Scream of Stone (18 page)

“How deep is it?” Willem asked. The wind took his voice and he was afraid Devorast didn’t hear him.

“Thirty feet,” Devorast said.

“It seems deeper,” Willem said, still looking down. “You’ve made startling progress, Ivar, really. How far are you from finishing?”

“A year,” Devorast replied.

“A year …” Willem mouthed the word again and puzzled over how foreign it sounded to him.

“What do you want here, Willem?”

Willem sighed and looked up into the clear blue sky. He rocked back on his feet just the tiniest bit, and his face flushed.

“Step back,” Devorast said.

Willem took a step backward from the edge, then another, then he turned and walked past Devorast.

“I don’t know what’s happened to me,” Willem said. “I know I look bad. I know that… something is wrong. I think I’ve done things that are wrong.”

“You did what you chose to do,” Devorast said.

Willem nodded, though he didn’t agree. He couldn’t believe that. He had done what he was told to do.

“Can I help you, Ivar?” Willem said. “Will you let me help you finish it?”

“As?”

“As?” Willem asked.

Devorast didn’t answer, and Willem paced in a slow

circle for a long moment while he considered the meaning of that one little word.

“You decide what as,” Willem said. “I’m not the master builder. I’m only a senator anymore—and even that in name only. Should you ask me to dig a hole I’ll dig it. Ask me to carry stone or cut lumber, I’ll do it. Let me do something. Give me something to do that will leave something behind to—”

Willem stopped talking because he didn’t know what he was saying anymore. He didn’t understand himself.

“As?” Willem said. “As a parasite. Let me help you as a less than sensate thing that lives on the blood and flakes of dead skin from—”

He stopped again.

“You told me that you were my enemy once,” Devorast said. “You warned me to carry a weapon.”

“I’ve done and said worse than that” Willem replied. He looked at Devorast and was just as relieved that he saw no compassion in the man’s face as he was to see no anger. “I can fall to my knees, if you like. I can grovel.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Devorast said with the barest hint of a smile.

Willem nodded and laughed in a way that didn’t feel as good as before, but made him feel tired.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

Devorast replied, “I’ll think about it.”

Willem nodded, looked at the ground, and smiled. He looked up at Devorast, who was looking at his canal, and Willem grinned wider. A tear rolled down his cheek, and it felt good.

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17 Eleasias, the Yearof Rogue Dragons (1373 DR) Pristal Towers, Innarlith

Jtr hyrea didn’t realize she touched her own chest when she said to the woman, “Your brooch is beautiful.”

The woman smiled in a way that made Phyrea feel at once embarrassed and delighted. She had to look away.

“Thank you, Lady,” the woman said in a voice so devoid of guile it was like a salve to Phyrea’s ears. She’d spent so much of her life among the aristocracy of Innarlith that anything that wasn’t a hateful lie seemed like music. “It is the symbol of my faith.”

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 city-state. 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. 7s 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.

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25Eleint, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR) The Land of One Hundred and Thirteen

The sky in Marek Rymiit’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 horizon, 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.