how 'they' will eventually win," Devorast reminded him.
"In the name of every god in the steaming Astral, Ivar, I didn't really think it would happen. I mean, honestly. Marek Rymiit is dangerous—but he's dangerous to people like me, not to people like you. And Willem Korvan?"
Devorast shrugged at that.
"I should thank you, still," Surero said. "You've been very kind to me, in your own way. I won't forget that you've supported me all this time since the... since we came back to the city. I can never forget that. If I'm alive today it's because of you."
"Why did the Thayan have you released?"
Surero almost gasped, he was so startled by the question, but he answered, "I have no idea. And don't think that question hasn't plagued me."
"He would have done it for some reason," Devorast went
on. "You think you've been beaten now, but what of then? He had you in the ransar's dungeon. All he had to do was say one word in the Chamber of Law and Civility, and they would have hanged you."
Surero rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands, heaved a great sigh, and said, "No, they would have beheaded me."
"In Cormyr, you would have been hanged."
Surero laughed and said, "Six of one..."
Devorast went back to his soup, and Surero picked up his own spoon, thinking he might give it a try, but he just didn't want it.
"I can't even feed myself," the alchemist said, his voice quiet, his heart heavy. "I have no means to keep myself alive but the mercy of others."
"Your smokepowder is unrivaled," Devorast said. "I've never heard of anything like it."
"I wonder how far away I will have to go before someone will be willing to risk buying it from me."
"Marek Rymiit's power doesn't extend beyond this city," Devorast told him.
"So at the very least he's driven us out."
"Leave if you want to," Devorast said, then paused to finish his soup. "I still have work to do."
"No, Ivar, it's over. The canal is theirs."
"No," Devorast said, and Surero almost fell out of his chair, driven back by the weight of Devorast's self-confidence. "That canal has never been anyone's but mine, and it always will be."
53
29Eleint, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) The Nagaflow
Though the water in the wide river was muddy and brown, from a thousand feet in the air, details were revealed. Insithryllax soared on a warm updraft, his huge wings unfurled. The warm air rushed along their surface, and the great wyrm reveled in the sensation of flight. It had been too long since he'd allowed himself to truly fly—too much time spent in the form of a human, contained in their claustrophobic buildings, or in the sharply delineated confines of Marek Rymiit's pocket dimension.
He dipped down to avoid disappearing into a low cloud where he wouldn't be able to see the river below him. He would be easier to see from the ground, but no one was expecting him, so there was a good chance they wouldn't be looking up. Even then, there was little anyone could do from still nearly a thousand feet—not to a creature as powerful as he.
As much as Insithryllax enjoyed the freedom of the air, he longed for the thrill of the hunt as well, and it was that longing that kept his attention on the river. He saw a promising shape, but quickly realized it wasn't slithering the way it should—it was just a log. The outline of a boat revealed itself from under half a dozen feet of water near the eastern bank. It had been there for at least a year.
He beat his mighty wings once as the cloud passed overhead, and he gained altitude. He'd come almost to the
northern end of the river where it widened into the long, narrow lake, and so he tipped his right wing down to make a gentle turn in that direction. He kept his eyes on the river, and before he was able to turn all the way back around to the south he saw it.
From over a thousand feet it just looked like a snake. The thing slithered through the water, twisting and dipping in pursuit of something he couldn't see from so high up—a school of fish, most likely.
The dragon moved his wings in subtle ways and turned in a series of ever-narrowing spirals. Flapping his wings again would have helped him align himself in the air better, but it would have made a lot of noise—maybe even enough noise to be heard from the river below. To avoid that he continued to soar, changing the shape of his wings to move in the air.
When he was properly aligned, his lips curled up into a great toothy grin. Eyes still on his prey, he angled his head down at the swimming creature, then tucked his wings to his side. He fell, and fell fast.
The air whistled in his ears. His fifth eyelid slipped over his eyes to protect them, but the transparent membrane still allowed him to see. He arrowed at his target, coming at it from behind. The creature didn't turn to look at him. It continued on its way, not diving deeper, or trying to avoid the enormous black dragon in any way.
Insithryllax opened his mouth and worked up a full volume of acid in the glands on either side of his lower jaw, under his tongue. It felt as though his face was swelling—and it was an unpleasant sensation. It made him want to empty the acid, spray it over his prey in a deadly black rain, but he resisted the temptation. From so high up and into the water, the acid would be far less effective than it would be when he was closer to his prey.
He was nearly there when he caught motion out of the corner of his eye: another naga swimming toward the one he dived at. The second of the two snake-creatures looked
up and over at him. They didn't quite make eye contact, but the naga's eyes widened in surprise—it saw him.
It was too late for Insithryllax to change direction, so he smashed into the river water with a spectacular splash. The naga he should have bitten in half the second after he hit the water had been warned by its companion, and it squirmed out of the black dragon's path.
Insithryllax arched his back so that he was almost bent in half, and he swooped through the cold water. He broke the surface with the naga—which one of the two he wasn't sure, but didn't much care—only a few feet to the side of him. He twisted his neck and bit, but the huge snake-creature slithered out of harm's way fast, and the black dragon's jaws came together on nothing but dirty river water.
Though frustrated by the failure to make quick work of the naga, Insithryllax drank in the smell of the river water, which was so like the swamp back in Thay where he'd spent the first ninety-six years of his life—before Marek Rymiit found, charmed, then befriended him.
The dragon's next instinct was to flood the water in front of him with his caustic acid, but he stopped himself. He had to make it look as though—
Pain flared in his side, and the dragon clawed out with both left legs. He twisted his great neck around and saw the shimmering after-effects of some sort of Weave energy sparking along the ebon scales on his left side.
Movement from the corner of his eye, and he whipped his head at an approaching naga. The thing growled out an incantation as it slithered toward him, and against his better judgment Insithryllax let loose his acid breath. A cloud of what looked like black smoke clouded the water and rolled over the naga. Its words sputtered to a halt and turned into a reedy squeal as the caustic liquid, diluted as it may have been, began to eat at its face.
The flesh fell away from the naga's skull, and its eyes dissolved into the water. Its long, snake's body spasmed,
cramping and twitching in a ghastly death-dance that kicked up soot and floating debris—including strips of the naga's own burned flesh and bone.
Though the naga was dead, in an effort to salvage it for his own purposes, Insithryllax turned in the water and sliced the top quarter of the serpent-creature clean off with one swordlike claw. The body drifted on the river current, and the dragon started to reach for it, but changed direction again—fast—when the second naga passed close enough to be seen in the murky water.
"What do you want here, wyrm?" the naga asked in Draconic.
Insithryllax found her voice pleasing somehow—maybe it was just because she spoke his native language, and it had been so long....
He turned, floating, still submerged in the cold, murky water. He drew in a great lungful and relished it. It had been a long time, too, since he'd spent any time underwater.
Facing the naga, he bared his great fangs in a sneer. The naga twitched in the water and backed off. She began to rattle off a spell, and Insithryllax snapped at her, his long neck closing the distance between them with a single pulse of coiled muscles. The naga managed to slither backward in the water so that the dragon's jaws came together only inches from her.
She finished her spell, and the water pounded against Insithryllax's face so hard it curled his lips off his teeth. He had to slam all of his eyelids shut, and still it felt as though the water moved so fast it might scoop them from his skull. Water was forced up his nose, and he coughed out a spray of bubbles—but the bubbles instantly popped. The water pushed his head back and to the side, and it took all of the great black wyrm's considerable strength to keep his neck from snapping.
He unfurled his wings in the water and brought them down and forward once, pushing as hard as he could.
Though he didn't quite manage to counteract the fast-moving current, magically generated by the naga, he did lift himself up and out of the focus of its effect. He was at least able to open his eyes.
Insithryllax's head lay just a few inches beneath the surface. He twisted his head around first right then left, and saw the naga floating, her lips moving, her eyes burning at him.
He pulled together the energy for a spell of his own, feeling the power coalesce in his throat.
The naga finished her spell first, and she shot up out of the water like an arrow loosed from a bow. Insithryllax had only to lift his head above the water to trace her path—straight up, trailing water beneath her like a wake in the sky.
She arced over the surface of the river, slithering in the air as though struggling with the sensation of flight. Insithryllax drew in a breath and roared.
The spell he'd cast augmented the already deafening sound into a physical force. The naga cringed at the sound and dipped in the air. Her tail splashed in the water then she curved back up and away, skillfully avoiding the hammerlike effect of his enhanced roar.
Insithryllax's spell effect faded as quickly as it had manifested, and the naga slithered and twisted until she stood almost perpendicular to the surface. She shot straight up again, then turned for the far bank.
Insithryllax beat his wings once, generating great waves that crashed against the riverbank, swamping the thick vegetation.
He watched the naga fade from sight as she flew away by the power of a spell. The naga was smart enough, then, not to face him. But she was a witness. Insithryllax wondered if that would matter—and if it was worth chasing her down.
With his version of a shrug the wyrm sank back into the water and followed his nose to the three-quarters of a
dead naga he'd left floating in the current. When he found the body he wrapped a huge, handlike claw around it, beat his wings over and over again until they not only broke the surface but had shed most of the water that clung to them. He took to the air, shook himself dry—or dry enough. His scales still glistened with river water when he turned south toward Innarlith carrying the dead naga. He cast a spell that rendered him invisible so the poor little people of that petty city-state wouldn't come to a complete halt while they watched a dragon land in their midst.
54_
1 Marpenotk, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) Third Quarter, Innarlith
Marek wondered at the feeling of familiarity, being in a temple where he knew he was unwelcome. Not that he was particularly unwelcome at the Cascade of Coins. Maybe it was the location, in the Third Quarter among the tradesmen and workshops____
"It could be that I'm uncomfortable with temples in general," he said.
Pristoleph nodded, and Marek could detect at least a trace of sincere camaraderie. It was a strange sensation.
"I never had a religious upbringing," Marek went on, "and a life of study in the Art has taught me not to rely on the whims of gods and goddesses, but to force power from the eternal Weave."
"Careful," Pristoleph said, pausing to sip wine from a gleaming gold cup, "that kind of talk might attract thunderbolts in a place like this."
Marek winked and said, "I've risked worse."
"Why come then?"
"It is the sort of social gathering one needs to attend," the Thayan replied, "whether one likes it or not. I'd like to think I'm not the only one here under false pretenses."
"Waukeen seems the type to forgive and forget," Pristoleph said. "For the right price, anyway." "You're circling him," the Red Wizard risked. "Excuse me?" "Salatis."
Pristoleph smiled, and declined to answer directly. "So, who will you honor tonight?" Marek asked. "Wenefir?"
"Marthoon is a festival honoring guards," Pristoleph said.
"And isn't he-?"
"Wenefir is my friend," Pristoleph cut in, his gaze cooling rapidly.
"Of course," Marek replied with a curt bow. "I apologize if I suggested otherwise. I meant only that it's well known in the city that he... looks after you."
"As I look after him."
"Of course," said Marek. "Is it true that they have a dozen of these?"
Pristoleph nodded and said, "But not all in honor of guards. And you?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Who are you here to honor?" Pristoleph asked. "Surely not Salatis."
"I suppose one could say that I'm here to honor guards in general."
"A fine answer," said Pristoleph. "I wonder why you feel I'm circling him."
"The priests here are calling themselves 'Waukeenar,'" Marek said. "I could have sworn they were 'Waukeenites.'"
"No, I think it's always been 'Waukeenar,' but I could be wrong," said Pristoleph. "Apparently I've been too busy circling the ransar to study church protocol."
Marek smiled and said, "We're all very busy, aren't we?"
"It's always good to have one's day full."
"I wonder how much more full a ransar's day is," Marek said. "Of course, should he find he was able to trust his friends, a certain amount of pressure could be set aside."
"Trust?" Pristoleph asked. "Really?"
"I know it can be difficult to imagine, but let's say that if he should decide that a new aqueduct is required, say," Marek explained, "perhaps the ransar would trust his closest allies to make sure that the right people are allowed to supervise its construction."
"Speaking of construction," Pristoleph replied, his eyes roaming the space above them, "what do you call this?"
Marek followed the senator's eyes up the length of a tall marble column. The column, and seven more just like it, supported a triangular roof that protected the wide front doors of the temple. The festivities had spilled out into the street in front of the building, and the doors had been left open and unguarded—the guards were being honored within, showered with gold and silver coins, with like sums being thrown into a deep well that served as the centerpiece of the temple proper.
"That would be a portico," Marek replied.
"Portico..." Pristoleph repeated, as though he'd never heard the word. "I suppose it's important to have an entrance that conveys a sense of power."
"Indeed."
"Why Salatis?" the senator asked.
Marek blinked at the question, and took a step backward. Pristoleph raised an eyebrow and stared at him, waiting for an answer. In order to simply have something to do while he thought, Marek laughed. Pristoleph smiled, but didn't join him in laughing.
"It's terrible in there, isn't it?" Marek asked. "All the colors... it confuses the eye."
Pristoleph glanced through the open doors at the garish decorations, rugs with intricate designs, everything gilded and overly decorated.
"I keep trying to focus on one thing," the Thayan said.
"I think if I can pay most of my attention to one thing among many, I might be able to put up with the confusion around me."
"But when there is so much detail," Pristoleph said, "so many colors, and all this embarrassment of riches, it can be difficult to choose one thing worthy of attention. Certainly it's not something that should be selected at random."
"I will admit, though with some reluctance," said Marek, "that I too often act with some impetuosity. But then one always hopes he'll think through every decision with care, but time and circumstances don't always allow that luxury."
Pristoleph smiled and tipped his chin down in the tiniest bow. His bright red hair moved in a way that seemed unnatural, as though it had a life of its own. Marek couldn't look away from it.
"Perhaps," the Red Wizard said, his voice low and coming from deep in his throat, "a little impetuosity might do me well tonight."
"Risking a thunderbolt," Pristoleph said, looking Marek in the eye and slowly, infinitesimally shaking his head, "I wonder what you think of the persistent rumor that the Merchant's Friend has actually fled her worshipers."
"I have heard that," Marek replied, forcing his face to mask his disappointment.
"That she was killed, or fled Toril's sphere, a decade ago?"
"During the Time of Troubles," Marek said. "But then, here we are."
"Could the Waukeenar simply be putting up a brave front?" asked Pristoleph.
"Everything is possible," Marek said, "but to answer that with any accuracy one would have to ask the very people who would be most intent on keeping the secret."
"And I suppose it doesn't matter anyway."
A bell rang, and one of the younger Waukeenar called
the faithful—and those just visiting—into the temple's central hall for some formal rite or another. Pristoleph gave Marek a smile and started to move off into the crowd. The Thayan stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. The genasi glanced down at the touch with a face so stern it seemed carved from stone. Marek took his hand away and reached into a pocket. Pristoleph watched his every move, and Marek had no doubt that the senator was ready for anything—including an assassination attempt.
Marek withdrew a polished silver box from his pocket, two inches by six inches, and hinged on one side. He offered the box to Pristoleph with a shallow bow.
"What is this?" the senator asked.
"A gift," Marek replied. "Consider it a token of good will from the Thayan Enclave."
Pristoleph took the silver box and looked Marek in the eye. He'd been taken off guard, and Marek made a note of that.
"Please don't try them on," Marek said when Pristoleph opened the box to reveal a pair of pince-nez spectacles with lenses of opaque magenta, "until you are in a private place."
Pristoleph closed the box and smiled. Marek could see that he had intrigued the genasi, and worried him at least a little.
55_
2 Marpenotk, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) The Golden Road
Insithryllax, in the form of a human, stepped out into the middle of the road and crossed his arms in front of his chest. The rider pulled his horse to a stop and regarded the dark man with a soldier's critical, suspicious eye, but didn't draw his sword.
"Let me guess," the rider said." 'Stand and deliver,' is it?"
Insithryllax laughed, hiding an incantation in the stuttering chuckle. The power gathered inside him, tingling first the tips of his fingers, then making his forearms almost sizzle. The sensation made him stop laughing and just smile.
"I am a rider in the service of the League of Lightning Mercenary Company and House Wianar of Arrabar," the soldier said. "Think twice, bandit."
"Ah," the disguised dragon replied, "good. You're the ambassador's escort."
The soldier's eyes narrowed, and his cheeks flushed. Insithryllax let the gathered Weave energy loose, thrusting his arm up and out to point at the rider. The soldier got a hand almost to his sword before the blinding blue-white flash of lightning arced from the dragon's outstretched palm and slammed into him.
The soldier jerked forward, not back, in his saddle. The horse screamed, but the man made no sound at all. It was if he screamed in reverse. He lungs seized, drew in air, but kept it lodged in his collapsed chest. The skin stretched tight over cramping muscles, and his eyes popped in his skull.
The warhorse bucked, trying to dislodge its rider. The man's armor had begun to glow red from heat, and Insithryllax could smell the stench of smoldering horseflesh. The lightning bolt disappeared, and finally the horse was able to dislodge its rider. Insithryllax fought down the urge to transform into his true form and make a meal of the animal, and he let it run westward up the Golden Road in a blind, agonized panic.
The soldier lay motionless in the middle of the road, slowly broiling inside his own armor.
A bloodcurdling scream ripped through the air from the east, and Insithryllax broke into a run, casting a spell as he went.
"Remember what I told you, children," he whispered into the wind, "no acid, and no survivors."
He ran half a mile down the middle of the road, uphill most of the way, and when he came to the hillcrest, he skidded to a stop, sending a little splash of standing water into the still, cool air. Rain began to patter on the muddy road around him. A black shape passed over his head with a flutter of leathery wings, but Insithryllax didn't flinch. He followed the black firedrake's swooping dive. It went for another of the riders, a man so like the one he'd just killed they could have been twins. The rider got his sword out of his scabbard before the f iredrake tore his face off as it passed. He screamed and fell from his mount. Another black firedrake perched on him and started eating him while he died.
His horse reared and shrieked, confused, until it was taken down by a firedrake's crocodilian fangs. As it went down, it kicked the side of the carriage, popping it up on two wheels. The firedrake, its mouth still on the horse's neck, pushed out with one wing and tipped the carriage the rest of the way over. The driver ran, heading perpendicular to the road and downhill.
Insithryllax cast a spell as he walked toward the overturned carriage. When he was done, he sent five slivers of green light speeding after the fleeing driver. The missiles twisted around each other in the air, dipping up and down as though avoiding a series of invisible obstacles in the air, but they hit the running man in a cluster in the middle of his back, and dropped him. He slid in the mud for half a dozen yards on his face, his arms limp at his sides.
The rear outrider thundered up, a lance held firmly at his side. He growled out a long, guttural battle cry that made Insithryllax laugh, but then the dragon's attention was drawn to the carriage. A hand appeared in the open window, smeared with blood.
A black firedrake roared, and Insithryllax broke into a run, casting another spell as he did so. A crackling sizzle cut the air. The approaching rider let loose a shriek of agony, and before Insithryllax even turned to look he
knew the source of the sizzle. The smell hit him next, and he redirected the spell away from the carriage and to his errant child.
The gust of wind knocked the black firedrake on its face and caught in its wing. The veiny black membrane ballooned up, and the force of the magic-driven air twisted its wing back and up so hard the bones snapped like twigs.
The firedrake shrieked in concert with the melting rider. The other firedrake turned on Insithryllax with an angry hiss, but backed off when the dragon merely tipped his head to one side.
He stood next to the carriage and muttered another spell, allowing himself the luxury of using the human gestures. The exercise gave the man time to crawl through the window and on to the side—which had become the top—of the carriage.
Insithryllax reached up, grabbed the man around the wrist, and pulled. With a yelp the man tumbled to the mud at the dragon's feet.
"What—?* the man demanded, struggling to get to his feet. "What in the name of Toril do you think you're doing?" He got to his feet, but staggered. Stepping back from Insithryllax, he steadied himself with a hand on the carriage. "Have you any idea who I am?"
"Ambassador Fael Verhenden of Arrabar," Insithryllax said.
The ambassador looked up at him, blood trickling down the side of his face from a cut in his scalp. He studied the dragon's dark face as though trying to place him A black firedrake reared up behind Insithryllax and the man screamed and fell back against the underside of the carriage. He put his arms up to fend the creature off.
Insithryllax knelt down in front of the man and grabbed him by his bloody jacket. Drawing him close, he looked the terrified ambassador in the eye. The spell he'd cast worked on the man's mind, opening it like a sack into which the dragon could toss whatever he pleased. He
could see the spell working in the way Verhenden's pupils dilated.
"It was nagas," Insithryllax said. "You were beset by nagas. Your men managed to kill one, but they overwhelmed you with spells."
The ambassador quivered, whimpered a little, and nodded.
Insithryllax drew the dagger out of the sheath at the ambassador's belt. He held it up close to the man's bulging, accepting eyes.
"You fought as best you could, but were armed only with this dagger. One of the nagas used some kind of magic to take it from you. It danced in the air of its own accord"— Insithryllax bounced the dagger up and down in front of his face—"then it slit your throat."
"With a flick of his wrist Insithryllax dragged the sharp edge along the side of the ambassador's throat, pressing it in deep. Blood poured out, the Arrabarran gasped for air and managed only to begin drowning in his own blood. Insithryllax watched him die then stood up, turned, and went to stand over the firedrake that still writhed in the mud with its wind-shattered wing twitching at its side.
"You," he said. "I told you no acid."
The wounded firedrake cringed beneath him as Insithryllax shed his human guise. His body trembled then convulsed, and as the black firedrakes watched, he grew to many times his human size. Finally he stood in his true form, his long, lithe body protected by scales the color of the sky at middark. Horns curved forward from each side of his head, and his eyes blazed with crimson light.
The wounded firedrake looked away.
Insithryllax opened his enormous jaws over the crippled monster and bit it in half. With only a few bone-splintering chews, he swallowed the first bite, then took the rest. That done, he ate the acid-burned rider, armor and all.
When he'd swallowed the last bite, made bitter by the black firedrake's acid, he turned on the other firedrake.
The creature shrank back from him a little but stood his ground before his gigantic father.
"You," the great wyrm rumbled, "get the dead naga and leave it here."
The black firedrake bowed and went off in the direction of the place where Insithryllax had hidden the water naga's remains. He looked around at the carnage and checked for any other signs of acid, or any evidence that the black firedrakes might have been involved, but saw none. Even if they brought the ambassador back from the dead, or questioned his corpse, he would insist that it was water nagas who'd killed them all.
56_
23 Marpenoth, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) Third Quarter, Innarlith
I^ristoleph held a little fire in his hand. Yellow-orange tongues of flame lapped at the chip of black wood at its heart. The heat felt good against his palm. It would have scorched a human, blistered him, but Pristoleph wasn't quite human. He stared at the fire's dance, kept small and contained by the power of his will. The movement mesmerized him, and he let it make his mind go blank.
Outside the window of the tall turret in Pristal Towers— his overly large manor home—the city of Innarlith slept. When he started to think again, he thought of the city. It had started out as his enemy. The city tried to kill him when he was a baby, and over and over again through his childhood, but he'd never let it. He beat it, and by the time he'd seen his thirtieth year, the city was his to do with as he pleased. He'd bought a seat on the senate, but kept largely to his own ways and his own circles. He'd never sought, or had been particularly interested in, the Palace of Many Spires, preferring to act at least a bit from the shadows, but...
"But things change," he whispered to himself.
He closed his palm around the fire. The coal sizzled and popped in his hand. The feeling made him smile.
When it settled, he tossed it into the brazier with the other coals and sighed. Tired, he rubbed his eyes and thought of going to bed. He looked at it, wide and comfortable, and richly appointed in silk, but it had no appeal.
Pristoleph considered going for a walk. It had been a long time since he'd done that. For the longest time he would wander the streets of the Fourth Quarter, visiting the avenues as a senator that he used to haunt as a street urchin. He would mark the passage of time by the houses that had collapsed or burned, the shanties that had been erected, the dead dogs in the midden. But he hadn't done that in a long time.
He'd stopped going to the docks as well. Since he'd started to "employ" undead dockworkers supplied by Marek Rymiit, he had to pretend, like the rest of the senate, that he was opposed to the very idea. He had to blame it on the guild he'd helped create. He had to make sure that the workers who'd played so easily into his hands and Marek's were blamed for their own obsolescence.
He didn't go to the docks because of the smell, and because it made him feel tired to be there. He couldn't tell anyone, even Wenefir, how tired he felt. Most of he time, he couldn't even tell himself. Thinking about it just made him more tired.
His eyes settled on the little silver box.
He took a deep breath and blinked. He'd forgotten about it, and there it sat on the side table where he'd left it, next to an oil lamp he hardly ever lit. Pristoleph reached out and picked it up, opened it, and stared down at its contents.
The spectacles didn't make any sense. The lenses were opaque. He knew they were enchanted in some way-considering the source that was a certainty—but the Thayan had never said how. For all Pristoleph knew, they'd blind him the second he put them on his nose. They'd either
blind him, or show him something.
He thought of a dozen things that Marek Rymiit might want him to see, and that was in the first few heartbeats, before he let his imagination wander. None of the possibilities particularly interested him, but still he lifted the pince-nez from the box, and turned them over in his hand.
He sighed again and stood. Still holding the spectacles, he crossed to his writing desk, pulled a sheet of parchment from a drawer, and wrote a brief note:
"Wenefir, if the pince-nez have harmed me in any way, kill Marek Rymiit."
He signed it with a certain sigil that would prove to Wenefir that he'd written it himself. He replaced the quill and sat back in his chair.
With a little shrug, he placed the pince-nez on his nose with his eyes closed. There was no sensation of anything out of the ordinary at first, and certainly no pain. After a moment he finally opened his eyes.
When it appeared as though he'd been transported to a strange room he closed his eyes and took the pince-nez off his nose. He blinked his eyes open and was happy, though not entirely surprised to be in his own bedchamber.
Pristoleph looked down at the pince-nez again and thought about what he'd seen. It was another bedchamber, someone else's. He'd never been there before, but when he had the spectacles on, it was as though he was actually there.
He put them on again, sat back, and studied his new surroundings in more detail. He seemed to be sitting on the edge of a bed. His head turned, but he didn't feel the muscles in his neck working, and he hadn't wanted to turn his head. A man or s. woman—he couldn't tell under the down and linen bedclothes—slept in the bed. He could see the rise and fall of the figure's breathing.
His head turned again and his vision scanned over the room. It was a cramped space, at least compared to what Pristoleph had grown accustomed to, and decorated in
what he found to be an overly garish fashion.
He reached out with his right hand, but couldn't see it, even when he was sure he held his palm a scant few inches from the tip of his nose.
A man stood in the open door of the bedchamber, and Pristoleph had the uneasy sensation that they had made eye contact. Something was wrong with the pince-nez, though. The man appeared transparent, as though made of deep violet light. He didn't seem to entirely belong in the scene, and Pristoleph realized maybe he wasn't in the scene at all, but—
He flipped the pince-nez off his nose, stood, and whipped his head from side to side. He'd thought perhaps the man was in fact standing in his own bedchamber, and Pristoleph saw him filtered through the magenta lenses.
But Pristoleph was alone.
"Whose eyes am I seeing through, Marek," Pristoleph whispered, "and why?"
Seeking the answer in the item itself, he put the glasses back on. His host had moved from the bed to sit in front of the dressing table. He saw a woman's delicate hand where he thought his own should be. She took a silver brush from the dressing table and looked up into a mirror.
Pristoleph gasped.
She was beautiful.
As she brushed her long, straight black hair, Pristoleph found that he could hardly breathe. He watched her, fixated by her deep blue eyes that were so sad and so troubled and so full of promise.
No woman had ever had that effect on him. No woman had ever stopped him cold.
A tear fell from one eye and she let it trickle down her smooth, flawless cheek without wiping it away. He felt uncomfortable watching her cry, but it was as though he'd fallen under the influence of some spell—and perhaps he had done just that, but he didn't care. He not only couldn't, but didn't want to look away.
Still looking deeply into her own eyes, she picked up a little cuticle knife from the dressing table and ran the sharp blade along the inside of her arm. He couldn't feel any pain, but he could see her wince in the mirror. The little line of red sat among scars and still-healing cuts on the same patch of skin.
When she looked at herself in the mirror again, she was smiling.
Pristoleph grabbed the pince-nez off his face and threw them to the floor. He stood, nearly falling back over his chair, but stayed on his feet.
The door opened, and the guard posted outside stuck his head in, looking around.
"Senator?" he said, seeing nothing amiss.
"It's all right," Pristoleph told him, and waved him away.
The guard nodded and closed the door.
With a deep breath to calm himself, Pristoleph knelt and picked up the spectacles. One of the lenses had broken into tiny shards that were no longer magenta, but ordinary clear, colorless glass.
"Why?" he whispered, though the man he was asking— Marek Rymiit—couldn't hear him. "Why show me her?"
Hours later, Pristoleph finally collapsed into bed without an answer to that question.
57__
24 Marpenoth, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) Second Quarter, Innarlith
The meat had not been cooked at all. Willem stared down at it, trying to find it in himself to be disgusted, but he couldn't quite muster it. He kept his hands in his lap.
"I told you, no," Phyrea whispered.
She sat at the other end of the dining table, and had no place setting in front of her, just a crystal tallglass of red
wine that she wasn't drinking. She looked off through the arched doorway to the sitting room, staring at empty space as though someone stood next to the sava board between the two wingback leather chairs.
"I beg your pardon?" he asked. His voice, pitched no louder than normal, seemed to boom in the still, heavy air of his dining room.
Phyrea shook her head, still looking at nothing, then turned toward him. Her eyes blazed with what Willem could have sworn was fear—but what could she possibly have to be afraid of?
"Were you speaking to me?" he asked.
In an instant the fear turned to contempt, and she said, "No. You aren't hungry?"
He glanced down at the raw meat and said, "No, thank you. Are you sure you don't want me to recall the cook, or perhaps you would feel more comfortable hiring someone else—someone of your choosing?"
"I told you I don't like people buzzing around me," she said.
"Then tell her to stay in the kitchen."
"I might want to go into the kitchen," Phyrea replied. She put a hand on her wine glass but didn't pick it up. "I suppose you miss the maids and cooks and little girls you can take to your bed whenever you choose, but things have changed, and it's time for you to grow up."
Willem blinked, both at the accusation, and at the sudden turns her temper took.
"I never..." he started, but trailed off when he realized she wasn't listening, and wouldn't care either way. "It's good to be home," he lied instead.
They'd been married for twenty months, and in that time she'd fired his household staff and scared his mother all the way back to Cormyr. He'd spent fewer than one night in twenty at home, having been overwhelmed by the process of restarting Devorast's project with the aid of two people even less competent than himself. In most
ways that mattered he and Phyrea were still strangers, but Willem remained unable to look at her without reeling at her perfect beauty. Even as tired as she looked, even when she twitched and glanced away at nothing, startled by silence, Phyrea was the most beautiful woman in the world.
"The fresh air agrees with you," she said. "You're a very handsome man."
He nodded in thanks, but couldn't keep the suspicion from his eyes.
"Eat your dinner, now, before it gets cold," she said. Phyrea, leering, glanced at the bloody red meat on the plate in front of him. "Be a good boy now. If you eat it, I'll let you touch me. I'll take you to bed, but you have to eat it all."
He looked down at the raw meat again, and swallowed. She shushed him, though he hadn't said anything, then she whispered, "He will." "Will I?" Willem asked her. "I wasn't talking to you."
He picked up his knife and fork, and she laughed at him.
"Go on, now," she said. "I'll make it worth your while."
He cut a little square off the side of the meat and held it up. Blood the consistency of water ran down the tines of his fork and dripped off the meat onto his plate.
She looked at him with wide eyes, and her open mouth was turned up in a trace of a smile.
"I will have to leave again tomorrow," he said.
She shrugged.
"I'm not entirely certain when I'll be back." Phyrea looked to her left and nodded to no one. Willem put the raw meat in his mouth and started to chew. It wasn't bad.
58
29 Marpenotk, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) The Canal Site
Willem had no idea what the man's name was, but he assumed he was some kind of foreman. Anyway, he was the one who talked to Willem most often, told him what was happening and asked for things. He was a short man, barely taller than a dwarf, but stocky and solid. He had a face like worn leather and dull eyes the color of mud. His greasy hair was always ragged and unkept, even falling out in patches. His clothes were spattered with holes and crusted with dried mud. He smelled of sweat and freshly-turned soil.
"Please come quickly, Senator," the little man said, his voice shaking in time with his panic-stricken eyes. "Please ... there's been a terrible accident."
Willem sighed. He'd lost track of the number of terrible accidents that had befallen the workers since he'd taken over the construction of the canal. Men died, were injured, fell to disease, and simply walked home in such numbers it frankly amazed him that there was anyone left to dig at all.
"Senator?" the little man prompted.
Willem scowled at him, and he backed away a few steps, but still seemed determined to have Willem follow him. Willem stood and the man started off, apparently in the direction of the accident. Willem stretched and looked up into the overcast sky.
"At least it isn't raining," he whispered to himself, then yawned.
"Senator?" the little man asked.
"Oh, for the sake of every god in the Outer Planes, man," Willem huffed, "what do you expect me to do?"
"Senator?" the man asked with a look of disappointed confusion.
"Honestly...." Willem went on. "What is it this time? Another trench collapse? Someone hacked his hand off with an axe? Someone blinded by a flying splinter? Do I look like a priest to you?"
"But, Senator, I thought..."
Willem waited for him to go on, but he didn't. Perhaps the grubby little man had finally realized that he hadn't thought anything at all. He looked down at the ground at his feet, and Willem almost felt sorry for him.
Willem stepped out of the protection of his tent, and his foot sank half an inch in the mud. He sighed and looked down at his expensive boots, which had long since been ruined.
"Damn this mud to the Barrens of Doom and Despair," he muttered. "Aren't you sick of the constant damp?"
The foreman shook his head, confused, simple.
"Did someone die?" asked Willem. "Is that what you're all in a fluster over?"
The foreman nodded.
Willem sighed and said, "Are they buried?" The foreman nodded again. "Loose soil, or mud?" "Mud," the man replied.
"Mud..." Willem sighed. "Don't you hate mud? I hate mud. I know people use that word too lightly, too often, 'hate.' But I hate this mud. I'm tired of being wet and cold. I'm tired of living outside like an ore. This is a life for savages, sitting in the rain, living in your own bathroom, for Waukeen's sake."
"Yes, Senator," the foreman agreed—or pretended to.
Willem saw a trace of annoyance pass through the man's features, and he fought down the impulse to draw his sword and gut the man where he stood. There were too many others around to see it, and even Salatis might consider that overstepping his bounds.
"What caused these men to be buried in the mud?" Willem asked. "Was it a naga?"
"A naga?"
"Yes, fool, a naga. You know, the giant snake things with human faces that eat slow-witted fools like you just to spite me. Was it a thrice-bedamned naga, or not?"
"No, Senator," the foreman replied. "I mean ... no one saw any naga."
"Just because you couldn't see it, doesn't mean it wasn't there," Willem said. "They've turned on us, you know."
"They have killed men to the north, I hear," the foreman said. "But that's miles away, Senator."
"They traveled for miles inland to kill the ambassador from Arrabar," Willem said. He stepped back into his tent and did his best to wipe the mud from his boots, but all he did was make the dryer, brown grass inside a little bit muddier. "So what happened, then?"
"It was just a mudslide, Senator. On account of all the rain we've been having."
"Really?" Willem asked, a growl to his voice that might have been due more to the fact that the cold and damp had settled in his chest than out of anger. "Could it really have been on account of all the rain we've been having?"
The foreman, sheepish, looked down at his feet.
"How many?" Willem asked.
"Senator?"
"How many men, damn it?"
The foreman nodded and said, "Fourteen souls. Tragic, ain't it, Senator? A human tragedy, this." Willem rolled his eyes and sighed. "Senator?"
"Are you sure they're dead?" Willem asked. "Well, they've been under there a long time." "Have you started digging them out?" "I think some of the men went at it while I ran for you, yes."
Willem rubbed his eyes and blinked, looking past the grubby foreman, and down a steep hill to the edge of the enormous trench. Most of the length of it that he could see was deserted, not near finished. Men walked here and
there, sometimes alongside ox carts with various tools and supplies. He couldn't draw a sense of urgency out of the scene no matter how hard he tried.
"There's so slim a chance that I will live to see this done, it's impossible to measure with the mathematics known to me," Willem said.
"I wouldn't know anything about that," the foreman replied, even though Willem hadn't asked him anything.
"Do you like it here?" Willem asked the man.
"Yes, Senator," the foreman lied.
"Are we paying you?"
"Yes, Senator."
"What for?"
"Senator?"
Willem looked the man in the eye and said, "What are we paying you for?"
"To help build the Grand Canal," he said, and Willem could hear the capital letters in the little man's prideful voice.
"What do you mean 'Grand Canal'?" Willem asked.
"That's what it's called, isn't it?"
"No."
The foreman looked surprised, and remained confused. He blinked at Willem then glanced off in the direction of the day's terribly tragic mudslide.
"No one has named it," Willem said. "Stop calling it that. Did Devorast call it that?"
"I never met that man, Senator," the foreman said. "I started after he was ... after I took over for that helf-elf chap."
"So there are now fourteen fewer men working," Willem said.
"Senator?"
"Get back to it, then," Willem said.
"Yes, Senator," the foreman replied, disappointment plain on his leathery face. "We'll have the bodies dug out by nightfall."
"No, you won't," Willem said, and the foreman had the nerve to looked surprised, even offended. "I want you to continue with your day's tasks. Light torches to work past nightfall if you have to, but finish. Then you can dig up your dead if you like."
The man stared at him, speechless.
"Wrap the bodies, but don't send them back to Innarlith," Willem said.
He'd nearly forgotten something Marek Rymiit had told him some tendays before.
"But their families—" the foreman started.
"Leave that to me," Willem said. His skin crawled, and he had to look away from the foreman's confused, puppy-dog eyes. "On your way, now."
59__
6 Uktar, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) The Canal Site
Willem looked at the line of canvas bundles and frowned. Stained with dried mud, the dull, bone-colored material bore the muddy brown handprints of the men who'd wrapped them and carried them to the open stretch of ground near the shore of the Lake of Steam. The sulfur smell of the water drove away the ripe stench of the dead bodies in the canvas bundles.
The short, squat foreman stared at Willem as though awaiting orders. When Willem shooed him away with a wave, the man started to turn but hesitated.
"Oh, what is it?" Willem demanded of him, all patience fled.
"Shouldn't I have a few men ready, Senator?"
"Whatever for?"
"To load the bodies on the boat?"
"What boat?" Willem asked.
The foreman inhaled, was about to answer, then let the
breath out in a gasp. He stared, wide-eyed, at something over Willem's shoulder.
Willem put a hand to his sword hilt and turned as a strange sound—sort of a mixture of hissing and tinkling— flittered from the air behind him.
Marek Rymiit stood in the muddy grass and blinked up at the sky. The sparse, scudding rain dampened his bald head and made him grimace. His strange tattoos glimmered under a sheen of rain water.
"Master Rymiit," Willem said, taking his hand away from his sword.
Marek tried to shake the wet from his voluminous robes and nodded in response. He took a couple of steps forward and finally glanced over the scene.
"Send your man away," the Thayan commanded.
Willem turned to the foreman, but the grubby little man was already walking away at a brisk pace, his short legs bouncing him down a little hill. Willem smiled when the foreman lost his footing and slid the rest of the way down the hill on his backside. When he stood, covered in wet mud, he broke into a run and disappeared among a gang of workers loading lumber onto ox carts.
"Difficult finding good people these days, isn't it?" Marek said.
Willem turned and traded smiles with the Thayan, who gestured to the canvas bundles.
The two of them stepped closer to the line of corpses, and Marek said, "I do wish you'd put them in a tent or something. This incessant rain goes straight to my joints."
"I apologize, Master Rymiit," Willem replied, "but we used all the canvas we had left to wrap the bodies."
Marek sighed and said, "Well, that was unnecessary, wasn't it?"
Willem looked over at the wizard, watched him wiggle his fingers as if stretching them, warming them up for— what? He'd seen musicians do the same thing.
"The men were more comfortable wrapping them in
something," Willem said, leaving out the fact that he'd ordered it himself. He was uncomfortable with dead bodies just laying out in the open. He wondered why that could be. What did he care, really? "I can have them—"
"No, no," Marek interrupted. "No, it's better we do it ourselves. If it's true the men felt uncomfortable with the sight of their dead comrades, I suppose they'll be even less comfortable with what's about to become of them. If we compel them to help, you could have a mutiny on your hands before they have a chance to think twice."
"Mutiny...?"
The Red Wizard laughed and said, "Really, Willem, my dear, you didn't expect your rabble to like that their dead comrades are being put back to work alongside them."
Willem took a deep breath and said, "I hadn't thought about it."
Truth be told, Willem didn't actually care. When he thought about it, he couldn't help feeling as though there was a time, long ago, when the thought of employing zombies, of having a hand in the desecration of the dead, when any sort of a hint of the use of slave labor, would have turned his stomach. Where he'd come from, in Cormyr, it simply wasn't done.
"I'm not in Cormyr anymore," he said aloud, though he hadn't intended to speak.
Marek laughed again and said, "You've been out in the cold and wet too long, my boy. Or is it your young bride who's causing you to talk to yourself? They say that after a time, married couples begin to resemble one another."
Willem shook his head.
"Pardon?" the wizard prompted, and Willem winced at his irritated mien.
"Shall we unwrap them?" Willem asked.
Not waiting for an answer, he squatted next to one of the bundles, drew his dagger, and cut the twine that held it closed. Marek stood watching him as he pulled back the heavy, wet material to reveal the still features of a young
man barely out of his teens. Though the men had washed his face, mud still clogged his nostrils and crusted in his eyelashes, holding his eyelids closed. "Sad, isn't it?" Marek said.
Willem didn't look up at him. He could hear the sarcasm in the Red Wizard's voice. Willem thought that if he turned and saw that Marek was smiling, he might become offended, and he just didn't have the energy for that.
"You look tired," the wizard said. "You should get back to the city more often."
"I'm needed here," Willem lied.
"Of course you are," Marek said, playing along.
Willem went to the next bundle, and the next, as Marek Rymiit stood watching in silence. By the time he had removed the canvas from all fourteen of the men, he was soaking wet and covered with mud. The smell of the dead bodies mixed with the lake's stench made him gag several times while he worked. After the first one, he stopped looking at their faces.
When he was done, he stood and brushed the mud off his hands as best he could.
"Come here, Willem," Marek said.
Willem walked oyer to the Thayan, who stood with his hand in a velvet sack he must have produced from a pocket while the senator was busy unwrapping the corpses.
"Take these," the Red Wizard said, pulling from the sack a handful of little black stones, "and place two in each of their mouths." He nodded at the bodies, and Willem took the stones. He shifted them in his cupped hands. "Onyx," Marek explained. "Two in each mouth."
Willem turned to go, but Marek reached out and grabbed him by the forearm. Willem flinched at his cold, clammy touch, and almost dropped the gemstones. Before he could speak, Marek's other hand came up, and Willem didn't quite have time to register the dagger before the blade bit—not too deeply—into the flesh of both his wrists.
Willem hissed and again almost dropped the gems, but
Marek let fall the dagger and held both his hands over Willem's, squeezing them together. Pain made Willem's breath catch in his throat, and he could feel the hot blood mixing with the scudding precipitation, which was cold enough to help soothe the pain. Marek stared down at his hands and began to babble in a language that made Willem's ears ring. Willem started to shake, and though he could breathe again, he couldn't speak.
Marek let go of him all at once, and Willem stepped away.
"Don't drop them, my boy," Marek said.
"What on—what are you... ?" Willem blustered.
Marek glanced down, and Willem followed his gaze to his own hands. The cuts on his wrists had already healed, the pain had been replaced with an uneasy nettling, and the black gemstones were traced with delicate slivers of deep crimson—blood red.
"My apologies, Willem," Marek said. "It works better somehow if you don't know it's coming."
Willem got the distinct impression that was a lie. "What works better?"
"Place the stones in the corpses' mouths now," said the Thayan. "Two in each mouth."
Willem hesitated.
"I've infused them with your blood," Marek explained, though it appeared to tire him to have to do so. "When they animate, they will look to you for instruction, not me."
A chill ran through Willem's body, and his knees went weak. He blinked, but gathered himself quickly. He wasn't sure he—
"Go on, now," Marek said, irritated. "I'd like to return to the warmth of my hearthfire before dark, if you don't mind."
Willem turned and squatted next to the first corpse. Though it wasn't easy, he shifted all of the little stones to his left hand. After a few tries he finally figured out how to hold the stones with one hand and force the corpse's
mouth open with his right. He dropped two of the blood-infused onyx chips into the dead man's mouth and pushed it closed.
"Good boy," Marek said.
Willem grimaced at that, but moved on to the next body, and so on down the line of dead workers. When he was finished he stood, and almost fell to the ground when his head spun. His head felt heavy and his eyesight dimmed. Blinking, breathing deeply, he began to feel normal again after a moment.
"You should eat better," the Thayan told him with a wink.
Willem shook his head and stepped away from the bodies.
Marek began chanting meaningless words and waving his hands in front of him. His face was set and determined, cold and inhuman, and though he might have looked or sounded ridiculous if it was indeed meaningless gibberish and waving about, Willem knew there was nothing random about it. Willem's hair began to stand on end, and he itched his scalp. He shivered and had to clench his teeth together to keep them from chattering.
One of the bodies-moved.
Willem stepped back, almost skipped in the mud, and drew in a sharp breath.
A second corpse twitched, and the arm of a third reached up to the sky then fell back down. Within a few heartbeats all fourteen of them jerked where they lay on their backs.
Bile rose in Willem's throat, and he choked it back.
One of the dead men rolled over onto all fours. Mud dripped from its nose, and it opened its mouth wide, its dead lips falling away from teeth caked with dried mud. The two stones fell out of its mouth and splashed onto the wet ground. The thing, its mouth still open, staggered to its feet. Still clothed in its simple homespun peasant's blouse and breeches, at first it looked almost normal. But
the pale, gray cast of its skin and its yellowed, jaundiced eyes betrayed it. Its arms hung limp at its side, and it staggered. When its boot—and it only wore one, the other was likely still buried in the mud where it had died—stepped on the onyx chips, Willem heard a quiet crumbling sound. When it moved its foot again the two gemstones were gone, replaced with a black powder.
Two or three at a time, the other corpses awakened, rolled over, and expelled the gemstones. They stood, shifting on uncertain feet, staring blankly in whatever direction they happened to be facing when they first stood.
Marek approached them, and the creatures didn't seem to notice him at all. He bent and retrieved one of the stones. He came to Willem and held it out to him. Willem took the gemstone in his hand before he realized it had just been spat out by a zombie. The thought made him flinch and squeeze the stone, which crumbled to black dust in his hand.
"It's like a piece of charcoal," Willem said, brushing the dust from his hand.
"More than twenty-five gold pieces each," Marek said. "Worry not, though, I'll bill the ransar."
Willem looked at the black dust that still coated his fingertips. There was no trace of red. His stomach turned at the thought that his blood had somehow been ingested by those hideous abominations.
"They're all yours, my boy," the Thayan told him. "Keep your commands simple. They're not quite as quick-witted as they were in life, though by the look of these peasants and the nature of the work they were content to do, I doubt it was a long way down for any of them."
Willem nodded, but avoided looking at the zombies.
"Really, Willem," Marek said, putting a hand on his shoulder, "why so squeamish? They're better workers now by half. All they lack is the ability to understand how little they matter in the world. Think of it that way, and it's really a blessing for them."
Willem couldn't look at the Thayan's leering smile. And the wizard's hand lingered too long on his shoulder.
"Let me know when you have another five and ten of them," said Marek, "and I'll come back, or send Kurtsson, to make more for you. In time, you'll have more undead than living workers, toiling away at all hours without a drop to drink or a bite to eat, oblivious to the weather, and so on. You'll want to wear something over your mouth and nose in the summer months, believe me, but I'm guessing that was true when they still breathed, eh?" Willem nodded and shook his head at the same time. The zombies had all turned to look at him, awaiting his command.
60__
11 Uktar, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) Pristal Towers, Innarlith
I don't remember the last time I was in the Fourth Quarter," Phyrea said, swallowing the breathless awe that threatened to overwhelm her.
Her host smiled graciously, but she hardly took notice. The opulence around her made her legs shake.
"If you have any questions about anything you see," said Pristoleph, "please don't hesitate to ask."
Ask him why he lives in such luxury, surrounded by starvation and want, the old woman said.
Phyrea shook her head at the apparition, checking out of the corner of her eye to see if he had noticed. If he had, he was too much of a gentleman to comment.
"It's not the..." she started. "You have impeccable taste."
He looked at her—really looked at her, in a way that only one man had before.
Get out of here, the man with the scar on his face said. This one is not to be trifled with.
"It's quite something that we haven't met before," Pristoleph said.
Phyrea stopped at a burled wood side table to admire a tea set that looked to have been cast from platinum traced with gold and accented with diamonds. She couldn't have begun to guess at its value.
Do you like that? the little girl asked. Phyrea looked over at her. She stood on the other side of the hall next to an identical side table. She had her hand on a cup from a similar tea set, but one made of the most delicate porcelain. Is it better than this one?
Phyrea didn't respond. She tried not to respond to the ghosts when people were able to hear her, but she desperately wanted to tell the little girl to stop.
The ghost picked up the teacup.
Phyrea gasped.
"Is something wrong?" Pristoleph asked.
The teacup shattered on the floor. The little girl smiled and faded away.
"What—?" the senator said, crossing the hall in a few long strides. "How did that happen?"
Phyrea didn't follow him. She couldn't move.
Well, the man with the scar on his face said—she saw him standing at the foot of the wide, sweeping stairs, that's -never happened before. How did she learn to do that?
Phyrea shook her head and closed her eyes.
"Was that you?" he said.
"What?" Phyrea gasped. "No."
It was me, the little girl said into her mind.
"Is there someone with you?" Pristoleph asked.
"What?" Phyrea muttered. "No."
"The man with the scar in the shape of the letter Z?" the senator asked.
Phyrea stared across the hall at Pristoleph and when he approached her she backed away, fending him off with her hands. He stopped a few paces from her. She looked around herself but couldn't see any of the apparitions.
None of them spoke to her.
"How do you know about him?" she asked, not sure she wanted to hear the answer.
"The pince-nez," he replied. She squinted at him, and he explained, "Spectacles ... lenses that you wear over your eyes. Marek Rymiit gave them to me. When I put them on I could see through your eyes—it was as though I were you. That's when I saw you for the first time, eighteen days ago, in your own mirror."
"And you saw... him?"
"It looked as though he was there, but not entirely. It was as though he was somehow added onto what I was seeing." "Made of purple light," she whispered, and he nodded. "Do you see him now?" he asked. She shook her head. "Do you see him often?"
"Most of the time," she replied. "They appear to me everywhere, any time they wish, except when I was with—"
She almost choked on his name. The ghosts were gone, then, just like they used to stay away when she was with Devorast.
"Used to," she whispered.
"What did you say?" Pristoleph asked. "Are you talking to him now?"
"No," she said, and felt the almost forgotten sensation of a smile on her face.
He smiled back at her, and for the first time she noticed his hair, red like Devorast's, but different—not human, somehow. It appeared to move as though blown by a wind from below.
"Why did he give you those lenses?" she asked. "Why would Marek Rymiit want you to see through my eyes? Why would he arrange for us to meet tonight?"
Pristoleph said, "He arranged this meeting because I asked him to. As for the pince-nez, I have no idea, but I'm happy that he did."
Phyrea smiled, still, even when she began to cry.
61
14 Uktar, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) Pristal Towers, Innarlith
E ven the place setting was intimidating. Willem placed his hand on the handle of the fork without picking it up, and ran his fingertip over the row of tiny ruby berries that accented the engraving of twisting vines. He blinked at a sparkling rainbow that beamed from a crystal decanter. The empty plate before him was made of a material he couldn't identify with any certainty. It appeared to be ivory, but somehow hewn from a single piece. It couldn't be, and he was afraid to ask.
Phyrea sat across from him and as hard as it was to tear his eyes from the magnificent opulence around him, he couldn't keep himself from looking at her. He'd never seen her look more beautiful, and for the thousandth time at least he wondered if she were truly human at all, and not some Astral being, some creature of the outer heavens. But as she listened to Pristoleph's perfunctory small talk, there was something else about her, something he'd never seen in her before. She seemed almost at peace, and peace was something he'd stopped trying to imagine for her.
Tm curious, Senator," Pristoleph said. "How goes your canal?"
Willem bristled and had to clear his throat before he could answer, "It's an honor to be asked to work on something so monumental, but of course it's the ransar's canal, not mine."
He felt Phyrea's burning stare then, but wouldn't look at her. He knew what she was about to say—or maybe she would leave it unsaid: It was Ivar Devorast's canal.
"I'd go you one more, Willem—if I may call you Willem?" said Pristoleph.
There was no sense that any other answer but "yes"
would ever be acceptable. It was the senior senator's way of informing him that henceforth he would call Willem by his first name. Willem nodded without hesitation.
"I'd say the canal belongs to the people of the city-state of Innarlith," Pristoleph went on.
"If not all the people of Faerun," Phyrea cut in.
Willem's skin crawled, and he looked at everything but Pristoleph and Phyrea.
"All the people of Toril, even," Pristoleph said with a heaviness to his voice that brought out the beginnings of a simmering rage in Willem, though he didn't understand in any concrete terms why he would feel that way. "It will spark a revolution in trade."
Willem nodded and cleared his throat again.
"Don't you think so, Willem?" Phyrea prompted.
She seemed legitimately interested in what he had to say, and it was so unexpected, all he could do was clear his throat again.
"Are you quite all right?" Pristoleph asked.
"Yes," Willem said around a deep breath. "I'm fine, thank you. It's just ... difficult for me, sometimes, to remember what it's like to sit at a proper table and have a proper conversation with proper people."
"Conditions at the canal site are rather primitive," Phyrea explained.
"I can imagine," said Pristoleph.
"I'm not sure you could, Senator," Willem said, plunging forward despite his best intentions. "It's awful. The cold, the rain, the mud... the mud gets everywhere. It's all over you in the space of the first afternoon. None of your clothes are ever dry. Fires provide warmth—everything. You live your life around an open fire like ores—worse, goblins. It's not a life fit for humans to live."
"I'm sure there are humans living in worse conditions," Pristoleph said.
"I can't imagine," Willem replied.
There was a short silence that commanded Willem's
attention. Almost against his will, he turned to face the senior senator, whose hair seemed to dance more quickly, as though agitated.
"I don't have to imagine," Pristoleph said, and his eyes allowed no argument. "I have but to remember. You see, I was born to the streets of the Fourth Quarter. From the day I could walk I started to fight to survive. I had no family to speak of, and in parts of this city, one doesn't have to actually do anything to attract enemies."
Willem nodded, his neck stiff, and sweat began to pool under his arms. He wanted a sip of water but was afraid to pick up the goblet for fear of revealing how badly his hands were shaking. He kept his hands in his lap.
"It was a difficult life," Pristoleph went on, "but not without rewards. Growing up that way, being that sort of a child, made me the man that I am today."
Willem nodded again and glanced around the cavernous dining room—a space so large Willem's entire house could easily have been constructed inside it. Part of him wanted to ask Pristoleph if he was, in fact, the richest man in Innarlith, but then he didn't have to. He was sitting in all the proof of that anyone would ever need.
But then Willem wondered: Wouldn't he be more important than he is? Wouldn't he be ransar, if that were true? Instead he seemed to be the senator that everyone deferred to when they had to, but rarely even spoke with. His appearances at social affairs both private and public were rare occurrences.
"I am a man who doesn't trust easily, Willem," Pristoleph continued. "I keep my own counsel, and I do what I think is best. Often, that is also what's best for Innarlith. Rarer still, it's what's best for other people."
"We should always consider others," Willem muttered. His face flushed, and he cleared his throat again, feeling like a child speaking out of turn.
Pristoleph laughed—laughed at him—and the blood drained from Willem's face.
"Wherever possible, yes, I suppose so," the strange man with fiery hair replied. "But not always, and so here we come to the reason I asked you and your lovely young bride to join me for dinner."
"I'll admit, Senator," Willem said, "that I've been curious..."
"Three days ago I met Phyrea for the first time," Pristoleph said. "For the first time in person, at least"—the two of them traded a conspiratorial smile that almost made Willem whimper in fear—"and very quickly afterward I decided to make her my wife."
Willem blinked, choked back the impulse to chuckle, and shook his head.
"My deepest apologies, Senator Pristoleph," he said, "but for a moment I thought you said..."
The look on Phyrea's face made it impossible for him to continue.
"You will step away," Pristoleph said. "Phyrea and I will leave on the morrow for a long sea journey. When we return, we will be wed."
"But..." Willem blustered. "But that's..."
He looked to Phyrea, who smiled at him in a freakishly maternal way that made Willem's skin crawl anew.
"You will go back to the canal," Pristoleph went on. "Go back and finish it. Make a name for yourself. From what I understand you don't deserve it, but Phyrea has asked—by the Nine Hells, she's demanded—that you be allowed to finish it. It will be your monument, your greatest achievement, and Phyrea will be mine."
Phyrea smiled and looked down.
Willem's jaw opened and closed, but no words came out.
"You can, of course, choose to be difficult," Pristoleph said, and again, Willem's attention was dragged kicking and screaming to the man's eyes. A spark blazed in them that Willem didn't think matched the candlelight, as though his eyes were lit from within. "Will you be difficult about this?"
Willem swallowed, mesmerized by the strange man, and well aware of the otherworldly woman that had attracted his attention. Willem didn't think either of them were human, certainly not human like he was, not flawed, afraid, incompetent, and—
"Willem?'' Phyrea asked.
"I won't be," he said. It was so difficult to get the words out he practically barked. "I won't stand in anyone's way."
"Very well, then," Pristoleph said, his voice as light and as casual as though they'd just come to agreement to get together later for a game of sava, not that he'd just appropriated a man's wife. "Let's eat, shall we?"
Willem sat through the meal desperately trying not to throw up.
62__
21 Uktar, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) The Canal Site
^Fifteen more dead men awoke, choked out a dusty black coal, and staggered to their feet.
"I'm beginning to think," Willem said with a sigh, "that for every one you bring back from the dead, two or three living workers flee back to the city."
Marek Rymiit chuckled and said, "Let them go. We've made arrangements to collect bodies from the Fourth Quarter mass graves, so they'll come back from the city in due course anyway."
Willem shuddered at the thought of it. He rubbed his wrists where he'd been cut and healed again. His body shook, his nose ran, and his head throbbed. He wondered if he had any more blood to lose.
"I hate the winter here," he muttered. "It's so cold. Every day it's so dark and cold."
"But isn't it colder in Cormyr?" Marek asked. "It's likely snowing there, no?"
Willem shook his head, but replied, "Yes, I suppose it is. Still, this damp—not damp but incessant soaking rain—sucks the warmth from your body. It's killing me. Its absolutely killing me."
"This?" said Kurtsson, who'd finish creating a handful of zombies himself. "This is warm. It's warm here."
"Ah," Marek said with a jovial laugh, "the Vaasan perspective. Surely even you can take heart in that, Willem."
"No, I can't," said Willem.
"Really, my boy," Marek said, "perhaps you need to spend more than a night or two with that lovely wife of yours. I've been encouraging you to get back to the city more often and for longer stretches."
"My lovely wife isn't there," Willem said, surprised that Marek, who always seemed to know everything, didn't know that. "She's gone off with another man."
Kurtsson laughed at him, and Willem spun on the Vaasan, which only made him laugh harder.
"Kurtsson," Marek said in a stern tone, "perhaps you could be of use with spells for the cause?"
The Vaasan wizard quieted a bit, but didn't stop laughing. He wandered off into the work camp, playfully passing between shambling rows of undead workers. Willem watched him go, not keen to see the look on Marek Rymiit's face, one way or another.
"I have to admit that I'm a bit disappointed you're only now telling me this," the Thayan said. "I knew, of course, but I was hoping that by now I'd gained your confidence."
Willem choked back a sob and wiped snot from his nose onto the back of his sleeve. His clothes were ruined from the wet and mud anyway, so what was the difference?
"Do you know where they've gone?" Marek asked.
"Do you?" Willem shot back—too fast, too forcefully— and fear that he'd offended the Thayan actually staggered him. "My apologies, Master Rymiit. I'm not myself."
"I should say you aren't," the Red Wizard replied, his voice devoid of anger. "You look terrible—worse every time
I see you. You're not wearing that item I provided you." "It stopped working." "I can find you an—"
"I'm dying out here," Willem said. "This thing is killing me."
"That was no one's intent, Willem. If you'd prefer to come back to the city, no one will fault you."
"But we both know that they will," Willem said. "They will fault me, they will blame me, they will shun me, they will punish me, and as sure as the mud and rain will kill me, they will just as fast."
"People will speak and act on your behalf," Marek promised without sincerity.
Willem gasped out something like an exhausted laugh and said, "I'm sure they will. Maybe one of the other senior senators will decide to move into my house. Meykhati, maybe? Or what if Salatis covets my eyes? He'll have them dug from my screaming skull as easily as Pristoleph took my-"
Willem stopped. His throat closed over anymore words. Tears streamed down to mix with the rain on his face.
"You've put yourself in the dragon's lair, my boy," Marek said. "This little city on the edge of the world has its own rules, and chief among those rules is the strong survive. Gold is what they all covet, gold and the power it brings. You've gone after power, Willem, and I'm surprised to find you naive enough to believe that there would be no consequences."
"This place has no honor," Willem said.
That made Marek laugh, and laugh long and loud.
When the Thayan finally got hold of himself he said, "Please, Willem. The same is true in your precious Cormyr, as it is in my own beloved Thay. The thing is, you see, that as the son of a boarding house wife, you simply weren't prepared for it."
Willem shook his head, though he knew that Marek spoke the truth.
"So, what now, then?" the Thayan asked.
"I will stay here and die desecrating the dream of a better man," Willem said.
"My, Willem, you do have a sense of the dramatic at times. I'll grant you that."
"Look at them," Willem said, ignoring the wizard's last comment. "I know you created them, but have you really ever looked at them?"
"The zombies, you mean."
"The walking dead," Willem replied, "yes. Don't you sometimes wish you could be like that?" "No," Marek said. "No, I don't."
"They haven't a care in the world," Willem went on. "They aren't happy, but they aren't unhappy, either, and do you know why?"
"Because what little brains they had in the first place are rapidly rotting in their skulls?"
"No," Willem replied. "I mean, yes, of course, but no. They're neither happy nor unhappy because they don't seek happiness. They don't know what happiness is—or at least they don't imagine they might someday know what happiness is. They exist, and that's enough for them. They do as they're told, and are left to do it. They aren't teased with gold, comfort, women, power.... No one leads them on.
"Perhaps the cold and damp have gotten to your thinking worse that I thought, my boy," Marek said. "Healthy men do not envy the undead—at least not this sort of shambling, mindless walking corpse. It almost sounds as though you'd like to be one."
"Perhaps I would," said Willem.
"Well," the Red Wizard replied, his voice dense and full of meaning, "that could be arranged."
Willem looked at the Thayan and almost screamed at the look he saw in the man's eyes.
But he didn't scream. Instead, he shook his head and excused himself. He walked back to his tent, leaving the
Thayan to disappear, sending himself back to Innarlith by means of his own magic.
In his tent, Willem sat on his canvas chair, opened a new bottle of brandy, and drank it.
All of it.
63_
22 Nightal, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) The Shining Sea, Seventy Miles North of Lushpool
They had been at sea for twenty-nine days, and in all that time Phyrea had not heard a single word uttered by anyone who wasn't physically present—and alive. She spoke almost exclusively with Pristoleph. The crew went about their duties, rarely if ever seen from the sections of the ship reserved for she and the vessel's master. She'd only ever been on one ship she thought was nearly a match to Pristoleph's impressive Determined, and that was the strange ship that Devorast had made for the woman from Shou Lung.
They were impressive because they were unlike anything she'd seen before, and were reflections of the geniuses behind them, but that was where any comparison ended.
Determined was one of the biggest ship's she'd ever seen, and she was dedicated to only one purpose: the recreation of her master. Friends of Phyrea's father owned sailboats and yachts of all sorts, but none of them approached Determined in sheer size and luxury. It was as though a wing of Pristal Towers, gilded appointments and all, had been set afloat.
Phyrea climbed the stairs to the sun deck, as had become her habit after a light lunch in the salon with Pristoleph. High above the main deck, the sun deck was hidden from the sight of the crew. Though open to the tropical sun and fragrant breezes of the Shining Sea, it was entirely private.
Her favorite chaise had already been turned to face the sun by a butler she rarely saw, but who's effect she felt throughout the day—every day. She dropped her silk robe to the deck planks and stretched, naked, basking in the warmth of the sun. She brushed a hand slowly down her flat stomach and could already feel the sun heating her skin. She'd taken on a deep, rich color, and when she looked at herself in the mirror, she couldn't believe the change. Gone were the bags under her eyes, the haunted, faraway look, the exhausted, defeated droop of her shoulders.
She heard footsteps climbing the stairs and was so confident that it was Pristoleph that she didn't cover herself, or even turn around. She sat, stretching, on the padded chaise and closed her eyes, tipping her face up to the warm sun. She imagined she could feel the perfect blue sky, unmarred by even the tiniest wisp of a cloud, soaking into her pores to nourish her in a way no food ever could.
"You are the most beautiful woman on the face of Toril," Pristoleph said.
He sat in a deck chair next to her, and she looked at him and smiled.
"Thank you," she said.
They had repeated the same words every day for the past twenty, and it had become another in a parade of simple comforts.
"Are we really on our way back?" she asked.
"We'll be at harbor in Innarlith as soon as three or four days from now."
Phyrea sighed.
"Are you disappointed?" Pristoleph asked.
"No," she replied. "I knew that eventually we would have to go home. All this last month, though, I've wondered why I've traveled so little in my life. My father's coin could have carried me to Waterdeep and back a hundred times, but I never really went any farther than our country estate."
She took a deep breath and sighed. She didn't want to
think about Berrywilde, and the ghosts she seemed to have finally left behind.
"I take Determined out at least one month in every twelve," Pristoleph said, though he'd told her the same many times before. "It never ceases to amaze me what getting away from the city can do for me, especially this time of year when the rain, the dark clouds, are so oppressive."
"Oppressive..." she repeated, carefully considering the word. "It is. It is oppressive. I wonder if people there ... if people would be better, would treat each other better, if the sun shined more often, and the Lake of Steam smelled like this sea and not the stinking innards of the Underdark."
"You know what I think about that," he replied. "People are people, and the weather might make you tired, or affect your mood, but ultimately what ails Innarlith goes deeper than too many rainy days."
"But people there hate each other," she said. "I know. I'm one of them. I've done hateful things, over and over—things to degrade myself and others. Here, under this perfect sky, I can't imagine what made me such a misanthrope."
"Everyone is an altruist on a tropical afternoon," he said. "When you have to fight for a piece of a pie that can only be cut into so many pieces, you do what has to be done."
She sighed and said, "I wish I'd stopped at what I had to do, sometimes."
He shrugged that off, but still she could tell he thought about it.
"Still, I can't help thinking people would be better to each other if they all had a month like this every year," Phyrea thought aloud.
"I have a month like this every year," Pristoleph said, "and I'm an unconscionable bastard."
Phyrea laughed, and Pristoleph joined her. She kept laughing until tears streamed from her eyes. Eventually they both took deep breaths, and finally sat, smiling, in silence for a while.
"Well," Phyrea said at last, "I'll try to overlook that side of you."
"That's the best any man can ask from a woman," Pristoleph replied. "Is it?"
"No," he answered without pause. "The best a man can ask is love—true love, if there is such a thing." "There is," she whispered.
"And if I thought you felt that way about me I wouldn't be a bastard anymore."
"Oh," she joked, "I doubt that one thing has anything to do with the other."
She did love him, but not the same way she loved Ivar Devorast. To Phyrea, Pristoleph and she were like old friends who hadn't seen each other in twenty years, but who fit back into a familiar, comforting groove the second they'd reacquainted.
"When we return," she said. "I'll bring my things and stay with you?"
"Of course," he said.
"I can't imagine living in such a beautiful place, surrounded by all that... beauty."
"Your father is no pauper, Phyrea," he reminded her. "Of course not, but..."
"It's important, I think, to surround yourself with the best of everything."
"Why?" she asked. "To impress?"
"No," he replied. "To remind me that the works of man are superior to the works of nature."
Phyrea smiled at that and nodded.
"Do you hear that?" he asked.
She listened, but all she could hear was the crack and pop of the wind in the sails, the creak of the rigging, and the gentle sound of the shallow waves against the hull—the sounds of the sea.
"Do you?" Pristoleph asked again.
She shook her head.
"The whisper of waves...." he said.
Phyrea nodded and was about to ask him what he meant, but instead she listened again. She could hear it, but only because she didn't hear the voices telling her to do things, asking her to murder herself. She wondered what else she'd missed under the weight of those voices.
"I do," she said, wiping a tear from her eye with one finger.
"What does it say to you?"
"Nothing at all," she said, "and that's fine with me. I'd rather hear the waves whisper of nothing, than suffer through the lies of light."
64_
26Nightal, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) Second Quarter, Innarlith
I just can't understand why it is that you hate me so, Phyrea," Willem said. "What have I done to make you see me with such contempt?"
Phyrea didn't want to answer him. She opened a drawer in the bureau and shifted through the scant few pieces of clothing she'd left before she went away with Pristoleph.
"There isn't really anything here I want anymore," she said.
"So you're going to leave it?" he asked. "What am I going to do with it?"
She bit her lip, cutting off the sarcastic, hurtful reply that came to mind. Instead, she scooped up the lace undergarments and stuffed them into the bag she had open on the bed.
"I can have the rest sent to you, if you can't stand to be here," he said, "or if you don't want to go through them. I can imagine how awful this little hovel must seem to you now."
"Your house is fine, Willem," she said. "That's not it."
"Then what is 'it'?" he pressed. "You ran my mother back to Cormyr and dismissed my staff. I wasn't even here most of the time, so if you found my presence so distasteful, at least you didn't have to suffer me much."
"Is that the life you wanted?" she asked him, though when all was said and done she didn't care to hear his answer. It didn't matter. "Were you really content with simply avoiding my distaste?"
He exhaled—not really a sigh—and leaned against the wall of his bedchamber.
Phyrea picked up the bag and walked past him, tense and uncertain of what he might do, but he did nothing to stop her. She stepped into the hall, leaving him silently leaning on the wall in the room behind her. The little girl stood at the top of the stairs, her eyebrows drawn into a V that twisted her eyes into smoldering pinpoints. Her purple-black lips pulled away from her teeth, which were needle fangs that glistened with a vile light of their own.
Phyrea screamed and dropped her bag. She recoiled back so fast and so out of control she nearly fell.
"No," she whispered.
You left us, the little girl's voice shrieked in Phyrea's head. You went away and you left us, you bitch.
"No," Phyrea whimpered, horrified by how weak her own voice sounded.
We knew you would come back, the man with the scar said.
Phyrea closed her eyes so she couldn't see him.
"What happened?" Willem asked. He'd come out of the bedchamber. "Phyrea?"
She shook her head and pushed him away, but not hard. He stopped and didn't try to come any closer.
"What's wrong with you?" he asked.
Tell him, the man demanded. Tell him we're here. Tell him we've been waiting here for all this time.
We have been, the little boy said.
"No, Willem..." Phyrea gasped.
We've stood over him while he tried to sleep but couldn't, the old woman said.
We watched him drown his sorrows in drink, the sad woman told her.
"Let me go," she said.
Go, yes, the little girl said. Go back to Berrywilde.
"I'm not stopping you," Willem said.
Phyrea opened her eyes and stormed forward, grabbing her bag as she passed it. She went past a violet-glowing form that she didn't look at. She ran down the stairs, leaving Willem behind, but the ghosts followed her. They tormented her out into the street. The little girl sat across from her in the coach and sneered at her.
"Home, Miss Phyrea?" the driver—Pristoleph's driver—asked.
She almost said yes, but at the last minute she said, "The Green Phoenix. In the Third Quarter."
The coach jerked to a start, and Phyrea closed her eyes and clasped her hands over her ears. Though she couldn't see them, they never spoke to her through her ears anyway, so she suffered, occasionally sobbing, with their incessant barrage of threats and demands until the coach finally pulled up in front of the sprawling brick building that housed the Green Phoenix.
"Shall I accompany you, Miss?" the driver, who Phyrea knew was also a more-than-capable fighter armed with magic and his master's protection, asked.
Without stopping or looking behind her, she said, "I'll be fine. No."
She burst into the common room of the dark, smoke-filled tavern and all but ran to the bar.
"Orerus," she demanded, slapping her palm on the bar. "Where is he?"
The skinny old woman behind the bar blinked at her.
"iVbtt;/"Phyrea screamed. "Where?"
The old woman pointed to a curtained doorway behind her and stepped aside.
Phyrea leaped the bar and tore though the curtain. She ignored the powerful aroma of the brewing vats, and the screaming tirade of the incorporeal girl.
"Surero," she whispered, wiping tears from her eyes and abandoning the alchemist's assumed name. "Where are you?"
"Phyrea?" he called from the back of the large room.
Pristoleph had helped her keep track of him, and she'd been surprised, but delighted to hear that he had taken a position as brewmaster for the Green Phoenix—an honorable enough use for his peculiar skills—under the name Orerus, Surero reversed.
He stepped out from behind one of the big copper kettles and greeted her with a smile that quickly faded to a scowl of concern.
"How did you find me?" he asked. "What's happened?" "Do you know where he is?" Phyrea asked. "Yes," Surero replied, not having to ask who she meant by "he."
Phyrea felt her knees give, and she lowered herself to the dirty floor, ignoring the sticky residue of the ale vats that coated every surface.
"Gods," Surero whispered. "What's happened to you?"
She took a deep breath and laughed a little while she cried.
Kill him, the man with the scar said. He'll deliver you back to Devorast if you don't kill him now. You know that man will destroy you.
"I just need to know that he's alive, and that you know where he is—that someone knows where he is," she said. "I don't know why. I'll never see him again, but I had to know that."
Good girl, the old woman whispered into her reeling mind. Never see him again.
"Phyrea," Surero said, "what is it?"
She struggled to her feet and said, "Where is he?"
"Ormpetarr."
She nodded and mouthed a "thank you," then turned to leave.
"Phyrea?" he called after her, but she didn't stop, turn, or answer.
65_
28Nightal, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) The Thayan Enclave, Innarlith
You've disappointed so many people, Willem," Marek Rymiit said.
Willem squirmed in his seat, and Marek had to force himself not to grin. When he really looked at Willem, it was easier not to smile. He looked worse. His eyes had sunk into his face and were rimmed with dark circles. His teeth were yellow, and his lips dry and cracked.
"You realize that, don't you?" he pressed.
Willem sighed and a tear rolled down from his right eye.
"I do, yes," Willem said. "Is that why I'm here? Did you send for me because you wanted to tell me I've disappointed you?"
"Among other things, yes."
Willem's head drooped on his shoulders, and he looked at the floor.
"Are you having work done?" Willem asked, his voice dull and faraway.
"Oh," replied the Thayan, "the canvas... no."
Willem nodded as though the answer he'd gotten could have been anything but unsatisfying. Marek had had the floor covered with thick canvas, and most of the furniture had been moved out too. It did appear as though he was having the room painted.
"Can I offer you a drink?" Marek asked.
Willem looked up at him with wide, wet eyes, like a lost puppy. Marek had never had a puppy, though he had
occasionally used them to practice spells on, and to test potions, but that was back home in Thay.
"I'll take that as a 'yes,'" said Marek.
He poured brandy from a crystal decanter and handed the glass to Willem, who took it in a grip so weak Marek grimaced at the possibility he might drop it and spill it. He glanced down at the decanter—he hadn't prepared much, but there was still enough left in case Willem dropped the first one.
"You aren't having one?" Willem asked.
Marek shook his head and watched the younger man down the brandy in one swallow, grimacing against the burn of it.
"Tell me you at least tried to stop them, Willem," said the Thayan. "I want to hear from you that you did everything you could to keep her—to keep her away from him."
Willem shook his head, refusing to look Marek in the eye. The Red Wizard had a sudden impulse to kick him hard in the chin, to force his miserable face up.
"You just let another man walk into your home and leave with your wife?" Marek said.
"No," Willem muttered. "No, we went to his house, and I left her there."
"That's pathetic," Marek said. "That's quite simply the most pathetic thing I've ever heard."
He picked up the crystal decanter and poured more of the brandy into Willem's glass. The young man sat there, slumped down, and stared at the umber liquid.
"Speak, Willem," Marek demanded. "Explain yourself."
"What's there to explain?" Willem asked, then swallowed half the brandy in his glass. He coughed, not bothering to put a hand up to cover his mouth. "What could I have done?"
Marek smiled down at Willem and said, "What could you have done? Hmm ... let me think. To begin with, you could have poisoned his drink."
Willem shook his head. Spittle dropped in a long,
stringy line from his lower lip. He put the glass to his mouth and drank some, but poured the rest of the brandy on the floor.
"You could have rendered him helpless," Marek went on. "And once he was unable to move, the poison making his muscles go rigid and unresponsive, you could have done anything you wanted to him. He would have been entirely under your power, yours to do with as you wished."
Willem slumped forward and fell onto the floor without changing from the hunched, sitting position he was in. His head bounced and scraped along the canvas tarp.
"I expected so much from you," Marek said.
Willem looked up at him, blinked, his eyes confused at first. His lips twitched, but he couldn't speak.
Marek took a deep, rattling breath and smiled. His face flushed, and his heart began to race.
"Oh," he breathed. "Oh, Willem. That must be awful-terrible. I can only imagine____"
Willem blinked at him again and fear replaced the confusion in a wave that made his pupils dilate.
Marek, reluctant to turn away, stepped back to a side table and opened a long, hinged wooden box. Inside was the sword Phyrea had brought him. The wavy blade glimmered in the candlelight. Marek bit his bottom lip and held his breath as he lifted the flamberge out of the velvet-lined box with all the reverence the exquisite weapon deserved.
When he went back to look down at Willem, the sword in his hand with the blade tipped down until it almost touched the floor, Marek thought he saw Willem shake his head. But the poison wouldn't allow him even that scant gesture. Marek thought perhaps he sensed so strongly Willem's powerful desire to make at least that tiny, futile gesture that he simply imagined the movement. Willem's eyes pleaded for mercy.
Marek dropped to his knee, one creaking, popping joint at a time. His generously-proportioned body was unac-
customed to sitting on the floor and when his full weight settled onto his knees, they burned in response.
He looked Willem in the eyes, and with his free hand he brushed the hair from the younger man's forehead.
"Pretty Willem," he whispered in a mocking rendition of what he thought "soothing" might sound like. "Everything will be all right. You wanted this, didn't you? You told me you did. You told me you envied them. You said you wanted to be one of them."
Marek shifted his weight to hover closer and closer over Willem's face. The younger man's mouth hung open, and the tip of his tongue protruded just the tiniest fraction of an inch
"Willem, my dear, dear, sweet boy," Marek whispered, "please believe me that if I thought there was any way to avoid this____"
Willem's eyes widened as Marek moved closer still, then the Thayan couldn't see his eyes anymore. His lips met Willem's and closed around them. The tip of his tongue darted in, and though Willem was unable to return the kiss, at least he couldn't back away. The poison made him appear dead—stiff and unresponsive—but Willem was still very much alive, warm and breathing.
Marek took his lips away from Willem's and punctured the helpless Cormyrean's skin with the tip of the sword.
Only his eyes responded at first. Marek knew that Willem could feel every inch of the f lamberge's cruel blade winding its way ever so slowly from just to the right of his belly button, up under his ribs. Then Willem's breaths started to come faster, and ever more shallow. Marek guided the blade to the middle of Willem's chest in hope of avoiding either lung. Willem panted—a rapid succession of gasps that were almost all exhale, and no inhale. Tears streamed from his twitching eyes.
Marek shushed him and pressed harder with the sword. It took all his strength and skill to slide the long blade into Willem's fast-beating heart. He could feel the firm
resistance of the thick muscle, and the blade jerked in his grip in time with its beating.
When it finally did pierce his heart, blood poured freely down the length of the blade and oozed out of the wound in his stomach. His eyes bulged, and for a moment Marek thought they might pop. Instead they relaxed, but they didn't close. He let go of the sword hilt, leaving the flamberge sheathed in Willem's body.
Marek let out a long, slow breath in time with Willem Korvan's last exhale. He smiled down into the face of the dead man and smiled.
"Shhh," he hissed. "That's a good boy."
66_
29Nightal, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) The Temple of the Delicate Chaos, Innarlith
Marek stepped out of the dimension door onto a rough flagstone floor that shifted under his weight. He staggered, his hands out to his sides, and almost fell. The stone bobbed on something that might have been water, but was too thick. The effect was the same as floating, but the movement was slower.
As the spell effect dissipated behind him his eyes began to adjust to the dim light from torches set in iron sconces on the tiled walls. The tiles had apparently been salvaged from wherever tiles could be salvaged from. Few were the same size, and almost none of them were of matching colors. The effect might have been pleasing had they been arranged with the care and vision of an artist, but it was no mosaic, just a random jumble of shapes and colors.
Marek stepped to another flagstone, riding the slow undulation under his feet, growing more secure with the uncertain footing. The flagstones did indeed float in some thick, gelatinous medium. Marek swallowed to settle his
stomach. His first few steps had disturbed many of the stones around him so that the floor rose and fell in waves throughout the chamber.
The room itself was a circle that Marek judged to be a hundred feet in diameter. The torches were not set at even intervals around the circumference so there were bright spots, and places where the shadows were deep as night. He got the distinct feeling that something—more than one something—watched him from the shadows, so he quickly ran through a spell.
Blinking, he refocused his eyes, and a bluish cast descended over the room. The shadows were peeled back when he set his attention on them, and indeed strange creatures that might have been insects or lizards stared at him, following his every move with twitching antennae, darting forked tongues, and bulging compound eyes.
Another spell, and blue-green fire flickered over his body, covering his robes in a glowing sheen that would give the creatures a painful surprise should they choose to attempt to do him harm.
"That won't be necessary," Wenefir said from behind him.
Marek knew better than to try to turn around too fast on the undulating floor, so instead he took his time, planting his feet with care.
"Well, better safe than breakfast," Marek said, stalling.
Wenefir laughed a little and stood with his hands clasped in front of him. He wore breeches of billowing purple silk but was naked from the waist up. Folds of hairless fat drooped off him, and Marek was reminded of why he so rarely went shirtless himself. His smile was cautious, suspicious, and set to turn at the slightest provocation.
"I was surprised to see you step into this place so easily," Wenefir said. "Well done, Master Rymiit."
"I can show you how to ward against dimensional intrusion," Marek replied.
"For a price, of course?"
"I'm sure we can come to a mutually satisfactory arrangement," said Marek.
"And yet I'm sure that you had a very different purpose in mind when you made the decision to invade the sanctity of Cyric's holy shrine this morning."
Marek dipped into as deep a bow as his girth and the floating floor would allow him, and said, "Indeed, my good friend. I suppose it would be safe to consider this a social call."
"This is not a salon, Master Rymiit, but a holy place," said Wenefir, but Marek could tell the man was curious to hear what he'd come to say.
"Then I will dispense with further niceties and bring us to the meat of the issue," the Thayan said. "Your mas-excuse me... your friend Pristoleph has made a very bad decision of late and I've come in the hopes that between the two of us we can either show him the error of his ways, or at the very least mitigate the damage his impetuosity might cause."
"Whatever do you mean?"
"The girl," Marek said, and left it at that.
Wenefir wore his thoughts clearly on his face. Marek didn't need a spell to see that the Cyricist was no friend of Phyrea's. Marek smiled, trying to defuse the expression with as much sympathy as possible. If he had guessed right about how Wenefir would feel about Pristoleph's sudden and acute obsession with Innarlith's most beautiful prize, the rest would be easy.
Remembering where he was, and that Wenefir was likely capable of mind-intruding magic gifted him by his mad god, Marek tried to keep his surface thoughts clear.
"It's a matter of the heart," Wenefir said, though his eyes pleaded for argument. "I can't imagine what we might be able to do to make him feel differently."
"All that in due course," said Marek. "For now, though, can we agree that the relationship is an unhealthy one?"
"Perhaps, but I'd be curious to hear your reasons for thinking so."
Marek nodded and replied, "She is married to another senator. You know that well enough, having performed the ceremony yourself."
"Cyric smiles upon those who change their minds," Wenefir said, almost showing his disappointment over that bit of scripture. "No marriage in his name is ought but temporary."
"Be that as it may, among the city's social circles it will be frowned upon."
Wenefir nodded, happy enough to concede the point. "Has there been talk?" he asked.
"Oh, there's always talk," said Marek. "Had it simply been a matter of divorce and remarriage tongues would wag among the wives and servants, but ultimately the city-state would have gone on about its business, but that, I'm afraid, is not the worst of it."
"Oh?"
"There's the matter of Senator Willem Korvan," Marek said.
Wenefir raised an eyebrow and asked, "What of him? He's been drinking, but don't we all? I understand he's been mostly away, at the canal site. I can't imagine he'd be stupid enough to publicly resist Pristoleph."
"Oh, and he isn't," Marek assured him. "In fact he's done just the opposite. Instead of crying on the shoulders of his fellow senators and making a sticky social situation any worse, he's disappeared."
"I'm sorry?"
"He's gone, and no one knows where," Marek said, though he knew precisely where Willem Korvan—or what was left of him—was.
"A young senator on the rise like that, with influential friends...." Wenefir thought aloud.
"Why, even if he was humiliated by Pristoleph's appropriation of his cheeky young bride," Marek said, leading
Wenefir in a disturbing direction, "why would a rising star like Willem simply walk away from all he's worked so hard to build? In some ways he's the heir apparent to Innarlith."
"I can assure you that neither Pristoleph nor myself had anything to do with his disappearance," Wenefir said. "I was told that he had acquiesced—surrendered, as it were, of his own free will."
"Such as a boy like Willem has free will, yes," Marek said. "Please believe me that I did not come here to make that accusation."
"So you believe he's gone to ground?" Wenefir asked, dire thoughts clouding his eyes. "Is he holed up somewhere planning some reprisal, or gathering allies against Pristoleph?"
"And Pristoleph," Marek said, "like all of us, has enemies to spare."
Wenefir nodded, and his eyes played over the shadows along one unlit section of the curved wall. Marek followed his gaze and saw the strange creature there take a tentative step forward, looking to Wenefir for instructions. The Cyricist held up a hand—a subtle gesture—and the creature slinked back into the deeper darkness.
"He was one of your boys," Wenefir said. "What has he told you?"
Marek brushed aside the implication that weighed heavily in Wenefir's eyes and said, "I have not heard from him, nor seen him, in days. But there is more to consider than Willem Korvan. There's the master builder. Phyrea is his daughter, after all, and he fought for the marriage with Willem. And he isn't necessarily counted among Pristoleph's allies. And the master builder has the ear of the ransar."
"And you have the mind of the ransar," Wenefir retorted. "What have you told Salatis to think?" "You overestimate me."
"No, Marek, I don't think I do," Wenefir said. "You were right to come to me. This relationship has implications,
and those implications will have to be more carefully considered."
"Carefully considered," Marek suggested, "by someone with a clearer view, unfiltered by love, lust, and so on."
Wenefir's eyes went cold, and a tickle of fear played along the edges of Marek's consciousness.
"I'll show you the way out," Wenefir said.
Turn on each other, Marek thought as he followed the soft, strange man to a hidden door. Turn on each other over a girl.
He tried not to laugh as he climbed the spiral stairs that would take him a hundred feet up to the street.
67_
30Nightal, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) The City of Ormpetarr
~Please, please, can't you let us go home? the little girl begged. Don't look at him.
He has replaced you, said the old woman. He's replaced you in his heart. There are other women. He didn't wait for you.
Surely you didn't expect him to wait for you, said the man with the scar on his face.
He should have, the younger woman sobbed. Why didn't he?
Phyrea stood at the foot of the skeletal pier that stretched out into the calm expanse of the Nagawater. The ghost of the old woman stood in front of her, and most of what she saw of the pier was filtered through her insubstantial violet form. Phyrea hugged herself and shivered. Even her heavy wool weathercloak didn't keep the chill away from her bones. When she caught the ghostly woman's eye she shivered worse. The spirit's freezing gaze cut her like a dagger, and her head ached.
"He won't kill me," Phyrea whispered.
Yes, he will, the little girl replied. "You will," she whispered.
The woman sneered at her, her eyes flickering orange. Phyrea put her hands over her eyes. The old woman's shriek rattled her skull, and beneath her the planks shuddered.
"Go away," she whispered, and opened her eyes.
The old woman was gone, and before her stood Ivar Devorast.
Phyrea took a step backward.
"I can't go away," he said. "I have work to do."
He wore the same simple tunic and breeches he always wore, and though it was cold, he didn't have any sort of cloak or coat. He held a carpenter's hammer in one hand, loose and comfortable at his side.
"Not you," she said, shaking her head.
Phyrea expected one of the ghosts to say something, but they remained silent. She looked around but couldn't see any of them. She smiled.
"You're not surprised to see me," she said.
He shook his head, but said nothing. His red hair whipped around his face in the steady wind.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
"Helping to build a pier," he said.
"But why?" she asked.
"They want to start building ships," he replied.
She waited for him to say more—then smiled. It had been a long time since she'd had to do that, to wait for him to say more. She couldn't believe how much she'd missed it.
"Will you build ships, then?" she asked.
"I'll build the pier," he told her.
"And you won't think of the canal?"
"I think of the canal every day," he said, and a darkness descended over his face that made Phyrea shiver.
"Will you come back?"
He just looked at her. He didn't shrug or nod or shake his head.
"I have something I wanted to tell you," she said. He waited for her to go on, and that made her smile again.
"I'm going to be married again," she said.
"Again?" he asked.
"I left Willem over a month ago."
"Why did you feel you had to tell me that?"
"I don't know," she said. "No, yes I do. I had to give you a chance to stop me."
"If you don't want to marry this man," he said, "then don't. If you want to be here with me, then stay."
"And there's nothing you want to say to influence me one way or the other?"
He stood there and stared at her again, and she sobbed and laughed at the same time.
"You just can't..." she started. "Can't you just tell me if you want me or not?"
He shook his head, and Phyrea thought he looked sad, but wasn't sure.
"I shouldn't have come here," she admitted.
"No, you shouldn't have," he said, "if you don't know what you want."
She sighed and looked down. Her hair flew around her face, and she hooked it behind her ear. Some of the other men who were working on the pier walked past them. They looked at her, glanced at Devorast, but kept going.
"I do know what I want," she said, her eyes darting at the passing men. "I did know what I want. I wanted you. I wanted you to love me. I wanted you to protect..."
She couldn't keep talking, but didn't cry. Devorast didn't say anything.
"I wanted to give you the chance to fight for me," she told him.
He shook his head.
"I know," she said, wiping a tear from her eye. The wind caught her hair again and made her blink. "Maybe I came to tell you that I found someone like you—so like you—in
ways I thought were impossible. And he loves me enough to take me away from someone else."
"Did you come to say good-bye?" he asked.
"I'll never say that to you, Ivar.''
He looked over his shoulder at the skeletal pier.
"I'm keeping you from your work," she said, and turned to go.
"Stay," he said.
She stopped, waiting for more, but he didn't say anything.
"Why?" she asked.
"For all the reasons that brought you here in the first place," he said.
Phyrea shook her head and replied, "No. I won't stay here to be a laborer's wife. But if you take me back to Innarlith and reclaim what's yours, I'd be happy to be a canal builder's slave."
The boards under her feet rattled and the sound of the hammer hitting them made her jump.
"Damn it, Phyrea," he said. "I don't want a slave."
She sighed, didn't turn around, and said, "I can't be anything for you but a slave. I can't do anything for you but surrender myself, body and soul. If you won't take that from me, there's another man who will."
"Go to him then," he said.
Tears fell from her eyes, but she refused to let him see her sob. She walked away, leaving him standing there watching her go.
68_
30Nightal, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) The Land of One Hundred and Thirteen
Iiightning flashed across the sharply delineated skies of Marek Rymiit's private dimension. No thunder followed, and no rain fell.
He took a deep breath and enjoyed the pure silence of the chamber high atop the tall tower that had finally been completed for him. Its twisted, needle-like architecture had come to him in a dream—a dream of the future of Thay that a part of him hoped he would never see.
On the floor in front of him lay the motionless form of Willem Korvan. The body was stiff with rigor mortis, and held straight by the long-bladed flamberge still sheathed in him from his stomach to the base of his neck.
Marek sighed at the sight of the handsome face made ugly in death. Not only was his mouth twisted into a grimace, lips pulled back from yellowed teeth and gums turning black, but his cheeks had sunk in so far they almost appeared to have been tucked up under his cheekbones.
He turned to the side table against the inside wall and tapped the hardwood top in front of each of the items that had been laid out there. A tiny scrap of raw meat—he'd asked for it to be human flesh, though it didn't necessarily have to be—lay on a fine porcelain plate as big around as Marek's hand. On an identical plate next to it was a shard of bone, jagged on one end, and rounded on the other. It looked like a finger bone. On a square of red velvet sat a loose black onyx, gem he'd paid three hundred gold pieces for. A clay pot filled with brackish water sat next to another that contained a handful of dark brown soil traced with gray dust that had been scooped by Marek's own hand from a freshly-turned grave. The last item was a glass vial, corked and sealed with wax.
He picked up the vial first and held it up to one of the whale oil lamps that lit the room. Inside the vial was a clove of garlic that he'd stolen from a rival wizard. That wizard had written, in a delicate and minute hand, an odd little poem on the tiny clove. It was written in Draconic and held power that Marek had waited more than four years to bring to bear.
"I don't think he really knew exactly what it would do," Marek said in a quiet, calm voice, directed at the dead body
of Willem Korvan. "Thadat...." He spoke the dead wizard's name with venomous contempt. "They never know what they have until I take it from them."
He looked down at Willem and thought about that.
"You never knew what you had," he said.
Marek frowned and drew a fingernail around the wax seal, breaking it. He pulled out the cork and placed it on the table, then tipped the vial so the garlic clove dropped onto his palm.
"You'll thank me for this later, my boy," Marek whispered, then he bit the clove in half and swallowed what was in his mouth without chewing it. The little nugget of garlic would stay in his stomach, lodged there to soak its power into him for years, even decades. "And this one is for you."
Marek sank to one knee, enduring the pain in his hip and ignoring the popping of his joints. He dropped the remaining half of the garlic clove into Willem's open mouth. With a deep breath, he climbed back to his feet.
"What next?" he breathed.
In answer to his own question, Marek picked up the onyx gem and turned back to the corpse. Once again he struggled down to one knee. He had to force the stone into Willem's mouth, sliding it up under his teeth and forcing it past his bloated, dry tongue.
"A special stone, for a special boy," the Thayan whispered.
He looked up at the table and sighed, smiling. He should have had the black firedrake—the runt he'd kept for himself as a personal servant—place the material components on the floor next to the body, so he wouldn't have to keep kneeling and standing.
He stood, and retrieved the two bowls. Kneeling again, he dipped two fingers into the grave dirt and drew a short line on Willem's bare chest. He went back for more dirt, then more and more as he drew vile sigils across the corpse's pale flesh. When he was done, he poured the water
over the dusty symbols. The water soaked into the grave dirt, adding just the touch of chaos necessary to bend the evil runes into their most potent configuration.
Marek stood and looked down at the body—it was just right. Everything was perfect.
He began one of two simultaneous spells, the incantations wrapped together in a way that tested even his experienced tongue. He paused only as long as it took to swallow the sliver of raw meat. His fingers traced intricate patterns in the air, the shard of bone pressed against his left palm with his middle finger. When the bone dissolved into dust, he dropped both hands to his sides.
Still chanting the interwoven necromancies, Marek bent at the waist and wrapped a hand around the hilt of the flamberge. With one swift motion, he pulled it free. The precise moment that the tip of the blade left Willem's cold flesh, his body jerked and his bulging, vacant eyes rolled around in their sockets.
Still holding the extraordinary sword, Marek stepped back, and let Willem—or to be more precise, the creature that Willem had become—roll onto its belly and vomit out the desiccated black gemstone.
"Stand, thrall," Marek ordered.
The creature struggled to its feet, its whole body shaking. It looked down at itself, naked and pale, the lightning that flashed in the window playing over the sword wound that no longer bled. Marek could see its eyes focus, and a dim beginning of sentience returned to its gaze.
"That's right," Marek said, letting a wide grin spread across his face. "You're no zombie to be made to dig and claw at mud, my boy."
The creature looked at its creator, its smoldering eyes running up the wavy length of the blade and stopping on Marek's grinning face.
"Yes," the Thayan said, taking a step closer to the hunched, naked undead wretch. "You know me. You know your master."
Recognition flooded into the creature's eyes all at once, to be replaced a moment later with impotent rage, then a desperate realization of what had become of it.
"Good morning, my boy," Marek Rymiit said, then he started to laugh.
The creature grunted, its lips still pulled away from its teeth in a terrible grimace. It lifted its sunken face, skin stretched tight and so pale it was almost green, up to the ceiling, to the lightning outside.
Marek laughed.
The thing that had once been Willem Korvan screamed.
Marek didn't stop laughing, and his creation didn't stop screaming, for a very long time.
To be concluded in Scream of Stone June 2007