Surero glanced at Devorast, who shrugged. The young alchemist took his lead from Devorast, as did the dwarf, and as always, Devorast seemed on some fundamental level oblivious to it.
“What is it, anyway?” the dwarf asked.
“Horse manure,” Surero explained, “mixed with wood ash and straw and left to compost.”
“At Berrywilde, it’s kept under a kind of shed, like a lean-to,” Phyrea said.
“They water it with… urine, too, don’t they?” Surero asked. He looked embarrassed to say the word “urine” in front of Phyrea, and that made her smile. “It’s formed into a powder.”
“And that’s what I have in the sacks,” said Phyrea.
“I mix that with other elements to create a powder that, when touched by fire, explodes,” Surero finished, making an expanding gesture with his hands.
“Is it difficult for you to get this for us?” Hrothgar asked her.
Phyrea started to answer, but didn’t know what to say. Her father paid no attention to what was a tiny fraction of what was produced at Berrywilde. He wouldn’t notice if she took it all. She could order more of the stuff made, even order another shelter built, and he wouldn’t know or care. The people still working on the winery would do it if she told them to. She could have men deliver cart after cart of it to Kurrsh at least, where Devorast’s men could haul it on to the canal site. It would be the easiest thing, but she would have to spend time at Berrywilde. The ghosts spoke more freely there. Their forms of light were brighter, more substantial there. And in the confines of the country estate, their words made more sense, and were more convincing. She never wanted to go back there again, but she had, for him.
She looked at Devorast, and he tipped his head, waiting for her to say something. She knew she must have looked as though she had something to say.
“So,” she said, “aren’t one of you big, strong men going to buy me an ale?”
33
21 Tarsakh, the Year of the Staff (1366 DR) The Canal Site
They had cut down trees, and arranged them over a hole that they’d dug in the ground. One man stood atop the cut trees, pushing and pulling on a long, straight saw. A fine wood powder clouded the air around him and fell into the pit like dirty snow. Svayyah had never seen that man beforehe wasn’t the man she’d come to find.
She’d cast certain spells on herself in preparation, and had come a long way across open land. The latter was something she didn’t like to do, but she did it because of the message he’d sent her. She’d given him the means to contact her, but he’d never used it before. He’d told her that he’d let himself be lured north, and was sure that something was going to happen. She’d found the small copse of trees that they’d been cutting down, and turning into long, rectangular strips of wood using the pit-saw, and she saw three men, including the one on the top of the pit, but none of them were Ivar Devorast. She had the feeling Devorast was down in the pit, since she could see a man’s hands rise above the lip of the hole when the saw was pulled up.
She slid out from behind the tree she’d been hiding behind, certain she’d startle the men who didn’t know herone or more of them might even have been the assassins Devorast feared, or at least suspectedbut she didn’t care. The other two men stood at the edge of the pit, stacking the freshly-cut lumber. Svayyah blinked in the bright daylight, her third and fourth eyelids keeping her eyes just barely damp enough. Bursts of brighter light burned her eyes and made her have to close them entirely. Because of that she couldn’t quite see where the missiles had come from. There were two screamsloud and desperate, and both cut off in wet gurglesand the sounds of three bodies falling to the ground, and the clatter of wood tumbling onto wood.
When she opened her eyes, she saw the men laying around the hole. The one who’d been standing atop the pit-saw rig was on the ground, and he was on fire. The bright light had been spheres of molten rock, burning orange and melting everything they touchedincluding human skin and bone.
She slithered faster toward the pit, and was still three nagalengths from it, when she saw the thing emerge from a thicker clump of trees. Her kind had always railed against the common mistake of calling the things “naga- like,” or even considering them a species of the naja’ssynsa. What had killed the men with the conjured lava was no naga, but a banelar. Its spike-lined, heavily scaled body wasn’t unlike a naga’s. Its rigid purple back shone in the sun, and its yellow-green underbelly glistened with slime. Around its frowning, paper-thin lips writhed a dozen long, stringy tentacles. Two of the tentacles bore gold rings, and it wore a wide ribbon around its neck held closed with a shiny black brooch. Its pale green eyes squinted against the sunshine, and its heavy brows furrowed with a look that promised more violence.
Svayyah whispered a short incantationa cantrip, reallyand followed it with a whispered, “Devorast, if that’s you, I’m here. It’s a banelar.”
The spell carried her voice from her lips to his ear without really crossing the intervening space.
The creature jumped. Svayyah had never heard of a banelar being able to jump that far, and there was something about it that just didn’t look right. She’d cast similar spells herself, but couldn’t know if it was a spell the thing had cast, or if it was an effect of one of the rings. The creature landed atop the pit-saw rig, sending up a cloud of sawdust. The logs creaked and popped under its weight. It slithered into a more comfortable position and looked down into the hole.
“Devorast,” it hissed. “You are Devorast?”
Even before the thing had finished speaking, Svayyah had twisted her tongue through another, slightly more complex casting. She disappeared in mid-slither and instantly popped back into reality, but at the very edge of the hole. Not even bothering to see if it was indeed Devorast in the saw pit, she cast another spell as quickly as she could.
The banelar, startled by her sudden appearance, whirled on her and half-hissed, half-growled, then started muttering an incantation of its own.
Svayyah finished first.
She drew from the Weave a blast of airlike the sudden rapids in a narrow stretch of riverthat smashed into the banelar and sent it sprawling off the pit-saw rig. It landed in a tangle with a still-smoldering corpse but was rolled off by the wind before it was burned. Its incantation was ruined by the sudden gust and the bruising impact. It rolled along the ground with an angry hiss.
Svayyah blinked again and she was inside the pit. She found herself in closer proximity to Ivar Devorast than she’d ever been. He was startled to see her appear out of the thin air, but just as quickly relieved. Inspired by the banelar itself, she gasped out a spell before he could speak, and he looked at her with a curious expression. She let her fine dry scales brush up against his hot, sweat-dampened skin, transferring the power of the spell to him.
“Jump,” she told him.
He only had to think about it for less than one of his slow heartbeats, then a knowing smile crossed his lips. He bent his knees deep and launched himself into the air. Her spell enhanced the movement and sent him shooting into the blue sky like a bolt from a crossbow. While he was still in the air Svayyah blinked out of the pit and back up to the ground at the edge of the side closer to where the banelar had rolled off.
Something hit herhardthe moment she materialized. She felt her snake’s body come off the ground, and all she could do was tense, try to inhale with the wind knocked out of her worse than she’d ever experienced, and watch the pit pass beneath her. She hit the ground on the other side and as she rolled to an undignified stop among the tree stumps and one of the corpses of the woodsmen, she saw Devorast hit the ground and fare no better than she. Though she had been hit by something she could have sworn was a spectral ram, Devorast had simply failed to properly compensate for his increased ability to jump.
As Svayyah found her breath again and forced herself upright, gasping in huge lungfuls of the dry air, she watched Devorast jump againand land on his feet. He pulled a woodsman’s axe from a tree stump, and jumped again. His jump sufficed as a charge, taking him straight at the banelar.
“Your naga can’t save you, human,” the banelar shrieked.
Svayyah winced at the words, “your naga,” and searched her mind for a spell.
Devorast took an aggressive swing with the axe, sending the banelar jumping several paces backward to avoid the axe head. Whatever magic allowed it to jump like that was obviously still in effect.
