Lies of Light (35 page)

“You know what I think about that,” he replied. “People are people, and the weather might make you tired, or affect your mood, but ultimately what ails Innarlith goes deeper than too many rainy days.”

“But people there hate each other,” she said. “I know. I’m one of them. I’ve done hateful things, over and over—things to degrade myself and others. Here, under this perfect sky, I can’t imagine what made me such a misanthrope.”

“Everyone is an altruist on a tropical afternoon,” he said. “When you have to fight for a piece of a pie that can only be cut into so many pieces, you do what has to be done.”

She sighed and said, “I wish I’d stopped at what I had to do, sometimes.”

He shrugged that off, but still she could tell he thought about it.

“Still, I can’t help thinking people would be better to each other if they all had a month like this every year,” Phyrea thought aloud.

“I have a month like this every year,” Pristoleph said, “and I’m an unconscionable bastard.”

Phyrea laughed, and Pristoleph joined her. She kept laughing until tears streamed from her eyes. Eventually they both took deep breaths, and finally sat, smiling, in silence for a while.

“Well,” Phyrea said at last, “I’ll try to overlook that side of you.”

“That’s the best any man can ask from a woman,” Pristoleph replied. “Is it?”

“No,” he answered without pause. “The best a man can ask is love—true love, if there is such a thing.” “There is,” she whispered.

“And if I thought you felt that way about me I wouldn’t be a bastard anymore.”

“Oh,” she joked, “I doubt that one thing has anything to do with the other.”

She did love him, but not the same way she loved Ivar Devorast. To Phyrea, Pristoleph and she were like old friends who hadn’t seen each other in twenty years, but who fit back into a familiar, comforting groove the second they’d reacquainted.

“When we return,” she said. “I’ll bring my things and stay with you?”

“Of course,” he said.

“I can’t imagine living in such a beautiful place, surrounded by all that… beauty.”

“Your father is no pauper, Phyrea,” he reminded her. “Of course not, but…”

“It’s important, I think, to surround yourself with the best of everything.”

“Why?” she asked. “To impress?”

“No,” he replied. “To remind me that the works of man are superior to the works of nature.”

Phyrea smiled at that and nodded.

“Do you hear that?” he asked.

She listened, but all she could hear was the crack and pop of the wind in the sails, the creak of the rigging, and the gentle sound of the shallow waves against the hull—the sounds of the sea.

“Do you?” Pristoleph asked again.

She shook her head.

“The whisper of waves….” he said.

Phyrea nodded and was about to ask him what he meant, but instead she listened again. She could hear it, but only because she didn’t hear the voices telling her to do things, asking her to murder herself. She wondered what else she’d missed under the weight of those voices.

“I do,” she said, wiping a tear from her eye with one finger.

“What does it say to you?”

“Nothing at all,” she said, “and that’s fine with me. I’d rather hear the waves whisper of nothing, than suffer through the lies of light.”

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26Nightal, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) Second Quarter, Innarlith

I just can’t understand why it is that you hate me so, Phyrea,” Willem said. “What have I done to make you see me with such contempt?”

Phyrea didn’t want to answer him. She opened a drawer in the bureau and shifted through the scant few pieces of clothing she’d left before she went away with Pristoleph.

“There isn’t really anything here I want anymore,” she said.

“So you’re going to leave it?” he asked. “What am I going to do with it?”

She bit her lip, cutting off the sarcastic, hurtful reply that came to mind. Instead, she scooped up the lace undergarments and stuffed them into the bag she had open on the bed.

“I can have the rest sent to you, if you can’t stand to be here,” he said, “or if you don’t want to go through them. I can imagine how awful this little hovel must seem to you now.”

“Your house is fine, Willem,” she said. “That’s not it.”

“Then what is ‘it’?” he pressed. “You ran my mother back to Cormyr and dismissed my staff. I wasn’t even here most of the time, so if you found my presence so distasteful, at least you didn’t have to suffer me much.”

“Is that the life you wanted?” she asked him, though when all was said and done she didn’t care to hear his answer. It didn’t matter. “Were you really content with simply avoiding my distaste?”

He exhaled—not really a sigh—and leaned against the wall of his bedchamber.

Phyrea picked up the bag and walked past him, tense and uncertain of what he might do, but he did nothing to stop her. She stepped into the hall, leaving him silently leaning on the wall in the room behind her. The little girl stood at the top of the stairs, her eyebrows drawn into a V that twisted her eyes into smoldering pinpoints. Her purple-black lips pulled away from her teeth, which were needle fangs that glistened with a vile light of their own.

Phyrea screamed and dropped her bag. She recoiled back so fast and so out of control she nearly fell.

“No,” she whispered.

You left us, the little girl’s voice shrieked in Phyrea’s head. You went away and you left us, you bitch.

“No,” Phyrea whimpered, horrified by how weak her own voice sounded.

We knew you would come back, the man with the scar said.

Phyrea closed her eyes so she couldn’t see him.

“What happened?” Willem asked. He’d come out of the bedchamber. “Phyrea?”

She shook her head and pushed him away, but not hard. He stopped and didn’t try to come any closer.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked.

Tell him, the man demanded. Tell him we’re here. Tell him we’ve been waiting here for all this time.

We have been, the little boy said.

“No, Willem…” Phyrea gasped.

We’ve stood over him while he tried to sleep but couldn’t, the old woman said.

We watched him drown his sorrows in drink, the sad woman told her.

“Let me go,” she said.

Go, yes, the little girl said. Go back to Berrywilde.

“I’m not stopping you,” Willem said.

Phyrea opened her eyes and stormed forward, grabbing her bag as she passed it. She went past a violet-glowing form that she didn’t look at. She ran down the stairs, leaving Willem behind, but the ghosts followed her. They tormented her out into the street. The little girl sat across from her in the coach and sneered at her.

“Home, Miss Phyrea?” the driver—Pristoleph’s driver—asked.

She almost said yes, but at the last minute she said, “The Green Phoenix. In the Third Quarter.”

The coach jerked to a start, and Phyrea closed her eyes and clasped her hands over her ears. Though she couldn’t see them, they never spoke to her through her ears anyway, so she suffered, occasionally sobbing, with their incessant barrage of threats and demands until the coach finally pulled up in front of the sprawling brick building that housed the Green Phoenix.

“Shall I accompany you, Miss?” the driver, who Phyrea knew was also a more-than-capable fighter armed with magic and his master’s protection, asked.

Without stopping or looking behind her, she said, “I’ll be fine. No.”

She burst into the common room of the dark, smoke-filled tavern and all but ran to the bar.

“Orerus,” she demanded, slapping her palm on the bar. “Where is he?”

The skinny old woman behind the bar blinked at her.

“iVbtt;/”Phyrea screamed. “Where?”

The old woman pointed to a curtained doorway behind her and stepped aside.

Phyrea leaped the bar and tore though the curtain. She ignored the powerful aroma of the brewing vats, and the screaming tirade of the incorporeal girl.

“Surero,” she whispered, wiping tears from her eyes and abandoning the alchemist’s assumed name. “Where are you?”

“Phyrea?” he called from the back of the large room.

Pristoleph had helped her keep track of him, and she’d been surprised, but delighted to hear that he had taken a position as brewmaster for the Green Phoenix—an honorable enough use for his peculiar skills—under the name Orerus, Surero reversed.

He stepped out from behind one of the big copper kettles and greeted her with a smile that quickly faded to a scowl of concern.

“How did you find me?” he asked. “What’s happened?” “Do you know where he is?” Phyrea asked. “Yes,” Surero replied, not having to ask who she meant by “he.”

Phyrea felt her knees give, and she lowered herself to the dirty floor, ignoring the sticky residue of the ale vats that coated every surface.

“Gods,” Surero whispered. “What’s happened to you?”

She took a deep breath and laughed a little while she cried.

Kill him, the man with the scar said. He’ll deliver you back to Devorast if you don’t kill him now. You know that man will destroy you.

“I just need to know that he’s alive, and that you know where he is—that someone knows where he is,” she said. “I don’t know why. I’ll never see him again, but I had to know that.”

Good girl, the old woman whispered into her reeling mind. Never see him again.

“Phyrea,” Surero said, “what is it?”

She struggled to her feet and said, “Where is he?”

“Ormpetarr.”

She nodded and mouthed a “thank you,” then turned to leave.

“Phyrea?” he called after her, but she didn’t stop, turn, or answer.

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28Nightal, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) The Thayan Enclave, Innarlith

You’ve disappointed so many people, Willem,” Marek Rymiit said.

Willem squirmed in his seat, and Marek had to force himself not to grin. When he really looked at Willem, it was easier not to smile. He looked worse. His eyes had sunk into his face and were rimmed with dark circles. His teeth were yellow, and his lips dry and cracked.

“You realize that, don’t you?” he pressed.

Willem sighed and a tear rolled down from his right eye.

“I do, yes,” Willem said. “Is that why I’m here? Did you send for me because you wanted to tell me I’ve disappointed you?”

“Among other things, yes.”

Willem’s head drooped on his shoulders, and he looked at the floor.

“Are you having work done?” Willem asked, his voice dull and faraway.

“Oh,” replied the Thayan, “the canvas… no.”

Willem nodded as though the answer he’d gotten could have been anything but unsatisfying. Marek had had the floor covered with thick canvas, and most of the furniture had been moved out too. It did appear as though he was having the room painted.

“Can I offer you a drink?” Marek asked.

Willem looked up at him with wide, wet eyes, like a lost puppy. Marek had never had a puppy, though he had

occasionally used them to practice spells on, and to test potions, but that was back home in Thay.

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’” said Marek.

He poured brandy from a crystal decanter and handed the glass to Willem, who took it in a grip so weak Marek grimaced at the possibility he might drop it and spill it. He glanced down at the decanter—he hadn’t prepared much, but there was still enough left in case Willem dropped the first one.

“You aren’t having one?” Willem asked.

Marek shook his head and watched the younger man down the brandy in one swallow, grimacing against the burn of it.

“Tell me you at least tried to stop them, Willem,” said the Thayan. “I want to hear from you that you did everything you could to keep her—to keep her away from him.”

Willem shook his head, refusing to look Marek in the eye. The Red Wizard had a sudden impulse to kick him hard in the chin, to force his miserable face up.

“You just let another man walk into your home and leave with your wife?” Marek said.

“No,” Willem muttered. “No, we went to his house, and I left her there.”

“That’s pathetic,” Marek said. “That’s quite simply the most pathetic thing I’ve ever heard.”

He picked up the crystal decanter and poured more of the brandy into Willem’s glass. The young man sat there, slumped down, and stared at the umber liquid.

“Speak, Willem,” Marek demanded. “Explain yourself.”

“What’s there to explain?” Willem asked, then swallowed half the brandy in his glass. He coughed, not bothering to put a hand up to cover his mouth. “What could I have done?”

Marek smiled down at Willem and said, “What could you have done? Hmm … let me think. To begin with, you could have poisoned his drink.”

Willem shook his head. Spittle dropped in a long,

stringy line from his lower lip. He put the glass to his mouth and drank some, but poured the rest of the brandy on the floor.

“You could have rendered him helpless,” Marek went on. “And once he was unable to move, the poison making his muscles go rigid and unresponsive, you could have done anything you wanted to him. He would have been entirely under your power, yours to do with as you wished.”

Willem slumped forward and fell onto the floor without changing from the hunched, sitting position he was in. His head bounced and scraped along the canvas tarp.

“I expected so much from you,” Marek said.

Willem looked up at him, blinked, his eyes confused at first. His lips twitched, but he couldn’t speak.

Marek took a deep, rattling breath and smiled. His face flushed, and his heart began to race.

“Oh,” he breathed. “Oh, Willem. That must be awful-terrible. I can only imagine____”

Willem blinked at him again and fear replaced the confusion in a wave that made his pupils dilate.

Marek, reluctant to turn away, stepped back to a side table and opened a long, hinged wooden box. Inside was the sword Phyrea had brought him. The wavy blade glimmered in the candlelight. Marek bit his bottom lip and held his breath as he lifted the flamberge out of the velvet-lined box with all the reverence the exquisite weapon deserved.

When he went back to look down at Willem, the sword in his hand with the blade tipped down until it almost touched the floor, Marek thought he saw Willem shake his head. But the poison wouldn’t allow him even that scant gesture. Marek thought perhaps he sensed so strongly Willem’s powerful desire to make at least that tiny, futile gesture that he simply imagined the movement. Willem’s eyes pleaded for mercy.