by Erin Evans
“I’m only tired,” Lorcan said. “I’ll have to return. Kulaga isn’t on our side, which means he might well try to turn the other collectors against us.” He pulled her hand to his chest. “It would be safest if we didn’t separate.”
No—whatever part of her wanted to give in, to go with this Lorcan who was almost sweet, almost gentle, the greater part of her was sure. Though not cruel enough to say so. “Go and lie down. I’ll stay up and make sure the room’s secure.”
As Lorcan limped into the other room, Farideh wondered how long this would last, how long he would be … so near to human. How long some part of her would want that, want him.
How long she could manage without finding a way to drag the devil in him back from wherever he’d lost it and get the spells she desperately needed.
PART III
THE PACT
15 Flamerule, the Year of the Spur (1348 DR)
Seven miles beyond Bloodstone Pass
• • •
If Bisera’d had her way, she would have left Alyona at the temple of Selûne in Darmshall, far, far away from the cave sunk into a cold rock face and the old man with the ram’s horns looking them both over like they were slaves in the market.
If she’d had her way, she thought, aware of Alyona’s arm twined around hers, she would have wanted her far, far from here, not holding her hand while she begged a boon she didn’t quite understand.
“I don’t need another whore. Or two,” the old tiefling said. “Those rituals are finished.”
Ever easy, Caisys clucked his tongue. “And I don’t undercut my own business, Titus. She’s not looking for coin. She’s looking for a path to more magic.”
Titus tugged his chest-length beard. “How’s that? You think this is simple? You think this is magic for gangly girls with soft hands?” He fixed Bisera with a wild eye. “Bet the most terrible thing you’ve ever seen is a hungry rat.”
“You’d lose that bet,” Bisera said. Alyona held her arm more tightly.
“Titus, you’ve said yourself,” Caisys went on, “you need an apprentice. She could be your apprentice.”
Titus snorted. “I said I need a clever apprentice, not some dewy-eyed girl who can’t go anywhere without having her hand held.”
Bisera grit her teeth. “You’re trying to make me angry. See if I want this badly enough. But since you haven’t even bothered to name what you’re offering, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. I have better things to do with my time than simper and beg to a procurer in a cave who has yet to show even a spark of magic.”
A small, cruel smile curved the old man’s mouth. “Well, well. So she has a little pluck at least.”
Bisera shot a look at Caisys. She did not have pluck. “And what do you have, old man?”
“An agreement,” Titus said, dark eyes glittering. “Sit down, plucky. You want magic, I’ll show you magic.”
“I never said he was friendly,” Caisys said, as the old man busied himself with strange powders and crystals. “But he’s no dabbler. Used to be a sellsword before he took to magic too. You could learn a great deal.”
“What the hrast does ‘an agreement’ mean?” Bisera demanded.
“A pact,” the old man called back. “An agreement with powers greater than our own—greater, at least, on this plane. I daresay we have skills they would find, at the least, novel.” He set the crystals in a rough circle, where the remnants of some glittering powder remained on the stone’s rough surface. A repeat application of the same glittering powder followed.
“What sort of being?” Alyona asked.
“A demon lord.”
A twist of anxiety curled around Bisera’s heart. “You’re going to call down a demon lord in this cave?”
“Of course not.” Titus eyed her and sniffed. “You haven’t proven yourself worthy enough for that introduction.”
As Titus finished his preparations, Bisera kept her eyes on the center of the circle, imagining what sort of creature might appear there—all horns and flames, scales and tentacles, or all too human—and what she would do. Bet the most terrible thing you’ve ever seen is a hungry rat. She couldn’t quail. She couldn’t so much as flinch.
“This is a bad idea,” Alyona murmured in her ear.
“It’s not so dangerous as it sounds,” Caisys said mildly. “It’s an alliance. A transaction.”
“What’s the price?” Alyona asked.
“Leaves a mark on your soul,” Titus said, lighting candles with a punk. “Same as anything. You want, they’ll make a steeper trade. Give up your soul wholly.” He blew out the stick.
“Don’t go for that,” Caisys said.
Bisera moved a little closer to her sister. The casualness with which they talked about giving up a soul, letting yourself corrupt, made her feel small and young and untested. She made herself stand still as strange words poured out of Titus’s mouth and a column of sickly light flowed up out of the circle.
In the center of the circle, a creature of ethereal beauty hovered. She held the shape of a winged woman, a copper-skinned angel with tattered wings. But her eyes leaked shadow, and when she smiled, Bisera fought the urge to cover her bare throat. Succubus.
“Well met, Metynoma,” Titus said. “You grace us with your presence.”
“Titus,” she said, a voice like a dirge and a hymn all at once. “And Caisys—what a pleasant surprise.” Her shadow-eyes flicked over Bisera, over Alyona pressed close behind her, murmuring a nearly inaudible prayer. “What have you brought for me, Titus?”
“A supplicant,” Titus said. “She says she wants magic. A pact.”
Somehow the succubus’s eyes darkened. “Easily done.”
“I don’t know that I like your price,” Bisera said.
“Everything has a price.”
“And my soul is too steep for something I could gain by keeping at my spellbooks.”
Metynoma laughed, a sound that made Bisera’s veins ache. “The powers of the Abyss for a tiefling soul? I’d say that’s a cheap deal indeed. Or are there so many gods clamoring for tiefling souls, driving up the price?”
Alyona’s prayer dragged through Bisera’s thoughts. “If it’s dear enough that demons demand it, then I think it’s something I ought to consider my options regarding. Not everyone in this room is a copper-caught slattern.”
Titus went rigid. Deep in the succubus’s shadow-eyes, a spark began to grow. “Oh Titus, I think I don’t like your gift. I don’t think my lord Graz’zt will appreciate her at all.”
“Clearly she speaks of Caisys,” Titus blurted. “She cannot mean you.”
“She knows what she means.” Metynoma drifted toward the edges of the circle, flames between her fingertips. “And so do you.” Bisera held her ground, even though every part of her wanted to flee the encroaching demon. The succubus’s eyes glowed like coals now, shadows pouring off like smoke.
Alyona’s arms folded around her sister from behind, and a sudden flood of cool, silvery magic surrounded Bisera. The sound of a woman, very far away, singing in a language Bisera didn’t understand. The succubus flinched away from the moon goddess’s protection, flapping back to the farther edge of the circle.
“Go!” Caisys hissed, and before Bisera could protest, Alyona was pulling her toward the entrance, running from the demon and the warlock, through the cave, out into the cold, clear night. Bisera half expected the screech of the succubus to chase them, the demon itself to come flapping after. But there was only silence, and the knowledge that she’d fled.
“You cannot do that again,” Alyona panted. “Please—we’ll find something else for you. But not that.”
Bisera folded her arm around her sister’s. “Never that,” she swore. For all of Titus’s bravado, one thing was certain: The pact he bore was nothing like he painted it, an alliance of equals, a mutually beneficial transaction. He was beholden to that fickle creature, little better than a slave. And Bisera would be no one’s slave.
• • �
�
5
29 Nightal, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR)
Djerad Thymar, Tymanther
FROM THE PEAK OF THE PYRAMID, DUMUZI LOOKS OUT OVER TYMANTHER, FARTHER than his eyes could ever see on their own. There on the shores of the Alamber Sea, Djerad Kethendi shines like a polished pearl. But there, flowing toward it like a swarm of ants over the land, the army of the King of Dust.
Enlil stands beside him, sets a hand upon his shoulder. Dumuzi blinks and the world shifts—the world as it once was. A city sprouts from the ground, whitewashed sandstone in neat blocky rows. Unthalass, Dumuzi thinks.
He will go there, Enlil’s voice comes, his Draconic without hesitation or stiffness. Mark it.
“It’s too close to Djerad Kethendi to be sure,” Dumuzi said.
He will come for Djerad Kethendi as well, Enlil agrees. But first he will claim what was stolen from him.
“Is there something there?”
His pride. Our past. Another time, another version of the world falls over this one like a curtain, the sea beyond, glittering in the sunlight. Boats move across its shimmering surface like dark-backed beetles. We came here when we defeated Imaskar, when we wrenched our stolen peoples from their grasp. We too came here from another world, our children stolen by another kind of tyrant, made to slave under an unfamiliar sun with no way to reach us.
Dumuzi watches the city of whitewashed clay rise up where the boats beach, years passing in the space of a heartbeat. “What happened?”
We found a way through, Enlil says darkly. And our children were slaves no more. The curtain of the past vanishes, and again they look upon the plains of Tymanther.
The army shifts and moves like a single being. Ten thousand people, swept from the old world and into this one, and Dumuzi imagines how different everything must seem to them, assuming the ancestor stories are true. Do they know what to eat? Do they know how to find water? When they look up at the sky stretching over them, blue and bright, does it warm them or terrify them in its strangeness?
Dumuzi folds his hands together. “These people—these humans from Unther—they’re your real children. Why aren’t you saving them instead?”
Enlil shakes his head. It doesn’t work that way. You’re as true as they were, as they may yet be.
“But they’re the ones you brought here, originally.”
Their descendants, Enlil corrected.
“They look like you did,” Dumuzi pointed out.
The black-scaled dragonborn only shakes his head. How I look means little. Do you understand what you did? Enlil asks. How you saved me? How you made this possible? Right now, those people wish to end you and yours. We have an agreement—and I would not forsake you. He considers the wide expanse of Tymanther’s plains, the sunset drowning the grasses in rubies and golds. But do not forget: Gilgeam is a tyrant. Not all who follow him do so willingly. There may be those among the army of the King of Dust who belong with us as well.
Dumuzi follows the line of Kuhri Ternhesh, winding toward Djerad Kethendi and the Vorelheching Kethendia. The River Alamber, Dumuzi translates. The Alamber Sea.
Unthalass, Enlil says. City of Gems. The ruins do not shift and become the city of whitewashed clay and stone, not this time. They remain a puzzle unassembled, a treasure buried in its own rubble. Across the water, Djerad Kethendi looks on, waiting for war.
Dumuzi startled awake, sitting in a chair in the Verthisathurgiesh enclave, a little nook with a bust of a long-dead ancestor overlooking it. He rubbed his eyes—that happened more and more, the sudden drop into a dreamworld, a place where he could speak to the god. It unnerved him—and yet he kept sitting down in quiet places, kept closing his eyes instead of fighting it.
This, he thought, standing and stretching, is why everyone is avoiding you.
He looked into the elder’s audience chamber, searching for Matriarch Anala but finding only the ancient dragon skull looking down on him with disapproval. He went to the guest quarters where Farideh and Mehen were staying and found only half-eaten farothai, cold and stiff and stale, and the door to what had been Brin’s room shut and locked, the wizard’s muffled, muttering voice the only thing to stir the silence. He went upstairs to his father Arjhani’s rooms at last, because this was something he ought to do, but found them blessedly empty as well. He blew out a breath in shameful relief.
“Dumuzi,” a voice near to him said. He turned and found his cousin, Lanitha, leading a broad-shouldered, copper-scaled man with steel antler piercings in his temples. Fenkenkabradon, Dumuzi thought. The clan of the Lance Defenders’ leader—and Arjhani’s superior—Fenkenkabradon Dokaan.
“Is Arjhani here?” Lanitha asked.
“Is Dokaan all right?” Dumuzi asked, almost in the same breath. The commander had been seriously wounded battling a demon not a few days before. Although he’d survived where others hadn’t, a wound like that could turn bad quickly.
The Fenkenkabradon regarded Dumuzi as though he’d just belched lightning all over himself. “I’ve come to speak with Verthisathurgiesh Arjhani,” he said. “If he’s not here, I’ll have to return another time.” Before either of the younger dragonborn could protest, he turned on his heel and left.
“What was that about?” Lanitha said. Then she turned swiftly to Dumuzi, teeth gapping. “Oh. Is it … I heard a rumor that you …”
“I called a god down in the Vanquisher’s Hall,” Dumuzi said. “It’s true.”
Lanitha’s green eyes widened. “Iskdara says she saw the lightning wall holding back the Blue Fire. You did that?”
The god’s presence pressed painfully upon Dumuzi’s eyes. “Enlil did it.”
Lanitha shook her head. “Who is that?”
“The god,” Dumuzi said. “He wants to join us.”
“Best of luck to him,” Lanitha said. “I can’t imagine the elders are going to be pleased with a god interloping.”
“Karshoj to what the elders think,” Dumuzi said irritably. Lanitha gave a short nervous laugh. “Sorry,” Dumuzi amended. “I do care, but they’re being silly. Iskdara told you—the Blue Fire would have destroyed Djerad Thymar. Enlil saved us.”
“Suppose. Well … tell him thank you,” Lanitha said. “But, Dumuzi, I’ll tell you, when your qallim agreement comes up, you might want to have this settled.”
Dumuzi blinked—a god in his head, the planes reshuffling, an army heading for Djerad Kethendi, and Lanitha was reminding him to think about his marriage prospects. “I think I’ll worry about that when the Vayemniri in general are settled,” he said, a little bluntly. “Do you know why the Fenkenkabradon wanted to see Arjhani?”
Lanitha shrugged. “Lance Defenders’ business I assume. Maybe Dokaan’s faring poorly. Or maybe they’re thinking of having Dokaan stand for Vanquisher, and he needs a replacement.”
“They’re taking votes for Vanquisher?”
Lanitha cast her eyes back down the hall. “I heard Matriarch Anala pushing for it. She has the Churirajachi and the Yrjixtilex in line with her, at least. An ‘interim’ position, she says.”
Though who would say when the interim had ended? That would depend a great deal on the Vanquisher, the clans that elected them, and how badly things had changed because of the Blue Fire’s return.
It would depend, Dumuzi thought, descending a staircase, on what you manage to do before the King of Dust gets here. He went back to the audience chamber, to await Anala.
Dumuzi considered the polished red floor, shining with the reflections of weapons hung on the walls, wielded by past elders. The shadow of the red dragon skull behind him. Symbols of his father’s clan’s roots, their traditions. Not a sign of any god among them. Dumuzi knew of people who had thrown in with gods—adherents of the Platinum Cadre, worshipers of Bahamut; the rumor of a cousin’s friend’s clan-mate bewitched by the Dragon Queen; warriors who had taken the powers granted by Torm or the Red Knight, maunthreki gods who might accept a “scalie” paladin. No one in his family
. No one whom he still knew. Not every chance at god-worship had a bad ending, not every clan abhorred it, but enough. Kepeshkmolik, for certain. He thought of the expression on his mother’s features, the distance. He thought of Lanitha’s warning he might not have any marriage prospects, no chance at a normal life, when this was through. Would anyone stand beside him when all this was done?
Would it ever be “done”?
Does it matter? he thought, resting his elbows on his knees. Both Vayemniri cities were in danger, the homesteads were largely lost—who cared if he had friends or a family or anything if it meant he could keep his people alive?
Those things are much of your life, the god’s voice said, a note of sadness to it.
Dumuzi scratched a loose scale from his knee—he’d forgotten Enlil. I’m not the sort of champion you need, he thought.
We are both learning, the god said. I have asked you to look at the world in a way you never have before. I spoke to many, and only you listened—I have never assumed this would be easy for you. Still, he added, time is of the essence.
Half of the enormous entry doors swung open, and Mehen entered, frowning when he saw Dumuzi. “Anala’s still gone?”
“I haven’t seen her,” Dumuzi said. “Did Farideh come back yet?”
“No.” Mehen came to stand in front of him. “How are you holding up?”
Dumuzi started laughing—he couldn’t help it. Mehen made a noise in the back of his throat as if he were annoyed, and sat down on the dais beside Dumuzi. “Your mother is worried about you.”
“She probably should be,” Dumuzi said. “I need worshipers for him. And soon.”
Mehen’s nostrils flared. “We’ve never needed a god before. We’ll manage.”
“We’ve never faced another god before,” Dumuzi pointed out.
“Pouring out of the cracks, they are. Centipedes and gods.” Mehen considered the carvings along the wall. “He give you any ideas about how you’re supposed to establish a church among unbelievers before that army gets near enough we need a pet god of our own?”
