Philip Athans - Lies of Light

Each of the other five nagas signaled their agreement and one by one swam off to their own business. Zaeliira and Svayyah shared a look, then she too swam off at her own slow pace.

Svayyah looked at Devorast in his bubble and shook her head. He had done precisely what he should have, and Svayyah found herself wholly unable to believe it.

He hadn’t said a thing the whole time.

1 Ches, the Year of the Sword (1365 DR)

THIRD QUARTER, INNARLITH

How did you-” Phyrea began, then quickly chose from two possible endings to that question-“find me?”

Devorast stepped closer to her, but stopped more than her arm’s length away. He’d been sitting in one of the uncomfortable old chairs that came with the rented flat, waiting for her in the dark. In the light of the candle she’d lit before she knew he was sitting there, his skin looked softer than she knew it to be, but his eyes were no less guarded, no more forthcoming.

“Osorkon,” he said. His voice sounded different, softer too, but that couldn’t have been the candlelight.

“The ransar?” she asked. She didn’t really care how he’d found her, but a chill ran down her spine at the revelation that the ransar knew of what she thought of as her hiding place. Of all the conversations, of all the things she hoped would pass between them that night, the wheres and whys and hows of the things Osorkon knew about her was of the least interest. “How did he-?”

Phyrea stopped when Devorast moved even closer to her. He smelled of the dry earth, the poison sea, and the bitter wind.

“Is that it?” she asked, her voice below even a whisper, but she knew he heard her. “Is that how you can do this to me? Is that your secret? Are you an elemental? Some creature of all the forces of nature-earth, air, fire, water … the Astral ether itself?”

He reached out a hand and though her mind wanted her body to flinch away, she found herself leaning forward. When the tip of his finger found the lace of her bodice she fell half a step closer to him.

“What are you?” she asked.

He raised his other hand and began to unlace her bodice. Phyrea’s knees shook, then her hips, then her shoulders. Her hands had been shaking already. She found it difficult to breathe in, but exhaled in throaty gasps.

“I’m all I ever needed to be, and all you ever need from me,” Devorast said. “A man.”

“No,” she said, even while wishing it was true. “That can’t be. That can’t be all.”

The stiff leather bodice fell away.

“I’ve said things about you,” Phyrea told him as he put his hand to the side of her face. His palm was warm and rough. “I’ve hurt you.”

He kissed her on the cheek, and she leaned against him. She put her hands on his forearms. The thin tunic he wore was made of rough material, cheap peasant clothes.

“I poison people against you,” she told him as his tongue played on her ear. Her body quivered at his touch. She couldn’t quite breathe. “I hurt you on purpose.”

“No, you don’t,” he whispered, then kissed her on the mouth.

She tried to melt into him, tried her best to disappear into his embrace, but couldn’t.

“If you tell me to stop, I’ll stop,” she said when their lips finally parted. “If you demand my obedience, you’ll have it. If you want me as your wife, your harlot, your slave, or your mistress, you will have me. I will remake myself to whatever standards you impose. I will erase myself if that’s what you wish. I’ll cut myself. I’ll kill myself. I’ll-”

“Do none of those things,” he said into the skin of her neck. “You don’t need to do anything to satisfy me, the same way I’ll never do anything simply to satisfy you.”

Tears streamed from her eyes.

“I can’t have you, can I?” she asked.

“Not the way you mean,” was his answer.

She cried while he held her for a little while, and she only stopped when she realized that in that time, she hadn’t heard one of the voices, or seen a single apparition. She hadn’t wanted to hurt herself, though she’d offered to.

“I have to destroy you,” she told him even as she let him carry her to her bed. “This world is too small for you.”

He moved to kiss her again, but she stopped him.

“There are people who are trying to stop you,” she told him, though he must have already known. “They’ll succeed, too, because it’s easy to do what they do. It’s the easiest thing in the world to tear a man down, to pick at his flesh till there’s nothing left of him but bones. I can’t watch that happen. Do you understand me?”

He smiled in a way that made Phyrea’s heart seem to stop in her chest.

“I won’t let you live to be so degraded,” she whispered as he finished undressing her. “Not by them.”

Those were the last words either of them spoke that night, and the ghosts didn’t come back until Devorast finally left.

5 Kythorn, the Year of the Sword (1365 DR)

SECOND QUARTER, INNARLITH

Marek Rymut couldn’t see the ghosts that haunted Phyrea, but he knew they were there. Though he was no necromancer-enchantments were more his cup of tea-he knew enough of the ways of the undead. He knew their power and their sharply delineated limitations. Over the past few tendays he’d learned more and more about the spirits that had taken up residence in that poor little rich girl, that tortured daughter of a wealthy idiot, and he found himself inventing more and more excuses to see her.

“My apologies, gentlesir,” Phyrea said to Marek’s oldest friend, “please help me to pronounce your name.”

“In- sith -rill-ax,” the black dragon said, enunciating each syllable with great care. In the guise of a human, he smiled at her without the barest sliver of interest.

“Insithryllax,” the girl repeated. “It’s an imposing name. To look at you I would have to say you are Chondathan, but that doesn’t sound like a Chondathan name.”

“I suppose,” the disguised dragon replied, “that I’m more Mulhorandi than Chondathan, but the name is … a very old one.”

Marek caught the twinkle in Phyrea’s eyes that told him she might have been close to figuring out that Insithryllax was no more Mulhorandi than Marek was a field mouse.

“How are you enjoying the tea, my love?” Marek asked her, returning the twinkle.

She did her best not to look him in the eye when she answered, “I’ve never been one for tea, Master Rymut, but I’m sure it’s wonderful.”

“The leaves are harvested on Midsummer’s eve from the slopes of one particular mountain high in the Spine of the World,” he told her, inventing every word of the preposterous tale as he went along. “Orc slaves carry them whole to a shop in the heart of fair Silverymoon, where they are purified with spells granted by the grace of Chauntea. One must have a signed writ from the Lady Alustriel herself to buy it.”

Phyrea laughed and said, “Somehow I doubt you possess such a writ, Master Rymut.”

“You wound me with the truth, my darling girl,” he responded with an entirely false chuckle. “The owner of the tea shop knows someone who knows someone who knows someone.”

Phyrea nodded, making it plain she’d lost interest in stories about tea she didn’t even drink. Instead she looked at Insithryllax.

“The way your eyes dart around the room,” she said to the dragon, “constantly on the lookout for-what? Another mad alchemist? A rival wizard determined to resist the inevitable? I was under the impression that no such attacks have come for some time.”

So, Marek thought, you’ve been studying me, too. Well done, girl. But tread lightly.