Lesser Evils

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

As much as they’d all been waiting for each heartbeat to be interrupted by the alarm, Brin wasn’t the only one who leaped at the sound. Even Lorcan’s wings suddenly swung up and over them, as if he meant to fly out of the Shadovar’s reach. Farideh grabbed him by the arm.

“Shar and hrast,” Tam spat. He turned to Farideh. “Get to the weak point and wait for our signal. Mira, find the door and get it open. Havi and Maspero, keep the Shadovar off us and the arcanist on the Shadovar. Brin …”

Havilar’s hand slipped into his, her tail twining nervously around his ankle. He could hear the words she hadn’t said yet-Brin can come with me. And split her focus, he thought. You could get her killed that way.

“I’ll go with Mira,” Brin said, squeezing Havilar’s hand. “If we can get the arcanist out, I’m the best person to try the air vents first. In case they’re too narrow.”

Tam nodded. “Excellent. Go.”

Havilar held tight to him, and unlike before, she looked nothing short of terrified. “You have to be careful,” she said, a little tremor in her voice. “You have to promise.”

“You be careful,” he told her. “I’m just doing a little climbing.”

Havilar seized him in a fierce embrace, tucking her face against the crook of his neck. “Just promise, all right?”

“I promise,” he said, and he kissed her quickly, before hurrying after Mira. Havilar looked around the camp, as if searching for someone-Farideh, he realized, but her twin had rushed off to help cast the rituals. Oh, Loyal Torm, he thought, seeing the sudden anguish on Havilar’s face, don’t let me have kept her from saying good-bye.

He broke into a run to keep up with Mira, darting around the twisting paths of the library’s shelves. She stopped abruptly along a mostly straight aisle, lined with fat, leather-bound books on either side, and wide enough for Lorcan to have spread his wings. She scanned the floor.

“Here,” she murmured. “It’s the only place that’s wide enough for that thing to get out.”

“How … big is it again?” Brin asked.

Mira didn’t answer, but dropped to her knees and started pulling at the corners of the tiles with a slim, sturdy wire. Brin bent low, studying the sand between the tiles for signs of disturbance. Off in the distance he heard the muffled booms of the wizards blasting their way through the obstacles. Ye gods, he thought. Where in the Hells was it?

Suddenly his ears felt thick, as if a storm were coming fast over the horizon, and the air seemed to vibrate. He looked up and saw the ghosts, still wearing the forms of Havilar, Farideh and himself take shape in the shadows. The booming grew louder, and Brin realized, as the ghosts edged closer, that not all of it was coming from the Shadovar’s progress.

“Mira,” he called.

“Have you found it?” she said, then she let out a little cry as she spotted the ghosts.

“It’s found us,” he said. He drew his sword and his holy symbol, and heard her take out her knives. The ghosts all eyed him as he backed toward Mira, as if waiting to see if he could do anything at all with the occasional goodwill of Torm.

One of the tiles started to lurch upward, out of place.

“Head for the others,” he said. “I’ll lead-”

“No,” Mira said, firmly. “I’ll lead it out. You get down there and make sure the air vents are a decent route.”

Brin might have argued, but then the tile flipped out of place, and a hideous, skeletal arm as long as he was reached up out of the floor. Mira darted past him, scoring a slash along the thing’s forearm, and the arcanist howled in rage. The mummy hauled himself up out of the trapdoor and for a brief, terrible moment, his glowing green eyes fell on Brin. He snarled and tossed his head, so bestial Brin could hardly imagine he had once been the architect of the library. Whatever the arcanist’s howl had meant, the ghosts understood, and as the mummy turned to follow Mira, the three of them focused their cold eyes on Brin.

Loyal Fury, he thought, and he leaped down the trapdoor into the darkness. The drop was long enough that it shocked his ankles, but Brin ran past the pain, down the steep and winding passage. One of the ghosts streaked past him with a sound halfway between a swarm of bees and a stiff breeze, and his own self seemed to take shape fifteen feet before him. He held the pendant of his holy symbol up menacingly.

“The gods cannot hear you down here,” the ghost said.

Brin gripped the emblem all the harder-if ever there was a time his fickle powers should come through, this was it. “Loyal Fury,” he said. “Aid me.”

The emblem took on a bright sheen, and the air rang with the sound of a blade against a whetstone. The ghost took a step back. Brin edged forward.

“Let me pass,” he said. “Or I release it.” He swung the holy symbol around to see the ghost in Havilar’s skin creeping up on him. “This is the sort of magic that killed your friend,” he warned.

She smiled, an evil, slippery thing. “He was already dead.”

Which ghost lunged first, he couldn’t have said. His eyes were first on Havilar’s face catching fire in the sudden brightness that exploded from the pendant, then on his own, the ghost’s gaping mouth filling with the holy light. His stomach churned up, but he had the good sense to run past the screaming creatures and swallow his sick back down.

They did not follow him into the crypt-whether they were dead or that fearful of him, he didn’t know. He ran through the field of bones to the trio of niches along the far wall. Even though the air was dense with the rotten smell of the arcanist’s victims, he could tell it was fresher than in the rest of the library, stirring the dank air into something breathable. He imagined the arcanist, his apprentices, or maybe their slaves-the wretched-looking little gnome of the Book’s pedestal flashed through his thoughts-laboring in the dark and the murky air, and he shuddered.

Brin sheathed his sword and took the stub of chalk he’d been carrying since Mira gave out orders. He looked up the first shaft and saw no sunlight-he drew a rough X before the opening, and hoped it would deter the others if they came before he’d found the right way out. The second looked promising, but a quick scramble found the rock crumbling under his hands fifteen feet up. He slid back down and drew another mark before starting carefully up the third vent, his arms and legs screaming as he crept nearer and nearer to to the world beyond.

“You know,” Lorcan said as Farideh poured the mix of metal salts into a circle around both of them, “there is a simpler way out.” The sounds of Rhand’s people making their way through the library made a strange complement to his calmness. He shifted out of the way as she came under his wing. “Not nicer, but simpler.” She stepped around her open ritual book to finish the line. “If we break the protection, Sairche will be on us in a heartbeat. She’ll pull us both out, quick as can be. Your sister too, I suspect.”

“But not the others,” Farideh said, calm because the alternative would undo her. “And then Sairche has us.”

“And then we have at least a little longer to live,” he corrected. “And a little longer to find a way out of the fire.”

Farideh thought of Havilar, of the approaching voices of the Netherese scouts, and the inevitable presence of Adolican Rhand. “I think our chances are better this way,” she said, even though she wasn’t sure. “I know the others’ chances are better this way.”

“No doubt,” Lorcan said. The echoing booms of the Shadovar’s wizards blasting their way through Maspero’s maze of shelves was getting closer. “What is your sister doing wrapped around the little wayward Tormite?”

“What it looks like,” Farideh said mildly. She scrutinized the circle rather than meet Lorcan’s eyes. He’d already seen whatever stunned expression must have crossed her face when Havilar went to Brin, all worried eyes and lashing tail-and not to Farideh. How many times had Havilar made her promise to stay safe when she wasn’t going to be there to save Farideh? Enough that she couldn’t shake the sense that missing that promise meant Farideh wouldn’t come back at all.

“It sounds like that bothers you,” Lorcan drawled.

“We are about to be overrun by a Shadovar army,” she said. “I’m not gossiping with you.” She looked back down the aisle where Dahl and Tam were bent over the ritual books, trying to transfer Dahl’s spell to Tam’s quicker than they ought to have.

A crash and a chorus of screams rang out as the Netherese hit the first of the traps. She looked back again for Dahl’s signal. Tam still scribbled. Dahl still gestured wildly as he tried to explain how the spell went together.

“It does make a neat little pair, doesn’t it,” he said savagely. “She has her not-quite-paladin, and you have yours.”

Farideh laughed once. “If Dahl is what I get then you can send me to the Hells right now. It would be much more pleasant.”

“He cares an awful lot about what you think of him,” Lorcan said.

Because he’s a proud idiot, Farideh thought, but she smiled sweetly at Lorcan, “Does that bother you?”

He made a face. “Well done.” She made the cross of leaves through the center, and looked back to Dahl and Tam. Now at least they had started, the lines of powdered silver gleaming in the light of the orbs overhead.

“What will you do if we escape?” Lorcan asked.

“Do we have to talk about this now?”

“What else should we do?” he said irritably. “The priest, no doubt, would tell you to be rid of me.”

“I’m not sending you back,” she said. She looked up at him, unsure of what to say. She wouldn’t betray him, she couldn’t. She wanted him near, even if at the same time she didn’t. If nothing else-no threat of Sairche, no Brimstone Angel, no debt of gratitude-here was a chance to see where they landed, he and she. To sort out whether she loved him or feared him or resented him, or some unnameable combination she would never come by with a thousand unexpected visits.

“I owe you better than that,” she finally said, and she thanked the gods that Dahl waved for her attention. The rituals were set. Once hers was finished, they’d make for the vents below.

She dropped the vial between them, and the magic surged through her, sucking the words of the spell from her mouth. The wind and the roar that rushed up between them was cool and then cold, blowing through Farideh’s armor and raising gooseflesh along her skin. Light burned through the circle of salts, and Farideh felt the Weave’s broken strands winding around them both, tying into tighter and tighter bands, before collapsing into them. The light and wind faded but a faint steam rose off of both of them, their flesh already scalding. She tucked the ritual book back into her haversack.

“Are you afraid?” she asked quietly.

“Not very, no,” he said, unrolling the scroll. “Though I don’t like to consider what comes after.” He looked down at her with those black, black eyes. “I don’t know which would be worse: oblivion or to rise into the ranks of devilkin already knowing I cannot win at the hierarchy.”

She looked at him, surprised. A devil killed on Toril would reform in the Hells, but not a half-devil. He’d said so before. “If you’re half-devil,” she said slowly, “then you’re half-mortal too?”

“Human, most likely,” Lorcan said. “Just as fragile as a devil, when it comes to undead monstrosities.”

Half-human means half a soul, she thought. You’re not doomed, and maybe he isn’t either.

“It’s very brave,” she said. “What you’re doing. Even if you’re not afraid.”

“Let’s see if it convinces the priest,” he said. “Are you ready?”

There was not a syllable of the arcanist’s spell that Farideh recognized, but every word sounded like magic. It made the pulse of Malbolge’s energies strike a frenzied beat, fighting against her heartbeat. The flood of the Hells spilled into her, and she stepped back and back from the cambion, until the protection that linked them stopped her feet.

The flames of Phlegethos burst forth from the limestone floor, hotter than a hundred cookfires, even with the ritual’s protection. The roaring stream of fire was nearly enough to drown out the ear-splitting screechs of the arcanist’s mummy and the crashes of the Netherese approaching. The screams as the arcanist reached them.

Lorcan was thrown up into the air by the force of the spell, and for a moment he hung there, his wings buoyed by the shimmering air, his head thrown back in a cry of pain.

Then the fire caught. The edges of his wings started to burn.

Farideh rushed forward as he fell, the heat of the cracking ground forcing her back. She pressed on and caught him.

“Hurry,” she said, hauling him up. “The lava’s coming.” He could hardly breathe for the pain of his burns it seemed, his eyes wild with the shock of it. She hauled him bodily toward the camp and the trapdoor beyond.

Mira raced across her path, knives out. Farideh called out to her, but she didn’t stop. A moment later, the arcanist lumbered into view. He turned to face Farideh and Lorcan and opened his mouth. The green light began to swell between his jaws.

Lorcan held her tighter.

The arcanist looked up, past their heads to the fires crackling beyond and the lava that was flowing over the shelves and stone, making greater fires in its wake. The arcanist howled up at the ceiling, as the column behind them started to crack. He turned back the way he had come, back toward the door, and Farideh dragged Lorcan on, watching after the creature as they passed. He had thrown aside the fallen bookshelves and the Netherese mercenaries that swarmed at him. Magic crackled in his hands, a great storm of power that seemed to take all his focus-the Shadovar who attacked him drew no notice from the arcanist. The tattered remains of his three apprentices battered the score of blades at their master’s feet, taking form and dissolving again and again.

As she got Lorcan past the aisle, she saw the arcanist cast some terrible power out the doors. As they came into sight of the camp, she heard the rush of the water pouring in. By the time Dahl and Tam reached her, it had covered the soles of her boots.

“He’s hurt!” Farideh said. “Do something!”

Tam hesitated, and her heart threatened to crack under the strain like the stone of the column. Lorcan raised his head, his whole frame resting on Farideh now. It would be easy to say no, she could imagine Tam thinking. It would be easy to let the devil die.

The priest set his hands on either side of Lorcan’s face. “Grant me, Selune, our balm for this … unlikely ally.”

If Lorcan’s screams had been loud before, now they rivaled the roaring flames of Phlgethos. She held him tighter as the goddess’s blessing racked a frame never meant to feel it.

For a moment, she was sure Tam had decided to kill him. But the charred flesh of his wings flaked away to reveal new, whole skin, and Lorcan straightened with a pained gasp. The hiss and crackle of the cooling lava carried across the caverns. The stone snapped and split as it cooled. Still the lava kept flowing over the river’s efforts. The arcanist roared. She heard a sound like an explosion and more water poured in, the wall torn free to let in more of the watercourse beyond.

“Go,” Tam said firmly, and he pushed her toward the hole where Dahl helped her down the steep drop. She ran down the slope, icy water rushing around her ankles, pressing her on. She nearly slipped in it and caught herself as she burst out into the crypt. Those were Mira’s legs disappearing up the farthest shaft and she followed, not daring to hesitate long enough to look back and be sure of the other three.

Farideh braced herself against the sides of the shaft and inched her way up, panting and sore and pelted by the frequent rain of stone bits kicked loose by Mira, or whoever might be above her. For an eternity, she climbed, all too aware of the crumbling column, the swelling lava, the steam that was no doubt building up behind her as the river rushed into the gate to Phlegethos.

Suddenly, Mira was gone, and the light of the sun blinded her, and hands were helping her out of the air vent and onto the slope of a mountainside. Farideh helped her pull Dahl and then Lorcan from the shaft.

“Move,” Mira said, pointing down the slope where an ancient path led down a nearly sheer face. “Around the cliff, quickly, before it blows.” She reached down to catch her father’s hands, and Farideh followed Dahl and Lorcan down the winding path, as fast as she dared to go, to find Havilar and Brin and Maspero waiting at the foot of a sheer granite wall.

Havilar threw her arms around her sister. “Oh,” she said, overcome, and she buried her face in her sister’s hair. “Oh.” Farideh hugged her hard, glad she had been wrong, glad that nothing ill had come of not saying good-bye. She had no words either.

“Against the cliff!” Tam barked.

They broke apart and had just flattened themselves beside the others against the stone when the other side of the mountain erupted, blasting their ears and shaking the ground beneath their feet hard enough to send rocks bouncing over them and down the slope below.

They would hear later that it had ripped the peak of the mountain away, that it had rained down flaming stone and fat ashes on the High Forest for miles. The plume of smoke and steam would be seen as far away as Waterdeep, and Shade would quietly hide away any mention of the library, the mission, and the score and a half of Shadovar lost in the explosion. The books Mira had carried out would be passed from scholar to scholar, except for a precious few which would secure the strength of Maspero of Everlund for a few years more.

“Everyone’s all right?” Tam asked as the rattle of falling stone slowed, and for the moment, it was the only thing that mattered.