Lies of Light Read Online Free PDF

work site Ran Ai Yu thought it was some kind of military drill. The sight of it gave the immediate impression of rigid organization that she had only experienced at the edge of a parade ground. But then details presented themselves, pieces took shape out of the whole, and that impression disappeared. She was left with chaos—madness, even—a barrage of colors and dizzying movement that erased any sense of organization at all, until she once again let those details melt into the beautiful whole.
    “These men are all at your command?” she asked Devorast, who stood beside her on a low hill.
    The sound of the men working deafened her, but then Devorast didn’t answer anyway. Picks chipped stone, shovels moved dirt and clay, and carts trundled past full of rocks, earth, wood, and more men. Oxen grunted, foremen shouted orders, and it was like music for a great dance.
    “This is as it should be,” she said, unconcerned with whether or not Devorast could hear her. “You will find your destiny here. Your spirit will fill itself with this work.”
    The heavy, damp air carried the smell of the Lake of Steam, but only faintly under the stench of turned earth and sweating bodies. It smelled like hard work.
    “I hope you live to see its completion,” she said.
    Devorast shrugged—a response that would have been considered rude in Shou Lung—but she took no offense.
    Ran Ai Yu crouched and touched the dirt at her feet. It was damp but not muddy, and she was able to scoop up a handful, testing the weight of it in her hand. She tried to imagine the weight of the dirt and rock, the trees and weeds, that Devorast meant to move to make the trench for his canal. Then she tried to imagine the weight of the water that would fill it, and though she’d plied the waters of a far greater canal in her far-off homeland, still the weight felt unbearable.
    “You will not require that I tell you how many people there must be… powerful people even… who will wish for you to fail,” she told him.
    He waited for her to look up at him before he shrugged again.
    She let the dirt pour out through her fingers, and something made her touch the tip of her tongue. She didn’t try to understand the impulse to taste it any more than she wanted to stop it. She just wanted to taste it—wanted to experience it with every one of her senses. It tasted like life, but not the same way food or water tasted; not physical life, but a deeper need within each human, the drive to build, the imperative to leave something behind, to make some mark. It tasted like the vital necessity to say, “I was here.”
    “Yes,” he said, “you are.”
    Ran Ai Yu felt her cheeks redden and her ears burn. She stood, avoiding his eyes.
    “I had not meant to… to speak that,” she stammered, her Common almost deserting her.
    Devorast said, “I’ve tasted it too.”
    She smiled at that, and smiled wider than she felt
    proper in front of a man she had not—
    The Shou merchant pushed that thought away before it was completed.
    “This is supported by your leader,” she asked, “your ransar?”
    “I don’t consider him my ransar,” Devorast replied, “but yes, it is.”
    “Both with the gold to pay these men and to buy their tools and materials, and so on,” she said then had to pause to again search her memory for the correct word. “Politically?”
    Devorast nodded. He didn’t look at her. Instead, his eyes darted from one part of the realization of his genius to another.
    “It is my understanding, having traveled to Innarlith on more than one occasion,” she went on, “and over more than a few years, that their ransar is a temporary post. Is this not true?”
    He glanced at her with a mischievous grin that further embarrassed her, and said, “Any job that is answerable to others could be called temporary.”
    “Ah, and is that not true of master builder?”
    “I’m not the ransar’s master builder,” he said.
    “Even worse for you, I should think.”
    He