23 Kythorn, the Year of the Dragon (1352 DR)
Darmshall, Vaasa
• • •
A pebble, smooth and shiny, rested in the hollow of Alyona’s throat—Bisera watched as it rose and fell with the slight movement of her labored breath. Bruises mottled her fair skin, despite the healing spells the priests of Selûne had cast on her. The magic of the moon goddess had sealed the worst of her injuries, but still, Alyona would not wake.
“Who did this?” Bisera demanded. The priests didn’t want to say—they must have seen murder in her eyes, and whatever they preached, Bisera knew they were human first.
“A child died,” the head priestess, an elderly woman with pale eyes, told her. “Red Marko’s youngest daughter. Killed, it seems. People were upset, they were frantic. She had just returned when it happened. Things got out of hand.”
Out of hand—a mob had beaten Alyona to the edge of death for a crime she wouldn’t have committed, not in their wildest fantasies, and the priestess spoke of it as if they’d cracked one too many casks of ale. As if Bisera had no business being upset—an accident, an understandable overreaction, perhaps.
Bisera kept her voice cold. “Who incited them? Who suggested it was her?”
“Leave it to the watch,” the priestess said.
It might well have been the watch, Bisera thought, her eyes on the dappled bruising of Alyona’s swollen face. Torger had sworn with them not long before they left, still all violence and mayhem, but now with the blessings of the Lord of Darmshall. She stroked her sister’s cheek with the backs of her fingers. I will find them, she promised. I will punish them. I will find somewhere far from here that’s safe for us. I swear.
The priestess cleared her throat. “Her wounds are grievous. Beyond our power to heal. I’m afraid we didn’t find her as swiftly as we should have. She will not wake—do you understand?”
“I understand you have failed,” Bisera said. “Send for someone more powerful. I’ll pay.”
The matron pursed her mouth. “She will die before any such assistance can be rendered.”
Bisera’s heart squeezed, wrung tight as a wet rag. “Then you can raise her.”
“Such spells are extremely costly. The components are—”
“What part of ‘I’ll pay’ do you not understand?” Bisera demanded. “I know what the spell entails. Find someone who can do it.”
The elderly priestess held her gaze for a long moment, mouth tight. She sat down beside Bisera with care, taking her hand into her own soft palms. “My dear, I fear your love for your sister is more endless than our magics. A soul cannot be called back unwillingly—I would hate for you to spend all you have to find out that Alyona is more peaceful where she is.”
Hateful tears rose in Bisera’s eyes. “And what,” she said, “is that supposed to mean?”
The priestess shook her head. “We are all given such a short time in this world. What waits for us is eternal.”
Bisera yanked her hand back. “So my sister—the other half of my heart—would be happier in a realm I have no place in? Would be better served far, far from me? She is twenty winters. If you’re telling me that’s all the gods have allotted her, then stlarn the gods!” She stood, too angry to sit. “You want to counsel me, Mother? You want my conversion? Fix this. Because you and every soul in godsdamned Darmshall fed this beast, made this monstrous thing happen. If she dies because she was a tiefling, then it is on all of your shitting heads!”
Without waiting for the old woman’s response, Bisera stormed from the temple of Selûne out into the moonlit night. Stlarn the gods, stlarn the priesthood. She’d get what she needed by herself.
The circle became easier to cast each time she did it, the devil simpler to call down. The powers of the Nine Hells thundered in her veins as a column of bruised light burned upward from the circle, leaving behind an erinyes floating gently above the ground.
“So soon? “Shetai said. “Do you find your powers not to your liking?”
“I want to talk to your mistress,” Bisera said. “Now.”
Shetai studied her a long moment. “You are bold, tiefling.”
“I am out of patience,” Bisera said, “and I want to discuss business. I need a boon and I need it now.”
“You might not like the price.”
“And I might get tired of waiting and go find another fiend to deal with. Tell her I want to talk.”
The night stretched on and on and on, but still Bisera waited. Now and then her thoughts flitted back to her sister—she should be by Alyona’s side, she should be there in case she woke, in case she didn’t—but she made herself remain. She wouldn’t watch Alyona die. Not tonight.
Malagarde did not enter Abeir-Toril the way her servant did. The night air seemed to bubble, to boil, to shimmer and quake. It split into ragged shreds like torn flesh, and then two ruby eyes opened in the darkness, a face the color of a deep bruise formed out of the void. An ancient woman, her face bleeding endlessly, her stooped shoulders framed by black-feathered wings, stood before Bisera where once there was nothing.
The Hag Countess’s blood-red eyes swam over Bisera. “So,” she said, her voice the creak of bone against bone. “My little forgespark warlock. We meet at last.”
“Well met, saer,” Bisera said.
There was no circle to encompass Malagarde. The night hag crept around Bisera, a predator, a thing of the dark. The tiefling turned with her—devil or not, the Hag Countess wasn’t someone she’d turn her back on.
“How are you enjoying the first of these powers?” she asked
“Very well,” Bisera said. “I need more.”
“More?” Malagarde chuckled, a sound that made Bisera’s nerves skitter like fleeing spiders. “Already? You’ve hardly earned what you have.”
“My sister is dying,” Bisera said. “She’s been taken from me. I want a way to save her. I want a way to punish the ones who hurt her. What would that cost?”
The hag stopped, considering her. “Shetai speaks truly. You are bold. You want that? It will cost you souls.”
“How many?”
“Don’t you want to know how you collect them?”
“Are you implying I can’t?”
She laughed again. “I think you make promises without knowing what your nerves are capable of.” A flourish of her bony hands, and suddenly she held a blade, a shining black dagger that glinted red in the moonlight. “You have to kill them with this. A blow to the heart while you channel the powers I granted you. You miss”—Bisera snatched the knife from the air as the hag tossed it—“you do it again. Twelve times. One dozen souls, tucked in the dagger. You have until the moon wanes, and then your soul is mine.”
Bisera cast her eyes skyward. The moon was half-full—a tenday until it waned. In her hands, the dagger seemed to pulse like a living thing. “And if I manage faster than that?”
The Hag Countess cackled, and despite herself, Bisera flinched. “Then you’ll have more time to decide how best to appease your gods for this blasphemy. Do we have a deal?”
Bisera tucked the dagger into her belt. “How are you going to rescue my sister?”
Malagarde brought her fingers up, a circle around the weeping ruby of her right eye. She blinked and suddenly her fingers encompassed a gem—a sky-blue cabochon the size of a gold piece with a twelve-pointed star flickering palely in its depths. “With this.”
“What is it?”
Malagarde tilted her head, peering around the gem. “Well, well—not so clever as we seem. This we call a soul sapphire. It will cling to your sister’s soul and prevent another from stealing it away.”
Bisera heard the empty spaces, the words she didn’t say. “It will kill her.”
Malagarde waved that away. “Death is an impermanence. Your priests can tell you that. It’s a trifle to raise her, I’m sure, but …” Again that terrible grin. “You fear if she dies that she won’t return when you call her. This way”—she shook the soul sapphire at Bisera—“there is nothing to call back. You will have her soul close when you raise the body—no priests telling you their failures are truly failures of your sister’s will to live. You’ll have perfect control.”
Bisera hesitated. “I can release her soul whenever I need to?”
“Of course.”
“Will it hurt her?”
“I wouldn’t know, dearie,” the Hag Countess said. “I haven’t died, myself. Do you want it or not?” Bisera held out her hands. Malagarde tossed the stone across the clearing. “Twelve souls. The deal is made.”
Bisera turned the soul sapphire in her hands, perfectly smooth and cool to the touch. “What about the other part? The spells?”
Suddenly Malagarde stood right against her, the stench of the night hag thick and choking, as if she’d stumbled into a charnel house. The hag’s ruby eyes danced as she reached a withered hand into her mouth, pulling out a streamer of darkness. Bisera had no more than realized she ought to step back but the Hag Countess’s hand—and the shadow-streamer in it—slapped down over her lips. She couldn’t breathe—the smell and the heat of Malagarde’s skin, the blood seeping into her mouth, and the taste of shadow—Bisera struggled. Her vision went dark.
She opened her eyes, lying on the grass. Malagarde stood over her, her wings a curtain of nightmares. “Until the moon wanes,” she reminded Bisera cheerfully, “my little forgespark.” Her laughter echoed through the glade as she disappeared.
Bisera groped through the wet grass for the soul sapphire and the blade. She wiped her face until she thought she might rub the skin from her skull, trying to rid herself of the memory of Malagarde’s touch. As she hurried back to the temple of Selûne, she tucked the gem and the blade into her pockets.
Alyona slept on, the pebble in her throat hardly moving. The priestesses and novices all gave her bier a wide berth, and as Bisera entered the sickroom, they scurried out. She took her seat once more, stroking her sister’s bloodless cheek. If she were awake, Bisera thought, Alyona would not like this. She would argue the dangers, the perils of dealing with fiends and magic her sister only barely understood.
“This is for your safety,” Bisera whispered. “I promise you I will fix this.” She removed the pebble from Alyona’s throat, replacing it with the smooth-sided sapphire.
Alyona sucked in a painful-sounding breath, her body convulsing, her back arching. Reflexively, Bisera grabbed hold of her twin’s arms, as if she could stop it, as if she could ease it. Alyona’s eyes opened briefly, her last breath hissing out. The asterism of the soul sapphire flashed, and her sister was gone.
Bisera’s legs buckled under her, and she fell upon Alyona’s body, sobbing without control, without concern for who might hear. She was alone. Alone.
She didn’t know how long she spent, her forehead pressed to her sister’s cooling shoulder. A hand rested upon her own back and she jolted up to see the head priestess standing there, tears on her crinkled cheeks. “She’s at peace now.”
Bisera palmed the soul sapphire and slipped it into her pocket. “I know. Can she stay here? For … for now?”
“We’ll have to discuss arrangements very soon. Now, if you’re—”
“No.” Bisera stood, touching the hilt of the fiery knife in her belt. She pulled on the connection the Hag Countess had granted her, the link to the magics of the Nine Hells. “I have matters I need to attend to immediately.”
• • •