Dahl frowned. “What were they singing?”
“I have no idea,” Sessaca said. “I can’t recall a note of it. Couldn’t as soon as I walked into the place, come to think of it. Not natural,” she added.
Who sent the dream? Dahl wondered. But he knew well enough to be sure it wasn’t a question his grandmother cared about the answer to. The ghost of Deneir, the hand of Oghma, some wicked god hoping to entice a Zhentarim agent to ransack their dead enemy’s sanctum—it wouldn’t matter to Sessaca the way it mattered to Dahl. “Do you think that’s what they’re looking for?” Dahl asked instead. “Treasure?” Grathson’s folks fought monsters, collected treasure. That could be it.
Sessaca snorted. “No. There’s nothing like that up there. But if it’s not old books …” She wrapped her shawl a little closer. “Let’s hope its old books.”
SHE WOULD NEVER forget the cold, the way the mud froze between her cloven hooves in the winter, the way it felt trying to pry a rock out from under the ice. Alyona wore boots after the winter of the Year of the Helm, and it looked ridiculous the way she toddled around in them, but she didn’t have the same troubles with the ice between her claws. She remembered refusing to do any such thing. “We’re not human,” she’d say. “That doesn’t mean you need to suffer,” Alyona would answer, but then she was always one to look on the bright side, even when they were trapped in the dark—
“Lady, come back.” The cambion’s hissed voice interrupted Bryseis Kakistos’s drifting thoughts. “Are you even there?”
Bryseis Kakistos shook free the thoughts of the past. Drew her attention back to the freezing room they stood in, to the wizard lying dead at the feet of a trio of erinyes. Hideous things, she thought. This was what Sairché’s mother had looked like when Caisys came to her.
You cannot find it? she asked.
“Nowhere we can see,” Sairché replied. Despite the thick, silver fur cape draped over her shoulders, the cambion shivered.
Look harder.
“If it’s hidden beyond all the searching we’ve done so far, I doubt we’ll find it without the man himself. And resurrection is beyond my talents and yours.”
Bryseis Kakistos looked down at the tiefling man lying supine on the floor, his dark robes splayed out, his white hair soaked in the blood of a score of injuries. Her grandson. She couldn’t recall his name anymore. If anyone had my spells, it’s him.
No, she thought. Not the spells. Focus.
“Well by your argument, no one has that spell any longer,” Sairché said. “And by your claims, there’s no way to proceed without it.”
You already know the answer, she said. We should seek the Abyss.
“Absolutely not,” Sairché said. “I don’t dirty my hands with demons.”
But you’ll dirty your hands with treason? I see.
“One of these gains me the favor of the archduchess. The other only gets me killed. Although, at this juncture I question the first assumption.”
Are you planning to unmask me, little cambion?
“Get me what I need with less of this chicanery.”
It was always on the table. Always a risk. They’d be your faithful servants, your close companions, until something better arose. Bryseis Kakistos considered the erinyes, all ignoring their cambion sister and picking through the wizard’s belongings in a disinterested way. Always a risk—and Bryseis Kakistos did not enter into plans mindless of the risks. She had contingencies. Always.
My gem, she said. Can you find that at least?
Sairché cut her eyes to one of the erinyes, her skin bloodless and her eyes red. “Caudine, may I have it?” The erinyes tossed her a blue-gray gem, the size of a walnut, hung on a chain. “It’s not active,” Sairché murmured.
It wouldn’t be—another memory that fled through her thoughts as if in the dark of her mind a door hung open. The soul sapphire contained no one, nothing, but it was meant to.
“And it’s not very high quality,” Sairché noted, examining the asterism that marked its smooth surface.
It’s distinctive. She’d changed it, shaped it to her purposes. A door that hung open … The thought was gone as soon as it formed.
Get the pieces back, she told herself. Get your memories. Everything will be clear again.
Have them take the books, the ghost said. He might have hidden it within one.
“He might have hidden it anywhere by that argument.”
Take the books, Bryseis Kakistos said again. If they don’t have the answer, we haven’t exhausted our resources.
Sairché hesitated, a moment of pique more than anything, then ordered the erinyes to gather up the books, to carry them back to Malbolge.
The scrying mirror scintillated as they entered the fingerbone tower, its surface still stirred by magic. Sairché studied it as the erinyes piled the books on the far side of the room. The image showed a group of mostly humans, traveling through snow-dusted mountains—centered on a man with dark hair and gray eyes.
“Put them on the table,” Sairché said to her sisters.
Who is that? Bryseis Kakistos asked.
“One of Lorcan’s little pawns, no doubt,” Sairché squinted at the mirror, then let out a short laugh. “No, wait—that’s the paladin Farideh spurned him over. Which means this is a very clumsy attempt to make me interested in taking care of that for him. Idiot. He’s losing his touch.”
Bryseis Kakistos peered at the dark-haired man climbing the mountain slope. A paladin, she thought, with no god’s mark upon him. A paladin who might challenge Caisys’s spoiled son for her great-granddaughter. Where is he?
“I have no idea,” Sairché said. “Lorcan made a deal with him and dumped him in the hinterlands.”
What sort of a deal?
“Likely something to get him away from the warlock,” Sairché said. “Likely something with a piss-ton of loopholes. He made that deal too fast.”
Find out.
Sairché didn’t move. “Is this about your replacement?”
Find out.
“In due time,” Sairché said. “I would hate to leap too many steps forward and find ourselves on unsteady ground.”
Bryseis Kakistos felt not the slightest bit of hesitation as she shoved Sairché aside, trapping her in the darkness of her own sleeping mind. In control of the body once more, Bryseis Kakistos rolled the cambion’s shoulders and stretched her neck.
The erinyes loitered by the table, speaking to each other in low, sneering tones. The books were a waste, clearly—whatever their baby sister was up to was a waste. The flimsy steel of those who will never rise above their rank, Bryseis Kakistos thought. Jabbing at their betters and pretending they have the real power.
“One of you,” she said, mimicking Sairché’s imperious tone, “I need a copy of an agreement. Lorcan’s deal with the paladin.” She turned from them, sure that one would take the initiative, that waiting to see which it was would only embolden them. Unlike Sairché, she’d had plenty of experience corralling willful underlings. Indeed, a moment later, the door opened and closed once more.
Time for the search.
Bryseis went to the table, feeling Sairché’s silver robes drag across the wooden floor behind her, and touched the bindings of the books. The Road to the Abyss. The Lords of Madness. The Reign of the Demon Prince. Know your enemy, she thought. Summoning the Demon Lords …
She’d held this book before—this same book, it was hers, from long ago, stolen from another wizard, another fool who’d thought she was something to use and discard, a puzzle to unlock. Summoning the Demon Lords. He’d thought to use her blood, to hook the sire who’d left his mark on her and her line. “Bisera, come on!” Alyona had hissed. Her hands were shaking … slick with blood, as she shoved the book beneath her shift.
“Little sister,” the nearest erinyes growled. “How long—”
“Wait outside, if you please,” Bryseis Kakistos said with Sairché’s tongue as she turned through the familiar pages, fitting tog
ether a much more suitable plan.
EVENTUALLY, OTHERS WOULD come.
This was the only thought in Louc’s head, had been the only thought for days or months or years. He’d always been here, hadn’t he? In the mouth of the Underdark, at the feet of the man made of night. Other times, other places slithered through his mind, the greasy ghosts of dreams.
Eventually, others would come. More Zhentarim looking for their lost outpost, demanding to know what had closed off communications. They would find their way down into the darkness, down into the reach of the man made of night.
Who will they send? The man made of night sifted through Louc’s thoughts, over and over, seeking every possible answer. At first, Louc had fought it, though now he couldn’t recall why. The man made of night was a prince above them all. He would triumph, he could not help but triumph, and the world would bend itself before him. Now Louc told him everything he could, knowing that a scrap of that power could be his too, if only he pleased the man made of night.
“Xulfaril, surely,” Louc told him, feeling half in a dream. “The wizard bitch. She runs what we trade up to the surface—all the dark things that darker things collect from the Underdark. If we don’t answer, she’ll come, thinking to punish us. She’ll bring others, though. Muscle and blades. They’ll expect drow or maybe duergar. They won’t expect you.”
Good, the man made of night said. They’ll make powerful tools. He wasn’t angry any longer—not with the Zhentarim. But with the one who had brought him here from his kingdom far away? Utter fury. The rage of a beast pushed from its rightful place atop the pecking order. The terrible, terrible moment before the pretender becomes dethroned.
A pity none of them will know how my current plans fare, the man made of night said, stroking Louc’s hair. I do not like leaving such things to their own rhythm. Louc could no longer tell which of the bodies around them were locked in passion and which were locked in battle. Gore smeared everything. But there was only the sensation of the man made of night’s fingers raking his scalp, the thin trickle of blood running down his forehead.
Whoever brought me here will lament the day they tried to play Graz’zt, the true Prince of Demons, as a pawn. And in his heart of heart’s Louc knew it was so.
PART II
YRJIXTILEX THE MANY ESHAM-ANA
Let us sing of one who inspired strength and kinship in our blood, of Esham-Ana Who-Would-Be-Yrjixtilex. Let us sing of the fall of the Vizier of Broken Thorns and the rise of Yrjixtilex.
While the titans slumbered and the ice lay thick on their prisons, a mine was dug at the edge of Skelkor, kingdom of the Foul Empress, and our ancestors were imprisoned there to dig ore from the mountains beneath the Dawn Titans. For long years, we toiled and died under the watch of the Foul Empress and her followers, and our suffering was great.
Esham-Ana Who-Would-Be-Yrjixtilex sought to lessen that suffering. Set as a guard, he would slip out in the night, to hunt and gather the mountains’ bounty to feed the many Who-Would-Be-Yrjixtilex. The elders cautioned him, for though the wilds’ plenty seemed endless, the Foul Empress was greedy and her grip like the core of the ice, cold and unbreakable. But Esham-Ana knew that the rations fed to the miners would never sustain them.
One spring, at last, the Foul Empress’s regard fell upon her miners, who no longer died and needed renewing, and from there to her mountain frontiers, thinned of deer and plucked of its first fruits.
“Find me the thief,” she said. “And bring me its head.”
While many of her underlings flew deep into the forest with blood in their thoughts, the Vizier of Broken Thorns, Ororonymilith, a copper dragon as canny as any of his kind, was clever. He chose one of our own, a slave called Shamash, who knew his place and knew what he would lose if he defied the Foul Empress. With threats in place, the Vizier left him where he was sure the thief would find him.
Night fell and Esham-Ana, carrying a pair of does, came upon Shamash. Seeing the lost slave, Esham-Ana cut a haunch from the deer, and built afire. “I am Esham-Ana,” he said, not suspecting a trap. “I will come again tomorrow.” And though Shamash’s heart was heavy, Ororonymilith had the name from him by morning, and Shamash died without a clan.
Ororonymilith ordered the miners driven to the surface, too hurried to even drop their picks. “Which of you is Esham-Ana?” the copper dragon demanded. “Thief and betrayer of the Empress.”
Esham-Ana Who-Would-Be-Yrjixtilex knew the steel-edge of fear, for what could he do but give in to the will of the Foul Empress and spare the rest of the slaves of the mine? He stepped forward to accept his fate, but as he did, he heard a clear voice cry out: “I am Esham-Ana!”
“No,” called another. “I am Esham-Ana!”
“I am Esham-Ana!”
“I am Esham-Ana!” Ororonymilith’s great head swung over the crowd, trying to single out which of the slaves before him was the thief his mistress demanded. But there were too many. Male and female, young and old. None would let he who sustained them suffer in their place—all were Esham-Ana.
And in every Esham-Ana’s hands, a pickaxe.
Ororonymilith realized what all the tyrants knew eventually: Where they are one, we are many. His skull was the first to hang over Yrjixtilex’s clan, cut from his loathsome body by the Many Esham-Ana, First of Yrjixtilex.
10
21 Nightal, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR)
Djerad Thymar, Tymanther
FARIDEH DREAMS OF ARUSH VAYEM AGAIN, THE SNOW THICK AROUND HER ANKLES. She calls for Dahl—he must be here somewhere—but she only hears the voices of her neighbors calling out, laughing, singing. She moves from house to house, fighting through the drifting snow, looking for Dahl.
“Let me help,” says a voice. Arjhani walks beside her, dressed for a long-ago summer and seemingly unaware of the snow. He smiles fondly at Farideh and her sudden fury sends flames racing over her skin. The hungry damned burst from the ground, tearing Arjhani apart before she can even consider what it is she’s unleashed.
“Why did you do that?” Farideh turns and finds Havilar, eleven years old, still small and scrawny, two summers before she and Farideh grew, like weeds after the first spring rain. The glaive in her hands is built of a stripped sapling, the first incarnation of her beloved blade. “Now he’s gone. Why did you do that?”
“Why did you?” Lorcan echoes. He stands in Arjhani’s place, amid the melting snow. A smile plays on his mouth, and she cannot speak, cannot tell Havilar what a danger Arjhani is, how he will leave, how he will never come back—
“What is the secret?” Havilar demands. “One of us knows how to defeat him—is it you?”
Farideh clutches her head. “This is a dream.”
“Clever girl,” Lorcan says. He tilts his chin. “Do you know who thinks you can defeat me?”
“Hey.” A hand grabs Farideh’s shoulder. Dahl stands beside her, his gray eyes blazing, nearly silver. He doesn’t look at Havilar or Lorcan, only Farideh, and the fury melts off her like the snow under Arjhani’s feet. He reaches out and fishes the amulet of Selûne out of her collar. “I’m still here,” he says.
Farideh searches his face, as if she’s memorizing it. “I can’t find you.” She looks over at the god in the cambion’s skin, fearful suddenly that he’ll hurt Dahl.
“Is that what you really want?” the god asks. “Another master? Another yoke?”
Yes. No. Farideh hardly knows what they’re discussing anymore. She clutches the amulet of Selûne. “Don’t hurt him.”
Asmodeus blinks with Lorcan’s eyes. The village is suddenly on fire, the cheerful voices screaming, and above them all Dahl whispers, “Remember—”
The sound of Dahl’s voice extorting her to remember circled in Farideh’s thoughts all morning long, chased by the scrying pool’s image of him and Mira. He was fine, he was safe, she had worse things to worry about—but that only kindled a spark of anger in her. He was fine and she was worrying herself mad and still, he’d
said nothing.
You don’t know he’s fine, she thought. You don’t know he’s not on some mission. You don’t know he hasn’t gone quiet to keep you safe.
But none of it felt right. None of it felt like Dahl as she knew him.
So maybe you don’t really know him, a little voice in her thoughts said.
Havilar’s hand suddenly closed over hers. “What did that pasty do to you?”
Farideh looked down at the mash of dough in her hands and flushed. “Sorry.”
“It’s not as if there’s a shortage,” Brin said. “Do you want another?”
Farideh took another pasty from the platter on the table, still heaped high with food. The young dragonborn who brought food to them from the kitchens seemed uncertain of how much three non–Vayemniri ate and erred on the side of too much. She set the pasty back down on her own plate, untouched. “Have you two …”
All three of them turned at the sound of Mehen entering, and Farideh’s plans dissolved at once.
“Oh, broken planes!” Mehen spat. “Will you three stop staring?”
Farideh didn’t dare make that promise. The jade plugs stretched the holes along Mehen’s jaw tight. The tailored white shirt covering his arms, its cuffs and high collar embroidered in bright white Draconic runes. The new and polished breastplate, dragonscale in a dozen coppery shades. Only the falchion strapped to his back, its hilt still wrapped in white, remained a familiar touchstone—her father would never be without it.
“You look pretty,” Havilar said, dissolving into giggles.
“It’s nice,” Farideh said. “You look … handsome.” Younger, she thought, but didn’t dare say. She reached up and straightened his collar, reading in the embroidered runes a lament for Verthisathurgiesh’s loss. “Did she make this for you? Overnight?”
Mehen fussed with the collar anew. “It’s … something the other lines in the clan do during mourning. Someone in Vandeth’s line was apparently working on it the last few days.” He grimaced. “Someone help me with this breastplate—it’s too tight.”
Ashes of the Tyrant Page 22
