Philip Athans - Whisper of Waves

“You could learn some from your friend here,” Inthelph said to Devorast, motioning to Willem. “He is a very careful young man.”

Devorast had no reaction and that in itself made Willem’s skin crawl. His heart raced. He could see it written plain across Devorast’s face. He had nothing to learn from Willem. Nothing to learn at all.

“Willem Korvan,” Inthelph said, “I hope that you will accept a position with the city-state of Innarlith in the Office of the Master Builder. We are preparing for a wide-scale improvement of the city’s walls, and I believe your talents and education can be of some assistance to us. There will be a stipend, of course, and other considerations.”

Willem took a deep breath, smiled, and said, “Innarlith …”

“On the eastern shore of the Lake of Steam,” Inthelph said, returning Willem’s smile. “I have it on good authority that upon my return I will be named by our esteemed ransar to be the city’s master builder.”

“I will be working for you?” asked Willem.

“Not directly, perhaps, at first, but….”

“Innarlith,” Willem said. “Yes, thank you, sir.”

“Senator,” Inthelph corrected.

“Senator,” said Willem.

Fharaud cleared his throat then and said to Devorast, “If I were to give you a problem to solve that involved a ship … the design of a hull or the rigging for a sail …?”

“I would do my best to solve the problem,” Devorast answered.

“And the two of you are friends?” Fharaud asked.

Devorast glanced at Willem and almost seemed to shrug but didn’t.

“Yes,” Willem answered for both of them. “We’ve known each other all through school, and Ivar lets a room from my mother.”

The two men from Innarlith shared a look.

“Well, then,” Fharaud said, “it appears you’ll be going to Innarlith together.”

Willem smiled and finally caught Devorast’s eye. Only reluctantly, Devorast smiled back.

8 Flamerule, the Year of Shadows (1358 DR)

THIRD QUARTER, INNARLITH

My Dearest Mother,

I’m certain you will be pleased to hear word from your dutiful son, now two months here in the far city of Innarlith. Again, please accept my most gracious apologies for having left you so quickly and with so little time to prepare. I hope that soon I will be able to send for you and we will once again be together as a family should be.

As you would expect, I continue in Innarlith under the employ of Senator Inthelph, who has indeed been named to the post of Master Builder. I am certain that when you have the opportunity to meet, you and the senator will get on well. He is a man of impeccable manners, with a careful mind, deliberate to draw conclusions. He is, as you always taught me to be, keenly aware of the finest traditions of both his society and his vocation.

Our principal project, being the restoration of the city’s great curtain wall, is proceeding apace. Measurements have nearly been completed, and I hope that we will begin to set ink to paper within the year. The current state of the walls is deplorable, and it’s a credit to the wisdom of the city’s ransar that we are employed so in its reclamation. Innarlith will be stronger and more beautiful upon its completion.

I’m sure you would find much of interest in the city of Innarlith. Though on the surface one could easily assume that it is of a lesser standing in the world than our fair Marsember, it took me only a short time to see the many fine qualities of the place. Within the embrace of the great curtain wall we’re endeavoring so to repair, the city is sternly and rightfully separated into bands that are know locally as Quarters.

The Fourth Quarter, nearest the wall, is an unfortunate slum wherein the least of the city’s population makes their squalid homes in hovels of the most obscene sort. Truly this place is the shame of Innarlith, but isn’t there a neighborhood like it in every city across the wide face of Faerun? Even, I dare point out, in our own fair Marsember? It is my unfortunate duty to daily cross this landscape of poverty and hopelessness to be at my work on the wall. As you have taught me, however, I keep my back to the suffering and a hand on my purse at all times. So far, being typically surrounded by soldiers and officials of the city, I have remained altogether unmolested.

I spend the majority of my free time, such as there is (indeed, have I come all this way to recreate? or to create?) in the Second Quarter. Here are the homes of the city’s finest people, and I think you will find them as fine as any of the nobles of Marsember. Great fortunes have been made in the minerals drawn from the fetid Lake of Steam. Farmland to the north of the city feeds us well, and I have heard talk of silver and even gold mined from the foot of the mountains we often see on the southern horizon, that is when the bleak overcast so rarely breaks.

The climate here is at once warm and dreary, and even the finest avenues of the Second Quarter are often cursed with the stench of the Lake of Steam. Sulfur and a volcanic mud of a most offensive variety bubbles to the surface of this stretch of water which I understand is dominated by a great volcano said to rise from its center. So far, at least, I have not set eyes on this volcano, my attention being paid to my work on the wall.

Of that work I can say mostly good things. I have earlier described the master builder and the team he has assembled (including your dutiful son) as of like mind and temperament. Within the circle of influence applied directly by the master builder, I am surrounded by allies and a veritable faculty of mentors. Though I hesitate to complain, the same is not true of all with whom I come in contact with while at my efforts.

The military here is much as one would expect of the military anywhere. They remain convinced of their own superiority in all things, and as it is that we’re engaged in the renovation of the city’s most vital fortification, we all find ourselves at constant odds with the officers, so many of whom seem to feel they know better how to build a wall than we, who have studied so hard at the essential sciences behind it.

One man in particular, a tiresome (excuse me!) officer by the name of Ptolnec (and as an aside, let me assure you that one quickly grows accustomed to the exotic names people give themselves here, which I’ve been led to believe are of largely Mulhorandi origin)-well, this officer, I believe his rank is captain, is a haughty and uncooperative fellow I’m told comes from a fine family, his father being a senator and therefore among the ruling class of the city. This man, I hear tell, acts as he does out of frustration at the slow speed at which he has advanced over some years in the military service. A particularly improper rumor, and one I assure you I hesitate to repeat, implies that Ptolnec’s peculiar frustration is in his father’s failure to exit this world in a timely fashion to leave the family’s apparently considerable wealth-and perhaps too the seat in the governing body, which I’m told is purchased and can be held in a family by the proper transfer of gold bars upon execution of a last will and testament-in his unworthy son’s hands. I apologize if the implication offends, Mother, but I hope you detect in my repeating of it the degree to which this man has caused me grief in the completion of my most important work.

Should you have begun to fret over this unseemly subject, take heart. Your son is growing into the man I believe you hoped I would be and indeed the man your careful nurturing and daily lessons have made me.

It was over a set of measurements for a string of battlements along what the military men have identified as a portion of the wall with a particular relevance for their defensive artillery tactics, that we (I so hope!) butted heads for the last time. This Captain Ptolnec (I hesitate to attach such a rank of importance to this man, really!), after barely a glance at the figures, had decided that I was in the wrong in my measurements. I would not be troubled to give his objections even the briefest consideration, he having proven himself to be one who finds fault without evidence in everything I do.