FARIDEH KEPT LOOKING AT THE DOOR, KEPT RUBBING HER ARM, BUT LORCAN didn’t come back.
“I told ya,” Pyador said again. “ ’Twent through a portal.”
“Yes,” Caisys said, “but I want to know what kind of portal.”
Pyador folded his thick arms over his black beard. “Do I look like some spangle-britched wizard to you?”
Farideh’s tail slashed the floor. Whatever relief she felt at not having to face Lorcan after last night was absolutely gone knowing he’d been snatched up and yanked out of the protection spell’s range. Nothing else she knew of could break it.
“What color was it?” Mehen asked patiently. He and Dahl’s brothers had gone out looking for signs of Lorcan or anyone who’d seen him and had gotten a piece of Pyador’s mind for harboring the devil. They quickly brought him back to Caisys.
“Red,” the dwarf said. “Maybe yellow. Fire-colored, let’s say.”
“So you are a spangle-britched wizard,” Caisys said dryly.
Pyador scowled at him. “Smelled strong too. Like slag and fireplace ashes.”
Hellsportal, Farideh thought. “Did he open it himself?” she asked.
But the dwarf only shrugged. “Criella ain’t gonna like it,” he told Caisys.
“Why would Criella need to know?” Caisys asked, sounding genuinely puzzled. “It’s not as if someone propped it open, letting imps in.”
Farideh tried not to worry about all the things that might have caused a Hellsportal to open in Arush Vayem. She tried not to worry about erinyes and Glasya and archdevils and Asmodeus. She tried not to think of all the ways this might be the next step of some horrible plan, right after letting Dahl out of his deal. She looked back at Dahl and Ilstan both poring over Caisys’s ritual, and worried anyway.
Caisys walked Pyador to the door, arguing with him lightheartedly about whether Criella needed to know and how much Caisys was going to pay for the liquor Pyador brewed if he didn’t mention it and whether anything else was the dwarf’s business.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” Bodhar said to her. She gave him a quick smile, as if that would make the way he said “friend” sound less suspicious.
“There is no telling whether anybody has to be sorry yet,” she said, as much to herself as to him. Maybe Lorcan just went home. Maybe Lorcan went to find some help. Maybe Asmodeus was planning to kill them all and take the staff. “Excuse me,” she said, and went back over to Dahl and Ilstan.
“You can pull out this part,” Dahl said. “It’s a redundancy.”
“No, see, it clarifies the binding,” Ilstan said, tapping the parchment. “Without that, you may end up dragging in bystanders.”
“Then cut the other clause,” Dahl said. “Doubling it just creates more failure points.”
“How’s it going?” Farideh asked.
Dahl smiled when he looked up—the same sort of smile she’d given Bodhar. “All right. You find Lorcan?”
“In the Hells.”
“Well at least he knows his way.”
“What’s wrong?”
Dahl sighed. “Can I talk to you?”
Farideh followed him into the little dark room under the stairs. “Fari, have you looked at this ritual? Do you understand what it does?”
“I’m the one who suggested it,” she said a little tartly. “So I understand what it’s supposed to do, yeah.”
“I mean, do you know what happens when you pour a god’s power into a mortal body?”
“I don’t. Do you?”
“It’s not good. Have you ever heard of Karsus?” Farideh shook her head. “Karsus was a spellcaster in Netheril. He tried to become a god and nearly destroyed the empire—certainly destroyed himself. He turned to stlarning stone.”
“Azuth was mortal once,” Ilstan called. “But ascended to Mystra’s side.”
“First, not the same thing,” Dahl retorted. “Second, private conversation!” To Farideh he said, softer, “Look, all I’m saying is that this is very risky. You could die. And for what?”
Sometimes the only choice is a sacrifice. Farideh shut her eyes a moment, chasing off the thought. “Obviously, that’s not my first choice. Can you make the ritual so that it doesn’t kill anyone?”
Dahl shook his head. “It’s not the ritual. It’s the fact that you’re not a god.”
“Look, if I do this, I might die. If I don’t? I might die, and so might a lot of other people. Do you know what happens when two gods rip each other apart? Do you know what happens when the king of the Nine Hells is destroyed?”
“No, and neither do you.”
“Do you think it’s something good?”
Dahl wrapped his arms around her. “I just got you back.”
Farideh leaned into him, her arms around his waist. How many times, how many indulgent little moments in Arush Vayem, had she let herself wish for something like this? She thought of Mehen and Havi and Dumuzi and Brin and all the other allies and—dare she say—friends she’d made. She didn’t want to die. “Tell Oghma to keep a miracle in reserve.”
He sighed again. “If you survive this, I’m going to have to insist you get yourself a religious education.”
“Don’t tell Mehen, please,” she murmured.
“About the religious education or the ritual?”
“Both,” she said. “I don’t want him to worry and I don’t want him to turn on you. I just got you back too.”
Caisys was standing over the parchment when they came back out. Suddenly he clutched his chest and winced. “Damn,” he said, sounding breathless.
“Are you all right?” Farideh asked.
“Planes are getting friendly again,” he said. “You need to go. Get your things. I’ll get you a portal opened.”
“Not here,” Mehen said from the door to the front room. “I have to take the bat. Can you get the portal open enough for one?”
Caisys rolled his eyes. “Why you people opted to mount flying rats, I will never understand.”
They gathered their things and donned their cloaks, following Caisys out into the snow. The villagers of Arush Vayem watched as their little party passed. Criella stood, just beyond the well, up the road from the gate.
“Garago!” she called. “A word.”
Caisys waved her off. “Give us a song, Criella, I’m seeing these folks off.”
“Perhaps you should go with them,” she shouted back.
“Perhaps you should get another personality adjustment,” he muttered.
“Don’t do that,” Mehen said.
Farideh glanced back at scowling Criella, and wished Arush Vayem another farewell. Dahl tucked his hand into hers. “I will promise you one thing,” he said. “My family’s farm is far more welcoming than this.”
Farideh glanced over at Thost and wasn’t so sure.
The bat had tucked itself into the shelter of some pine boughs for the night. When Mehen whistled through his fingers, it came flapping and shedding snow everywhere, to drop onto its belly where the path widened before it grew steep for a stretch. The creature crawled toward them, while Caisys made them kick the snow away, uncovering enough dirt to draw a portal. The lines of power woke with little prodding and even less in the way of components.
“He’s very good,” Dahl murmured to Farideh.
From the other side of the clearing, Caisys looked up and smirked. “You don’t know the half of it, Oghmanyte.”
But before the portal could open, three rifts split the cold morning air. A freezing wind blew through them, blasting Farideh from all sides, before devils slipped out of them. Great horned and spined creatures with leathery wings. One that looked as if it were an insect on two legs, carved of ice. A scattering of imps dressed in wooly skins.
“Ah, tluin and buggering Shar,” Caisys muttered.
“We come for the staff!” one of the horned devils snarled. “Which of you bears it?”
Farideh yanked her rod out of her sleeve, carving a semicircle with the tip. “Fiornix!” A wall of flames burst out of the ground, sizzling against the snow. She turned to Caisys, the others pulling swords free. “Finish the portal!”
“Oh, so I can clean up the Stygians? I see how it goes.” But Caisys went back to coaxing the circle of runes into wakefulness.
One of the horned devils made it over the wall of flames, flapping high overhead. It aimed a bow and arrow down at Caisys.
“I have it,” Ilstan called. He spat a word of magic, and a cluster of blue missiles shot out of the air, hammering the horned devil and pushing it back beyond the wall.
The imps dared the flames. Farideh slashed at one with her sword and cast a blast of angry energy at another, catching it ablaze and making it vanish in a puff of smoke. The wall of fire collapsed as she did.
“Garago!” Mehen shouted, catching the icy devil’s glaive on his falchion. “Faster!”
“Can’t rush portals,” Caisys said. “Gets you lost.”
Farideh hurled another bolt of energy at the back of the ice devil as Mehen continued to strike at it. She went to draw another, but suddenly it felt as if the Weave were buzzing in her veins, anchoring her to the ground. Another spell rose in her thoughts and she spat the trigger word. The ice devil froze in place, glaive drawn back, its side wide-open and vulnerable.
A shadow passed overhead and someone yanked her by the arm. She swung her rod around, nearly hitting Dahl as he turned her back toward the horned devil that had almost landed on top of her. “Hit it!” he said.
“Adaestuo!” Another burst of eldritch energy streamed from her rod, this one enough to make the devil burst into flames and vanish. “Thank you.”
“Always,” he said, turning to cut another imp down.
“Hey! I had that one!” Bodhar cried, oblivious to the horned devil rushing at him.
Farideh pointed her rod at the creature in tandem with Ilstan, both spitting the same spell with different words—Farideh’s trimmed with flame and shadow, Ilstan’s vibrant purple. Both struck the horned devil together and it disappeared with a pop.
“Again,” Ilstan said, “that isn’t how you’re meant to do it.”
“It gets it done!” Farideh returned.
“All right!” Caisys cried. “Portal’s set. Get your arses in it.”
Mehen swung his falchion down through the ice devil’s chest, just as Thost’s fist crashed into the back of its skull. It burst into flames at these last injuries and vanished back to the Nine Hells. Mehen turned, panting, and scowled at Caisys.
Caisys smiled. “See? I knew you’d manage.” He pointed a finger at Farideh. “Don’t fidget with that ring again, girly.”
Farideh held her hands up in appeasement as she stepped into the circle. As Mehen coaxed the bat into the ring of glowing runes, Caisys favored her with a fond smile. “Good luck,” he said. “And if you come back here again, I expect a replacement for my book, got it?” He winked at her.
“Thank you,” Farideh said. “I will.”
Farideh considered the forest around Arush Vayem, the last time she might ever see it—for one reason or the other—before the portal’s enchantment yanked them away, back to Djerad Thymar and hopefully an end to her dealings with the god of sin.
• • •
HAVILAR STEPPED INTO Bryseis Kakistos’s dream, announcing herself by making the seashore setting transform into the fields around Suzail in the midst of that last battle. Karshoj, Havilar thought. But at least it was somewhere she’d been, she’d succeeded. She felt armor form around her, her glaive filling her hand as she stalked across the field toward the Purple Dragon and the silver-eyed tiefling woman perched upon its neck. Fear curled around Havilar’s heart, and she made herself keep walking.
Bryseis Kakistos regarded her with puzzlement. “Where’s Alyona?”
“Not here,” Havilar answered. “We’re going to talk, you and I.”
Bryseis Kakistos gave her a withering look. With a flick of her wrist, the dragon’s attention snapped to Havilar. It roared, shaking Havilar down to her bones, and breathed a cloud of burning green gas. Havilar shut her eyes and reminded herself—this was a dream, this was her head, and besides, she’d been there, it wasn’t a black dragon and it couldn’t breathe acid anyway. So to the Hells with this.
She opened her eyes and fixed her attention on the dragon. It collapsed into the form of a much smaller wyvern, the creature that the Shadovar had disguised to frighten the Cormyrean army. Bryseis Kakistos raised her sleek eyebrows, looking impressed.
“I remember how it died too,” Havilar said. “Do you?”
“Vaguely,” she said. “As if in a dream.”
Raedra appeared, the jeweled short sword in hand, but this time she pointed it at Havilar, the same determination in her eyes that she’d had as she killed the Purple Dragon. Havilar rolled her eyes, and the young queen turned and stabbed the wyvern through the eye, both she and the monster vanishing at the mortal wound. Bryseis Kakistos landed on the muddy ground.
“I’m not scared of her anymore,” Havilar said. “I have a message from Alyona.”
“No you don’t. Alyona would come talk to me herself.” Flames raced over Bryseis Kakistos, building into fiery wings, and a rush of horror went through Havilar. “You ought to go back before I change my mind about preserving you.”
Havilar dug her heels into the mud, concentrating on the feeling. It was the same as when Fari did that—and she didn’t like the feeling, but she wasn’t scared of Farideh and she didn’t have a reason to be scared of Bryseis Kakistos. She couldn’t kill Havilar in a dream.
“Do you even know what you’re trying to accomplish anymore?” Havilar demanded.
“Don’t worry about my plans,” the Brimstone Angel said. A wreath of lightning stirred around her, spikes of lightning spearing the ground around her, wider and wider. “I know what I’m doing.”
“No you don’t,” Havilar returned.
The flames seethed around Bryseis Kakistos. “Punishing Asmodeus.”
“How is that a good plan?” Havilar cried. “He’s a god. They die and they come back and they die all over again and there is no guaranteeing they stay put—so what happens when he comes back and comes looking for you and your sister?”
“I didn’t agree to a deal with Selûne because I like her.”
“Do you actually think Selûne’s going to protect you if you do things this way?” Havilar said. “Alyona told me that you changed your plans, that you weren’t supposed to fight Asmodeus like this.”
Lightning struck the ground at Havilar’s feet, and she forgot it wasn’t real, skipping out of the way. “I’ve come too far to go back,” Bryseis Kakistos said. “And you can’t pretend he doesn’t deserve it, that Selûne wouldn’t relish his demise once the deed is done. That’s how it works, dear girl. We’re the ones who do the dirty work, who make things happen, while the good stand back and tut and pat themselves on the back once the dust settles. Now go home.”
“This is my karshoji head,” Havilar shouted. “And your sister doesn’t want to be resurrected!”
Bryseis Kakistos fell still, the flames still dancing around her. “Liar.”
“She told me to get Brin to steal the soul sapphire,” Havilar said. “She told me to have him threaten to break it if you don’t stop.”
“She told you to get your brightheart killed then.”
“No,” Havilar said. “She told me to gamble. To take the chance that you’d back off against the chance that you’d call his bluff and let him kill us both. She’s ready for that.”
Bryseis Kakistos shook her head. “I wouldn’t, though. She knows that much.”
“She doesn’t,” Havilar retorted. “She doesn’t trust you anymore. Because you aren’t karshoji listening! Because if you were paying even a little attention, you’d realize she’s miserable. She wants to be done. She wants to die.”
“Liar!” The Brimstone Angel drew her long sword, swinging it across Havilar’s core. But this was Havilar’s mind and Havilar’s kind of fight. She knocked the blade off course with the end of her glaive, chopping the blade toward Bryseis Kakistos’s shoulder.
The Brimstone Angel might not have been the daughter of Clanless Mehen, but she was far more skilled with a blade than Havilar would have given her credit for. The long sword rose again, slashing down at Havilar’s right arm to damage her grip. Havilar jerked back, hit the blade again with the shaft of the glaive, then slammed it forward into the Brimstone Angel. The flames crackled as Devilslayer struck, but she pulled back too quickly for them to catch.
“How can you know Alyona for longer than a tenday and think for a moment that she’d want dozens of people killed to bring her back?” Havilar demanded. “I mean, gods, are you that blind?”
The flames around Bryseis Kakistos burned brighter, hotter. “They die for a purpose. They’ll save us all.”
“From what?” Havilar shouted. “It’s like you’ve been in pieces so long you can’t string a thought together. Do you know what it’s like out there? It’s not perfect, but it’s not such a hardship that we don’t survive. Maybe people don’t like us, but it’s not everyone, and every day it gets a little easier. You want to save all the tieflings, there’s a lot better ways to do that than unmaking the karshoji Hells.”
Bryseis Kakistos laughed. “You’re actually arguing Asmodeus is a better master?”
“I’m arguing he’s not my godsbedamned master,” Havilar shouted. “I’m arguing—until all this warlock aithyas started up—he never made a damned difference in my life or more importantly, Remzi’s life. I’m arguing that you’d be a lot better off making a haven for tieflings or a spell to make people see what hardjacks they’re being or getting karshoji collector warlocks off your heirs’ backsides. I’m arguing that you are about to make things worse—for me, for Alyona, for all of us—just because you’re angry you were tricked.”
Bryseis Kakistos lunged with a shriek of rage, her blade suddenly aflame. The powers of Asmodeus’s Chosen surged, overwhelming Havilar’s resolve as she fell back under the Brimstone Angel’s renewed attack. The sword moved so swiftly it was all she could do to keep ahead of it. Suddenly Bryseis Kakistos’s hand came up and a burst of bruised, angry energy swelled out of it, striking Havilar and tossing her across the field—
Havilar landed with a jolt she felt as if she had a body once more—she wasn’t in Suzail any longer, but neither was she in the pocket world of mists and gates. She’d landed, still ghostlike, in a cell of a room, simple and spare. A table covered with scrolls dominated one side of the room, the wall behind it pasted with more scraps of parchment, more diagrams and notes. The open door illumined this, the bony lich standing over a narrow bed, and the jewel-adorned black skeleton shaking Havilar’s body into wakefulness.
Bryseis Kakistos sat up. “What is it?” she asked hoarsely.
“The staff’s returned,” Phrenike said. “Someone’s hiding it, but it’s here enough to keep triggering the location spell. I thought you might like to know.”
The memory of Havilar’s pulse sped as she watched herself sit up and look uneasily around the room. Bryseis Kakistos found where Havilar’s spirit hovered and locked eyes with her, her expression unreadable.
“Bryseis?” the lich said. “Did you hear me?”
“Good,” she said. Then, as if she were convincing herself, “Good. Let’s make certain everything’s ready.”
• • •
DUMUZI DIDN’T DARE let his nerves show as he watched Vanquisher Kallan returning to the city’s gates. He didn’t dare look back at the shrine he’d built with Tam and Mira’s help, fussing over its hasty shape, the paintings of the Vayemniri along the sides, would only send the signal that he wasn’t sure. And he had to be sure.
Kallan spoke to the leader of one of the spellcasting regiments, the Sixth Red Cohort—eighty Vayemniri wizards armed to the teeth with fireballs and enough guano to keep making them until the city crumbled. Even at a distance, the former sellsword’s easy nature showed—this he could do. The rest would come, Dumuzi felt certain. Hopeful. Maybe.
Nearby, Kepeshkmolik and the Lance Defenders’ commanders stood, with Namshita and her lieutenants beside them. Dumuzi kept himself from looking to his patriarch, his mother, and most especially at Arjhani, who kept glancing at him in a nervous way. No room for uncertainty, he thought. No room for weakness.
Beyond, under an evening winter sky thick with pale clouds, the very edge of the enemy’s army showed in the shimmer of fires along the horizon’s edge, the dark specks of winged demons floating over them like whirling ashes. Dumuzi swallowed his breath and kept his eyes on Kallan.
The Vanquisher clapped the wizard on the shoulder, bidding her farewell as he turned toward Dumuzi. As everyone within sight turned toward Dumuzi, dressed in his best armor. He’d found a forge and had the Kepeshkmolik moon covered over by a new sigil—a wheel of lightning with a clawed hand at the center. He still wasn’t sure about that, but Mira had nudged him toward something that bridged the gap between the Vayemniri and the Untheran god.
Enlil seemed to approve of it. He’d no sooner affixed it to his armor, but the lightning took on an eerie sheen, and the sense that the god stood beside him was unignorable.
Kallan smiled as he approached. “Well met, Dumuzi.”
“Chosen of Enlil, Majesty,” the Adjudicator at his elbow said.
Kallan made a face. “Let’s stay with names, if you don’t mind,” he said to Dumuzi. “Hard to take up formality after the fact, at least for me.” He studied the shrine. “You’ve been busy.”
Now Dumuzi turned to consider the stone shrine. Here, once more, Mira had proved invaluable. She’d sketched the niches in the catacombs, the resting places of particularly venerated warriors, and they’d mimicked the shape in wood and stone. A slight enclosure embraced the altar, a simple slab table, a roof projecting over just far enough to shelter someone from the storm. They’d painted all sides of it with figures from each of the clans—heroes from ancestor stories—and stars and jackals, mimicking the black axe. Against the back was the clawed fist over the wheel of lightning, and the words to a simple prayer. Across the roof, spelled out in green Draconic runes: Aricholedarthicaesh Archolkoshjimetev—Enlil, Strychik Ozhon.
Pride bloomed in Dumuzi, and it didn’t matter how much of it was his own and how much was Enlil’s—they agreed.
Kallan searched around the side, smiling as he spotted the figure of Esham-Ana Who-Would-Be-Yrjixtilex with his bow and deer. “Very nice,” he said.
“Thank you,” Dumuzi said. “I had some help.” Kallan’s gaze darted off behind Dumuzi where Tam and Mira stood against a stable wall. Dumuzi kept his eyes on the Vanquisher, a calm expression on his face.
Kallan came back around to the front, peered at the runes. “ ‘Sword of all the Lands, Elder of All the Children.’ ”
“They are approximations of the epithets that I heard when he manifested,” Dumuzi explained. “Made more appropriate.”
“And this?” Kallan turned to him, amused, as he pointed to the runes that spelled out Strychik Ozon. “ ‘Uncle Lightning Bolt’?”
Dumuzi held himself even straighter. It sounded ridiculous when you said it like that, like he was making the god into a buffoon for some market play. But Tam had made an inarguable point—“Enlil” wasn’t their god.
“His name is always going to remind you of that,” Tam had said as Dumuzi crossed out yet another version of the prayer for the shrine. “You need something that tells people instead that he’s chosen the Vayemniri.”
“I know my omin’ iejirsjighen,” Dumuzi said lightly. “Blood commands unity. Clan earns it. So call him as you call your fond elders, aunties and uncles, whom you honor not because they share blood, but because they share the clan’s load. The ones who make certain you are safe and that you grow wise and earn their honor too, despite the fact you are no child of theirs.”
Kallan nodded, approving. “All right. Let’s do this. How do I …” He gestured at the entrance.
“Go in,” Dumuzi said in a low voice. “You can read the prayer at the back.”
Kallan’s nostrils flared. “Nah. Give me something bigger. I’m Vanquisher. You need a big gesture.”
Dumuzi said a little thanks to the Selûnite priest. Tam was the one who’d helped him figure out the simple prayer, but he’d insisted as well on having some greater rituals prepared.
“You could dedicate your sword,” Dumuzi suggested. “As Enlil defends you, so shall you defend Enlil.” He pulled out a scroll. “Here, I wrote it down.”
Kallan gave him a curious smile. “You have no idea how much that sounds like a sellsword contract.”
Dumuzi knew exactly, but he only nodded and handed the scroll over to Kallan, who skimmed it. Beyond, Arjhani watched with narrowed eyes. “This bind me to anything?” Kallan asked in the same low voice.
“Makes you allies,” Dumuzi said. “Makes you promise not to be a tyrant.”
“Easy enough,” Kallan said, but he kept considering the scroll.
“Most of this is straightforward,” Dumuzi blurted out. “If we don’t worship him, he’ll be too weak to defend or protect us. Even if he wanted to leave us, it would hurt him. We need each other.”
Kallan let out a sigh. “Makes sense. Maybe I’m glad my grandfather’s not here to see this, but I’m with you.” He handed back the scroll and stepped into the shrine, laying upon the altar not the greatsword of his office, strapped across his back, but the well-worn bastard sword he’d carried as long as Dumuzi had known him. He didn’t kneel, and a little flush of panic hit Dumuzi as he realized how critically important both of these choices were. Enlil couldn’t be seen to be a new slave master, and the Vanquisher couldn’t be seen to be controlled by him.
“Great Strychik Ozhon,” Kallan said, “August Enlil, take my sword and my word. As you protect this city, so shall I pledge to protect your followers and your shrines, and give great thanks that you have come among us, sheltered from evil and sheltering from evil alike. You grant justice—I seek justice. I seek the destruction of evil and wickedness so the strong shall not oppress the weak, and the land shall be enlightened. Lend me your lightning, wise uncle, favored sword, in my coming battles, and I will lend you my heart and my blade.”
A rush of electricity ran up Dumuzi’s spine, as well as most of the crowd from the looks of things. Kallan clapped a hand to the back of his neck and looked at Dumuzi, surprised. Dumuzi smiled back. “He agrees,” he said.
Kallan shook his head, dumbfounded for a moment. Then he took a small pouch from his belt and handed it to Dumuzi. “Here. Call it alms or whatever you like. You’re going to need more of these.”
Dumuzi took the bag of coin gingerly, and very pointedly avoided looking at the Kepeshkmolik patriarch. Kepeshkmolik earned their keep, did not take debts lightly. Kallan looked down his snout at the younger man.
“You paid for this thing from your own pockets, and it doesn’t belong to you. It can’t. So take the karshoji coin and make sure you tell people you need it.”
Dumuzi shook his head tightly. “I can’t.”
Kallan sighed, his nostrils flaring again. “Godsbedamned Kepeshkmolik. Fine.” He turned to the crowd. “In grateful thanks to Enlil Aricholedarthicaesh for his timely assistance against the Blue Fire and his future assistance in our coming trials, I have gifted his Chosen and priests a sum of silver. We can’t all fit into this one little shrine.” A peppering of chuckles ran through the crowd. “Now I’m not going to tell you what you owe our Strychik Ozhon but keep in your minds, this is your shrine, your ally too. And I don’t think any of us will look too fondly on a clan that doesn’t take up its own weight in this matter.”
Kallan walked back down the steps, led by his Adjudicators to a group of waiting clan elders. Dumuzi shot a grateful glance at Tam and Mira Zawad. Saitha sidled up next to him. “We need something to put coin in. I have a strongbox I can give.”
“Go get it quickly,” Dumuzi said. “And send someone to figure out if we can borrow one of the Adjudicators’ vaults.”
She took the sack of silver and ran off, and he blew out a breath, thick with lightning. That had gone well, another step down a path full of pitfalls and obstacles. He risked a glance at his mother, still standing far, far from the shrine. Uadjit smiled and gave him a reassuring nod. You will manage, Dumuzi told himself. He glanced out at the horizon in the dimming light, at the shimmer of campfires. You have to.
When he turned back to the crowd, Arjhani was waiting for him.
“Well met, Son,” he said.
Dumuzi stiffened. “Well met.”
“I’ve been meaning to find you. To say … Well, to say thank you, I suppose.” Arjhani’s tongue fluttered nervously behind his teeth. “I know I haven’t … Well, you don’t love me like you love your mother, do you? Maybe I’ve given you reasons. But you saved me. You and your god. A lesser fellow would have left me to dangle over the pit for what I’d gotten into. Thank you.”
Dumuzi bit back all the things he wanted to say. For Arjhani, it was a profound display of humility. “Of course,” he said.
Arjhani nodded at the shrine. “I was wondering if you … If I could give it a try.”
“That’s what it’s for.”
But Arjhani didn’t move. “He won’t mind? I mean, given I was completely taken by the enemy. Not exactly ideal material.”
“Mistakes are mistakes,” Dumuzi said. “You can apologize if it makes you feel better.”
Arjhani tapped his tongue again. “I’m sorry, Dumuzi,” he said abruptly. “I’m obviously not … Well, there are things I am more skilled at than being a father.”
Dumuzi found it hard to meet Arjhani’s eye. He nodded. “It’s all right.” He gestured at the shrine. A small crowd was gathering around it, waiting for someone else to begin. “Here,” he said, “you go first. It will make it quite the fashion.”
He stood aside as Arjhani repeated the Vanquisher’s words—more or less—and again the rush of electricity flowed up the back of his scales. As he’d suspected, Arjhani’s act nudged others into their own attempts, the popular commander a suggestive force, even given his recent missteps.
“Well done,” Tam Zawad said, coming up beside him. “I assume, obviously.”
“It went well,” Mira confirmed, eyeing her handiwork. “Perhaps, after this, I might ask you some questions about consonantal shifts?”
“Perhaps,” Dumuzi said, utterly unsure of what she meant.
The crowd parted suddenly. Shestandeliath Geshthax came out of the city with a small retinue, including his daughter Narhanna and two young men, carrying a casket the size of a war drum and decorated all over with gilt runes. At each corner, the figure of a Vayemniri, arms wrapped around the box. Kallan straightened and went to the patriarch’s side, conferring in hushed voices. Dumuzi drew a sharp breath, and the whispers began.
“What’s happening?” Tam demanded. Mira shook her head.
“The Breath of Petron,” Dumuzi murmured. If there was any question of how dire things had become, that answered it. He glanced at Uadjit and Narghon—his grandfather watched the Shestandeliath patriarch with his jaw tight, his nostrils flaring. His eyes shining. He’d known.
Geshthax turned to the elders. “Should anything happen, I declare Shestandeliath Narhanna, my daughter, of the line of Haizverad, to be my selection for the throne of Shestandeliath.”
“Witnessed,” Narghon said, too briskly. “Good luck.”
Kallan glanced back at the crowd. “I don’t need to tell anybody to give the Shestandeliath some space, do I?” People moved back, whole armies began shifting closer to the pyramid, as Narhanna opened it for her father.
The Breath of Petron looked like nothing so much as a hand-sized piece of tree root made of blood-red stone, branching in at least six directions into finer and finer tubes. But unlike ordinary stone, it hummed with a peculiar power all its own.
In the third thousand years, Dumuzi thought, Versveshardinazar, the Opaline Terror, mined the Verthishai Loech Ternesh down to its roots, seeking the relics of Merciless Petron. For centuries, his slaves broke rocks until they found the corpse, and the precious remains of the Dawn Titan’s magic. Thus did Haizverad Who-Would-Be-Shestandeliath discover the Breath of Petron, a remnant of the titan small enough it could be spirited away.
“What does it do?” Mira whispered.
“ ‘In the first days, Merciless Petron claimed a kingdom that stretched to the sea,’ ” Dumuzi recited, “ ‘so flat and trackless that there was nothing to stop a stone rolled across it, nor the armies of her brothers and sisters. She claimed dominion over the stone and earth, and ordered fiery mountains to rise from the ground, a wall against invaders and a home for her red dragon steeds. When the Tyrants were slaves themselves, Petron brooked no imperfection, and those that defied her were turned to glass and stone at a word.’ ”
“What does that mean?” Tam asked.
Geshthax hefted the stone artifact in his remaining hand, shifting it with practiced ease so that the largest branch faced him. Grimly he strode through the crowd, out through the streets that surrounded the pyramid, the faint sparks of lightning clear along his jaw. Dumuzi thought of the rumors of Shestandeliath Geshthax, the reclusive patriarch, his grandfather’s closest friend. How he’d been ransomed by cultists of Tiamat as a cadet, who cut off his arm when Shestandeliath wouldn’t relinquish their artifact. How he’d led the Lance Defenders back to their hiding place when he’d escaped. How he’d denied the city the use of the Breath of Petron when the same cult had stirred up the ash giants and no one could agree if it was because he was a coward or because he wanted to punish Tiamat’s minions with his own blade.
“Watch,” Dumuzi said, and hoped Geshthax was as strong as the rumors suggested.
A bowshot from the last of the Thymari, Geshthax raised the Breath of Petron to his mouth. At a distance, Dumuzi could see the air around him crackle with lightning for a moment as he took a deep breath. And then he spat his breath through the strange instrument.
A note rang out, loud enough to shake the bones from their ossuaries down in the catacombs, and it grew preternaturally louder. Dumuzi fought the urge to cover his ears, even as those around him gave in. The Breath of Petron shook him down to his marrow—as it should. The magic of the Dawn Titans could never be seen as a trifle.
The rumbling came next, the groaning of stones deep below the earth waking and stretching. They erupted first at Geshthax’s feet, a building wall of dusty, unpolished granite. The Shestandeliath kept blowing lightning through the horn and the stones kept coming, a line, a wall that raced past Dumuzi’s line of sight, blocking all view of the army on the horizon.
The note extended into a song of its own, and Dumuzi felt as if he were melting into the sound. Dimly he imagined the grave titaness of whom this small piece contained such power.
Geshthax’s breath finally failed him and he collapsed, coughing, careful to keep the artifact from touching the earth even as it overwhelmed him. Strangers rushed to him, helping him to his feet, helping him back toward a worried Narhanna. The scales around his nostrils had turned blue. He wheezed, spitting blood.
Tam started forward, and Dumuzi could feel the surge of power from the High Harper’s goddess, ready to heal the ailing patriarch. In his own mind, he felt Enlil pressing forward and sensed the others he’d recruited to this unlikely priesthood tensing at the same urgent presence. He caught Tam’s arm.
“It won’t work,” he said. “The artifact demands a price. It commands the stones but it turns some of his lungs to glass. If you heal it, it will take back what it gave.”
“That’s not how these things work,” Tam began.
Dumuzi stared at the priest. “We’ve had that artifact for centuries. We know what it does.” He considered Geshthax being helped back inside by Narhanna and Narghon. “He’ll be made comfortable. Not everyone dies of the Breath of Petron.”
“Could you heal him after the battle?” Mira asked. “When you don’t need the wall anymore?”
“That presumes we’ll win,” Dumuzi said.
The air atop the pyramid flashed and boomed suddenly, sending more than a few warriors after their blade hilts. Kallan’s eyes went to the peak, even as two of his Adjudicators grabbed hold of him by the arms, ready to pull the Vanquisher to safety. Silence, and then a dark shape launched skyward, illumined by the last light of the sun as it wheeled around. The crowd parted again as the giant bat caught the edge of the pyramid, flopping down on its belly on the ground and chirruping, as Verthisathurgiesh Mehen dismounted, one arm tied up in a sling.
“Oh good,” Kallan said, grinning. “You brought that bat back.”
A tenuous smile tugged at Mehen’s expression as he handed the reins off to the Adjudicators. But then he found Dumuzi and he turned grim. “We need to talk to you,” he said. “Farideh needs your help and we don’t have much time. Come on.”