The popping was no longer her imagination, she was certain. The sound of a fire built high and damp, the sound of a thousand bullets from a thousand slings hitting the walls. She could hardly see for the lights and shadows. Though they seemed to grow, to surge off the two men, they swirled around the room like something alive.
Farideh shoved a hand in her pocket and felt the ring there. Whatever was happening to her, Tam and Dahl didn’t need to be pulled into it. Let them think she was a traitor, let them think she’d been corrupted in the Hells, let them think she was beyond saving anyway—just let them be safe.
The lights seemed to overtake her, as if they were boiling over from some source beyond the fabric of the world, like ethereal lava. She heard, dimly, the sound of Tam asking her something, the clink of a bottle being set down. The sound of the chair falling and Dahl shouting her name. She felt, at a distance, it seemed, her finger slip through the warm circle of the ring, and Dahl’s hands on her back as she collapsed into the space between worlds.
When Tam turned back from the sideboard at the sound of Dahl’s shout and Farideh’s wordless grunt, he expected his erstwhile charges puddled on the floor, one highly annoyed and one insensate and much heavier than expected.
Instead, there was only the chair, lying on its side on the well-worn rug, and the clink of the glass Tam dropped on the desk. Dahl and Farideh were gone.
Sairché waited until Farideh had left the library, off to assemble her things, and smiled to herself. Matched against a warlock in a game of wits? Even Farideh had to realize by now how unsporting that was.
Still, Sairché thought, it paid to make absolutely certain that she was defeated. Sairché knew better, after all, than to leave loose ends. She pulled a scroll from her sleeve, unrolled it and tore a large corner from it, making sure to catch just enough from the Netherese missive she’d snatched out of Rhand’s study. Enough to imply Farideh knew something about supply chains to the High Forest. Enough to be interesting to meddling Harpers. Enough to make even her family doubt Farideh’s innocence.
Sairché tucked it beside the ugly woodcut of a pit fiend. She tapped the little guardian on the nose. Farideh was going to wish very soon that she’d submitted quietly.
Chapter Six
18 Ches, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR) Somewhere north of Waterdeep
The floor dropped out from under Dahl’s feet, the air around him evaporated, and the only thing he could be sure of was the weight of Farideh slumped against him. But with his next heartbeat his feet slammed into a stone floor, the air condensed around him once more, cold and clammy, and there were six shadar-kai men standing around them, looking startled. “Gods’ books,” Dahl spat, and he dropped Farideh to her knees. He drew his sword and cut at the nearest of the shadar-kai—the blade slashing deep into the scarred, gray skin of the man’s arm, opening a vein. The shadow-damned creature looked down at the blood pumping from the wound, surprised. A wild grin spread across his face, thrilled by the sensation stirring up his nerves, anchoring his soul to his body a little firmer.
Dahl cursed. One didn’t wait for shadar-kai to bring the fight, and one didn’t count on a surrender.
Dahl moved quickly, taking out the fellow behind the wounded shadar-kai with a quick, fortunate strike to the side of the head. Still spraying blood, the wounded one pulled a pair of sharp sickles and with a crazed yell hooked both around toward Dahl’s back. Dahl twisted, slamming the hilt of the sword into the man’s face.
All around him, the sound of blades being pulled from scabbards, chains being unhooked from carriers, bodies primed for violence and eager for the pain of that violence, set into motion. He glanced around as he wrenched one of the sickles out of the wounded shadar-kai’s hand. They were all grinning.
Farideh was still on the floor, fingers curling against the stone, eyes on the backs of her hands. Gods damn it, Dahl thought, stepping between her and the shadar-kai. He flung the scythe at an approaching guard, a thick brute with a missing eye. He didn’t even flinch as it hit his collarbone. A long spiked chain slithered over the floor beside him, twitching as if preparing to strike.
It lashed out, but Dahl was ready. He leaped out of range and into the reach of another shadar-kai, this one shaved bald and pierced all over with silver barbs. He caught Dahl and slung him down to the stones, so quick Dahl couldn’t stop his head from smacking the floor.
Up, up, up! he shouted to himself. His head was spinning and the pain was intense, but it was nothing compared to what would come if the brutal shadar-kai got ahold of them. The chain struck him hard in the ribs as he pushed up, sending a lightning bolt of pain through his chest. One elbow buckled, but he kept moving, twisting up to face the shadar-kai who’d thrown him and slamming his elbow into the side of his knee. The pain lit the man’s face, and the dagger that was arcing toward Dahl slowed, enough to give the Harper a chance to sit up and get out of the way of the chain that hit its owner’s ally instead. Dahl’s sword finished its work.
But, Hells, there were still too many. He looked around, past the advancing thug with his chain, past the swordsman shifting around Dahl’s side, past the fellow who’d knocked him down, now holding a pair of sharp-bladed carvestars in hand, ready to throw. There had to be an exit, a way to retreat, but even then, could he get Farideh—
A crackling gust of magic streaked through the air and devoured the carvestar as the guard threw it. An explosion of metal shards and sparks made the guard flinch back. Farideh stood now, eyes wild, the powers of the Hells suffusing her arms and tinting her veins black. She hissed another unholy word and Dahl scuttled back, as several bolts of burning brimstone streaked out of nothing to hammer at the three guards.
The big fellow turned on her, but when his chain lashed out, she stepped into it—and vanished, reappearing at the guard’s back. She threw another bolt of bruised-looking energy. Dahl took advantage of the guard’s surprise and punched his dagger through the seams of the shadar-kai’s leather armor, deep into his belly. The chain slipped from the man’s grasp.
He heard Farideh’s shouts of Infernal and the sound of one of the swordsmen crying out and hitting the floor. When Dahl turned she was bleeding from one nostril and a cut on her arm below where the sleeve of her shirt had torn loose like a flapping sail, but the heel of her hand was also slamming into the philtrum of her assailant. The shadar-kai’s head snapped back, but he kept his feet.
“Adaestuo,” she hissed, and the pulse of energy came again, bursting out through her palm and over the man’s face. He screamed—that horrid scream the shadar-kai had, half pain and half mad laughter—and dropped the sword, stumbling back into Dahl and his dagger. Dahl cut the creature’s throat, ending his ecstasy.
“Oghma, Mystra, and lost Deneir,” Dahl said, panting. His ribs ached, his elbow was screaming, his head pounding hard. He couldn’t take another fight like that. He scanned the room—no more shadar-kai, but stairs up to some other level ahead and a path behind him into the torchlit gloom.
He sheathed his sword and took hold of her unwounded arm, dagger in the other hand. “We have to get out of here.”
She didn’t budge. “You have to get out of here.” She tore her sleeve at the elbow, wadded the cloth up and pressed it to the side of his head. Only when he took it, only when her hand came back smeared scarlet, did Dahl realize how much he was bleeding.
He cursed and pressed the cloth harder to the wound. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll find somewhere to lie low. There’s got to be—”
“No.” She looked from one exit to the other. “You shouldn’t have followed, Dahl.”
“Followed?” Dahl squinted, the wooziness of blood loss catching up. “You came here on purpose?”
“It’s not what it looks like.”
“It had better not be—it looks like you’re a godsbedamned Shadovar agent. Where is this place?”
“Whatever it is, it’s not safe for you to be here. Please. Trust me, I—” She jerked he
r head toward the sound of footsteps echoing down the stairway. “Karshoj,” she hissed. “You have to go. Before someone finds you.” She drew her sword and pushed him toward the dark corridor.
“I’m not leaving you!”
“You are, because they aren’t going to kill me.”
“What in all the planes are you—”
“Gods damn it, run!” The shadows of approaching bodies slunk down the stairs like the fingers of a reaching hand. And though a chorus of old instincts shouted at Dahl to stay, to draw his sword, to find out what in the Hells was going on, to protect her or stop her or something, Dahl had enough sense to know he wasn’t going to do any of that while bleeding from the head, Farideh fighting him every step of the way.
Farideh shoved Dahl hard toward what she hoped was the exit, and ran back to the circle of dead guards. It had to look like she’d come alone. It had to look like she’d done this, whatever the consequences. She drew her sword and bloodied it with the mess of one guard’s belly wound. Kept the rod in her off-hand. Didn’t dare look after Dahl as six guards—humans this time, but still armored in the same spiked and studded armor the shadar-kai had favored—came into view.
You can do this, Farideh thought, drawing herself up and trying to look dangerous.
The guards considered her, considered the dead shadar-kai. Considered the sickly looking light dancing around Farideh’s rod. But they didn’t move.
Not until the seventh, a man in robes of emerald so deep and dark they might have looked black were he not flanked by the guards in ebon armor, came up behind. The guards parted for Adolican Rhand, and Farideh’s heart stopped dead in her chest.
“You?” she said, suddenly no more dangerous than a stunned deer.
Adolican Rhand smiled at her, his blue eyes piercing and predatory, even if his next words were innocent enough. They always were, she thought.
“Ah, your mistress didn’t tell you,” he said. He clucked his tongue—at Farideh or at Sairché’s omission, she couldn’t say. “Nor did she mention that you planned to sacrifice half a dozen of my guards.”
Farideh didn’t dare move, didn’t dare look away. The memory of Rhand smiling at her while the poison he’d slipped her made her thoughts slip out of reach like little fishes in a dark pond. What had Sairché promised him?
Anything she wanted, Farideh thought. And Havilar and Lorcan will answer if you don’t.
She looked down at the dead guards. Adolican Rhand was still watching her, one part amused, one part hungry.
“If you didn’t intend them as a sacrifice,” Farideh said calmly, “you should have told them to let me pass. I didn’t come here to be tested.”
“My apologies,” Adolican Rhand said. “I suppose it was in their nature. To see how far something can be pressed before it breaks.” He smiled. “Obviously further than they thought.”
“Much further,” Farideh snapped.
“Well met, and I will warn them they should avoid it in the future.” His smile wavered, as if he might laugh. “Though you must promise me you won’t press them back. Come, I have quarters prepared for you.”
Run, every muscle of her body urged. Go. Go.
But instead she sheathed her sword, put away the rod, and sent the quickest, most secretive glance in the direction of the dark hallway. Dahl was gone, and despite her fear, she nearly sighed in relief, as she headed up the stairs, into the reaches of a man she’d had every intention of never, ever coming near again.
Dahl cursed and cursed again, as he wound through the passageway away from Farideh, away from the dead guards. He should have stayed. He should have gotten her away—she might be a traitor, she might not, and he wouldn’t be able to find out which if she was dead.
She’d come here on purpose, and if she hadn’t expected the shadar-kai, she’d expected something bad. Something dangerous.
But she told you to run, he thought, pulling the second dagger from his boot before edging around a corner. She could have kept you there, let whomever it is kill you.
Shade, he thought, easing open a door and finding a cistern and storeroom. That many shadar-kai in Faerûn and who else could it be? But why would Farideh aid the Shadovar? And if she would, why would she tell him to run?
A deal with a devil, Havilar had said. If the Nine Hells worked in concert with Netheril . . .
Then Toril had best all pray together, he thought, because anyone would make a better hero than you in this case.
Dahl moved quickly and quietly, checking for exits, and though he heard the sounds of more guards behind several doors, none of them opened on him.
He ducked behind a stack of water barrels, checked his wound. Still bleeding. He pressed harder and tore strips off his own sleeve to tie the packing on. He wriggled the flask out of his breeches’ pocket and took a mouthful— just enough to think straight. Until he knew what was happening, until he could get reinforcements, he was the only hero Toril got.
Stop the bleeding, he thought. Send a message back to Tam. A group of human guards passed by, talking in low, tense voices. Dahl waited until they passed, then—after another swallow too tiny to count—he edged down the corridor in the direction they’d come from.
He tried a quiet door—found a pair of human guards, dead asleep in their uniforms—and quickly shut it. A second—filled to the edges with casks. No exit. A third—an armory. Dahl slipped inside, his head getting lighter. He needed to sit.
Racks and racks and racks of swords. Spiked chains dangled from hooks like hideous vines. Hooked knives, vicious katars, long black whips—he counted back over the rooms he’d passed, considered the unused weapons. Whatever this fortress was guarding, it was well armed.
All the more reason to get out, he told himself. Not for the first time he was glad of the little sending kit he’d convinced Tam to have his Harpers carry. Even lost in the middle of gods-knew-where, he wasn’t cut off entirely from support. And Dahl carried a spare besides.
He found a dim corner and pulled out the pouch, the vials of powdered metals and salts, the little scroll. He poured the vials out in neat lines, one eye on the door, half his thoughts on the right words to send. Weapons. Fortress. Farideh. He cursed again, and read the ritual.
The lines burst into brief, bright flame.
“Netherese stronghold,” he whispered. “Soldiers, shadar-kai,heavily armed. Somewhere cold,” he added, spotting a single fur-trimmed cloak on a rack, and he nearly cursed again, recalling his thin breath. “High up.” He hesitated. “Farideh came intentionally. I’ve lost her, both wounded. Have one reserve sending, sword and dagger.”
The magic crackled like a fading fire, as the spell carried his words across Faerûn, to Tam Zawad’s ears. A moment later the reply came.
“Lie low. Get me better idea of your location, quickly, so rescuers can find a portal. Find Farideh. Determine where she stands. Stay safe.”
Dahl opened his mouth to protest, but the magic was spent, there was no replying. There was no insisting that he didn’t need to be rescued, that wasn’t what he meant. And the way Tam had said “find Farideh”—did he think Dahl had fumbled that too? That he ought to have stuck beside her, regardless of wounds, regardless of what she told him to do—regardless of the fact that it was likely she wasn’t exactly in need of rescue from the Shadovar? He couldn’t even be sure this was a dangerous place—what if what he thought was a Netherese fortress was only some Shadovar nobleman’s pleasure house?
He dragged his hands over his face. Gods, he thought. You’re a mess. Even Tam knows it. He sighed, sure there was no farther for him to fall. He’d missed the signs Khochen had picked up on, and let a probable Shadovar agent into the Harper’s hall—and then let her flee. He had botched recapturing her when he’d had the chance, and as much as he’d have liked to blame that on being hit on the head, he knew better. And just to confirm how little anyone trusted him to manage, there was a rescue party coming for him. Like some kidnapped noble in sullied hose.
&nb
sp; Dahl was sure down to his bones that if his colleagues had to save him, he would dig the tattoo out of his arm himself. He would find out what they were dealing with. He would find the way out.
And then he’d find Farideh—and whatever had passed between them before wouldn’t cloud his judgment again.
He stood, a little better for his rest, but his vision still swirled. He untied the makeshift bandage—the blood had clotted—and wiped the remaining smears away in the dull reflection of an axe head.
This is just information gathering, he told himself. You’re just in the field instead of behind a desk.
A fortress this stocked, and he’d be hard pressed to get out past its guards. He scanned the walls and racks of the armory before spotting the leather armor uniform of the Shadovar guards he’d seen earlier. If there were so many guards in the fortress, maybe one more wouldn’t faze the rest.
Dahl slipped out of the room moments later, his old clothes shoved back under a rack of pikes. The armor wasn’t fit for him, but the spare cloak covered the looseness around the chest and the gaps in the bracers. He pulled up the hood and continued searching for an exit.
The air was definitely thinner, he thought, as his pulse clattered along like a runaway wagon. Up in the mountains? Floating city? (Gods’ books, please, he thought, not a floating city.)
He found a way out at the back of a cellar, past vast stores of roots and kegs (ready for a siege, Dahl thought), and came up and out into a yard. A smithy sat to one side, still and seldom used. A trio of goats looked up at Dahl from a small pen, bleating uneasily. A handful of shadar-kai threw dice in the corner by the light of the moon. Dahl watched as one threw a bad round and was rewarded with a stiletto through the back of her hand as a prize.
While her companions laughed, Dahl slipped around the pen and past a stable, then past another stable where something big and growling stirred the shadows. He peered in a window and saw a massive creature, all leathery wings and gasping mouth. Veserab, he thought. Shit. Whoever ran this place had clout in the city of Shade to ride one of the monstrous mounts.
The Adversary Page 12
