Lies of Light

47

19 Alturiak, the Yearof the Shield (1367DR) Second Quarter, Innarlith

He couldn’t remember buying most of the clothes in his closet. They all looked the same, and none of them looked good. People often complimented him on his taste in clothing, on the cut and material, and so on, but looking at the contents of his closet, he couldn’t believe that. He didn’t let himself think about what he’d spentthousands of gold pieceson those pointless rags.

“Really, my dear,” his mother said. “Whatever are you doing?”

He ignored her. He didn’t have much time, and accommodations had to be made.

“You can at least answer me,” she pressed. “Willem?”

He stood back and looked at the closet. It wasn’t quite half empty, but it would have to do.

“Just like that, then?” his mother went on. “And you refuse even to discuss it? We aren’t a family anymore. Is that it? I’m no longer welcome here? My opinion is of no consequence to you? You have no care at all for”

“Please, Mother,” Willem finally said.

“Did I raise you to interrupt people?” she asked, her eyebrows arched, and the eyes underneath them cold and angry.

“I’m sorry, Mother,” said Willem, “but I am a grown man, and I have to ask you to respect”

“Your mother,” Phyrea said. Willem jumped, his heart skipping a beat, and Thurene gasped. “You should respect your mother, Willem dear.”

“My goodness,” Thurene gasped, a hand on her chest.

“Phyrea?” Willem asked. “What are you doing here?”

“Well,” Thurene cut in, “I for one am delighted to see you, Phyrea dear. I’m sure you’ll be able to talk some sense into my lovesick son.”

“Lovesick?” the master builder’s daughter teased, winking at Willem and leaning against the doorjamb. “Do tell, Senator.”

“It’s that Thayan girl,” Thurene sneered.

Phyrea glanced off to one side as though she’d heard a sound from somewhere downstairs. The gesture made the hair on the back of Willem’s neck stand on end.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

Phyrea tried to smile, and she shook her head, but still it appeared as though she heard someone downstairs.

“Is someone with you?” asked Willem.

“No,” she answered, but he didn’t believe her. When she said, “Of course not,” she seemed sincere.

“Don’t be silly, my dear,” his mother said. She seemed confused by the whole exchangeand truth be told, so was Willem. “Now, Phyrea, please help me convince my son that he’s opening his home, his life, and his family, to the wrong young woman.”

Phyrea smiled and said, “Willem, you’re opening your home, your life, and your family, to the wrong woman.”

Willem rubbed his eyes and sighed.

“Besides,” Phyrea added, “we both know you’re going to marry me.”

Thurene gasped again, and Willem’s blood ran cold.

“I need to sit down,” he said, but didn’t sit down.

“My stars!” his mother exclaimed, again with her hand on her chest.

“Halina is waiting…” Willem started.

“She’ll get over it,” Phyrea said, then she looked back behind her again and sort of shook her head.

“Someone’s down there,” said Willem, crossing to the door.

Phyrea held out a hand to stop him, and they ended up in an uncomfortable embrace.

“Did you hear something?” Thurene asked.

“Hello?” Willem called down the stairs. “Is someone there?”

Phyrea stood with her eyes closed and her head down while Willem listened for a response, or any sound at all. There was nothing. When he relaxed Phyrea sighed and pressed herself into him. All he wanted was to hold her, to touch her, and for a moment he forgot that his mother was a pace and a half behind him.

“Come with me,” Phyrea whispered in his ear, her breath hot on the side of his face.

She took him by the hand and started to lead him into the hall and to the stairs.

“Should I come with you, my dear?” Thurene asked.

“No,” Phyrea told her.

“Oh…” his mother breathed. “Well, I… I’ll wait for you here, then. Willem?”

Willem couldn’t look back at his mother. All he could see was Phyrea. Her perfect beauty eclipsed everything.

“Don’t worry, Madam Korvan,” Phyrea said. “I’ll take him from here.”

His mother was left at the top of the stairs, blustering and confused.

Phyrea led him out of his house. A coach waited in the street, and she all but pushed him into it. Phyrea rapped on the wall of the coach, and the driver whipped the horses out into traffic. Willem brushed his fingers through his hair and was surprised that it was wet.

“It’s raining,” he muttered, not having noticed before.

Phyrea nodded and leaned in toward him. Her lips met his, and he drank her in. Her hands were on the side of his face, and he put his on her shoulders. When he moved them down to her breasts she didn’t flinch or pull away.

Her lips came away from his, and she whispered, “You knew this would happen, Willem. It had to. It had to be us, after all.”

Willem shook his head and tried to think of Halina, waiting for him at that awful temple, waiting for him to come and get her so that they could live happily ever after. But he couldn’t get a picture of her to form in his mind, and the thought of her waiting, and waiting, and waiting for a husband who would never come didn’t make him feel anything at all.

She drew away from him, but gently, and took his hands in hers. She squeezed his hands a little in a calming, reassuring way, and a hiss passed her lips as though she was shushing him, but he hadn’t made a sound.

Willem sat still, listening to the sound of the coach’s wheels clatter over the cobblestones, and the rain patter against the roof. A little wisp of steam escaped his lips when he exhaled. It was chilly and dampwinter in Innarlith. Outside the coach the Second Quarter streets went by in a blur, not because they were moving particularly fast, but because Willem’s eyes refused to focus on distant objects. The rain kept most of the people off the streets, and the dull gray air was lit by the warm glow of candlelight and hearthfires in the passing windows.

They’d gone south away from his house and at the end of the street turned left to head east toward the Third Quarter. He wanted to ask where they were going, but he liked the quiet better.

“I know what I’m doing,” Phyrea whispered to herself, though it sounded as if she was talking to someone else.

Willem looked at her, but she avoided making eye contact and squeezed his hands again.

He hoped she was right. He hoped she knew what she was doing. He certainly didn’t.

At the next major thoroughfare the coach turned right to lead them back south, along the very edge of the line between the Second and Third Quarters.

“Why me?” he asked, not sure where the question came from, or why all of a sudden he wanted to talk. Part of him hoped she wouldn’t answer.

“My father wants it,” she said, sounding unconvinced.

“I love you,” he said.

To her credit she didn’t wince. He felt her hands grow warmer, though, and begin to sweat.

They rode in silence for a while longer, and the coach turned right onto the wide avenue of Ransar’s Ride, what some people called Sunset Boulevard because it lined up almost perfectly with the Midsummer sunset. They headed back into the heart of the Second Quarter and Willem noted a few of the shops where he’d bought the clothes he’d moved from his closet to accommodate

Phyrea.

He’d made the space for Phyrea to move in with him, so they could be together as man and wife.

They turned left again, near the Peacock Resplendent, heading south once more. Though Willem couldn’t see out of the front of the coach he knew that the Chamber of Law and Civility was only a few blocks ahead of them. Could it be she was taking him there? Wedding ceremonies had been held there, according to common law. Phyrea’s father would likely wish the blessing of Waukeen, but Phyrea might have talked him into a civil ceremony.

When the coach passed by the ornate edifice without a moment’s pause, he grew only more confused.

“Of course I won’t,” Phyrea whispered, so low he could just barely hear her.

He wanted to ask her who she was talking to, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak. He gently squeezed her hands, which felt slick with sweat, and sat in silence as the coach continued south. The wide avenue curved to the west, leading them to the First Quarter and the docks beyond, but they turned left at a fork in the road and were heading south again. They’d nearly crossed the entire length of the city from north to south. They could have been headed to the Cascade of Coinsthe temple of Waukeenafter all.

He looked at Phyrea and his breath caught. Her beauty overwhelmed him. He took a hand away from hers and touched her cheek. She leaned in to his touch and frowned. She looked sadas if she might even crythen she smiled.

The coach pulled to a stop, the horses clomping to the side of the street.

Willem looked around. He knew the neighborhoodnot well, but he knew it. They hadn’t come to the Cascade of Coins.

“Master Rymiit’s house?” he asked, recognizing the large manor home with its walled grounds.

Phyrea nodded, making no move at first to exit the coach, and said, “He wants people to call it the ‘Thayan Enclave’ now. I don’t know why. Maybe he thinks he’s some kind of ambassador now.”

“He is, I suppose,” Willem replied, “an ambassador of sorts.”

Phyrea sighed, and the coachman opened the door and stepped aside. She stepped out onto the street not quite as if she were being marched to the gallows, but close. Willem shared that feeling when his boots touched the cobblestones.

Marek Rymiit appeared at the gate, a huge grin plastered on his round face. The tattoos on his head looked even stranger, uglier than normal with the rain spattering off them. He waved them both toward the gate, and Phyrea hesitated for just a fraction of a heartbeat, so Willem did too. Marek only grinned wider.

Willem followed Phyrea through the gate. He avoided looking the Thayan in the eye. Marek looked at him with undisguised lust that made Willem squirm. He wanted to reach out and hold Phyrea’s hand, but he didn’t. He wondered, though, as they walked across the rain-drenched grounds to the main house, what he would have done if he had taken her hand. Would he have pulled her back into the coach, away from there and whatever was going to happen? Or would he just have felt better knowing she was pulling him toward that unknown, unavoidable fate?

“Ah,” Marek said from behind him, “young love…”

They went into the house and paused, dripping wet. Marek stepped in front of them, and still smiling ear to ear, said, “Ah, what a wonderful afternoon this is. Welcome to the Thayan Enclave, and let me say how pleased I am that you have chosen our”

“Please, Master Rymiit,” Phyrea interrupted. “Can we get on with it?”

Marek seemed disappointed, but didn’t argue, he bowed and motioned to a velvet curtain the color or rich red wine. Without hesitating, Phyrea stepped through the curtain. Willem looked at Marek, who leered at him. If for no other reason than to get away from the Thayan, he followed her through the curtain, and what he saw in there stopped him cold.

A freezing cold sweat broke out on the back of Willem’s neck, and he stopped breathing. He looked around at what was once a comfortable, ordinary sitting room. But it had been transformed into what could only be described as a temple. Candles burned on virtually every surface. The walls were draped in black velvet. An apothecary’s cabinet had been made into an altar, and the floors were covered by canvas tarps. Behind the altar stood a man Willem recognized, but in his current state, he couldn’t recall the man’s name. He was as rotund as Marek, but softer, more feminine somehow, clad in a hooded black robe of some homespun, rough fabric.

Phyrea took his hand, and Willem jumped. Marek giggled from behind them.

“Step forward,” the man in the robe said.

Phyrea did as she was told, dragging Willem forward by the hand.

“Good afternoon, Wenefir,” Phyrea said with a coy smile that didn’t suffice to cover the dread that quivered in her eyes.

Willem remembered: Pristoleph’s man. “In the name of the Dark Sun, I bless this union,” Wenefir said. “For the glory of the Prince of Lies, I bind you.” Cyric, Willem thought. Cyric?

“Willem Korvan,” said Wenefir, “you must state your intentions.”

“My in-?”

“Say you want to marry the girl,” Marek explained.

“I want to marry her,” he said before he could think it through, then he closed his eyes.

He didn’t want to see the rest of it. He heard Phyrea tell Wenefir that she wanted to join her life to his. When Wenefir gave him a metal cup he drank from it and tried to pretend that it wasn’t blood he was drinking. When the Cyricist tied his wrist to Phyrea’s with a length of silk cord Willem didn’t pull away. When he was told to repeat one bit of disconnected madness after another, he repeated it. He did all of it, said all of it, with his eyes closed.

Finally, Wenefir cut their wrists loose and stepped very close, so close that Willem could smell his sour breath. Still, Willem didn’t open his eyes.

“You are man and wife, now,” Wenefir said. “Seal it with a kiss, or not, as you wish.”

Willem heard footsteps and opened his eyes. Wenefir and Marek left the room. He looked down at Phyrea. Her whole body shook. He’d never seen her so pale. She seemed on the verge of bursting, or shaking apart. She turned on him and looked at him with the wild eyes of a panicked animal.

“Phyrea,” he said, and reached out for her.

“No,” she shrieked, her voice loud and out of control.

Willem didn’t know what to say. She glanced at him one more time, then ran from the room. He followed her, but only saw her disappear through the door. Marek stepped up next to him and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. Willem tried to pull away, but the Thayan held on tight.

“Might not be a proper wedding night tonight, my boy,” Marek said with a toothy grin, “but she’ll be back.”

Willem blinked, fighting back the tears that came to his eyes. He looked down at Marek, who grinned at him as if he knew something Willem didn’t.

But then that was always the case with Marek Rymiit. He always knew more than anyone else, and Willem always knew less. All Willem knew at that moment was that he had betrayed Halina, betrayed his own spirit, perhaps, in taking part in a ceremonial vow to the mad god Cyric. And his only prize was Phyrea, who had done what he should have done the second she’d appeared in his bedchamber: run.

He pushed away from the laughing Thayan and walked out of the house, and he had no idea where to go.