by Erin Evans
“I find the world of Abeir-Toril very much not as I left it.” The man sat upon a dais, even though he was larger than any of the priests around him in their spotted pelts. A pair of winged human-looking women with cruel claws flanked the gilded throne. Shadow-skinned creatures piled at his feet like a hideous rug. Behind him, a tent all embroidered and filigreed, but growing tattered. Its patterns reminded Heskan absurdly of the ancient, dusty tapestry hanging just beyond his brother’s rooms in the enclave back in Djerad Thymar. Beside the man, on a folding table, was a haversack, its contents spread across the table’s surface. On the man’s lap was a thick book, bristling with bits of paper and shivering with enough magic that Heskan felt it all down his scales.
Beyond, the city rose from its own ruins, bathed in the cold light of a winter sun, and the Untherans worked as if sleep would never come.
“Whose lands are these?” the man demanded in an idle sort of way.
“The Vayemniri hold these lands,” Heskan said. “You stand in Tymanther.”
The heavy weight of a club slammed into the middle of his back, driving the air from his lungs and knocking him onto his face. Clawed hands pulled him back up to his knees and he tasted blood in his mouth.
“I am the master of all you see,” the King of Dust declared. He plucked a small mirror from the pile, the size of his palm. It flashed in the sun as he turned it, one side polished, one side enameled with a symbol of grain sheaves. “The price of treason,” he went on, “is death. So I ask again: Whose kingdom do we stand in?”
“The Vayemniri,” Heskan said.
Another blow to the back, this one hard enough to send an explosion of pain through the left side of his ribs. Broken, he thought, lying on the ground, feeling each agonizing breath. The man set down the mirror and picked up a steel disk emblazoned with a scroll.
“Whose lands?” the King of Dust asked, all innocence.
“You can ask a thousand times,” Heskan shouted. “It doesn’t change the truth. We are here. We have made this land our own—you cannot change history. We’re not going anywhere, certainly not in the face of a pretender and his army.”
The slow smile that spread across the tyrant’s face, baring gleaming-white teeth, sent a shudder down Heskan’s scales. “I am the Lord of All Unther Reborn. I am the Son of Victory. I am the God Who Walks the Plane. History is what I say it is. This world is mine, it has always been mine, and I have already crushed you.”
Crushed the forward guard, Heskan thought. There were more warriors in Djerad Kethendi, and more still in Djerad Thymar. They had miscalculated badly, yes, but they would not do so again. He hoped.
“So I ask again,” the King of Dust said, “who rules this land?”
“The Vayemniri,” Heskan said, bracing for another blow.
10
1 Hammer, the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant (1487 DR)
Djerad Thymar, Tymanther
HUMAN, LORCAN TOLD HIMSELF AS HE STEPPED BACK INTO DJERAD Thymar leading the warlock known as Lachs the Yellow behind. Act human.
The old man looked around the granite room with its oversized bed. “What the hrast is that for? You put balors to bed here?”
Lorcan didn’t answer, but strolled from the room, trying to look … hesitant? Weary? How had he looked before? Could Farideh—or Mehen or Adastreia—see the difference in him as he came into the sitting room? They all stared.
“I take it I didn’t miss much,” he said. Farideh peered at him, and he cursed to himself—she stared as if it were written on his skin. “Is everything all right?”
“She hasn’t come,” Farideh said. “If that’s what you mean.”
A torus of magic burst through the room—Lorcan’s hand went to his sword, Farideh’s to her rod. Ilstan stood, revealing himself from behind the couch where he’d been bent over, the silvery markings of a protective circle following what must have been his path.
“Finished,” he announced. He caught sight of Lorcan and froze. The fine hairs on the back of Lorcan’s neck stood on end.
“To keep her from teleporting in,” Farideh explained, pushing the rod back up her sleeve. “He’s just reapplying it.”
“Good. Well then, may I present,” he said, stepping aside, “Lachs the Yellow. Who happens to be the last of the Brimstone Angels.”
Lachs hobbled forward, leaning on a gnarled, polished cane. Paler than Farideh, darker than Adastreia, he had been tall once, before age bent his body. His horns were the color of old bones, the source of his epithet, and his eyes shone gold.
He looked Adastreia and Farideh and Mehen over and sniffed. “Not the set I would have predicted. Who’s the scalie?”
“Your host,” Lorcan said sharply. “Be polite.”
Mehen scowled at his daughter. “Perhaps I should stay.”
“Someone has to find the giants. What about the others?” Farideh asked Lorcan. “Chiridion and Threnody and Nasmos? Livulia and Naria?”
“Oh, Chiridion’s dead,” Lachs said. “Idiot tried to take over a holding in the bloody Beastlands, tangled with a rakshasa before his pactmaster even got wind of it. Cocky bastard, that one.”
Farideh’s expression didn’t so much as flicker at the mention of her birth father’s death—not good. Lorcan found himself pining for the days when she’d flashed her every thought like a beacon. “And the others?”
“Well, Threnody likely went the same way. She was like that too, even though she was old enough to know better,” Lachs said. “Took after her father—Naria, my sister, had the worst taste in fellows. Now, she died about ten years back of a winterchill fever, which is about the time I lost track of Threnody. Nasmos and Livulia were the other branch of the family—the elder son, Jubal’s get. Never did mix much.”
“Nasmos was murdered not long ago,” Lorcan said. “Possibly by Bryseis Kakistos. I need to ask Sairché if she knows. And you, darling, make three. Aside from your sister, this room contains every living descendant of Bryseis Kakistos.”
Farideh considered Lachs a moment. “Thank you,” she said to Lorcan.
A step, Lorcan thought. “You’re welcome.”
“You should go talk to Sairché,” she said.
Not quite the next step he’d hoped for. But it was nothing Lorcan hadn’t intended to do. “Of course, darling.”
Sairché didn’t look up as he came into the room, but kept staring off into the depths of a corner with a pensive expression on her face. “You’re very fortunate,” Lorcan said, “that you have a protective circle around you. What if I were one of the pradixikai?”
“Then I have a protective circle around me.” Sairché lifted her head lazily. “How fares the world beyond?”
“Still turning,” Lorcan said. “Did you kill a tiefling warlock called Nasmos?”
“I was there when he was killed,” Sairché said. “Why?”
Lorcan cursed. “Why did you kill a Brimstone Angel?”
“Because he wasn’t answering questions,” Sairché said, as if such a thing should be patently obvious. “The ghost wanted a spell she thought he had. He insisted he didn’t have it. I turned some erinyes on him. He died. And it turned out he was right, he didn’t have it. She settled for a gem—a soul sapphire—and a small wagonload of books, so it wasn’t a total waste.”
Lorcan bit his tongue. His sister couldn’t have cared less about collecting warlocks if she were ordered to do so by the archduchess, but such a flimsy excuse for executing one of the rarest heirs in the Toril Thirteen made him want to shake her. “I assume she found what she was looking for, elsewhere, since you didn’t mention it before?”
“She found it making deals with demon lords,” Sairché said lightly. “You might recall?”
“I don’t like the way you made that plural.”
“Believe me, I like it even less.” She laid her head against her knees. “Tell me something: Do you think we’re damning ourselves with one hand here? I feel as though I can’t guess how many lines we’ve cross
ed so far.”
“Who even knows where the lines are anymore?” Lorcan said. “Treason is helping the king of the Hells; treason is following the archduchess’s orders. Allegiance may well be thwarting them—the Nine Hells has never lurched so near to chaos.”
“Who knew we’d pine for the days where we couldn’t see far enough to pick out the plans of Asmodeus?”
“Who knew there’d come a day that it seemed he didn’t have a plan to speak of?” Lorcan hesitated. “Is Invadiah truly dead?”
Sairché nodded, as if she couldn’t say the words. She cleared her throat. “Did you know Caisys the Vicelord was our sire?”
Lorcan stared—sure for a moment that he’d misheard her, sure that she was toying with him. But then, it made some sense—what sort of person would have lain down with Exalted Invadiah in all her ferociousness not once, but twice. The “Vicelord” had earned his epithet, after all.
“No. No I did not,” he said. “How’d you find that out?”
“The Brimstone Angel. Apparently it’s terribly obvious.”
Down in the library tomb of Tarchamus, the ghost in Farideh had smiled and called him Caisys. “Has she got an heir of his lined up?” Lorcan asked.
“Not when I was with her,” she said. “Do you know which one is the most powerful?”
“Do I look like a shitting registry of pacted warlocks?” he said. “There’s too many to count.” If they were indeed the children of Caisys, then the company they kept was thick indeed. They said the Vicelord had bedded beings from every plane, mortals from every kingdom, littering the landscape with offspring of every stripe and shade. Lorcan had never spent much effort on his Caisys heir. If one grew dissatisfied and wandered off, another could be cheaply had. Finding the most powerful heir would be like finding the longest sheaf of wheat in a field.
“It might be one of us,” Sairché said. Then, “Me, really. It might be me.”
“I don’t think she tabulates an heir’s relative strength based on the number of magical artifacts they’ve pilfered.”
“No, idiot, she wants you to get her more heirs on Farideh.” Sairché laid her chin against her knee again. “Apparently she has no idea at all how rubbish you are at the romantic arts—especially given Farideh obviously didn’t mention those plans. Besides, I don’t need artifacts to end you.”
“Maybe you do and maybe you don’t, but considering you can’t leave that circle, best of luck with that task.” A slow smile curved Lorcan’s mouth, the whole thing too amusing not to remark on. “We’ll consider that the plan in our pockets.”
Sairché narrowed her eyes. “What?”
“Well, if she doesn’t fall for Farideh’s trick, someone could always break the circle and let her find you. Of course, given that the oathbreaker curse is permanent, a handful of erinyes are bound to turn up in the same breath. Kill you and her in the same stroke. It’s really that or waiting for you to get too bored to stand living anymore, isn’t it?”
The stillness of Sairché’s expression, the lack of any barb, betrayed the fact that she hadn’t considered how trapped she really was. There was no escaping the circle—so far as Lorcan knew, there was no way to erase what Invadiah had done except death, and so the only way Sairché would ever leave the middle of a bed in the guest quarters of the Verthisathurgiesh enclave would be as a corpse. She could live forever in that room, hidden and safe and utterly trapped.
If he were human, Lorcan thought, smirking to himself, he would have to feel a little bad for Sairché. How fortunate then that the archduchess had crossed his path..
• • •
IN THE SITTING room, Lachs sat stroking his neatly trimmed beard. “Let’s see. On your mother’s side”—he nodded at Adastreia—“I’d be your first cousin, twice removed. And on your father’s, I’d be your granduncle. Uncle Lachs, how does that sound?”
He had the lankiness, the leanness that Farideh and Havilar possessed, the tapered lobes of the ears. “I’ll call you Lachs.”
“I think she got the dragonborn’s temperament,” Adastreia said. Farideh bristled.
“I don’t know. Sounds just right for ‘dear grandmama,’ ” Lachs said wryly. “All of us tools, none of us dear. You’re a lucky little thing, surviving all that.” He nodded to the empty space on the couch beside him. “We all are, I s’pose. No guarantee of a long life for a Kakistos heir.”
Oh, Chiridion’s dead, Farideh gritted her teeth. Cocky bastard, that one. She found herself wondering if he’d died alone. If he’d had anyone at all or if like Adastreia, he’d shut himself away from everything and everyone—no family, no friends, no allies. She didn’t want to know him, didn’t want to meet him, didn’t want to know if she’d guessed right about how he looked—but the fact that she never would sat sour in her stomach nonetheless. She found herself wondering if he’d known where Caisys was taking the twins, if maybe—maybe—he felt bad about letting them go, and immediately wished Mehen hadn’t left.
“What do you know about Caisys the Vicelord?” Farideh asked.
“I think she got the dragonborn’s single-mindedness too,” Adastreia said.
“Again,” Lachs said, “Bryseis.” He considered Farideh, all shrewdness. “What do you want to know about Caisys?”
“Where did he go after he left?” Farideh said. “Did you know if he had anything on him? Do you know where he is now? Do you know why he would have taken us somewhere safe instead of”—she made herself say it, kept her eyes on Lachs instead of glaring at Adastreia—“heading for the nearest river?”
“I assume he went wherever you were found. After that?” Lachs sniffed. “Everywhere, from the sounds of things. Man spent his life scouring the multiverse for new things to mix blood with. Or at least mix company with.”
“After the ritual?” Adastreia said skeptically. “He was well past a century. At some point, the spirit’s willingness is moot in the face of the flesh’s sheer exhaustion.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Lachs said with a wicked smile.
Adastreia rolled her eyes. “I know there’s a reason they chose Chiridion and not you.”
“I was left in a village called Arush Vayem on the Tymantheran frontier,” Farideh said, trying to steer them both back to the subject at hand. “Where would he go after that? Did he have a home? A place he stayed?”
Lachs shook his head. “No. Where’s Arush Vayem?”
“In the Smoking Mountains,” Farideh said. “That’s another thing: it’s not a village most people know about it, but clearly he did. I mean … there are a good number of tieflings there. Maybe he knew someone who lived there?”
“Now see,” Lachs said, leaning on his cane, “doesn’t matter about there being tieflings there. Not so much. Not to Caisys.”
“Caisys didn’t look like one of us,” Adastreia explained.
“He wasn’t one of us,” Lachs corrected. “Born before the Ascension. Succubus blood. He looks like a human. Blends in fine.”
“Not that fine,” Adastreia said. “He was very good-looking. He stood out.”
“I meant he hadn’t horns, whelp.”
“He just looks human?” Farideh asked. Karshoj, how was that fair?
“Well, human with a … an edge,” Lachs said. “His shadow was sort of … peculiar if you looked at it right.”
“And he sometimes made you feel a bit … like you wanted to agree with him and also run away, maybe strip naked for good measure.” Adastreia shook her head as if the description disappointed the truth. “You’d have to have met him. You’d understand.”
“Still,” Farideh said, “he could have blended in anywhere. Why go to Arush Vayem? That would take a tenday.”
“From Aglarond? It’s two at least,” Adastreia said.
“Portals,” Lachs said. “He could have taken a portal.”
“If he was going to take a portal,” Adastreia said, “why not take it somewhere less remote? She has a point. It’s an odd spot to choose.”
; “Well, as only she’s been there,” Lachs said, “only she can answer that.”
Farideh racked her thoughts, trying to remember some facet of life in Arush Vayem that might have explained it, that might have been the clue to understanding why anyone would have come there. It was remote—plenty of places were remote. It was full of people who didn’t wish to be found—but that still meant people. There were enough tieflings that two more wouldn’t have drawn notice—but that was truer of places like Calimshan or Aglarond or Neverwinter. She thought of the people who had been her neighbors—Criella, the village midwife; Garago, the daft wizard who lent her books and taught them sums; Pyador, the dwarf who raised yaks; Oster, the dairyman, and Iannis, his handsome son; Mashrek, the blacksmith, and more—but no, none of them seemed as if they’d have known a warlock of the Toril Thirteen. People didn’t visit the village, Mehen had said, and he was right. Arjhani was the only one she could remember.
And the more pressing question that remained. “Why did he save us? If he’d killed us, then the soul pieces would have been released, right? You could have tried again.”
Lachs made a face and waggled his hand—yes and no. “You have to understand,” he said. “She dug her hands into magic that wasn’t always well-tested. Might have been he wasn’t sure what would happen—I mean even now, can you say you know? Might be if you’d died before she pulled off that plan, you’d have all been chained together in the Nine Hells for eternity.”
“How long are we expected to sit here, waiting?” Adastreia asked.
“Yes,” Lachs said. “So long as we’re here, wouldn’t mind a look around.”
“Stay in the circle.” Farideh stood. “I’ll go ask Lorcan to—”
“How is it you can leave the circle?” Adastreia asked.
“Because she doesn’t want me,” Farideh said. “I’ll be back.” She stepped over the silver-dusted runes of Ilstan’s protective circle, lifting her tail carefully out of the way. Neither Lachs nor Adastreia seemed to know anything about the staff of Azuth, and as much as she didn’t want to talk to Lorcan, she was running short of options.
