by Erin Evans
She thought of her nightmares, of all the things Somni might see. “I don’t want to,” she admitted. He put his arm around her waist, pulling her close. She laid her head on his shoulder, closed her eyes, and thought of Suzail, of how close they’d been to being happy—minus the siege, minus the Sharrans, minus the looming question of Lorcan. She thought of how badly she wanted to be alone with him. She inhaled slowly, trying to reclaim that ease. Dahl’s pen scratched against the paper and she opened her eyes.
What was left of that scent was in my haversack, he’d written. Sorry.
Farideh laughed. “Scent’s replaceable.”
I will search high and low for that sort, he promised. Has a potent effect on you.
She covered his fingers with hers. “Scratch that out before someone reads it.” She traced the bones of his knuckles, before taking the stylus and ink from him. If she wrote, he wouldn’t try to speak. I don’t think your brothers like me much, Farideh wrote. I guess it’s best I didn’t come to Harrowdale.
Dahl took the stylus. What did they say?
Her throat started to tighten again. It doesn’t matter.
Give them a chance to come around. These are hard circumstances. His mouth made a hard line. You’re making them ride beside Lorcan, for one.
She made to grab for the stylus again, but her nerves sent up so much shadow-smoke and her hands were shaking. “I can’t get rid of him. Not now.”
Not ever.
“I don’t know! You’re asking me to undo something … Look, forget I brought it up. I don’t want to get into an argument and then you slip—”
Scratching. Did you sleep with him while we were apart? he scribbled.
He wouldn’t look at her. A stab of fear, of anger went through her heart and she straightened, pulling away. “No.”
But you thought about it, a cruel little part of her said. You might have. You let him kiss you.
She felt her cheeks burning as Dahl wrote swiftly, Look, I disappeared, I acted like a hardjack, he was there, you have a past. You might have.
Farideh took the stylus from him, face still burning. I didn’t, she wrote. Then, Are you asking because you slept with Mira? She couldn’t look at him as she held the stylus back out.
A long time ago. Not in the Underdark. She broke it off ages ago.
Farideh thought of the uneasy way Mira had regarded her, of Dahl, so long ago when they’d first met, clearly taken by the cool-mannered historian. Farideh’d admired her too. Mira, she thought, wouldn’t worry about any of this. Mira would just press on, not care. She studied the page, the lines of questions and promises and worries almost filling the foolscap. You’re not Mira, she thought.
“I kissed him,” she said. “I mean, he kissed me. Twice. But I didn’t … I should have … Once was after I had a sort of vision … I wasn’t thinking really. The other time he’d just come back, you’d just hit him and he wasn’t … He was babbling and falling down and I was just trying to get him to lie down so I could figure out what in the Hells was going on, but then he was kissing me and I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t trying … But I should have … I should have said so.” The lump in her throat was back and she swallowed hard against it. “I’m not feeling very like myself lately.”
The stillness stretched so long the shadows began to stir along her arms again. At least it will be an answer, she thought. At least you will have a path.
Dahl moved as if to write again, but instead covered her hand with his, rubbing his thumb over the dip between the bones of her thumb and her wrist.
I know the feeling, he wrote a moment later.
“Are you angry?”
He paused. Not especially. But I don’t like it. How long do I have to fix this?
Farideh looked up at him, horrified. “Whatever we need.”
Dahl gave her a skeptical look. You can’t wait forever. I know that.
I can wait a lot longer than two days, Farideh wrote. I missed you. Every day I missed you. Don’t make it sound like I’d replace you so quick. Then, How long do I have to sort things out?
Dahl sighed. Whatever you need. Then, Fair’s fair: I did kiss Mira. The demon lord got into
“Stop,” Farideh said, covering his hand. It didn’t matter—but also she didn’t want to think about it.
You know, he wrote, you’re what saved me in the Underdark. You’re the thought that kept me from getting overtaken. You’re what let me clear my head enough to save the others. He paused. And my grandmother smashed your ink, but
He scribbled over that. I love you.
I love you too, she wrote, and she was glad for the pen and ink. She could keep herself calm if she didn’t have to speak. I’m scared my problems are going to get you killed. I’m scared I’ll make you slip, and your deal will make things even worse.
Let me handle that, Dahl wrote. Then, I did this all out of order. I should have fixed it first, but I had the chance to come back. I’m sorry.
“Don’t be sorry,” Farideh said, holding him closer. “I’m really glad you’re here.” She cleared her throat and took the stylus back, dipping it once in the ink. I hope she knows how to get the staff. I don’t want to go back to Arush Vayem and hunt for Caisys.
To the Abyss and back with Arush Vayem, Dahl wrote. They didn’t deserve you.
She turned her face into his shoulder. I don’t deserve you, she thought. He pressed a kiss to her forehead. She lifted her head to the sound of scratching. Stay here?
“Where else would I go?” she said, and kept her thoughts very deliberately away from Lorcan sprawled twenty steps from where they were.
• • •
THE LAND BREATHES beneath Lorcan’s feet, its foul blood coursing through it like a monster no one can slay. Toril is a trap, a danger, but then where isn’t? He wears the skin of a human, so no one knows what he is, but the land does. It shivers the way Malbolge does, driven by the Hag Countess’s dying nerves, as if it cannot bear his passing.
Farideh watches him approach from the bridge, over a river of blood that would be more at home in Avernus. She looks as she did on the night in Suzail, waiting for him in the garden to take her away from that place of sorrow, to take her somewhere where there was nothing else to distract them. Her nightdress is thin and delicate and poor armor against the creatures that breach the blood river, but she doesn’t notice them. She’s waiting for him like no one else would.
Lorcan is nearly to the bridge when a man appears in front of him—he might be Lorcan’s double, but for the char-black hair, the lack of wings, the slashing tail. Caisys, he thinks, and whether this is what the Vicelord looked like in life or not doesn’t matter—that is who he is.
“That’s not the way out,” he says. “There is no way out, really.”
“Get out of my way,” Lorcan says. Caisys or not, it doesn’t matter. None of this matters.
“What bad fortune to pin all our hopes on a house divided,” the man says, the words of the mysterious god of spells. “Have you decided yet?”
The pradixikai approach from the farther shore, all thirteen of them and their furies besides, led by his mother, Exalted Invadiah, her hooves sharp, her horns scraping the sky. Thirty-seven erinyes, the most deadly in Malbolge, and Farideh has her back to them.
“She’s not waiting for you,” Caisys says.
“She’ll always wait for me,” Lorcan replies, trying to pass the tiefling. “You don’t know her.”
“Do you?”
Rage boils up in Lorcan and he reaches for his sword, but he’s lost it somewhere. He searches the heaving, twitching ground, but before he finds it, he sees the giant, sitting on the horizon, tilting her head back and forth as if listening to some silent music.
A dream, Lorcan remembers.
Then Farideh screams, and he forgets Somni and the giants and the fact that he is dreaming.
• • •
HAVILAR HESITATED, EYEING the split in the mists, trying to hold it in her thoughts. She coul
d feel a number of pathways leading out of that opening—ways into dreams. Farideh’s lay open like a wide city boulevard, the easiest path to take, and a part of Havilar wanted dearly to plunge along it, to find her sister and make certain she was all right first. Mehen’s, too, she could see it now, though the path seemed broken and dodgy, as if Mehen slept fitfully, ready to wake. Guilt burrowed into her chest—she should have gone to Mehen sooner, let him know she was all right. She could be in and out, a quick message—
You need to go now, Alyona said. We’ve delayed too long already.
How Alyona knew how much time had passed in the world beyond, Havilar still couldn’t guess, but given the dangers of Bryseis Kakistos’s dream, she was willing to bet that she was right.
Slipping into Brin’s dreams felt almost as natural as slipping into Farideh’s, and the ease with which she came to stand in a finely manicured garden felt treasonous. Blossoming hedges, buzzing with bees, rose high all around her. A bush carved in the shape of a castle tower rose up out of a bubbling fountain, the court around it ringed with red and pink roses.
“Brin!” she shouted, walking through the garden. “Brin, where are you?”
As she walked, the hedges grew thicker, more like brambles, their blooms turning sickly and lurid. The bees grew louder and louder until Havilar realized they weren’t bees—they were hellwasps. The dog-sized fiendish insects swooped over her, sword arms dragging through the air. The clouds overhead thickened and grew red. Havilar clenched her fists and found them closing around the haft of Devilslayer, to her surprise.
“Brin!” she shouted over the din.
She heard a deep, bone-shaking howl and ran toward it, weaving through the hedges. There, beyond a rotting lilac bush, she found another fountain, a statue of a woman spilling blood out of a jar, instead of water. Brin stood against it, sword out, holding back the little boy as Zoonie menaced a trio of erinyes encroaching on them.
“Brin!” she shouted again. “Shake it off. I have to talk to you.”
He spotted her and for a moment his expression was so full of fear. He’s starting to think you’re her, she realized. Karshoj. But then he blinked, his expression grateful, relieved. “Can you help me with this?”
Havilar’s grip tightened on the glaive. Three erinyes might be more than she could manage, but this wasn’t real, right? In a dream, she could beat them all together without so much as breaking a sweat.
Or, she realized as the erinyes turned to regard her, Brin’s fear she might get hurt would just mean she got killed and tossed back into the soul sapphire. Her hands itched around the weapon. The devils started toward her.
“Wait,” she said. She took a deep breath and when she exhaled, the erinyes and the hellwasps were all gone. Only her and Brin and Remzi chasing after Zoonie as she romped around the fountain, now full of clear ice. The clouds faded to a pearly gray, snow sifting down over the garden, quickly blanketing everything.
Havilar stared at Remzi packing a snowball and lobbing it at Zoonie, who tried to snap it out of the air, despite her muzzle. Brin approached her, sword still in hand.
“Is it you again?” he asked. “Is this real?”
Havilar tore her gaze from the little boy. “I guess. I mean, you’re not really in Suzail in the snow, but you didn’t make me up. So … half real?” She nodded at Remzi. “Does he … Has he been playing with her like that?”
“He’d like to,” Brin said, sheathing his sword and putting an arm around her waist. “We haven’t left my room.”
“She’s going to get antsy, not having any time to run,” Havilar said. Zoonie pounced on Remzi, knocking him on his backside with a burst of snow before romping off. “Bryseis Kakistos is planning on killing him, isn’t she?”
Brin’s arm tightened around her waist and the clouds grew darker. Lightning flashed, illuminating the clouds’ bellies, and the drone of insects returned. Havilar squeezed him back. “Never mind. That’s not right now. If this works, we won’t have to worry about it.”
“If what works?”
“Alyona sent me,” she said. “She thinks … I think you have to destroy the soul sapphire. The one Bryseis Kakistos wears around her neck.”
Brin goggled at her. “But, you’re in there.”
“Right,” Havilar said.
“It will kill you. Or at least leave you floating around without a body.”
“I don’t know,” Havilar admitted. “But it doesn’t matter—”
He shook his head. “I’m not doing that. I can’t do that.”
“All right well, don’t do it. Just pretend you’re going to do it. That’s what matters. The only thing she’s going to listen to is the possibility that Alyona might break free and wind up dead after all. Just bluff her.”
“If she calls my bluff?”
“Don’t let her call it.”
“That isn’t how things work!”
“Well it has to be!” Havilar said, growing irritated. “I don’t have another idea! I went in her dream too—she’s doesn’t care about anything except maybe her sister. That’s what all this aithyas boils down to. But she’s just exactly like Farideh in that she’s as stubborn as a goat in the mud and she wouldn’t even listen to Alyona. So the only way to stop her is to make … to make her think …”
The next thing she knew, Brin was calling her name. She cursed, her thoughts flooding back without order or reason.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I can’t keep doing this,” she said. “It’s making me lose my mind, just like Alyona. I’m already … My mind gets blown out like a candle and the next thoughts I have have nothing at all to do with what I was saying.” She turned the point of the glaive into the snow. “I know it’s a stupid plan. I don’t have a better one. This is Farideh’s job. She does the stupid tactical parts, not me. But I can’t do what I know how to do, so start with this?”
Brin wrapped his arms around her, and whether it was real or half real or just a figment, it made her feel a little less adrift.
“If she reminds you of Farideh,” he said, “then what would you do if you needed to change Farideh’s mind?”
Havilar snorted. “Give up.” But she thought about it a moment. “Fari listens better if you tell her directly. If you get right to the point and say what you want and why you want it. If you tell her you’re angry or scared or whatever. But she’s not Farideh.”
“But did Alyona tell her she was willing to sacrifice herself—and you—so that Bryseis Kakistos didn’t go ahead with this?”
“No,” Havilar said. In fact, she hadn’t considered it in those terms exactly. But Brin was right—even if it was a bluff, there remained the chance that Bryseis Kakistos would call it. Alyona had to know this might mean they both would die.
Havilar sighed. “How about this? Can you find a way to break the gem in case we need to? Maybe find someone who can?”
“Maybe,” Brin said. “If I need to, I’ll take the soul sapphire. I’d rather I had it anyway, but if I can’t leave the fortress, it’s not going to do a lot of good.”
Havilar took his hand and squeezed it. “I don’t know when I can come back again. It’s hard. It’s making me forgetful.”
“Can you stay a little longer?” he asked. He sat on the edge of the frozen fountain, patting the spot beside him. “We can pretend this is real. Or half real.”
“For a little bit,” Havilar agreed, sitting down beside him as Zoonie raced passed again, chased by Remzi’s snowballs. “I need to find Farideh too.”
• • •
SOMEONE HAS GIVEN Adastreia a basket, but whoever it was is long gone, and wherever she searches, there’s nowhere to set it down. She walks beside Kulaga down a springtime street in Mulsantir, but she knows better than to give the basket to Kulaga—never give a devil anything you don’t want used against you.
She lifts the corner of the cloth covering. The basket is full of detritus—potsherds and empty bottles, shells and old roots, pie
ces of pretty stone, and scraps of parchment. And a knife—a black-handled dagger with a sharp, oiled blade. Oh yes, she thinks. That’s mine.
Kulaga stops walking. “Give me the blade.”
Adastreia takes hold of the weapon, the devil’s secret name on her tongue. She could kill him—they both know it—and he could kill her. That they can persist in this equilibrium is the most useful thing about devils, so far as Adastreia can see.
But the blade in her hand has other ideas, and she doesn’t realize she slashed off the logokron’s tattooed tongue until it lies flopping in the dirt. Oh dear, Adastreia thinks as Kulaga roars. Now I have to start again.
She looks back the way they came, expecting more barbed devils. But there’s only a stone giant, sitting a bow’s shot up the path, rocking her head in time to a music Adastreia can’t hear.
A dream, she remembers. But then Kulaga reaches for her throat …
• • •
PREXIJANDILIN HESKAN’S HEAD seemed smaller somehow, perched on one of the many spears beside the golden general, its jaw agape as if awestruck. Ophinshtalajiir Rahdia, daughter of Shurideh, of the line of Assilyath, held his face in her thoughts as it had been in life, a small rebellion as the King of Dust looked down on her. Beyond, the snarling nightmare of demons, the darkness deeper than it had any right to be, and an army forming out of the seething mass of bodies, ready to march.
“You think you’re achieving something by holding out on me,” Gilgeam says. “But I still have so many of you to go. I know about your weaponry. I know how many casters you count among your forces. I know about the bats. I know how your magic works now.” He smiled, his teeth a perfect slice of white. “This land was given to me once, long before you ever sullied it with your footsteps. You had no right to it.”
Rahdia said nothing. She told herself ancestor stories of old, bound and kneeling there in the dirt. If the King of Dust broke them—somehow—they would escape him, regroup, rise again. They had done so before, hadn’t they? They could do it again.
But she thought of Djerad Thymar, of the Prexijandilin patriarch, so set in his ways. Can you turn back the glass? Rahdia thought. Or have we grown too used to our sanctuary here?