by Erin Evans
Kallan turned to her. “Yes?”
“Have the archers shoot the captives,” she said solemnly. “They cannot be rescued, but they can be saved.”
“Madness,” Dokaan cried. “We’re not out of options.”
A green-scaled man at the center of the line stopped, just within bowshot. His pause jerked the chain, stopped the line to a ragged stop. To his left and right, the others glanced back, but the green-scaled man just stared up at the wall. Could he see them? Kallan wondered. Could he spy his own clan among them?
“They’re within range,” Namshita said.
“Hold,” Kallan ordered, the shout repeated down the line.
One of the winged men dropped behind him, clawed hands glowing. He set his hands on the green-scaled man’s shoulders. “They will make him,” Namshita whispered. “That’s what they’re doing. Succubuses take over your mind.”
Other winged humans came up behind the remaining prisoners, pressing other magic to them, forcing wills that weren’t their own. Kallan felt sick—worse than captives. They were within range, he thought, watching the green-scaled man twist as though fighting the succubus standing behind them. Another landed beside him, building her will on the others.
The demons are in range, he realized. And still.
“Loose arrows!” he shouted. “They hold your targets for you!”
Arrows filled the air, followed by the sizzle of the Sixth Red’s fireballs. The succubi tried to scatter, but a full two-thirds of them were caught in the storm of projectiles and knocked to the ground. Whether they had survived or not hardly mattered when the front line of the Untheran force hit them, the bull-headed beasts and spike-covered toads trampling their prone forms.
And those of the prisoners. They’d sacrificed themselves to take out an equal number of Gilgeam’s demons, like something out of a karshoji ancestor story. Kallan glanced back up the pyramid’s slope, toward the peak where the flashing lights of stirring magic could be seen.
All of this is like something out of a karshoji ancestor story, he thought. And he hoped if it turned out to be one, no one made Yrjixtilex Kallan out to be anything he wasn’t.
The first bull-headed demon slammed into the wall, nearly knocking Kallan off his feet, and sending a rain of stone shards down the slope of the wall. He swept his gaze over the army, counting the big brutes, just as a ray of golden light streaked over his head, striking the pyramid in an explosion of granite.
“Come on, Dumuzi,” he muttered. “We’re going to need that god back.”
• • •
FARIDEH STOOD AT the foot of the bed, just beyond the circle of runes, expecting a trap, but unable to find the proof of it. “You want me to kill you?”
“No, that would actually ruin everything,” Sairché said. “Have you listened to a word I’ve said?”
Shadow-smoke leaked off her arms, her nerves driven by the persistent beat of the war drums as much as dealing with Sairché—she didn’t have much time left. “If I break the circle,” Farideh said, “one of your sisters will find you.”
“One or more of them,” Sairché said.
“And they’re going to kill you.”
“Yes.” Sairché’s mouth twitched in an uneasy smile. “Hopefully quickly. But you can’t do it. That would make this entire plan fall apart. You need the pradixikai to come here.”
“It’s as good as killing you,” Farideh said, not sure how she felt about the offer.
Sairché rolled her eyes. “Well, then you should be all the more pleased with this plan. You get your revenge. Lorcan gets to be rid of me. Your friend gets reinforcements—”
“What do you get?” Farideh asked.
Sairché fell silent a moment. “I get to be free. So far as anyone knows, the oathbreaker curse is permanent. It’s not going to wear off. And, as Dumuzi made abundantly clear, there aren’t many gods out there that are keen to do a favor for a devil like me.” She paused as if waiting for Farideh to say something. “Don’t you owe me a favor still?”
“You cleared them,” Farideh reminded her. “What about Asmodeus?”
Sairché chuckled. “That would be disrupting the hierarchy quite baldly. He might,” she allowed, “but also he might decide one day to mend his ways and become the footman of Lathander. I wouldn’t hold my breath. No, my very best hope is to assist you with all I can, and pray”—she said this with a desperate smile—“that Asmodeus takes notice and plucks my soul up from the Styx.” She folded her hands together. “Besides, we come back to the fact that I’m completely trapped here. Best case scenario, I’m left alone to go slowly mad in a cell the size of a dragonborn’s bed.”
Farideh had seen the pradixikai kill people in Neverwinter—even if it was Sairché they’d be killing, it felt abhorrent. But somehow it seemed crueler to leave her trapped here—and she couldn’t deny that fact made it more tempting to do just that.
“I hate you,” Farideh said. “I can’t say that about many people.”
“Well if it makes a difference, I hardly think about you personally anymore.”
“I hate giving you what you want,” she went on. “But I’ll do it.”
“Wait: there’s another part,” Sairché said. “It’s very important. Lorcan cannot let me come to harm. So you can’t tell him you’re doing this. But you need to make certain he’s near, because he is the only one who can control the pradixikai after they … after the deed is done,” she decided with the faintest tremble in her voice. “He must be in the room not a moment too late, or you’ll be dead too. And then I can kiss Asmodeus’s good word good-bye.” She licked her lips again. “Do we have a deal?”
Will you bargain for her as well? Asmodeus had asked of Sairché. Whether that boded well or ill for Sairché in the world beyond, Farideh wouldn’t have dared guess. Out in the city beyond, the drums’ beat shifted, became more insistent, more frantic. Sairché turned toward the door. “Sounds like you’re in a hurry.”
“Fine. Let’s do it,” Farideh said. She went to the door and looked out into the sitting room. Dumuzi and Mehen were gone, but Lorcan remained, sitting quietly on the couch. He looked up as she came out. “Is it time for that ominous ‘talk’?” he asked.
“Not yet,” she said. “Don’t go anywhere.” She closed the door again.
“I bargained the pradixikai’s aid,” Sairché reminded her. “Make sure he knows that.” She folded her hands nervously. “Make sure they know that army’s full of demons. Good, big ones. They won’t ask twice.” She smoothed a hand over her bare scalp, as if trying to memorize it. “You were … a surprising opponent, Farideh. You made my days interesting at least.”
“Go to the Hells,” Farideh said.
Sairché snorted. “I suppose I will. Tell Lorcan …” She sighed. “Never mind. He knows exactly how I feel. Let’s stop dawdling.”
Without another word, Farideh dragged a foot through the runes, scattering the powder that made the magic circle hold against devils. Sairché gave a sharp gasp as the magic failed.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Sairché’s golden eyes held hers as the cambion licked her lips nervously. Farideh took a step toward the door, and another, another, until her hand touched the handle. Sairché gathered her legs under her, rising slowly.
The first erinyes appeared near where Farideh had broken the circle. Dark-skinned, dark-haired, and not as big as the pradixikai erinyes she’d seen. Sairché backed up to the wall.
“Little Sister,” she said. “Oathbreaker.”
“Neferis,” she said. “Hold a moment.”
The erinyes didn’t listen, drawing her sword as she stepped up onto the bedframe. Another trio of erinyes appeared on the far side of the bed, and then a second, on the nearer side—both led by one of the huge pradixikai. Sairché’s eyes widened at the sight of them, but she seemed to relax. She found Farideh’s eyes.
The air went out of Sairché in a gasp as Neferis’s sword plunged into Sairché’s belly. One of the other e
rinyes dived forward, grabbing the cambion’s arm as if to yank the prize away from her sister.
Farideh fumbled with the knob as Sairché started screaming. By the time she got the door open, Lorcan was already there, already pushing in, and one of the erinyes had cut Sairché’s head partway from her shoulders. Farideh’s gorge rose and she turned away again.
“Stop!” Lorcan shouted, and mercifully, unbelievably, they did. Every sound in the room beyond the devils’ breath ceased. “Is she dead?”
A pause, a horrible fleshy sound. “Looks like,” one of the erinyes drawled. “She was an—”
“Oathbreaker, yes, I know.” He said nothing for another long moment, then turned back to Farideh. “Are you all right?” Lorcan asked, almost too soft to be heard. Farideh nodded, risking a glance over her shoulder. There was so much blood—
“You have to order them to take the battlefield,” she whispered. “Sairché bargained their aid to Enlil. Asmodeus already thinks it’s happening. You have to do it and you have to do it now. I’m sorry.”
Lorcan looked at her as if she were mad. “Asmodeus already knows about this?” he said carefully. She nodded. He looked back. “Seven’s not going to do it,” he murmured. “Shit and ashes.
“Megara, Charonea,” he barked. The pradixikai erinyes sneered around their terrible tusks but took notice. “His Majesty has bargained the might of the pradixikai to aid Djerad Thymar in the defeat of the Traitor Graz’zt’s beloved demons.”
“Demons?” the farther one, a white-haired high-cheekboned creature. “What sort of demons?”
“Goristros,” Lorcan said. “Vrocks, hezrou. Succubi,” he added with special emphasis. Now he had their attention. “They’re attacking, and His Majesty has business in this city he doesn’t want disrupted. Bring all twelve furies to the field, northeast of the city. You kill demons, leave the humans and the dragonborn.”
The white-haired one turned to nod at the two sisters at her side, but the other, red-eyed with her dark hair in twin braids, threw up a hand. “We don’t have twelve,” she said. “And we don’t have a leader. Who’s in charge?”
Lorcan scowled. “You can’t figure that out yourself?”
“You have Mother’s holdings,” Neferis pointed out. “You have to advance us. I told you that.”
Lorcan clenched his jaw as if he were biting back a scream of frustration. “Ascend Tyndaris and the twins. Neferis, congratulations, you’re now the leader of the pradixikai. Get your forces to Toril.”
The words themselves were magic. Hellfire erupted around Neferis, cocooning her in flames. As they fell away, the erinyes was revealed, bigger and fiercer looking than before, now clearly one of the fearsome pradixikai.
“What the shit do you think you’re doing?” the braided erinyes demanded.
“Putting someone in charge who isn’t going to stab me in the back, Megara,” Lorcan said. “I should think that fairly obvious. Next time, think a little more carefully on whom you’re tormenting.”
Neferis stepped down and dragged one obsidian-sharp hoof over the stone floor. “Charonea, send one of yours to find Faventia and Fidentia and tell them to choose their fury-sisters if they haven’t already figured out that much. We ride at once. Megara.” She paused, a deadly threat in that moment of quiet. “Let’s go.”
Lorcan turned to Farideh, expression grim. “You’ll understand,” he said quietly, “that Sairché’s set off something bigger than she realized. I need to go to Osseia. And you need to get to your post.”
“Be careful,” she said. He started to answer, but seemed to think better of it, stepping back from her as he called up the whirlwind that would carry him into the Nine Hells.
• • •
LORCAN HAD NO more than let his feet touch the bone-tiled floor of the fingerbone tower but he was sprinting for the exit, leaving his sisters to sort themselves out. He leaped from the window, flying with every bit of strength left in his wings, for the skull palace of Osseia, hoping that Sairché had not left him a trap buried in the gift of her death.
Sairché was dead. He reminded himself of this over and over. He’d seen her corpse, her mangled bloody corpse, but he couldn’t believe it was real. Sairché was dead. He was alone.
Lorcan landed before the jaws of the palace, running the moment he touched ground, forcing his way past throngs of greater devils into Glasya’s court room. The Princess of the Hells, Archduchess of Malbolge, Lord of the Sixth, Glasya lounged upon a silken couch, flanked by pit fiends and surrounded by the constant thrum of her hellwasp swarm. His stomach balked as he ran straight toward her—this was the only way to make certain he wasn’t eviscerated and the only way to be sure that Farideh didn’t perish at a demon’s hands, he told himself, shoving a horned devil out of the way.
“Highness!” Lorcan shouted, ignoring protocol, ignoring courtesy. Glasya sat straight, her black gaze the fathomless maw of a terrible beast. Lorcan threw himself to his knees before her, panting, knowing he had to wait for her notice. An eternity unfolded. Then two.
“What is it, Lorcan?” she finally asked.
“Highness, His Majesty is incarnate in Toril,” Lorcan said, trying to make his words come slowly, easily. Not the frantic screeching of a man fearing for his life and worse.
“What?” Glasya shouted. She stepped down from the couch, leaning closer. “Is this true?”
Lorcan nodded. “Fortuitously, his Chosen has discovered a way to save him from the betrayal of the Lord of Spells.” He looked up, hoping his careful words had made an impression on her. “He will remain a god.”
Glasya stared at him so long he felt his heart wither in his chest. “How fortunate,” she said.
“There is more,” Lorcan said.
“Oh really? Do tell.”
“The pradixikai. They have departed,” Lorcan said, hoping beyond hope that Glasya wouldn’t break his bones to splinters and pin him to the layer later. “As requested by His Majesty, to aid the god Enlil in his battle against his reborn son, who has allied with the traitor Graz’zt. I presumed that expediency in that request was more valuable to Your Highness than certainty, though you have my utmost apologies if I’ve erred.”
“Why would you think yourself in error?”
Lorcan wet his lips, urged himself to keep talking. This is how you protect her. “I would never doubt His Majesty or Lord Enlil,” Lorcan went on with careful, special emphasis, “but I would wager that the pradixikai are not quite enough to stand against the army of Gilgeam as it is.” He hesitated. “I’m sure they will take many of the Abyss with them when they fall.”
Glasya straightened. “Who else knows about this?”
“None of the lords know,” Lorcan said. “They are saying Lady Zariel is pursuing the Brimstone Angel, and Prince Levistus, an artifact that she seeks. The others have their attentions elsewhere.” He dared another glance up into her endless, ravenous eyes. “You know, though. And it’s a Malbolgean warlock who is the architect of His Majesty’s rescue.”
“And I can hardly let my dear father and sovereign fall to risk on the mortal plane,” she said. “What kind of daughter would I be not to aid him with all I have?” She smiled, and Lorcan shook with fear. “How good you brought this to me, Lorcan. Khartach?” One of the pit fiends stepped forward. “Gather your forces and join the pradixikai immediately. A purse to any who can bring me one of the Traitor’s generals alive.”
She smiled at Lorcan once more, as the pit fiend strode through the crowd of devils. “Well, Little Lorcan, what will you do now?”
“I am at Your Highness’s disposal,” he made himself say.
Glasya chuckled in a way that made his spine want to flee his body. She snapped her fingers and a hellwasp descended, carrying a ring of keys. From this, she selected one—pale and gleaming and small enough for her to close her hand around it. “Take this,” she said. “It will give you passage to the Fugue Plane.”
Lorcan took the key from her, dread unfolding in his ches
t. “What am I to do on the Fugue Plane?”
“Why, coax the warlock to Malbolge, of course,” Glasya said. “Mortals don’t take well to incarnations. I suspect I’ll get to meet this charming tiefling sooner than expected.”
• • •
WHEN THE BREATH of Petron had raised the stone wall, it left two gaps for gates—one on the road that led back to the sea, one on the track that led up into the mountains. Namshita raced toward the latter, where the Untherans were positioned.
The Vanquisher had named the Untherans “the Eighth Red Cohort,” which meant little to Namshita, except that the color red was auspicious, a color for warding off evil, and so those who looked to her were pleased. They’d taken up spears and bolas and swords, a handful who’d been hunters for the genasi, claiming bows up on the wall. They would be able to hold their own against this enemy that they’d only just fled.
She reached the gate as the beast on the other side began breaking through, the great stone doors cracking and shuddering a rain of dust. The wall here was deserted, the archers moved out of range of the goristros so they could focus on the succubi and vrocks coming over the wall.
Namshita found Amurri and Kirgal, who gave a sharp whistle, and the Untherans cheered that she’d come back to them. Beside them, a Vayemniri force under the banner for the Seventh Silver Cohort looked on. Namshita was pleased and surprised to see Uadjit directing them into formation.
“You’re here?” Namshita asked. “At the gate?”
“Where else would I be?” Uadjit replied. “I’m no archer.”
Namshita smiled. “Where are our giants?”
A stone the size of a child fell from the top of one door, crumbling as it hit the ground.
“With any luck,” Uadjit said, “on their way.”
“Do Vayemniri believe in luck?”
“Pardon the word, but I don’t karshoji know what we believe anymore,” Uadjit said crisply. “But I know we’ll take what we’re given in the way of benefits. Get ready!” she shouted. “Stand back from the ballista!”