Lies of Light

by Philip Athans

  She almost said yes, but at the last minute she said, “The Green Phoenix. In the Third Quarter.”

  The coach jerked to a start, and Phyrea closed her eyes and clasped her hands over her ears. Though she couldn’t see them, they never spoke to her through her ears anyway, so she suffered, occasionally sobbing, with their incessant barrage of threats and demands until the coach finally pulled up in front of the sprawling brick building that housed the Green Phoenix.

  “Shall I accompany you, Miss?” the driver, who Phyrea knew was also a more-than-capable fighter armed with magic and his master’s protection, asked.

  Without stopping or looking behind her, she said, “I’ll be fine. No.”

  She burst into the common room of the dark, smoke-filled tavern and all but ran to the bar.

  “Orerus,” she demanded, slapping her palm on the bar. “Where is he?”

  The skinny old woman behind the bar blinked at her.

  “Now!” Phyrea screamed. “Where?”

  The old woman pointed to a curtained doorway behind her and stepped aside.

  Phyrea leaped the bar and tore though the curtain. She ignored the powerful aroma of the brewing vats, and the screaming tirade of the incorporeal girl.

  “Surero,” she whispered, wiping tears from her eyes and abandoning the alchemist’s assumed name. “Where are you?”

  “Phyrea?” he called from the back of the large room.

  Pristoleph had helped her keep track of him, and she’d been surprised, but delighted to hear that he had taken a position as brewmaster for the Green Phoenix—an honorable enough use for his peculiar skills—under the name Orerus, Surero reversed.

  He stepped out from behind one of the big copper kettles and greeted her with a smile that quickly faded to a scowl of concern.

  “How did you find me?” he asked. “What’s happened?”

  “Do you know where he is?” Phyrea asked.

  “Yes,” Surero replied, not having to ask who she meant by “he.”

  Phyrea felt her knees give, and she lowered herself to the dirty floor, ignoring the sticky residue of the ale vats that coated every surface.

  “Gods,” Surero whispered. “What’s happened to you?”

  She took a deep breath and laughed a little while she cried.

  Kill him, the man with the scar said. He’ll deliver you back to Devorast if you don’t kill him now. You know that man will destroy you.

  “I just need to know that he’s alive, and that you know where he is—that someone knows where he is,” she said. “I don’t know why. I’ll never see him again, but I had to know that.”

  Good girl, the old woman whispered into her reeling mind. Never see him again.

  “Phyrea,” Surero said, “what is it?”

  She struggled to her feet and said, “Where is he?”

  “Ormpetarr.”

  She nodded and mouthed a “thank you,” then turned to leave.

  “Phyrea?” he called after her, but she didn’t stop, turn, or answer.

  65

  28 Nightal, the Year of the Banner (1368 DR)

  THE THAYAN ENCLAVE, INNARLITH

  You’ve disappointed so many people, Willem,” Marek Rymüt said.

  Willem squirmed in his seat, and Marek had to force himself not to grin. When he really looked at Willem, it was easier not to smile. He looked worse. His eyes had sunk into his face and were rimmed with dark circles. His teeth were yellow, and his lips dry and cracked.

  “You realize that, don’t you?” he pressed.

  Willem sighed and a tear rolled down from his right eye.

  “I do, yes,” Willem said. “Is that why I’m here? Did you send for me because you wanted to tell me I’ve disappointed you?”

  “Among other things, yes.”

  Willem’s head drooped on his shoulders, and he looked at the floor.

  “Are you having work done?” Willem asked, his voice dull and faraway.

  “Oh,” replied the Thayan, “the canvas … no.”

  Willem nodded as though the answer he’d gotten could have been anything but unsatisfying. Marek had had the floor covered with thick canvas, and most of the furniture had been moved out too. It did appear as though he was having the room painted.

  “Can I offer you a drink?” Marek asked.

  Willem looked up at him with wide, wet eyes, like a lost puppy. Marek had never had a puppy, though he had occasionally used them to practice spells on, and to test potions, but that was back home in Thay.

  “I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’” said Marek.

  He poured brandy from a crystal decanter and handed the glass to Willem, who took it in a grip so weak Marek grimaced at the possibility he might drop it and spill it. He glanced down at the decanter—he hadn’t prepared much, but there was still enough left in case Willem dropped the first one.

  “You aren’t having one?” Willem asked.

  Marek shook his head and watched the younger man down the brandy in one swallow, grimacing against the burn of it.

  “Tell me you at least tried to stop them, Willem,” said the Thayan. “I want to hear from you that you did everything you could to keep her—to keep her away from him.”

  Willem shook his head, refusing to look Marek in the eye. The Red Wizard had a sudden impulse to kick him hard in the chin, to force his miserable face up.

  “You just let another man walk into your home and leave with your wife?” Marek said.

  “No,” Willem muttered. “No, we went to his house, and I left her there.”

  “That’s pathetic,” Marek said. “That’s quite simply the most pathetic thing I’ve ever heard.”

  He picked up the crystal decanter and poured more of the brandy into Willem’s glass. The young man sat there, slumped down, and stared at the umber liquid.

  “Speak, Willem,” Marek demanded. “Explain yourself.”

  “What’s there to explain?” Willem asked, then swallowed half the brandy in his glass. He coughed, not bothering to put a hand up to cover his mouth. “What could I have done?”

  Marek smiled down at Willem and said, “What could you have done? Hmm … let me think. To begin with, you could have poisoned his drink.”

  Willem shook his head. Spittle dropped in a long, stringy line from his lower lip. He put the glass to his mouth and drank some, but poured the rest of the brandy on the floor.

  “You could have rendered him helpless,” Marek went on. “And once he was unable to move, the poison making his muscles go rigid and unresponsive, you could have done anything you wanted to him. He would have been entirely under your power, yours to do with as you wished.”

  Willem slumped forward and fell onto the floor without changing from the hunched, sitting position he was in. His head bounced and scraped along the canvas tarp.

  “I expected so much from you,” Marek said.

  Willem looked up at him, blinked, his eyes confused at first. His lips twitched, but he couldn’t speak.

  Marek took a deep, rattling breath and smiled. His face flushed, and his heart began to race.

  “Oh,” he breathed. “Oh, Willem. That must be awful—terrible. I can only imagine….”

  Willem blinked at him again and fear replaced the confusion in a wave that made his pupils dilate.

  Marek, reluctant to turn away, stepped back to a side table and opened a long, hinged wooden box. Inside was the sword Phyrea had brought him. The wavy blade glimmered in the candlelight. Marek bit his bottom lip and held his breath as he lifted the flambergé out of the velvet-lined box with all the reverence the exquisite weapon deserved.

  When he went back to look down at Willem, the sword in his hand with the blade tipped down until it almost touched the floor, Marek thought he saw Willem shake his head. But the poison wouldn’t allow him even that scant gesture. Marek thought perhaps he sensed so strongly Willem’s powerful desire to make at least that tiny, futile gesture that he simply imagined the movement. Willem’s eyes pleaded for mercy.


  Marek dropped to his knee, one creaking, popping joint at a time. His generously-proportioned body was unaccustomed to sitting on the floor and when his full weight settled onto his knees, they burned in response.

  He looked Willem in the eyes, and with his free hand he brushed the hair from the younger man’s forehead.

  “Pretty Willem,” he whispered in a mocking rendition of what he thought “soothing” might sound like. “Everything will be all right. You wanted this, didn’t you? You told me you did. You told me you envied them. You said you wanted to be one of them.”

  Marek shifted his weight to hover closer and closer over Willem’s face. The younger man’s mouth hung open, and the tip of his tongue protruded just the tiniest fraction of an inch

  “Willem, my dear, dear, sweet boy,” Marek whispered, “please believe me that if I thought there was any way to avoid this….”

  Willem’s eyes widened as Marek moved closer still, then the Thayan couldn’t see his eyes anymore. His lips met Willem’s and closed around them. The tip of his tongue darted in, and though Willem was unable to return the kiss, at least he couldn’t back away. The poison made him appear dead—stiff and unresponsive—but Willem was still very much alive, warm and breathing.

  Marek took his lips away from Willem’s and punctured the helpless Cormyrean’s skin with the tip of the sword.

  Only his eyes responded at first. Marek knew that Willem could feel every inch of the flambergé’s cruel blade winding its way ever so slowly from just to the right of his belly button, up under his ribs. Then Willem’s breaths started to come faster, and ever more shallow. Marek guided the blade to the middle of Willem’s chest in hope of avoiding either lung. Willem panted—a rapid succession of gasps that were almost all exhale, and no inhale. Tears streamed from his twitching eyes.

  Marek shushed him and pressed harder with the sword. It took all his strength and skill to slide the long blade into Willem’s fast-beating heart. He could feel the firm resistance of the thick muscle, and the blade jerked in his grip in time with its beating.

  When it finally did pierce his heart, blood poured freely down the length of the blade and oozed out of the wound in his stomach. His eyes bulged, and for a moment Marek thought they might pop. Instead they relaxed, but they didn’t close. He let go of the sword hilt, leaving the flambergé sheathed in Willem’s body.

  Marek let out a long, slow breath in time with Willem Korvan’s last exhale. He smiled down into the face of the dead man and smiled.

  “Shhh,” he hissed. “That’s a good boy.”

  66

  29 Nightal, the Year of the Banner (1368 DR)

  THE TEMPLE OF THE DELICATE CHAOS, INNARLITH

  Marek stepped out of the dimension door onto a rough flagstone floor that shifted under his weight. He staggered, his hands out to his sides, and almost fell. The stone bobbed on something that might have been water, but was too thick. The effect was the same as floating, but the movement was slower.

  As the spell effect dissipated behind him his eyes began to adjust to the dim light from torches set in iron sconces on the tiled walls. The tiles had apparently been salvaged from wherever tiles could be salvaged from. Few were the same size, and almost none of them were of matching colors. The effect might have been pleasing had they been arranged with the care and vision of an artist, but it was no mosaic, just a random jumble of shapes and colors.

  Marek stepped to another flagstone, riding the slow undulation under his feet, growing more secure with the uncertain footing. The flagstones did indeed float in some thick, gelatinous medium. Marek swallowed to settle his stomach. His first few steps had disturbed many of the stones around him so that the floor rose and fell in waves throughout the chamber.

  The room itself was a circle that Marek judged to be a hundred feet in diameter. The torches were not set at even intervals around the circumference so there were bright spots, and places where the shadows were deep as night. He got the distinct feeling that something—more than one something—watched him from the shadows, so he quickly ran through a spell.

  Blinking, he refocused his eyes, and a bluish cast descended over the room. The shadows were peeled back when he set his attention on them, and indeed strange creatures that might have been insects or lizards stared at him, following his every move with twitching antennae, darting forked tongues, and bulging compound eyes.

  Another spell, and blue-green fire flickered over his body, covering his robes in a glowing sheen that would give the creatures a painful surprise should they choose to attempt to do him harm.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Wenefir said from behind him.

  Marek knew better than to try to turn around too fast on the undulating floor, so instead he took his time, planting his feet with care.

  “Well, better safe than breakfast,” Marek said, stalling.

  Wenefir laughed a little and stood with his hands clasped in front of him. He wore breeches of billowing purple silk but was naked from the waist up. Folds of hairless fat drooped off him, and Marek was reminded of why he so rarely went shirtless himself. His smile was cautious, suspicious, and set to turn at the slightest provocation.

  “I was surprised to see you step into this place so easily,” Wenefir said. “Well done, Master Rymüt.”

  “I can show you how to ward against dimensional intrusion,” Marek replied.

  “For a price, of course?”

  “I’m sure we can come to a mutually satisfactory arrangement,” said Marek.

  “And yet I’m sure that you had a very different purpose in mind when you made the decision to invade the sanctity of Cyric’s holy shrine this morning.”

  Marek dipped into as deep a bow as his girth and the floating floor would allow him, and said, “Indeed, my good friend. I suppose it would be safe to consider this a social call.”

  “This is not a salon, Master Rymüt, but a holy place,” said Wenefir, but Marek could tell the man was curious to hear what he’d come to say.

  “Then I will dispense with further niceties and bring us to the meat of the issue,” the Thayan said. “Your mas—excuse me … your friend Pristoleph has made a very bad decision of late and I’ve come in the hopes that between the two of us we can either show him the error of his ways, or at the very least mitigate the damage his impetuosity might cause.”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “The girl,” Marek said, and left it at that.

  Wenefir wore his thoughts clearly on his face. Marek didn’t need a spell to see that the Cyricist was no friend of Phyrea’s. Marek smiled, trying to defuse the expression with as much sympathy as possible. If he had guessed right about how Wenefir would feel about Pristoleph’s sudden and acute obsession with Innarlith’s most beautiful prize, the rest would be easy.

  Remembering where he was, and that Wenefir was likely capable of mind-intruding magic gifted him by his mad god, Marek tried to keep his surface thoughts clear.

  “It’s a matter of the heart,” Wenefir said, though his eyes pleaded for argument. “I can’t imagine what we might be able to do to make him feel differently.”

  “All that in due course,” said Marek. “For now, though, can we agree that the relationship is an unhealthy one?”

  “Perhaps, but I’d be curious to hear your reasons for thinking so.”

  Marek nodded and replied, “She is married to another senator. You know that well enough, having performed the ceremony yourself.”

  “Cyric smiles upon those who change their minds,” Wenefir said, almost showing his disappointment over that bit of scripture. “No marriage in his name is ought but temporary.”

  “Be that as it may, among the city’s social circles it will be frowned upon.”

  Wenefir nodded, happy enough to concede the point. “Has there been talk?” he asked.

  “Oh, there’s always talk,” said Marek. “Had it simply been a matter of divorce and remarriage tongues would wag among the wives and servants, but u
ltimately the city-state would have gone on about its business, but that, I’m afraid, is not the worst of it.”

  “Oh?”

  “There’s the matter of Senator Willem Korvan,” Marek said.

  Wenefir raised an eyebrow and asked, “What of him? He’s been drinking, but don’t we all? I understand he’s been mostly away, at the canal site. I can’t imagine he’d be stupid enough to publicly resist Pristoleph.”

  “Oh, and he isn’t,” Marek assured him. “In fact he’s done just the opposite. Instead of crying on the shoulders of his fellow senators and making a sticky social situation any worse, he’s disappeared.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “He’s gone, and no one knows where,” Marek said, though he knew precisely where Willem Korvan—or what was left of him—was.

  “A young senator on the rise like that, with influential friends….” Wenefir thought aloud.

  “Why, even if he was humiliated by Pristoleph’s appropriation of his cheeky young bride,” Marek said, leading Wenefir in a disturbing direction, “why would a rising star like Willem simply walk away from all he’s worked so hard to build? In some ways he’s the heir apparent to Innarlith.”

  “I can assure you that neither Pristoleph nor myself had anything to do with his disappearance,” Wenefir said. “I was told that he had acquiesced—surrendered, as it were, of his own free will.”

  “Such as a boy like Willem has free will, yes,” Marek said. “Please believe me that I did not come here to make that accusation.”

  “So you believe he’s gone to ground?” Wenefir asked, dire thoughts clouding his eyes. “Is he holed up somewhere planning some reprisal, or gathering allies against Pristoleph?”

  “And Pristoleph,” Marek said, “like all of us, has enemies to spare.”

  Wenefir nodded, and his eyes played over the shadows along one unlit section of the curved wall. Marek followed his gaze and saw the strange creature there take a tentative step forward, looking to Wenefir for instructions. The Cyricist held up a hand—a subtle gesture—and the creature slinked back into the deeper darkness.