Philip Athans - Scream of Stone

She smiled at him and he had no choice but to smile back.

“I served here,” he told her, his thoughts spinning back to those simpler times.

“I can’t imagine you as a soldier,” she said.

“I’ll admit I wasn’t much of a footman,” he confided. “I had … other duties.”

“Oh?”

“Let’s just say that I provided an essential … supply service for my comrades in arms.”

“Yes,” she said with a light laugh-lighter than he’d heard from her in some time, if ever, “let’s just say that.”

She slowed as they passed close to a group of soldiers lined up parallel to each other, swinging wooden pole arms in mock combat. One head turned her way, then another and another, until a sergeant started yelling at them while he looked Phyrea up and down himself. Pristoleph could see that she was so used to that sort of attention from that sort of man, that she didn’t notice it at all.

“I want you to stay here for a while,” he said, once again leading her slowly toward the citadel. “The city may not be entirely safe-at least not for long.”

He looked at her, expecting her to look at him. Instead she seemed to be listening to one of those voices that only she could hear. He had to look away. When he watched her do that, his heart ached. Either she was indeed possessed, or she was mad. Either way he could pay a priest to make her better, but she refused to even hear of it. If anything else was mysteriously broken in his house, though, he would have her exorcised whether she agreed to it or not.

5 Mirtul, the Year of the Gauntlet (1369 DR)

FIRESTEAP CITADEL

Marek watched Insithryllax fidget. The black dragon wore his human guise, but his coal-dark eyes darted across the sky above him, his feet shuffled, and his shoulders twitched like a restless bird. The day was unseasonably warm, the sky a pure blue untroubled by clouds, and the dragon wanted to fly.

“He is himself again,” Wenefir said. His voice made Insithryllax jump a little and turn with an angry twist to his heavy brow. The priest of Cyric ignored him and went on, “I don’t know if it’s the clean southern air, or maybe even that trollop of his, but it’s as though he’s returned from a long journey.”

Marek shrugged while bowing to Wenefir in greeting. All three of them turned their eyes down to the ground fifty feet or more below them. From the top of the citadel, they could see the whole of the mustering grounds. There Pristoleph’s newly-acquired private army marched and drilled.

“Certainly you agree, Master Rymut?” Wenefir prompted.

Marek shrugged and said, “I’ve seen better prepared, better armed, and better disciplined armies in my day.”

He could sense Wenefir stiffen at his side but didn’t look at him. Instead, he let his gaze wander back to Insithryllax, who had once again turned his attention to the beckoning sky.

“Well,” the Cyricist huffed, “of course we all have.” Marek could tell that Wenefir hadn’t. “Still, it’s been barely three months.”

“And they weren’t an army before?” Marek teased with a smile.

The priest didn’t return the smile when he replied, “Not hardly. They were rabble, most of them, living off the paltry wages of Salatis’s sorry excuse for a military-and more than one of them had other interests … other business interests that is.”

“They were thieves,” Marek said.

“The best of them were, yes,” Wenefir replied, “while others either supported or extorted the camp followers, provided private security or other dark deeds for whatever coin might have been thrown at them … they were thieves, yes, and murderers, too.”

“I seem to recall,” Marek said, enjoying every second of what he was about to say with a wide, toothy grin, “hearing tell of a young soldier named Pristoleph who, some decades ago, provided his comrades in arms with the company of women … women, one might say, of generous affections.”

Wenefir tensed and Marek got the distinct impression the priest was holding himself rigid, as though unwilling to give the Red Wizard the satisfaction of whirling on him. His jaw tensed, his eyes closed, then all at once he relaxed. Behind him, the black dragon stared at the priest with the threat of violence in his eyes.

“What is it about you, I wonder,” Wenefir said, forcing a smile on his face with obvious difficulty, “that causes me to underestimate you in all the least important ways?”

“Let us call it ‘charisma’ and leave it at that,” Marek replied.

The priest tipped his head in acquiescence and once again the three of them turned their attention to Pristoleph at the head of his army.

14 Mirtul, the Year of the Gauntlet (1369 DR)

FIRESTEAP CITADEL

Phyrea dreamed of a monster with a beautiful face.

A snake, but bigger than any she’d ever imagined. Its smooth, dry scales shimmered in the dim candlelight, throwing off sparks of every color. She watched it approach the foot of her bed. While one part of her mind tried in vain to assign its slithering form a single color, another part screamed at her to move, to leap from bed and flee.

But she couldn’t move. The satin and silk bedclothes were loose and warm around her, but still she felt as though they held her firmly against the mattress. She lay on her back, her neck propped up on her favorite pillow, her arms at her sides, palms down, as stiff and as heavy as the world itself. Her legs might have been made of stone. She could breathe-more and more in rapid, panting gasps-and her eyes could move in her head, but even her throat refused to allow a cry for help. Instead she gurgled once, then began to breathe even harder, faster.

She looked at the door, still closed and locked, and hoped that Pristoleph would finally come to bed, that he would open the door, see the monster bearing down on her, and kill it before it could eat her, before it could enslave her mind, before it could ravage her still, helpless body. But the door remained closed, and no sound came from the corridor beyond.

The enormous snake stared Phyrea in the eye. Its face was that of a beautiful young girl, but with shimmering multicolored scales in place of youthful flesh. Hair that resembled the feathers of a bird pressed down on its scalp to just barely frame its perfectly-proportioned features. One side of its lips, tightly pressed together, curled up in a smile dripping with murderous glee.

Phyrea had to look away. Her eyes went to the thin window-an arrow loop, really-and the starless night sky beyond. The sounds of the soldiers camped at the foot of the mighty fortress had long since quieted, and Phyrea knew she could expect no help from that quarter either.

Once again trying to speak, and once again having no luck, she turned again to face her attacker, but the monster was gone. In its place, shimmering with all the same colors, twinkling in the candlelight just the same, was the woman she had seen so many times since that fateful stay at her family’s country estate.

The greens and reds, blues and oranges, faded into a familiar uniform violet when the woman’s knee came down on the bed at Phyrea’s feet. She had never seen one of the ghosts make an impression in furniture before, though the little girl had taken to breaking things. Something about the way the bed dipped under her weight made Phyrea want to scream even louder than she had at the sight of the snake-thing.

“Don’t tell me you want to live,” the woman said, and Phyrea’s blood ran even colder in her already frigid veins. The voice echoed in her ears, not her mind-she was sure of it. “You can’t want to live.”