Ashes of the Tyrant

by Erin M. Evans

  … the past lifts the present into the light … and the present prepares for the future … but the past is never gone from us …

  … can you trust what you see? Ilstan stiffened. Can you trust any of this?

  Ilstan wrapped his arms around himself, searching the dragonborn for the guard returning with his things. They blurred together, like a school of fish too thick, too similar for Ilstan to pick apart the individuals. A rainbow sea of scales.

  Then a woman cut through them—a dragonborn with silver scales, bright as moonlight, sharp as a knife. Ilstan stared at her, hard enough that the taunting words stopped making sense.

  Then the silver-scaled woman paused. Stared. Smiled.

  … can you trust what you see? Can you trust any of this?…

  A cold tendril of horror unfurled in Ilstan. The Weave unfurled along with it, wrapping Ilstan like a cloak. The pull of Azuth, suddenly stronger, enough to smother him in madness and magic. The Knight of the Devil? The Lady of Black Magic.

  Let her try and stop me, Ilstan thought. Let the powers of evil try and crush the spark of the divine. I am a war wizard of the vessel of the Magister, and though the words are missing, I have the powers—

  “Here.” The dragonborn guard had returned with Ilstan’s spellbook and wand, his cloak neatly folded around them. Ilstan blinked, focusing with some difficulty on these precious things. He took them, crushed them to his chest. “Thank you.”

  The dragonborn nodded. “And … we’re sorry. I suppose. Best of luck.”

  “Blessings of the Magister upon you.” The dragonborn muttered something under his breath that skittered away through the Weave, like spiders across an endless web.

  Ilstan turned back to the strange woman, weapons in hand.

  The silver-scaled woman was gone.

  Had she ever been there? Had he dreamed the whole thing?

  The Knight of the Devil, his thoughts murmured without meaning to. The Lady of Black Magic. He looked down at his sleeve. Find Farideh.

  Don’t listen when the voice changes, he could hear her saying. But was that her or was that the god of sin mimicking his Chosen? Was it only a taunt, since there was no not-listening? What terrible plans were hidden in the possibility of not listening?

  … all work together, a chorus of action, an army of truth … Azuth’s words? Or Asmodeus’s? Or one god speaking with the other’s voice? Even when we work alone, we are not alone …

  She holds the key—Ilstan clung to the thought like a lifeline as he plunged into dizzying Djerad Thymar. She holds the key and that doesn’t mean what you think.

  … power for the mighty … More power than you can imagine … I can offer that … No one will ever deny you again …

  Ilstan shuddered as the voice changed, and found himself seized by vertigo as he crossed a bridge, suddenly flush with more magic than he could remember. He clutched the balustrade, imagined tipping into the void.

  … power makes the weak mighty but can make the mighty weak … a wizard never rests … a wizard never forgets the reach of that might … without suffering ramifications greater than can be imagined …

  His hand was off the balustrade. He stood before a pair of enormous doors, a carved dragon skull leering down at him. Where the time between had gone, he couldn’t guess. A smear of dragonborn guards stood between him and the door. Him and the Lady of Black Magic. Him and the key.

  What do you want? the streak of dragonborn and blades demanded.

  “I need to speak to Farideh,” he managed.

  Other battles, other battlefields stuttered through his thoughts—marshes and ruins and forests of Cormyr. Facing wizards and goblins and bands of sellswords. They crystalized around this passageway, this entry, under the auspices of the wooden dragon.

  Lord of Spells, Ilstan prayed. Give me the strength to bend the Weave to this most glorious purpose, your freedom.

  Farideh parted the doors, looking as dark and terrible as an angel of battle swooping down upon this meager plane. At her hip hung a weapon of nightmares, a black axe of uncanny glassiness and evident sharpness that twisted with magics not of this world. The shadows of the Nine Hells twined around her. Ilstan was ready.

  Her hands came up. “Ilstan? Wait, are you all right?” Her voice shimmered like moonlight on the water. “Ilstan, you have to stay calm.”

  Don’t listen to the voice when it changes, Ilstan told himself. He drew his wand and began to cast.

  The words made time slow again, the magic growing thick around him. Farideh’s eyes widened, and in answer he saw magic build throughout her frame.

  He did not see the dragonborn guards separate from their scaly blur of flesh to tackle him to the ground. A ball of fire streaked from his wand, arcing toward the stone ceiling as he fell, the wand knocked from his hand. He cast again, a spell sure to strike, and the motes of magic curved as they arced off his hands, striking two of his attackers in the back with a chorus of smacks.

  “Henish!” a voice snarled. “Stop struggling!”

  “I am blessed by the Lord of Spells!” he snarled, hauling hard against scaly hands even as he drew up the power to recast the spell. “You cannot stop me, beasts!” He started to speak the words to trigger the spell. One of the guards wrapped an arm over his mouth, smothering the words and filling his nose with a musky scent.

  “Ilstan!” Farideh’s voice cut the hum of magic, the grumbling Draconic. Her face—one silver eye, one gold—swam into view. Angel. Demon. Angel. Demon.

  Lady of Black Magic, Ilstan thought. Don’t listen when the voice changes.

  “Ilstan!” she shouted over his struggles. “Ilstan, you need a caster! You need to—stop it! You need to pass the gift on! Give it to me! You did it before!”

  Find a wizard, his sleeves said. Give the magic to another caster.

  You go mad when you don’t, he remembered.

  The powers of Azuth yanked him toward her. This was supposed to be—whether it saved him or ended him, this was what the god wanted. The dim memory of his hand on her shoulder, then his hand on her shoulder again. He flexed his hand toward her, the little movement he could manage as the guards held him. She grabbed hold of it, squeezed tight.

  The pulse of magic that went through them both made his vision black. He heard Farideh shout, “Karshoj! Oshvith! Oshvith!” Hands released him, and for a moment it felt as if he were floating, falling slower than ever possible.

  Then the heat and roar of lava seared his ears and drove his eyes open. Farideh caught him around the waist, hauled him to his feet, even as she pulled a great rift of burning magma up through the planes. Even as fireballs peeled off her other hand, streaking toward the lava, one after another. Screams echoed all around them, but Ilstan smiled as magic surged through them both—he could almost imagine he felt the bare threads of the Weave against his skin. Every piece, every particle of magic in reach, seemed to surge through him and into her.

  It tapered away, the final notes of the last musician on a stage, as the glowing coals of the lava vent went out, the last of the fireballs swallowed up in that gap of the planes. Ilstan searched, by reflex, for casualties. A line of dragonborn stood twenty feet from the scorched boundary of Farideh’s spell, weapons out, eyes wary.

  No one had been hurt.

  Farideh released him, her own legs buckling under her. “Karshoj!” She shuddered violently, as if every nerve in her body had suddenly woken again. “Karshoj. Is everyone all right?” she shouted back to the guards, then shook her head. “I mean … wuyethi bensvenk?”

  “Akison.” One of the guards—a female, he saw now, with waist-length plumes of red, and jade plugs in her jaw—helped her to her feet, while the other three stood close to Ilstan. “Nobody was near it, whatever the broken planes it was. Good aim … one of you.”

  Farideh nodded, too quickly, still agitated by the flood of magic. “Good.”

  Good, Ilstan thought. She warned you. And she warned you. And when you tried to kill her, she rea
ched out a hand.

  … a wizard is often alone, and so it must be that a wizard seeks allies in the strongest of his peers …

  “Thank you,” Ilstan said, clinging to the all-too-brief clarity he’d gained. “I’m sorry.” He clutched his hands together. “I heard the god all wrong. I thought you were my enemy. I thought I had to kill you before you killed me. I don’t, do I? You’ve never tried to kill me, unless I was trying to kill you. You keep helping me and I keep forgetting. I’m so sorry.”

  Farideh shook her head. “You were mad with magic. It’s not your fault.”

  “But it is,” he said, and he felt his eyes well with tears. “I mistook you from the start. Before I could ever blame the madness. Oh gods, I’m so sorry.”

  Farideh looked away. “It’s all right.”

  “I have nowhere to go,” Ilstan told her. “And you’re right, the voice keeps changing. What is happening? Do you know?”

  Farideh glanced at the guard who’d helped her up. The woman gave a small shake of her head. “Matriarch Anala won’t like it.”

  “Well she won’t like it if he stays out here gaining an audience,” Farideh said. She rattled off more Draconic, her tone sounding as if she were bargaining. “Deshkrouth?”

  The guard looked to her fellows and shook her head again, handing over Ilstan’s dropped implements. “Deshkrouth. Your burial.”

  Farideh considered him gravely a moment. “You can come in. But I need to keep your wand and your spellbook. For the moment.”

  “That’s very fair,” Ilstan said, handing over both, even though a tiny part of himself panicked at being so disarmed.

  “Come on,” Farideh said. She guided him through the warren of hallways beyond the wooden dragon doors. For a moment, Ilstan thought of the Royal Palace of the Purple Dragon in Cormyr, its corridors as mazelike, as natural to Ilstan as this place’s seemed to be to Farideh.

  “Is there somewhere safe you can keep me?” he asked. “Somewhere where I won’t … well, I’d prefer someplace I won’t go mad, but that’s asking for the moon, I suspect.”

  “How long do you think you’ll be all right?” Farideh asked.

  Ilstan shook his head. “I have trouble with time since … since all of this started. That was risky,” he added, “a spell that big. But it might persist longer.”

  “Did it, the first time?”

  Ilstan looked down at his feet. The first time he had been days past the kind of madness he’d reached at the dragon-skull door. Maybe tendays. But he’d been sane enough to escape, to know he needed healing, to know he would steadily lose his grasp on reality—and after Azuth had guided him to channel the magic through Farideh, Ilstan had time to address all of those things before he’d started slipping again.

  “Was the spell you cast in the sewers stronger?” he asked.

  Farideh hesitated. “It’s the most dangerous spell I know.”

  Bits of that night flashed in his thoughts, jagged as a broken mirror. The nobleman who’d found him and his oily grin. The sight of the explosion racing past the shielded door. The moment of panic when it became clear the compulsion hadn’t taken on the Harper. The moment of triumph when it had worked on his colleague. His stomach churned sick as Farideh reached a door.

  “How many of them did I kill?” he asked in a small voice. “The war wizards. How many died because of me?”

  Farideh paused at the door. “I don’t know,” she said quietly.

  “But Devora? Drannon?”

  “Yes. And others.” She sighed. “Ilstan, I know it won’t help, but you weren’t the evil down there. Someone was just using you—if Pheonard Crownsilver hadn’t been there, they wouldn’t have died.”

  He wasn’t so sure. “I thought she’d betrayed me. Devora. She was doing her duty, but I’d spun it into something cruel and spiteful. And I made her walk to her death.”

  Farideh sighed, a sound so full of grief Ilstan wondered at it. “I’m not going to tell you not to think about it—you’ll always think about it. But Pheonard is dead. Shade was crushed at Suzail’s gates. You can never erase what you did, but you can make certain it doesn’t happen again.” She considered the door. “And make amends with the people you’ve hurt. Come on.”

  HAVILAR PEERED AT the winged snake, lying coiled and unmoving a few feet from the iron brazier, its wings folded tight. Zoonie whined and pranced a little, not sure what to make of it. “Do you think it’s dead?”

  Brin came to stand beside her, peering past her shoulder. “No. I think they just do that.” She considered it a moment longer, watching its scaly sides for some sign of movement, before she realized Brin was watching her.

  “Are you worrying about Farideh?” he asked.

  “No,” Havilar said. “I sort of figured it was Dumuzi at the door. Or maybe the Kepeshkmolik people changed their minds about that axe and came back for it.” She cursed to herself. “I forgot to sit with the scepter today. I would rather do a hundred drills than Lorcan’s stupid practice.”

  Brin chuckled. “That’s not saying much. You drill every day.”

  “But not a hundred times. That would be stupid.” She looked at the still-closed door as she walked toward the bedroom. “Do you think we should be worried about Farideh?”

  “Always,” Brin said, following her. “But what are you actually worrying about?”

  Hands on the closed case, Havilar blew out a breath. “Anala brought someone here. Dokaan. He’s … I guess he’s in charge of the Lance Defenders.” She pressed her hands to her thighs. “He offered me a position.”

  Brin frowned. “With the Lance Defenders?”

  “Teaching glaivework,” she said. “I haven’t … I haven’t said yes. I haven’t figured out the details.”

  Brin could no more hide the surprise on his face from her than she’d been able to hide her worry from him. “Ye gods. That’s fantastic.”

  “Is it?”

  Brin nodded, too quickly. “Of course. I mean, you’d be wonderful at it. Of course it’s fantastic. They’d be lucky to have you.”

  “But I’d have to live here,” she said. “In Djerad Thymar.”

  That hadn’t been lost on him. Brin looked as if she’d hit him in the kidneys. “Well, yes. But … You always wonder what you’re going to do, where life is going to send you, right? This is perfect.”

  “It’s not perfect.”

  “Well, it’s so godsdamned suited to you that I can’t really make an argument that it’s no good,” Brin said with a nervous laugh. “Look, we’re not … You don’t know what you want from me. Let’s just be honest. I shouldn’t be the thing that keeps you from an opportunity like this. You should take it.”

  She wanted to ask if he’d stay, but even if he’d said yes, it wouldn’t settle her nerves. She’d watched Brin’s humor wearing thin as their days in Djerad Thymar stretched. A tiny part of her wanted to seize it, to say See? This is why I hated Suzail so much! But only a very tiny part—he understood, and so did she. And she didn’t want him to be unhappy any more than she wanted to be unhappy.

  Before she could say anything more, though, Farideh returned, her hair looking as though she’d run into a gale on the way back.

  “What happened to you?” Havilar said.

  Farideh hesitated in a way that made Havilar very sure it had not been Dumuzi at the door. “We have a guest,” she said after a minute. Havilar frowned and looked around her. Ilstan, looking like a lost scarecrow, stood in the middle of the sitting room, staring at the furnishings as though they were insulting his robes. His eyes fell on Zoonie and he leaped backward.

  “Is the dog yours?” he called. “The … one dripping fire?”

  “Just sit down,” Farideh said. “She’s not going to attack you.”

  “She will attack you,” Havilar said, pushing past Farideh, “if you try anything funny. What is he karshoji doing here?” she whispered to Farideh in Draconic. “Was he or was he not trying to kill you?”

  Farideh pursed h
er mouth. “Was,” she answered back in the same language. “I don’t know. Things are getting worse—for both of us. We have to figure this out, and for the moment, he’s sane, he knows what he did was wrong, and I have his wand and his spellbook.”

  “I owe you an apology as well … Havilar,” Ilstan called from his perch at the very corner of the sofa. “I did not think well of you when Lord Crownsilver brought you to Suzail, and I did assume I should also kill you in order to fulfill my destiny. I was wrong. I beg your forgiveness.”

  Havilar glared at Farideh. “What did Mehen always say? ‘Don’t bring home karshoji wounded animals’?”

  “He’s a person, not a skunk with a broken foot,” Farideh said. “We can keep him sane. I can keep him sane. We just need somewhere safe for him in case he slips.”

  “How?” Havilar demanded. Brin edged around her, eyes hard, mouth tight. Lord Crownsilver again, every inch. He’d never liked Ilstan, even before the Chosen business had caught them all.

  “I haven’t read my spellbook in days,” Ilstan said. “Right now what I can cast is very minor. If you give me the spellbook back, I can cast an antimagic spell upon myself. It would take repeated castings, but in between it would render me safe, and I wouldn’t read any other spells—”

  “Clap him in irons,” Brin said. “Bind his hands and he can’t cast.”

  Ilstan recoiled. “That seems unnecessary.”

  “You tried to murder Farideh repeatedly,” Brin said, without an ounce of pity. “You tried to kill me, and now you’ve tried to kill Havilar. You can’t prove you won’t do it again.” He turned to Farideh. “If they have finger-cages, they should use those. Otherwise manacles behind his back will do in a pinch.”

  “I’ll still be able to cast,” Ilstan said. “There are spells that have no somatic requirement.” He pursed his mouth, his eyes darting from side to side as if searching some invisible book. “Light,” he said. “I can cast light without gesture.”

  “We’ll take the risk,” Brin said witheringly.

  “It’s just until we find a way to stop it,” Farideh said.

  “I’ll go fetch some,” Havilar offered. She didn’t want to be in the room with Ilstan anyhow. But before she could get far, Mehen stormed through the doorway, and Havilar’s heart jumped into her throat. When Mehen saw Ilstan—