Scream of Stone w-3

by Philip Athans

  “This way, please,” the ransar said then stepped through the door without waiting to see if Devorast followed him.

  The sitting room was comfortable, but not as garish as the more “public” rooms of Pristal Towers. The artifacts and art were from the far corners of Faerun, the furniture upholstered in Shou silk, the carved sandstone that surrounded the fireplace imported from Zakhara. Pristoleph went to a delicately crafted cart made from what looked like spun gold and poured himself a glass of Sembian wine.

  “Would you like one?” he asked Devorast.

  When Pristoleph turned he saw that Devorast had stepped to the tall, arched window that looked out over the city, facing west.

  “Pristal Towers,” the ransar said. “Welcome to my home.”

  “Am I free to go?” the man asked, still looking out at a sky he hadn’t seen in a very long time.

  “Are you refusing my hospitality?”

  “I have been your guest for …”

  “Fourteen months,” Pristoleph said.

  “What more could you wish of me?”

  Pristoleph took a long sip of wine and said, “It’s quite good, really. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a glass?”

  Devorast nodded, and the gesture betrayed impatience. Pristoleph made sure to take his time pouring the wine, but Devorast made no complaints. Instead, he continued to stare out the window.

  “The city hasn’t changed much in fourteen months, has it?” Pristoleph said, stepping to the window and holding out the tallglass.

  “No,” Devorast said as he took the glass. “It has not changed at all.”

  Pristoleph smiled at the subtext apparent in Devorast’s cold gaze. He sat and motioned for Devorast to do the same. Devorast lowered himself with a barely-audible grunt onto the divan across from Pristoleph.

  “There we are,” said the ransar. “Now we can converse like two gentlemen.”

  “I am not a gentleman, Ransar,” Devorast said. “You may be, but I am a prisoner.”

  “You are no longer a prisoner.”

  “Then I am free to go?”

  Pristoleph nodded, but Devorast did not stand.

  “I imagine you’re curious as to the state of the canal,” Pristoleph said.

  Devorast replied, “Only if there is something I can do about it.”

  “Well,” said the ransar, “I do hope so. Progress over the last fourteen months has been deplorable. They’re barely farther than they were when you were first detained.”

  “And so you’ve dug me out of the hole you buried me in so I can finish it?”

  Pristoleph found himself smiling, though by all rights he would never have allowed such impertinence from someone in Devorast’s position. But the truth of the Cormyrean’s words gave him some leeway.

  “I’ve dug you out of your hole because I know you didn’t kill anyone,” Pristoleph said. “At any rate, I know you didn’t kill Senator Horemkensi.” “And Surero?”

  “Your friend is being released and sent on his way even as we speak.”

  Devorast nodded and Pristoleph knew that was as much of a “thank you” as he was ever going to get-and maybe more of one than he deserved.

  Pristoleph took another sip of wine, noticing that Devorast hadn’t touched his, then he said, “Though I know you didn’t kill him, I do know that you made him … well, let’s say a sort of ‘cuckold’ for some months while you led the construction of the canal in secret. Do you deny that?”

  Devorast looked him in the eye and took his first sip of wine.

  “Let’s say that was worth fourteen months,” Pristoleph said. “Just to keep up appearances, you understand.”

  Devorast took another sip of wine.

  “There’s something I have been waiting some months to ask you,” Pristoleph said.

  “You knew where to find me.”

  Pristoleph laughed, ignoring the part of himself that told him he should have been offended, and said, “Indeed. At any rate, I wonder if you can tell me now-why?”

  Devorast lifted an eyebrow.

  “Why would you work so hard to finish a canal that Little Lord H would have gotten all the credit for? Why help him? Why build it in the first place if so many people, so many powerful people, especially since the death of Osorkon, were aligned against you?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  And from that answer, Pristoleph understood everything. He set his tallglass on the table between them and rubbed his hands together so Devorast wouldn’t see them shake.

  “I have made some inquiries,” the ransar said, “and find that you have very few close associates and no wife. No family.”

  Devorast nodded.

  “So you have never known the love of a woman?” asked the ransar.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Devorast answered, and seemed content to leave it at that.

  “I have,” Pristoleph pressed on. “I do, I mean. At least, I believe I do. Her name is Phyrea.”

  Devorast sipped his wine, and there was something in the way his eyes moved that made Pristoleph’s inner heat flare for the briefest moment. Devorast blinked, noticing the rise in temperature.

  “You know her,” Pristoleph said.

  “We have met.”

  “I never thought, when I was a younger man, that I would ever love a woman the way I love her. Women for me were always … difficult. At first I didn’t have enough gold, then I had too much. But then Phyrea. I had only to look upon her once-and if you’ve met her, then you certainly understand-and that was it. It was as though she ensnared me, or was it that she embraced me? I don’t know.”

  Devorast just stared at him, but it was Pristoleph’s turn to refuse to speak.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Devorast finally said, and Pristoleph felt in that moment as though he had achieved the impossible.

  “In ways I’m often loathe to admit,” said Pristoleph, “I have surrendered a part of myself to her, a part that I will never get back, that is hers to do with as she will. And no matter what she does or what intrudes from outside, I will never regain that part of myself, and will never want to.”

  “I couldn’t do that,” Devorast said, and Pristoleph got the feeling it was something the Cormyrean didn’t want to admit to himself, let alone to another. “I don’t know how to do that.”

  “Yes you do,” Pristoleph dared. “You have done the same with this canal of yours. That is why you would be content to work in the shadow of a buffoon like Horemkensi. That is why you will sit in a dungeon for more than a year and come out wanting nothing more than to go back there and start digging again.”

  “Are you asking me to do that?” Devorast asked. “As the Ransar of Innarlith?”

  Pristoleph said, “I am.”

  “And who will the men pretend to take their orders from?” Devorast asked.

  “They will take their direction from you.”

  “And who will I answer to?” Devorast asked.

  “You will answer to me,” said the ransar.

  “No,” said Devorast.

  Pristoleph closed his eyes and sighed.

  “I will finish it,” Devorast went on, “but I will do it for myself. I will do it for the work, for the doing of it, not for you, or for Innarlith, or for any ship captain who expects to make an extra silver piece from it. If you mean for me to do it, leave me alone to do it.”

  “Your own way,” said the ransar, “with no oversight? No budget? No restrictions?”

  “I can tell you precisely how much it will cost you,” Devorast said, and Pristoleph almost winced at the power of the sheer self-confidence the man radiated, “down to the last copper.”

  Pristoleph said, “On your way out, write that figure on a sheet of parchment. Gather yourself-eat, sleep-find your man Surero, and get back to work. Build it for whomever you please, however you please, but I will hold you to the number on that sheet of parchment. Down to the last copper.”

  26

  16 Nightal, the Year of
Wild Magic (1372 DR)

  THE THAYAN ENCLAVE, INNARLITH

  And what will it cost me to ensure that this stays between us?” Wenefir asked as he hefted the mace, obviously impressed with its perfect balance.

  Marek Rymut didn’t tell the priest what he was thinking, of course, but instead lied. “My dear Seneschal, I assure you that all our transactions are made within the confines of the strictest, most impenetrable confidence. In fact, I won’t even ask you who it is you intend to hide this beautiful piece from.”

  Wenefir rolled his eyes and said, “I am willing to pay for your silence, Master Rymut, but if you assure me I already have it, I will have to hold you to that.”

  “And you wouldn’t hold me to it if I did ask for coin?” the Red Wizard risked, and was answered with just the frigid glare he’d expected from the Cyricist. Time to calm things down. “I jest, of course.”

  “Fire and ice?” the priest asked, examining the platinum-inlaid mithral head of the enchanted weapon.

  “You have merely to speak the word ‘inflae’ and the head of the weapon will burst into flame,” the Red Wizard explained. “It will burn hotter than ordinary fire-but as long as you hold the mace, it will not burn you.”

  “And the ice?”

  Marek took note of the strange look that fell over the priest as he asked that question. Though it wasn’t an emotion he was personally plagued by, Marek thought the seneschal looked guilty.

  “The word is ‘cahlo’,” said the wizard.

  “Netherese….” Wenefir sighed.

  “You’re familiar with the ancient tongue?”

  Wenefir shook his head and laid the mace back into the felt-lined duskwood box. He closed the lid with a gentle touch and flicked the clasp closed.

  Marek sank into a leather chair and regarded the priest with a curious eye. The door opened and Marek nodded to the apprentice wizard who looked in.

  “Some wine, perhaps?” Marek asked Wenefir, who shook his head, looking down at the box with a distant expression.

  Marek waved the apprentice away and the door closed.

  “How many Thayans live here now?” Wenefir asked.

  Marek shrugged and smiled. He had no intention of replying in any further detail. Instead, he asked, “What is it, Wenefir? There’s something on your mind, my old friend.”

  “Are we friends?” the priest asked. “I didn’t think we were.”

  “There isn’t a word for precisely what we are to each other, Wenefir,” the Red Wizard answered, meaning to be cryptic in his response. “But I suppose ‘friends’ will have to do.”

  “I suppose so,” the priest answered.

  “So?”

  Wenefir sighed, maybe just for effect, and said, “Pristoleph has freed Ivar Devorast and that alchemist of his.”

  Marek blinked and put a hand to his heart before he realized maybe he should try to pretend he wasn’t surprised. But then, even someone who knew as much as Marek Rymut knew had to hear everything for the first time.

  “I suppose Devorast will return to work, then,” the Red Wizard guessed.

  “He was pulled out of an eight by eight cell in the dungeons under the Palace of Many Spires yesterday, and I understand he’s already on his way north.”

  “Well,” Marek said with a sigh, “I suppose that is the ransar’s prerogative. Surely, though, as his seneschal, you had some influence on that decision.”

  “I suppose people could get that impression,” the priest grumbled, his normally reedy voice surprisingly deep. “I have been his oldest and most loyal confidant for more years than I want to enumerate, but my opinion seems less and less relevant to him.”

  “Oh?” Marek prodded. “And who has the ransar’s ear if not for you?”

  “That woman …” Wenefir started, but wouldn’t let himself finish.

  “It’s been my experience,” Marek said, not letting Wenefir stew too much over the fair Phyrea, “that men like Pristoleph rapidly tire of women like Phyrea.”

  “Beauty fades?”

  Marek laughed and even Wenefir cracked a smile.

  “Beauty like Phyrea’s shan’t fade for many, many years to come, Seneschal,” Marek said.

  “Her influence on him will last as long, I fear.”

  Marek shrugged that off.

  “I’m surprised at you,” Wenefir went on. “I suppose I’m always surprised at you … but you as much as anyone helped make Pristoleph ransar, and to let that idiot girl, that mad woman, bend his ear …”

  “What has she told him to do that so worries you?” Marek asked.

  Wenefir shook his head and started to pace the parlor, his puffy girth coming close to knocking expensive Kozakuran ceramics from the side tables-and Marek winced with every pass.

  “Was it Phyrea who prompted him to release Devorast?” the Red Wizard asked.

  “I don’t think so,” the priest replied, “but perhaps. Regardless, she is a negative influence on a man who could do us both more harm than we’d like to admit, should circumstances move him in that direction.”

  “Then we will have to remain in control of his circumstances,” the Red Wizard said. He wouldn’t tell Wenefir the whole truth, but he thought maybe he could calm some of the priest’s only partially-warranted fears. “Besides, I’m hardly afraid of Pristoleph.”

  “Careful, Master Rymut,” the priest warned. “The ransar is more than he seems.”

  “Oh, please, Wenefir,” Marek replied with a chuckle that made his generous rolls shudder. “It takes more than a genasi to frighten me, I assure you.”

  Wenefir raised an eyebrow in surprise, but the expression was fleeting. “I should learn not to be surprised that you know everything about everyone.”

  Marek shrugged.

  “Still, Marek-” Wenefir started.

  “Calm yourself, Wenefir,” the Red Wizard interrupted. “Between the two of us, Pristoleph is well in hand, and should that stop being the case, well … perhaps you can use your priestly skills to ask the rotting corpse of Salatis what happens when a ransar outlives his usefulness.”

  Wenefir stopped pacing and kept his eyes away from Marek’s. He crossed his arms over his chest and his voice squeaked a little when he said, “Perhaps that wine, after all?”

  27

  18 Nightal, the Year of Wild Magic (1372 DR)

  THE LAND OF ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN

  I had these teeth carved out of whalebone for you,” Marek Rymut said, holding up the little bowl for Willem to see. Gray-black clouds boiled in the sky above them. Standing on the roof of the tower as they were, the bottoms of the clouds seemed only inches above their heads. “Open your mouth.”

  The undead thing opened its jaws wide and Marek stepped closer. Emaciated and half-rotten, Willem Korvan stood naked in the uniformly warm air of his master’s pocket dimension. Marek examined the spaces in his black gums where the teeth had fallen out.

  “I wish you would have kept the originals,” Marek chastised his creation. “These will do-no one will notice, anyway-but they’ll hurt.”

  Marek didn’t expect any reaction from Willem and didn’t get one, but Insithryllax grunted from behind him and said, “Why do you speak to that thing as though it understands you?”

  Willem’s yellow eyes rolled in their deep-sunken sockets to fix on the dragon, who leaned against one of the battlements in his human form.

  “What makes you think he can’t understand me?” the Red Wizard asked.

  “You’re the expert,” the dragon acquiesced, “but still….”

  “Still, nothing,” Marek said. “Willem understands me. It’s a part of the curse, I suppose, and I doubt it’s something he appreciates. In fact, if I didn’t have total control of his shredded will, I have no doubt he’d have pounded me to death with one of my own limbs the way he did the late master builder.”

  “So,” said the dragon, “doesn’t that give you pause?”

  Marek shook his head and chuckled in response. He chose one of the wh
alebone teeth and lined it up with a puckered, dried-up hole in the top right side of Willem’s mouth. He pressed it in until it met a little resistance, then wiggled it around a bit until it started moving again. Willem didn’t move or react in any way.

  “That’s grotesque, Marek,” Insithryllax complained. “Really.”

  “Well, if you want to undo an omelet,” Marek said, “you have to reassemble a few eggs.”

  He let go of the tooth and stepped back to make sure it was straight.

  “Close enough?” he asked the dragon.

  “A little to the left.”

  Marek adjusted the tooth and moved on to the next one.

  “Don’t you usually leave a hood on this thing anyway?” the dragon went on, and Marek started to wonder about his curiosity. “Surely this isn’t cosmetic.”

  “Well, in a way it is,” Marek said while he pressed the second tooth into another dead space in the thing’s black gums. “You see, I require a living Willem Korvan for a time-or, well, a mostly living one, anyway. His looks have always been his most potent weapon.”

  Insithryllax let out a scoffing breath.

  “I meant it was his most potent weapon, my friend,” Marek confirmed. “At any rate, I intend to restore a measure of life to our friend here.”

  Marek looked up at the undead man’s eyes and was certain that there was some recognition there. He knew the creature could think, though not necessarily make decisions, and that he could speak, even.

  “You hear me, don’t you, Willem?” he said. “Do you want to live again?”

  The creature just stood there.

  “I’ll take that as a maybe,” Insithryllax said.

  Marek jammed another false tooth into the dead man’s gums and said, “O ye of little faith. He wants to live again, Insithryllax. Of that I am entirely certain, though he will likely not be terribly satisfied with the life he’ll return to.”

  “He has been … gone,” the dragon said, “for a long time, by human standards.”

  “He has, hasn’t he?” Marek agreed. “But don’t forget that I have some influence on the way the winds blow in Innarlith. I’ll have him returned to the senate. I’ve even kept his house sealed and waiting for him.”