Ashes of the Tyrant

by Erin M. Evans

  Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t care for your conditions.”

  “You don’t do it, I’ll be his first karshoji convert, as soon as your declaration that Mehen stands for Verthisathurgiesh finishes,” Mehen said. “You protect that boy like you couldn’t before, and I’ll be your candidate, piercings and all.”

  Anala considered him a moment. “I’ll think about it,” she said. “But I have a counteroffer. I still don’t think you’d win, in the end, but I wonder”—she nodded at Kallan, who still watched Dumuzi and Uadjit with wonder and apprehension—“if the man who hunted the maurezhi, who leaped upon it like a runaway horse and brought it down, might make a better candidate overall?”

  27

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

  The Underdark

  THE VIPER OF THE EARTHFASTS WAS NOT SENTIMENTAL, SESSACA Peredur reminded herself as she sipped her grandson’s whiskey and contemplated the eerie black lake. It was practical to pray for her grandsons’ happiness, to pray for her daughter-in-law’s grief to be easy, for the farm she had made her home to be safe without her skills. It was a matter of preparedness to think back on her life, to consider the good deeds and the bad, to consider what god might open their gates to her soul once she’d passed. What the chances were of seeing her man, Lamhail, again; her lost baby; her boy Barron again.

  She remembered Tsurlagol and Lyrabar and how many times she’d had to scrub someone’s blood out from under her fingernails. The wars that thrived on the blades she ran. The deaths on her head.

  She took another swig of whiskey. I’m sorry, Lamhail. I’m sorry.

  But would she have done a damned thing different? Here or there maybe. If she thought too hard about that, what would she find but the ten thousand ways she would have lost a life she dearly loved. Perhaps the good would outweigh the wicked. Perhaps her soul would be light enough to escape Bane’s grasp. Perhaps, she thought. Perhaps.

  Ten thousand choices. Ten thousand escapes. But not this time.

  Another sip of whiskey—good boy, Dahl. She thought of the demon lord, how close she’d come to losing him. How hard he’d fought his way back. A pity she couldn’t meet this devil-child. She hoped this Farideh had a measure of her Lamhail’s patience, his loyalty, his kindness. Gods above, she missed that man.

  A song floated through her thoughts, like a tune she couldn’t shake—although it had not been in her head for more than sixty years. The lure of the Deneirrath priestess, come back to tempt her again? She hummed along with it. She had whiskey to finish.

  The surface of the water shivered. A dark gray head broke the surface, bulging eyes first. Sessaca drew the little knife. Death was coming. The Viper of the Earthfasts would not go easy.

  A rough triangle of heads, a dozen in all. The creatures lurched out of the black water, making croaking sounds of Undercommon to one another, their slick gray skin pale in the light of the glowing fungus. Nearly all of them carried spears—one though, one carried an offering, a bloody drow head.

  “Who are this one?” the one carrying the drow head croaked in broken Common. “How you make to the Lady’s shrine?”

  “I am the Viper of the Earthfasts,” Sessaca said, and readied herself for death. “I came because I was brought.”

  The kuo-toa looked at one another, mad eyes wide and puzzled. The attack didn’t come and didn’t come. Sessaca said a little prayer to herself, the song in her head given words.

  The one with the offering suddenly dropped to its knees, laying the drow’s head at her feet. Sessaca raised an eyebrow at its grotesque, upturned face, as the other eleven kuo-toa dropped to their knees behind the priest.

  “The Viper of the Earthfasts,” the priest croaked.

  “The Viper of the Earthfasts,” its guards chorused.

  “Well piss and hrast,” Sessaca said. Perhaps she was not finished with adventures quite yet.

  HAVILAR BLINKED, BUT it did nothing to clear the haze from her eyes. Wherever she was, there seemed to be nothing but a pale fog—no ceiling, no floor, no walls, no end. She looked down at her hands—at least she still existed, in some way. She had her armor on, but no weapons, no supplies. Every pouch and pocket was empty.

  Gods, I hope this isn’t being dead, Havilar thought. An eternity of nobody and nothing. She was already bored.

  She searched the fog again, but this time found a woman floating in the haze to her right. She grabbed for her glaive before she remembered it didn’t exist here. The woman was the ghost who’d peeled away from Sairché, the same one Havilar had glimpsed before awaking here, in this place of nothingness. Unlike the ghost, though, this woman seemed more solid—as solid as Havilar anyway—from her sharp little horns, to her cloven feet. She smiled at Havilar in a bashful sort of way.

  This could not, Havilar thought, be the Brimstone Angel.

  Who are you? Havilar asked, but the words formed without breath, without effort. The woman’s smile faltered.

  Alyona, she said. And you’re Havilar. It’s nice to meet you, properly.

  How do you know my name?

  Alyona laughed, bright and happy. Because I know you. I have known you all your life, and your sister too. I’m part of what she took out of you, before … Before. Her expression turned grim. This wasn’t the plan. She had seen the error of her ways, I thought. I thought … Maybe my faith was misplaced … Maybe what she promised was never meant to … This madness with the heirs … People will be hurt …

  Havilar had no idea what the woman was talking about. She seemed to lose track of her thoughts as she spoke, not quite present. How likely, Havilar asked, is it that everything is going to turn out all right?

  Alyona’s silver eyes regarded her, all solemnity now. That depends upon your sister and mine.

  A twin, Havilar thought. The Brimstone Angel had a sister. Did Lorcan know that? Did anyone know that? Alyona watched her in a worried way. Havilar tried to smile back. Is your sister as stubborn as mine? She might be in trouble.

  FOR A MOMENT, Farideh’s world was the silence enfolding her own panicked breath. Havilar was gone. Brin was gone. Even Zoonie was gone. The fear that gripped her was an animal’s, intense and mindless. She couldn’t even scream.

  “You will be weakened,” Bryseis Kakistos had said, and Farideh wondered if that were it.

  Near the door, Sairché stirred, lifting her head from the stones with a terrible moan. All Farideh’s shock turned to rage—Sairché had colluded with the Brimstone Angel, Sairché had brought the ghost here, Sairché had failed some way so that Havilar had been taken. She expected the powers of Asmodeus to engulf her, to burst out of her skin as flaming wings and send a wave of terror racing out over the cambion.

  But nothing of the sort happened. Her powers had vanished. All that remained was the pulsing line of her pact. For all she’d wished for this, it left her feeling unmoored and incomplete.

  Think, she told herself. Think. To the Hells with vengeance—the wrong decision could cost lives. It could cost her Havilar.

  Bryseis Kakistos means to kill Asmodeus, she thought. Asmodeus will do all he can to stop her. And if he stops her, Havilar dies.

  Sairché managed to roll over onto her back. “Help me,” she said, her voice a ghost of its own. “I’ve been cursed. The erinyes will be searching.”

  Even without the blessings of Asmodeus, Farideh’s temper would not cool so quickly. “How can you ask me that?”

  “You don’t want this place full of erinyes anymore than I do.” Sairché swallowed with effort. “I know how she’s going to do it—a ritual. I know she wants to unseat Asmodeus, maybe kill him. But I don’t know how. Find me a potion, get me somewhere safe, we can compare notes.”

  That stopped Farideh. “You don’t know what she’s doing?”

  Sairché gave the smallest shake of her head. “I know who she needs. I know where they are. I know where she intends to take them.”

  But not about Azuth and Asmodeus. Not about the s
park of the god. “Do you know where she’s gone now?”

  Sairché hesitated. “I could guess.”

  “Guess.”

  “Fortress in the Snowflake Mountains. She doesn’t have allies, but that … that one was close. She might hide there.”

  Might, Farideh thought. Close. It wasn’t the answer she needed. Sairché reached out a hand as if she sensed Farideh’s annoyance. “You could scry her. You could check.”

  She couldn’t—she couldn’t work a scrying and she couldn’t use that kind of magic on Havilar, if Lorcan was telling the truth. And Sairché didn’t know that.

  But Lorcan can work a scrying, she thought. And Brin has no protections on him. She crouched down, scooping Sairché from the floor with an arm under her shoulders. “I have a magic circle,” she said. “You can suffer in safety at least.”

  At least, Farideh thought, for a moment. Every one of their enemies was about to collide.

  WHEN THE WORLD stopped shaking, when the sky stopped falling, the first thing Namshita became aware of was the blood-red eyes of one of the bull-headed monsters that surrounded the golden god. The goristro held her gaze as it lifted one of the slack bodies that lay beside it—a young man, thrust into ill-fitting armor and given an unfamiliar blade in advance of the attack. Dead, without a doubt. The demon sniffed him once.

  Namshita looked away, willing herself not to flinch at the crunch of bone. The price of the god-king’s madness. She searched the horizon over the heads of her soldiers for the break in the cliffs that would mark the meeting place, the point of their escape. She looked and looked and looked, as if somehow by searching, the land would change back to the sunset-painted cliffs she’d been considering only a moment ago.

  But it didn’t. We’ve left, she thought, feeling numb.

  She stood stiffly, as if her limbs weren’t her own, as if her armor were suddenly made of stone, it took so much effort to move. The cliffs were gone, and so the canyon was gone, and then there was nowhere to lead the deserters, the rebels who had heard the lunacy in the Son of Victory’s revelations. Her heart felt as if it had crawled up into her throat.

  “My lord,” she heard one of the god-king’s warpriests cry, “where is Shyr? Where are the armies? Where have you brought us?”

  Namshita watched from the edge of her eyes as the golden god-king rose to his feet, unscathed by earthquake—nay, by the unseating of their world. He, too, searched the rolling hills, hunting for the walled city of the genasi slavers, his army’s prize-to-be.

  Instead, on the edge of the horizon rose a pyramid of granite that throbbed with the beat of a thousand war drums.

  “Home,” Gilgeam said, with a cruel smile. “I’ve brought you home.”