Lies of Light

by Philip Athans

  “What do you want here, naja’ssara?” Devorast called out.

  The creature hissed at him. For all the world it was a giant snake, but with a human’s face. That face held all the hate, anger, and violent rage Hrothgar had ever associated with humans, and more. The dwarf could only guess that the thing was a male.

  “Ivar,” he said, “you told us that you—”

  “Speak,” Devorast called to the naga, ignoring the dwarf.

  “This false river will not be realized,” the thing said. Hrothgar didn’t like its voice, not one bit. “Go from here, dista’ssara. Go now, or more will die.”

  Devorast crouched and picked up a rock. The action elicited from the naga a sound that Hrothgar assumed to be a laugh. He liked that sound even less than its speaking voice.

  “What of Svayyah?” Devorast demanded. “She and I—”

  “Svayyah?” the naga shrieked, hurling the name at Devorast as if it were a spear. What it said next had no meaning Hrothgar could fathom. Devorast threw the rock at the same time it spoke.

  As the rock arced through the air, four slivers of red-orange light appeared perhaps a yard in front of the naga and arrowed through the intervening space, unerringly for Devorast. When they hit him, the human staggered back with a grunt. His face twisted in what Hrothgar perceived to be frustration, not pain—certainly not fear—but he kept on his feet.

  The rock Devorast had thrown went wide—but then, it shouldn’t have.

  Hrothgar blinked and shook his head. The naga was there, then it was just a step or two to the side of there. The rock was supposed to hit the thing but …

  But you’ve seen it use foul magic, the dwarf told himself. Now here’s more.

  “All right then,” he said aloud so Devorast could, perhaps, benefit from his wisdom, “aim a yard or so to the snake’s left.”

  As if they’d planned it that way, a work gang bearing all sorts of nasty implements—shovels, awls, picks, and hammers—came up over a rise, attracted by the wind and commotion. They’d seen Devorast staggered by the naga’s magic, and though Devorast had assured them all that he’d garnered the snake-people’s support, even those simple men could add two and two. They rushed at the naga.

  “Careful, boys,” Hrothgar tried to warn them, “it’s—”

  The thing let loose another string of nonsense words, and light flashed in the air. There was no getting a sense of the source of it and there were so many colors it was impossible for the eye to pick one from the next. Devorast turned his face away.

  “Don’t look at it!” Devorast shouted, but only Hrothgar was able to heed his words.

  The on-rushing gang stopped dead in their tracks, eyes wide, moths agape, fixed in their places and thoroughly mesmerized by the naga’s incandescent display.

  “Damn their eyes,” Hrothgar muttered.

  He charged, trying not to consider what bizarre and horrendous fate the snake monster with the human face had in store for him.

  One hit, he thought, slapping the tree limb against his palm as he ran. Just one.

  Devorast threw another rock, and the naga started to rattle off another one of its spells. Hrothgar sent a silent thanks to Clangeddin Silverbeard that the rock not only beat the incantation from its mouth, but actually struck the creature a glancing blow. Surprised more than hurt, the thing stumbled over its words then growled in frustration. Sparks of blue and green light played in the air around its head, but that was all, and Hrothgar was there.

  He swung hard and spun a full circle when the club missed its target. All his warrior’s instincts—by the Nine Hells, all his stonecutter’s instincts—told him he should have hit the thing, but it simply wasn’t where it appeared to be.

  “Fool!” the naga hissed at him, then said something else in either the language of the wizards or the language of the nagas. The dwarf hoped it was the latter.

  Hrothgar swung again with the tree limb, but at what appeared to him to be thin air just to the creature’s left. He felt the branch scrape something, but couldn’t see anything. The naga twitched its tail and though it appeared as if the tip of it was a full armslength from Hrothgar’s side, it slapped him hard enough to crack a rib—but that was the least of it.

  The dwarf’s body spasmed and shook, and his teeth clamped down hard.

  He’d lost his club and tried to find it. There it was—in Devorast’s hands.

  The human swung the club hard from right to left across his body, and it hit something more or less near the naga, who reacted as though it had taken the full force of the blow. Devorast lost his grip on the club, and it went whirling past Hrothgar’s face.

  “It pays!” the naga shrieked. “It pays or more of its stinking kind dies!”

  Hrothgar looked up at the sound of another muttered incantation—a short one—and watched the naga slither away at such a speed….

  “Look at it … go,” he huffed out.

  Devorast dropped the club on the ground at his feet. Hrothgar stood, his whole body still tingling from whatever the naga had done to him.

  “You hurt it bad, my friend,” the dwarf said, bending to retrieve the makeshift weapon. “But you can bet it’ll be back.”

  Devorast didn’t even bother to shrug that off. He ran for the spot where the trench had collapsed. Hrothgar followed, grunting with pain the whole way. They dug as fast as they could, brought in as many men as would fit around the trench, but not one of the five diggers were pulled out alive.

  10

  5 Ches, the Year of the Sword (1365 DR)

  THIRD QUARTER, INNARLITH

  She hadn’t done any of the things she would have expected herself to do.

  She had taken no one’s advice. She’d used none of her father’s—her family’s—gold. The rented flat wasn’t in the worst part of Innarlith, but it wasn’t in the best either. Deep in the Third Quarter, it was a tradesman’s flat above a vacant storefront that used to sell cheese. She hated the smell that was left behind and under any other circumstances never would have put up with it. It was the kind of building she’d have burned down just because she didn’t like it. She spent not a single silver on furniture or decorations, and even promised herself—and any disembodied spirits that might be listening in—that she would sleep on the stained mattress, sit on the flea-ridden chair, and keep her clothes in the cupboard with the rat skeleton and the hardened undergarment the previous tenant—perhaps the cheesemonger’s wife—had left behind. She didn’t bring the flambergé, and had not even a slim dagger or kitchen knife with which she might cut herself.

  Phyrea sat on the floor. She had a candle, but had forgotten to bring anything with which to light it, so she sat in the dark.

  She folded her arms in front of her and doubled over. Her stomach hurt almost as much as her head throbbed. She wanted to cut herself so badly she wanted to scream. But she wouldn’t let herself do either of those things.

  The ghosts screamed louder and louder as the room grew darker and darker.

  Cut yourself.

  You long for it, came a shrieking wail. We know you crave the cold bite of steel. That thin chill of the blade passing through your own flesh, and the delicious quiver of your hand as you force it to draw your own blood.

  The sword.

  That blade bites the best.

  Use the flambergé, they screamed at her in a chorus of disembodied howls. Let it drink you in. Let it bring you to us.

  One of them said, Take me home. I don’t like it here. Take me back to Berrywilde. Berrywilde….

  It sounded like a little girl, but Phyrea could feel its soul sometimes, and it was the cold, bitter, mean spirit of a devil.

  “No,” she whimpered into the deathly quiet of the merchant quarter at night. “Get out of me.”

  A man screamed into her ear in inarticulate rage, but no real sound disturbed the silence. The voices didn’t speak into her ear, but rather from it.

  “Tell me what you want,” she asked, though they’d told her
before. She wanted a different answer.

  Cut yourself.

  Use the sword—the sword I gave you.

  Don’t give it to him. Don’t give it to the Thayan.

  Go home.

  Take us back to our pretty home and stay with us there forever.

  Kill for me.

  Give us your life.

  Spill your blood.

  Phyrea shook her head.

  She’d gone there—rented the flat, broken from her life in whatever ways she could—in the hope of gaining some clearer understanding. Perhaps, she’d thought, in the silence of a strange place, away from the people and the places that kept the ghosts rooted in her, she might find some answers.

  Did you hope to catch us off guard? one of them—a little boy by the sound of his voice, but a monster by the cold dread that followed his words—asked. What did you hope? That we would just rot in the ground, or that we would be frightened by the stench of rotten cheese? Have you ever smelled the inside of your own moldering casket?

  Phyrea shook her head.

  Of course you haven’t, a woman whispered at the edge of a sob. But you will.

  Phyrea opened her eyes, wondering how long she’d had them closed, and saw them gathered all around her. They loomed over her, each one drawn in the air from violet light. They existed as a glow, as a sourceless luminescence, and as voices.

  Free us, a little boy with one arm demanded through stern, gritted teeth.

  Free yourself, the man with the scar on his cheek said.

  Phyrea shook her head, pressed her hands to her temples.

  Cut yourself, a woman whispered in her ear so close it made her jump. The desperation plain in the woman’s voice made tears well up in Phyrea’s eyes. Maybe it will make it go away.

  Phyrea began to sob so hard she feared her ribs would crack, and that fear only made her cry some more.

  Feel that little pain, the woman—the ghost—went on. Just a little pain of the body makes all the pain of the mind go away. At least for a little while, yes? Just a little? Isn’t that good? Doesn’t that make it go away? Can’t you just make it go away?

  Still crying, Phyrea nodded.

  Trust us, said the man with the z-shaped scar—some long-dead relative she’d never known. We love you. Will you listen while we tell you some things you need to do?

  Phyrea wiped the tears from her eyes only to feel her cheeks soaked with tears again a scant heartbeat later.

  Trust us, the old woman insisted.

  Phyrea started to nod, and the ghosts started to laugh.

  11

  7 Ches, the Year of the Sword (1365 DR)

  THE CANAL SITE

  This is disgraceful,” Phyrea said.

  She glanced to her left to make sure the strange man was looking at her—he was.

  She folded her arms in front of her and let a breath hiss out through her nose. The man didn’t speak, but Phyrea knew he’d heard and understood her.

  A very short man—no taller than a halfling, but he looked human—rushed up to the stranger and spoke to him in a language Phyrea didn’t recognize, though she assumed it was the language of Shou Lung, from whence they’d come.

  Lau Cheung Fen answered the little man in clipped tones that sent the servant scurrying away as fast as he’d approached.

  “You object, Miss, to the viewing station or to the endeavor itself?” the Shou merchant asked.

  Phyrea paused to consider her response carefully. She’d learned from Meykhati’s dreary wife that Shou would only respect slow speech and careful responses.

  “Please accept my assurance, Master Lau,” she said, “that this is a subject that I have given considerable study. I object to both.”

  The merchant nodded.

  “This canal is a fool’s errand,” she added.

  “I have heard quite differently of this Ivar Devorast,” Lau replied.

  “There are some who mistake madness …” she began, but stopped to think. Then she continued, “Thank you, Master Lau, for letting me reconsider what I was … for letting me think.”

  “One should do precisely that,” he said, “before one speaks. But in fact there is more of interest to me in what your first response might have been than in what you might believe I wish to have you say.”

  Phyrea let one side of her mouth turn up in a smile. Though he was alien to her in so many ways, she could feel him respond to her beauty the same as any Innarlan.

  “I hope,” she said, “that those who have given you reason to believe that this canal will be of use to your trade will think again. This Devorast has ideas and passions, but he has no true skill.”

  “He will not be able to finish this?” the Shou asked.

  Phyrea looked down at the toes of her boots and sighed. She scraped a line of dried mud from her boot across the wood planks.

  “I think this … station, as you called it,” Phyrea said, “is all one needs to see to understand the nature of this canal.” She put as much sarcasm as she could into that last word—and feared it might have been a bit too much. “This is for show. It’s a performance. A master manipulator is at work here, not a master builder.”

  Lau Cheung Fen nodded, and looked out over the men scurrying this way and that, going about the complicated business of digging a miles-long trench from the Lake of Steam to the Nagaflow.

  “Soon,” Phyrea went on, “this will all stop. This will all be closed down, and all these men will go back to Innarlith.”

  “I was to understand that he had the support of your ransar,” Lau said.

  “And he does, for the time being. That will surely change once the gold has run out.”

  “The ransar’s gold?” Lau asked.

  “The gold he’s already given Devorast,” Phyrea told him. “It’s all the gold he’s going to get—all the gold the ransar will give him. And from what I have been told, there might be enough coin left for a tenday’s work. No more.”

  Lau Cheung Fen nodded again, and she thought it appeared as though he was considering her words. At least she hoped he was.

  You’re hurting him, the sad woman’s voice asked her. Why?

  She felt her cheek begin to twitch and so she turned away from the Shou merchant.

  “To begin, and not to end….” Lau Cheung Fen said, trailing off with a shake of his head.

  “It might still be finished,” Phyrea offered, “but not by Devorast.”

  Why? the woman asked again.

  But it was the old man, his voice a hoarse croak, who answered, Because she can.

  Phyrea smiled and Lau asked, “By someone else then?”

  “The master builder of Innarlith,” she said, “has an apprentice who by all accounts has surpassed him in skill if not position. This man is a senator in Innarlith, well liked and with all the right friends. He will be master builder himself soon, and this canal, should the ransar decide it’s indeed something that should be finished, will be—should be—completed by him.”

  Phyrea swallowed. Her mouth and throat had gone entirely dry. Her chest felt tight, and she drew in a breath only with some difficulty.

  “For me,” said Lau Cheung Fen, “it matters only that there is a canal. If Ivar Devorast or …?”

  “Willem Korvan,” she said.

  “Or Willem Korvan builds it, it will mean nothing to my ships. If there is water between here and there, they will float.”

  Phyrea bobbed down in a small bow and grinned. Her upper lip stuck for half a heartbeat on her sand-dry teeth.

  “Then I won’t belabor the point,” she said.

  “I did expect to see him here,” said Lau, “but I’m told he is away.”

  “He’s gone to beg peace from the nagas,” Phyrea replied. She had been at the canal site for less than a day, but had heard things. “They agreed to let him build the canal at first—or so he told the ransar—but came recently and killed some of the workers. I fear that if the canal is completed it might succeed only in spilling ships out into
hostile waters, controlled by those monstrous snake things.”

  She saw the very real concern that prospect elicited on the Shou’s face, and turned away.

  12

  7 Ches, the Year of the Sword (1365 DR)

  THE NAGAFLOW

  We feel anger,” Svayyah said for all the assembled naja’ssara to hear. “We feel great, grave, crippling anger, and that anger is directed not toward this dista’ssara before you, but for one of our own.”

  The source of her frustration glowered back at her from where he hung suspended, almost motionless in the cool, murky water. Six more of their kind swirled around them, their attentions struggling between the accused—Shingrayu—and the human, Ivar Devorast. Their tension began to heat the water, and Svayyah’s red-orange spines grew redder still.

  “Anger?” Shingrayu replied, literally dripping venom from his fangs into the water with each sneered syllable. “What does Svayyah know of anger? Let us tell our tribe-mates of anger.”

  Svayyah brought to mind a spell that would heat the water around Shingrayu to so scalding a temperature that his scales would slough from his body. But rather than cast it, she said to the other water nagas, “This dista’ssara, this human, is known to us. We have given it our word. We have made an agreement with it.”

  She looked at Devorast, who floated in the bubble of air she’d made for him with his arms folded across his chest. She could read nothing in his face, but his irritation came off him in waves that nettled at her sea-green scales.

  “We care nothing for an agreement with this low monkey of the dry cities,” Shingrayu spat. His serpentine body twitched, and he moved forward—only a foot or two—but Svayyah reacted to the threat by enveloping herself in a protective shield of magic. It lit around her with a pearlescent glow, reflecting off the particles of dirt that floated in the water. “You made this agreement, Svayyah.”

  The other half dozen water nagas writhed at the sound of that word: you.

  “We close upon the place where words fail,” Svayyah warned him.