Scream of Stone

5

1 Alturiak, the Year of the Gauntlet (1369 DR) The Cascade of Coins, Innarlith

Still in mourning, Phyrea wore black to her wedding. She hadn’t carefully considered the choice, and Pristoleph had shown no sign that he cared. When he looked at her in the coach on the way to the temple of Waukeen, he had looked at her eyes. The softness, the longing, the love she saw in his gaze had warmed her and chilled her at the same time. She felt safe in his presence. Safer, anyway, than when she was alone with the ghosts.

Rain came down in nearly horizontal sheets, driven by a fierce wind off the Lake of Steam. The horses faltered several times, and Phyrea held on to the arm of the coach’s velvet bench for fear that the conveyance would be sent over on its side by the frequent, violent gusts.

One of the high priests met them just inside the temple doors. Phyrea didn’t know his name, but she recognized his face. Flanked by a quartet of acolytes in robes of shimmering silk, the priest was draped in thread-of-gold, even finer silk, and a variety of fur that Phyrea couldn’t immediately identify. His wide, pale face betrayed a reluctance no bride wants to see on her wedding day.

“My dear Senator,” the priest said, tipping his chin down in the barest suggestion of a bow. “No guests have arrived.”

“There will be no guests,” Pristoleph said, his flat voice inviting no response.

“But surely a man of your” the priest began.

“Do you require guests?” Pristoleph interrupted.

The priest looked down at the marble-tiled floor and Phyrea could tell he was disappointed. He had hoped that a lack of wedding guests would put an end to the affair.

“This has all been arranged,” Pristoleph went on. “It has been paid for. Shall we go in?”

“Of course,” the priest acquiesced.

Phyrea wiped a drip of rainwater off her temple with one fingertip and leaned in closer to her groom. The warmth that always radiated from Pristoleph soothed her.

A sudden gust of wind rattled the tall, arched window, its intricate panes of stained glass creaked in their gilded frames. All eyes glanced up at it, all of them afraid, if not certain, that the glass would buckle and shatter, but it didn’t.

“Perhaps…” the priest began, then shook his head, uncertain what to say.

“Lead on,” Pristoleph told him, his voice heavy with impatience.

He won’t marry you, the man with the scar told Phyrea. She knew he stood behind her, and that only she could see him, and she was surprised that Waukeen would allow his unholy presence in her temple. He’s afraid of you. But I think there are other reasons.

She shook her head and let herself be led deeper into the temple..They followed the priest, who walked slower than a man being marched to the gallows. The wind battered the stained glass windows all around them, seeming to come from all sides at once. The opulent interior was lit by fewer candles than Phyrea knew was typical. Gold, silver, and platinum gleamed in the dim candlelight. Though Pristoleph was as warm as ever, Phyrea shivered.

“Perhaps…” the priest started again. He came to a sudden stop, and two of the acolytes bumped into each other. A nervous shuffling of feet followed.

“Speak, priest,” Pristoleph all but growled.

He won’t do it, the ghost whispered. He can’t.

“This is a bad day,” the priest said. Phyrea looked at him, but her eyes were drawn to the acolytes. All four of them stared at the ground, refusing to look at the priest or each other. A tear dripped from the eye of onea girl barely in her teens. “We have had a… a loss, here.”

Pristoleph stiffened and Phyrea put her hand on his arm, the heat under her palm uncomfortable but not yet painful. He was getting warmer. From the corner of her eye she could see Pristoleph’s strange red hair begin to dance on his head. The priest wouldn’t look at him.

“One of our own was” the priest started, but stopped when the girl sobbed, loud and sudden. Phyrea startled at the sound of it, so like the woman who appeared to her as an image of violet light, and of impenetrable sadness.

The girl turned and scampered away, and the priest didn’t stop her.

“We are to be married,” Pristoleph insisted. “Today.”

The priest couldn’t seem to be able to make up his mind if he wanted to nod or shake his head, so he just stood there and quivered.

Pristoleph shifted and Phyrea stepped away from him to avoid his elbow. He pulled a small leather pouch from under his rapidly-drying weathercloak, reached his hand in, and came out with a fistful of gold coins. He threw the gleaming disks at the priest’s feet. The priest startled away from the loud, sharp, echoing clatter as the coins seemed to shatter on the marble. The windows shook again, and something hit the outside wall hard enough to startle Phyrea and all of the Waukeenar. But not Pristoleph.

“This is not..the priest mumbled.

Pristoleph threw another fistful of gold coins at his feetmore than the little pouch should have been able to contain.

“Please, Senator…”

Another shower of coins. The three remaining acolytes all stepped back as one.

“You will wed us now, and in the name of your goddess,” Pristoleph said, and even from a step away Phyrea could feel the heat blazing from him. The acolytes were scared, and so was the priest. “Speak the words, even if your goddess doesn’t hear.”

The priest gasped. Two of the remaining acolytes turned and ran deeper into the gloom of the massive vaulted chamber. The last of the young priests in training stepped closer to the senator, his eyes bulging with outrage.

The priest held out a hand, gently pushing his student back from the burning groom, and said, “Chose your words carefully in the house of the Merchant’s Friend, Senator Pristoleph.”

The corner of Pristoleph’s mouth curled up in a dangerous smile and he threw yet another handful of coins at the priest’s feet.

The Waukeenar nodded and said, “Please hold hands.”

Phyrea ignored the protests of at least two of the ghosts that had followed her, and she didn’t look at the priest’s face, which was a mask of resignation, fear, and exhaustion. Pristoleph’s hands burned hers and she cringed at the pain but didn’t pull away. He cooled a little as the priest began his prayers.

Words, the man with the scar whispered. Hollow words to a goddess in hiding.

Phyrea shook her head. She didn’t care if Waukeen was alive or dead, didn’t care how much gold had bought her wedding, and paid no mind to the unnatural boiling heat of the manif he was a manshe was swearing her life to.

When the priest spoke his last words and the two of them were man and wife, the giant stained glass window imploded, burst by the fury of the air around them. The acolyte screamed, Pristoleph shrugged, and the priest began to cry.

Pristoleph and Phyrea turned and went back to their coach with the wind whipping rain and shards of glass all around them, their boots crunching broken pieces under their feet, and the sound of the wailing cries of the holy men harmonizing with the moans of the angry wind.

An interesting start, the old woman said, and as they walked out into the driving winter rain, Phyrea saw the violet ghost laughing on the steps of the once-glorious temple.