The Devil You Know

by Erin Evans

  Dahl scowled. “I wasn’t touching them. I was looking at the striations.”

  “Look from farther back,” Mehen said. He tasted the air, tapping his tongue to the roof of his mouth. “The Dawn Titans were the first of the tyrants of Abeir. Their relics are what magic Abeir has. Shestandeliath carries a fragment of the titan’s lungs—it built Djerad Thymar. Whatever’s condensed into those bones is powerful. And you don’t know what it does, so leave it be.”

  “I don’t know why you’re all acting like I’m chipping pieces off these things,” Dahl said. He pointed at the top of one of the nearly horizontal columns—what looked like the twist of a wrist bone. “That a sign of your monster?”

  Along the upper edge the stone was a patch of rough stone as long as Mehen’s torso. The light didn’t refract through it, and so it left a patch of opaque white along the bone. “What makes scratches like that?”

  “Not scratches,” Mehen said. “That’s acid pitting.” He turned back to Caisys. “What is it?”

  “I think it used to be a behir. Then it—or its progenitors—mucked around with those Dawn Titan bits.”

  “Yes, very helpful,” Lorcan said caustically. “Because we’re all walking bestiaries. What the shit is a behir?”

  Caisys scowled. “Pretend a dragon mated with a giant centipede and then it ate one of that titan’s organs. That’s why you don’t touch the bones!”

  Dahl shot Farideh a disbelieving look and threw his hands in the air.

  “Never mind him,” she said as she took the third glowball from him. Caisys smirked at Mehen, a reminder he was still Garago, even if he was Caisys too.

  Farideh handed Caisys the glowball. “Since you’re leading the way.” She turned to the rest of them. “What have we got in the way of magic that does work?”

  Lorcan held out the chain of rings he wore and felt his way along them. “I have one for an emergency portal, a dimensional pocket that I think still has a charged wand in it, and a ring with three frost spells left in it, but I cannot tell if it works. The others aren’t reacting or they need a connection to the Hells, so that’s a shitting lot of good.”

  “I’ve got my beads,” Adastreia said. “Three healings, one wind-walk.” She tapped the black pearl. “That’s not going to call my devil, is it?”

  “Not a chance,” Caisys said. “Anybody else?”

  Dahl dropped his bag in the middle of the group. “Ilstan,” he said very deliberately, “I brought a sizeable number of your creations.” But here too not everything seemed suited to the barren air of Abeir. From the bounty, they had slippers that made one able to climb walls, three wands full of lightning bolts, another two that could cast magical missiles—

  “And this.” Dahl held up one hand to show a gold ring etched with a ram barreling around the band. He locked eyes with Lorcan. “I thought I’d borrow it.”

  “Better than nothing,” Caisys said.

  They passed out the magic items and all shed their cloaks, the humid air making everyone flushed and sweating long before they began their careful passage through the ossuary. The crystals took up the light of the glowballs as they passed, illuminating the path better than the lights alone. The slippers were only large enough for Adastreia, and Lorcan kept his own rings. Mehen tucked the wand Dahl had given him into his belt and moved to the front, alongside Caisys, ahead of Farideh.

  “You going to yell at me about keeping all this from you?” Caisys asked, as he ducked under one of the shorter bones—a finger, Mehen thought, or a foot bone.

  “As far as I can see,” Mehen said, as he followed, “what you did was keep this nonsense far away from my girls, so there we’re in agreement. Can’t say I understand you not getting involved when Lorcan turned up.”

  Caisys snorted. “I had to guard the staff. Besides, you were gone before I even knew what happened—and if you haven’t heard yet, your girls are purposely hard to find.” He cleared his throat. “I was checking up. Now and again. Lost track of them, though, maybe eight years back? I’m glad it wasn’t for the worst kind of reasons.”

  They eased one after the other around a gently curving rib bone. “What’s the story with the Oghmanyte?” Caisys asked.

  Mehen sighed. “He’s better than the cambion.”

  “That’s a low bar to set.” He glanced back at Mehen. “What about the other twin? What’s she doing?”

  The question sent a cascade of cold panic through Mehen. “She’s being held captive by your mistress.”

  “Right,” Caisys said. Then he shook his head. “Bisera’s not my mistress. She’s a friend. The kind of friend who won’t call herself your friend, but still.” He reached back to help Mehen around another bone—something thick and flat on one side—but Mehen ignored the offered hand.

  “You mad at me for leaving them at the gate?” Caisys asked.

  Mehen tapped his tongue. “It was a pothach plan, Garago. Nobody wanted to keep them but me. And I don’t karshoji remember you arguing all that hard for it. What would you have done if no one had claimed them?”

  “Honestly?” He shrugged. “I don’t much remember that part. Kept them myself? Razed the village and gone elsewhere? Worked the right sort of magics to make someone think there was no world where they would have left those babies in the snow?” He smiled at Mehen and again something cold and terrible gripped his core. He could remember that day—he would always remember that day—coming back from patrol, well after the others, having stopped to dress a mountain goat they’d shot. He’d been a stone’s throw from the gates when he heard their little yelping cries, and thought some animal had dropped its kits too close to the village. Instead he found two little tieflings, wrapped in wool blankets, tucked together in the snow. No footprints. No notes. Only them, looking pale and drowsy and dangerously cold. Farideh’s little fist almost blue with the chill, but clinging tight to her sister’s blanket.

  “Did you do that to me?” he whispered.

  “Does it matter?” Caisys said. “I mean, I didn’t, but I don’t see why it would have been bad. I did do it to other people, mind, once I realized our little village is full of coldhearted hardjacks and you lacked some rather critical resources, such as milk and a basic understanding of non-Vayemniri infants. You needed help and you weren’t going to ask for it.”

  “Are you talking about Criella?” Mehen asked, startled. The tiefling midwife had been insistent that the twins could not stay, but once Mehen had shouted her down, once it was clear the twins were his and he wasn’t budging … she’d used Chauntea’s blessings to make milk for the twins, showed him how to change their cloths, talked him down when he thought he was losing his very mind.

  Caisys chuckled. “Do you want to know something about Criella? She’s actually the heir of a warlock called Margarites. She came to kill me and I opted to use a little magic instead of a blade, make her more useful. Re-sorted her mind so many times I don’t think she knows what she is.”

  “That’s monstrous!” Mehen said.

  “It’s a little funny,” Caisys said. “And for the record, I didn’t give her the stick up her arse; that came with the original.”

  The shadows between the crystal bones flickered—or had he imagined it? Mehen aimed the glowball’s light as much as it would be aimed into the darkness.

  The cavern narrowed, closed off by a wall of the crystal—the base of an enormous skull. Caisys pulled his sleeves down over his hands before crawling through a small round hole. Mehen cast a glance back at Farideh before following, his light blooming through the milky stone of the skull.

  He crawled through the hole, careful not to linger too long on the titan’s bones, the stories of titan relics murmuring in his head. Now wasn’t the time to find out if they were exaggerating. Inside the giant skull, plain stone rubble had filled in the space, half burying the curve of its brainpan. He waited to see Farideh come through before slipping out the jagged opening of a mouth.

  A stone’s throw beyond the ossuary, t
he cavern opened up into a huge domelike room. The path broke into ragged rock, then dropped away in a long, shallow slope that rose again on the opposite side, forming a bowl around a small pale streak that cast light enough for Farideh to see the whole of the indentation.

  “Is that it?” Adastreia whispered.

  “Can you feel it?” Ilstan said, sounding as if he might weep. “Oh, Watching Gods.”

  Even Mehen could feel it. The air was … more alive, as if it were thrumming like a hive of bees. Full of magic, she thought.

  “The staff of Azuth,” Ilstan intoned.

  Mehen studied the slope. The rock was crumbling and loose, an easy slide down and not so simple a climb back up. But if some of them stayed up here, if they tied ropes to—

  His eyes fell on the edge of the cliff. On the pitted stone that etched its way as far across the ledge as they stood.

  Something in the darkness above them shivered and hissed. “Mine,” a breathy voice said in Draconic. “That is Vozhin’s. So are you.” Mehen looked up in alarm as the shadows bulged and shifted. He reached for his sword.

  “Ah, tluin and buggering Shar,” Caisys said. “It’s awake.”

  21

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

  The Ossuary of Merciless Petron, Abeir

  THE CREATURE OOZED OUT OF THE SHADOWS ABOVE A DEEP, V-SHAPED mouth, then lambent eyes, then a serpentine body, bile-green and shining with slime, its many legs moving it down the wall of the cave. A dragon, Farideh thought, meets a centipede, meets the innards of a titan. Karshoj.

  “Scatter!” Caisys shouted. He broke right, down the crumbling slope.

  Farideh risked turning from Vozhin, searching the cavern for exits, for hiding places. She found only shadows.

  And the staff, stirring magic into being in the void of Abeir.

  “Go!” She shoved Ilstan toward the edge. “Get him cover!” she shouted down to Mehen and Dahl. “We need the staff!”

  Mehen drew his sword. “Watch his back. I’ll cover the right, Dahl keep the left.”

  Dahl’s gray eyes met Farideh’s—be careful, I love you, watch out. She nodded back, all the same words returned wordlessly, before watching him leap down into the bowl.

  “What jabber jabber, little two-legs!” Vozhin rumbled. “You talk in my gullet.”

  “Darling—” Lorcan reached back as if he meant to push her behind him and away from the creature—Farideh only realized what he was doing after she’d leaped forward, sliding down the crumbling, rocky slope. She stumbled at the base, rolling over one knee, to land on her backside, looking up at the gaping jaws of Vozhin.

  Lorcan launched himself into the air, flapping quickly out of reach. Vozhin arched away from the wall, rear legs clinging to the stone as the length of its body stretched toward Lorcan, snapping after the cambion.

  “Oh, flappy-flappy thing,” Vozhin rumbled. “I burn you from the sky.”

  Farideh’s heart leaped up her throat. Sparks clamored between the creature’s pointed teeth, a bulge of slime built in the back of its maw. Farideh scrambled to her feet. “Lorcan!” she screamed. “Move! Move!”

  Vozhin spat a stream of viscous yellow liquid, crackling with lightning, directly at Lorcan. The liquid seemed to skim just under his feet as he climbed toward the ceiling, but Farideh was already sprinting away at an angle, avoiding the slash of electric acid. It hit the stone, a long, hissing, sulphurous line. All instinct, she pulled on her powers, but no bolt of dark energy came and her arms itched as if they were drawn dry.

  “Karshoj.” She drew the wand of lightning bolts Dahl had given her, its slender length flimsy and awkward after her rod.

  Ilstan stumbled ahead of her, his stride longer, his speed slower. Mehen grabbed hold of his robes, yanking him to the right as another slash of acid crackled and sizzled across the stone. Farideh turned with them, scrabbling to keep her feet, and turned to keep her eyes on the monster.

  “That’s right, flappy thing,” Vozhin bellowed. “Higher, higher …”

  Farideh pointed the wand at Vozhin—but she hesitated. The creature was distracted, wasn’t chasing Ilstan. That’s what they needed, after all. She watched another bolus of acid building in the monster’s gullet.

  A bolt of lightning shot across the cave, crashing into the side of Vozhin’s head with a minor thunderclap. “Hoy! Ugly!” Dahl shouted in clumsy Draconic. “Eyes go over here!”

  The lightning seemed to annoy Vozhin more than harm it. It dropped off the wall with a thunderous boom that shook the whole cavern. “Not going anywhere, little two-legs,” it snarled. “Wait your—”

  Vozhin broke off in a howl as a bolt of frost hit it from above, ice spidering across its finely scaled yellow skin. It swung its head toward Lorcan, still hanging in the air.

  “You don’t have to have a shitting conversation with it, paladin!” Lorcan shouted, triggering another bolt of frost. Vozhin shied, taking the blast of cold across the side of its cheek, then whipping its head back and spitting another stream of crackling acid. Farideh sprinted toward Dahl, away from the stream—still, splatters of the slime peppered her tail, burning and sharp.

  “Watch the stlarning streams!” Dahl shouted back at him.

  “Magic in-your-hands?” Vozhin growled. “Vozhin plays that game too.” It flipped around, looking boneless as a whip, and shot up the wall, up into the shadows above.

  Ilstan and Mehen were nearly to the staff, picking their way over the broken surface of the cave floor. Farideh kept her eyes on the shadows, on Lorcan hanging above as she chased after them, and nearly tripped on the broken stones.

  Caisys shouted a curse that rang through the cavern. “Don’t let it get up on the ceiling!”

  “How in the Hells are we meant to stop it?” Farideh shouted back.

  “I have it!” Adastreia called.

  Before Farideh could see what she meant to do, the dark above flashed with lightning, a muffled thunderclap whooshing through the cave. A cacophony of high-pitched cries echoed through the cavern before the shadows exploded into a thousand tiny fragments, a swarm of bats with pinprick blue eyes glowing in the darkness, spiraling down into the cave.

  Farideh fought the urge to duck as they dipped lower, but high above she saw two slam into Lorcan in their attempts to escape Vozhin. He shouted, trying to swat them aside—

  Blue light raced over Lorcan like flames catching on oiled linen. He went stiff, then slack, his wings spread, and Lorcan began to fall.

  “Mehen! Mehen, help!” Farideh ran—eyes on Lorcan. She was never going to be able to catch him, but Mehen, maybe Mehen—

  Suddenly Lorcan’s wings flexed and caught the air. He jerked upright. There was a moment where he seemed to look around the cave, puzzled. Vozhin’s great head dropped out of the shadows, the corpses of a half-dozen of the bats dangling from its teeth.

  “Magic for you,” it chuckled. “Magic for me.”

  Lorcan’s head snapped up. He screamed, and a spell he had no business possessing streaked out of his mouth. Missiles of blazing emerald coalesced out of the shivering air, sharpening into points that shot unerringly toward Vozhin. The creature belched and a bubble-like shield curved in front of its head. It spat again, and this time the slime shimmered darkly with some unnamable energy.

  Farideh darted toward Ilstan, pushing the wizard out of its path. He clung to her arm, eyes wide at the circling swarm of bats.

  “They are spells,” he panted. “Living magic. The staff must draw them, change them, maybe even birth them.”

  Above Lorcan convulsed again. Twin bolts of fire burst out of his hands, sizzling against the creature’s slimy skin.

  Farideh turned to Ilstan. “It transfers on contact,” he said. “Touch it or kill it or—”

  “Catch the bats,” she confirmed.

  He nodded. “As many as you can.”

  Farideh looked up at the serpentine form of Vozhin. No doubt it had the same plans. “Lorcan!” she shout
ed. “Drive the bats down!”

  • • •

  THE NEARER ILSTAN came to the staff, the harder it was to keep his mind on his task. Not the panicked, frantic madness of the building powers of Azuth, but something dreamier, something more disconnected from here and now. His mind wandered—back to his days of apprenticeship, to his years in the War Wizards of Cormyr—only to snap back to the cavern, the creature, and the current peril. The lack of the god’s voice in his thoughts. His stomach lurched each time, but he forced himself forward, reaching for the lost staff of Azuth.

  Only you can claim it, he thought. Only you can bear it.

  Behind him Farideh leaped for a diving spell-bat, hitting it with her outstretched sword. Again the cascade of blue fire over her frame and a moment later her sword sent a wave of force slamming into the cave ceiling, dropping more stones and shaking the creature’s grip such that it’s back half hung, loose and thrashing.

  —Ilstan holds his little hand as if pinching a quill over the parchment listing his father’s latest shipments of copper and which smelters had already ordered what. A tidy duplicate of the figures appear on the blank sheet beside it, and Ilstan smiles up at his father and his beaming tutor. “It’s called amanuensis,” he says. His father chuckles and strokes his beard. “I’ll be damned.”—

  Someone shoved Ilstan hard from behind, making him stumble forward. The dragonborn. The cave, the staff, the creature. Ilstan looked up at the pale stick of wood still beckoning him from another twenty feet on. Right.

  Overhead the beast roared and magical thunder whoomphed through the room making his eardrums ache. The sounds of the wands discharging on either side. The constant screech of the spell-bats. Farideh cried out and another roar of flames sent a gust of hot air chasing Ilstan’s feet.

  “Lord of Spells grant me focus,” he murmured. “Guide my mind. Guide my feet. Guide my hands.”

  He leaped over a crack in the floor. As he landed, something shook the whole cavern, nearly knocking him over. He looked back over his shoulder. The creature had dropped from the ceiling, slithering down the slope of the basin.