by Erin Evans
“Oshvith!” Dahl shouted down at the dragonborn, pointing toward the giants. Run. He leaped across the narrowest part of the trench, over to the opposite side where his brothers had climbed out and were pulling dragonborn up after them. One of Gilgeam’s priests, an older man with a crooked scar across his cheek, ran at Dahl as he landed, his staff of office swung like a weapon. Dahl caught hold of it and yanked hard, pulling the priest toward him, then forcing him down into the trench.
Two soldiers followed, battered blades out, defending their leader even in the midst of the sudden, wild battle. Dahl dodged as one curved sword cut toward him, losing his balance and landing on the rocky ground. The second missed her mark as Thost slammed bodily into the bearer, knocking her into the first and overbalancing both down into the trench with the others. Thost caught Dahl’s hand and yanked him to his feet.
Overhead, giant bats circled. A scattering of clay pots plummeted from the sky—the air expanded with a distant whoosh where they struck, the unmistakable sound of alchemist’s fire. Screams ran through the camp, even as the horn blasts kept coming, even as regiments reformed around their demonic allies, choosing one enemy or the other.
Bodhar kneeled beside Mira, fighting with the knots tied into her shackles. Mira for her part had slipped free the manacle on her left wrist and was hissing directions at Bodhar. Another swordsman, one of the guardians arrayed around Gilgeam, broke free of his station, drawing his blade. Mira swung her manacled wrist up at him, catching him in the face hard. He pulled away and Mira snatched the dagger from his boot, sawing into the rope as Dahl hit him from behind. A pot of alchemist’s fire hit the ground beside the trench, splashing indiscriminately out onto soldier and demon and structure alike. Dahl and the soldier both leaped apart, away from the flames.
“Enough of this!” Dahl heard Gilgeam snarl. The rise of magic all around him stirred the traces of Graz’zt’s curse on him, and a part of him urged Dahl to go back, to stop Gilgeam with a sword to the throat. The Son of Victory clutched the amulet around his neck, spitting out a sharp, venomous word. A flight of succubi with cruel claws launched from half-a-dozen places through the crowd, aiming for the giant bats.
“You have to follow me,” Dahl told the others, even as the soldier gained his feet again. “We have to run.”
Another horn blast—this one three sharp bursts and two sustained, then repeated—this one close. Dahl looked back at Namshita, around whom a dozen warriors had stilled. Beyond, even in the battle, the horn call echoed, more signals repeated. The soldier standing over Bodhar faltered, looked back at the sikati.
One of the two thousand.
“Come on,” Dahl said to him, beckoning with both hands.
The air around Gilgeam grew dense, electric. He seemed to pulse with energy, a pulse that felt as if it would draw Dahl down into it, drain him dry. The Son of Victory was like a void, like the space before an explosion, like the air between thunderbolts. He cut both hands through the air and a blade of power sliced across the field, hamstringing a giant and tearing through the Kethendan dragonborn.
“End them all!” Gilgeam bellowed.
“Stop him!” Zillah shouted, leaping down from the dais toward Dahl.
The soldier stared at Dahl, frozen. Dahl cursed—no time, no time at all. He ran, hoping his brothers and Mira would follow. Hoping the soldier would choose to escape. Hoping he could outrun the lamia. Hoping he was right.
Tjáting, he thought. The center of his mind took on a warm glow, the unmistakable notice of the god of knowledge. Tjáting. Lord of All Knowledge, Binder of What Is Known, this had better not be a test.
In the chaos of battle, no one took much notice of Dahl running through their lines. The leaping, living sparks rampaged blindly through the Untherans. One of the goristros had cut the leg out from under one of the stone giants. A pair of female giants, lines of magic making spirals over their faces, pulled mirror-glass butterflies out of the air and sent the whirlwind of them against the attackers. Dahl veered away from the deadly wind, but the giantess creating the butterflies noticed him. She slammed her club down in his path, and it was the practice of a lifetime that made Dahl run toward her feet, around the weapon.
Make my mind open, my eye clear, my heart true, my feet stlarning faster than this! If even a fraction of the two thousand ran for the giants, he had to make sure it didn’t look like an attack.
“Tjáting!” Dahl shouted. The giantess pulled her club up, puzzled. “Tjáting!”
“Somni!” she shouted. “Forer!”
The giantess with the harp on her belly caught sight of him and frowned. The gust of wind dropped her back on the grasslands with a thunderous boom.
“Tjáting!” Dahl shouted. “Tjáting! Tjáting!”
All around the woman, giants looked back at her, distracted from their attack by her sudden stillness. She looked down, taking in the humans rushing toward her, hands in the air. Dahl’s heart felt as though it were about to burst out of his throat, but still he ran at her.
Thirty feet from where she stood, the giantess nodded once. “Tjáting,” she said as if agreeing.
The gem at her throat flared and every line carved into her body flooded with the strange magic. Suddenly a silvery net appeared, surrounding Dahl and all the people who fled beside him, as though they were fish in a weir. All around them, other giants flared with the same magic, and more nets appeared, ensnaring the escaping Untherans. The giantess pulled the net taut, and suddenly Dahl was swept from his feet, falling backward into a tangle of bodies. Above him he saw a giant bat circling, harried by a pair of succubi, saw the bursts of angry magic smiting it out of the sky, saw the dragonborn rider falling to the ground like a tossed rag doll.
The light all around him flared, taking on the same strange iridescence as the magic in the carvings, and suddenly there were no bats, no magic. Another jolt, and just before Dahl’s head cracked into someone else’s, he realized what he’d done: left the Kethendan dragonborn behind, without even the distraction of the giants to save them from Gilgeam’s wrath.
PART IV
THE DEVIL
6 Kythorn, the Year of the Dragon (1352 DR)
Aglarond
• • •
“I found this for you.”
Bisera looked up from sharpening her daggers. Phrenike, the wizard they’d taken on back in Sarshel, stood over her holding out a book, part of her take from the haul. Bound in a veiny sort of leather and decorated with beaten copper, it would fetch a few silvers at least.
“What is it?” Bisera asked.
The wizard’s deep blue eyes twinkled as she sat down beside Bisera. “A little bird told me you might be interested in fiends.”
Phrenike, like Caisys, hid her ancestry well, but there was something foxlike in the taper of her face, her perpetual smirk that suggested something darker in her blood. The wizard had joined them only a few months prior, but she’d proved a decent investment after the last caster to join their party of adventurers had disappeared in the night, halfway to Tsurlagol, along with half their treasure.
“Stlarning sorcerers,” Jefensi had muttered, and swore if they took up another one, he and his axe would be the next to disappear. So a wizard it was.
A mediocre wizard, Bisera thought, with the kind of jealousy she’d never, ever let show. When she’d at last swallowed her pride a few tendays back and asked Phrenike if she could teach Bisera some midlevel spells, the brown-haired woman had shrugged.
“I don’t teach,” she said simply. “Don’t have the knack for it.”
What had first felt like a slap soon revealed itself to be an unfortunate truth: Phrenike was as mired in her circumstances as Bisera. She might become a better wizard—if, much like Bisera, she could find the right teacher—but she would never be brilliant.
Bisera flipped through the pages. Illustrations of fiends snarled at her, prodded into imaginary motion by the firelight. Here, a spell to summon a devilish familiar. There, a circle to
bind a devil in place with promises. Bisera ran a light hand over the ink work, studying the wicked-looking creature in the circle, all bat wings and horns and muscle.
“Caisys told you that,” she said. “About the fiends.”
“Alyona,” Phrenike said. “So to be fair, it wasn’t so much that she said I should give you the book, as that I shouldn’t.” Her eyes glittered. “Trade for keeping me from treading on that godsbedamned pressure plate.”
Bisera looked across the fire at Alyona, bandaging Jefensi’s arm and wearing a grim expression. The symbol of Selûne around her neck shone with an unnatural light, as her attention was on the wound. But Bisera knew her sister was acutely aware of Phrenike beside her and the book in her hands.
“Don’t use any of that too close to the rest of us, eh?” Phrenike said. “Nobody wants to find out great-grandpa owed a debt to the Nine Hells.”
Bisera looked down at the book again. Not demons this time—devils. Less fickle. Maybe less demanding. Maybe more. She could manage a protective circle at least—though not much beyond that. Not enough that Bisera could be their caster.
“Why’d you take this one?”
“It had some lovely cabochons on the cover. I popped them off first—there’s a jeweler in Furthinghome that I know. He can make the ruby ones into earrings, and sell the rest.”
“You never thought about using the book?”
Phrenike shrugged. “Why bother?”
Alyona finished her ministrations and stood, heading for the edge of the clearing. Bisera watched for a moment, then glanced at Caisys, still sitting beside the fire and Jefensi. He raised an eyebrow. Bisera ignored him and excused herself, the book of devils still under her arm.
Alyona had retreated to the edge of a cliff near their campsite, where Selûne, her face just beginning to turn away, shone down on the sisters. Alyona held her face in her hands.
“Are you all right?” Bisera asked.
For a long moment, Alyona said nothing. Bisera moved closer to her, rubbing a hand over her twin’s back. “Is it Caisys?”
“I think we should go back to Darmshall,” Alyona said.
Bisera snorted. “Why in the world would we go anywhere near that shithole?” Alyona lifted her head but wouldn’t look at Bisera. A knot of worry looped itself around her stomach.
“These aren’t good people we’ve fallen in with,” Alyona said quietly. “I mean … I understand why—the world can be a cruel place. I don’t … maybe I don’t blame them. But I wish … I just think we shouldn’t poison ourselves so willingly.”
“Are you including your brightheart in that?” Bisera asked.
“ ‘The Priestess and the Turncoin.’ Sounds like a bawdy tavern tale.”
Alyona’s cheeks turned scarlet. “We’re friends. And whatever Caisys is—”
“He is literally a whore.”
“It’s better than your new bosom companion the lazy wicked wizard!” Alyona said. “She’s the worst of them—completely without morals and she dived right in grabbing up treasure despite the fact that she hardly lifted a damned finger clearing that tomb.”
“So which is it?” Bisera said. “She ought to cast the wicked spells or she oughtn’t?”
Alyona stood. “This is what I mean,” she said sadly. “This isn’t the right life for us, don’t you see? I miss … I miss us being a pair, a team. This is driving us apart. Even Caisys.”
Bisera looked away, up toward the moon. If anything was driving her from Alyona, it was the damned moon goddess and her edicts, the way her priestesses fed Alyona’s worst fears and tried to pull Alyona down, and Bisera with her.
“We are not going back to Darmshall,” she started.
“Then where?” Alyona said. “I’ll go, but it can’t be with these people. Not anymore.”
Bisera shook her head. “You’re upset. We can talk about this in the morning.”
“No,” Alyona said firmly. “Now. Decide.”
“I won’t,” Bisera said. “Tomorrow. We’ll talk tomorrow. It will all be all right, I promise.” She embraced her sister, Alyona stiff and unyielding in her arms.
Bisera didn’t return to the camp but worked her way deeper into the woods, to a sheltered spot beside some tumbled ruins, the remains of some elven village. Alyona would calm down—if nothing else, she was too smitten with Caisys to mean it when she said she’d leave. Give her time to cool off and there would be better options out there than Darmshall and weakness.
Settling down beside the stone remains of a granary, Bisera broke a sunrod and began to read.
• • •
By an hour before dawn, Bisera had finished, stolen back to the camp, and swiped a few components from Phrenike’s pack. Alyona was right about one thing—Phrenike wasn’t dedicated enough to care too much at the loss of a little silver and such, so long as she got her share. She went back to the ruins, to a nice flat place, and cast her first summoning, her brain boiling with old ideas and new. Whatever Alyona thought, she wasn’t making choices rashly. Not tonight anyway.
The creature in the circle reminded her of the succubus she had faced down in the cavern of gray-bearded Titus all those years ago. Feminine, with skin the color of a stone and feathery blood-red wings. She wore armor, though, and a helm that looked like a skull. An erinyes, Bisera thought. Battlemasters of the Nine Hells.
“You summoned me?” the devil seemed annoyed more than anything. Bisera lifted her chin.
“I did. What’s your name?”
The erinyes smiled. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you there’s power in knowing a thing’s name?”
“I’ve heard it,” Bisera said. “I don’t see it, though. What’s to stop you from changing it?”
“There’s the power,” the erinyes said. “Change the name, change who you are. What do you want, little demonborn?”
Bisera swallowed. “Once upon a time, I was brought to the presence of a demon in the hopes I’d make a warlock pact with them. A succubus,” she added. “In service to Graz’zt.”
“But you didn’t. So why does this matter?”
“I didn’t,” Bisera went on, “because the pact they offered was a slave’s agreement. I’m not going to live long enough to make trading my soul for spells worthwhile, and nothing that warlock did would convince me of that.”
The erinyes stared at her, unblinking. “You sound terribly clever,” she drawled.
“No,” Bisera said, “just not blisteringly stupid, which—to be frank—the more I read of demons and their methods, the more I’d say their intelligence doesn’t recommend them. You all on the other hand …”
“You simplify things.” The erinyes’s blood-red wings twitched. “Maybe too much.”
“Maybe,” Bisera said. Even the way the devil spoke to her was preferable to the demon—the slow unfolding was surely meant to lull her into a place where she felt as though she had the upper hand, but it gave her time to think, to stay calm and focused and listening. “Do you serve a greater master?”
The erinyes’s dark eyes gleamed beneath her helm. “Don’t we all serve a greater master? In one fashion or another? In the Nine Hells, every devil has its rank—and its master.”
“My studies”—Bisera selected the word carefully—“say you come from the Sixth Layer. Which means you serve Malagarde, the Hag Countess.”
The erinyes smiled like a razor blade. “True.”
“She’s not a devil.”
“She’s a curiosity,” the erinyes said by way of agreement. “Do you intend to stand here chatting until dawn?”
“Enough of a curiosity she might be interested in my offer,” Bisera said. “A pact for a soul is a dire thing—unnecessarily so. You can’t possibly claim many souls that way, and a person can’t possibly gain much power without going mad of it. It’s a terrible agreement for everyone.”
“And you have a different offer.”
“You give me the same sort of power,” Bisera said. “You trade me for potential—to beg
in. But there must be roads where our interests align, and while I’m no fool, the world is filled with the gullible and the grasping. I could get you other souls, to be sure.”
“But you’d be safe?”
“My soul would remain my own business,” she corrected.
“You’ll not find many gods interested in the soul of a tiefling who would pact with devils and sell others to the Nine Hells for a little power.”
You’d not find many gods that care about a tiefling in the streets, Bisera thought. “There are a lot of folks in the world that I suspect the gods would be happy to be rid of, and the devils would be happy to take. That’s between me and them. As for the magic, you’d keep a rein on it. It would have to be a sword that cut both ways for this to work.”
Cold, unblinking eyes watched her, the erinyes a statue of patience and vengeance. For a moment, Bisera saw the danger in the creature, the peril she was facing. The erinyes was not mortal, would not think like a mortal. Bisera would have to learn to think like a devil. Assuming it worked.
“It would be a lie to say your offer wasn’t intriguing,” the erinyes said. “Quite enterprising. Malagarde might well be interested in such an … arrangement. But first”—her dangerous smile spread—“you have to let me go.”
“I will,” Bisera said. “Would you let me sample the wares, so to speak? A small spell. I’ve cast wizard’s magic for long enough—I want to make sure this is similar.”
The erinyes chuckled. “You might like it too much. Doesn’t that worry you?”
“Maybe,” she allowed. “But it serves you just fine.”
“Quite.” The devil came to the edge of the circle. “Step in.”
Bisera nearly protested, but she knew that the circle couldn’t take her back, not without the erinyes meeting the conditions she’d carefully set. And if the erinyes killed her, she’d never find out the condition and would remain trapped until she did. The tiefling stepped over the chalked circle of runes, standing hardly a foot from the erinyes. The devil was both desirable and repugnant in equal measure, like a beautiful corpse. She laid one delicate-seeming hand on Bisera’s chest, twisting the fabric of her shirt in a fist, the other cupped her cheek.
