Lies of Light

by Philip Athans

  “Nothing was missing of my cargo or personal items,” she said. “I am sure she was alone.”

  “And you have a sensitive man….”

  Ran Ai Yu let that pass.

  “Would you like me to inform the master builder?” he asked.

  “If you feel that would be proper.”

  Ran Ai Yu let her gaze drift up from the flowers to the towering ramparts of the Palace of Many Spires. One tower in particular struck her eye. It was newer than the others and possessed of an ethereal beauty that was out of place in the otherwise underwhelming city of Innarlith.

  “I find it difficult, sometimes,” the ransar said, “to determine precisely what is and what isn’t proper. It can plague one, don’t you agree?”

  “With all honor and respect, Ransar, but I do not. I have come to know many of the ways of Innarlith, so to me I am not surprised by what you have been so kind to confide in me, but in my realm we are schooled from our youngest age—from before we can even speak—in the ways of polite and civilized society. We are taught always to know what is proper in any situation. It is the blood and sinew of our very culture.”

  What she’d said seemed to please him, and he replied, “Well then I guess I will have to rely on you to tell me if it would be proper for a man like me to ask to see a woman like you in a social setting.”

  Ran Ai Yu was struck momentarily dumb. She wasn’t even entirely certain what the ransar was asking.

  “I am certain we will encounter each other again at receptions and such,” she said. “My business demands that I—”

  “Tell me if you are uncomfortable with my advances, Ran Ai Yu,” he said, his voice sending a chill down the Shou woman’s spine.

  “I am uncomfortable only because I have been here so long, and have been unable to unload precious cargo for trade in Innarlith,” she said.

  He sighed at the change in subject and said, “There are men in this city who are inflaming the passions of the working class, though I have no idea of the purpose behind it. I strive diligently, I assure you, to take matters in hand. You will unload your cargo when limited resources make it possible.”

  “It is warm today,” she said.

  Ransar Osorkon grunted in the affirmative.

  “I arrived on the twelfth day of Alturiak,” she said. “Though I greatly enjoy your city and its people, now it is four months gone by, the warm winds of summer blow, and still my ship is at anchor in the harbor.”

  “Take your complaints to the harbor master,” the ransar replied.

  Ran Ai Yu nodded and changed the subject. “I have been to visit the site of the canal that Ivar Devorast constructs in your name. It is of great interest to me, to one day be able to sail into the Sea of Fallen Stars, which I have long heard tell of, but have never seen.”

  “Devorast didn’t tell you that he was building it in my name, did he?”

  “I only assumed.”

  The ransar sighed, and Ran Ai Yu risked a glance at his face. His pinkish skin had turned a deeper red, and she could feel that he was embarrassed by her rebuff.

  “It honors you, nonetheless,” she told him.

  “Devorast….” said the ransar. “Now that one is haunted.”

  “But not in the same way as the master builder’s unfortunate daughter?”

  “No,” Osorkon replied. “Devorast is haunted by his own greatness. If the son of a whore had an once of political ambition I would have had to have him killed a long time ago.”

  It was Ran Ai Yu’s turn to be embarrassed. She said, “She knows Ivar Devorast, yes?”

  “Phyrea?”

  Ran Ai Yu nodded, and the ransar shrugged and said, “I suppose so.”

  “I think she came to my ship because he built it.”

  “Devorast built your ship?”

  “He did, yes,” said the Shou merchant, “some three years ago.”

  “That’s right,” the ransar said. “He did build ships.”

  They went a few slow steps in silence, and Ran Ai Yu could no longer ignore the feeling that he wanted her to leave.

  “I will allow you to proceed with your day, Ransar,” she said. “Please accept my most humble thanks for the honor of your time, and your garden.”

  He stopped walking and turned to look at her. Though she didn’t want to, etiquette demanded she do the same.

  “I will try to convey to the master builder that his daughter is haunted,” he said with a trace of a bow, “by Ivar Devorast, and other ghosts.”

  She didn’t believe him, because it was obvious then that he didn’t believe her. Still, she bowed, thanked him, and went back to her ship.

  18

  11 Kythorn, the Year of the Sword (1365 DR)

  THE CHAMBER OF LAW AND CIVILITY, INNARLITH

  Willem Korvan wasn’t drunk, but he had been drinking. He’d come straight from the inn where he’d been with Halina. He still smelled of her—or at least he feared he did, but it was the smell of the wine he feared most. The air inside the giant chamber that served as a meeting room—a sort of temple—for the senate of Innarlith was dry and hot. Though it was many dozens of times the size of the room in the inn, he felt more closed in by the senate chamber. He found it more difficult to breathe there.

  “Do you think it a waste of your time, my boy,” the master builder said, “if I tell you again how proud I am of you?”

  Willem couldn’t answer, so he shook his head.

  But I can’t believe this, he told himself. She can’t be the one I end up with. My mother is right. Marek Rymüt is right. They’re all right. Halina is wrong.

  “You’ve done well these past months, Willem,” Inthelph droned on. “We are all very happy with you—all your generous patrons.”

  He thought of a dozen sycophantic replies to that but spoke none of them. He couldn’t muster the energy to push that much air out of his lungs.

  “But you should also know that I expect more of you than a vote in these chambers,” Inthelph went on.

  His voice made Willem’s skin crawl. The master builder spoke to him in paternal tones, and Willem wanted nothing more than to strike out. He couldn’t gather the strength to speak to him, but he felt sure he could snap the old man’s neck in the blink of an eye. They were alone in the chamber, after all. It would be a simple enough thing to concoct a story—a tragic fall, almost silly really, that such a great man might trip on a stair and fall just so as to break his neck. No one would question, would they? Would they take the master builder’s still corpse to a priest and inquire of his departed soul? Would Inthelph accuse Willem from beyond the grave? It was the sort of thing one had to consider, though they never did that with Khonsu….

  “Though you’re a senator now you’re still a very talented young man, and the city needs your talents, perhaps now more than ever.”

  But then the old man was wrong, wasn’t he? Willem had no talent—none at all—save the talent for impressing easily impressed old men and shy, bookish foreign women. He couldn’t build anything. He couldn’t leave a legacy, or a mark on the world. But he could kiss withered old arse with the best of them. Willem desperately craved more wine, or something stronger.

  “I just simply deplore the notion that any serious program of public works should proceed without your involvement. It’s a disservice to the city, the ransar, and the people of Innarlith—a grave disservice indeed.”

  Willem tried to sigh, but had no strength to do it, so he just sat there trying to keep a picture of Devorast’s canal from forming in his head. They both knew that that was what the master builder was talking about. But apparently only Willem knew that there was no way in all Nine screaming bloody Hells that he would be able to build it. Willem couldn’t even really imagine the thing. He understood the basic concept of course: Build a trench from the shore of the Lake of Steam to the bank of the Nagaflow and somehow fill it with water to form a man-made river. But it was such a long way, and would have to be so deep.

  “I’m sure
you know that the ransar will soon enough discover the sort of man your old friend Ivar Devorast is, after all. That fool—it’s Tymora’s most fickle whimsy that the man has avoided his unfortunate patron’s wrath this long. I mean, honestly….”

  Maybe, Willem thought, this ransar is not as stupid as you or I. Maybe he understands that though Devorast was no one’s idea of a sparkling conversationalist, he was perhaps the only human being on the whole of spinning Toril that might ever have even conceived of the thing, let alone was in possession of the skills necessary to see it done. If the master builder insisted that Willem finish the canal, he would have to do it, and he would have to fail.

  “But that’s all just fancy now, isn’t it? We’ll let it be as it may, yes?”

  Yes, yes, yes, Willem thought. Let it be. Let it be damned with the both of them to the endless Abyss. Willem rubbed his face, and an image of Halina came unbidden to his mind’s eye. She lay naked on the bed in the inn where he’d left her. She smiled at him in that way she had of smiling at him that made him not want to kill himself.

  “Really, Willem, I worry about you. You don’t look all together well. Please tell me you’ve been sleeping. It’s sleep that is the finest tonic for any man’s body and soul. You’ve earned some rest, at least until you are called upon to finish some endeavor or another for your dear adopted home.”

  Rest? Sleep? With Halina, yes, two or three days out of every ten. The rest of the time he couldn’t sleep. No half dozen bottles of wine could make him pass out, even. All he did was sit at home in the dark and think, the sound of his mother’s snoring wafting through the strangely unfamiliar halls of his townhouse. That sound reminded him of his childhood, and was just barely enough to keep him from opening his veins in the wee hours before dawn, but the house he’d bought was no home for him.

  “Perhaps you need a diversion, or better yet, a family. You know my feelings on this, Willem, and I think Phyrea’s coming around. In fact, I know for a fact she is. By the Merchantfriend’s jingling purse, my boy, I’ve long considered you a son—a part of the family already. Marry Phyrea, Willem, and let’s make that truly the case, eh?”

  Marry Phyrea? The thought made his head spin more than the wine or the memory of the softness of Halina’s skin. Phyrea had shown him nothing but scathing contempt, and her mouth-breathing old imbecile of a father thought that she was “coming around?” Her disdain was something Willem carried around with him like other men carried knives. It had become a comfortable part of him. Marry Phyrea? He had a better chance of wedding Chauntea herself in a grand ceremony in the Great Mother’s Garden.

  “I suppose you’ve heard the things she’s been saying about you. My daughter has become quite the devotee of Senator Willem Korvan. She’s mentioned you to the ransar himself—to all the finest people. She’s sung your praises to Marek Rymüt, and even to some visiting celestial from Shou Lung … you’ve met him, haven’t you? The tall, willowy one that looks even more like an elf than the rest of his kind. She’s made you something of a cause. All the wives are gossiping. They’ve sussed out her motives and I swear the wives of half the senators in Innarlith have already bought their dresses for the wedding.”

  The master builder was too stupid to have invented that. It must be true. But how? Why? How cold it possibly serve Phyrea to turn her opinion of him so sharply that she would even bother to criticize him in the higher social circles, let alone praise him. But the master builder couldn’t be making it up. And what of Halina?

  “Oh, gods …” Willem muttered, his gorge rising in his throat.

  “Goodness gracious, Willem,” Inthelph cooed, putting a dry, bony hand on his back. “You aren’t well, are you?”

  “I’m fine,” he managed to say. “I’m just …”

  The master builder laughed—a cackling, old man’s laugh—and said, “My daughter can have that effect on men, can’t she?”

  Willem nodded once then emptied his stomach onto the floor of the senate chamber.

  19

  12 Kythorn, the Year of the Sword (1365 DR)

  THE LAND OF ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN

  While Salatis stood in slack-jawed amazement, Marek Rymüt stood behind him and wove a spell that would, as he’d heard the Zulkir of Enchantment once say, “soften the ground a bit.” It hadn’t taken trust for Marek to bring Salatis to his pocket dimension. He would either be able to depend on the man, or he’d be able to kill him. But what he wanted more than the man’s trust was his word.

  “Where are we?” the senator asked, the words sounding hollow because he couldn’t seem to get his lips to come together. “Beshaba protect us from her own ill will.”

  “Beshaba now, is it?” Marek asked.

  He leaned in closer to the tall, angular man. Marek had to reach up a little to take the senator’s pendant in his hand. Finely crafted of red enamel over silver, the antlers depicted there had been carved from a single thin shard of ebony. Though he’d expected Salatis to move away at his advance, the senator stood stock still, gazing out over the abrupt confines of the Land of One Hundred and Thirteen. Marek took the opportunity to study the man a little more closely.

  He stood fully nine inches over six feet, but surely weighed less—by dozens of pounds even—than did Marek. Where Marek was bald, his head adorned with the tattoos of a Red Wizard, Salatis sported a full, healthy head of hair. A Chondathan, his hair was dark, but age and other difficulties had traced it with gray.

  “What in the name of the Maid of Misfortune are those things?” Salatis asked.

  “They are black firedrakes,” Marek answered. “Do you like them?”

  Insithryllax wheeled in the sky overhead, a cadre of firedrakes surrounding him in close formation. Salatis looked up, and his breath caught in his throat.

  “M-Master Rymüt …”

  “Never fear,” said Marek.

  Salatis tried to run when Insithryllax reeled down to land on the hill next to them. Marek took the senator by the arm and held him. He could feel the tall man shake, and his skin was clammy and cold. The dirt shuddered under the dragon’s considerable weight when it came to ground, and Salatis almost fell to his knees.

  “Stand,” Marek commanded. “This is Insithryllax. Though he will never be your subject, I would like for him to consider you an equal in the months and years ahead of us. Isn’t that as we discussed, Insithryllax?”

  Marek knew that the sound the black dragon made just then was a laugh, but Salatis surely assumed it was a growl.

  “Insithryllax,” the senator said, his voice shaking only a little less than his body.

  “Ransar,” the wyrm rumbled.

  Salatis gasped and Marek sighed.

  “Well, the cat’s out of the bag now, isn’t it,” said the Red Wizard.

  “What do you mean?” Salatis asked. “Lady Doom has held me in the embrace of the barbs of her Ill Fortune. I am not the ransar.”

  “You haven’t told him?” the black dragon asked.

  “Not yet,” said the Red Wizard. “I wanted him to see first. After all, I’m not giving him the Palace of Many Spires, only the means to gain it for himself.”

  “You’re giving me …?” Salatis began.

  “Really, Salatis,” Marek said, “if you’re going to be the ransar you’ll eventually have to complete a thought. I know it’s a lot to take in, my friend, but it’s happening, I assure you. You’re here, on a plane of existence of my own creation, and what you see before you are creatures made by my hand, with the indispensable assistance of my dear friend the black wyrm Insithryllax. They are the black firedrakes, and I give them to you.”

  Salatis shook his head and muttered, “I fear the Maid of Misfortune. I beg her to ignore me.”

  “Oh, please, Senator. Your mistress may have her way with us from time to time, but I assure you we petty mortals make our own luck. And it was neither Beshaba nor her sister who brought me to you.”

  “What can I do with these things?” the senator asked.


  “The black firedrakes? Well, if you insist on getting ahead of ourselves, let’s discuss precisely that. They were created, by me, from the cross-breading of ordinary firedrakes captured from the northern shores of the Lake of Steam with my boon companion Insithryllax. He proved to be a hearty source of fatherly essence”—the dragon took a bow—“and the black firedrakes were born. After some months of nurturing, some half dozen or so began to exhibit unusually high functionality. I have put them in command of units of various sizes, though I admit that military organization is of little interest to me, so you may want to reorganize them to fit your own needs. You will be able to do so at your whim.”

  “My whim….” Salatis said, perhaps just trying to get used to the idea.

  “Indeed,” Marek said. “My gift to you.”

  “An army of dragon-men?” asked the senator. “To invade Innarlith?”

  “Well …” Marek replied. “Not to put too fine a point on it.”

  The senator watched the firedrakes move around each other in silence. Some were in human form, some in the their natural shapes. He seemed equally interested in both, which Marek took as a good sign.

  “Why me?” Salatis asked.

  “I could give you any number of false answers, Senator,” Marek said, “but I shan’t. Suffice it to say that you have been recruited.”

  The black dragon’s laugh rumbled through the stale air and was met with shrieks and calls from the surrounding firedrakes. Marek could see Salatis’s skin crawl, but the hint of a smile played at the edges of the tall man’s lips.

  “You will command the firedrakes,” Marek explained. “I will continue to control the tradesmen.”

  “The tradesmen?” said the senator, turning finally to look at Marek. “It’s you, then? No one even suspects that.”

  Marek sketched a sarcastic bow and equally insincere smile, and said, “The comfort of the aristocracy has always been in the hands of the common man, Senator. Control their comforts, and you control them. Control them, and you control the city.”