Scream of Stone Read Free Page A

Harkhuf’s greatest achievement as an alchemist was when he stained his fingers green—an accident that had left him permanently marked but otherwise unharmed. Harkhuf wasn’t even good enough at his trade to have blown his fingers off, which is what would have happened if the concoction had done what he was hoping it would do.
    And that was the man Horemkensi trusted to place Surero’s smokepowder. No wonder the crowds had grown bigger and more bloodthirsty.
    Someone shouted orders. Surero didn’t recognize his voice. It wasn’t Harkhuf. Surero briefly held out hope that one of the foremen—one of the men he’d trained himself— had realized that the holes were too shallow and was putting a stop to it, but that wasn’t the case. The smokepowder had been placed and the man was simply warning the workers to step back as he lit the fuse.
    Surero bobbed from side to side to see around the heads of the people in front of him. He watched the workers walk too slowly away from the holes. He couldn’t see or hear the fuse from where he stood, and again all he could do was hope that it hadn’t yet been lit. The men stopped far too short of the safe margin Surero had worked out in his head.
    The alchemist sucked in a breath and held it. The dandy with the fur muff looked at him with wide, expectant eyes, and Surero turned away from him. He thought again that he should scream out a warning, but he knew it would do no good. If the fuse was already lit, it was too late. If it
    wasn’t, his would have only been one more voice from the viewing stand—a sound all the canal builders had long since learned to ignore.
    Before he could decide which god to pray to that he was wrong, the first of the kegs erupted in a rumble. The hiss of dirt and rocks in the air masked the excited gasps and nervous laughs of the spectators. The next went off, followed immediately by the third. Surero kept his eyes glued to the last in the line, the one closest to the group of workers and their cart.
    Too late the men realized they were too close. They must have instinctively gauged the size of the previous explosions and matched that to the distance they stood from the last hole. They turned and started to run. When the last keg exploded, a wave of dirt and loose stones, broken by the force of the explosion, tore into them. They were lost in the earthy brown cloud, their screams barely audible over the deafening thunder of the blast.
    The crowd at the viewing stand held its breath, then sighed as one, disappointed that the very cloud that caused the bloody deaths of the innocent men blocked their view of the carnage. They couldn’t see stones driven through flesh and bone to explode out of dying bodies in a shower of blood.
    One woman had the audacity to scream. The sound was theatrical and insincere, and Surero wondered how long she’d practiced it. He heard a man laugh, and the gorge rose in his throat. He closed his eyes and turned away, bumping into someone. He was shoved and almost tripped, scolded and berated, as he pushed his way off the viewing stand. Surero didn’t turn to see the dead men that littered the edge of the great trench. He pressed his hands tightly over his ears to block out the sound of the people laughing and talking in excited, loud whispers. He fled not only from the bloodshed and stupidity, but from the dense air of satisfaction that hung over the viewing stand.

4
    6 Hammer, the Year of the Gauntlet (1369 DR) Pristal Towers, Innarlith
    The woman sat on the floor, her legs splayed under her, a simple silk dressing gown pooled around her. She wept, tears streaming down her face, her muted sobs echoing in Phyrea’s head. The woman, made of violet light, didn’t look at Phyrea, didn’t seem to notice her at all.
    Her baby died, the old woman said, her voice coming from nowhere.
    “I know,” Phyrea whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
    She got no response to that. The woman continued to cry, and Phyrea knew she had been crying