Philip Athans - Scream of Stone

Devorast nodded.

“So what has changed?” she asked.

“He’ll kill Pristoleph, too,” Devorast said. “When that happens, I’ll only have Hrothgar, and some of the men.”

“The alchemist?”

“Killed by Willem Korvan,” Devorast said, and at that moment Svayyah saw more emotion on the man’s face than she’d ever imagined from him. “That was my fault, too.”

“It sounds like it was Willem Korvan’s fault,” she said. “But that aside. You gave us the impression that Pristoleph was stronger than the Thayan, that together the two of you could-”

“Marek Rymut controls the senate,” Devorast said. “And it’s the senate that names the ransar. Whoever is named ransar controls the black firedrakes.”

“The ransar’s guards?”

“If they strip Pristoleph of his title he’ll find himself surrounded by acid-spitting monsters that can hide in human form.”

Svayyah stopped to consider that, but could find no other conclusion than the one Devorast had come to.

“Then it’s over?” she asked.

Devorast didn’t reply, and didn’t look at her.

“Ah, well,” the water naga said, “we were never convinced it was such a good idea after all, all those human ships passing over us-tolls or no tolls.”

19 Tarsakh, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR)

SECOND QUARTER, INNARLITH

Home.

The word itself had lost all meaning to him, but it was both more and less than a word that brought Willem Korvan to his own door. After fleeing the canal, fighting all the while against a compulsion to return-to return and kill Ivar Devorast-Willem wandered south. His dead, numb legs carried him along ground that grew increasingly familiar, even to senses ravaged by undeath.

He entered the city under the cloak of night, crawling in along the edge of where the wall met the rocky shoreline of the Lake of Steam. He thought he might have killed a guard, or even a whole contingent of them, and maybe even more people as he wound his way through the streets of the First Quarter. He couldn’t remember for sure. Perhaps there had been no people at all. He thought he could still hear a woman’s primal, ragged scream echoing in his ears, but it might have been his imagination-or his inner ears drying and crumbling in his head.

Something that could have been described as memory moved him through the city. There were people in the First Quarter, talking and singing in taverns and festhalls along the quay and a few blocks deeper in. But when he crossed that invisible but very real line into the Second Quarter, the city went quiet. Candle- and hearth-light burned in windows high above the streets, but not many. Most windows were dark, the residents asleep, or pretending to be so the neighbors, who were themselves pretending to be asleep, wouldn’t notice and begin whispering rumors of-

Of what?

Willem had forgotten what he was thinking. He didn’t understand himself.

The buildings may as well have been solid to him, boulders or stone towers carved out by wind and water. The streets were as a canyon. The idea that there was anyone inside those structures made no difference to Willem.

There was in fact no reason for Willem to go home. It wasn’t a matter of his will or his master’s. It was as though his body walked there entirely of its own accord, and for reasons it kept to itself.

The garden gate was never meant to be anything but ornamental, and Willem didn’t even think of it until his knee clipped it and the latch broke free to clatter onto the flagstone pathway. He didn’t worry that the sound would alert anyone, because it didn’t matter.

Though he still had a key in his pocket, when he got to the door and found it locked, he pushed against it, broke that latch, too, and stepped inside.

He looked around at his own foyer and was staggered by a sense of familiarity, but he couldn’t put a name to any of the objects there. He had no recollection of where he’d found the little silver things or the ceramic things, or the flat representations of things that hung on the walls.

He stepped in, tracking in mud and horse manure from the streets. He smelled it, but it didn’t matter.

A noise from upstairs drew his eyes to the ceiling. He took a step into the house then dragged his other foot behind it, and the door slammed closed. The sound didn’t startle him. He took a few more steps into the house, moving for the parlor. He stopped at the foot of the stairs when he head more sounds-someone moving around-from above.

“Willem?” a familiar voice called.

Willem looked up the stairs. It was a woman. Someone he knew.

“Willem, my dear,” the voice came back. “Is that you?”

He opened his mouth to respond but had lost, at least for the nonce, the ability to speak. It was something that came and went. What issued from his throat was a dry rattle.

“Willem?” the woman repeated.

Willem could feel the fear in her voice, could smell it in her even from up the stairs. He staggered another step to the bottom of the stairs and waited.

She took two steps down and called his name again. She paused, waiting for an answer, and when she got none she stepped down one more. Willem could see her foot, bare and at the end of a fat, stumplike ankle. Candlelight flickered on the steps.

“I have a dagger,” she said, her voice quaking, “and I know how to use it.”

Willem stepped back, clearing the foot of the stairs, and watched the feet take two more steps down. She bent to look at him, perhaps seeing his shadow, perhaps merely sensing his presence at the bottom of the stairs. He saw the silver candlestick in her hand.

She had to take one more step down to see him, and just as she lifted her foot, Willem lunged.

Her grabbed the thick, fleshy ankle and pulled. Though she was heavy, Willem was strong, and the woman’s feet flew out from under her. She hit the stairs hard on her back and her nightgown flipped up to cover her face as she tumbled down the steps like an overstuffed sack of flour.

Something made Willem step back and he started when his back touched a wall.

Squealing like the terrified pig she was, the woman squirmed about on the floor, pulled her nightclothes from her face, and sat up, the candlestick still in her hand. The candle had fallen out and extinguished itself in its own tumble down the stairs. She held the candlestick in front of her like a weapon to ward him off. She had no dagger, but Willem had known that was a lie the moment she’d said it.

Their eyes met. The woman screamed in horror. Willem recognized her and a word came to him: Mother.

She rolled on the floor, trying to get away from him when he bent toward her. He tried to speak to her, but couldn’t. She screamed and screamed and the sound rattled in Willem’s ears, then echoed in his head. He didn’t like the sound. The sound was bad, and he wanted it to stop.

Willem grabbed his mother by the back of her head, his fingers twisting her hair. He pulled her head up and mouthed the word “Mother,” but she couldn’t see his lips. She screamed even louder, so loudly that Willem had to close his eyes, though that didn’t actually do anything to make the noise stop. He smashed her face against the floor and the scream was momentarily combined with a wet crack , then she quieted to a moaning, sickly sound that made Willem’s dead flesh crawl, so he smashed her face down again.

Her body convulsed and her legs kicked out. He drove her face once more into the ever-increasing puddle of hot, sticky blood and broken teeth. She kicked one more time then was still.

He let go of her head and stepped back. His right knee gave out and he fell, then scrambled back on his hands, fetching up against the door.