Whisper of Waves by Philip Athans Read Free Book Online Page B

Year of Shadows (1358 DR) Third Quarter, Innarlith
    My Dearest Mother,
    I’m certain you will be pleased to hear word from your dutiful son, now two months here in the far city of Innarlith. Again, please accept my most gracious apologies for having left you so quickly and with so little time to prepare. I hope that soon I will be able to send for you and we will once again be together as a family should be.
    As you would expect, I continue in Innarlith under the employ of Senator Inthelph, who has indeed been named to the post of Master Builder. I am certain that when you have the opportunity to meet, you and the
    senator will get on well. He is a man of impeccable manners, with a careful mind, deliberate to draw conclusions. He is, as you always taught me to be, keenly aware of the finest traditions of both his society and his vocation.
    Our principal project, being the restoration of the city’s great curtain wall, is proceeding apace. Measurements have nearly been completed, and I hope that we will begin to set ink to paper within the year. The current state of the walls is deplorable, and it’s a credit to the wisdom of the city’s ransar that we are employed so in its reclamation. Innarlith will be stronger and more beautiful upon its completion.
    I’m sure you would find much of interest in the city of Innarlith. Though on the surface one could easily assume that it is of a lesser standing in the world than our fair Marsember, it took me only a short time to see the many fine qualities of the place. Within the embrace of the great curtain wall we’re endeavoring so to repair, the city is sternly and rightfully separated into bands that are know locally as Quarters.
    The Fourth Quarter, nearest the wall, is an unfortunate slum wherein the least of the city’s population makes their squalid homes in hovels of the most obscene, sort. Truly this place is the shame of Innarlith, but isn’t there a neighborhood like it in every city across the wide face of Faerun? Even, I dare point out, in our own fair Marsember? It is my unfortunate duty to daily cross this landscape of poverty and hopelessness to be at my work on the wall. As you have taught me, however, I keep my back to the suffering and a hand on my purse at all times. So far, being typically surrounded by soldiers and officials of the city, I have remained altogether unmolested.
    I spend the majority of my free time, such as there is (indeed, have I come all this way to recreate? or to create?) in the Second Quarter. Here are the homes of
    the city’s finest people, and I think you will find them as fine as any of the nobles of Marsember. Great fortunes have been made in the minerals drawn from the fetid Lake of Steam. Farmland to the north of the city feeds us well, and I have heard talk of silver and even gold mined from the foot of the mountains we often see on the southern horizon, that is when the bleak overcast so rarely breaks.
    The climate here is at once warm and dreary, and even the finest avenues of the Second Quarter are often cursed with the stench of the Lake of Steam. Sulfur and a volcanic mud of a most offensive variety bubbles to the surface of this stretch of water which I understand is dominated by a great volcano said to rise from its center. So far, at least, I have not set eyes on this volcano, my attention being paid to my work on the wall.
    Of that work I can say mostly good things. I have earlier described the master builder and the team he has assembled (including your dutiful son) as of like mind and temperament. Within the circle of influence applied directly by the master builder, I am surrounded by allies and a veritable faculty of mentors. Though I hesitate to complain, the same is not true of all with whom I come in contact with while at my efforts.
    The military here is much as one would expect of the military anywhere. They remain convinced of their own superiority in all things, and as it is that we’re engaged in the