Scream of Stone

by Philip Athans

  Willem stepped forward again and Devorast thrust the flambergé into his withered chest, into the space where his heart once beat.

  “No,” Willem grunted as Marek Rymüt’s necromancy unwound inside him. “Don’t be sorry. It was my fault. It always was.”

  Phyrea sobbed and fell to her knees. Willem slid off the blade and crumpled to the rain-soaked mud.

  75

  13 Flamerule, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)

  THIRD QUARTER, INNARLITH

  Pristoleph stood under a dying tree on a street in the Third Quarter, baking under a deep woolen cowl in the late summer heat. The genasi didn’t mind it. He was comfortable, in fact, but what he saw across the street bothered him greatly.

  A cooper, a man he knew by reputation as one of the city’s finest craftsmen, stood with downcast eyes. His chest—once as big around and as sturdy as the barrels he fashioned—appeared sunken and slack. He watched with dull, beaten eyes as a gang of animated corpses pounded away at tasks that had once been performed by young apprentices, boys in their teens who would one day open workshops of their own, either in Innarlith or in neighboring cities from the Vilhon Reach to the Border Kingdoms. But those apprentices were gone, replaced by Marek Rymüt’s zombies.

  The undead barrel-makers poured water into a barrel they’d finished. It was bad enough that the thing sprung leaks in a dozen places or more, but as they poured the water in, strips of their own rotting flesh fell into the barrel, fouling it. The cooper looked away in disgust, and so did Pristoleph.

  He brushed past a man who sat on the street, his hand out, his eyes pleading. Children scurried after a rat, laughing only because they hadn’t yet had to come to grips with the fact that they had no future. They would not apprentice to the cooper, nor the baker, nor the chandler but would likely grow up as Pristoleph had, struggling for scraps left from the tables of the Second Quarter, fighting every day for any meager existence, fighting just to survive. Stealing. Killing.

  He put a hand against the wall of a boarded-up shop, what once was a baker of fine pastries had been forced to close when the undead work gangs brought disease and took the wages of the neighbors so that his steady business trickled to a few silvers here and there. Pristoleph had heard the baker moved his family to Arrabar.

  Having gathered himself, his anger suppressed enough so that at least the heat that poured from him didn’t set his clothes on fire, Pristoleph continued on his way past another beggar and another, past another vacant shop and another. At least the tavern was still open. One thing anyone could count on was that when times were hard, men drank. When they had nowhere to go, and nothing to occupy them, they drank a lot.

  Though it was still long before highsun, the tavern was crowded—packed to the walls. Pristoleph entered and all conversation came to a sudden halt. More than two hundred sets of eyes turned to him, and he paused in the door to study their faces. Perhaps only one in ten held a flagon of ale, and more than half wore hooded cloaks despite the Summertide heat.

  Pristoleph drew the cowl from his head and smiled, his strange hair waving on his head like a roaring campfire. The people gathered in the tavern and the barkeep himself stood a little straighter. Wemics stepped out of the crowd, their snarling smiles giving a few of the assembled pause. Second Chief Gahrzig tipped his maned head and touched the haft of a pole arm to his temple and the other wemics followed suit.

  The men who’d come from the ranks of the city watch, and from Firesteap Citadel and the Nagaflow Keep, saluted him as well, smiles splitting their faces, perhaps for the first time in a month.

  A woman stepped out of the crowd, her fine features and olive skin marking her as Shou. Her face, as beautiful as it was exotic, was one Pristoleph instantly recognized.

  “Greetings, noble Ransar,” Ran Ai Yu said and bent at the waist in a deep bow.

  Beside her another Shou, a man Pristoleph knew as Lau Cheung Fen, bowed alongside her, his unnaturally long neck swaying with the motion.

  “Greetings, Miss Ran,” Pristoleph said, “and greetings to you all.”

  The place remained as silent as a tomb, all eyes on Pristoleph.

  “On the eighth day of Eleasias,” Pristoleph said, his voice carrying strong and stern to every ear in the room, “Innarlith will live again.”

  76

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

  THE CHAMBER OF LAW AND CIVILITY, INNARLITH

  Marek Rymüt stood on the dais of the senate chamber, in the place normally reserved for the ransar. The significance of that was lost on no one, especially Marek himself.

  “My dear friends, one and all,” Marek shouted over the din of the assembled senators, who quickly began to shush each other and turn their attention to the dais. “Please rise for three of your number, any one of whom would make a fine, steady, and resolute ransar.”

  Marek then introduced Aikiko, Asheru, and Meykhati to thunderous applause. All three of them held up their hands in conciliatory gestures, calling for quiet even as their gloating smiles and limpid eyes soaked up the admiration of their peers like a spider draws the essential fluids from a doomed fly.

  “Thank you, Khazark,” Meykhati said, and Marek grinned and bowed, charmed by the senator’s use of the Thayan honorific he’d only recently revealed to the Innarlans. He’d revealed it to Meykhati first, in fact, at the same time he’d cast a spell over the senator that suppressed his willfulness and ambition. “We three stand before you, humbled by the grand traditions of the city-state we love so dearly, our hearts swelled with pride over having rescued Innarlith and her people from the vile clutches of the inhuman Pristoleph.”

  Another thunderous ovation, but when Marek scanned the faces of the senators, he saw no few scowls among the dead-eyed grins.

  “I come here today to deliver a message of a personal nature,” Meykhati went on, speaking the words Marek had recited to him that morning. If any of the senators, many of whom had known Meykhati for decades, detected any wavering in his sincerity, none would question it. “With a heavy heart, but a firm dedication to a greater purpose, I formally withdraw my name from your consideration to serve as the next Ransar of Innarlith.”

  What followed was a dead-pan murmuring no more sincere than Meykhati’s statement. The murmurs were replaced by applause when Meykhati bowed to the room and took a largely ceremonial step backward—but he didn’t leave the dais.

  Aikiko stepped forward even as Meykhati stepped back, and raised her hand, silencing the assembly.

  “My fellow senators, hear me,” she said. “I stand before you, like Meykhati, reluctant to set myself above any of you. I call for a new way. Let us set aside the post of ransar and let the senate itself hold executive power. Let us lead by consensus, and by the communal will of the aristocracy!”

  That was met with applause as well, though many of the senators appeared confused. That made Marek smile. They were afraid of the reality of the power they told each other they already had.

  “An idea worth debating further,” Asheru called out as the din once more died down. “But I offer another. There is one among us who—though compared with those of us born and raised within her walls is something of a newcomer to Innarlith—has time and again proven not only his worth but his loyalty. His steadfast determination and progressive ideas have brought a new economy to Innarlith and cowed the rise of a worker’s army—or have we forgotten those dark days when foreign agitators appealed to the baser instincts of the Third Quarter?”

  Shouts of “No! No!” and hisses followed, and Marek hid a chuckle with a hand to his mouth. After all, he was the foreign aggitator they so feared.

  “There is one man who, I believe, should be granted the post of Ransar of Innarlith, with all the duties and privileges so implied,” Asheru went on, “and that man is Marek Rymüt.”

  Marek didn’t flinch at the heartbeat of silence that weighed so heavily over the room before the senators broke into another round of applause. May
be they knew what was happening to them after all, even if they couldn’t voice it or give it a name. They certainly couldn’t stop it.

  Marek shook his head and waved his hands and said, “Alas, my dear, dear friends, I must of course decline that most singular of honors. My duties as khazark of the enclave, and the diplomatic status that post confers, would of course make it impossible for me to serve as your ransar. I do, however, offer my services to the next ransar, to the senate, and to the people of the fine city-state of Innarlith, so that I might advise and help in any way.”

  A less enthusiastic round of applause followed, and Marek, ever taking the pulse of those around him, knew that the senators were tiring of speeches. Though more was said, Marek pressured in ways both magical and mundane to move the proceedings along, once more without a vote, and when the congress was finally drawn to a close, he took a deep breath and tried not to feel as though he’d made a narrow escape.

  The junior senators made their way out of the chamber first, and Marek was held back by a veritable mob of well-wishers and sycophants, led by Asheru. They made their way slowly along the aisle, Marek telling them all what they wanted to hear, and the mob returning the favor threefold. Only when they passed through the outer doors did the senators disperse, wandering off in groups of half a dozen or less.

  When he’d entered there had been a pair of black firedrakes guarding the doors—fully a third of the remaining creatures after Pristoleph’s wemics, and so long without a ransar to follow, had killed or scattered the bulk of them. But they were gone.

  Marek took a deep breath of fresh air and fought back a nettling feeling—the inescapable sensation that he was being watched. His attention was drawn to one of the many reflecting pools that dotted the gardens surrounding the Chamber of Law and Civility.

  A bird unlike any he’d ever seen stood ankle-deep in the thin layer of water. A sort of crane, Marek guessed. It stood on legs like twigs, a foot and a half tall. Its long, sinuous neck was twice that length, and its red-accented head was tipped by a needle-like beak. The bird’s eyes found Marek’s and the Thayan detected a sparkle of intelligence that should not have been there.

  He looked behind him, then to one side, and began to cast a spell that would spirit him away to the safety of the enclave. A wemic burst from a concealing hedgerow and leveled a spear at Aikiko, who let rip a shrill, girlish scream unbefitting of a senator.

  Marek opened his mouth and uttered only the first syllable of his spell when a kick to his head shook him, blew the spell from his mind and left the casting ruined, and staggered him.

  He turned as quickly as his considerable girth would allow and had just barely enough time to take in the creature that stood behind him. It was as though the crane had somehow melded with a man. Its head was the same red-marked, beaked head of a bird, the eyes sparkling with more than intelligence. Marek saw a fierce humor there, and a sort of gloating that made his face flush. The rest of the creature’s body was human—wings replaced with long, graceful arms, the sticklike legs fuller and too long for a normal man. One of those legs seemed to twitch, the bird-man leaped a foot into the air, and the leg swept around. The creature’s foot smashed into Marek’s right temple and darkness enveloped him as he thought, The Shou …?

  77

  17 Eleasias, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)

  THE PALACE OF MANY SPIRES, INNARLITH

  Though Pristoleph disliked the Palace of Many Spires, he understood the significance of conducting the audience to follow in the ransar’s traditional seat. He’d also had the conspirators housed in the dungeons below the palace, so it was convenient for all present to meet there, and it didn’t hurt to show the various foreign dignitaries that he was the palace’s—and hence the city’s—rightful lord.

  He’d hand-picked the dungeon guards himself, pulling the chief jailer from the upper ranks of the city watch. The watch commander had lost his entire family—a wife and three adult daughters—when the black firedrakes tore indiscriminately through his Third Quarter neighborhood in search of Pristoleph. Though the man might have at least partially blamed the ransar for that turn of events, when he found that his wife and daughters had been animated and enslaved as zombie workers in a tannery, his outrage brought him to Pristoleph’s side.

  It was that man who opened the side door to the audience chamber and scowled at each of the seven conspirators as they were escorted into the room in shackles. Rymüt, Kurtsson, and Asheru were gagged to prevent them from casting spells. Nyla, Sitre, Aikiko, and Meykhati looked thin, pale, and utterly beaten from their short stay in the dungeon. All seven wore the drab, tattered shifts of prisoners, and they reeked of their own filth. They looked at Pristoleph with varying degrees of hatred, anger, fear, and desperation. He ignored them all, save the Thayan.

  If Marek Rymüt had been able to move his hands or speak, he would surely have burned the palace down, taking even his co-conspirators into the inferno. The anger that smoldered in the rotund, haggard foreigner came off him in waves not unlike the heat that Pristoleph’s genasi blood produced when he was in a similar state. Pristoleph gave the Thayan a smug curl of his lips—the only honor he’d offer the Red Wizard that day or ever again. The Thayan’s eyes only smoldered more.

  Behind the line of prisoners, sitting in orderly rows and dressed in their very finest, were the remaining senators, all cowed and quiet, all studiously examining the floor tiles or ceiling beams rather than catch the eyes of their former leaders.

  “Before we begin, I would like to introduce to the gathered senators our noble visitors from abroad, here to observe Innarlith in the twilight of its lowest point and the dawn of its rebirth,” Pristoleph said from the raised dais. He stood next to an ornamental throne, but never felt right sitting in it. He gestured to the people who sat in the front row, behind the prisoners. “May I present Miss Ran Ai Yu and Master Lau Cheung Fen of Shou Lung—” the two celestials, the male Pristoleph had come to know as a hengeyokai, stood and bowed—“Warden of the Port Ayesunder Truesilver of Cormyr—” who nodded but didn’t stand—“and Hrothgar Deepcarver of the Great Rift.”

  The dwarf looked surprised at having been introduced and ended up waving, unsure of the protocol. Pristoleph smiled at him and went on.

  “We are here today to once and for all have done with the conspirators who nearly destroyed the city-state we call home. They know the charges against them, as do you all. They meet our justice in one of two ways: exile or death.”

  The air in the room grew heavy and still. Pristoleph stood scanning the faces of the senators, noting who would look back at him and who wouldn’t.

  “With the exception of the mages,” Pristoleph said, “they will be allowed to speak.”

  “This is an outrage!” Aikiko shrieked. “You … all of you … you cannot let this stand! You cannot surrender to this genasi scum, this inhuman freak that holds court with a Shou witch and her lycanthropic master, or another Cormyrean—as though we haven’t had enough of the infant king’s meddling in our affairs—not to mention a stinking, low-life dwarf crawled up from under a rock to—”

  She was interrupted by Hrothgar, who bellowed out the heartiest laugh Pristoleph had ever heard, one he couldn’t help but join. Aikiko boiled with self-aggrandizing rage.

  “Stop it!” she shrieked. “Stop this at once!”

  Pristoleph put up a calming hand and stopped laughing. Hrothgar followed suit, but not before he shot Aikiko a look as full of murder as it was full of mirth.

  “And what of you, Aikiko?” Pristoleph said. “Are you not also of Shou blood? Your features betray that.”

  Aikiko gasped as though she’d been impaled with a crossbow bolt. “No Shou blood poisons my veins.”

  “With permission, Ransar,” Ran Ai Yu said, standing and bowing. Pristoleph nodded back with a smile. “This woman is correct, Ransar. She is Kozakuran, not Shou.”

  “I stand corrected, Miss Ran, thank you,” Pristoleph replied.

 
“This is madness,” Sitre gasped, and it seemed to Pristoleph as though the man had only just then awakened from a deep sleep. “I cannot be held to account with these people. I only served Innarlith. They lied to me. They told me what to do and what to say. Ransar, please, I beg your mercy!”

  But Pristoleph knew better, and had none of that to spare. Instead he looked to Meykhati and said, “And you? What do you have to say for yourself?”

  Meykhati looked him in the eye, but there was no defiance left in him. “I have distant relations in Cimbar. I will go there.”

  “Aikiko?” Pristoleph asked.

  “You will address me as Senator Aikiko, pretender,” she spat.

  “Kozakura,” Pristoleph asked, otherwise ignoring her, “or death?”

  She spat on the floor in front of her.

  “Senator Aikiko,” Pristoleph told the jailer, “has chosen to die for her crimes.”

  Screaming obscenities in at least three languages, Aikiko was dragged from the room. The sight of it made Sitre crumble to the ground, sobbing. Tears streamed down Asheru’s face as well.

  “Save me, Ransar,” Sitre begged. “Send me to Cimbar with Meykhati.”

  Pristoleph looked at Meykhati, who shrugged as though he couldn’t care less either way.

  “Done,” Pristoleph said, ignoring the groveling thanks of the blubbering criminal.

  Meykhati and Sitre were dragged from the chamber.

  “Nyla?” Pristoleph said, letting his attention fall on the woman he’d known perhaps longest of all.

  “You know full well you’ll have to kill me, Pristoleph,” the woman sneered. Her eye patch had been stripped from her and the scarred ruin of her right eye made Pristoleph wince. “I won’t be your whore again, and I won’t willingly step aside from all I’ve built here.”

  “That pains me, Nyla,” Pristoleph said, losing a brief struggle to keep his thoughts inside. “We’re not unalike, you and me.”