Philip Athans - Scream of Stone

“These creatures,” Pristoleph said, “all look the same.” A dark looked passed across Svayyah’s humanlike face, but passed quickly when they could all see that Pristoleph was thinking-that he wasn’t sure, that he was beginning to think he’d been fooled.

He looked Devorast in the eye and said, “Give me your word that the water nagas will honor their agreement. Look me in the eye and tell me it wasn’t her.”

Devorast looked him in the eye and said, “The water nagas will honor their agreement. It wasn’t her.”

Svayyah laughed and Pristoleph shot her a dangerous look.

“Release them,” the ransar said to the firedrakes, who instantly obeyed.

Surero couldn’t help but notice a strange, knowing look pass between two of the black firedrakes, one he couldn’t hope to unravel himself. He stayed on his knees until the ransar and his black firedrakes had gone back into the thin air from whence they’d come.

26 Eleint, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR)

THE LAND OF ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN

Insithryllax turned in a tight circle, a hundred feet above the top of Marek’s tower. The wailing of the maurezhi demon tore through the dense air, and though the black dragon had heard screams before, of fear mostly but also pain, the sound of those particular cries made his heart quiver in his scaled chest. A demon shouldn’t scream like that, and no human-even a Red Wizard-should be able to make one scream at all.

The dragon leaned into an easy descent, holding to his orbit of the tower. He dipped just below the roofline and passed the highest open window. As he flew by, the agonized screams of the demon rattled his ears and chilled his blood.

“… your failure!” Marek Rymut hollered from the same room-a chamber that comprised the entire top level of the tower.

The demon shrieked anew.

Insithryllax wheeled around the tower, the tip of his left wing almost grazing the rough-cut stone blocks. Movement from the right caught his attention-a fury’s eel breaking the surface of the lake, one of its bulbous, fishlike eyes scanning the tower.

Even the eels can feel it, the great wyrm thought.

He passed the open window again.

“… to fail me like this?” Marek taunted.

The demon panted, and as Insithryllax turned again around the other side of the tower, it began to whimper.

The dragon was impressed on some level that the Thayan had the power to torture a tanar’ri, but the ice in his veins was something else.

Fear? the dragon thought. Could it be?

Once again he passed the window and heard the demon groveling, begging in a language Insithryllax didn’t know. He thought he heard the Red Wizard laugh.

When he pulled around the tower once more he riffled his huge, leathery wings, and in one beat of his heart Insithryllax was once again a hundred feet above the tower’s roof. He looked down on the tower when the demon started screaming again. The sound had changed once more. It was desperate, terrified.

Insithryllax looked out to the near horizon and tried to ignore the screaming creature. He’d been in the Land of One Hundred and Thirteen for more than five months. He’d spent longer than that confined to the little pocket dimension in the past, but the last months had been harder. Never had he felt so confined, and the emotions that seethed in him were as intense as they were alien. The anger he’d felt in Innarlith had been replaced by fear.

Insithryllax didn’t like fear.

The sound of the maurezhi’s screams cut off with a gurgling abruptness that could mean only one thing.

Finding it more difficult to breathe all of a sudden, Insithryllax turned, put even more distance between himself and the ground, and flew off toward the edge of the Land of One Hundred and Thirteen. The fear swelled in him and he choked it down.

He had to get out of there.

27 Eleint, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR)

PRISTAL TOWERS, INNARLITH

The chain mail was tightly woven, but the steel was dull and heavy. Rolling it between his fingers, Pristoleph tried to imagine how heavy it would be in various configurations: a sort of tunic that would protect his arms and down to his mid-thighs, or just a vest to keep blades from his heart and gut.

The door opened and he turned to watch Wenefir step in while nodding to the black firedrakes that stood guard outside. One of the guards pulled the door closed. Wenefir caught Pristoleph’s eye and dipped in a shallow bow.

Pristoleph nodded and turned his attention back to the table. He picked up a square of stout black leather onto which had been sewn a dense pattern of steel rings. It wasn’t quite as heavy as the chain mail, but likewise wouldn’t provide the same protection-and it was identical to the armor the black firedrakes wore.

“The armorer left samples behind for me to examine at my leisure,” the ransar explained, though he knew he didn’t have to.

Wenefir stepped up behind him, but not too close, and said, “Is that really necessary?”

Pristoleph shrugged, put down the patch of ring mail, but didn’t turn around.

“I think so,” he said. “I think it’s been necessary for a long time, actually.”

“People have tried to kill us before,” Wenefir said.

Pristoleph smiled, and turned to face his oldest friend. Wenefir returned his smile from a face that was pale and deeply lined. Wenefir had aged over the last few years in a way that Pristoleph, with his half-elemental blood, hadn’t. The priest looked pale, as though his skin hadn’t seen the sun in a very long time.

“But you think this time it’s worse,” Wenefir said, the smile fading from his lips.

Pristoleph nodded and reached behind himself to take a small iron box from the tabletop. It opened and he held it out to Wenefir so his seneschal could see what was inside.

Wenefir looked into the box and raised one eyebrow. He swallowed and said, “An ear.”

Pristoleph nodded and looked at the ear in the box. It was pointed, like an elf’s, but the skin was gray and mottled, sickly.

“The ear of the naga that tried to kill you?” Wenefir said.

“No.”

“Something else, then?”

“It was sliced off the side of the naga’s head,” Pristoleph explained. “I saw it with my own eyes. But when I first placed it in this box it was rounded on the top, like a human ear, and the flesh had a blue cast to it.”

“One might expect a disembodied ear to turn gray after-”

“And the shape?” Pristoleph interrupted, then took a deep breath. He didn’t like to exhibit the sort of anxiety he felt just then, but if he could trust anyone, it was Wenefir. “I’m sorry, old friend.”

Wenefir smiled and said, “No apologies are necessary, Ransar.” He cleared his throat and went on, “It could have been … malformed, when it was shorn from the creature’s head.”

Pristoleph shook his head and replied, “No. I told you, I put it in the box, and when I opened it again the next day-yesterday-it was different.”

“Someone switched it?”

Again the ransar shook his head.

“Of course,” said Wenefir, “it was in your possession the whole time.”

“It wasn’t a water naga that attacked us,” Pristoleph said. He closed the lid of the box and held it out to Wenefir. The seneschal looked at it, but Pristoleph could sense his reluctance to take it. “I don’t know what it was.”

With a slow, pained exhale, Wenefir reached out and took the little iron box from the ransar’s hand.

“I need you to tell me what that ear came from,” Pristoleph commanded.

Wenefir nodded, but Pristoleph could tell the motion came hard. He looked down at the box in his hands as though he feared it would bite him.