Scream of Stone

by Philip Athans

  Pristoleph’s eyes widened and Surero got the unmistakable feeling that the ransar recognized the naga. “There you are.”

  “Here we are,” the naga returned, raising the ridge over one eye where, if she had any hair at all, an eyebrow would have been.

  “This naga,” Pristoleph said, glancing from Svayyah to Devorast, “attacked me in my home. It killed a number of my guards and nearly killed me, too.”

  “This naga,” Svayyah spit back, “did no such thing.” “I have found that Svayyah is as honest as she is direct,” Devorast said.

  “It was injured …” Pristoleph said, examining the water naga with narrowed eyes. “We took its right ear.”

  With a wicked little smile, Svayyah turned her head so that Pristoleph could see she was uninjured.

  “It wasn’t Svayyah,” Devorast said. “Our agreement with the water nagas still stands.”

  Svayyah drew herself up to her full height, her chin held even higher in the air.

  “These creatures,” Pristoleph said, “all look the same.” A dark looked passed across Svayyah’s humanlike face, but passed quickly when they could all see that Pristoleph was thinking—that he wasn’t sure, that he was beginning to think he’d been fooled.

  He looked Devorast in the eye and said, “Give me your word that the water nagas will honor their agreement. Look me in the eye and tell me it wasn’t her.”

  Devorast looked him in the eye and said, “The water nagas will honor their agreement. It wasn’t her.”

  Svayyah laughed and Pristoleph shot her a dangerous look.

  “Release them,” the ransar said to the firedrakes, who instantly obeyed.

  Surero couldn’t help but notice a strange, knowing look pass between two of the black firedrakes, one he couldn’t hope to unravel himself. He stayed on his knees until the ransar and his black firedrakes had gone back into the thin air from whence they’d come.

  42

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

  THE LAND OF ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN

  Insithryllax turned in a tight circle, a hundred feet above the top of Marek’s tower. The wailing of the maurezhi demon tore through the dense air, and though the black dragon had heard screams before, of fear mostly but also pain, the sound of those particular cries made his heart quiver in his scaled chest. A demon shouldn’t scream like that, and no human—even a Red Wizard—should be able to make one scream at all.

  The dragon leaned into an easy descent, holding to his orbit of the tower. He dipped just below the roofline and passed the highest open window. As he flew by, the agonized screams of the demon rattled his ears and chilled his blood.

  “… your failure!” Marek Rymüt hollered from the same room—a chamber that comprised the entire top level of the tower.

  The demon shrieked anew.

  Insithryllax wheeled around the tower, the tip of his left wing almost grazing the rough-cut stone blocks. Movement from the right caught his attention—a fury’s eel breaking the surface of the lake, one of its bulbous, fishlike eyes scanning the tower.

  Even the eels can feel it, the great wyrm thought.

  He passed the open window again.

  “… to fail me like this?” Marek taunted.

  The demon panted, and as Insithryllax turned again around the other side of the tower, it began to whimper.

  The dragon was impressed on some level that the Thayan had the power to torture a tanar’ri, but the ice in his veins was something else.

  Fear? the dragon thought. Could it be?

  Once again he passed the window and heard the demon groveling, begging in a language Insithryllax didn’t know. He thought he heard the Red Wizard laugh.

  When he pulled around the tower once more he riffled his huge, leathery wings, and in one beat of his heart Insithryllax was once again a hundred feet above the tower’s roof. He looked down on the tower when the demon started screaming again. The sound had changed once more. It was desperate, terrified.

  Insithryllax looked out to the near horizon and tried to ignore the screaming creature. He’d been in the Land of One Hundred and Thirteen for more than five months. He’d spent longer than that confined to the little pocket dimension in the past, but the last months had been harder. Never had he felt so confined, and the emotions that seethed in him were as intense as they were alien. The anger he’d felt in Innarlith had been replaced by fear.

  Insithryllax didn’t like fear.

  The sound of the maurezhi’s screams cut off with a gurgling abruptness that could mean only one thing.

  Finding it more difficult to breathe all of a sudden, Insithryllax turned, put even more distance between himself and the ground, and flew off toward the edge of the Land of One Hundred and Thirteen. The fear swelled in him and he choked it down.

  He had to get out of there.

  43

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

  PRISTAL TOWERS, INNARLITH

  The chain mail was tightly woven, but the steel was dull and heavy. Rolling it between his fingers, Pristoleph tried to imagine how heavy it would be in various configurations: a sort of tunic that would protect his arms and down to his mid-thighs, or just a vest to keep blades from his heart and gut.

  The door opened and he turned to watch Wenefir step in while nodding to the black firedrakes that stood guard outside. One of the guards pulled the door closed. Wenefir caught Pristoleph’s eye and dipped in a shallow bow.

  Pristoleph nodded and turned his attention back to the table. He picked up a square of stout black leather onto which had been sewn a dense pattern of steel rings. It wasn’t quite as heavy as the chain mail, but likewise wouldn’t provide the same protection—and it was identical to the armor the black firedrakes wore.

  “The armorer left samples behind for me to examine at my leisure,” the ransar explained, though he knew he didn’t have to.

  Wenefir stepped up behind him, but not too close, and said, “Is that really necessary?”

  Pristoleph shrugged, put down the patch of ring mail, but didn’t turn around.

  “I think so,” he said. “I think it’s been necessary for a long time, actually.”

  “People have tried to kill us before,” Wenefir said.

  Pristoleph smiled, and turned to face his oldest friend. Wenefir returned his smile from a face that was pale and deeply lined. Wenefir had aged over the last few years in a way that Pristoleph, with his half-elemental blood, hadn’t. The priest looked pale, as though his skin hadn’t seen the sun in a very long time.

  “But you think this time it’s worse,” Wenefir said, the smile fading from his lips.

  Pristoleph nodded and reached behind himself to take a small iron box from the tabletop. It opened and he held it out to Wenefir so his seneschal could see what was inside.

  Wenefir looked into the box and raised one eyebrow. He swallowed and said, “An ear.”

  Pristoleph nodded and looked at the ear in the box. It was pointed, like an elf’s, but the skin was gray and mottled, sickly.

  “The ear of the naga that tried to kill you?” Wenefir said.

  “No.”

  “Something else, then?”

  “It was sliced off the side of the naga’s head,” Pristoleph explained. “I saw it with my own eyes. But when I first placed it in this box it was rounded on the top, like a human ear, and the flesh had a blue cast to it.”

  “One might expect a disembodied ear to turn gray after—”

  “And the shape?” Pristoleph interrupted, then took a deep breath. He didn’t like to exhibit the sort of anxiety he felt just then, but if he could trust anyone, it was Wenefir. “I’m sorry, old friend.”

  Wenefir smiled and said, “No apologies are necessary, Ransar.” He cleared his throat and went on, “It could have been … malformed, when it was shorn from the creature’s head.”

  Pristoleph shook his head and replied, “No. I told you, I put it in the box, and when I opened it again the
next day—yesterday—it was different.”

  “Someone switched it?”

  Again the ransar shook his head.

  “Of course,” said Wenefir, “it was in your possession the whole time.”

  “It wasn’t a water naga that attacked us,” Pristoleph said. He closed the lid of the box and held it out to Wenefir. The seneschal looked at it, but Pristoleph could sense his reluctance to take it. “I don’t know what it was.”

  With a slow, pained exhale, Wenefir reached out and took the little iron box from the ransar’s hand.

  “I need you to tell me what that ear came from,” Pristoleph commanded.

  Wenefir nodded, but Pristoleph could tell the motion came hard. He looked down at the box in his hands as though he feared it would bite him.

  “I know you have ways to find the truth of things,” Pristoleph said. “Your own ways …”

  Wenefir turned away and started to pace the room. Pristoleph didn’t like the way he looked. He could tell when someone was hiding something from him.

  “I don’t want you to give it to the Thayan,” Pristoleph said.

  Wenefir stopped and turned his head to look at Pristoleph from the corner of his eye.

  “You don’t trust Master Rymüt?”

  “I don’t trust anyone,” Pristoleph said. “Someone is trying to kill me.”

  “And you think it could be Marek Rymüt?”

  “It could be,” Pristoleph replied. The words almost stuck in his throat. He didn’t like to say it aloud, and for reasons he couldn’t quite explain, especially to Wenefir. “Whoever it is, it’s someone of considerable power.”

  Wenefir started to pace again.

  “One of the other senators, then?” Wenefir asked, and Pristoleph got the feeling his seneschal was trying to lead him in that direction.

  “Perhaps,” Pristoleph said, confused as to why he felt he needed to humor his old friend. “Any number of them would like to be ransar, and I have enemies to spare in the Chamber of Law and Civility. But this is worse, I think. It’s not just a grab for power. Whoever it is may not even be trying to kill me so much as trying to turn me against Devorast.”

  “Devorast?” Wenefir asked, and again he stopped pacing.

  “This assassin was sent in the guise of the water naga that Devorast befriended in order to secure the Nagaflow end of the canal,” Pristoleph explained. “I was meant to believe, or whatever witness was left alive was to believe, that Devorast had turned on me and sent the naga to kill me. Someone is trying to ruin Ivar Devorast, and the canal in the process.”

  “There is a very long list of people who don’t want to see that trench ever filled with water.”

  “I know,” said the ransar, “but it will be. The canal will be finished, and it will be Ivar Devorast who finishes it. Every eye in the wide Realms will be turned in the direction of Innarlith. Ships will pass, and trade will flow.”

  “And gold,” Wenefir whispered.

  “And gold,” Pristoleph agreed. “And hang every last senator that thinks otherwise. I will raise Ivar Devorast above every one of their thick heads if I have to to see this done.”

  “And that,” Wenefir said, “is why they’ll line up to kill you.”

  44

  3 Uktar, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR)

  THE CANAL SITE

  Though he was barely four feet tall, Hrothgar was heavy and stout. His boots could be described the same way, which accounted for all the noise. He had no reason to be quiet, so he reveled in the clomp of his boots on the wooden planks of the scaffold.

  The ambient light from torches and lanterns set around the edge of the canal, reflected from the low overcast, was more than enough light for the dwarf to see by. He ran a hand along the stone blocks as he walked. The scaffold was set up about halfway up the side of the eastern canal wall. Hrothgar had been supervising the cutting of blocks at one of the three quarries that had been established along the length of the canal, so he hadn’t been there to make sure the blocks in that section had been properly set. He knew Devorast would have been there, and they wouldn’t have been left in place if he didn’t like the way they looked, but Hrothgar wanted to check for himself.

  He dug at the space between two of the blocks with a fingernail. Leaning in close, he set one cheek to the stone wall, closed the opposite eye, and peered down the length of the mortar line. It was as close to straight as he’d ever seen.

  “No way a human set this,” he muttered.

  He sighed and stepped away, looking all around with a worried smile.

  “Nothing to worry about,” the dwarf told himself, but he worried nonetheless.

  He heard voices echoing from above and was thankful that someone else couldn’t sleep. He didn’t even bother to wonder why he hadn’t heard them before.

  It took him a while to get to a ladder that led to a higher scaffold, then another ladder that took him to ground level.

  “Who is that, there?” someone called out to him—one of the guards?—but the voice sounded familiar.

  “Hrothgar?” Devorast said.

  The dwarf blinked and shook his head. At first it seemed as though Devorast’s voice had come from a rock lying at the edge of the trench. He blinked again and realized that it wasn’t a rock, but Devorast’s head, his hair matted with mud.

  “Careful where you step,” Surero said, and Hrothgar was actually startled.

  The dwarf looked down and sidestepped carefully away from the alchemist, who, like Devorast, was neck-deep in a hole.

  “By Dumathoin’s sprinkled rubies, someone finally did it,” the dwarf said. “They buried you alive but ye part-way chewed yerselfs out!”

  Surero shushed him and Devorast whispered, “Keep your voice down.”

  Hrothgar stood his ground and folded his arms. “Well?” he said, as quietly as he could without whispering.

  “Hand me that keg, there?” Surero asked.

  Hrothgar looked around at his feet and noticed a small wooden keg about the size of his head. A length of the burning cord Surero called a “fuse” had been stuck through the top and lay coiled next to the sack.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” the dwarf said, turning to look at Devorast, who had climbed up from the hole he’d been standing in and was walking toward the dwarf with hurried, determined steps. “What are ye two up to here, Ivar? What couldn’t ye tell me?”

  “Quiet, please, Hrothgar,” Devorast urged.

  The dwarf stood his ground and glared at the man, who bent and gingerly handed the keg of smokepowder to the alchemist.

  “What are you doing with those?” the dwarf asked, though he was starting to understand all on his own. The idea didn’t make him happy at all, and part of him hoped Devorast would offer a different explanation, one that didn’t mean what Hrothgar knew it had to. “If you put those between the dirt and the stone, they’ll collapse the canal when they go off.”

  “Then here’s hoping they never go off,” Surero said.

  Devorast flashed the alchemist a dark look, then turned to the dwarf and said, “I hope they never will, too, but I had to have some assurance of quality.”

  “A-what-ance of what, now?” the dwarf demanded, but managed to keep his voice low.

  “You know what he means, Hrothgar,” Surero said, grunting as he climbed out of the hole. “If you can’t sleep, why not help us?”

  45

  21 Uktar, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR)

  FOURTH QUARTER, INNARLITH

  It’s the smell that hits you first, isn’t it?” Pristoleph asked.

  He looked over at Devorast, who walked alongside him down the narrow, filthy street at the city’s easternmost edge. Devorast didn’t respond. His eyes darted from the overflowing midden to the walls of the ramshackle houses, but he never met the eyes of the people that stopped to watch them pass.

  “For me,” Pristoleph went on, “the smell was the easiest thing to forget. Faces, little things like a pile of rotting lumber aba
ndoned for years, or a child’s doll floating in raw sewage—those sights have been burned into my memory. I’ll never forget that doll.”

  Pristoleph closed his eyes, but opened them after only a couple steps—on that street, it was a risky proposition to not look where you were going for more than that.

  “Someone’s mother had stitched it together from rags. It was supposed to be a little girl—a little girl for a little girl, I’d guess. I can see its blue eyes, its red lips, its nose that was actually a button. There was a stain on the doll’s face that made it look like it had some sort of disease of the skin, but all it was was blood, mud, or wine. I suppose that either of the three of those things would constitute a disease for a child’s plaything.”

  Devorast glanced at him, as though he were affected in some way by that image, but what little trace of emotion Pristoleph thought he saw in the Cormyrean’s face was gone as quickly as it appeared.

  “It’s been years—decades, really—and I still wonder about that doll. What happened to the little girl who must have loved it? Did she drop it and not notice? Did she try to retrieve it from the midden before her mother pulled her away? Anything that goes in there doesn’t come out in any condition to be hugged ever again.”

  Devorast smirked, and Pristoleph laughed a little.

  “See this building here,” the ransar said, pointing to a brick building whose walls had been repaired so many times it looked like the patchwork rag doll of Pristoleph’s childhood memory. “This used to be an inn. My mother worked here.”

  Devorast stopped and looked at the building, and Pristoleph stood behind him. He waited for Devorast to ask for more information or to show any interest in anything he was saying, but he got nothing in response but a mute examination of the falling-down old inn.

  “She would take men there,” Pristoleph said.