Scream of Stone

by Philip Athans

  Phyrea smiled, feeling like a little girl. “And what is it precisely that I can do for you, Sister?” Pristoleph asked. “‘Sister’ is the proper form of address, I hope.”

  He motioned the woman to a seat around a grand table. The dining salon, like many of the rooms in the cavernous expanse of Pristal Towers, was like a museum of artifacts and antiquities from all corners of Toril. They only dined there with visiting dignitaries, foreign merchants, and other people Pristoleph wanted to impress.

  The woman smiled as she slid into one of the high-backed chairs. Over the gentle hiss of her flowing white silk robes she said, “I am known as ‘Mother,’ but you may address me as you wish, Ransar.”

  “‘Mother’ it is, then,” Phyrea said, shooting a stern glance Pristoleph’s way. He returned the expression with a little grin and they too sat. “Welcome to our home.”

  “Thank you,” said the high priestess, first to Phyrea, then Pristoleph. “I’m afraid, Ransar, that we must discuss a matter of some delicacy.”

  Phyrea watched her husband and saw that Pristoleph knew full well what the high priestess had come to say. He nodded and Phyrea saw that the woman could see the same.

  “For many years,” the woman said, “the Sisterhood of Pastorals has stood outside the civil politics of the citystate. For decades, even. But events occasionally force us to do otherwise.”

  “And some such event has occurred?”

  Pristoleph asked. Phyrea’s skin crawled.

  You like the brooch, the little girl said. Phyrea resisted the urge to turn and look behind her. Instead, she kept her eyes glued on the high priestess, staring at her evenly. The woman glanced at her as she spoke, and Phyrea hoped the woman would see the little girl made of lavender light standing behind her. Take it. You should have it if you want it.

  “I fear that that is indeed the case, yes, Ransar,” the high priestess said. “Two of our number went missing twelve days ago.”

  Pristoleph seemed surprised to hear that—sincerely surprised.

  What do you call two Chauntean priestesses at the bottom of the Lake of Steam? the little girl snarled.

  “Their bodies were found, burned and mutilated, the day before last, floating in the Lake of Steam,” the woman said, and Phyrea could sense the pain it caused her to say those words, but she could not read it in her calm, steady voice.

  A good start, the little girl said, and she started to laugh.

  The sound made Phyrea’s skin crawl, and when the other ghosts joined in, she had to hold her arms close to her body to keep from shivering. The high priestess looked at her, sensing something was wrong, but Phyrea just looked away.

  Pristoleph shook his head, his strange red-orange hair reacting in a way that was somehow unexpected. It only rarely moved with his head the way another person’s might. His brows knitted in concern, and for a moment Phyrea thought he was legitimately upset by the high priestess’s news.

  “That’s inexcusable, Mother,” the ransar said. “Please tell me what I might be able to do to bring to justice the man—or beast—responsible for this outrage.”

  The woman tipped her head in a sort of bow, but Phyrea didn’t think she accepted Pristoleph’s concern as sincere.

  It is a beautiful piece, the old woman said, her voice grating the inside of Phyrea’s skull. Is that a rose?

  Phyrea looked at the brooch again. It was a red rose formed from rubies and emeralds over stalks of wheat very elegantly carved of pure gold. It fastened a shimmering silk cape around the woman’s incongruously broad shoulders.

  Careful, now, the man with the scar whispered to her. She won’t be an easy kill. Not that you shouldn’t try.

  “Ransar,” the woman said, looking Pristoleph in the eye without the slightest trace of doubt or weakness, “I must be frank with you.”

  “Of course,” Pristoleph replied.

  The high priestess was about to speak when a servant entered the room with a platinum-chased silver tray of cheeses and sweet breads. The three of them sat in silence while another servant poured tea and placed small plates and utensils in front of each of them.

  When they were finally gone, the priestess said, “We have known for some time that you have been employing undead to work the docks and the canal.”

  Phyrea held her breath.

  Typical, the little girl sneered.

  Hush now, the man with the scar cut in. They’re zombies she’s talking about—less than beasts. What do we care? Pay her no mind, Phyrea.

  The ghost of the little girl didn’t reply to that, but Phyrea could sense that there was much left unsaid.

  “I have,” Pristoleph admitted. “I understand that that may not meet with your approval, but I’d hoped we could forgive each other’s—” he paused on purpose to sound as though he was choosing his words carefully—“little indulgences, in the name of peaceful cohabitation.”

  “And for the longest time,” the woman replied, “we turned a blind eye. Now, I must tell you, I am ashamed to admit that.”

  “All of the zombies have disappeared form the canal site,” Pristoleph said. “But then you knew that.”

  The woman tipped her chin up and gazed back at him with such a look of pure self-confidence it made Phyrea’s palms start to sweat.

  Oh, the old woman whispered from somewhere in the corner of the huge room, I like this one.

  She might be worth the trouble to kill, after all, the scarred man concurred.

  “That was a service I’m sure the entire city-state will thank us for, Ransar Pristoleph,” said the priestess.

  “And you’re providing the same service now, on the quayside,” he said.

  The high priestess nodded and replied, “But, apparently, not without opposition.”

  “Mother,” Pristoleph said, leaning forward to look the woman in the eyes, “you have my assurance as Ransar of Innarlith that I had nothing to do with the deaths of your priestesses. You also have my sincere assurance that my offices are at your disposal in the effort to find those responsible and to bring them to justice.”

  Phyrea was certain he was telling the truth with the first part, but the first part only, and from the look the high priestess gave him, they shared that opinion.

  Phyrea took hold of the little knife the servants had placed in front of her, and while Pristoleph and the high priestess stared each other down, examining each other as one would look for a hairline crack in a piece of expensive pottery, she put her hand under the table.

  Well, the man with the scar said, it looks as though you won’t have to kill her for that brooch.

  Phyrea lifted her skirt with one hand and held the knife with the other. She made her movements slow and quiet so the other woman wouldn’t look at her.

  “I hope that that is indeed the case, Ransar,” the high priestess said.

  “It is,” Pristoleph assured her.

  Phyrea held the blade of the little knife against her bare thigh.

  Yes, the old woman cackled, it looks as though your husband is going to do it for—

  She stopped when the blade bit into Phyrea’s soft flesh.

  “And we will agree that it is improper to employ the animated corpses of our fellow citizens as slaves,” the high priestess said.

  Phyrea closed her eyes against the pain of the cut in her thigh, while at the same time reveling in the silence.

  “I like to think I’m the sort of gentleman who can admit when he’s wrong, Mother,” Pristoleph said, but his voice was thick with a not-so-subtle warning.

  With that, the two of them moved on to niceties and vacuous small talk, in which Phyrea couldn’t bring herself to join.

  39

  25 Eleint, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR)

  THE LAND OF ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN

  The sky in Marek Rymüt’s tiny universe roiled and thundered. The clouds moved in many different directions at once, pulling away from the tall tower of dark stone atop the lone hill. Lightning arced across the hor
izon, making it appear as though the Land of One Hundred and Thirteen was contained in a cage of blue-white light.

  Marek grinned and took a deep breath of air that reeked of dragon and ozone. He looked up again and spied the huge, sinuous form of Insithryllax diving in and out of the tortured gray-black clouds. The dragon’s batlike wings caught the air and rode it in great sweeping arcs. The wyrm kept the black firedrakes at a distance, and Marek could only rarely see one of the much smaller forms dart from cloud to cloud closer to the lightning-traced horizon.

  The Red Wizard turned his attention to the stone-tiled roof of the tower upon which he stood. Before him, carefully scribed to sit in the exact center of the cylindrical structure, he had drawn a circle of chalk, blood, and magic. Placed at uneven but carefully delineated points around the circle were six candles made of wax mixed with the blood of an Abyssal tanar’ri—not an easy commodity to get one’s hands on, even in Thay.

  Looking up once again at the dragon circling high above him, Marek called out, “Stay close! I begin!”

  The dragon tipped one wing and waved his head in response and began a sweeping descent toward the roof of the tower.

  Marek set his hands in the first of a complex series of uncomfortable gestures and began to chant. The words stung his ears, and the foul language of a malignant civilization millennia dead grated in his dry throat until his voice sounded like the growl of a rabid dog. Ignoring the little aches and pains, the Red Wizard twisted his fingers through the series of gestures, and when he came to the last of them and the final word of the incantation, he took one step back from the circle.

  A blue-violet glow traced the outside of the circle, one he’d carefully measured to be precisely sixteen feet in diameter, then poured into the middle as though the light was water filling a low pool from all sides.

  Marek smiled when the bright light faded to a deep indigo. He looked up once more and made eye contact with the dragon.

  Insithryllax tucked his wings to the sides of his black-scaled body and dived headfirst at the pool of indigo light. Before the dragon reached the top of the tower, a gout of red and black smoke belched from the circle of light, and the air around them was assaulted by the sound of a million people screaming while another million cried. Marek flinched away from the agonized cacophony, but the dragon never wavered in his downward path—not until he was only feet above the circle, which had become a doorway into the heart of the Abyss.

  The black dragon spread his wings, and a sound like a great ship’s sails catching a stiff wind drowned out the screams of the tormented. Insithryllax stopped in midair for the briefest moment—less than one of Marek’s rapid, excited heartbeats—then he dipped his head into the very Abyss itself and came out carrying the writhing form of what at first appeared to be a man.

  Holding the squirming form in his mighty jaws, Insithryllax beat his wings once and fell away over the lip of the tower’s roof. As the tip of his right wing dropped from sight, Marek brought his hands together in a firm clap. The sound sent a shudder through the stone floor and the gate sent out a deafening crack in response. The candles and the circle both were gone, and a waft of acrid smoke remained, but otherwise the doorway to the horrific plane of chaos and evil was closed.

  The Red Wizard took a deep breath and smiled, waiting.

  Insithryllax, with a flapping of wings that made Marek stagger backward and hold onto a battlement lest he be blown over the side, rose above the roof. Like a cat toying with a mouse, the dragon snapped his neck and tossed the writhing form onto the roof. The gray-skinned creature rolled to a stop but was instantly on its feet and hissing its infernal rage at the black wyrm. Ignoring it, Insithryllax took wing, and before the demon even noticed Marek standing only a few feet away, the dragon was lost to the clouds.

  “Be at peace, maurezhi,” Marek said.

  The creature spun on him. The Red Wizard could feel its gray eyes fix on him though they held no iris or pupil. Its sinuous, grotesquely naked form was well muscled, especially in its legs, which were disproportionately huge compared to its upper body and head. Its feet were like a crocodile’s, with four big, pointed talons of yellowing, fungus-ravaged bone. It hissed at him, showing a mouth full of razor edged fangs.

  “Calm yourself,” Marek said, passing a hand in front of the creature to enact a spell. “Be calm, so we can speak.”

  The maurezhi seemed to deflate. It closed its mouth and stepped back, reaching out behind itself to lean against a battlement. Its eyes were the only part of it that didn’t seem to slow. They darted around, taking in the strict confines of the pocket dimension.

  Insithryllax dived from out of the clouds and the demon watched it circle the tower once then land with startling grace on the battlements. Then the tanar’ri turned its attention back to Marek.

  What are you? the thing hissed directly into Marek’s head in a voice like breaking glass. Human? What is this place?

  “I am indeed human,” the Red Wizard said, stepping away from the demon but still exuding all the confidence he felt. “You will call me Master.”

  The demon flinched at that and said, Master what?

  Marek snapped his fingers and the demon’s forearm snapped. The creature howled in agony and grabbed the twisted limb. Its clawed hand hung limp at the end of it.

  “You will call me Master,” the Red Wizard repeated.

  Y-yes … the maurezhi begged, dipping its head low, … Master.

  “Good,” Marek replied with a smile, and he snapped his fingers again.

  The demon shrieked when its arm snapped back into place, then worried at it with its claws, surprised that it was not only repaired but that the pain was gone. Marek grinned, doubting the maurezhi would soon forget that lesson.

  Why was I snatched from my torments, Master? the demon asked, and Marek could tell it still struggled with the title.

  “Do you hunger?” the Red Wizard asked.

  Always, Master, the demon replied. Always.

  Marek remembered well his lessons on demonology. The vile maurezhi feasted on the flesh of their victims, and when they were done, they could assume the form of their former meal, only to move ever deeper into human society to eat, and eat, and eat.

  “You will feast, then,” Marek promised it. “You will go to a human city on the world of Toril, and there you will find and devour a man named Pristoleph.”

  Pristoleph…. the demon repeated, nodding, and a great drop of yellowish drool hung from the side of its black lips.

  The dragon huffed and Marek turned his attention to the huge wyrm perched on the battlements and sneering down at the demon.

  “Yes, my friend?” the Red Wizard asked.

  “Isn’t Pristoleph surrounded by black firedrakes?” Insithryllax said.

  “He is, yes,” Marek replied.

  “And you feel you have to summon this thing from a universe away rather than just give the creatures you created yourself a single order?”

  “The black firedrakes were created to serve the Ransar of Innarlith,” Marek said.

  The dragon smiled a little and Marek tensed under the dragon’s scrutiny—a look that came painfully, infuriatingly close to patronizing.

  “If you’ll watch and see,” Marek continued, “all will become clear to you, I’m sure. Really, Insithryllax. Where has your patience gone?”

  The Red Wizard turned back to the demon and said, “Yes, Pristoleph. But first, you must wear a disguise.”

  The demon’s form blurred. It stood more erect and its legs shrank. Clothing formed around it almost as though it was weaving itself from the thin air. In a breath or two the monstrous entity had been replaced by a black-skinned man in rough-spun clothes. The gray eyes turned white and circles of deep, penetrating brown formed in their centers.

  “Nicely done,” Marek said, and the transformed maurezhi smiled a broad, gap-toothed grin. “But not precisely what I had in mind.”

  Marek cast a spell and the demon in its human form shrank
away, holding up arms that even then began to lose their healthy color to return to that pallid, awful gray. It was only back in its natural form for a moment before its legs came together, its joints popped, and its skin tore.

  The demon howled in pain, but the transformation didn’t take long.

  It looked down at itself, confused at first, but then the admiration for its new shape was written plainly on its new face. The demon twitched its new body, testing its own ability to move like a snake moves. Its face looked more human than it had moments before, but when it opened its mouth, a long, thin tongue that ended in a fork flicked over its lips.

  “There,” the Red Wizard said, “that’s better. Now, since I know you’ll be loath to tell me your name, I’ll have to give you a new one.”

  “A name?” the demon asked aloud, surprised by the hissing sibilance of its new voice.

  “Svayyah,” Marek said.

  40

  25 Eleint, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR)

  PRISTAL TOWERS, INNARLITH

  Pristoleph sat on a cool marble bench, letting the late summer sun that shone through the skylights and windows warm his already burning hot skin. The room was the uppermost floor of the second tallest tower of his magnificent manor home. From nearly a hundred feet in the air, the city looked peaceful, even beautiful, and Pristoleph often found himself drawn to that lofty space to sit alone and think.

  His eyes drifted lazily from one of the sixteen triangular windows to one of the sixteen statues lined up along the walls of the octagonal room. He’d collected the statues for years, finding them in all corners of the world. Some were very old—older even than the ancient empire of Netheril—and others he’d had commissioned from the artists himself, the newest one only a few months before.

  He turned his face back up to the skylights, which, like the windows in the tall, straight side walls, were triangles cut from the pyramidal roof. Through the skylights he could see the long orange pennant spreading itself along the gusty wind from its pole at the apex of the pointed roof.