Ashes of the Tyrant

by Erin M. Evans

  Maybe not, she thought. But that’s got nothing to do with who you go to bed with.

  Mehen sighed. “Fari, trust me when I say this: keep your wits about you. The heart’s a foolish thing … other … parts more so.”

  “Gods, just … no. We’re done.” Farideh resolutely did not look at her father as they wound through the catacombs, watching instead the slim dragonborn sellsword ahead of them. As they’d armed and armored themselves, Havilar had sent the doorguard to fetch Kallan, it felt rude and disruptive to suggest he alone should stay. “Are you avoiding Kallan?”

  “I’m not avoiding anybody,” Mehen muttered. “Where is she taking us?”

  “Did you tell him you had to break it off because of us?” Mehen said nothing for a long moment. Farideh cursed to herself. “That’s not fair. What happened to ‘my, you girls have grown’?”

  “You have grown,” Mehen said. “And that’s got nothing to do with whether it’s a good idea for me to take up with a fellow.”

  Farideh hooked her arm through her father’s. “You deserve to be happy.”

  Mehen pulled her close, but said nothing, and Farideh wondered if he believed a bit of that. “Arjhani was in the enclave,” he said in a low, apologetic voice.

  “I know,” Farideh said. “He … we argued.”

  “What?”

  “I’m fine. It was nothing. Lorcan got rid of him.” She wet her mouth. “I think Havi saw him too. He was looking for her. Like he was trying to finish a conversation.”

  Mehen stopped dead in the corridor and turned his daughter to face him.

  “I haven’t talked to her about it,” Farideh protested, before he could say a word. “She seemed fine and … well, it would be worse to bring it up again if she’d shaken him, right?” She searched Mehen’s scowling features. “Did you talk to him?”

  “No,” Mehen said. His teeth parted, tongue tapping against the roof of his mouth. “You are grown,” he said after a moment. “But … I have not been the best judge of character. It’s my decisions that have left you girls in range of heartache you didn’t deserve. I don’t think Kallan is Arjhani, but I don’t know.” He snapped his jaw again. “Havilar liked him too much. I panicked.”

  Farideh put her arm through his once more. “Havi likes more people than not. And it’s not your fault. No one blames you.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  Farideh shook her head. “Sometimes you want to kiss someone, and they’re awful. That doesn’t make you awful. At least I hope it doesn’t.”

  “That is where this conversation stops,” Mehen said. “Kallan tells me you went to see the wizard.”

  “The guard tells me you almost killed the wizard,” Farideh returned.

  “And I’d do it again. Do not go up there again.”

  Farideh shook her head. “Mehen, all this Chosen business … He knows something, and I think he doesn’t realize it. If I don’t find out, we could all be in a lot more trouble.”

  “And if you’re in his sight, you’ll be in one of these ossuaries before long.”

  Farideh sighed. “What if you come with me? If we go together, then you can keep an eye on Ilstan, and you’ll know what’s happening.” Mehen hesitated. “You know I’m going back, one way or another.”

  Zoonie jerked suddenly toward the right-hand passage, ears pricked. Havilar handed the chain over to Brin and went a few steps down the dark hallway.

  “It’s—” A high-pitched scream echoed through the catacombs and suddenly cut off. Havilar cursed and sprinted toward the sound.

  “Karshoj!” Mehen shouted. In Draconic, he ordered Dumuzi, “Run for the guards!” But the younger dragonborn ignored him, racing after Havilar.

  “Got it,” Kallan shouted, sprinting toward a side passage.

  Zoonie yanked hard on the chain, and Brin had no choice but to run after, the rest of them chasing.

  The passage ended in a small, disused tomb, the clan’s name—Churirajachi—etched over the lintel, unfamiliar to Farideh. At the far end, something hunched over a body, the sound of cracking bones echoing loudly as cannon shot.

  Zoonie growled and the shadow went rigid, whirling to face them: a dragonborn girl with dark green scales, the silvery chains of Shestandeliath hanging along her cheek. Blood, nearly black against her scales, smeared her snout.

  “Zaroshni!” Dumuzi shouted.

  “That’s not Zaroshni,” Havilar said, her voice starting to shake.

  The dragonborn girl smiled, and suddenly her body stretched, as if the bones were outgrowing her joints, reshaping her bit by bit. Her scales became hairless skin leached of color, like a dead fish drawn off the bottom of a lake. Powerful muscles bunched across its chest, over its thick thighs, its dangling arms. The sight of it stopped Farideh dead.

  Baatezu … a purring voice rumbled through Farideh’s thoughts. You want this prize too?

  Beside Farideh, Lorcan tensed. “Not particularly. But I have agreements to uphold.”

  Mehen gestured at Farideh, at Brin—get to the sides, surround it. He moved toward Havilar, slowly, slowly.

  The creature laughed, and Farideh’s scalp crawled at the sound. This one tastes like the old days. He has your master’s stink upon his flesh.

  Farideh moved up beside Zoonie, where she could see the man lying on the floor, in a pool of blood. Brume’s pale blue eyes, wild with pain, found hers. His throat had been torn out in such a way that he could not scream, but he had not died.

  No, Farideh thought. No, no, no.

  “Lords of the Nine,” Lorcan swore, drawing his sword.

  “Zoonie,” Havilar managed in a shaky voice. “P-parosh renoutaa.” Her hands gripped the glaive tight, but a fine sheen of sweat showed on her face. “One … of you … get …”

  The creature grinned, its teeth long and yellowed as finger bones. It spread its bloody, clawed hands, and all around, the ancient ossuaries rattled on their shelves and smashed open on the stone floor.

  “Zoonie! Renoutaa!”

  Dry bones bound with magic recombined into eight Vayemniri warriors, their claws lengthening into weapons themselves, fed by the demon’s magic. Farideh’s powers stirred in response.

  Havilar had hardly spoken the order but Zoonie leaped at the demon. Two of the bone warriors, just combined, threw themselves into her path. Their claws drew blood, even through her thick coat.

  The skeletons formed a wall before the demon, protecting it and its terrible meal from attack. Farideh pulled hard on the powers of the Nine Hells, drawing missiles of burning brimstone out of the air, raining down on the skeletons and the demon beyond. One hit Zoonie, thrashing against a clinging creature. Behind the iron cage she wore, her teeth were bared.

  “Muzzle!” Farideh shouted.

  “Shit!” Lorcan cried. He slashed at the skeleton that lunged toward Havilar, still gray-faced and leaning hard on her glaive. Farideh cursed and shifted her aim, drawing another cluster of missiles over the skeletons that menaced her sister.

  Lorcan shouted something in Infernal at the hellhound, grabbing for the muzzle’s latch. Zoonie ignored him, slamming down on one of the dragonborn skeletons with the full force of her front paws. Bones clattered, twitching, to the stone floor.

  Farideh released another blast of energy, threading the streak of bruised-looking power through the gap Brin and Dumuzi formed as they pressed their attack. A skeleton slammed against the wall. Mehen shoved forward, toward Havilar, toward the wall of skeletons.

  “Somebody!” Havilar bellowed. The gift of Asmodeus, Farideh thought. She could leap through the planes, come out behind the skeletons. She darted forward.

  Mehen’s roar, the crack and flash of the lightning breath, made the air in the tomb fizzle and cling to Farideh’s skin. Lightning leaped from skeleton to skeleton to skeleton. Dumuzi scrabbled backward, wide-eyed and fearful as if he’d been hit too, nearly dropping his sword.

  Havilar, unharried now, still took a step back, reaching back for an ally to ta
ke the blessing. The fiend, seeing its army shattering, noticed this. Noticed Havilar, and perhaps the building magic, that seemed to shiver on her frame. It moved forward, a terrible smile spreading over its bloody mouth.

  Farideh pulled hard on the powers of the Hells, even as she sprinted forward.

  Several things happened altogether: Lorcan yanked the pin holding the muzzle loose, stumbling as it came free. Zoonie shook the cage off, grabbed one of the skeletons by the leg and swung it over and into the ground, straight toward Lorcan. Farideh shoved him hard, out of the way of the skeleton that crashed between them.

  And into Havilar’s outstretched hand.

  He flinched. When his eyes opened, Farideh thought she could see a flicker of horror at what Havilar had done, but it was swallowed up by a sudden ferocity, as though Lorcan’s erinyes blood were bubbling up to the surface. His dark eyes locked on the demon.

  Farideh threw a spell at the skeleton before him. The burst of dark energy boiled out of the rod she held, slamming into the creature’s sternum and shattering what was left of its torso, opening a gap for Lorcan to leap forward and stab the demon through the back.

  It screamed, the sound of a score of voices in startled anguish, arching against the sword, the splatter of blood. It twisted, its clawed hand striking Lorcan across the face, hard enough to knock him off his balance.

  Havilar, freed for the moment of the burden of her gift, lunged with the glaive, driving the blade into the creature’s belly. It twisted, hissing, retreating. It flung one muscular arm at Havilar, and she ducked under it, but she’d no more stooped but she clapped a hand to her mouth.

  Blessed of the blessingless, its mocking voice slid through Farideh’s thoughts. Are you too soft for the Raging Fiend’s—

  “Adaestuo!” Farideh cast another burst of energy through the crowded room, but the demon yanked one of its skeletons into the blast’s path, and it destroyed the soldier’s arm instead.

  Farideh threw another blast of energy at the demon, pushing it back from her sister. All around the clatter of bone shards marked the nearing end of the demon’s defenders, and it seemed to realize this. It turned and fled deeper into the catacombs, still bleeding, but quick on its powerful legs.

  “It’s getting away!” Dumuzi shouted, racing after it. Mehen swore and followed. Havilar stood, furious and woozy. “Zoonie!” The hellhound looked up from shaking one of the skeletons’ still kicking legs. Havilar hauled herself onto Zoonie’s back. “Go! Chase it!”

  “Ahdiseqa!” Lorcan shouted. At the Infernal order, Zoonie took off like an arrow after, followed by Lorcan, cursing a steady stream.

  Farideh ran instead to the tiefling still dying on the floor.

  Brume’s throat was a ruin of meat. Farideh pressed both hands to the wound. “Brin! Get over here! Karshoj! It’ll be all right,” she told Brume. “He’ll fix it, it’ll be all right!”

  Brume’s mouth gaped, fishlike. “Please, look at me!” Farideh said. “Look at me! I can’t let you die, karshoj—I haven’t got any other way, you can’t die. Brin!” she screamed. “Get over here!”

  He couldn’t die. Not like this. And not now.

  Someone yanked on her shoulder.

  “Fari!” Brin was shouting. “Fari, stop! He’s dead. He’s dead.”

  Farideh blinked. Brume’s lifeless face looked up at her, blood running into his pale blue eyes. She stood. Throat torn out. Belly half-gone. One of his legs had been eaten to the knee. There was no saving him. There had never been any saving him.

  “Karshoj,” she said, feeling her eyes well with tears. “Karshoj.” She went to wipe them and realized her hands were covered in his blood.

  “Did you know him?” Lorcan asked from behind her. Brin met her eyes over the body.

  “I met him,” Farideh said. A man was dead, and what went through her head but, I haven’t got any other way. Brin handed her a handkerchief. Her hands shook when she took it. Brume was dead, and so the snake had no one to find. Her only link to Dahl was gone. She wiped her hands on the cloth, as if she could wipe away her guilt too. “I don’t know … He might have family …” She looked up at Brin. “He was Zhentarim.”

  Brin’s eyebrows rose. “We have to search the body,” he said, with evident care. She nodded and kneeled down beside Brume. Their heads together, Brin whispered, “He’s the one with the note, isn’t he?” She could only nod again. “Don’t give up, all right? You’re tougher than that.”

  She felt about as tough as the bone ash scattered on the floor. She reached up and closed Brume’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, before she began digging through the pockets for trinkets, messages, anything that might lead her to the Zhentarim and back to Dahl. A whistle, a handful of coins, a note of promise in Draconic for one trade bar. Half a slab of sweet almond cake wrapped in a handkerchief. A lump formed in Farideh’s throat.

  “Here.” Brin kneeled beside her, grim and solemn. He cut the lining of Brume’s coat, turned it out. A small black disk clattered to the floor. Brin picked it up with a look of faint disgust. “Token.” He pulled a sheaf of papers out. “Take it all. There’s no telling what’s useful.” He picked up the whistle. “He’s got a snake of his own?”

  Farideh nodded. “He called it Keetley.”

  Brin blew a short note on the whistle. Something rustled, high up in the ossuaries. He tried again, a trio of flickering pitches. The winged snake poked its blunt head out, its black tongue tasting the air for trouble.

  Farideh reached out to it. “Here! Come here, Keetley.” The snake eased out and seemed to consider Brume’s body, torn apart on the floor. Farideh pulled her collar open. “Come here!”

  Brin played a little tune with the notes of the whistle. Keetley flew out of its hiding place, circling the tomb twice, before slithering down through the air, and into Farideh’s collar. It was smooth and heavy, looping twice around her shoulders. Its wings draped on either side of her branded arm.

  Brin ventured out a hand to stroke the creature’s nose. “Do you know anything about caring for snakes?” Farideh asked.

  “Not a damned thing,” he said. He looked back to the tunnel. “Hrast.”

  Mehen returned, one arm around Lorcan, bloody-faced and favoring his right leg. Dumuzi was close behind, steadying Havilar, while Zoonie whined and pulled against her chain.

  “We lost it,” Mehen said.

  “He’s dead,” Farideh said.

  Mehen looked down at Brume and cursed. “The guards will be here soon.”

  “It won’t matter,” Lorcan said, wiping the blood from his cheek. “Your demon is a shitting maurezhi.”

  “What does that mean?” Farideh said.

  “It means that someone is trying to bring this whole city down.”

  15

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

  Verthisathurgiesh enclave

  Djerad Thymar, Tymanther

  DUMUZI RETURNED TO THE VERTHISATHURGIESH ENCLAVE IN A FOG, feeling as if language were falling away from him like shed scales. Bits of Munthrarechi slid off his ears without meaning. The devil’s explanations like dream-speak with their unfamiliar words.

  “The maurezhi,” Lorcan said, from the couch where his injured leg was propped, “were created to be the corpse collectors of the Abyss. What Orcus can’t use, what the Abyss doesn’t consume, they devour. And because nothing in the Abyss can be simple, what they devour, they become. They consume thoughts, memories, experiences, and they replicate them.”

  Devour, Dumuzi thought. He thought of Zaroshni, bright and buoyant, sharp and magnetic. A light even in the crowd of their friends. She knew what she wanted, she said what she meant, and what the elders wanted was a suggestion, not a lead around her neck. Do I love her, Dumuzi wondered in an inane way, or do I wish I could be like her?

  Did, he told himself. You mean “did.” The creature growing out of her skin. Zaroshni was gone, all that promise just meat.

  “Replicate them how c
losely?” Kallan asked from beside the door.

  “Exactly,” Lorcan said. “The maurezhi can appear to be anyone it’s consumed. It can mimic them all but perfectly. It knows where they would go, what they would say. Who they would know.”

  Exactly, Dumuzi thought. But not exactly. Dead-eyed Zaroshni who didn’t laugh, didn’t care about the missing, didn’t argue with him when he called her out for being so foolish. That was not Zaroshni, and shame on him for not seeing that his friend was gone, that she needed vengeance, that he owed her better.

  Brin sat down next to him with a roll of bandages. “Here,” he said, taking Dumuzi’s arm. It was raked and bloodied, the scales torn away in great rents. Dumuzi blinked as the human dripped some tincture on the wound. It hurt, but it didn’t matter, didn’t make its way into his thoughts.

  “Every time it consumes someone,” Lorcan went on, “it becomes more powerful. Stronger, faster, tougher. At this point it could be anyone, and you cannot defeat it alone.”

  “How do we stop it?” Farideh said, slicking her sister’s shoulder with the same tincture.

  Lorcan smiled as if she were trying to be funny, shook his head. “You have to find it first.”

  Find it. The gray-skinned beast fleeing into the darkness, the last edges of the glowlight from the disused Churirajachi tomb. Running as hard as he could, even as he felt the creeping sense that he’d miscalculated, that he wouldn’t keep the pace without suffering. And if he’d caught up? Mehen shouting at him to drop back, karshoj, you fool—and the sound of Pandjed haunting his words made every other sense fall away. He’d run until he died, for one reason or another.

  “But we have me,” Havilar said. “I mean, I can track it, can’t I?”

  “That’s the assumption,” Lorcan said. “But how many people live in this city? Any of them could be the maurezhi. Any of you could be the maurezhi.”

  Any. It could look like Uadjit. It could look like his little siblings. It could look like Patriarch Narghon, all stern and thoughtful. He thought of his teachers, up in the barracks. Fenkenkabradon Dokaan, the Lance Defenders’ commander. Ophinshtalajiir Sepideh, who taught tactics and thrown weapons. Arjhani with his glaive. Could they fall? He looked around the room considering these, his new friends, his new companions. Would he even be able to tell if one of them were dangerous? Mehen caught his eyes, frowning, and Dumuzi considered the floor.