Lesser Evils

CHAPTER NINE

THE SILVER MARCHES

14 FLAMERULE, THE YEAR OF THE DARK CIRCLE (1478 DR)

The expedition was not what Mira had planned on-half as many helpers, only two of them Harpers with any sort of training for artifacts, her father ready to run back to Everlund at the merest sign of Shade-but she had not gotten to where she was without a knack for adaptation. Convincing her father it would be too dangerous to leave his hangers-on behind at Everlund-without him to watch over them-had been the first step, and one tenuously made. All it would take, she thought, looking over the group as they set a camp by the roadside, was a word from Tam, and her expedition would crumble. Fortunately, she had the long ride to the caverns to accustom herself to the ragtag bunch that hung on her father like they were his children. If Tam decided to undercut her, she would be ready.

Havilar was the simplest-so enamored of Pernika and her blade that Mira suspected she would follow the mercenary into the Abyss. At least for the next tenday. Mira had made a point of nudging Pernika into sparring sessions, taking on her share of the campwork to make certain there was time enough for it.

And if the tiefling wavered, there was Farideh who was-Mira suspected-almost as interested in Tarchamus’s magic as she was. Mira could count on the warlock to slip up beside her at least once a day with some nonchalant question about the arcanist’s powers. Whether she was greatly underestimating the gulf between his skills and hers didn’t so much matter, because one thing became abundantly clear watching Farideh beside Dahl: the girl was stubborn.

And if she wants magic, Mira thought, there are ways I can give that to her.

Dahl was still a puzzle, but Mira had seen enough to gamble that if Tam ordered a retreat, he would refuse, at least at first. He wasn’t stubborn so much as ornery, ready to take everything as a slight. Dangerous to cultivate, Mira thought. That sort could turn on you quick.

And Brin …

Brin was watching her, even now. As if he were trying to determine the face that lay behind a mask. Keep on looking, she thought with a little smile. I was born to this.

Mira pulled her haversack from the cart and from it took the book she’d pressed the page into, a relatively crisp and thin atlas of the Sword Coast. The creases had been largely flattened out, and the ink no longer pooled along them as it shifted lazily. She could hear the whispery madness of its speech-ashenath enjareen nether pendarthis. Through rock and flood I’ve come to this.

“We will bring you back,” she said in Loross. “Tell us where.”

The ink jumped, as if she’d startled it, but the page didn’t reveal anything new before continuing its regular pattern of scrawlings. The schema had come up briefly the first time she’d offered, but never again. It was time for new efforts. She closed the book and sought out Dahl, sitting alone beside the fire.

The trouble was she spoke Loross, but the modern sort. She did not speak the Loross of Tarchamus, five thousand years old. For all she knew she was offering a pronunciation the page didn’t understand. Or one that threatened or insulted it. For all she knew she might, Mira thought, sound like nothing so much as a madwoman screaming from the street corner.

A blessing she had access to the sorts of rituals that solved such problems.

“Well met,” she said, dropping down beside Dahl. He eyed her warily, but nodded and returned the greeting. “Am I right to understand you can cast a translation ritual? I hear you’re rather talented at it.”

That flustered him. “Yes, well. I can cast it. Yes.” She opened the book to show the magical page. “I need this particular dialect of Loross.” He studied the page-a necessary sacrifice, she thought. As much as she’d like to keep a tight rein on what the Harpers knew about this mission, she couldn’t restrict everything. If he saw any of the page’s secrets, she’d deal with that later.

“It would be terribly helpful,” she said, after several long moments of his study of the page. “I can read it but I can’t be sure I’m speaking to it. And I’m no ritual caster.”

“I could show you,” he offered offhandedly, “so you don’t need others to cast it.”

Mira smiled and tucked that reaction away as well. “As lovely as that would be, I understand your services are already engaged.” She nodded at Farideh, who stood off at the edge of the grove, stretching a kink from her neck. Dahl’s expression closed.

“She’s not a very good pupil.”

“Really?” Mira asked. “She seems eager enough. Capable. What’s the matter?”

Dahl hesitated. “What she wants to learn … I can’t teach it.”

Planar magic, Mira thought. “Can’t or won’t?”

His whole demeanor had shifted, tensed. “Both.”

“I see,” Mira said before he pulled too far from her. “Shall we get to it?”

“You’ll have to wait until he sets the circle,” Brin interrupted. He was still standing on the other side of the campfire, arms folded. “Won’t she?”

Dahl glowered at him. “I know what I’m meant to do.”

“Well, Farideh can handle that,” Mira said. “You already taught her to lay a protective circle.”

“No,” Dahl said, still glaring at Brin. “Not yet.”

Not yet, but Farideh had said he would teach her back before they left Everlund. Very interesting. Usable.

“Mira!” her father called. “No one’s seen to the horses.”

Mira stood and dusted off her breeches, irritated but well aware she couldn’t do any more at the moment. “Sounds like we both ought to attend our tasks,” she said wanly. “But find me later. I could use your help.” She left without looking back, sure that they were both still glaring at each other. At least Brin had stopped watching her.

She was rubbing down the cart horse, contemplating the two younger men, when Maspero cornered her. “This isn’t what you sold me on.” Maspero’s voice was a sheet of lace, so fine and light, it was a shock to hear it coming from such a big man. But if Maspero was talking to you, you’d soon realize the lace was tatted of razor wire, and you would be lucky to live to repeat such comparisons.

“Well met, Maspero,” she said mildly.

“Half as many. Only two of them Harpers, and your father-”

“This is better,” she assured him. “You’ll get your weapon.”

Maspero grabbed hold of her wrist and jerked her around to face him. “You said Harpers would be best,” he reminded her. “You said they’d know how to look and what to look for, that you could get ones who wouldn’t ask questions.”

“We’ll manage,” she said, ignoring the pain in her arm. “May I have my hand back? I’m sure you don’t want anyone asking questions about why my mercenary is manhandling me.” Maspero narrowed his eyes. “It’s not as if we’ve drafted a gaggle of idiots. It was they who recovered the page, remember.”

Maspero snorted and released her, and it took all of Mira’s focus not to rub her wrist. “I heard about that,” he said. “Tell me why it is that shitting Graesson knew about the revel and the treasures. I believe I told you to be discreet.”

Mira returned to brushing the horse’s coat. “He already knew. Sent two assassins to kill me and steal it. I just … made sure he had the means to continue his search. And keep Adolican Rhand and his guards distracted in Graesson’s normal, dramatic fashion.” She bent to attend the horse’s legs. “The chaos was extraordinary.”

“Godsbedamned Cyricists,” Maspero muttered. “And if he’d managed to gain my treasure?”

“He didn’t.”

She straightened. Maspero was glaring over the cart horse at the rest of their party. “Pernika thinks the Cormyrean boy’s worth something,” he said.

“Tell her to keep it to herself until we’re done,” Mira replied. “The last thing you need is Pernika’s mad plans destroying your allies.”

“So now they’re allies?” Maspero said. “You told me ‘tools’ before. I don’t want Harpers as allies … A danger and a weakness. We deal with them as soon as they’re not necessary.”

Mira didn’t blink. “Best of luck with that.”

“Are you implying you aren’t with me, Mira?”

“I’m implying I don’t trust you not to kill me too,” she said simply. “Especially if you’re insisting I ‘deal with’ my own father because he wears the pin. He trusts me, so he trusts you too. Our goals are all in line, Maspero. What we want and what they want aren’t so far off. We get extra hands, extra eyes, and so do they, so why stir the pot? Especially when we all have a common enemy in Shade and Adolican Rhand.”

Maspero narrowed his eyes and muttered a curse for the Netherese gentleman. “If he beats us there, I’ll throttle your father myself for delaying us.”

“Oh, you’ll have to get in line in that case,” Mira said. She handed him the hoof pick. “It would do to look busy.”

Farideh hissed and pressed a hand to the sharp pain on the side of her head, drawing her ritual book closer like a shield. “Damn it, Havi, I said you could braid my hair, not yank it out by the roots.”

Havilar, who was busy scrutinizing the trio of slender braids that lay against a sleeping Pernika’s cheek, let the strands go looser. “Sorry,” she said, not looking away. “The back … she’s lying on it, but it does a funny curl, I think.” She squinted at her sister’s hair. “If I tuck this bit … D’you have a stick or a pin or something?”

Farideh held up her stylus. “Wipe the ink off, please. Why don’t you ask Pernika how she does it?”

“This is more fun,” Havilar said. “Did I tell you she said I was very skilled? She was impressed I got past her with Devilslayer, especially all battened up and off balance.”

Run darling, Lorcan says. Run fast and run far. “I wish you wouldn’t call it that.”

“What? Devilslayer?” Havilar said. “I like it.” She gathered up the thicker braids at the back of Farideh’s head and twisted them against the base of her skull. “Besides, it’s not like I called it ‘Half-Devilslayer.’ ” She stabbed the stylus through the layers of Farideh’s hair in one sharp stroke, slicing across her scalp.

“Ouch!”

“Sorry,” Havilar said. “It’s a bit precarious. Needs real pins. Here, look at me.”

Farideh reached back and gingerly touched the knot of braids that pulled all her hair taut and made her scalp ache. Havilar straightened the three smaller plaits that she’d threaded under Farideh’s right horn to run from her temple to her collarbone.

“Well?” Farideh said.

“I think it will look nice on me,” she said. “And Mehen can’t complain-there’s hardly anything to grab hold of.” She considered her sister a moment. “You should probably do the little braids on both sides if you like it-doing it only on one makes it seem like you’re trying to draw attention to one eye over the other. Makes your face a bit uneven.”

Farideh shoved the smaller braids behind her ear. “I’ll just … leave things the way they are.”

“Suit yourself.” Havilar looked ahead of the cart they rode in. “I think … It looks like the miners’ camp is ahead.”

“Good,” Farideh said and yanked the stylus free. “I’m tired of the cart. Though I suppose walking won’t be easier. Or riding.” Havilar sighed.

“You were right, by the way,” Havilar said, switching to Draconic. “Brin isn’t fond of me.”

Farideh bit her tongue. She wasn’t glad-how could she be glad at Havilar’s expense? — but she wasn’t disappointed either. In all the world, she had only Havilar and Brin, and if they went off together-or worse, fell out-everything would change. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Did he just … tell you? Like that?”

“No,” Havilar said, as if Farideh were an utter fool. “Why would I ask him? Gods, that would be embarrassing. No. I can just tell.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t say ‘oh’ like that,” Havilar said. “I’m perfectly capable of telling.”

“Could you two stop pretending I’m not here?” Dahl scowled back at them from the driver’s box. “I know enough Draconic to tell you’re gossiping.”

Havilar rolled her eyes at Farideh. “Fari, do you wonder why Dahl’s such a grouch?”

Farideh smiled. “Perpetually.”

“I think,” Havilar said, her eyes on Dahl, “he wishes we’d gossip about Mira.” Dahl’s scowl tightened and he turned back to guiding the wagon toward the stream ford.

“I like Mira,” Farideh said, closing the book and slipping it into her haversack. “She’s … very good at getting what she wants.”

Havilar sniffed. “Sometimes you shouldn’t get what you want.” She stood and heaved herself over the side of the wagon, her glaive in hand. Farideh sighed-gods, whatever she meant by that, it surely meant a fight later on. Perhaps she was mad about what Farideh had said about Brin. Perhaps she hadn’t wanted to come along. Perhaps she, like Farideh, wasn’t expecting Brin to come as well.

“She’s wrong, you know,” Dahl said abruptly.

Farideh leaned over the edge of the wagon so she could see him better. “About what?”

“About him. Brin.” Dahl looked back at her. “Every time he catches her talking to me he turns icy as a Nar foot bath.”

“I thought you were tired of gossip.”

He looked down at her. “I’m tired of half-understood gossip. This … I’m glad. I’d been thinking he was just another lordling ass looking down on the common folk.”

Farideh laughed. “Brin? No. Not in the least.” She considered Havilar, splashing up the other side of the stream toward where the others had stopped to arrange stables for the horses. Toward where Brin and Mira stood outside the lodge, talking. “I hope you’re wrong. I think she doesn’t like him so well as she pretends.”

“Certainly,” Dahl said dryly, as the cart sloshed down into the streambed. “That’s why she’s gone ahead to keep Mira from ‘getting what she wants.’ ”

Farideh cursed to herself. He was right-Havilar headed straight over and slipped into their conversation, drawing all their attention, her body language tense and angry. She was definitely going to pick a fight with Farideh later.

“Do you think we’ll stop long enough for another ritual?” she asked.

Dahl’s expression closed back up, like a book being shut. “I doubt it.” He was quiet as they eased through the water. “Master Zawad says you’re supposed to be resting in the wagon anyway.”

Farideh rolled her eyes. “I’m rested. Rested and rested and rested.”

“And you know better, do you?”

“Do you really think it takes a tenday to work a single dose of poison from a body?” she demanded. “Tell me honestly that you think that’s true, and I’ll rest until we’re back to Everlund.”

“It could,” he said defensively.

“But it doesn’t. Not in this case.” She scowled. “And still I’m supposed to rest and not cast and not take anything to help me sleep.” Tam had made the wagon a condition of her coming-along with insisting that if one of them came, all of them came.

“One separated is a weak point,” he’d said when Brin had informed Tam he would rather stay behind. “If Rhand comes through here looking for clues, I don’t want him to have options.” Mira had been as good as her word, and though Brin was clearly irritated to be painted as a weak point, the expedition was underway.

“Do you think he’ll catch up to us?” she asked Dahl. “Rhand, I mean.”

Dahl stared at her as if he were waiting for her to break down and confess all manner of crimes. She stared back, fighting the urge to turn away, to hide from his scrutiny.

“Look,” he said finally, “I didn’t know he was going to be that dangerous. You can’t blame me for that.”

“I wasn’t.”

“But you do,” he said. “It’s patently obvious you do.”

Farideh bit back a curse. “How very clever of you to know my mind.” Forget him, she thought, get out and walk. She came unsteadily to her feet. “Perhaps your Oghma favored you with the knowledge?”

The look on his face, so shocked and frankly hurt, showed the barb had gone deeper than she’d meant, but Farideh was too angry and too embarrassed to smooth things over. She moved unsteadily to the rear of the cart and slipped off as the wagon came up the muddy banks. If he wasn’t going to help her, she didn’t have to work at being pleasant to him-especially if he was going to treat her as if she were slow and wicked and plotting something fiendish by learning how to put glasses back together.

The miners’ camp marked the last bit of habitation before they reached the canyon Mira had marked, and it was the only place to leave the wagon and horses Mira had procured. There was no path to Mira’s cavern-they’d have to spend the final day of travel picking their way through the foothill forests.

“You planning to carry back what you find?” Pernika asked.

“I plan,” Mira said, “on finding out what we need to carry out before staking valuable horses out to make a highsunfeast for dire wolves. Unless you’d like to coax them into the caverns?”

“Are you suggesting we all need to traipse into the caverns?” Tam asked.

“Who knows how big they are? If we leave people behind, they’ll have no idea whether the rest of ous are lost or just following a particularly deep cave path. More inside means more who can carry a message out, if need be-and in pairs. Always in pairs. But that’s well ahead of us.” She shouldered her pack. “All we have to do is find the cave mouth; the rest should be easy enough.”

The forests of the Nether Mountain foothills were packed with larches and laspars with their shags of needles, and gnarled felsuls clinging to hollows of rock matted by their own shattered bark. In between, all manner of wildflowers and weeds, snags and bogs of old needles, and thick slicks of moss slowed them down. As Farideh picked her way through a matted patch of fireweed, a great flock of moths the size of doves swirled up around her. They battered blindly into her, and where they landed, they clung to her clothes and hair. She yelped and swatted wildly, trying to cover her head and knock the creatures off her armor at the same time.

She heard Brin crash back through the underbrush to her and the weight of the moths came off her hair one by one.

“Laspar moths,” Brin said. “They’re harmless.”

She shivered and rolled her shoulders, trying to rid herself of the sensation of them. “They’re too big to be harmless,” she said. The rest of the group was looking down the rise at them. Particularly Havilar.

“Thank you,” Farideh said to Brin. She started forward again, but he fell into step beside her.

“She’s angry, isn’t she?” he said. “Did she tell you why?”

Farideh hesitated. “I think it’s complicated.”

“Not that complicated,” he said irritably. But by then they’d caught up to Havilar, and he wouldn’t say any more. There was a moment between them so awkward and prickly that Farideh didn’t dare guess at its source, and then Brin was picking his way across the bare rocks.

“What did he say?” Havilar demanded.

“He wanted to know if you’d told me why you were angry. And I told him you hadn’t.”

“Hmph.” Havilar kicked a larch cone over the hump of granite. “If he doesn’t know, he could ask me. I almost wish he hadn’t come. Or we hadn’t.” She watched the group ahead of them for a bit. “Do you think we shouldn’t have come?”

“Why are you mad at him?”

“He called me daft,” Havilar said. “And some other things. But, I mean, I wonder if we shouldn’t have come because of Mehen. I keep expecting any moment Tam’s going to hear one of those senders and it’ll be Mehen roaring curses about how much trouble we’re in. We’re going to be in so much trouble anyway, you know? And then I wonder if maybe Mehen’s in trouble.”

“Maybe he’s just accepted we’re grown. We can go where we like, when we like. He can’t really stop us-”

Havilar grabbed her arm. “You’re not leaving.”

“No,” Farideh said, shaking her sister off. “But I could. You can. Or we can go off for a bit without Mehen and be trusted to come back. Maybe he’s seen reason.”

“Mehen?” Havilar said skeptically.

“Well what makes more sense?” Farideh asked, as the cliffs came into view ahead of them. “Mehen’s all right with us having a little adventure? Or he’s gotten into trouble standing in line for forms and approvals?”

“Well, yes.” Havilar’s tail slashed the fireweed. “I don’t know. What if … it’s Constancia? She might-”

“Want to keep us and Brin away?” Farideh interrupted. “Isn’t she more likely to … I don’t know, ransom Mehen? Or something more knightly to try to get Brin to come back?”

“That letchy fellow with the beard-”

“Would want us to go back to Waterdeep and bring the page with us.” Havilar went quiet and there was only the sound of their breaths and the crunch of dry moss underfoot.

“Devils,” Havilar said firmly. “What if it’s devils? Who … are trying to get us trapped somewhere …”

Farideh pursed her mouth. It was close-awfully close-to all she feared. Could Sairche have found out about the expedition? Could Sairche be manipulating Mira’s plans? Ahead, the dark-haired historian had stopped and was consulting her compass with a furrowed brow. Farideh would have called her independent, maybe carefree. Never the tool of another. But she would have called the cultist who’d nearly killed both her and Havilar kind and well-mannered. Her opinions of others weren’t all that trustworthy.

Mira had handed Dahl her map, and the Harper was holding it open for her to scrutinize. That opinion, Farideh thought, she trusted wholly.

“Lorcan would do it,” Havilar said.

Farideh watched Mira dart off over the rise, down toward a stream valley. “No, he wouldn’t.”

“He hates Mehen. And he tried to kill me.”

“No, he didn’t. He expressly didn’t, all right?” And he wouldn’t-he’d promised she was safe. They were both safe. Only so long as he’s alive, Farideh thought. And then who knew what would come? “It’s not Lorcan.”

“You don’t know that.”

Farideh yanked her sleeve up to her shoulder, displaying the angry red scars of her brand. She took Havilar’s hand and pressed it to the marks. “Cool. See? I’ll tell you when it’s Lorcan.”

Havilar scowled. “All right, fine. Maybe Mehen just trusts us.”

“And we were perfectly right to come.”

“You’re acting strange,” Havilar said, as they started after the others, “you know that? You’re supposed to be the worried one. I’m supposed to be the one demanding adventures.”

Farideh shook her head. “Maybe that’s why you’re worried. Because someone has to be.”

“That’s stupid,” Havilar said, but Mira’s cry of discovery from up ahead forestalled any argument. They had found the cavern of Xammux.

For all of Mira’s assurances, nothing was simple about entering the cavern, in Farideh’s opinion. First, there was a climb up a nearly sheer rock face, the stream that seemed to trickle out the broken door pouring down on her head. She hauled herself up onto the narrow ledge behind Mira, not wanting to consider how they would get back down.

The stone here was the same strange pattern as the fragment, layers of sharp circles over the dark grain of the granite. One door still hung in place, held to its ancient frame by the remains of one stone hinge. The other was half gone, its base nowhere to be seen. All over, mad writing scratched the pale stone’s surface-runes in Dethek, Draconic, and languages Farideh had never seen before. Xammux, they said. The Many.

And beneath those, in firmer, more formal lettering, was the Draconic that wasn’t Draconic.

“Not our door,” Mira said. She kneeled down and ran a finger over the broken edge. She shook her head. “No, it wouldn’t be.”

Farideh looked back down the cliff face, at Tam who’d nearly made the top. “So we’re through?” she panted.

Mira looked up at her and blinked. “Through with what?”

“It’s the wrong door.”

“No,” Mira said. “Just not the door that fragment came from. This is an old break. Ours had sharper edges. And none of this.” She waved at the scrawls crisscrossing the facade. “We have to go deeper,” she informed Tam as he climbed up beside her.

Tam peered at the door himself, easing across the slippery rock to touch the carvings. “The marks of our cultists.”

“Possibly,” Mira said. “But I don’t think they’re around, if they have been around any time of late.” She pointed across at the canyon wall, where one of the spongy funguses was crawling slowly toward them, the patterns of its skin shifting as it eased over the rocks. “The caverns must have flooded recently-and violently. Those things certainly look as if they’d rather be inside. And that’s likely where our fragment came from.” She pulled a slim book from her haversack, and the page from the center of that. “Perhaps you would too,” she said to it.

Second came the long and stumbling trek along the uneven streambed as it wound deeper into the ground. The wet, marshy smell of the funguses still hung in the air over the cold, clammy smell of wet stone. Rocks polished smooth by their passage out of the mountains turned under Farideh’s feet, and the water that covered her boots at the beginning swiftly rose to her knees. Mira led the way, the page in hand. Ashenath enjareen … Tarchamusi enpuluis …

At least Farideh could see well enough. Something greenish and shimmering coated the broken edges of the walls, the points of stalactites, and it threw off enough light for her sensitive eyes to pierce the dark, leaving both of her hands free to catch her balance on the walls.

Dahl came up beside her, holding one of the sunrods Mira had passed around and staring up at the strange glow. “Cavern botfly nymphs,” he said. “We’d best burn our hose as soon as we’re out of the water.”

Farideh looked back over her shoulder. “Why?”

“They lay their eggs in the water to find purchase with some passing host. They lodge in the knit of hose,” he said blandly, and he passed her by without further explanation, leaving Farideh eyeing the dark, chilly water uneasily.

Soon enough, the tunnel widened into a cavern as broad as Everlund’s training yard and longer than Waterdeep’s market. The path was a broken, sloping thing, inching upward to another cavern beyond. The river pooled into a lake that covered half the floor. More of the botflies glowed along the sunken walls and stalactites, matched here by a strange, bluish luminescence in the water itself. The ceiling shimmered with their reflected light.

“Wait,” Tam ordered. No one needed to be told-even Farideh and Havilar knew that color of light often meant a pocket of the wild magic left behind by the Spellplague. Almost a hundred years had passed, but here and there the remains of unbound power left by the death of the goddess Mystra could still be deadly.

But this … Farideh felt no pull to it, no sense of power. Tam seemed to be considering it with the same uncertainty. Blue might mean spellplague, but it could mean plenty of other things as well. He edged toward the water.

The light brightened as he neared the pool’s edge. But the waters stayed relatively calm, stirring gently toward the beginnings of the stream. If it had been plaguechanged, there would have been a greater strangeness-a twisting of reality, an unfolding of the stone and water, a wrongness that would have been clear in the growing light. Tam’s shoulders relaxed.

“Why is it getting brighter?” Havilar asked.

Tam looked back over his shoulder at Dahl, who shook his head. “It’s likely something living in the water. Some little plant or something. Like a sea sparkle. Might be a signal of some kind.”

The lights flared and shifted, as if the glowing creatures parted, leaving the center dark. Farideh crept a little nearer. “What in the world would a plant be signaling?”

A mass of serpentine heads lashed out of the dark water, all bellows and teeth and glowing eyes. Farideh shouted and leaped backward, away from the water, away from the burst of acid that spewed from the nearest mouth and hissed against the wet rocks.

The hydra’s near head snapped after her, more acid dripping from its jaws. The rod was in her hand with hardly a thought, the surge of the Hells in her blood, and a blast of crackling purple energy shot out and caught the hydra head along its cheek.

She called on her pact once more and slipped through the gap in the planes that opened. It spat her out farther left as the hydra dived toward the spot she’d been in before. Havilar shouted at her from across the way. “Get its head up!”

Farideh stabbed upward with the rod, a plume of flames searing the beast’s softer throat. It bellowed and thrashed itself away from the fire, but the Hellish magic clung to it.

“There!” she shouted as the head’s arc peaked, and it started to crash down.

Havilar sprinted up from behind her to plant the sharp end of her glaive below the falling head like a spike. With a great bloody crunch, it speared through the jaw and split the fragile base of its skull, spearing its brain.

A second head swung low, its jaws wide to snatch Havilar, the glaive, and the dead head in one gulp. Farideh cast another stream of fire into its mouth instead. It veered off. Havilar wrestled the weapon free.

Farideh grinned like a madwoman, exulting in the pulse of power, the strength of the spells she cast. Let Tam think her too weak to manage. Let Dahl treat her like some grasping apprentice. She knew what she was doing.

“Fari! Duck!” Havilar cried.

The second head slammed into her side and threw her into the lake.

The icy water shocked her every nerve and she nearly gasped in surprise. The blue light of the water was all around her, and for a moment she couldn’t tell where the surface was and where the lake bottom lay. A current stirred the water around her and pulled her gently toward some other shore. She turned, trying to find some purchase, some touchstone that would point the way.

And found herself facing a dark, jagged hole in the rock.

She hung there, her lungs screaming as her eyes adjusted to the dim light. A flat surface surrounded the hole, a square that broke the natural shape of the lake’s wall. And if that was the wall …

Farideh made for the surface, took another breath of air, and dived again, swimming closer. She ran her fingers over the freezing stone, the chiseled edges of runes still clear.

No wonder it had been lost to the ages.

The hydra plunged a head into the water beside her. She swam frantically backward, away from the bloom of acid, the snap of its teeth. The rod was still in her hand, but she couldn’t breathe let alone speak the trigger word. Back and back and back-chased by the lunging jaws, until its neck was stretched to the limit. Her muscles ached with the cold. She pulled out her sword and stabbed at the creature, only making it madder. It caught the edge of her cloak in its teeth and yanked. Pulling her near enough to take a bite. Pulling her near enough for Farideh to shove her sword into the soft back of its mouth.

The hydra pulled back, spitting acid. She swam for the surface again, and made for shore. The wounded head reared up over her, the hilt of her sword still protruding from its mouth.

“Dive!” Tam bellowed across the water, and she did, but not before she glimpsed Dahl and Pernika both taking their swords to the creature’s heart. From under the icy water, the crack of the hydra’s neck slamming into the lake’s surface sounded all around her. It drew up again, and its death scream reached even Farideh’s ears.

She broke the surface again. The last head lay sprawled across the stony shore, and Havilar was clambering over it. As Farideh paddled nearer, Havilar kneeled at the edge and held out her glaive end. “Gods, here! Are you all right?”

“I th-think I f-found it,” Farideh gasped. She grabbed hold of the proffered end of Havilar’s glaive and hauled herself up out of the freezing water. Her teeth chattered and her bones ached, but still she grinned. “There’s a hole, a passage in between two rocks. It’s hard to see, but there’s writing on part of it and the broken part’s the right size.”

Mira had been standing over Tam and Dahl, but now all her attention was on Farideh. “Where?”

“Along the cave wall, on the left.” She pushed the wet hair out of her eyes. “It’s fairly far in, though. Someone not so winded should check it.”

Mira was already stripping off her armor and gear. She waded into the water and started toward the cave wall.

Havilar pulled her cloak from her haversack and draped it around Farideh’s shoulders. “Here. Bad as swimming in the tarn too early?”

Farideh pulled the cloak around her. “Easily.”

“Brrr,” Havilar said sympathetically. “Can I borrow your sword a breath?”

“Get it out and you can.”

Tam yelped in pain. “Shar and hrast!” Dahl held Tam’s right hand by the raw and ragged fingers. The hand below it hardly bore any skin and had swollen twice its normal size.

“Broken,” Dahl said. “Can you heal it?”

“Not without my right hand,” Tam snapped. He winced as Dahl smeared an oily substance over the ruined skin. “Hrast. Brin, get over here. Dahl, go start a fire.”

“The salve will help,” Dahl said.

“Not fast enough to make my hand good for the next thing that needs healing.” Brin dropped down beside the silverstar and started praying. Dahl looked away-but seeing Farideh watching, he scowled.

“Start a fire,” Tam ordered again. “One of us is half frozen and it’s about to be two.” He looked over at Farideh. “What happened to ‘no powers until you’re well’?”

“Better than being eaten,” she replied. “And I’m fine.”

Out on the lake, she heard Mira break the surface, draw another breath and dive again. Farideh drew the cloak nearer, shivering in sympathy. Dahl finished off the spell that made a cheery little campfire burst smokelessly into being. She settled beside it, wishing it were bigger, just as a hydra head rolled past her and into the growing flames.

“Don’t you dare!” Dahl cried, jumping forward and kicking the head out of the fire. It rolled a short distance and sat steaming on one scaly cheek. “The air’s bad enough down here without adding burning hydra to the mix.”

“Do you have a better plan?” Havilar had planted a foot on another one of the hydra’s necks and started hacking at it with the sword. The hydra’s head came loose, and she kicked it away from the body, toward a hollow in the floor, before doing the same to the next one.

“What are you doing?” Maspero demanded. Farideh startled. The mercenary had said hardly a dozen words since they’d left Everlund, and his soft, light voice still surprised her.

Havilar kicked the second head so that it settled against the first. “Taking heads.”

“Why?”

“Every head grows another hydra,” Havilar said as if he were slow, “unless you burn them. So we’ll have to burn them. Fari, will you?”

Even with Dahl’s little fire, Farideh still shivered, and in a moment Mira would too. A quick gesture, a whispered word, and a bolt of flames sizzled from her open palm to engulf the hydra heads, hot enough to send up a cloud of steam and set the skulls to popping wetly. She caught her breath-Dahl was right, it smelled fouler than foul. But the chill in her bones started to recede.

Mira pulled herself from the water, her grin answer enough and her skin taking on a bluish cast. “Thank your gods, da,” she said through a chattering jaw. “We’ve found it-ah, piss and hrast, what is that stench?”

“Prevention,” Havilar said solemnly.

“You’re cold, even if you’re excited,” Farideh said, pulling Mira toward the fire.

Brin cursed and clutched his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s as best I can do.” Tam’s hand was still swollen and raw looking. “I can try again in a bit,” he offered, “but if I push it-”

“Neither of us will be well,” Tam finished.

“Bad luck,” Pernika put in. “Are you sure this is the right way?”

Havilar kicked a fourth head into the fire. “That’s all of them. No more hydras.”

Tam’s attention went to her. “Hydras have seven heads.”

“This one only had four. The other three necks are just stumps.” Havilar looked down at the carcass and wrinkled her nose. “Nasty-looking stumps.”

Tam sat up straighter. “Old wounds?”

“Old enough to putrefy,” she said. “I said nasty. I meant nasty.”

Tam cursed. “Then someone else has been this way recently. We don’t have time to dally.”