Whisper of Waves

by Philip Athans

  Willem had no idea where to even begin.

  “I am so proud,” Thurene said, pulling on his arm. “We should go back inside before anyone thinks we’ve left early. That wouldn’t do at all, would it, Master Builder?”

  “Not at all, Madam Korvan,” Inthelph replied. “The ransar is still more sensitive than usual, too, after that terrible, bold theft of a priceless family heirloom right from this very palace.”

  “Really?” Thurene gasped. “How awful. How long ago did that happen?”

  “What was it, Willem?” the master builder asked.

  “Six months or so?” Willem answered, his mind elsewhere.

  He let them lead him back inside and when they stepped back into the noise and frivolity of Osorkon’s Midsummer revel, Willem knew precisely where to begin. He knew whose vision would stand among the soaring monuments of the Palace of Many Spires and whose name would forever be etched in its stone, and Willem Korvan knew he would be neither of those men.

  47

  19 Marpenoth, the Year of the Wyvern (1363 DR)

  FIRST QUARTER, INNARLITH

  Ivar Devorast lived in a hovel. It was the only word for it, though perhaps “shack” might have been appropriate, or even “shanty.” Willem could see through the gaps in the clapboard walls and water dripped from the rusted tin roof in half a dozen places. Devorast had rearranged the spare, threadbare furniture based on the demands of the leaks rather than esthetics or traffic flow, so it was difficult for them to see each other, sitting in chairs set askew and on opposite ends of the single, dark room. Though the hour was getting late, the sun beginning to kiss the horizon, Devorast wouldn’t light his last candle until it became entirely necessary.

  “I will bring you candles, next time I come,” Willem said.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Devorast was quick to reply.

  They sat in silence for a while again, listening to the drips tap into the buckets and pots Devorast had arranged on the floor.

  “Saves a walk to the well,” Devorast said, startling Willem as much because he’d been caught staring as that he couldn’t remember Devorast ever initiating a conversation.

  Willem tried to laugh but couldn’t and ended up coughing through a confused grunt.

  “There’s no reason to be uncomfortable, Willem,” Devorast said. “We have chosen the lives we’re living.”

  “You didn’t choose this,” Willem risked, looking around at the decrepit dockside shack.

  “I chose the path that led here,” Devorast replied with a shrug.

  “I know you better than that,” Willem said.

  “Do you?”

  They looked at each other, feeling the heft of the air between them.

  “Yes, Ivar, I think I do.”

  Devorast stared at him, his eyes as clear and commanding as ever, despite their residence in his unshaven face, a face that was growing to match the horrid little house.

  Sensing that Devorast wouldn’t let him off easily, Willem continued, “I know that you never intended to end up here. You’ve always said that a man controls his own destiny, that a man who sets his own course will arrive at his intended destination, whatever that may be, in due time.”

  “In due time,” Devorast concurred with a smile.

  “Oh,” Willem said, sharing the smile. “Oh, that’s it, is it? This is but a rough patch on the way to your eventual, what … mastery of all you survey?”

  “Not quite,” Devorast replied, looking down at his lap. “No, I don’t intend to be any man’s master.”

  For the first time Willem noticed that Devorast was holding a silver coin, passing it through his fingers in an absent-minded way that seemed unlike him.

  “Your last silver?” Willem asked, knowing full well he was being rude and forcing himself not to care.

  Devorast didn’t look up when he said, “One last piece of silver, for luck, or perhaps I’ll spend it on some candles.”

  “Then what?”

  Devorast looked up then, shrugged, and said, “Something tells me, old friend, that that’s why you’re here this evening.”

  Willem’s face flushed, and he struggled to hold Devorast’s gaze.

  “Willem?”

  “Of course,” Willem said finally. “Of course, Ivar. For Waukeen’s sake …”

  “I don’t do anything for Waukeen’s sake.”

  Willem chuckled and said, “Of course not … the atheist. Well, then don’t thank Waukeen, but me.”

  “I suppose this is another project for which you will receive all the credit?” Devorast asked without the slightest trace of animosity or accusation.

  That bothered Willem most of all.

  “Really, Ivar,” he said, “you shouldn’t be so … blasé about this. It pains me, taking advantage.”

  “You aren’t taking advantage of me,” Devorast replied. “If I don’t want to do it, I won’t.”

  “And starve?”

  “And do something else,” Devorast said, and all Willem could do was nod in response. “So, speak.”

  “The Palace of Many Spires,” Willem said, latching on to his old friend’s gaze.

  There was a sparkle in Devorast’s eyes when he said, “Go on.”

  “The ransar has tired of living in someone else’s house, apparently, and he’s decided to make his own mark on the palace,” Willem explained. “He wants another tower, the tallest spire yet. The master builder is responsible, of course, so if you’re curious who will get the credit, there you are.”

  “You want me to design it, to do all the arithmetic, to make it stand for millennia, and you will be the middle, copying the plans and sketches and figures so that this dolt Inthelph can bury himself in the ransar’s gold and bask in the glory of this civil achievement for the rest of his petty, miserable life?”

  “By the gods, Ivar,” Willem said, sharing a laugh with his friend, “I think that constitutes a formal speech from you. I never thought you capable of so many words in a single sitting.”

  Devorast turned his attention back to the silver piece.

  “Really, Ivar,” Willem went on, “shall I leave you so you can sleep it off? You must be exhausted.”

  “I’ll live,” Devorast said, his laugh fading away, “and I’ll do it.”

  Willem nodded and immediately started to think of an excuse to leave.

  “Have you met him?” Devorast asked.

  Willem widened his eyes in hopes of a clarification, but when he realized they were sitting in the dark, and Devorast’s attention was on the coin, he said, “Met whom?”

  “The ransar.”

  “Osorkon?” Willem replied. “Yes, I have, more than once, at formal functions. State functions and such. I attended his Midsummer revel, in fact.”

  “I’ve been looking at this silver piece,” Devorast said. “It must be new, because it’s minted with a picture of him.”

  “I’ve seen them,” Willem said, all at once overwhelmed with curiosity. “It’s a reasonable likeness, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  It was hard to tell in the dark room, but Willem thought Devorast nodded.

  “I can front you a few gold, Ivar, if—”

  “That’s not it,” Devorast interrupted. “I was just wondering, honestly, about this man: the Ransar of Innarlith. Here’s a man who, by his own strength of will, has his likeness stamped into every coin in the realm.”

  “Azoun was no different,” Will said.

  “No, he wasn’t. Still, I can’t make myself understand how a man can do that. How a man can crave and keep power over other men.”

  “Please, Ivar,” said Willem, “I’ve never met a man, the ransar included, less inclined to that sort of hubris than you. If anything about our relative positions in Innarlith strikes me as strange at all it is that you’re not the ransar yet yourself.”

  “I never wanted to be the ransar,” Devorast said, and Willem thought he sounded sincere. “I never want to be ransar.”

  Wille
m waited through a seemingly interminable stretch of drip drip drip, but Devorast never finished that thought.

  Finally, Willem stood and drew a small leather pouch from an inside pocket of his cloak. He dropped the pouch on a little shelf and the clink of coins echoed in the darkness.

  “An advance,” Willem said. “I will come back again in a tenday’s time with the ransar’s specifications.”

  Devorast didn’t respond.

  Willem took one last look around the little space and said, “Well, then, I guess that’s good—”

  He saw Devorast’s weatherworn old portfolio sitting on the only dry space left on the floor. It was stuffed with parchment, sheets crammed in so that it would no longer even come close to closing.

  “Working on something?” Willem asked.

  “Yes,” Devorast answered, filling that one short word with such a sense of finality that Willem didn’t bother pursuing it.

  “Well, then,” Willem said. “Good evening, Ivar.”

  He opened the door, paused for Devorast to respond, but after a silent moment, he stepped through the door and onto the stinking, dirty waterfront. He went straight home and slept better than he had in months.

  48

  4 Alturiak, the Year of the Wave (1364 DR)

  SECOND QUARTER, INNARLITH

  Marek turned the skull over in his hands and looked at the teeth.

  “This one should have eaten more vegetables,” he said. “He died with the most unfortunate set of teeth.”

  “What do you want here, Thayan?” Thadat asked.

  Marek set the skull down on the cluttered work table and replied, “Can’t one practitioner of the Art pay a friendly visit to another without some nefarious purpose in mind?”

  “No,” the haggard wizard replied.

  Thadat was a man of slight build. Shorter than Marek and considerably thinner, he wasn’t physically intimidating in any way, but Marek knew he was an accomplished spellcaster and that made him dangerous. His suite of rooms in a fine inn on the edge of the Second Quarter were full of half-unpacked crates and already cluttered with all the obvious accoutrements of a wizard. Marek recognized a few of them as useful spell foci, but the vast majority were of no use—no use for anything but creating a false credibility in the eyes of visiting dilletantes.

  “I was surprised to hear that you had made this move,” Marek said, scanning the work table for more interesting artifacts. “This is not the finest inn, but it is in the Second Quarter. Quite a step up for you, isn’t it?”

  “I have been working hard,” Thadat said. “I don’t remember hearing that I had to ask you for permission to rent rooms.”

  “Oh, you don’t need my permission for that,” Marek replied, picking up a glass jar in which was contained a dead bat, preserved in some kind of clear blue liquid. The bat’s face was frozen in a wide-mouthed, needle-fanged scream. “This is ghastly.”

  “Precisely,” Thadat said, reaching out to take the jar from Marek’s hand.

  Marek pulled away and looked down his nose at the smaller man, making it clear that Thadat was not to touch him.

  “I didn’t come here to discuss your living arrangements,” Marek said, “if you’d prefer to dispense with the niceties we can move on to the business at hand.”

  “Yes,” Thadat replied, staring daggers at Marek, “let’s do that. I know something of the extent of the powers at your command, Rymüt, but you should know I’m not a spellcaster to be trifled with either. If you’ve come here to intimidate—”

  “Oh, come now,” Marek interrupted. “Don’t be crass.”

  He set the jar of pickled bat down on the table and clasped his hands behind his back.

  “I will have to ask you to keep your hands visible to me at all times while you’re in my home, sir,” Thadat insisted.

  With a grin and a flourish, Marek put his hands up and at his sides, waving them around like a croupier quitting a knucklebones table.

  “I’ve made myself clear to you, I think, Rymüt. I’d prefer it if we didn’t encounter each other again.”

  Marek’s face reddened a bit, but he didn’t lash out and kill Thadat. He turned back to the table and picked up a clove of garlic. Thadat had written a little poem on the side of the garlic in a tiny but clear hand.

  “Draconic,” Marek said.

  “Put that down,” Thadat commanded, but Marek ignored him.

  “‘Dan de dan de dan ne zhee,’” Marek read aloud.

  “‘Chaznur durro shizzlin dul aele asruzhaeldi. Ulliandrol durro klaya aele sheel al leernall. Realnakfloor durro shoke aele aesaldrindur. Lomridnelle verith al almindure fleezhae. Gahn dool aesdnur de quinlek gloesh.’”

  “Be careful, there,” Thadat warned.

  “‘One and one and one is three,’” Marek translated. “‘Fear that trembles up my spine. Pain that turns my cries to screams. Despair that breaks my spirit line. Surrender truth to desperate dreams. Set your soul and body free.’”

  Thadat stepped back, looked away, and began to sweat.

  “Planning to turn yourself into a vampire, Thadat?” Marek asked. “Surely not a lich.”

  “That is no business of yours, Rymüt,” the other wizard said, “and you should know not to trifle with a thing like that. Please, put it down.”

  With a great flourish Marek set the clove of garlic back down on the work table.

  “Now, go,” Thadat said.

  Marek made no move to go, but said, “Tell me why I’m here.”

  “To threaten me,” Thadat responded without hesitation. “You’ve come here to intimidate me into joining your little club.”

  Marek’s jaw clenched and his hands became fists. Thadat stepped back farther, kicking over a pile of musty old books on the floor behind him.

  “I serve no master, Rymüt.”

  “So, then,” Marek said, “that’s why I’m here. You see, I have given up on you, Thadat. You are a talented practitioner. I understand it’s rings you’re specializing in now. Is that correct?”

  “There is plenty of gold to go around in Innarlith,” Thadat said. “Leave me my customers, leave me my rings, and I’ll leave you your …”

  “My what?” Marek prompted.

  Thadat swallowed, and sweat made him blink, but he said, “There’s plenty to go around.”

  “No, there isn’t, my friend,” Marek said, putting all the finality he could into his inflection. “I didn’t come here to be satisfied with my little portion of Innarlith’s riches. I came here for all of it. In this godsforsaken city, magic is mine. Anyone who wants it comes to me. Anyone who sells it, sells it for me.”

  “What do you want of me?” Thadat asked. “Gold? Rings?”

  “I want you to be an example.”

  Thadat began to cast a spell. He got two words into the incantation when silence descended on them both. It was as if Marek lost his hearing all at once. Thadat’s lips moved, but there wasn’t the barest whisper of sound. His eyes bulged. Marek had cast no spell, made no move at all, and held nothing in his hands.

  Kurtsson appeared behind Thadat in a shimmer of magic-rippled air. Within the first heartbeat after he’d fully materialized, Kurtsson’s axe took Thadat’s right arm off just above the elbow and bit a quarter of an inch into his side. The bloody, screaming murder that followed played out in horrifying silence. There was no sound of bones snapping, no tearing of flesh or splashing of blood as Kurtsson hacked and hacked at him. Thadat’s mouth was open wide, his neck straining, his chest heaving, but the scream went unheard.

  Kurtsson stood in that same dead silence, drenched in the frail wizard’s blood, panting from his exertion.

  Marek smiled and mouthed the words: Well done.

  Kurtsson returned the smile and sketched the parody of a courtly bow.

  After slipping the magic-inscribed garlic into a pocket of his robe, Marek left the room, motioning Kurtsson to stay well behind him. The moment they were clear of the effects of the spell, he stopped.

&
nbsp; “Don’t get blood all over me,” Marek said.

  The Vaasan held up a hand in understanding, the bloody axe dangling limply in his other hand.

  “You know what to do,” Marek prompted.

  Kurtsson cast a spell with casual ease and in moments he’d taken on the remarkably convincing form of an anonymous street thug, but he was still drenched in blood. Anyone who might see him leaving the home of the slain wizard would describe a dark-haired Chondathan with a full beard, a pronounced limp, and a sailor’s tattoo on his hairy forearm. The fair-skinned, blond-haired Vaasan wizard would never be a suspect in the murder he’d so gleefully committed at Marek Rymüt’s command.

  “When you’ve had a chance to clean up,” Marek said, “meet me at the Rose and Stone for a brandy, eh?”

  The ugly street urchin grinned—he was even missing teeth, the illusion was so complete—and with a chuckle, Marek opened a dimensional door and made good his escape.

  49

  6 Tarsakh, the Year of the Wave (1364 DR)

  FOURTH QUARTER, INNARLITH

  The pain was gone. He could see, and he could breathe, but his body was numb. He couldn’t move his legs or his arms.

  “Can you speak?” Devorast asked.

  “Yes?” Fharaud said, not sure until the word passed his lips if he could or not.

  Devorast smiled and sat down next to him.

  “I’m going to die today,” Fharaud said.

  He didn’t recognize his own voice. It sounded like his grandfather’s voice.

  “You say that every day,” Devorast replied.

  “But he’s been dead for years,” Fharaud said.

  “Who has been dead for years?”

  Fharaud shook his head. He tried to order his mind, so that he wouldn’t do that sort of thing anymore.

  “I have so much to tell you, Ivar,” he said. “I’m trying to make sure that the Shou woman will tell him all about the girl—that the spirits inside her …”

  Damn it all, Fharaud thought. I’m doing it again.

  “What can I get you, old man?” Devorast asked. “Are you hungry? Can you eat?”