Whisper of Waves

by Philip Athans

  Willem’s chest tightened and he held his breath while his heart beat hard in his chest.

  “You have everything?” he asked. “Everything I asked you for?”

  Devorast might have nodded, but Willem didn’t turn around and look. He took a deep breath, trying hard to ignore the dank odor of Devorast’s quayside hovel. He reached out and brushed the top sheet aside just enough to reveal the edges of the pages beneath it. Devorast had finished everything: materials lists, detail drawings, ornaments, instructions for stonecutters, masons, carpenters, and blacksmiths. He’d even drawn plans for a new sort of scaffold rig that Willem didn’t quite understand, and a whole range of other purpose-built tools. It was a life’s work in that stack of parchment, but drawn over a few months in Devorast’s quick, sketchy hand and precise handwriting.

  “It just comes right out of you, doesn’t?” Willem asked, not expecting an answer.

  “There’s no sense in drawing until you see it in your head. I imagine it, in every detail, then draw what I see.”

  “I’ve never been able to do that,” Willem admitted.

  “Your skills lie elsewhere,” said Devorast.

  Willem’s face grew hot, and he pressed his teeth together. His anger was so intense it blurred his vision.

  “Oh, really,” he said, “and where do my talents lie?”

  He picked up the stack of parchment and rolled it quickly, making himself not worry about smudging or tearing them even though they were the single most important documents of his entire life. It was going to take him tendays to copy them all, but once he had and construction began, and he was given his seat on the senate, he could finally relax, spend the gold he’d sacrificed no less than his soul for, and to the deepest pits of the Nine Hells with all the rest of it.

  He’d be done. He’d have succeeded.

  “People,” Devorast said. “You can be around people. You can talk to people.”

  “Yes,” Willem replied as he slid the parchment into the leather tube he’d brought with him. “I am very good at changing myself to make other people like me better. I’m very good at getting what I want from people while giving them as little as possible in return.”

  Still not turning to look at Devorast, Willem started to walk to the door.

  “Are you going to give me as little as possible in return?” Devorast asked.

  Willem stopped but still didn’t turn around.

  “Willem?”

  “We’re finished, you and I,” Willem said. “This is the last one.”

  “Retiring early?”

  “After a fashion,” Willem replied, still not turning around.

  “I suppose I should kill you before I let you walk out of here with those,” Devorast said. His voice was as flat as always, almost monotone.

  Willem tensed and lifted the heel of his right boot a fraction of an inch off the floor. He kept a silver-bladed dagger in his boot and had been practicing with it—slashing, stabbing, even throwing.

  He didn’t hear Devorast stand. He hadn’t moved.

  “Why don’t you?” Willem asked, still not turning around, just standing in the doorway, one foot inside and one foot outside of the little shack. “You should kill me. I would kill me, if I were you. I made you promises. You worked very hard, created something that will live forever in the skies above Innarlith, casting its shadow on all the city’s inhabitants for all time to come. Here I am, stealing it from you, walking away with it without even turning around to look you in the eye.”

  Devorast heaved a world-weary sigh that only fanned the anger that smoldered in Willem.

  “I hate your stinking guts,” Willem said, his voice low and quiet, an animal’s growl. “You should kill me for what I’m doing, but you don’t even think that much of me, do you? You don’t even notice me enough to hate me. Is that it, you arrogant son of a whore? Is that why you’re going to let me walk out of here with these, without leaving a thin silver behind?”

  “No,” Devorast said, and still his voice hadn’t changed in the slightest. “I’m not going to kill you because you’re going to build it.”

  “The tower?”

  “The tower,” Devorast replied. “You’re going to build it, down to every detail, aren’t you?”

  “We built the keep up north,” Willem said. “We built it just as you planned.”

  “So, go,” Devorast said, absolving Willem of at least that afternoon’s sins.

  “That’s it?” he asked. “No gold? No threats?”

  “Go and build it, Willem,” said Devorast. “Build it and you can keep your gold.”

  “No one will ever know it was you. No one. Not ever.”

  “I don’t care,” Devorast replied, and Willem believed him.

  “You will die in obscurity,” Willem said, “and you could have been anything you wanted to be.”

  “All I ever wanted to be was me,” Devorast said, “and I’ve had that all along.”

  Willem nodded, and though he wanted to laugh, he couldn’t.

  “Build it, Willem,” Devorast urged. “I’ll see it every day and know it’s mine. I don’t care if anyone else knows its mine. I don’t care if I never have two coppers to rub together. I want to see that built, though, and I don’t mind telling even you that.”

  “Even though we’re enemies now, you and I?” Willem asked, suspicious.

  “We’re not enemies,” Devorast said.

  Willem almost turned around, almost turned on him, almost attacked, almost screamed, almost … but he didn’t move.

  “Do you have a sword, Ivar?” he asked.

  He took Devorast’s silence for a no.

  “You should carry a weapon with you now,” Willem said. His voice was so low, so pained, he had to force each word out with deep, hard pressure in his chest.

  Willem walked away, not waiting for Devorast to respond. He wouldn’t anyway.

  55

  14 Flamerule, the Year of the Wave (1364 DR)

  FIRST QUARTER, INNARLITH

  Hrothgar and Vrengarl lived in a basement. It was cheap, the walls leaked, there was moss on one wall, and algae on the floor. It was cold in the summer and colder in the winter, and the sun never shone directly in the one iron-barred window that was so small neither of the cousins could have crawled out it in a fire. Even poor humans wouldn’t be caught dead in the place, but the dwarves felt right at home. Vrengarl had started growing mushrooms in the closet and had harvested the first few to make a pungent broth.

  “Here,” Hrothgar said, handing a dented tin cup of the simple soup to Ivar Devorast. “It ain’t much but it’ll warm yer cockles. If you have any cockles.”

  Vrengarl chuckled and Devorast smiled, taking the cup. The human put his nose in the little wisps of steam that rose from the broth and smiled again at the hearty aroma. He glanced at Vrengarl and nodded.

  “I’d offer you bread, but it went moldy,” Hrothgar said, taking a seat on the rickety old chair. Vrengarl preferred the stool, and the newer, less rickety chair was more likely to hold up a human, so they’d offered it to Devorast.

  “You’re pale and sickly,” Vrengarl said to Devorast. “If you’d like some of that bread for the medicinal value, I can fetch it from the trash for you.”

  “No,” Devorast said, wrinkling his nose. “No, thank you, Vrengie. The broth is fine.”

  Vrengarl nodded and bent over his own broth, slurping loudly. Hrothgar realized that Devorast had called his cousin Vrengie, as he did sometimes, and Vrengarl hadn’t beaten him to a bloody pulp.

  “You don’t have a copper to your name, do you?” Hrothgar asked the human.

  “I have a copper,” Devorast replied with a shrug.

  “Still living in that shack?” asked Hrothgar.

  Devorast took a sip of broth and shook his head with his lips pressed tightly together.

  “Had to give it up?” asked Vrengarl.

  Devorast nodded, then took another sip of broth.

  “What in the nam
e of the Soulforger are you still doing in this rat hole of a city, then?” Hrothgar said, his deep voice booming off the close stone walls. “Go home to Cormyr or something. Go find someplace where they appreciate men like you.”

  “The story would be the same in Cormyr,” Devorast said. “Still, getting out of the city is an appealing thought.”

  “He should come with us,” Vrengarl suggested, looking at Hrothgar.

  The dwarf didn’t even have to think about it.

  “You should, damn it,” he said.

  Devorast raised an eyebrow.

  “Some rich bastard’s building a … what is it again?” Hrothgar asked his cousin.

  “Vine yard?” Vrengarl replied.

  “That’s right,” said Hrothgar, “a vine yard … out of town, in the countryside. He’s hiring a whole crew to build a winery, a barn, all sorts of walls and sheds and whatnot. It’s no fancy ceramic ship or nothin’, and you won’t be no one’s boss, but it’s silver coins at the end of a tenday and fresh air in the meantime. I know how you humans like that fresh air.”

  The two dwarves shared a smile while Devorast appeared to be thinking it over.

  “Oh, for the love of Clangeddin’s silver codpiece, Ivar,” Hrothgar cursed. “What do you want? A bloody engraved invitation?”

  “No,” the human answered finally. “That sounds fine, Hrothgar. I could use the fresh air.”

  “Well, you’ll need it after staying with us tonight,” the dwarf replied with a grin.

  They sat in silence for a while, finishing Vrengarl’s hearty broth of closet-grown mushrooms. If they made any further plans, they did so without speaking and for themselves only.

  56

  16 Flamerule, the Year of the Wave (1364 DR)

  THE WINERY, OUTSIDE INNARLITH

  Two days later they were in the country.

  “Damn that fiery ball to the blackest pits!” Hrothgar growled. “It burns my eyes, burns my face, burns the top of my arse-bald head…. How do you suffer the gods-cursed orb?”

  Devorast lifted his heavy sledgehammer over his head, pausing there, the muscles in his arms twitching ever so slightly, and said, “The sun does its job—” and he brought the hammer down on a limestone boulder with a loud crack!—“and I do mine.”

  That made Vrengarl laugh, but Hrothgar didn’t find it funny. It was only their first day toiling in the blazing Flamerule sun—no other month so aptly named—and he was already hot, sweaty, and angry … and not in a good way.

  Being part of the “new crew” only just arrived from Innarlith, they’d been assigned to the most menial task: what the gruff human foreman called “making big ones into little ones.” Hrothgar had broken boulders before but usually in the civil coolness of a deep cavern, not under the horrid scorching sun. The humidity was worse. The dwarf was covered from head to toe in sweat and over the course of the day he and Vrengarl had removed one layer of clothing after another until modesty stopped them at their stained linen loincloths.

  “One more warning,” Devorast said, lifting his hammer again. “Put something on or the sunburn will have you up all night.”

  Hrothgar grunted and lifted his own hammer. The three of them brought their heavy steel hammerheads down hard on separate boulders at the same time. Hrothgar watched Vrengarl take note of the size of the pieces that broke off each of the three and smiled a little at the grimace that crossed his face when he saw that Hrothgar’s was bigger.

  “It’ll peel, too,” Devorast said.

  “What?” asked Vrengarl, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. “What’ll peel?”

  “Your skin,” the human replied.

  “Bah,” Hrothgar scoffed. “Pull the other one tomorrow, will ya?”

  Devorast laughed a little and said, “You’ll see.”

  Hrothgar slammed his sledgehammer into the boulder again and taunted, “I’ll see, you’ll see, we’ll see…. Keep your eyes on your own skin, human.”

  “All right, you three,” the foreman called. He stood at the end of the line of laborers with a rolled up sheet of parchment in his hands, his face red and sweaty under a wide-brimmed hat. “You’re getting paid for what? Workin’, or sparkling conversation?”

  “We’re gettin’ paid for workin’, boss,” said Hrothgar.

  Vrengarl shouted back, “But we’ll throw in the sparklin’ conversation fer free!”

  The human laborers on either side of them, strangers all, laughed between hammer blows, and Hrothgar thought even the foreman let slip a smile. He stalked off with his parchment and left them to their labors.

  “I’m either going to fall in love with that string bean,” Hrothgar warned, “or kill him in his sleep.”

  “I’ll stay somewhere in between, thank you very much,” Devorast said.

  They broke rocks in silence for a while longer until a young boy came by with a bucket of water and a wooden ladle. All three drank eagerly of the tepid water and splashed a ladleful over their smoldering heads. Hrothgar watched steam rise from his cousin.

  “Have we made a grievous error coming out here, boys?” the dwarf had to ask.

  “Aye,” his cousin replied without a pause to think.

  “The worst mistake of my life,” Devorast said, even as he went back to work.

  The two dwarves joined him, all three of their boulders half the size they were when they’d started on them.

  “Still,” Devorast said, “it is good to be out in the fresh air. The city’s smell can get to you after a while.”

  “Bah,” Hrothgar replied. “A little sulfur never hurt a body. Reminds me of the stench of home.”

  “It’s not just the smell, though, is it Ivar?” Vrengarl asked.

  Though his cousin and the human went on with their labor, Hrothgar had to stop and consider Vrengarl’s words. It was as if he and Devorast shared some secret in common that Hrothgar wasn’t privy to.

  Why in the deeper three of the Nine Hells should I care if they do? he asked himself.

  “No, Vrengie, it’s not,” the human replied. “It’s the people.”

  “Aye,” Hrothgar said. “I know what you mean. Humans … if they didn’t breed like dung beetles they would have stupided themselves into oblivion by now and given the rest of Faerûn a chance to take a breath. Like this here senator whatshisname—?”

  “Infelp?” Vrengarl suggested.

  “Inzelf?” Hrothgar replied. “Inpelp? Whatever his name is. Here he’s got this grand plan for a grape farm out here in the middle of nowhere … well, if not the middle of nowhere then a point just west of the edge of nowhere … and what for? Wine? All this for wine? My grandmother used to drink wine on special occasions and such, but really. It’s not a beverage for someone with danglies, human, dwarf, or otherwise. It’s as if the sissier they are the better they’re thought of. There’s nary a real male among the lot of ’em.”

  “Present company excluded, of course,” Vrengarl cut in, with a nod to Devorast and a stern look for his cousin.

  “Aye, yeah,” Hrothgar said, feeling his already red, hot face flush. “Sorry ’bout that, Ivar.”

  “No worries,” the human replied. “I’m inclined to agree, in principle at least.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “This city is nothing,” Devorast explained, working all the while. “It’s a fly speck on the map of Faerûn, surrounded by greater realms with greater men to lead them. They scurry around after artifacts and curios from this or that far-off corner of Toril, never bothering to make anything of their own. They even had to bring me and …”

  He stopped himself, and Hrothgar looked up at him.

  “They even had to bring me all the way from Cormyr to build ships,” Devorast continued. “They brought you two and other dwarves from the Great Rift, and men of more races than I can count from everywhere to show them how to tie their wives’ corsets. You’re right, Hrothgar, there’s not a real man in that city, and only a handful who’d know one if he saw him.”

  Hrothgar s
topped working again to ponder that. He’d never heard a human criticize other humans like that. Devorast might have been a dwarf at heart after all.

  “Stopping for tea, are we?” the foreman shouted from across the line. He still held the rolled-up parchment, and his face was still sweaty and pinched under the shadow of his hat. “What’s that little chat costing me, dwarf?”

  “Apologies all around, boss,” Hrothgar called out, then smashed his hammer hard into the boulder, breaking it clean in half. Under his breath, he added, “Come closer and I’ll do the same to your head, you rat-birthed fancylad.”

  Vrengarl and Devorast chuckled and the foreman walked away.

  “Ever wonder what’s on that parchment he carries around?” Hrothgar asked.

  “A shopping list from his wife,” Devorast suggested.

  “Milk, bread, tomatoes,” Vrengarl listed, “oregano, a real man …”

  They laughed some more and broke rocks for the rest of the long, hot summer afternoon.

  57

  Midsummer, the Year of the Wave (1364 DR)

  SECOND QUARTER, INNARLITH

  Across the street from the Palace of Many Spires was a building that, had it been only a little farther away from the ransar’s edifice, would have been terribly impressive. Among the ten largest structures in Innarlith, the Chamber of Law and Civility housed the cavernous senate chambers where decisions that affected the lives of every citizen of the city-state were, if not created or agreed upon, then argued and fussed over. If the Palace of Many Spires was the showcase of the city, the Chamber of Law and Civility, otherwise known simply as the Chamber, was its bulging purse.

  Willem scanned the room from a vantage point he might never have again. He stood behind the ransar’s ornate, ceremonial throne on the highest part of a four-tiered dais that was the focal point of the largest enclosed amphitheater he’d ever seen. The throne, carved from a single slab of High Forest redwood by a craftsman who could only have been an elf, sat empty that day. Willem tried to avoid staring at it so as not to appear either disappointed that the ransar wasn’t there or covetous of the throne itself.