“Of course I will,” he promised.
“Then I won’t ask you why,” she said. He blinked at that, but let it go. “I’m still not well.”
“Considering the extent of your injuries,” Pristoleph replied, “it’s Chauntea’s own miracle that you can walk, let alone speak and feed yourself. I’ll ask the sisters to send acolytes with you to help, and we’ll hire a new staff.”
Phyrea shook her head and stared down at her plate.
“You’re healing quickly,” he said. “And it’s been… how long?”
“Forty-six days,” Phyrea said, glancing up at him with a flash of reproach.
“Forty-six days,” he repeated.
“I know what’s been happening in the city,” Phyrea said, either looking down at her lap or sitting with her eyes closedPristoleph couldn’t tell. “The sisters have been keeping me informed. As much as anyone could be in the midst of a bloody civil war.”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to call it that,” Pristoleph said, though that’s precisely what it was. “It’ll all be over soon.”
“Are you going to kill them all?” she asked. “Marek Rymiit, Meykhati, Nyla… the whole senate? Or are they going to kill you?”
“Neither,” he said, “unfortunately.”
She looked up at him and the look in her eyes made him so profoundly sad he had to turn his back on her. A lump lodged itself in his throat.
“I don’t care if I’ve failed Innarlith,” he said with some difficulty. “I don’t even care if I’ve failed myselfthough it makes me a hypocrite of the first order to admit that. But if I thought for a moment that I’d failed you, I’d throw myself in the lake.”
“You haven’t failed me,” she told him.
Pristoleph nodded and, still not looking at her, said, “Your safe passage has been guaranteed. You will go unmolested to Berrywilde while I put an end to all this infighting and stupidity once and for all.”
“And if I don’t want to go?”
He paused for a long moment because he didn’t want to say what he knew he had to say. “I will have you restrained, or sedated, and taken there.”
He stood facing the wall, listening to her slow, steady breathing for so long it felt as though days passed with each exhale.
“You may have to do that,” she said.
“I only asked one thing of Rymiit and the senate,” he said, “and that was a guarantee of safe passage for you and Ivar Devorast. You won’t make a liar of me. I’m sorry.”
“They’ll let Ivar go?” she asked. “Not to Berrywilde…?”
Pristoleph shivered at that. Though the room was warm, he’d never felt so cold. He held his arms crossed in front of his chest and felt his lower lip quiver.
“He’ll go to Tsingtao, in Shou Lung, I think,” Pristoleph said.
“But he’ll live?” she asked. He nodded to the wall.
“Very well, then,” Phyrea said. “When do I leave for Berrywilde?”
67
8 Kythorn, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR) The Thayan Enclave, Innarlith
Marek Rymiit couldn’t simply cast a spell and take control of Willem’s mind. He knew more than enough about the undead to know that, so he didn’t bother preparing that sort of spell. Instead, he wrapped himself in magical defenses on the off chance that the creature broke free of his chains.
Having been created by Marek, though, Willem was inclined to serve the Thayan, and the junior senator’s generally weak will when he lived made things easier for the Red Wizard. Still, even Marek hesitated stepping into a room with the feral, hate-driven, walking corpse that Willem Korvan had become.
The door to the dungeon cell creaked open with a shrill sound that gave Marek gooseflesh. He’d had the hinges specifically made to squeak. The whole level, deep below the Thayan Enclave, had been constructed according to Marek’s strict instructions, to terrify and intimidate as much as to contain. No one not of Thayan blood even knew they’d dug the dungeons.
The smell was as Marek expected, a cloying mix of exotic spices and rotten flesh. The dim light provided by a single candle an apprentice had lit prior to Marek’s descent into the dungeon cast a flickering black shadow of the restrained creature onto the wall and the ceiling behind him, and the effect was unsettling.
Willem opened his mouth, and Marek was distressed to see that several of the expensive ivory teeth had fallen out. The creature’s eyes rolled in their sockets, but quickly fixed on Marek with a cold, empty glare.
The Thayan cleared his throat and said, “Well, my boy. You’ve looked better.”
A hiss escaped Willem’s open mouth, but that was his only retort.
“You’ve been a very bad boy, Willem,” Marek went on. “You were told to kill someone, and that someone still lives.”
Willem winced and his teeth clacked together hard. Marek reached down and lifted the candle from its simple wrought iron holder. The undead thing flinched away. The sound of its chains shifting on the stone floor was loud enough to make Marek flinch himself.
“You were not created to fail,” Marek said. “Others have failedtoo many others. Though it benefited me that he live in fear of his life for a while, that he question who it was who wanted him dead and why, this Cormyrean has troubled me enough. It is time to be rid of him and his ambitious dreams so the city-state can move past this mess.”
Willem’s eyes held to the candle flame, though Marek knew he was listening.
“If I release you into the night, will you kill him?” Marek asked.
Willem didn’t respond at first, so the Thayan waved the candle closer to his face. The creature jerked back with an even louder jangle of chains. He growled from deep in his throat.
“Yes or no,” the Red Wizard pressed. “Will you kill Ivar Devorast? I know you can answer. I made you to answer. Answer.”
“Yes,” the creature croaked, his eyes rolling slowly to Marek’s face then back to the candle.
Marek smiled and stepped back, but Willem didn’t relax.
“Ivar Devorast has been given safe passage out of the city,” Marek said. “He’ll be leaving this very night. Though we’ve been told he’s going into some sort of self-imposed exile in Shou Lung, I know that he will go back to the blasted remains of that ludicrous canal of his at least once more.”
Willem grunted and said, “Ivar.”
Marek paused, not certain what to make of that, then pressed on. “Follow him out of the city. When he’s clear of the walls, kill him. Hurt him in the process if you like. I don’t care. Leave his body where it will be found, but not found quickly.”
Willem opened his mouth and jerked his arm with a clank of chains, but Marek didn’t know what that might signify.
“Do you understand those instructions?” the Thayan asked.
“Yes,” the undead creature hissed, and his head bobbed in something like a nod.
“Do you hate him still, Willem?” the Red Wizard had to ask.
The creature shuddered and the smell in the room grew stronger, more pungent. Marek had to hold a hand to his nose, but it didn’t help.
“Hate,” Willem rasped. “Devorast.”
Though he was far from satisfied with that answer, Marek moved on.
“There is something else we must discuss,” he said.
The creature shuffled his feet and said, “Release me.”
“Anxious?”
“Release me,” the creature rasped again.
Marek replaced the candle in its holder and reached into a pocket of his robe. He drew a long-bladed dagger and slid it from its sheath. The gold-chased steel blade flashed in the candlelight.
“It’s been a long, long time since I’ve stabbed someone,” Marek said, eyeing the blade.
The undead creature lurched forward and snapped his jaws at the Red Wizard, who met it with the dagger. The blade bit deeply into Willem’s desiccated cheek, and when it met the undead flesh it crackled with green and yellow sparks.
Willem howled like a wounded animal and fell backward. With a deafening clatter of chains he fetched up against the wall behind him. He almost fell but managed to get his feet under him. Willem stood, his back scraping against the stone, his humorless eyes following the Red Wizard’s dagger.