Authors: Philip Athans
“Some wine, perhaps?” Marek asked Wenefir, who shook his head, looking down at the box with a distant expression.
Marek waved the apprentice away and the door closed.
“How many Thayans live here now?” Wenefir asked.
Marek shrugged and smiled. He had no intention of replying in any further detail. Instead, he asked, “What is it, Wenefir? There’s something on your mind, my old friend.”
“Are we friends?” the priest asked. “I didn’t think we were.”
“There isn’t a word for precisely what we are to each other, Wenefir,” the Red Wizard answered, meaning to be cryptic in his response. “But I suppose ‘friends’ will have to do.”
“I suppose so,” the priest answered.
“So?”
Wenefir sighed, maybe just for effect, and said, “Pristoleph has freed Ivar Devorast and that alchemist of his.”
Marek blinked and put a hand to his heart before he realized maybe he should try to pretend he wasn’t surprised. But then, even someone who knew as much as Marek Rymiit knew had to hear everything for the first time.
“I suppose Devorast will return to work, then,” the Red Wizard guessed.
“He was pulled out of an eight by eight cell in the dungeons under the Palace of Many Spires yesterday, and I understand he’s already on his way north.”
“Well,” Marek said with a sigh, “I suppose that is the ransar’s prerogative. Surely, though, as his seneschal, you had some influence on that decision.”
“I suppose people could get that impression,” the priest grumbled, his normally reedy voice surprisingly deep. “I have been his oldest and most loyal confidant for more years than I want to enumerate, but my opinion seems less and less relevant to him.”
“Oh?” Marek prodded. “And who has the ransar’s ear if not for you?”
“That woman …” Wenefir started, but wouldn’t let himself finish.
“It’s been my experience,” Marek said, not letting Wenefir stew too much over the fair Phyrea, “that men like Pristoleph rapidly tire of women like Phyrea.”
“Beauty fades?”
Marek laughed and even Wenefir cracked a smile.
“Beauty like Phyrea’s shan’t fade for many, many years to come, Seneschal,” Marek said.
“Her influence on him will last as long, I fear.” Marek shrugged that off.
“I’m surprised at you,” Wenefir went on. “I suppose I’m always surprised at you … but you as much as anyone helped make Pristoleph ransar, and to let that idiot girl, that mad woman, bend his ear…”
“What has she told him to do that so worries you?” Marek asked.
Wenefir shook his head and started to pace the parlor, his puffy girth coming close to knocking expensive Kozakuran ceramics from the side tablesand Marek winced with every pass.
“Was it Phyrea who prompted him to release Devorast?” the Red Wizard asked.
“I don’t think so,” the priest replied, “but perhaps. Regardless, she is a negative influence on a man who could do us both more harm than we’d like to admit, should circumstances move him in that direction.”
“Then we will have to remain in control of his circumstances,” the Red Wizard said. He wouldn’t tell Wenefir the whole truth, but he thought maybe he could calm some of the priest’s only partially-warranted fears. “Besides, I’m hardly afraid of Pristoleph.”
“Careful, Master Rymiit,” the priest warned. “The ransar is more than he seems.”
“Oh, please, Wenefir,” Marek replied with a chuckle that made his generous rolls shudder. “It takes more than a genasi to frighten me, I assure you.”
Wenefir raised an eyebrow in surprise, but the expression was fleeting. “I should learn not to be surprised that you know everything about everyone.”
Marek shrugged.
“Still, Marek-” Wenefir started.
“Calm yourself, Wenefir,” the Red Wizard interrupted. “Between the two of us, Pristoleph is well in hand, and
should that stop being the case, well … perhaps you can use your priestly skills to ask the rotting corpse of Salatis what happens when a ransar outlives his usefulness.”
Wenefir stopped pacing and kept his eyes away from Marek’s. He crossed his arms over his chest and his voice squeaked a little when he said, “Perhaps that wine, after all?”
27_
18 Nightal, the Year of Wild Magic (1372 DR) The Land of One Hundred and Thirteen
I had these teeth carved out of whalebone for you,” Marek Rymiit said, holding up the little bowl for Willem to see. Gray-black clouds boiled in the sky above them. Standing on the roof of the tower as they were, the bottoms of the clouds seemed only inches above their heads. “Open your mouth.”
The undead thing opened its jaws wide and Marek stepped closer. Emaciated and half-rotten, Willem Korvan stood naked in the uniformly warm air of his master’s pocket dimension. Marek examined the spaces in his black gums where the teeth had fallen out.
“I wish you would have kept the originals,” Marek chastised his creation. “These will dono one will notice, anywaybut they’ll hurt.”
Marek didn’t expect any reaction from Willem and didn’t get one, but Insithryllax grunted from behind him and said, “Why do you speak to that thing as though it understands you?”
Willem’s yellow eyes rolled in their deep-sunken sockets to fix on the dragon, who leaned against one of the battlements in his human form.
“What makes you think he can’t understand me?” the Red Wizard asked.
“You’re the expert,” the dragon acquiesced, “but still….”
“Still, nothing,” Marek said. “Willem understands me. It’s a part of the curse, I suppose, and I doubt it’s something he appreciates. In fact, if I didn’t have total control of his shredded will, I have no doubt he’d have pounded me to death with one of my own limbs the way he did the late master builder.”
“So,” said the dragon, “doesn’t that give you pause?”
Marek shook his head and chuckled in response. He chose one of the whalebone teeth and lined it up with a puckered, dried-up hole in the top right side of Willem’s mouth. He pressed it in until it met a little resistance, then wiggled it around a bit until it started moving again. Willem didn’t move or react in any way.
“That’s grotesque, Marek,” Insithryllax complained. “Really.”
“Well, if you want to undo an omelet,” Marek said, “you have to reassemble a few eggs.”
He let go of the tooth and stepped back to make sure it was straight.
“Close enough?” he asked the dragon.
“A little to the left.”
Marek adjusted the tooth and moved on to the next one.
“Don’t you usually leave a hood on this thing anyway?” the dragon went on, and Marek started to wonder about his curiosity. “Surely this isn’t cosmetic.”
“Well, in a way it is,” Marek said while he pressed the second tooth into another dead space in the thing’s black gums. “You see, I require a living Willem Korvan for a timeor, well, a mostly living one, anyway. His looks have always been his most potent weapon.”
Insithryllax let out a scoffing breath.
“I meant it was his most potent weapon, my friend,” Marek confirmed. “At any rate, I intend to restore a measure of life to our friend here.”
Marek looked up at the undead man’s eyes and was certain that there was some recognition there. He knew the creature could think, though not necessarily make decisions, and that he could speak, even.
“You hear me, don’t you, Willem?” he said. “Do you want to live again?”
The creature just stood there.
“I’ll take that as a maybe,” Insithryllax said.
Marek jammed another false tooth into the dead man’s gums and said, “O ye of little faith. He wants to live again, Insithryllax. Of that I am entirely certain, though he will likely not be terribly satisfied with the life he’ll return to.”
“He has been… gone,” the dragon said, “for a long time, by human standards.”
“He has, hasn’t he?” Marek agreed. “But don’t forget that I have some influence on the way the winds blow in Innarlith. I’ll have him returned to the senate. I’ve even kept his house sealed and waiting for him.”
“I’m sure he’ll be delighted,” said the dragon, even though Marek had just told him that Willem wouldn’t be.
“Delighted or not,” the Red Wizard said, “he will continue to be mine to command.”
The dragon watched, occasionally commenting, while Marek finished restoring the dead man’s teeth. When he was finished he stepped back to examine his handiwork and smiled.
“Willem,” he said, “I have something to tell you.” The undead creature gave no indication he’d heard a thing.
Marek turned to Insithryllax and said, “Just for you, my friend, a little demonstration. This is not a zombie, after all, and not insensate.”
The dragon shrugged but continued to look on.
“Willem,” Marek said, “the ransar has released Ivar Devorast from his dungeon.”
The dead man’s head twitched a fraction of an inch.
“You don’t like that name, do you, Willem?” asked the Red Wizard. “Ivar Devorast?”
The dead man’s jaws clacked closed, and Marek gasped, worried the new teeth might crack, but they remained intact.
“I know you want to kill him,” Marek went on. “You will have your chance soon enough.”
The corpse moved his head in a way that might have been a nod.
“I’ve sent others before you to claim his life,” Marek said, “and they have all failed.”
“You’ve never sent me,” Insithryllax said.
Marek ignored him and said to the corpse, “It will take everything I’ve put into you to kill that one, I think, though I still can’t put my finger on why he’s managed to live this long. Sheer force of will, I’m sure. But for the nonce I’m going to awaken a force that I left latent inside you when first I helped you transform into your current state. When your heart beats once more you’ll go back to Innarlith and the remains of your life.”
The undead thing just stood there, silent and unmoving.
“I want you to go back to being a second-rate human,” Marek said, “before I make you a first-rate monster.”
28_
19 Nightal, the Year of Wild Magic (1372 DR) The Canal Site
Iristoleph pulled the two boards apart with his bare hands, the too-small nails squeaking and bending as they gave way. He blinked in the drizzling rain and watched as Devorast pried two more boards apart with a crowbar. He placed the board with no nails left in it on a neat stack of weathered planks then went to work on the nails sticking out of the other board.
“There will be no shortage of disappointed dilettantes in Innarlith this evening,” Pristoleph said.
Devorast glanced at him but didn’t answer.
Pristoleph smiled and looked at the viewing stand. It was half the size it was when it was filled, just days before, with gawking spectators. The previous overseers of the
canal project had had it moved along the length of the slowly-growing canal so the curious could see the construction and the accidents up close.
“They’ve gotten used to seeing people killed again,” Pristoleph went on. “When you were operating in secret and the rate of accidents fell sharply off, they’d stopped coming, but while you sat in the dungeon, the bloodshed returned, and so did they.”
Devorast, who’d removed the nails from the board he was working on, placed it on the stack and went to work on another step with his crowbar. Only he and the ransar worked on disassembling the viewing stand. The rest of the workers were busy on the canal itself, and Devorast refused to allow them to waste their time taking apart something that shouldn’t have been built in the first place.
“Perhaps I should have left you in there,” Pristoleph said, intentionally baiting Devorast. “I could have sold tickets. As long as things blew up in people’s faces and men were buried alive in mud, I would have made a fortune.”
“You already have a fortune,” Devorast said.
Pristoleph laughed, but studied the man at the same time. There was no anger apparent on his face, but he did seem annoyed, if only just a bit.
“I suppose you’re right,” the ransar said. “I have several fortunes. Perhaps you can go home, abduct your realm’s infant king, and come to me for the ransom. I can pay it.”
“But would you?”
Pristoleph stopped, making a show of the surprise he felt hearing Devorast actually ask a question. He didn’t pretend to know the man, but he could feel it was unusual for him. Pristoleph thought he might have been getting somewhere.
“No,” Pristoleph said, “I wouldn’t. Would you? If you had the means, of course.”
“The king of Cormyr is not my responsibility,” Devorast said, “and besides, he has the royal family to pay his ransom.”
“Someone else, then,” the ransar prodded. “Someone closer to you?”
“It’s a meaningless question, Ransar.”
“I wasn’t always the man I am today, you know,” Pristoleph said.
Devorast stacked more weathered lumber then started prying apart another step.
“I grew up in the Fourth Quarter,” Pristoleph said. “I grew up in the streets, but never in the gutter. I made myself what I am today by the force of my own will.”
Devorast glanced at him, but Pristoleph couldn’t quite decipher the expression.
“It was a long and difficult road from the Fourth Quarter,” Pristoleph said, “to here, where I am now: the highest-paid garbage man in Faerun.”
“I’m not paying you,” Devorast said.
“Nor are you understanding any of my jokes,” the ransar said. “Still, I get the feeling you have a sense of humor. After all, here you are working peacefully side by side with the man who held you in a stinking hole in the ground for more than a year. I would have killed me.”
“I’m not stopping you,” Devorast said.
Pristoleph laughed loud and hard, and for a while they went to work taking the viewing stand apart in silence.
“I also had to rely on myself as a child,” Devorast said, and Pristoleph was startled as much by the sudden sound of his voice as by the admission itself.
“Then you know what it’s like,” Pristoleph said, “to struggle for everything, to fight for every hint of power and influence, and every copper.”
“No, I don’t.”
Pristoleph stopped what he was doing and stared at Devorast, waiting for him to go on.
He had to wait a long time before Devorast said, “I’ve never been interested in power and influence. I don’t want to control people, and coins are tools to be used when you have them, and replaced by other tools when you don’t.”