Lies of Light

62

21 Uktar, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) The Canal Site

Fifteen more dead men awoke, choked out a dusty black coal, and staggered to their feet.

“I’m beginning to think,” Willem said with a sigh, “that for every one you bring back from the dead, two or three living workers flee back to the city.”

Marek Rymiit chuckled and said, “Let them go. We’ve made arrangements to collect bodies from the Fourth Quarter mass graves, so they’ll come back from the city in due course anyway.”

Willem shuddered at the thought of it. He rubbed his wrists where he’d been cut and healed again. His body shook, his nose ran, and his head throbbed. He wondered if he had any more blood to lose.

“I hate the winter here,” he muttered. “It’s so cold. Every day it’s so dark and cold.”

“But isn’t it colder in Cormyr?” Marek asked. “It’s likely snowing there, no?”

Willem shook his head, but replied, “Yes, I suppose it is. Still, this dampnot damp but incessant soaking rainsucks the warmth from your body. It’s killing me. Its absolutely killing me.”

“This?” said Kurtsson, who’d finish creating a handful of zombies himself. “This is warm. It’s warm here.”

“Ah,” Marek said with a jovial laugh, “the Vaasan perspective. Surely even you can take heart in that, Willem.”

“No, I can’t,” said Willem.

“Really, my boy,” Marek said, “perhaps you need to spend more than a night or two with that lovely wife of yours. I’ve been encouraging you to get back to the city more often and for longer stretches.”

“My lovely wife isn’t there,” Willem said, surprised that Marek, who always seemed to know everything, didn’t know that. “She’s gone off with another man.”

Kurtsson laughed at him, and Willem spun on the Vaasan, which only made him laugh harder.

“Kurtsson,” Marek said in a stern tone, “perhaps you could be of use with spells for the cause?”

The Vaasan wizard quieted a bit, but didn’t stop laughing. He wandered off into the work camp, playfully passing between shambling rows of undead workers. Willem watched him go, not keen to see the look on Marek Rymiit’s face, one way or another.

“I have to admit that I’m a bit disappointed you’re only now telling me this,” the Thayan said. “I knew, of course, but I was hoping that by now I’d gained your confidence.”

Willem choked back a sob and wiped snot from his nose onto the back of his sleeve. His clothes were ruined from the wet and mud anyway, so what was the difference?

“Do you know where they’ve gone?” Marek asked.

“Do you?” Willem shot backtoo fast, too forcefully and fear that he’d offended the Thayan actually staggered him. “My apologies, Master Rymiit. I’m not myself.”

“I should say you aren’t,” the Red Wizard replied, his voice devoid of anger. “You look terribleworse every time

I see you. You’re not wearing that item I provided you.” “It stopped working.” “I can find you an”

“I’m dying out here,” Willem said. “This thing is killing me.”

“That was no one’s intent, Willem. If you’d prefer to come back to the city, no one will fault you.”

“But we both know that they will,” Willem said. “They will fault me, they will blame me, they will shun me, they will punish me, and as sure as the mud and rain will kill me, they will just as fast.”

“People will speak and act on your behalf,” Marek promised without sincerity.

Willem gasped out something like an exhausted laugh and said, “I’m sure they will. Maybe one of the other senior senators will decide to move into my house. Meykhati, maybe? Or what if Salatis covets my eyes? He’ll have them dug from my screaming skull as easily as Pristoleph took my-“

Willem stopped. His throat closed over anymore words. Tears streamed down to mix with the rain on his face.

“You’ve put yourself in the dragon’s lair, my boy,” Marek said. “This little city on the edge of the world has its own rules, and chief among those rules is the strong survive. Gold is what they all covet, gold and the power it brings. You’ve gone after power, Willem, and I’m surprised to find you naive enough to believe that there would be no consequences.”

“This place has no honor,” Willem said.

That made Marek laugh, and laugh long and loud.

When the Thayan finally got hold of himself he said, “Please, Willem. The same is true in your precious Cormyr, as it is in my own beloved Thay. The thing is, you see, that as the son of a boarding house wife, you simply weren’t prepared for it.”

Willem shook his head, though he knew that Marek spoke the truth.

“So, what now, then?” the Thayan asked.

“I will stay here and die desecrating the dream of a better man,” Willem said.

“My, Willem, you do have a sense of the dramatic at times. I’ll grant you that.”

“Look at them,” Willem said, ignoring the wizard’s last comment. “I know you created them, but have you really ever looked at them?”

“The zombies, you mean.”

“The walking dead,” Willem replied, “yes. Don’t you sometimes wish you could be like that?” “No,” Marek said. “No, I don’t.”

“They haven’t a care in the world,” Willem went on. “They aren’t happy, but they aren’t unhappy, either, and do you know why?”

“Because what little brains they had in the first place are rapidly rotting in their skulls?”

“No,” Willem replied. “I mean, yes, of course, but no. They’re neither happy nor unhappy because they don’t seek happiness. They don’t know what happiness isor at least they don’t imagine they might someday know what happiness is. They exist, and that’s enough for them. They do as they’re told, and are left to do it. They aren’t teased with gold, comfort, women, power… No one leads them on.

“Perhaps the cold and damp have gotten to your thinking worse that I thought, my boy,” Marek said. “Healthy men do not envy the undeadat least not this sort of shambling, mindless walking corpse. It almost sounds as though you’d like to be one.”

“Perhaps I would,” said Willem.

“Well,” the Red Wizard replied, his voice dense and full of meaning, “that could be arranged.”

Willem looked at the Thayan and almost screamed at the look he saw in the man’s eyes.

But he didn’t scream. Instead, he shook his head and excused himself. He walked back to his tent, leaving the

Thayan to disappear, sending himself back to Innarlith by means of his own magic.

In his tent, Willem sat on his canvas chair, opened a new bottle of brandy, and drank it.

All of it.