Philip Athans - Whisper of Waves

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

BERRYWILDE

She didn’t like to move around when the voices started. If she did, they might see her, and though she didn’t know what they might do, didn’t know if they could even do anything at all, she was afraid.

Phyrea didn’t like being afraid. It felt weak. If felt bad.

The night air was full of sounds. Crickets chirped and the wind rustled leaves. People were speaking in empty rooms. Someone was crying-a woman. She tried but couldn’t count how many there were. One moment there was nothing, no sound at all, then the next it was as if a party was going on in the next room.

She didn’t want to sleep on the sofa in the library, but there were half a dozen rooms between there and her bedchamber, and the voices came from at least one, so Phyrea waited. She sat on the very edge of the stiff leather couch, her feet flat on the floor. She was cold, and she shivered, though the late summer air was very warm.

The voices quieted, but the woman was still crying. Phyrea wiped a tear from her own cheek and thought, Stop crying. Stop crying.

She imagined that the woman’s baby had died. She held the limp form, heavier in death than in life, cradled in her quivering arms. The sobs tore at her body and ripped her spirit from her. Her mouth twisted sideways and would not close. Her face tensed with the rest of her body and she couldn’t open her eyes. Why did it have to happen? Why did her baby have to die? The fever wasn’t that bad. He had nursed that afternoon, but by nightfall he’d fallen into a sleep she couldn’t wake him from-a sleep he would never wake from. After he drew his last breath, she held hers as long as she could, perhaps hoping she could die with him. If they died together it would be as if nothing bad had happened at all, but soon she drew in a breath and knew that she was alive and he was dead, and that was when she started to cry.

The crying stopped, and Phyrea stood up so fast her head spun and she almost fainted. She closed her eyes, wiped away another tear, and just stood there for a moment while her head cleared. Her baby didn’t die. She never had a baby.

She took a candle from a candelabra and left the library with it. Wax dripped onto her finger but she ignored it. It wasn’t that hot. There were no voices in the next room. She kept her eyes on her feet as she walked, in case there was something she didn’t want to see.

She crossed the first room telling herself she wasn’t the mother of a dead baby.

She crossed the second room imagining the feeling of the red-haired man’s skin. It would be firm but soft. It would thrill at her touch.

She crossed the third room wondering if she would ever go back to the city again.

She crossed the fourth room wondering if the man with red hair would take her back to Innarlith or stay with her at Berrywilde, whiling away the days in bed, bathing together, making love on the floor. At night he would hold her while the ghosts moaned and wailed and they would never be able to scare her again.

She crossed the fifth room, the room right before her bedchamber, but only halfway before she saw the man and stopped.

He sat on a chair at the little table where she often ate in the morning and where she had tea late at night before the voices made her reluctant to go from the kitchen to her room in the dark. The man was old, withered with age, his shoulders stooped and sagged as if even sitting there he labored under a crushing weight.

Phyrea let the breath she was holding out through her open mouth, not making the slightest sound.

She didn’t want to look at the man. The candle shook in her hand and wax dappled the floor at her feet. A drop hit the top of her little toe and made her hiss. The man looked up at the sound. He looked directly at her.

Their eyes met and he was the most terrifying thing and the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. She could see the lines of the chair, the corner, the pattern on the little rug on the floor beneath him-all that through his body. He was not made of flesh and blood but of a blue-violet light. His body, his face, and his eyes all formed of starlight.

Phyrea tried to hold her breath but couldn’t. She panted. The man didn’t speak, but she had the strong impression that he wanted to. He’d appeared for some reason, hadn’t he? He’d crossed the gulf from death to life-why? To tell her something?

She didn’t want him to speak. She was afraid not of what he would say but of what his voice would sound like. What would a man made of starlight and a will that resisted death itself sound like?

Then she noticed the scar on his cheek. It was in the shape of a z, uneven and angry. She’d seen that scar before, on one of the portraits. What surprised her most was that she’d remembered. She didn’t think she’d studied any of the old paintings in sufficient detail to match a scar from one to the scar on a ghost’s face, but there it was.

The man nodded then. He knew she saw the scar, knew she remembered his portrait, but how?

The man faded away, leaving an empty chair. There were no more sounds, no crying and carrying on.

Phyrea could have taken four steps and been in her bedchamber. She could have gone quietly to sleep and forgotten all of it by morning.

Instead, she turned and went back the way she came. She walked with purpose, her steps assured and steady, her hand no longer shaking, the wax no longer burning her. She had come to know the house so well that she found the room in the dark and didn’t even hesitate for the slightest moment until she stood looking up at the portrait of the man with the scar on his face.

The room was one of a dozen dining rooms. The long, wide table had been covered in thin canvas, the chairs draped in linen shawls. She’d told the staff, before she dismissed them, that she had no intention of entertaining.

Candles sat waiting in an elaborate gilded stand on a sideboard. She lit them with the candle in her hand, then blew it out and dropped it on the floor. The portrait hung on a wall richly paneled in dark wood. Phyrea reached up and took hold of the framed canvas in both hands. She lifted the picture up and away from the wall. It was heavy and she nearly dropped it on her bare feet, but managed to stagger back and lower it gently to the floor. She leaned it against the sideboard then pushed the candles closer to the wall.

Why am I doing this? she asked herself. What am I looking for?

She had practice finding secret doors. She was a thief after all, and in the Second Quarter everything worth taking was worth hiding in a secret place. Phyrea knew what to look for; she just didn’t know why she was looking for it.

There it was-a hairline crack in the paneling, played in along the grain.

She felt along the edges and imagined she could feel cool air blowing from inside. She pressed where her instincts told her to press, but nothing happened, so she pressed in other places, then ran a fingernail along the line of the seam.

That went on for a very long time, and Phyrea shifted her weight on the sideboard many times, climbed down and stretched even, looked at it from a distance, and from so close the tip of her nose touched the wood wall.

When the door popped open she breathed a sigh of relief as if she had finished something, as if just opening the door was what she’d come there to do, but it was just the beginning.

It didn’t creak or make any noise at all when it swung open, though Phyrea imagined it had been closed for decades at least. Her father had never mentioned anything about secret passages, and he wasn’t the type to have them put in or to use them. He didn’t like people sneaking around.