The Adversary

Chapter Twenty

26 Ches, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR) The Lost Peaks

Havilar woke to the sun streaming through a low break in the clouds, through the gap in the trees. Every bit of her was sore, but that, too, was worth it. She smiled to herself. She reached for Brin, but found him already dressed and stirring up the fire under a cook pot. Her clothes were thrown over a nearby tree’s low branches. The smell of the veserab was a faint mustiness on the cold air, almost hidden in the woodsmoke.

Brin stared into the empty air, still looking sad and distant. Like there was a cloud over him, keeping out the sun and turning everything dark again.

“Good morning,” Havilar said after another moment. He turned to her, and the cloud over him lifted. He smiled, and something similarly cloudy lifted off Havilar.

“Good morning,” he said. “Did you sleep all right?”

“Well enough.” Havilar smiled, feeling suddenly shy. She nodded at the pot. “What’s for morningfeast?”

Brin grinned. “Bathwater. There’s a little waterfall near here, but it’s basically flowing ice. I figured this would be nicer for you.”

Havilar wrapped her cloak around herself and went to sit beside him, not saying that she was pretty used to washing in cold streams. It was too nice of him. She leaned against him.

“How long do you think we have before they find us?”

“Hopefully, we get a little more time,” Brin said. He slipped an arm around her, over the cloak, and drew her close, nuzzling her behind the ear. “If a godsbedamned devil shows up now, I swear to every Watching God. .”

Havilar giggled. “Which is worse right now? A devil or Mehen?”

“A fair point,” Brin said, but he didn’t stop. “I suppose you ought to put some clothes on.”

“I suppose. When I’m ready,” Havilar said, arranging her cloak over her knees. “You’ve had a lot more. . practice, haven’t you?”

Brin chuckled softly. “A little less clumsy, yes?”

Havilar wet her mouth. “How. . much practice?”

He pulled back, far enough to look her in the eyes. “I don’t know. I didn’t really keep track of the times.”

“More than one girl?”

He seemed to search her face. “Yes,” he said.

A weight lifted off her chest. If it had just been one girl for all those years, then he was surely in love with someone else and Lorcan was right, it was all going to end badly. But it wasn’t. “More than a hundred?” she asked.

Brin burst out laughing. “Do you think I became a heartwarder while you were gone? Quit eating and sleeping? Gods.”

Havilar crossed her legs over, pulling herself tighter in. “I don’t know.”

His expression softened and he pulled her close again. “Hey, sorry. It’s three,” he said. “Just three.”

Three-why was that worse than “more than one, less than a hundred”? Havilar shifted. “Do you. . Did you love them?”

Brin hesitated. “I tried to. I thought I could let go of you. I thought I had to.”

“Did you?”

He rested his chin on her shoulder and sighed. “What do you think?”

Havilar bit her lip. She thought it was still too lucky to believe. She thought it was still too wonderful for there not to be some secret trap nestled in the middle of it that she hadn’t found yet. She still wondered why he looked so troubled when he thought she wasn’t looking.

Havilar considered the water, still working toward steaming. “What were you thinking of before?” she asked. “While I was sleeping? You looked awfully unhappy.”

“Court things,” he said, brushing her hair back. “Cormyr’s mired, badly.” He kissed her jaw. “As I said, I probably shouldn’t have left. And before. . all I wanted was to be sure you were all right. Not send you running because you were already completely overwhelmed by everything under the sun, and suddenly here I am, asking you how you feel about me.” A smile quirked the corner of his mouth. “For all I knew, you wanted to be away from everyone. I couldn’t make that harder.”

“That’s good of you,” Havilar managed. She leaned into him again. “What would you have done if that was the case?” Marry the crazy noblewoman, she thought. Fall in love with one of those other three.

“Kept waiting?” Brin said. “I could love you from any distance closer than the Hells, and my life would be happier for it. But this. . I like this best.” He was silent a moment, before adding, “I would fight an army of devils to keep this.”

Havilar smiled. “Me too.”

She could have gladly stayed there, beside the fire, curled so close to her love. She could have sat on the cold stone for seven and a half years, for twenty-five, for an eternity. And then her thoughts started drifting-the Harpers were coming, Farideh was in trouble, there were still devils afoot.

“Water’s ready,” Brin said.

Reluctantly, Havilar left him there, so she could scrub the last of the veserab from her skin and dress in her still-damp clothes. She had mastered the glaive again, Brin was hers once more, and now they were going to save Farideh. Everything was going right again.

Unless. .

She stopped, midway through lacing her blouse, struck by a sudden fear. What if Farideh was the thing that would go wrong? What if Havilar got back everything she’d lost, except Farideh? She was still furious with her twin, but she didn’t want that.

It doesn’t work that way, she told herself. But her fingers suddenly felt stiff and shaking, and the sense that she’d somehow ruined things lurked in the back of her thoughts.

It wouldn’t go wrong, she told herself. She put the amulet of Selûne on once more, and slipped the ruby necklace into her pocket. It wouldn’t go wrong because she wouldn’t let it.

She’d finished braiding her wet hair and begun cleaning the corners and crevices of her glaive she’d missed the night before, when the sound of another group approaching from the north end of the ledge reached them. Havilar stood, peering out into the distance for some hint of who it was.

At the lead were the Harpers from Tam’s office that awful night, trailed by robed wizards and shambling ghouls. Elves, carrying bows and arrows. A litter hauled by horrible-looking beasts, and something straight out of one of Havilar’s worst nightmares. But she hardly noticed any of them, because Mehen himself broke from the group and ran toward her.

He caught her up in a fierce embrace, and Havilar found a part of herself wanting to weep all over again. She hadn’t realized just how badly she missed Mehen, how awful it had been to leave, until then.

“What were you thinking?” he muttered.

Shame bloomed in Havilar’s heart. “Sorry,” she said, but only for making Mehen worry, for leaving so abruptly. She would have done the same thing over again a second time, she felt sure-waiting in Waterdeep even a breath longer would have killed her. “But you found me,” she offered. “And now we can find Farideh.”

Mehen held her a moment longer. “If I could send you safely back, I would.”

“I promise to be careful.”

He gave a short laugh. “How long has it been since I heard that?” He let her go finally. She saw Mehen’s gaze sweep the camp, lingering on the bedrolls that were packed and set together, then finding Brin beside the fire. He narrowed his eyes. “How long were you waiting?”

“Just a night and the morning,” Brin said, not quite meeting Mehen’s gaze.

Mehen made a low growling sound in his throat. He looked down at Havilar-she grinned back.

“I killed a veserab,” she told him. “It’s a flying lamprey thing.”

“Well done,” he said, setting an enormous hand on the back of her head. Mehen looked back as the Harpers came to stand beside them. They introduced themselves to Havilar.

“Zahnya says the camp is at the top,” Vescaras said. “Unless we’re waiting for further instructions? From a demon prince perhaps?”

Mehen scowled at him, then looked up the last slope of the mountain. “Is there a path?”

“Don’t know,” Brin said.

“You didn’t scout for one? You had the time.”

“In the dark?” Brin demanded.

“It’s not steep,” Havilar pointed out. “Not that steep. And the trees aren’t nearly as thick. We can just climb until we reach it.”

“Daranna seems to have had the same thought,” Khochen said dryly. They looked back at the rest of the party, at the scouts disappearing up the slope.

“Watching Gods,” Vescaras swore. “This is why no one wants to work with Daranna.”

Lorcan examined his face in the still scrying mirror. Such a waste of a healing potion, and the cure had been worse than the broken nose, by far. But he’d weighed turning up bruised and battered, considered what Farideh would do when she saw, when she asked what had happened.

No, he thought. No sympathy from that quarter. Not yet. She’d take Mehen’s side right off, and everything he’d done to coax her back would be worth far less-the apology, the rescue, the kiss. . He hadn’t considered the consequences of that as carefully as he should have-but the memory of her shifting toward him in those last fractured seconds, changing from a body to a participant, boded very well indeed.

He looked around the room-still no Sairché. She was supposed to lock down the situation with Rhand, then sort out Magros, while Lorcan saw to their more heroic tools. They’d agreed to meet back here once they’d both discharged their duties.

Lorcan took the dark braid of hair from the pouch on his belt and rubbed his thumb over the ridges of purplish-black hair. He considered his reflection in the scrying mirror a moment longer, then sifted through the rings he still wore to find a familiar iron band. This one he pulled off the chain and placed on his left hand-Sairché wasn’t getting his scrying mirror back.

He waved the trigger ring over the mirror’s surface, one hand on the leather scourge necklace he wore-the necklace imbued with Farideh’s blood. The surface of the mirror shimmered like a slick of oil, before resolving into Farideh, looking as though she had never slept a day in her life and never intended to remedy that. A line of people moved past her, and she studied each with a pinched expression, waving them to one side of the space or the other.

Lorcan narrowed his eyes. She hadn’t said she planned to sort the prisoners-why? And what other surprises were going to crop up in his absence?

He looked around the room again-still no Sairché, and Lorcan needed to get to Farideh as soon as possible. He walked back to the room with the portal, but found no sign that Sairché had returned. He waved his ring before the scrying mirror again and got. . nothing. He cursed. Sairché would-of course-find a way to block her own scrying.

Or she might be in trouble.

“Shit and ashes,” Lorcan cursed again. Whether this fell under the terms of their agreement or not, he’d have to go after her. Acting without being sure of Rhand or Magros would be suicide. He opened the portal to the primordial forest, the same little grove where he’d spied Magros the first time. He took from his pocket the iron cube, and unfolded the cloth wrapped around it. Frost still etched its surface.

Despite his agreements in the interim, Lorcan found himself tempted.

Lorcan had never lived anywhere but Malbolge, never sworn allegiance to any archdevil but Glasya, and that only by virtue of his birthplace. He was not angry enough or foolish enough to think that Stygia would be a paradise, or really anything except a different sort of game, a different battle for survival. A different Hell.

But Stygia would not have Glasya-and how could he not want that? For himself, for his warlocks. .

Warlock, he corrected himself. The rest were gone. And whatever dangers fickle Glasya brought to Farideh, Levistus and his legendary appetites would be another world of danger.

He picked up the cube, focusing on a star peeking through the branches of the oak beside him, so that when the violet portal opened and Magros stepped out, the agony of clutching the frozen cube was nowhere for the other devil to see.

“Ah, good,” Magros said. “You’ve come around.”

Lorcan regarded him coolly. “Where is Sairché?”

Magros raised an eyebrow. “Have you lost her?”

“Don’t be coy,” Lorcan said. “You must have heard by now.”

“I did hear something about Lady Sairché prowling the halls of Osseia once more. Though, I don’t generally countenance the gossip of imps. I take it she’s escaped.”

“As if you don’t know,” Lorcan replied. But perhaps he didn’t-ah Lords of the Nine, keep it balanced, he told himself. Remember he thinks you’re an idiot half-devil with an erinyes’s temper. “She came straight to you, didn’t she? What did you tell her?”

Magros’s smile flickered, as if he might laugh. “Dear boy, why would she ever come to me?”

“To ruin me?” Lorcan said. “To make certain I failed? What did you tell her?”

“I told you,” Magros said. “She hasn’t come to me.” He tilted his head. “It seems she’s given you ever more reasons to flee Malbolge, though. Have you seen to my agent?”

“It would help if you told me who it was,” Lorcan said.

Magros smiled. “Oh, but where’s the fun in that?”

Lorcan fell quiet, considering the misfortune devil. He’d assumed that Magros had wanted Lorcan to act-swiftly, rashly-and ruin Asmodeus’s plans by simply killing the Stygian agent or Rhand or Farideh. It had been a slapdash maneuver, one Lorcan assumed grew from the devil’s disdain for the cambion siblings.

But Magros had never told Lorcan who to kill.

“Well, you’re a sly one, aren’t you?” Lorcan said. “Let me think you don’t expect much at all from me, let me think you think I’m stupid enough to kill your agent and upset the plan so plainly. And all the while-what? What were you doing right under our noses?”

Magros shrugged, smiling all the while. “The world will never know. I notice you say ‘our.’ I take it Sairché is not escaped so much as freed? And still, you cannot find her. How interesting.”

“Not as interesting as the puzzle of your Thayans,” Lorcan tossed back. Magros’s smile flattened. “Didn’t think I knew about those, did you?”

“I hadn’t,” Magros admitted. “Until dear Zahnya alerted me to your intrusions. Whyever are you trucking with Harpers?”

Lorcan smiled wickedly. “The world may never know.”

“Well your Chosen won’t,” Magros said. “At least, not unless you get her free of that place in the next few hours.”

Lorcan froze again. “What happens in the next few hours?”

Magros spread his hands. “What do you think we’re doing here? Asmodeus’s plan must continue apace. The gathering must happen. If she’s within its reach. . well, you can guess, and we’ll see how His Majesty feels about that.”

Every drop of his mother’s blood urged Lorcan to seize hold of Magros, to shake the answers from him-Where was the agent? What was the gathering? Where in the Hells was Sairché?-but he fought it. Magros would have his due, but that wasn’t as important as getting Farideh away from that camp, nor as important as protecting his own skin.

“I think we can consider Prince Levistus’s offer rescinded,” Magros said, opening his own portal. “We have no need of the second-best leavings of discredited erinyes in Stygia.”

Lorcan watched the violet swirl of the portal surge and then fade, the wind of a frozen layer sending goosebumps across his red skin. Not an ally he wanted, Lorcan reminded himself, and he hoped Harpers and tieflings and the Chosen of Asmodeus made a better army than what powers Prince Levistus could muster from the heart of his glacier prison.

He pulled the portal to Malbolge open again. A few hours was not enough time to find out. Especially when he couldn’t find Sairché.

But he could find the erinyes she’d taken with her, he realized as he stepped through the portal. He crossed to the balcony and peered out over the suppurating landscape of Malbolge. Near Glasya’s garden walls, a group of erinyes loitered. Even at a distance he could spot Sulci’s shock of yellow hair. He glided down to land among them.

“Well, well,” Nisibis said, “are you in charge again?”

“Think we might want Her Highness’s input on that,” Noreia said lazily from her perch to the side.

“Where’s Sairché?” The erinyes all chuckled.

Sulci swung her blade up onto one shoulder. “We left her with the wizard.”

“What?” Lorcan cried.

“She invoked the disputation clause,” Nisibis said, “and offered a proxy. I thought he’d take Sulci there-gave her quite a look-but he chose Sairché instead. You’ll get her back in three days.”

Lorcan shut his eyes and silently cursed his sister’s damnable hubris. Sairché would not be back in three days, because she had not invoked the disputation clause of her contract with Rhand-she had only bluffed him, and Asmodeus would hand down no judgment on a contract that was still in force.

And worse, Lorcan knew Sairché was in danger. “I wish you had not told me that,” he said to Nisibis.

Havilar frowned at the space in front of her. It looked as if the mountain continued up, the trees blocking much of her view of the peak. But there was a faint distortion to the air, a not-quite-shimmer that made her eyes ache. She blinked hard a few times, then reached to touch it as the scout who’d found it had prompted. There was something smooth and hard there where there seemed to be nothing. With her other hand, Havilar squeezed the ruby necklace in her pocket.

“Beyond,” the Red Wizard declared, “is the camp. And here is where my aid is of no more use to you: I cannot pass the barrier.”

Vescaras considered Zahnya. “How is it you plan to claim Shar’s weapons if you can’t get inside?”

“I have a confederate,” she replied. “My spells will center on her. After. .” She shrugged. “I’ve been told I can access the camp then. But I can’t make promises for anyone left inside.”

“You expect that we’re going to stand here and let you kill a camp full of people?” Vescaras demanded. “We outnumber you as of yet, goodwoman. By still more than when we began.”

“Don’t be dramatic, saer,” Zahnya said. “You and I both know that a weapon in Shar’s hands is far more dangerous. The number of lives at stake should she raise herself any higher, gain any more kingdoms, or worse, rebuild her Shadow Weave, pale in comparison to the number of souls inside these walls. So yes, I will act. And you will have time-if, of course, you can enter-to stage a rescue. My spell will take hours to cast, after all.”

Havilar watched the Harpers, but none of them seemed to react to that. Good or bad? she wondered. Zahnya talked too much like Lorcan-made too much sense of things that shouldn’t make sense at all-and it set Havilar’s tail lashing. Beside her, Brin slipped his hand into hers and squeezed it furtively.

“How long?” Mehen asked.

Zahnya smiled. “Ten hours. It is complex.”

Vescaras narrowed his eyes. “Very well.” He looked at Havilar. “Have you still got the bead your father mentioned?”

She pulled the necklace from her pocket and held it up. “Bomb, charm, beacon, passwall,” she recited.

Vescaras crossed to her and plucked the passwall bead from the necklace. He held the red gem up to the growing light. “How certain are you?”

Havilar glanced over to Zahnya and her apprentices, who were clearing a square off the forest floor and taking various items out of their packs. Preparing for the casting.

“Sure enough for this,” Havilar said.

“I suppose we haven’t another option.” He gave Khochen a grim look and beckoned the others closer. Then the half-elf stepped forward and slapped the bead against the invisible wall. A ripple spread out through the seemingly empty air, then another, then a third that came with a crackle of rock. The air seemed to part like a pair of drapes, and there beyond was a valley-a crater, Havilar corrected herself-filled with small, close together huts and dominated by a shining black tower. The Harpers and Mehen hurried through, and Havilar followed. The spell faded quickly after, sealing the wall once more.

Behind them, the slope appeared just as they’d left it, with Zahnya and her minions working hard at the spell. She was smiling to herself in a way Havilar didn’t like.

“Do you trust her?” she asked Vescaras.

“Not a bit,” he spat. “ ‘Ten hours,’ my broken chamber pot. We have six at the outside.” He turned to his colleagues. “So we’re out of here in three.”

“I haven’t got another bead,” Havilar reminded him.

“Which is why we’ll have to be clever,” Khochen told her. “But first, we find Dahl and your sister.”

“We need to fan out,” Daranna said. “Khochen, take the dragonborn and his friends-”

“No,” Mehen said. He bared his teeth, tapping his tongue against the roof of his mouth repeatedly before saying. “You want to capture her, I want it to be safe and easy. So you put one friendly face in each of your groups.”

Vescaras and Khochen exchanged glances. “We’ll be cautious, goodman,” Vescaras said. “There’s no need to worry.”

“There is no need to worry because I or Havi or Brin will find her and make sure you keep your word,” Mehen snapped. He turned to Havilar. “Much as I don’t want to leave your side.”

Havilar hugged him awkwardly. “I know. Be careful.”

“Everyone, be careful,” Mehen said, looking past her to Brin. “I’ll go with Daranna.” The elf didn’t look pleased at that, but she nodded at one of her scouts and the three of them moved east and along the wall, down into the camp below.

“Very well,” Vescaras said. “Lord Crownsilver, you are with me.” He gestured to one of the scouts, an elf woman with reddish hair, as well. “Come on.”

“Do you think,” Havilar murmured, as Brin hugged her tight, “that this could be the last time we do this for a long while? I’m getting sick of it.” He laughed softly.

“Let’s try. I’ll see you soon, I promise.” Havilar watched him head along the northern edge of the invisible wall’s curve, tailing Vescaras and the elf. If this were a chapbook, she thought, he would definitely be getting hit by an arrow soon. She shook the thought from her head and turned back to her assigned allies.

“Come on, Ebros,” Khochen said to the remaining scout, her laughing eyes on Havilar. “This will be fun.”

“Your ladyships,” Rhand said as he crept over the threshold. For all the deference he showed the girl with no name, there was only cruelty in his smile. Sairché’s pulse became a voice shouting in her ears. “How are you getting on?”

The girl sitting beside the window looked up at Sairché with luminous eyes and smiled slightly. Panic rose up in Sairché, and there was no trick, no clever turn, no magic ring that could save her.

My doom, Sairché thought. Lords of the Nine, damn you, Lorcan.

The girl’s gaze inched its way over Sairché. “She is less amusing than I would have expected for a devil.”

“A cambion,” Rhand corrected, “my lady.”

She sniffed and Sairché’s pulse became a voice shouting in her ears, Run, run, run. “Where’s the other one?” she said. “The tiefling you mangled.”

Rhand’s expression tightened. “Still absent. But she’ll return, I’m assured, the day after tomorrow. Isn’t that right, Lady Sairché?” Sairché couldn’t speak, couldn’t find the clever words to string together. Damn Lorcan, damn Rhand, damn Farideh and Glasya and Asmodeus too. Every muscle of her body felt flooded with fear and adrenalin. She was a deer in the wood, too startled to move, and after a full day of the Chosen of Shar’s company, she felt as if she were dying.

“It sounds as if your experiment has failed, Saer Rhand,” the girl said.

Rhand cleared his throat, nerves Sairché had never managed to inspire in him clear even at a distance. “Not failed. Delayed.”

“I was told,” the girl said loftily, as the world threatened to roll over Sairché and smother her, “to assess the usefulness of keeping your camps going.”

“Yes, my lady.”

You have lived this every day, Sairché reminded herself, gazing down at the floor. She thought of each of her surviving half sisters in turn, the terrible tortures they’d gladly heap on her, one by one. It kept her sane, it kept her in the little room and not drowning in the void that threatened her mind. But still she could not bear to speak.

“You are not a very popular man within the Church. No one powerful left to speak for you.”

“Save you,” Rhand said. “My lady.”

“I don’t speak for you,” the girl said. “In fact, I think it is plain that this experiment is not worth the resources of Shade. I am ordering you to destroy it and return to the city.”

Sairché spared a glance for Rhand. His rage was enough to push aside the plain discomfort he’d worn since he’d entered the room.

“You don’t have the right,” he said.

“Don’t I?” the girl said. “I believe you’ll find you owe me your obedience, just as Shar intends.” The feeling of looking into an unending maw intensified. Sairché squeezed her hands into fists. Megara would spit me like a lamb, she thought. Oenaphtya would just cleave me in twain. Tanagra would stake me to the ground and let Malbolge deal with me. .

Beside Sairché, Rhand gave her the uncomfortable impression of one of her worse sisters about to snap. The girl smirked at him. “Order my veserab saddled.”

“It hasn’t been recovered,” Rhand said. “And if you think I’m ending this on the whim of a-”

“Saddle yours, then,” the girl said. “And call for carriers. I intend to leave. Take care of your experiment, or you will find yourself answering to people much more powerful than you.”

Rhand started forward, all inchoate violence, but he stopped just past Sairché, his eyes locked on something over the nameless girl’s dark head.

Sairché dared to look up-feeling the girl’s eyes still on her, still shrinking her down into something small and unnecessary-and followed Rhand’s gaze to the winking bluish light that hung in the air over the center of the camp.

Magic, Sairché thought. And not his.

Rhand swallowed, but the rage in him didn’t fade. “Excuse me,” he said. “I’ll let you know when the carriers have arrived.”

The girl watched him leave, a smug smile playing on her mouth. Her luminous eyes fell on Sairché once more. “How droll you assumed a mere archdevil could stand against the might of the Lady of Loss,” she said. “If you find your tongue. devil, perhaps you can tell me another funny tale.”

The scroll lay in a box, buried only a few inches under the packed earth floor of the tiny hut. Dahl levered it out of the hole with the blade of the stone spade Armas had found him. The half-elf stood silent and watching in the doorway.

“Half-done,” Dahl called. Armas said nothing. “You can start looking for the components in the thatch any time,” Dahl added. The fledgling Harper stood silent. “Armas?”

Armas jerked at the sound. “What?”

“Components.”

“Sorry.” Armas stepped into the hut and sighed, reaching up for the roof.

“Your friend. . do you think she knows what she’s doing?”

Dahl opened the scroll to find a very detailed spell and smiled-gods, he loved this. “Which part? The sorting?”

“Aye.”

Dahl shrugged, his eyes on the lines of runes before him, the diagrams, the list of components. “Seems so. Tharra and Oota made it sound as if she picked people they knew had been Chosen. Though with any luck, it won’t matter to us.” He glanced up at Armas, realization dawning on him. “Oh. . You’re one of them?”

Armas kept his eyes on the thatch. “She stopped me as we left.”

“Oh.” Dahl looked back down at his scroll. “Well, many blessings.”

“I suppose.”

Dahl had read the first few lines several times over when Armas cleared his throat.

“She says she can’t tell what will come of it or when. And all I can think of is how many gods there are. . It’s a fearful thing.”

“Yes,” Dahl said dryly. “The gods smiling on you is terribly frightening.” He heard the venom in his own voice and cursed himself. You’re not seventeen and newly fallen, he told himself. Armas has taken nothing from you, and he doesn’t deserve your pique. “I suppose,” he said, more kindly, “it probably is frightening. You do have my sympathies.” He wondered how many of the Chosen Farideh named might be favored by Oghma, and realized he was reading the same line on the scroll again.

Armas sighed again. “She said she thinks it will be soon. Says the mark is sharp. I suppose that’s a small blessing on its own. Not long to wait and wonder.” He stepped to the left, rifling through the straw and twigs. “If it’s something wicked, I don’t know what I’ll do. Maybe walk into the lake with my pockets full of stones.”

“Why would a wicked god choose you?” Dahl murmured. “Are you wicked?”

“I was helping Tharra.”

“That hardly counts.”

“According to who? Who can claim to know the will of the gods, right? Ah!” He pulled a small jar and then another out of the thatch, like plucking apples from a tree. Dahl took them: oils of sacred juniper and distilled troll saliva. He frowned and looked back at the ritual scroll-both were mentioned. The latter was a very expensive component and there was quite a lot of the former-but neither was used to achieve the sort of effect Tharra had described.

He unrolled several more inches of the scroll-familiar phrases, familiar directions, intermixed with unfamiliar forms. This line was reused from pre-Spellplague castings of destructive magic out of Lost Halruaa; that one borrowed the structure of protective spells the Turmishan wizards crafted during the Wailing Years; that focusing diagram was absolutely crafted by Oghmanyte casters in Procampur. Very complex, Dahl thought. Very confusing.

Armas pulled down still more components. Powdered silver and salts of copper, resins of obscure flora and ground teeth of strange beasts. A packet of dragon scales, a pouch of iron filings, a purse of dried purple blossoms that smelled strongly of mildew. A delicate crystal bottle of residuum. Bottles of specially imbued inks and paints.

“That’s all,” Armas said, rubbing his uncaged hands as if they ached.

“That’s more than enough,” Dahl said, at a loss in regards to the sheer quantity of components. Eleven different items. Easily thousands of coins worth, especially when you added in the hamadryad’s ash. He wondered if Tharra had used it all or if Farideh had reclaimed the rest. He’d have to check.

Each component was included in the ritual-which made no sense at all to Dahl. The various ingredients had their own attributes, their own abilities to draw or repel or create patches of magic. But together. . Together these made a mess.

“What do you think the chances are I end up being able to dig the shelters faster?” Armas said abruptly. “Maybe it’s someone who’s seen what trouble we’re in.”

Dahl shook his head, still studying the ritual. “Would be nice.”

“Torden’s got people carrying dirt out of the shelters, dumping it in secret places. They’re moving quickly, but they’ve got only enough room for eight hundred or so-no more. Would be nice to make earth turn to air or some such.”

Dahl kept his tongue, all too aware that his envy was misplaced and unflattering. Armas had no idea why Dahl should even be envious. He read on, through several more utterly tortuous steps, half his mind on the puzzle before him and half on the never-ending puzzle of Oghma.

Dahl sighed and rolled the scroll back up. “We can go. I’ll need to look at this some more. It doesn’t make sense.”

“What does these days?”

Indeed, Dahl thought, as they collected the multitude of components into a cloth and bound it shut. Preparing to fight Adolican Rhand and some crafty devil at the side of a drow, a cunning half-orc, an arrogant sun elf, a girl you thought was dead, Lorcan, and scores of people the gods have given the powers to make daisies and see souls.

And all you have is a ritual that makes no sense, he thought glumly. He looked up at Armas, who was studying the space outside the hut with a similar glumness. A pang of guilt went through Dahl’s stomach-the day after his mentor turned out to be a traitor, the half-elf turned out to be the Chosen of an unknown god. It wasn’t worth ranking hardships.

“My former teacher told me something very wise once,” Dahl said. “The sort of wisdom you don’t believe at first, at least not for yourself. But maybe you’re not as pig-headed as me.”

Armas regarded him. “I’ve never been called stubborn.”

“There are times when what you want doesn’t matter. Things are already in motion and the gods have already made their wills plain. So the very best thing you can do is to just remember who you are and take things as they come-one at a time.”

Armas smirked. “ ‘Shut your mouth and accept it’?”

“You don’t have to shut your mouth,” Dahl said. “But there’s something to be said for recognizing you’d best let a god have their full say before you decide to retort.” They walked back through the camp to Oota’s court. The paths and alleys were all but empty, faces peering out of windows as they passed. Off in the distance, he heard the jangle of guards patrolling.

“They’re going to notice sooner or later,” Armas muttered. “Then what?”

“Then we hope your god’s a fighting sort,” Dahl said, “and your gift happens to be punching those bastards back into the Shadow Plane.”

They made it back without incident to find the makeshift hall still busy with people-all standing a good distance from Farideh, who sat on the edge of Oota’s dais, her head in her hands. Dahl went over to her.

“You all right?”

“Headache,” she said, her voice muffled. “This is exhausting. I just need a breath.”

Dahl sat down beside her and unrolled the scroll once more, to the line he’d read twice. “Have they gotten any farther with the rooms underground?”

“Torden thinks they’ll be able to get a thousand in, if they don’t have to be there long. If they squeeze.”

Two-thirds, Dahl thought. Five hundred souls left behind to be wiped off the plane.

Farideh lifted her head. “Do you know the worst part? There’s a scroll in Rhand’s study that would solve all of this. A spell to make a cavern in the earth. And I didn’t take it.”

“How were you to know?”

Farideh shook her head, as if she ought to have, somehow. “I could go back. I could steal it-”

“No,” Dahl said firmly. “We have time still. We have the ritual-” He stopped, a sudden stillness in his heart. He unrolled the length of the scroll, skimming down the parchment, hunting for the completion of the spell-piece he’d just read, knowing it would have to be there.

It wasn’t.

“Stlarn and hrast,” he swore. He threw the scroll to the ground and clutched his own head. “It’s broken. It’s shitting broken.”

“What?” Farideh said. “Can you fix it?”

Dahl shook his head. “That’s why it makes no sense-that devil must have made it senseless.”

“Can you fix it?” Farideh said again.

“No,” Dahl said, considering the pieces that he’d found, the ways they seemed to just miss each other’s effects. “The problems are too big, too. . insidious. It looks like a proper ritual, all together. It feels like it should make sense and I’m just missing something. There’s bits here that have the sort of hints and markers that suggest some very recognizable wizards’ handiwork. See”-he picked up the parchment and pointed to a line of runes-“that’s absolutely one of the Blackstaffs from around the turn of the century. Really common element in their spells, starting around-”

“Dahl,” Farideh interrupted.

He pulled his hand back. “Right. So if you’re just looking, there’s no reason to think this isn’t built off of some powerful old spells that have been repaired and strung together. But if you trace the effects, you get nothing. That Blackstaff magic? It’s missing the completing line-that part won’t do a damned thing. The magic’s just going to fade as you cast it. Other parts, they actively cancel each other out.

“And,” he added, “if that weren’t bad enough, these components-while they’re all very potent and high quality-are the wrong sorts of things.” He sighed. “I should have guessed. Godsbedamned devils.”

Farideh shook her head. “Why would he sabotage his own end of the plan? If she doesn’t carry out the gathering, he’s the one who gets blamed. And I don’t see how he could turn this around-he’s the one who gave Tharra the ritual and the components.”

“Gods’ books, he’s a devil,” Dahl said. “Who knows what they’re thinking?” Farideh looked away and Dahl wished he’d kept his tongue that time too. “Sorry,” he said. “We have a hole in the ground and another day before Rhand expects you back. And I sold them on a worthless ritual-I’m not in the best of moods.”

“We’ll have to attack the tower,” Farideh said.

“How’s our army coming?”

“I have no idea,” Farideh said. “There are still Chosen among them, and Cereon and the others are trying to find gentle ways to spur their powers. But so far? We have numbers, not strength.” She rubbed her neck. “We have to rescue the ones he’s captured. Soon.”

“Tonight,” Dahl said, well aware that the delay was killing every one of them. But they needed Phalar, and the drow wouldn’t go out in the daylight. And the moment they breached the tower, Rhand would know he had a rebellion on his hands. Everything would have to happen right after.

And they had nothing to throw at the black glass tower but their own selves.

He closed his eyes. Lord of Knowledge, he prayed, Binder of What Is Known, for the love of all that is good and right and true, help me figure out what in the Hells I’m supposed to do here. You may have given me the means to seek the truth, but I am well out of options and now would be an excellent time to stop being so-

He stopped himself and blew out a breath. “You don’t still have that flask do you?”

She stiffened. “No.”

“Liar,” Dahl said.

“I’m not giving it to you,” she said. “It just doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you pour out where someone might stumble into it.”

“It’s not some sort of dragon acid-”

Armas pushed through the remaining prisoners, looking blanched and out of breath.

“You need to see this,” Armas said.

They followed him down several roadways, out through a growing crowd of prisoners waiting for the underground shelter to widen enough for them too. They were all staring up at the same spot, thirty feet above the middle of the camp: a ball of energy the size of a fist hung in the air over the camp, sizzling blue and black.

“It started,” Cereon said in heavily accented Common, “as a mote. That was a quarter hour ago. It’s magic-strange magic. Destructive and something else. Something-” He turned and spoke Elvish to Armas.

Armas frowned. “It’s going to collect something.”

Dahl said a silent apology to Oghma, because here indeed were the means to solve the unsolvable: Magros hadn’t given Tharra the proper tools to perform the gathering, because someone else was going to do it.

“Get everyone underground,” Dahl said. “Let’s hope this spell works the same way.”

“My lady,” the apprentice says, “ have you nothing to do but muddy the Fountains?”

Farideh doesn’t-at least she tells herself that. She cannot act without knowing where her enemies are, she cannot strike without being sure of who stands in the way. At least here she has a view of what’s happening-as slim and mendacious as a sliver through a cracked door. But it’s better than walking blind.

And if she wants to see clearly, the next vision has to be called. She’s been avoiding it, almost-asking more times than she cares to admit. But as she’s crawled back and back and back through the past, until the waters grow cloudy with the detritus of the petals, it’s hunkered there in the back of her thoughts, waiting like a dragon in a cavern, knowing that eventually it will be time to come out.

“Show me,” she says, trying for solemnity, “the Toril Thirteen and the day they cursed the tiefling race.”

The waters shimmer and shiver, and a faint mist seems to rise up off their surface, followed by the image of a grove at night, the ground burnt bare up to the roots of winter-dead trees. There are thirteen tieflings arrayed around the grove. Hooved and horned and winged and tailed and some who might as well be human, for all their fiendish blood shows-but Farideh knows they are tieflings all the same. Six men, six women, and the Brimstone Angel herself.

Bryseis Kakistos stands on polished black hooves, facing a statue shaped like what must be the king of the Hells: a man with the great horns of a ram, broadshouldered and beautiful even hewn out of bedrock. Blood paints the stone, as if tides of it have lapped Asmodeus’s feet.

Farideh peers into the waters, waits, but Bryseis Kakistos doesn’t look away from the statue, her confederates arrayed around her. Farideh can see that Lorcan was right-some do not seem to wish to be there. A man with snow-white hair and antlers sprouting from his brow. A woman with serpent’s eyes and a jungle of red curls around her long horns. A boy on the edge of manhood, whose fretful hands seem to have been attached the wrong way around.

And others watch the Brimstone Angel as if she is the source of all riches. An ancient man with ram’s horns and a beard to his knees. A fox-faced woman with a smile that sets Farideh’s nerves on edge, even through the waters. A handsome man who wafts shadow and darkness with every move.

But Bryseis Kakistos doesn’t turn. Farideh finds herself edging to this side and that as the chanting rises and the magic gathers, as if she can move around the surface of the water and see her wicked ancestor’s face. The magic around the basin snaps and fizzes as if Bryseis Kakistos is calling on it, too.

“What are you doing?” one of the apprentices demands. Farideh looks up, just as the chanting reaches a terrible peak, just as it turns into screams. The apprentice pushes her back, away from the waters, and she doesn’t see the end or whether Bryseis Kakistos ever turned to face her coven. She can only see the reflection of a terrible light-a fire to rival a crashing star-that reflects so brightly off the waters that it dapples the ceiling as if it were truly there in the room with them all.

“That is enough!” the apprentice all but shouts. And Farideh realizes, it will never be enough. She cannot stop Rhand’s experiments by spying. She cannot change the past by watching it. She cannot change where she stands, not now. No matter what features she recognizes in her ancestor’s face, she is not the Brimstone Angel, she never will be.

She cannot save them all. They are already damned.