Lies of Light Read online

  “I need to know who’s coin will pay me,” Surero said.

  “Mine,” Devorast said. “Where I get it from doesn’t have to concern you.”

  With a sigh, Surero looked around the room again. “You see all these people, Devorast? Look at them. These are sad, desperate people. And do you know why?”

  “No,” Devorast replied.

  Surero stopped himself from answering right away and looked Devorast in the eye. He could see the unspoken words in the man’s steely gaze: And I don’t care.

  “Tell me, have you spoken with Rymüt about this canal of yours? Has he made his opinion of it known to you?”

  “I have reason to believe he’s sent monsters to kill me on at least two occasions,” Devorast said.

  Surero found it difficult to breathe. He downed the rest of his ale and almost choked on it. Devorast held up a hand and got the attention of the serving wench. He held up two fingers, and she nodded and waddled to the bar.

  “What are you doing here?” asked Devorast. “I’ve asked about you, and by all accounts you’re an alchemist of considerable skill.”

  “I used to be,” he said. “Then the Thayan …”

  “He took your customers from you, and otherwise made it difficult to practice your craft,” Devorast finished for him. “If you’re ready to leave off crying about that, come with me and help do something that no one in Faerûn has ever done.”

  “I can’t place your accent,” Surero said.

  “I was born in Cormyr.”

  Surero shrugged, and sat quietly while the serving wench set two more ales on the table, collected his empty and the Cormyrean’s coin, and shuffled off.

  “I need to know if this canal … when it’s done, will Marek Rymüt hate it? Will he despise anyone who helped? Will he stop at nothing to destroy it?” Surero asked. “Answer me—and tell the truth. I have ways of knowing if you’re lying.”

  There was a potion that would help him discern the truth, but he hadn’t mixed one in years. Surero just needed to hear the man say it.

  “I will build it, because I want it to be built,” Devorast said. “I have no intention of seeking permission from Marek Rymüt.”

  Surero sighed again and met Devorast’s firm gaze.

  “It’s a good idea,” Surero said. “Smokepowder for digging …

  I hadn’t ever thought of it, but it’ll work. I’m sure it’ll work. This canal, basically it’s a trench that’ll eventually be filled with water?” Devorast nodded, and Surero went on, “I can do that. I’d be the first to do it … at least that I know of … and I can do it.”

  Devorast took a sip of his ale and didn’t seem to react at all to its bitterness. He looked Surero in the eye and waited.

  The alchemist sighed again and said, “I came here with the intention of gathering what few coins I could before moving on farther west. I’d thought, maybe, Athkatla. I’ve heard that some of the port cities are experimenting with weapons powered by smokepowder that could hurl heavy objects long distances to crash into ships and whatnot.”

  Devorast nodded as if he’d heard that too, and as if he thought the idea was perfectly sound, but he said, “What I mean to build is more worthy of your talents.”

  Surero laughed and drank more of his ale, wincing at the bite of it on his tongue.

  “Why me?” he asked.

  “Because I think you can do it.”

  “To be the first …” Surero said.

  Devorast nodded and Surero pushed the flagon of ale away from himself with a grimace.

  “What’s it like?” the alchemist asked. “Your work site. Is it like this?” He gestured to the room full of desperate men.

  “Yes,” Devorast replied, “but the air is a little fresher.”

  Surero laughed and felt relief wash over him like a waterfall. It had been so long since he’d had anything to do, he nearly cried.

  Nodding, he said, “All right then.”

  They finished their ales and Surero talked. He told Devorast everything—every last detail of his attempt to kill Marek Rymüt. He told him of his training in the alchemical arts, his workshop and business before the Red Wizard came to Innarlith. He talked and talked, and everything inside him spilled out into the ears of the red-headed Cormyrean who sat almost perfectly still, almost perfectly silent, and listened.

  30

  4 Alturiak, the Year of the Staff (1366 DR)

  THE CANAL SITE

  The sound of the explosion was muffled by eight feet of dirt, but much louder was the shower of loose soil that drummed through the air and back onto the ground in a hard rain of brown and gray. The crowd of workers that had gathered—at a safe distance determined by Surero—cheered and hooted.

  “I think they like it,” Surero said, smiling at the cloud of dust and smoke, slow to dissipate in the calm air. The dust began to mix with the incessant drizzle to form a dirty rain that followed the shower of dirt.

  “They enjoy the spectacle,” said Devorast, who stood beside him on the low hill to the side of the canal’s path.

  “Aren’t they happy not to have to dig all that out by hand?” Surero asked with a shrug.

  Devorast didn’t answer. Instead, he walked down the hill to the wide, deep crater. He carried a measuring stick, and by the time Surero followed him to the edge of the pit, he had already climbed into the crater and begun to measure it.

  “Careful of the loose dirt,” the alchemist warned, watching Devorast’s boot slip and sink half to his ankle in dusty soil. “What do you think?”

  “It’s definitely bigger,” Devorast replied. “When the rest of the loose dirt is dug out, it’ll be deeper still.”

  “I prefer to think of my creation as a pick more than a shovel,” Surero said.

  His measurements completed, Devorast led him back up the hill. Surero blinked in the drizzle and ran a hand through his wet hair. They climbed the low hill and stepped into the little hut they’d built to store the smokepowder.

  Inside, lined up on half a dozen shelves, were cheap burlap sacks of various sizes, from barely the size of a small coin purse, to sacks made for forty pounds of grain. The sacks were filled with his latest masterpiece.

  “The new ratio is better,” Devorast said.

  Surero smiled and replied, “I’m happy with it. the trick was increasing the amount of sulfur in the mix—convenient that it washes up on shore by the barrels-full every day. We don’t even have to buy it, just scrape it off the beaches and let it dry.”

  “And the charcoal?” Devorast asked as he searched the sacks for just the right size.

  “Willow,” Surero replied. “From now on, I’ll only use willow.” Devorast glanced at him with one eyebrow raised, so Surero explained, “You can use almost anything. Zalantar isn’t bad, but it can be expensive. Elder or laurel is pretty good. I’ve heard of people using grapevine. I could make it with pinecones, even.”

  Devorast lifted a sack from a low shelf and hefted it. He gave no indication that he’d heard a word the alchemist had said.

  “You know what you are, Ivar?” he asked, not expecting a response and not getting one. “You’re fearless.”

  Devorast glanced at him as he walked past with the sack of smokepowder, and Surero could see the trace of a grimace on his lips.

  “See?” the alchemist continued, following him out of the shack. “That’s ten pounds you have there. I measured it myself. If that went off now there wouldn’t be enough left of you to use as fertilizer, but to look at you, anyone would think it was a sack of potatoes.”

  Devorast kept walking, down the hill.

  “I know, I know …” Surero went on. “It’s not going to go off. You know it won’t, because you know how to handle it. That’s your secret, isn’t it? Self-confidence. You just believe in yourself completely.”

  “Don’t you?” Devorast asked.

  Surero laughed and said, “Don’t I? I still lie awake at night wondering why Marek Rymüt had me released from the dun
geon. I experiment with smokepowder and every second of it my hands are shaking and sweating and I’m sure the next turn of the mortar and pestle and will be my last.”

  Devorast ignored him as, having set the sack of smokepowder on the ground next to him, he crouched to inspect the hole. Ten yards away from the crater they’d just made, and still a safe distance from the onlooking workers, Devorast had had another shaft dug. The hole was no more than a foot in diameter.

  “That’s ten feet,” Surero said. “Ten pounds at ten feet? That’s easy to remember.”

  Devorast tied the end of the smokepowder-infused twine onto the top of the sack, then lowered it down the hole. Surero watched Devorast count the depth from knots that had been tied in the rope every foot. When the sack finally rested on the bottom, and Devorast had counted nine knots, he stood and walked back up the hill, trailing the twine as he went.

  “Aren’t you paying me to do that?” the alchemist asked.

  “I’m paying you for the powder,” Devorast replied.

  Once they were a safe distance away, up the hill, Devorast struck a flint and steel and a spark leaped to the twine. It sizzled and popped its way down the length of the fuse. Surero watched its progress with a self-satisfied smile.

  “You’ll want to cover your ears this time,” the alchemist warned, then did as he’d advised himself.

  Devorast waited until the little sparking flame following the length of twine dipped down into the deep shaft before holding his hands against his ears. Surero squinted, afraid of what ten pounds of—

  The explosion was so loud it rattled his eardrums, regardless of his hands pressed to the sides of his head. He staggered back a few steps and closed his eyes. Bending at the waist he moved his hands from his ears to the back of his head, protecting it from the stinging rain of dirt and stones that pounded them both. The onlooking workers shifted back several paces like a school of fish fleeing a shark.

  When it was safe to open his eyes again, Surero looked at Devorast. The Cormyrean stood there nodding, watching as the dust and smoke cleared to reveal a crater several times the depth and diameter of the first.

  “We need more,” he said.

  Surero chuckled, nodded, and said, “I don’t have a single grain of saltpeter left, and no one in Innarlith will sell it to me.”

  Devorast nodded, thinking, then said, “Phyrea’s father harvests saltpeter at his country estate. I saw the lean-to when I worked there.”

  “That’s interesting, but isn’t Phyrea’s father the master builder, and one of Rymüt’s closest allies in the senate?” Devorast shrugged. “If Rymüt doesn’t want us to have it—doesn’t want me to have it since he’s mage enough to know what I intend to use it for—he’ll never sell it to us. I’m going to need a lot of it, too. Three quarters of every sack is sulfur, a tenth is saltpeter, and the rest charcoal. A young lady can’t just hide it in her pockets and walk it out to us.”

  “She’ll think of something,” Devorast assured him, then turned and picked up his measuring stick again.

  He walked down the hill, and Surero called after him, “Maybe she can steal us some of her father’s wine, too. I can use it to mix the serpentine so it doesn’t blow up in my face!” Devorast again made no indication he’d heard anything the alchemist had to say, so he added more quietly, “And if I drink enough of it maybe my hands will stop shaking all the time.”

  31

  9 Alturiak, the Year of the Staff (1366 DR)

  THE PALACE OF MANY SPIRES, INNARLITH

  Salatis smiled and rubbed his hands together, gazing up at the jet black iron disk rimmed with purple-stained wood—the finishing touch to the shrine.

  “Shar be praised,” he whispered.

  One of the men looked at him, his eyes wide. Salatis’s blood ran cold, and the man looked away, sensing, perhaps, that he shouldn’t have heard that name.

  “Olin,” Salatis said, still staring at the workman.

  The black firedrake stepped up behind him with hardly a sound, and stood stiff and at the ready in his human guise. The workman and his partner wouldn’t look them in the eye. Instead, they hurried to pack up their tools. They were such simple men, with their rough homespun clothes and dirty, calloused hands. They smelled of sweat and sawdust.

  “Is there a problem, Ransar?” a stern, deep voice asked from behind him.

  Salatis turned to see Insithryllax standing in the open doorway. The swarthy, intimidating man folded his arms and leaned against the doorjamb. He glanced at Olin with a smirk, but the black firedrake refused to look at him.

  “No,” Salatis said, “thank you, Insithryllax. What brings you here?”

  “Just curious,” Marek Rymüt’s man replied, stepping into the room. Salatis could feel Olin move between them. “Back off, drake.”

  A sound like a creaking door rumbled out of Olin’s throat—a bestial growl. Insithryllax laughed.

  “Please, gentlemen,” said Salatis. “Have some care with your behavior. You are in a holy place.”

  The too-curious workman glanced up at the symbol of the Lady of Loss, and Salatis watched gooseflesh break out on his arms. He put a hammer into his toolbox, and Salatis sensed his reluctance to let go of the would-be weapon.

  “My apologies, Ransar,” Insithryllax sneered.

  Salatis stifled a gasp and thought, Ransar. I am the ransar, aren’t I?

  “Not at all, Insithryllax,” he said, watching the two workmen finish up their packing. “If you don’t mind, though, I wonder if between the two of you, you might do me a favor and kill these two workmen.”

  The two men looked up at that, fear taking over their faces. They began to sweat profusely, and stood on shaking legs. One of them held up his hands, the other shook his head.

  “Why?” Insithryllax asked.

  “Because I am your ransar, and I wish it.”

  “Please, Ransar,” one of the peasants blurted. “What—what have we done?”

  “Pardon me,” said Insithryllax, “but you are not my ransar.”

  The hair on Salatis’s arms stood on end, and he suppressed a shudder. Olin, without a word, stepped closer to the two men, who backed away from him with their hands up to fend him off. He hefted his longaxe and smiled the leer of a killer—the toothy grin of the jackal.

  The front of one of the workers’ trousers bloomed with a dark shadow, and the stench of urine filled the dense air of the close space.

  “Leave us alone,” the man whimpered.

  The other one sobbed, “Let us go home, my lord. Please let us go.”

  “You are excellent craftsmen and I’m sure your families are very proud of you,” Salatis said, excitement making his heart race and his throat tighten.

  “Please, Ransar,” one of them begged.

  “You will go to the Fugue Plane having done a great service to the Dark Goddess. Perhaps there she will claim your souls and bring them with her to the Plane of Shadow where you will serve her as you served me.”

  Olin stepped forward, and set his longaxe on his shoulder.

  “Oh, I see,” Insithryllax said. “This little temple of yours is a secret.”

  “Careful,” the ransar said, glancing back over his shoulder at Insithryllax.

  The bolder of the two doomed men—the one who hadn’t yet wet himself—took that as an opportunity to attempt to run past the three of them and out through the secret door to the ransar’s hidden shrine—the hidden shrine they’d just finished building for him. Olin swung his heavy longaxe from his right shoulder, took the man’s head off in the blink of an eye, and only stopped when the axe haft rested gently on his left shoulder.

  Blood fountained from the decapitated man’s neck as his body jerked to the floor. His partner was sprayed in the face, and yelped, trying his best to fend it off. He fell to his knees, then scrambled back until he fetched up against a wall. Babbling incoherent pleas for his miserable existence, he all but clawed the blood from his eyes.

  Insithryllax chuckled in
a mean-spirited way and said, “Collecting heads, are we?”

  He tipped his head in the direction of the altar, behind which was a shelf. On the shelf was a big glass jar, tightly sealed with a waxed cork. Inside the jar was the grimacing, disembodied head of Osorkon.

  “I hadn’t actually thought of that, no,” Salatis answered with a laugh. “Anyway, this new one isn’t worth keeping.”

  The surviving workman groveled on the blood-soaked floor, crying. He retracted, staring up with pleading, animal’s eyes, as Olin stepped up to tower over him.

  “All this blood,” Insithryllax said, “on your new floors.”

  “A small sacrifice,” Salatis said, “for the favor of the Mistress of the Night.”

  “Weren’t you a devoted follower of Malar just a tenday or so past?” Insithryllax asked.

  Salatis stiffened and said, “I’ll thank you not to mention that. Today, here in this place, I live for the dark secrets of Shar, divine daughter of Lord Ao.” He paused and Insithryllax shrugged. “Captain Olin….”

  Olin brought the axe down again, and the man stopped crying all at once. When Olin tried to pull his axe out of the dead man’s back, it stuck fast. The black firedrake vomited a black fluid over his axe blade and Salatis had to turn away. He could hear the workman’s skin sizzle away, freeing the blade.

  “Leave the mess,” Salatis said as he stepped past Insithryllax, ignoring the strange man’s grim smirk. “When Shar has had her fill of their souls, clean it up, and never come back in here again. Is that clear?”

  Olin nodded, wiping the blood and acid from his longaxe onto the headless workman’s back.

  Insithryllax laughed again, which elicited a sharp look from the black firedrake. But Salatis left the shrine, confident that no more blood would be spilled there, until he ordered it spilled.

  32

  3 Ches, the Year of the Staff (1366 DR)