“Do you know what a canal is?”
“Do you know that I’m not the village idiot?” Hrothgar growled.
Devorast smiled.
“So what?” the dwarf went on. “Now you want to build a canal?”
Before Devorast could reply the both of them were engulfed in water. The force of the wave hit Hrothgar so hard the air was forced from his lungs. It felt as if he’d fallen from a great heighta dozen feet or moreonto solid rock. He wanted to pull a breath into his already burning chest but knew if he did, he’d get nothing but water.
Someoneit must have been Devorastkicked him in the side. Gravel bit into his face and he was dragged along. The moment he realized he was upside down, he’d already spun back around. He kicked and kicked, but his boots found no solid ground. The water leeched all the heat from his muscles and his limbs stiffened and cramped. He couldn’t force himself to open his eyes so everything was utter blackness.
The muscles in Hrothgar’s broad chest pulsed, so great was his physical need to draw a breath. The cold water finally found its way up his nose. His whole head burned and the dwarf was afraid his eyes were going to launch from his skull. His ears popped. Someone grabbed his ankle.
Hrothgar felt his right hand come out of the water. The air was cold.
The hand came off his ankle, and he felt as though he’d changed direction. He thought he was being pulled out into the lakedeeper, deeper into the black, polluted water. He gasped, and water spilled into his lungs. He tried to cough but drew in more water instead. His chest exploded with pain, and his shoulders and stomach spasmed.
Someonecould it have been Devorast? grabbed him by the forearm.
Flashes of light assailed his vision, though his eyes were still closed. His head spun. He felt himself throw up but from such a detached perspective that it seemed unreal, like a distant memory.
Hrothgar’s hearing had been instantly overwhelmed by the roar of the wave, but he was sure he heard someone calling his name, far away and as if through a maze of intervening walls.
He must have blacked out for some time because to him there was no transition between being in the water tail over teacups, and being on his back out in the cold open air.
The crushing weight on his chest grew steadily more intense and water poured out over his already drenched beard. His eyes were still tightly shut and try as he might, Hrothgar couldn’t open them.
“Hrothgar!” Devorast shouted. He sounded close Inches away, maybe. “Come on, damn it.”
Hrothgar choked and coughed and more water came out. He took a breath.
I can breathe, he thought.
He tried to speak but only coughed some more. The water rattled in his chest, bubbling up his throat and sputtering out past his swollen tongue.
Hrothgar opened his eyes and was greeted to a too-close view of a drenched, disheveled Devorast The human looked as frantic as Hrothgar thought it was possible for him to be.
“Hrothgar!”
Hrothgar forced his way up to a sitting position, coughing out more and more water along the way.
“Damn it all,” the dwarf choked out It hurt him to speak, but he spoke anyway. “What… Wave?”
“It happens,” Devorast, winded, replied while he slapped the dwarf hard on the back. “They call them sneaker waves. It’s just something that happens.”
Hrothgar coughed some more and brushed Devorast away. It might have been helping, but the human slapping his back was starting to make him angry. Angier, anyway.
“Damn…” the dwarf wheezed, “water…”
Hrothgar rubbed the water out of his eyes and shook his head to dry his beard, but all it did was make him dizzy.
“You’ll live,” Devorast said, sitting next to him on the cold, wet rocks.
The two of them sat there, shivering, coughing, breathing, for a long time, looking out at the unpredictable waters of the Lake of Steam. The deafening roar had returned to the incessant hiss of the waves playing on the stony shore.
“Hear that?” Devorast asked.
“What?” the dwarf grunted. “Me choking?”
“No,” the human replied with a smile. “The whisper of waves.”
Hrothgar resisted the urge to punch his friend in the face and instead struggled to his feet, shivering and coughing, and in every way feeling awful.
“You are a case for the priests, my friend,” the dwarf said, offering his hand to help Devorast up. “They could puzzle over what’s wrong with your brain until even their gods give up on a cure.”
Devorast let Hrothgar help him to his feet, then he clapped the dwarf on his back again.
“Can we go to a gods bedamned pub now?” Hrothgar asked.
Devorast nodded and they both looked back in the direction of Innarlith. A signal fire burned from the top of the tall guard tower at the northwest corner of the city, where the huge curtain wall ended at the lakeshore.
“It’s a mile back to the city,” Devorast said.
“We’ll freeze to death before we get a sip of ale,” grumbled the dwarf.
“Not to worry,” Devorast replied, and he started off in the direction of the city, his strides long and steady. “Another wave will get us before then.”
Hrothgar stared at his receding back for the space of a dozen deep, rattling breaths. Devorast never broke stride. He knew the dwarf would follow him.
And Hrothgar did just that.
41
21 Alturiak, the Year of the Wyvern (1363DR) Second Quarter, Innarlith
Willem stared down at the tea cup on the table in front of him Holding his head in his hands, his elbows resting on the table, he pressed his palms against his temples in a pointless effort to block his mother’s words from entering his brain.
“You see her time and time again,” she prattled. “This whole filthy city is abuzz, you know. One social occasion after another with her on your arm, and no, she’s hardly the easiest girl to like. She can be difficult, can’t she? She should be. She should be difficult, Willem, and you should be too. That girl knows how to behave with people to make them know that her needs, her desires, are more important than theirs. She takes charge of a room. I’ve felt it. I’ll admit I don’t like it overmuch when I’m in the room with her, but it’s that kind of woman who should be seen on the arm of a man like you. She’s the kind of a woman who couldDid you hear that?”
He hadn’t. His hands had slipped down to cover his ears. There was something unclean about his mother talking about Phyrea like that.
He had been seen with her all over Innarlith. He would call on her, ask her, sometime through a household servant, to join him at one function or another, and she always accepted. She always appeared looking more beautiful than the last time he’d seen her. Perhaps it was her age, that age when a girl is a girl one day and a woman the next. They saw each other often, and he thought about her more and more, but when the gala or the ball, the wedding or the cotillion was ended, they would go their separate ways. She shrugged off his advances as if he were a fly that momentarily buzzed in her ear. When she chose to turn her attention away from him, he felt utterly alone.
That’s when he would go to Halina.
“Willem!” his mother said, insistent, slapping him lightly on the forearm.
He looked up at her and said, “Yes, Mother, you’re quite right.”
“What are you talking about?” she said. “Were you sleeping? There was a knock. Someone is at the door and at this hour.”
Willem stood as if in a trance. Perhaps he had fallen asleep. It must have been very late. After middark, easily. He went to the door and opened it without looking through the little window.
