Scream of Stone

by Philip Athans

  When his face was turned to the pelting rain, the human blinked and sputtered. While Devorast coughed Hrothgar laughed. Tears streamed down his bearded face to add their salt to the rain, and he put a hand on Devorast’s chest, to feel his heart beating. Lightning flashed overhead, and when the thunder rumbled behind it, Devorast opened his eyes. He blinked a few times before he finally made eye contact with the dwarf. Hrothgar stopped laughing, the smile melting from his lips.

  Devorast put his hands over his eyes and clawed the mud off his face. He tried to sit up but winced and groaned in pain.

  “Lay back,” Hrothgar advised him, but when the ground shifted beneath them, he changed his mind.

  He’d thought it was over, but he was wrong.

  “The hill is shifting,” Hrothgar said as he grabbed Devorast by the collar. “I’m carryin’ you outta here.”

  “Void …” Devorast mumbled, then grunted when Hrothgar draped him over his broad shoulder.

  “Void is right, by Moradin’s Beard,” Hrothgar said.

  The explosions had opened a space in the ground beneath them, a void, and the heavy, wet ground was sinking to fill it. Hrothgar knew enough about mining, about digging, about holes in the ground to know that it would sink slowly at first, settling, trying to redistribute its weight, then it would collapse all at once, and anyone unlucky or stupid enough to be standing on top of it would be swallowed whole by Toril herself.

  “Come, boy,” Hrothgar growled.

  He dragged Devorast’s feet behind him, the human too tall for him to properly carry, but at that moment the dwarf didn’t care if he left body parts in his wake, as long as he got himself and his friend out of there before—

  The ground collapsed behind them and Hrothgar shouted a very old curse in his native tongue, one that should have brought either the mercy or the wrath of every god in Dwarfhome.

  Devorast stiffened and turned, falling out of Hrothgar’s grip. The dwarf bellowed his name, but his voice was lost in the thunderous crash of the collapsing hillside. Hrothgar, propelled as much by the wavelike motion of the muddy ground beneath his feet as his feet themselves, continued to run and though his mind had dropped into a primal panic, he was aware enough to see Devorast running under his own power, right next to him.

  Side by side they ran for their lives.

  Instinct and experience took them away from the canal, but one huge chunk of broken stone after another—debris blasted away by the explosions—turned them this way and that, and soon enough Hrothgar lost all sense of direction. He ran and ran, dodging smoldering wood, and fires still blazing even under the pouring rain. He bounced off a block of stone, tripped on something he didn’t stop to identify, grabbed Devorast’s arm to help him along, or was grabbed and helped along by Devorast.

  When the shaking and the rumbling finally stopped again, the two of them stumbled in an effort to stop. The dwarf fell and slid, for a moment completely out of control, down a steep, muddy hill. He rolled to a stop only after tripping Devorast and the two of them ended up tangled together at the bottom of the incline, half-floating in six inches of standing water.

  Hrothgar untangled himself from the human while he coughed out half a lungful of rainwater and pawed mud from his stinging right eye. Devorast was breathing so hard he seemed to almost gasp for breath.

  When lightning flashed again and lit them both Hrothgar was shocked by two things: how horrible they both looked—like sea hags on the worst days of their lives—and that they were still alive. They’d lived.

  “What were the chances?” Hrothgar asked himself.

  Devorast shook his head and struggled to his knees. The dwarf stood, knee-deep in water, and looked around. The lightning was fast moving to the eastern horizon, but the rain still fell hard and steady. He turned his face up to the black, unforgiving sky, and let the rain wash the mud from his face. If the dirt was mixed with his blood or Devorast’s, Hrothgar couldn’t tell. He hurt all over, but he could breathe and he could stand. Any dwarf that could breathe and stand was just fine.

  Devorast stood next to him and took a deep breath.

  Lightning played along the horizon, outlining a jumble of broken stone and scarred earth.

  “Don’t look at it,” Hrothgar said.

  Devorast turned and smiled. The simple curl of his lips sent a shiver coursing through Hrothgar the dwarf was sure would finally shake him apart.

  “I want you to promise me somethin’,” Hrothgar said, and though he found it nearly impossible, he looked the Cormyrean in the eye. “Promise that you’ll never, ever, should we both live for another ten thousand years, tell me why.”

  The smile faded from Devorast’s lips and he nodded.

  Hrothgar stepped away and busied himself with trying to get more of the mud off him. The rain let up a little, but the wind increased, which made the rain seem so much colder. Hrothgar’s teeth chattered and his toes went numb in his boots.

  When Devorast placed a hand on his shoulder, the dwarf didn’t even have the energy to be startled.

  He looked up and saw Devorast run away from him.

  “Ivar?” he called after the human.

  “Phyrea!” Devorast screamed into a wind-blown wave of rain.

  “Phyrea?” Hrothgar asked the human’s receding back.

  Hrothgar stood and thought for a moment, the cold making him think as slowly as he moved. Finally he started off after Devorast. The dwarf slipped a few times on his way around a bulge in the ground, and his ankle rolled painfully on a piece of broken lumber, but he eventually limped to Devorast’s side.

  The Cormyrean kneeled in the mud next to what Hrothgar thought at first was the twisted remains of a scaffold or some other wooden structure. Though there was no shortage of that all around them, Devorast knelt before a body.

  “Phyrea….” Hrothgar whispered. “She dead?”

  Devorast shook his head and Hrothgar almost sobbed, but then the girl moved and he gasped instead.

  “She’s alive,” the dwarf said, joining Devorast on the ground.

  Phyrea lay face up in water and mud. Her left leg was twisted behind her, her hip shattered. Her left arm bent at an abrupt angle that made it appear as though she had two elbows. Blood clouded the standing water. She breathed, but only with obvious difficulty. Exhales came followed by trickles of blood.

  “Phyrea,” Devorast whispered. “Why?”

  “Come,” said the dwarf. “We need to make a stretcher, and tie her nice and tight to it.”

  Devorast glanced at him and nodded, but he didn’t stand or show any sign that he was about to leave the dying girl’s side.

  Hrothgar took a deep breath and went to work.

  62

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

  THE SISTERHOOD OF PASTORALS, INNARLITH

  One man held his ankles to the floor, two more held his hands, and the fourth kneeled on his chest, tangled a grubby hand in his hair, and cut him. Once, twice, then a third time. His own blood felt so hot it seemed to burn his face. When he opened his mouth to scream he could taste it.

  She held her baby’s head up, her soft, wispy hair in the palm of one hand. When she let the slight weight push her hand down, her baby’s neck gave no resistance. The infant was limp and still, her skin already going cold. A tear dropped onto the baby’s forehead and rolled down her cheek. Her dead eyes dry, it was left to her mother to cry for her.

  He screamed when his arm came away from his body, but not because of the pain. It didn’t even hurt, really, not like you’d think it would. He screamed because he knew that he would live the rest of his life without it. As young as he was, barely seven years old, he screamed from the horror or having been mutilated. Startled, perhaps even guilty at the sound of the boy’s scream, the dog took a better grip on the bleeding, disembodied limb, and ran away with it in his jaws. The boy screamed after it as his blood poured away onto the floor of his bedroom.

  She batted her face with her hands b
ut succeeded only in burning her palms. The oil had had time to soak into her skin, and when her husband touched the torch to her face the burns dug deep. She took a breath to scream and seared her own lungs. She coughed and choked and writhed in blind agony. Her fear turned to anger, then there was no word for the emotions that exploded in her as her brain began to cook in her skull. She died a feral thing, overwhelmed by agony, chewing through her own tongue.

  The little girl took her last breath on the day after her ninth birthday. Dressed in her finest nightgown, on her back under bedclothes of the softest silk and goose down, the woman her mother hired to care for her holding her hand in a cold, dry, unwelcome grip, she stared up at the ceiling over her bed and wondered how long it would take her to die, and if she would find herself in another world. She knew she didn’t want to go. She wanted to stay home. She wanted to stay at Berrywilde. She didn’t care about the gods and their punishments and rewards. If her soul stayed home, could she find some way to make her mommy love her? She was still asking that question when she felt her heart stop. Before her vision fled her, she saw the nanny shrug, stand, and walk away.

  The woman’s face hovered in the air above her in a way that wasn’t natural, that wasn’t right. Her smile was the warmest thing she’d ever seen, and the light that shone from her perfect, glowing skin washed away the images of pain and torture and hopelessness. When she spoke, her lips didn’t move, but the words filled an empty space that brought the world of the living together with the world of the dead.

  Wake up, now, girl, the goddess said. You lived.

  Phyrea drew in a breath and held it. Her eyes stung and watered from a light that was at once blinding and muted. Pain lanced through her, shoving her into consciousness, warning her that she should awake and take stock of herself or die. She tried to sit up, but something held her down—a hand on her chest.

  “Easy there,” a familiar voice whispered.

  “Father?” she guessed, her voice coming to her own ears as a ragged, alien rasp.

  “Phyrea,” the man said. “Breathe deeply.”

  “Pristoleph,” she whispered, and her voice sounded almost like her own.

  She took a deep breath and smelled and tasted incense and sickness.

  She took another breath and the dull throb of pain subsided, replaced by jabbing pinpoints here and there—her hip, her arm, her head. She opened her eyes.

  “There you are,” Pristoleph said, his voice as soft as the look in his eyes. His hair waved like fire on his scalp, and the warmth of his hand in hers drove off the chill touch of death. “There you are.”

  She turned her head, doing her best to ignore the pain that accompanied any movement at all. She lay on her back on a narrow bed set against the rough brick wall of a room no bigger than one of the smaller closets in Berrywilde or Pristal Towers. No artwork adorned the walls, but there was a window with cobalt blue glass that bathed the room in a cool, suppressed light. A candle burned on a short chest of drawers, backlighting Pristoleph, who sat at her bedside on a stool.

  “What happened?” she asked, but even then the memories flooded back. “The canal,” she rasped before Pristoleph could answer.

  “Destroyed,” he told her, but she knew that. She’d seen it happen and had nearly been destroyed with it.

  “How?” she asked.

  “Devorast and that alchemist of his,” Pristoleph answered, and she shook her head. She didn’t care how the canal had been destroyed, she wanted to know how she’d lived, but as he went on she realized it didn’t matter. “He was afraid that it was going to be completed by someone else, that his vision was to be perverted by the Thayan and his cronies.”

  “Ivar?” she whispered, and a tear came unbidden to the corner of her eye.

  Pristoleph sagged a little, in the face and in the body, and his hair looked less like fire.

  “He’s alive,” her husband said. “He brought you here. Devorast and the dwarf.”

  Phyrea tried to nod.

  “He saved me?” she said. It didn’t seem possible—hadn’t she gone there to save him? Or had she gone there to die with him?

  Pristoleph nodded and said, “Why, Phyrea? I thought you safe at Berrywilde.”

  She shook her head in an effort to tell him that she didn’t know why, and that she wasn’t safe at Berrywilde, at any rate.

  “Was he right?” she rasped.

  “Devorast?” asked Pristoleph. “About the canal?”

  She nodded.

  “No,” he said with stern self-confidence. “The city is divided. That much is true. I’ve turned the black firedrakes out of Pristal Towers for fear that they might betray me in favor of Rymüt. I have it on good authority that it was the Thayan that created them—or brought them here from whatever dark corner of the Realms he found them in. But I have the wemics, and I still control most of the military—the men at Firesteap Citadel and the Nagaflow Keep. The city watch is doing just that—watching, but doing little else. Fires are burning down parts of the Fourth Quarter, despite the rain.”

  Phyrea didn’t understand any of that at first. She shook her head, wincing at the pain.

  “Ivar?” she asked.

  “He’s safe,” Pristoleph said, and he appeared reluctant to speak. “He’s in Pristal Towers. He’s talked of Shou Lung—going there again, for good this time.”

  Phyrea shook her head and sobbed though it hurt her to do so.

  “I love you,” Pristoleph said. “Had you died I would have given this wretched city to the Thayan and been done with it, but you lived, so I will hold it for you. I will give it to you, along with everything I have. I will kill myself here and now if the gods require my life in exchange for yours, but know this.” He paused, swallowed, gathered himself. “If you take him into your bed or go with him to his I will kill you both.”

  Phyrea closed her eyes and cried.

  63

  6 Mirtul, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)

  SECOND QUARTER, INNARLITH

  Willem Korvan ate his mother’s corpse, little by little, over the course of seventeen days, not because he required sustenance, but out of some dimly-felt sense of necessity.

  Marek Rymüt could feel the undead thing’s need and confusion the second he stepped into the house. It hit him just as squarely, though not quite as hard, as the stench. The smell of the rotting carcass of Thurene Korvan mixed with the dried-meat and spice smell of her son. Throughout was the tang of disease.

  “Willem,” the Thayan whispered, “you poor dear.”

  The creature cowered at the sight of the Red Wizard who’d created it, its dull, glassy eyes devoid of any trace of the vibrant if confused young man that had once inhabited that flesh. Willem’s refined good looks had been replaced by desiccated tissue and bulging joints, his skin like a leather cloak left on the street for a year of sun, wind, and rain.

  It opened its mouth but didn’t speak. Marek’s skin crawled at the sound that came forth from it, and he cast another spell to insure his own safety. He was confident enough in the magic that gave him complete control of what was left of the creature’s will, but there were mitigating circumstances that made the wizard uneasy.

  “It’s been a long time, Willem,” he said to the cowering creature.

  The thing responded to Marek’s voice but showed no trace of recognition either for the Thayan or for the sound of his own name. But then it wasn’t his—its—name anymore. The creature that cowered in the corner, one foot tangled in the grisly ribcage of Willem Korvan’s mother, had no name. It didn’t need one. It had no will of its own, not really, because it didn’t need that either.

  “I am sorry,” Marek told the thing, and he didn’t lie. He didn’t have to. “There are any number of other paths I wish both our lives had taken. You were beautiful, Willem, and I could have loved you—if you could have loved me. But you wanted more than that, and I suppose so did I.”

  The creature rolled its eyes and clacked its teeth together—confused, a
waiting an order.

  “I didn’t want to make a monster out of you, you know,” said the Thayan.

  One of the monster’s arms twitched.

  “But I have, haven’t I?” Marek concluded. “And I’ve set a task for you. One you have yet to complete.”

  The undead thing drew its knee up to its chest, pulling the body of its mother with it. The torso came away from the limbs, the cartilage and ligaments having long since been chewed through. A fresh wave of rotting stink washed over Marek and he gagged despite himself.

  “Rise,” Marek said when he’d composed himself.

  Its foot still tangled in the ribs, slipping against the tattered strips of rotten flesh that dangled from the graying bones, it rose to its feet with some difficulty. Its foot finally came free and it stood slumped to one side as though the slightest breath would topple it.

  “But it won’t,” Marek whispered to himself.

  It would take more than that—much more than that—to defeat his creation. Though it looked wasted and weak, Marek knew that the creature Willem had become was possessed of strength no human could match. It could be destroyed, but not easily—not easily at all.

  “You have huddled long enough, my boy,” Marek said, his voice clear and commanding, echoing in the dead space, the horrid little charnel house that Willem’s home had become. “The war has begun. You will serve now as you have before.”

  The creature’s head tipped to one side—a death rattle more than a gesture.

  “You still have Ivar Devorast to kill,” Marek said.

  The monster’s leg shook and it lurched half a step forward. The Thayan held his ground.

  “Ivar Devorast,” he said, “among others.”

  64