The Adversary

Chapter Twelve

23 Ches, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR) The High Forest

Mehen crouched behind a moss-covered hump of stone, peering past at the moonlit clearing. The Thayan party had stopped, lowering the palanquin carried between two hulking zombies so that the two necromancers inside could exchange places with two more of their fellows. The remaining two clutched the leads of eight ghouls between them, as the creatures pulled like errant hounds, scenting the air wildly. The Harpers had moved carefully, staying downwind of the pack. The smell was thick, and every time Mehen nervously tasted the air, he fought not to gag.

Eight ghouls, six necromancers of unknown skill, two zombies, one towering creature with fingers like sharpened stakes that one of the scouts had identified as a boneclaw. And a Red Wizard.

“She’s sleeping in the palanquin,” Ebros had reported back. “The other wizards swapped in about half an-” He caught himself at Daranna’s furrowed brow. “Eight songs ago.”

“Now’s the time, then,” Vescaras said. “Let’s move.”

“Send your scouts around,” Mehen said. “Fire arrows from behind.”

“I know how to stage an ambush, goodman,” Daranna said. She had nodded at the scouts, gestured quickly in a rough circle, and they’d sped off into the forest.

Now, crouched and ready to attack, Mehen could just mark Ebros in the rustle of a tall oak tree. Daranna peered into the dark, checking for a sign of each.

“Ready?” Khochen murmured.

By way of answer, Daranna gave a nightjar’s looping trill, summoning the scout’s arrows as surely as she might a trained hawk. Two hit ghouls-one straight through the eye, one with a thud and a screech in the meaty part of its back. Their keepers turned toward the source of the arrows, loosing the ghouls. The two wizards who’d just woken pulled globes of light into being. More arrows struck more ghouls in the dark. Then a wizard dropped, clutching an arrow in the gut. The ghouls found the scent of the hidden Harper scouts, scrabbling at the bark of the trees.

The curtains of the palanquin twitched.

“Go,” Daranna said.

The arrows kept coming, but now the wizards aimed their spells at the scouts’ hiding places, splashing the trees with dark magic. Branches withered, leaves dropped. One scout yelped and fell to the brush as Mehen swung his falchion and took the wizard who’d brought her down across the chest. The wizard fell, a look of shock on his features, and Khochen’s dagger froze them that way with one sharp motion. A ghoul leaped on her, but Khochen turned it aside, and toward its former master’s body as she rolled under. The ghoul took the offering, and Khochen took the opportunity to run it through.

The Red Wizard burst from her palanquin, all fury and fiery light, and turned against the scouts and the Harpers that harried her undead and her apprentices. No taller than Khochen, but thicker, her skin was ghostly in the moonlight. Her inky hair stood out in a plume down the center of her shaven head and ran down her back in a thick queue.

Mehen shoved aside another ghoul and slammed against the zombie that had broken free of its harness and come at him, claws raised.

The Red Wizard cast a splatter of flames at the battle beyond, catching Vescaras’s sleeve and sending Daranna scuttling back from the boneclaw she’d been harrying. The scouts aimed their arrows at the boneclaw, and as they hit, they burst with a vibrant green light that made the boneclaw scream. It threw a hand up and the tapered blades of its middle fingers stretched impossibly far, up into the trees. Mehen heard Ebros cry out, and Daranna threw herself at the boneclaw again.

The Red Wizard started shouting orders to her remaining apprentices- only three now-to fall back, to pull in toward the palanquin.

But before she could finish, Mehen had reached her and her dangling braid.

He grabbed hold of it and yanked hard. With a yelp, the Red Wizard toppled backward, off the palanquin and to the ground.

Mehen set one clawed foot on her forehead and pressed the edge of his falchion against the woman’s throat. “Call them off,” he hissed. “Unless you can raise things when you’re the one beyond the grave?”

The woman’s dark eyes flicked down to the blade, shocked and fearful. Hesitantly, she raised a hand to the amulet she wore. Shadows twined around her hand.

The undead all froze and looked to the necromancer. Vescaras ran another ghoul through-the creature died with an inhuman screech-before he realized something had changed. The last three apprentices held their spells, dancing in their palms, and watched their leader.

The amulet still clutched in her hand, the Red Wizard looked up at Mehen. She was younger than he’d guessed-younger than his girls. “We surrender.”

“No need,” Daranna said, advancing with her blade out.

“Hold,” Vescaras said. He sheathed his rapier, eyeing the boneclaw, swaying in place, its skinless face impassive. “My friend doesn’t like trespassers in her forest, Lady Red. You might make her mood improve if you tell her what you’re doing here.”

The wizard’s eyes never left Mehen’s. “We have a mission. One you might be interested in for your own sakes. Parley?” Daranna snorted.

“You’ll forgive us,” Khochen said, “but parleying with zombies breathing down our necks is hardly appealing.”

“One zombie,” the wizard corrected. “One boneclaw. Four ghouls. Three necromancers. All held at bay. And myself. You have-I must admit-the advantage. In more than one fashion-I am Zahnya, of the Red Wizards of Thay. Who are you?”

“Your doom,” Daranna said. Vescaras sighed.

“Would you happen to be enemies of Netheril?” she asked. Her first fear at Mehen’s sudden presence had slipped behind a facade, but Mehen could see it, lurking behind her eyes. Not a lunatic, not a bluff-someone’s daughter, he thought. He kept the sword where it was, though.

“Because I might have information to trade,” Zahnya went on. “A partnership to offer, perhaps.”

“In trade for what?” Vescaras asked.

“Not killing me?” Zahnya squeezed the amulet more tightly, her eyes still on Mehen. “There’s a fortress, in the mountains. A wizard of Shade has a prison camp there. That is our mission: find it, destroy it, claim what weapons we can.”

The Harpers did not speak. Mehen felt as if every eye were on him in that moment-as if the Harpers and the undead knew that Mehen would be the one to decide the fate of this unlikely party. She can find Farideh, he thought. “What wizard?” he growled.

“A very evil man,” she said. “I can show you the way to his camp. I can help you destroy him.” She swallowed hard. “We’re on the same side, for the moment.”

Mehen’s pulse pounded. An evil man. Fari, he thought. Fari, Fari-what have you gotten caught in? He knew where he stood-if it meant they got where they needed to be faster, he would lead the slavering ghouls himself.

Vescaras and Daranna traded glances. Khochen’s eyes shifted off the boneclaw and to Mehen’s. “A caster would be handy,” she said.

“No,” Daranna said. “She’ll turn on us.”

“I can give you assurances,” Zahnya said. “The amulet-you can keep it. Control my creations, and the boneclaw.”

“Unwise.” The boneclaw’s hissed word made all of the Harpers jump. Its burning eyes pierced Mehen. “They will betray you.”

“Or they kill us now,” she said to the monster. Zahnya pulled the amulet from her neck and held the jewel up to Mehen. “It is, unfortunately, their choice.”

Tharra hadn’t been exaggerating. The next morning Dahl’s stomach had settled, his head had stopped spinning, and he felt far less fatigued. But his skull felt as if someone had filled it with nails that flexed and pierced his brain as he moved.

You don’t have time for a hangover, he thought. He shuffled out into the sunlight, nearly vomited from the sudden pain, and found Oota’s two guards waiting for him.

“Better, Harper?” the half-orc grunted. Dahl cursed to himself: Tharra clearly had different opinions about the need for secrecy.

“Oota has questions for you,” the human, Hamdir, said. “Come on.”

The little courtyard was empty this time, and Oota was sitting on a makeshift camp stool, making it look like a chieftain’s throne. She smiled when Dahl entered, and Dahl had to wonder what god’s hand had touched her, as a chill went down his spine.

“I assume Tharra has told you what we’re up against,” Oota said. “What we are.”

“More or less,” Dahl said. “Though that poison you dumped down my throat didn’t make things easier to make sense of. What do you want?”

Oota’s dark eye shifted off Dahl, to the entrance. “Tharra and I,” she said, “are on the same side. Let me make that absolutely clear. However, she and I have different ideas of how to be on the same side. How to run things. You understand?”

“Go on,” Dahl said.

“Tharra thinks it’s a death wish to take up arms against the wizard. She thinks we should bide our time until rescuers arrive. I say that is a death wish. There is no way into or out of this camp that the wizard doesn’t make. He picks us off, one by one. Some day-soon-we’ll have to take a stand, and the longer we wait for that day, the more people we lose.”

“You have no weapons.”

Oota smiled to herself. “We have some weapons. Some of us are weapons. Enough that if we had a clever strategist-someone who could even the odds from inside the fortress perhaps? — we could stand a chance. She says you stole a uniform.”

“I’m not about to stroll in there and start cracking skulls. I’d be dead in heartbeats.”

Oota’s attention shifted back to him. “Son, I know what you think of me-but whatever my kin have shown you, people don’t follow me because I’m a fool. I wouldn’t send you in alone. And I wouldn’t send you in without a plan. All I’m asking is if you have the means and the stones to do it.”

“Doesn’t Tharra know how to get in and out?”

“As a servant,” Oota said. “They offer extra rations for those of us desperate or foolhardy enough to take on tasks. But every breath there’s a guard on their back, and no one works down near the armory.” She sat back. “You can certainly use that, if you find a way. But you’re right, we need weapons. We need to deal with present threats first.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Word is,” Oota said, “the wizard has a new pet. A tiefling witch who’s making his life a lot easier.”

Dahl held in every curse he knew. “Does he now?”

“He’s picked up plenty of prisoners over the months, for the gods know what purpose. About thirty all told. But in two days she’s picked out that many of my people-all folks we suspected of having the gods’ good graces-and who knows how many of the rest. Tharra is out asking the longears for their count. Speck’s chatting up the remnants who don’t follow either of us.”

Dahl nodded, as if he were considering the numbers, but all he could think was that Khochen had been right. His younger self had been right. He thought of the distant way Farideh had acted, the way she’d snapped at him before she teleported them to the fortress. There was no questioning it-Farideh was an enemy.

No questioning it, he thought, but some stubborn part of him still didn’t believe it.

“This keeps up,” Oota said, “the rest of us will be next.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I need someone to get into the parts of the fortress they won’t let servants go to. Recover some weapons and deal with the tiefling. Cripple the wizard somehow.”

“Just that?” Dahl said. “I’m guessing based on that wall and that castle that we aren’t talking about some dabbler.”

Oota shrugged. “Rumor is, he’s not as powerful as he lets on. Maybe there’s something in there that will make the difference. Tharra knows where the witch is-she can get to the tiefling, but as I said-”

“Oota.” Dahl turned and saw Tharra standing in the doorway.

“Ah, my good friend,” Oota said. “What do the longears say?”

“Sixteen. Speck’s found eight more missing.” Tharra nodded at Dahl. “Did you tell him what’s happening?”

Oota stood. “We were just discussing what comes next.”

Tharra gave Dahl a dark look. “Well, good to see you’re up. Can I talk to you a moment?”

Dahl followed Tharra out into the sunlight.

“She’s asking you to help her attack the fortress, isn’t she?” she asked. “Gods be damned, her mind runs like a mine cart.”

“Infiltrate,” Dahl said. “She makes some good points.”

“Good points? Aye, well, here’s the one Oota will never make: attacking the wizard will kill more people than it will ever save. Starting with you.” She pointed up over the rooflines, at the fortress’s tower rising up to vanish in the low clouds. “Six points to that tower. He has a full view and at least four novices who can cast better than any of us. He doesn’t even have to come down to our level to destroy the entire camp. A few spells and we’re all ash.”

“Not when the clouds are this thick,” Dahl said. Anyone on the tower’s heights would be hard-pressed to see the ground. “You time it right, and-”

“You don’t have to aim much with a meteor swarm. And if you’re right and he doesn’t bother? Then he sends out the shadar-kai. They’ll mow through us like we were wheat stalks in a drought. Better to bide our time.”

“You must have casters.”

“He’s seen to that. You met Armas? My fledgling? He was a sorcerer. Can’t cast a thing, though, on account of the cages on his hands-every one of them is the same. They wake here, already hobbled, none of them the sort of wizard gifted enough to cast without hands. And if you think he’s let a spellbook slip by, you’re madder than a mouther. They come in here with nothing but their clothes.”

No weapons, no casters, no resources to speak of. Except perhaps for Dahl’s sword and stolen armor. And the Chosen that the wizard hadn’t claimed. “I can get in. Dressed like a guard.”

“And you’ll die before you pass the gatehouse. The human guards don’t come out of the fortress,” she said. “You’re lucky none of the shadar-kai saw you. If you head back in, pretending like you belong, they’re going to know something’s funny when they don’t know why you went out.”

“Nobody?” Dahl asked. “You don’t get soldiers fraternizing or-”

“You think a single one of these people are going to cross paths with a godsdamned Shadovar?” Tharra said. “They don’t come out here. They send the grays-they want us to stay scared. You get in as a servant-if they’ll take you-and you have a guard on you every single heartbeat. Think, would you? I know you’re cleverer than this,” she said it gently, but Dahl bristled all the same.

“So what’s your plan?” Dahl asked.

Tharra stared up at the fortress. “Stay alive.”

“You can cling to every soul you find, but what’s it matter if the wizard just kills them?”

“He doesn’t kill them,” Tharra started. Then her eyes fell on something behind Dahl and she cursed. Dahl looked back over his shoulder. A shadarkai guard was heading up the alleyway, shouting at them in Netherese.

“Run,” Tharra murmured. “Get back to Oota. Tell her they’re sweeping-”

A second guard stepped around a hut, blocking their escape. “Let’s go,” he said, herding them both down to the wider road where a score of other villagers gathered. Dahl wished for his sword as the half-dozen guards drove them like wayward sheep toward the fortress.

Patience, he told himself. Even if he’d had his sword, striking in the dense crowd would have been too dangerous. He kept his eyes on Tharra instead- watching as she took careful stock of the faces around them.

Twelve at a time, they were herded through a narrow stone passage, jammed cheek by jowl together, before shuffling out into the open. Into a wide courtyard with a smooth, black stone floor. High walls. A platform above-high over his head-on which stood several more of the shadar-kai guards, looking down at the villagers as they filtered in, and a wizard in dark robes, talking to a pair of robed novices and a woman in dark leathers.

“But, saer-” one began.

“You will wait,” the wizard interrupted, “until I am present. How many left?” he shouted down to the guard in the pit.

Dahl felt his lungs freeze: the wizard was Adolican Rhand.

“Two, master,” the guard called back.

Dahl ducked behind Speck, Oota’s big half-orc guard, hoping the wizard hadn’t seen him-Rhand might remember him and he might not, but now was not the time to find out. Hrast. Hrast. How in all the Hells could Farideh be helping him?

She wouldn’t, he realized, sure as he’d ever been. She couldn’t. Which meant she was in trouble, that Dahl shouldn’t have run. Which might mean she was dead-

Then he realized that the woman standing behind the novices was Farideh.

And she was staring straight at Dahl.

She’d traded whatever homespun clothes the Harpers had given her for snug black leathers and pinned her hair up between her horns with a jeweled comb. Gone was the grief-drawn young woman who’d haunted the Harper hall for the last half tenday-she looked like nothing so much as Rhand’s pet, the shadar-kai’s deadly ally.

Except she was staring at him.

He still wasn’t sure he could read her expression-not with those focusless eyes-but there was no triumph in that stare, no anger, not anything he could place on an enemy.

“Well?” Rhand asked her.

Farideh shifted away from him as she turned to survey the crowd. Her gaze swept over them, her mouth tight, until she was looking at Dahl again.

Rhand reached over and set a hand on the small of her back. Farideh did not flinch, but a certain rigidness overtook her frame. The gesture might look comforting but it would also take the merest effort to shove her right over the edge. “What do you see?”

Farideh kept staring at Dahl. She bit her lip. “The short man with the green tunic. The halfling woman in the apron near the front. The moon elf at the back. The big fellow. . the half-orc with the tattoos.” As Farideh identified the prisoners, the guards in the pit came forward and took hold of them-gently but with horrible smiles. They led them out the smaller door, one by one, ending with Oota’s struggling guard. Dahl took a step to the right, into the thick of the crowd.

Beside Dahl, Tharra cursed quietly.

Farideh hesitated, half a breath in her mouth, as if she were about to speak. “That’s it,” she finally said, turning back to Rhand. When she spoke next, her voice shifted, sharp and dissatisfied. “Now, I need rest. There’s nothing in our agreement about being made to stand in the cold for hours.”

Rhand gave her a slippery smile and reached his other arm around to guide her away from the edge. “Of course. Just once more.”

Before Dahl could so much as consider what to do, a guard shoved him toward the larger gate, along with the rest of the villagers. They were crowded in so close, he felt like a beast headed into a slaughterhouse. And then abruptly the bodies in front of him broke free into the open, and the guards were laughing as their captives scattered back into the strange village.

“Piss andhrast!” Dahl cursed. He had to go back. Whatever was happening, Farideh was not on Rhand’s side, he would drink a bucket of the wizard’s finest to prove that. He had to get her out-where Rhand wouldn’t be a factor.

But getting into the fortress would be nigh impossible, as Tharra said.

He spotted Tharra, hurrying south, away from the fortress and toward Oota’s makeshift stronghold. Dahl sprinted after her.

“He has Speck?” Oota said as Dahl came in.

“More than Speck,” Tharra said. “That witch picked perfectly. I don’t know how she spotted those four. Speck came to me complaining of a headache yesterday, and Perdaena and Laencom have had their powers for months-too quiet for the grays to spot.” She sighed, and spotting Dahl, beckoned him in. “The elf was a surprise, but even if she’s not what’s he’s looking for, that’s no better news. If Rhand’s witch can hunt the Chosen among us without even coming near them, nothing we’ve managed so far will matter. You need to get people down into the buried rooms, before that witch-”

“She’s not his witch,” Dahl snapped. Tharra frowned at him. “Why did nobody tell me the wizard was Adolican Rhand?”

“Doubt anyone thought it would matter,” Tharra said. “You know him?”

“After a fashion. He slipped my grasp before. Twice.”

“And her?” Oota asked.

“She brought him in here,” Tharra supplied. “Apparently not because he was pursuing her. Bit of the visions maybe we ought to reconsider.”

Dahl scowled at the other Harper. “She wouldn’t work with him, not willingly.”

“Nobody was making her pick those people out of the crowd.” Tharra shook her head. “She’s seemed right at home in her fancy jewels these past few days.”

Dahl dragged a hand through his hair. This was too many pieces all at once: Chosen and gods affecting the wars. And what was Adolican Rhand doing with those he gathered? What could Shade possibly do with a boy who trailed flowers? Tharra and Oota and the plain fact that whatever plans they had wouldn’t make a damned bit of difference without a means of escape. And Farideh, wearing shadar-kai armor and standing beside Rhand. For all you know, he thought, she has dressed that way every day of the last seven and a half years.

But never at Adolican Rhand’s side. If he could count on nothing else about Farideh, he could count on that.

Oota eyed him, patient as a hunting cat. “It sounds like we have a disagreement,” she said. “How are we going to settle it?”

“I have to get in there,” he said.

“You head in there,” Tharra said, “and the grays will kill you and never care why you were there or how well you might know Rhand’s pet tiefling.”

“And it’s no skin off your back if they do,” he said. He turned to Oota. “You want a better idea of what’s happening in that fortress? You’re not going to know what she’s doing or why unless someone she trusts asks her. Help me find a way in, and I’ll get your answer. Maybe some weapons, too.”

Oota cocked her head. “Can’t do that, son.” She smiled, and beside her Tharra folded her arms over her chest. “But I may know someone who can.”

Some time later, Oota paused in front of a little shack, glancing around for errant guards before knocking five times on the wooden door. She looked back at Dahl. “This is as far as I’m sure I’ve still got them on my side.”

“What else is there?” Dahl asked.

“The elves to begin with,” she said. “Few packs of dwarves playing the odds. And the stragglers in between-don’t want to throw in with the rest of us, just want to keep pretending everything’s going to right itself one morning.”

“Like Tharra?”

Oota looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “I didn’t say that.” She knocked again, harder.

The door opened and shut so quickly that the squat dwarf man who stepped out seemed to appear out of thin air. He scowled up at Oota, and ran a hand over his bristly black beard. “Did Tharra send you to pester me about that third level?” he asked. “I don’t know if the ground-”

“Tharra doesn’t send me anywhere. You know the dirt. Do what needs doing. Let us in.” Oota looked back at Dahl once more, as if to remind him to keep his mouth shut. The dwarf followed her gaze.

“That the Harper?”

“Let us in, Torden,” Oota answered. “I need to talk to Phalar.”

Torden snorted and threw the door open, ushering them down a roughhewn stairway that led deep into the ground. The entire building had been filled with excavated dirt. Dahl thought of the other buildings, all shut up tight, and wondered how many had been similarly used.

Despite being built of pounded dirt and uneven, the stairs were blessedly stable. They ended in a level tunnel, where Torden lit a lantern that smelled of old cooking oil and handed it to Oota.

“The bastard’s in a right mood today,” he said. “Don’t let him fool you-he’s bored and he wants to get out.” He looked at Dahl. “Best of luck.”

“Many thanks,” Dahl said, wondering privately at a dwarf guarding a hidey-hole in the territory of a half-orc chieftainess everyone seemed to listen to. Stranger and stranger.

Oota started off, leaving Dahl to follow past several doors. “This is where we hide the ones who’ve manifested. The ones we can catch before the guards do.” She shook her head to herself. “It’s not enough.”

“You do what you can,” Dahl said. “Someone down here can help us get into the fortress; that’s a good start.” He considered the doors they passed. “If you managed to dig this passage, why not dig under the wall?”

“That’s what we were doing,” Oota said. “The magic goes deep, deeper than we could manage without drawing too much notice. Torden keeps going, a little at a time. It’s a lot of dirt to hide.” The tunnel ended shortly after, in a makeshift door. Oota turned to face Dahl, sizing him up. “Son, I need you to promise that you won’t panic.”

Dahl frowned. “Why would I panic?”

Oota smirked, and by way of answer, unlatched the door. The lantern’s light fought its way into the room beyond, illuminating a large cell and a slight man with ebony skin and moonlight hair, flinching away from the light.

“Put that iblithl light out, you one-eyed brute,” he snarled, brandishing the book he’d been reading at Oota. “I thought we agreed to be civil.”

Dahl only just stopped himself from shouting “Drow!” and drawing weapons. If one didn’t take chances with shadar-kai, one certainly didn’t ask for favors from the spider-worshiping elves of the Underdark, unless one wanted to be tortured and sacrificed. Still he took a step back.

Phalar placed a cupped hand over his pale eyes. “Tell me what you want, cahalil, and get out.”

“Dahl,” Oota said, “this is Phalar. Phalar, this is Dahl. He wants a favor.”

Phalar chuckled to himself. “Does he?” He spread his fingers just wide enough to see through, making a mask of his hands. “Oh. You didn’t tell him who I was, did you?”

“I hear you can get me into the fortress,” Dahl said, making himself look at the drow. “That you’ve got some skill with breaking into places.”

“You could say that,” Phalar said. “In fact, in certain company that’s all you should say.” Dahl frowned.

“Dahl didn’t come here like the rest of us,” Oota said to Phalar. “He got pulled in by accident with Rhand’s new associate.” Dahl could hear the words Oota hadn’t said buried in that comment. “If you get him into the fortress, he thinks he can stop the wizard. And maybe get us some weapons.”

“That,” Phalar said, “is the stupidest thing I’ve heard all day. And Tharra was here earlier, trying to convince me to help my jailor dig holes.”

“All I need is someone to get me in,” Dahl said stiffly. “The rest is my problem.”

“Cocky, aren’t you? What’s in it for me?”

Dahl shrugged. “Escape?”

“If your plan succeeds. If you find your ‘associate.’ If the guards don’t flay you alive.” Phalar peered at Dahl through the mask of his fingers. “You almost certainly think I’m mad, but you still have to know the difference between mad and stupid.” He dropped his hand, wincing at the light. “Give me your dagger.”

“Give a drow a dagger, then follow him into a fortress under cover of night?” Dahl said. “I’m not stupid either.”

Phalar’s chuckle sent a shiver up Dahl’s back. “Oh good. I assumed you were like the rest of them, thinking I’m tamed because I’m trapped here too. But it’s the dagger or nothing. I don’t have to help you. It’s not as if I came to the surface to make friends. Give me the dagger when we part. Then all you have to do is stay out of my way.”

Dahl glanced at Oota out of the corner of his eye. Giving the drow a weapon might upset the careful balance she had crafted. But Oota merely shrugged.

“Fine,” Dahl said. “After.”

Phalar smiled. “Aren’t you going to ask me to promise I won’t try to kill you?”

“Why should I?” Dahl asked coolly. “You said it yourself: you aren’t stupid. You won’t try.”

“Be careful with Phalar,” Oota said as they climbed the dirt stair once more, a secretive smile playing on her mouth. “He tends to make people act a little”-she blew out a breath-“rash.”

“I’m not afraid of him,” Dahl said too quickly. Oota glanced back at him. “I mean,” he amended, “I can keep my head.”

“You have to be a little afraid, or he acts up. But he’s no fool-whatever he’d like to do to the lot of us, he’s outnumbered in the end, and he needs what people will trade him for the use of his powers. He’s only alive because of my good graces and Tharra’s silver tongue. He can’t afford to go around stabbing people and he knows it.”

“Why else would he want a dagger?”

Oota stopped walking. “You’re trapped in enemy territory full of people you don’t think much of, who are always arguing about whether they ought to just kill you and be done with it? You’d want a dagger too.” They slipped out the door and waited while Torden latched it behind them. “All the same, you get Torden a good crossbow when you find that armory. He’ll bury Phalar if he decides to prove me wrong with that dagger and then the whole tunnel will end up collapsed. Everybody would rather Torden just shot him in that case.”

All through evenfeast, Rhand was agitated, matching bouts of excitable conversation with as many sulking lulls as he watched the entrance to the dining hall. Farideh ate mechanically, answering his questions with whatever entered her head, spouting opinions that weren’t hers-it didn’t matter. She didn’t matter. To Rhand the only important thing was when his guest arrived.

And the only important thing to Farideh was the knowledge that Dahl had not managed to escape. She still had no idea what she was tangled in-the people who stood before her in the courtyard might be prisoners, might be displaced, might even be Sairché’s “common enemy.” She might have landed in the midst of worse evils with both feet. She didn’t know. She couldn’t.

But it was clear to her this was nowhere she wanted Dahl to be. Rhand’s assistant appeared in the entry, white-faced, and before he could say a word, Rhand bid her good evening, and servants appeared to clear the table, taking little notice of Farideh. Rhand stopped in his rush and looked back at her.

“By the way, Nirka tells me you have been enjoying the castle grounds,” he said. “Should you be interested in a walk tonight, I’d suggest you forgo it.”

“Why is that?”

He gave her a wicked smile. “To begin, she will be locking your door. For safety. Our guest can be particular.” Without further explanation, he swept from the room.

His guest can be Asmodeus himself, Farideh thought, and it would not stop me. Not now. She had to save Dahl. She had to find out what she was doing here.

“Leave Tharra outside, would you?” she said as Nirka loomed over her. “I’m tired, and I’d rather go to bed than wait on you and her. I can get myself out of my armor.”

Nirka narrowed her eyes. “I will have to go and tell her to leave.”

“Then do that,” Farideh said. “I shall be in my room. Dealing Wroth cards.”

She climbed the stairs, feeling Nirka’s suspicious gaze on her the entire time. But the shadar-kai said not another word until they reached her room.

“Whatever you’re thinking,” she started.

“Good night, Nirka,” Farideh said sharply, and she shut the door. A moment later, the latch clanked violently, as if Nirka could somehow wound Farideh with the key in the lock.

Farideh waited, but didn’t hear the guard’s footsteps leave. She took the cards up and flipped them loudly, one after the other-snap, snap, snap. Shuffled. Dealt. Beyond the door, she heard Nirka curse and storm off, and Farideh sighed in relief. She looked down at the haphazard pile of cards-the top one was flipped, facedown. She turned it and found a faintly scorched painting of a devil, horned and winged and hoofed, chasing a green-and-gold angel in a circle. The Adversary. Farideh fought back a shiver.

The second ruby comb still sat under the mattress where she’d hidden it, still buzzing with the magic from the ghost’s strange ritual. She hadn’t touched it-and she was trying hard not to wonder if the ghost was still watching her, unseen.

Farideh pulled her haversack from the wardrobe, still heavy with the ritual book Rhand had left her, but her thoughts were on the comb, the itch of its waiting spell like a plea-Pick me up. Bring her back.

Farideh hesitated a moment, before pulling it from its hiding place and stuffing it into the sack. She’d decide for herself what to do with it once she knew what she was up against.

Then she took another deep breath and went to the window. She pulled herself up to kneel on the ledge, leaning out as far as she dared. The night was cold, and though the wind had died down, it was enough to make her glad Tharra had plaited her hair. She could not miss.

Across the way, another of the fortress’s starlike points loomed. Two floors down, one window waited, not quite covered by its heavy curtains and leaking faint candlelight. The stairwell. Farideh pulled herself up to stand on the window ledge.

It was, perhaps, thirty feet away. Or perhaps fifty, perhaps a hundred. In the dark of night she couldn’t be sure. She held in her mind the way it had looked when she’d considered it several days before-close enough, she thought, to make this work if you just do it. She found her balance, held her breath. There wasn’t much a body rebelled against like this, and in the space between panicked thoughts, Farideh leaped, into the empty air.

And started to fall.

But in that heartbeat, she pulled hard on the powers of the Hells. The fabric of the world split and swallowed Farideh, spitting her back out into the air much farther on. Still not to the opposite point, and as soon as the gape closed, she was falling again.

I’m going to die-but the thought had no more formed, before she caught hold of the ledge, two floors below where she’d started, knocking the wind out of her. Farideh clung to the stonework, lungs screaming as she caught her breath, and hauled herself into the tower again.

She leaned against the wall-it had worked. She wasn’t dead. It wasn’t a hundred feet. Farideh pressed her hands to her face to smother the giddy laughter that shook her bruised ribs. For the first time in ages, she felt a little like her old self.

Composing herself, she looked up the dim stairwell, illuminated by the light of a few unclaimed candles, and hoped that the escape from her room would not turn out to have been the easy part.

Up, first-Farideh crept toward Rhand’s study, her nerves sending Hells magic through her and blurring the edges of her frame with shadowy smoke. At the top she peered in both directions, and saw no sign of guards. Odd, she thought, and she waited a few moments more, in case they were merely out of sight and quiet. Nothing.

She thought of Rhand’s warnings about his guest, and shoved that fear aside as she made for the study.

The door was open and she found the room beyond empty. A faint light emanated from the magic limning the vessels and from a crystal hanging overhead, and the brazier glowed with hot coals. Rhand’s open spellbook and ritual book sent a shiver through the space, pulsing with magic. Farideh slipped inside.

The heat from the brazier had no effect on the air over the vessels, and through the cloud of her breath, she watched the waters ripple. With no wizards to watch her, she might be able to find the way out.

Farideh scattered a pinch of the dried petals across the water’s surface, the way Rhand had. Specific, she thought, but vague. “Show me the last time someone found a weakness in the wall around this camp.”

The waters did not change. It hadn’t happened.

“Show me the last time someone came close to escaping the camp alive.”

The waters remained, stirring gently.

Farideh leaned farther over the waters, tension closing around her breath. She’d asked scores of questions in the days before and seen all manner of visions in return. But the Fountains of Memory had nothing to say about escaping the camp. No one had managed. Rhand hadn’t lied.

She’d been sure he had. There was something odd about the way he’d responded. Something that reminded her too much of Lorcan-that half moment where he decided to tell her the truth turned sideways.

Her heart buckled at the memory. Without thinking, she threw another pinch of petals into the waters. “Show me what happened to Lorcan when I made the deal with Sairché.”

There was Sairché, there was Farideh. There was the agreement, turning the room inside-out. The waters shivered and showed the Hells-and Sairché was right, there was no mistaking anything on Toril for such a place. The ground itself seemed to quiver, as if it were alive and hurting. There was a cave-a hollow of bone sunk deep into that evil ground and filled with writhing, shadowy forms. A cage formed of what looked like insect legs, thick and thorny, the spaces between crackling with lightning, and at its center, herself and Havilar. Sairché and Lorcan watched.

“What did you tell her?” Lorcan asked Sairché.

“What goes on between a girl and her patroness is private,” Sairché said. “Isn’t that right?” Farideh’s chest tightened, and she wished perversely she could be there, that she could tell him the truth.

The lightning of the cage snapped, popped, leaped outward to spark against the sides of the bowl. The center of the waters dropped nearly to the bottom of the basin, as if a drain had opened below. A sickly light shone from the whirlpool and the smell of brimstone wafted off the waters. Farideh stepped back.

A portal, just as Rhand had said-to the Hells, but when? If she reached in, could she save Lorcan? Or only trap herself a second time? The magic holding the waters sparked and crackled as the light built. Farideh reached toward it, feeling the pressure of the air change as she approached the portal’s edge.

The light surged and collapsed into itself like a dropped cloak. The portal was gone.

In the waters’ reflection, Sairché held up the ruby necklace she’d given Farideh. A greenish light-the color of a rotting limb-began to build around it. Lorcan stepped back, but caught in the protection spell, he could only go so far. The light flashed and the vision ended.

Farideh swallowed against the sudden lump in her throat and drew her hand back. The portal might not have worked, she reminded herself. It might have only made things worse.

And you wouldn’t be able to save Dahl, either way. She rubbed her hand. It had been stupid to even try. Lorcan was safe-Sairché had promised that much. Dahl wasn’t.

The water smoothed out again, waiting for the next request. Farideh chewed her lip, trying to puzzle out the right words, then scattered another pinch of the petals across the surface.

“Show me the conversation where Rhand denied anyone had escaped this place.”

Again the water swirled, and again the waters reflected the wizard and herself beside him, looking out over the camp below. She asked the question, her expression far more closed than it had felt. And there again, the flicker of annoyance across Rhand’s face before he spoke.

If there were nothing to find there, Rhand would have been smug, triumphant. Something hidden in her question irritated him. Reminded him of something he’d rather forget.

But what? Farideh turned from the waters, considering the lecterns, the tables spread with maps of Faerûn and scrolls, the shuttered windows. She crossed to the open shelves of spell components and pulled her torn and bloodstained shirt from her pack, laying small bottles in the open cloth. If she didn’t know how to escape, she couldn’t guess what might be useful-or what might be missed. She chose things she recognized and hoped for the best.

Swiftly, she turned to the rack of scrolls-spells that could be cast regardless of the reader’s skill-and pulled down several, eyeing the runes, the detailed diagrams. The remains of the destroyed ancient library. There was a spell to call the clouds down low. A spell to open caverns in the ground. A spell to turn a river to ice. There were half a dozen altogether, smudged and scorched but bristling with magic-not a one useful against an army of shadar-kai.

The sound of Rhand’s voice carrying from the staircase broke her reverie. Farideh shoved the scrolls back into place and bolted for the door, but his voice came again, too close: “The Lady of Loss should not be disappointed. More now than ever.”

Farideh turned and sprinted for the far corner of the room, behind a table covered with parchment and instruments, into a wardrobe hung with heavy leather aprons and stained robes. Farideh pulled the doors as close to shut as she could, before crouching low, out of the sight line of Rhand and the young girl he followed into the room.