Philip Athans - Scream of Stone

“I know you have ways to find the truth of things,” Pristoleph said. “Your own ways …”

Wenefir turned away and started to pace the room. Pristoleph didn’t like the way he looked. He could tell when someone was hiding something from him.

“I don’t want you to give it to the Thayan,” Pristoleph said.

Wenefir stopped and turned his head to look at Pristoleph from the corner of his eye.

“You don’t trust Master Rymut?”

“I don’t trust anyone,” Pristoleph said. “Someone is trying to kill me.”

“And you think it could be Marek Rymut?”

“It could be,” Pristoleph replied. The words almost stuck in his throat. He didn’t like to say it aloud, and for reasons he couldn’t quite explain, especially to Wenefir. “Whoever it is, it’s someone of considerable power.”

Wenefir started to pace again.

“One of the other senators, then?” Wenefir asked, and Pristoleph got the feeling his seneschal was trying to lead him in that direction.

“Perhaps,” Pristoleph said, confused as to why he felt he needed to humor his old friend. “Any number of them would like to be ransar, and I have enemies to spare in the Chamber of Law and Civility. But this is worse, I think. It’s not just a grab for power. Whoever it is may not even be trying to kill me so much as trying to turn me against Devorast.”

“Devorast?” Wenefir asked, and again he stopped pacing.

“This assassin was sent in the guise of the water naga that Devorast befriended in order to secure the Nagaflow end of the canal,” Pristoleph explained. “I was meant to believe, or whatever witness was left alive was to believe, that Devorast had turned on me and sent the naga to kill me. Someone is trying to ruin Ivar Devorast, and the canal in the process.”

“There is a very long list of people who don’t want to see that trench ever filled with water.”

“I know,” said the ransar, “but it will be. The canal will be finished, and it will be Ivar Devorast who finishes it. Every eye in the wide Realms will be turned in the direction of Innarlith. Ships will pass, and trade will flow.”

“And gold,” Wenefir whispered.

“And gold,” Pristoleph agreed. “And hang every last senator that thinks otherwise. I will raise Ivar Devorast above every one of their thick heads if I have to to see this done.”

“And that,” Wenefir said, “is why they’ll line up to kill you.”

3 Uktar, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR)

THE CANAL SITE

Though he was barely four feet tall, Hrothgar was heavy and stout. His boots could be described the same way, which accounted for all the noise. He had no reason to be quiet, so he reveled in the clomp of his boots on the wooden planks of the scaffold.

The ambient light from torches and lanterns set around the edge of the canal, reflected from the low overcast, was more than enough light for the dwarf to see by. He ran a hand along the stone blocks as he walked. The scaffold was set up about halfway up the side of the eastern canal wall. Hrothgar had been supervising the cutting of blocks at one of the three quarries that had been established along the length of the canal, so he hadn’t been there to make sure the blocks in that section had been properly set. He knew Devorast would have been there, and they wouldn’t have been left in place if he didn’t like the way they looked, but Hrothgar wanted to check for himself.

He dug at the space between two of the blocks with a fingernail. Leaning in close, he set one cheek to the stone wall, closed the opposite eye, and peered down the length of the mortar line. It was as close to straight as he’d ever seen.

“No way a human set this,” he muttered.

He sighed and stepped away, looking all around with a worried smile.

“Nothing to worry about,” the dwarf told himself, but he worried nonetheless.

He heard voices echoing from above and was thankful that someone else couldn’t sleep. He didn’t even bother to wonder why he hadn’t heard them before.

It took him a while to get to a ladder that led to a higher scaffold, then another ladder that took him to ground level.

“Who is that, there?” someone called out to him-one of the guards? — but the voice sounded familiar.

“Hrothgar?” Devorast said.

The dwarf blinked and shook his head. At first it seemed as though Devorast’s voice had come from a rock lying at the edge of the trench. He blinked again and realized that it wasn’t a rock, but Devorast’s head, his hair matted with mud.

“Careful where you step,” Surero said, and Hrothgar was actually startled.

The dwarf looked down and sidestepped carefully away from the alchemist, who, like Devorast, was neck-deep in a hole.

“By Dumathoin’s sprinkled rubies, someone finally did it,” the dwarf said. “They buried you alive but ye part-way chewed yerselfs out!”

Surero shushed him and Devorast whispered, “Keep your voice down.”

Hrothgar stood his ground and folded his arms. “Well?” he said, as quietly as he could without whispering.

“Hand me that keg, there?” Surero asked.

Hrothgar looked around at his feet and noticed a small wooden keg about the size of his head. A length of the burning cord Surero called a “fuse” had been stuck through the top and lay coiled next to the sack.

“I couldn’t sleep,” the dwarf said, turning to look at Devorast, who had climbed up from the hole he’d been standing in and was walking toward the dwarf with hurried, determined steps. “What are ye two up to here, Ivar? What couldn’t ye tell me?”

“Quiet, please, Hrothgar,” Devorast urged.

The dwarf stood his ground and glared at the man, who bent and gingerly handed the keg of smokepowder to the alchemist.

“What are you doing with those?” the dwarf asked, though he was starting to understand all on his own. The idea didn’t make him happy at all, and part of him hoped Devorast would offer a different explanation, one that didn’t mean what Hrothgar knew it had to. “If you put those between the dirt and the stone, they’ll collapse the canal when they go off.”

“Then here’s hoping they never go off,” Surero said.

Devorast flashed the alchemist a dark look, then turned to the dwarf and said, “I hope they never will, too, but I had to have some assurance of quality.”

“A-what-ance of what, now?” the dwarf demanded, but managed to keep his voice low.

“You know what he means, Hrothgar,” Surero said, grunting as he climbed out of the hole. “If you can’t sleep, why not help us?”

21 Uktar, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR)

FOURTH QUARTER, INNARLITH

It’s the smell that hits you first, isn’t it?” Pristoleph asked.

He looked over at Devorast, who walked alongside him down the narrow, filthy street at the city’s easternmost edge. Devorast didn’t respond. His eyes darted from the overflowing midden to the walls of the ramshackle houses, but he never met the eyes of the people that stopped to watch them pass.

“For me,” Pristoleph went on, “the smell was the easiest thing to forget. Faces, little things like a pile of rotting lumber abandoned for years, or a child’s doll floating in raw sewage-those sights have been burned into my memory. I’ll never forget that doll.”

Pristoleph closed his eyes, but opened them after only a couple steps-on that street, it was a risky proposition to not look where you were going for more than that.

“Someone’s mother had stitched it together from rags. It was supposed to be a little girl-a little girl for a little girl, I’d guess. I can see its blue eyes, its red lips, its nose that was actually a button. There was a stain on the doll’s face that made it look like it had some sort of disease of the skin, but all it was was blood, mud, or wine. I suppose that either of the three of those things would constitute a disease for a child’s plaything.”