MEHEN SHIFTED UNCOMFORTABLY IN HIS SADDLE—THEY HAD RIDDEN hard and far enough into the plains the day before to make certain there was no way he’d sit easy the next day. The wide-backed horse, a hot-blooded Ishen-Charac probably descended from his father’s own warhorse, flattened its ears in annoyance, and Mehen tried to settle himself. Uadjit rode ahead, followed by Dumuzi and two other young Kepeshkmoliks—Saitha and a boy called Persegor. Dumuzi’s first converts.
“Is it just me,” Kallan muttered, “or does this business with Enlil start making your scales itch when you’re faced with three hatchling priestlets?”
Mehen shifted in the saddle. “Older you get, more likely children are going to start making proclamations at you.”
“We are not that old.”
“Then you’d better find Dumuzi some grown converts,” Mehen said. “I don’t see this stopping anytime soon.”
Mehen tapped his tongue to the roof of his mouth. He’d gone to sit beside Dumuzi at the fire the night before. “I have a question for your god,” he’d said.
Dumuzi had folded his hands nervously, never at ease with Mehen. “All right. What is it?”
Mehen clenched his teeth together to fight the nervous urge to tap his tongue. “Is she alive? Is Havilar still alive?”
Dumuzi went quiet for a moment. “He doesn’t know.”
“How can he not know?” Mehen demanded. “I thought he was a god. ‘Soldier of all the lands, father of all children’? He can’t karshoji tell me if my daughter is dead?”
Dumuzi flinched, but a moment later he spoke. “He says there are some barriers even a god cannot breach. He says it isn’t definite, but given how weak he is right now, if he knew anything definitely, it would be that her soul had passed into the Fugue Plane.” He swallowed, noisy against a tight throat. “He says he understands. When he came back, he could not find his children. It’s a difficult thing to feel powerless.”
At that, Mehen had stood, strode off into the grasslands, too full of the words he didn’t dare say to sit still any longer. In the bright light of day, Dumuzi would not so much as meet his eye. Mehen wasn’t powerless. There were a thousand things Mehen could have been doing, and he wasn’t, because everything was so tangled up in planar nonsense.
As they rode, they passed swaths of land where the dirt was churned and wild, as if some invisible farmer had plowed it up and mixed in other soils, red and black, then sprinkled it with unfamiliar rocks. Mehen eyed a jagged, rust-colored boulder with a vein of crystal as green as new leaves running through it, and wondered what the world on the other side must have looked like.
Uadjit called back, “When we come to the rise, fall back. I’ll scout ahead.”
“You did the last one!” Kallan shouted back. “Give the rest of us something to—”
A ripple in the air—as if a gust of wind had blown across Mehen’s eye, distorting his vision—and suddenly a great, gray-skinned giant stood beside the line of their horses, club in hand. Mehen pulled his falchion as the Ishen-Charac broke left, fighting against the pull of Mehen’s reins. A second giant appeared there, hemming in their horses. She put out a hand, fingers outstretched. Across the skin of her right forearm and hand, blue light flooded channel lines, flowing up toward her palm. She spoke a word, soft as grass crunching underfoot.
Immediately the horses calmed.
“Chaubask bur kepeshk,” Mehen spat, but no amount of spur would make the gelding move.
“They are dreaming,” the giant said. “It won’t last long.”
“Have you come for Dahl Peredur and the others?” the man with the club said. “We have come to meet you.”.
• • •
BRIN SEARCHES THE room—the Griffon Room, portraits of Obarskyrs lining its walls. King Foril is here—not dead, but playing chess against Tam Zawad, the High Harper of Waterdeep, with ponderous care, as if he has no idea what perils are raging outside the palace. Beyond the windows, everything is on fire. Brin locks the door and starts throwing the pillows from the settee, the curtains from the wall.
“Aubrin, what are you doing?”
“Your Majesty,” Brin says. “I can’t find the baby.”
Foril doesn’t look up. “Again?”
Brin starts yanking pictures from the walls, flipping rugs from the floor—if he doesn’t find the baby, the demon will. A moment before, it had been in his arms, wrapped in swaddling—and then he’d set it down, just for a moment. Where?
“Brin?” He turns and Havilar is standing there—utter dread swamps him. He doesn’t want to tell her what he did, but then she of all people will understand the seriousness. He has to.
“I lost the baby!” he says, all panic. “I didn’t mean to, but he’s gone.”
She frowns at him, puzzled. “All right. That’s the dream. There isn’t actually a baby.”
“No, there is.” Brin yanks the drawers from a cabinet, spilling silver spoons and arrows and snakes onto the floor. “A baby. A boy—our boy. Only … only he’s not a baby.” He stops, shuts the last drawer. “He’s eight. Or so.” He turns and looks at Havilar. “This is a dream.”
A grin breaks over her face, a smile of utter relief. “Yes! Holy gods, you don’t know how long it took me to get Farideh to realize that. She is so karshoji stubborn, even when she’s asleep.”
Brin looks her over. “It’s a dream,” he says slowly. “But you’re not. You’re here. You’re here.” He throws his arms around her, holds her tight. “Blessed Torm, I … Oh thank the gods.” She clings to him in return, as real and solid as if she were beside him again. “Havi, I’m trying, but things are getting—”
“Wait.” She presses away from him, as a stream of people cross through the room, war wizards and Harpers and holy champions. “This is important. If you start dreaming again or you wake up, you have to remember this. All right? You need to tell Farideh that Caisys is the one who knows where the staff is, and Alyona says he watched over us in Arush Vayem. Maybe someone was reporting to him, or there’s a spell or something. A scrying surface? Tell her that?”
“I have to find more components,” Brin says. “All I’ve got is my Harper kit. That only—”
A baby’s high wailing breaks his attention. Where the farther wall once was has become a waterfall with sea elves lounging in its spray, tossing a ball back and forth. A snake as thick as a man’s leg slithers around the stones and the legs of the settee, as the dead king and the High Harper consider the chess board.
“You have such weird dreams,” Havilar says.
“I have to find the baby,” Brin says, pulling away from her.
“There’s no baby.”
“No, there is, he …” A dream, Brin reminds himself. A dream. “Havi, there is a baby, I think. I think we have a son.”
Havilar peers at him, as if she’s trying to decide how mad he might be. “Uh, I’m fairly sure I’d remember that.”
“I think you were trapped in the Hells when he was born,” Brin said. “There’s a sixth heir. He looks like you and he looks like me. Bryseis Kakistos didn’t know about him until she was in your body, and the lich used my blood to find him.” He wants to ask if she’s sure she didn’t know, if this is really a surprise and not a secret—but the expression that crosses her face holds all the answers.
“How …” she manages, as tears rise up in her eyes and the flames beyond the window break the panes of glass. “How did she—”
Brin woke to Zoonie snuffling at his cheek, his heart in his throat. He pushed the hellhound away, rubbing slobber and ash from his stubbled cheek, trying to take control of his breath again. A dream, he told himself. Just a dream. Just …
Not a dream—he felt sure of that. Not just a dream. Havilar had been there.
“You talk in your sleep,” Bosh said. Both imps were perched on the footboard. “That’s a liability. You shouldn’t do that.”
Brin sat up. The blue-eyed tiefling boy. “Has she come back?”
“No,” Mot said. “Neither of them.”
He got up and dressed quickly, checking his stores of components—not enough of the dried formian blood to make another sending, even if he’d had another scroll on him. Two scrolls, he thought. One to warn Farideh, one to warn the boy.
“Do you need to know a name to make a sending ritual?”
“You need to know how to cast a sending ritual without some hand-holding scroll,” Mot pointed out. “I thought you were some kind of priest. Don’t you have a ritual book?”
“I don’t think he’s a priest,” Bosh said. “Priests should be taller. Unless they’re halflings.”
“Never mind,” Brin said. “Do you know anything about dream magic? Like … how could someone appear in your dreams?”
Mot looked at him as if he’d asked about stuffing eels in a coinpurse. “Why would you do that?”
“Where do you think Bryseis Kakistos has Havilar?” Brin said, trying a different tack as he pulled on his boots.
“There’s lots of places you could shift a soul,” Mot said. “I mean, I’ve heard of some. I can’t do that. I might know some people. She could just be dormant in there, for one.”
“What if she’s not?”
Bosh screwed up his face. “Souls are either in their bodies or in the afterlife. Anything else is too complicated.”
“Shut up, Bosh,” Mot said. “You can put a soul in a vessel. That’s definitely been done before. Since she says that she’s planning to give Havilar back and she’s got a contingency for what happens if all this falls apart, it’s probably that. Dormant means it’s more likely she’d just get snapped up by some god or other when the body got killed.”
Brin nearly asked what contingency Mot was talking about, but then he remembered Bryseis Kakistos’s cryptic, muddled orders to Farideh—make some new bodies. If Havilar died, the soul would be protected, ready to slip into some other body, the way Bryseis Kakistos had meant to slip into Farideh and Havilar.
He donned the furs he’d been given and left the little room, Zoonie following close at his heels, Mot and Bosh flapping along ahead of him. “What things make vessels?”
“Magic things,” Mot said.
“Expensive magic things,” Bosh said. “You have to spend—”
“Amulets,” Mot interrupted. “Figurines. Phylacteries. Other bodies.”
Brin cast a glance back at Zoonie as they headed down a corridor. The hellhound wagged her tail happily, then caught sight of it and chased it in a circle a few times, scattering sparks. Probably not Zoonie.
“It would have been in the room when they did the spell,” Mot added.
“Ah, ye gods. The amulet.” Brin had nearly forgotten the blue stone on the chain that Havilar had been given to hold. “Is she still wearing that blue-gray stone?”
“You can ask her that,” Mot said as they came to the library.
To Brin’s surprise, Bryseis Kakistos and Phrenike’s voices echoed through the rows of books.
“It’s in here somewhere,” Phrenike was saying. “Everything’s in here somewhere.”
“And none of it has been touched in twenty years!” Bryseis Kakistos snapped.
“Oh twenty years,” the lich said dismissively. “We have time to find it. We’re still missing three heirs.”
Brin peered around a shelf in time to see Havilar drop down from halfway up one of the stone shelves. “And none of that will matter without the staff. Which means we need Caisys. Which means we need the notes in his spellbook. Now let me ask you again: Are you certain that you still have it?”
Phrenike didn’t answer. The sight of the lich, looking wary and perhaps fearful when faced with what looked like Havilar, made Brin’s stomach twist up his throat. He edged forward, ever so slightly, eyes on the chain along the back of Havilar’s neck. Phrenike’s violet eyes fell on him, and she cleared her throat. Bryseis Kakistos whipped around.
“Well met,” she said, straightening. “Can I help you?”
“No,” he said. “Just gathering some things.”
“Any luck with the stolen scion?”
Behind her, Phrenike grinned. “Oh, he hasn’t told you yet?” she said, not giving Brin even a breath to consider a way to lie about the boy. “He’s found it. A boy. In Aglarond—isn’t that ironic?”
Bryseis Kakistos shot her confederate a dark look. “Quite. Well done,” she said to Brin. She considered him. “I wasn’t sure you’d manage it. Especially after the business with Nalam.”
“I didn’t have much choice, did I?” Brin said.
“Choice is overrated,” she said. “But I’ll give you this one: Do you want to see him? He can stay with you when we return.”
“Please.” The lump in Brin’s throat was so thick he could hardly breathe. “What are you going to do to them?” he asked quietly.
Havilar’s golden eyes pierced him in a way that betrayed the being inside. “Make them useful. For all our sakes.”.
• • •
DOWN OVER THE rise, Uadjit and Kallan had been bickering, the giants were settling in, calling up rocks and a fence of brambles with their curious magic. All around them, a carpet of bodies of nearly a thousand humans and Vayemniri, antsy and anxious, waiting for an answer.
“What in the karshoji Hells have you been doing?” Mehen asked Dahl in amazement.
“Trying not to die, mostly,” Dahl said. He seemed less prickly somehow, less inclined to take the slight. Worn, Mehen thought. He’d been disappointed to find that Farideh wasn’t with Mehen, and completely incapable of hiding it. The giant that accompanied him to the ridge sat some distance away, watching him speak to Mehen with an unnerving level of attention.
“When did you take the Vayemniri?” Uadjit asked from beside Mehen.
When Dahl hesitated, Mehen snapped, “Dragonborn. Where did the dragonborn come from?”
“Refugees from the same planar storm that brought Gilgeam and the Untherans, maybe half a tenday—”
“We know which planar storm,” Mehen interrupted. “There’s only one karshoji planar storm. Do you think we live in the middle of that?”
“What are they doing with you?” Uadjit said.
“Gilgeam took them,” Dahl said. “Made them slaves.” They were Shestandeliath and Clethtinthtiallor, which thirty years ago would have put them three days north and east of Djerad Thymar, on a pair of horse farms raising warhorses like the one Mehen rode. Not Yrjixtilex, he thought, spotting Kallan moving among the survivors.
“How many?” Uadjit asked.
“Sixty-two. We lost about a dozen.”
“Which means they lost around a third in the storm,” Uadjit said. “And presumably the homesteads as well.”
Dahl shook his head. “We’re lucky they ran when I said. It was a bit dicey.”
“Do I want to know why you ran headlong into an army of giants?” Mehen asked.
“You didn’t see what I was running from.”
The humans were rebels, which didn’t much settle Mehen’s own feelings on the matter. Someone had gone for their leader, Namshita, while Dahl broke things down for Mehen and Uadjit. “She needs to ask you for asylum,” Dahl said. “They have nowhere to go.”
Mehen snorted. “Good karshoji luck to her. Her master just destroyed the forward regiment of Djerad Kethendi.”
“Well, she knows things about that army,” Dahl returned, his tone sharpening. “Troop numbers, demon counts, what Gilgeam’s capable of doing. Besides, I was led to believe overthrowing tyrants was what the Vayemniri did best.”
There was a hint of that prickliness, that sharp edge that Mehen had never liked. And now he was back, as if he’d never strolled out of Farideh’s life, as if he hadn’t vanished for a month, nothing but vague words assuring her that of course he still loved her, he just wasn’t going to respond when she cast sendings, nor come back. Between this one and Lorcan, Mehen was starting to think he’d set a bad example somewhere along the line.
Kallan came up the rise, looking troubled. “We have a problem.”
“What now?” Uadjit asked.
“I was talking to some of the folks down there,” he said. “Got some interesting details from a Shestandeliath called Mazarka. She says the Untherans are still paying Gilgeam worship in secret. Caught a few of them at it when she went walking last night. They chased her, but she lost them in the dark.”
“Mazarka said that?” Dahl said, sounding surprised. “She didn’t tell me.”
Mehen frowned. “How many?”
“She thinks it’s all of them,” Kallan said. “That this is all Gilgeam’s plan to break Djerad Thymar from the inside out.”
“No.” Mehen turned and found Dumuzi standing there. “She’s wrong,” he said. “I’ve spoken to some of them. We all three have. They want to be free of Gilgeam. They want to know about Enlil.”
Mehen sighed. “And what do you think they’d say if they were spies sent to end us?”
“I think this Gilgeam could do better than to send little children and half-starved runaway slaves to end us,” Dumuzi said, sounding disgusted. “Leaving aside what Gilgeam might or might not do, what happened to not turning away would-be allies and the victims of tyrants? Have we fallen so far?”
“Don’t be dramatic,” Mehen said. “If there aren’t any Gilgeam worshipers among them, then what did this Mazarka see?”
Dumuzi hesitated. “I don’t know.”
“I would ask,” a new voice said, “what exactly she thinks she saw.” A broad-shouldered human woman with cropped hair and leather armor stood behind Dumuzi, close to Dahl. With her was a Calishite woman who looked vaguely familiar to Mehen, though he couldn’t place where he might have seen her—which usually meant Harpers. The giantess too had moved nearer, crouching beside the group and toying with an odd pendant she wore around her neck.
“None of the people who fled with me are followers of the Son of Victory,” the woman said. “I would stake my life on that, and in effect I have: I cannot return. None of us can return, without paying the price. I don’t blame your caution, but I would suggest you consider carefully before spreading rumors that might cost lives.”
Dahl cleared his throat. “May I introduce Namshita. The leader of the Untheran refugees.”
“Well met,” Mehen said. “No one’s spreading rumors. You want to tell me you wouldn’t look into it if our positions were reversed, and it was your people in peril?”
Namshita nodded to Dumuzi. “You’ve already sent your little priest out converting my people. Get them on the Vayemniri’s side before we commence?”
“Or perhaps,” Uadjit said, “there’s no malice here, only misunderstanding. To be fair, whatever Mazarka saw, none of us can say what it looks like to pay Gilgeam worship.” She smiled. “The, ah, priest is my son, and while I would praise him for his many fine qualities, you should know we ourselves don’t have the best of relationships with the gods. He does not speak for Djerad Thymar.”
Dumuzi stiffened at his mother’s dismissal, turning to look back across the plain, down at his would-be converts.
“What is the difference,” the giant said, startling them all, “between his god-thing, the Son of Victory, and yours, Dahl Peredur?” She tilted her great, gray head. “Why is one an insult, one a danger, and one a boon?”
Dahl caught Mehen’s eye a moment before answering. “They are different things to different people. They have different reasons for being, different motives in the world. I, um, I can’t speak to Dumuzi’s god—”
“Enlil,” Dumuzi supplied.
Dahl paused, looking still more puzzled. “Somni are you joining us now?”
The giant considered the group, blinking slowly. “Yes, I think so. I am Somni,” she said. “forer of the Tusendraumren Steinjotunen.”
“Chieftain,” Dahl supplied. “Of these giants. The Thousand-Dreaming Stone Giants. She’s the one who rescued us from Gilgeam.”
Uadjit made a low, solemn bow. “Maetrish, I come bearing the gratitude of Djerad Thymar, of Clan Kepeshkmolik, of all the Vayemniri of Tymanther for sheltering our vulnerable and wounded. Your aid has been inestimable and we thank you.”
Somni inclined her head. “You are very welcome, but this is only our way. When the dreaming intrudes on the waking, then clearly there is something important occurring.”
Had Mehen been inclined toward such things, he would have thanked Enlil then and there that he wasn’t Uadjit. Faced with the giant chieftain’s hazy, woolgathering way of framing things, he would have certainly said something ill-advised and possibly thrown out the idea of allying with the Tusendraumren altogether.
Dahl, he noticed, did not so much as wince at Somni’s strange speech.
“I come also,” Uadjit went on, “to ask your further aid. The man they call Gilgeam, the Son of Victory, seeks to destroy us. We have long been prepared for an attack, but our forces are in disarray from an earlier attack, and this one is a foe unlike what we’ve faced before. You,” she said with significance, “have faced him before. You understand what it is we are up against. Please consider returning with me to Djerad Thymar, to discuss an alliance between the Vayemniri and the Tusendraumren.”
Somni tilted her head again, letting her eyes drift shut. Mehen glowered at Dahl. “Such allies,” he muttered.
“Just wait,” Dahl hissed.
After a moment, Somni lifted her head. “No,” she said. “Gilgeam has stolen the draumrting of my father. But simply because he is our enemy does not mean that an alliance is in the best interests of my stomm or yours. Dahl Peredur has made me curious of the nature of these god-things, but we cannot yet risk allying with them—Gilgeam or Enlil or Oghma. We have not been in this world long. We must dream and consider.”
Uadjit’s teeth gapped for the barest of moments—the only hint to her frustration. Mehen folded his arms again, still glad he wasn’t the diplomat. “I understand,” Uadjit said. “I would ask then for your word that you don’t intend to turn against Tymanther. If we cannot be allies, then at least we should not be enemies.”
Somni’s dark eyes suddenly seemed sharp as obsidian. “That too is a lot to promise.”
“Somni,” Dahl said, “you’re in their lands now. You can delay, but—”
“If I return to Djerad Thymar,” Uadjit said, “and tell my elders that the Tusendraumren cannot aid us, cannot promise us that they will not side with our enemies, cannot promise us that they won’t themselves become our enemies, then I cannot promise you that Tymanther will leave you in peace.”
“What will you do, Vayemniri?” Somni asked. “We are not dragons.”
“We have a great deal more experience fighting giants,” Uadjit said, “than gods and demons. Don’t mistake our knowledge of our weaknesses for weakness itself.”
Somni smiled suddenly, openly. “I think we are understood,” she said. “Now, will you take the refugees then? Would you care for some assistance in conveying them back to your city?”
The moon piercings along Uadjit’s brow shifted as she frowned. “Your pardon, but why would I accept your assistance when you’ve all but threatened me?”
Somni stood, rising to a height three times Mehen’s own. “That’s how these things are done. We are allies and enemies in one breath, as you said. The Vayemniri did not rise because they were fools who did not understand the nature of people—do not tell me you have grown into weak tyrants of your own on this side.” She looked down at Dahl. “Will you come with me now, or do you wish to talk more before they leave?”
“No,” Dahl said. “I mean, I have to go with them.”
Somni tilted her head. “Your god-thing says we must speak, we must learn from each other, does it not?”
“Yes,” Dahl said. “But there are people I need to help first. There’s someone I have to set things right with. We don’t leave the waking world to its own devices.”
“But you must sometimes,” Somni said as if explaining things to a child.
“If I don’t do this when I have the chance,” Dahl said, “then there’s no way at all my head will be clear or my knowledge of any use to you. I’ll come back,” he added. “I will promise that.”
“You cannot promise that,” Somni said. “You don’t know if it’s going to be true. But I will accept that your need exists. I will take my stomm back to the mountains’ edge and wait for you there, when you’ve finished settling things with your stomm.” Without waiting for an answer, without explaining what she’d meant before, the giant chieftain strode back down the hill to her people, taking every hope of a giant army to crush Gilgeam and Bryseis Kakistos with her.
“Well,” Mehen said acidly, “many thanks, Dahl, for bringing us allies. How would we manage without them?”
“Brand-new stlarning tribe of giants fell into the world seven days ago and I haven’t figured out exactly how to explain everything in this world to them or convince them to do things that I can’t even say for certain are in their best interests,” Dahl said hotly. “All my apologies. I’m trying.”
Uadjit smiled at the Harper. “Excuse us a moment.” She grabbed Mehen’s upper arm, pulling him aside, out of Dahl’s earshot. “What snake has crawled into your smalls? Can that boy say a word without you criticizing it?”
Mehen drew back. “You don’t know him. He’s a proud little hardjack and—”
“Like you? You sounded like Pandjed back there,” Uadjit snapped. “He didn’t put that nonsense in Somni’s head any more than he put omin’ iejirkkessh in mine. There is nothing happening right now that isn’t completely expected. Treaties don’t happen in a karshoji afternoon, and they don’t happen with someone sniping at the closest thing we have to an ambassador with the other side!”
At that moment, Uadjit glanced back and saw Dahl talking to Dumuzi. She broke off and turned on Mehen, eyes blazing. “He knows my son,” she said accusingly.
“They’ve met.”
“Which means he knows your daughter, and judging by the way you’re all but spitting lightning, he knows her too. Don’t tell me you’ve decided to play the blind patriarch and thwart Farideh’s happiness so you can make a match to keep her home?”
“I am not playing the karshoji blind patriarch!” Mehen said. “Life is not a godsbedamned Ash Day drama.”
“Then pull back your attack,” Uadjit said. “Do you think I like it when my son gets tongue-tied over foolish girls? It doesn’t matter. Whatever is happening between a pair of hatchlings behind closed doors has nothing to do at all with discussing refugees and asylum. Let me do what I do best, and save your snarling elder act for later.”
Mehen folded his arms over his chest as Uadjit rejoined the others, pride wounded more than he dared show. It’s because you love her, he told himself, because you only want what’s best for her. Because Havilar is missing and you can’t think straight. Because he really is a smug little hardjack and he abandoned her, tugging her back and forth with empty messages.
Which didn’t matter, he had to admit. Uadjit was right. He didn’t need to like Dahl. He didn’t need to scare him into behaving better, or make him prove he wasn’t going to bring Farideh to ruin and heartbreak. He just needed to know if Dahl was right about the giants and the Untherans.
And worse comes to worst, Mehen thought, he’s not Lorcan. He rubbed a hand over his face and edged back over to the group.
“So,” Namshita said, “which of you must I beg asylum from?”
“Djerad Thymar is a free city,” Uadjit said. “There’s nothing stopping you from entering. However, given the current tensions, it would be wisest if you entered with an escort and a clan’s backing.” She turned to Dahl. “Do you know if any of the Shestandeliath or Clethtinthtiallor survivors are elders?”
“That … is something we should probably check on,” Dahl said. He turned to the Calishite woman, who’d been watching the proceedings with a sharp and watchful eye. She shook her head.
“I’ll get Bodhar and Thost.”
“Get Mazarka,” Dahl said.
“If Shestandeliath or Clethtinthtiallor have elders who would back your request,” Uadjit explained, “that would ease the path. Better still if you’d be willing to tell us what we need to know to protect our own people and our cities.”
“You should know the Son of Victory will not stop until he’s won.” Kallan shot Mehen a significant look, which Namshita spotted. “I don’t say that in praise. I mean he will not admit defeat. I don’t know that he can. If you want to be free of him, you will have to destroy him, utterly.”
“Along with those who follow him,” Dumuzi said. “Wicked and innocent.”
“I will answer your questions,” Namshita said, “when you’ve given shelter to the people who risked their lives to defy him.”
Uadjit considered a moment. “Fair.”
“They ought to stay outside the pyramid while that’s settled,” Kallan chimed in. “And while you figure out if any of them are really on the side of Gilgeam.”
“Also fair,” Uadjit said, despite the dark look Namshita gave Kallan. “The city extends beyond the walls of the pyramid,” Uadjit assured her. “There will be shelter and food and safety. Ah!” Behind her, an owl-pierced old man with rust-colored scales came up to the slope, leaning on two human men—both bearded, one almost as tall as Mehen himself. “Let’s you and I speak to Clethtinthtiallor Zarjhan about his clan’s acknowledgment.”
Uadjit and Namshita headed down the slope, Uadjit taking hold of the Clethtinthtiallor elder’s arm and leading him back to where they might sit on a tumble of rocks. The two men came striding up the slope toward Dahl.
“You ought to go with her,” Dahl said to Mehen. “I think you and Namshita might get along better than you expect.”
“What says the wind?” the smaller one said. “We have a place to go? Oh, well met.” He nodded to Mehen, Kallan, and Dumuzi.
“This is, um, …” Dahl took another, unnecessary breath. “These are my brothers. Thost and Bodhar. This is Dumuzi, Kallan, and Mehen. Farideh’s father.”
“Oh,” the smaller one said with great significance. “Right. She’s adopted.” He grinned at Mehen. “And she puts a lot of sugar in her tea. Well met, goodman—goodman? Is that how I ought to say it?”
“Say what you like.”
Bodhar continued, greeting Kallan and Dumuzi. Mehen looked the other one over. Thost nodded back. “Well met. Those your horses?”
“Yes,” Mehen said. “All of them.” Uadjit’s chastisement came back to him. “Somni offered some help getting everyone back. You don’t have to walk.”
Thost shrugged. “We walk, then we walk.”
“Been walking a lot since we followed Dahl out of Harrowdale,” Bodhar said. “Besides, now we get to meet this mystery girl he’s so mad about.”
“Gods’ books, Bodhar. Don’t—”
“Hasn’t said a word about you, mind,” Bodhar said to Mehen. “Good or ill, good or ill.”
“Said he loves how much she loves her family,” Thost said. “Counts for some.”
“Right,” Bodhar said. “Forgot about that. So a little good.” He grinned at Mehen.
Dahl looked as if he were hoping a giant would come striding through and crush them all flat. “How far are we from Djerad Thymar?” he asked.
“Maybe two days walking,” Mehen said. “Three with all these folks.” He hesitated. “You want to take my horse and go on ahead with the others, you’ll get there in a day or so.”
Dahl hesitated as if he expected a trick. “Many thanks. The giants can speed things along, if you all are amenable to taking them up on their offer.”
“ ’Tain’t so bad as it seems,” Bodhar assured Mehen. “Not so bad as portals, anyhow.”
Kallan chuckled. “Speed’s handy, but I have to agree. Gives me a two-day headache.” He nodded at Dahl. “You can have my horse, get you both back quicker.”
“Again,” Dahl said, “many thanks.” He cleared his throat, turning to Mehen. “Is she all right?”
“None of us is all right,” Mehen said, and much as he wanted to ride off and leave Dahl with no more than that, he sighed and started to explain what exactly Dahl was insisting on walking into..
• • •
WHAT THE KARSHOJI HELLS? Havilar screamed as she found herself back in that plane of fog and light. It was a dream—it had to be the dream, confusing Brin and making him think things were true when they weren’t. She didn’t have a son. She couldn’t have a son.
You remember the Nine Hells in ways Farideh doesn’t, she realized. Farideh’s years there were a blankness, a hole in her memory—but Havilar had glimpses of devils and darkness and worse. Had they let her wake, at least a little?
She thought of the way her changed body made her feel clumsy and off-balance, her bosom alien and frustrating—and the way Farideh refused the same complaint. The way Farideh complained the dresses she’d borrowed from Havilar gaped at the bust.
If she’d needed to breathe, Havilar wasn’t sure she would have managed. She clutched her braid and wished it were her glaive or her sister or something useful.
Alyona stood, reaching for her. What happened?
Did you know? Havilar asked. About there being a baby?
Alyona blinked at her. Did he find it then?
The “it” Brin had been hunting for Bryseis Kakistos. The “it” Havilar should have known about, but didn’t. He’d found the missing heir. Which meant Bryseis Kakistos might know too. Which meant she might intend to use the baby for something terrible.
Where are you going? Alyona said as Havilar stood and moved for the fold in the fog.
She found the door herself this time, pulled herself through it, out into the fortress, where again she stood beside her own body.