“Is there a problem?” Rhand said.
Farideh shrugged. “There just aren’t any.”
“None?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary.”
Rhand stared at the crowd. He gestured to the guards, and the prisoners were led out the larger door as a second group was led in. Farideh eyed them as they entered—that dwarf with the thick black beard, that half-elf wreathed in green, that little blond-haired boy who eyed Farideh back, deeply serious.
Farideh swept the crowd twice and shook her head. “None of them.”
Rhand’s brows raised. “None of them?”
“Perhaps we’ve found them all already?” she said. She hardly dared move as his blue eyes pierced her. But after a moment that seemed to stretch taut and thin as a tripwire, he waved to the guards, without ever breaking his gaze.
“Perhaps they’ve realized what you are doing,” he said. “Perhaps they’re hiding their little lights.”
“I don’t think so,” she said, the picture of calm. “I can see . . . their souls still shine. Only none of them have the markers that the others did.” She considered the group that filed into the courtyard—another four in this one, a young man whose copper rune seemed to pulse with his heartbeat; an elf wound up in lines of green that framed her mark; a little blue-skinned genasi girl, sniffling and hiccupping and shimmering like light on the water with a blurry, uneven rune; and a dragonborn with silvery scales that shone a little too brightly around his chest.
“Perhaps I’m overtaxed from the last two days. Or perhaps there aren’t as many as we thought.”
Rhand was still looking at her when she glanced back. “Perhaps.”
Farideh again considered the group. He might be suspicious, but he had no reason to believe she would lie, and no way to prove that she was. Even proving she was right took days. She bit her tongue, as if deep in thought, then shook her head again. “None.”
“None,” he repeated.
“Perhaps the guards are bringing back the ones we rejected yesterday,” she said. “There’s nothing here.”
“Nothing,” he repeated. He watched her several tense seconds, before stepping entirely too close to her. He slipped an arm around her, and shouted a rough word of Netherese down to the guards.
The guards’ grins flashed into being, one by one, like stars appearing in a suddenly dark night.
“If there is nothing here,” Rhand said, low and in her ear, “then I have no use for them, do I?”
The first blade speared the young man, as easily as if he were made of almond paste, and no god on Toril or beyond stopped it. The coppery rune flared and vanished, as he pressed useless hands to his wounds. Farideh cried out in horror, but it made no difference. There were too many bodies, too many blades. Too much pain for the shadar-kai to pass up.
The little genasi girl froze in the middle of it, and started to scream.
The prisoners tried to flee, but in the little courtyard, the only exits were barred and blocked by more shadar-kai. Some fought. They died faster. Farideh tried to pull away, to get her hands up. The powers of the Hells poured into her, but Nirka’s knives were suddenly pricking at her chin, and strange hands were holding her wrists tight.
Down below, one of the guards sliced an old woman’s throat, bright red blood pumping from the wound. Rhand grabbed hold of Farideh’s jaw and wrenched her face toward the carnage. “Oh, you will watch.”
The lights around the elf suddenly caught fire in bright lines of green that surged out of Farideh’s strange vision and into reality. The elf cried out, throwing her arms up to shield herself, as a fringe of vines erupted out of the cracks between the stones and twisted around her.
Beside her, a burst of silver motes surrounded the dragonborn, and even as shock gripped Farideh, she felt the passage to someone old and distant and stern crack wide as the rune that marked his god burned bright as a fire. In the same moment, the little genasi girl’s screams reached a frantic pitch as the shadar-kai closed on her, becoming a roar like the waves ahead of a ferocious storm. They fell back, toppled by the noise, and the child’s eyes were deep and unfathomable behind their swollen lids. A rune the color of storm clouds nearly wrapped itself around her tiny frame.
The shadar-kai separated these, shunting them toward the smaller door, even as their fellows were cut down.
“You see,” Rhand crooned, stroking her jaw, “we managed fine before you. A little pressure in just the right way, and I don’t have to guess who I need to pay attention to—they make themselves known. Perhaps less ideal than the arrangement you and I have. After all”—he looked down at the courtyard, at the swamp of blood and spilled innards—“who knows what the rest of them might have been good for, with time.”
The dead man who’d worn the copper rune stared up at Farideh, as if he knew it was all her fault. She swallowed against the lump in her throat, against the feeling that she would surely vomit.
“Now,” Rhand said. “If you are through being willful, shall we continue?”
Dahl folded his arms over his chest, then self-consciously uncrossed them, as Tharra and Armas considered the array of weapons he’d brought. He had never been so aware of the flask in his pocket, heavy now with stolen liquor. Stolen and untouched, he reminded himself, trying to focus on that instead of the headache he still hadn’t shaken and the nerves that made the gruel in his stomach coil like snakes. He hadn’t heard back yet what Oota had decided to do about Phalar, and in the stark light of day, he wasn’t sure anymore what he thought the answer should be.
“To tell the truth, I expected you to be turned away,” Tharra said, sitting off to the side. Dahl had asked her for sketches of the tower above the cellar rooms and she’d managed the beginnings of these with a charred twig and a swath of ragged fabric that had been clothing once. “You’re lucky Phalar’s trick didn’t come sooner. I warned you it was dangerous.”
Dahl scowled. “I handled it.”
“You were lucky,” Tharra said again.
“Luck’s better than the alternative,” Armas said, nudging the punchdaggers to one side with his clawlike hands. “The whips were a good thought. More drovers than swordsmen around here.”
“Thank you,” Dahl said. “I grabbed sickles for the same reason.”
Dahl had slipped out of the armory, his pack heavy with weapons and Farideh’s ritual book. He didn’t dare swim out through that narrow passage, but a little searching led him through the storeroom he’d escaped through the first time.
And to the pyramid of sticky black casks, filled with the shadar-kai’s special brew. Much as Dahl would have liked to swear he’d gone right past the stuff, the sight of it had given him a terrible thirst. He’d filled the flask and ever since found himself wondering what a little would do.
“There are enough weapons to make a run at them,” Armas said. “Fortify Oota’s court and mount a defense. Especially if we can steal some bows right before.”
“Until the wizard lets his spells fly,” Tharra countered. “There’s no sense rushing into things. Just having these is an enormous step.”
Dahl kept his tongue—a sip, he thought. A sip would be fine and you’d be a lot easier for everyone to deal with.
Armas sighed. “I suppose.” He examined a sickle. “There’s more prisoners every day. We can’t protect them all.”
“Especially with that tiefling at hand,” Tharra said.
“She seemed fond enough of you when we spoke,” Dahl said.
Tharra looked up at him and smiled. “Did she?” she said. “I suppose I’ve only got so much to go on. Like how many people are being taken thanks to her.” She gave Dahl a serious look. “You really think she doesn’t know exactly what she’s doing? A tiefling? A warlock? A Netherese collaborator?”
Dahl ignored her. “We’ll have to find an area to fortify that Rhand can’t hit from the tower,” Dahl said. “Close up to the fortress, maybe. Or perhaps up against the wall, out of reach. And we need to be p
repared for an escape. Let’s start with the Chosen—”
“I’m sorry—first you think you can beat the wizard and his shadowwarriors,” Tharra interrupted. “Now you think you can pass the wall when none of us have managed?”
“I told you, Farideh thinks there’s a way. Maybe she’s wrong, but there’s plenty of sense in preparing for either possibility.”
“And so I come back to this,” Tharra said, “how in the Hells are you so sure she’s not going to turn on us? You don’t have an answer for that.”
Someone banged on the door of the little hut. The three Harpers scrambled to hide the weapons, but the door swung open before anyone could stop it. Dahl grabbed a dagger and got to his feet.
Oota’s big human guard, Hamdir, leaned in and nodded to Tharra. “You’d better come. We’ve got a problem.” He noticed the weapons spread across the table and raised his eyebrows. “Nice.”
Tharra gave Armas a worried look, before hurrying out the door after Hamdir.
“Probably nothing.” Armas sighed. “Oota likes making her jump, and what should she do? Complain she’s being included?”
“You think Tharra’s right?”
Armas shrugged. “They’re both stuck in their ways, if you ask me. Tharra’s right—we’re not ready for a fight.” He turned over a dagger. “But maybe we need to be.” He peered out the window. “I need to go get the kids out of the underground rooms. Let them have some sunshine.”
Dahl considered Tharra’s hardly begun maps. It was clear she wasn’t interested in helping him. Or admitting she wouldn’t help him. He sighed—more politics, more Harpers giving each other sidelong looks. “What about the elves?”
“What about them?”
“You carry them messages from Oota and Tharra, right? What is it they want? A battle? A long wait?”
Armas gave a short laugh. “The opposite of whatever Oota’s offering, usually.” He set his hands on the table, the finger cages clacking against the wood. Armas sighed. “Cereon—that’s their Oota—wants out, that’s for sure. His advisors feel the same. This place . . . it’s not somewhere you settle down. The waters, the cold, the mountain itself. You know if the elves don’t want to be somewhere, there’s a damned good reason.”
Dahl considered the array of weapons a moment. “But they don’t want to fight the wizard.”
“Oh they’d love to—who wouldn’t? But”—he held up one caged hand—“the ones in charge are in the same straits. No gestures, no spells. I almost wish you’d smuggled out a good heavy hammer. At this point I’d let you try.”
The cages weren’t too large, Dahl thought. Smaller than a cup altogether . . . or a carvestar.
Small enough for Farideh’s spell to destroy.
“If I found a way around the cages,” he said, “do you think they’d throw in?”
“If you ask them right.”
“So I’ll ask them.”
Armas snorted, but then realized Dahl meant what he’d said. “Oh. Take me along. Trust me. Cereon’s . . . well, you know what people think of the eladrin? Make it a little haughtier. He won’t talk to you. He doesn’t even like speaking Common—they don’t send me because I’ve got Dead Leira’s touch. Do you even speak Elvish?”
Dahl scowled at the half-elf. “Orth Quessin, arluth.”
Armas made a face. “Don’t do that around Cereon. Flaunting your Dalespidgin is exactly the kind of thing that will just kick his kettle. I’ll bring it up. Trust me.”
“It has to be now,” Dahl said. He pulled Farideh’s ritual book and the mix of stolen components out of the pack. Armas’s brows rose.
“Gods. Where’d you get that?”
“The same place I’m going to get the magic to break your cages,” Dahl said. “Go see if Hamdir will watch the little ones for a bit, while I figure out how to speak enough Elvish.”
“Evereskan dialect,” Armas said, his eyes still on the book. “That’s more important than you think.”
“Write a line before you go. We’ll take the elves some daggers to sweeten the pot, and be back before Tharra and Oota are through.”
“You’re not going to tell them where we’re going?”
“And let them argue over it?” Dahl said, plucking a tiny bottle of ink laced with potent magical salts from the jumble of components. “Let’s be sure before we start anything.”
The amulet hung around Mehen’s neck, solid as an iron anchor. All too often, as the strange party tramped through the High Forest—Zahnya in her palanquin, her undead breaking brush ahead of them—Mehen found himself holding the onyx pendant in the flat of his palm. It didn’t take the weight from his neck, though, and it tended to draw the boneclaw’s soulless gaze.
Mehen smirked and held the pendant up, dangling it like a lure at the creature. The boneclaw rubbed its fingers together in response—skritch, skritch.
“You shouldn’t do that,” Daranna pointed out as she passed Mehen by. None of the Harpers had been eager to take Zahnya’s amulet. Daranna, in particular.
“A calculated risk,” Vescaras had called it, after Mehen had allowed the Red Wizard to stand.
“There is no ‘risk’ when allying with Thayans,” Daranna had said. “There is certainty. We’ll regret this.”
“Eventually,” Vescaras said. “But not immediately. At the moment, they make fair allies.” Zahnya had, in fact, healed the scout who’d fallen from the tree, keeping the ghoul’s terrible poison from felling her—and all before she raised her own dead. The fallen apprentices made for poor palanquin bearers and poorer ghoul controllers. But they would make more fighters to stand against the wizard and his forces, should it come to that.
“Surely you want the Shadovar fortress gone from these woods,” Khochen said. “She promises that much.”
“We’re wasting time,” Mehen had snapped, and undead or no undead, he had followed after Zahnya and her palanquin. A sad army, he thought, infiltrators and restless corpses. But if Zahnya had the means to stop the wizard and destroy the fortress, he would follow her. Albeit with a watchful eye.
He strode up to walk beside the palanquin and yanked at the curtains. Zahnya opened them a finger’s length. “Yes.”
“How much longer?”
“Two days? Perhaps more. My creations don’t need to rest,” she added. “I didn’t plan to either. I need to be at the fortress at the appointed time, so—”
Mehen narrowed his eyes. “What happens at the appointed time?”
Zahnya shrugged. “My ritual works. If you want your fellows out of range, well, then I hope you can keep up.” She twitched the curtains shut once more.
“She’s hiding something,” Khochen said, when Mehen walked alone again. “Do you notice, she never throws those curtains open enough for anyone to see in? There’s something in there, I’ll wager.”
“You ought to stop wagering,” Mehen said. “She says it will take us another two days or more. That she’ll go on without us if need be.”
“Well,” Khochen said. “Then we’ll simply make certain there is no need.” She dropped her voice. “Daranna carries a special waybread to keep us running. But let her be furious at the rest of us another day. She’ll be likelier to share then.”
Mehen grunted. He hoped so—broken planes he hoped so. As he walked he couldn’t help imagining the fortress and camp. A sprawling keep? A fortified tower? Barracks? Tents? How many soldiers? He imagined Farideh—thrown in a dungeon, tied to a stake, locked in a tower, dead—and shuddered. For all he tried to keep his mind focused on what he might do to get to her, what he might have to plan around, his thoughts kept drifting there.
And Havilar . . .
Brin will keep her safe, he told himself. Or I will knock him senseless.
“Shall we resume then?” Khochen asked. “There’s little else to do.”
“Resume what?”
“Our discussion. About your latest friend.”
“What is there to discuss? I want nothing to do with Bahamut’s
orphans.”
Khochen regarded him mildly. “Goodman, I said you made an excellent guess. I didn’t say you were right.” Mehen stared her down, but Khochen didn’t so much as blink.
“Will you stop with these games, little verlym?” Mehen spat. “Congratulations—you’re very clever. Someone is after me, then name them. I’m not going to dance for you.”
Khochen clucked her tongue. “Out in the woods with you and Daranna. Maybe I should have left you two stone-tongues together. Happy in your silence.” Mehen bared his teeth, but the Harper only smiled. “Does the name Kepeshkmolik Dumuzi mean anything to you?”
“What does Kepeshkmolik want with me now?”
“What did they want with you before?” Khochen asked. “It’s a fair question,” she added, when Mehen growled. “I haven’t a side in this. So make me choose.”
“Henish,” Mehen spat. “You only want a story.”
Khochen smiled. “Sweetens the pot.”
And it was an old pain, Mehen thought, far duller, far less dangerous than stewing on what might happen, what troubles might lay over the horizon. Much as he hated to give Khochen what she wanted. “I was meant to marry their scion. Kepeshkmolik Uadjit.”
“A good match?”
“The best Verthisathurgiesh could broker. Kepeshkmolik is a wealthy clan, with many families. Uadjit is a skilled diplomat. A very wise, very proud woman with a very keen longsword.”
“Pretty?”
Mehen shifted. “I suppose.”
“But you wouldn’t do it.”
“I was in love with someone else.”
“So you insisted you would marry your lover.”
“There was no point in that,” Mehen said. “In Djerad Thymar, you marry for alliances, for eggs.”
“And those eggs wouldn’t be good enough,” Khochen finished, “for Verthisathurgiesh.”
Mehen snorted at Khochen’s sense of irony—it was a little funny—and startled the apprentices as much as the ghouls on their leads.
But then the Harper’s superior expression fell and Mehen realized she’d meant it—broken planes she’d meant it plain. His roar of laughter made the ghouls howl and claw at the ground.
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