The Devil You Know

by Erin Evans

  “Djerad Thymar,” Gilgeam said. “You stole it from us.”

  No, Rahdia thought. We built it of ruins and rock hewn from the Smoking Mountains. Sealed it with the Breath of Petron.

  “You built it,” Gilgeam said, “out of a god’s tomb. Did you think I wouldn’t remember?”

  Rahdia still said nothing, though her pulse leaped. If the Son of Victory could read her thoughts—

  “I do know what you’re thinking,” Gilgeam said. “ ‘That city is ours.’ You built that city of my brother’s tomb, desecrators, and we will retake it in short order. Now: What did you do with the body?”

  Rahdia tried not to think of the story of Thymara and the Black Axe, of the Moon’s Champion. At its heart lay a tomb, revealed by the broken stone. A bearded man, twice Thymara’s height, a human by his look and freshly dead by any indication. Had she reburied the body, after? Rahdia couldn’t remember. Her elders hadn’t liked that story, and young Rahdia had preferred tales of battle and bravery to the stillness of the founding of Thymara’s fortress.

  Gilgeam seized her by the plumes, shaking her bodily. Pain blurred her vision. “What did you do with the body?” Be like the elders in Raurokh, she told herself, clamping shut her jaw. Still, silent. Never give the tyrant what he wants.

  The King of Dust released her, planted a hand in the middle of her chest. A pulse of power surged through Rahdia, feeling as though it melted her very bones. She screamed, but the air went out of her as he shocked her again and again.

  “What did you do with the body?” Gilgeam snarled.

  “I don’t know,” Rahdia blurted.

  “Who does know?” When she didn’t answer, he shocked her again, her vision briefly going black from the pain. “Who?”

  “Kepeshkmolik,” she said. “It’s their tale.”

  Gilgeam released her. “Good. Now which among you is Kepeshkmolik.”

  But Rahdia would not compound her error. She shut her eyes and thought of Prexijandilin Heskan. “We are all Kepeshkmolik,” she whispered. “Ask around.”

  His sandaled foot pressed against her throat. “Which among you is Kepeshkmolik?” he asked again.

  “You cannot end us,” she said. “We are Vayemniri.”

  Gilgeam smiled. “Then I will enjoy making the effort, at the very least.”

  • • •

  FARIDEH ROLLS THE dough out, thin as a scraped skin, on the scarred wooden table of the tallhouse in Suzail. Flour coats her hands, blending away the edges of her bleached third finger. On the other end of the table, Dahl’s chopping something green. The kitchen’s full of the smell of herbs—rosemary and bay.

  Something black rises up out of the dough—a torn scrap of parchment. Farideh picks it out, then sees the others. It’s as if she’s rolled the dough out atop a shredded scroll, and maybe she has, she can’t remember. She picks them out, one by one, but there’s more than should be possible layered into the dough. She lays them to the side, torn edge to torn edge, looking for where the words meet, looking for meaning, but there’s nothing.

  She looks back, over her shoulder, out the window at the garden. There’s a giant sitting there, watching her.

  Dahl comes to stand behind her, arm around her waist. He kisses her cheek, just beneath the ear and asks, “Do we have turnips?”

  She looks back. His shirt’s half-laced and untucked, looking lazy and freshly woken—she forgets about the giant entirely when he smiles. “In the cellar,” she says.

  “Do you want to come with me?” he asks, still smiling. And it’s silly but she’s glad to. Her fingers interlace with his as they descend the wooden stair into a low-ceilinged, heavily decorated parlor. Cream silk papers the walls, and the rug beneath her feet is so thick Farideh loses her balance and bumps into a green plush couch. A hall leads away from the stairs, curving into the darkness. Dahl pulls her along, deeper into the cellars, down more stairs. She didn’t know this was all here.

  She looks in the doors as they pass—some guest rooms, some cells, some look just like the ossuary-lined tombs of the Vayemniri. One room is packed floor to ceiling with little painted wooden dolls; they’re tumbling out into the hallway like a landslide.

  Farideh steps over and she suddenly remembers—she has been here before.

  She came down here, into the third cellar; she met Lorcan. The memory is there—unassailable, irredeemable—she remembers this place and the burning touch of Lorcan’s skin, and the greedy way she kisses him, pulls him down into one of these strange beds. He might still be down here. He probably is still down here. And Dahl doesn’t know.

  “Dahl.” She tries to stop, but his hand only slips out of hers. “Dahl, wait!”

  The door beside her is open, and the giant is there, sitting at the end of the room, shrunken somehow to fit the space, or perhaps the space has grown around her. Somni, she thinks, and she remembers she’s dreaming.

  But it doesn’t last. She remembers Dahl—he can’t find out, not like this. She runs after him, down deeper into the earth. She finds Lorcan first, still naked and lounging in the unmade bed. He looks like sin. He looks like want. For a moment, she thinks no one can blame her for this misstep. No one can really call it a misstep.

  “You have to go,” she says. “Now.”

  “What’s this?” Dahl says behind her. She spins—he doesn’t look angry, only curious.

  “Not turnips,” Lorcan says, and even that he manages to make sound obscene.

  “Oh, are you kidding me?” Havilar is suddenly standing against the wall. “I thought you made your mind up.”

  Farideh is about to grab her sister, to beg for her help … but she stops. “It’s a dream.”

  “Yeah,” Havilar says gently. “It’s a dream.”

  Farideh covers her face, wishing she could make all of it vanish. “Karshoj. This is the dream I have to have when Somni’s watching. When you’re watching.” She looks up at Havilar. “You’re real. You’re really here.” Havi nods, and she grabs her sister tight. “Are you all right? Tell me you’re all right.”

  Havilar hugs her back. “For the moment. It’s getting worse. I’m … coming apart. I can’t … I can’t keep coming.”

  “United—that’s what she wanted,” a voice says. “And can you really say she was wrong?”

  Still holding Havilar, Farideh turns to look at Dahl, but he’s not there. Asmodeus stands in the doorway. He wears his own skin—he does when she’s dreaming, she thinks—and he watches her with mild displeasure. Even that makes her shiver uncontrollably.

  “How are we united?” Farideh asks.

  Asmodeus smiles. “You don’t know what it was like before. Chaos. Shadows. This is better, believe me.”

  “Don’t talk to him,” Havilar says, her voice unsteady. “Don’t talk to the weird giant in the corner either. I don’t have a lot of time.” The corner—the room stretches in impossible ways and Somni is sitting in the corner, considering.

  Havilar grips her shoulders. “What wouldn’t you do to save me?”

  Farideh shakes her head. “Nothing.”

  That isn’t the answer Havilar wants. “What … What would it take for you to give up? What would … It’s not you I’m asking about. It’s Bryseis Kakistos.”

  Farideh’s thoughts are spinning too fast to grab hold of. “I wouldn’t. Maybe … maybe if you said I shouldn’t? Is … Is that what you want?”

  “No,” Havilar says. “It’s Bryseis Kakistos. This isn’t about Asmodeus; it’s about—”

  At the name, Farideh looks back to be sure the god hasn’t heard, but he’s gone and left Dahl in his place again, looking not so much puzzled as concerned. His eyes shine silver in the torchlight.

  “I’m still here,” he says.

  It’s a dream, she reminds herself. An incredibly embarrassing dream.

  Havilar turns her back. “It’s about her sister. She’s trying to save her dead sister. Alyona.” The name echoes in Farideh’s memories, as if she’s heard it a thousand t
imes before. “Only, she’s going to kill everybody trying to do it,” Havilar went on. “So yeah, if you thought it would kill a plane full of people to save me, karshoj yes, you shouldn’t do that. You’d get that, right?”

  “It wasn’t supposed to be like that,” Dahl says.

  Farideh looks back at him, and he smiles, as if he’s waiting for her to answer a question that shouldn’t be this hard. His eyes are the wrong color, she thinks. “She was keeping secrets,” he says. “She still is.”

  “Shut up, Dahl,” Havilar says. “You can finish this weird dream later.”

  When she looks back at Havilar, Asmodeus stands right beside them, not merely displeased, but incandescent with fury—I’m not dreaming, Farideh thinks as Havilar skips back, away from the god. Her heart nearly stops.

  “You have no idea what you’re toying with,” he says. He waves a hand over them both—the cellars vanish and she and Havilar are looking out over the whole of the plane, turning blue and green beneath them.

  “Do you know what happens when the king is stolen out of the Nine Hells?” the god asks, and the plane tears. Fire and ice and hideous miasmas pour out, armies swarm from the rents, swallowing whole cities in their battle. The Nine Hells, collapsing in on themselves, their order destroyed, turn their armies out into every plane.

  “I warned you,” he whispers in her ear.

  Farideh turns, but he is gone, they’re in the cellars once more, and the old man is there, between her and Lorcan.

  “Who in the Hells is that?” Havilar demands.

  “You have no idea what you’re toying with,” he says sadly.

  “I know you’re both going to die no matter what I do,” Farideh says.

  The old man spreads his hands, cards appearing in neat rows in the air between them. “The time for chaos and disorder is passed. Now comes method, neatness, law. The Overgod approaches and all that we have striven for will be etched in stone.” He sweeps his hand across the cards and they vanish, but for three that lie in a crooked line: Iolaum, the Arcanist; the Adversary; the Godborn.

  Devils and magic, Farideh thinks. Sin and wizards. Gods and the Nine Hells. Jumbled together like cards dropped on a table.

  “He offers you no solution.” She turns and it is Asmodeus once more. “If you separate us, we will die and you will have neither—is that better? Do you know what happens when the king is stolen out of the Nine Hells?”

  She blinks and it’s Azuth before her. “Do you know what happens when the spark is stolen out of a god?”

  “Has he killed you?” she asks.

  The wizard smiles at her in a way that sets her nerves humming. “If you consider the matter carefully, he saved me, though not as I would have preferred to be saved. I was near death, my divinity slipping from my grasp. He might have tried to wrench it away, but no … this way both are whole. Either can claim the godhood. Or neither.

  “Fari,” Havilar starts.

  “How do I stop it?” Farideh demands.

  “You must wake now,” a voice—Somni’s voice—says, all urgency and magic. But Farideh can’t look away from the gods flickering in front of her.

  Blink. “Stop her,” Asmodeus says.

  Blink. “Help her,” Azuth says.

  Blink. “Do something before it’s too late.”

  “What do I do?” Farideh shouts.

  The old man considers her sadly. “Sometimes the only choice is a sacrifice.”

  The archdevil smiles. “Sometimes we forget the power we wield.”

  “Wake up!” Somni shouts. Havilar grabs her arm.

  “She took my powers,” Farideh says. “Lorcan can’t give me anything as he is. What do you think I can do?”

  Azuth approaches. Asmodeus approaches. A palm that might belong to either rises before her face, the god beyond it flickering between both selves. “We are fragile. We cannot spare a Chosen’s spark,” one says. “Any more than you need it.”

  “But all the same,” the other finishes. “It wouldn’t do to leave all to chance.”

  The hand caresses her face, electric with magic, enough to stop her heart.

  PART VIII

  ASCENSION

  13 Hammer, the Year of Blue Fire (1385 DR)

  Aglarond

  • • •

  Near the end of the ritual, Bryseis Kakistos could not say where she ended, where Asmodeus began, what was real, and where the lines of power that bound all of them together led to. The night of nights, the end of all her efforts, finally here.

  Twelve faces regarded her, some envious, some adoring, some hateful—none of that mattered. Success was at hand, the blood of the sacrificed victims soaking the ground, staining her robes, slick on her hands. The beat often thousand pulses forced into synchronization by the web of magic pulling on their blood made the air pound.

  United, Bryseis Kakistos thought. Intertwined. Bound.

  I did this, she thought. I brought us here. I will make you a god.

  I will bring you back, she thought.

  The surge of power that came with those last thoughts blotted out everything else. Bryseis Kakistos bled out of the edges of herself, blurring into the engines of the Nine Hells, the building power of the highest of the archdevils, the nascent god. She stopped existing, nothing but the conduit. Nothing but the path for all this power.

  Infernal words tore across her, the seal of the incantation spoken by the Raging Fiend himself. You are mine, they said. You have always been mine. You will always be mine.

  The heavens yawned above, the endless planes below. The world of Bryseis Kakistos was nothing more than a fevered dream of a distant overgod, easily changed, easily remade. The Nine Hells screamed with the sudden force often thousand voices, ten thousand hearts, ten thousand souls. For a moment, she was everything and everywhere.

  And then once more, she stood in the grove, coated in blood, and bound to her bones. In the stillness of the grove, twelve faces regarded her, all of them shocked, all of them silent but for the sounds of their uneven breaths. Bryseis Kakistos grinned.

  What have you done? Alyona’s screams were suddenly loud enough to make her ears ring. What have you done?

  • • •

  17

  6 Hammer, the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant (1487 DR)

  Djerad Thymar

  SOMETIME IN THE NIGHT, THE ADJUDICATORS HAD TAKEN DOWN THE WHITE cloth of mourning from the Vanquisher’s seat, leaving the stone throne cold and hard and ready for its next claimant. Mehen stood alone before the dais, waiting for the conclave, wanting nothing more than this, and yet knowing he would regret it.

  You cannot save Havilar alone, he told himself. You cannot save her without the Vanquisher’s might. Deep down he’d known this from the very beginning. Farideh’s plans moved too slowly, betrayed her hesitance, her fearfulness.

  Will you trust for a karshoji heartbeat that maybe I’m doing what’s best this time? Mehen tapped his tongue against the roof of his mouth. It’s a precaution, he told himself. It’s a contingency. He touched the pouch that held the sending stone Ilstan had given him, the one that spoke to a matching stone Farideh carried with her. She’s fine, he told himself. She will let you know when they’ve arrived. You will speak as soon as the stones’ magic builds back again. Her plans were slow and roundabout—she’s far from danger, and that’s for the best. She’s far from here, and she won’t try to stop you.

  If Farideh’s careful dancing around the Hells came to nothing, then this way he could be ready with an army.

  “You look like a man gonna do something foolish.”

  Mehen looked back over his shoulder at Kallan standing in the doorway. “I don’t suggest you try and stop me.”

  “Well you’re no fun.” Kallan came to stand beside him. “Uadjit told me Narghon threw your name into the pot while we were gone. You worried I can’t beat you?”

  “No,” Mehen said. “In fact … Look, you don’t want to be Vanquisher. I’ll do it. I have to do it.”
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  Kallan stepped around him, to stand between Mehen and the throne, one scaly brow ridge raised. “What happened to, ‘You’d be a good Vanquisher, Kallan’? You doubting me?”

  “What happened to ‘they’ll poke holes in my head’?” Mehen returned, feeling the snap of lightning at the back of his throat. He blew out a breath through his nostrils and set his eyes on the throne again. “You don’t want to do it. I shouldn’t have pushed you to it. I’ll take the piercings.”

  Kallan snorted. “You’d be shit at it, you know?”

  That startled Mehen. “Tiamat m’ henish—”

  “Not so shit as Arjhani,” Kallan went on, matter-of-factly, “but more shit than I would—and you know it. You let them get your scales up. You’d spend hours bellowing at people for being stupid. The first time someone implies you don’t know your omin’ iejirsjighen, you’re going to spit lightning. You can steer around a bunch of sellswords and teenagers, but you’re no diplomat. Hells, you can’t even be civil to Kepeshkmolik Narghon for a few breaths, and the man put your name forward. So why, all of the sudden, are you trying to sell me the story of your needing to do what’s right for Djerad Thymar?”

  Mehen folded his arms, feeling exposed and awkward. “I take back what I said about you talking people into things.”

  “Someone told me once you prefer plain talk,” Kallan said gently. “Tell me what you’re doing.”

  Lies flitted on Mehen’s tongue, but instead he said, “I need the Lance Defenders. The city forces. The giants, if they’ll help me.” He wet his mouth. “I can’t just sit around and wait. I have to do something.”

  Kallan was silent a moment. “You’re not talking about the King of Dust, are you?”

  “My daughter is in trouble,” Mehen said, hating the sudden thickness in his voice. “Farideh’s plans aren’t fixing this. I don’t even know why I’m karshoji still here, except that I know that this army can siege that lich’s fortress and stop this.” He looked up at Kallan. “I’m done rubbing my thumbs and fretting like an old man in the dust. I need an army. Please don’t try to stop me.”