Brimstone Angels

by Erin M. Evans

  “Go!” he said. “Run, darling, fast and far.”

  Farideh wanted to ask what they were. She wanted to ask what they wanted. She wanted to call him out, to be suspicious of these sudden heroics that didn’t so much as agitate the amulet’s magic. But the only words that left her mouth were those that cast a bolt of fire that turned into a torrent of hellfire. It crashed against the raven-haired monster and splashed flames onto her sister.

  Both flinched. Neither cried out as the flames burnt them.

  The redhead sneered. “Rohini hasn’t caught your little pet yet?”

  “How amusing,” the other said. “Won’t she be livid when we do it for her, Aornos?”

  “Let’s bring her the head,” Aornos said.

  Her sister’s cold black eyes flicked over Farideh. “No, no: the hands.”

  Aornos chuckled. “Oh, Nemea, how clever.”

  Lorcan reached back and pushed Farideh away. “Run, damn it.” He cast his own bolt of flames, but the devils closed in on him. And Farideh.

  Fear held her reins now, a wild thing urging her to kick and strike and cast with abandon. But the devils were stronger, faster. Wilder. Their swords were graceful and quick, the lightning strikes of their relentless storm.

  She saw the trail of blood along her arm before she felt the searing pain of the blade, and as she noticed it, the sword bit again slicing through the robe and the leather of her shirt and into her wounded hip. The nearer one grinned down at her, her black eyes cold and malevolent.

  Lorcan was right, Farideh thought. I’m going to die.

  She had forgotten, as the devils had in their fervor to kill Lorcan, that there were more than the two of them in this fight.

  They hadn’t counted on Havilar, that blanched and shivering girl, to shake loose her shock, take up her glaive, and become a blur of metal and blood, her blade as good as her right hand.

  Havilar dived across the courtyard, throwing herself behind the weight of the polearm. With a crack, the blade—aimed just so—split the Hell-forged armor of the black-haired devil standing over Farideh, and buried itself in her back. Nemea’s eyes widened as the blade plunged so deeply Farideh heard a rib bone snap. As swiftly as she’d struck, Havilar twisted, planting her foot on the back of the devil’s thigh, just above her knee. She yanked loose the glaive and buckled Nemea’s knee in one motion. Then she spun the glaive’s spike-capped end upward as Nemea fell and Aornos turned, and smashed it into the redhead’s unprotected nose and cheek. The strike was imperfect—the bone didn’t shatter as it had when she’d hit the Ashmadi cultist—but it startled Aornos and bloodied her nose with viscous, black fluids.

  Nemea’s sword sliced toward Havilar’s knees. Havilar moved to block with the haft of the glaive—it will snap, Farideh thought, and then snap Havilar as well.

  “Assulam!” The word flowed out of her mouth on a stream of foul magic that engulfed Nemea’s sword and shattered it into a cloud of rust.

  Another cry overtook Farideh’s curse, a fierce, wordless war cry chased by the sound of a sword unsheathing. Brin. Brin, but his voice was no half-grown boy’s, but a voice buoyed by the force of a god. Farideh remembered him yelling in the forest as he attacked Lorcan, his pitiful war cry, all the more pitiful next to this towering bellow.

  The devils froze—as if they did not know the sound, as if they did not know what was happening. Lorcan’s sword lashed out, slashing Aornos’s sword arm. She stood the pain well enough to parry his following strike, but Brin’s sword drove forward, sliding under her pauldron. Aornos shrieked and kicked backward, catching Brin’s legs and throwing him backward and across the cobbles. Brin rolled and came to his feet—

  Nemea’s hoof slammed into Farideh like a charging bull, knocking her to the ground and pinning her by Farideh’s right shoulder. Nemea reached down and pulled Farideh’s short sword from her belt. She tested the weight of it with a sneer. No match, it seemed, for her shattered sword.

  Match enough to take Farideh’s hands off.

  The butt of Havilar’s glaive cracked across Nemea’s face, rocking her back onto her other foot long enough for Farideh to roll away. Enraged, the devil swung her shield out to knock Havilar back, but the tiefling was too quick. As she clambered to her feet, Farideh caught a glimpse of Havilar’s flushed face, concentration and unbridled eagerness warring in her features, before Farideh cast another of the shimmering bolts of energy into Nemea’s chest.

  Swords clashed. Aornos pressed Lorcan back. He parried and blocked, his swordwork nearly as clean as the devil’s, but one glance at Aornos showed she was hardly making an effort. Lorcan, on the other hand, looked as if a gnat across his field of vision would break his concentration, make him slip, and kill him.

  It would be easy, she thought. Call out his name, and he’d look over. Long enough for the devil to break his defense.

  She could lose him. She could let the pact go.

  Her chest squeezed and the powers of the Hells churned her stomach sick.

  Aornos swung her sword into Lorcan’s, catching the blade on his guard. One swift, savage thrust and the force of her blade broke his grip. His sword clattered to the ground. Aornos bashed her shield into his chest and he fell, splayed out on the ground like a sacrifice. She raised her sword again.

  There was no place for thought. Farideh shouted the words of a spell she’d used only once, when Lorcan had shown it to her some other dark night in some other crumbling town. Screamed them with everything left in her. The ground beneath Aornos turned molten and swallowed her hooves. Then the fire that should have leaped out of the ground like a fountain instead burst forth like a waking volcano.

  Aornos’s screams pierced Farideh to her very marrow. Still she readied the next spell, the blast of energy that she’d first learned. When the fires fell away, she cast it, and the crackling light enveloped the devil. Her screams broke off and she collapsed in a heap.

  Only for a moment though—the body suddenly burst into greasy flames and within seconds, the fire had devoured Aornos.

  Farideh spared the slightest, most secretive glance at Lorcan as he pulled himself to his feet and snatched up his sword, before turning her rod toward the remaining devil. But she wasn’t needed.

  Nemea collapsed across the broken cobbles with a noisy clatter and Havilar’s glaive planted in her ribs. She groaned once and burst into flames as Aornos before her had done.

  Havilar wrenched her glaive free and planted it in the scorched and ruined cobbles.

  “Devilslayer,” she said with relish. She looked over at Brin, who still held his bloodied sword in a shaking hand. “Are you going to be sick again?”

  “No,” Brin said, looking gray. To his credit, he kept his dinner down. Havilar patted his back.

  The square was quiet—alarmingly so after the clamor of the devils and the clash of weapons. There was only the soft patter of the drizzling rain, which served to mute things further and wash away the smells of blood and brimstone. If anyone had heard them, they’d stayed well away. Lorcan crept up beside her.

  “What in the Hells were those?” Farideh demanded.

  “Erinyes,” Lorcan said, his voice taut and clipped. “The archduchess’s enforcers.”

  “Are there more?”

  “Not now. They were only supposed to take me.” He shifted. “There will be more if we wait much longer.”

  “We need to get out of the street.” She started to walk, but the light, tentative touch of Lorcan’s hand stopped her.

  “You could have let her kill me,” he pointed out.

  “I could have.”

  He waited, agitated, as if he expected her to say more. “You’re not terribly skilled at being a cold-blooded killer, are you? First you can’t blow my head off, then you can’t even let someone else’s sword take me.”

  “You’re right,” Farideh said. “We need to get out of the street.”

  There had been a building between the square and the temple, not yet demolished and par
tly swallowed by the last creeping edge of a lava flow that had obliterated the nearby street. Silent as a winter night, and empty. Brin and Havilar followed her as she strode briskly toward it.

  There was a gust of flapping wings, and Lorcan landed in front of her. “Why did you stop her?”

  “Stop it,” she said.

  “Afraid your ‘sword’ would be ruined?” he said.

  Farideh paused and looked him in the eye. “I’m not like you.” She pressed past him and farther up the street. The amulet would still hold for a good part of an hour; let him rage at her all he liked.

  But she heard nothing but footsteps as she reached the broken building.

  They climbed over the vein of rock and in through a window. The stairs had long since rotted or burned away. Lorcan flew to the upper story and disappeared, while the other three helped one another climb the crumbling stones of the walls. The floor above was mostly intact, although it, like the whole building, leaned.

  Brin led Havi over to the lowest corner of the floor where she finally admitted her ankle was hurting and the bloody patch growing on her sleeve was a deep cut on her arm.

  Lorcan stood by the window, scanning the streets below. For all that had happened in the street, it gave her a kick of terror to see him standing there, where Havi and Brin could see him—these two parts of her life weren’t meant to interact.

  “You knew them,” she said.

  “My sisters,” he said. “My half-sisters. Nemea and Aornos.”

  “Oh.” And she couldn’t help but imagine their positions exchanged—Havilar dead by his sword. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Why?”

  “… They’re dead. We killed them.”

  He shrugged. “They would have killed us. Me, in particular, with a great deal of glee. Besides, they’re not dead like you’d hope—you kill a devil on Toril, they reform in the Hells.” He looked over at her. “It’s complicated. Don’t …” He trailed off though, and didn’t tell her not to worry about it. “They can’t come here. Not for now.”

  “Then what are you afraid of?”

  “I have fifty-eight half-sisters,” he said.

  “We took care of those other ones. Those erinyes,” Havilar said, testing the word, “pretty handily. We’ll do it again. Just stand aside next time.”

  “Nemea and Aornos are easily the stupidest, laziest, and least dangerous of all my half-sisters. They still could have killed you in a heartbeat if you weren’t lucky and they weren’t cocky.” He turned back to the window and gripped the sill. “When the next wave comes, Invadiah will send better soldiers. And more of them. If she doesn’t come herself. You can think yourself whatever sort of hero you like, but Invadiah will cut you down all the same.”

  Farideh swallowed, imagining an army of the fearsome devil-women, their swift and shining swords, their nigh-unbreakable armor. “Why are they here?”

  He scowled. “Because someone has thrown me over to the wolves. They think I’ve betrayed my mother. Or worse, Glasya.” His dark eyes met Farideh’s. “They won’t stop—not until I’m dead or I convince Invadiah I’m no traitor. They knew you too.”

  “I heard that. You were right about Rohini then. That was supposed to be me.”

  “She’ll be looking for you.”

  “But why? Who is she?”

  He looked down at her, still puzzled, still angry. “Rohini is a devil,” he said after a breath. “A succubus. She is the main agent—maybe the only agent—of Glasya, Lord of the Sixth Layer, in Neverwinter.”

  “What about you?” Brin asked.

  Lorcan scowled at him. “I live at Glasya’s pleasure, but I don’t act on her orders.”

  “What is Rohini doing here?” Farideh asked.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea.” He sighed. “You won’t understand, but I have worked very hard not to have the faintest idea.”

  “She’s spellscarring orcs,” Havilar said matter-of-factly. “Even I know that.”

  Lorcan shrugged. “That could be her goal. That could be a step to something bigger. That could be an act so far ahead of her eventual goal that no one but Glasya could uncover what it is. I don’t know if Invadiah even knows, and she’s commanding Rohini. Devils don’t do things they way you do.”

  “Think,” Farideh said. “You must have heard something, if you know that much.”

  He shook his head resolutely, as if he didn’t want to remember. “Old ones,” he finally said. “She said she couldn’t risk the old ones.”

  Old ones? Farideh thought. Gods, could they be any more vague? “Old whats? Risk them what?” But Lorcan only shook his head.

  “They said arbalests,” Havilar said. “Or habolets. A sovereignty of habolets.”

  “Havi, that’s not even a word,” Farideh said.

  “I’m only saying what I—” Havilar started, but a horrified gasp cut her off.

  “Aboleths?” Brin said, staring at her.

  “Oh,” Havilar said. “Maybe. That makes more sense than giving orcs to an arbalest. Aren’t aboleths sea monsters though?”

  When they’d crossed the Sea of Fallen Stars to take the northern passage, the sailors had scanned the skies constantly for any sign of the aboleths. Hulking monsters, they’d told her, large as whales. Swam through water and air alike. They might pass a ship by, might render another into nothing but blood and splinters floating on the water, might coat all aboard a third with a layer of slime that sank into your head and warped your mind, making you into a servant with hardly a will of your own. Mehen had snorted and called them ridiculous tales, but he made Farideh and Havilar stay below deck.

  “They’re going to be disappointed those orcs can’t swim,” Havilar said.

  Farideh bit her tongue and did not ask where Havilar had gotten the idea that orcs couldn’t swim. “What would Rohini want to treat with an aboleth for?” she asked Brin.

  But Brin still sat, wide-eyed with horror. “Not an aboleth,” he said. “They’re dealing with the Abolethic Sovereignty.”

  “Is that … like a herd of aboleths?” Farideh asked.

  “It’s what controls them.” He shook his head. “Or something. Look, aboleths aren’t like regular creatures. They’re … they know things. And what one knows, they all know. Their memories are shared. The Sovereignty is like the mind that steers things. Maybe.” He sighed. “I’m not explaining it well, but I don’t know if anyone can explain it well. People aren’t supposed to know these things.”

  “I quite agree,” Lorcan said.

  “Why would Rohini be dealing with aboleths of any sort?” Farideh asked.

  “Because,” Lorcan replied, “the archduchess of the Sixth Layer said to. That’s all you need to know.”

  Farideh twisted the ends of her hair. “Then maybe she’s making a pact of some sort with the Abolethic Sovereignty?”

  “No,” Brin said. “I mean, I don’t think so. They don’t make treaties. They don’t make pacts. I don’t even think they talk to other powers. They don’t think like anything else does. It would be like you making an agreement with a tree. Why would you? The tree doesn’t have anything you couldn’t just take, and the tree can’t use anything you could give it.”

  “And,” Lorcan added, “making treaties is not Glasya’s style. She does things on her own, and your aboleths couldn’t take what they’d like from her.”

  Farideh frowned. Why bother trying to please a monster if the creature wasn’t a threat to you, wasn’t an ally for you, and didn’t have something you wanted? After all, what would an archdevil do with a sea monster’s treasures?

  “Would she want their memories?” she asked Brin. “That’s what you said, right? They share their memories? So if you were able to read the memories of one?”

  “You’d have a million years of memories,” he said, “starting with the first aboleths. And … I don’t know what’s true about them, but I’ve heard they absorb the memories of those they eat as well. That might be a sailor’s tale, but … eve
n devils can swallow sailor’s tales, right?”

  “So if you chose the right aboleth,” Farideh said, “you could know anything.”

  “But you’d have to get to their memories,” Brin said. “And they’re too powerful. They look like dumb beasts maybe, but you can’t match their minds.”

  “You don’t have to match their minds,” Lorcan said. “You have to possess them.” He ran his hands through his hair. “And then you can also control them. You can make them consume anyone you like. Anyone they could best.”

  “No,” Brin said. “They’re too powerful—”

  “As powerful as a princess of the Hells?” Lorcan snapped. “There are those who worship Glasya as a god. Regardless of what your Sovereignty can or cannot do to her, she will make them reconsider their supremacy.”

  It was plausible, Farideh thought. Though it seemed an awful lot of trouble … an awful lot of risk for something that might come to nothing at all. She shook her head. Maybe Lorcan was right. Maybe it was foolhardy to puzzle out the motives of archdevils. Maybe Glasya was the reckless one.

  His eyes met Farideh’s. “Darling, you have to agree this is far over any of our heads. Archdevils and aboleths? What do you think to do against that?”

  He was right, of course; she was not a match for an aboleth. Against Glasya’s plans, she would be no more an obstacle than a pebble in the road.

  “Nothing,” she said. “But now we know better how to distract Rohini while we rescue Mehen.”

  “And even if you get to him, darling, she has him dominated. He won’t come willingly. Better for you to think of him as dead.”

  “What your orc couldn’t do?” she said bitterly. His eyes hardened. “We’re going back for Mehen.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Break your own heart. Go see Mehen’s not coming back. But don’t try to stop Glasya’s plans. I beg you. You cannot stand against her. None of you can.”

  “Can you?” Havilar asked.

  “I’m not stupid enough to try,” he said. He scanned the street again. “What about the Ashmadai?” Farideh said.