Philip Athans - Scream of Stone

Devorast glanced at him, as though he were affected in some way by that image, but what little trace of emotion Pristoleph thought he saw in the Cormyrean’s face was gone as quickly as it appeared.

“It’s been years-decades, really-and I still wonder about that doll. What happened to the little girl who must have loved it? Did she drop it and not notice? Did she try to retrieve it from the midden before her mother pulled her away? Anything that goes in there doesn’t come out in any condition to be hugged ever again.”

Devorast smirked, and Pristoleph laughed a little.

“See this building here,” the ransar said, pointing to a brick building whose walls had been repaired so many times it looked like the patchwork rag doll of Pristoleph’s childhood memory. “This used to be an inn. My mother worked here.”

Devorast stopped and looked at the building, and Pristoleph stood behind him. He waited for Devorast to ask for more information or to show any interest in anything he was saying, but he got nothing in response but a mute examination of the falling-down old inn.

“She would take men there,” Pristoleph said.

An old man dressed in rags that had to be tied onto him staggered toward Pristoleph. His clothes looked and smelled no different than the midden ditch that ran like a stripe of feces, urine, garbage, and dead rats down the middle of the street. Pristoleph locked his eyes on the beggar’s and the man wilted under the ransar’s steady, firm gaze. The old man turned on his heel and scurried off into a garbage-strewn alley.

“It was the first building I ever bought,” Pristoleph said to Devorast’s back. “I’ve been collecting a pittance in rent on it for years. I’d almost forgotten about it, actually. It’s been used for meat packing, a blacksmith that made nails-nails, only, one after another after another all day-and Denier only knows what else, but it’s never been an inn. I never let it be that again, and I never will. I’ll burn it down myself before another woman sells her body in that building.”

“It wasn’t the inn,” Devorast said, not looking over his shoulder.

Pristoleph found himself nodding but angry at the same time.

“I bought the building next door, too,” Pristoleph went on, and started to walk again. “I bought a lot of buildings, and most of the time I didn’t ask what was going on inside them. I didn’t care. If the rent was paid, they could have been …”

He didn’t know what they could have been doing that would have come close to offending him, but that he would have allowed just the same.

“You haven’t asked me why I brought you down here,” he said to Devorast. Then he turned on a woman who had inched closer to them, and said, “Easy, there.”

The old woman took just a little more convincing than the male beggar before she moved away from the two men.

“You want me to know that you came from nothing,” Devorast said. “You thought I should see how far you’ve come, all the gold you’ve-”

“No,” Pristoleph said, loudly enough so that a couple of the grimy passersby turned and ran from him. “Or yes, I suppose,” he went on more quietly, directing the words to Devorast, and Devorast alone. “We’ve always agreed that coin for coin’s sake is hardly worth pursuing.”

Devorast nodded.

“I wanted you to know that I have dreams for Innarlith,” Pristoleph said. “I really don’t come here to remind myself of what it was like growing up on the streets, ‘raised,’ if you can call it that, by a whore. I didn’t ask for your pity, and I never will.”

The two men turned to look at each other and stood there longer than either had intended. A little boy tugged on Devorast’s sleeve and mumbled something about silver coins. Devorast shook his head but didn’t push the boy away.

The little beggar looked up at him, and Pristoleph watched a tear collect in the boy’s big eyes. He held out two silver coins. The boy smiled, grabbed the coins from the ransar’s hand, and disappeared back into the dark alley.

“That could have been me,” Pristoleph said, gesturing after the boy.

Devorast looked him in the eye and said, “Save for?”

Pristoleph raised an eyebrow and said, “Luck?”

“There is no such thing.”

“Ambition?”

“And what’s wrong with ambition?” Devorast replied.

4 Nightal, the Year of Rogue Dragons (1373 DR)

The Land of One Hundred and Thirteen

You have to let me go,” Insithryllax said. In his true form, he stood atop the tower and looked down at Marek standing on the dry ground below. “I can’t stand it anymore. I have to get out of here.”

“I don’t know if it’s safe,” the Thayan said.

Insithryllax tipped his head up to the sky and roared as loudly as he could. The attempt to release his anger fell pitifully short. His body shook, and his wings fluttered. The sound of his roar shook the tower, sending a rain of dust and little chips of the stone blocks to fall around the Red Wizard.

“What is it, Marek?” Insithryllax demanded. He couldn’t keep his ebon lips from pulling back to reveal his swordlike fangs. Acid sizzled in the air around him in a fine mist. “Why do I feel so trapped in here? What’s happening?”

Marek looked away and Insithryllax roared again. The Red Wizard looked him in the eye, and the dragon could tell that he was reluctant to speak, but he couldn’t tell if it was because Marek didn’t know the answers to his questions or didn’t want to tell him.

“Speak, damn you,” the wyrm hissed.

“Something has been happening in the outside world,” Marek said. “Something has been happening to the dragons.”

“Which dragons?”

Lightning arced from the sky and skittered across the surface of the lake, disturbing the eels.

Marek looked up at the dragon and said, “All of them.”

Insithryllax turned his face away from the human and swung his head around on his sinuous neck, searching for some answers in the dead sky of the pocket dimension. There was nothing there.

Nothing.

“You have to get me out of here,” Insithryllax said again.

“I can’t-”

“Yes, you can!” Insithryllax roared, and Marek took two steps backward, moving his hands up, ready to cast a spell. Insithryllax swallowed and gnashed his fangs, biting back the urge to shower the Thayan with his caustic breath and be done with him-his old friend.

“I was going to say,” Marek said in a voice that couldn’t possibly be as calm as it sounded, “that I can’t guarantee that you won’t be effected if you return to Faerun.”

“Effected …” the dragon repeated. “It’s a Rage, isn’t it?”

Marek Rymut nodded. Insithryllax closed his eyes and tried to steady his breath.

“I could feel it,” Insithryllax admitted-and how he hated to say that in front of a human, even Marek. “I could feel it, back in Innarlith, but that was months ago.”

Marek said, “I did everything I could, my friend. I’ve been researching the problem, desperate for a solution, but in your state of mind, I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t let you go back there until I knew how to help you. I’m sorry.”

Insithryllax looked down on him, studying Marek’s face and voice. The lift of an eyebrow, the curl of a lip, one too many blinks in too close succession.

“I’m truly sorry,” the Thayan said again.

“It’s been months,” the dragon said. “No Rage has ever lasted that long.”

“This one has,” Marek said, and he wasn’t lying.

“Let me out,” Insithryllax insisted.

Marek half nodded, half shrugged, and said, “You could go mad. You could kill a lot of people.”