Lies of Light

by Philip Athans

  The murmur that swept through the senate chamber was as forced as it was predictable.

  “The near-continuous efforts of a small army of craftsmen has done honor to the city of their birth, to their ransar, their senate, and the man who so capably leads them in their historic endeavor. Of course, that man of whom I speak is Ivar Devorast.”

  The name sent a shockwave of affected outrage through the senate, and the ransar smiled.

  “Oh, I know how you feel about Devorast,” Osorkon continued, his tone conversational, as though the whole of the assembled senators was but one man. “Believe me, he can be”—a well-placed pause—“frustrating, at times. But does the city-state benefit from his genius or his charisma? Considering Master Devorast’s considerable—”

  “Master Devorast?” Salatis shouted from the floor of the senate. He stood, turning once to each side to indicate that he addressed his fellow senators. There were a few hisses, but most if not all of the men in that room expected someone to interrupt eventually. “Surely the ransar errs in the use of that title. For the city of Innarlith has but one master builder, and his name is Inthelph.”

  Osorkon looked to Inthelph’s chair, and a few of the senators patted him on the shoulders, then urged him to stand. The master builder stood, bowed, then sat again, not once looking the ransar in the eye.

  “You all know of my deep respect and affection for the master builder,” Osorkon said. “Was it not I who appointed him, after all? No, when I used that appellation it was to honor a foreign dignitary.”

  “He is no dignitary, this man,” Salatis broke in. “He is a commoner in the realm of his birth, not important enough, loved or respected enough, to be kept close by his king’s side. If Cormyr recognized his so-called genius, why would Ivar Devorast be here?”

  “In that, my dear old friend,” Osorkon said to Salatis, “I will simply be happy that King Azoun’s loss is Innarlith’s gain.”

  “Need I remind you that you are no king, sir?” Salatis said.

  A hush fell over the assembly then, all eyes darting back and forth between Osorkon on the podium, and Salatis alone standing among the seated senators.

  “No,” replied the ransar. “You need not remind me of that, Senator. I meant only that the kingdom of Cormyr has lost a good man to the city-state of Innarlith. Their loss, is our gain.”

  “Your gain, you mean,” Salatis pressed.

  “The canal benefits me, yes,” Osorkon said. “There is no secret that my ships ply the waters of the Lake of Steam, and trade as far north as the Sword Coast. Should the Vilhon Reach be open to them at last, and the Sea of Fallen Stars beyond, Cormyrean coin, Sembian coin … gold from the Moonsea to the Old Empires will find its way into my purse, but don’t think for a moment—not for a moment—that it will fill my purse alone. Riches enough for us all will pass through that waterway. Of that I have not the slightest doubt.”

  Osorkon paused, and in some small way he still hoped someone would speak up then in support of the canal, with loyalty to their ransar, but he knew no one would.

  Salatis looked around the room, his hands palms up at his sides, making a great show of waiting for the same thing. Finally he said, “Ransar, please believe me when I say that all of us realize that trade eventually will flow through this canal of yours, but—”

  “This canal of ours, Senator,” the ransar interrupted.

  Salatis continued without missing a beat, “—how much and how soon? If it costs forty pieces of gold to build a wagon, and one sells it for thirty-five only after taking a decade to build the damned thing, what kind of trade is that? This insanity that takes place to the northwest will drain more gold from our coffers while it’s being built than it will drain water from the Lake of Steam when it’s completed. And will any one of us even live to see that day?”

  Osorkon smiled through the round of applause and cheers that followed. When the senate quieted enough for him to be heard, he said, “Is there any guarantee, Senator, that any of us will live to see the morrow?”

  The two men stared at each other across a stretch of air as heavy as it was silent.

  “Perhaps,” said Meykhati, rising with his hands at his side as though he was surrendering to someone, “we can agree that trade will flow once the canal is done, and that many in this body will profit from it either directly or indirectly—but is that the most pressing question?” Meykhati paused for effect, but Osorkon knew what was coming. “Perhaps it is the man who builds it, not the watercourse itself, that offends. Perhaps there is another man better suited to oversee this project so that it can be completed in a timely fashion … so that we will indeed all live to profit from that trade.”

  Once again the senators who sat around the master builder patted Inthelph on the back and whispered in his ear, all grins and chuckles. Osorkon’s skin crawled, and his eyes met Salatis’s.

  “That,” the ransar said, “is not an eventuality I am prepared to consider.”

  Salatis smiled, and spoke for a majority of the senate when he said, “Then perhaps it’s time we find someone more prepared.”

  “Is that a challenge?” Osorkon asked, and again the chamber fell into perfect silence. The ransar imagined he could hear every one of their heartbeats. “Senator Salatis?”

  “That’s not a question the ransar should ask lightly,” Salatis replied. “Let us say, for the nonce, that I respect the great traditions of this body and reserve, as do all senators, the right to petition for the office of first among equals. But on this day … on this day that is not an eventuality I am prepared to consider.”

  23

  10 Eleasias, the Year of the Sword (1365 DR)

  SOMEWHERE ON THE NAGA PLAINS

  Did you hear that?” Dharmun whispered, looking up into the warm rain. “Something … up there.”

  Hrothgar sighed, and didn’t look up. Even at night, even when it was raining, he didn’t like to look up into the open, endless sky. He tightened his grip on his heavy hammer and listened.

  “I can’t hear anything,” the dwarf said. “Rain … the torch flame …”

  He resisted the urge to look at the torch that Devorast held over his head. The guttering orange light would dampen his darkvision.

  “It’s above us,” Devorast said.

  Hrothgar cursed silently and looked up. The rain made him blink, and he couldn’t see anything.

  “Should we go back for more men?” Dharmun said, his voice quivering a little. He might have been cold, with no shirt on late at night, but the air was still muggy with late summer heat, despite the rain. “I mean, we could go back and return with—”

  At the same moment Devorast shushed Dharmun, something pushed Hrothgar to the ground. Pain skipped up his back in a series of rippling cramps, and he almost dropped his hammer. He slid face first in the mud, getting a little in his mouth, but thankfully none in his eyes.

  Dharmun grunted and as Hrothgar rolled to his feet, pain in his back making it harder for him to breathe than to stand, the dwarf saw him swing his heavy wood axe at a shape made of deeper blackness than the already inky, moonless night.

  “Damn it,” Hrothgar breathed. “It’s big.”

  Devorast swung at it with his torch, and Hrothgar caught a glimpse of it in silhouette. The light shone through one membranous patch that must have been a wing. Hrothgar could sense a serpent’s wedge-shaped head, and there was a flash of long, curved talons. Sparks flew, but the thing didn’t even flinch.

  “Ivar,” Hrothgar warned, “watch—”

  A cloud of thick, oily black mist benched from the creature, dimming the torchlight like a black lace curtain. Dharmun screamed.

  Hrothgar stomped forward with his hammer out in front of him. Devorast’s torch was on the ground. He saw a booted foot, didn’t know if it was Devorast’s or Dharmun’s, but before he could investigate further he was hit in the back again—harder.

  The hammer flew from his grip and went cartwheeling through the air, and once again his
face pressed into the slick mud. Claws raked at his back, digging into the leather tunic he wore. He was bruised, but not cut.

  “Where’s my axe?” Dharmun called out. “What is that thing?”

  Hrothgar tried to answer him but coughed instead. He patted the ground around him for his hammer and found something like it. He staggered to his feet and was almost fully upright when he realized he’d picked up Devorast’s torch instead.

  “I have your axe,” Devorast said—and it took a moment to realize that he was answering Dharmun’s question from before.

  The black creature screamed—a combination of some kind of bird of prey and a blare of trumpets—and skipped along the ground between Hrothgar and Devorast. The dwarf saw it lift something in its claws as it swooped back up into the night sky—Hrothgar’s hammer.

  “Trove Lord take you, whatever you are,” the dwarf roared into the night, spinning with Devorast’s torch in a vain attempt to find the thing in the darkness. “That’s my lucky hammer!”

  “There it is!” Dharmun screamed.

  “Where?” Devorast demanded.

  Hrothgar looked at Dharmun, and the human met his eye, then looked up again, then looked back at the dwarf and shrugged.

  “Is that a rock you have there?” Hrothgar asked.

  Dharmun looked at the first-sized stone in his hand as if noticing it for the first time, shrugged, and said, “Master Devorast has my—”

  Something hit Dharmun in the head, and the woodcutter fell like a sack of flour dropped from a third-story window. Hrothgar could hear the air punched from the human’s lungs.

  “What in the name of Dumathoin’s hairy—”

  “It dropped your hammer on him,” Devorast said.

  Hrothgar grimaced. He didn’t like that at all. The dwarf didn’t know Dharmun all that well. He was a woodcutter, who kept with the other woodcutters, and Hrothgar was a stonecutter who kept with the other stonecutters. But when Dharmun ran from his tent screaming that something had come in and snatched his tentmate away, Hrothgar was up and out almost as fast as Devorast. Together the three of them had pursued the beast out into the darkness and had gone too far from camp for Hrothgar’s liking. Other groups of three, four, or five men had gone off in other directions, and just when they were no longer able to hear the other groups calling out the missing man’s name, the thing had attacked.

  “Is he dead?” Hrothgar asked, turning all the way around once with the torch held high, waiting for the inevitable next attack.

  “I don’t—”

  It was Devorast’s turn to be pushed into the mud, and the sight of it only made Hrothgar angrier. He got a better look at the thing, though. It’s scales as black as the middark sky, it looked for all the world like a miniature dragon.

  Hrothgar threw the torch at it and shouted, “Eat this, lizard!”

  The monster took the torch in midair and bit it cleanly in half. The lighted end skipped across the rain-soaked mud and sputtered out barely an inch from Dharmun’s head. That seemed to rouse the woodcutter, who rolled to a seated position and grunted in pain.

  “Where’s my …?” Dharmun gasped, feeling around on the ground with one hand while he held the other pressed tight against his chest. Hrothgar couldn’t see any blood, but he could smell it. “I need my axe.”

  Dharmun found something on the ground next to him and picked it up—it was just a stick.

  A loud thump brought Hrothgar’s attention back to the creature. Devorast stood next to it, dwarfed by it, but pounded away at it with the rock Dharmun had found. The beast seemed more surprised than anything else.

  Hrothgar charged it, having no idea what he was actually going to do when he got to it—he didn’t even have a rock.

  The creature hissed at Devorast and flapped its huge, leathery wings. Hrothgar turned so fast he almost twisted his ankle, but avoided the wing. He tripped again when he kicked something heavy. Stumbling to a stop, the dwarf almost fell but managed to pick up Dharmun’s axe. The weapon felt good in his hand—it was just a hammer with a sharp edge, after all.

  Devorast threw the stone, but the thing dodged it. The dodge brought it closer to Hrothgar, though, who swung the axe. The axe head caught in the monster’s wing, fetching up on one of the bony spurs. The thing reacted with violence and an ear-splitting scream. Its wing bashed Hrothgar in the face, cracking the bridge of his nose and sending him flying three feet off the ground, and four times that backward through the air.

  He rolled to a bruising stop and with some difficulty sat up so at least he could see the thing coming to kill him. But the creature hadn’t moved. It flailed both wings and hopped about trying to dislodge the axe that still hung in its right wing.

  “Hrothgar?” Devorast called.

  The dwarf couldn’t see his friend. He took a deep breath to answer that he was all right, but couldn’t get enough air in his lungs. He coughed, hoping that sound would be good enough to tell Devorast that he still lived.

  “Dharmun,” Devorast shouted, “no!”

  “What—?” Hrothgar gasped.

  Dharmun stood and waved his twisted, ridiculous stick at the creature, which reared back, startled by the human that it apparently thought it had killed.

  “This isn’t …” the woodcutter said.

  “Don’t—” Hrothgar wheezed.

  The creature took a deep breath, it’s scaly chest expanding like a bellows. When it exhaled, Hrothgar winced at the stench of the fluid that rushed from its mouth. The greasy black cloud descended over the woodcutter, but Hrothgar could still see the outline of Dharmun’s body, which stood rigid but quivering.

  The cloud dissipated, sizzling in the pouring rain, and Hrothgar blinked away a sudden sting. He heard the woodcutter fall and knew he was dead. Living people didn’t fall like that.

  “Hrothgar,” Devorast said, startling the dwarf.

  “How did you …?” Hrothgar started to ask, but finished with another fit of coughing. There was pain in at least three parts of his body that was bad enough to actually worry the dwarf. “Where …?”

  Devorast had obviously run around behind the dragon-thing as it burned Dharmun to death with some sort of liquid.

  “Can you stand?” Devorast asked.

  Hrothgar shook his head, but tried to stand anyway. The creature beat its wings hard again and rolled on the ground.

  “What’s it—?” the dwarf started.

  “The axe,” Devorast finished for him.

  The axe came free of the beast’s wing finally, and slid along the wet mud. The monster turned to watch the weapon’s progress, its eyes burning red in the night like hot coals. Black mist puffed from its nostrils and it ran, dragging it’s ruined wing behind it, for the axe.

  Devorast jumped over Hrothgar, making the dwarf grimace and groan with pain. Sprawling out face-first in the mud, Devorast got his fingers around the axe handl and rolled. The dragon-thing came down right next to him and snapped at him with jaws like a crocodile’s.

  Hrothgar cast about for something—anything—he could use as a weapon. All he found was a rock, no bigger or more threatening than the one poor Dharmun had come up with, but then Devorast had used it to distract the thing, hadn’t he?

  Devorast swung the axe and cut the creature deep at the base of its neck. It growled and backed up, and black acid sprayed form its nose.

  It whirled back at Devorast, it’s jaws wide, and Hrothgar threw the rock as hard as he could.

  As a child, back in his home mines of the Great Rift, Hrothgar had thrown a lot of rocks. They’d set up elaborate games of skill and chance around the act of throwing a rock. He hadn’t done it in a long time—adult dwarves don’t throw rocks—but his body remembered.

  The rock went down its throat.

  The creature backed up again, twisting its neck, and made a terrible strangling sound that Hrothgar knew he would hear again in his happiest nightmares. Smoke billowed out from the corners of its mouth.

  Devorast scrambled
away from it, the axe still in his hands. Hrothgar set his jaw, closed his eyes, and got at least to his knees. Not sure what he could do in his current condition, he crawled forward—and his palm came down on the familiar handle of his hammer.

  “Ah,” he breathed, then gasped, “there you are.”

  Using the hammer to support himself, the dwarf stood. Devorast stood next to him. They looked at each other and smiled though they both panted like dogs. Hrothgar hefted his hammer, and Devorast put the axe up on his shoulder.

  The choking, struggling dragon-thing seemed to have forgotten all about them. They strode in with care, but killed it with relish.

  24

  9 Eleint, the Year of the Sword (1365 DR)

  THE NAGAFLOW KEEP

  I didn’t expect to have to wait,” the tall Cormyrean Ayesunder Truesilver said with obvious impatience. “I don’t suppose you have some idea when he’ll be back?”

  Hrothgar shrugged, and thought fast. He looked south, in the direction Devorast had gone and said, “I don’t want to give the warden false hopes. Devorast could be away another day or so. It’ll depend on how far afield the blasted creature fled.”

  The Cormyrean sighed and followed the dwarf’s gaze out to the flat southern horizon. Hrothgar watched him, and saw his eyes pick up and follow the line of stakes with the thin red ribbons tied to them. The parade of tiny flags stretched in two parallel, perfectly straight lines, as far south as the eye could see—past the horizon.

  “How often does this happen?” asked the Cormyrean.

  The dwarf turned to face the man. Behind him rose the Nagaflow Keep, standing strong in the hot summer air. Hrothgar had to push back the flood of memories that struck him every time he laid eyes on the keep.

  “These are still wild lands,” Hrothgar said.