TAM ZAWAD STARED AT THE LIFELESS BODY OF NANNA-SIN AS IF IT MIGHT spell doom or salvation, a riddle that wound itself around his faith. The god lay in repose, the vestiges of some unearthly vitality murmuring through the stone around him. Dumuzi watched the priest for any sign of whether he ought to be afraid or awestruck or at ease.
Mira kneeled beside the sunken sarcophagus, studying the dead god with a detachment that made clear to Dumuzi the difference between serving a god and simply existing alongside them. She reached her tapered fingers toward Nanna-Sin’s dusty profile.
“Don’t touch him!” her father cried. Beyond the door, a pair of Kepeshkmolik guards—Uadjit’s agemates, wily and well-experienced—looked in, ready for trouble.
“Apologies, Aunties,” Dumuzi said in Draconic. “Everything’s fine.”
“I doubt he minds,” Mira said, all mildness.
Tam rubbed a hand over his face, stroking his beard. Dumuzi had told him the ancestor story of Thymara and the Moon’s Champion on the way down to the tomb. Clearly, Tam hadn’t thought to take it literally until now. He muttered a curse under his breath, then stared down at Nanna-Sin again, his face a mask.
“What do you know about the Untheran gods?” he said.
Dumuzi racked his brain, pulling up the names Enlil had spoken, but Mira answered first. “Untheran texts claim they came through from another world, during the height of the Imaskar Empire. Imaskar had kidnapped the Untherans from their kingdom in that other world and blocked the gods from reaching here and rescuing them. Most all of them died in the Orcgate Wars. They say there used to be gods’ tombs all over this country before the Spellplague.”
“And Djerad Thymar began as a ruined god’s tomb?” Tam asked, looking up at Dumuzi.
“Parts,” Dumuzi answered. “The rest was quarried from the Smoking Mountains.”
“But you kept … him.”
Dumuzi felt his nostrils flare. “What else would we have done? Toss his corpse in the river? We’re not animals.” He considered Nanna-Sin. The god’s placid expression seemed to change each time he looked at him—now gently amused, now mournful, now on the brink of fury. “Why does he have a corpse? I thought gods … I mean, Enlil doesn’t have a form. But Gilgeam does?”
“It’s an avatar,” Mira said. “The Untheran gods came into this world by …” She cast a glance at her father. “Well, they say they came into the world by projecting a part of their power into a physical body. It’s like a suit, a vessel for the god to walk around in.”
“So they could be present,” Dumuzi said, “the way the people needed.”
Mira shrugged. “As you like. They say the Untheran gods led their people in revolt and brought them over the Sea of Fallen Stars. Then they ruled that nation like mortal kings and queens might. I guess if you were starting from almost nothing, it would be needful. Or they could have just let people figure themselves out,” she added dryly.
Dumuzi frowned at Nanna-Sin and wondered if Enlil had taken such a form, if he meant to again. But as he wondered, he felt his thoughts slip away and—
Bearded and broad-shouldered, the Ruler of Heaven regards his people from the steps of the ziggurat. Unthalass spreads out, robust and triumphant. Before him stand the others, his children, his comrades. Fierce and furious Inanna. Burning Girru, Shining Utu, Shadowed Nergal. Nanna-Sin, gleaming silver in the noonday light—even the moon watches Enlil’s departure. Proud Gilgeam with the crown of kingship on his brow. Enlil looks out over Unthalass, over his people, over his children. He raises his arms to the sky and in that moment, he is both ended and begun—body dissipating over Abeir-Toril like a vaporous cloud, being surging into a greater self, a greater power—
Dumuzi suddenly wheezed air, feeling his flesh around him as though someone had squeezed it around his breath like damp clay. The flutter of Nanna-Sin’s pulse felt like a tambourine, slammed against his chest—crash crash crash.
Tam stood directly in front of him, one hand gripping him by the shoulder. Dumuzi dropped his gaze from the human’s alarmed, dark eyes.
“Apologies,” he said. “That happens sometimes.”
“A Chosen dragonborn,” Tam mused. “Watching Gods. You’re all right?”
Dumuzi nodded. He thanked Enlil, blew a puff of air into his cupped palm, ignoring Tam’s puzzled expression. “I saw … I saw Enlil’s avatar destroy itself. Why is Nanna-Sin’s still here if he’s dead?”
Tam looked back at Mira, who shrugged. “The manifestations persist, I suppose, if they’re killed.” She nodded down at the still body. “I mean, clearly.”
“Do you have any idea why Gilgeam would want him?” Tam asked.
Mira’s expression shifted into utter stillness. “He felt very strongly that everything from the sea to the mountains was his. Maybe it’s pride. Maybe he thinks he can motivate the Untherans with their history.”
“How likely?” Tam asked.
She made a face. “Not very. The lost god-tomb is enough, or even just the land. He’s got them well and wound against anybody not human, besides.” She chewed her upper lip, deep in thought. “He’s curious about magic,” she said. “He’s got Dahl’s ritual book. Maybe he’s got a mind to grind up the body and make it into components.”
No!—the voice boomed so sudden, so fierce and frantic in Dumuzi’s thoughts that he clapped a hand to the side of his head. A wave of coolness, of comfort came after it, washing over him in time to Nanna-Sin’s pulse. Still a little mortal, Dumuzi thought, and he was glad.
Tam and Mira were staring again. “That would be very … shocking,” he decided on. “Even for Gilgeam.”
Mira raised an eyebrow. “That presumes he’s the same Gilgeam.” She looked up at her father. “I was stuck in a tent with him—I saw nothing that proved he was anything but a man with a little magic.”
“No magic in Abeir,” Tam pointed out.
“No gods either,” Mira returned.
“Oh,” Dumuzi said. Nanna-Sin’s expression seemed to radiate knowing, as if the god were a little smug even beyond the grave. “He’s an avatar,” Dumuzi said. “A manifestation. Just like before.”
“Maybe,” Mira allowed. “He’s not a very powerful one.”
He didn’t need to be powerful, Dumuzi thought. Not at first. He only needed to make it through, to catch the ears of his people, to gain power bit by bit—maybe by seizing it from the genasi, by demanding the artifacts of the Dawn Titans. But in Toril, the problem of power had other solutions. Maybe Gilgeam was only a Chosen, maybe he was an avatar, maybe by now he was a demigod or a god or some other thing Dumuzi didn’t know the name of—whatever he was, Dumuzi was sure he knew how Gilgeam meant to become more powerful.
“He wants what’s keeping Nanna-Sin here,” Dumuzi said. “He wants the last spark of his divinity for himself.”
• • •
THE FIRST ARROW flew out of the woods when they came into sight of Arush Vayem’s high wooden wall, burying itself harmlessly in the calf-deep snow, two steps in front of Farideh.
“Ambush!” Dahl shouted. All around Farideh, swords left their scabbards, bodies shifted to safer positions.
“Patrol!” Farideh corrected. The shadow-smoke that had been curling, thicker and thicker off her arms, pulled in, filling her hands with fire—not what she needed. Another handful of arrows struck the ground around them, the trees beyond.
“Ilstan?” she said, her lungs struggling with the thin air. “I need the shield.”
The wizard set his hand on her shoulder. Fighting all her instincts, Farideh shut her eyes as the surge of magic went through her, the sudden connection to the Weave alongside the Nine Hells. She found the vein of power that triggered the spell she wanted.
“Yuettviexcudot,” Ilstan said.
“Don’t move,” she said to Dahl and the others. “Yuettviexcudot.”
The strange syllables wove the magic streaming out of her together, knitting a wall of invisible power that briefly glinted in the crisp light before snapping tight across the edge of the path nearest the patrol. Another volley of arrows struck the shield, splintering apart against the barrier.
Ilstan’s hand left her shoulder, and he studied the shield spell. “Apt,” he pronounced. “One assumes you will become faster with practice.”
Farideh shook her arms out, feeling as if they were suddenly made of dry wood, stiff and too light. The spell was one of a handful that Ilstan and she had discovered she suddenly could access. They’d practiced along the way, giving Ilstan more and more release from Azuth’s madness.
“I would remark on the fairness of your gaining such magic without the attendant study,” Ilstan had said, rather dryly and quite sanely, “but under the circumstances, I suspect you have sacrificed the equivalent.”
On the path to Arush Vayem, cheeks aching with the cold, Farideh approached the edge of her shield. “Who’s out there?” she shouted. “Which of you is leading the patrol?”
The dark shape of a bundled body peered around the trunk of a fir tree. “Turn around. There’s nothing for you here.”
Farideh hesitated. Eight years on, there was no telling if the story of her exile would have faded or become embellished. “I used to live here,” she called back. “We don’t mean any harm.”
“Just keep walking,” Lorcan said, pulling his heavy cloak closer. “You don’t need to make friends.”
“No,” she said. “I need someone to open the gate.” Another two people peered out, bows ready, arrows nocked. Farideh squinted at the dragonborn-shaped one. “Zevar? Is that you?”
“Who wants to know?” yelled a voice that was unmistakably the shy and surly dragonborn smith’s.
Farideh hesitated, trying to calculate how the years might have diminished or embellished the story of the burned-down barn. Trying to decide if he’d remember her nearly taking his foot off when she’d been sent on patrol like this.
If Mehen were here, she thought, he would know what to say. He wouldn’t worry about whether Zevar remembered him fondly.
She didn’t relish returning to Arush Vayem without him.
“It’s Farideh,” she called back. “Clanless Mehen’s daughter. I need to get into the village.”
“Farideh?” Zevar stepped out from behind the fir, but he didn’t lower his bow. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Why’re you bringing a little army?”
“No, they’re friends,” she called back. More or less, she added to herself. “Zevar, I need to get into the village.”
“Seem to recall you and your sister were plenty good at knocking down walls. Turn around.”
She didn’t expect the chill in his voice to hurt—she’d expected it, after all. But her chest squeezed tight around the knowledge that these people, this world that had been everything she’d known, had cast her aside completely and never looked back. Arush Vayem truly had no love at all for her.
“How many in a patrol?” Adastreia asked, loud enough that Zevar and the others surely heard.
“Four to eight.”
Adastreia spread her fingers, filling up her hands with shimmering violet lights. “Against seven? I’ll take those odds.”
“Put it out,” Farideh said. Whatever grief she felt, she wasn’t going to let it be turned against innocent people.
“You want me to talk to him?” Bodhar asked quietly.
Farideh turned, surprised, but he only shrugged affably. “I’m pretty good at talking to folks. I could help.”
“Hold off,” Dahl said to him. This is … It’s not like Harrowdale.” He hesitated, his gray eyes finding hers. “They don’t want to trust us. They don’t have a reason to trust us.”
“We call that ‘being enemies,’ ” Adastreia said acidly. “I can hit the dragonborn from here.”
“The shield is going to fail in another few songs,” Ilstan noted. “We should come to an agreement.”
“Darling,” Lorcan said. “You don’t owe them.”
She turned back to Zevar, to the unknown guards still covered by the trees. It wasn’t about owing someone—if anything, it was what she owed herself. Killing them would be faster, but she’d have to live with that forever.
“Maybe we can bargain,” she said. “Maybe … Maybe they’ll take a bribe? Or a hostage?”
A dark shadow swooped through the crisp light. Farideh ducked, twisting to get the rod pointing up toward the winged shape. She heard Zevar and the others hit the snow, tracking the creature. It crashed through the coldbrittled branches, catching on a low bough and swinging like a hanging sack from it. As it dropped, a rider leaped from it, pulling out a massive sword as they landed. Three of the patrol shifted out of their cover, aiming their arrows at this intruder.
“Halt!” Zevar shouted.
“Karshoj, Zevar,” Clanless Mehen bellowed, and Farideh’s heart leaped. “Half your guards have their backs bare now, and I’m not the one casting godsdamned ranged spells. Stand down before you pothachis shoot your own karshoji backsides.”
Zevar went stiff as a post. “Mehen?” He seemed to look up, to register the giant bat hanging from the tree. “You … Did you steal that?”
“The new Vanquisher granted it to me,” Mehen said. “I hope you’re not giving my daughter trouble.”
Zevar shook his head. “She can’t come in. You know she can’t.” His whispered voice carried across the still, snowy forest. Mehen glanced over at Farideh, and for a moment, she expected him to agree, to insist she was coming back to Djerad Thymar.
But then he turned to Zevar. “Fair sure she can. She’s gotten a lot more powerful than when you saw her last, and besides, we’ve got important business in the village. So you may not like us visiting, but we certainly can.” He smiled, showing all his teeth. “Ask them to open the gates.”
“Criella won’t like it.”
“Then we’ll take it up with Criella. Go get her.”
Zevar hesitated a moment more before taking three of the guards—two more dragonborn Farideh didn’t recognize, and a human girl who looked a good deal like she was related to the dairyman, Oster. The sliver of familiarity stirred up more worry in her.
Mehen came crunching through the unbroken snow and half-dead undergrowth. Farideh didn’t realize she was braced for another argument until her father caught her up in a fierce embrace. Didn’t realize how afraid and alone she’d felt until she hugged him back.
“You have a plan,” he said. “We’re going to make it work. I’m sorry I didn’t trust you.”
“It’s all right,” she said. “We’ll … we’ll figure it out. I promise I’m not forgetting Havi.”
“Of course you’re not.” He released her, and though he looked drawn and worried, she knew he was on her side. “We need to do this part quickly, though,” he said. “Kallan needs that damned bat back. Come on.”
Arush Vayem. The village on no one’s maps. A refuge. A place of exile. A hiding place for folks who wanted a moment of peace, who could guarantee peace for their neighbors. Every step toward it felt more and more familiar. Every step made panic race a little nearer around her heart.
Farideh had asked Mehen once why he had settled in the mountain village, before she knew anything about why he’d left Djerad Thymar—anything apart from that he had left Djerad Thymar. He’d hesitated, the truth filling up his thoughts. “Because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have found you girls,” he’d said.
The palisade gates parted, revealing the little snow-swept village tucked against the rocky mountainside. Because you can hide from things here, she thought. Because you can hide from life itself. Because no one will ask questions, so long as you keep to yourself.
Dahl’s hand found hers. “Gods’ books,” he said to no one in particular. “It’s like the wizard’s finest come to life.” He squeezed her hand tight. “I have to imagine … someone coming back here, after all that, I have to imagine it would be difficult.”
She squeezed his hand back, trying to press down the fear, the grief, the odd longing for what she’d lost that winter day eight years before. The gladness that she didn’t have to stay here. She glanced over at Lorcan, carefully staying to the back of the group. Carefully not watching her and Dahl.
A group of villagers came hurrying toward them, chasing after Zevar. Farideh came to stand beside Mehen, ignoring the curl of dread in her stomach. One of these people knows something, she reminded herself. One of these people has the key to saving Havilar.
She recognized Criella first, the broad bumps of her polled horns giving her a familiar shape. Farideh drew a breath to steady herself. She very pointedly didn’t look at Lorcan. His wings were pressed down beneath a heavy cloak, but there was no being certain that no one would remember him.
Criella stopped, so far from Farideh that their outstretched fingers couldn’t have touched. Three more villagers stopped beside her—Pyador the dwarf, a dragonborn she didn’t recognize with empty piercings along her brow ridges, and—to her surprise—Iannis, the dairyman’s son, grown thicker and starting to gray. She couldn’t look at him.
“What are you doing here?” Criella demanded. “I think we made things quite clear before—you’re not welcome back.” She searched the crowd behind Farideh and Mehen, as if she were unimpressed. Farideh wondered if Zevar had told her there was an army.
“Mistress Criella,” Farideh said, “you look well.”
“Don’t be smart,” Criella snapped. “Why are you here?”
“We’re looking for something,” Mehen said.
“Anything that was yours was destroyed when she took on that unspeakable magic.” Criella searched the lot of them again, lingering on Lorcan, as if she could see through his cloak, and Adastreia, as if she might too be a devil in disguise.
“It’s not ours,” Farideh said. “But I don’t think you want it. Someone hid something here in the village, a long time ago. Something … well, let’s say the sort of people who want it aren’t the sort of people you want in Arush Vayem.”
Criella hesitated. “We’d know if there were something like that here.”
“Maybe,” Farideh said. “Did you ever know a man called Caisys?”
A strangely blank expression crossed Criella’s face—quick as a gasp, but there was no denying it, any more than Farideh could deny the suspicious look that replaced it. “I most certainly don’t.”
Ilstan stepped up behind Farideh and cleared his throat. “Your pardon,” he said. “But I took the liberty of attempting to detect some hint of the magic that would be required to hide such a portal or the item itself.”
“What did you find?” Farideh asked.
He shook his head. “The magic here is … very tangled. The spell bounces around like a voice in a canyon. It would not surprise me if that is exactly what we’re searching for, but, too, it suggests it won’t be easy to pin down.” He looked up at Criella. “Goodwoman, I suggest you give us leave to search. You have already been living too long in danger’s shadow.”
“Don’t see how that’s the case,” Pyador said. “Garago would have said something.”
Iannis scoffed. Criella glared at him. “Come now, Mistress Criella,” he said. “You know Garago isn’t in his right mind. Might be a little wisdom in letting them look around.”
“He’s come from Djerad Thymar,” Zevar pointed out, nodding at Mehen. “Says he’s cozy with the new Vanquisher.”
“Zevar, I’ve got a thousand better things to do than spy on clanless wanderers for their elders. Do what you’re doing, I don’t care.” He leveled a glare at Criella. “I haven’t heard a complaint that holds water yet.”
She scowled at him. “What exactly are you looking for?”
“A portal,” Ilstan said.
“And … some sort of observation spell,” Farideh said. If Caisys had left them there, if he didn’t know anyone in the village, then he would surely have had some way to check up on them. “Or someone who remembers the person that would have used them.”
But she thought of the moment of blankness in Criella’s features—what if Caisys had come and gone and made sure no one remembered when or why or where he’d gone next?
Criella kept her eyes on Mehen. “Fine. But you pester folks, and we’ll turn you right out again.” She left as swiftly as she came, the others trailing away after her, no more eager to speak to strangers than Criella had been.
“There are spells to make them speak,” Ilstan noted. “Should we need them.”
“No,” Farideh said. “We just look for now.”
“We’d have to break down every one of these hovels just to find out if any cranny might contain a spell,” Lorcan said. “You should listen to the war wizard.”
“Look,” Farideh said again. “And please don’t draw attention to yourself.”
“Divide up,” Mehen said. “Three casters, three groups.”
“I have to take Lorcan,” Farideh said. The spell wouldn’t stretch the length of the village. Dahl’s hand closed more tightly around hers and the guilt of her dream flooded her. “And Dahl.”
Mehen’s nostrils flared as if he were trying hard not to say what he thought about that. “I’ll take Ilstan. You two”—he pointed at Thost and Bodhar—“keep her out of trouble.”
“I have no interest in trouble, thank you,” Adastreia said.
“Then enjoy the tour of your daughters’ first home,” Mehen said. “Come on, War Wizard.” He and Ilstan headed up the center of the village.
“I’m fairly sure I can guess what’s here,” Adastreia said. “Which way should we start?”
Farideh sighed. “The staff in Abeir is in a cave, so maybe head toward the mountain slope?”
“And where shall we begin?” Lorcan asked as Adastreia, Thost, and Bodhar headed off.
“If you think this Caisys fellow hid the staff,” Dahl said to Lorcan, “and he’s the one who brought Fari and Havilar here, maybe the key came with them. We should look where the house was.”
It was as good a place to start as any, even if the thought made Farideh’s heart drop like a stone. They made their way through the village, under the dark stares of Arush Vayem’s inhabitants.
The old stone house hadn’t been cleared. Where Farideh had taken the pact, the ground was leveled, surrounded by a ring of stone rubble. At its edge, the building remained almost intact. The walls of Mehen’s bedroom stood, crumbling from the lack of care or a roof, and you could see how high the outside walls had reached. One side of the door frame remained and some of the timbers. The hearthstone, but no chimney.
Who could blame you? Lorcan had said. Who wants to be held responsible for something they can’t control? Turned away because of something their foremothers and forefathers did to gain a little power?
Farideh let go of Dahl’s hand, picked her way through what had been the door. Walked over the bare snowy floor, around the charred remains of the heavy wooden post that had held up the roof near there. A twisted branch of iron hung at eye level, the hook she’d hung her cloak on.
What do you know about my foremothers and forefathers? she’d said stupidly, so stupidly. Maybe it was power that made them cross with devils, or maybe they didn’t have much choice. Maybe it was for some … greater good. Maybe it was love. He’d laughed at that. He’d known better.
She found her way to the spot she’d stood on that day, beside the memory of a bookshelf, the hollow of a missing hearth. She looked at the spot where Havilar had bound Lorcan beneath their lofted bedroom, now just rubble blanketed by snow.
She remembered how he’d smiled. How she’d blushed. How he’d said: Of course. All those mortal women swooning over gallant pit fiends. All those golden-hearted succubi blushing as men kiss their burning hands. My darling, let me tell you a secret: devils don’t love.
It’s not why I said yes, she told herself, because there was no one else to say it to. Not because she blushed when he smiled or because she knew somehow she’d love him, that he’d break her heart, that he’d say he loved her back. She imagined a life where she hadn’t taken the pact, where the stone barn still stood, where Havilar chafed and tried to be happy hunting dire rats, where all Mehen had were surly patrols to correct. Where she looked into the gray emptiness of her future and tried to believe that something good would come of it. She shut her eyes.
A moment later someone put their arms around her, pulled her close. She rested her head against the hollow of Dahl’s neck.
“Someone ought to tell her we don’t have to look here,” he said, a little loudly. “Someone ought to say we can let Adastreia and my brothers pick through this.”
“No. I can do this.” As much as Farideh wanted to hide from the past, as much as she wanted to grieve once more what she’d lost, they needed the staff. They needed an answer. But she stayed a moment where she was, letting Dahl stroke her back and clinging to him like a gale was going to tear her away.
Lorcan was watching when she let go, and her heart flipped.
There was surprisingly little left in the rubble—nails, melted and twisted by the burst of flames; a spoon, bent and blackened; a half-rotted blanket in Mehen’s room. The villagers had scavenged what they could, no doubt. It was too far from anywhere else to let things go to waste. Farideh turned stones until her hands were cold and stiff and streaked by the ashy dirt. Nothing magical stirred.
“There’s nothing here,” Lorcan said, as if he wanted more than anything for it to be true. Farideh put her mittens back on and turned to him and Dahl.
“The wizard,” Dahl said. “She’s mentioned a wizard who taught her magic. If someone left an active spell in place, he’s probably the one who would have noticed it. Maybe,” he added pointedly, “you should ask her where he is.”
Lorcan scowled at him. “Darling, where’s the wizard?”
“Eight years ago he lived on the other side of the village, on the slope before the cliffside. I don’t know if he’d have noticed anyone coming or going or even placing a spell. He was a little mad when I was a girl.”
“Even madmen can sniff out a spell,” Lorcan said, striding toward the farther wall of the village, far enough ahead to stretch the edges of the spell. She blew out a breath, as if the tumult of memories could be exhaled in a cloud on the chilly air. She squeezed Dahl’s hand. “Come on.”
Farideh recalled the last time she’d seen Garago. She’d coaxed a book out of him, a history of the genasi in the south, even though he insisted she wouldn’t like it, wouldn’t understand it, shouldn’t waste her time on war stories when Mehen filled her ears with more than enough of that—besides, the book was nothing he could replace. She’d convinced him anyway … and then the book had been destroyed in the fire that taking her pact had ignited.
Farideh curled guiltily into herself, cloak tight around her. Maybe she could ignore the stares and whispers of her former neighbors, but Garago had been kind to her. She started thinking of ways she might replace the book.
Dahl returned the scowl of an old man it took Farideh a heartbeat to recognize as Iannis’s father, Oster. She squeezed his hand again. If Havilar couldn’t be with her, if she had to walk through Arush Vayem without Mehen, at least she had Dahl beside her. She found herself hoping Garago liked him. She found herself hoping Garago was sane enough to understand who he was—who she was.
He wasn’t always: Garago had lived in the village as long as anyone could remember, and as long as anyone could remember, he’d drifted in and out of madness. Some said he’d been spellstruck. Some said he’d been cursed. Sometimes he was the wisest person in the village, sometimes he blew out his own walls slinging spells at ghosts, and sometimes he vanished for months at a time.
At least, that’s what people said. Farideh never remembered him leaving.
Twenty-six years ago, she thought, would he have been well enough times to notice an active spell? Would he have noticed when Caisys came to the gates?
Would he have helped him?
Dahl tugged her hand and she realized she’d slowed down. The ramshackle stone cottage, its walls patched and repatched with year after year of new stone, waited only a bowshot away. Smoke curled from its chimney. Garago was at home.
If there had been a spell in place, she thought, then Garago would have said so—dispelled it or declared it. The people of Arush Vayem liked their privacy, their peace. If someone were watching them, they would want to know—Garago included—and if he’d known and said nothing and they’d found out? Any spell to observe them would have had to have been in place for all seventeen years she and Havilar had lived in Arush Vayem—if it had been broken, then Caisys would have come to find them.
So perhaps there had never been a spell.
If there hadn’t ever been a spell, then either Caisys was nothing like they’d been told—
“Oh gods,” she breathed, stopping in her tracks. “Lorcan!”
The cambion stopped and looked back at her, a cold wind threatening to tear aside the cloak that hid his wings. She ran toward him, past him, dragging Dahl along. “He didn’t leave,” she said as she passed.
“What? Who?” She looked back at Lorcan as she reached the door, saw the shock that overtook his features. “No.”
Farideh paused, about to knock. “I have to,” she called back. Lorcan said nothing—he didn’t even have the chance to flee. You can’t run from this, she thought, and rapped on the door anyway.
The door opened a sharp foot, revealing the face of an old man with a beard that came nearly to his waist, all steel gray. His black eyes stared at Farideh a moment, wild as a creature in the brush, then a slow smile split his beard and he straightened. “Ah. Where’ve you been? Where’s my Calimshan book?”
“Well met,” Farideh said, her breath clouding on the air, “Caisys.”
IN THE DEAD of night, Brin left Remzi sleeping, tucked against Zoonie’s side. The hellhound lifted her muzzled head as his makeshift lockpicks clanked against the tumbler of the ancient bolt. Zoonie whined and scratched at the floor with one paw.
“Shush,” Brin said. “Lie down and don’t burn him. Good girl.” Zoonie eyed him mistrustfully, but laid her head against the boy’s shoulder as Brin closed the door and relocked it from the outside, secure in the knowledge that if anyone short of Bryseis Kakistos returned—and maybe even then—Zoonie would defend the little boy.
The image of her tearing Nalam’s hand off, blood sizzling in her burning jaws—Brin pushed it aside. Havilar would be furious that the warlock was corrupting her dog, and that alone would chasten Zoonie. He held tight to that thought.
Four days had passed and Bryseis Kakistos had not returned to take the boy, but Brin had come no closer to finding a way out. He’d risked another sending, this one to Waterdeep and the Harpers there, requesting assistance. But, the reply came, Master Tam Zawad wasn’t in Waterdeep. He’d been called away in an emergency. They’d search for agents in Brin’s vicinity, but so far into the mountains and so far from the trade roads, they couldn’t promise aid would be quick in coming.
You’re on your own, the unspoken message.
Which didn’t leave Brin many options for allies.
No one had told the jewel-studded skeletons he wasn’t supposed to be walking around. He questioned two, their charred arms pointing the way through the fortress, until he found Phrenike in a high windowless tower, surrounded by the makings of spells but making use of none of them. Instead she was watching a pair of genasi fight in an arena, reflected in a scrying mirror. As Brin entered, she made the barest of turns, hardly acknowledging him beyond the shift of her violet eyes.
“Well met, saer,” Brin said.
“Lordling.” She returned to her spying. “Weren’t you supposed to be locked up?”
“Doesn’t seem so.”
“Hm. Have you grown bored with your little … object then?”
“Not at all,” Brin said. “I came to thank you. Obviously, I’d caught myself on a bit of a snag.”
“And you are ever so glad, surely, that Bryseis knows about the child.” She waved a skeletal hand over the mirror, banishing the fighting genasi, turning to him at last. “Why are you here?”
Brin made himself consider her for a long moment, reminding himself of the three Hellish armies and Remzi’s worried face, and not the feeling of his bones freezing under Phrenike’s touch. “Well, I’ve been down in the dungeons and I had a question for you,” he said. “Where’s your heir?”
Phrenike waved her hand dismissively. “She’ll find one soon enough. They always seem to be underfoot.”
Brin nodded to himself. “I mean, she has a perfectly good one right here. Do you think she’ll bother?”
“Me?” Phrenike said. “You assume Bryseis will run out of uses for me.”
Brin shrugged. “You said it yourself. ‘Bryseis has a way of trusting others without trusting them at all.’ You find that staff—or worse, she does—and suddenly, you’re no longer useful to her, and she’ll have the most powerful heir of your bloodline around.”
“I think you should be worrying about your own future.”
“She needs a father for her next vessel,” Brin pointed out, “and if you’re intending to apply to be her nursemaid, I have to tell you, your references are wanting.”
The lich was all but impossible to read, spare as her face was, but the silence that hung in the air revealed a sliver of doubt. “You say that as if she’ll have only mortal concerns once this is over. She’ll have to relearn a great deal if she expects to start anew. It can’t all be tattoos and scrolls and charms. She’ll need mentors.”
Brin gave the lich a piteous look. “My children could be taught by the Royal Magician of Cormyr himself, if I wished it. So what purpose do you serve, if you’re not meant for the ritual?”
For a long moment Phrenike said nothing, and Brin began to worry he’d badly miscalculated. A game of wits with a lich was a poor plan, even if the lich seemed to be lazy, as did Phrenike. Abruptly, she spread her hands, tracing the lines of some unseen magic and muttering an incantation that seemed to crawl over Brin’s very skin. The air shifted, his ears popped as it did.
“What—” he started, but Phrenike brought a finger to her thin lips.
“Shhh … Wait.”
Brin’s pulse thudded in his ears—one, two, three, four. At the count of twelve, the air shifted again, a feeling like something ineffable had split like an overstuffed sack of grain. Three devils spilled out, into the room—little spiky things, bigger than imps and carrying tridents. Each wore a cloak of furs, edged with frost.
The largest of them let out a triumphant-sounding cry. The other two lunged—one at Brin, one at Phrenike. Brin pulled his sword free, scrambling back to catch the trident across the blade. He shoved the creature back. The one who’d gone after the lich fared better, his trident catching the sinews of her wrist as she instinctively blocked him. The tendons snapped. Phrenike shrieked.
“You shitting little—” Phrenike flicked the fingers of her uninjured hand. A gust of wind tossed the spiky devil back into its fellows. She spread her bony hand, speaking a word as dense and heavy as lead.
The three little devils froze, tridents poised, mouths agape.
“That,” Phrenike said viciously, “is one thing I can do that you cannot.” She rubbed her torn wrist, then cast again, a mirror of the spell she’d done initially. Once more the air shifted, the sack of grain stitched shut and filled again, some sort of shield returning to its place.
“A forbiddance?” Brin asked.
“Hardly.” Phrenike crossed the room, searching the shelves there for a moment, before plucking up a thick, shimmery cloth and using it to pull down a bottle. She bent the devils’ hands so that each touched the other’s shoulder, then set the bottle atop the nearest one’s spiky head. The trio of devils were suddenly gone, replaced by a bearded human man, who looked around the room, wild-eyed.
“Oh,” Phrenike said. “I’d forgotten you.” Before the man could speak, she dropped to one knee and plunged her hand into his chest as though she were reaching into a well. Another pulse of magic thrummed through Brin’s nerves as the man gasped, his cheeks sinking in, his veins standing out like roots across the thin soil of his skin. Light flooded up Phrenike’s arm, the sinews re-forming, relinking the gilded wires and bones. The man collapsed, looking as shriveled and drained as if he’d been dead for years.
She flexed her repaired hand and sniffed. “Not the same,” she said. “Where were we? Oh yes: As you can see, I have my uses, and if she doesn’t feel that way, well, I’m not her tagalong anymore. If she tries to double-cross me, she—and you for that matter—will find I’m very prepared.”
Brin made himself stay where he stood, made himself look the lich in the eye. “That’s a lot of power to expend for someone you’re ready to stab in the back. What in the world do you owe her?”
“Nothing,” Phrenike said, too smoothly.
Brin tilted his head. “Well, if it’s worth the chance of being her sacrifice, then that’s your decision. But should you find yourself uneager to proceed, you know where I am, saer.” He turned to go.
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll tell her?”
Brin glanced back. “Not really. As I said, she has a use for me still, and given both of our seditions together, saer, I think she’ll opt to hold onto me. Don’t you?”
He headed back toward his room, hoping that he was right about any of this. Phrenike wasn’t wilier than a noble of Cormyr, she wasn’t more powerful than the Royal Magician, and she wasn’t more determined than the Holy Champions of Torm—all people he’d bluffed before. But the risks were higher than they’d ever been. He couldn’t afford to make a mistake.
He stopped at the next black skeleton he came across, this one’s eye sockets set with huge amethysts. “Do you know where Bryseis Kakistos intends to cast her ritual?”
It stared at him for a long moment, his face shining back, bruised-looking in the amethysts. Then it pointed one arm up a set of stairs. Brin felt it watching him all the way up.
The stairs led to a pair of doors. He slipped through these to find himself outside, and a cold winter wind cutting right through his clothes. He wrapped his arms around himself—who knew the fortress was warm by comparison?—and made his way along the gallery there.
The path wound around, overlooking a stone courtyard and sheltering it somewhat from the wind. Brin peered down at it, keeping himself behind one of the blocky pillars that lined the gallery. The courtyard was circular, with a plinth at its center … And thirteen slabs placed around the outer edge of it. Beneath the dusting of snow, faint lines of runes glowed red, eerily lighting the courtyard and illuminating the figure of Bryseis Kakistos, standing alone in the winter night, facing him.
She didn’t look up or seem to notice Brin at all. In fact, she didn’t seem to be paying attention to anything he could see. She stared at one of the slabs laid around the outer ring, her cheeks shining with tears, her lips moving faintly as if she were speaking under her breath. She touched the edge of the slab, almost reverently, but still, she didn’t look up.
She looked as if she were mourning. It made Brin feel almost sad—almost, but not enough to stop him from slinking back down the stairs, toward his rooms, thinking of ways to stop Bryseis Kakistos from ever using that courtyard.