Whisper of Waves

by Philip Athans

  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 was 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.

  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 Rymüt 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 Rymüt 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 Rymüt 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. “Rymüt, 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 Rymüt 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 ghosts 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.