Ashes of the Tyrant

by Erin M. Evans

  “Please. I’m not a young man who thinks his heart is a shield and a weapon anymore,” Mehen said. “I would have stayed away if only because you and he are here. But clan runs deep.”

  “Liar.” Uadjit turned away. And for all Uadjit had been at the center of Mehen’s woes, he pitied her then. Arjhani was nothing but heartbreak, even when you didn’t ever really love him.

  “Your son’s a fine lad,” Mehen said. “Dumuzi? Resourceful. I’m impressed he tracked me down so quickly.”

  Uadjit waved him away. “It was months.”

  “You forget, I’ve become very good at hiding,” Mehen pointed out. “Plus, he was good to my daughter when she was alone. Fought by her side when he could have run. He does your clan honor.”

  Uadjit unfolded her arms. “Thank you. He’s a good boy.” She hesitated. “They say you took in tieflings. Did you … have them when Jhani …”

  Mehen nodded. “Twins,” he said, skimming past the sharp edges of that. “Havilar and Farideh.”

  “Pretty,” Uadjit said, ignoring the sharp memories too. “Old names.”

  “I don’t want him to come near them,” Mehen said. “Are we clear on that?”

  “Very.” She tapped her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “They’re investigating the murders in the catacombs with you. My father mentioned them, though Dumuzi didn’t.”

  Mehen reconsidered Uadjit, that detail laid so carefully before him it might have been a peace offering. “I haven’t been able to figure out why Narghon was there,” he said slowly. “None of the dead were yours.”

  “No,” she said. She glanced at the door, then moved around the table to stand beside Mehen, where she could watch both entrances, before adding quietly, “None of the dead in the Verthisathurgiesh tomb.”

  “Karshoj,” Mehen swore. “Another one?”

  “The same night, but not the same place,” Uadjit said. “The southern exit from the catacombs—she was making a guard’s round that night. Throat torn out … and one of her arms …” She trailed off. “You’re looking for an animal. And we’re looking for a second guard. One dead, one vanished.”

  Mehen frowned. “Narghon said nothing.”

  “Consider this Narghon saying something.” Uadjit checked the door once more. “Why were the hatchlings in the catacombs?” she asked. “What were they doing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know, or you won’t tell me?”

  “Both,” Mehen said. “Anala’s the one who called me here, Anala’s the one who asked me for answers. I owe her first.”

  Uadjit scoffed. “I think you still owe me quite a bit.”

  “You, perhaps,” Mehen allowed. “But not Kepeshkmolik. I’m not here to play clan politics either.”

  Uadjit gave him a curious look. “Did Anala tell you why she wanted you back?”

  A trill of fear went through Mehen. “To recover numbers. To show she isn’t Pandjed. I haven’t agreed to stay,” he said. “In fact, I don’t plan on doing anything of the sort.” He hesitated. “Why? Why do you think she sent for me?”

  Uadjit’s teeth bared, something between a smile and a grimace. “You tell me what I want to know, and I’ll tell you what you want. Fair is fair.” And that sounded more like the Uadjit he remembered.

  Before Mehen could reply, the smack-smack of running feet echoed down the enclave’s hallways, and Brin burst into the room. “Mehen!” he cried. “Mehen, you have to come, right away.”

  THE DRAGONBORN OF Djerad Thymar swarmed around Ilstan like a tide of scales and strangeness. Eyes tracked him as he passed, glassy and jewel-bright. Do they see? Ilstan wondered. Do they know? Do they mark the ghost of the god that walks among them?

  … What are the gods if not our hearts encompassed, our hopes and fears embodied and not embodied, shadowed and silvered and undone … The Weave unravels, the spinner darns the breaks, and so we may find a lifeline in the darkness …

  “Saer.” Kallan took hold of Ilstan’s arm, and he jumped back, lightning forcing its way into his fingers. Kallan held up both hands. “Easy. I just noticed you’d stopped. The inn is this way.”

  Ilstan shook the lightning out, sparks snapping from his fingers. “Oh. Yes. Do we … Are we to stay with your family?”

  “Clan,” Kallan corrected gently. “I’ll have to go and present myself—make sure it doesn’t filter back to my grandfather that I have no manners, you know? But we’ll be staying at the Bow of Nilofer while you … put out some feelers?”

  Ilstan nodded, eyes on the crowd. He didn’t know how he’d find Farideh, but surely Azuth would help. Surely the god would not have entrusted him with this task without knowing he would complete it. Surely. Surely …

  “Saer?” Kallan said again. Ilstan moved past him, so that he followed the gnome wizard while the dragonborn sellsword guarded his back. Through the crowds they wound, Ilstan sweeping the scaly faces for a nearly human one with mismatched eyes.

  … There are those who are lost and those who are seeking … There are those who are struggling and those who are—

  The god’s voice didn’t trail away this time, but ended as though it had dropped off a cliff. Ilstan stopped dead in his tracks.

  “Here we are,” Kallan said, moving around him toward Wick. “Bow of Nilofer. How much can you afford?” he asked Wick, dropping his voice. “I think the wizard might need a rest.”

  Wizard! The voice echoed as if Ilstan stood in the tunnels beneath Suzail again. Wizardwizardwizardwizard.

  Ilstan clapped his hands over his ears. “Stop it!” he hissed.

  “Haven’t got scaly money,” Wick said.

  “Silver is silver,” Kallan answered. “I can get them down to six apiece, I think. Unless you want to share the room.”

  Something exploded beneath Ilstan’s feet, and he lurched to the right, into the crowd. But the stone floor remained, smooth and intact. Not an explosion, he thought. Not an explosion, but then—

  Wizard! The voice boomed again. You are needed.

  A burst, Ilstan thought. The burst of a spell against the threads of magic. Another came, beneath the stone floor and beyond the inn. Panting, Ilstan searched the pyramid city’s steeply sloping walls. An exit, a passage, something.

  Quickly, he thought, or maybe the god thought, but Ilstan was already running, hoping for a passage to the deeper floors, to the spellcaster fighting for his or her life. He ran for the eastern wall, dragonborn parting for him as if they knew his errand. Ahead of him a dark passage opened in the floor. Two guards stood at its mouth, and marked him as he neared. One held up a hand and started to speak.

  The spell was already leaving Ilstan’s mouth in the same moment, dragging power along the Weave’s remnants as he pulled his wand free. Magic wrapped the two dragonborn, heavy as a blanket, and they puddled to the floor, fast asleep but unharmed. Cries rose out of the crowd, a flock of panic, but Ilstan left them behind, diving down the granite staircase, tunneling into the city of stone.

  The pulse of panic—like the crying of a rabbit in a snare—called to him along the threads of the Weave. Another wizard, another spellcaster, in danger, drawing on magic that wasn’t enough. Another devoted of the Lord of Spells engaged with the forces of evil.

  Below, the air was cold, and the light sparse—glowbaskets broke the dark every stone’s throw or so. Ilstan stopped, listening, grasping at the bursts of magic.

  Strength lies in safety, the god murmured. Safety in strength. But strength in knowledge and there is no safety in knowledge.

  Someone collided with Ilstan, and he turned, ready to cast—a dragonborn, a dragonborn man with his sword in its scabbard and his hands held high—

  “Saer?” the man said. “You have to come away from here. Come back with me.”

  Ilstan searched the dragonborn, his face, his hands, the sword. “Loyal Kallan,” he said. His voice was breathless, panting. “Help. Someone needs help.”

  “No one’s down here but the dead and�
�”

  The scream came from all around them, the catacombs’ construction bouncing the sound off every wall. But in Ilstan’s very core, the wild cry of a spell screamed through the stale air, a signal. He sprinted away, not waiting for Kallan, not waiting for an explanation. Through corridors, through rooms and tombs and strange chapels, until he found the dragonborn wizard and the creature devouring him alive.

  “Chaubashk vur kepeshk karshoji!” Kallan shouted, yanking his sword free.

  The dragonborn stumbled. His chest was a ruin, the chains that marked his clan torn free of one nostril, which bled down his face. His right arm to the elbow was torn away, still in the grip of the creature that loomed over him.

  It found Ilstan with lambent eyes sunken into a corpse’s face. Gaunt and gray, with powerful limbs. Legs like a hunting cat’s and claws to match. The dragonborn’s blood stained its face and jagged teeth.

  Too close, little morsel, a voice in Ilstan’s thoughts sang, mad and ferocious and enough to make him wish he’d never left Suzail. Hungry, hungry, hungry. One for now, one for later, and one for later still. Lucky, lucky, lucky.

  … the many mouths of the Abyss are never fed …

  “Fiend,” Ilstan sneered. The creature smiled, an unholy thing, just before Kallan’s sword cut toward it.

  The blade sliced the creature’s arm, but then its terrible claws came up, and they might have been steel for all the creature seemed affected. Kallan turned the blade upward, into the thing’s belly and scored a better hit.

  But then its strong arm knocked the blade right out of Kallan’s grip to clatter to the ground between the wizard and a sarcophagus.

  “Help,” the wizard croaked, trying to gain his feet again. Ilstan sprinted to the man’s side. He had no healing magics ready, he had no cleric’s touch. But he had the blessings of Azuth, and each step he took toward the man, they built and built and built.

  … All work together, a chorus of action, an army of truth … even when we work alone, we are not alone …

  Ilstan kneeled beside him, feeling as if his bones were turning to sugarglass, feeling as though he moved through molasses—the wrong move and all of him would shatter with power. All of the dragonborn wizard too.

  “Get out of here!” Kallan shouted. His reclaimed sword scraped stone. The fiend hissed. Ilstan set his hands upon the other wizard, felt the bone and blood and muscle and magic in him. As the dragonborn struggled up, Ilstan glanced back at the fight.

  The creature burbled something hideous and unfathomable. In their niches, the ossuaries rattled, leaped. They fell from the shelves—one, two, three, four—spilling out their contents. Their occupants.

  Four dragonborn warrior skeletons stood, arraying themselves around the creature.

  Endless defenders. The creature grinned. Bones for miles.

  The skeletons advanced.

  Ilstan pointed his wand over the shoulder of the dragonborn wizard. “Ziastayix.” A bolt of crackling force shot out of the end of his wand and shattered the skeleton nearest Kallan.

  “Now you,” he murmured to the dragonborn wizard. And the blessings of Azuth poured through Ilstan and into the man.

  For a moment, all Ilstan knew was the surge of magic, the swirls of blue and silver light that blinded and buoyed him and the wounded wizard. Then he saw——as if he could see through the other man’s eyes——how the dragonborn’s hands moved as if to guide the spell into being. But the ruined arm posed beside the intact one, triggering nothing.

  The creature cackled. How weak wizards are.

  And then a voice spoke—Ilstan’s, the dragonborn man’s, and something greater than all of them. A word like a rockslide all condensed into sound, and suddenly the air sizzled and crackled as though the dragonborn breathed, not merely lightning but magic itself. The skeletons glowed white with the sudden pulse of power, and burst into twitching fragments of bone.

  The creature shrieked in agony as the spell struck it, its skin seared away. It crashed against the farther wall, thrown by the power of the spell. Ilstan hung between worlds, between moments. In the edges of his vision, Kallan scooped up his sword and eased onto his feet.

  Then the dragonborn wizard grunted and collapsed, nearly pulling Ilstan to the ground, and all at once Ilstan’s mind seemed to pull together, becoming solid and real and clear. He looked from Kallan to the dead wizard to the creature, remembering.

  “It’s a fiend,” he said, calm as ever. “You should run.”

  But then there were voices coming, shouting, the footfalls of a whole group. “Stay back!” Kallan called down the corridors. “For the love of every lost soul, stay back!” Ilstan turned to face the creature, wand high.

  “Go,” he said, drawing up a fireball. “We need assistance.”

  The fiend stood, still grinning, always grinning. Another time, morsel, it said. Ilstan released the fireball, just where it meant to turn. But slick as an eel, it twisted and fled out another door, sliding into the shadows. The fireball crashed against the wall as the footsteps reached the tomb.

  “Quick!” Kallan said. “There’s been—Oh!”

  Ilstan turned. And there she was.

  If Ilstan was surprised to see Farideh, the tiefling was nothing short of shocked. Afraid, he thought. As she should be.

  … We strive together even when we strive alone … Azuth whispered … and so every precious thing can be protected, every spell can be strengthened, every word can be saved, every tyrant brought down … and if we do not, it is the end, the end, the end in the beginning’s skin … The other faces didn’t matter, didn’t register, for here was the Knight of the Devil. The Lady of Black Magic. The Key to the prison of Azuth. The only adversary that mattered if Azuth was to live.

  “Ilstan,” she said. “What have you done?”

  “ ‘Ilstan’?” Kallan said. Ilstan turned to his faithful companion, but the sellsword looked upon him with frightened eyes, his sword high. “You’re that war wizard. The one who was trying to kill her. Ilstan Nyaril.”

  “This doesn’t concern you,” he said. Somewhere beside Farideh, one of her companions moved. He jerked toward it—

  The glaive jutted up toward his midsection, swifter than he would have thought such a weapon could move. But Ilstan Nyaril had been a Wizard of War, and old instincts shoved him backward, away from the blade. He pointed his wand at the attacker—at Farideh, her golden eyes stern—and spat a word of magic. A globe of fire burst from the tip of the wand and streaked toward her, but she jerked out of the way, the flames only singeing the fine hairs along her crown. The fireball crashed against … Farideh, standing behind her, rocking her back with a sharp cry.

  Ilstan blinked. Twins. Lord Crownsilver’s mistress. The Lady of Black Magic and the Knight of the Devil. “You are both tainted,” he said, realizing his mistake. “You both hide the key.”

  The shaft of the glaive hit him in the stomach, knocking the wind from his lungs. He swept the wand toward the tiefling, as someone else slammed the butt of a blade into the middle of his back.

  I cannot fall, Ilstan thought, locking his legs, drawing up the magic needed to cast. I cannot yield.

  Havilar pivoted, slashing the glaive toward his neck. Ilstan grabbed her fist, the point of strength, shoving her back and the blade away from him and—

  For a moment, Ilstan felt as if he did not exist, as if his whole awareness merely stretched across the edge of creation, looking down into an endless void, full of the cacophony of hungry beasts, the churn of chaos.

  Then just as suddenly, he was in the catacombs again, facing Havilar, who stared at him as if he had just crawled out of the endless Abyss. Kallan had moved toward him, and another dragonborn, a dark-scaled one with the moon sailing along his brow. And Lord Crownsilver, too, standing over the Knight of the Devil. Footsteps echoed as though all the catacombs were full of soldiers.

  But none of it mattered to Ilstan Nyaril—every spark and scrap of magic in him surged forth, hungry for the bloo
d of the only quarry that mattered now: the creature. The spell built up his arms as he turned from his previous quarry to follow the hateful fiend who had killed the dragonborn wizard.

  “Guards!” the dark-scaled dragonborn bellowed. “To the tomb of Shuchir’s line!”

  “It’s escaping!” Ilstan shouted back at him. “We don’t have time.”

  “Stop!” Farideh reappeared beside him, her rod held in her uninjured hand. “How many more are you going to kill?”

  Knight of the Devil, he thought. Lady of Black Magic. The drive to find the fiend wavered, but didn’t break. “Not so many as your pet.”

  Ilstan twisted away from her, diving toward the exit, but as he did, he came up short against a body, a guard coming through that door. A broad-shouldered dragonborn man with greenish scales and the same moon-shaped piercings. The guard grinned at Ilstan in an unsettling way as he seized him by the right hand, crushing his wrist and forcing the wand from his grip.

  “No way out, criminal.”

  Without a thought, Ilstan balled his left hand into a fist and slammed it into the guard’s toothy jaw. All at once, the strange focus that had gripped him vanished as pain shot up his arm. The guard, surprised, loosed his grip on Ilstan, but there was little the wizard could do but fall back into the tomb, clutching his bleeding knuckles in shock.

  More guards poured in, grabbing hold of him. They wrenched his hands behind his back where they could not coax magic from the Weave and pushed him down to his knees, holding his head so that all he could see were the scattered bones, the poor dead wizard, and the blood soaking his own cloak and robes.

  The younger dragonborn man kneeled beside the dead body. “It’s Ravar.”

  “Dead?” one of the guards said. The young man nodded and stood, looking away from the fallen wizard. The guard holding Ilstan’s head let go, clapped the younger man on the back several times. “You did your best. And we caught the killer. Your clan will be proud.”

  Ilstan looked around wildly. The Knight of the Devil was bent over, messily sick on the stone floor, while Lord Crownsilver himself held her hand. Farideh’s mismatched eyes held Ilstan’s, her face pale as death. “Brin, can you go get Mehen?” she whispered. Her sister vomited again.