Philip Athans - Scream of Stone

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.

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.”