Whisper of Waves (23 page)

He was looking at her, and she hadn’t noticed.

A chill ran down her serpentine body, like tickles of lightning running all twenty-five feet from the base of her skull to the blunt tip of her tail.

“Are you all right there?” the man asked, standing and moving closer to the water, as if he was about to swim out to her.

“We are fine, dista’ssara,”she said, bruising her tongue with his inelegant language. “Keep your distance.”

He was surprised by that and said, “I didn’t see you there. If you’d prefer, I can set up my camp elsewhere if you’re bathing here.”

He looked around while Svayyah tried to figure out what he was trying to say.

“Are you alone here?” he asked. “Are you from the keep?”

Ah, Svayyah thought, he thinks we’re human.

She suppressed the natural tendency any of her kind would have to be mortally offended by that implication and shook her head. Her face would have resembled a human’s, especially from a distance. He thought she was some dista’ssara girl out for a swim.

“Do you practice the Art?’ she asked, though she felt confident she knew the answer.

“Magic?” he said. “No, I don’t.”

“Strange,” Svayyah said, surprised. “You carry yourself with a confidence that only a strong connection to the Weave could bring, especially for a dista’ssara.”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” the man replied. He was cheeky, Svayyah had to give him that. “What does that mean, dista’ssara?”

“In your insufficient tongue, we believe: ‘hands of the embodiment.’”

He took a step backward and said, “You’re a naga.”

“We are Svayyah,” she said. “We are nqja’ssara, what you would call a water naga. Does that surprise you?”

“No,” the man said, running a hand through his orange-red hair. “I suppose it shouldn’t anyway.”

“Do we frighten you?”

“No,” he answered quickly enough and with sufficient confidence that Svayyah believed him. “Do you want me to go?”

“If we did, we would have told you to go,” she said.

” ‘We’?” the human asked. “Are there more of you?”

“We are alone here,” she replied, and the man appeared to understand. “We have seen you here before, when the dista’ssara started to build that tower.”

The man looked up at the structure, nodded, and said, “Does that offend you?”

“It surprises us,” she replied. “It is beautiful.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“We knew it,” Svayyah said. “You are responsible for that structure, aren’t you…”

“Ivar Devorast,” the human said.

“Ivar Devorast,” the naga repeated. “Why are you here? Why would you camp at the riverbank and not live in your own work?”

“That’s a long story,” he said.

“Which is a long story?” Svayyah asked. “Why you’re here, or why you don’t sleep in the human tower?”

“Both, I suppose,” Devorast replied.

“Well, then,” said Svayyah, “light your fire, sit, and tell your tale, Ivar Devorast.”

He looked her in the eye for some dozen heartbeats, then an understandably suspicious smile came across his face and he said, “Thank you, Svayyah, I would like that.”

Svayyah blinked at him, stunned into silence while she watched him set his campfire. He’d answered her as if her command to light his fire and tell her his story had been a request.

Another tingle played down the scaly length of her snakelike body, and Svayyah writhed in pleasure as the human began to speak.

WMirtul, the Year of the Wyvern (1363 DR) Second Quarter, Innarlith

They say he just came out of it all at once,” Inthelph whispered, but not so softly that half the room didn’t hear him. “He lay at death’s very door for… how long?”

“Five months,” Meykhati provided.

“So long….” Inthelph whispered.

Willem’s head spun and his hands shook. He couldn’t look at the master builder or at any of the senators that stood around him. He breathed only with some difficulty.

“At the very least,” said Senator Djeserka, “you have to give the old man his due. I heard he had enough of that poison in him to drop a stone giant.”

Meykhati nodded and said, “He had a team of clerics working on him practically day and night. Apparently he’d given Waukeen’s temple enough gold over the years that the Merchant’s Friend thought he deserved another year.”

Willem’s mouth went dry. It felt as if he’d crossed the Calim Desert on foot.

“If Waukeen was any kind of friend to that particular merchant,” the master builder said, “he would have let him go.”

“Are you all right, Willem?” Meykhati asked.

Willem’s eyes went wide when he realized the men were looking at him. If he looked half as bad as he felt…

“I’m well, thank you, Senator,” Willem answered, faking a smile.

“My, Inthelph, I think you might be keeping young Willem out in the rain too much,” Meykhati joked, slapping Willem on the back with a fatherly wink.

“Willem has been working very hard lately,” said the master builder. “He’s decided to take control of his own fate.”

Willem spun on Inthelph, his face flushed, sweat soaking him. The three senators were taken aback, but Inthelph laughed and the moment passed.

“Hell be a senator soon enough,” the master builder said.

Willem studied his cheerful, sociable demeanor and told himself that Inthelph didn’t know anything, didn’t know it was he who had poisoned Khonsu.

The senators moved on to other subjects, including the names of their younger, easier-to-manipulate colleagues whom they had managed to move into the committees once run by Khonsu. Though the old man could maintain his seat on the senate—he’d paid for it long ago, after all—he was a lone vote without consensus or allies. He could sit on the senate forever, but for him it would never be anything but a meaningless title ever again.

Willem swallowed his third glass of brandy and closed his eyes while it burned his throat. His hands were still shaking but not as bad.

He wanted to say, “I got away with it.” He wanted to tell Inthelph and his smug friends who had set the stage for their triumph over the old man. What would they have done?

Willem didn’t know, which is precisely why he kept his mouth shut. Instead he looked across the seemingly endless ballroom at Khonsu.

The old man sat in a chair—a strange contraption with wheels on the sides. A blanket was draped over his frail, sticklike legs. His skin was the color of bleached parchment. What little hair he’d had was gone and his dull eyes were lined with red.

Behind him stood the old chambermaid. She didn’t look much healthier than her half-dead employer.

Willem crossed the room. He didn’t know why, but he wanted a closer look. He wanted to be sure the old man really was still alive. From a distance he looked dead.

“Senator,” Willem said.

Khonsu looked up, his eyes twitching and rolling, looking for the source of the sound.

“Senator Khonsu,” Willem repeated, leaning in a bit.

The old man’s eyes found him and bulged. He drew in a deep, ragged, phlegmy breath.

“Senator,” Willem said, glancing at the chambermaid. The old woman looked at him the way she might a melon in the marketplace, if she wasn’t in the market for melons. There was no recognition, no realization that the mysterious Mister Wheloon had crossed her path again. “You’re alive.”

The old man opened his mouth, and his chin quivered. His eyes twitched in their sockets.

“It’s all right, Senator,” Willem said.

“What do you want?” Khonsu rasped.

Willem looked at the maid again. Her mind was on the buffet on the other side of the room. Though she wasn’t paying any attention to either of them, Willem knew he couldn’t say what he really wanted to say.

“No one knows who did this to you, Senator,” he said instead.

Khonsu shook his head. His legs jumped a little under the blanket and he turned his face away as if afraid Willem was about to strike him.

“They say no one will ever know,” Willem chanced.

“No,” the old man whispered. “No.”

“You will let me know,” Willem said as he took a step back, “if there’s anything I can do for you.” And Willem lay awake the entire rest of that night wondering what made him say, “A cup of tea, perhaps?”

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8Flamerule, the Year of the Wyvern (1363 DR) The Nagawater

Svayyah had cast an array of spells on the bubble and on the man. She wanted to know if he was lying, what he was thinking before he spoke, what spells or magical items

he might have had on his person, and so on—anything she could think of, and Svayyah could think of a lot.

They spent the first hour of their meeting discussing the bubble itself. The human was fascinated by it, as if he’d never seen magic in use before, but there was no awe in his eyes or voice. He asked the most bizarre questions, all focused on the fundamentals. He refused to accept that she’d made the sphere of breathable air ten feet below the surface of the long, narrow lake called the Nagawater simply by magic.

Ivar Devorast wanted to know how the magic worked— exactly.

Svayyah was perfectly capable of answering his questions. She wasn’t a mindless monster, as most dista’ssara believed. The Art was Svayyah’s life, and she knew what she was doing, and how she was doing it, at all times.

At the end of that first hour, though, Svayyah was forced to admit to herself that she had spent an hour explaining herself to a human who to her was still largely a mystery. Had it been any other human that would have angered her.

“Enough of that,” she said finally, though she knew Devorast was satisfied anyway. “You are putting us at a disadvantage.”

“I will never compete with you in the creation of magical air bubbles, Svayyah,” he said with that disarming smile.

“Careful how you speak to us, dista’ssara,”ahe warned. “You have to know that there are a thousand ways we could kill you right now in the blink of an eye.”

“Collapsing the bubble, for instance,” the human replied.

“To begin with,” said the water naga.

“In what way would that benefit you?”

Svayyah stopped herself from answering and thought about the question instead. Perhaps he did have her at a disadvantage after all.

“But,” he said, “we’re here to discuss something else.”

Svayyah nodded and replied, “We have discussed your intentions with our tribemates, and they are intrigued.” “Do you speak for them all?”

“As much as anyone speaks for the Ssa’Naja,” she replied. “We do not gather into realms and kingdoms the way you lesser beings do. No single naga would ever agree to be placed under the dominion of another. There are enough of us, however, and we are enlightened enough, that here in the lake and in the river south, we consult one another, warn one another of dangers, and have been known to gather together to further a common goal.”

“They understand what this will entail?”

Svayyah suppressed an angry hiss and said, “We are not snakes, ape-creature. We have discussed, and we understand. Don’t forget that if you succeed in this—and we are not the only one among the naja’ssara who believes you will not—we will expect to be compensated for the use of our waters.”

“You claim the river and the lake,” Devorast agreed. “That will be fair, as long as you and your fellows are fair.”

“We will discuss, and we will decide,” she said. “You will abide.”

“I’m not in the habit of abiding,” Devorast said, “but . I’m sure we can come to an agreement.”

Svayyah eyed him, and he stared back. She felt no fear in him, and his words echoed the thoughts she heard from his mind half a breath before he spoke. He really believed he was going to succeed in his scheme and that the naja’ssara would be cooperative partners.

Svayyah was growing increasingly convinced that he was right, so she checked again to make sure he was exerting no magical control over her. He wasn’t.

“What of the others?” she asked. “Have you spoken of this with the other interested parties? Those who would stand to gain or lose from the reality of this thing?”

Devorast shrugged and said, “I will take that as it comes, I suppose.”

“Now you’re just being naive, Devorast,” Svayyah warned him. “You mean to build a canal to join the Lake of Steam to the Nagaflow, which feeds into the Nagawater, which eventually empties into the Vilhon Reach. Nothing like this has ever been done before. You may have interested the naja’ssara, but what of, say, the Thayans?”

“The Thayans?” Devorast asked.

“Yes,” she taunted him, “the Thayans—the realm of wizards who travel through the Weave and who’ve been known to sell access to their portals? This canal could bite into that, no?”

Devorast shrugged. He really didn’t care.

“Cormyr might be on your side, but what of the sahuagin?” she asked. - “The sahuagin?”

“You know what a sahuagin is?” she asked, and Devorast nodded. “Then you know they’re not to be trifled with. The Inner Sea is acrawl with them, and there’s another race, deeper down, one we’re not sure your kind even knows of.”

“What are you suggesting?” he asked, and she thought he might be starting to get annoyed.

“What will the druids in Turmish think?” Svayyah went on. “Who will control the northern end of the canal? Your ransar will hold the southern end, perhaps, but what of the mouth of the Nagaflow at the Vilhon Reach? We don’t bother with those waters, but your fellows in Arrabar just might.”

Devorast shrugged.

“How is it that you get your goods, you humans, from the east to the west now, without this canal—with no navigable waterway between, say, Impiltur and Waterdeep?”

He looked surprised.

“As we said, Devorast, we’re not a dumb animal. We have ears and a mind. We’ve heard of Waterdeep.”

Devorast offered a smile and nod of apology and Svayyah returned the smile despite herself. She fought back the

temptation to rest her cheek on the outside of the bubble, but she had the sudden urge to get closer to him.

She shook her long, serpentine body so hard the bubble bounced in the murky water, almost knocking Devorast off his feet.

“All right, all right,” he said, steadying himself on the bottom of the spherical bubble. “Caravans. They carry goods, sometimes across the great desert Anauroch even, in caravans.”