The Devil You Know
Author: Erin Evans
Date: 2016-10-04 07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Forgotten Realms
Description: In the long-awaited finale of her riveting Brimstone Angels series, Erin M. Evans thrusts her signature character Farideh into an epic battle of good versus evil, rife with deception and intrigue, where the question is as much who is evil, as how they can be defeated. The stakes have never been higher, and the fallout will shake the Hells, and through them, the Forgotten Realms. Before Farideh took a devil's pact, before she was Chosen by the god-king of the Hells, before any of this started, there was Bryseis Kakistos, the original Brimstone Angel, first of Farideh's line. Now, at the end, th
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Publishing
Rights: Copyright © 2016 by Wizards of the Coast LLC

ALSO BY ERIN M. EVANS

• • •

Ed Greenwood Presents Waterdeep:
THE GOD CATCHER

• • •

The Brimstone Angels Saga

BRIMSTONE ANGELS

LESSER EVILS

THE ADVERSARY

FIRE IN THE BLOOD

ASHES OF THE TYRANT

THE DEVIL YOU KNOW
©2016 Wizards of the Coast LLC.

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All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All Wizards of the Coast characters, character names, and the distinctive likenesses thereof are property of Wizards of the Coast LLC.

Cartography by: Mike Schley
Cover art by: Min Yum

ISBN: 978-0-7869-6594-6
ISBN: 978-0-7869-6604-2 (ebook)
620B6775000001 EN

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v3.1

For Kristen and for Julia, the very best sisters.
For Idris and for Edmond, the very best brothers.
And for Kevin, the only one.

Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map

Part I: An Urchin
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Part II: The Night Merchant
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Part III: The Pact
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Part IV: The Devil
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Part V: The Price
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part VI: Hierarchy
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Part VII: Blood
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Part VIII: Ascension
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Part IX: Faithless
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Part X: Betrayal
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Part XI: Escape
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Part XII: The Vessel
Chapter 27
Part XIII: Renewal

Acknowledgments

PART I

AN URCHIN

113 Mirtul, the Year of the Weeping Moon (1339 DR)
Darmshall, Vaasa

• • •

Where there was one little tiefling on the streets of Darmshall, the other would be close by—everyone knew that. Bisera waved her twin back out of sight. If anyone so much as spotted Alyona, she wouldn’t be much of a lookout. Alyona bit her lip, but tucked herself deeper into the bunch of lilac bushes that had yet to bloom beside the side entrance of the temple.

Eight-year-old Bisera turned her attention to the three corpses laid out behind the temple of Selûne. Adventurers, dead in a tavern brawl, no one to claim them. The watch had taken the best things off them—blades, jewels, anything magical. A big human man, a half-orc woman, and an elf, who was one or the other or something in between. Didn’t matter, they were all dead.

Bisera slipped her little hands quickly through their pockets—adventurers always had pockets enough that the watch missed a few coins, a few trinkets. Silver on the woman, and a little whistle shaped like a sparrow. Just copper on the man, but a lot of it, and a dagger tucked deep into his boot. The elf had only a bunch of junk—pouches of powders and cobwebs and dried leaves and inks. She shoved her hand deep into the pocket inside the elf’s robe, all the way up to her armpit—that wasn’t right. Her hand closed on something heavy and thick and flat.

A book. Scorch-marked and dog-eared and chased with flaking gold leaf. She opened it, and a faint breeze of soot and wintergreen stirred the spring air. Bisera shivered.

“Oy, demonspawn!” Bisera dropped the book, kicked it under the corpse’s cot with one heavy hoof. She turned to see a trio of human boys storming toward her from the market street—Vainen, Marko, and Torger. She balled her hands into fists.

“Where’s your shadow?” Marko demanded. None of them would be called boys for long, but Marko was by far the biggest, the one she ought to be most afraid of.

“She didn’t want to help,” Bisera lied. “Too much of a risk.”

“Here’s your risk,” Torger said. “What you get? Hand it over.”

Bisera grit her teeth and thought about head-butting him, right in the stones. “I need it. I’m hungry.”

Vainen grabbed hold of her by one sharp horn and gave her a little shake. “You hand it over. This is our street and so these are our pickings, demonspawn. Thief.”

“You know what we do to thieves?” Torger chimed in. Marko cracked his knuckles in a way that was only half as menacing as Bisera was sure he meant it to be. Vainen let go of her and she fell to her knees on the dirty ice.

“Fine.” She reversed her pockets, dumping out two silvers and four coppers. She held them out to Vainen as though they were a weapon she could pierce him with. He snatched them, testing the weight in his hand.

“All of it.”

Bisera bit her lip, as if she were going to cry. She reached into her shirt and took out the whistle that looked like a sparrow. She held it a moment—pretty little thing. She hadn’t even gotten to play it. Torger snatched it out of her hand and blew sharply on it. “Dross,” he said. He dropped it on the cobblestones and crushed it into an unrecognizable lump. Despite herself. a flutter of sadness like a little bird taking off went through the tiefling child.

“Your cooperation is appreciated,” Vainen said. “Stlarn off before we change our minds.”

Still on the cobbles, Bisera wiped her face. While the boys circled up, arguing over who got the silvers and who got the coppers, she hooked the book with one arm and shoved it under her shirt, bundling her cloak around her. She stomped off toward Alyona’s hiding place.

One of the priestesses, a silverstar with her dark hair cropped close under a pale fur cap, stood in the doorway, considering Alyona as she spoke rapidly and animatedly. “That’s just what they say, the priests of Tempus,” Alyona finished, her voice rising with anxiety. “Is it so? Or does Selûne say different?”

The priestess looked up at Bisera and raised a thick eyebrow. “All things that seek the light in the darkness. Even the shadowed. Whatever the light of the moon touches, she protects. Now—”

“Some boys are messing with those dead people,” Bisera said. “I told them not to, but they didn’t stop.”

The priestess’s expression darkened, too shadowed for even Selûne, Bisera thought. She nudged Alyona aside, storming toward the rear of the temple.

“Come on,” Bisera hissed, pulling on her sister’s sleeve. They hurried up the street, away from the boys and the priestess and anyone who would bother them.

“I’m sorry,” Alyona said. “She came out and asked what I was doing, but then I heard Torger and I didn’t know how to keep her away and warn you too … Oh, tell me you’re all right?”

“I’m fine.” Bisera tucked her arm around her sister. “You did your job. She would have been more trouble than those idiots.”

“Did they hurt you?”

“Not badly.” They ducked under the wall of the baths, beside where the fire to warm the water was kept. Bisera snuggled up against the toasty wall while Alyona kneeled opposite her.

“Did they take it all?” she asked.

Bisera smiled and reached into her shirt for the book and for the little pouch she’d sewn under her arm. “One silver and fifteen copper. And a book. Best yet. Those three are such dummies—I just happened to find one silver fewer than there were boys?” She snorted. “They’re probably still trying to figure out if you can clip a silver into thirds.”

“You have to be careful,” Alyona said gently. “They’re more dangerous than you think.”

“So long as they keep being as stupid as I think, I don’t mind.”

“Do you want to go buy some food?”

“It’ll be cheaper later,” Bisera said. They’d learned already that if they looked like they could afford too much, people got suspicious and tried to call the watch. But some little beggar children with a few coppers buying bony dried fish and potatoes full of eyes didn’t gain much notice—and sometimes you could pocket some sweets while they weren’t noticing.

Bisera pulled the book onto her lap. Her fingertips tingled as she turned the gilt-edged pages. She could read, albeit slowly, but this was like nothing she’d ever seen. Magic. Spells. Which of them would give those bully boys something to fear? she wondered. How long would it take her to figure it out?

Alyona curled up next to her, considering the spells. “Who do you think they were?”

“Who?”

“The dead ones. Do you think they were friends?”

Bisera turned another page. Friends, enemies, acquaintances—it didn’t matter, they were dead, and alive they would have been so much less useful to the tiefling twins. Crueler even, perhaps. But Alyona studied the page with such sadness, the loneliness of life in Darmshall etched on every sigh. Bisera put her arm around her sister. “Whoever they were, they’re our heroes now,” she said, pulling the book closer. “We’ll never forget them.”

• • •

1

27 Nightal, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR)
Djerad Thymar, Tymanther

NONE OF THIS IS REAL. THAT THOUGHT CHASED FARIDEH’S EVERY WORRY, every plan, every panic. Her mind felt as if someone had peeled it away from her numb, mechanical body and her heart, which could only scream and scream and scream. None of this is real.

“I have to go,” Havilar said, with a firmness that didn’t match her trembling voice. “It should be me.”

Farideh shook her head. “No. I can’t let you.”

Farideh shut her eyes, trying to clear the memory from her mind, but it hung there as if suspended in cobwebs, and Sairché still sat in the center of Havilar’s unmade bed instead of Havi. The cambion prowled her nightmares often enough, but never like this—wounded belly newly bandaged, pallid and hollow with blood loss. Still, her gold eyes regarded Farideh with cunning. Farideh didn’t trust Sairché and Sairché returned the sentiment.

“You can talk,” Farideh said, “or I can break the circle.”

The cambion’s golden eyes flicked over the tiefling warlock as if she would evade the inevitable—it was only the protective circle Farideh had laid around Sairché that shielded her from the effects of the cursed dagger that had been buried in her gut. If the circle were so much as smudged, her erinyes half sisters would pour out of the Nine Hells and strike Sairché down, killing the oathbreaker marked by their dead mother’s blade.

Sairché glanced once at Mehen standing behind Farideh’s left shoulder, once at Ilstan positioned at her right. One unswervingly devoted to Farideh, one too mad to claim. No comfort to be had, no play to make—even Sairché had to recognize she was cornered, Farideh thought.

“Where do you want me to start?’ Sairché said.

Bryseis Kakistos looked out of Sairché’s eyes: “I need a body. Just temporarily. I’ll give it back, perhaps in better shape than I found it … It needs to be one of you. You were made for me. It won’t be so difficult to maintain control. It won’t damage you so badly. But you have that barrier on you. You have to be willing. You have to ask me in.”

“Where have they gone?” Mehen demanded.

“I don’t know,” Sairché said. “You want to find out for certain, you need to scry the lordling. If I had to guess, I’d say she’s headed for a fortress owned by one of her former followers. Up in the Snowflake Mountains, near Erlkazar.”

Havilar said, “It’s the only thing that makes sense. You know what’s going on better than I do. You’re the smart one—you’ll find a way to stop all of this. To fix it. And I’m the strong one. I can … I’ve done this before.” Havilar’s hand squeezed her own tight. “Just figure it out, all right?”

“A lich is a matter of some difficulty,” Ilstan Nyaril said. “They are wicked and tricky and not to be trusted, but oh, the magic they remember, the spells they can speak …”

“You should know the weaknesses of the ghost,” Farideh said.

Sairché scowled. “I thought I did. But as you may notice, she managed to overtake me, get me cursed, and leave me here for dead. I assume she’s taken a different strategy with your sister.”

There are two pieces still trapped inside you from that moment of error, buried in the layers of your own souls, Bryseis Kakistos had said. That’s what makes you interesting to the devils. That’s what makes you interesting to Asmodeus.

In Farideh’s mind, every awful moment came again and again: Sairché’s arrival in Djerad Thymar as the vessel of Bryseis Kakistos, the Brimstone Angel—Farideh and her twin, Havilar’s, great-great-grandmother. The threats. The terrible revelations. The moment when Havilar volunteered to be the one the ghost possessed, to save their loved ones and buy Farideh time to solve this puzzle. The feeling of having a part of her soul—albeit an alien part, a fragment of Bryseis Kakistos—torn away. Watching Havilar—no longer Havilar—vanish with her lover, Brin, and Zoonie, Havi’s hellhound, in tow.

Do you know what happens when the king is stolen out of the Nine Hells?

How could you have let this happen? Farideh thought, at Sairché, at herself.

“Bryseis Kakistos made it sound as if she had a plan for Asmodeus,” she said instead. “What exactly is she doing?”

Sairché cleared her throat. “Bryseis Kakistos is collecting heirs of the Toril Thirteen, the most powerful and potent ones available. That’s the core of her ritual. Through them, she can make the purest link to Asmodeus and the Nine Hells’ power.”

“How many has she found?” Farideh asked. How long do I have?

“In her possession?” Sairché asked. “One. And that’s stretching things. One of the original Toril Thirteen, the warlock Phrenike, persists as a lich—it’s her castle Bryseis Kakistos must have fled to. Given she’s still alive—for certain definitions of the word anyway—she’s the surest link. She’s found four others—the heirs of Caldura Elyria, Pradir Ril, Margarites, and Titus Greybeard.”

“Five,” Farideh said. “She has Havilar.” And me, she thought, and she knew in that moment if she could save Havilar by agreeing to Bryseis Kakistos’s ritual of revenge—the powerful magic she meant to use to destroy Asmodeus, the king of the Hells, once and for all—Farideh would go to her grave without question.

But Sairché gave her a withering look. “You’ll recall she has things for the both of you to do.”

“What things?” Mehen demanded.

“She needs another body,” Sairché said. “Another heir. And your daughter’s workshop is in perfect working order, so to speak.”

Farideh blushed scarlet. That is your task, my dear—difficult and simple together, the ghost had said as though she were a commander handing down tasks to her subordinates. A body for herself to be reborn in, a body for Havilar if something should go awry. Just as she and Havilar had been made, a vessel to hold her reincarnated spirit, twenty-seven years ago. It’s what you are for. You have the cambion. He would do. If I can free the Harper, all the better. Not as handsome, but steadier.

The reminder of Dahl’s absence slipped through her. However it grieved her, too many other things hammered cracks into her heart.

“It’s not the worst idea,” Sairché pointed out. “She’d be a lot less trouble in a newborn babe’s body. And it means you’re not number five.” She looked at the door. “Where is Lorcan?”

“How long is it going to take her to find the other heirs?” Farideh asked.

Sairché shrugged. “I don’t know. Yourself and your sister excluded, it isn’t terribly difficult to track down warlocks. The need for the most potent connection might force her to search a little more. What’s going to be trickier is that she hasn’t discovered the focus.”

“What does that mean?”

“Something for the ritual to affect,” Ilstan said, in the dreamy way he spoke. “Something to give the power to—it must go somewhere, that is the nature of things—like a river or a wind or a path, it must lead to something.”

Sairché looked at Farideh as if Ilstan were not to be believed. “The ritual inverts the warlock pact and pulls power out of the Nine Hells beyond what it normally should,” she said. “That alone is meant to weaken Asmodeus. But the power has to go somewhere, otherwise it’s liable to loop itself back through the warlocks.” She waved a hand. “The specifics aren’t important. She needs somewhere to force the power to go.”

A chill with no clear source ran down Farideh’s spine. “Where?”

A wicked smile played on Sairché’s mouth. “Ask your war wizard friend. Or rather, ask him to ask his friend.”

Ilstan Nyaril, Chosen of Azuth, regarded Sairché as if he’d only just noticed she was speaking—which might well have been the case. More often than not, the god of spellcasters spoke in Ilstan’s thoughts, a constant murmur of madness.

When the Spellplague ripped through Toril a hundred years ago and the goddess of magic had died, Azuth, the Lord of Spells, had perished as well, his divinity devoured by the king of the Nine Hells, the last step in raising Asmodeus from the station of archdevil to that of a god.

But within the last year, as strange happenings rocked the land and the Chosen of the gods walked the plane, Azuth—it seemed—had awakened, whispering madly in the brain of a single talented wizard of war. Ilstan had been convinced that Farideh was his enemy, that to kill Farideh was to save Azuth from Asmodeus. Farideh knew it wasn’t long before she would have to tell him what she’d learned as Bryseis Kakistos’s memories were torn out of her: that Azuth did not truly die, that he persisted within Asmodeus.

“She wants to feed the power into Azuth,” Farideh said quietly. “Kill Asmodeus from the inside out.”

“Got it in one,” Sairché said. “Which means she needs something connected to him on a very powerful level. She needs the staff of Azuth.”

Ilstan suddenly broke toward Sairché, eyes wide and mad. Farideh caught his sleeve as he hissed, “Where is it?”

Sairché snorted, all bravado. “If I knew that—if anyone knew that—we wouldn’t be sitting here.”

“Guess,” Farideh said.

The cambion smiled at her, as though she meant to test the strength of Farideh’s resolve. Try it, Farideh thought. Whatever pity, whatever empathy she might have had for Sairché, doomed as she was by her bad luck and worse choices, the previous night had destroyed it.

“I will let him go,” Farideh warned.

“Asmodeus,” Sairché said, “is not a fool. He got rid of it—inasmuch as you can get rid of such a thing. A god’s weapon is like a part of them. You destroy it and it may well turn up somewhere else where you weren’t expecting it. I hear it’s frozen in the heart of Prince Levistus’s glacier. I hear it’s lying in the bottom of the deepest lava pit in Nessus. I hear,” she said, with not a little significance, “that he gave it to a certain trusted mortal to hide, believing she didn’t know what it was.”

Mehen spat a curse of Draconic. “You said he wasn’t a fool.”

“And I said I would guess,” Sairché retorted. “She doesn’t have it now, I can tell you that, and she’s starting at the same point as you when it comes to remedying it. The difference being—I hope, at any rate—that she is mad enough and angry enough to do this ritual, not knowing whether it only angers Asmodeus or ends up destroying a large chunk of Toril and the planes above, and you are cautious enough to avoid such a thing.”

“Why did you ally with her if she’s so mad?”

“Caution breeds weakness,” Sairché said. “If she succeeded, then I had a very precious gift for the right archdevil in the right circumstances. If she didn’t—and let’s be clear, that is where I would have laid my coin—then I had a traitor to hand His Majesty. Clearly I miscalculated.” She considered Farideh a moment. “Your turn: What exactly are you planning to do?”

Ilstan grew still. “I find I think I need solitude,” he said meekly. “Can you lock the room?”

“Pardon me,” Farideh said, a little acidly, “I have a guest to attend to.” She strode from the room, Ilstan on her arm, knowing Mehen would follow, knowing Sairché’s curses would chase her, knowing she didn’t have an answer to Sairché’s question, not yet.

“The staff …” Ilstan said as they reached what had been Mehen’s room. He held out his hands for the shackles he wore when the madness of Azuth’s gift ate at him. “She doesn’t know where it is?”

“I don’t think so,” Farideh said. “Does Azuth?”

Ilstan’s eyes seemed to gaze far into the fabric of the planes. “He remembers it, the original, and the thing it became, the symbol and the strength. The feeling of it being pulled from him in the fall … No.” He blinked, focused on Farideh once more. “He doesn’t.”

Farideh nodded. She hadn’t expected anything different. “We’ll find it,” she assured Ilstan. “Forget the shackles.”

Ilstan looked uncomfortable. “Then lock the door.”

“Of course. You have enough to keep enchanting?”

“Enough,” the wizard said. She locked the door tight and turned to find Mehen waiting for her.

“The staff is the choke point.” Her father’s deep voice shook as he spoke, and Farideh’s stomach knotted at that. “That’s where we can stop her—there are a great deal more heirs than staves.”

“Mostly,” Farideh agreed. “The, um, Kakistos heirs.” Even the sound of those words made her temper rise. “There are only five, or there were when I … When the pact started. Me and Havi and three others. And they should be easier to find.”

And they might also include her birth parents—she and Havilar had been left at the gates of a remote village. Abandoned and exposed to the harsh winter, they would have died had a dragonborn exile returning from patrol not found them and claimed them when no one else would. Somewhere in the world was at least one Kakistos heir who had signed on with Bryseis Kakistos’s first attempt to ruin Asmodeus, to resurrect the Brimstone Angel with a child bred specifically to be her vessel.

Easier to find than a god’s weapon, Farideh thought. But still she’d rather dive into the deepest lava pit in Nessus than face the people she descended from.

Mehen’s tongue fluttered behind his parted teeth, and his anxiety made Farideh’s build. “We should just find this fortress,” he said. “Storm the gates and get your sister and Brin back safe. Let the gods worry about themselves.”

Do you know what happens when the spark is stolen out of a god? The god is killed. Destroyed.

Farideh shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know that we can get the ghost out. We’d need a priest—a more powerful one than we know.” Havilar had been a willing vessel, a participant in the spell. While a priest could turn out an unwilling possession, it seemed as if it should be much harder to do this time.

It should have been me, she thought before she could stop herself.

“Dumuzi?” she suggested. “Would he …”

Mehen shook his head. “Not a priest, or so he says.” He rubbed a hand over his face, knocking loose one of the jade piercings he’d started wearing again in the frill of his jaw, a mark of Clan Verthisathurgiesh. He fumbled with the jewelry a moment, unable to get it back in. With a roar of frustration, he hurled the plug across the room, where it plinked against the brazier.

Mehen sank down onto the couch, and Farideh tucked herself close beside him. He held her as if she were a little girl again, and rubbed his bare jaw frill against the crown of her head.

“Promise me,” he said, his voice thick. “Promise me you won’t rush in this time. Promise you’ll tell me first before you do anything—just tell me, if nothing else.”

Farideh held her father. The truth was she had a hundred different plans, all spinning themselves into sense within her head, all at odds with one another.

Do you know what happens when the spark is stolen out of a god?

If Bryseis Kakistos succeeded, then the god of sin would be destroyed, and wasn’t that for the best?

Do you know what happens when the king is stolen out of the Nine Hells?

If Bryseis Kakistos succeeded, the Nine Hells would fall into chaos and war might spill out over the planes, and so she had to be stopped, didn’t she?

If she didn’t stop Bryseis Kakistos, Asmodeus might do it himself, no matter the consequences to Havilar.

If she stopped Bryseis Kakistos, what would happen to Azuth?

“I promise,” Farideh said to Mehen, while her heart screamed and screamed and screamed. She hoped she wasn’t lying.

• • •

BRIN FOUND IT hard to look at Havilar. One moment, he could pretend that the woman he loved was still here, still in control of her form. She’d be looking out at the frozen vista of the Snowflake Mountains, her expression still and unconcerned, and she might be Havilar.

But then she’d notice him watching and she’d smile, and it wouldn’t be Havilar at all, even though it was her face the ghost smiled out of. Perhaps to another the difference would be too subtle to mark, but to Brin, it was the difference between the heavens and the Hells.

“Are you looking for something?” Bryseis Kakistos asked with the voice of the woman he loved. She stood in the library of the fortress she’d brought him to, standing over the lich whose fortress it was and flanked by her servants, a pair of char-black skeletons whose bones had been chased with gold and silver, their eyes replaced with staring bright gems. At her feet lay an enormous black mastiff with glowing eyes. Zoonie lifted her head as Brin came in, her tail thumping against the floor.

“Aside from your designated task, of course,” Phrenike drawled. Her eyes, two pinpoints of light within the sockets of her withered skull, managed still to convey all the former warlock’s disdain and suspicion.

“That’s why I’m here, saer,” Brin said with every ounce of grace he could muster. His tutors could be forgiven for not foreseeing that Lord Aubrin Crownsilver would have need of their skills in the forgotten castle of a tiefling lich and the most infamous warlock to walk Toril, particularly since he was managing all right so far by pretending the two ladies were ranked duchesses. “If you please, I didn’t bring my spellbooks.”

Bryseis Kakistos tilted her head. “You cast spells?”

“Rituals,” Brin corrected. “Not many, but I find it wisest not to leave blades on the table. So to speak. I find myself stymied, saers, without access to a scrying or a sending ritual. Would you have such spells?”

Bryseis Kakistos looked over at Phrenike who waved a skeletal hand at the library. “Oh somewhere. Everything’s somewhere.”

“Would you mind if I looked around?” Brin asked. He kneeled to scratch the hellhound behind her ears, through the muzzle. Zoonie licked the air between them, tail thumping happily. The hellhound had been a tool Havilar had gained from her status as Chosen of Asmodeus, a status that belonged now—had perhaps always belonged—to Bryseis Kakistos. “And I could take Zoonie out for a run, if you wish.”

The face that looked down at him was one Havilar never made, puzzled and maternal and faintly amused. It made his stomach twist. “You really think of it as a pet,” she said.

“Havi adores her.”

Phrenike snorted. “What heirs you’ve got, Bryseis. A simpleton who plays with devil-dogs.”

Bryseis Kakistos turned on the lich, slowly, slowly. “A Nessian warhound. She’s charmed a beast I could guarantee was meant to savage her. A notable start, I’d say.” She flexed Havilar’s hands, the strong muscles of her arms shifting beneath golden skin. “Especially considering she’s spent far more of her efforts gaining skill with her blade. At her age, had we faced a demon lord or bargained with an archdevil?”

Phrenike was quiet. “I hadn’t.”

“That’s right,” Bryseis Kakistos said. “So don’t call my granddaughter a simpleton.” She gave Brin a sidelong look. “And besides all of that, she’s gained herself a prince.”

Brin was sure Phrenike rolled her eyes at that. He smiled in a way he hoped looked a little simple.

“The library?” he asked. “Can I search for the books?”

“You want me to let you wander my library?” Phrenike asked.

Yes, Brin thought. Whatever it took to find what he needed. “You could always show me the proper shelves.”

“No, no, don’t waste your time,” Bryseis Kakistos said. She paused a moment, as if steadying herself. “I require assistance.”

Two pops broke the quiet of the library. Zoonie came to her feet, eyes on the pair of imps hanging in the air between Brin and Bryseis Kakistos. The red one, Brin recognized. The dark one with the crooked nose, he did not.

“What do you need, my lady?” Mot asked.

“That’s better,” Bryseis Kakistos said. “All the rebellion burned out of you?”

“We would never rebel,” the darker imp said. “Order is paramount to devils.” It looked around the library. “Where did you get all of these books?”

“Bosh,” Mot said in a warning tone. “Not now.”

“My guest requires your assistance,” Bryseis Kakistos said. “He needs to find a fairly minor spellbook.”

“I beg your pardon?” Phrenike said. “You’re letting imps and bratty boys rifle through my things?”

Bryseis Kakistos clucked her tongue. “What could you possibly fear? The young man is a dabbler at best. The imps will keep an eye on him and expedite things. Besides, you have far more important things to do than play librarian.”

“Are you sure?” the lich asked tartly. “Perhaps the dabbler could find them both in one shot? Or maybe once you find Caisys, he’ll just manage everything again.”

“Don’t be sullen, Phrenike, it doesn’t suit you,” Bryseis Kakistos said. “You are the one I came to, not Caisys.”

“And he’s the one you gave the staff to.”

“Oh, Ilmater’s old bandages, are you jealous?” She noticed Brin and the imps still standing there and shooed them toward the books. “Get to it.”

“Eshata, Zoonie,” Brin said. Zoonie started after him, looking back as if unsure if she should follow or stay with this person who was and was not her mistress. Brin crouched down beside the enormous hound. “Come on, puppy girl.”

“You’re too soft on her,” Bryseis Kakistos said.

“Keeps her loyal,” Brin said, taking hold of the muzzle.

“A Nessian warhound is nothing but loyal,” Bryseis Kakistos said. “They are bred for it. They are also bred to be efficient killers—why waste that?” She turned back to Phrenike. “Have you got any prisoners or anything? Perhaps she could hunt them.”

Phrenike’s pinpoint eyes found Brin. “If I have prisoners, I drain them.”

“Thank you both, saers,” Brin said with a smooth bow. “I’ll let you know how I fare.” He took his leave, heading into the shelves, trailed by a hellhound and a pair of imps. There was no tutor in Cormyr who could have prepared him for that.

• • •

THIS ISN’T THE FUGUE PLANE, Alyona told Havilar. I promise.

Havilar remained skeptical. Bryseis Kakistos had taken her soul from her body with a stolen spell and left her in a field of nothing but endless, shining fog, where her breath didn’t matter and her glaive was nowhere to be found. If that didn’t sound like the plane of the dead, she didn’t know what did.

But we’re ghosts, Havilar said.

The silver-eyed tiefling woman gave a little waggle of her head. I am. You … I don’t know. You still have a body. You’re still connected to your body. So … It gets complicated, spirits, you know? A ghost is not a wraith is not a spirit is not a specter is not a … Her voice trailed away, before abruptly resuming. I suppose we’re both connected to your body though, because we’re both connected to my sister’s soul.

Like she did with Sairché?

Alyona frowned. Which is Sairché?

The cambion Bryseis Kakistos possessed.

Oh. Then no. Not like that. She sighed. I hate that name.

Havilar couldn’t have said she’d ever given a moment’s thought to Sairché’s name, so she sat on what felt like the ground, her arms wrapped around her knees. Everything felt close to numb, as if her mind were just suggesting to her what ground and legs and arms felt like. If she wasn’t dead, it was close. She said she’ll give my body back.

Then she will, Alyona said with a stubbornness that made Havilar doubtful. Odd enough she was sitting in a little pocket of a plane no one had a name for, but the fact that she was stuck here with the Brimstone Angel’s until-now unknown twin sister made the whole thing feel like a wild story. The fact that Alyona seemed to be nothing at all like her infamous sister—more like the kindly, absentminded aunt that Havilar supposed she was, given their relationship—just made the whole thing ridiculous.

And we can’t get out?

Alyona waggled her head again. Yes and no. It takes effort, but you can slip into the material world. But you won’t be seen, and you can only speak to Bisera. If you want to speak to others … Besides you don’t want to bother. Phrenike is … I will bet your young man is making fine progress, she said, as though they’d been talking of Brin all along. After all he has all the motivation in the world.

Havilar sat up, alarmed. Progress with what?

His search, Alyona said. He came along, you know, to find … Well, if you want to check on him, we could. It wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to try anyway.

Havilar felt the memory of her heart hammering in her chest. Brin, in the hands of Bryseis Kakistos, in the lair of a lich that Alyona made clear she didn’t like, and everything Havilar knew had to be pulled out of a ghost that couldn’t keep a thought in her head for more than a sentence. Yes, I want to see him. Now. How? How do we do that?

Alyona considered her a moment. You have to go out the door.

There was no door—not so far as Havilar could see, and she bit back a little screech of frustration. Help me? she asked. None of this is the way I do things.

Alyona smiled. Oh. I know that. She took hold of Havilar’s hand, and tugged.

For the length of an eye blink, Havilar noticed the door, the fold in the fog that led out of that interminable prison. The next, she stood—or maybe floated—at the left hand of her own body in a cavernous library. On her other side was the lich in the lavender gown. And there was Brin, holding onto Zoonie’s muzzle, and Mot and some other imp besides.

“Are you sure?” the lich asked tartly. “Perhaps the dabbler could find both in one shot? Or maybe once you find Caisys, he’ll just manage everything again.”

“Don’t be sullen, Phrenike, it doesn’t suit you,” Bryseis Kakistos said. “You are the one I came to, not Caisys.”

“And he’s the one you gave the staff to.”

She looked over at herself, at Alyona who she could just make out standing on the other side of her body. Blushing. A blushing ghost, Havilar thought. Nothing made sense here.

She watched as Brin slipped away, Zoonie and the imps following behind. She followed, unseen, just wanting to be near, wanting to know he was all right. She reached out to touch his shoulder, but her hand slipped through him, as if neither of them occupied the same space. Oh Brin, she said, even though no one heard. You sweet, sweet pothachi.

“What are we looking for?” the darker imp asked, flying up and down the shelves.

“I need a sending ritual,” Brin said. “And a simple scrying—a scroll if you can find it.”

The dark imp narrowed its eyes. “Do you know how to cast those?”

Brin smiled, as if it took all the effort in the world to not swat the imp. “Please find them.” The dark imp flew off along the shelves, but Mot remained behind, arms folded across his tiny chest.

“Is she all right?” Mot asked. “I mean, do you know?”

“What do you care?” Brin asked. “She’s not Chosen anymore.”

“Hey, I didn’t say I cared!” Mot said. “I just asked. I’ve got this new Chosen to worry about, in case you didn’t notice, and she got rid of that stupid bastard Olla, so we’ll get on just fine.” He glowered at Brin for a moment. “You don’t know, do you?”

“No,” Brin admitted. “And to be honest, I don’t know what it is your new mistress thinks I can find. But if she finds that out, at best she’ll throw me out into the snow, and Havilar’s got one fewer person trying to get her free.”

Mot snorted. “Oh, like you’d stop, you dumb mortal.” His stinger-laden tail flicked from side to side. “I’ll help you find out what it is.”

“What’s the price?” Brin asked, and Havilar felt terribly proud of him.

“This one’s free,” Mot said. “Let’s say it’s for her, not for you.” He glanced down the row of shelves to where Zoonie had lain down. The other imp hovered over her, arms folded.

“A hellhound oughtn’t be lying down,” he said. “They’re killers. Everyone knows that.”

“Blistering archlords. This one’s free, but maybe you can help me get a new partner down the line.” He flew off to search the shelves.

Havilar drifted nearer to Brin, close enough she could feel the memory of his warmth. She reached to touch his blond hair—maybe he could feel her stir the air beside him—

All at once, she felt herself snapped back to where Bryseis Kakistos and Alyona’s ghost stood. Her own eyes seemed to fix on her. “You need to go back,” Bryseis Kakistos said. “You’ll just upset yourself.”

Suddenly Havilar felt herself yanked away, back through that fold in the plane, and she was swathed in fog once more. Karshoj, Havilar spat. Fat lot of good that did.

He’s all right, Alyona pointed out. And so is your dog.

Maybe, she thought. And Brin had some sort of a plan—a sending and a scrying. And she knew now that Bryseis Kakistos was looking for a staff, and someone called Caisys who had it.

Who’s Caisys? Havilar demanded.

Alyona blushed all over again. A man we knew, once. He was an ally of Bisera’s, though she never did appreciate … He had the kindest manners. And he was terribly, terribly handsome.

A warlock?

Alyona’s smile wavered. “Yes. Among other things.”

Havilar cursed to herself again. The only person she knew that could give her a better answer about an ancient warlock was several hundred miles away, and sleeping like he’d never done it before.

2

27 Nightal, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR)
Djerad Thymar, Tymanther

DEVILS DIDN’T DREAM—AT LEAST NOT SO FAR AS LORCAN KNEW. DREAMS were for conflicted hearts, for minds that didn’t follow a strong and singular path, for souls, and not for the emptiness that filled a devil of the Nine Hells. There was no reason for a devil to dream.

But a half-devil? Lorcan might have dreamed before, the stirrings of something riding along his sire’s bloodline—but never like this. He slept and woke and dreamed and it all blurred and blended into something strange and unreal. A cavern deep in the Underdark. The traitor Graz’zt and a sea of enthralled Zhentarim. The pradixikai stalking him. Farideh smoothing back his hair, leaning close, tucked beside him. Dahl Peredur’s fist striking the center of his chest, knocking something profound out of him along with every puff of air in his lungs.

Lorcan woke or maybe he still slept—how did one tell for certain? He saw the bone devil and Asmodeus and Shetai, the Vulgar Inquisitor, and his mother, Fallen Invadiah. He saw Farideh, standing in the lost library of the Netherese wizard, weeping for him. He saw her hungry and wild and tempting. He saw her standing grimly over him in a dark stone-walled room.

“I need you to wake up,” she said.

Lorcan blinked. Awake, then. He swallowed against a terrible taste in his mouth and winced. He left his eyes shut. “I don’t sleep, darling.”

“You made an exception, clearly.” The bed shifted as she sat down on its edge. “How are you feeling?”

His eyelids felt like lead weights, and every part of him ached. He couldn’t quite separate out the dreams from what had actually happened, and he had the most peculiar urge to turn over and sleep again, maybe pull her back in beside him. He forced himself to sit up instead, to look around the room—stone walls, a protection circle on the floor, a brazier by the wall. Djerad Thymar.

He’d come here after the battle, after …

The cave with the lake. He’d left Dahl in the Underdark.

He’d won.

“I’ve been better,” he said. “But then again, I’ve been worse.” He swallowed again—why did his mouth taste like that? He studied Farideh—she looked exhausted, emptied out, as if waking Lorcan were the very last thing she could manage on her own. Promising, he thought, even as an unreasonable twist of worry came with it.

“You don’t look all that well yourself,” he said. It occurred to him she might know what he’d done to Dahl—somehow—that this might be the source of her grim expression. And then something else came back to him.

I love you. I just don’t love you the way you want, because I am who I am, but I’m not myself now, am I? So what do you do with that?

Beshaba shit in my godsbedamned eyes, he thought. And whatever she knew or didn’t know about Dahl, it was certain she’d heard every word of that confession. He could remember her grief-stricken expression. He could remember the vague sensation of recognizing the words tumbling out of him, washing away every trace of the careful platform he’d built to keep their relative positions in check. He could remember at least a little tenderness in the way she’d helped him to bed, lain down beside him.

There was nothing tender in the way she looked at him now, but at least there was nothing murderous either.

“Are you all right, darling?” he made himself ask. His head felt as if it were buzzing.

“Havi’s gone,” she said flatly. “And Bryseis Kakistos ripped a piece of her soul out of me, which means I’m not the Chosen of Asmodeus anymore. I have to ask you questions about warlocks. So you have to wake up.”

Lorcan struggled to piece her words together. “Gone? What do you mean gone?”

“I mean—” Her voice broke and she pursed her mouth around it. Some part of Lorcan remembered this would be a good time to comfort her, to remind her he was here and he was needed. Another part urged the same, if only to stop her from crying. But instead he sat motionless as a rabbit in the field, as she swallowed her tears and started over, her gaze on her lap.

“Brysesis Kakistos was possessing your sister,” she said, her voice tight. “Apparently Havilar and I were supposed to be the vessel for her rebirth, but maybe you knew that already. The spell went wrong and she was destroyed, because there were suddenly two of us, not one. But a piece of her stayed behind in each of us. That’s why we were Chosen—Asmodeus honoring his deal with her, nothing else. She tore the pieces out and she left Sairché’s body for Havilar’s.” Farideh looked up at him. “Then she took her.”

Shit and ashes, Lorcan thought. He shook his head slowly. “Darling, I didn’t know—”

“Your sister says that Bryseis Kakistos needs to find the most powerful heirs of the Toril Thirteen,” Farideh went on. “Which means she needs a Kakistos heir, and Havilar and I won’t do. So where are the others, please?”

Bad to worse—he’d rather discuss his godsbedamned feelings (or madness or whatever was making him incapable of keeping his mouth shut) than that. “What makes you think you don’t count?”

“She’s possessing Havilar,” Farideh said. “And … she gave me something else to do. I don’t think she’ll use me, and neither does Sairché.”

Lorcan frowned and eased nearer to her. “Sairché’s alive? Why would you leave her alive?”

“What matters,” Farideh said, “is that she needs another heir. And you said there were only five.”

“Eight years ago there were.”

“If we can collect the other three here, then we can make her come to us,” Farideh said. “Right now that’s the only way I can think of to get Havilar back here before Asmodeus notices that Bryseis Kakistos is running around Toril, plotting his demise in my sister’s body, and he decides to …” She bit her lip. Lorcan slipped an arm around her, but she pushed away. “Don’t. Please.”

His heart seemed to scale his throat. “Are you angry at me, darling?”

“You’re not yourself,” she said. “And I’m not … Just don’t, please. Tell me the heirs.”

Lorcan hesitated. “The five I know of: You. Havilar. Nasmos. Lachs the Yellow. Adastreia Tyrianicus.”

She nodded, eyes still on her lap. “Will they be hard to find? To track down?”

“No,” Lorcan said, a little reluctantly. “You are the only Brimstone Angels whom every collector devil in the Nine Hells cannot name on sight. It will be difficult to approach them, to convince them, surely. But I can tell you where each of them resides. Or resided, eight years ago.”

He waited for her inevitable, terrible question. When she didn’t speak, he said, “I have no notion of who my father is. Even still, I can tell you he is nothing good, nothing special, nothing that detracts from my life as I live it. He is a moment in my mother’s past—that’s all.”

Farideh looked up, and here was a shade of the tenderness that had been missing. “You don’t really believe that,” she said, more an accusation than a plea.

Lorcan shrugged. “Why shouldn’t I? More importantly, why shouldn’t you?”

She turned from him, considering the brazier, but when he edged nearer, she didn’t push him away. “Dahl told me once,” she said suddenly, “that his family’s lived on the same farm for two hundred years. Mehen can name his ancestors back to Abeir, back to before they were even calling themselves Verthisathurgiesh. Brin has a family tree—an actual, written out, illuminated tree with more names on it than I can remember.” She looked back to him. “So why should we believe that?”

“We’re different,” Lorcan said. “Everyone’s past is deep. Some of our pasts ought to be not just deep, but buried.”

“Maybe.” She fell silent, staring at the brazier. He thought about kissing her—she’d let him, he recalled, the night before. But as his hand reached for hers, she spoke. “What about the staff of Azuth?”

Lorcan pulled back as if burned. “What about it?”

“She needs that too. Where do you think it is?”

“I have no idea,” Lorcan said. “That’s the sort of thing I try not to know. Rumors abound—I’m sure Sairché repeated them for you. The bottom of a lava pit. The heart of Levistus’s glacier—”

“Bryseis Kakistos,” Farideh added. “Which makes no sense.”

Lorcan shrugged. “It might. Asmodeus excels at trusting others to the exact point that they fail, wherein he is nowhere to be found. No one can say he didn’t trust Bryseis Kakistos. To a point.”

“So he might have given her the staff, which means we lose another option.” She bit her lip. “But he stopped trusting her—she couldn’t have it now unless she had it somewhere even a god couldn’t reach it.”

“I suppose you can bring it up the next time you manage to sleep.”

Farideh sighed. “I’m not the Chosen of Asmodeus anymore. My nightmares are all my own now.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Lorcan said. “You do realize your plan here is essentially to rescue Asmodeus?”

“It’s to stop Bryseis Kakistos,” Farideh said firmly. “It’s to rescue Havilar before she gets too far and Asmodeus decides to do something to stop her. I don’t care what he gains or doesn’t gain, so long as Havilar is safe.”

Lorcan knew better than to argue with her at this juncture—much like Asmodeus, he’d be better off biding his time until it was clear what Farideh was going to do. But he couldn’t help himself: “You know, whatever it is you plan to do, you can’t pretend that Asmodeus won’t have an opinion about it, and the powers to back that opinion up?”

Farideh regarded him levelly. “Then that’s another excellent reason for you to get well again—no one else is going to be able to go into the Hells.”

Lorcan laughed. “I can’t go anywhere near there. I don’t know that I should leave this circle. I defied the pradixikai trying to save Sairché. I’m hardly a half step above an oathbreaker myself—if I set foot in Malbolge, my half sisters will be waiting to peel answers from my tongue.”

Farideh bit her lip. She pulled a dagger from her belt. “You could do the spell again. The one to share the protection.” She considered him sidelong. “They couldn’t hunt you then. Not in the quickest ways.”

Lorcan raised his eyebrows. Perhaps he hadn’t damned himself so neatly after all—whatever had happened down in the Underdark, whatever left him loose-tongued and sleeping of all things, clearly it had softened her some. With the protection spell around them both, he would be safe from scrying spells, but he would also have to stay close to her. The last time they’d only managed to make the spell stretch twenty steps, and that had been before they’d shared a bed. Lorcan felt sure he could work with such proximity. Gain a little ground back.

He yawned—assuming all this resolved itself. He reached for the knife.

She pulled it back. “Which of them are my parents?”

“Darling—”

“No. There are five. At least one of them had to be involved with Bryseis Kakistos when she tried to come back the last time,” Farideh said. “It stands to reason that she’d go after the ones who she knew she could trust.”

“Trust is … complicated.”

Farideh’s mismatched eyes fixed him, not willing to let it lie. “Those are the ones we gather up first. And if our birth parents are alive, I assume they’re among that group. Who are they?”

Lorcan wet his mouth. She wouldn’t like the answer. “I wasn’t there,” he said. “I can’t say for sure who your parents were …”

“But,” Farideh urged.

“But I have my suspicions,” Lorcan admitted. He took the knife from her and set it down on the bed. “If you want to go after Adastreia Tyrianicus, I have to clear the way first.”

Farideh nodded and sheathed the blade. “All right. You take care of that,” she said, standing, “and then we’ll do the ritual.”

• • •

KEPESHKMOLIK DUMUZI, SON of Uadjit, of the line of Shasphur, stood before the patriarch of his clan, a disappointment in every way. Patriarch Narghon’s eyes beneath their row of moon-chart piercings, never left him. Kepeshkmolik valued order, and there was little more opposed to order than the hatchling who called down a god—of all things!—in the middle of the Vanquisher’s Hall. The only other person in the audience chamber was Dumuzi’s mother, Uadjit, still wearing her shining black armor, spattered with the blood of a demon.

And the god in the form of a black-scaled dragonborn, who Dumuzi knew was there but could not see.

“Did you know,” Narghon intoned, “that was going to happen?”

Kepeshkmolik Dumuzi, new-made Chosen of Enlil, did not avoid his grandfather’s gaze. What was done was done, and he could no more run from it than he could from the god that seemed to haunt the edges of his vision. A storm is coming, Enlil had said in his dreams and later in his waking thoughts. And then the wizard, Ilstan, had burst into the chamber shouting about the planes, and Dumuzi had understood: the Blue Fire was coming again. Toril and Abeir would collide.

“I only knew the moment before I called out,” Dumuzi said. “I understood what the wizard meant, what the god had been trying to tell me. So I acted.”

“And so the city was saved,” Uadjit pointed out. “We owe this Enlil a little thanks at least.”

Narghon’s nostrils flared. “ ‘Thanks’—I’m sure that’s what he demands. He couldn’t have made the lightning wall without corrupting you? He couldn’t have saved the homesteads?”

Dumuzi’s chest tightened, and a wave of grief that wasn’t his chased it. The scattering of settlements over the countryside of Tymanther would have been in the path of the Blue Fire. How many survived, how many had been torn away, back to Abeir, the land of the steel sky and the dragon tyrants, was uncertain and might remain uncertain for some time yet. The nearest ones were gone, that much had been established by the score of bat riders who were still alive and in contact with Djerad Thymar’s Lance Defenders.

“We don’t know the full extent of the damage,” Uadjit said smoothly. “Better to wait for all the information before we make rash decisions.”

Narghon snapped his teeth. “You are too old for impertinence, child.”

“Your forgiveness, elder, but we’re both too old for make-believe,” Uadjit said. “The Vanquisher is dead, the Lance Defenders’ command is badly injured, an enemy with an army and the power to send a demon as forward scout sits perilously close to Djerad Kethendi, uncounted homesteads are lost, but thirty thousand Vayemniri are saved—I would think at this point it’s apparent we wait for information to stop rolling in before we move too quickly and dive into the tyrant’s claws.”

The tyrant, the tyrant. Dumuzi closed his eyes and remembered for a moment the dreams that had plagued him ahead of the return of the Blue Fire: A long-lost city and a tyrant of a god. The King of Dust, the demon had called him before he died.

Gilgeam, the god’s voice said in Dumuzi’s thoughts. The Father of Victory. The god to whom Enlil had left Unther, when he first left Toril behind.

Will he come for us? Dumuzi wondered. Will he want our lands back?

Dumuzi could swear the black-scaled dragonborn stood just to his left, but he knew if he turned and looked, there would be no one there. I cannot say. He is not as he was when I left him last. He has not been so for many, many years. A change of planes, a change of worshipers. We are less permanent than you believe.

It was an odd statement—a month ago, much like any Vayemniri, Dumuzi wouldn’t have said he gave the gods much thought. A tenday ago, he wouldn’t have said he had much opinion on their permanence. But within the last two days, he suddenly saw a great deal more, because of the Untheran god who’d taken the form of a black-scaled dragonborn with lightning in his teeth.

“Has the army moved against Djerad Kethendi?” Dumuzi asked.

Narghon frowned at him, and Dumuzi nearly apologized for speaking out of turn. He held his ground—you are not just some hatchling now, he told himself. You have to speak for Enlil. You have to get them to understand.

“The army has only just been sighted,” Narghon said. “Djerad Kethendi has been warned, and as your mother said, we don’t have all the information we need. That is not why I called you here.” He looked down his snout at Dumuzi. “How far does this god business extend?”

Dumuzi shook his head. “Myself. Those who were in the Vanquisher’s Hall and saw.”

“You haven’t a little conspiracy brewing? A little …” He trailed off, searching for the word. “Cult, perhaps, that you picked up in the maunthreki lands?” He looked down his snout at Dumuzi. “Does this come from Mehen and those tieflings?”

“Narghon,” Uadjit said, her usual patience fraying from her voice. “He’s told the tale. The god came to him. He held the old kingdom, the one we supplanted.”

“The same one this King of Dust is said to come from?” Narghon’s teeth gapped in agitation. “Dumuzi, you are young. You are untested. You have no idea what you have made an alliance with.”

Dumuzi balled his hands into fists. A month ago he would have bowed his head and never even thought of talking back to the patriarch. But in a month, everything had changed.

“I have crossed the world alone,” he said calmly. “I have seen war and helped defend the wall of Suzail. I am the one who killed the maurezhi. I am the one carrying Thymara’s axe. I have listened to Enlil not as a hatchling listens to an elder, delighting in tales of bravery and cunning, but as one grown listens to the old stories, because there is sense in them still. He has offered to protect us. He has shown that he can. You can call me a fool and a child, and chastise me for disappointing Kepeshkmolik, but please, explain what I should have done. Let a tide of magic wash away the city and everyone in it? Let it drag us back to Abeir? What should I have done instead of accept the help I was offered—no, we were offered!”

Calm, the voice in his thoughts spread like a cool breeze. Narghon merely shook his head, as if dumbfounded at the change in his scion’s once-proper hatchling.

The door to the audience chamber opened a hand span. One of Dumuzi’s cousins poked his snout in. “Patriarch Narghon? The Verthisathurgiesh matriarch has come to see you. She says—”

Before he could finish, the door was yanked open another foot and Verthisathurgiesh Anala swept in, a gauzy scarf draped around her red-scaled shoulders. “Well met, Narghon,” she said. “Uadjit.” Anala turned and offered Dumuzi a polite bow. He froze, uncertain of the meaning. Verthisathurgiesh Anala was a great many things—shrewd, calculating, cunning—but of the many Vayemniri who made Djerad Thymar their home, Dumuzi would not have put her on the list of the easily converted.

“What are you doing here?” Narghon demanded. “Don’t you have your own clan to see to?”

“I thought perhaps we could discuss things,” Anala said. “Dumuzi’s sudden elevation. The need for an interim Vanquisher.”

“No one has elevated Dumuzi,” Narghon said.

Anala smiled. “I think Dumuzi has elevated Dumuzi. There’s no denying what happened in the Vanquisher’s Hall—we are none of us fools. As he is of Verthisathurgiesh on his father’s side, and since I have known him to be a most well-brought-up young man, I am here to tell you that I stand behind him and his …” She waved her hand vaguely at Dumuzi. “Ally.”

The presence of Enlil eased forward in Dumuzi’s thoughts, giving him the impression that the god was leaning into the conversation with some interest. Narghon’s nostrils flared. “To what end?”

Anala tilted her head. “To the betterment of all the Vayemniri and the safety of our cities, of course.”

You cannot trust her, Dumuzi thought for Enlil’s sake. She says one thing, she means another.

Enlil’s faint amusement flowed through Dumuzi. Most everything is that way. It is a boon to know so.

“Are you planning on building a … chapel”—Narghon spat the unfamiliar word—“in Verthisathurgiesh’s enclave? Taking up a rattle and a torch and playing priestess?”

“It’s not as if I don’t have room for a chapel.” Anala smiled at Dumuzi. “Such a thing would require some further discussion about concessions and accommodations for the clan. In the meantime though, I’m sure I could convince some of the others of this … new development’s merits.”

“And in exchange?” Narghon asked flatly.

Anala shook her head, as if she didn’t understand the question. “There is no exchange. As I said”—she turned to Dumuzi, as though he were an equal—“I only want the betterment and safety of the city.”

Dumuzi glanced toward his mother. For all his life, Uadjit had served as a diplomat in far-off cities, legendary for her silver tongue and iron fist. She watched Anala, implacably, without any sign of the suspicion Dumuzi knew stormed within her.

“We … We need to convince others,” Dumuzi said, trying to make Uadjit proud. “He … the god, he needs worshipers in order to gain the power for such things as the lightning wall. I hardly know where to begin.”

“Begin with finding a way to dip in honey asking us to yoke ourselves to a new tyrant.” Frost edged Narghon’s teeth, the scales along his lips, anger building the breath of cold up in his throat. “Clearly I am no longer needed in this. Anala.” He turned to go.

“There is one other matter,” Anala called. Narghon stopped, halfway to the exit. “The Vanquisher,” she said. “I intend to press for a vote at the conclave.”

Narghon scowled back at her. “The man died yesterday.”

“And we are beset by enemies.”

“Exactly. There are more important matters to deal with at the moment.”

“And all of them would be better addressed if we had a Vanquisher to direct the many voices shouting about them.”

Realization sank into Dumuzi. The Vanquisher was elected every ten years—the next election would have taken place in about a year, with each clan putting forth a candidate of their own, and each clan elder voting for another’s selection.

But Vanquisher Tarhun was dead. And no one had announced their candidates yet—not officially. Everyone with any sense knew Uadjit would be Kepeshkmolik’s choice.

Uadjit, whose son had called down a god in the middle of the Vanquisher’s Hall.

“I assume you’re putting up Pandjed’s boy,” the patriarch said.

Anala tilted her head again, as if Narghon had said something amusing. “Mehen? Why would I do that?”

The breath from Narghon’s nostrils clouded cold on the air. Uadjit stepped forward. “Vanquisher aside,” she said, “this King of Dust should be our primary concern, and that can’t wait for conclaves. I think we can all agree with that—Vayemniri, gods, and otherwise. I’ll go to Fenkenkabradon Dokaan and say that Kepeshkmolik—and Verthisathurgiesh, if I have your leave, Matriarch Anala—offer up their private forces for the Lance Defenders’ command.”

Narghon’s brow ridge shifted skeptically. “I have no love of that man’s sense of tactics.”

“He won’t be in charge,” Uadjit pointed out. “He’s still injured. It will be one of his subordinates.”

“Arjhani?” Narghon said.

Uadjit’s expression tightened at her mate’s name, Dumuzi’s Verthisathurgiesh father. “We shall see. But Arjhani is a known quantity at least.”

“Dokaan sounds more promising by the moment, doesn’t he?” Anala said.

Narghon muttered something to himself, catching Uadjit’s eye. “Then I shall see you when that conclave is called. Your pardon.” He stormed from the audience chamber without waiting for Anala’s response. At least he hadn’t demanded Dumuzi’s piercings. At least Dumuzi wasn’t exiled.

Yet, he thought gloomily.

“Charming as always.” Anala turned to Dumuzi. “When that little meeting of the elders comes together, I’ll send for you. We can discuss what you’ll say.” She nodded to Uadjit. “You may, of course, offer Verthisathurgiesh’s forces to the Lance Defenders, such as they are. A pleasure as always.”

Uadjit turned to watch Anala until the massive double doors to the audience chamber stilled against each other once more. “If not Mehen,” Uadjit said slowly, “then who?”

Dumuzi didn’t dare speculate. It wouldn’t be Arjhani—Dumuzi had been sent out into the wider world to find Mehen solely to make certain Arjhani wouldn’t be the only option Verthisathurgiesh had for a Vanquisher run. Verthisathurgiesh Arjhani was handsome, charming, and clever, exactly the sort of person who ought to be suggested for the Vanquisher’s seat—but those who knew Arjhani best knew his selfish and even cowardly nature. He wouldn’t be a wise choice for Vanquisher, even though he might be chosen.

“I don’t know,” Dumuzi supplied. “She hasn’t said. Not to me or anyone who would have told me.”

Uadjit turned and smiled at him, rubbed the frill of her jaw against his cheek affectionately. “It will be all right. The most Narghon will concede to is a vote for an interim Vanquisher. We can withstand anything for a year.” She considered the doors again. “Do you want to go to the elders’ conclave?”

Dumuzi cleared his throat. “He needs more worshipers. That’s … I think that’s how it works. More worshipers make him stronger, so he can keep helping to protect us. Right now it’s only me.” Mostly, he thought.

For a heartbeat, Uadjit watched him, and Dumuzi could almost see her many possible replies flicking through her dark eyes. There isn’t any hiding from it, Dumuzi wanted to tell her. There isn’t any going back.

“Well,” Uadjit finally said. “We’ll hear from Anala soon enough. I need to go up and discuss things with Dokaan and whomever he’s appointed. Perhaps it would be best if you stayed in the enclave, for the moment anyway. Just until things … well, when things are better sorted, we’ll have a sense of what can be done.”

The familiar briskness of her voice had grown so brittle by the end that Dumuzi quickly agreed, if only to take away whatever his formidable mother feared. She left. He sat down on the edge of the elder’s dais and looked up at the frieze of the Battle of the Crippled Mountain around the top of the wall. Nigh-insurmountable odds, as the bands of escaped slaves that would become the Vayemniri fought the Tyrant of Tyrants, united in the face of a powerful enemy. The red dragon had been carved over the doors, his head thrown back in pain or rage as the volcano beneath him began to erupt in jasper-studded lava.

You have done this before, the voice of the god said. It seemed as if he sat beside Dumuzi now. You can do it again.

Dumuzi considered explaining the difference between an ancestor story and real life, but stopped himself. The god probably knew. Had to know. Didn’t he?

Is this how gods are? Dumuzi wondered. Enlil seemed more like an uncle than an unknowable entity. Wide, yes, powerful, indeed. But nothing like the incarnate power gods were meant to be.

Gentle amusement flowed through him. I am what you need me to be, Ushamgal-lù, the voice said. Would you trust me if I were something too great to understand? If I were a creature as alien even as that Tyrant of Tyrants?

But you still are that, Dumuzi thought.

We are all more than one thing, Enlil said, and Dumuzi could have sworn a hand lay upon his shoulder. Mortal and god, Vayemniri and maunthreki. That much is not hard to understand.

Perhaps not—it made sense to Dumuzi when Enlil said it that way. But whether there was any way to put things into words for the clan elders was another question entirely.

• • •

NEAR TO THE peak of Djerad Thymar, the Lance Defenders, the city’s army, lived and trained and taught the next generation of warriors. Almost thirty training yards pocked the three floors, and so it wasn’t a difficulty for Mehen to find one unoccupied and out of the way.

Gods, ghosts, devils, one daughter lost, the other wounded to her very soul—these weren’t the sort of problems Mehen had any sense of how to deal with. And with Farideh busy gathering information about warlocks and pacts, needing privacy Mehen did not want to grant her, Mehen went back to where he had gone when he was young and faced with other such problems that had no solutions.

He shrugged out of his sword harness, leaving the falchion to the side of the training room, as he approached the wood-and-leather training dummy. In his youth, he might have imagined the dummy was his father, Pandjed, now dead in the catacombs.

Thwack! Thwack! A parade of possible faces raced through his thoughts as he struck the dummy with his bare fists. Pandjed. Anala. Narghon. The maurezhi. Lorcan. Thwack!

None were the ghost who had stolen his daughter. None were the god that had made all these terrors come down on them.

Thwack!

Enemies too distant to do anything about. Too powerful to strike down with nothing but rage and grief and a sword.

Thwack! Mehen felt his knuckles split against the leather, but he didn’t stop until his breath came too hard to catch, until blood smeared the dummy.

“You look like a man with a lot on his mind.”

Mehen turned—Yrjixtilex Kallan stood in the door, just as hollow-eyed, just as drawn, but with half a smile eased across his face. “Do you want to talk?” he asked.

Mehen turned back to the dummy. “Can’t.”

If he tried—if he tried to break this problem down into sensible bits—the whole of it would spread itself out before him, insurmountable as the vault of the sky. How did they find Havilar? How did they free her from the ghost’s grip? How did they stop the god of sin from crushing all their lives in the name of punishing a woman who’d been dead for almost a century?

“Fair enough.” Kallan came around the other side of the dummy. “You want any help punching the sawdust out of this thing?”

If he talked to Kallan, he would have to tell him that Anala intended to put Kallan forth as Verthisathurgiesh’s candidate for Vanquisher. And Kallan would laugh and say that sounded mad, but the more Mehen thought about it, the more he felt sure that Anala’s plan could scale the mountains. He’d never met a soul as easygoing and calm as Kallan—what did they need now but a leader who would convince them everything would be all right. Couple that with the fact that he’d shown uncommon bravery in hunting and stopping the maurezhi, and Kallan stood a decent chance—with the wily matriarch’s help—of gaining the gold piercings of Djerad Thymar’s ruler.

Mehen rested his bleeding hands against the dummy. “Have you heard back from the homesteads?”

That easy smile vanished. “No. Not a bleat.”

“They were farther out, though, your people,” Mehen said. “Nearly to Akanûl, you said. Maybe the Blue Fire didn’t reach that far.”

Kallan laughed once. “That doesn’t sound like you. I’d more expect you to point out that those lands were lost to this plane a hundred years ago—what’s to point a body to the assumption that they didn’t all swap places again? What the karshoji Hells gives some Yrjixtilex sheep ranch the right to avoid that fate?”

Mehen said nothing for a long moment. “You want a turn?”

“I want some karshoji answers,” Kallan said, sounding deflated.

If you were Vanquisher, you could demand them, Mehen thought. The Vanquisher could request a special search of that area, or begin efforts in finding the magic that would reverse the passage to Abeir. The Vanquisher could order the city’s armies to march on that godsbedamned fortress the cambion hinted at and get Havilar back.

Mehen looked across the dummy at Kallan. Chaubask vur kepeshk, he thought—for once I would like to be the one who gets comforted—it was a selfish, shallow thought, but he let it sit. It wouldn’t be less true if he pushed it away. Still, Mehen was the one that pulled Kallan nearer, that rubbed his jaw frill against Kallan’s cheek. It was cruel, he thought, that this was what they got—that any chance they had for something sweet and easy, they left back in Suzail.

I left back in Suzail, he thought. It wouldn’t get simpler with Anala plotting in the elders’ conclave.

“I know a way you could get answers,” Mehen said reluctantly.

“Thrik,” Kallan said. “We’re having a moment here.”

The sound of someone clearing their throat jerked Mehen’s attention up. Kepeshkmolik Uadjit stood in the doorway, her eyes darting from Mehen to Kallan. “I see I’m not the only one looking for privacy.”

Mehen bristled. “You want privacy, the Lance Defenders barracks are hardly the place to find it.”

“Yes, well, I was hoping to distract myself by pummeling something,” Uadjit said.

Kallan moved away from Mehen and the practice dummy, toward a rack of wooden weapons. “Seems to be going around. What’s got your back?”

Uadjit hesitated, eyes on the dummy. Mehen took two steps backward toward the weapons rack, as she took three long strides across the mats. The heel of her hand slammed into the dummy’s chest, then two swift punches to its ribcage. She moved with a familiar discipline that shredded as her fury broke free, hitting the dummy over and over and over. She fell back two steps and kicked out hard—

With a crack, the dummy fractured along the mended split, leaving a chunk of wood dangling, still half-tacked to the leather.

“Karshoj!” Uadjit snarled, slamming her fist into the dummy twice more. Panting, she turned on Kallan and Mehen. Kallan held out a wooden long sword without a word. Uadjit’s teeth gapped, quick and embarrassed.

“Dumuzi,” she said, sounding reluctant. “I have no idea what to do about him, except …” She shook her head. “He is my boy, my first, my scion. I cannot leave him alone in this. But I don’t think he appreciates the nature of the beast he’s unleashed.”

“That ‘beast’ made him run up the pyramid like a karshoji monkey,” Kallan pointed out. “And then stopped Djerad Thymar from being sucked back into Abeir.”

“I don’t mean him,” Uadjit said. “I mean, what he asks. We have been here a hundred years—the gods have only the smallest of toeholds among the Vayemniri. Even if … if we ought to follow him, Dumuzi’s asking the whole of our culture to change. For the things that make us Vayemniri to reorder and reshape.” She shook her head. “You’d sooner make us ally with the dragons.”

“I don’t think it’s as impossible as you’re saying,” Kallan said. “We’re practical, and here’s a god that’s practical.”

“If he has worshipers,” Uadjit pointed out. “Dumuzi says if he hasn’t got worshipers, he won’t have the strength to do it again. You cannot get around that.”

Mehen remembered that moment in the Vanquisher’s Hall, the voices singing the praises of Enlil, the black-scaled dragonborn who stood behind Dumuzi, one paternal hand on his shoulder. The god had nodded at Mehen, a curious gesture of something so like camaraderie that it still puzzled Mehen.

“What if it’s not a yoke so much as a … an agreement?” Dumuzi had asked him, just before he’d called down the god. “What if it’s more like a clanship? A qal agreement? An adoption?”

What if they’ll say anything to gain your trust? Mehen thought. What if the gods are just the tyrants of this world?

Uadjit snatched the long sword from Kallan. “And that’s the least of our worries while folks are rumbling about needing an interim Vanquisher.”

“Who?” Mehen asked.

“Anala,” Uadjit said darkly. Mehen fought to keep his jaw closed. “And probably Narghon, truth be told, although he’s not happy Anala’s the one who brought it up.”

“And he won’t want an interim Vanquisher,” Mehen said. “Not if it’s you.” It should just be Uadjit, he thought. And leave Kallan out of it.

Uadjit shook her head, her mouth quirked oddly. “And therein lies the problem—we don’t have time for all these debates with a god on the line and an army marching toward Djerad Kethendi.”

• • •

DAHL PEREDUR PEERED over the rise again, a ripple of earth that felt all too new. The army they’d spotted the night before remained at camp, too close for comfort, a battle flag with a crimson fist on a golden sun snapping in the wind over ten thousand bodies, at a glance. Some of them inhumanly large.

“Mind, I’m not trying to get punched in the face again,” his brother, Bodhar murmured. “But you’re going to tell me this girl’s worth weathering that?”

Farideh might be in the fortified city on the other side of that army, but the army itself had Dahl’s attention at the moment. Ten thousand people appearing in the midst of Tymanther flying an ancient Untheran battle flag and riding with some kind of monsters—Dahl wasn’t within the usual reach of the Harpers of Waterdeep, but nobody would tell him this wasn’t going to change circumstances for a lot of nations.

“I’m not going to punch you in the face,” he whispered, counting standards. “Technically I didn’t punch you in the face the first time.”

Bodhar snorted. “That the kind of squirrelly thinking they teach you in Oghma’s halls? Your fist, your temper.”

“A stlarning demon lord aiming my hand,” Dahl said. “And I’m sorry. Again.”

“Oy! You have what you need yet?” Thost called up from the shade below. Dahl gestured at his oldest brother to hush. Scouts were not a possibility but an inevitability. Dahl climbed down the rise, sliding in the broken stone and dust to where the others waited. Volibar, a halfling Zhentarim agent, crouched beside a hastily assembled sledge, securing one of the joints. Thost towered over all of them, shirt tied around his waist to pad the sledge carrying Mira Zawad at his hips. The Calishite woman raised her eyebrow as Dahl skidded to a stop.

“Still there,” Dahl said. “Still not marching yet. We get to the river, get across it, we might avoid them.”

“How far is that?” Bodhar asked.

“Far enough we need to get moving,” Volibar said.

Dahl shook his head. “Couple miles?” The spell that had been meant to send them to Djerad Thymar had malfunctioned in some way, dropping them along the coast of the Alamber Sea, instead of outside the pyramid city.

We shouldn’t have come, a little part of Dahl said. He should have insisted they all return to Harrowdale, his brothers to their families, to their mother and the farm. But after they’d escaped the clutches of the demon lord Graz’zt, trapped in the Underdark with only a scroll to escape by, his brothers, his granny, and Mira had insisted they use it to get to Djerad Thymar. To help Dahl return to Farideh. His grandmother had remained behind to cast it, sacrificing herself to buy their safety.

Harrowdale would have been safer, he thought.

That’s the kind of thinking, he could almost hear Granny Sessaca say, that gets you caught in a back alley getting beaten shitless by sharpjaws. Past is past, keep moving. He blew out a breath and with it a little prayer. He wondered if she were dead yet.

“Where’d they come from?” Bodhar asked. “Thought everyone down here was a scalie. Or,” he added with a nod to Dahl, “adopted.”

“Unther was wiped away in the Spellplague,” Mira said. “Their cities were all destroyed—some folks think Tymanther literally crushed them. But regardless of what exactly happened, it’s not like other places—Imaskar or Mulhorand or the like. The Untherans have been gone for a century, not hiding in the shadows. There’s nowhere here they would have come from.”

Thost sniffed. “Other world.”

“He’s got a point,” Bodhar said. “You can’t throw me through a portal and tell me that can’t happen.”

Dahl felt confident he could—he couldn’t recall hearing of portals that breached the wall between Toril and her sister plane of Abeir. It took the destruction of the very Weave of magic to bring the two planes into contact. If that had happened again …

Chosen walking Toril, Dahl thought. Gods being reborn. A second Spellplague wouldn’t be out of place in all that. What had their portal spell struck, after all, that whirlwind of blue light and power?

“What would they want here?” Dahl asked. “Here specifically.”

Mira chewed her upper lip. Her skin had a grayish cast, the pain from her broken ankle wearing her down. “I think we’re close to the ruins of one city. Unthalass. But it was destroyed long before Unther. In the Time of Troubles. They say the god-king Gilgeam fought Tiamat here. The city was leveled and Gilgeam was killed.” She made a face, as if she could read Dahl’s thoughts. “Whatever that’s worth these days.”

“If you want to get to the river,” Volibar said, “then this history lesson isn’t the way to do it. Up against this rise, we’re asking to get crept up on.”

The rise was better than the seashore or the flat land between. At least it gave them a little protection from the greater part of the army. “How are you faring?” Dahl asked Thost.

He readjusted his grip on the sledge. “I’ll survive.”

Dahl looked down at Mira. “Don’t you dare ask,” she said. “Unless you can suddenly grant healing magic again.”

He bit his tongue. Oghma’s attention had definitely returned to Dahl, but he wasn’t a paladin or even a cleric—he had little to show, in fact, for Oghma’s blessings, but a riddle on his soul and a book or two that might contain a piece of the puzzle.

Across the river lay the road to Djerad Thymar, but perhaps more importantly, the road to Djerad Kethendi, the nearer city of Tymanther and likely someone who could heal Mira’s ankle or at least give her something stronger than willpower for the pain. A couple of miles, Dahl thought. No more than an hour.

“Gala-dâg!” Dahl pulled his sword at the voice, stepping between the sledge and the rise. A trio of humans—two men and a woman, all copper-skinned and dark-haired with thick tracings of kohl around their eyes—trained arrows on them. At their left was another woman with cropped hair, holding a curved khopesh, armored in a dusty leather breastplate with shoulder pieces shaped like the heads of jackals, their ears lying flat. Dahl didn’t lower his sword.

Then a pair of demons—slippery-looking, dark-skinned things—came over the rise, flanking the soldiers. The woman spoke another stream of the unfamiliar language, softer now, her whole body tense as the demons sniffed the air.

“Mira,” Dahl called, eyes on the demons. “Do you know this one?”

“Untheric,” she said. “I know a little. Enough to say you ought to—”

“Gâr-lù.” The woman gestured sharply down with her off hand. She took a few steps—suddenly, she’d slid down the rise and grabbed hold of Dahl’s arm by the elbow, twisting his sword down. He tried to move with her, to get her off her feet, but the woman was taller than him and a good deal heavier. She hit him hard in the kidney and he dropped—one of the other soldiers slid down the rise to claim his sword, and then his dagger, as well as his brothers’ and Mira’s blades.

The woman yanked his hands up and set them on Dahl’s head, while one of the men came and tied them behind his back, then did the same to Bodhar. The demons slunk down the hill, sniffing the air. The woman pointed her sword at Thost, gesturing for him to drop the sledge. Mira sat up a little.

“Mihishtu,” she said. The woman looked startled. Mira pointed to her ankle. “Zingi. Mihishtu. Nu-malaku.”

The woman looked down at Mira’s ankle. The soldier beside her said something, eyes darting to the demons. The woman cut him off with an order to pick up the sledge. The demons bared their teeth, shadows leaking from their damp mouths. The woman faced them, rattling off another string of Untheric, repeating several times the words, “eme bala.”

“Malaku,” she snapped to Dahl, pointing up the rise. He glanced back, quickly. Volibar was nowhere to be seen.

Dahl ought to have given the halfling his due, as he climbed the rise, but he cursed Volibar for managing to escape whatever it was they were heading into.

PART II

THE NIGHT MERCHANT

15 Flamerule, the Year of the Bright Blade (1347 DR)
Darmshall, Vaasa

• • •

Caisys had told Bisera and Alyona he was a tiefling before either of them had thought to ask. He didn’t look it. Where the twins had silver eyes and sharp hooves and horns like mountain goats, Caisys’s ancestor had left him looking altogether human—save for the fact that being in the merchant’s presence left Bisera feeling simultaneously uneasy and rapt, and the shadows around him seemed a bit deeper, a bit more alive. Nothing but a trifle for a night merchant.

For that alone, she wouldn’t have liked Caisys.

“How was Thesk?” Alyona asked him as they settled by the fire outside his wagon. He’d been gone for months, trading far and wide. Caisys gave her a smile that made Alyona blush scarlet as she toyed with the symbol of Selûne. Bisera scowled at the fire. That was a much better reason to dislike Caisys.

“Fair as ever,” he said, every word a seduction. “I could regale you with tales of silks and spices, the sound of rain on the golden eaves of Telflamm, the—”

“Rain doesn’t fall on eaves,” Bisera interrupted. “They’re vertical.” Alyona pursed her mouth.

Caisys smiled warmly at her sister. “I think this tea will tell you stories aplenty,” he said, hooking the kettle out of the fire. “While your sister and I get to business.”

“What’s in the tea?” Bisera demanded.

Caisys poured three cups. “Spices,” he said, a cloud of licorice and cinnamon and other things she couldn’t name rising over the kettle. He passed the tea around, then beckoned Bisera to come into the wagon.

Inside, Caisys moved smoothly around his myriad wares—kegs of ale topped with bundles of skins, locked chests stacked with barrels of grains. He unlocked a small chest resting on a makeshift desk strewn with receipts.

“You know you don’t have to play her guard dog,” he said mildly. “It’s nothing but a bit of fun.”

“Maybe for you,” Bisera said. Inside were six scrolls wound on wooden rollers. She examined their markings, the first lines of the spells contained. Two spells she possessed already. Three more made her head hurt when she tried to read them. The last was new to her—a spell to open or close something small. Smaller than the chest before her.

“Is this all?” she asked.

“At the moment.” His long fingers closed around the scroll. “I note,” Caisys said, “that you seem to have struck a bit of a wall where it comes to your spellcasting. You don’t have much use for my more powerful offerings.”

“I’m managing fine.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t. The fact that you’ve gotten this far without a teacher, without someone to so much as show you how to read a spell, is extraordinary. For all you don’t like me,” he added, “never think I’m not acutely aware of your strengths, Bisera. But …”

“But what?”

“You need a mentor if you’re going to get any further. You know I’m right.”

He was right. Cantrips she could manage, and some of the simpler things. But anything of true power? She’d been staring at a spell to make a fireball for the better part of a year, no closer to mastering it. “Why do you care?”

Caisys pressed a hand to his chest, as though wounded. “I care about you two. I shudder to think of the sort of things you have to defend yourself and sweet Alyona against with trifles like lights that dance and figment sounds.”

“I have a knife. We both have knives.” And Alyona had her prayers now, no matter how that made her sister chafe.

“Then, let’s be honest—I’d do a better trade if you were willing to pay for more powerful spells.”

Bisera folded her arms across her chest. “Be that as it may, wizards wanting tiefling apprentices aren’t exactly thick on the ground out here. I couldn’t find a mentor if I wanted to.”

Caisys’s dark eyes glittered. “Then I think you ought to cast your net a bit wider, beyond wizards. I might know someone.”

Bisera hesitated. “Who?”

“A client of sorts,” he said. “Give me two tendays to see to my buyers and patrons up here. Then the both of you can ride down through Bloodstone Pass, and I’ll introduce you.” He offered her an arm. “Come sit and have tea. You can be a little pleasant, for your sister’s sake?”

Bisera ignored him and strode from the wagon, thoughts of a caster who wasn’t a wizard turning in her thoughts.

• • •

3

27 Nightal, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR)
Tymanther

FARIDEH LEFT LORCAN BEHIND, HALF EXPECTING HIM TO FOLLOW HER FROM the room, half expecting she would have to turn around and apologize for treating him like that. But when she’d looked down at the sleeping cambion, when she’d thought about the night before and what he’d said, she knew what she had to do.

“Your shitting brightbird,” he’d said, when she asked who had done this to him. “I saved him—you’re welcome. I didn’t want to, obviously, but you wanted it, so I did it. And other reasons. And then he did this.”

There was no world where Lorcan would rescue Dahl unless something else was going on. Regardless of what Farideh wanted, she knew that much was true. And so whatever made Lorcan save Dahl, made him tell her he loved her, could be put to good use. And if he trusted her again, perhaps he’d tell her the truth about what happened to Dahl, where he was now.

It made her stomach twist to think it in so many words—this wasn’t who she was. But maybe it was who she needed to be, if she was going to save Havilar. Maybe it’s who you would have been, she thought, if Bryseis Kakistos and Adastreia Tyrianicus had had their ways.

She pushed that aside, along with how she was going to tell Mehen she was planning to track down the mother that abandoned her. Instead, Farideh went to the door of Ilstan’s room and rapped on it. “Are you doing better?”

A heartbeat passed, then two. “I am not.”

Farideh hooked the key from the top of the doorframe and let herself in. Ilstan was curled up on the floor beneath a desk that held a stack of scrolls, a scattering of components, and two very smooth gray rocks. “The shadow in the words is … is … There is darkness and light and shade between and I cannot say which is which.” He looked up at her. “Have you a plan?”

“The beginnings of one. Come here,” Farideh said, helping him to his feet. “I’ll take the magic.”

Ilstan all but fell into his chair. “No. Please? Let me stay a little mad a little longer?” Ilstan turned to her, his eyes damp. “I think he’s afraid. I know I’m afraid, and I don’t want to be alone.”

Farideh wet her lips—she shouldn’t. Ilstan was dangerous if he wasn’t kept in check. But his plea cracked her heart—she didn’t want to be alone either. She scooped the shackles from the table, held them up like an offering. The war wizard bent his hands behind his back.

“What were you making?” Farideh asked as she fastened the irons.

“Sending stones,” Ilstan said. “It seems you all use that spell so much, it might come in handy. Before that, scrolls. I have one … You might use it to bind her, when you find her. On the table.” He smiled uneasily back at her. “Do you really intend to rescue Azuth?”

Farideh turned the key. Rescuing Azuth was a side effect of rescuing Havilar as much as rescuing Asmodeus was, but she had to admit, the fate of the Lord of Spells didn’t seem fair. “Has he told you his story?” she asked. “Do you know him well?”

Ilstan’s smile took on a wild quality. “There once was a wizard who wanted power beyond all mortal reach,” he said, the cadence of his words not at all his own. “Such stories always end poorly, but luckily for the wizard, the Lady of the Mysteries took a shine to him and became his queen. She granted him powers—such powers—until he was no longer a mere wizard but a god in truth. A god dedicated to his lady and all who wore her crown. He forgot what it was to be human. What it was to not wear the god’s mantle. He forgot what it was to crave power.

“Down, down, the wizard fell, from the heights of the heavens to the depths of the Hells, the fabric of the very planes tearing as he passed …” Ilstan’s voice broke and he went silent.

“What made him fall?” Farideh asked.

Ilstan didn’t answer, but a moment later he said, “And perhaps, then, it was a fitting punishment, for the wizard who forgot what it was to want, that he landed broken at the feet of one who was nothing but want incarnate. He remembers now, too late, what it means, the perils and the potentials.” He shut his eyes. “And now this.”

Like much of what Ilstan said of late, it didn’t make sense to Farideh. “Is that how he speaks to you?”

“Yes. But there is always a reason,” Ilstan said, sounding sad. “Always wisdom I must glean from his words, and when I can, I am saved.”

“It sounds as if he cares for you at least.”

“It is what the gods must do, in some sense,” Ilstan said. “They must have us, and we must have them.”

“Even gods like Asmodeus?” Farideh said. “What does he give his followers?”

“Strife,” Ilstan intoned.

Farideh leaned her head on her hand. “I thought there was already a god of strife.”

Ilstan gave her an irritable look. “Death, destruction, unease—do you deny it?”

She did. None of those sounded right—they sounded like the warnings of Criella, the village midwife in Arush Vayem, who was always convinced every bit of mischief would turn the twins evil as the pit of the Abyss. Farideh frowned to herself. People worshiped Asmodeus—they must. Without worshipers, he couldn’t be as powerful as Ilstan and Lorcan and the others made him out to be—even with all the actions of the Toril Thirteen. She thought of the Ashmadai in Neverwinter, the violent cult of Asmodeus worshipers who had sacrificed more than a few souls to the Nine Hells and nearly killed her too.

But how many Ashmadai would it take to make a god so powerful as Asmodeus? Too many, Farideh thought. Every village would need to be stocked with murderers. So what good was the god of sin?

“His destruction would benefit many,” Ilstan said. “It would be a boon to us all, and—”

“Is he like Shar?” Farideh asked. Ilstan frowned at her. “Dahl told me once you worship Shar when grief overtakes you. You give her a little honor so that she eases the sadness through your life. That the evil of Shar is that she’ll try to pull you down into that darkness, to make you stay. Is he like that?”

Ilstan shifted uneasily. “One might say so.”

“Have you given him worship then?”

“I’ve … You can’t ask me that.”

Perhaps, but Farideh could picture it: you pray to Asmodeus in the dark, for protection from the darker things, from the darkness inside you, for the blindness of other gods to the sins of your heart, for a silver tongue and a weight on Kelemvor’s scales, come the day. Freedom from consequence.

Asmodeus is the god of easy paths, Farideh thought. A god of happiness, as he says it.

“So he has a purpose.”

“A purpose we didn’t need for thousands of years.” He turned his mournful eyes on her. “If you find the staff, what will you do? Which side will you choose?”

Farideh hesitated. “I don’t know that there is a side. If we let her destroy Asmodeus, she’ll use Azuth to do it. If we stop her, Asmodeus lives, but so does Azuth.”

Ilstan shook his head. “You misunderstand. Both speak to me now, because they must share the same space—but they cannot. This will not last. Azuth will continue to wake. Asmodeus will continue to fight it. You have to choose a side.” He stared at her. “Take the scroll at least. It’s ready.”

No matter what you do, Farideh realized—aid Bryseis Kakistos, end her, or walk away—the two gods might well kill each other, the Nine Hells might well spill out, and there might be no stopping the world from ending.

Ilstan began humming to himself in an off-key way, as if Farideh weren’t there at all—and she realized that whatever she did, she was going to have to do it alone.

• • •

THE SOLDIERS MARCHED Dahl and his brothers through the camp, led by the jackal-shouldered woman dragging Mira and followed by the shadowy demons. Dahl glimpsed more armored soldiers, but commoners besides—men, women, and children with kohl-marked eyes and dark hair. Everyone gave the demons a wide berth.

The crowds grew denser, thicker with soldiers—and more demons of more sorts—as they neared the center of the encampment. No escape, Dahl thought, not without abandoning Mira. And not without finding some way to alert his brothers.

“Is this how you do things with the Harpers?” Bodhar whispered.

“Sometimes,” Dahl said, sweeping the crowd. No sign of casters—that was odd. “Don’t say anything when we get where we’re going, unless they make you. Let me and Mira do the talking.” One of the bowmen barked an order at them, gesturing with his arrow. Shut up or I’ll make you shut up—that much was clear in any language.

Near the center of the camp, a tent rose like a mound, far finer than any of the ones they’d passed already—opulent only in comparison to what lay around it. Bright strips of fabric made a pattern of chevrons on the side, not all dyed quite the same shade of blue. A row of gold disks trimmed the entrance, and here sat a throne made of the bones of a strange beast, the armrests covered with more gold, hammered thin. And here sat a man.

The man made the opulence of the tent seem mean and ordinary, though Dahl could not have quite said why or how. He seemed larger than any of the men surrounding him, and more striking. His head was shaved so close that, had his eyebrows not made two forceful arches of suspicion, Dahl would have thought he grew no hair at all. Dark eyes watched them approach, watched the woman lower the sledge and prostrate herself. Watched as the bowmen forced Dahl and his brothers down to the bent grass.

The man asked a question: What have you brought? Dahl imagined. The jackal-shouldered woman responded, a long and rolling answer in tones of humility and apology. Eme bala—those words again. She fell silent and Dahl risked a glance up at the man in the monster-bone chair.

He was looking directly at Dahl. “Stand up,” the man said, in perfect Common. “All of you.” Dahl rose, taking the opportunity to move a step in front of his brothers, a step nearer to Mira. Still sitting on the sledge, Mira held herself straight.

“Forgive me, saer,” she said. “My ankle is broken. I cannot accommodate you.”

The man considered Mira a moment, his black eyes endless. “Yes. And so you should have fed the labashu. But my sikati, Namshita”—he gestured to the woman with the jackal-shoulders—“tells me you can translate from our tongue to yours. Is this true?”

“A little,” Mira said. “Yours is not a tongue widely spoken, and what I know is old, from days long past.”

The man smiled, his teeth a sea cliff, white and endless and sharp. “Days of splendor,” he said. “Do they still tell tales of Unther’s might? Of the glory of Gilgeam, the Father of Victory?”

Gilgeam—Dahl racked his brain. A god—a dead god, a very dead god. A dead demigod, he amended. The god-king of lost Unther, killed in the Time of Troubles and returned weaker and sullen. Whatever glory Unther had gained, it was lost in the hands of Gilgeam.

Mira’s smile petrified upon her face, and Dahl suspected she was as anxious as he was. Mira wasn’t the sort of agent the Harpers or the Zhentarim used to grease a path into more dangerous company. For all she’d charmed their leader and for all she knew about Unther, there remained the fact that Mira worked best when she was at her task—head down and seeming too distracted to hear everything around her. Eventually, it seemed, everyone grew frustrated with Mira, and this madman with his demon-spangled army would not be an enemy they wanted to make.

You could say the same for yourself, he thought. At least Bodhar and Thost were keeping mum.

“Among the wise, they have never ceased,” Mira said, her caution barely disguised by obsequiousness. The man didn’t seem to notice. “But it’s said that Unther was destroyed in the Spellplague. No one claiming Unther’s blood has walked this plane in almost a century.”

The man stood, spreading his hands, wide as the wings of a griffon. “Perhaps your wisest are not so very wise. Behold the might of Unther. Behold”—the barest of pauses, a faint smirk on the man’s face—“the Father of Victory reborn the Son. We cannot be ended. We cannot be diminished, not while I lead.”

Oghma’s bloody papercuts, Dahl thought. An army of ten thousand and they’re led by a madman who thinks he’s a god.

“Well met,” Dahl said, stepping even with Mira, head bowed, “Your … Eminence. Welcome back.”

Gilgeam turned to consider Dahl as though he had interrupted something personal and private. “And who are you?”

Dahl quickly considered his options—what would appeal most to this man who claimed the godhead, who preened and posed and surrounded himself with deadly demons. “My name is Dahl Peredur,” he said. “I’m a priest of Oghma, our god of knowledge, and these are my traveling companions. We were drawn here, and I see now it is to learn what … was lost when Unther was stolen. What you gained in the other world.”

“The other world is a place of chaos and uncertainty,” Gilgeam said, louder than necessary—loud enough for it to carry well beyond his filigreed tent. “Dragons perverting what it means to be human with their magic and their experiments, littering the landscape with monstrous mistakes. Genies playing at humanity and lording over kingdoms—pressing us, pressing the children of the gods into servitude to their hateful enemies, who in turn serve the genasi, willing slaves and toadies. It became clear, in that other world, that only humans are meant for power and freedom. That only we are meant to rule.

“Had we remained,” the man said, clutching the amulet around his neck, “we would have crushed the genasi, ground their bones into vapor and flame and dust. Look around at my army, my might—they would not have stood, those tyrants of Shyr. But clearly, the land remembers us. The gods of Toril favor us—of course they do. We are returned and we shall reclaim our rightful empire here and now!”

A cheer went up around them and Dahl carefully did not look at his brothers. Madmen, he thought. They always want a stlarning empire.

“Then we are glad to assist you,” Dahl said. “If you tell me your story, I will carry it far and wide. That will be Oghma’s gift to you.” To all of us, Dahl thought. The more people he could warn, the faster this might be contained.

Gilgeam narrowed his eyes. “Your god gives you magic, yes? Can you gift the language of this place to another?”

Dahl hesitated—he could do that, but by ritual only, not by Oghma’s grace. Would Gilgeam know the difference? “Of course, Your Eminence,” he said. “I can grant any tongue I speak, for a time. Perhaps we could trade—”

“No,” Gilgeam said. He turned to Mira, “Shunigin gesh-tuku-ze akkil e, Gurun?”

Mira frowned. “I understand, though not the last part.”

Gilgeam nodded, satisfied. “It is your new name. I would keep our tongue pure,” he said. He turned back to Dahl, “You have no reason to speak it, arad, and Gurun here can remain near to me, so I will give you nothing. Instead, you will cast your magic upon my sikatis, beginning with Namshita here, that she may better make your duties known.”

The woman with the jackals on her shoulders bowed to Gilgeam, her stony expression betraying nothing. Dahl cast a glance at Mira—if Gilgeam wanted him to cast such a simple spell, that suggested he didn’t have the power to do it himself. He thought back to Farideh’s ancestor stories—they never used magic, unless it came from an artifact of the titans. They might not have magic, Dahl thought. Which meant he’d have to be careful. If he made himself seem more powerful in any fashion, Dahl didn’t doubt Gilgeam would become far, far less accommodating.

He counted the men surrounding the monster-bone throne—four of them wearing strange skins and necklaces of gold. Priests? If so, what magic could they wield?

“A boon, Your Eminence,” Dahl asked. “I would gladly bring the common tongue to your sikatis, but in return, would you aid us? Mira, your translator, is injured and it’s beyond my skills to heal her. My god is a scholar,” he said, trying for embarrassed, “not a power for the battlefield and its needs. Have you healers who might see to her?”

Dahl said a little apology to Oghma as Gilgeam’s dark eyes pierced him once more. The Son of Victory stooped beside Mira, and his advisors all crouched to stay as low as their leader. One hand on the amulet, he set the other on Mira’s swollen ankle, met her eyes, and smiled that sea-cliff smile.

The burst of magic that followed smelled of blood and hot steel and the midday sun on stone. For a moment, panic flooded Dahl, as if he’d been suddenly thrust into a battle. Mira cried out as the air filled with the sounds of marching feet.

Then all of it was gone. Mira flexed her ankle and shot Dahl a worried look. Gilgeam regarded her smugly. “Felicitations,” he said. “You are the first upon this plane to accept the blessings of the Son of Victory.”

Behind him, the priests shook rattles, and Dahl’s pulse rattled along with them. There was no doubting the sudden presence of the divine in that spell—if the man wasn’t what he’d claimed, then he was still powerful. A Chosen or perhaps a priest himself. He wished Farideh were here with her soul sight, and then took it back. Gilgeam’s speech might not have mentioned tieflings, but he could guess he wouldn’t make an exception. Suddenly Dahl was very glad Volibar had fled.

Gilgeam straightened and spread his arms as if to encompass Dahl and his brothers and Mira. “You are all honored among the people of this plane,” Gilgeam declared. “You are the first slaves of Unther, the first to bow your heads to our regained might. You shall be venerated among the chattel—the fortunate first. So says the Son of Victory.”

• • •

AS THE SUN set, the camp slowed down—all but the demons, who seemed more restless than ever. Dahl and his brothers were led to the edge of the camp, their manacles tied to a spike hammered down into the hard-packed ground.

There, Dahl cast the language ritual on Namshita, the jackal-shouldered woman, as darkness fell, without her ever speaking a word. Thost and Bodhar sat quiet beside him, shackled at the ankles as Dahl was. Mira had been kept back in the filigreed tent.

“We ought to rescue her,” Bodhar whispered as they were led away.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about Mira,” Dahl murmured.

“He might make her like a concubine or some such, and then what?”

“Then he gets a dagger in his belly for the trouble, but he won’t.” Mira was far more valuable to him as a translator—the only one among them who spoke any degree of Untheric. He finished the ritual, brushing the white feather across the sikati’s eyelids and ears and lips. A flash of magic and Namshita flinched.

“Can you understand me?” Dahl asked.

She frowned at him. “Yes,” she said slowly. Then, “How long does this last?”

“An hour,” Dahl said. “Your god can make it permanent, I assume.”

“You speak of the Son of Victory as though you aren’t happy with your fate,” Namshita said, as though she were merely observing the color of boots Dahl had chosen to wear. “Tell me: does that magic work both ways? Can you not cast the spell to speak our tongue just as simply?”

Dahl busied himself tidying components. “Why would I do that?” he asked. “If you can speak the common—”

“But we will not speak your tongue among ourselves,” Namshita pointed out. “And Gilgeam does not know the extent of your spell.” In the distance, the wind stirred the brush. Namshita peered out into the darkness, frowning.

Dahl shrugged. “I would not dare guess at what the Son of Victory knows or does not know. I’ll need more white feathers, saer, and more powdered salts of mithral. If you don’t have them, they can likely be obtained in Djerad Kethendi.”

Namshita regarded him as though he were being purposefully confusing. Which he was. “Where is that?”

“The nearest city,” Dahl said.

“That is Unthalass, the City of Gems,” Namshita said. “Where is Djerad Kethendi?”

Dahl looked up. “Djerad Kethendi is on the other shore of the River Alamber. Opposite the ruins of Unthalass.” He folded the last of his powdered bluefoot mushrooms into a parchment square. “Is he planning to head to Unthalass? That would put you near enough for a supply run.”

Shouts came from deeper in the camp. Namshita stood, hand on her sword, as another woman in heavy armor ran up, speaking rapidly in Untheric, too fast for Dahl to catch much. But her uneasiness was clear in the way her dark eyes darted to the other soldiers standing at the edges of the encampment.

Namshita responded, low and swift, but the words Djerad Kethendi were unmistakable. The other woman shook her head and made a fluttering sort of gesture off to the northwest as she answered. Namshita spat something that was almost certainly a curse. She glanced once at Dahl, who made a point of being very careful with his parchment square, before they both took off, heading toward the filigreed tent.

“We’re well under treefall aren’t we?” Bodhar asked.

“Not yet,” Dahl said. There was time still and options. He hoped.

“She knows your spell works both ways. She knows you didn’t tell yon cuckoo that.”

“Handing out new names,” Thost sniffed. “I’d ask who he thinks he is, but that’s apparent.”

“D’you think he could be? A god, I mean.”

“Don’t be daft.”

“How’s that daft?” Bodhar demanded. “We just fled a godsbedamned demon lord. Did you forget that?”

“Not a god.” Thost looked to Dahl as if expecting agreement, but Dahl could only shrug.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Nothing’s making sense these days. It wouldn’t be out of place.”

“Were he a god,” Thost said, “I think we’d know it.”

Dahl would have agreed. But then Gilgeam spoke the common tongue despite there being no way Gilgeam could have lived on Toril. He healed Mira when they said there were no gods on Abeir—and so no gods he could draw such gifts from—and magic was even more difficult to grasp there than on Toril.

“You planning on signing up for the priesthood?” Dahl asked. “Because if not, the only thing that matters is he’s trouble. We need to get around him, not try and go through him.” He cast his gaze out at the encampment. “If he’s headed for Unthalass, we’ll be close enough to Djerad Kethendi to make a run for it.”

Again, the brush rustled, but the wind didn’t make it down to where they sat. Too much noise for too little breeze. Dahl glanced toward the camp again.

Bodhar rubbed his arms. “Stlarning cold.”

“I gotta piss,” Dahl said, standing. Without waiting for his brothers to reply, he walked out to the edge of his tether, eyeing the green-gray brush. As he came to a stop, he gave a low, looping whistle. Nothing. He tried it again.

“Black Hound and Green Sister!” a voice whispered. “What’s that supposed to be? A drunk barn swallow?”

“Volibar?”

“You don’t need to sound so surprised.” The halfling poked his head out from behind a brush. “Where’s Mira?”

“You’ve got to get out of here,” Dahl said quickly. “Stay as far from this camp as you can—the leader’s mad, he’s got demons and more than enough followers, he hates nonhumans, and he’s not too keen on humans if they don’t come from Unther.”

“Naed,” Volibar swore. “So you’re just planning to rot here?”

“No, but I know when I need reinforcements,” Dahl said. “Get to Djerad Thymar. Cross the river and—”

“I know how to get to godsdamned Djerad Thymar.”

“Get yourself to the Verthisathurgiesh clan,” Dahl said. “Ask to talk to Farideh, or if not her, then a fellow named Mehen.”

“She’s the one who’s got Haslam.”

“Yes, damn it, just … Tell them what I told you. They’ll listen. Tell them he’s heading for the ruins of Unthalass, and don’t forget the stlarning demons. The dragonborn have to be ready.”

“Aye aye. Don’t get yourselves killed,” Volibar added as he slipped off into the night.

Dahl straightened and made a show of rearranging his clothes, trying to calculate the likelihood of the halfling’s success. Volibar was faster than any of them in this terrain, slipperier than even the shadowy demons. But the army stretched out, farther than he could see. They’d need another plan.

As he approached the tether’s anchor and his brothers though, he saw Namshita had returned with a pair of young men doling out bowls of some sort of porridge. Her dark eyes were locked on Dahl, as if she’d seen every moment of his subterfuge.

“Fill your bellies,” she said, not breaking her gaze. “Tomorrow we march.”

Behind her, more soldiers came, flanked by the dark shapes of winged women—succubi, Dahl thought, avoiding their gleaming eyes. Between them trudged a line of dragonborn, their faces pierced with swinging silver chains and small copper owls. Old and young and hardy—not an army, but a family. A few families. The remains of a few families, Dahl thought.

And the latest slaves of the Son of Victory, Dahl thought, as they too were yoked to spikes driven into the ground.

• • •

BRIN CONSIDERED THE diagram sketched above the location spell once more—how in every broken plane he was meant to balance the owl’s feather like that he couldn’t imagine, but the instructions saw no need to elaborate. The book hadn’t been written for dabblers after all. With the point of the fineknife he’d used to trim it, he shifted the feather a finger’s width down the iron bar, where it toppled, floating down to the empty basin below.

“I thought you said you knew how to do this,” Mot demanded.

Brin ignored the imp hovering just past his shoulder. Of course he’d said it—Bryseis Kakistos would only keep him close so long as she thought he could help her. At the very least, he needed this apparatus to look plausibly functional, even if his chances of making the spell work were small.

Not small, he thought. Nonexistent, unless you figure out what it is you’re trying to find.

Mot dropped lower, nearly landing on his shoulder. “You have no shitting idea what you’re doing, do you?”

“So far as you know,” Brin replied, trying to balance the feather once more, “I’ve done this every day of my life. So you can’t tell her anything different, unless you want to risk being wrong.”

Mot was silent and scowling a long moment. “The witch? If she asks, I have to tell her how long you’ve been messing with that feather. If she doesn’t ask …” The imp shrugged. “If she doesn’t ask, then it doesn’t matter. You don’t know how to do this, do you?”

“What about Bosh?” Brin asked, eyes on the feather.

“Turn around.”

Brin glanced back over his shoulder. Beyond the glowering Mot, Bosh was examining the glass panes of the window with a curled nostril, as if he had never seen anything so out of place. “In the time it takes Bosh to tell the witch a damned thing,” Mot said, “she’ll turn him to ash faster than she did Olla. I’ve never known anybody who could be so stupid about such pointless things in so many words. You don’t know what you’re doing. How, by the Nine, do you survive without her?”

The feather drifted down again, and Brin balled his hands into fists and blew out a breath that caught it and sent it spinning. “I’m trying.”

Mot snatched the feather. “Try harder.”

“Are you going to try to convince me you care about Havi?” Brin asked. “Because I’m not buying that cow.”

Mot folded his little arms across his chest. “Look, when you’re an imp, you get a lot of orders. I happened to like her as an order. She says thank you. Also,” he added a little defensively, “maybe Dembo got the axe for helping, but I got the credit for the hellhound idea. Might get promoted for it. Maybe I’ll be a spinagon.”

Brin frowned. “You want that?”

“Of course I want that! Everybody wants a promotion.”

“But you won’t be you anymore, will you?” Brin said. “The imp’s destroyed.”

Mot looked at him as if he were being deliberately obtuse. “No, I’ll be me, but I’ll be Spinagon Me. Who cares if the imp’s destroyed? But I’m not getting promoted for serving the Brimstone Angel, even if it’s in my orders. Have you figured out what you’re supposed to find yet?”

He hadn’t, but he’d pieced a few clues together: Bryseis Kakistos hadn’t asked about “it,” until she’d possessed Havilar—that moment where Havilar’s expression had gone blank, as if the ghost were searching through the borrowed memories of this body. Havilar must have known, and she hadn’t told Brin.

Brin considered the scrying equipment. What wouldn’t Havilar have told him?

The list was short. Havilar didn’t keep secrets, not from Brin.

Arjhani, he thought. She hadn’t told him the story of Arjhani, the story of the winter night where she’d nearly died trying to right a wrong that wasn’t hers. And she hadn’t told him about being the Chosen of Asmodeus, or about the power that made her sick around demons.

But in all those cases, she’d told him on her own, as soon as it brushed his own life, even though she clearly wanted to keep it secret. She wasn’t the sort to hide something important.

“It’s something Havilar knew about,” he said. “It’s something she’s … embarrassed about or worried about, probably. And Bryseis Kakistos wants it badly enough to set me after it.” He twirled the owl’s feather between his fingers. “Which narrows it almost none at all. Do you know of anything Havi might have been keeping secret?”

“Lords of the Nine! You’re missing the obvious,” Mot said. He dropped his voice, flying closer to Brin. “She only cares about two things: those heirs and that staff. So if you’re meant to find something, odds are good it’s an heir or a staff.”

Brin blinked. Where is it? Not “he,” not “she.” “It.” Bryseis Kakistos thought he knew where to find the staff of Azuth. Brin shook his head. “The staff. Havilar didn’t … I mean, it wouldn’t have been in her glaive or something. Right?”

Mot gave him a dark look. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure even the crazy ghost witch would have noticed the divine artifact in the room. It must be someplace else.”

And Bryseis Kakistos couldn’t find it on her own, which meant there must be some sort of trick to it. A trick Havilar didn’t know well enough for Bryseis Kakistos to pluck out of her mind. A trick she thought Brin could figure out.

“Stay here,” Brin said.

He wound his way through the cold fortress until he found one of the black-boned skeletons dusting a sculpture of a demonic vulture in flight. The skeleton gestured with an arm decorated in silver wire, staring at Brin with blue cabochons for eyes, which distorted his reflection: Bryseis Kakistos was down in the dungeons. The lowest level of the fortress still hung high over the valleys of the Snowflake Mountains. As he descended, he passed narrow windows that let in icy gusts off the farther peaks, glimpsed in the distance through the gathering storm.

The stairs came down into the middle of a corridor, and he heard Havilar’s voice off to the left. As he neared the source, Bryseis Kakistos’s tones rang through, and he found that even though he knew he ought to expect the difference by now, it still took his breath away.

“If you cannot give me a different name,” she was saying, “then you’ll have to remain here.”

“I don’t know any others!” the woman shouted. “Do you think we’re such a close-knit family? We flee each other—we know that much.” Brin stopped before the closed door.

“Then I suppose you’ll have to do,” Bryseis Kakistos said politely. “Someone will be by with food later. You ought to eat while you can.”

The door swung open and Brin stepped back out of the way, glancing inside as unobtrusively as he could. A woman with a tangle of red hair around her horns glared at him as the door shut. Bryseis Kakistos locked it with a heavy key. She smiled at him. “And how are you getting along?”

“Well enough, saer.”

She waved that away. “That’s not necessary. We’re all but family.” She started down the corridor, not waiting for Brin. He hurried to catch up with her. “Any luck?”

“There are protections in place, it seemed,” he said. “I was wondering if you had any notion of how to elude them.”

She clucked her tongue. “I’d assumed you placed them. What a tragedy. Ah well, try the usual avenues. You may need to use blood, although it won’t be as potent.”

Whose blood? Brin wanted to ask, but he held his tongue. “Thank you.”

“At least you understand the …” She drifted to a stop, her words trailing away. Brin stood beside her as Havilar’s face, still and unexpressive, stared straight down the corridor.

“Havi?” he whispered.

She blinked, but then it was Bryseis Kakistos and no one else who turned to him. “Where will you settle after this?” she asked as they strolled past the stairs. “I can’t imagine Cormyr is good for … mixed families.”

“Depends on how much coin you have,” Brin said lightly. “We were considering Waterdeep.”

She made a face. “I suppose. I’d manage, of course, but should you have others …”

“Others?”

“Children.” Bryseis Kakistos waved a hand at one of the crystals in the wall. A swirl of magic started a mote of blue light glowing at the crystal’s core. “You should have others. Not too many of course. What do you intend to do for work in Waterdeep?” she asked. “Or will the Crownsilvers fund you?”

Brin blinked. “Um, well, we were discussing buying a caravan company.”

Bryseis Kakistos made another face. “Which will mean you’re away more often than not, or you’re raising your family on the road. That’s hardly ideal. Perhaps you should consider going back to your family. Presumably, with heirs, the troubles you left behind become much more manageable. How much coin are they worth, precisely?”

In his wildest dreams, Brin could not have imagined a stranger discussion: his lover’s great-great-grandmother’s ghost testing his suitability as a husband to her granddaughter and a father for herself. But mad or not, it wasn’t a test he could fail.

“Quite a lot,” he said, “but I wouldn’t … I don’t think it’s the place for a child. To the Crownsilvers, an heir is a tool. I grew up with titles and coin, yes, but no choices of my own, no freedom. My playmates were novices of Torm. I lived in fear of the assassins who killed my father. I had to hide behind a screen during his funeral—I didn’t get to say good-bye, because it was too risky to the Crownsilvers. And when I returned to that world, its ruthlessness infected me. I felt I had no choice but to think of politics and games of succession. I wouldn’t wish that on any child.” Especially not a tiefling child, he thought.

“Your children won’t be you.”

Brin shook his head. “But Suzail will be Suzail. I will be me, and Havilar will …” He faltered. “I hope Havilar will be Havilar. If we have children, I would rather they were paupers with love and safety in their lives than nobles who have to grow poison in their hearts to survive.”

Bryseis Kakistos smiled coldly. “You’ve never been a pauper.”

“A happy medium then.”

She tilted her head, that gesture so like Havilar that Brin’s thoughts reeled a moment, and her smile faded. “I will grant you this, Lord Crownsilver: you have a kind heart. Perhaps that will make some difference—a little kindness right from the start. Or perhaps it would have.”

Brin hesitated. “Did you not know your father?”

She laughed, and once more, every hint of Havilar seemed erased. “The winter,” she said, “was my father. Darmshall’s streets, my mother. You don’t have to do much to improve upon that. Though,” she added, “it remains to be seen if any of it matters at all. I have things to attend to. And so do you.”

Brin headed back up the stairs, feeling that if he hadn’t gained the information he’d sought, at least he’d gotten a little better informed about his enemy. Even if it meant he was starting to feel sorry for Bryseis Kakistos.

4

28 Nightal, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR)
Fifth of the fingerbone towers, Malbolge
The Nine Hells

AN UNFAMILIAR CURL OF PANIC GREW IN LORCAN AS HE STEPPED through the portal into the Nine Hells. A dose of fear was normal—a half-devil wouldn’t live long in Malbolge without being wise enough to fear what lay around each corner. But this was different—this was the kind of terror that got a fellow killed. The kind of terror he knew how to prey on, but not how to master, and it thrummed all through him, as if carried by the faint, unending pulse of Malbolge.

Another sign that things had changed. It couldn’t be permanent, he told himself as his feet settled on the bone-tiled floor. Although, he had no proof of that, no understanding of how far this change extended. Only that it wasn’t right.

Damn you, Dahl, he thought, as he glanced around the narrow room, fighting to keep his breath calm. Once more he wished he’d convinced Farideh to share the protection—but he’d had no choice but to return to the Nine Hells, and the very thought of bringing Farideh here for more than a heartbeat made him feel like nothing but prey.

He noticed the erinyes waiting for him—too late—by the time he registered her standing there, blade in hand, he should have been dead. No god of luck would have dropped a die for Lorcan, but he found himself endlessly grateful it was Neferis waiting for him.

“You’re alive.” She sounded surprised, maybe a little relieved. The last he’d seen Neferis, Glasya had tasked her specially with watching over Lorcan—whether that meant she was to guard him or spy on him, neither of them was sure. “Where’s Zela?”

“She didn’t come back?” Lorcan said. He’d left Zela and eight other erinyes in the Underdark as well, facing off with a clearly diminished but still-dangerous Graz’zt, the Dark Prince. The erinyes should have been able to flee … but Lorcan wouldn’t have laid a wager on whether Zela, the most powerful of his sisters, would have let them.

“Not yet,” Neferis said. She sheathed her sword. “I would have chased you. Her Highness said you have to be alive. But with Zela there …” She let the explanation trail away, leaving Lorcan to decide if Zela had been a safeguard or a deterrent.

The walls oozed a stream of marrow. “If she’s not back yet,” Lorcan said, “does Glasya know they left?”

Neferis shook her head. “The oathbreaker curse gives special permissions through the gates and portals.” She drummed her fingers on her sword hilt. “Where’s Little Sister?”

“Out of reach,” Lorcan said. Until Farideh turned twenty-seven, he was bound to protect Sairché from harm, just as she was bound to protect him. A deal that outlived its usefulness the moment it compelled him to open a portal to the Underdark to save a possessed Sairché from Bryseis Kakistos’s reckless—and failed—plan to ally with Graz’zt. Farideh’s birthday couldn’t come soon enough. “For the moment, anyway. Has Shetai sent anyone looking for me?”

Before Lorcan had leaped into Toril and into trouble, he’d made overtures to another collector devil, a paelyrion called Shetai. While his first attempt at gathering information from Shetai had failed and given it far more information about Lorcan than he’d received about the Brimstone Angel, a message had come soon afterward when Shetai had realized Lorcan might have his uses after all.

“No—and be glad,” Neferis said. “Shetai is trouble.”

“Well met and welcome to the shitting Hells. Who isn’t trouble?”

Neferis gave him a dark look. “Shetai’s the one who triggered the fall of Malagarde. Anyone tell you that?”

Malagarde, the Hag Countess, had been the layer’s previous ruler and now her magically twisted body made the layer itself. The ghost of the night hag wailed in the winds, her body seeping fluids still, her heartbeat pulsing in everything.

“So it’s the Vulgar Inquisitor’s fault the walls are constantly ruining my clothes?” He waved toward the door. “Send a messenger to Shetai that I would speak soon. I have warlock business to attend to.”

“Be careful,” Neferis said. “It’s more ruthless than Mother ever was. And I won’t rescue you from the Vulgar Inquisitor either.” She left, and Lorcan sprinted after her, locking the door tight. He fell against it and made himself take several deep breaths.

Find Adastreia, he thought. Then find a way to fix this. He crossed to the iron scrying mirror hanging in the corner beside the portal’s anchor point.

Five Brimstone Angels walking the world. Farideh was his and Havilar was no one’s. Shetai claimed a man called Lachs the Yellow—Lorcan didn’t relish trying to coax that one away. Nasmos was held by a bone devil called Incus, and Adastreia Tyrianicus was kept by a logokron from the Eighth Layer called Kulaga.

Lorcan called up the image of a fortress deep in a pine forest, atop a tor of granite, and studied it, frowning. A Brimstone Angel was a valuable heir, if you were going to collect warlock pacts, and Kulaga and Adastreia didn’t have the luxury of a mysterious protection spell to keep other, overeager collector devils away. If he showed up with Farideh in tow, there was every chance Adastreia and her patron would assume it was an attack: nothing increased a warlock’s value like ensuring their rarity.

Which meant he needed to arrange for Kulaga to be there as well, with as little information handed over as possible. Neferis could be sent, maybe another two erinyes for show—

Lorcan yawned, suddenly, and dread pooled in him. How quickly would Kulaga realize that Lorcan was weakened, maybe addled? The logokron was wily, a practitioner of old true-name magics, and a spymaster with at least half Shetai’s reach, which was nothing to disregard.

And you are the madman who lied to the archduchess, Lorcan thought. Not a skill to disregard.

And if he didn’t, what would happen to Farideh? No, never mind Farideh—how badly would it fall on him if Asmodeus were displeased? That panic built in his chest, a thick cloud he could hardly breathe around. Trying to predict what Asmodeus would be pleased by in the long run was as impossible as trying to guess what his plans were.

But if you don’t guess, Lorcan thought, considering the scrying mirror, you may wind up dead anyway.

• • •

ILSTAN RAN HIS fingertips over the smooth stone, testing the magic laid into it. On the other side of the table, its twin hummed, alight with magic. The murmurings of Azuth matched the pitch of the magic, and together they hummed in Ilstan’s bones.

One death was a trial … one death was a test … perhaps two shall answer the question once and for all …

You will not die, Ilstan thought. I will not let you die.

Many a wizard forgets to plan for death … many a wizard seeks to evade it … none …

The voice trailed away and dread built in Ilstan’s heart as the silence stretched.

The Moonmaiden will come to regret her meddling, the same voice returned, but stronger, more musical somehow. Asmodeus. Where has she gone, my little hero?

Ilstan crouched down beside the table, laden with more scrolls, more magic items than he should have been able to shape. Don’t listen to the voice when it changes, he told himself. He made himself think of the meshing of spells, the network of magic that would link the stones together over the planes. Don’t listen to the voice when it changes.

Why doesn’t he know? The thought slipped in without Ilstan meaning for it to. But why wouldn’t Asmodeus know where to find Farideh, his reluctant Chosen?

Reluctance does not necessarily forestall action … what actions we take are greater currency than our promises and titles … intent multiplies action but does not absolve action …

She helped you, Ilstan reminded himself, curling his fists into his hair. She saved you. He doesn’t mean Farideh.

And what did she save you from? Against his will, Ilstan found his mind flooded with images of his life before he’d left Cormyr, before he’d become the Chosen of Azuth. Striding through the palace of the Purple Dragon. Given the robes of a full war wizard several years before his peers. Given command over contingents even sooner. He’d had the trust of the Crown. He’d had the affection of Princess Raedra. All of that was gone and he would never regain it.

But those memories felt empty, those prizes not so precious. For all he contended with madness, he would not have traded his nearness to the Lord of Spells for anything. The spells he cast as a war wizard were works of craft and care, but they lacked a spark he could not have gained without the Lord of Spells. Was this the difference between being a wizard without a god and with one? Was it what came of being the Chosen of Azuth?

What would happen if the Brimstone Angel succeeded?

“Where is the staff?” Ilstan whispered. “Can you sense it?”

What is the symbol but a fraction of the thing?… When it is lost, what is lost?… Direction, focus, resilience …

The staff is gone, the other voice said.

Little is truly gone … only forgotten …

Where is she? Asmodeus’s voice rang in Ilstan’s head like the pealing of a great bell. Your master dies if the vessel does not.

Ilstan squeezed his eyes shut. Don’t listen to the voice when it changes.

• • •

YOU SEEM UPSET.

Havilar blinked at Alyona’s voice. How long had they sat silent after returning from the fortress? She would have said it was only a heartbeat ago—had she a pulse to count, anyway—but at the interruption, it suddenly felt as though it might have been hours or days or maybe years. I am upset, she said. How could I possibly be anything else?

Alyona crouched down and put her arms around Havilar, who took the offered comfort, trying to ignore the way the difference between what it felt like to be hugged and what it should have felt like made her want to scream.

I know, Alyona said. I was upset too. I was so angry at my sister for such a long time.

If I were you, Havilar said, I would go right on being angry. You’d be justified.

Alyona’s hand rubbed her back for a moment before she released her. Maybe, she allowed, but anger only poisons us. I cannot change the past. I can only change with the future.

Havilar thought that sounded like a lot of rubbish—some things didn’t deserve forgiveness, and trapping your sister in a karshoji soul prison seemed like the top of the list. You sound like a priest, spouting lines like that.

Alyona laughed. Well I am. I was. A devotee of Selûne.

Oh, Havilar said. Well that’s all right.

I’m glad she meets your approval, Alyona said wryly. She has done so much … She … Do you know, when I was a girl, the town watch would lay the bodies of unclaimed dead out behind the temple of Selûne? Bisera would pick their pockets while I kept watch. That’s where the head priestess first noticed me, where she … I was only pretending at first, you see? Trying to keep her attention, trying to keep Bisera safe, but it made an impression, you could say, when she’d come talk to me. No one else cared for me like that, except my sister.

Coin bought a lot more than kind words and silly sayings, Havilar thought. But she couldn’t imagine Tam Zawad, the Harper priest of Selûne who was Brin’s superior, dispensing Selûne’s wisdom to a starving child and not passing some bread and dried meat along with it, and a place to sleep as well. What did your sister think about your calling?

Alyona shrugged the way a person did when they knew the answer and they didn’t much like it or like to admit it. She didn’t turn my gifts down when we went adventuring. Everyone’s a god-worshiper when their leg’s broken. Even Caisys … She drifted off again, the smirk at some joke Havilar didn’t know relaxing into something sad and a little defeated. She doesn’t venerate the gods the same way. She was always angry at our lot, not that I would blame her. Not that anyone could blame her. She smiled at Havilar. There—that is something you can relate to at least a little. She doesn’t wish for assistance, she wants to do things on her own.

Havilar frowned. How … How much do you know about me? Or about us?

Alyona smiled. Both. I was broken too.

So you just … watched?

Don’t worry, Alyona said. It’s like a dream. You’re just … You’re there and you’re a part of it … You see so much of a person in their dreams …

That didn’t comfort Havilar. It still meant that Alyona had been there for … well, for everything. Brin and the imps and calling down Lorcan, getting possessed and that time she broke her arm, and everything about Arjhani. You’re there and you’re a part of it—she didn’t want someone else to be a part of it, watching and judging and—

Havilar stood. Wait—do you mean you can go into people’s dreams?

Yes, Alyona said. Bisera’s and … She stopped herself this time, looking abashed. Well, Bisera’s are simplest. The closer you are to someone, the simpler.

I could talk to Farideh, Havilar said. That’s what you mean?

Yes, Alyona said slowly. But it’s … I mean, it’s not so simple. It takes some practice. Especially since she is so far away. What do you want to tell her anyway?

Show me how, Havilar said.

She might not be asleep.

Someone will be asleep, Havilar said, pulling Alyona to her feet. Show me how.

• • •

IF FARIDEH HADN’T been warned about Kulaga’s secretive nature, about Adastreia’s reclusiveness, she wouldn’t have been able to spot the small fortress she and Lorcan were walking into. A sheer cliff face, only reached by a narrow path between two hills. The brush was thick and snagged her cloak and the wrappings on her legs as she pushed through it, toward the broken brown rock face. Even though she could see no one watching, she felt eyes on her and kept her rod in her hand.

She won’t kill you, Farideh thought, repeating Lorcan’s assurances. She’s afraid, but she’s curious.

Though, she added as she reached the gates, never curious enough to look for you. Never that. She blew out a slow breath—she didn’t want Adastreia or anyone else to have come to find her, to have claimed her and taken her from Mehen. So why did it sting to know they hadn’t?

She felt the first of the protective circles as she crossed over it, as if pressing through an enormous spiderweb. The reason they couldn’t use a portal to get any closer. Lorcan cursed as he pushed through the same barrier, but it didn’t stop him.

“How many do you expect there are?” Farideh asked.

Lorcan didn’t answer. He passed her, looking tense—and damp with sweat. Farideh stared at him. “Are you all right?”

“No, I’m—” He broke off. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look well,” she caught up with him. “You’re sweating.”

“Well this isn’t my usual constitutional, now is it?”

“I have never seen you sweat. Not once.”

Lorcan looked back at her. “You’re remembering wrong. Please, darling, I’m fine. Come on.”

Farideh was not remembering wrong. The way her clammy skin clung to his, the difference between her hand on his bare back and her hand on Dahl’s—there was no mistaking something had changed in Lorcan. She started to ask him—again—what had happened, but she stopped herself. He didn’t need to know she was worried about him.

You should be more worried about him, she thought, and she wished Mehen were with them. While Lorcan had gone to make the necessary preparations to collect Adastreia, Farideh had donned her armor, belted her sword, and gone to find Mehen, to tell him she was going to go after the other heirs. To ask if he would come along—at least that had been her plan. She knew well enough she shouldn’t be alone with Lorcan, that she needed allies, that she needed her father with her.

But then she imagined a tiefling, a Brimstone Angel, with her eyes or hair or nose. Someone wicked enough to collude with Bryseis Kakistos, wicked enough to leave two newborn babies in the snow and never once be sure of their safety. How many horrible things might she say? How many cruelties would she sling at Mehen? And Farideh would have to ask him to stand there, to listen to all of it and say nothing, do nothing.

She couldn’t ask that of Mehen. She left a note instead.

Following Lorcan through another protective barrier and into the crack in the cliff face, Farideh hoped Mehen would understand. There was so little of this she could protect him from—this one moment of unfair restraint seemed a minor gift.

A grinding sound—two humanlike bodies peeled themselves from living rock, falling into step behind Farideh and Lorcan as the crack widened into a cavern, then the cavern smoothed into an entrance hall lit by hanging balls of light. Intricate chiseled patterns laced the polished stonework as they climbed a short flight of stairs, and another stone golem broke away from a column, leading the way down into the hillside.

“Don’t talk unless I say so,” Lorcan told her. “There’s an order to this. Kulaga will need assurances that we’re not threatening him, that I don’t want Adastreia’s pact. A lot of posturing, a lot of sparring. Don’t tell him why we’re really here. And put away your rod before someone thinks you’re getting ideas.”

“What are you going to tell him we’re here for?” Farideh asked as they entered a long rectangular room, its walls dominated by impossible windows of frosted glass. Sunlight, which could not have possibly come from this deep in the ground, lit the space illumining the woman sitting at the far end of the room, and the ebon-skinned devil behind her.

Here was the source of their purplish-black hair—though Adastreia’s was streaked with silver as bright as her eyes. Here were their swept-back horns, dark and neat. She could see Havilar’s mouth and the shape of her chin, but the rest of Adastreia’s face was softer, her nose a tidy line. She was paler, Farideh thought as she came closer, and shorter too—she would have come just to Farideh’s shoulder, slim as a whip in her crimson gown, her necklace of fine stones. In that moment, by the features she lacked, Farideh imagined she could picture what her father looked like.

Mehen, she reminded herself. Mehen is your father. These are the people who abandoned you in the snow.

But a lump built in her throat anyway as the other tiefling regarded her coldly.

“Well met, Lorcan,” a sibilant voice said. “And Farideh, I believe? The secret Brimstone Angel?”

In her study of Adastreia, she’d neglected the devil Kulaga behind her, still as a statue. Two hands folded over his chest as if in contemplation—two more held halberds, long axes on poles. Kulaga’s skin was as dark as Lorcan’s eyes, his eyes as red as Lorcan’s skin, and a tongue tattooed with a sigil dangled from his mouth. Something about the rune made Farideh flinch. “We meet at last.”

“Well met, Kulaga,” Lorcan said, with a sort of half bow that held an equal mix of fear and disdain. “How fares Cania?”

The logokron’s ruby eyes didn’t leave Farideh. “Do you ask for my sake, or for Archduke Mephistopheles’s?”

“I’m not acquainted with His Highness,” Lorcan said. “So consider my question to you.”

Kulaga’s long tongue flicked, and Farideh tried not to gag. How did the devil speak around it? “That’s not quite how I’ve heard it—rumors suggest you’ve made yourself the special confidant of His Majesty. Perhaps even his spy and enforcer in Malbolge.”

“Lords of the Nine,” Lorcan said in a haughty way, “but people will repeat anything, won’t they?”

“You’ve been seen talking to Shetai.”

“And now I’m talking to you,” Lorcan said. Farideh slipped the rod from her sleeve once more, tatters of shadow-smoke building along her skin. Kulaga didn’t move, and neither did Adastreia. She didn’t even blink.

“Lorcan,” she murmured.

“Because you want a proper Kakistos heir,” Kulaga finished. “Don’t deny it. You’ve never said how you found a Brimstone Angel the rest of us missed. How you kept her, and yet lost all the rest of your collection. I find that curious.”

Lorcan smiled. “Have you said how you enticed your Kakistos heir? This isn’t something we talk about, so why begin?”

“Why indeed?” Kulaga said. “I hear another rumor—a rumor that this one isn’t what she seems. She was supposed to be a Chosen of Asmodeus by anyone’s tales. I hear too you’re saying all the Kakistos heirs were invested with such powers. As if mine is the false Brimstone Angel. All curious, very curious.”

Lorcan raised his eyebrows. “Perhaps I had bad information.”

“Perhaps you’re using Asmodeus’s temporary favor to get yourself a collection worth speaking of. Regardless, you have nothing I want.”

The Nine Hells prickled at the base of Farideh’s spine for an incongruous moment, as if she’d begun a spell, without doing any such thing—before the air around Kulaga snapped and three immense devils covered in thorns appeared. The two stone golems behind them moved forward, unarmed but for their massive granite fists.

“Shit and ashes!” Lorcan spat and drew his sword. “Kulaga, wait!”

“Laesurach!” All instinct, Farideh pointed the rod and with it pulled a vent of lava into existence, making a barrier between them and the stone golems. The guardians stepped backward, considering the sudden fountain of molten rock. Farideh turned from them to the barbed devils rushing toward them. Lorcan’s sword met the first of them, slicing deeply into its spiny shoulder. The devil threw itself into the strike though, and the barbs caught Lorcan, piercing his forearm. He cried out.

Farideh turned a blast of flames on the barbed devil. Fire splashed across its thorny skin, and it turned to regard her as if she were flinging pebbles at it.

“This isn’t what you think!” she shouted.

A second barbed devil slashed at her with its claws, catching her armor and throwing her shoulder painfully back. She threw another bolt of fire and yanked hard on the powers of the Malbolge, opening a rent in the planes and stepping back through it to reappear on the other side of the room.

“You have always lacked foresight,” Kulaga chided. “Fire, fire, fire—what would Exalted Invadiah say about her feckless son imbuing his warlocks with such misdirected skills?” The logokron’s forward hands filled with dark shadows. “Oh, I suppose nothing. She’s rotted into the layer by now.”

Fire doesn’t hurt them, Farideh realized. She drew her sword, ducked under a ball of flame hurled from the nearer barbed devil’s hand. The fire bolt, the rain of brimstone, the blast of eldritch energy—only the last wouldn’t count as fire. One of the stone golems had sunk to its knee in the lava. The other made its way around the still-burning patch of stone.

“Adaestuo!” she shouted, flinging a burst of energy toward the golem. Retreating, Lorcan parried his barbed devil’s claws on his silvery sword, both spattered in black blood Farideh didn’t stop to assess the source of. She held the rod parallel to the ground, perfectly still, even as the barbed devils stalked toward her.

I’m sorry, she thought.

“Chaanaris!” she hissed, yanking the rod up. The floor seemed to boil, as spectral hands reached up through the polished stone. The hungry souls of the Nine Hells grasped at the barbed devils, trying to pull them back into the Hells, trying to draw energy out of them, the souls they once possessed. The spirits yanked one of the barbed devils coming for Farideh off its feet, pulling it flat against the ground and screaming. More clutched at the other barbed devils—none touched the golems as they made their stomping way through the lava.

Suddenly Lorcan cried out. Two of the souls had ahold of him. He slashed at their ghostly hands as they pulled, dark red energy flowing out of him and into them. Farideh yanked on the powers of the Hells again, tearing the fabric of the planes again so that she landed lightly beside Lorcan.

A hand brushed her calf, an unholy cold spreading up through her body as it did. But Farideh gritted her teeth, grabbing hold of Lorcan’s arms and tearing the planes once more, to pull him through and land, dizzy and off-balance, out of the reach of the grasping spirits. Lorcan stumbled as she landed, one leg buckling under him as he collapsed to the floor.

“Well, well,” Kulaga said. “The little fraud can fight.” He raised his hands as if to hurl the balls of shadows at her. “So let’s make this a fight worth counting.”

“Stop!” Farideh shouted. “I want to talk to my mother!”

That gave Kulaga pause. Beside him, Adastreia Tyrianicus regarded Farideh, unmoving.

“Your life may be in danger,” Farideh said to her. “So please, it’s not what you think.”

“Clearly.” Kulaga let one of the spells collapse, holding up the other forward hand in a fist. The barbed devils, climbing to their feet as the hungry souls faded back through the planes, held their positions. “When did you get yourself a daughter, my dear?” he called out.

The tiefling beside him wavered like a reflection in a pool, then vanished without so much as a sound.

“I don’t have a daughter,” a woman’s voice said. “She’s lying.”

Farideh glanced at the wall to the left, before one of the panes of frosted glass—now black as a sheet of obsidian. Adastreia’s double stood there in the same crimson gown, the same necklace of coral and topaz and a fat black pearl—no, Adastreia in the flesh. Her eyes were no warmer than the illusion’s had been.

“The young lady seems very insistent,” Kulaga said. “So why is that?”

“Oh, didn’t you know?” Lorcan drawled, despite his wounds. “Twenty-seven years ago, your Kakistos heir decided to dabble in treachery.”

Adastreia blanched. “What sort of treachery?” Kulaga asked.

“Aiding Bryseis Kakistos’s ghost,” Lorcan said, “in an attempt to resurrect her and dethrone Asmodeus. That’s where mine comes from—that little ritual made sure your Brimstone Angel was left in the family way. Did you know?”

“Someone else had my pact then,” Adastreia said.

“But you didn’t mention you had heirs,” Lorcan said. “Otherwise, I assume you’d have a greater collection, Kulaga.”

“So far as I knew, they were dead.” She turned to Farideh. “Did you know about the other one?” Adastreia said, as if she meant to wound Lorcan with the fact.

Farideh swallowed her anger. “My sister. Yes.”

“Two?” Kulaga asked eagerly.

“Twins,” Adastreia said. “And since she was meant to hold the Brimstone Angel’s soul, I’d tread lightly, Kulaga.”

The logokron considered Farideh with new eyes. “Why do you say my Kakistos heir’s life is at stake?”

“Bryseis Kakistos is going to attempt it again,” Farideh said before Lorcan could stop her. “She needs a Kakistos heir to manage it, and we think Adastreia might top her list. Might I have a word in private?” she said to the tiefling.

Adastreia’s eyes darted back to the logokron. “Whatever you say to me—”

“Do you really want him to hear all of it?” Farideh asked quietly.

She fell silent a moment, eyes locked on Farideh. “Very well.” Adastreia turned to her patron. “Kulaga, excuse us, please. I think you’re finished here.”

The logokron’s ruby eyes narrowed. “And risk my Kakistos heir?”

“If you’re going to insist on staying,” Adastreia said, “then I’m going to insist on your binding word that you will not take matters into your own hands with either the cambion or the girl, particularly not before I know what I want to do about this. Which would you prefer?”

The shift of power came so abruptly it left Farideh startled, unsure of where to look. Lorcan moved carefully to his feet behind her, the stillness of his expression so intent, so calculated she knew he was surprised too. Kulaga made a noise deep in his throat and the barbed devils vanished from the plane in three bursts of acrid-smelling smoke.

“I’ll wait for you in the library,” he said, and left the room in a clatter of armor.

“Can you walk?” Farideh murmured to Lorcan.

“Oh no,” Adastreia said, holding up a hand. “If I don’t have my devil beside me, you certainly don’t have yours.” She nodded to the golems. “Keep him comfortable. You, girl, hand him your sword and rod for the moment, and come along.”

Do not take risks here, Lorcan mouthed as she handed him her weapons. Farideh said nothing, but followed Adastreia across the room, toward another pane of the strange glass. She let a little of the Hells flow into her, flexing her hands against the thrumming strength of the magic. Not too risky, she thought.

Fighting at all had been far riskier, she thought. If Kulaga hadn’t held, there was no way they would have survived the battle. A part of her missed the powers of Asmodeus—how much would the fear she’d inspired have evened the field?

The black glass pulsed as they passed through it, as if it were a living membrane, releasing them into another chamber, this one overlooking a waterfall deep underground. Another stone golem took up a place before the entryway, a not-quite-living door. Adastreia stood with her back against another of the panes of glass.

“Thank you,” Farideh said. “I know it’s not—”

“No,” Adastreia interrupted. “First: How do I know you aren’t her? The Brimstone Angel.”

“I don’t know,” Farideh admitted. “I hardly know Bryseis Kakistos. Maybe you could listen to me first and decide that second?”

“I already heard what you told Kulaga. I’m not going anywhere. I’m safe here.”

“Do you really believe that? You know her better than I do, what she was capable of then—”

“I’ve been hiding for twenty-five years,” Adastreia said. “Give or take. She hasn’t found me yet. I think I’ll stay.”

“And you know she wasn’t her whole self—she is now,” Farideh said. “She has a body. She has comrades. She has an opportunity that she won’t have again. If you come with us to Djerad Thymar, we can protect you,” Farideh said. “And perhaps we can draw her out, make sure that she can’t succeed.”

Adastreia cocked her head. “Why in all the planes would you assume I care if she succeeds?”

Farideh began to protest that it would mean the destruction of Azuth, the collapse of any sense of order in the Nine Hells—maybe worse. That if they didn’t intervene, Asmodeus surely would come after Havilar, killing her to forestall Bryseis Kakistos’s plans.

But Adastreia’s eyes were so cold. She wouldn’t care about any of that. She’d said it herself—she was safe enough here. What did everyone else matter? What did her daughters matter? It broke through the armor around Farideh’s heart and lit a fierce anger in her. Maybe she would get no love from her mother, maybe she couldn’t have acceptance, but the bare consideration due another person? No, she wouldn’t get that either.

She imagined knocking Adastreia out and just dragging her back through the portal, where she’d be safe and where she might set a decent trap for Bryseis Kakistos. Adastreia might have more spells than her, but Farideh didn’t doubt she was stronger, quicker—quick enough to get a few well-placed strikes in. It would be easy. It would get through this mess.

It would make you a kidnapper, Farideh thought.

“It’s your decision,” she said instead. “Only I’d hate to find out you’d been obliterated just so Bryseis Kakistos can tweak Asmodeus’s nose. They make pawns of us, the devils.”

“She said that too,” Adastreia pointed out.

“Well, she’s leaped in right alongside them. She took my twin so she’d have a body. She’s not thinking about how this plays out. And she doesn’t care about who gets harmed when she tries to dethrone Asmodeus.”

Adastreia frowned, but she didn’t answer. “If you won’t come,” Farideh said, “then at least tell me what you remember. Did she have the staff of Azuth then?”

Adastreia shook her head. “That wasn’t part of it. Maybe she meant to use it later.”

“Do you know the other heirs? Where they might be, which of them might help her?”

“Not well. And no—I’ve made a point of staying away from them.”

Farideh bit back a curse. “Names? Anything?”

She blew out a breath. “Chiridion, Lachs, Threnody, Nasmos, Livulia, Naria, and Alonzo,” Adastreia recited. “Although I’ll save you a little trouble—I know Alonzo’s dead. And then, Caisys, though obviously he wasn’t an heir.”

“Who’s Caisys?” Farideh asked.

“Caisys the Vicelord. One of the Toril Thirteen,” Adastreia said, as though it were common knowledge. “Bryseis Kakistos’s confederate. He was the one who found us. And he was the one who took you away. Where were you?” she asked. “I’d assumed he was headed for the nearest river.”

Farideh gritted her teeth. “Somewhere safe.”

A fragment of her dreams came back to her out of nothing—You were supposed to be safe, one of the ghosts had said. He gave you that, at least. Be careful. Farideh paused. The way Bryseis Kakistos had talked when she’d taken Havilar, it sounded as if they’d ended up in Arush Vayem by accident, as if Adastreia’s expectation were the outcome she’d been hoping for.

But Caisys had brought them to the village in the mountains. And the ghost in her dreams had said they were supposed to be safe. Maybe he’d had a care after all.

“Are you through?” Adastreia asked.

“No.” Farideh turned back to her. “Does Bryseis Kakistos have a twin?”

Adastreia blinked at her, as though she couldn’t have expected a less sensible question. “I don’t know. She was dead when I knew her. I assume any twin would be more so. Why would you think she had a twin?”

Farideh didn’t answer. It would explain why the ghost in her visions and dreams was sometimes cruel and sometimes kind. It would explain—perhaps—why the resurrection ritual had gone awry, how two souls made two bodies. “Who would know?” she asked. “Any of the heirs?”

Adastreia snorted. “As I said, I don’t exactly keep up with them these days.”

“Caisys?”

“I most certainly don’t know anything about Caisys.”

Farideh rubbed a hand over her face. This was going nowhere. “Fine. I’m through. Thank you for your time.”

Adastreia nodded, but didn’t move toward the door and the portal beyond. “Your devil,” she said after a moment. “Why in the world didn’t he establish clearer terms of parley before you came?”

“He’s distracted,” Farideh said. “He’s got some sort of curse on him or something. He won’t tell me what. Fortunately, I can take care of myself.”

Adastreia’s silvery eyes flicked over her, and she reached up to fiddle with the beads of her necklace. “Perhaps you should stay the night.”

Farideh regarded Adastreia suspiciously. “Aren’t you worried I’ll kill you?”

“Please. You’ve had all the time in the world to try that in here. Kulaga thinks your devil’s simple, you tell me he’s cursed—I’m concerned you or he might be hurt, and there’s every chance that something in my contract will lead from that to my punishment, and there is very little these days that makes such things worth the risk. At the very least, I’ll have to take it up with Kulaga, and he exhausts me these days.”

Farideh peered at Adastreia—it was such an odd line of thought. Was this what other warlock pacts were like? Adastreia fiddled with her rings. “Where did you learn to fight like that?”

“My father.”

Adastreia let out another snort of laughter. “You did not learn that from Chiridion.”

The name struck another blow to the shell around Farideh’s heart. Again, she could almost see the man—tall and brown-skinned with the same prominent nose. “I mean my father,” Farideh said stiffly. “The man who raised me.”

Adastreia looked away. “My mistake. Go … Go see if your devil wants to stay. I’ll convince Kulaga to accept a proper parley. You can leave in the morning.”

Farideh considered her wounds and Lorcan’s—how long it would take to bandage and brace and salve them. They could leave in a few hours. When she went back out into the larger chamber, she amended her time line. Lorcan looked as though he were about to fall asleep on his feet.

“What is going on with you?” she demanded when they were alone again. A stone golem had led them up into another pane of strange glass, to a set of rooms already prepared for guests. Immediately, both began checking the room, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

“Nothing I want Kulaga to know about,” he answered. Then, “Please, just trust me. It’s not … It’s temporary.”

Farideh pulled open a cabinet—only a bowl and ewer of water inside. “You said Dahl did it.”

“Did I?” He kept his eyes on the tapestry he was looking behind. “Well, I’m sure it wasn’t his fault entirely. How was your mother?”

“Terrible,” Farideh answered. “Why are you not telling me what happened? Where is Dahl?”

His dark eyes met hers. “Darling, I know you don’t want to hear it, but your brightbird tried to kill me. I left him behind, because as much as I … care for you, I don’t want to die. Now I could go the rest of my life without hearing the name Dahl Peredur, especially from your lips.” His wings twitched in an irritable way as he surveyed the rooms. “Did you convince her to come?”

Farideh looked away. “No. You were right. She’s too afraid.”

He sighed. “Pity. How careless the gods have to be to give a coward such courageous issue.”

Farideh felt a blush threaten her cheeks. “Have you got any other spells I can use?” she asked. “That was too close before. I need to be better prepared before we do this again.”

Lorcan hesitated. “I might.”

He said nothing more for so long that Farideh’s temper began to fray. “What? Do you want something in return? Now?”

“Don’t be silly. Even if I could wring something from you, you saved my life before.” He beckoned to her and she moved to stand closer—too close, she thought. You’re giving him the wrong ideas, leaving open the wrong doors. Lorcan took her hands in his, formed a bowl of air between them. Stared at her palms for long moments.

Farideh focused on the arch of her fingers, not on his hands pressed over hers, the heat of him too close. She waited and waited for the familiar flood of magic, the sudden appearance of another spell at her fingertips, tense and uneasy. Sometimes the spells were simple things—bursts of magic or flame. Sometimes they were the hungry spirits damned to the Nine Hells. She hadn’t asked what was coming, and maybe that was foolish.

But no spells came to her.

Lorcan dropped her hands. “I … I think I’m tired again. The spell with the souls …”

It wasn’t just the spell with the souls though, Farideh felt sure. The sleeping and sweating, the strange bursts of emotion. It was as if something fundamentally part of Lorcan had been stripped away. She covered his hand in hers.

“You ought to lie down,” Farideh said. She swallowed. “The protection spell—if you can’t connect to the Hells, maybe it’s safest. The rooms … I think it will stretch far enough.” If it didn’t, she could sleep on the floor between them.

“I’m only tired,” Lorcan said. “I’ll have to return. Kulaga isn’t on our side, which means he might well try to turn the other collectors against us.” He pulled her hand to his chest. “It would be safest if we didn’t separate.”

No—whatever part of her wanted to give in, to go with this Lorcan who was almost sweet, almost gentle, the greater part of her was sure. Though not cruel enough to say so. “Go and lie down. I’ll stay up and make sure the room’s secure.”

As Lorcan limped into the other room, Farideh wondered how long this would last, how long he would be … so near to human. How long some part of her would want that, want him.

How long she could manage without finding a way to drag the devil in him back from wherever he’d lost it and get the spells she desperately needed.

PART III

THE PACT

15 Flamerule, the Year of the Spur (1348 DR)
Seven miles beyond Bloodstone Pass

• • •

If Bisera’d had her way, she would have left Alyona at the temple of Selûne in Darmshall, far, far away from the cave sunk into a cold rock face and the old man with the ram’s horns looking them both over like they were slaves in the market.

If she’d had her way, she thought, aware of Alyona’s arm twined around hers, she would have wanted her far, far from here, not holding her hand while she begged a boon she didn’t quite understand.

“I don’t need another whore. Or two,” the old tiefling said. “Those rituals are finished.”

Ever easy, Caisys clucked his tongue. “And I don’t undercut my own business, Titus. She’s not looking for coin. She’s looking for a path to more magic.”

Titus tugged his chest-length beard. “How’s that? You think this is simple? You think this is magic for gangly girls with soft hands?” He fixed Bisera with a wild eye. “Bet the most terrible thing you’ve ever seen is a hungry rat.”

“You’d lose that bet,” Bisera said. Alyona held her arm more tightly.

“Titus, you’ve said yourself,” Caisys went on, “you need an apprentice. She could be your apprentice.”

Titus snorted. “I said I need a clever apprentice, not some dewy-eyed girl who can’t go anywhere without having her hand held.”

Bisera grit her teeth. “You’re trying to make me angry. See if I want this badly enough. But since you haven’t even bothered to name what you’re offering, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. I have better things to do with my time than simper and beg to a procurer in a cave who has yet to show even a spark of magic.”

A small, cruel smile curved the old man’s mouth. “Well, well. So she has a little pluck at least.”

Bisera shot a look at Caisys. She did not have pluck. “And what do you have, old man?”

“An agreement,” Titus said, dark eyes glittering. “Sit down, plucky. You want magic, I’ll show you magic.”

“I never said he was friendly,” Caisys said, as the old man busied himself with strange powders and crystals. “But he’s no dabbler. Used to be a sellsword before he took to magic too. You could learn a great deal.”

“What the hrast does ‘an agreement’ mean?” Bisera demanded.

“A pact,” the old man called back. “An agreement with powers greater than our own—greater, at least, on this plane. I daresay we have skills they would find, at the least, novel.” He set the crystals in a rough circle, where the remnants of some glittering powder remained on the stone’s rough surface. A repeat application of the same glittering powder followed.

“What sort of being?” Alyona asked.

“A demon lord.”

A twist of anxiety curled around Bisera’s heart. “You’re going to call down a demon lord in this cave?”

“Of course not.” Titus eyed her and sniffed. “You haven’t proven yourself worthy enough for that introduction.”

As Titus finished his preparations, Bisera kept her eyes on the center of the circle, imagining what sort of creature might appear there—all horns and flames, scales and tentacles, or all too human—and what she would do. Bet the most terrible thing you’ve ever seen is a hungry rat. She couldn’t quail. She couldn’t so much as flinch.

“This is a bad idea,” Alyona murmured in her ear.

“It’s not so dangerous as it sounds,” Caisys said mildly. “It’s an alliance. A transaction.”

“What’s the price?” Alyona asked.

“Leaves a mark on your soul,” Titus said, lighting candles with a punk. “Same as anything. You want, they’ll make a steeper trade. Give up your soul wholly.” He blew out the stick.

“Don’t go for that,” Caisys said.

Bisera moved a little closer to her sister. The casualness with which they talked about giving up a soul, letting yourself corrupt, made her feel small and young and untested. She made herself stand still as strange words poured out of Titus’s mouth and a column of sickly light flowed up out of the circle.

In the center of the circle, a creature of ethereal beauty hovered. She held the shape of a winged woman, a copper-skinned angel with tattered wings. But her eyes leaked shadow, and when she smiled, Bisera fought the urge to cover her bare throat. Succubus.

“Well met, Metynoma,” Titus said. “You grace us with your presence.”

“Titus,” she said, a voice like a dirge and a hymn all at once. “And Caisys—what a pleasant surprise.” Her shadow-eyes flicked over Bisera, over Alyona pressed close behind her, murmuring a nearly inaudible prayer. “What have you brought for me, Titus?”

“A supplicant,” Titus said. “She says she wants magic. A pact.”

Somehow the succubus’s eyes darkened. “Easily done.”

“I don’t know that I like your price,” Bisera said.

“Everything has a price.”

“And my soul is too steep for something I could gain by keeping at my spellbooks.”

Metynoma laughed, a sound that made Bisera’s veins ache. “The powers of the Abyss for a tiefling soul? I’d say that’s a cheap deal indeed. Or are there so many gods clamoring for tiefling souls, driving up the price?”

Alyona’s prayer dragged through Bisera’s thoughts. “If it’s dear enough that demons demand it, then I think it’s something I ought to consider my options regarding. Not everyone in this room is a copper-caught slattern.”

Titus went rigid. Deep in the succubus’s shadow-eyes, a spark began to grow. “Oh Titus, I think I don’t like your gift. I don’t think my lord Graz’zt will appreciate her at all.”

“Clearly she speaks of Caisys,” Titus blurted. “She cannot mean you.”

“She knows what she means.” Metynoma drifted toward the edges of the circle, flames between her fingertips. “And so do you.” Bisera held her ground, even though every part of her wanted to flee the encroaching demon. The succubus’s eyes glowed like coals now, shadows pouring off like smoke.

Alyona’s arms folded around her sister from behind, and a sudden flood of cool, silvery magic surrounded Bisera. The sound of a woman, very far away, singing in a language Bisera didn’t understand. The succubus flinched away from the moon goddess’s protection, flapping back to the farther edge of the circle.

“Go!” Caisys hissed, and before Bisera could protest, Alyona was pulling her toward the entrance, running from the demon and the warlock, through the cave, out into the cold, clear night. Bisera half expected the screech of the succubus to chase them, the demon itself to come flapping after. But there was only silence, and the knowledge that she’d fled.

“You cannot do that again,” Alyona panted. “Please—we’ll find something else for you. But not that.”

Bisera folded her arm around her sister’s. “Never that,” she swore. For all of Titus’s bravado, one thing was certain: The pact he bore was nothing like he painted it, an alliance of equals, a mutually beneficial transaction. He was beholden to that fickle creature, little better than a slave. And Bisera would be no one’s slave.

• • •

5

29 Nightal, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR)
Djerad Thymar, Tymanther

FROM THE PEAK OF THE PYRAMID, DUMUZI LOOKS OUT OVER TYMANTHER, FARTHER than his eyes could ever see on their own. There on the shores of the Alamber Sea, Djerad Kethendi shines like a polished pearl. But there, flowing toward it like a swarm of ants over the land, the army of the King of Dust.

Enlil stands beside him, sets a hand upon his shoulder. Dumuzi blinks and the world shifts—the world as it once was. A city sprouts from the ground, whitewashed sandstone in neat blocky rows. Unthalass, Dumuzi thinks.

He will go there, Enlil’s voice comes, his Draconic without hesitation or stiffness. Mark it.

“It’s too close to Djerad Kethendi to be sure,” Dumuzi said.

He will come for Djerad Kethendi as well, Enlil agrees. But first he will claim what was stolen from him.

“Is there something there?”

His pride. Our past. Another time, another version of the world falls over this one like a curtain, the sea beyond, glittering in the sunlight. Boats move across its shimmering surface like dark-backed beetles. We came here when we defeated Imaskar, when we wrenched our stolen peoples from their grasp. We too came here from another world, our children stolen by another kind of tyrant, made to slave under an unfamiliar sun with no way to reach us.

Dumuzi watches the city of whitewashed clay rise up where the boats beach, years passing in the space of a heartbeat. “What happened?”

We found a way through, Enlil says darkly. And our children were slaves no more. The curtain of the past vanishes, and again they look upon the plains of Tymanther.

The army shifts and moves like a single being. Ten thousand people, swept from the old world and into this one, and Dumuzi imagines how different everything must seem to them, assuming the ancestor stories are true. Do they know what to eat? Do they know how to find water? When they look up at the sky stretching over them, blue and bright, does it warm them or terrify them in its strangeness?

Dumuzi folds his hands together. “These people—these humans from Unther—they’re your real children. Why aren’t you saving them instead?”

Enlil shakes his head. It doesn’t work that way. You’re as true as they were, as they may yet be.

“But they’re the ones you brought here, originally.”

Their descendants, Enlil corrected.

“They look like you did,” Dumuzi pointed out.

The black-scaled dragonborn only shakes his head. How I look means little. Do you understand what you did? Enlil asks. How you saved me? How you made this possible? Right now, those people wish to end you and yours. We have an agreement—and I would not forsake you. He considers the wide expanse of Tymanther’s plains, the sunset drowning the grasses in rubies and golds. But do not forget: Gilgeam is a tyrant. Not all who follow him do so willingly. There may be those among the army of the King of Dust who belong with us as well.

Dumuzi follows the line of Kuhri Ternhesh, winding toward Djerad Kethendi and the Vorelheching Kethendia. The River Alamber, Dumuzi translates. The Alamber Sea.

Unthalass, Enlil says. City of Gems. The ruins do not shift and become the city of whitewashed clay and stone, not this time. They remain a puzzle unassembled, a treasure buried in its own rubble. Across the water, Djerad Kethendi looks on, waiting for war.

Dumuzi startled awake, sitting in a chair in the Verthisathurgiesh enclave, a little nook with a bust of a long-dead ancestor overlooking it. He rubbed his eyes—that happened more and more, the sudden drop into a dreamworld, a place where he could speak to the god. It unnerved him—and yet he kept sitting down in quiet places, kept closing his eyes instead of fighting it.

This, he thought, standing and stretching, is why everyone is avoiding you.

He looked into the elder’s audience chamber, searching for Matriarch Anala but finding only the ancient dragon skull looking down on him with disapproval. He went to the guest quarters where Farideh and Mehen were staying and found only half-eaten farothai, cold and stiff and stale, and the door to what had been Brin’s room shut and locked, the wizard’s muffled, muttering voice the only thing to stir the silence. He went upstairs to his father Arjhani’s rooms at last, because this was something he ought to do, but found them blessedly empty as well. He blew out a breath in shameful relief.

“Dumuzi,” a voice near to him said. He turned and found his cousin, Lanitha, leading a broad-shouldered, copper-scaled man with steel antler piercings in his temples. Fenkenkabradon, Dumuzi thought. The clan of the Lance Defenders’ leader—and Arjhani’s superior—Fenkenkabradon Dokaan.

“Is Arjhani here?” Lanitha asked.

“Is Dokaan all right?” Dumuzi asked, almost in the same breath. The commander had been seriously wounded battling a demon not a few days before. Although he’d survived where others hadn’t, a wound like that could turn bad quickly.

The Fenkenkabradon regarded Dumuzi as though he’d just belched lightning all over himself. “I’ve come to speak with Verthisathurgiesh Arjhani,” he said. “If he’s not here, I’ll have to return another time.” Before either of the younger dragonborn could protest, he turned on his heel and left.

“What was that about?” Lanitha said. Then she turned swiftly to Dumuzi, teeth gapping. “Oh. Is it … I heard a rumor that you …”

“I called a god down in the Vanquisher’s Hall,” Dumuzi said. “It’s true.”

Lanitha’s green eyes widened. “Iskdara says she saw the lightning wall holding back the Blue Fire. You did that?”

The god’s presence pressed painfully upon Dumuzi’s eyes. “Enlil did it.”

Lanitha shook her head. “Who is that?”

“The god,” Dumuzi said. “He wants to join us.”

“Best of luck to him,” Lanitha said. “I can’t imagine the elders are going to be pleased with a god interloping.”

“Karshoj to what the elders think,” Dumuzi said irritably. Lanitha gave a short nervous laugh. “Sorry,” Dumuzi amended. “I do care, but they’re being silly. Iskdara told you—the Blue Fire would have destroyed Djerad Thymar. Enlil saved us.”

“Suppose. Well … tell him thank you,” Lanitha said. “But, Dumuzi, I’ll tell you, when your qallim agreement comes up, you might want to have this settled.”

Dumuzi blinked—a god in his head, the planes reshuffling, an army heading for Djerad Kethendi, and Lanitha was reminding him to think about his marriage prospects. “I think I’ll worry about that when the Vayemniri in general are settled,” he said, a little bluntly. “Do you know why the Fenkenkabradon wanted to see Arjhani?”

Lanitha shrugged. “Lance Defenders’ business I assume. Maybe Dokaan’s faring poorly. Or maybe they’re thinking of having Dokaan stand for Vanquisher, and he needs a replacement.”

“They’re taking votes for Vanquisher?”

Lanitha cast her eyes back down the hall. “I heard Matriarch Anala pushing for it. She has the Churirajachi and the Yrjixtilex in line with her, at least. An ‘interim’ position, she says.”

Though who would say when the interim had ended? That would depend a great deal on the Vanquisher, the clans that elected them, and how badly things had changed because of the Blue Fire’s return.

It would depend, Dumuzi thought, descending a staircase, on what you manage to do before the King of Dust gets here. He went back to the audience chamber, to await Anala.

Dumuzi considered the polished red floor, shining with the reflections of weapons hung on the walls, wielded by past elders. The shadow of the red dragon skull behind him. Symbols of his father’s clan’s roots, their traditions. Not a sign of any god among them. Dumuzi knew of people who had thrown in with gods—adherents of the Platinum Cadre, worshipers of Bahamut; the rumor of a cousin’s friend’s clan-mate bewitched by the Dragon Queen; warriors who had taken the powers granted by Torm or the Red Knight, maunthreki gods who might accept a “scalie” paladin. No one in his family. No one whom he still knew. Not every chance at god-worship had a bad ending, not every clan abhorred it, but enough. Kepeshkmolik, for certain. He thought of the expression on his mother’s features, the distance. He thought of Lanitha’s warning he might not have any marriage prospects, no chance at a normal life, when this was through. Would anyone stand beside him when all this was done?

Would it ever be “done”?

Does it matter? he thought, resting his elbows on his knees. Both Vayemniri cities were in danger, the homesteads were largely lost—who cared if he had friends or a family or anything if it meant he could keep his people alive?

Those things are much of your life, the god’s voice said, a note of sadness to it.

Dumuzi scratched a loose scale from his knee—he’d forgotten Enlil. I’m not the sort of champion you need, he thought.

We are both learning, the god said. I have asked you to look at the world in a way you never have before. I spoke to many, and only you listened—I have never assumed this would be easy for you. Still, he added, time is of the essence.

Half of the enormous entry doors swung open, and Mehen entered, frowning when he saw Dumuzi. “Anala’s still gone?”

“I haven’t seen her,” Dumuzi said. “Did Farideh come back yet?”

“No.” Mehen came to stand in front of him. “How are you holding up?”

Dumuzi started laughing—he couldn’t help it. Mehen made a noise in the back of his throat as if he were annoyed, and sat down on the dais beside Dumuzi. “Your mother is worried about you.”

“She probably should be,” Dumuzi said. “I need worshipers for him. And soon.”

Mehen’s nostrils flared. “We’ve never needed a god before. We’ll manage.”

“We’ve never faced another god before,” Dumuzi pointed out.

“Pouring out of the cracks, they are. Centipedes and gods.” Mehen considered the carvings along the wall. “He give you any ideas about how you’re supposed to establish a church among unbelievers before that army gets near enough we need a pet god of our own?”

“I’m not pretending that it will be simple, but …”

Start with the truth, Enlil’s voice echoed. We have common ground. Dumuzi tapped his tongue to the roof of his mouth, assuring himself Mehen wasn’t angry. “He … He feels you understand. He feels you might be open to the idea.”

Mehen stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Why the karshoji Hells would he think that?”

Not only blood makes a clan, Enlil said. The strong shall not oppress the weak, and the land shall be enlightened.

Dumuzi felt the god’s presence press upon his mind. “I think … He’s a father—he sees himself as a father. A parent and a soldier. And so are you. Maybe you understand then. Maybe you can believe him when he says he’s come here to help us, to watch over us, to guide us and not yoke us.”

Mehen looked unconvinced. “I’ve seen a lot of sorts of fathers in my day. Doesn’t mean much. Same for soldiers. Is he the sort that whips a subordinate for having muddy boots? Who drapes himself in purple silk and brocade and doesn’t much care if his army is starving or badly trained? This Enlil, is he the kind of commander that makes an example? Beats a body out of ten just to scare the other nine?”

“No!” Dumuzi said indignantly—but then he caught himself. He didn’t really know. He felt sure—but then appearances could be deceptive. He thought of Arjhani, of the way he could charm everyone and then fail Dumuzi so utterly.

“Enlil saved us,” Dumuzi made himself point out.

Mehen folded his arms. “What’s he think about the fact you’re not his truest convert?”

Dumuzi sighed. “He’s not happy about it, but he understands.”

“Well that’s a start.”

“And it’s a problem,” Dumuzi said. “You’re right—I’m not his truest convert. I hear myself and I can’t believe this is my voice saying these things, trying to convince people to worship a god. But at the same time, I know I have to. Has Anala told you what they know? About the army heading for Djerad Kethendi?”

“It’s come up,” Mehen said. “We’ve beaten armies before.”

“Of gods and demons?” Dumuzi demanded. “We need this ally, and … and I’m asking everyone to stop being Vayemniri by accepting him.”

Mehen started to say something, then cursed and rubbed his hands over his face. “How practical is he?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, how heartfelt does this worship need to be?” Mehen said. “We’re a practical people—can he be a practical god? Can he be an ally, not a master?”

Enlil seemed to press into reality, as if curious. “Maybe,” Dumuzi allowed.

“Lay it out that way,” Mehen said, sounding reluctant. “Lay it out like it’s a treaty or a qallim agreement or a mercenary contract. What do they have to give up to get this Enlil’s help? How many prayers buys a lightning wall? What happens if we refuse to prance around in pothach robes and hats? Things like that.” He scratched his jade piercings. “Put a time limit to it and I’ll wager you get some more interest.”

In Dumuzi’s thoughts, the god’s presence seemed to thicken, as if he wanted badly for Dumuzi to sleep again, to be able to hear his words clearest. Enlil didn’t like this idea—gods did not make contracts—and yet he did—he had been a god of law, of order, and what was a contract but order imposed upon the fleeting realities of life?

A frantic scrabbling sound came from the other side of the door. Two Verthisathurgiesh hatchlings, a white-scaled girl and a bronze-scaled boy, burst through, shoving past each other. “Matriarch Anala!” the girl shouted.

“She’s out,” Mehen said. The girl froze, fearful, and the boy scrambled to a stop beside her—Mehen resembled so closely his brutal father, the previous patriarch, that Dumuzi didn’t wonder if his voice sent the two of them spiraling back into the past. “What do you need?” Mehen said, when neither spoke. The boy gestured to the girl.

“There’s … there’s an army,” the girl panted.

“We’re aware,” Mehen said. “Has it reached Djerad Kethendi then?”

The girl shook her head. “No … another army. Not humans … giants. Giants … marching on Djerad Kethendi.”

Panic swelled through Dumuzi, but the presence of Enlil was only puzzled. “Ash giants?” Dumuzi asked. Ash giants had attacked Djerad Thymar in Dumuzi’s childhood.

“No. From the north. They’re something else. Something … The rider said they had marks all over. And they’re bigger than the ash giants.”

Mehen stood. “Just what we need. And you,” he said to the boy. “You have the same message?”

“No,” the lad said. “There’s a visitor to see you. Says it’s urgent. Says he fled the first army and he wants to see Farideh.” He tapped his tongue to the roof of his mouth. “Says she has his snake?”

• • •

ZOONIE DREAMS.

Hot sun. Wide plains. Grass is crunching—nice dry smell, like fire-to-be. Man in black smells like shadows, hiding in the grass, but not for long. Zoonie scents him. Tracks him. Fast-fast-fast.

Man pops up. Run, man, run. Doesn’t matter—Zoonie is faster. Zoonie is fastest. Run forever, Zoonie will catch.

“Zoonie!” Voice shouts. “Tarto!”

Zoonie stops. Zoonie listens. Where is Havilar? Where is best-favorite-love-master? She smells the Havilar-smell—oil and leather and sweat and Havilar. Sights her. In the grass. Forget the man. The man will wait. Havilar is here!

Zoonie runs-runs-runs. Smell is stronger—realer. True Havilar not Strange Havilar. Zoonie runs too far, knocks Havilar to the ground. So happy! So glad! Havilar is happy too! Pets and laughs and shouting! Zoonie shouts—big deep shouts!

Off!—Zoonie hears the words now. Zoonie scurries back—best-favorite-love-master says off, so off. Havilar scratches in Zoonie’s fur, smooths her ears back. Love, love, love! Obey. Obey, obey. Where has Havilar been, leaving her body behind smelling so wrong? Almost knocks her down again, so happy! More what-to-do? More orders?

“Good girl,” Havilar says. More pets, more scratches. Zoonie is happiest. She has obeyed and best-favorite-love-master is happy. More orders? But no, Havilar just wants pets and scratches. Easy done.

“Is she taking care of you?” Havilar says. Zoonie has no answers—Zoonie is, Zoonie obeys, Zoonie waits-waits-waits. Listens-smells-watches for better answer.

“You’re bored,” Havilar says. “I can tell.”

Yes—bored. Zoonie shoves her head under Havilar’s arm. More chasing. More orders. More things-to-hunt.

“At least I know I can do this now,” she says, scratching ears. “Hopefully Farideh’s as happy to see me as you are.”

Shadow-smell—Zoonie turns toward it. Shadow-smell, so man in black is near. No, there, crunching grasses, running fast. None is fast as Zoonie, though. See the army in black? If they get in our way, you can eat any of them you like—orders, definitely orders. Happiest to obey. She takes off with all her feet. Fast-fast-fast, run-run-run. She hears Havilar shouting something, but there is nothing in her head but the man in black and the running fast and the way shadows taste when they burn.

• • •

THE CITY OF Gems lay in ruins, far older than the Spellplague. From a distance, it might have been anything—the remains of a landslide, the tailings of a quarry, the abandoned beginnings of a dragonborn fortress. But Dahl marched close enough to the Son of Victory’s sedan chair to see and hear the man’s growing excitement.

“Here is where we begin again,” he bellowed. “Here is the seat of our ancestors, the seed of our glory.”

Dahl eyed the slipping piles of sandstone and crumbled clay. Here is a nest for ankhegs, he thought.

He’d cast the ritual on himself that morning, but without the touch of a would-be god, there was no making it permanent like the ritual cast on the sikatis. He’d learned enough to make the use of components worth it: once they established a base at Unthalass, the priests and sikatis said, they would march on one of the cities. Djerad Kethendi—the white-walled pyramid on the other shore of the bay—or Djerad Thymar—the prize, the jewel, the heart of the monsters’ kingdom—no one could say for sure. Perhaps both together—after all, they had a god to lead them. Their scouts had the slightest of information, and though they’d seen the riders on giant bats passing overhead, no one knew whose they were. They were too far off to tell what manner of creature rode astride them.

It doesn’t matter, the murmurs said. All will bow before the Son of Victory as we reclaim our kingdom.

The heart of their kingdom—a hundred massive piles of rubble, pocked with sinkholes to the collapsed city below—now lay before them. For all Gilgeam’s flowery speeches, a current of doubt ran through the whispers.

“What are they saying?” the dragonborn woman beside him whispered. Shestandeliath Mazarka, violet-scaled and pierced with the silver chain, had sought Dahl out the night before. The dragonborn captured had been from a pair of villages to the northwest, both ripped apart in the sudden planar storm. Half the buildings Mazarka’s clan held had just disappeared, along with everyone in them. Their apple orchards had vanished too, replaced with a dry riverbed that ended a mile on. They’d met up with the other clan—Clethtinthtiallor—heading to Djerad Kethendi in hopes it still stood and they’d be safe there.

Dahl shook his head—no one needed to know he understood Untheric for the moment. The doubts grew louder as the shadows between the rubble piles flashed and flickered. A high-pitched keening echoed through the stones.

One of the sinuous demons lashed out, snatching a creature that seemed half-human, half-beast from the dark patches of shade. The creature screeched and howled and slashed at the demon with powerful claws and a snout full of teeth. For all the demon bled, it still managed to kill the jackalwere, tearing its belly out with its teeth. Other jackalweres howled a warning through the ruins.

“Holy stlarning Torm and Tyr,” Bodhar hissed beside Dahl.

“Call your master!” Gilgeam shouted. “Or we will hunt you, each by each.”

A chorus of yelps and barks echoed through the ruins, no language Dahl could ever pinpoint. A moment later, a woman scaled the heap of stone, the shift of her tanned shoulders as she came into view subtly but hideously wrong. Her face might have been human—handsome even—but there was something about her that made Dahl’s skin crawl. Her pale eyes surveyed the army with the sort of callousness with which Dahl might have considered a stack of parchment or a field of rye. We don’t matter, he thought. Why would we think we did? Even so, as she scanned the army, still marching toward the ruins, she seemed to calculate, consider the numbers. Consider the bull-headed demons, the sedan chair that held Gilgeam. The jackalweres snarled, holding their position.

“You’ll find their master is already well prepared for you.” The woman crested the pile of rubble, revealing the source of her odd movements—where she should have had legs, instead a body like a lion’s flowed out of her torso. A lamia, Dahl thought. “That said, everything we’ve seen and considered suggests that perhaps Zillah’s kingdom is not the place for you to stop, human.”

“I am no human!” Gilgeam snarled. Then calmer, colder, “I have come allied with your master, the Dark Lord Graz’zt. My army is his army—you may mark his favored among my troops—and you are trespassing in my sacred city.”

Zillah didn’t flinch at that pronouncement, but it seemed to give her pause. As though she were considering what use Gilgeam might be, as opposed to what threat. Then all at once the creature sketched a sort of bow, her demeanor changed. “I beg your pardon, my lord,” she said, her voice thick with such falseness that she would put a Cormyrean courtier to shame. “If you had been made known to me—”

“My plans have changed,” Gilgeam said. “I have brought my people to their true home rather than claim a borrowed one.”

“Of course,” the lamia said. “I have held this city for years, but I have always known its makers were elsewhere.”

“And they have returned,” Gilgeam said as if he were finishing Zillah’s sentence. He turned to the sikatis, the priests marching near him. “Make camp once more. On the morrow, we’ll begin remaking the city.”

“How fortunate,” Zillah said.

Dahl knew a brewing catastrophe when he saw it—the lamia watched the god-king with a calculating sort of coldness, a certainty that she would cut his legs out the first chance she got; meanwhile the god-king ignored Zillah as though she were no more than another demon granted him by Graz’zt.

That was another detail Dahl wasn’t sure what to do with—if Graz’zt had granted Gilgeam this army, it had to have been before the demon lord had been pulled down into the Underdark. Which meant the demon lord could reach Abeir, or maybe that Gilgeam was capable of reaching out to the Abyss.

It also meant the source of Gilgeam’s reinforcements wasn’t anywhere accessible, he realized. Assuming Graz’zt remained trapped in the Underdark. He cast his eyes over at the goristro lurking over the filigreed tent already rising beside the slope of rubble. Only one way to find out.

Mira stepped from the sedan chair, scanning the crowd until she spotted Dahl.

All right? He signaled.

Safe, she signed back. Then, Trouble.

“What’s she saying?” Thost whispered. Dahl bit back a curse.

“The three of you!” Namshita stood over them. “We need water. Pick up those buckets.”

Finally they had their chance to break for the River Alamber, and the sikati who listened too closely would be accompanying them. He shouldered clay pots, hanging on a yoke, beside Thost and Bodhar, waited as Namshita untied their shackles from the post. Four archers came with them, and a half-dozen soldiers who shouldered pots of their own.

Maybe, he thought, considering the numbers. If Bodhar and Thost could move fast. If he could get Namshita down.

If he could live with abandoning Mira.

Namshita fell into step beside him.

“I have trained with the sword since I could stand,” she murmured. “I have two abnu on you and a handspan. My word is iron among these people, and if you so much as cry out, I will make certain you die before a sound leaves your throat. Are you and I clear?”

Dahl kept his eyes on Thost’s back, calculating how honest Namshita’s threats were. Pretty damned honest, he thought, considering the shadow of her, the movement of the archers at their lead. “Perfectly clear,” he said.

“You are a soldier,” she said, and he didn’t correct her. “What are your resources in this world?”

“Exactly as I told the Son of Victory.”

“No,” Namshita said. “You lied, and it was good you lied.” She hesitated a moment, then dropped her voice. “He is mad and he is dangerous. In the other world, we listened because we believed the opposite choice meant being the chattel of the genasi. But then his lunacy began to uncover itself.”

Dahl risked a glance toward her. “I assume around the time he made a deal for Abyssal shock troops?”

The look of disgust on Namshita’s face would have quelled any ordinary person. “Before the storm came, two thousand of us intended to flee into the wilds and escape over the mountains. What are your resources?”

“You’re still planning on running?”

“Is the Son of Victory still mad?” Namshita asked. “The city on the harbor—my scouts say it’s heavily defended. That we might assail it, but it would be years before it broke. And yet he colludes with that creature as if they’re discussing a march to the next supply depot.”

Dahl couldn’t say how long Djerad Kethendi could hold out against the Untheran army—the city was among the newest in Faerûn, untested by war. But the Fortress of Gems had been built by the same hands in the same way as Djerad Thymar—and no matter how isolated and peculiar the dragonborn were, Dahl doubted you could find a military mind on Toril who’d say the pyramid city was an easy prize to take.

“I have contacts in the western city, Djerad Thymar,” he said quietly. “They might shelter you.”

“ ‘Might’ is a heavy risk to take.”

Dahl bit his lip and wished Mira were there. Cultures weren’t his specialty. He wasn’t the person to ask about dragonborn—

He thought back to Farideh, sitting in the alley behind the tavern called the Sweet Nymph, and him prodding her into telling him dragonborn ancestor stories while waiting for her disguise spell to wear off so that it didn’t surprise the Sharrans they were hunting.

“Are you related to all of these people?” he had asked. “I mean, not by blood, obviously, but … you know.”

She shrugged. “It’s … I don’t think it’s the same thing as when you say related. Clans aren’t just about bloodlines, it’s also about who was willing to fight beside you, share the risk, share the damage.”

He squinted at her through the drizzle of rain. “So you and I could be in the same clan by those requirements.”

Farideh had snorted. “If you want to be adopted by dragonborn.”

Walking beside Namshita, Dahl considered this, and the half-score other stories he’d coaxed out of Farideh. “You could tilt those odds,” he said. “They say they’re a welcoming people, but they’re just as martial as you lot. You show up, an army at their gates, they won’t be fools. If you surrender and give up your weapons, perhaps some intelligence about Gilgeam, they’ll see you’re sincere. And if you’re sincere, they’ll be welcoming, I wager.”

Namshita made a soft snort, as if this was asking more than could be born. “They’ll see we’re meant for their chains.”

“Well there I have no ‘mights’ or ‘maybes’: They don’t take slaves,” Dahl said. “They don’t take kindly to those who do.” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “Can you give that up?”

“Only Gilgeam has taken it up,” Namshita said as they reached the mouth of the river. “Two thousand of us, at least, know better.”

The tide had pulled the water from the river’s mouth, the rising sea levels dragging water out that had once been farther upriver. Great boulders made cataracts as the tide receded, a fall of spraying water that surely couldn’t last long.

Across the estuary, Djerad Kethendi sat, a trio of pyramids shining white in the midday sun. The air thrummed faintly with the sounds of drums, the dark shapes of circling bat riders against the clear sky. Along the wall that now ran right along the water’s edge, more warriors paced, the size of mites at this distance.

“Not an easy prize,” Namshita murmured. “But how will they fare against a mad god?” She nudged Dahl with her shoulder. “Water,” she reminded him. “Watch the rapids.”

Dahl made his way down to the silty, sandy bank and waded up to his ankles. If he could get the Untheran rebels to Djerad Thymar, could he even trust them to treat with the dragonborn as allies? Gilgeam’s hateful speech made clear he wasn’t going to pass their city by—would the rest of his people?

If you just hadn’t left Harrowdale, he thought, scooping buckets of water.

A flash of silver caught his eye, popping up behind the rocks. Dahl edged closer to the cataract—a fish, and then another and another, trying to leap up the steep rock. He registered a patch of pink, a hooked jaw. Salmon, running up the river toward the mountains to spawn.

Dahl’s heart started to pound.

It was late for salmon to be running, he thought, staring at the fish. The water should be too cold. But then as the world unwound, as magic returned, the sea levels had risen. The rivers had changed. And the salmon that ran up the Alamber found themselves trying to futilely leap up a stone wall that hadn’t been there the prior year, that would be impossible to pass until the tide came back in.

And after my priest speaks, the god’s words had read. Where the salmon demand the tide.

Dahl wasn’t supposed to be in Harrowdale. Dahl was only supposed to be right here.

At least until he figured out what priest he was waiting for.

• • •

FARIDEH KNOWS—SOMEHOW—SHE SHOULD be more afraid as she moves through the Lost Library of Tarchamus the Unyielding. The stone shelves make a maze, and she can’t find the exit, can’t find the others, can’t remember what’s in the library that she should be afraid of. Wisps of blue fog drift over the limestone floor. Farideh leaps out of their path, feeling sure she shouldn’t touch them.

She sees the old man ahead, the long robes of a war wizard dragging across the stones, and she sprints to catch up, but she no more than turns the corner but the library’s not there—this is the basement of the temple of Oghma in Neverwinter. She starts opening doors—a jumble of memories and nightmares and nonsense. One-eyed Oota from the internment camp and poor dead Pernika picking grapes off a vine. A trio of erinyes decking a room in torture equipment—whips and chains and shackles and irons. Dahl and Mira whispering over a book. The flames of Asmodeus race up over her, sudden and anguished and unstoppable—

Dahl looks up, his eyes more silver than gray, and he smiles. “I haven’t left,” he says.

“But you did.” And now she’s alone.

He shakes his head. “Never alone.”

“Fari!” Someone yanks her arm, pulls her back from the scene that’s turning her into a monster. Havilar, glaiveless and furious. “Karshoj, what in the Hells is this place? Is this what you dream about?”

“The temple of Oghma.” Farideh looks around—all the open doors reveal empty rooms. What was she looking for? “You came here with me.”

“No,” Havilar said. “Listen to me: You have to find Caisys the Vicelord.”

The warlock. The confederate Adastreia mentioned. She calls up the soul sight and searches the hall—where is he hiding?—and nearly blinds herself. She blinks. There is Asmodeus.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he says. Flames flood her hands, her whole self. He clucks his tongue. “None of that. I have something you want.” He holds out a staff, shining white as a bolt of lightning, thrumming with the power of a thousand storms. “Assuming,” he says, “you’ll make a trade.”

“What do you want?” Farideh asks.

“Hey!” Havilar shouts. “Me! Listen to me! You have to find Caisys the Vicelord, because—”

“Havi! Not now,” Farideh says. She turns back to where Asmodeus had been standing, but he’s gone, and so is the staff. The blue fog is getting thicker, rising to their knees. If she doesn’t find the staff …

Maybe you don’t find the staff, Farideh thinks. Maybe you leave it all be.

Havilar yanked her back. “Look. At. Me. This isn’t real, but I’m real. You have to stop getting distracted. You have to remember that you need to find Caisys the Vicelord. Understand?”

Farideh searches her sister’s face. This is a dream. “Havi?” she says. “Are you … Are you all right?”

“Caisys the Vicelord,” Havilar repeats firmly. “Say it.”

“Caisys the Vicelord.” Grief overtakes her swiftly as a rising river. “Havi, why did you go? I’m so alone.”

Havilar sighs. She puts her arms around Farideh. “Me too. Well, I mean, I’m alone with Alyona, but gods above, it’s still lonely and—”

Farideh opened her eyes to the still-drawn drapery around the bed in Adastreia’s stronghold, despite the fact she felt certain she’d only just fallen asleep. Her head thundered with the echoes of her dream, particularly Havilar’s shouting, the strange feeling she had been right there beside Farideh. This is a dream. She thought of Asmodeus trying to hand her the staff. Was it a dream or was it another vision?

Caisys the Vicelord.

She curled around the knot of the coverlet made by her tossing and turning, hating the silence, feeling the truth in her gasped I’m so alone. How much of that is your fault? She thought. You left Mehen behind, and Ilstan too. You weren’t quick enough to stop Bryseis Kakistos, and so Havilar left, and Brin went with her because he loves her best. You’ve drawn your lines with Lorcan and Dahl …

She buried her face in the blankets, embarrassed beyond mention by the moment she’d dreamed of Dahl and Mira, the flood of furious, jealous magic. You should be alone, she thought. You’re acting like a madwoman. He’d be safer with her. He’d be happier.

I love you. I miss you. I am sure of that.

She climbed out of bed, not caring what the hour truly was, and dressed, before pushing into Lorcan’s room. Again, he slept, thrown across the bed as though somehow it had defeated him, and here he lay, an unwashed corpse. Farideh pulled the coverlet over him, and thought herself a fool once more. If she were smart, when she got back to Djerad Thymar, she would ask Sairché what had happened to him. She would look for ways to work around his weaknesses and build her spells up.

If she were smart.

You don’t have time for anything else, she told herself.

When Farideh went back out into the sitting room, Adastreia was waiting for her, sitting in one of the padded wooden chairs, before a table of breads. “Good morning,” she said.

Farideh looked away. “We’re leaving shortly.”

Adastreia nodded. “I’d assumed.” She fiddled with the beads of her necklace, still staring at Farideh, but saying nothing for so long. “You can’t paint us all monsters, you know,” she said finally. “Those of us who did the ritual.”

The ritual. “How many people were involved in making me?”

“We had the best of intentions.” Farideh said nothing, too many angry words crowding in her mouth. “If anything,” Adastreia went on, “we were too idealistic.”

“You were ready to sacrifice me twice over,” Farideh said. “Karshoj to your idealism.”

At that, at least, Adastreia had the decency to look wounded. “Fair enough.” Then, “I think I might come with you. If the offer stands.”

Absolutely not, Farideh wanted to say. She made herself think of Havilar and of Bryseis Kakistos, as she strapped her armor back on. “What about Kulaga?”

“Kulaga is convinced I might woo you away from the cambion,” Adastreia said. “And I … I think you might be right about Bryseis Kakistos. She isn’t someone to underestimate.” Farideh looked back to find Adastreia staring at her. “Are you underestimating her?”

“She has my sister,” Farideh said. “I can’t afford to underestimate her.”

“Whereas Kulaga can,” Adastreia said. “So. We’ll go to Djerad Thymar. But don’t mistake me: I’m not offering to help you. Whatever plans you have, you’re on your own. I’ll take the offered sanctuary and that’s all.”

Farideh bit her tongue—you don’t want anything else from her, she reminded herself. It didn’t matter if Adastreia was a coward or a blackguard or a saint. All she needed to be was near enough to protect and central enough to trap Bryseis Kakistos.

“You ought to wear a cloak,” she said, heading back into her room to gather the last of her things. One heir down, she thought. That’s all that matters.

6

30 Nightal, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR)
Djerad Thymar, Tymanther

MEHEN COULDN’T HAVE SAID WHICH WINGED SNAKE WAS WHICH, and so he carried one and gave the other to Dumuzi to carry up to the halfling in the Vanquisher’s Hall, where Volibar was repeating what he’d told Mehen to the elders there. An army of thousands, a message from Dahl, and Farideh was still not back.

“Better than waiting,” Kallan teased him as they climbed the stairs. “At least you’re carrying something. You going to miss these little fellows?”

The snake licked at Mehen’s knuckles, as if scenting the blood beneath the scabs there. “I never thought I’d say so, but I prefer the hound.”

White cloth draped the Vanquisher’s throne, a symbol of mourning and a sign of respect for Tarhun, dead not five days at the hand of a vicious shapechanging fiend that had wreaked havoc on the City-Bastion. A score or more of dragonborn, gray-scaled elders and their scions shifting uneasily beside them, surrounded a man that came hardly to their hipbones, settled on a low cot.

“He’s calling himself Gilgeam,” the halfling was saying. “Doesn’t like folks who aren’t humans, and seems like maybe he specifically doesn’t like you all or the genasi. Army’s pushing forty thousand and he’s got a solid number of demons leashed among them.”

“More demons?” Narghon spat. “What enemy has set its sights on us?”

“Who says it’s related?” Ophinshtalajiir Kaijia said, leaning heavily on her cane. “The last one came through those hatchlings’ fool actions. I doubt even the most determined children can summon up an army forty thousand deep.” Here she cast her eyes toward Mehen, and Dumuzi beside him. To his credit, the boy didn’t flinch, even if Mehen could hear the soft tapping of his tongue against the roof of his mouth as they approached.

“If you ask me,” Shestandeliath Geshthax said to the green-scaled matriarch, “it would be wisest to round up all the ones who paid worship to the Dragon Queen. Everyone knows she’s got her claws in the Abyss.”

Kaijia frowned at him. “Who on every broken plane knows that?”

“What about the giants?” Mehen interrupted.

Volibar shook his head, puzzled. “If there’s giants in the middle of this, I don’t know about ’em. He’s heading for Unthalass. Dahl’s said you ought to make sure that port city of yours knows it.”

“Already done,” Anala said. She nodded at Mehen. “Your snakes, goodman.” The creature wrapped around Mehen’s arm slithered off, dropping down into Volibar’s lap.

“Hey, boy,” Volibar crooned to the snake as it slipped inside his collar. “Someone’s been feeding you all right.” He frowned at the other snake as Dumuzi approached. “That’s not mine.”

“Your friend didn’t bring it to the Fugue Plane with him,” Mehen said. “Brume.”

Volibar made a face, but held out his hands for the other serpent. “Pity,” he said. “I didn’t like Brume particularly, mind. But you know … I didn’t want him dead.” He gave two sharp whistles. “Come here, Keetly. I can make a little room.”

“I think it’s clear,” Anala said, “that we can no longer delay the Vanquisher elections. Even an interim leader is better than trying to jockey for position while wyrms and wolves surround us. If the army of the King of Dust wants to bring his might against the Vayemniri, then we must be ready for this tyrant as we have been for all others.”

“Is this really the time?” Geshthax demanded, gesturing at the halfling with his one arm and oh-so-subtly encompassing Dumuzi with the sweep. Again the boy didn’t flinch. Moreover, he spoke.

“You need a Vanquisher,” he agreed. “We need a Vanquisher. But they’re not wolves and wyrms. Not necessarily.”

Narghon started to retort, but bit down on his reply, as if he realized Dumuzi was making his argument for him, despite speaking out of turn. Still Uadjit stepped in beside Dumuzi. “Hold your tongue at the moment, please,” she said, almost too softly to hear. “And sit down.”

“I won’t,” Dumuzi said, though he said it just as softly.

“Shestandeliath puts forth Narhanna,” Geshthax said. Mehen glanced over at Anala, whose pleasure was unmaskable. Narhanna was Mehen’s age, more her uncle’s lackey than anything approaching a leader—she wasn’t even there. An unprepared answer, a panicking elder.

“Kepeshkmolik puts forth Uadjit,” Narghon said, pulling his daughter away from her wayward child. Whispers chased the announcement. Scandal—nothing but scandal—especially given Dumuzi’s sudden disobedience, his lack of anything approaching decorum.

They have seen nothing yet, Mehen thought, as Anala cleared her throat.

“Verthisathurgiesh puts forth Yrjixtilex Kallan,” Anala announced.

“What?” Kallan’s cry broke over the rising voices. He looked to Mehen, shocked.

“Calm down, noachi,” Vardhira, the stout Yrjixtilex matriarch, said, holding up a hand. “Anala, why nominate someone outside of your clan? That isn’t done.”

Mehen’s stomach dropped. Such a weak protest—and yet unassailable in the strictest sense: Vardhira was in on Anala’s mad plan to keep Kepeshkmolik off the Vanquisher’s throne.

“Karshoji right it isn’t done!” Narghon sputtered. “What about your nephew there?”

“My nephew is not the best choice for Vanquisher,” Anala said. “The laws of the city say only that each clan head nominate the best candidate and they may not vote for their own clan. I nominate Yrjixtilex Kallan, the man who hunted the maurezhi. He is clever, resourceful, arguably incorruptible”—here she glanced sidelong at Uadjit, an unfair slice to her credibility—“and very brave. We could use fresh blood. He is my nominee.”

“In that case,” Vardhira said, “Yrjixtilex will simply have to second.”

Kallan looked at Mehen, horrified. It was only the standing, Mehen wanted to say. There were still the votes to cast, and even then it was only interim, a position for hardly more than a year. And to be fair, Anala wasn’t wrong.

None of it, he thought, looking at Kallan, was going to convince the sellsword.

“Since this is an interim vote,” Ophinshtalajiir Kaijia said, “and since some of us have lost our favored scions to the demon, there’s no need for every clan to make an offering. Ophinshtalajiir stands with Yrjixtilex Kallan.”

“We’re not voting!” Narghon burst out.

“Well we’ve hardly time to waste,” Anala said, not a little smugly. “If we voted now, we could certainly start things moving.”

“Fenkenkabradon puts forth Verthisathurgiesh Arjhani.”

Anala turned toward the booming voice—everyone turned. Fenkenkabradon Ishkhanak, the elder brother of Dokaan, stood at the edge of the circle. Dull silver scales showed a myriad of scars from his days hunting dragons in the Smoking Mountains, the most prominent a bright line that bisected the left side of his snout. He smiled at Anala.

“Churirajachi stands with Arjhani.”

“Prexijandilin stands with Kallan.”

“Linxakasendalor stands with Uadjit.”

“Stop voting!” Narghon bellowed. “Are you hatchlings who cannot wait to unsheathe your first sword? Not everyone is here. Not every one of these would-be candidates even knows they’ve been asked to stand. Narhanna, Arjhani, Kallan, Uadjit. Make a date to reconvene and vote. Tomorrow.”

“In the meantime,” Uadjit said, “we should send word to Chessenta and Deep Imaskar. Even if we suspect they cannot spare reinforcements, we should ask.”

“For all the good it does us,” Fenkenkabradon Ishkhanak said.

“Better to be sure,” Uadjit said. She turned away, her gaze lingering a moment on Patriarch Narghon, before she returned to Dumuzi’s side, beckoning him to come with her. The elders and their scions broke apart, most heading back to their enclaves. Mehen looked for Kallan, but he was lost in the crowd as Matriarch Vardhira steered him away.

“That was stlarning dramatic,” Volibar said. “For, you know, a lot of posturing and procedure.” He looked up at Mehen. “You got anywhere I can stay?”

“City’s full of inns.”

“Now, now,” Anala said, sweeping toward him, her diaphanous wraps trailing behind like wings. “Verthisathurgiesh would happily extend our invitation to you, goodman. From the sounds of things, you might have more information we could use.”

Volibar eyed her, then Mehen. “Is that a threat?”

“Why would we threaten a guest?” Anala said. She turned to Mehen. “Show him the way back to the enclave and then go and find Kallan, if you please. I’d like things to go easily tomorrow.”

“You shouldn’t have thrown him in like that,” Mehen said.

“I gave you the chance to warn him. You want me to set Verthisathurgiesh behind Dumuzi, you will go and speak with him. Meanwhile, I shall go spread the good word of Enlil and the merits of Yrjixtilex Kallan together to the Churirajachi, and find out just what he’s karshoji playing at backing Ishkhanak’s blasted idea.”

Volibar watched her walk away. “What’s she got over you?”

“Nothing,” Mehen said.

The halfling snorted. “That’s not what she thinks.” He eased off the divan, following Mehen back down the pyramid with the stiff steps of a man whose legs were still wooden from several days of running. “Who’s Dumuzi?”

“Why do the Zhentarim care?” Mehen returned as they crossed one of the bridges.

“Stlarn the Zhentarim, I care about who I bunk down with.”

Mehen snorted. “You can still choose the inn.”

What would happen when the wider world heard tell of Dumuzi, and Enlil’s return? It wasn’t a question Mehen had even thought to consider. The sudden attentions of the Vayemniri had seemed trouble enough, but if this opened the floodgates and sent the servants of every karshoji god in the Astral Sea crashing through their gates? If it meant sending out priests to proselytize and preach the gospel of Enlil? Or worse: if it meant would-be priests came there to Djerad Thymar—

Not your problem, Mehen thought.

But it might soon be Kallan’s, and he didn’t relish that either.

He delivered Volibar along with Anala’s requests to a well-mannered young man with his first blade at his belt, and then went back to his own rooms, to check for Farideh and delay the inevitable—he would go to find Kallan, much as he wanted to defy Anala. He thought back to that morning in the sparring room. I want some karshoji answers.

She can’t make him be Vanquisher, Mehen reminded himself.

To his surprise, Farideh was in the guest quarters, but Lorcan was missing. Instead there was another tiefling, a middle-aged woman, sitting on one of the long, padded benches, wand in hand. Farideh looked up, startled and guilty, when Mehen came in, and he scowled—he knew that look.

“What did you …”

But his demand trailed away. The woman beside her raised a purplish-black eyebrow.

Mehen’s heart squeezed in on itself. An heir of the same line his daughters descended from. An heir who seemed to have twenty-seven years or so on Farideh. An heir with the shadow of his daughters’ faces in her own.

He should have guessed. He should have known from the moment he found the note. He squeezed his hands into fists. Farideh pushed him back, gently, away from the woman, into his room. “Mehen, truly, not now. It’s all right.” She shut the door behind her. “I’m back. I’m fine.”

“Is that who I think it is?” he asked, lightning in his teeth. “Is she the one who dumped you in the snow?”

“Yes,” Farideh said. “But no—she gave us to someone else to dump in the snow.” She told him the story, the brief sketches of a gathered coven, a ghost, an ancient warlock who’d borne them away. Her voice shook and they both pretended it didn’t. “I think we have to find this Caisys.”

“Did you ask Lorcan?”

She shook her head. “He tore off as soon as we got back. I think he’s … upset with me, maybe?” She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’m worried about him.”

Mehen narrowed his eyes, nostrils flaring. “Let Lorcan worry about himself. He’s probably trying to play on your pity.”

“That is not why,” she said, sounding weary.

“Is it so far from what he’s done before?”

“A bit,” Farideh replied. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m a woman grown and I have better things to do in this moment, like stop my sister getting killed. I can do that a lot better with him than without him.” She swallowed. “Besides … I’m not made of ice.”

Mehen folded his arms, fighting not to bare his teeth in annoyance. The cambion was like a houseguest that never seemed to leave, no matter how many times he got out the door. “We got a messenger while you were gone,” he said. “A halfling with the Zhentarim. The one who sent the snakes. He came from Dahl.”

Farideh looked up, wide-eyed. “What? Where is he?”

“The maurezhi’s ‘King of Dust’ has him captive.”

She shook her head, as if trying to lose some measure of sudden frantic energy, and guilt surged over Mehen. “Where … Who’s gone after them?” she demanded. “When do we leave? No, that’s all there is to it—when do we leave?”

“We don’t,” Mehen said, taking her by the shoulders. “Fari, that King of Dust fellow, he’s mad. He’s mad and he hates folks who aren’t human, like … like you hate heights. It’s not safe for you to go after him.”

She shoved his hands off of her. “You want me to sit here and what? Wait for the Lance Defenders? Wait for another message that says he’s dead? You can’t ask me—”

“I can ask you to,” Mehen said. “You’re no weakling, but you’re not facing down an army, and not an army who wants to wipe anyone different from them off the plane. Be sensible.”

“Have a karshoji heart!” she returned. “He is here and he’s in danger and you want me to—”

“I want you to survive so I don’t lose both my daughters!” Mehen shouted. He nodded at the closed door. “Maybe she can live with that, but I can’t!” Farideh fell silent, as stunned as if he’d slapped her, and Mehen cursed under his breath. “Fari, I’m sorry. I know—”

“You don’t know,” she said. “Not this time.”

And he could argue he knew near enough, that she had to trust him—but it wouldn’t be true and she wouldn’t believe him. “They are sending forces from Djerad Kethendi to press this Gilgeam’s forces back,” he said. “They know to look for Dahl. Give them a chance before you put yourself in another madman’s sights. Please. Give me this, if nothing else.”

She pursed her mouth, as if she were pressing all her protests, all her sadness back in. “Fine,” she said. “For you.”

Mehen gathered his daughter into a fierce embrace. In the hollow of his heart, he wished there were some way to protect her from all this danger, all this heartache, all these villains who wanted to harm her, to strip her from the world.

This, he thought, holding her tight. This is what Dumuzi meant. Ah, karshoj.

• • •

HAVILAR RETURNED TO the plane of mist so dizzied and drained she couldn’t tell for sure at first that she was there—that she existed at all. It seemed an eternity before she felt like she had limbs and a trunk and a self again. Alyona was looking down at her, frowning.

That might have been too far, she said. You have to remember you’re extending yourself quite a lot. It’s hard—I remember … I … It was difficult to figure out, how to do it. You can’t leave, you know, but this way you leave without leaving.

Havilar shut her eyes. It made as much sense as anything in this place. It made as much sense as standing in her sister’s dreams, watching a dead mercenary pick grapes in a blue fog.

She sat up. Where do I go when I do that? Am I in Farideh’s head or another world or what?

Alyona’s frown deepened. You’re in her dreams.

Right, Havilar said. But I’m not here. So where do I go?

To her dreams, Alyona said again. The specifics don’t matter.

Havilar wanted to protest that it most certainly did matter—she for one did not go traipsing through strange planes if she could help it, and not at all if she didn’t know where she was treading—but Alyona sighed and continued, Was it strange? I found it strange at first—dreams are so intimate. You see in them your sister’s hopes, her fears, her darkness and her light. I knew things suddenly that I’m sure Bisera wished to stay secret, even from me, and things I did not wish to face the truth of, alongside happier memories, happier truths. I stayed away at first, but then … I missed her. I miss her. You understand.

What does she dream of now? Havilar asked.

Alyona’s expression grew distant, as if she weren’t entirely there, and Havilar had to feel at least a little sorry for her. Whatever Farideh’s failings, she didn’t think she’d lock Havilar up in a little planar prison like this.

When did Bisera become Bryseis Kakistos? she asked.

Alyona toyed with the charm she wore around her neck. After I died.

• • •

“TELL ME YOU’VE got a plan,” Thost said, leaning on his shovel where they were digging another trench alongside around forty of the dragonborn refugees.

Dahl blew out a breath, searching the horizon once more. Two days had passed since they’d arrived in the ruins—there were ramshackle buildings rising from the rubble, scouts circling, circling, and not a single sign of anything that might possibly be a priest of Oghma. Djerad Thymar was too far over the horizon to spot anymore, but still he marked the point where the river touched the horizon, an arrow to the pyramid city. So close and yet so far. They could make it to Djerad Kethendi, he thought, and from there to Djerad Thymar.

But you wouldn’t be where the salmon demand the tide, he thought. There is nowhere else Oghma’s message might be true.

“I’ve got several plans at the moment,” Dahl said. “I haven’t worked out which is best.”

“All of them are better than sitting here, being slaves,” Bodhar told him. “Mostly sure being in the stlarning Underdark is better.”

A whip cracked near them—though not too near. “No talking!” Namshita shouted. Dahl shot her a look of irritation. She’d been incautious talking to him, she said. After the first trip to the water, she’d followed him again, asking questions of Old Unther, of the Mulhorandi, of the genasi to the north. None of these were Dahl’s expertise, but she took whatever he could give her, as if these were waymarkers to the world as she understood it.

“Were you a slave in the other world?” he asked as he lifted the water.

“A granary guard,” she said. “Then they made me an overseer—they gave me a whip and told me to punish the slow workers. I ran instead, and took the slow ones with me.” She scowled past him, as if she weren’t taking notice of Dahl at all. “I’ve spread the word that we can still escape. That there is sanctuary to be had. That the signal still holds.”

“What’s the signal?” Dahl asked.

“Too dangerous,” Namshita said. “Get that water back.”

Dahl had spread a similar word through the dragonborns’ ranks: Be ready to run. Soon.

The next day, Namshita told him one of the priests had noticed her talking to him, had noticed him talking to the other slaves. “It’s too dangerous,” she said. “The Son of Victory cannot think I’m disloyal. Too much depends on it.”

“Why don’t you tell him some of what I’ve told you?” Dahl said. “Give him information he can use—maybe you’re just using me for his gain?”

Namshita’s rough smile twisted in amusement. “You don’t boast to the Son of Victory. If I tell him I found something out from you that he couldn’t, we would both be dead.”

Hence the whip, that always just missed them. Hence the priest that stuck close beside. Hence the blazing eyes of Gilgeam on them, and Zillah besides. At their feet, Mira watched too, her dark gaze burrowing into Dahl—move faster.

Dahl shoved the blade of his shovel into the swiftly dampening dirt. One might run, maybe three. Maybe four if they could make a plan that freed Mira first. Five became a problem—Namshita would be noticed. Two thousand an impossibility. Two thousand plus seventy-five dragonborn? Asking for the godsbedamned moon.

Volibar would make it to Djerad Thymar—unless, he thought, one of the demons caught him and we never heard. Unless he fell into the River Alamber. Farideh would convince the dragonborn—unless they never brought the message to her. Unless she was long gone. Unless Lorcan had given her all the reasons she should turn away a message from Dahl. The army of Djerad Thymar would clash with Gilgeam and they would have a chance.

Unless they don’t, he thought, and he cursed and cursed. Too many pieces, too many unknowns.

“Turning a war is a matter of shifting a hundred battles,” Tam Zawad, the High Harper of Waterdeep and Dahl’s superior, had once told him, long before the war of the Shadovar or the Son of Victory. Long before it mattered. “Turning a battle is a matter of shifting an army. Turning an army is a matter of shifting all the right souls.”

“What happens if you pick the wrong ones?” Dahl had asked.

“You knuckle down,” Tam said. “This business isn’t for the faint of heart.”

Nor is it for agents without resources or contacts, Dahl thought. He was well out of his depth. He’d furtively cast the ritual that morning to understand the language of the Untherans, in the hopes of gleaning some sense of when they would attack and where. How long he had to wait Oghma out. But all he’d learned were plans to build the camp up, including these trenches.

He glanced up at Gilgeam. The so-called god watched him like a guard dog watches a gate. Something deep and uncomfortable seethed in Dahl—what he wouldn’t give for the space to call this bastard out, to measure his might against Oghma’s, to break his stlarning face—

Dahl turned back to the trench, his pulse galloping and uneven. The remnants of Graz’zt’s maddening touch. The demon lord had pulled upon Dahl’s strings as if he were a puppet, drawing up something animal and angry in him. A need for power and control. A need to stand supreme and unchallenged, whatever it took to reach that place. A need to be right.

With that need, Graz’zt had driven Dahl mad enough to attack Lorcan on sight. With that spell, he had wounded the cambion gravely, in ways he wasn’t entirely sure of. He glanced up at Gilgeam from the corner of his eye, the same fury simmering in him, the same madness seeming to ooze off the god-king. What would happen if he did hit Gilgeam?

You prove yourself an idiot, he thought. Oghma was stronger than this pretender—that wouldn’t change if Gilgeam refused the truth of it or conceded because Dahl forced him to. Oghma is stronger, Dahl told himself. Knowledge is stronger. You are not this stupid, and you’re waiting for a priest.

Who could be a lot quicker, he added. Unless they were already here. Unless it was one of the Untherans. Unless they were a prisoner of Zillah. The lamia watched them digging with a smug, mild expression that hid the power she held.

Lord of All Knowledge, Dahl prayed. Binder of What Is Known. Make my eye clear, my mind open, my heart true. Give me the wisdom to separate the lie from the truth. Give me the strength to accept what is so …

The prayer caught his thoughts, smoothed them out like a sheet upon a bed, even and calm and ready for the word that laid itself across the middle of his mind: Tjáting.

Dahl opened his eyes. Tjáting. Gods’ books, what was that supposed to mean? Not Common, not Elvish, not Draconic, not Untheric—even if the ritual had failed, he knew the sounds of it by now and none of them came close to that.

“Tjáting,” he murmured, testing the sound of it. It made his head hum, undoubtedly the gift of the god. His gaze swept the horizon once more, as if it had become a tic of sorts. A dark shape broke the even line of Tymanther’s plain.

Then three.

Then nothing.

Then a dozen.

A horn blew a frantic warning. Across the camp, the goristros all straightened, lifting their snouts to the wind. The slinking shadow demons boiled up over the crowds, and the succubi sprang into the air. Something began a chorus of howling. Gilgeam seized the amulet he wore, shooting to his feet. “What is it?” he demanded.

Unnoticed for the moment, Dahl climbed out of the trench for a better look. The dark shapes winked out, then reappeared, one by one. There and then gone. There and then a hundred feet farther on. He thought of the spell Farideh cast sometimes, the one that slipped her through a vent in the planes, letting her move a good sprint in a few steps. The bodies approaching them wavered and shone. There and then gone. There and then very, very close.

“Mash-en-li,” Gilgeam snarled.

Giants, Dahl realized. Stone giants. Three or four times the size of himself, long and tapered gray-skinned limbs, heavy clubs and stone swords in hand. Their eyes fell on the army, gems of a score of colors.

They were giants, but they were not: every inch of their stone skin was covered with a pattern of pictographs, deep carvings into the rock of their flesh. A milky iridescence seemed to flow through the grooves, filling them like water through an irrigation ditch, and perhaps feeding their strange magic.

Dahl spotted a male with a scruffy lichenlike beard, who raised his club as if it were a wand, pulling up a row of daisies the size of siege towers, made of steel. A second giant appeared beside them, slamming his stone sword into the flowers, cutting off their heads in a shower of sparks that came to life as they hit the ground, racing through the crowd. Behind them both, a female rose up in the air as if a column of wind had lifted her stony body from the grasslands, light as a dead leaf.

More lines etched her skin than any of the others Dahl could see—foxes and dragons chased each other over her shoulders, the shape of a wave curled over her breast.

And on her belly, flooded with the strange light, a curious-looking harp.

Dahl’s heart nearly stopped. The Harp shall be your truest guide, he thought. From heav’ns to Hells the plane will ring.

Reflect, and after, my priest speaks.

“Return the draumrting!” the giantess thundered.

“Sodden Hells!” Thost swore.

“Tjáting,” Dahl said to himself. Draumrting, tjáting. A Giant word? What did it mean?

One way to find out. “Out! I’ve got a plan,” he shouted down to his brothers. In the chaos, Namshita was shouting orders across the trench, arguing with one of Gilgeam’s priests in Untheran. “Time to run,” he said. “You got your signal ready?”

Namshita looked at him as if he were mad. “While the Mash-en-li attack?”

The word fought against his thoughts without a translation to be found. “The enemy of our enemy,” he said, a little desperate. “Give the signal. Get to the giants. We’re surrendering.”

But as he said this, another chorus of horns blew their frantic notes. To the south, another army approached: dragonborn on horseback and on giant bats riding hard from the shores where a dozen ships anchored. The forces of Djerad Kethendi, no longer content to sit back and wait.

“Oghma’s bloody papercuts,” Dahl swore. The dragonborn in the trench started shouting back and forth, their Draconic too frantic for Dahl’s thoughts to catch.

“Enemies of our enemies,” Namshita said. She considered the army racing toward them a moment. “Get your friend, the eme-bala, and do what you are planning. If we do this, it must be now.” She pulled her own horn from her belt.

“Oshvith!” Dahl shouted down at the dragonborn, pointing toward the giants. Run. He leaped across the narrowest part of the trench, over to the opposite side where his brothers had climbed out and were pulling dragonborn up after them. One of Gilgeam’s priests, an older man with a crooked scar across his cheek, ran at Dahl as he landed, his staff of office swung like a weapon. Dahl caught hold of it and yanked hard, pulling the priest toward him, then forcing him down into the trench.

Two soldiers followed, battered blades out, defending their leader even in the midst of the sudden, wild battle. Dahl dodged as one curved sword cut toward him, losing his balance and landing on the rocky ground. The second missed her mark as Thost slammed bodily into the bearer, knocking her into the first and overbalancing both down into the trench with the others. Thost caught Dahl’s hand and yanked him to his feet.

Overhead, giant bats circled. A scattering of clay pots plummeted from the sky—the air expanded with a distant whoosh where they struck, the unmistakable sound of alchemist’s fire. Screams ran through the camp, even as the horn blasts kept coming, even as regiments reformed around their demonic allies, choosing one enemy or the other.

Bodhar kneeled beside Mira, fighting with the knots tied into her shackles. Mira for her part had slipped free the manacle on her left wrist and was hissing directions at Bodhar. Another swordsman, one of the guardians arrayed around Gilgeam, broke free of his station, drawing his blade. Mira swung her manacled wrist up at him, catching him in the face hard. He pulled away and Mira snatched the dagger from his boot, sawing into the rope as Dahl hit him from behind. A pot of alchemist’s fire hit the ground beside the trench, splashing indiscriminately out onto soldier and demon and structure alike. Dahl and the soldier both leaped apart, away from the flames.

“Enough of this!” Dahl heard Gilgeam snarl. The rise of magic all around him stirred the traces of Graz’zt’s curse on him, and a part of him urged Dahl to go back, to stop Gilgeam with a sword to the throat. The Son of Victory clutched the amulet around his neck, spitting out a sharp, venomous word. A flight of succubi with cruel claws launched from half-a-dozen places through the crowd, aiming for the giant bats.

“You have to follow me,” Dahl told the others, even as the soldier gained his feet again. “We have to run.”

Another horn blast—this one three sharp bursts and two sustained, then repeated—this one close. Dahl looked back at Namshita, around whom a dozen warriors had stilled. Beyond, even in the battle, the horn call echoed, more signals repeated. The soldier standing over Bodhar faltered, looked back at the sikati.

One of the two thousand.

“Come on,” Dahl said to him, beckoning with both hands.

The air around Gilgeam grew dense, electric. He seemed to pulse with energy, a pulse that felt as if it would draw Dahl down into it, drain him dry. The Son of Victory was like a void, like the space before an explosion, like the air between thunderbolts. He cut both hands through the air and a blade of power sliced across the field, hamstringing a giant and tearing through the Kethendan dragonborn.

“End them all!” Gilgeam bellowed.

“Stop him!” Zillah shouted, leaping down from the dais toward Dahl.

The soldier stared at Dahl, frozen. Dahl cursed—no time, no time at all. He ran, hoping his brothers and Mira would follow. Hoping the soldier would choose to escape. Hoping he could outrun the lamia. Hoping he was right.

Tjáting, he thought. The center of his mind took on a warm glow, the unmistakable notice of the god of knowledge. Tjáting. Lord of All Knowledge, Binder of What Is Known, this had better not be a test.

In the chaos of battle, no one took much notice of Dahl running through their lines. The leaping, living sparks rampaged blindly through the Untherans. One of the goristros had cut the leg out from under one of the stone giants. A pair of female giants, lines of magic making spirals over their faces, pulled mirror-glass butterflies out of the air and sent the whirlwind of them against the attackers. Dahl veered away from the deadly wind, but the giantess creating the butterflies noticed him. She slammed her club down in his path, and it was the practice of a lifetime that made Dahl run toward her feet, around the weapon.

Make my mind open, my eye clear, my heart true, my feet stlarning faster than this! If even a fraction of the two thousand ran for the giants, he had to make sure it didn’t look like an attack.

“Tjáting!” Dahl shouted. The giantess pulled her club up, puzzled. “Tjáting!”

“Somni!” she shouted. “Forer!”

The giantess with the harp on her belly caught sight of him and frowned. The gust of wind dropped her back on the grasslands with a thunderous boom.

“Tjáting!” Dahl shouted. “Tjáting! Tjáting!”

All around the woman, giants looked back at her, distracted from their attack by her sudden stillness. She looked down, taking in the humans rushing toward her, hands in the air. Dahl’s heart felt as though it were about to burst out of his throat, but still he ran at her.

Thirty feet from where she stood, the giantess nodded once. “Tjáting,” she said as if agreeing.

The gem at her throat flared and every line carved into her body flooded with the strange magic. Suddenly a silvery net appeared, surrounding Dahl and all the people who fled beside him, as though they were fish in a weir. All around them, other giants flared with the same magic, and more nets appeared, ensnaring the escaping Untherans. The giantess pulled the net taut, and suddenly Dahl was swept from his feet, falling backward into a tangle of bodies. Above him he saw a giant bat circling, harried by a pair of succubi, saw the bursts of angry magic smiting it out of the sky, saw the dragonborn rider falling to the ground like a tossed rag doll.

The light all around him flared, taking on the same strange iridescence as the magic in the carvings, and suddenly there were no bats, no magic. Another jolt, and just before Dahl’s head cracked into someone else’s, he realized what he’d done: left the Kethendan dragonborn behind, without even the distraction of the giants to save them from Gilgeam’s wrath.

PART IV

THE DEVIL

6 Kythorn, the Year of the Dragon (1352 DR)
Aglarond

• • •

“I found this for you.”

Bisera looked up from sharpening her daggers. Phrenike, the wizard they’d taken on back in Sarshel, stood over her holding out a book, part of her take from the haul. Bound in a veiny sort of leather and decorated with beaten copper, it would fetch a few silvers at least.

“What is it?” Bisera asked.

The wizard’s deep blue eyes twinkled as she sat down beside Bisera. “A little bird told me you might be interested in fiends.”

Phrenike, like Caisys, hid her ancestry well, but there was something foxlike in the taper of her face, her perpetual smirk that suggested something darker in her blood. The wizard had joined them only a few months prior, but she’d proved a decent investment after the last caster to join their party of adventurers had disappeared in the night, halfway to Tsurlagol, along with half their treasure.

“Stlarning sorcerers,” Jefensi had muttered, and swore if they took up another one, he and his axe would be the next to disappear. So a wizard it was.

A mediocre wizard, Bisera thought, with the kind of jealousy she’d never, ever let show. When she’d at last swallowed her pride a few tendays back and asked Phrenike if she could teach Bisera some midlevel spells, the brown-haired woman had shrugged.

“I don’t teach,” she said simply. “Don’t have the knack for it.”

What had first felt like a slap soon revealed itself to be an unfortunate truth: Phrenike was as mired in her circumstances as Bisera. She might become a better wizard—if, much like Bisera, she could find the right teacher—but she would never be brilliant.

Bisera flipped through the pages. Illustrations of fiends snarled at her, prodded into imaginary motion by the firelight. Here, a spell to summon a devilish familiar. There, a circle to bind a devil in place with promises. Bisera ran a light hand over the ink work, studying the wicked-looking creature in the circle, all bat wings and horns and muscle.

“Caisys told you that,” she said. “About the fiends.”

“Alyona,” Phrenike said. “So to be fair, it wasn’t so much that she said I should give you the book, as that I shouldn’t.” Her eyes glittered. “Trade for keeping me from treading on that godsbedamned pressure plate.”

Bisera looked across the fire at Alyona, bandaging Jefensi’s arm and wearing a grim expression. The symbol of Selûne around her neck shone with an unnatural light, as her attention was on the wound. But Bisera knew her sister was acutely aware of Phrenike beside her and the book in her hands.

“Don’t use any of that too close to the rest of us, eh?” Phrenike said. “Nobody wants to find out great-grandpa owed a debt to the Nine Hells.”

Bisera looked down at the book again. Not demons this time—devils. Less fickle. Maybe less demanding. Maybe more. She could manage a protective circle at least—though not much beyond that. Not enough that Bisera could be their caster.

“Why’d you take this one?”

“It had some lovely cabochons on the cover. I popped them off first—there’s a jeweler in Furthinghome that I know. He can make the ruby ones into earrings, and sell the rest.”

“You never thought about using the book?”

Phrenike shrugged. “Why bother?”

Alyona finished her ministrations and stood, heading for the edge of the clearing. Bisera watched for a moment, then glanced at Caisys, still sitting beside the fire and Jefensi. He raised an eyebrow. Bisera ignored him and excused herself, the book of devils still under her arm.

Alyona had retreated to the edge of a cliff near their campsite, where Selûne, her face just beginning to turn away, shone down on the sisters. Alyona held her face in her hands.

“Are you all right?” Bisera asked.

For a long moment, Alyona said nothing. Bisera moved closer to her, rubbing a hand over her twin’s back. “Is it Caisys?”

“I think we should go back to Darmshall,” Alyona said.

Bisera snorted. “Why in the world would we go anywhere near that shithole?” Alyona lifted her head but wouldn’t look at Bisera. A knot of worry looped itself around her stomach.

“These aren’t good people we’ve fallen in with,” Alyona said quietly. “I mean … I understand why—the world can be a cruel place. I don’t … maybe I don’t blame them. But I wish … I just think we shouldn’t poison ourselves so willingly.”

“Are you including your brightheart in that?” Bisera asked.

“ ‘The Priestess and the Turncoin.’ Sounds like a bawdy tavern tale.”

Alyona’s cheeks turned scarlet. “We’re friends. And whatever Caisys is—”

“He is literally a whore.”

“It’s better than your new bosom companion the lazy wicked wizard!” Alyona said. “She’s the worst of them—completely without morals and she dived right in grabbing up treasure despite the fact that she hardly lifted a damned finger clearing that tomb.”

“So which is it?” Bisera said. “She ought to cast the wicked spells or she oughtn’t?”

Alyona stood. “This is what I mean,” she said sadly. “This isn’t the right life for us, don’t you see? I miss … I miss us being a pair, a team. This is driving us apart. Even Caisys.”

Bisera looked away, up toward the moon. If anything was driving her from Alyona, it was the damned moon goddess and her edicts, the way her priestesses fed Alyona’s worst fears and tried to pull Alyona down, and Bisera with her.

“We are not going back to Darmshall,” she started.

“Then where?” Alyona said. “I’ll go, but it can’t be with these people. Not anymore.”

Bisera shook her head. “You’re upset. We can talk about this in the morning.”

“No,” Alyona said firmly. “Now. Decide.”

“I won’t,” Bisera said. “Tomorrow. We’ll talk tomorrow. It will all be all right, I promise.” She embraced her sister, Alyona stiff and unyielding in her arms.

Bisera didn’t return to the camp but worked her way deeper into the woods, to a sheltered spot beside some tumbled ruins, the remains of some elven village. Alyona would calm down—if nothing else, she was too smitten with Caisys to mean it when she said she’d leave. Give her time to cool off and there would be better options out there than Darmshall and weakness.

Settling down beside the stone remains of a granary, Bisera broke a sunrod and began to read.

• • •

By an hour before dawn, Bisera had finished, stolen back to the camp, and swiped a few components from Phrenike’s pack. Alyona was right about one thing—Phrenike wasn’t dedicated enough to care too much at the loss of a little silver and such, so long as she got her share. She went back to the ruins, to a nice flat place, and cast her first summoning, her brain boiling with old ideas and new. Whatever Alyona thought, she wasn’t making choices rashly. Not tonight anyway.

The creature in the circle reminded her of the succubus she had faced down in the cavern of gray-bearded Titus all those years ago. Feminine, with skin the color of a stone and feathery blood-red wings. She wore armor, though, and a helm that looked like a skull. An erinyes, Bisera thought. Battlemasters of the Nine Hells.

“You summoned me?” the devil seemed annoyed more than anything. Bisera lifted her chin.

“I did. What’s your name?”

The erinyes smiled. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you there’s power in knowing a thing’s name?”

“I’ve heard it,” Bisera said. “I don’t see it, though. What’s to stop you from changing it?”

“There’s the power,” the erinyes said. “Change the name, change who you are. What do you want, little demonborn?”

Bisera swallowed. “Once upon a time, I was brought to the presence of a demon in the hopes I’d make a warlock pact with them. A succubus,” she added. “In service to Graz’zt.”

“But you didn’t. So why does this matter?”

“I didn’t,” Bisera went on, “because the pact they offered was a slave’s agreement. I’m not going to live long enough to make trading my soul for spells worthwhile, and nothing that warlock did would convince me of that.”

The erinyes stared at her, unblinking. “You sound terribly clever,” she drawled.

“No,” Bisera said, “just not blisteringly stupid, which—to be frank—the more I read of demons and their methods, the more I’d say their intelligence doesn’t recommend them. You all on the other hand …”

“You simplify things.” The erinyes’s blood-red wings twitched. “Maybe too much.”

“Maybe,” Bisera said. Even the way the devil spoke to her was preferable to the demon—the slow unfolding was surely meant to lull her into a place where she felt as though she had the upper hand, but it gave her time to think, to stay calm and focused and listening. “Do you serve a greater master?”

The erinyes’s dark eyes gleamed beneath her helm. “Don’t we all serve a greater master? In one fashion or another? In the Nine Hells, every devil has its rank—and its master.”

“My studies”—Bisera selected the word carefully—“say you come from the Sixth Layer. Which means you serve Malagarde, the Hag Countess.”

The erinyes smiled like a razor blade. “True.”

“She’s not a devil.”

“She’s a curiosity,” the erinyes said by way of agreement. “Do you intend to stand here chatting until dawn?”

“Enough of a curiosity she might be interested in my offer,” Bisera said. “A pact for a soul is a dire thing—unnecessarily so. You can’t possibly claim many souls that way, and a person can’t possibly gain much power without going mad of it. It’s a terrible agreement for everyone.”

“And you have a different offer.”

“You give me the same sort of power,” Bisera said. “You trade me for potential—to begin. But there must be roads where our interests align, and while I’m no fool, the world is filled with the gullible and the grasping. I could get you other souls, to be sure.”

“But you’d be safe?”

“My soul would remain my own business,” she corrected.

“You’ll not find many gods interested in the soul of a tiefling who would pact with devils and sell others to the Nine Hells for a little power.”

You’d not find many gods that care about a tiefling in the streets, Bisera thought. “There are a lot of folks in the world that I suspect the gods would be happy to be rid of, and the devils would be happy to take. That’s between me and them. As for the magic, you’d keep a rein on it. It would have to be a sword that cut both ways for this to work.”

Cold, unblinking eyes watched her, the erinyes a statue of patience and vengeance. For a moment, Bisera saw the danger in the creature, the peril she was facing. The erinyes was not mortal, would not think like a mortal. Bisera would have to learn to think like a devil. Assuming it worked.

“It would be a lie to say your offer wasn’t intriguing,” the erinyes said. “Quite enterprising. Malagarde might well be interested in such an … arrangement. But first”—her dangerous smile spread—“you have to let me go.”

“I will,” Bisera said. “Would you let me sample the wares, so to speak? A small spell. I’ve cast wizard’s magic for long enough—I want to make sure this is similar.”

The erinyes chuckled. “You might like it too much. Doesn’t that worry you?”

“Maybe,” she allowed. “But it serves you just fine.”

“Quite.” The devil came to the edge of the circle. “Step in.”

Bisera nearly protested, but she knew that the circle couldn’t take her back, not without the erinyes meeting the conditions she’d carefully set. And if the erinyes killed her, she’d never find out the condition and would remain trapped until she did. The tiefling stepped over the chalked circle of runes, standing hardly a foot from the erinyes. The devil was both desirable and repugnant in equal measure, like a beautiful corpse. She laid one delicate-seeming hand on Bisera’s chest, twisting the fabric of her shirt in a fist, the other cupped her cheek.

Darkness flooded Bisera’s vision, a torrent of magic poured across her senses. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe, and then the flames chased the darkness, and she was breathing too much, the air cold despite the fire that consumed her from the inside out. The erinyes’s red eyes danced.

In a moment, it was over and a second pulse seemed to throb in Bisera’s veins. She pressed a hand to her chest, stumbling back a step, remembering at the last moment to move carefully, lest she smear the circle and let the devil out.

“How’s it taste?” the erinyes asked. Bisera straightened carefully, examining her hands. They felt as if they were burning, as if a stream of virulent flames ran down her wrists, down her spine, and deep into the ground.

“You tap into it,” the erinyes said. “Say adaestuo. That should trigger something interesting.”

Bisera pointed both hands toward the ruins. “Adaestuo.” A sphere of magic, the deep color of a bruise, sizzled into being before her hands and rushed across the gap, splashing into the stones and sending shards of rock scattering into the forest. “Not bad,” she said, flexing her hands.

The erinyes smiled at her. “So we’ll have more to discuss. Now: What’s the circle’s condition?”

Bisera matched that wicked grin. “Tell me your name.”

The erinyes tilted her head. “What if I’d told you that when you asked the first time? I’d be gone in a flash, and you’d have nothing to show for it.”

“Then I’d know how to find you,” Bisera pointed out. “Names have power, remember.”

That, at least, seemed to impress the erinyes a little. “Shetai,” she said, and a column of light streaked up from the circle of runes, carrying her and Bisera’s offer back to the Nine Hells.

Bisera blew out a tense breath she hadn’t been aware she was holding. A far cry better than Titus’s succubus. Maybe it would come to nothing, but here, perhaps, were the beginnings of the kind of power that could keep her safe—keep Alyona safe—and make them comfortable for once besides.

Alyona—she’d be worried back at the camp. It had been long enough that whatever anger she’d built at her twin would surely have dissipated. Bisera scuffed the runes back into the dirt, dusted herself and her book off, and headed back.

The sun was just rising over the hills beyond. Caisys sat at the fire’s edge, drinking from a mug. Bisera imagined how she must look—flushed and puffy-eyed and excited. He raised an eyebrow.

“There you are,” he said. “I was about to go searching.”

“I’ve been busy,” she said, feeling not a little triumphant. She’d call the devil back that night, and see if the seeds of her plan had born fruit. It was closer than she’d come so far. “Is Alyona up yet?”

Caisys gave her a curious look. “Alyona left. Last night. No one could convince her to stay.”

All Bisera’s triumph evaporated. “Did … Did she say why?”

He shook his head. “She said this wasn’t the life for her. Said you hadn’t decided if you were staying behind or following her. But to tell you she loves you and she knows you’ll make the right choice.”

Bisera balled her hands into fists. The right choice—which was Alyona’s choice, Selûne’s choice. “She went back to Darmshall?”

Caisys nodded. “You can catch up to her, surely. Maybe convince her to come back.”

Alyona likely thought the same—she’d head for Delthuntle and the port and wait, and Bisera would be along a day behind at most, all apologies and changed heart. But if returning to Darmshall was the answer, Bisera would rather have the problem.

“I think this time,” Bisera said, sitting down beside the fire to pick pebbles from beneath her hooves, “I’ll let Alyona catch up to me.”

• • •

7

30 Nightal, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR)
Fifth of the fingerbone towers, Malbolge
The Nine Hells

ONCE MORE, AS LORCAN STEPPED INTO THE NINE HELLS, HE FOUND himself overtaken by an animalistic panic that nearly forced him to his knees. This time the room at the top of the fingerbone tower was empty, and he wrapped his arms around his chest, trying to quell the shaking. It will pass, he told himself. It will pass.

It might, but Lorcan could no longer wait for whatever Graz’zt and Dahl had done to him to pass. What had happened with Kulaga couldn’t be allowed to be repeated. Even if some part of him weighed the dangers of other devils finding out he was impaired, against Farideh’s hand stroking his.

One of these is going to kill you, he told himself. The other is not worth that.

He unlocked the sinew-bound door to the room at the top of the fingerbone tower. An erinyes was on the other side. Lorcan shouted and leaped back a step, trying and failing to pull fire into his hands.

Neferis sneered at him. “You’re in trouble.”

“How so this time?” Lorcan straightened, as if he could shrug off the pounding fear. “Did Zela come back?”

“The archduchess was looking for you.”

Lorcan’s pulse squeezed around his breath. “What did you tell her?”

“The truth,” Neferis said, giving him a puzzled look. “I told her you were on Toril. That you bolted there after the pradixikai tangled with Graz’zt and lost Sairché on ‘warlock business.’ She isn’t happy.”

“How shocking,” Lorcan fought to keep his voice flat.

“There’s more,” she said. “Everybody knows Zela and the others are gone—or at least that Her Highness counts them lost. They want you to name a new leader and advance four more to fill the ranks of the pradixikai.”

“They want to kill me and they want me to tell them what to do. Wonderful.”

“You still control Mother’s holdings,” Neferis said. “Which means you’re still master of the pradixikai whether we like it or not. As much as some of us would like to kill you and claim the oathbreaker curse, everyone wants to know who’s in charge. So?”

“So, what?”

“Who replaces Zela?”

Once, Lorcan might have relished this power over his terrible, violent half sisters. But only one thing mattered now, and that was undoing whatever curse had been placed on him. “I’ll think about it. Anything else?”

“Shetai sent a couple of its own erinyes to collect you,” Neferis pointed out. “They’re camped just past a bowshot from here. Said you are testing the Vulgar Inquisitor’s patience. Said it knows about Kulaga. Said you’d best come now.”

“Beshaba shit in my godsbedamned eyes,” Lorcan hissed.

Neferis shifted on her hooved feet. “You ought to name a leader before you go. Or at least a successor.”

At least it meant a brief reprieve from Glasya, he told himself as he walked, surrounded by erinyes, to the caverns Shetai held deep in Malbolge. He should have considered the paelyrion would hear about his meeting with Kulaga. He should have prepared. He should have stayed on godsbedamned Toril and waited.

Instead he found himself walking into Shetai’s cavern, trying not to vomit with nerves he had no business having.

The paelyrion loomed over Lorcan, a mountain of flesh bound in leather armor, its mouth a lurid slash of magenta, punctuated by razor teeth. For once, the Vulgar Inquisitor did not smile at Lorcan, as though it knew something amusing were coming along to destroy the cambion. It looked at him as though it might devour him itself.

“Is this about godsbedamned warlocks?” Shetai demanded. “Has this all been about a shitting collection?”

Lorcan blew out a careful breath. “I don’t want your Brimstone Angel.”

“That’s not what Kulaga says. And Incus”—the paelyrion leaned closer, its fetid breath a hot wind through Lorcan’s hair—“Incus told Kulaga that someone murdered her heir, right in the middle of his …” Shetai broke off, searching Lorcan’s face. “What’s wrong with you?”

Lorcan swallowed. “Perhaps I’m overcome by Incus’s loss—”

“Shut up,” Shetai said. It tilted its great head like a moon turning on an off-kilter axis. “Kulaga said you were a fool. But beyond what he expected—there’s a reason, isn’t there? What is it? Has Asmodeus’s rumored madness seeped into you?”

Lorcan willed a lie to his lips—but what would make sense? If Shetai could spot this change in him, what could he possibly excuse it with that wouldn’t let the paelyrion take advantage? A curse? A curse that he would pass on if killed, not cured? An illness that might spread?

The sudden hum of hellwasps nearly stopped his heart dead in his chest and every thought in his head. Shetai’s expression froze.

“You tangled with the Dark Prince,” a mellifluous voice said. “I’d know that curse anywhere.”

Lorcan dropped to his knees to the sound of Shetai lowering its enormous body into a bow. The archduchess Glasya’s coppery feet paced around the cambion, between him and the paelyrion. All around, the hellwasps buzzed, too numerous to count.

Lorcan’s breath started to outpace him, so he caught it, held it tight until he grew dizzy. Shit and ashes, he thought. Shit and ashes.

“I will grant,” she said, “that your attempts to thwart Graz’zt were most admirable, considering your station. Admirable but foolish—you are not a resource to waste, Lorcan. Not with my lord father so … invested in you. I am likewise displeased to find myself short Sairché, Invadiah, and ten of my erinyes.” Her terrible, beautiful voice built and built, like the roar of a flooding river. “And now I find you here, not in my presence, and it sounds an awful lot like you’re wasting my godsbedamned time, Lorcan!” She yanked his head up, her eyes blazing like comets, her teeth bared and sharp.

“Forgive me, Your Highness,” Lorcan managed.

“I don’t want your apologies,” Glasya said. “I want answers. Where is your sister?”

Lorcan pursed his lips around the lie he already knew he had to tell. This time, it came more easily. “Dead.”

“By the pradixikai?”

“By Bryseis Kakistos.”

All the air seemed to go out of the cavern at once. Glasya stopped her pacing and came right up to Lorcan. “I beg your pardon?”

He did not dare look at Shetai. “It is where I have been, Your Highness: the ghost of the Brimstone Angel has returned. She possessed Sairché and killed Invadiah—not realizing Invadiah’s true strength and getting marked by the oathbreaker dagger for her crimes. She fled to Toril, to make a deal with the Dark Prince Graz’zt.”

“A deal for what?” Glasya demanded.

Lorcan thought of the true answer: the spell to divide the fragments of her soul from Farideh and Havilar. “To dethrone His Majesty, I believe. By the time I got there, she had already made the agreement.”

“And you were bound to protect your sister.”

“My sister,” Lorcan agreed. “But not Bryseis Kakistos. Between the erinyes and the … misdirected attacks of the demon lord’s allies, she succumbed to her wounds.”

Glasya narrowed her eyes. “Where is the Brimstone Angel now?”

Not a question Lorcan wanted to answer—it was no secret at all that Glasya craved her father’s crown. She would cheerfully find a way to ally with the Brimstone Angel if it meant Asmodeus’s downfall and her own ascension. Which could only lead to Lorcan’s death, by one archdevil’s hand or another.

So he only shook his head. “I don’t know. I discovered the ghost sought out my warlock, her descendant. I’ve since found out that another of the heirs, a warlock called Nasmos, once held by Incus of the Second Layer, was murdered quite suspiciously.”

“I told him that, Your Highness,” Shetai said. “What about Adastreia? What about Kulaga’s heir?”

Lorcan nodded solemnly. “She’s spoken with the Brimstone Angel as well.”

Glasya turned to Shetai. “You have a pact with one of the Kakistos heirs. What of that one?”

Shetai frowned. “That is what Lorcan came to ask. I shall have to seek Lachs out.”

This did not satisfy the archduchess. “What does she plan?”

Lorcan shook his head again. “We are still unraveling that, Highness. But my warlock is fearful for her sister’s sake. She’s very motivated to uncover Bryseis Kakistos’s plans before the ghost realizes there is an unclaimed heir.”

“An unclaimed heir!” Shetai burst out.

The buzzing of the hellwasps rose in pitch. Glasya turned her dark gaze on the paelyrion. “We are not talking of warlocks, Shetai. We’re discussing the collusion of great traitors.” She faced Lorcan. “What of Graz’zt?”

“To my knowledge, he remains on Toril,” Lorcan said. “Separated from the Abyss and the greater part of his forces.”

“But he had enough to curse you.” She tilted her head. “Poor little cambion. He’s stripped everything devilish right out of you. You’re just a human in a devil’s skin right now.”

A shudder ran through Lorcan—the sleeping, the fear, the sweating, the lies, and the godsbedamned feelings. The pact magic he couldn’t channel. Graz’zt had made him human. No—Dahl had made him human. What an irony.

“Please, Your Highness,” Lorcan said. “If that’s it, surely you can repair it.”

Glasya’s piercing eyes fixed upon him. The nine-tailed scourge whipped across his chest, breaking the skin even through his leather armor. But that pain was nothing compared to the sudden, shocking blow of magic that came with it. As if his body had fallen from a great height, flat into a pool of lava. He might have screamed—there was no being sure in that moment as something essential and fearful intruded onto himself again.

He drew a great gasping breath and the cavern returned, Shetai returned, the Nine Hells all returned to his awareness. Glasya was gone, but so was the frantic fear he’d had to fight so hard to master and the fatigue he couldn’t quite sweep from his bones.

“How very interesting,” Shetai said. “How much of that was true?”

“More than was not,” Lorcan said. “I wouldn’t guess if I were you.”

“The Brimstone Angel is certainly not gone,” Shetai said. “She was always wilier and luckier than anyone gave her credit for. Kulaga says you kidnapped Adastreia.”

“It would be wise,” Lorcan said carefully, “for all the Kakistos heirs to be somewhere safe. Somewhere safe and … easily controlled.”

Shetai raised one ink-line eyebrow. “Like a trap.”

“One might make the comparison.”

The paelyrion said nothing for several moments. “Whose side are you on, Lorcan?”

“My own,” Lorcan said. “Same as anyone. My heir is going to insist on speaking to Lachs. Will you provide him, or is she going to take matters into her own hands?”

“And the unclaimed heir?”

“Truth, but I wouldn’t try for her. Not at the moment.”

Shetai shifted like an avalanche. “Is she really Adastreia’s daughter?”

“I don’t know,” Lorcan said testily. “I wasn’t there. Lachs?”

Again, Shetai fell silent. “I will speak with him,” it said finally.

Returning again to the fingerbone towers, Lorcan felt far hardier, far more at ease than he had leaving them. Still, as he reached the room at the tip, he thought of Farideh’s hand on his, the moment of hesitation when he’d asked her to bed. It wouldn’t be hard to mimic that weakness, he thought. Surely. He could convince her that he was still no longer devilish.

The lies he’d told Glasya stirred up his thoughts. They weren’t enormous lies, but they were greater and more easily told than anything he’d ever managed before. Being human—or mostly human, at any rate—might have meant a great deal of weakness … but it had been much more free as well. He could have walked away from the hierarchy and not felt unmoored, if he’d stayed like that. He could have lied about anything he wished, or been baldly honest and damn the consequences.

He could tell Farideh he loved her and it might even have been true.

A curse befitting fickle Graz’zt, Lorcan thought. It injured him and, for all appearances, benefited Dahl. But by making Lorcan act more human, by taking away the devilish things that tended to get in the way of Farideh’s fond feelings—the tendencies that had saved them both but led her to throw Lorcan over when he’d infected her so as to keep her out of harm’s way the one time—well … Graz’zt had made things all the more complicated. After all, if Lorcan wasn’t a devil, then what could Farideh hold against him? What could Dahl possibly offer that she didn’t already have in Lorcan?

Lorcan stopped before the scrying mirror. What is it she has that you want so badly? he thought. What is it you even want anymore?

But before he could even begin to think of an answer, a presence filled the room, turning the air hot and electric. Lorcan’s knees buckled under him and he slammed down on the ground prostrate and blind. Even returned to its normal state, his heart threatened to burst—

And then … the pressure lifted. Not entirely, enough for Lorcan to lift his head a few inches from the bone-tiled floor, to glimpse the edge of a brocade robe through one blurry eye.

So, said a voice that shouldn’t have been in the mouth of the king of the Hells. This is the path you choose? Or this is the path they choose for you?… I know … I’m sure I said it before—you will determine which of them succeeds … which of us dies … You think your path is made, cambion, but there is no such thing, not when one carries a soul within them … you could choose … you could be free … In that, a soul is a surety …

Lorcan lay still, listening to his breath rush against the tile floor, afraid to do anything more. He shut his eyes tight and waited for Asmodeus to speak, to see if the god of sin had heard the Lord of Spells speaking through him. To see what fate Azuth’s notice had decided for Lorcan.

Stay by her side … You know how to make certain … You might even know how to be certain …

One heartbeat Lorcan lay pressed to the floor, the next, the god—or gods—were gone. He stood, carefully, cautiously, but no one else was in the room with him. He shuddered.

Once upon a time, Lorcan had made a point of never considering the secrets of archdevils, lest he come under their notice and find himself in terrible danger. The first time Asmodeus had spoken to him in a strange voice, he had tried hard to bury it, to never consider the source or the reason. But whether it was the message or the sheer number of times Lorcan had faced the fact that his king was not what he seemed, as the presence of the highest of the archdevils receded, Lorcan couldn’t help but wonder what it meant that Azuth had managed to seek him out and speak whole thoughts, without Asmodeus ever once interrupting.

At the least, Lorcan thought, it means you’re running short of time..

• • •

BRIN SLIPPED FROM his room in the middle of the night, when the imps had returned to the Nine Hells, and made his way down into the dungeons again. That evening, he’d attempted to make the location spell find the missing staff of Azuth and succeeded only in summoning up a few sparks that nearly ignited the damned feather and knocked it off its precarious perch.

He pressed himself into the shadow of a doorway as one of the lich’s dead-eyed servants walked past, carrying a bucket and mop. Five failures, twenty-five failures, twenty-five hundred—the number didn’t matter, not so long as he didn’t have a sense of the time line. If Bryseis Kakistos took another year to gather her warlock heirs, he could fill every one of those days attempting to find the staff of Azuth that Havilar had forgotten.

If she was down to the last heir, then he needed a new plan.

Brin eased across the dim hallway, too smooth and slow for the servant to notice the motion, then down the hallway toward the dungeon stairs. Creeping through a lich’s fortress in the dead of night, looking for captives, was altogether similar to slipping through a noble house, hunting for documents while a brightstarfeast went on downstairs, albeit with fewer tapestries and statues to duck behind.

And an outcome, he thought, that is more immediately pressing.

He paused at the end of the hallway, in the shadow between glowballs, and drew a long, slow breath. Now was not the time to think about that. But even still, the last words he’d exchanged with Havilar rose up in his mind.

“Even if she says you’ll come back,” Brin had pleaded, “what is there to be sure?”

“Nothing,” Havilar had agreed. “So you’ll figure it out, or you have to beg a miracle from Torm.” And then she’d kissed him and warned him to be careful. And not a moment later, he’d run after her, making himself Bryseis Kakistos’s hostage.

He wondered, as he eased down the staircase, if she knew—wherever she was—if she had any sense that he’d followed after. If she did, likely she was annoyed about needing to be rescued and very, very worried about him.

At the base of the stairs, a basket of glowballs hung on the wall. “Phrenike has trouble letting go of her past,” Bryseis Kakistos had explained to him. “She likes the magic she worked when she was young, whether she has any need of it now or not. Besides,” she’d added in a sneering sort of way, “it’s pretty.”

The glowball’s light pressed the darkness back, but deep beneath the mountain’s slope it had no help. Whispers slithered through the stone corridors. Brin drew his dagger and eased down the hallway toward the sound and the cell he’d seen the heir in. He took a corner and found the walls lined with heavy doors.

Brin peered through the grating on the first door—a tiefling man of middling years looked back at him balefully with lilting eyes of a flat, even gold. His skin was red as Lorcan’s, his hair and beard heavy with gray, and his clothes had a rough, salt-stained look to them. The angry red lines of a warlock brand showed on his calf where his trouser leg had been torn away. A metal collar had been clapped around his neck and it shivered with an angry energy.

“Who the broken planes are you?” the tiefling demanded.

“Uh, checking beds,” Brin said gruffly. One, he thought, moving down the line.

Two was the red-haired woman with the blackened eye. Three was a dark-skinned girl with horns like a ram’s and a smirk, even in her sleep. Four was a snow-haired man, his features far younger than his coloring suggested. Five was an older woman with close-cropped hair and hints of Kara-Tur in her features. Six—

By six, Brin’s thoughts were drifting—every warlock shaved his odds down, every warlock made him wonder who might be looking for them—so when the wiry young woman’s hand shot through the bars and grabbed him by the throat, he had only himself to blame. He pulled the dagger up, close enough to her wrist to startle her and slammed the hilt of it against her wrist to break her loosened grip. The moment her fingers loosened, he scrambled backward, all the way to the opposite wall. She stayed beside the grating, silver eyes fierce and unfriendly. Silver, he thought, like the ghost’s had been.

“Are you … are you the Kakistos heir?” he whispered.

In answer, the girl spat through the bars.

“There is no Kakistos heir down here,” a voice said near his ear. Brin jumped away from the wall, pulling the dagger up again. Through the door beside where he’d landed, an older Durpari man was watching him, his dark eyes faintly amused. His horns were like Farideh’s or Havilar’s, sweeping back from his graying hair in dark curves.

“Aside, of course, from the one serving as the Brimstone Angel’s vessel,” he said kindly. “Karnika descends from Zeal Harper.”

“Why are you talking to him, Nalam?” the girl hissed. “If he’s not the Brimstone Angel’s, then obviously some devil sent him.”

“Perhaps one of ours.”

The girl’s silver eyes narrowed. “And perhaps a stlarning rival sent him to make their heirs more valuable by dagger point.”

“Then we shall have at least the satisfaction of thwarting Bryseis Kakistos as we pass into the next world.” The man turned back to Brin. “So which of these is it? Why are you counting heirs?”

Brin ran through all the covers he could conceive of—he was a servant to the lich checking on her prisoners; he had indeed been sent by a devil, looking for a missing heir that wasn’t here; he was the Brimstone Angel’s apprentice, and then they might just die of laughter because no one would believe these things.

“I need to know how close she is,” Brin said hedging. “I need to know how much time before she casts the ritual. There are seven of you?”

Nalam shrugged. “Depends on how you count. Why do you need to know?”

“She’s missing a piece,” Brin said. “A piece she wants me to find. I want to know how long I have.”

“And you cannot ask?” Nalam said with a chuckle.

“No,” Brin said. “She doesn’t have a Kakistos heir yet. That will be difficult, won’t it?”

“You know enough about warlocks to know that much,” Nalam said. “But not enough to be sure.”

“Hells-lackey,” Karnika spat.

“Not necessarily,” Nalam said. He studied Brin a moment. “You’re here to rescue the vessel, aren’t you?”

Brin blinked, but said nothing. Nalam smiled. “It’s a specific and small amount of knowledge for a person to have. But exactly what a man who loves an unpacted Kakistos heir might know.”

There was no point in being flustered at being unmasked—a lesson the Harpers had impressed upon Brin until it lay a deep memory in his muscles and breath. “How long do I have?” Brin asked.

Nalam pointed to the cells one by one. “Elyria, Margarites, Titus Greybeard, Nicodemus, Lahriman Jarl, Caisys, Zeal Harper”—he ended on himself—“Pradir Ril. Add the lich and she has Phrenike. Add the vessel and she has the Kakistos heir, which makes ten.”

Brin shook his head. “She has other plans for Havilar.”

“Of course she does,” Karnika said. “I’ll bet all her heirs get special treatment.”

“Do not envy them,” Nalam said. “Perhaps this is the difference in our lines, my dear. The children of Pradir Ril all know the extent of the Brimstone Angel’s cruel depravity. Her ‘plans’ for the vessel may well be a thousand times worse than ours.”

Brin was surprised to find some part of him wanted to defend Bryseis Kakistos—after all she seemed to take no pleasure in any of this. He thought of the way her demeanor had changed when all her memories came back. And it made no difference to him if Asmodeus was brought down or not—even the devils in the Nine Hells seemed keen on that outcome. All he cared about was making sure Havilar returned safely.

“After all,” Nalam added, “we know we will die. She may remain to suffer.”

“Die?” Brin asked.

“Oh yes. The ritual must unmake us, and through each of us, unmake the pact.” He shook his head. “A hundred years ago, Bryseis Kakistos forced my great-grandfather into making the pact, with blackmail and blood magic. Now she wishes to take back that agreement by spilling my blood? Beshaba holds the dice, indeed.”

“Ye gods,” Brin said. “So how long?”

“There are three left,” Nalam said. “Four if you count the Kakistos heirs, five if you count Phrenike’s.”

“Aside from her heir, are they hard to find?”

“You’d have to ask someone with a better knowledge of the pacts,” Nalam said. “Phrenike’s will not be difficult. A Kakistos heir will. The other three are neither common nor rare.”

Brin hesitated. “She also needs the staff of Azuth.”

Nalam’s brows rose. “What does she intend to do with that?”

“She means to destroy the king of the Hells.”

Nalam stared at him, a fraction too hard, a moment too long. He hadn’t known. “You’re in need of help,” he noted after a moment. “You’re not going to defeat Bryseis Kakistos alone.” He ran a brown finger along the edge of a pale metal collar. “Antimagic. She can defeat any one of us, but all eight together?”

Brin shook his head. “I’m no wizard.”

“Pick the locks then,” Nalam said. “I’ll do the rest.”

Brin sheathed his dagger and rifled through his pockets for the scraps of his unsuccessful location ritual. A piece of silver wire, a rusted nail, the fineknife—not the thieves’ tools he would have gone into a Harper mission with, but they’d do. Nalam and Karnika spoke not a word while Brin struggled to manhandle the heavy old lock of the cell door.

At last the latch turned and the door opened. Nalam checked the corridor, then came out as Brin stood once more. “We don’t have long,” Brin started to say. But before he could finish, Nalam’s hand shot out and grabbed the dagger, his other arm wrapping around Brin’s shoulders and pulling him close.

Nalam held the knife to Brin’s throat, the blade tickling the thin skin along his larynx. “Now walk.”

Brin cursed at himself. You are just slipping every chance you get tonight, he thought. “We’re on the same side, goodman.”

“You’re on the side of a Kakistos heir,” Nalam pointed out. “We were never going to be allies. Walk.”

He had half a foot on Brin, maybe a stone of weight. No weapon but the blade, no spells he could cast. Brin took two steps forward, then one hard step backward, slamming his foot down on Nalam’s. The weight of him shoved the tiefling back and off-balance. Brin pulled the fineknife from his pocket and stabbed it backward into Nalam’s thigh. The warlock shouted in alarm and pain, the angle of the dagger slipping enough for Brin to shift, stepping out of his grip and into a better position. He slammed his elbow into the older man’s chin, knocking his head back, and shoving him backward to land on the floor. Brin skipped back a step—

“Enough.”

All at once, the corridor flooded with light. Bryseis Kakistos stood at the bottom of the stairs, staff in hand, a perfect mockery of Havilar with her glaive outstretched. The crystal at the tip glowed red and fearsome. At her heels, Zoonie crouched, ready to attack, and for the first time in a long while, Brin felt very afraid of her.

“Nalam Ril,” she intoned, striding down the corridor. “I should have guessed you’d be the troublemaker.” She gestured at Brin and he found himself shoved to the side, back against the wall beside Karnika’s cell. The heir of Zeal Harper had retreated into the shadows.

Nalam stood as Bryseis Kakistos approached, seething hatred so intense that some part of Brin wanted to jump out, protect Havilar. The man still held the dagger in his right hand. “The trouble started long before I walked this plane,” he said.

Bryseis Kakistos rolled her eyes. “And what? It will end before you leave it? Because honestly, that’s all I wish for. Get back in your cell now. You’ve had your moment.”

“But you will not have yours.” With that, Nalam plunged the dagger into his own chest, sinking it between the ribs deep into his heart. His eyes bulged, as if he hadn’t expected the pain that came with it, but he met Bryseis Kakistos’s gaze without flinching.

For her part, the Brimstone Angel only sighed as the heir of Pradir Ril hit the stone floor. She rolled back the sleeves of her robes, and Brin saw that the bare skin of her arms was marked with tattoos in a purplish ink that had definitely not been there when she was only Havilar. “You, I will deal with in a moment, Lord Crownsilver,” she said without looking at Brin. She pressed her fingers to the tattoo just at the crook of her elbow and uttered a word that echoed like an explosion in Brin’s ears. The corridor became too bright to bear, and for a moment, Brin couldn’t find his breath.

Then a great sucking sound filled the space, followed by the sound of his blade clattering to the floor. The light faded and Nalam Ril sat up, alive once more.

“Parosh renoutaa,” Bryseis Kakistos said. Zoonie sprang forward, nearly filling the hall, to loom over the tiefling man. Nalam’s mouth worked, trying to find words and failing. His eyes welled with tears.

“That,” Bryseis Kakistos said, “was a very expensive spell I had stored for a much more dire use. But I didn’t come this far to be stymied by Pradir Ril’s rebellious leavings. If you’re so eager to die, I have much more productive ways for you to do so.”

“You will not win,” Nalam said, his voice hoarse. “You have no idea what you’re setting yourself against.”

Bryseis Kakistos didn’t so much as blink. “Zoonie.” The hellhound’s ears pricked at the sound of her name. “Throw him in the cell and bite his hands off.”

Nalam threw up his hands to ward off the hellhound—a mistake. For all her bulk, Zoonie was extraordinarily fast and tore first the right hand then the left right off his wrists. She picked him up by the front of his robes and with a toss of her head, flung him back into the cell, splashing blood everywhere.

“Zoonie! Stop! Eshata!” Brin shouted, a moment too late. The hellhound turned from the now screaming man, her muzzle stained, fingers dangling from her mouth, and wagged her tail. She moved nearer to Brin, waiting for another order. He held up his hands, ready to push her away, trying hard not to vomit. Bryseis Kakistos, still ignoring him, stepped around the hellhound. As she passed, flames enveloped her from head to toe, and Brin’s heart suddenly threatened to explode with fear.

The blessings of Asmodeus, Brin told himself. It was nothing Farideh hadn’t done. She reached down and clutched Nalam’s spraying stumps with her burning hands. The air sizzled with the smell of cauterizing flesh. Nalam finally stopped screaming, falling backward, insensate with shock.

“There,” she said briskly, as the flames went out. “That should help him resist the temptation to be a fool.” She shut the door behind her, locking it with the key at her belt. Brin dug his fingers into Zoonie’s fur as Bryseis Kakistos turned to face him.

“Walk with me,” she said.

Brin didn’t move. “Where are we going?”

“Back to your rooms, of course,” she said, striding past him. “Unless you’d rather sleep down here.”

Brin scooped his dagger from the floor, gauging his odds. Zoonie nudged Brin to follow, unhappy to be separated. Brin tried not to think about how much of the tiefling man’s blood the hellhound had smeared onto him, as he moved after the Brimstone Angel. He tried not to think about the possibility that what looked like Havilar was about to kill him.

“Do you know anything about Nalam Ril?” she asked. When Brin didn’t answer right away, she went on, “I assume he told you I bent his grandsire to my will? That I doomed his line?”

“Some,” Brin said.

“Well, it’s not entirely untrue. Pradir was not the most constant of converts. Did Nalam tell you, though, that he himself is one of the Raging Fiend’s greatest devotees in Durpar? In the old ways too—bodies on the altar, blood for the summoning, none of this whispers-in-the-dark and prayers-for-clemency, oh no. He is Ashmadai, make no mistake.” She stopped, looked back at him, and tilted her head. “You and Havilar have tangled with his sort before, I see.”

“In Neverwinter,” Brin said. The memory of the Ashmadai priest dragging Havilar off, of that first time Havilar insisted he run instead of staying, instead of saving her.

“Then you know where this little plan of his would have ended. Blood on the altar, probably yours and hers.” Havilar’s golden eyes pierced him. “You are tenderhearted, which suits my needs, but foolishness does not. Go back to your rooms now. Stay out of the dungeons and keep to your task. Don’t assume I can’t replace you if you start proving more of an impediment than an asset.”

8

1 Hammer, the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant (1487 DR)
Tymanther

WHEN DAHL WOKE AGAIN, EVERY PART OF HIM HURT, AND FOR THE barest of seconds he assumed he’d been in his cups again and wondered what idiot thing he’d said the night before and if he’d cringe to know how he came to be lying face-down in a field. Then he remembered Tymanther and Unther and the Son of Victory. Then he remembered the Kethendan dragonborn plunging from the sky and the giants who cast spells that seemed to take no notice of sense or reality.

“Are you finally up?” He winced at Mira’s voice and rubbed a hand over his hair—hissing as he discovered the lump on the back of his head. “Good,” she said briskly. “That was a bit long for comfort.”

“How long?”

“Next morning. I sent your brothers to go check on the dragonborn and stop poking you.”

He pushed back onto his heels, surveying their position. The army of Gilgeam was nowhere in sight—except for the throngs of Untherans sitting on the ground around him. At a distance of a hundred paces or so, a fence flickered, woven of the same silvery light as the net that had scooped them all up. Beyond it a pair of giants watched over them, and beyond them more of the strange giants sat or stood along the foothills of mountains of tumbling rocks.

“What in the stlarning planes did you get us into?” Mira asked, crouching down next to him with a dipper of water. He drained it before answering.

“I have no idea. But we escaped Gilgeam.”

“Some of us.” He looked back and saw Namshita standing over them, flanked by two other Untheran warriors. “We’re counting nine hundred escaped.”

Nine hundred of two thousand sounded decent when they were numbers in a ledger. Another matter when they were people he might have seen or spoken to, people Namshita had promised safety to. “I’m sorry. It was a chance and I took it.”

Namshita nodded, but didn’t answer him. Instead she gestured to the men beside her. “I would introduce my confederates. This is Utu and Amurri.” The younger man was the soldier from Gilgeam’s guard. “Can you cast the spell to help them learn your language?”

Dahl shook his head. “My haversack is still in the camp. All my things …”

His ritual book. His symbol of Oghma. The little enamel-backed steel mirror his mother had given him the day he left the farm, the one he’d used in thousands of rituals. He’d had these things since he’d gone to the Domes of Reason, as paladin and Harper spy, through mission after mission, loss after loss. Farideh’s letters, the talisman they provided. The absence of these things hit him like a blow to the chest. All gone, as if a part of his life had been stolen away in that moment.

But nine hundred escaped, he reminded himself. Don’t be petty. “How many of the dragonborn made it?”

“Sixty-two,” Mira supplied. “Most, not all. They’re keeping to themselves, on the slope side of the fence. Don’t seem to trust the giants or the Untherans, but they like your brothers well enough. Someone named Mazarka asked after you, for Shestandeliath.”

“Her clan,” Dahl explained. “She’s been representing them. Have the giants spoken to anyone?”

“The Mash-en-li only want to talk to you,” Namshita said.

“What does that mean?” Dahl asked. “Mash-en-li.”

Namshita frowned. “You don’t have the words. They are only half in this place. Half in the world of dreams.”

“They came with you then?” Dahl asked. “With the storm?”

“They must have. We stayed away from them in the other world. They’re … You’ve seen their magic. Strange magic. Unpredictable. It’s said they carve foul curses upon their skin with chisels and hammers, and then fill the lines with the blood of human sacrifices so as to fuel their connection to that dream place.”

“You mean Gilgeam says so?”

Namshita glowered at him. “They carve their spells upon their skin. Their magic is enough to warp the mind. That much is true, and you can’t tell me otherwise. They are his enemies. They are not necessarily our friends.”

Dahl eyed the giants on the other side of the fence, two males this time. At least three times his height, their muscles seeming chiseled out of living rock and—yes—carved deeply with patterns and pictograms. Each of them wore a pendant with a rough-hewn jewel hanging from it. “I’ve made allies of worse. I thought you didn’t have magic in Abeir.”

“And so we stay away from them,” Namshita reminded Dahl. “They are not natural.”

He climbed to his feet, still a little unsteady. “You trusted me anyway?”

“We were running short of time,” Namshita pointed out. “It is very unnatural that you should know their tongue, and know they would not crush us all. You owe me an explanation for that much.”

Dahl hesitated. Namshita’s entire experience of the gods was a madman who claimed to be a reborn dead power, a man whose ego threatened to undo them all. If he tried to explain Oghma and the message to her, how all of this had come about because of a poem he couldn’t see and a word he didn’t know, Namshita would have no choice but to brush him off as a madman, a flamefool—and she’d be close enough to right, wouldn’t she? How many successes made the difference? Did Sessaca and the deal with Lorcan and the dead Zhentarim all wipe away anything he’d earned? That dark, angry something in his chest started to build.

Lord of All Knowledge, he prayed, trying to calm himself. Binder of What Is Known: Make my eye clear, my mind open, my heart true. He blew out a slow breath, the grief and fear and anger receding.

“The chieftain,” he said. “She was the one with the harp on her stomach? The one shouting about the draumrting?”

Utu turned to Namshita, speaking quickly in Untheran. She answered back, shaking her head vehemently. The sikati turned back to Dahl. “Yes. Gilgeam stole it from them. A gem of considerable size and uncanny magic. That’s what he traded for the demon’s army. Or at least what Gilgeam thinks he traded.”

“So they’re not getting it back soon.”

“Not from the Son of Victory.”

The giants on the other side of the fence seemed to notice Dahl and the cluster of people around him. They spoke quickly to one another, before one sauntered off and the other approached the fence. Dahl headed toward them, and found Mira soon at his side.

“You want to know what he really said?” Mira asked once they were a good distance on.

“Please.”

“Utu says Gilgeam still has the draumrting. That if they went back, they could steal it,” Mira said. “He was quite insistent, but Namshita said that was wrong. The draumrting was what he traded to Graz’zt, ‘among the other things.’ Utu thinks he kept it for himself.”

Dahl frowned. “I don’t suppose Utu said why he thought that.” And he knew Namshita wouldn’t have explained. “Regardless, it means we don’t have a good idea of what a draumrting’s powers are or Gilgeam’s.”

“Everything he’s done could be achieved by a charlatan with the right magic items,” Mira said stubbornly. “He’s always grabbing that amulet, for one.”

“He’s dangerous enough it almost doesn’t matter, though.” Dahl looked over at Mira as they approached the fence. “Are you all right, by the way?”

“Better now that I’m nowhere near him,” she said. “I don’t know if he’s Chosen or something like a god or a fraud of the highest order. But the Son of Victory is definitely a slimy hardjack of the highest order.”

The giant who had left, a pale fellow a head shorter than the first, strode back to his fellow, nodding once. Each took hold of their amulets, and a glittering swirl of magic poured into the carvings on their throats. The giant who had remained behind reached over the fence.

“You,” he said. “You, van. Human one. Come here, please. Somni wishes to speak to you now. I will lift you out.”

Dahl stopped in his tracks at the voice. “You speak the common tongue? How is that possible?”

The giants exchanged a glance. “This is how speaking works,” the second said, sounding confused. “You would not understand me otherwise.”

“Come on, please,” the first said. “Somni is anxious.”

Dahl let the second giant lift him out of the enclosure. Thankfully, he set Dahl down and the two of them let him walk across the rocky landscape, keeping their steps slow so as not to let him fall out of line. Dahl considered the other giants as they walked—men, women, even children. Some very young, some very elderly. Someone had built the beginnings of a rock wall on the plains side of the camp, and as Dahl watched, a female giant coaxed boulders to hop themselves down the slopes toward the growing wall. Not an army, Dahl thought. But then he remembered the Untherans. Not a usual army.

High on the slope of the mountain, the giantess watched him approach with eyes like onyx. Like most of the giants, male and female, her head was bald, her chest bared and carved heavily over. A skirt of mosses hung around her waist and a chain of office—embedded with uncut rubies and shining obsidian—hung around her shoulders. She lowered herself down to sit on the ground, with a difficulty that suggested she was older than she looked, and made herself, if not eye-to-eye with Dahl, then near to it.

“Who are you,” she said, still stately even huddled on the ground, “to ask for sanctuary? Who are you to have etched yourself with such words?”

Dahl bowed his head. “I’m called Dahl Peredur. I … Sorry, what words?”

“The song written on you. ‘Does the salmon demand the tide? Does the owl’s wing unfurl the gale?’ What does it mean?”

That threw him. “You can see it?”

“It is written out,” she said simply. “I can read it.” Her black eyes studied him a moment from crown to sole. “You are very marked for one of the vanen. Does this give you magic?”

“It … no, not exactly.”

“I am Somni, new-made forer of the Tusendraumren Steinjotunen,” she said. “The man that calls himself the Son of Victory killed my father and stole his draumrting. You run with him, but you flee him and beg for sanctuary from us. There are those among us who think it is madness to stop the reclamation of my father’s powers.” She sat back on her heels. “But we do not take such a call for sanctuary lightly, not even from one of the vanen. If we stop allowing these things to have meaning, we have lost the meaning of ourselves. So tell me your story, Dahl Peredur. Tell me why I should shelter that man’s allies.”

“To begin,” Dahl said, “we aren’t his allies. Some of these people planned to flee before the Blue Fire pulled them here. They know Gilgeam is dangerous and mad. They say he stole the draumrting and gave it to a demon lord. Myself and my friends and the dragonborn, we were captured and made slaves. We have no more love for the Son of Victory than you.”

“But you must admit,” Somni said, “that is what anyone would say in this moment. You don’t speak our language. Who told you to call for tjáting?”

Dahl swallowed. If it would be hard to explain to Namshita, it would be no easier to explain to Somni—and Somni was three times his size. But she watched him with infinite patience, a living mountain. She would wait him out, he felt certain.

“The … song,” he began, “was written on me by a god.”

She blinked at him. “God? Like the Son of Victory?”

“No,” Dahl said. “Oghma isn’t interested in conquest. Only knowledge.”

“A kind of conquest,” she pointed out.

“Only if you pervert it,” Dahl said. “The song, I think, is a puzzle. I think it told me to wait at the ruins for someone. I think that someone is you. The god put the word tjáting in my head, moments before you arrived. I didn’t know what it meant. I just trusted him.”

Somni tilted her head, considering him. “It sounds mad,” Dahl agreed.

“It sounds wise,” Somni said. “We believe that what we live is only a reflection of the greater world. That the world of dreams is what you see when you glimpse that something greater. From a very young age, we teach our children that dreams are not to be fought. That you gain most from them, that you can tap into their magic and strength when you go along and observe and experience all that the world is trying to show you. Your god-thing is speaking like a dream. When a dream speaks, it is wise you listen.”

“How is it,” Dahl asked, “that you can speak the common tongue? Do they speak it in Abeir?”

Somni considered him, faintly amused, the way Dahl might have looked at his little nephew Wilmot as he made a childlike observation Dahl wasn’t sure how to explain. She lifted the pendant from her chest—it was as big as a shield. “This is a draumrting,” she said, cupping the stone in one etched gray palm. “In this, we place the essence of our dreams so that we may take them into the waking world. So that we may claim a little of the dreaming world’s strength and channel it into our spells. In dreams,” she said, “we speak as we need to. So the magic of the draumrting can accommodate us, for a time anyway. I would still wish to learn it in the waking, since it seems we are meant to remain here.”

Dahl stared at the amulet. Here was a kind of magic he’d never encountered any mention of—there was tattoo magic that stored spells and runic magic, which might both mark the skin. There were warlock pacts that let a person draw the power of a plane and shape it into spells. “Can you …” He faltered, dazzled by the array of questions he found himself with. “Is that what makes your spells summon such strange things? The flowers that made sparks? The mirror-glass butterflies?”

Somni chuckled. “Are they strange? Maybe, if you don’t dream.” She considered him again. “Do you dream, Dahl Peredur? Or is this the purpose of your god-thing?”

“I dream,” Dahl said, feeling oddly defensive. “We dream. But we can’t do this sort of magic.”

“You don’t have a draumrting. Maybe this is why you have a god to fill your etchings.” She touched Dahl’s forearm with a fingertip as long as his hand. “Not this one. This is something else. And this”—she tapped his chest.

Dahl frowned. The Harper tattoo on his forearm was meant to be invisible—though less so than the words of Oghma, which he himself had never seen. As for the other … “What do you see there?” he asked.

Somni regarded him solemnly. “There are monsters in the dreaming world too.”

The demon lord, he thought. Or maybe Lorcan’s deal? “Can you tell if it’s permanent?”

Somni shook her head. “Your magics are not our magics. Those things that came in the two Sunderings we leave to themselves.”

With every careless word, Dahl’s brain began to churn—a new society of giants, an unheard of sort of magic, now artifacts from the first catastrophe that had split Abeir-Toril into two worlds. “What things?”

“Remnants of the Dawn Titans, bodies of those beings, artifacts that should be elsewhere.” She folded her hands in her lap. “Your god-thing must be pleased with such a curious one as you.”

“At times,” Dahl allowed.

“You have your freedom from the Son of Victory now. What do you intend to do?”

“There’s a city near here, Djerad Thymar,” he said. “The dragonborn are centered there, and their army.”

Somni frowned. “Do you mean the Vayemniri?”

Dahl racked his brain trying to recall the word. “The … scaly ones. I think I can rally aid for them, for all these people and an army to fight Gilgeam. I can get my family to their home and my friend to her allies. I can find … The woman I love is there. I need to get to her as well.”

Somni smiled. “Such a lot of reasons. What does your god-thing say?”

“He doesn’t,” Dahl said. “I think he wishes I would figure it out myself.”

“In the absence of dreams—or god-things—I would urge caution and patience,” Somni said. “The Son of Victory expects rashness, a lack of control. He is not one to rush into battle against. Rest. Recover your strength. Return to the dreaming.”

Dahl held his tongue—how could he possibly rest when he was this close? When Gilgeam was so dangerous? “He’s going to attack them. They need to be warned.”

“Oh, they have been,” Somni said. “That much I have dreamed. In the meantime, though, I think you and your god-thing have much to share with us. We can meet your Vayemniri on the morrow.”.

• • •

HAVILAR HESITATED EVEN as Alyona regarded her sadly. Was it rude to ask someone how they died? It seemed rude—but then, how often did you get the chance to ask? Assuming, she thought, you weren’t a priest who also tracked down murderers or something like that, there probably weren’t rules about it.

Alyona gave a little chuckle. You’re wondering how, aren’t you?

A little, Havilar admitted. Was it bad?

I don’t remember everything, Alyona said. Not anymore. She and I fought. I left. I went home, but then … I remember being cornered. A lot of people. Her voice grew flat, distant. I remember they blamed me for something—I wasn’t there. It couldn’t have been my doing. Someone threw a stone. And … Things go dark after that, for a long time. Dark but painful.

Havilar felt the memory of her pulse speeding. She’d had stones thrown at her too—never a mob, never more than a stone or two. But how many did it take? How different was the world she’d grown up in from the one Alyona had died in? A part of her scoffed and wanted to insist it was as different as one plane to the next. A part of her didn’t dare believe it.

I can remember Bisera saying that it was for my own safety. Then I was here. She gave Havilar a shy smile. Or maybe a place like this. I suspect they all look similar.

Havilar frowned. All what? What is this place?

Did I forget to tell you? Alyona asked. I’m sorry—I know you asked before … You did, didn’t you? Did I say it was a soul sapphire?

You didn’t, Havilar said, trying not to sound impatient. The poor woman was dead and maybe addled from many blows to the head—who knew what carried over when you became a ghost? What’s a soul sapphire?

A trap, Alyona said. This one’s different, though. The devils made them for their Blood War. You see, if you kill a demon, it goes back to the Abyss and is reborn. But the soul sapphire traps it, and so they can interrogate it or ransom it or … other things. At least that’s what Bisera knows.

Havilar considered the hazy expanse. How do you get a demon in one?

Alyona’s expression tightened. They would put a mortal soul in first. As bait of a kind.

Havilar shot to her feet once more, for all the good it did. Is she planning to put a demon in here?

No, no! Alyona cried, waving the thought away. Don’t be ridiculous. My sister isn’t a monster.

Your sister, the Brimstone Angel? Havilar said skeptically. The one who’s supposed to have sacrificed scores of tieflings to help Asmodeus ascend? The one who possessed Crake and Moriah and got them killed? The one who broke Brin’s fingers to make the point she could kill him? Because I get the impression we think the word “monster” means different things, you and I, if you’re going to say that.

Alyona wrapped her arms around herself and looked away. She wasn’t herself. Not entirely.

How much of herself was she? Havilar demanded.

Look, Alyona said. I wouldn’t try to tell you that Bisera’s … that Bryseis is perfect. But … she knows that. She accepted her transgressions and wanted to atone. To make things right.

You can’t un-kill people.

Alyona fixed her with a silvery glare. Are you going to tell me you have never taken a life? That you’ve never killed someone and damn the consequences?

I didn’t ever do it in the name of Asmodeus.

But what about your sister?

She doesn’t kill anyone in the name of Asmodeus either! Havilar cried. And frankly, she’s a terrible shot.

She uses his powers, Alyona said. The strength of his domain. Where do you think that magic comes from?

Havilar frowned. Fire and … planar magic … stuff?

Alyona’s eyes were hard. The Nine Hells feeds itself on the energy of souls. The damned are sacrificed to keep the plane intact. Her powers come directly from that plane, so her powers are fed by the suffering of mortal souls. Powers she has been specifically granted in the hopes she will feed more souls to the Nine Hells.

Havilar folded her arms over her chest. It wasn’t the same, she felt sure about that. But all the same … so often rules were stupid and badly thought out. Nobody planned for every circumstance, and no one would have planned for a warlock like Farideh, she felt certain. She wondered if Farideh would end up damned when she died. She wondered if she would be too … but that thought was a step too far down a path too thorny and she pulled her thoughts away from it.

You wouldn’t be able to save her from that, Havilar thought, even as she skirted the possibility.

But she doesn’t, Havilar said. She doesn’t damn people. She doesn’t sacrifice them. I mean … she cares about people who, really, no one would fault her for walking away from. That war wizard—did you see the war wizard? Would your sister have saved Ilstan or gutted him on an altar?

Alyona fell silent. I suppose it would depend. But—truly—she understood what she’d done. She wanted to make amends and I believe she’s doing that now. She gestured at the space around them. Or this? If she were a monster, why bother altering the soul sapphire so that I could leave? It would be easier to just leave it shut and never see or hear … Never dream … At the beginning I was so angry. I can’t imagine the dreams were good, for her, for Caisys, for … At any rate, if she were irredeemable, the Moonmaiden wouldn’t have aided us.

Another retort was on her lips … but the indignation in Alyona’s voice was all too familiar. It was one thing to know your sister was imperfect or maddening or wrong. It was another to sit and listen to someone else demonize her. For all of Bryseis Kakistos’s numerous faults, Alyona obviously loved her. She obviously wanted everything to come out all right, and while Havilar had her doubts, it wouldn’t be a pleasant sentence in the soul sapphire if she kept arguing the point. Better kindness, she thought, than rightness.

How many people’s dreams have you been in? she asked instead.

Alyona shut her eyes as if remembering. Bisera’s mostly. I helped her find the heirs that way as well … I didn’t … It wasn’t that many. And then Caisys. I visited Caisys.

Havilar rolled her eyes. Back to Caisys the Perfect Murder-Warlock. Alyona opened her eyes and caught Havilar making a face. She scowled. You don’t know him.

You’re right, Havilar said. But I’m willing to bet he’s not all that perfect.

I didn’t say perfect. He had his flaws … his … tendencies. But in the end, he was the only one of them Bisera could trust—even if she didn’t like him, she knew she could trust him. She adjusted her skirts in a prim sort of way. He watched over you. You owe him a little respect for that.

Havilar frowned. Me?

You and your sister, Alyona said.

That was the first Havilar had heard of any such thing. When?

Before … When you were small … after the ritual … It wasn’t supposed to go that way. I don’t know. Maybe Bisera … Maybe Bryseis was trying to make it do too much … So that we’d both be reborn, instead of only her. Maybe it was fate. Maybe bad luck … We’ve had such a lot of bad luck …

Havilar bit back another frustrated screech. When did Caisys watch over us?

Alyona blinked and said nothing for such a long time. No, he can’t see us here. You misunderstand. She turned away, staring off into the mists in a way that Havilar knew meant she was through talking for a time.

At least this time she’d left Havilar with another detail, another piece of the puzzle: Caisys had been watching them in Arush Vayem. She found the fold in the mists, the exit of the soul sapphire’s prison, the passage to that dream world. She had to tell Farideh.

But had Farideh listened to a damned thing she’d said? Havilar’s tail slashed across the mists, the faint memory of a solid floor beneath her traced in its arc. Dreams were a stupid way to tell someone something so important. Especially when that someone was all wound up and stubborn as an aithyas stain.

She blinked—the door had shifted. How long had she stood there, glowering at it? She found the fold again, but the path that led to Farideh had grown hazy and indistinct. She’d woken up. Havilar cursed to herself. If she’d just gone instead of getting annoyed …

In the mists, other paths, other dreams shimmered. She studied them, found one in particular that felt secure and familiar, even as it flickered into awakeness. It doesn’t have to be Farideh, she thought, even though it felt like a betrayal..

• • •

FARIDEH DRUMMED HER fingers against the side of the couch, eyes on the wide bowl of water before her, the cluster of components she’d borrowed from Ilstan. A protective circle nearly as wide as the room shimmered along the edges of her sight.

“I can scry,” Adastreia said from the far side of the circle where she sat. “Not that you asked.”

“I can wait for Lorcan.” Except she couldn’t. She couldn’t wait for any of this. It felt as if it took half her thoughts just to keep from losing her mind over how slowly everyone else seemed to be moving when there was so much on the line. Surely Lorcan could have taught her this sooner—some sort of far-seeing warlock spell, perhaps? But even as she thought it, she remembered how many conditions he’d had when he’d scried Dahl for her. Lorcan wouldn’t give her the means to see Dahl, even if that meant making her helpless and—

Lachs, Threnody, Nasmos, Chiridion, Livulia, Naria, she said to herself, over and over. Which of them were still alive? Which of them would Lorcan be able to find? Lachs, Threnody, Nasmos, Chiridion, Livulia, Naria.

Caisys.

“What exactly is between you and he?” Adastreia asked. “Are you sleeping with your pactmaster?”

“No,” Farideh said. Even though it stirred up memories of just that. Even though she kept letting herself get too close, too near to giving in.

I love you. I just don’t love you the way you want, because I am who I am, but I’m not myself now, am I? So what do you do with that? A lump built in her throat. Even if he loves you, she thought, he’s still too dangerous. He still poisoned you. He still won’t tell you what happened with Dahl.

That sent a new burst of panic through her. Dahl had sent the halfling Zhentarim to Djerad Thymar, to find her and have her warn the Vayemniri. Dahl was within a day or two of the city, captive of an army led by a madman that dealt with demons—an army that a second army of giants was already marching on and the dragonborn clans all dickered and positioned and argued about—

Farideh blew out a breath, concentrated on the still pool of water.

Lachs, Threnody, Nasmos, Chiridion, Livulia, Naria she thought. Lachs, Threnody, Nasmos, Chiridion, Livulia, Naria

Caisys.

“All right,” she said to Adastreia. “If you want to help.”

The tiefling warlock sauntered over, seating herself opposite her daughter. For a long moment, she said nothing, not until Farideh looked up. “Who do you want to start with?”

Lachs, Threnody, Nasmos, Chiridion, Livulia, Naria. “Caisys,” she said.

Adastreia snorted. “You’re not going to track down Caisys. He’s almost certainly dead by now.”

Farideh said nothing—Adastreia could be useful or she could complain and disagree and it wouldn’t matter. Lorcan would return eventually.

“I assumed,” Adastreia went on, “you’d want to find Chiridion first. Since you’re so curious about the old days. Is it for the dragonborn’s sake he’s not your first pick?”

Farideh’s temper flared, pulling on the pact, reaching for the absent blessings of Asmodeus. “The only thing I’m curious about,” she said, trying to keep her voice level, “is how you could do such a thing?”

Adastreia leaned back, stretching out against the couch’s low back. “As I said, I was young and idealistic.”

“Don’t mock me.”

“I don’t know you,” she said coldly, “so I can’t mock you. Everyone could ‘do such a thing’ given the right reasons, and Bryseis Kakistos had the right reasons. The Raging Fiend’s blood taints us all, and she thought she might be able to undo that.”

“You can’t undo that,” Farideh said dismissively.

Adastreia pushed her silvering hair back, revealing a thick scar along her temple beneath her horn. “See that? I was nobody but a scullery and some wine-swamped, sharpjaw half-elf got it into his head that I was spying on his business. Broke a wine bottle on my head, nearly killed me. You think he would have done that to a human? An elf? Another half-elf? I was picking up dishes and I didn’t understand the first stlarning thing about his hushword-coin schemes.

“I’ll bet you have a scar like that,” Adastreia said, smoothing her hair down. “I’ll bet most of us do. So don’t tell me you wouldn’t have done ‘such a thing’ in the hopes it all could change.”

Farideh looked away. In this, she was lucky and she knew it. She’d had moments of danger, certainly—most recently, the urchins in front of the Suzailan tallhouse throwing rocks, the taproom at the Brigand’s Bottle when she’d suddenly lost her disguise spell—but the most perilous points of her life had arisen out of her own decisions or simply being in the way of someone or something worse. She didn’t have the scars of a brutal beating on her. She hadn’t clubbed her tail or polled her horns like the village midwife in Arush Vayem had, trying to unmake what Bryseis Kakistos’s deal had wrought. She’d been safe and sheltered in Arush Vayem, protected by Mehen and isolation.

You wore a full cloak even in the midst of summer, she thought. Maybe not scars like Adastreia’s, but not easy either.

“You handed us over to Caisys,” Farideh said. “You never even wondered.”

“He said you had the blessings of a proper goddess on you,” Adastreia said. “I assumed you were fine.”

“Before you said you assumed I was dead, so …” Farideh frowned. “What goddess?”

“How should I know?” Adastreia said. “I didn’t get involved with that part.” She sighed, sounding annoyed. “Do you or don’t you want me to scry someone for you?”

Just behind Adastreia, Mehen came into the room. Farideh leaped to her feet at the sight of him, moving away from the other woman and toward her father. “Watch the circle!” she warned. “Any word?”

“No,” Mehen said. “Havi?”

“Nothing yet,” Farideh said. “I think … I’m waiting for Lorcan, but—”

“Karshoj, can we just find a way to work around him?” Mehen demanded. “It’s been five karshoji days and we’re no closer—”

“Mehen, I can’t do the spell we need,” Farideh said. “There’s no getting around that.”

“I did offer to help,” Adastreia called back, “but you’ve raised a terribly stubborn child.”

Lightning crackled in Mehen’s teeth. “At least I raised her, tiamash!”

Farideh stepped between them. “Mehen, come on. We’ll talk outside.” She led the way back out into the wide corridor, not waiting for Mehen to follow her, pleased when he did. “Don’t let her get to you,” she said. “She’s … I think she’s—”

“A monster?” Mehen suggested.

“No, just … I don’t know if she has it in her to care about someone else.” Farideh sighed. “I just keep reminding myself that if she had cared then, well, we wouldn’t have you.”

Mehen’s fury softened at that. “That may be so, but I don’t have to like her for abandoning you.” He folded his arms. “You’re not stubborn. You’re … persistent.”

“I’m stubborn,” Farideh said. “You’ve said that plenty of times.”

“Well, it’s different when you’re doing something with it, isn’t it?” Mehen said. “And we’re both fairly karshoji stubborn. Persistent. What are you waiting for Lorcan to do?”

“Scry the last heir,” she said. “I have six names, but only one of them is alive, and I don’t know which and I don’t know where they all are. If it’s very far, I need Lorcan anyway, since I can’t make a portal.” She wet her lips. “Have they … Do you have a Vanquisher yet? A plan for the giants and the King of Dust?”

Mehen blew out a breath, his nostrils flaring. “It’s all talk and posturing. Every time a few more voices get anxious enough to want to move, but still, there’s too much old pride in that room. Anala pushed for them to vote for an interim Vanquisher—she put forth Kallan.”

For a moment, Farideh was sure she’d heard wrong. “Kallan? Why?”

“He could be Vanquisher,” Mehen said, a little defensive.

“He wouldn’t want to be. And it seems odd for Anala to choose someone who’s not Verthisathurgiesh.”

“It is,” Mehen said. “She’s playing a risky game. Especially since Uadjit won’t stand while Dumuzi’s business is in the way and Fenkenkabradon heard about Anala’s fool plan ahead of time and pulled the same stunt themselves, pushing Arjhani up since Dokaan won’t win while he’s recovering, but Arjhani will listen to Dokaan. Or so they think. And whatever Kallan thinks about perching on a throne and telling people what to do, I don’t think he’d leave Djerad Thymar to that fate.”

“Could be worse,” Farideh said. “Anala didn’t put you forth.”

“At this point, I would take the piercings if only for the chance to knock all their heads together and tell them what pothatchis they’re being. Wouldn’t say no to an army to go fetch your sister either.” A terrible, terrible, dangerous idea, Farideh thought. Even if she understood what drove it. An army attacking Bryseis Kakistos would be attacking Havilar too.

“Speaking of pothatchis, would you talk to Dumuzi?” Mehen said suddenly. “That boy is looking for advice from every karshoji quarter and not a one of them is the right place.”

“I’m not the right place,” Farideh said.

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Mehen said. “You’ve stood a lot closer to where he is than the rest of us.” He scratched at the jade plugs studding his jaw and sighed again. “While you’re at it, you could track down Kallan for me and talk to him.”

“You know you have to do that yourself,” Farideh said. “It’s a pity you can’t just leave the city for a bit. Take a bounty or something.”

“There are entirely too many things happening here for me to go out gallivanting.”

“Still, it would give you space to talk to Kallan without spooking him, and give you something to do while we’re just waiting for everyone else to … Oh!” Farideh pressed her hands to her mouth. “What about those giants? The ones that they spotted on the plains?”

Mehen raised a scaly brow ridge. “I’m not hunting monsters while your sister’s missing. Anyway, you need a solid hunting party to take down one giant.”

“Who says you need to take them down?” Farideh said. “They were marching toward the King of Dust’s army, weren’t they? Maybe they’re reinforcements and maybe they’re attacking him. Maybe they’re the ally we need.”

“Fari, I don’t know where you got your ideas about giants,” Mehen said. “But you don’t just stroll up and ask them where their loyalties lie.”

She laughed, feeling a little wild. “If anyone could, I’ll bet it’s Kallan. Look, someone needs to find this out, and if they can help, someone needs to get to them. Plus, if you think Kallan needs to be Vanquisher, wouldn’t it look well for him to have made an alliance like that?”

“You sound like Anala,” Mehen said darkly.

“That’s not always a bad thing.” It wasn’t rescuing Havilar, she thought. It wasn’t untangling herself from the Nine Hells. It wasn’t solving the problem of gods.

“It’s something,” Mehen said. “Better than avoiding your unfortunate family reunion. Come with us. I’d feel better if I could keep an eye on you.”

Farideh shook her head. “I have to find that last heir. And—oh! I found something else out. Adastreia says that someone called Caisys the Vicelord is the one who brought us to Arush Vayem. I don’t suppose … it doesn’t sound familiar does it? Maybe he was someone who visited?”

Mehen made a face. “People didn’t visit the village.”

“So why would he go there?” she asked. “How did you know about it?”

He shrugged. “Rumors mostly. I knew enough people who had been exiled, enough others that I had heard of a village in the mountains. A bat rider off course seeing smoke where there should be none. So I found it. He could have.” He didn’t sound convinced. “What’s he got to do with Havi?”

You have to remember that you need to find Caisys the Vicelord. Understand?

Farideh blinked. “I think … I think he’s important. I have a gut feeling he’s a part of this.” She hesitated. “Have you had any dreams of Havilar?”

“I’ve not been sleeping much,” Mehen said. “You hear from Brin again?”

Farideh shook her head. “You think of anything in the village that might have been the staff of Azuth?”

“Damned if I know—a stick is a stick.” He blew out a noisy breath, nostrils flaring. “Are you going to take her with you to talk to Dumuzi?”

Farideh hesitated. She shouldn’t leave Adastreia alone. The circle would protect her from being scried and from someone trying to pull her out with teleportation magic, but if Bryseis Kakistos just turned up …

“Someone has to watch Adasteia.”

“How about,” Mehen said, “I find a few guards to stand in there and keep watch? Give you a break.”

“Thank you,” Farideh said. “Don’t do anything dangerous, all right? With the giants?”

He pulled her into an embrace. “I won’t if you won’t,” he said, and Farideh hoped the both of them could keep that word.

PART V

THE PRICE

23 Kythorn, the Year of the Dragon (1352 DR)
Darmshall, Vaasa

• • •

A pebble, smooth and shiny, rested in the hollow of Alyona’s throat—Bisera watched as it rose and fell with the slight movement of her labored breath. Bruises mottled her fair skin, despite the healing spells the priests of Selûne had cast on her. The magic of the moon goddess had sealed the worst of her injuries, but still, Alyona would not wake.

“Who did this?” Bisera demanded. The priests didn’t want to say—they must have seen murder in her eyes, and whatever they preached, Bisera knew they were human first.

“A child died,” the head priestess, an elderly woman with pale eyes, told her. “Red Marko’s youngest daughter. Killed, it seems. People were upset, they were frantic. She had just returned when it happened. Things got out of hand.”

Out of hand—a mob had beaten Alyona to the edge of death for a crime she wouldn’t have committed, not in their wildest fantasies, and the priestess spoke of it as if they’d cracked one too many casks of ale. As if Bisera had no business being upset—an accident, an understandable overreaction, perhaps.

Bisera kept her voice cold. “Who incited them? Who suggested it was her?”

“Leave it to the watch,” the priestess said.

It might well have been the watch, Bisera thought, her eyes on the dappled bruising of Alyona’s swollen face. Torger had sworn with them not long before they left, still all violence and mayhem, but now with the blessings of the Lord of Darmshall. She stroked her sister’s cheek with the backs of her fingers. I will find them, she promised. I will punish them. I will find somewhere far from here that’s safe for us. I swear.

The priestess cleared her throat. “Her wounds are grievous. Beyond our power to heal. I’m afraid we didn’t find her as swiftly as we should have. She will not wake—do you understand?”

“I understand you have failed,” Bisera said. “Send for someone more powerful. I’ll pay.”

The matron pursed her mouth. “She will die before any such assistance can be rendered.”

Bisera’s heart squeezed, wrung tight as a wet rag. “Then you can raise her.”

“Such spells are extremely costly. The components are—”

“What part of ‘I’ll pay’ do you not understand?” Bisera demanded. “I know what the spell entails. Find someone who can do it.”

The elderly priestess held her gaze for a long moment, mouth tight. She sat down beside Bisera with care, taking her hand into her own soft palms. “My dear, I fear your love for your sister is more endless than our magics. A soul cannot be called back unwillingly—I would hate for you to spend all you have to find out that Alyona is more peaceful where she is.”

Hateful tears rose in Bisera’s eyes. “And what,” she said, “is that supposed to mean?”

The priestess shook her head. “We are all given such a short time in this world. What waits for us is eternal.”

Bisera yanked her hand back. “So my sister—the other half of my heart—would be happier in a realm I have no place in? Would be better served far, far from me? She is twenty winters. If you’re telling me that’s all the gods have allotted her, then stlarn the gods!” She stood, too angry to sit. “You want to counsel me, Mother? You want my conversion? Fix this. Because you and every soul in godsdamned Darmshall fed this beast, made this monstrous thing happen. If she dies because she was a tiefling, then it is on all of your shitting heads!”

Without waiting for the old woman’s response, Bisera stormed from the temple of Selûne out into the moonlit night. Stlarn the gods, stlarn the priesthood. She’d get what she needed by herself.

The circle became easier to cast each time she did it, the devil simpler to call down. The powers of the Nine Hells thundered in her veins as a column of bruised light burned upward from the circle, leaving behind an erinyes floating gently above the ground.

“So soon? “Shetai said. “Do you find your powers not to your liking?”

“I want to talk to your mistress,” Bisera said. “Now.”

Shetai studied her a long moment. “You are bold, tiefling.”

“I am out of patience,” Bisera said, “and I want to discuss business. I need a boon and I need it now.”

“You might not like the price.”

“And I might get tired of waiting and go find another fiend to deal with. Tell her I want to talk.”

The night stretched on and on and on, but still Bisera waited. Now and then her thoughts flitted back to her sister—she should be by Alyona’s side, she should be there in case she woke, in case she didn’t—but she made herself remain. She wouldn’t watch Alyona die. Not tonight.

Malagarde did not enter Abeir-Toril the way her servant did. The night air seemed to bubble, to boil, to shimmer and quake. It split into ragged shreds like torn flesh, and then two ruby eyes opened in the darkness, a face the color of a deep bruise formed out of the void. An ancient woman, her face bleeding endlessly, her stooped shoulders framed by black-feathered wings, stood before Bisera where once there was nothing.

The Hag Countess’s blood-red eyes swam over Bisera. “So,” she said, her voice the creak of bone against bone. “My little forgespark warlock. We meet at last.”

“Well met, saer,” Bisera said.

There was no circle to encompass Malagarde. The night hag crept around Bisera, a predator, a thing of the dark. The tiefling turned with her—devil or not, the Hag Countess wasn’t someone she’d turn her back on.

“How are you enjoying the first of these powers?” she asked

“Very well,” Bisera said. “I need more.”

“More?” Malagarde chuckled, a sound that made Bisera’s nerves skitter like fleeing spiders. “Already? You’ve hardly earned what you have.”

“My sister is dying,” Bisera said. “She’s been taken from me. I want a way to save her. I want a way to punish the ones who hurt her. What would that cost?”

The hag stopped, considering her. “Shetai speaks truly. You are bold. You want that? It will cost you souls.”

“How many?”

“Don’t you want to know how you collect them?”

“Are you implying I can’t?”

She laughed again. “I think you make promises without knowing what your nerves are capable of.” A flourish of her bony hands, and suddenly she held a blade, a shining black dagger that glinted red in the moonlight. “You have to kill them with this. A blow to the heart while you channel the powers I granted you. You miss”—Bisera snatched the knife from the air as the hag tossed it—“you do it again. Twelve times. One dozen souls, tucked in the dagger. You have until the moon wanes, and then your soul is mine.”

Bisera cast her eyes skyward. The moon was half-full—a tenday until it waned. In her hands, the dagger seemed to pulse like a living thing. “And if I manage faster than that?”

The Hag Countess cackled, and despite herself, Bisera flinched. “Then you’ll have more time to decide how best to appease your gods for this blasphemy. Do we have a deal?”

Bisera tucked the dagger into her belt. “How are you going to rescue my sister?”

Malagarde brought her fingers up, a circle around the weeping ruby of her right eye. She blinked and suddenly her fingers encompassed a gem—a sky-blue cabochon the size of a gold piece with a twelve-pointed star flickering palely in its depths. “With this.”

“What is it?”

Malagarde tilted her head, peering around the gem. “Well, well—not so clever as we seem. This we call a soul sapphire. It will cling to your sister’s soul and prevent another from stealing it away.”

Bisera heard the empty spaces, the words she didn’t say. “It will kill her.”

Malagarde waved that away. “Death is an impermanence. Your priests can tell you that. It’s a trifle to raise her, I’m sure, but …” Again that terrible grin. “You fear if she dies that she won’t return when you call her. This way”—she shook the soul sapphire at Bisera—“there is nothing to call back. You will have her soul close when you raise the body—no priests telling you their failures are truly failures of your sister’s will to live. You’ll have perfect control.”

Bisera hesitated. “I can release her soul whenever I need to?”

“Of course.”

“Will it hurt her?”

“I wouldn’t know, dearie,” the Hag Countess said. “I haven’t died, myself. Do you want it or not?” Bisera held out her hands. Malagarde tossed the stone across the clearing. “Twelve souls. The deal is made.”

Bisera turned the soul sapphire in her hands, perfectly smooth and cool to the touch. “What about the other part? The spells?”

Suddenly Malagarde stood right against her, the stench of the night hag thick and choking, as if she’d stumbled into a charnel house. The hag’s ruby eyes danced as she reached a withered hand into her mouth, pulling out a streamer of darkness. Bisera had no more than realized she ought to step back but the Hag Countess’s hand—and the shadow-streamer in it—slapped down over her lips. She couldn’t breathe—the smell and the heat of Malagarde’s skin, the blood seeping into her mouth, and the taste of shadow—Bisera struggled. Her vision went dark.

She opened her eyes, lying on the grass. Malagarde stood over her, her wings a curtain of nightmares. “Until the moon wanes,” she reminded Bisera cheerfully, “my little forgespark.” Her laughter echoed through the glade as she disappeared.

Bisera groped through the wet grass for the soul sapphire and the blade. She wiped her face until she thought she might rub the skin from her skull, trying to rid herself of the memory of Malagarde’s touch. As she hurried back to the temple of Selûne, she tucked the gem and the blade into her pockets.

Alyona slept on, the pebble in her throat hardly moving. The priestesses and novices all gave her bier a wide berth, and as Bisera entered the sickroom, they scurried out. She took her seat once more, stroking her sister’s bloodless cheek. If she were awake, Bisera thought, Alyona would not like this. She would argue the dangers, the perils of dealing with fiends and magic her sister only barely understood.

“This is for your safety,” Bisera whispered. “I promise you I will fix this.” She removed the pebble from Alyona’s throat, replacing it with the smooth-sided sapphire.

Alyona sucked in a painful-sounding breath, her body convulsing, her back arching. Reflexively, Bisera grabbed hold of her twin’s arms, as if she could stop it, as if she could ease it. Alyona’s eyes opened briefly, her last breath hissing out. The asterism of the soul sapphire flashed, and her sister was gone.

Bisera’s legs buckled under her, and she fell upon Alyona’s body, sobbing without control, without concern for who might hear. She was alone. Alone.

She didn’t know how long she spent, her forehead pressed to her sister’s cooling shoulder. A hand rested upon her own back and she jolted up to see the head priestess standing there, tears on her crinkled cheeks. “She’s at peace now.”

Bisera palmed the soul sapphire and slipped it into her pocket. “I know. Can she stay here? For … for now?”

“We’ll have to discuss arrangements very soon. Now, if you’re—”

“No.” Bisera stood, touching the hilt of the fiery knife in her belt. She pulled on the connection the Hag Countess had granted her, the link to the magics of the Nine Hells. “I have matters I need to attend to immediately.”

• • •

9

1 Hammer, the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant (1487 DR)
Djerad Thymar, Tymanther

GIANTS, MEHEN THOUGHT AS HE CLIMBED THE PYRAMID TOWARD THE Yrjixtilex enclave, weren’t known for their love of the dragonborn. To the south, across the lava fields they called the Black Ash Plain, a savage tribe of ash giants made passage to East Rift, and the lands beyond, perilous. Not a decade ago, they’d waged war against Djerad Thymar, manipulated by more terrible powers the rumors said, but it hadn’t taken much. Not the sort of allies the Vayemniri took to.

But an army of stone giants? That could march straight through the Black Ash Plain, around the Lake of Steam, right up the Snowflake Mountains, to where the Brimstone Angel had taken Havilar—

Don’t get ahead of yourself, he thought, pausing before the Yrjixtilex enclave’s great doors with their silver pickaxes, their scores of carved Vayemniri overwhelming a copper dragon. He didn’t have giants. He didn’t have a plan. Farideh was still trying to go about it her way. Mehen would have to wait.

He could wait, he told himself. Until he couldn’t. Every time he managed to string a thought together that wasn’t a worry about his daughter, he would catch himself, guilty and frantic. How could he sit here, waiting and waiting—for gods and devils and warlocks—letting Farideh stand full in the face of danger and Havilar stay trapped the karshoji gods only knew where. He gave his name to the doorguards and asked for Kallan.

“He’s just left,” the woman on the right said.

Mehen sighed. “When will he be back?”

The guard glanced worriedly to her fellow—a glance made all the more obvious by the row of red jasper axeheads arched over her right eye. “He … He looked as though he meant to be gone some time.”

“We can tell him you were here,” the other guard, a red-scaled male, said crisply.

Mehen cursed as he turned, hurrying back down the stairs toward the market floor and the city gates. The stalls and shops of the market were largely closed, their owners recalled to defend the city, no doubt, as the threat of the King of Dust grew and the clans all mustered their forces. If he were a different sort, he might have thanked Dumuzi’s god for the good fortune, since closed shops meant thinner crowds, which meant it didn’t take him long to find Yrjixtilex Kallan trying to bargain his way onto a caravan guard.

“That army’s nowhere near as close as they’re saying,” he told the human merchant. “You head north now, I promise you’ll miss the fighting.”

The human, a stout, pale-skinned man with stringy hair and a pronounced Waterdhavian accent, folded his arms. “Army’s one thing. Spellplague’s another. And now I hear rumors of giants? Everybody on the Alamber knows if you’re going to get sieged, this is the city to be in. I’m not leaving for at least a tenday.” He looked up at Mehen. “Same goes for you. Everybody with goods to rot or a streak of insanity already left. I’m not paying guards to sit around.”

“Fair,” Mehen said. “But I was looking for him. Well met. You weren’t even going to say good-bye?”

Kallan smiled, but there was no warmth at all in his eyes. “You weren’t going to tell me your aunt was going to put me forth for Vanquisher?”

“Hang on,” the merchant said, frowning at Kallan. “You’re the new Vanquisher?”

“Karshoj, no,” Kallan said. To Mehen, he added, “And I figure if that’s where things stand, then Djerad Thymar and I are done. You can tell Vardhira that I went north to find Cayshan and the others.”

“She’ll send someone after you,” Mehen said. “She’ll go straight for your family’s farm.”

“Which is why I’ll be somewhere else.” He tapped the side of his snout. “Maybe I’m not the fool your aunt thinks I am.” He started off, back across the market. Mehen caught him by the arm.

“She doesn’t think you’re a fool,” he said. “She thinks you stand a good chance of winning. Specifically, of beating Uadjit. Anala might be a loose quarrel, but she doesn’t take on battles she doesn’t think she can win.”

Kallan laughed to himself. “What kind of elder votes for an unpierced, son of a shepherd, clutch-dodging sellsword over Kepeshkmolik Uadjit, who no one in this karshoji city—including you—seems to be able to shut up about?”

“Quite a lot of them,” a new voice said. Mehen looked toward the city gates. Uadjit stood there, fully armored, fully armed, and wearing her cloak besides. “Verthisathurgiesh, Ophinshtalajiir, Prexijandilin, Daardendrien. I suspect you might gather Kepeshkmolik too—my father can’t abide Arjhani, and he thinks Narhanna is a twit.”

“Someone else will add a candidate, I’m sure,” Kallan said in a friendly way. “But I doubt it matters—you’re clearly going to win.”

Uadjit looked down her snout at him. “If you think that, then where are you off to?” When Kallan didn’t answer, she went on. “They all know by now that you were the one who figured out the puzzle of the maurezhi. That you leaped upon its back to help bring it down. Anyone that talks to you can see perfectly well that you know how to negotiate—”

“Compared to the ambassador to Imaskar, sathi?” Kallan said. “I don’t think me getting an extra two silver or a bit of information out of a merchant means much at all.”

Uadjit’s expression darkened. “I’m also the mother of the boy trying to bring a maunthreki god to the Vayemniri. I guarantee that means a great deal more than where I’ve done my negotiating.”

“Lots of folks are kin to god-worshipers,” Kallan said. “Only a Kepeshkmolik would call it a death stroke.”

“Even if they overlook it,” Uadjit said. “It would be inappropriate. The Vanquisher mother to the Chosen of … whatever we end up calling him? They’ll say Kepeshkmolik has seized the Vayemniri, and for them to be wrong, I cannot stand beside my son as ruler.”

Mehen considered the sagging scales around her eyes, her tight jaw. “You think he’s going to manage it.”

She shrugged. “He must,” she said, her voice thick. “We’re doomed elsewise. I know you were too busy making eyes with Arjhani in tactics lessons—”

“First off, I paid attention fine,” Mehen said. “Second, a plague-addled hatchling could see the trouble we’re in. No one in that conclave has a notion beyond doing what we’ve always done. We’ve gotten complacent and soft. An army full of demons, led by a man that calls himself a god—what are we going to do? Aerial strikes? A cavalry press? No one’s come up with a plan, because there’s nothing we know that will work, and testing the old ways means we risk killing our own. That leaves Dumuzi and his god of the lightning storms.”

Uadjit sighed. “It’s worse than that. That storm … the Second Blue Fire or the Rending or whatever you want to call it, that’s not the last of it. What the wizard noticed, it’s still the case—I talked to Kanjentellequor’s wizards when I went to see how they were voting. The planes are unstable. It’s likely to happen again. And we don’t have a way to prevent it, nor do we have a way to protect ourselves from it.”

“Except Dumuzi,” Kallan finished, “and his god of lightning storms.”

“Bad enough that he has to convince us all to change our ways,” Uadjit said, “but picture Anala, picture her allies accepting that now we must listen to a Kepeshkmolik hatchling, whose mother is the Vanquisher—now, right now, before the storms unmake us. Tyranny! Dynasty! The undoing of all we stand for! There is no way on any plane that they would see reason in time.

“Arjhani,” she went on more briskly, “will present the same problems from the other angle—my father has a tendency to forget sense when Verthisathurgiesh scrapes his scales—and even still, we’ll have Fenkenkabradon’s continuing tactical control.”

“More cavalry presses and aerial assaults,” Mehen said.

“Which of course assumes anyone can find Arjhani,” Uadjit said, all false cheer, “since he’s still slinking around avoiding anyone who might be a touch upset about him colluding with Fenkenkabradon.”

“How do you know he wasn’t just as surprised as I was?” Kallan asked.

“Because I know Verthisathurgiesh Arjhani,” she said darkly.

Kallan’s nostrils flared, his expression tense. “Narhanna,” he reminded her. Both Uadjit and Mehen snorted.

“Narhanna is an excellent secretary to her uncle,” Uadjit said carefully.

Mehen shook his head. “There is no way she’s not just the first person the Shestandeliath thought of. I suspect he’s kicking himself for that one.”

Kallan rubbed a hand over his face. “There’s a score of clans, and four candidates for Vanquisher? You really think no one will put forth someone else?”

“It’s only for a year and a half,” Uadjit reminded him. “We haven’t needed an interim Vanquisher in forty years, and there’s no clear answer about whether this counts as a term. No one wants to waste their best candidates.”

“Except Narghon,” Mehen pointed out.

Uadjit looked up at him. “I think Narghon knows I’m not truly in the running any longer.”

It was a pity, Mehen thought. For all the frustrations she had caused him, he knew Uadjit to be thoughtful, careful, and with a mind sharp and clear as a cut diamond. She would have made an excellent Vanquisher, among the best Djerad Thymar had ever seen.

“Have you taken up the rattle and altar yet?” Mehen asked.

Uadjit made a face. “Broken planes, no. I’m hoping there’s a way around that.” She glanced over her shoulder, as if her son might be just behind them. “I don’t know,” she allowed, “what’s true and what’s hearsay and what changes from god to god. But the maunthreki get up to some ridiculous things because their gods ask it. Garish robes, talking to statues, horrible off-tune chanting, asking someone who isn’t even there for every little thing.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how Dumuzi’s going to manage it, to be honest.”

“But he has to,” Mehen said, even though he agreed completely. “Could be worse? This Enlil doesn’t seem the sort to want blood sacrifices.”

“You aren’t helping.”

Mehen glanced out the gates of the city, toward the bustle of bodies there, the regiments of soldiers preparing to march toward Djerad Kethendi or to dig in and defend Djerad Thymar at the word of the Vanquisher. Any moment, he thought, they’re going to vote and things will get out of control.

“I was coming to say,” he told Kallan, “we ought to go take a patrol and survey these giants. Find out how many enemies we’re looking at and whether we might convince them to our side. Do you want to come along?”

Kallan gave him a crooked smile. “Have you ever taken down a giant?”

“I said survey,” Mehen pointed out. “We’re all hoping for allies. Even if it would be nice to beat the aithyas out of something that deserved it.”

“Assuming you can actually get close enough. What are you planning to do?” Uadjit demanded. “Steal two of the handful of giant bats we still have?”

“Could be one,” Kallan said, all innocence. “I can ride cozy.”

Uadjit raised a brow ridge. “One bat could hardly carry Mehen when he was eighteen. You’ll ground the karshoji thing a league out, riding together, I don’t care how cozy you get.”

“Horses,” Mehen said. “We’ll take horses.”

“Just the two of you?” Uadjit said.

Mehen folded his arms over his chest. “All right. You want to come along?”

Uadjit regarded him levelly. “As it happens … Narghon wants me to do the same thing. As I said, I’m fairly sure he’s realized I’m not going to be Vanquisher any time soon. Except Dumuzi … I can’t leave him now.”

“Dumuzi will be fine, you know?” Kallan said. “Whatever happens to god-worshiping hatchlings in your clan, that’s not happening to Dumuzi. People might be getting angry, but everyone knows he’s got the ear of a power that can stop the karshoji Blue Fire, plus that shiny black axe you handed down to him—which enough people saw him plant in that demon’s chest. Nobody’s troubling Dumuzi right now if they have any sense. Besides,” he added, “he’s a good hatchling. Worst case, someone’s nasty at him.”

Uadjit regarded Kallan the way she might have a merchant being too effusive about the deal she was getting, and Mehen knew all too well what she must have been thinking. “Did you tell him you were leaving?” he asked.

“Not yet,” she said. “I was rather hoping I wouldn’t need to go.”

Mehen suppressed a sigh. She would have to. He would have to. “We go fetch these giants, maybe we don’t need a god, and Dumuzi can be rid of all that.” And then I can convince them to help me smash Havilar’s prison open.

“Have you ever fought a giant?” Kallan repeated skeptically.

“No one’s fighting them,” Uadjit said. “At least, I doubt it. Gilgeam doesn’t like nonhumans. Why would he have a rearguard made up of giants?”

Kallan shrugged. “Why would he have demons in his army?”

“My guess? He feels he can control the demons. Master them. The maurezhi sounded like it was doing his bidding—or trying to look like it was. I doubt giants come with the same strings.”

“So how you going to pull them in to our side?”

“Can’t be harder than arguing with the Imaskari,” Mehen said. “And more vital to us all.”

“You sound like Narghon.” She glanced back at the city gate. “We’ll miss the Vanquisher vote, you know.”

“I thought that was part of the plan,” Kallan said.

Uadjit gave Mehen a dark look. “Why am I reminded of being goaded into skipping tactics?”

“Because you dragged your heel claws then too. Go tell Dumuzi you’re heading out. If he wants to come along, we’ll have him. I’ll get my things.” Uadjit left them, heading back up the pyramid toward the enclaves. Mehen cast a glance sidelong at Kallan. “Are you going to run off before I get back?”

Kallan watched Uadjit. “Nah. This hunt’s a little more to my liking. I’m sorry,” he added without looking at Mehen. “For assuming you were on Anala’s side with this. I didn’t … I didn’t want to ask and find out I was right, you know? Not my best quality.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“Better than some,” Kallan teased. “ ’Specially given your idea of courting is riding off into the sunset to fight giants—or better yet, negotiate with them—with a handsome man and his ex-betrothed.”

Mehen turned away, as if he could avoid the compliment by looking out the gates. “I am on Anala’s side a little,” he told him. “At least I don’t think she’s wrong, even if she’s going about it in a pothach way. You’d be a good Vanquisher.”

“Flatterer.”

“I might be out of practice at this, but if that’s how I flatter, then drop me in the karshoji sarcophagus right now.” Mehen shook his head. “You are possibly the only person I know who could talk sense into any of those elders without them closing you out. You make people listen even when they don’t want to—so long as you’re actually talking to them.”

You could be Vanquisher, he thought, and turn the might of this city to my daughter’s safety. But he said none of this. Mehen could wait. Until he couldn’t.

“People only listen to me because I’m not in charge of them,” Kallan said. “Waste all my time delegating, letting people muck things up and arguing, arguing, arguing.” He made a face. “I’m better when I can just get everything done on my own terms and make the ones handing out assignments happy they assigned me. It’s how I get the good coin.”

“You think there was never a Vanquisher who did things like that?”

“I think if there were, he or she spent a karshoji kraken’s load of time getting an earful from prideful elders,” Kallan told him. “Besides, they’d poke me full of holes. Mar this pretty face.”.

• • •

DUMUZI STOOD BEFORE the Hall of Trophies, the passageway that connected the Vanquisher’s Hall and the Adjudicators’ enclave and Lance Defender barracks beyond. Its doors had been closed since the demon had run rampant through it, killing Vanquisher Tarhun and several guards. A white ribbon bound the door handles, themselves shaped from ancient dragon talons.

You surround yourselves with reminders of your time in bondage, the god’s voice noted.

So we don’t forget, Dumuzi thought. How swiftly could a tyrant rise? How dangerous could a usurper be? How quickly could they forget themselves what it meant to be the chattel of the dragon tyrants?

Perilously quickly, the god’s voice said. Flashes of another time, another world, danced before Dumuzi’s eyes, a waking dream. The dark-eyed people who must be Untherans, the first children of Enlil, bound by pale-skinned wizards, calling out for aid. The Untherans again, arguing the prices of slaves coming off a ship. This cannot happen again.

Dumuzi looked up at the doors, at the carvings depicting Vayemniri, with every clan’s piercing carefully etched into the pale stone around them. Wondering if you could fit carvings of dark-eyed humans in between them.

What happens if I can’t convince them? Dumuzi thought. Do you force them?

Silence. That would not help matters. I see that.

This isn’t what you’re supposed to be doing, he thought to himself. You’re supposed to be finding Arjhani.

You don’t like how he preens, Enlil noted. You don’t like how he turns all things to himself.

Dumuzi studied the joints of the stone. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

“Sorry?” He spun at the voice and found Farideh standing behind him. She put her hands up in a gesture of calm. “We don’t have to talk about anything if—”

“Sorry,” Dumuzi said. He waved vaguely at his own head. “Not you.”

She gave him a pitying sort of smile. “Mehen thought I should come talk to you. About … Chosen and gods and things.”

“That’s kind of you,” Dumuzi said stiffly.

“I don’t know how you convert thousands of Vayemniri,” she went on. “I don’t even know how you convert one.”

“Put him in an impossible situation and let him count the odds,” Dumuzi said dryly.

The moment he said it, a pang of guilt went through Dumuzi. That made it sound like Enlil was nothing but a convenience, a weapon snatched up in the heat of battle. And even if that were true, at the time … now he wasn’t sure he could imagine going back to life before the god began speaking to him—something far more likely to happen if Dumuzi kept thinking things like that.

You forget, Enlil said, I know you better than you think. I understand.

Dumuzi sighed. He understood too—Enlil would be better off with a more dedicated Chosen, but Dumuzi was all he could get.

“Dumuzi?” Farideh frowned at him, as though that hadn’t been the first time she’d called his name.

“Sorry.” Dumuzi rubbed his forehead along the row of his piercings. “Is this what it’s like? For you? I feel as if I’m half in one world and half in another. Every time I sit down, I fall asleep and dream, and even when I’m awake, it’s as if I’m tracking the dream through everything, like guano out of the bat stables.”

Farideh shook her head. “I don’t think Asmodeus is like Enlil. I don’t think he’s like most gods. Except … I suppose except like Azuth.”

“The one the wizard speaks to?”

“I suppose Azuth is more like Enlil in that,” Farideh said. “I only meant they’re intertwined still. Though I don’t know.”

He frowned. “Does he not tell you?”

“I’m not his Chosen anymore,” Farideh reminded him. “She … Bryseis Kakistos took that too.”

Another pang of guilt—how far from this world, from everything he knew to be right, had Dumuzi drifted that he spoke so casually about the crisis that took Havilar away? “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Have you heard anything from Havilar? From Brin?”

“No.” She got a distant sort of look. “Can you ask him questions? Will he answer in a way that makes sense?”

“I suppose,” Dumuzi said. “It works better if I’m sleeping or … I mean, if I’m not entirely here.”

“When I’ve seen Asmodeus,” she said, “there’s … there’s a sort of sigil on him, the way there is on you. I’m guessing, because it’s the name of Azuth, that this is the … spark, let’s say, that made Azuth a god. That’s the thing Asmodeus was trying to consume, but—”

She uses mortal words for immortal things, Enlil murmured. It can run a mind into a mire.

Dumuzi related this. Farideh frowned. “The part of Azuth that Asmodeus needed to become a god. Can we just call it a spark? Or a godhood? Does Enlil have that?”

A flood of singular emotion hit Dumuzi. “Obviously,” he said.

“But he didn’t die, right?” Farideh said. “He was just somewhere else. What if he were dead?”

It remains unless it doesn’t, Enlil said. As the storm comes, the dead wake—unless they don’t.

Dumuzi flinched. “I think he says it depends. It can stay. It can also go out. Whatever is happening with the planes and the gods and things seems to be waking the ones who kept their godhood despite being dead.”

“What if,” Farideh said, “you take the spark out of a god?”

Dumuzi’s chest grew suddenly warmer. That is what makes one Chosen, Enlil said. A fragment of strength, of power, shared out to better anchor us, to spread our words. Dumuzi repeated this, though the notion made him distinctly uncomfortable—deep down he couldn’t deny how little he wanted to be the one spreading any god’s words.

Farideh shook her head. “All of it, I mean. What happens if you take all of that away? Just ripped it out?”

Enlil fell still and silent before answering. “If the spark is removed,” Dumuzi repeated, “or if it dwindles too far, then that is not a god anymore.”

The words left a hollow spot in Dumuzi’s heart. They might have been speaking of Asmodeus and Azuth, but Enlil also meant himself. He had Dumuzi. He had one not-quite-true-believer, one reluctant Chosen dithering over how to approach the rest of the city like a hatchling suggesting his own qallim. That wasn’t a god. He wasn’t even sure what that was.

Farideh sighed. “Thank you. That’s better than I could have found on my own, even if I still don’t quite understand it.”

You’re not meant to understand it, Enlil said gently. Sadly.

“Don’t thank me,” Dumuzi said. “I’m nothing but the translator.”

She peered at him, her mismatched eyes narrowed in puzzlement. “How do I say thank you to Enlil then?”

“I … I don’t know,” Dumuzi said. From Enlil there was only silence for such a long time that Dumuzi began to worry he would have to invent something on his own.

The old words do not suit, the god finally said. I am not as I was, not entirely. The world is not as it was. Tell her these words …

“Prominent one whose words are well-established,” Dumuzi said, “whose words bring comfort like fine oil for the heart, whose command and support are things that are immutable, whose utterances take precedence, whose plans are firm words, Great Mountain, Father Enlil, your praise is sublime!”

Farideh pursed her lips. “I just repeat it?”

“And do this,” Dumuzi said, cupping his hands to his mouth and exhaling hard. Her look grew more skeptical, and Dumuzi had to agree—no one was going to want to do this ritual, but how could he tell Enlil that? What kind of Chosen told his god that his prayers sounded pothach? “Do you think we should work on it?” he asked stiffly.

“I would work on it,” Farideh said. But she repeated the words and the gesture, and in that moment, Dumuzi saw how she was symbolically offering a share of her breath to Enlil, the god with storms in his blood …

A crackle of electricity danced up the scales on Dumuzi’s neck, and all of a sudden he felt a bit light-headed. Farideh looked at him, alarmed. “Are you all right?” she asked.

Are you all right? Dumuzi thought.

Yes—the answer hummed in his blood, firm and forthright, and in it, Dumuzi saw the answer.

The Vayemniri might not lean upon a god the way other races would. But Dumuzi knew enough ancestor stories to be certain they knew the value in acknowledging an ally, in repaying a debt. If he could convince them it wasn’t a trick or a trap …

Behind Farideh, he watched as the first of the elders returned for their conclave.

“I have to go,” Dumuzi said.

He hurried back toward the Vanquisher’s audience chamber, past the weapons of Vanquishers of old. The conclave had not yet begun and only a few of the elders were there—including Verthisathurgiesh Anala, whose brow ridges lifted as he appeared.

“Dumuzi,” she said, greeting him warmly. “I’m glad to see you’ve returned.”

“Matriarch,” he said formally, bowing with more solemnity than strictly necessary. “I would speak with you. About your offer of space for a shrine. I will need it, as it happens.”

Anala’s amber eyes narrowed, the only hint that she was annoyed at Dumuzi. “Oh? Did I offer that?”

“You did. Shall I find you after the conclave?”

Anala pulled her gauzy crimson wrap close around her shoulders. “I’m afraid I’ve been called to approve Verthisathurgiesh’s contributions to the defense of Djerad Kethendi.”

“They haven’t already left?”

“No,” Anala said slowly, and Dumuzi saw the rebuke implicit in his words. “As I said. I must review them and send them off.”

As they spoke, more of the elders entered, Kepeshkmolik Narghon among them. Uadjit was nowhere to be seen. Nor, Dumuzi noted, was Kallan with Yrjixtilex Vardhira.

“Are you voting on the Vanquisher today?” he asked.

“That is the intent,” Anala said, her tone annoyed as Fenkenkabradon Ishkhanak entered, leading Arjhani. Dumuzi’s father, slight, compact, and handsome in his best armor, scanned the room, his gaze carefully gliding past Anala and Dumuzi. A stab of anger went through Dumuzi—Arjhani had not so much as asked after him in the time since Dumuzi had killed the demon on the pyramid’s peak—but he smothered it. He shouldn’t expect anything different from Arjhani.

The Shestandeliath patriarch had arrived with Narhanna, their matching silver chains swinging as they surveyed the conclave. Dumuzi counted piercings—jade plugs, mother-of-pearl moons, jasper axe heads, bone studs, silver skewers, copper owls, dark steel antlers, pale jade rings, and more. Enough.

You have to do it, he told himself. There’s no time to waste.

“I wish to address the conclave!” he shouted above the murmurs. The elders fell silent, gazes cast askance—who was this hatchling to broach protocol as if he’d been raised in a cave? Dumuzi clenched his jaw, fighting his nerves, fighting the urge to apologize, to take it back.

I am with you, Enlil reminded him. But Narghon was already pushing his way through the crowd and Dumuzi’s heart had climbed right up his throat.

“Stop,” Narghon hissed. “This is not the time, not the place, and you are not free to speak.”

A lifetime’s lessons of following his elders nearly broke Dumuzi’s resolve. He focused instead on that growing sense of sureness, that strength. “I have a matter for the conclave, Patriarch. I speak for the god, not Kepeshkmolik.”

“Let the boy speak,” Anala said, in tones all too eager, to tweak Narghon’s snout. There it is, Dumuzi thought, the clearest confirmation he would get of Anala’s true intentions when it came to Dumuzi and Enlil. You can still use it, he thought.

You cannot build a city on a foundation of deceit.

“Speak your piece,” Anala said, her eyes never leaving Narghon’s. “We have much to attend to.”

Dumuzi took a deep breath—this first, the shrine, and the rest later. “We are Vayemniri,” he said to the assembled elders. “We don’t let our debts linger. We earn the balance—we are not slaves nor are we slave masters. And so I wish to collect what is owed Enlil, Father of Storms.”

“You cannot claim a debt for an unasked-for service,” the Clethtinthtiallor matriarch said. “In my day, we called that extortion.”

“I claim we owe him our gratitude,” Dumuzi said, embarrassed at how his voice shook. “Or have my elders taught me poorly?” His heart sped further at the strange and suspicious looks this garnered.

“My, Narghon,” the Ophinshtalajiir said. “Your hatchling has a very bold tongue.”

“He has our gratitude,” Narghon said, ignoring old Kaijia. “No one has said otherwise.”

Dumuzi fought the urge to tap his tongue to the roof of his mouth, to taste for the scent of danger. “No one has said otherwise, but no one has said their thanks. That’s what I request. That’s all he wants.”

“Right now,” someone snorted.

“It isn’t so much,” the Daardendrien patriarch said, scratching the row of bone studs in his jaw. “I assume we can’t—”

“We can’t at all!” the Clethtinthtiallor matriarch said. “Why are you entertaining this nonsense?”

Anala studied Dumuzi with a puzzled expression. “What is it—”

But then a young woman with Kanjentellequor’s silver skewers in her jaw and a Lance Defender’s badge on her shoulder came barreling into the audience chamber. All eyes went to her as she searched the room.

“Who is in charge?” she gasped, almost a plea—Let them have made the Vanquisher vote, let someone be in control of this.

“Still the conclave,” Narghon snapped. “What’s happened?”

For a moment, her eyes searched the room again, as if hoping beyond hope there would be someone in charge. “Djerad Kethendi’s forward regiment has been destroyed,” the young woman said, still panting. “The King of Dust turned magic on them, terrible demons ripped their bats from the sky. They say it happened so fast. Those that aren’t dead are captured, except the five who escaped.”

“How many captured?” Kaijia demanded.

“We don’t know,” the Lance Defender said. “But Djerad Kethendi can’t support another attack like that. The conclave there wants orders.”

“Armies from the clans will reach there soon,” Anala said. “There will be reinforcements.”

“Djerad Kethendi’s forward regiment was a thousand strong,” Narghon said. “Clearly this King of Dust is skilled in magic, and his demons are worse than the first one he turned on us. The forces we’ve spared may hardly wind him.”

“Such a thing to say about our warriors,” the Clethtinthtiallor matriarch said. But a grim silence surrounded her—if Djerad Kethendi had lost so many, then it would not matter how loudly they praised their warriors’ skills.

“We need to establish a Vanquisher,” Vardhira said.

“We need to act,” Narghon said. “What would a Vanquisher do? Pull away more of our attention while we get him or her settled in? We need to set a strategy—”

“Which is why a Vanquisher—”

“Enlil,” Dumuzi said, trying to be heard above the shouting. “You cannot have a strategy that ignores—” But no one would hear him.

Anala took him by the arm and marched him swiftly from the room. “Dumuzi, noachi,” she said, “come back later. Let us settle this, and we’ll discuss your god and his concerns after.”

“But—” The doors shut in his face, the guards barring the way. “I need to get in there,” he told the Adjudicators.

The man on the left gave him a sympathetic look. “It will be all right,” he said. “Go find your agemates.”

Dumuzi snapped his teeth, feeling a frustrated cloud of electricity building between his teeth. So close—he’d been sure that would get through to them.

The god pressed upon him, and he felt as if the black-scaled dragonborn walked beside him, wordless and sorry and crackling with the same frustration, and yet knowing that this was exactly what was bound to happen. It made Dumuzi’s head ache.

Another reason I need more followers, Enlil said. You cannot be everything.

Being something was almost too much for Dumuzi. He’d rushed in with broken words and clumsy gestures and nothing like a plan. There wasn’t time to figure out how to be perfect at this and there wasn’t time to be less than perfect.

The doors to the conclave opened only wide enough for Verthisathurgiesh Arjhani to slip through. Dumuzi looked up, surprised at his father’s appearance, but then Arjhani caught him by the arm, steered him down the hallway.

“I love you,” Arjhani hissed. “You know that, and I’m sorry you’re angry, but have you given the slightest thought to how much you’re upsetting me? To how badly you’re damaging my chances?”

Dumuzi shook him off. “Your chances?”

“I could be Vanquisher,” Arjhani said, sounding furious. “I could be, but then my son is shouting all manner of nonsense out of order in the conclave he hasn’t been invited to—”

“I’m trying to save this city!” Dumuzi burst out.

“You’re trying to make that god at home,” Arjhani said. “You shouldn’t trust people just because they pay attention to you. Have you not learned the lessons of Esham-Ana?”

Dumuzi felt as if he might faint or explode, and he could only wait and see which. “That’s not what that story’s about,” he managed.

“I think I’ve learned my ancestor stories. Well enough to know better than to fall for such tricks.”

“Tricks?’ Dumuzi demanded. “But … You’re … Fenkenkabradon only nominated you so they could keep hold of the Lance Defenders.”

Arjhani’s expression contorted in rage. “How dare you.”

“It’s the truth!” Dumuzi cried. “Ask anyone. You’re their puppet in this. How could you not know?”

Arjhani slapped him across the face. “Shut your mouth. If I’m a puppet, then what are you?”

Dumuzi stood for a long moment as his father’s footsteps faded away, hands balled into fists, trying to ignore the surge of the god all around him. He didn’t want pity. He didn’t want power. How was he different anyway? Arjhani wasn’t wrong.

He isn’t right, Enlil said, but what else would he say? Dumuzi rubbed the scales of his cheek. You can’t ape Enlil’s old ways, he told himself. You can’t just try to please the elders. You need another way and you need to find it yourself.

Dumuzi climbed up to the Lance Defender barracks, winding his way through busy corridors followed by nearly empty ones. No one was teaching classes to cadets. Everyone was preparing for war. Remembering his dream, he made his way through the bat stables and up onto the launching platform at the pyramid’s peak.

A jolt of sick panic hit him as he stood where not six days before Dumuzi had dealt the maurezhi a killing blow with the Black Axe of the Moon’s Champion. He’d climbed the pyramid itself, trying to chase down the killer of his friends, the killer of the girl he’d been smitten with, believing he had doomed himself, and suspecting he might die. Lightning snapped in his teeth.

You survived, the god’s voice reminded him, in tones that smoothed Dumuzi’s nerves and quieted the lightning breath. There’s no danger here. I am with you.

Three dozen young dragonborn arrayed themselves along the wall, looking down at the forces rallying on the plain below. Beyond, the Kuhri Ternhesh snaked toward Djerad Kethendi. Dumuzi peered at the horizon as he approached his father’s unsupervised polearms class, but the land rose up between him and wherever the King of Dust’s army waited.

“Look at that,” someone said. “They’ve added another regiment of glaive bearers.”

“That’s the Ninth Blue Cohort. My cousin’s there.”

“Must be expecting a lot of ground forces.”

“Any day now they’ll have to add cadets to the ranks,” someone replied. “That’s what my uncle says.”

Which of the students looked back at Dumuzi first, he couldn’t have said. But one moment their eyes were all on the plains below, and the next they were on Dumuzi. One, his cousin Saitha, a reddish-scaled Kepeshkmolik girl, stepped out of the crowd.

“What’s at your back?” she asked with a nod.

Dumuzi shrugged. “Still have my shadow. What do you think?” he added, nodding toward the edge and the armies below.

Saitha hesitated. “It’s bad, isn’t it? I heard they let you into the elders’ conclave. Do you know how bad?”

Three dozen pairs of eyes watched Dumuzi. It would be proper, he thought, to demur. To let the elders handle this. Sometimes there was value in the bare truth and sometimes it was wiser to say what needed to be said and no more. Six days ago, Dumuzi might have told them he wasn’t really sure, that they should all go home and stop gossiping. This was too serious.

“The Kethendan forces have been slaughtered,” Dumuzi told them. “At least fourteen homesteads are just gone, and it sounds like there’s a good chance the Blue Fire will come again.”

“But you can stop it,” asked a tall boy near Saitha, an Ophinshtalajiir with jade rings in his jaw. “You stopped it, that’s what they’re saying. You did a spell.”

“That is not what they’re saying,” retorted a Shestandeliath girl—Ereshkin, Zaroshni’s cousin, Dumuzi thought, a pang of grief going through him with the recognition. A pang of grief that kept him silent as she added, “They’re saying you channeled a god, right in front of everyone, and made it do that.”

Murmurs raced through the crowd before Dumuzi found his voice. “Not exactly,” he said.

“They’re saying you killed the maurezhi too,” the Ophinshtalajiir boy said.

“No,” Ereshkin said, the silver chains that ran from her nostril to her ear shaking with her head. “I heard it was Master Arjhani.”

The Ophinshtalajiir boy frowned. “I guess that’s more likely.”

Dumuzi ran a thumb over the head of the black axe. “That was me. And … I didn’t make the god—make Enlil—do that. He just did.”

Saitha gave him a deeply skeptical look. “Why?”

“Because he wants to help,” Dumuzi said. “Because … He was here before we were, and he left his people in the wrong hands. He’s … I think he wants to atone for that, but I think, too, he just sees we need help. We need him.”

“Do we?” Saitha asked.

“We did,” Dumuzi pointed out. “Or do you think I’m the sort of person who can run up the pyramid and plant this axe in a demon’s chest and then make a wall of lightning to protect the city?”

“So … can he do that again?” the Ophinshtalajiir boy asked.

“Not yet.” Dumuzi considered the young Vayemniri before him. They were all in the year before their Lance Defender service—hatchlings by the elders’ measure, not yet experienced enough to be thrown into the field or allowed their own decisions. Dumuzi’s peers, or close to it. “I need help with that.”

Saitha tilted her head. “What kind of help?”

“Well … your help, I suspect.” Mehen’s suggestions, the words of Enlil, Farideh’s notions all boiled together in his thoughts. It could work. If he’d stood in the group of cadets instead of in front of them, he would have at least listened.

“I stand with an offer of engagement,” Dumuzi said, as formally as if he were one of their elders suggesting a qallim agreement. “Enlil will aid us if we acknowledge him. In exchange, though, we agree not to put anyone in shackles—not the Untherans, not ourselves, not the god. Anyone who gives him worship belongs to him like a clan-mate, and so belongs to the city. You will strive to be true, to be kind, to follow the laws and traditions we have set out. When he has helped us, we will acknowledge it and thank him, just as we would a comrade.” A sea of skeptical faces considered him, whispering to each other. Dumuzi took a deep breath. “For two years. The same as a term with the Lance Defenders. After two years, we will reconsider and renegotiate as needed.”

Mortal words for immortal things, Dumuzi thought as the murmurs built and built.

Not always the wrong choice, the god’s voice murmured in his thoughts. You say it how they need to hear it.

“Are we … allowed to take an offer like that?” said a boy near Saitha, white-scaled and stocky and wearing Clethtinthtiallor’s piercings across his cheeks. “By the laws, we’re not adults yet.”

“But you are your own people,” Dumuzi pointed out. “You belong to the city and the city belongs to you. This doesn’t reflect on your clan. You can be everything you’re asked to be, and still make this agreement—think of it like a sellsword contract.”

“People don’t get exiled for sellsword contracts,” Ereshkin pointed out.

Saitha uncrossed her arms and came to stand beside Dumuzi. “I can do anything for two years,” she said with not a little bravado. “How do I agree?”

Dumuzi faltered. “It’s … I might need help with that. The way he did things before, it won’t work for us. But.” He cupped his hand to his mouth and exhaled sharply. “That. And think your thanks for the lightning wall. We’ll see if that’s enough.”

Saitha glanced back at her friends, as if she couldn’t quite believe this. “You have to mean it,” Dumuzi warned. “Don’t bother if you don’t mean it.”

The look of skepticism didn’t quite fade from Saitha’s expression. But she closed her eyes and cupped her hand to her mouth, silent a moment before the soft exhale of her breath.

Again the crackle of electricity raced up the small scales at the back of Dumuzi’s neck, a hint of Enlil’s growing power. Again he felt light-headed and his heart started pounding. The presence of the god swelled in his thoughts—more solid, more pleased, more real.

But this time, Saitha and a few others clapped a hand to the backs of their necks, startled by the sensation. Saitha’s gold eyes widened and Dumuzi grinned, almost giddy. It was a start—finally a start..

• • •

PREXIJANDILIN HESKAN, SON of Ghesh, of the line of Namarra, did not kneel before the King of Dust until the demons made him. With his commanders dead, he rose to the leadership of Djerad Kethendi’s forward guard, a dubious promotion—there were only ninety-two of them left and all of them prisoners of this hairless, sneering maunthreki.

As his knees hit the cold, dusty ground, hands tied behind his back, Heskan met the King of Dust’s imperious gaze and knew he was the next to die.

“I find the world of Abeir-Toril very much not as I left it.” The man sat upon a dais, even though he was larger than any of the priests around him in their spotted pelts. A pair of winged human-looking women with cruel claws flanked the gilded throne. Shadow-skinned creatures piled at his feet like a hideous rug. Behind him, a tent all embroidered and filigreed, but growing tattered. Its patterns reminded Heskan absurdly of the ancient, dusty tapestry hanging just beyond his brother’s rooms in the enclave back in Djerad Thymar. Beside the man, on a folding table, was a haversack, its contents spread across the table’s surface. On the man’s lap was a thick book, bristling with bits of paper and shivering with enough magic that Heskan felt it all down his scales.

Beyond, the city rose from its own ruins, bathed in the cold light of a winter sun, and the Untherans worked as if sleep would never come.

“Whose lands are these?” the man demanded in an idle sort of way.

“The Vayemniri hold these lands,” Heskan said. “You stand in Tymanther.”

The heavy weight of a club slammed into the middle of his back, driving the air from his lungs and knocking him onto his face. Clawed hands pulled him back up to his knees and he tasted blood in his mouth.

“I am the master of all you see,” the King of Dust declared. He plucked a small mirror from the pile, the size of his palm. It flashed in the sun as he turned it, one side polished, one side enameled with a symbol of grain sheaves. “The price of treason,” he went on, “is death. So I ask again: Whose kingdom do we stand in?”

“The Vayemniri,” Heskan said.

Another blow to the back, this one hard enough to send an explosion of pain through the left side of his ribs. Broken, he thought, lying on the ground, feeling each agonizing breath. The man set down the mirror and picked up a steel disk emblazoned with a scroll.

“Whose lands?” the King of Dust asked, all innocence.

“You can ask a thousand times,” Heskan shouted. “It doesn’t change the truth. We are here. We have made this land our own—you cannot change history. We’re not going anywhere, certainly not in the face of a pretender and his army.”

The slow smile that spread across the tyrant’s face, baring gleaming-white teeth, sent a shudder down Heskan’s scales. “I am the Lord of All Unther Reborn. I am the Son of Victory. I am the God Who Walks the Plane. History is what I say it is. This world is mine, it has always been mine, and I have already crushed you.”

Crushed the forward guard, Heskan thought. There were more warriors in Djerad Kethendi, and more still in Djerad Thymar. They had miscalculated badly, yes, but they would not do so again. He hoped.

“So I ask again,” the King of Dust said, “who rules this land?”

“The Vayemniri,” Heskan said, bracing for another blow.

10

1 Hammer, the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant (1487 DR)
Djerad Thymar, Tymanther

HUMAN, LORCAN TOLD HIMSELF AS HE STEPPED BACK INTO DJERAD Thymar leading the warlock known as Lachs the Yellow behind. Act human.

The old man looked around the granite room with its oversized bed. “What the hrast is that for? You put balors to bed here?”

Lorcan didn’t answer, but strolled from the room, trying to look … hesitant? Weary? How had he looked before? Could Farideh—or Mehen or Adastreia—see the difference in him as he came into the sitting room? They all stared.

“I take it I didn’t miss much,” he said. Farideh peered at him, and he cursed to himself—she stared as if it were written on his skin. “Is everything all right?”

“She hasn’t come,” Farideh said. “If that’s what you mean.”

A torus of magic burst through the room—Lorcan’s hand went to his sword, Farideh’s to her rod. Ilstan stood, revealing himself from behind the couch where he’d been bent over, the silvery markings of a protective circle following what must have been his path.

“Finished,” he announced. He caught sight of Lorcan and froze. The fine hairs on the back of Lorcan’s neck stood on end.

“To keep her from teleporting in,” Farideh explained, pushing the rod back up her sleeve. “He’s just reapplying it.”

“Good. Well then, may I present,” he said, stepping aside, “Lachs the Yellow. Who happens to be the last of the Brimstone Angels.”

Lachs hobbled forward, leaning on a gnarled, polished cane. Paler than Farideh, darker than Adastreia, he had been tall once, before age bent his body. His horns were the color of old bones, the source of his epithet, and his eyes shone gold.

He looked Adastreia and Farideh and Mehen over and sniffed. “Not the set I would have predicted. Who’s the scalie?”

“Your host,” Lorcan said sharply. “Be polite.”

Mehen scowled at his daughter. “Perhaps I should stay.”

“Someone has to find the giants. What about the others?” Farideh asked Lorcan. “Chiridion and Threnody and Nasmos? Livulia and Naria?”

“Oh, Chiridion’s dead,” Lachs said. “Idiot tried to take over a holding in the bloody Beastlands, tangled with a rakshasa before his pactmaster even got wind of it. Cocky bastard, that one.”

Farideh’s expression didn’t so much as flicker at the mention of her birth father’s death—not good. Lorcan found himself pining for the days when she’d flashed her every thought like a beacon. “And the others?”

“Well, Threnody likely went the same way. She was like that too, even though she was old enough to know better,” Lachs said. “Took after her father—Naria, my sister, had the worst taste in fellows. Now, she died about ten years back of a winterchill fever, which is about the time I lost track of Threnody. Nasmos and Livulia were the other branch of the family—the elder son, Jubal’s get. Never did mix much.”

“Nasmos was murdered not long ago,” Lorcan said. “Possibly by Bryseis Kakistos. I need to ask Sairché if she knows. And you, darling, make three. Aside from your sister, this room contains every living descendant of Bryseis Kakistos.”

Farideh considered Lachs a moment. “Thank you,” she said to Lorcan.

A step, Lorcan thought. “You’re welcome.”

“You should go talk to Sairché,” she said.

Not quite the next step he’d hoped for. But it was nothing Lorcan hadn’t intended to do. “Of course, darling.”

Sairché didn’t look up as he came into the room, but kept staring off into the depths of a corner with a pensive expression on her face. “You’re very fortunate,” Lorcan said, “that you have a protective circle around you. What if I were one of the pradixikai?”

“Then I have a protective circle around me.” Sairché lifted her head lazily. “How fares the world beyond?”

“Still turning,” Lorcan said. “Did you kill a tiefling warlock called Nasmos?”

“I was there when he was killed,” Sairché said. “Why?”

Lorcan cursed. “Why did you kill a Brimstone Angel?”

“Because he wasn’t answering questions,” Sairché said, as if such a thing should be patently obvious. “The ghost wanted a spell she thought he had. He insisted he didn’t have it. I turned some erinyes on him. He died. And it turned out he was right, he didn’t have it. She settled for a gem—a soul sapphire—and a small wagonload of books, so it wasn’t a total waste.”

Lorcan bit his tongue. His sister couldn’t have cared less about collecting warlocks if she were ordered to do so by the archduchess, but such a flimsy excuse for executing one of the rarest heirs in the Toril Thirteen made him want to shake her. “I assume she found what she was looking for, elsewhere, since you didn’t mention it before?”

“She found it making deals with demon lords,” Sairché said lightly. “You might recall?”

“I don’t like the way you made that plural.”

“Believe me, I like it even less.” She laid her head against her knees. “Tell me something: Do you think we’re damning ourselves with one hand here? I feel as though I can’t guess how many lines we’ve crossed so far.”

“Who even knows where the lines are anymore?” Lorcan said. “Treason is helping the king of the Hells; treason is following the archduchess’s orders. Allegiance may well be thwarting them—the Nine Hells has never lurched so near to chaos.”

“Who knew we’d pine for the days where we couldn’t see far enough to pick out the plans of Asmodeus?”

“Who knew there’d come a day that it seemed he didn’t have a plan to speak of?” Lorcan hesitated. “Is Invadiah truly dead?”

Sairché nodded, as if she couldn’t say the words. She cleared her throat. “Did you know Caisys the Vicelord was our sire?”

Lorcan stared—sure for a moment that he’d misheard her, sure that she was toying with him. But then, it made some sense—what sort of person would have lain down with Exalted Invadiah in all her ferociousness not once, but twice. The “Vicelord” had earned his epithet, after all.

“No. No I did not,” he said. “How’d you find that out?”

“The Brimstone Angel. Apparently it’s terribly obvious.”

Down in the library tomb of Tarchamus, the ghost in Farideh had smiled and called him Caisys. “Has she got an heir of his lined up?” Lorcan asked.

“Not when I was with her,” she said. “Do you know which one is the most powerful?”

“Do I look like a shitting registry of pacted warlocks?” he said. “There’s too many to count.” If they were indeed the children of Caisys, then the company they kept was thick indeed. They said the Vicelord had bedded beings from every plane, mortals from every kingdom, littering the landscape with offspring of every stripe and shade. Lorcan had never spent much effort on his Caisys heir. If one grew dissatisfied and wandered off, another could be cheaply had. Finding the most powerful heir would be like finding the longest sheaf of wheat in a field.

“It might be one of us,” Sairché said. Then, “Me, really. It might be me.”

“I don’t think she tabulates an heir’s relative strength based on the number of magical artifacts they’ve pilfered.”

“No, idiot, she wants you to get her more heirs on Farideh.” Sairché laid her chin against her knee again. “Apparently she has no idea at all how rubbish you are at the romantic arts—especially given Farideh obviously didn’t mention those plans. Besides, I don’t need artifacts to end you.”

“Maybe you do and maybe you don’t, but considering you can’t leave that circle, best of luck with that task.” A slow smile curved Lorcan’s mouth, the whole thing too amusing not to remark on. “We’ll consider that the plan in our pockets.”

Sairché narrowed her eyes. “What?”

“Well, if she doesn’t fall for Farideh’s trick, someone could always break the circle and let her find you. Of course, given that the oathbreaker curse is permanent, a handful of erinyes are bound to turn up in the same breath. Kill you and her in the same stroke. It’s really that or waiting for you to get too bored to stand living anymore, isn’t it?”

The stillness of Sairché’s expression, the lack of any barb, betrayed the fact that she hadn’t considered how trapped she really was. There was no escaping the circle—so far as Lorcan knew, there was no way to erase what Invadiah had done except death, and so the only way Sairché would ever leave the middle of a bed in the guest quarters of the Verthisathurgiesh enclave would be as a corpse. She could live forever in that room, hidden and safe and utterly trapped.

If he were human, Lorcan thought, smirking to himself, he would have to feel a little bad for Sairché. How fortunate then that the archduchess had crossed his path..

• • •

IN THE SITTING room, Lachs sat stroking his neatly trimmed beard. “Let’s see. On your mother’s side”—he nodded at Adastreia—“I’d be your first cousin, twice removed. And on your father’s, I’d be your granduncle. Uncle Lachs, how does that sound?”

He had the lankiness, the leanness that Farideh and Havilar possessed, the tapered lobes of the ears. “I’ll call you Lachs.”

“I think she got the dragonborn’s temperament,” Adastreia said. Farideh bristled.

“I don’t know. Sounds just right for ‘dear grandmama,’ ” Lachs said wryly. “All of us tools, none of us dear. You’re a lucky little thing, surviving all that.” He nodded to the empty space on the couch beside him. “We all are, I s’pose. No guarantee of a long life for a Kakistos heir.”

Oh, Chiridion’s dead, Farideh gritted her teeth. Cocky bastard, that one. She found herself wondering if he’d died alone. If he’d had anyone at all or if like Adastreia, he’d shut himself away from everything and everyone—no family, no friends, no allies. She didn’t want to know him, didn’t want to meet him, didn’t want to know if she’d guessed right about how he looked—but the fact that she never would sat sour in her stomach nonetheless. She found herself wondering if he’d known where Caisys was taking the twins, if maybe—maybe—he felt bad about letting them go, and immediately wished Mehen hadn’t left.

“What do you know about Caisys the Vicelord?” Farideh asked.

“I think she got the dragonborn’s single-mindedness too,” Adastreia said.

“Again,” Lachs said, “Bryseis.” He considered Farideh, all shrewdness. “What do you want to know about Caisys?”

“Where did he go after he left?” Farideh said. “Did you know if he had anything on him? Do you know where he is now? Do you know why he would have taken us somewhere safe instead of”—she made herself say it, kept her eyes on Lachs instead of glaring at Adastreia—“heading for the nearest river?”

“I assume he went wherever you were found. After that?” Lachs sniffed. “Everywhere, from the sounds of things. Man spent his life scouring the multiverse for new things to mix blood with. Or at least mix company with.”

“After the ritual?” Adastreia said skeptically. “He was well past a century. At some point, the spirit’s willingness is moot in the face of the flesh’s sheer exhaustion.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Lachs said with a wicked smile.

Adastreia rolled her eyes. “I know there’s a reason they chose Chiridion and not you.”

“I was left in a village called Arush Vayem on the Tymantheran frontier,” Farideh said, trying to steer them both back to the subject at hand. “Where would he go after that? Did he have a home? A place he stayed?”

Lachs shook his head. “No. Where’s Arush Vayem?”

“In the Smoking Mountains,” Farideh said. “That’s another thing: it’s not a village most people know about it, but clearly he did. I mean … there are a good number of tieflings there. Maybe he knew someone who lived there?”

“Now see,” Lachs said, leaning on his cane, “doesn’t matter about there being tieflings there. Not so much. Not to Caisys.”

“Caisys didn’t look like one of us,” Adastreia explained.

“He wasn’t one of us,” Lachs corrected. “Born before the Ascension. Succubus blood. He looks like a human. Blends in fine.”

“Not that fine,” Adastreia said. “He was very good-looking. He stood out.”

“I meant he hadn’t horns, whelp.”

“He just looks human?” Farideh asked. Karshoj, how was that fair?

“Well, human with a … an edge,” Lachs said. “His shadow was sort of … peculiar if you looked at it right.”

“And he sometimes made you feel a bit … like you wanted to agree with him and also run away, maybe strip naked for good measure.” Adastreia shook her head as if the description disappointed the truth. “You’d have to have met him. You’d understand.”

“Still,” Farideh said, “he could have blended in anywhere. Why go to Arush Vayem? That would take a tenday.”

“From Aglarond? It’s two at least,” Adastreia said.

“Portals,” Lachs said. “He could have taken a portal.”

“If he was going to take a portal,” Adastreia said, “why not take it somewhere less remote? She has a point. It’s an odd spot to choose.”

“Well, as only she’s been there,” Lachs said, “only she can answer that.”

Farideh racked her thoughts, trying to remember some facet of life in Arush Vayem that might have explained it, that might have been the clue to understanding why anyone would have come there. It was remote—plenty of places were remote. It was full of people who didn’t wish to be found—but that still meant people. There were enough tieflings that two more wouldn’t have drawn notice—but that was truer of places like Calimshan or Aglarond or Neverwinter. She thought of the people who had been her neighbors—Criella, the village midwife; Garago, the daft wizard who lent her books and taught them sums; Pyador, the dwarf who raised yaks; Oster, the dairyman, and Iannis, his handsome son; Mashrek, the blacksmith, and more—but no, none of them seemed as if they’d have known a warlock of the Toril Thirteen. People didn’t visit the village, Mehen had said, and he was right. Arjhani was the only one she could remember.

And the more pressing question that remained. “Why did he save us? If he’d killed us, then the soul pieces would have been released, right? You could have tried again.”

Lachs made a face and waggled his hand—yes and no. “You have to understand,” he said. “She dug her hands into magic that wasn’t always well-tested. Might have been he wasn’t sure what would happen—I mean even now, can you say you know? Might be if you’d died before she pulled off that plan, you’d have all been chained together in the Nine Hells for eternity.”

“How long are we expected to sit here, waiting?” Adastreia asked.

“Yes,” Lachs said. “So long as we’re here, wouldn’t mind a look around.”

“Stay in the circle.” Farideh stood. “I’ll go ask Lorcan to—”

“How is it you can leave the circle?” Adastreia asked.

“Because she doesn’t want me,” Farideh said. “I’ll be back.” She stepped over the silver-dusted runes of Ilstan’s protective circle, lifting her tail carefully out of the way. Neither Lachs nor Adastreia seemed to know anything about the staff of Azuth, and as much as she didn’t want to talk to Lorcan, she was running short of options.

Sairché remained, perched on the oversized bed like a castaway on a raft, looking bleak and uneasy. Lorcan stood at the foot of the bed with an unpleasant smirk on his face. Shadow-smoke began to drift off Farideh’s arms as she took in the tension in the room. “Is everything all right?”

Lorcan turned to her, his expression shifting into something lighter. “Oh just fine, darling. Did you get a chance to acquaint yourselves?”

“A little,” Farideh said. “I don’t think either of them knows about the staff.”

“Never mind that.” Sairché’s golden eyes pinned Farideh, blazing and wild. “How far off is that army?”

“A few days,” Farideh said. “Why?”

“What are your assets?” Sairché demanded. “What’s keeping this city intact?”

“I’m not the karshoji Vanquisher,” Farideh said. “It’s massive, it’s extremely defensible, especially from aerial attack. Most everyone in the city has weapons training—”

“Weapons training isn’t military training,” Sairché said. “And how many people live in this city? Fifty thousand? What about these giants?”

“Where did you hear about the giants?”

“Please, that dragonborn you travel with might be soft-footed, but he can say nothing quieter than a roar,” Sairché said. “Has he gone off to battle them, or to ask for assistance?”

“He’s gone to see what they’re doing here,” Farideh said. “Why do you care?”

“Because you need some reinforcements if you’re going to stand against an army of demons!” she said, growing agitated. “You’re going about this in a terribly slapdash way. An army of demons isn’t something you ought to underestimate.”

“The djeradi are well defended,” Farideh began.

“And completely dependent on just a few lines of supply,” Sairché said. “Oh, you’ll last long enough—make the Hells nod in appreciation for how long you can stretch a battle. But you’ll lose in the end. You have solid defense and nothing to attack with.”

“Why in the world do you care?” Farideh cried.

“Because,” Sairché said savagely, “I’m bored to the eyeteeth with this place, and if I have to sit here for an eternity, I’d rather it not be rubble.”

“Don’t mind Sairché,” Lorcan drawled. “She’s only just realized she should have stayed out of our business all those years ago. Maybe saved herself a little trouble.”

Farideh sighed. As much as she might have appreciated seeing Sairché punished—after everything she’d done, the cambion certainly deserved some sort of consequences—there was nothing about Sairché’s circumstances that didn’t make Farideh’s problems harder to solve. Except, perhaps, that she was no longer aiding Bryseis Kakistos, if she ever really had been.

“At least we have all the heirs here,” Farideh said. “Except Havilar. If she wants a Kakistos heir, she has to come to us.”

Sairché’s graceful brows shot up, her limp wings suddenly erect. “Oh. Oh shitting Lords. Was that your plan?”

Lorcan turned, his expression still and calculating. “What did you do?”

Farideh’s chest squeezed tight as Sairché bit her lip, as if trying to will back in whatever secret she’d let out. “I may,” she allowed, “have forgotten to mention the Brimstone Angel I hid away.”

• • •

THE SCRYING APPARATUS sat upon the table, feather finally balanced precariously over the shallow bowl of snowmelt. Perfect to the specifications of the spell—and absolutely inert. Even knowing that Bryseis Kakistos expected him to track down the staff of Azuth, Brin could not fathom where to begin.

“She said I need blood,” he said.

“We can get you blood,” Bosh chirped from beside the brazier where he was stirring up the coals. “Of course, you should have said something sooner—usually we get it from this cultist in Chult, and he’s definitely not in Chult right now—”

“Whose blood do you need to scry a staff?” Mot interrupted. He hovered over the scrying apparatus, trying to be helpful and succeeding only in making Brin feel as if he were banging his head against the stone walls of the fortress.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” he said.

“Probably the one who held it,” Bosh said.

“The one who held it was a god, idiot,” Mot said.

“Gods have blood,” Bosh returned, indignant. Then, “Some gods have blood. Otherwise people wouldn’t swear about it.”

“Nobody swears by Azuth’s blood.”

“Maybe you need his beard then,” Bosh said.

“Both of you shut up,” Brin snapped. “Go back to the Hells.”

“We can’t,” Mot said. “Not unless she dismisses us.”

“Then sit on the sill and give me a little peace.” He dragged his hands through his hair. Bryseis Kakistos wanted him to find the staff. She had some reason to think he knew where it was, which suggested Havilar knew where it was. Havilar hadn’t told him. He needed blood to scry it. It was plausible Zoonie could track it.

Which meant it existed—or Bryseis Kakistos believed it did. It meant that it was likely somewhere Havilar had been. It meant that it was somewhere Brin hadn’t been—or at least somewhere she hadn’t had him to talk to.

Akanûl. The road to Waterdeep. The Nine Hells.

“Arush Vayem,” he whispered to himself.

The only place Havilar had been long enough to have noticed a divine artifact one way or another—but where Brin wouldn’t have been, and where she might not have told him so—was Arush Vayem, the village on no one’s maps. Tucked deep in a valley in the Smoking Mountains, small and secretive and hidden away. Where Havilar and Farideh had grown up. Where Mehen had fled his father.

It wasn’t the worst place to hide something, he reasoned.

“Are you thinking?” Bosh called.

It didn’t explain the blood. It didn’t tell him who he ought to scry, or what.

No, he thought, not scry. He turned back to the worktable, the assortment of components he’d collected together out of Phrenike’s stores. The dried blood of a formian, salts of copper, powdered silver—all laid in neat lines. Risky, he thought, setting up the spell as carefully as possible. But if the answer lay in Arush Vayem, the best and only way to know.

He fished the little scroll out of his boot where it had ridden with him for years. A few short words and it caught with flames that were not fire, pulling magic from the Weave and opening a passage between himself and Farideh in far-off Djerad Thymar. The air cracked faintly. Brin took a deep breath.

“She’s looking for the staff of Azuth,” he whispered. “She thinks I know where to look—‘where is it’? Which means Havi thinks I know. In Arush Vayem?” The magic snapped and crackled as the message sped across the plane, back to Farideh, wherever she was. A moment later, the softer crackle of breath and Farideh’s voice rang through the room.

I don’t know, she said, sounding surprised, and Brin cursed. We’re tracking down the Kakistos heirs, also Caisys—he brought us to the village. He might have known more. She paused as if counting the words. Stay safe, Brin.

“Oh, if anyone knows about the staff of Azuth, it’s Caisys.”

Brin leaped to his feet, reaching for a sword at the sound of Phrenike’s voice. She shook her head, the violet lights of her eyes rolling skyward. “Watching Gods, you are ridiculous. And a fraud—I knew it. Are you even the princeling she thinks you are?”

“I don’t know what you think you heard,” Brin began.

The lich strolled past him, to the scrying apparatus, waving him off. “Please. I’m not some snooping noblewoman you can scare off. I heard you fine.” She eyed the bowl, the brass arm, the feather. “She’s so busy imagining a little family of her own that she’s taken leave of her senses and trusted you’re on her side, all the while forgetting she’s walking around in your true love’s skin. Makes a man willing to take very foolish risks.”

“I never imagined she trusted me,” Brin said. “Do you think she trusts you?”

Phrenike looked back at him and grinned. “Yes and no. I suppose we’re in the same straits, you and I. Bryseis has a way of trusting others without trusting them at all. It’s rather amusing, don’t you think, how similar that makes her to Asmodeus? She wouldn’t like to hear you say that, though. I’d hold my tongue.”

Brin didn’t let go of his sword—for what little good it would do him against a lich. “What do you want, saer?” he asked. “Are you planning to tell her about the sending?”

Phrenike chuckled. “Let me tell you a story about the Brimstone Angel: When I met her, she was nothing but a thief. A quick-fingered rogue with a knack for traps and an absolute obsession with gathering magic. I was the wizard. She was the one wishing for my skills.”

“But you wound up serving her?”

Phrenike’s face shifted, and it took Brin a moment to realize she was pursing what was left of her lips. “I never said she wasn’t hideously clever. And ambitious. You can fall into lichdom, but to bargain with the king of the Hells and survive … Regardless: thief, dabbler. That’s how it was, and that’s how it would have kept on going, do you know why?”

The lich reached over and plucked the feather from the apparatus, inverting it so it curved downward over the brass arm. “Because she had only one impediment—her sister.”

“She had a sister?” Brin asked.

Phrenike looked back at him again. “Oh, you didn’t know about Alyona? Chaste little thing. Well, chaste-acting. She was always mooning over Caisys—absolutely pathetic.” She rotated the bowl a quarter turn and ran a finger down one line of copper salts, tidying it up. “Let’s call her … sanctimonious. But Bryseis would have done anything for her—and then Alyona got fed up with how the rest of us stayed ahead of death, threw a fit, and stormed off. That was the last time I ever saw Bryseis Kakistos give a care for her own.” She pulled the book of spells nearer, pushed the candle away. “That was the last I could ever call Bryseis Kakistos nothing but a thief.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Brin asked, as calmly as he could.

Phrenike considered her handiwork, nodded once, then turned to face Brin again. “Because you’ve made a very embarrassing mistake, and I want to be sure you’ve been cured of any assumption that might have led you to it.”

Brin frowned. “What mis—”

Phrenike’s skeletal hand shot out and grabbed him by the arm, so fast Brin hardly had time to swing his sword at her, slashing a rent in the lavender robes as she stepped back. It was too late—a numbing chill spread through him, his arm falling dead beside him, the blade clattering to the ground as his hand went slack. Phrenike smiled and took him by the arm again, pulling him toward the prepared ritual.

“We all make mistakes,” she said, taking a pinch of the dried flowers and sprinkling them over the water. “We all meet people and read them exactly wrong. I thought she was nothing, and she proved she was my better—at least for a time.” She turned Brin’s hand over with one hand, cold upon his skin. With the other, she drew a black-handled dagger and slashed his wrist. Blood spurted from the painless wound, and Phrenike held his arm high over the bowl so that the blood dripped down the feather, taking on a strange glow as it did.

“You assume,” she said, “that she’s like you. Or perhaps because she’s clearly got it into her mind to resurrect into a child of yours, you assume she cares about her own blood.”

The pool of snowmelt shivered as the drops of blood hit it—one, two, three. As it stilled, the refection changed. Not Brin’s room … but a child. A little tiefling boy, with golden skin, blue eyes, and blond curls. His nose had a curve to it, the hints of a more elegant face to come; his mouth a stubbornness that seemed it must run down to his very bones. He leaned on a herder’s crook, his gaze distant and dreamy.

While Brin watched, frozen, the child turned and walked across a far-off field, a scaled-down, softened version of Havilar’s swinging, swaggering gait—Brin knew that walk as surely as he knew the difference between Havi’s grin and Bryseis Kakistos’s sly smile.

Seven years old, Brin thought. Maybe eight.

“She knows,” Phrenike said, “about all the heirs. The twins have their use, the others are weaker—this is the Kakistos heir she wants. This is what you lost that she couldn’t find.” She let Brin’s slack arm fall. “I’ll leave it to you to let Bryseis know that you’ve finished your task.”

11

2 Hammer, the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant (1487 DR)
Djerad Thymar, Tymanther

MEHEN SHIFTED UNCOMFORTABLY IN HIS SADDLE—THEY HAD RIDDEN hard and far enough into the plains the day before to make certain there was no way he’d sit easy the next day. The wide-backed horse, a hot-blooded Ishen-Charac probably descended from his father’s own warhorse, flattened its ears in annoyance, and Mehen tried to settle himself. Uadjit rode ahead, followed by Dumuzi and two other young Kepeshkmoliks—Saitha and a boy called Persegor. Dumuzi’s first converts.

“Is it just me,” Kallan muttered, “or does this business with Enlil start making your scales itch when you’re faced with three hatchling priestlets?”

Mehen shifted in the saddle. “Older you get, more likely children are going to start making proclamations at you.”

“We are not that old.”

“Then you’d better find Dumuzi some grown converts,” Mehen said. “I don’t see this stopping anytime soon.”

Mehen tapped his tongue to the roof of his mouth. He’d gone to sit beside Dumuzi at the fire the night before. “I have a question for your god,” he’d said.

Dumuzi had folded his hands nervously, never at ease with Mehen. “All right. What is it?”

Mehen clenched his teeth together to fight the nervous urge to tap his tongue. “Is she alive? Is Havilar still alive?”

Dumuzi went quiet for a moment. “He doesn’t know.”

“How can he not know?” Mehen demanded. “I thought he was a god. ‘Soldier of all the lands, father of all children’? He can’t karshoji tell me if my daughter is dead?”

Dumuzi flinched, but a moment later he spoke. “He says there are some barriers even a god cannot breach. He says it isn’t definite, but given how weak he is right now, if he knew anything definitely, it would be that her soul had passed into the Fugue Plane.” He swallowed, noisy against a tight throat. “He says he understands. When he came back, he could not find his children. It’s a difficult thing to feel powerless.”

At that, Mehen had stood, strode off into the grasslands, too full of the words he didn’t dare say to sit still any longer. In the bright light of day, Dumuzi would not so much as meet his eye. Mehen wasn’t powerless. There were a thousand things Mehen could have been doing, and he wasn’t, because everything was so tangled up in planar nonsense.

As they rode, they passed swaths of land where the dirt was churned and wild, as if some invisible farmer had plowed it up and mixed in other soils, red and black, then sprinkled it with unfamiliar rocks. Mehen eyed a jagged, rust-colored boulder with a vein of crystal as green as new leaves running through it, and wondered what the world on the other side must have looked like.

Uadjit called back, “When we come to the rise, fall back. I’ll scout ahead.”

“You did the last one!” Kallan shouted back. “Give the rest of us something to—”

A ripple in the air—as if a gust of wind had blown across Mehen’s eye, distorting his vision—and suddenly a great, gray-skinned giant stood beside the line of their horses, club in hand. Mehen pulled his falchion as the Ishen-Charac broke left, fighting against the pull of Mehen’s reins. A second giant appeared there, hemming in their horses. She put out a hand, fingers outstretched. Across the skin of her right forearm and hand, blue light flooded channel lines, flowing up toward her palm. She spoke a word, soft as grass crunching underfoot.

Immediately the horses calmed.

“Chaubask bur kepeshk,” Mehen spat, but no amount of spur would make the gelding move.

“They are dreaming,” the giant said. “It won’t last long.”

“Have you come for Dahl Peredur and the others?” the man with the club said. “We have come to meet you.”.

• • •

BRIN SEARCHES THE room—the Griffon Room, portraits of Obarskyrs lining its walls. King Foril is here—not dead, but playing chess against Tam Zawad, the High Harper of Waterdeep, with ponderous care, as if he has no idea what perils are raging outside the palace. Beyond the windows, everything is on fire. Brin locks the door and starts throwing the pillows from the settee, the curtains from the wall.

“Aubrin, what are you doing?”

“Your Majesty,” Brin says. “I can’t find the baby.”

Foril doesn’t look up. “Again?”

Brin starts yanking pictures from the walls, flipping rugs from the floor—if he doesn’t find the baby, the demon will. A moment before, it had been in his arms, wrapped in swaddling—and then he’d set it down, just for a moment. Where?

“Brin?” He turns and Havilar is standing there—utter dread swamps him. He doesn’t want to tell her what he did, but then she of all people will understand the seriousness. He has to.

“I lost the baby!” he says, all panic. “I didn’t mean to, but he’s gone.”

She frowns at him, puzzled. “All right. That’s the dream. There isn’t actually a baby.”

“No, there is.” Brin yanks the drawers from a cabinet, spilling silver spoons and arrows and snakes onto the floor. “A baby. A boy—our boy. Only … only he’s not a baby.” He stops, shuts the last drawer. “He’s eight. Or so.” He turns and looks at Havilar. “This is a dream.”

A grin breaks over her face, a smile of utter relief. “Yes! Holy gods, you don’t know how long it took me to get Farideh to realize that. She is so karshoji stubborn, even when she’s asleep.”

Brin looks her over. “It’s a dream,” he says slowly. “But you’re not. You’re here. You’re here.” He throws his arms around her, holds her tight. “Blessed Torm, I … Oh thank the gods.” She clings to him in return, as real and solid as if she were beside him again. “Havi, I’m trying, but things are getting—”

“Wait.” She presses away from him, as a stream of people cross through the room, war wizards and Harpers and holy champions. “This is important. If you start dreaming again or you wake up, you have to remember this. All right? You need to tell Farideh that Caisys is the one who knows where the staff is, and Alyona says he watched over us in Arush Vayem. Maybe someone was reporting to him, or there’s a spell or something. A scrying surface? Tell her that?”

“I have to find more components,” Brin says. “All I’ve got is my Harper kit. That only—”

A baby’s high wailing breaks his attention. Where the farther wall once was has become a waterfall with sea elves lounging in its spray, tossing a ball back and forth. A snake as thick as a man’s leg slithers around the stones and the legs of the settee, as the dead king and the High Harper consider the chess board.

“You have such weird dreams,” Havilar says.

“I have to find the baby,” Brin says, pulling away from her.

“There’s no baby.”

“No, there is, he …” A dream, Brin reminds himself. A dream. “Havi, there is a baby, I think. I think we have a son.”

Havilar peers at him, as if she’s trying to decide how mad he might be. “Uh, I’m fairly sure I’d remember that.”

“I think you were trapped in the Hells when he was born,” Brin said. “There’s a sixth heir. He looks like you and he looks like me. Bryseis Kakistos didn’t know about him until she was in your body, and the lich used my blood to find him.” He wants to ask if she’s sure she didn’t know, if this is really a surprise and not a secret—but the expression that crosses her face holds all the answers.

“How …” she manages, as tears rise up in her eyes and the flames beyond the window break the panes of glass. “How did she—”

Brin woke to Zoonie snuffling at his cheek, his heart in his throat. He pushed the hellhound away, rubbing slobber and ash from his stubbled cheek, trying to take control of his breath again. A dream, he told himself. Just a dream. Just …

Not a dream—he felt sure of that. Not just a dream. Havilar had been there.

“You talk in your sleep,” Bosh said. Both imps were perched on the footboard. “That’s a liability. You shouldn’t do that.”

Brin sat up. The blue-eyed tiefling boy. “Has she come back?”

“No,” Mot said. “Neither of them.”

He got up and dressed quickly, checking his stores of components—not enough of the dried formian blood to make another sending, even if he’d had another scroll on him. Two scrolls, he thought. One to warn Farideh, one to warn the boy.

“Do you need to know a name to make a sending ritual?”

“You need to know how to cast a sending ritual without some hand-holding scroll,” Mot pointed out. “I thought you were some kind of priest. Don’t you have a ritual book?”

“I don’t think he’s a priest,” Bosh said. “Priests should be taller. Unless they’re halflings.”

“Never mind,” Brin said. “Do you know anything about dream magic? Like … how could someone appear in your dreams?”

Mot looked at him as if he’d asked about stuffing eels in a coinpurse. “Why would you do that?”

“Where do you think Bryseis Kakistos has Havilar?” Brin said, trying a different tack as he pulled on his boots.

“There’s lots of places you could shift a soul,” Mot said. “I mean, I’ve heard of some. I can’t do that. I might know some people. She could just be dormant in there, for one.”

“What if she’s not?”

Bosh screwed up his face. “Souls are either in their bodies or in the afterlife. Anything else is too complicated.”

“Shut up, Bosh,” Mot said. “You can put a soul in a vessel. That’s definitely been done before. Since she says that she’s planning to give Havilar back and she’s got a contingency for what happens if all this falls apart, it’s probably that. Dormant means it’s more likely she’d just get snapped up by some god or other when the body got killed.”

Brin nearly asked what contingency Mot was talking about, but then he remembered Bryseis Kakistos’s cryptic, muddled orders to Farideh—make some new bodies. If Havilar died, the soul would be protected, ready to slip into some other body, the way Bryseis Kakistos had meant to slip into Farideh and Havilar.

He donned the furs he’d been given and left the little room, Zoonie following close at his heels, Mot and Bosh flapping along ahead of him. “What things make vessels?”

“Magic things,” Mot said.

“Expensive magic things,” Bosh said. “You have to spend—”

“Amulets,” Mot interrupted. “Figurines. Phylacteries. Other bodies.”

Brin cast a glance back at Zoonie as they headed down a corridor. The hellhound wagged her tail happily, then caught sight of it and chased it in a circle a few times, scattering sparks. Probably not Zoonie.

“It would have been in the room when they did the spell,” Mot added.

“Ah, ye gods. The amulet.” Brin had nearly forgotten the blue stone on the chain that Havilar had been given to hold. “Is she still wearing that blue-gray stone?”

“You can ask her that,” Mot said as they came to the library.

To Brin’s surprise, Bryseis Kakistos and Phrenike’s voices echoed through the rows of books.

“It’s in here somewhere,” Phrenike was saying. “Everything’s in here somewhere.”

“And none of it has been touched in twenty years!” Bryseis Kakistos snapped.

“Oh twenty years,” the lich said dismissively. “We have time to find it. We’re still missing three heirs.”

Brin peered around a shelf in time to see Havilar drop down from halfway up one of the stone shelves. “And none of that will matter without the staff. Which means we need Caisys. Which means we need the notes in his spellbook. Now let me ask you again: Are you certain that you still have it?”

Phrenike didn’t answer. The sight of the lich, looking wary and perhaps fearful when faced with what looked like Havilar, made Brin’s stomach twist up his throat. He edged forward, ever so slightly, eyes on the chain along the back of Havilar’s neck. Phrenike’s violet eyes fell on him, and she cleared her throat. Bryseis Kakistos whipped around.

“Well met,” she said, straightening. “Can I help you?”

“No,” he said. “Just gathering some things.”

“Any luck with the stolen scion?”

Behind her, Phrenike grinned. “Oh, he hasn’t told you yet?” she said, not giving Brin even a breath to consider a way to lie about the boy. “He’s found it. A boy. In Aglarond—isn’t that ironic?”

Bryseis Kakistos shot her confederate a dark look. “Quite. Well done,” she said to Brin. She considered him. “I wasn’t sure you’d manage it. Especially after the business with Nalam.”

“I didn’t have much choice, did I?” Brin said.

“Choice is overrated,” she said. “But I’ll give you this one: Do you want to see him? He can stay with you when we return.”

“Please.” The lump in Brin’s throat was so thick he could hardly breathe. “What are you going to do to them?” he asked quietly.

Havilar’s golden eyes pierced him in a way that betrayed the being inside. “Make them useful. For all our sakes.”.

• • •

DOWN OVER THE rise, Uadjit and Kallan had been bickering, the giants were settling in, calling up rocks and a fence of brambles with their curious magic. All around them, a carpet of bodies of nearly a thousand humans and Vayemniri, antsy and anxious, waiting for an answer.

“What in the karshoji Hells have you been doing?” Mehen asked Dahl in amazement.

“Trying not to die, mostly,” Dahl said. He seemed less prickly somehow, less inclined to take the slight. Worn, Mehen thought. He’d been disappointed to find that Farideh wasn’t with Mehen, and completely incapable of hiding it. The giant that accompanied him to the ridge sat some distance away, watching him speak to Mehen with an unnerving level of attention.

“When did you take the Vayemniri?” Uadjit asked from beside Mehen.

When Dahl hesitated, Mehen snapped, “Dragonborn. Where did the dragonborn come from?”

“Refugees from the same planar storm that brought Gilgeam and the Untherans, maybe half a tenday—”

“We know which planar storm,” Mehen interrupted. “There’s only one karshoji planar storm. Do you think we live in the middle of that?”

“What are they doing with you?” Uadjit said.

“Gilgeam took them,” Dahl said. “Made them slaves.” They were Shestandeliath and Clethtinthtiallor, which thirty years ago would have put them three days north and east of Djerad Thymar, on a pair of horse farms raising warhorses like the one Mehen rode. Not Yrjixtilex, he thought, spotting Kallan moving among the survivors.

“How many?” Uadjit asked.

“Sixty-two. We lost about a dozen.”

“Which means they lost around a third in the storm,” Uadjit said. “And presumably the homesteads as well.”

Dahl shook his head. “We’re lucky they ran when I said. It was a bit dicey.”

“Do I want to know why you ran headlong into an army of giants?” Mehen asked.

“You didn’t see what I was running from.”

The humans were rebels, which didn’t much settle Mehen’s own feelings on the matter. Someone had gone for their leader, Namshita, while Dahl broke things down for Mehen and Uadjit. “She needs to ask you for asylum,” Dahl said. “They have nowhere to go.”

Mehen snorted. “Good karshoji luck to her. Her master just destroyed the forward regiment of Djerad Kethendi.”

“Well, she knows things about that army,” Dahl returned, his tone sharpening. “Troop numbers, demon counts, what Gilgeam’s capable of doing. Besides, I was led to believe overthrowing tyrants was what the Vayemniri did best.”

There was a hint of that prickliness, that sharp edge that Mehen had never liked. And now he was back, as if he’d never strolled out of Farideh’s life, as if he hadn’t vanished for a month, nothing but vague words assuring her that of course he still loved her, he just wasn’t going to respond when she cast sendings, nor come back. Between this one and Lorcan, Mehen was starting to think he’d set a bad example somewhere along the line.

Kallan came up the rise, looking troubled. “We have a problem.”

“What now?” Uadjit asked.

“I was talking to some of the folks down there,” he said. “Got some interesting details from a Shestandeliath called Mazarka. She says the Untherans are still paying Gilgeam worship in secret. Caught a few of them at it when she went walking last night. They chased her, but she lost them in the dark.”

“Mazarka said that?” Dahl said, sounding surprised. “She didn’t tell me.”

Mehen frowned. “How many?”

“She thinks it’s all of them,” Kallan said. “That this is all Gilgeam’s plan to break Djerad Thymar from the inside out.”

“No.” Mehen turned and found Dumuzi standing there. “She’s wrong,” he said. “I’ve spoken to some of them. We all three have. They want to be free of Gilgeam. They want to know about Enlil.”

Mehen sighed. “And what do you think they’d say if they were spies sent to end us?”

“I think this Gilgeam could do better than to send little children and half-starved runaway slaves to end us,” Dumuzi said, sounding disgusted. “Leaving aside what Gilgeam might or might not do, what happened to not turning away would-be allies and the victims of tyrants? Have we fallen so far?”

“Don’t be dramatic,” Mehen said. “If there aren’t any Gilgeam worshipers among them, then what did this Mazarka see?”

Dumuzi hesitated. “I don’t know.”

“I would ask,” a new voice said, “what exactly she thinks she saw.” A broad-shouldered human woman with cropped hair and leather armor stood behind Dumuzi, close to Dahl. With her was a Calishite woman who looked vaguely familiar to Mehen, though he couldn’t place where he might have seen her—which usually meant Harpers. The giantess too had moved nearer, crouching beside the group and toying with an odd pendant she wore around her neck.

“None of the people who fled with me are followers of the Son of Victory,” the woman said. “I would stake my life on that, and in effect I have: I cannot return. None of us can return, without paying the price. I don’t blame your caution, but I would suggest you consider carefully before spreading rumors that might cost lives.”

Dahl cleared his throat. “May I introduce Namshita. The leader of the Untheran refugees.”

“Well met,” Mehen said. “No one’s spreading rumors. You want to tell me you wouldn’t look into it if our positions were reversed, and it was your people in peril?”

Namshita nodded to Dumuzi. “You’ve already sent your little priest out converting my people. Get them on the Vayemniri’s side before we commence?”

“Or perhaps,” Uadjit said, “there’s no malice here, only misunderstanding. To be fair, whatever Mazarka saw, none of us can say what it looks like to pay Gilgeam worship.” She smiled. “The, ah, priest is my son, and while I would praise him for his many fine qualities, you should know we ourselves don’t have the best of relationships with the gods. He does not speak for Djerad Thymar.”

Dumuzi stiffened at his mother’s dismissal, turning to look back across the plain, down at his would-be converts.

“What is the difference,” the giant said, startling them all, “between his god-thing, the Son of Victory, and yours, Dahl Peredur?” She tilted her great, gray head. “Why is one an insult, one a danger, and one a boon?”

Dahl caught Mehen’s eye a moment before answering. “They are different things to different people. They have different reasons for being, different motives in the world. I, um, I can’t speak to Dumuzi’s god—”

“Enlil,” Dumuzi supplied.

Dahl paused, looking still more puzzled. “Somni are you joining us now?”

The giant considered the group, blinking slowly. “Yes, I think so. I am Somni,” she said. “forer of the Tusendraumren Steinjotunen.”

“Chieftain,” Dahl supplied. “Of these giants. The Thousand-Dreaming Stone Giants. She’s the one who rescued us from Gilgeam.”

Uadjit made a low, solemn bow. “Maetrish, I come bearing the gratitude of Djerad Thymar, of Clan Kepeshkmolik, of all the Vayemniri of Tymanther for sheltering our vulnerable and wounded. Your aid has been inestimable and we thank you.”

Somni inclined her head. “You are very welcome, but this is only our way. When the dreaming intrudes on the waking, then clearly there is something important occurring.”

Had Mehen been inclined toward such things, he would have thanked Enlil then and there that he wasn’t Uadjit. Faced with the giant chieftain’s hazy, woolgathering way of framing things, he would have certainly said something ill-advised and possibly thrown out the idea of allying with the Tusendraumren altogether.

Dahl, he noticed, did not so much as wince at Somni’s strange speech.

“I come also,” Uadjit went on, “to ask your further aid. The man they call Gilgeam, the Son of Victory, seeks to destroy us. We have long been prepared for an attack, but our forces are in disarray from an earlier attack, and this one is a foe unlike what we’ve faced before. You,” she said with significance, “have faced him before. You understand what it is we are up against. Please consider returning with me to Djerad Thymar, to discuss an alliance between the Vayemniri and the Tusendraumren.”

Somni tilted her head again, letting her eyes drift shut. Mehen glowered at Dahl. “Such allies,” he muttered.

“Just wait,” Dahl hissed.

After a moment, Somni lifted her head. “No,” she said. “Gilgeam has stolen the draumrting of my father. But simply because he is our enemy does not mean that an alliance is in the best interests of my stomm or yours. Dahl Peredur has made me curious of the nature of these god-things, but we cannot yet risk allying with them—Gilgeam or Enlil or Oghma. We have not been in this world long. We must dream and consider.”

Uadjit’s teeth gapped for the barest of moments—the only hint to her frustration. Mehen folded his arms again, still glad he wasn’t the diplomat. “I understand,” Uadjit said. “I would ask then for your word that you don’t intend to turn against Tymanther. If we cannot be allies, then at least we should not be enemies.”

Somni’s dark eyes suddenly seemed sharp as obsidian. “That too is a lot to promise.”

“Somni,” Dahl said, “you’re in their lands now. You can delay, but—”

“If I return to Djerad Thymar,” Uadjit said, “and tell my elders that the Tusendraumren cannot aid us, cannot promise us that they will not side with our enemies, cannot promise us that they won’t themselves become our enemies, then I cannot promise you that Tymanther will leave you in peace.”

“What will you do, Vayemniri?” Somni asked. “We are not dragons.”

“We have a great deal more experience fighting giants,” Uadjit said, “than gods and demons. Don’t mistake our knowledge of our weaknesses for weakness itself.”

Somni smiled suddenly, openly. “I think we are understood,” she said. “Now, will you take the refugees then? Would you care for some assistance in conveying them back to your city?”

The moon piercings along Uadjit’s brow shifted as she frowned. “Your pardon, but why would I accept your assistance when you’ve all but threatened me?”

Somni stood, rising to a height three times Mehen’s own. “That’s how these things are done. We are allies and enemies in one breath, as you said. The Vayemniri did not rise because they were fools who did not understand the nature of people—do not tell me you have grown into weak tyrants of your own on this side.” She looked down at Dahl. “Will you come with me now, or do you wish to talk more before they leave?”

“No,” Dahl said. “I mean, I have to go with them.”

Somni tilted her head. “Your god-thing says we must speak, we must learn from each other, does it not?”

“Yes,” Dahl said. “But there are people I need to help first. There’s someone I have to set things right with. We don’t leave the waking world to its own devices.”

“But you must sometimes,” Somni said as if explaining things to a child.

“If I don’t do this when I have the chance,” Dahl said, “then there’s no way at all my head will be clear or my knowledge of any use to you. I’ll come back,” he added. “I will promise that.”

“You cannot promise that,” Somni said. “You don’t know if it’s going to be true. But I will accept that your need exists. I will take my stomm back to the mountains’ edge and wait for you there, when you’ve finished settling things with your stomm.” Without waiting for an answer, without explaining what she’d meant before, the giant chieftain strode back down the hill to her people, taking every hope of a giant army to crush Gilgeam and Bryseis Kakistos with her.

“Well,” Mehen said acidly, “many thanks, Dahl, for bringing us allies. How would we manage without them?”

“Brand-new stlarning tribe of giants fell into the world seven days ago and I haven’t figured out exactly how to explain everything in this world to them or convince them to do things that I can’t even say for certain are in their best interests,” Dahl said hotly. “All my apologies. I’m trying.”

Uadjit smiled at the Harper. “Excuse us a moment.” She grabbed Mehen’s upper arm, pulling him aside, out of Dahl’s earshot. “What snake has crawled into your smalls? Can that boy say a word without you criticizing it?”

Mehen drew back. “You don’t know him. He’s a proud little hardjack and—”

“Like you? You sounded like Pandjed back there,” Uadjit snapped. “He didn’t put that nonsense in Somni’s head any more than he put omin’ iejirkkessh in mine. There is nothing happening right now that isn’t completely expected. Treaties don’t happen in a karshoji afternoon, and they don’t happen with someone sniping at the closest thing we have to an ambassador with the other side!”

At that moment, Uadjit glanced back and saw Dahl talking to Dumuzi. She broke off and turned on Mehen, eyes blazing. “He knows my son,” she said accusingly.

“They’ve met.”

“Which means he knows your daughter, and judging by the way you’re all but spitting lightning, he knows her too. Don’t tell me you’ve decided to play the blind patriarch and thwart Farideh’s happiness so you can make a match to keep her home?”

“I am not playing the karshoji blind patriarch!” Mehen said. “Life is not a godsbedamned Ash Day drama.”

“Then pull back your attack,” Uadjit said. “Do you think I like it when my son gets tongue-tied over foolish girls? It doesn’t matter. Whatever is happening between a pair of hatchlings behind closed doors has nothing to do at all with discussing refugees and asylum. Let me do what I do best, and save your snarling elder act for later.”

Mehen folded his arms over his chest as Uadjit rejoined the others, pride wounded more than he dared show. It’s because you love her, he told himself, because you only want what’s best for her. Because Havilar is missing and you can’t think straight. Because he really is a smug little hardjack and he abandoned her, tugging her back and forth with empty messages.

Which didn’t matter, he had to admit. Uadjit was right. He didn’t need to like Dahl. He didn’t need to scare him into behaving better, or make him prove he wasn’t going to bring Farideh to ruin and heartbreak. He just needed to know if Dahl was right about the giants and the Untherans.

And worse comes to worst, Mehen thought, he’s not Lorcan. He rubbed a hand over his face and edged back over to the group.

“So,” Namshita said, “which of you must I beg asylum from?”

“Djerad Thymar is a free city,” Uadjit said. “There’s nothing stopping you from entering. However, given the current tensions, it would be wisest if you entered with an escort and a clan’s backing.” She turned to Dahl. “Do you know if any of the Shestandeliath or Clethtinthtiallor survivors are elders?”

“That … is something we should probably check on,” Dahl said. He turned to the Calishite woman, who’d been watching the proceedings with a sharp and watchful eye. She shook her head.

“I’ll get Bodhar and Thost.”

“Get Mazarka,” Dahl said.

“If Shestandeliath or Clethtinthtiallor have elders who would back your request,” Uadjit explained, “that would ease the path. Better still if you’d be willing to tell us what we need to know to protect our own people and our cities.”

“You should know the Son of Victory will not stop until he’s won.” Kallan shot Mehen a significant look, which Namshita spotted. “I don’t say that in praise. I mean he will not admit defeat. I don’t know that he can. If you want to be free of him, you will have to destroy him, utterly.”

“Along with those who follow him,” Dumuzi said. “Wicked and innocent.”

“I will answer your questions,” Namshita said, “when you’ve given shelter to the people who risked their lives to defy him.”

Uadjit considered a moment. “Fair.”

“They ought to stay outside the pyramid while that’s settled,” Kallan chimed in. “And while you figure out if any of them are really on the side of Gilgeam.”

“Also fair,” Uadjit said, despite the dark look Namshita gave Kallan. “The city extends beyond the walls of the pyramid,” Uadjit assured her. “There will be shelter and food and safety. Ah!” Behind her, an owl-pierced old man with rust-colored scales came up to the slope, leaning on two human men—both bearded, one almost as tall as Mehen himself. “Let’s you and I speak to Clethtinthtiallor Zarjhan about his clan’s acknowledgment.”

Uadjit and Namshita headed down the slope, Uadjit taking hold of the Clethtinthtiallor elder’s arm and leading him back to where they might sit on a tumble of rocks. The two men came striding up the slope toward Dahl.

“You ought to go with her,” Dahl said to Mehen. “I think you and Namshita might get along better than you expect.”

“What says the wind?” the smaller one said. “We have a place to go? Oh, well met.” He nodded to Mehen, Kallan, and Dumuzi.

“This is, um, …” Dahl took another, unnecessary breath. “These are my brothers. Thost and Bodhar. This is Dumuzi, Kallan, and Mehen. Farideh’s father.”

“Oh,” the smaller one said with great significance. “Right. She’s adopted.” He grinned at Mehen. “And she puts a lot of sugar in her tea. Well met, goodman—goodman? Is that how I ought to say it?”

“Say what you like.”

Bodhar continued, greeting Kallan and Dumuzi. Mehen looked the other one over. Thost nodded back. “Well met. Those your horses?”

“Yes,” Mehen said. “All of them.” Uadjit’s chastisement came back to him. “Somni offered some help getting everyone back. You don’t have to walk.”

Thost shrugged. “We walk, then we walk.”

“Been walking a lot since we followed Dahl out of Harrowdale,” Bodhar said. “Besides, now we get to meet this mystery girl he’s so mad about.”

“Gods’ books, Bodhar. Don’t—”

“Hasn’t said a word about you, mind,” Bodhar said to Mehen. “Good or ill, good or ill.”

“Said he loves how much she loves her family,” Thost said. “Counts for some.”

“Right,” Bodhar said. “Forgot about that. So a little good.” He grinned at Mehen.

Dahl looked as if he were hoping a giant would come striding through and crush them all flat. “How far are we from Djerad Thymar?” he asked.

“Maybe two days walking,” Mehen said. “Three with all these folks.” He hesitated. “You want to take my horse and go on ahead with the others, you’ll get there in a day or so.”

Dahl hesitated as if he expected a trick. “Many thanks. The giants can speed things along, if you all are amenable to taking them up on their offer.”

“ ’Tain’t so bad as it seems,” Bodhar assured Mehen. “Not so bad as portals, anyhow.”

Kallan chuckled. “Speed’s handy, but I have to agree. Gives me a two-day headache.” He nodded at Dahl. “You can have my horse, get you both back quicker.”

“Again,” Dahl said, “many thanks.” He cleared his throat, turning to Mehen. “Is she all right?”

“None of us is all right,” Mehen said, and much as he wanted to ride off and leave Dahl with no more than that, he sighed and started to explain what exactly Dahl was insisting on walking into..

• • •

WHAT THE KARSHOJI HELLS? Havilar screamed as she found herself back in that plane of fog and light. It was a dream—it had to be the dream, confusing Brin and making him think things were true when they weren’t. She didn’t have a son. She couldn’t have a son.

You remember the Nine Hells in ways Farideh doesn’t, she realized. Farideh’s years there were a blankness, a hole in her memory—but Havilar had glimpses of devils and darkness and worse. Had they let her wake, at least a little?

She thought of the way her changed body made her feel clumsy and off-balance, her bosom alien and frustrating—and the way Farideh refused the same complaint. The way Farideh complained the dresses she’d borrowed from Havilar gaped at the bust.

If she’d needed to breathe, Havilar wasn’t sure she would have managed. She clutched her braid and wished it were her glaive or her sister or something useful.

Alyona stood, reaching for her. What happened?

Did you know? Havilar asked. About there being a baby?

Alyona blinked at her. Did he find it then?

The “it” Brin had been hunting for Bryseis Kakistos. The “it” Havilar should have known about, but didn’t. He’d found the missing heir. Which meant Bryseis Kakistos might know too. Which meant she might intend to use the baby for something terrible.

Where are you going? Alyona said as Havilar stood and moved for the fold in the fog.

She found the door herself this time, pulled herself through it, out into the fortress, where again she stood beside her own body.

PART VI

HIERARCHY

19 Mirtul, the Year of the Arch (1353 DR)
Aglarond

• • •

It took a great deal of effort, a great deal of magic, to let Alyona haunt her.

Caisys helped her find Titus Greybeard again, who in turn traded her texts mentioning soul sapphires, at a dear price. They didn’t speak of the succubus.

The demons, it happened, had ways to break a soul sapphire, and while none of them were what Bisera needed, she immersed herself in those spells, finding the pieces and paths to crack an opening in the prison, a door to let Alyona’s soul reach out, but not escape. A way to keep her sister bound to her, safely, that took her own soul to wedge the door open.

At first, Bisera’s nightmares raged. She should have dreaded them, but in each, she saw her sister once more—furious, yes; dangerous, indeed. But alive.

“I need to find a way to bring her back,” Bisera told Caisys. The priests of Selûne had cremated the body, not waiting for Bisera to return from her vengeance, not waiting for a proper priest. There were no tokens taken. The underpriests had burned everything—who would think any part of a tiefling lovely enough to take?

Bisera had gotten carried away, and what the Hag Countess had given her wasn’t power enough to make up the difference. She tried to call the night hag down again, but to no avail. She tried to call the erinyes back, but nothing came.

“You need a cleric,” Caisys had said. “And while I know a few, none of them can do what you’re asking.”

“You don’t have to help me.”

“Please,” Caisys said. “It’s more helping Alyona, isn’t it?”

I will find a way, she promised Alyona in her dreams. I will rescue you, I promise.

When the nightmares started to settle into something dim and mournful, Bisera found herself surprised by the return of Shetai. It was evening, the caravan drawn alongside the road to Ilmwatch, and she left to go pull water from a nearby stream. The presence of Alyona came with her—she could feel her twin’s ghost as though she walked beside her, and Bisera clutched the soul sapphire around her neck, as if she could protect Alyona from any further injustice.

She reached the stream and found an imp waiting there. “Are you Bisera?”

“Depends who’s asking,” she said, letting the magic she still channeled flood her fingertips.

“Shetai,” the imp said. It handed her a mirror, and as soon as she held it firm, the imp vanished back into the air.

The surface of the mirror flashed, and the face it showed a moment later was not the erinyes, but a pale creature the size of a mountain with piercing eyes and a wide, razor-lined mouth trimmed in paint.

“Bisera,” it said. “There you are. I have such news for you.”

Bisera frowned. “You aren’t Shetai.”

“I am and I’m not,” the creature said. It flourished a hand tipped with sharp, bloodied nails. “Promoted. There’s been a change in the regime of the Sixth Layer, you see. Malagarde is no more.”

“She’s dead?”

Shetai chuckled in a way Bisera couldn’t have imagined coming from the erinyes. “Yes and no. What matters is she is no longer Lord here. She displeased His Majesty, and that could not stand. I chose the correct side, as you can see. I serve Glasya, Lord of the Sixth and Princess of the Nine Hells.”

Bisera bit her tongue. “And so I assume this means the end of my pact. How convenient.”

Shetai’s dark eyes glittered. “Not at all. Your pact, perhaps, marks the sort of thing that His Majesty found distasteful in Malagarde’s methods—slapdash and without order. But the core of it intrigues him. Asmodeus has taken an interest.”

“Asmodeus?” Bisera asked. “The king of the Nine Hells?”

Shetai nodded slowly. “I mentioned it.”

Bisera felt as though she’d been crossing a marsh, and rather than being knee-deep, she’d just plunged to her waist. Beside her, Alyona felt frantic and cold—Bisera could nearly hear her screaming in the breath of the wind. “What does that mean?” Bisera asked. “For me?”

“It means,” Shetai said, “you should have a visitor soon enough.”

Soon enough—how long had it been? The sky was fully dark, the air cool at last, and the moon a sliver of light above, but Bisera could have sworn only a heartbeat had passed when she noticed the archdevil standing on the other side of the stream.

She would know later that this wasn’t him—only a dim reflection, an avatar of sorts—but in that moment, she had never seen anything so glorious or so terrifying as the king of the Hells.

“You’ve found yourself a tidy little connection to my kingdom,” he said, a voice like a promise in the dead of night. “Was that your doing, or Malagarde’s?”

“Mine,” she said, only a little bit of a lie.

“What a clever, clever girl you are,” he said, the praise slippery as fishes. “And how are you enjoying those powers?”

She forgot so much of that first meeting—but whatever fear and want and confusion the Hag Countess had caused in her, beside Asmodeus it was a trifle, shadows and scratchings. This was something altogether different, and it took all her will to keep her feet. I am no one’s slave, she thought.

“I don’t want a deal if you can’t do better than she did,” she said.

Asmodeus’s laugh etched itself into her bones. “Please, child. You stand before the master of the Nine Hells. What a night hag can give you is like the light a star gives compared to the midday sun. Name your terms, I’ll name my price.”

“First,” Bisera said, “I want my sister back.”

Asmodeus clucked his tongue. “A true resurrection. You’re asking an archdevil for the powers of a god.”

“Are you so far from being a god?”

She would never ever forget his smile as he said, “How funny you should ask that. I think we can suit each other nicely.”

• • •

12

2 Hammer, the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant (1487 DR)
Aglarond

FARIDEH MOVED AS IF IN A DREAM, SOME DISTANT PART OF HERSELF NOTING how out of place she must have looked, striding up to a cowherd’s cottage on a hill, wrapped in leather armor and holding tight to her sword. A sixth Brimstone Angel. A nephew. Havi’s son.

There had to be a mistake.

“Would I possibly waste this much effort on a mistake?” Sairché had said in her withering way. “Believe me, at the time I was as surprised as you are now. It was such a trial, making sure the babe thrived enough to be born, and then midwifing the whole thing, and carrying it off, without anyone noticing. There were plenty of times,” she went on, “I considered calling off the whole business.”

Whatever clemency Farideh had been inclined to offer, with worse villains to face, it vanished in the face of Sairché’s flippant remarks. Lorcan had to pull her bodily from the room.

“What’s done is done,” he told her, holding her tight. “What matters now is finding him.”

That, at least, Sairché had given up, and by the next afternoon, they stepped through the portal into a pastureland at the edge of Aglarond’s forest, Lorcan in his human disguise. The light was low, the hour later here than in Djerad Thymar.

“You can put that sword up,” Lorcan said. “We’re not walking into an ambush.”

“The sort of people who would take a baby from Sairché, no questions asked, and you’ll pardon me if I don’t trust them.”

“How many questions did you ask?” Lorcan said. “People forget to ask plenty of things when faced with their heart’s desires.”

Farideh stopped and turned on him. “Something changed again.”

Lorcan’s face became as still and implacable as a statue, and it only made her more certain. “Darling, if you’re going to be cryptic—”

“You know what I mean.” She studied him, not budging. “You’re back to normal, aren’t you?” Farideh said. “Whatever happened, you fixed it. You made it stop.”

“I am who I’ve always been,” Lorcan said. He hesitated. “I meant to offer before, but I can give you another spell. I think it will work this time. Put your sword away.”

She did, and he pulled her hands toward him, turning her palms up. “What is it?” she asked.

He laid his hands over hers, flexing his fingers. “Something useful.”

Farideh closed her hands into fists. “What is it?” she said again. Lorcan’s dark eyes met hers, and the memory of a time that might have cowed her shivered through the back of her thoughts. She said nothing.

“It will make a wall of fire around you,” Lorcan said, “burning anyone on the outside. Or inside if you mean it that way.”

“She’s still a tiefling,” Farideh said. “It won’t burn her.”

“It’s quite potent.” He nodded at her balled fists. She opened her hands again with only a little reluctance. She wouldn’t have to use it. It wouldn’t matter how potent it was.

Lorcan laid his hands across hers, the connection to the Nine Hells surging with a jolt of power that seemed to shoot up through the bones of her arms, into her spine, stretching her nerves beyond what they could contain. Lorcan’s hands slid forward suddenly, closing over her wrists and squeezing them tight enough to send a shock of pain through her. His black, black eyes threatened to sweep away whatever distance lay between them now, turning memories into present. The magic drove the breath out of her.

And then it was finished. She stood a moment, her hands still in Lorcan’s, reeling from the spell.

“Draw a semicircle with the rod’s tip,” he said. “Say fiornix.”

Farideh pulled her hands back. “Thank you.”

“Of course.” He hesitated another moment, then nodded toward the cottage. “They’re no one,” he said. “Barren couple. One tiefling, one human. Perfectly ordinary, but willing to deal. Sairché is a lot of things, but she isn’t a fool. She wouldn’t stash a Brimstone Angel just anywhere.”

“Not cultists?” Farideh asked. “Not warlocks?”

“As I said, she’s not a fool,” Lorcan said. “He’d have been found out immediately, and if he hadn’t, well, at a certain age, mortals tend to challenge what their parents taught them to hold dear. And if he didn’t, then all the worse—you get a warlock who knows entirely too much for your own good, growing up neck-deep in devils and spells. You get much better results putting a foundling somewhere ordinary.”

Arush Vayem, Farideh thought, wasn’t ordinary. Mehen wasn’t ordinary. Or was she wrong? After all, she’d taken the pact, she’d ended up lost in the middle of the Nine Hells machinations. Who was to say this wasn’t Caisys’s plan all along? She pushed those thoughts aside as they reached the stone cottage, and knocked. A chorus of cattle moaned from the pen on the cottage’s side.

The door opened to reveal a human woman with dark, curly hair pulled up in a knot at the back of her head. “Yes? Well met?”

“Well met,” Farideh said. “We’re looking for a tiefling boy.”

The woman looked Farideh up and down, eyes widening, then pressed a fist to her chest. “You can’t have him,” she said in the smallest of voices.

Yes, Farideh thought, no. “He’s in danger,” she said. “Can we come in?”

The woman shook her head. “She said … She said never to give …” Her voice broke. “What kind of danger?”

“Merida?” Behind her, a tiefling man maybe ten years older than Farideh, with a short beard and his hair tied back in a club at the nape of his neck. “Merida, what’s wrong?” As he caught sight of Farideh and Lorcan behind her, terror showed plain on his face. “Where’s Remzi?”

Merida turned and raced back through the house. Farideh’s heart cracked—whatever monsters she wanted these people to be, they weren’t Sairché’s minions. They weren’t child thieves. “Wait.”

“We’re friends of Sairché’s,” Lorcan said smoothly. “Might we come in?”

“No,” Farideh assured the man. “We’re not her friends. But we’re … Remzi’s. Someone is looking for him. Someone is planning to kidnap him and possibly kill him. We don’t want that to happen any more than you do. So, please, may we come in and discuss how to stop anyone from hurting Remzi?”

The man searched her face, looking as afraid of her as if she were Bryseis Kakistos herself come to steal his son. “You’re his real mother, aren’t you?”

“No.” Then: “I’m … I’m his aunt.”

The man looked her over again, as if debating what he might do to stop them. “Sairché sent you? Why didn’t she come herself?”

“She can’t,” Farideh said. “She’s trapped. Please, I don’t how much time we have. My name’s Farideh,” she added. “This is Lorcan.”

“Emmer,” the man said, nodding at them. He blew out a breath. “Come inside.”

Emmer led them into the front room of the cottage, where a cookfire burned under a little cauldron. He gestured at the wooden chairs around a table, but didn’t sit himself. “Your sister,” he said. “Is she dead?”

“No. But she’s in danger too.” Farideh swallowed hard against the growing lump in her throat. “She doesn’t know about him. I don’t think she even knows she was carrying. Don’t deal with devils,” she added, when Emmer gave her a curious look. “You don’t know what you’ll lose.”

Outside, the sun was setting, painting the walls of the little stone cottage in a golden light. Emmer lit a lantern on the table and closed the shutters one by one, plunging the room into secretive gloom. Merida came back into the room, carrying a child almost as long as she was, cradling the back of his head as though he were a babe. His arms were locked around her neck, his face buried against her shoulder, his skinny tail slashing anxiously. She spotted Farideh and stopped dead in her tracks. “You can’t have him,” she said, as if it were a simple fact.

“She’s his aunt,” Emmer said. The boy lifted his head and glanced back at Farideh from the corner of his eyes, angry and skeptical around the redness of tears. A fist of grief closed on her heart. His profile was so similar to Havilar’s—to her own—at that age. The eyes were Brin’s, the dark blond hair around his horns, just starting to curl back over his head.

“I don’t have an aunt,” Remzi said, not quite able to shake the quaver of tears.

“It’s all right,” Farideh said, dropping down into a chair. “I, um, I bet I know what you’re thinking. You think I’m going to tell you that you have to come away with me. That these aren’t your real parents and you have to come back to the ones you share blood with. But that’s not it. I wouldn’t say that. I know it’s not true.” She met Merida’s eye. “I was raised by someone who had nothing to do with my being born. I was raised by a man who’s not even the same race. But he’s my father. And nobody can change that, Remzi. I wouldn’t dare try to change it for you.”

Emmer cleared his throat. “She says they didn’t know.”

“How do you not know?” Merida demanded. “How do you not look if someone stole your child?”

“If we stole their child?” Emmer said. “You know they can’t search through the spells Sairché gave us.”

“It doesn’t matter right now,” Farideh said. “We can talk about what you want to do, what … my sister and her lover want to do, what Remzi wants, another time. What matters now is that Remzi is in danger.”

She told them the story of the Toril Thirteen, of Bryseis Kakistos and her attempt to reincarnate herself and bring down Asmodeus, how the ghost had returned and taken Havilar and was now hunting down the most powerful heirs of her coven, to finish what she’d begun. Fahideh didn’t watch Remzi as she told the story—she knew it was more than a child could understand, but she didn’t dare try to soften it, for fear his parents wouldn’t take her seriously.

Still, she felt his blue eyes boring into her.

“He has to come back to Djerad Thymar,” she said. “You can come with him. I think you should come with him.”

“He’s only a boy,” Merida said. “You said she wants the powerful ones—he’s not even … he doesn’t have a pact or what have you.”

The child of a Brimstone Angel and the royal line of Cormyr. It wouldn’t be Lachs or Adastreia Bryseis Kakistos went after. It would be Remzi, she felt sure of it. “It’s not what he is now,” Farideh said. “It’s what he could become. It’s what’s in his blood.”

“Thought you said blood didn’t matter,” Emmer said.

It doesn’t, Farideh thought, until it does. “Please,” Farideh said. “Bring him. We can stop her, but we can’t let her gather the heirs. Remzi is the last one.”

A window overlooking the cow pen blew open, a hot, bitter wind gusting through the little cottage. The cows started lowing, a chorus of frantic bleats. Lorcan shot to his feet. “Portal,” he hissed to Farideh.

Emmer started for the door, pulling on a quiver and grabbing a longbow. “Stay inside,” Farideh warned. “If the house is warded, you stand a chance. Hide Remzi.” She drew the rod from her sleeve, her sword from its sheath and headed out into the gloaming, calculating how fast she could drop one or the other and get Ilstan’s scroll out. This might be their only chance to catch Bryseis Kakistos.

The wind had faded to a snapping breeze by the time she stepped out of the house. The cows were still panicking, jostling themselves against the fence. The air tasted of ice and angry magic, brimstone and wintergreen. Lorcan came up beside her. “Maybe it was just the wind,” Farideh murmured.

“Doubtful,” Lorcan said. “I’ll go around the other side. You keep those haynoses in the house.”

Farideh glanced back at the cottage, to where Emmer was leaning out the door. She waved him back, out of sight.

Something yanked at her attention, the feeling of someone shouting her name. She looked up, expecting to see Havilar standing beside the cow pen, forgetting for a heartbeat it was Bryseis Kakistos, looking like something out of Farideh’s oldest nightmares: She wore Havilar’s leathers, but a blood-red cloak fluttered around her shoulders in the faint breeze, and every part of her that could hold a bit of jewelry did, all of them humming with magic. Worse, instead of Havilar’s glaive, she carried a staff with a scarlet gem at the tip, a mockery of Havilar’s precious polearm.

“I dearly hope,” she said with Havilar’s voice, “that you’ve come to give me some good news. Because if you’ve come to thwart me, Farideh, I doubt you’re going to like the outcome. Where’s the boy?”

“I don’t know,” Farideh said, stalling. “We only just arrived. Did you know about him?”

It was hard not to see Havilar despite the wicked smile that wasn’t at all her own. “Didn’t you?”

“Sairché only just confessed to hiding him. My father wants him safe,” she added, a plausible reason that had nothing at all to do with Bryseis Kakistos.

“Sairché survived?” Bryseis Kakistos laughed. “Resourceful little cockroach. Tell the dragonborn that my blood is none of his concern. Without the boy, Asmodeus wins.” Her eyes flicked to the weapons Farideh held, and she clucked her tongue. “You aren’t thinking clearly, my dear. What do you intend to do with those?”

Farideh didn’t dare glance at the far corner of the cow pen where Lorcan would surely be coming around any moment. She sheathed the sword. “Do you think I’d stroll into the home of someone Sairché trusted without arming myself?” She glanced back at the house, checking to make certain Emmer had stayed out of sight. “I think she must have warned them. What do you need the boy for?”

For a moment, Farideh dared to hope she might bluff the Brimstone Angel. Havilar’s golden eyes studied her face, as if looking for a hint of subterfuge. Ilstan’s scroll felt like a burning beacon at her waist—but the aftermath of it yawned wide in Farideh’s thoughts. Once she’d captured the Brimstone Angel, they wouldn’t have much time to decide what came next.

Then her gaze flicked up to the cottage, to where Emmer was leaning out the door, arrow nocked and aimed at Bryseis Kakistos. She gave a short laugh, and pointed the staff at him. A burst of light exploded from the crystal at the tip, expanding into a net that wrapped around the shepherd, yanking him bodily from the cottage and dragging him toward the Brimstone Angel.

“You nearly had me,” she said. “Maybe this one has a better answer.”

All instinct, Farideh pointed the rod. “Adaestuo!” she cried, sending a bolt of bruised-looking energy streaking across the field toward her twin. It crashed into Bryseis Kakistos, splashing over an invisible shield without doing much more than startling her. The net fizzled. Farideh took two steps forward and carved an arc through the air with the rod. “Fiornix!”

A wall of flames erupted out of the ground, surrounding her and Emmer. It rose too high to see Bryseis Kakistos on the other side, nearly twice Farideh’s height. The spell seemed to burn at Farideh’s thoughts, as if it were trying to break away. Emmer scrambled backward, trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and the fire.

“Get up!” she shouted at Emmer. “Get back in the house!”

A burst of fear exploded in her chest, enough to knock the wind from her and break her hold on the spell. The wall collapsed, flames extinguished, but there on the other side of the wall stood the Brimstone Angel, wreathed in the flames of Asmodeus’s power. Wings of fire unfolded from her back, and she smiled at Farideh.

“You don’t know when to quit, do you?”

Farideh pressed the fear down—it was only the magic, the blessing she’d fought against so hard for months—but a seething envy remained, and shocked her to her core. “I know killing that man doesn’t benefit you at all,” Farideh managed. “Just a convenience.”

The Brimstone Angel smiled. “If you’re going to be trouble, you ought to know that I’ve all but settled things with Lord Crownsilver, assuming we can figure out the actual transfer. If you can’t behave and play your part, then you are not a need or a convenience. Understood?”

Twin blasts of energy slammed into her armored chest, driving a cry from Bryseis Kakistos and extinguishing the flames. Lorcan came around the edge of the cow pen, wand and sword out.

“If you think things are settled with Lord Crownsilver,” he drawled, “then I doubt you know the little Tormite well at all. Step away from my warlock.”

Bryseis Kakistos looked back at him, as though he were only an old acquaintance come through the door. “Oh there you are,” she said. “I have something of yours.” She murmured a word that seemed to crawl through Farideh’s ears and a glittering rent appeared in the air before her. She reached into it like a pocket and pulled out a scroll as long as her forearm, tightly wrapped and capped with copper end pieces. Lorcan stopped dead in his tracks and she grinned. “Have you seen this?” she asked Farideh, waggling the scroll.

“What is it?” Farideh asked.

“I think you’ll find it interesting,” Bryseis Kakistos said in her singsong way. “Full of answers.” She held out the scroll. “Perhaps a trade. For the boy.”

“I don’t have the boy,” Farideh said.

Bryseis Kakistos gave Farideh a disapproving look. “Enough of this—you of all people should know my cause is just. How else can we loose the bonds Asmodeus has put us in? How else can we end this?” She held the scroll out again. “Honey for the pot. If you ask nicely, I’ll even tell you what it is first.”

“Farideh,” Lorcan said in warning.

Farideh! someone screamed, as if in echo, pulling all her thoughts away from the strange scroll, back toward the house.

• • •

HAVILAR BLINKED AND found herself standing not in the fortress as she expected, but in a field somewhere, in the middle of a cow pen next to a stone cottage. Her body stood not far off, holding tight to a charm pinned to her cloak and watching as Farideh and Lorcan crept out of the door.

Karshoj, she thought. Her hands itched for her glaive—let Farideh distract Bryseis Kakistos, come around behind, hit her quick and let Farideh break a spell out when she turns to stop it. Lorcan slipped around the back of the cottage and Farideh waved at someone in the cottage to stay back.

Farideh! Havilar shouted. Her sister looked up. In the same moment, Bryseis Kakistos let go of the invisibility charm.

“I dearly hope,” she said, and the sound of her own voice twisted to someone else’s words made Havilar’s skin crawl, “that you’ve come to give me some good news. Because if you’ve come to thwart me, Farideh, I doubt you’re going to like the outcome. Where’s the boy?”

“I don’t know,” Farideh said, and Havilar cringed—she was such a bad liar. “We only just arrived. Did you know about him?”

Him—the boy was in the cottage. Her son was in the cottage.

No, she said. It’s a mistake. Havilar curled her hands around the air as if she could will a weapon into them. Stop talking, she thought, and do something!

But Farideh wouldn’t, she realized. She might be talking to the Brimstone Angel, but she was also looking at Havilar. Anything she did to Bryseis Kakistos might hurt Havi. Havilar cursed. Maybe she could do something else? Maybe she could—

Havilar pulled herself away from Bryseis Kakistos, floating into the house. The electric jangle of a protective spell shook her being to its very edges, but it didn’t stop her from coming in. Just a house, just a room, just afire—she drifted farther, feeling the tether to her body grow more taut. A stirring in the back rooms, a woman struggling with the latch on a cellar door … and a child beside her, a boy with horns. Havilar stopped, hanging just behind the woman, where she could see the boy’s face.

“Gods be damned, Emmer,” the woman cursed, frantic and frustrated. “Of all the times to put off fixing this damned door.”

The boy seemed to look directly at her. His eyes widened, full of terror. Havilar suspected her face looked the same—it did look the same, or terribly close. Brin’s dream was true. She was looking at their son.

Karshoji Hells, she said.

The boy bolted, heading for the door.

“Remzi!” the woman shouted, trying to catch hold of him. She fell onto one knee as she lunged. “Remzi, stop!”

Havilar sped after the boy, following the thread that led back to her body, reaching as if she could catch hold of him—he couldn’t be allowed to cross the threshold.

It came to her, a moment too late, that if he could see her, then so far as Remzi could tell, a ghost was chasing him, and that might be far scarier than anything on the other side of the door.

Farideh! Havilar screamed, hoping beyond hope that her sister would hear. Whether it was Havilar’s scream or Remzi’s footsteps running out of the cottage, Farideh did look back, away from Bryseis Kakistos, away from the copper-capped scroll she was holding out to Farideh.

“Remzi, get back in the house!” Farideh shouted.

In the same moment, Lorcan pointed his wand at the scroll. Magic, invisible but for the sizzling, searing disturbance it left in the air, streaked across the distance. It devoured the scroll, burning it to a cloud of ashes and flakes of charred copper. Bryseis Kakistos pulled her hand back, surprised. Remzi stopped short of the tiefling man who clutched a painful-looking burn.

“Well met, dear boy,” Bryseis Kakistos said. The tip of her staff glowed and a glowing net shot out, all made of magic. It wrapped around the boy, who screamed. The tiefling man made a grab for him, but missed. Farideh drew her sword, swung it through the spell’s long rope. The blade slid past as if it had cut through nothing more than a sunbeam.

For Remzi, on the other hand, the bands of light were like solid rope. He fought and kicked and grabbed at the grass as Bryseis Kakistos dragged him nearer. Havilar surged forward, grabbing hold of the net herself. The magic burned her palms, and though the net slowed, she had no way to stop it.

Again, Lorcan flung missiles of magic at the Brimstone Angel. Farideh grabbed hold of Bryseis Kakistos by one wrist and yanked her out of the path. Havilar nearly shouted at her—what kind of pothach move had that been?—only to realize she’d forgotten she was looking at her own body. The missiles streaked by harmlessly, but the moment of distraction made the net evaporate. Remzi, suddenly unencumbered, sprawled belly-first in the dust.

Bryseis Kakistos’s staff began to glow again. Farideh slammed into the other tiefling as the spell erupted from the staff, searing a line of violet energy across the sky, away from Lorcan. Bryseis Kakistos shifted her weight, twisting so that Farideh fell instead of her, landing flat on her back on the ground. She planted the crystal of the staff in the middle of Farideh’s chest.

“The trouble is,” Bryseis Kakistos said, “she’s your sister. You won’t hurt her. But I will hurt you.” She spat a word of jagged Infernal, a short blast of magic exploding from the tip, sending hot magic over Farideh’s chest and arms. She cried out, spasmed.

Fari! Havilar screamed, and pressed toward her.

As Farideh lay on the grass, trying to regain her breath, Bryseis Kakistos grabbed hold of the boy by one arm. With a swirl of her staff, she reopened the portal, pulling Havilar with her into the smell of ice and wood smoke. The pull of the portal dragged her back across the plane, swiftly as a watercourse, and she found herself flung back into that place of fog and emptiness with the memory of her body being slammed against the ground.

Alyona looked down at her. Are you all right? What happened? Where did you go?

Havilar started to answer, but found her voice breaking on a sudden lump in her throat. She wept, even though the tears weren’t real and the breath she gasped was only a memory, and that somehow made it worse. Alyona kneeled down beside her, lifting her from the cloudy ground and cradling her close.

How could you not tell me? Havilar asked. I had a son.

I thought you knew, Alyona told her.

Havilar pushed away from her, started to … say … something. What had she known? She studied Alyona’s face as if it might remind her. Farideh was there, she said. She’s … She’s figuring things out. Havilar shut her eyes and tried to steer her thoughts back on course. I forgot what I was saying.

That happens, Alyona said sadly. The longer you’re not connected to your body this way the harder it is to keep your thoughts together. She smoothed Havilar’s hair back. This is taking longer than I think Bisera expected. Perhaps we should ask her to give you some time in your own body.

Havilar peered at Alyona, sure she’d misheard. You can talk to her?

Of course, Alyona asked. I talk to her all the time. Haven’t you noticed?

This time Havilar did scream—in frustration, in rage, in grief. How cruel were the gods to let her end up here and give her someone who seemed so close to being helpful and yet who was so incapable of helping her manage anything? Alyona might be kind, but she seldom made sense … and now Havilar wasn’t going to make sense. She wasn’t going to make sense and her sister might be dead—but at the very least she wasn’t here—and she had a son no one told her about and she was all alone, except for Alyona, and she didn’t have her glaive. Havilar curled into a ball and sobbed and sobbed, for all the good it did, but in that moment it was all she could manage.

Alyona’s arms wrapped around her. There, there, she said. We’ll both go and talk to her. The moment she’s asleep. This will all be over soon. I promise..

• • •

EMMER’S SHOUT OF anguish rivaled Farideh’s screams, still echoing in Lorcan’s ears as he raced across the farmyard. The tiefling cowherd crawled toward where Farideh still lay writhing in the dirt and grabbed hold of what remained of her shirt sleeve.

“Where did she take him?” he demanded, shaking her. “Where did she take him?”

“Erlkazar,” Farideh gasped. “Maybe … I don’t …” She broke off with a cry of pain, gritting her teeth, and a fresh tide of fear rose in Lorcan. He shoved Emmer away as he reached her.

“Where are your healing potions?” he demanded as he dropped to her side. She shook her head—back to Djerad Thymar, it was the only choice. He plucked the portal ring from the chain around his neck and scooped her from the ground. She cried out again—the remains of the armor still steamed and his hand burned where it brushed a buckle. “I’m sure Mehen will have words for you about rushing into battle without proper equipment,” he said, even while some distant part of his brain began to panic.

“Stop,” she said. “We can’t … leave them.”

“We can and we will.”

“Stop!” she cried.

He stopped walking, but he held her all the more tightly. “Darling,” he said in a low voice, “I cannot take them through the Hells. Whatever you were thinking to promise, they would lose their minds at the sight of the fingerbone tower and you know it. That aside, you are in a great deal of pain and you need healing, now!”

“Put … me down,” she said.

Instead he turned so that she could see Emmer, still on the ground, Merida standing in the door. “You’ll have to excuse us,” he said, letting his disguise spell drop with a shiver of needle-sharp pain. “Your son is as necessary to us as he is to you and I promise we’ll be in touch about his circumstances.” Before Farideh could protest again, Lorcan blew through the portal ring that pulled them both back through the planes and into the Hells. Farideh, for all she gritted her teeth and scowled, kept her eyes shut tight, her face turned toward Lorcan, until he opened the portal again, to the Verthisathurgiesh enclave in Djerad Thymar.

He set her down on the bed. “You need out of that armor,” he said, reaching for the still-hot buckles.

Farideh grabbed his hand. “Don’t.”

“Do you imagine this is a seduction?” he said, trying to keep his voice level. The remnants of Graz’zt’s curse, he told himself. The triple urge to scream at her, to panic, to leave and cut his losses like he ought to. He ought to force a deal, some little part of him noted. She’d make any kind of deal right now.

“Mehen’s … room,” she said. “On the … dresser. Burn salves.”

This is what happens when you stop thinking like a devil, he told himself as he bolted from the room. They start giving orders. They start thinking they’re driving the team. They start figuring out how to push and pull you.

Yell at her later, he thought, as if that would regain anything.

Lachs and Adastreia looked up as he strode through the central room. “What happened?” Adastreia called. “What did you do?”

“We don’t need you anymore!” Lorcan shouted. He plunged into Mehen’s room, everything organized in tidy precision so the box of salves and healing supplies was easily snatched up.

“Is Bryseis dead?” Lachs called as he sprinted past again.

Not dead, Lorcan thought, returning to Farideh. Closer than ever.

Farideh had managed to get her leather brigandine partway off, lying back panting on the bed. The skin beneath was angry red and weeping, though thankfully not charred away. He threw the healing kit on the bed, and ignoring Farideh’s attempted protests, unbuckled the rest of the armor.

“Did you find the Brimstone Angel?” Adastreia stood in the doorway, examining Farideh with a callous sort of curiosity. Lorcan ignored her, pulling pots and bottles from the kit, all of them labeled in Draconic.

“Which of these is for burns?” he shouted.

“Oh for blessed Beshaba’s sake.” Adastreia sat down on the opposite side of the bed. She examined the burns across Farideh’s chest and neck and shoulders. She reached up for the necklace she wore, sorting through the beads by touch. With one careful hand, she laid her fingertips against Farideh’s sternum. She whispered a word that sent the feeling of a moonbeam slicing through the clouds in Lorcan’s brain, and a faint silver glow over Farideh’s reddened skin. Lorcan blinked, his panic all erased. Farideh’s skin was still raw-looking, but the skin was intact, the weeping and blood gone.

“Better?” Adastreia asked.

“Better,” Farideh said, still breathless. “Thank you.”

Adastreia stood, dusting off her hands. Lorcan scowled. “Prayer beads?”

“I don’t like being in pain,” Adastreia said carelessly. “I’m not such a fool as to make myself beholden to Kulaga’s opinion of what I might need.” She folded her arms. “I assume if you don’t need us, that means you lost the sixth heir. I assume that Bryseis Kakistos came to fetch him, if you’re burned like that, so—”

“Give me a moment,” Lorcan said. “I’ll call on Kulaga when she’s settled.”

“I was going to say,” Adastreia went on, “that means you’re on to the staff, and Lachs had a notion about that you might want to hear.”

“What is it?” Farideh said. “No, wait, let me … Let me get dressed again.” She pulled the sheet up over her. “He can tell me.”

“I can tell you,” Adastreia said. “It’s not on this plane. Stands to reason. Asmodeus is a god here, so hiding something here—especially something that’s connected to him on such a fundamental level—would go poorly. In a hundred years, he would have found it and reclaimed it. It’s not here, and if Bryseis Kakistos thinks she can get hold of it, it’s a fair wager that it’s not in the Nine Hells.”

“Excellent,” Lorcan said. “Only ten thousand planes to search.”

Adastreia snorted. “Don’t be dramatic. Lachs and I will help you narrow it down. While we wait for Kulaga and Shetai.” She left the room without waiting for an answer.

Farideh blew out a breath. “I have no idea what to do with her.”

“It could be worse,” Lorcan said. “She could be actively trying to kill you. Which pot is the burn salve?”

“I’m fine. This will heal.”

“Darling, humor me?” he said, hating the brittle sound of his own voice. She considered him, wary and worried.

“The clay one with the red labeling.” Farideh pursed her mouth. “Are we doing the right thing?”

Lorcan rifled through the pouch’s contents. “I told you this isn’t a seduction.”

“I mean, should we be trying to stop her? She has a point—you had the same point—if she doesn’t do this ritual, Asmodeus wins.”

“Asmodeus always wins,” Lorcan said. “Are you planning to sacrifice your sister’s child to realize that?”

“Maybe there’s another way to go about it,” Farideh said. Then, “I just want Havilar back safe.”

Lorcan stopped. “You can’t listen to her,” he said. “It’s dangerous.”

“As dangerous as listening to Asmodeus?” Farideh asked.

“Easily,” Lorcan said. “Do you remember what I told you? In life she was a monster. A madwoman. A killer of her own kind. She coerced the Toril Thirteen into sacrifice—”

“All of them?” Farideh asked. “It seems like some were eager enough.” She shook her head. “Why change her mind now? Why make it all out to be a mistake?”

“Because she feels cheated,” Lorcan said. “Isn’t that obvious? She wants revenge.”

“But she has the powers now,” Farideh pointed out. “She’s Chosen. That’s what he promised.” She pursed her lips, deep in thought as Lorcan found and opened the pot of ointment. “Is that all he promised?”

“It’s a fairly standard agreement,” Lorcan said, scooping amber jelly from the jar and smearing it over the burn across her neck and chest. Farideh gasped in sudden pain, sinking her fingers into his shoulder like claws. It sent a muddled rush of pain and pleasure and anger through him. “Shit and ashes!”

“Sorry!” she cried, but it took a moment longer for her fingers to unlock. “Sorry,” she said again, and she seemed to remember, as he did, how fiercely, how passionately she’d gripped him other times. How similar this seemed, even if it wasn’t a seduction.

Farideh pulled the now greasy sheet up over her. “I … I can do this myself now.”

“Do you want to?” Lorcan asked, his eyes never leaving hers.

“I need to.” She took the pot from him. “Thank you … for helping.”

“What else am I here for?” Lorcan asked. The god’s orders rang in his thoughts: Stay by her side … You know how to make certain … You might even know how to be certain … Lorcan cleared his throat.

“There’s no question now that she can track me,” he said. “The pradixikai too once they realize Sairché’s out of reach.”

Farideh didn’t look up from her awkward self-ministrations. “I thought they didn’t want you.”

“They want Sairché,” he agreed. “But they’ll spread their net soon enough.”

Farideh nodded toward the dressing table. “Can you get my spare shirt?”

Lorcan gritted his teeth. Once, he would have been sure she was only missing his meaning. Now? He handed her the shirt. “Would you share the protection spell again?” he asked bluntly. “Or am I to fend for myself?”

Farideh said nothing for a moment, shrugging into fresh clothing as if it didn’t matter in the least that he was standing there. “I’m not sleeping with you,” she said finally.

“Presumptuous,” Lorcan said. “All I asked about was protection magic.”

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t pretend I’m too stupid to know what you’re doing.”

Think like a human, he told himself. Talk like a devil. “Making sure you know where I stand?” Lorcan said. “Darling, you make your own decisions—you’ve always made your own decisions, good or ill. You chose Dahl. Now, I have my own opinions about that—we’ve been over them. Moreover, I think you have a great deal more important things to do than worry about which fellow warms your bed. I’m hardly so desperate as to press you when you’ve got your sister to worry about and gods to untangle. When this is all through, and Dahl is still gods’ know where, then I might press my suit. But now? Please.” He regarded her in a way that ought to look concerned, vaguely wounded. “I’m your ally.”

Farideh looked away. “I’m sorry. You’ve been … You’ve been helping in ways no one else can. I know that.” She drew her dagger and handed it over to him. He made sure his fingertips brushed hers the barest possible degree—a reminder, not an overture. “Do it.”

“Do you want to wait for the salve to do its work?”

“Everything already hurts,” she said, extending her arm and rolling the sleeve up past her elbow. “What’s one more scratch?” She cut the thin skin there, swiftly, without hesitating the way she had the last time they’d done this, then handed Lorcan the weapon and heaved herself from the bed.

Lorcan slashed his own arm, black blood smearing into red along the well-worn blade. The powers of the Nine Hells surged around the blade, around the both of them as he stood, as she moved closer to him. He spoke the words of the spell, the magic that would let him borrow a measure of the protection spell some god had bestowed on her. Farideh’s eyes locked on his, flinching slightly as the spell built, no doubt surging through the brand that marked her upper arm.

He released the dagger, the spell buoying it between them. The blood exploded from the blade of the knife, the spray of droplets fine enough to coat them both and leave no trace at all. Lorcan’s hands shot out, grabbed hold of her and pulled her close.

Mine—the only thought that pierced the wall of power that knotted together around them. His thoughts blurred into the spell and his pulse beat a tattoo against his brain. A flicker of fear crossed Farideh’s features. Mine, he thought.

The spell finished, vanished into the air. Farideh gasped as if she hadn’t been breathing and took a step back. The magic that wound around them persisted, a tether that kept him bound to her side. She brushed her hands over her arms, as if trying to dislodge the vague presence of the spell.

“All right?” she asked.

“Seems in order,” Lorcan said calmly.

She ran a distracted hand through her hair. “Good. All right.” She wet her mouth before looking up at him. “I meant to ask, what was that?” she asked. “That scroll she was trying to trade? Was that yours? That’s why you said she can find you?”

Lorcan held perfectly still. Dahl’s agreement—the copper-capped scrolls were copies of deals created for Glasya’s recorders. Bryseis Kakistos could have gotten it while she was impersonating Sairché, and what else could she sow such fast-growing chaos with?

It meant the Brimstone Angel knew about Dahl. She knew about the deal.

Lorcan held her gaze, feeling the half-lie burning on his tongue before he spoke it. “I don’t know.” You don’t know, he told himself. It could be any agreement in Malbolge. You don’t know.

“Why did you destroy it then?”

“I panicked,” he said, again the half-lie. “It might have been cursed or a trap. If she wanted you to have it, it couldn’t have been good.”

Farideh studied him a long moment. “Well,” she said finally, “I suppose we’re safe from that at least.”

Lorcan smiled at her, but his thoughts were on the other nine copies of the deal, which were stored around the Hells. A security against reckless mortals thinking to destroy their contracts and a liability when it came to Bryseis Kakistos.

13

3 Hammer, the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant (1487 DR)
Djerad Thymar, Tymanther

SODDEN HELLS,” THOST MUTTERED AS THEY PASSED THROUGH THE GATES to Djerad Thymar late in the evening. “Every soul in this place is scaly.”

“Except this girl of Dahl’s, I s’pose,” Bodhar added.

Dahl kept his eyes locked on the middle of Mehen’s back, wondering how likely it was that the dragonborn was leading him back just to make it absolutely clear Dahl had no chance of repairing things with his daughter, and good riddance, which would be just exactly what he needed while everything else seemed to be slipping out of his grasp.

Calm, he told himself. Calm.

Before they’d left Somni and the dreaming giants, the giants had found another group of dragonborn refugees—these with piercings that announced their clan as Prexijandilin, apparently, and Yrjixtilex. Kallan had rushed off, but when he returned, it was clear these weren’t the family he couldn’t contact.

“Line of Nerinal,” he said gruffly. “Apple orchards near the foothills.” Tales of their farm torn in half by the planar storm, tales of the Prexijandilin’s holding nearly wiped out by a landslide that swept away their livestock but stopped short of living quarters. They were all heading to Djerad Thymar, and glad to hear it still stood. In the end, they deemed it best to use the giants’ powers and speed the travel of everyone together. The horses would need less rest that way, and their trail would be shorter, and no one would worry about whether they were treating the elders poorly, because everyone would be swept along together.

And now three giants slept beyond the gates of Djerad Thymar, lying on their backs and smiling up at the clear night sky as they dreamed. The Untherans remained beyond the gates, for the moment camping between the sleeping giants—whether out of respect for the dragonborn’s customs or caution for their actions remained to be seen.

“Never thought I’d see such a thing,” Dahl heard a dragonborn woman with silver skewers through her jaw mutter as he followed Mehen into the city.

“The giants or the maunthreki?” her companion asked.

Dahl blew out a breath. Uadjit had gone ahead, to speak with her clan’s patriarch. Dumuzi had stayed behind among the Untherans, despite his mother’s suggestions he do otherwise. Mira stayed behind as well, to ease the language barrier for the Untherans.

“Utu came and found me again,” Mira had told Dahl before they’d started out that morning. “He says a lot of them don’t trust the dragonborn. That they don’t want to go to Djerad Thymar. That some of the dragonborn refugees are saying they ought to make an example of the Untherans.”

“No one is saying that!” Shestandeliath Mazarka insisted when Dahl confronted her. “If anything, Gilgeam’s spies are among them, waiting to make an example of us.” She—and most of the Vayemniri—had left quickly after arriving in Djerad Thymar.

“I’ll find her,” Kallan had said when Dahl noted her absence.

“Go,” Namshita had said when he asked about Utu. “I will deal with my people. You see if your beliefs in the Vayemniri are true.” There was nothing left in Dahl’s way but several hundred stairs and his own fears.

“Would you look at that?” Bodhar said, as they came into the interior of the pyramid city, a shaft a thousand feet high stretched up through the center, full of a magical glow. Balconies projected from every slanting wall, dripping with plants that filled the air with unfamiliar scents. “Feels like we fell into a different world.”

Thost eyed the dragonborn eyeing him. “Ayup.” Dahl said a little prayer to himself that his brothers wouldn’t gawk at Farideh the way they did at the dragonborn passing by.

“Did you know they came in normal size?” Dahl heard one young woman whisper in Draconic, her eyes locked on Thost as he strode by, as if Oghma meant to remind him such things came from all sorts of sources.

“Everyone speaks … um, dragonborn here?” Bodhar asked Mehen.

“Draconic,” Mehen said. “And the common tongue. Worse comes to worst, your brother can translate, I’m sure.”

“Can you?” Bodhar asked.

“Yeah, some,” Dahl said.

“What’s that say?” Bodhar asked, pointing across the path.

Dahl squinted at the sign. “It’s a shop that sells pasties.”

“Huh,” Bodhar said. “What sorts?”

“It’s a sign, not a bill of fare,” Dahl said irritably. “Probably all sorts.”

“You all right?” Thost asked.

“Fine.” I love and miss you more than I can say, her last letter had read. But how many days had passed since then?

Bodhar squinted at him. “For someone you were willing to pop me in the jaw for the honor of—”

“For the last time, I’m sorry!”

“I’m just saying, you look like you’re heading for the hangman’s noose!”

“You’re shaking,” Thost noted.

Dahl blew out a breath. “She doesn’t …” He stopped himself. She doesn’t know I can’t talk to her, he thought. She doesn’t know what Lorcan’s done. I don’t know what he’s been telling her and I don’t know if she even thinks I’m still alive. He thought, not for the first terrible moment, about what might have happened if Farideh thought he was dead, and Lorcan turned up to apply the right pressures—

“I don’t know what’s happened since I saw her last,” Dahl said, driving the image from his mind and dancing around the realities of the situation. “I don’t know … I don’t know if I can make it up to her.”

Mehen made a low, irritated noise deep in his throat and turned so swiftly that Dahl nearly crashed into him. “I am not going to pretend I’m fond of you,” Mehen said. “I am not going to tell you that you’re anything close to what my daughter deserves. But I will tell you I’m already done listening to this whimper-whining. Get your head together. Because if nothing else, right now, you remind her she doesn’t need to go back to Lorcan, and that, I prize.” He bared his teeth briefly, not a smile, not a grimace, but something swift and agitated. “And you make her happy, for whatever reason, so don’t ruin what you have.”

Dahl felt certain he would never get anything closer to approval from Mehen, and though it didn’t sweep away his worries—or the sharp things Mehen had said about him back before they left—Dahl quelled the panic until they reached the Verthisathurgiesh enclave.

Bodhar whistled as they passed through the massive doors. “Fancy.” He peered up at the frieze running along the top of the wall, a running scene of dragonborn battling dragons and kobolds and skeletal dragonborn. Above the door at the end of the hallway was a red dragon perched atop an erupting volcano, a fat faceted garnet set into the mountain’s heart.

“Some kind of story?” Bodhar whispered.

Mehen started to answer, but Dahl was already speaking. “The Tale of the Crippled Mountain,” he said. “It’s where his clan takes their name from. They fought a dragon tyrant and triggered a volcano to kill him. Oh.” Mehen glanced back at Dahl, puzzled. “Vayemniri,” Dahl said. “Ash-Marked Ones.”

“Did Farideh tell you that?” he asked.

“I was interested,” he said, a little defensive maybe. “Where is she?”

Mehen turned back to the path. “I don’t know where we’re going to put you. Even with …” He broke off, silent for a moment. “We’re down a few,” he said flatly, “but then we’ve added some others.”

Havilar and Brin missing, Dahl remembered. It was a wonder Mehen had a civil word in his mouth. They turned down several corridors, winding through the mazelike enclave for so many turns that when they finally pushed through a door into the little sitting room, Dahl was startled to find an end to their wandering, and Farideh sitting on a low couch with two other people, not fifteen feet from him.

She looked up and saw Mehen first, coming swiftly to her feet. “Mehen!” she said. “Something awful’s happened, I—” But whatever new horror had interjected itself, it would have to wait. Three steps from Mehen she noticed Dahl and stopped, dead in her tracks.

A part of Dahl believed so surely that this moment would be like something out of an epic or a chapbook, full of poetry and beauty, a story he would always recall. But he couldn’t have said what her face looked like when she recognized him, which of them moved first, or given a single detail of what was in the room. She was just in his arms again.

There had been times in the past month where Dahl had thought, surely, he had misremembered the feeling of Farideh in his arms. That it couldn’t be all that special, that he was acting like a sop. That somehow the sureness of her that had saved him in the presence of Graz’zt was only because he’d convinced himself out of stubbornness. But for the first time in a month, with gods and demons and devils and worse still circling them, once more in her embrace, he felt as if everything would be all right.

“I wasn’t sure,” she whispered, her voice thick. “I didn’t know if you were coming back. Where have you been?”

He nearly answered—there was nothing he wanted so badly as to answer—but he caught himself. He buried his face in the crook of her neck and held her tighter. It sufficed, at first, but then she pushed him back, cupped his cheek. “Dahl? Are you all right?”

Bodhar stepped up beside them, tapping Farideh on the shoulder. She turned to him, startled. “Well met, sorry. Um, I’m Dahl’s brother—we’re Dahl’s brothers, me and Thost. Heard … well, not a lot about you—Dahl’s not the most forthcoming soul, right?”

“Bodhar—” Dahl started.

“You oughta know he can’t talk to you,” Bodhar finished. “Some kind of magic or something”

Farideh’s eyes widened, but Dahl could not so much as nod. “What happened?” she asked.

No one answered—no one could have answered. Only Dahl and Lorcan knew. Farideh looked from him to his brothers and back. “Did you make a deal with someone?” she whispered.

Again, he couldn’t answer—he couldn’t speak to Farideh and he couldn’t tell anyone about the deal he’d made with Lorcan that had let him reach his family in time to save them. “Bodhar,” he said, carefully looking away from Farideh. “Could you tell Farideh when you have a chance that I … I haven’t exhausted my resources on this? I will figure it out. I promise.”

Bodhar squinted at Dahl. “Can you promise that?”

The door to one of the bedrooms opened and a strikingly handsome human man with dark blond hair curling to the collar of his leather armor came out, looking annoyed. He spotted Dahl and his eyes widened.

Dahl let go of Farideh—forgot Farideh. Every thought in his head evaporated, except for the sudden searing rage boiling out of his chest, the sureness in his step as he darted across the room toward Lorcan, pulled by the blessing and the curse of Graz’zt. The cambion scrambled backward into the room he’d just left, trying to shut the door, but he wasn’t quick enough.

There are monsters in the dreaming world too—Somni’s voice went through Dahl’s head as he slammed into the closing door with his shoulder, forcing it open. You don’t want to do this, he managed, but the taste of ashes in his mouth said it was a lie. He stormed into the room, noting nothing but Lorcan, scrambling backward.

“Sairché!” Lorcan shouted. “Hit him!”

“Why would I do that?” Dahl heard a woman say as he closed the distance and swung at Lorcan’s face. The cambion dodged, grabbed his fist, but even as he forced Dahl’s strike aside, Dahl’s left hand was swinging up. He watched his knuckles slam into the hard bone of the cambion’s jaw, but felt nothing at all, not even when Lorcan hit him back, right in the stomach.

“Dahl!” Farideh cried. “Stop! Stop!”

You think you’re escaping, Graz’zt sang in Dahl’s head. But you can’t flee your own true nature …

A haze had closed over Dahl’s vision, his arms hardly seemed his own. He watched himself draw back, watched his fist fly forward and connect with the center of Lorcan’s chest. The cambion’s human disguise burned away, but the skin revealed beneath was not red, but sickly gray, traced with the jagged map of the capillaries of his face. A pulse of magic went through Dahl in the same moment, pulling the air from his lungs, stopping his heart in his chest, his knees buckled—he nearly fell.

Then Farideh tackled him to the ground and he did fall. All at once, the wild drive vanished from him, the urge for violence knocked out of him with his breath as he hit the stone floor.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “He was just standing there!”

Dahl rolled over, looking up at her, again unable to answer, unable to outline Lorcan’s crimes, unable to tell her about the demon lord, unable to ask for help. Behind Farideh, the cambion woman who’d come looking for Dahl, who’d tried to tempt him with a copy of his own deal, watched with interest. Dahl laid his head back and cursed and cursed and cursed.

In the door his brothers stood, looking surprised. Bodhar held up both hands, a gesture of calm.

“All right, so he might need a priest,” Bodhar told her.

• • •

BRIN WAS WAITING at the portal when Bryseis Kakistos returned with her hand fastened around the upper arm of a boy about seven or eight years old. His frantic, pupilless blue eyes found Brin’s and stole the breath from him.

Bryseis Kakistos saw him and pulled the red-crystal staff in front of her. “Did you tell her where he was?”

“Who?” Brin asked. “Phrenike?”

She pressed the crystal tip of the staff up under his chin. “Don’t toy with me, Lord Crownsilver.” Her cloak was scorched, burned along all the edges, and her eyes were wild. “Farideh and the cambion were waiting for me when I arrived. Did you find out from her? From Sairché?”

Brin held up his hands in surrender. “I didn’t say a word to Farideh. And truth be told, if Sairché had a chance to say a word to me, I’d do my utmost to end her then and there.”

“Then why are you waiting here,” Bryseis Kakistos snarled.

Brin cast his gaze down at the terrified boy she still held tight to. “I wanted to see him. You said I could. You said he might stay with me.” He had clung to that, figuring he was one step closer to a plan to rescue the child if he had access.

Bryseis Kakistos searched his face with Havilar’s golden eyes. “I don’t think that’s wise anymore.”

“Look”—Brin dropped his voice—“you already had trouble with Nalam, right? Do you think the rest of these are going to stay calm if you have a crying child thrown in with them?” She looked down at the boy, red-faced and silently weeping.

“Don’t put him in a cell alone,” Brin said. “He can stay with me, or I can stay with him. Your choice.”

Bryseis Kakistos said nothing for a long moment, and Brin wondered if she had drifted off again. “You shouldn’t get attached,” she finally said in dull tones. “He’s not for you.”

“No,” Brin said, making himself sound as though he agreed. “But … well, you seemed concerned before over whether I could manage. In the future. And I was thinking … perhaps it would assuage your worries. And give me a chance to know him.”

Brin held his breath as she considered him, setting up better ways to convince her, new angles to consider. Down in his marrow, he knew there was no way he was letting her throw the boy in a cell on his own. Bryseis Kakistos’s expression softened.

“Fine,” she said, shoving the boy toward him. “But your door is locked from here on out. I do not fear you, Lord Crownsilver, but I don’t have the patience for nonsense I might have once had.”

A pair of the lich’s servants marched the boy and Brin together back up to his rooms in the tower. A platter of highsunfeast waited on the table beside the defunct location apparatus. When the bolt had slammed into the lock, the boy’s silence broke.

“I want my mam,” the boy said in a small, frightened voice. He curled into himself, as if he could hide his grief and fear from Brin. “I want my da.”

Brin moved beside him, putting an arm around the boy. He shoved Brin violently away, scrambling across the room toward the window. “It’s all right,” Brin said. Then, “No, I shouldn’t tell you it’s all right. This is all very scary. But I’m not going to hurt you. You want to stay over there, that’s just fine. What’s your name?”

The boy shook his head. Brin sat down again beside the brazier. “My name’s Brin. It’s short for Aubrin, but the people I like best call me Brin.”

“She called you Lord Crownsilver,” the boy said.

“Exactly,” Brin said. “Do you want something to eat? I’ve some milk in the kettle and some bread.”

The boy didn’t move. “Are you a prince? Did she lock you up in here?”

“I was a lord and a duke, and I suppose a prince, but nowadays, I try to just be Brin. And, yes, I’m stuck here too.”

“So … do you have to wait for a princess to come rescue you?” he asked. “Does it work like that?”

“I hope not,” Brin said. “I don’t think any princesses know I’m here. Where do you come from?”

The boy sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Aglarond.”

Brin poured some of the hot milk into a cup for the boy. “What do you like best about Aglarond?”

The boy blinked at him, as if this were the oddest thing he’d ever been asked. “Remzi,” he said, after a moment. “My name’s Remzi.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Remzi,” Brin said, uncomfortably aware of the lump in his throat. Remzi sat down at the little table beside him, in front of the mug of milk. He considered it, not touching the cup. He pulled his knees up to his chest.

“When I say I want my mam,” Remzi said, “I don’t mean that evil lady. That’s her, isn’t it? The one that came to the cottage said she was my aunt, and they have the same face, so that must be my real mam.” Remzi wiped his nose on his knees. “ ’Cept the one in the cottage said that my mam’s my real mam even if she’s not. I’m adopted,” he added.

“I know,” Brin said. “Farideh came and found you? Did … the evil lady hurt her?”

“I don’t know,” Remzi said. “She just—whoosh!—dragged me out of there. She left the ghost.” He started to cry again. “What if the ghost eats my mam and da?”

Brin laughed in a way he hoped sounded convincing, “I don’t know about your mam and da, but Farideh can handle some ghost. She casts magic spells, did you know that? When I first met her, she saved me from an orc.”

Remzi looked up, suspicious. “Just one?” he hiccupped.

“The one that was trying to chop me with an axe, specifically, but there were others too.”

“If you know her, you know the evil lady too? Is she my real mam?”

Brin hesitated. There was no easy way to explain any of this. “Do you want to hear a story?”

Remzi scowled at him. “You’re trying not to answer me.”

“I’m trying to tell you something very tricky,” Brin corrected. “Once upon a time there was a very wicked warlock, who wanted to dethrone the king of the Hells—”

“That doesn’t sound wicked.”

“Wicked isn’t what you do,” Brin said. “It’s how you do it. She had died and she needed to be able to walk the plane again, to carry out her plans. The first time she tried to get a body, she convinced two people to make a baby. But the spells went wrong and the baby turned into twins and the warlock’s ghost was torn to the winds. The twins grew up and the ghost returned. She tried to possess them, but she couldn’t. Something was in the way. So first she—”

“This story is confusing,” Remzi said. He took a piece of bread and dunked it in the milk. “I mean, sorry, saer, I don’t understand.”

Brin sighed. “The outside of her is one of the twins. A woman called Havilar. She’s very nice. The ghost is inside her, though. The ghost … the ghost is evil,” he admitted. Maybe he could agree with her goals, maybe he could look away as she sacrificed Asmodean cultists and criminals. But there was no making Remzi out to be someone deserving of any of this.

“That’s what you should have said,” Remzi said. “It’s all right, though. I’m not good at stories either.” He set the soaked bread down on the plate. “Havilar?” he asked.

Brin nodded. “Do you want—”

But Remzi only laid his head down on his knees again, and quietly sobbed.

Seven, Brin thought. Maybe eight—he could hardly remember what he knew at that age, what he was capable of managing. A year and a half short of his grandmother’s confessions of infidelity, he thought. A little more until his father’s descent and blood were tested for proof of connection to the royal line. Two years before his father was murdered and Brin’s whole life changed.

Brin pulled the flute out of the pocket in his cloak, noticing as he set his fingers to the holes that his hands were shaking. He played a little tune for the boy, slow and soft. Remzi wept on, but as the song came to an end, he lifted his head and wiped his nose on his knees.

Before either of them could say a word, the air popped at the intrusion of the Nine Hells, and the two imps reappeared in the air. Remzi shrieked and nearly fell off his chair in the scramble to get behind Brin. The imps didn’t seem to notice.

“You have armies incoming,” Mot said. “Avernal, Stygian, and Malbolgean.”

“What does that mean?” Brin demanded.

“Avernan,” Bosh said. “Lady Zariel changed it.”

Mot clubbed him. “First, Fifth, and Sixth then! Armies are heading here. Nobody shitting cares about what you call them.”

“What does that mean?” Brin shouted over them.

“One ally, one enemy, one die nobody’s thrown,” Mot said, counting on his fingers. “From Asmodeus’s point of view, at least. Can’t guess what that means for the Brimstone Angel except a whole load of devils are wrangling permission and resources to get to her.”

Remzi peered around Brin, looking worriedly at the imps. Brin took hold of his hand. “How much time?”

“Days,” Mot said. “Sooner if Asmodeus starts being a little more present. Word is that he’s sealed himself in Nessus—no one’s getting in or out.” His stinger tail curled and uncurled. “I don’t like it,” he admitted. “I’ve never heard of anything like that happening. Ever.”

Brin squeezed Remzi’s hand tight. All his plans would have to start moving a little quicker.

• • •

IN THE SHADOW of a sleeping giant, Dumuzi sighed. “No, he was the god of your pantheon before you were sent to Abeir.”

“And now he’s a Vayemniri god?” Amurri asked, puzzled. The human squatting beside the fire leaned forward, arms on his knees. “How does that work?”

Dumuzi had remained behind with the Untherans, the descendants of Enlil’s first worshipers. If the Vayemniri didn’t quite believe in the woken god, he’d reasoned, perhaps the Untherans would. Perhaps they needed him too.

“He’s a god,” Dumuzi pointed out. “He can be both.”

The broad-shouldered man, one of Namshita’s subordinates, squinted at Dumuzi. “But when he talks,” Amurri said, “when he’s giving orders, which is he?”

“No, he’s not … He’s not like Gilgeam. You don’t see him.”

Amurri shifted back on his heels beside the fire, pensive. As uncomfortable as it looked to Dumuzi, all the Untherans squatted like that when they sat. A branch popped, sending up a swirl of embers. “I thought,” he said, “your kind couldn’t mix.”

Dumuzi shut his eyes. As frustrating as it was in the moment, he’d had more success than he would have dared hope for in the previous days. The cadets at the pyramid’s peak a first step, even if most of them seemed to regard Enlil as a novelty, a way to irritate their elders. Saitha, at least, seemed convinced, the shiver of power that ruffled her neck scales enough to assure her of Enlil’s realness, if not the full extent of his power.

And then the next morning, after they’d ridden out after the giants, she’d come to sit next to Dumuzi, looking disturbed and serious. “Your god—is he black-scaled and unpierced?” she asked in low tones.

“Did you have a dream?” Dumuzi asked.

Saitha tapped her tongue twice. “He followed me around the city. Like I was showing him the sights. He kept repeating ancestor stories to me. Karshoj, what is that supposed to mean?”

“I think he means to settle,” Dumuzi said.

Saitha nodded in an uneasy way. “You don’t think he’s just looking for a way in? Like if he were trying to take things over, maybe he would ease in, try and make us comfortable, you know? Spout a bunch of ancestor stories to serve his purpose?”

Dumuzi had given her a hard look. “I don’t think so.”

Saitha only shrugged. “I don’t either,” she’d admitted. “I just feel as if I should. I told him he ought to pick some piercings. He looks weird without them. Was that rude?”

Dumuzi couldn’t have said—so much of this was new, and so foreign from anything they already knew. It was a lucky thing Enlil wasn’t so prideful as to sulk over their clumsy manners and ungainly prayers. What made sense in ancient Unther, he seemed to have realized, would not fit perfectly in modern Djerad Thymar. Dumuzi closed his eyes, feeling for the presence of the god—still there, but somehow farther, somehow larger. As if in answer, he pulled closer and again Dumuzi had the sensation of a dragonborn man larger than he was, sitting on the ground beside him.

When he opened his eyes, Amurri was staring. “What was that? Was that magic?”

“That was Enlil,” Dumuzi said. “I think.”

Amurri searched the empty air beside Dumuzi. “Eerie,” was all he said.

Dumuzi frowned. “Does … does the Father of Victory not do anything like that?”

“Son of Victory,” Amurri corrected. “And no. Mostly he … Well, he uses magic like a weapon.”

Doubt filled Dumuzi, not only his own. Some part of Enlil wanted Gilgeam to be true, to be the scion he left behind. But “the Son of Victory” seemed less and less like the Father of Victory, and both the god and the Chosen began to suspect and hope in equal parts that this man was nothing but a fraud. After all, even if Gilgeam was one of Enlil’s comrades, he was an enemy now and would have to be met head on.

Which meant Dumuzi needed to recruit more followers.

You’ve managed a great deal already, a voice in his thoughts said. For all it sounded like his own voice, he knew that was Enlil—Dumuzi didn’t have much good to say about his successes.

What did people do when they were trying to convince others to follow a god? Proselytizing would only go so far—with the Vayemniri, because they were used to managing on their own, to making their own luck; with the Untherans, because the one god they knew was so far from anything Enlil was promising. From anything he can manage at the moment, Dumuzi thought. If Gilgeam could strike bat riders from the sky and command demons, appearing in dreams and making people’s skin shiver was hardly a match. He thought of the accusations of Shestandeliath Mazarka, the whispered worship to the Son of Victory she claimed to have seen. Maybe it took such flashy miracles to make a connection.

He winced and apologized to the god—that hadn’t come out right. He breathed a little gust into his cupped palm, crackling with nervous lightning. He excused himself, and stood, brushing off his armor. The hour was late, and he ought to go back into the city where the other Vayemniri had retired. He thought of Kepeshkmolik, of Uadjit and maybe Narghon waiting up for him, waiting to question him, waiting to correct him. He didn’t fit in Kepeshkmolik anymore—Dumuzi found himself testing the thought regularly, believing it more and more, day by day.

Maybe he could reside with the Untheran, Dumuzi thought. Maybe live in a temple out on the fields. The stone giants dozed, still as mountains, a broken wall around the Untherans. Dumuzi wondered what they dreamed of.

As he made his way back toward the city, he kept an eye out for the commander with the jackal-headed epaulets. Sikati, he thought, rolling the word through his thoughts. Commander, the Draconic word repeated back, shaped by Enlil’s blessings.

Perhaps translating Untheran to Draconic and back wasn’t a miracle on par with the lightning wall, Dumuzi thought, but it was appreciated. He stopped at the curve of one of the giant’s necks, murmured his thanks, and gave another breath.

You don’t have to do that every time, the voice in his thoughts whispered, but the god sounded pleased, nevertheless.

Kepeshkmolik Dumuzi however had been raised to revere his elders, to observe the many actions that made up the omin’ iejirkkessh and omin’ iejirsjighen—even if Enlil hadn’t been a god, it would have been right and proper to thank him, and thank him in the way that he would understand. Gratitude made for an easy inroad, he thought, continuing on his way. Asking for help would be another thing entirely.

As he came around the giant’s head, he heard voices—Namshita and her other subordinate, the man called Utu, speaking low and quickly. Dumuzi froze—he ought to continue, ought to pretend he hadn’t heard them. This too was only proper, the results of living in an enclave so tightly packed with people. But Enlil’s touch upon his mind made the words shift—with every syllable, the Draconic version lit up in his thoughts. And it wasn’t something he could pretend he hadn’t heard.

“You know as well as I do,” Utu was saying, “that the Vayemniri don’t give a care for those they don’t share clanship with.”

“I know what the Son of Victory says,” Namshita replied. “That’s hardly confirmation that they intend to trade our lives for Gilgeam’s mercy.”

“But it makes sense?” Utu said. “Tell me it doesn’t.”

Namshita said nothing for a moment. “What better options do you imagine we have?” she asked. “At the very least, this buys us time to find a haven, to get the lay of the land.”

Utu’s voice dropped lower, and Dumuzi had to creep closer to hear him say, “We can still go back. We could find out what it would take to bring this city down and go back.”

“Never.”

“Best of bad choices,” Utu pointed out. “Look at this city—does it look a hundred years old? It should have been a hundred just to build. They took what was ours. There’s no other explanation. If we go back now, we can claim we were taken. We can find more time to plan an escape and reclaim what is due us.”

Dumuzi felt a sense of unease that he couldn’t quite place, and then the certainty, as Utu reached out, that something bad was coming. He bolted from his hiding place. “Sikati?” he said, loud enough to startle them both. “May I speak with you?”

Namshita took a step back from Utu, as if trying to signal she wasn’t a part of anything he’d been saying. “Of course.” She walked toward Dumuzi without looking back at Utu. Utu’s dark eyes pinned the young dragonborn in place, and Enlil’s presence drew nearer.

That one is dangerous—the thought so filled Dumuzi’s head that he forgot that he was supposed to be talking with Namshita until she interrupted him.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I was wondering,” Dumuzi said, turning to face her fully, “if my mother had extended her invitations to you. To come and visit Kepeshkmolik.”

Namshita’s eyes narrowed. “Uadjit seemed to think it best that we stay outside the city at the moment. That we allow her time to make arrangements.”

“She’s very good at this sort of thing,” Dumuzi agreed. “And our patriarch can be a little … formal. Would you like to see the public parts of the city at least? So you might consider staying?”

“No one has offered us a place to stay,” Namshita replied. “And forgive me, little priest-man, but you don’t strike me as old enough to make such overtures.”

“I don’t speak for myself,” Dumuzi said. “I speak for Enlil. And as my mother said, it’s an open city. No one needs the blessings of a clan to live here. When she has made those arrangements, it would be good if you could say whether you wanted to make your homes in our city.”

Namshita tilted her head, considering him as if he were a curious illusion. “Wouldn’t you say we are beggars?” she asked. “That we should take what is given us?”

“No,” Dumuzi said truthfully. “You are the children of Unther, of the line of Enlil. You are no more beggars than the Vayemniri.” He thought of Saitha’s dreams. “If you wish, gather a group, perhaps the ones who need most assurance, and we can show them what Djerad Thymar has to offer.”

Namshita regarded him a few moments more, and he wondered if she were turning over Utu’s accusations, weighing them against Dumuzi’s offer. He wondered too if he ought to be considering Shestandeliath Mazarka’s accusations with any greater weight.

“Very well,” she said finally. “On the morrow.”

• • •

UNLIKE THE PREVIOUS forays into the dreams of others, Havilar felt nothing but overwhelming dread when faced with Bryseis Kakistos’s sleeping mind. Alyona took hold of her hand, but it felt more like an anchor about to drag her down than a reassurance.

Come on, she said.

The next moment disoriented Havilar—before, she’d felt no different in dreams than she had in the soul sapphire. She walked through Zoonie’s dreams, through Farideh’s dreams, through Brin’s dreams, as if they were just another place she’d reached, albeit one that wasn’t remotely real.

In Bryseis Kakistos’s dreams, it felt as though she were a part of everything, and everything was dangerously close to being real. A patchwork of locations wove together to make the world of the dream—Djerad Thymar’s dizzying stairways and bridges married to a dockside city she’d never seen; the eerie plains of the Nine Hells contained in the mazelike corridors beneath the palace of the Purple Dragon, the teetering ruins of Neverwinter built into a mountain town covered in snow, and bookshelves, bookshelves everywhere.

“Bisera!” Alyona shouted. “Bisera, come out! We need to talk!”

This is your own head, Havilar thought, staring at the mix of familiar and unfamiliar surroundings. Your own head and someone else’s memories shoved into it.

“Bisera!” Alyona’s voice echoed off mountains that weren’t the ones Havilar had grown up in.

They moved deeper into the strange landscape, but as they passed, it started changing—the hints of unfamiliar places and times collapsed like snow washed away by spring rains, leaving behind only Havilar’s memories. They climbed down Djerad Thymar’s stairs, the stones turning from rough limestone to polished granite, the smells of salt and rotting seaweed becoming exotic flowers and the smell of dragonborn bodies. Alyona frowned, but said nothing.

They found Bryseis Kakistos at last, when they squeezed through a narrow corridor of bookshelves, remnants of the library tomb of a Netherese arcanist, to emerge on the little farm with the stone cottage. The sky overhead was red, full of clouds that boiled with a storm, ragged with spears of lightning. Havilar’s breath quickened, as though her pulse sped up—but she had no pulse, and no breath either—gods above, she was sick of this.

Bryseis Kakistos, Alyona’s double, kneeled beside a cairn, stacking flat white stones, building it higher. Abruptly she scowled and pulled down the top half of the stack, re-sorting the rocks and starting again.

“Bisera,” Alyona said, pulling Havilar toward her. “Bisera, we need to talk.”

The tiefling woman didn’t look up, sorting the stones into groups of similar shapes. Havilar scanned the forest beyond, the thick-trunked conifers casting deep, eerie shadows. Peering between them, she spotted a stone statue—a devilish man with curling horns and a wicked smirk, the base of the statue was stained as if it had been dipped in blood.

“Bisera!” Alyona shouted. Her twin’s attention didn’t leave the stones as she started stacking them again.

“That isn’t my name anymore,” she murmured, laying the largest stone against the faint mound in the dirt. “That girl is innocent. I’m not.”

Havilar stared at the statue, but unlike the stone and the smells, it didn’t change. She stared at it, willing it to disappear. The statue only smiled back, until she had to look away.

Alyona grabbed her sister by the wrist as she reached for another stone. “Stop. Stop.” She kneeled down beside Bryseis Kakistos. “This isn’t going like it’s supposed to. The girl is … Bisera? Bisera, listen to me.”

Bryseis Kakistos looked up at her, eyes blazing. “I’m busy. It has to be right—you know that. I’m not leaving until it’s right.”

“The girl is losing her memory,” Alyona said. “She needs to get back into her body.”

Bryseis Kakistos blinked. She looked over Alyona’s shoulder at Havilar standing there, then turned back to the stones. “You shouldn’t have brought her. Everything is going according to plans. I have the heirs.”

“Are you planning to hurt them?” Alyona demanded.

Bryseis Kakistos balanced a triangular stone atop the last. “Don’t worry about that.”

“I am going to worry about it,” her sister said. “Because that’s not what you promised.”

“I’ve come too far to abandon everything now.” She picked up another rock. “We can’t remake the world without disrupting what’s here already.”

“You can’t steal my body and kill a child!” Havilar shouted. Bryseis Kakistos didn’t so much as flinch—as if she hadn’t even spoken. Karshoj to that, Havilar thought, balling her hands into fists.

Her fingers didn’t touch her palms, though. Suddenly the smooth wooden surface of her glaive materialized in her hands, as if in answer to her need.

“You know what’s going to happen if you don’t hurry,” Alyona said. “And you know the Moonmaiden won’t be happy if—”

Bryseis Kakistos knocked over the cairn with a sweep of one arm, surging to her feet. “To the Abyss with Selûne! Who do you think has stood in our way all these years? Who do you think made the vessel split? Whose blessing sealed them off from us?” Overhead, the lightning sprouted wildly, filling the clouds with thorny vines of light.

Alyona’s expression hardened. “Your plan didn’t work. Her blessings protected them—and us, you’ll remember—from more devils, more meddling.”

“She’s a god!” Bryseis Kakistos shouted. Flames started pouring into her hands. “If she gave a care, she could have stopped it. We wouldn’t be here. Any of us.”

“Including me,” Havilar said. Glaive in hand, she felt a measure of security she couldn’t have conjured on her own. This was her head; these dreams were hers as much as Bryseis Kakistos’s. “Give my body back.”

Bryseis Kakistos glanced at Havilar from the corner of her eyes. One hand shot out, and an invisible, irresistible force yanked the glaive from Havilar’s grip. The weapon flew from her, disappearing into the dark and shadowed forest. Thunder shook the mountainsides and when Havilar tried to shout, she found her voice had evaporated.

“You,” Bryseis Kakistos said, “are nothing. Don’t speak again.”

“Enough!” Alyona bellowed. Moonlight split the storm like a plow made of pearlescent light, shoving the thick clouds aside, uprooting the shadows of the dark forest. The stone statue remained, swaddled in an unnatural darkness. Bryseis Kakistos turned to her twin, startled.

“She is helping you,” Alyona said. “More than any soul out there, she is helping you, so don’t take that tone. You owe her better—you owe all of us better!”

Bryseis Kakistos said nothing for a long moment. She looked down at the scattered cairn, the slight mound of dirt. “I’m trying to fix it,” she said softly. “Please don’t be angry.”

“Please let her go,” Alyona said. “It’s taking too long. We can find another way.”

Bryseis Kakistos shook her head. “I need more time. I need to find where Caisys went. I need … Please. Don’t be angry. We’ll make right what we need to, afterward.”

Alyona embraced her sister, and the Brimstone Angel hugged her back as if she were afraid one or both of them would break. “I’m not angry,” Alyona said. “But you have to rethink this plan, Bisera.”

“We’ll make right what we need to, afterward,” she said again. “Go back to the soul sapphire. I need to wake up.” She returned to her stone-stacking, not saying another word to Havilar. Alyona pursed her mouth, but took Havilar by the hand, heading away from the grave and the dark forest.

The return to the soul sapphire’s prison left Havilar feeling thinner, less real, confirming the urgency Alyona had been trying to convince her sister of. Havilar wrapped her arms around her chest—was this how Alyona felt? Would there be any “making it right”?

Don’t panic, she told herself. Brin’s out there. Farideh’s out there. Mehen’s out there.

And she’d made a glaive in the dream world—that was something.

Is she always like that? Havilar asked Alyona, trying not to let the panic leak into her voice.

Alyona stared into the depths of the swirling mists, as if lost in grim thought. No, she said finally. Are you feeling well enough to travel again?

Havilar’s tail slashed the mists. Where? And why?

Alyona turned to her, every bit the priestess who’d split the storm of Bryseis Kakistos’s madness. You need to go back to your young man, Alyona said. You need to tell him to take the soul sapphire from my sister. She isn’t on our side any longer.

14

3 Hammer, the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant (1487 DR)
Djerad Thymar, Tymanther

DAHL’S BROTHERS HAULED HIM OFF THE FLOOR BEFORE FARIDEH COULD. His breath came in rapid gasps, his skin clammy, but as he came upright, his eyes found Farideh’s, fearful and fully aware of what he’d done—this wasn’t just rage or madness. All she wanted for a moment was to go with him, to make sure he was all right.

But that wouldn’t solve things, a part of her thought.

“Get Adastreia,” she told Mehen. “Tell her she needs to heal him. Or both of them.”

“A healing won’t work,” Sairché called. Up on her knees, she was peering down at Lorcan and Dahl. “That’s a curse.”

“No.” Lorcan’s skin had a terrible pallor, his veins still carving dark lines across his face. “It’s not … It’s worse. It’s him and it’s worse and … You can’t change him.” He turned to Dahl, a flicker of something devilish persisting in his dark eyes. “Can she? He doesn’t just curse you, they say—he finds how you’ve cursed yourself.”

“Who?” Farideh demanded.

Dahl lunged against his brothers' grip. “Get up, you stlarning bastard!”

“He needs a priest,” Bodhar said again. “It’s a curse that—all right, hrast Dahl, stop it.” Thost yanked hard on Dahl’s arm, pulling him back on his heels and nearly knocking him over. “No one’s saying you don’t have reason to hit him,” Bodhar went on.

“Get him in the other room,” Farideh said.

Dahl looked at her, the rage in his expression melting into something fearful. He turned deliberately to Mehen. “Do you know what he did? He left us trapped in the Underdark. Pulled us to a cave with no exit but a fathomless lake and used his portal to get himself out of there. We only escaped because my grandmother sacrificed herself.”

Mehen gave Farideh a significant look over Dahl’s head. “Sounds like an excellent reason to punch a fellow.”

Farideh couldn’t deny that Dahl probably had lists of reasons to hit Lorcan, even setting aside the death of his grandmother. But no matter how terrible Lorcan was, without him, she didn’t have a portal, she didn’t have access to the Hells, she didn’t have her powers. “Send one of the hatchlings to find a priest,” she told Mehen. “It doesn’t matter who and it doesn’t matter how they know them, just that they can get here fast. Tell them that.” To Dahl she said, more gently, “Let them take you into the other room. I’ll come soon.”

Dahl said nothing, and anxiety curdled her stomach. She pushed it away. One thing at a time. As the others left the room, she turned to Lorcan, still collapsed on the floor, skin still half a shade from a corpse’s.

“Do you want to hear my side of it?” he asked hoarsely.

“Oh this should be good,” Sairché crowed. “The grandmother was an assassin? Hm? An Abyssal plant? The demonic daughter of a murderous cultist sent to hunt the Brimstone Angel?”

“Did you leave him trapped in the Underdark?” Farideh asked.

Lorcan sighed. “I don’t know.”

“I think you do know,” Farideh said. “I think it’s pretty karshoji hard not to know if you left someone trapped in the Underdark.”

“I got him away from the demon lord. I assumed that’s what you would have wanted.” Lorcan said. The usual edge in his voice was dulled, not sharp enough to cover the hurt in it.

Farideh squeezed her hands into fists. “How?”

“Used a teleportation scroll he had. I sent it to the first cavern in range—there wasn’t time for anything else. And then, yes, I got out of there. You saw what happens when I’m alone with him. Why would I want to do that more than once?”

Farideh could imagine it, how easily such a thing could happen, how easily it might seem purposeful. How easily it might be purposeful, and Lorcan might be turning the telling in such a way that he wasn’t at all to blame.

Maybe—if whatever had caused Lorcan to start acting so strange, so fragile, so human had been in play then as well, it was hard to see him thinking quickly enough to do anything of the sort. Lorcan considered her a moment.

“Are you going to tell him?”

“About what?”

He raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t been the chastest while he’s been away.”

Whatever fondness had welled in her for Lorcan dried up. “What were you doing there?” she asked. “Down in the Underdark?”

“Rescuing Sairché,” Lorcan said. “She went to make a deal with Graz’zt.”

“That,” Sairché said, “was Bryseis Kakistos—the moment I saw the demon lord, I told her I wasn’t having it. I blacked out thereafter.”

“Fine,” Lorcan said. “The Brimstone Angel went to make a deal with Graz’zt—all I saw was the sister I have a very strict agreement of protection with in mortal peril. But once there, I found Dahl. You might ask your brightbird what he had going with Bryseis Kakistos and the Dark Prince that they were in the same place at the same time.”

Farideh didn’t move. “Did Graz’zt make some kind of deal with Dahl? Is that why he can’t talk?”

“Does he have a deal?” Lorcan asked. Farideh held her tongue—not an answer. After a moment Lorcan sighed. “Fine, he obviously has a deal. I haven’t looked into it. I don’t care if he has a deal. You can’t possibly think it reasonable to ask me to try and salvage the mess he’s made of your happiness.” He looked over at Sairché. “Did you do it?”

“No,” Sairché said. “I had better things to worry about. But don’t pretend you weren’t trying to bait me into something similar.”

Lorcan turned back to Farideh. “I won’t,” he told her. “I can say with absolute sincerity I would be very happy if Sairché had Dahl caught in some kind of deal.”

None of it fit right, Farideh thought, and if there weren’t ten thousand other more important things to worry about, she would have sat here and turned every word Lorcan spoke until all these half-truths made a story that made sense. Sitting on the bed, Sairché scowled in a way that made Farideh think she felt the same way.

“You didn’t make that deal?” Sairché said. “Lords of the Nine, how did you let that slip you by?”

Lorcan rubbed his forehead. “I’m tired again,” he told Farideh. “Where can I lie down?”

“I’ll help you to Mehen’s room,” Farideh said. She pulled Lorcan up from the floor. “At least you know what you need to do to make it better now.”

The look he gave her was full of such weary sadness, Farideh regretted saying a word. “I don’t know that it’s better,” he said.

“Don’t listen to him,” Sairché said. “That spell essentially knocks what’s devilish from him. He’s full of nonsense.”

Farideh turned to Lorcan, startled by the explanation. He didn’t deny it. This was why he couldn’t give her spells, why he was falling asleep, why he was telling her he loved her. Everything devilish, drained away. For a moment, some part of her was elated.

But no, no. This wasn’t better. This wasn’t Lorcan, to begin with, and if he’d sought out a solution, then it wasn’t what he wanted to be. And this Lorcan couldn’t help her, a mercenary part of her thoughts pointed out. Couldn’t give her the magic she needed, couldn’t negotiate with devils. This Lorcan might love her, but he might also get her killed by the likes of Kulaga.

This Lorcan might love her, but she didn’t want that, she reminded herself.

“Is she right?” Farideh asked, letting him lean on her.

“Near as I can tell?” he said. “Yes.”

“Wait,” Sairché called. “They’ve returned from the giants, I see? What’s the answer?”

“I don’t know,” Farideh said. “I’ve hardly had a chance to talk to them.”

“I thought of something they might consider instead,” Sairché said. “You have that young dragonborn going around talking to a god—presumably the god has minions. Angels, archons, that sort of thing. They could stand against demons, one would presume.”

“I don’t think he has those things,” Farideh said. “Excuse me.”

“You have to do something!” Sairché cried. “It hardly matters if you stop the Brimstone Angel if you get killed in the mix.”

The powers of the Hells boiled up Farideh’s nerves. “It matters if I save Havi.”

“Are you really just going to flit around trying to find a way to stop Bryseis Kakistos when the obvious answer is to kill your sister?”

If she’d still held the powers of a Chosen of Asmodeus, Farideh would have burst into flames in that moment. Instead she stepped from the room without a word and slammed the door, trapping Sairché in her prison. It wasn’t as satisfying as she hoped.

Focus, Farideh told herself. You don’t have time to be distracted. You don’t have time to deal with these momentary things. She ignored Lachs’s and Adastreia’s pointed stares as she helped Lorcan into Mehen’s room.

“You know he’s going to tell you to break the pact,” Lorcan said, grabbing her hand as he settled on the bed. “Dahl. It’s coming. I think he’ll do anything to make certain we’re apart.”

That might be wisest, Farideh thought, but then she considered the portal, the Nine Hells, and Havilar on the other side of the world. Absently, she brushed the hair from his forehead. “You need to sleep. I have things to take care of.”

“Stay,” he said, catching her hand. “I hate this part so much.”

Wise or not, she sat down on the edge of the bed and waited until his breathing slowed, deepened, until he was past the gates of sleep.

Out in the sitting room again, Dahl’s brothers had joined the Brimstone Angels and a Verthisathurgiesh hatchling—a boy called Hencin—was setting down a platter of food with a nervous glance at Farideh. And standing beyond them, quiet and calm as ever, Mira Zawad waited. She nodded at Farideh as their eyes met, a nervous half smile on her lips.

Adastreia looked back over the edge of the couch. “We were just talking about you.”

“Were you?” Farideh looked over at the closed door to her room. “Did they find a priest?”

“Yes,” Hencin said. “A cousin of a friend—well, a friend of a friend, really. You don’t need to tell Matriarch Anala, right?”

Bodhar smiled at Farideh. “Been in there a few breaths. Guess it’ll take a while to fix him up?”

Farideh shook her head. “What happened? He’s … I mean I know he can have a temper sometimes, but he doesn’t act like that—”

“Oh, that’s on account of the demon lord in the Underdark,” Bodhar said. “Did some spell on him.”

“Gretz,” Thost said, arms folded.

“Graz’t?” Farideh asked.

“Graz’zt,” Mira confirmed. “Dark Prince, Lord of Azzagrat. I wouldn’t believe it either if we hadn’t seen it ourselves.” Again that nervous half smile that made Farideh’s tail lash. “His, um, powers affected all of us.”

“Dahl especially,” Bodhar said. “Anyway, he did that before when that devil fellow turned up the first time. Punched him right in the chest.” He blanched. “I don’t mean like a tiefling. I mean … he’s definitely a devil, right? I wouldn’t call you all … that.”

“He’s a half-devil,” Farideh said.

“And … that’s different,” Bodhar said.

“Difference between a half-elf and a story about your great-great-great-grand-mother being a princess of Cormanthyr,” Lachs supplied. “Fiendish blood doesn’t water out, but it doesn’t cling on your brain and steer you around.”

“Not anymore,” Adastreia said.

Mira glanced back at the closed door. “How long do you expect it to take?” she asked Hencin.

The dragonborn’s tongue hammered the roof of his mouth. “I don’t know. I don’t dabble in that sort of thing.”

Mira bit her upper lip, deep in thought. Again, it sent an uneasy twitching through Farideh’s tail. “It sounds like he needs a proper priest,” Farideh said. “Do you think Tam would come?”

Mira hesitated. “He’s rather busy.”

“Dahl’s rather cursed,” Farideh pointed out. “It can’t hurt to ask. Will you?”

Again, Mira bit her lip. “Tell Dahl I’ll be back later on, all right?” She excused herself and left, trailed by Hencin carrying his empty tray.

Farideh found an empty spot on the couch. As much as she didn’t want to face Dahl’s family without him, she wanted answers more. “Do you think Lorcan trapped you in that cave on purpose?”

Bodhar shrugged. “Damned if I know. Just a lot of shouting and madness and then there we were.”

“He knew,” Thost supplied. “Said some things that made it sound that way, anyhow. ‘All that counts is I didn’t break my word to Farideh’—like that.”

Which fit with Dahl’s version and fit with Lorcan’s version fine. And altogether made Farideh wish she’d never let them cross paths, somehow. “I’m sorry,” she said. “About your grandmother.”

Bodhar nodded once. “Many thanks. It was her idea, make no mistake. Dahl was bound to stay behind himself, I wager, and she was having none of it. Feisty old lady.”

“ ’Twouldn’t surprise me she’s still alive down there,” Thost said. “Ordering drow about.”

Lachs cocked his head. “You’ve never met a drow, have you?”

“You never met my granny,” Thost pointed out.

Farideh glanced over at her door again—still shut. As tangled and troubled as everything was—as worse as this new complication had made things—all she wanted to do was go to him, to take a moment and just deal with this small, safe problem and see it resolved. If it could be resolved, she thought. There was every chance that the staff of Azuth would be less a snarl than Dahl would. The others took food from the platters, but she found her appetite lacking.

“Is he very angry?” she asked.

“At you?” Bodhar asked. “Don’t think so. Think he’s worried you’re angry at him. Pretty mad at the devil, though—and not just about the Underdark, you catch my meaning.”

“He shouldn’t worry about that,” Farideh said.

“Yeah, but that’s Dahl,” Bodhar said. He cast a glance at Thost and chuckled. “Knarp hunting.”

Farideh sat down. “What’s a knarp?”

“Nothing,” Thost said, grinning through his beard. “ ’Tweren’t kind.”

“So Dahl’s maybe five, maybe six.” Bodhar said. “Which’d put me and Thost around about seventeen and nineteen. And he’s a serious little cuss. Smart as a whip and stlarning hates being talked to like a little’un. Well, so we play a little joke on him, right? Try to make him crack. We start stealing the laces out of his boots at night, leaving them all tied up in knots in the middle of his toys. Tell him, ‘Oh, that’s a sure sign you’ve got a knarp on you. Better leave it your share of ma’s apple cake to appease it.’

“But Dahl, no, he’s all riled. He decides, to the Abyss with the knarp, he’s going to give it what for. Doesn’t tell a soul, mind, what he’s got planned—not me, not Thost, not anyone.”

“Ma was furious,” Thost said. “Figured it was on a level with letting him go leucrotta hunting all on his own.”

“Oh yeah,” Bodhar said. “All ‘what if there had really been a knarp? What then?’ But that’s getting ahead. So Dahl’s decided he’s doing this. Thost and I slip into his room, middle of the night, expecting a bit more than our share of the cake, and what’s waiting for us? Our mite of a brother, fireplace poker in hand, sitting in front of his boots and his apple cake, and watching the door.”

“Looking fierce as an orc in winter,” Thost said. “For a little’un.”

“You don’t have kids,” Bodhar said, “so maybe you don’t know how unlikely it is for a kiddo of five to be sitting up past deepnight, not giving in and not eating the damned apple cake, because he’s going to have it out with a bogie. Doesn’t happen, but Dahl, he’s determined. Well, he saw us and he knew. All of it. Came flying at us. Threw the poker down, screamed like a banshee and managed to kick me in the shins before Thost threw him over his shoulder. Then we went back downstairs, calmed him down, and shared his apple cake and thought we’d made up.” He started chuckling again. “Then, next night, he stole the laces outta our boots and threw them in the pig pen.”

Thost chuckled. “Da made him dig them out.”

“And Granny said, ‘Serves ’em right for acting like fools. Don’t prod a wasp’s nest and act surprised when it stings.’ ” He said it fondly, as if he missed her sharpness. He smiled at Farideh. “He can get a bit up in his own thoughts and you’d think he’s pretty mild given that. But see, you push too far and he’ll push back. You try and take something important, he’s not going to let you.”

Farideh bristled. “I’m not bootlaces.”

Bodhar wrinkled his nose. “No, see, you’re the apple cake.” He looked to Thost, who only shrugged. “Maybe it doesn’t translate too well if you’re not Dallish.”

But Farideh understood all too well, and it wasn’t a sentiment she wanted. Whether it was supposed to make her feel prized or guilty, the whole notion left a sour taste in her mouth. She filled up a plate with easily grabbed things and excused herself, heading into her room.

The priest was young and silver-scaled, calm in a way that Farideh didn’t believe as he moved his clawed hands over Dahl, a disk of gleaming platinum in one hand. Farideh stood just inside the door, holding the plate, not wanting to disrupt anything. Demon lords, deals with devils—do something, Bahamut, Farideh thought.

The priest clenched his fists shut as the faint echo of a roar in a depthless cavern shivered through the air. “I’m sure it’s only temporary,” he said, growing flustered. “Perhaps it’s … poor timing?”

Mehen sighed, nostrils flaring, and Dahl cut a glance to her she couldn’t decipher. The young priest turned to Mehen. “Perhaps Bahamut would save his blessings for someone … someone more of our sort.”

“Dahl’s as much our sort as a karshoji silver dragon,” Mehen said.

“Platinum,” the young priest corrected. But he knew enough to show himself out.

“What about Dumuzi?” Farideh asked as the door closed. “Can he do anything?”

“Go ask Dumuzi how many prayers to Enlil a curse costs and see how that goes,” Mehen said. “You’d be better off cutting Lorcan loose and not worrying about it any further.”

“I like that plan,” Dahl chimed in, not looking at her.

“I can’t do that.”

“Can’t or won’t?” Mehen asked.

“Fine,” Farideh said. “I won’t do it. We don’t have another way to get a portal, we don’t have anyone else who can keep track of what’s happening in the Nine Hells—”

“Karshoj to the Hells,” Mehen said irritably. “Worry about your sister.”

“I am worried about my sister.”

“And what do we have to show for it?” Mehen said. “Lorcan’s distracting you with this Hells nonsense.”

“No,” Farideh said. “Lorcan is the only source I have of a portal. He’s the only way I could find the other heirs—”

“And what good are they?”

“He’s the only way I found Havi’s son!” Farideh said, raising her voice. “All right? You don’t have to like him—neither of you have to like him, but will you trust for a karshoji heartbeat that maybe I’m doing what’s best this time?”

Whatever triumph she might have found in knocking Mehen off-balance was gone the moment he heard her. He looked as if someone had made all the air in the room vanish, leaving him breathless and startled. “What son?”

Farideh wet her mouth. “That’s what I was about to tell you when you came in. There’s another heir, and Sairché says he’s Havi’s son. That she had a baby while we were trapped in the Nine Hells and Sairché hid him away.”

“Oghma’s bloody—” Dahl swore. He turned to Mehen and continued as if he had always meant to be speaking to Mehen “… papercuts. Mehen.”

Mehen’s gaze didn’t leave Farideh. “Did … did you find him?”

“Yes,” she said. “And then before I could convince his parents to come back here, Bryseis Kakistos showed up and took him.”

Mehen drew back. “You saw Havilar? You saw her and you waited until now to say something?”

“I didn’t exactly get a chance.”

“You make a chance for something like that!” he all but roared.

Farideh started to protest, but then Dahl stood. “Gods’ books! Cut her a little slack—you don’t think I threw the conversation more than a little askew? And you might have missed the fact that she’s got stlarning burns up her neck—if I’m catching any of this, I’m going to say that seeing Havilar didn’t go like you’re imagining it, so maybe you ought to try again.”

Farideh was stunned. Mehen looked as if he couldn’t decide whether to yell at Dahl, to yell at Farideh, to storm out of the room, and to go rescue Havilar himself, and maybe the boy too.

“She looks well enough,” Farideh said, more quietly. She tugged the collar of her armor as if she could hide the marks. “Havi, I mean. I tried to stop … her, but I couldn’t do much. Not without hurting Havi. She knew that.”

“Was Brin with her?” Mehen finally asked.

“No. Just her.” She blew out a breath. “Bryseis Kakistos has a good deal of magic gathered up—tattoos, stored magic, spells that I don’t recognize. And the Chosen powers. Mine, at least. I don’t think she has a pact exactly, which means we can’t count on Asmodeus closing that off to her.” She wet her mouth. “I’m sorry I couldn’t catch her. I wasn’t ready.”

Mehen rubbed a hand over his face. “I should have asked about the burns,” he said after a moment. “Are you all right? What happened?”

“She hit me pretty hard with a spell. Adastreia had some healing spells, and the salve in your room took care of what was left. I don’t think it will scar. But she took him, so trying to stop her by holding onto the Kakistos heirs won’t work. We have to find the staff of Azuth.” And then, because it needed saying, “His name’s Remzi.”

Mehen cursed and cursed and cursed. Farideh stood, unmoving, the enormity of all of this suddenly threatening to overwhelm her. Somehow it was one thing to know all of it, but another to tell the story, to pass that heartache on to someone else. Dahl looked back at her, and wordlessly came to stand beside her, taking her free hand in his. She shut her eyes.

Mehen snapped his teeth once. “I have to go and talk to Uadjit,” he said, sounding grim. “Do not leave again until I’ve come back. Please.”

Farideh shook her head. “I’ll make sure you know.” Mehen scowled—it wasn’t the answer he wanted—but embraced her, forcing Dahl aside. The door closed behind Mehen, sealing Farideh and Dahl in with a silence so foreign and complete, it felt like a tide rising up to swallow them both.

Farideh set the plate down on the dressing table, and clenched her hands to hide the tremor there.

The silence stretched. Too many feelings, too many things she ought to say, she wanted to say, crowded in her head: That he couldn’t hit Lorcan, she needed Lorcan, whatever else he’d done. That she didn’t have time or space for being someone’s “apple cake” while her sister was in danger—and little interest in it otherwise. That she still wasn’t sure she wasn’t angry at him for telling her not to come to Harrowdale, for vanishing, for not explaining what had happened. That she’d noticed how twitchy Mira had been acting and the way he’d looked at her in Lorcan’s scrying pool.

A lump built in her throat. That she was sorry, so sorry, about his grandmother, whether it had been Lorcan’s fault or not. That she knew he was caught in something devilish, something he’d surely been tricked into. That she was beyond glad he was here, so happy she didn’t deserve it. That she’d let Lorcan kiss her and thought about more, so maybe it didn’t matter if she wanted to be anyone’s apple cake anyway.

She swallowed hard, too full of too much to keep the careful control she’d managed. She hadn’t cried since Havilar disappeared—what claimed her thoughts now had no business breaking her resolve.

Dahl came over beside her. A clink, a scratching, and then he slid a piece of foolscap over beside the plate. Are you all right?

“No.” Her tears broke. “Karshoj. Gods, I … karshoj.” And whether he’d been joking when he’d sworn he would never face her father, enough truth lingered in the jest to make her certain. She wiped her eyes. “You faced Clanless Mehen for me. You really love me, don’t you?”

Dahl chuckled and scratched another line. Gods’ books, you never listen.

She laughed, and he wrapped his arms around her and held her near, so they fitted together more perfectly than Farideh could have dared imagine. She couldn’t have said if it was she or he who shifted first, if her hand reached for his cheek before his hand pressed to the middle of her back, drawing her near. But when they kissed, the tide of silence lost its danger, and left this moment, an island of real in a sea of wrong. It was as if they’d never left Suzail, never lost what they’d had in the little tallhouse off the Promenade.

And the door definitely locked.

Dahl pulled back, kissed her jaw, and she heard the beginnings of a word shaped in his exhale. His whole body went rigid. She bit her lip, heart sinking. It wasn’t that he couldn’t talk to her—it was that he wasn’t allowed.

“All right,” she said, catching her breath. “None of that for now.”

He fumbled for the paper. I won’t talk.

Farideh bit back a laugh and kissed him. “You know you can’t promise that.”

I will find a silence ritual?

“Just hold me a moment?” she asked. Dahl rested his forehead against hers, wordlessly stroking her back.

“Everything’s terrible,” she told him. “Except that I have you back.”

He reached for the ink pot once more, left arm still looped around her waist. Mehen told me. I’m so sorry about your sister. I know she

Farideh grabbed his hand, stopped the stylus. “Don’t be sorry. Please don’t be sorry. It’s not permanent yet.” She squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry about your grandmother.”

Dahl pursed his mouth, then squeezed her hand back before writing, He said you were looking for heirs and a staff.

“Right,” she said. “I found the heirs, and then I lost …” Remzi’s terrified face flashed in her thoughts. “The heirs aren’t the choke point anymore. We have to find the staff and we have to find it fast.” And then I have to find a way to stop Bryseis Kakistos, she thought. Without hurting Havilar.

I can help, Dahl wrote.

Farideh set a hand on his chest. “It’s dangerous. Even if we don’t consider … you have a deal with someone, don’t you?”

Dahl’s expression closed. I can’t talk about that.

“And you can’t talk to me,” she said. “I’m guessing it’s someone, something who wants to make sure I don’t have your help? Maybe someone who thinks this is a good way to thwart Asmodeus?”

Dahl looked as if he’d like to hurl the ink pot right into the face of whatever fiend had bound him. He drew a careful line under I can’t talk about that.

“The punishment must be steep,” Farideh said. “I don’t want you getting hurt because we slipped.”

Well, you don’t get to decide that, he wrote. Also, I think I solved your problem on the way here, so don’t run me off so quick.

Farideh frowned. “What?”

The staff of Azuth, he wrote. No one’s seen it since the Spellplague. Asmodeus doesn’t have it—otherwise

“Right—she wouldn’t be looking for it if it were in his hands.”

Dahl scowled at her. You have to let me finish, he scribbled. It’s not fair you can interrupt me but I can’t interrupt you.

Farideh smiled. She took the stylus and wrote under his line, Sorry. Continue?

Dahl chuckled. Not with Asmodeus. Not in the Hells. Not on this plane, because then he would have sent followers after it. Not on any plane he could grab it or an ally of Azuth could grab it.

Farideh gestured for the stylus. Adastreia and Lachs guessed that much. But too many planes. I’m afraid the answer is the Abyss. You?

Grinning, Dahl turned the paper, finding a clear corner. Not the Abyss—Abeir, he wrote. Where would you hide an artifact from a god if not the plane that has no gods? And I think I know someone who might be able to help.

• • •

ILSTAN’S BED WAS heaped high with treasures. At a glance, they were only ordinary things—stones and scrolls and plain little rings. But what the eyes couldn’t see, the Art could unveil. Every object was imbued with magic, and even Ilstan had to admit the collection was an astonishing thing for as few days as he’d spent on it.

Magic is a gift and a blessing and a millstone, the voice of Azuth murmured in his thoughts. What can you do but answer it?… What can you do but embrace what will consume you?…

Ilstan closed his eyes, grieving for the pain in the god’s voice. If I were a more powerful Chosen, he thought. If I were a wiser man. If I were not so weak a vessel.

If you were those things, the voice replied, you would be someone else entirely, and I shouldn’t have Chosen you. Wish to know the unknowable if you must, but I can think of fewer wastes of time and effort so great.

Ilstan’s eyes flew open—all the clarity, all the coherence of the voice of the god of sin. But this was not Asmodeus—not this time. “My lord?” he whispered.

The voice said nothing. Ilstan crossed back over to the pile of magic items, two stones in his hands humming with a force that echoed between them like two matching voices. Linked by magic, they could connect to one another across the vastness of Toril, letting two speakers conduct a sending without needing to cast the spell. He set them reverently on the pile with the rest.

… power has a rhythm, has a pattern, has a flow … a true wizard knows before something becomes uncontrollable … when the pattern changes, when the flow reverses, when the rhythm shatters … a true wizard knows … but most people do not …

Ilstan froze. He’d heard those words before, moments before blue fire rolled over Djerad Thymar. Moments before the other voice, the voice of Asmodeus, told him quite bluntly that he needed to go find Kepeshkmolik Dumuzi and tell him what was happening.

“Is it about to start again?” he whispered.

Silence. Awful silence. Ilstan shut his eyes, reaching deep into himself, searching for the core of his strength, the touch of the Weave, the edges of the fabric of the plane. The magic did not cling and snap the way it had before, but there was a thickness to the air that felt unnatural.

… Unnatural depends on where you stand … A chill ran down Ilstan’s spine. That was not the voice of Azuth, but that was not the careful cadence of Asmodeus. Breathless, frantic … Order is not natural, but it is right … to determine what is out of order and what is in good order … all depends on how you are willing to look at the matter.

Ilstan held perfectly still. First, Azuth speaking clearly, then Asmodeus speaking madly. He knotted his hands together. What did it mean?

A rapping at the door startled him badly enough that he scrambled backward, behind the bed, a spell on his lips and magic in his hands. “Ilstan!” Farideh called through the door. “Ilstan! Can I come in?” A man’s swearing voice came after and Ilstan’s racing heart urged him to burn down the door—she’d turned, she’d changed, there were only enemies here.

No, a part of him said. He saw the shackles lying on the floor, the bindings meant to keep him from casting if he got too mad. She’d undone them, left him to his own devices as he poured the excess magic into object after object. He picked the shackles up, cold and dead.

“Ilstan? I’m coming in.”

The door opened a handspan, and he took another step back, calling spells up into his thoughts. Farideh—seething angel, shining devil—and a man he’d seen before behind her. Gray-eyed, dark-haired … the Ready Sword. The man from the catacombs. The man who he’d nearly sacrificed in his madness, along with all his fellow war wizards. He hugged the shackles to his chest. Two against one, but he had these … these bindings …

Thost!” the Ready Sword shouted. “Thost get in here, please!”

“Please,” Ilstan echoed. “Don’t come too close.”

“It’s all right,” Farideh said, reaching out a hand. “Do you need to cast before we talk?”

He shook his head—he didn’t dare release even a scrap of magic, didn’t dare weaken himself. She watched him warily, creeping into the room. The Ready Sword grabbed hold of her arm, but she shook him off. “Dahl, stop it.”

Magic cannot be stopped … cannot be ended … can only be changed and channeled and divided … or strengthened …

A mountain of a man, with a thick brown beard and the stolen eyes of the Ready Sword filled the door frame. He glanced around the room. “Problem?”

“Tell her not to do this,” the Ready Sword said rapidly. “Ask her what the stlarning Hells is he doing here? Ask her if she’s lost her godsbedamned mind!”

“Well I’m not saying that,” the Mountain answered.

Farideh eased closer. “Ilstan, give me your hand. It’s getting too strong again and we need your help.”

A wizard forgets it is not always about strength … it is about control … it is about discipline … Ilstan started muttering an incantation, recognizing the words only after they were spoken—fire. Fire: enough to melt the very Hells—

“I think we can find the staff of Azuth,” she said. “I need your help.”

Abruptly the voices in Ilstan’s head fell silent and the spell on his lips died. She reached out her hand again, and this time Ilstan grabbed it as a drowning man grabs a rope. All at once the Weave seemed to tighten, sharpen all around him, magic pouring through him and through her. The veins of her arms suffused with shadow, the magic of the Nine Hells tainting her. Control, Ilstan reminded himself. The stream of magic tightened, eased. Farideh blinked, pointed two fingers at the ink pot on his desk. “Assulam!”

It exploded so completely that the ink evaporated, the glass vaporizing into a burst of colored lights that filled the room and dazzled even Ilstan’s eyes, as if they were all drowning in rainbows. When it faded, he looked down at his hands.

You are still here, he thought. You are still whole.

You are still needed, a wispy voice shimmered in his thoughts.

Panting, wild-eyed, Farideh straightened. The dark streaks of her veins faded back into her skin. “All right,” she said, sounding manic, frantic. “All right. All right.” She turned back to the two men—the Mountain and the Ready Sword.

Thost, Ilstan thought. And Dahl.

Thost had run back out of the doorway and only now peered around the frame, while Dahl had flattened himself against the wall, out of the spell’s reach. Farideh’s cheeks flushed. “Sorry,” she said. “I forgot the last time you saw him was in the tunnels. It’s better now, if we plan ahead. It helps him stay sane—that’s what … that’s why I …” She trailed away, flushing deeper, and Ilstan recalled, as if remembering an old dream, the surge of missiles that had burst out of her hands in the tunnels. The missile striking Dahl.

Dahl looked as if he would have liked to strangle Ilstan. “Thost, will you tell her she needs to warn us next time?”

“I’m not telling her a damned thing,” Thost said, sounding stunned. “Certainly not suggesting a next time.”

Farideh scowled. “I know you have to do that, but it’s really annoying. I’m sorry. I’ll warn you.”

“I’m sorry as well,” Ilstan called. “You haven’t fared well under my situation, and I regret it.”

“You tried to kill me,” Dahl corrected.

“I did,” Ilstan agreed. “I don’t plan to do it again.”

Farideh turned back to Ilstan. “I had a question to ask you: Where can we find a portal to Abeir?”

Ilstan shook his head. “I don’t know that you can. Others have tried. The planes slip and break. They are not meant to touch.”

“But if someone did?” she asked. “If you can’t make one just anywhere, where would you look? How would you do it?”

Ilstan frowned at her. “As I said, you would not.”

“Plaguelands,” a voice said. Behind Thost, another tiefling woman stood, slight and silvery and soulless. Not Havilar, not the Knight of the Devil, but a Masked Lady, a Dark Star. Ilstan blinked, but she remained. “Where the Spellplague lingers,” she said, “wouldn’t that imply the planes are thinned?”

“Perhaps,” Ilstan said slowly. “But all indications are the plague pockets are receding. And what remains is too dangerous to venture into. Besides, the best minds have found neither form nor function in their placement—that suggests there is no connection, as the planes force no pattern.”

“Or,” the woman said, “you are too small to see the pattern.”

“Dahl thinks he knows someone who might know if the staff exists in Abeir,” Farideh explained. “I think I might know where the person who took it there was last seen. If we find it …” She wet her mouth. “Well, I think we’re going to need a lot of help and that you should come.”

A wizard is often alone, and so it must be that a wizard seeks allies in the strongest of his peers … for a time at least …

“This is what I was Chosen for,” Ilstan said simply.

PART VII

BLOOD

14 Alturiak, the Year of the Shadows (1358 DR)
Vaasa

• • •

Given the way Alyona’s ghost yanked toward the door, Bryseis Kakistos knew before he called out that Caisys had returned. She focused all her attention on the dish before her, pulling Alyona nearer.

“Bisera? Are you in?”

Bryseis Kakistos pursed her mouth at the name. She had stopped using it half a decade ago, but five years of telling Caisys to stop had thus far had no effect. Change the name, Shetai had said. Change who you are. Bisera was a girl, an innocent. Bryseis Kakistos might reshape the world.

She didn’t look up from the pool of blood in the silver dish before her. “What did you find?”

His boots scuffed the floor as he entered her study. “Rakshasa. A fairly potent one. But I don’t think he’s all too keen—”

“They don’t need to be keen,” Bryseis Kakistos said. “They need to be accessible.” Caisys sat down on the stool beside her, leaning against her worktable with a carelessness belied by the way he didn’t so much as brush any of her equipment.

“Whose is that?” he asked, nodding at the blood in the dish.

“Titus’s.”

“He came around? That’s surprising. Who’d he come from?”

“A devil by the looks of it. My guess is Eighth Layer, perhaps even Mephistopheles, but a long way back. I’m still narrowing it down.”

Caisys gave a low whistle. “Well that’s good news. Another link down. What’s left?”

“If I’m right? Rakshasa,” she said. “Yugoloth. Demodand. And an evil god’s avatar, although I’d rather have at least two. We’re close, very close.” She had six other tieflings, six other bloodlines. Titus made the seventh—she the eighth. She added three drops of a tincture to the blood, sending dark swirls through the redness.

Demons, devils, night hags, rakshasas, fiends of all stripes—every one of them bred tieflings eventually. Regardless of the ways their traits differed, the way their ancestors repelled one another, the way their blood would sometimes boil when spilled into another’s, they were all called tieflings and they all suffered for their ancestors’ indiscretions or ill luck. They all were forced to hide, to separate themselves, to suffer the punishments that other races felt that they’d earned, just for being born.

“Are you ready to give me yours?” she asked Caisys.

He smiled at her, and despite herself, Bryseis Kakistos felt a flood of warmth pour through her body. Her sister’s ghost leaned nearer, as if trying to touch Caisys’s face. “What if I don’t want to know?”

“Telling you isn’t a necessary step,” Bryseis Kakistos said. “Besides, you can’t possibly pretend we don’t all already know what the answer is.”

He leaned a little nearer. “What’s that?”

Alyona’s embarrassment fluttered through the edges of her thoughts as Bryseis Kakistos cast a sidelong glance at the so-called merchant. “If you aren’t descended from a succubus—and fairly recently—I will eat your wagon.”

He smiled, baring bright, even teeth. “I do hope that’s a euphemism. You never told me what you found in your blood.”

In the silver dish, Titus’s blood deepened, darkened, a pool of shadows. Closer, she thought. An archdevil would be precious, terribly precious. When Asmodeus had nudged her back toward Titus, she had doubted. Even if the old man had descended from a rare pairing, surely there had to be tieflings in the world who would come more easily to her side and Asmodeus’s far-reaching plans.

A fortunate thing demons were so inconstant, she thought, adding a few drops of a second, yellow tincture—this one infused in the melted ice of Cania. Titus had lost his powers when his succubus turned on him and he’d had no choice but to kill her.

“Am I to take it that you haven’t put your own blood to the test?” Caisys asked.

“I have,” she said. “I just don’t think it much matters. Mine is clearly far off.”

“Is it?” Caisys asked, reaching to tap her horn.

Her hand shot out, catching him by the wrist, and she scowled. “Don’t touch me.”

Caisys only smiled. “Fair enough. I suppose it won’t matter in the long run, if you succeed.” She let go of him and he rubbed his wrist, still smiling at her. “Tell me: You think this will change things, that it will save us in the long run. But if you change our blood, are you sure you won’t change us? If I don’t carry the blood of a succubus anymore, how can I be sure that I’ll still be my charming self?”

“Because blood’s not as critical as you think,” Bryseis Kakistos said, watching the blood thicken and flocculate as the mixture of otherworldly solutions made it swirl under its own power. “You’ve lived your whole life being a promiscuous trifler, I doubt any spell could force you to change tack now. If you have to work a little harder to be convincing, I doubt that’s something outside your skills.”

Caisys chuckled. “At least I’m honest about what I want and I make my own way. What happened to Bisera ‘I am no one’s slave’? Was Asmodeus too convincing?”

The blood stopped swirling, great clots of it sinking to the bottom of the bowl—for a moment, a perfect moment, a trident piercing a ring, the sigil of Mephistopheles, hung in the liquid, as clearly as if it had been etched upon glass. Bryseis Kakistos let out a breath. Another down.

“This isn’t slavery,” she said, eyes on the symbol as it broke apart into blood and soil and water. “This is a partnership.”

• • •

15

5 Hammer, the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant (1487 DR)
Tymanther, near the Smoking Mountains

DUMUZI HIKES UP THE GHOST OF A MOUNTAIN, ITS SLOPES MISTY AND INDISTINCT, scattered with ruins that seem less destroyed and more forgotten. Shadows slip in and out of the corners of his vision, alive but only just, and the air is cold and dry against his skin. It isn’t until he crests the peak that he can see the stars and Enlil surveying everything beyond.

“What is this place?” Dumuzi asks.

What remains of Zigguraxus, Enlil said. I have this much power now, to find it again. But not yet to pull it back. He looks up at the sky, clear and endless. Once this was a kingdom unto itself. The resting place of all my children. The seat of every god who followed me to this world. He points to the edges of the world, like the points of a many-armed compass. Inanna. Ki. Gurru. Nanna-Sin. Marduk. Nergal. Ramman. Tiamat. Utu. Assuran. Ishtar. Gilgeam.

“Gilgeam was your ally?” Dumuzi asks, surprised. Enlil looks down at him, puzzlement in his golden eyes.

Gilgeam was my son, Enlil said.

An heir, a scion, a tyrant—somehow Dumuzi has never drawn the lines back to what that must mean. Why would he? he supposes. Gods are not like mortals. “And Tiamat?”

A point of balance in the beginning, Enlil said. If there is order, then, too, must there be chaos. But this plane fed her worst nature, merged her with something too great to be balanced by us alone. Enlil looks to the stars again, his black scales nearly the shade of the night sky. We are constant and we are changeable. It is difficult to explain.

Dumuzi considers Enlil, once a great bearded human, now a Vayemniri warrior. “You are what we need you to be. Is this Gilgeam the same? Is he your son too?”

Enlil shakes his head. I don’t know. If he is, he is weakened, he is reshaped by death and exile. If he is not … he has some measure of my son’s power and more than a little of his pride.

“Will he come here too?” Dumuzi asks, nodding at the ghostly slopes.

That depends, Enlil says, on which of us gains the necessary strength first. He snaps his teeth—a gesture Dumuzi’s never seen him make, but one that looks wholly natural. The souls of the Vayemniri have no plane?

“I don’t know,” Dumuzi says. “I’ve never died.”

But you care for your dead, Enlil said. You shelter their bones from the threats of dark magic. You remember the tale of Hazor and the Jet-Boned Tyrant.

Once we laid our dead upon the stones, Dumuzi thinks, the music of the ancestor story singing through him. Once we gave them back to the wilds. Then came Daelfyrthimachian, the Jet-Boned Tyrant, a dracolich of ponderous horror, who made the dead to rise against their loved ones, and everything had to change.

“In death we are freed,” Dumuzi said. “Better oblivion than apart from our clans. Better an end than perpetuity in bondage.” Enlil only nods, as if he’s still considering all the pieces, as if he’s still trying to find who he’s agreed to become. Dumuzi considers the plains below. “What happened to the others? The gods you named?”

Dead, Enlil says. He waves a hand, and a battle sprouts out of the ground, gods battling among armies of their followers, brown-skinned humans and gray orcs. He watches as a woman in a chariot drawn by seven lions is cut down by an enormous orc man, even as her axe shatters his armor. A man wreathed in flames falls to the terrible claws of an orc woman who seethes darkness. A man seething that same sort of darkness, hollow-eyed as a skeleton, bashing the orcs aside with a midnight shield, even as an orc general plowed toward him with his long sword swinging.

The silver-skinned man with the black axe, driving his boat down into the battle, dying at the reaching hands of an undead-looking orc man, his eyes seeping eerie light.

The battle fades. Dumuzi fingers the axe at his belt. “Who was the warrior with the black axe?”

Nanna-Sin. The Night’s Light. Dumuzi recalls the dream wherein Enlil first changed into a Vayemniri. Where the boat that held the moon dipped low, and a silver-skinned man gave him the axe he wears on his belt now. He thinks of the tomb, deep in the catacombs. “Here Lies a Great Warrior of this World.”

“Is he the one sleeping in the catacombs?”

Enlil frowns. All were buried in the god’s tombs. The ziggurats.

The ziggurats, Dumuzi thinks, that crumbled in the Spellplague. “Djerad Thymar’s bones are the bones of the ziggurat. The body of the warrior whose tomb this was is in the catacombs.”

Suddenly, Enlil’s eyes blaze like fires, and Dumuzi’s heart nearly explodes with the hope pouring from the god.

Show me?

Dumuzi woke with a start to someone shaking him and found Mehen standing over him, looking worried. He was sitting on a bench near to Kepeshkmolik’s enclave entrance, waiting for Namshita and her seconds. The market beyond the stone balustrade echoed with shouted orders, directing clan armies through the shuttered stalls.

The god’s last words echoed through his thoughts—show me?

“What are you doing out here?” Mehen demanded. “Did Narghon turn you out? Where’s your mother?”

“Ninth Linxakasendalor, form at the west gate!” a bellowed voice echoed through the pyramid.

Dumuzi blinked hard, trying to clear his eyes. “I just fell asleep. He had to show me something.”

“Who, Narghon?”

Show me?

“West gate! West gate!”

“Enlil.” He stood, his vision still muddled as if he were half dreaming. “I have to go.”

“Where are you going?” Mehen demanded.

Show me? “I have to go,” Dumuzi said again, setting eyes on the stairs that led down to the market.

Halfway down the stairs, he ran into Namshita, and three others—Utu, Amurri, and a woman he hadn’t yet met. The gods on the field of battle bled through his thoughts, as though the Untherans marched up out of that war.

“Good morning,” Namshita said in Common, with a stiff manner that said she was refusing to look around her, refusing to acknowledge the sidelong stares or whispers. “This is Kirgal,” she said, gesturing toward the woman. “You remember Utu and Amurri.”

Utu—the god’s voice, the name of the dead god echoed around her voice. The mortal Utu nodded at Dumuzi, no sign of the distrust he’d shown before. Dumuzi hoped Namshita had talked to him. Mehen came to stand beside Dumuzi. Voices raised in alarm in the market beyond. “Karshoj, you four, watch where you’re swinging that ballista!”

Show me?

“Good morning,” Dumuzi said, in Untheric, with the slight but proper bow they favored. The languages all jostled around in his head for primacy. “You have to excuse me, I need to see to something urgently.”

Namshita’s expression tightened. “I see.”

Karshoj—stopped himself. “Unless of course you wish to see the catacombs first?”

“The catacombs?”

“Of course,” Dumuzi said, remembering too late that maunthreki found the catacombs unsettling—or at least Havilar had. Panic for the missing tiefling clutched briefly at his throat, as if it were trying to make up for all the worrying he hadn’t done, and his gaze darted back to Mehen. The older man gave Dumuzi a dark look that said there was no way at all he was going to leave Dumuzi alone with Namshita and the Untherans. Especially not down in the catacombs.

Show me?

“I’d like to see it,” Utu said.

“It is a part of our city and our past,” Dumuzi said quickly, quoting a rather pompous uncle. “To leave it out would be to ignore our history. If you follow me?”

He walked quickly through the crowded market toward the catacombs entrance—he could show them this part later, once he’d found the tomb in the very deepest parts of the pyramid, once he’d quieted Enlil’s panicked voice. It wouldn’t take long, he told himself, as he came to the bottom of the first set of stairs. It wouldn’t—

He stopped. They’d entered Shestandeliath’s section of the catacombs, and here where the corridor bent was the room in which Shestandeliath Ravar had fallen to the maurezhi. Dumuzi’s stomach clenched at the memory—the wizard’s last twitching movements, the smell of blood and ash and lightning—and wondered when it would stop doing that.

Mehen caught up to him. “What’s going on?” He peered down at Dumuzi in the dim light. “Are you all right?”

“No,” he said quickly. “I said I’d show them the city. Because they might live here—they ought to live here. They took our place in the other world. They could be allies. Enlil belongs to them as much as to us. Maybe more. I don’t know. But I know I have to do it before word gets back to Narghon, and now he needs to see something, and it’s down in the catacombs, and you all don’t like the catacombs, but he keeps asking—”

Mehen grabbed hold of his arm. “Take a breath. What does Enlil want to see?”

“A dead god,” Dumuzi said. “Nanna-Sin, the warrior of Thymara’s Black Axe.” Dumuzi glanced back at Utu, who had a vague sort of smile on his face as they approached. That one is dangerous.

“The warrior of the moon is a dead god?” Mehen whispered.

“I think so,” Dumuzi said. “I’m going to find out.”

Namshita came to a stop beside him. “All of this,” she asked, “for your dead.” She turned to the wall where hundreds of names had been etched. “What does it say?”

“The Roll of the Lost,” Dumuzi said. “The names of those who were not brought to this world in the Blue Fire, whose bones we couldn’t bury.” He stood quiet beside her a moment. “You said before you were slaves in the other world. Was it the dragons as well?”

She shook her head. “Humans. The Mulhorandi were our enemies in this world, and in that world they quickly made themselves the favorites of the genasi. So we became the slaves of slaves, until the Son of Victory rose up.”

Enlil pressed upon Dumuzi, images of another time, grief for another Roll of the Lost. “You were slaves before too,” he said, parsing out the images that flooded his mind, repeating his dreams. “Pulled from another world by powerful wizards, cut off from your gods. They helped you rise up then.”

“And this time we did it on our own,” Namshita said in a way that closed off any further discussion.

They were more alike—Vayemniri and Untheran—than either realized. If only Dumuzi could make the elders understand, could quash rumors of secret alliances with the Son of Victory. They wound deeper and deeper down into the catacombs, and with every level, Dumuzi’s gut knotted more tightly around the fear that he shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be showing them these things. He pointed out clan names, well-known ancestors, the art that depicted those come before. When Namshita paused to consider a frieze of four warriors attacking a strange creature Dumuzi had no name at all for—something sinuous and leggy and spitting green fluids—Mehen murmured to him, “Does your mother or your patriarch know you’re doing this?”

“No,” Dumuzi said. “And neither does Arjhani, come to that.” He looked up at Mehen. “I know already, they wouldn’t approve.”

Mehen’s nostrils flared. “Be that as it may, they cannot say you don’t observe the ways of omin’iejirsjighen. A host to would-be allies, and all of that. Point that out. Just don’t be a fool and give your guests a tour of the barracks.”

“Just because I talk to a god in my head doesn’t mean I’ve become a madman,” Dumuzi said irritably. But to his surprise, Mehen laughed, startling the Untherans—all except Utu, who studied the strange creatures of Abeir carved into the walls.

Down, down, down—the same path that had led them to Verthisathurgiesh Arjhani, imprisoned by the maurezhi in the very deepest part of the catacombs.

“These are newer?” Kirgal asked, tracing a finger along the wall. “Or older?”

“Older,” Dumuzi said. He glanced back at her. “We dug to make space for every generation.”

“Do you worry you’ll fill them all?” Utu asked.

“Utu,” Namshita snapped. She turned back to Dumuzi. “Continue your … tour, please,” she said.

Dumuzi turned back to the path, tapping the roof of his mouth as he walked. He didn’t point anything else out, until they reached the door he was looking for.

The resting place of the Warrior of the Moon lay in the very oldest, deepest part of the catacombs. Flaking red and blue paint decorated the tomb door, an old style that later generations had covered over in other cases. The shape of a crescent moon spanned the width of the doorway. Beneath it, the epitaph that echoed in Dumuzi’s dream: Here lies a great warrior of this world. Claimed as clan-kin by Kepeshkmolik and all the Vayemniri of Djerad Thymar, now and forevermore under our protection.

“What does it say?” Namshita asked. “Who lies here?”

Dumuzi laid a scaly hand against the tomb door, feeling the faint buzz of far-off lightning in the air. How many Vayemniri had come down to this place? How many had read the epitaph and thought of the warrior? How many times had the story of Thymara and the Gift of the Moon been repeated? A pulse, as if the door were living, thudded through his palm. A kind of worship, he thought. Maybe enough.

“Is he still alive?” Dumuzi whispered.

No, Enlil said, sounding intrigued. But neither is he entirely gone.

“A hero,” Mehen supplied, answering Namshita’s hanging question. “Among those who died in the passage from Abeir to Toril.” Dumuzi looked back, the truth between his teeth—the image of the battle that killed Nanna-Sin burned into his thoughts. It did none of them any good, any honor, to diminish him—especially if the tomb had somehow kept him alive.

Mehen’s gaze wasn’t on Namshita, but on Utu, who was studying the inscription with interest. “We should go back up,” Dumuzi said. “See the rest of the city—the living parts.”

The Untherans said little as they wound their way up to the market floor. Enlil too kept his thoughts to himself, and between the two silences, an anxious electricity built in Dumuzi’s gut. What did it mean that Nanna-Sin wasn’t “entirely gone”? What did it mean that Namshita said nothing? Where did Utu learn to read Draconic, and should that worry him?

“Breathe,” Mehen reminded him in low tones.

“I’ve ruined this,” Dumuzi whispered back. “I should have waited for Uadjit.”

“You haven’t ruined anything,” Mehen said dismissively. “If a boring tour of the catacombs was going to undercut your mother’s diplomatic gestures, then they were never going to succeed.”

Dumuzi showed them the market floor, the dwellings that filled the lower walls—avoiding the signs of impending war. He explained the light that poured down the middle of the pyramid and brought the Untherans to his cousin Yehenna’s teahouse, the Horn of Shasphur. Near the middle of explaining the story of Shasphur and the Elders of Raurokh, Uadjit hurried up to their tables. Dumuzi could smell the chill of frost coming off her, and stood reflexively, even as she slowed and greeted his guests with all possible decorum.

“Would you excuse us for a moment?” she asked, gesturing sharply to Dumuzi and Mehen. When they were out of earshot, she whispered, “Where have you been? We have two very big problems.”

Mehen’s nostrils flared. “Karshoj. Kallan ran.”

“I could fix that. Shestandeliath Mazarka has brought her tale of secret Gilgeam worshipers to Arjhani’s ear last night. Now he’s talking up the danger of the Untheran refugees to anyone who will listen, and hammering Fenkenkabradon’s skill defeating the ash giants.”

“But he can’t win,” Dumuzi said. “They’ll elect Kallan, surely.”

Uadjit’s dark eyes stayed on Mehen. “My father has withdrawn my nomination. He’s already nominated Mehen in my place, and as you can guess, that’s thrown a great number of votes into the wind.”

Dumuzi glanced up at Mehen, expecting the other man to sneer and rage and spit lightning. But instead Mehen looked like a man who’d just been given a solution, and the expression chilled Dumuzi down to his core.

• • •

THE GIANTS LEFT them to walk once the encampment came into site, the snowy peaks of the Smoking Mountains looming over the Thousand-Dreaming Stone Giants, making them seem small and manageable. Beside Dahl, Farideh stopped as she saw the mountains. Home, Dahl thought. The home that wouldn’t welcome her back. He wanted to tell her it didn’t matter, that whatever her former neighbors said, it didn’t change the truth. That she had homes enough that knew her worth. That he loved her and that she’d saved him down in the Underdark.

But he could say none of it.

He couldn’t say why she shouldn’t trust Lorcan, and he couldn’t say he was worried at the distant, flat way she stared at the campfire, at the way she didn’t seem to want to go to sleep. He couldn’t say he thought that bringing Ilstan was a terrible idea—or that bringing Lorcan was worse, or that bringing Adastreia made no sense to him at all.

“This,” Bodhar said, riding up alongside Dahl and blocking his view of Farideh, “is far wilder than being a secretary. I’m just saying.” He shot an uneasy glance Lorcan’s way. The cambion rode undisguised but for a heavy cloak against the cold, incapable of using those powers. “That devil fellow giving you any trouble?” Bodhar asked.

“Once again,” Dahl said, trying not to let his irritation show. “Not right now.”

“Curse works like a flipped copper, heads or tails, I know,” Bodhar said. So long as Lorcan was weakened like this, the unearthly rage that Graz’zt’s gift filled Dahl with only simmered along the edges of his natural temper.

I still want to punch him, Dahl had written out, not caring that it made Farideh’s mouth tighten. If she knew, if he could just tell her what Lorcan had done …

“You don’t have to be friends,” she said. “But I can’t leave him—I literally cannot walk more than twenty-six steps from him—and unless you learned to make portals in the Underdark, he’s got a use.”

Maybe I should stay.

Farideh fell silent. “If that’s what you want,” she’d said. “But I need you too.”

And Dahl’s temper shattered. You can’t abandon her again, he thought.

And you shouldn’t, a dark part of him murmured. Even if Graz’zt’s “blessing” had stripped out Lorcan’s more impressive powers, it left him more vulnerable, less silver-tongued. More trustworthy, it seemed, in Farideh’s eyes. More than once, Dahl had caught her regarding Lorcan with blank concern, and the darkness curled around his heart saw only the path that led from there to something warmer.

“Your dove there is nice enough,” Bodhar said. “I mean, she’s a mite …” He trailed off as if searching for the right word. The word that wasn’t going to get him socked in the mouth again. “Well, distracted maybe, isn’t she?”

“She has a lot on her mind,” Dahl said. What exactly he’d imagined this homecoming to be like, he hadn’t expected to find her in worse straits than he’d left her in. Maybe he should have.

“Didn’t expect the other fella to be a devil.”

“He’s not ‘the other fellow.’ ”

Bodhar gave him a skeptical look, his horse pulling ahead. “So you say.”

Not for the first time, Dahl found himself wishing he’d been able to leave Thost and Bodhar behind. But without them, who would speak to Farideh for him? He wasn’t such a fool as to let it be Lorcan. Gods only knew whether Ilstan could manage. He had no trust at all in Adastreia, and while he’d expected to have to mend fences with Mehen to get the dragonborn’s aid, Farideh’s father wasn’t with them.

Before they’d left, Mehen had returned, distant and battle-shocked. He didn’t argue with Farideh about her intentions, he gave vague reasons for not coming along, about politics and clan. Something had happened, something that gave him another path—one he didn’t want Farideh to know about. Dahl would have laid all his coin on it.

It had shaken Farideh.

But here at least, Ilstan had proven useful. He’d come out of his rooms bearing two stones etched with runes, handing Mehen one, and Farideh the other. “You can make a sending,” he explained. “Once a day, only to the other person holding the stone. But hopefully it should ease the distance.”

Dahl thought of the stiff, distant words Farideh had spoken to the stone the night before, the awkward reply. Gods books, Mehen, he thought. You better have a good reason.

The giant nearest him, a male called Jaari, lifted a strange stone rattle. He snapped it three times, smacking the smooth rock at the head with a smaller hammer. A pealing like a great muffled bell rang out loud enough for the stone giants at the edge of the camp to straighten and take notice. Dahl dismounted along with the others, taking the reins of the enormous chestnut beast Verthisathurgiesh had given him. Farideh looked back from beside her bay, the freezing wind catching the fur-lined cloak she wore, and her expression dimmed.

“A pity, paladin,” came a voice from behind him. Dahl’s fists balled at Lorcan’s words, his pulse picking up. “Not a shadow of privacy to be had. Of course, I don’t suppose you want a translator in the bedroom.”

He could hear the loss of something vital, something otherworldly in Lorcan’s voice, but still the curse Graz’zt had buried in him itched to tear his silver tongue right out. “We’ll manage.”

“Oh, for a time,” Lorcan said. “But how long will this suffice? You made the deal, you knew what it meant, and yet here you are, tormenting yourself and her. The longer you drag this out, the more it hurts her, and then what happens when you slip?”

Dahl looked back at him. “If I slip, that means I’ll be free to tell her every word of the deal.”

“It means,” Lorcan said, “that I have your soul and I have no reason to keep you alive. Think it through.”

“You promised her you wouldn’t harm me. Or don’t you keep your word?”

Lorcan smiled then, and something terrible glittered in his eyes. “Mind your own path, Dahl. You’ve enough stones under your feet to worry about.”

“Lorcan!” Farideh shouted. “Leave him be!”

“She knows you’re a miserable bastard,” Dahl said.

“Does she?” Lorcan tossed back as led his horse past. “I guess she doesn’t mind the company of a miserable bastard then.”

She’s keeping him from picking at you, Dahl told himself, as he watched Lorcan meet Farideh. She’s trying to keep the peace.

A cambion against the full might of Asmodeus. The memory of Graz’zt’s taunts uncoiled in his thoughts. For a clever boy, you’re easily duped.

Adastreia came up beside him, watching Lorcan as well. “If I didn’t know better, I’d guess that cambion had everything to do with your terrible, terrible deal.”

Dahl bristled. “I can’t talk about it.”

She laughed, and the ghost of Farideh’s laugh hid in that sound. “Of course you can’t,” she said. “Word of advice? Don’t kill him. Unless you’re prepared to deal with his inevitable successor.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means, dear boy, Brimstone Angels don’t go unpacted. That she has a fairly shiftless cambion for a pactmaster is a blessing on her head, and probably yours—even if his armor is … distractingly snug.” She smirked. “But the next one might be wilier or wickeder. The next one might know more ways around its promises. The next one might happily kill you to keep her head clear, and could easily make you pine for the days of Lorcan.” She patted his shoulder. “Trust me.”

It was a disquieting thought. If she kept her pact with Lorcan, a shadow would always hang over them, and however Dahl was sure of her, it would chip away at his confidence little by little. If she broke it for him, if she put herself in greater peril—

Maybe she wouldn’t, he thought. Maybe there would be another path.

He watched Adastreia walking ahead of him. She spoke from experience. She knew what would happen because it had happened. Was there any future that didn’t conspire to destroy them?

As they reached the encampment, Ilstan threw his head back and his arms wide. “What splendor is this?” he murmured. “What new shape of magic?”

“Peculiar, you ask me,” Thost said, taking the reins of Ilstan’s horse.

“Come on,” Dahl said, to no one in particular. But as he passed, Farideh took his hand in hers. He didn’t look back at Lorcan, for all he wanted to.

The chieftain sat beside a young giant, chisel in her hand, carving pictures directly into his skin and singing softly as she did. The young giant’s eyes were closed, his head drooping, as if he sat sleeping.

Dahl squeezed Farideh’s hand tight, until Somni’s song drifted into stillness. She turned and smiled at him in a beatific way. “So you did come back. And you brought so many more.” She brushed the stone dust from her charge’s arm, flicking rocks from the channels that made the shape of a serpent wreathed in flames.

“Sadly I haven’t come to stay, not yet,” Dahl said. “We have a serious problem, and I think you might be able to help us.” He introduced the others. Somni nodded at each.

“They have interesting markings as well,” she said, her gaze lingering on Farideh. Farideh’s hand twitched in his, and he thought of the raised scars of her warlock brand. He held tight. “What is it you want help with?” Somni asked.

“You mentioned artifacts,” Dahl said, “things from this world that were thrown into yours when the planes last crossed. We’re looking for a powerful artifact that we believe was smuggled into Abeir around the time of the last collision—a staff, belonging to a god.”

Somni considered him. “What will you do with this knowledge, Dahl Peredur?”

Dahl hesitated. Save Havilar—but that was only a fraction of the problem. Return Azuth to his previous strength—but he couldn’t say that was even possible, or that Farideh even meant to do it. Bring the staff into Toril, where Asmodeus might be able to snatch it—that was uncomfortably true, a problem they hadn’t even begun to consider.

Dahl glanced sidelong at Farideh. Had she considered it?

“We need the staff to stop a dangerous spellcaster,” Farideh answered when he didn’t. “She wants it in order to punish a god, to kill him. But doing so will kill my sister.”

Somni frowned. “Do you normally kill your god-things?”

“It’s complicated,” Dahl said. “Do you recall anyone ever seeing a staff?”

For a long moment, Somni didn’t speak. “In the other world, in a cave in the mountains, in the caverns where we mine the crystal for the draumrting, there is something that does not belong. In one of these caves there is no crystal, but the whole place pulses with a magic that would be much more at home in this place. We don’t go there—others have. I have not seen it or sought it out myself, but they say it is only a stick of wood, but that it glows and gives strange and terrible dreams.”

Dahl nearly shouted in triumph. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you. If you could just—”

“How will you get there, Dahl Peredur?”

A complex question. “We have ideas,” he said. “Places to start. There are still places here that bear the scars of the last collision. There’s the possibility the planes are close still. There’s the one who hid the staff in the first place. But if we don’t have a map of where to find the staff, it won’t matter. We don’t have time to search a whole plane.”

“You always talk of not having time.” Somni studied the lot of them—human, tiefling, half-devil—for so long, Dahl began to wonder if she’d even understood the question. But then she nodded once. “I will give you the map,” Somni agreed. “The price is three dreams.”

Dahl frowned. “Forgive me, I don’t understand what you mean. You … want us to give you the power from three dreams?”

“Yes,” Somni said. “As well as the visions in them. In your dreams, I will see that you can be trusted with this—or not. Our bond will strengthen and so will our draumrtings. This is the price.”

Dahl glanced over at Farideh. For as long as he’d known her, she’d suffered from nightmares and she didn’t like talking about them. He thought of the time in the prison camp that they’d both drunk a tainted potion called the wizard’s finest, that hurtled them into a distorted dream of Farideh’s. She didn’t look at him, but her expression looked grim.

“Which of us do you want?” she asked Somni.

Somni regarded her as if she were an anxious child. “It is best if you all sleep,” Somni said. “And I will find the dreams that need to be found.”

16

5 Hammer, the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant (1487 DR)
Tymanther, near the Smoking Mountains

THE MOON ROSE, WANING GIBBOUS OVER SOMNI’S LEFT SHOULDER, AS THE Tusendraumren Steinjotunen chanted a loop of song, blending their magic into the powers of the Weave. Farideh could feel the edges of it, closing like a gossamer-fine net around them. She had never wanted so badly not to sleep.

She wasn’t the only one. Dahl sat close to Somni, writing notes in a leather-bound book. Thost and Bodhar’s bedrolls were laid out but unoccupied, the brothers wandering the camp. Ilstan lay staring up at the stars, unblinking, and Lorcan stood at the edge of the magic’s reach, arms folded, eyes shadowed. Only Adastreia slept, as if nothing they were doing mattered in the least.

Farideh rubbed the pinch of her brow. The night before, what little she’d slept had been plagued by nightmares, frantic races to find Havilar, battles with warlock after warlock, the armies of Bryseis Kakistos, Lorcan, and nothing she wanted the giant to ask questions about. Farideh watched Dahl scribbling notes. Every time she’d spoken to him, there was a moment where he’d almost speak—an intake of breath shaped around the thought of a word—but he’d catch himself, close his mouth around it. It frightened her. The danger in speaking so clear and yet unexplained.

This is what happens when you make deals with devils, she thought. This is what happens to the people you love.

Farideh walked to the farther side of the circle and sat down next to Lorcan. “You’re going to need to sleep.”

“I don’t particularly want an odd giant sifting through my thoughts,” Lorcan said, still standing. “Or dreams, or whatever. Why does she care? So far as I can tell, it’s an extreme waste of time, dreaming. Sleeping. All of this.”

“How else do we find the staff?” she asked. She reached up and tugged on the edge of his sleeve. “Sit, at least. I’m tired and so are you.”

Lorcan scowled at her, but he settled beside her. “Your brightbird clearly thinks I shouldn’t have come.”

“Do you blame him?” she asked. “You’re hardly trying to be pleasant.”

“Why would I be pleasant to him, darling?” Lorcan said softly. “As far as I’m concerned, he’s an impediment. The one thing I can’t resolve.”

Farideh sighed. Leave it, she told herself. You need him. Even as she thought it, Lachs’s words rose up in her thoughts: Sounds just right for “dear grandmama.” All of us tools, none of us dear.

“Are you feeling any better?” she asked.

“No,” Lorcan said. “Everything hurts. I’m tired and I’m hungry again, and I have no idea what I can or can’t eat, because who’s to say I won’t drop dead of a little venom now?”

Farideh looked across the circle at Dahl. “No one’s going to feed you anything poisonous.”

“Please: Dahl, for one. His brothers make three. Ilstan, cheerfully—assuming he remembers what food is. Adastreia, without a doubt—especially if Kulaga has a mind to expand his collection or make her more valuable in a stroke. You are the only person I can trust. More so than usual.”

Dahl looked back at them, meeting her eyes for only a breath before he looked away. Her heart squeezed. “I have some dried meat in my saddlebag,” she said. “Probably more waybread. Do you want me to get it for you?”

“I do not want to eat another crumb of that horrible waybread.”

“Would you rather undo the protection?” Farideh asked. “If you want to go home—”

“I can’t go home.” Then softer, “I don’t think you can appreciate, darling, how far and wide this stretches. Your eyes are locked on saving your sister, one small piece of this horrible puzzle, but the ramifications are … extraordinary.

“You save her, you kill Bryseis Kakistos once and for all—don’t tell me you don’t intend to do it, you might not, but given the right circumstances you would—then you stop the downfall of Asmodeus. You let the god of sin persist in the world and you make yourself an enemy of every archdevil hoping to bring him low.”

“You’re exaggerating,” Farideh said, even though it made her stomach tighten. “I don’t have that kind of power.”

“You shouldn’t,” Lorcan agreed. “That is how bad things have gotten. If you aid her, if you decide she has a point—and don’t tell me you don’t intend to do that either, if she offers you Havilar’s safety and an end to Asmodeus, then what will stop you?—if you aid her, then Asmodeus and Azuth will both be destroyed, there is no guaranteeing the continued stability of the Nine Hells, and you will have colluded in the deaths of thirteen innocents at the very minimum. And if you do nothing at all, the risk rises by the day that Asmodeus will find your sister and destroy her and Bryseis Kakistos together—which, in the broadest scheme of things is the wisest choice of action, and the only one I think you’ll refuse to do.”

“All I want is Havilar safe,” Farideh said. “That’s it.”

Still, the thought of the thirteen heirs, of little Remzi, of the balance of power that might crush tens of thousands or more … Farideh blew out a breath. I don’t have that kind of power, she reminded herself. I can only protect my own.

“Liar,” Lorcan said, his remark stretching into a yawn.

Farideh yawned too, unable to stifle it. The song of the giants, the way the music, the sounds of the strange words, looped and looped like a nighthawk, seemed to drag her down toward sleep, even as she was speaking. Thoughts of her nightmares crowded the worries about gods and ghosts and wars. She looked over at Somni, the grooves carved into her skin slowly building with a milky light.

“I hope this works,” she said, trying to ignore the very real fear that it wouldn’t. She wet her mouth. “Do you know much about Caisys the Vicelord? Where he might be?”

Lorcan said nothing, a silence so pointed that Farideh turned back to him, expecting to have set him off somehow. But instead he was watching the giants, grim and pensive. “Lorcan?” she said.

“Caisys the Vicelord was one of the Brimstone Angel’s first recruits,” Lorcan said, as if he were being forced to recite, “a demonborn tiefling well-known for his … wide-ranging tastes. His heirs are by far the cheapest, the most common. My last Caisys heir …” He broke off and swallowed, looking away as if he’d said something profoundly uncomfortable.

“What’s wrong?” Farideh asked.

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. What’s wrong?” But he kept his silence. “You can tell me,” she reminded him. “Did something happen to the heir?” Nothing. “Did something happen with the heir?”

“No. The heir was a louche little dabbler. He’s my father,” he added all in a rush. “So my warlock was … kin or something. I hadn’t thought of it until now. It’s … unsettling is all.”

“Holy gods,” Farideh said. “How … How long have you known that?”

“Sairché told me, I don’t know, some days ago. I don’t keep track.” He looked away again.

Farideh shifted a little nearer. “Are you all right?”

“Of course I’m all right. It doesn’t matter,” he said. “He’s just some deviant who made a deal with Invadiah.”

“And left you in the Hells.”

“Yes, I’m sure I would have fared so well up here. With a wizard-coinlad father.”

Maybe, Farideh thought. “We could go looking for him anyway. After.”

“No. If I sleep,” he said, “if I let this lunatic giant sift through my dreams, do you think that will increase our chances of never having to bother increasing my knowledge of Caisys the Vicelord again?”

“You’re not curious what happened? Where he is?”

Lorcan looked at her sidelong. “Having seen how extraordinarily well things have gone between you and Adastreia, I’m surprised you’d even ask.”

Farideh wanted to protest that she didn’t care about Adastreia, that she never had. But the more the warlock involved herself, the more Farideh began to think perhaps … perhaps she wasn’t so terrible. Perhaps it was a good thing to have met her. She thought of the argument she’d had with Mehen before they’d left, and pushed it all aside.

“What do you dream about?” she asked Lorcan.

For a long moment, he said nothing. “I assume the same things you do,” he said loftily. “I assume everyone gets to watch their heart turned inside out and all your terrors capering about for the amusement of gods only know what. Where are you planning to sleep?”

“I have to go get my bedroll,” she said without answering. “Do you want something to eat or not?”

“You always said you hated sleeping alone,” Lorcan said, returning the favor. “I will say this much—I understand now. I suspect the dreams aren’t so bad, are they? Not when there’s someone close. Someone reminding you of what’s real with every breath.” The tips of his fingers brushed the side of her hand, lingering and suggestive.

“I have to go get my bedroll.” Farideh stood, turning swiftly from him, and headed toward where they’d picketed the horses. What is wrong with you? she thought, wrapping her cloak closer against the chilly night. But she was starting to realize there was nothing wrong—this was how it would always be. Something in her would always drag her back to Lorcan. She could fight it, but she couldn’t begin to imagine how to extinguish it. Time? Distance? All things she didn’t have.

You can kill him, the words of the long-dead Ashmadai shopkeeper came back to her. You can find another devil. How long could she walk free, the descendent of the Brimstone Angel, without a devil’s pact? Would someone like Kulaga be better, someone she didn’t care about?

She stopped beside the pillar of stones the giants had erected at the edge of their camp, covering her face with both hands. Calm, she told herself, willing the tears crowding her throat to melt away. But when she thought of breaking her pact, they threatened to choke her. She repeated to herself a litany of Lorcan’s crimes—he’d tried to kill Brin, to kill Mehen, he’d held Havilar’s safety over her, he’d claimed the gift Dahl had given her in apology for his own, he’d abandoned her in the prison camp, he’d infected her with shaking fever to keep her in Suzail. And he had reasons—he’d always had reasons. He’d always made it up to her and to others.

And none of that would stop the next transgression, Farideh thought.

She wiped her eyes, more to be certain they were dry than anything else. She couldn’t put off sleeping much longer—not for fear of nightmares or for fear of Somni. She headed toward the horses, their backs blanketed against the chill. And heard voices.

Thost and Bodhar were checking the picket lines, shifting some of them closer to the camp. “Gotta say,” Bodhar’s voice came, “not what I expected Dahl to be about out in the world. Although, I do notice you and I are making sure the horses get fed proper and he’s writing down peculiar giant songs.”

“Best we came with him,” Thost said. “What do you think of her?” Farideh stepped back, behind the stone tower.

“Dunno yet,” Bodhar said. “Prettier than I was thinking. She’s a complicated one, that’s for certain. Kind of … aloof.”

“Hold’s him at arm’s length.”

“Hold’s everybody at arm’s length,” Bodhar said. “Including her own mother.”

“Everyone save the devil,” Thost noted.

“Aye. Don’t know how he stands that. You’d think as clearly mad about her as Dahl is, she’d be a little affectionate. But apart from that greeting?”

“Pretty clear why Dahl wants to beat the devil brainless,” Thost said, exchanging a knowing look with his brother.

Farideh’s cheeks burned hot and she stepped away from the horses, fighting the urge to reveal herself and inform them both that what they thought was happening wasn’t at all what was going on—Was it what was going on? a clutching panic in her chest cried. She tried to think back, to sift through the things she’d said and done—maybe she had been too aloof, but all her mind and all her heart were taken up by trying to save Havilar, trying to stop Bryseis Kakistos.

Your eyes are locked on saving your sister, Lorcan had said, one small piece of this horrible puzzle, but the ramifications are … extraordinary.

Calm, she told herself, forcing a deep breath into her lungs. Calm. You’ve made it this far, you can keep yourself together.

She slipped back into the circle of the giants. Despite his protestations, Lorcan lay sprawled across the ground, face slack with sleep, and only then did Farideh realize she hadn’t gotten any of the things she’d gone for. She looked up at the moon and cursed.

When she looked down, Dahl was watching her. He raised his eyebrows as if asking if everything was all right.

Wave him off, she thought. Tell him its fine.

But with everything crowding up around her, with that accusation of aloofness burning in her thoughts, with Lorcan sound asleep and incapable of seeing, she went to Dahl’s side, and tucked herself close to him when he guided her near. The edges of the spell that shared her protection buzzed against her nerves. He pulled out their piece of foolscap, tucked behind his notes, the one they’d been writing on.

What’s wrong? he wrote.

She shook her head. “Nothing. Nothing new.”

Are you going to sleep tonight? he wrote, balancing the little notebook on one knee.

She thought of her nightmares, of all the things Somni might see. “I don’t want to,” she admitted. He put his arm around her waist, pulling her close. She laid her head on his shoulder, closed her eyes, and thought of Suzail, of how close they’d been to being happy—minus the siege, minus the Sharrans, minus the looming question of Lorcan. She thought of how badly she wanted to be alone with him. She inhaled slowly, trying to reclaim that ease. Dahl’s pen scratched against the paper and she opened her eyes.

What was left of that scent was in my haversack, he’d written. Sorry.

Farideh laughed. “Scent’s replaceable.”

I will search high and low for that sort, he promised. Has a potent effect on you.

She covered his fingers with hers. “Scratch that out before someone reads it.” She traced the bones of his knuckles, before taking the stylus and ink from him. If she wrote, he wouldn’t try to speak. I don’t think your brothers like me much, Farideh wrote. I guess it’s best I didn’t come to Harrowdale.

Dahl took the stylus. What did they say?

Her throat started to tighten again. It doesn’t matter.

Give them a chance to come around. These are hard circumstances. His mouth made a hard line. You’re making them ride beside Lorcan, for one.

She made to grab for the stylus again, but her nerves sent up so much shadow-smoke and her hands were shaking. “I can’t get rid of him. Not now.”

Not ever.

“I don’t know! You’re asking me to undo something … Look, forget I brought it up. I don’t want to get into an argument and then you slip—”

Scratching. Did you sleep with him while we were apart? he scribbled.

He wouldn’t look at her. A stab of fear, of anger went through her heart and she straightened, pulling away. “No.”

But you thought about it, a cruel little part of her said. You might have. You let him kiss you.

She felt her cheeks burning as Dahl wrote swiftly, Look, I disappeared, I acted like a hardjack, he was there, you have a past. You might have.

Farideh took the stylus from him, face still burning. I didn’t, she wrote. Then, Are you asking because you slept with Mira? She couldn’t look at him as she held the stylus back out.

A long time ago. Not in the Underdark. She broke it off ages ago.

Farideh thought of the uneasy way Mira had regarded her, of Dahl, so long ago when they’d first met, clearly taken by the cool-mannered historian. Farideh’d admired her too. Mira, she thought, wouldn’t worry about any of this. Mira would just press on, not care. She studied the page, the lines of questions and promises and worries almost filling the foolscap. You’re not Mira, she thought.

“I kissed him,” she said. “I mean, he kissed me. Twice. But I didn’t … I should have … Once was after I had a sort of vision … I wasn’t thinking really. The other time he’d just come back, you’d just hit him and he wasn’t … He was babbling and falling down and I was just trying to get him to lie down so I could figure out what in the Hells was going on, but then he was kissing me and I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t trying … But I should have … I should have said so.” The lump in her throat was back and she swallowed hard against it. “I’m not feeling very like myself lately.”

The stillness stretched so long the shadows began to stir along her arms again. At least it will be an answer, she thought. At least you will have a path.

Dahl moved as if to write again, but instead covered her hand with his, rubbing his thumb over the dip between the bones of her thumb and her wrist.

I know the feeling, he wrote a moment later.

“Are you angry?”

He paused. Not especially. But I don’t like it. How long do I have to fix this?

Farideh looked up at him, horrified. “Whatever we need.”

Dahl gave her a skeptical look. You can’t wait forever. I know that.

I can wait a lot longer than two days, Farideh wrote. I missed you. Every day I missed you. Don’t make it sound like I’d replace you so quick. Then, How long do I have to sort things out?

Dahl sighed. Whatever you need. Then, Fair’s fair: I did kiss Mira. The demon lord got into

“Stop,” Farideh said, covering his hand. It didn’t matter—but also she didn’t want to think about it.

You know, he wrote, you’re what saved me in the Underdark. You’re the thought that kept me from getting overtaken. You’re what let me clear my head enough to save the others. He paused. And my grandmother smashed your ink, but

He scribbled over that. I love you.

I love you too, she wrote, and she was glad for the pen and ink. She could keep herself calm if she didn’t have to speak. I’m scared my problems are going to get you killed. I’m scared I’ll make you slip, and your deal will make things even worse.

Let me handle that, Dahl wrote. Then, I did this all out of order. I should have fixed it first, but I had the chance to come back. I’m sorry.

“Don’t be sorry,” Farideh said, holding him closer. “I’m really glad you’re here.” She cleared her throat and took the stylus back, dipping it once in the ink. I hope she knows how to get the staff. I don’t want to go back to Arush Vayem and hunt for Caisys.

To the Abyss and back with Arush Vayem, Dahl wrote. They didn’t deserve you.

She turned her face into his shoulder. I don’t deserve you, she thought. He pressed a kiss to her forehead. She lifted her head to the sound of scratching. Stay here?

“Where else would I go?” she said, and kept her thoughts very deliberately away from Lorcan sprawled twenty steps from where they were.

• • •

THE LAND BREATHES beneath Lorcan’s feet, its foul blood coursing through it like a monster no one can slay. Toril is a trap, a danger, but then where isn’t? He wears the skin of a human, so no one knows what he is, but the land does. It shivers the way Malbolge does, driven by the Hag Countess’s dying nerves, as if it cannot bear his passing.

Farideh watches him approach from the bridge, over a river of blood that would be more at home in Avernus. She looks as she did on the night in Suzail, waiting for him in the garden to take her away from that place of sorrow, to take her somewhere where there was nothing else to distract them. Her nightdress is thin and delicate and poor armor against the creatures that breach the blood river, but she doesn’t notice them. She’s waiting for him like no one else would.

Lorcan is nearly to the bridge when a man appears in front of him—he might be Lorcan’s double, but for the char-black hair, the lack of wings, the slashing tail. Caisys, he thinks, and whether this is what the Vicelord looked like in life or not doesn’t matter—that is who he is.

“That’s not the way out,” he says. “There is no way out, really.”

“Get out of my way,” Lorcan says. Caisys or not, it doesn’t matter. None of this matters.

“What bad fortune to pin all our hopes on a house divided,” the man says, the words of the mysterious god of spells. “Have you decided yet?”

The pradixikai approach from the farther shore, all thirteen of them and their furies besides, led by his mother, Exalted Invadiah, her hooves sharp, her horns scraping the sky. Thirty-seven erinyes, the most deadly in Malbolge, and Farideh has her back to them.

“She’s not waiting for you,” Caisys says.

“She’ll always wait for me,” Lorcan replies, trying to pass the tiefling. “You don’t know her.”

“Do you?”

Rage boils up in Lorcan and he reaches for his sword, but he’s lost it somewhere. He searches the heaving, twitching ground, but before he finds it, he sees the giant, sitting on the horizon, tilting her head back and forth as if listening to some silent music.

A dream, Lorcan remembers.

Then Farideh screams, and he forgets Somni and the giants and the fact that he is dreaming.

• • •

HAVILAR HESITATED, EYEING the split in the mists, trying to hold it in her thoughts. She could feel a number of pathways leading out of that opening—ways into dreams. Farideh’s lay open like a wide city boulevard, the easiest path to take, and a part of Havilar wanted dearly to plunge along it, to find her sister and make certain she was all right first. Mehen’s, too, she could see it now, though the path seemed broken and dodgy, as if Mehen slept fitfully, ready to wake. Guilt burrowed into her chest—she should have gone to Mehen sooner, let him know she was all right. She could be in and out, a quick message—

You need to go now, Alyona said. We’ve delayed too long already.

How Alyona knew how much time had passed in the world beyond, Havilar still couldn’t guess, but given the dangers of Bryseis Kakistos’s dream, she was willing to bet that she was right.

Slipping into Brin’s dreams felt almost as natural as slipping into Farideh’s, and the ease with which she came to stand in a finely manicured garden felt treasonous. Blossoming hedges, buzzing with bees, rose high all around her. A bush carved in the shape of a castle tower rose up out of a bubbling fountain, the court around it ringed with red and pink roses.

“Brin!” she shouted, walking through the garden. “Brin, where are you?”

As she walked, the hedges grew thicker, more like brambles, their blooms turning sickly and lurid. The bees grew louder and louder until Havilar realized they weren’t bees—they were hellwasps. The dog-sized fiendish insects swooped over her, sword arms dragging through the air. The clouds overhead thickened and grew red. Havilar clenched her fists and found them closing around the haft of Devilslayer, to her surprise.

“Brin!” she shouted over the din.

She heard a deep, bone-shaking howl and ran toward it, weaving through the hedges. There, beyond a rotting lilac bush, she found another fountain, a statue of a woman spilling blood out of a jar, instead of water. Brin stood against it, sword out, holding back the little boy as Zoonie menaced a trio of erinyes encroaching on them.

“Brin!” she shouted again. “Shake it off. I have to talk to you.”

He spotted her and for a moment his expression was so full of fear. He’s starting to think you’re her, she realized. Karshoj. But then he blinked, his expression grateful, relieved. “Can you help me with this?”

Havilar’s grip tightened on the glaive. Three erinyes might be more than she could manage, but this wasn’t real, right? In a dream, she could beat them all together without so much as breaking a sweat.

Or, she realized as the erinyes turned to regard her, Brin’s fear she might get hurt would just mean she got killed and tossed back into the soul sapphire. Her hands itched around the weapon. The devils started toward her.

“Wait,” she said. She took a deep breath and when she exhaled, the erinyes and the hellwasps were all gone. Only her and Brin and Remzi chasing after Zoonie as she romped around the fountain, now full of clear ice. The clouds faded to a pearly gray, snow sifting down over the garden, quickly blanketing everything.

Havilar stared at Remzi packing a snowball and lobbing it at Zoonie, who tried to snap it out of the air, despite her muzzle. Brin approached her, sword still in hand.

“Is it you again?” he asked. “Is this real?”

Havilar tore her gaze from the little boy. “I guess. I mean, you’re not really in Suzail in the snow, but you didn’t make me up. So … half real?” She nodded at Remzi. “Does he … Has he been playing with her like that?”

“He’d like to,” Brin said, sheathing his sword and putting an arm around her waist. “We haven’t left my room.”

“She’s going to get antsy, not having any time to run,” Havilar said. Zoonie pounced on Remzi, knocking him on his backside with a burst of snow before romping off. “Bryseis Kakistos is planning on killing him, isn’t she?”

Brin’s arm tightened around her waist and the clouds grew darker. Lightning flashed, illuminating the clouds’ bellies, and the drone of insects returned. Havilar squeezed him back. “Never mind. That’s not right now. If this works, we won’t have to worry about it.”

“If what works?”

“Alyona sent me,” she said. “She thinks … I think you have to destroy the soul sapphire. The one Bryseis Kakistos wears around her neck.”

Brin goggled at her. “But, you’re in there.”

“Right,” Havilar said.

“It will kill you. Or at least leave you floating around without a body.”

“I don’t know,” Havilar admitted. “But it doesn’t matter—”

He shook his head. “I’m not doing that. I can’t do that.”

“All right well, don’t do it. Just pretend you’re going to do it. That’s what matters. The only thing she’s going to listen to is the possibility that Alyona might break free and wind up dead after all. Just bluff her.”

“If she calls my bluff?”

“Don’t let her call it.”

“That isn’t how things work!”

“Well it has to be!” Havilar said, growing irritated. “I don’t have another idea! I went in her dream too—she’s doesn’t care about anything except maybe her sister. That’s what all this aithyas boils down to. But she’s just exactly like Farideh in that she’s as stubborn as a goat in the mud and she wouldn’t even listen to Alyona. So the only way to stop her is to make … to make her think …”

The next thing she knew, Brin was calling her name. She cursed, her thoughts flooding back without order or reason.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“I can’t keep doing this,” she said. “It’s making me lose my mind, just like Alyona. I’m already … My mind gets blown out like a candle and the next thoughts I have have nothing at all to do with what I was saying.” She turned the point of the glaive into the snow. “I know it’s a stupid plan. I don’t have a better one. This is Farideh’s job. She does the stupid tactical parts, not me. But I can’t do what I know how to do, so start with this?”

Brin wrapped his arms around her, and whether it was real or half real or just a figment, it made her feel a little less adrift.

“If she reminds you of Farideh,” he said, “then what would you do if you needed to change Farideh’s mind?”

Havilar snorted. “Give up.” But she thought about it a moment. “Fari listens better if you tell her directly. If you get right to the point and say what you want and why you want it. If you tell her you’re angry or scared or whatever. But she’s not Farideh.”

“But did Alyona tell her she was willing to sacrifice herself—and you—so that Bryseis Kakistos didn’t go ahead with this?”

“No,” Havilar said. In fact, she hadn’t considered it in those terms exactly. But Brin was right—even if it was a bluff, there remained the chance that Bryseis Kakistos would call it. Alyona had to know this might mean they both would die.

Havilar sighed. “How about this? Can you find a way to break the gem in case we need to? Maybe find someone who can?”

“Maybe,” Brin said. “If I need to, I’ll take the soul sapphire. I’d rather I had it anyway, but if I can’t leave the fortress, it’s not going to do a lot of good.”

Havilar took his hand and squeezed it. “I don’t know when I can come back again. It’s hard. It’s making me forgetful.”

“Can you stay a little longer?” he asked. He sat on the edge of the frozen fountain, patting the spot beside him. “We can pretend this is real. Or half real.”

“For a little bit,” Havilar agreed, sitting down beside him as Zoonie raced passed again, chased by Remzi’s snowballs. “I need to find Farideh too.”

• • •

SOMEONE HAS GIVEN Adastreia a basket, but whoever it was is long gone, and wherever she searches, there’s nowhere to set it down. She walks beside Kulaga down a springtime street in Mulsantir, but she knows better than to give the basket to Kulaga—never give a devil anything you don’t want used against you.

She lifts the corner of the cloth covering. The basket is full of detritus—potsherds and empty bottles, shells and old roots, pieces of pretty stone, and scraps of parchment. And a knife—a black-handled dagger with a sharp, oiled blade. Oh yes, she thinks. That’s mine.

Kulaga stops walking. “Give me the blade.”

Adastreia takes hold of the weapon, the devil’s secret name on her tongue. She could kill him—they both know it—and he could kill her. That they can persist in this equilibrium is the most useful thing about devils, so far as Adastreia can see.

But the blade in her hand has other ideas, and she doesn’t realize she slashed off the logokron’s tattooed tongue until it lies flopping in the dirt. Oh dear, Adastreia thinks as Kulaga roars. Now I have to start again.

She looks back the way they came, expecting more barbed devils. But there’s only a stone giant, sitting a bow’s shot up the path, rocking her head in time to a music Adastreia can’t hear.

A dream, she remembers. But then Kulaga reaches for her throat …

• • •

PREXIJANDILIN HESKAN’S HEAD seemed smaller somehow, perched on one of the many spears beside the golden general, its jaw agape as if awestruck. Ophinshtalajiir Rahdia, daughter of Shurideh, of the line of Assilyath, held his face in her thoughts as it had been in life, a small rebellion as the King of Dust looked down on her. Beyond, the snarling nightmare of demons, the darkness deeper than it had any right to be, and an army forming out of the seething mass of bodies, ready to march.

“You think you’re achieving something by holding out on me,” Gilgeam says. “But I still have so many of you to go. I know about your weaponry. I know how many casters you count among your forces. I know about the bats. I know how your magic works now.” He smiled, his teeth a perfect slice of white. “This land was given to me once, long before you ever sullied it with your footsteps. You had no right to it.”

Rahdia said nothing. She told herself ancestor stories of old, bound and kneeling there in the dirt. If the King of Dust broke them—somehow—they would escape him, regroup, rise again. They had done so before, hadn’t they? They could do it again.

But she thought of Djerad Thymar, of the Prexijandilin patriarch, so set in his ways. Can you turn back the glass? Rahdia thought. Or have we grown too used to our sanctuary here?

“Djerad Thymar,” Gilgeam said. “You stole it from us.”

No, Rahdia thought. We built it of ruins and rock hewn from the Smoking Mountains. Sealed it with the Breath of Petron.

“You built it,” Gilgeam said, “out of a god’s tomb. Did you think I wouldn’t remember?”

Rahdia still said nothing, though her pulse leaped. If the Son of Victory could read her thoughts—

“I do know what you’re thinking,” Gilgeam said. “ ‘That city is ours.’ You built that city of my brother’s tomb, desecrators, and we will retake it in short order. Now: What did you do with the body?”

Rahdia tried not to think of the story of Thymara and the Black Axe, of the Moon’s Champion. At its heart lay a tomb, revealed by the broken stone. A bearded man, twice Thymara’s height, a human by his look and freshly dead by any indication. Had she reburied the body, after? Rahdia couldn’t remember. Her elders hadn’t liked that story, and young Rahdia had preferred tales of battle and bravery to the stillness of the founding of Thymara’s fortress.

Gilgeam seized her by the plumes, shaking her bodily. Pain blurred her vision. “What did you do with the body?” Be like the elders in Raurokh, she told herself, clamping shut her jaw. Still, silent. Never give the tyrant what he wants.

The King of Dust released her, planted a hand in the middle of her chest. A pulse of power surged through Rahdia, feeling as though it melted her very bones. She screamed, but the air went out of her as he shocked her again and again.

“What did you do with the body?” Gilgeam snarled.

“I don’t know,” Rahdia blurted.

“Who does know?” When she didn’t answer, he shocked her again, her vision briefly going black from the pain. “Who?”

“Kepeshkmolik,” she said. “It’s their tale.”

Gilgeam released her. “Good. Now which among you is Kepeshkmolik.”

But Rahdia would not compound her error. She shut her eyes and thought of Prexijandilin Heskan. “We are all Kepeshkmolik,” she whispered. “Ask around.”

His sandaled foot pressed against her throat. “Which among you is Kepeshkmolik?” he asked again.

“You cannot end us,” she said. “We are Vayemniri.”

Gilgeam smiled. “Then I will enjoy making the effort, at the very least.”

• • •

FARIDEH ROLLS THE dough out, thin as a scraped skin, on the scarred wooden table of the tallhouse in Suzail. Flour coats her hands, blending away the edges of her bleached third finger. On the other end of the table, Dahl’s chopping something green. The kitchen’s full of the smell of herbs—rosemary and bay.

Something black rises up out of the dough—a torn scrap of parchment. Farideh picks it out, then sees the others. It’s as if she’s rolled the dough out atop a shredded scroll, and maybe she has, she can’t remember. She picks them out, one by one, but there’s more than should be possible layered into the dough. She lays them to the side, torn edge to torn edge, looking for where the words meet, looking for meaning, but there’s nothing.

She looks back, over her shoulder, out the window at the garden. There’s a giant sitting there, watching her.

Dahl comes to stand behind her, arm around her waist. He kisses her cheek, just beneath the ear and asks, “Do we have turnips?”

She looks back. His shirt’s half-laced and untucked, looking lazy and freshly woken—she forgets about the giant entirely when he smiles. “In the cellar,” she says.

“Do you want to come with me?” he asks, still smiling. And it’s silly but she’s glad to. Her fingers interlace with his as they descend the wooden stair into a low-ceilinged, heavily decorated parlor. Cream silk papers the walls, and the rug beneath her feet is so thick Farideh loses her balance and bumps into a green plush couch. A hall leads away from the stairs, curving into the darkness. Dahl pulls her along, deeper into the cellars, down more stairs. She didn’t know this was all here.

She looks in the doors as they pass—some guest rooms, some cells, some look just like the ossuary-lined tombs of the Vayemniri. One room is packed floor to ceiling with little painted wooden dolls; they’re tumbling out into the hallway like a landslide.

Farideh steps over and she suddenly remembers—she has been here before.

She came down here, into the third cellar; she met Lorcan. The memory is there—unassailable, irredeemable—she remembers this place and the burning touch of Lorcan’s skin, and the greedy way she kisses him, pulls him down into one of these strange beds. He might still be down here. He probably is still down here. And Dahl doesn’t know.

“Dahl.” She tries to stop, but his hand only slips out of hers. “Dahl, wait!”

The door beside her is open, and the giant is there, sitting at the end of the room, shrunken somehow to fit the space, or perhaps the space has grown around her. Somni, she thinks, and she remembers she’s dreaming.

But it doesn’t last. She remembers Dahl—he can’t find out, not like this. She runs after him, down deeper into the earth. She finds Lorcan first, still naked and lounging in the unmade bed. He looks like sin. He looks like want. For a moment, she thinks no one can blame her for this misstep. No one can really call it a misstep.

“You have to go,” she says. “Now.”

“What’s this?” Dahl says behind her. She spins—he doesn’t look angry, only curious.

“Not turnips,” Lorcan says, and even that he manages to make sound obscene.

“Oh, are you kidding me?” Havilar is suddenly standing against the wall. “I thought you made your mind up.”

Farideh is about to grab her sister, to beg for her help … but she stops. “It’s a dream.”

“Yeah,” Havilar says gently. “It’s a dream.”

Farideh covers her face, wishing she could make all of it vanish. “Karshoj. This is the dream I have to have when Somni’s watching. When you’re watching.” She looks up at Havilar. “You’re real. You’re really here.” Havi nods, and she grabs her sister tight. “Are you all right? Tell me you’re all right.”

Havilar hugs her back. “For the moment. It’s getting worse. I’m … coming apart. I can’t … I can’t keep coming.”

“United—that’s what she wanted,” a voice says. “And can you really say she was wrong?”

Still holding Havilar, Farideh turns to look at Dahl, but he’s not there. Asmodeus stands in the doorway. He wears his own skin—he does when she’s dreaming, she thinks—and he watches her with mild displeasure. Even that makes her shiver uncontrollably.

“How are we united?” Farideh asks.

Asmodeus smiles. “You don’t know what it was like before. Chaos. Shadows. This is better, believe me.”

“Don’t talk to him,” Havilar says, her voice unsteady. “Don’t talk to the weird giant in the corner either. I don’t have a lot of time.” The corner—the room stretches in impossible ways and Somni is sitting in the corner, considering.

Havilar grips her shoulders. “What wouldn’t you do to save me?”

Farideh shakes her head. “Nothing.”

That isn’t the answer Havilar wants. “What … What would it take for you to give up? What would … It’s not you I’m asking about. It’s Bryseis Kakistos.”

Farideh’s thoughts are spinning too fast to grab hold of. “I wouldn’t. Maybe … maybe if you said I shouldn’t? Is … Is that what you want?”

“No,” Havilar says. “It’s Bryseis Kakistos. This isn’t about Asmodeus; it’s about—”

At the name, Farideh looks back to be sure the god hasn’t heard, but he’s gone and left Dahl in his place again, looking not so much puzzled as concerned. His eyes shine silver in the torchlight.

“I’m still here,” he says.

It’s a dream, she reminds herself. An incredibly embarrassing dream.

Havilar turns her back. “It’s about her sister. She’s trying to save her dead sister. Alyona.” The name echoes in Farideh’s memories, as if she’s heard it a thousand times before. “Only, she’s going to kill everybody trying to do it,” Havilar went on. “So yeah, if you thought it would kill a plane full of people to save me, karshoj yes, you shouldn’t do that. You’d get that, right?”

“It wasn’t supposed to be like that,” Dahl says.

Farideh looks back at him, and he smiles, as if he’s waiting for her to answer a question that shouldn’t be this hard. His eyes are the wrong color, she thinks. “She was keeping secrets,” he says. “She still is.”

“Shut up, Dahl,” Havilar says. “You can finish this weird dream later.”

When she looks back at Havilar, Asmodeus stands right beside them, not merely displeased, but incandescent with fury—I’m not dreaming, Farideh thinks as Havilar skips back, away from the god. Her heart nearly stops.

“You have no idea what you’re toying with,” he says. He waves a hand over them both—the cellars vanish and she and Havilar are looking out over the whole of the plane, turning blue and green beneath them.

“Do you know what happens when the king is stolen out of the Nine Hells?” the god asks, and the plane tears. Fire and ice and hideous miasmas pour out, armies swarm from the rents, swallowing whole cities in their battle. The Nine Hells, collapsing in on themselves, their order destroyed, turn their armies out into every plane.

“I warned you,” he whispers in her ear.

Farideh turns, but he is gone, they’re in the cellars once more, and the old man is there, between her and Lorcan.

“Who in the Hells is that?” Havilar demands.

“You have no idea what you’re toying with,” he says sadly.

“I know you’re both going to die no matter what I do,” Farideh says.

The old man spreads his hands, cards appearing in neat rows in the air between them. “The time for chaos and disorder is passed. Now comes method, neatness, law. The Overgod approaches and all that we have striven for will be etched in stone.” He sweeps his hand across the cards and they vanish, but for three that lie in a crooked line: Iolaum, the Arcanist; the Adversary; the Godborn.

Devils and magic, Farideh thinks. Sin and wizards. Gods and the Nine Hells. Jumbled together like cards dropped on a table.

“He offers you no solution.” She turns and it is Asmodeus once more. “If you separate us, we will die and you will have neither—is that better? Do you know what happens when the king is stolen out of the Nine Hells?”

She blinks and it’s Azuth before her. “Do you know what happens when the spark is stolen out of a god?”

“Has he killed you?” she asks.

The wizard smiles at her in a way that sets her nerves humming. “If you consider the matter carefully, he saved me, though not as I would have preferred to be saved. I was near death, my divinity slipping from my grasp. He might have tried to wrench it away, but no … this way both are whole. Either can claim the godhood. Or neither.

“Fari,” Havilar starts.

“How do I stop it?” Farideh demands.

“You must wake now,” a voice—Somni’s voice—says, all urgency and magic. But Farideh can’t look away from the gods flickering in front of her.

Blink. “Stop her,” Asmodeus says.

Blink. “Help her,” Azuth says.

Blink. “Do something before it’s too late.”

“What do I do?” Farideh shouts.

The old man considers her sadly. “Sometimes the only choice is a sacrifice.”

The archdevil smiles. “Sometimes we forget the power we wield.”

“Wake up!” Somni shouts. Havilar grabs her arm.

“She took my powers,” Farideh says. “Lorcan can’t give me anything as he is. What do you think I can do?”

Azuth approaches. Asmodeus approaches. A palm that might belong to either rises before her face, the god beyond it flickering between both selves. “We are fragile. We cannot spare a Chosen’s spark,” one says. “Any more than you need it.”

“But all the same,” the other finishes. “It wouldn’t do to leave all to chance.”

The hand caresses her face, electric with magic, enough to stop her heart.

PART VIII

ASCENSION

13 Hammer, the Year of Blue Fire (1385 DR)
Aglarond

• • •

Near the end of the ritual, Bryseis Kakistos could not say where she ended, where Asmodeus began, what was real, and where the lines of power that bound all of them together led to. The night of nights, the end of all her efforts, finally here.

Twelve faces regarded her, some envious, some adoring, some hateful—none of that mattered. Success was at hand, the blood of the sacrificed victims soaking the ground, staining her robes, slick on her hands. The beat often thousand pulses forced into synchronization by the web of magic pulling on their blood made the air pound.

United, Bryseis Kakistos thought. Intertwined. Bound.

I did this, she thought. I brought us here. I will make you a god.

I will bring you back, she thought.

The surge of power that came with those last thoughts blotted out everything else. Bryseis Kakistos bled out of the edges of herself, blurring into the engines of the Nine Hells, the building power of the highest of the archdevils, the nascent god. She stopped existing, nothing but the conduit. Nothing but the path for all this power.

Infernal words tore across her, the seal of the incantation spoken by the Raging Fiend himself. You are mine, they said. You have always been mine. You will always be mine.

The heavens yawned above, the endless planes below. The world of Bryseis Kakistos was nothing more than a fevered dream of a distant overgod, easily changed, easily remade. The Nine Hells screamed with the sudden force often thousand voices, ten thousand hearts, ten thousand souls. For a moment, she was everything and everywhere.

And then once more, she stood in the grove, coated in blood, and bound to her bones. In the stillness of the grove, twelve faces regarded her, all of them shocked, all of them silent but for the sounds of their uneven breaths. Bryseis Kakistos grinned.

What have you done? Alyona’s screams were suddenly loud enough to make her ears ring. What have you done?

• • •

17

6 Hammer, the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant (1487 DR)
Djerad Thymar

SOMETIME IN THE NIGHT, THE ADJUDICATORS HAD TAKEN DOWN THE WHITE cloth of mourning from the Vanquisher’s seat, leaving the stone throne cold and hard and ready for its next claimant. Mehen stood alone before the dais, waiting for the conclave, wanting nothing more than this, and yet knowing he would regret it.

You cannot save Havilar alone, he told himself. You cannot save her without the Vanquisher’s might. Deep down he’d known this from the very beginning. Farideh’s plans moved too slowly, betrayed her hesitance, her fearfulness.

Will you trust for a karshoji heartbeat that maybe I’m doing what’s best this time? Mehen tapped his tongue against the roof of his mouth. It’s a precaution, he told himself. It’s a contingency. He touched the pouch that held the sending stone Ilstan had given him, the one that spoke to a matching stone Farideh carried with her. She’s fine, he told himself. She will let you know when they’ve arrived. You will speak as soon as the stones’ magic builds back again. Her plans were slow and roundabout—she’s far from danger, and that’s for the best. She’s far from here, and she won’t try to stop you.

If Farideh’s careful dancing around the Hells came to nothing, then this way he could be ready with an army.

“You look like a man gonna do something foolish.”

Mehen looked back over his shoulder at Kallan standing in the doorway. “I don’t suggest you try and stop me.”

“Well you’re no fun.” Kallan came to stand beside him. “Uadjit told me Narghon threw your name into the pot while we were gone. You worried I can’t beat you?”

“No,” Mehen said. “In fact … Look, you don’t want to be Vanquisher. I’ll do it. I have to do it.”

Kallan stepped around him, to stand between Mehen and the throne, one scaly brow ridge raised. “What happened to, ‘You’d be a good Vanquisher, Kallan’? You doubting me?”

“What happened to ‘they’ll poke holes in my head’?” Mehen returned, feeling the snap of lightning at the back of his throat. He blew out a breath through his nostrils and set his eyes on the throne again. “You don’t want to do it. I shouldn’t have pushed you to it. I’ll take the piercings.”

Kallan snorted. “You’d be shit at it, you know?”

That startled Mehen. “Tiamat m’ henish—”

“Not so shit as Arjhani,” Kallan went on, matter-of-factly, “but more shit than I would—and you know it. You let them get your scales up. You’d spend hours bellowing at people for being stupid. The first time someone implies you don’t know your omin’ iejirsjighen, you’re going to spit lightning. You can steer around a bunch of sellswords and teenagers, but you’re no diplomat. Hells, you can’t even be civil to Kepeshkmolik Narghon for a few breaths, and the man put your name forward. So why, all of the sudden, are you trying to sell me the story of your needing to do what’s right for Djerad Thymar?”

Mehen folded his arms, feeling exposed and awkward. “I take back what I said about you talking people into things.”

“Someone told me once you prefer plain talk,” Kallan said gently. “Tell me what you’re doing.”

Lies flitted on Mehen’s tongue, but instead he said, “I need the Lance Defenders. The city forces. The giants, if they’ll help me.” He wet his mouth. “I can’t just sit around and wait. I have to do something.”

Kallan was silent a moment. “You’re not talking about the King of Dust, are you?”

“My daughter is in trouble,” Mehen said, hating the sudden thickness in his voice. “Farideh’s plans aren’t fixing this. I don’t even know why I’m karshoji still here, except that I know that this army can siege that lich’s fortress and stop this.” He looked up at Kallan. “I’m done rubbing my thumbs and fretting like an old man in the dust. I need an army. Please don’t try to stop me.”

“I’m going to have to. You’re not thinking straight.”

“Straighter than meandering around looking for warlocks and staves!”

“Hmm. What would Havi say?” Kallan asked, all mildness. “You think she’d appreciate you pulling away forces from a city of fifty thousand about to be attacked?”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t wait until the attack.”

“ ‘Attack’? You think that fellow’s going to hit us once and vanish?” Kallan shook his head. “Tiamash think’s he’s a god, thinks this is his land, his city. You know damned well this isn’t ending before the summer, and we ought to count ourselves lucky if it ends before Dumuzi’s grandchildren are arguing over that throne. You take that army anywhere, Djerad Thymar would be doomed.”

Mehen covered his face with both hands. “I have to do something.”

“You have to trust your girls.”

“I’ve trusted them!”

“No, you’ve assumed that Havilar made a pothach call, and you’ve been ignoring Farideh and coming up with your own mad plans for stealing a godsbedamned army to save Havilar yourself,” Kallan pointed out. “That’s not trusting them. Which of you knows the first thing about devils and warlocks and—”

“Farideh! Fine? Farideh.” Mehen snapped his teeth. “Knowing the first thing doesn’t mean she knows enough.”

Kallan shrugged. “I know you don’t want to hear it, noachi, but it means she knows more than you. It also means, she could probably use your help on what she doesn’t know.”

“She’s got a whole horde of people to help her.”

“And none of them,” Kallan said, “are you.”

A clamor of voices heralded the arrival of the first of the elders and their entourages. Shestandeliath Geshthax arrived with a furious-looking Narhanna. Kepeshkmolik Narghon with Uadjit by his side entered and stood a cautious distance from Mehen. Shortly after, Fenkenkabradon strode in flanked by his scions, Dokaan leaning heavily on a crutch still, and Arjhani, dripping with finery. Narghon’s teeth parted, swathed in frost—Arjhani avoided his gaze.

But in doing so he locked eyes with Mehen. A half smile curved Arjhani’s mouth, but Mehen only looked away. He had nothing at all left for Arjhani, not anymore. Especially not seeing him try to turn the city against Dumuzi this way. Following close beside him was a dragonborn woman with purplish scales and the chains of Shestandeliath swinging from one nostril to her ear. Mazarka, Mehen thought. Troublemaker—Dahl vouching for her didn’t change that.

“Now, I’m going to do you a favor and win this karshoji seat,” Kallan continued, lowering his voice, “because I’m awful fond of you and I don’t want to see you turn into a godsbedamned cautionary tale.”

Mehen cut a glance at the growing crowd, at Narghon’s cold eye on him. “You don’t have to take care of me.”

“Yeah, but I’m gonna. You don’t like it, you can bellow at me later.” Swift as a sword thrust, he leaned forward, brushing the frill of his jaw over Mehen’s cheek. “And if you like it, well …” He hesitated, his brashness run short. “I wouldn’t mind if you stayed. Kept me company at the least. After we figure out how to save your girls, I mean.”

Mehen could not have replied even if he’d known what to say. In that moment, Anala came swooping through the crowd, stopping close enough beside them both to force them to step apart, to move back. She smiled at Mehen. “Well met, Kallan. Mehen.”

Mehen sighed. “Again,” he said. “This wasn’t my idea.”

“That hardly matters, does it?”

“What’s the matter?” Kallan said. “You change your mind about how good my chances are?”

The barest hint of Anala’s teeth flashed ivory behind her smile. “Dear boy, I can hardly account for human refugees and wakened gods and the fall of Kepeshkmolik Uadjit. We will see what we can do.” Her gaze flicked over Mehen. “And what we can’t manage.”

The elders all identified their clans, rolling down the lists from Kepeshkmolik to Churirajachi, each one proclaiming their strength and support for Djerad Thymar. Each one scared beyond reason, Mehen thought. How long had it been since the Vayemniri faced a true threat?

Uadjit detailed the defeat of Djerad Kethendi, the debates in that city over whether the available armies would be best used for defense, for rescue, for destroying the Untherans altogether. To all appearances, she might have been giving only the bare facts, but the way her words fell, it was clear Uadjit did not favor another attack.

A pity her candidacy for Vanquisher had been withdrawn.

“There’s only one thing to be done,” Arjhani announced. “The army of the King of Dust must be stricken from the plane. Let them persist and we are only setting ourselves up for further attacks. Only tyrants come out of the Steel Sky’s embrace.” Not a word of that was Arjhani’s, Mehen would have laid double coin on that much. He glanced after Mazarka, but she wasn’t beside Arjhani anymore. She was heading out the door. As she did, she passed Dumuzi leading in Namshita, Amurri, and Kirgal. Mazarka eyed Namshita as she went by, a clear smirk in her teeth.

“If I am made Vanquisher,” Arjhani went on, “then you may rest assured that the first matter at hand will be ridding our country of these interlopers. Tymanther belongs to the Vayemniri.”

Mehen’s attention snapped back to the conclave, his temper overtaking him. “You karshoji coward,” Mehen said. “If it’s not Vayemniri, it doesn’t matter, isn’t that right?” Arjhani’s jaw parted, his tongue tapping nervously.

“Mehen, control yourself,” Narghon hissed.

“He has a point,” Fenkenkabradon Ishkhanak said. “Is that cowardly?”

“It’s a cowardly point. It’s a karshoji idiotic point as well.” Mehen turned on Arjhani. “Have you or your puppet master exchanged two sentences with the people waiting at the gates? They don’t want to follow that madman. Your own karshoji son can see it. Just because someone’s not scaly doesn’t mean they can’t be Thymari.”

The Churirajachi matriarch rapped her walking stick against the floor. “Do you intend to argue that the maunthreki among us are Thymari?”

“Verthisathurgiesh extended clan benefits to my daughters,” Mehen said. “Pretty sure everyone in this room knows perfectly well they’re not Vayemniri. Pretty sure everyone in this room knows they’re half the reason we’re not still scrambling around chasing a demon.”

“That demon was killed by a Vayemniri,” Arjhani started.

“Channeling an Untheran god,” Mehen shot back.

“Be fair,” Kallan pointed out, “from what Kepeshkmolik Dumuzi says, Enlil has opted to make the transition. Be pretty brazen to pretend that’s not the case, or that it can’t or shouldn’t be done.”

“So the unpierced one wants to tell us what our ways are?” Fenkenkabradon Ishkhanak drawled.

Mehen bared his teeth—you want to karshoji declare what is and isn’t Vayemniri, start by remembering a patriarch can’t be Vanquisher—but Kallan only shrugged.

“I don’t think I have to tell anyone here anything. Nobody in this room needs to be taught their ancestor stories. Nobody needs lessons on why we praise Esham-Ana for giving his comrades aid, even Clanless Shamash. The slaves of the tyrant aren’t the enemy—the tyrant is the enemy. And I wouldn’t dream of telling my elders they ought to be at my knee paying attention to what is and isn’t omin’ iejirsjighen.”

Arjhani’s scowl could have melted glass. “Perhaps wandering the world, it doesn’t matter who your allies are, but look around. We protect our own in Djerad Thymar. You want to make us into Waterdeep or some other worldly place.”

Kallan only chuckled. “That may be the first time anyone’s accused me of being too cosmopolitan.” A chorus of snickers chased his words. Why he ever thought he’d be bad at this, Mehen couldn’t fathom.

“I have seen a lot of the world,” Kallan admitted. “I think there’s a lot we could learn. Pretty sure you all know that too, given past events.” He nodded at Namshita and the others. “I think we all know how easy it is to find a tyrant in your midst, no matter how careful you were—some of us more than others.” He gave Arjhani a look so blatant that none could have missed it, or misremembered Verthisathurgiesh Pandjed.

“So what would you do?” Anala said.

Kallan considered her, as if realizing how neatly he’d stepped into the role she’d made for him. For a moment, that fear he’d shown in the market square glinted in his eyes. His nostrils flared and he answered: “Make space for the refugees. Shore up our defenses. Reclaim our lost. Wait and see what we’re really up against.”

“And die from the inside out as they turn on us,” Arjhani said.

“They’ve offered us intelligence about the King of Dust’s army,” Dumuzi protested. “They aren’t our enemies.”

“Sit down!” Arjhani snapped, sparks dripping from his jaw. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Well, now, he knows better than you do,” Kallan pointed out. “He’s the one spending the time getting to know the Untherans.”

“And taking the time to give them access to our secrets,” Arjhani said. “I have sources that say he and Verthisathurgiesh Mehen brought that woman and her people down to the catacombs, down to the very deepest parts. They intend to raise the Warrior of the Moon.”

Narghon scowled. “Why would anyone raise the Warrior of the Moon?”

Arjhani shot a triumphant look at Narghon. “Because,” he intoned, “it is another of their gods.”

The conclave erupted in angry, astonished shouts. Mehen narrowed his eyes at Arjhani.

He had only one “source”—Mazarka—who couldn’t know about Nanna-Sin. He and Dumuzi had spoken quickly, quietly, always in Draconic. Except—

“Utu,” Dumuzi whispered. He looked at Mehen in alarm. “Maybe there is a traitor.”

“You see!” Arjhani shouted.

Mehen grabbed Dumuzi by the arm, dragged him from the hall out to the staircase. He leaned out, as far as he could, searching the stairs and walkways below—a flash of purple scales. “Come on,” he said. “She’s going after your spare god.”

• • •

DUMUZI RACED AFTER Mehen, down, down back into the catacombs, Enlil’s warning echoing in his thoughts. That one is dangerous. That one is dangerous. That one is dangerous.

He’d said nothing, like a fool, kept his own counsel as though that were worth anything. Mehen wound down and down into the belly of the city, the presence of Enlil growing heavier, more frantic with every step.

As the tomb of Nanna-Sin came into view, Dumuzi spied the shattered stone, the flash of purple scales beyond. Mehen pulled his falchion from its harness as he burst into the tomb, sending more bits of stone and plaster scattering. Dumuzi came through after him, pulling his own sword free to confront Mazarka.

But Shestandeliath Mazarka wasn’t in the tomb.

Utu stood instead at the head of a large sarcophagus sunk into the stones of the floor, its lid pulled to the side to reveal the body of what seemed to be a human man with silver skin looking undisturbed and peaceful, as though he only slept. The double, Dumuzi thought of the god from his dreams. His scales shivered as if a fine storm of lightning raced over them.

Nanna-Sin, Enlil sighed.

Ud-sakar-zu ud-sakar imin-bi mu pad-da! Dumuzi closed his eyes as the faint chorus of Untheric chased the god’s grief. Thou Crescent Moon of the Seventh Day …

Mehen seemed unmoved by the sight and edged around the burial. “You don’t get to take him,” Mehen said. “We’ve claimed him as our own.”

“He belongs to Unther,” Utu said, his Common untouched by any accent. Dumuzi looked up and realized he held a knife in one hand, a peculiar amulet in the other. “Not Abeiran upstarts.”

“Is Unther made of grave robbers?” Mehen said. “Or shapeshifters?” he shot a glance at Dumuzi, a look that said he needed to move around the other side of the tomb before Mehen pushed him there. Dumuzi moved, sword out, head buzzing.

Utu sneered at Mehen. “If you kill me, what will Namshita say?”

“That you had no business breaking into a tomb,” Namshita said, entering with khopesh drawn. “How long have you served the Son of Victory?”

Utu’s dark eyes narrowed, his attention shifted enough for Mehen to lunge. But before he reached the Untheran man, Utu darted forward, touching Mehen’s forearm. The burst of magic made the air in the room prickle, and Mehen’s sword slowed.

Utu made a gesture as if he were rending the air itself. Mehen stumbled back a step, his falchion drooping, his eyes staring.

“Kill Namshita,” Utu said sweetly.

Mehen blinked. He turned toward Namshita as if just seeing her for the first time. His falchion slowly rose, as rage overtook his blank expression.

“Dumuzi,” Namshita said, her khopesh high, her feet dancing. “Get out of here. Warn the others.” She broke off with a grunt of effort as Mehen lunged, the force of his sword strike pushing her back, blocking the entrance to the tomb. He came at her again and again and she caught each stroke. The crackle of lightning built around Mehen’s teeth—

“Mehen, stop!” Dumuzi shouted.

The other man flinched, snapped his teeth around the burst of lightning, scattering it. In that moment, Namshita slammed the hilt of her sword against the side of his face. Mehen reeled but didn’t fall, pulling his huge sword back for a strike as he regained his balance.

Cursed, Dumuzi thought. Charmed. He didn’t know the difference, but surely—

The flash of metal out of the corner of his eye startled him, made him leap back and get his own blade up. Utu’s ornate dagger slashed wide, missing him by inches. Surprised, Dumuzi swept his own sword across—instinct and memory driving it—and scored a line across the Untheran man’s chest.

Utu grinned and brushed his wrist. Again the prickle of strange magic raced over Dumuzi’s scales, squeezing down through his skin as if it meant to crush his heart. For a moment, he forgot everything but the squeezing magic, his ears buzzing with a sound like a cloud of flies.

Namshita screamed, a sound of rage and pain, but Dumuzi couldn’t look away from Utu’s dark eyes.

“You’ve already made a grave mistake,” he said. “You think Enlil speaks to you from beyond the planes—what you’re following is the words of the Son of Victory. He’s already won.”

A spear of doubt pierced Dumuzi’s heart—was that true? Could it be true?—a strange voice speaking through the ether, a god from Abeir who sent demons ahead to begin their defeat. If he kept listening to Enlil, he wouldn’t let the Untherans be harmed—that played right into Gilgeam’s wishes—

No—the sureness of it rolled through every part of him like the thunder before the storm. Lightning stirred up through his throat, snapping between his teeth. “Enlil belongs to us.”

Dumuzi’s hand came up, almost of its own accord, the rush of divine magic nothing he could deny. A pulse of light, so white it seared his eyes, burst out of his palm, and in the afterimages, he could see the black-scaled dragonborn standing over …

A cold-eyed human woman with the lower half of a lioness.

“Lamia!” Namshita shouted. Dumuzi risked a glance back and saw Namshita—sweating, smeared in blood, favoring one leg—punch Mehen across the snout and then in the chest. He slashed at her, but Namshita, wild-eyed, dropped her blade and grabbed his arm, wrenching it into an awkward angle. Mehen cried out as his shoulder crunched, and collapsed to the ground.

Namshita scooped up the khopesh and started toward the lamia. “Where is Utu?”

The lamia spun her dagger into an overhanded grip. “Dead, of course. He hesitated when you ran.” Her dark eyes slid to Dumuzi, as if daring him to ask about Shestandeliath Mazarka. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

“Your blood for theirs, then,” Namshita said.

“Wait.”

Namshita stepped back so that she could face both Mehen and the lamia.

“It’s all right,” Mehen panted. “I shook it. Karshoji suggestion.” Blood dripped from one nostril and he held the shoulder of his sword arm as if it were no longer in its socket. “We need to know what’s going on. We need to get her to the Adjudicators.”

Namshita frowned. “What does that mean?”

“It means wait and don’t let her touch you,” Mehen said. “We’ve made enough of a scene that they should be here shortly.”

• • •

THE INFIRMARY ROOM in the Adjudicator’s enclave smelled of sharvas oil and the minty stink of poultices. Namshita bore the ministrations of the young Daardendrien healer white-lipped and silent, even as she stitched shut the deep wound Mehen had made in her thigh. Mehen rotated his wounded shoulder and winced, avoiding Namshita’s gaze. Dumuzi watched them both, the lightning sparking in his throat—this was all his fault. He should have said something as soon as Enlil suggested Utu was trouble.

You aren’t suited for Kepeshkmolik, Dumuzi thought, and now you’ve failed the Untherans.

The Adjudicators had come, just as Mehen had predicted. The lamia—Zillah—had tried once more to turn the tide in her favor by taking Mazarka’s form as they arrived, but it only meant that when she was struck down with a sedative-tipped throwing knife, she was easier to carry up to the enclave. She waited now in one of the cells. Dumuzi wondered if Arjhani was already demanding her freedom. He wondered if Arjhani had even known what he was doing, or if he’d been the puppet of the lamia all along.

If you’d said something, he told himself, Arjhani would be nowhere near the Vanquisher’s throne. You could have stopped this before it started.

She didn’t talk to him before he slapped you, Dumuzi thought. It didn’t make him feel better.

The healer packed her things and left with promises to come back in a moment with the Adjudicators. Only when she’d gone did Mehen clear his throat. “You all right?” he said to Namshita.

“I’ve been worse,” she said, flexing her leg. “You?”

He sighed. “Nothing I didn’t deserve.”

“You were a fool to bring him down there with you,” Namshita said, nodding at Dumuzi. “If he dies, who else would speak to your god for you?”

“I’m not the only one,” Dumuzi protested.

“In this, the Son of Victory has made the better choice,” she said. “You can see him. You can hear him. You can touch him. You can know what he is and isn’t.”

“Is he a god?” Dumuzi asked.

A slow smile spread across Namshita’s face. “I would have said once, ‘He is god enough.’ ”

“Enough for what?” Mehen said. “To make deals with demons? To drag you through the planes? To raze the first city you found?”

Namshita chuckled in a bitter way. “Dumuzi says you have stories of tyrants and slavery in the other world, but you seem to have forgotten what that means. We were slaves there—every one of us. Beholden to the genasi of Shyr from our first breath to our dying day. I was sold the first time at five, to work in a wheat field. By the time the whispers of the Son of Victory reached us, I was a granary guard, made to punish my own people for not being the tireless constructs the genasi demanded. At the time, he didn’t say he was a god. Something more, something out of the old world, but no one said god. When Gilgeam reached the farm, we knew we might be free for once. We rebelled, burned it down. He killed the genasi and gave us the chance to join him.”

“And if you’d said no?” Dumuzi asked.

“Death,” Namshita said plainly. “But what would you choose, faced with a chance of freedom, of strength, of punishing those who’d wronged you every day of your lives? What would your ancestors have done?”

Mehen shook his head. “The Vayemniri of old would not suffer a tyrant. A man gives you a choice between following him and dying, that’s just another master, another yoke. Given that choice, you fight. But,” Mehen went on, “you might have noticed our ways have softened into dickering and posturing about every karshoji thing, so I can’t say for sure it’s the best option out there. Besides, under that sky, they say, you take what you can get.”

Namshita looked away. “God or not, he didn’t know we would be pulled here. He said he made the planes thin, that he opened the way, but we were preparing to attack Shyr, at last, to bring down the genasi once and for all. Why leave before we achieve his final promise?”

He doesn’t even want you, the maurezhi had sneered as it died. But taste the air—you’re the ones he’ll get.

“The demons were sent to infiltrate Shyr,” Dumuzi said. “To bring it down from the inside.” And then something had thrown the maurezhi off course, maybe the same magic that had pulled Gilgeam and his army into Toril.

“Some,” Namshita said. “If we hadn’t won that day, at the very least we would have brought Shyr a measure of the pain it has dealt us. He is our best chance at salvation.” She chuckled again. “And it isn’t a very good chance or a very good salvation, is it?”

“So you planned to run,” Dumuzi said.

“As you said,” she replied, “there is only so long one can suffer a tyrant.” She studied the herbs bound against her leg, as if they were terribly interesting. “He’s reckless. That much I know the genasi feared. We were not a small force, but poorly trained, poorly armed. Desperate, and led by a madman. You could defend against him for ages, assuming you have the supplies for a siege.”

Mehen shook his head. “Supplies maybe. Patience, no. And what about the demons?”

Namshita shuddered visibly. “I haven’t seen what that many can do. I don’t wish to.”

“Would the lamia know?” Dumuzi asked. “Did she come with you?”

“No,” Namshita said. “She’s of this world. A minion of the demon lord he bought his army from. Still, he might have told her something. The Son of Victory is prideful enough to let his tongue outrun his good sense.” She hesitated. “But also devious enough to plant all the wrong information in an agent meant to sow discord.”

Mehen cleared his throat. “You have my apologies,” he said.

“It’s not your fault,” Namshita replied.

“Clearly the lamia knew how to choose a mark.”

“You were closest,” Dumuzi said.

“No,” he said grimly. “That’s not the first time I’ve been caught out by such a creature. I should have been prepared.” He sniffed. “Maybe I can’t be prepared. Maybe they know I’m the one who’ll fall.”

Dumuzi frowned. “She hit you once.”

“Once was enough.”

“You made an error. You assumed she was only what she seemed,” Dumuzi said. “But you’re the one who figured out where she might be, that a traitor was even among us. If I hadn’t been so … worried …”

Dumuzi trailed away, hearing his own words. An error. The kind of error they’d all make if they didn’t assume every shadow was a monster, every fear was a call to arms. The scales on his arms hummed with the edges of a lightning storm. The clan is only as strong as the weaknesses each of us shows—no, Dumuzi thought. Not quite.

“We all have weaknesses,” he said. “We all will make mistakes. Acting as though we must be faultless only undercuts what good the many may do as one. If you make yourself the Starshine Duke, ready for every loose stone to hide an assassin—”

“All right, enough,” Mehen said, raising the hand of his uninjured arm. “If you’re going to play the preacher, tell your god to spread around a little more healing magic.”

The presence of Enlil built in his thoughts, sending a prickle of lightning down through his fingertips. But Dumuzi ignored it—they were still Vayemniri. “Your shoulder’s going to be fine.”

The door opened and Uadjit stormed in, looking as though she might cut down the next person in her way, Kepeshkmolik Narghon and Shestandeliath Geshthax close behind her. When she saw Dumuzi, a measure of fury left her frame.

“You’re all right,” she said. She turned to Mehen. “You caught the traitor?”

“A lamia,” Namshita answered. “A confederate of the Son of Victory. Zillah, who rules the ruins of Unthalass.”

Narghon bared his teeth. “That vermin. How many times did we say someone should have cleared that karshoji wreckage?” He turned to Namshita, hesitating as if he weren’t sure how best to approach her.

“Namshita helped us,” Dumuzi said. “If she hadn’t been there—”

“You are Kepeshkmolik,” Narghon said in a dismissive way.

“And the lamia can turn a mind inside out,” Dumuzi said. “If I weren’t killed, I likely would have been made a slave to her wishes.”

Uadjit’s brow ridges rose, the row of nacre moons rising. “Arjhani?”

“I don’t know,” Dumuzi said.

She turned to Namshita. “Well met, sikati. We’re grateful for your assistance.”

Namshita inclined her head. “And I for yours. She killed one of mine, same as you. Dumuzi was very brave,” she added to Narghon. “The god uncovered the lamia—without that, our peoples would have found it easy to blame each other, even if she were captured.”

Uadjit’s dark eyes shone, but she nodded, formal and stern. “We have a proposition for you, and it’s something that should be decided as swiftly as possible. The new Vanquisher will be here shortly—”

“They voted?” Mehen said.

“Anala wouldn’t hear of holding it back,” Uadjit said dryly. “You can give Kallan your congratulations and concessions later.”

Dumuzi felt a weight lift off his shoulders. Kallan at least wouldn’t bring harm to the Untherans.

“We don’t want things buried under the entreaties of a dozen clans,” Narghon said. He cleared his throat. “Our world, once more, is changing right beneath our feet. But one thing that has not changed, that cannot be allowed to change is this: the Vayemniri are not fools. Everything Dumuzi has said thus far has been … wise, as much as we haven’t wanted to hear it.” Dumuzi’s grandfather turned his dark gaze on him. For all some part of Dumuzi felt young and awestruck under the Kepeshkmolik’s attention, it didn’t quail him like it once had. “I was wrong.”

“We need allies,” Geshthax interrupted.

Narghon’s nostrils flared. “We have always reached out a hand to allies,” he went on. “Clans are not built of blood, but of shared purpose.” He inclined his head. “If you wish to settle in Djerad Thymar—and at this point, Kepeshkmolik would welcome the presence of the Untherans—then you should have a clan.”

Namshita frowned. “A what?”

“It sounds like a stupid idea,” Geshthax said over Narghon’s shoulder. “I agree with you there. But hear us out.”

“Others have joined us—in the old world, and since the Spellplague,” Uadjit said. “Fleeing Returned Abeir on the far side of the ocean. Some are claimed by a clan, which is already recognized. You would form a new line of descent within the clan—”

“No—clans,” Geshthax corrected. “If we’re going to do this, it should at least be shared. I’m not taking all the burden nor letting someone take all the reward.”

“I thank you for the offer,” Namshita said. “I would have to bring it to my people, but I doubt they would happily lose what they are for that measure of safety.”

“Then there is the second option,” Uadjit went on. “We can petition to form a new clan for you.”

“A clan of Untherans?” Namshita said dryly. “I cannot see your elders accepting that.”

Both elders chuckled and Mehen grunted. “You have Kepeshkmolik and Shestandeliath speaking for you. You have the Chosen of the only Vayemniri god on your side. The new Vanquisher is amenable, and so Verthisathurgiesh needs to stand behind him or look a fool.”

“And Yrjixtilex,” Uadjit said. “And then most of their allies will fall in line. There will be dissent, but it won’t last.” She regarded Namshita gravely. “Especially if you can give us intelligence on the King of Dust and his armies. He’s started for Djerad Thymar.”

“And so we must move with all haste,” Namshita said. “I won’t speak for everyone. I need to discuss matters. And I want to see the lamia.”

Uadjit smiled, baring each of her teeth. “Don’t we all. Come on.” Namshita stood, testing her weight on her injured leg before following Uadjit out the door. Geshthax and Mehen went after, but Narghon stepped aside. Watching Dumuzi.

“Patriarch,” Dumuzi said.

“Dumuzi,” Narghon replied. “Your mother thinks we should talk. Have many … made their obsequies or whatever it is this creature is asking for?”

“Some,” Dumuzi said. He shifted his attention to the presence of Enlil, wanting the security. Narghon’s insult slipped past, ultimately without meaning to Enlil or Dumuzi. “He doesn’t ask for obsequies,” Dumuzi pointed out. “Excuse me.”

But Narghon moved to block his way and set a hand on his shoulder. He cleared his throat. “I wasn’t raised to bother with this god nonsense,” he declared. “That’s a modern thing. But … We have long prized ingenuity. Kepeshkmolik has always sought allies the others didn’t consider. Jarfras and the Treaty of Tel-Quess. The Forgesisters of Urdun. The Gift of the Moon.” His nostrils flared. “That’s really a god down there in the tomb?”

“In a sense,” Dumuzi said. He wasn’t sure at all where this was going.

Narghon snorted. “She might have mentioned that to Thymara.” Dumuzi knew better than to point out the goddess of the moon had said so, though not in so many words. Not so clearly it was unforgivable they hadn’t realized what they were sheltering.

“At any rate,” Narghon continued, “I think you were right to make this alliance. And as I don’t want this city swept away by either Blue Fire or trumped-up tyrant … Tell me what the deal you’ve struck is. What I have to do.”

Dumuzi was so startled for a moment, he said nothing—proper, orthodox Kepeshkmolik Narghon asking him about Enlil. “It, um … I …”

Breathe, the voice that was beginning to blur with his own said. He steadied himself. “Does this mean I’m still Kepeshkmolik?”

That seemed to surprise Narghon. “Of course. Until and unless it interferes with your … purpose, I assume. I may not enjoy the notion of my grandson worshiping gods on its face, but to make you clanless …” He sniffed and swiped a hand through the air as if this were a notion for fools. “Besides, as I’ve said, the situation has convinced me. Tell me the terms.”

“The others agreed to two years. The veneration due an ancestor, the gratitude due a comrade, the loyalty due an elder—nothing more.”

Narghon’s teeth parted. “ ‘Nothing more.’ How will you determine if the terms are met?”

Dumuzi shrugged. “I don’t have to. If the terms aren’t met, he doesn’t have the power to protect us. You starve your sellswords, and they can’t protect you, no matter how loyal they are.”

“Sounds like a threat.”

Never—the voice and the thought and the words Dumuzi spoke all together. “No more than you’d threaten me,” he said.

“I might,” Narghon pointed out.

“Only if it prevented something worse. You’re not cruel, and neither is he,” Dumuzi said. “Do you want to do this?”

Narghon’s eyes narrowed. “One year,” he said. “But if he changes terms, the agreement is void.”

“Of course,” Dumuzi said.

“Good.” Narghon nodded. “Then you have Kepeshkmolik’s dedication.” He gestured vaguely at the air between them. “Is there some … thing I have to do?”

Dumuzi showed him the cupped breath gesture he’d figured out, and Narghon repeated it, albeit awkwardly. Nothing seemed to happen—to the Kepeshkmolik patriarch or to Dumuzi. He started to explain that Narghon would have to mean it, but the patriarch had already passed through the door to the cells.

“You know perfectly well this is a trick by those damned maunthreki!” Arjhani was shouting at Uadjit, teeth bared. “You think just because that karshoji sellsword took the piercings that you can just silence us—silence me! You’re going to be sorry.” Mehen and Namshita stood to the side, both tense and watching. Geshthax stood behind them, looking more annoyed than usual.

Behind the bars, a purple-scaled Vayemniri woman sat, smirking to herself.

“Verthisathurgiesh!” Narghon snapped. “Have a little decorum!”

Arjhani whirled on the patriarch. “You’ve signed our death warrant, imprisoned an innocent, and you ask me for decorum?”

“I told you,” Uadjit said, her patience worn as an old cloak, “that isn’t Shestandeliath Mazarka. Mazarka is very likely dead. That is a—”

“No!” Arjhani moved between them, as if the two Kepeshkmoliks were attackers trying to flank him. “You’ve fallen for their lies. And you’re supposed to be the wise one. Mazarka,” he shouted at the woman in the cage, “don’t tell them anything.”

Dumuzi thought of the lamia’s touch, of the fog that fell on his mind, the way he doubted what he knew because Zillah wished him to doubt. There was no need to ask if the lamia had ever laid a hand on his father—all it would take was a touch of the shoulder, a clasp of the hand. Arjhani could be prideful, Arjhani could be stubborn, but Arjhani was not brave enough to shout Kepeshkmolik Narghon down in the middle of the Adjudicators’ enclave. It will wear off, he thought, watching sparks snap in Arjhani’s teeth. It must.

And he thought of his father, realizing in a month or a season or a year what a fool he’d been played for. Verthisathurgiesh Arjhani might well die of embarrassment by then. Dumuzi’s stomach soured. The air in his lungs thickened like a storm was building within him.

Help him.

Arjhani was still railing at Uadjit. “You tell your pothach little weasel to release her, or so help me—”

“Arjhani?” Dumuzi said. His father broke off, facing Dumuzi with a fury that would have driven Dumuzi off another time. Instead Dumuzi stepped forward, planted his hands on his father’s shoulders, and exhaled.

The blessings of Enlil raced over Arjhani’s scales, miniature bursts of lightning scrabbling over his hide like silvery insects. Arjhani’s eyes rolled back in his head and he gave a great, wheezing gasp. As swiftly as the storm had arisen, it vanished, sinking into Arjhani’s skin. He rocked back on his heel claws, staring at Dumuzi’s hands on him a moment. Then he looked up, fearful and puzzled, at Narghon and Uadjit.

“What … What happened …?”

“Oh, don’t you remember?” Narghon asked, dripping sarcasm.

Dumuzi folded his hands in front of him. “A lamia put a spell on you. You were speaking her words.”

Arjhani gave a nervous smile. “I … I don’t recall that. Did I … Did I really?”

“I don’t know,” Narghon said. “Were you or were you not threatening your qal here over Shestandeliath Mazarka.”

Uadjit sighed. “Jhani, go ask about a healer,” she said gently. “I think you need some rest.”

He nodded. “Of course.” He looked over at Dumuzi, met his son’s eye. But if Verthisathurgiesh Arjhani had anything to say, he kept it to himself as he fled through the door into the Adjudicator’s enclave.

You don’t have to like him, Dumuzi thought of Mehen saying, you don’t even have to love him. But for your own peace of mind if nothing else, you have to forgive him. The memory of the slap still stung in his thoughts.

“If nothing further happens,” Narghon said, “I will hold your Enlil dear for making Arjhani take his blasted medicine.” He smiled at Uadjit and breathed into his cupped hand. She scowled at her father.

“Leave him be, elder,” she said sternly. “No need to kick a fallen comrade.” She nodded at Dumuzi. “Well done.”

“Thank you,” he said.

The lamia stood on Mazarka’s feet, but as she moved toward the bars, the dragonborn woman melted, distorted, sprouting a leonine lower half and shedding purple scales for golden skin and dusty-brown hair. She smiled at Dumuzi in a way that suggested nothing mirthful, nothing genuine.

“That was impressive,” she said. “Perhaps you’re the one I ought to be dealing with.”

“I have no interest in dealing with you,” Dumuzi said, feeling the god’s presence mantling him.

Zillah didn’t react. “One of us has had the ear of Gilgeam.”

“And one of us has sown nothing but discord since she came here,” Mehen said. “What about the King of Dust?”

She shrugged. “What about him?”

“You serve him.”

“I did. What use is he to me now?”

“And how swiftly would you be having this same conversation with another of our enemies?” Uadjit asked.

“Why look for another?” Namshita said. “You’ll go right back to the Son of Victory. Bring him the information he needs.”

Zillah’s eyes hadn’t left Dumuzi. “Not if I have a more powerful protector. Your god isn’t like him, now is he? You offer humans and dragonborn and tieflings alike his grace. I wonder where you draw the line.”

“You haven’t exactly endeared yourself,” Dumuzi said. “Trying to turn us against each other. Trying to take Nanna-Sin.”

She smiled. “Perhaps I could tell you what he wants with it.”

Dumuzi hesitated. That was a question he didn’t know the answer to, and neither, it seemed, did Enlil.

Maybe—it seemed as his influence spread, the god became less and less a discrete presence. More and more distant. Maybe he didn’t know or maybe he didn’t care.

I am what you need me to be, Ushamgal-lù—and again, Dumuzi couldn’t say if it were a memory or a reminder.

“What does he intend?”

“Ah-ah!” Zillah said. “I want assurances. My freedom. My city back, when you’ve routed Gilgeam and his train of demons. Half the captives you take.”

“We don’t take captives,” Narghon said in a deadly, dangerous voice.

Zillah smiled at Dumuzi. “Then what am I?”

“Reckless?” Dumuzi said. “We have no way of knowing if anything you say is true. We have no reasons to trust you. Tell me something I can verify.”

Her eyes narrowed. For a long moment, she only looked at Dumuzi as if she would have liked to tear out his throat.

“The demons,” she said finally. “He made a deal for them with my lord, Graz’zt. Only it seems the Dark Prince remains indisposed. I cannot contact him. Nor can Gilgeam. No one seems to know where he is.”

“I don’t see how that matters to us,” Uadjit said. “Unless you mean to imply this Graz’zt is coming for Djerad Thymar?”

“No, the demons,” Namshita said, sounding surprised. “He can’t ask for more. If we kill them, they can’t be replaced.”

“Well that’s something,” Geshthax said.

“Are you prepared to make an agreement now?” Zillah asked Dumuzi.

Dumuzi found it was no longer only Zillah watching him. He glanced at his mother, who looked as if she would have liked to swoop in and answer for him … but she held her place, only the faint shadow of her tongue fluttering behind her teeth to give away her nerves.

Dumuzi only shrugged at Zillah. “You’ll have to discuss that with the Vanquisher and the sikati here. Enlil does not rule, and he doesn’t deal with mercenaries. Your pardon, elders, sikati. I don’t think I’m needed here any longer.”

The Adjudicators’ enclave beyond was crowded with Lance Defenders and pages from the clan armies, rushing here and there with reports for, no doubt, the new Vanquisher, the commanders, and elders beyond. So much motion after such intense stillness—it made Dumuzi uneasy. Not the way the lamia had, but more the way approaching the cadets had. Everything was changing.

I am going to have to get better at being political, he thought. However much he’d like to believe these things could be separate, the clans and the church (Did you call it a church? he wondered. A worship? A temple? He would have to figure that out too.), he knew better. All the pieces that made Tymanther would have to mesh together.

And he was going to have to determine what the Son of Victory wanted with the corpse of Nanna-Sin.

“There you are.” Dumuzi turned and saw an old tiefling man with yellowed horns walking slowly toward him, leaning on a cane. Lachs, he remembered. Dumuzi hurried forward, giving Lachs an arm and helping him to a nearby bench.

“There are too many damned stairs in this place,” Lachs said, coughing. He pulled a dark blue kerchief out of his robes and mopped his pale face. “You’re going to have to wait a bit for me to go back down or stir up some healing magic for me quick.”

“Why did you come up here?” Dumuzi asked.

“To find you, whelp.” Lachs leaned in and lowered his voice. “The cambion girl wants to talk to you. Says it’s urgent.”

18

6 Hammer, the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant (1487 DR)
Tymanther, near the Smoking Mountains

FARIDEH WOKE TO SOMNI LOOKING DOWN ON HER, DAHL STILL SLEEPING tucked against her. She sat up quickly, dislodging Dahl, and pressed one hand to her cheek. A dream, a dream—but the powers of the Nine Hells thundered up her nerves as though she’d been casting all night long. Was that how it had always felt? She looked up at Somni and couldn’t remember.

“I have concerns,” Somni said. “Come.” She straightened and headed off for the opposite side of the camp.

“Hrast,” Dahl said, rubbing his eyes. “Did she …” He caught himself, turned away. “Whose dreams would make her say that, I wonder?”

At the center of the giants’ encampment, Somni regarded all of them pensively. Farideh kept her eyes on the giant, avoiding the others’ gazes, and especially Lorcan.

“What you’ve shown me suggests you have not been entirely forthcoming,” Somni said finally. “Your dreams have great power, but you seem not to understand it, as if you’re wading into a whirlpool.” She looked directly at Farideh. “You didn’t mention all the god-things involved here before. You didn’t mention the one called Asmodeus.”

“The gods are secondary to my goals,” Farideh said carefully, keeping her eyes on Somni.

“And are you secondary to theirs?”

I think I hardly register in their goals, Farideh thought, but didn’t say. I’m no one, nothing.

Help her. Stop her.

If you’re no one, a little voice in her thoughts seemed to say, then why do we bother? It would be beyond easy to ignore you. A shiver ran down her spine, right to the tip of her tail. It didn’t sound like herself speaking.

“Whatever you intended to achieve, your dreams make it evident that the god-things will press their own wants and goals forward, demanding a solution to a problem that seems impossible at a glance. Who are you to fight this battle?” Somni asked, “To right this wrong?”

“I’m … stubborn,” she allowed. “You could say. And I’m the one standing in the right place at the right moment, hearing the right things. That’s all.”

“You’re impossibly stubborn,” Lorcan interjected. His dark eyes were oddly soft as he regarded her. “And loyal. Even to an ally who doesn’t deserve it.”

“She sees things that another wouldn’t,” Ilstan added. “The good in that which seems irredeemable. The right in what seems broken.”

“She’s the right person,” Dahl said. He slipped his hand into hers. “She doesn’t give up. She’s true to a fault. She’s frequently the one who manages to spot what the rest of us are missing. She’s kind and she’s stalwart and … clearly she’s not secondary.”

“If there is a soul on this plane or any other who can find a way to rescue the Lord of Spells and forestall the Nine Hells collapsing into chaos, it’s her,” Lorcan said.

Farideh’s cheeks burned, everyone’s words more than she could accept. Accept them, the strange voice in her said. For once, just accept them. “It isn’t just me,” Farideh added. “I can’t do this alone. I wouldn’t dare try.”

Somni tilted her head. “Am I to hear a recitation of all your companions’ strengths?”

“No,” Dahl said firmly. “You need to give us the map. We gave you the dreams.”

The giant nodded to herself. “I cannot claim to understand your relationship to these god-things,” Somni said. “But we understand how precious the balance is, what the ramifications are if you do not address your dreaming intruding on your waking world. I will give you the map, Farideh.” She spoke to the giant man standing to her left, an order in her mother tongue. Dahl squeezed Farideh’s shoulder. She reached up and covered his hand with hers, all too aware of Lorcan’s eyes on them.

“I need to talk to Lorcan about something,” she whispered to Dahl. He frowned, but she took his hand and kissed it. “I’ll be right back.”

She crossed the circle to Lorcan’s side, ignoring his sullen expression for the moment. “Good morning, darling,” he said. “Sleep well?”

“What’s different?” she asked him. “What’s changed about me?”

Lorcan peered at her. “Should something have changed?”

“I had a dream that wasn’t a dream,” she said. “I’m fairly sure your master did something, gave me something. What is it? What do I have to expect?”

Lorcan took a step nearer, searching her face, her whole self. It stirred something unwelcome in her and she pressed those thoughts, those feelings back. She is true to a fault—what would Dahl say if he knew that Lorcan still flustered her like this?

The cambion leaned close enough she felt his hot breath brush her skin. “Nothing. Nothing I can see.”

Farideh drew back. “Are you sure?”

“Bearing in mind that there are limits to what changes in you I can perceive, yes, I’m sure.” Lorcan folded his arms over his chest. “What were you expecting me to see?”

Farideh shook her head. The voice in her thoughts didn’t feel like her own, but surely if she were carrying some fraction of a god, it would be apparent. Lorcan had known she was Chosen after all.

We cannot spare a Chosen’s spark …

“The Weave,” Ilstan said. He stood beside Lorcan, eyes slightly too wide. “It wraps itself close to you. Have you a spellbook?”

“No,” Farideh said. “My pact doesn’t work that way.”

“You have a wizard’s spells in your grasp,” he said. “Spellbook or no. The pattern, the threads of magic—this is the shape of a wizard’s gift.” He tilted his head. “I wonder what you know.”

It was nothing near to what Farideh was expecting. “Can you … Can I cast them? Can you tell what they are?”

Ilstan was silent a moment too long. Farideh’s tail began to lash. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Perhaps if you let me grow a little madder …”

The giant returned with a long piece of wood, a limb with all its branches smoothed off. With the end of it, Somni scratched the map in the dust, the peaks of mountains, the edge of a lake, the line of a river cutting through a plain. Farideh frowned.

“This is Tymanther,” she said.

For once, Somni seemed surprised. “No, its twin.” She considered her handiwork, adding a few more strokes to sketch out a second lake—a twin to the Ash Lake south of Djerad Thymar—another vast plain beyond. Then she set three stones atop the map: one at where the Greenfields lay, one near the center of Tymanther’s open plain, and one high in the mountains. She tapped the last of them.

“Each of these mark the place of a relic that is not of Abeir. This is the ruins of a stone tower, which none dare breach”—she tapped the stone amid the plains, then the stone nestled in the Greenfields—“This is a pit that drops down into the heart of the plane, from which a song that never ceases echoes. But this”—she laid a finger on the stone in the mountains—“is the relic I suspect you seek. Down in the caves of crystal. I don’t know how you will reach it. I don’t know how you will return. But if you truly believe that what you need lies in Abeir, this, I can tell you, is the most likely source.”

“Well,” Lorcan said. “That’s comforting.”

“No,” Farideh said, staring at the last stone. “That’s Arush Vayem.”

• • •

MEHEN KNEW NOT enough time had passed to deck Kallan in a Vanquisher’s finery, or to wrestle him down and decorate his cheekbones with the gold studs that marked the ruler. But still the sight of him in his scarred and cobbled-together armor surprised Mehen, as if the title alone would change Kallan. Adjudicators swarmed around him, bearing scrolls and the frantic looks that said there were days’ worth of work to be done and they could finally do it. A table had been brought up and a map of Tymanther spread across it. Anala and Vardhira, the Yrjixtilex matriarch, hovered near, the only elders still allowed in the Vanquisher’s Hall for the moment.

Kallan looked up, a wild gleam in his eye, and he beckoned them nearer. “This is how it’s gonna be from now on, isn’t it?” Kallan said, as Mehen came close. “You get to get your hands dirty and I get to hear reports.”

“Remember how Tarhun died,” Mehen said.

“You’ll be leading an army soon enough,” Uadjit said. “Plenty of action.”

Kallan snapped his teeth. “Karshoj. Gonna give me a broadsword to handle, aren’t they?”

“Greatsword,” she corrected. “For ceremony.”

“This should be you,” Kallan told her.

“Well it’s not,” she said. “If you spend the next eighteen months saying that, we’ll all get sick of it. Namshita and the Untherans are prepared to give us intelligence about the army. She says given what she’s seen and what she knows about Gilgeam, he’s absolutely going to hit Djerad Thymar with the intention of toppling it. He needs a symbolic victory, proof he’s what he says.”

“And has anybody figured out if he is what he says?” Kallan looked around. “Where’s Dumuzi?”

“Went off on his own for a bit,” Mehen said. “He’ll be along shortly.”

Kallan shook his head. “Has anybody gotten that boy a damned shrine yet?”

“No,” Mehen said. He turned to Anala. “Have you found a place?”

She smiled, unconcerned. “The perfect spot. The catacombs—”

“Verthisathurgiesh, forgive me, but you know that’d be wasted,” Kallan said. “Enlil’s a sky god—can’t bury that in the ground. We’ll get broken miracles.” He turned to the Adjudicator beside the throne. “What’s your name?”

The young man straightened. “Sithra, Your Majesty.”

Kallan made a face. “Save that for a proper Vanquisher. Let’s scrounge up some land in the exterior city for … I don’t know, I guess a temple is what we’re talking about. In the meantime, makes sense to set something little up on the pyramid’s peak, wouldn’t you say?”

“I … I suppose so?”

“Find Dumuzi. Or find that skinny girl he’s convinced already. Saitha. Give her a project. Maybe the Verthisathurgiesh could go with you.” He smiled at Anala, and you would almost think he meant it. “If you can’t get him the ground he needs, I’m sure he and Enlil will appreciate you using your considerable influence to get it.”

Anala’s own smile didn’t waver. “How clever. Your Majesty. Vardhira, be a dear and keep me company?” The two matriarchs left, following Adjudicator Sithra from the hall.

“Well, I suppose that’s what I get.” Kallan turned back to Mehen and Uadjit, gave them a stiff smile. “You two are going to have to step in if I say something foolish, because I am guessing, every word.”

“You’re doing fine,” Uadjit said.

Kallan looked unconvinced. “These folks say word is that the army encamped opposite Djerad Kethendi has split. Maybe a third to a quarter of the force remains at the ruins—which they are definitely rebuilding—and the rest have started our way. So Namshita’s right about that much. What else can she give us?”

“Demon types,” Mehen said. “Numbers. She thinks he’ll have a hard time breaking the city. We’re in for a siege.”

Kallan snorted. “Well, got practice at that. Scouts are estimating four days. They’re moving quick, but there are a lot of them. Probably get some forward detachments in the near term.”

“Another thing,” Uadjit said.

Mehen glanced down at the map, at the metal markers that indicated the Untheran army. The charcoal Xs that marked the areas of the wider country that had been searched. “Lot of empty land up north,” he said.

Kallan shot him a dark look. “I’ll have to worry about that later.”

Found a clue to staff, Farideh’s voice spoke from the empty air. Heading to Arush Vayem, and then … we need a path to Abeir, I think. She was quiet a moment, as Mehen gripped the stone. If anything happens, I love you.

“Karshoj!” Mehen spat without thinking. The spell picked up the word and flung it back to Farideh—godsbedamned magic, Mehen thought. Twenty-four more words—but panic and guilt sank their claws into his mind and he couldn’t slow his tongue enough to think. “Be careful. Don’t take Lorcan into the … Fari, don’t … Don’t do anything rash. Don’t leave this plane—I shouldn’t have to tell you not to leave the karshoji plane!”

It was too many words, Mehen realized too late. And none of them were an apology. None of them were to tell her he loved her too. What if something did happen? He’d made a terrible mistake. “Chaubask vur kepeshk!” he shouted, and would have thrown the stone across the room, had Kallan not caught his wrist.

“That’s not gonna help,” he said.

Nothing is, Mehen thought. You’re in over your head. You were in over your head the moment you claimed those babies, and now you’re failing them both.

“You know where she is, noachi,” Kallan said gently. “You know she’s on the right path. Go help her.”

Mehen swallowed, acutely aware of all the eyes on them. “She’s days away,” he said quietly, lowering his arm. “She has … Those giants will get them up the mountains faster than I can ride. Arush Vayem … They won’t be happy she came back.”

Why was she going back? Mehen wondered. What in the world did she think was there?

Kallan ignored the audience and patted his uninjured arm. “Look, get a bat from the stables—you can absolutely get there ahead of them if you go now.” He looked over at one of the Adjudicators. “I can do that right? Commandeer a bat?”

Mehen tapped his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “What happened to not being selfish? Thirty thousand lives against one?”

Kallan looked down his snout at Mehen. “I’m giving you a bat, not a karshoji army. Go help her, then get yourself back here before our four days are up, because I might need to ask you to ride that karshoji bat into battle. Fair?”

“More than fair,” Mehen said reluctantly. He felt every eye on him, and it made him want to curse and spit. “I don’t want to leave you here, you know?”

“That’s sweet,” Kallan said. “But you got me this damned job I have to do.”

Mehen held out the sending stone. “You keep this. If Farideh sends another message, tell her I’m on my way. I’ll … I’ll let you know when I get there.”

Kallan smiled as he took it. “Go. Be quick. Be safe.”

“You too.” Mehen started out the door, then turned back. Karshoj to audiences. “I’ll miss you,” he said.

“Oh, you’d best,” Kallan said, with a cheeky grin that made Mehen hope Kallan would keep the Vanquisher’s piercings away. It would be a shame to mar that pretty face.

• • •

THE CAMBION SAT, straight-backed against the niche of her wings, with her hands folded neatly in her lap, for all the world an emissary awaiting guests, despite the mess of the sheets around her. Lachs sat in the chair beside the door, leaning on his cane, an unlikely guard. These mock trappings made Dumuzi nervous, despite the fact that the cambion had no power to speak of.

“Well met,” she said, flicking her golden eyes over him. “I don’t believe we’ve had a proper introduction.”

“We haven’t needed one,” Dumuzi said. The powers of the god seethed all around him, disliking this fiend in his midst.

“Too true,” she said. “So I’m Sairché, and you’re the boy with the dead god in your head.”

Enlil flooded Dumuzi’s nerves, lightning crackling all down his arms at the presence of this, another fiend in his city. “What do you want?” Dumuzi asked.

She pursed her mouth. “Straight to the point. I like that. As you can see,” she said, “I’m a rather unwilling guest of your city. Which, from the sound of things, is soon to have more guests it’s unwilling to host. The one you call the King of Dust and his demon army. I cannot leave this circle, you understand. If they siege the city, if it falls—”

“It won’t fall,” Dumuzi said. “We are Vayemniri.”

Sairché chuckled. “You have no idea how many times I’ve heard that refrain. Let’s just consider it—think of it as an exercise if you will. If the city falls, then I will be sitting here when demons tear it down. I don’t want that, and while I suspect you don’t care overmuch about my particular circumstances, I suspect the part about the city being torn down does in fact resonate with you. So you see, we are both invested in the success of … What is it you call this place again?”

“Djerad Thymar.”

“Yes, that.” Sairché smiled at him once more. “It so happens, I have a very valuable connection to offer to your leaders. A mercenary army, of sorts.”

“You want to flood Djerad Thymar with devils,” Dumuzi said flatly.

“ ‘Flood’ sounds terribly dramatic,” Sairché said. “No, no, you choose the right devils, and you’ll send a signal. Tell the demons that you mean business. After all, there’s no one in the multiverse that can fight demons like we can. Practice,” she added. “Does your god have that?”

Dumuzi didn’t answer. “We have a lamia imprisoned who’s made us a similar offer. Why should—”

Sairché’s snort interrupted him. “A lamia? A lamia can’t promise you anything. They’re useless boot suckers. You shouldn’t listen to her anyway. She’ll kick you under the cart, the first chance she gets. They always do.”

“And a devil?”

“A devil,” she said, “will adhere to her word.” Her bravado flickered. “The consequences of doing otherwise can be most unpleasant. You deal with the lamia, all you’ll get is heartache. You deal with me, and I’ll gain you and your god the sort of army that can crush the demons.”

“And everything else in their way?”

“My half sisters are very disciplined,” Sairché said. “If all you want are demons dispatched, they will take the field and never touch a mortal head. They will remain until the Abyssal threat is vanquished and then leave. We’ll never have to speak of this again. No one ever need find out whether your god is strong enough to cut through their forces.”

“Just like that?” Dumuzi asked. “Here and gone?”

“Happily,” she said. “Whatever stories they tell on this plane, it isn’t meant for us. You have … things we need, but … well, you may fish, but you don’t linger in the depths of the sea, now do you? Once the deal is complete, we will go.”

As horrifying as that sounded, Farideh trusted them—that thought cut through the unhappy rumblings of the god beyond. Farideh trusted them, used them. They used each other, he thought. “And what do you want in return?” Dumuzi asked.

Sairché fluttered her silver eyelashes, a gesture he found disquieting. She nodded at the runes shimmering around the bed. “You’ve noticed, no doubt, the magic circle. Unlike your lamia, I’m not imprisoned—I’m protected. I’ve been cursed, and should I step outside this circle, the very devils I could gain for you would kill me. What I need is someone to wipe the curse from me. Do that, and I can call my sisters here safely.” She smiled. “So, Boy with the Dead God in His Head, have we got a deal?”

Dumuzi imagined himself standing on the pyramid, watching all manner of fiends battling for Tymanther, for Unther. Let them cut each other’s throats—he tested the thought. If Gilgeam would bring demons, couldn’t he bring devils? Assuming he could muster the power to clear her curse. Assuming he could convince Enlil. But if Farideh trusted them …

In a wary sort of way—he thought of how cautious she’d been about Lorcan, even when it had clearly not been about assignations and private things. How she kept things from him, for safety, it seemed. How she didn’t like to sleep. How she’d come to Cormyr—

Dumuzi frowned. “Sairché? You’re Lorcan’s sister.”

The cambion hesitated. “Yes.”

“The sister who bound my father’s clan-kin to the Nine Hells.”

“I don’t think so,” Sairché said with a little laugh. “You’re the first dragonborn I’ve dealt with.”

“Farideh,” Dumuzi supplied. “And Havilar.”

Sairché paled. For a moment she didn’t speak. “You have to understand,” she said, “a deal is a deal—”

“And you have to understand I owe you nothing,” Dumuzi said, feeling the lightning itch in his teeth, the god heavy on his thoughts. “Less than nothing—you’ve harmed my clan-kin, and more importantly, my friends. By rights I ought to break your circle and claim vengeance for Verthisathurgiesh.”

Sairché rose to her knees, her smile frozen. “Don’t be hasty!”

“I won’t be,” Dumuzi said. “If Farideh has you here, it’s clearly for a reason. I assume you have a purpose. At least for now.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Sairché said in a small voice.

Dumuzi shook his head. “I don’t know. But if I were you, I would hope she is kinder than she has any right to be. Don’t call for me again, please.” He left the room, trailed by Lachs.

“Showed her, huh?” the old tiefling said, slowing as they reached the middle of the sitting room. “Do you know where the brother and the warlock are?”

“No,” Dumuzi said. He paused. “Do you need me to find you someone who can send you back home? I can’t promise anything, but I know people who are clan-kin to decent wizards.”

Lachs shrugged, then shook his head. “Don’t bother yet. Not as if I’m needed elsewhere.” He settled himself on the couch before the spread of maps. “But I’ll certainly take some more of that salty mutton, if you don’t mind.”

Dumuzi left, arms folded close. Wondering if everything Sairché had said about the demons in Gilgeam’s army were true. Wondering if he ought to have listened to her offer.

You’re not the Vanquisher, he reminded himself. It’s not your place.

It will keep happening—he thought or Enlil said. Let it be Enlil, he told himself. The more powerful the god became, the less it felt as if he had a friend standing just behind his shoulder. The less mortal it all seemed.

It will keep happening—because he was the first, the speaker of the god, the one who would always seem to have Enlil’s ear. First Zillah, then Sairché, next who? Would Bahamut’s notice fall upon him, the Platinum Cadre making overtures? Would he have to speak to other priests, other gods?

Dumuzi stopped, studying the frieze that ran along the top of the hallway, a depiction of the building of Djerad Thymar. He wouldn’t mind talking to another priest or two, he thought, eyes on the small carnelian figure of Shestandeliath Maruzith, the great-granduncle of Geshthax, and former patriarch. He bore the clan’s most precious artifact, a strange branching flute called the Breath of Petron. With it, the powers of the dead titan were turned against the earth and stone on Toril, helping to pull the pyramid together and seal the granite in place.

The closest thing to priests or wizards in Abeir, he thought. Grave robbers of the fallen titans.

As he neared the entrance, Dumuzi peered into the rooms that lined the entryway, looking for one of the younger Verthisathurgiesh to send to the kitchens to bring Lachs something to eat. In the third of these, a little sitting room overlooked by a bust of his great-grandmother, Verthisathurgiesh Gharizani, he found not dawdling hatchlings, but a human man and woman.

The woman perched on the edge of the seat closest to the entrance, as if she hadn’t noticed it was built for someone much larger, and she’d rather sit there anyway. She looked up at Dumuzi, her dark eyes searching his face for a moment, before she gave him an easy smile. “Well met,” she said. “Dumuzi, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he answered. Mira, he remembered. The other Harper who traveled with Dahl. “Well met. Are you waiting for—”

“Anyone, really,” Mira said. “But Dahl in particular.”

The man had looked up when she started speaking. His skin was the same sort of brown as the Untherans, but his hair and beard were silver as the scales of Sepideh, his dead tactics teacher … or the Vayemniri woman the moon had become.

It means he’s older, Dumuzi recalled. He wore plain, gray robes and a silver necklace with a medallion impressed with a crescent moon. He looked up at Dumuzi and a shiver ran down his scales. The man closed his book, his dark eyes studying the Kepeshkmolik piercings across Dumuzi’s brow ridges.

“My father,” Mira said, though she didn’t name him.

“Well met,” he said, sounding curious. “You’re not Verthisathurgiesh, are you?”

“My father is,” Dumuzi said. When Mira didn’t make introductions, he went on, “I’m Kepeshkmolik Dumuzi, son of Uadjit, of the line of Shasphur. And you are?”

The man’s eyes traced the moons once more. Dumuzi found his own gaze drawn to the medallion. “Apologies, my name is Tam Zawad. I’m a friend of Dahl’s. Mira tells me he could use some assistance. Is he here?”

“No,” Dumuzi said. “Dahl went with Farideh and the others to speak with the giants.” He nodded at the medallion. “Are you a priest of the moon?”

Tam smiled in a way that Dumuzi didn’t quite believe. “I am. Though not to worry, I’m a bit beyond the days of fiery proselytizing.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Dumuzi said. He hesitated. “I saw her in a dream.”

Tam’s eyebrows rose. “You … sorry, what?”

“The moon. However you call her.” Dumuzi considered the medallion again. “Are you in a hurry to find Dahl, or can I ask for your help with something?”

19

6 Hammer, the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant (1487 DR)
Djerad Thymar, Tymanther
The Tomb of the Moon’s Warrior

TAM ZAWAD STARED AT THE LIFELESS BODY OF NANNA-SIN AS IF IT MIGHT spell doom or salvation, a riddle that wound itself around his faith. The god lay in repose, the vestiges of some unearthly vitality murmuring through the stone around him. Dumuzi watched the priest for any sign of whether he ought to be afraid or awestruck or at ease.

Mira kneeled beside the sunken sarcophagus, studying the dead god with a detachment that made clear to Dumuzi the difference between serving a god and simply existing alongside them. She reached her tapered fingers toward Nanna-Sin’s dusty profile.

“Don’t touch him!” her father cried. Beyond the door, a pair of Kepeshkmolik guards—Uadjit’s agemates, wily and well-experienced—looked in, ready for trouble.

“Apologies, Aunties,” Dumuzi said in Draconic. “Everything’s fine.”

“I doubt he minds,” Mira said, all mildness.

Tam rubbed a hand over his face, stroking his beard. Dumuzi had told him the ancestor story of Thymara and the Moon’s Champion on the way down to the tomb. Clearly, Tam hadn’t thought to take it literally until now. He muttered a curse under his breath, then stared down at Nanna-Sin again, his face a mask.

“What do you know about the Untheran gods?” he said.

Dumuzi racked his brain, pulling up the names Enlil had spoken, but Mira answered first. “Untheran texts claim they came through from another world, during the height of the Imaskar Empire. Imaskar had kidnapped the Untherans from their kingdom in that other world and blocked the gods from reaching here and rescuing them. Most all of them died in the Orcgate Wars. They say there used to be gods’ tombs all over this country before the Spellplague.”

“And Djerad Thymar began as a ruined god’s tomb?” Tam asked, looking up at Dumuzi.

“Parts,” Dumuzi answered. “The rest was quarried from the Smoking Mountains.”

“But you kept … him.”

Dumuzi felt his nostrils flare. “What else would we have done? Toss his corpse in the river? We’re not animals.” He considered Nanna-Sin. The god’s placid expression seemed to change each time he looked at him—now gently amused, now mournful, now on the brink of fury. “Why does he have a corpse? I thought gods … I mean, Enlil doesn’t have a form. But Gilgeam does?”

“It’s an avatar,” Mira said. “The Untheran gods came into this world by …” She cast a glance at her father. “Well, they say they came into the world by projecting a part of their power into a physical body. It’s like a suit, a vessel for the god to walk around in.”

“So they could be present,” Dumuzi said, “the way the people needed.”

Mira shrugged. “As you like. They say the Untheran gods led their people in revolt and brought them over the Sea of Fallen Stars. Then they ruled that nation like mortal kings and queens might. I guess if you were starting from almost nothing, it would be needful. Or they could have just let people figure themselves out,” she added dryly.

Dumuzi frowned at Nanna-Sin and wondered if Enlil had taken such a form, if he meant to again. But as he wondered, he felt his thoughts slip away and—

Bearded and broad-shouldered, the Ruler of Heaven regards his people from the steps of the ziggurat. Unthalass spreads out, robust and triumphant. Before him stand the others, his children, his comrades. Fierce and furious Inanna. Burning Girru, Shining Utu, Shadowed Nergal. Nanna-Sin, gleaming silver in the noonday light—even the moon watches Enlil’s departure. Proud Gilgeam with the crown of kingship on his brow. Enlil looks out over Unthalass, over his people, over his children. He raises his arms to the sky and in that moment, he is both ended and begun—body dissipating over Abeir-Toril like a vaporous cloud, being surging into a greater self, a greater power—

Dumuzi suddenly wheezed air, feeling his flesh around him as though someone had squeezed it around his breath like damp clay. The flutter of Nanna-Sin’s pulse felt like a tambourine, slammed against his chest—crash crash crash.

Tam stood directly in front of him, one hand gripping him by the shoulder. Dumuzi dropped his gaze from the human’s alarmed, dark eyes.

“Apologies,” he said. “That happens sometimes.”

“A Chosen dragonborn,” Tam mused. “Watching Gods. You’re all right?”

Dumuzi nodded. He thanked Enlil, blew a puff of air into his cupped palm, ignoring Tam’s puzzled expression. “I saw … I saw Enlil’s avatar destroy itself. Why is Nanna-Sin’s still here if he’s dead?”

Tam looked back at Mira, who shrugged. “The manifestations persist, I suppose, if they’re killed.” She nodded down at the still body. “I mean, clearly.”

“Do you have any idea why Gilgeam would want him?” Tam asked.

Mira’s expression shifted into utter stillness. “He felt very strongly that everything from the sea to the mountains was his. Maybe it’s pride. Maybe he thinks he can motivate the Untherans with their history.”

“How likely?” Tam asked.

She made a face. “Not very. The lost god-tomb is enough, or even just the land. He’s got them well and wound against anybody not human, besides.” She chewed her upper lip, deep in thought. “He’s curious about magic,” she said. “He’s got Dahl’s ritual book. Maybe he’s got a mind to grind up the body and make it into components.”

No!—the voice boomed so sudden, so fierce and frantic in Dumuzi’s thoughts that he clapped a hand to the side of his head. A wave of coolness, of comfort came after it, washing over him in time to Nanna-Sin’s pulse. Still a little mortal, Dumuzi thought, and he was glad.

Tam and Mira were staring again. “That would be very … shocking,” he decided on. “Even for Gilgeam.”

Mira raised an eyebrow. “That presumes he’s the same Gilgeam.” She looked up at her father. “I was stuck in a tent with him—I saw nothing that proved he was anything but a man with a little magic.”

“No magic in Abeir,” Tam pointed out.

“No gods either,” Mira returned.

“Oh,” Dumuzi said. Nanna-Sin’s expression seemed to radiate knowing, as if the god were a little smug even beyond the grave. “He’s an avatar,” Dumuzi said. “A manifestation. Just like before.”

“Maybe,” Mira allowed. “He’s not a very powerful one.”

He didn’t need to be powerful, Dumuzi thought. Not at first. He only needed to make it through, to catch the ears of his people, to gain power bit by bit—maybe by seizing it from the genasi, by demanding the artifacts of the Dawn Titans. But in Toril, the problem of power had other solutions. Maybe Gilgeam was only a Chosen, maybe he was an avatar, maybe by now he was a demigod or a god or some other thing Dumuzi didn’t know the name of—whatever he was, Dumuzi was sure he knew how Gilgeam meant to become more powerful.

“He wants what’s keeping Nanna-Sin here,” Dumuzi said. “He wants the last spark of his divinity for himself.”

• • •

THE FIRST ARROW flew out of the woods when they came into sight of Arush Vayem’s high wooden wall, burying itself harmlessly in the calf-deep snow, two steps in front of Farideh.

“Ambush!” Dahl shouted. All around Farideh, swords left their scabbards, bodies shifted to safer positions.

“Patrol!” Farideh corrected. The shadow-smoke that had been curling, thicker and thicker off her arms, pulled in, filling her hands with fire—not what she needed. Another handful of arrows struck the ground around them, the trees beyond.

“Ilstan?” she said, her lungs struggling with the thin air. “I need the shield.”

The wizard set his hand on her shoulder. Fighting all her instincts, Farideh shut her eyes as the surge of magic went through her, the sudden connection to the Weave alongside the Nine Hells. She found the vein of power that triggered the spell she wanted.

“Yuettviexcudot,” Ilstan said.

“Don’t move,” she said to Dahl and the others. “Yuettviexcudot.”

The strange syllables wove the magic streaming out of her together, knitting a wall of invisible power that briefly glinted in the crisp light before snapping tight across the edge of the path nearest the patrol. Another volley of arrows struck the shield, splintering apart against the barrier.

Ilstan’s hand left her shoulder, and he studied the shield spell. “Apt,” he pronounced. “One assumes you will become faster with practice.”

Farideh shook her arms out, feeling as if they were suddenly made of dry wood, stiff and too light. The spell was one of a handful that Ilstan and she had discovered she suddenly could access. They’d practiced along the way, giving Ilstan more and more release from Azuth’s madness.

“I would remark on the fairness of your gaining such magic without the attendant study,” Ilstan had said, rather dryly and quite sanely, “but under the circumstances, I suspect you have sacrificed the equivalent.”

On the path to Arush Vayem, cheeks aching with the cold, Farideh approached the edge of her shield. “Who’s out there?” she shouted. “Which of you is leading the patrol?”

The dark shape of a bundled body peered around the trunk of a fir tree. “Turn around. There’s nothing for you here.”

Farideh hesitated. Eight years on, there was no telling if the story of her exile would have faded or become embellished. “I used to live here,” she called back. “We don’t mean any harm.”

“Just keep walking,” Lorcan said, pulling his heavy cloak closer. “You don’t need to make friends.”

“No,” she said. “I need someone to open the gate.” Another two people peered out, bows ready, arrows nocked. Farideh squinted at the dragonborn-shaped one. “Zevar? Is that you?”

“Who wants to know?” yelled a voice that was unmistakably the shy and surly dragonborn smith’s.

Farideh hesitated, trying to calculate how the years might have diminished or embellished the story of the burned-down barn. Trying to decide if he’d remember her nearly taking his foot off when she’d been sent on patrol like this.

If Mehen were here, she thought, he would know what to say. He wouldn’t worry about whether Zevar remembered him fondly.

She didn’t relish returning to Arush Vayem without him.

“It’s Farideh,” she called back. “Clanless Mehen’s daughter. I need to get into the village.”

“Farideh?” Zevar stepped out from behind the fir, but he didn’t lower his bow. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“I know. But there’s—”

“Why’re you bringing a little army?”

“No, they’re friends,” she called back. More or less, she added to herself. “Zevar, I need to get into the village.”

“Seem to recall you and your sister were plenty good at knocking down walls. Turn around.”

She didn’t expect the chill in his voice to hurt—she’d expected it, after all. But her chest squeezed tight around the knowledge that these people, this world that had been everything she’d known, had cast her aside completely and never looked back. Arush Vayem truly had no love at all for her.

“How many in a patrol?” Adastreia asked, loud enough that Zevar and the others surely heard.

“Four to eight.”

Adastreia spread her fingers, filling up her hands with shimmering violet lights. “Against seven? I’ll take those odds.”

“Put it out,” Farideh said. Whatever grief she felt, she wasn’t going to let it be turned against innocent people.

“You want me to talk to him?” Bodhar asked quietly.

Farideh turned, surprised, but he only shrugged affably. “I’m pretty good at talking to folks. I could help.”

“Hold off,” Dahl said to him. This is … It’s not like Harrowdale.” He hesitated, his gray eyes finding hers. “They don’t want to trust us. They don’t have a reason to trust us.”

“We call that ‘being enemies,’ ” Adastreia said acidly. “I can hit the dragonborn from here.”

“The shield is going to fail in another few songs,” Ilstan noted. “We should come to an agreement.”

“Darling,” Lorcan said. “You don’t owe them.”

She turned back to Zevar, to the unknown guards still covered by the trees. It wasn’t about owing someone—if anything, it was what she owed herself. Killing them would be faster, but she’d have to live with that forever.

“Maybe we can bargain,” she said. “Maybe … Maybe they’ll take a bribe? Or a hostage?”

A dark shadow swooped through the crisp light. Farideh ducked, twisting to get the rod pointing up toward the winged shape. She heard Zevar and the others hit the snow, tracking the creature. It crashed through the coldbrittled branches, catching on a low bough and swinging like a hanging sack from it. As it dropped, a rider leaped from it, pulling out a massive sword as they landed. Three of the patrol shifted out of their cover, aiming their arrows at this intruder.

“Halt!” Zevar shouted.

“Karshoj, Zevar,” Clanless Mehen bellowed, and Farideh’s heart leaped. “Half your guards have their backs bare now, and I’m not the one casting godsdamned ranged spells. Stand down before you pothachis shoot your own karshoji backsides.”

Zevar went stiff as a post. “Mehen?” He seemed to look up, to register the giant bat hanging from the tree. “You … Did you steal that?”

“The new Vanquisher granted it to me,” Mehen said. “I hope you’re not giving my daughter trouble.”

Zevar shook his head. “She can’t come in. You know she can’t.” His whispered voice carried across the still, snowy forest. Mehen glanced over at Farideh, and for a moment, she expected him to agree, to insist she was coming back to Djerad Thymar.

But then he turned to Zevar. “Fair sure she can. She’s gotten a lot more powerful than when you saw her last, and besides, we’ve got important business in the village. So you may not like us visiting, but we certainly can.” He smiled, showing all his teeth. “Ask them to open the gates.”

“Criella won’t like it.”

“Then we’ll take it up with Criella. Go get her.”

Zevar hesitated a moment more before taking three of the guards—two more dragonborn Farideh didn’t recognize, and a human girl who looked a good deal like she was related to the dairyman, Oster. The sliver of familiarity stirred up more worry in her.

Mehen came crunching through the unbroken snow and half-dead undergrowth. Farideh didn’t realize she was braced for another argument until her father caught her up in a fierce embrace. Didn’t realize how afraid and alone she’d felt until she hugged him back.

“You have a plan,” he said. “We’re going to make it work. I’m sorry I didn’t trust you.”

“It’s all right,” she said. “We’ll … we’ll figure it out. I promise I’m not forgetting Havi.”

“Of course you’re not.” He released her, and though he looked drawn and worried, she knew he was on her side. “We need to do this part quickly, though,” he said. “Kallan needs that damned bat back. Come on.”

Arush Vayem. The village on no one’s maps. A refuge. A place of exile. A hiding place for folks who wanted a moment of peace, who could guarantee peace for their neighbors. Every step toward it felt more and more familiar. Every step made panic race a little nearer around her heart.

Farideh had asked Mehen once why he had settled in the mountain village, before she knew anything about why he’d left Djerad Thymar—anything apart from that he had left Djerad Thymar. He’d hesitated, the truth filling up his thoughts. “Because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have found you girls,” he’d said.

The palisade gates parted, revealing the little snow-swept village tucked against the rocky mountainside. Because you can hide from things here, she thought. Because you can hide from life itself. Because no one will ask questions, so long as you keep to yourself.

Dahl’s hand found hers. “Gods’ books,” he said to no one in particular. “It’s like the wizard’s finest come to life.” He squeezed her hand tight. “I have to imagine … someone coming back here, after all that, I have to imagine it would be difficult.”

She squeezed his hand back, trying to press down the fear, the grief, the odd longing for what she’d lost that winter day eight years before. The gladness that she didn’t have to stay here. She glanced over at Lorcan, carefully staying to the back of the group. Carefully not watching her and Dahl.

A group of villagers came hurrying toward them, chasing after Zevar. Farideh came to stand beside Mehen, ignoring the curl of dread in her stomach. One of these people knows something, she reminded herself. One of these people has the key to saving Havilar.

She recognized Criella first, the broad bumps of her polled horns giving her a familiar shape. Farideh drew a breath to steady herself. She very pointedly didn’t look at Lorcan. His wings were pressed down beneath a heavy cloak, but there was no being certain that no one would remember him.

Criella stopped, so far from Farideh that their outstretched fingers couldn’t have touched. Three more villagers stopped beside her—Pyador the dwarf, a dragonborn she didn’t recognize with empty piercings along her brow ridges, and—to her surprise—Iannis, the dairyman’s son, grown thicker and starting to gray. She couldn’t look at him.

“What are you doing here?” Criella demanded. “I think we made things quite clear before—you’re not welcome back.” She searched the crowd behind Farideh and Mehen, as if she were unimpressed. Farideh wondered if Zevar had told her there was an army.

“Mistress Criella,” Farideh said, “you look well.”

“Don’t be smart,” Criella snapped. “Why are you here?”

“We’re looking for something,” Mehen said.

“Anything that was yours was destroyed when she took on that unspeakable magic.” Criella searched the lot of them again, lingering on Lorcan, as if she could see through his cloak, and Adastreia, as if she might too be a devil in disguise.

“It’s not ours,” Farideh said. “But I don’t think you want it. Someone hid something here in the village, a long time ago. Something … well, let’s say the sort of people who want it aren’t the sort of people you want in Arush Vayem.”

Criella hesitated. “We’d know if there were something like that here.”

“Maybe,” Farideh said. “Did you ever know a man called Caisys?”

A strangely blank expression crossed Criella’s face—quick as a gasp, but there was no denying it, any more than Farideh could deny the suspicious look that replaced it. “I most certainly don’t.”

Ilstan stepped up behind Farideh and cleared his throat. “Your pardon,” he said. “But I took the liberty of attempting to detect some hint of the magic that would be required to hide such a portal or the item itself.”

“What did you find?” Farideh asked.

He shook his head. “The magic here is … very tangled. The spell bounces around like a voice in a canyon. It would not surprise me if that is exactly what we’re searching for, but, too, it suggests it won’t be easy to pin down.” He looked up at Criella. “Goodwoman, I suggest you give us leave to search. You have already been living too long in danger’s shadow.”

“Don’t see how that’s the case,” Pyador said. “Garago would have said something.”

Iannis scoffed. Criella glared at him. “Come now, Mistress Criella,” he said. “You know Garago isn’t in his right mind. Might be a little wisdom in letting them look around.”

“He’s come from Djerad Thymar,” Zevar pointed out, nodding at Mehen. “Says he’s cozy with the new Vanquisher.”

“Zevar, I’ve got a thousand better things to do than spy on clanless wanderers for their elders. Do what you’re doing, I don’t care.” He leveled a glare at Criella. “I haven’t heard a complaint that holds water yet.”

She scowled at him. “What exactly are you looking for?”

“A portal,” Ilstan said.

“And … some sort of observation spell,” Farideh said. If Caisys had left them there, if he didn’t know anyone in the village, then he would surely have had some way to check up on them. “Or someone who remembers the person that would have used them.”

But she thought of the moment of blankness in Criella’s features—what if Caisys had come and gone and made sure no one remembered when or why or where he’d gone next?

Criella kept her eyes on Mehen. “Fine. But you pester folks, and we’ll turn you right out again.” She left as swiftly as she came, the others trailing away after her, no more eager to speak to strangers than Criella had been.

“There are spells to make them speak,” Ilstan noted. “Should we need them.”

“No,” Farideh said. “We just look for now.”

“We’d have to break down every one of these hovels just to find out if any cranny might contain a spell,” Lorcan said. “You should listen to the war wizard.”

“Look,” Farideh said again. “And please don’t draw attention to yourself.”

“Divide up,” Mehen said. “Three casters, three groups.”

“I have to take Lorcan,” Farideh said. The spell wouldn’t stretch the length of the village. Dahl’s hand closed more tightly around hers and the guilt of her dream flooded her. “And Dahl.”

Mehen’s nostrils flared as if he were trying hard not to say what he thought about that. “I’ll take Ilstan. You two”—he pointed at Thost and Bodhar—“keep her out of trouble.”

“I have no interest in trouble, thank you,” Adastreia said.

“Then enjoy the tour of your daughters’ first home,” Mehen said. “Come on, War Wizard.” He and Ilstan headed up the center of the village.

“I’m fairly sure I can guess what’s here,” Adastreia said. “Which way should we start?”

Farideh sighed. “The staff in Abeir is in a cave, so maybe head toward the mountain slope?”

“And where shall we begin?” Lorcan asked as Adastreia, Thost, and Bodhar headed off.

“If you think this Caisys fellow hid the staff,” Dahl said to Lorcan, “and he’s the one who brought Fari and Havilar here, maybe the key came with them. We should look where the house was.”

It was as good a place to start as any, even if the thought made Farideh’s heart drop like a stone. They made their way through the village, under the dark stares of Arush Vayem’s inhabitants.

The old stone house hadn’t been cleared. Where Farideh had taken the pact, the ground was leveled, surrounded by a ring of stone rubble. At its edge, the building remained almost intact. The walls of Mehen’s bedroom stood, crumbling from the lack of care or a roof, and you could see how high the outside walls had reached. One side of the door frame remained and some of the timbers. The hearthstone, but no chimney.

Who could blame you? Lorcan had said. Who wants to be held responsible for something they can’t control? Turned away because of something their foremothers and forefathers did to gain a little power?

Farideh let go of Dahl’s hand, picked her way through what had been the door. Walked over the bare snowy floor, around the charred remains of the heavy wooden post that had held up the roof near there. A twisted branch of iron hung at eye level, the hook she’d hung her cloak on.

What do you know about my foremothers and forefathers? she’d said stupidly, so stupidly. Maybe it was power that made them cross with devils, or maybe they didn’t have much choice. Maybe it was for some … greater good. Maybe it was love. He’d laughed at that. He’d known better.

She found her way to the spot she’d stood on that day, beside the memory of a bookshelf, the hollow of a missing hearth. She looked at the spot where Havilar had bound Lorcan beneath their lofted bedroom, now just rubble blanketed by snow.

She remembered how he’d smiled. How she’d blushed. How he’d said: Of course. All those mortal women swooning over gallant pit fiends. All those golden-hearted succubi blushing as men kiss their burning hands. My darling, let me tell you a secret: devils don’t love.

It’s not why I said yes, she told herself, because there was no one else to say it to. Not because she blushed when he smiled or because she knew somehow she’d love him, that he’d break her heart, that he’d say he loved her back. She imagined a life where she hadn’t taken the pact, where the stone barn still stood, where Havilar chafed and tried to be happy hunting dire rats, where all Mehen had were surly patrols to correct. Where she looked into the gray emptiness of her future and tried to believe that something good would come of it. She shut her eyes.

A moment later someone put their arms around her, pulled her close. She rested her head against the hollow of Dahl’s neck.

“Someone ought to tell her we don’t have to look here,” he said, a little loudly. “Someone ought to say we can let Adastreia and my brothers pick through this.”

“No. I can do this.” As much as Farideh wanted to hide from the past, as much as she wanted to grieve once more what she’d lost, they needed the staff. They needed an answer. But she stayed a moment where she was, letting Dahl stroke her back and clinging to him like a gale was going to tear her away.

Lorcan was watching when she let go, and her heart flipped.

There was surprisingly little left in the rubble—nails, melted and twisted by the burst of flames; a spoon, bent and blackened; a half-rotted blanket in Mehen’s room. The villagers had scavenged what they could, no doubt. It was too far from anywhere else to let things go to waste. Farideh turned stones until her hands were cold and stiff and streaked by the ashy dirt. Nothing magical stirred.

“There’s nothing here,” Lorcan said, as if he wanted more than anything for it to be true. Farideh put her mittens back on and turned to him and Dahl.

“The wizard,” Dahl said. “She’s mentioned a wizard who taught her magic. If someone left an active spell in place, he’s probably the one who would have noticed it. Maybe,” he added pointedly, “you should ask her where he is.”

Lorcan scowled at him. “Darling, where’s the wizard?”

“Eight years ago he lived on the other side of the village, on the slope before the cliffside. I don’t know if he’d have noticed anyone coming or going or even placing a spell. He was a little mad when I was a girl.”

“Even madmen can sniff out a spell,” Lorcan said, striding toward the farther wall of the village, far enough ahead to stretch the edges of the spell. She blew out a breath, as if the tumult of memories could be exhaled in a cloud on the chilly air. She squeezed Dahl’s hand. “Come on.”

Farideh recalled the last time she’d seen Garago. She’d coaxed a book out of him, a history of the genasi in the south, even though he insisted she wouldn’t like it, wouldn’t understand it, shouldn’t waste her time on war stories when Mehen filled her ears with more than enough of that—besides, the book was nothing he could replace. She’d convinced him anyway … and then the book had been destroyed in the fire that taking her pact had ignited.

Farideh curled guiltily into herself, cloak tight around her. Maybe she could ignore the stares and whispers of her former neighbors, but Garago had been kind to her. She started thinking of ways she might replace the book.

Dahl returned the scowl of an old man it took Farideh a heartbeat to recognize as Iannis’s father, Oster. She squeezed his hand again. If Havilar couldn’t be with her, if she had to walk through Arush Vayem without Mehen, at least she had Dahl beside her. She found herself hoping Garago liked him. She found herself hoping Garago was sane enough to understand who he was—who she was.

He wasn’t always: Garago had lived in the village as long as anyone could remember, and as long as anyone could remember, he’d drifted in and out of madness. Some said he’d been spellstruck. Some said he’d been cursed. Sometimes he was the wisest person in the village, sometimes he blew out his own walls slinging spells at ghosts, and sometimes he vanished for months at a time.

At least, that’s what people said. Farideh never remembered him leaving.

Twenty-six years ago, she thought, would he have been well enough times to notice an active spell? Would he have noticed when Caisys came to the gates?

Would he have helped him?

Dahl tugged her hand and she realized she’d slowed down. The ramshackle stone cottage, its walls patched and repatched with year after year of new stone, waited only a bowshot away. Smoke curled from its chimney. Garago was at home.

If there had been a spell in place, she thought, then Garago would have said so—dispelled it or declared it. The people of Arush Vayem liked their privacy, their peace. If someone were watching them, they would want to know—Garago included—and if he’d known and said nothing and they’d found out? Any spell to observe them would have had to have been in place for all seventeen years she and Havilar had lived in Arush Vayem—if it had been broken, then Caisys would have come to find them.

So perhaps there had never been a spell.

If there hadn’t ever been a spell, then either Caisys was nothing like they’d been told—

“Oh gods,” she breathed, stopping in her tracks. “Lorcan!”

The cambion stopped and looked back at her, a cold wind threatening to tear aside the cloak that hid his wings. She ran toward him, past him, dragging Dahl along. “He didn’t leave,” she said as she passed.

“What? Who?” She looked back at Lorcan as she reached the door, saw the shock that overtook his features. “No.”

Farideh paused, about to knock. “I have to,” she called back. Lorcan said nothing—he didn’t even have the chance to flee. You can’t run from this, she thought, and rapped on the door anyway.

The door opened a sharp foot, revealing the face of an old man with a beard that came nearly to his waist, all steel gray. His black eyes stared at Farideh a moment, wild as a creature in the brush, then a slow smile split his beard and he straightened. “Ah. Where’ve you been? Where’s my Calimshan book?”

“Well met,” Farideh said, her breath clouding on the air, “Caisys.”

• • •

IN THE DEAD of night, Brin left Remzi sleeping, tucked against Zoonie’s side. The hellhound lifted her muzzled head as his makeshift lockpicks clanked against the tumbler of the ancient bolt. Zoonie whined and scratched at the floor with one paw.

“Shush,” Brin said. “Lie down and don’t burn him. Good girl.” Zoonie eyed him mistrustfully, but laid her head against the boy’s shoulder as Brin closed the door and relocked it from the outside, secure in the knowledge that if anyone short of Bryseis Kakistos returned—and maybe even then—Zoonie would defend the little boy.

The image of her tearing Nalam’s hand off, blood sizzling in her burning jaws—Brin pushed it aside. Havilar would be furious that the warlock was corrupting her dog, and that alone would chasten Zoonie. He held tight to that thought.

Four days had passed and Bryseis Kakistos had not returned to take the boy, but Brin had come no closer to finding a way out. He’d risked another sending, this one to Waterdeep and the Harpers there, requesting assistance. But, the reply came, Master Tam Zawad wasn’t in Waterdeep. He’d been called away in an emergency. They’d search for agents in Brin’s vicinity, but so far into the mountains and so far from the trade roads, they couldn’t promise aid would be quick in coming.

You’re on your own, the unspoken message.

Which didn’t leave Brin many options for allies.

No one had told the jewel-studded skeletons he wasn’t supposed to be walking around. He questioned two, their charred arms pointing the way through the fortress, until he found Phrenike in a high windowless tower, surrounded by the makings of spells but making use of none of them. Instead she was watching a pair of genasi fight in an arena, reflected in a scrying mirror. As Brin entered, she made the barest of turns, hardly acknowledging him beyond the shift of her violet eyes.

“Well met, saer,” Brin said.

“Lordling.” She returned to her spying. “Weren’t you supposed to be locked up?”

“Doesn’t seem so.”

“Hm. Have you grown bored with your little … object then?”

“Not at all,” Brin said. “I came to thank you. Obviously, I’d caught myself on a bit of a snag.”

“And you are ever so glad, surely, that Bryseis knows about the child.” She waved a skeletal hand over the mirror, banishing the fighting genasi, turning to him at last. “Why are you here?”

Brin made himself consider her for a long moment, reminding himself of the three Hellish armies and Remzi’s worried face, and not the feeling of his bones freezing under Phrenike’s touch. “Well, I’ve been down in the dungeons and I had a question for you,” he said. “Where’s your heir?”

Phrenike waved her hand dismissively. “She’ll find one soon enough. They always seem to be underfoot.”

Brin nodded to himself. “I mean, she has a perfectly good one right here. Do you think she’ll bother?”

“Me?” Phrenike said. “You assume Bryseis will run out of uses for me.”

Brin shrugged. “You said it yourself. ‘Bryseis has a way of trusting others without trusting them at all.’ You find that staff—or worse, she does—and suddenly, you’re no longer useful to her, and she’ll have the most powerful heir of your bloodline around.”

“I think you should be worrying about your own future.”

“She needs a father for her next vessel,” Brin pointed out, “and if you’re intending to apply to be her nursemaid, I have to tell you, your references are wanting.”

The lich was all but impossible to read, spare as her face was, but the silence that hung in the air revealed a sliver of doubt. “You say that as if she’ll have only mortal concerns once this is over. She’ll have to relearn a great deal if she expects to start anew. It can’t all be tattoos and scrolls and charms. She’ll need mentors.”

Brin gave the lich a piteous look. “My children could be taught by the Royal Magician of Cormyr himself, if I wished it. So what purpose do you serve, if you’re not meant for the ritual?”

For a long moment Phrenike said nothing, and Brin began to worry he’d badly miscalculated. A game of wits with a lich was a poor plan, even if the lich seemed to be lazy, as did Phrenike. Abruptly, she spread her hands, tracing the lines of some unseen magic and muttering an incantation that seemed to crawl over Brin’s very skin. The air shifted, his ears popped as it did.

“What—” he started, but Phrenike brought a finger to her thin lips.

“Shhh … Wait.”

Brin’s pulse thudded in his ears—one, two, three, four. At the count of twelve, the air shifted again, a feeling like something ineffable had split like an overstuffed sack of grain. Three devils spilled out, into the room—little spiky things, bigger than imps and carrying tridents. Each wore a cloak of furs, edged with frost.

The largest of them let out a triumphant-sounding cry. The other two lunged—one at Brin, one at Phrenike. Brin pulled his sword free, scrambling back to catch the trident across the blade. He shoved the creature back. The one who’d gone after the lich fared better, his trident catching the sinews of her wrist as she instinctively blocked him. The tendons snapped. Phrenike shrieked.

“You shitting little—” Phrenike flicked the fingers of her uninjured hand. A gust of wind tossed the spiky devil back into its fellows. She spread her bony hand, speaking a word as dense and heavy as lead.

The three little devils froze, tridents poised, mouths agape.

“That,” Phrenike said viciously, “is one thing I can do that you cannot.” She rubbed her torn wrist, then cast again, a mirror of the spell she’d done initially. Once more the air shifted, the sack of grain stitched shut and filled again, some sort of shield returning to its place.

“A forbiddance?” Brin asked.

“Hardly.” Phrenike crossed the room, searching the shelves there for a moment, before plucking up a thick, shimmery cloth and using it to pull down a bottle. She bent the devils’ hands so that each touched the other’s shoulder, then set the bottle atop the nearest one’s spiky head. The trio of devils were suddenly gone, replaced by a bearded human man, who looked around the room, wild-eyed.

“Oh,” Phrenike said. “I’d forgotten you.” Before the man could speak, she dropped to one knee and plunged her hand into his chest as though she were reaching into a well. Another pulse of magic thrummed through Brin’s nerves as the man gasped, his cheeks sinking in, his veins standing out like roots across the thin soil of his skin. Light flooded up Phrenike’s arm, the sinews re-forming, relinking the gilded wires and bones. The man collapsed, looking as shriveled and drained as if he’d been dead for years.

She flexed her repaired hand and sniffed. “Not the same,” she said. “Where were we? Oh yes: As you can see, I have my uses, and if she doesn’t feel that way, well, I’m not her tagalong anymore. If she tries to double-cross me, she—and you for that matter—will find I’m very prepared.”

Brin made himself stay where he stood, made himself look the lich in the eye. “That’s a lot of power to expend for someone you’re ready to stab in the back. What in the world do you owe her?”

“Nothing,” Phrenike said, too smoothly.

Brin tilted his head. “Well, if it’s worth the chance of being her sacrifice, then that’s your decision. But should you find yourself uneager to proceed, you know where I am, saer.” He turned to go.

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll tell her?”

Brin glanced back. “Not really. As I said, she has a use for me still, and given both of our seditions together, saer, I think she’ll opt to hold onto me. Don’t you?”

He headed back toward his room, hoping that he was right about any of this. Phrenike wasn’t wilier than a noble of Cormyr, she wasn’t more powerful than the Royal Magician, and she wasn’t more determined than the Holy Champions of Torm—all people he’d bluffed before. But the risks were higher than they’d ever been. He couldn’t afford to make a mistake.

He stopped at the next black skeleton he came across, this one’s eye sockets set with huge amethysts. “Do you know where Bryseis Kakistos intends to cast her ritual?”

It stared at him for a long moment, his face shining back, bruised-looking in the amethysts. Then it pointed one arm up a set of stairs. Brin felt it watching him all the way up.

The stairs led to a pair of doors. He slipped through these to find himself outside, and a cold winter wind cutting right through his clothes. He wrapped his arms around himself—who knew the fortress was warm by comparison?—and made his way along the gallery there.

The path wound around, overlooking a stone courtyard and sheltering it somewhat from the wind. Brin peered down at it, keeping himself behind one of the blocky pillars that lined the gallery. The courtyard was circular, with a plinth at its center … And thirteen slabs placed around the outer edge of it. Beneath the dusting of snow, faint lines of runes glowed red, eerily lighting the courtyard and illuminating the figure of Bryseis Kakistos, standing alone in the winter night, facing him.

She didn’t look up or seem to notice Brin at all. In fact, she didn’t seem to be paying attention to anything he could see. She stared at one of the slabs laid around the outer ring, her cheeks shining with tears, her lips moving faintly as if she were speaking under her breath. She touched the edge of the slab, almost reverently, but still, she didn’t look up.

She looked as if she were mourning. It made Brin feel almost sad—almost, but not enough to stop him from slinking back down the stairs, toward his rooms, thinking of ways to stop Bryseis Kakistos from ever using that courtyard.

PART IX

FAITHLESS

26 Uktar, the Year of Lost Ships (1400 DR)
Vaasa

• • •

“You have to admit,” Caisys told Bryseis Kakistos, “you’ve gained far more than most people trying to trap the king of the Hells in his promises would have.”

Fifteen years, and the Brimstone Angel’s powers were unrivaled among the infernally pacted. What the Hells could not grant her, Bryseis Kakistos had directed their powers toward gaining the spells of a wizard and more. Magic infused her, kept her strong and quick. When assassins came for her, she cut them down by spell or by blade, and never feared for her life. When the world buckled and the Weave split, she was prepared with spells plucked from every sort of discipline, powerful enough to protect herself, to avoid being blown apart by the shatter of magic.

But she didn’t have the only thing she wanted.

“He said he needed the powers of a god,” she told Caisys, and Caisys alone. “That was the only way to get her back.”

Caisys had shrugged, jiggled the cradle that held her second-born son with the sort of disinterested kindness that made one toss a stick for a strange mutt. The baby stirred and pawed at the nubs of his horns in his sleep. They were all like that now—horns, tails, smooth, edgeless eyes. “But did he say he would?” Caisys asked.

“I’m not an idiot,” Bryseis Kakistos snapped. But neither did she have the upper hand. Asmodeus had agreed, but without any time line established, it had quickly become apparent that the new-made god of sin felt no compulsion to complete their deal. She had summoned emissary after emissary, devils appearing in the middle of her workroom.

“His Majesty requests your patience,” they would always say. “Now is not the time.”

It would never be the time, she was rapidly coming to understand. He would feed her powers, little by little, hoping to distract her from the promise of returning Alyona to flesh and seating Bryseis Kakistos at his right hand. Perhaps because he couldn’t do it. Perhaps because he didn’t wish to. It didn’t matter—whatever his reasons, Asmodeus had betrayed her, and Alyona’s ghost drifted through her dreams every night, mournful and distant. She needed another solution.

“Do you still have the staff?”

Caisys made a face at the baby. All these years gone and he looked almost identical to when she’d first seen him—a little gray in his hair, some weariness around his eyes, but nothing like a man of seventy-odd years. Magic buoying him above the tide of age, she thought, and she wondered if that had come with Asmodeus’s magics or from somewhere else. “Maybe,” he allowed. “But it’s not easy to get to. And I recall you telling me to forget it, and certainly not to tell you where it is.”

She had told him that, and she’d intended to kill him after, to seal away the secret completely. But … after everything, she’d hesitated. Caisys was different than the others.

“That was then,” she told Caisys. “I need leverage. I need a conduit.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Please tell me you aren’t planning to build the kind of spell it sounds like you’re building.”

“Help me? For her sake.”

Caisys stared at her a long moment, then pointed at the baby with his chin. “I see you’ve been busy. What’s this one’s name?”

Bryseis Kakistos blinked, and answered before she could stop herself, “ ‘The baby’? The fosterage will give him a proper name when I send him out.”

“Baby,” Caisys crooned over the cradle, “your mummy is a madwoman. She needs to leave well enough alone.”

“If you’re going to say no, say no like a grown man. Don’t use a baby for a puppet.”

Caisys straightened. “If I say no, you’ll stop listening to me—how long have we known each other? Don’t do this. You’ll end up a dead woman.”

“And Alyona?” Bryseis Kakistos demanded.

“There are other ways to deal with this,” he had said. “Pick one.”

Bryseis Kakistos narrowed her eyes. “Give me the staff.”

“No,” Caisys said. “You said to take it and never tell you where it went.”

“That was then,” she said. “That was when the problem was some rival of Asmodeus’s or that some trumped-up wizard might want it. Now I need it.” She dropped her voice. “I think I can use it. I can use the pacts to pull magic out of the Nine Hells and force it into the staff—”

“And get caught a heartbeat later,” Caisys finished.

Bryseis Kakistos smiled. “It will go too fast. By the time he realizes something’s wrong, the stream will be a torrent. It will weaken him even as it strengthens the god in him.”

Caisys studied her face for long moments. “And what about Alyona?”

Bryseis Kakistos held his gaze, but her hand wrapped around the soul sapphire hanging from its chain around her neck. “You mean if Azuth doesn’t appreciate our help? Then I’ll find someone else. She’s safe now.”

“While you live.” Caisys shook his head. “Maybe you ought to let her go. Try living a life that’s not about … hrast, you’re out for revenge on everything, more or less. You can’t be happy. Don’t you want to be happy?”

For a long moment, Bryseis Kakistos said nothing, but stared at Caisys unblinking for so long a normal person would have turned away. But he only waited, as if he’d asked a question she had any interest in answering.

“Bring me the staff,” she said again.

Caisys sighed. “It’s going to take me a bit,” he said. “It’s not as if I put it under the bed.”

“Hmm. Too much traffic,” Bryseis said.

He gave her a withering look. “For one. A month—give me a month. But promise me you’ll think about what I said, Bisera.”

“I promise,” she lied. The smallest twinge of guilt went through her—after all, Caisys remained her oldest ally. They were very nearly friends.

If she’d known then, as he walked out the door, that he’d never return, she might not have felt guilty at all.

• • •

20

8 Hammer, the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant (1487 DR)
Arush Vayem, Tymanther

LORCAN DID NOT CARE WHO THE WIZARD WAS OR WASN’T. BUT IF ONE WERE going to care about such things, he supposed he would be disappointed in Caisys the Vicelord. In tales, he had been called handsome in a way that suggested something short of obscenity, clever and ruthless and undeniable in a way that bespoke succubus blood. “Garago” muttered to himself while he poured five cups of tea, missing or ignoring the fact that eight people were crowding his little cottage’s front room. He said nothing as he set small spoons alongside each chipped cup. Then he paused and counted, frowning as if suddenly realizing he hadn’t made enough tea for the mob of people massed in his sitting room—but instead, he muttered, “Right,” and pulled the fifth spoon from the tangled depths of his beard.

Lorcan stayed where he was, standing against the wall, and hated every moment.

“Are you all right?” Farideh had whispered as they waited for the others.

“I wish you’d stop asking that,” Lorcan said.

“I meant about Caisys. I didn’t expect we’d find him so soon.”

“Quite a surprise,” he said, keeping his voice as neutral, as empty as possible, and failing.

Dahl sat at the wizard’s table, watching them talk and sending ripples through Lorcan’s temper. Maybe that was the curse’s effect wearing off and maybe that was just his frustration at the stunning lack of chasms to shove the Harper down. He should have given up back in the Dalelands. This wouldn’t end unless Lorcan forced it, but his promise to Farideh itched along his thoughts: Swear to me right now that you won’t harm Dahl. Ever.

“Did you not suspect?” he asked suddenly, the question bursting out without his leave.

“About … About Garago?” she asked. “No. Maybe I can see a little now. You have the same eyes, when you look human, I mean.” She looked down at her hands. “I don’t think you should grow a beard. Are you going to tell him who you are?”

“Why should I?” Lorcan had asked. “I said it before. He doesn’t matter.”

Caisys polished the spoon on the front of his robes, staring down Farideh with black eyes that Lorcan managed a little more hate for.

“That one,” he said, nodding at Adastreia standing against the wall, “I remember. But not all these others—when did you start tramping around with a gang? And I thought you had a sister.”

“You know I do,” Farideh said. “And you remember Mehen.”

“They all look alike to me,” he said in a low voice, though not low enough to keep Mehen from hearing it. He slid a cup of tea toward Farideh, hand caged over the steaming liquid as if he hadn’t even considered the heat of it. “He used to live here?”

“You know damned well who I am, Garago,” Mehen said. “I used to live here and I used to fix your karshoji roof for you whenever you blew a hole in it.”

Caisys scratched his beard. “All right, that tone I remember. And I remember you don’t like downheather tea.” He slid Mehen’s cup over in front of himself and sat down. He took a delicate sip of the tea and considered Farideh. “You’ve been gone a long while.” He jerked his head toward Lorcan. “See the rumors are true enough.”

“Is this one true?” Lorcan asked, his voice cold and hard. “Are you Caisys the Vicelord?”

He turned to consider Lorcan, as if he’d just posed a curious puzzle, and for a moment he said nothing, only studied Lorcan’s face. For a moment, Lorcan felt the tide of his mother’s blood, surging up from wherever Dahl’s curse had buried it—even though he had no idea why. Caisys was no one. Nothing.

“Have we met before?” he asked.

Lorcan kept his face impassive. “No,” Lorcan said. “Are you Caisys the Vicelord?”

He stared at Lorcan a moment longer, before turning back to Farideh. “What gave it away?”

She shook her head. “Just odds. Adastreia said Caisys took us, so he had to have come here. The staff is hidden in the same place as the village only in Abeir, and he hid it. If you weren’t him, you had to have known him. But no one comes to the village. So I don’t think you had a visitor.”

“Or,” Caisys said, “perhaps I was driven mad by him in order to keep his secrets.”

“You already admitted it,” Farideh said. She shot a look at Lorcan—the madness wasn’t an act.

I don’t care if he’s mad, Lorcan thought. Or perhaps, he cared only so much as it made Farideh kind to him. He hated that it took him a moment to remember that. They couldn’t leave Arush Vayem soon enough.

“We need the staff,” Farideh said.

He shrugged. “What do you want that for?”

“Bryseis Kakistos is looking for it. She possessed Havilar and she’s planning to destroy the gods with it. We have to stop her.”

His oddly sleek eyebrows rose. “She’s around again? How does she look?”

“Like Havilar!” Mehen barked. “She’s a ghost and she’s possessing my daughter.”

“Right,” Caisys said. “Hmm … Anyway, I do so have visitors.” He looked over at Dahl and nodded. “Drink your tea. It’ll warm you up.”

Dahl frowned. “How are you still alive?”

“Clean living.” Caisys snickered to himself, trailing away when no one seemed to catch the joke. “Oh. See it’s funny, because I have never been an advocate of anything … Well. They did wind up calling me ‘the Vicelord’ didn’t they? Terribly dramatic. Though,” he added, “you wouldn’t believe how many people—and not-quite-people—will line up to notch the bedposts of ‘the Vicelord.’ It has a ring to it.” He chuckled to himself and took another sip of tea. “But to answer your question, mind your own damned business and drink your tea so you can go on your way.”

“It’s a spellscar.”

Lorcan frowned at Ilstan. One madman faced the other, and in that moment it would have been easy for anyone to believe both of them were perfectly sane. And perfectly dangerous. Caisys dropped his gaze to the Purple Dragon insignia, faint as lichen dappling a rock against Ilstan’s filthy robes. “Well, well,” he said. “What a combination. A dragonborn, a cambion, a war wizard, a Brimstone Angel, a nosy Oghmanyte—”

“It’s a fairly large one,” Ilstan broke in. He drew a circle in the air, level with Caisys’s chest. “There is a … collapsing of the Weave, approximately there. It’s keeping you alive but it’s driving you mad, isn’t it? It’s too much magic for a body to hold.”

Caisys’s mouth quirked. “I’ve had practice.”

Ilstan dropped his hand. “What does it do?”

He shrugged. “As you said, keeps me alive.”

“Oh no,” Ilstan said. “It’s too powerful for only that.”

Caisys chuckled again and turned back to Farideh. “Obviously the war wizard’s a good addition. It’s hard to find a good wizard. We were stuck with Phrenike so long, I suspect that’s why Bisera finally stopped shillyshallying and took steps.”

Farideh frowned. “Aren’t you a wizard? And who’s Bisera?”

“I mean Bryseis. She hates when I call her that.” He sipped his tea noisily. “So, you’ve come back to stay or do you prefer cold tea?”

“I told you,” Farideh said. “I came back for the staff.” Caisys made a dismissive noise. “If she gets the staff—”

“She’s not going to get the staff. Do you think I’m an idiot?” he demanded. “Asmodeus passed it to her, she passed it to me, and I made sure to hide it where nobody could find it.”

“In Abeir,” Adastreia said.

“Right, in Abeir.” He frowned. “No, wait, how did you find out about that?”

“Because nobody’s found it,” Dahl said. “Anyone looking to resurrect Azuth would want it. Anyone looking to topple Asmodeus would too. Hells, any wizard with more than a little ambition would probably sell half their apprentices into bondage to get their hands on the staff of Azuth. But nobody has it. So it’s someplace they don’t know how to reach.”

“Someplace where the gods may not tread,” Ilstan added.

“Someplace that lines up almost exactly with Arush Vayem,” Farideh said. “Did you found this village? Just to protect the staff?”

Caisys’s dark eyes glittered dangerously, but then he smiled. “I told you I get visitors.” He studied Farideh for a long moment. “I watched you. Seventeen years I watched, waiting to see if there was some phantom of her in you. Now you show up and I’ll be damned if you’ve not become exactly as pigheaded.” He looked over at Lorcan again, squinting as if he weren’t quite sure what he was looking at. “Which of them are you with?”

“Technically?” Lorcan said. “Glasya.”

“She want the staff?”

“Her Highness doesn’t know about the staff,” Lorcan said. “And I don’t much want to enlighten her.”

“Could get you a hell of a boon.”

“More likely to get me killed.” This was going to go on forever. “Are you familiar,” he asked, “with the ritual Bryseis Kakistos intends to use to kill the king of the Hells?”

“Intimately? No.” He watched Lorcan in a wary sort of way. “But maybe she mentioned it once. Maybe I know you can’t do it without the staff.”

“Or the heirs,” Lorcan said. “The most powerful she can get her hands on, the better to make the conduit to the Nine Hells’ magic. The most potent. So far that hasn’t always meant the closest to the source … but speaking as a collector? Your descendants aren’t anything special. They litter the multiverse—I myself have gone through six. They are weak and unambitious. No one cares if you lose one. There’s always another Vicelord heir.”

“Sounds about right.” Caisys’s dark eyes sharpened. “You want me to save them?”

Lorcan shrugged. “Do as you like. But I think you’d be more concerned with saving yourself.” He moved toward the table, leaned against its surface, vaguely threatening, entirely sure. It felt awkward, as if he were trying to wield a weapon after a long injury—he knew this was the right gesture, but he doubted nonetheless.

“You’ve hidden yourself out here,” he went on, “where no one can find you. No one comes to this village except if they want to hide—so who do you hide from?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not particularly,” Lorcan said. “Though mere distance doesn’t do much when it comes to gods and archdevils, so I’d guess you’re more worried about mortal threats. You don’t want to die. And if Bryseis Kakistos is looking for the most powerful individual in the line of Caisys the Vicelord? Well, I’m sure I’m not the only one who’d make a wager that it’s you.”

Caisys chuckled. “Silver-tongued, this one. So you think Bryseis is coming after me. You think I can’t stand against her? I’d wager you know by now that I already had dealings with her ghost and Alyona’s. If you think she’s given up on her kinder, gentler plans for survival, then I’d say I’m ready for her. I can handle a ghost.”

That name again—Alyona. But there wasn’t time to press him. Lorcan clucked his tongue. “A ghost with three times your knowledge and the blessings of a Chosen of Asmodeus in the body of a woman with twice your strength and a blade that might as well be her right hand?”

Caisys squinted. He looked over at Mehen. “She’s still carting around that damned glaive?” He shook his head. “Waste. Girl had a memory like a godsbedamned aboleth. Assuming she paid attention.” He slurped his tea. “Piecemeal mess when she didn’t pay attention. Bisera is probably hating that.”

“She’s probably enjoying having that youthful, well-trained body,” Lorcan said. “Having those memories to search through.” He tilted his head as if it gave him a new angle on Caisys’s features. Studied him right back, the bastard. “How long,” he said, “before she sees a certain wizard from a certain village on no one’s maps, do you think?”

Caisys’s eyebrows rose again. He took another deliberate sip of tea, before setting the cup down and turning to Farideh.

“What are you going to do with it?” he said.

“Trap her,” Farideh said. “That’s the bait. Ilstan and I can make a prison.”

“Then what?”

Farideh wet her mouth. “Then,” she said finally, “we figure out how to get Havilar back. How to push the ghost back out.”

“What about Asmodeus?”

Farideh shook her head. “I don’t think he cares.”

Caisys snorted and shot a look at Lorcan. “You have not done a good job here. Of course he cares! You bring that staff onto this plane and you’ll be horn-deep in devils. Are you prepared for that?”

“Asmodeus has other concerns at the moment,” Lorcan said. “The planes are … shifting. The gods changing.” He hesitated, unable to bring himself to say it. “Azuth is alive and waking up. Asmodeus has sealed himself in Nessus.”

Caisys scratched his beard. “Sounds like he’ll want that staff all the more.”

“Why?” Farideh asked. “He wouldn’t want to strengthen Azuth.”

“Who the Hells even knows?” Caisys said. “But he surely doesn’t want it falling into the wrong hands.”

“Then we’ll be the right hands,” Farideh said. “We have to get her out of that fortress, away from that ritual. I don’t know how else to save Havilar.” She hesitated. “Or you.”

For a long moment, Caisys said nothing, only considered each of them in turn. “It’s not a simple quarterstaff, you know. You have a way to transport it?”

“I think so,” Farideh said. She glanced at Ilstan. “He’s the Chosen of Azuth.”

“Well,” Caisys said, sounding surprised. “If anyone can hold onto it …” He glanced around the room. “How many of you plan on coming along?”

“All of us,” Farideh said.

“If it’s all the same,” Bodhar interrupted, “maybe Thost and I stay behind. Guard the back way, so to speak.” He smiled at Caisys. “We’re simple fellows. That portal business … not for us.”

“Six of you is still pushing the limits,” Caisys said. He drained his tea cup. “But you’re going to need the muscle, so I suppose we’ll make it work.” He stood. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.” Farideh looked over at Lorcan, and for a moment he wondered how she’d ever been that wide-eyed girl too stunned to even hold onto her book. “What do we need to do?”

“Farm boys, back up,” Caisys said. He stood as well and pulled open his shirt to reveal a splatter of a scar, like the remnants of hot oil thrown against his skin. It pulsed with a faint blue light. “Spellscar,” he confirmed. “I don’t recommend it. Everyone who’s coming along on this ridiculous errand come a little closer.”

Lorcan moved to stand behind Farideh. And Dahl—godsdamned Dahl. The Harper looked over his shoulder, as if marking Lorcan’s exact position, and took Farideh by the hand. Maybe there’d be a monster on the other side or a shitting sinkhole.

“Ready?” Caisys asked. But without waiting for an answer, he set a hand against his spellscar, and all the light around him bled through the air, sucked away into a doorway no one ever suspected was there.

• • •

WHEN HAVILAR RETURNED to the mists, Alyona was nowhere to be seen and Havilar couldn’t shake the feeling she needed to catch the breath she didn’t have. The image of the archdevil, the rising feeling of unease and then terror as she realized he was not—he couldn’t possibly be—a figment of her sister’s dreams. She felt as if her pulse was racing, but with no body, there was nothing she could do to slow it down.

Havilar sat, pulled her knees close to her chest, tried to sort through how many things were going wrong. Poor Brin—she thought of the little boy romping in the snow with Zoonie, of how hard it would be to protect him. Poor Fari—for all she got annoyed with Farideh for not catching on faster when Havilar dipped into her dreams, it was clear she was dealing with enough to make anyone distracted. The archdevil, growing more and more solid, seeming to suck all the light out of the room, out of Havilar—

She shuddered and laid her head against her knees. Poor Fari and poor me, she thought, even though that wasn’t going to do any good. She sighed, even though it stirred no breath, and looked around again.

For a terrible moment she imagined Brin succeeding, stealing the soul sapphire and freeing Alyona while Havilar was still stuck in Farideh’s dreams. But then surely there would be no misty place to come to or perhaps …

If Alyona was gone then …

… But she had made a glaive, so—

Havilar blinked hard. She’d lost track of herself again. Shit, she said without actually saying it. Shit and karshoji gods. How long did it take before she was as worn and fluttery as Alyona? Would it take fifty years or a hundred? Or would she come apart faster, since she’d come later, since it wasn’t her sister’s powers keeping her alive?

She said she’d give my body back, Havilar told herself.

And make one of them get her a new one.

Once all those heirs were dead.

She thought again of the little boy in the snow, and felt her thoughts start to drift. Havilar squeezed her eyes shut. Keep yourself together, she thought. Snow, snow, snow.

You started in the snow, she said out loud. Left at the gates of a village on no one’s maps, one and two, and who came to claim twin tiefling foundlings but Clanless Mehen.

The words picked up the cadence of a story—her story. If she kept telling it, maybe she’d stop losing track of who she was and where she was. She told the mists the silly, cherished stories of her babyhood in Mehen’s words—you would not sleep unless I sang battle anthems and stomped about the house with you facedown across an arm. She told her first memories of the snow and the old stone barn. She told the story of breaking her arm and building her first trap, the story of Arjhani and the winter storm, the story of the imp who turned out to be Lorcan, and leaving Farideh to unwind all their fates.

Havilar suddenly ran out of words at that. For all she wanted to be mad at Farideh for starting this, she couldn’t have done any such thing without Havilar summoning Lorcan in the first place.

And if she got mad at Farideh, then didn’t she have to be mad about Brin—who she would never have met—or Kallan or every adventure? She’d have to be mad about the little blue-eyed boy in the snow too.

Remzi, she said, and it didn’t sound like a word, but it still made her heart squeeze.

What’s that? Alyona stood behind her, hands clasped before her, looking as if she’d been standing there for ages.

Havilar stood swiftly. Where have you been?

Alyona frowned. Here and there. Why? Did something happen?

I talked to Brin, Havilar began.

I see, Alyona wrapped her arms around herself. So. He’s agreed.

Havilar felt her tail lashing the memory of a solid floor. What happens if she calls his bluff? What happens if the soul sapphire gets destroyed?

She won’t do that, Alyona said firmly.

You’re sure? Havilar asked. Brin seems to think she might.

She’s my sister. She promised—

She promised you that she wouldn’t hurt people this time, didn’t she? She promised she could do it without killing anyone?

This will remind her, Alyona said. She won’t … She knows, deep down … I’m sure she remembers.

Havilar’s stomach knotted. She could hear herself saying the same things about Farideh. Or Farideh saying the same things about her. But Bryseis Kakistos wasn’t either of them.

And if she calls his bluff? She asked again.

Alyona pursed her lips. If she calls his bluff, she said, then I suspect you and I will die. She looked away. Do you think she will?

I think if it’s even a possibility, you need to talk to her, Havilar said. Stupid things happen when you don’t talk.

I have talked to her. She won’t listen.

You haven’t said the right things. You know she’s doing this for you. She thinks she’s doing this for you.

No, Alyona said sadly. Maybe once. But now she’s doing it for power.

I don’t think so, Havilar said. Did you see her before? That was a grave she was fussing with. Nobody fusses with graves to get power—nobody fusses with graves at all, I guess, but still.

She wants revenge, Alyona said.

Revenge for you, Havilar said. Look, I know that Farideh would do pretty much anything to save me. Your sister has put her in a position where she has to do a lot of it to try and save me. The only thing that would stop her is if I said stop.

The soul sapphire—

That’s not saying “stop,” Havilar said. That’s saying “do it my way.” And I’m pretty sure your sister is at least twice as stubborn as mine, so that’s just going to make her push back even more. You have to tell her you’re done.

Alyona looked away, off into the mists, and said nothing. Havilar held her breath—or at least, she did something that felt like holding her breath. Done meant dead when it came to Alyona, but Havilar couldn’t imagine that didn’t appeal at least a little after all these years bound to Bryseis Kakistos.

If it didn’t appeal … well, then, neither of their plans was going to work and Havilar was going to have to do something drastic.

My sister isn’t your sister, Alyona said after a long while. She sighed. My sister isn’t even really my sister anymore. Bisera is long gone. I doubt … Perhaps it’s better just to wait. To see … Maybe she can achieve her goal and we’ll be freed?

If she achieves her goal, innocent people die, Havilar reminded her. Two gods die and there’s no way to know what happens.

Innocent people die all the time. Alyona’s silver eyes slid to her. A tiefling’s first lesson, isn’t it?

Havilar balled her fists, but didn’t answer. Maybe she could stop Bryseis Kakistos without Alyona and maybe she couldn’t, but she could think of two lessons she’d been taught before that: One, when someone’s being stubborn, go around them. Two, don’t let shady, skull-cracked warlocks kill your kin.

More or less, Havilar thought, heading toward the split in the mists before Alyona could stop her.

• • •

DAARDENDRIEN NIJANA, DAUGHTER of Turan, of the line of Garshabin, tugged the chain that bound her to a line of twenty other Vayemniri and waited for the response, eyes on the Untheran army, on their golden god-general standing atop one of the jagged edges of earth dragged up by the planar storm. Overhead, the clouds had grown thick and heavy, and Nijana worried about a second storm.

The god-king’s priests in their tattered skins had walked all down the line of prisoners, white feathers in hand, smearing ink on their eyelids and ears. None would miss the words of the Son of Victory, they said.

“You may be saying, ‘this is not the battle he promised us,’ ” Gilgeam cried, his voice echoing, buoyed by magic. “ ‘This is not the victory we deserved, the kingdom we were meant for!’ I say to you, no! I say to you instead that this place is our true reward, this battle is the one we have remade ourselves for.”

Nijana looked sidelong to the next Vayemniri along the chain, a red-scaled Yrjixtilex girl hardly old enough to wield a sword. Her tongue rattled dryly against the roof of her mouth, little flames bursting between her teeth. When she caught Nijana’s eye, she stopped and swallowed hard.

“Who was responsible for our misfortune?” Gilgeam bellowed. “Who profited by our collapse? And in answer: the Vayemniri flourish, they do not suffer. In the other world, they make their empire, they treat with the genasi as though they are righteous. In this world—in our world—they claim our fields and our monuments, our riches and our mines. Our cities are laid to ruin and we are cast into the wilderness. ‘We too have suffered the predations of tyrants’ they say to us, but they do not suffer. They make themselves fat on the efforts of our ancestors. They claim what is ours and now that we have returned to our glorious homeland, they refuse to cede it. What choice do we have? We cannot feed ourselves on memories and broken stone! They will make us slaves again, demanding labor and riches for the slightest morsel. I cannot allow that.”

The Untherans shouted, angry and exultant, and the sound agitated the demons. Nijana counted the nearest ones to the line of Vayemniri prisoners staked along the outside edge of the army’s encampment—two of the vulturelike vrocks perched close to her end, a succubus lounging as if disinterested and lazy beside the stake. Nijana had seen well enough that they moved from inaction to action faster than she would have credited.

“We have raised ourselves out of bondage,” Gilgeam went on. “We have fostered the virtue of bravery. Our ranks number in the ten thousands and we have, each and every one of us, proven with our blood, our determination, that the strength of Unther has not ended. Not yet.”

Nijana heard the chain clank along the line before she felt the tug, and started counting to a hundred, her eyes darting from the Untheran guard to the god-general he watched with rapt attention. With any luck he would not pay the slightest attention to the living fence they’d laid along this edge of the camp.

“If we, the last bastion of this plane’s greatest empire, should fall into servitude once more, if we should fall to these creatures, then what? Who is there to come after us? The blood of Unther is on the way to extinction unless we reclaim our lands and make ourselves free!”

Fifty, Nijana counted. Fifty-one, fifty-two … She slowly increased the tension of the chain against the stake. Beside her, the Yrjixtilex girl shifted up onto her heels, ready to straighten.

“They have left us with only two possibilities,” Gilgeam went on. “Either we remain Untheran or we let ourselves come under the dominion of the Vayemniri. This latter must not occur. It cannot be allowed to occur. And so the Son of Victory stands before you, the new god, the new king of Unther, and says that though we are outnumbered, we are of a purpose. We are given strength. And if you trust in me we will be victorious over the hateful Vayemniri.”

Light built around Gilgeam with each rising word, each chorus of shouts from the Untherans. How much of what he said was true? How much should they fear? Seventy-six, Nijana counted. Seventy-seven, Seventy-eight …

“In two days’ time,” Gilgeam went on, “we shall reach the stolen city of Djerad Thymar. We shall reclaim it, reclaim the bones of my fallen brother, and with our victory, reclaim Unther’s might.”

Eighty-eight, eighty-nine, ninety … Thunder rumbled in the distance. Nijana shifted onto one knee, surreptitiously taking hold of the chain in both shackled hands. Her mouth flooded with acid, her breath burning with it.

“Among you there are those who fear this fight,” Gilgeam said. “There are those who fear their weapon will betray them, their determination will not let them defeat this threat, that their desire for freedom, for vengeance for our ancestors is evil. To you I say, do not be afraid. Know that anyone whose throat you cut, that is one who will not cut your throat. That is one more claw that will not cut the life from Unther.”

Nijana stood—and the whole line of Vayemniri stood as one. She pulled against the stake with all her strength—and the Yrjixtilex girl and the man beyond her, and those beyond him pulled with her. It broke free of the hard dirt as the succubus came to her feet, wings high, hands reaching for Nijana.

The dragonborn woman spat, a stream of acid spraying through her pointed teeth to splatter the succubus. The Untheran guard turned at the demon’s scream, but the chain beyond was clattering as the other Vayemniri began to run. Nijana pulled the loose end to her, the stake a weapon in her hands.

The vrocks took to the air, the succubus dived at Nijana. She stabbed and stabbed again with the filthy stake and punched through the succubus’s shoulder before the chain yanked her away, into the darkness.

“Stop them!” she heard Gilgeam shouting. “Destroy them!”

A patch of darkness thickened in front of Nijana. Demon! her mind cried as she pulled away, tugging the Yrjixtlex girl from the creature. The shadow sliced through the chain, burning claws cutting the iron as easily as young cheese. The Yrjixtilex girl breathed fire at it, and again at the vrocks that descended to its side. None of the creatures so much as flinched.

A rain of arrows pattered the ground behind them. Nijana risked a look back over her shoulder and saw the building light around Gilgeam, the beginnings of the same spell that had taken Djerad Kethendi’s Lance Defenders out of the sky.

“Karshoj,” she swore. Front lines first, she thought, whipping back toward the demons. The vrocks lunged for the Yrjixtilex girl, for the chain that bound her to Nijana. Nijana yanked on her end of the chain, pulled the girl behind her and spat a stream of acid that caught both vrocks across the face.

The closer one screamed as its eye burst into a fountain of blood. With a cry that sounded like the birth of a whirlwind, the shadow demon surged up and attacked its wounded comrade.

A bolt of lightning sizzled out of the sky, striking the ground beside Gilgeam. The god-general half-fell, half-flew off the back of the rise. Waves of screaming rose out of the night as sleet began pouring out of the billowing clouds.

A stroke of luck, Nijana thought, running after the other prisoners, and hoped they could count on more such luck, tonight as they ran and in the days ahead for Djerad Thymar.

• • •

ABEIR BEGAN AS utter darkness. Humid air, uncomfortably warm and dense, made Mehen’s scales all prickle down to their roots. He tasted the air, reaching back for his falchion. Still there, still whole—the portal hidden in Caisys’s scar hadn’t destroyed them.

“Where are we?” Farideh called. Her voice echoed oddly, as if it were bouncing off Mehen’s bones.

“Shit,” Garago muttered—no, Caisys, he reminded himself. “Forgot torches.”

A bluish light grew off to Mehen’s left, illuminating Dahl who was shaking a glowball into life. “I have three,” he said, reaching back into the bag at his hip.

“Well done,” Adastreia said, taking the lit glowball.

The light built and built, gleaming off crystals the size of castle towers, lying at angles to the walls. Mehen sucked in a breath, tracing the strange and lovely stones with his eyes.

“Gods,” Farideh whispered. Again, that strange vibration and Mehen tasted the air more frantically.

For a thousand years, the titan lay, incorrupt and unapproachable, for all who neared Merciless Petron felt the earthquake in their marrow until they shattered like fragile schist.

Dahl moved closer to the crystal, studying the strangely curved edges. The milky stone seemed to absorb the light from the glowstone, so that the length of it gleamed pale blue.

“Don’t touch that,” Caisys said.

“How is it working?” Ilstan’s voice shook as he stormed toward Dahl. “How did you manage? I can’t … I can’t make anything!”

Mehen looked over at Farideh. She was staring at her up-turned arms as if someone might have etched a map there. “I don’t have any spells,” she said. “I can’t … I can’t feel the Hells or the Weave.”

“We can’t cast magic?” Adastreia asked.

“Of course you can’t,” Caisys said. “Pacts are sealed off. Weave doesn’t exist. You get what you carried in, assuming it’s self-contained. Weren’t you listening?”

“You didn’t tell us that,” Farideh said, her voice rising.

Caisys frowned at her. “Well, I should’ve. No magic. No normal magic. Hope you remembered blades. Anybody have a bow?” No one did, of course. “Well, tluin and buggering Shar,” Caisys said. “This is why you don’t ask me to plan your little outings.”

Mehen scanned the group—swords on Farideh, himself, Lorcan, and Dahl. Adastreia had a dagger, and Ilstan … well, Mehen felt a lot better if Ilstan didn’t have a blade. Besides, the wizard had a job to do.

“Why do we need a bow?” Mehen asked. “Can hardly move in here.”

“Because they might not have magic, but they have stlarning monsters,” Caisys said. “Monsters like you haven’t seen. There’s a big bugger in these caverns in particular. If we’re lucky, it’s dormant. If we’re not … well, you don’t want to get close.”

Mehen looked up at the jumble of crystals as if something might be there, moving in the shadows. The cavern stretched up into shadowy pockets, broken by more of the long crystals. He peered at them, trying to make the edges straight, trying to convince himself they were only crystals. But there was no denying the soft curves and strange bulges.

For the second thousand years, the body began to degrade, and any who approached the remains of Merciless Petron were turned to glass where they stood. The dragon tyrants dropped stones upon her body and built the Verthishai Loech Ternesh to protect those who wandered.

“The Dead Stone Mountains,” Mehen murmured.

“Bones,” Lorcan said, looking up at the crystals as well. “What madman carves quartz into giant bones?”

“Nobody,” Caisys said. “Those are Dawn Titan bones. It’s like an ossuary.”

In the third thousand years, Versveshardinazar, the Opaline Terror, mined the Verthishai Loech Ternesh down to its roots, seeking the relics of Merciless Petron. For centuries his slaves broke rocks until they found the corpse, and the precious remains of the Dawn Titan’s magic.

“Is this the ossuary of Petron?” Mehen whispered.

“How would I know?” Caisys replied. “I said don’t touch them!”

Dahl scowled. “I wasn’t touching them. I was looking at the striations.”

“Look from farther back,” Mehen said. He tasted the air, tapping his tongue to the roof of his mouth. “The Dawn Titans were the first of the tyrants of Abeir. Their relics are what magic Abeir has. Shestandeliath carries a fragment of the titan’s lungs—it built Djerad Thymar. Whatever’s condensed into those bones is powerful. And you don’t know what it does, so leave it be.”

“I don’t know why you’re all acting like I’m chipping pieces off these things,” Dahl said. He pointed at the top of one of the nearly horizontal columns—what looked like the twist of a wrist bone. “That a sign of your monster?”

Along the upper edge the stone was a patch of rough stone as long as Mehen’s torso. The light didn’t refract through it, and so it left a patch of opaque white along the bone. “What makes scratches like that?”

“Not scratches,” Mehen said. “That’s acid pitting.” He turned back to Caisys. “What is it?”

“I think it used to be a behir. Then it—or its progenitors—mucked around with those Dawn Titan bits.”

“Yes, very helpful,” Lorcan said caustically. “Because we’re all walking bestiaries. What the shit is a behir?”

Caisys scowled. “Pretend a dragon mated with a giant centipede and then it ate one of that titan’s organs. That’s why you don’t touch the bones!”

Dahl shot Farideh a disbelieving look and threw his hands in the air.

“Never mind him,” she said as she took the third glowball from him. Caisys smirked at Mehen, a reminder he was still Garago, even if he was Caisys too.

Farideh handed Caisys the glowball. “Since you’re leading the way.” She turned to the rest of them. “What have we got in the way of magic that does work?”

Lorcan held out the chain of rings he wore and felt his way along them. “I have one for an emergency portal, a dimensional pocket that I think still has a charged wand in it, and a ring with three frost spells left in it, but I cannot tell if it works. The others aren’t reacting or they need a connection to the Hells, so that’s a shitting lot of good.”

“I’ve got my beads,” Adastreia said. “Three healings, one wind-walk.” She tapped the black pearl. “That’s not going to call my devil, is it?”

“Not a chance,” Caisys said. “Anybody else?”

Dahl dropped his bag in the middle of the group. “Ilstan,” he said very deliberately, “I brought a sizeable number of your creations.” But here too not everything seemed suited to the barren air of Abeir. From the bounty, they had slippers that made one able to climb walls, three wands full of lightning bolts, another two that could cast magical missiles—

“And this.” Dahl held up one hand to show a gold ring etched with a ram barreling around the band. He locked eyes with Lorcan. “I thought I’d borrow it.”

“Better than nothing,” Caisys said.

They passed out the magic items and all shed their cloaks, the humid air making everyone flushed and sweating long before they began their careful passage through the ossuary. The crystals took up the light of the glowballs as they passed, illuminating the path better than the lights alone. The slippers were only large enough for Adastreia, and Lorcan kept his own rings. Mehen tucked the wand Dahl had given him into his belt and moved to the front, alongside Caisys, ahead of Farideh.

“You going to yell at me about keeping all this from you?” Caisys asked, as he ducked under one of the shorter bones—a finger, Mehen thought, or a foot bone.

“As far as I can see,” Mehen said, as he followed, “what you did was keep this nonsense far away from my girls, so there we’re in agreement. Can’t say I understand you not getting involved when Lorcan turned up.”

Caisys snorted. “I had to guard the staff. Besides, you were gone before I even knew what happened—and if you haven’t heard yet, your girls are purposely hard to find.” He cleared his throat. “I was checking up. Now and again. Lost track of them, though, maybe eight years back? I’m glad it wasn’t for the worst kind of reasons.”

They eased one after the other around a gently curving rib bone. “What’s the story with the Oghmanyte?” Caisys asked.

Mehen sighed. “He’s better than the cambion.”

“That’s a low bar to set.” He glanced back at Mehen. “What about the other twin? What’s she doing?”

The question sent a cascade of cold panic through Mehen. “She’s being held captive by your mistress.”

“Right,” Caisys said. Then he shook his head. “Bisera’s not my mistress. She’s a friend. The kind of friend who won’t call herself your friend, but still.” He reached back to help Mehen around another bone—something thick and flat on one side—but Mehen ignored the offered hand.

“You mad at me for leaving them at the gate?” Caisys asked.

Mehen tapped his tongue. “It was a pothach plan, Garago. Nobody wanted to keep them but me. And I don’t karshoji remember you arguing all that hard for it. What would you have done if no one had claimed them?”

“Honestly?” He shrugged. “I don’t much remember that part. Kept them myself? Razed the village and gone elsewhere? Worked the right sort of magics to make someone think there was no world where they would have left those babies in the snow?” He smiled at Mehen and again something cold and terrible gripped his core. He could remember that day—he would always remember that day—coming back from patrol, well after the others, having stopped to dress a mountain goat they’d shot. He’d been a stone’s throw from the gates when he heard their little yelping cries, and thought some animal had dropped its kits too close to the village. Instead he found two little tieflings, wrapped in wool blankets, tucked together in the snow. No footprints. No notes. Only them, looking pale and drowsy and dangerously cold. Farideh’s little fist almost blue with the chill, but clinging tight to her sister’s blanket.

“Did you do that to me?” he whispered.

“Does it matter?” Caisys said. “I mean, I didn’t, but I don’t see why it would have been bad. I did do it to other people, mind, once I realized our little village is full of coldhearted hardjacks and you lacked some rather critical resources, such as milk and a basic understanding of non-Vayemniri infants. You needed help and you weren’t going to ask for it.”

“Are you talking about Criella?” Mehen asked, startled. The tiefling midwife had been insistent that the twins could not stay, but once Mehen had shouted her down, once it was clear the twins were his and he wasn’t budging … she’d used Chauntea’s blessings to make milk for the twins, showed him how to change their cloths, talked him down when he thought he was losing his very mind.

Caisys chuckled. “Do you want to know something about Criella? She’s actually the heir of a warlock called Margarites. She came to kill me and I opted to use a little magic instead of a blade, make her more useful. Re-sorted her mind so many times I don’t think she knows what she is.”

“That’s monstrous!” Mehen said.

“It’s a little funny,” Caisys said. “And for the record, I didn’t give her the stick up her arse; that came with the original.”

The shadows between the crystal bones flickered—or had he imagined it? Mehen aimed the glowball’s light as much as it would be aimed into the darkness.

The cavern narrowed, closed off by a wall of the crystal—the base of an enormous skull. Caisys pulled his sleeves down over his hands before crawling through a small round hole. Mehen cast a glance back at Farideh before following, his light blooming through the milky stone of the skull.

He crawled through the hole, careful not to linger too long on the titan’s bones, the stories of titan relics murmuring in his head. Now wasn’t the time to find out if they were exaggerating. Inside the giant skull, plain stone rubble had filled in the space, half burying the curve of its brainpan. He waited to see Farideh come through before slipping out the jagged opening of a mouth.

A stone’s throw beyond the ossuary, the cavern opened up into a huge domelike room. The path broke into ragged rock, then dropped away in a long, shallow slope that rose again on the opposite side, forming a bowl around a small pale streak that cast light enough for Farideh to see the whole of the indentation.

“Is that it?” Adastreia whispered.

“Can you feel it?” Ilstan said, sounding as if he might weep. “Oh, Watching Gods.”

Even Mehen could feel it. The air was … more alive, as if it were thrumming like a hive of bees. Full of magic, she thought.

“The staff of Azuth,” Ilstan intoned.

Mehen studied the slope. The rock was crumbling and loose, an easy slide down and not so simple a climb back up. But if some of them stayed up here, if they tied ropes to—

His eyes fell on the edge of the cliff. On the pitted stone that etched its way as far across the ledge as they stood.

Something in the darkness above them shivered and hissed. “Mine,” a breathy voice said in Draconic. “That is Vozhin’s. So are you.” Mehen looked up in alarm as the shadows bulged and shifted. He reached for his sword.

“Ah, tluin and buggering Shar,” Caisys said. “It’s awake.”

21

8 Hammer, the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant (1487 DR)
The Ossuary of Merciless Petron, Abeir

THE CREATURE OOZED OUT OF THE SHADOWS ABOVE A DEEP, V-SHAPED mouth, then lambent eyes, then a serpentine body, bile-green and shining with slime, its many legs moving it down the wall of the cave. A dragon, Farideh thought, meets a centipede, meets the innards of a titan. Karshoj.

“Scatter!” Caisys shouted. He broke right, down the crumbling slope.

Farideh risked turning from Vozhin, searching the cavern for exits, for hiding places. She found only shadows.

And the staff, stirring magic into being in the void of Abeir.

“Go!” She shoved Ilstan toward the edge. “Get him cover!” she shouted down to Mehen and Dahl. “We need the staff!”

Mehen drew his sword. “Watch his back. I’ll cover the right, Dahl keep the left.”

Dahl’s gray eyes met Farideh’s—be careful, I love you, watch out. She nodded back, all the same words returned wordlessly, before watching him leap down into the bowl.

“What jabber jabber, little two-legs!” Vozhin rumbled. “You talk in my gullet.”

“Darling—” Lorcan reached back as if he meant to push her behind him and away from the creature—Farideh only realized what he was doing after she’d leaped forward, sliding down the crumbling, rocky slope. She stumbled at the base, rolling over one knee, to land on her backside, looking up at the gaping jaws of Vozhin.

Lorcan launched himself into the air, flapping quickly out of reach. Vozhin arched away from the wall, rear legs clinging to the stone as the length of its body stretched toward Lorcan, snapping after the cambion.

“Oh, flappy-flappy thing,” Vozhin rumbled. “I burn you from the sky.”

Farideh’s heart leaped up her throat. Sparks clamored between the creature’s pointed teeth, a bulge of slime built in the back of its maw. Farideh scrambled to her feet. “Lorcan!” she screamed. “Move! Move!”

Vozhin spat a stream of viscous yellow liquid, crackling with lightning, directly at Lorcan. The liquid seemed to skim just under his feet as he climbed toward the ceiling, but Farideh was already sprinting away at an angle, avoiding the slash of electric acid. It hit the stone, a long, hissing, sulphurous line. All instinct, she pulled on her powers, but no bolt of dark energy came and her arms itched as if they were drawn dry.

“Karshoj.” She drew the wand of lightning bolts Dahl had given her, its slender length flimsy and awkward after her rod.

Ilstan stumbled ahead of her, his stride longer, his speed slower. Mehen grabbed hold of his robes, yanking him to the right as another slash of acid crackled and sizzled across the stone. Farideh turned with them, scrabbling to keep her feet, and turned to keep her eyes on the monster.

“That’s right, flappy thing,” Vozhin bellowed. “Higher, higher …”

Farideh pointed the wand at Vozhin—but she hesitated. The creature was distracted, wasn’t chasing Ilstan. That’s what they needed, after all. She watched another bolus of acid building in the monster’s gullet.

A bolt of lightning shot across the cave, crashing into the side of Vozhin’s head with a minor thunderclap. “Hoy! Ugly!” Dahl shouted in clumsy Draconic. “Eyes go over here!”

The lightning seemed to annoy Vozhin more than harm it. It dropped off the wall with a thunderous boom that shook the whole cavern. “Not going anywhere, little two-legs,” it snarled. “Wait your—”

Vozhin broke off in a howl as a bolt of frost hit it from above, ice spidering across its finely scaled yellow skin. It swung its head toward Lorcan, still hanging in the air.

“You don’t have to have a shitting conversation with it, paladin!” Lorcan shouted, triggering another bolt of frost. Vozhin shied, taking the blast of cold across the side of its cheek, then whipping its head back and spitting another stream of crackling acid. Farideh sprinted toward Dahl, away from the stream—still, splatters of the slime peppered her tail, burning and sharp.

“Watch the stlarning streams!” Dahl shouted back at him.

“Magic in-your-hands?” Vozhin growled. “Vozhin plays that game too.” It flipped around, looking boneless as a whip, and shot up the wall, up into the shadows above.

Ilstan and Mehen were nearly to the staff, picking their way over the broken surface of the cave floor. Farideh kept her eyes on the shadows, on Lorcan hanging above as she chased after them, and nearly tripped on the broken stones.

Caisys shouted a curse that rang through the cavern. “Don’t let it get up on the ceiling!”

“How in the Hells are we meant to stop it?” Farideh shouted back.

“I have it!” Adastreia called.

Before Farideh could see what she meant to do, the dark above flashed with lightning, a muffled thunderclap whooshing through the cave. A cacophony of high-pitched cries echoed through the cavern before the shadows exploded into a thousand tiny fragments, a swarm of bats with pinprick blue eyes glowing in the darkness, spiraling down into the cave.

Farideh fought the urge to duck as they dipped lower, but high above she saw two slam into Lorcan in their attempts to escape Vozhin. He shouted, trying to swat them aside—

Blue light raced over Lorcan like flames catching on oiled linen. He went stiff, then slack, his wings spread, and Lorcan began to fall.

“Mehen! Mehen, help!” Farideh ran—eyes on Lorcan. She was never going to be able to catch him, but Mehen, maybe Mehen—

Suddenly Lorcan’s wings flexed and caught the air. He jerked upright. There was a moment where he seemed to look around the cave, puzzled. Vozhin’s great head dropped out of the shadows, the corpses of a half-dozen of the bats dangling from its teeth.

“Magic for you,” it chuckled. “Magic for me.”

Lorcan’s head snapped up. He screamed, and a spell he had no business possessing streaked out of his mouth. Missiles of blazing emerald coalesced out of the shivering air, sharpening into points that shot unerringly toward Vozhin. The creature belched and a bubble-like shield curved in front of its head. It spat again, and this time the slime shimmered darkly with some unnamable energy.

Farideh darted toward Ilstan, pushing the wizard out of its path. He clung to her arm, eyes wide at the circling swarm of bats.

“They are spells,” he panted. “Living magic. The staff must draw them, change them, maybe even birth them.”

Above Lorcan convulsed again. Twin bolts of fire burst out of his hands, sizzling against the creature’s slimy skin.

Farideh turned to Ilstan. “It transfers on contact,” he said. “Touch it or kill it or—”

“Catch the bats,” she confirmed.

He nodded. “As many as you can.”

Farideh looked up at the serpentine form of Vozhin. No doubt it had the same plans. “Lorcan!” she shouted. “Drive the bats down!”

• • •

THE NEARER ILSTAN came to the staff, the harder it was to keep his mind on his task. Not the panicked, frantic madness of the building powers of Azuth, but something dreamier, something more disconnected from here and now. His mind wandered—back to his days of apprenticeship, to his years in the War Wizards of Cormyr—only to snap back to the cavern, the creature, and the current peril. The lack of the god’s voice in his thoughts. His stomach lurched each time, but he forced himself forward, reaching for the lost staff of Azuth.

Only you can claim it, he thought. Only you can bear it.

Behind him Farideh leaped for a diving spell-bat, hitting it with her outstretched sword. Again the cascade of blue fire over her frame and a moment later her sword sent a wave of force slamming into the cave ceiling, dropping more stones and shaking the creature’s grip such that it’s back half hung, loose and thrashing.

—Ilstan holds his little hand as if pinching a quill over the parchment listing his father’s latest shipments of copper and which smelters had already ordered what. A tidy duplicate of the figures appear on the blank sheet beside it, and Ilstan smiles up at his father and his beaming tutor. “It’s called amanuensis,” he says. His father chuckles and strokes his beard. “I’ll be damned.”—

Someone shoved Ilstan hard from behind, making him stumble forward. The dragonborn. The cave, the staff, the creature. Ilstan looked up at the pale stick of wood still beckoning him from another twenty feet on. Right.

Overhead the beast roared and magical thunder whoomphed through the room making his eardrums ache. The sounds of the wands discharging on either side. The constant screech of the spell-bats. Farideh cried out and another roar of flames sent a gust of hot air chasing Ilstan’s feet.

“Lord of Spells grant me focus,” he murmured. “Guide my mind. Guide my feet. Guide my hands.”

He leaped over a crack in the floor. As he landed, something shook the whole cavern, nearly knocking him over. He looked back over his shoulder. The creature had dropped from the ceiling, slithering down the slope of the basin.

“Go!” Mehen shouted, starting toward the beast again.

Ilstan tore his gaze away from the creature, started again—

—Magic shifts under Ilstan’s concentration, forming it like a cloak around the other war wizard, a stocky brown-haired man. The spell wraps him, closer and closer until it snaps around him like a second skin, and the war wizard stands, no longer human but an elf of extraordinarily similar features. The Royal Wizard of Cormyr only raises his thick auburn brows, and Ilstan flushes with pride—

He blinked. The cavern, the creature, the staff. Ten more steps. He ran at it, not watching his feet, trying only to get farther.

—The air beneath Ilstan’s feet lifts him high over the heads of the Purple Dragons, over the army of goblins and hobgoblins and bugbears clashing before him. He raises his wand and the words that pour from him are a power all their own, as they condense high above, around dust and nothing, and rain down on the monsters, a hailstorm of fire—

The creature roared, wrenching Ilstan’s thoughts back to the present. He glanced back—closer, too close. He felt the surge of spells from Farideh, from the cambion, from the Harper and Caisys—the creature returned nearly as many and still the air was thick with bats.

Farideh reached Ilstan and shoved him hard the last few feet toward the staff. He felt his thoughts start to spin away and clung to the sound of the creature’s roars, the shouts of his comrades, the sour, flinty smell of dissolving limestone, and the charred stink of the monster’s flesh as he heaved himself up onto the plinth and closed one hand around the pale wood of the staff of Azuth—

—A human man stands before a wide window, overlooking a green countryside far—impossibly far—below, working magic into a solid surface, layer after layer after layer. Invisible and strong as stone, he thinks. Perfect—

—The elf woman shapes the spell, her hands tracing mystic passes through the air, her eyes always, always on her opponent, a big orc wearing a warrior’s armor tight across bound breasts. The snow falls dry and sharp and cold as the orc swings an axe at another elf, a man with a long sword, but the wizard smiles. You can’t block this with an axe—

—A pipe floats beside the old man, waiting for him to finish crafting the spell that will link this plane to the next. Or the one after that. There’s such a lot of places he has yet to see—

—The cat leaps onto the Turami wizard’s shoulder, his beard cut into a sharp square, but his concentration never wavers. He leans over the shimmering glass before him, his dark face lit amber with magic and scenes of a far-off battle—

The images raced through Ilstan’s mind, a blur of other wizards, other spells. As they sped, faster and faster through his thoughts, in the spaces between those other times and places he glimpsed the face of an older man with a snow-white beard, his features uncertain but his eyes burning blue into Ilstan’s very heart.

Wizard, a voice rang through him, down to his very bones, and every part of Ilstan began to vibrate with the strange, stirring magic of the staff.

Ilstan opened his eyes, still humming with the power of the staff, and looked up into the maw of the deformed behir looming overhead, Farideh between them, sword drawn back, the Harper running full speed toward her. For all Ilstan’s mind knew the scene that lay before him was terrifying, a perfect calm claimed him instead as he stepped forward and laid a hand upon Farideh’s shoulder.

“Wizard,” he said, in a voice not entirely his own.

• • •

MEHEN WATCHED FARIDEH shove Ilstan the last few feet to reach the staff of Azuth. As the wizard’s hands closed on the artifact, blue flames engulfed him, the staff, the plinth it stood upon, until it was impossible to separate one from the other in the blazing light. Mehen flinched away from the brightness—

Vozhin’s tail slammed into him, taking Mehen off his feet and tossing him away to land hard on the stone. He heard his injured shoulder crunch again before pain exploded up through his entire body, like a bolt of lightning. He gritted his teeth, coming onto his feet. Vozhin thrashed as Dahl cast another string of missiles at it. Above, more spell-bats, having tried to roost again, fled screeching from Adastreia as she scrabbled over the ceiling like a spider.

Mehen’s right arm hung useless, his hand numb around the falchion’s hilt. He gripped his arm around the biceps, trying to lift it out and forward, but got only blinding pain. Karshoji shoulder, he thought, trying to shift it again. How many times had he done this?

“Fari!” he shouted the moment Vozhin swung its head away from her.

Caisys swung his staff into one of the spell-bats—a burst of blue fire raced down over him and a moment later the tip of the staff sprayed … a stream of crystal-clear water over the cave.

“Are you stlarning kidding me?” he bellowed, swinging for another spell-bat.

“Stay out of the water!” Mehen shouted and hoped they’d listen. You made the mistake of testing your breath in the rain only once. Farideh at least skipped out of the puddles as she darted over to him.

“Shoulder,” he said. She took the falchion and grabbed hold of his elbow, pulling it outward as far as it would go, then lifted his arm high, reaching over his head. Pain far worse than it should have been seared across Mehen’s joint. “Stop!” he gasped.

“You popped it backward. I can’t set it.” Farideh searched the roof. “Adastreia!” she shouted. “We need help!”

Her calls drew Vozhin’s attention, but even as it swung its head toward her, drawing its head back, ready to spray its terrible breath again, Farideh swung the falchion up and into another of the spell-bats, hardly pausing between the rush of blue fire and the spell bursting out of her off hand, scattering a score of bright flashing lights through the air. Vozhin flinched away.

A cool mist swirled beside Mehen, reforming as Adastreia, looking thoroughly rattled as she pinched one topaz bead. Her silver eyes flicked over Mehen. “Shoulder?”

“Please,” Mehen said.

Farideh shoved his falchion back into his off hand. “I’ll keep it away from you,” she said, drawing her own sword and the wand of lightning bolts. Mehen started to protest that the pothach wand wasn’t going to do a bit of good against a beast with that much lightning in its belly, but she aimed it upward instead, at the circling spell-bats. Despite everything, Mehen had to feel a little pleased.

“How bad is it?” Adastreia asked, rubbing the beads between her fingers.

“Bad,” Mehen said. “Wasn’t healed from the last time someone popped the joint. I think it’s come out the wrong side too.”

Adastreia frowned, counting beads. Beyond her, Dahl tossed aside his wand, its blasts expended, and ran in to take his blade to the beast’s side. Vozhin snatched another mouthful of bats, rays of searing light streaming from its eyes. Caisys cried out.

“Save your strong ones for him!” Mehen snapped.

“I know what I’m doing,” Adastreia said mildly. Her little hand hardly covered the sphere of his shoulder, but she gripped the joint with surprising strength. Her other hand pinched one of the topazes until it flashed. Cool magic tingled through the damaged joint and all down his arm. He heard a reassuring pop.

“Better?” Adastreia asked.

Mehen tightened his grip on the falchion—a bolt of pain shot up from his wrist to his shoulder and he winced. “Good enough, now go—”

Vozhin convulsed, lashing its tail once more toward them. Farideh caught it this time, bracing and shifting her weight so that her blade took the bulk of the force as it shoved her back. She tripped over a bit of disturbed stone, tumbling backward, but then rolled up to her feet. Vozhin turned toward where she crouched.

“On your right, paladin!” Lorcan shouted.

The cambion had hit the ground, a stone’s throw from Dahl. Wand out, spell building—Dahl looked back and pivoted, stepping backward away from the last ray of frost the wand contained. Into the pool of water. The smallest of smiles curled Lorcan’s mouth.

Mehen shoved Adastreia aside. The frost missed Vozhin and another bolus of the electric slime was building in its throat. And it was looking at Dahl, at Dahl’s feet. The lightning in its teeth crackled.

Dahl looked up only as Mehen hit him, pushing him out of the pool and out of danger just as the creature’s lightning breath hit the water and exploded up through Mehen. All the air went out of him as if it had vanished, and every nerve in his body turned sharp and searing as if it had decided to slice its way out.

Mehen remembered the feeling, in that last breath before the lightning hit and he realized he wasn’t going to miss it. He remembered his own breath reflecting back at him in the wet. He remembered his father’s ire turned on him. He knew how much it would hurt and how long it would last and how much more prepared for it he was than Dahl.

But in the moment, he thought nothing.

The lightning released him and it was all Mehen could do not to collapse to the floor, no longer held stiff by electricity. His thoughts came back together, his grip tightened on his falchion and the pain shot up his arm again.

He heard Farideh scream, but by the time he recognized his name, a hot damp darkness had closed over him and it didn’t matter what she’d said. It was too late.

• • •

FARIDEH ROSE TO her feet just in time to see Mehen shove Dahl out of the pool left behind by Caisys’s unlucky spell, to see the lightning seize him. She’d started running when Vozhin slithered nearer, and the lightning flashed out.

Mehen stumbled not seeing the beast rise over him, its enormous mouth gaping like a snake about to take its prey. Farideh heard herself scream, “Mehen! Move!”

His head turned lazily as if he’d only half heard her, and Farideh watched as the monster plunged down and snapped her father up in one gulp.

Farideh shattered.

Her mind went blank, utterly blank, and then raced, scrambling for a way to undo what she’d just seen. Maybe she’d seen wrong. Maybe if she moved away from the beast, it would spit Mehen back out. Maybe one of the spell-bats would contain a miracle, a gift to turn the glass back over and stop her ever coming here.

But her body screamed, her body ran, her body held the short sword Mehen had laid in her hands when she was old enough for a dragonborn but still absurdly small for a tiefling. Her nerves pulled sharp against her flesh like razor wire as she grasped for the Hells and the power to split the plane again, and again she found nothing—nothing.

Just the blade. Just the legacy of Clanless Mehen.

Vozhin tossed its head back, the lump of its meal sliding down its fleshy throat. “My arms are tired,” Farideh complains, six and hating the way Mehen and Havilar watch her, pick at her. “I want to go in. The lump bulged—did Mehen twitch? Did he move? Was she going mad? “Good,” Mehen says. “That means they’re getting stronger. Do it again.” The soft belly of the behir, that’s where to strike it. Or the throat. What if she hit Mehen? “I’m never going to be good at this,” Farideh says. “You should just stop.” But he laughs. “Someday you’ll need it.”

You need it, she thought, leaping over the broken stones, eyes on Vozhin, only on Vozhin. But you never got good at it. You chose the wrong path and now you’re trapped.

Vozhin turned to her now, ignoring the flashes of magic that struck weakly against its flank.

Well you’re going to do it anyway, she told herself calmly, adjusting her grip on the sword.

A hand grabbed hold of her shoulder yanking her to a stop. Ilstan, holding the staff and radiant with a pale bluish light.

“Wizard,” he intoned.

—The silver-haired woman regards the armies below her, a faint smile on her lovely lips. The Red Wizards are formidable in their magic, and she has to admire their skill. The beast the necromancers have crafted, a writhing monster of stitched flesh and too many bones, bellows its rage, its agony. Well-made, she thinks, but unacceptable. She draws the Weave near, the effort of an inhalation, enough to destroy the unspeakable beast that—

No, Farideh begged. No. I don’t want revenge. I want a way to save him. Please.

The images, memories of another time, vanished abruptly into a field of white, and then—

—“I’m not about to let you just blast it,” the blond woman says to the dark-skinned woman beside her. She draws a gleaming long sword. “Where’s the fun in that?” The Royal Wizard regards the regent with a pursed mouth. Beyond them, a sinuous creature winds through the air over a seaside village, dark magic oozing from it. “You’re not as young as you once were,” the wizard says. “Neither are you,” the regent replies. The wizard sighs, and magic fills her hands. “Take this at least.”—

Farideh came back to herself, the spell pulling all the broken parts back together into something whole. Vozhin loomed over her, blazing eyes fixed on her. She slid the rod from her sleeve, into her off hand.

“Run, you idiots!” Caisys shouted. “You’ve got the staff, now go!”

“Jabber two-legs,” Vozhin chortled, the void of its great mouth like a terrible cave. “You go next.”

“My sword goes next!” Farideh shouted back, feeling the spell saturate every part of her, threatening to burst free. She pointed the blade at Vozhin, stalking toward it. “Now I drag you to the Hells!”

Vozhin laughed, loud and deep and rolling through the cavern to startle the last of the spell-bats into flight. Its mouth opened wide, gasping air.

Farideh whipped the rod toward the creature’s mouth, and the spell that had blessed the regent’s sword bloomed violet at the tip of the rod and shot unerringly down Vozhin’s open throat. The beast looked startled, the light of the spell glowing through its skin, making shadows of bones and viscera, down to its belly where it went dark.

Hands grabbed Farideh—Dahl, pulling on her arm—but her feet stuck in place. That wasn’t what it did. That wasn’t the end of the spell, was it?

A slow cruel smile curled across Vozhin’s mouth. “Toasty. Is it warm in there for you n—”

The wet sound of tearing flesh came a breath before Vozhin broke off in a scream that made Farideh’s guts unwind. The creature’s neck went straight and thrashed from side to side as a wound opened in its side, a familiar blade, glowing violet, cutting through its rubbery skin. Mehen staggered out, eyes wild, scales pitted and missing in places, but his falchion still gripped in both hands and lightning spitting in his teeth.

“Gods damn it! Run!” Caisys shouted again, from up on the ridge.

Farideh grabbed Dahl’s arm and raced toward Mehen. “Help me!” she cried, sheathing her sword and grabbing her injured father under his shoulder. Where the acid still clung to his scales, it stung against Farideh’s wrist and palm. She clenched her teeth as more of Mehen’s weight came onto her than she’d expected, but she pulled him toward the slope with Dahl’s help.

Vozhin’s tail lashed frantically as its blood oozed out of Mehen’s exit. Farideh looked up and saw its head rise, eyes mad with pain and rage, jaws ready to snap over the source of its agony. They were nearly to the slope up to the ridge. They might make it.

The wet, dragging sound of the creature, its snarling whine. Farideh’s pulse quickened, her nerves screaming as her powers didn’t come.

“Chaubask vur kepeshk,” Mehen panted. “What the godsbedamned Hells—”

“Up,” Dahl ordered as they finally reached the slope. He made a step of his hands, Farideh did the same, and between the two of them—and Caisys and Adastreia above—they got Mehen up to the ridge.

Just as Vozhin reached them. Farideh pulled her sword free as it lunged, blocking the snapping teeth with a sword across its snout. It hissed, drawing back and oozing more amber blood.

“This is not the way it ends,” it snarled, eyes flickering as it drew itself up. “I end, you end!”

Wordlessly, Dahl reached back, pushing her toward the slope, holding up his ringed fist toward Vozhin. “Avinos.”

The ring exploded with force, enough to shove Dahl backward into Farideh. She caught him, held him upright as the magic took the shape of a ghostly ram moments before its horns slammed into Vozhin’s snout.

Dahl turned and again made a step of his hand. Farideh didn’t argue but let him boost her up to the higher ledge, where Caisys grabbed hold of her by the wrists and pulled her over. She turned to help Dahl up, but suddenly, Lorcan had crushed her close.

“Darling,” he said, sounding relieved, and every part of Farideh wanted to shove him away—where was Mehen? Where was Dahl?

“Stop dawdling and go!” Caisys yelled, pulling the Harper up beside him. “It’s not stlarning dead yet.”

Dahl’s eyes fell on her, but Farideh wasn’t even thinking anymore. She shoved Lorcan toward the mouth of the skull where Ilstan waited, still swirling with the strange blue light. “Go!” she shouted at Ilstan. If he didn’t escape, none of this mattered.

She tried to wait for Dahl, but Caisys shoved her forward, and in the hollow of the Dawn Titan’s skull, the darkness, the closeness made the cold calm that had clamped down around her start to fray. One by one they slipped through the hole at the base of the skull. As Lorcan disappeared, she heard the wet, dragging sound of Vozhin pulling itself up the cliffs again.

“You!” she pulled Caisys ahead of her. Without him there was no portal, no way to escape. She turned to Dahl, to pull him after Caisys. But he was already there, pushing her forward.

“Caisys, get moving!” he shouted, the faintest tremor in his voice. Farideh crouched down behind the wizard, halfway through the hole when a wheezing hiss echoed through the skull.

“I … end,” Vozhin wheezed, teeth crackling with lightning and jaws dripping with slime. “You … end.” A ball of acid built in its throat. Farideh slid back into the skull.

“Stlarn it.” Dahl made a fist, thrust it at the back of the skull, just over his head. “Avinos!”

The rush of magic burst out of the ring, the ghostly ram forming inches before the titan’s bone. Farideh grabbed hold of Dahl by the shirtfront, yanking him down and through the hole at the base of the skull, as the spell struck and a sound like the pealing of a bell the size of a mountain rang out. Pain stabbed her ears and then they went numb, ringing and ringing with the sound of the titan’s skull as she and Dahl squeezed through the too-small hole. She felt, not heard, the vibrations of the cave collapsing behind them, as hands pulled her to her feet.

“That is why,” Caisys shouted, his voice a ringing whisper to her damaged ears, “you don’t touch the stlarning bones!”

• • •

BEYOND THE OSSUARY of crystal bones, Dahl made himself sit down and covered his face with shaking hands. Battle shock, he thought, over the ringing in his ears. You’re battle shocked. Get to safety, get attention from a healer, get a stlarning whiskey in you—that was the plan. That was always the plan. But he found he couldn’t move. He’d fought monsters just as terrible beside Farideh before, but somehow he could not shake the image of her stalking toward Vozhin, tears streaming down her face, with only a short sword in her hand—and him, completely mute.

He couldn’t scream her name, he couldn’t shout a warning—or rather he could, if only he didn’t value his soul, and some frantic, senseless part of him thought how selfish it was to want that badly enough to let Farideh die.

And then Caisys had pulled Dahl to relative safety, and there was Lorcan, holding her.

You’re going to go mad of this, he thought, dragging a hand over his face. Lorcan would make sure of it.

Farideh sat down beside him, thin lines of blood marking her cheeks from her ears to her jaw. She took a cloth from one of her pockets and gently wiped the same stretch of his stubbled cheek. His hand jerked toward his bag, toward the ink and the paper, but he stopped himself. His mind felt blank. He laid his hand on her knee instead as the ringing subsided.

Lorcan watched them from the far side of the cave, unblinking.

“How many healings do you have left?” Caisys asked Adastreia. “ ’Cause I’m pretty sure the dragonborn needs a few.”

“I’ll be fine,” Mehen said hoarsely.

But Adastreia only toyed with her necklace. “Is it hard to get out of these caverns?”

Caisys frowned at her. “Depends on what you mean by hard. Climb for a short day that way”—he gestured to the darker end of the cave—“and you hit a much wider cavern that gets used by a lot more things. Weird giants and such. Get you out in another day.”

“And what’s outside?”

Caisys made a face. “I haven’t wandered around here in seventy years. Maybe it’s still a grassland, maybe it’s a godsbedamned floating city by now. Why?”

Adastreia bit her lip. “I think you should go back and do your healing there. I’m staying. In fact, I think you all should consider staying, but it’s no skin off my nose if you don’t, I’m only saying.”

“What?” Farideh cried. She shot to her feet. “No—we’re so close.”

“You’re so close,” Adastreia said. “And to what? You thwart her and Asmodeus is still out there. You thwart him and the Nine Hells are still out there. You find some way to go take your brightbird and retire to some far-off cottage and the collectors are still out there. You can’t win. We can’t win.” She held up her necklace by the fat black pearl. “Do you know how many devils I’ve had? Enough that being Kulaga’s caged bird is a relief. They can’t get us here.”

Dahl thought of Adastreia’s warnings, of the promise that he would come to miss Farideh’s days of being pacted to Lorcan if she ever got rid of him. The only way to escape devils for a Kakistos heir was to cut the Nine Hells off entirely. He tried to imagine staying in Abeir, under a steel sky, and found he couldn’t.

But neither could Farideh. “If we don’t go back, my sister’s doomed.”

Adastreia shook her head. “Do you really think she isn’t doomed anyway? You bring that staff back into Toril, and it’s not going to stay hidden much longer. Asmodeus is going to come for it once you’ve stopped Bryseis Kakistos.”

Farideh hesitated. “Then maybe we beat her to the end. Maybe we use the staff.”

“Darling,” Lorcan said sternly, “you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Adastreia said. “But you can shut your mouth, cambion. Nobody wants Baator’s take on this.

“Gods don’t just die,” she told Farideh. “You don’t know what’s going to happen and you don’t know what’s going to come for you when it does happen. If you think that you can just kill Asmodeus before Bryseis Kakistos does, and that such a plan will let you survive long at all, then you are entirely too stupid to be breathing and he should have thrown you in the river.”

Dahl sucked in a breath at that—all the colder coming from her own mother. But Farideh didn’t so much as flinch.

“What happened to idealistic?” Farideh asked.

“I grew up,” Adastreia answered. “So can you. You should stay here.”

Farideh shook her head. “I would rather die tomorrow than live knowing I left my sister and an entire plane behind to suffer. So maybe I’m a child and I’m still idealistic, but I don’t care. If I can do something, I will.”

“It’s not so impossible,” Dahl spoke up, his eyes carefully on Adastreia. “We can shield the staff. Long enough at least to keep devils off it.”

“How?” she demanded.

“Lorcan has a ring attached to a dimensional pocket,” he pointed out. “And I’m going to assume that it is carefully warded such that his superiors aren’t sifting through his things, yes?”

Lorcan’s dark eyes narrowed. “Yes. It could hold the staff.”

“And then you can give the ring to someone else,” Dahl finished for him. He smiled at Adastreia with a calm he didn’t feel. “We’ll manage. With or without you.”

Adastreia’s silver eyes regarded him sadly, as if there were nothing so tragic. “Without. And so I’ll keep my healings.”

“Your funeral,” Caisys said. “Hope this midden heap of a plane doesn’t decide to crash again.” He cut his eyes to Mehen as he reached for the closure of his shirt. “No offense.”

PART X

BETRAYAL

17 Mirtul, the Year of the Solitary Cloister (1408 DR)
Chondath, South of the ruins of Mussum

• • •

“I know this isn’t better,” Bryseis Kakistos whispered to her sister’s ghost. She could feel Alyona, pulling on her soul, trying with all her might to drag Bryseis Kakistos from the room, a ruin sunk down into the very bowels of the plane, on the edge of the Chondalwood. She didn’t know who’d built the massive stone structure nor when it had fallen. But there was no doubting they’d used this place to reach across the planes, to make overtures to powers not even devils would deal with.

Alyona didn’t stop pulling. Bryseis gritted her teeth and fought the urge to use the power of the soul sapphire to yank her sister back. “We don’t have a choice,” she said. Without the staff of Azuth, she’d need a great deal more power of her own to master the ritual, to force the powers of the Nine Hells to shift. She needed time to accumulate it. She needed more power to gain power.

Still the emissaries of Nessus demurred when she called them, when they answered at all. Patience, they said. Your time will come. Make your bones, pay your tithes. You will rise eventually. By now, if Asmodeus thought she would believe that, he was a greater fool than she could have possibly believed.

She laid out the jeweled box. The knife. The glimmering heart cut out of an innocent’s chest and preserved with magic. That, more than anything, had made Alyona furious, and Bryseis Kakistos’s dreams had driven her to wake, drenched in sweat, every night for a month.

“Innocent people die all the time, “she murmured to her sister’s ghost. “This one died for a purpose at least.”

“What was that?” Titus looked up from the brazier he was stirring.

“Nothing,” Bryseis Kakistos said. She looked back over her shoulder as Phrenike came into the room, bearing more components for crafting the circles of power needed to open a path to the Abyss.

Titus had known the ways to contact the demons of the Abyss so that she could whisper the right words, pass the right information up to more powerful demons who might be swayed by fear or promise of power into whispering the right words—the promise of an end to Asmodeus—into the ear of Orcus, Prince of the Undead. Through Titus and through Phrenike, she’d given him other offerings, other payments for the price of lichdom. A deal had been struck, in dark, secret places like this one, well-warded from onlookers—even divine ones.

She half wished he would spy upon her. That Asmodeus would see his downfall coming and realize how badly he’d miscounted her, realize he had to give her everything he’d promised, everything she deserved.

He won’t, she thought. So you have to make him.

Alyona pulled and pulled—she felt the phantom wind of her sister screaming in her ear. She could imagine Alyona, symbol of her goddess clenched in one fist as if it would give her strength. As if Selûne spared the slightest thought for the souls of tieflings.

I don’t care if it damns me, she thought. I don’t care who damns me. I’m through being used.

Phrenike handed her the salts, the distilled and dried blood—Titus was too palsied to make the runes, and Phrenike too careless. Bryseis Kakistos laid them herself, a circle of summoning and unspeakable power wrought in runes as jagged and thorough as claw marks scratched into the stones. When the circle was complete, she sprinkled the first set of herbs onto the brazier, followed by a vial of blood. She spoke the words that threatened to break her throat. The runes glowed sullen amber and the air in the room thickened.

She set the box in the center of the circle, and opened spellbooks on every side.

“Should we leave?” Phrenike asked.

Bryseis looked back over her shoulder. “If you haven’t the stomach.”

Phrenike scowled. “I’ll go watch the entrance.”

Bryseis Kakistos drew her sword and shrugged off her robes so that she stood before the glowing circle in only a shift. Alyona’s pulling dragged on all her bones now, so close to a physical sensation she could imagine giving into it and following Phrenike out the door. This will work, she thought. Just trust me for once.

“You ought to be careful with her, “Titus said.

She looked back at him, eyes narrowed. “Who?”

“Phrenike—who else?” He sniffed. “She’s exactly the sort that’ll turn on you. Hungry and foolish.”

“She’ll have her work cut out for her,” Bryseis Kakistos said. She set the dagger against her forearm. “Are you going to—”

She did not get the chance to finish her sentence. Portals ripped open on either side of her—no, every side of her. She spun, sword in hand, rod in hand as six-armed snake women bristling with blades slipped out, huge beasts all mouth and covered in spikes, a four-armed monster with pinching claws, winged boar-faced demons—too many demons for just one target.

Not the demons she’d called either, she realized, meeting the marilith’s blades with her own enchanted sword as the creature slithered swiftly across the room. The circle still glowed, ready to receive the demon lord. These were some other’s assassins. She forced the marilith off, cast a spell of light and lightning across at the clawed glabrezu. It took her attention from the second marilith, the demon’s blades carving through the shielding spells Bryseis Kakistos still maintained and slicing into her flesh.

She clenched her teeth, took one of the marilith’s arms, pulled another spell, this one ice from the tattoo at the top of her arm. A spiky hezrou froze as it barreled toward her—and so too did the glabrezu, its claw poised around the other demon’s leg. More than one force, she thought, pressing her fist and the rod in it to her wounded side.

Titus screamed—a hideous sound that cut off abruptly. She couldn’t see how he’d died, if he’d died—there were too many swords and too many demons and the ice was melting and Alyona was screaming and screaming.

She only had to last, she thought, cutting through another of the marilith’s arms with the sizzle of magic, until the demon lord stepped through.

Just a few more breaths—she forced the blade through the marilith’s stomach.

Just another few—demon blood splattered her, burned her cheek as she retreated toward the door, trying to gain some space.

She backed into the entry way … and came up against a solid wall. The remaining marilith met her eyes and gave Bryseis Kakistos a feral smile. More portals opened. More demons arrived. The marilith snapped her fingers and the room went dark as a tomb, save for the circle of runes.

In the dim light, Bryseis Kakistos watched chaotic death come for her, and she knew in her heart this was somehow Asmodeus’s doing.

• • •

22

9 Hammer, the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant (1487 DR)
Arush Vayem, Tymanther

FARIDEH CROSSED BACK INTO TORIL, THE PECULIAR PORTAL SEALING OUT the vacuum of Abeir and leaving Adastreia behind them. Her tail lashed the floor, her chest tight—she didn’t care if Adastreia had abandoned them, she told herself. It was obvious that it was coming. Her mother had cared only about herself, she always had.

No one else ever did, a little part of her thought. She looked back at Mehen, settling onto a stool with Dahl’s brothers’ help and a pained expression. No one had taken Adastreia in out of the cold. No one had trusted her, been willing to sacrifice themselves for her happiness. How different would Farideh have been without a family, with only devils to care whether she lived or died or thrived? She turned the copper ring with the channel of seed-sized rubies she now wore on her bleached ring finger, felt the dimensional pocket stir and then settle. You don’t know what’s going to happen, Adastreia’s warning murmured in her thoughts, and you don’t know what’s going to come for you when it does happen.

Caisys smacked her fidgeting hand. “Ow!” she cried.

“Don’t mess with that!” he said. “You open it and the staff’s technically here. Keep it shut or you’re going to get trouble.”

“Everything go all right?” Bodhar asked.

“Bit rough,” Dahl said.

Caisys handed Mehen a dusty-looking brown bottle from one of the crowded shelves. “Here. I have no idea how old this is, but it should help.” He considered the rest of them. “I hope to the Hells the rest of you have some draughts on you, otherwise you’re going to have to go beg prayers off Criella.”

Mehen downed the potion, flinching as the magic pushed shiny new scales out of his damaged skin. He gripped his injured shoulder and winced. “Ah, karshoj. Fari, I’ve got a spare shirt in my bag—can you make a sling?”

Dahl held out a trio of healing potions as Farideh retrieved the shirt, but Mehen shook his head. “This one’s going to take something a little stronger, I’m afraid. Joint’s wearing out.”

“Tell her she should take one?” Dahl asked, sounding so tired Farideh’s heart squeezed.

Mehen sighed, his nostrils flaring. “Fari, you need a potion?”

Farideh took one of the vials. “Dahl, are you all right?”

He regarded her silently a moment, before Mehen made a low growling sound in his throat. “Oh broken planes. Dahl, are you all right?”

“Just need a breath,” he said, but the way he said it made the Hells suddenly flood Farideh, pushing shadow-smoke out of her skin. He offered Ilstan one of the healing potions, but the wizard declined. He turned to Lorcan, whose wing hung crooked and pale with acid burns. Dahl shook his head and closed his hand around both vials, clinking them together.

“Give him one,” Farideh said.

“You heard the lady,” Lorcan said. He smiled and held out a hand.

But Dahl turned away. “You can stlarning heal yourself.”

“Dahl,” Farideh started.

Dahl didn’t look at her. “Is there somewhere I can …” he asked Caisys.

“Go upstairs,” the wizard said. “Left-hand door. It’s dusty, but the door shuts.”

“Thank you.”

“Dahl,” Farideh tried again, but Mehen shook his head.

“Give him some space,” he said.

“What’s wrong, paladin?” Lorcan called after as Dahl climbed the stairs at the back of the cottage. “Did your feelings get bruised?”

“Hey!” Thost shouted. “Watch your tongue.”

“I don’t need your help, Thost!” Dahl called back.

Farideh strode across the room, seizing Lorcan by the arm and dragging him into Caisys’s kitchen. “Will you stop it?” she hissed when they had a measure of privacy. “Leave him alone!”

“Darling, do you really think he’s going to break on a few barbs?” He tilted his head. “Or are you afraid it’s the two of you who’ll break?”

A flush burned up her neck. “I think you should be more worried about it breaking you and me.”

His expression gained that careful blankness once again. “Why? Are you planning to run to Abeir after your mother?”

“Don’t you karshoji threaten me,” she said.

“I’m not threatening; I’m giving you perspective.” He hesitated. “I’m not such a bad fellow. And I don’t think you want me gone anyway.”

Farideh took a half step back, aware of how close Lorcan stood, aware of how true what he said was. Even when she dwelled on the worst things he’d done, she couldn’t quite imagine a future without Lorcan in it—as if breaking the pact and breaking away from him would dissolve her completely.

But how long would Dahl stay beside her, taking Lorcan’s snide comments?

How long will you wait while he’s trying to undo whatever’s trapped him? a little part of her said. They were doomed, doomed completely by the Nine Hells, she thought, looking up into Lorcan’s black, black eyes.

Someone cleared their throat from the doorway. Caisys stood there with Ilstan beside him. “You two ready to get some work done?” he asked. “Or do you need a room too?”

Farideh took another step back from Lorcan. None of this mattered while Havilar was in danger. “What do we need to do?”

“Depends,” Caisys said. “Because I think your goals are getting tangled up in other things.”

“I want to save Havilar,” Farideh said. But even as she did, she thought of Havilar’s words from the dream: If you thought it would kill a plane full of people to save me, karshoj yes, you shouldn’t do that. She bit her lip. “But are they right? Is that going to make everything worse?”

Caisys raised an eyebrow. “For your sister?”

“For everyone.”

“The gods cannot occupy the same space,” Ilstan said. “They vie for the same divinity, the same entity. When the Lord of Spells speaks, sometimes it is him and sometimes it is the Raging Fiend. As Azuth grows stronger, I think the king of the Hells grows weaker.”

“No,” said Lorcan. “That is not remotely what is happening.”

“Then enlighten us,” Caisys said.

Lorcan scowled. “Azuth grows stronger, I’ll agree to that. But Asmodeus is not weakening. Azuth is merely succeeding in gaining control of Asmodeus—but never completely. I suspect the best you can hope for is that they merge into one god.”

“Perhaps for you!” Ilstan cried.

“Well considering the alternative is that they destroy each other, I’d say so,” Lorcan replied. “There’s only one spark between them. And while your god might have once been powerful enough to claim it, he’s also been dead a century and doesn’t exactly possess a defender’s advantage in the depths of Nessus.”

“He said …” Farideh swallowed against a suddenly dry throat. “Asmodeus said that if she succeeds, then the Hells will break into civil war and spill out onto the planes.”

“Sounds right,” Caisys said dryly. “Plus, I’d wager your wizard god is starting to reach out beyond his prison. Last time gods of the arcane died, they took a whole lot of spellcasters with them.”

Farideh’s heart felt as if it were turning to lead. “Bryseis Kakistos wants to feed power from the Hells through the staff, into Azuth, so that he overpowers Asmodeus and kills him. That’s what Sairché said.”

“Who’s Sairché?” Caisys asked.

“Never mind,” Lorcan said.

“If that’s the ritual,” Farideh went on, “can we … change it? Can we give Azuth enough power to survive, without killing Asmodeus?”

Caisys made a face and ran a hand through his beard. “Ah, gods, I’m not the one you want for this nonsense. Pity Bisera’s the one you’re up against. She’s a crack at ridiculous rituals.” He sighed and thought a moment. “It won’t work, though. You only have one godhead to divvy up.”

“Can we split it?” Farideh asked.

“If you could split it that simply, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we?” He dragged his fingers through his beard again. “I mean, it’s happened before, but not because of desperate mortals. No, you’d have to find another spark of divinity.”

Farideh thought of the internment camp, the purpose of gathering all those souls, and pushed her panic down. “What about from a Chosen?”

“Not enough.”

She looked over at Ilstan. “What about two?”

“Two’s going to get you a god of field mice or somesuch,” Caisys said. “You’d need a thousand to secure someone like Asmodeus.”

“What about a spark from a dead god?”

Mehen stood in the doorway to the kitchen, his arm in its sling. Caisys turned slowly to look at him.

“Well, well,” he said. “You holding out on us?”

“Would it work?”

“I love how you ask that as if I’ve done anything like that before,” Caisys said. “It should work. Assuming you have a dead god.”

“Djerad Thymar does,” Mehen said to Farideh. “Which means if you can get the magic and the ritual to do this, you’re going to have to convince Dumuzi and his god.”

Farideh pursed her lips. Dumuzi, she felt could be convinced. He was, like a lot of the Vayemniri, fairly even-tempered about devils and such. But Enlil was a mystery.

“We can solve that next.” She turned to Caisys. “So you’ll help us?”

“Well, I don’t want every archdevil spilling out onto the plain inserting themselves into people’s business,” he said. “Come on, you lot. I’ll show you the ‘library.’ ”

Beneath the open stairs and behind what had once been the back wall, Caisys’s cottage had a little space crammed quite full of books and scrolls and odd magic items. He set them to work emptying it out, sorting the scrolls and books and searching for particular spells and mentions. For all Caisys insisted he was nothing special, he had a notion of what to do, how to cobble it together.

“You’re going to need something to hold them in,” he muttered, scrawling notes on the edge of a parchment. “Or someone.”

“Like a soul sapphire?” Lorcan asked.

Caisys looked up. “Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t fit a god in a soul sapphire.”

“Why do we need anything?” Farideh asked. “Can’t they hold themselves?”

Caisys hesitated, dragged his hand through his beard, and plucked a small bone out of it. “Hmph. No. Not for the middle part. You have to help them do a little reorganizing.” He looked back down at his notes. “Better draw straws for who brings it up to them, by the by.”

Later, Farideh thought. First it remained to be seen that such a thing could even be done.

“You might want to get some rest,” Caisys told her. He dropped his voice. “I don’t actually need all of you, I just don’t like them standing around with empty hands.”

“Maybe send Dahl’s brothers to chop firewood,” she said.

“Your cambion’s the one I’m worried about.” He considered Lorcan, sorting through a case of small vials on the floor of the front room. “He has quite the talent for making enemies.”

“I don’t think he knows how not to,” Farideh said. The truth was on the tip of her tongue, but it wasn’t hers to tell. “You should be a little kinder to him,” she said, and went back into the dark space under the stairs.

Her chest felt tight around her breath. She couldn’t pretend this was the first time she’d leaped in with a risky, half-formed plan, but neither could she pretend this wasn’t on an entirely different plane of difficulty. It felt as if she had leaped off a cliff so high she had time to consider the ground beneath her and how badly it would hurt to land. You’re going to need something to hold them in, she thought of Caisys saying. Or someone.

Sometimes the only choice is a sacrifice, Azuth had said.

Sometimes we forget the power we wield, Asmodeus had warned.

Farideh swallowed against her twisting stomach. She glanced up at the spaces between the stairs, wishing to see the shadow of Dahl’s feet descending once more, but there was nothing.

Farideh pulled out a wooden box from just inside the door to the addition. Beyond, things were better organized, set upon shelves at the least. She came back out, setting the box on the table and emptying it: An old map of the coast of Aglarond. Six silver pieces with star-shaped holes in them. An old dagger rusted into its sheath. Two spells that she set to one side to reconsider. A scroll wrapped in leather with copper caps at its ends.

Farideh frowned and picked up the last one. It was the very double of the one Bryseis Kakistos had offered her.

“Is this your pact?” she asked softly, turning to Caisys.

He sniffed and looked up from his notes. “That? No. Pact’s in the brand. On the skin, written in magic. Pretty simple agreement usually—though some might lash another deal to the back of it.” He went back to drawing.

“What is it then?”

He looked up again, narrowing his bright black eyes at the cylinder. “Copper means Malbolge. Sixth Layer.” He raked a hand through his beard and smiled impishly. “I knew an erinyes from Malbolge once. That’s probably the deal I held with her.”

Farideh tilted it. A deal. A Malbolgean deal. I have something of yours, Bryseis Kakistos had said to Lorcan. But then, Have you seen this? I think you’ll find it interesting. Full of answers.

Bryseis Kakistos had gotten a copy of … what? Her finished deal with Sairché? Lorcan would have inherited it when he took Sairché’s place. Was something else waiting in the cambion’s tricky phrasing? She’d been sure her soul was safe after all—two favors done and Asmodeus negating everything anyway. “What was your deal with—”

“Fari,” Caisys said, suddenly serious, “think about all you’ve learned and ask yourself if you want the answer to that question, because I don’t relish making you blush.”

She returned his gaze. “I didn’t think you needed a deal for that.”

“Eh, things get complicated when it’s a devil. Transactional. I got some spells out of it. She got some offspring, I think.”

Lorcan and Sairché, she thought. “What do you still owe her?”

“Nothing,” Caisys said, returning to his work. “But it pays to hold on to your deals. Make sure there’s nothing hanging over you.” Eyes on the parchment, he added, “Anything hanging over you?”

“Not like this,” she said. So what was Bryseis Kakistos trying to buy her with?

“Your fancyman probably has one like it,” Caisys said. “One or the other of them.”

Farideh froze, eyes locked on her warped reflection in the copper cap. She didn’t have a deal, but Dahl had a deal.

I have something of yours, Bryseis Kakistos had said to Lorcan.

I think you’ll find it interesting, she’d said to Farideh. Full of answers.

And there was one question that burned brighter than all the others, one answer she would give nearly anything for: What happened to Dahl?

She felt suddenly sick and cold and faint. She dropped the scroll in the box as if it had come alive, backing from the table. Lorcan kept sorting old components on the floor and she thought she would vomit.

“Fari?” Caisys said. “Are you all right?”

She tore her gaze from Lorcan. “I have to talk to Dahl,” she said, or thought she said, only she was already heading up the stairs, before anyone could stop her.

Farideh pushed into the spare room, slamming the door behind her. Dahl kneeled near to an old, thin bed covered in a moth-eaten quilt, as if he’d been praying, inkwell and book upon the side table like a makeshift altar. When she came in he stood, looking worried.

“It was Lorcan,” she said, feeling sick and dizzy. “Lorcan’s the one you made a deal with, isn’t he?”

Dahl looked startled, a relieved sort of smile flickering at the corners of his mouth—that was answer enough. He pulled the parchment from his pocket, unfolding it and turning it, hunting for a clean corner. Tears broke down her cheeks, and she saw his relief harden as he dipped the stylus.

I don’t know why that would surprise you, he wrote, cramming the words into a clear patch.

She took the stylus and the parchment, but it was so full of questions and answers and promises and flirtations that there wasn’t any room. She dropped the page, pushed the sleeve of her blouse up instead, scratched across her arm, I asked him if he did anything to you. I asked him outright and he told me he hadn’t. He’d never lied before.

He took the stylus from her, laid a hand against her wrist to make her arm flat. The stylus tickled. I told you not to trust him.

She wrote across his arm this time, ink catching on the dark hairs. And you didn’t tell me why.

I couldn’t, Dahl wrote. Then, again, Why would this surprise you?

Farideh grit her teeth. She was getting so karshoji sick of all of this. You don’t like him but you know I have to

He yanked the stylus from her, You don’t have to comfort him.

“Don’t interrupt me!” Farideh cried. “What are you karshoji implying?”

I might as well be Dumuzi if he’s watching, Dahl wrote, his mouth a hard line. I’m starting to wonder if you’re playing the odds.

She snatched the stylus, splattering black across the floor and the edge of his arm as she dipped it in the ink. I don’t want him to hurt you.

You don’t want him to get upset, Dahl corrected across her elbow.

Farideh’s tail slashed. They go together.

Well he and I don’t.

“I’m not your karshoji apple cake, Dahl!” she burst out, another round of tears springing from her eyes.

Dahl stared at her, utterly baffled and clenching his jaw hard as if trying not to speak. I don’t know what that means, he wrote finally.

Knarp hunting, she wrote underneath.

Dahl stared at the words a long moment. “Oh stlarn off, Bodhar,” he said after a moment.

I’m not a prize, she wrote, hand shaking. I’m not something you get to rub in his face. You don’t fight him for me. I make my choice. I made my choice.

Farideh stopped and wiped her eyes with the heel of her right hand—already sick and furious at Lorcan, now Dahl had come at her out of nothing and …

And he wasn’t wrong, she thought. Lorcan had all the rein in the world to needle him, and then what did she do but try and make all of this smoother for Lorcan. Dahl wasn’t the one she ought to be looking to for comfort—not about this.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes stinging with tears again. “I’m sorry. I—”

Dahl tapped a finger to his lips. He pulled her closer.

Don’t listen to Bodhar, he wrote along the inside of her biceps, slow and smooth so the stylus didn’t scratch. He’s trying to help, but he’s got no idea what he’s talking about. I never called you apple cake—and if I were going to hang a pet name on you, it would not be one that necessitates telling that.

He stopped at the slight protrusion of bone at her elbow, frowning at her ink covered arm. His eyes skimmed over her shoulders, her chest, her throat, before she held out her right arm, and he set the stylus to her wrist.

Stlarning story, he finished, and a laugh burst out of her. Dahl smiled. He wrote, I am not trying to fight Lorcan for you. But you can’t ask me to sit and smile and try and make him happy while he’s driving us apart.

Farideh’s chest grew tight. She moved closer to him, pushed up the sleeve to write along the curve of his upper arm. He’s not. I promise. I promise. You’re the only one I want. Please don’t leave.

Don’t say that because you’re afraid I’m going to leave, he wrote. I’m not going to leave.

Farideh shook her head. “You already did,” she whispered.

Dahl shut his eyes a moment, pursed his mouth. Farideh started to step back, not thinking, just moving as if her feet knew where this was going and wanted to be away. But Dahl caught her around the waist with one arm, half a breath shaped around a protest. Both of them froze, as if that fumbled word might summon Lorcan up the stairs and finish undoing everything in one breath.

When that didn’t happen, Dahl held up the stylus, as if asking to continue. She offered her arm. You’re right, he wrote. And look where it got me. I’m not making that mistake again. He paused, swallowed. I adore you. I’m terrified of how much I adore you. You’re not some prize, you’re the woman I love, and you are the only soul on this or any other plane who gets to have a say in that, so to the Abyss with Lorcan and his godsbedamned deal.

“It’s too dangerous,” Farideh said. “We keep coming so close to breaking your deal. And Lorcan—”

Dahl drew a line under to the Abyss with Lorcan. Then he wrote, What do you want?

Farideh hesitated, the weight of all her choices and dilemmas laid upon her at once—the memory of Lorcan and the memory of Dahl and Asmodeus’s promises and threats. It didn’t matter what she wanted—it would be easy to say that, but the fact it didn’t concern gods and archdevils and the spinning plane didn’t matter here and now.

“You,” she said softly. “I want you.”

• • •

LORCAN RUBBED HIS eyes—how could he possibly be tired once again? It had hardly been a day. He picked up the components he’d been sorting and returned them to Caisys.

“You’ve got some astral diamond dust amid all this mess,” he reported. “But not the other things.” He looked around the increasingly cluttered space. “Where’s Farideh?”

“Busy,” Caisys said. “You want to take another look around the understairs?”

Lorcan set the box of components down, very carefully, considering Caisys, considering the table. His eyes fell on the wooden casket, left open. And the copper-capped scroll half hanging out of its mouth. His blood turned cold. He looked up at the staircase.

Beshaba shit in my eyes, he thought. His heart felt as if it were trying to beat its way up out of his throat.

Caisys had returned to his notes. Lorcan moved carefully, strolled toward the staircase as if he were in no hurry. But in such a small space there was no hope of avoiding notice—Mehen stepped in front of him, blocking his path.

“Stay a moment, Lorcan,” he said.

“Where would I be going?” he said lightly.

Mehen didn’t budge. “I can’t be sure,” he said, “whether you knew what you were doing, casting that spell over Dahl’s shoulder, making him step into the water. I expect that’s just how you want it.”

Lorcan’s palms itched, missing the magic that would have filled his hands with fire, had the demon lord’s curse not wrapped around his soul. “Is there a question in there?”

“You wouldn’t answer it.” Mehen shook his head. “I don’t know why I’m going to bother saying this, but you need to decide for yourself what you’re doing here, because I for one am through giving you the benefit of the doubt.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means, are you trying to press a suit with my daughter or are you trying to use her for your own gain?” Mehen said. “You can’t have it both ways.”

“I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”

Mehen smiled, baring all his teeth, as he set his uninjured hand on Lorcan’s shoulder and squeezed. “My girls make their own choices,” he said. “But that doesn’t stop a father from giving advice. Nor from lending his sword. Got it?”

Lorcan jerked away from the dragonborn, temper seething. If he had even a measure of his normal powers …

But he didn’t. Not now. And Farideh was still upstairs. “You’ll pardon me,” he said, taking another step back to move around Mehen. He felt the dragonborn’s eyes on him the whole way up the stairs.

Two doors opened off the landing, one wide open to an unlit room, the other ajar and aglow with a lamp. As he reached for the knob, the silence struck him. There was no noise—none at all. Not a voice from the room, not his boots on the boards, not his own breath. Magic, he thought. Shit and ashes.

I take you to Harrowdale, and you never, ever speak to Farideh again, he’d told Dahl. You don’t whisper in her ear, you don’t yell across the room. Not with a spell, not with handsigns. Never. The sloppiness of the deal struck him then. If she couldn’t hear, if she couldn’t understand him, would a spell to eliminate all sounds take away the risk of speaking? Could she read his lips? That was surely covered. Without a connection to the Nine Hells, he had no feel for whether Dahl had broken his agreement, and without a copy, he couldn’t be certain. He eased the door open another inch, peering inside.

But there was nothing to put a stop to.

The spell kept either of them from hearing the door open, but even without it, Lorcan doubted they’d have noticed. Farideh lay on her side, one arm tucked under her head, naked but for smears of black ink and the sheet draped over her hip. Her tail slipped from the bedcovers, the tip tracing an anxious semicircle on the floor. Her side heaved with a soundless sigh, as she traced more inky streaks across Dahl’s face with lingering fingers.

Lorcan’s hand tried to crush the doorknob.

Be patient, he told himself, feeling his temper surge. You can wait him out. How many times had Dahl almost slipped already? Another tenday? Another month? Another year and the Harper’s soul would be claimed and dealt with and he could coax Farideh back.

No—he thought, studying the edge of her face, the hints of sorrow in the angle of her mouth, the tightness of her eyes. She knows and she’d blame you and if you could lure her back after that, then all you’d have is a shell of what she is. She’d hate him in her heart and that wasn’t what he wanted. Dahl kissed her forehead. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Lorcan’s gaze traced the groove of her spine, avoiding the hand wrapped around her waist. Think like a devil, Lorcan thought. There’s another way. You’ve always found another way. Think like a devil—

Farideh pulled Dahl down into a much less chaste kiss, pushing off the bed and up onto him.

There was nowhere Lorcan wanted to be less than on Toril just then. He went back downstairs, utterly without a plan—he hated not having a plan. Dahl’s idiot brothers had come back in, letting in a blast of chilly air as they stacked more wood beside the hearth under Mehen’s watchful eye. Ilstan was laying out a bedroll near the fire.

“Hey,” Caisys called, as Lorcan reached the bottom of the stairs. He held up a cloudy glass bottle.

“I didn’t find that,” Lorcan said, coming over to the table. “I don’t know what it is.”

“It’s like whiskey,” Caisys said. “You want some?”

Lorcan almost pointed out there was no point in him drinking—his devilish blood meant he couldn’t be poisoned and drink slipped through him like water without numbing a thing. But he remembered the curse, the limits it laid and undid. “All right.”

“Comes with a conversation,” Caisys warned.

Lorcan sighed. “Just give me the shitting drink.”

Caisys poured the clear liquid into two copper cups and pushed one toward Lorcan. “You don’t always get to choose who you fall for,” he said. “But you do get to choose whether or not you’re a hardjack about it.”

“That sort of conversation. I see. Well, I’ve had quite enough advice in the last hour, thank you.” But he took the copper cup anyway. “And anyway, that’s godsbedamned rich coming from the Vicelord.”

Caisys shrugged. “Don’t see how a taste for the unknown makes me heartless.”

Lorcan took a swallow. Whatever the liquor was, it tasted as if it could strip rust off armor—he swallowed a cough and a shudder wrenched his whole body.

“Hm. You really are human at the moment,” Caisys noted. “Really shouldn’t fuss around with demon lords. I will grant her that much.” He folded his scarred hands together. “I’ve fallen in love exactly once, for your information. It’s rubbish. I don’t recommend it. Got me nowhere and put me in a position that would have hurt a lot of people.”

“Why would you care?” Lorcan asked, taking another sip. It felt as if his eyeballs were floating, and he didn’t much mind.

“Well if I were going to be heartless, I’d say it takes up a lot of time, dealing with everyone being angry at you. It’s a lot easier to get along when no one wants to gut you.” He leaned on the table. “So I did the right thing and opted to be the hurt one. I survived. We all survived. Then I got to—let’s say—‘make deals’ with a lot of interesting people, so it wasn’t all bad.”

“You didn’t even try to get what you wanted?”

Caisys made a face. “Well, maybe you are still a devil. That’s not how you think about someone you love.”

“Devils don’t love,” Lorcan said and drained the cup.

He hadn’t been thinking like a devil, though, Lorcan realized. A devil would be patient, would be calculating. A devil would have assessed what gains were to be made, what losses could be borne. A devil would see in Dahl a way to make his warlock act or retreat—a tool and not a rival, because what human could rival a devil of the Nine Hells?

What devil could rival a human, after all? he thought. What devil would bother wanting someone to care about them? What devil would waste time turning a vassal into a companion?

You are thinking like a human, he realized. You’ve been thinking like a human all along—human wants, devilish plans. It all falls to pieces because you can’t have it both ways.

You failed.

You need a new plan.

Lorcan sat at the table until the fire in his belly had vanished and his eyeballs didn’t feel so much like floating. Perhaps, Lorcan thought, if he sat long enough, the curse would wear off and everything would be easier. Everyone else had gone to sleep, save Caisys, still sorting through his notes, building the spell that might save them all or make all of this moot.

Nothing gets easier, he thought bitterly as he stood.

“Don’t go up there,” Caisys said absently.

Lorcan ignored him, half expecting as he climbed the stairs that the fabled warlock would try to stop him. But Caisys only watched as Lorcan returned to the dusty bedroom.

He oughtn’t to have been surprised to find Dahl awake and waiting for him, sitting up against the head of the bed. Farideh lay deep asleep, curled on her side and facing the door.

“I didn’t break the deal,” Dahl said. “You can’t say I did.”

“I probably could,” Lorcan pointed out. “But … I have a proposition for you.”

“Stlarn off.” Dahl shook his head. “I told her I wouldn’t fight with you, but if you think for even a breath—”

“You can talk to her again.”

The look of shock that crossed Dahl’s face would normally have pleased Lorcan, but it only made him feel more like one of his half sisters had punched him in the gut. “I don’t believe you,” Dahl said quietly. “What’s the catch?”

“Good question,” Lorcan said, with a briskness he didn’t feel. “Because there has to be a catch. Can’t have a deal without requirements, can we? That would be … noteworthy. So here’s my offer: You can talk to her. You can tell her what happened, since I wager she’s worked it out. You just can’t say anything bad about me.”

Dahl scoffed. “No.”

“Fine,” Lorcan said. “You can’t say anything bad about me that isn’t true.”

Dahl hesitated. “That’s awfully subjective.”

Another time, Lorcan would have toyed with that. Left Dahl thinking there was danger in every opinion and the only way to be safe would be to keep his tongue still. But, Lords of the Nine, Lorcan was so weary. “Not really. There is truth, there is untruth, and there are things that are neither because they depend on you. Saying ‘Lorcan is a bastard’ doesn’t count. Saying ‘Lorcan stole my ill-fitting jerkin’ does. Got it?”

Dahl said nothing for a long moment, already conditioned to be wary. “Why are you doing this?”

Farideh slept on. Without wanting to, Lorcan thought of the way she’d looked at Dahl. She’d never looked at him that way, he had to admit. Or maybe she had—there was a time in Suzail where perhaps she’d been looking at him with that same longing and grief and he’d never noticed because he’d never thought for a moment about what he really had or whether he wanted it.

Think like a devil, he reminded himself. Get through this. “Well, clearly I’ve lost this battle. You’re tenacious and she … she’s made up her mind. The very best I can hope for, you’d have to agree, is to be a gracious loser in the hopes that the next battle will be mine.”

“Next battle?”

Lorcan smiled, even though he didn’t feel it. “I’m immortal. I’m always going to look as I do now. I might have a chance when this”—he gestured at Dahl’s bare torso—“starts giving out on you.”

“Yeah, you look like that now,” Dahl pointed out. “And she doesn’t appreciate that ‘battle’ horseshit, and you know it. So I’m not buying that cow.”

Lorcan’s wings twitched nervously—how far had he fallen, for Dahl to see right through him? “I need her not to hate me,” Lorcan said. “I need that very much. All right? I haven’t earned any particular kindness from you,” he added, too quickly, “but … please don’t tell her to break the pact.”

“Why would I do that?” Dahl demanded.

She’s all I have left, Lorcan thought. But he knew better than to say that. “Because it would be very inconvenient, of course.”

Lorcan left—first the room, then the stone cottage—walking out into the snowy night with the heavy fur cloak covering his wings. Beyond the thick trees, dawn lightened the edge of the sky. He didn’t dare stray too far from Caisys’s cottage, but in that moment, he needed a moment away from everything, away from Farideh and the fear that he’d made a grave miscalculation. You’re letting her be happy, he thought. And that is the one thing Asmodeus demanded. Human and devil, all aligned.

Beshaba shit in my eyes, he thought, looking at the dwindling stars.

“Oy,” a voice called. “Devil-child!” Lorcan turned and saw a dwarf—the same one that had met them at the gates—standing on a path trod into the snow with a lantern in one hand. “You lost?” he demanded in a way that sounded very much like a threat.

Lorcan rolled his eyes. “How could I possibly get lost in a village with two bloody streets in it?”

A burning wind blew his cloak and wings forward, tangling his hair. The dwarf squawked in surprise. He turned, finding himself facing a portal that seethed like boiling lava in shimmering red and orange. Nessus, he thought. The layer of Asmodeus. Only, everyone had said Nessus was sealed.

Come here, said twin voices that made his heart want to climb his throat and smother his brain. We have a message for you to carry.

• • •

DAHL STARED UP at the thatched roof, listening to the birds waking outside with the dawn, debating if he ought to wake Farideh. On the one hand, he could talk to her again and there were a thousand things he wanted to say. On the other, he’d have to tell her that Lorcan had made it possible, and as much as he wanted to believe that Farideh had run out of patience for the cambion and would see through his schemes, Dahl thought of Lorcan’s last words to him and felt an unwelcome curl of guilt that could not be good. Lorcan was very convincing.

All the more when there were gods and warlocks and worse in their midst. Dahl rolled onto his side, considering Farideh’s sleeping face turned half into the mattress by the curve of her horn. Half the word again? printed backward on her forehead. He brushed a lock of hair off her cheek.

Suddenly her eyes flew open and she shot up, clapping a hand to her branded arm with a sharp cry. Dahl jumped out of her way, hands up in a gesture of calm. She searched his face. “Lorcan’s gone.”

“Well …” Dahl said. “Good?”

“No, I mean …” Her expression froze, horrified. “Oh, no. No, no, no!”

“It’s all right!” Dahl said. “Sorry! Lorcan was here. He changed the terms.”

Her hand dropped. “Why? What to?”

Dahl considered—Lorcan hadn’t specified he couldn’t tell Farideh the new terms. “If I say a bad word about him, it has to be true.”

“That’s too easy,” she said. “Why … why would he do that? Why would he let you out?” She rubbed her arm. “Why did he go back to the Nine Hells?”

Dahl hesitated. I need her not to hate me. I need that very much. Gods’ books. “Are you in love with him?” he asked.

Whatever she’d expected him to say, that wasn’t it. “I told you last night—”

“No, I know. You love me. Do you love him too?”

He could hear her tail tapping against the frame of the bed. “It’s not that simple—”

“Just yes or no, Fari.”

“Do you want an answer, or do you want an argument?” she demanded. She picked at the ancient blanket. “He’s awful. He’s cruel and he’s selfish and he knows exactly how to get under my skin. Do you know why I made a pact with him?”

“I have eyes,” he said dryly.

“No.” She looked down at her lap. “I mean, I’m not going to pretend that didn’t … make it a little harder to think through all the consequences. But I’m not going to do something stupid because I’m lonely.”

Don’t be a hardjack, Dahl told himself. She didn’t say yes. “You picked up with me,” he pointed out, which got him a little smile. “You wanted to leave this place,” he said more gently. “You were trapped here and you couldn’t just leave, not with Mehen and Havilar here too. It was a way out. An exit.”

A godsbedamned parallel road to the one he’d taken.

Dahl thought of the times they’d argued, where he’d said unkind things about her pact and she’d demanded to know how it was different from his bond to Oghma. For the first time, he could see how she wasn’t quite wrong—Oghma had seen in him a purpose past a life that left him unfulfilled and out of place. Lorcan had come down and offered her a chance, a power, a path into the world, and away from this angry, sad little village.

“That’s … pretty obvious the more I think about it,” he said.

Farideh shook her head, though. “I didn’t know the pact would let me leave. I didn’t know I was even brave enough to leave.” She swallowed. “But Lorcan was the first person who ever looked at me and saw anything special. Anything of value. This village didn’t want me. The mother that gave birth to me didn’t want me.”

“Mehen,” Dahl pointed out.

She sighed. “Mehen loves me. Mehen … does not have any idea what I’m good for. Or he didn’t, when I met Lorcan. Nobody did. I was too clumsy for the sword, too scared to run off, too stubborn to stay. I was the quiet one, so everyone assumed I was the wicked one. Everyone—even the people who loved me—were always talking about who was going to be stuck with me. There was nothing for me here, and you’re right, I didn’t know how to leave, especially not without Havi and Mehen. And … Lorcan showed up and he wanted me.” She met his gaze. “And I wanted him.

“But,” she went on, “he’s awful. He’s cruel and he’s selfish and he knows exactly how to get under my skin. He doesn’t listen to me and he hurts the people I care about.”

“And do you love him?”

She laughed. “I don’t know anymore. It’s too knotted up in all the things he’s done—terrible and generous. I don’t even know if I ought to be mad at him for changing the terms. He could have just ended the agreement, after all, but he never would have. I can’t believe he even did this much.” She bit her lip. “He saved me. And I think he needs me. It’s hard to let go of that.”

All of it rolled around in Dahl’s heart like a lead weight. I haven’t earned any particular kindness from you, but … please don’t tell her to break the pact. He was very convincing. Always very convincing.

“Fari, I don’t want to tell you how to live your life,” he said. “But I can’t do this.”

Her mismatched eyes regarded him warily. “What does that mean?”

“It means … You have to choose. Me or the pact. I love you. I love you regardless of what the Hells want with you, regardless of where you get your powers. Maybe even because of it—you’re resourceful and you’re steadfast. Gods’ books, how many people in your boots would have given in and just taken everything the devils offered? But you never would. It takes your sister being stolen to even consider—”

“No. It took you disappearing,” Farideh interrupted softly. He stopped. “Asmodeus said he’d give me whatever I wanted, whatever made me happy. There was a moment I thought that would be the only way to get you back. But then, what would it cost? Did you even want to come back? Would it make everything worse? Would it put you in danger?” She wet her mouth. “I couldn’t do it.”

A flood of guilt he didn’t want hit Dahl. “I understand why you have it. I understand why you’d rather it was with him. But even if I trust you, I don’t trust him. I don’t want to watch him put his hands on you, and I certainly don’t want to test the limits of how far he’ll go to sway you—it hasn’t worked out well for me in the past.” She looked away, and he felt like a hardjack again, even though there was nothing else he could possibly do. “Look, you don’t have to decide right off,” he said. “If you need time—”

“I don’t need time,” Farideh said, sounding surprised. “I pick you.”

Dahl stumbled. “Really?”

“Yes, really,” she said. “You’re sweet. And you’re thoughtful. And you’re smart, and you’re willing to fight for what you know is right, but you’re willing to be wrong too. Mostly.”

“Mostly,” he agreed.

“You’re good to me. And you’re good for me. I don’t know how long we’re all going to survive, but I would be heartbroken if it weren’t with you.” Her eyes flicked over him. “Don’t look too excited.”

“I’m excited,” he protested. “I just … I didn’t expect you to answer so fast. You have a lot of history with him.”

“He took you away from me,” she said. “And I love you better.” She hesitated. “But it has to wait until this is through. Until Havi’s safe or … or we find out …”

“Until Havilar’s safe,” he said.

The door opened and Farideh yanked the ink-stained sheets up just as Caisys stuck his head in.

“Oy, Oghmanyte,” Caisys said. “Fari says you do rituals. Put your breeches on and come check my work.” He frowned at the bedsheets. “What in the Hells happened?”

“We … spilled some ink,” Farideh said, a blush creeping up her neck.

Caisys raised an eyebrow. “Huh. I’m not familiar with that one.”

“Lorcan’s gone,” she said.

“Went outside.”

“No, he went back to the Hells,” she said. “We had a protection spell on both of us. It just broke. I think someone took him.”

Caisys cursed. “Well, wash your faces and get down here. We’ve got a lot to do.” He slammed the door behind him.

Farideh watched the door a long moment, before turning to Dahl. “I don’t mind him being gone,” she told him before he could say anything. “But I don’t want him dead, and I don’t want an archdevil in our way.”

“Fair,” Dahl said, reaching for his breeches. “In the way of what exactly? What ritual am I supposed to look at?”

Farideh froze in the middle of pulling on her blouse. “Oh karshoj. I forgot. You’d left.”

That tone didn’t bode well. “What is he doing?”

“We’re,” Farideh corrected. “We’re going to try and save both gods.”

23

9 Hammer, the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant (1487 DR)
Arush Vayem, Tymanther

FARIDEH KEPT LOOKING AT THE DOOR, KEPT RUBBING HER ARM, BUT LORCAN didn’t come back.

“I told ya,” Pyador said again. “ ’Twent through a portal.”

“Yes,” Caisys said, “but I want to know what kind of portal.”

Pyador folded his thick arms over his black beard. “Do I look like some spangle-britched wizard to you?”

Farideh’s tail slashed the floor. Whatever relief she felt at not having to face Lorcan after last night was absolutely gone knowing he’d been snatched up and yanked out of the protection spell’s range. Nothing else she knew of could break it.

“What color was it?” Mehen asked patiently. He and Dahl’s brothers had gone out looking for signs of Lorcan or anyone who’d seen him and had gotten a piece of Pyador’s mind for harboring the devil. They quickly brought him back to Caisys.

“Red,” the dwarf said. “Maybe yellow. Fire-colored, let’s say.”

“So you are a spangle-britched wizard,” Caisys said dryly.

Pyador scowled at him. “Smelled strong too. Like slag and fireplace ashes.”

Hellsportal, Farideh thought. “Did he open it himself?” she asked.

But the dwarf only shrugged. “Criella ain’t gonna like it,” he told Caisys.

“Why would Criella need to know?” Caisys asked, sounding genuinely puzzled. “It’s not as if someone propped it open, letting imps in.”

Farideh tried not to worry about all the things that might have caused a Hellsportal to open in Arush Vayem. She tried not to worry about erinyes and Glasya and archdevils and Asmodeus. She tried not to think of all the ways this might be the next step of some horrible plan, right after letting Dahl out of his deal. She looked back at Dahl and Ilstan both poring over Caisys’s ritual, and worried anyway.

Caisys walked Pyador to the door, arguing with him lightheartedly about whether Criella needed to know and how much Caisys was going to pay for the liquor Pyador brewed if he didn’t mention it and whether anything else was the dwarf’s business.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” Bodhar said to her. She gave him a quick smile, as if that would make the way he said “friend” sound less suspicious.

“There is no telling whether anybody has to be sorry yet,” she said, as much to herself as to him. Maybe Lorcan just went home. Maybe Lorcan went to find some help. Maybe Asmodeus was planning to kill them all and take the staff. “Excuse me,” she said, and went back over to Dahl and Ilstan.

“You can pull out this part,” Dahl said. “It’s a redundancy.”

“No, see, it clarifies the binding,” Ilstan said, tapping the parchment. “Without that, you may end up dragging in bystanders.”

“Then cut the other clause,” Dahl said. “Doubling it just creates more failure points.”

“How’s it going?” Farideh asked.

Dahl smiled when he looked up—the same sort of smile she’d given Bodhar. “All right. You find Lorcan?”

“In the Hells.”

“Well at least he knows his way.”

“What’s wrong?”

Dahl sighed. “Can I talk to you?”

Farideh followed him into the little dark room under the stairs. “Fari, have you looked at this ritual? Do you understand what it does?”

“I’m the one who suggested it,” she said a little tartly. “So I understand what it’s supposed to do, yeah.”

“I mean, do you know what happens when you pour a god’s power into a mortal body?”

“I don’t. Do you?”

“It’s not good. Have you ever heard of Karsus?” Farideh shook her head. “Karsus was a spellcaster in Netheril. He tried to become a god and nearly destroyed the empire—certainly destroyed himself. He turned to stlarning stone.”

“Azuth was mortal once,” Ilstan called. “But ascended to Mystra’s side.”

“First, not the same thing,” Dahl retorted. “Second, private conversation!” To Farideh he said, softer, “Look, all I’m saying is that this is very risky. You could die. And for what?”

Sometimes the only choice is a sacrifice. Farideh shut her eyes a moment, chasing off the thought. “Obviously, that’s not my first choice. Can you make the ritual so that it doesn’t kill anyone?”

Dahl shook his head. “It’s not the ritual. It’s the fact that you’re not a god.”

“Look, if I do this, I might die. If I don’t? I might die, and so might a lot of other people. Do you know what happens when two gods rip each other apart? Do you know what happens when the king of the Nine Hells is destroyed?”

“No, and neither do you.”

“Do you think it’s something good?”

Dahl wrapped his arms around her. “I just got you back.”

Farideh leaned into him, her arms around his waist. How many times, how many indulgent little moments in Arush Vayem, had she let herself wish for something like this? She thought of Mehen and Havi and Dumuzi and Brin and all the other allies and—dare she say—friends she’d made. She didn’t want to die. “Tell Oghma to keep a miracle in reserve.”

He sighed again. “If you survive this, I’m going to have to insist you get yourself a religious education.”

“Don’t tell Mehen, please,” she murmured.

“About the religious education or the ritual?”

“Both,” she said. “I don’t want him to worry and I don’t want him to turn on you. I just got you back too.”

Caisys was standing over the parchment when they came back out. Suddenly he clutched his chest and winced. “Damn,” he said, sounding breathless.

“Are you all right?” Farideh asked.

“Planes are getting friendly again,” he said. “You need to go. Get your things. I’ll get you a portal opened.”

“Not here,” Mehen said from the door to the front room. “I have to take the bat. Can you get the portal open enough for one?”

Caisys rolled his eyes. “Why you people opted to mount flying rats, I will never understand.”

They gathered their things and donned their cloaks, following Caisys out into the snow. The villagers of Arush Vayem watched as their little party passed. Criella stood, just beyond the well, up the road from the gate.

“Garago!” she called. “A word.”

Caisys waved her off. “Give us a song, Criella, I’m seeing these folks off.”

“Perhaps you should go with them,” she shouted back.

“Perhaps you should get another personality adjustment,” he muttered.

“Don’t do that,” Mehen said.

Farideh glanced back at scowling Criella, and wished Arush Vayem another farewell. Dahl tucked his hand into hers. “I will promise you one thing,” he said. “My family’s farm is far more welcoming than this.”

Farideh glanced over at Thost and wasn’t so sure.

The bat had tucked itself into the shelter of some pine boughs for the night. When Mehen whistled through his fingers, it came flapping and shedding snow everywhere, to drop onto its belly where the path widened before it grew steep for a stretch. The creature crawled toward them, while Caisys made them kick the snow away, uncovering enough dirt to draw a portal. The lines of power woke with little prodding and even less in the way of components.

“He’s very good,” Dahl murmured to Farideh.

From the other side of the clearing, Caisys looked up and smirked. “You don’t know the half of it, Oghmanyte.”

But before the portal could open, three rifts split the cold morning air. A freezing wind blew through them, blasting Farideh from all sides, before devils slipped out of them. Great horned and spined creatures with leathery wings. One that looked as if it were an insect on two legs, carved of ice. A scattering of imps dressed in wooly skins.

“Ah, tluin and buggering Shar,” Caisys muttered.

“We come for the staff!” one of the horned devils snarled. “Which of you bears it?”

Farideh yanked her rod out of her sleeve, carving a semicircle with the tip. “Fiornix!” A wall of flames burst out of the ground, sizzling against the snow. She turned to Caisys, the others pulling swords free. “Finish the portal!”

“Oh, so I can clean up the Stygians? I see how it goes.” But Caisys went back to coaxing the circle of runes into wakefulness.

One of the horned devils made it over the wall of flames, flapping high overhead. It aimed a bow and arrow down at Caisys.

“I have it,” Ilstan called. He spat a word of magic, and a cluster of blue missiles shot out of the air, hammering the horned devil and pushing it back beyond the wall.

The imps dared the flames. Farideh slashed at one with her sword and cast a blast of angry energy at another, catching it ablaze and making it vanish in a puff of smoke. The wall of fire collapsed as she did.

“Garago!” Mehen shouted, catching the icy devil’s glaive on his falchion. “Faster!”

“Can’t rush portals,” Caisys said. “Gets you lost.”

Farideh hurled another bolt of energy at the back of the ice devil as Mehen continued to strike at it. She went to draw another, but suddenly it felt as if the Weave were buzzing in her veins, anchoring her to the ground. Another spell rose in her thoughts and she spat the trigger word. The ice devil froze in place, glaive drawn back, its side wide-open and vulnerable.

A shadow passed overhead and someone yanked her by the arm. She swung her rod around, nearly hitting Dahl as he turned her back toward the horned devil that had almost landed on top of her. “Hit it!” he said.

“Adaestuo!” Another burst of eldritch energy streamed from her rod, this one enough to make the devil burst into flames and vanish. “Thank you.”

“Always,” he said, turning to cut another imp down.

“Hey! I had that one!” Bodhar cried, oblivious to the horned devil rushing at him.

Farideh pointed her rod at the creature in tandem with Ilstan, both spitting the same spell with different words—Farideh’s trimmed with flame and shadow, Ilstan’s vibrant purple. Both struck the horned devil together and it disappeared with a pop.

“Again,” Ilstan said, “that isn’t how you’re meant to do it.”

“It gets it done!” Farideh returned.

“All right!” Caisys cried. “Portal’s set. Get your arses in it.”

Mehen swung his falchion down through the ice devil’s chest, just as Thost’s fist crashed into the back of its skull. It burst into flames at these last injuries and vanished back to the Nine Hells. Mehen turned, panting, and scowled at Caisys.

Caisys smiled. “See? I knew you’d manage.” He pointed a finger at Farideh. “Don’t fidget with that ring again, girly.”

Farideh held her hands up in appeasement as she stepped into the circle. As Mehen coaxed the bat into the ring of glowing runes, Caisys favored her with a fond smile. “Good luck,” he said. “And if you come back here again, I expect a replacement for my book, got it?” He winked at her.

“Thank you,” Farideh said. “I will.”

Farideh considered the forest around Arush Vayem, the last time she might ever see it—for one reason or the other—before the portal’s enchantment yanked them away, back to Djerad Thymar and hopefully an end to her dealings with the god of sin.

• • •

HAVILAR STEPPED INTO Bryseis Kakistos’s dream, announcing herself by making the seashore setting transform into the fields around Suzail in the midst of that last battle. Karshoj, Havilar thought. But at least it was somewhere she’d been, she’d succeeded. She felt armor form around her, her glaive filling her hand as she stalked across the field toward the Purple Dragon and the silver-eyed tiefling woman perched upon its neck. Fear curled around Havilar’s heart, and she made herself keep walking.

Bryseis Kakistos regarded her with puzzlement. “Where’s Alyona?”

“Not here,” Havilar answered. “We’re going to talk, you and I.”

Bryseis Kakistos gave her a withering look. With a flick of her wrist, the dragon’s attention snapped to Havilar. It roared, shaking Havilar down to her bones, and breathed a cloud of burning green gas. Havilar shut her eyes and reminded herself—this was a dream, this was her head, and besides, she’d been there, it wasn’t a black dragon and it couldn’t breathe acid anyway. So to the Hells with this.

She opened her eyes and fixed her attention on the dragon. It collapsed into the form of a much smaller wyvern, the creature that the Shadovar had disguised to frighten the Cormyrean army. Bryseis Kakistos raised her sleek eyebrows, looking impressed.

“I remember how it died too,” Havilar said. “Do you?”

“Vaguely,” she said. “As if in a dream.”

Raedra appeared, the jeweled short sword in hand, but this time she pointed it at Havilar, the same determination in her eyes that she’d had as she killed the Purple Dragon. Havilar rolled her eyes, and the young queen turned and stabbed the wyvern through the eye, both she and the monster vanishing at the mortal wound. Bryseis Kakistos landed on the muddy ground.

“I’m not scared of her anymore,” Havilar said. “I have a message from Alyona.”

“No you don’t. Alyona would come talk to me herself.” Flames raced over Bryseis Kakistos, building into fiery wings, and a rush of horror went through Havilar. “You ought to go back before I change my mind about preserving you.”

Havilar dug her heels into the mud, concentrating on the feeling. It was the same as when Fari did that—and she didn’t like the feeling, but she wasn’t scared of Farideh and she didn’t have a reason to be scared of Bryseis Kakistos. She couldn’t kill Havilar in a dream.

“Do you even know what you’re trying to accomplish anymore?” Havilar demanded.

“Don’t worry about my plans,” the Brimstone Angel said. A wreath of lightning stirred around her, spikes of lightning spearing the ground around her, wider and wider. “I know what I’m doing.”

“No you don’t,” Havilar returned.

The flames seethed around Bryseis Kakistos. “Punishing Asmodeus.”

“How is that a good plan?” Havilar cried. “He’s a god. They die and they come back and they die all over again and there is no guaranteeing they stay put—so what happens when he comes back and comes looking for you and your sister?”

“I didn’t agree to a deal with Selûne because I like her.”

“Do you actually think Selûne’s going to protect you if you do things this way?” Havilar said. “Alyona told me that you changed your plans, that you weren’t supposed to fight Asmodeus like this.”

Lightning struck the ground at Havilar’s feet, and she forgot it wasn’t real, skipping out of the way. “I’ve come too far to go back,” Bryseis Kakistos said. “And you can’t pretend he doesn’t deserve it, that Selûne wouldn’t relish his demise once the deed is done. That’s how it works, dear girl. We’re the ones who do the dirty work, who make things happen, while the good stand back and tut and pat themselves on the back once the dust settles. Now go home.”

“This is my karshoji head,” Havilar shouted. “And your sister doesn’t want to be resurrected!”

Bryseis Kakistos fell still, the flames still dancing around her. “Liar.”

“She told me to get Brin to steal the soul sapphire,” Havilar said. “She told me to have him threaten to break it if you don’t stop.”

“She told you to get your brightheart killed then.”

“No,” Havilar said. “She told me to gamble. To take the chance that you’d back off against the chance that you’d call his bluff and let him kill us both. She’s ready for that.”

Bryseis Kakistos shook her head. “I wouldn’t, though. She knows that much.”

“She doesn’t,” Havilar retorted. “She doesn’t trust you anymore. Because you aren’t karshoji listening! Because if you were paying even a little attention, you’d realize she’s miserable. She wants to be done. She wants to die.”

“Liar!” The Brimstone Angel drew her long sword, swinging it across Havilar’s core. But this was Havilar’s mind and Havilar’s kind of fight. She knocked the blade off course with the end of her glaive, chopping the blade toward Bryseis Kakistos’s shoulder.

The Brimstone Angel might not have been the daughter of Clanless Mehen, but she was far more skilled with a blade than Havilar would have given her credit for. The long sword rose again, slashing down at Havilar’s right arm to damage her grip. Havilar jerked back, hit the blade again with the shaft of the glaive, then slammed it forward into the Brimstone Angel. The flames crackled as Devilslayer struck, but she pulled back too quickly for them to catch.

“How can you know Alyona for longer than a tenday and think for a moment that she’d want dozens of people killed to bring her back?” Havilar demanded. “I mean, gods, are you that blind?”

The flames around Bryseis Kakistos burned brighter, hotter. “They die for a purpose. They’ll save us all.”

“From what?” Havilar shouted. “It’s like you’ve been in pieces so long you can’t string a thought together. Do you know what it’s like out there? It’s not perfect, but it’s not such a hardship that we don’t survive. Maybe people don’t like us, but it’s not everyone, and every day it gets a little easier. You want to save all the tieflings, there’s a lot better ways to do that than unmaking the karshoji Hells.”

Bryseis Kakistos laughed. “You’re actually arguing Asmodeus is a better master?”

“I’m arguing he’s not my godsbedamned master,” Havilar shouted. “I’m arguing—until all this warlock aithyas started up—he never made a damned difference in my life or more importantly, Remzi’s life. I’m arguing that you’d be a lot better off making a haven for tieflings or a spell to make people see what hardjacks they’re being or getting karshoji collector warlocks off your heirs’ backsides. I’m arguing that you are about to make things worse—for me, for Alyona, for all of us—just because you’re angry you were tricked.”

Bryseis Kakistos lunged with a shriek of rage, her blade suddenly aflame. The powers of Asmodeus’s Chosen surged, overwhelming Havilar’s resolve as she fell back under the Brimstone Angel’s renewed attack. The sword moved so swiftly it was all she could do to keep ahead of it. Suddenly Bryseis Kakistos’s hand came up and a burst of bruised, angry energy swelled out of it, striking Havilar and tossing her across the field—

Havilar landed with a jolt she felt as if she had a body once more—she wasn’t in Suzail any longer, but neither was she in the pocket world of mists and gates. She’d landed, still ghostlike, in a cell of a room, simple and spare. A table covered with scrolls dominated one side of the room, the wall behind it pasted with more scraps of parchment, more diagrams and notes. The open door illumined this, the bony lich standing over a narrow bed, and the jewel-adorned black skeleton shaking Havilar’s body into wakefulness.

Bryseis Kakistos sat up. “What is it?” she asked hoarsely.

“The staff’s returned,” Phrenike said. “Someone’s hiding it, but it’s here enough to keep triggering the location spell. I thought you might like to know.”

The memory of Havilar’s pulse sped as she watched herself sit up and look uneasily around the room. Bryseis Kakistos found where Havilar’s spirit hovered and locked eyes with her, her expression unreadable.

“Bryseis?” the lich said. “Did you hear me?”

“Good,” she said. Then, as if she were convincing herself, “Good. Let’s make certain everything’s ready.”

• • •

DUMUZI DIDN’T DARE let his nerves show as he watched Vanquisher Kallan returning to the city’s gates. He didn’t dare look back at the shrine he’d built with Tam and Mira’s help, fussing over its hasty shape, the paintings of the Vayemniri along the sides, would only send the signal that he wasn’t sure. And he had to be sure.

Kallan spoke to the leader of one of the spellcasting regiments, the Sixth Red Cohort—eighty Vayemniri wizards armed to the teeth with fireballs and enough guano to keep making them until the city crumbled. Even at a distance, the former sellsword’s easy nature showed—this he could do. The rest would come, Dumuzi felt certain. Hopeful. Maybe.

Nearby, Kepeshkmolik and the Lance Defenders’ commanders stood, with Namshita and her lieutenants beside them. Dumuzi kept himself from looking to his patriarch, his mother, and most especially at Arjhani, who kept glancing at him in a nervous way. No room for uncertainty, he thought. No room for weakness.

Beyond, under an evening winter sky thick with pale clouds, the very edge of the enemy’s army showed in the shimmer of fires along the horizon’s edge, the dark specks of winged demons floating over them like whirling ashes. Dumuzi swallowed his breath and kept his eyes on Kallan.

The Vanquisher clapped the wizard on the shoulder, bidding her farewell as he turned toward Dumuzi. As everyone within sight turned toward Dumuzi, dressed in his best armor. He’d found a forge and had the Kepeshkmolik moon covered over by a new sigil—a wheel of lightning with a clawed hand at the center. He still wasn’t sure about that, but Mira had nudged him toward something that bridged the gap between the Vayemniri and the Untheran god.

Enlil seemed to approve of it. He’d no sooner affixed it to his armor, but the lightning took on an eerie sheen, and the sense that the god stood beside him was unignorable.

Kallan smiled as he approached. “Well met, Dumuzi.”

“Chosen of Enlil, Majesty,” the Adjudicator at his elbow said.

Kallan made a face. “Let’s stay with names, if you don’t mind,” he said to Dumuzi. “Hard to take up formality after the fact, at least for me.” He studied the shrine. “You’ve been busy.”

Now Dumuzi turned to consider the stone shrine. Here, once more, Mira had proved invaluable. She’d sketched the niches in the catacombs, the resting places of particularly venerated warriors, and they’d mimicked the shape in wood and stone. A slight enclosure embraced the altar, a simple slab table, a roof projecting over just far enough to shelter someone from the storm. They’d painted all sides of it with figures from each of the clans—heroes from ancestor stories—and stars and jackals, mimicking the black axe. Against the back was the clawed fist over the wheel of lightning, and the words to a simple prayer. Across the roof, spelled out in green Draconic runes: Aricholedarthicaesh Archolkoshjimetev—Enlil, Strychik Ozhon.

Pride bloomed in Dumuzi, and it didn’t matter how much of it was his own and how much was Enlil’s—they agreed.

Kallan searched around the side, smiling as he spotted the figure of Esham-Ana Who-Would-Be-Yrjixtilex with his bow and deer. “Very nice,” he said.

“Thank you,” Dumuzi said. “I had some help.” Kallan’s gaze darted off behind Dumuzi where Tam and Mira stood against a stable wall. Dumuzi kept his eyes on the Vanquisher, a calm expression on his face.

Kallan came back around to the front, peered at the runes. “ ‘Sword of all the Lands, Elder of All the Children.’ ”

“They are approximations of the epithets that I heard when he manifested,” Dumuzi explained. “Made more appropriate.”

“And this?” Kallan turned to him, amused, as he pointed to the runes that spelled out Strychik Ozon. “ ‘Uncle Lightning Bolt’?”

Dumuzi held himself even straighter. It sounded ridiculous when you said it like that, like he was making the god into a buffoon for some market play. But Tam had made an inarguable point—“Enlil” wasn’t their god.

“His name is always going to remind you of that,” Tam had said as Dumuzi crossed out yet another version of the prayer for the shrine. “You need something that tells people instead that he’s chosen the Vayemniri.”

“I know my omin’ iejirsjighen,” Dumuzi said lightly. “Blood commands unity. Clan earns it. So call him as you call your fond elders, aunties and uncles, whom you honor not because they share blood, but because they share the clan’s load. The ones who make certain you are safe and that you grow wise and earn their honor too, despite the fact you are no child of theirs.”

Kallan nodded, approving. “All right. Let’s do this. How do I …” He gestured at the entrance.

“Go in,” Dumuzi said in a low voice. “You can read the prayer at the back.”

Kallan’s nostrils flared. “Nah. Give me something bigger. I’m Vanquisher. You need a big gesture.”

Dumuzi said a little thanks to the Selûnite priest. Tam was the one who’d helped him figure out the simple prayer, but he’d insisted as well on having some greater rituals prepared.

“You could dedicate your sword,” Dumuzi suggested. “As Enlil defends you, so shall you defend Enlil.” He pulled out a scroll. “Here, I wrote it down.”

Kallan gave him a curious smile. “You have no idea how much that sounds like a sellsword contract.”

Dumuzi knew exactly, but he only nodded and handed the scroll over to Kallan, who skimmed it. Beyond, Arjhani watched with narrowed eyes. “This bind me to anything?” Kallan asked in the same low voice.

“Makes you allies,” Dumuzi said. “Makes you promise not to be a tyrant.”

“Easy enough,” Kallan said, but he kept considering the scroll.

“Most of this is straightforward,” Dumuzi blurted out. “If we don’t worship him, he’ll be too weak to defend or protect us. Even if he wanted to leave us, it would hurt him. We need each other.”

Kallan let out a sigh. “Makes sense. Maybe I’m glad my grandfather’s not here to see this, but I’m with you.” He handed back the scroll and stepped into the shrine, laying upon the altar not the greatsword of his office, strapped across his back, but the well-worn bastard sword he’d carried as long as Dumuzi had known him. He didn’t kneel, and a little flush of panic hit Dumuzi as he realized how critically important both of these choices were. Enlil couldn’t be seen to be a new slave master, and the Vanquisher couldn’t be seen to be controlled by him.

“Great Strychik Ozhon,” Kallan said, “August Enlil, take my sword and my word. As you protect this city, so shall I pledge to protect your followers and your shrines, and give great thanks that you have come among us, sheltered from evil and sheltering from evil alike. You grant justice—I seek justice. I seek the destruction of evil and wickedness so the strong shall not oppress the weak, and the land shall be enlightened. Lend me your lightning, wise uncle, favored sword, in my coming battles, and I will lend you my heart and my blade.”

A rush of electricity ran up Dumuzi’s spine, as well as most of the crowd from the looks of things. Kallan clapped a hand to the back of his neck and looked at Dumuzi, surprised. Dumuzi smiled back. “He agrees,” he said.

Kallan shook his head, dumbfounded for a moment. Then he took a small pouch from his belt and handed it to Dumuzi. “Here. Call it alms or whatever you like. You’re going to need more of these.”

Dumuzi took the bag of coin gingerly, and very pointedly avoided looking at the Kepeshkmolik patriarch. Kepeshkmolik earned their keep, did not take debts lightly. Kallan looked down his snout at the younger man.

“You paid for this thing from your own pockets, and it doesn’t belong to you. It can’t. So take the karshoji coin and make sure you tell people you need it.”

Dumuzi shook his head tightly. “I can’t.”

Kallan sighed, his nostrils flaring again. “Godsbedamned Kepeshkmolik. Fine.” He turned to the crowd. “In grateful thanks to Enlil Aricholedarthicaesh for his timely assistance against the Blue Fire and his future assistance in our coming trials, I have gifted his Chosen and priests a sum of silver. We can’t all fit into this one little shrine.” A peppering of chuckles ran through the crowd. “Now I’m not going to tell you what you owe our Strychik Ozhon but keep in your minds, this is your shrine, your ally too. And I don’t think any of us will look too fondly on a clan that doesn’t take up its own weight in this matter.”

Kallan walked back down the steps, led by his Adjudicators to a group of waiting clan elders. Dumuzi shot a grateful glance at Tam and Mira Zawad. Saitha sidled up next to him. “We need something to put coin in. I have a strongbox I can give.”

“Go get it quickly,” Dumuzi said. “And send someone to figure out if we can borrow one of the Adjudicators’ vaults.”

She took the sack of silver and ran off, and he blew out a breath, thick with lightning. That had gone well, another step down a path full of pitfalls and obstacles. He risked a glance at his mother, still standing far, far from the shrine. Uadjit smiled and gave him a reassuring nod. You will manage, Dumuzi told himself. He glanced out at the horizon in the dimming light, at the shimmer of campfires. You have to.

When he turned back to the crowd, Arjhani was waiting for him.

“Well met, Son,” he said.

Dumuzi stiffened. “Well met.”

“I’ve been meaning to find you. To say … Well, to say thank you, I suppose.” Arjhani’s tongue fluttered nervously behind his teeth. “I know I haven’t … Well, you don’t love me like you love your mother, do you? Maybe I’ve given you reasons. But you saved me. You and your god. A lesser fellow would have left me to dangle over the pit for what I’d gotten into. Thank you.”

Dumuzi bit back all the things he wanted to say. For Arjhani, it was a profound display of humility. “Of course,” he said.

Arjhani nodded at the shrine. “I was wondering if you … If I could give it a try.”

“That’s what it’s for.”

But Arjhani didn’t move. “He won’t mind? I mean, given I was completely taken by the enemy. Not exactly ideal material.”

“Mistakes are mistakes,” Dumuzi said. “You can apologize if it makes you feel better.”

Arjhani tapped his tongue again. “I’m sorry, Dumuzi,” he said abruptly. “I’m obviously not … Well, there are things I am more skilled at than being a father.”

Dumuzi found it hard to meet Arjhani’s eye. He nodded. “It’s all right.” He gestured at the shrine. A small crowd was gathering around it, waiting for someone else to begin. “Here,” he said, “you go first. It will make it quite the fashion.”

He stood aside as Arjhani repeated the Vanquisher’s words—more or less—and again the rush of electricity flowed up the back of his scales. As he’d suspected, Arjhani’s act nudged others into their own attempts, the popular commander a suggestive force, even given his recent missteps.

“Well done,” Tam Zawad said, coming up beside him. “I assume, obviously.”

“It went well,” Mira confirmed, eyeing her handiwork. “Perhaps, after this, I might ask you some questions about consonantal shifts?”

“Perhaps,” Dumuzi said, utterly unsure of what she meant.

The crowd parted suddenly. Shestandeliath Geshthax came out of the city with a small retinue, including his daughter Narhanna and two young men, carrying a casket the size of a war drum and decorated all over with gilt runes. At each corner, the figure of a Vayemniri, arms wrapped around the box. Kallan straightened and went to the patriarch’s side, conferring in hushed voices. Dumuzi drew a sharp breath, and the whispers began.

“What’s happening?” Tam demanded. Mira shook her head.

“The Breath of Petron,” Dumuzi murmured. If there was any question of how dire things had become, that answered it. He glanced at Uadjit and Narghon—his grandfather watched the Shestandeliath patriarch with his jaw tight, his nostrils flaring. His eyes shining. He’d known.

Geshthax turned to the elders. “Should anything happen, I declare Shestandeliath Narhanna, my daughter, of the line of Haizverad, to be my selection for the throne of Shestandeliath.”

“Witnessed,” Narghon said, too briskly. “Good luck.”

Kallan glanced back at the crowd. “I don’t need to tell anybody to give the Shestandeliath some space, do I?” People moved back, whole armies began shifting closer to the pyramid, as Narhanna opened it for her father.

The Breath of Petron looked like nothing so much as a hand-sized piece of tree root made of blood-red stone, branching in at least six directions into finer and finer tubes. But unlike ordinary stone, it hummed with a peculiar power all its own.

In the third thousand years, Dumuzi thought, Versveshardinazar, the Opaline Terror, mined the Verthishai Loech Ternesh down to its roots, seeking the relics of Merciless Petron. For centuries, his slaves broke rocks until they found the corpse, and the precious remains of the Dawn Titan’s magic. Thus did Haizverad Who-Would-Be-Shestandeliath discover the Breath of Petron, a remnant of the titan small enough it could be spirited away.

“What does it do?” Mira whispered.

“ ‘In the first days, Merciless Petron claimed a kingdom that stretched to the sea,’ ” Dumuzi recited, “ ‘so flat and trackless that there was nothing to stop a stone rolled across it, nor the armies of her brothers and sisters. She claimed dominion over the stone and earth, and ordered fiery mountains to rise from the ground, a wall against invaders and a home for her red dragon steeds. When the Tyrants were slaves themselves, Petron brooked no imperfection, and those that defied her were turned to glass and stone at a word.’ ”

“What does that mean?” Tam asked.

Geshthax hefted the stone artifact in his remaining hand, shifting it with practiced ease so that the largest branch faced him. Grimly he strode through the crowd, out through the streets that surrounded the pyramid, the faint sparks of lightning clear along his jaw. Dumuzi thought of the rumors of Shestandeliath Geshthax, the reclusive patriarch, his grandfather’s closest friend. How he’d been ransomed by cultists of Tiamat as a cadet, who cut off his arm when Shestandeliath wouldn’t relinquish their artifact. How he’d led the Lance Defenders back to their hiding place when he’d escaped. How he’d denied the city the use of the Breath of Petron when the same cult had stirred up the ash giants and no one could agree if it was because he was a coward or because he wanted to punish Tiamat’s minions with his own blade.

“Watch,” Dumuzi said, and hoped Geshthax was as strong as the rumors suggested.

A bowshot from the last of the Thymari, Geshthax raised the Breath of Petron to his mouth. At a distance, Dumuzi could see the air around him crackle with lightning for a moment as he took a deep breath. And then he spat his breath through the strange instrument.

A note rang out, loud enough to shake the bones from their ossuaries down in the catacombs, and it grew preternaturally louder. Dumuzi fought the urge to cover his ears, even as those around him gave in. The Breath of Petron shook him down to his marrow—as it should. The magic of the Dawn Titans could never be seen as a trifle.

The rumbling came next, the groaning of stones deep below the earth waking and stretching. They erupted first at Geshthax’s feet, a building wall of dusty, unpolished granite. The Shestandeliath kept blowing lightning through the horn and the stones kept coming, a line, a wall that raced past Dumuzi’s line of sight, blocking all view of the army on the horizon.

The note extended into a song of its own, and Dumuzi felt as if he were melting into the sound. Dimly he imagined the grave titaness of whom this small piece contained such power.

Geshthax’s breath finally failed him and he collapsed, coughing, careful to keep the artifact from touching the earth even as it overwhelmed him. Strangers rushed to him, helping him to his feet, helping him back toward a worried Narhanna. The scales around his nostrils had turned blue. He wheezed, spitting blood.

Tam started forward, and Dumuzi could feel the surge of power from the High Harper’s goddess, ready to heal the ailing patriarch. In his own mind, he felt Enlil pressing forward and sensed the others he’d recruited to this unlikely priesthood tensing at the same urgent presence. He caught Tam’s arm.

“It won’t work,” he said. “The artifact demands a price. It commands the stones but it turns some of his lungs to glass. If you heal it, it will take back what it gave.”

“That’s not how these things work,” Tam began.

Dumuzi stared at the priest. “We’ve had that artifact for centuries. We know what it does.” He considered Geshthax being helped back inside by Narhanna and Narghon. “He’ll be made comfortable. Not everyone dies of the Breath of Petron.”

“Could you heal him after the battle?” Mira asked. “When you don’t need the wall anymore?”

“That presumes we’ll win,” Dumuzi said.

The air atop the pyramid flashed and boomed suddenly, sending more than a few warriors after their blade hilts. Kallan’s eyes went to the peak, even as two of his Adjudicators grabbed hold of him by the arms, ready to pull the Vanquisher to safety. Silence, and then a dark shape launched skyward, illumined by the last light of the sun as it wheeled around. The crowd parted again as the giant bat caught the edge of the pyramid, flopping down on its belly on the ground and chirruping, as Verthisathurgiesh Mehen dismounted, one arm tied up in a sling.

“Oh good,” Kallan said, grinning. “You brought that bat back.”

A tenuous smile tugged at Mehen’s expression as he handed the reins off to the Adjudicators. But then he found Dumuzi and he turned grim. “We need to talk to you,” he said. “Farideh needs your help and we don’t have much time. Come on.”

PART XI

ESCAPE

The Feast of the Moon, The Year of Resurrections Rampant (1441 DR)
Neverwinter

• • •

After uncounted years in the Nine Hells, returning to the mortal plane sent a chill right through Bryseis Kakistos’s ghost. She watched the rift she’d triggered seal behind them, making sure the magic was good and spent before she turned to Alyona.

Could have been harder, she said. Alyona said nothing, but looked up at the night sky above them, the full moon shining down like a disapproving matron. Bryseis Kakistos couldn’t look at it.

Bryseis Kakistos might have accepted her death with a little grace, eventually. She might have come to believe that it was all she’d bargained for, being allowed to persist as herself in the Nine Hells, a favored if unimportant courtier of Nessus, in the form of a burning spirit. After all, here was eternity, here was a little power, here was a position from which she could—one day—reach out to the world and master some small part of it.

She might have accepted her fate, if it hadn’t been for Alyona.

Moments or maybe eons after she died deep below the Chondalwood, she’d awoken on a plane of mists, and found Alyona beside her. They’d no more than embraced before archons descended, female and green-skinned, parting the mists to reveal a moon-drenched valley. The kingdom of Selûne. The Gates of the Moon.

Bryseis Kakistos held her sister tight—she couldn’t lose her, not after everything she’d given up, everything she’d built. Alyona turned to consider the entrance, the offer, not letting go of her sister, but still, looking, yearning.

And then the devils had split the mists, and taken them both.

Alyona, they explained, was still sealed to Bryseis, and while someone—surely!—could perform the necessary steps to separate them, it would be risky—terribly risky!—now that both were in the Nine Hells. Assuming, of course, she wanted her sister’s soul intact?

In that moment, Bryseis Kakistos began plotting ways to escape the Nine Hells, taking risks, stealing power. She was reckless, but who bothered to watch? A mortal soul languishing in the corners of Nessus, waiting for Asmodeus to deign to notice her? Her keepers knew to watch for alliances, for overtures to other archdevils. They didn’t listen as she whispered to the ghost bound to her heart.

I am still so sorry, she said. Alyona kept watching the moon. A strange, cool prickling ran through the core of Bryseis Kakistos, as if the moon were watching her back.

What are you sorry for? Alyona asked.

Bryseis Kakistos hesitated. All of it, she said, even if it wasn’t entirely true. From the Nine Hells she could see the waves and ripples that her actions cast across the world, the rise of a tiefling race, the offer of the Infernal pact. Now they might know each other, might band together, might find weapons they weren’t given in the old days. Now they couldn’t hide, could be harassed and chased off, could damn themselves more swiftly than ever before. It was all more complicated than “good” or “evil” and she’d always known so.

But perhaps she felt guilt at letting others think it was that simple.

I’m sorry I dragged you into it, she said. You haven’t deserved any of it—you were always the virtuous one. Alyona kept her eyes on the disk of the moon. And that extends—I shouldn’t have helped him make them like this. Not unasked for.

Still, Alyona said nothing.

I know how to undo it all, Bryseis said, I know how to destroy him.

Will that save them? Alyona asked. She turned at last to her sister. Our goal must be to save them. I cannot believe she will aid us if it’s vengeance alone, and without Selûne’s guidance, we’re doomed to wander, planeless.

It will save them, Bryseis said. How could it not, after all? But first, we need to find out what happened to my sons.

• • •

24

9 Hammer, the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant (1487 DR)
Snowflake Mountains, Erlkazar

REMZI PLAYED THE LITTLE FLUTE WITH NO SKILL AT ALL, BUT PLENTY OF enthusiasm. Brin sharpened his dagger against a whetstone and smiled to himself, thinking of his father giving him the flute to play and the same horrible noises coming out of it. Zoonie lowered her head, whining. Brin patted his leg, and the hellhound came and draped herself over his thigh. He scratched her ear and sighed.

Remzi stopped playing, and considered Brin with a furrowed brow. “You’ve got a gauntlet on your necklace,” he said at last. “Like the lord’s men.”

Brin fished his symbol of Torm out from his shirt, laid it across his palm. “I was supposed to be a priest,” he said.

“And a prince?” said Remzi.

“Yes.”

“But you aren’t either?”

“I’m sort of both and sort of neither.”

Remzi gave him a skeptical look that reminded Brin so much of Havilar he almost laughed. “You have a pet hellhound. I don’t think Tormish priests are allowed that.”

“Zoonie’s not a normal hellhound,” Brin said. “And she’s not my pet, she’s Havi’s.”

“Are priests allowed to have tiefling brightbirds?”

“As much as princes are.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means I have a tiefling brightbird and an almost-pet hellhound and that … Doesn’t change everything else.” He frowned down at the dagger. “Things are a lot more complicated when you’re an adult.”

Remzi rolled his eyes. “That’s what everybody says.”

Brin went back to sharpening his dagger, remembering when he’d first fled the Citadel of Torm at seventeen, knowing he didn’t belong there, knowing it was too dangerous for him to try to belong there. He’d imagined a whole flock of futures and not one would have looked like this one, with a tiefling child asking him questions, a hellhound on his knee, while he waited for a pair of imps to bring him news. The first time he’d seen Havilar and Farideh he’d been so afraid they were devil themselves, momentarily terrified for the state of his soul. But without them, without the dangerous help of the Nine Hells, where would Brin have been? Where would House Crownsilver and Cormyr have landed? He thought of the Citadel of Torm, of the holy champions who had taught him, tried to mold him into the right kind of nobleman, superior, devout, and true. How wrong it had felt and how much he’d been sure it was his failure.

Not your failure, he thought. You just aren’t the sort of champion Torm demands.

He took off the necklace. “Here,” he said to Remzi. “Take this.”

Remzi stared at him. “You shouldn’t give me anything.”

“I want you to have it.”

“It’d be a waste.” Remzi looked down at his lap. “She’s going to kill me still, isn’t she?”

“No,” Brin promised, even though he couldn’t be sure of any such thing. “I won’t let that happen.”

“How?” Remzi asked. “She’s scary. And you said she’s … she’s walking around in your brightbird’s body so you can’t even hurt her.”

“I have a plan.”

“What?”

“Just trust me. It will work.” I hope, Brin thought. Loyal Torm, I hope. He went back to sharpening the dagger, just in case.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” Brin said, not looking up.

“If she’s my mother,” Remzi said in a small voice, “are you my father? Or is he someone else?”

Brin hesitated. “I thought you said your father was a cowherd named Emmer.”

“You know what I mean.”

Brin examined the edge of the dagger, then slid it back into its sheath. He crossed over to where Remzi sat and handed him the symbol of Torm. “It’s got a little protection in it,” he told Remzi. “Wear it, all right?”

Remzi looked away, but put the necklace on. “I’m not stupid. You’re not answering because it’s so. Why’d you give me to the devils?”

“Nobody gave anybody to the devils,” Brin said. “And your father is a cowherd named Emmer.”

“I know.” Remzi fidgeted with the holy symbol. “Am I a prince too?”

Brin held back a sigh and imagined the roiling gossip that would overtake Suzail at the knowledge of Lord Crownsilver’s secret tiefling bastard, even if circumstances meant that Remzi could inherit very little. “No. And you don’t want to be.”

“I might,” Remzi said. “I don’t like cows. They’re mean.”

“Nobles are meaner,” Brin said. “And you can’t eat them.”

The air popped and Mot and Bosh unfurled in the little room. The little red imp looked harried and singed. He shoved Bosh toward Zoonie and flapped up to Brin. “We have a shitting problem.”

“What happened?”

“That staff is back in Toril,” Mot said. “Back and then pfft gone again. But enough that everybody is going wild. Have you looked outside?”

Brin went to the window and looked down the slope. In the snow, dark shapes clustered at the base of the cliffs around enormous bonfires and what looked like a ballista. Several of the shapes circled the camp on wings, as if trying to test the limits of Phrenike’s invisible wall.

“Lady Zariel has given up breaking through the usual way,” he said. “She’s desperate to look good in front of His Majesty—not that he’s noticing a shitting thing right now. Make it clear she deserves what she took.”

“Took from who?” Bosh asked.

Mot grimaced. “You are so stupid. Lord Bel! Lord Bel! She’s hardly held the throne long enough to warm it, how can you possibly believe that stupid propaganda that she never lost it?”

Bosh folded his arms. “I listen to my betters.”

Mot muttered something under his breath, then landed closer to Brin. “Tell me you have a plan.”

“Havi does,” Brin said, still wishing for something more solid. “Have you seen the necklace Bryseis Kakistos wears? It’s important to her. If I can take it, she’ll deal.”

Mot gave him a dark look. “What?”

“That’s a soul sapphire,” Brin said. “That’s where she’s keeping Havilar and Alyona. She doesn’t want to lose her sister. I’ve got the lich ready to defect, I think. Maybe she can undo it.”

“You’ve been parleying with the lich!” Mot hissed. “Lords of the Nine, are you insane?”

“Well, we don’t want her working against us, do we?”

“I don’t want her working at all.” Mot wrung his tiny hands. “Look, I shouldn’t offer this. But if you can get the soul sapphire, maybe … maybe I could take it away. Give you room to bargain. Without the lich.”

“But you have to do what she says,” Brin pointed out.

“Yeah, but nobody said anything about when. Maybe I just don’t hear her summons right away?”

Brin considered Mot. “Can you take Remzi?”

“What?” Remzi cried. “No!”

“For safety,” Brin said.

“He’s not going to be all that safe in the Hells,” Mot pointed out. He squinted at the boy. “Wait … you’ve been there before.”

A key jangled in the lock, and Brin shot a look at Remzi, who tucked himself behind the cabinet near the door, the only place that passed for a hiding spot in the little room. Zoonie came to her feet, whining uneasily, as Bryseis Kakistos entered the room, followed by Phrenike and a pair of skeletons.

“Lord Crownsilver,” she said, mildly. “I trust you’re well.” She looked around the room. “Please don’t tell me you’ve decided to do something foolish with the boy.”

Over her shoulder, Phrenike smiled at Brin. It sent a chill down his spine. “Is it time?” he asked.

“Shortly,” Bryseis Kakistos said. “And so all the heirs should be in place.”

“Did you ever find out which heir she chose?” he asked Phrenike. The lich’s smile slipped.

Bryseis Kakistos peered at him a moment, then smirked. “Oh. You’ve been talking, I see.” She glanced back at Phrenike. “Did he get to you?”

“Not exactly,” Phrenike said. She grabbed hold of Havilar’s arm, freezing Bryseis Kakistos in place. “I didn’t plan to do this now, but you force my hand. There are only eleven heirs down there. Did you think I couldn’t count?”

Bryseis Kakistos worked her mouth, fighting the lich’s freezing touch. One hand twitched.

“Right,” Phrenike said, grimacing. “Can’t talk.” She turned to Brin. “Well, Lord Crownsilver, before I wipe your beloved from the plane entirely”—she yanked the soul sapphire from Bryseis Kakistos’s neck—“care to make a deal?”

Behind her, Brin saw Remzi peek out from the cabinet. He didn’t dare move a muscle. “What do you want?”

“Oh, everything a prince of Cormyr can gain me, I should think.” She let the pendant swing. “Let’s begin with that Royal Magician.”

The spell on Bryseis Kakistos gave out with an audible snap. “Aquatin luokseni,” she muttered. The air sizzled, flashed, and popped like fireworks. Bryseis Kakistos broke free of the spell that held her and never looked away from Phrenike as she held out her hands … and a small jeweled metal box appeared in them.

Phrenike’s violet eyes burned brighter. “How did you get that?”

“How do you think I got it?” Bryseis Kakistos said. “You are without a doubt the laziest, stupidest person I’ve ever known to achieve so much, Phrenike. You stole my lichdom, my phylactery, and you didn’t even think to disguise it from me? To undo the spells I set on it? You think your hospitality is enough to make me forgive and forget the fact that it was you who betrayed me to Asmodeus?”

Phrenike had gone perfectly still. “I did no such thing.”

“Oh, was it Titus? Caisys? And you simply happened to be out of the room when the assassins came?”

“When you ruined your summoning?”

“I don’t ruin spells,” Bryseis Kakistos said. Her right eye started to twitch. “And I don’t intend to begin. Now, you can take your place in the ritual, die, and make yourself a new body, nice and easy, or”—she tapped her fingers on the phylactery’s top—“we can make this a lot more difficult.”

“You seem to forget I have your sister’s cage.” She wrapped a bony hand around the soul sapphire. “Would be a shame for something to happen to it.”

Bryseis Kakistos narrowed her eyes, the right one still twitching. Her hands tightened around the box until her knuckles stood out pale. “I suppose we’re at an impasse,” she said softly.

“It seems,” Phrenike replied.

“You’ve miscalculated. Zoonie,” Bryseis Kakistos. “Parosh renoutaa.” The hellhound came snarling to her feet. “Lord Crownsilver, the muzzle, if you please.”

“Oh, are you going to waste your dog on a feint?” Phrenike asked. Her left hand seethed an eerie greenness, sick and foul. “I can kill it, you’ll recall, rather quickly.” Brin’s heart leaped up his throat.

“You can have a crushed phylactery and a dead hellhound,” Bryseis Kakistos said. “Or we can all calm down. Lord Crownsilver, what say you?”

“Tarto, Zoonie.” The hellhound dropped onto her hindquarters, but kept growling at the lich. “I’m not taking off her muzzle.”

“Well, she doesn’t need the muzzle off, strictly speaking.” Bryseis Kakistos smiled, never taking her eyes off Phrenike, even though they still twitched. “Your true love’s soul is in quite a lot of trouble.”

Beside him, Zoonie whined, bouncing on her hindquarters, as if she sensed the danger Havilar was in. Brin hesitated. Havilar was more important than Zoonie—he would never argue otherwise. But dooming the hellhound was harder than he could have prepared himself for. “Perhaps we can come to a—”

Bryseis Kakistos gasped suddenly. “You little bitch!” she shouted.

At that moment, Remzi lunged at Phrenike, grabbing hold of the soul sapphire’s cord dangling from her fist.

• • •

DUMUZI LISTENED TO Farideh with the concentrated caution of someone hearing out a madwoman, and she knew it. He sat opposite her in the quiet of the Verthisathurgiesh guest quarters, listening without any interruption as she laid out their plans for the ritual, and only when she came to asking outright for Thymara’s Black Axe and the corpse of Nanna-Sin did he speak.

“Absolutely not,” he said, sounding surprised, as if he’d expected her explanation to land somewhere entirely different.

“Dumuzi,” Farideh said, “we really don’t have many options.”

“And I’m sorry to hear that,” Dumuzi said, “but that doesn’t mean you get to desecrate the grave of the Moon’s Champion or use my family’s artifact to bless the god of sin.”

Farideh pursed her mouth. Between her and Ilstan, it was hard not to think that they could surely wrest the black axe from Dumuzi. He might be stronger than both of them, but he had no magic to speak of. Mehen was on their side—he knew exactly where the body of Nanna-Sin lay and could get them there, or get it out.

No, she told herself. It would be easier to do things without letting other people in, but it wouldn’t be right.

“If we don’t find a spark,” she said, “then they’ll keep pulling each other apart. Then Bryseis Kakistos still has a way to end him, and Havilar is still a target.”

Dumuzi shook his head. “That’s something you should bring up to your god. We already stopped Gilgeam from stealing Nanna-Sin’s divinity—why would I just let Asmodeus take it?”

“It won’t make things worse for your people,” Ilstan said. “And it may make them better.” He looked at Farideh. “There are dragonborn wizards, after all, and if they are open now to the notion of worship—”

“We aren’t,” Dumuzi said flatly. “Certain cases aside.”

Stay calm, Farideh reminded herself. They had time to argue, to discuss Dumuzi’s concerns and explain their own reasons. She wasn’t in such a hurry to put these plans into motion.

Suddenly a gust of hot air flooded out of the room Sairché had been imprisoned in, and Farideh’s brand ignited in a flurry of prickling. She came to her feet just as Lorcan passed through the door.

There was no mistaking the curse had once again been wiped from him. His dark eyes seemed to smolder as he looked them over. But his gaze fell on her for only the briefest of moments before it darted away. Her temper surged, even as she was searching him for injuries.

“You’re back?” she managed.

He cleared his throat, and his wings flicked in that way that made him seem nervous. “I’ve come from Nessus,” he said, his voice tight. “From His Majesty … and guest. They wish to speak with their Chosen. Both of you.”

“I’m not his Chosen anymore,” Farideh said.

Lorcan chuckled once. “Well, darling, today is full of surprises. I’d get comfortable if I were you.”

She shook her head. “We’re … We’re in the middle of something. And you and I are going to talk—”

“It’s not so much a request as a warning,” Lorcan interrupted.

“Is that why?” she asked. “Does he know what we’re hoping to do?”

“I think he might.” His dark eyes found hers, and her heart started racing—with fear or with passion, and she was distressed to notice she couldn’t tell the difference with him. “Darling,” he said, “I’m only a messenger.”

Farideh turned to Dumuzi. There wasn’t time to goad him. “What would make the plan all right? Quick! What would he agree to?”

“I don’t know,” Dumuzi said. “You have to understand, Nanna-Sin … He clearly misses him. He clearly misses the pantheon he had. If it doesn’t protect us, I can’t imagine him doing anything to harm what little he has of the past.” His teeth gapped. “If anything’s going to be done to Nanna-Sin, I would think Enlil would want him brought back.”

“What if he came back,” Ilstan said, “but without the divinity?”

Farideh turned to him. “Can we do that?”

Ilstan shrugged. “We can’t. But … Asmodeus is at the peak of his power, one assumes. He’d probably be immortal. Probably retain his self. Although gods … they are both changeable and unchanging.”

“Would that do it?” she demanded.

Dumuzi shook his head. “I don’t know. I’d have to ask.”

“Ask!” Farideh said, or might have said. She could no longer be sure as her vision turned gray and she was falling, falling, into some other place. Her presence requested by someone with no need to ask if she was finished.

• • •

HAVILAR WASTED NO time once she’d been shoved back out of the dream world. She climbed back through the invisible door, into the world of mists, startling Alyona.

Oh, she said. Did you go?

You’re going to help me, Havilar said quickly, grabbing the other woman by the arm. Your sister is about to do the ritual and I’m not letting that happen.

Alyona shook her head. What do you imagine I can do?

You can hold her here, Havilar said. You can. I saw you do it in her dream—that’s not your head, that’s not your dream, but you stopped her, so don’t act like you can’t.

Alyona lifted her chin. Maybe, she allowed. I’ve never tried. She’ll be upset, she added.

Good, Havilar said savagely. Maybe then she’ll listen. Come on.

When they came back out into the world, they were entering a little room in one of the towers. Brin, Zoonie—Havilar floated away from her body, searching for the little boy, and spotted him hiding behind a cabinet in the corner. He saw her too, his eyes bulging in utter terror. She tapped a finger to her lips—shush.

“Lord Crownsilver,” she heard her voice say. “I trust you’re well.” Bryseis Kakistos looked around the room. “Please don’t tell me you’ve decided to do something foolish with the boy.”

“Is it time?”

Zoonie? Havilar said. The hellhound cocked an ear, her tail thumping against the floor. Good girl. Good. All right. You can hear me?

The hellhound made a grumbling sort of noise and coughed sparks, which was about as much as Havilar was willing to expect. Good girl, she murmured again.

Suddenly the memory of cold gripped her, a disorienting feeling as if her mind thought she was freezing stiff but her body had no such sensation. Alyona shouted as Havilar turned and saw the lich yanking the soul sapphire from her body’s neck. Bryseis Kakistos made no move to stop her, paralyzed as she was.

Get her free, Havilar shouted. She sped to Alyona’s side. Can we do that? How do we do that?

Quiet, Alyona said. She grabbed Havilar’s hand and plunged both their fists together through the back of Bryseis Kakistos. It felt as if she were punching through the crust on top of a thick layer of snow, only if lava lay beneath. Havilar yelped, but Alyona held her firm. Something deep inside the Brimstone Angel twisted, alive, and pulled a pulse of magic out of the two of them, and her arm jerked into motion, then her head, then she was speaking. “Aquatin luokseni.”

That was her, Havilar realized. She’d gripped the Brimstone Angel’s ghost.

Bisera, Alyona said. Bisera, you have to listen.

A flash of magic deposited a small jeweled box into Bryseis Kakistos’s hands. The lich looked surprised. “How did you get that?”

She isn’t listening, Havilar insisted. She shoved her ghostly hand once more through the body and grabbed a fistful of what she found there. She heard Bryseis Kakistos’s sharp intake of breath, so soft her enemies would have missed it. Havilar glanced at the little boy tucked in the shadows of the room’s corner, and pulled a little farther. Her own heart started to flutter—a sensation far more definite than anything she’d found in the misty plain.

“I suppose we’re at an impasse,” Bryseis Kakistos said, and Havilar couldn’t be sure if she was talking to the lich or herself.

Oh, I think I have the upper hand here, Havilar said. You come out now.

“You’ve miscalculated,” she said. “Zoonie, parosh renoutaa.” The hellhound came snarling to her feet. “Lord Crownsilver, the muzzle, if you please.”

Havilar froze, her arm sunk to the elbow in her own rib cage. What are you doing?

“Oh, are you going to waste your dog on a feint?” Phrenike asked. Her left hand seethed an eerie greenness, sick and foul. “I can kill it, you’ll recall, rather quickly.”

“You can have a crushed phylactery and a dead hellhound,” Bryseis Kakistos said. “Or we can all calm down. Lord Crownsilver, what say you?”

“Tarto, Zoonie,” Brin said.

Havilar hesitated, eyes on Zoonie, arm still half out of Bryseis Kakistos. The hellhound eyed the place she hovered with worried eyes, sparks raining from her jaws. Zoonie would do anything for her, she was sure of that. She didn’t release her grip, but she stopped pulling.

“Your true love’s soul is in quite a lot of trouble,” Bryseis Kakistos told Brin.

Do it, Alyona said beside her. It’s the only way.

Havilar shut her eyes and shoved her arm in up to the shoulder in one swift motion.

Bryseis Kakistos gasped suddenly. “You little bitch!” she shouted. Havilar pushed harder, her sight growing hazy, even as the sense that Bryseis Kakistos’s spirit was struggling against her grasp grew. Alyona pressed against her other shoulder—she felt the edges of their souls sizzle now as they contacted—and with her other hand reached in to grab hold of Bryseis Kakistos as well.

It hurt, it hurt more than Havilar could have imagined. If she’d been rolled flat as a farothai and run through a basilisk’s gullet, it couldn’t have hurt worse. For a moment she forgot who she was, where she was. She was only heavy and dense and trapped.

Then she opened her eyes and saw Remzi, one hand tangled in the leather thong of the soul sapphire’s necklace, hanging from Phrenike’s grasp.

“What a foolish little creature you are,” the lich said. “I suppose you favor your simpleton mother.”

Havilar reached for her glaive—her arms moved like they were filled with sand—but there was no glaive, of course. Bryseis Kakistos had no need for a glaive.

Destroy the phylactery! Alyona shouted. Havilar turned her head too fast and caught a glimpse of the tiefling twins, their souls twisted and tangled together as Bryseis Kakistos tried to escape. Havilar looked at the box in her hand—and her eyes caught the trio of tattoos someone had put on her wrist. Strange runes, unfamiliar runes.

But that second one … that second one looked like the shape Farideh drew before the lava vent opened.

Which wouldn’t save Remzi. Brin had his sword out and a dagger—he was going to do something unwise, she was sure of it. She would have too, if she had her weapon.

But then Zoonie leaped into motion. She howled and the flames that had been building in her jaws streamed forth to catch the lich’s robes aflame. Phrenike shrieked and twisted from the fire, loosing her grip enough for Remzi to twist free. In the same moment, Havilar touched her fingers to the mark. The floor before her ignited, smaller than Farideh’s lava vent but faster, hotter. She dropped the phylactery into the fire, as still-burning Phrenike reached for her son with green glowing fingers. The lich cried out in sudden surprise but didn’t fall.

Zoonie’s muzzle fell apart, the leather burned away, and no sooner had the glowing cage of metal hit the floor but the Nessian warhound sprang into Phrenike, seizing the lich’s neck and jerking—once, twice—

The spell unfolded, filling Phrenike’s bony hand as she clawed at Zoonie.

“Zoonie!” Havilar screamed. “Eshata! Eshata!” The hellhound dropped the lich, but not quick enough. Havilar watched that green glowing hand sweep around, forgetting Remzi, forgetting Bryseis Kakistos, reaching for the hellhound—

A dagger struck Phrenike’s palm not a handspan from Zoonie’s shaggy coat, tossing her arm backward with the force of the throw. Remzi ran around the lich, giving her a wide berth, to hide behind Brin, while Zoonie wheeled, scrambling up to her feet again.

Phrenike lay broken on the floor, her neck twisted, her violet eyes dimming. Havilar dared to move a little nearer, her feet fighting her like sellswords uncertain of a new mistress. The lich looked up at her. “You kill me and you have to hunt yourself up another heir,” she said.

“I do not,” Havilar said. “Karshoj to that stupid plan. You almost killed my dog.” Havilar looked down at her wrist and chose the first of the two tattoos, the one that looked like a snowflake. Light streamed from her wrist, a cone of sunshine. The lich collapsed into a pile of ashes.

“Havi?” Brin said, softly. “Havi?” She turned to him and smiled, nodded.

Brin rushed to her side, throwing his arms around her. “Oh gods, gods.” He kissed her and kissed her. It had never felt so good to have a form, Havilar thought, trying not to laugh.

But some part of her lurched. She looked back at the ghosts, at Bryseis Kakistos reaching for her beyond Alyona’s grasp.

You will not take this from me, she whispered.

“I will take this from you, because you have a terrible plan,” she said. “I’m going to fix it for you, because I like your sister. You had your chance. Now sit down.”

“Are you … Are you talking to her?” Brin asked.

Havilar remembered no one else could see the ghosts. Except …

She looked over at Remzi, who was watching her wide-eyed with the soul sapphire clutched to his chest. Zoonie licked his cheek, and he pushed her away without breaking Havilar’s gaze.

“Can you see them?” Havilar asked. “Or could you just see me?”

Remzi’s gaze darted over her shoulder. He gave a small, shy nod. “Excellent,” Havilar said. “Your job is to keep an eye on them and tell me if … well if one of them breaks free, it’s Bryseis Kakistos.” She pressed her mouth shut a moment. “I’m Havi, by the way.”

“Well met,” Remzi said in a tiny voice. Brin put an arm around his shoulders and squeezed. Remzi slipped out and moved behind Zoonie.

“He … has your sense of timing,” Brin said quietly. “Your insane courage.”

Havilar rolled her eyes. “And your aim, I guess.” She shook her head. “We have to set that aside for later. We need to get out of here.”

Mot landed on the table beside her. “Lady,” he said, nodding. “I see you’re back.”

“Well met, Mot,” she said. She winced as another yank came on her spirit.

I can’t force her into the sapphire, Alyona apologized.

Traitor, Bryseis Kakistos said mournfully.

It’s for your own good, Bisera!

“Hey, little boy! Give me that,” Mot said, beckoning for the amulet. “I know what to do with her.”

“No!” Havilar snatched it out of the air as Remzi handed it over. She looked at the stone in her palm—dark blue and refracting the light into the shape of a multipointed star. “Her sister is in here too. And she didn’t do anything, except maybe hope that Bryseis Kakistos would remember how to be decent.” She turned back to where the ghosts were still intertwined. But quieter now. Watching.

“Nobody is taking Alyona to the Nine Hells,” she said, for the sake of the ghosts and the living. “But,” she added, “I am willing to wager that Torm will spare a turning for you if you don’t behave.”

Bryseis Kakistos watched, hateful and furious, and Havilar was certain she was only biding her time. Fine, she thought. Better than stealing my body. She turned back to Brin. “First, we unlock the cells and find her staff,” she said. “Then we go get my glaive.”

25

9 Hammer, the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant (1487 DR)
Djerad Thymar, Tymanther

THE DRAGONBORN SHOPKEEPER’S NOSTRILS FLARED IN A WAY DAHL expected meant something, but he had no idea what. “I can’t go below sixty,” he said. “Especially not when you’re paying me in foreign coin.”

“You can weigh it,” Dahl pointed out. The shopkeeper only shrugged, sending the chain draped across his cheek swaying.

“Still sixty.”

Dahl scowled at the ritual book between them. There was only one other shop that dealt in magic items and components in all of Djerad Thymar, and its owner, he was told, had given most of her stock to the war effort and then joined up with a battalion of wizards.

“Sixty?” Bodhar said. “Who you selling to, Preskan? Can’t tell me the demands all that high. A pity,” he added, “because I seen some impressive things come of magic.”

The elderly tiefling with them snorted. “None of that comes out of an empty ritual book. Sixty’s definitely a premium.”

“Have to stay in business,” Preskan said.

“Aye, Lachs. Gotta find some way to pay the embroiderers for this frippery.” Bodhar ran a finger over the gold stitching on the book’s fabric cover. “Dunno, Dahl, does it match your dancing slippers?”

The dragonborn chuckled, though Dahl had a hard time telling if he was laughing at Bodhar’s charm or if the attempt were just failing. He’d chuckled the same way at seeing Thost—as if the sight of a human as big as a dragonborn surprised him or maybe that too seemed absurd.

“What if you do seventy,” Bodhar compromised, “and you add five spells to the pages.” He looked over at Dahl. “Would that work?”

“Eighty,” Preskan said. “And two.”

“Seventy-five and three.” A shield, Dahl thought. A magic circle.

A resurrection.

He pushed that thought to the side, even though it felt as though his heart was screaming and screaming for him to focus on it. She’s not necessarily going to die of this, he told himself. You still have time to hunt up a priest. In Djerad Thymar. Where the most powerful priest is a fifteen-year-old traditionalist who thinks people ought to let their own injuries heal because that’s how things have been done. Hrast.

He’d wanted to go with Farideh, to talk to Dumuzi with her, but she’d been firm: the fewer people in that room the better.

“Besides,” she’d said, “Sairché’s still trapped in there and if you get too near, she’ll wake the curse again.” She’d kissed him. “I promise I’ll be fine. This is only talking.”

The shopkeeper’s teeth parted and snapped shut. “All right.” He pushed his own ritual book over to Dahl to peruse. “Choose what you’d like.”

Dahl flipped through the pages. Preskan wasn’t a very accomplished spellcaster from the look of things. He found the circle, though, and the shield, and marked them with his fingers, trying not to picture casting them around Farideh in the hopes of keeping the battle away from her, only to have her die of something from inside.

The grated door that separated the shop from the city swung open with a rusty creak. “There you are,” a familiar voice said. “Well met.”

Dahl spun around to see Tam Zawad enter the little shop, followed by Mira. “What in the Hells are you doing here?” he asked, too surprised for pleasantries. Tam grasped his hand.

“I brought him,” Mira said crisply. “You need that curse off.”

“Lorcan left,” Dahl said. “It’s fine.”

“Still,” Mira said.

“And it seems there’s a lot of things I’ve missed while you’ve been away,” Tam said. “Zhentarim. Demons. Unther. Giants with strange new magic. A dragonborn god—”

“Vayemniri,” Dahl corrected.

“You have a brightbird,” Tam went on. “That’s fairly interesting.”

“Isn’t it?” Bodhar chimed in. He held out a hand. “Bodhar. That’s Thost. We’re Dahl’s brothers. That there’s Lachs, he’s an uncle of Farideh’s—I gather you know her.”

“Tam Zawad.” The High Harper shook Bodhar’s hand with a cool smile. “I understand you have been dragged along on this adventure.”

“They know,” Mira said flatly.

“Couldn’t have been helped, really,” Bodhar said. “But hey, I know when a secret’s a secret, and you can barely get a word out of Thost anyway.”

Dahl began to shush Bodhar—talking about “a secret” was near enough to revealing it and Lachs didn’t know—but he stopped, remembering. “You can cast resurrection magic, can’t you?” he said to Tam.

Tam looked startled. “Who died?”

“Not yet. I need to talk to you in private. I’ll come back for this,” Dahl told the shopkeeper. “I want the magic circle, the shield, and the … oh, the sentinel.” He handed over entirely too many coins for this and the first round of components. He nodded to Bodhar. “Can you get the rest of the things and bring them up to the enclave?”

“Sure enough,” Bodhar said. Dahl handed a list and the rest of the sack of coins over to him, but Thost intercepted it with a raised eyebrow. Bodhar scowled at him. “Who’m I going to dice with here?”

“I’d be up for some dicing,” Lachs chimed in. “Make the most of my holiday as it were.”

“Be back in an hour. I’m closing early.” Preskan said, eyes on Tam. “You’re the one who’s been shepherding Kepeshkmolik Dumuzi? They say the battle will begin in the morning.”

“If not sooner,” Tam said.

The scaly ridges over Preskan’s eyes rose. “In the dark? Maunthreki are seldom so bold.”

“Gilgeam is a maunthreki of a different stripe,” Mira said.

Dahl led them to the Verthisathurgiesh enclave, grateful that his hazy memory didn’t get them lost in the city’s winding passageways. The young dragonborn at the door directed Dahl and Tam to a small room nearby the guest quarters. Mira positioned herself at the door. The room held a few chairs and one of the low tables like the guest quarters. A painted scene of Vayemniri battling against a blue dragon and its giant minions deep in what looked like a canyon.

“Here,” Tam said. He set his fingertips against Dahl’s chest, murmuring a prayer to the Moonmaiden. Silver light flashed, bright enough to sear his eyes and leave the reflection of dark eyes, a pale face floating in his vision. Dahl gasped involuntarily, his lungs filling with air much cooler than the room around them. When the blessing had faded, he was surprised at how much straighter he stood, how much lighter his chest felt. Even without being near Lorcan or another devil, it had been working on him.

“Thank you,” he said to Tam.

“You’re welcome. Now: Why do you need a resurrection?”

“Farideh’s planning to do something extraordinarily risky and thus far there is no chance at all I can stop her, so I’m trying to be prepared.” Dahl took a vial from his pocket and held it out. “Will that suffice?”

Tam took the crushed diamonds from him, considering the crystals through the dusty glass. “Where did you get this?”

“I stole it,” Dahl said. “From a lunatic warlock. Who, if it matters, I don’t think would much mind if it went toward keeping Farideh alive.” Panic crawled up his chest again and he quashed it. “Will it be enough?”

Tam held the vial up to the torchlight, squinting. He made a face and went to the door. “Mira? Can I borrow you a moment?” He shut the door behind her. “Are those sufficient clarity to do a resurrection?”

Mira sighed. “You need spectacles.” She held the jewel dust up to the light. “Who died?”

“Precautionary,” Tam said. “Hopefully it’s of no use at all.”

She handed them back. “They’re good, not perfect. I hope they’re not for our friend in the cellars.”

“Of course not,” Tam said, popping the cork off. “Who do you think I am?” He poured the gritty dust onto his flat palm until it filled his hand, and considered it, mouth pursed. “It’s enough for one,” he said. “And it’d better be quick.”

Dahl swallowed against the tight feeling rising up his throat. “How quick?”

“Preferably as soon as she hits the ground. Do you know where the ritual’s meant to happen?”

Dahl shook his head, suddenly afraid if he spoke, he’d lose all semblance of sensibleness. He drew a deep breath and tried to push aside the image of her collapsing onto the stones. It didn’t work. “Shit.”

“Thank you Mira,” Tam said, steering his daughter back toward the door and shutting it behind her. He considered the frieze that ran along the top of the wall rather than looking at Dahl, and Dahl was grateful he did. “So. This got serious rather quickly.”

Dahl blew out another breath. He thought of rainy days in the tallhouse in Suzail, of late nights in taprooms, of teaching her rituals beside a campfire, of the moment he found her again in the prison camp, of buying the rod to apologize to her, of that night in the festhall that came down around them, of seeing her after, of knowing how much he’d been avoiding the truth.

“It really, really didn’t,” he said. “It took ages. And even then I mucked it up.” He gave a bitter laugh. “Now she’s going to get herself killed because Asmo-stlarningdeus has to drag the whole multiverse down with him.”

Tam sighed. He came over and set a hand on Dahl’s shoulder. “You’re borrowing worry,” he said.

“It’s what we do.”

“No,” Tam said. “We prepare. We keep our heads straight. We maintain balance. We know the cost.” He squeezed Dahl’s shoulder. “This is the very worst part about loving someone. Anyone. They may be your whole heart, but that doesn’t stop the world from handling them as ungently as it handles any of us. So you prepare. You keep your head straight. You don’t dwell on what might be, even if you’ve noted it. You remember that even if they are your whole heart, they are their own self. And I think you know that. I think you’re managing that.”

“It’s not enough.”

“It’s better than most can manage. Now,” he went on, “I think it would be wise for you to find Farideh, remind yourself the world’s not over, and maybe let me talk to her about what exactly she’s intending to do.”

While Farideh might be willing to discuss her plans with Tam, Dahl thought as they left the little room, he wasn’t going to talk her out of it. Maybe he shouldn’t talk her out of it—there was no arguing things were getting more dire by the day.

“I’m going to have to ask for directions again,” he said, considering the corridors. “This place is like a maze.”

“I get the feeling from Mira,” Tam said as they walked, “that I can’t expect you to come back to your handler duties anytime soon.”

And after, my priest speaks—Oghma’s words ran through his thoughts. “There are some things I have to do,” he said as they approached the entry. “I’m sorry.”

“Not as sorry as I am,” Tam said. He dropped his voice, “Maybe I’ll try and offer Mira your position. Get her into the house.”

Dahl cast a skeptical look at the High Harper. “Mira? Did you listen to none of your own lecture back there?”

“Fair,” Tam said with a wince.

A flash. A rush of air. A sound like hot fat hitting a pan and the sudden, strange taste in his mouth of wintergreen and old wine. Dahl flinched and reached for his sword. When he could see clearly again, a faint mist crowded the entryway, around the forms of Havilar, Brin, a small boy, an enormous black hound, and a pair of imps.

Dahl pulled his sword—Havilar meant Bryseis Kakistos, meant the same woman who’d been dangerous enough to taunt Graz’zt. But then she coughed. “Karshoj,” she cursed. “You’d think they’d figure out a way to make that less unpleasant. I mean, doors aren’t hard, and it’s just a magic door.” She glanced to her right, the same place the boy was looking. “Oh thrik. No one cares.”

“Havi?” Dahl asked.

She looked up at him, surprised, her face gleaming with sweat. “Dahl? You came back?”

“Tam?” Brin said. “What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing with a hellhound and two imps?” Tam returned.

“Never mind,” Havilar said. “First, where’s Farideh?”

“In the guest quarters,” Dahl said. “Do you know the way?”

“Not well enough to make the portal go there apparently,” she said dryly. “But I can walk.” She glanced back to the empty spot in the air. “Hey—you see him? He’s a proper priest, so if Torm falls through, I’m pretty sure Selûne would like a karshoji word with you.”

“Havi, are you all right?”

“Mostly. I might,” she added to Tam, “have a problem to run by you later. Or sooner. It depends on some things.”

• • •

ONE MOMENT, DUMUZI was considering Farideh’s suggestion. The next her eyes shifted, fluttered—rolled back in her head, he realized as her face went slack and she started to fall. He leaped forward and caught her, easing her down to the floor. There was a thud behind him as Ilstan fell.

“Why didn’t you catch him?” Dumuzi demanded of Lorcan.

“Why didn’t his god?” Lorcan returned. He sat on the edge of the table and folded his arms, looking down at Farideh with an expression Dumuzi couldn’t read at all.

After a moment of this uncomfortable silence, Dumuzi spoke. “She said you went to Abeir. How … how was it?”

“I see why you left,” Lorcan said, not lifting his gaze.

“We didn’t leave exactly,” Dumuzi said, but Lorcan waved at him dismissively as if he were a gnat. “Did you and she have a falling out then?” Lorcan made a small, noncommittal noise. “Does the Peredur know you were coming back?”

Lorcan shot him a deeply baleful look. “You can stop talking to me now.”

“What’s happening?” a voice shouted from the other room. “Someone tell me.”

“This is the reward for treachery, Sairché,” Lorcan called back. “Stew in your ignorance.”

A pause. “What’s wrong, Lorcan? Did your warlock give up on sparing your feelings?”

Dumuzi rose and crossed to the room where Sairché waited. The cambion sat up straighter when she saw him—she looked more ragged than she had the last time he’d seen her, her nails bitten and her lip bloody with worrying. “Nothing is happening,” he told her. “Kindly be quiet.” And he went to shut the door.

“Wait!” she cried. And despite his better instincts, Dumuzi stopped. She licked her chapped lips. “I have another proposition,” she said. “Given … given my unchanged circumstances and everything I’ve overheard thus far.”

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“It’s not for you!” she said. “It’s not for you, it’s for your god.” She smiled nervously. “I assume the godling with his demon army still marches?”

Dumuzi nodded. “They’ll reach us within the day.”

Sairché drew a deep breath, as if trying to steady herself. “Look, there’s no questioning my fate in this—I’m doomed. No one’s going to wipe the curse from me. If I leave, I’ll get killed. So … So the best I can do is make an impression. I need to be on the winning side here.”

Dumuzi came into the room another few steps, closing the door behind him. “What does that mean?”

“I hear,” she said, “that you’re planning to bring an offer to your god, a provisional overture of assistance from Asmodeus, with regard to one of his dead. It doesn’t sound as if you think he will accept that offer as it stands. Perhaps if a devil army were added to the pot, it would make the difference.”

Dumuzi hesitated. It might—life again for Nanna-Sin, a force to stand against the demons and maybe save Vayemniri lives. “What do you want in exchange?”

Sairché chewed her lip again and shook her head. “Farideh needs to be the one to come and tell me if it’s so. Farideh has to be the one to … to help me summon them.”

“So you can harm her?”

“No. She won’t be harmed. She will be free to complete the ritual she’s planned out.”

“And if Enlil doesn’t want the devils?”

Sairché gave a short, nervous laugh. “Well, we’re all shit in the midden then, so it hardly matters, now does it?”

Dumuzi thought she might be exaggerating some—how bad could an army of demons really be? But he remembered the predations of the maurezhi. “I’ll ask,” he said, and left the room, closing the door behind him.

He sat down on the couch farthest from Lorcan and his brooding vigil, eyeing the cambion for a moment before deciding he wasn’t doing anything immediately nefarious. He laid his head back on the cushion, closed his eyes, and reached toward the god …

Enlil stands atop the mountain, waiting for Dumuzi’s arrival. The sky above seethes with storm clouds, and the thunderheads seem to coalesce into the black-scaled Vayemniri, even as he dissolves back into them. Enlil’s eyes glow like moonlight, like the flash of lightning. He is the mountain. He is the storm. Dumuzi feels his heart shiver.

But he blinks, and they are once more atop Djerad Thymar, and Enlil stands beside him, as present as flesh and blood. Uncle Lightning Bolt, Dumuzi thinks.

“The army of Gilgeam is nearly here,” he says.

Are you frightened?

“I am Vayemniri,” Dumuzi says.

There is no shame in fear, the god says. Shasphur was afraid before he led Those-Who-Would-Be-Kepeshkmolik from the Citadel of Endings. The warrior twins feared their own deaths at the Battle of Arambar Gulch.

“You don’t need to quote ancestor stories for me,” Dumuzi says. Enlil chuckles. “I have a message,” Dumuzi tells him. “An offer. My friends … They’re caught between two gods that have intertwined. They think they can help them separate and keep both from oblivion. But they need a second spark of divinity to raise the second god. They want what lives in Nanna-Sin.”

Dumuzi speaks and Strychik Ozhon is gone and there is only the mountain and the thunderhead, the god who stretches beyond the planes, beyond the reach of time.

No one may have Nanna-Sin, his voice rumbles like the storm. The Night’s Light. The Moon’s Champion. You tell only stories of his corpse, but do you know who he was? A warrior, true and proud. A friend, light of heart and quick of tongue. None could know Nanna-Sin and not love him. Gilgeam will not despoil him, and neither will these failed, foul gods!

“They’ve offered an exchange,” Dumuzi shouts into the wind. “Asmodeus will call his soul back, raise him to life again. They will give us reinforcements to defeat the army of demons. It may save Djerad Thymar and more!”

The storm rages a moment longer, and in a flash, Enlil is standing beside him again, still looking stern, still looking furious. None can raise him, he says. I have seen it. His priests all tried.

“But a god?” Dumuzi asks. “A god at the peak of his power?” He thinks of Ilstan’s words. “We will be stronger for it. And we will know Nanna-Sin again, in some way.”

Enlil hesitates once more. Tell me the ritual. Tell me what your friends would do. Dumuzi explains, everything Farideh had told him, adding in the resurrection of Nanna-Sin. Enlil frowns the whole time.

Who would be the vessel for Nanna-Sin? he asks.

“Me, I assume.”

No, Enlil says. You are my Chosen, and if I am to be a part of this, you must represent me, be my vessel. Will you do this?

“Of course,” Dumuzi says. His assent brings a smile to the god’s face, and Enlil’s clawed hands close on what is first empty air, then the gleaming shaft of a javelin, each end capped in hammered platinum. He hands the weapon to Dumuzi, who takes it gingerly. “But then, who will hold Nanna-Sin’s axe and call him home?” he asks.

Enlil gestures up at the clouds, forcing the storm to part so that the moon, atop its luminous boat, shines down on them. I can’t tell you, he says. Ask the axe.

Dumuzi pulls the black axe from his belt, tilts the obsidian head until it catches the moonlight, until it reflects back a familiar, impossible face.

• • •

ILSTAN NYARIL WALKS through rows and rows of scrolls and books—the library of the Silent Room, the temple of Oghma. The long aisles are empty of loremasters, the altar at the end of the temple devoid of petitioners. Ilstan moves from one side to the other, crossing over the bright-tiled walkway down the center of the temple.

But this time as his feet touch the center, a voice calls his name. Ilstan stops. Remembers.

He looks toward the altar, but it’s not Oghma’s, not anymore. There’s only a simple stone table, and an old man in gray silk robes that seem to float on the currents of the air. A beard hangs to his belt, and he holds a pale wood staff in one hand.

“My lord?” Ilstan says. The man inclines his head, then beckons Ilstan nearer.

“My lord,” he says again, “I’ve come to petition you—”

The Silent Room stretches as he moves, Azuth still and speechless in the distance. Ilstan’s breath stops—he feels as if he’s smothering, but still he begins to run. It’s as if a cord snaps, and Ilstan finds himself at the edge of the dais, looking up at the Lord of Spells.

You don’t have much time, he says. I cannot remain as I once could.

“My lord, I bring an offer of assistance,” Ilstan says. He explains the offers of Enlil and Asmodeus. The plan as it stands.

Azuth smiles crookedly. His face becomes Ganrahast, the Royal Wizard of Cormyr. It becomes Ilstan’s father, Tildor Nyaril, with his trim beard and graying hair. It becomes poor dead Devora, one eyebrow raised in challenge.

… When they say the devils are bound to the rule of law, the Lord of Spells voice comes, dreamy and distant again, they do not mean laws like those of mortals, lean and uninspired … How could a creature—destined to be bound by its agreements, its promises, the power of its very words … how could such a creature not, in the long millennia of its life, create laws of a sort that wind themselves around the realities, the expectations of mere mortals, twisting these prisons into freedoms? They need you, you see … Thriving and endless …

“That may be so,” Ilstan says. He studies the shifting faces, feeling madness pull him in like a whirlpool. “My lord, I think you will know better than I. Who else can say what is in the mind and the heart of Asmodeus than you who have shared a form? But … all proof seems to say that he doesn’t wish to be unmade, that he knows he will be. All proof suggests that the Chosen who remains to him doesn’t seek to undermine us.” He cannot say when the god’s face returns, but when it does, the presence of the Weave becomes palpable, and his whole self is buoyed. “You must decide, and swiftly. The ritual is prepared.”

Azuth looks down at Ilstan, as if he is a student presenting ancient treatises as his own notions. I am the Lord of Spells, he says, all traces of madness gone. I know what you intend.

“Will it succeed?” Ilstan asks.

You may. You should know, the Lord of Spells says, a mortal body wasn’t meant to hold a god’s power. There’s a very good chance it will kill you.

“But not a certainty,” Ilstan says. “Others have survived it.”

You may, Azuth allows. He reaches down, sets a hand upon Ilstan’s shoulder. Every bone in his body is suddenly aflame with magic. Or you may not, he says. Take no more action until you are prepared for that.

In his dreams, Ilstan Nyaril weeps as the magic of the Weave, stronger than he’s ever known it, knits his flesh to his bones to the plane to the god. This is everything he has devoted himself to, condensed and shaped and given life. If his life is the price? It is a worthy price, he thinks, to make certain this isn’t lost.

“I have done so many terrible things in my madness,” Ilstan says. “If death is my penance, then I am glad this is the death I’m granted.”

Azuth pats his shoulder, regarding him sadly. He puts the staff into Ilstan’s hands—it feels as if he’s holding a moonbeam or a cold breeze.

Ilstan Nyaril, he murmurs, you are a worthy vessel.

• • •

THE BONES LITTER the floor, so thick Farideh cannot see the stones beneath. The ossuaries lie tipped and scattered, this one’s lid against the wall, that one’s overturned in the nest of a pelvis. She must sort them all, a kind of penance, for a sin no one’s named. She wonders if these are the people she’s killed, and she thinks of cultists and devils and the poor Chosen of the internment camp, but there’s no way of knowing. The bones have their secrets, and they’re not telling her.

She sorts out the skulls, and the whispering starts. Dragonborn, human, gracile elf, tiefling—she realizes holding one that it can only be Criella, the midwife of Arush Vayem, with her horns polled, and the sadness that strikes her burrows down into her core. Does she know all of them? She looks again, and they all have horns. They’ve all become tieflings.

The air in the room shifts. She looks up and sees Asmodeus, standing in the midst of the scattered bones of the dead. She remembers the deal and the danger.

So it comes to this, he says, his voice hot and terrible and beautiful as a wildfire roaring through a forest, and there’s no pretending he’s some fiction of her sleeping mind. Your granddam would be proud.

“I suspect she’d rather I ended you,” Farideh says, fighting the urge to fall to her knees. “If this works, you’ll have another chance. Enlil will let you have Nanna-Sin’s divinity to replace Azuth’s. You just have to let Azuth separate and resurrect Nanna-Sin.”

Minus what makes him a god?

“Minus what makes him a god,” Farideh agrees. “He’ll live, and that’s enough for Enlil.”

Asmodeus drags a path through the bones, describing a circle around Farideh. Her pulse shifts, slowing to match his footfalls, while her fear yanks on her heart like it’s a fallen comrade—move, move, move.

Perhaps he should manage it on his own, Asmodeus says. If he wants the Night’s Light returned, he can use his own magic.

“He can’t,” Farideh says. “He isn’t powerful enough, not yet. But you can.”

Until I trade what I’ve gained for myself for the dregs of a manifestation that’s been dead for millennia. Did you consider that?

The weight of his disappointment threatens to crush her, even as she’s sure she doesn’t care. She lowers her eyes, though, a compromise of servility and pride. “I have. You’ve been looking for another spark for some time, haven’t you? That was the aim of the internment camps, to steal enough from other gods to make yourself something. You knew Azuth was bound to escape.”

Clever girl, Asmodeus says. That was the aim of more schemes than you can fathom. Did you know, then, in Neverwinter, that the Nine Hells reached out to claim what the aboleths have been hoarding? You’ve been in the thick of things since—

The next moment he is gone, and she is alone with the whispering bones of tieflings and her own clattering heart. The absence shakes her nearly as much as his presence does, and for a terrible moment she feels unmoored, half-emptied. What was she doing here?

The next breath the god returns. He considers her with eyes like dying stars. What do you gain from this?

“The world doesn’t end.”

He chuckles, and her blood simmers, her nerves writhe. I didn’t ask what the world gains. I asked what you gain.

“Am I not a part of the world?”

It doesn’t do, his terrible, beautiful voice rolls through her, to let debts hang.

I would not owe you for this. So name your price.

Farideh exhales, every want, every wish boiling up in her thoughts—no desire is too impossible, too hedonistic, too small to be dragged up by the promises of the god of sin. She says nothing.

Do you want to survive it? he asks.

“I want this to work,” she says, and her voice trembles. “Nothing can get in the way of it working. Not even that.”

Asmodeus smiles, and it’s like the world is ending, with all the terror and relief that comes with such ends. Clever, clever. Then what will you ask for?”

Farideh swallows. “You’ll leave my family and my friends alone. The Hells do not touch them unless they request it.”

The mortal ones.

“Yes,” she says. “And Lorcan.”

For a moment there are only the whispers of the bones, and when she looks up, Asmodeus is gone. She waits this time, and it’s hardly a breath later that he says in her ear, Lorcan is my willing vassal.

“And you can let him go,” she says. “Cast him out of the Hells. He has a soul. He should have a chance.”

You don’t think his nature will lead him right back to me?

“Maybe,” Farideh says. “But how can you know, if Lorcan never has the choice?”

I am a god, he reminds her.

“If you knew what every soul was bound to do,” she said, “then there would be no reason for devils to tempt us.”

True enough, he says. I notice Sairché has pledged the pradixikai to your cause. An interesting … choice. Will you bargain for her as well?

Farideh looks down at the tiefling bones. “When did she—”

Farideh startled awake, every nerve in her body screaming, as the dream abruptly ended. “Wait!” she gasped, before she could recognize it was over.

“Is it done?” Dumuzi asked, sounding hoarse. Beside him Ilstan was also awake—though the smile he turned on her was so dreamy and beatific that she thought perhaps they should make certain. Lorcan stood between them, staring at her as though she had a scorpion perched on her chest.

“Yes,” she said. But she hadn’t gotten an answer. She cursed every devil in the Nine Hells—they never answered straight—before she realized there was something lying in her lap.

The rod stretched across her knees, its ruby shaft engraved with strange runes that seemed to run backward, to blur her eyes and whisper in her ears as she tried to read them. One end was broken off in a jagged stump, the other formed a claw around a black stone shaped like a skull. The whole thing made her bones itch.

She picked it up gingerly and the creeping feeling stopped. She wet her mouth. “I suppose he says yes.”

“That makes three,” Ilstan said.

“But we need four,” Dumuzi said. “Someone has to stand for Nanna-Sin and wield the black axe.”

“Can’t you?” Lorcan asked, staring at the ruby rod.

Dumuzi shook his head. “Enlil intends to be there as well.” He held up a javelin, its points covered in gleaming platinum. “Nanna-Sin doesn’t have a Chosen, exactly.”

Lorcan looked up and met Farideh’s gaze as she stood. “Can anyone do it?”

Dumuzi hesitated. “No, I mean, the axe … chose. It showed me who it wants. In the dream. But I don’t know—”

Just then the door to the guest chambers opened, and Havilar came in, panting. Lorcan’s hands filled with flames. But Farideh knew at a glance this wasn’t Bryseis Kakistos. She stood so quickly she dropped the ruby rod, and rushed to her sister. Not until she embraced Havilar did she believe it was real.

“Oh gods,” she gasped, sobbing despite herself. “Oh gods, you’re all right.”

“Sort of,” Havilar said anxiously. “I need some help.”

“So do we,” Dumuzi said, sounding relieved. Farideh let go of her sister and looked back to see Dumuzi holding out the Black Axe of Nanna-Sin. “This is yours after all.”

Havilar’s eyes widened greedily. “Really?” She snatched the axe from Dumuzi, grinning as if she no longer noticed whatever was making her sweat so. Farideh laughed to herself, so grateful to have Havilar back that gods and planes and devils didn’t matter. She glanced toward the door, toward the crowd of people who’d come into the room along with Havilar. Brin and Remzi, Zoonie—dangerously unmuzzled. She smiled as Dahl followed them in, glad he was close again. And then Tam—

“Tam?” she said. “What are you doing here?”

The High Harper had begun to answer when someone else floated across Farideh’s field of view, and Farideh’s cry of alarm cut him off. The Brimstone Angel—no, two Brimstone Angels—in ghostly form, took shape between her and the door, their forms fading in and out of substance, just as she had in the prison camp.

“Havi!” Farideh cried, grabbing her sister’s arm. “The ghosts!”

“You can see them too?’ Havilar said. She looked back at the tieflings and they grew slightly more solid. “So can Remzi. That one’s Alyona and the other’s Bryseis Kakistos.” The first held the second as if she feared her twin would fling herself off a cliff, while the second twisted against her as if it were only a matter of time before she fell.

“Twins,” Farideh said.

“Yeah, that’s what I need help with. Alyona and I are still tethered to her.” Havilar considered the axe keenly. “Maybe I can chop the connections with this fabulous relic.”

“No,” Dumuzi said. “You need that to be the vessel of Nanna-Sin.”

“The what?”

Farideh cast an eye over the crowd—she didn’t relish explaining their plans to this many people.

But then they were all in this with her. She went back to the couches, to where Caisys’s scroll waited. Lorcan set a hand on her shoulder, stopping her, before pointing to the ruby rod lying on the floor. She picked it up, and suddenly the humming in her bones she hadn’t noticed stopped. She relaxed.

“You have to be careful with that,” he whispered. “Promise me, darling, you’ll be careful.”

“I’ll be careful.” She looked up at him, stomach twisting. She still had to tell him that she wanted to end the pact. That she didn’t want to see him again. The very idea seemed so mad, so dangerous, it made her balk. But then she remembered everything he’d done, all the ways he’d hurt Dahl. I’ll be careful, she told herself.

Farideh unrolled the scroll. “You may know,” she started, “that Azuth and Asmodeus are currently … linked and battling over the same divinity. It’s going to destroy both of them if they’re not stopped, and they can’t stop themselves. Caisys—a warlock from the original Toril Thirteen—helped us make this ritual to prevent that.”

“Caisys?” Havilar said. Both ghosts stilled, both startled it seemed. “Caisys is alive?”

“He’s Garago,” Farideh said.

Havilar made a face. She turned, gaping, to Alyona. “You were mad for Garago?” Alyona seemed to protest—her mouth flickered, her expression turning dark and furious. “He keeps things in his beard,” Havilar said, as though that ended any argument.

The ghost of Bryseis Kakistos kept her silver eyes on Farideh, calmer now. Drifting.

“She’s moving,” Remzi said.

Havilar looked over. Alyona’s attention swung to her sister and pulled her back, away from Farideh and the scroll. Again, the agitated flickering suggested an argument, one with many fierce gestures toward Farideh.

“The ritual,” Farideh went on, “should pull the gods down, incarnate them briefly. Long enough to move bits around. Enlil’s agreed to let Asmodeus take the divinity of Nanna-Sin.”

“Who is that?” Havilar asked.

Farideh hesitated. “The dead moon god in the catacombs.”

“What are the weapons for?” Havilar asked.

“Lodestones,” Ilstan said. “They are minor aspects of the gods themselves. That should draw them so as not to let their power scatter, their selves come apart.”

Both ghosts now drifted nearer to Farideh, Bryseis Kakistos peering over her shoulder but Alyona still holding firm to her sister’s spirit.

“So I have to hold the axe,” Havilar said, “and then, what? A dead god jumps inside me?”

“And then jumps out,” Farideh said. “Nanna-Sin should end up raised, immortal, but not a god.” She glanced up at Tam who was staring at her. “You think it’s mad.”

“Yes,” he said. “I see why. It’s very risky, and if you succeed, then you bolster one of the most evil gods worshiped on Toril.”

“If he’s a god,” Farideh pointed out, “then he has to follow the rules of a god. Evil, but stable. He wants and needs us to keep surviving, to keep thriving. You can’t say as much for him if he’s only an archdevil.”

The ghostly face of her ancestress again filled her vision, and Farideh jerked away. Silver eyes glared at her, the skin of her face peeling back to reveal a skeletal jaw, bare teeth. Farideh looked away—there was no argument that would convince her to go along with Bryseis Kakistos’s plans.

The ghost swerved in front of her once more, gesturing at the swirling cloud of her hair.

“She wants to talk to you,” Havilar said. “She says you know how to. I don’t think you ought to bother.” She considered the other ghost, and made a face. “Maybe. All right, maybe she has something to say.”

Farideh hesitated. “Dahl, there’s a comb in my top drawer. Can you fetch it?”

The ghost drifted back a pace as Dahl brought her the ruby-studded comb she’d enchanted in the prison camp so that she could speak to Bryseis Kakistos there. He looked uneasy as he handed it to her. “I can’t believe you kept this thing.”

“Preparing for the worst,” she said and shoved the decorative comb into her hair, scraping her scalp.

The ghost sharpened, solidified. You have forgotten something important, the ghost said. Caisys wasn’t thinking.

“I’m not falling for any tricks,” Farideh warned her.

No tricks, Bryseis Kakisto said. Call it a courtesy. I want with all my being the destruction of Asmodeus. I cannot fathom how you’ve come to a place where you wish to aid him. But … She faltered, then added quickly. I would not let my descendants fall to fiends. That’s all.

“Why would that happen?”

The gods will come most easily if you call them near to their planes, she said. You have a god of the storms, a god of the moon, and two gods lingering in the Nine Hells—you need to be outside, high up if you can. Which means you will be exposed to the battle that’s coming. You need to be shielded.

“I can cast a shield,” Farideh said.

“You can’t,” Dahl interrupted. “Not while you’re doing something else. You can’t concentrate on both.”

Precisely, Bryseis Kakistos said, though Dahl couldn’t hear it. Moreover, you will be in the midst of fiends—demons from your enemy’s side. If you don’t set a protective circle around this ritual the moment the gods reach you, you’ve set yourselves up for something very unpleasant taking up residence in your bodies the moment that force vacates them.

Farideh looked to Dahl. “She says we need a magic circle.”

And enough silver to drown a werebear, the ghost added.

Dahl reached into the bag he was carrying, withdrawing a smaller leather sack about the size of his two fists together, and dropped it onto the table beside the scroll. Farideh loosened the neck of it. “I went and got a new ritual book. I made a point of getting a shield and a magic circle,” Dahl said. Farideh got the bag opened and looked inside to see more powdered silver than she’d ever imagined in one place. Enough to drown two werebears, she thought, a little giddy.

“I have your back,” he said.

Farideh came to her feet and kissed him on the mouth, not caring who saw. “Thank you.”

Well done, Bryseis Kakistos said. Now all you need is a place to cast this that will catch all their notices.

“It’s a pyramid,” Havilar said. “We’ve always had that.”

26

THE FAINT GLIMMERINGS OF DAWN JUST LIT THE EDGE OF THE HORIZON. From so high up, the sun seemed imminent, but Churirajachi Kerashna, daughter of Versengethor, of the line of Abinirash, knew better. Another hour, maybe an hour and a half, before the sun broke. That didn’t seem to stop the army trudging on toward Djerad Thymar in the dark.

“The demons are all at the front!” the man clinging to her waist shouted over the wind. “They see in the darkness!” Amurri, she thought, trying to make the lonely name stop feeling overly familiar. Just Amurri.

“Do you think he knows they can’t be replaced?” she asked, pulling the reins so that her bat, Ishaniki, wheeled westward, coming around to pass the army again.

“I can’t say! I’m not an expert on demons! We don’t usually get them in the other world!” He resettled his grip. “Do you fly on these a lot?”

“Every day!” she said, chuckling. “Not usually scouting an army.”

“Do you think they’ll let some of us join you?” he asked. “I would like this, I think!”

Kerashna laughed. “So long as you earn it. Which way’s the wind blowing on that? You think we’re getting a new clan?”

“I want it,” Amurri shouted over the wind. “I think a lot of people do. It’s hard to read the sikati, but she wants safety for us, and she’s … I don’t know the word.”

“Honorable?” Kerashna suggested. Namshita had the sort of presence that made you want to stand a little straighter, answer a little quicker. An elder already, she thought. “Gotta choose a name,” she called. “Maybe you’ll get one out of this battle.”

They came up on the western flank of the army. She urged Ishaniki down for a closer look. Torches punctuated the dark shapes of troops marching in formation.

“How important is the jewelry do you think?” Amurri asked.

“Pretty important,” Kerashna agreed. “That way everyone knows at a glance you’re Thymari. But there’s not much to pierce on your faces is there? It’s all smooth. So I don’t know.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Of course it hurts,” she replied. “You’re getting holes stabbed in your face. But I’d say it’s worth … Karshoj!”

Ahead of the demons, they drove a line of chained Vayemniri.

A lance of yellow energy shot past them, singeing the giant bat’s left wing. They dropped sharply, plunging a handful of feet, and Kerashna reached back to be sure Amurri didn’t leave the saddle, even as she yanked Ishaniki’s reins hard.

“The Son of Victory!” Amurri shouted. “He’s seen us.”

“Up, up!” she shouted. “Kick her in the ribs!”

The bat screeched, a needling sound that made Kerashna’s ears itch even when it had passed. If Gilgeam had seen them, his winged demons wouldn’t be far behind. There was no chance for a single scout to rescue those captives, she told herself. Another bolt of yellow light blazed past as the bat climbed and climbed into the cold air. “Hold on very tight!” she told Amurri. There was no time to lose.

• • •

WAR DRUMS BEAT a furious pulse for Djerad Thymar. Even in the heart of the Verthisathurgiesh enclave, Mehen fought back the building anticipation and anxiety the sound stirred in him, despite the years. He pushed into the guest room with his uninjured shoulder, with a treat for the boy who was and wasn’t his grandson in his other hand. The hellhound by the foot of the bed leaped to her feet.

“Lie down, Zoonie,” he said irritably. The dog sat but laid her enormous head—once more muzzled—on the quilt that covered Remzi’s lap as he sat against the headboard. “Well, Dahl managed to make a sending to your parents.”

“Are they all right?” Remzi asked.

“Better now they know you’re fine. Here,” Mehen said, handing Remzi the handled bowl. “It’s called indhumicha. It’s hot, it’s sweet, it will help you sleep.” Particularly, Mehen thought, with the few drops of chmertehoschta he’d stirred into it. The boy had been up all night long, and the racket of a battle wasn’t going to help things.

“It looks like porridge,” Remzi said skeptically.

Mehen shrugged. “A little. It’s got corn flour, honey, anise, and … you don’t have it in Aglarond, but it’s called fahel. Put it in pies and things.”

Remzi took a cautious slurp. “It’s good,” he said, sounding relieved. Then, “Did Havilar drink this? When she was little?”

“On special occasions,” Mehen said. “We lived up in the mountains, so some things were a luxury.”

“Is she going to fight in the war?” He looked Mehen over, wide-eyed. “Are you?”

Mehen tapped his injured arm. Better suited, this time around, he thought bitterly, to caring for babes and staying out of the way. Karshoji Vozhin. Karshoji Lorcan. Kallan up on the wall. Uadjit leading a cohort. His girls standing atop the pyramid, racing the demons. And Mehen couldn’t move his sword arm. “Priest’s busy,” he said. “I’ll find something to do.”

“You have a really big sword,” Remzi pointed out. “Maybe you should use a smaller one, while your arm’s hurt?”

“I’ll think about it,” he said. “Drink your indhumicha.”

Remzi gave the drink another cautious slurp. “Do the drums mean that they’re attacking already?”

“No,” Mehen said. “When they drum like that”—he clapped his hands, matching the beat—“it means attackers are in sight, and everyone needs to make ready.”

“And I have to go to bed.”

“You’re seven,” Mehen reminded him. “And you have no weapons.”

Remzi frowned. “I have a sling to scare off wolves. I mean, at home I do.”

Mehen smiled—he sounded so much like Havilar. “In the morning, if you’re needed, I will find you a sling. Provided you go to sleep.”

“Maybe a sword?”

“Maybe a sword,” Mehen said. At seven, a child should have a sword, even if he’s only a cowherd. “Are you excited to go home?”

Remzi shrugged. “Yes, but I’m liking my adventure. The parts without the ghost, I mean. It’s going to be boring when I go home.”

“Boring isn’t bad,” Mehen said. “Boring lets you get your feet under you.”

“My feet are under me.”

“You’re seven,” Mehen reminded him. “You’ve got a lot of adventures ahead of you.” He nodded at the bowl. “You finished?”

Remzi drank the last of the indhumicha and the rest of the sedative, handing the bowl over to Mehen. “If the city gets taken while I’m asleep,” he said, snuggling down under the covers, “what do I do?”

“If that happens, I still have one good arm to carry you off with. Stay with Zoonie until someone comes for you.”

“Thank you for … the porridge thing,” Remzi said.

“You’re welcome. Get some sleep.”

Mehen closed the door and went back out into the sitting room, just as Farideh and Dumuzi came back in, that horrible ruby rod in her left hand. Between Mehen and them, Lorcan waited on one of the low couches, tense and twitchy—that, more than anything, made Mehen nervous.

“What’s the word?” Mehen asked his daughter.

“They’re moving Nanna-Sin,” Farideh said. “Everything should be set in maybe an hour.” She blew out a nervous breath. “And I have to talk to Sairché for some reason. How are you?”

“I will be better when all this is passed,” Mehen said. One more act, one more ritual and they’d be through with all this nonsense about gods. Farideh hugged him, and he flinched as she jostled his arm.

Farideh pursed her mouth. “Will you just let Tam heal it?”

“You’ve got Tam up to his elbows in gods,” Mehen said. “Besides, there’ll be plenty of folks needing his healing spells more than I do.”

“You can’t wield your sword, though,” Dumuzi said.

“Happens when you get old,” Mehen said. He nudged Farideh toward the cambion’s door. “Go have your chat.”

Farideh and Lorcan exchanged a look as she passed him. Her step slowed, just for a moment. “She said alone,” Farideh told Lorcan.

“Not surprising,” he said, a touch gruffly.

“I need to talk to you,” she said. “After.”

Lorcan looked away. “Of course. I’ll be waiting.”

Mehen snapped his teeth. Another thing they might be all through with after this, and it was only a very small part of him that regretted the loss of Lorcan.

“Have you seen healers?” Dumuzi asked.

“No, I’ve just been wandering around with a useless arm,” Mehen retorted. “Of course I’ve seen healers. They got the joint reset, but there’s damage inside. They say it’s going to take a long time to heal and it’ll fall out again. Probably through with the falchion.”

Dumuzi’s teeth parted, anxious, and Mehen sighed. “Don’t. Don’t feel bad. I’ve done this enough times I’ve had it coming.” He looked at the door Farideh had disappeared through. “I do wish I could do something to protect them, though. Much as I’d like to trust the lot of you, you’ve hardly shaken the eggshells off your heels.”

“You can be healed by divine magic, though,” Dumuzi said.

“Maybe. Maybe not. Doesn’t always work with old injuries or old bodies.”

“You aren’t that old,” Dumuzi said, and he sounded so much like Uadjit that Mehen chuckled. Dumuzi only grew more solemn. “Do you accept Enlil as an ally?” he demanded.

Mehen snorted. No—every part of him wanted to say no. Every instinct, every lesson he’d learned—you didn’t yoke yourself to a tyrant. You didn’t tie yourself to a god. But he hesitated. He thought of the vision of the black-scaled Vayemniri, his hand on Dumuzi’s shoulder. He thought of the way Dumuzi had described the god—He sees himself as a father. A parent and a soldier. And so are you. That balance, Mehen thought, between protecting and smothering. Between trusting and neglecting.

“Yes,” Mehen said. “An ally and a comrade.”

Dumuzi nodded. “Then I think this might work.”

He clapped his hand to Mehen’s injured shoulder, harder than Mehen would have expected the boy to manage. A jolt went through him, the feeling of the lightning biting back, followed by the strange ringing voices he’d heard when the god had first appeared in the Vanquisher’s Hall. For a moment he was aware of every bone in his skeleton, and then the smell of fahel and fennel burned his nostrils. His ears thrummed with a beat that his heart fought to match.

Be well, a voice said. We need your sword.

The next moment, Mehen stood in the sitting room, sling loose around his neck with his arm out as though he’d shoved Dumuzi off. The boy only regarded him with a satisfied smile as Mehen rotated his shoulder tentatively.

“Well,” Lorcan said dryly. “You’ve gained a bit of skill while we were gone, haven’t you?”

“Thank you,” Mehen said, his ears still pulsing. But Dumuzi wasn’t listening.

“The drums,” he said. Mehen listened—the beat wasn’t in his ears. The drummers had changed the rhythm—faster, more urgent. A message to all parts of the city to take their stations.

“He’s here,” Dumuzi said.

• • •

YOUR ARMY IS HERE. Havilar scowled back at the ghost of Bryseis Kakistos, washed out by the growing sunlight. Alyona still held tight to her arm, but they didn’t struggle as they looked over the side of the pyramid.

Havilar cursed. Of course they were—and she was still stuck up here, waiting for everything to begin.

“You’re supposed to be checking his work,” she said to the ghost. “Not watching the battle.”

Down on the stones of the pyramid, Dahl paused in his construction of the magic circle meant to protect them, but he held his tongue. Pity, Havilar thought. She could use a fight.

He’s fine, Bryseis Kakistos said dismissively. The circle’s simple. The shield trickier. What you’re doing is the complex part.

Havilar moved nearer to where the ghosts hung. Down below, the battling fiends and humans and Vayemniri were too small to even gain a sense of who was winning or losing. She tapped the black axe on her belt and thought about her glaive, down in the Adjudicator’s enclave with the rest of her armor.

We talked, Bryseis Kakistos said offhandedly. Alyona and I.

“Is that why you’re being so helpful?”

One of the reasons, the ghost said, but she didn’t elaborate. Alyona smiled at Havilar.

She’s keeping her promise, Alyona said. Then, But I’m keeping mine too, to you.

That was probably for the best. For all Havilar wanted to see parallels between Alyona and her twin and Havilar and Farideh, none of Fari’s crimes could hold a candle to Bryseis Kakistos’s.

She didn’t think, anyway.

Havilar turned back to Dahl. “Are you done yet? I want to get a chance to fight some demons.”

“Well, if it were up to me, you could be down there,” he said, eyes still on his runes. “And I could be down in the enclave with your sister, instead of Lorcan. But it’s not up to me.”

“Oh, don’t be stupid,” Havilar said. “She likes you better. She told you that. She told me that.”

Dahl looked up at that. “What did she tell you?”

Havilar grinned at him. “Sister secrets. But, come on. You’re supposed to be smart. She kissed you in front of people. In front of Lorcan. She’s private. For Farideh, that’s basically the same as … as me ripping Brin’s breeches off in the middle of a crowd. She likes you. Stop fussing.”

Dahl regarded her warily a moment, a smile spreading on his face. “Well. Fair then. Are you scared?” he asked.

“Probably,” she said. “Farideh warned me.” She looked back at the ghosts. “I should be more scared. But I’m so tired of all this that I’m starting to get numb to it. But … I keep thinking about Remzi and about the ancestor stories they have about the Wailing Years, and I really don’t want him to have to grow up fighting monsters and devils and things because he has to, because Azuth and Asmodeus melt into one thing or explode or whatever.” She scowled down at the runes. “I don’t understand gods. Seems like we’re always getting the worst of their messes.”

Dahl sat back on his heels and looked up at her. “It does,” he agreed. “Sometimes they’re very helpful, and sometimes you’re just wishing they would stop giving you notice. But that’s the way it is.”

“That’s a horseshit answer, Dahl.”

He smiled. “That’s not up to me either.”

The air snapped, and a board, covered with a sheet and holding a body that seemed improbably long, appeared in the center of the circle. Ilstan, Brin, Tam, and Mira stood at the corners.

“Watch the circle!” Dahl shouted as Mira stepped back from the body.

“Is that him?” Havilar asked, a queer feeling curling in her stomach. She lifted the corner of the sheet, and that was answer enough. At least he looked peaceful.

Brin moved to stand beside her, tucking an arm around her waist.

“The circle’s ready,” Dahl said. He looked out toward the army, to where the air was growing thick with the dark shapes of flying demons. “Time for the shield.”

• • •

“THEY’RE FAST,” FENKENKABRADON Dokaan said to the Vanquisher and the sikati as they stood on the glass-smooth top of Shestandeliath’s wall, looking down at the army advancing swiftly toward Djerad Thymar’s northern side. “You have to give them that.”

“The Son of Victory knows his time is borrowed,” Namshita said. “The victory at Shyr was stolen. He needs to prove his deal with the Dark Prince was worth it.”

“You think it’s going to be worth it?” Kallan asked.

Namshita’s mouth tightened. “A great many people are going to die today. So I would say no.”

On either side of Kallan, rows of archers held their arrows nocked and ready. At either gate, a ballista waited to be rolled out. A far cry, he thought, from being a sellsword. He’d told Dokaan and Namshita not to leave his side. If he couldn’t turn into a decent general overnight, then he’d make do with two ready-made ones by him.

“Not as big as I was expecting,” Kallan said. “We ready for a siege?”

“So long as we hold the river,” Dokaan said. “We can keep getting supplies from Arush Ashuak.” He shifted his crutch to spare his injured leg. “It’s the demons I’d worry—chaubask vur kepeshk karshoji!”

The front lines of the army of Unther were solely of the Abyss. Hulking monsters with bull’s horns and fists like tree stumps. Slippery shadow-creatures. Squat spiky beasts like brutal toads. Winged women and men who perched atop the bull-demons or flew above their fellows.

Or goaded the line of chained dragonborn that ran ahead of the army, now visible in the growing light. Kallan’s heart squeezed. Only a dozen or so, but still—a dozen or so! Their snouts had been wrapped in leather, their hands chained behind them. Too far to pick out clan piercings, but that didn’t matter.

“Send a cohort out to retrieve them,” Dokaan said. “Cavalry, they’re far enough ahead, we can make a run while the archers cover—”

“No,” Namshita said. “Those ones”—she pointed at the shadowy demons—“they are fast. They’ll cut your cavalry out before it ever reaches them. If I were you, Vanquisher?”

Kallan turned to her. “Yes?”

“Have the archers shoot the captives,” she said solemnly. “They cannot be rescued, but they can be saved.”

“Madness,” Dokaan cried. “We’re not out of options.”

A green-scaled man at the center of the line stopped, just within bowshot. His pause jerked the chain, stopped the line to a ragged stop. To his left and right, the others glanced back, but the green-scaled man just stared up at the wall. Could he see them? Kallan wondered. Could he spy his own clan among them?

“They’re within range,” Namshita said.

“Hold,” Kallan ordered, the shout repeated down the line.

One of the winged men dropped behind him, clawed hands glowing. He set his hands on the green-scaled man’s shoulders. “They will make him,” Namshita whispered. “That’s what they’re doing. Succubuses take over your mind.”

Other winged humans came up behind the remaining prisoners, pressing other magic to them, forcing wills that weren’t their own. Kallan felt sick—worse than captives. They were within range, he thought, watching the green-scaled man twist as though fighting the succubus standing behind them. Another landed beside him, building her will on the others.

The demons are in range, he realized. And still.

“Loose arrows!” he shouted. “They hold your targets for you!”

Arrows filled the air, followed by the sizzle of the Sixth Red’s fireballs. The succubi tried to scatter, but a full two-thirds of them were caught in the storm of projectiles and knocked to the ground. Whether they had survived or not hardly mattered when the front line of the Untheran force hit them, the bull-headed beasts and spike-covered toads trampling their prone forms.

And those of the prisoners. They’d sacrificed themselves to take out an equal number of Gilgeam’s demons, like something out of a karshoji ancestor story. Kallan glanced back up the pyramid’s slope, toward the peak where the flashing lights of stirring magic could be seen.

All of this is like something out of a karshoji ancestor story, he thought. And he hoped if it turned out to be one, no one made Yrjixtilex Kallan out to be anything he wasn’t.

The first bull-headed demon slammed into the wall, nearly knocking Kallan off his feet, and sending a rain of stone shards down the slope of the wall. He swept his gaze over the army, counting the big brutes, just as a ray of golden light streaked over his head, striking the pyramid in an explosion of granite.

“Come on, Dumuzi,” he muttered. “We’re going to need that god back.”

• • •

FARIDEH STOOD AT the foot of the bed, just beyond the circle of runes, expecting a trap, but unable to find the proof of it. “You want me to kill you?”

“No, that would actually ruin everything,” Sairché said. “Have you listened to a word I’ve said?”

Shadow-smoke leaked off her arms, her nerves driven by the persistent beat of the war drums as much as dealing with Sairché—she didn’t have much time left. “If I break the circle,” Farideh said, “one of your sisters will find you.”

“One or more of them,” Sairché said.

“And they’re going to kill you.”

“Yes.” Sairché’s mouth twitched in an uneasy smile. “Hopefully quickly. But you can’t do it. That would make this entire plan fall apart. You need the pradixikai to come here.”

“It’s as good as killing you,” Farideh said, not sure how she felt about the offer.

Sairché rolled her eyes. “Well, then you should be all the more pleased with this plan. You get your revenge. Lorcan gets to be rid of me. Your friend gets reinforcements—”

“What do you get?” Farideh asked.

Sairché fell silent a moment. “I get to be free. So far as anyone knows, the oathbreaker curse is permanent. It’s not going to wear off. And, as Dumuzi made abundantly clear, there aren’t many gods out there that are keen to do a favor for a devil like me.” She paused as if waiting for Farideh to say something. “Don’t you owe me a favor still?”

“You cleared them,” Farideh reminded her. “What about Asmodeus?”

Sairché chuckled. “That would be disrupting the hierarchy quite baldly. He might,” she allowed, “but also he might decide one day to mend his ways and become the footman of Lathander. I wouldn’t hold my breath. No, my very best hope is to assist you with all I can, and pray”—she said this with a desperate smile—“that Asmodeus takes notice and plucks my soul up from the Styx.” She folded her hands together. “Besides, we come back to the fact that I’m completely trapped here. Best case scenario, I’m left alone to go slowly mad in a cell the size of a dragonborn’s bed.”

Farideh had seen the pradixikai kill people in Neverwinter—even if it was Sairché they’d be killing, it felt abhorrent. But somehow it seemed crueler to leave her trapped here—and she couldn’t deny that fact made it more tempting to do just that.

“I hate you,” Farideh said. “I can’t say that about many people.”

“Well if it makes a difference, I hardly think about you personally anymore.”

“I hate giving you what you want,” she went on. “But I’ll do it.”

“Wait: there’s another part,” Sairché said. “It’s very important. Lorcan cannot let me come to harm. So you can’t tell him you’re doing this. But you need to make certain he’s near, because he is the only one who can control the pradixikai after they … after the deed is done,” she decided with the faintest tremble in her voice. “He must be in the room not a moment too late, or you’ll be dead too. And then I can kiss Asmodeus’s good word good-bye.” She licked her lips again. “Do we have a deal?”

Will you bargain for her as well? Asmodeus had asked of Sairché. Whether that boded well or ill for Sairché in the world beyond, Farideh wouldn’t have dared guess. Out in the city beyond, the drums’ beat shifted, became more insistent, more frantic. Sairché turned toward the door. “Sounds like you’re in a hurry.”

“Fine. Let’s do it,” Farideh said. She went to the door and looked out into the sitting room. Dumuzi and Mehen were gone, but Lorcan remained, sitting quietly on the couch. He looked up as she came out. “Is it time for that ominous ‘talk’?” he asked.

“Not yet,” she said. “Don’t go anywhere.” She closed the door again.

“I bargained the pradixikai’s aid,” Sairché reminded her. “Make sure he knows that.” She folded her hands nervously. “Make sure they know that army’s full of demons. Good, big ones. They won’t ask twice.” She smoothed a hand over her bare scalp, as if trying to memorize it. “You were … a surprising opponent, Farideh. You made my days interesting at least.”

“Go to the Hells,” Farideh said.

Sairché snorted. “I suppose I will. Tell Lorcan …” She sighed. “Never mind. He knows exactly how I feel. Let’s stop dawdling.”

Without another word, Farideh dragged a foot through the runes, scattering the powder that made the magic circle hold against devils. Sairché gave a sharp gasp as the magic failed.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Sairché’s golden eyes held hers as the cambion licked her lips nervously. Farideh took a step toward the door, and another, another, until her hand touched the handle. Sairché gathered her legs under her, rising slowly.

The first erinyes appeared near where Farideh had broken the circle. Dark-skinned, dark-haired, and not as big as the pradixikai erinyes she’d seen. Sairché backed up to the wall.

“Little Sister,” she said. “Oathbreaker.”

“Neferis,” she said. “Hold a moment.”

The erinyes didn’t listen, drawing her sword as she stepped up onto the bedframe. Another trio of erinyes appeared on the far side of the bed, and then a second, on the nearer side—both led by one of the huge pradixikai. Sairché’s eyes widened at the sight of them, but she seemed to relax. She found Farideh’s eyes.

The air went out of Sairché in a gasp as Neferis’s sword plunged into Sairché’s belly. One of the other erinyes dived forward, grabbing the cambion’s arm as if to yank the prize away from her sister.

Farideh fumbled with the knob as Sairché started screaming. By the time she got the door open, Lorcan was already there, already pushing in, and one of the erinyes had cut Sairché’s head partway from her shoulders. Farideh’s gorge rose and she turned away again.

“Stop!” Lorcan shouted, and mercifully, unbelievably, they did. Every sound in the room beyond the devils’ breath ceased. “Is she dead?”

A pause, a horrible fleshy sound. “Looks like,” one of the erinyes drawled. “She was an—”

“Oathbreaker, yes, I know.” He said nothing for another long moment, then turned back to Farideh. “Are you all right?” Lorcan asked, almost too soft to be heard. Farideh nodded, risking a glance over her shoulder. There was so much blood—

“You have to order them to take the battlefield,” she whispered. “Sairché bargained their aid to Enlil. Asmodeus already thinks it’s happening. You have to do it and you have to do it now. I’m sorry.”

Lorcan looked at her as if she were mad. “Asmodeus already knows about this?” he said carefully. She nodded. He looked back. “Seven’s not going to do it,” he murmured. “Shit and ashes.

“Megara, Charonea,” he barked. The pradixikai erinyes sneered around their terrible tusks but took notice. “His Majesty has bargained the might of the pradixikai to aid Djerad Thymar in the defeat of the Traitor Graz’zt’s beloved demons.”

“Demons?” the farther one, a white-haired high-cheekboned creature. “What sort of demons?”

“Goristros,” Lorcan said. “Vrocks, hezrou. Succubi,” he added with special emphasis. Now he had their attention. “They’re attacking, and His Majesty has business in this city he doesn’t want disrupted. Bring all twelve furies to the field, northeast of the city. You kill demons, leave the humans and the dragonborn.”

The white-haired one turned to nod at the two sisters at her side, but the other, red-eyed with her dark hair in twin braids, threw up a hand. “We don’t have twelve,” she said. “And we don’t have a leader. Who’s in charge?”

Lorcan scowled. “You can’t figure that out yourself?”

“You have Mother’s holdings,” Neferis pointed out. “You have to advance us. I told you that.”

Lorcan clenched his jaw as if he were biting back a scream of frustration. “Ascend Tyndaris and the twins. Neferis, congratulations, you’re now the leader of the pradixikai. Get your forces to Toril.”

The words themselves were magic. Hellfire erupted around Neferis, cocooning her in flames. As they fell away, the erinyes was revealed, bigger and fiercer looking than before, now clearly one of the fearsome pradixikai.

“What the shit do you think you’re doing?” the braided erinyes demanded.

“Putting someone in charge who isn’t going to stab me in the back, Megara,” Lorcan said. “I should think that fairly obvious. Next time, think a little more carefully on whom you’re tormenting.”

Neferis stepped down and dragged one obsidian-sharp hoof over the stone floor. “Charonea, send one of yours to find Faventia and Fidentia and tell them to choose their fury-sisters if they haven’t already figured out that much. We ride at once. Megara.” She paused, a deadly threat in that moment of quiet. “Let’s go.”

Lorcan turned to Farideh, expression grim. “You’ll understand,” he said quietly, “that Sairché’s set off something bigger than she realized. I need to go to Osseia. And you need to get to your post.”

“Be careful,” she said. He started to answer, but seemed to think better of it, stepping back from her as he called up the whirlwind that would carry him into the Nine Hells.

• • •

LORCAN HAD NO more than let his feet touch the bone-tiled floor of the fingerbone tower but he was sprinting for the exit, leaving his sisters to sort themselves out. He leaped from the window, flying with every bit of strength left in his wings, for the skull palace of Osseia, hoping that Sairché had not left him a trap buried in the gift of her death.

Sairché was dead. He reminded himself of this over and over. He’d seen her corpse, her mangled bloody corpse, but he couldn’t believe it was real. Sairché was dead. He was alone.

Lorcan landed before the jaws of the palace, running the moment he touched ground, forcing his way past throngs of greater devils into Glasya’s court room. The Princess of the Hells, Archduchess of Malbolge, Lord of the Sixth, Glasya lounged upon a silken couch, flanked by pit fiends and surrounded by the constant thrum of her hellwasp swarm. His stomach balked as he ran straight toward her—this was the only way to make certain he wasn’t eviscerated and the only way to be sure that Farideh didn’t perish at a demon’s hands, he told himself, shoving a horned devil out of the way.

“Highness!” Lorcan shouted, ignoring protocol, ignoring courtesy. Glasya sat straight, her black gaze the fathomless maw of a terrible beast. Lorcan threw himself to his knees before her, panting, knowing he had to wait for her notice. An eternity unfolded. Then two.

“What is it, Lorcan?” she finally asked.

“Highness, His Majesty is incarnate in Toril,” Lorcan said, trying to make his words come slowly, easily. Not the frantic screeching of a man fearing for his life and worse.

“What?” Glasya shouted. She stepped down from the couch, leaning closer. “Is this true?”

Lorcan nodded. “Fortuitously, his Chosen has discovered a way to save him from the betrayal of the Lord of Spells.” He looked up, hoping his careful words had made an impression on her. “He will remain a god.”

Glasya stared at him so long he felt his heart wither in his chest. “How fortunate,” she said.

“There is more,” Lorcan said.

“Oh really? Do tell.”

“The pradixikai. They have departed,” Lorcan said, hoping beyond hope that Glasya wouldn’t break his bones to splinters and pin him to the layer later. “As requested by His Majesty, to aid the god Enlil in his battle against his reborn son, who has allied with the traitor Graz’zt. I presumed that expediency in that request was more valuable to Your Highness than certainty, though you have my utmost apologies if I’ve erred.”

“Why would you think yourself in error?”

Lorcan wet his lips, urged himself to keep talking. This is how you protect her. “I would never doubt His Majesty or Lord Enlil,” Lorcan went on with careful, special emphasis, “but I would wager that the pradixikai are not quite enough to stand against the army of Gilgeam as it is.” He hesitated. “I’m sure they will take many of the Abyss with them when they fall.”

Glasya straightened. “Who else knows about this?”

“None of the lords know,” Lorcan said. “They are saying Lady Zariel is pursuing the Brimstone Angel, and Prince Levistus, an artifact that she seeks. The others have their attentions elsewhere.” He dared another glance up into her endless, ravenous eyes. “You know, though. And it’s a Malbolgean warlock who is the architect of His Majesty’s rescue.”

“And I can hardly let my dear father and sovereign fall to risk on the mortal plane,” she said. “What kind of daughter would I be not to aid him with all I have?” She smiled, and Lorcan shook with fear. “How good you brought this to me, Lorcan. Khartach?” One of the pit fiends stepped forward. “Gather your forces and join the pradixikai immediately. A purse to any who can bring me one of the Traitor’s generals alive.”

She smiled at Lorcan once more, as the pit fiend strode through the crowd of devils. “Well, Little Lorcan, what will you do now?”

“I am at Your Highness’s disposal,” he made himself say.

Glasya chuckled in a way that made his spine want to flee his body. She snapped her fingers and a hellwasp descended, carrying a ring of keys. From this, she selected one—pale and gleaming and small enough for her to close her hand around it. “Take this,” she said. “It will give you passage to the Fugue Plane.”

Lorcan took the key from her, dread unfolding in his chest. “What am I to do on the Fugue Plane?”

“Why, coax the warlock to Malbolge, of course,” Glasya said. “Mortals don’t take well to incarnations. I suspect I’ll get to meet this charming tiefling sooner than expected.”

• • •

WHEN THE BREATH of Petron had raised the stone wall, it left two gaps for gates—one on the road that led back to the sea, one on the track that led up into the mountains. Namshita raced toward the latter, where the Untherans were positioned.

The Vanquisher had named the Untherans “the Eighth Red Cohort,” which meant little to Namshita, except that the color red was auspicious, a color for warding off evil, and so those who looked to her were pleased. They’d taken up spears and bolas and swords, a handful who’d been hunters for the genasi, claiming bows up on the wall. They would be able to hold their own against this enemy that they’d only just fled.

She reached the gate as the beast on the other side began breaking through, the great stone doors cracking and shuddering a rain of dust. The wall here was deserted, the archers moved out of range of the goristros so they could focus on the succubi and vrocks coming over the wall.

Namshita found Amurri and Kirgal, who gave a sharp whistle, and the Untherans cheered that she’d come back to them. Beside them, a Vayemniri force under the banner for the Seventh Silver Cohort looked on. Namshita was pleased and surprised to see Uadjit directing them into formation.

“You’re here?” Namshita asked. “At the gate?”

“Where else would I be?” Uadjit replied. “I’m no archer.”

Namshita smiled. “Where are our giants?”

A stone the size of a child fell from the top of one door, crumbling as it hit the ground.

“With any luck,” Uadjit said, “on their way.”

“Do Vayemniri believe in luck?”

“Pardon the word, but I don’t karshoji know what we believe anymore,” Uadjit said crisply. “But I know we’ll take what we’re given in the way of benefits. Get ready!” she shouted. “Stand back from the ballista!”

“Draw!” another Vayemniri woman yelled, preparing the ballista.

All around them, swords left their sheathes, and soldiers crouched, the better for their comrades to aim past them with spears and javelins.

The door shattered, the first glimpse of the beasts coming clear.

“Remember your ancestors!” Uadjit shouted. “Remember their strength and their struggles! Remember the ones who come after us, who will sing of this day!”

Likely without us, Namshita thought grimly as the first goristro tore aside the remains of the door, letting sunlight pour past its shaggy frame. But there will be a future, she told herself.

Suddenly, the air before the ballista sizzled, vents opening in the very air. A creature stepped free—and another and another and another. Nine. Nine of them. Fiends, Namshita thought, ferocious-looking women with tangled horns and sharp hooves. The first of them shouted—a war cry to be certain, but in no tongue Namshita knew—and charged the goristro, sword first.

“Reinforcements?” Uadjit said, sounding puzzled.

“Luck,” Namshita told her, as the devilish warriors drove the demons back, away from the gate. “Forward!” she cried. “Let the Son of Victory see we are not his thralls and our home is no prize for him!”

• • •

DAHL’S HANDS SHOOK as he set all the components he needed in order, the book open at his feet. Already, there were demons climbing the winds high enough to reach them on the peak of Djerad Thymar. He needed to cast the shield—but once he did, he couldn’t break concentration or risk letting the spell slip. The body of Nanna-Sin lay at the center of the unfinished circle, all but bait for the circling demons. Ilstan stood alongside it, Dumuzi and Havilar at its head and feet, all prepared with the markings the spell demanded and the words Caisys had crafted. And Farideh wasn’t here yet.

Mehen slashed at a succubus that dipped too near. “Dahl, stop dawdling!”

Farideh came racing up the stairs from below, her cheeks flushed. “Sorry! I’m here!” she panted. “We have to start!”

“Obviously!” Havilar shouted. She and Farideh both looked to the empty space between them for a moment, as if listening. “Switch spots with me, Dumuzi,” Havilar said.

“Should you be listening to her?” Dumuzi asked, but he exchanged positions anyway.

Dahl started mixing the powdered bluefoots and the salts of mercury. Farideh darted over to him and held him tight a moment. “I’ll be right back,” she whispered.

“Promise,” he said, and kissed her cheek. He glanced at Tam, checked for the vial of crushed diamonds at his belt.

He finished the spell, dragging an iron ring through the mixture and whispering the words that made a rust-colored hemisphere shimmer into being over them. He held that image in his mind and began a prayer to Oghma to help keep his focus.

Farideh twisted the ring on her finger, retrieving the pale staff of Azuth from its hiding place. Ilstan took hold of it as though she were returning his child, cradling it close to his narrow chest. Brin stood ready with the powdered silver. Mehen and Mira kept their swords out, in case Dahl’s shield dropped. Tam lowered himself to his knees, as if in prayer.

Farideh looked over at Dahl. I love you, she mouthed, before touching the ruby rod of Asmodeus to the staff of Azuth and starting something that might save the world, or end it.

PART XII

THE VESSEL

28 Alturiak, the Year of the Malachite Shadows (1460 DR)
Aglarond

• • •

There were eight of them, children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, scattered across a family tree that had planted its roots from Vaasa to Amn to Durpar. Bryseis Kakistos surveyed the circle of tieflings with a pride she wouldn’t have expected.

One son survived, Alonzo, the baby Caisys had stood over, now an old man with a bad hip and the soft eyes of the adept she’d brought to her bedchambers one night. The stern line of his mouth as he watched the others made her think of Alyona when she grew nervous and annoyed. He’d married a Northern girl—an odd concession to society, given the rest of her brood—and two of his children stood nearby in the grove. Naria, dark as her dead mother, and Lachs, pale as his father, both long and lanky. Naria’s daughter, Threnody, stood by as well, sharp eyes watching the shadows despite her graying hair. Two more children were dead, another boy, another girl—the elder brother’s son was the one they’d chosen for the ritual. Chiridion, proud and straight-backed and bearing all the best gifts of his forebears. They’d tracked him to far-off Durpar, amid silks and spices and the dangerous eyes of rakshasas and the descendants of Pradir Ril. Bryseis Kakistos had to admit not a little fondness for the young man who’d given Caisys the slip twice before being caught, and then bargained like a fence for his assistance. Strength, tenacity, cleverness—who wouldn’t be proud?

Her other son had not fared so well. The fosterage had named him Jubal, and he’d rambled all across Toril, leaving behind bodies and debts and children, before dying at last in the dark by the point of several blades. She had gathered two of his children to their cause—proud and sullen Nasmos, secret child of a minor Amnian noblewoman; and Livulia, stout and graceful, the third child of a merchant and his straying tiefling wife.

How many children Jubal had fathered wasn’t certain, nor was it certain how many of these had gone on to mimic their father’s ways. The Nine Hells would know—the devils had begun to make a sport of crafting their own pacts, collecting their own sets of warlocks, descended from that first coven, that first agreement. Every one of these, her descendants, had been snared in such a pact, and it made what remained of Bryseis Kakistos twist with guilt. She had doomed them, every one, all down the line from Jubal to the baby-vessel resting in Adastreia.

She’d traced the lines of the pact out to Mulsantir, to the tiny, purple-haired woman now sitting on a rock with her hands folded nervously over her stomach. She called herself Adastreia Tyrianicus, which made Alyona chuckle. She was sharp and careful and far more powerful in her pact than Bryseis Kakistos would have expected of someone who worked as a scullery in a Golden Way tavern, but the pact was fresh and Adastreia already knew to be careful with devils.

She glanced at Caisys. He still believed this was about untangling their descendants from the demands of the pact, about making the world better for tieflings by making it progress. Adastreia had needed a firmer nudge, the whispered truth of Asmodeus’s ending in her dreams, and the fire had taken hold of her great-granddaughter.

You might have doomed them, Bryseis Kakistos thought, looking over her brood, but had she not made things easier as well? If she hadn’t helped Asmodeus claim the blood of the fiendborn, they might have seemed human and lived completely invisible lives.

Or they might have been born with every wrong feature and been thrown in the river. They might have never had the chance to take the power of a warlock pact.

They might never have been chased by devils, she thought.

Alyona was suddenly beside her. It worked! she said. Are you ready?

Bryseis Kakistos turned her attention to Caisys, the architect of this strange family gathering, their messenger in the mortal world. Tell her its time, she said.

He chuckled once, and nodded, the enchanted ring that let them speak glinting in his ear. “Well done, children,” he said. “Sounds like it’s time.”

Adastreia nodded, ignoring the others with a determination that made Bryseis smile. She took up the knife and the oils, stretched herself out upon the stone surface. Chiridion moved beside her, saying something soft and in her ear that made Adastreia roll her eyes and laugh. They might not be all that fond of each other, Bryseis Kakistos thought, but they are comrades at least. They want this better world.

They want to fix your mistakes.

Livulia stepped forward, bearing the gifts of Selûne, the prayers and spells that would make the vessel safe from prying devils’ eyes, from the notice of Asmodeus. Long enough at least for Bryseis Kakistos to gather the elements for the next ritual, the one to bring down the king of the Hells. She’d have to tell Caisys about unseating Asmodeus eventually. She’d have to pry the staff from him one way or another.

He noticed her watching and raised an eyebrow. “Is something wrong?”

I’m glad we’re allies once more, she said, and she meant it.

He snorted, but he smiled. “You don’t have friends, do you?” She didn’t know how to answer that. She had allies and she had Alyona. And maybe she had Caisys.

Bisera? Alyona said, taking her by the hand. Are you ready?

Bryseis Kakistos turned her attention to her great-granddaughter, to the fluttery beginnings of something in her belly, to the strands of the Weave and something more tatting themselves into readiness. The ritual would disrupt all of that, latch Bryseis Kakistos’s soul into that tiny void, taking up the space meant to grow some other self. She wondered idly if that supplanted soul would find another someone to become, if, like Bryseis and Alyona, it would have another chance.

She wove the anchor, magic and moonlight—this one for her and the next for Alyona. It wouldn’t take long between them—not twins, but sisters still, and she told herself that was more than enough. It wasn’t how she anticipated her revenge, but this would be better. This would cleanse the stain from her. This would make Alyona forgive her.

Stay close, she told her sister.

The thread of magic pouring down from the moon suddenly tightened, sharp as a razor across the center of her soul. She moved in front of Alyona, but the anchor was splitting, the magic shifting. Each point was suddenly bound to two places—an impossibility that forced the spell apart. She felt the connection to Alyona pull close, then tear away.

Her last thought before Beshaba’s misplaced blessings destroyed her, was to hope for third chances.

• • •

27

TTHERE IS A MOMENT, NO MORE THAN A HEARTBEAT, WHERE ETERNITY STRETCHES, where the gods face each other, strange allies and equals, separate once more. The Lord of Spells looks out of the eyes of a young man who loved magic as dearly as the wizard Azuth once was, even in the absence of Beloved Mystra. What was Ilstan Nyaril is wholly enveloped by the god, embraced by the Weave flowing through them both, knitting the wounds of the shared spark. Sealed in that moment, divine to ephemeral, flesh to godhead, every wizard on the plane sees for a moment the return of Azuth, the sight of a young man with ancient eyes, smiling wryly at the way things come round.

The Thrower of Lightning hands over his beloved child’s gift, the ember of godhood kindled by the stories and memories of the Ash-Marked Ones. Even as the king of the Hells takes it, Enlil draws Asmodeus’s promise back. Nanna-Sin will live, will return, will protect again.

The Raging Fiend fills the flesh of the tiefling woman, tinting her mismatched eyes black as the lightless depths of his realm. His presence flickers, like a mockery of candlelight, but her hand, now his, reaches toward the third god, claims the bright light of divinity hanging between them and presses it to the breast of this champion he does not deserve. She is endless as sin in that moment, more certain than death. God or devil or woman, the Raging Fiend reclaims his throne, his role—the Dark Shepherd of Toril.

Between them the Moon’s Champion opens his eyes once as divinity flees him, his soul escaping whatever place it had slumbered, resting a breath in the heart of the golden-eyed tiefling who bears the onyx axe that once cut down the enemies of Unther. As he dies anew, she gasps, still all too mortal, all too unprepared to be the vessel of the god, and her skin glows with a bluish light, her slow smile beyond charming. The gods reach out—ruby rod, black axe, white staff, platinum javelin. Nanna-Sin’s body twists, rising, changing. The soul that lights the tiefling woman floods back out of her, as the god of the moon is reborn in a blaze of light, not here in the depths of Djerad Thymar but where he is needed.

Where the navy of Unthalass has arrayed itself along the coast, a cry goes up: a dragon turtle rises from the depths, ancient and fierce, with a shell of mother-of-pearl and deep eyes lined with black. There is no crossing the harbor. There will be no crossing the harbor, not without the grace of Vivesh Nannari, the Moon’s Champion.

Asmodeus raises his hand, her hand, sweeps it out toward the field of battle. Where the fallen angels, the erinyes, storm toward their perpetual enemies, the powers of their master catch them, lift them up on well-earned wings, signs of his favor, her favor. The erinyes leap skyward, cutting succubi and vrocks and shadows from the sky, out of the paths of Djerad Thymar’s bat riders, sowing fear in the demons of Gilgeam.

A moment, no more than a heartbeat, when all things change, all things return. Three gods face each other, strange allies and equals, and then they are gone, taking their vessels with them.

• • •

DUMUZI SHOT UP as if from a nightmare, shivering to the very points of his teeth. The touch of Enlil on his mind calmed him—barely. Bodies surrounded him, faces. Shouting. He couldn’t remember …

You’re all right, the voice of the god said. You are safe.

He’d been dead, he realized. For a breath, he’d been dead.

You came with me, the god said, sounding apologetic. But you’re all right now.

“Dumuzi!” Someone was shouting at him. He blinked. Tam. “Dumuzi!”

“I’m all right,” he said. “I’m all right!”

You have to listen. We’ve distracted ourselves—

But the others weren’t. Farideh, Havilar, and Ilstan lay splayed on the ground, feet pointing together. Ilstan stared up at the cloudy sky, a soft smile on his face. The twins lay slack. The Crownsilver had dropped his sword and stood helpless over Havilar, one of the little imps flapping frantically over her. The Peredur stood at his post, holding the shield that kept the diving vulture demons away, but glancing back over his shoulder with increasing anguish. Mehen, holding Farideh’s limp head. Her eyes were open, staring at Dumuzi.

“Do something!” Mehen roared.

It’s happening again. Dumuzi, Ushamgal-lù, listen.

“That’s one down then.” The Selûnite priest crouched between the twins, his palm full of glittering dust. “Which of them do I raise?”

Raise, Dumuzi thought. Dead. And everything seemed to fit together again, jerking into motion like a wheel finding solid ground. His thoughts came back, his nerves reawoke, his heart seemed to find a steady beat once more. The itching, crackling sensation of loose magic on his scales.

“No,” he breathed. “Oh karshoj, no.”

“You need to choose now!” Tam shouted.

• • •

FARIDEH OPENED HER eyes to a world without edges, an endless plain of grayish mist that made her brain ache, trying to discern where it ended, where it began. She felt a hand in hers—Havilar, beside her, looking just as shaken as Farideh felt.

“This is the Fugue Plane, isn’t it?” she whispered, her voice shaking. Farideh squeezed her hand tight. “Karshoj. What now?”

Farideh had no idea. Dahl’s teasing went through Farideh’s thoughts. If you survive this, I’m going to have to insist you get yourself a religious education. Grief crushed itself around her. She squeezed Havilar’s hand tighter.

In the mists ahead, two more figures stood. Twin tieflings, with small sharp horns like a mountain goat’s, hoofed feet, and lovely faces, hands interlocked just like Havilar and Farideh’s. “Oh my dears,” Alyona said. “You’ve done a very brave thing.”

“For all the good it will do,” Bryseis Kakistos said mournfully. She eyed the mists around them—dark shapes moved through the clouds. “When the devils come, you mustn’t listen. Farideh, do you understand?” Her voice began to tremble as she spoke. Alyona turned and wrapped her in an embrace, stroking her sister’s hair.

The mists shifted. One moment there was only grayness, the next there seemed to be a doorway to another place, a cave within the clouds that led to a vast starry sea, hung with islands bathed in moonlight. A winged woman flew through the night toward them.

Bryseis Kakistos lifted her head, still holding tight to Alyona. “Oh,” she sighed. “Oh, you’re going to leave. You have to leave. And I’m …”

Alyona shushed her. “You don’t have to go back to the Nine Hells. I’ll stay until you’re ready.”

“Where else would I go?” her sister demanded. “I broke my promise. I won’t be welcome in the Gates of the Moon.”

“No,” Alyona agreed. She took her sister by the hand. “Come on, Bisera, I’ll show you.”

“Do you want to follow?” Havilar whispered. “I sort of want to follow.” She glanced at the nearing angel. “I don’t want to answer this woman’s questions, that’s for sure.”

Farideh was more concerned with the dark shapes circling them in the mists. She nodded, and together they walked through the endless plane after the other twins.

An eternity passed, so long Farideh felt as if she couldn’t remember who she was, where she was, only that Havilar was with her, her hand tight in Farideh’s. They finally came to a stop, the mists clearing before them to reveal a jagged edge, as if someone had torn the plane away, letting it fall into darkness. Farideh’s heart turned as cold as the bottom of the mountain tarn she had grown up swimming in. Havilar grabbed her arm with her other hand.

“There’s nothing there,” she whispered. “There’s nothing there—right?”

Oblivion.

Bryseis Kakistos looked back at Alyona, alarmed. “You can’t do this,” she said, clasping her sister’s hands. “This isn’t fair. It’s not what you deserve.”

Alyona covered her sister’s hands with her own. “I’m not coming with you this time,” she said sadly. “But I will wait. I will stay until you’re ready.”

Farideh looked away. She was a monster, a killer of her own kind. She’d been the reason for more bloodshed and heartache than could ever be tallied. But she’d been someone’s sister too. And in the end, she’d helped them.

“I’m sorry,” Havilar said, turning her own face into Farideh’s shoulder. “I could have been a better sister.”

“No you couldn’t have,” Farideh said. She blinked, expecting tears at the past tense, but they didn’t seem to come. “Dahl … Dahl was ready if one of us died.”

“But just one of us,” Havilar said sadly. “I don’t know whether to hope it’s you or it’s me.” She pursed her lips, looking at the dark shapes in the mists. “But it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Maybe they didn’t manage?”

Farideh glanced at the sisters standing on the edge of oblivion, wondering if that too would be her fate. Bryseis—Bisera—looked up and met her gaze for a moment. She turned and cupped her sister’s face in both hands. “You will be safe,” she said firmly. “That’s all I really wanted.”

Then Bisera jumped into the darkness, so suddenly that Farideh cried out, moved as if to stop her. The Brimstone Angel was gone.

• • •

MEGARA, THIRD AMONG the pradixikai, ripped the club from a succubus’s grip and ran the demon bitch through with her sword. Her sisters, Artaxata and Nola, speared the creature from opposite sides, too swift to be stopped. The sound of the succubus’s innards sliding along twin blades, accompanied by her last gasp, was a godsbedamned symphony to Megara.

“Surprise,” she snarled, just before the succubus burst into flames. What a glorious gift from the king of the Hells: the return of their wings, the return of their hated enemies to their proper side, and still the erinyes perched in the same place upon the hierarchy—she knew that down in her bones.

“Dive at the ground troops,” she ordered Artaxata and Nola. “Get that goristro’s attention off the wall.” She grinned. “How long has it been since we’ve gotten to twist one of those big bastard’s heads around?”

Curly-haired Artaxata grinned back. “Too long. Let’s savor it.”

Lorcan might have snatched Mother’s mantle from Megara, insulting her by elevating a weakling like Neferis over her, but she could die happily, once more battling the enemies every part of her knew as enemies, once more riding above the fray on powerful wings.

The goristro had been driven back from the hole it broke in the long stone wall, but not far. The dragonborn might be clever, powerful warriors for this world, but judging by the bodies scattered around the breach, they were exactly as fragile as everyone else in it. Nola dived for the bull-faced demon, scoring a cut along one shoulder, drawing its attention toward her and away from Artaxata, who dropped down and stabbed it through the other shoulder. The goristro roared, more in fury than in pain—which suited Megara fine. They were only beginning, and the pradixikai could make a demon’s agony last a long, long time.

The air near the demon split and a trio of succubi tumbled out. Megara eyed them, calculating how quickly she could end these new fighters before the goristro noticed. But the smell of rotting flowers and burning flesh hit her nose. The succubus at the center smirked and raised a hand in greeting—a hand holding the sigil of Glasya, a copper-tipped scourge—before all three of them leaped into the air, seeking out the humans in leopard skins chasing the goristro.

“Lords of the shitting Nine,” Nola sneered. “We’re still stuck with them?”

A moment later a troop of spined devils scattered from the rift, followed by a pit fiend—Khartach, one of Her Highness’s special guard. The monstrous creature threw wide his wings and threw back his head, roaring with a sound that shook the battlefield.

“Shit and ashes.” Megara turned to her fury sisters. “Take out the goristro before His Lordship decides he needs to show off and ruins our fun.”

• • •

LORD OF ALL Knowledge, Binder of What Is Known. Make my eye clear, my mind open, my heart true.

Dahl prayed so that he would not scream. He’d prepared for this. He’d made sure there was a solution if she fell, if Asmodeus didn’t give a care for his Chosen.

Give me the wisdom to separate the lie from the truth. Give me the strength to accept what is so.

A vrock crashed against the shield, scattering a cloud of poisonous-looking spores. Dahl held tight to the spell—it could only get worse if the demons broke through. He glanced over his shoulder, some part of him hoping, willing Farideh to blink. She still lay across Mehen’s lap, pale and still and staring.

“You need to choose now!” Tam shouted.

“Choose?” Mehen bellowed. “Choose?”

“Wait!” Dumuzi cried.

My word is my steel, my reason my shield.

“I’ve enough for one, and there’s a limit to the time,” Tam shouted. “Dahl, choose!”

No one spoke—to choose felt monstrous, to separate them, to deny one and lift up the other. Mehen shook all down to his feet. Brin had gone terribly pale. I’m the one who prepared, Dahl thought savagely at the gods. I’m the one who thought ahead. Don’t make me do this.

“The planes are colliding again!” Dumuzi cried. “It might go awry. I have to—”

“I don’t have time!” Tam shouted. “Choose!”

From heav’ns to Hells the plane will ring. Dahl closed his eyes as his thoughts rang with the memory of Farideh reading the prophecy etched across his soul. Reflect, and after my priest speaks. Her heart would break if he didn’t try.

Try, a voice that might have been his own and might have been something greater whispered.

“Cast it between them!” Dahl shouted, anguished. “The one that wants to come back comes back.”

Tam blew into his palm, scattering the diamond dust into the air above the twins—the blessings of Selûne held it in a sort of cloud above them, twinkling in the dawning light. Dahl’s throat closed shut, listening to the soft prayers to the Moonmaiden, trying to cling to his shield spell.

But a moment later, it didn’t matter. Lightning seared his eyes, and it was all Dahl could do to keep his feet.

• • •

ALYONA TURNED TO the twins. “Thank you,” she said. “It’s not a perfect ending, but the best she or I could hope for, I think.” She smiled, but even that seemed sad.

“What now?” Havilar asked again. “Do we wait?”

Alyona nodded at something behind them. Farideh looked over her shoulder—there was the opening in the mists, the starry sky spangled with beautiful islands. There was the green-skinned angel waiting.

“Welcome to the Gates of the Moon,” she said.

“Selûne has watched over you all of your lives,” Alyona said. “You can come with me there. It may not feel like much consolation. Not now, but in time—”

“In time,” a silky voice interrupted, “you will grow to miss the mortal realm.”

Havilar squeezed Farideh’s hand more tightly as a horned man with bright red skin stepped out of the mists. The angel made no move to stop him as he approached. He sketched a bow to Havilar and Farideh.

“My ladies,” he said. “As you have provided such a boon to His Majesty, you would be welcome in his kingdom, and Lord Dispater is most passionate about securing your—”

“Don’t listen to him,” another voice chimed in. Another devil, another horned man, this one decked in luxurious furs. “Prince Levistus would suit your desires far better. From Stygia you may reach the mortal realm most easily.”

“Not so easily as Avernus,” a third devil chimed in, stepping from the mists in shining bronze armor. “It’s hardly separated.”

“Don’t listen to them,” Alyona implored.

“Why listen to her?” the devil from Avernus asked. “Can Selûne let you reach your loved ones again?”

“Farideh!”

She whipped toward the sound, just as Lorcan burst through the mists. “Oh holy gods,” Farideh said. “Are you dead?”

“I’m a devil,” he reminded her, his voice shaking. “The Sixth Layer … Please, come with me. Come with me. I’ll keep you safe. These others will strip your soul from you, don’t listen to them. I can hide you. I can figure out a way—”

“Lorcan,” Farideh said. “Stop.” He did, dark eyes shining, and though she didn’t owe him any sort of fond feelings, her heart ached. “We never got the chance to talk.”

“I will talk about whatever you like,” he said. “Just please, come with me. Please.”

Farideh sighed. With her free hand, she reached up and touched his cheek. “You won’t be there much longer,” she said. “My price was you. I do love you. I love you enough that I wouldn’t keep you trapped in the Hells for my own comfort.”

He shook his head. “What does that mean? What are you talking about?”

Farideh started to explain, but she felt so weary all of the sudden. “It means good-bye,” she said.

He caught her arm. “No.”

Farideh leaned forward and kissed him, one final time, still holding tight to Havilar’s hand.

Suddenly, her arm was nearly yanked from its socket, as if someone were trying to tear Havilar from her. Lorcan grabbed hold of her hand as she was pulled back, keeping her on her feet as the mists closed around them.

Go, said a voice that sliced through her weary thoughts like a silvery knife.

Go, said a voice like the final word of a spell.

Go, said a voice promising she would delight in what came next and regret it as well.

“Fari!” Lorcan shouted. She shook her head.

“Let go,” she told him and pulled her hand from his. To Havilar, Farideh held on all the tighter, reaching for her sister with her newly freed hand. Somewhere in the closing mists, it caught Havi’s other hand, pulling back with all her might.

Come back, said a voice like a song and a prayer and the beat of her own heart.

And then, Farideh was nowhere.

• • •

THE SON OF Victory nearly missed the signals, though no one would ever say so. One moment, he watched the battle with growing fury, his priests all channeling what power they could into the demons that were rapidly falling to the sudden army of devils that appeared on the field.

The next moment, the priests saw wings of lightning close around Djerad Thymar, and the Son of Victory cried out—though no one would ever admit to hearing it. They would attest that every scrap of power his priests might have called on was suddenly pulled back into Gilgeam, stolen out from the fiends, gathered together to create a great bubble of golden light that grew from the god-king to encompass all his army, as a wind like none other blew wild over the field, sparking with strange light and stranger magic. Another storm of the planes, they whispered. And what had it brought?

No one would have said, not to the Son of Victory, that perhaps Djerad Thymar wasn’t their prize to take this day, that perhaps the stones of their ancestors weren’t worth dying for. But when the storm passed, when they found themselves once more left in the wake of its power, when the Son of Victory looked upon the still-dancing lightning wall that embraced Djerad Thymar and declared a retreat to secure Unthalass, not a soul remained behind.

• • •

WHEN FARIDEH WOKE again, it was to a horrible wheezing, sucking sound.

You’re breathing, she thought dimly, noticing all of her bones and how they ached, her nerves and how they scintillated with pain and magic. You’re alive.

“Havi,” she gasped.

“Gods’ books!” Someone seized her, lifted her off the stones. Her muscles felt as if they had no idea how to move anymore. “You got both of them!” Dahl shouted. “You got both of them!”

“Fari?” Mehen was suddenly looming over her. “Fari, say something!”

She struggled a moment to focus on his face. “I’m sorry,” she managed.

“Oh, Fari,” Mehen said, squeezing her hand. “Comes back from the grave and first words are ‘I’m sorry.’ ”

“Here.” Dahl held a flask to her lips, a potion spicy and thick with mint. She drank it and her eyes worked better, her muscles let her sit upright.

“I don’t think I need a religious education anymore,” she told Dahl weakly. “At least not parts of it.”

“Not funny,” he said. His cheeks were slick with tears. She pulled herself up and embraced him fiercely. Over his shoulder, she spied Havilar, gently twisting her arm as if it pained her a little, while the other embraced Brin. Havilar met her gaze.

Thank you, Farideh mouthed.

Havilar looked at her as though she were mad, as though there were never another thing she could have done besides hold so tightly to her soul that the gods and the Fugue Plane released it. Farideh smiled. She was a good sister—the best of sisters—and all the rest of their days, she would never forget that.

PART XIII

RENEWAL

14 Alturiak, the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant (1487 DR)
Harrowdale, a day’s ride from New Velar

• • •

Farideh blew out a nervous breath as Bodhar’s and Thost’s horses trotted away from the wagon, heading down the snowy slope toward the little farmhouse that had just come into view.

“I am fairly sure,” Dahl murmured from the driver’s box beside her, “that you did not make this much shadow-stuff when you faced the arcanist. Nor the Chosen of Shar.”

“You weren’t there for the Chosen of Shar,” Farideh pointed out. She brushed a hand over her cloak, trying to smooth away any sign of her nerves. Dahl had insisted she didn’t need to wear the hood up, but the cover over her horns gave her a measure of comfort as the wagon rattled through the Dalelands. “I don’t think you’re right about the arcanist either.”

“Good,” Dahl teased. “My mother is nowhere near as frightening as an undead arcanist, and don’t you dare suggest otherwise.” She brushed a hand over her sleeve again—Dahl caught her fingers and squeezed them. “What are you afraid of? What’s the worst that could happen?”

Farideh gave a nervous laugh. “The worst? Your brothers tell your mother you’re bringing a tiefling girl home, she gets so upset she bursts out of the door, calls you a disappointment and makes you choose between your family or me. And then I’m alone, in the middle of the Dales.”

“Well,” Dahl said mildly, “if she demanded I choose, I’d choose you.”

“You can’t pick me over your mother.”

“Of course I can. Besides, if my mother demanded I pick, I’m fairly sure that’s not my mother, so we’re dealing with doppelgangers or the like, and I need you in that case.”

One of the stones in her pocket hummed, as if it had suddenly become alive. She slipped her hand in and pressed it to her palm.

Did you know, her sister’s voice came, that people drop actual pearls into the Sea of Fallen Stars to appease Umberlee? Sea elves must be decked out. Miss you.

Farideh smiled to herself. “This is not what the stones are for, I hope it’s nearly deepnight there or that you have no emergencies. Nearly there, miss you too.”

“I will wager you the next words out of her mouth are ‘I have a glaive and a hellhound, I don’t have emergencies.’ ”

“She also has a child with her, at least for the next tenday,” Farideh pointed out. Havilar and Brin had gone to return Remzi to his parents. Farideh and Mehen had both offered to go along, but Havilar had been firm.

“You both have other things to do,” she’d said. “Brin and I can handle this.”

Farideh leaned against Dahl’s shoulder, wishing to herself that Havilar were here too. “Is it late there?”

“Assuming they’ve nearly reached Aglarond, yes, it’s very late.” He kissed her head. “You going to give Mehen the sending you promised now, or hope you remember before you fall asleep?”

“I haven’t forgotten once yet, thank you very much,” Farideh said. She thought of Mehen, alone again for the first time since they’d returned from their imprisonment in the Nine Hells. This time, though, he had a way to keep tabs on them: Ilstan’s last gift. And someone to keep him company in Kallan, and someone who needed him in Dumuzi.

Farideh tried to imagine Mehen, forcing her to choose between her family and Dahl, between her past and her future, and couldn’t. Especially not after everything that had happened on top of Djerad Thymar—Mehen would always, she suspected, be a bit gruffer with Dahl than he was with Brin, but when Farideh had told him they were heading to Harrowdale after all, his only hard words were over whether it was wiser to take the land route through the newly disturbed countryside of Tymanther or the sea route, past Unthalass.

“I’m well aware that dragon turtle is meant to be on our side,” he’d said. “But give him a year to prove he can tell the difference between a trade ship and the karshoji Untheran navy. You go with your giants.”

Someone—a woman too young to be Dahl’s mother—came out and lit lamps beside the doorway. Dahl waved to her, and another twinge of anxiety took Farideh by the throat. Mehen wouldn’t make you choose, she told herself. Eurdila won’t make him choose.

“What should I say to her?”

“Who? Dellora?” Dahl asked.

“Your mother.”

“I don’t know. ‘Well met, it’s nice to meet you.’ What should you say?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know any Dallish customs. I don’t know what’s rude or not or what’s going to make me stand out—”

“You’re going to be fine,” Dahl said. “You managed in Djerad Thymar, you managed in the royal palace of the Purple godsbedamned Dragon—twice, now—you are not going to somehow bungle things so impossibly that it can’t be explained on my family’s farm, where half the time someone has to tell my brothers to leave their sheep-mucked boots outside.”

Ilstan’s body had been laid to rest in the catacombs of Djerad Thymar, a warrior’s burial, a hero’s tomb etched with the story of the warning he carried to Dumuzi, the ritual they’d cast on the pyramid’s peak. To Suzail, Farideh had carried his cloak with the war wizard sigil on it, his wand, his spellbook, and a lock of his hair. She’d intended to bring them to the Nyaril family, but she’d no more than crossed the city’s gate but war wizards had descended on her, brought her to the palace, first to the Royal Magician Ganrahast, and from there to Queen Raedra, who was—much to Farideh’s surprise—very glad to see her.

“You were going to sneak right by, weren’t you?” she’d said.

“I didn’t want to bother you, Your Majesty,” Farideh managed.

Raedra raised an eyebrow. “I became queen—I didn’t become a stranger.” She’d smoothed her purple skirts nervously, and for a moment she was so clearly the young woman Farideh had become friends with in Suzail, that she smiled.

“I let you leave without much of a good-bye last time,” Raedra had said. “So I do hope I can convince you to stay a few days at least.” They’d spared three, and promised when they came through again, to stop once more.

Dahl pulled the team of horses to a stop alongside a hitching post set at the edge of a wide yard. A lanky boy and a girl of about fifteen came out of the house, bundled in woolens and jogging toward the wagons. Farideh’s pulse leaped up her throat as Dahl climbed down and hugged them both. “You two draw the short straws?”

“Still short some hands,” the boy said. “Ghiwan and Marto went to war and Jessa’s gone home to Deepingdale. Besides, it’s ‘good for us.’ ”

Dahl chuckled. “Farideh, this is Jens, Thost’s oldest boy, and Sabrelle, Bodhar’s daughter. This is Farideh.”

“Da says she might want her space,” Sabrelle said, peering under Farideh’s hood. Farideh felt a blush burn up her cheeks. She took a deep breath and climbed from the wagon.

“Well met,” she said to the girl. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Sabrelle glanced at Jens. “Well met,” she said, sounding pleased. “Is it true you saved Uncle Dahl from a hundred shades?”

“That is not remotely true,” Dahl said. “Get the horses dried off and into the barn. You can catch up later and see if whatever your da says bears the slightest resemblance to the truth.” They both went to work, unhitching the tired horses.

“What else do you think he said?” Farideh asked.

Dahl pulled their haversacks down from the wagon bed. “Sorry, did you meet Bodhar earlier? If you’re not a dragonborn princess who faced down an archdevil on her own, you should count yourself lucky.”

Farideh shifted both bags onto her shoulders, as Dahl pulled a crate of goods down and set it on the ground. She slipped one hand up her sleeve to trace the edges of her brand—the marks had changed since she woke again, since she’d freed Lorcan, but the brand was still there, the connection to the Nine Hells was still there.

You don’t have to use it, she thought. There are other ways.

“Hey!” Bodhar shouted, appearing in the doorway. “Ma says you went to all this trouble she expects her boots to be off!” A woman in the doorway swatted at him as he broke into laughter. Farideh caught a glimpse of her, stout and smiling, before she followed after Bodhar out of sight.

Farideh turned back to Dahl to find him looking abashed and a little amused. “Do I need to take off my boots?” she asked.

“No, he’s … he’s teasing. It’s …” He folded his hands around hers. “It’s a Harran wedding custom. You come in barefoot and the groom’s mother … she washes your feet. It’s … It’s kind of archaic, I suppose.”

“It’s kind of nice,” Farideh said. And Eurdila hadn’t looked worried at the joke. Maybe it would be all right. “Do you think she knows?”

“What do I have to tell you to make you stop worrying?” Dahl asked. “I said before, you’re a woman and I’ve brought you home. You could be a bugbear and my mother would be delighted.” Farideh bit her lip. It was easy to say that sort of thing when you had nothing to compare it to. “When you first met me, you wouldn’t have thought it was someone you should bring home. Why would she?”

“She’s less of a git than I was.” Dahl sighed. “All right, look: if she’s not … nice, if anyone’s cruel to you, then we take provisions and head for New Velar. Maybe horses, though it’s fine to walk, we’ll just have to leave the things Raedra gave you behind—which is a pity, I haven’t gotten anywhere useful with the Giant primer and I liked that dress on you, but there we are. I know places we can camp on the road. Shouldn’t take more than a tenday to find a ship sailing to Suzail and from there we can cross the reach to Chondath and down to Somni, or head for Waterdeep or take a boat to Djerad Thymar, because nothing sank Havilar and Brin’s ship so I don’t think we’re going to prove your father right.” He paused. “Where you go, I go. Whatever else, I promise you that.”

Farideh smiled. “Thank you.”

“Don’t stlarning kill yourself again, all right?”

“Promise,” she said.

He hesitated again. “Just to be clear, that didn’t count, what Bodhar … My brother didn’t propose to you for me. He doesn’t get to do that.”

“No, he was being Bodhar,” Farideh said. “Besides, Mehen would probably have something to say if we got married and didn’t tell him, and however afraid I am of your mother, you’re ten times more scared of my father.”

“Your father is more frightening than my mother, ten times over,” Dahl said, and she chuckled. “How do dragonborn get married?”

“With a very big contract and a lot of arguing about eggs.” Farideh smiled at him. “It doesn’t really matter to me, you know. Where you go, I go—that’s all I want.”

Dahl frowned at her. “Really?”

“Contracts and eggs and Mehen arguing,” Farideh reminded him. “Why would I ever think about getting married?”

“You’re not opposed though? Right?”

“I’m very opposed if you’re going to try and make me walk barefoot in the snow.” She glanced back at the farmhouse as the snow began to fall again. “But not on the whole.”

“Summer wedding. Got it.” Dahl slipped an arm around her waist as they walked, chasing away the last fearful ghosts of her lonesomeness. Whatever came next, Farideh would have him, and Havi and Mehen and Brin and more on her side.

• • •

Lorcan left the Hells in the dead of winter, almost ten years after he’d first appeared to the last Brimstone Angel in a village on no one’s maps. In his palm lay a little silver mirror, and in the mirror, the face of the woman who’d either saved him or doomed him—it remained to be seen which.

“Lords of the shitting Nine,” said the little black imp perched on a branch of the tree beside him, “if you expect me to traipse around this horrible little plane while you mope over her—”

“You don’t have to traipse after anyone,” Lorcan said, slipping the mirror back into his pocket. “You’re welcome to return to the Hells. Find something else to do besides pester me. Isn’t that right?”

The erinyes who’d conducted them to the edge of this forest, folded her arms and shrugged. “It’s no skin off my nose.” She frowned and shifted her arms, as if testing for the proper placement across her chest.

The imp made an irritated noise in the back of her throat. “Underneath.”

The erinyes folded them again. “Oh, that does work better!” she said. “Right so, she’s free to go or stay.”

The imp scowled. “Her Highness has especially requested I stay with you. As a reward.”

“Felicitations,” Lorcan said. “It was a clever idea.” He cast his gaze up at the imp that had once been his sister. “I find it rather insulting that His Majesty and Her Highness believe I need to be goaded along by an imp. Or thrown out by an erinyes so freshly promoted she lacks a proper name.”

The erinyes tilted her head. “I like Mot.”

“That’s an imp’s name,” Sairché said.

Mot made a face. “Well, I’d like to see an imp tell me I have to change it.” She smiled wickedly. “If you’re all set.”

“Perfectly set,” Lorcan said. “Go away.”

“This is a trap,” Sairché said as the erinyes vanished back into the Nine Hells. “You know it’s a trap. I’m supposed to report back on you.”

“We’ll see,” Lorcan said dryly. “It’s not clear you’ll have anything to report at all.”

It could be a lot of things, Lorcan thought. Perhaps Asmodeus wanted him back—after all, Lorcan had had a hand in preserving his godhood. Perhaps Glasya wanted him back—he’d been a part of what ensured she rose out of the Declension, seeming a stronger ally to her father instead of the near-traitor she truly had been. Perhaps both wanted him dead—an end to the example of a devil escaping the Nine Hells.

Half-devil, he reminded himself, looking down on the city tucked against the bank of a river. Maybe there was an arrangement to be had, a balance to be struck, in this new world. Whichever it was, Lorcan was game.

• • •

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

With this, the final book of the Brimstone Angels Saga, there are so very many people to thank.

Nothing I have done would have been possible without the two best editors a writer could ask for: Susan J. Morris, who let me drag her into a conference room and pitch the story of tiefling twins, who provided an expert ear and eye for every book in between, and who came back to help finish things off; and Nina Hess, who suggested me for the Sundering and who made me ten times the writer I could have been on my own, even if I was occasionally crabby about it. Thank you both so much for everything.

Thank you to those folks who made my job immeasurably easier by lending a sharp eye to a wobbly scene, enthusiasm to an incubating idea, or access to their bank of knowledge: Brian J. Cortijo, Michaelle Forbus, Ari Marmell, Matt Sernett, George Krashos, Corry Boehm, Rhiannon Held, Kate Marshall, and Shanna Germain. Thank you to Mike Schley for such fabulous maps. Thank you to Min Yum, Tyler Jacobson, and Kekai Kotaki for the lovely covers, and to Dina Pearlman for making my words sound wonderful even when they’re too karshoji complicated. Thank you to the other authors of the Realms—Ed, for uncountable emails about uncountable problems big and small and all the solutions; Paul for well-timed pep talks and a beer I still owe you; Richard, my copacetic confidante; Troy, for all those story connections and sticking up for me; and Bob, for all that business wisdom and for punching my imposter syndrome right down.

Unending thanks to my family. To Kevin, for making it possible to write these books, for supporting me through stressful deadlines and Word crashes, book launches and best-seller lists, and for doing the vast majority of the dishes. For Idris, who was born alongside Brimstone Angels, and for Ned, who settled in as I finished The Devil You Know. The very presence of you changed this series from what I first imagined. You can read them when you’re eighteen. Fifteen. We’ll discuss it later.

Thank you to my sister, Julia, who kept her nephew entertained and bought me time to write, and then listened to me talk through too many scenes to count and helped me find the right path. Thank you to my sister, Kristen, for answering many frustrated texts, and my brother-in-law, Mike, for reading more than a few scenes.

Thank you to my mother, Andriea, for being the first one to recognize that maybe I should be a writer and taking care of Idris when I needed some more time. Thanks to my father, Andy, for telling anyone who would listen about his daughter’s new book, and facing out the latest copy in any bookstore in any city he happened to travel to.

And thank you, readers. For all of you who gave these books a try, who told a friend, who wrote a review. For all of you who brought my ideas to your game table, who had me on your podcasts (special thanks to The Tome Show for being the first!), who drew fanart and cared enough to petition me for particular endings (so sorry #TeamLorcan). You made this whole experience amazing.