Scream of Stone w-3

by Philip Athans

  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 Rymut?”

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

  “And you think it could be Marek Rymut?”

  “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.
<
br />   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 abandoned 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.

  An old man dressed in rags that had to be tied onto him staggered toward Pristoleph. His clothes looked and smelled no different than the midden ditch that ran like a stripe of feces, urine, garbage, and dead rats down the middle of the street. Pristoleph locked his eyes on the beggar’s and the man wilted under the ransar’s steady, firm gaze. The old man turned on his heel and scurried off into a garbage-strewn alley.

  “It was the first building I ever bought,” Pristoleph said to Devorast’s back. “I’ve been collecting a pittance in rent on it for years. I’d almost forgotten about it, actually. It’s been used for meat packing, a blacksmith that made nails-nails, only, one after another after another all day-and Denier only knows what else, but it’s never been an inn. I never let it be that again, and I never will. I’ll burn it down myself before another woman sells her body in that building.”

  “It wasn’t the inn,” Devorast said, not looking over his shoulder.

  Pristoleph found himself nodding but angry at the same time.

  “I bought the building next door, too,” Pristoleph went on, and started to walk again. “I bought a lot of buildings, and most of the time I didn’t ask what was going on inside them. I didn’t care. If the rent was paid, they could have been …”

  He didn’t know what they could have been doing that would have come close to offending him, but that he would have allowed just the same.

  “You haven’t asked me why I brought you down here,” he said to Devorast. Then he turned on a woman who had inched closer to them, and said, “Easy, there.”

  The old woman took just a little more convincing than the male beggar before she moved away from the two men.

  “You want me to know that you came from nothing,” Devorast said. “You thought I should see how far you’ve come, all the gold you’ve-”

  “No,” Pristoleph said, loudly enough so that a couple of the grimy passersby turned and ran from him. “Or yes, I suppose,” he went on more quietly, directing the words to Devorast, and Devorast alone. “We’ve always agreed that coin for coin’s sake is hardly worth pursuing.”

  Devorast nodded.

  “I wanted you to know that I have dreams for Innarlith,” Pristoleph said. “I really don’t come here to remind myself of what it was like growing up on the streets, ‘raised,’ if you can call it that, by a whore. I didn’t ask for your pity, and I never will.”

  The two men turned to look at each other and stood there longer than either had intended. A little boy tugged on Devorast’s sleeve and mumbled something about silver coins. Devorast shook his head but didn’t push the boy away.

  The little beggar looked up at him, and Pristoleph watched a tear collect in the boy’s big eyes. He held out two silver coins. The boy smiled, grabbed the coins from the ransar’s hand, and disappeared back into the dark alley.

  “That could have been me,” Pristoleph said, gesturing after the boy.

  Devorast looked him in the eye and said, “Save for
?”

  Pristoleph raised an eyebrow and said, “Luck?”

  “There is no such thing.”

  “Ambition?”

  “And what’s wrong with ambition?” Devorast replied.

  46

  4 Nightal, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR)

  The Land of One Hundred and Thirteen

  You have to let me go,” Insithryllax said. In his true form, he stood atop the tower and looked down at Marek standing on the dry ground below. “I can’t stand it anymore. I have to get out of here.”

  “I don’t know if it’s safe,” the Thayan said.

  Insithryllax tipped his head up to the sky and roared as loudly as he could. The attempt to release his anger fell pitifully short. His body shook, and his wings fluttered. The sound of his roar shook the tower, sending a rain of dust and little chips of the stone blocks to fall around the Red Wizard.

  “What is it, Marek?” Insithryllax demanded. He couldn’t keep his ebon lips from pulling back to reveal his swordlike fangs. Acid sizzled in the air around him in a fine mist. “Why do I feel so trapped in here? What’s happening?”

  Marek looked away and Insithryllax roared again. The Red Wizard looked him in the eye, and the dragon could tell that he was reluctant to speak, but he couldn’t tell if it was because Marek didn’t know the answers to his questions or didn’t want to tell him.

  “Speak, damn you,” the wyrm hissed.

  “Something has been happening in the outside world,” Marek said. “Something has been happening to the dragons.”

  “Which dragons?”

  Lightning arced from the sky and skittered across the surface of the lake, disturbing the eels.

  Marek looked up at the dragon and said, “All of them.”

  Insithryllax turned his face away from the human and swung his head around on his sinuous neck, searching for some answers in the dead sky of the pocket dimension. There was nothing there.