Philip Athans - Lies of Light

Dissolution , the voices cried out.

“I’m sorry,” Phyrea breathed.

The second time , one of the voices told her, is forever .

“The foreman,” Phyrea whispered, and the ghast, with the last bit of strength left to it, nodded. “I killed you.”

The ghast froze, every muscle tense, and only then did Phyrea realize it was on its knees. She coughed, and the face she recognized blew away, the purple-bruised skin turned to dust. A white skull glowed in the meager starlight, then more bones as the rest of the undead flesh drifted away on the damp winter breeze. It fell apart, clattering to her feet, a pile of bleached white bones.

The smell was gone.

Phyrea took a step back and looked at the sword. It tingled in her hand, and more than ever, she was afraid of it.

Yes , the voice of the man-the man with the scar on his cheek in the shape of a Z — whispered into her consciousness, it was the sword. It was the sword that killed him .

“And the sword that brought him back,” Phyrea whispered in reply.

7 Hammer, the Year of the Sword (1365 DR)

THE CANAL SITE

As far as Hrothgar could tell, no one in the camp worked harder than Ivar Devorast. And by all rights, Devorast was the one who should have been working the least. It was his project after all, his brainchild, his life’s work.

Or was it?

“There are times, Ivar,” Hrothgar told him that cool, gray morning in the first month of the year, “that I think this mad delusion of yours is more whim than obsession.”

Devorast heard him, though he gave no outward sign. The human read from a list of provisions that had recently been delivered to the work site by one of the ransar’s supply caravans.

“That half-elf … what’s his name?” the dwarf prodded.

“Enril,” Devorast replied.

“For the sake of Moradin’s sweatin’ danglies, Ivar, do you really know the name of every swingin’ hammer at work here?” That drew the slightest trace of a smile from Devorast, and Hrothgar pressed on. “Can’t Enril see to that? It’s his job, isn’t it?”

“He has,” Devorast said.

Hrothgar was about to heave a dramatic, world-weary sigh, but stopped himself, knowing full well it would be lost on that peculiar human he’d come to call a friend.

“There’s a difference, you know, between a dwarf and a pick-axe,” Hrothgar said.

A warm breeze blew in from the south, bringing the sulfur-tinged breath of the Lake of Steam with it, rattling the wood shutters that closed the window from the morning’s damp. Devorast got to the end of the list, folded the parchment once in half, then stuffed it into the wood stove that warmed the little cabin that was Devorast’s home, office, command post, and …

“Temple,” Hrothgar mumbled. It felt like a temple of sorts, but devoted to no god but Devorast himself. A god who asked for and accepted no worshipers, no prayers, no mercy, no pity, but enormous responsibility.

“I’m going to understand you one day,” the dwarf said. “I may have to live as long as a withered old elf, but I’m going to figure your mind out if it’s the death of me.”

Devorast ignored him, moving on from the list of provisions to a written report from one of the foremen. Hrothgar didn’t bother trying to read over the human’s shoulder. He didn’t really care what the foreman had to say, and by the look on his face neither did Devorast. Still, Hrothgar could see by the way his eyes moved that Devorast read every word before stuffing it, too, into the fire.

“It’s an old saying from the Great Rift,” Hrothgar went on. “Wisdom from home, right? ‘There’s a difference between a dwarf and a pick-axe.’”

Devorast looked at him, and Hrothgar was momentarily taken aback by the sudden shift in his friend’s attention. The dwarf swallowed.

“It means,” Hrothgar said after clearing his throat, “that a good king doesn’t use his people like tools.”

“I’m no one’s king,” Devorast said.

“Close enough, out here,” the dwarf said.

“I’ve read the complaints.”

“I’m not talking about complaints. A man signs up to dig he should shut up and dig; he signs up to cut trees he should get to sawin’. What I mean is how you use your own self, my friend. Doin’ the work of a thousand men is only necessary when you don’t have a thousand men to do as you say. You don’t have to do everything. You don’t have to wield every tool, read every supply list. Trust yer people for the Gray Protector’s sake.”

“You know I don’t mean any disrespect at all when I remind you that I don’t do anything for the Gray Protector’s sake,” said Devorast. “I trust the people here to do what they do, but I hold myself to a certain standard and so I hold this canal to that standard, which means I have to hold everyone who touches it to the same standard. You never struck me as the sort who would find that unreasonable. I’ve seen the standards you set for your own work.”

Hrothgar took a breath with the intent to argue, but he couldn’t find the words. He wasn’t quite sure what to say. If Devorast noticed his discomfiture he made no sign.

The dwarf let his breath out in a sigh and let his gaze roam around the single room as Devorast sifted through a bowl of loose soil with his fingers. The room was a clutter of sheets of parchment, some as big square as Hrothgar was tall. Drawings had been tacked to the walls, clothes lay in rumpled piles on the floor, and a meager collection of dishes sat clean-perhaps never used-on a little shelf by the stove. Devorast looked much like his quarters. His red hair was clean but in a fashion Hrothgar thought atypical of humans and elves, it was long and uncombed. His skin was weathered from their time in the damp and rain of a winter north of the Lake of Steam. His clothing was simple and practical, sturdy and unadorned. He wore not a single piece of jewelry. His fingertips were stained with the charcoal he used to write and draw, and the dirt he was in some ways moving himself, handful by handful, to form his straight-line river to connect sea to sea.

“If you find a worm in there, save it for me,” Hrothgar said, nodding at the bowl of dirt Devorast still sifted through, deep in thought. “I’ve been meaning to take up this ‘fishing’ I’ve heard tell of.”

Devorast didn’t look up from the bowl when he said, “You won’t like fishing.”

“Oh, and why not?”

“It depends too much on the whim of the fish.”

15 Hammer, the Year of the Sword (1365 DR)

SECOND QUARTER, INNARLITH

It’s cold outside,” Phyrea said, staring out the window, her back to Marek Rymut. “I hate it when it gets cold like this.”

Marek didn’t feel cold. There was a bit of a chill in the air, but it never really got too cold in Innarlith. The stinking warm waters of the volcanic Lake of Steam kept the air warm and damp most of the year.

But it wasn’t the weather that Marek found interesting just then. It was Phyrea herself.

“It’s positively freezing, my dear,” he said to her back.

She didn’t turn around, but seemed to relax a bit. Her shoulders sagged, but didn’t hunch. Marek couldn’t shake the feeling that she wanted to turn and face him but was afraid to. He couldn’t imagine that she feared him for any reason. She’d never shown any sign of that before, and they had known each other at least in passing for some time.

“There’s something different about you,” he said, keeping his voice light, though what he began to feel emanating from her was increasingly disturbing. “You’ve been away.”