Scream of Stone w-3

by Philip Athans

  “No,” he interrupted, blushing when he saw the brief flash of anger that passed through her otherwise forgiving blue eyes. “Now I must say I’m sorry.”

  He smiled and bowed his head and the hardness was gone from her eyes, replaced once more by a searching gaze.

  “Your voice is familiar to me,” she said.

  “We have spoken before, though it was long ago,” Surero said. “I have thought about-”

  “Have you thought about other people who might like a bowl of soup, mate?” a pungent old woman who stood three people down from him in line called out. She was answered by a general shuffle and air of impatience.

  Halina dropped a ladleful of barley soup into his bowl then turned to one of the younger acolytes behind her and asked, “Would you take my place, please? I must excuse myself for a moment.”

  The younger woman stepped into her place and took the ladle from her hand without the slightest hesitation. Something in that simple exchange made Surero’s heart skip a beat. He couldn’t even begin to keep the smile from his face. When she turned and looked at him again, Halina was even more puzzled.

  “Why are you smiling?” she asked as she stepped from behind the table.

  He nodded for her to proceed in front of him, and as she led him to a table in the far corner of open courtyard of Chauntea’s temple in Innarlith, he replied, “I’m sorry, Sister.”

  “You apologize a lot,” she told him as they sat. “You don’t have to call me ‘Sister.’ My name is Halina.”

  “Surero,” the alchemist replied. He realized that the accent he’d remembered-one he’d heard many times since in his imagination-was, though not gone entirely, softened. He wondered if she had made an effort to lose it, but thought it would be rude to ask.

  “And where have we met, Surero?’ she asked.

  Surero put a hand to his beard and said, “It was four years ago, I believe. You served me soup then, too.”

  “I serve a lot of soup to a lot of people who have felt the sting of being brushed aside, and the ache of hunger that inevitably follows.”

  Surero managed to stop smiling when he said, “I hope, Halina, that I can help you now the way you helped me then and help all these people every day.”

  “I hope so, too, Surero,” she said, but he could tell she didn’t believe him. Her eyes changed the subject before her words did. “You didn’t have a beard then.” He blushed and she added, “You look better without it. I should like to see you again without it.”

  Surero was thankful for that beard when he felt his cheeks blaze with heat. He had to look away, but could still see her smile at him.

  “Believe me, Halina,” he said, “I would relish the opportunity to remove it.”

  “Then why don’t you?”

  “I don’t want to be recognized.”

  Halina let her hands rest on the table and her face grew hard, though he thought she was reluctant to have to look at him like that. “This is a temple, and here you will find peace but not sanctuary. If you are in trouble, and you repent your sins in the name of the Greatmother, we could speak on your behalf to-”

  “No,” he interrupted again, still blushing. “Please, Sister Halina, no. That’s not it. That’s not it at all.”

  “But you disguise yourself?”

  “Only to continue working in a place that long ago discharged me,” he said.

  “Explain yourself,” she said. “Then, if it’s appropriate for me to help you, I will.”

  The alchemist took a deep breath and did his best to explain, in the broadest possible terms, how he and Devorast-and he made a point to risk mentioning Ivar Devorast by name-had begun to work in secret not to undermine the efforts of Horemkensi, but to rescue the canal-and the workers-from his incompetence.

  “But try as we might,” he finished, “there are some … workers … who will not ignore the orders given them by this dangerous incompetent.”

  Halina took a deep breath and held it. Surero couldn’t help but stare at her. She returned the stare with a smile and a long, slow exhale.

  “There are more people here than ever, aren’t there?” he asked.

  Her face serious and solemn, she replied, “More than ever, yes.”

  “And at the canal site, at the quayside,” he whispered, leaning across the table toward her, “more undead.”

  She closed her eyes at the sound of that last word but didn’t back away. Surero still leaned forward. He looked at her, at the smoothness of her skin stretched tight against her high, aristocratic cheekbones, at the simplicity of her, the purity of her. He drank her in.

  “If only I could tell you how-” she said, but stopped herself.

  “You can help us,” he whispered. “You can help us all.” She shook her head but said, “Yes.”

  “Will you?”

  She closed her eyes and sat very still for a long time, and Surero let her, but he never took his eyes from her face.

  “The sisters have discussed this,” she said finally, her voice so quiet he barely heard her from scant inches away, “but they are reluctant to take sides in a city so continuously damaged from people taking sides. And the new ransar-” Again, she stopped herself from completing a thought he could tell was too painful for her, personally, to follow through on. “But I will try.”

  19

  8 Kythorn, the Year of the Unstrung Harp (1371 DR)

  THIRD QUARTER, INNARLITH

  Phyrea could see the gleaming minarets of the Palace of Many Spires glittering in the bright sunshine long before her coach passed though the south gate into the city proper. Staring at it gave her at least a lame excuse not to make eye contact with the nameless-at least, he hadn’t given her his name-black firedrake Pristoleph had sent to watch over her on her journey from Firesteap Citadel.

  The strange man in his black armor held a short spear across his lap. He breathed heavily through his nose-sniffing really more than inhaling-but otherwise made no sound. She thought he smelled of charcoal or brimstone, as though he’d spent long periods of time sitting around a campfire.

  The guard didn’t look at her, either, his black eyes shifting from one side of the coach to another, determined to catch a sign of an ambush that never came.

  Phyrea’s neck ached from looking out the window. She sat facing the front of the coach and looked out to her left to see the palace. Looking out the window meant not only that she could avoid making eye contact with the black firedrake, but she wouldn’t have to acknowledge the ghost that sat beside him on the rear-facing bench.

  Just because we made it this far, the old woman made of purple light said, doesn’t mean we won’t still be set upon by Salatis’s men.

  Phyrea didn’t answer aloud. She didn’t want the guard to think she was speaking to him. But she wanted to tell the old woman that the black firedrakes were Salatis’s men, and she’d ridden with one all day, thirty-five miles from the citadel. If he were still taking orders from the dead ransar, she would have been dead a log time ago.

  Don’t be so sure, the old woman said.

  Phyrea cringed, drawing, only briefly, the black firedrake’s attention. She thought the smell of charcoal grew stronger for a moment, until he had reassured himself that nothing was wrong.

  Phyrea sighed, still staring at the Palace of Many Spires, and the feeling of dread that was always with her welled up in her chest. There was something about the idea of living in the palace that-

  The coach turned right at the first opportunity, carrying them farther from the palace, and into the seedy, impoverished Fourth Quarter.

  Where are they taking us? the old woman asked, and Phyrea spared the ghost a glance and as subtle a shrug as she could manage.

  Pristal Towers, Phyrea realized, not the Palace of Many Spires.

  She sighed, relieved, but not sure why she should be.

  It could still be a trap, said the old woman. Salatis didn’t care about you one way or the other, I think, but this Pristoleph will destroy you,
of that you can be sure, and we may not be here to pick up the pieces.

  Phyrea answered the ghost by letting her emotions run unchecked for the length of time it took the coach to weave through the crowded, rutted, dirty Fourth Quarter streets and pause at the gate to Pristal Towers. She hoped that the beings of light and hate indeed wouldn’t be there to “pick up the pieces,” or to do anything for or to her, ever again. Phyrea further hoped that the ghosts could sense that from her.

  The black firedrake insisted on exiting the coach first, and Phyrea let him. She told herself she would have to make herself accustomed to the guards. She was, after all, the wife of the ransar.

  A temporary turn of affairs, at best, the ghost of the old woman commented.

  As she slid out of the coach Phyrea spared the ghost a smirk. The old woman made no move to exit the coach, and Phyrea briefly thought maybe the old apparition would finally just ride away. But of course she was not nearly so lucky. When she looked up to greet Pristoleph, who waited for her on the broad steps leading to the entrance to his enormous manor home, the old woman stood only a few steps away from him, returning Phyrea’s smirk with her own tight-pressed line of indigo light.

  “Phyrea, my love,” Pristoleph said, meeting her in the middle of the stairway with a burning embrace and a kiss chaste enough to be appropriate for the eyes of the staff that lined the stairs. “Your journey was safe?”

  She returned the embrace and kissed him on the cheek, which almost scalded her lips. “I was well looked after.”

  Pristoleph glanced over her shoulder and nodded to the black firedrake, who bowed in response then climbed into the coach.

  “It has been a long time,” Pristoleph whispered in her ear as she looked over her shoulder to watch the coach pull away.

  “Does he just ride around in there all the time?” she asked with a smile and a playful wink.

  Pristoleph returned the smile and said, “No, but he would if I asked him to.”

  He would have if Salatis had asked him to, too, the little boy with the missing arm said from behind her.

  She didn’t pay the spirit any mind. Instead, she let Pristoleph lead her up the stairs. She nodded to each of the household staff as they passed, all of whom were gracious enough to smile and pretend they didn’t despise her, but she thought she knew otherwise.

  “I thought you would never send for me,” she said to Pristoleph. “For a while there I imagined myself one of those insipid princesses from a child’s tale, locked away in the highest room of the highest tower, living only to hope that the handsome prince would come to rescue me.”

  “If you were that princess,” he said, “I would be the prince, and not the man who imprisoned you.”

  Her smile faltered ever so slightly at that, though in her heart she felt that was true.

  “Still, it’s been so long,” she said.

  “Not even four months,” he replied, as though that wasn’t a long time.

  “Four months since you became ransar,” she said, “but I’ve been at Firesteap for longer than that.”

  “Of course,” he said, patting her hand, “and for that I am sorry, and I promise that I will spend what remains of my life making it up to you.”

  “I suppose I should thank you for starting that process by not making me live in the Palace of Many Spires?”

  They reached the top of the stairs and he stopped her before they went inside. He held her by the shoulders and looked in her eyes. Her heart warmed in her chest at the way he looked at her.

  “I would have thought you’d be angry with me about that,” he said.

  She put a hand to his fiery cheek and said, “Not at all. I’ve come to feel that Pristal Towers is my home, and that wasn’t easy for me. The palace would have felt too … temporary.”

  “It wouldn’t have been,” he assured her. “It won’t be.”

  She smiled, though she didn’t believe that for a second.

  I don’t believe it, either, said the old woman. I wonder who the Red Wizard will choose next?

  He’s different, Phyrea replied in her head. Don’t underestimate him.

  She felt rather than heard the ghosts laugh, but ignored the feeling.

  As they passed into the foyer and a butler handed them each a tallglass of her late father’s wine, she said, “The city doesn’t seem at all changed. It’s as though nothing ever happened.”

  “And it wasn’t easy, these last months, making that so,” he said after he took a sip of the wine. She thought she heard the cool liquid hiss against his lips. “I’ve been busy not only restoring the damage done to buildings and streets, but to the hearts and minds of the senate and citizens alike. I think they’re already starting to realize that I will be more … let’s say, stable, than some of the previous ransars.”

  It’s not the men themselves, but the position that’s unstable, said the man with the scar on his face, and Phyrea had to agree.

  “So you will be the great reformer?” she asked.

  He laughed as they strolled to a parlor and said, “Eventually, I hope to be, but for the nonce I’ve been busy putting things back to the way they were before the unfortunate siege.”

  A siege he instigated, the old woman reminded her.

  “Even the canal has been making startling progress,” he went on, and Phyrea’s flesh crawled at the sound of that word: canal. “It’s a wonder, considering it’s still in the hands of that barely-functional idiot Salatis put in charge of it.”

  “Horemkensi?” she asked.

  “I hear the workers call him Little Lord H, and have begun to ignore his orders,” Pristoleph replied. “Even the zombie workers the Thayan sold them are starting to disappear. What does it say about a man, I have to wonder, if a zombie, magically compelled to do so by a Red Wizard’s powerful necromancy, won’t even take him seriously?”

  Phyrea shook her head and sank into a plush, silk-upholstered sofa. Pristoleph sat next to her, so close she could feel his heat, and he waved the butler away. The servant stepped backward through the double doors, pulling them closed in front of him.

  “It has been a long time,” he said, setting his tallglass on the little table next to him. He took her glass from her and set it next to his, and looked at her with undisguised lust-fire, even, in his eyes.

  Though the word “canal” conjured an image of a man she still knew she loved in a way she could never love her husband, she had missed Pristoleph more than she thought she would, and the heat of him, the smell of him, his commanding presence surrounded by his seemingly limitless wealth, managed to push Ivar Devorast’s face from her thoughts.

  “And how may I serve the ransar?” she whispered.

  Pristoleph kissed her, burning her mouth with his tongue. As hot as it was, she pressed in harder still.

  He pulled only a hair’s breadth away from her and said, “This ransar will serve you.”

  20

  30 Eleint, the Year of the Unstrung Harp (1371 DR)

  THE CANAL SITE

  It’s true then,” the Cormyrean said, and T’juyu, who listened, invisible and unmoving, from behind the canvas rear wall of the tent, sensed more relief than surprise in his voice.

  “Warden Truesilver,” a man’s voice replied-it was the alchemist. T’juyu didn’t know his name. “To what do we owe this-?”

  “My king is dead,” Truesilver interrupted. A silence followed and T’juyu had no idea how to interpret it. “Our king has fallen on the field of battle.”

  The alchemist cleared his throat and said, “I’m … shocked to hear that, Warden. I’m sorry.”

  “Devorast?” Truesilver asked.

  “He was a good man,” Ivar Devorast said. “He was a fair and forthright king.”

  “I suppose that will suffice as an outpouring of grief for the misery of your homeland,” the warden replied. T’juyu wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic.

  “Is that what you came here to tell us?” Devorast asked, and from his tone T’juyu c
ould tell he didn’t think that was the case.

  “Please, Warden, sit,” the alchemist said.

  There came a rustling and shuffling of feet as the three men settled themselves in the cramped, dark tent. For a while the only sounds were the general murmur of the camp-not too loud with Devorast’s tent so far removed from the others-and the croaking of unseen frogs hiding in the tall grass around them. The night sky was devoid of stars and the breeze from the west was cool and damp.

  “I heard a rumor that you had returned,” the visiting Cormyrean said. “You have taken back your canal, then.”

  There was another pause then the alchemist said, “Well … not precisely.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Truesilver. “I’ve seen the progress. It’s remarkable. This is truly a feat that will be the envy of … well, everyone.”

  “Horemkensi,” Devorast said, “is the master builder.”

  “Whatever does that mean?”

  “It means,” said the alchemist, “that as far as anyone who matters in Innarlith knows, Senator Horemkensi is directing the construction of the canal, not Ivar Devorast.”

  “And I would prefer that that fiction remain in place,” Devorast said. “At least for now.”

  There was another pause, but T’juyu could hear the warden breathing loudly. Finally the Cormyrean said, “That’s an outrage. The new ransar is so loyal to this Horemkensi that he wouldn’t hear your plea?”

  If it was possible to hear someone shrug, T’juyu heard it, or at least sensed it from the alchemist.

  “Have you even spoken to him?” Truesilver asked.

  “Pristoleph?” the alchemist replied.

  “No,” said Devorast.

  “I’ve met with him,” Truesilver said. “I’ve just come from Innarlith and plan to ride the rest of the way north to Arrabar. A Cormyrean ship awaits me there so that I can return home … to a kingdom without-” He stopped speaking and even T’juyu could sense the discomfort in the air.

  A footstep startled her and she brushed up against the canvas. Feet shifted inside, but T’juyu looked up at the sound of another footstep outside, then another. A man carrying a short spear and wearing ring mail that looked at least a size too big for him passed. He looked and smelled drunk-only a little-but he still seemed determined to make his rounds.