Scream of Stone

71

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

He isn’t there! the sad woman screamed, the “sound” echoing in Phyrea’s head and setting her teeth on edge. He doesn’t love you. He’ll use you. He’ll ruin you. He’ll kill you. He’ll bleed you dry.

They all do, the old woman said. Turn, girl. Turn away.

Let her go, the little girl squealed. Let her die by his hand, or the creature’s. Let her die and come with us that way. Let her join us covered in mud.

No, the man with the scar on his face warned. She must die at Berrywilde.

Phyrea screamed into the blast of thunder and kicked her horse forward. The animal stumbled on the loose rocks and started at a flash of lightning. She forced the horse’s head down and screamed again, anger flooding through her, washing away all the fear and doubt.

The flamberge bounced against the saddle horn, clattering in its scabbard. She grabbed it and steadied it as the horse calmedat least calmed enough for her to urge it deeper into the ruin of the canal.

“What creature?” she screamed into the night, then half-screamed, half-grunted when a ghost appeared in front of her. She pulled her horse around the ghost of the old woman.

Go home, girl, the withered old crone wheezed, there’s nothing for you here.

Phyrea shook her head and let a frustrated growl rumble from her throat. As she passed, the old woman’s face changed. Phyrea had to turn in her saddle to see it, and she blinked in the cold, driving rain. The old woman’s face twisted into a hideous, monstrous mask like the face of a demon, all fangs and open, worm-ridden sores.

Phyrea yanked her eyes off the horrifying visage and urged her horse into the storm. She didn’t know where she was going.

“Where are you?” she howled into the night. Her body shook with a sob that almost knocked her from the saddle. She began to weep. “Where are you?”

Show her, said the man with the scar on his face.

Phyrea pulled her horse up short. The beast was only too happy to oblige. Fear made it quiver under her. It kept its head down, scanning what it could see of the ground in the lightning-punctuated darkness. It shifted, desperate for footing in the mud and loose stones.

“Show me,” Phyrea sobbed.

But if she dies here, the little boy said. If Willem touches her…

Willem? Phyrea thought.

She saw the boy standing at the top of a hill made of the sundered remains of the canal. His missing arm had been replaced by a ghastly tentacle that waved and curled with an intelligence all his own. The violet light was tinged with green. His face was locked in a rigid death maska silent’ scream of incalculable agony.

Phyrea sobbed again, “Show me. Help me.”

Show her, said the man with the scar on hisno, Phyrea realized. His “voice” was different.

She dug her heels into her horse’s flanks and drove it toward the hideous phantasm of the little boy. The mount fetched up near the base of the mound and pulled around to the left. Phyrea held on for dear life, almost sliding offthen she hopped back straight onto the saddle, flinching away from the ghostly tentacle. The little boy had disappeared only to reappear in the air right next to her.

Phyrea’s attention was drawn up to the sky above her. The ghosts whirled in the air, their arms and legs flailing as though they were falling, but they spun in circles-opposing orbits that intersected with each other so that Phyrea winced several times in the space of a few heartbeats, certain that two or more of them would collide.

They had all changedtheir mouths lined with fangs, their eyes bulging and distorted. Hands shrank to feeble claws or grew to swollen, diseased proportions.

There, the new voice said.

Phyrea’s head turned of its own accord, as though gently nudged that way. Lightning flashed and she saw a man scrambling through the mud on his back, and another figure stalking up to him, murder coming off him in waves.

“Ivar,” she gasped.

The sword… the voice whispered.

Phyrea screamed, “Ivar!” and jammed her heels into the horse’s flanks, whipping its neck with the reins.