Marek smiled when the bright light faded to a deep indigo. He looked up once more and made eye contact with the dragon.
Insithryllax tucked his wings to the sides of his black-scaled body and dived headfirst at the pool of indigo light. Before the dragon reached the top of the tower, a gout of red and black smoke belched from the circle of light, and the air around them was assaulted by the sound of a million people screaming while another million cried. Marek flinched away from the agonized cacophony, but the dragon never wavered in his downward path—not until he was only feet above the circle, which had become a doorway into the heart of the Abyss.
The black dragon spread his wings, and a sound like a great ship's sails catching a stiff wind drowned out the screams of the tormented. Insithryllax stopped in midair for the briefest moment—less than one of Marek's rapid, excited heartbeats—then he dipped his head into the very Abyss itself and came out carrying the writhing form of what at first appeared to be a man.
Holding the squirming form in his mighty jaws, Insithryllax beat his wings once and fell away over the lip of the tower's roof. As the tip of his right wing dropped from sight, Marek brought his hands together in a firm clap. The sound sent a shudder through the stone floor and the gate sent out a deafening crack in response. The candles and the circle both were gone, and a waft of acrid smoke remained, but otherwise the doorway to the horrific plane of chaos and evil was closed.
The Red Wizard took a deep breath and smiled, waiting.
Insithryllax, with a flapping of wings that made Marek stagger backward and hold onto a battlement lest he be blown over the side, rose above the roof. Like a cat toying with a mouse, the dragon snapped his neck and tossed the writhing form onto the roof. The gray-skinned creature rolled to a stop but was instantly on its feet and hissing its infernal rage at the black wyrm. Ignoring it, Insithryllax took wing, and before the demon even noticed Marek standing only a few feet away, the dragon was lost to the clouds.
"Be at peace, maurezhi," Marek said.
The creature spun on him. The Red Wizard could feel its gray eyes fix on him though they held no iris or pupil. Its sinuous, grotesquely naked form was well muscled, especially in its legs, which were disproportionately huge compared to its upper body and head. Its feet were like a crocodile's, with four big, pointed talons of yellowing, fungus-ravaged bone. It hissed at him, showing a mouth full of razor edged fangs.
"Calm yourself," Marek said, passing a hand in front of the creature to enact a spell. "Be calm, so we can speak."
The maurezhi seemed to deflate. It closed its mouth and stepped back, reaching out behind itself to lean against a battlement. Its eyes were the only part of it that didn't seem to slow. They darted around, taking in the strict confines of the pocket dimension.
Insithryllax dived from out of the clouds and the demon watched it circle the tower once then land with startling grace on the battlements. Then the tanar'ri turned its attention back to Marek.
What are you? the thing hissed directly into Marek's head in a voice like breaking glass. Human? What is this place?
"I am indeed human," the Red Wizard said, stepping away from the demon but still exuding all the confidence he felt. "You will call me Master."
The demon flinched at that and said, Master what?
Marek snapped his fingers and the demon's forearm snapped. The creature howled in agony and grabbed the twisted limb. Its clawed hand hung limp at the end of it.
"You will call me Master," the Red Wizard repeated.
Y-yes... the maurezhi begged, dipping its head low, ... Master.
"Good," Marek replied with a smile, and he snapped his fingers again.
The demon shrieked when its arm snapped back into place, then worried at it with its claws, surprised that it was not only repaired but that the pain was gone. Marek grinned, doubting the maurezhi would soon forget that lesson.
Why was I snatched from my torments, Master? the demon asked, and Marek could tell it still struggled with the title.
"Do you hunger?" the Red Wizard asked. Always, Master, the demon replied. Always. Marek remembered well his lessons on demonology. The vile maurezhi feasted on the flesh of their victims, and when
they were done, they could assume the form of their former meal, only to move ever deeper into human society to eat, and eat, and eat.
"You will feast, then," Marek promised it. "You will go to a human city on the world of Toril, and there you will find and devour a man named Pristoleph."
Pristoleph____the demon repeated, nodding, and a
great drop of yellowish drool hung from the side of its black lips.
The dragon huffed and Marek turned his attention to the huge wyrm perched on the battlements and sneering down at the demon.
"Yes, my friend?" the Red Wizard asked.
"Isn't Pristoleph surrounded by black firedrakes?" Insithryllax said.
"He is, yes," Marek replied.
"And you feel you have to summon this thing from a universe away rather than just give the creatures you created yourself a single order?"
"The black firedrakes were created to serve the Ransar of Innarlith," Marek said.
The dragon smiled a little and Marek tensed under the dragon's scrutiny—a look that came painfully, infuriat-ingly close to patronizing.
"If you'll watch and see," Marek continued, "all will become clear to you, I'm sure. Really, Insithryllax. Where has your patience gone?"
The Red Wizard turned back to the demon and said, "Yes, Pristoleph. But first, you must wear a disguise."
The demon's form blurred. It stood more erect and its legs shrank. Clothing formed around it almost as though it was weaving itself from the thin air. In a breath or two the monstrous entity had been replaced by a black-skinned man in rough-spun clothes. The gray eyes turned white and circles of deep, penetrating brown formed in their centers.
"Nicely done," Marek said, and the transformed maurezhi
smiled a broad, gap-toothed grin. "But not precisely what I had in mind."
Marek cast a spell and the demon in its human form shrank away, holding up arms that even then began to lose their healthy color to return to that pallid, awful gray. It was only back in its natural form for a moment before its legs came together, its joints popped, and its skin tore.
The demon howled in pain, but the transformation didn't take long.
It looked down at itself, confused at first, but then the admiration for its new shape was written plainly on its new face. The demon twitched its new body, testing its own ability to move like a snake moves. Its face looked more human than it had moments before, but when it opened its mouth, a long, thin tongue that ended in a fork flicked over its lips.
"There," the Red Wizard said, "that's better. Now, since I know you'll be loath to tell me your name, I'll have to give you a new one."
"A name?" the demon asked aloud, surprised by the hissing sibilance of its new voice.
"Svayyah," Marek said.
40_
25 Eleint, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR) Pristal Towers, Innarlith
Iristoleph sat on a cool marble bench, letting the late summer sun that shone through the skylights and windows warm his already burning hot skin. The room was the uppermost floor of the second tallest tower of his magnificent manor home. From nearly a hundred feet in the air, the city looked peaceful, even beautiful, and Pristoleph often found himself drawn to that lofty space to sit alone and think.
His eyes drifted lazily from one of the sixteen triangular windows to one of the sixteen statues lined up along the
walls of the octagonal room. He'd collected the statues for years, finding them in all corners of the world. Some were very old—older even than the ancient empire of Netheril— and others he'd had commissioned from the artists himself, the newest one only a few months before.
He turned his face back up to the skylights, which, like the windows in the tall, straight side walls, were triangles cut from the pyramidal roof. Through the skylights he could see the long orange pennant spreading itself along the gusty wind from its pole at the apex of the pointed roof.
Uncharacteristically calm, even content—if such a thing could be imagined from a man like Pristoleph—he took a deep breath and smiled.
But his smile faded almost as quickly as it came to his lips. A strange feeling nettled at the back of his neck, and though he didn't remember hearing anything, he could swear his ears had something akin to an aftertaste, the feeling of having heard something. He turned to look behind him but he was still alone in the big room. The statues all stood mute sentinel around the perimeter, staring out at nothing with eyes of marble, bronze, and wood.
In the center of the room, ringed by an ornamental railing of polished brass, was a hole down which a spiral stairway sank into the room below. Even as Pristoleph assured himself that there was no one on the stair, a scuffle of booted feet sounded from below, and the head of one of his black firedrake guards appeared, scanning the room with a furrowed brow over his coal-black eyes. He saw Pristoleph and came up to the top of the stairs.
"Ransar?" the firedrake said. "All is well?"
"I believe so, Sergeant Nevor," Pristoleph said, "but I have the strangest—"
Pristoleph was silenced by the black firedrake's shuddering, strangled cry of shock and pain. The dark-skinned, black-clad man's knees buckled and he dropped
to the floor—not dead, but nearly so. His longaxe clattered onto the wood floor next to him. Pristoleph stood as the huge, terrifying form of a water naga shimmered into existence. It stood just at the top of the stairs, behind Nevor, and by the way it held its right hand, Pristoleph could tell that it was the naga's touch that had felled his guard.
But not his only guard.
"Firedrakes!" Pristoleph called.
The naga, slithering on its blue-green scales, charged him, its clawed hands out in front of it, its fangs bared and its forked tongue flicking in and out of its mouth.
"Firedrakes, to me!"
Pristoleph drew the dagger from his belt and tried to jump to the side to avoid the charging naga, but his shin clipped the marble bench. He fell to his right and the naga slithered past him, raking along the left side of his chest and digging ragged furrows in his skin that flared with burning pain.
He let loose a hissing curse as the dagger fell from his hand. He clambered away from the naga, literally crawling across the floor.
The naga surged forward at him, and he grabbed for the . dagger. The weapon looked small, hopelessly insufficient when compared to the bulk of the massive creature, but it was enchanted to bite a little deeper, hurt a little more, and slice a little faster than any ordinary dagger. Pristoleph didn't usually come to his statue gallery armed at all, so he had to be thankful that he'd thought to carry the dagger with him that day.
Surging above him, the naga opened its eyes wide and hissed at him, the humanlike, feminine face and arms the only thing about it that wasn't a hellish serpent. Pristoleph felt a tingling wash over his body and he rolled away. A burst of panic welled up within him.
"Guards!" he screamed, and only then heard them coming up the stairs.
The naga heard it too and backed off enough to look at the stairs without giving Pristoleph too easy an opening with his dagger. The ransar picked up the knife with a shaking hand and paused long enough to fight back the fear. He could feel it fall away as suddenly as it came, and there was something about the feeling that made him think it came from outside him—it must have been some foul magic of the naga's.
Nevor tried to get to his feet but couldn't. When a black firedrake in its bestial, dragonlike form, swooped up the stairs, it almost tripped over the sergeant.
"Dlavin," the dying sergeant gasped, and Pristoleph was thankful that Nevor had named the drake. In their natural forms, Pristoleph could never tell one from another. "To the ransar."
Nevor fell to the floor again, breathing but unconscious, and Dlavin took wing just long enough to hit the wood floor between Pristoleph and the naga.
"Kill it!" Pristoleph barked, and before the words were even out of his mouth, the winged creature belched forth a cloud of black acid that sprayed over the naga.
Pristoleph could hear it sizzle, and he climbed to his feet, watching and waiting for the serpent to dissolve before his eyes. But that didn't happen. The naga winced at what appeared to be a minor burn, then smiled into the black firedrake's reptilian face.
The acid should have killed it.
Fighting down the fear again, Pristoleph tightened his grip on his dagger and glanced over to the/Stairs to see two more guards—Varnol, in his human guise—and a second firedrake in its dragonlike form emerge from the room below. It took them both all of a heartbeat to figure out what was going on and rush to the aid of the ransar.
Dlavin, surprised that his acid had so little effect on the naga, lunged to meet the serpent's own charge. Pristoleph started to step to the side to flank the creature and try to slit its throat while it was caught up in a clawing grapple
with Dlavin, but his foot wouldn't move. He managed to bring the dagger up in front of his chest, then every muscle in his body locked in place.
A hideous, keening voice sounded in Pristoleph's head, Stand and watch while I devour your guards, Pristoleph, then you will know what it's like to be eaten alive while you cannot even scream your last breath.
Pristoleph's skin crawled, but the rest of his body remained immobile. He hoped that he'd only imagined the voice, but he knew it was the naga.
Dlavin's left wing tore free under the assault of the naga's ragged claws, and the black firedrake shot out more acid while it screamed in rage and agony. The naga took the fullness of the acid in its face and blinked and spat. The dazzling blue of its eyes faded into white, then the white turned to gray, and though he couldn't express it, Pristoleph thrilled at the thought that his firedrake had managed to blind the thing.
Dlavin fell to the floor, already bleeding to death, and on came Varnol with his longaxe. The stout wooden beams that held up the pyramidal ceiling were well enough above the black firedrake's reach that even with the weapon's long haft, he could hold it straight up above his head in an effort to bring it down onto the top of the naga's head.
The blue in the naga's eyes reappeared and it looked up at the axe coming down hard and fast. The serpent creature twisted away, but the axe still took off its right ear. Blood poured out, then more when the axe bit deeply into the naga's shoulder. The creature screamed—at least it sounded like a scream—and slithered back away from Varnol, who wrenched his axe head out of the monster's shoulder with a wet crack.
The second firedrake in its dragon form leaped at the naga, but the serpent looked up at him and disappeared. When the firedrake came down it landed on the floor next to its fallen comrade and whirled to find its foe, but the naga was nowhere to be seen.
The firedrakes cast about, Varnol with his axe in front of him, the other taking wing to roost in the rafters twenty feet above the floor.
Pristoleph tried to speak, but his jaw was locked closed, and all he could manage was to grind his teeth. Frustration and rage made his skin grow hotter and hotter, until Varnol finally felt it, glanced at him, and stepped away.
"Ransar?" Varnol asked. "Are you unable to move?"
Pristoleph just looked at him, hoping his total inability to answer would suffice as a "Yes."
"Moraahl," Varnol said, looking up at the firedrake in the rafters. "The ransar is paralyzed. Fly down and summon a priest. I think the naga has fled."
Pristoleph tried to take a deep breath, but he could draw only enough air to sustain himself. He wanted to warn them that the naga was likely still in the room but simply couldn't be seen. The firedrake named Moraahl leaped from the rafters and lit at the top of the stairs. It was at that moment that Pristoleph saw the blood on the floor. A drop first, then another, then too many to count. They appeared on the floor as if from nowhere—as if from the gaping wound of an unseen naga.
Moraahl looked at Varnol and opened his crocodile-like jaws to speak when Nevor suddenly rolled over, shook, groaned, and died. The naga appeared next to him, its hand on the dead firedrake's chest. The wound in the naga's shoulder was partially closed, but the side of its head was still a mess of bloody pulp. Blood still flowed, but not as much and not as quickly.
Moraahl didn't get a chance to turn before the naga punched out with its left hand, digging deep into the black scales on Moraahls's right side, just under his wing. The firedrake gurgled out a gout of acid that succeeded only in further ruining Pristoleph's floor. The naga yanked back hard and came out with the still-beating, black heart of the firedrake it its clawed fist. Moraahl
had time only to blink and close his mouth before he fell over dead.
Pristoleph began to panic then. The thing was making quick work of his black firedrakes, and he couldn't move a muscle.
Terrible, isn't if? the naga asked, invading his mind.
Pristoleph didn't give it the satisfaction of a reply. Instead he put all his concentration into moving his elbow. All he wanted was to move that one elbow. While the ransar busied himself with that, Varnol charged the naga, his longaxe swinging in arcs before him so fast the weapon became but a silver blur. The air quivered with the sound of its slicing and reversing, slicing and reversing.
The naga backed away from the onslaught and its face twisted in strange, unreadable expressions. Pristoleph got the feeling it was trying to cast some spell or bring to bear some magical ability, but there was no visible effect on the firedrake. A sound from one side of the room stole Pristoleph's attention from his elbow and he saw a dead-pale hand with nails like sharpened talons fold itself over the hip of a statue. What emerged was an undead thing so hideous Pristoleph had to force himself to look at it. A stench of decay and putrescence filled the room, and Pristoleph cursed the naga anew for leaving him so he Could only breathe through his nose.
The sound of feet dragging on wood revealed that there was at least one more of the creatures—ghouls, Pristoleph decided—in the room with him. The one he could see hissed at the naga then looked Pristoleph in the eye. Its deformed lips twisted into a fang-lined grin, and it shambled forward from behind the statue. Pristoleph couldn't even begin to imagine where it had come from.
But even as Pristoleph began to consider what it would feel like to be eaten alive, the black firedrake that had lain bleeding at his feet stood in front of him, staggering and almost falling to put himself between his master and the ghoul.
Dlavin, missing a wing and still slowly but surely bleeding to death, surged forward, stumbled again, but met the ghoul near the stairs. The undead creature lunged with its claws extended but never got within reach of the firedrake before a cloud of acidic mist mushroomed in its face.
The ghoul staggered backward, clawing at its face and tearing free great strips of flesh, revealing the bone beneath. It had no skin on its face at all when it finally fell still.
But Dlavin also fell, sprawling on the floor next to it. The black firedrake crawled, ever so weak, to the top of the stairs and let loose a roar that rattled the windows. The sound, was suddenly choked off, though, when the second ghoul landed on the firedrake's back and began to rip huge bites of flesh out of him in bloody mouthfuls. Dlavin twitched and grunted, trying to shake the thing off, but all he could really do was wait for the one bite that would finally kill him. The ghoul took its time.
The naga screamed when it finally reached the wall, fetched up with its back to one of the triangular windows, and took a bloody slice from Varnol's longaxe.
At precisely the same moment, Dlavin shuddered once and died; the ghoul spat out the killing bite and fell back with acid dissolving its pale, vein-streaked chest.
The naga smashed out the window behind it. Pristoleph could only watch as the naga grabbed the windowsill and fell backward out into the open air. Varnol tried to cut off its fingers with his axe, but the naga was too fast. It climbed up the stonework exterior of the tower, and Pristoleph, unable to tip his head up, could only see it pass over one of the skylights.
The firedrake that had burned the ghoul leaped up out of the stairwell, making way for another of its kind. Both held longaxes.
"This way!" Varnol shouted. "It's on the roof!"
The two firedrakes glanced at Pristoleph as if awaiting
further instructions, but then surged ahead to the broken window.
"Zevok," Varnol said to one of the firedrakes, "the ransar has been paralyzed. Stay with him."
Zevok, one of the black firedrakes Pristoleph didn't remember ever meeting—he hadn't personally introduced himself to all of them—crossed the room to stand next to his ransar, his longaxe held ready in front of his chest. He scanned the carnage in the room with concern but no fear.
Varnol and the other firedrake shifted into their true forms—it was a process Pristoleph never quite got used to—and leaped out of the window in pursuit of the naga.
All at once Pristoleph's neck moved. His head tipped up. Then he could bend his elbow, but just a little. He tried to take a deep breath. Though what he managed couldn't have been described as "deep," he did draw in more than the slightest bit of air.
He looked up at the fight on the roof and saw the firedrakes harrying the naga, which clung to the flagpole. The pole began to bend under the creature's considerable weight, and it took a few painful rakes of the firedrake's claws. The orange pennant—sixteen feet long, Pristoleph remembered—made getting closer to the naga difficult for the two firedrakes, but they pressed on, trying to bleed dry their foe while at the same time not allowing themselves to become tangled in the flag.
Pristoleph took a step forward and opened his mouth just a little. He managed a small sound, not quite a word, and Zevok leaned in closer to hear.
Still looking up, Pristoleph watched as a shimmering glow appeared in the air next to the naga, and a portion of the blue sky for all appearances in the shape of a door, opened onto what looked like a roiling thunderstorm. Pristoleph got only the vaguest glimpse of fast-moving gray-black clouds and a flash of lightning that briefly lit the naga a shocking yellow. Then the serpent creature fell sideways into the space.
The two firedrakes flexed their wings to follow, but the door in the sky slammed shut and they flew instead through empty air and followed each other in a long, swooping circle around the tower.
41_
26Eleint, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR) The Canal Site
Surero's hands shook and his hair stood on end. The black firedrake's grip on his arm was more than firm, but it wasn't painful—not yet. He stood still, holding his hands away from his body as he was instructed. He tried to ignore the smell of acid that drifted from the dark-skinned guard. Surero knew that smell, and the fact that it was coming from the man's breath was, for the alchemist, more frightening than the gleam of his razor-sharp axe.
He looked at Ivar Devorast, who stood at the edge of the trench, so far north they were only a few miles from the banks of the Nagaflow. Devorast was flanked by two of the black-clad guards. He looked back at Surero and the way he tipped his head and widened his eyes said, Just be quiet and don't resist... until we know we have to.
It had taken a very, very long time before he was able to read Devorast that well.
Three more of the black firedrakes stood a few yards away, their vicious longaxes held at the ready, scanning the growing crowd of workers that had come to see what all the fuss was about. The men kept a respectful distance, but Surero could feel a rising tension in the air. The men liked Devorast, and everyone was suspicious of the black firedrakes.
One of the firedrakes looked up into the overcast sky and blinked a few times. Surero couldn't tell if he was listening to something or smelling the air. After a brief
moment he looked at Devorast and said, "Kneel to receive the ransar."
Devorast didn't have a chance to bend his knee before the two black firedrakes pushed him to the muddy ground. Surero was likewise forced down.
There was a blur of violet-blue light and a prickling in the air. Surero squinted, ready to close his eyes tightly should something explode or ... he didn't know what else.
Pristoleph stepped out of the light, emerging from the air itself, and the uncomfortable feeling was gone.
The black firedrakes stiffened to attention while the ransar walked past them in a straight line to Devorast. The moment he was within reach, Pristoleph slapped Devorast so hard across the face, he was knocked out of the grip of one of the firedrakes. There was a moment of confusion while the guards struggled to get Devorast back to his knees. Pristoleph stepped back, shaking his hand and rubbing his wrist. Blood oozed from the side of Devorast's lip.
"Did you send it to kill me?" Pristoleph said, his voice grinding with anger. "Or did it decide on its own?"
Devorast jerked his arm away from one of the firedrakes to wipe the blood from his face. The guard was about to hit him, but Pristoleph waved him off.
"Let him up," the ransar said.
Devorast stood and the black firedrakes didn't hold him, but stayed close enough to kill him in the blink of an eye should the ransar order it.
"Speak," Pristoleph demanded.
"I didn't send anyone to kill anyone," Devorast said.
"You said they were under control," Pristoleph seethed.
Devorast just looked at him with a question in his eyes,
"The nagas," Pristoleph said.
"We are the embodiments of the ideal, genasi," a voice at once resonant and sibilant said from behind Surero.
The black firedrake that held Surero released him to hold his axe in both hands. The guards surrounded the ransar, whose strange orange hair seemed to blaze on his head like fire.
Genasi, Surero thought. That explained a lot.
"We are under no monkey's 'control,'" Svayyah said as she slithered just close enough to make the black firedrakes nervous, but not feel as though they had to attack. "What is the meaning of this?"
Pristoleph's eyes widened and Surero got the unmistakable feeling that the ransar recognized the naga. "There you are."
"Here we are," the naga returned, raising the ridge over one eye where, if she had any hair at all, an eyebrow would have been.
"This naga," Pristoleph said, glancing from Svayyah to Devorast, "attacked me in my home. It killed a number of my guards and nearly killed me, too."
"This naga," Svayyah spit back, "did no such thing."
"I have found that Svayyah is as honest as she is direct," Devorast said.
"It was injured..." Pristoleph said, examining the water naga with narrowed eyes. "We took its right ear."
With a wicked little smile, Svayyah turned her head so that Pristoleph could see she was uninjured.
"It wasn't Svayyah," Devorast said. "Our agreement with the water nagas still stands."
Svayyah drew herself up to her full height, her chin held even higher in the air.
"These creatures," Pristoleph said, "all look the same."
A dark looked passed across Svayyah's humanlike face, but passed quickly when they could all see that Pristoleph was thinking—that he wasn't sure, that he was beginning to think he'd been fooled.
He looked Devorast in the eye and said, "Give me your word that the water nagas will honor their agreement. Look me in the eye and tell me it wasn't her."
Devorast looked him in the eye and said, "The water nagas will honor their agreement. It wasn't her."
Svayyah laughed and Pristoleph shot her a dangerous look.
"Release them," the ransar said to the firedrakes, who instantly obeyed.
Surero couldn't help but notice a strange, knowing look pass between two of the black firedrakes, one he couldn't hope to unravel himself. He stayed on his knees until the ransar and his black firedrakes had gone back into the thin air from whence they'd come.
42_
26 Eleint, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR) The Land of One Hundred and Thirteen
Insithryllax turned in a tight circle, a hundred feet above the top of Marek's tower. The wailing of the maurezhi demon tore through the dense air, and though the black dragon had heard screams before, of fear mostly but also pain, the sound of those particular cries made his heart quiver in his scaled chest. A demon shouldn't scream like that, and no human—even a Red Wizard—should be able to make one scream at all.
The dragon leaned into an easy descent, holding to his orbit of the tower. He dipped just below the roof line and passed the highest open window. As he flew by, the agonized screams of the demon rattled his ears and chilled his blood.
"... your failure!" Marek Rymiit hollered from the same room—a chamber that comprised the entire top level of the tower.
The demon shrieked anew.
Insithryllax wheeled around the tower, the tip of his left wing almost grazing the rough-cut stone blocks. Movement from the right caught his attention—a fury's eel breaking
the surface of the lake, one of its bulbous, fishlike eyes scanning the tower.
Even the eels can feel it, the great wyrm thought.
He passed the open window again.
"... to fail me like this?" Marek taunted.
The demon panted, and as Insithryllax turned again around the other side of the tower, it began to whimper.
The dragon was impressed on some level that the Thayan had the power to torture a tanar'ri, but the ice in his veins was something else.
Fear? the dragon thought. Could it be?
Once again he passed the window and heard the demon groveling, begging in a language Insithryllax didn't know. He thought he heard the Red Wizard laugh.
When he pulled around the tower once more he riffled his huge, leathery wings, and in one beat of his heart Insithryllax was once again a hundred feet above the tower's roof. He looked down on the tower when the demon started screaming again. The sound had changed once more. It was desperate, terrified.
Insithryllax looked out to the near horizon and tried to ignore the screaming creature. He'd been in the Land of One Hundred and Thirteen for more than five months. He'd spent longer than that confined to the little pocket dimension in the past, but the last months had been harder. Never had he felt so confined, and the emotions that seethed in him were as intense as they were alien. The anger he'd felt in Innarlith had been replaced by fear.
Insithryllax didn't like fear.
The sound of the maurezhi's screams cut off with a gurgling abruptness that could mean only one thing.
Finding it more difficult to breathe all of a sudden, Insithryllax turned, put even more distance between himself and the ground, and flew off toward the edge of the Land of One Hundred and Thirteen. The fear swelled in him and he choked it down.
He had to get out of there.
43
27 Eleint, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR) Pristal Towers, Innarlith
The chain mail was tightly woven, but the steel was dull and heavy. Rolling it between his fingers, Pristoleph tried to imagine how heavy it would be in various configurations: a sort of tunic that would protect his arms and down to his mid-thighs, or just a vest to keep blades from his heart and gut.
The door opened and he turned to watch Wenefir step in while nodding to the black firedrakes that stood guard outside. One of the guards pulled the door closed. Wenefir caught Pristoleph's eye and dipped in a shallow bow.
Pristoleph nodded and turned his attention back to the table. He picked up a square of stout black leather onto which had been sewn a dense pattern of steel rings. It wasn't quite as heavy as the chain mail, but likewise wouldn't provide the same protection—and it was identical to the armor the black firedrakes wore.
"The armorer left samples behind for me to examine at my leisure," the ransar explained, though he knew he didn't have to.
Wenefir stepped up behind him, but not too close, and said, "Is that really necessary?"
Pristoleph shrugged, put down the patch of ring mail, but didn't turn around.
"I think so," he said. "I think it's been necessary for a long time, actually."
"People have tried to kill us before," Wenefir said.
Pristoleph smiled, and turned to face his oldest friend. Wenefir returned his smile from a face that was pale and deeply lined. Wenefir had aged over the last few years in a way that Pristoleph, with his half-elemental blood, hadn't.
The priest looked pale, as though his skin hadn't seen the sun in a very long time.
"But you think this time it's worse," Wenefir said, the smile fading from his lips.
Pristoleph nodded and reached behind himself to take a small iron box from the tabletop. It opened and he held it out to Wenefir so his seneschal could see what was inside.
Wenefir looked into the box and raised one eyebrow. He swallowed and said, "An ear."
Pristoleph nodded and looked at the ear in the box. It was pointed, like an elf's, but the skin was gray and mottled, sickly.
"The ear of the naga that tried to kill you?" Wenefir said.
"No."
"Something else, then?"
"It was sliced off the side of the naga's head," Pristoleph explained. "I saw it with my own eyes. But when I first placed it in this box it was rounded on the top, like a human ear, and the flesh had a blue cast to it."
"One might expect a disembodied ear to turn gray after-"
"And the shape?" Pristoleph interrupted, then took a deep breath. He didn't like to exhibit the sort of anxiety he felt just then, but if he could trust anyone, it was Wenefir. "I'm sorry, old friend."
Wenefir smiled and said, "No apologies are necessary, Ransar." He cleared his throat and went on, "It could have been ... malformed, when it was shorn from the creature's head."
Pristoleph shook his head and replied, "No. I told you, I put it in the box, and when I opened it again the next day—yesterday—it was different."
"Someone switched it?"
Again the ransar shook his head.
"Of course," said Wenefir, "it was in your possession the whole time."
"It wasn't a water naga that attacked us," Pristoleph said. He closed the lid of the box and held it out to Wenefir. The seneschal looked at it, but Pristoleph could sense his reluctance to take it. "I don't know what it was."
With a slow, pained exhale, Wenefir reached out and took the little iron box from the ransar's hand.
"I need you to tell me what that ear came from," Pristoleph commanded.
Wenefir nodded, but Pristoleph could tell the motion came hard. He looked down at the box in his hands as though he feared it would bite him.
"I know you have ways to find the truth of things," Pristoleph said. "Your own ways..."
Wenefir turned away and started to pace the room. Pristoleph didn't like the way he looked. He could tell when someone was hiding something from him.
"I don't want you to give it to the Thayan," Pristoleph said.
Wenefir stopped and turned his head to look at Pristoleph from the corner of his eye.
"You don't trust Master Rymiit?"
"I don't trust anyone," Pristoleph said. "Someone is trying to kill me."
"And you think it could be Marek Rymiit?"
"It could be," Pristoleph replied. The words almost stuck in his throat. He didn't like to say it aloud, and for reasons he couldn't quite explain, especially to Wenefir. "Whoever it is, it's someone of considerable power."
Wenefir started to pace again.
"One of the other senators, then?" Wenefir asked, and Pristoleph got the feeling his seneschal was trying to lead him in that direction.
"Perhaps," Pristoleph said, confused as to why he felt he needed to humor his old friend. "Any number of them would like to be ransar, and I have enemies to spare in the Chamber of Law and Civility. But this is worse, I think. It's not just a grab for power. Whoever it is may
not even be trying to kill me so much as trying to turn me against Devorast."
"Devorast?" Wenefir asked, and again he stopped pacing.
"This assassin was sent in the guise of the water naga that Devorast befriended in order to secure the Nagaflow end of the canal," Pristoleph explained. "I was meant to believe, or whatever witness was left alive was to believe, that Devorast had turned on me and sent the naga to kill me. Someone is trying to ruin Ivar Devorast, and the canal in the process."
"There is a very long list of people who don't want to see that trench ever filled with water."
"I know," said the ransar, "but it will be. The canal will be finished, and it will be Ivar Devorast who finishes it. Every eye in the wide Realms will be turned in the direction of Innarlith. Ships will pass, and trade will flow."
"And gold," Wenefir whispered.
"And gold," Pristoleph agreed. "And hang every last senator that thinks otherwise. I will raise Ivar Devorast above every one of their thick heads if I have to to see this done."
"And that," Wenefir said, "is why they'll line up to kill you."
44_
3 Uktar, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR) The Canal Site
Though he was barely four feet tall, Hrothgar was heavy and stout. His boots could be described the same way, which accounted for all the noise. He had no reason to be quiet, so he reveled in the clomp of his boots on the wooden planks of the scaffold.
The ambient light from torches and lanterns set around the edge of the canal, reflected from the low
overcast, was more than enough light for the dwarf to see by. He ran a hand along the stone blocks as he walked. The scaffold was set up about halfway up the side of the eastern canal wall. Hrothgar had been supervising the cutting of blocks at one of the three quarries that had been established along the length of the canal, so he hadn't been there to make sure the blocks in that section had been properly set. He knew Devorast would have been there, and they wouldn't have been left in place if he didn't like the way they looked, but Hrothgar wanted to check for himself.
He dug at the space between two of the blocks with a fingernail. Leaning in close, he set one cheek to the stone wall, closed the opposite eye, and peered down the length of the mortar line. It was as close to straight as he'd ever seen.
"No way a human set this," he muttered.
He sighed and stepped away, looking all around with a worried smile.
"Nothing to worry about," the dwarf told himself, but he worried nonetheless.
He heard voices echoing from above and was thankful that someone else couldn't sleep. He didn't even bother to wonder why he hadn't heard them before.
It took him a while to get to a ladder that led to a higher scaffold, then another ladder that took him to ground level.
"Who is that, there?" someone called out to him—one of the guards?—but the voice sounded familiar. "Hrothgar?" Devorast said.
The dwarf blinked and shook his head. At first it seemed as though Devorast's voice had come from a rock lying at the edge of the trench. He blinked again and realized that it wasn't a rock, but Devorast's head, his hair matted with mud.
"Careful where you step," Surero said, and Hrothgar was actually startled.
The dwarf looked down and sidestepped carefully away from the alchemist, who, like Devorast, was neck-deep in a hole.
"By Dumathoin's sprinkled rubies, someone finally did it," the dwarf said. "They buried you alive but ye part-way chewed yerselfs out!"
Surero shushed him and Devorast whispered, "Keep your voice down."
Hrothgar stood his ground and folded his arms. "Well?" he said, as quietly as he could without whispering.
"Hand me that keg, there?" Surero asked.
Hrothgar looked around at his feet and noticed a small wooden keg about the size of his head. A length of the burning cord Surero called a "fuse" had been stuck through the top and lay coiled next to the sack.
"I couldn't sleep," the dwarf said, turning to look at Devorast, who had climbed up from the hole he'd been standing in and was walking toward the dwarf with hurried, determined steps. "What are ye two up to here, Ivar? What couldn't ye tell me?"
"Quiet, please, Hrothgar," Devorast urged.
The dwarf stood his ground and glared at the man, who bent and gingerly handed the keg of smokepowder to the alchemist.
"What are you doing with those?" the dwarf asked, though he was starting to understand all on his own. The idea didn't make him happy at all, and part of him hoped Devorast would offer a different explanation, one that didn't mean what Hrothgar knew it had to. "If you put those between the dirt and the stone, they'll collapse the canal when they go off."
"Then here's hoping they never go off," Surero said.
Devorast flashed the alchemist a dark look, then turned to the dwarf and said, "I hope they never will, too, but I had to have some assurance of quality."
"A-what-ance of what, now?" the dwarf demanded, but managed to keep his voice low.
"You know what he means, Hrothgar," Surero said, grunting as he climbed out of the hole. "If you can't sleep, why not help us?"
45_
21 Uktar, the Yearof Rogue Dragons (1373 DR) Fourth Quarter, Innarlith
It's the smell that hits you first, isn't it?" Pristoleph asked.
He looked over at Devorast, who walked alongside him down the narrow, filthy street at the city's easternmost edge. Devorast didn't respond. His eyes darted from the overflowing midden to the walls of the ramshackle houses, but he never met the eyes of the people that stopped to watch them pass.
"For me," Pristoleph went on, "the smell was the easiest thing to forget. Faces, little things like a pile of rotting lumber abandoned for years, or a child's doll floating in raw sewage—those sights have been burned into my memory. I'll never forget that doll."
Pristoleph closed his eyes, but opened them after only a couple steps—on that street, it was a risky proposition to not look where you were going for more than that.
"Someone's mother had stitched it together from rags. It was supposed to be a little girl—a little girl for a little girl, I'd guess. I can see its blue eyes, its red lips, its nose that was actually a button. There was a stain on the doll's face that made it look like it had some sort of disease of the skin, but all it was was blood, mud, or wine. I suppose that either of the three of those things would constitute a disease for a child's plaything."
Devorast glanced at him, as though he were affected in some way by that image, but what little trace of emotion Pristoleph thought he saw in the Cormyrean's face was gone as quickly as it appeared.
"It's been years—decades, really—and I still wonder about that doll. What happened to the little girl who must have loved it? Did she drop it and not notice? Did she try to retrieve it from the midden before her mother pulled her away? Anything that goes in there doesn't come out in any condition to be hugged ever again."
Devorast smirked, and Pristoleph laughed a little.
"See this building here," the ransar said, pointing to a brick building whose walls had been repaired so many times it looked like the patchwork rag doll of Pristoleph's childhood memory. "This used to be an inn. My mother worked here."
Devorast stopped and looked at the building, and Pristoleph stood behind him. He waited for Devorast to ask for more information or to show any interest in anything he was saying, but he got nothing in response but a mute examination of the falling-down old inn.
"She would take men there," Pristoleph said.
An old man dressed in rags that had to be tied onto him staggered toward Pristoleph. His clothes looked and smelled no different than the midden ditch that ran like a stripe of feces, urine, garbage, and dead rats down the middle of the street. Pristoleph locked his eyes on the beggar's and the man wilted under the ransar's steady, firm gaze. The old man turned on his heel and scurried off into a garbage-strewn alley.
"It was the first building I ever bought," Pristoleph said to Devorast's back. "I've been collecting a pittance in rent on it for years. I'd almost forgotten about it, actually. It's been used for meat packing, a blacksmith that made nails—nails, only, one after another after another all day—and Denier only knows what else, but it's never been an inn. I never let it be that again, and I never will. I'll burn it down myself before another woman sells her body in that building."
"It wasn't the inn," Devorast said, not looking over his shoulder.
Pristoleph found himself nodding but angry at the same time.
"I bought the building next door, too," Pristoleph went on, and started to walk again. "I bought a lot of buildings, and most of the time I didn't ask what was going on inside them. I didn't care. If the rent was paid, they could have been..."
He didn't know what they could have been doing that would have come close to offending him, but that he would have allowed just the same.
"You haven't asked me why I brought you down here," he said to Devorast. Then he turned on a woman who had inched closer to them, and said, "Easy, there."
The old woman took just a little more convincing than the male beggar before she moved away from the two men.
"You want me to know that you came from nothing," Devorast said. "You thought I should see how far you've come, all the gold you've—"
"No," Pristoleph said, loudly enough so that a couple of the grimy passersby turned and ran from him. "Or yes, I suppose," he went on more quietly, directing the words to Devorast, and Devorast alone. "We've always agreed that coin for coin's sake is hardly worth pursuing."
Devorast nodded.
"I wanted you to know that I have dreams for Innarlith," Pristoleph said. "I really don't come here to remind myself of what it was like growing up on the streets, 'raised,' if you can call it that, by a whore. I didn't ask for your pity, and I never will."
The two men turned to look at each other and stood there longer than either had intended. A little boy tugged on Devorast's sleeve and mumbled something about silver coins. Devorast shook his head but didn't push the boy away.
The little beggar looked up at him, and Pristoleph watched a tear collect in the boy's big eyes. He held out two
silver coins. The boy smiled, grabbed the coins from the ransar's hand, and disappeared back into the dark alley.
"That could have been me," Pristoleph said, gesturing after the boy.
Devorast looked him in the eye and said, "Save for?"
Pristoleph raised an eyebrow and said, "Luck?"
"There is no such thing."
"Ambition?"
"And what's wrong with ambition?" Devorast replied.
46_
4 Nightal, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR) The Land of One Hundred and Thirteen
"You have to let me go," Insithryllax said. In his true form, he stood atop the tower and looked down at Marek standing on the dry ground below. "I can't stand it anymore. I have to get out of here."
"I don't know if it's safe," the Thayan said.
Insithryllax tipped his head up to the sky and roared as loudly as he could. The attempt to release his anger fell pitifully short. His body shook, and his wings fluttered. The sound of his roar shook the tower, sending a rain of dust and little chips of the stone blocks to fall around the Red Wizard.
"What is it, Marek?" Insithryllax demanded. He couldn't keep his ebon lips from pulling back to reveal his swordlike fangs. Acid sizzled in the air around him in a fine mist. "Why do I feel so trapped in here? What's happening?"
Marek looked away and Insithryllax roared again. The Red Wizard looked him in the eye, and the dragon could tell that he was reluctant to speak, but he couldn't tell if it was because Marek didn't know the answers to his questions or didn't want to tell him.
"Speak, damn you," the wyrm hissed.
"Something has been happening in the outside world," Marek said. "Something has been happening to the dragons."
"Which dragons?"
Lightning arced from the sky and skittered across the surface of the lake, disturbing the eels.
Marek looked up at the dragon and said, "All of them."
Insithryllax turned his face away from the human and swung his head around on his sinuous neck, searching for some answers in the dead sky of the pocket dimension. There was nothing there.
Nothing.
"You have to get me out of here," Insithryllax said again.
"I can't-"
"Yes, you can!"Insithryllax roared, and Marek took two steps backward, moving his hands up, ready to cast a spell. Insithryllax swallowed and gnashed his fangs, biting back the urge to shower the Thayan with his caustic breath and be done with him—his old friend.
"I was going to say," Marek said in a voice that couldn't possibly be as calm as it sounded, "that I can't guarantee that you won't be effected if you return to Faerun."
"Effected..." the dragon repeated. "It's a Rage, isn't it?"
Marek Rymiit nodded. Insithryllax closed his eyes and tried to steady his breath.
"I could feel it," Insithryllax admitted—and how he hated to say that in front of a human, even Marek. "I could feel it, back in Innarlith, but that was months ago."
Marek said, "I did everything I could, my friend. I've been researching the problem, desperate for a solution, but in your state of mind, I couldn't tell you. I couldn't let you go back there until I knew how to help you. I'm sorry."
Insithryllax looked down on him, studying Marek's face and voice. The lift of an eyebrow, the curl of a lip, one too many blinks in too close succession.
"I'm truly sorry," the Thayan said again.
"It's been months," the dragon said. "No Rage has ever lasted that long."
"This one has," Marek said, and he wasn't lying.
"Let me out," Insithryllax insisted.
Marek half nodded, half shrugged, and said, "You could go mad. You could kill a lot of people."
Insithryllax held the wizard's gaze, looking deep into his eyes, and said, "You can stop me."
They stared at each other for a long time, locked across the distance by their wills.
"Can you take human form?" Marek asked finally.
Insithryllax shifted his weight onto the center of the roof, which creaked and sagged under him. He brought to mind the spell that would make him look human, but the first word stuck in his throat. He shook his head and the word came out, but the second one wouldn't come to him. He growled and spat, dissolving one of the battlements.
Marek Rymiit, from the ground far below, began to cast a spell. The words drifted up on the still air and brought with them the tingle of magic.
Insithryllax felt himself shrinking, and though a big part of him didn't want to trust the human, he managed to hold himself still. After a brief moment, he stood on the roof of the tower, a dark-skinned man in black silks. He looked at his hands and they seemed so alien to him. It was as though he'd never worn that guise before.
Marek appeared then, levitating from the ground below, drifting up until his feet cleared the roof line. He stepped forward to approach Insithryllax. The Thayan kept his hands at his sides, where the dragon could see them.
"Are you sure?" the Red Wizard asked.
Insithryllax nodded.
The spell that sent them back to Faerun was simple—for Marek, at least—and before Insithryllax thought twice about the true consequences of going back, he took a deep breath of Toril's air. He looked around and saw that
they stood in the courtyard of the Thayan Enclave, safely behind the walls in what was, officially speaking, Thayan territory. Marek watched him closely and Insithryllax could tell the wizard was ready to cast a spell—ready to kill him.
"I tire of this," the dragon said, hating the sound of the voice that came from his false body. "And the Rage?" asked Marek.
Insithryllax took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He searched his own feelings and found only exhaustion. He wasn't angry, he wasn't frustrated, he wasn't mad. He was tired.
He looked at Marek and shook his head.
"I'm free," the dragon said, and he couldn't keep it from sounding like a challenge.
"You always were, my old friend," Marek replied. The Thayan spoke a single word in a forgotten tongue and Insithryllax's human guise fell away. "But I hoped you would stay."
Insithryllax unfurled his wings and stretched his long neck. He'd never wanted so badly to sleep, while at the same time all he could think of was flying—flying free of the beehive urgency of the human city and their petty squabbles.
"Could be," he said to the Thayan, "I'll miss it, in time."
Marek smiled at him and said, "I doubt that."
Insithryllax beat his wings, sending a blast of air at the Thayan, who stepped back and shielded his eyes. Then he was in the air.
A woman on the street screamed when he rose above the walls of the enclave, then a horse panicked and more people screamed and shouted and scurried around. They ran from him never knowing that he didn't care if they lived or died, and at that moment couldn't even be bothered to look down at them, let alone attack them. Though he was tired, he flew fast and high. He closed his eyes for a while and soared past the city walls to the north.
Insithryllax didn't spare the canal even the slightest glance. He turned to the east—to the Surmarsh and home—and was gone from Innarlith forever.
47
18Alturiak, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR) Hungste Province, Shou Lung
I expected them to be suspicious," Pristoleph said, "to be less welcoming."
He looked at Devorast, who quickly drew a series of broad strokes on a parchment folio spread out on the red-enameled wood deck of the strangely-shaped boat. A Shou crewman slipped behind him, bowing as he passed, a vacant smile frozen on his face.
"I still don't understand why you like it here," said the ransar.
Pristoleph put the fine porcelain cup to his lips and reveled in the boiling intensity of the fragrant tea, waiting for Devorast to answer.
"They have ideas," Devorast said, his hand pausing for the briefest moment over the parchment.
"Ideas?"
"I've seen them pack smokepowder into a tube," Devorast said, still not looking up from his drawing, "and attach something like fletching on one end so it looks like an arrow. When they ignite the smokepowder, the arrow flies on its own, but faster than any arrow I've ever seen. They call it a 'hud jidn'."
Pristoleph smiled and nodded. He blinked and looked up into the clear azure sky. The silence that followed was interrupted only by the gentle, hollow lapping of the river water on the boat's hull. The crewmen were completely silent.
"This boat is interesting, too," Devorast said.
Pristoleph chuckled, and Devorast actually smiled.
"I should get you away from that canal more often," Pristoleph said. "Impossible as it seems, you actually have it in you to relax."
"I'm always relaxed," Devorast replied, and Pristoleph didn't think he was joking.
"I wouldn't have thought you'd be so comfortable with the Shou ways," the ransar said. "I understand they hold to a rigid caste system—one where a man like you might never realize his full potential under the weight of tradition."
"Cormyr is hardly different," Devorast said.
"But Innarlith is?"
Devorast stopped drawing, looked up at Pristoleph, and said, "Innarlith is very different. In Innarlith, a man like you can be king. In Cormyr, you have to be born to it. You can be an infant and still be king if you have the right blood in your veins."
"I'm no king."
Devorast's look made it clear he didn't accept that.
"But you've told me you never want to be ransar," Pristoleph said. "You don't want power over men."
"I don't," Devorast replied, continuing to draw. "I want to build a canal."
"I know, I know," Pristoleph said. "And building it is more important than it being finished."
"No," Devorast said with something that might have been a sigh—but Devorast never sighed. "I fully intend to finish it. You know that."
Pristoleph watched the strange trees pass by on the far riverbank and asked, "Do you know what those trees are called?"
"Bamboo."
"And the river?"
"Chan Lu," Devorast said.
"What does that mean?"
"I don't know."
"How long have we been away?" asked Pristoleph. "Almost three months."
Pristoleph took a deep breath and held it, letting his mind go completely blank. Devorast stopped drawing and the sudden cessation of the charcoal on parchment made Pristoleph exhale and look over at what the man had drawn. Though he was looking at it upside down, Pristoleph could make out the outlines of a tall tower with a peaked roof, not unlike the towers of his own home in Innarlith, but Devorast had drawn in some kind of window or something, a perfect circle near the top of the tower marked off in twelve even increments. He didn't ask Devorast about the drawing. He'd learned not to.
"I think Marek Rymiit is trying to kill us both," Pristoleph said.
Devorast turned to a blank sheet of parchment and began to draw again.
"I may have made a mistake by being too close to him," Pristoleph admitted. "I've grown too dependent on his magic."
"I don't know Marek Rymiit," Devorast said.
"I don't know whether you'd love him or hate him."
"I'd neither love nor hate him."
With a smile, Pristoleph said, "That's probably the principal reason why he wants to kill you."
Devorast ignored that and continued his drawing. Pristoleph didn't try to interpret the wild but controlled lines and shapes.
"He uses people," Pristoleph said. "I think that's why we worked together so well. I use people, too."
"Are you ashamed of that?"
Pristoleph was too surprised by the question to answer it right away. After a long silence, he simply shrugged.
"You can only use people who allow themselves to be used," Devorast said. "And anyone who would allow that is not worthy of your shame."
Pristoleph laughed even though Devorast was entirely serious.
"This is a strange idea," Devorast asked Pristoleph after a while, "these 'holidays' of yours. How long do they last?"
48_
3Ches, the Yearof Lightning Storms (1374 DR) The Thayan Enclave, Innarlith
"YV^illem stopped in the doorway to the parlor and looked around. He'd been in that same room many times, but it had been a while, and it looked different. He had the feeling that all the objects, both mundane and exotic, were in the same places, that the furniture and the rugs were the same, that the walls were painted the same color, but still it looked different.
Smaller? he asked himself. It was smaller—darker, duller.
And Marek himself looked awful. Willem winced when the Thayan entered the room. He recoiled ever so slightly from the man's smile. Marek's teeth were brown in spots and yellow everywhere else. Dark circles under his eyes told of many sleepless nights, and he'd gotten fatter. The smell of some tropical flower Willem didn't have a name for followed the wizard into the room, but it didn't mask the old man smell that oozed from the Thayan's very pores.
"Ah," Marek said with a smile that turned Willem's stomach, "there you are, my boy. Come. Sit. You've been too long away from the city."
Willem forced a smile, found a chair, and sat as quickly as he could, deftly avoiding Marek's embrace.
"So tell me," said the wizard, "how progresses the canal?"
Willem replied, "Well, Master Rymiit."
He wanted to leave it at that, but Marek made it plain
with his pursed lips and wide-open eyes that that wouldn't be nearly sufficient.
"Construction is progressing according to Ivar's plans," Willem said. "It's amazing, really, Master Rymiit."
"What's amazing?" the wizard asked, lifting one eyebrow in a look at once bored and quizzical.
"The whole thing," Willem breathed, certain that answer would never satisfy the Thayan, but it was all Willem could think to say.
Marek chuckled, sat back in his chair, and stared up at the ceiling as though trying to frame his thoughts so that he could express himself in terms simple enough that even a dolt like Willem might understand him.
"Why did you ask me to come here?" Willem said. His voice barely squeaked out of him. His throat had become reluctant to speak, his mind afraid of the words, but his heart longing to know.
"You're still a sitting member of the Senate of Innarlith," Marek said. "You have responsibilities. This is beneath you, really, this digging around—rooting in the dirt out there with the snakes and the nagas."
"I've never been—" Willem started to say, but stopped himself. He didn't want to tell Marek Rymiit that he'd never been happier.
But the Thayan knew what he was going to say and his smile was even more mocking that usual.
"I understand," said the wizard. "Really, I do."
Willem's teeth hurt and he rubbed his bottom lip as he said, "Do you need something from me?"
"Tell me about this man Devorast," Marek said. "Have you brought anything of yourself to this canal? Or do you simply follow the instructions of your former countryman?"
Willem shook his head and said, "We all follow his instructions. To the letter."
Marek shrugged—he'd heard exactly what he'd expected to hear—and he asked, "Is it true what I've heard about Devorast and the ransar?"
"The ransar?"
"Pristoleph has gone off on one of those excursions of his," the wizard explained, "and this time he's brought Ivar Devorast with him."
"And?"
Willem couldn't help but shrink at the look his one-word question elicited from the Thayan. Willem cleared his throat and looked away.
"Is it true?" asked the wizard.
Willem nodded then made himself shrug.
"Then surely he's left you in charge," Marek said.
Willem thought about that for a moment then shook his head. He thought he saw Marek's lips move, and he did something with his hands as though reaching for something in front of him that wasn't there. Willem blinked sweat from his eyes and his face tingled. He shuddered through a sudden chill and wrapped his hands around his arms.
"Are you all right, Willem?" the Thayan asked, and his voice sounded strange—different somehow.
Willem nodded, even though he didn't feel well at all.
"Kurtsson?" Marek called over his shoulder. "Aikiko?"
Willem licked his lips and wondered why his teeth didn't hurt anymore. He puzzled over that so long he didn't notice that two people entered the room and sat together on a small sofa between he and Marek.
"You've been left alone up there," Marek said. "You need help, don't you?"
"Yes," Willem answered without thinking—without being able to think.
"You know Kurtsson."
Willem felt himself nodding and he looked up at Kurtsson. The Vaasan's blue eyes were cold, his smile condescending.
"And this is Aikiko. Have you met Aikiko?"
Willem's head got stuck between a nod and a shake. He didn't remember the woman, but for a moment he was
distracted by the look of her thin, perpetually squinting eyes and the exotic cast to her skin. Her waist-length hair was as black as a drow's flesh, and her smile was as condescending as the Vaasan's.
"The two of them are going to go back with you," Marek said with a grin.
"We're to help you," Kurtsson said.
"Don't worry about a thing," said Aikiko.
Willem shook his head, though the movement hurt his neck.
"Surely," Marek said, his voice taking on a coldness that made Willem's skin crawl, "you can use the help—with Devorast gone."
"He-" Willem started.
"He may never come back," Marek said and Willem couldn't resist looking the Thayan in the eyes.
"But Ivar..." Willem started again. "Ivar will..."
"We'll help you," said the strange-looking woman who might have been a half-elf. "We're only trying to help."
"Agree to the arrangement, Willem," Marek said.
Willem started to nod and tried to stop himself. He caught a glimpse of a self-satisfied grin from Kurtsson that made him say, "I don't think I can..."
But by the time he got that far he was nodding.
"You'll let us help you?" Aikiko said.
And Willem nodded.
"Help me," he whispered.
5Q_
14 Tarsakh, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR) The Canal Site
fristoleph looked at Devorast then at the—whatever it was—then back to Devorast. He didn't know which sight he found more unsettling.
"What is it?" Devorast said.
Pristoleph had never heard that quality in his voice before—even more clipped, even colder. He looked down at the muddy ground. Bubbles sizzled and popped around the edges of his boots and little tendrils of steam rose into the warm air. The ransar flexed his right hand into a fist and covered it with his left. If he'd touched anyone at that moment the heat from his palm would have raised a blister.
"Answer him," Pristoleph commanded no one in particular. "Someone speak."
"Her name is Senator Aikiko," the alchemist Surero answered. "But it was the Vaasan that's been overseeing it—every part of it."
Pristoleph didn't look at the alchemist but at Devorast.
"Take it down," Devorast said.
All eyes turned to the stone archway. It rose over the canal trench, which ended only a few yards beyond it.
"Take it down," Devorast repeated, and the workers that had gathered to see his reaction to the arch began to break up and go on about the business of carrying out Devorast's orders.
The alchemist and the dwarf glanced at each other, but otherwise didn't move.
"Senator Aikiko?" Pristoleph asked the both of them. "She has no authority here."
Surero and Hrothgar stared at him as though he were lying, but the fire in his eyes made them quickly look away.
"She's a senator," the alchemist said, addressing Devorast.
"What of it?" Pristoleph demanded.
He stepped forward, advancing on the alchemist, who took one step backward away from him and looked at Devorast to help him. Pristoleph grabbed Surero by the throat and felt the man's skin crisp under his grip. The dwarf stepped back and squared his shoulders with defiance at the same time.
"What," Pristoleph sneered into the terrified alchemist's face, "of it?"
"Pristoleph," Devorast said. He put a hand on his shoulder, but pulled it away quickly when the genasi's heat burned him. "Let him go."
"You heard 'im," Hrothgar said. "You let the man go. Ransar or no... you bloody well let 'im go."
Pristoleph heard the black firedrakes step up behind him when the dwarf moved closer. The alchemist gasped and Pristoleph released him. Surero fell to the ground in a heap, gingerly touching at the fiery red burn on his neck. The smell of it spiked the air around them.
"Speak," the ransar ordered. "Speak, the both of you, or I'll burn you where you stand."
"It's a portal," Surero said, then he stopped to cough and wince in pain.
Pristoleph laughed even though he wasn't the slightest bit amused. He turned back to the arch and looked up at it. Though it was impressive for its sheer size, there was something about it that felt alien, wrong. Runes had been chiseled into the stones and inlaid with precious metals. Rising above the simple elegance of the straight-cut canal walls it appeared garish.
"You were gone," the dwarf said.
Pristoleph turned and the dwarf held his gaze, as stern and intractable as the stone he cut.
"I shouldn't have been away so long," Devorast said, but the disappointment in his eyes was plain.
The dwarf blushed and that stonelike visage slipped the slightest bit.
"We've been gone a few months," Pristoleph said. "Does he have to be here every day? Does he have to hold your hands? Does he have to cut every stone, and dig every hole?"
Devorast shook his head and the anger came back to the dwarf's face.
"A few months, eh?" Hrothgar grumbled. "A few months?"
"A few months!" the ransar shouted.
The dwarf stepped forward with clenched fists and so did the two black firedrakes at Pristoleph's sides.
"You've had 'im away for five an' a half months," Hrothgar said. "Five an' a half months."
"I will be away or I will be here for as long as I wish, dwarf," the ransar said. "And in the meantime, my orders will be carried out, and they will be carried out without question."
"And what were your orders, Ransar?" Surero asked. He looked up from where he sat on the wet, matted grass, and held a shaking hand a few inches from his neck.
"My orders?" Pristoleph replied. "My orders came to you through Ivar Devorast."
Surero glanced at Devorast but obviously saw nothing there in which he could find solace. He looked back down at the ground and grimaced.
"These senators of yours," Hrothgar said. "The moment you were gone, they started comin' outta the stonework. I'm happy to tell them where to get off, but the crew, they see a senator and it gets 'em all tense an' twitchy."
"But Aikiko?" Pristoleph shot back. "What in the name of Azuth's flaming manhood could she possibly have to contribute to this?"
"Nothing," said the dwarf. "She's a mouth-breather if ever one walked under this godsbedamned sun o' yers. But that Kurtsson—the wizard—I think he ensorcelled enough o' the men that the others went along just to make it easy on 'em."
"We did our best, Ivar," Surero almost sobbed from where he sat on the ground. "We couldn't stop them."
Something in the sound of the alchemist's voice cooled Pristoleph. He took a deep breath and the ground under his feet no longer boiled.
"Kurtsson," Pristoleph said. "I know him."
"He works for the Thayan," Surero said.
Pristoleph resisted the urge to look back at the black
firedrakes that still flanked him. He couldn't explain why, but the guards made him uneasy just then. "Rymiit," Pristoleph said.
The Thayan had always been opposed to the canal—he'd always argued against it. His enclave, which had taken complete control of the trade in magic in every corner of Innarlith, would have profited from the continued practice of moving ships and goods to the Vilhon Reach by magical means—even after the Everwind disaster. But Rymiit had been an ally of Pristoleph's—had been instrumental in his seizing the mantle of ransar.
He turned to Devorast, who still stared at the arch, and said, "These two were loyal to you, at least." He paused to sigh. "Loyal...."
"We were gone too long," Devorast said. "Hrothgar and Surero are right."
Pristoleph shook his head and wanted to argue, but he couldn't.
"I still don't understand..." the ransar said. "Aikiko? What did she do? Did she climb into a carriage, make the trip all the way up here, step out, and just seize control? That simpleton?"
Surero shook his head and looked at Devorast then the ground. It was obvious he was reluctant to speak.
"Hells," the dwarf grumbled, "if she'd done that, I'd've knocked 'er out myself."
Pristoleph stared at he dwarf, waiting for more, but the stonecutter looked at Devorast as though waiting for permission to continue.
"Don't tell me Rymiit himself—" the ransar started.
"No," Devorast interrupted. "It wasn't Marek Rymiit."
Pristoleph turned and was confronted by Devorast's back. Devorast stared at the gate, and the ransar waited while the man turned to look back down the length of the canal, which was so long it disappeared over the southern horizon. The blue sky hung dense and humid, quiet save for the distant sounds of work gangs.
Ivar Devorast took a deep breath and said, "It was Willem."
51_^_
16 Tarsakh, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR) The Canal Site
Willem hadn't moved the tent, as had become customary, to the end of the great trench. He couldn't see the portal arch from the tent, and the sound of the bursting smokepowder was subdued enough by the distance that he didn't jump out of his skin every time one went off. And he was far away from the men who looked at him with accusatory glares and grumbled behind his back.
He sat at the drawing table and stared down at one of Ivar Devorast's drawings, a plan for a section of the canal that would never be built. Overwhelmed by a draining melancholy, all he could do was stare at it. He was thirsty but couldn't face the complex and draining task of pouring a glass of water from a pitcher that was just out of reach on another table. When the tent flap rustled and someone stepped in, Willem didn't turn around.
"You had to know I was coming back," Ivar Devorast said.
Willem's shoulders sagged and a pressure pushed on his chest so that he could barely force his lungs to take in air. The tip of his tongue cracked, his mouth was so dry, and he tasted blood. The incessant pain of his teeth flared and he closed his eyes to fight back a tear.
"Willem," Devorast said.
Willem opened his mouth—but not to speak. He couldn't breathe.
"I should have given you some way to contact me," Devorast said, stepping closer.
Willem managed to say, "I would have... used it." "Why, Willem?" Devorast asked.
Willem shook his head and gasped in a breath that seemed to lodge in his throat. A stabbing pain struck his knee and his shoulders pressed down even farther. He felt as though he were being crushed into the damp ground.
"I couldn't stop them," Willem said. His voice was so low, so weak, he could hardly hear it himself. "He compelled—"
Willem's throat closed and he gagged. He wanted to tell Devorast everything. He wanted to tell him that Marek Rymiit had in some way magically compelled him to accept Aikiko and Kurtsson's "help" in finishing the canal. He wanted to tell Devorast he had no choice, that he was just a pawn, as always, of more powerful men, but he couldn't. He couldn't force the words from his mouth.
"Did you come here to kill me?" Willem whispered.
Devorast stepped closer and Willem tensed, certain he would feel a blade pierce the flesh of his quivering back and still his heart. He couldn't decide if that would be such a bad thing at all. His heart beat too fast, and a dull pain spread through his chest like water spilled from a barrel.
"It was my fault," Devorast said.
Willem shook his head.
"It was," Devorast. went on. "I was gone too long." "You..." Willem choked out, "should not have... trusted me."
"I shouldn't have trusted anyone. I should have understood that I have too many enemies to leave for five months or more."
Willem nodded, and though he couldn't remember breathing in, he managed to rasp, "You should have been able to trust me."
Willem waited for Devorast to answer, but there was only silence in the tent behind him. A sharp pain in his head made him close his eyes.
"Ivar?" Willem whispered. "You can't forgive me."
Willem's jaw clenched of its own accord and the agony of his teeth grinding together made him tilt off the stool to sprawl on the floor. He was dimly aware of Devorast
stepping forward to help him, then stepping away when he spun into a crouch, his hands in front of him, his fingers bent to claw at the air.
"Willem," Devorast said. "You're not well."
Willem's head exploded in a shower of liquid agony and the skin on his face tightened, stretching his dry lips into a cracking, painful grimace.
"Pity?" Willem choked out.
He looked up, and with dim, dull vision, saw Devorast's smug, vile, hated face looking at him with condescending pity—looking at him as though Willem were a troubled child who'd done wrong, but couldn't be blamed because he didn't know any better.
Willem rose to his feet, and as he did the pain dropped away, like a tree sheds it leaves in the autumn. By the time he stood to his full height, he was rid of it all, the pain, the shame, the guilt—all of it. And it had been replaced by a single thought, a singular, burning desire.
From a tiny, walled-off portion of his conscious mind Willem knew he wasn't breathing, and could feel that his heart had stopped in his chest. But that was just the smallest part of him, a part too small to stop the rest, and the rest wanted only to kill—to kill Ivar Devorast.
Willem lurched forward, both hands up to grasp Devorast's throat, but the man turned to the side just in time and Willem, overbalanced, staggered past him.
"Willem," Devorast said. "Stop it."
With a feral growl Willem spun and lashed out with a backhand that caught Devorast on the shoulder. It was a weak blow, but it sent Devorast, arms flailing, into the drawing table. Wood cracked and splintered and parchment tore and crumpled as Devorast crashed to the ground.
Willem bent at the waist and twisted, which made something inside him crack and tear, and he grabbed Devorast by his threadbare black vest. Ignoring the sounds of his own body creaking, only half aware of his own pain, Willem lifted Devorast off the ground.
Devorast hit his wrists then tried to dig his fingernails into Willem's forearms, but Willem ignored the sensation that a living human might describe as "pain." He threw Devorast to the ground. When he hit, the air went out of his lungs in a loud grunt that Willem found at once satisfying and disturbing.
He didn't want to kill Ivar Devorast. He had to. He didn't want it to be a long, protracted, painful death, but it would be.
Devorast crawled away from him as Willem lurched forward.
"Willem," Devorast gasped, "what's... happened to you?"
Though Willem wanted to answer, he couldn't. He didn't know what had happened to him, and he didn't want Devorast to know anyway.
"Die," Willem barked out—his voice so shredded and guttural the word was hardly recognizable.
Devorast staggered to his feet and turned to run out of the tent, but Willem lashed at him with his left fist-pulling the punch at just the last instant—and knocked Devorast once more to the ground. He knew that if he'd hit him as hard as he could he would have killed him, and as he tried to understand why he'd spared the life of the man he was absolutely compelled to kill, the last trace of question, the last morsel of will, fled him.
He screamed out his rage—blind, remorseless, unfettered—at the writhing form of his victim, and he stepped forward.
The tent opened and someone stood in front of Willem.
"Surero—no!" Devorast gasped.
Willem didn't recognize the intruder. He saw a face-eyes wide, mouth open—and a body, but that was all. It wasn't a person, not a man with a soul and a history, but a thing between Willem and Devorast, and he couldn't have anything between him and Devorast.
Willem lashed out, and there was no last-instant tempering of the blow, no reprieve for the unknown victim
that should have known better than to step between him and his kill.
Surero's head exploded from the force of Willem's blow. The dry-skinned fist shattered teeth, drove the alchemist's mouth open, and continued on through flesh, bone, brain, and sinew to burst out the other side drenched in blood and saliva.
"No!" Devorast shouted. "Willem!"
Willem stumbled backward, avoiding the headless corpse and blinking from the spray of blood driven up from the alchemist's still-beating heart.
The alchemist.
Willem grunted and blinked—he'd killed... who? Surero.
And that little closed off corner of his consciousness opened just enough, just barely enough, for him to realize what he'd done. That little corner spoke then to the rest of his dead mind and he knew on every level still available to him that he'd killed the wrong man.
Willem took control of his body for one step, then another, and he was out of the tent and running.
52_
17 Tarsakh, the Year of Lightning Sorms (1374 DR) The Canal Site
Iristoleph stood when Devorast opened his eyes. His heart raced and he almost choked on a sip of the cheap local wine he'd found in the tent.
"Surero..." Devorast said, his voice thin and raspy.
Pristoleph shook his head and Devorast closed his eyes. The genasi stood there, looking away, for a long moment while his friend relived the alchemist's death. Pristoleph had to know more.
"What was it that killed him?" he asked. "What was it that infected you?"
"Infected...?"
"You were half dead when a work gang got to the tent," Pristoleph explained. "Surero had been murdered, and you lay dying from some kind of disease. It was as though you were rotting alive, just... deteriorating."
Devorast shook his head and closed his eyes.
"The men said they saw someone run from the tent," Pristoleph continued. "They described some kind of cloying smell, but didn't see the man."
"It was Willem."
Pristoleph hissed with surprise. His eyes narrowed and he looked around the room as though searching for something, but he didn't know what he was looking for.
"How could that be?" asked Pristoleph. "The priestess from the Sisterhood of Pastorals said it was a disease associated with—"
"It was Willem," Devorast interrupted. He struggled to sit up, but Pristoleph held out a calming hand and he lay back down on the narrow, sweat-soaked cot.
"I'm beginning to understand something," Pristoleph said, and waited for Devorast to look at him before he went on. "I saw something at the Thayan Enclave once, some kind of undead creature. Marek Rymiit made it, but he said it was for him, that itwasn't for sale. It wasn't a zombie, like the dockworkers, but... something else. I don't know what."
Devorast closed his eyes and looked away.
"I think," Pristoleph whispered, "that everything I feared has come to pass."
53_
18 Tarsakh, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR) The Nagawater
When Svayyah's right hand broke the surface of the water, she turned it palm up. From below, Devorast's rough
but fascinating features appeared blurred and shifting, and even with eyes accustomed to seeking prey from the safety of the river, she couldn't quite tell if the human was happy or sad. The fact that he'd come to the Nagawater, to the place they had agreed on as a rendezvous point, didn't bode well, though. Ivar Devorast didn't generally visit her with good news. Unless...
He took her hand and Svayyah suppressed a thrilled shudder. Though the man was surely senthissa'ssa—a teacher worthy of emulating—he was human, a lesser being, nonetheless.
Devorast slipped into the water and shivered. When Svayyah finished her spell she touched his cheek. His eyes and the set of his jaw showed the same reluctance he'd always had with the effects of the spell, he opened his mouth, and cautiously at first, drew in a breath of the frigid water. His body lurched and he coughed out a stream of bubbles, which made Svayyah smile. His second breath was better received by lungs that had finally been purged of air. She looked him in the eye and he remained still while she cast a second spell—one that would allow him to speak.
With the air out of his lungs, he was at least a bit less buoyant. When she took him by the hand and whipped her great serpentine body behind her, she had only to expend a bit more effort than normal to carry him down with her to the murky river bottom.
Neither of them spoke as she continued to carry him along, kicking up sediment behind her and scattering the green and brown fish in front of her. A giant frog kicked up a cloud of black mud, startled by the naga's approach, and spared her a frightened glance as it swam at speed to avoid her. Svayyah looked around and remembered a sunken log and a collection of rocks that formed the shape of an arrow. She would come back later, when she was at leisure, to devour the frog.
They soon came to a submerged burrow, one of many that Svayyah had dug over her long lifetime. It was a convenient place to withdraw from the occasional dangers of the wild Nagawater. A place to sleep, eat, or plan. The entrance was barely big enough for her alone, so she pushed Devorast toward it:
When he looked at her with suspicion she said, "Come now, Senthissa'ssa. You wish to speak in private."
Though he hadn't said as much, Svayyah found it a safe assumption, and one that was apparently correct, for Devorast turned and swam in his ungainly human fashion, into the dark hole. The moment he cleared the passage, Svayyah followed.
Past the opening, the burrow was a roughly spherical depression in the muddy riverbank, entirely filled with water. Roots from trees along the bank held the walls together. Devorast felt around along the walls, facing away from her, and Svayyah realized he couldn't see. She dug one hand into the mud wall and found a small gold box. She'd secreted one such box in each of her burrows, and in them were coins and other items of value. She opened the box with a sibilant, hissing sound to deactivate the magical traps that sealed it.
Inside the box was a silver coin minted millennia past by a forgotten civilization. A spell had been cast on it that made it glow with a brilliance that made both Svayyah and Devorast blink. Their eyes adjusted soon enough and they faced each other in the tight confines of the burrow. Svayyah's serpent's body brushed up against the side of Devorast's leg, but the man didn't seem to mind the contact.
"It is safe to speak here," she said,,then raised an eyebrow and waited.
Devorast appeared reluctant to speak, but finally he said, "I came here to tell you that the construction of the canal will be delayed indefinitely."
Svayyah was surprised, and let that show. "That's not what we expected to hear, Senthissa'ssa,"she said.
Before she could go on, Devorast said, "Please, do not call me that."
"It is meant to show respect," Svayyah said. She tried not to be too irritated. After all, as wise and as capable as he seemed to be, Devorast was a human after all. "It means—"
"I know what it means," Devorast interrupted, and he either didn't notice the stern look of reproach she flashed him, or didn't care. Svayyah would have wagered the contents of her little gold box that the latter was true. "Please, call me Ivar."
"Ivar," she said with a tilt of her head. It wasn't an unpleasant sound. "What has happened now? More false nagas sent to kill or confuse you?"
Devorast shook his head. 1
"Your ransar has been unseated?" she ventured. "Or he has withdrawn his support and coin?" t
"None of those things, no," he said. "It was me."
She thought about that word, "me," as he looked away, looked around the burrow without really seeing it. It was a strange concept, the humans had, of considering themselves an individual among many, instead of one of many individuals. Svayyah wondered if they could even understand the distinction.
"I allowed myself to be distracted," Devorast went on.
"It is a common trait among humans," she said, still waiting for a clearer explanation.
Devorast shrugged her comment off and said, "Do you have anything in that box that can help me send a message?"
Svayyah said, "No, but there are other boxes." She thought for a moment then asked, "What has happened?"
"I allowed an enemy in too close, and so did Pristoleph. Even he won't be able to stop him now."
"Explain," Svayyah said, curious about the vagaries of human interaction.
"The Red Wizard I've told you about," he said, "sent agents to install a portal in the canal. He's done something to Willem Korvan, something that made him some kind of monster."
"You've known for some time that the Thayan would be just as happy to see you dead," Svayyah said. "You've told us yourself that this one means to take the canal from you, or destroy it. If he's kept you alive this long, it means he intends to shame you in the process."
Devorast nodded.
"So what has changed?" she asked. "He'll kill Pristoleph, too," Devorast said. "When that happens, I'll only have Hrothgar, and some of the men." "The alchemist?"
"Killed by Willem Korvan," Devorast said, and at that moment Svayyah saw more emotion on the man's face than she'd ever imagined from him. "That was my fault, too."
"It sounds like it was Willem Korvan's fault," she said. "But that aside. You gave us the impression that Pristoleph was stronger than the Thayan, that together the two of you could—"
"Marek Rymiit controls the senate," Devorast said. "And it's the senate that names the ransar. Whoever is named ransar controls the black firedrakes."
"The ransar's guards?"
"If they strip Pristoleph of his title he'll find himself surrounded by acid-spitting monsters that can hide in human form."
Svayyah stopped to consider that, but could find no other conclusion than the one Devorast had come to.
"Then it's over?" she asked.
Devorast didn't reply, and didn't look at her.
"Ah, well," the water naga said, "we were never convinced it was such a good idea after all, all those human ships passing over us—tolls or no tolls."
54
19 Tarsakh, the Yearof Lightning Storms (1374 DR) Second Quarter, Innarlith
Home.
The word itself had lost all meaning to him, but it was both more and less than a word that brought Willem Korvan to his own door. After fleeing the canal, fighting all the while against a compulsion to return-to return and kill Ivar Devorast—Willem wandered south. His dead, numb legs carried him along ground that grew increasingly familiar, even to senses ravaged by undeath.
He entered the city under the cloak of night, crawling in along the edge of where the wall met the rocky shoreline of the Lake of Steam. He thought he might have killed a guard, or even a whole contingent of them, and maybe even more people as he wound his way through the streets of the First Quarter. He couldn't remember for sure. Perhaps there had been no people at all. He thought he could still hear a woman's primal, ragged scream echoing in his ears, but it might have been his imagination—or his inner ears drying and crumbling in his head.
Something that could have been described as memory moved him through the city. There were people in the First Quarter, talking and singing in taverns and fest-halls along the quay and a few blocks deeper in. But when he crossed that invisible but very real line into the Second Quarter, the city went quiet. Candle- and hearth-light burned in windows high above the streets, but not many. Most windows were dark, the residents asleep, or pretending to be so the neighbors, who were themselves pretending to be asleep, wouldn't notice and begin whispering rumors of—
Of what?
Willem had forgotten what he was thinking. He didn't understand himself.
The buildings may as well have been solid to him, boulders or stone towers carved out by wind and water. The streets were as a canyon. The idea that there was anyone inside those structures made no difference to Willem.
There was in fact no reason for Willem to go home. It wasn't a matter of his will or his master's. It was as though his body walked there entirely of its own accord, and for reasons it kept to itself.
The garden gate was never meant to be anything but ornamental, and Willem didn't even think of it until his knee clipped it and the latch broke free to clatter onto the flagstone pathway. He didn't worry that the sound would alert anyone, because it didn't matter.
Though he still had a key in his pocket, when he got to the door and found it locked, he pushed against it, broke that latch, too, and stepped inside.
He looked around at his own foyer and was staggered by a sense of familiarity, but he couldn't put a name to any of the objects there. He had no recollection of where he'd found the little silver things or the ceramic things, or the flat representations of things that hung on the walls.
He stepped in, tracking in mud and horse manure from the streets. He smelled it, but it didn't matter.
A noise from upstairs drew his eyes to the ceiling. He took a step into the house then dragged his other foot behind it, and the door slammed closed. The sound didn't startle him. He took a few more steps into the house, moving for the parlor. He stopped at the foot of the stairs when he head more sounds—someone moving around— from above.
"Willem?" a familiar voice called.
Willem looked up the stairs. It was a woman. Someone he knew.
"Willem, my dear," the voice came back. "Is that you?"
He opened his mouth to respond but had lost, at least for the nonce, the ability to speak. It was something that came and went. What issued from his throat was a dry rattle.
"Willem?" the woman repeated.
Willem could feel the fear in her voice, could smell it in her even from up the stairs. He staggered another step to the bottom of the stairs and waited.
She took two steps down and called his name again. She paused, waiting for an answer, and when she got none she stepped down one more. Willem could see her foot, bare and at the end of a fat, stumplike ankle. Candlelight flickered on the steps.
"I have a dagger," she said, her voice quaking, "and I know how to use it."
Willem stepped back, clearing the foot of the stairs, and watched the feet take two more steps down. She bent to look at him, perhaps seeing his shadow, perhaps merely sensing his presence at the bottom of the stairs. He saw the silver candlestick in her hand.
She had to take one more step down to see him, and just as she lifted her foot, Willem lunged.
Her grabbed the thick, fleshy ankle and pulled. Though she was heavy, Willem was strong, and the woman's feet flew out from under her. She hit the stairs hard on her back and her nightgown flipped up to cover her face as she tumbled down the steps like an overstuffed sack of flour.
Something made Willem step back and he started when his back touched a wall.
Squealing like the terrified pig she was, the woman squirmed about on the floor, pulled her nightclothes from her face, and sat up, the candlestick still in her hand. The candle had fallen out and extinguished itself in its own tumble down the stairs. She held the candlestick in front of her like a weapon to ward him off. She had no dagger, but Willem had known that was a lie the moment she'd said it.
Their eyes met. The woman screamed in horror. Willem recognized her and a word came to him: Mother.
She rolled on the floor, trying to get away from him when he bent toward her. He tried to speak to her, but couldn't. She screamed and screamed and the sound rattled in Willem's ears, then echoed in his head. He didn't like the sound. The sound was bad, and he wanted it to stop.
Willem grabbed his mother by the back of her head, his fingers twisting her hair. He pulled her head up and mouthed the word "Mother," but she couldn't see his lips. She screamed even louder, so loudly that Willem had to close his eyes, though that didn't actually do anything to make the noise stop. He smashed her face against the floor and the scream was momentarily combined with a wet crack, then she quieted to a moaning, sickly sound that made Willem's dead flesh crawl, so he smashed her face down again.
Her body convulsed and her legs kicked out. He drove her face once more into the ever-increasing puddle of hot, sticky blood and broken teeth. She kicked one more time then was still.
He let go of her head and stepped back. His right knee gave out and he fell, then scrambled back on his hands, fetching up against the door.
He opened his mouth to scream, but when he did his eyes fell on the corpse of his mother and he heard the sound of her blood, dripping at first then pouring over the lip of the single step that led into the parlor.
A barely-audible rattle escaped his wide-opened mouth.
He climbed to his feet, using the wall to steady him, and burst out the front door. The street outside was quiet, and he soon found the cold embrace of a dark alley. There he clawed at the brick wall and tried to think about what he'd just done. He tried to weep, but quickly forgot why, and instead just clamped his teeth shut and shook his head.
There's another, he thought. There was a better one.
A better—what? He didn't know. He staggered away, not even conscious that his lips mouthed the name "Halina."
55_
19 Tarsakh, the Yearof Lightning Storms (1374 DR) Pristal Towers, Innarlith
Had Wenefir not thought to cast a spell to protect him from the ravages of heat and fire, he likely would have been dead after his first few breaths in Pristoleph's private chamber. The braziers had all been piled high with wood, and torches blazed so bright and hot on sconces all along the walls that the already black stone behind them was beginning to melt.
And in the center of that furnace stood Pristoleph, his strange red hair replaced by a crown of dancing, sizzling flame. His eyes blazed yellow and smoke began to billow from his robes.
"Ransar," Wenefir called, feeling he had to shout over the roar of the flames. "Pristoleph—how long have you been in here?"
Pristoleph looked at him and shook his head, making the flames on his scalp quiver.
Wenefir swallowed and looked away, terrified by the genasi's fiery gaze.
"Ransar," he said. "Please. Let me help you. What is it you require?"
"What is it I require?" the ransar shot back, and though he didn't want to look, Wenefir thought flames shot from his mouth and smoke puffed from his nostrils. "What is it I require?"
The heat grew so intense that even Wenefir's Cyric-granted spells began to fail him.
"Please, Pristoleph," he said. "You'll burn the place down. For the Mad God's sake, please."
Pristoleph took a deep breath and the flames died down a little—as if he'd drawn them into his lungs.
"Better," Wenefir said, risking a smile. "Thank you."
"I don't suppose you can explain what happened while I was away," the ransar said, his eyes losing some of their fire but none of their intensity.
Wenefir swallowed again and said, "You left Willem Korvan in charge. I—"
"I left no one in charge, Seneschal," Pristoleph interrupted. "Devorast trusted Korvan. That was his mistake. I trusted the Thayan, and that was mine. Tell me, Wenefir, my oldest friend, which was the greater mistake?"
"Perhaps neither," Wenefir chanced.
A spark of yellow darted through Pristoleph's eyes when he said, "The nerve of them."
"It was a risk on their part, indeed," Wenefir concurred. "But perhaps there was no real effort to undermine your authority."
"Undermining Devorast undermines me," said the ransar.
"As you have said, Ransar, but consider this," Wenefir said. "Korvan, Kurtsson, and Aikiko were trying to help. Perhaps there was a difference of... vision, but—"
"Damn it, Wenefir!" Pristoleph shouted, and all of the fires burst hotter and bigger to punctuate it before moderating once more. "There can be only one vision."
Not fully understanding, Wenefir replied, "But surely you agree that Devorast could never have finished something so great on his own."
Shaking his head, Pristoleph said, "Something so great can only be done by one man alone."
Wenefir, his eyes narrow and his brow furrowed, shook his head.
"You don't understand, do you?" the ransar asked.
Wenefir replied, "Not entirely, no, but I think I understand you, Pristoleph. After all this time, who but me could?"
"And?"
"And I hope that you will see that no harm was done to you while you were away."
Pristoleph looked deep into Wenefir's eyes, and the Cyricist's knees shook.
"I have your loyalty, still, after all this time?" asked Pristoleph.
"You do," Wenefir said, and it wasn't entirely a lie.
"Then do this," Pristoleph commanded, the fires rising when he squared his broad shoulders. "Send for the wemics, and have them place the Vaasan wizard Kurtsson, Senators Korvan and Aikiko, and the Thayan Marek Rymiit under arrest."
"Under arrest?" Wenefir asked, stalling. Despite the dangerous heat in the chamber, the priest's blood ran cold. "On what charge?"
"For Willem Korvan, the charge is murder," Pristoleph said, and Wenefir almost gasped at the look of grief that came over his old friend. "He murdered the alchemist Surero in clear view of at least one witness. Beware, though, he is no longer human, but some sort of diseased undead."
"And the others?"
"Treason."
"But the Thayan-"
"What of him?" Pristoleph asked through clenched teeth. The fire on the top of his head blazed hot yellow and Wenefir had to blink and turn his face away.
"He is not, technically ... legally speaking, one of your subjects, Ransar," Wenefir explained. "He stands on Thayan soil when he is in his enclave, and I surely doubt that he'll leave there until you—" he paused and swallowed once more—"forgive me, Ransar... cool down."
"Thayan soil____" Pristoleph sneered.
"Perhaps an investigation first," Wenefir suggested, hoping to stall the ransar in any way possible. "If we have the proper evidence, an appeal can be made to the Thayan
authorities. After all, Marek Rymiit is not without superiors of his own."
"An investigation ..." Pristoleph growled. He seemed to be biting his tongue. "Very well. But Willem Korvan is a murderer, and he became a citizen of the city-state of Innarlith when he became a senator. Find him and destroy him."
Wenefir, caring not the slightest bit for the fate of Willem Korvan, bowed and got out of that room as fast as he could.
56__
20 Tarsakh, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR) The Sisterhood of Pastorals, Innarlith
The wall was high, but not impossible to climb. Willem looked up and saw the glow of the broken glass that had been mortared to the top of it, reflecting the wan light of the coming dawn. He dug his fingernails—talons, really, that had grown an inch in one night—into the space between the smooth rocks. Moving slowly but with purpose, he scaled the wall. When the broken glass tore his trousers and bit into his legs, he didn't care, and he didn't bleed.
Willem dropped to the mud between two shrubs and kneeled in the darkness of the wall's shadow. He moved his head from side to side, and though he didn't actually draw any air into his lungs—he no longer needed to do that—he was sure of the smell of her.
The name came to him once more—Halina—but it faded as quickly as it came, and there was only his quarry, his prey. There was only a goal he didn't understand.
He crossed the manicured grounds, his chin up, his nose trolling the air for the scent. He found it again, and it was as though a finger formed in the air to point him in the right direction.
He followed the scent to a shorter stone wall, one more ornamental than the high wall that surrounded the place.
Willem didn't know exactly where he was. He was on the grounds of some kind of building, and there was something about that building, about the ground itself, that repelled him as much as the scent attracted him.
He stepped over the little wall and found himself in a graveyard.
Maybe three dozen stones had been scattered, seemingly at random, on the cut grass. None more than three feet tall, they were simple and carved with names.
Willem sniffed the air again and stepped between the stones.
The sound of a voice drifted from far away, carried on the cool pre-dawn air. Willem looked in the direction he thought the voice had come from, but he saw nothing. Looking into the shadows he felt a sense of impending doom wash over him, so strong he almost fell to his knees.
He shook his head when the scent intruded on him—if it even was a scent. It could have been more an impulse—a need to find her.
Whatever the mechanism, Willem knew she was close, and he was certain that when he found her, she would make everything all right. She would save him. He didn't know her name or how they knew each other. He could form no picture of her in his reeling, increasingly dull mind. But he knew her, and he knew she was—
There.
Under the ground, buried.
He let a ragged growl tremble unvoiced in his throat, and he fell to his knees in front of a stone. His fingers found the engraving and traced the letters. He blinked but couldn't see them, and though he wasn't conscious of being able to read, he knew the letters came together to spell her name.
Halina.
"Who is that there?" a woman called out to him.
He jumped to his feet, his head spinning, and cast about for the source of the voice.
Though so much of what was left of him longed for it to be her, he knew it wasn't Halina.
"By the Blessed—" the woman shrieked.
He saw her step out from behind a tree, just inside the low wall around the cemetery. She clutched at her chest. The light from her lantern lit her face from below, twisting her features into a grotesque mockery of human.
Willem, overwhelmed by the need to kill the woman, moved toward her, his hands poised to rip her head from her shoulders. The woman raised the thing she'd clutched at her neck for and a brilliant white light overwhelmed Willem's vision.
He couldn't see any details of the symbol, but he knew what it was. The power of a goddess he was unfit to name rolled over him like a thunderhead rolls across an open plain.
He turned and ran. His legs moved, and his arms bounced at his sides. He couldn't think. The need to find Halina was gone, the overwhelming necessity to kill Ivar Devorast also fled, and all that was left was the immediate, irrepressible need just to get away.
The woman drove him before her, and he ran all the way to the high wall. He climbed it faster than before, cut himself more deeply, too, but once he was over he ran and ran and ran into the growing light of the awakening city.
By the time he found an abandoned shed behind a ramshackle storefront in which to hide, there was nothing left of Willem Korvan. The man had been erased, and the monster knew only one thing.
Kill.
Kill Ivar Devorast.
57
20Tarsakh, the Year ofLightning Storms (1374 DR) Berrywilde
f*hyrea heard someone call her name. In the dark, still expanse of the country estate, she had heard her name come from nowhere before, had for years spoken with apparitions of violet light, but the voice that came to her that night was different.
She lay in a tub of warm water that she'd scented with lavender oil. The little knife she'd brought from the kitchen lay on the marble tile within easy reach, but she hadn't cut herself yet. The little girl floated a few inches off the floor in the corner of the room, adding a purple glow to the orange candlelight.
"I like your dress," Phyrea told the little girl. "It's pretty."
The girl grimaced—an expression that looked wrong on her baby face—but she didn't say anything. After a tenday at Berrywilde, they had spoken enough.
They'd told her again and again that Pristoleph meant to destroy them. They told her that her father was still alive but that he'd abandoned her, and the only family she had left was them. They begged her to kill herself, then they demanded that she do it, then they begged some more. They made her cry more than once, and she even put a knife to her throat one night. She looked the old woman in the eyes, then, and the desperation she saw there, the longing, almost made her slit her own throat, but she didn't. Even days later she didn't know why she'd spared her own life.
Just then all she wanted was to sit in a lavender-scented bath, close her eyes, and soak as much in the silence as the water.
You've already become one of us, you know, the little girl said. You just don't know it yet.
Phyrea looked at her, met her eyes, and smiled. The girl faded away.
And that was when she heard her name.
She closed her eyes and whispered, "Leave me alone. I'll die soon enough."
Phyrea.
She shook her head and was about to speak, when the voice came again.
Stay away from the canal.
"Ivar," she said, and her eyes flickered open.
She sat up in the tub and looked behind her. There he was—made of the same violet light as the rest of them.
Phyrea, I know you can hear me.
"Ivar," she whispered. "Can you see me?"
She looked at his eyes, but they didn't meet hers. He stood, his feet an inch off the floor, and he looked up at the ceiling. When he spoke, the movement of his lips didn't quite match the sound of his voice—a voice that sounded in her head, but not in her ears.
Tell Pristoleph. It isn't safe.
"Where are you?" she asked, the sound of her own voice so loud in the otherwise silent house that it startled her. I'm not there. I'll find you. She blinked and he was gone. "Ivar?" she whispered.
She gasped and held the breath. She rose to her knees and came part of the way out of the bath water. There was no sign of him, and no sound in either her ears or her head. Tears welled in her eyes and she wiped them away with a lavender-scented forearm.
"Ivar?" she whispered. "What's happened?"
There's no one here named Ivar, the man with the scar on his face said.
The cool violet glow once again mixed with the candlelight, but she didn't look at it. She knew it wasn't Devorast.
"He was here," Phyrea whispered.
No one was here, the man said.
They didn't see him, Phyrea thought. They didn't hear him.
She let herself sink back into the tub so that only her face was above water.
"Why would he warn me away?" she whispered.
Because he is finished with you, said the old woman.
He doesn't want you anymore, the melancholy woman added.
"He looked like you," Phyrea whispered. "Is he dead?"
She sat up straight in the tub, her jaw clenched tight and her hands shaking.
"He's dead," she said, again too loudly, startling herself and sloshing water from the tub. It splashed onto the knife, which slid a few inches across the slick marble floor.
"Is he dead?" she whispered, and reached for the knife.
She gasped for a breath and felt her chest tighten around her heart as though her own body meant to squeeze the life out of her.
"Ivar?" she gasped. "Are you alive?"
No, the old woman said. He's dead.
He has to be dead, the little girl said.
There's only one way to see him now, said the sad woman.
Phyrea sank the blade of the kitchen knife into her forearm and screamed through the pain that made her hands stop shaking. She cut herself again and she could breathe.
She held her eyes closed until the initial wave of pain passed, then she opened them to see that the room was lit only by the orange glow of her candles.
58__
23 Tarsakh, the Yearof Lightning Storms (1374 DR) Pristal Towers, Innarlith
The forces aligned against you are too great," Wenefir said.
He stared at Pristoleph, waiting for some response, but the ransar sat in silence, staring at the crystal balls. Not one of them showed anything but a reflection of the room in which they sat. They had stopped working all at once, and the arcane words that Marek Rymiit had given Pristoleph failed to bring them back to life.
"Ransar?" Wenefir asked.
Still Pristoleph sat in silence, ignoring his seneschal. "Pristoleph...." Wenefir said.
Pristoleph's hair flickered on his head, and Wenefir brought to mind the spell that would keep him from being burned should the ransar's temper once again get the better of him.
"Is it raining?" Pristoleph asked.
"Wh—pardon me?" Wenefir responded. "Is it raining... outside?"
Pristoleph nodded. "Yes, Ransar."
"I thought so," said Pristoleph. "I could feel it."
"Yes, well, be that as it may," Wenefir pressed on, keeping his voice low and calm. "I'm convinced you must allow Kurtsson and Aikiko to finish the canal their way. Master Rymiit will provide for the operation of the portal. He's willing to entertain a mutually acceptable arrangement for the collection of tolls and associated fees for that service. The Thayan Enclave will maintain the magic and guarantee its safety and accuracy."
Pristoleph smoothed one of his eyebrows with the tip of a finger. Wenefir had never seen that gesture.
"As your closest advisor," Wenefir went on, "I advise you to agree to this."
"Do you?" Pristoleph asked. He didn't seem surprised, and Wenefir could tell he was disappointed.
"There's nothing for it, Pristoleph," he said.
The ransar smiled and said, "There's always..."
After a moment, Wenefir realized that Pristoleph didn't intend to finish his thought, so he said, "Is it that
bad? Is it really some defeat?" "Wenefir-"
"It has come down to a simple choice," Wenefir interrupted, and pressed on even when Pristoleph turned to give him a dangerous look. "The time has come to choose between Ivar Devorast and Marek Rymiit."
"Has it?" Pristoleph asked, his eyes flashing yellow. "Has it really come down to that? And of course you would have me chose the Thayan."
"The Thayan, yes," Wenefir said. "And why not? It was the Thayan that helped make you ransar, after all, not Devorast. You want a canal. You want ships to stop in Innarlith from the ports of Cormyr and Sembia on their way to Baldur's Gate and Waterdeep, and vice versa. What could it possibly matter to you if those ships float on water or on magic?"
Pristoleph looked away, again staring at the blank, useless crystal balls. Wenefir sighed and his shoulders sagged.
"I'm tired," Wenefir said.
"Tired of me?" the ransar asked. "After all these years?"
Wenefir took a moment to consider his answer then said, "No, Pristoleph. The truth is I still admire you. In-ways that I'll probably never understand I'm still that gutter kid, the castrated chimney rat that you rescued, that you dragged up with you into a life worth living."
"What then?"
"I'm tired of being dragged," Wenefir admitted, "up or otherwise."
"I didn't drag you to Cyric," Pristoleph said.
"Careful, now," Wenefir replied, bringing to mind a prayer that would do much more than protect him from fire. "Invoke his name at your peril, Ransar."
Pristoleph sighed and ran his fingers through his flamelike hair.
"Why not choose everything?" the priest asked.
"Everything?"
"Everything," Wenefir replied. "The Thayan's magic, the support of the senate, the rights and privileges of Ransar of Innarlith, and the canal."
"I thought I had," the ransar said.
"Is that what you wish me to convey to the Thayan?" Wenefir asked.
He waited while Pristoleph sat in silence. It didn't appear as though the ransar was thinking it over. He seemed to just be sitting there. Wenefir hoped that was a good sign. He'd never seen Pristoleph, not in the forty-four years of their friendship, resign himself to anything, but Wenefir hoped there was a first time for everything.
"Where is Willem Korvan?" Pristoleph asked.
Wenefir blinked and shook his head, surprised by the question.
"Wenefir?" the ransar prompted.
"No one knows," Wenefir replied.
"He will have to be found," Pristoleph said. "He must be put down for the murder of Surero."
Wenefir didn't smile, but he wanted to. He said, "I'm certain that between Marek Rymiit and myself, with Cyric's blessing, he will be found. And when he is, he will face the ransar's justice."
"And in return for that," Pristoleph said, "I will have to allow Kurtsson and Aikiko to finish the canal. I will have to betray the promise I made, the word I gave, to Ivar Devorast."
"Yes," Wenefir said, not happy with the way things were starting to go.
"And the fact that Devorast is a better man than any of them together, a greater man, a man more worthy of so great an undertaking, matters not at all."
"I understand that it matters to you, my friend," Wenefir said. "But you are ransar now. Not every decision is an easy one, and not every decision can be made based on your admiration for one man's ideas."
"The world turns on the ideas of one man."
Wenefir chewed on his bottom lip, for all appearances | considering thcransar's point, but instead he just stood i waiting
"That's not much of a trade for one murderous senator," Pristoleph said.
"It's not the canal for Korvan," Wenefir said, stepping forward for emphasis, because he absolutely needed to be heard. "If you allow Marek Rymiit's people to finish the canal, you will be allowed to remain as ransar."
Wenefir didn't breathe again until it became painful. He knew Pristoleph wouldn't like anything about the words "be allowed to," but knowing him for more than four decades gave him only moderate insight into what he would do in response.
"Do you have an answer I can convey to the enclave?" Wenefir asked.
"No," Pristoleph said, not looking at him, barely raising his voice enough to be heard. "Your services as seneschal are no longer required."
59_
23 Tarsakh, the Yearof Lightning Storms (1374 DR) The Canal Site