Ashes of the Tyrant

by Erin M. Evans

  Don’t worry about any of this, he told himself over and over, until you get to the Master’s Library.

  “Fine,” Sessaca snapped. “You want to keep your secrets, I’ll leave them be. But I expect you’re going to say something before this ends with our blood on your hands.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” Dahl said. “There’s nothing she could hold over me that would make that acceptable.”

  Sessaca’s stony expression softened. “Then go make up with your brothers because I’ve got no interest marching with a divided force, understand? Finish the fire first,” she added.

  Dahl added the fuel he’d collected as they’d scaled the peak, out of the thick forests, enough to get the fire hot enough to get a pot of water boiling, at least. They’d have to go down through the valleys tomorrow. And then? Sessaca was still being coy.

  “What lies to the east of the Master’s Library?” Dahl asked her quietly.

  Sessaca’s dark eyes pierced him. “Lot of things. You can read a map, can’t you?”

  “What lies to the east beneath the Master’s Library?”

  Just as it had back in New Velar, a certain cunning overtook his grandmother’s expression, even though not a muscle of her face moved. “A lot of dirt, I suspect. You have a different idea?”

  “I think these folks have that idea,” Dahl said. “I don’t think they want the library, I think they want what’s down below it. Those goblins came up from the Underdark, and that spooked Grathson. So what is it we’re heading for?”

  Sessaca was quiet a moment. Then she shrugged. “Nothing.”

  “They can’t hear us right now.”

  “Truly, lambkin, nothing of note. It’s the Underdark. It’s all strange. It’s all beyond your wildest nightmares. You think it matters if there’s a lake here, a city there, but it’s all made for someone, something that’s not you.” She considered the backs of the Zhentarim grimly. “You sure that’s what they’re after?”

  “I’d stake every drop of whiskey I have on it,” Dahl said. He frowned at his grandmother. “You’ve been to the Underdark?”

  “I told you,” she said. “I’ve done a lot more and a lot worse than you. Put a little of that whiskey in the tea. There’s no way I’m sleeping on these rocks otherwise.” She was quiet a moment as he set up the pot, added the tea, debated keeping his dwindling whiskey to himself.

  “I don’t remember where everything within the library is,” Sessaca suddenly said, “but … there’s a statue of an archon on the floor above the entry. You can see it when you go in. The shelves beside that have scrolls, samples of a godsbedamned great lot of spells. Schools of magic marked on the rollers. Best ones are gone, but you could probably find a portal spell among them.”

  “How do you know the best … No, you know what? Never mind. Add it to the list.” He stirred the tea. “You think we’ll need a swift escape.”

  “It never hurts to be ready.”

  Dahl sat back on the cold ground, listening to the water bubble in the pot. “How long were you in there?”

  “Long enough,” Sessaca said.

  “Gods, Granny, are you going to be cryptic the whole trip? You dreamed a path up the mountains and then you heard a strange voice and you found the Master’s Library and wandered around a bit? Why’s no one gone back there?”

  “Because it’s sealed shut.” He turned to see Mira behind him, her dark eyes full of warning, and Xulfaril beside her. “People have found it since—or said they found it,” Mira went on. “They just can’t get in.”

  Sessaca folded her blanket closer, her eyes hard. “Not my sort of gossip.”

  “I assume you can,” Xulfaril said, “else I don’t think you’d be foolish enough to lead us up here, where no one will find your body or your grandsons’.”

  “You making more threats?”

  “I’m making reminders,” the wizard said.

  Sessaca’s dark eyes glittered. “I can open the door. I helped seal it, I can unseal it.” She turned to Dahl. “I don’t know who did the singing, but when I found the place, there was still a priestess there. An old woman, the last of the Deneirrath who held the Master’s Library. She told me she’d been praying and praying for someone to come assist her—there was no one left and she had to seal the library. She thought I was the one the gods sent. I laughed at her.”

  “Well, that sounds about right,” Dahl said.

  “Don’t insult the gods like that, and I won’t laugh. Her prayers were answered by a blade-ferrying sellsword with a rotten heart and a bad demeanor?” She made a face. “Turns out she was asking for trouble, that one.”

  Dahl knew better than to argue, even if there was nothing about Sessaca’s opinion that made sense. She’d come on the suggestion of a vague and prophetic dream, after all, to a place on no one’s maps, and whatever had happened, she’d clearly helped the Deneirrath priestess—

  “Gods’ books—did you kill her?”

  Sessaca gave him a withering look. “She wanted help and I gave it to her. She had a magical way of closing it off, but it needed two people to work. One inside, one outside.” She fished the heavy locket she always wore out from her shirt. “Gave me the key and a few instructions. And the Master’s Library was sealed.”

  Dahl narrowed his eyes. “She gave that to you?”

  “More or less,” Sessaca said, tucking the necklace back in place. “So,” she said to the Zhentarim, “that’s all the assurances you’re getting. For your records, I’m fair sure that it’s got to be me that wields the charm. Though if you’re feeling lucky, your swords could always pluck it off my corpse and see if they’re good enough.”

  Xulfaril narrowed her eyes. “I’d suggest you not give Grathson any excuses.”

  “I’m surprised you haven’t found his leash yet,” Sessaca said. Xulfaril only smiled at her, and left their little fire to return to the rest of the camp.

  Mira smiled. “Fair winds, old mother.” She fished the pouch of herbs out of her bag and crouched beside the fire. “I won’t let them do any such thing, and neither will your grandsons.”

  Sessaca looked at Dahl over Mira’s dark head. “Sometimes you can’t help it.”

  “If anyone can, I’m sure it’s your boys.” Mira stood and gave Dahl a significant look. “Xulfaril’s making noises like you’ve volunteered your expertise.”

  “Volunteered is an odd word.”

  Mira raised an eyebrow. “Is it bad?”

  “It’s enough.”

  “Well,” she said. “Could be worse. At least you and I know we … work together well.”

  Beyond Mira, Sessaca smirked in a triumphant kind of way.

  Dahl cursed to himself, but kept his tongue. “Your tea’s ready,” he told Sessaca, and strode off toward the rest of the camp, without so much as meeting Mira’s eye.

  It stung when it shouldn’t to have her humoring Sessaca like that. He didn’t mourn the loss of her—there was never any road that didn’t lead to Mira growing bored of him or him becoming frustrated with her constant indifference—but she’d been the one to end it, and in the intervening years, she’d not shown one spark of affection.

  It still wasn’t affection, he thought. But there was no pretending Mira wasn’t acting a little less than indifferent. Or that Sessaca hadn’t noticed.

  “Lord of All Knowledge,” he muttered under his breath as he watched the sun slip behind the horizon. “Binder of What Is Known. Make my mind open, my eye clear, my heart true.”

  There were a hundred reasons he ought to be fond of someone like Mira—someone human, someone who was intimately involved in the secretive parts of his life, someone his family was already charmed by. Someone who didn’t bring devils to his door.

  Devils aren’t worse than Zhentarim, he thought. But the devilish woman’s words rang in his head: It’s not as if I don’t have options. Because you aren’t what she wants, he thought. Farideh’s the key. And options meant Lorcan—it had to mean Lorcan.

 
She can take care of herself, Dahl thought—made himself think. If only to stem the surge of memories, proofs that—once, at least—she had been more than a little taken by the cambion, and Lorcan had been more than a little willing to put her best interests to the side. He turned back to the Zhentarim and his brothers, and cursed again.

  Beside a second fire, Volibar suddenly jerked up, scrambled to his feet. He pulled a little metal flute out of his pocket and played a fluttery trio of notes. Dahl’s heart skipped as the dark shape of the winged snake slipped down the air currents and settled itself around Volibar’s neck. He ran at the halfling.

  “Good boy,” the halfling crooned. “Who’s a good, strong boy?” The snake licked his chin. In the little harness it wore, there was a tiny scroll case.

  “Give it to me,” Dahl said, trying to keep the urgency out of his voice and failing. “Please.”

  Volibar glowered at him as he removed Haslam’s harness, checked the snake’s wing joints, and finally opened the scroll case. “Looks like you got an answer.”

  Dahl snatched the note from the halfling’s hands, unrolled so quickly he tore the edge and cursed. Both sides of the paper were covered in Farideh’s jagged handwriting.

  I haven’t given up, though I have no idea what’s going on. Why didn’t you answer my sending? Why did you go? I trust you. I know there are reasons, but I wish I knew what they were. I wish you were here. My nightmares are worse & now Ilstan has turned up in the city. There’s a demon loose, murdering people. (I suspect you would say I should stay inside given that, but the joke is on you—the whole city is inside.) More than once I’ve thought, “Dahl would be such a help here.” And besides, I’m lonely for you. I don’t know if you can write again, but now I know where the Zhent in the city is, I will use him to track you down if I must. I love and miss you more than I can say. Be careful. Farideh.

  Ilstan, Dahl thought, feeling his stomach knot, demons, murderers. And still Asmodeus. And here he sat, on the edge of the Vast, too far to do anything at all. She didn’t mention Lorcan, and that was something—the memory of Lorcan kissing her rose up again and he shoved it away. What in the name of Oghma, Mystra, and Lost Deneir would he say to her now?

  He couldn’t answer any of her questions, after all, not without breaking his agreement with Lorcan. But how many letters could he send without saying a word?

  And where was Lorcan?

  “How long before I can send another message?” he asked.

  “Haslam’s not a magic faerie,” Volibar snapped. “He’s got to recover.”

  “Before you go in,” Dahl said. “I want that before you go into the ruins.”

  Volibar chuckled to himself, as if Dahl were a little mad. “Run that by Xulfaril. Pretty sure we’ll be able to package up what’s left of you and ship it snake-back to your ladylove.”

  It would have to do. And if not, he told himself, you can find the means to make a sending. You can pass a message through Havilar or Mehen. Maybe Brin, if he was still with them. Farideh was already picking up the pattern, already being resourceful with scryings and sendings. All is not lost, he told himself.

  I will use him to track you down if I must. I love and miss you more than I can say.

  A hundred thousand reasons to love someone else, Dahl thought, folding the note into neat quarters. And none of them were true.

  His brothers stood, considering the lines of a tent, the dusting of snow blowing up its side. Thost kicked a stake. “Sturdy enough.”

  “I suppose,” said Bodhar. “Assuming that wind doesn’t pick up. Gonna have to bunk in together to keep her warm, though. You still snore?”

  “Like you don’t.”

  They both looked up as Dahl came to stand beside them, Thost greeting him with a wordless nod. Bodhar looked awkwardly down at the tent stake.

  Dahl rubbed his thumb over the note in his hand and tucked it into his pocket.

  “One,” Dahl said, feeling like an idiot, “she makes me happy. Happier than I think I have any right being, sometimes. And when I’m not, when I feel like I could just fall into the stlarning gutter and quit and no one in the world would care, she does care. And that’s enough, right, but I said three. So two, I love the way she laughs. It’s ridiculous, because it’s just a laugh, but gods’ books, it feels like I could do any godsbedamned thing in the world when I hear her laugh. When I hear how happy she is. And three, I love how much she loves her family, because I know that when I tell her that I had to come here, that I had to make certain you were all safe, she understands because she would do the exact same thing.

  “And I do think it’s adorable how much sugar she dumps into her tea, even if that’s ridiculous too,” he added. He spread his arms, making a target of himself. “So let’s hear it.”

  Bodhar shook his head. “Look, you’re a man grown. You make your choices, good and bad.”

  “Have you thought about Ma?” Thost asked. “She’s not going to like it.”

  “Bodhar didn’t think she’d take to Dellora either,” Dahl said. Thost turned, surprised, to Bodhar who threw up his hands.

  “I was wrong, obviously! But don’t tell me you weren’t nervous about telling Ma you were marrying a lady sellsword out of Cormyr? Mind,” he added, shaking a finger at Dahl, “that’s not ’tall the same as a devil-child, and you can’t pretend otherwise. You can’t deny blood.”

  Dahl felt as if his heart had grown still as a mountain pool. “She is the truest person I’ve ever met. She once saved my life by hauling me out of a ballroom full of shadar-kai and Zhentarim assassins, after I’d dragged her there and left her with a lunatic. There was nothing stopping her from saving her own skin—I would have deserved it at that point—and she still got me out. She’s better than she has any reason to be. Whatever bad her blood brings, I will stand and fight it with her because she doesn’t deserve it—not for being born to the wrong parents.” He paused. “Do you want some help?” he said, nodding at the tents.

  “No,” Bodhar insisted. “You … You take a load off. We’ll finish up.” He scratched his beard, quiet a moment, before he pulled a short stick of wood from his belt. “Um, here. It’s a good, straight piece. Lellthorn. Won’t split. Found it on the way up. You could … whittle maybe a knife from it? Couldn’t hurt, right?”

  Dahl took the bit of hardwood from him. “Yeah, sure. Thanks.”

  “Course. Shoulda kept my wits about me. Before. I wasn’t thinking. I hope it’s not put you under treefall or anything.”

  “Nothing worse than what I’ve put myself under.”

  “We good?”

  Dahl turned the wood in his hand—solid, straight. “If you call her a devil-child again, I will punch in your stlarning face.”

  A moment of silence, Thost and Bodhar watching him, and Dahl felt surer than ever that if there was anything at all that might drive him from his family, this was it—and it wrung his heart out to know that.

  Then Bodhar snorted, a half-swallowed laugh. Thost’s shoulders shook, and as one they burst out. Thost slapped Dahl on the back and Bodhar put his fists up as though they would brawl right then and collapsed into further laughs.

  “Ah, Hells,” Thost managed. “Sodden Hells.”

  “Clearly you mean it,” Bodhar said. “Punch me in the stlarning face.” And burst into laughter again.

  Dahl gritted his teeth, but at least they were brothers again. At least they were united as they headed into the last day of travel before they reached the Master’s Library.

  THE CATACOMBS AT evening were no darker than in day, no more twisting or solemn, but to Farideh, they felt inarguably different. The shadows seemed more solid, more secretive, as they threaded their way in twos through the first of the tombs. As they descended a set of stairs, she found her way to Mehen’s side.

  “This is too many people,” he said gruffly. Ahead of them, Havilar and Brin, Kallan and Dumuzi, Lorcan and Zoonie moved through the shadows. He tugged on the hood of the cloak he’d worn to help him p
ass unnoticed through the city. “We might as well be bellowing, ‘Here, demon, demon,’ while we walk.”

  “You could have stayed,” Farideh pointed out as mildly as she could. She might have too—Havilar was necessary, Lorcan required, and there was no chance of telling Dumuzi to stay behind.

  And no chance of leaving Mehen or Brin or Farideh back, once Havilar agreed to help him rescue Zaroshni.

  “Lorcan’s exercises are kind of rubbish anyway,” Havilar had said. “That scepter is creepy. It’s not that hard—even if it’s not that pleasant either. And it’s boring.” She drummed her fingers against the shaft of her glaive. “Besides, it seems like the whole thing’s less about finding demons and more about making people want to fight them for me. And I can’t practice that on a karshoji stick.”

  Lorcan had been less pleased about the sudden insistence that they needed to track the demon down—though clearly a little pleased that Farideh had called him down herself to do it.

  “What’s the situation with Lorcan?” Mehen asked as they walked along, as if they were talking about something as simple as a bounty.

  Farideh kept her eyes on the cambion’s back. “He’s helping Havilar.”

  “Is that all?”

  A blush crept up her neck. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Do you think I’m an idiot? That I have no idea you are—or were—infatuated? You don’t need to tell me everything that happened in Suzail, but don’t think I haven’t got eyes and a mind.”

  If Mehen ever knew even a fraction of the details of what happened between her and Lorcan in Suzail, Farideh would curl up and die on the spot. “What happened then has nothing at all to do with what’s happening now. If it weren’t for these murders, I’d be done with him.”

  Liar, she thought. If it weren’t the murders, it would be something else. It would be collector devils or Shadovar or Asmodeus himself. It would be the unshakable worry that something bad would happen to Lorcan because of her. Could she ever truly be done with Lorcan?