Scream of Stone w-3

by Philip Athans

  Nothing.

  “You have to get me out of here,” Insithryllax said again.

  “I can’t-”

  “Yes, you can!” Insithryllax roared, and Marek took two steps backward, moving his hands up, ready to cast a spell. Insithryllax swallowed and gnashed his fangs, biting back the urge to shower the Thayan with his caustic breath and be done with him-his old friend.

  “I was going to say,” Marek said in a voice that couldn’t possibly be as calm as it sounded, “that I can’t guarantee that you won’t be effected if you return to Faerun.”

  “Effected …” the dragon repeated. “It’s a Rage, isn’t it?”

  Marek Rymut nodded. Insithryllax closed his eyes and tried to steady his breath.

  “I could feel it,” Insithryllax admitted-and how he hated to say that in front of a human, even Marek. “I could feel it, back in Innarlith, but that was months ago.”

  Marek said, “I did everything I could, my friend. I’ve been researching the problem, desperate for a solution, but in your state of mind, I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t let you go back there until I knew how to help you. I’m sorry.”

  Insithryllax looked down on him, studying Marek’s face and voice. The lift of an eyebrow, the curl of a lip, one too many blinks in too close succession.

  “I’m truly sorry,” the Thayan said again.

  “It’s been months,” the dragon said. “No Rage has ever lasted that long.”

  “This one has,” Marek said, and he wasn’t lying.

  “Let me out,” Insithryllax insisted.

  Marek half nodded, half shrugged, and said, “You could go mad. You could kill a lot of people.”

  Insithryllax held the wizard’s gaze, looking deep into his eyes, and said, “You can stop me.”

  They stared at each other for a long time, locked across the distance by their wills.

  “Can you take human form?” Marek asked finally.

  Insithryllax shifted his weight onto the center of the roof, which creaked and sagged under him. He brought to mind the spell that would make him look human, but the first word stuck in his throat. He shook his head and the word came out, but the second one wouldn’t come to him. He growled and spat, dissolving one of the battlements.

  Marek Rymut, from the ground far below, began to cast a spell. The words drifted up on the still air and brought with them the tingle of magic.

  Insithryllax felt himself shrinking, and though a big part of him didn’t want to trust the human, he managed to hold himself still. After a brief moment, he stood on the roof of the tower, a dark-skinned man in black silks. He looked at his hands and they seemed so alien to him. It was as though he’d never worn that guise before.

  Marek appeared then, levitating from the ground below, drifting up until his feet cleared the roofline. He stepped forward to approach Insithryllax. The Thayan kept his hands at his sides, where the dragon could see them.

  “Are you sure?” the Red Wizard asked.

  Insithryllax nodded.

  The spell that sent them back to Faerun was simple-for Marek, at least-and before Insithryllax thought twice about the true consequences of going back, he took a deep breath of Toril’s air. He looked around and saw that they stood in the courtyard of the Thayan Enclave, safely behind the walls in what was, officially speaking, Thayan territory. Marek watched him closely and Insithryllax could tell the wizard was ready to cast a spell-ready to kill him.

  “I tire of this,” the dragon said, hating the sound of the voice that came from his false body.

  “And the Rage?” asked Marek.

  Insithryllax took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He searched his own feelings and found only exhaustion. He wasn’t angry, he wasn’t frustrated, he wasn’t mad. He was tired.

  He looked at Marek and shook his head.

  “I’m free,” the dragon said, and he couldn’t keep it from sounding like a challenge.

  “You always were, my old friend,” Marek replied. The Thayan spoke a single word in a forgotten tongue and Insithryllax’s human guise fell away. “But I hoped you would stay.”

  Insithryllax unfurled his wings and stretched his long neck. He’d never wanted so badly to sleep, while at the same time all he could think of was flying-flying free of the beehive urgency of the human city and their petty squabbles.

  “Could be,” he said to the Thayan, “I’ll miss it, in time.”

  Marek smiled at him and said, “I doubt that.”

  Insithryllax beat his wings, sending a blast of air at the Thayan, who stepped back and shielded his eyes. Then he was in the air.

  A woman on the street screamed when he rose above the walls of the enclave, then a horse panicked and more people screamed and shouted and scurried around. They ran from him never knowing that he didn’t care if they lived or died, and at that moment couldn’t even be bothered to look down at them, let alone attack them. Though he was tired, he flew fast and high. He closed his eyes for a while and soared past the city walls to the north.

  Insithryllax didn’t spare the canal even the slightest glance. He turned to the east-to the Surmarsh and home-and was gone from Innarlith forever.

  PART 4

  47

  18 Alturiak, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)

  HUNGSTE PROVINCE, SHOU LUNG

  I expected them to be suspicious,” Pristoleph said, “to be less welcoming.”

  He looked at Devorast, who quickly drew a series of broad strokes on a parchment folio spread out on the red-enameled wood deck of the strangely-shaped boat. A Shou crewman slipped behind him, bowing as he passed, a vacant smile frozen on his face.

  “I still don’t understand why you like it here,” said the ransar.

  Pristoleph put the fine porcelain cup to his lips and reveled in the boiling intensity of the fragrant tea, waiting for Devorast to answer.

  “They have ideas,” Devorast said, his hand pausing for the briefest moment over the parchment.

  “Ideas?”

  “I’ve seen them pack smokepowder into a tube,” Devorast said, still not looking up from his drawing, “and attach something like fletching on one end so it looks like an arrow. When they ignite the smokepowder, the arrow flies on its own, but faster than any arrow I’ve ever seen. They call it a ‘huo jian’.”

  Pristoleph smiled and nodded. He blinked and looked up into the clear azure sky. The silence that followed was interrupted only by the gentle, hollow lapping of the river water on the boat’s hull. The crewmen were completely silent.

  “This boat is interesting, too,” Devorast said.

  Pristoleph chuckled, and Devorast actually smiled.

  “I should get you away from that canal more often,” Pristoleph said. “Impossible as it seems, you actually have it in you to relax.”

  “I’m always relaxed,” Devorast replied, and Pristoleph didn’t think he was joking.

  “I wouldn’t have thought you’d be so comfortable with the Shou ways,” the ransar said. “I understand they hold to a rigid caste system-one where a man like you might never realize his full potential under the weight of tradition.”

  “Cormyr is hardly different,” Devorast said.

  “But Innarlith is?”

  Devorast stopped drawing, looked up at Pristoleph, and said, “Innarlith is very different. In Innarlith, a man like you can be king. In Cormyr, you have to be born to it. You can be an infant and still be king if you have the right blood in your veins.”

  “I’m no king.”

  Devorast’s look made it clear he didn’t accept that.

  “But you’ve told me you never want to be ransar,” Pristoleph said. “You don’t want power over men.”

  “I don’t,” Devorast replied, continuing to draw. “I want to build a canal.”

  “I know, I know,” Pristoleph said. “And building it is more important than it being finished.”

  “No,” Devorast said with something that might have been a sigh-but Devorast never sighed. “
I fully intend to finish it. You know that.”

  Pristoleph watched the strange trees pass by on the far riverbank and asked, “Do you know what those trees are called?”

  “Bamboo.”

  “And the river?”

  “Chan Lu,” Devorast said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How long have we been away?” asked Pristoleph.

  “Almost three months.”

  Pristoleph took a deep breath and held it, letting his mind go completely blank. Devorast stopped drawing and the sudden cessation of the charcoal on parchment made Pristoleph exhale and look over at what the man had drawn. Though he was looking at it upside down, Pristoleph could make out the outlines of a tall tower with a peaked roof, not unlike the towers of his own home in Innarlith, but Devorast had drawn in some kind of window or something, a perfect circle near the top of the tower marked off in twelve even increments. He didn’t ask Devorast about the drawing. He’d learned not to.

  “I think Marek Rymut is trying to kill us both,” Pristoleph said.

  Devorast turned to a blank sheet of parchment and began to draw again.

  “I may have made a mistake by being too close to him,” Pristoleph admitted. “I’ve grown too dependent on his magic.”

  “I don’t know Marek Rymut,” Devorast said.

  “I don’t know whether you’d love him or hate him.”

  “I’d neither love nor hate him.”

  With a smile, Pristoleph said, “That’s probably the principal reason why he wants to kill you.”

  Devorast ignored that and continued his drawing. Pristoleph didn’t try to interpret the wild but controlled lines and shapes.

  “He uses people,” Pristoleph said. “I think that’s why we worked together so well. I use people, too.”

  “Are you ashamed of that?”

  Pristoleph was too surprised by the question to answer it right away. After a long silence, he simply shrugged.

  “You can only use people who allow themselves to be used,” Devorast said. “And anyone who would allow that is not worthy of your shame.”

  Pristoleph laughed even though Devorast was entirely serious.

  “This is a strange idea,” Devorast asked Pristoleph after a while, “these ‘holidays’ of yours. How long do they last?”

  48

  3 Ches, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)

  THE THAYAN ENCLAVE, INNARLITH

  Willem stopped in the doorway to the parlor and looked around. He’d been in that same room many times, but it had been a while, and it looked different. He had the feeling that all the objects, both mundane and exotic, were in the same places, that the furniture and the rugs were the same, that the walls were painted the same color, but still it looked different.

  Smaller? he asked himself. It was smaller-darker, duller.

  And Marek himself looked awful. Willem winced when the Thayan entered the room. He recoiled ever so slightly from the man’s smile. Marek’s teeth were brown in spots and yellow everywhere else. Dark circles under his eyes told of many sleepless nights, and he’d gotten fatter. The smell of some tropical flower Willem didn’t have a name for followed the wizard into the room, but it didn’t mask the old man smell that oozed from the Thayan’s very pores.

  “Ah,” Marek said with a smile that turned Willem’s stomach, “there you are, my boy. Come. Sit. You’ve been too long away from the city.”

  Willem forced a smile, found a chair, and sat as quickly as he could, deftly avoiding Marek’s embrace.

  “So tell me,” said the wizard, “how progresses the canal?”

  Willem replied, “Well, Master Rymut.”

  He wanted to leave it at that, but Marek made it plain with his pursed lips and wide-open eyes that that wouldn’t be nearly sufficient.

  “Construction is progressing according to Ivar’s plans,” Willem said. “It’s amazing, really, Master Rymut.”

  “What’s amazing?” the wizard asked, lifting one eyebrow in a look at once bored and quizzical.

  “The whole thing,” Willem breathed, certain that answer would never satisfy the Thayan, but it was all Willem could think to say.

  Marek chuckled, sat back in his chair, and stared up at the ceiling as though trying to frame his thoughts so that he could express himself in terms simple enough that even a dolt like Willem might understand him.

  “Why did you ask me to come here?” Willem said. His voice barely squeaked out of him. His throat had become reluctant to speak, his mind afraid of the words, but his heart longing to know.

  “You’re still a sitting member of the Senate of Innarlith,” Marek said. “You have responsibilities. This is beneath you, really, this digging around-rooting in the dirt out there with the snakes and the nagas.”

  “I’ve never been-” Willem started to say, but stopped himself. He didn’t want to tell Marek Rymut that he’d never been happier.

  But the Thayan knew what he was going to say and his smile was even more mocking that usual.

  “I understand,” said the wizard. “Really, I do.”

  Willem’s teeth hurt and he rubbed his bottom lip as he said, “Do you need something from me?”

  “Tell me about this man Devorast,” Marek said. “Have you brought anything of yourself to this canal? Or do you simply follow the instructions of your former countryman?”

  Willem shook his head and said, “We all follow his instructions. To the letter.”

  Marek shrugged-he’d heard exactly what he’d expected to hear-and he asked, “Is it true what I’ve heard about Devorast and the ransar?”

  “The ransar?”

  “Pristoleph has gone off on one of those excursions of his,” the wizard explained, “and this time he’s brought Ivar Devorast with him.”

  “And?”

  Willem couldn’t help but shrink at the look his one-word question elicited from the Thayan. Willem cleared his throat and looked away.

  “Is it true?” asked the wizard.

  Willem nodded then made himself shrug.

  “Then surely he’s left you in charge,” Marek said.

  Willem thought about that for a moment then shook his head. He thought he saw Marek’s lips move, and he did something with his hands as though reaching for something in front of him that wasn’t there. Willem blinked sweat from his eyes and his face tingled. He shuddered through a sudden chill and wrapped his hands around his arms.

  “Are you all right, Willem?” the Thayan asked, and his voice sounded strange-different somehow.

  Willem nodded, even though he didn’t feel well at all.

  “Kurtsson?” Marek called over his shoulder. “Aikiko?”

  Willem licked his lips and wondered why his teeth didn’t hurt anymore. He puzzled over that so long he didn’t notice that two people entered the room and sat together on a small sofa between he and Marek.

  “You’ve been left alone up there,” Marek said. “You need help, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Willem answered without thinking-without being able to think.

  “You know Kurtsson.”

  Willem felt himself nodding and he looked up at Kurtsson. The Vaasan’s blue eyes were cold, his smile condescending.

  “And this is Aikiko. Have you met Aikiko?”

  Willem’s head got stuck between a nod and a shake. He didn’t remember the woman, but for a moment he was distracted by the look of her thin, perpetually squinting eyes and the exotic cast to her skin. Her waist-length hair was as black as a drow’s flesh, and her smile was as condescending as the Vaasan’s.

  “The two of them are going to go back with you,” Marek said with a grin.

  “We’re to help you,” Kurtsson said.

  “Don’t worry about a thing,” said Aikiko.

  Willem shook his head, though the movement hurt his neck.

  “Surely,” Marek said, his voice taking on a coldness that made Willem’s skin crawl, “you can use the help-wi
th Devorast gone.”

  “He-” Willem started.

  “He may never come back,” Marek said and Willem couldn’t resist looking the Thayan in the eyes.

  “But Ivar …” Willem started again. “Ivar will …”

  “We’ll help you,” said the strange-looking woman who might have been a half-elf. “We’re only trying to help.”

  “Agree to the arrangement, Willem,” Marek said.

  Willem started to nod and tried to stop himself. He caught a glimpse of a self-satisfied grin from Kurtsson that made him say, “I don’t think I can …”

  But by the time he got that far he was nodding.

  “You’ll let us help you?” Aikiko said.

  And Willem nodded.

  “Help me,” he whispered.

  50

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

  THE CANAL SITE

  Pristoleph looked at Devorast then at the-whatever it was-then back to Devorast. He didn’t know which sight he found more unsettling.

  “What is it?” Devorast said.

  Pristoleph had never heard that quality in his voice before-even more clipped, even colder. He looked down at the muddy ground. Bubbles sizzled and popped around the edges of his boots and little tendrils of steam rose into the warm air. The ransar flexed his right hand into a fist and covered it with his left. If he’d touched anyone at that moment the heat from his palm would have raised a blister.

  “Answer him,” Pristoleph commanded no one in particular. “Someone speak.”

  “Her name is Senator Aikiko,” the alchemist Surero answered. “But it was the Vaasan that’s been overseeing it-every part of it.”

  Pristoleph didn’t look at the alchemist but at Devorast.

  “Take it down,” Devorast said.

  All eyes turned to the stone archway. It rose over the canal trench, which ended only a few yards beyond it.

  “Take it down,” Devorast repeated, and the workers that had gathered to see his reaction to the arch began to break up and go on about the business of carrying out Devorast’s orders.