The Devil You Know

by Erin Evans

“And one of us has sown nothing but discord since she came here,” Mehen said. “What about the King of Dust?”

  She shrugged. “What about him?”

  “You serve him.”

  “I did. What use is he to me now?”

  “And how swiftly would you be having this same conversation with another of our enemies?” Uadjit asked.

  “Why look for another?” Namshita said. “You’ll go right back to the Son of Victory. Bring him the information he needs.”

  Zillah’s eyes hadn’t left Dumuzi. “Not if I have a more powerful protector. Your god isn’t like him, now is he? You offer humans and dragonborn and tieflings alike his grace. I wonder where you draw the line.”

  “You haven’t exactly endeared yourself,” Dumuzi said. “Trying to turn us against each other. Trying to take Nanna-Sin.”

  She smiled. “Perhaps I could tell you what he wants with it.”

  Dumuzi hesitated. That was a question he didn’t know the answer to, and neither, it seemed, did Enlil.

  Maybe—it seemed as his influence spread, the god became less and less a discrete presence. More and more distant. Maybe he didn’t know or maybe he didn’t care.

  I am what you need me to be, Ushamgal-lù—and again, Dumuzi couldn’t say if it were a memory or a reminder.

  “What does he intend?”

  “Ah-ah!” Zillah said. “I want assurances. My freedom. My city back, when you’ve routed Gilgeam and his train of demons. Half the captives you take.”

  “We don’t take captives,” Narghon said in a deadly, dangerous voice.

  Zillah smiled at Dumuzi. “Then what am I?”

  “Reckless?” Dumuzi said. “We have no way of knowing if anything you say is true. We have no reasons to trust you. Tell me something I can verify.”

  Her eyes narrowed. For a long moment, she only looked at Dumuzi as if she would have liked to tear out his throat.

  “The demons,” she said finally. “He made a deal for them with my lord, Graz’zt. Only it seems the Dark Prince remains indisposed. I cannot contact him. Nor can Gilgeam. No one seems to know where he is.”

  “I don’t see how that matters to us,” Uadjit said. “Unless you mean to imply this Graz’zt is coming for Djerad Thymar?”

  “No, the demons,” Namshita said, sounding surprised. “He can’t ask for more. If we kill them, they can’t be replaced.”

  “Well that’s something,” Geshthax said.

  “Are you prepared to make an agreement now?” Zillah asked Dumuzi.

  Dumuzi found it was no longer only Zillah watching him. He glanced at his mother, who looked as if she would have liked to swoop in and answer for him … but she held her place, only the faint shadow of her tongue fluttering behind her teeth to give away her nerves.

  Dumuzi only shrugged at Zillah. “You’ll have to discuss that with the Vanquisher and the sikati here. Enlil does not rule, and he doesn’t deal with mercenaries. Your pardon, elders, sikati. I don’t think I’m needed here any longer.”

  The Adjudicators’ enclave beyond was crowded with Lance Defenders and pages from the clan armies, rushing here and there with reports for, no doubt, the new Vanquisher, the commanders, and elders beyond. So much motion after such intense stillness—it made Dumuzi uneasy. Not the way the lamia had, but more the way approaching the cadets had. Everything was changing.

  I am going to have to get better at being political, he thought. However much he’d like to believe these things could be separate, the clans and the church (Did you call it a church? he wondered. A worship? A temple? He would have to figure that out too.), he knew better. All the pieces that made Tymanther would have to mesh together.

  And he was going to have to determine what the Son of Victory wanted with the corpse of Nanna-Sin.

  “There you are.” Dumuzi turned and saw an old tiefling man with yellowed horns walking slowly toward him, leaning on a cane. Lachs, he remembered. Dumuzi hurried forward, giving Lachs an arm and helping him to a nearby bench.

  “There are too many damned stairs in this place,” Lachs said, coughing. He pulled a dark blue kerchief out of his robes and mopped his pale face. “You’re going to have to wait a bit for me to go back down or stir up some healing magic for me quick.”

  “Why did you come up here?” Dumuzi asked.

  “To find you, whelp.” Lachs leaned in and lowered his voice. “The cambion girl wants to talk to you. Says it’s urgent.”

  18

  6 Hammer, the Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant (1487 DR)

  Tymanther, near the Smoking Mountains

  FARIDEH WOKE TO SOMNI LOOKING DOWN ON HER, DAHL STILL SLEEPING tucked against her. She sat up quickly, dislodging Dahl, and pressed one hand to her cheek. A dream, a dream—but the powers of the Nine Hells thundered up her nerves as though she’d been casting all night long. Was that how it had always felt? She looked up at Somni and couldn’t remember.

  “I have concerns,” Somni said. “Come.” She straightened and headed off for the opposite side of the camp.

  “Hrast,” Dahl said, rubbing his eyes. “Did she …” He caught himself, turned away. “Whose dreams would make her say that, I wonder?”

  At the center of the giants’ encampment, Somni regarded all of them pensively. Farideh kept her eyes on the giant, avoiding the others’ gazes, and especially Lorcan.

  “What you’ve shown me suggests you have not been entirely forthcoming,” Somni said finally. “Your dreams have great power, but you seem not to understand it, as if you’re wading into a whirlpool.” She looked directly at Farideh. “You didn’t mention all the god-things involved here before. You didn’t mention the one called Asmodeus.”

  “The gods are secondary to my goals,” Farideh said carefully, keeping her eyes on Somni.

  “And are you secondary to theirs?”

  I think I hardly register in their goals, Farideh thought, but didn’t say. I’m no one, nothing.

  Help her. Stop her.

  If you’re no one, a little voice in her thoughts seemed to say, then why do we bother? It would be beyond easy to ignore you. A shiver ran down her spine, right to the tip of her tail. It didn’t sound like herself speaking.

  “Whatever you intended to achieve, your dreams make it evident that the god-things will press their own wants and goals forward, demanding a solution to a problem that seems impossible at a glance. Who are you to fight this battle?” Somni asked, “To right this wrong?”

  “I’m … stubborn,” she allowed. “You could say. And I’m the one standing in the right place at the right moment, hearing the right things. That’s all.”

  “You’re impossibly stubborn,” Lorcan interjected. His dark eyes were oddly soft as he regarded her. “And loyal. Even to an ally who doesn’t deserve it.”

  “She sees things that another wouldn’t,” Ilstan added. “The good in that which seems irredeemable. The right in what seems broken.”

  “She’s the right person,” Dahl said. He slipped his hand into hers. “She doesn’t give up. She’s true to a fault. She’s frequently the one who manages to spot what the rest of us are missing. She’s kind and she’s stalwart and … clearly she’s not secondary.”

  “If there is a soul on this plane or any other who can find a way to rescue the Lord of Spells and forestall the Nine Hells collapsing into chaos, it’s her,” Lorcan said.

  Farideh’s cheeks burned, everyone’s words more than she could accept. Accept them, the strange voice in her said. For once, just accept them. “It isn’t just me,” Farideh added. “I can’t do this alone. I wouldn’t dare try.”

  Somni tilted her head. “Am I to hear a recitation of all your companions’ strengths?”

  “No,” Dahl said firmly. “You need to give us the map. We gave you the dreams.”

  The giant nodded to herself. “I cannot claim to understand your relationship to these god-things,” Somni said. “But we understand how precious the balance is, what the ramifications are if you do not addre
ss your dreaming intruding on your waking world. I will give you the map, Farideh.” She spoke to the giant man standing to her left, an order in her mother tongue. Dahl squeezed Farideh’s shoulder. She reached up and covered his hand with hers, all too aware of Lorcan’s eyes on them.

  “I need to talk to Lorcan about something,” she whispered to Dahl. He frowned, but she took his hand and kissed it. “I’ll be right back.”

  She crossed the circle to Lorcan’s side, ignoring his sullen expression for the moment. “Good morning, darling,” he said. “Sleep well?”

  “What’s different?” she asked him. “What’s changed about me?”

  Lorcan peered at her. “Should something have changed?”

  “I had a dream that wasn’t a dream,” she said. “I’m fairly sure your master did something, gave me something. What is it? What do I have to expect?”

  Lorcan took a step nearer, searching her face, her whole self. It stirred something unwelcome in her and she pressed those thoughts, those feelings back. She is true to a fault—what would Dahl say if he knew that Lorcan still flustered her like this?

  The cambion leaned close enough she felt his hot breath brush her skin. “Nothing. Nothing I can see.”

  Farideh drew back. “Are you sure?”

  “Bearing in mind that there are limits to what changes in you I can perceive, yes, I’m sure.” Lorcan folded his arms over his chest. “What were you expecting me to see?”

  Farideh shook her head. The voice in her thoughts didn’t feel like her own, but surely if she were carrying some fraction of a god, it would be apparent. Lorcan had known she was Chosen after all.

  We cannot spare a Chosen’s spark …

  “The Weave,” Ilstan said. He stood beside Lorcan, eyes slightly too wide. “It wraps itself close to you. Have you a spellbook?”

  “No,” Farideh said. “My pact doesn’t work that way.”

  “You have a wizard’s spells in your grasp,” he said. “Spellbook or no. The pattern, the threads of magic—this is the shape of a wizard’s gift.” He tilted his head. “I wonder what you know.”

  It was nothing near to what Farideh was expecting. “Can you … Can I cast them? Can you tell what they are?”

  Ilstan was silent a moment too long. Farideh’s tail began to lash. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Perhaps if you let me grow a little madder …”

  The giant returned with a long piece of wood, a limb with all its branches smoothed off. With the end of it, Somni scratched the map in the dust, the peaks of mountains, the edge of a lake, the line of a river cutting through a plain. Farideh frowned.

  “This is Tymanther,” she said.

  For once, Somni seemed surprised. “No, its twin.” She considered her handiwork, adding a few more strokes to sketch out a second lake—a twin to the Ash Lake south of Djerad Thymar—another vast plain beyond. Then she set three stones atop the map: one at where the Greenfields lay, one near the center of Tymanther’s open plain, and one high in the mountains. She tapped the last of them.

  “Each of these mark the place of a relic that is not of Abeir. This is the ruins of a stone tower, which none dare breach”—she tapped the stone amid the plains, then the stone nestled in the Greenfields—“This is a pit that drops down into the heart of the plane, from which a song that never ceases echoes. But this”—she laid a finger on the stone in the mountains—“is the relic I suspect you seek. Down in the caves of crystal. I don’t know how you will reach it. I don’t know how you will return. But if you truly believe that what you need lies in Abeir, this, I can tell you, is the most likely source.”

  “Well,” Lorcan said. “That’s comforting.”

  “No,” Farideh said, staring at the last stone. “That’s Arush Vayem.”

  • • •

  MEHEN KNEW NOT enough time had passed to deck Kallan in a Vanquisher’s finery, or to wrestle him down and decorate his cheekbones with the gold studs that marked the ruler. But still the sight of him in his scarred and cobbled-together armor surprised Mehen, as if the title alone would change Kallan. Adjudicators swarmed around him, bearing scrolls and the frantic looks that said there were days’ worth of work to be done and they could finally do it. A table had been brought up and a map of Tymanther spread across it. Anala and Vardhira, the Yrjixtilex matriarch, hovered near, the only elders still allowed in the Vanquisher’s Hall for the moment.

  Kallan looked up, a wild gleam in his eye, and he beckoned them nearer. “This is how it’s gonna be from now on, isn’t it?” Kallan said, as Mehen came close. “You get to get your hands dirty and I get to hear reports.”

  “Remember how Tarhun died,” Mehen said.

  “You’ll be leading an army soon enough,” Uadjit said. “Plenty of action.”

  Kallan snapped his teeth. “Karshoj. Gonna give me a broadsword to handle, aren’t they?”

  “Greatsword,” she corrected. “For ceremony.”

  “This should be you,” Kallan told her.

  “Well it’s not,” she said. “If you spend the next eighteen months saying that, we’ll all get sick of it. Namshita and the Untherans are prepared to give us intelligence about the army. She says given what she’s seen and what she knows about Gilgeam, he’s absolutely going to hit Djerad Thymar with the intention of toppling it. He needs a symbolic victory, proof he’s what he says.”

  “And has anybody figured out if he is what he says?” Kallan looked around. “Where’s Dumuzi?”

  “Went off on his own for a bit,” Mehen said. “He’ll be along shortly.”

  Kallan shook his head. “Has anybody gotten that boy a damned shrine yet?”

  “No,” Mehen said. He turned to Anala. “Have you found a place?”

  She smiled, unconcerned. “The perfect spot. The catacombs—”

  “Verthisathurgiesh, forgive me, but you know that’d be wasted,” Kallan said. “Enlil’s a sky god—can’t bury that in the ground. We’ll get broken miracles.” He turned to the Adjudicator beside the throne. “What’s your name?”

  The young man straightened. “Sithra, Your Majesty.”

  Kallan made a face. “Save that for a proper Vanquisher. Let’s scrounge up some land in the exterior city for … I don’t know, I guess a temple is what we’re talking about. In the meantime, makes sense to set something little up on the pyramid’s peak, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I … I suppose so?”

  “Find Dumuzi. Or find that skinny girl he’s convinced already. Saitha. Give her a project. Maybe the Verthisathurgiesh could go with you.” He smiled at Anala, and you would almost think he meant it. “If you can’t get him the ground he needs, I’m sure he and Enlil will appreciate you using your considerable influence to get it.”

  Anala’s own smile didn’t waver. “How clever. Your Majesty. Vardhira, be a dear and keep me company?” The two matriarchs left, following Adjudicator Sithra from the hall.

  “Well, I suppose that’s what I get.” Kallan turned back to Mehen and Uadjit, gave them a stiff smile. “You two are going to have to step in if I say something foolish, because I am guessing, every word.”

  “You’re doing fine,” Uadjit said.

  Kallan looked unconvinced. “These folks say word is that the army encamped opposite Djerad Kethendi has split. Maybe a third to a quarter of the force remains at the ruins—which they are definitely rebuilding—and the rest have started our way. So Namshita’s right about that much. What else can she give us?”

  “Demon types,” Mehen said. “Numbers. She thinks he’ll have a hard time breaking the city. We’re in for a siege.”

  Kallan snorted. “Well, got practice at that. Scouts are estimating four days. They’re moving quick, but there are a lot of them. Probably get some forward detachments in the near term.”

  “Another thing,” Uadjit said.

  Mehen glanced down at the map, at the metal markers that indicated the Untheran army. The charcoal Xs that marked the areas of the wider country that had been searche
d. “Lot of empty land up north,” he said.

  Kallan shot him a dark look. “I’ll have to worry about that later.”

  Found a clue to staff, Farideh’s voice spoke from the empty air. Heading to Arush Vayem, and then … we need a path to Abeir, I think. She was quiet a moment, as Mehen gripped the stone. If anything happens, I love you.

  “Karshoj!” Mehen spat without thinking. The spell picked up the word and flung it back to Farideh—godsbedamned magic, Mehen thought. Twenty-four more words—but panic and guilt sank their claws into his mind and he couldn’t slow his tongue enough to think. “Be careful. Don’t take Lorcan into the … Fari, don’t … Don’t do anything rash. Don’t leave this plane—I shouldn’t have to tell you not to leave the karshoji plane!”

  It was too many words, Mehen realized too late. And none of them were an apology. None of them were to tell her he loved her too. What if something did happen? He’d made a terrible mistake. “Chaubask vur kepeshk!” he shouted, and would have thrown the stone across the room, had Kallan not caught his wrist.

  “That’s not gonna help,” he said.

  Nothing is, Mehen thought. You’re in over your head. You were in over your head the moment you claimed those babies, and now you’re failing them both.

  “You know where she is, noachi,” Kallan said gently. “You know she’s on the right path. Go help her.”

  Mehen swallowed, acutely aware of all the eyes on them. “She’s days away,” he said quietly, lowering his arm. “She has … Those giants will get them up the mountains faster than I can ride. Arush Vayem … They won’t be happy she came back.”

  Why was she going back? Mehen wondered. What in the world did she think was there?

  Kallan ignored the audience and patted his uninjured arm. “Look, get a bat from the stables—you can absolutely get there ahead of them if you go now.” He looked over at one of the Adjudicators. “I can do that right? Commandeer a bat?”

  Mehen tapped his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “What happened to not being selfish? Thirty thousand lives against one?”

  Kallan looked down his snout at Mehen. “I’m giving you a bat, not a karshoji army. Go help her, then get yourself back here before our four days are up, because I might need to ask you to ride that karshoji bat into battle. Fair?”