The Devil You Know

by Erin Evans

  “That is why,” Caisys shouted, his voice a ringing whisper to her damaged ears, “you don’t touch the stlarning bones!”

  • • •

  BEYOND THE OSSUARY of crystal bones, Dahl made himself sit down and covered his face with shaking hands. Battle shock, he thought, over the ringing in his ears. You’re battle shocked. Get to safety, get attention from a healer, get a stlarning whiskey in you—that was the plan. That was always the plan. But he found he couldn’t move. He’d fought monsters just as terrible beside Farideh before, but somehow he could not shake the image of her stalking toward Vozhin, tears streaming down her face, with only a short sword in her hand—and him, completely mute.

  He couldn’t scream her name, he couldn’t shout a warning—or rather he could, if only he didn’t value his soul, and some frantic, senseless part of him thought how selfish it was to want that badly enough to let Farideh die.

  And then Caisys had pulled Dahl to relative safety, and there was Lorcan, holding her.

  You’re going to go mad of this, he thought, dragging a hand over his face. Lorcan would make sure of it.

  Farideh sat down beside him, thin lines of blood marking her cheeks from her ears to her jaw. She took a cloth from one of her pockets and gently wiped the same stretch of his stubbled cheek. His hand jerked toward his bag, toward the ink and the paper, but he stopped himself. His mind felt blank. He laid his hand on her knee instead as the ringing subsided.

  Lorcan watched them from the far side of the cave, unblinking.

  “How many healings do you have left?” Caisys asked Adastreia. “ ’Cause I’m pretty sure the dragonborn needs a few.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Mehen said hoarsely.

  But Adastreia only toyed with her necklace. “Is it hard to get out of these caverns?”

  Caisys frowned at her. “Depends on what you mean by hard. Climb for a short day that way”—he gestured to the darker end of the cave—“and you hit a much wider cavern that gets used by a lot more things. Weird giants and such. Get you out in another day.”

  “And what’s outside?”

  Caisys made a face. “I haven’t wandered around here in seventy years. Maybe it’s still a grassland, maybe it’s a godsbedamned floating city by now. Why?”

  Adastreia bit her lip. “I think you should go back and do your healing there. I’m staying. In fact, I think you all should consider staying, but it’s no skin off my nose if you don’t, I’m only saying.”

  “What?” Farideh cried. She shot to her feet. “No—we’re so close.”

  “You’re so close,” Adastreia said. “And to what? You thwart her and Asmodeus is still out there. You thwart him and the Nine Hells are still out there. You find some way to go take your brightbird and retire to some far-off cottage and the collectors are still out there. You can’t win. We can’t win.” She held up her necklace by the fat black pearl. “Do you know how many devils I’ve had? Enough that being Kulaga’s caged bird is a relief. They can’t get us here.”

  Dahl thought of Adastreia’s warnings, of the promise that he would come to miss Farideh’s days of being pacted to Lorcan if she ever got rid of him. The only way to escape devils for a Kakistos heir was to cut the Nine Hells off entirely. He tried to imagine staying in Abeir, under a steel sky, and found he couldn’t.

  But neither could Farideh. “If we don’t go back, my sister’s doomed.”

  Adastreia shook her head. “Do you really think she isn’t doomed anyway? You bring that staff back into Toril, and it’s not going to stay hidden much longer. Asmodeus is going to come for it once you’ve stopped Bryseis Kakistos.”

  Farideh hesitated. “Then maybe we beat her to the end. Maybe we use the staff.”

  “Darling,” Lorcan said sternly, “you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “No, she doesn’t,” Adastreia said. “But you can shut your mouth, cambion. Nobody wants Baator’s take on this.

  “Gods don’t just die,” she told Farideh. “You don’t know what’s going to happen and you don’t know what’s going to come for you when it does happen. If you think that you can just kill Asmodeus before Bryseis Kakistos does, and that such a plan will let you survive long at all, then you are entirely too stupid to be breathing and he should have thrown you in the river.”

  Dahl sucked in a breath at that—all the colder coming from her own mother. But Farideh didn’t so much as flinch.

  “What happened to idealistic?” Farideh asked.

  “I grew up,” Adastreia answered. “So can you. You should stay here.”

  Farideh shook her head. “I would rather die tomorrow than live knowing I left my sister and an entire plane behind to suffer. So maybe I’m a child and I’m still idealistic, but I don’t care. If I can do something, I will.”

  “It’s not so impossible,” Dahl spoke up, his eyes carefully on Adastreia. “We can shield the staff. Long enough at least to keep devils off it.”

  “How?” she demanded.

  “Lorcan has a ring attached to a dimensional pocket,” he pointed out. “And I’m going to assume that it is carefully warded such that his superiors aren’t sifting through his things, yes?”

  Lorcan’s dark eyes narrowed. “Yes. It could hold the staff.”

  “And then you can give the ring to someone else,” Dahl finished for him. He smiled at Adastreia with a calm he didn’t feel. “We’ll manage. With or without you.”

  Adastreia’s silver eyes regarded him sadly, as if there were nothing so tragic. “Without. And so I’ll keep my healings.”

  “Your funeral,” Caisys said. “Hope this midden heap of a plane doesn’t decide to crash again.” He cut his eyes to Mehen as he reached for the closure of his shirt. “No offense.”

  PART X

  BETRAYAL

  17 Mirtul, the Year of the Solitary Cloister (1408 DR)

  Chondath, South of the ruins of Mussum

  • • •

  “I know this isn’t better,” Bryseis Kakistos whispered to her sister’s ghost. She could feel Alyona, pulling on her soul, trying with all her might to drag Bryseis Kakistos from the room, a ruin sunk down into the very bowels of the plane, on the edge of the Chondalwood. She didn’t know who’d built the massive stone structure nor when it had fallen. But there was no doubting they’d used this place to reach across the planes, to make overtures to powers not even devils would deal with.

  Alyona didn’t stop pulling. Bryseis gritted her teeth and fought the urge to use the power of the soul sapphire to yank her sister back. “We don’t have a choice,” she said. Without the staff of Azuth, she’d need a great deal more power of her own to master the ritual, to force the powers of the Nine Hells to shift. She needed time to accumulate it. She needed more power to gain power.

  Still the emissaries of Nessus demurred when she called them, when they answered at all. Patience, they said. Your time will come. Make your bones, pay your tithes. You will rise eventually. By now, if Asmodeus thought she would believe that, he was a greater fool than she could have possibly believed.

  She laid out the jeweled box. The knife. The glimmering heart cut out of an innocent’s chest and preserved with magic. That, more than anything, had made Alyona furious, and Bryseis Kakistos’s dreams had driven her to wake, drenched in sweat, every night for a month.

  “Innocent people die all the time, “she murmured to her sister’s ghost. “This one died for a purpose at least.”

  “What was that?” Titus looked up from the brazier he was stirring.

  “Nothing,” Bryseis Kakistos said. She looked back over her shoulder as Phrenike came into the room, bearing more components for crafting the circles of power needed to open a path to the Abyss.

  Titus had known the ways to contact the demons of the Abyss so that she could whisper the right words, pass the right information up to more powerful demons who might be swayed by fear or promise of power into whispering the right words—the promise of an end to Asmodeus—into the ear of
Orcus, Prince of the Undead. Through Titus and through Phrenike, she’d given him other offerings, other payments for the price of lichdom. A deal had been struck, in dark, secret places like this one, well-warded from onlookers—even divine ones.

  She half wished he would spy upon her. That Asmodeus would see his downfall coming and realize how badly he’d miscounted her, realize he had to give her everything he’d promised, everything she deserved.

  He won’t, she thought. So you have to make him.

  Alyona pulled and pulled—she felt the phantom wind of her sister screaming in her ear. She could imagine Alyona, symbol of her goddess clenched in one fist as if it would give her strength. As if Selûne spared the slightest thought for the souls of tieflings.

  I don’t care if it damns me, she thought. I don’t care who damns me. I’m through being used.

  Phrenike handed her the salts, the distilled and dried blood—Titus was too palsied to make the runes, and Phrenike too careless. Bryseis Kakistos laid them herself, a circle of summoning and unspeakable power wrought in runes as jagged and thorough as claw marks scratched into the stones. When the circle was complete, she sprinkled the first set of herbs onto the brazier, followed by a vial of blood. She spoke the words that threatened to break her throat. The runes glowed sullen amber and the air in the room thickened.

  She set the box in the center of the circle, and opened spellbooks on every side.

  “Should we leave?” Phrenike asked.

  Bryseis looked back over her shoulder. “If you haven’t the stomach.”

  Phrenike scowled. “I’ll go watch the entrance.”

  Bryseis Kakistos drew her sword and shrugged off her robes so that she stood before the glowing circle in only a shift. Alyona’s pulling dragged on all her bones now, so close to a physical sensation she could imagine giving into it and following Phrenike out the door. This will work, she thought. Just trust me for once.

  “You ought to be careful with her, “Titus said.

  She looked back at him, eyes narrowed. “Who?”

  “Phrenike—who else?” He sniffed. “She’s exactly the sort that’ll turn on you. Hungry and foolish.”

  “She’ll have her work cut out for her,” Bryseis Kakistos said. She set the dagger against her forearm. “Are you going to—”

  She did not get the chance to finish her sentence. Portals ripped open on either side of her—no, every side of her. She spun, sword in hand, rod in hand as six-armed snake women bristling with blades slipped out, huge beasts all mouth and covered in spikes, a four-armed monster with pinching claws, winged boar-faced demons—too many demons for just one target.

  Not the demons she’d called either, she realized, meeting the marilith’s blades with her own enchanted sword as the creature slithered swiftly across the room. The circle still glowed, ready to receive the demon lord. These were some other’s assassins. She forced the marilith off, cast a spell of light and lightning across at the clawed glabrezu. It took her attention from the second marilith, the demon’s blades carving through the shielding spells Bryseis Kakistos still maintained and slicing into her flesh.

  She clenched her teeth, took one of the marilith’s arms, pulled another spell, this one ice from the tattoo at the top of her arm. A spiky hezrou froze as it barreled toward her—and so too did the glabrezu, its claw poised around the other demon’s leg. More than one force, she thought, pressing her fist and the rod in it to her wounded side.

  Titus screamed—a hideous sound that cut off abruptly. She couldn’t see how he’d died, if he’d died—there were too many swords and too many demons and the ice was melting and Alyona was screaming and screaming.

  She only had to last, she thought, cutting through another of the marilith’s arms with the sizzle of magic, until the demon lord stepped through.

  Just a few more breaths—she forced the blade through the marilith’s stomach.

  Just another few—demon blood splattered her, burned her cheek as she retreated toward the door, trying to gain some space.

  She backed into the entry way … and came up against a solid wall. The remaining marilith met her eyes and gave Bryseis Kakistos a feral smile. More portals opened. More demons arrived. The marilith snapped her fingers and the room went dark as a tomb, save for the circle of runes.

  In the dim light, Bryseis Kakistos watched chaotic death come for her, and she knew in her heart this was somehow Asmodeus’s doing.

  • • •

  22

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

  Arush Vayem, Tymanther

  FARIDEH CROSSED BACK INTO TORIL, THE PECULIAR PORTAL SEALING OUT the vacuum of Abeir and leaving Adastreia behind them. Her tail lashed the floor, her chest tight—she didn’t care if Adastreia had abandoned them, she told herself. It was obvious that it was coming. Her mother had cared only about herself, she always had.

  No one else ever did, a little part of her thought. She looked back at Mehen, settling onto a stool with Dahl’s brothers’ help and a pained expression. No one had taken Adastreia in out of the cold. No one had trusted her, been willing to sacrifice themselves for her happiness. How different would Farideh have been without a family, with only devils to care whether she lived or died or thrived? She turned the copper ring with the channel of seed-sized rubies she now wore on her bleached ring finger, felt the dimensional pocket stir and then settle. You don’t know what’s going to happen, Adastreia’s warning murmured in her thoughts, and you don’t know what’s going to come for you when it does happen.

  Caisys smacked her fidgeting hand. “Ow!” she cried.

  “Don’t mess with that!” he said. “You open it and the staff’s technically here. Keep it shut or you’re going to get trouble.”

  “Everything go all right?” Bodhar asked.

  “Bit rough,” Dahl said.

  Caisys handed Mehen a dusty-looking brown bottle from one of the crowded shelves. “Here. I have no idea how old this is, but it should help.” He considered the rest of them. “I hope to the Hells the rest of you have some draughts on you, otherwise you’re going to have to go beg prayers off Criella.”

  Mehen downed the potion, flinching as the magic pushed shiny new scales out of his damaged skin. He gripped his injured shoulder and winced. “Ah, karshoj. Fari, I’ve got a spare shirt in my bag—can you make a sling?”

  Dahl held out a trio of healing potions as Farideh retrieved the shirt, but Mehen shook his head. “This one’s going to take something a little stronger, I’m afraid. Joint’s wearing out.”

  “Tell her she should take one?” Dahl asked, sounding so tired Farideh’s heart squeezed.

  Mehen sighed, his nostrils flaring. “Fari, you need a potion?”

  Farideh took one of the vials. “Dahl, are you all right?”

  He regarded her silently a moment, before Mehen made a low growling sound in his throat. “Oh broken planes. Dahl, are you all right?”

  “Just need a breath,” he said, but the way he said it made the Hells suddenly flood Farideh, pushing shadow-smoke out of her skin. He offered Ilstan one of the healing potions, but the wizard declined. He turned to Lorcan, whose wing hung crooked and pale with acid burns. Dahl shook his head and closed his hand around both vials, clinking them together.

  “Give him one,” Farideh said.

  “You heard the lady,” Lorcan said. He smiled and held out a hand.

  But Dahl turned away. “You can stlarning heal yourself.”

  “Dahl,” Farideh started.

  Dahl didn’t look at her. “Is there somewhere I can …” he asked Caisys.

  “Go upstairs,” the wizard said. “Left-hand door. It’s dusty, but the door shuts.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Dahl,” Farideh tried again, but Mehen shook his head.

  “Give him some space,” he said.

  “What’s wrong, paladin?” Lorcan called after as Dahl climbed the stairs at the back of the cottage. “Did your feelings get
bruised?”

  “Hey!” Thost shouted. “Watch your tongue.”

  “I don’t need your help, Thost!” Dahl called back.

  Farideh strode across the room, seizing Lorcan by the arm and dragging him into Caisys’s kitchen. “Will you stop it?” she hissed when they had a measure of privacy. “Leave him alone!”

  “Darling, do you really think he’s going to break on a few barbs?” He tilted his head. “Or are you afraid it’s the two of you who’ll break?”

  A flush burned up her neck. “I think you should be more worried about it breaking you and me.”

  His expression gained that careful blankness once again. “Why? Are you planning to run to Abeir after your mother?”

  “Don’t you karshoji threaten me,” she said.

  “I’m not threatening; I’m giving you perspective.” He hesitated. “I’m not such a bad fellow. And I don’t think you want me gone anyway.”

  Farideh took a half step back, aware of how close Lorcan stood, aware of how true what he said was. Even when she dwelled on the worst things he’d done, she couldn’t quite imagine a future without Lorcan in it—as if breaking the pact and breaking away from him would dissolve her completely.

  But how long would Dahl stay beside her, taking Lorcan’s snide comments?

  How long will you wait while he’s trying to undo whatever’s trapped him? a little part of her said. They were doomed, doomed completely by the Nine Hells, she thought, looking up into Lorcan’s black, black eyes.

  Someone cleared their throat from the doorway. Caisys stood there with Ilstan beside him. “You two ready to get some work done?” he asked. “Or do you need a room too?”

  Farideh took another step back from Lorcan. None of this mattered while Havilar was in danger. “What do we need to do?”