Lies of Light

64

26 Nightal, the Yearof the Banner (1368 DR) Second Quarter, Innarlith

" I just can’t understand why it is that you hate me so, Phyrea,” Willem said. “What have I done to make you see me with such contempt?”

Phyrea didn’t want to answer him. She opened a drawer in the bureau and shifted through the scant few pieces of clothing she’d left before she went away with Pristoleph.

“There isn’t really anything here I want anymore,” she said.

“So you’re going to leave it?” he asked. “What am I going to do with it?”

She bit her lip, cutting off the sarcastic, hurtful reply that came to mind. Instead, she scooped up the lace undergarments and stuffed them into the bag she had open on the bed.

“I can have the rest sent to you, if you can’t stand to be here,” he said, “or if you don’t want to go through them. I can imagine how awful this little hovel must seem to you now.”

“Your house is fine, Willem,” she said. “That’s not it.”

“Then what is ‘it’?” he pressed. “You ran my mother back to Cormyr and dismissed my staff. I wasn’t even here most of the time, so if you found my presence so distasteful, at least you didn’t have to suffer me much.”

“Is that the life you wanted?” she asked him, though when all was said and done she didn’t care to hear his answer. It didn’t matter. “Were you really content with simply avoiding my distaste?”

He exhalednot really a sighand leaned against the wall of his bedchamber.

Phyrea picked up the bag and walked past him, tense and uncertain of what he might do, but he did nothing to stop her. She stepped into the hall, leaving him silently leaning on the wall in the room behind her. The little girl stood at the top of the stairs, her eyebrows drawn into a V that twisted her eyes into smoldering pinpoints. Her purple-black lips pulled away from her teeth, which were needle fangs that glistened with a vile light of their own.

Phyrea screamed and dropped her bag. She recoiled back so fast and so out of control she nearly fell.

“No,” she whispered.

You left us, the little girl’s voice shrieked in Phyrea’s head. You went away and you left us, you bitch.

“No,” Phyrea whimpered, horrified by how weak her own voice sounded.

We knew you would come back, the man with the scar said.

Phyrea closed her eyes so she couldn’t see him.

“What happened?” Willem asked. He’d come out of the bedchamber. “Phyrea?”

She shook her head and pushed him away, but not hard. He stopped and didn’t try to come any closer.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked.

Tell him, the man demanded. Tell him we’re here. Tell him we’ve been waiting here for all this time.

We have been, the little boy said.

“No, Willem…” Phyrea gasped.

We’ve stood over him while he tried to sleep but couldn’t, the old woman said.

We watched him drown his sorrows in drink, the sad woman told her.

“Let me go,” she said.

Go, yes, the little girl said. Go back to Berrywilde.

“I’m not stopping you,” Willem said.

Phyrea opened her eyes and stormed forward, grabbing her bag as she passed it. She went past a violet-glowing form that she didn’t look at. She ran down the stairs, leaving Willem behind, but the ghosts followed her. They tormented her out into the street. The little girl sat across from her in the coach and sneered at her.

“Home, Miss Phyrea?” the driverPristoleph’s driverasked.

She almost said yes, but at the last minute she said, “The Green Phoenix. In the Third Quarter.”

The coach jerked to a start, and Phyrea closed her eyes and clasped her hands over her ears. Though she couldn’t see them, they never spoke to her through her ears anyway, so she suffered, occasionally sobbing, with their incessant barrage of threats and demands until the coach finally pulled up in front of the sprawling brick building that housed the Green Phoenix.

“Shall I accompany you, Miss?” the driver, who Phyrea knew was also a more-than-capable fighter armed with magic and his master’s protection, asked.

Without stopping or looking behind her, she said, “I’ll be fine. No.”

She burst into the common room of the dark, smoke-filled tavern and all but ran to the bar.

“Orerus,” she demanded, slapping her palm on the bar. “Where is he?”

The skinny old woman behind the bar blinked at her.

“iVbtt;/”Phyrea screamed. “Where?”

The old woman pointed to a curtained doorway behind her and stepped aside.

Phyrea leaped the bar and tore though the curtain. She ignored the powerful aroma of the brewing vats, and the screaming tirade of the incorporeal girl.

“Surero,” she whispered, wiping tears from her eyes and abandoning the alchemist’s assumed name. “Where are you?”

“Phyrea?” he called from the back of the large room.

Pristoleph had helped her keep track of him, and she’d been surprised, but delighted to hear that he had taken a position as brewmaster for the Green Phoenixan honorable enough use for his peculiar skillsunder the name Orerus, Surero reversed.

He stepped out from behind one of the big copper kettles and greeted her with a smile that quickly faded to a scowl of concern.

“How did you find me?” he asked. “What’s happened?” “Do you know where he is?” Phyrea asked. “Yes,” Surero replied, not having to ask who she meant by “he.”

Phyrea felt her knees give, and she lowered herself to the dirty floor, ignoring the sticky residue of the ale vats that coated every surface.

“Gods,” Surero whispered. “What’s happened to you?”

She took a deep breath and laughed a little while she cried.

Kill him, the man with the scar said. He’ll deliver you back to Devorast if you don’t kill him now. You know that man will destroy you.

“I just need to know that he’s alive, and that you know where he isthat someone knows where he is,” she said. “I don’t know why. I’ll never see him again, but I had to know that.”

Good girl, the old woman whispered into her reeling mind. Never see him again.

“Phyrea,” Surero said, “what is it?”

She struggled to her feet and said, “Where is he?”

“Ormpetarr.”

She nodded and mouthed a “thank you,” then turned to leave.

“Phyrea?” he called after her, but she didn’t stop, turn, or answer.