The Adversary

by Erin M. Evans

  Tharra still came in the mornings, to help her dress and style her hair. Farideh made no protests—not any longer. What was the point? She took out Dahl’s cards and made a game of them just to keep Tharra from talking to her any more. Dahl was right: the game did still her thoughts, for a time.

  Once the maid had left, Farideh searched nearly every inch of the black glass castle, spiraling down from the battlements to Rhand’s study, into the dark cellars. She passed storerooms and servant’s quarters; barracks and an armory where she found her rod, dagger, and sword; more guest rooms and a strange little kitchen. She walked the wall around the fortress, hunting for Dahl among the people passing through the little village. She never found him. The shadar-kai guards watched her pass, their coal-black eyes glittering, but their weapons still. Rhand was as good as his word—not a one moved to stop her.

  It wasn’t until she stood before a pair of iron-banded doors that the shadarkai reacted, blocking her passage and herding her back to her room.

  “What’s behind there?” Farideh had asked Nirka.

  “If you’re lucky,” Nirka said, all but walking on Farideh’s heels, “you won’t find out.”

  Farideh looked back at the guard. “That’s where he’s working, isn’t it? Where he brought those people.”

  Nirka scowled at her. “If you need to know, he will tell you. Keep walking.”

  But she couldn’t stay another moment in the little room. As soon as Nirka had left her, Farideh went back to the study at the top of the tower. The waters still swirled in their basins, two apprentice wizards murmuring questions over them. The third stood unattended, and Farideh looked down into the stirring waters once more.

  “May we help you, lady?” one of the apprentices, a heavy-set young man, asked. Farideh regarded him, unsure of what to say, for so long that he started to fidget—and she realized he couldn’t read her gaze any better than most of them. They didn’t know what to make of her.

  “No,” she said, and she reached for the bag of petals. And though the wizards watched her, agitated and unsure of what she thought she was doing there, Farideh didn’t budge. Vision after vision after vision—she knew without a doubt that Sairché wasn’t done, that Rhand was no innocent. That there was so much on her to solve. At first, she pulled past events from the water like fishes, hoping one of them would hold a secret in its belly.

  But even as she called up the first of those visions, Farideh knew in her heart of hearts she wasn’t asking for answers. She was asking for penance. She was asking for comfort. She was asking the waters to condense her guilt and sorrow into something she could hold and handle, and make into something useful—she owed them all a solution.

  She was asking to see that all wasn’t lost, something the Fountains of Memory couldn’t possibly know.

  The questions whose answers might make a damned bit of difference to her predicament, she couldn’t ask, not while the wizards were watching her.

  That night, she played the cards while Tharra took her hair down and plaited it, and didn’t look up as she bid Farideh good night and left. Farideh did not sleep until the early hours of the morning, when she couldn’t keep her eyes open and watching the door any longer.

  She woke up alone, unharmed, and still frightened to her core. Tharra brought water and soap, and a scowling Nirka, and once Farideh had convinced them both that she wouldn’t be so much as shifting a sleeve while they were there, she washed in the chilly water, trying to sort through her thoughts and figure out an escape—

  There is no way out, she told herself. You have to make it through.

  Rhand did not come to morningfeast, and after, Farideh went back to the iron-banded doors, wondering what went on behind them, wondering what wonders or horrors she might have made possible. Nirka came again and escorted her back to the cold, dark room.

  “That place is not for you,” she said. “And the wizards want you out of the study. You stay here.”

  Farideh looked up at her. “And what if I won’t?”

  Nirka raised an eyebrow and folded her arms, standing directly in front of the door. “Then I will make you.”

  Farideh stared at Nirka—if you die fighting shadar-kai, she told herself, with absurd mildness, then Havi is in just as much trouble—then turned to her dressing table and pulled the cards out again.

  “What is that you have?”

  “Cards,” Farideh held up the painted deck. “To pass the time.”

  The shadar-kai woman considered the deck a moment, muttered, “Wroth,” and spat wetly. “What do you ask them?”

  Farideh spread the cards out in a fan, considering the faces and stalling for an answer. Dahl had said they were for fortune-telling, even if they could be used for games, but he hadn’t said how they were consulted or who used them or why. The shadar-kai refolded her arms nervously.

  “Right now?” Farideh said slowly. “I’d like to know how much longer I’m needed. It seems as if your master has gone ahead without me. If I’m going to sit in a room and dawdle uselessly, I’d like it to be my own.” She laid out the first row.

  “He will tell you when you have a use. Put away the cards.”

  Farideh looked up at her and very deliberately laid a second row down. “What use does he have for you?”

  Nirka gave her a jagged smile. “He knows what it is to battle with the Shadowfell—a cleverer master than most. If we do not have as much to do at this stage, at least he knows how to keep us amused.”

  Farideh did not flinch, but she could not stop her tail from flicking across the thick rug, and Nirka smirked at her. Farideh laid the third row.

  “Lot of superstitious nonsense, Wroth.”

  “Are you afraid of it?”

  “You can’t fool me. I think you ask them how to escape.”

  The face-up card, a stern-looking man in a crown, riding a chariot drawn by displacer beasts, might have made a decent start, Farideh thought. “Why would I do that?” she asked, mildly. “Master Rhand mentioned it hadn’t been done. Are you suggesting he was lying?”

  “Put them away, little demon.”

  “Or what?”

  In Nirka’s smile there were a thousand threats, a thousand ways she would be thrilled to kill Farideh. Farideh narrowed her eyes. “Or I’ll cut off your hands,” Nirka said. “See if you can manage without.”

  “Did you forget what I did to your fellows when I arrived?” Farideh asked.

  “You’ll find I have no fellows.”

  “I’ve asked the cards how you’ll die,” Farideh said. “I see a castle on a mountain with nothing to occupy you, nothing to keep the Shadowfell at bay.” Nirka’s hands twitched toward her weapons. Farideh held her gaze—the guard couldn’t kill her, not without angering Rhand, and Sairché, and who knew who else. “Quiet,” Farideh said. “Lots and lots of quiet.”

  “Mad witch.” Nirka snorted. She turned on her heel and slammed the door shut. The heavy clunk of the lock punctuated her departure.

  Farideh laid the last row of cards down with shaking hands—The Offering, number twenty-two; The Companions, number six; The Rising Dragon, number twenty—trying to keep her focus on the painted faces, the numbers, the flow of the game. She might well be mad after all, provoking Nirka like that.

  You should have let her stay, Farideh thought. You should have made her tell you what’s happening here. You should have made her tell you what she knows about Sairché, about Rhand. Another time, another Farideh, and that was exactly what she would have done.

  But in that moment, all she wanted was to prove she wasn’t a pawn. Maybe Sairché and her strange powers were changing her more than she’d realized.

  These powers, she thought bitterly. She laid down another card—number thirteen, The Herald—and bit her lip. They weren’t from her pact—even if Sairché had stolen that from her brother, she would have had to give Farideh the new spells explicitly. If she hadn’t been so quick to snap at Sairché, the cambion might not have sent her into the
fortress with no idea she was toting strange powers around or what their purpose was.

  A potion, she thought, furious at Sairché as much as herself. An infection. Some charm she didn’t realize she carried. There were ways to do it. They were all ways that might run out, and there was no telling when that would happen or what would happen to her when they did.

  As if to assure her they had not run out, her headache sank its claws into her brain, and she dropped the hand of cards in shock, clutching her skull with a hiss of ripe Draconic. Bit by bit, the pain receded, as if the claws were being drawn slowly out of her head, and when she looked up, the cards were strewn over the floor, and the ghost was back.

  Farideh turned to fully face the figure, too startled to speak. The apparition didn’t vanish as she had before, but tilted her head, considering. Her horns were slim and sharp as a mountain goat’s, and her eyes seemed to glow silver.

  “Who are you?” Farideh asked. The ghost pointed down at the scattered cards. Three were faceup: a woman holding a child in her arms, an elf standing over a pool that reflected a battle, a woman in dark robes. The Ancestor; The Seer; Tethyla, the Dark Lady.

  Farideh considered them. A seer . . . who came before her. A seer and a dark lady . . . “You . . . Did you help Rhand before me?”

  The ghost smiled, but said nothing. The light shifted so that half her body wore away, down to the bone.

  “You can’t talk,” Farideh said.

  The ghost wagged a finger at her. She swept her arm over the cards and a breath later a gust of cold wind blew through the curtains and stirred up the cards again. Again three landed faceup: a monstrous man with a bloodied sword, a whirling creature with a tail of flames, a pile of gems and flowers. The Reaver, The Firetail, The Offering. The ghost touched her mouth. She pointed to Farideh, to the combs lying in their case, to the brazier on the other side of the room.

  Blood, jewels, fire.

  The ghost pointed at the scattered cards and one trembled, then flipped over. A green-skinned angel pursuing a devil that chased after her in a whirlwind. The Adversary.

  Farideh picked it up. Was the ghost her predecessor, the angel chasing the devil? Or was she instead the devil, and some new enemy to consider and plan around? There was little telling.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  The cards stirred. Tethyla, the Dark Lady again; a grim-faced specter called Loskor, the Gatherer; a robed man named Iolaum, the Arcanist. Dark lady, death, wizard. Farideh raised her eyebrows. “You want to stop Rhand.”

  The ghost nodded gently.

  “And the first set,” she said, “that’s . . . how to do it?”

  The ghost shook her head, regretful, then touched her mouth again. How to help her to speak. Farideh looked down at the card in her hand. It had the sort of buzzing, itchy feeling she’d noticed magically touched things had, a sense they were reacting to her pact. It hadn’t done that before, she was certain. Farideh held it up to the ghost. “And this?”

  The ghost drew her hands together, interlocking fingers that were nothing but bone and sinew. Farideh took one of the combs and wove the card in between the teeth of it. The ghost held up one hand and drew a line across her palm. The blood—Farideh’s stomach twisted.

  “I don’t have a knife.”

  The ghost stared at her.

  Farideh blew out a breath, her gloom evaporating as if this new element shone a bright, hot light on it. If she could get the ghost’s help, she might be able to unravel Sairché’s plan—or at least figure out what it was Rhand was doing.

  She scanned the room. She could shatter the mirror and cut herself on that, but what would Nirka do when she saw it? The cards’ edges weren’t crisp enough to cut her. Smashing a shard of wood from the chair or the chest would make as much mess and probably damage the stone walls—

  The walls. Farideh stood and went to one, running her hands over the slick surface. Here and there the black glass wavered as if the room had been chipped at, and the edges of the chips were sharp as razors. She’d caught her sleeve on one walking around a corner too close and sliced a neat line through the dress’s sleeve.

  Near the corner, she found a peak sharp enough to slice a small cut through the center of her palm, so quick and neat Farideh hardly felt it at first. She turned her palm up to cup the blood that oozed up.

  “Now what?”

  The ghost smiled. And dissolved into a cloud of vapor.

  Farideh nearly cursed as it swirled in the air over her bed for a moment, but then the cloud streaked across the room and vanished through the mirror, fogging the whole glass.

  A line slowly appeared across the surface with the long squeak of a finger drawn over the glass. The line became a letter, and the letter a word as inch by creaking inch the ghost spelled out a strange phrase down the mirror.

  Farideh moved to stand beside the brazier, transferring the card to her bleeding hand. “Ibaatori pherognathis molochai.” The flames leaped up, licking at her hand. A drop of blood sizzled into the fire. “Adaachinis labolas maniria.”

  The flames surged and Farideh dropped the card and comb, jumping out of the way. The fire turned brilliant red, then fell back, then died down into the glowing coals that had filled the brazier before the spell. On top of them, the comb rested, the card balanced on its ruby flowers merely scorched. Farideh fished them from the brazier. The card was once more ordinary, but the comb had the same faint feeling of something strange that the card had had before.

  The ghost reappeared, smiling. Waiting. She gestured to the side of her head.

  Farideh set the comb down carefully on the dressing table. This was how she fell into trouble. This was how Sairché had caught her and Lorcan before her—giving her an answer she didn’t have time to consider carefully.

  “Not yet,” she said. The ghost’s expression was lost as the light shifted peeling her face back to the bone.

  The lock clanked open and Nirka pushed in again. “You have to go, up to his study.” She grimaced at the scatter of cards across the ground. “Now.”

  Farideh’s stomach knotted up again, and the pain of the strange magic curled around her skull, as she hurried up the stairs.

  “Perfect!” Rhand declared as she entered the room. “Every one of them. And it took no more than confinement to force the manifestation.” His blue eyes were dancing. “A pity for my guards, but a boon for you and I.”

  “Good,” she said. “Are . . . we finished?”

  “We are only just begun!” he crowed. “With your assistance, we might sort the camp in mere tendays. I can bring in double, triple the possible subjects and clear them out as they prove unlikely.”

  One of the younger wizards sprinted into the room, skidding to a stop before the basins. “Saer?” he said.

  Rhand did not so much as look back at him. “Mere months and they will see how right I have been, how dear my work is. All to the glory of—”

  “Saer!” the assistant said, louder now. Rhand whirled on him. “There’s been a message,” the younger man said tremulously. “From the city.”

  Rhand smiled, a mirthless empty thing. “I trust there is more to it if you think it worth interrupting.”

  The aide wet his mouth. “The Nameless One arrives tomorrow evening.”

  “What?” Rhand said, and it was not a question so much as a dagger stab. A chill ran down Farideh’s spine.

  “Sh-she will stay four days, the message said,” the younger wizard went on, apologetic. “The Church of Shar is eager to see our—your progress.”

  Rhand did not move, did not speak. He knows what it is to battle with the Shadowfell, Nirka had said. Farideh still wasn’t sure what that meant, but she imagined all the darkness in the room sinking into Rhand, condensing around his rage. She did not dare move.

  “Well,” he said, sharp and brittle as the black glass. A silence just as sharp hung in the air a moment. “Prepare her rooms. Make a stable ready for her mount. And get me more subjects.” He
turned to Farideh. “We have much time to make up.”

  Shortly after sunrise, Mehen stared at the edge of a vast forest, and wished the breath that stirred in the corners of his lungs were made of fire not lightning. Miles and miles of karshoji trees between me and Farideh, he thought, tapping his tongue nervously. He would burn them all to cinders if he had the chance. “Are you all right, goodman?” Mehen looked down at the little Tuigan Harper, Khochen, and bared the edge of his teeth. No laying waste to forests with Harpers on his heels. Khochen and Vescaras flanked him as they neared the High Forest, while another flock of them purportedly waited in the damnable wood.

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  Khochen smiled at him and kept her pace. “They say dragonborn are tricky to read. But you could be a faceless thaluud and I’d still say that was a bald lie.”

  “It was,” Mehen agreed, turning his eyes back to the forest. When Brin’s sending had come, with an apologetic admission that he could not convince Havilar to give up her quest and come home, that Lorcan was still there, that they were still headed north . . . well, Mehen hoped his response made Brin wish he’d turned the lightning breath on him instead.

  “You’re still upset about that scrap I found aren’t you?” Khochen said.

  “Khochen,” Vescaras warned. To Mehen he said, “You needn’t worry. We’ll find her.”

  Mehen would find Farideh. And Havilar. And Brin. Then he would lock the three of them in their rooms until . . .

  Mehen blew out an agitated breath. There were no rooms to lock them in. There was no sense in doing it. They were grown, all of them—and Brin, for all the boy had been like family, was not. Was in fact Mehen’s patron at this point and a lord of Cormyr. If Mehen so much as raised a hand to him, there’d be payment in kind, whether Brin liked it or not.

  Still the need to do something—anything!—ate at him like rust at old armor. He’d felt as though he’d been sitting still for seven and a half long years. When Dahl’s voice had broken the tense silence of a palace hallway, two little words—they’re alive—had dissolved all that stillness and left him free falling, unsure of what to catch hold of. He’d stuffed that urge down, moved carefully.