“Is it possible … Do you think there’s a way to keep the same devil, but … tighten its reins?”
Yvon smiled and sipped his tea. “No. As far as the devils are concerned, they hold the reins. And in a sense, they do. If you try to reason them out of that mindset, at best you’re only arming them with ways to needle you. The key, it seems, is not to hand the reins over too easily.” He gestured for her to drink her tea and put another biscuit on her plate.
She sipped reluctantly. The tea was bitter and earthy under the sugar, and it burned her tongue a little. Kill Lorcan, take on a different devil’s pact, or continue as she was. They were not the choices she’d hoped for.
“It isn’t easy,” Yvon said. “And to think you’ve been going at it all alone.” He clucked his tongue. “At least you have a little power, yes? It’s not as if you’re stuck with Lector’s imp.”
“A little, yes,” she said. She broke a piece off the biscuit and pressed it nervously to crumbs between her fingers. “I know most people would say it’s foolish of me, but … most days, I’m glad of the pact.”
Yvon leaned forward and gave her a very solemn look over the rims of his spectacles. “I wouldn’t say you’re foolish for that. After all, without the pact, you wouldn’t have seen the truth of the wider world, the path to true power.”
It was a strange way to say it, but Farideh supposed he was right. If she hadn’t taken Lorcan’s pact, she would still be in Arush Vayem, she would never have seen a Neverwinter full of tieflings, she would not know she was capable of protecting a caravan or trapping a bounty.
“And I would guess this Lorcan is the one who introduced you to the Raging Fiend?”
Farideh set her cup down and frowned. “I’m sorry?”
“Asmodeus. The king of the Hells. We often prefer his epithet.”
“Oh.” The king of the Hells’ own blood runs in your veins. “Yes. I mean, I knew some things. Before.”
The bells over the door jingled as a customer came in. Yvon shook his head with a weary smile. “Business intruding on pleasure. I’ll be just a moment.” He stood and passed through the curtained door.
We often prefer his epithet. Farideh sighed. There was so much she didn’t know about warlocks. A whole way of speaking of devils, for one. She wondered if Lorcan’s lady had such an epithet. She took a bite of teacake.
When she heard the rasping voice from the front room, her mouth dried up, threatening to choke her on her mouthful. “I’m looking for people. Not things. A boy, a dragonborn, and a pair of tieflings.”
“Oh?” Yvon said. “Friends of yours?”
Farideh stood too quickly, scraping the chair against the floor, her heart in her throat. The voice continued, “One of the tieflings wields a glaive. The other has a silver eye. Have you seen them?”
“Perhaps. I believe I saw two tieflings of that description just the other day. Young ladies?”
“Yes. Where are they?”
“I must admit I don’t know,” Yvon said. “Are they friends of yours?”
Farideh crept to the curtained door, angled her head so she could see through the sliver of a gap between the pieces of fabric. She pressed a hand to her mouth to keep from crying out.
The orc from the forest, the one who had shot Havilar, the one who returned in her nightmares, stood in Yvon’s shop, a naked axe in his hand. Yvon listened to him as politely as he had anyone who came into his shop, giving no clue that he might have noticed things weren’t quite right.
The orc curled his lip. “Good friends. You tell me where they are.”
“As I said, I don’t know.” Farideh felt her shoulders drop. At least Yvon knew that much. “But I believe I can be of some assistance to you. You see, they were looking for someone I am acquainted with. If you’d like, I could bring you to our mutual friend right now, and he might be able to shed some light on where your friends lie.”
The orc peered at Yvon, as if he didn’t quite believe his luck. He turned the axe over in his hand several times. “Now?”
“As soon as I get my things.”
The orc snorted. “I’ll be outside.” The bells jangled again, and Farideh stepped back from the curtain just as Yvon came through. The kindly expression had grown tight.
“I don’t need to ask if you know him,” he said.
“He tried to kill me,” she whispered, shaking her head. “He almost killed my sister. I don’t know why he’s hunting us.”
Yvon squeezed her arm. “It will be all right. We’ll take care of him, don’t you worry. I had hoped to invite you to our gathering this afternoon, Farideh, but under the circumstances, I think that is a poor plan. Come along.” He ushered her through the closed door, down a set of stairs, and through a dark cellar room that felt as if it were much larger than the building upstairs. Yvon led her through the dark without hesitation, and aided her up another flight of stairs. He unlocked a second door and held it wide as she exited into a small yard with a quartet of chickens and a dozy donkey.
“Wait here a bit until I’ve led him away.”
“You must be careful—”
Yvon held up a hand. “You’re not to worry, remember? We can handle him. Now, later on, after nightfall, if you’d like to come back, we’ll have a more informal meeting right here. You can meet Lector and the others. And I’ll let you know that your little problem is taken care of, all right? We protect our own.” Farideh nodded and stepped back.
“Keep clear of the wood for a few hours,” he added, and he shut the door tight.
“Why?” she asked, but the door was closed and Yvon was gone. Why should she stay out of the wood? Why should she even think of going into the wood? Perhaps he was going to get the garrison and they would sweep the forest for more orc assassins. Perhaps Yvon’s friends didn’t want to worry about her seeing them kill the orc. Perhaps they were worried she was too new to use her powers. She remembered the orc’s cruel eyes and shuddered.
Yvon had told her not to worry, but she had a very bad feeling that things were going to turn out differently than he’d expected.
MALBOLGE, THE HELLS
THE PALACE OF OSSEIA
LORCAN OPENED THE PORTAL TO THE NEEDLE OF THE CROSSROADS and stepped from the courts of Amn to his mother’s treasure room in the Hells. Bloody djinn, he thought. What a mess. At least he’d managed to convince his Phrenike heir to get out of Calimport. There might be a half-dozen others like him, but Lorcan had better things to do than hunt down another one and convince him to take up the pact. A day or so of reminding the Phrenike heir what he stood to lose, what his foremother would have done, what Lorcan was going to do if he didn’t start packing his things before the bloody genasi realized they very much wanted the Phrenike heir dead—well, it had been time better spent.
And it had kept him busy and away from the scrying mirror.
He stood before the iron mirror and scowled at his reflection. As crowded as Calimport and Amn were, he’d had no choice but to alter his appearance. The face that looked back at him was built on the same bones as Lorcan’s, but he didn’t look like himself. His skin was no longer red, but a middling tone that was acceptable most everywhere on Toril. His hair a dark, murky blond. His eyes were still black, but the whites that surrounded them made him look as if he were goggling like an idiot. No horns, no wings, no pointed teeth—everything devilish stripped out of him, and only the human left behind.
And, he thought glancing down at the back of his hands, though it wasn’t supposed to, the spell that shifted his appearance hurt like the Hells. He reversed the enchantment slowly, wincing against the pain. It took him nearly a quarter hour to change back, and left him sweating and sore—but still, it hurt less than doing it quickly. When he opened his eyes, the backs of his hands were red again. He sighed. Someday he ought to put a little more effort into learning that spell properly.
But not today. Fidgeting with the scourge-pendant, he waved the activating ring over the mirror. After that night in the fo
rest, he’d decided to leave her to her own devices for a while. See how she liked things without her “sword.”
With any luck, Goruc would have caught up with them, dealt with the priest, the acolyte, and Mehen, and Farideh would be nothing but grateful to see Lorcan turn up again.
The mirror’s surface swirled. It started to form a mountain road. Then stopped, swirled again. Started to form the gates of a city. Stopped. Swirled. The city again. A broken-down temple. A street. The city.
And no Farideh.
Dread coiled in his stomach. Goruc would not have gone against him, not after seeing all Lorcan threatened. Lorcan waved the ring over the mirror again. This time it showed him Goruc, wild-eyed and storming down a street, his axe still clearly in hand.
Lorcan cursed under his breath and waved the ring over the mirror. This time the image closed in on a building—a shop with a large sign he had no time to read—before leaping back to the gates.
“Godsdamned, piece of—”
“Troubles, Lorcan?”
Lorcan cried out and spun around, fire in his hands. Rohini raised an eyebrow at the spell—a spell that would not so much as singe a succubus.
“Not at all,” Lorcan said, more calmly than he felt. He shook the flames out. “You surprised me.”
“Not as much as you surprise me.”
Lorcan eyed her a moment. Rohini’s voice was no longer a purr but a growl, and she looked more ready to physically tear his heart out than to break it. “What do you mean?” he said carefully.
“What is your warlock doing in Neverwinter?” she asked.
“Neverwinter?” he said, trying hard to sound puzzled. The mountain road. The city gates in a towering wall. Oh, shitting Hells, Farideh, he thought. No, no, no!
“Invadiah didn’t tell me you were involved.”
“I’m not,” he said. “If one of my warlocks has gone off to Neverwinter, it’s simply a coincidence.”
“A coincidence?”
“There are a lot of cities in the world. Is there any reason she shouldn’t be in Neverwinter?”
“You know damned well there is,” Rohini said. She jabbed a taloned finger into his chest. “You pretend like you don’t know or care what happens in the Hells, but you haven’t fooled me at all, half-blood. You know Invadiah’s plans. Are you acting on her orders?”
“I know you’re in Neverwinter,” he countered, stepping back, “and I know Mother’s very unhappy with you. And I don’t want to know more.”
“I think you’re waiting to see how things fall out so you can swoop in and grab the glory.”
“To what end? I have more to lose and nothing to gain. I’m not playing your games, succubus.”
She leaned in close, baring her teeth before speaking in barely a hiss. “Then why are your toys all over my board?”
He shrugged, trying to look insouciant. Trying to look like the careless, accidental son of the most powerful erinyes in Malbolge and nothing more. “As I said: coincidence.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I expect you’ll believe anything I tell you to believe,” he said, harder. “Because I’d hate to tell my mother you destroyed one of my … ‘toys.’ ”
Rohini narrowed her eyes at him. Lorcan’s stomach turned to ice, but he kept his smirk. Rohini had to know Invadiah would let her take the blame if things went awry. She had to know Invadiah was waiting for the merest excuse to cast off the skulking and infiltration Rohini favored for a frontal assault. She had to know—
Rohini slapped her hand down in the center of Lorcan’s chest, sending a wave of agony coursing through him. He gasped and before he could stop her, she did it once more. His knees buckled and he fell to the ground.
“You understand,” she said, “that it would take nothing—nothing—for me to convince you to go find the biggest, most ill-tempered pit fiend in Malbolge and pick a fight? To waltz up to Glasya herself and call her treasonous? To throw yourself into the midst of your squabbling pack of sisters and let them tear you limb from limb?”
Lorcan kept his mouth shut. Whether she could or couldn’t, he wasn’t stupid enough to test her further. This was Rohini after all.
She kneeled down beside Lorcan and clucked her tongue. “You all think I’m just a tool, when I could kill you without a moment’s breath. You, Invadiah, all her pretty little erinyes.” She chuckled to herself. She leaned in and whispered into his ear, “If you know what’s best, Lorcan, you’ll do what I tell you. Either get your warlock out of my way, or give her to me.”
“I’ll get her out,” he panted. “Give me some time, though. I can’t scry her. The mirror is fighting—”
Rohini stood. “You have until I return to the temple.”
He waited until she’d left, until the worst of the pain and the nausea had passed, before pulling himself up on the bone spurs of the room’s corner. Bloody Rohini. He’d try a few more times, and surely Farideh would get out of the way of whatever was blocking the mirror. He’d call her through the brand, get her someplace secluded, and then travel to Neverwinter and make her leave. He waved the ring in front of the mirror.
A shop. A street. The shop again, and Farideh hurrying out from the alley beside it, glancing back at the front door, over which hung a sign that read “Claven’s General Goods and Armory.”
“Oh, shit and ashes,” he whispered.
Forbiddances positively haloed the shop. Those spells had been what kept the mirror from scrying her—powerful magic that had no place at all around a random storefront. Lorcan’s pulse hammered unpleasantly at him: nestled in the crook of one of the runes in the store’s sign was a trio of black triangles.
The sign of Asmodeus.
Farideh had just left an Ashmadai lair.
He grabbed ahold of the mirror as if he could shake her through it. Stumbling into Rohini’s way was bad enough, but this could make everything so much worse. He pulled hard on the tethers that connected to her brand. She had to get someplace quiet. Someplace he could get to her.
In the mirror, Farideh stopped in the middle of the crowded street, clasped her arm, and flinched. Lorcan pulled again and again.
Listen to me this time, he begged.
Farideh was threading her way through a crowd of people in front of a fishmonger when Lorcan pulled on her scar. It flared so hot and sharp she gasped and clapped a hand over it.
A woman in front of her, a human with large knobby hands, grabbed hold of her shoulder as she stumbled. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. Thank you,” Farideh said. But then the pull came again, so sharp it made her eyes water and again she gasped the fishy air. She pushed past the woman and out of the crowd, hurrying toward the House of Knowledge.
He called again, but if he wanted her attention he could come and ask for it. After days of leaving her alone, leaving her wondering what had happened to him, and, of course, what made him take notice of her was finding out she’d spoken to someone else about him and how to leash him better. She should have expected it.
The key is not to hand over the reins too easily, Yvon had said.
Again Lorcan pulled on the scar hard enough to take her breath, and Farideh stopped walking. Around her, the road was still busy with passersby, and off to the right a fountain in the shape of a wyvern swarmed with citizens and children and more than a few gulls.
Mehen often told her she was stubborn, a complaint Havilar often repeated. Farideh headed for the crowded fountain. For once, Lorcan would see exactly how stubborn she could be. She sat down on the edge of the fountain, resolutely ignoring the insistant pain of her scar.
Mehen dreamed.
He was following the redheaded woman from the temple through a forest. Not a forest like Tymanther’s scraggly mountains—heavy evergreens interspersed with bone white birches and monstrous oaks. Around their feet, ferns swished and shushed as they passed. The world smelled damp and resinous, like wet pine.
He remembered waking in the temple, prepar
ing to go haul stone. He remembered the redhead—Rohini, that was it—coming to find him. He must have fallen asleep, though, since he couldn’t make himself ask her where they were or what they were doing. He couldn’t do much at all but follow along after the hospitaler. He hated the dreams he knew were dreams yet couldn’t wake from. But at least Arjhani and Uadjit hadn’t made an appearance yet, to drag up everything that had happened so long ago.
Rohini turned to him.
“Stop,” she said, and he did. In his dream, she looked strange—stronger, fiercer, almost bestial. She grinned at him, but it looked more like she was baring her teeth.
“We’re going to fight some of those orcs you mentioned,” she said. “But I need you to avoid killing them. I want as many as possible alive.”
“Of course,” he said.
“And another thing,” she said. “I won’t look like myself. So mark me—if you hurt me, Mehen, I will hurt you back.”
Confused, he regarded her. He didn’t want to hurt Rohini. He couldn’t hurt Rohini. He drew his falchion, and bowed over it to her, his new commander.
“Good,” she said. Her form wavered and for a moment, she seemed to have wings and talons, her hair a cloud of bloodred. He blinked and he found himself looking instead at a lean and muscular male orc, his face crazed with deliberate scars, his dark hair tinged red. Her face? Her hair? No, it was simpler to call the orc as he looked—young, male, and oddly handsome.
Somewhere deep in his mind, Mehen sighed. This was going to be a long, strange dream.
“Lead on,” he heard himself say.
The Rohini-orc strode through the brush, making no effort to dampen the sound of his passage. Even in his dream, Mehen knew where to step and how to slide around the densest brush. Even if Rohini didn’t care, it was his way.
The squad of orcs crouched around a low fire, finishing the remains of a midday meal. Twelve of them. Half nursing wounds that could not be more than a few days old. All males, but one—a shaman decked in totems and packs of herbs. She was as big as the males though.
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