DAHL’S BROTHERS HAULED HIM OFF THE FLOOR BEFORE FARIDEH COULD. His breath came in rapid gasps, his skin clammy, but as he came upright, his eyes found Farideh’s, fearful and fully aware of what he’d done—this wasn’t just rage or madness. All she wanted for a moment was to go with him, to make sure he was all right.
But that wouldn’t solve things, a part of her thought.
“Get Adastreia,” she told Mehen. “Tell her she needs to heal him. Or both of them.”
“A healing won’t work,” Sairché called. Up on her knees, she was peering down at Lorcan and Dahl. “That’s a curse.”
“No.” Lorcan’s skin had a terrible pallor, his veins still carving dark lines across his face. “It’s not … It’s worse. It’s him and it’s worse and … You can’t change him.” He turned to Dahl, a flicker of something devilish persisting in his dark eyes. “Can she? He doesn’t just curse you, they say—he finds how you’ve cursed yourself.”
“Who?” Farideh demanded.
Dahl lunged against his brothers' grip. “Get up, you stlarning bastard!”
“He needs a priest,” Bodhar said again. “It’s a curse that—all right, hrast Dahl, stop it.” Thost yanked hard on Dahl’s arm, pulling him back on his heels and nearly knocking him over. “No one’s saying you don’t have reason to hit him,” Bodhar went on.
“Get him in the other room,” Farideh said.
Dahl looked at her, the rage in his expression melting into something fearful. He turned deliberately to Mehen. “Do you know what he did? He left us trapped in the Underdark. Pulled us to a cave with no exit but a fathomless lake and used his portal to get himself out of there. We only escaped because my grandmother sacrificed herself.”
Mehen gave Farideh a significant look over Dahl’s head. “Sounds like an excellent reason to punch a fellow.”
Farideh couldn’t deny that Dahl probably had lists of reasons to hit Lorcan, even setting aside the death of his grandmother. But no matter how terrible Lorcan was, without him, she didn’t have a portal, she didn’t have access to the Hells, she didn’t have her powers. “Send one of the hatchlings to find a priest,” she told Mehen. “It doesn’t matter who and it doesn’t matter how they know them, just that they can get here fast. Tell them that.” To Dahl she said, more gently, “Let them take you into the other room. I’ll come soon.”
Dahl said nothing, and anxiety curdled her stomach. She pushed it away. One thing at a time. As the others left the room, she turned to Lorcan, still collapsed on the floor, skin still half a shade from a corpse’s.
“Do you want to hear my side of it?” he asked hoarsely.
“Oh this should be good,” Sairché crowed. “The grandmother was an assassin? Hm? An Abyssal plant? The demonic daughter of a murderous cultist sent to hunt the Brimstone Angel?”
“Did you leave him trapped in the Underdark?” Farideh asked.
Lorcan sighed. “I don’t know.”
“I think you do know,” Farideh said. “I think it’s pretty karshoji hard not to know if you left someone trapped in the Underdark.”
“I got him away from the demon lord. I assumed that’s what you would have wanted.” Lorcan said. The usual edge in his voice was dulled, not sharp enough to cover the hurt in it.
Farideh squeezed her hands into fists. “How?”
“Used a teleportation scroll he had. I sent it to the first cavern in range—there wasn’t time for anything else. And then, yes, I got out of there. You saw what happens when I’m alone with him. Why would I want to do that more than once?”
Farideh could imagine it, how easily such a thing could happen, how easily it might seem purposeful. How easily it might be purposeful, and Lorcan might be turning the telling in such a way that he wasn’t at all to blame.
Maybe—if whatever had caused Lorcan to start acting so strange, so fragile, so human had been in play then as well, it was hard to see him thinking quickly enough to do anything of the sort. Lorcan considered her a moment.
“Are you going to tell him?”
“About what?”
He raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t been the chastest while he’s been away.”
Whatever fondness had welled in her for Lorcan dried up. “What were you doing there?” she asked. “Down in the Underdark?”
“Rescuing Sairché,” Lorcan said. “She went to make a deal with Graz’zt.”
“That,” Sairché said, “was Bryseis Kakistos—the moment I saw the demon lord, I told her I wasn’t having it. I blacked out thereafter.”
“Fine,” Lorcan said. “The Brimstone Angel went to make a deal with Graz’zt—all I saw was the sister I have a very strict agreement of protection with in mortal peril. But once there, I found Dahl. You might ask your brightbird what he had going with Bryseis Kakistos and the Dark Prince that they were in the same place at the same time.”
Farideh didn’t move. “Did Graz’zt make some kind of deal with Dahl? Is that why he can’t talk?”
“Does he have a deal?” Lorcan asked. Farideh held her tongue—not an answer. After a moment Lorcan sighed. “Fine, he obviously has a deal. I haven’t looked into it. I don’t care if he has a deal. You can’t possibly think it reasonable to ask me to try and salvage the mess he’s made of your happiness.” He looked over at Sairché. “Did you do it?”
“No,” Sairché said. “I had better things to worry about. But don’t pretend you weren’t trying to bait me into something similar.”
Lorcan turned back to Farideh. “I won’t,” he told her. “I can say with absolute sincerity I would be very happy if Sairché had Dahl caught in some kind of deal.”
None of it fit right, Farideh thought, and if there weren’t ten thousand other more important things to worry about, she would have sat here and turned every word Lorcan spoke until all these half-truths made a story that made sense. Sitting on the bed, Sairché scowled in a way that made Farideh think she felt the same way.
“You didn’t make that deal?” Sairché said. “Lords of the Nine, how did you let that slip you by?”
Lorcan rubbed his forehead. “I’m tired again,” he told Farideh. “Where can I lie down?”
“I’ll help you to Mehen’s room,” Farideh said. She pulled Lorcan up from the floor. “At least you know what you need to do to make it better now.”
The look he gave her was full of such weary sadness, Farideh regretted saying a word. “I don’t know that it’s better,” he said.
“Don’t listen to him,” Sairché said. “That spell essentially knocks what’s devilish from him. He’s full of nonsense.”
Farideh turned to Lorcan, startled by the explanation. He didn’t deny it. This was why he couldn’t give her spells, why he was falling asleep, why he was telling her he loved her. Everything devilish, drained away. For a moment, some part of her was elated.
But no, no. This wasn’t better. This wasn’t Lorcan, to begin with, and if he’d sought out a solution, then it wasn’t what he wanted to be. And this Lorcan couldn’t help her, a mercenary part of her thoughts pointed out. Couldn’t give her the magic she needed, couldn’t negotiate with devils. This Lorcan might love her, but he might also get her killed by the likes of Kulaga.
This Lorcan might love her, but she didn’t want that, she reminded herself.
“Is she right?” Farideh asked, letting him lean on her.
“Near as I can tell?” he said. “Yes.”
“Wait,” Sairché called. “They’ve returned from the giants, I see? What’s the answer?”
“I don’t know,” Farideh said. “I’ve hardly had a chance to talk to them.”
“I thought of something they might consider instead,” Sairché said. “You have that young dragonborn going around talking to a god—presumably the god has minions. Angels, archons, that sort of thing. They could stand against demons, one would presume.”
“I don’t think he has those things,” Farideh said. “Excuse me.”
“You have to do something!” Sairché cried. “It hardly matters if you stop the Brimstone Angel if you get killed in the mix.”
The powers of the Hells boiled up Farideh’s nerves. “It matters if I save Havi.”
“Are you really just going to flit around trying to find a way to stop Bryseis Kakistos when the obvious answer is to kill your sister?”
If she’d still held the powers of a Chosen of Asmodeus, Farideh would have burst into flames in that moment. Instead she stepped from the room without a word and slammed the door, trapping Sairché in her prison. It wasn’t as satisfying as she hoped.
Focus, Farideh told herself. You don’t have time to be distracted. You don’t have time to deal with these momentary things. She ignored Lachs’s and Adastreia’s pointed stares as she helped Lorcan into Mehen’s room.
“You know he’s going to tell you to break the pact,” Lorcan said, grabbing her hand as he settled on the bed. “Dahl. It’s coming. I think he’ll do anything to make certain we’re apart.”
That might be wisest, Farideh thought, but then she considered the portal, the Nine Hells, and Havilar on the other side of the world. Absently, she brushed the hair from his forehead. “You need to sleep. I have things to take care of.”
“Stay,” he said, catching her hand. “I hate this part so much.”
Wise or not, she sat down on the edge of the bed and waited until his breathing slowed, deepened, until he was past the gates of sleep.
Out in the sitting room again, Dahl’s brothers had joined the Brimstone Angels and a Verthisathurgiesh hatchling—a boy called Hencin—was setting down a platter of food with a nervous glance at Farideh. And standing beyond them, quiet and calm as ever, Mira Zawad waited. She nodded at Farideh as their eyes met, a nervous half smile on her lips.
Adastreia looked back over the edge of the couch. “We were just talking about you.”
“Were you?” Farideh looked over at the closed door to her room. “Did they find a priest?”
“Yes,” Hencin said. “A cousin of a friend—well, a friend of a friend, really. You don’t need to tell Matriarch Anala, right?”
Bodhar smiled at Farideh. “Been in there a few breaths. Guess it’ll take a while to fix him up?”
Farideh shook her head. “What happened? He’s … I mean I know he can have a temper sometimes, but he doesn’t act like that—”
“Oh, that’s on account of the demon lord in the Underdark,” Bodhar said. “Did some spell on him.”
“Gretz,” Thost said, arms folded.
“Graz’t?” Farideh asked.
“Graz’zt,” Mira confirmed. “Dark Prince, Lord of Azzagrat. I wouldn’t believe it either if we hadn’t seen it ourselves.” Again that nervous half smile that made Farideh’s tail lash. “His, um, powers affected all of us.”
“Dahl especially,” Bodhar said. “Anyway, he did that before when that devil fellow turned up the first time. Punched him right in the chest.” He blanched. “I don’t mean like a tiefling. I mean … he’s definitely a devil, right? I wouldn’t call you all … that.”
“He’s a half-devil,” Farideh said.
“And … that’s different,” Bodhar said.
“Difference between a half-elf and a story about your great-great-great-grand-mother being a princess of Cormanthyr,” Lachs supplied. “Fiendish blood doesn’t water out, but it doesn’t cling on your brain and steer you around.”
“Not anymore,” Adastreia said.
Mira glanced back at the closed door. “How long do you expect it to take?” she asked Hencin.
The dragonborn’s tongue hammered the roof of his mouth. “I don’t know. I don’t dabble in that sort of thing.”
Mira bit her upper lip, deep in thought. Again, it sent an uneasy twitching through Farideh’s tail. “It sounds like he needs a proper priest,” Farideh said. “Do you think Tam would come?”
Mira hesitated. “He’s rather busy.”
“Dahl’s rather cursed,” Farideh pointed out. “It can’t hurt to ask. Will you?”
Again, Mira bit her lip. “Tell Dahl I’ll be back later on, all right?” She excused herself and left, trailed by Hencin carrying his empty tray.
Farideh found an empty spot on the couch. As much as she didn’t want to face Dahl’s family without him, she wanted answers more. “Do you think Lorcan trapped you in that cave on purpose?”
Bodhar shrugged. “Damned if I know. Just a lot of shouting and madness and then there we were.”
“He knew,” Thost supplied. “Said some things that made it sound that way, anyhow. ‘All that counts is I didn’t break my word to Farideh’—like that.”
Which fit with Dahl’s version and fit with Lorcan’s version fine. And altogether made Farideh wish she’d never let them cross paths, somehow. “I’m sorry,” she said. “About your grandmother.”
Bodhar nodded once. “Many thanks. It was her idea, make no mistake. Dahl was bound to stay behind himself, I wager, and she was having none of it. Feisty old lady.”
“ ’Twouldn’t surprise me she’s still alive down there,” Thost said. “Ordering drow about.”
Lachs cocked his head. “You’ve never met a drow, have you?”
“You never met my granny,” Thost pointed out.
Farideh glanced over at her door again—still shut. As tangled and troubled as everything was—as worse as this new complication had made things—all she wanted to do was go to him, to take a moment and just deal with this small, safe problem and see it resolved. If it could be resolved, she thought. There was every chance that the staff of Azuth would be less a snarl than Dahl would. The others took food from the platters, but she found her appetite lacking.
“Is he very angry?” she asked.
“At you?” Bodhar asked. “Don’t think so. Think he’s worried you’re angry at him. Pretty mad at the devil, though—and not just about the Underdark, you catch my meaning.”
“He shouldn’t worry about that,” Farideh said.
“Yeah, but that’s Dahl,” Bodhar said. He cast a glance at Thost and chuckled. “Knarp hunting.”
Farideh sat down. “What’s a knarp?”
“Nothing,” Thost said, grinning through his beard. “ ’Tweren’t kind.”
“So Dahl’s maybe five, maybe six.” Bodhar said. “Which’d put me and Thost around about seventeen and nineteen. And he’s a serious little cuss. Smart as a whip and stlarning hates being talked to like a little’un. Well, so we play a little joke on him, right? Try to make him crack. We start stealing the laces out of his boots at night, leaving them all tied up in knots in the middle of his toys. Tell him, ‘Oh, that’s a sure sign you’ve got a knarp on you. Better leave it your share of ma’s apple cake to appease it.’
“But Dahl, no, he’s all riled. He decides, to the Abyss with the knarp, he’s going to give it what for. Doesn’t tell a soul, mind, what he’s got planned—not me, not Thost, not anyone.”
“Ma was furious,” Thost said. “Figured it was on a level with letting him go leucrotta hunting all on his own.”
“Oh yeah,” Bodhar said. “All ‘what if there had really been a knarp? What then?’ But that’s getting ahead. So Dahl’s decided he’s doing this. Thost and I slip into his room, middle of the night, expecting a bit more than our share of the cake, and what’s waiting for us? Our mite of a brother, fireplace poker in hand, sitting in front of his boots and his apple cake, and watching the door.”
“Looking fierce as an orc in winter,” Thost said. “For a little’un.”
“You don’t have kids,” Bodhar said, “so maybe you don’t know how unlikely it is for a kiddo of five to be sitting up past deepnight, not giving in and not eating the damned apple cake, because he’s going to have it out with a bogie. Doesn’t happen, but Dahl, he’s determined. Well, he saw us and he knew. All of it. Came flying at us. Threw the poker down, screamed like a banshee and managed to kick me in the shins before Thost threw him over his shoulder. Then we went back downstairs, calmed him down, and shared his apple cake and thought we’d made up.” He started chuckling again. “Then, next night, he stole the laces outta our boots and threw them in the pig pen.”
Thost chuckled. “Da made him dig them out.”
“And Granny said, ‘Serves ’em right for acting like fools. Don’t prod a wasp’s nest and act surprised when it stings.’ ” He said it fondly, as if he missed her sharpness. He smiled at Farideh. “He can get a bit up in his own thoughts and you’d think he’s pretty mild given that. But see, you push too far and he’ll push back. You try and take something important, he’s not going to let you.”
Farideh bristled. “I’m not bootlaces.”
Bodhar wrinkled his nose. “No, see, you’re the apple cake.” He looked to Thost, who only shrugged. “Maybe it doesn’t translate too well if you’re not Dallish.”
But Farideh understood all too well, and it wasn’t a sentiment she wanted. Whether it was supposed to make her feel prized or guilty, the whole notion left a sour taste in her mouth. She filled up a plate with easily grabbed things and excused herself, heading into her room.
The priest was young and silver-scaled, calm in a way that Farideh didn’t believe as he moved his clawed hands over Dahl, a disk of gleaming platinum in one hand. Farideh stood just inside the door, holding the plate, not wanting to disrupt anything. Demon lords, deals with devils—do something, Bahamut, Farideh thought.
The priest clenched his fists shut as the faint echo of a roar in a depthless cavern shivered through the air. “I’m sure it’s only temporary,” he said, growing flustered. “Perhaps it’s … poor timing?”
Mehen sighed, nostrils flaring, and Dahl cut a glance to her she couldn’t decipher. The young priest turned to Mehen. “Perhaps Bahamut would save his blessings for someone … someone more of our sort.”
“Dahl’s as much our sort as a karshoji silver dragon,” Mehen said.
“Platinum,” the young priest corrected. But he knew enough to show himself out.
“What about Dumuzi?” Farideh asked as the door closed. “Can he do anything?”
“Go ask Dumuzi how many prayers to Enlil a curse costs and see how that goes,” Mehen said. “You’d be better off cutting Lorcan loose and not worrying about it any further.”
“I like that plan,” Dahl chimed in, not looking at her.
“I can’t do that.”
“Can’t or won’t?” Mehen asked.
“Fine,” Farideh said. “I won’t do it. We don’t have another way to get a portal, we don’t have anyone else who can keep track of what’s happening in the Nine Hells—”
“Karshoj to the Hells,” Mehen said irritably. “Worry about your sister.”
“I am worried about my sister.”
“And what do we have to show for it?” Mehen said. “Lorcan’s distracting you with this Hells nonsense.”
“No,” Farideh said. “Lorcan is the only source I have of a portal. He’s the only way I could find the other heirs—”
“And what good are they?”
“He’s the only way I found Havi’s son!” Farideh said, raising her voice. “All right? You don’t have to like him—neither of you have to like him, but will you trust for a karshoji heartbeat that maybe I’m doing what’s best this time?”
Whatever triumph she might have found in knocking Mehen off-balance was gone the moment he heard her. He looked as if someone had made all the air in the room vanish, leaving him breathless and startled. “What son?”
Farideh wet her mouth. “That’s what I was about to tell you when you came in. There’s another heir, and Sairché says he’s Havi’s son. That she had a baby while we were trapped in the Nine Hells and Sairché hid him away.”
“Oghma’s bloody—” Dahl swore. He turned to Mehen and continued as if he had always meant to be speaking to Mehen “… papercuts. Mehen.”
Mehen’s gaze didn’t leave Farideh. “Did … did you find him?”
“Yes,” she said. “And then before I could convince his parents to come back here, Bryseis Kakistos showed up and took him.”
Mehen drew back. “You saw Havilar? You saw her and you waited until now to say something?”
“I didn’t exactly get a chance.”
“You make a chance for something like that!” he all but roared.
Farideh started to protest, but then Dahl stood. “Gods’ books! Cut her a little slack—you don’t think I threw the conversation more than a little askew? And you might have missed the fact that she’s got stlarning burns up her neck—if I’m catching any of this, I’m going to say that seeing Havilar didn’t go like you’re imagining it, so maybe you ought to try again.”
Farideh was stunned. Mehen looked as if he couldn’t decide whether to yell at Dahl, to yell at Farideh, to storm out of the room, and to go rescue Havilar himself, and maybe the boy too.
“She looks well enough,” Farideh said, more quietly. She tugged the collar of her armor as if she could hide the marks. “Havi, I mean. I tried to stop … her, but I couldn’t do much. Not without hurting Havi. She knew that.”
“Was Brin with her?” Mehen finally asked.
“No. Just her.” She blew out a breath. “Bryseis Kakistos has a good deal of magic gathered up—tattoos, stored magic, spells that I don’t recognize. And the Chosen powers. Mine, at least. I don’t think she has a pact exactly, which means we can’t count on Asmodeus closing that off to her.” She wet her mouth. “I’m sorry I couldn’t catch her. I wasn’t ready.”
Mehen rubbed a hand over his face. “I should have asked about the burns,” he said after a moment. “Are you all right? What happened?”
“She hit me pretty hard with a spell. Adastreia had some healing spells, and the salve in your room took care of what was left. I don’t think it will scar. But she took him, so trying to stop her by holding onto the Kakistos heirs won’t work. We have to find the staff of Azuth.” And then, because it needed saying, “His name’s Remzi.”
Mehen cursed and cursed and cursed. Farideh stood, unmoving, the enormity of all of this suddenly threatening to overwhelm her. Somehow it was one thing to know all of it, but another to tell the story, to pass that heartache on to someone else. Dahl looked back at her, and wordlessly came to stand beside her, taking her free hand in his. She shut her eyes.
Mehen snapped his teeth once. “I have to go and talk to Uadjit,” he said, sounding grim. “Do not leave again until I’ve come back. Please.”
Farideh shook her head. “I’ll make sure you know.” Mehen scowled—it wasn’t the answer he wanted—but embraced her, forcing Dahl aside. The door closed behind Mehen, sealing Farideh and Dahl in with a silence so foreign and complete, it felt like a tide rising up to swallow them both.
Farideh set the plate down on the dressing table, and clenched her hands to hide the tremor there.
The silence stretched. Too many feelings, too many things she ought to say, she wanted to say, crowded in her head: That he couldn’t hit Lorcan, she needed Lorcan, whatever else he’d done. That she didn’t have time or space for being someone’s “apple cake” while her sister was in danger—and little interest in it otherwise. That she still wasn’t sure she wasn’t angry at him for telling her not to come to Harrowdale, for vanishing, for not explaining what had happened. That she’d noticed how twitchy Mira had been acting and the way he’d looked at her in Lorcan’s scrying pool.
A lump built in her throat. That she was sorry, so sorry, about his grandmother, whether it had been Lorcan’s fault or not. That she knew he was caught in something devilish, something he’d surely been tricked into. That she was beyond glad he was here, so happy she didn’t deserve it. That she’d let Lorcan kiss her and thought about more, so maybe it didn’t matter if she wanted to be anyone’s apple cake anyway.
She swallowed hard, too full of too much to keep the careful control she’d managed. She hadn’t cried since Havilar disappeared—what claimed her thoughts now had no business breaking her resolve.
Dahl came over beside her. A clink, a scratching, and then he slid a piece of foolscap over beside the plate. Are you all right?
“No.” Her tears broke. “Karshoj. Gods, I … karshoj.” And whether he’d been joking when he’d sworn he would never face her father, enough truth lingered in the jest to make her certain. She wiped her eyes. “You faced Clanless Mehen for me. You really love me, don’t you?”
Dahl chuckled and scratched another line. Gods’ books, you never listen.
She laughed, and he wrapped his arms around her and held her near, so they fitted together more perfectly than Farideh could have dared imagine. She couldn’t have said if it was she or he who shifted first, if her hand reached for his cheek before his hand pressed to the middle of her back, drawing her near. But when they kissed, the tide of silence lost its danger, and left this moment, an island of real in a sea of wrong. It was as if they’d never left Suzail, never lost what they’d had in the little tallhouse off the Promenade.
And the door definitely locked.
Dahl pulled back, kissed her jaw, and she heard the beginnings of a word shaped in his exhale. His whole body went rigid. She bit her lip, heart sinking. It wasn’t that he couldn’t talk to her—it was that he wasn’t allowed.
“All right,” she said, catching her breath. “None of that for now.”
He fumbled for the paper. I won’t talk.
Farideh bit back a laugh and kissed him. “You know you can’t promise that.”
I will find a silence ritual?
“Just hold me a moment?” she asked. Dahl rested his forehead against hers, wordlessly stroking her back.
“Everything’s terrible,” she told him. “Except that I have you back.”
He reached for the ink pot once more, left arm still looped around her waist. Mehen told me. I’m so sorry about your sister. I know she
Farideh grabbed his hand, stopped the stylus. “Don’t be sorry. Please don’t be sorry. It’s not permanent yet.” She squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry about your grandmother.”
Dahl pursed his mouth, then squeezed her hand back before writing, He said you were looking for heirs and a staff.
“Right,” she said. “I found the heirs, and then I lost …” Remzi’s terrified face flashed in her thoughts. “The heirs aren’t the choke point anymore. We have to find the staff and we have to find it fast.” And then I have to find a way to stop Bryseis Kakistos, she thought. Without hurting Havilar.
I can help, Dahl wrote.
Farideh set a hand on his chest. “It’s dangerous. Even if we don’t consider … you have a deal with someone, don’t you?”
Dahl’s expression closed. I can’t talk about that.
“And you can’t talk to me,” she said. “I’m guessing it’s someone, something who wants to make sure I don’t have your help? Maybe someone who thinks this is a good way to thwart Asmodeus?”
Dahl looked as if he’d like to hurl the ink pot right into the face of whatever fiend had bound him. He drew a careful line under I can’t talk about that.
“The punishment must be steep,” Farideh said. “I don’t want you getting hurt because we slipped.”
Well, you don’t get to decide that, he wrote. Also, I think I solved your problem on the way here, so don’t run me off so quick.
Farideh frowned. “What?”
The staff of Azuth, he wrote. No one’s seen it since the Spellplague. Asmodeus doesn’t have it—otherwise
“Right—she wouldn’t be looking for it if it were in his hands.”
Dahl scowled at her. You have to let me finish, he scribbled. It’s not fair you can interrupt me but I can’t interrupt you.
Farideh smiled. She took the stylus and wrote under his line, Sorry. Continue?
Dahl chuckled. Not with Asmodeus. Not in the Hells. Not on this plane, because then he would have sent followers after it. Not on any plane he could grab it or an ally of Azuth could grab it.
Farideh gestured for the stylus. Adastreia and Lachs guessed that much. But too many planes. I’m afraid the answer is the Abyss. You?
Grinning, Dahl turned the paper, finding a clear corner. Not the Abyss—Abeir, he wrote. Where would you hide an artifact from a god if not the plane that has no gods? And I think I know someone who might be able to help.
• • •
ILSTAN’S BED WAS heaped high with treasures. At a glance, they were only ordinary things—stones and scrolls and plain little rings. But what the eyes couldn’t see, the Art could unveil. Every object was imbued with magic, and even Ilstan had to admit the collection was an astonishing thing for as few days as he’d spent on it.
Magic is a gift and a blessing and a millstone, the voice of Azuth murmured in his thoughts. What can you do but answer it?… What can you do but embrace what will consume you?…
Ilstan closed his eyes, grieving for the pain in the god’s voice. If I were a more powerful Chosen, he thought. If I were a wiser man. If I were not so weak a vessel.
If you were those things, the voice replied, you would be someone else entirely, and I shouldn’t have Chosen you. Wish to know the unknowable if you must, but I can think of fewer wastes of time and effort so great.
Ilstan’s eyes flew open—all the clarity, all the coherence of the voice of the god of sin. But this was not Asmodeus—not this time. “My lord?” he whispered.
The voice said nothing. Ilstan crossed back over to the pile of magic items, two stones in his hands humming with a force that echoed between them like two matching voices. Linked by magic, they could connect to one another across the vastness of Toril, letting two speakers conduct a sending without needing to cast the spell. He set them reverently on the pile with the rest.
… power has a rhythm, has a pattern, has a flow … a true wizard knows before something becomes uncontrollable … when the pattern changes, when the flow reverses, when the rhythm shatters … a true wizard knows … but most people do not …
Ilstan froze. He’d heard those words before, moments before blue fire rolled over Djerad Thymar. Moments before the other voice, the voice of Asmodeus, told him quite bluntly that he needed to go find Kepeshkmolik Dumuzi and tell him what was happening.
“Is it about to start again?” he whispered.
Silence. Awful silence. Ilstan shut his eyes, reaching deep into himself, searching for the core of his strength, the touch of the Weave, the edges of the fabric of the plane. The magic did not cling and snap the way it had before, but there was a thickness to the air that felt unnatural.
… Unnatural depends on where you stand … A chill ran down Ilstan’s spine. That was not the voice of Azuth, but that was not the careful cadence of Asmodeus. Breathless, frantic … Order is not natural, but it is right … to determine what is out of order and what is in good order … all depends on how you are willing to look at the matter.
Ilstan held perfectly still. First, Azuth speaking clearly, then Asmodeus speaking madly. He knotted his hands together. What did it mean?
A rapping at the door startled him badly enough that he scrambled backward, behind the bed, a spell on his lips and magic in his hands. “Ilstan!” Farideh called through the door. “Ilstan! Can I come in?” A man’s swearing voice came after and Ilstan’s racing heart urged him to burn down the door—she’d turned, she’d changed, there were only enemies here.
No, a part of him said. He saw the shackles lying on the floor, the bindings meant to keep him from casting if he got too mad. She’d undone them, left him to his own devices as he poured the excess magic into object after object. He picked the shackles up, cold and dead.
“Ilstan? I’m coming in.”
The door opened a handspan, and he took another step back, calling spells up into his thoughts. Farideh—seething angel, shining devil—and a man he’d seen before behind her. Gray-eyed, dark-haired … the Ready Sword. The man from the catacombs. The man who he’d nearly sacrificed in his madness, along with all his fellow war wizards. He hugged the shackles to his chest. Two against one, but he had these … these bindings …
Thost!” the Ready Sword shouted. “Thost get in here, please!”
“Please,” Ilstan echoed. “Don’t come too close.”
“It’s all right,” Farideh said, reaching out a hand. “Do you need to cast before we talk?”
He shook his head—he didn’t dare release even a scrap of magic, didn’t dare weaken himself. She watched him warily, creeping into the room. The Ready Sword grabbed hold of her arm, but she shook him off. “Dahl, stop it.”
Magic cannot be stopped … cannot be ended … can only be changed and channeled and divided … or strengthened …
A mountain of a man, with a thick brown beard and the stolen eyes of the Ready Sword filled the door frame. He glanced around the room. “Problem?”
“Tell her not to do this,” the Ready Sword said rapidly. “Ask her what the stlarning Hells is he doing here? Ask her if she’s lost her godsbedamned mind!”
“Well I’m not saying that,” the Mountain answered.
Farideh eased closer. “Ilstan, give me your hand. It’s getting too strong again and we need your help.”
A wizard forgets it is not always about strength … it is about control … it is about discipline … Ilstan started muttering an incantation, recognizing the words only after they were spoken—fire. Fire: enough to melt the very Hells—
“I think we can find the staff of Azuth,” she said. “I need your help.”
Abruptly the voices in Ilstan’s head fell silent and the spell on his lips died. She reached out her hand again, and this time Ilstan grabbed it as a drowning man grabs a rope. All at once the Weave seemed to tighten, sharpen all around him, magic pouring through him and through her. The veins of her arms suffused with shadow, the magic of the Nine Hells tainting her. Control, Ilstan reminded himself. The stream of magic tightened, eased. Farideh blinked, pointed two fingers at the ink pot on his desk. “Assulam!”
It exploded so completely that the ink evaporated, the glass vaporizing into a burst of colored lights that filled the room and dazzled even Ilstan’s eyes, as if they were all drowning in rainbows. When it faded, he looked down at his hands.
You are still here, he thought. You are still whole.
You are still needed, a wispy voice shimmered in his thoughts.
Panting, wild-eyed, Farideh straightened. The dark streaks of her veins faded back into her skin. “All right,” she said, sounding manic, frantic. “All right. All right.” She turned back to the two men—the Mountain and the Ready Sword.
Thost, Ilstan thought. And Dahl.
Thost had run back out of the doorway and only now peered around the frame, while Dahl had flattened himself against the wall, out of the spell’s reach. Farideh’s cheeks flushed. “Sorry,” she said. “I forgot the last time you saw him was in the tunnels. It’s better now, if we plan ahead. It helps him stay sane—that’s what … that’s why I …” She trailed away, flushing deeper, and Ilstan recalled, as if remembering an old dream, the surge of missiles that had burst out of her hands in the tunnels. The missile striking Dahl.
Dahl looked as if he would have liked to strangle Ilstan. “Thost, will you tell her she needs to warn us next time?”
“I’m not telling her a damned thing,” Thost said, sounding stunned. “Certainly not suggesting a next time.”
Farideh scowled. “I know you have to do that, but it’s really annoying. I’m sorry. I’ll warn you.”
“I’m sorry as well,” Ilstan called. “You haven’t fared well under my situation, and I regret it.”
“You tried to kill me,” Dahl corrected.
“I did,” Ilstan agreed. “I don’t plan to do it again.”
Farideh turned back to Ilstan. “I had a question to ask you: Where can we find a portal to Abeir?”
Ilstan shook his head. “I don’t know that you can. Others have tried. The planes slip and break. They are not meant to touch.”
“But if someone did?” she asked. “If you can’t make one just anywhere, where would you look? How would you do it?”
Ilstan frowned at her. “As I said, you would not.”
“Plaguelands,” a voice said. Behind Thost, another tiefling woman stood, slight and silvery and soulless. Not Havilar, not the Knight of the Devil, but a Masked Lady, a Dark Star. Ilstan blinked, but she remained. “Where the Spellplague lingers,” she said, “wouldn’t that imply the planes are thinned?”
“Perhaps,” Ilstan said slowly. “But all indications are the plague pockets are receding. And what remains is too dangerous to venture into. Besides, the best minds have found neither form nor function in their placement—that suggests there is no connection, as the planes force no pattern.”
“Or,” the woman said, “you are too small to see the pattern.”
“Dahl thinks he knows someone who might know if the staff exists in Abeir,” Farideh explained. “I think I might know where the person who took it there was last seen. If we find it …” She wet her mouth. “Well, I think we’re going to need a lot of help and that you should come.”
A wizard is often alone, and so it must be that a wizard seeks allies in the strongest of his peers … for a time at least …
“This is what I was Chosen for,” Ilstan said simply.