The Adversary

by Erin M. Evans

  “Gods stlarning hrast it!” Dahl shouts. “Watch yourself!” The man just chuckles. The lamplighter brings her torch up to the streetlamp, and the flame reflects off plate armor, elegantly wrought and inlaid with gold and copper.

  “It’s you that’s turned the wrong way, my good man,” the man says, and his voice sends an eerie, slow shiver down Farideh’s back. It’s like a song. It’s like a prayer. Dahl freezes. The man keeps walking, looking over his shoulder to call back. “Surely you can figure that out.”

  Dahl sits, stunned, amid the fallen books, staring after the man as if he’s seen a ghost. He looks as if he’s frozen to the cobblestones, as if he’ll never move . . .

  “Wait!” he shouts, leaping to his feet like the ground beneath him has exploded. But the ice is slick and kicks his feet out from under him as he stands. He falls onto the scatter of books again, catching himself inches from an open page. The red-inked print of an angel with a herald’s horn and a flaming sword standing before an elf hero stripped of his weapons, and leaning on a crutch. The line of text beneath it: You believed yourself unmatched, good Fflar, honest and wise beyond all measure. But you never set yourself to find the whole truth, and that was your undoing.

  Dahl lets out a breath as if he’s been punched. The bookseller is shaking the Harper’s shoulder, demanding to know who will pay for the ruined books. But when Dahl sits up, his gray eyes are locked on the crowded street, where the strange man with the elegant armor and the song for a voice has disappeared. A smile eases over Dahl’s face, as if someone has snatched away a heavy burden. He starts to laugh.

  The vision disappears, leaving Farideh to wonder what happened between then and now, what took away that moment of lightness. And what exactly caused it.

  Chapter Nine

  20 Ches, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR) Somewhere North of Waterdeep

  Whatever this place was—village, prison, long-term military encampment—Dahl still couldn’t make sense of it. He’d spent the first sleepless night under a thick yew bush near the wall, nibbling at the bitter orclar lichen and emptying his flask sip by sip. Before the sun was too high, he sneaked down into the village again and stolen clothes—a tunic and cloth breeches—off a line. He’d tucked his dagger into a boot, hidden his sword and the armor in the thatch of one of the empty huts’ roofs, and made his way around the perimeter.

  He’d estimated close to five hundred stone huts. Spotted something like an infirmary. Garden patches, a lot more than he’d have expected in such close quarters. Meager piles of food stores left by the guards in two places, and quickly divvied up by a score or more. Later, he saw familiar faces doling out gruel from wooden buckets.

  Near the lake, the villagers were mostly elves, and the shadar-kai more frequent. Up on the higher slope, the huts were crowded and the mix of villagers more dramatic—humans, orcs, half-orcs, half-elves. He even found a contingent of dwarves all packed in together in six huts. Wherever he went, the villagers watched him cautiously, but no one tried to drive him off, the way he would have expected if he’d wandered into the wrong quarter of some other town. Whatever this place was, whoever these people were, they seemed to know he was either on their side . . . or he was with the shadar-kai and not to be provoked.

  And then there were the flowers.

  Dahl had found another trail of them, a scatter of crushed violet petals, and followed it to the crowded quarter. He asked about Tharra, and everyone played dumb. He asked about Oota, and everyone looked at him like he was madder than a mouther.

  He might be one of them, their looks seemed to say, but he also might not be. They gave him a little gruel, though, and asked where he was from, when he’d come to the camp. His answers weren’t the right ones, and everyone seemed to keep their distance.

  Dahl cursed, nipped whiskey-flavored air from his flask, and cursed again. What he wouldn’t do for an ale, he thought for the third time that day. What in the Hells had Farideh gotten him into?

  He found a bench before one of the dwellings and sat down to eat his gruel and think. He looked up at the dark fortress, looking comically wicked against a blue, cheery sky. He’d have to get back inside, somehow. Climb over the wall. Bluff his way through a gate. Discover how the villagers interacted with the fortress and slip in with someone who did belong.

  “Hey!” a child called. “Hey! Hey!”

  Dahl looked down the road a short ways, where a trio of children watched him from another bench several dwellings down—a blond boy, a blue-skinned girl with the marks of a water genasi on her bare scalp, and a long-legged Turami boy, his knees drawn up to his chest.

  “What’s your name?” the genasi called out, her little legs swinging back and forth.

  Dahl considered them a moment. “Dahl. What’s yours?”

  “I’m Vanri,” she said, pointing to herself, the pale boy, and the darkskinned boy in turn. “He’s Stedd, and that’s Samayan.” Samayan watched him cautiously over his knees.

  “Well met,” Dahl said. “Are your parents around?”

  Vanri shook her head. “No, they didn’t get took.”

  “Taken,” Stedd corrected. “When did you get taken?”

  “Two days ago,” Dahl said. He stood and crossed over to the children. Taken—interesting. “Have you been here long?”

  “I’ve been here longest,” Vanri said. “Then Samayan, then Stedd.”

  “But she’s the youngest,” Stedd said. “She’s only seven. But I’m ten. And Samayan’s almost eleven.”

  “How old are you?” Vanri asked.

  “Twenty-seven. Do you know a woman named Tharra?”

  “Everyone knows Tharra,” Vanri said. “She makes everyone talk to each other, and keeps all the people safe. Most all the people, if they listen.” The dark-skinned boy hissed something at her, and Vanri made a face at him. “What?”

  “Safe from what?” The children traded glances. “Does she tell you what this place is?”

  “It’s like . . . a farm,” the little blond boy said, and he smiled, pleased with himself.

  “No, it’s not,” Vanri said.

  Dahl shook his head. “Like a what?”

  “A farm,” Stedd said more loudly. “A farm for chosen.”

  “Chosen what?”

  “You know. Chosen of the gods,” the little boy said. “The wizard makes them grow, then he harvests them.” He thought a moment. “But not really. Because they’re people.”

  “Ah.Chosen,” Dahl said. He ruffled the serious little boy’s hair. “Of course.”

  The Chosen of the gods—if there were any such people walking Toril— were individuals the gods imbued with uncanny powers, to serve their interests in the mortal world. But even in stories such people were so rare as to be apocryphal. You didn’t fill a mountain village with them, even if you managed to capture every Chosen in the world. Even if you were a wizard and a high-ranking Shadovar . . .

  “Have you ever seen the wizard?” he asked. The children eyed him like he was a lunatic.

  “You don’t want to see the wizard,” Vanri said.

  “Nobody does,” Samayan said quietly.

  “Sometimes Tharra sees him,” Stedd said. “I mean, I bet she does. ’Cause she goes into the fortress. For food and things,” he explained to Dahl.

  “She doesn’t see him,” Samayan said, sounding worried.

  “Where can I find Tharra?” Dahl asked.

  “She just left,” Vanri said. “She had to go and meet Ol’ Sour-Fey, so we’re waiting for Hamdir.” She wrinkled her nose. “You ask a lot of questions.”

  “Which you are very good at answering,” Dahl said. “Do you know where I can find Tharra right now?”

  “I told you,” Vanri said. “Ol’ Sour-Fey.”

  “Cereon,” Stedd said. “You’re not supposed to call him that.”

  Samayan’s dark eyes watched Dahl. “Why do you want to know about Tharra?” he asked. Dahl weighed his options—all the while Samayan watche
d him nervously.

  “Because I think she can help me,” Dahl said.

  “If you want help you’re supposed to go to Oota,” Vanri said. “Everyone does. Except Ol’ Sour-Fey and the elves.”

  “Can you tell me how to find Oota?”

  Vanri wrinkled her nose again. “How come you don’t know where Ootais?”

  Dahl held up two fingers and smiled. “I only got took two days ago, remember.”

  “Taken!” Stedd cried.

  It was more information than Dahl had gotten anywhere else, even though he wasn’t sure what to make of half of it. It did not answer his questions of the daisies. It did not tell him who the wizard was. It didn’t give the other villagers much reason to stop playing dumb with him, particularly when he broke down and asked about the farm for Chosen.

  Though, he had to admit, that might well have been more because it was a foolish question than because they weren’t going to answer. Dahl felt foolish enough asking. If the villagers were somehow Chosen of the gods, one of the dwarves pointed out, they would have been able to breach the wall with those fantastical powers and escape. Why would any one of them be sitting there, at the wizard’s mercy, if the gods had granted them powers fit for a chapbook?

  It sounded like the sort of puzzle Dahl’s masters in the Church of Oghma would have handed down: A god grants powers to a mortal, but leaves the mortal trapped in the hands of a madman. What is the god’s will?

  And after all the possibilities, the ultimate answer: We can never be certain of the will of the gods. We can only trust them to know their own minds.

  The thought dredged up old pains Dahl always managed to believe were buried down deep. A god grants a mortal powers, but then takes them away without saying why. What is the god’s will? The answer, Dahl had found, was much the same: We can never be certain of the will of the gods. We can only be certain they know you aren’t worthy.

  He stopped and blew out a noisy breath, as if he could spit out the shame of falling that still crept up on him from time to time and plant it in the cold mud. Now was not the time.

  When night fell again, he tried to re-enter the fortress, but the gates were locked tight, and there was no climbing the stone wall without risking the bored guards. He retreated to the cottage he’d stored his things in and cast the second sending. At least he’d puzzled out one answer: he’d scaled the crater’s edges, high enough to look down on a trackless forest stretching off to the east and south and north, a ribbon of river to the west, just past the wood’s only visible edge.

  “Southernmost of the Lost Peaks,” he said, while the ritual’s components burned away. “A camp of some kind—inhabitants were kidnapped. Definitely Shadovar work. There’s a wall around the place I can’t breach.”

  Eight days to reach you from Everlund, came the reply. Find Farideh and wait for them to contact you. Dahl bristled. He spent the evening praying indignantly to Oghma.

  The next day he tried again, and while the villagers seemed to be less wary of him, they weren’t welcoming. He made his way, winding through the alleys, toward the crowded quarter where the children had said he could find Oota, wondering if there were better ways to track down Tharra, the elusive Harper who might have a way to get into the fortress. Instead he found a trio of villagers, all muscle and grim expressions, weaving through the scattered people and alleyways, searching for Dahl. He lost them without much trouble, but every time he came back out into the open, he saw them again. Tucked into a narrow passage between houses, he crouched over someone’s fallow garden, puzzling over what to try next.

  He reached the street again and found a delicate line of violets peeking out of the dirt.

  Perhaps they bloom early here, Dahl thought. It wasn’t warm on the mountain, but it wasn’t as cold as it should have been. Perhaps . . . it’s warmer this year. Perhaps the mountains have volcanos’ hearts, and the seeds stay warm. There were a dozen answers more likely than flowers signaling the presence of a . . . what? What did he expect to find?

  Chosen growing in the mud, he thought. Waiting for a wizard to harvest them.

  “Cakes, some sweetmeats, lovely grapes only a little bruised.” A woman’s voice stopped Dahl in his tracks. “And half a ham on the edge of spoiling—I suppose she doesn’t much appreciate the wizard’s hospitality.”

  Dahl peered around the building’s corner—there was Tharra again, holding open a sack. She was talking to a half-elf man with broad shoulders. Beside them, Samayan perched on a windowsill, while little Vanri hopped one-footed around them, squelching in the chilly mud.

  “Brightnose lady?” the man asked.

  The woman shook her head. “She’s odd. But I don’t think so. Wants to wear armor, not frilly dresses. Looks embarrassed half the time she gives an order. She puts my nerves to the blade, but she’s better than the wizard—so far.”

  The man shook his head. “Small comfort. Is she certainly on his side?”

  Tharra gave the man a look Dahl was all too familiar with. “Look at the signs. You don’t deck an enemy in gems.”

  “Right,” the man said, with the air of a chastened pupil. He scratched his forehead with the back of his hand, and Dahl noticed the cages—the man’s fingers were locked into awkward curls by metal brackets. “Wish I could help in there. You still think it’s worth it?” he asked. “Walking among the guards—they could figure you out any time now.”

  “Then they will have to reckon with the fact I’m not just a servant,” the woman said. “But don’t worry. They don’t want to figure me out.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid they’ll notice—Vanri, stop. You’re getting mud everywhere.”

  Vanri made a face at the man, then looked across the road. Right at Dahl. Her eyes brightened. “Hey! Hey! There’s that jack!”

  And now all of them were looking where Vanri pointed.

  “Dahl,” Samayan said.

  “Yeah, Dahl,” Vanri said. She looked up at the woman as Dahl walked over. “He got took two days ago.”

  “Three,” Samayan said.

  Tharra pulled the little girl behind her, her eyes on Dahl. “We’ve met already. Armas?” The half-elf man took hold of Vanri’s hand. She pulled against it.

  “Dahl, Dahl, Dahl!” she said. “Want to see how far I can jump?”

  “Later perhaps,” Dahl said. “I need to talk to Tharra right now.”

  “Vanri, Samayan,” Tharra said. “Go with Armas, please.”

  Armas frowned. “Are you sure?”

  “She knocked me down pretty quick the last time,” Dahl said. “I wouldn’t worry.”

  Tharra looked over at Armas. “I’ve dealt with worse. I’ll meet you later. You too,” she said to Vanri and Samayan, as she passed Armas the sack of food. “Go with Armas now.”

  “Bye, Dahl!” Vanri said, as Samayan slid off the windowsill. Dahl waved, but at the same time he was thinking about how fast he could get the dagger out of his boot. Tharra only smiled pleasantly at him, as Armas and the children headed up the road.

  “You’re a pretty incautious fellow,” Tharra said. “Strolling around in your uniform. Walking right up to me like this. I hear you’ve been looking, though, asking around. But not getting anywhere.”

  Dahl blinked at her. “You told them to stay away from me.”

  “Guilty,” she said. “But I have to say, you’ve done better than expected— you went to the children. Good instincts.”

  “Thank you,” Dahl said.

  “And you’ve managed to keep ahead of Oota’s enforcers,” Tharra pointed out. She straightened her apron, her hand reaching into the front of it briefly, as if adjusting the pin Dahl knew hid there. “They’ve been trailing you all day.”

  “They’re easy to spot,” Dahl admitted. “Do you think I need to talk to Oota?” Dahl frowned. Why would he talk to Oota? Why wouldn’t he just talk to Tharra, here and now? He had to show her . . . something. “Wait,” he said, shaking his head. “I need to talk to you. I need to get back
in the fortress.”

  “Well, we can talk about that. No problems there. But I need to go, I’m keeping someone more powerful than me waiting.” She smiled. “You can wait in my house here. I’ll even leave you some bread and wine to keep you company.”

  He nearly agreed—bread and a seat and some stlarning wine was all he wanted in the entire world, and a chance to talk to Tharra besides? She smiled, and he nearly thanked her profusely and followed her in.

  But it didn’t sound nice, a little part of him thought—in fact, it sounded like an ambush meant to catch a complete imbecile, even if a little of the wine would be fine, drugged or not. “Something’s not right here.”

  Tharra gave him a pleasant smile. “We could talk about it inside.”

  She looked past him, up the street. Dahl followed her gaze to where three powerful brutes—two humans and a half-orc—were marching down the street toward them.

  “Ah, never mind,” Tharra said, and the urge to follow her dissolved. “They’ve finally found you. Give Oota my regards, would you?”

  “You stlarning—” But Dahl stopped, transfixed—not by the approaching toughs, but by the trail of tiny wine-dark violets running up the path between them, beginning in the spot where Samayan had stepped down from his perch.

  As bad as having Rhand loom over Farideh’s shoulder was, being left alone in the fortress for two days was almost worse. Alone with her thoughts, with nothing to do, she alternated between sudden, racing plans to escape, to unravel Sairché’s deal—or at least speed her way through it somehow—and deep, smothering sadness.

  She might well die here, and she couldn’t even hope for someone to save her. If she didn’t uphold her end of the deal, Sairché would have her soul, and anyone who might manage their way past the wall would be in grave danger.