surrounded by flowering bushes. The warm orange glow of candles pulsed in the windows, and when the door swung silently open, the familiar round shape of Marek Rymiit filled the doorway.
“Ah, Willem, my boy,” he said, his voice as warm and welcoming as the cottage itself, “do come in.”
The guard bowed and backed away, and Willem stepped up to the door then hesitated when Marek didn’t move out of the way. Instead the Thayan stepped forward and before Willem could back awayand his instincts insisted he at least trythe wizard’s arms enfolded him in what was, if anything, too warm an embrace.
“Ah, Willem,” Marek whispered in his ear. The Thayan’s breath was hot and thick with the cloying aroma of elven brandy. “You know you are always welcome here.”
Willem stood rigid in the older man’s embrace, but Marek either didn’t notice or didn’t mind. The Thayan released him and stepped aside. Willem staggered into the room.
“Sit,” Marek said. “Brandy?”
Willem took in his surroundings with some surprise. He’d known Marek Rymiit for a long time, and thought he had some sense of the Thayan’s tastes, which ran to the finer thingsthe more exotic. His “private study” was just the opposite. The room was everything one would expect from a peasant grandmother’s country cottage. Though he suspected the decorations had been chosen to put people at ease, Willem grew only more anxious as he lowered himself into a leather armchair. Though he hadn’t asked for one, Marek poured him a glass of brandy and set it on the little table next to Willem’s chair.
“Why the long face?” the wizard asked as he lowered his girth into the chair opposite.
“What happened, Master Rymiit?”
The Thayan smiled at that and shrugged.
Willem took a deep breath, and wondered how to even begin.
“Really, my boy,” Marek went on, swirling the brandy glass under his nose, “there’s no reason to be so glum, now is there?”
“Isn’t there?” Willem asked. “I’m being…” “You’re being…?”
“I can’t remember things,” Willem said before he realized he was saying the words aloud. “I don’t know what’s happened to me.”
“You’re fine, my boy.”
Words caught in Willem’s throat and he made a little coughing sound.
The Thayan took a little sip of brandy then said, “They didn’t come to your little party.”
A tear welled up in Willem’s right eye and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. He let his head hang on his neck, looking down at the wood floor.
“I have bad dreams,” Willem whispered. He was afraid to say the words, but more afraid not to. “I wake up drenched in sweat, my teeth clenched so hard my head aches. Most of the time my hands are curled into fists and I can’t open them.”
Willem looked at his hands, both of which were balled into tight fists. He didn’t bother trying to open them.
“It’s summer already,” Willem went on. “I don’t remember spring. I think I don’t.”
“It will all be fine,” the Thayan said. “You’ll see. Try not to think too hard about all this. We all have nightmares. We all forget things. We all have days when we feel we have no friends in the world, when we feel all of Toril has somehow gotten together to forget us all at once, but that’s hardly reason to hang your head in misery, crying into your friend and patron’s expensive elven spirits.”
“I’m sorry,” Willem all but gasped.
“Wait a month,” Marek went on, ignoring Willem’s apology. “In a month, all your friends will come back to you. It will be as if nothing ever happened.”
“But…” Willem breathed, looking up into the Thayan’s face, “what happened?”
“Nothing,” Marek said with a wide grin. “In a month, at any rate.”
“But how?”
“I’ll tell them to,” said Marek. “We will all be fast friends and close associates once more, because I will tell them as much.”
Willem swallowed, looked at the glass of brandy on the table next to him, but didn’t reach for it.
“You can do that?” Willem whispered, his eyes still on the glass.
“Don’t think too much of me,” the wizard said with a laugh. “I am but a small piece in a much larger puzzle. Still, if you need anything… anything at all… I am here for you.”
“No,” Willem said, forcing his attention from the glass to Marek’s big, wet eyes. “No, Master Rymiit, it is I who am here for you. Always.”
Marek laughed in a way that made the hair on the back of Willem’s neck stand on end.
36
5 Eleasias, the Yearof Rogue Dragons (1373 DR) First Quarter, Innarlith
Wenefir didn’t know the names of either of the two black firedrakes. They looked so much alike they might have been twins. Both had black hair and dusky skin, with eyes blacker than any human’s. They wore thick black leather ring mail vests, and even their boots were of the same design and materials. The only thing that was different about the two was the way they stood: One of them set all his weight on his left foot. The other leaned on the thick haft of his longaxe. There was something about the way they smelled that Wenefir found unpleasant.
The night breeze brought the stench of sulfur from the Lake of Steam, and Wenefir couldn’t smell the firedrakes anymore. He blinked in the darkness and gazed down the length of the long pier. The ship that was tied therea sturdy cog out of Calimportbumped the piling with a hollow thud, and a wave broke, sending a few drops of water into Wenefir’s face. The priest blinked the acidic water from his eyes. He didn’t want to take even one hand from the haft of his mace to wipe the water away.
He glanced down at the platinum-inlaid mithral of the weapon’s fierce head and smiled. His hands tightened around the polished wooden haft. The weapon felt good in his hands.
A clatter of wood on wood made him jump, and a cool sweat broke out on his forehead. He blinked again and watched the zombie work gang unload the cog while the Calishite crew drank away their meager earnings in some quayside tavern. The zombies weren’t careful, and they were slowso slow it was difficult for someone like Wenefir to watch them without feeling frustrated, even though he couldn’t possibly care less whether or not the Calishite ship was unloaded in a timely fashion.
Wenefir sniffed the air. The sulfur from the water, and a hint of the black firedrake’s acidic musk assaulted his nostrils, but the priest couldn’t detect even a trace of rotting flesh. By the look of the half dozen animated corpses a few yards away from him, the stench of rotting flesh should have been unbearable.
“What do you smell?” one of the black firedrakes whispered.
Wenefir shook his head.
“Master Rymiit made them that way,” the firedrake said. Wenefir couldn’t place his accent. “The sailors and captains were complaining.”
Wenefir shrugged and silenced the firedrake with the hint of a smile.
The three of them watched the zombies work, and as they watched, they listened. One of the firedrakes tipped his head up and sniffed at the warm summer breeze.
“I smell it, too,” the other black firedrake whispered. “They’re here.”
Wenefir nodded and brought the mace up in front of his chest. He kept his eyes on the zombies and heard footsteps on the pier before he saw anyone. They came from the end of the pier, as though they’d come from the open water. The black firedrakes fanned out to either side of them. Wenefir couldn’t hear themnot a creak of leather or the tap of a boot heel on the planks.
The women stepped into the meager light from the one lantern the cog’s captain had left burning for the zombie work gang. Wenefir recognized them both immediately. He brought a prayer to mind, and when he was ready, he made eye contact with one of the black firedrakes. They stepped out of the shadows together, but the second firedrake remained cloaked in the shadows of the night-dark pier.
