Lesser Evils

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE LOST LIBRARY OF TARCHAMUS

Tam couldn’t recall hitting the ground or the snap of bone. The fall, opening his eyes, struggling to draw a breath in lungs shocked from impact, and a pain so intense he could hardly think to calm himself; that much came to him in a rush. His ribs screaming where they’d hit the floor. The sharp edges of rocks and debris under him. His leg, the thighbone, the muscles contracting over the shattered limb. He was shouting, he realized, screaming on borrowed air.

Calm, hrast you, calm. He managed short pants, bringing his breath back into himself, mouthful by mouthful. Cooler air, stirring air. A bad taste. He looked around him and saw bones and bones and bones. An arm in leathers, an arm with a sleeve of tattoos attached to another body. Screaming that wasn’t his.

Pernika lay bent and broken, farther away than his chain would have reached. Her arm was folded under and gravely dislocated. Her leg had broken at the shin, and a lump of bone protruded into her leathers. More than a body’s worth of blood was thick and drying on the stones. Clumps of dark hair and sticky tissue spattered on the edge of a dais he could just make out, along with the jawless, half-skinned head of a man with matted hair.

And worse.

Sitting there, on the dais, a horror like everything the shade’s notes had implied, was the mummified body of a man. He was folded into a pose of contemplation, his hands, like shriveled roots, set skeletal fingertip to skeletal fingertip and painted black with dried blood.

Around his neck was the garnet pendant every image had repeated. The arcanist, Tarchamus.

The arcanist lifted his head at Tam’s curse, the empty sockets of his skull taking on an otherworldly green light.

Above him Dahl and Farideh were shouting, but to Tam’s ears they sounded so far off, so garbled, they might as well have been shouting through the water that had brought them to this Hellish place.

“Don’t come down,” he tried to shout back. “It’s not safe.”

He might have bellowed or he might have only whimpered, but for certain one person heard Tam Zawad. The arcanist turned to look at him.

Tam struggled to sit up, to pull himself onto his good leg, but the pain was astounding. Magic crackled and shot over the arcanist’s sinewy arms and legs, spidering like lightning over his protruding ribs, as he unfolded and came to his full horrible height.

In life, the arcanist might have been the elderly man the doors all depicted-but the magic that had given rise to the creature moving toward Tam had swelled and strengthened the arcanist’s frame. He was as big as a dragonborn, and even if his muscles were dry and his skin leathery, it was clear the mummy could tear a person apart.

The bones littering the floor made it clear he had.

The mummy moved very deliberately toward them. Pernika’s screams became frantic, piercing. The kind of screams that burrowed into a person’s mind and never, ever came out. Tam tried to grab hold of the holy symbol he wore pinned to his collar, but his fingers couldn’t find it and he could not look away from the mercenary lying in the mummy’s path.

The arcanist reached down and picked up Pernika by her dislocated arm, as if she were a forgotten doll. The mercenary swiped at the creature with one blade, slashing at the mummy’s desiccated skin. He regarded her a moment, as if puzzled by what she was doing.

Then he wrenched her waving arm from her body, as easily as plucking a flower from a wet field. A spray of blood red as poppies erupted from her body. The screams broke off as she collapsed in shock. The fountain of blood diminished pump by pump. The arcanist brought the end of the limp arm to his mouth and bit through leather, muscle, bone.

Silver Lady, Tam prayed, unable to look away, don’t forsake us.

The air cracked and split with a gust of hot air and the acrid smell of burning stone, and Farideh leaped from the middle of nothing, pulling Dahl behind her to land lightly on his feet.

“Gods, devils and demons,” Dahl swore. “What is that thing?”

Farideh didn’t answer him, but pointed the infernal rod at the mummy. “Adaestuo.” The powers of the Hells surged through her, racing black as soot along the veins of her arms before bursting out the end of the rod in a searing ball of sickly, violet energy. It broke over the mummy, clinging to his dry form in embers here and there. Tarchamus looked up from his grisly meal.

But now his full attention was on Farideh.

Dahl drew his sword, but Farideh laid a hand on his arm. “No. Don’t get close. Get Tam fixed.” She swept her arms together and with another infernal shout, sent a gust of burning air toward the arcanist as the strange green light gathered around him.

Dahl started to protest, but the arcanist’s light burned brighter, gathering in his gaping mouth. The mummy’s jaw opened like a yawn and Dahl leaped aside. Another crack and Farideh vanished and reappeared a dozen feet to the arcanist’s left, just as the green light streamed out of the mummy, charring a streak through the litter of bones. Dahl’s sword clattered on the bones and he dropped to Tam’s side.

Time seemed to drag to an unbearable crawl as Dahl looked over Tam’s injuries, the bursts of fire and green light flashing just out of sight and throwing shadows of their casters across the room.

“Hurry!” Tam tried to say.

“Right,” Dahl said. “This is going to … be horrible.” Tam hardly knew what was happening until another explosion of pain shattered his shock, and he realized Dahl had planted a foot to one side of his crotch, grabbed hold of the ankle of his broken leg, and pulled. The grind of bone sliding on bone made Tam clutch at the air as much as the pain did, and again he was dimly aware that he was screaming.

And still the arcanist roared and still the smell of brimstone was thick enough to make a man gag.

Now Dahl was binding his legs, one to the other with a solid piece of wood on either side of the broken bone … Tam looked down-not wood, some other poor soul’s thighbone. He started to retch.

“You’re losing blood,” Dahl said, pressing gently on the broken leg. “The vessels … even though nothing’s broken the skin, they’re going to bleed. You need healing.”

“I’ll …” Tam started to reach for the symbol of Selune he wore as a pin.

Dahl caught hold of his hand and pulled it away. “Wait for Brin. You need all your strength.”

The smack of a rope hitting the floor beside him. The roar of the arcanist. The smell of bitter brimstone so sharp it burned the back of his throat. Mira landed beside him, her face suddenly hovering over him, pale and drawn.

I’m sorry, he wanted to say. I don’t know what happened.

“Pernika?” she asked.

“Don’t look,” Dahl advised.

Mira said not another word, but tied the rope into a harness and-with Dahl’s help-bound it around Tam. The flash of flames and ancient magic continued, just out of sight.

Then suddenly, there was a sickening thud. Dahl shouted and pulled his sword again. Mira went stiff.

“Haul!” she shouted. The rope jerked. He lifted his head and looked out across the tomb.

Farideh lay sprawled on the floor. The arcanist, still trailing bits of intestine and sinew, had stopped casting, was making his way over. Dahl ran across the bone field, blade out, but gods, no, Tam thought, he’ll die. She’ll die. No blade can stop that thing. No one can stop that thing.

Farideh pulled herself up, and stumbled.

No, he thought. You can stop it. You have to stop it. He clutched at the pin. And opened himself wide to Selune.

The blessings of the moon swelled, so intense he could feel them in his teeth. Even here, so far from the night sky, so far from the Moonmaiden’s fair face, the undeniable power of her poured into her servant, like water into a vessel. With all his strength, Tam pulled the pin from his collar and thrust it out toward the arcanist.

He cried out Selune’s name, and a silvery radiance exploded outward from the symbol. The light overwhelmed Tam’s eyes, the spell sapped his strength. But he heard the arcanist scream and the sound of the mummy’s body crashing against the farther wall.

“Gods damn it! Pull him up!” Mira shouted. The ropes around him tightened. He spun in the air as he was hauled upward, the roar of the arcanist suddenly splitting the air.

No, he thought, struggling to stay conscious. No, no, no. Arms pulled him out of the air. He landed on another hard floor.

“Karshoj,” he heard Havilar swear and swear and swear. Her voice echoed strangely in his ears as his vision closed. “Do something …”

There was a ringing sound, like a sword on a whetstone, and a woman’s voice, singing softly. The pain in his leg multiplied, doubled, and tripled, and he was screaming again. The light, so bright he might have held the moon to his eye …

He sat up panting hard and nearly fell over. His leg was still in agony, his head still spun, but he no longer felt as if he were going to die. Brin, looking ashen, stood over him. Maspero held the rope, slung over a fallen shelf, hauling mightily against the weight of someone down below. Havilar pulled behind him, her feet sliding on the polished floor …

“Get this off me,” Tam ordered, reaching for the splint of bones.

“Not until someone sees to you,” Brin said. “I don’t know if it’s fixed.”

Tam ignored him and tried to come to his feet, and stumbled, dizzy and sick. Brin caught him, like he was an invalid-damn it-and eased him down. “Don’t move. I think it’s still broken.”

Down below the arcanist screamed again, and Tam pushed Brin away. Mira scrambled up the rope. The bookshelf the rope hung over splintered under their weight.

“Hurry, gods blast you,” Maspero shouted down at her.

She wouldn’t be quick enough. Tam took his pin in hand and filled his heart and mind with the distant powers of the Moonmaiden. A cool wave of intense magic rushed through him, along with the sound of faint singing. His thighbone knitted together with a cracking and snapping that he never got used to.

The bookshelf cracked and snapped along with him. The wood splintered. Mira reached the top of the rope and started swinging for the ledge. He pulled the chain from his belt.

“No!” Havilar screamed. The bookshelf broke-Tam’s chain lashed out and tangled around the rope. He hauled hard against it, keeping Mira from dropping any farther. Arms shaking, she scaled the rope to the edge of the chain and caught Brin’s reaching hand. She half fell, half leaped the distance, and Brin grabbed hold of her as she did, helping her scramble over the side. She fell forward onto her hands and knees.

Down in the pit, where Farideh and Dahl still were, the arcanist howled.

Lorcan didn’t have long to plan before Sairche returned, wearing more of Invadiah’s treasured armor and accompanied by Bibracte again. Arisia and Cissa positioned themselves on either side of the door. Bibracte took off her sword belt and set it beside the door. Lorcan’s pulse quickened.

“I suspect,” Sairche said, “you thought you were being clever.”

“It’s possible,” he said, pointedly not looking at Bibracte, standing there beside the door, all fang and muscle. He palmed the pearl Invadiah had given him. “I often am. What are we talking about?”

“The succubus.”

“Ah,” he said. “No. I wouldn’t deign to call myself clever over that. I might suggest you were being a bit … let’s say, overbold. As if I can’t spot a succubus?” Bibracte was grinning at him. The memory of his mad half sister killing an Asmodean cultist for being near her sword, by slicing him completely in half, ran through his thoughts. Along with the sound of her cackling, like only Bibracte could, seeing him clutching at his innards. Beshaba shit in my eyes, he cursed to himself. Bad, bad, very bad. He could smash the pearl now … and hope picturing some cave on Toril would get him anywhere near where he needed to be.

“She told me,” Sairche said, “what it was you talked about. The protective spells. Took some … convincing, but she was most forthcoming in the end.”

“I didn’t expect anything else,” he said. She hadn’t mentioned the blood magic. “It’s more telling that she wasn’t interested in sharing, don’t you think?”

Sairche straightened the bracer on her left arm with a small, secretive smile. “Not so interesting as the fact that you thought you could keep her from compelling you. But that’s all behind us now. I thought you should know I figured out how you got around the protections.”

Lorcan met her golden gaze. “Did you now?”

“The rod.”

He held perfectly still. Shit. Shit and ashes-he hadn’t thought of that. The rod Farideh carried-a minor artifact from the first layer called the Rod of the Traitor’s Reprisal-had been a fixture of his mother’s treasury, gathering a greasy layer of wall spatter and bone dust for ages, before he gave it to Farideh. While Invadiah had been impatient and ill-tempered as a hornet’s nest sinking in boiling water, she’d been remarkably thorough about her belongings. There would be records. Someone would have noted that Lorcan had taken it when he’d requested the weapon.

Which meant Sairche had a focus for her scrying that wasn’t covered by the protection spell.

“It seems your girl is playing adventurer somewhere in Northern Faerun,” she said.

Lorcan smirked, though inside he was throttled by panic. If she’d found Farideh, she might know that he’d slipped out. That he might again. “That’s an awful lot of world to consider. Doesn’t sound like such a good solution after all.”

Sairche smirked back. “Oh, not to worry. I haven’t been able to find her precisely. She’s somewhere with a forbiddance cast upon it. Some sort of temple, I’d wager. Fortunately, I have this lovely scrying mirror, already altered to pierce hallowed ground.” She started toward the mirror.

Not a temple, he thought. A cavern. A cavern whose forbiddance had been broken down enough for him to pass through. It would be like greased tissue to the scrying mirror.

He rolled the pearl back between his fingers. Now. It would have to be now.

“What do you intend to do about the protection?” he blurted.

Sairche glanced back at him over her shoulder, puzzled. “Why should I do anything? By tracking the rod, I circumvent it.”

Lorcan spread his arms wide. “Am I nothing if not an object lesson in the perils of relying on magic items? If you can track the rod, so can everyone else.” He smirked, though he didn’t feel terribly confident. “Not just the ones you’re willing to deal with.”

Sairche turned, eyeing him cautiously. “You didn’t use the rod, did you?”

He shrugged, trying to look as impish and thoughtless as possible. “You may have noticed Invadiah only granted me that treasure fairly recently. Or you may not have.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Dissolving the protection is a trifling matter, if you know anything about magic. I’ll swap the rod.”

“But you don’t want it broken-that would merely send a signal to the entirety of the Hells that there’s a Brimstone Angel to be had.”

For a moment, Sairche looked as if she would sic Bibracte on him. She broke her gaze and stared deeply at the scrying mirror. “You might,” she finally said, “have loosened the protection. Stretched it over yourself and her both. It would be enough to block her and you.”

He snorted. “You’re clever, but widening a spell is archwizard’s magic. Not an option.”

Sairche gave him a withering look. “Do you even read your pact agreements before you hide them away? You don’t have to widen the spell, you just have to convince her to share her spell’s effects … So that’s not what you did.” She shook her head. “Of course not. Then you’d have been stuck within the protection’s boundary, and it wouldn’t stretch between the planes.”

She pursed her lips. “You’d need something she could carry without notice, something no one could take and something she wouldn’t give …” Sairche’s voice trailed away, and she looked up at Lorcan with the faintest suggestion of respect.

“Blood magic,” she said. “That’s how you got around the protection-called her blood with her blood. She can’t lose it, she can’t cast it aside, and you keep the protection.” She cursed. “You shitting bastard. How could I have missed that?”

“I’m not the only thing you have to attend to,” Lorcan said, as impudently as he could. But inside his thoughts were racing-now that she knew about the blood connection, she could find Farideh and take her own vial. There was a finite amount of time before there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to stop Sairche.

But Sairche didn’t know Farideh had pulled him out of this prison. Nor, he thought, did Sairche realize what she’d given away as she puzzled. Not the details he was hoping for, but a beginning, a possibility. And she wouldn’t kill him until she had Farideh in hand.

Bibracte eyed him like a waiting vulture, as she pulled spiked gloves over her powerful hands.

Use the mirror, damn it, he thought. Anytime you like.

“Where’s the connection?” she demanded. “It’s one of your trinkets, isn’t it? Which one has the sympathetic link?”

Lorcan shrugged. “You have all my belongings, don’t you? Search them yourself.”

“Oh, I will.” Sairche glared down at the dark mirror, where it leaned against the fleshy wall. “Does it pain you to realize all you ever had to do was assist me?” she burst out. “It didn’t have to be this way.”

“When should I have done that? Before or after you went around bargaining with my warlocks?”

“I would have let you live.”

“Then you should have come to me first,” Lorcan snapped. “But we both know that was never going to happen. You don’t want allies. It’s not in your nature.” It’s in neither of our natures, he thought.

Sairche narrowed her eyes at his reflection and waved a hand to stir the powers of the scrying mirror.

It found the rod, the blast of Hellish magic that streamed from it, and Farideh’s hand. Sairche forced the image to shift, to show the entire warlock-still down in the caverns where Lorcan had left her-and fighting alone against what looked to be a seven-foot-tall corpse spouting green fire.

Lorcan held his breath.

Sairche clenched her fists. “What is she doing? Gods be damned, I need her alive!”

“Welcome,” Lorcan said, “to owning a Brimstone Angel.” He folded his arms and kept his eyes off the mirror, off the sight of Farideh putting herself in mortal danger. There’s nothing you can do, he thought. She’ll dig her own grave. “You don’t even have a portal with which to gather her. Whatever shall you do?”

Sairche spun on him. “Oh, I’ve got plans to fix that. Irons in other fires. Once you’re out of the way, it will take just moments. Don’t worry,” she added. “I won’t take her right away. I want to make sure you suffer.”

“If you really wanted my help,” he said. “I would have considered it. Hells, it’s not as if we couldn’t convince some other heir to switch their pact, the two of us.” He let the pearl drop to the floor behind him, where his heel could crush it quickly. “We still could.”

Sairche regarded him, her expression puzzled and her grin slowly growing. “Really?” she said after a moment. “If I didn’t know better, Lorcan, I would guess you didn’t know.”

That stopped him. “Didn’t know what?”

“There are a fair number of devils interested in a Kakistos heir,” she said, “and they’ll pay well enough. But there are a much smaller number interested in this Kakistos heir. And what they’ll pay … To be perfectly honest, even I wasn’t expecting it.”

Lorcan frowned. “Why?”

“Oh that’s funny. You don’t know.”

“You intend to kill me anyway,” he said. “Why not tell me?”

Sairche patted his cheek. “It’s been awhile since you’ve had the upper hand, but trust me when I say it’s far more satisfying to send you to your grave wondering. I do hope you’ve been a dearer brother to Bibracte than you have to me.” The erinyes loomed over Lorcan, flexing her hands in the vicious wrappings, her fangs bared in a horrible grimace.

“Do be sure,” she said to Bibracte as she headed out the door, “to leave something for the others to do.” She glanced back at him. “We have to convince those watching that I’m a worthy successor to mother, after all.”

Bibracte’s spiked fist crashed into his face, hard enough to split his lip and bloody his nose. He reeled and felt his foot come down on the pearl. He caught himself before he crushed it and cut a glance to the mirror, to Farideh fallen prone across a field of bones. The paladin coming to her side, his sword drawn. The blast of silver, divine light, so cold he could almost feel it through the mirror. Now or never, he thought.

“Tell Sairche she’ll have to try harder to succeed someone as cunning as Mother,” he said, and he stepped back onto the pearl, smashing it to dust.

By the fifth time Farideh stepped through a rent in the world, she realized she’d gotten into more than she knew how to get out of. So many leaps through the strange passages were making her dizzy. As slow as the creature was, it didn’t falter as it tracked her around the tomb. And as much as the fire seemed to pain it, none of her spells had brought it down-and it was getting angrier. The ghosts streaked back and forth across the crypt, diving near her, but always shying away as she drew on her powers.

Make for the exit, Farideh thought as the world parted for her, then cast the lava vent. If anything could stop it, it was that.

But as she stepped free of the cloud of smoke and brimstone, her foot came down on some unfortunate’s skull. Her ankle turned, and she fell forward, smacking her face against a second skull.

That’s what you get for being clever-the thought went through her head as quickly as the pain shooting from her cheekbone. Blood filled her mouth where her teeth had sliced her cheek. The creature’s heavy footfalls, crunching through the field of bones toward her, shook her from her daze. She scrambled to her feet, collecting the fallen rod as she did, but her ankle threatened to buckle under her weight.

Her eyes on the creature and her rod in hand, the bones were equal parts obstacle and motivation as she limped toward the exit. The light between the creature’s jaws started to build again. Farideh pointed the rod at it, drawing hard on the Hells.

Dahl all but tackled her, pulling her out of the blast’s reach. At the same time a beam of silvery light streaked across the tomb, Selune’s magic slamming into the creature and throwing it across the chamber. The mummy screamed.

“Gods damn it!” she heard Mira shout. “Pull him up!”

“Come on!” Dahl hooked an arm under hers and started toward Mira and the exit and the rope dangling there.

The mummy screamed. The pain in her ankle surged to match it, but Farideh gritted her teeth and clung to Dahl and the rod. She glanced back over her shoulder. The mummy kept its pace toward the exit to the pit, its empty eye sockets seeming to focus past Farideh on the dancing end of the rope.

A sharp crack, a yelp of pain from Mira, and the remains of one of the heavy bookshelves rained down on the field of broken bones. Dahl cursed and jumped back, yanking her with him. She could hear Tam yelling and Havilar yelling and Maspero yelling. The crash of more shelves, another rain of spellbooks. The rope slapping the wall.

But the only sound that mattered was the howl of the approaching mummy. It was close, close enough to see where the pale jade bones of its wrists peeked through its flaking muscles, the fine, broken hairs that had been its beard, the garnet pendant hanging around its neck.

Tarchamus, Farideh realized.

The ghosts took shape at their master’s side-no longer familiar faces, but apprentices in long mage’s robes. A man with steel-gray hair and pale skin. A red-haired girl. A dark-skinned woman with her hair in braids. The cold light of the dead behind their eyes.

Dahl had left her and knotted loops into the hanging rope. He stepped into one, pulling it tight. He looked back and spotted the arcanist, now no farther than the reach of one of Farideh’s blasts. “Let’s go,” he said, coming to her side again.

And then the portal opened.

Dahl gasped as he crushed her close, either to protect her or to claim some protection himself from the flash of hellfire and the fearsome figure that appeared in its heart: Lorcan.

For a moment, Farideh was sure he was nothing more than the aftereffects of Adolican Rhand’s poisons, except Dahl could clearly see this devil too. She sat there, stunned: he’d found a way out. His wings were still bound, and his nose and lip streamed black blood. Lorcan’s gaze fell on her and his wings flexed against the pin, but at the same moment the arcanist looked back and marked his presence.

He turned to consider this new threat-no, she thought, none of us are threats. We are nuisances. Prey. He knows he will have all of us eventually.

“Farideh, come on,” Dahl said, finding his voice again.

He cannot fly, she thought, watching Lorcan. He cannot fight him. Even erinyes burn, but not Tarchamus. His eyes on the arcanist, Lorcan untangled the sword from Pernika’s remains. The ghosts crept toward him. All Farideh’s nightmares, all her hideous visions were about to come true.

“Run!” she shouted at Lorcan. He ignored her and cast a ball of energy at the mummy. The arcanist didn’t so much as flinch. The boiling promises of Malbolge started whispering in her ears, burning in her veins.

“Go,” she said to Dahl. She looked back at him. “Many thanks. For coming back for me.”

“No-are you mad? That thing-”

“I can’t leave him,” Farideh said. She didn’t wait for Dahl to argue. She stepped into another split-the last she could likely handle, she realized as vertigo snarled around her like a cast-off net-and landed off-balance near the northern wall, near one of the narrow alcoves that lined it.

Off-balance, because Dahl had grabbed hold of her arm and traveled with her.

“You are not,” he said, drawing his sword once more, “making me explain to Master Zawad how I left you to die.” He knew this was madness-she could see it in the grim set of his mouth, the verge of panic in his eyes.

“Stay back,” she said. “Keep the ghosts off us.”

The bursts of energy were enough to get the ghosts’ attention, to turn them away from Lorcan. A rain of burning brimstone drew the arcanist’s eye as Dahl’s sword warded off the swooping ghosts. Lorcan cast again, and the arcanist’s attention switched, still trying to decide which of them to take first.

“Shit and ashes,” Lorcan shouted. “Will you run already?”

Green light collected in the arcanist’s open mouth.

The erinyes poured out of the second portal, near where Lorcan’s had opened. The center one she remembered all too well-the erinyes slicing one of the Asmodean cultists in half, laughing and toying with his innards, as Lorcan turned her face from the carnage. One of the pradixikai, the elite. The other two-one with red eyes, one with a broken fang-seemed smaller and less terrible but still fit for Farideh’s nightmares. Their shining hooves crushed the field of bones as they strode from the portal, surveying the battlefield. “Oh karshoj.”

“What are those?” Dahl cried.

“Run, Dahl,” she said. She pointed the rod at the mad erinyes. “Adaestuo.” The bolt screamed past the arcanist and struck her wicked black armor. She focused her attention on Farideh, sneering … then turned away. Back to Lorcan. She pointed to either side and the erinyes fanned out to surround him.

As his sisters’ gazes swept the tomb and each person in it, Lorcan had sprinted away-after the mummy. He scooped up a skull, a pelvis, poor Pernika’s torn-off forearm, and hurled it all at the arcanist, between blasts of the bruised-looking energy.

The arcanist swung around to swat at Lorcan-but as he did, he released the building burst of magic. The green light screamed across the tomb and enveloped the erinyes with the broken tusk fully.

One moment the erinyes was stalking toward her brother. The next she had become nothing more than an ear-splitting scream and a wispy emerald vapor hanging in the air … before swirling together into a cloud that streamed back to the arcanist’s open mouth, chased by the insubstantial forms of the ghosts.

Farideh clapped a hand to her mouth to stem the scream that threatened to work its way free. Even the erinyes seemed shocked. Then the mad one barked a command, and they broke wide to flank the mummy. The arcanist paid them no mind-the essence of the erinyes seemed to swell through him, and he threw back his head, making a hideous droning hum of pleasure. The ghosts chased each other around their master’s form, sending a queer vibration through the air.

Lorcan ran to Farideh as if he meant to bowl her over, ignoring the death of his sister, ignoring the hideous sound coming from the mummy. “The bolt!” he shouted catching hold of the hand that held the rod. “Gods damn it, the bolt!”

Farideh tore her gaze from the arcanist. “A-assulam.”

The bolt shattered into a rain of rust and sparks, and Lorcan’s wings sprang open. He took another quick survey of the crypt and tried to grab her around the waist. “It had to shitting be Bibracte. Come on.”

“Dahl,” she said slipping out of Lorcan’s reach. “We have to-” The clash of Dahl’s sword against the erinyes’s interrupted her, and Lorcan leaped away from the sound. The mad-eyed erinyes-Bibracte-had circled around the arcanist, leaving him focused on her compatriot, whose own blackened sword swatted wildly at the ghosts as they swept near.

In the very core of her heart, Farideh was screaming. Compared to the erinyes of her nightmares, Bibracte was larger, fiercer, and more gleefully determined to tear through her brother and the tiefling before her as if they were made of parchment. Dahl blocked the erinyes’s advance with sword strokes so clean and firm that Farideh could imagine Mehen directing her to pay attention, this was how it was done.

But Bibracte had a faint, amused smile-Dahl was a better match than she’d expected, but he wasn’t built to cut down the enemies of archdevils.

… the erinyes are a thunderstorm, unstoppable and rolling toward them out of nothing. Their hooves crack the cobbles, shatter the rune. Their crowns of horns threaten to spear the moon. Their swords are fire. Their swords are hungry …

Farideh cast a stream of flames up under the erinyes’s sword arm, forcing her back and burning the tender skin not shielded by her gleaming armor. If it hurt her, though, Farideh couldn’t tell. Bibracte skittered back and snarled at her.

“Thank Sairche for your life,” she spat. She swung a fist at Farideh, expecting, no doubt, to knock her flat.

But Lorcan’s borrowed sword interrupted her-stabbing deeply into the gap of her spaulder and cuirass. Black blood oozed from the wound and Bibracte grunted as Lorcan pulled the weapon free again.

“Run, darling,” Lorcan ordered, her nightmare starting all over again. But before Bibracte could punish her brother’s impudence, the screams of the other erinyes demanded everyone’s attention.

The ghosts had taken solid form again and pinned the erinyes to the ground. She was strong enough to lift them each from their feet, but they were three and she was one.

“Mother of nightmares, Cissa,” Bibracte cursed.

The arcanist bent down, as leisurely as if he were retrieving a fallen coin, plucked the erinyes’s armor away, and plunged a skeletal hand into her abdomen.

Farideh knew better than to watch after that, and focused only on the distance between them and the exit shaft, on being certain Dahl and Lorcan followed. The ghosts, no longer needed to hold down the red-eyed erinyes, streaked past, landing and taking solid form to strike at the trio before dissolving into smoke and light again. The old man slammed into Farideh with all the same strength the last ghost had had, knocking her into Dahl. But the Harper kept his feet and pulled her past so he could swipe at the ghost with his sword.

The other two hurtled into Lorcan, raking his flesh with their nails, tearing the wounds in his wings deeper. Farideh heard him cry out in shock and pain, but there was no time to stop.

The rope still hung down the wall’s side, dancing as someone started down it. “No!” Dahl shouted. “We’re coming up!” He pushed her forward. The arcanist looked up from his still-kicking meal, as if realizing he was about to lose them all. He roared and started toward them.

There wouldn’t be time, Farideh realized. Not for each of them to ascend. Lorcan reached them. She shoved the rope into Dahl’s hands.

“You go!” she shouted. “I can slow him down.” She turned back to the monstrous creature and pointed the rod at the ground before it. “Laesurach.”

The ground beneath the arcanist’s feet turned molten, and a geyser of magma shot forth around him. He screamed, an unearthly howl, and the ghosts twined around and around and around. The mad erinyes retreated a distance, her sword drawn, waiting, it seemed, for the flames to die down.

Farideh looked over at Lorcan. “Can you fly?”

“Not well,” he said. He took hold of her, and without explanation he plucked the rod from her hands. “Is your paladin out of the way?”

Dahl hauled himself awkwardly over the top. “Yes.”

“Pity,” Lorcan said.

The powers of Malbolge surged around and through them both, then burst out in a ring of flames that gusted up the exit shaft and under Lorcan’s battered wings. She held tight as the burning air vaulted them both up, past the walls, past the lip, and out to the second layer.

“Back!” she heard Tam shout, as the flames burst outward, setting the scrolls and books left scattered by their efforts afire. She shut her eyes and curled toward Lorcan, shielding her face from the heat.

They landed in an awkward heap, the cuffs of Farideh’s blouse singed and smoking. Havilar rushed her and pulled her up, and embraced her fiercely. “You stupid henish-don’t do that!” she said. She tucked her head into her sister’s hair. Farideh hugged her back, still trying to catch her breath. Below them the arcanist’s screams of pain faded.

“Make a circle!” Lorcan shouted. “Someone make a godsbedamned circle!”

Farideh let go of Havilar, suddenly aware that everyone could see Lorcan and that only Havilar wasn’t braced as if the devil was a new threat. Tam in particular, though he stood as if that were all he could handle, held the holy symbol of Selune and his chain as if both would spring to life at any moment.

“Havilar,” he said, “help your sister aside.”

“No!” Farideh cried. She stepped back, closer to Lorcan. “Please, Tam! Lock him in a circle. Let me bind him, but don’t kill him.” She shook her head. “He hasn’t done anything.”

“Yet.”

“Please,” Lorcan repeated, without an ounce of scorn in him. “Please. I will go wherever you want, tell you whatever you need. Just make a circle. Now. Or they will find me and you will find yourself with still more to contend with, and I don’t think you have the resources for that.” He smiled and spread his hands in a gesture of peace. “We’re on the same side for the moment, I promise.”

The last erinyes started screaming, and though Farideh wouldn’t have thought it possible, everyone grew tenser.

“We’ll need him,” Dahl said, and Tam dropped the holy symbol to his side and stared at him. “We’ll need as many as we can,” Dahl added, “when we go back down.”

“Next time,” Havilar said, “you’re taking me.”

“No one is going down there again,” Tam said. “Understood?”

Dahl shook his head. “We have to. The air shafts. Didn’t you see? There are three of them along the far wall. That’s our other exit.”