Uadjit nodded once. “Have you told Anala?”
“Not yet,” Mehen said. “And she can go complain to Khorsaya if she doesn’t like Tarhun finding out before her. This is beyond hatchlings spitting on their ancestors. The city is in danger.”
Uadjit chuckled. “I doubt she bargained on you being so forward. I’ll send runners to the other enclaves,” she added.
“In twos,” Mehen said. “Leave no one alone.”
“Where are you two going?”
Mehen regarded Farideh with a grim expression. “To the Vanquisher himself.
IT MUST HAVE been a reading room once, Dahl thought, considering the collapsed room. The way the shelves framed the space, the capitals of columns still clinging by their mortar to the ceiling. Beside him, Mira aimed her glowstick toward the ceiling and peered at them.
“That looks Shou,” Mira said. “But not—they don’t … Their pillars aren’t built like that. Has to be another repro—”
“No one gives a shit about the stonework,” Grathson snapped. “Aside from which bits can hold ropes.”
Mira lowered the glowstick. “Well, certainly not the collapsed sectioned column.”
Grathson looked down the shaft, hand still on his sword. Dahl pictured shoving the Zhentarim over the edge—and everything that would fall apart once he did. “Any idea how far down it goes?”
“Obviously that’s where we need to begin,” Xulfaril said, magic cloaking her arms to the elbows. “Any words of wisdom, Swordcaptain?”
“I think you can get yourselves down a hole,” Sessaca said. “Shall we wait up here, or may we start our journey home?”
“Why oh why, Swordcaptain,” Xulfaril said, “do I find myself suspecting you’re not being entirely forthcoming?”
“I’d lay my guess on the company you keep.”
Xulfaril studied the sinkhole, ignoring the barb. “Mira, dear, where can we anchor?”
Mira edged around toward the farther side of the hole, gravel spilling down into the void with each careful step. “Nothing’s safe to tie on to in here,” she said, searching the stonework. “I’d go back out—lash the main ropes to one of the monolithic pillars near the entry, set some anchors and smaller ropes into the walls here. Might take a while.”
“This is all going to take a while,” Xulfaril said. She turned to Sessaca, “So get comfortable.” Dahl didn’t like the smile that split Grathson’s scarred face at that.
He took hold of Sessaca’s arm, as if to guide her back to a seat, and whispered in her ear, “Got them. I need to read them, though.”
“Any idea how long they’ll take?”
“None. But portal spells aren’t simple. Half an hour, maybe more.”
Sessaca cursed and stopped walking. “You’re taking the long way,” she called back to Xulfaril. “No idea what you’re up to, but you seem in a hurry.”
Grathson and Xulfaril’s quiet conference cut short. “What do you mean the long way?” Grathson asked.
“It means,” Sessaca said, “that you’re going to be digging for a very long time if you head down that shaft. Half a mile down it’s packed with rubble—or at least, it was sixty years ago. Can’t imagine it’s loosened up much since.”
“We know about the slide,” Grathson started.
“Shut up.” Xulfaril narrowed her eyes. “You spent a lot of time mapping paths out of the library?”
“I had to,” Sessaca said. “That Deneirrath bitch sealed me in here. ‘One inside, one outside.’ Last to see it, and last to flee it.”
Turns out she was asking for trouble, that one. Dahl felt sick at the thought of a priest of a god so near to Oghma’s grace sacrificing someone like that. Even “a blade-ferrying sellsword with a rotten heart and a bad demeanor.” How long has she been in here? Long enough to remember where the portal spells were, sixty years later, he thought.
“You didn’t mention that part,” Xulfaril said.
Sessaca smiled. “You didn’t ask.”
The wizard and Grathson exchanged glances. Grathson let go of his sword. “What are we looking at?” Xulfaril asked.
“That’s cute,” Sessaca said. “Here’s what’s going to happen: my grandsons and I are leaving. You can send one of yours along—”
“Old woman,” Xulfaril interrupted, the end of her wand lighting with foul-looking magic, “you’re trying my patience. I’ve got the magic to get it out of you, come to that. How did you escape?”
Sessaca’s eyes flicked to Dahl, calculating. “The shaft you’ve found is bigger, but as I said, the rubble fills it well before you get to the Upperdark. It’s as if the whole core of the mountain fell in. You dig down very far and it’s practically solid rock, even though the bottom’s coming loose—clear there’s something big blocking the way. There’s a second shaft. That’s what you need if you want to get down there.”
“Where is it?”
“It starts in a room with a plaster painting of Candlekeep on the back wall, six rows to the east. Just a crack, you’ll have to go in one at a time. Follow it down and then take the right-hand passage, then the leftmost. Squeezes tight about a mile down, but it jogs enough there’s no reason to fear falling. It’s not very difficult—least if you’re young, spry, and determined—but it’ll take you some days. It comes out almost on top of the slide, so you’ll know where you are.
“Now,” she said, rubbing the fingers of her right hand, “you don’t need to haul me down there. I’m just going to slow you down all the worse.”
Xulfaril laughed once, short and sharp. “At this point, Swordcaptain, you’ve shown me at every step of the way that you have one more secret in your pocket. So no—you won’t be leaving until we’re absolutely sure there’s nothing left to discover. I hope the climb down is as easy as you’ve promised, for your sake.”
“And when we reach the bottom?” Dahl said. “You need her for what’s down there, or are you going to make us climb back up?”
“She hasn’t said,” Mira remarked.
“Something to do with the outpost,” Volibar added. “That much we can all guess.”
Grathson drew his sword. “Take your orders and shut your—”
“No,” Xulfaril said. She stepped in front of the mercenary. “The outpost in the Upperdark has gone silent. A snake carrying a distress call got out to the aboveground checkpoint, and the decision was made—too hastily, I might add—to collapse the passage. Now we can’t contact the outpost, the paths to it through the Underdark are either blocked or too dangerous at the moment. The collapsed shaft was marked on maps, as well as its probable connection to the Master’s Library. We get in, we find out what we’re dealing with, we get out.”
“Slowly up a crack one-person wide,” Dahl said.
“Do you care so little for your people, Harper?” Xulfaril said. “We’ll get out. But first, we have to get in.”
“WHAT IS THIS going to be like?” Farideh asked Mehen as they climbed the wide stairs toward the rooms at the peak of the pyramid called the Vanquisher’s enclave. “Is it more like court in Suzail or like heading into a tavern or Tam’s offices?”
Mehen glanced back at her. Even as she walked, Farideh fidgeted with the black axe at her hip. The edges of the shadow-smoke had begun to tatter the edges of her arms.
“I don’t know,” Mehen said, honestly. “It changes, Vanquisher to Vanquisher. But if it’s Tarhun that’s in the throne …” He sniffed. “Court mixed with tavern.”
“So he’s not exactly a king?”
“The trouble with the Vanquisher’s seat,” Verthisathurgiesh Pandjed had been heard to opine, “is that by the third year, they think themselves kings and queens. They forget they are but trumped-up arbiters, commanders who’ve been given airs. Watch the fools remember the day after they’re told to hand the piercings back.”
There was truth in it, Mehen had to admit. But like anything Pandjed said, the truth was poisoned—he had been passed over when his chance arose, in favor of an Ophins
htalajiir, an aunt of Sepideh’s called Shaushka who’d led a bloody raid against the ash giants that everyone had said was doomed before it started. Only three Vayemniri were lost. Every clan head voted for her, save Ophinshtalajiir, which by tradition could not. By the time Shaushka’s term had ended, Pandjed’s father had died and he’d been elevated to patriarch, no longer eligible for the Vanquisher’s throne.
“Not exactly,” Mehen said. He scratched at the jade plugs—there was no going to the Vanquisher unmarked. “The Vanquisher is elected every ten years. Each clan puts forth a candidate and then each clan votes for someone else’s candidate. In that time, the Vanquisher is the final authority in Djerad Thymar. So like a king, but you’re not stuck with any of them.”
“But the clan heads don’t like going to him?” He looked back at her curiously. “The ones in the catacombs didn’t want to bring it to the Adjudicators,” she reminded him, “which sounds like it means bringing it to the Vanquisher.”
“More or less.”
“Do you know the Vanquisher?” Farideh asked. “Tarhun?”
Mehen snorted. “Yes and no. He’s clan-kin to Uadjit. Kepeshkmolik, but a line called Akkadi. He’s not much older than I am. I was certainly aware of him, and I’m sure we patrolled together in the Lance Defenders. We weren’t friends, but I can’t say anything bad about him.” He knocked one of the jade plugs loose as he scratched, and he cursed. “That’s not true. He was always a bit of a prig. Wants everything to be straightforward and honorable, and because he’s a skilled warrior, things shake out that way for him. Never mind a thousand years of ancestor stories make it clear that’s not how things usually go. And people wonder how their hatchlings start falling for the Platinum Dragon’s line.” He shook his head.
“But he’ll listen,” Farideh said. “He’ll help to stop the maurezhi?”
“He’s not a monster,” Mehen agreed.
They crossed the threshhold of the enclave that housed the Adjudicators’ and the Vanquisher as well, high up the pyramid and intertwined with the Lance Defenders’ barracks up above. The double doors were wide-open beneath a carved row of dragon skulls and the words: Never forget what clans may do as one.
“Did you ever want to be Vanquisher?” Farideh suddenly asked. “Growing up, I mean?”
Mehen sighed. “Children want a lot of things. Come on.”
The Vanquisher’s Hall of Mehen’s memory did not resemble the room he stood in now. In Shaushka’s reign it had been everything Kepeshkmolik prized—ordered, mannerly, as if the dragonborn had gotten their hands on one of Havi’s chapbooks about Cormyrean kings and queens. Her successor, a grizzled Churirajachi veteran called Versengethor, scattered his chamber with warriors ready for battle.
Tarhun’s court, by contrast, was crowded—too crowded—with petitioners and elders and warriors, all mingling in their finest as though it were a gathering or a wedding or a hatching.
Pandjed would have loathed the court of Tarhun, Mehen thought. He grabbed the nearest Adjudicator, her square gold piercings mimicking the Vanquisher’s own. “I need to speak with someone. It’s an emergency.”
The woman cocked her head. “The Vanquisher is hearing grievances. You can tell him yourself.”
“It’s an emergency.”
“Then go and tell him,” she said slowly, as if Mehen were simply not hearing her. “Give your name to Shikari over there, and wait to be called.” She squinted at him, and then at Farideh. “Are you visiting from somewhere?”
Mehen muttered a curse to himself. “Thank you.” He turned to Farideh, still standing in the doorway, studying the dragonborn with a faraway expression. The soul sight.
“Anything?” he whispered.
She shook her head and blinked twice. “Nothing extraordinary,” she said in a quiet way that made him worry she’d seen something upsetting. “I’ll wait here.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Mehen,” she said, as if he were being obtuse, “I’m the only tiefling—the only non–Vayemniri—in the whole place. They’ll listen to you.”
Mehen looked out over the Vanquisher’s Hall—scaly bodies in a hundred shades all like enough to himself that he hadn’t even hesitated.
All like himself, and not a one like his daughter—he couldn’t remember a time when they hadn’t both been outsiders.
“If they don’t, I’m coming to fetch you,” Mehen said. “Anyone gives you trouble, say you’re Verthisathurgiesh and we’ll see if we can call Anala’s bluff.” He left her and strode into the audience chamber, feeling a number of eyes follow him.
Tarhun, at least, looked like the sort of Vanquisher Pandjed would have appreciated. A broad-shouldered, bronze-scaled pinnacle of Vayemniri masculinity and physical prowess.
Don’t karshoji say it like that, he could hear the ghost of his father’s voice say. This is why everyone thinks you’re a blasted clutch-dodger.
Your type, old man, not mine, Mehen thought as he gave his name to the adjudicator. “It’s a matter of critical importance,” he said. “Lives are at stake.”
Tarhun glanced over, frowning at Mehen. He did not have to wait long.
The moment the conversation Tarhun was having with a Kanjentellequor man ended, the Vanquisher descended the dais, studying Mehen as he did. By the time Tarhun stood opposite Mehen, his eyes had lit with recognition. He clasped Mehen’s forearm.
“Broken planes,” he said. “Mehen, yes? We were in Shaushka’s honor guard together. Chaubask vur kepeshk, it’s been, what? Twenty years?”
“Thirty,” Mehen said.
“Thought you were old Pandjed for a moment,” Tarhun said. He turned grim. “Terrible what happened.” Whether he meant Pandjed’s death, Mehen’s exile, or some fanciful vision of what happened in either case, Mehen didn’t know and didn’t care.
“There is a demon running lose in Djerad Thymar, a creature called the maurezhi. You need to send out as much of your force as can be spared to search for it before it kills again. Majesty,” he added a little reluctantly.
Tarhun looked surprised. “Right to it then.” He glanced at the Adjudicator, the reddish-scaled man called Shikari. “Did you say a demon? As in one?”
“So far as we know.”
Tarhun waved this away. “I’ll get my sword and armor. We can take care of this—you, me, a few others. Dokaan will be up for it, when he returns. Do you remember him?”
“It’s not merely a demon,” Mehen said. “It’s a shapechanger. It’s capable of moving among your people, disguised as one. And we think it might have been sent as the vanguard of an attack.”
Tarhun shook his head. “A single demon is the harbinger of an attack? By whom?”
“We haven’t figured that out,” Mehen said. “There are more than a dozen dead at this point and probably more. Seven of us couldn’t pin it down. You need to sweep the catacombs, tell the clan elders to take this seriously.”
People around them were starting to whisper. Tarhun’s expression shifted. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll discuss it with Dokaan. Speaking of elders,” he went on, “where is the Verthisathurgiesh? I would have assumed Matriarch Anala would have come herself.”
Mehen cursed to himself, and from deep down the horror he should have felt at this error, this appalling misstep ghosted through him. Some people take omin’ iejirkkessh quite seriously, Anala had said. The whispers thickened.
People are dying, he told himself. Karshoj to etiquette.
“I came here first,” Mehen said. “This is a matter for all of us, not just Verthisathurgiesh. Had I waited for the matriarch, precious time would have been lost.”
That seemed to satisfy the Vanquisher well enough. “A wise choice. But I would strongly suggest you head straight back to your enclave. Anala is not one to trifle with.”
“Of course, Majesty,” Mehen answered, gritting his teeth as the whispers continued all the same.
… THE GREATEST MEASURE of strength lies in patience … the voice of the god m
urmured.… Though urgency would suggest otherwise … And there is no enemy like urgency …
Any moment now, Ilstan thought, you will burst into nothing but magic and power and the scattered scraps of a once-whole mind. Your bones will be the Weave and your blood will be an offering to Mystra herself. Any moment. Any moment.
… Then perhaps it is madly wise to lay an offering to Urgency … or wisely mad to ignore her …
Here was the edge, here was the precipice, the moment before he tipped into madness and Ilstan remembered, still, every moment of the last time, deep in the tunnels of Suzail, trying to hold his thoughts together. And then the moment when he escaped the powerful pull of the god’s promise, of the lines of magic and destiny that bound Ilstan to Azuth, Azuth to Ilstan, in a flood of spells.
“What am I meant to do?” he whispered, frustrated tears welling in his eyes, as the cell began to vibrate with the once-invisible magic of the Weave. “Why can’t you free me?”
… Freedom isn’t necessary. Only patience …
Ilstan froze. “My lord?” he murmured. But there was nothing. Only the growing crackle and hum of magic bleeding through the stone walls, the whine of the barrier spells anchored between the bars. His guard—a pale gold one this time, with silver skewers protruding from his jaw—watched him with a quizzical, mocking expression.
“Lord of Spells forgive me, I am too weak, I am too weak.”
… Strength in weakness, weakness in strength. Power in all things—it is easy to forget when you wield the gift of Mystra herself …
Ilstan straightened. The wizard. He pushed his sleeve back, saw the shivering runes embroidered there—Find a wizard. That was how he staved off the madness. That was the only way to remain sane as more power than he could contain roiled through him.
But here, trapped in the clutches of terrible dragon-men and at the mercy of his greatest enemy, and Wick … where had Wick gone? Betrayed him like Kallan?
… Our dearest allies may be our nearest friends … but a wizard is often alone, and so it must be that a wizard seeks allies in the strongest of his peers … for a time at least …
Ashes of the Tyrant Page 38
