Philip Athans - Lies of Light

“He’s …”

“Gone, yes,” Marek said. “I’m sure Senator Korvan told me he was just leaving. Surely you don’t have anything to do with that beastly man.”

She nodded and shook her head at the same time, and Marek risked a playful laugh at her confusion.

“The ransar-” she started.

“Is not immune to the occasional ill-considered decisions, my dear,” he finished for her. “I assure you that Ivar Devorast is just that.”

“Still, there’s something about him, don’t you think?”

“No,” he lied. “There’s nothing about him at all but a man in deep water who hasn’t sorted out that he’s already drowned.”

Phyrea wasn’t listening. Marek could tell. She listened to someone else, and nodded ever so slightly in response.

What do you hear? Marek Rymut wondered. What do you know?

27 Alturiak, the Year of the Sword (1365 DR)

THE CANAL SITE

The stout wooden planks that braced the sides of the trench shattered. They crumbled to sawdust all at once; an explosion of brown dust that followed a loud sizzling sound that must have been a million softer cracks all intermingled.

Hrothgar looked up at the sound. He’d heard a lot of new, strange sounds in his time among humans, under the limitless sky and so near the unforgiving sea, but he’d been at the canal site long enough to grow accustomed to its noises, and that one-those millions at once-didn’t belong. Because of the sound, though, he saw the planks shatter, and the dried-mud walls begin to crumble. He saw the men inside paw at their dust-blinded eyes, and their screams tore up from the depths of the trench. As tall as the humans were, the lip of the trench towered over their heads, twice again as tall as the tallest of the diggers.

“By the unhewn rock of Deepshaft Hall,” the dwarf cursed. “They’ll be-”

Devorast pushed past him at a run, but it took some time for Hrothgar to realize they were being attacked. At first the trench collapse was just another accident-not that there had been many. In fact, Hrothgar had commented to Devorast and to his cousin Vrengarl on many occasions already how surprised he was that so few men had been injured, and how incomprehensible it was that no one had yet died for the cause of the canal. What they were building was so big, there were so many men, and so many things that could go wrong.

A trench could cave in, but what made the planks explode into dust?

The wind had been light all day, the clouds gray but thin and dry. Though Hrothgar could hardly be called an expert on the ways of wind and storm, the wind that blew the dirt onto those poor diggers didn’t just blow in on its own from the Lake of Steam.

He ran after Devorast, not bothering to consider how many times he’d done just that in only the past few years. Devorast reached the crumbling edge of the trench long before the dwarf. He skidded to a stop, sending dust swirling around his toes only to be whipped into a series of tiny little tornadoes around his feet.

Then the wind changed again, and lifted Devorast off the ground. The human hurtled backward through the air, his arms pinwheeling at his sides in a vain attempt to either stop or control his sudden flight. He slammed hard into Hrothgar. The dwarf tried to wrap his arms around the human’s waist, made every effort to catch him, but was rewarded with a broken nose, a poked eye, and an impact on his chest hard enough to drain his lungs of air.

They ended up on the ground in an undignified sprawl, their hair and clothing still whipping around them in the sourceless gust of hurricane-force wind.

“The men!” Devorast barked.

His eyes were closed, and blood trickled from under the line of his shaggy red hair. Hrothgar blinked back unwelcome tears and shot blood and snot out of his nose in a painful exhalation that at least let him start to breathe again. The two of them stood at the same time, neither helping the other to his feet.

By the time Hrothgar reoriented himself, the trench was gone. Wind whipped the dirt so thoroughly that anyone passing by who had not seen it only moments before, would never have suspected that there had been a hole there at all.

“Five men,” Hrothgar growled to himself.

He looked to Devorast, who stood tall but still. His head moved to one side, then the other.

“What is it?” the dwarf asked casting about for a weapon. Where’s my gods bedamned hammer? he thought. “Is it some mage? Some wind wizard?”

Devorast stopped-he saw something. Hrothgar moved back and his foot kicked something heavy. Without looking, he reached down and grabbed it-just an old tree limb the clean-up crew had missed.

It’ll do, he thought, then followed Devorast’s gaze.

“Sweet Haela’s bum,” the dwarf oathed.

“Naga,” Devorast said.

The human relaxed. Hrothgar couldn’t believe it. He hefted the makeshift club and stepped forward, but Devorast didn’t move. He faced the creature as if they were old friends, and Hrothgar realized that perhaps they were.

“What do you want here, naja’ssara?” Devorast called out.

The creature hissed at him. For all the world it was a giant snake, but with a human’s face. That face held all the hate, anger, and violent rage Hrothgar had ever associated with humans, and more. The dwarf could only guess that the thing was a male.

“Ivar,” he said, “you told us that you-”

“Speak,” Devorast called to the naga, ignoring the dwarf.

“This false river will not be realized,” the thing said. Hrothgar didn’t like its voice, not one bit. “Go from here, dista’ssara . Go now, or more will die.”

Devorast crouched and picked up a rock. The action elicited from the naga a sound that Hrothgar assumed to be a laugh. He liked that sound even less than its speaking voice.

“What of Svayyah?” Devorast demanded. “She and I-”

“Svayyah?” the naga shrieked, hurling the name at Devorast as if it were a spear. What it said next had no meaning Hrothgar could fathom. Devorast threw the rock at the same time it spoke.

As the rock arced through the air, four slivers of red-orange light appeared perhaps a yard in front of the naga and arrowed through the intervening space, unerringly for Devorast. When they hit him, the human staggered back with a grunt. His face twisted in what Hrothgar perceived to be frustration, not pain-certainly not fear-but he kept on his feet.

The rock Devorast had thrown went wide-but then, it shouldn’t have.

Hrothgar blinked and shook his head. The naga was there, then it was just a step or two to the side of there. The rock was supposed to hit the thing but …

But you’ve seen it use foul magic, the dwarf told himself. Now here’s more.

“All right then,” he said aloud so Devorast could, perhaps, benefit from his wisdom, “aim a yard or so to the snake’s left.”

As if they’d planned it that way, a work gang bearing all sorts of nasty implements-shovels, awls, picks, and hammers-came up over a rise, attracted by the wind and commotion. They’d seen Devorast staggered by the naga’s magic, and though Devorast had assured them all that he’d garnered the snake-people’s support, even those simple men could add two and two. They rushed at the naga.

“Careful, boys,” Hrothgar tried to warn them, “it’s-”

The thing let loose another string of nonsense words, and light flashed in the air. There was no getting a sense of the source of it and there were so many colors it was impossible for the eye to pick one from the next. Devorast turned his face away.

“Don’t look at it!” Devorast shouted, but only Hrothgar was able to heed his words.

The on-rushing gang stopped dead in their tracks, eyes wide, moths agape, fixed in their places and thoroughly mesmerized by the naga’s incandescent display.