Lesser Evils

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Lorcan dropped from nowhere, as if stumbling into the world. Farideh sprang to her feet. “You’re alive.” Such a stupid thing to say, but gods, she hadn’t been sure-even when the spells had worked, she hadn’t believed. For once, Lorcan had no witty barb, no charm and cajolery for her. He stared at the cavern, at the circle, at Farideh as if he didn’t believe a one of them was real.

“How?” he finally gasped. He started laughing. “How, you perfect little … ashes, but I could kiss you!” He pulled himself to his feet, staring at the cavern beyond.

Gladly, since she was blushing furiously-he’d spoken and what had gone through her thoughts but, Yes, you could. An old thought, she told herself. She twisted her hands into each other. “It took some work,” she said. “But-”

“But Sairche can eat that shitting room,” he said. He laughed again, triumphant, and found her eyes. “Darling, you are worth twenty of any other warlock. I can’t believe I doubted you.” He started toward her.

And hit the barrier of the circle.

The magic rebuffed him solidly as a brick wall, and he stepped back, startled. He pressed a hand against the empty air. A crackle of gold energy spidered off his palm where it pressed the plane of the line of runes, and he pulled it back with a hiss.

“What is this?” he said, low and deadly. “Let me out.”

Farideh swallowed. “It’s for your own good.”

Lorcan closed his hand into a fist. “Is it? Or is it just a way to get what you want?” He paced the edge. “I see you’ve improved on your sister’s design. What’s the requirement? Hmm? Do you want me to release you from the pact? Or stand against another unbeatable force out of the Hells before you send me back into Sairche’s tender mercies?”

“No, I-”

“Did you just learn the spell to punish me?” he raged. “First that godsbedamned amulet, now a binding circle? What comes next? Will you leash me like a disobedient dog?”

“No!” she cried. Karshoj, she thought, you idiot. He is the same. He is exactly the same. “Here! Here.”

Farideh crossed carefully over the line of runes, into the binding circle. The magical barrier created a narrow wall of chilly air that sent goosebumps over her skin. She shivered. Wary, Lorcan stepped back. She spread her hands in a gesture of appeasement.

“You can’t escape them here,” Farideh said. “I haven’t figured that part out yet. But whoever has you can’t find you-I don’t think they can find you-if you’re trapped in the circle. Isn’t that right?”

Lorcan scowled. “Yes,” he spat.

“So it’s just temporary. Just for safety. The only binding is that you ask me to send you back.” She swallowed-gods, but she was out of practice talking to him. “Do you have a way? Something to keep … whoever from finding you?”

“No,” he said glumly. He dropped to sit on the floor. “It’s a clever notion,” he allowed. “Although, such a waste-what’s the point of giving me a few moments respite if you’re just going to send me back?”

It’s a thousand times more terrifying to kiss Lorcan, and that’s never stopped you. Farideh looked away.

“I thought you might know a way to block them,” she admitted. “Sairche,” Lorcan supplied.

“Oh,” Farideh said. “That’s … well she’s not the worst, is she?”

“She’s kept me captive since you left Neverwinter,” he snapped.

“But you’re alive,” Farideh said, smiling despite herself. “And … I mean, Sairche hasn’t bothered us again. If nothing else, she’s been distracted.”

“Something like that,” Lorcan muttered. “Is that dragonborn going to come storming over to pin me with his falchion?”

“Mehen’s not here,” Farideh said. She looked down at him again. “He’s in Cormyr.”

Lorcan’s eyebrows rose. “Really?” he said, and she knew that tone. That tone was dangerous, far more dangerous than his ire. “And where is here?”

“The Silver Marches,” she said. “It’s a buried library, a Netherese wizard’s collection.”

“What have you gotten up to, darling?”

“It’s too long a story,” she said.

“What do I have but borrowed time?”

Farideh started to protest that she was the one short of time. She hadn’t expected the spell to work, to be honest, and now she was all too aware of how long she’d been away from Dahl. Her eyes drifted up, away from Lorcan, and she saw he held his wings at an awkward angle, pinned together. She moved to better see the iron pin that had been stabbed through the thin membrane and bound around the bone. Black blood oozed from the wound.

“Oh gods,” she gasped and reached for the powers of the Hells, the powers to shatter the awful thing to dust.

Lorcan grabbed her hand out of the air. “No,” he said. “Don’t touch it.”

He didn’t let go of her hand. “Doesn’t it hurt?”

“Of course it hurts,” he said. “But it will hurt ten thousand times as much if I go back and Sairche sees it missing. She’s not so self-absorbed as to miss that.” He glared at her hand, as if he were holding something he couldn’t decide what to do with. She drew it back.

“What do you plan to do now?” he asked.

She sat down beside him, as aware of the barrier of the circle as if it had been a solid wall. It might have been no impediment to her passage, but it was the last layer of protection she’d had from him. From what stupid things she might do.

“Do you know of some spell I should be looking for?” she asked. “Something that would keep you safe? There’s … so many books here, it’s possible I’ve just missed it.”

Lorcan looked at her, as if he weren’t sure whether to laugh or not. “You’re serious, aren’t you? Lords of the Nine, you mean that.”

Farideh held herself a little straighter. “Of course I do. You saved us. I owe you this much. I can’t just leave you there.” She looked down at her lap. “Tell me what I need to do?”

“Buy me passage to another layer?” he said bitterly. “Kill Sairche?”

“Something I can do.”

“If I knew, darling, I would tell you,” he said. “But you’d better think of something. She’s only interested in me to get ahold of you, and I am fast running out of options. If you don’t figure something out, I can’t promise I’ll be able to hold onto that little secret Sairche doesn’t know about.”

Havilar. Farideh’s heart stopped. “You wouldn’t.”

“Darling, you’re clearly not aware of the myriad tortures my sister has at her fingertips.” He looked away, scowling up at the statue of the dead wizard. “I wouldn’t, but I might not have the choice.”

“No,” she said. She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “Why is she doing this?”

“It’s complicated.”

No doubt, she thought. Everything in the Hells seemed complicated, but when it came out across the planes and threatened her, Havilar, and everything she held dear, it was not too complicated to explain.

“It has to do with Bryseis Kakistos, doesn’t it?”

Lorcan stiffened, but he kept watching the wizard. “Sairche told you that, didn’t she? Not someone you’d normally listen to, darling.”

“I don’t see another answer.” He didn’t react. “Tell me what it is.”

Silence.

“I know,” she said. “About Bryseis Kakistos. About the pact with Asmodeus.”

Lorcan froze, turned, and for a moment, eyed her with such breathless horror that he might as well have been expecting her to smash his teeth in and tear out his tongue.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she said.

“If you know,” he said, still watching her cautiously, “I think you can appreciate that wasn’t the obvious course of action. I had thought … Well, I expected you to be upset, darling, and why would I want that?”

“Upset?” She frowned at him. The story the Book had told her was so much better than what she’d feared. Better than anything she dared imagine. She couldn’t guess what Lorcan thought she’d be upset about.

“Because,” she ventured, “I owe her better? Because she took the pact with Asmodeus to protect tieflings from being bound like this?” She rubbed her arm where the brand that marked her as Lorcan’s warlock lay. “I don’t think of our pact that way. Not anymore.” She looked up at him. “It’s a tool, not a punishment.” Lorcan was staring at her as if she had suddenly started speaking in abyssal tongues.

“What exactly do you know about Bryseis Kakistos?” he asked.

Farideh’s pulse was in her throat. “That she, that all of the Thirteen, took the pact with Asmodeus to protect tieflings from … from having to answer to fiendish lords. That she sacrificed her own freedom to …” Farideh let her words trail away. The dark expression on Lorcan’s face said too much.

“Someone’s been lying to you, darling,” he said.

“It wasn’t … Why would someone lie about that? They didn’t know what it meant.” Farideh shook her head. “How do I know you’re not the one lying?”

“Darling, did you know that in the north, near Vaasa where your ancestress made her home, very naughty little tieflings are warned to be good, lest Bryseis Kakistos come and steal their skins off their bones? I didn’t teach them to do that.” He paused, then added, “Much as I wish I could tell you I had.”

I am such a fool, she thought. “She was evil?”

“Vile,” Lorcan said. “She was a madwoman, a killer of her own kind. In fact, plenty of people lay the credit for Asmodeus’s ascension squarely at her feet. Without Bryseis Kakistos, there would have been no Toril Thirteen-there are those among them who did not enter the pact willingly. Without the Toril Thirteen, there is a fair chance Asmodeus wouldn’t have had the power to claim the mantle of a dead god and fling the Abyss into the Elemental Chaos. Without the efforts of Bryseis Kakistos, the history of tieflings is a good bit different.”

This shouldn’t shock you, she told herself. This is what you should have known. But it did shock her, because some part of her had always hoped-no, had been certain-that she might be different. That she wasn’t doomed like the rest. Farideh felt the blood pooling away from her. I will not faint, she thought. “That’s not true.”

“Likely not entirely,” he said, as if they were arguing over a tavern tale. “These stories increase every time they’re told. But, darling, no one in the Hells would give a mortal credit for anything they could claim the glory for, unless she’d definitely done something.”

A swift stroke, she thought, is better than a thousand cuts. “What did she do?” Lorcan hesitated a moment, as if he recalled he should have been managing her differently, and Farideh’s temper rose. “What did she do?”

“It’s as I said,” he replied. “What do you want?”

“The whole story,” Farideh said. “Don’t tell me not to worry about it.”

“But you shouldn’t,” he said more sharply. “Darling, you can’t change the past, and you can’t change where you came from.”

“I have you caught in a binding circle,” she said. “Don’t treat me like a child.”

Lorcan’s expression hardened. Gods, she thought, where did they stand anymore? She wouldn’t bend to him, and he wouldn’t treat her as something more than a plaything again-where was the middle ground? Was there any place left, she wondered, where they fit?

“If you go back in time, it was never a secret that the king of the Hells wanted godhood,” Lorcan said. He spoke without softness, without care. As if he meant for her to feel every blow. “Whether they offered the sacrifices or he demanded them isn’t clear. But thirteen tieflings made a pact with Asmodeus-a mass sacrifice of fiend-born, plus their own souls and blood, for the chance to wield the powers of the Hells.

“The stories are muddled. I don’t doubt some devil has it written down-someone has everything written down-but the way it’s told, the tieflings thought their blood would be spilled in offering, or maybe that they would die in a future sacrifice, but instead … their rites let Asmodeus take the very blood in their veins-in every tiefling’s veins for his own.”

Farideh frowned. “He killed them?”

“Then how would you be here, darling?” Lorcan said. “No. Before the Spellplague, tieflings … Well, it was harder to tell who was and who wasn’t a tiefling, and what sort of being sullied the well. They might have horns or hooves or peculiar eyes or any number of things. Tieflings were descendants of all manner of creatures-demons, devils … fiendish things-and it showed. And after …”

“After we look the same,” Farideh said, horror dawning on her. “Is that … she did that?”

“Perhaps,” Lorcan said. “As I said, there’s no way of knowing what happened precisely, short of convincing Asmodeus himself to tell you the tale. But there is no demon blood left in tieflings descended from those days. No scattered fiend’s. The children born to tieflings after that rite were devilborn, the true-breeding scions of Asmodeus. A hundred years ago a body might have a little devil blood, and mixing with the right mortals could thin it all out. Mortals don’t breed straight down after all, not even with fiendish blood in them. Now a dozen generations could go by, but the result will be the same. You are the descendents of Asmodeus, every one.” His eyes darted once around the space, as if he were afraid the god of evil might be listening. “Whatever happened, those thirteen were in the middle of it and the magic was unlike anything Asmodeus had managed in ages.”

Farideh covered her face, blocking out Lorcan and the library and all of it. A madwoman. A killer of her own kind. On Bryseis Kakistos lay the blame for Asmodeus becoming the god of evil, the fall of those first thirteen infernal warlocks, the undilutable blood that cursed the tiefling race.

She closed her eyes. Mortals don’t breed straight down-but tieflings, ah, tieflings were the exception. Tieflings didn’t mix, didn’t dilute. A human and an elf might beget a half-elf, but no matter who lay down with a tiefling-human, elf, orc-the result was another tiefling. Her chest felt as if it were collapsing around her lungs. What else might carry down with that blood curse?

“Is that why you chose me?” she said, barely above a whisper. “Because you think I’ll be like her?”

Lorcan clucked his tongue. “Lords, no, you’re enough of a headache. I suspect your existence would make Bryseis Kakistos-and several of her descendents-spin in their graves.” He paused. “I told you that you wouldn’t like it.”

“She had children,” Farideh said. She stood, without any sense of where she meant to go. “How? Who would …?” She trailed off. No one, was the answer. No one sane, no one with an ounce of decency, would take that risk and have a child with someone like Bryseis Kakistos. No one would seek to continue that line. Mortals don’t breed straight down, she thought. And genocidal warlocks don’t breed at all. Or they shouldn’t.

No one sane, she thought, or willing.

“Darling, don’t,” Lorcan said, standing as well. “That’s not a path you want to go down.”

She swallowed to wet her mouth, but it did no good. “That’s why they’re rare. Sairche said there are only four Kakistos heirs. Five, if you count Havilar.” She looked up at him. “You know who our parents are.”

“Why ask? I can promise it doesn’t matter. You don’t need to know.”

“Who, Lorcan?” she asked. “Please.”

His wings shuddered as he tried to flex them against the iron bar. “I haven’t looked into it. But … you’re right. There aren’t many likely options.”

“And they’re all wicked.”

“It isn’t common to have such a principled warlock,” he agreed.

Of course it wasn’t. Of course they were wicked. What other kinds of tieflings were there but those who were wicked to the bone? “Hasn’t anyone tried to fix it?” she said softly, but she knew the answer. Who would try to undo it? If you knew, you were surely pacted … and telling yourself all sorts of fairy stories to make that all right. She wrapped her arms around herself.

“Ah, lords.” Lorcan drew her closer. “Darling, listen to me: this is not yours to repair. You are not Bryseis Kakistos. You were not there, and if by some bizarre weft of the Weave you could be, do not think that you could have changed a thing. Don’t think you can change a thing. Gods do not rise by a single act. Even if it is true, and the Toril Thirteen tipped the scales in Asmodeus’s favor, there were dozens of other acts and powers that came first-the succubi’s defection, the collapse of the Weave, the death of Azuth. Once Asmodeus discovered blood magic, there were a hundred ways he could have gained the power of a god.”

She looked up at him. Close, so close she hardly dared to breathe. The first time she met him, she’d thought it was like being swallowed whole. There had been nothing, in that moment, but the man, the devil looking down at her, and she’d had no sense of when it would end. Or how. I could drown watching him, she thought. I could do something foolish.

More foolish, the little voice added.

“And Bryseis Kakistos,” he said, taking her face in his hands, “would gladly let her devil rot in the Hells.”

It’s a thousand times more terrifying to kiss Lorcan. It would be, she thought. Like that first dip into the fount of the Hells’ power. Like falling into darkness.

“I’ll try,” she whispered.

“If anyone can manage, it’s you.” Something in his expression softened, seemed almost human. “I suspect,” he said, “that’s more than true. There is not another soul on any plane who cares even a little if I die. No one but you, darling.”

Tears sprang to her eyes. She turned her cheek into his hand, so she couldn’t see him. So the breadth of his burning palm pressed against her face. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so tired. And I know, Sairche’s bound to find me, to find us-”

Lorcan let go of her face, and she pressed her lips shut. “You need to take this.” He took off the pendant he wore and pressed it into her hand. “It will keep Sairche from finding you. Don’t ask what it is, just keep it safe. You can hand it back once you’ve solved the problem of how to keep her from finding me too.”

She took the strange charm, a nine-tailed scourge with copper beads at its tips, and wiped her eyes with her other hand. “I don’t want to send you back.”

“Much as I’d love to tell you not to,” Lorcan said, “it’s for the best.” He hesitated. “I may have an idea. Will you cast this again? In a day, no later?”

Farideh nodded. “I have the components for once more. But after I need to find a source of silver. And down here …” She swallowed-such a stupid thing to say when he might never come back to her.

“Well, you’ll just have to make sure you only need the once. Good luck, darling.”

“Yes,” she managed. “Thank you.”

Farideh hardly considered what she was doing before she’d already done it. Only the barest of seconds unfurled with the recognition that she was being an utter, utter fool-then she kissed his cheek, close enough to brush the corner of his lips, one hand on the opposite side of his beautiful face. He froze. Her brow resting against his temple, she shut her eyes tight, so that she wouldn’t have to see his expression.

One arm slid around her waist.

“Please,” she whispered, “be careful. I can’t … I can’t lose-”

“Oh gods’ books.” Farideh broke off and turned to see Dahl, standing at the edge of the shelves with a bare sword in his hand and a horrified look on his face.

Twenty feet from where Dahl stood, there was a devil in the library. Worse, the creature clearly had Farideh entranced. Dahl started forward, pacing around the devil, looking for a weak point. It hadn’t noticed him-with luck it wouldn’t until he was close enough to pull Farideh out of reach. He kept his eyes on her, ready to drop the sword and dive forward if-

He heard her breath hitch, and she darted forward, pressing her lips to the creature’s cheek. Dahl stopped in his tracks.

Over her shoulder, the devil’s nightmare black eyes met Dahl’s, and narrowed. One arm snaked around her waist-possessive or protective or-

“Be careful,” she whispered. “I can’t … I can’t lose-”

“Oh gods’ books,” Dahl said. Farideh turned, and her eyes went wide-with surprise, with horror, with what he couldn’t have said.

“Karshoj,” she said. “Gods. Damn it.” She let go of the devil. The devil did not let go of her. “Wait, Dahl. Put the sword down.”

“You called a stlarning devil,” he said, still shocked, still dumbfounded. She all but told you this was what she meant to do, he thought. You should have seen that. Warlock. Tiefling. Gods. “I was so sure I’d find you in some monster’s clutches,” he said. “And instead you’re off kissing the monster.” And that-that was the polish on the whole mess. He’d had to stumble in on some bizarrely intimate moment.

She turned red as hot irons and shoved the devil’s arm off her. “It’s not what it looks like.” The devil’s wings twitched, bound by an iron pin. His dark eyes pinned Dahl to the ground.

“Where do you find all these broken holy men?” he drawled. “A cleric who can’t be counted on. A fallen paladin pouting because he can’t save you. Terrible taste, darling, or terrible luck?”

Farideh turned on the devil. “Stop it.”

“Or what?” he said. “You’ve already got me in the circle.” He glanced over at Dahl. “Are you going to do something with that sword, or do you just like holding it?”

Dahl’s grip tightened. The devil might have powers he couldn’t see, but Dahl was quick, the sword sharp. The devil was trapped in that circle. It would be better all around-

Farideh leaped over the ring of runes and put herself between Dahl and the devil. “Stop it,” she said again, this time to Dahl. “He’s baiting you. Can’t you see that?” She swallowed. “Just let me … I’ll send him off. Don’t do anything rash.”

Dahl found he couldn’t look at her. He sheathed the sword. “Fine,” he said. “But the next time you want to dally with fiends, don’t do it when I’m supposed to be watching out for you.”

The devil laughed. “I’m sure you’re watching her ever so well.”

“Lorcan, enough!” Farideh snapped. “It’s not funny.” Her voice was shaking. “Ask me to send you back.”

“You’ll call again?” he said.

“Trust me,” she answered. “Now, ask.”

The devil watched her for moments so long and taut that Dahl had to look away. “Will you send me back?”

He’d no more than spoken the words but the circle of runes burst into wild, leaping flames. The devil took on a searing, silvery light that grew and grew until, with a rush of air and magic, it overwhelmed Dahl’s eyes. Farideh flinched away.

The light faded, the runes stopped burning, and the devil was gone. Farideh held still, facing the empty circle. After a moment, she looked back at Dahl.

“I suppose you’re going to bring this up to Tam,” she said.

Dahl shook his head, at a loss. He’d have to. What would happen if the silverstar found out and Dahl hadn’t told him? She was putting herself in peril-putting all of them in peril by calling down devils.

“He’s not …,” she started. “It’s complicated. He’s not that bad.”

That was it. “You’ll pardon me if I don’t take your word on it. There are Shadovar at the doors, by the by. You might want to follow me.” Dahl turned on his heel and stormed back toward the camp, not caring much if she followed. It was one thing to run off (you told her to run off, he thought), another to dabble with the Hells (you knew she was a warlock, he thought), but he was not going to stand there while she tried to tell him he ought to get to know her devil better.

The sound of footsteps came out of nothing, as if several people had suddenly materialized in the long aisle behind him, striding purposefully his way and making an absurd amount of noise. Dahl held his sword ready and turned cautiously toward the sound.

And saw, not the library of Tarchamus but the temple of Oghma, the Domes of Reason, in Procampur. And it was Jedik and the leaders of Oghma’s paladins who were walking toward Dahl.

Cold rushed over him. He heard his sword fall to the ground, but when Dahl looked down at his hands, he saw as he feared: the blood-soaked bandage wrapped around the left, the ugly swelling of the broken bone. The floor beyond was no longer pale limestone, but rust-colored tiles, and there was no blade beyond. The shelves around him had become pews and reading stands.

No-he shut his eyes. Not again. Once was enough.

But before Jedik reached him, those old emotions surged up like an unstoppable tide. His world was in freefall, and no matter how hard he tried to catch hold, there was nothing to slow him down. His heart was pounding, and by the time his mentor stood before him, his stomach was sick and his head spun as if he might collapse.

“Nothing happened,” he said, as he had seven years before.

“I know,” Jedik said.

“I tried. I tried, and tried.” Panic again clawed its way up Dahl’s throat. “It’s still broken and I can’t fix it, I can’t fix it!” The paladins behind the old loremaster looked on, stern and cold. Looking for all the world as if they had never thought anything of Dahl but that he was trouble and a nuisance. A poor use of the order’s charity. A millstone.

“Please,” Dahl said, tears rising to his eyes. “What do I do?”

Jedik set a hand on his shoulder and gestured for Dahl to sit. “It seems,” Jedik said, settling himself beside the younger man, “that Oghma has seen fit to revoke your powers.”

He had said it already, already the pain of it was seven years on, but all over again Dahl’s heart shattered. “No,” he pled. “No.”

“Dahl-”

“Why?” he howled. “What have I done? How have I failed?” He was sobbing now, and he didn’t care that the paladins were shifting uncomfortably to see him. Somehow he had slipped, he had transgressed without knowing how, and fallen. “I cannot. I cannot lose everything. Please. What do I do?”

Jedik laid a hand on his shoulder. “You are sworn to serve knowledge. ‘Knowledge is not to be hidden, not from the world and not from the self. Tell me, Dahl … how does it serve you to lock yourself away here?”

Jedik waited as if he expected an answer. Dahl shook his head. “I don’t understand. Where? In the temple?”

With a pitying look, Jedik set his gnarled hands on either side of Dahl’s wounded one. But this time, he did not clasp his student’s hand in his. He did not cast the spell to heal the wound … instead, Dahl watched as the old man’s cheeks sank like a corpse’s, his eyes becoming small and eerily bright as diamonds.

“There’s nothing here worth dying for,” he said, but it was Tam’s voice that said it.

Someone grabbed ahold of him and pulled him bodily to the floor. He hit the ground, and once more the tile was limestone, the shelves hemmed him in, and his sword was lying on the ground all-too-near his cheek. And the tiefling was there, scrambling to her feet behind him, leaping over his prone form to stand as if ready to do battle with some unseen monster.

“You leave him be!” Farideh shouted. “Leave all of us be!” There were flames licking the edges of the air around the rod in her hand, the veins in her wrist black as streaks of rot. No answer came from the cold quiet of the library. “You can’t chase us off!” she shouted. “We’re not as weak as you think!”

Silence, but for the pant of her breath and of Dahl’s.

She made a little shriek of annoyance and shook the flames from her hands. She looked down at Dahl for an interminable moment, her queer eyes flickering-and it took him a moment to realize she was assessing his state.

“Are you all right?” she said softly.

He looked down at his hands, but they were whole again. Not so his heart, once again ravaged by the knowledge of what he’d lost. He swallowed against the lump in his throat.

“Fine,” he said, ignoring the hand she offered him. He dared to look at the spot where Jedik had stood. An illusion, he thought. A very cruel illusion.

“You were standing there,” she said. “Talking to someone. Begging …” She looked away. “It was an illusion, wasn’t it? You were reliving something bad.”

He turned away from her and wiped the tears from his face-gods, that hadn’t been part of the illusion either. “It’s fine.”

How had he come so under Beshaba’s notice that not only did the illusion force him to relive his very worst memory, but then Farideh-of all people-had to find him at it, weeping like a child and shaking. He did not need her watching him all smug and piteous, while Jedik’s words rattled his thoughts.

It seems that Oghma has seen fit to revoke your powers. Tell me, Dahl, how does it serve you to lock yourself away here?

No. That wasn’t right …

Farideh was still there, watching him with that inscrutable expression. “What happened?” she asked more gently.

“It’s fine,” he repeated. “We need to find the others.”

“You ought to tell Tam what you saw. He’d want to know-”

Dahl cut her off. “If you breathe a word of this to him,” he snarled, “I will tell him exactly what I found you doing, and then I will leave you here in this bloody cavern with all that water to get through. Now leave. Me. Be.”

For a moment, he thought she was going to pull the same ridiculous stunt she had back at the inn-flash her infernal powers as if rubbing them in his face. The tatters of smoke blurred her edges and she stepped back.

“You think,” she said, “that you know everything, you think no one can possibly be as godsbedamned smart as you, but every other word out of your karshoji mouth is you jumping to another conclusion that isn’t fair. At least now you know better than to sneer at the rest of us for getting caught by those illusions. I’ll see you in the camp.” The sound of her tail brushing the floor in an agitated slash chased her footsteps.

Good riddance, Dahl told himself. But it didn’t work-that had been humiliating in every possible way, including telling her off. He didn’t want to care. He dragged his hands through his hair. Once they were free of this place, he would find some other way to occupy himself-away from tieflings and silverstars.

Tell me, Dahl, how does it serve you to lock yourself away here?

It had been very nearly the same conversation they’d had on that terrible day, until the end. What Jedik had told him, Dahl had etched on his heart, repeating it over and over and over again: “Tell me, Dahl, how does it serve Oghma to simply give you the answers you’ve been sent to seek? When you are sworn to the God of Knowledge, you are sworn to serve knowledge, to seek it, to free it.” He’d shaken his head. “It is in your power to know. So find the answers.”

That had been three years ago. And Dahl had found nothing.

Not a soul would have called the Lord of Knowledge a cruel god. But after so long searching, Dahl had begun to wonder how dear Oghma’s regard really was. He missed, still, the divine presence of his god, the surge of magic lighting his mind on fire and nearly stealing his breath away entirely, the shimmering notes of the harp that came sometimes with powerful prayers. He wondered how long it would be before he couldn’t remember it any longer, and he both craved and dreaded that day.

He would have liked to keep on sobbing. He would have liked to have locked himself away with a bottle of zzar or three and get as maudlin as he liked. Three years and the wound was as raw as the day it had cut his life in half.

He wiped his face again, burying down all the sorrow and anger and loss and rage, all the while turning the difference between his memory and the illusion over in his thoughts, as if by some twisting he would find a secret to unlocking this misery. He pulled himself to his feet.

As he bent to pick up his sword, he saw one of the leather-bound books on the floor-fallen, likely, while he stumbled around begging shadows for mercy. It had landed open to the middle.

Dahl picked up the book, glancing at the text: … Cormyrean line of succession as of 1478 DR. He stopped, scanning the artful inking of a tree, laden with names. King Foril Obarskyr … Crown Prince Irvel Obarskyr … Prince Baerovus Obarskyr … Princess Raedra Obarskyr … Lord Aubrin Crownsilver (Obarskyr) …

“Gods’ books,” he said. He read it again, but the names and dates were all the same. Where in the Hells had such a thing come from? Where had it picked up the notion that Brin …

He raced after Farideh, toward the camp, still worried first and foremost about the Shadovar at the gates, but suddenly far more concerned about ghosts and illusions, and a certain over-helpful tome.