Whisper of Waves

by Philip Athans

  Willem took a deep breath, smiled, and said, “Innarlith …”

  “On the eastern shore of the Lake of Steam,” Inthelph said, returning Willem’s smile. “I have it on good authority that upon my return I will be named by our esteemed ransar to be the city’s master builder.”

  “I will be working for you?” asked Willem.

  “Not directly, perhaps, at first, but….”

  “Innarlith,” Willem said. “Yes, thank you, sir.”

  “Senator,” Inthelph corrected.

  “Senator,” said Willem.

  Fharaud cleared his throat then and said to Devorast, “If I were to give you a problem to solve that involved a ship … the design of a hull or the rigging for a sail …?”

  “I would do my best to solve the problem,” Devorast answered.

  “And the two of you are friends?” Fharaud asked.

  Devorast glanced at Willem and almost seemed to shrug but didn’t.

  “Yes,” Willem answered for both of them. “We’ve known each other all through school, and Ivar lets a room from my mother.”

  The two men from Innarlith shared a look.

  “Well, then,” Fharaud said, “it appears you’ll be going to Innarlith together.”

  Willem smiled and finally caught Devorast’s eye. Only reluctantly, Devorast smiled back.

  10

  8 Flamerule, the Year of Shadows (1358 DR)

  THIRD QUARTER, INNARLITH

  My Dearest Mother,

  I’m certain you will be pleased to hear word from your dutiful son, now two months here in the far city of Innarlith. Again, please accept my most gracious apologies for having left you so quickly and with so little time to prepare. I hope that soon I will be able to send for you and we will once again be together as a family should be.

  As you would expect, I continue in Innarlith under the employ of Senator Inthelph, who has indeed been named to the post of Master Builder. I am certain that when you have the opportunity to meet, you and the senator will get on well. He is a man of impeccable manners, with a careful mind, deliberate to draw conclusions. He is, as you always taught me to be, keenly aware of the finest traditions of both his society and his vocation.

  Our principal project, being the restoration of the city’s great curtain wall, is proceeding apace. Measurements have nearly been completed, and I hope that we will begin to set ink to paper within the year. The current state of the walls is deplorable, and it’s a credit to the wisdom of the city’s ransar that we are employed so in its reclamation. Innarlith will be stronger and more beautiful upon its completion.

  I’m sure you would find much of interest in the city of Innarlith. Though on the surface one could easily assume that it is of a lesser standing in the world than our fair Marsember, it took me only a short time to see the many fine qualities of the place. Within the embrace of the great curtain wall we’re endeavoring so to repair, the city is sternly and rightfully separated into bands that are know locally as Quarters.

  The Fourth Quarter, nearest the wall, is an unfortunate slum wherein the least of the city’s population makes their squalid homes in hovels of the most obscene sort. Truly this place is the shame of Innarlith, but isn’t there a neighborhood like it in every city across the wide face of Faerûn? Even, I dare point out, in our own fair Marsember? It is my unfortunate duty to daily cross this landscape of poverty and hopelessness to be at my work on the wall. As you have taught me, however, I keep my back to the suffering and a hand on my purse at all times. So far, being typically surrounded by soldiers and officials of the city, I have remained altogether unmolested.

  I spend the majority of my free time, such as there is (indeed, have I come all this way to recreate? or to create?) in the Second Quarter. Here are the homes of the city’s finest people, and I think you will find them as fine as any of the nobles of Marsember. Great fortunes have been made in the minerals drawn from the fetid Lake of Steam. Farmland to the north of the city feeds us well, and I have heard talk of silver and even gold mined from the foot of the mountains we often see on the southern horizon, that is when the bleak overcast so rarely breaks.

  The climate here is at once warm and dreary, and even the finest avenues of the Second Quarter are often cursed with the stench of the Lake of Steam. Sulfur and a volcanic mud of a most offensive variety bubbles to the surface of this stretch of water which I understand is dominated by a great volcano said to rise from its center. So far, at least, I have not set eyes on this volcano, my attention being paid to my work on the wall.

  Of that work I can say mostly good things. I have earlier described the master builder and the team he has assembled (including your dutiful son) as of like mind and temperament. Within the circle of influence applied directly by the master builder, I am surrounded by allies and a veritable faculty of mentors. Though I hesitate to complain, the same is not true of all with whom I come in contact with while at my efforts.

  The military here is much as one would expect of the military anywhere. They remain convinced of their own superiority in all things, and as it is that we’re engaged in the renovation of the city’s most vital fortification, we all find ourselves at constant odds with the officers, so many of whom seem to feel they know better how to build a wall than we, who have studied so hard at the essential sciences behind it.

  One man in particular, a tiresome (excuse me!) officer by the name of Ptolnec (and as an aside, let me assure you that one quickly grows accustomed to the exotic names people give themselves here, which I’ve been led to believe are of largely Mulhorandi origin)—well, this officer, I believe his rank is captain, is a haughty and uncooperative fellow I’m told comes from a fine family, his father being a senator and therefore among the ruling class of the city. This man, I hear tell, acts as he does out of frustration at the slow speed at which he has advanced over some years in the military service. A particularly improper rumor, and one I assure you I hesitate to repeat, implies that Ptolnec’s peculiar frustration is in his father’s failure to exit this world in a timely fashion to leave the family’s apparently considerable wealth—and perhaps too the seat in the governing body, which I’m told is purchased and can be held in a family by the proper transfer of gold bars upon execution of a last will and testament—in his unworthy son’s hands. I apologize if the implication offends, Mother, but I hope you detect in my repeating of it the degree to which this man has caused me grief in the completion of my most important work.

  Should you have begun to fret over this unseemly subject, take heart. Your son is growing into the man I believe you hoped I would be and indeed the man your careful nurturing and daily lessons have made me.

  It was over a set of measurements for a string of battlements along what the military men have identified as a portion of the wall with a particular relevance for their defensive artillery tactics, that we (I so hope!) butted heads for the last time. This Captain Ptolnec (I hesitate to attach such a rank of importance to this man, really!), after barely a glance at the figures, had decided that I was in the wrong in my measurements. I would not be troubled to give his objections even the briefest consideration, he having proven himself to be one who finds fault without evidence in everything I do.

  He commanded me, as if I was one of his lowly soldiers, to measure the section again, and of course I refused. The master builder himself was clear with me that I am not in the charge of the military and should accept orders from no one but him.

  Wasn’t it your son’s fair fortune to have been invited to a reception at the master builder’s residence not a handful of days after this unfortunate confrontation with Ptolnec (see, between the two of us, I will not call him captain again)? The master builder, as one can expect from a senator in so lofty a perch, has many and varied friends among the better people of the city, not the least of whom was the senator in whose charge was the committee that holds sway over the military’s reserves of gold—their very lifeline.

  Oh, Mother, how proud of me
you would have been. I promise you I did not embarrass you, myself, or the master builder by complaining, but with great care let slip this difficulty with Ptolnec. All along I apologized, feigned worry over having offended this simple officer, and always speaking in support of my adopted city, its tireless guardians among the soldiery, the master builder, and the lot of my betters.

  I have heard only this morning that my performance was not in vain and that this Ptolnec will trouble me no more, having been reassigned to a faraway post in the mountains that I’m to understand is the closest thing to exile that can be forced on an officer of the armies of the city-state.

  I will leave you with that, the knowledge that your efforts on my behalf since the moment of my conception have not been in vain and that your son continues to rise in the world.

  Further evidence, the box of gold coins in which this letter has been found. In the months ahead I am certain I will be able to send more, and then only until I can at last send for you to join me here.

  Until next, I remain forever your dutiful son.

  —Willem

  11

  14 Flamerule, the Year of Shadows (1358 DR)

  FIRST QUARTER, INNARLITH

  Fharaud deliberately slowed his steps when he saw Devorast standing at the end of the long pier. The young man faced the water, his arms at his side, his weight equally distributed on both feet, for all appearances like a statue overlooking the gently lapping waves of the Lake of Steam.

  Devorast had been in Innarlith working for Fharaud’s shipyards for only a month but had already proven himself both as a surprisingly eager student, despite his brusque even insolent manner, and as a young shipbuilder with extraordinary promise. Though he hadn’t know Devorast long, Fharaud couldn’t help but think that he should know him better after a month working so closely together. He’d opened his shipyards and his home to the young man, who had never once thanked him, and still spoke in such terse, clipped tones that it felt as if any attempt at conversation beyond the demands of the project at hand was an intrusion Devorast only grudgingly allowed.

  As he approached Devorast, Fharaud puzzled over his own patience. How many times in the past had he dismissed an associate for less than he tolerated every day from Devorast? That there was something undeniable about the young man was itself undeniable. He simply had a quality to him, an aura of potential that Fharaud was unable to ignore.

  “Good morning, Ivar,” Fharaud said as he finally gained the end of the long pier. The waves were so quiet and the breeze so moderate that he didn’t have to raise his voice.

  “Good morning,” Devorast replied without turning around.

  Fharaud sighed. In years past, that petty discourtesy alone would have been reason enough for him to let an associate go.

  They stood in silence for a while, Fharaud trying once more to let Devorast begin a conversation. In time, he gave up.

  “The wind is from the southeast this morning,” Fharaud said.

  “That’s unusual?” Devorast asked.

  “Unusual,” said Fharaud, “but not unheard of. It’s a kind wind that keeps the smell of the lake off the city for a while. I can see why you’d take the opportunity to spend some time nearer the water. I’m surprised we don’t have more company.”

  Devorast shrugged, and Fharaud got the feeling the smell, the wind, and the company had never entered his mind. He stood there because he wanted to stand there, not because the conditions invited it.

  “Sometimes I think it’s Umberlee herself who’s cursed this lake,” Fharaud said, scanning the far horizon to pick out the tall plume of the Arnrock—the great volcano in the center of the Lake of Steam—that stood like a white thread against the uniform gray of the high overcast far out to the west. “I suppose it’s bad luck to utter the Bitch Queen’s name so close to the water, but the breeze means Tymora has a hand in the day’s events as well.”

  Devorast had no response to that, which elicited another sigh from Fharaud.

  “In the time we’ve spent together I don’t remember you speaking of the gods,” Fharaud said. “Do you hold one’s favor above another’s? What temple holds sway over your Marsember?”

  It was a question that anyone might ask a newfound friend from a far-off realm, but when Devorast finally turned the look on his face made Fharaud feel as if he’d been speaking a language the young man didn’t understand.

  “I have no more interest in the gods than they do in me,” Devorast said then turned back to the water.

  Fharaud replied, “I have heard similar sentiments from men before, but I must say, men much older than you.”

  They stood in silence a bit longer, then Fharaud said, “Are you happy here, Ivar? Content in your work? Suitably challenged?”

  “Yes, I am,” Devorast answered. “For now, at least.”

  “And when you’re not, you will be on your way?”

  Devorast nodded as if there was no need to state so obvious a point of fact.

  “Well, then,” Fharaud went on, “I suppose it’s up to me to keep you challenged.”

  Again, Devorast gave no response.

  “I have seen you looking out into the water more and more,” said Fharaud, “and I have seen you reading, always reading, and always on the subject of shipbuilding, the art of the sail, and the ways of the sea. In my day, we’d describe a man like you as having heard the whisper of waves. What, I wonder, have the waves whispered to you?”

  For once, Fharaud had asked Devorast a question for which he didn’t require an answer, and for once, the young man answered anyway:

  “I haven’t heard a whisper, sir, not in words, anyway. The waves don’t speak to me, nor do the gods. I speak to myself, though, and the sight of the water, the waves, the far horizon, gives me peace enough to hear myself.”

  “And what do you say?”

  “I remind myself that the world is mine for the taking, is there for us all, gods or no,” said Devorast. “I remind myself that if there is some deficiency in the world, as surely as I can identify it, I can repair it.”

  Fharaud smiled and nodded. “The shape of the world doesn’t please you, does it, Ivar?” he asked.

  “Not always,” the young man replied with a shrug.

  “So how will you go about changing it to your liking?”

  Fharaud let Devorast stand in silence for a long time, as he could see the young man was truly considering his question.

  “For now at least,” Devorast said finally, “with ships.”

  That made Fharaud smile again.

  12

  15 Eleint, the Year of Shadows (1358 DR)

  SECOND QUARTER, INNARLITH

  The nursery was an assault on the senses.

  Marek Rymüt had begun to dread his infrequent visits there, though it was he who had built the place. Well, to be entirely accurate, he hadn’t built it but found it. The space had been there for a very long time. A long-disbanded guild of thieves had used it as a place to hide and squabble over loot, then it was used as a wine cellar for some wealthy merchant to indulge his dilettante’s fantasies of culture and good taste. Pirates moved in for a year or so after that, doing much the same as the thieves had, but entering more often through the dreary, slime-covered water that washed in from the drainage tunnel and spilled into the Lake of Steam. Then it was used as a prison during some minor border skirmish against a nearby city-state Marek had never heard of. Through the decades it went on like that, with no one bothering to scrape the mold off the walls or sweep the dust from the floor.

  When Marek found it, he had trouble at first believing that it was a man-made structure and not a natural cavern so thick was the dust and debris. He hired some men to clean it out, paid them not to speak of it, then paid others to intimidate them into keeping that promise and even briefly considered having all of them killed. Then that wasn’t really necessary, was it? Anyone who really wanted to know would know, and most everyone else wouldn’t care. He’d have to do what he always did, which
was trust that he had more, better friends in Innarlith than any of his enemies did.

  All those thoughts were pushed from his mind when his foot found the bottom step and he turned into the great vaulted chamber under the streets of Innarlith. The smell got to him first, even though he had been careful to place a fine silk handkerchief over his mouth and nose before he was halfway down the seemingly endless staircase from the sewer above.

  The smell was a combination of blood, sulfur, charred flesh, burned hair, and things even less pleasant. There was no way a human could pick out each of those smells separately, so all he could do was withstand the force of the combination. What all those things created when put together was a unique odor all its own and one Marek could only call “the nursery.”

  He put his hand on the wall and it felt warm. The air was thick with humidity and so hot Marek began to sweat from his forearms along with all the usual places. He didn’t like the way that felt and couldn’t wait to get out of there for at least that reason. A bath and clean clothes seemed like the most valuable things in the world just then. He stepped into the room on legs made unsure by a vibration that rattled the ancient flagstones under his feet. The dragon was moving.

  “Ah, Marek Rymüt,” the bass voice trundled through the heavy air.

  Marek smiled despite his discomfort and said, “Insithryllax, my friend. You’re well?”

  The sound of the dragon’s laugh was like distant thunder crawling at him from the horizon. He’d long ago stopped being scared by the sound and had come to relish the feeling it elicited in his chest.

  “I’ve had a glass poured for you,” said the dragon.

  Marek followed the great wyrm’s gaze to a fine crystal wine glass sitting on the floor next to a matching decanter. The Red Wizard had never seen the set before and found that fact unsettling but only passingly so. Insithryllax wasn’t his prisoner, and the dragon was well-versed at taking human form.