Scream of Stone

9

20 Alturiak, the Year of the Gauntlet (1369 DR) Firesteap Citadel

They stepped out of the coach and into a cacophony of taps and cracks. Hundreds of men milled about, seemingly at random, groups surrounding pairs fighting each other with wooden swords. Other rings of men encircled half a dozen men fighting another half a dozen men with long, blunt-ended poles. Orders and encouragementand more than a few insults and jibesburst free of the general din.

Pristoleph nodded to a lieutenant who saluted him and helped Phyrea down from the coach. Not paying attention to the lieutenant’s status report, Pristoleph watched his young bride take in the scene. She squinted in the winter overcast from under a wide-brimmed hat.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Pristoleph said, cutting off the officer’s report.

The soldier bowed and scurried away into the general confusion.

“You’re sure you’re well?” Pristoleph said, allowing every bit of the doubt he held to show in both his voice and his face.

Phyrea didn’t look at him. She held a small black parasol under one arm, which she fiddled with. He couldn’t help thinking she wanted to open it, as though the dull gray light was too bright for her. He’d been noticing that she was growing more and more sensitive to light, as though she was becoming a creature of the Underdark, and he didn’t like that.

As he continued to watch her, her tight squint began to relax a little and she almost began to smile.

“Well?” he prompted.

“This is yours now?” she asked, and he could tell she was impressed. Just then Pristoleph thought he’d somehow done the impossible. “You bought this?”

“The citadel?” he replied, taking her by the arm and leading her along the winding dirt track that led through the drilling grounds toward the tall stone fortress. “Firesteap Citadel belongs to the ransaror, well, let’s say, the people of Innarlith. I bought the castellan.”

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 laughlighter 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 safeat 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.