Scream of Stone

70

10 Kythorn, the Yearof Lightning Storms (1374 DR) The Canal Site

There was just enough left of Willem Korvan’s mind to make his undead body quiver at the sight of Ivar Devorast.

The man that had been his friend, became his enemy, then ended as his prey, stood straight and tall against the driving rain. A piercing blast of lightning split the sky and illuminated the devastated remains of the canal. Devorast stood in silhouette against the jumble of broken stone and shattered wood. Willem opened his mouth, ignoring the rain that pelted his face. He shivered, but not because the rain was cold. His body moved in response to fell magica curse, reallythat had saturated his desiccated form with the semblance of life. Sometimes that magic tipped out of balance and he shook. Sometimes his mouth fell open. Sometimes he gurgled. Sometimes he lost control of his eyes. And sometimes he screamed.

The loud rumble of thunder masked the scream at first, but when the thunder echoed away, the hoarse cry remained.

Devorast spun, blinking his wet hair from his eyes, and Willem leaped.

He’d crawled up on Devorast from behind and was poised on all fours on a tilted block of stone that seemed to have been tossed up by the hand of some enormous giant from where it had once served as part of the canal’s wall. The stone was at once rough and slick. Willem ignoreddidn’t even register, reallythe pain of scraping several layers of skin from his knee, hip, and palms when he leaped. The skin, all of it, was dead anyway.

Devorast grunted, not in panic or fear, but from simple exertion, as he jumped to the side to avoid Willem. The undead creature didn’t try to turn in the air. He didn’t have that degree of control over his own body, and in the primal part of his mind that Marek Rymiit had made most dominant, Willem knew he didn’t have to.

They were alone. No living soul within miles would hear Devorast’s last wordsif Willem allowed him any. No one was there to help. No one would stand in Willem’s way at the last moment. And any ability to change his mind, to decide for himself simply not to kill the man who once shared his roof and his dreams, had been drained from Willem Korvan once and for all.

“Who are you?” Devorast shouted into the pounding rain.

Willem fetched up on the muddy ground in a crouch and grimaced at his prey. Another of his teeth fell out to clatter against his tongue, which sat in his lower jaw like a stone. Devorast’s eyes narrowed and he stepped back.

“What are?” he started, but then shook his head. “Willem?”

Willem lunged, his hands out in front of him. He meant to grab Devorast by his filthy red hair and drag him down to the mud. He meant to rip the man’s head off. He wanted to taste Devorast’s blood, to gouge out his eyes, to rip his spleen from his still-warm guts.

But something stopped him in mid-air with the force of a battering ram. He’d only barely registered a glow in the air like some sort of phosphorescent mist.

If he’d had any air in his lungs it would have been driven from him by the impact of his chest, but instead he simply flew backward through the air, whirling in the driving rain. He hit the ground in a rolling confusion of limbs and scattered stones, but was quickly back on his feet.

He screeched a hollow, atonal battle-cry across the dark distance between him and Devorast, but the human didn’t stand and fight. Instead, he turned and jumped. It was a jump no human should have been capable ofboth too high and too far. He landed with uncertain footing on a tall pile of broken stone blocks, and turned to look back at Willem.

Willem began to close the distance between them in whatever rough approximation of running he was capable of. His feet slipped in the mud and he staggered and grunted. Devorast stood high on the mound, watching him.

“Willem, is that you?” the human shouted over the rumble of thunder and the drumming of the rain. “Willem? What’s happened to you? What have you become?”

“What do you care?” Willem coughed out, then repeated it in a feral, shrieking wail. He hadn’t willed himself to speak, and when he tried again his brain wouldn’t send words to his mouth. He lumbered toward Devorast, toward the man he was created to kill.

“Willem,” Devorast called. “Do you understand me?”

But Willem Korvan staggered on, his mouth open, his eyes rolling in his skull. The cold and the pain and every hideous sensation that came from his withering, deteriorating, rotting body tore through him. But instead of stopping him or slowing him even, it was the pain and the misery that drove him on.

He clambered up the side of the mound and Devorast looked down at him. It was too dark for Willem to see his face, and the undead thing he’d become wouldn’t have recognized anything but fear in Devorast’s expression. And that was the one thing that, even in his crumbling state, Willem knew he would never see. Devorast might pity him, hate him, or be disgusted by him. He might be disappointed. But he would never be afraid.

“Willem, stop,” Devorast said, not having to yell so loudly, with Willem only a few feet beneath him.

Maybe that was pity in his voice. Maybe he was disappointed.

Willem let loose a rattling, throat-shredding scream and grabbed a piece of broken wooden brace that protruded from the pile of rubble. With a strength granted him by the Red Wizard’s necromancy, Willem yanked the board free of the pile. The rocks on which Devorast stood shifted then fell, toppling the human off. He fell backward, arms pinwheeling, and disappeared from sight over the other side of the mound.

Willem scrambled to the top, the board hanging from his open hand by a long, thick sliver of wood that had come loose and impaled him through the palm of his hand. When he tried to use that hand to climb with, the splinter broke and the board fell free, but wood stayed in his hand.

He didn’t care.

Once atop the mound of rubble, Willem looked down. Devorast lay on his back, his chest heaving, his mouth open wide. He struggled to breathe and to sit up. Willem hissed and leaped from the top of the mound.

Devorast coughed then sputtered something, the sound of his voice lost to another crash of thunder. Rainwater and spittle few from the man’s lips.

Willem was stopped once more in midair. The force of the glowing mistmist in the shape of the head of a ram, its curved horns traced with shimmering luminescence-tipped him up and drove him into the mound. He hit hard, and some combination of bones snapped. Willem screamed out of some half-buried instinct, though the pain was no worse than always.

He slid to the muddy ground in front of Ivar Devorast, who scurried away from him, still not able to stand, and still desperately gasping for a decent breath. Willem rose to his feet and took a step toward Devorast. The human spat out a word, the same word that had conjured the spectral ram, and Willem steeled himself for another blow, but it didn’t come.

Something passed through Devorast’s gaze that might have been fearmight have been. Or was he simply annoyed? He held a hand to his face, a ring gleaming on one finger, and spoke the word again, but again the magic did not appear. He was left scrambling away on his back, gasping for breath and helpless.