Lies of Light (5 page)

“Oh, yes, my darling,” Meykhati’s pinch-faced wife whispered at Marek’s elbow. Her hissing voice was so loud to him that Marek had to close his eyes. “Straight away.”

With that, at least she was gone.

As the new lead pair of dancers worked their way back to the line behind them, Marek turned to glance at Phyrea and Devorast. Ran Ai Yu had wandered off to be replaced by Lau Cheung Fen, who took Devorast by the arm.

The Shou gentleman had no trouble pulling Devorast away from Phyrea, who all but ran to the farthest corner of the large room, disappearing into a crowd of her father’s friends and political associates. Devorast didn’t watch her go, but a twitch of his eye betrayed him to one as observant as Marek Rymiit.

This, the Red Wizard thought, is a relationship I will need to follow as closely as possible.

Two new dancers began to quiver so quickly they appeared in the throws of some sort of catalepsy. The jangle

of their various bells and cymbals began to intrude on Marek’s spell, and he noted a few in the crowded room place hands to their ears to fend off the foreign cacophony.

“I will leave it to you to determine the advantages to you and your trade,” Devorast told Lau Cheung Fen.

“And there is nothing you wish to add?” the Shou asked. “I should think that to have the endorsement of the merchant fleets of Shou Lung would be for you a very … ah, but help with the word… ?”

“Advantageous?” Devorast provided.

Sharp, Marek thought. Very sharp of mind indeed, this shipwright turned canal builder.

Lau sketched a shallow bow and said, “To have this advantageous support from afar would give you greater support at home, is that not true?”

“I have all the support I need,” Devorast replied, and Marek cringed at the supreme self-confidence of that, the bold naivete. “I will build the canal, who uses it and why makes no difference to me.”

“Ivar,” Willem Korvan said, appearing from the crowd holding a half-full tallglass of Inthelph’s upstart local vintage. He took Devorast by the arm and bowed to the Shou. “If I may.”

Lau Cheung Fen appeared reluctant to release him, but apparently felt he had no choice and returned Willem’s bow.

All seven of the dancers began to move in a slow, fluid motion that Marek assumed most men would find alluring. For him, though, there was Willem Korvan. The young senator’s immaculate dress complimented his perfect features. Next to the disheveled, weather-beaten, ill-dressed Devorast, Willem appeared soft, still in the full flower of youth. Though Marek had heard the two were of an age, he would have thought Ivar Devorast at least a decade Willem Korvan’s senior.

“Is that the best you can do?” Willem said to Devorast, the contempt soaking each word in bile.

“Hello, Willem,” Devorast said. “Is that the best you can do?”

“Is there something you need from me?” asked Devorast.

Willem’s handsome face went flat, his jaw tight and his lips twisted.

“Do you realize that that one man could—” Willem started to say, and just then Marek’s spell faded out, and the clashing harmonics of the exotic music once more assaulted his ears.

He started moving in the direction of the two Cormyreans before he even made up his mind as to which of the several reasons for doing so drove him over there. Did he want to break up what might become and unseemly brawl? Other than the fact that it would be a shame should something happen to damage Willem’s-face, why on spinning Toril would he care if the two men came to blows? Of course, he wanted to hear their conversation but knew that as soon as he was close enough to hear them without the aid of a spell they’d stop talking in front of him.

Whatever the reason, he arrived at their side in a shot, but refused to look at Devorast.

“Ah, Senator Korvan,” he gushed, “there you are.”

“Master Rymiit,” Willem mumbled, his face red, his eyes darting around as though he were a rabbit caught in a snare. “May I present—”

Marek didn’t want to be introduced to Ivar Devorast just then. Not yet, he thought. So he clamped his hand on Willem’s arm and squeezed.

“Master Rymiit….” Willem almost protested, but let himself be led away at a pace that drew alarmed glances from the mingling aristocrats around them.

When they were out of earshot of Ivar Devorast, Rymiit said, “Really, Senator, you should take care with whom you’re seen conversing.”

“But—” the pretty weakling started to protest.

“Go tell our host how much you enjoy this hideous

clanging and stomping about,” he said, pushing Willem away, but releasing his grip only slowly, and with some reluctance.

Willem looked down at his hand with vague discomfort, but Marek was quickly distracted by Phyrea. The girl stood on her tiptoes, peering as best she could above the heads of the other guests. The crowd erupted in insincere applause for the imported entertainment, and Marek stopped to make a show of it. His eyes never left Phyrea though, and he took some interest in her crestfallen mien.

As the applause died down, he made his way to her side. She looked up at him as if he were the last man in Faerun she wanted to see, and maybe he was.

“Master Rymiit,” she said, “hello again.”

“Hello again to you too, my dear. I couldn’t help but notice… were you looking for someone?”

She sighed, her shoulders slumped, and she looked off to her right at nothing.

“Phyrea?”

“Yes,” she answered fast. “No. I mean … that man. Devorast is his name.”

“The savior of merchant captains across Toril, yes,” Marek mumbled. “What of him?”

“He’s…”

“Gone, yes,” Marek said. “I’m sure Senator Korvan told me he was just leaving. Surely you don’t have anything to do with that beastly man.”

She nodded and shook her head at the same time, and Marek risked a playful laugh at her confusion.

“The ransar—” she started.

“Is not immune to the occasional ill-considered decisions, my dear,” he finished for her. “I assure you that Ivar Devorast is just that.”

“Still, there’s something about him, don’t you think?”

“No,” he lied. “There’s nothing about him at all but a man in deep water who hasn’t sorted out that he’s already drowned.”

Phyrea wasn’t listening. Marek could tell. She listened to someone else, and nodded ever so slightly in response.

What do you hear? Marek Rymiit wondered. What do you know?

9_

27Alturiak, the Year of the Sword (1365 DR) The Canal Site

The stout wooden planks that braced the sides of the trench shattered. They crumbled to sawdust all at once; an explosion of brown dust that followed a loud sizzling sound that must have been a million softer cracks all intermingled.

Hrothgar looked up at the sound. He’d heard a lot of new, strange sounds in his time among humans, under the limitless sky and so near the unforgiving sea, but he’d been at the canal site long enough to grow accustomed to its noises, and that one—those millions at once—didn’t belong. Because of the sound, though, he saw the planks shatter, and the dried-mud walls begin to crumble. He saw the men inside paw at their dust-blinded eyes, and their screams tore up from the depths of the trench. As tall as the humans were, the lip of the trench towered over their heads, twice again as tall as the tallest of the diggers.

“By the unhewn rock of Deepshaft Hall,” the dwarf cursed. “They’ll be-“

Devorast pushed past him at a run, but it took some time for Hrothgar to realize they were being attacked. At first the trench collapse was just another accident—not that there had been many. In fact, Hrothgar had commented to Devorast and to his cousin Vrengarl on many occasions already how surprised he was that so few men had been injured, and how incomprehensible it was that no one had yet died for the cause of the canal. What they were building was so big, there were so many men, and so

many things that could go wrong.

A trench could cave in, but what made the planks explode into dust?

The wind had been light all day, the clouds gray but thin and dry. Though Hrothgar could hardly be called an expert on the ways of wind and storm, the wind that blew the dirt onto those poor diggers didn’t just blow in on its own from the Lake of Steam.

He ran after Devorast, not bothering to consider how many times he’d done just that in only the past few years. Devorast reached the crumbling edge of the trench long before the dwarf. He skidded to a stop, sending dust swirling around his toes only to be whipped into a series of tiny little tornadoes around his feet.

Then the wind changed again, and lifted Devorast off the ground. The human hurtled backward through the air, his arms pinwheeling at his sides in a vain attempt to either stop or control his sudden flight. He slammed hard into Hrothgar. The dwarf tried to wrap his arms around the human’s waist, made every effort to catch him, but was rewarded with a broken nose, a poked eye, and an impact on his chest hard enough to drain his lungs of air.

They ended up on the ground in an undignified sprawl, their hair and clothing still whipping around them in the sourceless gust of hurricane-force wind.

“The men!” Devorast barked.

His eyes were closed, and blood trickled from under the line of his shaggy red hair. Hrothgar blinked back unwelcome tears and shot blood and snot out of his nose in a painful exhalation that at least let him start to breathe again. The two of them stood at the same time, neither helping the other to his feet.

By the time Hrothgar reoriented himself, the trench was gone. Wind whipped the dirt so thoroughly that anyone passing by who had not seen it only moments before, would never have suspected that there had been a hole there at all.

“Five men,” Hrothgar growled to himself.

He looked to Devorast, who stood tall but still. His head moved to one side, then the other.

“What is it?” the dwarf asked casting about for a weapon. Where’s my gods bedamned hammer? he thought. “Is it some mage? Some wind wizard?”

Devorast stopped—he saw something. Hrothgar moved back and his foot kicked something heavy. Without looking, he reached down and grabbed it—just an old tree limb the clean-up crew had missed.

It’ll do, he thought, then followed Devorast’s gaze.

“Sweet Haela’s bum,” the dwarf oathed.

“Naga,” Devorast said.

The human relaxed. Hrothgar couldn’t believe it. He hefted the makeshift club and stepped forward, but Devorast didn’t move. He faced the creature as if they were old friends, and Hrothgar realized that perhaps they were.

“What do you want here, nqja’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.