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  The girl turned and scampered away, and the priest didn’t stop her.

  “We are to be married,” Pristoleph insisted. “Today.”

  The priest couldn’t seem to be able to make up his mind if he wanted to nod or shake his head, so he just stood there and quivered.

  Pristoleph shifted and Phyrea stepped away from him to avoid his elbow. He pulled a small leather pouch from under his rapidly-drying weathercloak, reached his hand in, and came out with a fistful of gold coins. He threw the gleaming disks at the priest’s feet. The priest startled away from the loud, sharp, echoing clatter as the coins seemed to shatter on the marble. The windows shook again, and something hit the outside wall hard enough to startle Phyrea and all of the Waukeenar. But not Pristoleph.

  “This is not …” the priest mumbled.

  Pristoleph threw another fistful of gold coins at his feet—more than the little pouch should have been able to contain.

  “Please, Senator …”

  Another shower of coins. The three remaining acolytes all stepped back as one.

  “You will wed us now, and in the name of your goddess,” Pristoleph said, and even from a step away Phyrea could feel the heat blazing from him. The acolytes were scared, and so was the priest. “Speak the words, even if your goddess doesn’t hear.”

  The priest gasped. Two of the remaining acolytes turned and ran deeper into the gloom of the massive vaulted chamber. The last of the young priests in training stepped closer to the senator, his eyes bulging with outrage.

  The priest held out a hand, gently pushing his student back from the burning groom, and said, “Chose your words carefully in the house of the Merchant’s Friend, Senator Pristoleph.”

  The corner of Pristoleph’s mouth curled up in a dangerous smile and he threw yet another handful of coins at the priest’s feet.

  The Waukeenar nodded and said, “Please hold hands.”

  Phyrea ignored the protests of at least two of the ghosts that had followed her, and she didn’t look at the priest’s face, which was a mask of resignation, fear, and exhaustion. Pristoleph’s hands burned hers and she cringed at the pain but didn’t pull away. He cooled a little as the priest began his prayers.

  Words, the man with the scar whispered. Hollow words to a goddess in hiding.

  Phyrea shook her head. She didn’t care if Waukeen was alive or dead, didn’t care how much gold had bought her wedding, and paid no mind to the unnatural boiling heat of the man—if he was a man—she was swearing her life to.

  When the priest spoke his last words and the two of them were man and wife, the giant stained glass window imploded, burst by the fury of the air around them. The acolyte screamed, Pristoleph shrugged, and the priest began to cry.

  Pristoleph and Phyrea turned and went back to their coach with the wind whipping rain and shards of glass all around them, their boots crunching broken pieces under their feet, and the sound of the wailing cries of the holy men harmonizing with the moans of the angry wind.

  An interesting start, the old woman said, and as they walked out into the driving winter rain, Phyrea saw the violet ghost laughing on the steps of the once-glorious temple.

  6

  1 Alturiak, the Year of the Gauntlet (1369 DR)

  PRISTAL TOWERS, INNARLITH

  His touch was hot, but not uncomfortably so. Phyrea’s body responded in a much more sincere way than her mind. She did her best not to think but to let her body merge with his. She took on his rhythm, almost as though her heartbeat came into perfect synchronization with his. He moaned, and she responded with a gasp. He squeezed her tighter and she bent beneath him like a tree making way for the wind.

  They writhed in the rich satin- and silk-covered goose-down. Sweat rolled from her skin and his seemed to drink it in. His heat warmed her, fed her, made her safe.

  She didn’t listen to the woman crying over the still form of her only child. She ignored the chuckles of the old hag. She didn’t let the little girl’s growled outrage stop her. She gave herself to Pristoleph in a way that made the man with the scar on his face shake his head. The little boy with the missing arm screamed filth at them both but she paid him no heed. Instead she gave herself to her husband in a way she’d only allowed one man before him.

  And that was the thought that finally worked its way in.

  His name came to her first: Ivar Devorast. Then the touch of his rough, calloused hands, the smell of his musk, the sound of his voice.

  If Pristoleph sensed that another had, in some way beyond the physical, come into their wedding bed, he gave no sign. Phyrea touched him and moved with him still, was warmed by him and warmed him both, but her mind began to soar from her body, her desires splitting into physical and spiritual.

  Ivar Devorast had gone away. She didn’t know where. Even Surero had lost touch with him. Phyrea had made inquiries at once subtle and overt, public and private, desperate and resigned. He was gone as though he never existed. His great undertaking had been ripped from him and gifted to the loudest-squealing toadies of the ransar. Tendays or longer had passed since she’d even thought of it.

  And as she made love to her husband on their wedding night, as cursed as it may have been, she even let herself, for the briefest of moments, forget there was an Ivar Devorast. But that brief moment had passed.

  A shrill scream tore through her as though she was being sawed in half. Though the sound came from inside her head, still her eardrums trembled against its onslaught. Her body tensed and every instinct in her made her fling Pristoleph from her. She scrambled away from him, but only a few inches, before her legs curled up, her knees knocked her chin, and her eyes pressed so tightly closed her temples began to throb.

  Pristoleph’s voice came to her as if from the bottom of a deep well. He called her name, confused at first, then insistent. She didn’t want to hear any real emotion in his voice, not just then, so her own mind masked the fear and desperation, the uncertainty that poured over her. His hand wrapped around her arm and she trembled but didn’t push him away. Tears burned her eyes, hotter even than his touch.

  “I can make them go away,” he all but shouted into her ear. His breath scalded her. “Let me help you.”

  She shook her head and was only barely conscious of telling him no.

  The little girl screamed again, and Phyrea sobbed and stiffened. When the apparition began to break things—a vase, a mirror, a windowpane—Pristoleph leaped from the bed, his hair dancing on his scalp like flames.

  “Go away!” he roared at the room itself.

  She screamed the word “No,” over and over and over again until the little girl stopped screaming and started laughing.

  Never let him say that again, the man with the scar warned her.

  We will kill you both if you let him say that again, the old woman threatened.

  And it will hurt, said the little boy.

  Then they went silent all at once. Nothing more was broken, and the feeling of them fled her. Phyrea let a convulsing sob vibrate through her sweat-soaked flesh then wiped the tears from her eyes.

  “No,” she whispered.

  Pristoleph stood naked before her, heat radiating from his body, and she could tell that if he touched her then she would be burned. She felt herself smile when she thought of the pain—the pain that would make it go away—and she reached out for him.

  Pristoleph took a step back away from her.

  Embarrassed, she drew the satin sheet up to her shoulders to cover her nakedness, then turned her face away from him to cover her shame.

  7

  2 Alturiak, the Year of the Gauntlet (1369 DR)

  TEMPLE OF THE DELICATE CHAOS, INNARLITH

  You seem very certain of Senator Pristoleph’s desires,” Wenefir said, his eyebrows crunched together in thought. “Has he said as much to you?”

  “Does he have to?” Marek Rymüt asked. He smiled at the Cyricist who sat across from him. Wenefir’s bloated, too-soft body reeked of stale perfume and sweat. The
gold and silver goblet in his hand had been drained and refilled eight times by an emaciated boy in a clean white tunic. The boy’s face was as soft and as clean as his clothing, but his eyes appeared almost dead. Even Marek didn’t want to imagine what so youthful a servant must have been put through to burn so much of him away. “What else is there for him?”

  “I assure you, Master Rymüt, the subject of the Palace of Many Spires has come up between the senator and myself on numerous occasions. Not only has he never expressed an interest in the position, but he has repeatedly criticized those who covet it.”

  “They say it is a woman’s prerogative to change her mind,” said the Thayan, “and we both know the same holds true for men—but for genasi, who knows?”

  Wenefir bristled at the word genasi, and Marek returned the look with a smile.

  “I am no fool, Priest of Cyric,” the wizard said. “Our friend’s … father, was it? … was a native of the Elemental Plane of Fire.”

  “Careful, Master Rymüt,” Wenefir warned, then once again emptied his goblet.

  The boy stepped up with the ewer, but the Cyricist waved him away.

  “Ever careful, thank you, Master Wenefir,” Marek replied with a wink. “I have friends and close associates among the planetouched, as among other races. I hold no prejudices in that regard.”

  “But some in this city do,” Wenefir said.

  “As a foreigner myself, I can assure you that you are indeed correct. Should Pristoleph wish to continue to keep his secret, as open as it might be among those with more than the most rudimentary education, so be it. I have kept and will continue to keep secrets aplenty on his behalf and others’.”

  Wenefir nodded and waved that train of thought away. They both had secrets, they all had secrets, and both he and Wenefir knew that their secrets would be kept as long as—and only just as long as—it was in the keeper’s best interest to hold them.

  “If it’s true what you say of his ambitions,” Wenefir said, “and I am not saying it is true, then this marriage is even more disastrous. Is it not?”

  Marek shrugged and smiled broader. “Phyrea is a delightful girl, just the type that Pristoleph and—dare I utter his cursed name—Ivar Devorast are most drawn to. Or so I’m told.” He winked at Wenefir, who grimaced. “I think she’ll add an air of refinement and culture, not to mention her father’s numerous contacts, to our friend’s social arsenal, don’t you?”

  “No,” Wenefir replied, not bothering to mask his surprise—even outrage at Marek’s sudden change of opinion. “No, I most certainly do not. First of all, her father’s contacts fled him the second his life was beaten out of him with his own leg.”

  Marek searched the priest’s mien for any hint that he knew it was Marek who had arranged that ignoble death, but if he did know, he didn’t betray himself.

  “Secondly, it is well known throughout the city-state that Phyrea is mad, and I don’t mean that garden variety madness that strikes all the scions of the aristocracy in their youth, but well and truly insane. If anything, an association with her will do him damage—considerable damage. I was certain you agreed with me on that, at least, and not long ago.”

  Marek shrugged in a theatrical way he hoped wouldn’t too deeply wound the Cyricist.

  “Well,” said the Thayan, “I suppose I’ll have to summon that prerogative we touched on earlier.”

  “‘Cyric smiles on those who change their minds,’” Wenefir recited, but it was plain he didn’t believe it—at least not just then. “But still….”

  “But still,” Marek said, “it seems to you as though my stated loyalty to Senator Pristoleph is in question.”

  “No more in question than your stated loyalty to Ransar Salatis.”

  Marek took that opportunity to lift his too-heavy goblet and sip the cloying, sweet wine. Wenefir swallowed, too, doing his best to mask the trepidation he obviously felt at having challenged the Red Wizard. Even in the safety of his secret, monster-infested temple, Wenefir had to know how powerful an enemy Marek Rymüt would be—the same way Marek knew that Wenefir was hardly a man to be trifled with.

  “Here we sit,” the Thayan said, “in a temple dedicated to the Mad God. I know that your own loyalty is to that master. I think it goes without saying that when all is said and done my loyalty is to a certain tharchion far, far away in my beloved homeland. But alas, all has not been said or done, so here we are. You threw your lot in with Pristoleph early, I hear, and have maintained that even after you found a new, much more powerful and compelling master to serve. I have remained loyal to the highest bidder, while nurturing a loyalty to the next highest.”

  “And Pristoleph is the next highest?”

  “Pristoleph,” Marek said with a grin, “may well be the highest of all.”

  Wenefir swallowed again and looked off into the gloom of the subterranean chamber. He held up his goblet and the dead-eyed boy stepped to him and filled it again. He brought the cup to his lips but stopped before he drank and looked up at Marek, his eyes cold and hard. Marek returned the glare with a smile and Wenefir took a small sip of wine.

  “So you will make a ransar of Pristoleph,” the Cyricist said. “And he’ll be a ransar with more coins than friends.”

  “Only the poorest of the Fourth Quarter wretches have more friends than coins, my friend,” Marek relied. “And between the two of us, I should think, we could muster sufficient support.”

  “A process, I can guess, that you’ve already begun.”

  “In earnest,” Marek replied with a wink. “Senator Sitre has made his intentions known.”

  Wenefir’s eyes briefly crossed and he shook his head.

  “I know, I know,” Marek said, holding out a hand as though to steady the priest from across the space between them. “Sitre has long been a close associate of Salatis’s, but the Palace of Many Spires does tend to inspire as much jealousy as it does awe, especially in the unimaginative.”

  “Indeed,” said the priest.

  “I wonder,” Marek said, making a show of looking up at the ceiling, “what two men with the proper imagination could muster in a place like Innarlith?”

  He looked back at Wenefir, who gazed off into the gloom again, imagining.

  8

  12 Alturiak, the Year of the Gauntlet (1369 DR)

  THE GRAND CANAL OF THE SECOND EMPEROR, SHOU LUNG

  Ivar Devorast sat on a hill a hundred and thirty miles west along the Grand Canal of the Second Emperor from the city of Wuhu, a hundred and fifty miles northwest of Ch’ungkung. Ran Ai Yu stopped, the bowls of rice beginning to burn her hands, and stared at him. She had seen westerners in Shou Lung before, had seen the faraway, lost looks in their eyes, the confusion and fear in their halting speech, the insecurity that came from being in a place at once familiar and so alien. She knew she’d felt the same the first time she’d ventured west into Faerûn, and she still felt that way most of the time, even after having spent so much time in Innarlith, Calimport, and surrounding cities.

  But Ivar Devorast showed none of that discomfort. His eyes darted from the unfamiliar to the exotic without ever betraying a sense of the difference between one and the other. He’d picked up a few words of Kao te Shou already, even though they had been in her home country for but a few days.

  The voyage had lasted a month—fast even for her—and Devorast had seemed equally at home aboard the vessel he’d built for her, the wondrous Jié Zuò, as he was passing through the occasional magical portal they’d used to shave time from the voyage. She had been concerned about his reaction to that, but he’d had none. He seemed either to trust her to convey him safely to Shou Lung, or he simply didn’t care. She hoped it was the former, but feared it was the latter.

  And so there he sat, on a high hilltop overlooking the Grand Canal of the Second Emperor, stretched out far below them, a ribbon of blue-black water no different from any river. On the other side, following the canal’s lazily-winding course between the moundlike hills ran the Kaifen
g Highway, a band of dusty brown punctuated here and there by the clouds of dust kicked up by a passing caravan. Ships and barges alike plied the waters of the canal, square sails making the most of the cool, strong breeze that tore through the hills. He sat facing north into Hungtse Province, though where he sat was the northern frontier of Wang Kuo. Ran Ai Yu knew that Ivar Devorast cared little for that distinction, or for any of the names people had given anything. She spared a glance at her own ship, which sat tied to the edge of the canal three hundred feet below. The ceramic tiles sparkled in the sunlight, and the sight of it filled her with awe, even though it had been hers for more than six years.

  “Rice?” Devorast asked, not turning his head.

  Ran Ai Yu smiled and stepped forward, not speaking until she had come to his side and he looked up at her.

  “Yours will be no less impressive,” she said.

  He glanced at the bowl of rice she held out to him and cracked just the tiniest of smiles. Ran Ai Yu felt her heart expand in her chest, but she fought down the feeling. She couldn’t keep herself from blushing, though, but Devorast didn’t seem to notice.

  He took the bowl from her hand and said, “Thank you. For the rice.”

  “May I sit?” she asked, and he nodded.

  She sank into a lotus position next to him, close but not so close that anything could be implied. She took a deep breath and settled her own rice bowl in the folds of her robe.

  They sat for a long time in silence, neither of them eating, just staring off into the distance at the bald hills on the other side of the canal, at the wakes of the boats running along the water, and the clouds drifting lazily across the azure sky.

  “You will have to go back,” she said, and her jaw started to tremble so she closed her mouth.

  “I have only been here a few days.”

  “And what have you learned?”

  He didn’t answer for a long time, so Ran Ai Yu waited.