Willem stood rigid in the older man’s embrace, but Marek either didn’t notice or didn’t mind. The Thayan released him and stepped aside. Willem staggered into the room.
“Sit,” Marek said. “Brandy?”
Willem took in his surroundings with some surprise. He’d known Marek Rymüt for a long time, and thought he had some sense of the Thayan’s tastes, which ran to the finer things—the more exotic. His “private study” was just the opposite. The room was everything one would expect from a peasant grandmother’s country cottage. Though he suspected the decorations had been chosen to put people at ease, Willem grew only more anxious as he lowered himself into a leather armchair. Though he hadn’t asked for one, Marek poured him a glass of brandy and set it on the little table next to Willem’s chair.
“Why the long face?” the wizard asked as he lowered his girth into the chair opposite.
“What happened, Master Rymüt?”
The Thayan smiled at that and shrugged.
Willem took a deep breath, and wondered how to even begin.
“Really, my boy,” Marek went on, swirling the brandy glass under his nose, “there’s no reason to be so glum, now is there?”
“Isn’t there?” Willem asked. “I’m being …”
“You’re being …?”
“I can’t remember things,” Willem said before he realized he was saying the words aloud. “I don’t know what’s happened to me.”
“You’re fine, my boy.”
Words caught in Willem’s throat and he made a little coughing sound.
The Thayan took a little sip of brandy then said, “They didn’t come to your little party.”
A tear welled up in Willem’s right eye and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. He let his head hang on his neck, looking down at the wood floor.
“I have bad dreams,” Willem whispered. He was afraid to say the words, but more afraid not to. “I wake up drenched in sweat, my teeth clenched so hard my head aches. Most of the time my hands are curled into fists and I can’t open them.”
Willem looked at his hands, both of which were balled into tight fists. He didn’t bother trying to open them.
“It’s summer already,” Willem went on. “I don’t remember spring. I think I don’t.”
“It will all be fine,” the Thayan said. “You’ll see. Try not to think too hard about all this. We all have nightmares. We all forget things. We all have days when we feel we have no friends in the world, when we feel all of Toril has somehow gotten together to forget us all at once, but that’s hardly reason to hang your head in misery, crying into your friend and patron’s expensive elven spirits.”
“I’m sorry,” Willem all but gasped.
“Wait a month,” Marek went on, ignoring Willem’s apology. “In a month, all your friends will come back to you. It will be as if nothing ever happened.”
“But …” Willem breathed, looking up into the Thayan’s face, “what happened?”
“Nothing,” Marek said with a wide grin. “In a month, at any rate.”
“But how?”
“I’ll tell them to,” said Marek. “We will all be fast friends and close associates once more, because I will tell them as much.”
Willem swallowed, looked at the glass of brandy on the table next to him, but didn’t reach for it.
“You can do that?” Willem whispered, his eyes still on the glass.
“Don’t think too much of me,” the wizard said with a laugh. “I am but a small piece in a much larger puzzle. Still, if you need anything … anything at all … I am here for you.”
“No,” Willem said, forcing his attention from the glass to Marek’s big, wet eyes. “No, Master Rymüt, it is I who am here for you. Always.”
Marek laughed in a way that made the hair on the back of Willem’s neck stand on end.
36
5 Eleasias, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR)
FIRST QUARTER, INNARLITH
Wenefir didn’t know the names of either of the two black firedrakes. They looked so much alike they might have been twins. Both had black hair and dusky skin, with eyes blacker than any human’s. They wore thick black leather ring mail vests, and even their boots were of the same design and materials. The only thing that was different about the two was the way they stood. One of them set all his weight on his left foot. The other leaned on the thick haft of his longaxe. There was something about the way they smelled that Wenefir found unpleasant.
The night breeze brought the stench of sulfur from the Lake of Steam, and Wenefir couldn’t smell the firedrakes anymore. He blinked in the darkness and gazed down the length of the long pier. The ship that was tied there—a sturdy cog out of Calimport—bumped the piling with a hollow thud, and a wave broke, sending a few drops of water into Wenefir’s face. The priest blinked the acidic water from his eyes. He didn’t want to take even one hand from the haft of his mace to wipe the water away.
He glanced down at the platinum-inlaid mithral of the weapon’s fierce head and smiled. His hands tightened around the polished wooden haft. The weapon felt good in his hands.
A clatter of wood on wood made him jump, and a cool sweat broke out on his forehead. He blinked again and watched the zombie work gang unload the cog while the Calishite crew drank away their meager earnings in some quayside tavern. The zombies weren’t careful, and they were slow—so slow it was difficult for someone like Wenefir to watch them without feeling frustrated, even though he couldn’t possibly care less whether or not the Calishite ship was unloaded in a timely fashion.
Wenefir sniffed the air. The sulfur from the water, and a hint of the black firedrake’s acidic musk assaulted his nostrils, but the priest couldn’t detect even a trace of rotting flesh. By the look of the half dozen animated corpses a few yards away from him, the stench of rotting flesh should have been unbearable.
“What do you smell?” one of the black firedrakes whispered.
Wenefir shook his head.
“Master Rymüt made them that way,” the firedrake said. Wenefir couldn’t place his accent. “The sailors and captains were complaining.”
Wenefir shrugged and silenced the firedrake with the hint of a smile.
The three of them watched the zombies work, and as they watched, they listened. One of the firedrakes tipped his head up and sniffed at the warm summer breeze.
“I smell it, too,” the other black firedrake whispered. “They’re here.”
Wenefir nodded and brought the mace up in front of his chest. He kept his eyes on the zombies and heard footsteps on the pier before he saw anyone. They came from the end of the pier, as though they’d come from the open water. The black firedrakes fanned out to either side of them. Wenefir couldn’t hear them—not a creak of leather or the tap of a boot heel on the planks.
The women stepped into the meager light from the one lantern the cog’s captain had left burning for the zombie work gang. Wenefir recognized them both immediately. He brought a prayer to mind, and when he was ready, he made eye contact with one of the black firedrakes. They stepped out of the shadows together, but the second firedrake remained cloaked in the shadows of the night-dark pier.
Wenefir coughed out the harsh words to the prayer and felt Cyric’s temperamental grace well up within him. The older of the two women heard him first. She gasped, reached out to grab the younger woman’s forearm, and took a step back. A zombie carrying a crate passed between them, oblivious to the presence of the women, the Cyricist, and the black firedrake.
The force of the prayer swept out from Wenefir’s hands. He could feel it drape itself over the two women. The black firedrake didn’t wait to see if it had any effect. He stepped forward with his longaxe high over his head. Stepping nimbly around one of the slowly-shambling zombies, the firedrake brought his axe down in a blow that would have split the older woman in two if she hadn’t slipped out of the way with reflexes so sharp and precise they had to be magical—or spiritual—in nature.
T
he younger woman shivered and opened her mouth as if to scream, but made no sound. She was frozen in place, unable to move.
The black firedrake growled and spun, reversing his longaxe to try to take the older woman’s head off, but she waved her hand in front of her and the heavy, razor-sharp blade pinged off a wide metal bracer on her forearm, sending a shower of blue-white sparks arcing in the night air—more magic.
The black firedrake answered by vomiting in her face—or so it appeared to Wenefir. A spray of thin black fluid missed her head and only a little bit of it spattered against her shoulder as she once more dodged with superhuman speed.
She clutched a holy symbol that hung from a cord around her neck—the hated device of Chauntea—and began a staccato obeisance of her own.
“Cahlo,” Wenefir said, and the mace glowed with an eerie blue light. He stepped forward to face the priestess and said, “These zombies belong to the ransar.”
A flash of yellow light blazed, so bright and so sudden Wenefir had to look away. He brought the mace up instinctively to block it, but it didn’t do much good. He had to blink spots from his eyes and hope he had the few heartbeats he needed to clear his vision. The black firedrake that had spit acid at the priestess cursed in a language Wenefir didn’t understand—but curses are unmistakable in any language.
Yellow light shone from the firedrake’s eyes. The priestess had placed the spell expertly, so that its illumination covered the black firedrake’s eyes, doing more than simply blinding him. He clawed at his face and staggered backward, his longaxe lying on the pier at his feet.
“This abomination has gone on long enough,” the Chauntean priestess announced. “In the name of the—”
Her oath came to a stop with the sound of a butcher’s blade cutting meat. She staggered forward, gasping for air, and the black firedrake behind her passed into the light. The feral, animal look in his eyes gave even Wenefir pause. He glanced at the younger woman, still glued to the same spot a few steps away. The look of sheer terror on her face made the Cyricist smile.
The older woman began another prayer, but her words gurgled in her own blood. The black firedrake opened its mouth and coughed out a cloud of black mist that enveloped her head. The sound of the priestess’s scream as her head dissolved would stay with Wenefir for the rest of his life. When the headless body dropped to the planks one of the zombies tripped over it and went sprawling facefirst at the younger woman’s feet.
The undead stevedore struggled to its feet and continued on its way to the gangplank and back into the cog’s hold for another crate. Wenefir watched it go then turned to the girl, who was still stuck in place, and stepped close to her.
She looked him in the eye with a look of stern defiance startlingly at odds with the utter terror he’d seen in her eyes scant moments before.
Wenefir looked down at the mace in his hands, glowing with its cold blue light. He held it to her face and when it was close enough to really light her features, the unnatural cold radiating from it made frost spread across her cheek. One of her eyes started to close as her skin tightened, and pain made a tear well up in the other one.
“I’m sorry, Halina,” Wenefir said. “Is that cold?”
She showed him her teeth in a sneer of contempt and said, “Have you stopped toadying around for Pristoleph now, Wenefir? Did my uncle buy you from him?”
Wenefir laughed in her face and said, “Inflae.”
The cold was gone in the blink of an eye and the mace burst into flames. Halina whimpered and, try as she might to back away from the searing heat, she still couldn’t move. A blister began to rise on her already frost-burned cheek.
“You’ve been a bad, bad girl,” Wenefir said. “Your uncle is very disappointed in you.”
Wenefir dropped his hand just a little and touched the flaming mace to the girl’s robes. They caught easily enough and she screamed when the fire touched her soft skin.
“Too bad, really,” Wenefir said, backing away.
“I escaped him!” Halina screamed. “I did more than you!”
Wenefir smiled at that, then stepped out of the way to let a zombie carrying a crate pass by him.
“Yes,” he said to the burning girl, “I suppose you have.”
They waited for her to die before putting her out with water from the Lake of Steam, so as not to burn down the pier. When she’d cooled sufficiently to touch, they pushed her and the older priestess off the end of the pier and into the black water.
37
17 Eleasias, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR)
THE CANAL SITE
How long has it been?” Willem asked.
Ivar Devorast looked at him—looked him in the eye. Willem didn’t remember the last time he’d done that. Though it was never easy to read Devorast’s expression, Willem was sure he finally could. It was confusion Willem saw in his old friend’s face. The look was what would come before, “Are you well? Have you been ill? What has happened to you?” But Devorast didn’t say any of those things.
“Six years,” he answered instead.
Willem nodded, puzzled over that length of time. He couldn’t decide if six years seemed like too long, or not long enough.
“I wonder sometimes,” Willem said, “if it was even me who met you all those years ago, in school. Did you really let a room from my mother? Did we really come here, and …?”
Devorast didn’t answer. He never answered questions like that, rhetorical questions, questions from the verge of panic.
Willem tipped his face up into the hot wind. The clear blue sky left the sun unfiltered and Willem felt as though he’d stepped into a blast furnace. The light hurt his eyes. He was sweating, and he hated sweating.
“What brings you here?” Devorast asked him.
Willem closed his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair. He wanted to answer, but he couldn’t form a thought much less the words. He looked over at Devorast, who stood, still as always, and waited for an answer.
Willem smiled and said, “That’s what I must have looked like, all those times I stood there, waiting for you to answer, waiting for anything from you but the least you could give.”
Devorast stood and waited, and that made Willem laugh.
“I haven’t laughed in a long time,” he said to himself, then stepped to the lip of the stone-lined trench.
He stopped with his toes barely a quarter of an inch from the edge. Below him was a sheer drop to the bottom of the canal. The section was finished, and Willem’s eyes followed its sharp contours. It was straighter than anything so big had any right to be. The blocks fit together perfectly.
“How deep is it?” Willem asked. The wind took his voice and he was afraid Devorast didn’t hear him.
“Thirty feet,” Devorast said.
“It seems deeper,” Willem said, still looking down. “You’ve made startling progress, Ivar, really. How far are you from finishing?”
“A year,” Devorast replied.
“A year …” Willem mouthed the word again and puzzled over how foreign it sounded to him.
“What do you want here, Willem?”
Willem sighed and looked up into the clear blue sky. He rocked back on his feet just the tiniest bit, and his face flushed.
“Step back,” Devorast said.
Willem took a step backward from the edge, then another, then he turned and walked past Devorast.
“I don’t know what’s happened to me,” Willem said. “I know I look bad. I know that … something is wrong. I think I’ve done things that are wrong.”
“You did what you chose to do,” Devorast said.
Willem nodded, though he didn’t agree. He couldn’t believe that. He had done what he was told to do.
“Can I help you, Ivar?” Willem said. “Will you let me help you finish it?”
“As?”
“As?” Willem asked.
Devorast didn’t answer, and Willem paced in a slow circle for a long moment while he considered the mean
ing of that one little word.
“You decide what as,” Willem said. “I’m not the master builder. I’m only a senator anymore—and even that in name only. Should you ask me to dig a hole I’ll dig it. Ask me to carry stone or cut lumber, I’ll do it. Let me do something. Give me something to do that will leave something behind to—”
Willem stopped talking because he didn’t know what he was saying anymore. He didn’t understand himself.
“As?” Willem said. “As a parasite. Let me help you as a less than sensate thing that lives on the blood and flakes of dead skin from—”
He stopped again.
“You told me that you were my enemy once,” Devorast said. “You warned me to carry a weapon.”
“I’ve done and said worse than that,” Willem replied. He looked at Devorast and was just as relieved that he saw no compassion in the man’s face as he was to see no anger. “I can fall to my knees, if you like. I can grovel.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Devorast said with the barest hint of a smile.
Willem nodded and laughed in a way that didn’t feel as good as before, but made him feel tired.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
Devorast replied, “I’ll think about it.”
Willem nodded, looked at the ground, and smiled. He looked up at Devorast, who was looking at his canal, and Willem grinned wider. A tear rolled down his cheek, and it felt good.
38
17 Eleasias, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR)
PRISTAL TOWERS, INNARLITH
Phyrea didn’t realize she touched her own chest when she said to the woman, “Your brooch is beautiful.”
The woman smiled in a way that made Phyrea feel at once embarrassed and delighted. She had to look away.
“Thank you, Lady,” the woman said in a voice so devoid of guile it was like a salve to Phyrea’s ears. She’d spent so much of her life among the aristocracy of Innarlith that anything that wasn’t a hateful lie seemed like music. “It is the symbol of my faith.”
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