Scream of Stone w-3

by Philip Athans

  “Then I will have to make do without the rest,” said Devorast.

  “For the nonce, yes, I suppose, but don’t give up hope entirely. He may hate you, but he likes-no, he loves-gold. I’ll make sure your needs are met, as we agreed.”

  Devorast made to stand, but Pristoleph waved him down.

  “Please,” said the ransar. “I have very few people to talk to. I think these stacks of parchment are driving me mad. Phyrea seems to hear voices I can’t while mine goes entirely unnoticed. Wenefir has this god of his now, though he still plays the faithful lieutenant. The rest of them I hardly know-useful sycophants, I suppose, but nothing more. I’m starved for someone to talk to.”

  “As the ransar,” Devorast said with the hint of a smile, “couldn’t you just order someone to talk to you?”

  “When I said they were useful sycophants, I meant that they are no more to me than tools. It would be like you having a conversation with one of your shovels.”

  “My shovel serves me, at least.”

  “And these men serve me,” said the ransar. “The citystate is hale and hearty and safe. We have no enemies. The streets are reasonably peaceful.”

  “Does that mean you have succeeded?” Devorast asked.

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” Pristoleph replied. “All that could turn on a silver piece. When you wield power over other men, you’re never successful, because you’re never finished.”

  “I’ve been getting through to you after all,” Devorast said, and the two men shared a rare and precious laugh.

  34

  17 Tarsakh, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR)

  THE THAYAN ENCLAVE, INNARLITH

  It was Halina,” Marek said, his head heavy on his neck, his shoulders drooping. “It was my own niece, after all.”

  “I’ll melt her flesh off her bones,” Insithryllax said in a voice even deeper, even more potent than normal. “I’ll dissolve her. I’ll liquefy her.”

  They walked side by side in the courtyard of the ever-growing cluster of buildings, and Marek stopped short. Insithryllax continued another few steps then whirled on the Red Wizard. The dragon wore his human guise, but when he turned, Marek was startled by his eyes, which had gone entirely black. The dragon’s forehead furrowed and his jaw tightened into a trembling grimace.

  Marek smiled, but at the same time had to clench his hands into fists to keep them from shaking.

  “Is there something else amiss, my friend?” the wizard asked. “You seem-”

  Insithryllax turned away, and Marek winced-people didn’t turn their backs on him often, and the Red Wizard didn’t like it.

  “How can you stand it?” the dragon grumbled.

  “Insithryllax, what’s come over you?”

  The dark-skinned man flexed his hands and his fingers stretched into horrible, elongated talons.

  “Insithryllax,” Marek said, stepping closer behind him with some reluctance. “Remember yourself, my friend.”

  The disguised dragon’s right hand shrank to its human form, but his left remained spindly and capped with razor-edged claws. A sound came from him that was something between human speech and the thunderous roar of a great wyrm.

  A young wizard stepped out from one of the doors that opened onto the courtyard. She had been in Innarlith less than a month, having come from Thay to learn alchemy and make minor potions and ointments for the Third Quarter tradesmen. Marek didn’t remember her name. When she saw Insithryllax, she stopped, her eyes wide. She could see something Marek couldn’t-Insithryllax’s face-and her reaction froze the blood in Marek’s veins.

  “This isn’t like you,” Marek said. “Calm yourself. Now.”

  Insithryllax turned his head and glanced back over his shoulder. Marek gasped at the sight of his twisted features. The transformation was blurring him, combining the human with the draconic to create a hellish mask of black menace.

  “How can you stand it?” the wyrm said. “Your own flesh, a girl you took into your home, who had nowhere else to go and burdened you with her foolishness … and now she destroys something you worked to create? How can you not roar your rage to the skies? How can you not take wing, to drive her down before you and reduce her to paste?”

  “Well,” Marek offered, “what’s a few zombies between an uncle and his favorite niece?”

  “You toy with me,” the dragon growled, and the fingers of his right hand snapped out like whips, transforming instantly into talons to match his left. “Don’t toy with me. Tell me to kill her. Tell me to kill them all.”

  Marek spoke an incantation and gathered a feeling of calm. He took a deep breath, held it for a few heartbeats while Insithryllax continued to slowly transform, bit by bit, in front of him. When the Red Wizard exhaled he sent a wave of calm washing over the dragon. It was a simple spell, but one Marek was confident would at least slow the black dragon’s mounting rage.

  “Save your breath,” the dragon said. “You know you want her dead. She’ll start on the dock workers next. She’ll destroy everything you’ve built.”

  “Not just her, though,” Marek said. The dragon turned away, wings beginning to sprout from his slowly-widening back. “That’s the thing, my friend. Kill her, attack her at the temple, and we make an enemy of her whole faith. They are hardly to be concerned with one at a time, but should their goddess take notice of-”

  “Goddess?” the dragon shot back, his voice so loud and so low-pitched it set Marek’s ears ringing.

  The girl who’d been watching them from the door slapped her hands to her ears.

  “Leave us …” Marek called to her, but he couldn’t remember her name, “… you. Leave us!”

  The girl had her hands over her ears and couldn’t hear.

  “Girl!” Marek screamed.

  Insithryllax turned in her direction and she screamed, her hands still over her ears. Marek shouted for her to run, but she couldn’t hear him. A cloud of black mist washed over her, expelled from Insithryllax’s head, which had fully transformed into the head of a dragon. When the mist hit her, her skin blistered. She opened her mouth to scream again and inhaled a deep breath of acid. Instead of another scream, what came out was a white and pink froth. Her eyes melted into her skull and were gone entirely in less than a single heartbeat. The girl lived too long, dissolving away while trying to breathe and scream, but succeeding only in sizzling.

  When she finally collapsed, Insithryllax tipped his head up into the sky and roared as his neck stretched. His tail lashed out behind him, his wings burst into full form, and he dropped onto all fours.

  Marek ran through a spell more potent than the last, one that would temporarily rid the dragon of any intellect at all, leaving him open to whatever calming suggestion the Red Wizard chose to imbed in his consciousness.

  “Insithryllax, please,” he said.

  The dragon stretched his wings and with a groan his transformation was complete. “My friend, I-”

  “No!” the black wyrm shouted. Marek stepped back, feeling as though the dragon’s voice had physically pushed him. “I’ll kill her. I’ll kill them all. I’ll reduce their temple to mud. I’ll melt them from the face of Toril.”

  Marek tried to make eye contact with the wyrm, but Insithryllax wouldn’t-or couldn’t look him in the eye.

  The Red Wizard brought a spell to mind as the dragon leaped into the air. It wasn’t easy casting it in the wash of dust and leaves under Insithryllax’s titanic wings, but he did his best to hold firm.

  Marek’s spell opened a gray-black doorway in the air an arm’s length in front of the dragon, who flew blindly into the slowly-rotating zone of darkness. Without pause, the dragon, blind with rage, flew into the middle of it. When the last fraction of an inch of the black dragon’s tail passed through the horizon of the effect, Marek slammed it shut with an exertion of his will.

  The door in the sky disappeared and took the dragon with it.

  “Master,” a voice sounded from behind and above the Red Wiza
rd. “Is everything well?”

  “No,” Marek answered, then stopped himself and cleared his throat. “Everything is fine, but someone will have to clean up the … the …” Marek pointed at the still-sizzling remains of the acid-melted apprentice alchemist, “… the mess, over there.”

  “The dragon is gone, Master?” another of the apprentices called from a window.

  “He’s gone, yes,” Marek said with a sigh. He folded his arms across his chest and sighed again. He closed his eyes, thinking, wondering what could have come over Insithryllax. “He’s gone back to the Land of One Hundred and Thirteen.”

  “Will he be back?” asked yet another wizard, one visiting from Thazrumaros to help the growing staff of the Innarlith enclave master the art of creating magic wands.

  “No,” Marek said even as he considered whether he should bother answering at all. “He won’t be back until I bring him back.”

  “Please don’t, Master,” the wandmaker said in a voice loaded with fear and on the edge of panic.

  35

  5 Eleasias, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR)

  SECOND QUARTER, INNARLITH

  All of his best Shou ceramics-and it was fine indeed-was set out. Not a single detail had been overlooked. The silver shone so brightly in the candlelight it was difficult for him to look at the table. The crystal stemware glimmered with tiny rainbows, and the table linens were as white as fresh-fallen snow. A line of wine bottles had been opened and decanted, left to breathe a little too long already. The food-prepared by a small army of cooks who had long since gone-sat cooling on silver trays on a huge mahogany sideboard he’d purchased specially for the event.

  Willem sat in a stiff, uncomfortable chair he’d had for years and didn’t remember ever having sat in. He let the breath out through his nose.

  “I’ll be going to bed now,” his mother said, her voice barely more than a whisper, from behind him. “Unless you …?”

  She didn’t finish, but Willem shook his head anyway. Of course he didn’t expect his mother, only two months back in Innarlith from Cormyr, to help him clean up. As the only witness to what had become the most humiliating day of his life, he really just wanted her to go upstairs, go to bed, and perhaps forget what she had seen that evening.

  “Willem, my dear?”

  He turned to look at her and winced at the look of disappointment that was written so plainly on her face. She looked away as though he were diseased or in some way deformed. She looked away as though he were a beggar in the street. Without another word she shuffled off, her long silk gown rustling, the jewelry he’d bathed her in tinkling with each step.

  He sat there for some time longer, watching the candles shrink, dripping wax on the clean linen. Willem knew the last thing he’d be able to do was sleep. He needed someone to tell him why-tell him how, tell him when he had been abandoned by everyone. How could all two hundred invitations be ignored?

  He didn’t understand, his mother wouldn’t know, and Willem Korvan had no one else to talk to-no one except Marek Rymut.

  Willem stood and smoothed his fine wool waistcoat with trembling hands. He didn’t bother calling for a coach, though it was a walk of four long blocks from his home to the Thayan Enclave. He breathed deeply of the summer air, and as he walked he tried not to make eye contact with any of the people who strolled the lanternlit streets. He knew that too many of them-especially the ones who made a point to cross the street when they caught sight of him-had been on his guest list.

  When he presented himself at the gates to the enclave, he was admitted without question, as though the guards had been told to expect him. As he passed through the tall wrought-iron gate, Willem tried to remember when Marek Rymut had hired guards. He looked up at the building as he approached the door, and though parts of it were familiar, much of it had changed-too much of it, he thought, since the last time he’d been there. But then, try as he might, he didn’t quite remember exactly when he’d last been there-anyway, not long enough for the grand house to be converted into what more closely resembled a castle bailey: a cluster of buildings inside a walled enclosure.

  “Senator?” the guard said, even that one word thick with the peculiar, gruff accent of Thay. When Willem stopped to look at him, the guard continued, “The master will see you in his private study.”

  Willem nodded, not sure what that meant or where he should go. Obviously sensing that confusion, the guard motioned for him to follow and led him to a low stone house-for all appearances a pleasant country cottage surrounded by flowering bushes. The warm orange glow of candles pulsed in the windows, and when the door swung silently open, the familiar round shape of Marek Rymut filled the doorway.

  “Ah, Willem, my boy,” he said, his voice as warm and welcoming as the cottage itself, “do come in.”

  The guard bowed and backed away, and Willem stepped up to the door then hesitated when Marek didn’t move out of the way. Instead the Thayan stepped forward and before Willem could back away-and his instincts insisted he at least try-the wizard’s arms enfolded him in what was, if anything, too warm an embrace.

  “Ah, Willem,” Marek whispered in his ear. The Thayan’s breath was hot and thick with the cloying aroma of elven brandy. “You know you are always welcome here.”

  Willem stood rigid in the older man’s embrace, but Marek either didn’t notice or didn’t mind. The Thayan released him and stepped aside. Willem staggered into the room.

  “Sit,” Marek said. “Brandy?”

  Willem took in his surroundings with some surprise. He’d known Marek Rymut for a long time, and thought he had some sense of the Thayan’s tastes, which ran to the finer things-the more exotic. His “private study” was just the opposite. The room was everything one would expect from a peasant grandmother’s country cottage. Though he suspected the decorations had been chosen to put people at ease, Willem grew only more anxious as he lowered himself into a leather armchair. Though he hadn’t asked for one, Marek poured him a glass of brandy and set it on the little table next to Willem’s chair.

  “Why the long face?” the wizard asked as he lowered his girth into the chair opposite.

  “What happened, Master Rymut?”

  The Thayan smiled at that and shrugged.

  Willem took a deep breath, and wondered how to even begin.

  “Really, my boy,” Marek went on, swirling the brandy glass under his nose, “there’s no reason to be so glum, now is there?”

  “Isn’t there?” Willem asked. “I’m being …”

  “You’re being …?”

  “I can’t remember things,” Willem said before he realized he was saying the words aloud. “I don’t know what’s happened to me.”

  “You’re fine, my boy.”

  Words caught in Willem’s throat and he made a little coughing sound.

  The Thayan took a little sip of brandy then said, “They didn’t come to your little party.”

  A tear welled up in Willem’s right eye and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. He let his head hang on his neck, looking down at the wood floor.

  “I have bad dreams,” Willem whispered. He was afraid to say the words, but more afraid not to. “I wake up drenched in sweat, my teeth clenched so hard my head aches. Most of the time my hands are curled into fists and I can’t open them.”

  Willem looked at his hands, both of which were balled into tight fists. He didn’t bother trying to open them.

  “It’s summer already,” Willem went on. “I don’t remember spring. I think I don’t.”

  “It will all be fine,” the Thayan said. “You’ll see. Try not to think too hard about all this. We all have nightmares. We all forget things. We all have days when we feel we have no friends in the world, when we feel all of Toril has somehow gotten together to forget us all at once, but that’s hardly reason to hang your head in misery, crying into your friend and patron’s expensive elven spirits.”

  “I’m sorry,” Willem all but gasped.

 
“Wait a month,” Marek went on, ignoring Willem’s apology. “In a month, all your friends will come back to you. It will be as if nothing ever happened.”

  “But …” Willem breathed, looking up into the Thayan’s face, “what happened?”

  “Nothing,” Marek said with a wide grin. “In a month, at any rate.”

  “But how?”

  “I’ll tell them to,” said Marek. “We will all be fast friends and close associates once more, because I will tell them as much.”

  Willem swallowed, looked at the glass of brandy on the table next to him, but didn’t reach for it.

  “You can do that?” Willem whispered, his eyes still on the glass.

  “Don’t think too much of me,” the wizard said with a laugh. “I am but a small piece in a much larger puzzle. Still, if you need anything … anything at all … I am here for you.”

  “No,” Willem said, forcing his attention from the glass to Marek’s big, wet eyes. “No, Master Rymut, it is I who am here for you. Always.”

  Marek laughed in a way that made the hair on the back of Willem’s neck stand on end.

  36

  5 Eleasias, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR)

  FIRST QUARTER, INNARLITH

  Wenefir didn’t know the names of either of the two black firedrakes. They looked so much alike they might have been twins. Both had black hair and dusky skin, with eyes blacker than any human’s. They wore thick black leather ring mail vests, and even their boots were of the same design and materials. The only thing that was different about the two was the way they stood. One of them set all his weight on his left foot. The other leaned on the thick haft of his longaxe. There was something about the way they smelled that Wenefir found unpleasant.

  The night breeze brought the stench of sulfur from the Lake of Steam, and Wenefir couldn’t smell the firedrakes anymore. He blinked in the darkness and gazed down the length of the long pier. The ship that was tied there-a sturdy cog out of Calimport-bumped the piling with a hollow thud, and a wave broke, sending a few drops of water into Wenefir’s face. The priest blinked the acidic water from his eyes. He didn’t want to take even one hand from the haft of his mace to wipe the water away.