Philip Athans - Whisper of Waves

“That’s good,” Phyrea whispered to her reflection.

“Is that good?”

“Beautiful,” her reflection answered.

She froze, staring at herself.

The black silk dress clung to her narrow hips, and accentuated her firm, round breasts. A keyhole cut in the front of the dress exposed her navel. Her flat stomach was starting to lose some of its tone from the summer spent in the country, relaxing and talking to herself during the day, shaking and cowering from ghosts at night. She’d worked harder on her hair that morning than she’d had all summer, and had even traced her eyes in kohl, and dabbed red powder on her cheeks.

“We’re beautiful,” her reflection said, grinning back at her, though she couldn’t feel a smile on her face.

She turned away from the mirror, closed her eyes, squeezed her hands in tight fists, and held her breath. She counted five heartbeats, then exhaled, opened her eyes, relaxed, and forced herself to smile.

“He’ll like that,” the little girl said. Phyrea couldn’t see her. “You should smile more often.”

Phyrea shook her head and left her bedchamber. She stopped next to the little table in the next room, where her breakfast dishes still sat. There was a knife. She picked it up and held it to her arm but didn’t cut herself.

“Use the sword,” a voice she didn’t recognize whispered in her ear.

Phyrea dropped the knife and ran through the house surrounded by echoing laughter. She burst out the nearest outside door into a dull gray overcast morning. It was still hot, and the air smelled as if it was going to rain soon.

It was quiet outside, though. There was no laughing and no screaming, and no one whispered in her ear.

She stood in the middle of a flowerbed, breathing deeply in and out, calming herself, slowing her heartbeat. It didn’t take long for the fear and confusion to be replaced by the thrill of knowing that the day had come. He was coming. Ivar Devorast would be there to work on the wall.

Phyrea looked down, sighed, and stepped out of the flowerbed. She began to stroll along a winding flagstone path, at first just wandering, then following a sound. Barely aware of it at first, she followed it without thinking. Then she realized what it was: a cart. The way it clattered along it sounded empty. Her heart raced and she smiled. The cart went past, driven by a man who wiped sweat from his brow with a forearm covered with grotesque tattoos. Two other men sat in the back of the cart and looked equally exhausted.

She walked with purpose in the direction the cart had come from and came around the corner of one of the outbuildings. The men had made four huge piles of rocks. The stones were each the size of Phyrea’s head.

She looked around but didn’t see the red-haired man. Resisting the temptation to call out his name she just stood there, her knees shaking, running her fingers through her long, soft hair. She heard rock scraping on rock from behind one of the piles. He was behind there-must have been kneeling or squatting, since the pile was half his height.

She walked slowly around the pile of rocks, moving her hips, almost slithering when she walked. He didn’t hear her coming. She looked down at the ground as she came around the rock pile. Only by looking at the wall could she tell she stood where he could see her.

“Mornin’, Miss,” he said.

“Good morning,” she said.

She put a fingertip in her mouth and her other hand on her hip, gently rolling her hips as if she was about to turn around. Normally she could feel it when a man was looking at her, but that wasn’t happening. She couldn’t take it and finally had to sneak a look at him.

She gasped, jumped back, and almost screamed.

It wasn’t the beautiful red-haired man kneeling behind the rock pile. It was some kind of misshapen thing, standing up on two squat legs, so short it was hidden by the pile of stones. It looked at her from behind a mass of matted hair that covered its face so that she could make out only a grimacing mouth full of flat yellow teeth and two beady eyes that stared at her with puzzled intelligence.

She almost screamed again, then a word popped into her mind: dwarf.

She’d seen the dwarf at the winery site. He had stood next to Ivar Devorast.

“Where …” she said, her voice shaking along with the rest of her. “Where is Ivar Devorast?”

“Oh, yeah,” the dwarf said, looking at her as if she were a mad woman. “He couldn’t make it this morning, Miss, so he asked me to come in his stead. I’m a capable stonemason, Miss, and can promise you a good job raising yer wall here.”

“He …?” she said. “He sent you?”

“Aye, Miss,” replied the dwarf. “Name’s Hardtoil, Miss. Vrengarl Hardtoil. At yer service.”

Phyrea’s fists clenched again, and she closed her eyes. Her entire body tensed, but it wasn’t just anger.

“Miss?” the horrible little dwarf asked.

Without another word to the thing Devorast had sent in his place, she spun on her heel and went back to the house. She knew they’d be laughing at her and they were. Gales of laughter followed her from room to room, even as she ripped the dress off and threw it aside. She went back to where she’d dropped the knife.

“No!” one of them screamed. “The sword!”

She cried while she cut herself, and they laughed at her the whole time.

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

THE LAND OF ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN

The black firedrake struggled under Insithryllax’s massive talon. It wasn’t trying to escape-it knew better-but it was just trying to breathe. The black dragon held it firmly to the ground of the alien dimension while Marek Rymut walked around and around the dragon in slow, deliberate circles.

The rest of the firedrakes, hundreds of them, wheeled in the air far above, watching Marek with fiery eyes smoldering with nascent intelligence.

They’ve come a long way, Marek thought with a smile.

“I’m bored,” the black dragon rumbled.

Marek looked up into his reptilian face and said, “Patience, my friend.”

“Patience?” the black wyrm replied. “I’ve given you your little mutants, your black firedrakes. I’ve helped tame your lightning fish-whatever you call them.”

“I’ve been thinking, ‘Fury’s Eels.’”

“Spectacular,” said Insithryllax. “I’m tired of this place. I can’t live out here like an animal anymore. It’s not a proper life for a civilized creature. You or I.”

Marek looked back down at the restrained firedrake and said, “One more little experiment.”

“Then what?”

Marek sighed.

“At least tell me what we’re doing here,” asked the wyrm.

“This is the last element in the creation of the black firedrakes,” Marek explained. He let his chest swell with pride when he spoke, and why not? It would be his greatest achievement. “With this spell, the new ransar’s shock troops will be ready to serve him.”

“What new ransar?” the dragon asked. “We were sent here-you were sent here-to take control of the supply of magic. We’re here to sell magic items, not to supply ‘shock troops’ … whatever that is, to some human bureaucrat.”

Marek laughed and said, “Magic items? Watch this, my friend.”

He kneeled on the soft, mossy ground next to the pinned firedrake. The creature’s eyes rolled to take him in, and softened when they fell on Marek’s face. The beast recognized him. Marek had seen similar looks on the faces of his mother’s dogs. The thought disappointed him.

He spoke the first word of the first spell and the firedrake flicked its tongue at him. Marek smiled back at his creation and wove the spells, first one, then another, then a third, and a fourth. It took a long time, a lot longer than each one would have taken had he stopped in-between and cast them individually. Done together, each one was more powerful and more permanent. Into the casting he mingled words in Draconic that didn’t trigger spell effects but were a message to the firedrake: