The Adversary

by Erin M. Evans

  “Here,” he said, interlacing his fingers. “You don’t have long.”

  “Good thing I’m quick,” she said, her voice too light.

  “Go out over the wall,” he advised. “Just past the veserab stables.”

  Tharra nodded and stepped onto his hands, reaching high to grasp the sharp, polished edge of the black stone above. She peered back down once she’d pulled herself up. “Best of luck, Harper.”

  Before Dahl could reply, she was gone, slipping alone into the forbidding fortress.

  “Come on.” Oota went to the smaller door and forced the lock—another narrow hallway, empty and lightless. She edged inside, followed by the rest.

  At the end was a second door—a portcullis, and this one guarded. Dahl gestured for the others to stop and crept forward, near enough to see what lay beyond.

  Two guards waited by the door, distracted by at least three wizards—two younger-looking fellows and Rhand—considering a young elf man in a cage, whose skin radiated soft light. One of the novices prodded at him with a thin, sharp-looking rod. The man made no noise.

  Rhand sighed heavily. “We haven’t time for the hot irons,” he said. “Make them ready to depart. If that little witch thinks I’m leaving behind such resources, we will have to disabuse her of such fancies.” He turned to two of the wizards. “Come along. We haven’t much time to prepare before—”

  Another guard, a shadar-kai woman with pierced cheeks, came in through the far door and called out to Rhand. “Your devil is a liar, master.”

  Rhand spun on her. “What?”

  Dahl gripped his sword. The room was larger than the stables outside, and lined with cells and cages—holding more prisoners, fifty at least, many with the glitter of strange magic worked on them. And more guards—another four. As he reached the edge of the light, he nearly stumbled, and leaned heavily against the tunnel wall. His eyes crossed, the lids almost too heavy to lift.

  “I’ll return in an hour,” he heard Rhand say as he started to drift off. “I expect everything to be prepared. The same goes for you two—get upstairs and work quickly. I need to deal with something out . . .”

  Someone grabbed hold of Dahl and pulled him sharply back into the tunnel. “All right?” Vescaras whispered.

  “Yes,” Dahl said, extricating himself. “There’s . . . There’s something magic happening in there.” He peered back through the portcullis. None of the wizards seemed to feel the strange sleepiness, and all six of the guards he’d spotted stood around the space, lazy and unconcerned.

  “Six guards,” he said. “Two wizards. A lot of bystanders.” He shook his head. “The Chosen aren’t affecting the wizards, either, I don’t think. And there’s—”

  “They’re sleeping too,” Armas said. “There’s something about halfway across the room giving off a magical field. I’ll wager that’s it.”

  “How are the guards awake?” Vescaras asked.

  “Amulets,” Armas supplied. “The gold ones are making some sort of dispelling field. Weak, but enough to keep them on their feet.”

  “So without those amulets we fall asleep, too,” Brin said.

  “Well we shouldn’t wait,” Vescaras said. “Shadar-kai can’t take that kind of thing draining on them long. I would suspect they cycle through the guards regularly. Better we take on someone who’s been on their feet a while than someone fresh.”

  “Why are they keeping them sleeping?” the elf asked.

  “It probably keeps their powers from affecting everyone else,” Dahl said. “Otherwise, you’d have to worry about . . .” He stopped. “Oh. Oh, that is perfect. What’s your name?”

  “Sheera,” she said, sounding puzzled.

  “Well met, Sheera.” He nodded at her crossbow. “How accurately can you shoot?”

  Farideh pulled the dancing eldritch light into her hands and shook it out again as she waited at a crossroads for Tharra and the others to return. It didn’t rid her of the feeling that the Nine Hells themselves were about to boil out of her. She did it again, not daring to cast fully, but needing to expend that power.

  Lorcan’s words kept coming back to her: Asmodeus only knows what will trigger it, after all. What if all this worrying just brought on worse powers? What if it made their rescue plan unworkable? What if it made Asmodeus notice what was happening in the prison camp?

  She rolled the rod between her fingers, all too aware of the flags of shadow smoke that had started curling around her again, and tried to slow her pulse. If there were anything to make people more nervous about her, leaking shadows like some Shar-blessed creature was probably it. She looked down at her bone-white finger and shivered. She pulled her sleeve down over it again and scanned the crossroads once more. Still no guards, and that worried her—hopefully they weren’t out among the stragglers, keeping people from reaching the shelters. Hopefully they weren’t all defending the wizard’s workshop. Hopefully they wouldn’t stop Tharra from reaching the study and meeting Farideh back here.

  Movement—the flames leaped to Farideh’s fingers again. A little boy—the same towheaded boy she’d spared in the courtyard the day before—marched across the crossroads, not seeming to care that Farideh stood guard.

  “Well met?” she called, shaking the flames out.

  The little boy looked up. “Well met.” And he started off again. Farideh hurried after him. “Wait. You have to go back into the shelters.

  It’s not safe.”

  “I know,” he said. “They don’t say why, but I know. That’s why I have to get Samayan.” He stopped at the next alleyway, studying the muddy ground. “He got nervous—he doesn’t like being underground. So he ran away.” He gave Farideh a very serious look. “I don’t think he knows how dangerous it is.”

  “You need to go back to the shelters,” Farideh told him again, unsure of what to do. He wasn’t afraid of her. “Would you like me to walk you back?”

  “No,” he said, continuing to the next crossroads. “I have to find Samayan.”

  He peered down the alleyway and froze. Farideh leaped ahead of him, ready to cast flames into—

  “Havi?” Farideh said. There in the alley opposite, her twin and two others—the Harper Khochen from Waterdeep and a half-elf fellow—were hurrying toward them. Havilar glanced quickly at the crossroads and darted to her sister’s arms. Farideh nearly wept.

  “Oh, you’re safe,” Havilar said. “You’re safe, you’re safe.” She held Farideh tight. “Lorcan said, but he’s such a liar and I wasn’t sure.”

  “You shouldn’t have come,” Farideh said. “Gods, Havi, you—”

  “Oh shut up,” Havilar said. “What was I going to do? Let you have all the adventure? Besides, you needed saving.” She let Farideh go, but her eyes were worried. “Mehen’s here. Brin too. They’re looking for you in other spots.

  But, Fari, there’s guards looking for you too. They thought I was you and—”

  “You should go to the shelters,” the little boy said. “It’s dangerous.” He trotted up to the next crossroads and gasped. He darted out of sight, and all four adult sprinted after him. A line of snowstars, tiny white flowers on tiny dark leaves, headed down toward the lake.

  “Stop, poppet,” Khochen said, setting a firm hand on the little boy’s shoulder. He looked up at the Harper as if he might scold her. “That’s Samayan’s trail,” he said. “He went this way.”

  “If we follow it, we’ll find him?” Farideh asked. The little boy nodded.

  “Then you go back,” she told him, “and quickly. We’ll go find Samayan and bring him to you.”

  The little boy eyed her skeptically. “All right,” he finally said. “But you have to tell him you won’t make him go past the bottom stair. And that I’ll stay with him.”

  “I promise,” Farideh said. “Go.” The little boy ran off, back toward the shelters.

  The Harper woman eyed her oddly. Farideh stared right back, not caring what she saw. “Samayan’s only a little older than his friend,�
� she said.

  Khochen’s gaze flicked over her once more.

  “Then we ought to find him.”

  Farideh ripped the flowers up as they passed, removing any trace the shadar-kai might follow. They went on, twisting through the camp, heading for the lake. When the four of them passed the edge of the buildings and came out onto the broad shores of the icy waters, Farideh saw the trail of flowers, in distant patches as if the boy had bounded over the pebbly beach, ending in the water.

  “Gods be damned.” Khochen breathed. They had found Samayan. The boy stood up to his ankles in the water, shivering as half a dozen shadar-kai closed in, another dozen crowding the shore. Samayan backed away, deeper into the water. The shadar-kai’s voices shouting, taunting. “Come out of there, or we come in for you!”

  Samayan stood up to his thighs now, struggling against the pull of the water’s strange flow. His lips were turning pale. He kept shaking his head, kept moving backward.

  Khochen caught Farideh’s arm as she started forward. “They’ll catch you, and then we’re all done for,” Khochen said. “We just need a distraction.”

  “Chase him in,” one of the guards called. There were more of them now, at least a dozen, gathering out of the alleyways to watch the sport of drowning a young boy. Farideh’s temper rose.

  “All right,” Khochen said, “Farideh, set one of these huts on fire. Havi and Ebros—”

  The nearest guard slashed at Samayan with her blade, scoring a line of blood across his chest. He flinched, curling away from the weapon as she made another slice across his shoulder, cackling as she did. Samayan stumbled backward, as if over an unseen rock, the choppy waters closing over his dark head. And Khochen’s plan didn’t matter anymore.

  Khochen cursed and she and the twins raced toward the fight, balls of dark energy peeling off Farideh’s fingertips, Ebros’s arrows sailing over their heads. “Keep them back,” Farideh shouted at her sister. “I’ll get Samayan.”

  “What?” Havilar cried, as she stopped a shadar-kai’s sword on her glaive. Ahead of Farideh, Samayan’s face broke the lake’s surface, gasped too little air, and dipped under again.

  Farideh ran through the lapping water, toward the bobbing shape of the boy, heedless of the threat of the shadar-kai. The water was cold enough her bones ached—colder than the tarn she’d grown up swimming in, colder than the waters of the Fountains of Memory. She dodged the lash of a spiked chain, and—as Samayan’s head dipped below a wave—she leaped through the fabric of the planes to close the distance. She stepped free, catching hold of the lanky boy in her arms and realizing that the lake bed had dropped off precipitously under her feet.

  The icy water closed all around her.

  There was no swimming through this—so much cold her every nerve was screaming and fading into numbness already. She could hardly move her arms, locked around Samayan, and each kick of her legs felt as if she were dragging them through concrete. The cold seemed to still her lungs, making it harder to draw breath when she did break the surface. She was turned around, unable to find the shore. Her heart hammered in her chest, and it did no good. She couldn’t warm herself, couldn’t draw her magic, couldn’t keep Samayan above the water. The lake would kill her.

  No . . .

  She tightened her arms around Samayan as they sank into the freezing water.

  No . . .

  Air bubbled out of her mouth, water flooded in.

  No . . .

  . . . there are thirteen tieflings arrayed around the grove—hooved and horned and winged and tailed and some who might as well be human for all their blood shows—but they are tieflings all the same. Six men, six woman, and the Brimstone Angel herself who stands facing the symbol of the king of the Hells, painted in blood on the spire of stone that they have dragged out of the bedrock with will and the frayed scraps of the Weave, the engines of the Nine Hells and the tortured howls of souls long-lost. This is how it starts, where it begins. Where Farideh and Havilar and every tiefling walking the plane begin. This is how they damn us all . . .

  Farideh opened her eyes in the freezing water, the water that once filled the Fountains of Memory—and sees the vision as real as it was in her head, as real as it would have been if she stood there; the blue-black fall of her ancestress’s hair where the surface of the lake should be—before her sight began fading. She blinked once, and suddenly she saw the ghost woman’s face, inches from her own, her teeth bared in a grin that was more animal than human . . .

  Relax, Farideh heard her say. Let go . . . Let me help you . . . NO—Farideh’s wordless scream made the ghost woman recoil. The last of her air spilled out.

  And fire rolled from the core of her out.

  She clung tightly to Samayan as everything around them was suddenly bright as a sun and hissing with the furious sound of boiling water. Her thoughts reeled, wordless and scrambling, but her lungs were screaming for air and her legs knew well enough to answer the need. She broke the surface, flames still filling her sight, and pulled Samayan up with her. A spill of water poured out of his nose and mouth. She could hear people shouting and weapons clashing on the shore. A burst of Hells magic pulled her nearer, near enough to regain all her weight as air replaced the water around her. Through the flames she could see the shadar-kai watching her warily. She could see Havilar and Khochen frozen where they’d stood holding off shadar-kai. Samayan coughed, gagged, and she set him shivering on the shore. Khochen sprinted forward and dragged the boy back, away from the fire. Away from Farideh.

  Away from the Chosen of Asmodeus.

  Farideh turned to the shadar-kai, and she felt her fury, her certainty that she would not let them take another soul, burst out of her like a wave. The flames burned hotter still. She would do anything, in that moment, to keep them from torturing the boy.

  “Leave them to me,” Farideh said to the others. She drew the rod from her sleeve and held it out in front of her, parallel to the ground. “Chaanaris.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  26 Ches, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR) The Lost Peaks

  Lord of Knowledge, Binder of what is Known, Dahl chanted to himself, Make my eye clear, my mind open, my heart true. Give me the wisdom to separate the lie from the truth . . .

  Dahl had not been a paladin for ten years now, but still he remembered the feeling of the god of knowledge’s presence—the sure, tranquil truth of Oghma that lit his mind afire. It bore little resemblance to the oddly strangled calm that seemed to surround and hold tight to his nerves, foreign as some Chosen’s power on his thoughts.

  You can do this, he reminded himself. You have done it plenty of times before. He turned his sword in his hand, adjusting the grip. And if you can’t, he added, then all these people are going to die for your stupid plan, and Vescaras will be there to see you—

  He nodded to Sheera, before he lost the calm.

  The Harper raised her crossbow and stepped quickly to the portcullis, firing off a bolt before the guards turned at the sound, before the orb in the center of the room could ensnare her. True to her promise, the bolt flew across the room and struck the sphere on the pillar, knocking it to the ground.

  The glass shattered.

  And the Chosen woke.

  The sudden cacophony of powers vying for his attention made Dahl’s stomach plunge and his heart race. The man in the cage beside the wizards opened his eyes and started to scream.

  Lord of Knowledge, he chanted to himself, Binder of What Is Known . . .

  As soon as the bolt flew, Sheera threw herself flat against the wall as Phalar summoned the globe of darkness around himself once more and let the blessings of his god wash over them all. Dahl gripped his sword more tightly as the urge to reach through the grate and cut the guards’ throats raced through him. Phalar chuckled softly within his bubble of night, and then ran at the portcullis.

  The iron grating sizzled as Phalar’s magic let him phase through it. The guards startled, reaching for their weapons. Dahl
hit the grate and saw their dark eyes deepen as Phalar’s god stripped off any caution they had left.

  “Hey!” Dahl shouted. “Hey! Shadow-kisser!” He banged his sword against the grating, drawing the door guards’ attention, as Phalar streaked across the room. The globe passed over the surprised wizards, swallowing them both for a moment. The darkness vanished—but Phalar was already past, running for the far door and dropping the crossbar before turning to defend against the near guard who’d shaken off her shock and realized the drow racing through the room didn’t belong.

  The clanking of the portcullis seized Dahl’s attention, as a shadar-kai ducked under the rising gate in front of him. Idiot, he thought, and he brought the pommel of his sword down hard on the exposed back of the man’s head. Still, it took all his effort not to duck under the portcullis himself to get to the second guard faster.

  Make my eye clear, my mind open, my heart true, he chanted, a hymn to hold onto his real self.

  The shadar-kai finished hauling the gate open, his eyes dancing as if he were relishing the idea of running Dahl through, as his fellows closed on the entrance. But he wasn’t expecting Oota to come screaming out of the tunnel, sword first. She forced him back, slashing wildly. Dahl followed, trailed by Vescaras, Armas, and Hamdir.

  “Hrast,” Armas cursed, searching the cages that lined the shadowy edges of the room. “She pulled a lot of people.”

  “We need a key,” Dahl said. He glanced back at Brin and Sheera. “You, keep shooting. You, keep the guards off her. Hamdir—”

  Oota’s bellow filled the room, drowning out the building shouts of the prisoners. Dahl saw her shove the dead door guard off her blade.

  “Which of you is next?” she roared. “Which of you thought you could capture my people and survive my wrath? Which of you cowards thinks you can best the Chosen of Obould?”

  Two streaks of burning air whizzed past Dahl. Behind him, the air went out of Armas in an ugly gasp. Something else set the air behind him humming. Dahl didn’t dare turn—his sword caught the blade of a rangy shadar-kai man with his pale hair in tight braids. Slight as he seemed, the man forced Dahl back and off-balance. Something behind Dahl rumbled as the man pulled his blade up to cut Dahl down—