“Ah, the agreement. I’d forgotten,” Sairché said. “You can have her back in just a moment. I can’t say the curse won’t come with her, though—better you should think of a way around that.”
Lorcan let her go, leaping back. “Shit and ashes.”
Oh, have you caught up to us, cambion? Graz’zt said. It’s far more amusing still—don’t you agree? She comes to beg a boon and this is the sad little armor she claimed.
Four Zhentarim, their uniforms still intact, rushed Sairché and Lorcan. Lorcan flung a bolt of bruised-looking energy their way, slowing one enough to give him time to draw his sword. But Sairché calmly pointed her wand at the attackers. A line of spirits, doomed souls, boiled out of the air, meeting the line of sellswords head-on.
“You can be squeamish or you can be helpful,” the ghost he hadn’t been able to find said to Lorcan. “And if I were you, I’d keep in mind that, unlike Sairché, I have a vested interest in reuniting you and dear Farid—”
She broke off with a yelp as a bolt of lightning hit her in the back. A woman with short-cropped hair and a missing eye advanced grimly toward her. Before Bryseis Kakistos could retaliate, the wizard spat another word of power and a handful of bluish missiles streaked through the air, striking Sairché with a series of meaty smacks. Lorcan leaped back again as she turned—a stone sailed through the air, cracking against the side of his sister’s head.
The air near them shimmered again, the air jagged as if strands of reality were being pulled this way and that. Zela stepped free, followed by the curse of erinyes. Zela marked Sairché—or what was in her skin—pointing a sword at the cambion that immediately burst into flames.
“Oathbreaker,” she said, even as the rest of them took notice of their full battlefield. Without Zela’s orders, they reorganized, spreading out into a V.
Only a curse of erinyes? Graz’zt said in a pouty way. Don’t I warrant the full pradixikai?
Bryseis Kakistos scowled at the intrusion. Blood running down the side of her borrowed head, she shouted to Graz’zt, “You’ve made a worse enemy than you realize!”
He clucked his tongue, the sound of an executioner’s axe resounding through Lorcan’s skull. Prove it.
She plucked up Sairché’s portal ring and blew through it once, vanishing into the whirlwind that pulled her into the Nine Hells before Lorcan could grab hold of her again.
Graz’zt sighed. At least she brought me more interesting playthings. Look alive, cambion.
Lorcan turned to gauge his half sisters’ progress—
And found himself instead facing Dahl, storming toward him with a look of single-minded fury on his face. Driven by Graz’zt or driven by his own anger?—Lorcan had only a moment to curse before the Harper’s fist crashed into the center of his face.
Fifty-eight erinyes half sisters and there was nothing novel about getting punched in the face for Lorcan. His vision briefly crowded with sparks, his face went numb then hot, and the first thought in his head was to run like mad.
The second punch, Lorcan had his hands up, deflecting the strike. “He’s gotten to you, hasn’t he?”
Dahl’s answer was an uppercut that broke through Lorcan’s guard enough to knock his teeth together. Lorcan lashed out with one arm, striking the Harper openhanded. The edges of his promise to Farideh traced his thoughts like a knife. Careful, careful—he scrambled back. The Zhentarim had fallen into violent disarray—some attacking the erinyes, some still surging up the rocks toward Dahl and Lorcan, some tearing into each other, given the chance.
“Harper, you have all of a”—he ducked another punch—“shitting song to break out of this”—another hit slammed into his arm—“before I opt to test the limits of my promise to Farideh.”
Something in the paladin’s expression shifted, and for a moment, Lorcan thought he’d found an opening.
Then Dahl’s fist slammed into the unguarded center of his chest.
Suddenly, Lorcan was dying.
THE PRESSURE BEHIND Dumuzi’s eyes had grown steadily worse, until it was all he could do to concentrate on his breath, to avoid the sensation. You’re not Chosen, he thought. Not yet. Farideh watched him from the corner of her eye. Because you keep watching her, he told himself. That’s all.
“Are you all right?” Uadjit asked him as they descended to the market floor.
I see that the world is unstable again and you, who are the heirs of my children, are in grave danger … a storm is coming. “I’m only worried,” he said.
Uadjit considered him for a long moment, even as they hurried toward the war drummers, the monster that had walked among them all this time. “You can tell me if there’s something wrong.”
What would Uadjit say if he told her? If you are going to be Kepeshkmolik, then you must never refuse your duty like this again. The clan is only as strong as the weaknesses each of us shows. And how weakened would Kepeshkmolik be if Dumuzi became the Chosen of a god? “Just nerves,” he said. “I want to be useful.” Uadjit frowned again, but let him fall away from her.
You’re not Chosen, Dumuzi thought as they wound toward the drummers. This time of night, most everything was locked up tight, and what would have been opened had been shut by the cadence of the war drums. She never said you were.
“What were you talking to Farideh about?”
Dumuzi startled. When had Mehen come to walk beside him? “Just … I had a dream. Silly things.”
He could feel Mehen’s eyes boring into him. “So you told Fari?” he asked, in a skeptical way. He knows, Dumuzi thought. He has to.
“It seemed wise,” he said.
“Are you having the same sorts of dreams she does, then?” Mehen asked.
Dumuzi swallowed. “I don’t know what that means.”
Mehen snapped his teeth. “Karshoji gods. Not everyone wants your yoke.”
The pressure behind his eyes seemed to bloom into a deep sadness that poured through Dumuzi. Not a yoke, he thought, or maybe Enlil thought. It should not be a yoke. It should never have been a yoke. You are our children. We are not your masters.
Dumuzi thought of the tyrant-scion. “What if it’s not a yoke so much as a … an agreement?” he asked. “What if it’s more like a clanship? A qal agreement? An adoption?”
“Don’t listen to them,” Mehen said. “Whatever they’re selling.”
“Not all with power are tyrants,” Dumuzi murmured. “Not only blood makes a tribe. You can make your own family. You can tell your clan to piss into the wind.”
Mehen scowled. “What are you talking about?”
Dumuzi shook his head. “How am I supposed to know who to listen to when you all make sense?”
The war drums stood at the open end of the market, facing out onto the plain beyond. Standing at an angle, their stretched-sheepskin heads as wide as a firepit, the drums echoed with the furious beats of a score of drummers, a tattoo that sang orders out to the cavalry beyond and the citizenry within. An attack, far to the north, be ready. At every quarter of Djerad Thymar, Vayemniri would be waking, checking their arms and armor, assessing the forces they could muster if the attack reached the City-Bastion. We are strongest together. Vayemniri stand alone.
But the curl of anxiety building in the space behind Dumuzi’s eyes didn’t abate. We are strongest together, but what good is that if we march into battle unarmed?
The lead drummer’s rhythm faltered as he noticed the small army hurrying toward him.
“Where is Tarhun?” Arjhani demanded.
The lead drummer frowned. “He was just here.”
“Stop the drums,” Arjhani said. “Call them down, call them back. There’s been a mistake.”
“Where did he go?” Mehen said.
The drummer looked from one to the other. “Outside, and what about the Vanquisher’s order?”
“That wasn’t the Vanquisher,” Uadjit said.
Dumuzi looked over at Havilar. “Anything?”
Instead of answering, she walked out the
open side of the pyramid, into the streets beyond. Farideh chased after her, and Dumuzi found himself following, looking for the shape of the demon, or another Vayemniri. The air tasted like lightning, and whether it came from his own throat or the clouds that seemed to gather on the horizon, he couldn’t have said.
Havilar stopped at the edge of the next street. “It was here,” she said. “It’s somewhere … I can’t …”
Farideh yanked the black axe free of its place at her belt, searching the sky. The moon, nearly full, had only just breached the horizon, sailing slowly over the scattered buildings surrounding Djerad Thymar, painting a silver path across the grasslands beyond. She held the axe at an angle, trying to catch the beams of moonlight just so. Dumuzi watched, his breath caught in his teeth—maybe it would work, maybe it would show nothing. Maybe Farideh would be the bearer. Maybe it would be just an axe.
A flash.
A flicker—a bronze-scaled man, broad-faced, broad-shouldered. Stooped? Reaching? The image was gone before Dumuzi could tell, before he could see any hint of where the Vanquisher was. Farideh spat a curse, trying to catch the moon just so again.
Again, the Vanquisher; again, he was gone before anyone could make sense of him, his strange posture. Farideh looked up at him.
“Try again,” he said.
“Take the axe, pothachi,” Havilar yanked the axe from her sister and shoved it into Dumuzi’s hands. “This is what your dream was about.”
Dumuzi’s hands closed around the axe—it was a weapon, after all, you didn’t let a weapon drop. A strange jolt went through him, as if all the muscles of his arms and back had twitched together. It felt warm in his hands.
Tapping the roof of his mouth, he tilted the glassy blade toward the moon.
A flash.
A flicker.
A clutch of panic in his chest, and the pressure behind his eyes seemed to spread.
You want to be an ally, he thought. Show me. Help me. Something terrible is about to happen. Help me, and I’ll know we are comrades.
The full moon’s light poured down on him, painting a path across the plain, the way it had for Thymara so long ago. There was no voice in his thoughts, however, no indication that a god would take him by the hand—
A flash. A flicker. An image.
The Vanquisher’s form scaling a hill of stone, the edge of him traced in the moonlight.
Dumuzi turned. The dark shape of a body, crawling up Djerad Thymar stood out from the fainter shadows, two-thirds of the way to the platform at the peak.
Hurry! This time, Dumuzi felt sure it was the god. Listen. Listen, and I can help you.
“Up!” he cried. “It’s climbing the pyramid.” The shortest route to the peak—and without thinking, he began to climb after it. I am listening, he told the god seeping into his head. I am listening if you can help me. But no one else takes the yoke. No one else makes this agreement.
Anguish again, frustration—not a yoke, not a yoke. The tyrant-scion—a name, Gilgeam—the five-headed dragon queen—anger and anguish. How badly the world hurts because of ones like them.
Dumuzi gritted his teeth and sprinted for the pyramid’s stones. He thought of his dead friends, and his new ones, his clans and the people at the pyramid’s top who didn’t know what was coming for them. His father shouted at him, but he ignored it. Give me the yoke, I will take it if this stops.
The god grew calm behind his eyes.
Climb, Ushamgal-lú, and I will climb with you, Enlil whispered in Dumuzi’s thoughts. Your heart is strong enough for both of us.
As DAHL’S FIST struck Lorcan, the same surge of power went through him as when Graz’zt had slammed the ball of magic into his own chest. It sucked the air from his lungs, the pulse from his blood, the strength from his marrow.
The cambion fared worse. His black eyes widened, the breath going out of him. For a moment, every vein in his face stood out, a tracery of black lines like tributaries on a hideous map. A web of grayish, clinging magic seemed to coat him, to drag through him. Lorcan gave an ugly grunt and convulsed once as the spell seemed to pull something vital out of him. His legs buckled, sending him to his knees.
Oghma’s bloody papercuts. Dahl took a stumbling step back.
“I want you to promise,” Farideh had said, “that if he doesn’t try to hurt you, you’re not going to try and hurt him.”
You haven’t hurt him, the demon lord’s voice echoed through Dahl’s head. You’ve evened the field.
No, Dahl thought. The cambion regained his feet, but looked like little more than a corpse. If he dies, Dahl thought, you might have doomed her.
“You have to get out of here,” Lorcan rasped. “You fall to him, and I lose my head.”
“I’m not making any more deals with you.”
“You already made this one,” Lorcan said, as though every word were an effort, but stopping would be impossible. “You stupid bastard—you keep your soul by holding to the deal, it’s not my shitting fault. You lose it to a demon lord, and you might guess we’re both damned!”
The demon lord. The pull down to some base, animal version of himself. Fighting his way out only to be swamped under again by the sight of Lorcan.
Lorcan reached out a hand. “I’ll pull you out.”
His brothers. His grandmother. Mira. The Zhentarim—he looked back over his shoulder at the seething mass of them. Thirty-five? Forty? He looked down at the scroll, still crushed in his fist. Too many to teleport, he thought. Too many to save. He found Thost and Bodhar and Sessaca in the mass of bodies between the rock shelf and the line of erinyes pressing toward Graz’zt.
The demon lord laughed, and every hair along Dahl’s spine stood on end. Zela, Zela, deadly dealer. More like mantle-stealer, now, eh? When’d your mother fall from grace? Same time Asmodeus turned your lot into boar-faced land-things?
More interesting playthings, Dahl thought. He shoved the crumpled scroll into Lorcan’s hands. “Cast it. Cast it as soon as you see me coming back, or I will throw myself in front of that godsbedamned monster, drag his attention over here, and damn us both.”
As many people as you can grab, he thought, drawing his sword. But it wasn’t as simple as just hauling bodies nearer to Lorcan. He couldn’t pull himself up out of Graz’zt’s thrall unless his thoughts ran to Farideh. Unless he thought about the one he loved? The one he would sacrifice for? If he couldn’t get them out of that dark place, then they couldn’t stop following the whims of this tyrannical demon lord.
Sessaca must have followed him when Lorcan appeared—she was much closer to the shelf than they’d been. She gave him the dagger eyes as he approached.
“Granny,” Dahl shouted over the chaos, “think about Grandda. Think about Lamhail. You have to—”
“Oh Watching Gods, Dahl, don’t waste your time,” Sessaca said. “He’s got no hold on me—I’ve got nothing to prove. Help me up the rocks and then talk your brothers down.”
He lifted Sessaca up onto the relative safety of the shelf. Nothing to prove, nothing to prove—of course it’s not as simple as it seemed, he thought. Letting his thoughts fall to his brothers—the family he’d sacrifice everything for—had done nothing but rile him and bloody Bodhar’s nose.
Not Farideh, he thought, dodging an emaciated Zhentarim’s wild strike. You don’t need to prove anything to her. When Lorcan had mentioned her, his thoughts had even cleared briefly—he’d wanted to crush Lorcan, but not for anyone’s sake but his own.
That’s the key. Someone you care about, someone you have nothing to prove to.
Thost stood over one of Grathson’s sellswords—a sallow man with a torn ear and a newly broken leg—a rock in his hands. Dahl leaped over the sellsword, shoving his brother backward as he raised the rock. Thost almost toppled.
Dahl grabbed the outer edge of his sleeve, racking his brain. “What would Dellora say if she saw you like this?”
Thost’s eyes narrowed, his lip curled. “Don’t you stlarning start—I know yo
u’ve got eyes for her.” He pulled the rock back and swung it toward Dahl.
Dahl darted out of the way, backing into another of the Zhentarim. The erinyes were far too close for comfort. “When I was six, plinth-head!” he shouted.
Gods’ books, that was it: “Like Wilmot is! Six like Wilmot is! What would Wil think if he saw you, throwing rocks at an injured man? Screaming about your baby brother’s tenday-long crush on his new sister-in-law?”
Thost startled, as if he’d woken from a nightmare; stared, as if he were suddenly seeing the cavern around them. “Wilmot,” he said. “Hrast … Dahl—”
“Help me get to Bodhar,” Dahl said. “Keep thinking about your kids.”
Bodhar had gotten into a three-way battle with one of Xulfaril’s favorites and a bedraggled man with shaggy hair—as if all three had intended to make a run at the pale-skinned erinyes nearby, now engaged with a pair of casters, and none would share the glory.
“Bodhar!” Dahl shouted. His brother made no move to acknowledge his presence, only took another swing at the bedraggled Zhentarim, dagger in hand.
“Bodhar, is this what Sabrelle would want to see?” Dahl tried.
That time Bodhar heard, but unlike Thost, Bodhar only turned, eyes wild. His free hand flew out, striking Dahl across the chest with his forearm, faster than Dahl would have credited his brother. “Stlarn off,” Bodhar said. “You think she wouldn’t believe her father has a chance in a fight? Of course you would, ‘little’ brother. Think you’re the big man, too good for the rest of us?” He lashed out with the knife this time, fierce but clumsy. Dahl grabbed the wrist, knocking his strike aside and twisting his arm away—Bodhar moved with him, slippery as an eel, forcing Dahl to release him.
“Meri’s going to cry her damned eyes out if we have to tell her you’re dead down here,” Thost said. “ ’Specially if you die of acting like an ass.”
Bodhar seemed to forget his previous opponents, eyeing his brothers as if they were his attackers now. “Don’t you tell my wife I’m the foolish one.”
Shit, Dahl thought. If Bodhar’s kids didn’t pull him out, if Meribelle didn’t pull him out, what was left? It struck him that he might not know his brother well enough to save him.
Ashes of the Tyrant Page 53
