Scream of Stone

58

23 Tarsakh, the Yearof Lightning Storms (1374 DR) The Canal Site

Phyrea called his name again and again but there was no answer. The rain pounded from the night sky, and thunder rumbled all around her. The deluge drowned out her voice, but still Phyrea worried that Ivar Devorast was dead.

After seeing his spectral form she thought that she should have listened to him and stayed away, but finally she decided she had to go there. She had to find him and see him. She had to know one way or another if he was alive or dead.

“I’ll leave him,” she shouted into the driving rain. Rainwater mixed with spittle flew from her lips. Her long dark hair was plastered to her head, and her light riding silks and wool vest were so heavy, her shoulders slumped under the weight. “Ivar!”

She pulled on her horse’s bridle and the animal shook its head out of her grasp. She turned and grabbed the leather strap again, sneering and growling at the horse until its head bowed and it took a step forward. A deafening crash of thunder seemed to burst the sky apart and the horse started again. The beast rose up on its hind legs, jerking her arm. A stab of pain lanced through her shoulder before her fingers slipped from the bridle and she swore.

Her mount bounded backward a few steps, and when Phyrea reached once more for the bridle the horse turned and ran at speed into the black night. She lost sight of it a scant moment later, and even the sound of its pounding hooves disappeared behind the roar of the storm.

With another unseemly curse, Phyrea turned back to the canal, banishing the startled horse from her mind. She squinted into the rain and sloshed through muddy grass to the edge of the canal. She looked down into darkness and called for Ivar Devorast.

The darkness seemed to move closer into her from all sides. Blinking, rubbing her eyes, opening them as wide as she could and holding them open even when wind-driven rain stung at them, Phyrea still couldn’t see.

Something’s wrong, the sad woman who cried over the corpse of her only child said, her voice clear in Phyrea’s head despite the rain and thunder. I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.

Step off, the little boy said, and Phyrea shook her head so hard and so fast that her own soaking-wet hair whipped her face.

She opened her mouth wide and screamed into the uncaring storm.

He’s dead, the man with the scar on his face said. Why did you come here?

“Why did I come here?” Phyrea asked the ghosts, the storm, anyone who would listen.

You love him as much as you hate yourself, said the old woman.

You know he’s dead, said the man with the scar, but you don’t want to believe it.

Step off the damned edge, the little boy demanded.

Phyrea started to cry, her tears disappearing into the rain and wind. She thought she heard the little girl crying too, but couldn’t be sure.

He’s dead, the grieving woman said. They’re both dead. We’re all dead.

“No,” Phyrea said, her voice gravelly and ragged.

She could feel the ghosts inside her and knew the contempt they felt for her, at that moment more than ever before. She could feel their frustration and anger with her. They wanted her dead. They wanted her to join them, wanted her to stay with them forever, inside the cold, silent walls of Berrywilde. She was the last of her family, and when she was gone what would happen to that estate?

“Why do you want me?” she asked them.

Because you wanted us, the man with the scar on his face said. You came to us. You sent everyone else away and you sat in that house like the ghost you were fated to be. You sat in silence and you cut yourself. You hurt yourself because you hated yourself. You opened yourself to us. You wanted us, as much as we wanted you.

“Wanted?” she whispered.

The feeling that came to her in response made her blink. Dizzy, she staggered back from the edge of the canal and almost fell.

“You don’t want me anymore?” she whispered.

Of course we do, the old woman replied, her voice soothing. Come back with us, to Berrywilde.

Forever, the little girl said.

Phyrea rubbed the rainwater and tears from her eyes and stepped forward, to the very edge of the canal.

Lightning flashed, and for a moment the space around her was lit as though it was high noon. The canal was deep-deep enough that the fall would kill herand rainwater had started to collect at the bottom, enough so that it had filled to a depth of nearly an inch.

“It’s filling up,” she said into the pitch dark that followed the transient illumination of the lightning.

Step over the side, the little boy begged. Please, Mommy?

Phyrea gasped and stepped back.

“No,” she whispered. “It’s filling with water. It’s going to work.”

Phyrea looked up, and when another flash of lightning gave her an instant’s sight, she looked down the length of the canal, which disappeared over the horizon. It was the most incredible thing she’d ever seen in her life.

“I did,” she said when it was dark again. She stopped crying but shivered in the cool rain. “I went there to give up, and I almost did, but then he showed me there was a reason to live. He showed me that it was for me to decide”

She stopped when the ground beneath her trembled. It felt as though the world itself shivered in the rain.

More lightning flashed on the horizon, but it didn’t go away as fast as it should have, and it was the wrong color, and there was moreand Phyrea realized it wasn’t lightning at all.

Turning to the north, her breath trapped in her lungs, her eyes and mouth wide open to the driving rain, Phyrea watch enormous balls of yellow-orange light mushroom over the horizon. Each was followed several heartbeats later by a low rumble, each one louder than the last, and the tremors grew stronger, too.

“Oh,” she breathed. “Oh, no.”

Another explosion of orange fire, then another, and another. They marched down the length of the canal, on both sides, and ground-shaking tremors followed in their wakes.

Phyrea’s feet felt frozen in place, as though nailed to the ground at the edge of the canal. The light from the explosions grew brighter, the sounds louder, and soon the cacophony of the pounding thunderstorm was drowned out by the continuing series of massive explosions.

Closer and closer they came and finally Phyrea moved one foot. She turned and the ground bucked under her, rattling her knee and numbing the bottoms of her feet. She stumbled, but rose to her feet even as another tremor shook the ground. She ran through a Shockwave that smashed into her ears. The roar of the explosions were dulled, overwhelmed by a piercing ringing in her ears.

Phyrea glanced over one shoulder, and another explosion blossomed behind her, so close there was no delay before the sound of it took the rest of her hearing until all that was left was an agonizing wail. She screamed as she ran, her mind racing through prayers, pleading for help. She wanted Devorast to save her, but she knew for certain then that he must be dead. If he lived, he never would have allowed his greatest masterpiece to be destroyed.

The next explosion lifted her off her feet. She whirled through the air, entirely unable to control her own body. Her arms flailed, hitting herself in the face. She felt her right knee bend sideways, and the jarring pain pushed bile into her throat. She couldn’t breathe or even retch as she flew through air that had become searingly hot. She couldn’t open her eyes, and she couldn’t close her mouth.

Another explosion lifted her higher into the air just an instant before she hit the ground. It was hotter still, and she screamed when the rainwater in her hair began to boil. Her scream rattled her ears and the wail seemed to harmonize with it. The last bit of air was driven from her lungs and her scream cut off. There was another explosion, but it wasn’t as hot, and Phyrea could feel herself falling. She wanted to move somehow, so she whirled her arms and tried to run, but the pain from her ruined knee sent lightning flashing behind her eyelids. The only sound left was something that could have come from inside or out, but to Phyrea it sounded like the scream of stone, the death rattle of the canal itself.

She hit the ground so hard her head nearly came off her shoulders. She felt bones snap all over her body, and as consciousness fled her she was glad that she’d landed in the cold mud. It soothed her charred skin.