Ashes of the Tyrant

by Erin M. Evans

  “Walk carefully?” she said. “It was unstable sixty years ago. Watching Gods know what’s happened since.”

  “Monsters?” Grathson asked.

  “Yes,” Sessaca drawled. “Every beastie that can break through a seal that kept every godsbedamned treasure hunter in Toril out. Think it through, donkey shit.”

  “Granny,” Dahl warned. Grathson was not one to be riled—especially not as Sessaca was coming near to the end of her usefulness. She gave him a sharp look.

  “And don’t you go getting distracted now that I’ve vouched for you,” she said. “Knowing you, we’ll find you elbows deep in spells to draw your monster doxie back or leap off across the planes to her.”

  That broke Dahl’s distraction, a retort on his lips, but then he caught the clever glint in his grandmother’s eye: the portal spells. The angel statue on the floor above the entry. A quick escape.

  Focus, he told himself, though it was Farideh’s sharp tones.

  “Gods’ books, Granny,” Dahl said, hoping his delay wouldn’t show. “Lay off.” He scowled at Xulfaril. “We find this, we all go our separate ways?”

  Xulfaril smiled at him. “If that’s what you really wish.”

  Which meant he needed that portal spell, Dahl thought, as one of the Zhentarim handed out sunrods. Xulfaril waved Volibar and Mira over to follow him.

  “Ye gods,” the halfling spat as they worked their way around the library’s outer edge. “Be all day with you two. Mira Turn-Me-Every-Stone and a stlarning Oghmanyte walk into an ancient library. It’s like a bad tavern joke.”

  “You can go search for yourself,” Mira said, her eyes wandering the stonework. “It’s not as if we can’t manage.” From the corner of his eye, Dahl saw her glare at the halfling and tap her dagger. Dahl’s pulse skipped—a threat for the halfling? a sign for a fellow Zhent?

  Volibar hesitated. “Xulfaril sent me after you.”

  “Then come along,” Mira said, as if she couldn’t imagine anything mattering less to her. “You heading somewhere particular Harper?”

  “Up,” he said tersely, as they came to a staircase.

  “What happened?” Volibar called. “You two have a falling out? You need to send her a love note too?”

  “Look at these carvings,” Mira said, crouching on the stairs to examine the spindles. “Late twelve-hundreds. Dwarven. You wouldn’t expect to see that. Must have been a later addition.”

  Dahl walked quickly, searching for the Zhentarim’s hole or the statue of the angel, dreading the possibility of finding them in the wrong order. The shelves on this level were more disheveled than below, cracked and leaning. Dahl clambered over more piles of lost wisdom than he dared think about. The gods only knew what remained in the Master’s Library.

  “Slow up there, longshanks!” Volibar shouted, as Dahl made his way over a fallen shelf and around a column. And found himself facing the angel statue.

  A planetar, to be specific—though if his granny had known that, Dahl would have given up ever being sure of anything else ever again—a muscular winged woman bearing a sword, her skull as smooth as an eggshell, her features merciless as her blade.

  Behind the statue, a shelf of scrolls reached nearly to the cracked ceiling, untoppled by time, the Spellplague, or Sessaca Peredur. Dahl glanced back, listening for Volibar’s grumbling, gauging the distance. Not much time. He scanned the ends of the rollers, hunting for the marks of conjuration. Top four shelves, all the way against the wall. He climbed as high as he dared and pulled scrolls from the shelves one after another, hoping one would be castable, one would be the right spell. You can come back and look for the perfect one once you’re free. You can come back and search for the answer to the riddle.

  And if you believe that, Dahl thought, his bag reaching its limits, then Mira’s right. You’ve gone right off your mind.

  He jumped down, pulled the bag shut, and turned as the sounds of the halfling and Mira came closer. Strolled back as if he’d only realized he’d gotten ahead of them and needed to turn back. “Will you hurry up?” he called as they climbed over the broken shelf beside the column. “I think there’s more up ahead.”

  A sharp whistle resounded through the library, amplified by magic. Mira grimaced. “I suppose it will have to wait for another time,” she said. “Sounds as if we’ve found our sinkhole.”

  HAVILAR FELT A sort of relief once Mehen and Farideh had left. That might not have gone the way she’d hoped, but it was a lot better than the last two times, and it wasn’t as if she’d collapsed. She’d handled herself.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Mehen had asked once again, just before they’d left. “You should be lying down.”

  “I’m fine,” Havilar said. “It’s hardly more than a scratch.”

  A scratch that definitely still burned. She rotated her shoulder, feeling the skin stretch around the wound, itchy and aching. A scratch, and maybe she felt a little antsy, a little unsettled. But at least she’d done something. Stabbed that henish right in the gut. And then it had outrun even Zoonie.

  “Ah-di-say-ka,” she murmured under her breath. The word tasted off in her mouth. “You have to teach me the commands,” she said to Lorcan. “It’s stupid my dog knows all these things and I don’t.”

  “What’s stupid is that we’re making due with mud and herb water while Brin has not once gotten his little amulet out,” Lorcan drawled. “What happened, Tormite?”

  “You hate being healed,” Brin said mildly as he worked a salve into Zoonie’s cuts. The hellhound lay on the floor, once again muzzled. She didn’t seem to notice Brin, burning eyes locked on the dark space between the cushions of the unused couch where the winged snake had retreated.

  “I hate this itching more,” Lorcan said. Havilar agreed, but said nothing. The last time Brin had tried to heal someone, it had not gone well. Maybe he was avoiding it, and maybe he knew it wouldn’t do any good.

  “I suspect Torm would say you are capable of withstanding it,” Brin said. “Builds character and focus. Or something.” He smiled at Havilar. She thought about kissing him again.

  You are doing a very bad job, she told herself, of figuring things out.

  “Don’t be bad-tempered just because Farideh left,” she said to Lorcan.

  Lorcan narrowed his eyes at her. “Who was that fellow? With the snake?”

  Havilar schooled her features into carelessness. Farideh had slipped into her room again the other night, asking if Havilar was all right in a way that made Havilar suspect she knew about Arjhani. But when Havilar had made her change the subject, Farideh had told her about the Zhentarim with the winged snake, and the note from Dahl.

  “Let me see it,” Havilar had demanded.

  “No!” Farideh blushed. “It’s private.”

  That had surprised Havilar. She didn’t have any notes like that. “Is it that racy?”

  “It’s not racy, it’s just private,” Farideh had said stubbornly. She’d smiled. “But he’s safe—safe enough, rather. He’s all right and he’s sorry and he loves me.”

  Very easy things to say, Havilar thought, from the other end of the world. Karshoji Dahl.

  “A Zhentarim,” Brin answered, when Havilar had sat silent too long. “His name seems to have been Brume.” He stood, scratching Zoonie behind the ear. Zoonie stopped her vigil over the snake long enough to happily rub against Brin’s hand.

  “So she’s crying over some Black Network tiefling.”

  “If she was crying,” Havilar said, “it’s probably because she’s worn out of karshoji devil gods and murder demons and a certain someone who is still not sorry.”

  “I apologized, not that it’s your business.” He sat up, flexing the foot of his injured leg. “When you were traveling in Cormyr, out of curiosity, did you tell Sairché about the ghost?”

  “No,” Havilar said. She thought a moment. “She was there when Brin was …” Possessed—she couldn’t quite bring herself to say the word. Brin sat down besid
e her, fist full of unused bandages, and said nothing. “The, um, I think the ghost talked to her then, and before then. She kept calling her … That thing the maurezhi called you. Batty-zoo.”

  Lorcan glowered at her. “Baatezu.”

  “It’s another word for devils,” Brin told her.

  “It’s not important.” Lorcan drummed his fingers against his leg. “Did she recognize the ghost?”

  “No,” Havilar said. “Should she have?”

  “That would be odd,” Lorcan said. He glanced back at the door. “I assume this isn’t finished. I assume you’re going back out after it.”

  “Sooner or later,” Havilar said. Then, “I appreciate your help.”

  “I think you don’t need it so badly as you insisted.”

  Havilar made a face at him. “Well then take that creepy scepter back.”

  “You aren’t done with it,” Lorcan said, standing. “Tell your sister I want to talk to her when she gets back. And try to survive in the meantime since the Tormite’s spells are too good for you.” Before Havilar could reply, Lorcan had opened the portal back to the Hells and vanished in a gust of sulfurous wind.

  “Gods, he’s insufferable.” Havilar turned to Brin. “How did you know that?” she asked. “Baatezu.”

  Brin focused on rolling bandages. “I read a lot of books. When I was looking for you. It came up.”

  A wave of guilt rolled through Havilar, perversely settling the edge the demon had left her with. It was a familiar guilt, a familiar sadness. One she might be making worse … or maybe saving herself from drowning in. “Sorry,” she said, and it was such a stupid thing to say. “I forgot.”

  “Demons,” Brin said, as if he were changing the subject, “call themselves tanar’ri. Three sounds,” he added, with a smile. “Tah-nahr-ree.”

  Havilar giggled. “That does sound better than ‘demons.’ ”

  Brin’s attention returned to the bandage roll. “How come you keep trying to get Lorcan to make up with your sister?”

  “Because,” Havilar said, “he was awful to her.”

  “Right. But he’s Lorcan—he is awful. Apologizing doesn’t change that. Your sister’s probably better off without him.”

  Havilar wasn’t sure she could agree, but at the same time she wasn’t going to argue. Lorcan could be awful—worse than awful—but he could be kind too, in his own strange way. More, she couldn’t quite imagine him not being around. How he’d gone from an intrusion to a fixture in their lives, Havilar couldn’t have said. Wouldn’t have said, she amended. She knew Brin was right, even if she didn’t believe it completely.

  “He’s not a lot worse than Dahl,” Havilar said.

  Brin looked at her as if she were a little mad. “You can’t really think your sister ought to prefer Lorcan to Dahl.”

  “She ought to prefer neither of them,” Havilar said. “I don’t care what he said, he left without telling her and he’s said nasty, snipey things to her and he’s a drunk.”

  “I think you might be a little biased,” Brin said. “Didn’t Farideh say things like that about me? And it made you furious.”

  “I shouldn’t have told you that.”

  Brin shrugged. “That’s what I mean, though. For both of you, no one’s good enough for the other. You just have to trust that she’s got her own life in order, and if she needs you, she’ll say so.” He looked down at the bandages again. “I mean, it’s not that either of you are necessarily wrong … if you think …” He cleared his throat, and Havilar took his hand.

  “This is all pretty stupid, isn’t it?”

  “No, it made sense. It’s hard to make decisions without knowing what’s out there.” He cleared his throat again. “Though if you were planning to find another fellow or two, you certainly picked a terrible city to come to.”

  Havilar squeezed his hand, but there was nothing she could say to that that didn’t sound worse. She didn’t want to find another fellow—she wanted to have already had other lovers, to have enough life under her feet to feel like she stood equal with Brin. To know she was making the right choices.

  Zoonie trotted up behind them and laid her muzzled head between theirs, whining. Havilar wrinkled her nose. “She needs a run,” she told Brin. “I think she might have eaten a little of the skeleton.”

  “I doubt your knee’s better yet,” Brin said. He scratched Zoonie’s enormous head. “Could you heal it?” Havilar asked. “Or do you think …”

  Brin considered her leg, before blowing out a breath. “I don’t know. And I don’t know if I want to. I pretty well spat in Torm’s eye back there. It doesn’t feel right to ask for blessings from him.” He set his hand upon her injured knee, gentle and familiar. “If you really need it …”

  “It’s all right,” Havilar said. “It’s just a twist.”

  Brin left his hand against her leg. “I could take her. If you think she’d listen.”

  Havilar smiled. “That could work.”

  It took some persuading—Zoonie didn’t like to leave Havilar behind—but when the hellhound puppy seemed to grasp that the only way she was getting out of the pyramid was with Brin, she relented, glancing back at Havi mournfully, but leaving slack in the chain as she followed Brin from the room.

  Havilar’s heart twisted. Brin had relaxed a great deal about Zoonie after the hellhound had defended both Havilar and the now-Queen of Cormyr during the siege of Suzail, never turning on the Cormyrean army. And now Zoonie had clearly settled on Brin as someone she ought to listen to, in the absence of Havilar, more so even than Farideh or Mehen.

  But you have to send her back eventually, Havilar thought, even though she hated it, even though she’d rather hide from it. Zoonie couldn’t be happy penned up and kept from her natural urges. Would she be happier, though, Havilar wondered, in a pack of vicious, evil hellhounds—and nearly snorted at the image.

  Maybe you just don’t know what she really is, Havilar thought. She’s not going to be a puppy forever.

  What Havilar needed was a spell to keep Zoonie a puppy forever …

  On second thought, no—such a spell might be too tempting for Mehen. And then they’d never find the pothach maurezhi.

  Havilar stood, testing her twisted knee. She could work around it. She took up the glaive and limped away from the sitting area. Her weight on the uninjured leg, sweep the glaive down, through an imaginary attacker. Shift back onto the injured leg, just enough to skip the good leg backward, tail pressed to the ground for balance.

  Havilar wrinkled her nose. Not perfect. Good enough for skeletons, maybe, definitely dretches. But she wouldn’t be cutting down the maurezhi one-legged. She imagined another fight with the creature, staying back and letting Mehen and Farideh and Brin and Dumuzi handle the front—and she couldn’t even picture herself, loitering around the edges, passing blessings off.

  Havilar went through another pass, trying to pivot on the uninjured leg. Whatever it was supposed to be like, being the Chosen of Asmodeus was just pothach through and through. What a stupid set of powers to give her! Better Farideh have the demon sense, the blessing against them, and Havilar be the one to burst into terrible flames. She paused—she’d look amazing with fiery wings—and then shook her head. She didn’t want Farideh’s powers. She didn’t much want any of these powers.

  Except Zoonie, she amended, which meant except the imps.

  Except Mot, she added. She rather liked Mot at times.

  Someone behind her cleared their throat, and Havilar whirled on her unhurt leg, glaive ready. Anala raised an eyebrow.

  “Has no one shown you the training yard?” she asked. Beside her stood a dragonborn man who seemed vaguely familiar. Broad-shouldered as Mehen and with similarly bronze scales, though with a wider face and dark green eyes. Instead of piercings along his jaw, the ridge above each temple had been fitted with small branching shapes, like steel antlers. His eyes settled on Havilar’s glaive and a faint smile broke his gruff expression. The man from the barracks, she th
ought.

  “This isn’t really training,” Havilar started.

  “Never mind,” Anala said. “Where’s your father?”

  “He and Farideh are walking Dumuzi home,” she said. “He said he’d find you soon.”

  The man stepped forward before Anala could speak. “Well met,” he said, in easy Common. “I am Fenkenkabradon Dokaan. I take it you’re Verthisathurgiesh Havilar.”

  Havilar frowned. “Who,” Havilar said, “is calling me that?”

  Dokaan blinked at her, startled. He cleared his throat. “Well. Regardless … Arjhani has spoken well of you. Seems you brought his students down a few notches? Showed them what they hadn’t mastered?” He turned to Anala, shaking his head. “They get younger every year and seem like they already know everything a month earlier than the last. Hatchlings.”

  Havilar twisted her glaive against the floor. “If they got hurt at all, it was only a few bruises. I didn’t use the blade.”

  “He’s offering you a position,” Anala said to Havilar. “Not chiding you.”

  “A position? Doing what?”

  “Teaching,” Dokaan said. “The glaive is not the most popular weapon, but we like to make certain the cadets have a range. Arjhani has … enough on his hands. And from the sound of things, he may be leaving our company for a time. He suggested I consult Anala and see if you’d be interested in the position.”

  Havilar frowned, sure she was missing something. “You want me, to teach Vayemniri hatchlings how to use a glaive?”

  Dokaan nodded once. “It would be a few classes a week. And you’d have to enlist, so you’d have other responsibilities as well. We would waive the two-year service. You’d be career. And clearly we’d have to work out what that means. We’ve had mercenaries serve alongside us, teach cadets a time or two, but …” He shrugged. “This is tidier.”

  Havilar wasn’t sure what that meant. “Would I live here?”