Philip Athans - Whisper of Waves

10 Kythorn, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)

Lightning played across the water-saturated ground, the only relief from the utter blackness of the moonless night. Each brilliant flash of blue-white showed another tableau of destruction.

There was nothing left but rubble. It was all gone. The supports lay shattered, once great stone blocks so much gravel, and all around was mud-everywhere black, all-consuming mud.

He didn’t speak. Barely moving enough to breathe, he stood perfectly still. He’d never held his body so motionless. As the lightning crashed all around him and the thunder vibrated his chest, threatening to disrupt the very beat of his heart, he stood in perfect, uninterrupted silence.

There was nothing to say, after all. What was there to say? What eulogy could be appropriate for a man’s dreams? His life, that was obvious-a list of family and friends, platitudes to assuage the grief of those left behind-but his dreams? His dreams left in a pile of mud and ruin, what could a man be expected to say?

Lightning arced a few paces from him, close enough to raise each hair on his head in a wave from the front of his hairline to his neck. The skin on his back shivered, and his knees twitched. Despite his desire to stand in place, he took one step backward to keep from falling but still slipped on the muddy ground. He fell to one knee but stood quickly, even as the deafening boom of thunder echoed into the background hiss of the incessant rain.

He took no notice of the mud caked on his trousers. His linen and silk clothing stuck to his body, heavy with rain. If it was dirty as well, what could it matter? The rain was cold and the wind blew in from the Lake of Steam, cool enough to provide no relief but still rife with the stench of sulfur that was the lake’s peculiar curse-one of its curses, anyway.

His body shivered, but he paid it no mind. A bolt from the heavens crashed to ground behind the pile of rubble that had been his life’s work, outlining in silhouette the uneven mound. Ribbons of rain water blew from the edges of broken stones like the thin branches of willows whipping in the wind. The constant percussion of the rainfall grew loud enough to drown out all but the closest and most insistent of the thunderbolts. He couldn’t have heard someone approach from behind him if he’d tried, and he didn’t try.

A deep breath put as much rain water as air into his lungs, but he didn’t give the storm the satisfaction of coughing. His eyes moved slowly from left to right, then back again, taking in the ruin, memorizing it, making it a part of himself. He cared only for the sight of what had become of his work, and he didn’t know that something made its way across the ankle-deep mud behind him.

Had he bothered to turn he might have seen it, at least in silhouette, against the blinding lightning that illuminated the roiling, angry clouds. He might have seen it take its time, dragging its feet through the mud one tortured step every dozen heartbeats, secure in the fact that it didn’t have to be fast. It had all the time in the world.

So intent was he on the rocks, mud, twisted metal, and splintered wood that he didn’t see it coming. So deafened was he by the crash of thunder and the hammering of rain that he didn’t hear its footsteps or its groans. So devoured was he by the bitter reality of the mess his work had been reduced to that he didn’t think to turn.

Behind him, something had come almost within reach-something that moved but didn’t live, hated but didn’t reason, killed but felt no remorse.

Mirtul, the Year of the Striking Hawk (1326 DR)

THE CITY OF NETHJET, THAY

We don’t reach like that now, Mari,” his mother reminded in a tight voice.

Marek Rymut drew his hand back from the cup but not all the way. He looked at his mother and inched his hand back a little more, then a bit more. When the side of her thin lips twitched up the littlest bit, he smiled and began to reach for the teacup again but ever so much more slowly.

His mother greeted the slow, deliberate, unobtrusive reach with a satisfied smile that disappeared when he drew the teacup too quickly to his lips. Something about the look on her face as he sipped the too-sweet tea sent a thrill tickling his skin. Taking almost a full minute to set the teacup on the saucer then another minute to place them both on the tablecloth in front of him was her reward for sitting through his offensive gesture.

“My pretty Mari,” she whispered.

Marek felt his breath stop in his throat. He didn’t like it when she called him Mari, but she never called him anything else.

He took another sip of the tea, then tipped the cup over and poured the rest onto the table in front of him. For the longest time there was no sound. They didn’t look at each other. Both sets of eyes stayed firmly on the spilled tea.

“Stand up, baby,” his mother said, her voice betraying not a trace of emotion. “You don’t want that getting on your dress.”

Marek stood and stepped away from the table. No sooner had he moved his knee away than the tea began to drip then pour off the edge of the tabletop.

His mother stepped around the table, avoiding the spilled tea, and looked down at him. She didn’t bother giving him a disapproving look.

“My pretty Mari,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “How old are you now?”

“Eleven,” Marek said.

She nodded in response and reached out, slowly, to smooth down the ruffled collar of his simple lace gown.

“Who are we waiting for?” he asked.

Her brow wrinkled, accentuating the fine lines around her eyes. Strands of white were intertwined with her jet black hair. Her nose was too big and her eyes too small. He knew that because she’d told him so.

It seemed as if she was about to speak when a servant entered the room. His mother’s eyes followed the uniformed maid, but her head never moved. The girl stepped with the jerky quickness of someone in fear of her life. Marek didn’t understand why. He’d never seen his mother kill one of the servants.

As the maid hurried to clean the spilled tea from the floor then began to gather up the soaked tablecloth, Marek asked his mother, “Why hasn’t Father been home in six years?”

A clatter of fine porcelain-the maid was fortunate it didn’t break-followed the question like a punctuation mark. Marek looked at her, but his mother didn’t.

“Has it been six years?” his mother asked.

He nodded. The maid had the cups on the tray and carefully, slowly, lifted it from the table and set it on the floor, never looking up from her task.

“Your father is an important man,” she explained for precisely the eighty-third time since Marek started keeping count. “If he has been away for six years, it’s because he is tending to the family business.”

“Where?” he asked, going through the motions even though he knew what she was going to say.

“He is in Eltabbar,” she said.

“Why?” he asked.

The maid folded the tea-stained tablecloth into a bundle against her stomach then set it on the floor next to the tray.

“All of this requires …” Marek’s mother started to say.

The maid produced a fresh tablecloth from somewhere and spread it over the table in a single fluid, silent motion.

“Look around you, Mari dear,” his mother said.

Marek did as he was told. His eyes played across the ornate furniture, most of it upholstered in silk, some gilded, others with jewels inlaid into the polished, rare hardwoods. The walls were freshly painted every three months, and the art was replaced at the same interval. The floor was marble and so perfectly buffed he could see his reflection in it. The scent of the spilled tea had given way to the ever-present lavender. His mother liked lavender.