Ashes of the Tyrant

by Erin M. Evans

  “Because she’s a demonborn tiefling of course. Apparently, you’re a little sensitive.”

  Havilar frowned. “But … wouldn’t that mean I’m a demonborn tiefling? Why doesn’t Farideh make me throw up?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “You were born after the Ascension. You’re devil-blooded. Anyway you would have gotten used to Farideh by now.”

  Havilar frowned. “How long does it take?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” Lorcan said. “Something under nine months.” He rubbed his forehead, his neck—the soul sapphire had been a gamble and it had worked. But the price was worse than he’d anticipated. He needed to sit down. “A good sign.”

  “It has to be faster,” Havilar said, dropping onto the floor herself. “The demon’s still out there.”

  “That’s what the next lesson’s for.” Lorcan started to stand. He caught the footboard of the bed and dropped onto the mattress, before vertigo caught him.

  “Are you all right?” Brin said.

  “No.” His eyes felt as if someone were trying to burst them like grapes, via a pair of iron spikes driven inch by inch through the top of his skull. “Abyssal magic doesn’t agree with me either.”

  “If you throw up, I’ll throw up,” Havilar said.

  “All right, I’m fetching both of you some water and a draught,” Brin said. “Don’t get up while I’m gone.”

  “Lordling, divine magic is not going to be better.”

  “Lucky for you the dragonborn just know their herbs better than most. Well done, Havi,” Brin said. Lorcan heard the door shut behind him, Brin speaking to Farideh beyond.

  Havilar was quiet a moment, scratching the hellhound’s coat. “What is that thing anyway?”

  “A kind of prison.”

  “There’s someone in there?”

  “There’s someone in there with a demon,” Lorcan said into his hands. “I don’t know who. It wasn’t labeled.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “The Blood War was awful. Is awful. Just … you don’t want to dabble with demons, all right? You should thank us for keeping them at bay.”

  “Are you still going to help me?” Havilar said after a moment.

  “I said I would. It doesn’t benefit me in the slightest if you get torn up by a demon or captured by a cultist.”

  “True,” Havilar said. “Farideh would never forgive you.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Please. You’re in love with her, whatever you say.”

  “How long are you planning to lead Brin down the primrose path? Just until you find someone more your … class?”

  Havilar snorted. “I don’t know if I’m getting used to you or if you’re slipping. Brin and I are perfectly fine with the way things are.”

  Lorcan lifted his head, the glowing lights on the walls as sharp as lightning bolts through his eyes. “Are you? I’d ask him about that.”

  Havilar considered him with an unmistakably savage glint in her eye. “She likes Dahl better, you know. In bed.”

  Rage poured through him, swift and hot enough to still his breath. Lorcan laid his head in his hands again. “You are very lucky,” he said, “that I can hardly stand breathing right now.”

  “Fine,” Havilar said. “Truce.”

  “Truce,” he agreed, though he resolved to discover what exactly Farideh had told her sister when he wasn’t listening. He glanced at the door, waiting for her to stick her head in, to ask where Brin had run off to—she might as well have not been there.

  “Who’s Alyona?” he asked offhandedly.

  Havilar lifted her head and frowned. “Never heard of her. Should I have?”

  “It would be simpler,” Lorcan said. “Do you have any idea what kind of name that is?”

  “What name?” Brin asked, returning with a glass flask and a pouch of herbs. “She said put it under your tongue,” he told Havilar. She opened her mouth, and he stuffed a pinch of the medicine there and handed her the water flask. Brin turned to Lorcan again, expectantly.

  “Wha kine uff name is Alyona?” Havilar said.

  “Alyona?” Brin tilted his head. “Sounds Damaran. Maybe Vaasan. Who is that?”

  “A puzzle,” Lorcan said, taking the herbs from Brin. Their flavor resembled the underside of a shambling mound, and even with the water, it left his mouth puckered and muddy-tasting.

  “What’s the next lesson?” Havilar asked.

  Lorcan gritted his teeth. The herbs did almost nothing for his headache, though they seemed to calm the spinning nausea that came with it. He ought to set a magic circle first, but the pain of getting down on the floor to draw it wouldn’t be worth the danger of the dretch. He pulled out a scroll. “Get your glaive ready. You’re going to practice.”

  Havilar stood, still pale, and took the weapon from where it rested against the wall.

  “Wait,” Brin said. “Truly? You nearly threw up all over—”

  “Better throwing up than getting possessed. Stay back,” she said grimly. Then, “If I do vomit, please don’t watch.”

  “Get ready.” Lorcan cast the spell, a simple scroll, of only the most limited practical use. The air within the room seemed to contract violently, then shiver. The scent of corpses and roses and the edge of ancient ice filled the room. A wave of heat burst out of the center of the circle, and when it passed, there was another dretch, squat and stinking at the end of the room.

  “Kill it,” Lorcan said.

  The dretch might not have understood Lorcan’s words, but it clearly understood the language of a blade advancing toward it. A screeching voice scrambled over Lorcan’s thoughts, protesting in Abyssal that they would regret it. It threw itself against the wall, shrieking. A noxious cloud rose around it.

  The hair on Zoonie’s back stood up straight and she slunk beside her mistress. Havilar had eyes only for the dretch, her knuckles white around the glaive.

  “Zoonie,” Lorcan said. “Tarto.”

  “Tarto,” Havilar repeated.

  The hellhound dropped back on her haunches and whimpered, eyeing Havilar and then Brin as if one of them would rescind the order. Havilar pressed on. The dretch bared its gummy stumps, its claws curling against the granite.

  A few feet short of her glaive’s reach, she stumbled as if she were fighting against an invisible tide. Her lips pressed together white, her eyes watering, she stood, drawing breath through her nose as if the air were thick as mud.

  Despite her demands, Brin darted to her, and despite her insistence, Havilar reached almost blindly for his shoulder.

  All the fine hairs along Lorcan’s wings stood on end. In that moment, the room itself seemed electric, alive. He blinked and it passed, but there was no denying it happened. The dretch bunched its legs under it, as if it meant to spring.

  But before Havilar could stop it, Brin lunged toward the dretch, sword suddenly in hand. He plunged the weapon into the creature and its squeaks broke off abruptly. Before he’d pulled the sword entirely free, it burst into flames and vanished.

  “Gods damn it!” Lorcan shouted. Havilar suddenly straightened, her cheeks flushing, her breath rattled. Brin stared, dumbfounded at the blackish blood oozing down his weapon.

  “I don’t know. I just … It happened.” He turned to Lorcan. “Was that your doing?”

  “No,” Lorcan said. “You can thank Havi for that.” He muttered a curse under his breath. “Why didn’t you tell me you could do that?”

  “I don’t know!” Havilar panted. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Really? What just happened then? Hmm? Brin?” Lorcan gestured to the lordling. “Care to enlighten her?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It was … I was here, and then I wasn’t. There was a breath where I could have sworn …”

  “That you didn’t exist?” she asked softly.

  Brin nodded. “Something like that. And then all I could think of was the dretch. Killing the dretch. I don’t think it’s exa
ggerating to say I couldn’t have done anything else.”

  “It’s possible you couldn’t have,” Lorcan said. “Let’s say the blessings of the Raging Fiend have their own schedules. Use it now or it’s not for you.”

  Havilar cursed softly, over and over, before straightening. “I did that before, I think. With Ilstan. Whatever it is, this time it made me feel better.” Brin wiped the blood from his sword and sat down beside her.

  An interesting development. Another element to consider. He handed Havilar the glass of water. “Here. Take it out into the sitting room. You’re going to want to let the air clear out for a bit.”

  And Lorcan was going to need to find more answers.

  DAYS PASSED—FEIYEN ONLY realized that they’d left the outpost far behind when the man made of night turned the Zhentarim against some mind flayers and their thralls. There was no asking what the creatures were after, where they were coming from when they had strayed so near the Zhentarim’s routes.

  Feiyen fought, tooth and claw. A vague part of her mind wondered where her arrows were, where her poisons had gone. She watched her hands, calloused from the bow, crush the throat of an emaciated man. She watched a mind flayer fall to its knees, shattered by the magic of the man made of night.

  After, there was no asking how many had died—the thralls, the Zhents, or even the mind flayers. The fallen are weak, the man made of night said, as though she were a child for having such thoughts. They are but rungs for the strong to climb.

  “Yes, my lord,” Feiyen heard herself say. His fingertips trailed down her spine, burning like frost against her skin. Pain in her shoulder evaporated in that strange sensation, and it was only then she realized she’d been wounded.

  And if do you fall, the man made of night said, one strong hand kneading her breast, you have no choice but to strike upward. One … last … chance.

  The sound of his voice made Feiyen’s thoughts dip and soar, plunging down into nothing more than an awareness of pulse and nerves one moment, then scattering everything so wide that she forgot she existed, forgot she needed to breathe. The more he talked, the more she felt as if she were changing into something else. A more bestial, more calculating version of herself.

  Of course, he went on, my foes think I’ve fallen, trapping me here like this. But they’re fools, whoever they are. Already I’ve grown an army. I’ve found an exit. I will make this place my fourth kingdom, and whichever of them has struck against me—it is Demogorgon, though, mark it—will find that I cannot be unseated so easily.

  He gestured then to the cavern before them, a tumult of rock and rubble. Feiyen’s attention focused as he pushed her forward, her eyes catching the edge of a scroll, dusty and torn, that protruded from the earthfall. Neat runes of High Shou lay faded against the ancient parchment, and a whispering part of her mind read them in her grandfather’s voice: All the world is a valley from the mountain’s peak.

  The man made of night’s breath curled against her neck, the smell of blood and sulfur and dense perfume assaulting her as he whispered, Start digging.

  14

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

  Djerad Thymar, Tymanther

  DUMUZI IS CAUGHT IN THE BELLY OF A THUNDERHEAD LIKE A FISH IN A WHALE. He swims through dark clouds as the lightning hems him in. He twists, flips, but the lightning spears him through the back, out the belly and he’s falling, falling …

  Out of the cloudbank, Tymanther spreads out beneath him, rushing nearer by the heartbeat—the bulk of Djerad Thymar against the Ash Lake, shining Djerad Kethendi standing over the harbor, the homesteads scattered over the northern plains, the lush farmlands to the south all centered on Arush Ashuak, the village that’s quickly outstripping its name.

  Suddenly, the coastline shifts as though it’s a pulled string. Djerad Kethendi falls first, it’s shining white walls crumbling into sand along the rising water. Djerad Thymar flattens into the hills, the homesteads’ lights wink out as the storm clouds whirl faster. The green fields shift and reshape. All over the plains, the ziggurats rise.

  And Dumuzi keeps falling.

  Cities sprout out of the ground, clusters of mudbrick and stone. Where bustling Djerad Kethendi once stood, an enormous golden city rises. At its center, a ziggurat.

  Dumuzi tries to scream as he crashes into the city, tries to get his feet beneath him, as if that would stop his fall. But before he can do any such thing, he is thrust into a body standing on the steps of the ziggurat, looking down at an unfamiliar street.

  Humans stroll past dressed in loose clothing and heavy gold, eyes traced in dark kohl. Proud-shouldered guards pass, nodding at the citizens walking by. There is something of Djerad Kethendi in its flower boxes and whitewashed walls, but Dumuzi’s never been here. No dragonborn has ever been here.

  Still, the people who pass him don’t stare. They pause and bow, and he bows back—a little gesture that makes him feel as if he has been here after all. As if he belongs in this place, this … this …

  Unthalass—its name is suddenly in his thoughts, as though he has always known it. Unthalass. City of Gems.

  No, he thinks, remembering his waking life. You mean Djerad Kethendi, the Fortress of Gems.

  That moment of confusion makes everything change.

  The windows are shut tight, the flower boxes long gone. People move, quick and closed off, eyes on the ground while ornate palanquins ferry other men, heavy with gold and marked by blue circles on their foreheads. The guards are thickest around these, and not much else. It’s a poor, frightened place. Fear presses in on Dumuzi like a physical thing, and deep in his heart that fear curdles into anger. They will obey him, or they will die. That is the order of things, that is—

  Then the dragon screams.

  Dumuzi flees down the side of the ziggurat, leaving behind the tyrant’s spirit that gripped him there. The streets flood with soldiers, and he runs and runs and runs. In the chaos, he can hear the voice of dead Pandjed shouting—

  He runs full into the man with the curly beard. The man considers him, as though he’s a puzzle. Dumuzi tries to shout—they have to run, there’s a dragon! But he cannot speak. The man turns him around and Dumuzi sees they’re on a rooftop now, overlooking the city, the battlefield swelling out of the ground. At the head of the humans is a golden king, his shoulders as broad as a dragonborn’s, his skin shining as new scales. He is beautiful and terrible and foolish as he strides toward the five-headed dragon and her endless invaders.

  Tiamat, Toril’s own Tyrant Queen, fire and ice and lightning and acid streaking from her many jaws, burning through her own armies and Unthalass’s. People flee. The tyrants and their armies crash and crush the city, striving for supremacy. Bolts of magic fly alongside arrows, alongside the Tyrant Queen’s murderous breath. One will win. And so Unthalass will lose.

  The golden king is the one to fall, and Tiamat claims his body in her ungainly claws, leaving the armies to battle beneath the burning sun. Unthalass collapses, ruined, and Dumuzi suspects that it isn’t alone. All the lands of Unther, broken, because of one man.

  Not a man, ushumgal-lú, a voice rolls through his thoughts. Dumuzi turns, surprised, to face the bearded man. He looks up at the sky over Unthalass, where the clouds are scarlet and bristle with gilded lightning.

  “Then what?” Dumuzi asks.

  A storm is coming, the man says. And so this will happen again, unless you listen. Ushumgal-lú-en ur-sag enlil-la-ke?…

  Dumuzi woke to a cold room, feeling as though his body had turned to lead in the night and now his soul was trapped within it. The lightning breath crackled in his lungs, and he swallowed it.

  The brazier went out, he told himself as he dressed. You had a bad dream. That’s all.

  The lights were still dim, too early to be up without reason, but Dumuzi washed himself and dressed anyway. He stopped, shirt in hand, and moved before the looking glass, turning back over his shoulder.

  The scars the li
ghtning breath had left over his back, feathery patterns of silver where all the color bleached from his scales, remained as bright as ever. “They’ll be gone in a month or so,” the healer had said. But whatever scales he shed, the mark of Pandjed’s displeasure always returned.

  A storm is coming …

  “Ush-um-ga-loo,” Dumuzi murmured. The rest jumbled in his thoughts. It wasn’t Draconic and it wasn’t Munthrarechi and he didn’t have an ear for anything else. He thought of the languages he’d heard in the months that he’d searched for Clanless Mehen—it must have been one of them, but he couldn’t place it. “Ush-um-ga-loo en … sag … enlil …”

  Dumuzi sighed and pulled his shirt on, dressing and tidying his room, the phrase seeming to dart past his thoughts too quick to catch hold of. What did it mean?

  It’s a dream, he told himself. It’s just nonsense your mind tells itself while you sleep. Not the sort of thing, after all, that Kepeshkmolik gave credence to.

  He made his way through the enclave toward his mother’s chambers, wondering if there would be anything for him to do today or if he’d be free to seek out Zaroshni and the handful of Liberators they’d not tracked down.

  Or head to the training yards again, he thought glumly. Zaroshni was avoiding him, there was no denying it, any more than there was any way of knowing why. Perhaps she’d devoted herself more wholly to the Liberators, and the fact he thought them fools meant he wasn’t welcome. Perhaps she was angry he’d listened to his father’s request and left. Perhaps she’d met someone else.

  That doesn’t matter, he told himself briskly. She was always going to find someone else. He was always meant for someone else. That was how things were.

  As he came near to the hallway that led to Uadjit’s rooms, raised voices broke into his woolgathering.

  “What about Chessenta?” his father’s voice came. “Or … I don’t know, Aglarond? Akanûl?”

  “There are ambassadors in those places already,” Uadjit answered.

  Dumuzi froze. He ought to keep walking. He ought to make his presence known. In a space as crowded as the enclave, the only proper thing was to pretend you couldn’t hear what you heard, to remove yourself when it could be done or interrupt to make it clear the speakers had forgotten they shared space with so many. Dumuzi leaned against the wall instead, listening to his parents argue.