by Erin Evans
“Mostly,” he agreed.
“You’re good to me. And you’re good for me. I don’t know how long we’re all going to survive, but I would be heartbroken if it weren’t with you.” Her eyes flicked over him. “Don’t look too excited.”
“I’m excited,” he protested. “I just … I didn’t expect you to answer so fast. You have a lot of history with him.”
“He took you away from me,” she said. “And I love you better.” She hesitated. “But it has to wait until this is through. Until Havi’s safe or … or we find out …”
“Until Havilar’s safe,” he said.
The door opened and Farideh yanked the ink-stained sheets up just as Caisys stuck his head in.
“Oy, Oghmanyte,” Caisys said. “Fari says you do rituals. Put your breeches on and come check my work.” He frowned at the bedsheets. “What in the Hells happened?”
“We … spilled some ink,” Farideh said, a blush creeping up her neck.
Caisys raised an eyebrow. “Huh. I’m not familiar with that one.”
“Lorcan’s gone,” she said.
“Went outside.”
“No, he went back to the Hells,” she said. “We had a protection spell on both of us. It just broke. I think someone took him.”
Caisys cursed. “Well, wash your faces and get down here. We’ve got a lot to do.” He slammed the door behind him.
Farideh watched the door a long moment, before turning to Dahl. “I don’t mind him being gone,” she told him before he could say anything. “But I don’t want him dead, and I don’t want an archdevil in our way.”
“Fair,” Dahl said, reaching for his breeches. “In the way of what exactly? What ritual am I supposed to look at?”
Farideh froze in the middle of pulling on her blouse. “Oh karshoj. I forgot. You’d left.”
That tone didn’t bode well. “What is he doing?”
“We’re,” Farideh corrected. “We’re going to try and save both gods.”
23
9 Hammer, the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant (1487 DR)
Arush Vayem, Tymanther
FARIDEH KEPT LOOKING AT THE DOOR, KEPT RUBBING HER ARM, BUT LORCAN didn’t come back.
“I told ya,” Pyador said again. “ ’Twent through a portal.”
“Yes,” Caisys said, “but I want to know what kind of portal.”
Pyador folded his thick arms over his black beard. “Do I look like some spangle-britched wizard to you?”
Farideh’s tail slashed the floor. Whatever relief she felt at not having to face Lorcan after last night was absolutely gone knowing he’d been snatched up and yanked out of the protection spell’s range. Nothing else she knew of could break it.
“What color was it?” Mehen asked patiently. He and Dahl’s brothers had gone out looking for signs of Lorcan or anyone who’d seen him and had gotten a piece of Pyador’s mind for harboring the devil. They quickly brought him back to Caisys.
“Red,” the dwarf said. “Maybe yellow. Fire-colored, let’s say.”
“So you are a spangle-britched wizard,” Caisys said dryly.
Pyador scowled at him. “Smelled strong too. Like slag and fireplace ashes.”
Hellsportal, Farideh thought. “Did he open it himself?” she asked.
But the dwarf only shrugged. “Criella ain’t gonna like it,” he told Caisys.
“Why would Criella need to know?” Caisys asked, sounding genuinely puzzled. “It’s not as if someone propped it open, letting imps in.”
Farideh tried not to worry about all the things that might have caused a Hellsportal to open in Arush Vayem. She tried not to worry about erinyes and Glasya and archdevils and Asmodeus. She tried not to think of all the ways this might be the next step of some horrible plan, right after letting Dahl out of his deal. She looked back at Dahl and Ilstan both poring over Caisys’s ritual, and worried anyway.
Caisys walked Pyador to the door, arguing with him lightheartedly about whether Criella needed to know and how much Caisys was going to pay for the liquor Pyador brewed if he didn’t mention it and whether anything else was the dwarf’s business.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” Bodhar said to her. She gave him a quick smile, as if that would make the way he said “friend” sound less suspicious.
“There is no telling whether anybody has to be sorry yet,” she said, as much to herself as to him. Maybe Lorcan just went home. Maybe Lorcan went to find some help. Maybe Asmodeus was planning to kill them all and take the staff. “Excuse me,” she said, and went back over to Dahl and Ilstan.
“You can pull out this part,” Dahl said. “It’s a redundancy.”
“No, see, it clarifies the binding,” Ilstan said, tapping the parchment. “Without that, you may end up dragging in bystanders.”
“Then cut the other clause,” Dahl said. “Doubling it just creates more failure points.”
“How’s it going?” Farideh asked.
Dahl smiled when he looked up—the same sort of smile she’d given Bodhar. “All right. You find Lorcan?”
“In the Hells.”
“Well at least he knows his way.”
“What’s wrong?”
Dahl sighed. “Can I talk to you?”
Farideh followed him into the little dark room under the stairs. “Fari, have you looked at this ritual? Do you understand what it does?”
“I’m the one who suggested it,” she said a little tartly. “So I understand what it’s supposed to do, yeah.”
“I mean, do you know what happens when you pour a god’s power into a mortal body?”
“I don’t. Do you?”
“It’s not good. Have you ever heard of Karsus?” Farideh shook her head. “Karsus was a spellcaster in Netheril. He tried to become a god and nearly destroyed the empire—certainly destroyed himself. He turned to stlarning stone.”
“Azuth was mortal once,” Ilstan called. “But ascended to Mystra’s side.”
“First, not the same thing,” Dahl retorted. “Second, private conversation!” To Farideh he said, softer, “Look, all I’m saying is that this is very risky. You could die. And for what?”
Sometimes the only choice is a sacrifice. Farideh shut her eyes a moment, chasing off the thought. “Obviously, that’s not my first choice. Can you make the ritual so that it doesn’t kill anyone?”
Dahl shook his head. “It’s not the ritual. It’s the fact that you’re not a god.”
“Look, if I do this, I might die. If I don’t? I might die, and so might a lot of other people. Do you know what happens when two gods rip each other apart? Do you know what happens when the king of the Nine Hells is destroyed?”
“No, and neither do you.”
“Do you think it’s something good?”
Dahl wrapped his arms around her. “I just got you back.”
Farideh leaned into him, her arms around his waist. How many times, how many indulgent little moments in Arush Vayem, had she let herself wish for something like this? She thought of Mehen and Havi and Dumuzi and Brin and all the other allies and—dare she say—friends she’d made. She didn’t want to die. “Tell Oghma to keep a miracle in reserve.”
He sighed again. “If you survive this, I’m going to have to insist you get yourself a religious education.”
“Don’t tell Mehen, please,” she murmured.
“About the religious education or the ritual?”
“Both,” she said. “I don’t want him to worry and I don’t want him to turn on you. I just got you back too.”
Caisys was standing over the parchment when they came back out. Suddenly he clutched his chest and winced. “Damn,” he said, sounding breathless.
“Are you all right?” Farideh asked.
“Planes are getting friendly again,” he said. “You need to go. Get your things. I’ll get you a portal opened.”
“Not here,” Mehen said from the door to the front room. “I have to take the bat. Can you get the portal open enough for one?”
C
aisys rolled his eyes. “Why you people opted to mount flying rats, I will never understand.”
They gathered their things and donned their cloaks, following Caisys out into the snow. The villagers of Arush Vayem watched as their little party passed. Criella stood, just beyond the well, up the road from the gate.
“Garago!” she called. “A word.”
Caisys waved her off. “Give us a song, Criella, I’m seeing these folks off.”
“Perhaps you should go with them,” she shouted back.
“Perhaps you should get another personality adjustment,” he muttered.
“Don’t do that,” Mehen said.
Farideh glanced back at scowling Criella, and wished Arush Vayem another farewell. Dahl tucked his hand into hers. “I will promise you one thing,” he said. “My family’s farm is far more welcoming than this.”
Farideh glanced over at Thost and wasn’t so sure.
The bat had tucked itself into the shelter of some pine boughs for the night. When Mehen whistled through his fingers, it came flapping and shedding snow everywhere, to drop onto its belly where the path widened before it grew steep for a stretch. The creature crawled toward them, while Caisys made them kick the snow away, uncovering enough dirt to draw a portal. The lines of power woke with little prodding and even less in the way of components.
“He’s very good,” Dahl murmured to Farideh.
From the other side of the clearing, Caisys looked up and smirked. “You don’t know the half of it, Oghmanyte.”
But before the portal could open, three rifts split the cold morning air. A freezing wind blew through them, blasting Farideh from all sides, before devils slipped out of them. Great horned and spined creatures with leathery wings. One that looked as if it were an insect on two legs, carved of ice. A scattering of imps dressed in wooly skins.
“Ah, tluin and buggering Shar,” Caisys muttered.
“We come for the staff!” one of the horned devils snarled. “Which of you bears it?”
Farideh yanked her rod out of her sleeve, carving a semicircle with the tip. “Fiornix!” A wall of flames burst out of the ground, sizzling against the snow. She turned to Caisys, the others pulling swords free. “Finish the portal!”
“Oh, so I can clean up the Stygians? I see how it goes.” But Caisys went back to coaxing the circle of runes into wakefulness.
One of the horned devils made it over the wall of flames, flapping high overhead. It aimed a bow and arrow down at Caisys.
“I have it,” Ilstan called. He spat a word of magic, and a cluster of blue missiles shot out of the air, hammering the horned devil and pushing it back beyond the wall.
The imps dared the flames. Farideh slashed at one with her sword and cast a blast of angry energy at another, catching it ablaze and making it vanish in a puff of smoke. The wall of fire collapsed as she did.
“Garago!” Mehen shouted, catching the icy devil’s glaive on his falchion. “Faster!”
“Can’t rush portals,” Caisys said. “Gets you lost.”
Farideh hurled another bolt of energy at the back of the ice devil as Mehen continued to strike at it. She went to draw another, but suddenly it felt as if the Weave were buzzing in her veins, anchoring her to the ground. Another spell rose in her thoughts and she spat the trigger word. The ice devil froze in place, glaive drawn back, its side wide-open and vulnerable.
A shadow passed overhead and someone yanked her by the arm. She swung her rod around, nearly hitting Dahl as he turned her back toward the horned devil that had almost landed on top of her. “Hit it!” he said.
“Adaestuo!” Another burst of eldritch energy streamed from her rod, this one enough to make the devil burst into flames and vanish. “Thank you.”
“Always,” he said, turning to cut another imp down.
“Hey! I had that one!” Bodhar cried, oblivious to the horned devil rushing at him.
Farideh pointed her rod at the creature in tandem with Ilstan, both spitting the same spell with different words—Farideh’s trimmed with flame and shadow, Ilstan’s vibrant purple. Both struck the horned devil together and it disappeared with a pop.
“Again,” Ilstan said, “that isn’t how you’re meant to do it.”
“It gets it done!” Farideh returned.
“All right!” Caisys cried. “Portal’s set. Get your arses in it.”
Mehen swung his falchion down through the ice devil’s chest, just as Thost’s fist crashed into the back of its skull. It burst into flames at these last injuries and vanished back to the Nine Hells. Mehen turned, panting, and scowled at Caisys.
Caisys smiled. “See? I knew you’d manage.” He pointed a finger at Farideh. “Don’t fidget with that ring again, girly.”
Farideh held her hands up in appeasement as she stepped into the circle. As Mehen coaxed the bat into the ring of glowing runes, Caisys favored her with a fond smile. “Good luck,” he said. “And if you come back here again, I expect a replacement for my book, got it?” He winked at her.
“Thank you,” Farideh said. “I will.”
Farideh considered the forest around Arush Vayem, the last time she might ever see it—for one reason or the other—before the portal’s enchantment yanked them away, back to Djerad Thymar and hopefully an end to her dealings with the god of sin.
• • •
HAVILAR STEPPED INTO Bryseis Kakistos’s dream, announcing herself by making the seashore setting transform into the fields around Suzail in the midst of that last battle. Karshoj, Havilar thought. But at least it was somewhere she’d been, she’d succeeded. She felt armor form around her, her glaive filling her hand as she stalked across the field toward the Purple Dragon and the silver-eyed tiefling woman perched upon its neck. Fear curled around Havilar’s heart, and she made herself keep walking.
Bryseis Kakistos regarded her with puzzlement. “Where’s Alyona?”
“Not here,” Havilar answered. “We’re going to talk, you and I.”
Bryseis Kakistos gave her a withering look. With a flick of her wrist, the dragon’s attention snapped to Havilar. It roared, shaking Havilar down to her bones, and breathed a cloud of burning green gas. Havilar shut her eyes and reminded herself—this was a dream, this was her head, and besides, she’d been there, it wasn’t a black dragon and it couldn’t breathe acid anyway. So to the Hells with this.
She opened her eyes and fixed her attention on the dragon. It collapsed into the form of a much smaller wyvern, the creature that the Shadovar had disguised to frighten the Cormyrean army. Bryseis Kakistos raised her sleek eyebrows, looking impressed.
“I remember how it died too,” Havilar said. “Do you?”
“Vaguely,” she said. “As if in a dream.”
Raedra appeared, the jeweled short sword in hand, but this time she pointed it at Havilar, the same determination in her eyes that she’d had as she killed the Purple Dragon. Havilar rolled her eyes, and the young queen turned and stabbed the wyvern through the eye, both she and the monster vanishing at the mortal wound. Bryseis Kakistos landed on the muddy ground.
“I’m not scared of her anymore,” Havilar said. “I have a message from Alyona.”
“No you don’t. Alyona would come talk to me herself.” Flames raced over Bryseis Kakistos, building into fiery wings, and a rush of horror went through Havilar. “You ought to go back before I change my mind about preserving you.”
Havilar dug her heels into the mud, concentrating on the feeling. It was the same as when Fari did that—and she didn’t like the feeling, but she wasn’t scared of Farideh and she didn’t have a reason to be scared of Bryseis Kakistos. She couldn’t kill Havilar in a dream.
“Do you even know what you’re trying to accomplish anymore?” Havilar demanded.
“Don’t worry about my plans,” the Brimstone Angel said. A wreath of lightning stirred around her, spikes of lightning spearing the ground around her, wider and wider. “I know what I’m doing.”
“No you don’t,” Havilar r
eturned.
The flames seethed around Bryseis Kakistos. “Punishing Asmodeus.”
“How is that a good plan?” Havilar cried. “He’s a god. They die and they come back and they die all over again and there is no guaranteeing they stay put—so what happens when he comes back and comes looking for you and your sister?”
“I didn’t agree to a deal with Selûne because I like her.”
“Do you actually think Selûne’s going to protect you if you do things this way?” Havilar said. “Alyona told me that you changed your plans, that you weren’t supposed to fight Asmodeus like this.”
Lightning struck the ground at Havilar’s feet, and she forgot it wasn’t real, skipping out of the way. “I’ve come too far to go back,” Bryseis Kakistos said. “And you can’t pretend he doesn’t deserve it, that Selûne wouldn’t relish his demise once the deed is done. That’s how it works, dear girl. We’re the ones who do the dirty work, who make things happen, while the good stand back and tut and pat themselves on the back once the dust settles. Now go home.”
“This is my karshoji head,” Havilar shouted. “And your sister doesn’t want to be resurrected!”
Bryseis Kakistos fell still, the flames still dancing around her. “Liar.”
“She told me to get Brin to steal the soul sapphire,” Havilar said. “She told me to have him threaten to break it if you don’t stop.”
“She told you to get your brightheart killed then.”
“No,” Havilar said. “She told me to gamble. To take the chance that you’d back off against the chance that you’d call his bluff and let him kill us both. She’s ready for that.”
Bryseis Kakistos shook her head. “I wouldn’t, though. She knows that much.”
“She doesn’t,” Havilar retorted. “She doesn’t trust you anymore. Because you aren’t karshoji listening! Because if you were paying even a little attention, you’d realize she’s miserable. She wants to be done. She wants to die.”
“Liar!” The Brimstone Angel drew her long sword, swinging it across Havilar’s core. But this was Havilar’s mind and Havilar’s kind of fight. She knocked the blade off course with the end of her glaive, chopping the blade toward Bryseis Kakistos’s shoulder.