Glasya’s placid expression did not shift, and the longer Lorcan stared at her, the more certain he became that he was about to die, devoured like a vole in a falcon’s talons. “Why did you visit Shetai?” she asked a moment later.
Lorcan’s thoughts spun—there was no part of what had happened within Shetai’s lair that he wanted Glasya to know, and nothing would twist easily away from the information he’d tried to deal, the knowledge that the Brimstone Angel still roamed Toril.
You don’t have to tell her the truth, Lorcan thought, a little giddy.
“There is no devil in Malbolge who Invadiah hated like Shetai,” Lorcan said. “I felt if the situation was what it seemed, if I needed to prepare for my mother’s gaze to fall upon me, then Shetai was an ally I needed to cultivate.”
Glasya’s eyes narrowed. “And?”
“And the Vulgar Inquistitor seemed to feel I was no more than Invadiah’s spoiled son after all,” Lorcan said. “I was sent away with nothing but Shetai’s derision.”
Glasya released his chin and tapped his cheek, just shy of slaps. “Let us call this a warning then,” she said. “Remember, little Lorcan, you were not made for the hierarchy.”
“Yes, Your Highness.” He dropped his gaze, and did not dare look up until the buzzing of hellwasps had ended, the throne and its queen vanished from sight.
Beshaba shit in my bloody eyes, Lorcan cursed to himself. His breath wouldn’t slow and his heart seemed likely to burst out of his ears, the way it seemed to climb his chest. He had lied to Glasya. And he still lived.
A miracle, he thought. A shitting miracle.
Or the missed blessings of his ignoble birth. Was it that he was not made for the hierarchy or that the hierarchy was not made for one such as him?
How long until some greater devil noticed?
He did not have much time to ponder that question before the pop of an imp arriving disturbed the air. Lorcan leaped to his feet, but not fast enough to prevent the imp from seeing his cowering position. It giggled at him, baring a serrated grin.
“Oh, don’t get up for me.”
“It’s much easier to cut you from the air from up here,” Lorcan said. “Who sent you? I thought I had a forbiddance on this room.”
The imp giggled again and handed Lorcan a tasseled envelope, sealed with ink-black wax that seemed to shiver and reshape, as though it were alive. Lorcan broke the wax, ignoring the tiny howl that gusted out of it, and unfolded the parchment note.
You have exceeded my expectations, it read. You may return at your earliest convenience.
18
Malbolge, the Nine Hells
YOU’RE QUIET,” SAIRCHÉ SAID. “SHOULD I BE CONCERNED?”
Bryseis Kakistos pulled herself away from her careful plans. The hour was at hand, and she could think of little else beyond making certain she was properly armed and armored. No more than I would expect you to be usually.
Sairché was quiet a moment, as they walked through the palace of Osseia, trailed by a pair of erinyes. “How many are left? Four?”
Three now. That was the tenth.
Her thoughts smeared over the cambion’s and for a moment she could only see her assembled coven, and among them Pradir Ril, the progenitor of the last tiefling warlock they’d sought out. Where his great-grandsire had been the unremarkable descendant of a rakshasa, a thoroughly human boy with only his reversed hands to mark his blood, the warlock looked much as they all did now—horned and tailed and every inch Asmodeus’s. The eyes were the same color, though—black and soft. She wondered if he’d cry when the time came—Pradir Ril had.
“What is it you’re going to do with them all?” Sairché asked in a casual way.
I will tell you as soon as you need to know.
If you survive that long, she added to herself.
They came at last to the door at the base of the fingerbone tower. As Sairché reached to unlock the door, Bryseis Kakistos—giddy with anticipation—shoved her aside. Where Sairché had intended to climb once more to the room that held the scrying mirror, Bryseis Kakistos steered her instead down into the cellars of the tower.
“What are you doing?” one of the erinyes asked.
Bryseis Kakistos looked back over her shoulder. “Gathering tools.” She set her hand upon the sinewy lock that held the door closed.
She would need shielding—plenty of it. She found a box of rings and selected three that hummed with protective magic and an amulet of retribution besides. A chain shirt clearly made for an elf, slim enough to fit the fine-boned cambion, and bracers besides, charmed to absorb spells. A blade—she selected a short sword that glittered with a soul sapphire. Turning the blade in the torchlight, she smiled to herself, imagining how quickly the next steps would come.
“Well, well, well,” a silky voice said. “You are a brazen one, aren’t you?”
Bryseis Kakistos turned and found herself facing a succubus with black hair and mottled brown wings. The creature paced toward her, the easy gait of a predator approaching wounded prey. Bryseis Kakistos looked her over with a dismissive flick of the eyes.
“I’m a little busy,” she said. “Whatever nonsense you’re peddling, take it out on the plains.”
The succubus smiled in a mad, ragged way. “A little busy stealing my bounty? You always were a deceitful child. Creeping and scheming. How long did you think you’d last, after you betrayed me?”
Ah, Bryseis Kakistos thought. Exalted Invadiah. She returned the succubus’s smile. “What line did he feed you, when he’d called you down? I’ve always wondered what he said.”
Invadiah’s eyes narrowed, reassessing her treacherous youngest daughter for a moment. “Whelp,” she finally spat. “What are you talking about?”
“Caisys, of course. Was it all business—all about the monstrous children he could get you—or did he seduce you the way he did mortal women?”
A slow, terrible smile spread across the succubus’s face, and in it Bryseis Kakistos could almost see the fierce erinyes she had once been.
“You aren’t Sairché at all, are you?” she said, starting to pace around Bryseis Kakistos. “What did she let in to the mistress’s house?”
“I’m sure you can guess,” Bryseis Kakistos said, buckling the sword in its scabbard around her hips. “From what your daughter’s told me, you are quite clever for your kind. Do you have anything suitable for—ah! There.” She crossed to a rack of rods, ignoring the succubus entirely. She selected two—one charged with fireballs, one humming with the kinds of enchantments that would give her spells an additional edge—and tucked them into the cambion’s belt.
Skritch.
The softest of sounds—a blade against a hard surface. A sound that every flicker of the ghost, every borrowed nerve knew. Bryseis Kakistos twisted out of reach as the sword cut through the air where she’d been standing. She hardly had a moment to wake the rings on her fingers before Invadiah pressed her attack again, forcing Bryseis Kakistos back, forcing her to stumble. She pulled the sword with the soul sapphire free and caught the long sword on it. A succubus was nothing to the Brimstone Angel.
But Invadiah was no mere succubus. She might have lost her form, her monstrous strength, by failing the archduchess in some manner or another, but her cunning remained, her speed, and her skill. The stalwart leader of Glasya’s elite erinyes army. Mother of the pradixikai. These things didn’t vanish just because you changed your form.
Fortunately, the ghost thought.
“I’ve heard you were an admirable swordswoman,” Invadiah said, attacking again. “I always assumed that was just flash to the legend.”
—A sword in her hand, a cheap battered thing. An old man with horns—Titus Greybeard, watching, unmoving. No one’s going to guard your back like you will. Sighting him down the pitted blade, thinking of someone who would have had her back, no question. The pull on her soul. Not even you? He smiled wickedly. Now you’re catching on—
Invadiah’s blade sliced toward he
r, straight down to cut her hand from the wrist. Bryseis Kakistos shook free of the memory as the blade hit the shield she’d crafted around herself, sending magic crackling into the air.
“Do you really think I’m stupid?’ she said. “Do you really think I reached where I did by leaving my guard down and trusting in devils?”
Invadiah laughed, a sound both musical and somehow virulent, as if it were growing in Bryseis’s ears. “You ended up dead. Just like the rest of them.”
Quick as an adder, her hand shot out, grabbed hold of Sairché’s wrist with her free hand. Bryseis Kakistos felt the pulse of magic from the succubus, the will of Invadiah washing over her. A charm to subvert her will. A charm to make her compliant.
Bryseis smiled as the ring on her middle finger burned hot. “Maybe,” she allowed, “you don’t know who I intend to go after next.”
Invadiah pulled her hand back and cut her sword across before Bryseis Kakistos could grab hold. Pain shot up Sairché’s nerves from where the blade had sliced along her forearm. Bryseis Kakistos pushed magic down those same nerves, squelching the pain before it could stir Sairché’s consciousness, as Invadiah stepped back repositioned, and then pressed forward in a motion so quick Bryseis Kakistos could not split it into steps.
There was no denying Invadiah had earned her title and her status.
There was no pretending it would save her either, Bryseis Kakistos thought. She retreated, letting the succubus attack and chase her back across the arsenal, toward the suppurating wall. She kept the long sword away mostly by escaping, counted her steps until her heel struck the bone wall and Invadiah pulled her weapon back to cleave her daughter’s head from her body.
Bryseis Kakistos released a burst of magic Sairché had kept stored in the ring of her smallest finger. A gust of wind caught the blade, and Invadiah overbalanced. In that moment, Bryseis Kakistos plunged the sword into the succubus’s midsection, driving the blade with all Sairché’s strength. The long sword slipped from Invadiah’s hands.
Bryseis Kakistos drew upon the remnants of her pact—that it remained showed how little Asmodeus really thought of her—pulling power from the Nine Hells and waking the soul sapphire.
But Fallen Invadiah was no weakling. Rage burned in her dark eyes, even as inky blood poured from her mouth. As the magic imbued in that relic of the Blood War sapped away the very essence of her being, Invadiah pulled a dagger from her belt and plunged it up under the chain shirt, deep into her daughter’s abdomen.
That woke Sairché. Bryseis Kakistos gritted the cambion’s teeth as her soul screamed and thrashed, shoving her back down as hard as she could, as a spell, freezing and burning together all along her veins, slipped past her damaged defenses.
“You cannot win the hierarchy, oathbreaker,” Invadiah sneered. “My vengeance will … chase you … to the … grave … again.” She withered on the blade until, a useless corpse, she slid off it, crumpling to the bone-tiled floor.
Bryseis Kakistos gasped and wrenched the dagger from her belly. A trickle of blood spilled out. Not a spray, she thought. She had a few hours at least. She tore a strip of cloth from Sairché’s robes and bound her belly tightly enough to staunch the bleeding. She held the pommel with the soul sapphire close to her face. “As I said,” she whispered, “I’m a little busy.”
Not bothering to wipe the sword, she sheathed it and stepped over the succubus’s body, armed and armored and ready for battle with a far more worthy opponent.
She had no more than crossed the threshold of the treasury but the two massive erinyes were waiting for her. Blades out. Dark eyes burning over predatory grins.
“Oathbreaker,” the one on the left said. “You’ve been marked.”
Bryseis Kakistos raised an eyebrow, even as she took stock of her magic, stolen and otherwise. “Is this the best use of your lives?”
“This is the role and purpose of the pradixikai,” the one on the right told her. “The glory of the erinyes. We kill you, we secure ourselves among them.”
Bryseis Kakistos gritted her borrowed teeth. That damned dagger. “You want your mother’s fate?” It made no impact upon either erinyes—it wouldn’t. Fallen Invadiah wouldn’t bother with anything weaker, not in curses and not in daughters.
Swiftly Bryseis Kakistos drew both rods, leaping back out of the erinyes’ reach. She cast a burst of blinding light, a little nothing of a spell that still made the erinyes pause, reposition themselves. These were not, after all, pradixikai.
She’d no sooner cast the spell but she’d pointed the other wand straight up, shooting a fireball toward the fleshy ceiling. The ghost of the layer’s previous ruler screamed in the walls of the fingerbone tower as the magical flames ripped a hole through the tissue and bone. The erinyes had no more than gained their feet but Bryseis Kakistos launched herself in Sairché’s wings through the still-burning passage, up to the next floor. The wound in her belly screamed with pain, and a gush of new warmth soaked the bandage.
The Brimstone Angel paid it no mind and ran her borrowed body up the stairs, the thunderous hoofbeats of the bloodthirsty erinyes chasing her up to the peak of the fingerbone tower. She paused only long enough to lock the door, and then to wake the scrying mirror, to pull the image of the dark-haired paladin wandering the Underdark up to the surface.
DON’T LISTEN TO the voice when it changes, Ilstan told himself, over and over and over. Farideh’s warning, made into a sort of prayer, a kind of mantra. Don’t listen to the voice when it changes.
… The goal and gift of the gods above and below is the care and dedication of mortals below …
Don’t listen to the voice when it changes. Only that felt like it tied him to reality—all around, the world blurred and bled. Time slowed to a crawl, then blew past him in an instant.
… To care of the care, dedicate to the dedicated … but the greatest gods know, these are your children and not your children … They must grow and thrive alone, despite terrible odds and the gods must let them …
Don’t listen to the voice when it changes, Ilstan thought, magic prickling all up and down his sleeves. It was coming, his whole body braced for the shift that would signal the presence of the god of wizards receding and what might be his captor rising up. His captor. Farideh’s master.
Is the warning for you? Or for the god of sin?
For all his preparation, for all the times it had happened even since Farideh’s warning, Ilstan did not hear the change in Azuth’s voice at first, only as it continued did the mellifluousness, the coaxing tone come clear. Only as it continued did he coil away from it.
If you know, then he can surely find you … She has handed you over, bound and paid for to the king of the Hells—can you be sure she hasn’t?
The strange voice trailed off into silence, almost more terrible than its presence. Ilstan held his breath.
… What pain it is to see your children suffer … the god’s true voice returned, and Ilstan breathed a sigh of relief.…What wisdom it is to grant them their freedom …
Ilstan was dimly aware of the door to the cells opening, lost in the words of the god and the humming of the Weave, but when the guard stopped before his own prison, the key clanking in his own door’s lock, Ilstan shot to his feet, flattening himself against the far wall as if he might melt into the stone as the door swung wide.
“You can go,” the guard said, loud enough to crack the foundations of the city.
“Go where?” Ilstan asked.
The guard, a reddish-scaled man with jade rings in his jaw, only shrugged. “Go where you want. You’ve been cleared of all charges, so ‘not here’ is as far as my orders cover. We need these cells for whatever the Adjudicators bring back. Now move along, before I come in and drag you out.”
Ilstan crept through the long, stone hallways of the strange city, the eyes of dragonborn following his every step, wondering who this shabby, ragged, hunched, and haggard thing was. He felt as if he were curling into himself with every step.
Ilstan stopped in the middle of the hallway, a moment of clarity smoothing the shuddering passage of time, the shapeless edges of reality.
“I am a war wizard of Cormyr,” he said, softly to himself.
“Good-man?” the dragonborn guard said, the word weighted all wrong. “Good-man, keep moving, you’re not out yet.”
Ilstan stood straight, his spine crackling as it unkinked. He turned to face the guard, now looking down at the dragonborn’s scaly pate. “I am a war wizard of Cormyr,” he said, as calmly as he could. “And I’ve been falsely imprisoned. You will return my things—my wand, my spellbook, and my robes. And I expect an apology.”
The dragonborn guard gaped at him a moment. “Yes … all right. Um …” He looked around the hallway, as if he might find the spellbook on the floor there. “This way, please.”
… the past lifts the present into the light … and the present prepares for the future … but the past is never gone from us …
Settled on a bench, Ilstan watched the dragonborn passing back and forth, their steps in time with the rhythm of the god’s words, his breath slowing to match. He looked down at the sleeves of his robes, eyes ticking from rune to rune, reading the words stitched there. Find a wizard. Give the magic to another caster. Find Farideh. Rescue the Lord of Spells. End the Lady of Black Magic.
… the past lifts the present into the light … and the present prepares for the future … but the past is never gone from us …
The sensation of the spell that made the stitches ghosted through his thoughts. He frowned—he couldn’t remember stitching them, but clearly he had. He imagined the thread creating itself, finding its way through the cloth to shape these runes by force of the Weave and the god of wizards.
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