Lesser Evils

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

For the second time since they’d arrived, Tam waited just beyond the doors to Tarchamus’s library for an answer to his sending, but still there was no answer. He studied the ceiling of the smaller cave, and wondered if his messages had even reached Everlund and Waterdeep.

He gathered his supplies and returned to the camp. He would simply have to broach with Mira the subject of retreating. The hours went by, quicker than any of them could appreciate, and while searching the whole of the library for a few spellbooks had originally seemed like trying to empty a lake with a beer mug, having attempted it made it clear “a sea with a teaspoon” was a more apt comparison. They were running short of supplies and very likely short of time. At the very least, they needed a report on where the Shadovar might be.

The library was a fraction of what Netheril had known. The sprawling empire of wizards had gained more knowledge than mortals were meant to have, and so had collapsed under the weight of their own hubris. All that remained was the City of Shade, which escaped to another plane as Netheril fell. And now Shade wanted what Netheril had possessed. Shade felt entitled to an empire and all its trappings.

It is a wonder, Tam thought, as he reached the camp, that they haven’t found this place and torn it apart.

The camp was empty except for Farideh, sitting on her bedroll with an assortment of scrolls and books open in front of her. Tam cleared his throat, and she looked up guiltily. She all but threw the book in her lap onto the pile of scrolls … but not before Tam marked the map that lay nearest to the top, the descending spiral used to illustrate the layers of the Hells.

“Enjoying the rarities of Tarchamus?”

“While I can,” she said.

“Which, I hope, won’t be much longer,” he said. “We need to contact Everlund. You need to go back to Mehen.” She nodded absently. Tam frowned. “What are you doing with all of those scrolls?”

“Brin’s looking for you,” she said and did not answer his question.

Tam cursed to himself-he’d forgotten Brin was asking for something earlier. This is why you work alone, he thought.

You’re a link in a chain, a knot in a silk rug. You haven’t worked alone, truly, since you took up with the Harpers, Viridi might as well have said.

“Tell me what you’re doing,” he said. Farideh looked up at him skeptically, as if he were trying to trick her. There were dark circles under her eyes. “Good gods. When’s the last time you slept?”

“Just a bit ago,” she said. She looked past him. “You’re missing Brin.”

The younger man walked past the camp. Tam cursed again. “Stay here,” he said to Farideh. “We’re not done.” He sprinted to catch up with Brin, coming to a stop just before him.

“I’m sorry I didn’t find you,” Tam said. “It’s been rather busy. But I’m …” Brin walked right past him, staring fixedly at something just ahead. “Farideh said you were looking for me,” Tam tried again. The younger man kept walking, his pace quickening.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

The hairs on the back of Tam’s neck stood on end. Something wasn’t right. He unpinned his holy symbol and started after Brin.

They followed the aisle for another thirty or forty feet, when Brin drifted right between two shelves. Tam sprinted to catch up, glimpsing the blue sleeve of the younger man’s shirt as he wove through the maze of shelves-left, then right, then right again. Tam stepped out into a narrow passage, towered over by shelves packed tightly with thick tomes. Brin was nowhere to be seen.

“Brin!” he shouted. He ran one direction for a dozen feet, then back the other way. The door that led between the shelves was all but invisible until he came right up on it. A narrow shelf of small leather-bound volumes, dripping a trim of ribbon placeholders, stuck out from its neighbors. Behind the books, Tam could see Brin, standing stock still, and peering through a gap in the shelf in front of him. He could also smell the corpses.

He pulled on the shelf, which swung open smoothly on hidden hinges, just as Brin cried out and leaped back from the shelf. Tam caught him, and he shouted again.

“It’s all right! It’s all right. What happened?”

Brin shook his head dumbly and swallowed hard as if he’d been overcome. “I don’t … Where are we?” He glanced back at the gap in the books, at the dead body of a man in inky leathers and a deep emerald cloak who lay sprawled on the floor, looking up at them with staring, hollow eyes. His belly was a ruin, rotting around a deep cut that his hand was still buried in. The stench was powerful but peculiar-the sweet rot of death smothered and blunted by a staleness, an almost muskiness …

“Oh, Loyal Torm,” Brin swore and clapped a hand over his mouth. Tam guided him back out the door and down to the ground.

“Put your head between your knees,” he instructed. “And breathe.” He pushed his sleeves up and went back behind the partition, fearing the worst with the scent of shadows in the air.

The man looked up at him with eyes as ebony as an eclipse, his skin a shade of gray that death couldn’t explain. And as Tam watched, a wisp of shadowstuff rose off his waxy cheek.

“Hrast,” Tam swore. A shade. The man had been dead at least a few days, and judging from the bloodstains on the floor, he hadn’t been alone.

Tam followed the path of black, stinking footprints around a blind corner. There were two more bodies, weapons in hand, lying on the floor. Both shadar-kai. One had a chain wrapped around his throat. The other had a sword in her back. Both seemed somehow less substantial, as if their bodies were slowly returning to the Shadowfell.

Brin still looked pale, but he was well enough to lift his head when Tam came back out. “We have a problem,” Brin said. “A few problems.”

“I’ll say.” Tam pulled him to his feet. “We need to get out of here. How did you know there were dead Shadovar behind that wall?”

“I didn’t,” Brin said. “That’s the first problem.” He described what had happened in his mind as he raced past Tam-the memory that shifted and changed from the truth, the strange sound of Constancia speaking in broken words. Tam schooled his expression-but with every word of the strange vision the hope that his dream of Viridi had been brought on by fatigue and stress faded faster than the dead shade.

“Walk,” Tam ordered. They had to get back to the others-if Brin had been pulled into an illusion real enough to lead him halfway across the cavern, who knew what the others had experienced. “Did you have the sense she-it was trying to trap you? Hurt you?”

“No,” Brin said. “Only … it was hard to live that again.” He swallowed once more. “She didn’t do anything else though-only showed me the dead body.”

“Which sounds an awful lot like a threat to me.”

“She said there was nothing here worth dying for.”

Cold horror poured over Tam. “I’m inclined to agree. Whatever’s happening, we’re not equipped to handle it, few as we are.” They reached the wider aisle. “At least the other problems can’t make things worse.”

“Much worse.” Brin stopped walking. “There’s another kind of illusion,” he said. “And we haven’t got as many allies as we thought.”

Tam swore, but before he could get more of an explanation out of Brin, a scream split the silence of the library.

“There you are!”

Farideh nearly leaped out of her skin as Havilar bounded out from the maze of shelves into the open space of their camp. Farideh tucked the scroll she’d been studying-and its guilty infernal runes-under her ritual book. Havilar dropped beside her sister, practically vibrating with energy.

“I,” she announced, “have been looking everywhere for you.”

Farideh had been sitting in the camp since leaving the Book’s alcove, trying to sort out the ritual before Tam came back to scold her. “I don’t think it’s been everywhere.”

“It might as well have been,” Havilar said with a giggle. “You will not believe.”

“You’re in a good mood,” Farideh said, returning to the text in her lap as her sister settled down beside her. “What happened? Did you find another trap?”

“I kissed him.”

Farideh looked up, startled at her sister’s smug, gleeful expression. “Brin?”

Havilar snorted. “No, Maspero. Yes, Brin. Right on the mouth.” She grinned and hugged her knees to her chest. “And then he kissed me back. Can you believe it? I was so sure he wasn’t fond of me.”

“What … When did this happen?” Why did she feel as if someone had punched her in the chest? Brin hadn’t said anything, she realized. He’d stood there and let her think everything was the same as always.

“Before. We were talking and he said I was pretty, and I wasn’t sure at first if he meant it or if maybe he meant the both of us, right? But then … he said the nicest things. And he is fond of me. So I kissed him.” Havilar squinted at her. “Are you angry?”

“No,” Farideh said. “I … just surprised.” She swallowed. “Was it … How was it?”

Havilar blushed. “Nice. Not like you’d expect, right? But nice. Sort of terrifying.”

“If it’s terrifying, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it,” Farideh said, before she could stop herself. You can’t stop any of this anymore, she thought.

Havilar looked as if Farideh had slapped her across the mouth. “Many thanks, Mehen,” she said. “I don’t care what you think. I did it. I’ll do it again.” She stood. “Besides I’m sure it’s a thousand times more terrifying to kiss Lorcan, and that’s never stopped you.”

Farideh blushed so hard her face ached. “I’ve never kissed Lorcan.”

Havilar rolled her eyes. “Well he’s kissed you then. It still counts.”

“No!” Hells, but there had never been a conversation Farideh wanted to have less. “Really. We’ve never … on the cheek and that was only to bother me.”

Devils don’t love, he’d told her once, and even if he was half a devil, that still meant Lorcan. Every touch, every sweet word, even that burning kiss on her cheek-they were all to keep her guessing, to make her unsure of where she stood. Not a one was “nice.”

It doesn’t matter, she thought. You wouldn’t kiss him. You have an agreement, that’s it.

Havilar was staring at her. “Really?”

“He’s not some boy. Why would I?”

“Because you’re not blind,” Havilar said. “No, even if you were blind I’d still be surprised, since your ears and hands would still work. How many times have you snuck off with him and you never even tried-”

“Are you not the one always telling me to get rid of him? To stop talking to him?”

“And you should,” Havilar said. “But it’s not like you haven’t already ignored me for ages, and gods, do come on!”

“I am not talking about this with you,” Farideh said. “Go talk to Brin about how faulty I am. You can share that too.”

Havilar scowled at her. “I’m not blind either. So quit pretending you’re so much more virtuous.” She turned on her heel and stalked off into the labyrinth of the library.

Farideh watched her go, torn by the urge to chase Havilar down and make it all right and to leave her be, to let her cool down.

This isn’t going to last. He’s going to break your heart. He doesn’t belong in our world. He’s going to leave us both. She didn’t have the words in her to explain to Havilar why this was a terrible, terrible thing, and she didn’t think Havilar would have heard them if she had.

She will call me jealous, Farideh realized. And to a point she would be right.

Not of Brin-though Havilar would never believe that, she was sure-but that Havilar had things so easy. A nice boy, a decent boy, a boy brave enough to get close to Havilar, and he liked her horns and all. Even if Farideh had half a chance at such luck, the pact would probably frighten anyone decent off.

Unbidden, Adolican Rhand popped into her mind and she shuddered. That was what she was allotted. No thank you.

I’m sure it’s a thousand times more terrifying to kiss Lorcan.

Farideh ran her hands through her hair, under her horns, and squeezed her eyes shut. How could Havilar even think that was an option? And, even if it were …

Even if it were, she thought, you wouldn’t. You couldn’t. And neither would he.

She opened her eyes and suddenly the floor was dark, and canted woozily, as if half the library had sunk. But there was no library, no books, and no maze of shelves, the floor was clear but for the trash of a life someone had fled ages ago and the splash of moonlight across the floor.

Neverwinter, she thought, and the powers of the Hells surged up through her, trailing pennants of shadow. Neverwinter and they were all in terrible danger.

“I’d never hurt you like they will.” She turned, and there was Lorcan, standing by the window. She remembered this-she’d been furious with him, and all over again a cacophony of emotion slammed into her, so heady and tangled she fought to rise above it.

But here he wasn’t wearing that petulant scowl. He wasn’t trying to confuse her. He kept his distance, tense and watching, his wings’ tips flicking with agitation. She shouldn’t be angry, she thought. And she shouldn’t want to run to him.

She slipped a hand under her collar and pulled the amulet out. She’d bound him with it, hadn’t she? Yes-he’d threatened her and she’d bound him, but he didn’t flinch to see it. “You hurt me enough,” she said.

His wings flicked again and again, as if she were blinking and missing the motion. “I would have died anyway,” he said, and the voice was his but angry, far angrier than his expression. “You could run. Run, darling. Fast and far.”

“No,” she said. “I’m not leaving you.” Not again, she thought, remembering the hellwasps. But that had come after, well after. And he hadn’t been so angry at her until they’d left the tilting building. She pressed the heel of her hand to one eye. Gods, what was this?

When she looked up-for the barest of moments-it wasn’t Lorcan standing there, but a bearded man, thickset and sad-eyed. And then it was Lorcan, no one but Lorcan. She took a step back.

“What is this?” she said.

“You will be dead, and there is nothing I can do to fix that.” He shivered again, like there was too much heat between them, and his wings flickered. “There’s nothing here worth dying for,” he said.

It wasn’t Lorcan’s voice. It was Tam’s. “What?”

He was staring at her now, imploring, willing her to hear the words he wasn’t saying. “Trust me here. Run, darling. Fast and far.”

Farideh took another step back, flame and shadow pouring down her arms and into her hands. “Who are you?”

His red skin darkened, mottling with bruises. His wings collapsed, broken, and blood poured from his mouth when he spoke in a patchwork voice, “Run, darling. Run fast and far. There is nothing here worth dying for.”

“Don’t listen to him.” She spun toward the voice. Tam was suddenly standing there, in the shadows of the broken room in Neverwinter. “They’re all lies. Every word.”

“It’s not what you think,” Farideh started.

“Run, darling,” Lorcan, or something like him, said again.

The moonlight through the window cast the priest’s sharp features in a ghoulish light as he moved toward Lorcan. The half-devil flickered, then the room. Farideh stepped between them, but Tam kept coming, his dark eyes hateful. She threw an arm behind her to push Lorcan back, out of the way, but she couldn’t find him. Tam lunged forward, shoving her aside.

Farideh screamed.

And everything-Lorcan, the room, the moon shining down-vanished.

She blinked, trying to reorient herself-the shelves, the little cookfire, Maspero’s bedroll under her feet. She stepped off of it quickly. Her pulse was racing, her arms aching with unspent magic. The vision of Lorcan, battered and bleeding, wouldn’t leave her thoughts, and she felt as if she might break down and weep; it had seemed so real, so certain. She swallowed the urge and tried to shake the flames from her hands.

“What was that?” she demanded of Tam, who was still staring at the empty air with such a look of fury and disgust as she’d never seen on him.

“Nothing,” he all but snarled. He turned to her and smiled, but the rage was still there behind his eyes. “An illusion. Never you mind.”

She stepped back. “How did you know?”

“Paltry magic like that shows,” he said. “How are your studies coming? You’ve been doing a lot of reading, I noticed.”

She searched his face but it betrayed nothing. “Well enough,” she said. He said nothing but moved nearer, still wearing that peculiar, distant expression. The miasma of shadows seeped up from the churning powers flowing into her. “Are you going to take me to task for learning something new?” she asked. “It’s not as if the others aren’t doing the same thing. Dahl and Mira-she’s piled a whole cart’s worth of books here.”

“But you’ve gotten a lot of help from Tarchamus’s book of knowledge, haven’t you?” Tam said. “You’ve taken plenty.” He grabbed her forearm, and his hand was colder than the waters of the cavern lake-so cold her skin ached. “Why don’t you come give something back?”

Something is wrong, a little part of her thoughts shrieked. Something is very wrong.

But the greater part of her lit with an animal fury. “Don’t touch me.” She twisted her arm and brought her elbow down hard on his forearm, to break his grip. But he didn’t so much as flinch at the strike, only twisted with her, his icy grip tightening. She pulled back to strike the center of his chest, to knock him back and off balance the way Mehen had taught her.

But as her palm connected, the powers of Malbolge showed dark in the veins that writhed over the bones of her hand. As she struck the priest in the sternum, she spoke the word that triggered a great lash of flames, and engulfed him in fire.

She leaped backward. The blaze raced over the priest as he stumbled and unleashed an unearthly howl. She snatched up the nearest bedroll to smother the flames-oh gods, oh gods.

“Shar pass us over,” Tam said from behind her. Farideh froze and looked back to see the priest, his expression stunned. He unhooked the chain from his waist and the pin from his collar, as Farideh’s spell extinguished itself. “Move,” he said, his eyes locked on the double of himself, now riddled with empty patches of angrily shifting light.

Light, bright as a full moon on a clear night, seared Farideh’s eyes, the echoes of Tam’s voice reverberating in her ears alongside his screams. Both faded and, through the floating spatters of her vision, she saw Tam-the Tam who she’d cast her spells at-thrash against the light, throwing off the priest’s skin. For a moment, it seemed as if another man stood there-a gaunt, clean-shaven man with a nose like a knife. The creature roared and shifted to become only a dancing distortion in the air.

But Tam-the Tam who had cast the Moonmaiden’s magic-slung the length of his spiked chain at the ghost, another crackling blessing skipping along the links.

Farideh leaped out of the way as the blessing burst free, enveloping the ghostly creature. The air pulsed with a frantic sound, so low it made Farideh’s ears throb. The promise of flames and poison throbbed in her hands, and the memory of her brand’s ache.

She cast again-the burst of energy that came so easily, it might as well have been an exhalation. The Hellish magic caught the ghost just as Selune’s magic subsided, and the pulse became a sharp, high screech. Something popped like a drum skin breaking. Then there were only the sounds of Tam and Farideh, trying to catch their breath.

“What was that?” she demanded, her eyes on the empty space where the creature had been. Her arm kept aching, and she realized it was not the brand at all, but the place where the ghost had seized her. “Karshoj-what was that?”

“Nothing good,” Tam said. But even with her nerves so shaken, she could tell he was just as unsettled. “Did you try to set fire to me-to it?”

“I didn’t try.” Still trembling with adrenaline, Farideh shoved her sleeve back up past her elbow. The dark marks of the ghost’s fingers stood out luridly against the frost-pale skin. “And if you ever grab hold of me like that,” she said sharply, “I’ll do it again.”

“Hrast.” Tam took her by the wrist. She flinched, and he waited until it passed and she let him examine the bruises. “Not an illusion then.” Tam set his fingertips against the wound and murmured something. A silvery light bloomed from his fingers and spread over her skin with a prickling sensation she had an urge to rub away. But when it faded her skin was smooth and only ached when she pressed against it. She hugged her arm to her chest all the same.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’m sorry I thought … That wasn’t like you.”

“Loyal Fury,” she heard Brin curse from the other end of the camp. He looked winded, as if he’d chased after Tam. “Are you all right?”

She turned away, too embarrassed to look at him. “Fine.”

“The second one’s not an illusion,” Tam said to Brin. “It’s a ghost. Or it was.” He looked up at the ceiling, as if there might be more there among the stalactites. “We need to find the others.”

In the alcove of the Book, there was a silence, like the space after a drum’s beat. A silence shivering with sound just beyond hearing-a vibration just beyond sensation. If any person had been standing in the empty space, they would have been struck by the feeling that the space did not seem empty at all.

I want more time, the Book said to the emptiness.

The air thickened, taking on a whining drone, the sound of a trapped fly, amplified to fill the space.

Of course he’s hungry, the Book said quietly. He’s always hungry. We’re all hungry. But you had those last three in hand and what happened? It’s not my fault he’s woken up without a proper meal.

The air thrummed and turned colder. The strange presence divided, separated into three smaller nodes of thick air. In each was the suggestion of something more solid, and human-shaped. The notion of a face. The one opposite the Book-a lithe and twisting form that recalled a young woman with her hair in a thousand tiny braids-popped and crackled like a wet fire.

And whose fault is that? the voice sneered. You overplayed your hands. It’s as if you’ve all been corrupted by his impatience. So I will not weep for Bois-there is tragedy and there is the inevitable end of one who cannot think beyond his next task.

The strange ghost’s noises grew louder and more insistent. Threatening, one might have thought, and then dismissed. The space was empty after all.

I want more time, the Book repeated. I haven’t gotten enough from even one of them.

Another of the ghosts, the one that may have been an older man with a short beard, picked up the thrumming whine. The air grew colder still.

Perhaps they are cleverer than you think, the Book said sharply. Or perhaps it is Emrys’s doing. Either way, you may look into the runes, no one is stopping you. Or leave it be-there is no need to slow down those who might find the library after all. Tarchamus never wanted the wards, you’ll recall.

A pop. A screech. A whine that crescendoed into a faint roar, like a rush of wind.

Fine, the Book said. Take one or two. And leave me the warlock and the paladin at least. They show promise.

The strange presences swirled and clamored, drawing together once more. The roar of a phantom wind bounced around the space, and the disturbed air shifted from wall to wall to ceiling, before shooting off to other parts of the library.

Idiots, the Book muttered. A silence. Then, I know you are there, Emrys. Do not pretend I am such a fool as those children are.

The space shifted, and if the Book had possessed eyes, it would have seen the alcove as a brightly lit room, all paneled in rare, blond woods, with an enormous window looking out into an endless blue sky, and the rolling country far below. There was a bearded, thickset man standing by the window, looking down at the Book.

“You are asking for betrayal,” he said, as the ghost plucked words from different memories the Book held of the man. “You are lying. They will wonder.”

They are zealots, the Book replied, beholden only to the rotting plans of a man without enough vision. They will not even think I might have surpassed Tarchamus as they knew him.

The illusion’s power wavered. “You ought to consider. You ought to forsake their plans. They do not matter.”

Let the visitors free? the Book said. Why? Better rescuers are underway. Or do you have some other method to keep him distracted? The bearded man did not answer. Forget these people, Emrys-they are as doomed as every soul that enters the library. Everything you might have done slipped out of your reach five thousand years ago, it said bitterly. The illusion collapsed, returning to the cold, empty library. Your chance to win me over has passed.