by Erin Evans
The Brimstone Angel might not have been the daughter of Clanless Mehen, but she was far more skilled with a blade than Havilar would have given her credit for. The long sword rose again, slashing down at Havilar’s right arm to damage her grip. Havilar jerked back, hit the blade again with the shaft of the glaive, then slammed it forward into the Brimstone Angel. The flames crackled as Devilslayer struck, but she pulled back too quickly for them to catch.
“How can you know Alyona for longer than a tenday and think for a moment that she’d want dozens of people killed to bring her back?” Havilar demanded. “I mean, gods, are you that blind?”
The flames around Bryseis Kakistos burned brighter, hotter. “They die for a purpose. They’ll save us all.”
“From what?” Havilar shouted. “It’s like you’ve been in pieces so long you can’t string a thought together. Do you know what it’s like out there? It’s not perfect, but it’s not such a hardship that we don’t survive. Maybe people don’t like us, but it’s not everyone, and every day it gets a little easier. You want to save all the tieflings, there’s a lot better ways to do that than unmaking the karshoji Hells.”
Bryseis Kakistos laughed. “You’re actually arguing Asmodeus is a better master?”
“I’m arguing he’s not my godsbedamned master,” Havilar shouted. “I’m arguing—until all this warlock aithyas started up—he never made a damned difference in my life or more importantly, Remzi’s life. I’m arguing that you’d be a lot better off making a haven for tieflings or a spell to make people see what hardjacks they’re being or getting karshoji collector warlocks off your heirs’ backsides. I’m arguing that you are about to make things worse—for me, for Alyona, for all of us—just because you’re angry you were tricked.”
Bryseis Kakistos lunged with a shriek of rage, her blade suddenly aflame. The powers of Asmodeus’s Chosen surged, overwhelming Havilar’s resolve as she fell back under the Brimstone Angel’s renewed attack. The sword moved so swiftly it was all she could do to keep ahead of it. Suddenly Bryseis Kakistos’s hand came up and a burst of bruised, angry energy swelled out of it, striking Havilar and tossing her across the field—
Havilar landed with a jolt she felt as if she had a body once more—she wasn’t in Suzail any longer, but neither was she in the pocket world of mists and gates. She’d landed, still ghostlike, in a cell of a room, simple and spare. A table covered with scrolls dominated one side of the room, the wall behind it pasted with more scraps of parchment, more diagrams and notes. The open door illumined this, the bony lich standing over a narrow bed, and the jewel-adorned black skeleton shaking Havilar’s body into wakefulness.
Bryseis Kakistos sat up. “What is it?” she asked hoarsely.
“The staff’s returned,” Phrenike said. “Someone’s hiding it, but it’s here enough to keep triggering the location spell. I thought you might like to know.”
The memory of Havilar’s pulse sped as she watched herself sit up and look uneasily around the room. Bryseis Kakistos found where Havilar’s spirit hovered and locked eyes with her, her expression unreadable.
“Bryseis?” the lich said. “Did you hear me?”
“Good,” she said. Then, as if she were convincing herself, “Good. Let’s make certain everything’s ready.”
• • •
DUMUZI DIDN’T DARE let his nerves show as he watched Vanquisher Kallan returning to the city’s gates. He didn’t dare look back at the shrine he’d built with Tam and Mira’s help, fussing over its hasty shape, the paintings of the Vayemniri along the sides, would only send the signal that he wasn’t sure. And he had to be sure.
Kallan spoke to the leader of one of the spellcasting regiments, the Sixth Red Cohort—eighty Vayemniri wizards armed to the teeth with fireballs and enough guano to keep making them until the city crumbled. Even at a distance, the former sellsword’s easy nature showed—this he could do. The rest would come, Dumuzi felt certain. Hopeful. Maybe.
Nearby, Kepeshkmolik and the Lance Defenders’ commanders stood, with Namshita and her lieutenants beside them. Dumuzi kept himself from looking to his patriarch, his mother, and most especially at Arjhani, who kept glancing at him in a nervous way. No room for uncertainty, he thought. No room for weakness.
Beyond, under an evening winter sky thick with pale clouds, the very edge of the enemy’s army showed in the shimmer of fires along the horizon’s edge, the dark specks of winged demons floating over them like whirling ashes. Dumuzi swallowed his breath and kept his eyes on Kallan.
The Vanquisher clapped the wizard on the shoulder, bidding her farewell as he turned toward Dumuzi. As everyone within sight turned toward Dumuzi, dressed in his best armor. He’d found a forge and had the Kepeshkmolik moon covered over by a new sigil—a wheel of lightning with a clawed hand at the center. He still wasn’t sure about that, but Mira had nudged him toward something that bridged the gap between the Vayemniri and the Untheran god.
Enlil seemed to approve of it. He’d no sooner affixed it to his armor, but the lightning took on an eerie sheen, and the sense that the god stood beside him was unignorable.
Kallan smiled as he approached. “Well met, Dumuzi.”
“Chosen of Enlil, Majesty,” the Adjudicator at his elbow said.
Kallan made a face. “Let’s stay with names, if you don’t mind,” he said to Dumuzi. “Hard to take up formality after the fact, at least for me.” He studied the shrine. “You’ve been busy.”
Now Dumuzi turned to consider the stone shrine. Here, once more, Mira had proved invaluable. She’d sketched the niches in the catacombs, the resting places of particularly venerated warriors, and they’d mimicked the shape in wood and stone. A slight enclosure embraced the altar, a simple slab table, a roof projecting over just far enough to shelter someone from the storm. They’d painted all sides of it with figures from each of the clans—heroes from ancestor stories—and stars and jackals, mimicking the black axe. Against the back was the clawed fist over the wheel of lightning, and the words to a simple prayer. Across the roof, spelled out in green Draconic runes: Aricholedarthicaesh Archolkoshjimetev—Enlil, Strychik Ozhon.
Pride bloomed in Dumuzi, and it didn’t matter how much of it was his own and how much was Enlil’s—they agreed.
Kallan searched around the side, smiling as he spotted the figure of Esham-Ana Who-Would-Be-Yrjixtilex with his bow and deer. “Very nice,” he said.
“Thank you,” Dumuzi said. “I had some help.” Kallan’s gaze darted off behind Dumuzi where Tam and Mira stood against a stable wall. Dumuzi kept his eyes on the Vanquisher, a calm expression on his face.
Kallan came back around to the front, peered at the runes. “ ‘Sword of all the Lands, Elder of All the Children.’ ”
“They are approximations of the epithets that I heard when he manifested,” Dumuzi explained. “Made more appropriate.”
“And this?” Kallan turned to him, amused, as he pointed to the runes that spelled out Strychik Ozon. “ ‘Uncle Lightning Bolt’?”
Dumuzi held himself even straighter. It sounded ridiculous when you said it like that, like he was making the god into a buffoon for some market play. But Tam had made an inarguable point—“Enlil” wasn’t their god.
“His name is always going to remind you of that,” Tam had said as Dumuzi crossed out yet another version of the prayer for the shrine. “You need something that tells people instead that he’s chosen the Vayemniri.”
“I know my omin’ iejirsjighen,” Dumuzi said lightly. “Blood commands unity. Clan earns it. So call him as you call your fond elders, aunties and uncles, whom you honor not because they share blood, but because they share the clan’s load. The ones who make certain you are safe and that you grow wise and earn their honor too, despite the fact you are no child of theirs.”
Kallan nodded, approving. “All right. Let’s do this. How do I …” He gestured at the entrance.
“Go in,” Dumuzi said in a low voice. “You can read the prayer at the back.”
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Kallan’s nostrils flared. “Nah. Give me something bigger. I’m Vanquisher. You need a big gesture.”
Dumuzi said a little thanks to the Selûnite priest. Tam was the one who’d helped him figure out the simple prayer, but he’d insisted as well on having some greater rituals prepared.
“You could dedicate your sword,” Dumuzi suggested. “As Enlil defends you, so shall you defend Enlil.” He pulled out a scroll. “Here, I wrote it down.”
Kallan gave him a curious smile. “You have no idea how much that sounds like a sellsword contract.”
Dumuzi knew exactly, but he only nodded and handed the scroll over to Kallan, who skimmed it. Beyond, Arjhani watched with narrowed eyes. “This bind me to anything?” Kallan asked in the same low voice.
“Makes you allies,” Dumuzi said. “Makes you promise not to be a tyrant.”
“Easy enough,” Kallan said, but he kept considering the scroll.
“Most of this is straightforward,” Dumuzi blurted out. “If we don’t worship him, he’ll be too weak to defend or protect us. Even if he wanted to leave us, it would hurt him. We need each other.”
Kallan let out a sigh. “Makes sense. Maybe I’m glad my grandfather’s not here to see this, but I’m with you.” He handed back the scroll and stepped into the shrine, laying upon the altar not the greatsword of his office, strapped across his back, but the well-worn bastard sword he’d carried as long as Dumuzi had known him. He didn’t kneel, and a little flush of panic hit Dumuzi as he realized how critically important both of these choices were. Enlil couldn’t be seen to be a new slave master, and the Vanquisher couldn’t be seen to be controlled by him.
“Great Strychik Ozhon,” Kallan said, “August Enlil, take my sword and my word. As you protect this city, so shall I pledge to protect your followers and your shrines, and give great thanks that you have come among us, sheltered from evil and sheltering from evil alike. You grant justice—I seek justice. I seek the destruction of evil and wickedness so the strong shall not oppress the weak, and the land shall be enlightened. Lend me your lightning, wise uncle, favored sword, in my coming battles, and I will lend you my heart and my blade.”
A rush of electricity ran up Dumuzi’s spine, as well as most of the crowd from the looks of things. Kallan clapped a hand to the back of his neck and looked at Dumuzi, surprised. Dumuzi smiled back. “He agrees,” he said.
Kallan shook his head, dumbfounded for a moment. Then he took a small pouch from his belt and handed it to Dumuzi. “Here. Call it alms or whatever you like. You’re going to need more of these.”
Dumuzi took the bag of coin gingerly, and very pointedly avoided looking at the Kepeshkmolik patriarch. Kepeshkmolik earned their keep, did not take debts lightly. Kallan looked down his snout at the younger man.
“You paid for this thing from your own pockets, and it doesn’t belong to you. It can’t. So take the karshoji coin and make sure you tell people you need it.”
Dumuzi shook his head tightly. “I can’t.”
Kallan sighed, his nostrils flaring again. “Godsbedamned Kepeshkmolik. Fine.” He turned to the crowd. “In grateful thanks to Enlil Aricholedarthicaesh for his timely assistance against the Blue Fire and his future assistance in our coming trials, I have gifted his Chosen and priests a sum of silver. We can’t all fit into this one little shrine.” A peppering of chuckles ran through the crowd. “Now I’m not going to tell you what you owe our Strychik Ozhon but keep in your minds, this is your shrine, your ally too. And I don’t think any of us will look too fondly on a clan that doesn’t take up its own weight in this matter.”
Kallan walked back down the steps, led by his Adjudicators to a group of waiting clan elders. Dumuzi shot a grateful glance at Tam and Mira Zawad. Saitha sidled up next to him. “We need something to put coin in. I have a strongbox I can give.”
“Go get it quickly,” Dumuzi said. “And send someone to figure out if we can borrow one of the Adjudicators’ vaults.”
She took the sack of silver and ran off, and he blew out a breath, thick with lightning. That had gone well, another step down a path full of pitfalls and obstacles. He risked a glance at his mother, still standing far, far from the shrine. Uadjit smiled and gave him a reassuring nod. You will manage, Dumuzi told himself. He glanced out at the horizon in the dimming light, at the shimmer of campfires. You have to.
When he turned back to the crowd, Arjhani was waiting for him.
“Well met, Son,” he said.
Dumuzi stiffened. “Well met.”
“I’ve been meaning to find you. To say … Well, to say thank you, I suppose.” Arjhani’s tongue fluttered nervously behind his teeth. “I know I haven’t … Well, you don’t love me like you love your mother, do you? Maybe I’ve given you reasons. But you saved me. You and your god. A lesser fellow would have left me to dangle over the pit for what I’d gotten into. Thank you.”
Dumuzi bit back all the things he wanted to say. For Arjhani, it was a profound display of humility. “Of course,” he said.
Arjhani nodded at the shrine. “I was wondering if you … If I could give it a try.”
“That’s what it’s for.”
But Arjhani didn’t move. “He won’t mind? I mean, given I was completely taken by the enemy. Not exactly ideal material.”
“Mistakes are mistakes,” Dumuzi said. “You can apologize if it makes you feel better.”
Arjhani tapped his tongue again. “I’m sorry, Dumuzi,” he said abruptly. “I’m obviously not … Well, there are things I am more skilled at than being a father.”
Dumuzi found it hard to meet Arjhani’s eye. He nodded. “It’s all right.” He gestured at the shrine. A small crowd was gathering around it, waiting for someone else to begin. “Here,” he said, “you go first. It will make it quite the fashion.”
He stood aside as Arjhani repeated the Vanquisher’s words—more or less—and again the rush of electricity flowed up the back of his scales. As he’d suspected, Arjhani’s act nudged others into their own attempts, the popular commander a suggestive force, even given his recent missteps.
“Well done,” Tam Zawad said, coming up beside him. “I assume, obviously.”
“It went well,” Mira confirmed, eyeing her handiwork. “Perhaps, after this, I might ask you some questions about consonantal shifts?”
“Perhaps,” Dumuzi said, utterly unsure of what she meant.
The crowd parted suddenly. Shestandeliath Geshthax came out of the city with a small retinue, including his daughter Narhanna and two young men, carrying a casket the size of a war drum and decorated all over with gilt runes. At each corner, the figure of a Vayemniri, arms wrapped around the box. Kallan straightened and went to the patriarch’s side, conferring in hushed voices. Dumuzi drew a sharp breath, and the whispers began.
“What’s happening?” Tam demanded. Mira shook her head.
“The Breath of Petron,” Dumuzi murmured. If there was any question of how dire things had become, that answered it. He glanced at Uadjit and Narghon—his grandfather watched the Shestandeliath patriarch with his jaw tight, his nostrils flaring. His eyes shining. He’d known.
Geshthax turned to the elders. “Should anything happen, I declare Shestandeliath Narhanna, my daughter, of the line of Haizverad, to be my selection for the throne of Shestandeliath.”
“Witnessed,” Narghon said, too briskly. “Good luck.”
Kallan glanced back at the crowd. “I don’t need to tell anybody to give the Shestandeliath some space, do I?” People moved back, whole armies began shifting closer to the pyramid, as Narhanna opened it for her father.
The Breath of Petron looked like nothing so much as a hand-sized piece of tree root made of blood-red stone, branching in at least six directions into finer and finer tubes. But unlike ordinary stone, it hummed with a peculiar power all its own.
In the third thousand years, Dumuzi thought, Versveshardinazar, the Opaline Terror, mined the Verthishai Loech Ternesh down to its roots, seeking the
relics of Merciless Petron. For centuries, his slaves broke rocks until they found the corpse, and the precious remains of the Dawn Titan’s magic. Thus did Haizverad Who-Would-Be-Shestandeliath discover the Breath of Petron, a remnant of the titan small enough it could be spirited away.
“What does it do?” Mira whispered.
“ ‘In the first days, Merciless Petron claimed a kingdom that stretched to the sea,’ ” Dumuzi recited, “ ‘so flat and trackless that there was nothing to stop a stone rolled across it, nor the armies of her brothers and sisters. She claimed dominion over the stone and earth, and ordered fiery mountains to rise from the ground, a wall against invaders and a home for her red dragon steeds. When the Tyrants were slaves themselves, Petron brooked no imperfection, and those that defied her were turned to glass and stone at a word.’ ”
“What does that mean?” Tam asked.
Geshthax hefted the stone artifact in his remaining hand, shifting it with practiced ease so that the largest branch faced him. Grimly he strode through the crowd, out through the streets that surrounded the pyramid, the faint sparks of lightning clear along his jaw. Dumuzi thought of the rumors of Shestandeliath Geshthax, the reclusive patriarch, his grandfather’s closest friend. How he’d been ransomed by cultists of Tiamat as a cadet, who cut off his arm when Shestandeliath wouldn’t relinquish their artifact. How he’d led the Lance Defenders back to their hiding place when he’d escaped. How he’d denied the city the use of the Breath of Petron when the same cult had stirred up the ash giants and no one could agree if it was because he was a coward or because he wanted to punish Tiamat’s minions with his own blade.
“Watch,” Dumuzi said, and hoped Geshthax was as strong as the rumors suggested.
A bowshot from the last of the Thymari, Geshthax raised the Breath of Petron to his mouth. At a distance, Dumuzi could see the air around him crackle with lightning for a moment as he took a deep breath. And then he spat his breath through the strange instrument.
A note rang out, loud enough to shake the bones from their ossuaries down in the catacombs, and it grew preternaturally louder. Dumuzi fought the urge to cover his ears, even as those around him gave in. The Breath of Petron shook him down to his marrow—as it should. The magic of the Dawn Titans could never be seen as a trifle.