Scream of Stone

by Philip Athans

  “Sir?” the man repeated.

  Surero nudged Ivar Devorast with an elbow to the ribs and whispered, “He means you, Lord Ditchdigger.”

  Devorast stopped his steady rhythmic shoveling and looked up at the man, twelve feet up the side of the trench from him. He squinted into the sun and blinked a few times, but otherwise waited to hear what the man had to say.

  The man cleared his throat and looked both ways as though afraid of passing carts. He opened his mouth to speak then seemed to think better of it. He set his cap on the edge of the trench and climbed down to the level where Surero and Devorast dug.

  “You’re him, all right,” the man said in a voice that made it plain he was holding back a laugh or some other expression of joy. Surero stood, leaning on his shovel, also working to keep a smile off his face. “They said not to say anything, and I swear by whatever god looks after people who dig holes in the ground that no one will hear your name from these lips.”

  Devorast nodded and said, “Thank you, Mister …?”

  “No mister, anyway, sir,” the man replied, embarrassed. “My name is Fador, and I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  “What can we do for you?” Surero asked, startling Fador, who looked at him as though just then noticing someone else was there.

  “Um, well …” he started, forcing his attention back to Devorast. “Little Lord H”—as the men had come to call Horemkensi—“he’s told us to use four inches of sand instead of eight from now on as it’s takin’ too long using eight inches and he wants us to build faster.”

  Devorast shook his head, and Surero smiled when he saw no anger or even frustration there. It was as though Devorast had already fixed the problem that had been brought to him.

  “It has to be eight inches,” he told Fador. “Tell everyone I said so.”

  “But Little Lord H, sir …” Fador mumbled.

  “He’ll never know,” Surero assured the man. “Likely as not he’s already forgotten the order.”

  Fador smiled at that, still embarrassed. “But if we don’t build faster?”

  Devorast started digging again and Surero realized that for him, at least, the conversation was over.

  “The horses had to be reshod this month,” Surero said—the first thing that came to mind. Fador answered with a confused look. “If the horses all have to be reshod the work will slow, even if you used less sand.”

  “But the horses are fine, Master …”

  “Call me Orerus,” Surero replied. “Don’t actually reshod them, Fador, but your Little Lord H won’t know you didn’t, will he?”

  Fador smiled and nodded. He looked back at Devorast and seemed anxious to say something else, but Devorast just went on digging.

  “Thank you, Fador,” Surero said.

  Fador nodded and scurried back up the trench wall, laughing.

  “Well,” Surero said to Devorast when Fador was finally out of earshot, “I guess the word is spreading.”

  Devorast, seeming to reply to an entirely different question, said, “The zombies won’t lie about horseshoes.”

  Surero stood staring at Devorast, who went on digging for some time.

  “The zombies …” the alchemist finally said, lifting his shovel to dig. “I’ve been thinking about that.”

  18

  3 Mirtul, the Year of the Unstrung Harp (1371 DR)

  THE SISTERHOOD OF PASTORALS, INNARLITH

  Surero didn’t mind standing in line with the rest of them for a bowl of soup and a crust of bread. It gave him a chance to look at Halina. She had changed since last he saw her, some four years before. She had aged, but in a way that flattered her. The tired, almost simpering girl had not so much hardened, but solidified—no, he thought, that is a terrible choice of words to describe a woman so beautiful.

  “I’m sorry,” he said when finally he stepped in front of her, a dented pewter bowl in his hands.

  She looked at him with a curious expression, as though she recognized but didn’t remember him.

  “You have no need to apologize, Brother,” she told him. “The Great Mother smiles on all her—”

  “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 assu
red 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?”