Soon she lost herself in the footpaths that wound through one shady copse of trees after another. She walked for miles before she started to realize how far from the house she’d strayed. Not having explored much of the grounds and having kept mostly inside that summer, Phyrea had to fight back a rising panic that teased at the edges of her consciousness. Was she lost?
She was sweating a little and took off her light jacket. The linen camisole underneath was something she couldn’t have gotten away with in the city, but out there, on the grounds of Berrywilde, she was completely alone.
Phyrea made her way up a steep hill. Her feet grew heavier with every step. The fresh air and exercise that had so refreshed her at first had given way once again to exhaustion.
For seven nights in a row Phyrea had heard voices, whispers, and strange noises coming from dark corners and empty rooms. She slept only little, spending most of the night with her knees tucked up to her chin, her arms wrapped around her shins, her eyes wide, her mouth open. Every night she determined to leave first thing in the morning, but every morning she felt better, at peace, relaxed, and couldn’t imagine leaving. She remembered the fear of the night’s disturbances, but only as some distant recollection, as if years had passed between middark and dawn.
Before she reached the top of the hill she heard voices: men calling to each other, shouting orders. The sounds echoed across the hills, occasionally lost to the strong breeze. She stopped at the top of the hill and looked down at the work site. Her long, soft black hair blew across her face, and she slid it back with her hand.
They didn’t see her at first. There were dozens of them, digging, carrying rocks and planks, and clearing downed trees and underbrush. She couldn’t make out the outline of the winery. They hadn’t started to form a foundation yet.
Phyrea couldn’t help but stare at them. She hadn’t seen another human being in more than a tenday … was it a month already? The sounds of the men working reminded her of the city, but the cleared land and the great collection of materials, the sheer size of the work force … she told herself that what they were building would be hers one day. She would inherit Berrywilde in its entirely, including the winery and vinyards, the cattle ranch, the chicken farm, the berry orchard that accounted for at least the first part of the name of the estate … all of it.
Part of her wanted to kill her father in order to make it hers that much faster-the same part of her that robbed her neighbor’s houses at Wenefir and his mysterious patron’s request.
Another part of her wanted to burn it down-the same part of her that broke the priceless jeweled egg and scattered it in the midden.
Yet another part of her wanted to just get on a horse and ride-away from Berrywilde, away from Innarlith, all the way to Waterdeep or farther, where no one would know her and no one would ever find her.
Her hair blocked her face again and she turned her head away from the wind. When she did, her eyes fell on a man and stayed there.
He shouldn’t have caught her attention. Why would he have? He was one of dozens of men, most not wearing much but simple breeches or even simpler loin cloths. They were all dirty because they were digging in the dirt. They were all sweating because it was the end of the second tenday in Highsun and it was hot outside. They were all lean and muscular because they made their livings, meager as they might be, from the strengths of their backs and tirelessness of their arms.
One of them stood out. Could it have been because he worked between two dwarves? That might have made him appear taller than he was, but still there was no doubt that he was tall. He wore torn breeches that stopped at mid-calf. From the top of the hill, Phyrea couldn’t tell if they were cuffed that length or had torn off. Sweat made his skin shine in the brilliant afternoon sun. An unruly mop of red hair was plastered to his head, soaked with the sweat of a day’s honest labor. The muscles in his arms writhed under his taut bronzed skin.
That couldn’t have been all. They all looked much the same.
There was something else about the man with the red hair.
From the top of the hill she could cover him with the palm of her hand. She couldn’t hear him, though it didn’t appear that he spoke at all the whole time she stood there staring. She could feel something radiating from him, even imagined she saw it, pulsing like blue-white fire, warming her more even that the blazing afternoon sun.
When someone whistled, all that stopped.
Heads began to turn in her direction, one after another. When the man with the red hair looked up at her, Phyrea turned and ran back down the hill, disappearing from sight in just a few steps but continuing to run. More whistles and catcalls followed her. She couldn’t tell what the men were saying, but she knew men well enough to know what they’d thought of her. Though normally she’d get a little thrill from knowing men were lusting after her, Phyrea was only embarrassed. It was an unfamiliar feeling for her.
A gruff, loud voice cowed the shrill, apelike behavior with a few barked threats. She couldn’t make out individual words, but the implication was clear.
She was the master builder’s daughter. She was off limits. They shouldn’t even look at her. None of them should ever come near her, not even the red-haired man.
Phyrea’s sudden panic quickly gave way to anger. She didn’t want those horrid, sweaty men hooting at her, but she didn’t want to be off limits either. She didn’t want that one man to see her run away like a frightened school girl. She wanted to kill something.
When she’d dressed she’d slipped a thin dagger into her breeches at the small of her back. Though she was more afraid of the inside of the estate than the outside, she wasn’t stupid. The area had been cleared a very long time before she was ever born, and it was patrolled, and there was a rather large and noisy construction project, but all of Faerun was a wild place at least some of the time, and it didn’t pay to assume you were safe anywhere, ever.
She took the knife in hand and slowed her furious pace to a soft-footed stroll. She took control of her breathing and tucked her long hair around one thin strap of her camisole so that it would stay out of her face. She sniffed the wind as she took note of sounds-her own footfalls, the wind rustling the leaves, the ever more distant clatter of the work site-and dropped each noise away, filtering them for the hiss of movement in the grass.
There.
She let the knife go with a lightning-fast flick of her wrist and it shot away from her with a flash of steel in the bright sunshine. The dagger took a rabbit down, pinning it to the ground so that in its dying spasms it couldn’t even roll over and die on its back.
Phyrea, her breath still even and under control, her ears still attuned to the slightest whisper, felt more in control of herself and her surroundings than she had in some time.
She stood there looking down at the dead rabbit for a little while, then she retrieved her knife, wiped the blood off on the grass, and picked up the carcass by the ears.
Phyrea went back to the house. On the way she thought more about the man with the red hair than she did about her supper of fresh rabbit.
61
23 Eleasias, the Year of the Wave (1364 DR)
BERRYWILDE
She didn’t like to move around when the voices started. If she did, they might see her, and though she didn’t know what they might do, didn’t know if they could even do anything at all, she was afraid.
Phyrea didn’t like being afraid. It felt weak. If felt bad.
The night air was full of sounds. Crickets chirped and the wind rustled leaves. People were speaking in empty rooms. Someone was crying-a woman. She tried but couldn’t count how many there were. One moment there was nothing, no sound at all, then the next it was as if a party was going on in the next room.
She didn’t want to sleep on the sofa in the library, but there were half a dozen rooms between there and her bedchamber, and the voices came from at least one, so Phyrea waited. She sat on the very edge of the stiff leather couch, her feet flat on the floor.
She was cold, and she shivered, though the late summer air was very warm.
The voices quieted, but the woman was still crying. Phyrea wiped a tear from her own cheek and thought, Stop crying. Stop crying.
She imagined that the woman’s baby had died. She held the limp form, heavier in death than in life, cradled in her quivering arms. The sobs tore at her body and ripped her spirit from her. Her mouth twisted sideways and would not close. Her face tensed with the rest of her body and she couldn’t open her eyes. Why did it have to happen? Why did her baby have to die? The fever wasn’t that bad. He had nursed that afternoon, but by nightfall he’d fallen into a sleep she couldn’t wake him from-a sleep he would never wake from. After he drew his last breath, she held hers as long as she could, perhaps hoping she could die with him. If they died together it would be as if nothing bad had happened at all, but soon she drew in a breath and knew that she was alive and he was dead, and that was when she started to cry.
The crying stopped, and Phyrea stood up so fast her head spun and she almost fainted. She closed her eyes, wiped away another tear, and just stood there for a moment while her head cleared. Her baby didn’t die. She never had a baby.
She took a candle from a candelabra and left the library with it. Wax dripped onto her finger but she ignored it. It wasn’t that hot. There were no voices in the next room. She kept her eyes on her feet as she walked, in case there was something she didn’t want to see.
She crossed the first room telling herself she wasn’t the mother of a dead baby.
She crossed the second room imagining the feeling of the red-haired man’s skin. It would be firm but soft. It would thrill at her touch.
She crossed the third room wondering if she would ever go back to the city again.
She crossed the fourth room wondering if the man with red hair would take her back to Innarlith or stay with her at Berrywilde, whiling away the days in bed, bathing together, making love on the floor. At night he would hold her while the ghosts moaned and wailed and they would never be able to scare her again.
She crossed the fifth room, the room right before her bedchamber, but only halfway before she saw the man and stopped.
He sat on a chair at the little table where she often ate in the morning and where she had tea late at night before the voices made her reluctant to go from the kitchen to her room in the dark. The man was old, withered with age, his shoulders stooped and sagged as if even sitting there he labored under a crushing weight.
Phyrea let the breath she was holding out through her open mouth, not making the slightest sound.
She didn’t want to look at the man. The candle shook in her hand and wax dappled the floor at her feet. A drop hit the top of her little toe and made her hiss. The man looked up at the sound. He looked directly at her.
Their eyes met and he was the most terrifying thing and the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. She could see the lines of the chair, the corner, the pattern on the little rug on the floor beneath him-all that through his body. He was not made of flesh and blood but of a blue-violet light. His body, his face, and his eyes all formed of starlight.
Phyrea tried to hold her breath but couldn’t. She panted. The man didn’t speak, but she had the strong impression that he wanted to. He’d appeared for some reason, hadn’t he? He’d crossed the gulf from death to life-why? To tell her something?
She didn’t want him to speak. She was afraid not of what he would say but of what his voice would sound like. What would a man made of starlight and a will that resisted death itself sound like?
Then she noticed the scar on his cheek. It was in the shape of a z, uneven and angry. She’d seen that scar before, on one of the portraits. What surprised her most was that she’d remembered. She didn’t think she’d studied any of the old paintings in sufficient detail to match a scar from one to the scar on a ghost’s face, but there it was.
The man nodded then. He knew she saw the scar, knew she remembered his portrait, but how?
The man faded away, leaving an empty chair. There were no more sounds, no crying and carrying on.
Phyrea could have taken four steps and been in her bedchamber. She could have gone quietly to sleep and forgotten all of it by morning.
Instead, she turned and went back the way she came. She walked with purpose, her steps assured and steady, her hand no longer shaking, the wax no longer burning her. She had come to know the house so well that she found the room in the dark and didn’t even hesitate for the slightest moment until she stood looking up at the portrait of the man with the scar on his face.
The room was one of a dozen dining rooms. The long, wide table had been covered in thin canvas, the chairs draped in linen shawls. She’d told the staff, before she dismissed them, that she had no intention of entertaining.
Candles sat waiting in an elaborate gilded stand on a sideboard. She lit them with the candle in her hand, then blew it out and dropped it on the floor. The portrait hung on a wall richly paneled in dark wood. Phyrea reached up and took hold of the framed canvas in both hands. She lifted the picture up and away from the wall. It was heavy and she nearly dropped it on her bare feet, but managed to stagger back and lower it gently to the floor. She leaned it against the sideboard then pushed the candles closer to the wall.
Why am I doing this? she asked herself. What am I looking for?
She had practice finding secret doors. She was a thief after all, and in the Second Quarter everything worth taking was worth hiding in a secret place. Phyrea knew what to look for; she just didn’t know why she was looking for it.
There it was-a hairline crack in the paneling, played in along the grain.
She felt along the edges and imagined she could feel cool air blowing from inside. She pressed where her instincts told her to press, but nothing happened, so she pressed in other places, then ran a fingernail along the line of the seam.
That went on for a very long time, and Phyrea shifted her weight on the sideboard many times, climbed down and stretched even, looked at it from a distance, and from so close the tip of her nose touched the wood wall.
When the door popped open she breathed a sigh of relief as if she had finished something, as if just opening the door was what she’d come there to do, but it was just the beginning.
It didn’t creak or make any noise at all when it swung open, though Phyrea imagined it had been closed for decades at least. Her father had never mentioned anything about secret passages, and he wasn’t the type to have them put in or to use them. He didn’t like people sneaking around.
Behind the hidden panel was a space no bigger than a cupboard. The walls inside were rough brick, mortared in that messy, unfinished way that implied the mason didn’t expect anyone to see his handiwork. A wooden ladder was bolted to the far wall and descended into utter blackness.
Am I really going to do this? Phyrea asked herself. The words formed clearly in her mind, as clear as if she’d spoken them aloud.
She took a deep breath and held it, staring at the ladder, then exhaled slowly through her nose. Taking a candle from the sideboard, she leaned forward and stuck her head into the dark space. She looked down, but the meager candlelight only showed more ladder. She couldn’t see the bottom.
Still holding the candle in one hand, she crawled into the space and tested the ladder with her foot. It held, seemed strong, and she was light, especially dressed in a simple silk nightshirt. She didn’t stop to think. If she had, she would have realized at least that she was unarmed and might have done something about that. Instead, she started climbing down the ladder.
After a dozen rungs she started to imagine that the ladder had no end, that she’d lowered herself into some bottomless pit and would climb down forever and ever. She didn’t bother looking down. Her arms hurt, but she continued to descend.
Her bare foot touched stone, and Phyrea was almost disappointed that the ladder hadn’t gone on forever. She guessed she was thirty feet below ground.
She wa
s in a crypt.
The candlelight was all she needed to see the confines of the small space, maybe fifteen feet square, the ceiling only inches from the top of her head. In the center of the room was a knee-high stone slab, and on the slab was a casket. The workmanship was fine, the wood heavy and the hardware gleaming gold, sparkling in the flickering light of her candle.
The man made of light stood over the casket, looking down.
Phyrea’s blood went cold, and she started to shake again, which made the candlelight dance and jitter, sending crazy shadows dancing through the crypt.
The man looked so sad. He wanted her to open it. She stepped forward, and he disappeared.
Phyrea had trusted her interpretation of the ghost’s desires enough to find the secret door and climb down the ladder in the pitch dark. She’d stopped thinking some time ago, actually. She was doing what she thought she was supposed to do, and her mind couldn’t begin to function on any sort of analytical level.
She stepped to the casket on the spot where the man made of starlight had stood. She tried the lid with one hand, holding the candle above her. To her surprise-and no small dread-the lid opened easily. She grimaced and winced at the sight of the skeleton that lay there, wrapped in the dried, worm-eaten silk of its burial shroud. It was some distant ancestor of hers. It might have been a great uncle or great grandfather, and she didn’t even know his name.
The corpse wore no jewelry and the coffin bore no inscription, but lying along the length of the desiccated corpse was a sword.
Phyrea gasped when her eyes finally took it in. The scabbard was pure gold, intricately engraved with serpentine dragons that appeared to writhe in the flickering candlelight. The hilt was gold as well, the handle wrapped in black leather that had been worked with the same dancing dragons. A magnificent cluster of sapphires capped the pommel.
She picked up the sword, amazed by how light it was. The gold alone should have weighed twice as much or more. She kneeled and dripped a little wax on the dusty stone floor then set the candle down, careful not to let her silk nightshirt fall into the flame.
Whisper of Waves wt-1 Page 25
