The Adversary

Chapter Nine

2 °Ches, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR) Somewhere North of Waterdeep

Whatever this place was-village, prison, long-term military encampment-Dahl still couldn’t make sense of it. He’d spent the first sleepless night under a thick yew bush near the wall, nibbling at the bitter orclar lichen and emptying his flask sip by sip. Before the sun was too high, he sneaked down into the village again and stolen clothes-a tunic and cloth breeches-off a line. He’d tucked his dagger into a boot, hidden his sword and the armor in the thatch of one of the empty huts’ roofs, and made his way around the perimeter.

He’d estimated close to five hundred stone huts. Spotted something like an infirmary. Garden patches, a lot more than he’d have expected in such close quarters. Meager piles of food stores left by the guards in two places, and quickly divvied up by a score or more. Later, he saw familiar faces doling out gruel from wooden buckets.

Near the lake, the villagers were mostly elves, and the shadar-kai more frequent. Up on the higher slope, the huts were crowded and the mix of villagers more dramatic-humans, orcs, half-orcs, half-elves. He even found a contingent of dwarves all packed in together in six huts. Wherever he went, the villagers watched him cautiously, but no one tried to drive him off, the way he would have expected if he’d wandered into the wrong quarter of some other town. Whatever this place was, whoever these people were, they seemed to know he was either on their side. . or he was with the shadar-kai and not to be provoked.

And then there were the flowers.

Dahl had found another trail of them, a scatter of crushed violet petals, and followed it to the crowded quarter. He asked about Tharra, and everyone played dumb. He asked about Oota, and everyone looked at him like he was madder than a mouther.

He might be one of them, their looks seemed to say, but he also might not be. They gave him a little gruel, though, and asked where he was from, when he’d come to the camp. His answers weren’t the right ones, and everyone seemed to keep their distance.

Dahl cursed, nipped whiskey-flavored air from his flask, and cursed again. What he wouldn’t do for an ale, he thought for the third time that day. What in the Hells had Farideh gotten him into?

He found a bench before one of the dwellings and sat down to eat his gruel and think. He looked up at the dark fortress, looking comically wicked against a blue, cheery sky. He’d have to get back inside, somehow. Climb over the wall. Bluff his way through a gate. Discover how the villagers interacted with the fortress and slip in with someone who did belong.

“Hey!” a child called. “Hey! Hey!”

Dahl looked down the road a short ways, where a trio of children watched him from another bench several dwellings down-a blond boy, a blue-skinned girl with the marks of a water genasi on her bare scalp, and a long-legged Turami boy, his knees drawn up to his chest.

“What’s your name?” the genasi called out, her little legs swinging back and forth.

Dahl considered them a moment. “Dahl. What’s yours?”

“I’m Vanri,” she said, pointing to herself, the pale boy, and the darkskinned boy in turn. “He’s Stedd, and that’s Samayan.” Samayan watched him cautiously over his knees.

“Well met,” Dahl said. “Are your parents around?”

Vanri shook her head. “No, they didn’t get took.”

“Taken,” Stedd corrected. “When did you get taken?”

“Two days ago,” Dahl said. He stood and crossed over to the children. Taken-interesting. “Have you been here long?”

“I’ve been here longest,” Vanri said. “Then Samayan, then Stedd.”

“But she’s the youngest,” Stedd said. “She’s only seven. But I’m ten. And Samayan’s almost eleven.”

“How old are you?” Vanri asked.

“Twenty-seven. Do you know a woman named Tharra?”

“Everyone knows Tharra,” Vanri said. “She makes everyone talk to each other, and keeps all the people safe. Most all the people, if they listen.” The dark-skinned boy hissed something at her, and Vanri made a face at him. “What?”

“Safe from what?” The children traded glances. “Does she tell you what this place is?”

“It’s like. . a farm,” the little blond boy said, and he smiled, pleased with himself.

“No, it’s not,” Vanri said.

Dahl shook his head. “Like a what?”

“A farm,” Stedd said more loudly. “A farm for chosen.”

“Chosen what?”

“You know. Chosen of the gods,” the little boy said. “The wizard makes them grow, then he harvests them.” He thought a moment. “But not really. Because they’re people.”

“Ah.Chosen,” Dahl said. He ruffled the serious little boy’s hair. “Of course.”

The Chosen of the gods-if there were any such people walking Toril- were individuals the gods imbued with uncanny powers, to serve their interests in the mortal world. But even in stories such people were so rare as to be apocryphal. You didn’t fill a mountain village with them, even if you managed to capture every Chosen in the world. Even if you were a wizard and a high-ranking Shadovar. .

“Have you ever seen the wizard?” he asked. The children eyed him like he was a lunatic.

“You don’t want to see the wizard,” Vanri said.

“Nobody does,” Samayan said quietly.

“Sometimes Tharra sees him,” Stedd said. “I mean, I bet she does. ’Cause she goes into the fortress. For food and things,” he explained to Dahl.

“She doesn’t see him,” Samayan said, sounding worried.

“Where can I find Tharra?” Dahl asked.

“She just left,” Vanri said. “She had to go and meet Ol’ Sour-Fey, so we’re waiting for Hamdir.” She wrinkled her nose. “You ask a lot of questions.”

“Which you are very good at answering,” Dahl said. “Do you know where I can find Tharra right now?”

“I told you,” Vanri said. “Ol’ Sour-Fey.”

“Cereon,” Stedd said. “You’re not supposed to call him that.”

Samayan’s dark eyes watched Dahl. “Why do you want to know about Tharra?” he asked. Dahl weighed his options-all the while Samayan watched him nervously.

“Because I think she can help me,” Dahl said.

“If you want help you’re supposed to go to Oota,” Vanri said. “Everyone does. Except Ol’ Sour-Fey and the elves.”

“Can you tell me how to find Oota?”

Vanri wrinkled her nose again. “How come you don’t know where Ootais?”

Dahl held up two fingers and smiled. “I only got took two days ago, remember.”

“Taken!” Stedd cried.

It was more information than Dahl had gotten anywhere else, even though he wasn’t sure what to make of half of it. It did not answer his questions of the daisies. It did not tell him who the wizard was. It didn’t give the other villagers much reason to stop playing dumb with him, particularly when he broke down and asked about the farm for Chosen.

Though, he had to admit, that might well have been more because it was a foolish question than because they weren’t going to answer. Dahl felt foolish enough asking. If the villagers were somehow Chosen of the gods, one of the dwarves pointed out, they would have been able to breach the wall with those fantastical powers and escape. Why would any one of them be sitting there, at the wizard’s mercy, if the gods had granted them powers fit for a chapbook?

It sounded like the sort of puzzle Dahl’s masters in the Church of Oghma would have handed down: A god grants powers to a mortal, but leaves the mortal trapped in the hands of a madman. What is the god’s will?

And after all the possibilities, the ultimate answer: We can never be certain of the will of the gods. We can only trust them to know their own minds.

The thought dredged up old pains Dahl always managed to believe were buried down deep. A god grants a mortal powers, but then takes them away without saying why. What is the god’s will? The answer, Dahl had found, was much the same: We can never be certain of the will of the gods. We can only be certain they know you aren’t worthy.

He stopped and blew out a noisy breath, as if he could spit out the shame of falling that still crept up on him from time to time and plant it in the cold mud. Now was not the time.

When night fell again, he tried to re-enter the fortress, but the gates were locked tight, and there was no climbing the stone wall without risking the bored guards. He retreated to the cottage he’d stored his things in and cast the second sending. At least he’d puzzled out one answer: he’d scaled the crater’s edges, high enough to look down on a trackless forest stretching off to the east and south and north, a ribbon of river to the west, just past the wood’s only visible edge.

“Southernmost of the Lost Peaks,” he said, while the ritual’s components burned away. “A camp of some kind-inhabitants were kidnapped. Definitely Shadovar work. There’s a wall around the place I can’t breach.”

Eight days to reach you from Everlund, came the reply. Find Farideh and wait for them to contact you. Dahl bristled. He spent the evening praying indignantly to Oghma.

The next day he tried again, and while the villagers seemed to be less wary of him, they weren’t welcoming. He made his way, winding through the alleys, toward the crowded quarter where the children had said he could find Oota, wondering if there were better ways to track down Tharra, the elusive Harper who might have a way to get into the fortress. Instead he found a trio of villagers, all muscle and grim expressions, weaving through the scattered people and alleyways, searching for Dahl. He lost them without much trouble, but every time he came back out into the open, he saw them again. Tucked into a narrow passage between houses, he crouched over someone’s fallow garden, puzzling over what to try next.

He reached the street again and found a delicate line of violets peeking out of the dirt.

Perhaps they bloom early here, Dahl thought. It wasn’t warm on the mountain, but it wasn’t as cold as it should have been. Perhaps. . it’s warmer this year. Perhaps the mountains have volcanos’ hearts, and the seeds stay warm. There were a dozen answers more likely than flowers signaling the presence of a. . what? What did he expect to find?

Chosen growing in the mud, he thought. Waiting for a wizard to harvest them.

“Cakes, some sweetmeats, lovely grapes only a little bruised.” A woman’s voice stopped Dahl in his tracks. “And half a ham on the edge of spoiling-I suppose she doesn’t much appreciate the wizard’s hospitality.”

Dahl peered around the building’s corner-there was Tharra again, holding open a sack. She was talking to a half-elf man with broad shoulders. Beside them, Samayan perched on a windowsill, while little Vanri hopped one-footed around them, squelching in the chilly mud.

“Brightnose lady?” the man asked.

The woman shook her head. “She’s odd. But I don’t think so. Wants to wear armor, not frilly dresses. Looks embarrassed half the time she gives an order. She puts my nerves to the blade, but she’s better than the wizard-so far.”

The man shook his head. “Small comfort. Is she certainly on his side?”

Tharra gave the man a look Dahl was all too familiar with. “Look at the signs. You don’t deck an enemy in gems.”

“Right,” the man said, with the air of a chastened pupil. He scratched his forehead with the back of his hand, and Dahl noticed the cages-the man’s fingers were locked into awkward curls by metal brackets. “Wish I could help in there. You still think it’s worth it?” he asked. “Walking among the guards-they could figure you out any time now.”

“Then they will have to reckon with the fact I’m not just a servant,” the woman said. “But don’t worry. They don’t want to figure me out.”

“That’s what I’m afraid they’ll notice-Vanri, stop. You’re getting mud everywhere.”

Vanri made a face at the man, then looked across the road. Right at Dahl. Her eyes brightened. “Hey! Hey! There’s that jack!”

And now all of them were looking where Vanri pointed.

“Dahl,” Samayan said.

“Yeah, Dahl,” Vanri said. She looked up at the woman as Dahl walked over. “He got took two days ago.”

“Three,” Samayan said.

Tharra pulled the little girl behind her, her eyes on Dahl. “We’ve met already. Armas?” The half-elf man took hold of Vanri’s hand. She pulled against it.

“Dahl, Dahl, Dahl!” she said. “Want to see how far I can jump?”

“Later perhaps,” Dahl said. “I need to talk to Tharra right now.”

“Vanri, Samayan,” Tharra said. “Go with Armas, please.”

Armas frowned. “Are you sure?”

“She knocked me down pretty quick the last time,” Dahl said. “I wouldn’t worry.”

Tharra looked over at Armas. “I’ve dealt with worse. I’ll meet you later. You too,” she said to Vanri and Samayan, as she passed Armas the sack of food. “Go with Armas now.”

“Bye, Dahl!” Vanri said, as Samayan slid off the windowsill. Dahl waved, but at the same time he was thinking about how fast he could get the dagger out of his boot. Tharra only smiled pleasantly at him, as Armas and the children headed up the road.

“You’re a pretty incautious fellow,” Tharra said. “Strolling around in your uniform. Walking right up to me like this. I hear you’ve been looking, though, asking around. But not getting anywhere.”

Dahl blinked at her. “You told them to stay away from me.”

“Guilty,” she said. “But I have to say, you’ve done better than expected- you went to the children. Good instincts.”

“Thank you,” Dahl said.

“And you’ve managed to keep ahead of Oota’s enforcers,” Tharra pointed out. She straightened her apron, her hand reaching into the front of it briefly, as if adjusting the pin Dahl knew hid there. “They’ve been trailing you all day.”

“They’re easy to spot,” Dahl admitted. “Do you think I need to talk to Oota?” Dahl frowned. Why would he talk to Oota? Why wouldn’t he just talk to Tharra, here and now? He had to show her. . something. “Wait,” he said, shaking his head. “I need to talk to you. I need to get back in the fortress.”

“Well, we can talk about that. No problems there. But I need to go, I’m keeping someone more powerful than me waiting.” She smiled. “You can wait in my house here. I’ll even leave you some bread and wine to keep you company.”

He nearly agreed-bread and a seat and some stlarning wine was all he wanted in the entire world, and a chance to talk to Tharra besides? She smiled, and he nearly thanked her profusely and followed her in.

But it didn’t sound nice, a little part of him thought-in fact, it sounded like an ambush meant to catch a complete imbecile, even if a little of the wine would be fine, drugged or not. “Something’s not right here.”

Tharra gave him a pleasant smile. “We could talk about it inside.”

She looked past him, up the street. Dahl followed her gaze to where three powerful brutes-two humans and a half-orc-were marching down the street toward them.

“Ah, never mind,” Tharra said, and the urge to follow her dissolved. “They’ve finally found you. Give Oota my regards, would you?”

“You stlarning-” But Dahl stopped, transfixed-not by the approaching toughs, but by the trail of tiny wine-dark violets running up the path between them, beginning in the spot where Samayan had stepped down from his perch.

As bad as having Rhand loom over Farideh’s shoulder was, being left alone in the fortress for two days was almost worse. Alone with her thoughts, with nothing to do, she alternated between sudden, racing plans to escape, to unravel Sairché’s deal-or at least speed her way through it somehow-and deep, smothering sadness.

She might well die here, and she couldn’t even hope for someone to save her. If she didn’t uphold her end of the deal, Sairché would have her soul, and anyone who might manage their way past the wall would be in grave danger.

Tharra still came in the mornings, to help her dress and style her hair. Farideh made no protests-not any longer. What was the point? She took out Dahl’s cards and made a game of them just to keep Tharra from talking to her any more. Dahl was right: the game did still her thoughts, for a time.

Once the maid had left, Farideh searched nearly every inch of the black glass castle, spiraling down from the battlements to Rhand’s study, into the dark cellars. She passed storerooms and servant’s quarters; barracks and an armory where she found her rod, dagger, and sword; more guest rooms and a strange little kitchen. She walked the wall around the fortress, hunting for Dahl among the people passing through the little village. She never found him. The shadar-kai guards watched her pass, their coal-black eyes glittering, but their weapons still. Rhand was as good as his word-not a one moved to stop her.

It wasn’t until she stood before a pair of iron-banded doors that the shadarkai reacted, blocking her passage and herding her back to her room.

“What’s behind there?” Farideh had asked Nirka.

“If you’re lucky,” Nirka said, all but walking on Farideh’s heels, “you won’t find out.”

Farideh looked back at the guard. “That’s where he’s working, isn’t it? Where he brought those people.”

Nirka scowled at her. “If you need to know, he will tell you. Keep walking.”

But she couldn’t stay another moment in the little room. As soon as Nirka had left her, Farideh went back to the study at the top of the tower. The waters still swirled in their basins, two apprentice wizards murmuring questions over them. The third stood unattended, and Farideh looked down into the stirring waters once more.

“May we help you, lady?” one of the apprentices, a heavy-set young man, asked. Farideh regarded him, unsure of what to say, for so long that he started to fidget-and she realized he couldn’t read her gaze any better than most of them. They didn’t know what to make of her.

“No,” she said, and she reached for the bag of petals. And though the wizards watched her, agitated and unsure of what she thought she was doing there, Farideh didn’t budge. Vision after vision after vision-she knew without a doubt that Sairché wasn’t done, that Rhand was no innocent. That there was so much on her to solve. At first, she pulled past events from the water like fishes, hoping one of them would hold a secret in its belly.

But even as she called up the first of those visions, Farideh knew in her heart of hearts she wasn’t asking for answers. She was asking for penance. She was asking for comfort. She was asking the waters to condense her guilt and sorrow into something she could hold and handle, and make into something useful-she owed them all a solution.

She was asking to see that all wasn’t lost, something the Fountains of Memory couldn’t possibly know.

The questions whose answers might make a damned bit of difference to her predicament, she couldn’t ask, not while the wizards were watching her.

That night, she played the cards while Tharra took her hair down and plaited it, and didn’t look up as she bid Farideh good night and left. Farideh did not sleep until the early hours of the morning, when she couldn’t keep her eyes open and watching the door any longer.

She woke up alone, unharmed, and still frightened to her core. Tharra brought water and soap, and a scowling Nirka, and once Farideh had convinced them both that she wouldn’t be so much as shifting a sleeve while they were there, she washed in the chilly water, trying to sort through her thoughts and figure out an escape-

There is no way out, she told herself. You have to make it through.

Rhand did not come to morningfeast, and after, Farideh went back to the iron-banded doors, wondering what went on behind them, wondering what wonders or horrors she might have made possible. Nirka came again and escorted her back to the cold, dark room.

“That place is not for you,” she said. “And the wizards want you out of the study. You stay here.”

Farideh looked up at her. “And what if I won’t?”

Nirka raised an eyebrow and folded her arms, standing directly in front of the door. “Then I will make you.”

Farideh stared at Nirka-if you die fighting shadar-kai, she told herself, with absurd mildness, then Havi is in just as much trouble-then turned to her dressing table and pulled the cards out again.

“What is that you have?”

“Cards,” Farideh held up the painted deck. “To pass the time.”

The shadar-kai woman considered the deck a moment, muttered, “Wroth,” and spat wetly. “What do you ask them?”

Farideh spread the cards out in a fan, considering the faces and stalling for an answer. Dahl had said they were for fortune-telling, even if they could be used for games, but he hadn’t said how they were consulted or who used them or why. The shadar-kai refolded her arms nervously.

“Right now?” Farideh said slowly. “I’d like to know how much longer I’m needed. It seems as if your master has gone ahead without me. If I’m going to sit in a room and dawdle uselessly, I’d like it to be my own.” She laid out the first row.

“He will tell you when you have a use. Put away the cards.”

Farideh looked up at her and very deliberately laid a second row down. “What use does he have for you?”

Nirka gave her a jagged smile. “He knows what it is to battle with the Shadowfell-a cleverer master than most. If we do not have as much to do at this stage, at least he knows how to keep us amused.”

Farideh did not flinch, but she could not stop her tail from flicking across the thick rug, and Nirka smirked at her. Farideh laid the third row.

“Lot of superstitious nonsense, Wroth.”

“Are you afraid of it?”

“You can’t fool me. I think you ask them how to escape.”

The face-up card, a stern-looking man in a crown, riding a chariot drawn by displacer beasts, might have made a decent start, Farideh thought. “Why would I do that?” she asked, mildly. “Master Rhand mentioned it hadn’t been done. Are you suggesting he was lying?”

“Put them away, little demon.”

“Or what?”

In Nirka’s smile there were a thousand threats, a thousand ways she would be thrilled to kill Farideh. Farideh narrowed her eyes. “Or I’ll cut off your hands,” Nirka said. “See if you can manage without.”

“Did you forget what I did to your fellows when I arrived?” Farideh asked.

“You’ll find I have no fellows.”

“I’ve asked the cards how you’ll die,” Farideh said. “I see a castle on a mountain with nothing to occupy you, nothing to keep the Shadowfell at bay.” Nirka’s hands twitched toward her weapons. Farideh held her gaze-the guard couldn’t kill her, not without angering Rhand, and Sairché, and who knew who else. “Quiet,” Farideh said. “Lots and lots of quiet.”

“Mad witch.” Nirka snorted. She turned on her heel and slammed the door shut. The heavy clunk of the lock punctuated her departure.

Farideh laid the last row of cards down with shaking hands-The Offering, number twenty-two; The Companions, number six; The Rising Dragon, number twenty-trying to keep her focus on the painted faces, the numbers, the flow of the game. She might well be mad after all, provoking Nirka like that.

You should have let her stay, Farideh thought. You should have made her tell you what’s happening here. You should have made her tell you what she knows about Sairché, about Rhand. Another time, another Farideh, and that was exactly what she would have done.

But in that moment, all she wanted was to prove she wasn’t a pawn. Maybe Sairché and her strange powers were changing her more than she’d realized.

These powers, she thought bitterly. She laid down another card-number thirteen, The Herald-and bit her lip. They weren’t from her pact-even if Sairché had stolen that from her brother, she would have had to give Farideh the new spells explicitly. If she hadn’t been so quick to snap at Sairché, the cambion might not have sent her into the fortress with no idea she was toting strange powers around or what their purpose was.

A potion, she thought, furious at Sairché as much as herself. An infection. Some charm she didn’t realize she carried. There were ways to do it. They were all ways that might run out, and there was no telling when that would happen or what would happen to her when they did.

As if to assure her they had not run out, her headache sank its claws into her brain, and she dropped the hand of cards in shock, clutching her skull with a hiss of ripe Draconic. Bit by bit, the pain receded, as if the claws were being drawn slowly out of her head, and when she looked up, the cards were strewn over the floor, and the ghost was back.

Farideh turned to fully face the figure, too startled to speak. The apparition didn’t vanish as she had before, but tilted her head, considering. Her horns were slim and sharp as a mountain goat’s, and her eyes seemed to glow silver.

“Who are you?” Farideh asked. The ghost pointed down at the scattered cards. Three were faceup: a woman holding a child in her arms, an elf standing over a pool that reflected a battle, a woman in dark robes. The Ancestor; The Seer; Tethyla, the Dark Lady.

Farideh considered them. A seer. . who came before her. A seer and a dark lady. . “You. . Did you help Rhand before me?”

The ghost smiled, but said nothing. The light shifted so that half her body wore away, down to the bone.

“You can’t talk,” Farideh said.

The ghost wagged a finger at her. She swept her arm over the cards and a breath later a gust of cold wind blew through the curtains and stirred up the cards again. Again three landed faceup: a monstrous man with a bloodied sword, a whirling creature with a tail of flames, a pile of gems and flowers. The Reaver, The Firetail, The Offering. The ghost touched her mouth. She pointed to Farideh, to the combs lying in their case, to the brazier on the other side of the room.

Blood, jewels, fire.

The ghost pointed at the scattered cards and one trembled, then flipped over. A green-skinned angel pursuing a devil that chased after her in a whirlwind. The Adversary.

Farideh picked it up. Was the ghost her predecessor, the angel chasing the devil? Or was she instead the devil, and some new enemy to consider and plan around? There was little telling.

“What do you want?” she asked.

The cards stirred. Tethyla, the Dark Lady again; a grim-faced specter called Loskor, the Gatherer; a robed man named Iolaum, the Arcanist. Dark lady, death, wizard. Farideh raised her eyebrows. “You want to stop Rhand.”

The ghost nodded gently.

“And the first set,” she said, “that’s. . how to do it?”

The ghost shook her head, regretful, then touched her mouth again. How to help her to speak. Farideh looked down at the card in her hand. It had the sort of buzzing, itchy feeling she’d noticed magically touched things had, a sense they were reacting to her pact. It hadn’t done that before, she was certain. Farideh held it up to the ghost. “And this?”

The ghost drew her hands together, interlocking fingers that were nothing but bone and sinew. Farideh took one of the combs and wove the card in between the teeth of it. The ghost held up one hand and drew a line across her palm. The blood-Farideh’s stomach twisted.

“I don’t have a knife.”

The ghost stared at her.

Farideh blew out a breath, her gloom evaporating as if this new element shone a bright, hot light on it. If she could get the ghost’s help, she might be able to unravel Sairché’s plan-or at least figure out what it was Rhand was doing.

She scanned the room. She could shatter the mirror and cut herself on that, but what would Nirka do when she saw it? The cards’ edges weren’t crisp enough to cut her. Smashing a shard of wood from the chair or the chest would make as much mess and probably damage the stone walls-

The walls. Farideh stood and went to one, running her hands over the slick surface. Here and there the black glass wavered as if the room had been chipped at, and the edges of the chips were sharp as razors. She’d caught her sleeve on one walking around a corner too close and sliced a neat line through the dress’s sleeve.

Near the corner, she found a peak sharp enough to slice a small cut through the center of her palm, so quick and neat Farideh hardly felt it at first. She turned her palm up to cup the blood that oozed up.

“Now what?”

The ghost smiled. And dissolved into a cloud of vapor.

Farideh nearly cursed as it swirled in the air over her bed for a moment, but then the cloud streaked across the room and vanished through the mirror, fogging the whole glass.

A line slowly appeared across the surface with the long squeak of a finger drawn over the glass. The line became a letter, and the letter a word as inch by creaking inch the ghost spelled out a strange phrase down the mirror.

Farideh moved to stand beside the brazier, transferring the card to her bleeding hand. “Ibaatori pherognathis molochai.” The flames leaped up, licking at her hand. A drop of blood sizzled into the fire. “Adaachinis labolas maniria.”

The flames surged and Farideh dropped the card and comb, jumping out of the way. The fire turned brilliant red, then fell back, then died down into the glowing coals that had filled the brazier before the spell. On top of them, the comb rested, the card balanced on its ruby flowers merely scorched. Farideh fished them from the brazier. The card was once more ordinary, but the comb had the same faint feeling of something strange that the card had had before.

The ghost reappeared, smiling. Waiting. She gestured to the side of her head.

Farideh set the comb down carefully on the dressing table. This was how she fell into trouble. This was how Sairché had caught her and Lorcan before her-giving her an answer she didn’t have time to consider carefully.

“Not yet,” she said. The ghost’s expression was lost as the light shifted peeling her face back to the bone.

The lock clanked open and Nirka pushed in again. “You have to go, up to his study.” She grimaced at the scatter of cards across the ground. “Now.”

Farideh’s stomach knotted up again, and the pain of the strange magic curled around her skull, as she hurried up the stairs.

“Perfect!” Rhand declared as she entered the room. “Every one of them. And it took no more than confinement to force the manifestation.” His blue eyes were dancing. “A pity for my guards, but a boon for you and I.”

“Good,” she said. “Are. . we finished?”

“We are only just begun!” he crowed. “With your assistance, we might sort the camp in mere tendays. I can bring in double, triple the possible subjects and clear them out as they prove unlikely.”

One of the younger wizards sprinted into the room, skidding to a stop before the basins. “Saer?” he said.

Rhand did not so much as look back at him. “Mere months and they will see how right I have been, how dear my work is. All to the glory of-”

“Saer!” the assistant said, louder now. Rhand whirled on him. “There’s been a message,” the younger man said tremulously. “From the city.”

Rhand smiled, a mirthless empty thing. “I trust there is more to it if you think it worth interrupting.”

The aide wet his mouth. “The Nameless One arrives tomorrow evening.”

“What?” Rhand said, and it was not a question so much as a dagger stab. A chill ran down Farideh’s spine.

“Sh-she will stay four days, the message said,” the younger wizard went on, apologetic. “The Church of Shar is eager to see our-your progress.”

Rhand did not move, did not speak. He knows what it is to battle with the Shadowfell, Nirka had said. Farideh still wasn’t sure what that meant, but she imagined all the darkness in the room sinking into Rhand, condensing around his rage. She did not dare move.

“Well,” he said, sharp and brittle as the black glass. A silence just as sharp hung in the air a moment. “Prepare her rooms. Make a stable ready for her mount. And get me more subjects.” He turned to Farideh. “We have much time to make up.”

Shortly after sunrise, Mehen stared at the edge of a vast forest, and wished the breath that stirred in the corners of his lungs were made of fire not lightning. Miles and miles of karshoji trees between me and Farideh, he thought, tapping his tongue nervously. He would burn them all to cinders if he had the chance. “Are you all right, goodman?” Mehen looked down at the little Tuigan Harper, Khochen, and bared the edge of his teeth. No laying waste to forests with Harpers on his heels. Khochen and Vescaras flanked him as they neared the High Forest, while another flock of them purportedly waited in the damnable wood.

“I’m fine,” he said.

Khochen smiled at him and kept her pace. “They say dragonborn are tricky to read. But you could be a faceless thaluud and I’d still say that was a bald lie.”

“It was,” Mehen agreed, turning his eyes back to the forest. When Brin’s sending had come, with an apologetic admission that he could not convince Havilar to give up her quest and come home, that Lorcan was still there, that they were still headed north. . well, Mehen hoped his response made Brin wish he’d turned the lightning breath on him instead.

“You’re still upset about that scrap I found aren’t you?” Khochen said.

“Khochen,” Vescaras warned. To Mehen he said, “You needn’t worry. We’ll find her.”

Mehen would find Farideh. And Havilar. And Brin. Then he would lock the three of them in their rooms until. .

Mehen blew out an agitated breath. There were no rooms to lock them in. There was no sense in doing it. They were grown, all of them-and Brin, for all the boy had been like family, was not. Was in fact Mehen’s patron at this point and a lord of Cormyr. If Mehen so much as raised a hand to him, there’d be payment in kind, whether Brin liked it or not.

Still the need to do something-anything! — ate at him like rust at old armor. He’d felt as though he’d been sitting still for seven and a half long years. When Dahl’s voice had broken the tense silence of a palace hallway, two little words-they’re alive-had dissolved all that stillness and left him free falling, unsure of what to catch hold of. He’d stuffed that urge down, moved carefully.

And what good had it done him? Mehen had lost them all over again.

No more sitting still, he thought. No more waiting.

“And Dahl is with her,” Khochen added. “He’ll see that she’s safe.”

“Once he sees she’s not a traitor?” Mehen said.

“It’s only caution,” Khochen said. “If she’s honorable as you say, that will prove out.”

It had been caution that kept Tam talking and planning and thinking instead of striking while there was still time. When Brin’s message had come, when he’d heard that Havilar was not coming back, Mehen had nearly broken down the door to Tam’s offices, demanding the Harpers make up their karshoji minds and go after his daughters.

“I’m not raising an army here,” Tam told him in private. “These people are skilled infiltrators, not infantry ready to march at a moment’s notice.”

“Every moment we wait puts them farther out of reach and closer to danger.”

“Enough,” Tam had said. “You will give me the time to make arrangements so my people can do what they do best. I can promise it won’t be more than a day. In the meantime, collect yourself-we may be old friends, but I won’t hesitate to leave you behind if it’s in this mission’s best interests.”

“And I won’t hesitate to go without you,” Mehen said. “And damn your missions.”

Which was when Mehen had stormed out, cursing Tam, cursing devils, cursing Brin who had not managed to keep his word. Snapping at every Harper who had crossed his path. He’d spent the day as far from Tam as possible, knowing there was nothing left in him to keep quiet and polite while his girls were in danger, and he needed the Harpers’ resources to do anything about that.

Tam at least was true to his word, and a brief and bone-jangling portal trip later, they were in Everlund, far to the North. Closer, they hoped, to the spot Dahl indicated in his second message. Mehen shuddered-if he never traveled by portal again, it would be too soon.

The Lost Peaks, the Harpers said, would take at best eight days to reach from Everlund. Mehen tried to imagine eight more days of this uncertainty, this stillness, and fought the urge to take off into the ancient wood himself, alone. Somehow, even after seven and a half long, awful years, this was worse.

“May I ask, goodman,” Khochen said, interrupting his thoughts, “how you came to adopt tieflings?”

Mehen kept his eyes on the treeline, the path vanishing into the emerald shade. The air was turning warmer every step they neared the ancient wood. “Someone abandoned them at the village gates,” Mehen said. “It was winter. No one wanted them. I’m not heartless.”

“Fortunate,” Vescaras said. Mehen gave the half-elf a glare that did not wilt the good Lord Ammakyl. “There aren’t many villages out there that would take kindly to a delivery of tieflings in cloths.”

“Arush Vayem is different.”

“Not that different if they were going to leave them in the snow,” Khochen said. “Though I suppose there are blackguards everywhere.”

“Not just Westgate,” Vescaras murmured. Khochen snickered.

Mehen sighed and shook his head. The villagers had been cowards, not blackguards-even the tieflings among them. If you came to Arush Vayem, you’d already heard every bad thing about yourself and believed half of it. Tieflings might well be little demons, even in the cradle. Twins might easily be a dark portent. “It was the eye,” he said out loud, and regretted it immediately. “Farideh’s silver eye,” he explained. “That mark is an ill-luck sign to some of us, and the tieflings didn’t want trouble.”

“Dragonborn and tieflings no one wants,” Khochen mused, as they crossed into the wood. “Interesting village. Did you grow up there?”

“No.”

“Where is home, then?”

“Where my girls are,” Mehen said tersely.

Khochen began to reply, when the rustle of a fern brought them all up short. No one moved for a moment, their hands hovering near their weapons. Vescaras made a face.

“Daranna, if you please,” he said, “I’m not going to hoot like a bloody owl when you’ve given yourself up that way.”

“That’s not me,” a woman’s voice spoke from behind them. An elf woman with hollow eyes and loose dark hair dropped down from the spreading limbs of an elm tree. “Ebros,” she said sternly. A young half-elf man with mussy blond hair rose out of the patch of ferns, looking abashed. Daranna sighed. “Next time not the ferns.”

“If we hadn’t been allies, you’d be dead, lad,” Vescaras said.

“No,” Daranna said. She nodded to their right, where two more rangers in dyed leather had appeared out of the wood, both holding bows trained on the intruding trio. “You make a great deal of noise,” Daranna noted, her voice soft as the moss underfoot.

“It’s a fair concealment technique in the city,” Khochen said. Vescaras gave her another sour look, as Daranna’s green eyes flicked over the other Harper.

“Don’t do it anymore,” she said. “Get yourself killed.” She looked up at Mehen and sighed. “You, do your best.” And with no further introduction or warning, Daranna started into the High Forest, her scouts falling in behind her, and Clanless Mehen close on their heels.