Lies of Light (18 page)

Blood fountained from the decapitated man’s neck as his body jerked to the floor. His partner was sprayed in the face, and yelped, trying his best to fend it off. He fell to his knees, then scrambled back until he fetched up against a wall. Babbling incoherent pleas for his miserable existence, he all but clawed the blood from his eyes.

Insithryllax chuckled in a mean-spirited way and said, “Collecting heads, are we?”

He tipped his head in the direction of the altar, behind which was a shelf. On the shelf was a big glass jar, tightly sealed with a waxed cork. Inside the jar was the grimacing, disembodied head of Osorkon.

“I hadn’t actually thought of that, no,” Salatis answered with a laugh. “Anyway, this new one isn’t worth keeping.”

The surviving workman groveled on the blood-soaked floor, crying. He retracted, staring up with pleading, animal’s eyes, as Olin stepped up to tower over him.

“All this blood,” Insithryllax said, “on your new floors.”

“A small sacrifice,” Salatis said, “for the favor of the Mistress of the Night.”

“Weren’t you a devoted follower of Malar just a tenday or so past?” Insithryllax asked.

Salatis stiffened and said, “I’ll thank you not to mention that. Today, here in this place, I live for the dark secrets of Shar, divine daughter of Lord Ao.” He paused and Insithryllax shrugged. “Captain Olin—”

Olin brought the axe down again, and the man stopped crying all at once. When Olin tried to pull his axe out of the dead man’s back, it stuck fast. The black firedrake vomited a black fluid over his axe blade and Salatis had to turn away. He could hear the workman’s skin sizzle away, freeing the blade.

“Leave the mess,” Salatis said as he stepped past Insithryllax, ignoring the strange man’s grim smirk. “When Shar has had her fill of their souls, clean it up, and never come back in here again. Is that clear?”

Olin nodded, wiping the blood and acid from his longaxe onto the headless workman’s back.

Insithryllax laughed again, which elicited a sharp look from the black firedrake. But Salatis left the shrine, confident that no more blood would be spilled there, until he ordered it spilled.

32_

3 Ches, the Yearofthe Staff (1366 DR) The Village of Kurrsh

She couldn’t see the man with the scar on his face, but he could hear him. It was as if he rode in the cart behind her, whispering in her ear the whole way.

You have no idea what he’s using this for, the ghost told her. You’re helping him. Don’t help him. What do you think is going to happen?

Phyrea had no idea what was going to happen, but she didn’t care. For the past two days she’d had enough to concern herself just handling the cart. She hadn’t spent

much time driving carts after all.

“Please,” she whispered as she passed the first of the little cluster of waddle and daub buildings that comprised the village of Kurrsh, “just shut up.”

She closed her eyes for a bit, letting the horse lead her, as the man with the scar on his face flooded her mind with a raw sense of righteous indignation.

“You’re afraid of him,” she whispered with a smile, and opened her eyes.

I can’t be afraid of anything anymore, the man answered. But I can see what you cannot see, and hear what you cannot hear. I know that he has no feelings at all—not for you, not for anyone. He cares only about this hole in the ground. He’s manipulating you to help him when you know you should be fighting against him. Fight against him, Phyrea. Turn the cart around. Take us back to Berrywilde where we belong—where we all belong.

Phyrea sighed and brought the cart to a stop. Four children wandered by, looking at her with unashamed curiosity. Her cart was loaded with plain burlap sacks. They couldn’t know what the sacks contained, but whatever it was, it wasn’t very interesting, so they kept going, speaking to each other in low voices. They smiled, giggled even, as they passed. From the way they walked and spoke, she could tell they were in no hurry, and they were happy.

Don’t go in there, the man whispered. If you go in there, I can’t help you.

“You don’t appear to me when I’m with him,” she whispered. “Why?”

The ghost didn’t answer.

Phyrea climbed down off the cart, tied up the horse, and went into the squat little building. She took a deep breath, savoring the smell of ale and pipeweed. Though it was a warm afternoon for so early in the spring—the sun was shining even—a fire crackled in the hearth. She saw them right away—the place wasn’t that big—but she stood just inside the door and watched them for a moment.

They sat at a table in the middle of the room, surrounded by the farmers and simple country folk of Kurrsh, and they blended right in. Even the dwarf didn’t seem out of place. And Phyrea, the daughter of a senator, a bitter, resentful, petulant city girl, felt no less at home.

She smiled and walked to their table. The dwarf noticed her first and tapped the other two on their arms. When Devorast saw her, he smiled, and Phyrea’s heart melted in her chest. She missed a step, almost stumbled, but slipped onto the chair next to him.

“I was afraid you weren’t coming,” Hrothgar said.

She nodded, her mouth dry, and looked at Devorast when she said, “I had some trouble with the cart. I felt like a peasant woman.”

Devorast smiled again and said, “How did you like it?”

She made a show of sighing, and showed her teeth in a wide grin. “It wasn’t so bad.”

The third man looked at her in a way Phyrea was accustomed to being looked at by strange men. He tried his best to pretend he wasn’t looking at her body, scanning her curves, sizing her up. She could tell his mouth was dry, his breathing just a little shallow, his heart maybe even racing a bit in his chest. She smiled at him, and he looked down at his mug of ale.

“You’re the alchemist,” she said.

“Surero,” the man answered.

“A pleasure.”

“And you brought what he needs?” asked the dwarf.

Phyrea nodded and said, “I have fifty fifty-pound sacks. I hope that will be enough.”

Devorast and the dwarf looked to Surero, who shrugged and said, “It’ll get us started, but there’s a lot of earth to be moved. I’ll always need more.”

“I have to ask,” she said. “Why saltpeter? I mean, I thought my father sold it to the army for some reason, and I don’t know what else—is it spread on crops to make them grow better… something like that?”

Surero glanced at Devorast, who shrugged. The young alchemist took his lead from Devorast, as did the dwarf, and as always, Devorast seemed on some fundamental level oblivious to it.

“What is it, anyway?” the dwarf asked.

“Horse manure,” Surero explained, “mixed with wood ash and straw and left to compost.”

“At Berrywilde, it’s kept under a kind of shed, like a lean-to,” Phyrea said.

“They water it with … urine, too, don’t they?” Surero asked. He looked embarrassed to say the word “urine” in front of Phyrea, and that made her smile. “It’s formed into a powder.”

“And that’s what I have in the sacks,” said Phyrea.

“I mix that with other elements to create a powder that, when touched by fire, explodes,” Surero finished, making an expanding gesture with his hands.

“Is it difficult for you to get this for us?” Hrothgar asked her.

Phyrea started to answer, but didn’t know what to say. Her father paid no attention to what was a tiny fraction of what was produced at Berrywilde. He wouldn’t notice if she took it all. She could order more of the stuff made, even order another shelter built, and he wouldn’t know or care. The people still working on the winery would do it if she told them to. She could have men deliver cart after cart of it to Kurrsh at least, where Devorast’s men could haul it on to the canal site. It would be the easiest thing, but she would have to spend time at Berrywilde. The ghosts spoke more freely there. Their forms of light were brighter, more substantial there. And in the confines of the country estate, their words made more sense, and were more convincing. She never wanted to go back there again, but she had, for him.

She looked at Devorast, and he tipped his head, waiting for her to say something. She knew she must have looked as though she had something to say.

“So,” she said, “aren’t one of you big, strong men going to buy me an ale?”

33_

21 Tarsakh, the Year of the Staff (1366 DR) The Canal Site

They had cut down trees, and arranged them over a hole that they’d dug in the ground. One man stood atop the cut trees, pushing and pulling on a long, straight saw. A fine wood powder clouded the air around him and fell into the pit like dirty snow. Svayyah had never seen that man before—he wasn’t the man she’d come to find.

She’d cast certain spells on herself in preparation, and had come a long way across open land. The latter was something she didn’t like to do, but she did it because of the message he’d sent her. She’d given him the means to contact her, but he’d never used it before. He’d told her that he’d let himself be lured north, and was sure that something was going to happen. She’d found the small copse of trees that they’d been cutting down, and turning into long, rectangular strips of wood using the pit-saw, and she saw three men, including the one on the top of the pit, but none of them were Ivar Devorast. She had the feeling Devorast was down in the pit, since she could see a man’s hands rise above the lip of the hole when the saw was pulled up.

She slid out from behind the tree she’d been hiding behind, certain she’d startle the men who didn’t know her—one or more of them might even have been the assassins Devorast feared, or at least suspected—but she didn’t care. The other two men stood at the edge of the pit, stacking the freshly-cut lumber. Svayyah blinked in the bright daylight, her third and fourth eyelids keeping her eyes just barely damp enough. Bursts of brighter light burned her eyes and made her have to close them entirely. Because of that she couldn’t quite see where the missiles

had come from. There were two screams—loud and desperate, and both cut off in wet gurgles—and the sounds of three bodies falling to the ground, and the clatter of wood tumbling onto wood.

When she opened her eyes, she saw the men laying around the hole. The one who’d been standing atop the pit-saw rig was on the ground, and he was on fire. The bright light had been spheres of molten rock, burning orange and melting everything they touched—including human skin and bone.

She slithered faster toward the pit, and was still three nagalengths from it, when she saw the thing emerge from a thicker clump of trees. Her kind had always railed against the common mistake of calling the things “naga-like,” or even considering them a species of the naja’ssynsa. What had killed the men with the conjured lava was no naga, but a banelar. Its spike-lined, heavily scaled body wasn’t unlike a naga’s. Its rigid purple back shone in the sun, and its yellow-green underbelly glistened with slime. Around its frowning, paper-thin lips writhed a dozen long, stringy tentacles. Two of the tentacles bore gold rings, and it wore a wide ribbon around its neck held closed with a shiny black brooch. Its pale green eyes squinted against the sunshine, and its heavy brows furrowed with a look that promised more violence.

Svayyah whispered a short incantation—a cantrip, really—and followed it with a whispered, “Devorast, if that’s you, I’m here. It’s a banelar.”

The spell carried her voice from her lips to his ear without really crossing the intervening space.

The creature jumped. Svayyah had never heard of a banelar being able to jump that far, and there was something about it that just didn’t look right. She’d cast similar spells herself, but couldn’t know if it was a spell the thing had cast, or if it was an effect of one of the rings. The creature landed atop the pit-saw rig, sending up a cloud of sawdust. The logs creaked and popped under its weight. It

slithered into a more comfortable position and looked down into the hole.

“Devorast,” it hissed. “You are Devorast?”

Even before the thing had finished speaking, Svayyah had twisted her tongue through another, slightly more complex casting. She disappeared in mid-slither and instantly popped back into reality, but at the very edge of the hole. Not even bothering to see if it was indeed Devorast in the saw pit, she cast another spell as quickly as she could.

The banelar, startled by her sudden appearance, whirled on her and half-hissed, half-growled, then started muttering an incantation of its own.

Svayyah finished first.

She drew from the Weave a blast of air—like the sudden rapids in a narrow stretch of river—that smashed into the banelar and sent it sprawling off the pit-saw rig. It landed in a tangle with a still-smoldering corpse but was rolled off by the wind before it was burned. Its incantation was ruined by the sudden gust and the bruising impact. It rolled along the ground with an angry hiss.

Svayyah blinked again and she was inside the pit. She found herself in closer proximity to Ivar Devorast than she’d ever been. He was startled to see her appear out of the thin air, but just as quickly relieved. Inspired by the banelar itself, she gasped out a spell before he could speak, and he looked at her with a curious expression. She let her fine dry scales brush up against his hot, sweat-dampened skin, transferring the power of the spell to him.

“Jump,” she told him.

He only had to think about it for less than one of his slow heartbeats, then a knowing smile crossed his lips. He bent his knees deep and launched himself into the air. Her spell enhanced the movement and sent him shooting into the blue sky like a bolt from a crossbow. While he was still in the air Svayyah blinked out of the pit and back up to the ground at the edge of the side closer to where the banelar had rolled off.

Something hit her—hard—the moment she materialized. She felt her snake’s body come off the ground, and all she could do was tense, try to inhale with the wind knocked out of her worse than she’d ever experienced, and watch the pit pass beneath her. She hit the ground on the other side and as she rolled to an undignified stop among the tree stumps and one of the corpses of the woodsmen, she saw Devorast hit the ground and fare no better than she. Though she had been hit by something she could have sworn was a spectral ram, Devorast had simply failed to properly compensate for his increased ability to jump.