away, trailing a string of pale yellow sinew then snapping off entirely. Devorast staggered back, shaking the dismembered tongue from his hammer.
Hrothgar, pressing with all his might, looked down into the giant frog’s mouth. Behind him, the sound of the other amphibian’s deep, grumbling screams were punctuated by thud after thud as Devorast beat the thing with his hammer over and over. Hrothgar let his own hammer fall to the ground in order to free up the hand closest to his enemy’s mouth. Bending at the knees, giving the frog the impression that he was being pulled farther in, Hrothgar reached, straining every muscle and tendon in his arm until they creaked. When his hand found human flesh, he squeezed as tightly as he could and pulled with his arm, his back, and both legs. Swallowing, the giant frog fought against him, but Hrothgar could feel the boy starting to slide in his direction.
Something made the giant frog bounce, and the grip of the tongue weakened just enough that Hrothgar, with one great pull, wrenched the boy’s face clear of the thing’s gullet. The dwarf made eye contact with the waterboy, whose face was a reddened, slime-covered mask of sheer terror, his mouth open wide in a silent scream, his eyes as red as his cheeks.
The frog jerked again, and Hrothgar realized that Devorast, having taken down his own giant frog, stood next to the thing, pounding away at it with his hammer.
The hammer blows, combined with Hrothgar’s relentless pull on the struggling boy and the natural impulse of any animal when it finds something lodged half in and half out of its throat, finally forced the boy free. The dwarf tossed him to the ground where he rolled away, mouth still gaping, eyes wide, body shaking, skin and eyes red, clothes torn, and drenched in the frog’s vile, slimy spittle.
Devorast paused in his attacks only long enough to hand Hrothgar his hammer. The two of themthe human standing in the tall grass and the dwarf still pushing against the relentless pull of the massive tonguewent to work on the giant frog one stone-splitting hammer blow at a time.
It took dozens and dozens of those blows to kill the thing, but in time, Hrothgar fell from the dead tongue’s embrace.
He sat on the ground for half a dozen deep, rattling breaths before he looked up at Devorast. The human looked around, brushing away the grass with the back of one hand.
A cheer and a smattering of applause came from the top of the hill, where the other workers had gathered. Hrothgar didn’t allow himself to wonder how long the whoresons had been standing there watching, not helping, while he and Devorast saved the Waterboys and killed two giant frogs all on their own. He looked back at Devorast instead.
The human said, “Where are the water buckets?”
Hrothgar took a breath, almost answered, then lay back in the tall grass and laughed.
Had he looked up just then he might have seen a pair of cold, hard eyes half in and half out of the water and the top of what would have looked like a woman’s head barely breaking the river’s surface. Those malevolent, critical eyes watched every move Ivar Devorast made until he finally strode back up the hill to get back to work. Then it slid back into the unforgiving waters of the Nagaflow.
24
5 Mirtul, the Year of Maidens (1361 DR) The Nagaflow Keep
Willem had never been more uncomfortable in the presence of the master builder. Inthelph seethed with anger, and Willem suffered through the seemingly endless carriage ride trying not to make eye contact with him. The carriage bounced and jostled for hour after hour, testing the limits of Willem’s patience and the integrity of his kidneys. When they stopped to rest the horses, Willem found new sources of pain and stiffness in his exhausted body.
Inthelph appeared no worse for wear, though. It was as if his anger and outrage were keeping the trip from wearing on him.
Throughout the sixteen-hour ride from Innarlith to the proposed site of the Nagaflow Keep, Willem sat in silence. For the first several hours he’d tried to puzzle out what in Faerun’s name Devorast must have been thinking, but by the time the carriage came to a stop amid the clatter of stonemasons at work, he’d given up trying.
When he’d first heard that Devorast had begun construction on the keep, he’d had a momentary thrill. Though he’d certainly never admit it to the master builder or anyone in the master builder’s acquaintanceand therefore almost no one in Innarlithhe admired the pure outrageous hubris of the whole thing. It was so far beyond mere self-confidence that Willem couldn’t even puzzle at its source. Once confronted by the master builder, Willem had faked shocked outrage and joined Inthelph in days’ worth of steaming, hateful rants. Messages were sent and ignored, agents dispatched and sent home, and finally Inthelph decided to go to the river himself. He didn’t bother asking Willem to go along. It was simply assumed.
Willem let the master builder step out of the carriage first. The softly glowing lamps that swung from the corners of the carriage only made it more difficult to see anything happening at a distance. Willem stepped out of the carriage, stiff muscles protesting all the way, and blinked in a vain attempt to adjust his eyes to the odd lighting.
Torches driven into the rolling grassland turned the sky into a starless expanse of the deepest black. Willem judged it to be near or just after midnight, and still the work site was abuzz with the clatter of hammers on wedges, the grunts of workers, and the barking laughs of men drawn close by hard work toward a common goal. The very air was alight with a sense of order and calm but driven efficiency.
All that was lost on Inthelph.
“Where is he?” the master builder asked, his face flushing red, his lips curling up over his graying teeth. “Where is this man of yours?”
Willem had no idea. He’d never been out into the wild lands north of the city to the river everyone said was infested with the nagas that gave it its name and other creatures less intelligent but no less dangerous.
The master builder didn’t wait for him to answer anyway and instead stomped off into the thick of the crowded work site. Willem followed behind, determined to let the master builder do all the talking. He’d stopped short of practicing a look of crushed disappointment in a mirror but was certain Devorast would know how he feltor at least how he wanted to appear to be feeling, for the admiration he’d felt when he’d first heard that Devorast had begun work was only intensified with every step they took through the tightly organized site. If Willem had had to guess, he’d have said they’d been at work for the better part of six months, but he knew it had been less than two.
Inthelph stopped a man carrying a bundle of sticks on his back and demanded, “Where is Ivar Devorast?”
The man with the sticks looked at the master builder with a passive, quietly respectful look and Willem realized then that the crew Devorast had assembled had no idea what he’d done, but then, why would they need to know?
“He’s over by the dwarfs,” the man drawled, his accent as much as his occupation marking him as a citizen of the Fourth Quarter.
Inthelph raised an eyebrow, and the man nodded in the direction of a steep, flat-topped hill. Without another word, the master builder stomped off up the hill with Willem in tow. The climb was rough, especially after sixteen hours in a carriage, but the higher they climbed the more of the surrounding territory Willem could see. When they reached the top of the bill, more of the torches revealed the shimmering waters of a wide river below. Willem tried to imagine the scene in the daylight and realized he could see for miles on all sides. He guessed that in the daylight they’d be able to see all the way east to the Golden Road bridge. That crossing was already fortified by the ransar, it being a vital trade link to Arrabar and the Vilhon Reach to the north, but from the hill…
“Perfect,” Willem whispered.
The master builder paid him no mind. He’d spotted Devorast sitting next to a small fire, sipping from a steaming cup of tea and bent over a sheet of parchment. At his side was a squat dwarf with greasy red-brown hair and hands that looked as rough as the stone his hammer and apron said he worked with. Inthelph charged up to
