Lies of Light

30

4Alturiak, the Year ofthe Staff(1366 DR) The Canal Site

The sound of the explosion was muffled by eight feet of dirt, but much louder was the shower of loose soil that drummed through the air and back onto the ground in a hard rain of brown and gray. The crowd of workers that had gatheredat a safe distance determined by Surero cheered and hooted.

“I think they like it,” Surero said, smiling at the cloud of dust and smoke, slow to dissipate in the calm air. The dust began to mix with the incessant drizzle to form a dirty rain that followed the shower of dirt.

“They enjoy the spectacle,” said Devorast, who stood beside him on the low hill to the side of the canal’s path.

“Aren’t they happy not to have to dig all that out by hand?” Surero asked with a shrug.

Devorast didn’t answer. Instead, he walked down the hill to the wide, deep crater. He carried a measuring stick, and by the time Surero followed him to the edge of the pit, he had already climbed into the crater and begun to measure it.

“Careful of the loose dirt,” the alchemist warned, watching Devorast’s boot slip and sink half to his ankle in dusty soil. “What do you think?”

“It’s definitely bigger,” Devorast replied. “When the rest of the loose dirt is dug out, it’ll be deeper still.”

“I prefer to think of my creation as a pick more than a shovel,” Surero said.

His measurements completed, Devorast led him back up the hill. Surero blinked in the drizzle and ran a hand through his wet hair. They climbed the low hill and stepped into the little hut they’d built to store the smokepowder.

Inside, lined up on half a dozen shelves, were cheap burlap sacks of various sizes, from barely the size of a small coin purse, to sacks made for forty pounds of grain. The sacks were filled with his latest masterpiece.

“The new ratio is better,” Devorast said.

Surero smiled and replied, “I’m happy with it. the trick was increasing the amount of sulfur in the mixconvenient that it washes up on shore by the barrels-full every day. We don’t even have to buy it, just scrape it off the beaches and let it dry.”

“And the charcoal?” Devorast asked as he searched the sacks for just the right size. S

“Willow,” Surero replied. “From now on, I’ll only use willow.” Devorast glanced at him with one eyebrow raised, so Surero explained, “You can use almost anything. Zalantar isn’t bad, but it can be expensive. Elder or laurel is pretty good. I’ve heard of people using grapevine. I could make it with pinecones, even.”

Devorast lifted a sack from a low shelf and hefted it. He gave no indication that he’d heard a word the alchemist had said.

“You know what you are, Ivar?” he asked, not expecting a response and not getting one. “You’re fearless.”

Devorast glanced at him as he walked past with the sack of smokepowder, and Surero could see the trace of a grimace on his lips.

“See?” the alchemist continued, following him out of the shack. “That’s ten pounds you have there. I measured it myself. If that went off now there wouldn’t be enough left of you to use as fertilizer, but to look at you, anyone would think it was a sack of potatoes.”

Devorast kept walking, down the hill.

“I know, I know…” Surero went on. “It’s not going to go off. You know it won’t, because you know how to handle it. That’s your secret, isn’t it? Self-confidence. You just believe in yourself completely.”

“Don’t you?” Devorast asked.

Surero laughed and said, “Don’t I? I still lie awake at night wondering why Marek Rymiit had me released from the dungeon. I experiment with smokepowder and every second of it my hands are shaking and sweating and I’m sure the next turn of the mortar and pestle and will be my last.”

Devorast ignored him as, having set the sack of smokepowder on the ground next to him, he crouched to inspect the hole. Ten yards away from the crater they’d just made, and still a safe distance from the onlooking workers, Devorast had had another shaft dug. The hole was no more than a foot in diameter.

“That’s ten feet,” Surero said. “Ten pounds at ten feet? That’s easy to remember.”

Devorast tied the end of the smokepowder-infused twine onto the top of the sack, then lowered it down the hole. Surero watched Devorast count the depth from knots that had been tied in the rope every foot. When the sack finally rested on the bottom, and Devorast had counted nine knots, he stood and walked back up the hill, trailing the twine as he went.

“Aren’t you paying me to do that?” the alchemist asked.

“I’m paying you for the powder,” Devorast replied.

Once they were a safe distance away, up the hill, Devorast struck a flint and steel and a spark leaped to the twine. It sizzled and popped its way down the length of the fuse. Surero watched its progress with a self-satisfied smile.

“You’ll want to cover your ears this time,” the alchemist warned, then did as he’d advised himself.

Devorast waited until the little sparking flame following the length of twine dipped down into the deep shaft before holding his hands against his ears. Surero squinted, afraid of what ten pounds of

The explosion was so loud it rattled his eardrums, regardless of his hands pressed to the sides of his head. He staggered back a few steps and closed his eyes. Bending at the waist he moved his hands from his ears to the back of his head, protecting it from the stinging rain of dirt and stones that pounded them both. The onlooking workers shifted back several paces like a school of fish fleeing a shark.

When it was safe to open his eyes again, Surero looked at Devorast. The Cormyrean stood there nodding, watching as the dust and smoke cleared to reveal a crater several times the depth and diameter of the first.

“We need more,” he said.

Surero chuckled, nodded, and said, “I don’t have a single grain of saltpeter left, and no one in Innarlith will sell it to me.”

Devorast nodded, thinking, then said, “Phyrea’s father harvests saltpeter at his country estate. I saw the lean-to when I worked there.”

“That’s interesting, but isn’t Phyrea’s father the master builder, and one of Rymiit’s closest allies in the senate?” Devorast shrugged. “If Rymiit doesn’t want us to have itdoesn’t want me to have it since he’s mage enough to know what I intend to use it forhe’ll never sell it to us. I’m going to need a lot of it, too. Three quarters of every sack is sulfur, a tenth is saltpeter, and the rest charcoal. A young lady can’t just hide it in her pockets and walk it out to us.”

“She’ll think of something,” Devorast assured him, then turned and picked up his measuring stick again.

He walked down the hill, and Surero called after him, “Maybe she can steal us some of her father’s wine, too. I can use it to mix the serpentine so it doesn’t blow up in my face!” Devorast again made no indication he’d heard anything the alchemist had to say, so he added more quietly, “And if I drink enough of it maybe my hands will stop shaking all the time.”