“You all know of my deep respect and affection for the master builder,” Osorkon said. “Was it not I who appointed him, after all? No, when I used that appellation it was to honor a foreign dignitary.”
“He is no dignitary, this man,” Salatis broke in. “He is a commoner in the realm of his birth, not important enough, loved or respected enough, to be kept close by his king’s side. If Cormyr recognized his so-called genius, why would Ivar Devorast be here?”
“In that, my dear old friend,” Osorkon said to Salatis, “I will simply be happy that King Azoun’s loss is Innarlith’s gain.”
“Need I remind you that you are no king, sir?” Salatis said.
A hush fell over the assembly then, all eyes darting back and forth between Osorkon on the podium, and Salatis alone standing among the seated senators.
“No,” replied the ransar. “You need not remind me of that, Senator. I meant only that the kingdom of Cormyr has lost a good man to the city-state of Innarlith. Their loss, is our gain.”
“Your gain, you mean,” Salatis pressed.
“The canal benefits me, yes,” Osorkon said. “There is no secret that my ships ply the waters of the Lake of Steam, and trade as far north as the Sword Coast. Should the Vilhon Reach be open to them at last, and the Sea of Fallen Stars beyond, Cormyrean coin, Sembian coin
… gold from the Moonsea to the Old Empires will find its way into my purse, but don’t think for a momentnot for a momentthat it will fill my purse alone. Riches enough for us all will pass through that waterway. Of that I have not the slightest doubt.”
Osorkon paused, and in some small way he still hoped someone would speak up then in support of the canal, with loyalty to their ransar, but he knew no one would.
Salatis looked around the room, his hands palms up at his sides, making a great show of waiting for the same thing. Finally he said, “Ransar, please believe me when I say that all of us realize that trade eventually will flow through this canal of yours, but”
“This canal of ours, Senator,” the ransar interrupted.
Salatis continued without missing a beat, “how much and how soon? If it costs forty pieces of gold to build a wagon, and one sells it for thirty-five only after taking a decade to build the damned thing, what kind of trade is that? This insanity that takes place to the northwest will drain more gold from our coffers while it’s being built than it will drain water from the Lake of Steam when it’s completed. And will any one of us even live to see that day?”
Osorkon smiled through the round of applause and cheers that followed. When the senate quieted enough for him to be heard, he said, “Is there any guarantee, Senator, that any of us will live to see the morrow?”
The two men stared at each other across a stretch of air. as heavy as it was silent.
“Perhaps,” said Meykhati, rising with his hands at his side as though he was surrendering to someone, “we can agree that trade will flow once the canal is done, and that many in this body will profit from it either directly or indirectlybut is that the most pressing question?” Meykhati paused for effect, but Osorkon knew what was coming. “Perhaps it is the man who builds it, not the watercourse itself, that offends. Perhaps there is another man better suited to oversee this project so that it can be completed in a timely fashion… so that we will indeed all live to profit from that trade.”
Once again the senators who sat around the master builder patted Inthelph on the back and whispered in his ear, all grins and chuckles. Osorkon’s skin crawled, and his eyes met Salatis’s.
“That,” the ransar said, “is not an eventuality I am prepared to consider.”
Salatis smiled, and spoke for a majority of the senate when he said, “Then perhaps it’s time we find someone more prepared.”
“Is that a challenge?” Osorkon asked, and again the chamber fell into perfect silence. The ransar imagined he could hear every one of their heartbeats. “Senator Salatis?”
“That’s not a question the ransar should ask lightly,” Salatis replied. “Let us say, for the nonce, that I respect the great traditions of this body and reserve, as do all senators, the right to petition for the office of first among equals. But on this day… on this day that is not an eventuality I am prepared to consider.”
23
10 Eleasias, the Yearofthe Sword (1365 DR) Somewhere on the Naga Plains
" Did you hear that?” Dharmun whispered, looking up into the warm rain. “Something… up there.”
Hrothgar sighed, and didn’t look up. Even at night, even when it was raining, he didn’t like to look up into the open, endless sky. He tightened his grip on his heavy hammer and listened.
“I can’t hear anything,” the dwarf said. “Rain… the torch flame…”
He resisted the urge to look at the torch that Devorast held over his head. The guttering orange light would dampen his darkvision.
“It’s above us,” Devorast said.
Hrothgar cursed silently and looked up. The rain made him blink, and he couldn’t see anything.
“Should we go back for more men?” Dharmun said, his voice quivering a little. He might have been cold, with no shirt on late at night, but the air was still muggy with late summer heat, despite the rain. “I mean, we could go back and return with”
At the same moment Devorast shushed Dharmun, something pushed Hrothgar to the ground. Pain skipped up his back in a series of rippling cramps, and he almost dropped his hammer. He slid face first in the mud, getting a little in his mouth, but thankfully none in his eyes.
Dharmun grunted and as Hrothgar rolled to his feet, pain in his back making it harder for him to breathe than to stand, the dwarf saw him swing his heavy wood axe at a shape made of deeper blackness than the already inky, moonless night.
“Damn it,” Hrothgar breathed. “It’s big.”
Devorast swung at it with his torch, and Hrothgar caught a glimpse of it in silhouette. The light shone through one membranous patch that must have been a wing. Hrothgar could sense a serpent’s wedge-shaped head, and there was a flash of long, curved talons. Sparks flew, but the thing didn’t even flinch.
“Ivar,” Hrothgar warned, “watch”
A cloud of thick, oily black mist benched from the creature, dimming the torchlight like a black lace curtain. Dharmun screamed.
Hrothgar stomped forward with his hammer out in front of him. Devorast’s torch was on the ground. He saw a booted foot, didn’t know if it was Devorast’s or Dharmun’s, but before he could investigate further he was hit in the back againharder.
The hammer flew from his grip and went cartwheeling through the air, and once again his face pressed into the slick mud. Claws raked at his back, digging into the leather tunic he wore. He was bruised, but not cut.
“Where’s my axe?” Dharmun called out. “What is that thing?”
Hrothgar tried to answer him but coughed instead. He patted the ground around him for his hammer and found something like it. He staggered to his feet and was almost fully upright when he realized he’d picked up Devorast’s torch instead.
“I have your axe,” Devorast saidand it took a moment to realize that he was answering Dharmun’s question from before.
The black creature screameda combination of some kind of bird of prey and a blare of trumpetsand skipped along the ground between Hrothgar and Devorast. The dwarf saw it lift something in its claws as it swooped back up into the night skyHrothgar’s hammer.
“Trove Lord take you, whatever you are,” the dwarf roared into the night, spinning with Devorast’s torch in a vain attempt to find the thing in the darkness. “That’s my lucky hammer!”
“There it is!” Dharmun screamed.
“Where?” Devorast demanded.
Hrothgar looked at Dharmun, and the human met his eye, then looked up again, then looked back at the dwarf and shrugged.
“Is that a rock you have there?” Hrothgar asked.
Dharmun looked at the first-sized stone in his hand as if noticing it for the first time, shrugged, and said, “Master Devorast has my”