the rain. With each footstep closer that Inthelph drew, the less likely that seemed to be. Devorast appeared only barely aware of the man.
Finally, Willem stepped into the chilling downpour and the master builder shook rain from his weathercloak under the scaffold.
Keeping his anger in check, Willem said, “Master Builder Inthelph, may I introduce my good friend and classmate Ivar Devorast, late of Marsember in the Kingdom of Cormyr.”
The master builder looked Devorast up and down like a man examining a fencepost for rusty nails.
Devorast, in turn, remained impassive, but nodded in a minute approximation of a bow and said, “Master Builder.”
“Devorast, is it?” Inthelph said, turning his stare to Willem. “Willem tells me we met in Cormyr. Though I’m sure I don’t recall that meeting, I’ve heard good things about you, despite the sad incident with the Neverwind.”
Willem’s skin froze on his body and his heart sank in his chest. Of course he’d heard the illfated cog referred to by that slanderous name “Neverwind” before, but to say it in the presence of a man who at least had a hand in its design and who had suffered greatly for its loss, was rude beyond description. Willem stood still, having no idea what to say or do.
“They say she was too big for her britches,” the master builder went on.
“It was precisely the size it needed to be,” Devorast said, his voice betraying no hint of animosity or anger, “and it was seaworthy.”
The master builder plastered a false grin on his face and said, “Of course it was. Though I know you’ve heard more than one authority maintain that she was simply too big for the portal.”
“Master Builder, sir…” Willem started, but when Inthelph looked at him and raised an eyebrow, he had no idea what to say.
“Fear not, Willem,” Inthelph said. “I have learned to trust your instincts and your judgment. If you judge this man to be worthy of my attention, then he must be, past failures aside.”
Willem watched Devorast for any sign of a reaction, certain that that last comment must rankle even him, but there was nothing.
“He is one of the great…” Willem said, still looking at Devorast. “He is one of the great minds.”
Devorast looked him in the eye then, and something that might have been silent thanks passed between the two men. Inthelph blew a breath out his nosenot quite a scoff but close enough.
“Well, then,” the master builder said, “I won’t keep any of us up here in the freezing rain any longer than we need to be. Devorast will have a place at the keep.”
“The Nagaflow Keep?” Willem asked, not surprised by the master builder’s decision.
Devorast looked between the two men, obviously waiting for further clarification.
Inthelph nodded and said to Willem, “Have him show me something in two months’ time.”
“Of course, Master Builder,” Willem said, “thank you, sir.”
“Yes,” Devorast said, and Willem could hear the reluctance in his voice, the words almost sticking in his throat, “thank you.”
Inthelph drew up his collar and stepped into the rain but paused at the top of the stairway. He turned to Willem and Devorast and said, “I think you will find that failure for me will mean worse than a year or two in poverty, Devorast. Do as well as your friend says you can.”
It had not the slightest ring of encouragement.
Willem and Devorast watched the master builder disappear down the stairs, then Devorast said, “The Nagaflow Keep?”
“A watchpost really,” Willem explained. “The ransar ‘ wishes to keep a closer eye on the river to the north.”
Devorast nodded and said, “Fine.”
Willem was about to say something when Devorast; just walked away, following the master builder down the stairs. Hate seethed under Willem’s skin and in the beating of his heart. He wanted Devorast to know how he felt. For the sake of fairness, just once the perfect Ivar Devorast should know what was like to be afraid, to be a failure.
“Fail,” Willem whispered after him, “you arrogant…”
He sighed instead of being vulgar then waited half a frigid hour before climbing down from the wall.
22
3 Tarsakh, the Year of Maidens (1361 DR) Second Quarter, Innarlith
When the black firedrake tore the man’s throat out, killing him instantly, it was tantamount to an act of mercy. After all, it had already melted off his face with its spittle of flaming acid.
As he looked on from a second-story rooftop above, Marek Rymiit was of two minds. He was thrilled by the sheer destructive power and undeniable effectiveness of the black firedrakes, but at the same time he was horrified by the ill-timed, accidental appearance of the creatures. It had been only a month and a half since he’d promised Insithryllax more space for his brood and that long since Marek had been down to check on them. Things had obviously gone from bad to worse in the hatchery.
Marek cringed away from a blast of heat and ducked behind the peak of the roofa good thing, too, as shards of glass pattered onto the shingles around him. He looked over the edge and simultaneously grinned and grimaced at the sight of the billowing, orange-traced smoke billowing out of the blasted storefront. It took only seconds before the lamp-oil merchant’s shop was completely engulfed in flames, which quickly spread to the neighboring buildings.
Screams of agony mingled with shouts of warning as the citizens of that once-quiet neighborhood took to the streets, some of them scurrying around in a blind panic like mice stirred up by a barnyard cat. More than one of them was on fire. A woman cradling a baby in her arms crouched in the middle of the street, screaming at a black firedrake that toyed with them before making a meal of both mother and child. A man in the apron of a butcher did his best to fend the creature off but was rewarded for his gallantry with a stream of blue-flickering acid to the face. Marek marveled at the precision of the firedrake’s attack. He had done well in their breeding indeed.
Aware that the spells that granted him a limited ability to fly and rendered him invisible would both soon fade away, Marek tore himself from the spectacle and hopped off the rooftop and into the air. Though he was certain it couldn’t see him, he had to dodge one of the firedrakes that swooped down to slash at the back of a draft horse. Though too small to carry the animal, the firedrake’s black dragon blood must have sent that idea to its limited brain. It quickly realized the error of its ways, though, and alit on the street to snap at the draft horse the old fashioned way. Though he had scant seconds to lose, Marek snuck furtive glances at the horse’s courageous if futile efforts to fend the firedrake off with its powerful hooves. By rearing up on its hind legs, all it did was open its groin to the firedrake’s acid. Left writhing in pain at the end of its harness, the cart behind it bobbing up and down so hard the wheels finally shattered, the horse succumbed to a savage bite to the neck.
Marek whipped around a corner, following the obvious, ever-widening path of destruction the black firedrakes his black firedrakeshad left in their wake. Three blocks of Sulfur Street were already ablaze, and if he’d bothered to count he would have seen at least pieces of a hundred | human bodies. Great columns of choking black smoke rose up into the warm, unseasonably sunny, early spring 3 sky. Marek had to hold his breath and close his eyes for a few seconds as he passed through one of the smoke columns. He came out the other end dusted in black soot and coughing just the same.
Pulling up a bit higher in the sky, he looked in the direction of the underground hatchery, expecting to see the path of destruction endor more properly begin-there, but it didn’t.
“They found a back door,” Marek muttered to himself, then closed his lips tightly so as not to draw the attention of one of the swooping, soaring firedrakes that filled the air around him.
Below him, Marek saw a small pottery shop he’d actually frequented a few timesthey were one of the few shops in the Second Quarter that specialized in local artistry, where most others were caught up in a growing craze
