Scream of Stone

69

10 Kythorn, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR) The Chamber of Law and Civility, Innarlith

Wenefir knew precisely where he stood. It had all been explained to him by Marek Rymiit. Should Pristoleph acquiesce to the senate’s demands and peacefully step down, the Temple of the Delicate Chaos would be allowed to come up from underground. Wenefir would not just be allowed, but would be assisted, in spreading the word of the Mad God to the people of Innarlith. Worship of Cyric would finally come out into the open, and Wenefir was confident that, given that chance, Cyric’s word would take hold of the city and never release it. Ransar? What would that be compared to the spiritual leader of thousands of souls enslaved to the whims of the Prince of Lies?

He walked into the senate chamber alongside Pristoleph. Wenefir could feel the heat radiating from his old friend. Though his face was impassive, impossibly calm in the face of a senate that had come to hate him so deeply they were willing to plunge their own city into civil war, the heat revealed his simmering anger, a rage that literally boiled just below his placid exterior.

Those senators who had had the courage or ambition to attend the session seemed to feel it, too, though none of them came close enough to Pristoleph to feel the heat. Only a very few of them even tried to look Pristoleph in the eye, and most of those who tried, failed to hold the ransar’s powerful gaze.

Pristoleph didn’t even spare a glance in the direction of the black firedrakes. The creatures that used to be his most trusted bodyguards lined the walls of the chamber, hands on long spears and other weapons, and dark passion in their eyes. Wenefir recognized a few of them, “men” who had held posts in Pristal Towers, but their murderous eyes betrayed no shred of the loyalty that had once been so resolute.

Wenefir didn’t let the presence of the black firedrakes rattle himhe was rattled enough as it was, merely from the dense, hot air of the room. Black firedrakes aside, all he had to do was play his role and wait, and Innarlith would be Cyric’s, and by default, his, soon enough.

“Welcome, Pristoleph,” Meykhati said from the dais, his omission of the title ransar was neither unexpected nor unnoticed. “You will have the ear of the senate, and you will not be harmed.”

Meykhati didn’t have to say that. It had all been decided, negotiated, decided again, then renegotiated and settled in the last two days. Pristoleph didn’t appear to have heard the senator. Instead, he walked to the dais, stood next to him, and cleared his throat.

The senators in attendance took their seats, all eyes fixed on Pristoleph. They waited to hear a message they had been given in writing in advance, a message penned in part by Marek Rymiit, in part by Meykhati, and in part by Pristoleph. Wenefir knew that if Pristoleph merely spoke those words and walked away, everything would go back to normal, the streets would calm, the wemics would go back to the Shar, and Cyric’s Black Sun would rise in Innarlith. Sweat beaded on Wenefir’s forehead.

“I come before this assembly for the last time,” Pristoleph beganthe words taken verbatim from the prepared statement. Wenefir took a deep breath. “i will speak my piece, then I will step down as your ransar.”

There was a general murmur in the chamber that made Wenefir cringe. The senators had the nerve to feign surprise.

“But before I go,” Pristoleph went on, “there is something that I must say.”

Wenefir’s head spun. That wasn’t part of the statement. Pristoleph was supposed to have begun thanking people who helped him get where he was. Wenefir scanned the huge chamber for Marek but didn’t see him. How could the Thayan not be here? Wenefir thought. His own internal voice had gone shrill with panic. Cold sweat began to soak through his robes and the scar between his legs began to itch.

“Perhaps you wish to reconsider,” Meykhati warned Pristoleph. “The senate’s patience is voluminous but has its limits. For the sake of peace”

“To the Abyss with peace,” Pristoleph shot back, and Meykhati shrunk away before clearing his throat and puffing out his chest, his eyes darting around the chamber for fear that his colleagues had seen him flinch. “I will speak, and you will listen.”

The assembled lawmakers fidgeted and murmured to each other. One of them stoodAikikoand turned to march out of the chamber. Pristoleph watched her go, his yellow-hot gaze boring into her back. She stumbled on the steps at the end of the aisle and turned. Wenefir saw the fear in her eyes and thought, She looks like I feel.

“If any more of you would like to go,” Pristoleph said. “You know where the doors are.”

That stopped Aikiko in her tracks and she turned, standing at the end of the aisle. She fidgeted, not sure what to do. with her hands, and Pristoleph stared at her for a moment that seemed as endless as it was heavy.

“In the long history of Faerun,” Pristoleph said, his eyes finally leaving Aikiko to bounce around the senate chamber, “change has come in many forms, both good and bad. Empires have risen and fallen, whole races have emerged only to be washed from the face of Toril, and even the gods have tread the land upon which we stand this very dayand even they died like the mortals that bow before them. All of these moments, all of those beginnings and endings, have come at the hands of a man. It wasn’t Mystra who brought low the Empire of Netheril, but a single arch-wizard who gave himself the power of a god. And in that spirit, Ivar Devorast came here from Cormyr to change the face of Faerun for all time, to leave a mark upon the very rock and soil, to dig a river where none existed before, to redraw our maps and change everything in the process. Some of you supported that goal. Others of you opposed it. Some of you watched from afar, content to get on with your lives either way. But not one of younot one of you useless, pointless bureaucratsrecognized the truth of the canal, or of Ivar Devorast, or of me.”

Some of the senators looked angry, some appeared cowed, but all of them remained silent. Meykhati’s face went red, but he too didn’t speak.

“What Ivar Devorast created, and what he subsequently destroyed,” Pristoleph went on, “was a work that could only be imagined by one man. He destroyed it because you proved yourselves unworthy of it. You proved Innarlith unworthy of it. You are servants. You are slaves.”

“That’s an outrage!” Meykhati shouted. “An outrage!”

Wenefir’s knees quivered, and his breath came in shallow gasps. The huge chamber seemed to press in on him from all sides, stifling, suffocating. The priest turned and almost fell. His head spun and his mouth went dry.

“Be silent, fool,” Pristoleph said. “You’ll get what you want. You’ll be ransar. And you’ll stay ransar only long enough for the Thayana man we should have killed the moment he stepped on Innarlan soilto choose your successor. Be the lead sheep, if you like. The herd will be happy with you until they’re told not to be.”

“Get out!” Meykhati shrieked. “Get out of here before I have you arrested. Get out of here before I kill you myself!”

Wenefir glanced back to see Pristoleph and Meykhati seem to teeter for the blink of an eye, then move toward each other as one. Candles flared into great plumes of white-hot flame and one of the chandeliers that hung from the high ceiling began to quiver. The senators stood, and someone shouted, but Wenefir ignored it all, brushing aside a page who was fleeing the room.

Wenefir burst into the outer chamber and ran. His legs burned and he breathed in gasps. He would be blamed. He would be blamed for all of it. Pristoleph had destroyed himself when he defied the order, the arrangement, and he’d taken Wenefir with him.

The priest burst through the doors, startling the pair of black firedrakes that stood guard. They almost stopped him, but stepped aside when they recognized the priest. Outside, there was a short colonnade. Rain fell and mixed with the sweat that had soaked into his robe. He stepped aside to avoid someone who was just as startled as he, and he slipped. Mud splattered, he stood and started to run again, losing his way and ending up in the gardens that surrounded the imposing edifice of the Chamber of Law and Civility.

“Wenefir,” a voice boomed amid the patter of rain. The sound of it stopped the priest cold.

“Marek” Wenefir gasped. “Pristoleph”

“Come here, Wenefir,” Marek Rymiit said, beckoning him to a narrow path that led into a copse of trees. “It will be all right. Pristoleph’s fate is sealed.”

Wenefir followed the wizard because he wasn’t sure what else to do.

“He lied,” Wenefir mumbled. “It’s degenerated into a brawl.”

“I know,” said the Thayan.

“What do we do?”

“We?” the Red Wizard asked.

“Yes, I-“

Wenefir might have finished that thought had a bolt of lightning not crashed down from the roiling gray clouds to hold him for an agonizing moment in its death grip.

He fell to the ground afire, smelling his own flesh burning, choking on the smoke and heat that blistered his lungs.

“We shall do nothing, priest,” Marek said, his voice almost lost to Wenefir amid the crackling of flames.

Marek Rymiit laughed while Wenefir burned to death.