Scream of Stone w-3 Read online

  He glanced down at the platinum-inlaid mithral of the weapon’s fierce head and smiled. His hands tightened around the polished wooden haft. The weapon felt good in his hands.

  A clatter of wood on wood made him jump, and a cool sweat broke out on his forehead. He blinked again and watched the zombie work gang unload the cog while the Calishite crew drank away their meager earnings in some quayside tavern. The zombies weren’t careful, and they were slow-so slow it was difficult for someone like Wenefir to watch them without feeling frustrated, even though he couldn’t possibly care less whether or not the Calishite ship was unloaded in a timely fashion.

  Wenefir sniffed the air. The sulfur from the water, and a hint of the black firedrake’s acidic musk assaulted his nostrils, but the priest couldn’t detect even a trace of rotting flesh. By the look of the half dozen animated corpses a few yards away from him, the stench of rotting flesh should have been unbearable.

  “What do you smell?” one of the black firedrakes whispered.

  Wenefir shook his head.

  “Master Rymut made them that way,” the firedrake said. Wenefir couldn’t place his accent. “The sailors and captains were complaining.”

  Wenefir shrugged and silenced the firedrake with the hint of a smile.

  The three of them watched the zombies work, and as they watched, they listened. One of the firedrakes tipped his head up and sniffed at the warm summer breeze.

  “I smell it, too,” the other black firedrake whispered. “They’re here.”

  Wenefir nodded and brought the mace up in front of his chest. He kept his eyes on the zombies and heard footsteps on the pier before he saw anyone. They came from the end of the pier, as though they’d come from the open water. The black firedrakes fanned out to either side of them. Wenefir couldn’t hear them-not a creak of leather or the tap of a boot heel on the planks.

  The women stepped into the meager light from the one lantern the cog’s captain had left burning for the zombie work gang. Wenefir recognized them both immediately. He brought a prayer to mind, and when he was ready, he made eye contact with one of the black firedrakes. They stepped out of the shadows together, but the second firedrake remained cloaked in the shadows of the night-dark pier.

  Wenefir coughed out the harsh words to the prayer and felt Cyric’s temperamental grace well up within him. The older of the two women heard him first. She gasped, reached out to grab the younger woman’s forearm, and took a step back. A zombie carrying a crate passed between them, oblivious to the presence of the women, the Cyricist, and the black firedrake.

  The force of the prayer swept out from Wenefir’s hands. He could feel it drape itself over the two women. The black firedrake didn’t wait to see if it had any effect. He stepped forward with his longaxe high over his head. Stepping nimbly around one of the slowly-shambling zombies, the firedrake brought his axe down in a blow that would have split the older woman in two if she hadn’t slipped out of the way with reflexes so sharp and precise they had to be magical-or spiritual-in nature.

  The younger woman shivered and opened her mouth as if to scream, but made no sound. She was frozen in place, unable to move.

  The black firedrake growled and spun, reversing his longaxe to try to take the older woman’s head off, but she waved her hand in front of her and the heavy, razor-sharp blade pinged off a wide metal bracer on her forearm, sending a shower of blue-white sparks arcing in the night air-more magic.

  The black firedrake answered by vomiting in her face-or so it appeared to Wenefir. A spray of thin black fluid missed her head and only a little bit of it spattered against her shoulder as she once more dodged with superhuman speed.

  She clutched a holy symbol that hung from a cord around her neck-the hated device of Chauntea-and began a staccato obeisance of her own.

  “Cahlo,” Wenefir said, and the mace glowed with an eerie blue light. He stepped forward to face the priestess and said, “These zombies belong to the ransar.”

  A flash of yellow light blazed, so bright and so sudden Wenefir had to look away. He brought the mace up instinctively to block it, but it didn’t do much good. He had to blink spots from his eyes and hope he had the few heartbeats he needed to clear his vision. The black firedrake that had spit acid at the priestess cursed in a language Wenefir didn’t understand-but curses are unmistakable in any language.

  Yellow light shone from the firedrake’s eyes. The priestess had placed the spell expertly, so that its illumination covered the black firedrake’s eyes, doing more than simply blinding him. He clawed at his face and staggered backward, his longaxe lying on the pier at his feet.

  “This abomination has gone on long enough,” the Chauntean priestess announced. “In the name of the-”

  Her oath came to a stop with the sound of a butcher’s blade cutting meat. She staggered forward, gasping for air, and the black firedrake behind her passed into the light. The feral, animal look in his eyes gave even Wenefir pause. He glanced at the younger woman, still glued to the same spot a few steps away. The look of sheer terror on her face made the Cyricist smile.

  The older woman began another prayer, but her words gurgled in her own blood. The black firedrake opened its mouth and coughed out a cloud of black mist that enveloped her head. The sound of the priestess’s scream as her head dissolved would stay with Wenefir for the rest of his life. When the headless body dropped to the planks one of the zombies tripped over it and went sprawling facefirst at the younger woman’s feet.

  The undead stevedore struggled to its feet and continued on its way to the gangplank and back into the cog’s hold for another crate. Wenefir watched it go then turned to the girl, who was still stuck in place, and stepped close to her.

  She looked him in the eye with a look of stern defiance startlingly at odds with the utter terror he’d seen in her eyes scant moments before.

  Wenefir looked down at the mace in his hands, glowing with its cold blue light. He held it to her face and when it was close enough to really light her features, the unnatural cold radiating from it made frost spread across her cheek. One of her eyes started to close as her skin tightened, and pain made a tear well up in the other one.

  “I’m sorry, Halina,” Wenefir said. “Is that cold?”

  She showed him her teeth in a sneer of contempt and said, “Have you stopped toadying around for Pristoleph now, Wenefir? Did my uncle buy you from him?”

  Wenefir laughed in her face and said, “Inflae.”

  The cold was gone in the blink of an eye and the mace burst into flames. Halina whimpered and, try as she might to back away from the searing heat, she still couldn’t move. A blister began to rise on her already frost-burned cheek.

  “You’ve been a bad, bad girl,” Wenefir said. “Your uncle is very disappointed in you.”

  Wenefir dropped his hand just a little and touched the flaming mace to the girl’s robes. They caught easily enough and she screamed when the fire touched her soft skin.

  “Too bad, really,” Wenefir said, backing away.

  “I escaped him!” Halina screamed. “I did more than you!”

  Wenefir smiled at that, then stepped out of the way to let a zombie carrying a crate pass by him.

  “Yes,” he said to the burning girl, “I suppose you have.”

  They waited for her to die before putting her out with water from the Lake of Steam, so as not to burn down the pier. When she’d cooled sufficiently to touch, they pushed her and the older priestess off the end of the pier and into the black water.

  37

  17 Eleasias, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR)

  THE CANAL SITE

  How long has it been?” Willem asked.

  Ivar Devorast looked at him-looked him in the eye. Willem didn’t remember the last time he’d done that. Though it was never easy to read Devorast’s expression, Willem was sure he finally could. It was confusion Willem saw in his old friend’s face. The look was what would come before, “Are you well? Have you been ill? What has
happened to you?” But Devorast didn’t say any of those things.

  “Six years,” he answered instead.

  Willem nodded, puzzled over that length of time. He couldn’t decide if six years seemed like too long, or not long enough.

  “I wonder sometimes,” Willem said, “if it was even me who met you all those years ago, in school. Did you really let a room from my mother? Did we really come here, and …?”

  Devorast didn’t answer. He never answered questions like that, rhetorical questions, questions from the verge of panic.

  Willem tipped his face up into the hot wind. The clear blue sky left the sun unfiltered and Willem felt as though he’d stepped into a blast furnace. The light hurt his eyes. He was sweating, and he hated sweating.

  “What brings you here?” Devorast asked him.

  Willem closed his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair. He wanted to answer, but he couldn’t form a thought much less the words. He looked over at Devorast, who stood, still as always, and waited for an answer.

  Willem smiled and said, “That’s what I must have looked like, all those times I stood there, waiting for you to answer, waiting for anything from you but the least you could give.”

  Devorast stood and waited, and that made Willem laugh.

  “I haven’t laughed in a long time,” he said to himself, then stepped to the lip of the stone-lined trench.

  He stopped with his toes barely a quarter of an inch from the edge. Below him was a sheer drop to the bottom of the canal. The section was finished, and Willem’s eyes followed its sharp contours. It was straighter than anything so big had any right to be. The blocks fit together perfectly.

  “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.

  38

  17 Eleasias, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR)

  PRISTAL TOWERS, INNARLITH

  Phyrea 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 citystate. 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.
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br />   “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. Is 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.”