Scream of Stone w-3

by Philip Athans

  Those senators who had had the courage or ambition to attend the session seemed to feel it, too, though none of them came close enough to Pristoleph to feel the heat. Only a very few of them even tried to look Pristoleph in the eye, and most of those who tried failed to hold the ransar’s powerful gaze.

  Pristoleph didn’t even spare a glance in the direction of the black firedrakes. The creatures that used to be his most trusted bodyguards lined the walls of the chamber, hands on long spears and other weapons, and dark passion in their eyes. Wenefir recognized a few of them, “men” who had held posts in Pristal Towers, but their murderous eyes betrayed no shred of the loyalty that had once been so resolute.

  Wenefir didn’t let the presence of the black firedrakes rattle him-he was rattled enough as it was, merely from the dense, hot air of the room. Black firedrakes aside, all he had to do was play his role and wait, and Innarlith would be Cyric’s, and by default, his, soon enough.

  “Welcome, Pristoleph,” Meykhati said from the dais, his omission of the title ransar was neither unexpected nor unnoticed. “You will have the ear of the senate, and you will not be harmed.”

  Meykhati didn’t have to say that. It had all been decided, negotiated, decided again, then renegotiated and settled in the last two days. Pristoleph didn’t appear to have heard the senator. Instead, he walked to the dais, stood next to him, and cleared his throat.

  The senators in attendance took their seats, all eyes fixed on Pristoleph. They waited to hear a message they had been given in writing in advance, a message penned in part by Marek Rymut, in part by Meykhati, and in part by Pristoleph. Wenefir knew that if Pristoleph merely spoke those words and walked away, everything would go back to normal, the streets would calm, the wemics would go back to the Shar, and Cyric’s Black Sun would rise in Innarlith. Sweat beaded on Wenefir’s forehead.

  “I come before this assembly for the last time,” Pristoleph began-the words taken verbatim from the prepared statement. Wenefir took a deep breath. “I will speak my piece, then I will step down as your ransar.”

  There was a general murmur in the chamber that made Wenefir cringe. The senators had the nerve to feign surprise.

  “But before I go,” Pristoleph went on, “there is something that I must say.”

  Wenefir’s head spun. That wasn’t part of the statement. Pristoleph was supposed to have begun thanking people who helped him get where he was. Wenefir scanned the huge chamber for Marek but didn’t see him. How could the Thayan not be here? Wenefir thought. His own internal voice had gone shrill with panic. Cold sweat began to soak through his robes and the scar between his legs began to itch.

  “Perhaps you wish to reconsider,” Meykhati warned Pristoleph. “The senate’s patience is voluminous but has its limits. For the sake of peace-”

  “To the Abyss with peace,” Pristoleph shot back, and Meykhati shrunk away before clearing his throat and puffing out his chest, his eyes darting around the chamber for fear that his colleagues had seen him flinch. “I will speak, and you will listen.”

  The assembled lawmakers fidgeted and murmured to each other. One of them stood-Aikiko-and turned to march out of the chamber. Pristoleph watched her go, his yellow-hot gaze boring into her back. She stumbled on the steps at the end of the aisle and turned. Wenefir saw the fear in her eyes and thought, She looks like I feel.

  “If any more of you would like to go,” Pristoleph said. “You know where the doors are.”

  That stopped Aikiko in her tracks and she turned, standing at the end of the aisle. She fidgeted, not sure what to do with her hands, and Pristoleph stared at her for a moment that seemed as endless as it was heavy.

  “In the long history of Faerun,” Pristoleph said, his eyes finally leaving Aikiko to bounce around the senate chamber, “change has come in many forms, both good and bad. Empires have risen and fallen, whole races have emerged only to be washed from the face of Toril, and even the gods have tread the land upon which we stand this very day-and even they died like the mortals that bow before them. All of these moments, all of those beginnings and endings, have come at the hands of a man. It wasn’t Mystra who brought low the Empire of Netheril, but a single archwizard who gave himself the power of a god. And in that spirit, Ivar Devorast came here from Cormyr to change the face of Faerun for all time, to leave a mark upon the very rock and soil, to dig a river where none existed before, to redraw our maps and change everything in the process. Some of you supported that goal. Others of you opposed it. Some of you watched from afar, content to get on with your lives either way. But not one of you-not one of you useless, pointless bureaucrats-recognized the truth of the canal, or of Ivar Devorast, or of me.”

  Some of the senators looked angry, some appeared cowed, but all of them remained silent. Meykhati’s face went red, but he too didn’t speak.

  “What Ivar Devorast created, and what he subsequently destroyed,” Pristoleph went on, “was a work that could only be imagined by one man. He destroyed it because you proved yourselves unworthy of it. You proved Innarlith unworthy of it. You are servants. You are slaves.”

  “That’s an outrage!” Meykhati shouted. “An outrage!”

  Wenefir’s knees quivered, and his breath came in shallow gasps. The huge chamber seemed to press in on him from all sides, stifling, suffocating. The priest turned and almost fell. His head spun and his mouth went dry.

  “Be silent, fool,” Pristoleph said. “You’ll get what you want. You’ll be ransar. And you’ll stay ransar only long enough for the Thayan-a man we should have killed the moment he stepped on Innarlan soil-to choose your successor. Be the lead sheep, if you like. The herd will be happy with you until they’re told not to be.”

  “Get out!” Meykhati shrieked. “Get out of here before I have you arrested. Get out of here before I kill you myself!”

  Wenefir glanced back to see Pristoleph and Meykhati seem to teeter for the blink of an eye, then move toward each other as one. Candles flared into great plumes of white-hot flame and one of the chandeliers that hung from the high ceiling began to quiver. The senators stood, and someone shouted, but Wenefir ignored it all, brushing aside a page who was fleeing the room.

  Wenefir burst into the outer chamber and ran. His legs burned and he breathed in gasps. He would be blamed. He would be blamed for all of it. Pristoleph had destroyed himself when he defied the order, the arrangement, and he’d taken Wenefir with him.

  The priest burst through the doors, startling the pair of black firedrakes that stood guard. They almost stopped him, but stepped aside when they recognized the priest. Outside, there was a short colonnade. Rain fell and mixed with the sweat that had soaked into his robe. He stepped aside to avoid someone who was just as startled as he, and he slipped. Mud splattered, he stood and started to run again, losing his way and ending up in the gardens that surrounded the imposing edifice of the Chamber of Law and Civility.

  “Wenefir,” a voice boomed amid the patter of rain. The sound of it stopped the priest cold.

  “Marek-” Wenefir gasped. “Pristoleph-”

  “Come here, Wenefir,” Marek Rymut said, beckoning him to a narrow path that led into a copse of trees. “It will be all right. Pristoleph’s fate is sealed.”

  Wenefir followed the wizard because he wasn’t sure what else to do.

  “He lied,” Wenefir mumbled. “It’s degenerated into a brawl.”

  “I know,” said the Thayan.

  “What do we do?”

  “We?” the Red Wizard asked.

  “Yes, I-”

  Wenefir might have finished that thought had a bolt of lightning not crashed down from the roiling gray clouds to hold him for an agonizing moment in its death grip.

  He fell to the ground afire, smelling his own flesh burning, choking on the smoke and heat that blistered his lungs.

  “We shall do nothing, priest,” Marek said, his voice almost lost to Wenefir amid the crackling of flames.

  Marek Rymut laughed while Wenefir burned to de
ath.

  71

  10 Kythorn, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)

  THE CANAL SITE

  There was just enough left of Willem Korvan’s mind to make his undead body quiver at the sight of Ivar Devorast.

  The man that had been his friend, became his enemy, then ended as his prey, stood straight and tall against the driving rain. A piercing blast of lightning split the sky and illuminated the devastated remains of the canal. Devorast stood in silhouette against the jumble of broken stone and shattered wood. Willem opened his mouth, ignoring the rain that pelted his face. He shivered, but not because the rain was cold. His body moved in response to fell magic-a curse, really-that had saturated his desiccated form with the semblance of life. Sometimes that magic tipped out of balance and he shook. Sometimes his mouth fell open. Sometimes he gurgled. Sometimes he lost control of his eyes. And sometimes he screamed.

  The loud rumble of thunder masked the scream at first, but when the thunder echoed away, the hoarse cry remained.

  Devorast spun, blinking his wet hair from his eyes, and Willem leaped.

  He’d crawled up on Devorast from behind and was poised on all fours on a tilted block of stone that seemed to have been tossed up by the hand of some enormous giant from where it had once served as part of the canal’s wall. The stone was at once rough and slick. Willem ignored-didn’t even register, really-the pain of scraping several layers of skin from his knee, hip, and palms when he leaped. The skin, all of it, was dead anyway.

  Devorast grunted, not in panic or fear, but from simple exertion, as he jumped to the side to avoid Willem. The undead creature didn’t try to turn in the air. He didn’t have that degree of control over his own body, and in the primal part of his mind that Marek Rymut had made most dominant, Willem knew he didn’t have to.

  They were alone. No living soul within miles would hear Devorast’s last words-if Willem allowed him any. No one was there to help. No one would stand in Willem’s way at the last moment. And any ability to change his mind, to decide for himself simply not to kill the man who once shared his roof and his dreams, had been drained from Willem Korvan once and for all.

  “Who are you?” Devorast shouted into the pounding rain.

  Willem fetched up on the muddy ground in a crouch and grimaced at his prey. Another of his teeth fell out to clatter against his tongue, which sat in his lower jaw like a stone. Devorast’s eyes narrowed and he stepped back.

  “What are-?” he started, but then shook his head.

  “Willem?”

  Willem lunged, his hands out in front of him. He meant to grab Devorast by his filthy red hair and drag him down to the mud. He meant to rip the man’s head off. He wanted to taste Devorast’s blood, to gouge out his eyes, to rip his spleen from his still-warm guts.

  But something stopped him in mid-air with the force of a battering ram. He’d only barely registered a glow in the air like some sort of phosphorescent mist.

  If he’d had any air in his lungs it would have been driven from him by the impact of his chest, but instead he simply flew backward through the air, whirling in the driving rain. He hit the ground in a rolling confusion of limbs and scattered stones, but was quickly back on his feet.

  He screeched a hollow, atonal battle-cry across the dark distance between him and Devorast, but the human didn’t stand and fight. Instead, he turned and jumped. It was a jump no human should have been capable of-both too high and too far. He landed with uncertain footing on a tall pile of broken stone blocks, and turned to look back at Willem.

  Willem began to close the distance between them in whatever rough approximation of running he was capable of. His feet slipped in the mud and he staggered and grunted. Devorast stood high on the mound, watching him.

  “Willem, is that you?” the human shouted over the rumble of thunder and the drumming of the rain. “Willem? What’s happened to you? What have you become?”

  “What do you care?” Willem coughed out, then repeated it in a feral, shrieking wail. He hadn’t willed himself to speak, and when he tried again his brain wouldn’t send words to his mouth. He lumbered toward Devorast, toward the man he was created to kill.

  “Willem,” Devorast called. “Do you understand me?”

  But Willem Korvan staggered on, his mouth open, his eyes rolling in his skull. The cold and the pain and every hideous sensation that came from his withering, deteriorating, rotting body tore through him. But instead of stopping him or slowing him even, it was the pain and the misery that drove him on.

  He clambered up the side of the mound and Devorast looked down at him. It was too dark for Willem to see his face, and the undead thing he’d become wouldn’t have recognized anything but fear in Devorast’s expression. And that was the one thing that, even in his crumbling state, Willem knew he would never see. Devorast might pity him, hate him, or be disgusted by him. He might be disappointed. But he would never be afraid.

  “Willem, stop,” Devorast said, not having to yell so loudly, with Willem only a few feet beneath him.

  Maybe that was pity in his voice. Maybe he was disappointed.

  Willem let loose a rattling, throat-shredding scream and grabbed a piece of broken wooden brace that protruded from the pile of rubble. With a strength granted him by the Red Wizard’s necromancy, Willem yanked the board free of the pile. The rocks on which Devorast stood shifted then fell, toppling the human off. He fell backward, arms pinwheeling, and disappeared from sight over the other side of the mound.

  Willem scrambled to the top, the board hanging from his open hand by a long, thick sliver of wood that had come loose and impaled him through the palm of his hand. When he tried to use that hand to climb with, the splinter broke and the board fell free, but wood stayed in his hand.

  He didn’t care.

  Once atop the mound of rubble, Willem looked down. Devorast lay on his back, his chest heaving, his mouth open wide. He struggled to breathe and to sit up. Willem hissed and leaped from the top of the mound.

  Devorast coughed then sputtered something, the sound of his voice lost to another crash of thunder. Rainwater and spittle few from the man’s lips.

  Willem was stopped once more in midair. The force of the glowing mist-mist in the shape of the head of a ram, its curved horns traced with shimmering luminescence-tipped him up and drove him into the mound. He hit hard, and some combination of bones snapped. Willem screamed out of some half-buried instinct, though the pain was no worse than always.

  He slid to the muddy ground in front of Ivar Devorast, who scurried away from him, still not able to stand, and still desperately gasping for a decent breath. Willem rose to his feet and took a step toward Devorast. The human spat out a word, the same word that had conjured the spectral ram, and Willem steeled himself for another blow, but it didn’t come.

  Something passed through Devorast’s gaze that might have been fear-might have been. Or was he simply annoyed? He held a hand to his face, a ring gleaming on one finger, and spoke the word again, but again the magic did not appear. He was left scrambling away on his back, gasping for breath and helpless.

  72

  10 Kythorn, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)

  THE CANAL SITE

  He isn’t there! the sad woman screamed, the “sound” echoing in Phyrea’s head and setting her teeth on edge. He doesn’t love you. He’ll use you. He’ll ruin you. He’ll kill you. He’ll bleed you dry.

  They all do, the old woman said. Turn, girl. Turn away.

  Let her go, the little girl squealed. Let her die by his hand, or the creature’s. Let her die and come with us that way. Let her join us covered in mud.

  No, the man with the scar on his face warned. She must die at Berrywilde.

  Phyrea screamed into the blast of thunder and kicked her horse forward. The animal stumbled on the loose rocks and started at a flash of lightning. She forced the horse’s head down and screamed again, anger flooding through her, washing away all the fear and doubt.

 
The flamberge bounced against the saddle horn, clattering in its scabbard. She grabbed it and steadied it as the horse calmed-at least calmed enough for her to urge it deeper into the ruin of the canal.

  “What creature?” she screamed into the night, then half-screamed, half-grunted when a ghost appeared in front of her. She pulled her horse around the ghost of the old woman.

  Go home, girl, the withered old crone wheezed, there’s nothing for you here.

  Phyrea shook her head and let a frustrated growl rumble from her throat. As she passed, the old woman’s face changed. Phyrea had to turn in her saddle to see it, and she blinked in the cold, driving rain. The old woman’s face twisted into a hideous, monstrous mask like the face of a demon, all fangs and open, worm-ridden sores.

  Phyrea yanked her eyes off the horrifying visage and urged her horse into the storm. She didn’t know where she was going.

  “Where are you?” she howled into the night. Her body shook with a sob that almost knocked her from the saddle. She began to weep. “Where are you?”

  Show her, said the man with the scar on his face.

  Phyrea pulled her horse up short. The beast was only too happy to oblige. Fear made it quiver under her. It kept its head down, scanning what it could see of the ground in the lightning-punctuated darkness. It shifted, desperate for footing in the mud and loose stones.

  “Show me,” Phyrea sobbed.

  But if she dies here…. the little boy said. If Willem touches her….

  Willem? Phyrea thought.

  She saw the boy standing at the top of a hill made of the sundered remains of the canal. His missing arm had been replaced by a ghastly tentacle that waved and curled with an intelligence all his own. The violet light was tinged with green. His face was locked in a rigid death mask-a silent scream of incalculable agony.