Philip Athans - Lies of Light

Surely you didn’t expect him to wait for you , said the man with the scar on his face.

He should have , the younger woman sobbed. Why didn’t he?

Phyrea stood at the foot of the skeletal pier that stretched out into the calm expanse of the Nagawater. The ghost of the old woman stood in front of her, and most of what she saw of the pier was filtered through her insubstantial violet form. Phyrea hugged herself and shivered. Even her heavy wool weathercloak didn’t keep the chill away from her bones. When she caught the ghostly woman’s eye she shivered worse. The spirit’s freezing gaze cut her like a dagger, and her head ached.

“He won’t kill me,” Phyrea whispered.

Yes, he will , the little girl replied.

“You will,” she whispered.

The woman sneered at her, her eyes flickering orange. Phyrea put her hands over her eyes. The old woman’s shriek rattled her skull, and beneath her the planks shuddered.

“Go away,” she whispered, and opened her eyes.

The old woman was gone, and before her stood Ivar Devorast.

Phyrea took a step backward.

“I can’t go away,” he said. “I have work to do.”

He wore the same simple tunic and breeches he always wore, and though it was cold, he didn’t have any sort of cloak or coat. He held a carpenter’s hammer in one hand, loose and comfortable at his side.

“Not you,” she said, shaking her head.

Phyrea expected one of the ghosts to say something, but they remained silent. She looked around but couldn’t see any of them. She smiled.

“You’re not surprised to see me,” she said.

He shook his head, but said nothing. His red hair whipped around his face in the steady wind.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Helping to build a pier,” he said.

“But why?” she asked.

“They want to start building ships,” he replied.

She waited for him to say more-then smiled. It had been a long time since she’d had to do that, to wait for him to say more. She couldn’t believe how much she’d missed it.

“Will you build ships, then?” she asked.

“I’ll build the pier,” he told her.

“And you won’t think of the canal?”

“I think of the canal every day,” he said, and a darkness descended over his face that made Phyrea shiver.

“Will you come back?”

He just looked at her. He didn’t shrug or nod or shake his head.

“I have something I wanted to tell you,” she said. He waited for her to go on, and that made her smile again.

“I’m going to be married again,” she said.

“Again?” he asked.

“I left Willem over a month ago.”

“Why did you feel you had to tell me that?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “No, yes I do. I had to give you a chance to stop me.”

“If you don’t want to marry this man,” he said, “then don’t. If you want to be here with me, then stay.”

“And there’s nothing you want to say to influence me one way or the other?”

He stood there and stared at her again, and she sobbed and laughed at the same time.

“You just can’t …” she started. “Can’t you just tell me if you want me or not?”

He shook his head, and Phyrea thought he looked sad, but wasn’t sure.

“I shouldn’t have come here,” she admitted.

“No, you shouldn’t have,” he said, “if you don’t know what you want.”

She sighed and looked down. Her hair flew around her face, and she hooked it behind her ear. Some of the other men who were working on the pier walked past them. They looked at her, glanced at Devorast, but kept going.

“I do know what I want,” she said, her eyes darting at the passing men. “I did know what I want. I wanted you. I wanted you to love me. I wanted you to protect …”

She couldn’t keep talking, but didn’t cry. Devorast didn’t say anything.

“I wanted to give you the chance to fight for me,” she told him.

He shook his head.

“I know,” she said, wiping a tear from her eye. The wind caught her hair again and made her blink. “Maybe I came to tell you that I found someone like you-so like you-in ways I thought were impossible. And he loves me enough to take me away from someone else.”

“Did you come to say good-bye?” he asked.

“I’ll never say that to you, Ivar.”

He looked over his shoulder at the skeletal pier.

“I’m keeping you from your work,” she said, and turned to go.

“Stay,” he said.

She stopped, waiting for more, but he didn’t say anything.

“Why?” she asked.

“For all the reasons that brought you here in the first place,” he said.

Phyrea shook her head and replied, “No. I won’t stay here to be a laborer’s wife. But if you take me back to Innarlith and reclaim what’s yours, I’d be happy to be a canal builder’s slave.”

The boards under her feet rattled and the sound of the hammer hitting them made her jump.

“Damn it, Phyrea,” he said. “I don’t want a slave.”

She sighed, didn’t turn around, and said, “I can’t be anything for you but a slave. I can’t do anything for you but surrender myself, body and soul. If you won’t take that from me, there’s another man who will.”

“Go to him then,” he said.

Tears fell from her eyes, but she refused to let him see her sob. She walked away, leaving him standing there watching her go.

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

THE LAND OF ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN

Lightning flashed across the sharply delineated skies of Marek Rymut’s private dimension. No thunder followed, and no rain fell.

He took a deep breath and enjoyed the pure silence of the chamber high atop the tall tower that had finally been completed for him. Its twisted, needle-like architecture had come to him in a dream-a dream of the future of Thay that a part of him hoped he would never see.

On the floor in front of him lay the motionless form of Willem Korvan. The body was stiff with rigor mortis, and held straight by the long-bladed flamberge still sheathed in him from his stomach to the base of his neck.

Marek sighed at the sight of the handsome face made ugly in death. Not only was his mouth twisted into a grimace, lips pulled back from yellowed teeth and gums turning black, but his cheeks had sunk in so far they almost appeared to have been tucked up under his cheekbones.

He turned to the side table against the inside wall and tapped the hardwood top in front of each of the items that had been laid out there. A tiny scrap of raw meat-he’d asked for it to be human flesh, though it didn’t necessarily have to be-lay on a fine porcelain plate as big around as Marek’s hand. On an identical plate next to it was a shard of bone, jagged on one end, and rounded on the other. It looked like a finger bone. On a square of red velvet sat a loose black onyx gem he’d paid three hundred gold pieces for. A clay pot filled with brackish water sat next to another that contained a handful of dark brown soil traced with gray dust that had been scooped by Marek’s own hand from a freshly-turned grave. The last item was a glass vial, corked and sealed with wax.

He picked up the vial first and held it up to one of the whale oil lamps that lit the room. Inside the vial was a clove of garlic that he’d stolen from a rival wizard. That wizard had written, in a delicate and minute hand, an odd little poem on the tiny clove. It was written in Draconic and held power that Marek had waited more than four years to bring to bear.

“I don’t think he really knew exactly what it would do,” Marek said in a quiet, calm voice, directed at the dead body of Willem Korvan. “Thadat….” He spoke the dead wizard’s name with venomous contempt. “They never know what they have until I take it from them.”