Scream of Stone

47

18 Alturiak, the Year of Lightning Storms (1374 DR) Hungste Province, Shou Lung

I expected them to be suspicious,” Pristoleph said, “to be less welcoming.”

He looked at Devorast, who quickly drew a series of broad strokes on a parchment folio spread out on the red-enameled wood deck of the strangely-shaped boat. A Shou crewman slipped behind him, bowing as he passed, a vacant smile frozen on his face.

“I still don’t understand why you like it here,” said the ransar.

Pristoleph put the fine porcelain cup to his lips and reveled in the boiling intensity of the fragrant tea, waiting for Devorast to answer.

“They have ideas,” Devorast said, his hand pausing for the briefest moment over the parchment.

“Ideas?”

“I’ve seen them pack smokepowder into a tube,” Devorast said, still not looking up from his drawing, “and attach something like fletching on one end so it looks like an arrow. When they ignite the smokepowder, the arrow flies on its own, but faster than any arrow I’ve ever seen. They call it a ‘hud jidn’.”

Pristoleph smiled and nodded. He blinked and looked up into the clear azure sky. The silence that followed was interrupted only by the gentle, hollow lapping of the river water on the boat’s hull. The crewmen were completely silent.

“This boat is interesting, too,” Devorast said.

Pristoleph chuckled, and Devorast actually smiled.

“I should get you away from that canal more often,” Pristoleph said. “Impossible as it seems, you actually have it in you to relax.”

“I’m always relaxed,” Devorast replied, and Pristoleph didn’t think he was joking.

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d be so comfortable with the Shou ways,” the ransar said. “I understand they hold to a rigid caste systemone where a man like you might never realize his full potential under the weight of tradition.”

“Cormyr is hardly different,” Devorast said.

“But Innarlith is?”

Devorast stopped drawing, looked up at Pristoleph, and said, “Innarlith is very different. In Innarlith, a man like you can be king. In Cormyr, you have to be born to it. You can be an infant and still be king if you have the right blood in your veins.”

“I’m no king.”

Devorast’s look made it clear he didn’t accept that.

“But you’ve told me you never want to be ransar,” Pristoleph said. “You don’t want power over men.”

“I don’t,” Devorast replied, continuing to draw. “I want to build a canal.”

“I know, I know,” Pristoleph said. “And building it is more important than it being finished.”

“No,” Devorast said with something that might have been a sighbut Devorast never sighed. “I fully intend to finish it. You know that.”

Pristoleph watched the strange trees pass by on the far riverbank and asked, “Do you know what those trees are called?”

“Bamboo.”

“And the river?”

“Chan Lu,” Devorast said.

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“How long have we been away?” asked Pristoleph. “Almost three months.”

Pristoleph took a deep breath and held it, letting his mind go completely blank. Devorast stopped drawing and the sudden cessation of the charcoal on parchment made Pristoleph exhale and look over at what the man had drawn. Though he was looking at it upside down, Pristoleph could make out the outlines of a tall tower with a peaked roof, not unlike the towers of his own home in Innarlith, but Devorast had drawn in some kind of window or something, a perfect circle near the top of the tower marked off in twelve even increments. He didn’t ask Devorast about the drawing. He’d learned not to.

“I think Marek Rymiit is trying to kill us both,” Pristoleph said.

Devorast turned to a blank sheet of parchment and began to draw again.

“I may have made a mistake by being too close to him,” Pristoleph admitted. “I’ve grown too dependent on his magic.”

“I don’t know Marek Rymiit,” Devorast said.

“I don’t know whether you’d love him or hate him.”

“I’d neither love nor hate him.”

With a smile, Pristoleph said, “That’s probably the principal reason why he wants to kill you.”

Devorast ignored that and continued his drawing. Pristoleph didn’t try to interpret the wild but controlled lines and shapes.

“He uses people,” Pristoleph said. “I think that’s why we worked together so well. I use people, too.”

“Are you ashamed of that?”

Pristoleph was too surprised by the question to answer it right away. After a long silence, he simply shrugged.

“You can only use people who allow themselves to be used,” Devorast said. “And anyone who would allow that is not worthy of your shame.”

Pristoleph laughed even though Devorast was entirely serious.

“This is a strange idea,” Devorast asked Pristoleph after a while, “these ‘holidays’ of yours. How long do they last?”