Whisper of Waves wt-1

  Whisper of Waves

  ( Watercourse Trilogy - 1 )

  Philip Athans

  Philip Athans

  Whisper of Waves

  PROLOGUE

  10 Kythorn, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)

  Lightning played across the water-saturated ground, the only relief from the utter blackness of the moonless night. Each brilliant flash of blue-white showed another tableau of destruction.

  There was nothing left but rubble. It was all gone. The supports lay shattered, once great stone blocks so much gravel, and all around was mud-everywhere black, all-consuming mud.

  He didn’t speak. Barely moving enough to breathe, he stood perfectly still. He’d never held his body so motionless. As the lightning crashed all around him and the thunder vibrated his chest, threatening to disrupt the very beat of his heart, he stood in perfect, uninterrupted silence.

  There was nothing to say, after all. What was there to say? What eulogy could be appropriate for a man’s dreams? His life, that was obvious-a list of family and friends, platitudes to assuage the grief of those left behind-but his dreams? His dreams left in a pile of mud and ruin, what could a man be expected to say?

  Lightning arced a few paces from him, close enough to raise each hair on his head in a wave from the front of his hairline to his neck. The skin on his back shivered, and his knees twitched. Despite his desire to stand in place, he took one step backward to keep from falling but still slipped on the muddy ground. He fell to one knee but stood quickly, even as the deafening boom of thunder echoed into the background hiss of the incessant rain.

  He took no notice of the mud caked on his trousers. His linen and silk clothing stuck to his body, heavy with rain. If it was dirty as well, what could it matter? The rain was cold and the wind blew in from the Lake of Steam, cool enough to provide no relief but still rife with the stench of sulfur that was the lake’s peculiar curse-one of its curses, anyway.

  His body shivered, but he paid it no mind. A bolt from the heavens crashed to ground behind the pile of rubble that had been his life’s work, outlining in silhouette the uneven mound. Ribbons of rain water blew from the edges of broken stones like the thin branches of willows whipping in the wind. The constant percussion of the rainfall grew loud enough to drown out all but the closest and most insistent of the thunderbolts. He couldn’t have heard someone approach from behind him if he’d tried, and he didn’t try.

  A deep breath put as much rain water as air into his lungs, but he didn’t give the storm the satisfaction of coughing. His eyes moved slowly from left to right, then back again, taking in the ruin, memorizing it, making it a part of himself. He cared only for the sight of what had become of his work, and he didn’t know that something made its way across the ankle-deep mud behind him.

  Had he bothered to turn he might have seen it, at least in silhouette, against the blinding lightning that illuminated the roiling, angry clouds. He might have seen it take its time, dragging its feet through the mud one tortured step every dozen heartbeats, secure in the fact that it didn’t have to be fast. It had all the time in the world.

  So intent was he on the rocks, mud, twisted metal, and splintered wood that he didn’t see it coming. So deafened was he by the crash of thunder and the hammering of rain that he didn’t hear its footsteps or its groans. So devoured was he by the bitter reality of the mess his work had been reduced to that he didn’t think to turn.

  Behind him, something had come almost within reach-something that moved but didn’t live, hated but didn’t reason, killed but felt no remorse.

  PART 1

  1

  Mirtul, the Year of the Striking Hawk (1326 DR)

  THE CITY OF NETHJET, THAY

  We don’t reach like that now, Mari,” his mother reminded in a tight voice.

  Marek Rymut drew his hand back from the cup but not all the way. He looked at his mother and inched his hand back a little more, then a bit more. When the side of her thin lips twitched up the littlest bit, he smiled and began to reach for the teacup again but ever so much more slowly.

  His mother greeted the slow, deliberate, unobtrusive reach with a satisfied smile that disappeared when he drew the teacup too quickly to his lips. Something about the look on her face as he sipped the too-sweet tea sent a thrill tickling his skin. Taking almost a full minute to set the teacup on the saucer then another minute to place them both on the tablecloth in front of him was her reward for sitting through his offensive gesture.

  “My pretty Mari,” she whispered.

  Marek felt his breath stop in his throat. He didn’t like it when she called him Mari, but she never called him anything else.

  He took another sip of the tea, then tipped the cup over and poured the rest onto the table in front of him. For the longest time there was no sound. They didn’t look at each other. Both sets of eyes stayed firmly on the spilled tea.

  “Stand up, baby,” his mother said, her voice betraying not a trace of emotion. “You don’t want that getting on your dress.”

  Marek stood and stepped away from the table. No sooner had he moved his knee away than the tea began to drip then pour off the edge of the tabletop.

  His mother stepped around the table, avoiding the spilled tea, and looked down at him. She didn’t bother giving him a disapproving look.

  “My pretty Mari,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “How old are you now?”

  “Eleven,” Marek said.

  She nodded in response and reached out, slowly, to smooth down the ruffled collar of his simple lace gown.

  “Who are we waiting for?” he asked.

  Her brow wrinkled, accentuating the fine lines around her eyes. Strands of white were intertwined with her jet black hair. Her nose was too big and her eyes too small. He knew that because she’d told him so.

  It seemed as if she was about to speak when a servant entered the room. His mother’s eyes followed the uniformed maid, but her head never moved. The girl stepped with the jerky quickness of someone in fear of her life. Marek didn’t understand why. He’d never seen his mother kill one of the servants.

  As the maid hurried to clean the spilled tea from the floor then began to gather up the soaked tablecloth, Marek asked his mother, “Why hasn’t Father been home in six years?”

  A clatter of fine porcelain-the maid was fortunate it didn’t break-followed the question like a punctuation mark. Marek looked at her, but his mother didn’t.

  “Has it been six years?” his mother asked.

  He nodded. The maid had the cups on the tray and carefully, slowly, lifted it from the table and set it on the floor, never looking up from her task.

  “Your father is an important man,” she explained for precisely the eighty-third time since Marek started keeping count. “If he has been away for six years, it’s because he is tending to the family business.”

  “Where?” he asked, going through the motions even though he knew what she was going to say.

  “He is in Eltabbar,” she said.

  “Why?” he asked.

  The maid folded the tea-stained tablecloth into a bundle against her stomach then set it on the floor next to the tray.

  “All of this requires …” Marek’s mother started to say.

  The maid produced a fresh tablecloth from somewhere and spread it over the table in a single fluid, silent motion.

  “Look around you, Mari dear,” his mother said.

  Marek did as he was told. His eyes played across the ornate furniture, most of it upholstered in silk, some gilded, others with jewels inlaid into the polished, rare hardwoods. The walls were freshly painted every three months, and the art was replaced at the same interval. The floor was marble and so perfectly buffed he
could see his reflection in it. The scent of the spilled tea had given way to the ever-present lavender. His mother liked lavender.

  The maid replaced the tray on the table and scurried out.

  “He stays away in Eltabbar,” Marek said, “so we can live here.”

  His mother drew in a breath so big it made her seem taller, then she let it out over the course of ten heartbeats and said, “That’s right.”

  Marek nodded, though he really didn’t understand.

  They looked at each other for a while, then their eyes shifted to the big double doors when a gong sounded from beyond them.

  His mother started breathing more shallowly and her eyes darted over his face and body, taking in every last detail in less than a second.

  “Your lips,” she whispered, using the tip of her little finger to smooth the edge of his mouth, which she’d outlined herself that morning with a pleasing shade of red.

  “Who’s here?” he asked, knowing full well what the gong signified.

  She seemed afraid to answer but was trying, when the doors opened. A man stepped into the room before the butler, who had opened the doors, had a chance to finish saying, “The Zulkir Kavor, milady.”

  The man who walked into the room looked at no one but Marek. That in itself was unsettling-Marek was only eleven, and his mother was standing right there-but there was more. The man who’d been announced as Zulkir Kavor was the tallest man Marek had even seen. His gathered robes shimmered in the lamplit chamber and hung on the man’s broad, solid form in layer after layer of linen, silk, and leather. His forearms, wrapped in some kind of soft, thin hide fastened at the wrists with carved, jewel-encrusted gold bands, were thick and powerful. His heavy boots made sounds like thunder that echoed against the polished marble floor.

  “Zulkir,” Marek’s mother said, “you honor us.”

  The zulkir didn’t even glance at her. His eyes-dark brown, almost black-bore into Marek’s and the boy felt a cool sheen of sweat break out on his neck and back. Gooseflesh rose on the undersides of his arms.

  The zulkir’s eyes burned from under a pronounced brow and over equally defined cheekbones. His mouth was set in a stern frown that was neither sad nor disapproving. His head was shaved, and not a single speck of stubble was evident on its surface.

  “Rymut,” the man said. His voice, like his footsteps, rumbled in the air like thunder. “The boy?”

  Marek found himself nodding, though he knew the question was intended for his mother, who cleared her throat before saying, “Yes, Zulkir.”

  Marek was dressed and made up like a girl. His skin crawled under the zulkir’s gaze.

  “Will you …?” his mother whispered.

  “The decision has already been made,” said Kavor. “I wanted but to stand in his presence once to be certain.”

  “And are you?” Marek asked, knowing he risked much by speaking at all, but not sure what exactly it was he was risking. “Certain?”

  The man didn’t smile, and Marek wasn’t even sure why he thought he might, but he did nod.

  “What’s that on your head?” Marek asked.

  “Mari!” his mother hissed.

  The man almost smiled when he replied, “You will find out.”

  On his bald head was a drawing that looked at first like a random scattering of squares and triangles. The more Marek stared at it, the zulkir not moving, the more the blue-black shapes took on the form of a dragon’s head, its jaws agape and its fangs dripping with deadly venom.

  Without another word, Zulkir Kavor turned and walked out.

  When the door closed behind him, Marek looked up at his mother. A tear traced a path down her right cheek.

  “You’re going to be going away now,” she said, her voice breaking and tight. She smiled. “You’re going to honor our family by being a Red Wizard.”

  Marek didn’t know what that was, but if it made him anything like Zulkir Kavor, he couldn’t wait to start.

  2

  7 Eleint, the Year of the Marching Moon (1330 DR)

  FOURTH QUARTER, INNARLITH

  The sound was meant to scare him, but it wasn’t working. A constant, regular tap tap tap tap tap of steel on brick said, “I have a knife” and “I’m coming for you.”

  Pristoleph had been chased by boys with knives before and had even been caught by them. Only twelve years old, he had been stabbed eight times, twice badly enough to nearly kill him. He knew that the sound the point of a dull knife made as it entered his skin was louder than the sound a sharp knife made. The deeper the wound, the less it hurt. The rustier the blade, the longer it took to heal.

  One of the boys who was chasing him whistled. It sounded like a signal, but Pristoleph didn’t know exactly what it meant. He looked up at the wall rising high into the sky next to him. Sounds echoed between the wall and the tightly packed cluster of falling-down buildings pressed almost right up to it. The alley between the wall and the abandoned houses was narrow enough that Pristoleph could have touched the wall with his left hand and the house with his right. On the other side of the towering wall was the outside. Pristoleph had imagined what the outside looked like but had never seen it. He’d never left the city, though he’d lived right at its very edge his entire short, miserable life.

  Because of the echoes, Pristoleph couldn’t be certain exactly where his pursuers were, how close behind or in front of him. It seemed as if they were all around him, but it might have just been a trick of the narrow confines.

  He kept moving, knowing that was one thing that might save him. He could see in the dark better than a human, and if the footsteps that followed him was the human gang he thought they were he would be at an advantage. The night was clear and hot. Humans would find the temperature uncomfortable. Moving fast in tight places, in the dark, sweating, excited, they would make mistakes.

  A loud crash came from behind him, then a dull thud and a whispered curse. It was a boy’s voice. He stumbled in the dark alley and knocked over a barrel. Scurrying noises must have been rats. Pristoleph didn’t stop to make sure.

  “Mandalax!” someone whispered.

  The sound pinged from city wall to house to city wall and back again, but Pristoleph was sure the voice had come from behind him. He stifled a smile at the sound of it. He knew the name. Mandalax’s gang was indeed a human one, notorious in the Fourth Quarter-the district closest to the great sweeping curtain wall that protected Innarlith from Pristoleph didn’t know what-as a pack of petty street thugs who’d recently taken to crawling into people’s houses through their chimneys. With the long, hot summers on the eastern shores of the balmy Lake of Steam, they had an ample season’s worth of warm nights with no fires. Pristoleph had heard that they’d even started crawling into the shops on the edge of the Third Quarter, hunting bigger game. Mandalax wanted him to join, expecting Pristoleph to strip naked and climb down one chimney after another, only to give the spoils to the gang leader. Pristoleph knew better than to get into that line of work and had no problem telling Mandalax where to go.

  A shadow flickered in firelight from a cross-alley and Pristoleph slid to a stop. The figure paused, standing at the mouth of the alley. Pristoleph crept to the corner of the dark house on his right, half an inch at a time. The shadow moved. He heard a voice and stopped, holding his breath so he could hear better.

  The voice was answered by another, deeper voice, then the shadow was joined by another. The first voice, which Pristoleph thought might have been one of the boys’, giggled and said something he couldn’t understand, but it was clearly a woman’s voice. The two shadows grew larger, and the sound of footsteps echoed away. The shadows were gone.

  Had he simply strolled down the alley, the whore and her mark would have left him alone, and perhaps Mandalax’s gang would have too. Not that either of the adults, plying that particular trade in that particular neighborhood at that time of night, would have lifted a finger to save his life. Still, a witness is a witness is a witness.

  Pristo
leph didn’t want to see the source of those two shadows. He knew what they were and what they were doing, but not who they were.

  He didn’t think the woman was his mother. He’d heard her clearly enough to have recognized her voice if she was, but still….

  Pristoleph hadn’t seen his mother in two years and hadn’t lived with her for three. People in the ragged clutch of rat-infested hovels they called a neighborhood had told him she was beautiful, but Pristoleph could only see the dirt. They told him she was good at what she did, but what she did disgusted him. He’d heard she used to be rich, but used to be didn’t pay the rent. What she’d paid the rent for the first nine years of his life with her was her body. When times were good, when the nights weren’t too hot and commerce made the Third Quarter jingle with coins, she grew pudgy, voluptuous. When times were hard, and the nights too sticky for thoughts of bodies intertwined, she grew slim.

  Either way, Pristoleph’s own ribs showed through skin stretched tight across them. His elbows and knees bulged, and his eyes were sunken and sallow. He was hungry all the time, regardless of the men coming and going, and his mother coming and going. He never remembered he and his mother eating together.

  Which isn’t to say there weren’t the occasional good memories, few and far between as they may have been. They had spent one particularly stormy night sharing a lump of moldy cheese and stories of djinn, laughing. It was that night that she told him why his skin was red, and why his orange-yellow hair swayed on his head out of sync with the breeze, sometimes jumping over his scalp like a flame. She told him he wasn’t entirely human. She told him about the beast of fire that had come to her in the guise of a man, cloaked in the illusion of a customer. Where she might have told him the details of that brief moment they’d shared, instead her eyes had grown distant with the memory of pain and degradation even someone who had grown accustomed to pain and degradation had trouble remembering.