“Not when the clouds are this thick,” Dahl said. Anyone on the tower’s heights would be hard-pressed to see the ground. “You time it right, and—”
“You don’t have to aim much with a meteor swarm. And if you’re right and he doesn’t bother? Then he sends out the shadar-kai. They’ll mow through us like we were wheat stalks in a drought. Better to bide our time.”
“You must have casters.”
“He’s seen to that. You met Armas? My fledgling? He was a sorcerer. Can’t cast a thing, though, on account of the cages on his hands—every one of them is the same. They wake here, already hobbled, none of them the sort of wizard gifted enough to cast without hands. And if you think he’s let a spellbook slip by, you’re madder than a mouther. They come in here with nothing but their clothes.”
No weapons, no casters, no resources to speak of. Except perhaps for Dahl’s sword and stolen armor. And the Chosen that the wizard hadn’t claimed. “I can get in. Dressed like a guard.”
“And you’ll die before you pass the gatehouse. The human guards don’t come out of the fortress,” she said. “You’re lucky none of the shadar-kai saw you. If you head back in, pretending like you belong, they’re going to know something’s funny when they don’t know why you went out.”
“Nobody?” Dahl asked. “You don’t get soldiers fraternizing or—”
“You think a single one of these people are going to cross paths with a godsdamned Shadovar?” Tharra said. “They don’t come out here. They send the grays—they want us to stay scared. You get in as a servant—if they’ll take you—and you have a guard on you every single heartbeat. Think, would you? I know you’re cleverer than this,” she said it gently, but Dahl bristled all the same.
“So what’s your plan?” Dahl asked.
Tharra stared up at the fortress. “Stay alive.”
“You can cling to every soul you find, but what’s it matter if the wizard just kills them?”
“He doesn’t kill them,” Tharra started. Then her eyes fell on something behind Dahl and she cursed. Dahl looked back over his shoulder. A shadarkai guard was heading up the alleyway, shouting at them in Netherese.
“Run,” Tharra murmured. “Get back to Oota. Tell her they’re sweeping—”
A second guard stepped around a hut, blocking their escape. “Let’s go,” he said, herding them both down to the wider road where a score of other villagers gathered. Dahl wished for his sword as the half-dozen guards drove them like wayward sheep toward the fortress.
Patience, he told himself. Even if he’d had his sword, striking in the dense crowd would have been too dangerous. He kept his eyes on Tharra instead— watching as she took careful stock of the faces around them.
Twelve at a time, they were herded through a narrow stone passage, jammed cheek by jowl together, before shuffling out into the open. Into a wide courtyard with a smooth, black stone floor. High walls. A platform above—high over his head—on which stood several more of the shadar-kai guards, looking down at the villagers as they filtered in, and a wizard in dark robes, talking to a pair of robed novices and a woman in dark leathers.
“But, saer—” one began.
“You will wait,” the wizard interrupted, “until I am present. How many left?” he shouted down to the guard in the pit.
Dahl felt his lungs freeze: the wizard was Adolican Rhand.
“Two, master,” the guard called back.
Dahl ducked behind Speck, Oota’s big half-orc guard, hoping the wizard hadn’t seen him—Rhand might remember him and he might not, but now was not the time to find out. Hrast. Hrast. How in all the Hells could Farideh be helping him?
She wouldn’t, he realized, sure as he’d ever been. She couldn’t. Which meant she was in trouble, that Dahl shouldn’t have run. Which might mean she was dead—
Then he realized that the woman standing behind the novices was Farideh.
And she was staring straight at Dahl.
She’d traded whatever homespun clothes the Harpers had given her for snug black leathers and pinned her hair up between her horns with a jeweled comb. Gone was the grief-drawn young woman who’d haunted the Harper hall for the last half tenday—she looked like nothing so much as Rhand’s pet, the shadar-kai’s deadly ally.
Except she was staring at him.
He still wasn’t sure he could read her expression—not with those focusless eyes—but there was no triumph in that stare, no anger, not anything he could place on an enemy.
“Well?” Rhand asked her.
Farideh shifted away from him as she turned to survey the crowd. Her gaze swept over them, her mouth tight, until she was looking at Dahl again.
Rhand reached over and set a hand on the small of her back. Farideh did not flinch, but a certain rigidness overtook her frame. The gesture might look comforting but it would also take the merest effort to shove her right over the edge. “What do you see?”
Farideh kept staring at Dahl. She bit her lip. “The short man with the green tunic. The halfling woman in the apron near the front. The moon elf at the back. The big fellow . . . the half-orc with the tattoos.” As Farideh identified the prisoners, the guards in the pit came forward and took hold of them—gently but with horrible smiles. They led them out the smaller door, one by one, ending with Oota’s struggling guard. Dahl took a step to the right, into the thick of the crowd.
Beside Dahl, Tharra cursed quietly.
Farideh hesitated, half a breath in her mouth, as if she were about to speak. “That’s it,” she finally said, turning back to Rhand. When she spoke next, her voice shifted, sharp and dissatisfied. “Now, I need rest. There’s nothing in our agreement about being made to stand in the cold for hours.”
Rhand gave her a slippery smile and reached his other arm around to guide her away from the edge. “Of course. Just once more.”
Before Dahl could so much as consider what to do, a guard shoved him toward the larger gate, along with the rest of the villagers. They were crowded in so close, he felt like a beast headed into a slaughterhouse. And then abruptly the bodies in front of him broke free into the open, and the guards were laughing as their captives scattered back into the strange village.
“Piss andhrast!” Dahl cursed. He had to go back. Whatever was happening, Farideh was not on Rhand’s side, he would drink a bucket of the wizard’s finest to prove that. He had to get her out—where Rhand wouldn’t be a factor.
But getting into the fortress would be nigh impossible, as Tharra said.
He spotted Tharra, hurrying south, away from the fortress and toward Oota’s makeshift stronghold. Dahl sprinted after her.
“He has Speck?” Oota said as Dahl came in.
“More than Speck,” Tharra said. “That witch picked perfectly. I don’t know how she spotted those four. Speck came to me complaining of a headache yesterday, and Perdaena and Laencom have had their powers for months—too quiet for the grays to spot.” She sighed, and spotting Dahl, beckoned him in. “The elf was a surprise, but even if she’s not what’s he’s looking for, that’s no better news. If Rhand’s witch can hunt the Chosen among us without even coming near them, nothing we’ve managed so far will matter. You need to get people down into the buried rooms, before that witch—”
“She’s not his witch,” Dahl snapped. Tharra frowned at him. “Why did nobody tell me the wizard was Adolican Rhand?”
“Doubt anyone thought it would matter,” Tharra said. “You know him?”
“After a fashion. He slipped my grasp before. Twice.”
“And her?” Oota asked.
“She brought him in here,” Tharra supplied. “Apparently not because he was pursuing her. Bit of the visions maybe we ought to reconsider.”
Dahl scowled at the other Harper. “She wouldn’t work with him, not willingly.”
“Nobody was making her pick those people out of the crowd.” Tharra shook her head. “She’s seemed right at home in her fancy jewels these past few days.”
Dahl
dragged a hand through his hair. This was too many pieces all at once: Chosen and gods affecting the wars. And what was Adolican Rhand doing with those he gathered? What could Shade possibly do with a boy who trailed flowers? Tharra and Oota and the plain fact that whatever plans they had wouldn’t make a damned bit of difference without a means of escape. And Farideh, wearing shadar-kai armor and standing beside Rhand. For all you know, he thought, she has dressed that way every day of the last seven and a half years.
But never at Adolican Rhand’s side. If he could count on nothing else about Farideh, he could count on that.
Oota eyed him, patient as a hunting cat. “It sounds like we have a disagreement,” she said. “How are we going to settle it?”
“I have to get in there,” he said.
“You head in there,” Tharra said, “and the grays will kill you and never care why you were there or how well you might know Rhand’s pet tiefling.”
“And it’s no skin off your back if they do,” he said. He turned to Oota. “You want a better idea of what’s happening in that fortress? You’re not going to know what she’s doing or why unless someone she trusts asks her. Help me find a way in, and I’ll get your answer. Maybe some weapons, too.”
Oota cocked her head. “Can’t do that, son.” She smiled, and beside her Tharra folded her arms over her chest. “But I may know someone who can.”
Some time later, Oota paused in front of a little shack, glancing around for errant guards before knocking five times on the wooden door. She looked back at Dahl. “This is as far as I’m sure I’ve still got them on my side.”
“What else is there?” Dahl asked.
“The elves to begin with,” she said. “Few packs of dwarves playing the odds. And the stragglers in between—don’t want to throw in with the rest of us, just want to keep pretending everything’s going to right itself one morning.”
“Like Tharra?”
Oota looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “I didn’t say that.” She knocked again, harder.
The door opened and shut so quickly that the squat dwarf man who stepped out seemed to appear out of thin air. He scowled up at Oota, and ran a hand over his bristly black beard. “Did Tharra send you to pester me about that third level?” he asked. “I don’t know if the ground—”
“Tharra doesn’t send me anywhere. You know the dirt. Do what needs doing. Let us in.” Oota looked back at Dahl once more, as if to remind him to keep his mouth shut. The dwarf followed her gaze.
“That the Harper?”
“Let us in, Torden,” Oota answered. “I need to talk to Phalar.”
Torden snorted and threw the door open, ushering them down a roughhewn stairway that led deep into the ground. The entire building had been filled with excavated dirt. Dahl thought of the other buildings, all shut up tight, and wondered how many had been similarly used.
Despite being built of pounded dirt and uneven, the stairs were blessedly stable. They ended in a level tunnel, where Torden lit a lantern that smelled of old cooking oil and handed it to Oota.
“The bastard’s in a right mood today,” he said. “Don’t let him fool you—he’s bored and he wants to get out.” He looked at Dahl. “Best of luck.”
“Many thanks,” Dahl said, wondering privately at a dwarf guarding a hidey-hole in the territory of a half-orc chieftainess everyone seemed to listen to. Stranger and stranger.
Oota started off, leaving Dahl to follow past several doors. “This is where we hide the ones who’ve manifested. The ones we can catch before the guards do.” She shook her head to herself. “It’s not enough.”
“You do what you can,” Dahl said. “Someone down here can help us get into the fortress; that’s a good start.” He considered the doors they passed. “If you managed to dig this passage, why not dig under the wall?”
“That’s what we were doing,” Oota said. “The magic goes deep, deeper than we could manage without drawing too much notice. Torden keeps going, a little at a time. It’s a lot of dirt to hide.” The tunnel ended shortly after, in a makeshift door. Oota turned to face Dahl, sizing him up. “Son, I need you to promise that you won’t panic.”
Dahl frowned. “Why would I panic?”
Oota smirked, and by way of answer, unlatched the door. The lantern’s light fought its way into the room beyond, illuminating a large cell and a slight man with ebony skin and moonlight hair, flinching away from the light.
“Put that iblithl light out, you one-eyed brute,” he snarled, brandishing the book he’d been reading at Oota. “I thought we agreed to be civil.”
Dahl only just stopped himself from shouting “Drow!” and drawing weapons. If one didn’t take chances with shadar-kai, one certainly didn’t ask for favors from the spider-worshiping elves of the Underdark, unless one wanted to be tortured and sacrificed. Still he took a step back.
Phalar placed a cupped hand over his pale eyes. “Tell me what you want, cahalil, and get out.”
“Dahl,” Oota said, “this is Phalar. Phalar, this is Dahl. He wants a favor.”
Phalar chuckled to himself. “Does he?” He spread his fingers just wide enough to see through, making a mask of his hands. “Oh. You didn’t tell him who I was, did you?”
“I hear you can get me into the fortress,” Dahl said, making himself look at the drow. “That you’ve got some skill with breaking into places.”
“You could say that,” Phalar said. “In fact, in certain company that’s all you should say.” Dahl frowned.
“Dahl didn’t come here like the rest of us,” Oota said to Phalar. “He got pulled in by accident with Rhand’s new associate.” Dahl could hear the words Oota hadn’t said buried in that comment. “If you get him into the fortress, he thinks he can stop the wizard. And maybe get us some weapons.”
“That,” Phalar said, “is the stupidest thing I’ve heard all day. And Tharra was here earlier, trying to convince me to help my jailor dig holes.”
“All I need is someone to get me in,” Dahl said stiffly. “The rest is my problem.”
“Cocky, aren’t you? What’s in it for me?”
Dahl shrugged. “Escape?”
“If your plan succeeds. If you find your ‘associate.’ If the guards don’t flay you alive.” Phalar peered at Dahl through the mask of his fingers. “You almost certainly think I’m mad, but you still have to know the difference between mad and stupid.” He dropped his hand, wincing at the light. “Give me your dagger.”
“Give a drow a dagger, then follow him into a fortress under cover of night?” Dahl said. “I’m not stupid either.”
Phalar’s chuckle sent a shiver up Dahl’s back. “Oh good. I assumed you were like the rest of them, thinking I’m tamed because I’m trapped here too. But it’s the dagger or nothing. I don’t have to help you. It’s not as if I came to the surface to make friends. Give me the dagger when we part. Then all you have to do is stay out of my way.”
Dahl glanced at Oota out of the corner of his eye. Giving the drow a weapon might upset the careful balance she had crafted. But Oota merely shrugged.
“Fine,” Dahl said. “After.”
Phalar smiled. “Aren’t you going to ask me to promise I won’t try to kill you?”
“Why should I?” Dahl asked coolly. “You said it yourself: you aren’t stupid. You won’t try.”
“Be careful with Phalar,” Oota said as they climbed the dirt stair once more, a secretive smile playing on her mouth. “He tends to make people act a little”—she blew out a breath—“rash.”
“I’m not afraid of him,” Dahl said too quickly. Oota glanced back at him. “I mean,” he amended, “I can keep my head.”
“You have to be a little afraid, or he acts up. But he’s no fool—whatever he’d like to do to the lot of us, he’s outnumbered in the end, and he needs what people will trade him for the use of his powers. He’s only alive because of my good graces and Tharra’s silver tongue. He can’t afford to go around stabbing people and he knows it.
”
“Why else would he want a dagger?”
Oota stopped walking. “You’re trapped in enemy territory full of people you don’t think much of, who are always arguing about whether they ought to just kill you and be done with it? You’d want a dagger too.” They slipped out the door and waited while Torden latched it behind them. “All the same, you get Torden a good crossbow when you find that armory. He’ll bury Phalar if he decides to prove me wrong with that dagger and then the whole tunnel will end up collapsed. Everybody would rather Torden just shot him in that case.”
All through evenfeast, Rhand was agitated, matching bouts of excitable conversation with as many sulking lulls as he watched the entrance to the dining hall. Farideh ate mechanically, answering his questions with whatever entered her head, spouting opinions that weren’t hers—it didn’t matter. She didn’t matter. To Rhand the only important thing was when his guest arrived.
And the only important thing to Farideh was the knowledge that Dahl had not managed to escape. She still had no idea what she was tangled in—the people who stood before her in the courtyard might be prisoners, might be displaced, might even be Sairché’s “common enemy.” She might have landed in the midst of worse evils with both feet. She didn’t know. She couldn’t.
But it was clear to her this was nowhere she wanted Dahl to be. Rhand’s assistant appeared in the entry, white-faced, and before he could say a word, Rhand bid her good evening, and servants appeared to clear the table, taking little notice of Farideh. Rhand stopped in his rush and looked back at her.
“By the way, Nirka tells me you have been enjoying the castle grounds,” he said. “Should you be interested in a walk tonight, I’d suggest you forgo it.”
“Why is that?”
He gave her a wicked smile. “To begin, she will be locking your door. For safety. Our guest can be particular.” Without further explanation, he swept from the room.
His guest can be Asmodeus himself, Farideh thought, and it would not stop me. Not now. She had to save Dahl. She had to find out what she was doing here.
“Leave Tharra outside, would you?” she said as Nirka loomed over her. “I’m tired, and I’d rather go to bed than wait on you and her. I can get myself out of my armor.”
The Adversary Page 26