Authors: Philip Athans
“Have we made a grievous error coming out here, boys?” the dwarf had to ask.
“Aye,” his cousin replied without a pause to think.
“The worst mistake of my life,” Devorast said, even as he went back to work.
The two dwarves joined him,all three of their boulders half the size they were when they’d started on them.
“Still,” Devorast said, “it is good to be out in the fresh air. The city’s smell can get to you after a while.”
“Bah,” Hrothgar replied. “A little sulfur never hurt a body. Reminds me of the stench of home.”
“It’s not just the smell, though, is it Ivar?” Vrengarl asked.
Though his cousin and the human went on with their labor, Hrothgar had to stop and consider VrengarFs words. It was as if he and Devorast shared some secret in common that Hrothgar wasn’t privy to.
Why in the deeper three of the Nine Hells should I care if they do? he asked himself.
“No, Vrengie, it’s not,” the human replied. “It’s the people.”
“Aye,” Hrothgar said. “I know what you mean. Humans … if they didn’t breed like dung beetles they would have stupided themselves into oblivion by now and given the rest of Faerun a chance to take a breath. Like this here senator whatshisname?”
“Infelp?” Vrengarl suggested.
“Inzelf?” Hrothgar replied. “Inpelp? Whatever his name is. Here he’s got this grand plan for a grape farm out here in the middle of nowhere … well, if not the middle of nowhere then a point just west of the edge of nowhere … and what for? Wine? All this for wine? My grandmother used to drink wine on special occasions and such, but really. It’s not a beverage for someone with danglies, human, dwarf, or otherwise. It’s as if the sissier they are the better they’re thought of. There’s nary a real male among the lot of ‘em.”
“Present company excluded, of course,” Vrengarl cut in, with a nod to Devorast and a stern look for his cousin.
“Aye, yeah,” Hrothgar said, feeling his already red, hot face flush. “Sorry ‘bout that, Ivar.”
“No worries,” the human replied. “I’m inclined to agree, in principle at least.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“This city is nothing,” Devorast explained, working all the while. “It’s a fly speck on the map of Faerun, surrounded by greater realms with greater men to lead them. They scurry around after artifacts and curios from this or that far-off corner of Toril, never bothering to make anything of their own. They even had to bring me and…”
He stopped himself, and Hrothgar looked up at him.
“They even had to bring me all the way from Cormyr to build ships,” Devorast continued. “They brought you two and other dwarves from the Great Rift, and men of more races than I can count from everywhere to show them how to tie their wives’ corsets. You’re right, Hrothgar, there’s not a real man in that city, and only a handful who’d know one if he saw him.”
Hrothgar stopped working again to ponder that. He’d never heard a human criticize other humans like that. Devorast might have been a dwarf at heart after all.
“Stopping for tea, are we?” the foreman shouted from across the line. He still held the rolled-up parchment, and his face was still sweaty and pinched under the shadow of his hat. “What’s that little chat costing me, dwarf?”
“Apologies all around, boss,” Hrothgar called out, then smashed his hammer hard into the boulder, breaking it clean in half. Under his breath, he added, “Come closer and I’ll do the same to your head, you rat-birthed fancylad.”
Vrengarl and Devorast chuckled and the foreman walked away.
“Ever wonder what’s on that parchment he carries around?” Hrothgar asked.
“A shopping list from his wife,” Devorast suggested.
“Milk, bread, tomatoes,” Vrengarl listed, “oregano, a real man…”
They laughed some more and broke rocks for the rest of the long, hot summer afternoon.
57______
Midsummer, the Yearofthe Wave (1364 DR) Second Quarter, Innarlith
Across the street from the Palace of Many Spires was a building that, had it been only a little farther away from the ransar’s edifice, would have been terribly impressive.
Among the ten largest structures in Innarlith, the Chamber of Law and Civility housed the cavernous senate chambers where decisions that affected the lives of every citizen of the city-state were, if not created or agreed upon, then argued and fussed over. If the Palace of Many Spires was the showcase of the city, the Chamber of Law and Civility, otherwise known simply as the Chamber, was its bulging purse.
Willem scanned the room from a vantage point he might never have again. He stood behind the ransar’s ornate, ceremonial throne on the highest part of a four-tiered dais that was the focal point of the largest enclosed amphitheater he’d ever seen. The throne, carved from a single slab of High Forest redwood by a craftsman who could only have been an elf, sat empty that day. Willem tried to avoid staring at it so as not to appear either disappointed that the ransar wasn’t there or covetous of the throne itself.
He stood with four other men, three of whom he recognized from Meykhati’s salon and other functions, and one who appeared to be a half-elf. They were the newest appointees to the senate and were dressed for the occasion under layer after sweaty layer of fine linen, silk, and wool. Willem itched and chafed in the attire that had been chosen by his mother and donated by a select group of tailors, cobblers, and jewelers anxious to have their wares be seen on the floor of the Chamber.
On the tier below them were three of the senior senators: Meykhati, Inthelph, and a man Willem recognized but whose name escaped him. The thought that he was no longer in the position to be able to forget another senator’s name made him sweat just a little more, but he remained standing still and straight, a self-satisfied smile lighting his clean-shaven face.
His mother looked down at him from the gallery. An empty seat next to her should have been occupied by Phyrea. He had sent word to her father’s country manor with an invitation to the ceremony, but she had not deigned to reply. Had he then invited Halina in her place, the
master builder might have taken offense, so his mother sat alone. Willem forced himself not to consider the fact that he had no other friends in Innarlith.
“Senators, ladies, and gentlemen,” Meykhati called out from the dais below. His voice echoed in the massive chamber, bouncing from soaring flying buttresses and a domed ceiling whose apex was fully two hundred feet above their heads, the interior painted in Sembian frescoes depicting scenes of commerce and civil discourse. The room had the air of a temple, but even Waukeen’s priests were never so crass in their celebration of all things mercantile. “Please give your attention to these men, who have come before us, as is our law, on this Midsummer, to beg your permission to swing wide the doors of this hallowed institution and admit their wisdom, labor, and loyalty to the Grand Senate of Innarlith.”
A rousing round of applause exploded from the assembled senatorsWillem never realized there were so many!and his ears began to ring.
The ceremony was a simple one, held every year on the Midsummer festival. He had heard it described but had never seen it, it being an invitation-only affair. It was, however, the one day a year that any of the public was invited into the Chamber of Law and Civility at all.
“With your leave, I will begin by introducing to you a young man whom we all have come to know and trust though his time among us has been short,” Meykhati went on. Willem tensed. Each of the new senators required a sitting senator to introduce him, and that elder senator would be his patron in all things, at least for the first six months while the new senator got to know the lay of the land. Willem, though, had agreed to be Meykhati’s man for five years. “My fellow senators, meet our peer: Senator Willem Korvan.”
The applause again but not as loud, and Willem stepped forward. All he could think of was that he walk carefully in his new shoes so as not to trip in front of the assembled
senate and his mother. He stopped at the edge of the high tier. As he’d been instructed he bowed first to Meykhati, then the master builder, then the third senator, and finally to the assembly. The applause trickled to silence and Willem stepped backward, again careful not to trip. He took his place in line once more.
“Senator Salatis,” Meykhati called, “please come forward.”
Salatis stood and walked down the center aisle, taking a place behind a podium on the bottom tier of the dais.
Willem looked up at his mother, the smile still plastered on his face. She was so far away he couldn’t really see her features, but still he got the feeling she was crying. Her wave was tight and practiced, as if she were Queen Filfaeril on parade through the streets of Marsember. He looked away.
“My fellow senators,” Salatis began, “ladies and gentlemen. It is my pleasure to introduce to you a young man who has distinguished himself in the service of the city watch, twice beating down the insidious rabble-rousers who daily press for the rebellion of the peasantry against their betters.”
The young man next to Willem stepped forward.
That was it. They had moved on. Meykhati had said just enough to satisfy the letter of the traditional introductions and had named him senator. Willem’s smile went away.
He didn’t listen to the rest of Salatis’s lengthy and gushing introduction, and barely noticed the other two. Willem knew he should have been studying every detail, memorizing every word, but he couldn’t. There would be time, he told himself, to get to know everyone he needed to know, but even then, would it matter? It wasn’t as though he’d have to build coalitions, chair meetings, champion writs and proclamations.
All he’d have to do for five yearsor as long as he was a member of the senatewas exactly what Meykhati told him to do. In exchange, he’d have a title, a generous stipend of gold and property… everything he’d ever wanted.
He looked around the massive room, in awe of its beauty and of the power that was like a palpable thing there, an electricity in the air. On the floor of the room, which sloped up away from the dais, were arranged chairs of so many different designs he didn’t try to identify even a fraction of them. It had become a tradition, after one senator complained of the seats the then-master builder had provided for them and finally brought in one of his own, that each senator provide his own chair and desk. It quickly became a competition for who could find the most exotic seat, the most ornate, the oldest, the newest, the most expensive.
Willem’s mother had already begun shopping for one, and thanks to a gift of gold bars from the master builder, was free to spend more on his chair than he’d spent on that ridiculous sculpture for Phyrea. Try as he might, Willem couldn’t stand the thought of sitting on something that cost so much, but then he was a senator, and in Innarlith at least, that’s what senators did.
One of the other junior senators nudged him with an elbow and Willem realized the ceremony had come to an end.
He followed his fellow inductees down the steps of the dais and into a crowd of senators, relatives, and well-wishers. The lot of them streamed out of the senate chambers and into an adjacent room, one almost as big, where a massive feast had been prepared. Musicians began to play from a corner of the room, and servants filtered through the dispersing crowd with food and drinks. All around was gay laughter and light banter.
“Willem, my dear,” his mother beamed. She appeared to him from the center of the crowd like a dolphin breaking the surface of a raging sea. Her smile was all teeth and pageantry. “Oh, my dear, dear Willem!”
She took his face in her hands and he smiled because he knew she’d want him to.
“Senator Willem Korvan,” she said, and there was a tear in her eye.
“Mother,” he said and could think of nothing else to say.
Hands clapped him on the back and patted him on the shoulder as he and his mother smiled at each of the passersby and uttered inane, meaningless greetings.
“The throne was empty,” his mother whispered in his ear when the function had finally settled into pockets of friends, acquaintances, and co-conspirators.
“The ransar’s throne?” he asked, even though he knew precisely what she was referring to.
“So auspicious a day,” Thurene said with a pained grimace, “and Ransar Osorkon couldn’t be bothered even to walk across the street!”
He found himself starting to say something in the ransar’s defense but stopped.
“When you’re ransar,” his mother said, her voice and face conveying real sincerity, “I never want you to miss one of these. It simply should not be allowed.”
In his entire life Willem Korvan had never wanted so badly to hit his mother.
58_
9 Eleasias, the Year of the Wave (1364 DR) The Winery
Hrothgar woke up with his hammer in his hand and was on his feet before he realized it was just Devorast.
“By the braided beard of the Brightaxe, Ivar,” he grumbled. “I just about cracked ya one.”
Hrothgar took no offense at Devorast’s crooked, doubtful smile. Instead he leaned the heavy sledgehammer against his dank, musty cot and sat. Vrengarl snored away, dead to the world.
The tent they shared was a tight fit for the three of them: Devorast a little too tall for it, and the two dwarves a little too wide, but while they toiled away on the rich man’s
winery, the tent was home. It kept the rain out better than their basement room, at least, though it had only rained twice since they’d been there. There was a decent sense of camaraderie in the camp, so no one messed about with their belongings or kept the camp up late with talking, singing, or other disturbances. It wasn’t the Great Rift, but Hrothgar had seen worse.
“Where do you go at night?” the dwarf asked.
Devorast pulled off his tunic and sat on the edge of his own cot. In the dark tent Hrothgar knew the human couldn’t see his face, but the dwarf could see Devorast’s.
“Ivar?” Hrothgar prompted.
“The woods,” the human answered, then rubbed his face with his hands.
“North?” asked the dwarf. “Across the path?”
“It gives me a chance to think,” he said. “You know how we humans value the fresh air.”