Philip Athans - Whisper of Waves

Behind the hidden panel was a space no bigger than a cupboard. The walls inside were rough brick, mortared in that messy, unfinished way that implied the mason didn’t expect anyone to see his handiwork. A wooden ladder was bolted to the far wall and descended into utter blackness.

Am I really going to do this? Phyrea asked herself. The words formed clearly in her mind, as clear as if she’d spoken them aloud.

She took a deep breath and held it, staring at the ladder, then exhaled slowly through her nose. Taking a candle from the sideboard, she leaned forward and stuck her head into the dark space. She looked down, but the meager candlelight only showed more ladder. She couldn’t see the bottom.

Still holding the candle in one hand, she crawled into the space and tested the ladder with her foot. It held, seemed strong, and she was light, especially dressed in a simple silk nightshirt. She didn’t stop to think. If she had, she would have realized at least that she was unarmed and might have done something about that. Instead, she started climbing down the ladder.

After a dozen rungs she started to imagine that the ladder had no end, that she’d lowered herself into some bottomless pit and would climb down forever and ever. She didn’t bother looking down. Her arms hurt, but she continued to descend.

Her bare foot touched stone, and Phyrea was almost disappointed that the ladder hadn’t gone on forever. She guessed she was thirty feet below ground.

She was in a crypt.

The candlelight was all she needed to see the confines of the small space, maybe fifteen feet square, the ceiling only inches from the top of her head. In the center of the room was a knee-high stone slab, and on the slab was a casket. The workmanship was fine, the wood heavy and the hardware gleaming gold, sparkling in the flickering light of her candle.

The man made of light stood over the casket, looking down.

Phyrea’s blood went cold, and she started to shake again, which made the candlelight dance and jitter, sending crazy shadows dancing through the crypt.

The man looked so sad. He wanted her to open it. She stepped forward, and he disappeared.

Phyrea had trusted her interpretation of the ghost’s desires enough to find the secret door and climb down the ladder in the pitch dark. She’d stopped thinking some time ago, actually. She was doing what she thought she was supposed to do, and her mind couldn’t begin to function on any sort of analytical level.

She stepped to the casket on the spot where the man made of starlight had stood. She tried the lid with one hand, holding the candle above her. To her surprise-and no small dread-the lid opened easily. She grimaced and winced at the sight of the skeleton that lay there, wrapped in the dried, worm-eaten silk of its burial shroud. It was some distant ancestor of hers. It might have been a great uncle or great grandfather, and she didn’t even know his name.

The corpse wore no jewelry and the coffin bore no inscription, but lying along the length of the desiccated corpse was a sword.

Phyrea gasped when her eyes finally took it in. The scabbard was pure gold, intricately engraved with serpentine dragons that appeared to writhe in the flickering candlelight. The hilt was gold as well, the handle wrapped in black leather that had been worked with the same dancing dragons. A magnificent cluster of sapphires capped the pommel.

She picked up the sword, amazed by how light it was. The gold alone should have weighed twice as much or more. She kneeled and dripped a little wax on the dusty stone floor then set the candle down, careful not to let her silk nightshirt fall into the flame.

Phyrea drew the sword and had to gasp again. The blade glowed in the dark crypt with a light of its own. The metal looked like platinum, but Phyrea thought it might have been adamantite. The blade itself was beautiful, wavy and graceful. She didn’t know the word for it. Was it a falchion?

She looked down at her long-dead relative one more time then closed the casket.

He’d wanted her to find the sword. She didn’t know why.

The climb up the ladder was difficult holding both the candle and the sword, but in time she made it back up, closed the secret door behind her, and replaced the painting. She carried the sword cradled in her arms like a baby back to her bedchamber. She didn’t see the ghost of the man with the scar on his cheek again that night and slept with the scabbarded sword in the bed with her.

Her dreams were of the red-haired man, holes in the ground, explosions, and blood on a wavy blade of glowing adamantite.

1 Eleint, the Year of the Wave (1364 DR)

THE PALACE OF MANY SPIRES, INNARLITH

Fifteen people sat on various chairs and sofas in the enormous office of Ransar Osorkon. Some of them were mages, six were bodyguards, and the rest were advisors and hangers-on or part-time spies. A few of them read through journal books and ledgers, occasionally making notes. Two of them played a long, half-hearted game of sava . The rest gazed at one or another of a score of crystal balls that had been arranged on stands around the room. From those enchanted devices, Osorkon was able to look in on the comings and goings of friends and enemies alike.

A small group of men stood around one crystal ball, leering and giggling at the magically conjured image of a senator they all knew well who was engaged in an illicit dalliance with his upstairs maid. The senator’s wife appeared in another of the crystal balls, taking tea with two other senators’ wives in an opulent sitting room elsewhere in the Second Quarter.

Osorkon sighed and propped his head in his hands, his elbows on the gigantic desktop in front of him.

“Oh, my!” one of the men looking into the crystal ball at the senator and his maid exclaimed.

Osorkon looked up, noticing the sudden change in mood. The men around the crystal ball stared at the image with shock and concern, all leering gone. The crystal ball showed the senator clutching at his chest, his left arm dangling limply at his side. The young maid scurried about, naked, screaming. They couldn’t hear through the crystal ball, but it looked as though she was screaming. They all paused for a moment to watch the man die in his bed while the crying maid hurried to get dressed and get out.

One of the mages passed a hand over the crystal ball and the group of men dispersed, all looking vaguely embarrassed. None of them looked at the image of the dead man’s wife, still enjoying her tea and gossip.

Osorkon heaved another sigh, louder and deeper.

“Is something the matter, Ransar?” one of the mages asked.

Osorkon shook his head.

“Is there anything I can get you, my lord?” one of the advisors inquired.

Osorkon ignored him and started sifting through the parchment, paper, and vellum on his desk. There were letters, account ledgers, writs, and requests, and they all bored him to tears. He’d fallen behind with all the reading and signing, signing and reading, and the more he tried to force himself to get caught up, the less work he actually did. The advisors had gone from tolerant to testy to insistent and back to tolerant again, having lost interest in the fact that he’d lost interest.

As the bulk of the people in the room watched the sava game, none of them really interested in it, Osorkon quickly skimmed one sheet after another, sliding them off the desktop as he read them. He signed one, a request for the release of a hundred gold pieces to buy bricks to shore up a falling pier. A letter from a housewife from the Third Quarter that seemed not to have a point at all was sent off the edge of the desk only partially read. That went on for a long time.