Lies of Light

36

8 Marpenoth, the Year of the Staff (1366 DR) The Canal Site

Even during the tendays that Devorast lay writhing in quiet agony, then slowly recovered, construction continued. At first many of the Innarlan diggers, woodcutters, and stonemasons had wandered back and forth from Innarlith, but work had become increasingly difficult to find in the city, so most eventually took up residence at the site. Word spread to neighboring cities, and men came from as far as Arrabar for the ransar’s gold. When those coins diminished over time, increasingly replaced by excuses, Arrabar started to pay the Arrabarrans, Saelmur and Nimpeth supported their own people, and King Azoun sent gold by the trade bar.

They had dug for miles, a trench forty feet deep and three hundred feet wide. Parts of it had already been paved on the bottom and sides with stone blocks. All along the mile after mile the site stretched were scaffolds and rigs of all descriptionstructures Phyrea had never seen before. Many of them no one had ever seen before, all of them drawn from the mind of one man.

When she compared in her mind the parts of the canal that she’d seen near completion and the drawings in the stacks and stacks of parchment in Devorast’s little cabin, they were not merely similar, but perfectly identical.

It would be the greatest monument to one man Faerun had ever known.

Phyrea stumbled on a loose rock, and Devorast took her hand to steady her. His fingers were rough and warm, his grip strong and reassuring. She shuddered at the feeling of his hand in hers, especially when he didn’t let go. She could feel him smiling at her, but she didn’t look at him.

“I can’t come back here anymore,” she said.

“Why not?” he asked, too quick for him.

She wriggled her hand free from his and felt the cold metal of a ring on his finger.

“What is that?” she asked him, then took his hand to examine the ring: a thin gold band traced with a line of engraved runes. “When did you start wearing this?”

Devorast shrugged, and pulled his hand away.

“It’s been almost six months,” she said. “Why would you start to wear that now? If it was anyone but you, I’d think you were wearing it for me.”

He looked at her without speaking, but she knew what he was thinking. He wasn’t wearing it for her.

“Curious?” she asked him. “Is that it?”

He smiled and started walking again. She didn’t follow him.

“If you had died,” she told his back, “I might have killed myself.”

He stopped and turned, the cool autumn breeze pulling his long red hair away from his stern face. “That would have been stupid.”

She shook her head, and tried not to start crying.

“I lived,” he said, and turned around again but didn’t walk away.

“Yes, you did,” Phyrea replied. “You lived, and you went right back to work. And how many times since the spring have they tried to kill you?”

“If they truly wanted me dead,” Devorast said, “they’d have killed me.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“I think they have something else in mind for me,” said Devorast. “They think they can frighten me, intimidate me.”

“And when they finally realize they can’t, if they haven’t already, they will kill you,” she said. “And when they do, I won’t kill myself. I can’t kill myself for you.”

“Phyrea, I never asked you to”

“I know,” she cut in. “Of course you never asked that of me. You never asked anything of me. I got you saltpeter from my father’s farm, but you paid me for it. You love me with your body but not with your heartif you even have a heart. You live for this hole in the ground, even if it makes enemies of the whole of Toril, and you don’t even bother fighting them.”

“I fight-“

“For your life,” she shouted. “When they attack you, you defend yourself. I know that. But you don’t fight them, really. You know who it is. You know who’s behind all of it, but will you go back to the city and find him? Will you confront him? Will you have it outbe done with it once and for all? No, you won’t.”

“I have no interest in”

“Damn it, Ivar,” she screamed at him, “they have an interest in you!”

He looked at her and shrugged. The gesture almost made Phyrea drop to her knees and tear her hair out in frustration. Her eyes blurred with tears.

“I know it’s not cowardice,” she told him, getting control of her voice. “But then what is it? I know how beneath you they are, but”

She took a deep breath. She’d said it all before, been trapped by him too many times already. She’d given herself to him, and when she was with him, the ghosts that haunted her fell silent. But then days would passtendays, monthsand she would realize once again that he gave her his body, but too little elsefar, far too little of himself.

“Ivar, I can’t-“

There was a flash of light, bright even in the midafter-noon sun, and he rushed at her with his arms outstretched. He meant to embrace her, and Phyrea, startled, stepped back. His face was a stone maskutterly unreadable. Her instincts told her to defend herself, but her reflexes failed her. He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed. She gasped when they left the ground.

The sound that followed close after the flash of light was a dull but deafening thud that stung her ears. She couldn’t tell for sure but it seemed as though they hurtled through the aireasily a dozen feet off the groundbecause Devorast had jumped, but how could that be? It must have been the explosion that launched them into the sky, but

The ring, she thought.

As they rotated in the air she saw a massive orange and yellow fireball still expanding, showering the place where they’d been standing only half a heartbeat before with chunks of smoking rock as big around as her head. Men screamed, and the air hummed from the sound of the big rocks hitting the ground.

They landed hard enough to make her grunt, but Devorast landed on his feet and came to a stop with his body between Phyrea and the explosion. She pushed away from him and sprawled onto the ground on her back.

He didn’t even spare you a glance, the voice of the sad woman whined in her head.

Phyrea closed her eyes.

I don’t blame you, the old woman saidand Phyrea could see her burn-scarred face in her mind’s eye. wouldn’t want to see him running away from me again, either, if I were you. p›

Forget him, the man with the scar on his face said.

Phyrea opened her eyes and looked over her shoulder. The man stood among the falling pebbles that rained down on her like warm, dry hail. The stones passed right through him.

“This is the last time,” she promised the ghost.

The man shook his head, but Phyrea turned away from him, stood, and followed Devorast. She ran through a continuing rain of pebbles and specks of wood, and vegetation that the fireball had thrown into the air. By the time she reached the edge of the crater and stopped at Devorast’s side, the rain of stones had stopped. Dust and smoke made her cough and stung her eyes. “Who is she?” a workman asked.

She saw Devorast shake his head. On the ground at his feet was the mangled body of a girl. Devorast kneeled and turned her over. Her head rolled on a broken neck, and her dead eyes stared up at the sky.

“I know her,” Phyrea said, then coughed again.

Devorast turned, surprised to find her right behind him.

“I went to finishing school with her,” she explained. “Her father lost his seat on the senate and killed himself when the debts were called in. I lost track of her when she and her mother and sisters moved out of the Second Quarter.”

“She ignited Surero’s smokepowder casks,” Devorast said. “Why?”

Phyrea rubbed the grit from her eyes with the back of her hand. “Why does anyone want to kill you?”

“What’s her name?” the workman asked.

“Cassiya,” Phyrea answered. “I think her name was Cassiya.”