Whisper of Waves wt-1

by Philip Athans

  Phyrea drew the sword and had to gasp again. The blade glowed in the dark crypt with a light of its own. The metal looked like platinum, but Phyrea thought it might have been adamantite. The blade itself was beautiful, wavy and graceful. She didn’t know the word for it. Was it a falchion?

  She looked down at her long-dead relative one more time then closed the casket.

  He’d wanted her to find the sword. She didn’t know why.

  The climb up the ladder was difficult holding both the candle and the sword, but in time she made it back up, closed the secret door behind her, and replaced the painting. She carried the sword cradled in her arms like a baby back to her bedchamber. She didn’t see the ghost of the man with the scar on his cheek again that night and slept with the scabbarded sword in the bed with her.

  Her dreams were of the red-haired man, holes in the ground, explosions, and blood on a wavy blade of glowing adamantite.

  62

  1 Eleint, the Year of the Wave (1364 DR)

  THE PALACE OF MANY SPIRES, INNARLITH

  Fifteen people sat on various chairs and sofas in the enormous office of Ransar Osorkon. Some of them were mages, six were bodyguards, and the rest were advisors and hangers-on or part-time spies. A few of them read through journal books and ledgers, occasionally making notes. Two of them played a long, half-hearted game of sava. The rest gazed at one or another of a score of crystal balls that had been arranged on stands around the room. From those enchanted devices, Osorkon was able to look in on the comings and goings of friends and enemies alike.

  A small group of men stood around one crystal ball, leering and giggling at the magically conjured image of a senator they all knew well who was engaged in an illicit dalliance with his upstairs maid. The senator’s wife appeared in another of the crystal balls, taking tea with two other senators’ wives in an opulent sitting room elsewhere in the Second Quarter.

  Osorkon sighed and propped his head in his hands, his elbows on the gigantic desktop in front of him.

  “Oh, my!” one of the men looking into the crystal ball at the senator and his maid exclaimed.

  Osorkon looked up, noticing the sudden change in mood. The men around the crystal ball stared at the image with shock and concern, all leering gone. The crystal ball showed the senator clutching at his chest, his left arm dangling limply at his side. The young maid scurried about, naked, screaming. They couldn’t hear through the crystal ball, but it looked as though she was screaming. They all paused for a moment to watch the man die in his bed while the crying maid hurried to get dressed and get out.

  One of the mages passed a hand over the crystal ball and the group of men dispersed, all looking vaguely embarrassed. None of them looked at the image of the dead man’s wife, still enjoying her tea and gossip.

  Osorkon heaved another sigh, louder and deeper.

  “Is something the matter, Ransar?” one of the mages asked.

  Osorkon shook his head.

  “Is there anything I can get you, my lord?” one of the advisors inquired.

  Osorkon ignored him and started sifting through the parchment, paper, and vellum on his desk. There were letters, account ledgers, writs, and requests, and they all bored him to tears. He’d fallen behind with all the reading and signing, signing and reading, and the more he tried to force himself to get caught up, the less work he actually did. The advisors had gone from tolerant to testy to insistent and back to tolerant again, having lost interest in the fact that he’d lost interest.

  As the bulk of the people in the room watched the sava game, none of them really interested in it, Osorkon quickly skimmed one sheet after another, sliding them off the desktop as he read them. He signed one, a request for the release of a hundred gold pieces to buy bricks to shore up a falling pier. A letter from a housewife from the Third Quarter that seemed not to have a point at all was sent off the edge of the desk only partially read. That went on for a long time.

  When he saw Fharaud’s signature at the bottom of an expensive sheet of bleached white paper, he stopped.

  Fharaud had been dead for months. They had been friends-a long time ago, before the shipwright’s public disgrace. The signature at the bottom of the letter was ragged and shaky. The letter was dated, and more than five months, almost six, had passed since it had been written. Ransar Osorkon read the letter.

  Then he read it again.

  He stood and crossed to a map of the city and surrounding territory that he’d had painted onto one of the walls of his office. The map covered everything from Firesteap Citadel at the northern foot of the mountains to the south, all the way north to the middle of the Nagawater. He had to reach up and stretch to do it, but he touched the thin blue line of the southern Nagaflow at the site of his new keep, then traced a straight line down with the tip of his finger to the shore of the Lake of Steam.

  “Forty miles, give or take,” he whispered to himself.

  More than one of the people in the room asked, “Ransar?”

  He looked at the letter, then asked the room, “Has anyone heard of this man, Ivar Devorast?”

  The people in the room looked at one another, and most of them shrugged.

  “A Cormyrean,” Osorkon said, reading from the letter. “Once apprenticed to Fharaud, the shipbuilder.”

  One of the mages stepped forward and said, “I believe the name is familiar, my lord. He was bound up in the tragedy of the Neverwind.”

  “Everwind,” Osorkon corrected then waved it away. “Who is he?”

  “No one, my lord,” the mage said.

  “Would Rymut know him?” Osorkon asked the ransar. The wizard’s face went white and he stuttered, “M-my lord?”

  “This Cormyrean has an idea that I find interesting,” Osorkon said. “It’s an idea that you mages might not like, an idea some Red Wizards might not like.”

  “My lord,” the mage said. “Master Rymut may be Thayan, but-”

  “I’d like to speak with this man,” Osorkon interrupted, and the mage knew well enough to quiet himself.

  Two of the bodyguards stared him down and the wizard bowed.

  “I heard that Rymut tried to kill him on at least one occasion but couldn’t,” said one of the advisors, the sort of man who listened to gossip but rarely passed it on.

  “Shall I try again to scry him, my lord?” another of the mages suggested. “Rymut, I mean.”

  The ransar waved again and said, “There’s no point. He’s blocked your every attempt. No, I think I’ll speak with this Devorast. If Marek Rymut wants him dead, and Fharaud wrote his last letter on his behalf, he must be worth meeting. Find this man for me.”

  The fifteen people in the room looked at each other. They had all been given the same task, but very few of them would make any attempt at all to find Ivar Devorast.

  63

  3 Eleint, the Year of the Wave (1364 DR)

  BERRYWILDE

  I think I want the wall around the main house made a foot taller,” Phyrea said to the old woman with the horrible burn scars.

  The woman, made of shimmering violet light, didn’t answer, but her smirk was enough.

  “Stop it,” Phyrea whispered, looking at her but trying not to make eye contact. “That’s not it.”

  The little girl walked across the room and disappeared through a bookcase. Phyrea wrapped her arms around herself in a vain attempt to stop shaking. She hated it when they did that.

  She closed her eyes and said, “Go away.”

  When she opened them, they were gone, but she knew they would be back. She also knew that they knew why she wanted to repair the wall.

  She stood up and walked as quickly as she could without actually running until she was out in the blazing sun.

  It was still hot, but the days were starting to get shorter. The summer was coming to an end, and she was going to have to go back to the city. She might take some of the ghosts with her. She wondered if she could take any of the ghosts with her. She didn’t want to take any of the gh
osts with her.

  “I want to stay for a long time still,” she muttered to herself as she walked, panting and sweating across the rolling countryside of Berrywilde. “I need to get out of here and not take them with me, but one or two will come with me and then I won’t so much be here as I’ll be there.”

  She stopped herself from talking by holding her hand over her mouth and kept it there until she came to the last hill. As she walked over the rise, she didn’t feel like she needed to talk to herself anymore. Phyrea perused through them as if she were looking for just the right maidens-thigh melon at the farmers’ market in Innarlith.

  “Melon,” she whispered under her breath.

  There he was.

  “You, there,” she said to the red-haired man.

  The man straightened and looked her in the eyes. He didn’t leer or grin or lick his lips. Her blood ran cold, and her skin grew hot at the same time.

  “What is your name?” she asked. Her voice sounded distant and reedy to her ears, and she wondered if he’d even heard her.

  “Ivar Devorast,” he answered.

  “You work with stone,” she said. The thought that he might say no to that made her breath stop in her chest.

  “Yes,” he answered, and she started breathing again.

  “Do you know who I am?” she asked.

  “M-Miss Phyrea!” the foreman stuttered, running up to them. He turned to Ivar Devorast and said, “You, there, get back to work. This is the master builder’s daughter and she’ll not suffer the drooling leers of the likes of-”

  “No!” Phyrea practically screamed. She held herself tightly, her face red and hot. That horrible foreman. That horrible little man. He was embarrassing her. He was horrible. “I want him.”

  Phyrea cringed so badly that it felt like a seizure.

  “No,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I require the services of a stonemason. I have a … uh …”

  “Do you need work done at the house, Miss?” the horrible foreman asked.

  “The wall is too short,” she said to Ivar Devorast, who lifted an eyebrow to show that he was listening. She turned to the foreman and said, “The wall around the main house.” The foreman nodded and she turned to Devorast and said, “I’ve seen you working. I think you could do an acceptable job. I require the wall around the main house to be taller. I don’t feel safe. I won’t feel safe until it’s taller.”

  Devorast looked at her as if waiting for her to say something that had anything to do with him.

  “My father is paying you,” she tried.

  “He is,” the foreman said. “He is indeed, Miss.” He took Devorast by the elbow and said, “You take care of this wall for the young miss, now, Cormyrean.” Then he leaned in close to Devorast and whispered into his ear loud enough for everyone nearby to hear, “No funny business. Just the wall, now. Remember your place.”

  Devorast didn’t seem to hear him at all. He looked at Phyrea.

  He looked through her.

  “First thing,” she mumbled already turning away. “First thing in the morning.”

  “Two days,” Devorast said. She stopped and turned around to face him again. “I’ll need to have rocks delivered.”

  That made sense, so she nodded.

  “As long as the wall is higher,” she said, then turned away from him and went back to the house, where the ghosts teased her silently all night.

  64

  3 Eleint, the Year of the Wave (1364 DR)

  BERRYWILDE

  Her hands shook so badly it took her twice the normal time to get dressed. She wanted to wear her mother’s pearls but almost gave up, it was so hard for her to close the clasp.

  “That’s good,” Phyrea whispered to her reflection.

  “Is that good?”

  “Beautiful,” her reflection answered.

  She froze, staring at herself.

  The black silk dress clung to her narrow hips, and accentuated her firm, round breasts. A keyhole cut in the front of the dress exposed her navel. Her flat stomach was starting to lose some of its tone from the summer spent in the country, relaxing and talking to herself during the day, shaking and cowering from ghosts at night. She’d worked harder on her hair that morning than she’d had all summer, and had even traced her eyes in kohl, and dabbed red powder on her cheeks.

  “We’re beautiful,” her reflection said, grinning back at her, though she couldn’t feel a smile on her face.

  She turned away from the mirror, closed her eyes, squeezed her hands in tight fists, and held her breath. She counted five heartbeats, then exhaled, opened her eyes, relaxed, and forced herself to smile.

  “He’ll like that,” the little girl said. Phyrea couldn’t see her. “You should smile more often.”

  Phyrea shook her head and left her bedchamber. She stopped next to the little table in the next room, where her breakfast dishes still sat. There was a knife. She picked it up and held it to her arm but didn’t cut herself.

  “Use the sword,” a voice she didn’t recognize whispered in her ear.

  Phyrea dropped the knife and ran through the house surrounded by echoing laughter. She burst out the nearest outside door into a dull gray overcast morning. It was still hot, and the air smelled as if it was going to rain soon.

  It was quiet outside, though. There was no laughing and no screaming, and no one whispered in her ear.

  She stood in the middle of a flowerbed, breathing deeply in and out, calming herself, slowing her heartbeat. It didn’t take long for the fear and confusion to be replaced by the thrill of knowing that the day had come. He was coming. Ivar Devorast would be there to work on the wall.

  Phyrea looked down, sighed, and stepped out of the flowerbed. She began to stroll along a winding flagstone path, at first just wandering, then following a sound. Barely aware of it at first, she followed it without thinking. Then she realized what it was: a cart. The way it clattered along it sounded empty. Her heart raced and she smiled. The cart went past, driven by a man who wiped sweat from his brow with a forearm covered with grotesque tattoos. Two other men sat in the back of the cart and looked equally exhausted.

  She walked with purpose in the direction the cart had come from and came around the corner of one of the outbuildings. The men had made four huge piles of rocks. The stones were each the size of Phyrea’s head.

  She looked around but didn’t see the red-haired man. Resisting the temptation to call out his name she just stood there, her knees shaking, running her fingers through her long, soft hair. She heard rock scraping on rock from behind one of the piles. He was behind there-must have been kneeling or squatting, since the pile was half his height.

  She walked slowly around the pile of rocks, moving her hips, almost slithering when she walked. He didn’t hear her coming. She looked down at the ground as she came around the rock pile. Only by looking at the wall could she tell she stood where he could see her.

  “Mornin’, Miss,” he said.

  “Good morning,” she said.

  She put a fingertip in her mouth and her other hand on her hip, gently rolling her hips as if she was about to turn around. Normally she could feel it when a man was looking at her, but that wasn’t happening. She couldn’t take it and finally had to sneak a look at him.

  She gasped, jumped back, and almost screamed.

  It wasn’t the beautiful red-haired man kneeling behind the rock pile. It was some kind of misshapen thing, standing up on two squat legs, so short it was hidden by the pile of stones. It looked at her from behind a mass of matted hair that covered its face so that she could make out only a grimacing mouth full of flat yellow teeth and two beady eyes that stared at her with puzzled intelligence.

  She almost screamed again, then a word popped into her mind: dwarf.

  She’d seen the dwarf at the winery site. He had stood next to Ivar Devorast.

  “Where …” she said, her voice shaking along with the rest of her. “Where is Ivar Devorast?”

  “Oh, yea
h,” the dwarf said, looking at her as if she were a mad woman. “He couldn’t make it this morning, Miss, so he asked me to come in his stead. I’m a capable stonemason, Miss, and can promise you a good job raising yer wall here.”

  “He …?” she said. “He sent you?”

  “Aye, Miss,” replied the dwarf. “Name’s Hardtoil, Miss. Vrengarl Hardtoil. At yer service.”

  Phyrea’s fists clenched again, and she closed her eyes. Her entire body tensed, but it wasn’t just anger.

  “Miss?” the horrible little dwarf asked.

  Without another word to the thing Devorast had sent in his place, she spun on her heel and went back to the house. She knew they’d be laughing at her and they were. Gales of laughter followed her from room to room, even as she ripped the dress off and threw it aside. She went back to where she’d dropped the knife.

  “No!” one of them screamed. “The sword!”

  She cried while she cut herself, and they laughed at her the whole time.

  65

  8 Eleint, the Year of the Wave (1364 DR)

  THE LAND OF ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN

  The black firedrake struggled under Insithryllax’s massive talon. It wasn’t trying to escape-it knew better-but it was just trying to breathe. The black dragon held it firmly to the ground of the alien dimension while Marek Rymut walked around and around the dragon in slow, deliberate circles.

  The rest of the firedrakes, hundreds of them, wheeled in the air far above, watching Marek with fiery eyes smoldering with nascent intelligence.

  They’ve come a long way, Marek thought with a smile.

  “I’m bored,” the black dragon rumbled.

  Marek looked up into his reptilian face and said, “Patience, my friend.”

  “Patience?” the black wyrm replied. “I’ve given you your little mutants, your black firedrakes. I’ve helped tame your lightning fish-whatever you call them.”