Philip Athans - Scream of Stone

With a laugh Pristoleph replied, “I’ve never withdrawn that offer. And for that, I will expect a work befitting my queen.”

Devorast glanced at Phyrea and said, “It will be.”

The air took on a density that made all four of them look at anything but the others in the room.

Finally, Pristoleph could stand it no more and said, “She was never mine, Ivar.” He looked at Phyrea, who nodded to him, then wiped a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand. “She was no more mine than she will be yours.”

Devorast nodded and he and Phyrea shared a glance.

“And she will have to share you,” Pristoleph said with a smile that expressed both joy and sadness, “with a hole in the ground.”

“And you?” Devorast said.

“Me?” the ransar answered, letting his gaze fall over the beautiful and mysterious woman from Shou Lung. “My only mistress will be Innarlith herself.”

Ran Ai Yu smiled at him in a way that said she didn’t believe him any more than he believed himself.

3 Ches, the Year of Risen Elfkin (1375 DR)

THE CITY OF VELEN, TETHYR

Marek Rymut found the dance as alien as the music that filled the air of the candlelit ballroom. He blinked at his dance partner in the dim light, a pretty but severe woman in her forties, who had very forwardly and in a manner that allowed no other alternative, demanded that he dance with her. Her dress was of a sort with the other members of the Tethyrian nobility-a fashion he would also need time to grow accustomed to.

“I must say, my dear,” he said, having just then realized he didn’t know the woman’s name, “that these candles do you an injustice by hiding your features, which even in the darkness reveal themselves to be as handsome as they are noble. Perhaps I will be able to appeal to the master of the house”-a petty lord who’s name Marek had already forgotten-“to allow me the opportunity to supply him with lighting of an enchanted-and more enchanting-sort.”

“Save it, Rymut,” the woman responded in the dialect of Mulhorandi spoken only on the windswept plateaus of Thay.

Marek’s blood ran cold, and when he tried to pull away, the woman drew him closer. Her grip was stern and commanding, and she danced so close to him, taking the lead and spinning him in the coastal realm’s whirling mockery of a formal dance. She was so close that Marek’s arms wrapped all the way around her thin frame. The hooks that his masters had given him in place of hands clanked together and sent electric spasms up his arms. He hated that sensation more even than the ruin his life had become. It was worse than pain, it was a reminder.

“Forgive me … Khazark,” Marek whispered, his eyes darting to the woman’s hairline, where the very edge of a tattoo was revealed from beneath her otherwise convincing wig.

“This isn’t Innarlith,” the khazark of the Thayan Enclave in Velen said, her breath almost painfully hot on his neck. “You will serve me, and you will stay out of the corridors of power. Serve me well and serve me long enough, and I might just have them give you your hands back.”

Marek’s throat closed and his knees began to shake.

“Yes, Khazark,” he said.

The woman whirled him away and they both came to a stop on the dance floor, the other guests continuing to circle them. She stared into his eyes with an arctic coldness, and Marek didn’t know what to do with himself.

“This is the Lady Dumonde,” she said in the common tongue.

Breathlessly delighted for the opportunity to do anything but stand there like a first-year apprentice, Marek plastered his most charming smile on his face, and brought that sparkle to his eye. The young lady-she might have been all of nineteen-curtsied and stared at his hooks. At least one of the two things she’d done was polite.

“My lady,” Marek said with a sweeping bow. “Please allow this humble, maimed soldier of the cause of justice the pleasure of your company for the remainder of this delightful melody.”

The girl giggled and fell into Marek’s embrace as though she couldn’t wait to feel the cold metal of his hooks on her. He looked at the khazark, whose face remained stern and frosty, then turned his attention entirely to the girl.

“You have a charming accent,” she said, batting her eyes at him in a way that made him want to roll his. “Where are you from?”

“Ah, my dear, dear lady,” Marek said, “I have come here from far, far away for one reason and one reason only, and that is to make your most gracious and alluring acquaintance.”

She giggled again and as they danced, Marek thought of at least a dozen ways to kill her, and her whole family, with but a few arcane phrases.