Ashes of the Tyrant

by Erin M. Evans

  Ophinshtalajiir’s clan name etched the posts of the entry to the tomb. Half a dozen dragonborn with jade rings stood in the crypt, clustered around one of the sarcophagi. The stone lid lay askew, and one of the dragonborn was helping a hyperventilating woman, her scales pale and her expression drawn, from the sarcophagus.

  “It’s all right!” the guard was saying, even as the panicking dragonborn pushed her away. “You’re safe! You’re safe!”

  “You there!” a woman’s voice bellowed. “Hold!”

  Farideh turned to see a silver-scaled woman with Ophinshtalajiir’s jade ring piercings in her neck and a Lance Defender’s medallion pinned to her shoulder limping toward them. Her left leg was wrapped rigid in bandages from ankle to above the knee, and she hobbled on a sturdy crutch. She carried her sword bare, nevertheless. The shadow-smoke began to leak off Farideh’s arms.

  “Relax,” Kallan murmured, stepping in front of Farideh. He smiled broadly at the approaching dragonborn, giving a polite bow. “Commander. Pardon the intrusion—we heard the shouts and meant to lend a hand.”

  The woman searched his face for the markers of his clan. Her sword pointed at Kallan’s chest like the needle of a compass as he spoke. “Name yourself.”

  “Yrjixtilex Kallan, son of Ardeshisk, of the line of Esham-Ana. I’m out of the homesteads,” he added, when her eyes flicked up to his bare face again. “Yrjixtilex Cayshan’s place, up south of the Methwood. This is Farideh, who is newly claimed by Verthisathurgiesh, daughter of Mehen.”

  Surprise and recognition lit the Ophinshtalajiir’s face. “Verthisathurgiesh Mehen? He was made clanless. He …” The sword dropped as she looked Farideh over. “She’s a tiefling.”

  “He’s had an interesting life out in the world,” Kallan said. “May I know your name?”

  “Ophinshtalajiir Sepideh,” the woman said brusquely, remembering, perhaps, her station. “You need to clear this tomb—this is a private matter for our clan.”

  “Well met, Sepideh,” Kallan said, not moving a muscle. “We’re not at cross-purposes, I don’t think. Farideh and I were searching the Shestandeliath tomb for signs of the creature that killed Shestandeliath Ravar. Wonder if you have any clues we might find useful.”

  Behind her, the dragonborn in the sarcophagus fainted. Sepideh sheathed her sword, not looking away from Kallan. “Maybe Shestandeliath is fine with you rummaging through their ancestors’ bones, but Ophinshtalajiir declines.”

  “Yrjixtilex found a dead hatchling in the Verthisathurgiesh tomb killings,” Kallan said. “Maybe that’s a clue you could use?”

  “Do you know why she was down here?” Farideh asked, nodding to the woman, now laid out on the floor with a folded cloak beneath her feet. “Was she with the hatchlings in the Verthisathurgiesh tomb?”

  Sepideh shrugged. “Can a person not come to contemplate the struggles of their ancestors?”

  “So she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time?” Kallan asked.

  “Seems to be going around. Who sent you looking?”

  “Verthisathurgiesh,” Kallan said. “They’re concerned about what’s going on down here. And I think Ophinshtalajiir is wise enough to be concerned too.”

  Sepideh shook her head, the edges of her teeth clear, as if she were annoyed at the whole situation. “That well may be, but from the sound of things, we’re dealing with something too dangerous for ordinary citizens … Rather … You need to go. Ophinshtalajiir has ordered the tomb closed.”

  “Thank you for your time then,” Kallan said. “Let’s go, Fari.”

  Up above, out of the stale air, he turned to her. “You think she knows something?”

  “No,” Farideh said. “I think she knows nothing and that worries her.” No shortage of clues, but no sensible way they fit together. She thought of the elders in the Verthisathurgiesh tomb—and no one wanted to talk about what they knew. Except Kallan.

  “That worked well. I was pretty certain we were going to get thrown out right off, but you got her talking.”

  Kallan shrugged. “People are generally decent. They’re just scared or ignorant or frustrated. I figure you always talk to them like they’re just settling onto the stool next to you and you’ll get a lot further.”

  “What if they don’t talk back to you that way?”

  “Then they’re hardjacks and you don’t owe them,” he said with a smile. “Is it time for you to go back?”

  Farideh’s tail slashed over the granite as she walked. “No,” she said finally. “I need to take one more risk than Mehen will think I need to.”

  12

  21 Nightal, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR)

  The Earthfasts

  THE THIN, ICY AIR OF THE EARTHFASTS BURNED DAHL’S NOSE AS HE struggled to keep his breath. Two days into their ascent, and only Thost seemed to have little trouble. As he walked through the snowy, needle-leafed forest, Dahl listened to his grandmother’s labored breath, a touchstone and a morbid timekeeper.

  “Can we have a rest?” he called up the line. “She needs water.”

  Grathson glared back at him. “We’re running behind as it is.”

  “Not going to be … any faster if she collapses,” Bodhar wheezed.

  They continued up to a break in the thinning trees, far enough to let Grathson feel like he’d won, no doubt. Dahl kept his tongue and started a small fire to help warm Sessaca. For the thousandth time since Volibar had released the winged snake, he scanned the sky between the branches for any sign of its return. The mountain rose up with a steep cliff face to the right, boulders and rubble from long-ago landslides littered the edges of the path ahead. Somewhere beyond the destruction, a waterfall of early snowmelt trickled.

  Mira kneeled beside him, measuring out a mix of herbs for tea. “It’ll help with the elevation.”

  “Mix it with some of that Chessentan Black,” Dahl advised. “She’ll toss anything else into the brush.” He took out a waterskin, and Bodhar handed him a little pot out of the haversack.

  “Get … that water … boiling,” Sessaca gasped as Thost set her gently down at the base of a pine tree. “Tastes … like mud … otherwise.”

  “Yes, Granny.”

  “How much farther, do you expect?” Mira murmured.

  “Gods only know,” Dahl answered. He dropped his voice lower still. “What’s to the east of the Master’s Library?”

  Mira gave him a puzzled look. “The Vast,” she said slowly. “Tsurlagol. Imaskar.”

  “Zhentarim don’t have forces in Tsurlagol,” Dahl said. “Not large ones. Nor Imaskar.”

  “Not that I know of.” She added the tea into the roiling pot. “But as established, they don’t tell me everything we’re doing.”

  He pointed his chin at Xulfaril. “Your leader there got a message saying they were sending forces along the eastern path. What’s that about?”

  “Add it to the list of things they don’t tell me,” Mira said, pouring a measure of a ruby-colored potion into the pot. “That’s the first I’ve heard of anyone else being involved. Speaking of forces, are your folks coming soon?”

  “They don’t know we’re here. I ran through my sendings.”

  “Damn.”

  “You keep saying ‘you’ instead of ‘we,’ ” Dahl noted, dropping his voice to hardly more than the sound of his breath. “Anything you want to tell me?”

  Mira turned and smiled at him in a forced way. “That we are quite surrounded by people who don’t know why I wouldn’t?”

  She was right, and yet it didn’t sit well with Dahl. Mira’s father might be a High Harper. She might have sworn the oath and gotten the tattoo etched into the side of her neck, but no one could convince Dahl that at her core, Mira wasn’t out for herself, first and foremost.

  Beyond Mira, Sessaca watched them, a faint smile playing at her mouth even as she labored to catch her breath. Dahl scowled at her.

  “Don’t,” he said. Mira straightened, considering Dahl and Sessaca in t
urn.

  “Better … brown,” Sessaca rasped, “than … scaly.” Mira’s mouth became a hard line.

  “Granny,” Thost said in a low voice, “you can’t say things like that.”

  “What’s she mean ‘scaly’?” Bodhar asked.

  “She’s not a stlarning dragonborn!” Dahl said. “And even if she was, I’m not looking for my grandmother’s opinion on my love life. Leave Mira out of this, please.”

  Sessaca snorted. “You’ve got,” she wheezed at Mira, “a … brightbird … girl?”

  “Not in the market, old mother,” Mira said, stirring the tea. “Thank you for the offer.”

  “I still think she’s Hillfarian,” Bodhar said.

  “A Hillfarian … with a dragonborn name?” Sessaca said, dripping doubt.

  “A dragonborn?” Thost asked. He scratched his chin. “How does that work?”

  “It doesn’t,” Dahl said. “She’s not a dragonborn and she’s not from Hillsfar, and she’s not something I particularly want to discuss in front of these people, so let it lie.”

  “I don’t know why you don’t tell them,” Mira piped up. She kneeled beside Sessaca and handed her a mug of the tea. “You needn’t be embarrassed.”

  “I’m not embarrassed—”

  “Why should he be embarrassed?” Thost asked.

  “He shouldn’t,” Mira said. Then, “She’s a very nice girl.”

  “You know her?” Bodhar demanded, sitting a little straighter. “She knows your mystery girl, but we can’t meet her?”

  “She knew her,” Dahl said. “Before, a long time ago. And I didn’t say you couldn’t meet Farideh, I said she couldn’t come.”

  “He didn’t think you’d take to her, I assume,” Mira said.

  “You are not helping,” Dahl hissed.

  “Who said I was trying to help?” Mira replied. “These are hardly the hidden secrets of Messemprarian ruins. What’s the point of hiding every detail about her?”

  “Not every detail,” Bodhar said. He turned to Thost and Sessaca. “She’s adopted and she puts a lot of sugar in her tea.”

  Dahl bit back a string of curses, and turned to the Zhentarim party. A quartet of them stood, eyes on the cliff side. Grathson had his hand on his blade, tense as a wire. Xulfaril watched her unhappy subordinate, still crouched beneath the trees.

  “What kind of person gets adopted by a dragonborn?” Sessaca asked, her voice stronger, but still raspy. She slurped her tea. “Seems like you’d have to go out of your way to get an arrangement like that.”

  “What’s down there?” Thost asked. “Akanûl? She a genie?”

  “That’s close,” Mira said. “But no.”

  “Not close,” Dahl said, breaking his study of Grathson. “All of you, hush—”

  A stone rattled down the cliff face. Another two Zhents stood suddenly, eyes toward the trees. Oghma’s bloody papercuts—ambush. Dahl reached for his sword.

  “What’s close to a genie,” Bodhar mused, “but not, but embarrassing enough that Dahl’d hold his tongue?”

  “She’s a tiefling, all right!” Dahl snapped, yanking his sword free. “Get your shitting blades out, now! We’re under attack!”

  A flight of arrows soared down from the tops of the cliffs, two of them catching the gathered Zhentarim. Goblins swarmed over the nearby boulders, stone weapons high. The Zhents rose to meet them, Bodhar grabbed his dagger, and Thost grabbed a fallen tree branch. Mira cursed and scrabbled for her pack and the long knives inside.

  Dahl stepped in front of his grandmother, drawing his mind into the peace of Oghma. But it was not the prayer for wisdom that drummed through his mind.

  Does the salmon demand the tide? Does the owl’s wing unfurl the gale? His sword cut through the air, slamming into the first goblin and breaking one scrawny arm with a crunch.

  My priest may name the spinning plane. The chant sounded like his own voice, sounded like Farideh’s soft recitation of the words imprinted on his soul. It made him uneasy, unsettled. It made him fight harder. The plane has never spun for him.

  Two more ran at him, holding either end of a trip line—he caught it on the sword and forced it up, over his head on the guard. One of the two lifted off its feet and landed in a heap. Bodhar cut that one’s throat as if it were a lamb for slaughter while Dahl made short work of the other.

  Does the owl’s wing unfurl the gale? Dahl pressed forward, warding off a trio that surged toward him and Sessaca. It is the gale that folds the wing.

  Xulfaril cast a spell that sent a crack of thunder rolling through the mountain, stones rattling down the slopes. The goblins that didn’t fall redoubled their efforts, clustering around Xulfaril. Too hungry to fail, Dahl thought sweeping another with his sword.

  The plane has never spun for him. And still the wise seek the axis …

  He glanced back at Sessaca. His grandmother had gained her feet and stood with her back right against the big pine tree, three of the dirty green creatures surrounding her.

  “Tough eating,” she warned.

  The goblin at the center, a squat creature with a blaze of white hair down the center of its skull laughed and growled something back in Orcish. They crept forward. Sessaca smiled.

  Thost slammed his scavenged branch down on top of the goblins, flattening them on their backs. Sessaca nodded at him. “Next time wait,” she advised as Bodhar and Dahl finished off the attackers. “You’ll snap their necks. Lot cleaner.”

  The fight was over as quickly as it had started. The remnants of the ambush fled off into the wilds, leaving their fallen behind.

  “Gods stlarning hrast it!” Xulfaril spat. “I hate goblins.”

  “Worse,” Grathson said. He held up a dead goblin by the back of its armor. Scavenged armor, hammered down to fit a smaller body, but the embossed spider was still plain. Scavenged from drow, Dahl thought. Xulfaril hissed a curse.

  Grathson dropped the goblin. “If they’re on the surface—”

  “We need to keep moving.” Xulfaril turned and found Dahl watching. He didn’t look away. “Get your grandmother up and ready or we’ll leave her behind, understand.”

  “There’s no point in heading on without me,” Sessaca called, as loudly as her struggling breath would allow. “It’s not a stlarning inn. If you could just push in and wander around, there’d be nothing there to find.”

  Xulfaril watched her stonily. “Don’t be so sure.”

  Dahl surveyed the damage. Bodhar had a hand pressed to his forearm, blood seeping through the sleeve. Sessaca and Thost remained unharmed, but the tea had been kicked over, the mug shattered, and the waterskin’s cork knocked free. The crust of snow melted at the loss.

  “So … what’s that mean?” Bodhar said, as though the fight hadn’t happened. “Does she have goat feet?”

  Dahl sighed. “She doesn’t have stlarning goat feet.”

  “Didn’t think you could do worse than dragonborn.” Sessaca’s dark eyes held him like razors to his throat.

  “You know you’re not …” Thost began. He looked awkwardly to Bodhar. “I mean, we all joke, but it’s not as if you don’t have options.”

  “Randar’s youngest daughter’s still at home,” Bodhar offered. “She’s … a good seamstress?”

  “I’m perfectly aware of the options I have.” Dahl rubbed his face. “I’m going to refill the waterskin.”

  “Are you?” Bodhar asked. “I mean … No, I don’t think there’s many a woman out there thinking, ‘My, but I’d like to be married to a Harper agent up in Waterdeep!’ but I can’t believe the number’s … so …”

  At the word Harper, Dahl’s hand grabbed hold of his sword. He kept his eyes on Bodhar, carefully watching Mira from the edges of his vision—she had the wisdom to look surprised, to grab her own weapon.

  Bodhar turned almost purple. “Oh, naed.”

  Dahl turned slowly. The Zhentarim were all watching him. Grathson’s sword was still out. “Hands on your head, Harper.”

  �
��I don’t think that’s necessary,” Xulfaril said. She eyed Dahl with a speculative smile.

  Grathson narrowed his eyes. “Have you lost your mind? You’ve been letting him send messages—”

  “All of which have been read.”

  “And we know they use codes. Who knows what they know by now? This is why you’re here—I shouldn’t be the one telling you to stlarning think about these kinds of outcomes!”

  “Precisely,” Xulfaril said. “Go fetch your water, Harper.”

  Waterskin in hand, Dahl stormed through the crowd of staring Zhentarim. The snowmelt splattered down the cliff, past the boulders, where it curved in toward the mountain peak. Out of sight from the Zhentarim and from his family, Dahl propped the waterskin’s mouth under the fall and crouched against a boulder, out of the icy spray, waiting—surely—for Xulfaril.

  In Suzail, before he’d let his fear and doubt run him off the path, he’d been sure that his family would take to Farideh. How could they not? He loved her, after all. He still wasn’t sure what to credit to the chaos of war and the shock of their near deaths, what to the changes wrought by the blessings of Oghma, and what was the pure unaltered truth—but it seemed that the moment he realized he loved her extended, forward and backward, through time. He’d always loved her. He’d always be surprised he loved her.

  Except for a moment where she’d channeled the powers of the god of sin, and Dahl found a kernel of doubt.

  Or was he simply being sensible for once? Without Farideh beside him, Sessaca and his brothers could assume all manner of things about her. And what if they convinced you? he thought. You doubted yourself once. You might again.

  “Oghma’s bloody papercuts,” he muttered up at the sky. Focus on the Master’s Library. Focus on finding a way out of this deal. Focus on keeping everyone alive. You can be a weeping mouse later.

  He pulled the flask out, held it in both hands.

  The magic of a sending crackled in his ears like a shower of ice. Farideh’s voice floated on the brittle air. He sat up straight. Looking for spells that could get me to you, but it’s not easy here. Should I bother? she whispered. You’re headed somewhere, not alone … I love you.