Whisper of Waves

60

20 Eleasias, the Year of the Wave (1364 DR)

THE WINERY

The sun was high and hot, but a steady breeze from the north cooled the air and rustled the trees. Phyrea didn’t want to leave the house at first, but finally she couldn’t resist it. In the waning moments of the morning she set out on foot, timid at first then boldly stepping across the rolling foothills with confident, energetic strides.

Soon she lost herself in the footpaths that wound through one shady copse of trees after another. She walked for miles before she started to realize how far from the house she’d strayed. Not having explored much of the grounds and having kept mostly inside that summer, Phyrea had to fight back a rising panic that teased at the edges of her consciousness. Was she lost?

She was sweating a little and took off her light jacket. The linen camisole underneath was something she couldn’t have gotten away with in the city, but out there, on the grounds of Berrywilde, she was completely alone.

Phyrea made her way up a steep hill. Her feet grew heavier with every step. The fresh air and exercise that had so refreshed her at first had given way once again to exhaustion.

For seven nights in a row Phyrea had heard voices, whispers, and strange noises coming from dark corners and empty rooms. She slept only little, spending most of the night with her knees tucked up to her chin, her arms wrapped around her shins, her eyes wide, her mouth open. Every night she determined to leave first thing in the morning, but every morning she felt better, at peace, relaxed, and couldn’t imagine leaving. She remembered the fear of the night’s disturbances, but only as some distant recollection, as if years had passed between middark and dawn.

Before she reached the top of the hill she heard voices: men calling to each other, shouting orders. The sounds echoed across the hills, occasionally lost to the strong breeze. She stopped at the top of the hill and looked down at the work site. Her long, soft black hair blew across her face, and she slid it back with her hand.

They didn’t see her at first. There were dozens of them, digging, carrying rocks and planks, and clearing downed trees and underbrush. She couldn’t make out the outline of the winery. They hadn’t started to form a foundation yet.

Phyrea couldn’t help but stare at them. She hadn’t seen another human being in more than a tenday … was it a month already? The sounds of the men working reminded her of the city, but the cleared land and the great collection of materials, the sheer size of the work force … she told herself that what they were building would be hers one day. She would inherit Berrywilde in its entirely, including the winery and vinyards, the cattle ranch, the chicken farm, the berry orchard that accounted for at least the first part of the name of the estate … all of it.

Part of her wanted to kill her father in order to make it hers that much faster-the same part of her that robbed her neighbor’s houses at Wenefir and his mysterious patron’s request.

Another part of her wanted to burn it down-the same part of her that broke the priceless jeweled egg and scattered it in the midden.

Yet another part of her wanted to just get on a horse and ride-away from Berrywilde, away from Innarlith, all the way to Waterdeep or farther, where no one would know her and no one would ever find her.

Her hair blocked her face again and she turned her head away from the wind. When she did, her eyes fell on a man and stayed there.

He shouldn’t have caught her attention. Why would he have? He was one of dozens of men, most not wearing much but simple breeches or even simpler loin cloths. They were all dirty because they were digging in the dirt. They were all sweating because it was the end of the second tenday in Highsun and it was hot outside. They were all lean and muscular because they made their livings, meager as they might be, from the strengths of their backs and tirelessness of their arms.

One of them stood out. Could it have been because he worked between two dwarves? That might have made him appear taller than he was, but still there was no doubt that he was tall. He wore torn breeches that stopped at mid-calf. From the top of the hill, Phyrea couldn’t tell if they were cuffed that length or had torn off. Sweat made his skin shine in the brilliant afternoon sun. An unruly mop of red hair was plastered to his head, soaked with the sweat of a day’s honest labor. The muscles in his arms writhed under his taut bronzed skin.

That couldn’t have been all. They all looked much the same.

There was something else about the man with the red hair.

From the top of the hill she could cover him with the palm of her hand. She couldn’t hear him, though it didn’t appear that he spoke at all the whole time she stood there staring. She could feel something radiating from him, even imagined she saw it, pulsing like blue-white fire, warming her more even that the blazing afternoon sun.

When someone whistled, all that stopped.

Heads began to turn in her direction, one after another. When the man with the red hair looked up at her, Phyrea turned and ran back down the hill, disappearing from sight in just a few steps but continuing to run. More whistles and catcalls followed her. She couldn’t tell what the men were saying, but she knew men well enough to know what they’d thought of her. Though normally she’d get a little thrill from knowing men were lusting after her, Phyrea was only embarrassed. It was an unfamiliar feeling for her.

A gruff, loud voice cowed the shrill, apelike behavior with a few barked threats. She couldn’t make out individual words, but the implication was clear.

She was the master builder’s daughter. She was off limits. They shouldn’t even look at her. None of them should ever come near her, not even the red-haired man.

Phyrea’s sudden panic quickly gave way to anger. She didn’t want those horrid, sweaty men hooting at her, but she didn’t want to be off limits either. She didn’t want that one man to see her run away like a frightened school girl. She wanted to kill something.

When she’d dressed she’d slipped a thin dagger into her breeches at the small of her back. Though she was more afraid of the inside of the estate than the outside, she wasn’t stupid. The area had been cleared a very long time before she was ever born, and it was patrolled, and there was a rather large and noisy construction project, but all of Faerun was a wild place at least some of the time, and it didn’t pay to assume you were safe anywhere, ever.

She took the knife in hand and slowed her furious pace to a soft-footed stroll. She took control of her breathing and tucked her long hair around one thin strap of her camisole so that it would stay out of her face. She sniffed the wind as she took note of sounds-her own footfalls, the wind rustling the leaves, the ever more distant clatter of the work site-and dropped each noise away, filtering them for the hiss of movement in the grass.

There.

She let the knife go with a lightning-fast flick of her wrist and it shot away from her with a flash of steel in the bright sunshine. The dagger took a rabbit down, pinning it to the ground so that in its dying spasms it couldn’t even roll over and die on its back.

Phyrea, her breath still even and under control, her ears still attuned to the slightest whisper, felt more in control of herself and her surroundings than she had in some time.

She stood there looking down at the dead rabbit for a little while, then she retrieved her knife, wiped the blood off on the grass, and picked up the carcass by the ears.

Phyrea went back to the house. On the way she thought more about the man with the red hair than she did about her supper of fresh rabbit.