Scream of Stone

by Philip Athans

  “I want safe passage out of the city for two people, and the wemics,” Pristoleph said.

  “The barbarians are mercenaries,” Wenefir said. “No one will stop them from going home, if they go home in peace.”

  Something about the way he’d said that curled under Pristoleph’s skin.

  “And the two?” Wenefir asked. “Yourself and Phyrea?”

  “Phyrea and Devorast,” Pristoleph said.

  Wenefir winced, though he couldn’t have been surprised.

  “Agreed,” the priest said.

  Pristoleph let his body sink into the leather chair. He looked as deeply into Wenefir’s eyes as he could.

  “Is that all?” the priest asked.

  “A neutral third party,” Pristoleph repeated.

  Wenefir smiled.

  Pristoleph sat there staring at his old friend sweat for a long moment, wondering if the priest realized he’d been caught negotiating, that he’d agreed to something no “neutral third party” had a right to agree to.

  “Safe passage,” Pristoleph said again. “The wemics will remain until Phyrea is safe at Berrywilde, and Devorast is on his way to Shou Lung.”

  Wenefir blinked and nodded. “You have the word of the Senate of Innarlith.”

  Pristoleph cleared his throat and clenched his teeth together to keep himself from laughing.

  “And then everything goes back to normal,” Wenefir said.

  Pristoleph smiled and allowed a chuckle to bounce out of his throat.

  “Yes, well,” he said, “the crown weighed heavily on my brow after all.”

  67

  8 Kythorn, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)

  THE SISTERHOOD OF PASTORALS, INNARLITH

  Pristoleph watched as one of the sisters helped Phyrea into a chair. Her brow narrowed and she blinked, but the grimace, the grunting, and the tears were gone. It hurt her to move, but not as bad.

  “You’re looking better every time I see you,” Pristoleph said.

  Phyrea glanced at him, smiled, then turned her attention to the sister, who arranged a napkin on her lap and took the pewter cover off a tray of food. The smell of the steamed vegetables and fish stew reminded Pristoleph that he hadn’t eaten himself in—how long? He couldn’t even remember. The aroma didn’t make him feel hungry, though.

  “I want you to leave the city,” he said.

  Phyrea had been about to dip her spoon into the bowl of stew, but she froze. She didn’t look at him, but glanced instead at the sister. The young acolyte shifted uncomfortably, trying with all her will not to look at either the ransar or his wife. Finally, the girl turned and stepped to the door.

  “Unless you need anything else …?” she asked Phyrea, and the way she said it, it was as though she was begging for Phyrea to say “no.”

  Phyrea obliged the sister, who stepped out and closed the door behind her.

  “I want you to go to Berrywilde,” Pristoleph said before Phyrea had a chance to speak. “Wait for me there.”

  “If I ask you why, will you tell me the truth?” she asked, setting her spoon down and folding her shaking hands in her lap.

  “Of course I will,” he promised.

  “Then I won’t ask you why,” she said. He blinked at that, but let it go. “I’m still not well.”

  “Considering the extent of your injuries,” Pristoleph replied, “it’s Chauntea’s own miracle that you can walk, let alone speak and feed yourself. I’ll ask the sisters to send acolytes with you to help, and we’ll hire a new staff.”

  Phyrea shook her head and stared down at her plate.

  “You’re healing quickly,” he said. “And it’s been … how long?”

  “Forty-six days,” Phyrea said, glancing up at him with a flash of reproach.

  “Forty-six days,” he repeated.

  “I know what’s been happening in the city,” Phyrea said, either looking down at her lap or sitting with her eyes closed—Pristoleph couldn’t tell. “The sisters have been keeping me informed. As much as anyone could be in the midst of a bloody civil war.”

  “I wouldn’t go so far as to call it that,” Pristoleph said, though that’s precisely what it was. “It’ll all be over soon.”

  “Are you going to kill them all?” she asked. “Marek Rymüt, Meykhati, Nyla … the whole senate? Or are they going to kill you?”

  “Neither,” he said, “unfortunately.”

  She looked up at him and the look in her eyes made him so profoundly sad he had to turn his back on her. A lump lodged itself in his throat.

  “I don’t care if I’ve failed Innarlith,” he said with some difficulty. “I don’t even care if I’ve failed myself—though it makes me a hypocrite of the first order to admit that. But if I thought for a moment that I’d failed you, I’d throw myself in the lake.”

  “You haven’t failed me,” she told him.

  Pristoleph nodded and, still not looking at her, said, “Your safe passage has been guaranteed. You will go unmolested to Berrywilde while I put an end to all this infighting and stupidity once and for all.”

  “And if I don’t want to go?”

  He paused for a long moment because he didn’t want to say what he knew he had to say. “I will have you restrained, or sedated, and taken there.”

  He stood facing the wall, listening to her slow, steady breathing for so long it felt as though days passed with each exhale.

  “You may have to do that,” she said.

  “I only asked one thing of Rymüt and the senate,” he said, “and that was a guarantee of safe passage for you and Ivar Devorast. You won’t make a liar of me. I’m sorry.”

  “They’ll let Ivar go?” she asked. “Not to Berrywilde …?”

  Pristoleph shivered at that. Though the room was warm, he’d never felt so cold. He held his arms crossed in front of his chest and felt his lower lip quiver.

  “He’ll go to Tsingtao, in Shou Lung, I think,” Pristoleph said.

  “But he’ll live?” she asked. He nodded to the wall.

  “Very well, then,” Phyrea said. “When do I leave for Berrywilde?”

  68

  8 Kythorn, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)

  THE THAYAN ENCLAVE, INNARLITH

  Marek Rymüt couldn’t simply cast a spell and take control of Willem’s mind. He knew more than enough about the undead to know that, so he didn’t bother preparing that sort of spell. Instead, he wrapped himself in magical defenses on the off chance that the creature broke free of his chains.

  Having been created by Marek, though, Willem was inclined to serve the Thayan, and the junior senator’s generally weak will when he lived made things easier for the Red Wizard. Still, even Marek hesitated stepping into a room with the feral, hate-driven, walking corpse that Willem Korvan had become.

  The door to the dungeon cell creaked open with a shrill sound that gave Marek gooseflesh. He’d had the hinges specifically made to squeak. The whole level, deep below the Thayan Enclave, had been constructed according to Marek’s strict instructions, to terrify and intimidate as much as to contain. No one not of Thayan blood even knew they’d dug the dungeons.

  The smell was as Marek expected, a cloying mix of exotic spices and rotten flesh. The dim light provided by a single candle an apprentice had lit prior to Marek’s descent into the dungeon cast a flickering black shadow of the restrained creature onto the wall and the ceiling behind him, and the effect was unsettling.

  Willem opened his mouth, and Marek was distressed to see that several of the expensive ivory teeth had fallen out. The creature’s eyes rolled in their sockets, but quickly fixed on Marek with a cold, empty glare.

  The Thayan cleared his throat and said, “Well, my boy. You’ve looked better.”

  A hiss escaped Willem’s open mouth, but that was his only retort.

  “You’ve been a very bad boy, Willem,” Marek went on. “You were told to kill someone, and that someone still lives.”

  Willem winced and his teeth clack
ed together hard. Marek reached down and lifted the candle from its simple wrought iron holder. The undead thing flinched away. The sound of its chains shifting on the stone floor was loud enough to make Marek flinch himself.

  “You were not created to fail,” Marek said. “Others have failed—too many others. Though it benefited me that he live in fear of his life for a while, that he question who it was who wanted him dead and why, this Cormyrean has troubled me enough. It is time to be rid of him and his ambitious dreams so the city-state can move past this mess.”

  Willem’s eyes held to the candle flame, though Marek knew he was listening.

  “If I release you into the night, will you kill him?” Marek asked.

  Willem didn’t respond at first, so the Thayan waved the candle closer to his face. The creature jerked back with an even louder jangle of chains. He growled from deep in his throat.

  “Yes or no,” the Red Wizard pressed. “Will you kill Ivar Devorast? I know you can answer. I made you to answer. Answer.”

  “Yes,” the creature croaked, his eyes rolling slowly to Marek’s face then back to the candle.

  Marek smiled and stepped back, but Willem didn’t relax.

  “Ivar Devorast has been given safe passage out of the city,” Marek said. “He’ll be leaving this very night. Though we’ve been told he’s going into some sort of self-imposed exile in Shou Lung, I know that he will go back to the blasted remains of that ludicrous canal of his at least once more.”

  Willem grunted and said, “Ivar.”

  Marek paused, not certain what to make of that, then pressed on. “Follow him out of the city. When he’s clear of the walls, kill him. Hurt him in the process if you like. I don’t care. Leave his body where it will be found, but not found quickly.”

  Willem opened his mouth and jerked his arm with a clank of chains, but Marek didn’t know what that might signify.

  “Do you understand those instructions?” the Thayan asked.

  “Yes,” the undead creature hissed, and his head bobbed in something like a nod.

  “Do you hate him still, Willem?” the Red Wizard had to ask.

  The creature shuddered and the smell in the room grew stronger, more pungent. Marek had to hold a hand to his nose, but it didn’t help.

  “Hate,” Willem rasped. “Devorast.”

  Though he was far from satisfied with that answer, Marek moved on.

  “There is something else we must discuss,” he said.

  The creature shuffled his feet and said, “Release me.”

  “Anxious?”

  “Release me,” the creature rasped again.

  Marek replaced the candle in its holder and reached into a pocket of his robe. He drew a long-bladed dagger and slid it from its sheath. The gold-chased steel blade flashed in the candlelight.

  “It’s been a long, long time since I’ve stabbed someone,” Marek said, eyeing the blade.

  The undead creature lurched forward and snapped his jaws at the Red Wizard, who met it with the dagger. The blade bit deeply into Willem’s desiccated cheek, and when it met the undead flesh it crackled with green and yellow sparks.

  Willem howled like a wounded animal and fell backward. With a deafening clatter of chains he fetched up against the wall behind him. He almost fell but managed to get his feet under him. Willem stood, his back scraping against the stone, his humorless eyes following the Red Wizard’s dagger.

  “Do you have any other demands, my boy?” Marek asked.

  He paused, but the creature offered no argument. The wound in his cheek was part cut and part burn. Marek wasn’t sure if his creation could feel pain, but he knew that Willem knew that Marek could kill him with that dagger, and that was enough.

  “When Devorast is dead,” Marek went on, “you will have another to kill, as quickly afterward as possible.”

  Still the creature stood and waited, and Marek couldn’t really be sure Willem heard a word he said.

  “Devorast is not the only one who has been granted safe passage out of the city,” Marek said.

  69

  8 Kythorn, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)

  THE THAYAN ENCLAVE, INNARLITH

  It’s up there, the man with the scar on his face told Phyrea. I can sense it. I can feel it. Like an itch.

  Her lips parted, but she didn’t even draw in a breath to speak. She wanted to ask the ghost if it was that sword, the flambergé, that had killed him, that had made him what he was. But she knew better than to make any noise—even the faintest whisper.

  It was, the man answered anyway, and a cold chill shook Phyrea. You knew that.

  She stood in the shadow of a bluetop tree, its leaves rustling in the warm summer breeze. The night was dark, a high overcast blocking the moon and stars. The streets of the Second Quarter were lit only well enough to confer a false sense of security to the residents, but not brightly enough to disturb their slumber—or their illicit comings and goings.

  Above her rose the imposing stone wall of what used to be Marek Rymüt’s house. No one in the city seemed to notice the moment—even the month—that it stopped being another palatial Second Quarter townhouse and had become one corner of a walled enclave, a little piece of the realm of Thay in the heart of Innarlith.

  Wait, the little boy whispered into her head.

  Phyrea leaned back into the deeper shadow of the tree and didn’t make a sound. Footsteps approached and faded without pause. She couldn’t see who’d passed, but it didn’t matter. It was the people on the inside of the enclave she had to worry about.

  Are you certain you can climb that? the sad woman asked, and Phyrea’s lips twisted into a smirk.

  It’s all right, the little boy whispered.

  Go, said the man with the scar.

  Phyrea crossed from the tree to the wall in three long strides. Her fingers played at the spaces between stones, finding holds all on their own. When she lifted herself up, the tips of her fingers went slightly numb, but otherwise gave no argument. Her toes, protected only by shoes of soft, thin leather that most people would call “slippers,” helped her toes cling to spaces too small for them to properly fit into.

  And here, the old woman said from somewhere close by, as though she too climbed the wall next to Phyrea, you said you were too sick to travel.

  Phyrea didn’t answer, keeping her attention fixed on the wall—a crack big enough for two fingers, a mislaid brick that served as a ledge for one toe. She had told Pristoleph that she still felt the effects of her injuries, that she had trouble walking even. But that was a lie. The sisters had done Chauntea’s work, and done it well.

  “Never felt better,” she whispered into the rough stones, her voice so quiet the breeze snatched it away even as it passed her lips.

  Pause, if you can, the man with the scar advised, under the windowsill.

  Is someone there? she asked without speaking.

  I’m there, the little girl answered. I’ll tell you when it’s safe.

  Phyrea let her doubts jab out of her mind. She wanted all of the ghosts to know that she didn’t trust the little girl—as if she trusted any of them.

  I’m here, too, the man with the scar assured her.

  Phyrea reached the window, and paused as the apparitions advised. She heard sounds echo from the tall, thin, arch-topped window—someone moving around inside.

  Wait, the little boy whispered.

  Phyrea looked down at the uppermost branches of the bluetop, twenty feet below her, and there was another ten or even fifteen feet to the ground. She held herself to the wall with one toe of her left foot, the leather sole of her right foot, two fingers of her left hand, and three on her right. The breeze ruffled her hair, which she’d tied back out of her face. The leather pants and tunic she wore had been oiled so they wouldn’t creak, and her short sword was strapped tight to her back so it wouldn’t bounce and clank when she moved.

  Her left hand began to shake.

  Just one moment, the man with the scar p
romised.

  Phyrea couldn’t hear anything.

  Now, the little girl said, the word accompanied by the feeling of a sneer.

  Phyrea waited, even though her right foot began to slip.

  Come in, the man with the scar said, and Phyrea reached up with her right hand and took hold of the wooden windowsill. The heavy leaded glass was hinged like a door and had been left open. Phyrea held the windowsill with both hands and pulled up so that her eyes just peeked over the sill. She let both her feet hang, but not dangle.

  The room was dark, and the lack of moonlight didn’t help. For all Phyrea knew she could have been staring at a dozen battle-ready Red Wizards, standing staring at her in the darkness.

  There’s no one here, the man with the scar said, and he faded into view. He stood, a figure made of violet light, in the center of the room. The light that formed him failed to illuminate his surroundings.

  “Are you lying to me?” she whispered.

  The ghost shushed her and shook his head.

  The ring, the old woman said, and it sounded as though she was behind Phyrea—and perhaps she was, floating thirty feet in the air.

  Phyrea closed her eyes for a moment and concentrated on the coolness of the metal band on the ring finger of her right hand. The ring had been a “gift” from Pristoleph—purloined by her many months before. She had used it to take a sort of inventory of Pristal Towers, and since then had never bothered to use it. She couldn’t imagine a place with more magic in it than her husband’s house.

  She opened her eyes and the ghost of the man was gone, but other things glowed with a similar cool, self-contained light. The window she clung to was ringed with yellow, as was a squat chest of drawers. A wide, high feather bed glowed a sickly green, and a similar hue lit a bearskin rug on the floor in the middle of the chamber. A tray had been set out on a little table, and whatever was in the graceful crystal carafe glowed blue. The sword on the wall was as red as the flames of the Nine Hells.

  Don’t touch the frame of the window, the man with the scar said.