Ashes of the Tyrant

by Erin M. Evans

  He lost time, he was sure of it. The guard’s scales became pale then coppery then red, the piercings leaping around as if they were flies alighting on that changing face. But when the door opened, when Farideh came in, time gelled around him.

  “Not again,” he murmured. “Not again.”

  An axe as black as the hidden face of the moon hung at her hip. The guard snapped orders at him, the words rockfall and crackling ice. Farideh retorted, storm clouds and broken glass. She came close to the bars, staring at Ilstan, eyes unreadable. Demon axe at hand.

  “You should not have come,” he panted, the god threatening to crumble out of his words. A warning, a threat—both, if he were honest. “You should not have come.”

  “I have to ask you something,” she said. “When Azuth told you to cast the fireball, did he sound like himself?”

  “You will not turn me against the Lord of Spells.”

  The voice in his thoughts echoed back, eerily mellifluous: Even iron melts if it’s hot enough … Ilstan found himself mouthing the words, for hours and hours and hours. He blinked. She was still staring at him.

  “Is Asmodeus the one talking to you?” she whispered.

  Ilstan blinked again. Asmodeus. “ ‘And perhaps, then,’ ” he recited, the words of Azuth, “ ‘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.’ ”

  Her eyes widened and for a terrible moment, Ilstan feared he might fall into them and felt the world shift. He grabbed hold of the bars, and she jumped back, startled.

  “You have the key,” he said. “You or the Knight of the Devil—he said so. You have the key to free him, and you do nothing, minion of evil. You know he would split your would-be god in twain! You would rather there were sin in the world than to have the Lord of Spells walk anew.”

  “I don’t want any of those things,” Farideh said. “When was the last time you … when did a wizard last come?”

  His head spun—the feeling of the Weave bursting out his fingers, the dead dragonborn, the fiend in the catacombs … Our dearest allies may be our nearest friends … but 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 …

  Another dragonborn burst into the room, an ochre-colored male who filled the door, shouting thunder and thrown stones. Lord Crownsilver’s bodyguard. Farideh’s guardian. Ilstan released the bars and scrambled back, out of reach.

  “What are you doing here?” he shouted at Farideh.

  “Running an errand,” Farideh said. “Mehen—”

  “We need to go.” He shouted something at the guard. The guard snapped back. A storm of Draconic, vicious and violent. Farideh interrupted, over and over. Her father ignored her, and so she turned to Ilstan.

  “Ilstan!” Farideh shouted over the arguing dragonborn. “Don’t listen when the voice changes! Understand? Don’t listen!”

  “We’re leaving,” the dragonborn said. “Come on.”

  Ilstan blinked. He was alone once more, but for the guard, who had turned into a female with greenish-bronze scales and brass owls pinned to her face. She regarded him with distaste as he studied her.

  “Don’t listen to the voice when it changes,” he mouthed, and wondered if he’d know when he heard it.

  FROM THE GRAVE of the pyramid up to its peak—the city hums, it buzzes, it rasps, but I am silent as a ghost, sliding up out of the graves in the skin of the girl. The guard has his uses, foremost of which is the names and the faces of the ones who know how the city protects itself, how this jewel is guarded, how the king of dust might pluck it. Up to the peak, to where the soldiers stand guard, to find another body, another batch of memories, another burst of strength. The taste of the devil-touched is still sweet-sour on my tongue, and my belly is aching for the stolen meal. Worse, my body is battered, bloodied. Unrepaired.

  I cannot return to the catacombs.

  Do not fail me, my dark lord instructed. The gains are too important. And what has the maurezhi done but grow distracted with sweet flesh and too-wily prey? If I am called back soon, there will be nothing to show for it, and my torments will never end. I want to run and run from this city that is nothing like I was told, to where I might not be found.

  There is no such place, for all my fear says there is.

  And running free through the buzzing, rasping, boiling city will unmask me, and my mask is my greatest strength, the reason the Dark Prince has a use for me. I pull myself deeper into the girl’s skin—I cannot wear this much longer—I have to be clever now while the hunt and hunger screams in me. I have to feed, or I will die.

  So I hurry up and up and up where my crowded memories say the defenders of this strange city live.

  She had lessons here—the screaming one—and these feet on the padded floor kick up memories of blades and bruises and bodies. Young ones, clumsy ones, to-be-honed ones, and their teachers too—the ones who fill their heads and muscles with the ways of soldiers, the ways of protecting the city. Fenkenkabradon Dokaan—the old general with a booming voice. Verthisathurgiesh Arjhani—the slim man with the glaive. Ophinshtalajiir Sepideh—the silver woman with a brusque manner. Vanquisher Tarhun—the sweetest prize. Devour them and I’ll fill my mind, my muscles, with those answers, learn their secrets with my teeth and my gullet. Bring them to that king of dust and my Dark Prince will be pleased and I will not suffer.

  The slim man with the blade-stick, I find, foolishly tucked away in a training room no one uses. He sees me and smiles—she missed her lessons the other day. He has time for her to make it up—sternness in that offer, annoyance. He holds out another blade-stick.

  I smile, weapon enough myself. I reach not for the offered blade but for his arm and yank with all my strength, the joint separates with a delicious crack. The man shouts in surprise, pain, but he doesn’t pull away like he’s supposed to. He twists, slippery as fresh intestines, and my hand is forced to open.

  He is fast, the glaive sharp. I dart around it. He’s frightened—he is prey, after all, and this sweet, sweet girl isn’t supposed to be a predator—but the glaive isn’t afraid. This was what it was forged for, and in some part of his shivering mind the man knows it—the knowledge floods his eyes, squeezing out anything sensible. He cuts the girl across the chest and it burns, but I grab his other arm and twist—

  Pain—the room spins—

  The glaive’s blade, slammed across my borrowed face, I realize.

  “Arjhani!” a woman shouts. And there by the door, a better prize, a silver one, a ring-pierced one, her leg bandaged up and hurting her as she walks. Ophinshtalajiir Sepideh, my new memories say. A teacher of tactics. Wounded by an overeager student who is still polishing tack for the sloppiness. Her blade is elsewhere, but she charges in. “Drop your karshoji weapon! Are you all right, Zaroshni?”

  “Just learning,” I say, and in a moment it will be true.

  “Sepah!” Arjhani shouts. “Don’t!”

  I turn and I change—the panic that overtakes this broken soldier thickens the air. I reach for the Abyss, and my own army comes running, obedient and fearful. Eight loathesome dretches burst out of the air, and, just after, a cadre of ghouls. I will not lose again.

  “Block the doors,” I order. “Don’t kill them yet.” A thud, a crunch, pain—Sepideh’s crutch hits me like a bludgeon in the base of my breath. A lesser demon would fall to that. But the maurezhi lashes out, tooth and claw, and I rake her deep, deep, through the armor that is no armor. She limps back, but I am furious, unstoppable. And the poison in her veins is taking hold.

  She manages half a shout before her tongue stills, her leg buckling. Half a heartbeat more and I am on her, the tear of flesh, the crack of bones, the spray of blood—yes, yes, yes—

  Pain. Again. The blade in my back. I dip into the space between spaces, leaping to a safe distance.

  Half the dretches are gone, half the ghouls. Another
vanishes in a burst of flames as it tries to intercept the glaivemaster—he is quick, too quick, even with one arm hanging useless. Strike and strike and strike, never slowing. The glaive carves up my ghoul as though it’s made of tissue, and now he’s coming for me. My prey behind him, trying to gain her knees, to crawl away, to reach the glaive I dropped.

  I can only have one, only one can make a meal before both souls flee.

  Unless the maurezhi is clever.

  The glaivemaster defends his fallen comrade, winnowing my army—putting them to their true purpose, but if I’m to claim both these prizes, I need some preserved.

  Fear is my weapon, as much as the mask. Not even the glaivemaster can defeat the dread gift of the Abyss. It slows him, and when the glaive hits me again, it comes just after I’ve yanked his useless arm wide and bitten deep into the muscle.

  Cloth and scales peel away and my poisons sink into his blood. I let go. One step back, two, and Verthisathurgiesh Arjhani collapses, boneless but alive. For the moment.

  “Don’t let him get up,” I tell the remaining ghoul as I return to the silvery prey reaching for the fallen weapon. “I’m going to need him later.”

  THE FOURTH WARLOCK had proved the trickiest to pin down. Pacted to a paelyrion called Shetai and bound to the seventh layer of the Nine Hells, the tiefling had hidden himself in plain sight. A wise scheme.

  He has Elyria’s eyes, Bryseis Kakistos noted as Sairché watched the man argue with a fishmonger. The shape of them, I mean.

  “The most powerful descendant of Caldura Elyria and he’s bargaining for salmon,” Sairché replied. “What a waste.”

  Visibility is a poor indicator of power, Bryseis Kakistos said. The scorpion outlasts the butterfly.

  Her thoughts buckled again. Watching herself gasping, delighted, at a cloud of pale green moths in the moonlight. Staring at a brilliant orange butterfly, dying on the side of a building, its wings twitching as it fought the grip of Kelemvor. Standing over a grave mound, watching the swirl of lemon-yellow wings, mocking the hollowness in her heart and knowing she wouldn’t stand for it. She would tear the world apart instead.

  “You have such interesting sayings in this world,” Sairché said. “When do you expect to snatch him?”

  All in good time, Bryseis Kakistos said. There’s still much we need to do.

  “Of course,” Sairché said. She triggered the portal back to Malbolge. Bryseis Kakistos still couldn’t have said whether Sairché could be taken at her word—whether she wanted her mistress’s favor returned by giving Glasya the means to topple her father, or whether she intended to hand Bryseis Kakistos over to gain the princess of the Hells’ good graces.

  “Where’s the fourth?” Sairché asked.

  He was the fourth, Bryseis Kakistos said.

  “Was he?” Sairché was quiet a moment. “Yes … I suppose I just lost count.”

  Half the capsules remained, and still Bryseis Kakistos had not secured a new body. She had not found the spell to separate out her soul’s parts. And already Sairché seemed to be noticing the gaps left in her memory.

  When Sairché went to the scrying mirror and drew up not the image of another warlock but Farideh’s human lover, Bryseis nearly overtook her out of panic.

  Why are you interested in him? Bryseis Kakistos asked. I thought you found your brother’s baiting insulting.

  “I do,” Sairché agreed. “But if Lorcan wants him dead, then it stands to reason—assuming all else is neutral—I want him alive. The sands are running down on this pact between us. I’d like to have my arsenal ready. You understand, of course.”

  Of course. The mirror shivered, and the dull reflection reshaped to show the human man, amid his fellows, standing in an ancient and tumbled-down library near an enormous hole, its edges hemmed by leaning columns and dangerously tilted shelves.

  Sairché’s puzzlement swarmed around the ghost. She swirled her fingers over the hole and the mirror shuddered, the blackness of the hole folding around the image as though the whole mirror were being swallowed. Down, down, down. Through rock and earth and mountain, faster and faster, and then—

  The mirror stopped amid a group of humans who seemed to be digging through the rubble at the bottom of the great hole. Bloodied, dazed, not noticing either the dead that lay around them nor the couples locked in ferocious passion.

  “What by the shitting Nine …,” Sairché murmured. She swirled the ring again.

  The image held, focused on the center of the humans, the deep shadows there …

  Eyes opened in the shadows, an impossibly handsome man, his skin as black as charred bones. He looked directly at Sairché as though he could see her, through the spell, through the planes, through the mirror. He met her eye and he laughed.

  Sairché waved the trigger ring over the mirror as though she were slapping it, falling back several steps as though the man were going to leap out of the mirror before the scrying could be dispelled. As soon as the mirror returned to its resting state, she tore the ring from her finger, hurling it across the room.

  Was that who I think it was? Bryseis Kakistos asked.

  “No one,” Sairché said. “It was no one. Put it out of mind.”

  You are not that lucky, little devil, Bryseis Kakistos thought. And I may not have to go down to the Abyss after all.

  PART III

  VERTHISATHURGIESH THE TALE OF THE CRIPPLED MOUNTAIN

  Let us sing of the battle that spilt the blood of the Tyrant of Tyrants and burnt his bones to ashes. Let us sing of Iskdara and Shurideh Who-Would-Be-Verthisathurgiesh, the descendants of Khorsaya, of Reshvemi Who-Would-Be-Verthisathurgiesh, whose descendants we claim. Let us sing of the battle that birthed Verthisathurgiesh, the Crippled Mountain.

  Rhodrolytharnestrix, the Tyrant of Tyrants, laired high on the peak of a volcano called the Celestial Mountain, ancient and canny and cruel. Uncountable lives were lost to his ambition and greed, as he waged war against other dragons and unearthed the titans’ treasures from their graves, our ancestors’ merely tools and toys to the Tyrant of Tyrants.

  We craved his death and our freedom from the very shell.

  Iskdara and Shurideh brought their band, still heady from the victory at Arambar Gulch, strengthened by the band of Thuchir Who-Would-Be-Shestandeliath, of Haizverad’s line, and bearer of the Breath of Petron; by the band of Mirichesh Who-Would-Be-Ophinshtalajiir, of Caysh’s line and killer of the Frostborn Duke; by the band of Nerifar Who-Would-Be-Kepeshkmolik, of Shasphur’s line, whose descendants would found Djerad Thymar, and many more.

  But the Tyrant of Tyrants upon the mountain peak could rain fire down on our ancestors, long before they ever reached him, and from so high, Rhodrolytharnestrix thought himself unassailable. He watched the massing armies—thousands upon thousands armed and armored—with the cruel amusement of a hatchling considering ants upon the stones.

  But at the battle of Arambar Gulch, where Iskdara and Shurideh, sister-warriors, had felled proud Asativarainuth, the Silver Death, they had gained from his treasury a weapon beyond all of Rhodrolytharnestrix’s imaginings: the Eye of Blazing Rorn, a ruby imbued with all the rage, all the heat of that terrible Dawn Titan.

  “What good is even a titan’s fire-jewel against an old, wily charir?” asked Nerifar Who-Would-Be-Kepeshkmolik. “He could swallow it whole and never feel a thing.”

  “It is not for the Tyrant of Tyrants,” said Shurideh.

  “It is for the Celestial Mountain,” said Iskdara.

  As the battle stirred, the sister-warriors, brave Reshvemi and Thuchir Who-Would-Be-Shestandeliath found their way into the belly of the volcano, through old lava tubes and caverns that opened for the Breath of Petron, that precious artifact of the titans’ power. The armies massed, the Tyrant of Tyrants gloated and circled his lesser dragons. The Eye of Blazing Rorn plummeted into the belly of the volcano, tipped from Reshvemi’s hand, stirring the fires that kept the Tyrant of Tyrants warm, into an inferno.

  The Celestial Mou
ntain conspired with them, they say. The eruption did not flood the old lava tubes and burn and boil away Iskdara, Shurideh, Reshvemi, and Thuchir. Lava and ash and stone exploded into the air, breaking the peak of the Celestial Mountain so that—ever after—it bent, away from where the ancestors hid, as if it were crippled by the explosion. Ever after, we honor the intent of the sacrifice and the luck of the Crippled Mountain by our name, Verthisathurgiesh, so that we draw strength from deep within and surprise our foes when they least expect it.

  The ashes rained down for forty days, the death of the Tyrant of Tyrants coating the scales of all who had faced him that day, all who fought the armies that survived the eruption. Ever after, we named ourselves—no longer the slaves of the tyrants, their unlucky progeny—the Vayemniri, the Ash-Marked Ones, so that we shall never forget what clans can do as one.

  17

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

  Verthisathurgiesh enclave

  Djerad Thymar, Tymanther

  FARIDEH SAT UP IN BED, WATCHING THE WINGED SNAKE ZIGZAG ACROSS THE ceiling. If she stayed pressed against the headboard, the urge to duck and cover her head as Keetley passed over was manageable. Zoonie had not adapted yet, pressed to the floor beside Havilar’s edge of the bed and whining.

  “How many of the enclaves are locked down?” Farideh asked Havilar.

  Havilar, still curled up on her side, groaned. “Six? Five? I don’t know.”

  “Maybe the maurezhi is already in one of them,” Farideh went on. “Maybe it’s biding its time and that’s why no one’s found it?”

  Havilar rolled over. “They’re looking. The Adjudicators, the Lance Defenders. Why are you awake?”

  “Nightmare,” Farideh said. This time she could see Dahl, standing amid the empty houses of Arush Vayem. Between her and him, though, was the Lorcan who wasn’t Lorcan, and the ghost of Bryseis Kakistos.

  We could be very helpful to each other, he’d said, while the ghost faded in and out of reality, baring bones and viscera and sinews. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.