The Devil You Know

by Erin Evans

  He’d wanted to go with Farideh, to talk to Dumuzi with her, but she’d been firm: the fewer people in that room the better.

  “Besides,” she’d said, “Sairché’s still trapped in there and if you get too near, she’ll wake the curse again.” She’d kissed him. “I promise I’ll be fine. This is only talking.”

  The shopkeeper’s teeth parted and snapped shut. “All right.” He pushed his own ritual book over to Dahl to peruse. “Choose what you’d like.”

  Dahl flipped through the pages. Preskan wasn’t a very accomplished spellcaster from the look of things. He found the circle, though, and the shield, and marked them with his fingers, trying not to picture casting them around Farideh in the hopes of keeping the battle away from her, only to have her die of something from inside.

  The grated door that separated the shop from the city swung open with a rusty creak. “There you are,” a familiar voice said. “Well met.”

  Dahl spun around to see Tam Zawad enter the little shop, followed by Mira. “What in the Hells are you doing here?” he asked, too surprised for pleasantries. Tam grasped his hand.

  “I brought him,” Mira said crisply. “You need that curse off.”

  “Lorcan left,” Dahl said. “It’s fine.”

  “Still,” Mira said.

  “And it seems there’s a lot of things I’ve missed while you’ve been away,” Tam said. “Zhentarim. Demons. Unther. Giants with strange new magic. A dragonborn god—”

  “Vayemniri,” Dahl corrected.

  “You have a brightbird,” Tam went on. “That’s fairly interesting.”

  “Isn’t it?” Bodhar chimed in. He held out a hand. “Bodhar. That’s Thost. We’re Dahl’s brothers. That there’s Lachs, he’s an uncle of Farideh’s—I gather you know her.”

  “Tam Zawad.” The High Harper shook Bodhar’s hand with a cool smile. “I understand you have been dragged along on this adventure.”

  “They know,” Mira said flatly.

  “Couldn’t have been helped, really,” Bodhar said. “But hey, I know when a secret’s a secret, and you can barely get a word out of Thost anyway.”

  Dahl began to shush Bodhar—talking about “a secret” was near enough to revealing it and Lachs didn’t know—but he stopped, remembering. “You can cast resurrection magic, can’t you?” he said to Tam.

  Tam looked startled. “Who died?”

  “Not yet. I need to talk to you in private. I’ll come back for this,” Dahl told the shopkeeper. “I want the magic circle, the shield, and the … oh, the sentinel.” He handed over entirely too many coins for this and the first round of components. He nodded to Bodhar. “Can you get the rest of the things and bring them up to the enclave?”

  “Sure enough,” Bodhar said. Dahl handed a list and the rest of the sack of coins over to him, but Thost intercepted it with a raised eyebrow. Bodhar scowled at him. “Who’m I going to dice with here?”

  “I’d be up for some dicing,” Lachs chimed in. “Make the most of my holiday as it were.”

  “Be back in an hour. I’m closing early.” Preskan said, eyes on Tam. “You’re the one who’s been shepherding Kepeshkmolik Dumuzi? They say the battle will begin in the morning.”

  “If not sooner,” Tam said.

  The scaly ridges over Preskan’s eyes rose. “In the dark? Maunthreki are seldom so bold.”

  “Gilgeam is a maunthreki of a different stripe,” Mira said.

  Dahl led them to the Verthisathurgiesh enclave, grateful that his hazy memory didn’t get them lost in the city’s winding passageways. The young dragonborn at the door directed Dahl and Tam to a small room nearby the guest quarters. Mira positioned herself at the door. The room held a few chairs and one of the low tables like the guest quarters. A painted scene of Vayemniri battling against a blue dragon and its giant minions deep in what looked like a canyon.

  “Here,” Tam said. He set his fingertips against Dahl’s chest, murmuring a prayer to the Moonmaiden. Silver light flashed, bright enough to sear his eyes and leave the reflection of dark eyes, a pale face floating in his vision. Dahl gasped involuntarily, his lungs filling with air much cooler than the room around them. When the blessing had faded, he was surprised at how much straighter he stood, how much lighter his chest felt. Even without being near Lorcan or another devil, it had been working on him.

  “Thank you,” he said to Tam.

  “You’re welcome. Now: Why do you need a resurrection?”

  “Farideh’s planning to do something extraordinarily risky and thus far there is no chance at all I can stop her, so I’m trying to be prepared.” Dahl took a vial from his pocket and held it out. “Will that suffice?”

  Tam took the crushed diamonds from him, considering the crystals through the dusty glass. “Where did you get this?”

  “I stole it,” Dahl said. “From a lunatic warlock. Who, if it matters, I don’t think would much mind if it went toward keeping Farideh alive.” Panic crawled up his chest again and he quashed it. “Will it be enough?”

  Tam held the vial up to the torchlight, squinting. He made a face and went to the door. “Mira? Can I borrow you a moment?” He shut the door behind her. “Are those sufficient clarity to do a resurrection?”

  Mira sighed. “You need spectacles.” She held the jewel dust up to the light. “Who died?”

  “Precautionary,” Tam said. “Hopefully it’s of no use at all.”

  She handed them back. “They’re good, not perfect. I hope they’re not for our friend in the cellars.”

  “Of course not,” Tam said, popping the cork off. “Who do you think I am?” He poured the gritty dust onto his flat palm until it filled his hand, and considered it, mouth pursed. “It’s enough for one,” he said. “And it’d better be quick.”

  Dahl swallowed against the tight feeling rising up his throat. “How quick?”

  “Preferably as soon as she hits the ground. Do you know where the ritual’s meant to happen?”

  Dahl shook his head, suddenly afraid if he spoke, he’d lose all semblance of sensibleness. He drew a deep breath and tried to push aside the image of her collapsing onto the stones. It didn’t work. “Shit.”

  “Thank you Mira,” Tam said, steering his daughter back toward the door and shutting it behind her. He considered the frieze that ran along the top of the wall rather than looking at Dahl, and Dahl was grateful he did. “So. This got serious rather quickly.”

  Dahl blew out another breath. He thought of rainy days in the tallhouse in Suzail, of late nights in taprooms, of teaching her rituals beside a campfire, of the moment he found her again in the prison camp, of buying the rod to apologize to her, of that night in the festhall that came down around them, of seeing her after, of knowing how much he’d been avoiding the truth.

  “It really, really didn’t,” he said. “It took ages. And even then I mucked it up.” He gave a bitter laugh. “Now she’s going to get herself killed because Asmo-stlarningdeus has to drag the whole multiverse down with him.”

  Tam sighed. He came over and set a hand on Dahl’s shoulder. “You’re borrowing worry,” he said.

  “It’s what we do.”

  “No,” Tam said. “We prepare. We keep our heads straight. We maintain balance. We know the cost.” He squeezed Dahl’s shoulder. “This is the very worst part about loving someone. Anyone. They may be your whole heart, but that doesn’t stop the world from handling them as ungently as it handles any of us. So you prepare. You keep your head straight. You don’t dwell on what might be, even if you’ve noted it. You remember that even if they are your whole heart, they are their own self. And I think you know that. I think you’re managing that.”

  “It’s not enough.”

  “It’s better than most can manage. Now,” he went on, “I think it would be wise for you to find Farideh, remind yourself the world’s not over, and maybe let me talk to her about what exactly she’s intending to do.”

  While Farideh might be willing to discuss her plans with
Tam, Dahl thought as they left the little room, he wasn’t going to talk her out of it. Maybe he shouldn’t talk her out of it—there was no arguing things were getting more dire by the day.

  “I’m going to have to ask for directions again,” he said, considering the corridors. “This place is like a maze.”

  “I get the feeling from Mira,” Tam said as they walked, “that I can’t expect you to come back to your handler duties anytime soon.”

  And after, my priest speaks—Oghma’s words ran through his thoughts. “There are some things I have to do,” he said as they approached the entry. “I’m sorry.”

  “Not as sorry as I am,” Tam said. He dropped his voice, “Maybe I’ll try and offer Mira your position. Get her into the house.”

  Dahl cast a skeptical look at the High Harper. “Mira? Did you listen to none of your own lecture back there?”

  “Fair,” Tam said with a wince.

  A flash. A rush of air. A sound like hot fat hitting a pan and the sudden, strange taste in his mouth of wintergreen and old wine. Dahl flinched and reached for his sword. When he could see clearly again, a faint mist crowded the entryway, around the forms of Havilar, Brin, a small boy, an enormous black hound, and a pair of imps.

  Dahl pulled his sword—Havilar meant Bryseis Kakistos, meant the same woman who’d been dangerous enough to taunt Graz’zt. But then she coughed. “Karshoj,” she cursed. “You’d think they’d figure out a way to make that less unpleasant. I mean, doors aren’t hard, and it’s just a magic door.” She glanced to her right, the same place the boy was looking. “Oh thrik. No one cares.”

  “Havi?” Dahl asked.

  She looked up at him, surprised, her face gleaming with sweat. “Dahl? You came back?”

  “Tam?” Brin said. “What are you doing here?”

  “What are you doing with a hellhound and two imps?” Tam returned.

  “Never mind,” Havilar said. “First, where’s Farideh?”

  “In the guest quarters,” Dahl said. “Do you know the way?”

  “Not well enough to make the portal go there apparently,” she said dryly. “But I can walk.” She glanced back to the empty spot in the air. “Hey—you see him? He’s a proper priest, so if Torm falls through, I’m pretty sure Selûne would like a karshoji word with you.”

  “Havi, are you all right?”

  “Mostly. I might,” she added to Tam, “have a problem to run by you later. Or sooner. It depends on some things.”

  • • •

  ONE MOMENT, DUMUZI was considering Farideh’s suggestion. The next her eyes shifted, fluttered—rolled back in her head, he realized as her face went slack and she started to fall. He leaped forward and caught her, easing her down to the floor. There was a thud behind him as Ilstan fell.

  “Why didn’t you catch him?” Dumuzi demanded of Lorcan.

  “Why didn’t his god?” Lorcan returned. He sat on the edge of the table and folded his arms, looking down at Farideh with an expression Dumuzi couldn’t read at all.

  After a moment of this uncomfortable silence, Dumuzi spoke. “She said you went to Abeir. How … how was it?”

  “I see why you left,” Lorcan said, not lifting his gaze.

  “We didn’t leave exactly,” Dumuzi said, but Lorcan waved at him dismissively as if he were a gnat. “Did you and she have a falling out then?” Lorcan made a small, noncommittal noise. “Does the Peredur know you were coming back?”

  Lorcan shot him a deeply baleful look. “You can stop talking to me now.”

  “What’s happening?” a voice shouted from the other room. “Someone tell me.”

  “This is the reward for treachery, Sairché,” Lorcan called back. “Stew in your ignorance.”

  A pause. “What’s wrong, Lorcan? Did your warlock give up on sparing your feelings?”

  Dumuzi rose and crossed to the room where Sairché waited. The cambion sat up straighter when she saw him—she looked more ragged than she had the last time he’d seen her, her nails bitten and her lip bloody with worrying. “Nothing is happening,” he told her. “Kindly be quiet.” And he went to shut the door.

  “Wait!” she cried. And despite his better instincts, Dumuzi stopped. She licked her chapped lips. “I have another proposition,” she said. “Given … given my unchanged circumstances and everything I’ve overheard thus far.”

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “It’s not for you!” she said. “It’s not for you, it’s for your god.” She smiled nervously. “I assume the godling with his demon army still marches?”

  Dumuzi nodded. “They’ll reach us within the day.”

  Sairché drew a deep breath, as if trying to steady herself. “Look, there’s no questioning my fate in this—I’m doomed. No one’s going to wipe the curse from me. If I leave, I’ll get killed. So … So the best I can do is make an impression. I need to be on the winning side here.”

  Dumuzi came into the room another few steps, closing the door behind him. “What does that mean?”

  “I hear,” she said, “that you’re planning to bring an offer to your god, a provisional overture of assistance from Asmodeus, with regard to one of his dead. It doesn’t sound as if you think he will accept that offer as it stands. Perhaps if a devil army were added to the pot, it would make the difference.”

  Dumuzi hesitated. It might—life again for Nanna-Sin, a force to stand against the demons and maybe save Vayemniri lives. “What do you want in exchange?”

  Sairché chewed her lip again and shook her head. “Farideh needs to be the one to come and tell me if it’s so. Farideh has to be the one to … to help me summon them.”

  “So you can harm her?”

  “No. She won’t be harmed. She will be free to complete the ritual she’s planned out.”

  “And if Enlil doesn’t want the devils?”

  Sairché gave a short, nervous laugh. “Well, we’re all shit in the midden then, so it hardly matters, now does it?”

  Dumuzi thought she might be exaggerating some—how bad could an army of demons really be? But he remembered the predations of the maurezhi. “I’ll ask,” he said, and left the room, closing the door behind him.

  He sat down on the couch farthest from Lorcan and his brooding vigil, eyeing the cambion for a moment before deciding he wasn’t doing anything immediately nefarious. He laid his head back on the cushion, closed his eyes, and reached toward the god …

  Enlil stands atop the mountain, waiting for Dumuzi’s arrival. The sky above seethes with storm clouds, and the thunderheads seem to coalesce into the black-scaled Vayemniri, even as he dissolves back into them. Enlil’s eyes glow like moonlight, like the flash of lightning. He is the mountain. He is the storm. Dumuzi feels his heart shiver.

  But he blinks, and they are once more atop Djerad Thymar, and Enlil stands beside him, as present as flesh and blood. Uncle Lightning Bolt, Dumuzi thinks.

  “The army of Gilgeam is nearly here,” he says.

  Are you frightened?

  “I am Vayemniri,” Dumuzi says.

  There is no shame in fear, the god says. Shasphur was afraid before he led Those-Who-Would-Be-Kepeshkmolik from the Citadel of Endings. The warrior twins feared their own deaths at the Battle of Arambar Gulch.

  “You don’t need to quote ancestor stories for me,” Dumuzi says. Enlil chuckles. “I have a message,” Dumuzi tells him. “An offer. My friends … They’re caught between two gods that have intertwined. They think they can help them separate and keep both from oblivion. But they need a second spark of divinity to raise the second god. They want what lives in Nanna-Sin.”

  Dumuzi speaks and Strychik Ozhon is gone and there is only the mountain and the thunderhead, the god who stretches beyond the planes, beyond the reach of time.

  No one may have Nanna-Sin, his voice rumbles like the storm. The Night’s Light. The Moon’s Champion. You tell only stories of his corpse, but do you know who he was? A warrior, true and proud. A friend, light of heart and quick of tongue. N
one could know Nanna-Sin and not love him. Gilgeam will not despoil him, and neither will these failed, foul gods!

  “They’ve offered an exchange,” Dumuzi shouts into the wind. “Asmodeus will call his soul back, raise him to life again. They will give us reinforcements to defeat the army of demons. It may save Djerad Thymar and more!”

  The storm rages a moment longer, and in a flash, Enlil is standing beside him again, still looking stern, still looking furious. None can raise him, he says. I have seen it. His priests all tried.

  “But a god?” Dumuzi asks. “A god at the peak of his power?” He thinks of Ilstan’s words. “We will be stronger for it. And we will know Nanna-Sin again, in some way.”

  Enlil hesitates once more. Tell me the ritual. Tell me what your friends would do. Dumuzi explains, everything Farideh had told him, adding in the resurrection of Nanna-Sin. Enlil frowns the whole time.

  Who would be the vessel for Nanna-Sin? he asks.

  “Me, I assume.”

  No, Enlil says. You are my Chosen, and if I am to be a part of this, you must represent me, be my vessel. Will you do this?

  “Of course,” Dumuzi says. His assent brings a smile to the god’s face, and Enlil’s clawed hands close on what is first empty air, then the gleaming shaft of a javelin, each end capped in hammered platinum. He hands the weapon to Dumuzi, who takes it gingerly. “But then, who will hold Nanna-Sin’s axe and call him home?” he asks.

  Enlil gestures up at the clouds, forcing the storm to part so that the moon, atop its luminous boat, shines down on them. I can’t tell you, he says. Ask the axe.

  Dumuzi pulls the black axe from his belt, tilts the obsidian head until it catches the moonlight, until it reflects back a familiar, impossible face.

  • • •

  ILSTAN NYARIL WALKS through rows and rows of scrolls and books—the library of the Silent Room, the temple of Oghma. The long aisles are empty of loremasters, the altar at the end of the temple devoid of petitioners. Ilstan moves from one side to the other, crossing over the bright-tiled walkway down the center of the temple.