Lies of Light (10 page)

“I’m sure you know that the ransar will soon enough discover the sort of man your old friend Ivar Devorast is, after all. That fool—it’s Tymora’s most fickle whimsy that the man has avoided his unfortunate patron’s wrath this long. I mean, honestly….”

Maybe, Willem thought, this ransar is not as stupid as you or I. Maybe he understands that though Devorast was no one’s idea of a sparkling conversationalist, he was perhaps the only human being on the whole of spinning Toril that might ever have even conceived of the thing, let alone was in possession of the skills necessary to see it done. If the master builder insisted that Willem finish the canal, he would have to do it, and he would have to fail.

“But that’s all just fancy now, isn’t it? We’ll let it be as it may, yes?”

Yes, yes, yes, Willem thought. Let it be. Let it be damned with the both of them to the endless Abyss. Willem rubbed

his face, and an image of Halina came unbidden to his mind’s eye. She lay naked on the bed in the inn where he’d left her. She smiled at him in that way she had of smiling at him that made him not want to kill himself.

“Really, Willem, I worry about you. You don’t look all together well. Please tell me you’ve been sleeping. It’s sleep that is the finest tonic for any man’s body and soul. You’ve earned some rest, at least until you are called upon to finish some endeavor or another for your dear adopted home.”

Rest? Sleep? With Halina, yes, two or three days out of every ten. The rest of the time he couldn’t sleep. No half dozen bottles of wine could make him pass out, even. All. he did was sit at home in the dark and think, the sound of his mother’s snoring wafting through the strangely unfamiliar halls of his townhouse. That sound reminded him of his childhood, and was just barely enough to keep him from opening his veins in the wee hours before dawn, but the house he’d bought was no home for him.

“Perhaps you need a diversion, or better yet, a family. You know my feelings on this, Willem, and I think Phyrea’s coming around. In fact, I know for a fact she is. By the Merchantfriend’s jingling purse, my boy, I’ve long considered you a son—a part of the family already. Marry Phyrea, Willem, and let’s make that truly the case, eh?”

Marry Phyrea? The thought made his head spin more than the wine or the memory of the softness of Halina’s skin. Phyrea had shown him nothing but scathing contempt, and her mouth-breathing old imbecile of a father thought that she was “coming around?” Her disdain was something Willem carried around with him like other men carried knives. It had become a comfortable part of him. Marry Phyrea? He had a better chance of wedding Chauntea herself in a grand ceremony in the Great Mother’s Garden.

“I suppose you’ve heard the things she’s been saying about you. My daughter has become quite the devotee of

Senator Willem Korvan. She’s mentioned you to the ransar himself—to all the finest people. She’s sung your praises to Marek Rymiit, and even to some visiting celestial from Shou Lung … you’ve met him, haven’t you? The tall, willowy one that looks even more like an elf than the rest of his kind. She’s made you something of a cause. All the wives are gossiping. They’ve sussed out her motives and I swear the wives of half the senators in Innarlith have already bought their dresses for the wedding.”

The master builder was too stupid to have invented that. It must be true. But how? Why? How cold it possibly serve Phyrea to turn her opinion of him so sharply that she would even bother to criticize him in the higher social circles, let alone praise him. But the master builder couldn’t be making it up. And what of Halina?

“Oh, gods…” Willem muttered, his gorge rising in his throat.

“Goodness gracious, Willem,” Inthelph cooed, putting a dry, bony hand on his back. “You aren’t well, are you?”

“I’m fine,” he managed to say. “I’m just…”

The master builder laughed—a cackling, old man’s laugh—and said, “My daughter can have that effect on men, can’t she?”

Willem nodded once then emptied his stomach onto the floor of the senate chamber.

19_

12 Kythorn, the Yearofthe Sword (1365 DR) The Land op One Hundred and Thirteen

While Salatis stood in slack-jawed amazement, Marek Rymiit stood behind him and wove a spell that would, as he’d heard the Zulkir of Enchantment once say, “soften the ground a bit.” It hadn’t taken trust for Marek to bring Salatis to his pocket dimension. He would either be able to depend on the man, or he’d be able to kill him. But what he

wanted more than the man’s trust was his word.

“Where are we?” the senator asked, the words sounding hollow because he couldn’t seem to get his lips to come together. “Beshaba protect us from her own ill will.”

“Beshaba now, is it?” Marek asked.

He leaned in closer to the tall, angular man. Marek had to reach up a little to take the senator’s pendant in his hand. Finely crafted of red enamel over silver, the antlers depicted there had been carved from a single thin shard of ebony. Though he’d expected Salatis to move away at his advance, the senator stood stock still, gazing out over the abrupt confines of the Land of One Hundred and Thirteen. Marek took the opportunity to study the man a little more closely.

He stood fully nine inches over six feet, but surely weighed less—by dozens of pounds even—than did Marek. Where Marek was bald, his head adorned with the tattoos of a Red Wizard, Salatis sported a full, healthy head of hair. A Chondathan, his hair was dark, but age and other difficulties had traced it with gray.

“What in the name of the Maid of Misfortune are those things?” Salatis asked.

“They are black firedrakes,” Marek answered. “Do you like them?”

Insithryllax wheeled in the sky overhead, a cadre of firedrakes surrounding him in close formation. Salatis looked up, and his breath caught in his throat.

“M-Master Rymiit…”

“Never fear,” said Marek.

Salatis tried to run when Insithryllax reeled down to land on the hill next to them. Marek took the senator by the arm and held him. He could feel the tall man shake, and his skin was clammy and cold. The dirt shuddered under the dragon’s considerable weight when it came to ground, and Salatis almost fell to his knees.

“Stand,” Marek commanded. “This is Insithryllax. Though he will never be your subject, I would like for him to consider you an equal in the months and years ahead of

us. Isn’t that as we discussed, Insithryllax?”

Marek knew that the sound the black dragon made just then was a laugh, but Salatis surely assumed it was a growl.

“Insithryllax,” the senator said, his voice shaking only a little less than his body.

“Ransar,” the wyrm rumbled.

Salatis gasped and Marek sighed.

“Well, the cat’s out of the bag now, isn’t it,” said the Red Wizard.

“What do you mean?” Salatis asked. “Lady Doom has held me in the embrace of the barbs of her 111 Fortune. I am not the ransar.”

“You haven’t told him?” the black dragon asked.

“Not yet,” said the Red Wizard. “I wanted him to see first. After all, I’m not giving him the Palace of Many Spires, only the means to gain it for himself.”

“You’re giving me… ?” Salatis began.

“Really, Salatis,” Marek said, “if you’re going to be the ransar you’ll eventually have to complete a thought. I know it’s a lot to take in, my friend, but it’s happening, I assure you. You’re here, on a plane of existence of my own creation, and what you see before you are creatures made by my hand, with the indispensable assistance of my dear friend the black wyrm Insithryllax. They are the black firedrakes, and I give them to you.”

Salatis shook his head and muttered, “I fear the Maid of Misfortune. I beg her to ignore me.”

“Oh, please, Senator. Your mistress may have her way with us from time to time, but I assure you we petty mortals make our own luck. And it was neither Beshaba nor her sister who brought me to you.”

“What can I do with these things?” the senator asked.

“The black firedrakes? Well, if you insist on getting ahead of ourselves, let’s discuss precisely that. They were created, by me, from the cross-breading of ordinary firedrakes captured from the northern shores of the Lake of

Steam with my boon companion Insithryllax. He proved to be a hearty source of fatherly essence”—the dragon took a bow—”and the black firedrakes were born. After some months of nurturing, some half dozen or so began to exhibit unusually high functionality. I have put them in command of units of various sizes, though I admit that military organization is of little interest to me, so you may want to reorganize them to fit your own needs. You will be able to do so at your whim.”

“My whim….” Salatis said, perhaps just trying to get used to the idea.

“Indeed,” Marek said. “My gift to you.”

“An army of dragon-men?” asked the senator. “To invade Innarlith?”

“Well…” Marek replied. “Not to put too fine a point on it.”

The senator watched the firedrakes move around each other in silence. Some were in human form, some in the their natural shapes. He seemed equally interested in both, which Marek took as a good sign.

“Why me?” Salatis asked.

“I could give you any number of false answers, Senator,” Marek said, “but I shan’t. Suffice it to say that you have been recruited.”

The black dragon’s laugh rumbled through the stale air and was met with shrieks and calls from the surrounding firedrakes. Marek could see Salatis’s skin crawl, but the hint of a smile played at the edges of the tall man’s lips.

“You will command the firedrakes,” Marek explained. “I will continue to control the tradesmen.”

“The tradesmen?” said the senator, turning finally to look at Marek. “It’s you, then? No one even suspects that.”

Marek sketched a sarcastic bow and equally insincere smile, and said, “The comfort of the aristocracy has always been in the hands of the common man, Senator. Control their comforts, and you control them. Control them, and you control the city.”

“And you control the city?”

Marek laughed at that and said, “Only the parts of it that interest me, Senator. For the rest, I will depend on you.” “What of Osorkon?”

Again, the black dragon laughed. Marek caught the senator glancing at the wyrm, fear heavy in his gaze.

“I suspect that you’ll have one of the black firedrakes kill and eat him,” Marek answered. “Anyway, that’s what I would do. But first things first. I will give you the black firedrakes so that you can be ransar, and in return I will expect what favors from you I might choose to request. You will deny not a single one of those requests, nor shall you pause before seeing to their completion. Otherwise, the city-state is yours to do with as you wish.”

“What favors-?”

“What he wishes,” the dragon grumbled. “When he wishes it.”

Salatis swallowed hard, almost choked.

“I will require from you only a single word answer, Senator Salatis,” Marek said.

Without pause Salatis asked, “And if I refuse? I will never leave this strange little world of yours alive, will I?”

Marek took a deep breath, locked his eyes on Salatis’s, and said, “Since time is a luxury that neither of us can squander on trivialities, we’ll let that be as it may for now. I will have your answer.”

Salatis swallowed again, looked out over the army of transformed monsters, and said, “Beshaba guide me.”

Marek smiled, and studied the tall man. Salatis was afraid, but that passed in a few breaths to be replaced by a look Marek had seen too often in men like Salatis. It was a lust for power that transcended all sense of proportion. It was the drive that made empires rise and fall, and rise and fall, over and over and over again for millennium after millennium.

“This business with religion,” Marek said. “It could be of use in controlling the people, of course, but from

henceforth you will set it aside when you speak with me. You will hold sway over the black firedrakes for as long as I have your loyalty. The moment I feel I no longer have that—whether you’ve given it over to another man, or some god or goddess—you will no longer hold sway over the beating of your heart or the breath in your lungs, much less the firedrakes. Remember this gift and who gave it to you, or I will send Insithryllax to see you, and he will send you to the embrace of whatever Power is forgiving enough to take your disloyal soul into its embrace.

“Are you, or are you not, my ransar?”

Marek listened for one word, and heard it.

“Yes, I am your ransar,” Salatis answered with an almost drunken grin.

My ransar, Marek thought. The ficklest daughter of Tyche will have to look elsewhere for hers.

20_

16 Kythorn, the Yearofthe Sword (1365 DR)

Third Quarter, Innarlith

Willem watched Phyrea wander through the merchants’ stalls for most of the afternoon. He was able to breathe, after a time, only to the rhythm of her footsteps and the graceful sway of her narrow hips. She wore a cloak of shimmering silk and carried a parasol of black lace. He hadn’t recognized her at first because of the parasol. It was an aristocratic lady’s affectation that was beneath her, especially with the thin, high overcast tempering the direct rays of the sun.

“How much?” she asked a vendor.

The man studied the boot she held up to him, glanced at her foot, and seemed at a loss for words. Willem slid past a woman who had stopped to admire a spray of cheap pewter jewelry laid out on a blanket on the street so that he could get a better look. He ignored the look of impatience the

woman shot his way, even when her face softened and she smiled at him, trying to catch his eye.

“For the lady’s husband?” the cobbler asked Phyrea.

She shook her head. The boot was easily twice the size of her own delicate foot, and cut for a man. The craftsmanship was exceptional. Willem could see that even from a distance.

Someone bumped him, and Willem looked down to see his purse stolen by a boy no older than ten. They looked each other in the eye for half a breath, the boy’s dirty face frozen in fear, his mouth open to show yellow teeth—an old man’s teeth. He ran into the crowd, pushing past a man carrying a crate of live chickens. The chicken farmer shouted some obscenity at the boy, and the chickens put up a fuss of their own. The boy didn’t run too fast, and Willem could have caught him easily enough and got his coins back, but he didn’t bother.