Scream of Stone Read online

  “No,” she said, “I suppose not. I was a whore once, and now you are one—a whore to the drooling toddler monarch of Cormyr.” She tossed her head back in the direction of Ayesunder Truesilver. “Who is this, now? Your new master? The purple-headed hag not to your tastes?”

  “Ambassador Harriman,” Truesilver said, and Pristoleph could see Nyla’s skin crawl at the sound of his deep, calm voice, “has been recalled to Cormyr to answer to the Crown’s justice. The Steel Regent has asked that I attend to our embassy in Innarlith until such time as a suitable replacement can be sent. I assure you, your ransar takes no orders from the King of Cormyr, who, you might be interested to know, stopped drooling a year ago.”

  Pristoleph had never heard so uncomfortable a smattering of laughter as followed that, but his own smile was genuine when he turned it on the Cormyrean.

  “Be that as it may,” Nyla went on, “I must demand that Mast—that Khazark Rymüt, be allowed to speak in his own defense. Or are you that afraid of him?”

  “I’m that afraid of him,” Pristoleph said, holding her one-eyed stare. “Senator Nyla has chosen to be executed.”

  Nyla spat on the floor as she was pulled from the room.

  “And as for the three of you,” Pristoleph said to the gagged and bound mages. “You will be returned to the realm of Thay with a formal missive from my own hand, detailing the extraordinary actions you’ve taken to undermine the sovereignty of the city-state that took you in and showed you nothing but hospitality and trust that we now know was sorely misplaced. I remand you to whatever justice awaits you there.”

  Marek tipped his head in a defiant bow that was so smug Pristoleph had to restrain himself from leaping from the dais and beating the Thayan down. Asheru muttered some kind of protest from behind his gag—he wasn’t Thayan after all—but Pristoleph paid him no heed.

  “And Rymüt,” Pristoleph said as the last three conspirators were being dragged from the room in their chains, “if you ever darken a single doorway in my city ever again, I will burn you where you stand.”

  Marek shrugged and Pristoleph tilted his head to the guard who pushed the Thayan through the door and on to the hands of the zulkirs.

  78

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

  ALONG THE BANKS OF THE NAGAFLOW

  Phyrea knelt on the muddy riverbank, her simple dress pulled up over her knees to keep it out of the mud. She dipped a hand into the cool water and traced a slow circle with the tip of a finger. Her reflection wavered and broke apart.

  “You don’t like what you see?” Ivar Devorast said from behind her.

  She looked back at the water, which had already begun to calm. There she saw both herself and Devorast. She smiled and was surprised by the way her face looked. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d looked at her own reflection and seen herself smile, but she didn’t try to remember. It didn’t matter.

  “I do,” she said to his reflection. “I like what I see very much.”

  He smiled and shrugged and walked downriver a few steps. She watched his reflection in the water as long as she could, then she looked down at her legs. The end of a thin white scar was visible on her thigh and she touched it with her wet hand. The water was cold on her skin and she shivered, though the day was warm and the sun bright.

  She knew she would carry those little scars with her forever, but she also knew that there would be no more of them. Phyrea wasn’t conscious of having made that decision, any more than she’d been conscious of making a decision to cut herself in the first place. She just didn’t want to anymore.

  Looking out over the slow-moving river, the sun sparkling from its surface, Phyrea felt safer than she ever had in her life, and it wasn’t just the imposing bulk of the Nagaflow Keep that rose behind her—the citadel that had been her home since that terrible night in the storm—and it wasn’t because Ivar Devorast was there with her. She felt safe from herself.

  So content was she that at first she didn’t see the thing rise from the sun-dappled water. Phyrea blinked to clear the sun from her eyes then gasped and scuttled backward, dragging her dress in the mud. Devorast came to her side with a few fast, heavy strides, and by then Phyrea could see the thing’s face—stern and cold, but the face of a human. It rose on a neck that was too long, and Phyrea realized that no shoulders would ever break the water’s surface.

  “Svayyah,” Devorast said.

  The naga.

  Phyrea took a deep breath and put a hand to her chest. Her heart hammered and adrenaline coursed through her veins, but still she smiled.

  “Greetings, Senthissa’ssa,” the naga hissed. She blinked at Phyrea, who nodded in response. “We are pleased that you appear well.”

  “Thank you, Svayyah,” Devorast said.

  Phyrea stood and brushed the mud from her dress. She looked at Devorast and her breath stopped in her throat. Behind him, formed of violet light, stood the form of her father.

  “Is this human well?” Svayyah asked, but Phyrea paid her no mind.

  Go home, Phyrea, Inthelph said with a gentle smile—a smile she’d only rarely seen when he was alive, a smile she wished she’d seen more often. It’s safe.

  “Phyrea?” Devorast asked. He touched her elbow, which startled her, and when she blinked her father was gone.

  “And he won’t be back,” she whispered.

  “Phyrea?” Devorast said.

  She looked at him and smiled, and shook her head. “None of them are coming back,” she told him, and he seemed to understand her—though how could he, really?

  “This human has lived for a time in more than this world,” Svayyah observed. “Some among the naja’ssara would consider this one blessed indeed.”

  Phyrea looked at the naga and said, “Thank you.”

  The naga lifted one eyebrow and turned her attention back to Devorast. “It is fortunate that Ssa’Naja has found you. We wish to ask—will the canal be rebuilt? Will it be finished?”

  “Yes,” Devorast said without the briefest moment’s hesitation. “Yes, it will be.”

  The naga sort of bowed to one side in what Phyrea took to be a shrug. “Very well then,” she said. “The agreement between us stands as before.”

  “Thank you,” he said, and the naga sank beneath the surface with a smile that made Phyrea shudder.

  “It’s time,” Phyrea said. “It’s time to go home.”

  “Is it?” he asked. “You’ve received a message from Pristoleph?”

  “No,” she said with a smile, turning her face into the warm wind, “but it’s time to go back.”

  79

  7 Eleint, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)

  PRISTAL TOWERS, INNARLITH

  Pristoleph smoothed his already smooth tunic with hands that didn’t shake so much as vibrate. He pressed his teeth together, then relaxed his jaw. He folded his arms in front of his chest, then let them hang limp at his side. He sat, briefly, on one of the antique Mulhorandi folding chairs then stood. He paced for a few steps then stopped at the opposite end of the parlor from the door. Then he crossed to the fireplace and leaned with one elbow on the mantle. His nervous proximity made the fire flare white so he stepped away, sensitive to the comfort of the guests that he’d been told had arrived.

  The ransar still hadn’t settled on where or how he should stand when the door opened and Ran Ai Yu stepped in. Pristoleph smiled at the Shou woman, as had become his habit, and she smiled back then held the door open and bowed.

  “Ransar,” she said, her accent tickling Pristoleph’s ears in a way that delighted him only until Phyrea stepped into the room, “may I present your wife, the Mistress Phyrea, and the Master Builder of Innarlith, Ivar Devorast.”

  Phyrea nodded to the Shou woman and smiled at Pristoleph. She stepped into the room with a foreshortened, almost timid gate. The way she looked made his skin grow warm, but the way she looked at him cooled him until he almost shivered. The smile they shared stayed warm throug
hout, though, and he could feel a certain understanding pass between them.

  “I’ve told you before,” Ivar Devorast said, breaking that connection and pulling Pristoleph’s attention to him with the crystalline confidence of his voice, “how I feel about that title.”

  “A jest, then,” Pristoleph said, extending his hand to the one man he could truly call a friend. “Call yourself ‘foreman,’ ‘chief ditch-digger,’ or ‘Lord of the Watercourse’ for all I care.”

  Devorast put his hand in his and their grasp was warm, firm, and direct.

  Turning to Ran Ai Yu, Devorast said, “Seeing you again pleases me as much as it surprises me, Miss Ran. I hope you’ll be staying in Innarlith long enough for me to visit Jié Zuò.”

  “You are welcome aboard her any time you wish, Master Devorast,” she said, bowing once more, and her eyes darted to Pristoleph. “Circumstances shall keep me here for, I believe, some time to come.”

  “Ran Ai Yu has agreed to act as my seneschal,” Pristoleph explained. He tried to keep from grinning like a schoolboy, especially when Phyrea’s eyes widened and she studied him with some confusion. “She will be staying on here, at Pristal Towers.”

  “It would please me greatly,” the seneschal said, “if Jié Zuò were to be the first ship to pass from the Lake of Steam to the Nagaflow without use of magecraft.”

  “Then I shall do my best to see that day finally arrive, Seneschal,” Devorast said with a bow of his own.

  “That’s it, then,” Pristoleph said. “You’ll rebuild it? You’ll finish it?”

  “You’ll pay for it?” asked Devorast.

  With a laugh Pristoleph replied, “I’ve never withdrawn that offer. And for that, I will expect a work befitting my queen.”

  Devorast glanced at Phyrea and said, “It will be.”

  The air took on a density that made all four of them look at anything but the others in the room.

  Finally, Pristoleph could stand it no more and said, “She was never mine, Ivar.” He looked at Phyrea, who nodded to him, then wiped a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand. “She was no more mine than she will be yours.”

  Devorast nodded and he and Phyrea shared a glance.

  “And she will have to share you,” Pristoleph said with a smile that expressed both joy and sadness, “with a hole in the ground.”

  “And you?” Devorast said.

  “Me?” the ransar answered, letting his gaze fall over the beautiful and mysterious woman from Shou Lung. “My only mistress will be Innarlith herself.”

  Ran Ai Yu smiled at him in a way that said she didn’t believe him any more than he believed himself.

  EPILOGUE

  3 Ches, the Year of Risen Elfkin (1375 DR)

  THE CITY OF VELEN, TETHYR

  Marek Rymüt found the dance as alien as the music that filled the air of the candlelit ballroom. He blinked at his dance partner in the dim light, a pretty but severe woman in her forties, who had very forwardly and in a manner that allowed no other alternative, demanded that he dance with her. Her dress was of a sort with the other members of the Tethyrian nobility—a fashion he would also need time to grow accustomed to.

  “I must say, my dear,” he said, having just then realized he didn’t know the woman’s name, “that these candles do you an injustice by hiding your features, which even in the darkness reveal themselves to be as handsome as they are noble. Perhaps I will be able to appeal to the master of the house”—a petty lord who’s name Marek had already forgotten—“to allow me the opportunity to supply him with lighting of an enchanted—and more enchanting—sort.”

  “Save it, Rymüt,” the woman responded in the dialect of Mulhorandi spoken only on the windswept plateaus of Thay.

  Marek’s blood ran cold, and when he tried to pull away, the woman drew him closer. Her grip was stern and commanding, and she danced so close to him, taking the lead and spinning him in the coastal realm’s whirling mockery of a formal dance. She was so close that Marek’s arms wrapped all the way around her thin frame. The hooks that his masters had given him in place of hands clanked together and sent electric spasms up his arms. He hated that sensation more even than the ruin his life had become. It was worse than pain, it was a reminder.

  “Forgive me … Khazark,” Marek whispered, his eyes darting to the woman’s hairline, where the very edge of a tattoo was revealed from beneath her otherwise convincing wig.

  “This isn’t Innarlith,” the khazark of the Thayan Enclave in Velen said, her breath almost painfully hot on his neck. “You will serve me, and you will stay out of the corridors of power. Serve me well and serve me long enough, and I might just have them give you your hands back.”

  Marek’s throat closed and his knees began to shake.

  “Yes, Khazark,” he said.

  The woman whirled him away and they both came to a stop on the dance floor, the other guests continuing to circle them. She stared into his eyes with an arctic coldness, and Marek didn’t know what to do with himself.

  “This is the Lady Dumonde,” she said in the common tongue.

  Breathlessly delighted for the opportunity to do anything but stand there like a first-year apprentice, Marek plastered his most charming smile on his face, and brought that sparkle to his eye. The young lady—she might have been all of nineteen—curtsied and stared at his hooks. At least one of the two things she’d done was polite.

  “My lady,” Marek said with a sweeping bow. “Please allow this humble, maimed soldier of the cause of justice the pleasure of your company for the remainder of this delightful melody.”

  The girl giggled and fell into Marek’s embrace as though she couldn’t wait to feel the cold metal of his hooks on her. He looked at the khazark, whose face remained stern and frosty, then turned his attention entirely to the girl.

  “You have a charming accent,” she said, batting her eyes at him in a way that made him want to roll his. “Where are you from?”

  “Ah, my dear, dear lady,” Marek said, “I have come here from far, far away for one reason and one reason only, and that is to make your most gracious and alluring acquaintance.”

  She giggled again and as they danced, Marek thought of at least a dozen ways to kill her, and her whole family, with but a few arcane phrases.

  APPENDIX

  The Calendar of Harptos

  The calendar used throughout the realms of Faerûn consists of twelve months, each with an even thirty days. With the addition of five “special days,” the Faerûnian year is three hundred and sixty-five days long. Months are further divided into three tendays each. The new year begins on the first of the month of Hammer, and ends on the thirtieth of Nightal.

  Order Month Colloquial Description

  1 Hammer Deepwinter

  —Midwinter—

  2 Alturiak The Claw of Winter, or the Claws of the Cold

  3 Ches Month of the Sunsets

  4 Tarsakh Month of the Storms

  —Greengrass—

  5 Mirtul The Melting

  6 Kythorn The Time of Flowers

  7 Flamerule Summertide

  —Midsummer—

  8 Eleasias Highsun

  9 Eleint The Fading

  —Higharvestide—

  10 Marpenoth Leaffall

  11 Uktar The Rotting

  —The Feast of the Moon—

  12 Nightal The Drawing Down

  Years are numbered using Dalereckoning, based on the year that humans were first permitted by the Elven Court to settle in the forests of Cormanthor. Concurrently, years are given names in the Roll of Years. These year names were drawn from the prophesies of the Lost Sage, Augathra the Mad, and her student, the great seer Alaundo.

  The Watercourse Trilogy describes events in Innarlith and other parts of the world spanning five decades from the Year of the Striking Hawk (1326 DR) to the Year of Risen Elfkin (1375 DR).

  The Year of the Striking Hawk 1326 DR

  The Year of the Blue Flame 1327 DR

 
The Year of the Adder 1328 DR

  The Year of the Lost Helm 1329 DR

  The Year of the Marching Moon 1330 DR

  The Year of the Leaping Dolphin 1331 DR

  The Year of the Sword and Stars 1332 DR

  The Year of the Striking Falcon 1333 DR

  The Year of the Blazing Brand 1334 DR

  The Year of the Snow Winds 1335 DR

  The Year of the Highmantle 1336 DR

  The Year of the Wandering Maiden 1337 DR

  The Year of the Wanderer 1338 DR

  The Year of the Weeping Moon 1339 DR

  The Year of the Lion 1340 DR

  The Year of the Gate 1341 DR

  The Year of the Behir 1342 DR

  The Year of the Boot 1343 DR

  The Year of Moonfall 1344 DR

  The Year of the Saddle 1345 DR

  The Year of the Bloodbird 1346 DR

  The Year of the Bright Blade 1347 DR

  The Year of the Spur 1348 DR

  The Year of the Bridle 1349 DR

  The Year of the Morningstar 1350 DR

  The Year of the Crown 1351 DR

  The Year of the Dragon 1352 DR

  The Year of the Arch 1353 DR

  The Year of the Bow 1354 DR

  The Year of the Harp 1355 DR

  The Year of the Worm 1356 DR

  The Year of the Prince 1357 DR

  The Year of Shadows 1358 DR

  The Year of the Serpent 1359 DR

  The Year of the Turret 1360 DR

  The Year of Maidens 1361 DR

  The Year of the Helm 1362 DR

  The Year of the Wyvern 1363 DR

  The Year of the Wave 1364 DR

  The Year of the Sword 1365 DR

  The Year of the Staff 1366 DR

  The Year of the Shield 1367 DR

  The Year of the Banner 1368 DR

  The Year of the Gauntlet 1369 DR