Lesser Evils

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE LOST LIBRARY OF TARCHAMUS

Farideh jerked out of sleep to the cool air of the cavern-library, her skin chill and damp with sweat. Panting, she surveyed the little courtyard in which they’d established their camp-the circle of shelves, the stillness of the library, not a hellwasp or a devil or a ruined wall to be seen.

Only Dahl, perched on a camp stool, holding a mug of something hot and watching her with one raised brow. His gray eyes were softly bloodshot, as if he’d been up most of the night as well.

“Sleep well?” he asked dryly.

Farideh didn’t answer, but straightened her clothes and rebuckled her jacks. Her head ached and her hands were shaking, and she did not have the reserves to deal with Dahl’s surly mood. Not when her brain still trembled with the images of Lorcan being torn apart and Havilar laughing over it.

She pressed her hands to her eyes. Perhaps Tam was right. Perhaps Rhand’s drugs were still undoing her.

“What kept you up?” she asked, standing and straightening her bedroll.

“Nothing,” he said. “It seemed better to start work than to sleep.” He sipped from his mug. “Mira and I stayed up, searching the shelves. Don’t,” he said, when Farideh smiled at the admission. “I am not being pulled into you and your sister’s silly gossip.”

“You are full of so much more silly gossip than either of us,” Farideh said. Havilar might have teased him, but Dahl was the one sorting out her sister’s imaginary love life for his own amusement.

He scowled at her. “We’re marking the shelves we’ve searched with chalk to keep a better record. Pull a book every few levels to get an idea of what’s shelved along that row. Write that down on the slate and put a cross on the end so no one else comes back to search it.”

“I kept a slate fine yesterday,” she reminded him. She hesitated. “Are you ever going to show me the rest of those rituals?” she asked. “You owe me seven more. And you said you’d show me the protective circle.”

Dahl sipped from his mug. “We haven’t got time.”

She waited, but he said nothing else. “Convenient.” She scooped up a slate and stub of chalk before she said anything she would later regret.

Only a few of the nearest shelves had been marked with quick slashes of white. Farideh found an unmarked line and pulled several texts-all very old scrolls to do with military orders that were at least interesting, but not terribly applicable to the world they lived in now-and added her own mark before moving down a row. The scrolls and tomes stretched off into the darkness.

It would take ages to find Mira’s spellbooks, no doubt. And ages more to stumble on the planar magic that she did not know the name or the shape of that might make a path for Lorcan.

You have to figure this out, she thought. He’s going to die if you don’t figure this out.

Perhaps she should tell someone else what she was looking for …

“Well met.” Farideh started at the sudden voice. Havilar came around the corner to stand beside her.

“Karshoj,” Farideh swore. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

“Was I sneaking?” Havilar said sweetly.

Farideh scowled at her. “Yes.”

“Have you looked at that book I found yet?” she asked. “It’s amazing.”

“I was there,” Farideh said. “I saw it just like everyone-”

“You should be reading it. Everyone should be.”

“Why?” Farideh said sharply. “Is it going to tell me dragons’ toenails are made of gold or hydras sprout from heads or some other nonsense?”

Havilar’s brow furrowed and Farideh let her tirade die. She rubbed her face. “I’m sorry. I’m just … I haven’t been sleeping well, you know? I didn’t mean it. Honestly. I’m sure the book’s plenty interesting, I just haven’t done any sections.”

To her surprise, Havilar only shook her head, as if Farideh were being silly. “I think it does know everything,” she said. “I’ll bet it knows how to make you sleep. You should ask it.”

Farideh waited for Havilar to lash out at her, but she just stood there, giving her sister the same, almost puzzled, look. As if Farideh were the one acting strange.

“Maybe you need some rest too,” Farideh said. She frowned. “Havi, where’s your glaive?”

Havilar shook her head again. “In the camp. Where else? You should see what the Book says about your problem, anyway.” She turned and slipped back in between the shelves, no doubt to seek out more traps.

Karshoj, Farideh swore to herself. She hoped Havilar wasn’t acting strange over her fight with Brin. Because gods knew how that was bound to shake out. If she’d just been a little more careful and not …

Farideh rolled her shoulders against the knot in the middle of her back. Calm, she told herself. Calm. Havi’s keeping busy. She’s rooting out traps. She’s reading that book. Farideh reached for a scroll …

The Book. It had said it knew the library. That it could find spells if you asked for specifics. She closed her hand into a fist. She’d only be able to read Loross a few more hours-if that; there was no hope of telling time down beneath the earth. She’d have to stop and recast the ritual anyway.

No one else was standing in the alcove where they’d left the Book, and Farideh stood just at the edge of the shelves considering it. There was a good reason, she was sure, that everyone was avoiding it but Havilar. She thought of the way the Book hadn’t known where the spell was that Mira mentioned, the thing that Rhand wanted. Perhaps it’s just not that clever, she thought.

Can I help you, dear girl? the Book spoke. Farideh moved closer, watching the pages. Someone-Havilar, no doubt-had left it open on the lectern again, and the pages crawled with spell-enhanced lines of Draconic written so neatly they might have been printed.

“I think … perhaps,” she said. “I don’t want to be a bother.”

Nonsense, the voice said, sounding more like a pleasant old man than anything else. Do you see anyone else bothering me? That callous woman earlier made it sound as if you were in a hurry. As if you had agents of a floating city on your heels. And yet no one’s here asking for my help.

Because you didn’t know the spell we need, Farideh thought. “I need to find a ritual. Where would I find such books?”

Ritual … ritual … the Book mused. Ah-do you mean the spells of the new era? The magic cast to rebind the Weave?

“Yes?” That certainly sounded right. Like something Dahl would utter.

Fascinating study. Alas, that variety of magic is the work of more modern minds. We did not need such measures before the Blue Fire. Its voice grew wistful. Before, the Weave of magic was like a tamed beast, if you had the right sort of mind, the right sort of sight. No need to tie together errant wildlings of power-just let your spells work with the natural flow of Mystryl.

“Of course,” Farideh said, not sure about half of its assertions and not wanting to ask. Her stomach twisted, remembering Lorcan’s bloody, empty sockets. No rituals in the library. None but Dahl’s and Tam’s.

Is there something in particular you need? the Book asked. Magic has certainly changed, but it’s always possible to adapt, to reinvent. Perhaps the spell you require already exists in another form?

“Perhaps,” Farideh said. The runes were shivering, as if they might swirl into something else, the way the page alone had. “I need to summon someone from another plane,” she said, leaving the book on the plinth.

Someone willing? the Book asked. Or someone … coerced?

Farideh hesitated. “Yes, willing. I mean, I believe so.”

Well there’s nothing simpler! the Book said. There are half a dozen spells to do just that, and Netheril mastered the art of interplanar travel very long ago. It would help, the Book went on, if I knew where your someone needed to be gathered from.

Farideh hesitated again and looked around to make certain no one was near. “The sixth layer of the Hells.”

Your friend is in Baator? The Book sounded genuinely surprised. In the domain of Moloch?

She frowned. That didn’t sound right-Lorcan answered to a mistress, an archdevil called Glasya-but whether the Book was wrong or the Book was remembering something long ago, she couldn’t have said. Did archdevils have successors? “Things,” she said, “may have changed somewhat.”

The Book harrumphed. Even evil is inconstant. Nevertheless-you should start with the details of the planes and the fabric between. The scrolls you need are in an antechamber on the western side of the library.

“There are other chambers?”

Something your leader should like to know, eh? Let her come and ask then. It chuckled once more. Follow the outer ring of the shelves until you find a large column with a rune on it. Now that rune locks the antechamber, so before you so much as touch the door, you need to disarm it. Eradicate the mark and that should break the spell. The door is a score of paces beyond, between the maps of the Eastern kingdoms and the star charts.

“Thank you,” Farideh said.

Not at all, the Book said. Come back when you’ve found your information and we’ll see about finding you the right sort of spell.

Farideh followed the Book’s directions along the curved path that traced the library’s outer wall. The shelves along it stretched to twice her height and were laden with thick, leather-bound tomes. The sounds of the others echoed back across the dim cave, but no one was working here. She was completely alone.

She stopped and drew a deep breath, trying to still her thoughts to match the quiet. How long had it been since she’d been truly alone? No Havilar asking her what she was thinking. No Lorcan telling her what to think. Not even the anonymous bustle of Waterdeep.

It was strangely unnerving. She wondered if the arcanist had enjoyed the solitude.

The columns along the outer edge were wide enough to wrap her arms around and polished to a sheen. Farideh kept her eyes high, studying the veins and grains of the stone, searching for anything that might have been a rune. She needn’t, it turned out, have looked so hard.

Six columns from the Book, a rune scarred the stone high above her head, a deep black mark shivering with a greenish light that echoed the pulse of the swirling lights and swarmed in the space between the shelves and the ceiling. Eradicate the mark, she thought. She took the rod from its pocket.

“Adaestuo.” The ball of jagged violet light crashed into the column almost as soon as it came into being, just beyond her outstretched arm. The spell and the rune combined in a blinding burst of light, a pop, and a shower of stone dust.

When the flare of the blast had faded and her eyes had adjusted, she could see the polished exterior of the column had been destroyed, blasted into powder. The powers of the Hells that had surged up through her when casting slipped back into their places, trailing down her nerves like a lover’s fingers.

She rolled her shoulders, trying to shake the sensation. The bones of her neck popped past each other.

Then … more popping. Like a campfire.

She turned and saw the camp, the full moon casting shadows with the broken remnants of ancient walls. The campfire tossing them back. Akanul, she thought. Scarcely a tenday out of Arush Vayem-the village she’d grown up in, the village that had cast her aside when she took the pact. They had come down far enough from the mountains that winter had all but lost its teeth, and only the night air had a bite to it. The grass and scorched stonework beyond glittered with frost.

She blinked and Lorcan’s portal opened, in the heart of the campfire. Whether because of the noise, the smell of burning brimstone, or the fluctuation in the air as one plane intruded on the next, she heard Mehen stir as the devil stepped toward her.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she blurted, dimly noting that she said it because she had said it that winter night. “He’ll wake.”

Lorcan didn’t stop, but passed her by and so she followed between buildings to a roughly flat field that had once been a road. “First it’s that I can’t come around while he can see me,” he said. “Now it’s not while he might wake. Honestly, darling, I’m going to have to insist you give me more options. Or give yourself a little more space.”

“You should stay away,” she said.

He moved around her, and she held her breath waiting for the hand that slipped around her waist, over her hip. It didn’t come. He smiled with that wicked way he had. “You should give yourself a little more space.”

She frowned. That didn’t sound like him. “Do you want me to show you what I’ve done?”

“I want you to …” It was as if her mind turned over, as if other thoughts spilled into this one, and suddenly the air was Neverwinter’s all over again, all humid and threatening storms. “Run, darling,” Lorcan said, urgent and fearful. “Run fast and run far.”

She blinked hard. “What?”

Lorcan crouched a distance away and scratched a rune into the layer of frost and dead moss: a sinuous thing of smoothly angling lines that seemed to suggest a much more complex symbol, as if there were lines to it that Farideh couldn’t perceive.

“You still think like a soldier,” he said, coming to stand beside her. “Remember, darling.” And his voice shifted, turning into Tam’s. “There’s nothing here worth dying for.”

Farideh jumped away from him, and once more she was in the lost library, alone and standing in a dusting of powdered stone. Her footsteps alone marred the dust-she’d walked twenty feet, back the way she’d come.

She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes and cursed. She’d been so sure the poison had passed, but to see things this mad … If she told Tam, he’d be after her to lie down and give up the pact for the rest of her days. And then what would become of Lorcan?

Lorcan … She would have been embarrassed to admit just how real the hallucination had seemed. How much she had been waiting for his hand on her wrist, his arm around her waist, his breath on her neck …

She blinked up at the ceiling, as if she were waking from a second dream, and cursed under her breath. It was the spell she was remembering, she told herself firmly. The echo of the dream. Everything else was just her being silly. She was through with that. They were … comrades. And she owed Lorcan her life. Get the scrolls, she thought, then go and lie down.

She found the door to the antechamber easily enough, noting the maps and charts for Mira’s sake, as she pressed the smooth stone inward. The hinges moved silently, admitting her to a room packed with scrolls.

“Karshoj,” she swore. She could be hours searching all of it. She pulled a scroll from near the door and unrolled it-something about a city made of brass. She pulled one a few feet farther in-details about the fauna in a plane of ice. She kept on, pulling scrolls from different shelves, looking for anything that might hint at a way to link to the Nine Hells. There were notes on planes that housed gods and planes full of nothing at all; worlds of flame and stone and metal; a dimension where nothing stayed on the ground and another that could be sailed to by launching a ship across the stars. Planes above and below and just to one side of Toril.

The next scroll she pulled was rolled as thin and tight as a reed. Open it stretched only the length of her arm. But there, in vibrant shades of red and violet and stark black was a map of the Hells, each layer spiraling down into a smaller, more concentrated realm. Avernus, the Last Outpost. Dis, the Iron City. Minauros, the Endless Bog. Phlegethos, the Heart of Flames. Stygia, the Frozen Wastes.

Malbolge, the spidery writing read, two-thirds of the way down. The Tyranny of Turmoil. Be cautious and do not …

The runes dissolved into gibberish before her eyes, and Farideh cursed and nearly crushed the parchment in her frustration. The ritual had run out. She’d have to go back to the camp to recast it.

“Think like a soldier,” she murmured, recalling Lorcan’s words. “Take what you might need and sort it out later.”

There were at least a score of scrolls in the same niche as the map had come from. She pulled every one out and scanned the foreign marks for familiar signs-eleven bore the cluster of runes that seemed to mean Malbolge. She gathered these in her arms and left the rest in a tidy pile where she could find them later.

It was a start, she thought, making her way back to the camp at the center of the library. She knew better than to hope the arcanist’s notes were less confusing than a ritual scroll like the one Havilar had found. But it was a start-a better start than she’d had in the last month-and she dared to hope she’d found the solution.

A month … and her spells still worked. She wouldn’t pretend she understood the ways of the Hells, but having seen Lorcan’s monstrous sisters at battle, it seemed strange she might still have a chance to save him. If someone had asked her before Lorcan had vanished, she would have said the erinyes would surely have slaughtered anyone they took prisoner.

She remembered watching one slice a man in half, so quick he had time to grasp for his legs, as if he might pull them back on like trousers-before Lorcan turned her face away.

Maybe he is dead, she thought. Or maybe someone else has already rescued him. She held the scrolls closer. Maybe he’d decided to be done with her.

Farideh took a deep breath and pressed on. She wouldn’t know until she tried, and if she was wrong, at least she would know. She owed him that much. And if he was free, well, he would have found her, and said so. Wouldn’t he?

She walked more quickly, as if she could outpace the worries that wouldn’t stay down.

As she passed an open aisle, she glimpsed her sister. Havilar sat on the floor beside a hole left by the slab of polished limestone she’d somehow levered out of place. In its absence, the workings of the pressure trap were laid out like a strange skeleton. She disconnected one of the pieces, a copper spring made verdigrisy with age.

“Hey,” she called as she drew nearer. Havilar looked up at her. “I … talked, I suppose, to the Book.”

“Which book?”

Farideh frowned. “The … talking one?”

Havilar tilted her head. “Did you? Was it more interesting than before?”

“I suppose,” Farideh said. “It’s odd talking to a thing, you know?”

“I guess. Aren’t you supposed to be reading the scrolls and stuff though? I thought Mira said to forget the weird book for now.” She held up the spring. “Isn’t this odd? It’s as if there’s air flowing under the floor.”

Farideh shook her head and let it go. “How many have you dismantled?”

“Three,” she said. “This one nearly got me.” She pointed with her chin at the nearby shelf, now plastered with a sticky ooze. “Mira’s going to have a fit, isn’t she?”

“She’ll understand,” Farideh said. “How many other traps are there?”

Havilar shrugged. “I found two others that are magical. I’m not fussing with those. I think there’s something over on the east side. There’s a big rune on the wall there.”

“Didn’t the Book tell you where they were?”

“No,” Havilar said, prying one of the levers from the mechanism. “Why should it?”

Farideh did not press and made her excuses. Given the world of questions Havilar might have asked the Book, she supposed as she wound through the maze of shelves, one that would give her less to do to distract her from worrying about Mehen or Brin, or maybe even Farideh probably wouldn’t rank high …

Farideh stopped in the middle of the shelves, the hairs on her neck on end and sure as she’d ever been that someone was watching her. “Well met?” she called, looking back the way she’d come. “Is someone there?” Only quiet.

Havi, sneaking around again, she told herself, her eyes locked on the darkness. Mira, being quiet. Maspero, creeping around like Mehen does.

There was a thickness to the air. A strange quality she almost recognized-as if something were about to be there. As if something had just left.

“Is someone-”

A hand fell on her shoulder, and she spun, scattering scrolls across the aisle.

Tam flexed his hand and winced. It had taken Brin several more tries, and though the skin was healed over, and the bones were all set, it was stiff and aching. Not worth wasting a healing on, he thought, but it annoyed him nonetheless. He eased himself to the ground and pulled down another batch of books.

In the sepulchral silence of the library, the sounds of the others echoed and refused to settle into any clear location. The repeated shush of Mira pulling book after book, one at a time past its fellows, might have been several rows ahead or on the other end of the cavern. The occasional shuffle and thud of Maspero carting the texts she set aside to the camp in the center of the library might have come from beside him or farther on. The wooden clatter of Havilar and her glaive setting off one of the traps might be anywhere. The sound of Dahl and Farideh sniping at each other should have been nowhere.

He sighed. Gods, he did not want to play caretaker. Not for the first time he cursed Mehen, cursed the Fisher, and then cursed himself for not refusing the two of them.

They don’t need a caretaker, he reminded himself, opening one of the books. You don’t need to stop Farideh and Dahl from arguing or stop Havi running around.

Except he did-they were all his responsibility in the end, and if he couldn’t keep them alive and unharmed and watching out for one another, they might all be doomed. He rubbed the beginnings of a headache from his forehead. They shouldn’t have come-he shouldn’t have come. Only the moon above knew what the Fisher was letting happen out in the world. He set the book, a collection of folktales from Eaerlann, back on the shelf.

He wished he’d been able to detect the spellbooks from among the more mundane texts, but the magic of the library seemed to blur and bounce his senses every which way. He wished he’d insisted on leaving the cavern, on being out in the open one time more before they settled into this all-but-futile task. He’d have liked to perform the rites to have a moment to himself and Selune before being buried under the ground.

Mira had a point, he reminded himself. More important, perhaps, he hadn’t wanted to take that point, that authority away from her. Something was wrong-she had always been unflappable, reserved even. And all he knew to do was let her have the room she insisted on-to step back so she didn’t need to push.

But this time, he thought, returning the next two tomes to their spots, it didn’t seem to be doing the trick. More than anything he wished he could sit her down and get her to tell him what was going on. Good or ill. He was still her father after all.

The sendings to Everlund and Waterdeep hadn’t worked. The components had lain there, unspent as the ritual failed. The wards, Mira reminded him. The Book had mentioned them. They keep outside eyes from seeing in, so wouldn’t they stop messages from getting out? Perhaps-there was no telling, as old as this place was, as many changes to the nature of magic as it had seen. He tried again, just past the doors, and while the ritual cast, he got no answers. There was no way to be sure where the Shadovar, the Zhentarim, or even Mehen were.

“Shepherd,” a voice, an old voice from the recesses of his memory, said, “what do you think you’re doing?”

Tam blinked. The book was gone. His hands rested on the marble altar of Selune he’d used for so many years, in the chapel at the center of Viridi’s complex. Above, the leagues of stone had vanished, replaced by a clear and cloudless night sky.

He reached for his chain as he looked back over his shoulder-the shelves, the library, and the sounds of his team were gone. It was the chapel, as surely as it was Viridi, stern-faced and richly robed, standing there beside the stone table they used for resurrections, leaning on a cane.

Tam remembered this. It was two months before she’d died, her lungs failing her at last. Only Tam had known her time was short, and she’d caught him praying for the power to heal her.

He swallowed. “Let me do this. Let me try, at least.”

Viridi didn’t budge. “It’s effort wasted. You know that. My time is what it is.” She seemed to vanish, to skip across the room when he blinked. She was sitting behind the resurrection table, as if it were a desk. “Your people say you’re difficult to work with, you know?”

“It’s not that, I-” he started, then he stopped, puzzled. “I don’t have people. I work alone. I always have.”

“You are never alone,” Viridi said. “You’re a link in a chain, a knot in a silk rug. If you leave now … your people will owe you quite a few favors. Even if they don’t know it.”

“Stop talking about my ‘people,’ ” Tam said. Stop talking at all, he thought. She didn’t sound right. She didn’t sound like Viridi. “I don’t have people. I work alone.”

“We’re on the same side,” she chided, standing again and moving. Moving toward him.

Tam shook his head. They’d had this conversation before … but it had been different, as if the words were out of order, landing in a pattern that wasn’t from the spymaster’s tongue. He looked down at his hands, at the thick veins and thicker knuckles. He’d been younger too, when they’d spoken last. She took a step toward him, and he remembered.

“You’re dead,” he said to Viridi. She gave him that patient look she’d worn so often, the one that said he was missing something, and she wasn’t about to tell him what. He started to stand, but his knee seized, forcing him back down.

Viridi leaned down the shadows settling into the hollows of her eyes and the sudden collapse of her cheeks. The dead spymaster spoke and he could have sworn it was his own voice speaking back to him: “There’s nothing here worth dying for.”

Tam fell backward onto the stone floor of the library, and the chapel, Viridi, and moon above were gone. He blinked at the shelves surrounding him, his pulse still pounding. There was no sign of Viridi. There was no sign of what had just happened to him.

“Well met,” Brin said, coming around the corner. “Do you think you could recast-” He stopped and his eyes traced the path of Tam’s gaze. “Is everything all right?”

“Fine,” Tam snapped.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Brin said.

You haven’t, Tam told himself. Viridi is buried in Erlkazar, hundreds and hundreds of miles away. You’ve had her in your thoughts is all. That and not enough sleep. You’re overtired and overworked. It’s why you were supposed to rest, remember?

“I just …,” Tam said, standing. “I’m going to go lie down a spell. Excuse me.” He pushed past Brin, heading off toward the camp, the conversation with the illusory spymaster rattling in his thoughts. You’re a link in a chain. If you leave now … your people will owe you quite a few favors. There’s nothing here worth dying for.

Havilar slipped back into the presence of the Book. She glanced around, to be sure she was alone, before edging up to the Book once more. Picking it up initially had been completely boring-but after Farideh admitted to talking with it as if it were something important …

She scooped up the tome in both hands, perhaps a bit too eagerly, as the puff of dust hit her again and made her cough. It wasn’t as heavy as it looked, and she turned so that she could look at it and watch the aisle to the camp in case someone sneaked up on her.

“You’re supposed to know everything?” she asked.

Not everything, the Book said. But plenty.

Havilar eyed the open pages and the shifting inks. “What’s the best way to counter an attack that comes from both the left and the right side?”

Depends on the weaponry.

“Axes,” she said, after a moment. “And you have a glaive.”

I’m afraid I would have nothing at all, the Book said with a chuckle. But it seems that the Liquid Blades form would do best in those circumstances. Get both attackers to one side, and likely trip one into the other if you move correctly.

Havilar frowned. “Tell me what a nentyarch is.”

A ruler of frozen Narfell, the Book said. Demon-binders. Are you interested in demon-binding? Nar history?

“No.” She stayed silent for a long time, considering the Book in her hands, her tail slashing over the floor behind her.

“What does it mean,” Havilar finally asked, “when you’re fond of a boy and you think he’s fond of you-he acts fond of you, anyway-and then he doesn’t tell you that he’s secretly a prince and then he starts acting like he’s fond of you half the time and not so fond the rest?”

The quiet stretched taut, hanging after Havilar’s question like a rope with too much spring.

I beg your pardon? the Book said.

“What,” Havilar said a bit louder, “does it mean when you’re fond of a boy and he acts fond of you, but he doesn’t tell you he’s a secret prince of Cormyr, and when you find out, he starts acting confusing?”

You can ask me anything, the Book said, and that’s what you choose?

“Then do you know?”

Let us say it is not in my purview.

Havilar all but tossed the book back on the pedestal. “Rubbish,” she muttered and stalked away, into the shadows of the library’s shelves, leaving the Book to ponder what exactly had just happened.

The Book-and Pernika, who stood watching from the shadows with a sharp smile and a sharper knife.