Philip Athans - Scream of Stone

Insithryllax held the wizard’s gaze, looking deep into his eyes, and said, “You can stop me.”

They stared at each other for a long time, locked across the distance by their wills.

“Can you take human form?” Marek asked finally.

Insithryllax shifted his weight onto the center of the roof, which creaked and sagged under him. He brought to mind the spell that would make him look human, but the first word stuck in his throat. He shook his head and the word came out, but the second one wouldn’t come to him. He growled and spat, dissolving one of the battlements.

Marek Rymut, from the ground far below, began to cast a spell. The words drifted up on the still air and brought with them the tingle of magic.

Insithryllax felt himself shrinking, and though a big part of him didn’t want to trust the human, he managed to hold himself still. After a brief moment, he stood on the roof of the tower, a dark-skinned man in black silks. He looked at his hands and they seemed so alien to him. It was as though he’d never worn that guise before.

Marek appeared then, levitating from the ground below, drifting up until his feet cleared the roofline. He stepped forward to approach Insithryllax. The Thayan kept his hands at his sides, where the dragon could see them.

“Are you sure?” the Red Wizard asked.

Insithryllax nodded.

The spell that sent them back to Faerun was simple-for Marek, at least-and before Insithryllax thought twice about the true consequences of going back, he took a deep breath of Toril’s air. He looked around and saw that they stood in the courtyard of the Thayan Enclave, safely behind the walls in what was, officially speaking, Thayan territory. Marek watched him closely and Insithryllax could tell the wizard was ready to cast a spell-ready to kill him.

“I tire of this,” the dragon said, hating the sound of the voice that came from his false body.

“And the Rage?” asked Marek.

Insithryllax took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He searched his own feelings and found only exhaustion. He wasn’t angry, he wasn’t frustrated, he wasn’t mad. He was tired.

He looked at Marek and shook his head.

“I’m free,” the dragon said, and he couldn’t keep it from sounding like a challenge.

“You always were, my old friend,” Marek replied. The Thayan spoke a single word in a forgotten tongue and Insithryllax’s human guise fell away. “But I hoped you would stay.”

Insithryllax unfurled his wings and stretched his long neck. He’d never wanted so badly to sleep, while at the same time all he could think of was flying-flying free of the beehive urgency of the human city and their petty squabbles.

“Could be,” he said to the Thayan, “I’ll miss it, in time.”

Marek smiled at him and said, “I doubt that.”

Insithryllax beat his wings, sending a blast of air at the Thayan, who stepped back and shielded his eyes. Then he was in the air.

A woman on the street screamed when he rose above the walls of the enclave, then a horse panicked and more people screamed and shouted and scurried around. They ran from him never knowing that he didn’t care if they lived or died, and at that moment couldn’t even be bothered to look down at them, let alone attack them. Though he was tired, he flew fast and high. He closed his eyes for a while and soared past the city walls to the north.

Insithryllax didn’t spare the canal even the slightest glance. He turned to the east-to the Surmarsh and home-and was gone from Innarlith forever.

18 Alturiak, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)

HUNGSTE PROVINCE, SHOU LUNG

I expected them to be suspicious,” Pristoleph said, “to be less welcoming.”

He looked at Devorast, who quickly drew a series of broad strokes on a parchment folio spread out on the red-enameled wood deck of the strangely-shaped boat. A Shou crewman slipped behind him, bowing as he passed, a vacant smile frozen on his face.

“I still don’t understand why you like it here,” said the ransar.

Pristoleph put the fine porcelain cup to his lips and reveled in the boiling intensity of the fragrant tea, waiting for Devorast to answer.

“They have ideas,” Devorast said, his hand pausing for the briefest moment over the parchment.

“Ideas?”

“I’ve seen them pack smokepowder into a tube,” Devorast said, still not looking up from his drawing, “and attach something like fletching on one end so it looks like an arrow. When they ignite the smokepowder, the arrow flies on its own, but faster than any arrow I’ve ever seen. They call it a ‘huo jian’.”

Pristoleph smiled and nodded. He blinked and looked up into the clear azure sky. The silence that followed was interrupted only by the gentle, hollow lapping of the river water on the boat’s hull. The crewmen were completely silent.

“This boat is interesting, too,” Devorast said.

Pristoleph chuckled, and Devorast actually smiled.

“I should get you away from that canal more often,” Pristoleph said. “Impossible as it seems, you actually have it in you to relax.”

“I’m always relaxed,” Devorast replied, and Pristoleph didn’t think he was joking.

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d be so comfortable with the Shou ways,” the ransar said. “I understand they hold to a rigid caste system-one where a man like you might never realize his full potential under the weight of tradition.”

“Cormyr is hardly different,” Devorast said.

“But Innarlith is?”

Devorast stopped drawing, looked up at Pristoleph, and said, “Innarlith is very different. In Innarlith, a man like you can be king. In Cormyr, you have to be born to it. You can be an infant and still be king if you have the right blood in your veins.”

“I’m no king.”

Devorast’s look made it clear he didn’t accept that.

“But you’ve told me you never want to be ransar,” Pristoleph said. “You don’t want power over men.”

“I don’t,” Devorast replied, continuing to draw. “I want to build a canal.”

“I know, I know,” Pristoleph said. “And building it is more important than it being finished.”

“No,” Devorast said with something that might have been a sigh-but Devorast never sighed. “I fully intend to finish it. You know that.”

Pristoleph watched the strange trees pass by on the far riverbank and asked, “Do you know what those trees are called?”

“Bamboo.”

“And the river?”

“Chan Lu,” Devorast said.

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“How long have we been away?” asked Pristoleph.

“Almost three months.”

Pristoleph took a deep breath and held it, letting his mind go completely blank. Devorast stopped drawing and the sudden cessation of the charcoal on parchment made Pristoleph exhale and look over at what the man had drawn. Though he was looking at it upside down, Pristoleph could make out the outlines of a tall tower with a peaked roof, not unlike the towers of his own home in Innarlith, but Devorast had drawn in some kind of window or something, a perfect circle near the top of the tower marked off in twelve even increments. He didn’t ask Devorast about the drawing. He’d learned not to.

“I think Marek Rymut is trying to kill us both,” Pristoleph said.

Devorast turned to a blank sheet of parchment and began to draw again.

“I may have made a mistake by being too close to him,” Pristoleph admitted. “I’ve grown too dependent on his magic.”

“I don’t know Marek Rymut,” Devorast said.

“I don’t know whether you’d love him or hate him.”

“I’d neither love nor hate him.”