Farideh shuddered. Of course—that was how the shadar-kai fought off the Shadowfell, wasn’t it? They would tear each other apart and make it stop. She made her way to a rack of short, cruel-looking knives, and picked up one with a scarlet handle. Sharp enough to part flesh easily. Broad enough to cause a lot of pain. She imagined how it would feel, plunging into someone’s back.
She shuddered again, so hard she nearly dropped the blade. Even if she found a guard . . .
It won’t end on its own, the ghost chided. You have to take action. A little suffering now, greater rewards later.
Farideh took a firmer grip on the knife. Perhaps she could use it on Rhand . . . and then Sairché would say she hadn’t kept her deal, and Havilar was as doomed as the rest of them. Besides, she couldn’t go after Rhand with her head spinning like this. It will take a knife. An act to shock the thoughts out of you.
Farideh squeezed the knife’s hilt hard enough to make her palm ache, and steeled herself for what she had to do.
Once the sun had set and the moon was low, Dahl—dressed once more in his stolen uniform—met the drow near the fortress’s postern gate, near where Dahl had made his initial escape. The walls swarmed with guards.
It’s impossible, Dahl thought. They’re waiting for exactly this. But at the same time, his pulse started drumming with excitement, and he found himself sizing up the wall, the guards, the entrance. There were ways to do this, if you were bold enough to seize what you deserved.
Phalar chuckled under his breath. “Oh good. You’re ready.” Dahl blinked, suddenly aware of how out of place those thoughts were.
Oota’s warning came back to him.
“Stay close,” Phalar said, and he walked toward the wall, toward the spot where the shadows clung close. As Dahl sprinted after him, a ball of darkness formed around Phalar, so complete the drow seemed to disappear. Clinging tight to that sense of boldness, Dahl stepped into the dark as well, one hand shooting out to catch the drow’s shoulder, trying to keep track of how many steps they’d taken, before the drow crashed them both into the stone wall.
A clammy sensation rushed over Dahl as he counted too many steps.
Phalar stopped, then pushed him backward—into the other side of stone wall. The darkness dissipated. They stood at the edge of the courtyard, alongside the large stable Dahl had noticed earlier and behind a disused smithy. The veserabs inside stirred with a sound like leather cloaks slapping in the wind.
Phalar smirked. “There you are. Blessed be . . . Let us say you owe someone a very quiet favor.”
“I owe you a dagger,” Dahl said. “Your god can keep his blessings.” He scanned the courtyard—there were a handful of shadar-kai at the door, and more still dicing in the courtyard. “Which wall do we hit next?”
“We don’t,” Phalar said. “I’m not a ghost. I need a chance to recover.” Dahl turned to him. “So what are you planning?”
“Oh calm down, cahalil. I’ve done this scores of times—do you think I leave a body behind every time?” A deep booming sound echoed off the crater’s ridge.
Phalar peered around the edge of the shack. “Ah! There’s what we’re waiting for.” Through the low clouds, a great dark shape descended into the courtyard—
a long, deep box big as a barque, dangling from a half a dozen cables. The booming came again as the carrier landed, and six enormous, shadow-winged drakes swooped low.
Phalar turned and scaled the wall of the building beside them where it met the curtain wall, finding footholds in the rippling stone. Dahl followed, saying a quiet prayer to Selûne that she kept herself hidden behind the thick clouds. No cry of alarm followed, and Dahl shortly hauled himself up onto the low roof. Phalar had not waited, but stretched out on his belly and crept along the slates toward the tower. Crouched, Dahl hurried to catch up to Phalar, where he’d slowed beside some damaged tiles.
“Does that come every night?” he panted.
“It came tonight,” Phalar said. “It’s come on other nights.”
“What do you do when it doesn’t come?”
Down below, the drakes squalled and boomed, and the shadar-kai and humans holding on to their lines struggled and shouted at each other. The clouds split, revealing Selûne in all her glory. Phalar cursed and flinched back, away from the edge of the roof, away from Dahl.
“Make the darkness,” Dahl hissed. “Hide us!”
“I have a better idea,” Phalar said. And he kicked Dahl into the patch of damaged tiles.
The tiles fell in, and so did Dahl, slipping between the broken beams of the roof to land roughly on a loft piled with detritus and old hay. He’d hardly gotten his breath back, but the veserab’s flexing mouth appeared beside his head, as likely trying to take a bite of the intruder as goading him into riding.
There were two of them now, thrashing and fighting the lines that held their harnesses in agitation.
Dahl rolled to his feet—all too aware of the shouts outside, the nearing voices. He climbed down from the loft, cursing Phalar and skirting the veserab’s wild wings. There were two doors, he noted, one on the side where the carrier had landed, one on the farther wall.
Two shadar-kai men came into the stable, weapons out, muttering to each other in Netherese. Dahl ducked behind a bale of hay, landing in a pile of the veserabs’ stinking shadowstuff castings. He watched the shadar-kai split up, edging around the stable. Looking for the intruder.
Oghma don’t forsake me, Dahl said to himself. He eased from his hiding place enough to gauge the distance, and when the shadar-kai were as far behind the fitful veserabs as they could be, he leaped out. He pulled loose the tethers holding down the veserabs one by one as he ran for the door. Behind him the shadar-kai shouted, and Dahl dared to glance back. One veserab threw itself at the nearer guard, battering him to the ground. The other disentangled itself quickly from the ropes and threw itself at the other door, knocking it wide.
Dahl didn’t wait to see what happened next. He ran through the opposite courtyard, wondering what in the world had possessed him to do something so mad. As he reached the shadows of the fortress wall, hands seized him and pulled him into the darkness.
“See?” Phalar said. “A much better idea.”
Dahl tried to shove the drow back, but Phalar was quick and the darkness, complete. “You nearly killed me.”
“Yes,” Phalar said. “Because I like you, cahalil.” Dahl felt the drow clap him on the arm, and the darkness evaporated. “So you get to be ‘nearly’ dead.” He chuckled again. “Come along.”
They skirted the fortress wall, before slipping in through a trapdoor that led to the cistern.
“There you are,” Phalar said. “Swim through and you’ll come out in the fortress.”
“You really think I’m an idiot.”
“It’s rainwater,” Phalar said. He pulled a pair of skins from his pack. “No one wants to drink the tainted stuff.” He held out a hand. “My dagger?”
“You’re supposed to get me into the fortress,” Dahl said.
“I don’t go into the fortress,” Phalar told him, filling the first skin. “All the stores I steal from are in the outbuildings—where I can get out quickly.
A drow in the fortress would be a little suspect, don’t you think?”
“So how do I know this doesn’t end with me drowning in some underground river?”
“You don’t,” Phalar allowed. He gave Dahl a wicked smile. “I could snatch that blade, cut your throat, and leave you here for some jack to find the next time the wizard gets thirsty.”
Dahl was sure Phalar wasn’t lying—the drow likely had plenty of practice cutting throats in the darkness. But he was also sure that he wasn’t the easy target Phalar expected—especially with the drow god stirring up his adrenalin, urging him to keep the dagger, or maybe leave it buried in Phalar’s gut. “You could,” he said evenly, pushing down that alien brashness for all he was worth. “But then your chances of getting out of here get a little slimmer.
I can’t imagine you like being caged up, put to work for a stlarning half-orc.
But maybe you’re more of a cahalil than you think.”
Phalar smirked. “Well. You’re no fun.”
Dahl waded into the water, up to his waist. The water moved from the small pond he stood in through a narrow passageway. He could see lights beyond, filtered through the cold, dark water. He swam right up to the passage, turned and threw the dagger to Phalar, before ducking under and swimming to the other side.
The cistern room within the fortress was empty, thank the gods. Dahl squeezed as much water as he could from his cloak and shirt, and poured out his boots before donning them once more, half-hoping that the drow would swim up from the cistern and attack him after all—
Dahl shook the urge off and said a little prayer to Oghma as he slipped down the hallway, looking for the armory once more. Much as he’d like to pretend Phalar’s powers were nothing notable, the force still thrumming through him called his bluff. Even with Phalar far behind him. How long was this going to last?
Dahl found the armory and slipped inside. He considered the array of weaponry. Blades, arrows, whips, chains—how much would fit in the sack? How much can you take before they notice? he thought, looking for a new dagger. He was certainly cleverer than some shadow-kissing mercenaries.
Dahl stopped to collect himself—he knew better. He’d worked hard not to be the sort of man that took everything as a challenge. After all, look where that had gotten him.
You’ll be fine in a bit, he told himself. Just don’t make any decisions you can’t undo and keep your steel sheathed. Find a dry uniform, stay calm— As unexpectedly as she’d appeared in the taproom, Farideh stood in front of him, holding a dagger. She looked up at him lazily. Unconcerned. Dahl hadn’t planned this far ahead, what to do or say when he found her, and all the options he’d considered crowded up into his thoughts. For once, Phalar’s damned god had a use.
She’ll cut you down if you don’t take her first, the voice in his thoughts murmured. Dahl reached for his sword, his sureness bolstered by Phalar’s powers. Good, he thought. He wouldn’t be able to do this without it. “Drop the blade,” he said.
Farideh blinked at him, as if she didn’t quite believe he was there. “Dahl?”
“Drop,” he said again, “the blade.”
She looked down at the knife, as if she weren’t sure where it had come from. The dagger fell out of her hands and she threw her arms around him in a way he was very much unprepared for. “You’re all right. Oh gods.” He froze and let go of the sword. Not even Phalar’s god had an answer for this.
“You’re all right,” she said again. “I didn’t know which was the safe one. I was sure . . .” She exhaled again, as if it were taking all of her effort to talk. For a moment, he was entirely too aware of her—the curve of her breasts, the strength of her arms, the faint wind of her exhalation, damp with tears on the edge of his collar. She was tall enough to rest her chin on his shoulder, and he noticed this, too, without meaning to.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
She pushed back from him, looking . . . tired? Dazed? Embarrassed? Gods, he was still so bad with tiefling eyes. “I don’t know. Something happened.
Everything’s going wrong. I was coming to save you . . . but I have to save the girl first, before . . .” She inhaled as if she’d forgotten she ought to be doing that. “But I can hardly keep my thoughts . . . .”
“What girl?”
“With Rhand,” Farideh said. “She’s so young. But then she’s so strange too. Like a shadow? Like a nightmare? But he’s the nightmare.” She was squeezing his arms, her hands over the sharp buckles of the bracers, and she was swaying on her feet. “What’s wrong with you?” he asked. She met his eyes, and the shade of them shifted, darkened. He wondered if she was trying to focus on his face. “I think I was poisoned.” Horror poured through Dahl. “What did he give you?”
“Not like that,” she said. “He calls her ‘my lady’ like he doesn’t want to.
The Nameless One.”
Dahl steadied her. “Gods damn it, concentrate. What happened?”
“I looked in the waters,” she said. “The Fountains of Memory. There’s no way out, we’re trapped. And then I hid in the cabinet. There was Rhand and the girl, the nameless girl. There’s something . . . he seemed ill too—
like he was falling apart and couldn’t stop it. Like he hated her and was afraid of her. And . . .” She swallowed. “And now I can’t bear it. It’s like I’m smothering in my own skin. I thought I could drive it out with the knife. But I’m not brave.”
“You tried to fight an arcanist’s mummy alone, last I recall. You’re brave enough,” he said, his mind racing. “This started in the study? Had you seen that girl before?”
She shook her head. “She came today, from Shade. To see about Rhand’s works.”
Dahl cursed again. A girl that Rhand feared and deferred to must be something terrible indeed. If Phalar’s god could fill Dahl with reckless nerve, then someone blessed by the Lady of Loss might fill a soul with melancholy and numbness. He thought of his darkest days, the feeling of despair settling down on him, heavy enough to stop his breath. If a body were swallowed up by that feeling, without a source, without an outlet . . .
That body would look for a cure, he thought. Something to shock it out of them. Like a knife through the palm.
“I have to save her,” Farideh said, tears welling in her eyes. “And I can’t save her. Not like this. I can’t save anybody.”
“You shouldn’t save her,” Dahl said, trying to think of a solution. “She’s a bigger problem than Rhand.”
Farideh stared at him a moment, horrified. “She’s just a girl.”
“Would he be scared of a girl?” Dahl demanded. “She’s got powers over him. You need to stay far away from her. Let Rhand handle her.”
“I’m not leaving her to be handled—or worse—by that monster.” Dahl’s mind turned to the mutilated apprentice, and he pushed it aside.
“He wouldn’t dare do anything of the sort,” Dahl said. “Not this time. Not if I’m right.”
Farideh drew back from him, rigid with fury. “Right,” she snapped. “Just like he wouldn’t have done anything of the sort at that revel.” Dahl felt himself color. “Gods’ books,” he spat. “Truly? Now?”
“You could say I’m reminded. Clearly it’s well out of your mind.”
“Do you think I don’t regret that?” he demanded. “It’s plagued me for years, that mistake. When I found out you were dead, I was convinced it had been Rhand’s hand that did it and my fault that it was you. But you’re not
dead, and I’ve apologized, and this is not the same situation, gods damn it!”
“You most certainly did not apologize,” Farideh said. “You said I wasn’t allowed to blame you—which is not a karshoji apology.”
“Fine!” Dahl shouted. “I’m sorry. Did you really think I wasn’t? It’s probably the worst thing I’ve ever done to someone—of course I’m sorry. How could I not be?”
“You’re unbelievable. How is it you can turn an apology into an insult about what an idiot I am?”
“I didn’t say you were an idiot.”
“You didn’t have to,” she said. “Because I’m not.”
Dahl bristled, churning with Phalar’s recklessness. “Yes. Terribly wise getting us dragged off to a Netherese prison camp. Perhaps you ought to be the loremaster.”
“You don’t even know what—oh.” Farideh gave a little laugh. “It doesn’t
take a knife.” She giggled again, covering her mouth as if to stem the mad laughter.
“Oh gods,” Dahl said. “Is this a fit?”
“I’m not having a fit. I’m fine. It’s passed. Whatever it was, apparently it doesn’t go well with being really karshoji angry.” She smiled. “So thank you for being unpleasant.”
Dahl sighed, still on edge and annoyed and ready to ar
gue. But at least he’d fixed it. Sort of. That was something. “You’re welcome. And I am sorry.”
“I forgive you,” Farideh said, still fighting back giggles. “Gods, sorry—the difference is really nice.” She frowned at him. “Why are you all wet?”
“This girl,” Dahl said, trying to steer her back to the matter at hand, “you didn’t feel strange until she was there, right? And Rhand didn’t look well?”
“He looked like he was about to fall down.”
“But you were fine before,” Dahl asked, “when you were alone with Rhand?
She’s got to be the source.”
“She’s just a girl,” Farideh protested.
And a girl could channel the powers of the gods as easily as a half-orc or a Rashemi woman or a Turmishan boy who trails flowers. “She’s probably one of them,” he said. “Are you likely to run into her again?”
“I have no idea,” Farideh said. “I keep thinking I’ve figured out what’s happening, and then it all changes.” She told him what she’d overheard, what Rhand had shared with her and what she thought she’d missed, and about the waters pulled from the Fountains of Memory. “I don’t know what he’s doing exactly,” she admitted, “but it’s important. And complicated.”
“You don’t know,” Dahl said, overwhelmingly glad that he’d been right.
She wasn’t a sympathizer. She wasn’t a traitor.
Farideh scowled at him. “I’m trying, but he keeps me out—”
“That isn’t what I mean,” Dahl said. He narrowed his eyes at her. “Why are you helping him?”
Her expression shifted—was that sadness or annoyance or confusion? “I made a deal with a devil,” she said finally, and he decided it was something in the middle of all three. “Seems Rhand made a deal with the same devil, and that’s my payment. If I don’t help, she gets my soul. Worse, if I don’t help, she’ll go after Havilar. A very stupid thing to do,” she added swiftly.
“I know that.”
Dahl sighed. “I’m not going to tell you it was wise. But we are both in this now, however it happened, and it might be for the best. I don’t know when—or if—we would have found this place otherwise. And then it might have been too late.”
The Adversary Page 28