Ashes of the Tyrant

by Erin M. Evans

  “When the mourning period’s ended, then I’ll make arrangements,” Anala had said. “You ought to tie your weapon.”

  “I know this is hard and I know this is tradition. But you’re giving them time to hide what they might know,” Mehen had said. “We’re losing proof as we speak.” Anala had not wavered, and a white ribbon appeared on the hilt of Mehen’s falchion.

  The mourning didn’t apply to the twins and Brin, but still it found a way to trip them up. Farideh and Brin had gone down to explore the market one morning while Havilar took Zoonie running. She’d found a shop that sold components, but without Verthisathurgiesh’s blessing, the prices were steep.

  “We go out today,” Mehen said. “You and Havi find Dumuzi. The dead were mostly his agemates. He followed us down into the catacombs. Maybe he knows what they were up to.”

  “Wouldn’t he have told Anala?” Farideh asked. “Or Narghon?”

  Mehen lifted his head and looked down his snout at her. “Do you tell me everything you get up to?”

  “Mostly,” Farideh said. Eventually, she added to herself. “If we’re really not finished, shouldn’t we be looking for a wizard? Someone who could have opened a portal?”

  “There aren’t a lot of wizards in Djerad Thymar,” Mehen said. “So don’t get ideas.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that I’m well aware you want to leave and why you want to leave,” Mehen said. “And where you want to go and what a wizard might be able to help you with. We will get to it. Start with the hatchlings in the catacombs. Figure out why they were there and you can verify this notion about monsters crawling out of portals and dead demons, if it’s right.”

  Farideh frowned. “What else could it be?”

  “Look,” Mehen said, “Vayemniri don’t truck with things from other worlds.”

  “Well that’s not true,” Farideh said. “Just because you don’t like what Havilar found the other night doesn’t mean there aren’t—”

  Havilar stuck her head out of the door, bleary-eyed, with her purplish-black hair a nest. Zoonie nearly knocked her over as she tried to peer past. “What are you two yelling about?” she asked. “Some of us are trying to sleep.”

  Mehen scowled. “You two, staying up, gabbing all karshoji night—how are we supposed to do anything when you’re a slugabed?”

  Farideh’s stomach tightened, and from the corner of her eye she glanced at Brin. They hadn’t been up late—was it a bad sign that Havilar overslept? Maybe there was a ritual of some sort, a spell to check. Maybe Havilar would tell her soon. She ran through a count of her own days, and found she wasn’t sure anymore if they were anywhere close to Havilar’s.

  A tenday, she reminded herself, maybe two, and they’d know for sure. But when the last two days had felt like an eternity, languishing in Djerad Thymar, Farideh wasn’t sure how they’d manage.

  “Do you know,” Brin said, in a conversational way, “that the three of you have been speaking Draconic since Mehen woke up? All I’ve managed to catch is ‘Dumuzi,’ ‘night,’ ‘wizard,’ and something nasty that—to speak the truth—I still don’t know what it means, for all the three of you say it.”

  Farideh blushed, and Mehen looked abashed. “Sorry,” Mehen said. “Force of habit.” He repeated his plans for the three of them.

  “What are you going to do?” Havilar asked.

  “Invite myself over to the Shestandeliath enclave,” Mehen said. “And make a little trouble.”

  “Fun,” Havilar said dryly. She spotted the red bowl. “Ooh! Yochit!” She piled several spoonfuls on one of the flatbreads. “Did you try them?” she asked Brin around a mouthful. “You’d never think ant eggs would taste so good.”

  Brin set the mutton pasty down without another word.

  They had hardly finished preparing to go out into the city when Dumuzi arrived, unannounced. “I thought perhaps you might be looking for something to do,” he said. “I haven’t anything particular to do today myself.”

  Farideh thought of her own hollowed face when she looked at Dumuzi. His sharp scale armor seemed as if it held him up.

  “We’re supposed to come find you, actually,” Havilar said, as she pulled on a boot. “Did you know the ones that died?”

  Dumuzi looked away. “I did.”

  Havilar started to ask another question, but Farideh gestured sharply at her. “Would you like to have some tea or something?”

  “You can ask me about them,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I know.”

  Brin poured a cup of tea for Dumuzi, but the dragonborn only took it and set it back on the table. “They were trying to go to Abeir.”

  Havilar’s eyes widened. “Karshoj. Really?”

  “The other world or the other continent?” Brin asked.

  “The other world. They called themselves …” He hesitated as if searching for the right words in the common tongue. “The Liberators of the Steel Sky. They thought … They had this mad notion that that was the place where we belonged. Where we ought to return. They thought they could go there and it would be like the ancestor stories.”

  “I’ve heard those stories—that sounds like a good reason to stay far away,” Brin said. “Isn’t it better here?”

  Dumuzi shook his head, as if Brin were being deliberately obtuse. “It is and it isn’t. Like anywhere.”

  “Well, no dragon tyrants attacking you,” Havilar said. “Better than that.”

  “Was Baruz the one who made the circle?” Farideh asked.

  Dumuzi gave her an odd look. “No. I don’t think he could do that sort of magic. It’s difficult, isn’t it?”

  “Quite,” Brin said.

  “Who made the circle then?” Farideh asked. Do they have a ritual book? Can they make another circle? Can they make a sending?

  Gods’ books, someone’s distracted, she thought, and it was Dahl’s dry voice. You need a killer, not a way to run. She sat opposite Dumuzi, and folded her hands in her lap, as if crushing the thought between them.

  “Shestandeliath Ravar is the only one who could have,” Dumuzi said. “He was sympathetic to their goals, or maybe he just found them amusing. I don’t know. I don’t think he was there that night, though.”

  “Could he have just told them how?” Havilar asked her sister.

  Farideh nodded. “He could have made a scroll. If he had those skills. Would Ravar have turned on them?”

  “On the Liberators?” Dumuzi asked. “I don’t think so. I mean …” He scowled again at the table’s edge, lost in thought. “Do you know the word throtominarr? It’s … it’s the honor you pay your ancestors by building and … improving what they did. You owe them, and your descendants owe you. Leaving Djerad Thymar, leaving behind their clans and their futures for this silly dream? That would be a disgrace. It would be ignoring that responsibility. It’s the sort of thing elders might exile you for.”

  “Is that what Mehen did?” Havilar whispered.

  That startled Dumuzi. “You don’t … Don’t you know?”

  From the corner of her eye, Farideh saw Havilar turn to her, but her own gaze was locked on Dumuzi. “Not really,” Havilar said lightly. “I know it was to do with Arjhani. Probably.”

  “He was supposed to marry,” Dumuzi said. “He was supposed to marry my mother, Kepeshkmolik Uadjit, but he refused in favor of Arjhani. But you didn’t tell Pandjed no, even if you were his scion, and refusing a match like that … For a reason like that …” He shook his head. “Mehen was exiled. And Arjhani did not go with him. He stayed and wed Uadjit.” He shook his head. “I thought you knew.”

  They did, Farideh thought. They knew all the pieces, scattered to the winds. A comment there, a sore spot there. Narghon’s glare in the Verthisathurgiesh tomb. What sthyarli did they find to satisfy choosy Uadjit? Mehen had demanded when Dumuzi had named his mother. If not Mehen, then who?

  The one man Verthisathurgiesh Pandjed could punish his wayward son with.

  For a
long, awkward moment, no one spoke.

  “It sounds like Ravar is the man to talk to,” Brin said briskly. “Can you make an introduction?”

  Dumuzi cleared his throat. “I can try.”

  The Shestandeliath enclave was on the other side of the pyramid, down two staircases and across a wide walkway. The city bustled beneath the warm midmorning light streaming down from nowhere, the smell of plants and strange herbs warming in the magical light threaded through the air.

  “This is what Suzail was like, isn’t it?” Brin asked as they descended from the City-Bastion toward the market floor. “For you two, I mean.”

  “How do you mean?” Havilar asked.

  “I haven’t seen a single human since we got here,” Brin said. “Everyone stares. No one speaks the same language as me, unless I start talking first. Everything,” he added, coming down off the stairs with a heavy thump, “is meant for someone a good deal taller than I am. I don’t fit. That’s what it was like, wasn’t it?”

  Havilar shrugged in a diffident way. “That’s how it is most places.”

  Shestandeliath enclave’s doors were hung with falchions, carved with twisting dragons and a strange-looking bow on its side, wide as the whole portal. Slices of colorful stone decorated the spaces between. The doorguards told them that Ravar had left not long before.

  “Meeting someone down in the clan tomb,” one said. “I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

  “That will be Zaroshni, I hope,” Dumuzi said, sounding perturbed. “She’s one of them too … a friend of mine. Her cousin was among the dead. She’s helping me find the remaining Liberators,” he went on. “I haven’t seen her since that day.” He turned to Farideh. “Do you mind going down there again?”

  “I think we’d best,” Farideh said.

  THEY NEVER, NEVER notice—oh they always think they will! But whatever difference they believe they’ll surely mark, I’ve marked it too. This one remembers two tongues, the way the chain across her face swings, the way her feet walk the paths through this city of stone, the names of the ones who might go missing—but oh, oh, nothing to eat, not truly. It’s a buzzing city, a rumbling city, a too-crowded place. Down, down in the catacombs is the only peace and quiet, the only place to eat, so that’s where she—sweet as a dewdrop hanging on a thorn—asks to meet the chain-marked wizard and he doesn’t notice. They never notice. Tasty, tasty magics on this one. Seasons the flesh so well.

  Turn, turn, down into the shadows, to wait and wait and wait, until the smell of blood that puts the dewdrops to shame becomes too much to bear …

  7

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

  Raven’s Bluff

  RAVEN’S BLUFF EMBRACED THE ZHENTARIM SHIP, WRAPPING IT IN THE waiting arms of its harbor. On the rising cliffs over the Dragon Reach, the city glinted with innumerable torches as the sun set. None of the Zhentarim spoke, the tension on the ship’s deck as thick as a fog across the water until the ship moored between a trireme and a big caravel with its sails all furled.

  “What now?” Dahl asked Grathson. He’d been on the deck of the ship since Thost had stormed off, hovering between his brothers and his grandmother and Mira, not coming too close to any of them.

  “We switch to a river boat,” Grathson said. “Make sure yours are ready to move as soon as we’ve secured it.”

  “Any chance of visiting the market while we’re here?” Dahl asked.

  “Why? You need new dancing slippers?”

  “I need components,” Dahl said, gesturing at his haversack. “I can’t cast rituals without them.”

  Grathson chuckled. “Boy, keep your sorry spells to yourself. We don’t need a ritual caster for this mission. Just a little motivation for your granny.” He strolled away.

  Dahl considered the torches of the city beyond, the distant glow of the night-market. Chances were good he wouldn’t find the ritual he needed anyway—not at a price he could pay. The knowledge sent his pulse racing. Every day that passed without Farideh felt like another cut, another slice through the ties between them, and how long would she wait before she gave up? How long before Lorcan lured her back?

  Stop, he told himself, rubbing a hand over his face. She’s not a stlarning dog.

  His brothers and Sessaca had retreated to his grandmother’s cabin, shutting themselves away from the Zhentarim—they’d done so nearly every night. Dahl had left them to it, with everything lying sharp and uneven between himself and them. For a moment, he considered letting it lie, staying the villain and keeping his secrets so they could all remain safe and sound—

  It’s too late for that, Dahl thought as he crossed the ship. So you have to fix this first. Then figure out how to get off this ship before they find a boat. Stock up on components. Steal some grog.

  Not that one—Even if his head ached and his temper simmered, not that one. Keep your wits about you.

  Dahl pushed into the cabin without knocking. Bodhar sat on the floor, Thost at the foot of the narrow bed. Sessaca occupied a narrow wooden chair. Every one of them looked up at Dahl as he entered, as stonily as if Dahl had been one of the Zhentarim sailors. Dahl found the latch and shut it.

  “Did you check for spells?” he asked Sessaca. “Listening, scrying, that sort of thing?”

  She gave him a withering look. “Please.”

  Dahl nodded once, his pulse rattling. He rolled his sleeve up. “Look, I’m sick of secrets and lying—”

  “Oh, cry for the Fallen!” Sessaca said. “No one lied to you, lambkin.”

  “Really? What do you call it? I’m sick of the lying,” Dahl went on firmly, “and so it’s not fair to do it to you.” He laid two fingers on his forearm. “Vivex prujedj.” A dark blue sigil of a harp and moon rose out of his skin.

  “I’m not a Zhentarim agent, I’m a Harper,” he said, dropping his voice. “That’s what I do in Waterdeep, that’s what I was doing in Suzail, that’s …” He faltered. That wasn’t how he knew they were in danger. That had been all Lorcan’s doing. “That’s who I was contacting in the wood. That’s how I know Mira,” he said. “She’s a flipcloak agent, I’m her handler. She tells me what the Black Network get up to and helps me keep them in sights. But the Zhentarim think I’m just a contact of hers, an Oghmanyte come to hard times, so none of this can ever, ever leave this cabin.” He hid the tattoo and rolled his sleeve back down, eyes on the floor. “Now,” he said. “Thost, do you want to talk to Dellora?”

  “I knew it!” Bodhar cried. “I knew there was something squirrelly. You’re a Harper? How long have you been a Harper?”

  “Give me a breath, Bodhar. Do you want to talk to Dellora?” Dahl asked. He glanced at his brother. Thost’s expression was ice.

  “You can,” Dahl said. “The sending ritual I used before. I can make it so you can talk to her. You can tell her you’re all right and make sure she is too. I can’t undo what happened, but this I can do.”

  Dahl took his ritual book out, the packets of components. He kneeled on the floor. “You get twenty-five words, that’s it. Once the spell takes effect, the next twenty-five words out of your mouth are what she’ll hear, all right?” He laid the lines of powdered metals and dried blood out in careful succession. “You might want to write them down first,” he added. “It’s easy to lose count.”

  Still, Thost didn’t speak. Dahl bit back a curse and settled into the rhythm of the ritual, shifting threads of the Weave with careful application of the components and murmured words. Everything else faded away.

  When he’d finished, the magic hung in the air, a bird, a sprite ready to carry Thost’s voice all the way back to New Velar, to a three-room house just a little less crowded than it had been two days ago.

  Dahl lifted his head, regarding the circle of faces around him. He held out a hand to Thost, who still watched him, grim and unflinching. His eldest brother wet his lips, glanced at the lines on the floor, at Dahl.

  He leaned forward. “Dellora?” He paus
ed as if waiting for an answer. Dahl gestured at him to keep speaking. “I’m … we’re all right, all of us. In Raven’s Bluff. On a boat.” He trailed off, wide-eyed.

  Eleven more, Dahl mouthed. Tell her: twenty-five words. Are they all right?

  “Tell me you’re all right? In twenty-five words.” He exhaled. “I love you.”

  The air fizzled, popped. A moment so long panic began to edge up Dahl’s nerves—what if something had happened? What if Dellora was dead?

  Oh gods, his sister-in-law’s voice came, scratchy and thin. Oh … We’re fine. We’re all fine. They left. She exhaled, as at a loss for words as her husband. Watching Gods, Thost, you don’t come back in one piece, I’ll hunt your ghost down.

  Thost chuckled. “Don’t doubt it one bit. Kiss the children for me?” Silence answered.

  “She can’t hear you,” Dahl said, apologetically. “It’s … it’s just those twenty-five words.”

  “Ah,” Thost said, nodding. “Better’n nothing.” He sniffed, nodded twice. “Many thanks.”

  “Least I could do.”

  “Cost a shiny copper too,” Bodhar pointed out, sounding surprised. “Figured that mess you bought was for a lot more than a quick back and forth. How much coin you take as a Harper?”

  “You don’t do it for the coin. Nor secretary work. But it was important,” Dahl said, sweeping away the lines.

  “A handy little spell,” Sessaca agreed. “Suppose it wasn’t an entire waste, sending you off to the Oghmanytes.” Then, “You talk to your brightbird that way?”

  “Nah,” Bodhar said. “He can’t talk to her.”

  Sessaca frowned. “What do you mean he can’t talk to her?”

  “He can’t do that”—Thost gestured at the scattered powders on the wooden floor—“thing again?”