The Adversary

by Erin M. Evans

  “Don’t know,” Brin said.

  “You didn’t scout for one? You had the time.”

  “In the dark?” Brin demanded.

  “It’s not steep,” Havilar pointed out. “Not that steep. And the trees aren’t nearly as thick. We can just climb until we reach it.”

  “Daranna seems to have had the same thought,” Khochen said dryly. They looked back at the rest of the party, at the scouts disappearing up the slope.

  “Watching Gods,” Vescaras swore. “This is why no one wants to work with Daranna.”

  Lorcan examined his face in the still scrying mirror. Such a waste of a healing potion, and the cure had been worse than the broken nose, by far. But he’d weighed turning up bruised and battered, considered what Farideh would do when she saw, when she asked what had happened.

  No, he thought. No sympathy from that quarter. Not yet. She’d take Mehen’s side right off, and everything he’d done to coax her back would be worth far less—the apology, the rescue, the kiss . . . He hadn’t considered the consequences of that as carefully as he should have—but the memory of her shifting toward him in those last fractured seconds, changing from a body to a participant, boded very well indeed.

  He looked around the room—still no Sairché. She was supposed to lock down the situation with Rhand, then sort out Magros, while Lorcan saw to their more heroic tools. They’d agreed to meet back here once they’d both discharged their duties.

  Lorcan took the dark braid of hair from the pouch on his belt and rubbed his thumb over the ridges of purplish-black hair. He considered his reflection in the scrying mirror a moment longer, then sifted through the rings he still wore to find a familiar iron band. This one he pulled off the chain and placed on his left hand—Sairché wasn’t getting his scrying mirror back.

  He waved the trigger ring over the mirror’s surface, one hand on the leather scourge necklace he wore—the necklace imbued with Farideh’s blood. The surface of the mirror shimmered like a slick of oil, before resolving into Farideh, looking as though she had never slept a day in her life and never intended to remedy that. A line of people moved past her, and she studied each with a pinched expression, waving them to one side of the space or the other.

  Lorcan narrowed his eyes. She hadn’t said she planned to sort the prisoners—why? And what other surprises were going to crop up in his absence?

  He looked around the room again—still no Sairché, and Lorcan needed to get to Farideh as soon as possible. He walked back to the room with the portal, but found no sign that Sairché had returned. He waved his ring before the scrying mirror again and got . . . nothing. He cursed. Sairché would—of course—find a way to block her own scrying.

  Or she might be in trouble.

  “Shit and ashes,” Lorcan cursed again. Whether this fell under the terms of their agreement or not, he’d have to go after her. Acting without being sure of Rhand or Magros would be suicide. He opened the portal to the primordial forest, the same little grove where he’d spied Magros the first time. He took from his pocket the iron cube, and unfolded the cloth wrapped around it. Frost still etched its surface.

  Despite his agreements in the interim, Lorcan found himself tempted.

  Lorcan had never lived anywhere but Malbolge, never sworn allegiance to any archdevil but Glasya, and that only by virtue of his birthplace. He was not angry enough or foolish enough to think that Stygia would be a paradise, or really anything except a different sort of game, a different battle for survival. A different Hell.

  But Stygia would not have Glasya—and how could he not want that? For himself, for his warlocks . . . .

  Warlock, he corrected himself. The rest were gone. And whatever dangers fickle Glasya brought to Farideh, Levistus and his legendary appetites would be another world of danger.

  He picked up the cube, focusing on a star peeking through the branches of the oak beside him, so that when the violet portal opened and Magros stepped out, the agony of clutching the frozen cube was nowhere for the other devil to see.

  “Ah, good,” Magros said. “You’ve come around.”

  Lorcan regarded him coolly. “Where is Sairché?”

  Magros raised an eyebrow. “Have you lost her?”

  “Don’t be coy,” Lorcan said. “You must have heard by now.”

  “I did hear something about Lady Sairché prowling the halls of Osseia once more. Though, I don’t generally countenance the gossip of imps. I take it she’s escaped.”

  “As if you don’t know,” Lorcan replied. But perhaps he didn’t—ah Lords of the Nine, keep it balanced, he told himself. Remember he thinks you’re an idiot half-devil with an erinyes’s temper. “She came straight to you, didn’t she? What did you tell her?”

  Magros’s smile flickered, as if he might laugh. “Dear boy, why would she ever come to me?”

  “To ruin me?” Lorcan said. “To make certain I failed? What did you tell her?”

  “I told you,” Magros said. “She hasn’t come to me.” He tilted his head. “It seems she’s given you ever more reasons to flee Malbolge, though. Have you seen to my agent?”

  “It would help if you told me who it was,” Lorcan said.

  Magros smiled. “Oh, but where’s the fun in that?”

  Lorcan fell quiet, considering the misfortune devil. He’d assumed that Magros had wanted Lorcan to act—swiftly, rashly—and ruin Asmodeus’s plans by simply killing the Stygian agent or Rhand or Farideh. It had been a slapdash maneuver, one Lorcan assumed grew from the devil’s disdain for the cambion siblings.

  But Magros had never told Lorcan who to kill.

  “Well, you’re a sly one, aren’t you?” Lorcan said. “Let me think you don’t expect much at all from me, let me think you think I’m stupid enough to kill your agent and upset the plan so plainly. And all the while—what? What were you doing right under our noses?”

  Magros shrugged, smiling all the while. “The world will never know. I notice you say ‘our.’ I take it Sairché is not escaped so much as freed? And still, you cannot find her. How interesting.”

  “Not as interesting as the puzzle of your Thayans,” Lorcan tossed back. Magros’s smile flattened. “Didn’t think I knew about those, did you?”

  “I hadn’t,” Magros admitted. “Until dear Zahnya alerted me to your intrusions. Whyever are you trucking with Harpers?”

  Lorcan smiled wickedly. “The world may never know.”

  “Well your Chosen won’t,” Magros said. “At least, not unless you get her free of that place in the next few hours.”

  Lorcan froze again. “What happens in the next few hours?”

  Magros spread his hands. “What do you think we’re doing here? Asmodeus’s plan must continue apace. The gathering must happen. If she’s within its reach . . . well, you can guess, and we’ll see how His Majesty feels about that.”

  Every drop of his mother’s blood urged Lorcan to seize hold of Magros, to shake the answers from him—Where was the agent? What was the gathering? Where in the Hells was Sairché?—but he fought it. Magros would have his due, but that wasn’t as important as getting Farideh away from that camp, nor as important as protecting his own skin.

  “I think we can consider Prince Levistus’s offer rescinded,” Magros said, opening his own portal. “We have no need of the second-best leavings of discredited erinyes in Stygia.”

  Lorcan watched the violet swirl of the portal surge and then fade, the wind of a frozen layer sending goosebumps across his red skin. Not an ally he wanted, Lorcan reminded himself, and he hoped Harpers and tieflings and the Chosen of Asmodeus made a better army than what powers Prince Levistus could muster from the heart of his glacier prison.

  He pulled the portal to Malbolge open again. A few hours was not enough time to find out. Especially when he couldn’t find Sairché.

  But he could find the erinyes she’d taken with her, he realized as he stepped through the portal. He crossed to the balcony and peered out over the suppurating landscape of
Malbolge. Near Glasya’s garden walls, a group of erinyes loitered. Even at a distance he could spot Sulci’s shock of yellow hair. He glided down to land among them.

  “Well, well,” Nisibis said, “are you in charge again?”

  “Think we might want Her Highness’s input on that,” Noreia said lazily from her perch to the side.

  “Where’s Sairché?” The erinyes all chuckled.

  Sulci swung her blade up onto one shoulder. “We left her with the wizard.”

  “What?” Lorcan cried.

  “She invoked the disputation clause,” Nisibis said, “and offered a proxy. I thought he’d take Sulci there—gave her quite a look—but he chose Sairché instead. You’ll get her back in three days.”

  Lorcan shut his eyes and silently cursed his sister’s damnable hubris. Sairché would not be back in three days, because she had not invoked the disputation clause of her contract with Rhand—she had only bluffed him, and Asmodeus would hand down no judgment on a contract that was still in force.

  And worse, Lorcan knew Sairché was in danger. “I wish you had not told me that,” he said to Nisibis.

  Havilar frowned at the space in front of her. It looked as if the mountain continued up, the trees blocking much of her view of the peak. But there was a faint distortion to the air, a not-quite-shimmer that made her eyes ache. She blinked hard a few times, then reached to touch it as the scout who’d found it had prompted. There was something smooth and hard there where there seemed to be nothing. With her other hand, Havilar squeezed the ruby necklace in her pocket.

  “Beyond,” the Red Wizard declared, “is the camp. And here is where my aid is of no more use to you: I cannot pass the barrier.”

  Vescaras considered Zahnya. “How is it you plan to claim Shar’s weapons if you can’t get inside?”

  “I have a confederate,” she replied. “My spells will center on her. After . . .” She shrugged. “I’ve been told I can access the camp then. But I can’t make promises for anyone left inside.”

  “You expect that we’re going to stand here and let you kill a camp full of people?” Vescaras demanded. “We outnumber you as of yet, goodwoman. By still more than when we began.”

  “Don’t be dramatic, saer,” Zahnya said. “You and I both know that a weapon in Shar’s hands is far more dangerous. The number of lives at stake should she raise herself any higher, gain any more kingdoms, or worse, rebuild her Shadow Weave, pale in comparison to the number of souls inside these walls. So yes, I will act. And you will have time—if, of course, you can enter—to stage a rescue. My spell will take hours to cast, after all.”

  Havilar watched the Harpers, but none of them seemed to react to that. Good or bad? she wondered. Zahnya talked too much like Lorcan—made too much sense of things that shouldn’t make sense at all—and it set Havilar’s tail lashing. Beside her, Brin slipped his hand into hers and squeezed it furtively.

  “How long?” Mehen asked.

  Zahnya smiled. “Ten hours. It is complex.”

  Vescaras narrowed his eyes. “Very well.” He looked at Havilar. “Have you still got the bead your father mentioned?”

  She pulled the necklace from her pocket and held it up. “Bomb, charm, beacon, passwall,” she recited.

  Vescaras crossed to her and plucked the passwall bead from the necklace. He held the red gem up to the growing light. “How certain are you?”

  Havilar glanced over to Zahnya and her apprentices, who were clearing a square off the forest floor and taking various items out of their packs. Preparing for the casting.

  “Sure enough for this,” Havilar said.

  “I suppose we haven’t another option.” He gave Khochen a grim look and beckoned the others closer. Then the half-elf stepped forward and slapped the bead against the invisible wall. A ripple spread out through the seemingly empty air, then another, then a third that came with a crackle of rock. The air seemed to part like a pair of drapes, and there beyond was a valley—a crater, Havilar corrected herself—filled with small, close together huts and dominated by a shining black tower. The Harpers and Mehen hurried through, and Havilar followed. The spell faded quickly after, sealing the wall once more.

  Behind them, the slope appeared just as they’d left it, with Zahnya and her minions working hard at the spell. She was smiling to herself in a way Havilar didn’t like.

  “Do you trust her?” she asked Vescaras.

  “Not a bit,” he spat. “ ‘Ten hours,’ my broken chamber pot. We have six at the outside.” He turned to his colleagues. “So we’re out of here in three.”

  “I haven’t got another bead,” Havilar reminded him.

  “Which is why we’ll have to be clever,” Khochen told her. “But first, we find Dahl and your sister.”

  “We need to fan out,” Daranna said. “Khochen, take the dragonborn and his friends—”

  “No,” Mehen said. He bared his teeth, tapping his tongue against the roof of his mouth repeatedly before saying. “You want to capture her, I want it to be safe and easy. So you put one friendly face in each of your groups.”

  Vescaras and Khochen exchanged glances. “We’ll be cautious, goodman,” Vescaras said. “There’s no need to worry.”

  “There is no need to worry because I or Havi or Brin will find her and make sure you keep your word,” Mehen snapped. He turned to Havilar. “Much as I don’t want to leave your side.”

  Havilar hugged him awkwardly. “I know. Be careful.”

  “Everyone, be careful,” Mehen said, looking past her to Brin. “I’ll go with Daranna.” The elf didn’t look pleased at that, but she nodded at one of her scouts and the three of them moved east and along the wall, down into the camp below.

  “Very well,” Vescaras said. “Lord Crownsilver, you are with me.” He gestured to one of the scouts, an elf woman with reddish hair, as well. “Come on.”

  “Do you think,” Havilar murmured, as Brin hugged her tight, “that this could be the last time we do this for a long while? I’m getting sick of it.” He laughed softly.

  “Let’s try. I’ll see you soon, I promise.” Havilar watched him head along the northern edge of the invisible wall’s curve, tailing Vescaras and the elf. If this were a chapbook, she thought, he would definitely be getting hit by an arrow soon. She shook the thought from her head and turned back to her assigned allies.

  “Come on, Ebros,” Khochen said to the remaining scout, her laughing eyes on Havilar. “This will be fun.”

  “Your ladyships,” Rhand said as he crept over the threshold. For all the deference he showed the girl with no name, there was only cruelty in his smile. Sairché’s pulse became a voice shouting in her ears. “How are you getting on?”

  The girl sitting beside the window looked up at Sairché with luminous eyes and smiled slightly. Panic rose up in Sairché, and there was no trick, no clever turn, no magic ring that could save her.

  My doom, Sairché thought. Lords of the Nine, damn you, Lorcan.

  The girl’s gaze inched its way over Sairché. “She is less amusing than I would have expected for a devil.”

  “A cambion,” Rhand corrected, “my lady.”

  She sniffed and Sairché’s pulse became a voice shouting in her ears, Run, run, run. “Where’s the other one?” she said. “The tiefling you mangled.”

  Rhand’s expression tightened. “Still absent. But she’ll return, I’m assured, the day after tomorrow. Isn’t that right, Lady Sairché?” Sairché couldn’t speak, couldn’t find the clever words to string together. Damn Lorcan, damn Rhand, damn Farideh and Glasya and Asmodeus too. Every muscle of her body felt flooded with fear and adrenalin. She was a deer in the wood, too startled to move, and after a full day of the Chosen of Shar’s company, she felt as if she were dying.

  “It sounds as if your experiment has failed, Saer Rhand,” the girl said.

  Rhand cleared his throat, nerves Sairché had never managed to inspire in him clear even at a distance. “Not failed. Delayed.”

  �
�I was told,” the girl said loftily, as the world threatened to roll over Sairché and smother her, “to assess the usefulness of keeping your camps going.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  You have lived this every day, Sairché reminded herself, gazing down at the floor. She thought of each of her surviving half sisters in turn, the terrible tortures they’d gladly heap on her, one by one. It kept her sane, it kept her in the little room and not drowning in the void that threatened her mind. But still she could not bear to speak.

  “You are not a very popular man within the Church. No one powerful left to speak for you.”

  “Save you,” Rhand said. “My lady.”

  “I don’t speak for you,” the girl said. “In fact, I think it is plain that this experiment is not worth the resources of Shade. I am ordering you to destroy it and return to the city.”

  Sairché spared a glance for Rhand. His rage was enough to push aside the plain discomfort he’d worn since he’d entered the room.

  “You don’t have the right,” he said.

  “Don’t I?” the girl said. “I believe you’ll find you owe me your obedience, just as Shar intends.” The feeling of looking into an unending maw intensified. Sairché squeezed her hands into fists. Megara would spit me like a lamb, she thought. Oenaphtya would just cleave me in twain. Tanagra would stake me to the ground and let Malbolge deal with me . . .

  Beside Sairché, Rhand gave her the uncomfortable impression of one of her worse sisters about to snap. The girl smirked at him. “Order my veserab saddled.”

  “It hasn’t been recovered,” Rhand said. “And if you think I’m ending this on the whim of a—”

  “Saddle yours, then,” the girl said. “And call for carriers. I intend to leave. Take care of your experiment, or you will find yourself answering to people much more powerful than you.”

  Rhand started forward, all inchoate violence, but he stopped just past Sairché, his eyes locked on something over the nameless girl’s dark head.

  Sairché dared to look up—feeling the girl’s eyes still on her, still shrinking her down into something small and unnecessary—and followed Rhand’s gaze to the winking bluish light that hung in the air over the center of the camp.