by Erin Evans
“Help me? For her sake.”
Caisys stared at her a long moment, then pointed at the baby with his chin. “I see you’ve been busy. What’s this one’s name?”
Bryseis Kakistos blinked, and answered before she could stop herself, “ ‘The baby’? The fosterage will give him a proper name when I send him out.”
“Baby,” Caisys crooned over the cradle, “your mummy is a madwoman. She needs to leave well enough alone.”
“If you’re going to say no, say no like a grown man. Don’t use a baby for a puppet.”
Caisys straightened. “If I say no, you’ll stop listening to me—how long have we known each other? Don’t do this. You’ll end up a dead woman.”
“And Alyona?” Bryseis Kakistos demanded.
“There are other ways to deal with this,” he had said. “Pick one.”
Bryseis Kakistos narrowed her eyes. “Give me the staff.”
“No,” Caisys said. “You said to take it and never tell you where it went.”
“That was then,” she said. “That was when the problem was some rival of Asmodeus’s or that some trumped-up wizard might want it. Now I need it.” She dropped her voice. “I think I can use it. I can use the pacts to pull magic out of the Nine Hells and force it into the staff—”
“And get caught a heartbeat later,” Caisys finished.
Bryseis Kakistos smiled. “It will go too fast. By the time he realizes something’s wrong, the stream will be a torrent. It will weaken him even as it strengthens the god in him.”
Caisys studied her face for long moments. “And what about Alyona?”
Bryseis Kakistos held his gaze, but her hand wrapped around the soul sapphire hanging from its chain around her neck. “You mean if Azuth doesn’t appreciate our help? Then I’ll find someone else. She’s safe now.”
“While you live.” Caisys shook his head. “Maybe you ought to let her go. Try living a life that’s not about … hrast, you’re out for revenge on everything, more or less. You can’t be happy. Don’t you want to be happy?”
For a long moment, Bryseis Kakistos said nothing, but stared at Caisys unblinking for so long a normal person would have turned away. But he only waited, as if he’d asked a question she had any interest in answering.
“Bring me the staff,” she said again.
Caisys sighed. “It’s going to take me a bit,” he said. “It’s not as if I put it under the bed.”
“Hmm. Too much traffic,” Bryseis said.
He gave her a withering look. “For one. A month—give me a month. But promise me you’ll think about what I said, Bisera.”
“I promise,” she lied. The smallest twinge of guilt went through her—after all, Caisys remained her oldest ally. They were very nearly friends.
If she’d known then, as he walked out the door, that he’d never return, she might not have felt guilty at all.
• • •
20
8 Hammer, the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant (1487 DR)
Arush Vayem, Tymanther
LORCAN DID NOT CARE WHO THE WIZARD WAS OR WASN’T. BUT IF ONE WERE going to care about such things, he supposed he would be disappointed in Caisys the Vicelord. In tales, he had been called handsome in a way that suggested something short of obscenity, clever and ruthless and undeniable in a way that bespoke succubus blood. “Garago” muttered to himself while he poured five cups of tea, missing or ignoring the fact that eight people were crowding his little cottage’s front room. He said nothing as he set small spoons alongside each chipped cup. Then he paused and counted, frowning as if suddenly realizing he hadn’t made enough tea for the mob of people massed in his sitting room—but instead, he muttered, “Right,” and pulled the fifth spoon from the tangled depths of his beard.
Lorcan stayed where he was, standing against the wall, and hated every moment.
“Are you all right?” Farideh had whispered as they waited for the others.
“I wish you’d stop asking that,” Lorcan said.
“I meant about Caisys. I didn’t expect we’d find him so soon.”
“Quite a surprise,” he said, keeping his voice as neutral, as empty as possible, and failing.
Dahl sat at the wizard’s table, watching them talk and sending ripples through Lorcan’s temper. Maybe that was the curse’s effect wearing off and maybe that was just his frustration at the stunning lack of chasms to shove the Harper down. He should have given up back in the Dalelands. This wouldn’t end unless Lorcan forced it, but his promise to Farideh itched along his thoughts: Swear to me right now that you won’t harm Dahl. Ever.
“Did you not suspect?” he asked suddenly, the question bursting out without his leave.
“About … About Garago?” she asked. “No. Maybe I can see a little now. You have the same eyes, when you look human, I mean.” She looked down at her hands. “I don’t think you should grow a beard. Are you going to tell him who you are?”
“Why should I?” Lorcan had asked. “I said it before. He doesn’t matter.”
Caisys polished the spoon on the front of his robes, staring down Farideh with black eyes that Lorcan managed a little more hate for.
“That one,” he said, nodding at Adastreia standing against the wall, “I remember. But not all these others—when did you start tramping around with a gang? And I thought you had a sister.”
“You know I do,” Farideh said. “And you remember Mehen.”
“They all look alike to me,” he said in a low voice, though not low enough to keep Mehen from hearing it. He slid a cup of tea toward Farideh, hand caged over the steaming liquid as if he hadn’t even considered the heat of it. “He used to live here?”
“You know damned well who I am, Garago,” Mehen said. “I used to live here and I used to fix your karshoji roof for you whenever you blew a hole in it.”
Caisys scratched his beard. “All right, that tone I remember. And I remember you don’t like downheather tea.” He slid Mehen’s cup over in front of himself and sat down. He took a delicate sip of the tea and considered Farideh. “You’ve been gone a long while.” He jerked his head toward Lorcan. “See the rumors are true enough.”
“Is this one true?” Lorcan asked, his voice cold and hard. “Are you Caisys the Vicelord?”
He turned to consider Lorcan, as if he’d just posed a curious puzzle, and for a moment he said nothing, only studied Lorcan’s face. For a moment, Lorcan felt the tide of his mother’s blood, surging up from wherever Dahl’s curse had buried it—even though he had no idea why. Caisys was no one. Nothing.
“Have we met before?” he asked.
Lorcan kept his face impassive. “No,” Lorcan said. “Are you Caisys the Vicelord?”
He stared at Lorcan a moment longer, before turning back to Farideh. “What gave it away?”
She shook her head. “Just odds. Adastreia said Caisys took us, so he had to have come here. The staff is hidden in the same place as the village only in Abeir, and he hid it. If you weren’t him, you had to have known him. But no one comes to the village. So I don’t think you had a visitor.”
“Or,” Caisys said, “perhaps I was driven mad by him in order to keep his secrets.”
“You already admitted it,” Farideh said. She shot a look at Lorcan—the madness wasn’t an act.
I don’t care if he’s mad, Lorcan thought. Or perhaps, he cared only so much as it made Farideh kind to him. He hated that it took him a moment to remember that. They couldn’t leave Arush Vayem soon enough.
“We need the staff,” Farideh said.
He shrugged. “What do you want that for?”
“Bryseis Kakistos is looking for it. She possessed Havilar and she’s planning to destroy the gods with it. We have to stop her.”
His oddly sleek eyebrows rose. “She’s around again? How does she look?”
“Like Havilar!” Mehen barked. “She’s a ghost and she’s possessing my daughter.”
“Right,” Caisys said. “Hmm … Anyway,
I do so have visitors.” He looked over at Dahl and nodded. “Drink your tea. It’ll warm you up.”
Dahl frowned. “How are you still alive?”
“Clean living.” Caisys snickered to himself, trailing away when no one seemed to catch the joke. “Oh. See it’s funny, because I have never been an advocate of anything … Well. They did wind up calling me ‘the Vicelord’ didn’t they? Terribly dramatic. Though,” he added, “you wouldn’t believe how many people—and not-quite-people—will line up to notch the bedposts of ‘the Vicelord.’ It has a ring to it.” He chuckled to himself and took another sip of tea. “But to answer your question, mind your own damned business and drink your tea so you can go on your way.”
“It’s a spellscar.”
Lorcan frowned at Ilstan. One madman faced the other, and in that moment it would have been easy for anyone to believe both of them were perfectly sane. And perfectly dangerous. Caisys dropped his gaze to the Purple Dragon insignia, faint as lichen dappling a rock against Ilstan’s filthy robes. “Well, well,” he said. “What a combination. A dragonborn, a cambion, a war wizard, a Brimstone Angel, a nosy Oghmanyte—”
“It’s a fairly large one,” Ilstan broke in. He drew a circle in the air, level with Caisys’s chest. “There is a … collapsing of the Weave, approximately there. It’s keeping you alive but it’s driving you mad, isn’t it? It’s too much magic for a body to hold.”
Caisys’s mouth quirked. “I’ve had practice.”
Ilstan dropped his hand. “What does it do?”
He shrugged. “As you said, keeps me alive.”
“Oh no,” Ilstan said. “It’s too powerful for only that.”
Caisys chuckled again and turned back to Farideh. “Obviously the war wizard’s a good addition. It’s hard to find a good wizard. We were stuck with Phrenike so long, I suspect that’s why Bisera finally stopped shillyshallying and took steps.”
Farideh frowned. “Aren’t you a wizard? And who’s Bisera?”
“I mean Bryseis. She hates when I call her that.” He sipped his tea noisily. “So, you’ve come back to stay or do you prefer cold tea?”
“I told you,” Farideh said. “I came back for the staff.” Caisys made a dismissive noise. “If she gets the staff—”
“She’s not going to get the staff. Do you think I’m an idiot?” he demanded. “Asmodeus passed it to her, she passed it to me, and I made sure to hide it where nobody could find it.”
“In Abeir,” Adastreia said.
“Right, in Abeir.” He frowned. “No, wait, how did you find out about that?”
“Because nobody’s found it,” Dahl said. “Anyone looking to resurrect Azuth would want it. Anyone looking to topple Asmodeus would too. Hells, any wizard with more than a little ambition would probably sell half their apprentices into bondage to get their hands on the staff of Azuth. But nobody has it. So it’s someplace they don’t know how to reach.”
“Someplace where the gods may not tread,” Ilstan added.
“Someplace that lines up almost exactly with Arush Vayem,” Farideh said. “Did you found this village? Just to protect the staff?”
Caisys’s dark eyes glittered dangerously, but then he smiled. “I told you I get visitors.” He studied Farideh for a long moment. “I watched you. Seventeen years I watched, waiting to see if there was some phantom of her in you. Now you show up and I’ll be damned if you’ve not become exactly as pigheaded.” He looked over at Lorcan again, squinting as if he weren’t quite sure what he was looking at. “Which of them are you with?”
“Technically?” Lorcan said. “Glasya.”
“She want the staff?”
“Her Highness doesn’t know about the staff,” Lorcan said. “And I don’t much want to enlighten her.”
“Could get you a hell of a boon.”
“More likely to get me killed.” This was going to go on forever. “Are you familiar,” he asked, “with the ritual Bryseis Kakistos intends to use to kill the king of the Hells?”
“Intimately? No.” He watched Lorcan in a wary sort of way. “But maybe she mentioned it once. Maybe I know you can’t do it without the staff.”
“Or the heirs,” Lorcan said. “The most powerful she can get her hands on, the better to make the conduit to the Nine Hells’ magic. The most potent. So far that hasn’t always meant the closest to the source … but speaking as a collector? Your descendants aren’t anything special. They litter the multiverse—I myself have gone through six. They are weak and unambitious. No one cares if you lose one. There’s always another Vicelord heir.”
“Sounds about right.” Caisys’s dark eyes sharpened. “You want me to save them?”
Lorcan shrugged. “Do as you like. But I think you’d be more concerned with saving yourself.” He moved toward the table, leaned against its surface, vaguely threatening, entirely sure. It felt awkward, as if he were trying to wield a weapon after a long injury—he knew this was the right gesture, but he doubted nonetheless.
“You’ve hidden yourself out here,” he went on, “where no one can find you. No one comes to this village except if they want to hide—so who do you hide from?”
“Does it matter?”
“Not particularly,” Lorcan said. “Though mere distance doesn’t do much when it comes to gods and archdevils, so I’d guess you’re more worried about mortal threats. You don’t want to die. And if Bryseis Kakistos is looking for the most powerful individual in the line of Caisys the Vicelord? Well, I’m sure I’m not the only one who’d make a wager that it’s you.”
Caisys chuckled. “Silver-tongued, this one. So you think Bryseis is coming after me. You think I can’t stand against her? I’d wager you know by now that I already had dealings with her ghost and Alyona’s. If you think she’s given up on her kinder, gentler plans for survival, then I’d say I’m ready for her. I can handle a ghost.”
That name again—Alyona. But there wasn’t time to press him. Lorcan clucked his tongue. “A ghost with three times your knowledge and the blessings of a Chosen of Asmodeus in the body of a woman with twice your strength and a blade that might as well be her right hand?”
Caisys squinted. He looked over at Mehen. “She’s still carting around that damned glaive?” He shook his head. “Waste. Girl had a memory like a godsbedamned aboleth. Assuming she paid attention.” He slurped his tea. “Piecemeal mess when she didn’t pay attention. Bisera is probably hating that.”
“She’s probably enjoying having that youthful, well-trained body,” Lorcan said. “Having those memories to search through.” He tilted his head as if it gave him a new angle on Caisys’s features. Studied him right back, the bastard. “How long,” he said, “before she sees a certain wizard from a certain village on no one’s maps, do you think?”
Caisys’s eyebrows rose again. He took another deliberate sip of tea, before setting the cup down and turning to Farideh.
“What are you going to do with it?” he said.
“Trap her,” Farideh said. “That’s the bait. Ilstan and I can make a prison.”
“Then what?”
Farideh wet her mouth. “Then,” she said finally, “we figure out how to get Havilar back. How to push the ghost back out.”
“What about Asmodeus?”
Farideh shook her head. “I don’t think he cares.”
Caisys snorted and shot a look at Lorcan. “You have not done a good job here. Of course he cares! You bring that staff onto this plane and you’ll be horn-deep in devils. Are you prepared for that?”
“Asmodeus has other concerns at the moment,” Lorcan said. “The planes are … shifting. The gods changing.” He hesitated, unable to bring himself to say it. “Azuth is alive and waking up. Asmodeus has sealed himself in Nessus.”
Caisys scratched his beard. “Sounds like he’ll want that staff all the more.”
“Why?” Farideh asked. “He wouldn’t want to strengthen Azuth.”
“Who the Hells even knows?” Caisys said. “But he surely d
oesn’t want it falling into the wrong hands.”
“Then we’ll be the right hands,” Farideh said. “We have to get her out of that fortress, away from that ritual. I don’t know how else to save Havilar.” She hesitated. “Or you.”
For a long moment, Caisys said nothing, only considered each of them in turn. “It’s not a simple quarterstaff, you know. You have a way to transport it?”
“I think so,” Farideh said. She glanced at Ilstan. “He’s the Chosen of Azuth.”
“Well,” Caisys said, sounding surprised. “If anyone can hold onto it …” He glanced around the room. “How many of you plan on coming along?”
“All of us,” Farideh said.
“If it’s all the same,” Bodhar interrupted, “maybe Thost and I stay behind. Guard the back way, so to speak.” He smiled at Caisys. “We’re simple fellows. That portal business … not for us.”
“Six of you is still pushing the limits,” Caisys said. He drained his tea cup. “But you’re going to need the muscle, so I suppose we’ll make it work.” He stood. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.” Farideh looked over at Lorcan, and for a moment he wondered how she’d ever been that wide-eyed girl too stunned to even hold onto her book. “What do we need to do?”
“Farm boys, back up,” Caisys said. He stood as well and pulled open his shirt to reveal a splatter of a scar, like the remnants of hot oil thrown against his skin. It pulsed with a faint blue light. “Spellscar,” he confirmed. “I don’t recommend it. Everyone who’s coming along on this ridiculous errand come a little closer.”
Lorcan moved to stand behind Farideh. And Dahl—godsdamned Dahl. The Harper looked over his shoulder, as if marking Lorcan’s exact position, and took Farideh by the hand. Maybe there’d be a monster on the other side or a shitting sinkhole.
“Ready?” Caisys asked. But without waiting for an answer, he set a hand against his spellscar, and all the light around him bled through the air, sucked away into a doorway no one ever suspected was there.
• • •
WHEN HAVILAR RETURNED to the mists, Alyona was nowhere to be seen and Havilar couldn’t shake the feeling she needed to catch the breath she didn’t have. The image of the archdevil, the rising feeling of unease and then terror as she realized he was not—he couldn’t possibly be—a figment of her sister’s dreams. She felt as if her pulse was racing, but with no body, there was nothing she could do to slow it down.