Whisper of Waves wt-1

by Philip Athans

  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 name 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.

&nb
sp; “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 Faerun 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 Faerun, 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 stopped 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.

  He stood with four other men, three of whom he recognized from Meykhati’s salon and other functions, and one who appeared to be a half-elf. They were the newest appointees to the senate and were dressed for the occasion under layer after sweaty layer of fine linen, silk, and wool. Willem itched and chafed in the attire that had been chosen by his mother and donated by a select group of tailors, cobblers, and jewelers anxious to have their wares be seen on the floor of the Chamber.

  On the tier below them were three of the senior senators: Meykhati, Inthelph, and a man Willem recognized but whose name escaped him. The thought that he was no longer in the position to be able to forget another senator’s name made him sweat just a little more, but he remained standing still and straight, a self-satisfied smile lighting his clean-shaven face.

  His mother looked down at him from the gallery. An empty seat next to her should have been occupied by Phyrea. He had sent word to her father’s country manor with an invitation to the ceremony, but she had not deigned to reply. Had he then invited Halina in her place, the master builder might have taken offense, so his mother sat alone. Willem forced himself not to consider the fact that he had no other friends in Innarlith.

  “Senators, ladies, and gentlemen,” Meykhati called out from the dais below. His voice echoed in the massive chamber, bouncing from soaring flying buttresses and a domed ceiling whose apex was fully two hund
red feet above their heads, the interior painted in Sembian frescoes depicting scenes of commerce and civil discourse. The room had the air of a temple, but even Waukeen’s priests were never so crass in their celebration of all things mercantile. “Please give your attention to these men, who have come before us, as is our law, on this Midsummer, to beg your permission to swing wide the doors of this hallowed institution and admit their wisdom, labor, and loyalty to the Grand Senate of Innarlith.”

  A rousing round of applause exploded from the assembled senators-Willem never realized there were so many! — and his ears began to ring.

  The ceremony was a simple one, held every year on the Midsummer festival. He had heard it described but had never seen it, it being an invitation-only affair. It was, however, the one day a year that any of the public was invited into the Chamber of Law and Civility at all.

  “With your leave, I will begin by introducing to you a young man whom we all have come to know and trust though his time among us has been short,” Meykhati went on. Willem tensed. Each of the new senators required a sitting senator to introduce him, and that elder senator would be his patron in all things, at least for the first six months while the new senator got to know the lay of the land. Willem, though, had agreed to be Meykhati’s man for five years. “My fellow senators, meet our peer: Senator Willem Korvan.”

  The applause again but not as loud, and Willem stepped forward. All he could think of was that he walk carefully in his new shoes so as not to trip in front of the assembled senate and his mother. He stopped at the edge of the high tier. As he’d been instructed he bowed first to Meykhati, then the master builder, then the third senator, and finally to the assembly. The applause trickled to silence and Willem stepped backward, again careful not to trip. He took his place in line once more.

  “Senator Salatis,” Meykhati called, “please come forward.”

  Salatis stood and walked down the center aisle, taking a place behind a podium on the bottom tier of the dais.

  Willem looked up at his mother, the smile still plastered on his face. She was so far away he couldn’t really see her features, but still he got the feeling she was crying. Her wave was tight and practiced, as if she were Queen Filfaeril on parade through the streets of Marsember. He looked away.