The Devil You Know

by Erin Evans

  The rumbling came next, the groaning of stones deep below the earth waking and stretching. They erupted first at Geshthax’s feet, a building wall of dusty, unpolished granite. The Shestandeliath kept blowing lightning through the horn and the stones kept coming, a line, a wall that raced past Dumuzi’s line of sight, blocking all view of the army on the horizon.

  The note extended into a song of its own, and Dumuzi felt as if he were melting into the sound. Dimly he imagined the grave titaness of whom this small piece contained such power.

  Geshthax’s breath finally failed him and he collapsed, coughing, careful to keep the artifact from touching the earth even as it overwhelmed him. Strangers rushed to him, helping him to his feet, helping him back toward a worried Narhanna. The scales around his nostrils had turned blue. He wheezed, spitting blood.

  Tam started forward, and Dumuzi could feel the surge of power from the High Harper’s goddess, ready to heal the ailing patriarch. In his own mind, he felt Enlil pressing forward and sensed the others he’d recruited to this unlikely priesthood tensing at the same urgent presence. He caught Tam’s arm.

  “It won’t work,” he said. “The artifact demands a price. It commands the stones but it turns some of his lungs to glass. If you heal it, it will take back what it gave.”

  “That’s not how these things work,” Tam began.

  Dumuzi stared at the priest. “We’ve had that artifact for centuries. We know what it does.” He considered Geshthax being helped back inside by Narhanna and Narghon. “He’ll be made comfortable. Not everyone dies of the Breath of Petron.”

  “Could you heal him after the battle?” Mira asked. “When you don’t need the wall anymore?”

  “That presumes we’ll win,” Dumuzi said.

  The air atop the pyramid flashed and boomed suddenly, sending more than a few warriors after their blade hilts. Kallan’s eyes went to the peak, even as two of his Adjudicators grabbed hold of him by the arms, ready to pull the Vanquisher to safety. Silence, and then a dark shape launched skyward, illumined by the last light of the sun as it wheeled around. The crowd parted again as the giant bat caught the edge of the pyramid, flopping down on its belly on the ground and chirruping, as Verthisathurgiesh Mehen dismounted, one arm tied up in a sling.

  “Oh good,” Kallan said, grinning. “You brought that bat back.”

  A tenuous smile tugged at Mehen’s expression as he handed the reins off to the Adjudicators. But then he found Dumuzi and he turned grim. “We need to talk to you,” he said. “Farideh needs your help and we don’t have much time. Come on.”

  PART XI

  ESCAPE

  The Feast of the Moon, The Year of Resurrections Rampant (1441 DR)

  Neverwinter

  • • •

  After uncounted years in the Nine Hells, returning to the mortal plane sent a chill right through Bryseis Kakistos’s ghost. She watched the rift she’d triggered seal behind them, making sure the magic was good and spent before she turned to Alyona.

  Could have been harder, she said. Alyona said nothing, but looked up at the night sky above them, the full moon shining down like a disapproving matron. Bryseis Kakistos couldn’t look at it.

  Bryseis Kakistos might have accepted her death with a little grace, eventually. She might have come to believe that it was all she’d bargained for, being allowed to persist as herself in the Nine Hells, a favored if unimportant courtier of Nessus, in the form of a burning spirit. After all, here was eternity, here was a little power, here was a position from which she could—one day—reach out to the world and master some small part of it.

  She might have accepted her fate, if it hadn’t been for Alyona.

  Moments or maybe eons after she died deep below the Chondalwood, she’d awoken on a plane of mists, and found Alyona beside her. They’d no more than embraced before archons descended, female and green-skinned, parting the mists to reveal a moon-drenched valley. The kingdom of Selûne. The Gates of the Moon.

  Bryseis Kakistos held her sister tight—she couldn’t lose her, not after everything she’d given up, everything she’d built. Alyona turned to consider the entrance, the offer, not letting go of her sister, but still, looking, yearning.

  And then the devils had split the mists, and taken them both.

  Alyona, they explained, was still sealed to Bryseis, and while someone—surely!—could perform the necessary steps to separate them, it would be risky—terribly risky!—now that both were in the Nine Hells. Assuming, of course, she wanted her sister’s soul intact?

  In that moment, Bryseis Kakistos began plotting ways to escape the Nine Hells, taking risks, stealing power. She was reckless, but who bothered to watch? A mortal soul languishing in the corners of Nessus, waiting for Asmodeus to deign to notice her? Her keepers knew to watch for alliances, for overtures to other archdevils. They didn’t listen as she whispered to the ghost bound to her heart.

  I am still so sorry, she said. Alyona kept watching the moon. A strange, cool prickling ran through the core of Bryseis Kakistos, as if the moon were watching her back.

  What are you sorry for? Alyona asked.

  Bryseis Kakistos hesitated. All of it, she said, even if it wasn’t entirely true. From the Nine Hells she could see the waves and ripples that her actions cast across the world, the rise of a tiefling race, the offer of the Infernal pact. Now they might know each other, might band together, might find weapons they weren’t given in the old days. Now they couldn’t hide, could be harassed and chased off, could damn themselves more swiftly than ever before. It was all more complicated than “good” or “evil” and she’d always known so.

  But perhaps she felt guilt at letting others think it was that simple.

  I’m sorry I dragged you into it, she said. You haven’t deserved any of it—you were always the virtuous one. Alyona kept her eyes on the disk of the moon. And that extends—I shouldn’t have helped him make them like this. Not unasked for.

  Still, Alyona said nothing.

  I know how to undo it all, Bryseis said, I know how to destroy him.

  Will that save them? Alyona asked. She turned at last to her sister. Our goal must be to save them. I cannot believe she will aid us if it’s vengeance alone, and without Selûne’s guidance, we’re doomed to wander, planeless.

  It will save them, Bryseis said. How could it not, after all? But first, we need to find out what happened to my sons.

  • • •

  24

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

  Snowflake Mountains, Erlkazar

  REMZI PLAYED THE LITTLE FLUTE WITH NO SKILL AT ALL, BUT PLENTY OF enthusiasm. Brin sharpened his dagger against a whetstone and smiled to himself, thinking of his father giving him the flute to play and the same horrible noises coming out of it. Zoonie lowered her head, whining. Brin patted his leg, and the hellhound came and draped herself over his thigh. He scratched her ear and sighed.

  Remzi stopped playing, and considered Brin with a furrowed brow. “You’ve got a gauntlet on your necklace,” he said at last. “Like the lord’s men.”

  Brin fished his symbol of Torm out from his shirt, laid it across his palm. “I was supposed to be a priest,” he said.

  “And a prince?” said Remzi.

  “Yes.”

  “But you aren’t either?”

  “I’m sort of both and sort of neither.”

  Remzi gave him a skeptical look that reminded Brin so much of Havilar he almost laughed. “You have a pet hellhound. I don’t think Tormish priests are allowed that.”

  “Zoonie’s not a normal hellhound,” Brin said. “And she’s not my pet, she’s Havi’s.”

  “Are priests allowed to have tiefling brightbirds?”

  “As much as princes are.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means I have a tiefling brightbird and an almost-pet hellhound and that … Doesn’t change everything else.” He frowned down at the dagger. “Things are a lot more compl
icated when you’re an adult.”

  Remzi rolled his eyes. “That’s what everybody says.”

  Brin went back to sharpening his dagger, remembering when he’d first fled the Citadel of Torm at seventeen, knowing he didn’t belong there, knowing it was too dangerous for him to try to belong there. He’d imagined a whole flock of futures and not one would have looked like this one, with a tiefling child asking him questions, a hellhound on his knee, while he waited for a pair of imps to bring him news. The first time he’d seen Havilar and Farideh he’d been so afraid they were devil themselves, momentarily terrified for the state of his soul. But without them, without the dangerous help of the Nine Hells, where would Brin have been? Where would House Crownsilver and Cormyr have landed? He thought of the Citadel of Torm, of the holy champions who had taught him, tried to mold him into the right kind of nobleman, superior, devout, and true. How wrong it had felt and how much he’d been sure it was his failure.

  Not your failure, he thought. You just aren’t the sort of champion Torm demands.

  He took off the necklace. “Here,” he said to Remzi. “Take this.”

  Remzi stared at him. “You shouldn’t give me anything.”

  “I want you to have it.”

  “It’d be a waste.” Remzi looked down at his lap. “She’s going to kill me still, isn’t she?”

  “No,” Brin promised, even though he couldn’t be sure of any such thing. “I won’t let that happen.”

  “How?” Remzi asked. “She’s scary. And you said she’s … she’s walking around in your brightbird’s body so you can’t even hurt her.”

  “I have a plan.”

  “What?”

  “Just trust me. It will work.” I hope, Brin thought. Loyal Torm, I hope. He went back to sharpening the dagger, just in case.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course,” Brin said, not looking up.

  “If she’s my mother,” Remzi said in a small voice, “are you my father? Or is he someone else?”

  Brin hesitated. “I thought you said your father was a cowherd named Emmer.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Brin examined the edge of the dagger, then slid it back into its sheath. He crossed over to where Remzi sat and handed him the symbol of Torm. “It’s got a little protection in it,” he told Remzi. “Wear it, all right?”

  Remzi looked away, but put the necklace on. “I’m not stupid. You’re not answering because it’s so. Why’d you give me to the devils?”

  “Nobody gave anybody to the devils,” Brin said. “And your father is a cowherd named Emmer.”

  “I know.” Remzi fidgeted with the holy symbol. “Am I a prince too?”

  Brin held back a sigh and imagined the roiling gossip that would overtake Suzail at the knowledge of Lord Crownsilver’s secret tiefling bastard, even if circumstances meant that Remzi could inherit very little. “No. And you don’t want to be.”

  “I might,” Remzi said. “I don’t like cows. They’re mean.”

  “Nobles are meaner,” Brin said. “And you can’t eat them.”

  The air popped and Mot and Bosh unfurled in the little room. The little red imp looked harried and singed. He shoved Bosh toward Zoonie and flapped up to Brin. “We have a shitting problem.”

  “What happened?”

  “That staff is back in Toril,” Mot said. “Back and then pfft gone again. But enough that everybody is going wild. Have you looked outside?”

  Brin went to the window and looked down the slope. In the snow, dark shapes clustered at the base of the cliffs around enormous bonfires and what looked like a ballista. Several of the shapes circled the camp on wings, as if trying to test the limits of Phrenike’s invisible wall.

  “Lady Zariel has given up breaking through the usual way,” he said. “She’s desperate to look good in front of His Majesty—not that he’s noticing a shitting thing right now. Make it clear she deserves what she took.”

  “Took from who?” Bosh asked.

  Mot grimaced. “You are so stupid. Lord Bel! Lord Bel! She’s hardly held the throne long enough to warm it, how can you possibly believe that stupid propaganda that she never lost it?”

  Bosh folded his arms. “I listen to my betters.”

  Mot muttered something under his breath, then landed closer to Brin. “Tell me you have a plan.”

  “Havi does,” Brin said, still wishing for something more solid. “Have you seen the necklace Bryseis Kakistos wears? It’s important to her. If I can take it, she’ll deal.”

  Mot gave him a dark look. “What?”

  “That’s a soul sapphire,” Brin said. “That’s where she’s keeping Havilar and Alyona. She doesn’t want to lose her sister. I’ve got the lich ready to defect, I think. Maybe she can undo it.”

  “You’ve been parleying with the lich!” Mot hissed. “Lords of the Nine, are you insane?”

  “Well, we don’t want her working against us, do we?”

  “I don’t want her working at all.” Mot wrung his tiny hands. “Look, I shouldn’t offer this. But if you can get the soul sapphire, maybe … maybe I could take it away. Give you room to bargain. Without the lich.”

  “But you have to do what she says,” Brin pointed out.

  “Yeah, but nobody said anything about when. Maybe I just don’t hear her summons right away?”

  Brin considered Mot. “Can you take Remzi?”

  “What?” Remzi cried. “No!”

  “For safety,” Brin said.

  “He’s not going to be all that safe in the Hells,” Mot pointed out. He squinted at the boy. “Wait … you’ve been there before.”

  A key jangled in the lock, and Brin shot a look at Remzi, who tucked himself behind the cabinet near the door, the only place that passed for a hiding spot in the little room. Zoonie came to her feet, whining uneasily, as Bryseis Kakistos entered the room, followed by Phrenike and a pair of skeletons.

  “Lord Crownsilver,” she said, mildly. “I trust you’re well.” She looked around the room. “Please don’t tell me you’ve decided to do something foolish with the boy.”

  Over her shoulder, Phrenike smiled at Brin. It sent a chill down his spine. “Is it time?” he asked.

  “Shortly,” Bryseis Kakistos said. “And so all the heirs should be in place.”

  “Did you ever find out which heir she chose?” he asked Phrenike. The lich’s smile slipped.

  Bryseis Kakistos peered at him a moment, then smirked. “Oh. You’ve been talking, I see.” She glanced back at Phrenike. “Did he get to you?”

  “Not exactly,” Phrenike said. She grabbed hold of Havilar’s arm, freezing Bryseis Kakistos in place. “I didn’t plan to do this now, but you force my hand. There are only eleven heirs down there. Did you think I couldn’t count?”

  Bryseis Kakistos worked her mouth, fighting the lich’s freezing touch. One hand twitched.

  “Right,” Phrenike said, grimacing. “Can’t talk.” She turned to Brin. “Well, Lord Crownsilver, before I wipe your beloved from the plane entirely”—she yanked the soul sapphire from Bryseis Kakistos’s neck—“care to make a deal?”

  Behind her, Brin saw Remzi peek out from the cabinet. He didn’t dare move a muscle. “What do you want?”

  “Oh, everything a prince of Cormyr can gain me, I should think.” She let the pendant swing. “Let’s begin with that Royal Magician.”

  The spell on Bryseis Kakistos gave out with an audible snap. “Aquatin luokseni,” she muttered. The air sizzled, flashed, and popped like fireworks. Bryseis Kakistos broke free of the spell that held her and never looked away from Phrenike as she held out her hands … and a small jeweled metal box appeared in them.

  Phrenike’s violet eyes burned brighter. “How did you get that?”

  “How do you think I got it?” Bryseis Kakistos said. “You are without a doubt the laziest, stupidest person I’ve ever known to achieve so much, Phrenike. You stole my lichdom, my phylactery, and you didn’t even think to
disguise it from me? To undo the spells I set on it? You think your hospitality is enough to make me forgive and forget the fact that it was you who betrayed me to Asmodeus?”

  Phrenike had gone perfectly still. “I did no such thing.”

  “Oh, was it Titus? Caisys? And you simply happened to be out of the room when the assassins came?”

  “When you ruined your summoning?”

  “I don’t ruin spells,” Bryseis Kakistos said. Her right eye started to twitch. “And I don’t intend to begin. Now, you can take your place in the ritual, die, and make yourself a new body, nice and easy, or”—she tapped her fingers on the phylactery’s top—“we can make this a lot more difficult.”

  “You seem to forget I have your sister’s cage.” She wrapped a bony hand around the soul sapphire. “Would be a shame for something to happen to it.”

  Bryseis Kakistos narrowed her eyes, the right one still twitching. Her hands tightened around the box until her knuckles stood out pale. “I suppose we’re at an impasse,” she said softly.

  “It seems,” Phrenike replied.

  “You’ve miscalculated. Zoonie,” Bryseis Kakistos. “Parosh renoutaa.” The hellhound came snarling to her feet. “Lord Crownsilver, the muzzle, if you please.”

  “Oh, are you going to waste your dog on a feint?” Phrenike asked. Her left hand seethed an eerie greenness, sick and foul. “I can kill it, you’ll recall, rather quickly.” Brin’s heart leaped up his throat.

  “You can have a crushed phylactery and a dead hellhound,” Bryseis Kakistos said. “Or we can all calm down. Lord Crownsilver, what say you?”

  “Tarto, Zoonie.” The hellhound dropped onto her hindquarters, but kept growling at the lich. “I’m not taking off her muzzle.”

  “Well, she doesn’t need the muzzle off, strictly speaking.” Bryseis Kakistos smiled, never taking her eyes off Phrenike, even though they still twitched. “Your true love’s soul is in quite a lot of trouble.”