by Erin Evans
“It’s nice to meet you, Remzi,” Brin said, uncomfortably aware of the lump in his throat. Remzi sat down at the little table beside him, in front of the mug of milk. He considered it, not touching the cup. He pulled his knees up to his chest.
“When I say I want my mam,” Remzi said, “I don’t mean that evil lady. That’s her, isn’t it? The one that came to the cottage said she was my aunt, and they have the same face, so that must be my real mam.” Remzi wiped his nose on his knees. “ ’Cept the one in the cottage said that my mam’s my real mam even if she’s not. I’m adopted,” he added.
“I know,” Brin said. “Farideh came and found you? Did … the evil lady hurt her?”
“I don’t know,” Remzi said. “She just—whoosh!—dragged me out of there. She left the ghost.” He started to cry again. “What if the ghost eats my mam and da?”
Brin laughed in a way he hoped sounded convincing, “I don’t know about your mam and da, but Farideh can handle some ghost. She casts magic spells, did you know that? When I first met her, she saved me from an orc.”
Remzi looked up, suspicious. “Just one?” he hiccupped.
“The one that was trying to chop me with an axe, specifically, but there were others too.”
“If you know her, you know the evil lady too? Is she my real mam?”
Brin hesitated. There was no easy way to explain any of this. “Do you want to hear a story?”
Remzi scowled at him. “You’re trying not to answer me.”
“I’m trying to tell you something very tricky,” Brin corrected. “Once upon a time there was a very wicked warlock, who wanted to dethrone the king of the Hells—”
“That doesn’t sound wicked.”
“Wicked isn’t what you do,” Brin said. “It’s how you do it. She had died and she needed to be able to walk the plane again, to carry out her plans. The first time she tried to get a body, she convinced two people to make a baby. But the spells went wrong and the baby turned into twins and the warlock’s ghost was torn to the winds. The twins grew up and the ghost returned. She tried to possess them, but she couldn’t. Something was in the way. So first she—”
“This story is confusing,” Remzi said. He took a piece of bread and dunked it in the milk. “I mean, sorry, saer, I don’t understand.”
Brin sighed. “The outside of her is one of the twins. A woman called Havilar. She’s very nice. The ghost is inside her, though. The ghost … the ghost is evil,” he admitted. Maybe he could agree with her goals, maybe he could look away as she sacrificed Asmodean cultists and criminals. But there was no making Remzi out to be someone deserving of any of this.
“That’s what you should have said,” Remzi said. “It’s all right, though. I’m not good at stories either.” He set the soaked bread down on the plate. “Havilar?” he asked.
Brin nodded. “Do you want—”
But Remzi only laid his head down on his knees again, and quietly sobbed.
Seven, Brin thought. Maybe eight—he could hardly remember what he knew at that age, what he was capable of managing. A year and a half short of his grandmother’s confessions of infidelity, he thought. A little more until his father’s descent and blood were tested for proof of connection to the royal line. Two years before his father was murdered and Brin’s whole life changed.
Brin pulled the flute out of the pocket in his cloak, noticing as he set his fingers to the holes that his hands were shaking. He played a little tune for the boy, slow and soft. Remzi wept on, but as the song came to an end, he lifted his head and wiped his nose on his knees.
Before either of them could say a word, the air popped at the intrusion of the Nine Hells, and the two imps reappeared in the air. Remzi shrieked and nearly fell off his chair in the scramble to get behind Brin. The imps didn’t seem to notice.
“You have armies incoming,” Mot said. “Avernal, Stygian, and Malbolgean.”
“What does that mean?” Brin demanded.
“Avernan,” Bosh said. “Lady Zariel changed it.”
Mot clubbed him. “First, Fifth, and Sixth then! Armies are heading here. Nobody shitting cares about what you call them.”
“What does that mean?” Brin shouted over them.
“One ally, one enemy, one die nobody’s thrown,” Mot said, counting on his fingers. “From Asmodeus’s point of view, at least. Can’t guess what that means for the Brimstone Angel except a whole load of devils are wrangling permission and resources to get to her.”
Remzi peered around Brin, looking worriedly at the imps. Brin took hold of his hand. “How much time?”
“Days,” Mot said. “Sooner if Asmodeus starts being a little more present. Word is that he’s sealed himself in Nessus—no one’s getting in or out.” His stinger tail curled and uncurled. “I don’t like it,” he admitted. “I’ve never heard of anything like that happening. Ever.”
Brin squeezed Remzi’s hand tight. All his plans would have to start moving a little quicker.
• • •
IN THE SHADOW of a sleeping giant, Dumuzi sighed. “No, he was the god of your pantheon before you were sent to Abeir.”
“And now he’s a Vayemniri god?” Amurri asked, puzzled. The human squatting beside the fire leaned forward, arms on his knees. “How does that work?”
Dumuzi had remained behind with the Untherans, the descendants of Enlil’s first worshipers. If the Vayemniri didn’t quite believe in the woken god, he’d reasoned, perhaps the Untherans would. Perhaps they needed him too.
“He’s a god,” Dumuzi pointed out. “He can be both.”
The broad-shouldered man, one of Namshita’s subordinates, squinted at Dumuzi. “But when he talks,” Amurri said, “when he’s giving orders, which is he?”
“No, he’s not … He’s not like Gilgeam. You don’t see him.”
Amurri shifted back on his heels beside the fire, pensive. As uncomfortable as it looked to Dumuzi, all the Untherans squatted like that when they sat. A branch popped, sending up a swirl of embers. “I thought,” he said, “your kind couldn’t mix.”
Dumuzi shut his eyes. As frustrating as it was in the moment, he’d had more success than he would have dared hope for in the previous days. The cadets at the pyramid’s peak a first step, even if most of them seemed to regard Enlil as a novelty, a way to irritate their elders. Saitha, at least, seemed convinced, the shiver of power that ruffled her neck scales enough to assure her of Enlil’s realness, if not the full extent of his power.
And then the next morning, after they’d ridden out after the giants, she’d come to sit next to Dumuzi, looking disturbed and serious. “Your god—is he black-scaled and unpierced?” she asked in low tones.
“Did you have a dream?” Dumuzi asked.
Saitha tapped her tongue twice. “He followed me around the city. Like I was showing him the sights. He kept repeating ancestor stories to me. Karshoj, what is that supposed to mean?”
“I think he means to settle,” Dumuzi said.
Saitha nodded in an uneasy way. “You don’t think he’s just looking for a way in? Like if he were trying to take things over, maybe he would ease in, try and make us comfortable, you know? Spout a bunch of ancestor stories to serve his purpose?”
Dumuzi had given her a hard look. “I don’t think so.”
Saitha only shrugged. “I don’t either,” she’d admitted. “I just feel as if I should. I told him he ought to pick some piercings. He looks weird without them. Was that rude?”
Dumuzi couldn’t have said—so much of this was new, and so foreign from anything they already knew. It was a lucky thing Enlil wasn’t so prideful as to sulk over their clumsy manners and ungainly prayers. What made sense in ancient Unther, he seemed to have realized, would not fit perfectly in modern Djerad Thymar. Dumuzi closed his eyes, feeling for the presence of the god—still there, but somehow farther, somehow larger. As if in answer, he pulled closer and again Dumuzi had the sensation of a dragonborn man larger than he was, sitting on the ground
beside him.
When he opened his eyes, Amurri was staring. “What was that? Was that magic?”
“That was Enlil,” Dumuzi said. “I think.”
Amurri searched the empty air beside Dumuzi. “Eerie,” was all he said.
Dumuzi frowned. “Does … does the Father of Victory not do anything like that?”
“Son of Victory,” Amurri corrected. “And no. Mostly he … Well, he uses magic like a weapon.”
Doubt filled Dumuzi, not only his own. Some part of Enlil wanted Gilgeam to be true, to be the scion he left behind. But “the Son of Victory” seemed less and less like the Father of Victory, and both the god and the Chosen began to suspect and hope in equal parts that this man was nothing but a fraud. After all, even if Gilgeam was one of Enlil’s comrades, he was an enemy now and would have to be met head on.
Which meant Dumuzi needed to recruit more followers.
You’ve managed a great deal already, a voice in his thoughts said. For all it sounded like his own voice, he knew that was Enlil—Dumuzi didn’t have much good to say about his successes.
What did people do when they were trying to convince others to follow a god? Proselytizing would only go so far—with the Vayemniri, because they were used to managing on their own, to making their own luck; with the Untherans, because the one god they knew was so far from anything Enlil was promising. From anything he can manage at the moment, Dumuzi thought. If Gilgeam could strike bat riders from the sky and command demons, appearing in dreams and making people’s skin shiver was hardly a match. He thought of the accusations of Shestandeliath Mazarka, the whispered worship to the Son of Victory she claimed to have seen. Maybe it took such flashy miracles to make a connection.
He winced and apologized to the god—that hadn’t come out right. He breathed a little gust into his cupped palm, crackling with nervous lightning. He excused himself, and stood, brushing off his armor. The hour was late, and he ought to go back into the city where the other Vayemniri had retired. He thought of Kepeshkmolik, of Uadjit and maybe Narghon waiting up for him, waiting to question him, waiting to correct him. He didn’t fit in Kepeshkmolik anymore—Dumuzi found himself testing the thought regularly, believing it more and more, day by day.
Maybe he could reside with the Untheran, Dumuzi thought. Maybe live in a temple out on the fields. The stone giants dozed, still as mountains, a broken wall around the Untherans. Dumuzi wondered what they dreamed of.
As he made his way back toward the city, he kept an eye out for the commander with the jackal-headed epaulets. Sikati, he thought, rolling the word through his thoughts. Commander, the Draconic word repeated back, shaped by Enlil’s blessings.
Perhaps translating Untheran to Draconic and back wasn’t a miracle on par with the lightning wall, Dumuzi thought, but it was appreciated. He stopped at the curve of one of the giant’s necks, murmured his thanks, and gave another breath.
You don’t have to do that every time, the voice in his thoughts whispered, but the god sounded pleased, nevertheless.
Kepeshkmolik Dumuzi however had been raised to revere his elders, to observe the many actions that made up the omin’ iejirkkessh and omin’ iejirsjighen—even if Enlil hadn’t been a god, it would have been right and proper to thank him, and thank him in the way that he would understand. Gratitude made for an easy inroad, he thought, continuing on his way. Asking for help would be another thing entirely.
As he came around the giant’s head, he heard voices—Namshita and her other subordinate, the man called Utu, speaking low and quickly. Dumuzi froze—he ought to continue, ought to pretend he hadn’t heard them. This too was only proper, the results of living in an enclave so tightly packed with people. But Enlil’s touch upon his mind made the words shift—with every syllable, the Draconic version lit up in his thoughts. And it wasn’t something he could pretend he hadn’t heard.
“You know as well as I do,” Utu was saying, “that the Vayemniri don’t give a care for those they don’t share clanship with.”
“I know what the Son of Victory says,” Namshita replied. “That’s hardly confirmation that they intend to trade our lives for Gilgeam’s mercy.”
“But it makes sense?” Utu said. “Tell me it doesn’t.”
Namshita said nothing for a moment. “What better options do you imagine we have?” she asked. “At the very least, this buys us time to find a haven, to get the lay of the land.”
Utu’s voice dropped lower, and Dumuzi had to creep closer to hear him say, “We can still go back. We could find out what it would take to bring this city down and go back.”
“Never.”
“Best of bad choices,” Utu pointed out. “Look at this city—does it look a hundred years old? It should have been a hundred just to build. They took what was ours. There’s no other explanation. If we go back now, we can claim we were taken. We can find more time to plan an escape and reclaim what is due us.”
Dumuzi felt a sense of unease that he couldn’t quite place, and then the certainty, as Utu reached out, that something bad was coming. He bolted from his hiding place. “Sikati?” he said, loud enough to startle them both. “May I speak with you?”
Namshita took a step back from Utu, as if trying to signal she wasn’t a part of anything he’d been saying. “Of course.” She walked toward Dumuzi without looking back at Utu. Utu’s dark eyes pinned the young dragonborn in place, and Enlil’s presence drew nearer.
That one is dangerous—the thought so filled Dumuzi’s head that he forgot that he was supposed to be talking with Namshita until she interrupted him.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I was wondering,” Dumuzi said, turning to face her fully, “if my mother had extended her invitations to you. To come and visit Kepeshkmolik.”
Namshita’s eyes narrowed. “Uadjit seemed to think it best that we stay outside the city at the moment. That we allow her time to make arrangements.”
“She’s very good at this sort of thing,” Dumuzi agreed. “And our patriarch can be a little … formal. Would you like to see the public parts of the city at least? So you might consider staying?”
“No one has offered us a place to stay,” Namshita replied. “And forgive me, little priest-man, but you don’t strike me as old enough to make such overtures.”
“I don’t speak for myself,” Dumuzi said. “I speak for Enlil. And as my mother said, it’s an open city. No one needs the blessings of a clan to live here. When she has made those arrangements, it would be good if you could say whether you wanted to make your homes in our city.”
Namshita tilted her head, considering him as if he were a curious illusion. “Wouldn’t you say we are beggars?” she asked. “That we should take what is given us?”
“No,” Dumuzi said truthfully. “You are the children of Unther, of the line of Enlil. You are no more beggars than the Vayemniri.” He thought of Saitha’s dreams. “If you wish, gather a group, perhaps the ones who need most assurance, and we can show them what Djerad Thymar has to offer.”
Namshita regarded him a few moments more, and he wondered if she were turning over Utu’s accusations, weighing them against Dumuzi’s offer. He wondered too if he ought to be considering Shestandeliath Mazarka’s accusations with any greater weight.
“Very well,” she said finally. “On the morrow.”
• • •
UNLIKE THE PREVIOUS forays into the dreams of others, Havilar felt nothing but overwhelming dread when faced with Bryseis Kakistos’s sleeping mind. Alyona took hold of her hand, but it felt more like an anchor about to drag her down than a reassurance.
Come on, she said.
The next moment disoriented Havilar—before, she’d felt no different in dreams than she had in the soul sapphire. She walked through Zoonie’s dreams, through Farideh’s dreams, through Brin’s dreams, as if they were just another place she’d reached, albeit one that wasn’t remotely real.
In Bryseis Kakistos’s dreams, it felt as though she were a pa
rt of everything, and everything was dangerously close to being real. A patchwork of locations wove together to make the world of the dream—Djerad Thymar’s dizzying stairways and bridges married to a dockside city she’d never seen; the eerie plains of the Nine Hells contained in the mazelike corridors beneath the palace of the Purple Dragon, the teetering ruins of Neverwinter built into a mountain town covered in snow, and bookshelves, bookshelves everywhere.
“Bisera!” Alyona shouted. “Bisera, come out! We need to talk!”
This is your own head, Havilar thought, staring at the mix of familiar and unfamiliar surroundings. Your own head and someone else’s memories shoved into it.
“Bisera!” Alyona’s voice echoed off mountains that weren’t the ones Havilar had grown up in.
They moved deeper into the strange landscape, but as they passed, it started changing—the hints of unfamiliar places and times collapsed like snow washed away by spring rains, leaving behind only Havilar’s memories. They climbed down Djerad Thymar’s stairs, the stones turning from rough limestone to polished granite, the smells of salt and rotting seaweed becoming exotic flowers and the smell of dragonborn bodies. Alyona frowned, but said nothing.
They found Bryseis Kakistos at last, when they squeezed through a narrow corridor of bookshelves, remnants of the library tomb of a Netherese arcanist, to emerge on the little farm with the stone cottage. The sky overhead was red, full of clouds that boiled with a storm, ragged with spears of lightning. Havilar’s breath quickened, as though her pulse sped up—but she had no pulse, and no breath either—gods above, she was sick of this.
Bryseis Kakistos, Alyona’s double, kneeled beside a cairn, stacking flat white stones, building it higher. Abruptly she scowled and pulled down the top half of the stack, re-sorting the rocks and starting again.
“Bisera,” Alyona said, pulling Havilar toward her. “Bisera, we need to talk.”
The tiefling woman didn’t look up, sorting the stones into groups of similar shapes. Havilar scanned the forest beyond, the thick-trunked conifers casting deep, eerie shadows. Peering between them, she spotted a stone statue—a devilish man with curling horns and a wicked smirk, the base of the statue was stained as if it had been dipped in blood.
