The fire is nearly gone now. “What happens when he finally wakes up?” she asks. “Will it hurt you?”
The avatar shimmers like a heat mirage. Asmodeus tilts his head in a way that reminds her so much of Lorcan that for a moment she’s afraid he’ll change once more.
“This much we can both agree on,” he says. “I cannot afford to lose you, or your sister. Stay alive.”
22
26 Nightal, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR)
Djerad Thymar, Tymanther
THIS BODY, THIS SELF, IS THE SIMPLEST OF ALL—EVERY YEAR THAT HE HAS been Vanquisher seems to have stripped a little more of his true self away. The man is the role. The role is all they see. Every choice, every action he takes is because that is what the Vanquisher would do. If I had only been strong enough out of the gate, I could have taken this one and not a soul would have noticed, he is so easy to mimick.
Not even the guards who trail me notice, as I march them up to the highest part of this city of stone. By now I know that king of dust is bound to be surprised—this city isn’t what he’s bargained for, but it should do.
Tarhun knows Fenkenkabradon Dokaan better, perhaps, than anyone else. They are comrades. They are friends. They have the city in a stranglehold and never once reflect upon it—they simply have more power between them and too many of the same thoughts. In their minds all is perfect, but what that means is the city’s weaknesses are so easy to find.
The leader of the Lance Defenders is still awake—too long awake. How easy he would be to overtake, to add to my collection of souls …
No—I am full still. And I have orders.
“Majesty?” Dokaan says. “What’s happened?”
“I was attacked by the creature,” Tarhun says in a low voice. “But that will be its undoing.”
“Chaubask vur kepeshk!” Dokaan spits. “Are you all right?”
“Of course,” Tarhun says dismissively. “The creature hinted at a threat coming from the north, near the Smoking Mountains. Deploy the bat riders immediately. All of them.”
“All of them, Majesty?”
“Of course,” Tarhun explains, and paints a picture of a demon-augmented army riding from the north. “The creature is an advance scout,” I add. “Sent to break our defenses.”
It would never occur to Dokaan that everything Tarhun says is not true. It would never occur to him that it might all be true, every word, and yet it might also be what destroys him.
He nods gravely. “I’ll send the order to the war drummers. We’ll launch within the hour.”
“No, you ready the Lance Defenders,” I say. “Let me give the orders.”
DJERAD THYMAR IS the ziggurat. The ziggurat is Djerad Thymar. It’s Unthalass’s streets and houses, stacked into the pyramid’s shape, linked by its pathways and bridges that dark-eyed humans and Vayemniri alike march across, never looking down, never looking at Dumuzi. Through the crowds, he glimpses the dark gray shape of the maurezhi, slinking between bodies. Dumuzi’s sword is in his hands, but as he turns, he cannot track the fiend.
The planes are thinning. Dumuzi turns to find the bearded man standing beside him. His Draconic is accentless, but stiff, as if he must place deliberately each word beside the last, like bricks in a wall. The old world and the new collide. The tyrants are reborn. You have to listen.
The drum of feet makes it hard to do that. “We’ve fought before,” Dumuzi says. “We’re ready to fight again. Always. We never forget.” The stories of his clans, of all the ancestors, rumble through his thoughts. The stories persist because any hatchling might be the next. One day they might need such heroes. Shasphur. Nerifar. Thymara. Esham-Ana. Iskdara and Shurideh. He knows them all.
The man’s dark eyes are full of anguish and lightning. Dumuzi stops. He knows the stories because he listened.
“Tell me,” he says.
The man takes a step back, his eyes never leaving Dumuzi’s. The pyramid spins and melts and turns into the plain, the ziggurats, the cities of dark-eyed humans.
I brought them here, the man’s voice rumbled. I made this their home, their sanctuary. I breathed the law and civilization into them. They were my children.
In that moment, Dumuzi feels as if the man has bled into him. As if the dark-eyed humans are his children, his charges, and what’s left of his self will drown in that endless pride and love.
I gave my crown to another, the man says. My scion. My heir. He betrayed me. He betrayed my children. I didn’t know this and I should have.
The maurezhi slinks through the crowds, unnoticed and unstopped.
A storm is coming, the man says. Powerful enough to wake me, to draw me back from that farther place. I saw what had become of Unther. I saw what the Blue Fire brought. I see that the world is unstable again and you, who are the heirs of my children, are in grave danger.
The air crackles, the storm building all around them. “What does that mean?” Dumuzi asks. “What sort of storm?”
The man looks out over the city, consternated and silent, as if he lacks the words, or maybe Dumuzi is the one who can’t understand.
I am close, he says. I am so close. But I have no children anymore. Do you understand?
Dumuzi shakes his head, and thunder rattles the city. The people scream and stumble, and the maurezhi slips out from the shadows again, leaving a trail of blood. “What do you need?” he demands. “I can help you if you ask, but there’s so much going wrong. I can’t even stop that.”
The man frowns at the maurezhi, as if he’s just noticed it. If a fire consumes the house before the flood comes, the house is still destroyed. I see. I know what you need.
He gestures to the sky. Dumuzi blinks and the city is gone. The storm is all around them, and nothing is making sense. The seething clouds split as the prow of a ship cuts through them, sailing through the night, the full moon its passenger.
The ship dips low and a man leaps from it. He is dark-eyed as the humans, but his skin is paler than a Cormyrean’s, almost silver. He strides toward them and Dumuzi realizes he is carrying Thymara’s black axe as he bows to the bearded man.
The dark-eyed warrior turns into a woman with an angled face and softly pointed ears, her silver hair sweeping to her waist, her eyes the luminescent gray of the moon. Dumuzi blinks and she becomes a dragonborn woman, silver-scaled and lithe, a full head taller than Dumuzi. She holds the axe out. “Not all with power are tyrants,” she says, and her voice sounds so like Ashoka’s. “Not only blood makes a tribe.”
Dumuzi takes the axe. He looks back at the bearded man, but he’s gone. In his place, a dragonborn, as tall as Pandjed or Mehen, his scales black as night, his eyes gold as the sunset. The blood of the storm is in his veins and lightning sparks between his teeth.
“Listen,” he says, “Trust me. Ushumgal-lú-en ur-sag enlil-la-ke?”
Dumuzi jolted awake, grasping for a weapon that wasn’t there, gasping air that felt too thick, too humid. A storm is coming, he thought. Someone was hissing his name, shaking him awake. He blinked and Arjhani’s narrow face resolved from the darkness.
“Wake up, lad!” his father said. “We have to hurry.”
Everything felt slow and disjointed. Everything felt as if he were moving at the wrong speed, as if his thoughts would never fit together in the right order again.
And all the while a little part of him screamed, Go get the axe.
“Hurry where?” Dumuzi said.
“The thing, the creature.” Arjhani winced and rolled his shoulder as if testing the joint’s limits. “It looked like Zaroshni. It killed Sepideh. It … it made itself look like her. After.”
The maurezhi. Dumuzi forced himself to his feet. “Right.”
“We have to wake Mehen?” Arjhani said it as if he wanted Dumuzi to contradict him, as if he wanted another option.
“We have to wake Mehen,” Dumuzi agreed. Without the twins, without the hellhound, they would only be cutting their own legs out.
; And they have the axe, he thought without meaning to. Ushumgal-lú-en ur-sag enlil-la-ke? He shuddered even in the unseasonably clammy air, and buckled his sword belt.
“Are you all right?” he asked his father belatedly.
Arjhani nodded and shrugged in the same gesture. “Still have a shadow. I don’t think I’ll dream well for some time yet.” He took up his glaive from where it rested against the wall, avoiding Dumuzi’s gaze. “It’s a fast henish, but it’s rotten at keeping its guard up. I might have beaten it back, if Sepideh hadn’t interrupted, but … I don’t know. I might as easily have died.”
That acknowledgment, so far from his father’s usual boasting, unnerved Dumuzi. “Well,” he said, “we’ll find it. I’m sure we’ll find it. We should go.”
Arjhani led the way, winding through the dark corridors of the Verthisathurgiesh enclave, as the bearded man’s voice went around and around in Dumuzi’s thoughts. Ushumgal-lú-en ur-sag enlil-la-ke? The woman who’d given him the axe made him think of Ophinshtalajiir Sepideh, with her gleaming silver scales. She’d given him lessons up in the barracks, praising his skill with the bow and the dagger. Said he was a credit to Kepeshkmolik and to Arjhani too. His chest squeezed tight. Another dead because you couldn’t see what was happening, he thought.
Dumuzi slipped around Arjhani to knock on the door to the guest rooms. In the middle of his head, a growing pressure nagged at him, the beginnings of a headache. Havilar yanked it open and frowned. “You’re not Kallan.” She saw Arjhani beyond his son, and her expression grew stony.
“He saw the maurezhi,” Dumuzi told her. “He knows the last victim.”
“May I come in?” Arjhani asked.
Havilar turned on her heel without answering, leaving the door open and retreating to the sitting room where Brin, the wizard, and the hellhound waited. Dumuzi took a few steps into the room, searching for Farideh, searching for the axe. Trying to ignore the bare distaste in Brin’s eyes, the tension in the helhound’s crouch.
Havilar pounded her fist on the door nearest the exit. A few breaths later, Mehen yanked it open, scowling and half-dressed. “What?”
“He woke up,” Havilar said.
“He knows the maurezhi’s last victim,” Dumuzi said more severely.
Mehen’s gaze fell on Arjhani, as if he were looking at a ghost. Dumuzi thought of snippets of confessions he’d heard in the catacombs, of his own father’s haunted expression when he returned—it was like looking at a ghost. Dumuzi turned away—he ought to have brought the message alone. He had let the dream distract him, let him forget what was sensible.
Arjhani cleared his throat. “Well met, Mehen,” he said, all fragile formality. “You’re, um, you’re looking for Ophinshtalajiir Sepideh. That was … that was the, uh … tiamash, sorry. There’s not really a good way …”
“It’s all right,” Mehen said, not moving from the doorway. He folded his arms over his scarred chest. “Ophinshtalajiir Sepideh. Same Sepah from our service?”
“Same. Can you track her the way you did me?”
“She won’t smell like herself,” Havilar pointed out. “Zoonie only found you because we had a shirt. We don’t have anything that smells like the maurezhi.”
“Right,” Arjhani said. “Clever. Do you have anything—”
“The axe,” Brin said.
“Might work. We still need to test it.” Mehen scratched his jaw. “All right, we were going up to the pyramid’s top regardless.” He turned to Havilar and Brin. “Keep an eye out for her. Silver scales. Jade rings.”
“She has a limp at the moment,” Dumuzi added. Mehen frowned.
“One of her students let an arrow go wild,” Arjhani said.
Ilstan stood, staring at the table. “A silver-scaled dragonborn woman,” he repeated. “With a limp. I have seen her. Passing through the crowds of her fellows. A shark among the—”
“Where?” Mehen demanded.
Ilstan blinked and looked up at Mehen. “In the place where I was kept, of course. This morning, after I was released. I thought her a vision. There was something very unnatural about her. I was right.”
“Someone has to have seen her then,” Havilar said. Then, “It, I mean. If we’re going up through the barracks to test the axe, we should be able to ask on the way. Or at least warn people.”
Mehen rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Fine. I need to wake Anala, tell her we’re going.” He started to go back into his room, but Arjhani caught his arm.
“We should talk,” Arjhani said quietly. “I think I owe you an apology.”
In that moment, Mehen looked so like Patriarch Pandjed, that Dumuzi was sure he was about to strike Arjhani. “We don’t have time,” Mehen said instead. “Go send a message to your qal. Tell Uadjit you’re awake and we’re heading to the Adjudicators’.” He pulled away and shut the door.
Arjhani turned back, his startlement swiftly hidden. “Well, I shouldn’t go alone.” From the corner of his eye, Dumuzi could see his father looking to him, waiting for him to volunteer or to offer his company. Mehen’s words came back to him: You have to give your father a little bit of slack. He heard the truth in them, felt the quiet suffering of his father echoed in the bearded man’s guilt at failing his children.
But there were other things he had to attend to that night.
“I have to take care of something,” he said. He crossed quickly to Havilar before Arjhani could say anything more. “Where’s Farideh?”
Havilar peered at him. “Asleep. It’s the middle of the night.”
Brin was eyeing them. The wizard had gone back to the magic he was working by the lamplight, his hands unbound while he crafted scrolls. Dumuzi dropped his voice. “I need to talk to her. Right now. Please. Can you wake her?”
Havilar cocked her head. “All right.”
The door opened again—Kallan, ready for their trek up the pyramid. Arjhani, not yet left, frowned at the sellsword.
Dumuzi’s attention snapped back to Havilar, heading into the farthest room. “How about I just come with you?”
He followed her into the bedroom without waiting for an answer. Farideh seemed to have stirred at the door’s opening, propped on one elbow and looking blearily at her sister. The black axe lay on the floor beside the bed. “Is it time already?” she asked.
“Almost,” Havilar said. “Dumuzi says he needs to talk to you first.”
Dumuzi shut the door behind him as Farideh sat up, arranging the blankets around her “What is it?”
For a sharp, terrible breath, Dumuzi couldn’t speak, couldn’t tell her. This was all a mistake, he thought. He was having nightmares and giving them the credence of a hatchling.
The air clung to him. The lightning in his throat seemed to spark, and he swallowed it down, putting it out as he always did.
“I had a dream. I think … I think you might have been wrong about the kind of dream. Will you look? Again?” Dumuzi said, unable to keep the fear out his voice.
You already know the answer, he thought. She checked once. You cannot be afraid of what you know.
Farideh’s strange eyes searched him. She frowned. “There’s … something.”
Dumuzi balled his hands into fists, his ears ringing. “No.”
“It’s a mark … but not exactly. It’s as if it’s not entirely there. But it’s as if … It’s like someone wrote it on a glass. Like it’s over you, but not on you.”
“Not yet,” Dumuzi said. His breath was coming too quick, sparking in his throat. He swallowed hard. “What happens? What happens when I get marked? Karshoj!” He snapped his teeth as if he could bite off the rising panic. “The patriarch will exile me for certain. Uadjit will—”
“Dumuzi,” Farideh said firmly. “You haven’t done anything—wrong or right. You’re not Chosen. And if you become Chosen, that’s nothing you’ve done. The gods choose people for their own reasons.”
Not this time, Dumuzi thought. “He says he comes to me because I listen. Because no one will.” A
ll his dreams were churning through his thoughts together. “Maybe it doesn’t need to happen. I think I have to take it or he won’t give it, because … because …”
I don’t know, he thought. I don’t know about any of this.
“Who?” Havilar said.
Dumuzi shook his head. “He’s never said his name. I think … I’m afraid he was a god here, before the Blue Fire, before the Vayemniri came. He showed me … cities that were here, that don’t exist. He said he left the world behind, left another god in charge. His scion. The scion turned out to be a tyrant.”
A shudder went through him at the memory of the earlier dream, of standing on the ziggurat’s steps with the cold oppressive mind of that lost son. “And then everything went wrong. He lost his children. The ones that survived the tyrant were taken away in the Blue Fire. He’s all alone. I think he …” He tapped his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “I think he wants me to have the axe.”
“Not fair,” Havilar said.
“He’s a human god?” Farideh said.
Dumuzi nodded. “I think. He looks … he looks …” He unclenched his hands to touch the axe, the carvings along the shaft. “Like these. Dark eyes. Dark hair. Heavy beard. But then, just now, he turned into a Vayemniri—dark scales, gold eyes. Lightning in his teeth. I think … he has something to do with the lightning. The dreams always have lightning. And he asks the same thing.” Dumuzi closed his eyes. “Ushumgal-lú-en ur-sag enlil-la-ke?”
Ashes of the Tyrant Page 51