Philip Athans - Lies of Light

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’” said Marek.

He poured brandy from a crystal decanter and handed the glass to Willem, who took it in a grip so weak Marek grimaced at the possibility he might drop it and spill it. He glanced down at the decanter-he hadn’t prepared much, but there was still enough left in case Willem dropped the first one.

“You aren’t having one?” Willem asked.

Marek shook his head and watched the younger man down the brandy in one swallow, grimacing against the burn of it.

“Tell me you at least tried to stop them, Willem,” said the Thayan. “I want to hear from you that you did everything you could to keep her-to keep her away from him.”

Willem shook his head, refusing to look Marek in the eye. The Red Wizard had a sudden impulse to kick him hard in the chin, to force his miserable face up.

“You just let another man walk into your home and leave with your wife?” Marek said.

“No,” Willem muttered. “No, we went to his house, and I left her there.”

“That’s pathetic,” Marek said. “That’s quite simply the most pathetic thing I’ve ever heard.”

He picked up the crystal decanter and poured more of the brandy into Willem’s glass. The young man sat there, slumped down, and stared at the umber liquid.

“Speak, Willem,” Marek demanded. “Explain yourself.”

“What’s there to explain?” Willem asked, then swallowed half the brandy in his glass. He coughed, not bothering to put a hand up to cover his mouth. “What could I have done?”

Marek smiled down at Willem and said, “What could you have done? Hmm … let me think. To begin with, you could have poisoned his drink.”

Willem shook his head. Spittle dropped in a long, stringy line from his lower lip. He put the glass to his mouth and drank some, but poured the rest of the brandy on the floor.

“You could have rendered him helpless,” Marek went on. “And once he was unable to move, the poison making his muscles go rigid and unresponsive, you could have done anything you wanted to him. He would have been entirely under your power, yours to do with as you wished.”

Willem slumped forward and fell onto the floor without changing from the hunched, sitting position he was in. His head bounced and scraped along the canvas tarp.

“I expected so much from you,” Marek said.

Willem looked up at him, blinked, his eyes confused at first. His lips twitched, but he couldn’t speak.

Marek took a deep, rattling breath and smiled. His face flushed, and his heart began to race.

“Oh,” he breathed. “Oh, Willem. That must be awful-terrible. I can only imagine….”

Willem blinked at him again and fear replaced the confusion in a wave that made his pupils dilate.

Marek, reluctant to turn away, stepped back to a side table and opened a long, hinged wooden box. Inside was the sword Phyrea had brought him. The wavy blade glimmered in the candlelight. Marek bit his bottom lip and held his breath as he lifted the flamberge out of the velvet-lined box with all the reverence the exquisite weapon deserved.

When he went back to look down at Willem, the sword in his hand with the blade tipped down until it almost touched the floor, Marek thought he saw Willem shake his head. But the poison wouldn’t allow him even that scant gesture. Marek thought perhaps he sensed so strongly Willem’s powerful desire to make at least that tiny, futile gesture that he simply imagined the movement. Willem’s eyes pleaded for mercy.

Marek dropped to his knee, one creaking, popping joint at a time. His generously-proportioned body was unaccustomed to sitting on the floor and when his full weight settled onto his knees, they burned in response.

He looked Willem in the eyes, and with his free hand he brushed the hair from the younger man’s forehead.

“Pretty Willem,” he whispered in a mocking rendition of what he thought “soothing” might sound like. “Everything will be all right. You wanted this, didn’t you? You told me you did. You told me you envied them. You said you wanted to be one of them.”

Marek shifted his weight to hover closer and closer over Willem’s face. The younger man’s mouth hung open, and the tip of his tongue protruded just the tiniest fraction of an inch

“Willem, my dear, dear, sweet boy,” Marek whispered, “please believe me that if I thought there was any way to avoid this….”

Willem’s eyes widened as Marek moved closer still, then the Thayan couldn’t see his eyes anymore. His lips met Willem’s and closed around them. The tip of his tongue darted in, and though Willem was unable to return the kiss, at least he couldn’t back away. The poison made him appear dead-stiff and unresponsive-but Willem was still very much alive, warm and breathing.

Marek took his lips away from Willem’s and punctured the helpless Cormyrean’s skin with the tip of the sword.

Only his eyes responded at first. Marek knew that Willem could feel every inch of the flamberge’s cruel blade winding its way ever so slowly from just to the right of his belly button, up under his ribs. Then Willem’s breaths started to come faster, and ever more shallow. Marek guided the blade to the middle of Willem’s chest in hope of avoiding either lung. Willem panted-a rapid succession of gasps that were almost all exhale, and no inhale. Tears streamed from his twitching eyes.

Marek shushed him and pressed harder with the sword. It took all his strength and skill to slide the long blade into Willem’s fast-beating heart. He could feel the firm resistance of the thick muscle, and the blade jerked in his grip in time with its beating.

When it finally did pierce his heart, blood poured freely down the length of the blade and oozed out of the wound in his stomach. His eyes bulged, and for a moment Marek thought they might pop. Instead they relaxed, but they didn’t close. He let go of the sword hilt, leaving the flamberge sheathed in Willem’s body.

Marek let out a long, slow breath in time with Willem Korvan’s last exhale. He smiled down into the face of the dead man and smiled.

“Shhh,” he hissed. “That’s a good boy.”

29 Nightal, the Year of the Banner (1368 DR)

THE TEMPLE OF THE DELICATE CHAOS, INNARLITH

Marek stepped out of the dimension door onto a rough flagstone floor that shifted under his weight. He staggered, his hands out to his sides, and almost fell. The stone bobbed on something that might have been water, but was too thick. The effect was the same as floating, but the movement was slower.

As the spell effect dissipated behind him his eyes began to adjust to the dim light from torches set in iron sconces on the tiled walls. The tiles had apparently been salvaged from wherever tiles could be salvaged from. Few were the same size, and almost none of them were of matching colors. The effect might have been pleasing had they been arranged with the care and vision of an artist, but it was no mosaic, just a random jumble of shapes and colors.

Marek stepped to another flagstone, riding the slow undulation under his feet, growing more secure with the uncertain footing. The flagstones did indeed float in some thick, gelatinous medium. Marek swallowed to settle his stomach. His first few steps had disturbed many of the stones around him so that the floor rose and fell in waves throughout the chamber.

The room itself was a circle that Marek judged to be a hundred feet in diameter. The torches were not set at even intervals around the circumference so there were bright spots, and places where the shadows were deep as night. He got the distinct feeling that something-more than one something-watched him from the shadows, so he quickly ran through a spell.