Philip Athans - Whisper of Waves

Marek cast another spell to make him invisible again then another to reveal the thoughts of anyone who might be watching.

The neighbors had obviously had the good sense to clear out a long time ago, and Marek started running back in the direction of the worst of the firedrake attacks, confident that no one else alive knew the source of the firedrakes’ escape. Even if a few did, he reasoned, the shaft had been sealed well enough that no one could trace them back to the hatchery.

Marek worked well into the night chasing down the last of the black firedrakes and teleporting them back, dead or alive, to the hatchery. He was a bit disappointed that three of them had been killed by the city watch, though in the wealthy Second Quarter the officers were combat veterans and armed to a man with enchanted weapons and armor. Marek had supplied a good number of them himself.

Still, the black firedrakes, having had the element of surprise, bursting out of the ground in the middle of the fancy shopping district, had done severe damage to the city. Marek promised himself he’d keep a close eye on the toll of death and damage as the ensuing tendays revealed the extent of the devastation.

Though unplanned, and not a little inconvenient, it had been a successful test.

He went to bed that night concerned only with what he was going to tell Insithryllax, and what he was going to have to do to finally give the dragon and his mutant offspring the space they needed to grow in safety and secrecy. As he drifted off to a deep, restful sleep, Marek Rymut wondered if the city itself could truly hold them.

17 Tarsakh, the Year of Maidens (1361 DR)

ALONG THE BANKS OF THE NAGAFLOW

Hrothgar Deepcarver couldn’t help but watch the strange human. The man they called Devorast had hair as red as Hrothgar’s own bushy eyebrows, but his beard was but a brown-red stubble-the sort of beard Hrothgar had sported when barely out of diapers-the same color as the dwarf’s.

“He could be a Deepcarver,” Hrothgar said to his cousin Vrengarl. “If he wasn’t so tall and lanky, that is.”

The human’s big eyes were so dark brown they almost matched Hrothgar’s own beady black orbs.

“He works like a Deepcarver,” Vrengarl replied. “You know, slow and clumsy.”

Hrothgar suppressed a smile at the jibe and hefted his bulky stonehammer.

“Did we come here to work,” Vrengarl asked, “or to stare at humans?”

Hrothgar shrugged then swung his hammer down onto a steel wedge. The wedge split a block of stone and Hrothgar kept his eyes off Devorast long enough to appraise the cut. It was straight and true-worthy of a Deepcarver.

“Judging by the shape of your blocks,” Hrothgar taunted his cousin in return, “it looks like you’ve come here to work like a human.”

Vrengarl laughed heartily-as if a dwarf from the Great Rift could laugh any other way-and bent his back to his work, and his blocks were as straight as Hrothgar’s.

The rest of the morning was spent cutting blocks from boulders dug from the limestone quarries north of Innarlith. Hrothgar paid attention to his work, but for a dwarf of his skill and experience, cutting blocks was the simplest of tasks. As he worked he continued to sneak glances at Devorast, who worked as hard as any of the stonemasons, dwarf and human alike. He’d pause only to answer the odd question or to set smaller crews to specific tasks as he saw fit. He gave every order with the same simple confidence he exhibited in his stone cutting.

When he and Vrengarl were done, Hrothgar waved to Devorast who came to examine their work. All morning the dwarf had watched Devorast pick and choose from the blocks cut by the human masons, accepting only the few that met his exacting eye and ignoring the baleful stares of the stonecutters who obviously didn’t share his high standards.

Hrothgar stepped back and watched Devorast examine his blocks. Vrengarl took the opportunity to sit on a rock and take a deep draught of ale from an earthenware jug he’d carried with him from home. Hrothgar’s cousin grimaced at the taste of the human-brewed ale-he’d long since finished the stout dwarven brew that filled the jug when they’d left the Rift-but he drank just as deeply as he always had.

When Devorast finished examining every side of every one of Hrothgar’s stone blocks he stood and locked eyes with the dwarf.

“Fine work,” the human said.

Hrothgar nodded once and stood his ground.

Devorast smiled and said, “Finally, someone who isn’t wasting any of my-”

A shrill scream ripped the air between the nearby riverbank and the startled stonecutters.

Hrothgar turned, instinctively lifting his hammer into a defensive posture while Vrengarl stood and did the same without hesitation. The dwarf saw Devorast bring his own hammer to the ready, but unlike the two dwarves, the human was already running toward the riverbank, covering ground fast with those long, long strides.

“He can cut stone,” Hrothgar growled under his breath, “and he’s got guts too.”

The dwarf shook his head and found himself running after Devorast before he could talk himself out of it. Vrengarl called after him, as angry as he was confused, but Hrothgar ran on even as he wondered himself what he was thinking-or if he was thinking at all.

The stretch of river where the ransar of Innarlith had decided to construct a keep was a wild place. The humans among the crew tended toward the jittery side, and none of them wandered too far off from the crowd. Word of strange water monsters in the river, stranger monsters hiding in the tall grass, and even stranger monsters burrowing up from under the ground were traded back and forth among the men on an almost continuous basis. Hrothgar had been around long enough to believe half of them, and half of them were enough to scare the wits out of anyone with a pinch of brain between his ears.

The scream sounded again, even more desperate. When they came over the crest of a low hill, their legs pushing through the tall brown grass as if wading through waist-deep water, Hrothgar and Devorast saw the source of the terrified screams.

Human boys no more than ten years of age or so, employed by the work crew to fetch water, always went down to the riverbank in groups of two. Hrothgar could only see one of them. The boy was running as fast as he could up the steep hill toward them, struggling with the tall grass and uneven footing.

A frog the size of an ox gained ground on the boy with every step. The creature ran on its tiptoes, and if the thing were any smaller, any less grotesque, and any less hungry, it might have been comical. Instead, it was all Hrothgar could do to force himself onward at Devorast’s side.

The human never broke stride and went tearing down the hill, holding his hammer up and behind him so he could swing it down hard the second he came close enough to the frog-thing. Hrothgar was barely able to keep up.

A great splash in the river revealed a second of the bulbous green frog creatures. Its wide mouth opened, and Hrothgar had to blink a few times fast before he could be sure he saw the little human hand reaching out from inside the horrid monster’s wide, yellow-lipped mouth. The boy was still alive in there. The thought of it made Hrothgar dizzy, but he ran on.

Devorast passed the running boy, who had the good sense to keep running, and the pursuing giant frog’s attention was drawn to the man. It didn’t take more than a few more of his long, human strides before Devorast was close enough to strike. Hrothgar, still at least a few steps behind, watched the hammer come down-only to be snatched out of Devorast’s strong grip by a long, thick rope of slime-glistening tissue that snapped out of the frog’s cavernous mouth like a bolt from a crossbow.