Philip Athans - Whisper of Waves

One of the other junior senators nudged him with an elbow and Willem realized the ceremony had come to an end.

He followed his fellow inductees down the steps of the dais and into a crowd of senators, relatives, and well-wishers. The lot of them streamed out of the senate chambers and into an adjacent room, one almost as big, where a massive feast had been prepared. Musicians began to play from a corner of the room, and servants filtered through the dispersing crowd with food and drinks. All around was gay laughter and light banter.

“Willem, my dear,” his mother beamed. She appeared to him from the center of the crowd like a dolphin breaking the surface of a raging sea. Her smile was all teeth and pageantry. “Oh, my dear, dear Willem!”

She took his face in her hands and he smiled because he knew she’d want him to.

“Senator Willem Korvan,” she said, and there was a tear in her eye.

“Mother,” he said and could think of nothing else to say.

Hands clapped him on the back and patted him on the shoulder as he and his mother smiled at each of the passersby and uttered inane, meaningless greetings.

“The throne was empty,” his mother whispered in his ear when the function had finally settled into pockets of friends, acquaintances, and co-conspirators.

“The ransar’s throne?” he asked, even though he knew precisely what she was referring to.

“So auspicious a day,” Thurene said with a pained grimace, “and Ransar Osorkon couldn’t be bothered even to walk across the street!”

He found himself starting to say something in the ransar’s defense but stopped.

“When you’re ransar,” his mother said, her voice and face conveying real sincerity, “I never want you to miss one of these. It simply should not be allowed.”

In his entire life Willem Korvan had never wanted so badly to hit his mother.

9 Eleasias, the Year of the Wave (1364 DR)

THE WINERY

Hrothgar woke up with his hammer in his hand and was on his feet before he realized it was just Devorast.

“By the braided beard of the Brightaxe, Ivar,” he grumbled. “I just about cracked ya one.”

Hrothgar took no offense at Devorast’s crooked, doubtful smile. Instead he leaned the heavy sledgehammer against his dank, musty cot and sat. Vrengarl snored away, dead to the world.

The tent they shared was a tight fit for the three of them: Devorast a little too tall for it, and the two dwarves a little too wide, but while they toiled away on the rich man’s winery, the tent was home. It kept the rain out better than their basement room, at least, though it had only rained twice since they’d been there. There was a decent sense of camaraderie in the camp, so no one messed about with their belongings or kept the camp up late with talking, singing, or other disturbances. It wasn’t the Great Rift, but Hrothgar had seen worse.

“Where do you go at night?” the dwarf asked.

Devorast pulled off his tunic and sat on the edge of his own cot. In the dark tent Hrothgar knew the human couldn’t see his face, but the dwarf could see Devorast’s.

“Ivar?” Hrothgar prompted.

“The woods,” the human answered, then rubbed his face with his hands.

“North?” asked the dwarf. “Across the path?”

“It gives me a chance to think,” he said. “You know how we humans value the fresh air.”

“Ha,” Hrothgar huffed. “That’s a dangerous pursuit, my friend. There could be predators about. After all, the last few times we went out of the city together it was, what, giant frogs and killer waves? Or was it killer frogs and giant waves? Either way, one more walk in the woods and you could find yourself working your way through a dragon’s bowels, and he’ll use your shin bone for a toothpick.”

Devorast smiled and lay down on his back, his hands behind his head.

“I’m only kinda kidding, there,” the dwarf warned.

“I can take care of myself,” Devorast said. “Besides, this whole area has been cleared, and there are patrols.”

“Those guards are city-born,” the dwarf complained. “One look at the beasties that haunt these parts and they’ll run back to Innarlith so their mommas can wash the night soil out of their breeches.”

“Maybe so,” the human allowed.

Hrothgar sat quietly watching Devorast for a moment. He hadn’t closed his eyes and didn’t appear sleepy.

“Well, you already woke me up,” Hrothgar said. “Might as well tell me what’s on your mind then maybe we can both get a little shut eye. I’m still catching up on what I lost to the su-”

Hrothgar couldn’t bring himself to say the word “sunburn.”

The first ten days at the work site had been among the most painful of his life. Everything Devorast had warned him about had come to pass, including the peeling. Then there was the itching, the burning again, and more peeling. He and Vrengarl sat for so long every night, just tearing layers of flaky yellow-white skin off each other’s backs; Hrothgar was sure he’d lost an inch off his shoulder span. Eventually, though, all that stopped, but what they were left with was no less disturbing.

“I look like half a drow!” Vrengarl had exclaimed the first time they’d seen themselves in a mirror.

Their skin had turned a rich brown color they both still found unsettling.

“Ivar,” Hrothgar urged.

“It’s nothing, my friend,” Devorast replied. “As I said, I just like the fresh air.”

“That’s all?”

Devorast sighed, and Hrothgar could tell he had more to say, so he sat quietly waiting.

“There are no stars out tonight,” Devorast said after a long moment. “On nights like this, it’s hard to tell where the mountains end and the sky begins.”

Hrothgar nodded. The Firesteap Mountains rose like a wall of brown, green, gray, and white on the southern horizon, towering over the gentle hills already planted with the Innarlan senator’s Sembian grape vines. Hrothgar and Vrengarl often spent a lazy moment gazing at the mountains, thinking of home, thinking of all things dwarven.

“Are you homesick?” the dwarf asked.

“Like you?” Devorast replied with a friendly smile that made Hrothgar look away.

“Aye,” he said, “like me. Like me, and Vrengarl, and every other swingin’ hammer out here. There’s no shame in that, you know.”

“Perhaps not, but for me …”

Hrothgar waited for another long pause to end but finally had to break it himself. “For you what?”

“For me,” Devorast replied, though he was obviously reluctant to do so, “there’s no home to be sick for.”

“I can’t imagine that,” the dwarf said. “If I didn’t have the Great Rift to pine for, I don’t know what I’d do.”

“Make your own home,” Devorast suggested, and Hrothgar wondered if the human had convinced even himself that that was possible. “You can make a home for yourself if you want to.”

Hrothgar didn’t want to go down that path. He liked where they were, what they were doing, and though he never would have imagined bringing a human so deeply into his confidence, he liked that it was the three of them out there. He didn’t want to make a home anywhere else just then and didn’t want either Vrengarl or Devorast to do that either.

“Before we left,” the dwarf said instead, “you were working on something.”

“Yes, I was.”

“Tell me about that,” Hrothgar suggested. “You always feel better when you talk about some project or another. What was it, another ship?”

“No,” Devorast replied, “not another ship. I’m sorry, my friend, but I promised another friend that I wouldn’t speak of it.”