Philip Athans - Whisper of Waves

A particular favorite of the firedrakes were the fat, six-foot-long worms Marek had taken to calling Fury’s Grubs. They seemed harmless enough and at first failed even to take notice of Marek and even Insithryllax as they first explored, then with great violence of spell and acid, tamed the little nugget of Fury’s Heart.

Though Insithryllax was late, Marek hardly noticed, he was so caught up in the spectacle of the black firedrakes at play. When the great black wyrm finally emerged from a flash of brilliant red light a thousand feet in the air above his head, Marek didn’t bother to feign impatience.

“Apologies for my lateness,” the dragon said when he had settled with a ground-jarring boom on the hill beside Marek. “I know you have plans for the evening and peasant uprisings to run.”

“Bah,” Marek scoffed. “That strike? An amusing diversion is all. A chance to draw certain people out of the crowd of Innarlith’s poor excuse for an intelligentsia. It only lasted a day, and I think the poor, downtrodden commoner is even commoner for the experience.”

“So then just the odd society ball tonight?”

Marek shrugged and said, “Another year gone, eh, friend? And a busy one at that.”

“Indeed,” the dragon replied.

“So, then,” said Marek, “what is it you needed to show me?”

“It appears we were not as thorough in our cleansing of this place as we’d thought,” Insithryllax said.

“Do tell,” Marek prompted with a raised eyebrow.

“In the lake,” said the dragon.

Marek studied the calm, dark surface of the small body of water. They had given it only cursory attention, true, and Marek didn’t even know how deep it was.

“Surely it’s too small to contain anything of consequence,” he said, even then knowing he must be wrong.

“I’ve only caught a glimpse of them myself,” the dragon said. “The drakes are too like their mothers to go close to water. Still, one of them strayed too near, and not a trace of it has washed up.”

“Show me,” Marek said.

As the dragon took wing, Marek closed his eyes against the rush of wind-driven dust and considered the possibilities. If there was something living in the lake that was big enough and mean enough to kill one of the black firedrakes, it might be worth keeping-if it could be tamed, magically or otherwise.

Insithryllax swooped down into a copse of the native trees-spindly, skeletal things that bore a fruit Marek was currently harvesting for its potent poison-and came back up into the air with one of the fat, squirming grubs writhing in his talons.

A few of the firedrakes left off their aimless soaring and swooped down to follow their father, one of them even taking tentative snaps in the direction of the grub. When Insithryllax flew past the shore of the little lake, the firedrakes broke off and climbed, avoiding flying over the water.

Insithryllax dropped the giant worm over the lake and Marek half expected at least one firedrake to swoop in and try to grab it. The best any of them did was level a perturbed glance at their father for wasting so fine and fat a worm.

Having steeled himself to witness a great splash, Marek was startled when the splash came altogether too early. The disturbance in the water was not caused by the grub falling in, but by something else bursting out.

It was, for lack of a more educated perspective, a great fish, long like an eel. Fins flapped like sideways wings at the corners of its wide mouth, which opened so fully under the falling worm Marek thought he might be able to step into the thing’s gullet without tipping his head. A jagged row of swordlike teeth latched onto the worm and popped it like a sausage, sending the grub’s yellow-green blood pouring into its mouth.

Flashes of blue light flickered across its spiny fins and reflected off its slimy wet scales. Before it fell back under the water, graceful arcs of blue-white lightning leaped from its body and dug into the dying grub, lighting it from within.

All at once the beast was gone.

Marek, grinning, couldn’t resist the temptation to applaud, and was clapping still, and chuckling, when the great black dragon once again alit beside him.

“Well?” Insithryllax said.

“Lovely!” Marek gushed. “Oh, I’ll have to come back with all the appropriate spells.”

“You mean to tame them?” asked the dragon.

“Certainly,” Marek replied. “The black firedrakes are a wonder, and now that our little breeding program is finally fully underway they’ll surely be everything I’d hoped for, but these demon-fish … We do live in a coastal city after all, and one never knows.”

It seemed to Marek as if the dragon had something more to say but was reluctant.

“That can’t trouble you, my friend,” Marek said. “They’re just fish. Giant, electrical fish, yes, but fish just the same.”

“Monsters,” said the dragon, an edge in his voice Marek didn’t remember ever hearing before. “Monsters that can be charmed.”

Marek heaved a great, dramatic sigh and said, “That spell was spent a long, long time ago, my friend.”

The dragon met Marek’s comforting gaze and after a heartbeat or two seemed satisfied.

“So,” Insithryllax said, his voice back to normal, “have you settled on a name?”

“For the fish?” Marek asked.

“No, damn you,” the dragon huffed, “not the gods-cursed fish. The … whatever this place is.”

“Technically, it’s a ‘pocket dimension,’ and yes, I think I have,” Marek replied. “I’m going to call it the Land of One Hundred and Thirteen.”

The dragon puzzled over that for some time while Marek watched the water for any sign of demonic fish, but saw none.

“One hundred and thirteen?” Insithryllax finally asked.

“It was the number of days it took us to tame the place,” Marek replied. “It’s been one hundred and thirteen days since I pulled it from Fury’s Heart and made it my own. One hundred and thirteen days later, we made our last discovery.”

Marek knew that the dragon didn’t necessarily believe the denizens of the little lake would really be the last discovery, but still the black firedrakes were being born, were feeding on things other than themselves, and only a handful had been lost in those last hundred and thirteen days. At least the bulk of their work had been done.

“The Land of One Hundred and Thirteen,” the black dragon repeated. “I like the sound of it.”

Marek smiled and stood with his friend for a while longer before once again crossing the endless space between the Land of One Hundred and Thirteen and the hard reality of Innarlith.

5 Ches, the Year of the Helm (1362 DR)

SECOND QUARTER, INNARLITH

Meykhati and his wife looked ridiculous. They wore matching robes that Willem supposed were terribly expensive. Both of them droned on and on all evening about how the garments were imported from Shou Lung and “the Celestials” wore them at their most sacred rites and observances. None of their guests inquired as to the details of those rites. No one asked them what they meant by calling people from Shou Lung “Celestials”-and Willem could hear the capital C in the twist of their lips when they said it. No one mentioned that they were far, far away from Shou Lung and the Celestials’ mysterious rites and observances and so they looked foolish and out of place in their own home. No one said any of that because to do so would have been rude, and to be rude to Meykhati and his wife would have been social suicide.

All that being the case, Willem said to Meykhati’s wife, “The embroidery is astonishing. Such workmanship….”

The woman beamed as if she had embroidered the thing herself and said, “Isn’t it? Isn’t it really? Can you just imagine the delicate little elfish fingers of those tiny Celestial women stitching away? Stitching and stitching. Could they even imagine, I wonder, that their exquisite handiwork would be enjoyed by people so far away?”