Scream of Stone

35

5 Eleasias, the Yearof Rogue Dragons (1373 DR) Second Quarter, Innarlith

All of his best Shou ceramics and it was fine indeed was set out. Not a single detail had been overlooked. The silver shone so brightly in the candlelight it was difficult for him to look at the table. The crystal stemware glimmered with tiny rainbows, and the table linens were as white as fresh-fallen snow. A line of wine bottles had been opened and decanted, left to breathe a little too long already. The foodprepared by a small army of cooks who had long since gonesat cooling on silver trays on a huge mahogany sideboard he’d purchased specially for the event.

Willem sat in a stiff, uncomfortable chair he’d had for years and didn’t remember ever having sat in. He let the breath out through his nose.

“I’ll be going to bed now,” his mother said, her voice barely more than a whisper, from behind him. “Unless you…?”

She didn’t finish, but Willem shook his head anyway. Of course he didn’t expect his mother, only two months back in Innarlith from Cormyr, to help him clean up. As the only witness to what had become the most humiliating day of his life, he really just wanted her to go upstairs, go to bed, and perhaps forget what she had seen that evening.

“Willem, my dear?”

He turned to look at her and winced at the look of disappointment that was written so plainly on her face. She looked away as though he were diseased or in some way deformed. She looked away as though he were a beggar in the street. Without another word she shuffled off, her long silk gown rustling, the jewelry he’d bathed her in tinkling with each step.

He sat there for some time longer, watching the candles shrink, dripping wax on the clean linen. Willem knew the last thing he’d be able to do was sleep. He needed someone to tell him whytell him how, tell him when he had been abandoned by everyone. How could all two hundred invitations be ignored?

He didn’t understand, his mother wouldn’t know, and Willem Korvan had no one else to talk tono one except Marek Rymiit.

Willem stood and smoothed his fine wool waistcoat with trembling hands. He didn’t bother calling for a coach, though it was a walk of four long blocks from his home to the Thayan Enclave. He breathed deeply of the summer air, and as he walked he tried not to make eye contact with any of the people who strolled the lanternlit streets. He knew that too many of themespecially the ones who made a point to cross the street when they caught sight of himhad been on his guest list.

When he presented himself at the gates to the enclave, he was admitted without question, as though the guards had been told to expect him. As he passed through the tall wrought-iron gate, Willem tried to remember when Marek Rymiit had hired guards. He looked up at the building as he approached the door, and though parts of it were familiar, much of it had changedtoo much of it, he thought, since the last time he’d been there. But then, try as he might, he didn’t quite remember exactly when he’d last been thereanyway, not long enough for the grand house to be converted into what more closely resembled a castle bailey: a cluster of buildings inside a walled enclosure.

“Senator?” the guard said, even that one word thick with the peculiar, gruff accent of Thay. When Willem stopped to look at him, the guard continued, “The master will see you in his private study.”

Willem nodded, not sure what that meant or where he should go. Obviously sensing that confusion, the guard motioned for him to follow and led him to a low stone housefor all appearances a pleasant country cottage surrounded by flowering bushes. The warm orange glow of candles pulsed in the windows, and when the door swung silently open, the familiar round shape of Marek Rymiit filled the doorway.

“Ah, Willem, my boy,” he said, his voice as warm and welcoming as the cottage itself, “do come in.”

The guard bowed and backed away, and Willem stepped up to the door then hesitated when Marek didn’t move out of the way. Instead the Thayan stepped forward and before Willem could back awayand his instincts insisted he at least trythe wizard’s arms enfolded him in what was, if anything, too warm an embrace.

“Ah, Willem,” Marek whispered in his ear. The Thayan’s breath was hot and thick with the cloying aroma of elven brandy. “You know you are always welcome here.”

Willem stood rigid in the older man’s embrace, but Marek either didn’t notice or didn’t mind. The Thayan released him and stepped aside. Willem staggered into the room.

“Sit,” Marek said. “Brandy?”

Willem took in his surroundings with some surprise. He’d known Marek Rymiit for a long time, and thought he had some sense of the Thayan’s tastes, which ran to the finer thingsthe more exotic. His “private study” was just the opposite. The room was everything one would expect from a peasant grandmother’s country cottage. Though he suspected the decorations had been chosen to put people at ease, Willem grew only more anxious as he lowered himself into a leather armchair. Though he hadn’t asked for one, Marek poured him a glass of brandy and set it on the little table next to Willem’s chair.

“Why the long face?” the wizard asked as he lowered his girth into the chair opposite.

“What happened, Master Rymiit?”

The Thayan smiled at that and shrugged.

Willem took a deep breath, and wondered how to even begin.

“Really, my boy,” Marek went on, swirling the brandy glass under his nose, “there’s no reason to be so glum, now is there?”

“Isn’t there?” Willem asked. “I’m being…” “You’re being…?”

“I can’t remember things,” Willem said before he realized he was saying the words aloud. “I don’t know what’s happened to me.”

“You’re fine, my boy.”

Words caught in Willem’s throat and he made a little coughing sound.

The Thayan took a little sip of brandy then said, “They didn’t come to your little party.”

A tear welled up in Willem’s right eye and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. He let his head hang on his neck, looking down at the wood floor.

“I have bad dreams,” Willem whispered. He was afraid to say the words, but more afraid not to. “I wake up drenched in sweat, my teeth clenched so hard my head aches. Most of the time my hands are curled into fists and I can’t open them.”

Willem looked at his hands, both of which were balled into tight fists. He didn’t bother trying to open them.

“It’s summer already,” Willem went on. “I don’t remember spring. I think I don’t.”

“It will all be fine,” the Thayan said. “You’ll see. Try not to think too hard about all this. We all have nightmares. We all forget things. We all have days when we feel we have no friends in the world, when we feel all of Toril has somehow gotten together to forget us all at once, but that’s hardly reason to hang your head in misery, crying into your friend and patron’s expensive elven spirits.”

“I’m sorry,” Willem all but gasped.

“Wait a month,” Marek went on, ignoring Willem’s apology. “In a month, all your friends will come back to you. It will be as if nothing ever happened.”

“But…” Willem breathed, looking up into the Thayan’s face, “what happened?”

“Nothing,” Marek said with a wide grin. “In a month, at any rate.”

“But how?”

“I’ll tell them to,” said Marek. “We will all be fast friends and close associates once more, because I will tell them as much.”

Willem swallowed, looked at the glass of brandy on the table next to him, but didn’t reach for it.

“You can do that?” Willem whispered, his eyes still on the glass.

“Don’t think too much of me,” the wizard said with a laugh. “I am but a small piece in a much larger puzzle. Still, if you need anything… anything at all… I am here for you.”

“No,” Willem said, forcing his attention from the glass to Marek’s big, wet eyes. “No, Master Rymiit, it is I who am here for you. Always.”

Marek laughed in a way that made the hair on the back of Willem’s neck stand on end.