THE DRAGONBORN SHOPKEEPER’S NOSTRILS FLARED IN A WAY DAHL expected meant something, but he had no idea what. “I can’t go below sixty,” he said. “Especially not when you’re paying me in foreign coin.”
“You can weigh it,” Dahl pointed out. The shopkeeper only shrugged, sending the chain draped across his cheek swaying.
“Still sixty.”
Dahl scowled at the ritual book between them. There was only one other shop that dealt in magic items and components in all of Djerad Thymar, and its owner, he was told, had given most of her stock to the war effort and then joined up with a battalion of wizards.
“Sixty?” Bodhar said. “Who you selling to, Preskan? Can’t tell me the demands all that high. A pity,” he added, “because I seen some impressive things come of magic.”
The elderly tiefling with them snorted. “None of that comes out of an empty ritual book. Sixty’s definitely a premium.”
“Have to stay in business,” Preskan said.
“Aye, Lachs. Gotta find some way to pay the embroiderers for this frippery.” Bodhar ran a finger over the gold stitching on the book’s fabric cover. “Dunno, Dahl, does it match your dancing slippers?”
The dragonborn chuckled, though Dahl had a hard time telling if he was laughing at Bodhar’s charm or if the attempt were just failing. He’d chuckled the same way at seeing Thost—as if the sight of a human as big as a dragonborn surprised him or maybe that too seemed absurd.
“What if you do seventy,” Bodhar compromised, “and you add five spells to the pages.” He looked over at Dahl. “Would that work?”
“Eighty,” Preskan said. “And two.”
“Seventy-five and three.” A shield, Dahl thought. A magic circle.
A resurrection.
He pushed that thought to the side, even though it felt as though his heart was screaming and screaming for him to focus on it. She’s not necessarily going to die of this, he told himself. You still have time to hunt up a priest. In Djerad Thymar. Where the most powerful priest is a fifteen-year-old traditionalist who thinks people ought to let their own injuries heal because that’s how things have been done. Hrast.
He’d wanted to go with Farideh, to talk to Dumuzi with her, but she’d been firm: the fewer people in that room the better.
“Besides,” she’d said, “Sairché’s still trapped in there and if you get too near, she’ll wake the curse again.” She’d kissed him. “I promise I’ll be fine. This is only talking.”
The shopkeeper’s teeth parted and snapped shut. “All right.” He pushed his own ritual book over to Dahl to peruse. “Choose what you’d like.”
Dahl flipped through the pages. Preskan wasn’t a very accomplished spellcaster from the look of things. He found the circle, though, and the shield, and marked them with his fingers, trying not to picture casting them around Farideh in the hopes of keeping the battle away from her, only to have her die of something from inside.
The grated door that separated the shop from the city swung open with a rusty creak. “There you are,” a familiar voice said. “Well met.”
Dahl spun around to see Tam Zawad enter the little shop, followed by Mira. “What in the Hells are you doing here?” he asked, too surprised for pleasantries. Tam grasped his hand.
“I brought him,” Mira said crisply. “You need that curse off.”
“Lorcan left,” Dahl said. “It’s fine.”
“Still,” Mira said.
“And it seems there’s a lot of things I’ve missed while you’ve been away,” Tam said. “Zhentarim. Demons. Unther. Giants with strange new magic. A dragonborn god—”
“Vayemniri,” Dahl corrected.
“You have a brightbird,” Tam went on. “That’s fairly interesting.”
“Isn’t it?” Bodhar chimed in. He held out a hand. “Bodhar. That’s Thost. We’re Dahl’s brothers. That there’s Lachs, he’s an uncle of Farideh’s—I gather you know her.”
“Tam Zawad.” The High Harper shook Bodhar’s hand with a cool smile. “I understand you have been dragged along on this adventure.”
“They know,” Mira said flatly.
“Couldn’t have been helped, really,” Bodhar said. “But hey, I know when a secret’s a secret, and you can barely get a word out of Thost anyway.”
Dahl began to shush Bodhar—talking about “a secret” was near enough to revealing it and Lachs didn’t know—but he stopped, remembering. “You can cast resurrection magic, can’t you?” he said to Tam.
Tam looked startled. “Who died?”
“Not yet. I need to talk to you in private. I’ll come back for this,” Dahl told the shopkeeper. “I want the magic circle, the shield, and the … oh, the sentinel.” He handed over entirely too many coins for this and the first round of components. He nodded to Bodhar. “Can you get the rest of the things and bring them up to the enclave?”
“Sure enough,” Bodhar said. Dahl handed a list and the rest of the sack of coins over to him, but Thost intercepted it with a raised eyebrow. Bodhar scowled at him. “Who’m I going to dice with here?”
“I’d be up for some dicing,” Lachs chimed in. “Make the most of my holiday as it were.”
“Be back in an hour. I’m closing early.” Preskan said, eyes on Tam. “You’re the one who’s been shepherding Kepeshkmolik Dumuzi? They say the battle will begin in the morning.”
“If not sooner,” Tam said.
The scaly ridges over Preskan’s eyes rose. “In the dark? Maunthreki are seldom so bold.”
“Gilgeam is a maunthreki of a different stripe,” Mira said.
Dahl led them to the Verthisathurgiesh enclave, grateful that his hazy memory didn’t get them lost in the city’s winding passageways. The young dragonborn at the door directed Dahl and Tam to a small room nearby the guest quarters. Mira positioned herself at the door. The room held a few chairs and one of the low tables like the guest quarters. A painted scene of Vayemniri battling against a blue dragon and its giant minions deep in what looked like a canyon.
“Here,” Tam said. He set his fingertips against Dahl’s chest, murmuring a prayer to the Moonmaiden. Silver light flashed, bright enough to sear his eyes and leave the reflection of dark eyes, a pale face floating in his vision. Dahl gasped involuntarily, his lungs filling with air much cooler than the room around them. When the blessing had faded, he was surprised at how much straighter he stood, how much lighter his chest felt. Even without being near Lorcan or another devil, it had been working on him.
“Thank you,” he said to Tam.
“You’re welcome. Now: Why do you need a resurrection?”
“Farideh’s planning to do something extraordinarily risky and thus far there is no chance at all I can stop her, so I’m trying to be prepared.” Dahl took a vial from his pocket and held it out. “Will that suffice?”
Tam took the crushed diamonds from him, considering the crystals through the dusty glass. “Where did you get this?”
“I stole it,” Dahl said. “From a lunatic warlock. Who, if it matters, I don’t think would much mind if it went toward keeping Farideh alive.” Panic crawled up his chest again and he quashed it. “Will it be enough?”
Tam held the vial up to the torchlight, squinting. He made a face and went to the door. “Mira? Can I borrow you a moment?” He shut the door behind her. “Are those sufficient clarity to do a resurrection?”
Mira sighed. “You need spectacles.” She held the jewel dust up to the light. “Who died?”
“Precautionary,” Tam said. “Hopefully it’s of no use at all.”
She handed them back. “They’re good, not perfect. I hope they’re not for our friend in the cellars.”
“Of course not,” Tam said, popping the cork off. “Who do you think I am?” He poured the gritty dust onto his flat palm until it filled his hand, and considered it, mouth pursed. “It’s enough for one,” he said. “And it’d better be quick.”
Dahl swallowed against the tight feeling rising up his throat. “How quick?”
“Preferably as soon as she hits the ground. Do you know where the ritual’s meant to happen?”
Dahl shook his head, suddenly afraid if he spoke, he’d lose all semblance of sensibleness. He drew a deep breath and tried to push aside the image of her collapsing onto the stones. It didn’t work. “Shit.”
“Thank you Mira,” Tam said, steering his daughter back toward the door and shutting it behind her. He considered the frieze that ran along the top of the wall rather than looking at Dahl, and Dahl was grateful he did. “So. This got serious rather quickly.”
Dahl blew out another breath. He thought of rainy days in the tallhouse in Suzail, of late nights in taprooms, of teaching her rituals beside a campfire, of the moment he found her again in the prison camp, of buying the rod to apologize to her, of that night in the festhall that came down around them, of seeing her after, of knowing how much he’d been avoiding the truth.
“It really, really didn’t,” he said. “It took ages. And even then I mucked it up.” He gave a bitter laugh. “Now she’s going to get herself killed because Asmo-stlarningdeus has to drag the whole multiverse down with him.”
Tam sighed. He came over and set a hand on Dahl’s shoulder. “You’re borrowing worry,” he said.
“It’s what we do.”
“No,” Tam said. “We prepare. We keep our heads straight. We maintain balance. We know the cost.” He squeezed Dahl’s shoulder. “This is the very worst part about loving someone. Anyone. They may be your whole heart, but that doesn’t stop the world from handling them as ungently as it handles any of us. So you prepare. You keep your head straight. You don’t dwell on what might be, even if you’ve noted it. You remember that even if they are your whole heart, they are their own self. And I think you know that. I think you’re managing that.”
“It’s not enough.”
“It’s better than most can manage. Now,” he went on, “I think it would be wise for you to find Farideh, remind yourself the world’s not over, and maybe let me talk to her about what exactly she’s intending to do.”
While Farideh might be willing to discuss her plans with Tam, Dahl thought as they left the little room, he wasn’t going to talk her out of it. Maybe he shouldn’t talk her out of it—there was no arguing things were getting more dire by the day.
“I’m going to have to ask for directions again,” he said, considering the corridors. “This place is like a maze.”
“I get the feeling from Mira,” Tam said as they walked, “that I can’t expect you to come back to your handler duties anytime soon.”
And after, my priest speaks—Oghma’s words ran through his thoughts. “There are some things I have to do,” he said as they approached the entry. “I’m sorry.”
“Not as sorry as I am,” Tam said. He dropped his voice, “Maybe I’ll try and offer Mira your position. Get her into the house.”
Dahl cast a skeptical look at the High Harper. “Mira? Did you listen to none of your own lecture back there?”
“Fair,” Tam said with a wince.
A flash. A rush of air. A sound like hot fat hitting a pan and the sudden, strange taste in his mouth of wintergreen and old wine. Dahl flinched and reached for his sword. When he could see clearly again, a faint mist crowded the entryway, around the forms of Havilar, Brin, a small boy, an enormous black hound, and a pair of imps.
Dahl pulled his sword—Havilar meant Bryseis Kakistos, meant the same woman who’d been dangerous enough to taunt Graz’zt. But then she coughed. “Karshoj,” she cursed. “You’d think they’d figure out a way to make that less unpleasant. I mean, doors aren’t hard, and it’s just a magic door.” She glanced to her right, the same place the boy was looking. “Oh thrik. No one cares.”
“Havi?” Dahl asked.
She looked up at him, surprised, her face gleaming with sweat. “Dahl? You came back?”
“Tam?” Brin said. “What are you doing here?”
“What are you doing with a hellhound and two imps?” Tam returned.
“Never mind,” Havilar said. “First, where’s Farideh?”
“In the guest quarters,” Dahl said. “Do you know the way?”
“Not well enough to make the portal go there apparently,” she said dryly. “But I can walk.” She glanced back to the empty spot in the air. “Hey—you see him? He’s a proper priest, so if Torm falls through, I’m pretty sure Selûne would like a karshoji word with you.”
“Havi, are you all right?”
“Mostly. I might,” she added to Tam, “have a problem to run by you later. Or sooner. It depends on some things.”
• • •
ONE MOMENT, DUMUZI was considering Farideh’s suggestion. The next her eyes shifted, fluttered—rolled back in her head, he realized as her face went slack and she started to fall. He leaped forward and caught her, easing her down to the floor. There was a thud behind him as Ilstan fell.
“Why didn’t you catch him?” Dumuzi demanded of Lorcan.
“Why didn’t his god?” Lorcan returned. He sat on the edge of the table and folded his arms, looking down at Farideh with an expression Dumuzi couldn’t read at all.
After a moment of this uncomfortable silence, Dumuzi spoke. “She said you went to Abeir. How … how was it?”
“I see why you left,” Lorcan said, not lifting his gaze.
“We didn’t leave exactly,” Dumuzi said, but Lorcan waved at him dismissively as if he were a gnat. “Did you and she have a falling out then?” Lorcan made a small, noncommittal noise. “Does the Peredur know you were coming back?”
Lorcan shot him a deeply baleful look. “You can stop talking to me now.”
“What’s happening?” a voice shouted from the other room. “Someone tell me.”
“This is the reward for treachery, Sairché,” Lorcan called back. “Stew in your ignorance.”
A pause. “What’s wrong, Lorcan? Did your warlock give up on sparing your feelings?”
Dumuzi rose and crossed to the room where Sairché waited. The cambion sat up straighter when she saw him—she looked more ragged than she had the last time he’d seen her, her nails bitten and her lip bloody with worrying. “Nothing is happening,” he told her. “Kindly be quiet.” And he went to shut the door.
“Wait!” she cried. And despite his better instincts, Dumuzi stopped. She licked her chapped lips. “I have another proposition,” she said. “Given … given my unchanged circumstances and everything I’ve overheard thus far.”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“It’s not for you!” she said. “It’s not for you, it’s for your god.” She smiled nervously. “I assume the godling with his demon army still marches?”
Dumuzi nodded. “They’ll reach us within the day.”
Sairché drew a deep breath, as if trying to steady herself. “Look, there’s no questioning my fate in this—I’m doomed. No one’s going to wipe the curse from me. If I leave, I’ll get killed. So … So the best I can do is make an impression. I need to be on the winning side here.”
Dumuzi came into the room another few steps, closing the door behind him. “What does that mean?”
“I hear,” she said, “that you’re planning to bring an offer to your god, a provisional overture of assistance from Asmodeus, with regard to one of his dead. It doesn’t sound as if you think he will accept that offer as it stands. Perhaps if a devil army were added to the pot, it would make the difference.”
Dumuzi hesitated. It might—life again for Nanna-Sin, a force to stand against the demons and maybe save Vayemniri lives. “What do you want in exchange?”
Sairché chewed her lip again and shook her head. “Farideh needs to be the one to come and tell me if it’s so. Farideh has to be the one to … to help me summon them.”
“So you can harm her?”
“No. She won’t be harmed. She will be free to complete the ritual she’s planned out.”
“And if Enlil doesn’t want the devils?”
Sairché gave a short, nervous laugh. “Well, we’re all shit in the midden then, so it hardly matters, now does it?”
Dumuzi thought she might be exaggerating some—how bad could an army of demons really be? But he remembered the predations of the maurezhi. “I’ll ask,” he said, and left the room, closing the door behind him.
He sat down on the couch farthest from Lorcan and his brooding vigil, eyeing the cambion for a moment before deciding he wasn’t doing anything immediately nefarious. He laid his head back on the cushion, closed his eyes, and reached toward the god …
Enlil stands atop the mountain, waiting for Dumuzi’s arrival. The sky above seethes with storm clouds, and the thunderheads seem to coalesce into the black-scaled Vayemniri, even as he dissolves back into them. Enlil’s eyes glow like moonlight, like the flash of lightning. He is the mountain. He is the storm. Dumuzi feels his heart shiver.
But he blinks, and they are once more atop Djerad Thymar, and Enlil stands beside him, as present as flesh and blood. Uncle Lightning Bolt, Dumuzi thinks.
“The army of Gilgeam is nearly here,” he says.
Are you frightened?
“I am Vayemniri,” Dumuzi says.
There is no shame in fear, the god says. Shasphur was afraid before he led Those-Who-Would-Be-Kepeshkmolik from the Citadel of Endings. The warrior twins feared their own deaths at the Battle of Arambar Gulch.
“You don’t need to quote ancestor stories for me,” Dumuzi says. Enlil chuckles. “I have a message,” Dumuzi tells him. “An offer. My friends … They’re caught between two gods that have intertwined. They think they can help them separate and keep both from oblivion. But they need a second spark of divinity to raise the second god. They want what lives in Nanna-Sin.”
Dumuzi speaks and Strychik Ozhon is gone and there is only the mountain and the thunderhead, the god who stretches beyond the planes, beyond the reach of time.
No one may have Nanna-Sin, his voice rumbles like the storm. The Night’s Light. The Moon’s Champion. You tell only stories of his corpse, but do you know who he was? A warrior, true and proud. A friend, light of heart and quick of tongue. None could know Nanna-Sin and not love him. Gilgeam will not despoil him, and neither will these failed, foul gods!
“They’ve offered an exchange,” Dumuzi shouts into the wind. “Asmodeus will call his soul back, raise him to life again. They will give us reinforcements to defeat the army of demons. It may save Djerad Thymar and more!”
The storm rages a moment longer, and in a flash, Enlil is standing beside him again, still looking stern, still looking furious. None can raise him, he says. I have seen it. His priests all tried.
“But a god?” Dumuzi asks. “A god at the peak of his power?” He thinks of Ilstan’s words. “We will be stronger for it. And we will know Nanna-Sin again, in some way.”
Enlil hesitates once more. Tell me the ritual. Tell me what your friends would do. Dumuzi explains, everything Farideh had told him, adding in the resurrection of Nanna-Sin. Enlil frowns the whole time.
Who would be the vessel for Nanna-Sin? he asks.
“Me, I assume.”
No, Enlil says. You are my Chosen, and if I am to be a part of this, you must represent me, be my vessel. Will you do this?
“Of course,” Dumuzi says. His assent brings a smile to the god’s face, and Enlil’s clawed hands close on what is first empty air, then the gleaming shaft of a javelin, each end capped in hammered platinum. He hands the weapon to Dumuzi, who takes it gingerly. “But then, who will hold Nanna-Sin’s axe and call him home?” he asks.
Enlil gestures up at the clouds, forcing the storm to part so that the moon, atop its luminous boat, shines down on them. I can’t tell you, he says. Ask the axe.
Dumuzi pulls the black axe from his belt, tilts the obsidian head until it catches the moonlight, until it reflects back a familiar, impossible face.
• • •
ILSTAN NYARIL WALKS through rows and rows of scrolls and books—the library of the Silent Room, the temple of Oghma. The long aisles are empty of loremasters, the altar at the end of the temple devoid of petitioners. Ilstan moves from one side to the other, crossing over the bright-tiled walkway down the center of the temple.
But this time as his feet touch the center, a voice calls his name. Ilstan stops. Remembers.
He looks toward the altar, but it’s not Oghma’s, not anymore. There’s only a simple stone table, and an old man in gray silk robes that seem to float on the currents of the air. A beard hangs to his belt, and he holds a pale wood staff in one hand.
“My lord?” Ilstan says. The man inclines his head, then beckons Ilstan nearer.
“My lord,” he says again, “I’ve come to petition you—”
The Silent Room stretches as he moves, Azuth still and speechless in the distance. Ilstan’s breath stops—he feels as if he’s smothering, but still he begins to run. It’s as if a cord snaps, and Ilstan finds himself at the edge of the dais, looking up at the Lord of Spells.
You don’t have much time, he says. I cannot remain as I once could.
“My lord, I bring an offer of assistance,” Ilstan says. He explains the offers of Enlil and Asmodeus. The plan as it stands.
Azuth smiles crookedly. His face becomes Ganrahast, the Royal Wizard of Cormyr. It becomes Ilstan’s father, Tildor Nyaril, with his trim beard and graying hair. It becomes poor dead Devora, one eyebrow raised in challenge.
… When they say the devils are bound to the rule of law, the Lord of Spells voice comes, dreamy and distant again, they do not mean laws like those of mortals, lean and uninspired … How could a creature—destined to be bound by its agreements, its promises, the power of its very words … how could such a creature not, in the long millennia of its life, create laws of a sort that wind themselves around the realities, the expectations of mere mortals, twisting these prisons into freedoms? They need you, you see … Thriving and endless …
“That may be so,” Ilstan says. He studies the shifting faces, feeling madness pull him in like a whirlpool. “My lord, I think you will know better than I. Who else can say what is in the mind and the heart of Asmodeus than you who have shared a form? But … all proof seems to say that he doesn’t wish to be unmade, that he knows he will be. All proof suggests that the Chosen who remains to him doesn’t seek to undermine us.” He cannot say when the god’s face returns, but when it does, the presence of the Weave becomes palpable, and his whole self is buoyed. “You must decide, and swiftly. The ritual is prepared.”
Azuth looks down at Ilstan, as if he is a student presenting ancient treatises as his own notions. I am the Lord of Spells, he says, all traces of madness gone. I know what you intend.
“Will it succeed?” Ilstan asks.
You may. You should know, the Lord of Spells says, a mortal body wasn’t meant to hold a god’s power. There’s a very good chance it will kill you.
“But not a certainty,” Ilstan says. “Others have survived it.”
You may, Azuth allows. He reaches down, sets a hand upon Ilstan’s shoulder. Every bone in his body is suddenly aflame with magic. Or you may not, he says. Take no more action until you are prepared for that.
In his dreams, Ilstan Nyaril weeps as the magic of the Weave, stronger than he’s ever known it, knits his flesh to his bones to the plane to the god. This is everything he has devoted himself to, condensed and shaped and given life. If his life is the price? It is a worthy price, he thinks, to make certain this isn’t lost.
“I have done so many terrible things in my madness,” Ilstan says. “If death is my penance, then I am glad this is the death I’m granted.”
Azuth pats his shoulder, regarding him sadly. He puts the staff into Ilstan’s hands—it feels as if he’s holding a moonbeam or a cold breeze.
Ilstan Nyaril, he murmurs, you are a worthy vessel.
• • •
THE BONES LITTER the floor, so thick Farideh cannot see the stones beneath. The ossuaries lie tipped and scattered, this one’s lid against the wall, that one’s overturned in the nest of a pelvis. She must sort them all, a kind of penance, for a sin no one’s named. She wonders if these are the people she’s killed, and she thinks of cultists and devils and the poor Chosen of the internment camp, but there’s no way of knowing. The bones have their secrets, and they’re not telling her.
She sorts out the skulls, and the whispering starts. Dragonborn, human, gracile elf, tiefling—she realizes holding one that it can only be Criella, the midwife of Arush Vayem, with her horns polled, and the sadness that strikes her burrows down into her core. Does she know all of them? She looks again, and they all have horns. They’ve all become tieflings.
The air in the room shifts. She looks up and sees Asmodeus, standing in the midst of the scattered bones of the dead. She remembers the deal and the danger.
So it comes to this, he says, his voice hot and terrible and beautiful as a wildfire roaring through a forest, and there’s no pretending he’s some fiction of her sleeping mind. Your granddam would be proud.
“I suspect she’d rather I ended you,” Farideh says, fighting the urge to fall to her knees. “If this works, you’ll have another chance. Enlil will let you have Nanna-Sin’s divinity to replace Azuth’s. You just have to let Azuth separate and resurrect Nanna-Sin.”
Minus what makes him a god?
“Minus what makes him a god,” Farideh agrees. “He’ll live, and that’s enough for Enlil.”
Asmodeus drags a path through the bones, describing a circle around Farideh. Her pulse shifts, slowing to match his footfalls, while her fear yanks on her heart like it’s a fallen comrade—move, move, move.
Perhaps he should manage it on his own, Asmodeus says. If he wants the Night’s Light returned, he can use his own magic.
“He can’t,” Farideh says. “He isn’t powerful enough, not yet. But you can.”
Until I trade what I’ve gained for myself for the dregs of a manifestation that’s been dead for millennia. Did you consider that?
The weight of his disappointment threatens to crush her, even as she’s sure she doesn’t care. She lowers her eyes, though, a compromise of servility and pride. “I have. You’ve been looking for another spark for some time, haven’t you? That was the aim of the internment camps, to steal enough from other gods to make yourself something. You knew Azuth was bound to escape.”
Clever girl, Asmodeus says. That was the aim of more schemes than you can fathom. Did you know, then, in Neverwinter, that the Nine Hells reached out to claim what the aboleths have been hoarding? You’ve been in the thick of things since—
The next moment he is gone, and she is alone with the whispering bones of tieflings and her own clattering heart. The absence shakes her nearly as much as his presence does, and for a terrible moment she feels unmoored, half-emptied. What was she doing here?
The next breath the god returns. He considers her with eyes like dying stars. What do you gain from this?
He chuckles, and her blood simmers, her nerves writhe. I didn’t ask what the world gains. I asked what you gain.
“Am I not a part of the world?”
It doesn’t do, his terrible, beautiful voice rolls through her, to let debts hang.
I would not owe you for this. So name your price.
Farideh exhales, every want, every wish boiling up in her thoughts—no desire is too impossible, too hedonistic, too small to be dragged up by the promises of the god of sin. She says nothing.
Do you want to survive it? he asks.
“I want this to work,” she says, and her voice trembles. “Nothing can get in the way of it working. Not even that.”
Asmodeus smiles, and it’s like the world is ending, with all the terror and relief that comes with such ends. Clever, clever. Then what will you ask for?”
Farideh swallows. “You’ll leave my family and my friends alone. The Hells do not touch them unless they request it.”
The mortal ones.
“Yes,” she says. “And Lorcan.”
For a moment there are only the whispers of the bones, and when she looks up, Asmodeus is gone. She waits this time, and it’s hardly a breath later that he says in her ear, Lorcan is my willing vassal.
“And you can let him go,” she says. “Cast him out of the Hells. He has a soul. He should have a chance.”
You don’t think his nature will lead him right back to me?
“Maybe,” Farideh says. “But how can you know, if Lorcan never has the choice?”
I am a god, he reminds her.
“If you knew what every soul was bound to do,” she said, “then there would be no reason for devils to tempt us.”
True enough, he says. I notice Sairché has pledged the pradixikai to your cause. An interesting … choice. Will you bargain for her as well?
Farideh looks down at the tiefling bones. “When did she—”
Farideh startled awake, every nerve in her body screaming, as the dream abruptly ended. “Wait!” she gasped, before she could recognize it was over.
“Is it done?” Dumuzi asked, sounding hoarse. Beside him Ilstan was also awake—though the smile he turned on her was so dreamy and beatific that she thought perhaps they should make certain. Lorcan stood between them, staring at her as though she had a scorpion perched on her chest.
“Yes,” she said. But she hadn’t gotten an answer. She cursed every devil in the Nine Hells—they never answered straight—before she realized there was something lying in her lap.
The rod stretched across her knees, its ruby shaft engraved with strange runes that seemed to run backward, to blur her eyes and whisper in her ears as she tried to read them. One end was broken off in a jagged stump, the other formed a claw around a black stone shaped like a skull. The whole thing made her bones itch.
She picked it up gingerly and the creeping feeling stopped. She wet her mouth. “I suppose he says yes.”
“That makes three,” Ilstan said.
“But we need four,” Dumuzi said. “Someone has to stand for Nanna-Sin and wield the black axe.”
“Can’t you?” Lorcan asked, staring at the ruby rod.
Dumuzi shook his head. “Enlil intends to be there as well.” He held up a javelin, its points covered in gleaming platinum. “Nanna-Sin doesn’t have a Chosen, exactly.”
Lorcan looked up and met Farideh’s gaze as she stood. “Can anyone do it?”
Dumuzi hesitated. “No, I mean, the axe … chose. It showed me who it wants. In the dream. But I don’t know—”
Just then the door to the guest chambers opened, and Havilar came in, panting. Lorcan’s hands filled with flames. But Farideh knew at a glance this wasn’t Bryseis Kakistos. She stood so quickly she dropped the ruby rod, and rushed to her sister. Not until she embraced Havilar did she believe it was real.
“Oh gods,” she gasped, sobbing despite herself. “Oh gods, you’re all right.”
“Sort of,” Havilar said anxiously. “I need some help.”
“So do we,” Dumuzi said, sounding relieved. Farideh let go of her sister and looked back to see Dumuzi holding out the Black Axe of Nanna-Sin. “This is yours after all.”
Havilar’s eyes widened greedily. “Really?” She snatched the axe from Dumuzi, grinning as if she no longer noticed whatever was making her sweat so. Farideh laughed to herself, so grateful to have Havilar back that gods and planes and devils didn’t matter. She glanced toward the door, toward the crowd of people who’d come into the room along with Havilar. Brin and Remzi, Zoonie—dangerously unmuzzled. She smiled as Dahl followed them in, glad he was close again. And then Tam—
“Tam?” she said. “What are you doing here?”
The High Harper had begun to answer when someone else floated across Farideh’s field of view, and Farideh’s cry of alarm cut him off. The Brimstone Angel—no, two Brimstone Angels—in ghostly form, took shape between her and the door, their forms fading in and out of substance, just as she had in the prison camp.
“Havi!” Farideh cried, grabbing her sister’s arm. “The ghosts!”
“You can see them too?’ Havilar said. She looked back at the tieflings and they grew slightly more solid. “So can Remzi. That one’s Alyona and the other’s Bryseis Kakistos.” The first held the second as if she feared her twin would fling herself off a cliff, while the second twisted against her as if it were only a matter of time before she fell.
“Twins,” Farideh said.
“Yeah, that’s what I need help with. Alyona and I are still tethered to her.” Havilar considered the axe keenly. “Maybe I can chop the connections with this fabulous relic.”
“No,” Dumuzi said. “You need that to be the vessel of Nanna-Sin.”
“The what?”
Farideh cast an eye over the crowd—she didn’t relish explaining their plans to this many people.
But then they were all in this with her. She went back to the couches, to where Caisys’s scroll waited. Lorcan set a hand on her shoulder, stopping her, before pointing to the ruby rod lying on the floor. She picked it up, and suddenly the humming in her bones she hadn’t noticed stopped. She relaxed.
“You have to be careful with that,” he whispered. “Promise me, darling, you’ll be careful.”
“I’ll be careful.” She looked up at him, stomach twisting. She still had to tell him that she wanted to end the pact. That she didn’t want to see him again. The very idea seemed so mad, so dangerous, it made her balk. But then she remembered everything he’d done, all the ways he’d hurt Dahl. I’ll be careful, she told herself.
Farideh unrolled the scroll. “You may know,” she started, “that Azuth and Asmodeus are currently … linked and battling over the same divinity. It’s going to destroy both of them if they’re not stopped, and they can’t stop themselves. Caisys—a warlock from the original Toril Thirteen—helped us make this ritual to prevent that.”
“Caisys?” Havilar said. Both ghosts stilled, both startled it seemed. “Caisys is alive?”
“He’s Garago,” Farideh said.
Havilar made a face. She turned, gaping, to Alyona. “You were mad for Garago?” Alyona seemed to protest—her mouth flickered, her expression turning dark and furious. “He keeps things in his beard,” Havilar said, as though that ended any argument.
The ghost of Bryseis Kakistos kept her silver eyes on Farideh, calmer now. Drifting.
“She’s moving,” Remzi said.
Havilar looked over. Alyona’s attention swung to her sister and pulled her back, away from Farideh and the scroll. Again, the agitated flickering suggested an argument, one with many fierce gestures toward Farideh.
“The ritual,” Farideh went on, “should pull the gods down, incarnate them briefly. Long enough to move bits around. Enlil’s agreed to let Asmodeus take the divinity of Nanna-Sin.”
“Who is that?” Havilar asked.
Farideh hesitated. “The dead moon god in the catacombs.”
“What are the weapons for?” Havilar asked.
“Lodestones,” Ilstan said. “They are minor aspects of the gods themselves. That should draw them so as not to let their power scatter, their selves come apart.”
Both ghosts now drifted nearer to Farideh, Bryseis Kakistos peering over her shoulder but Alyona still holding firm to her sister’s spirit.
“So I have to hold the axe,” Havilar said, “and then, what? A dead god jumps inside me?”
“And then jumps out,” Farideh said. “Nanna-Sin should end up raised, immortal, but not a god.” She glanced up at Tam who was staring at her. “You think it’s mad.”
“Yes,” he said. “I see why. It’s very risky, and if you succeed, then you bolster one of the most evil gods worshiped on Toril.”
“If he’s a god,” Farideh pointed out, “then he has to follow the rules of a god. Evil, but stable. He wants and needs us to keep surviving, to keep thriving. You can’t say as much for him if he’s only an archdevil.”
The ghostly face of her ancestress again filled her vision, and Farideh jerked away. Silver eyes glared at her, the skin of her face peeling back to reveal a skeletal jaw, bare teeth. Farideh looked away—there was no argument that would convince her to go along with Bryseis Kakistos’s plans.
The ghost swerved in front of her once more, gesturing at the swirling cloud of her hair.
“She wants to talk to you,” Havilar said. “She says you know how to. I don’t think you ought to bother.” She considered the other ghost, and made a face. “Maybe. All right, maybe she has something to say.”
Farideh hesitated. “Dahl, there’s a comb in my top drawer. Can you fetch it?”
The ghost drifted back a pace as Dahl brought her the ruby-studded comb she’d enchanted in the prison camp so that she could speak to Bryseis Kakistos there. He looked uneasy as he handed it to her. “I can’t believe you kept this thing.”
“Preparing for the worst,” she said and shoved the decorative comb into her hair, scraping her scalp.
The ghost sharpened, solidified. You have forgotten something important, the ghost said. Caisys wasn’t thinking.
“I’m not falling for any tricks,” Farideh warned her.
No tricks, Bryseis Kakisto said. Call it a courtesy. I want with all my being the destruction of Asmodeus. I cannot fathom how you’ve come to a place where you wish to aid him. But … She faltered, then added quickly. I would not let my descendants fall to fiends. That’s all.
“Why would that happen?”
The gods will come most easily if you call them near to their planes, she said. You have a god of the storms, a god of the moon, and two gods lingering in the Nine Hells—you need to be outside, high up if you can. Which means you will be exposed to the battle that’s coming. You need to be shielded.
“I can cast a shield,” Farideh said.
“You can’t,” Dahl interrupted. “Not while you’re doing something else. You can’t concentrate on both.”
Precisely, Bryseis Kakistos said, though Dahl couldn’t hear it. Moreover, you will be in the midst of fiends—demons from your enemy’s side. If you don’t set a protective circle around this ritual the moment the gods reach you, you’ve set yourselves up for something very unpleasant taking up residence in your bodies the moment that force vacates them.
Farideh looked to Dahl. “She says we need a magic circle.”
And enough silver to drown a werebear, the ghost added.
Dahl reached into the bag he was carrying, withdrawing a smaller leather sack about the size of his two fists together, and dropped it onto the table beside the scroll. Farideh loosened the neck of it. “I went and got a new ritual book. I made a point of getting a shield and a magic circle,” Dahl said. Farideh got the bag opened and looked inside to see more powdered silver than she’d ever imagined in one place. Enough to drown two werebears, she thought, a little giddy.
“I have your back,” he said.
Farideh came to her feet and kissed him on the mouth, not caring who saw. “Thank you.”
Well done, Bryseis Kakistos said. Now all you need is a place to cast this that will catch all their notices.
“It’s a pyramid,” Havilar said. “We’ve always had that.”