Scream of Stone

by Philip Athans

  “What then?”

  “I’m tired of being dragged,” Wenefir admitted, “up or otherwise.”

  “I didn’t drag you to Cyric,” Pristoleph said.

  “Careful, now,” Wenefir replied, bringing to mind a prayer that would do much more than protect him from fire. “Invoke his name at your peril, Ransar.”

  Pristoleph sighed and ran his fingers through his flamelike hair.

  “Why not choose everything?” the priest asked.

  “Everything?”

  “Everything,” Wenefir replied. “The Thayan’s magic, the support of the senate, the rights and privileges of Ransar of Innarlith, and the canal.”

  “I thought I had,” the ransar said.

  “Is that what you wish me to convey to the Thayan?” Wenefir asked.

  He waited while Pristoleph sat in silence. It didn’t appear as though the ransar was thinking it over. He seemed to just be sitting there. Wenefir hoped that was a good sign. He’d never seen Pristoleph, not in the forty-four years of their friendship, resign himself to anything, but Wenefir hoped there was a first time for everything.

  “Where is Willem Korvan?” Pristoleph asked.

  Wenefir blinked and shook his head, surprised by the question.

  “Wenefir?” the ransar prompted.

  “No one knows,” Wenefir replied.

  “He will have to be found,” Pristoleph said. “He must be put down for the murder of Surero.”

  Wenefir didn’t smile, but he wanted to. He said, “I’m certain that between Marek Rymüt and myself, with Cyric’s blessing, he will be found. And when he is, he will face the ransar’s justice.”

  “And in return for that,” Pristoleph said, “I will have to allow Kurtsson and Aikiko to finish the canal. I will have to betray the promise I made, the word I gave, to Ivar Devorast.”

  “Yes,” Wenefir said, not happy with the way things were starting to go.

  “And the fact that Devorast is a better man than any of them together, a greater man, a man more worthy of so great an undertaking, matters not at all.”

  “I understand that it matters to you, my friend,” Wenefir said. “But you are ransar now. Not every decision is an easy one, and not every decision can be made based on your admiration for one man’s ideas.”

  “The world turns on the ideas of one man.”

  Wenefir chewed on his bottom lip, for all appearances considering the ransar’s point, but instead he just stood waiting.

  “That’s not much of a trade for one murderous senator,” Pristoleph said.

  “It’s not the canal for Korvan,” Wenefir said, stepping forward for emphasis, because he absolutely needed to be heard. “If you allow Marek Rymüt’s people to finish the canal, you will be allowed to remain as ransar.”

  Wenefir didn’t breathe again until it became painful. He knew Pristoleph wouldn’t like anything about the words “be allowed to,” but knowing him for more than four decades gave him only moderate insight into what he would do in response.

  “Do you have an answer I can convey to the enclave?” Wenefir asked.

  “No,” Pristoleph said, not looking at him, barely raising his voice enough to be heard. “Your services as seneschal are no longer required.”

  59

  23 Tarsakh, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)

  THE CANAL SITE

  Phyrea called his name again and again but there was no answer. The rain pounded from the night sky, and thunder rumbled all around her. The deluge drowned out her voice, but still Phyrea worried that Ivar Devorast was dead.

  After seeing his spectral form she thought that she should have listened to him and stayed away, but finally she decided she had to go there. She had to find him and see him. She had to know one way or another if he was alive or dead.

  “I’ll leave him,” she shouted into the driving rain. Rainwater mixed with spittle flew from her lips. Her long dark hair was plastered to her head, and her light riding silks and wool vest were so heavy, her shoulders slumped under the weight. “Ivar!”

  She pulled on her horse’s bridle and the animal shook its head out of her grasp. She turned and grabbed the leather strap again, sneering and growling at the horse until its head bowed and it took a step forward. A deafening crash of thunder seemed to burst the sky apart and the horse started again. The beast rose up on its hind legs, jerking her arm. A stab of pain lanced through her shoulder before her fingers slipped from the bridle and she swore.

  Her mount bounded backward a few steps, and when Phyrea reached once more for the bridle the horse turned and ran at speed into the black night. She lost sight of it a scant moment later, and even the sound of its pounding hooves disappeared behind the roar of the storm.

  With another unseemly curse, Phyrea turned back to the canal, banishing the startled horse from her mind. She squinted into the rain and sloshed through muddy grass to the edge of the canal. She looked down into darkness and called for Ivar Devorast.

  The darkness seemed to move closer into her from all sides. Blinking, rubbing her eyes, opening them as wide as she could and holding them open even when wind-driven rain stung at them, Phyrea still couldn’t see.

  Something’s wrong, the sad woman who cried over the corpse of her only child said, her voice clear in Phyrea’s head despite the rain and thunder. I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.

  Step off, the little boy said, and Phyrea shook her head so hard and so fast that her own soaking-wet hair whipped her face.

  She opened her mouth wide and screamed into the uncaring storm.

  He’s dead, the man with the scar on his face said. Why did you come here?

  “Why did I come here?” Phyrea asked the ghosts, the storm, anyone who would listen.

  You love him as much as you hate yourself, said the old woman.

  You know he’s dead, said the man with the scar, but you don’t want to believe it.

  Step off the damned edge, the little boy demanded. Phyrea started to cry, her tears disappearing into the rain and wind. She thought she heard the little girl crying too, but couldn’t be sure.

  He’s dead, the grieving woman said. They’re both dead. We’re all dead.

  “No,” Phyrea said, her voice gravelly and ragged.

  She could feel the ghosts inside her and knew the contempt they felt for her, at that moment more than ever before. She could feel their frustration and anger with her. They wanted her dead. They wanted her to join them, wanted her to stay with them forever, inside the cold, silent walls of Berrywilde. She was the last of her family, and when she was gone what would happen to that estate?

  “Why do you want me?” she asked them.

  Because you wanted us, the man with the scar on his face said. You came to us. You sent everyone else away and you sat in that house like the ghost you were fated to be. You sat in silence and you cut yourself. You hurt yourself because you hated yourself. You opened yourself to us. You wanted us, as much as we wanted you.

  “Wanted?” she whispered.

  The feeling that came to her in response made her blink. Dizzy, she staggered back from the edge of the canal and almost fell.

  “You don’t want me anymore?” she whispered.

  Of course we do, the old woman replied, her voice soothing. Come back with us, to Berrywilde.

  Forever, the little girl said.

  Phyrea rubbed the rainwater and tears from her eyes and stepped forward, to the very edge of the canal. Lightning flashed, and for a moment the space around her was lit as though it was high noon. The canal was deep—deep enough that the fall would kill her—and rainwater had started to collect at the bottom, enough so that it had filled to a depth of nearly an inch.

  “It’s filling up,” she said into the pitch dark that followed the transient illumination of the lightning.

  Step over the side, the little boy begged. Please, Mommy?

  Phyrea gasped and stepped back.

  “No,” she whispered. “It’s
filling with water. It’s going to work.”

  Phyrea looked up, and when another flash of lightning gave her an instant’s sight, she looked down the length of the canal, which disappeared over the horizon. It was the most incredible thing she’d ever seen in her life.

  “I did,” she said when it was dark again. She stopped crying but shivered in the cool rain. “I went there to give up, and I almost did, but then he showed me there was a reason to live. He showed me that it was for me to decide—”

  She stopped when the ground beneath her trembled. It felt as though the world itself shivered in the rain.

  More lightning flashed on the horizon, but it didn’t go away as fast as it should have, and it was the wrong color, and there was more—and Phyrea realized it wasn’t lightning at all.

  Turning to the north, her breath trapped in her lungs, her eyes and mouth wide open to the driving rain, Phyrea watch enormous balls of yellow-orange light mushroom over the horizon. Each was followed several heartbeats later by a low rumble, each one louder than the last, and the tremors grew stronger, too.

  “Oh,” she breathed. “Oh, no.”

  Another explosion of orange fire, then another, and another. They marched down the length of the canal, on both sides, and ground-shaking tremors followed in their wakes.

  Phyrea’s feet felt frozen in place, as though nailed to the ground at the edge of the canal. The light from the explosions grew brighter, the sounds louder, and soon the cacophony of the pounding thunderstorm was drowned out by the continuing series of massive explosions.

  Closer and closer they came and finally Phyrea moved one foot. She turned and the ground bucked under her, rattling her knee and numbing the bottoms of her feet. She stumbled, but rose to her feet even as another tremor shook the ground. She ran through a shockwave that smashed into her ears. The roar of the explosions were dulled, overwhelmed by a piercing ringing in her ears.

  Phyrea glanced over one shoulder, and another explosion blossomed behind her, so close there was no delay before the sound of it took the rest of her hearing until all that was left was an agonizing wail. She screamed as she ran, her mind racing through prayers, pleading for help. She wanted Devorast to save her, but she knew for certain then that he must be dead. If he lived, he never would have allowed his greatest masterpiece to be destroyed.

  The next explosion lifted her off her feet. She whirled through the air, entirely unable to control her own body. Her arms flailed, hitting herself in the face. She felt her right knee bend sideways, and the jarring pain pushed bile into her throat. She couldn’t breathe or even retch as she flew through air that had become searingly hot. She couldn’t open her eyes, and she couldn’t close her mouth.

  Another explosion lifted her higher into the air just an instant before she hit the ground. It was hotter still, and she screamed when the rainwater in her hair began to boil. Her scream rattled her ears and the wail seemed to harmonize with it. The last bit of air was driven from her lungs and her scream cut off. There was another explosion, but it wasn’t as hot, and Phyrea could feel herself falling. She wanted to move somehow, so she whirled her arms and tried to run, but the pain from her ruined knee sent lightning flashing behind her eyelids. The only sound left was something that could have come from inside or out, but to Phyrea it sounded like the scream of stone, the death rattle of the canal itself.

  She hit the ground so hard her head nearly came off her shoulders. She felt bones snap all over her body, and as consciousness fled her she was glad that she’d landed in the cold mud. It soothed her charred skin.

  60

  23 Tarsakh, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)

  PRISTAL TOWERS, INNARLITH

  The floor shook, and though Pristoleph wasn’t sleeping, the sudden motion roused him from a fitful rest. He sat up in bed and looked around in the dark. Phyrea was at Berrywilde, and save for the crackle of the fire in the wide marble fireplace, there was no sound, and no one else in the room.

  The floor shook again, making the bed quiver under him. That time he was sure it wasn’t just his imagination. He threw off the bedclothes and stood just as the door burst open.

  “Second Chief Gahrzig,” Pristoleph said to the wemic in the doorway, “what was that?”

  The lion-barbarian said, “You had better come and see.”

  In the time it took Gahrzig to say that, the ransar had donned a dressing gown and crossed to the door. The wemic led the way, trundling along the wide, high-ceilinged corridors with a clatter of weapons and armor, and the tapping of his sharp claws on the polished marble. By the time they reached a circular stairway that wound its way up to the top of the highest tower, the wemic had broken into a run, and Pristoleph panted trying to keep up with him.

  The building shook again and again as they climbed the stairs. The motion was just strong enough to be felt, and at no time did Pristoleph feel as though it would knock him off his feet, or that it would put the structural integrity of his great manor in peril. Still, the ground shouldn’t shake like that, despite the storm that raged outside.

  When they came to the topmost room they were greeted by three of Gahrzig’s wemics, who stood with wide eyes, clutching at their enchanted spears with tense hands. Pristoleph went to a window on the northwestern wall of the room to look out over his city, and his jaw fell open at what he saw.

  A fierce orange glow lit the far horizon, brighter even than the lights of the city that stretched out below him. Lightning flashed all around and a strong wind whipped rain against the windows. The orange glow reflected in the droplets that clung to the glass, and on the faces of the wemics that stared off into the distance, unsure how to react to something they didn’t understand. The floor trembled again and in a moment the orange glow brightened and expanded. Pristoleph put a hand against the window frame and waited. It took a long time for the shockwave to travel from the source of the orange light, but when it did, he felt the floor once more quiver under his bare feet.

  “What is it, Ransar?” Gahrzig asked, his throaty voice quiet, muffled by awe.

  “The canal,” Pristoleph whispered back, the sound of his own words making his eyes burn. “It’s the canal.”

  The wemic shook his head. He didn’t understand, but Pristoleph didn’t want to explain. He touched his head to the cool glass and closed his eyes to hold the tears in. The glass steamed, made opaque by the heat of his forehead, and he stepped back. The distant orange glows continued to flare, one after another, tracing a line along the canal, straight from the north to the south. Each one grew brighter, and the floor shook just a little more each time.

  “Everyone in the city must be able to feel it—even see it—now,” Gahrzig said. “What do we do?”

  Pristoleph shook his head. By the time any of them made it out there what was happening would have long finished. Whatever it was, whatever cataclysm had befallen the canal, could hardly be stopped from miles away in the middle of a storm-ravaged night.

  “We watch it,” Pristoleph said. “That’s all we can do.”

  The wemic nodded. He seemed satisfied, but then Gahrzig and his tribe cared nothing of the canal, if they even understood what it was, and what it would mean to Innarlith.

  “Phyrea,” Pristoleph whispered, the name coming unbidden to his lips.

  “Ransar?” asked the wemic mercenary.

  Pristoleph looked at him and blinked. He didn’t know why he’d spoken her name—and why, when he had, his heart sank in his chest. He held his left hand up in front of his face and saw sweat glisten in his palm.

  “Ransar?” the wemic asked again.

  Pristoleph said, “Nothing.”

  “You’re worried about your female,” the wemic stated, his voice pitched to reassure his employer.

  The ransar nodded at first then shook his head. “No,” he said. “Phyrea is at Berrywilde—her family’s country estate.”

  “Out of the city,” said Gahrzig. “Good. Safer. But where is—?”

  “To
the east,” Pristoleph interrupted. “Far away from the canal.”

  Pristoleph couldn’t resist looking off through the windows that faced east. No fiery light glowed on that horizon. It wasn’t even early enough for the first hint of dawn. Thunder crashed, close and loud, startling both Pristoleph and Gahrzig, who also stared off into the east at darkness only occasional split by jagged bolts of lightning.

  “She is safe, then,” the wemic said.

  Pristoleph watched more brilliant orange explosions plume up from the northwestern horizon.

  61

  23 Tarsakh, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)

  THE CANAL SITE

  Hrothgar had never in his whole life felt himself shake so badly. It was as though his very bones quivered. His skin crawled, and the hair—all of his hair, all over his body, and that was a lot—stood on end. He was sure that his gums were peeling back from his teeth. His eyes watered and his head throbbed.

  The force of any one of the explosions would have been enough to rattle anyone, even a sturdy dwarf like Hrothgar. A series of them, one after another, dozens upon dozens marching in a line nearly forty miles from the Nagaflow on the north end to the Lake of Steam at the south end, made Hrothgar think that Faerûn, even Toril itself, was splitting in two.

  But finally the explosions passed, lighting the sky at the far horizon, shaking the ground for a long time after the last of the shards of stone and wood had fallen, and eventually even the ground stopped shaking and the horizon went dark. The rain never ceased, though, and for once Hrothgar was thankful for it. The cool rain calmed his heat-nettled skin and made steam billow up from his scorched clothes and hair.

  He fell as much as ran to Devorast’s side. The Cormyrean lay face down in the mud, and Hrothgar didn’t know if he was dead or alive. He grabbed the man by his torn and ragged vest and turned him over. The effort, which should have been nothing for the strong and hearty dwarf, nearly exhausted him. Devorast, limp and covered in mud and soaked to the skin, seemed to weigh a ton.