by Erin Evans
Kallan moved away from Mehen and the practice dummy, toward a rack of wooden weapons. “Seems to be going around. What’s got your back?”
Uadjit hesitated, eyes on the dummy. Mehen took two steps backward toward the weapons rack, as she took three long strides across the mats. The heel of her hand slammed into the dummy’s chest, then two swift punches to its ribcage. She moved with a familiar discipline that shredded as her fury broke free, hitting the dummy over and over and over. She fell back two steps and kicked out hard—
With a crack, the dummy fractured along the mended split, leaving a chunk of wood dangling, still half-tacked to the leather.
“Karshoj!” Uadjit snarled, slamming her fist into the dummy twice more. Panting, she turned on Kallan and Mehen. Kallan held out a wooden long sword without a word. Uadjit’s teeth gapped, quick and embarrassed.
“Dumuzi,” she said, sounding reluctant. “I have no idea what to do about him, except …” She shook her head. “He is my boy, my first, my scion. I cannot leave him alone in this. But I don’t think he appreciates the nature of the beast he’s unleashed.”
“That ‘beast’ made him run up the pyramid like a karshoji monkey,” Kallan pointed out. “And then stopped Djerad Thymar from being sucked back into Abeir.”
“I don’t mean him,” Uadjit said. “I mean, what he asks. We have been here a hundred years—the gods have only the smallest of toeholds among the Vayemniri. Even if … if we ought to follow him, Dumuzi’s asking the whole of our culture to change. For the things that make us Vayemniri to reorder and reshape.” She shook her head. “You’d sooner make us ally with the dragons.”
“I don’t think it’s as impossible as you’re saying,” Kallan said. “We’re practical, and here’s a god that’s practical.”
“If he has worshipers,” Uadjit pointed out. “Dumuzi says if he hasn’t got worshipers, he won’t have the strength to do it again. You cannot get around that.”
Mehen remembered that moment in the Vanquisher’s Hall, the voices singing the praises of Enlil, the black-scaled dragonborn who stood behind Dumuzi, one paternal hand on his shoulder. The god had nodded at Mehen, a curious gesture of something so like camaraderie that it still puzzled Mehen.
“What if it’s not a yoke so much as a … an agreement?” Dumuzi had asked him, just before he’d called down the god. “What if it’s more like a clanship? A qal agreement? An adoption?”
What if they’ll say anything to gain your trust? Mehen thought. What if the gods are just the tyrants of this world?
Uadjit snatched the long sword from Kallan. “And that’s the least of our worries while folks are rumbling about needing an interim Vanquisher.”
“Who?” Mehen asked.
“Anala,” Uadjit said darkly. Mehen fought to keep his jaw closed. “And probably Narghon, truth be told, although he’s not happy Anala’s the one who brought it up.”
“And he won’t want an interim Vanquisher,” Mehen said. “Not if it’s you.” It should just be Uadjit, he thought. And leave Kallan out of it.
Uadjit shook her head, her mouth quirked oddly. “And therein lies the problem—we don’t have time for all these debates with a god on the line and an army marching toward Djerad Kethendi.”
• • •
DAHL PEREDUR PEERED over the rise again, a ripple of earth that felt all too new. The army they’d spotted the night before remained at camp, too close for comfort, a battle flag with a crimson fist on a golden sun snapping in the wind over ten thousand bodies, at a glance. Some of them inhumanly large.
“Mind, I’m not trying to get punched in the face again,” his brother, Bodhar murmured. “But you’re going to tell me this girl’s worth weathering that?”
Farideh might be in the fortified city on the other side of that army, but the army itself had Dahl’s attention at the moment. Ten thousand people appearing in the midst of Tymanther flying an ancient Untheran battle flag and riding with some kind of monsters—Dahl wasn’t within the usual reach of the Harpers of Waterdeep, but nobody would tell him this wasn’t going to change circumstances for a lot of nations.
“I’m not going to punch you in the face,” he whispered, counting standards. “Technically I didn’t punch you in the face the first time.”
Bodhar snorted. “That the kind of squirrelly thinking they teach you in Oghma’s halls? Your fist, your temper.”
“A stlarning demon lord aiming my hand,” Dahl said. “And I’m sorry. Again.”
“Oy! You have what you need yet?” Thost called up from the shade below. Dahl gestured at his oldest brother to hush. Scouts were not a possibility but an inevitability. Dahl climbed down the rise, sliding in the broken stone and dust to where the others waited. Volibar, a halfling Zhentarim agent, crouched beside a hastily assembled sledge, securing one of the joints. Thost towered over all of them, shirt tied around his waist to pad the sledge carrying Mira Zawad at his hips. The Calishite woman raised her eyebrow as Dahl skidded to a stop.
“Still there,” Dahl said. “Still not marching yet. We get to the river, get across it, we might avoid them.”
“How far is that?” Bodhar asked.
“Far enough we need to get moving,” Volibar said.
Dahl shook his head. “Couple miles?” The spell that had been meant to send them to Djerad Thymar had malfunctioned in some way, dropping them along the coast of the Alamber Sea, instead of outside the pyramid city.
We shouldn’t have come, a little part of Dahl said. He should have insisted they all return to Harrowdale, his brothers to their families, to their mother and the farm. But after they’d escaped the clutches of the demon lord Graz’zt, trapped in the Underdark with only a scroll to escape by, his brothers, his granny, and Mira had insisted they use it to get to Djerad Thymar. To help Dahl return to Farideh. His grandmother had remained behind to cast it, sacrificing herself to buy their safety.
Harrowdale would have been safer, he thought.
That’s the kind of thinking, he could almost hear Granny Sessaca say, that gets you caught in a back alley getting beaten shitless by sharpjaws. Past is past, keep moving. He blew out a breath and with it a little prayer. He wondered if she were dead yet.
“Where’d they come from?” Bodhar asked. “Thought everyone down here was a scalie. Or,” he added with a nod to Dahl, “adopted.”
“Unther was wiped away in the Spellplague,” Mira said. “Their cities were all destroyed—some folks think Tymanther literally crushed them. But regardless of what exactly happened, it’s not like other places—Imaskar or Mulhorand or the like. The Untherans have been gone for a century, not hiding in the shadows. There’s nowhere here they would have come from.”
Thost sniffed. “Other world.”
“He’s got a point,” Bodhar said. “You can’t throw me through a portal and tell me that can’t happen.”
Dahl felt confident he could—he couldn’t recall hearing of portals that breached the wall between Toril and her sister plane of Abeir. It took the destruction of the very Weave of magic to bring the two planes into contact. If that had happened again …
Chosen walking Toril, Dahl thought. Gods being reborn. A second Spellplague wouldn’t be out of place in all that. What had their portal spell struck, after all, that whirlwind of blue light and power?
“What would they want here?” Dahl asked. “Here specifically.”
Mira chewed her upper lip. Her skin had a grayish cast, the pain from her broken ankle wearing her down. “I think we’re close to the ruins of one city. Unthalass. But it was destroyed long before Unther. In the Time of Troubles. They say the god-king Gilgeam fought Tiamat here. The city was leveled and Gilgeam was killed.” She made a face, as if she could read Dahl’s thoughts. “Whatever that’s worth these days.”
“If you want to get to the river,” Volibar said, “then this history lesson isn’t the way to do it. Up against this rise, we’re asking to get crept up on.”
The rise was better than
the seashore or the flat land between. At least it gave them a little protection from the greater part of the army. “How are you faring?” Dahl asked Thost.
He readjusted his grip on the sledge. “I’ll survive.”
Dahl looked down at Mira. “Don’t you dare ask,” she said. “Unless you can suddenly grant healing magic again.”
He bit his tongue. Oghma’s attention had definitely returned to Dahl, but he wasn’t a paladin or even a cleric—he had little to show, in fact, for Oghma’s blessings, but a riddle on his soul and a book or two that might contain a piece of the puzzle.
Across the river lay the road to Djerad Thymar, but perhaps more importantly, the road to Djerad Kethendi, the nearer city of Tymanther and likely someone who could heal Mira’s ankle or at least give her something stronger than willpower for the pain. A couple of miles, Dahl thought. No more than an hour.
“Gala-dâg!” Dahl pulled his sword at the voice, stepping between the sledge and the rise. A trio of humans—two men and a woman, all copper-skinned and dark-haired with thick tracings of kohl around their eyes—trained arrows on them. At their left was another woman with cropped hair, holding a curved khopesh, armored in a dusty leather breastplate with shoulder pieces shaped like the heads of jackals, their ears lying flat. Dahl didn’t lower his sword.
Then a pair of demons—slippery-looking, dark-skinned things—came over the rise, flanking the soldiers. The woman spoke another stream of the unfamiliar language, softer now, her whole body tense as the demons sniffed the air.
“Mira,” Dahl called, eyes on the demons. “Do you know this one?”
“Untheric,” she said. “I know a little. Enough to say you ought to—”
“Gâr-lù.” The woman gestured sharply down with her off hand. She took a few steps—suddenly, she’d slid down the rise and grabbed hold of Dahl’s arm by the elbow, twisting his sword down. He tried to move with her, to get her off her feet, but the woman was taller than him and a good deal heavier. She hit him hard in the kidney and he dropped—one of the other soldiers slid down the rise to claim his sword, and then his dagger, as well as his brothers’ and Mira’s blades.
The woman yanked his hands up and set them on Dahl’s head, while one of the men came and tied them behind his back, then did the same to Bodhar. The demons slunk down the hill, sniffing the air. The woman pointed her sword at Thost, gesturing for him to drop the sledge. Mira sat up a little.
“Mihishtu,” she said. The woman looked startled. Mira pointed to her ankle. “Zingi. Mihishtu. Nu-malaku.”
The woman looked down at Mira’s ankle. The soldier beside her said something, eyes darting to the demons. The woman cut him off with an order to pick up the sledge. The demons bared their teeth, shadows leaking from their damp mouths. The woman faced them, rattling off another string of Untheric, repeating several times the words, “eme bala.”
“Malaku,” she snapped to Dahl, pointing up the rise. He glanced back, quickly. Volibar was nowhere to be seen.
Dahl ought to have given the halfling his due, as he climbed the rise, but he cursed Volibar for managing to escape whatever it was they were heading into.
PART II
THE NIGHT MERCHANT
15 Flamerule, the Year of the Bright Blade (1347 DR)
Darmshall, Vaasa
• • •
Caisys had told Bisera and Alyona he was a tiefling before either of them had thought to ask. He didn’t look it. Where the twins had silver eyes and sharp hooves and horns like mountain goats, Caisys’s ancestor had left him looking altogether human—save for the fact that being in the merchant’s presence left Bisera feeling simultaneously uneasy and rapt, and the shadows around him seemed a bit deeper, a bit more alive. Nothing but a trifle for a night merchant.
For that alone, she wouldn’t have liked Caisys.
“How was Thesk?” Alyona asked him as they settled by the fire outside his wagon. He’d been gone for months, trading far and wide. Caisys gave her a smile that made Alyona blush scarlet as she toyed with the symbol of Selûne. Bisera scowled at the fire. That was a much better reason to dislike Caisys.
“Fair as ever,” he said, every word a seduction. “I could regale you with tales of silks and spices, the sound of rain on the golden eaves of Telflamm, the—”
“Rain doesn’t fall on eaves,” Bisera interrupted. “They’re vertical.” Alyona pursed her mouth.
Caisys smiled warmly at her sister. “I think this tea will tell you stories aplenty,” he said, hooking the kettle out of the fire. “While your sister and I get to business.”
“What’s in the tea?” Bisera demanded.
Caisys poured three cups. “Spices,” he said, a cloud of licorice and cinnamon and other things she couldn’t name rising over the kettle. He passed the tea around, then beckoned Bisera to come into the wagon.
Inside, Caisys moved smoothly around his myriad wares—kegs of ale topped with bundles of skins, locked chests stacked with barrels of grains. He unlocked a small chest resting on a makeshift desk strewn with receipts.
“You know you don’t have to play her guard dog,” he said mildly. “It’s nothing but a bit of fun.”
“Maybe for you,” Bisera said. Inside were six scrolls wound on wooden rollers. She examined their markings, the first lines of the spells contained. Two spells she possessed already. Three more made her head hurt when she tried to read them. The last was new to her—a spell to open or close something small. Smaller than the chest before her.
“Is this all?” she asked.
“At the moment.” His long fingers closed around the scroll. “I note,” Caisys said, “that you seem to have struck a bit of a wall where it comes to your spellcasting. You don’t have much use for my more powerful offerings.”
“I’m managing fine.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t. The fact that you’ve gotten this far without a teacher, without someone to so much as show you how to read a spell, is extraordinary. For all you don’t like me,” he added, “never think I’m not acutely aware of your strengths, Bisera. But …”
“But what?”
“You need a mentor if you’re going to get any further. You know I’m right.”
He was right. Cantrips she could manage, and some of the simpler things. But anything of true power? She’d been staring at a spell to make a fireball for the better part of a year, no closer to mastering it. “Why do you care?”
Caisys pressed a hand to his chest, as though wounded. “I care about you two. I shudder to think of the sort of things you have to defend yourself and sweet Alyona against with trifles like lights that dance and figment sounds.”
“I have a knife. We both have knives.” And Alyona had her prayers now, no matter how that made her sister chafe.
“Then, let’s be honest—I’d do a better trade if you were willing to pay for more powerful spells.”
Bisera folded her arms across her chest. “Be that as it may, wizards wanting tiefling apprentices aren’t exactly thick on the ground out here. I couldn’t find a mentor if I wanted to.”
Caisys’s dark eyes glittered. “Then I think you ought to cast your net a bit wider, beyond wizards. I might know someone.”
Bisera hesitated. “Who?”
“A client of sorts,” he said. “Give me two tendays to see to my buyers and patrons up here. Then the both of you can ride down through Bloodstone Pass, and I’ll introduce you.” He offered her an arm. “Come sit and have tea. You can be a little pleasant, for your sister’s sake?”
Bisera ignored him and strode from the wagon, thoughts of a caster who wasn’t a wizard turning in her thoughts.
• • •
3
27 Nightal, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR)
Tymanther
FARIDEH LEFT LORCAN BEHIND, HALF EXPECTING HIM TO FOLLOW HER FROM the room, half expecting she would have to turn around and apologize for treating him like that. But when she’d looked down at the sleeping camb
ion, when she’d thought about the night before and what he’d said, she knew what she had to do.
“Your shitting brightbird,” he’d said, when she asked who had done this to him. “I saved him—you’re welcome. I didn’t want to, obviously, but you wanted it, so I did it. And other reasons. And then he did this.”
There was no world where Lorcan would rescue Dahl unless something else was going on. Regardless of what Farideh wanted, she knew that much was true. And so whatever made Lorcan save Dahl, made him tell her he loved her, could be put to good use. And if he trusted her again, perhaps he’d tell her the truth about what happened to Dahl, where he was now.
It made her stomach twist to think it in so many words—this wasn’t who she was. But maybe it was who she needed to be, if she was going to save Havilar. Maybe it’s who you would have been, she thought, if Bryseis Kakistos and Adastreia Tyrianicus had had their ways.
She pushed that aside, along with how she was going to tell Mehen she was planning to track down the mother that abandoned her. Instead, Farideh went to the door of Ilstan’s room and rapped on it. “Are you doing better?”
A heartbeat passed, then two. “I am not.”
Farideh hooked the key from the top of the doorframe and let herself in. Ilstan was curled up on the floor beneath a desk that held a stack of scrolls, a scattering of components, and two very smooth gray rocks. “The shadow in the words is … is … There is darkness and light and shade between and I cannot say which is which.” He looked up at her. “Have you a plan?”
“The beginnings of one. Come here,” Farideh said, helping him to his feet. “I’ll take the magic.”
Ilstan all but fell into his chair. “No. Please? Let me stay a little mad a little longer?” Ilstan turned to her, his eyes damp. “I think he’s afraid. I know I’m afraid, and I don’t want to be alone.”
Farideh wet her lips—she shouldn’t. Ilstan was dangerous if he wasn’t kept in check. But his plea cracked her heart—she didn’t want to be alone either. She scooped the shackles from the table, held them up like an offering. The war wizard bent his hands behind his back.