Lies of Light

56

23 Marpenoth, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) Third Quarter, Innarlith

Pristoleph held a little fire in his hand. Yellow-orange tongues of flame lapped at the chip of black wood at its heart. The heat felt good against his palm. It would have scorched a human, blistered him, but Pristoleph wasn’t quite human. He stared at the fire’s dance, kept small and contained by the power of his will. The movement mesmerized him, and he let it make his mind go blank.

Outside the window of the tall turret in Pristal Towers his overly large manor homethe city of Innarlith slept. When he started to think again, he thought of the city. It had started out as his enemy. The city tried to kill him when he was a baby, and over and over again through his childhood, but he’d never let it. He beat it, and by the time he’d seen his thirtieth year, the city was his to do with as he pleased. He’d bought a seat on the senate, but kept largely to his own ways and his own circles. He’d never sought, or had been particularly interested in, the Palace of Many Spires, preferring to act at least a bit from the shadows, but…

“But things change,” he whispered to himself.

He closed his palm around the fire. The coal sizzled and popped in his hand. The feeling made him smile.

When it settled, he tossed it into the brazier with the other coals and sighed. Tired, he rubbed his eyes and thought of going to bed. He looked at it, wide and comfortable, and richly appointed in silk, but it had no appeal.

Pristoleph considered going for a walk. It had been a long time since he’d done that. For the longest time he would wander the streets of the Fourth Quarter, visiting the avenues as a senator that he used to haunt as a street urchin. He would mark the passage of time by the houses that had collapsed or burned, the shanties that had been erected, the dead dogs in the midden. But he hadn’t done that in a long time.

He’d stopped going to the docks as well. Since he’d started to “employ” undead dockworkers supplied by Marek Rymiit, he had to pretend, like the rest of the senate, that he was opposed to the very idea. He had to blame it on the guild he’d helped create. He had to make sure that the workers who’d played so easily into his hands and Marek’s were blamed for their own obsolescence.

He didn’t go to the docks because of the smell, and because it made him feel tired to be there. He couldn’t tell anyone, even Wenefir, how tired he felt. Most of he time, he couldn’t even tell himself. Thinking about it just made him more tired.

His eyes settled on the little silver box.

He took a deep breath and blinked. He’d forgotten about it, and there it sat on the side table where he’d left it, next to an oil lamp he hardly ever lit. Pristoleph reached out and picked it up, opened it, and stared down at its contents.

The spectacles didn’t make any sense. The lenses were opaque. He knew they were enchanted in some way-considering the source that was a certaintybut the Thayan had never said how. For all Pristoleph knew, they’d blind him the second he put them on his nose. They’d either blind him, or show him something.

He thought of a dozen things that Marek Rymiit might want him to see, and that was in the first few heartbeats, before he let his imagination wander. None of the possibilities particularly interested him, but still he lifted the pince-nez from the box, and turned them over in his hand.

He sighed again and stood. Still holding the spectacles, he crossed to his writing desk, pulled a sheet of parchment from a drawer, and wrote a brief note:

“Wenefir, if the pince-nez have harmed me in any way, kill Marek Rymiit.”

He signed it with a certain sigil that would prove to Wenefir that he’d written it himself. He replaced the quill and sat back in his chair.

With a little shrug, he placed the pince-nez on his nose with his eyes closed. There was no sensation of anything out of the ordinary at first, and certainly no pain. After a moment he finally opened his eyes.

When it appeared as though he’d been transported to a strange room he closed his eyes and took the pince-nez off his nose. He blinked his eyes open and was happy, though not entirely surprised to be in his own bedchamber.

Pristoleph looked down at the pince-nez again and thought about what he’d seen. It was another bedchamber, someone else’s. He’d never been there before, but when he had the spectacles on, it was as though he was actually there.

He put them on again, sat back, and studied his new surroundings in more detail. He seemed to be sitting on the edge of a bed. His head turned, but he didn’t feel the muscles in his neck working, and he hadn’t wanted to turn his head. A man or s. womanhe couldn’t tell under the down and linen bedclothesslept in the bed. He could see the rise and fall of the figure’s breathing.

His head turned again and his vision scanned over the room. It was a cramped space, at least compared to what Pristoleph had grown accustomed to, and decorated in what he found to be an overly garish fashion.

He reached out with his right hand, but couldn’t see it, even when he was sure he held his palm a scant few inches from the tip of his nose.

A man stood in the open door of the bedchamber, and Pristoleph had the uneasy sensation that they had made eye contact. Something was wrong with the pince-nez, though. The man appeared transparent, as though made of deep violet light. He didn’t seem to entirely belong in the scene, and Pristoleph realized maybe he wasn’t in the scene at all, but

He flipped the pince-nez off his nose, stood, and whipped his head from side to side. He’d thought perhaps the man was in fact standing in his own bedchamber, and Pristoleph saw him filtered through the magenta lenses.

But Pristoleph was alone.

“Whose eyes am I seeing through, Marek,” Pristoleph whispered, “and why?”

Seeking the answer in the item itself, he put the glasses back on. His host had moved from the bed to sit in front of the dressing table. He saw a woman’s delicate hand where he thought his own should be. She took a silver brush from the dressing table and looked up into a mirror.

Pristoleph gasped.

She was beautiful.

As she brushed her long, straight black hair, Pristoleph found that he could hardly breathe. He watched her, fixated by her deep blue eyes that were so sad and so troubled and so full of promise.

No woman had ever had that effect on him. No woman had ever stopped him cold.

A tear fell from one eye and she let it trickle down her smooth, flawless cheek without wiping it away. He felt uncomfortable watching her cry, but it was as though he’d fallen under the influence of some spelland perhaps he had done just that, but he didn’t care. He not only couldn’t, but didn’t want to look away.

Still looking deeply into her own eyes, she picked up a little cuticle knife from the dressing table and ran the sharp blade along the inside of her arm. He couldn’t feel any pain, but he could see her wince in the mirror. The little line of red sat among scars and still-healing cuts on the same patch of skin.

When she looked at herself in the mirror again, she was smiling.

Pristoleph grabbed the pince-nez off his face and threw them to the floor. He stood, nearly falling back over his chair, but stayed on his feet.

The door opened, and the guard posted outside stuck his head in, looking around.

“Senator?” he said, seeing nothing amiss.

“It’s all right,” Pristoleph told him, and waved him away.

The guard nodded and closed the door.

With a deep breath to calm himself, Pristoleph knelt and picked up the spectacles. One of the lenses had broken into tiny shards that were no longer magenta, but ordinary clear, colorless glass.

“Why?” he whispered, though the man he was asking Marek Rymiitcouldn’t hear him. “Why show me her?”

Hours later, Pristoleph finally collapsed into bed without an answer to that question.