Fire in the Blood, page 64
“Oghma’s bloody papercuts,” he muttered. He heard the acolyte’s sharp intake of breath and winced. “Sorry.”
He felt as though he were a novice again, relearning lessons. Think things through before you open your mouth, he told himself as he stood. He’d go back to the tallhouse. He’d smooth things over. They’d come up with some plan, what to do if the Hells intruded into Harrowdale. What to do if things got worse.
Everything would be all right.
“Well met, Dahl,” a voice called from the alley as he passed. Dahl stopped in his tracks. There was Lorcan, wearing a human’s skin, leaning against the wall of a bakery as though he were only out enjoying the chilly winter sunlight.
Dahl’s pulse clattered. He can’t do anything to you, he thought. Especially not here, in the streets. “What do you want?”
“A chat. Have you the time?” Lorcan asked, as though he couldn’t bear to inconvenience Dahl. His cold black eyes promised only violence.
“You know, don’t you?”
“I know lots of things,” Lorcan said. “For instance—” He twisted his wrist and a glass globe appeared in his hand. Shining in the center was a little farmhouse. His mother came out the front door and rang a bell—highsunfeast was ready. “I know about this little farmstead,” Lorcan went on, as Dahl’s breath went still and cold in his lungs. Lorcan brushed his fingers over the orb, the image blurring away, changing to a company of Shadovar scouts, a shade among them, trooping across the fields of the Dalelands. “And I know about this lot, looking for farms to raid, heading right for that little farmstead.
“I also know,” the cambion went on, “how to get you there. The travel takes an instant. You’ll have at least three hours to get everyone out of harm’s way. Or arm them all, if you’re feeling reckless and heroic.” He smiled, his eyes still cold and cruel. “Plenty of time, if you act now.”
“What’s the price?” Dahl asked, knowing that he’d pay it, knowing that he’d pay anything to be sure they were safe.
“Nothing much,” Lorcan said. “Just this: I take you to Harrowdale, and you never, ever speak to Farideh again. You don’t whisper in her ear, you don’t yell across the room. Not with a spell, not with handsigns. Never.”
Dahl kept his expression calm, though there was nothing Lorcan could have asked for that made him want to panic worse. “You don’t think she’ll have a problem with that?”
“I think she’ll assume you did change your mind after all. That you don’t want her cluttering up your life, frightening your blessed mother. And I don’t think anyone will correct her. Because you also can’t tell anyone about the deal. Those are the terms, and should you break either of them, I get your soul. Take it or leave it.”
Dahl scrambled. “She said … She said you weren’t allowed to harm me.”
Lorcan laughed. “I promised that. You’re very lucky, because frankly, there is not a soul on this plane I want to harm more. Your family, on the other hand, I made no such promises about. I can lead the Shadovar straight to them. I can make sure they can’t hide. And when the army’s passed, I can bring in my half sisters, and let them do the sort of unspeakable things the devils of the Sixth Layer are renowned for. And don’t worry—I’ll also be sure you have a chance to watch.” He smiled. “Or you just never talk to my warlock again. Choose.”
There would be a hole in the contract, an exception, Dahl thought. He was clever enough, he could find it. He had to find it—he couldn’t say no. And Farideh …
“She isn’t going to come back to you,” Dahl said.
Lorcan laughed. “Oh, Dahl. You’re not the hero of her story. You’re an impediment. A sidetrack. Can you really stand there, considering this deal, and think you’ve won?”
“I don’t think there was ever a contest,” Dahl said.
“No,” Lorcan said. “Because you aren’t my rival. The sands are running, Dahl. What are you going to do?”
Dahl closed his eyes. “Take me to Harrowdale.”
“A wise decision,” Lorcan said, yanking him into the alley and opening the portal that carried Dahl the thousands of miles to his childhood home. “A pleasure doing business,” Lorcan said, pushing Dahl out into the path that led back to the farmhouse, tucked against the edge of the forest there. The portal shut behind him, and Dahl started running, shoving aside the screaming panic that he’d made the wrong choice—both choices were wrong, and only this one meant no one would have to die. He pushed open the door without knocking. That’s the cruelty of the Nine Hells, he thought. That’s what you have to outsmart.
“Ma!” he shouted, running through the house. “Thost! Bodhar!” In the kitchen, they sat at the long table, a winter’s spread laid upon the boards—his mother, brothers, their wives, their children, the farmhands, and Granny, perched beside the fire. His mother stared at him as though he were a ghost, and Dahl realized that he had no explanations to give them, no cover for how and why he was here.
There wasn’t time. “Shadovar forces are heading this way,” he said. “I haven’t time to explain. We need to head into the hills. Now. All of us.”
Whether his tone convinced them, or whether Dahl’s family suspected he was more than just a secretary after all, mercifully they moved. As much as possible was packed into carts, the livestock driven up into the snowy hills.
“Leave a little,” Dahl said. “They can’t decide to follow.” He made certain to leave the door standing open, to knock over the furniture and smash a window. Make it look as if someone else had already ransacked the place.
Up in the hills, as night fell, he crouched beside his older brothers, Thost and Bodhar, and watched the lights the Shadovar carried bob across the fields below, heading toward the farmhouse.
“How’d you know they were coming?” Bodhar asked.
“I’ll tell you later,” Dahl said. He took the little sending kit out of his cloak’s pocket and with it, the bottle of scented ink he’d been carrying for months and months like a little talisman. The consequences of the deal hit him in the chest like a thrown stone.
“What is that?” Bodhar asked, scratching his graying beard.
“Ink,” Dahl said, tucking it back into his pockets. He poured the lines of powder on the ground, relying on the light of the moon to find the right paths. He murmured the words of the scroll, thinking of Vescaras as he did. As the light of magic flared along the powders, he chose his words carefully, tapping them out on his fingers.
“An emergency’s come up,” he said in a hushed voice. “Gone to Harrowdale. No sendings left. I’ll work on contact. Tell Farideh I love her. I will fix this—exactly that.”
A pause, a crackle of magic. Understood, Vescaras’s voice came back, faintly surprised. I assume there’s a reason you’re not telling her? I’ll bring your things back to Waterdeep. Another pause. Best of luck, Dahl. See you soon. The magic faded, the light from the lines dimmed, and Dahl cursed Lorcan as many ways as he could.
“Who in the sodden Hells is Farideh?” Bodhar demanded.
“Never mind that,” Thost said in his deep voice. “Who in the sodden Hells are you, little brother?”
ON THE FRONT steps of the tallhouse, Havilar shivered beside Farideh in the winter chill. “Do you think it’s warmer in Djerad Thymar?” she asked. “I mean, I know Arush Vayem is colder, but it’s up in the mountains, so …”
“I don’t know,” Farideh said. It wouldn’t be warmer in Harrowdale, she thought, a knife against her heart. How long until she stopped thinking such things, just to test the pain of them?
Havilar leaned against Farideh and put an arm around her. “This will be good,” she said, as though she were trying to convince herself as much as Farideh. “Just you and me. No dumb boys being henishs. We get to see Djerad Thymar.”
“What happens if we see Arjhani?” Farideh asked. When Dahl hadn’t returned that night or that morning, she’d taken it for her answer. She’d gone to Mehen and told him that they wouldn’t be going to Harrowdale after all, and not an hour later he’d suggested they go to Djerad Thymar instead.
“I ought to,” he said. “If for no other reason than to tell Anala not to bother me. And,” he added reluctantly, “truth be told, it seems rough to send Dumuzi packing all alone.”
“I wouldn’t mind going with him,” Farideh said cautiously. “Are you sure you want to go back?”
Mehen had sighed. “It’s funny. I don’t quite believe he’s dead. Don’t want to, I guess. He’s still my father.” He fixed Farideh with a grim, yellow stare. “I hope I don’t leave you wanting to dance on my grave.”
“Of course not!” Farideh said. “Don’t be gruesome.” He hugged her tight, rubbing the fringe of scales along his jaw against the top of her head.
“I’m sorry,” he told her. “It’s not easy. But he’s hardly the only fellow in the world.”
Farideh had pushed away from him then, smiled, and excused herself. “I’ll be all right,” she’d told Mehen, told herself.
“Arjhani,” Havilar said loftily, hugging her sister closer, “has nothing on Kallan. If we see him, we’ll just turn away. Because karshoj to him. Did you know Dumuzi is his son?”
“Did he tell you?”
“No, but it’s completely obvious. I don’t think Mehen knows. But who can tell?” She sighed. “I hope they’re using their time wisely in there. Isn’t it kind of hilarious that all of us sneak about, pretending that we don’t have lovers, because someone might get upset?”
“Do you wish you’d told Mehen you were sneaking off with Brin?”
“Gods, no. But it’s still funny.”
“Not anymore,” Farideh said. She didn’t mean it to sound morose, but there was hardly another way for words to come out of her mouth just now. She found her heart scrambling every time a dark-haired man walked by, thinking surely, surely, this was Dahl with some explanation, some reason he hadn’t come back. But every one of them kept walking by. He wasn’t coming back.
Suppose something happened, she thought, not for the first time. Suppose he was attacked or kidnapped or worse.
But every time she thought that, she could only hear him saying, Maybe it would be best if you didn’t come to Harrowdale. You loved him, she thought, but he didn’t love you the same. She didn’t want to believe it—she thought again and again of the stunned look he’d given her, that night after Teneth’s, as if the whole illusion of the world had been stripped away, and he realized that he’d been fighting against it’s very workings. I’m in love with you, he’d said, as if it were a revelation from the gods themselves. I’m so in love with you.
He was drunk, she told herself. He was reeling from reaching Oghma once more. You knew that. You know it.
“Do you think there’s people who can block ghosts in Djerad Thymar?” Havilar asked. “Since they haven’t exactly got swarms of clerics and things.”
Havilar had told her of the ghost that possessed Brin and the dead sellswords. They’d compared it to the ghost from the internment camps, and Farideh’s mangled dreams. Bryseis Kakistos, the Brimstone Angel—there was no one else it could be. Whatever she wanted, it couldn’t be good.
Except …
Farideh couldn’t shake the memory of the last dream of Asmodeus, the moment of darkness, the ghost suddenly kind-faced and warning her to hold tight to the amulet of Selûne. If she had to guess, what Asmodeus wanted and what Bryseis Kakistos wanted were opposed to each other. Which did not mean, she reminded herself, that either was the good option. Sometimes the choice is the least of the evils. Sometimes the only choice is a sacrifice.
“Do you think it’s putting my soul in peril if I keep Zoonie?” Havilar asked. “Because I don’t. But I don’t know these things.”
“Neither do I,” Farideh said. “It seems odd that it would. You don’t let her do evil things. Aside from the Shadovar she ate.”
“Never again!” Havilar said. “She doesn’t need to eat, and I don’t want to clean up what comes out. Shades make for disgusting aithyas.” She hugged Farideh again. “It’s going to be all right. For both of us.”
Farideh started to answer, but then a man entered the gate and for a moment her heart skipped again—but it wasn’t Dahl, it was Brin. Clean-shaven and dressed in clothes for travel.
“Well met,” he said. “And good morning.”
“Well met,” Farideh said. Beside her, Havilar went tense as a spring.
“You shaved,” she said. He rubbed his chin, smiling nervously.
“I told you,” he said. “As soon as I don’t have to go to court anymore. And I don’t. I’ve been … not quite disinherited, but nearly. And my cover has been compromised—there’s no good reason for me to be in Suzail at all. So.” He wet his mouth. “Do you think we could talk for a moment, Havi?”
“What is there to say?” she asked.
“A lot, I think. You don’t have to change your mind, but hear me out? Please?”
Havilar clung to Farideh, as if she could anchor her to the front steps, as if she could stop Havilar from going. Farideh pushed her arm off. “It’s all right. Go talk. I’ll be there in a moment.”
As the door clicked shut behind them, Farideh wrapped her arms around her knees, her breath a faint cloud on the air. You will be all right, she told herself. And some day you will believe that. But as much as she tried to insist that she’d known Dahl was going to leave her behind, the truth was, she didn’t believe it. She’d believed in his promises and his smile and the sweet, rambling things he said as she drifted off to sleep.
You are going to be fine, she told herself. Because he isn’t coming back. And that’s better in the long run—he’s safer this way.
When the man reached for the gate at the end of the pathway, Farideh startled, her pulse racing away from her. Once more it wasn’t Dahl.
Instead it was Lorcan in his human disguise, strolling up the pathway, and the same image from her dream, the path to an unwanted happiness slipped through her thoughts, a ghost she couldn’t quite exorcise.
“Well met, darling,” he said. “It’s been a while.” He looked her over, and despite the fact that she had already tapped into the pact, ready with a blast of energy, that look sent a slow burn through her body.
Karshoj, she thought.
“You look well,” he said. “Been keeping busy?”
“Plenty busy,” she said. “What do you want?”
“To sort things out,” Lorcan said. “I figure that we’re even now. You got angry I left you when you needed me. Then you cut me out when I’ve only been helping. I forgive you. I see now how it feels. And I promise, no more contagions. Happy?”
Farideh shook her head. “Do you think this is about making me sick?”
“And,” Lorcan added, “not listening. But I do listen. And you and I both know that this”—he gestured between them—“isn’t meant to break on something so trivial.”
“So trivial as poisoning me?” Farideh demanded. “No—it’s not. It’s all of it, Lorcan. You act as if everything’s different, but it doesn’t change. Do you think I can’t tell the way you try to keep me alone? The way you bully me, even when—”
“Even when I give you everything you want?” Lorcan demanded. He climbed the steps toward her. “Could your paladin say that?”
Cold horror poured over Farideh. “What did you do? You said you wouldn’t harm him.”
“I did,” Lorcan agreed. He tilted his head. “Don’t you think it’s more likely that he left of his own accord?”
It was—but that didn’t mean it was so. “Did you do something to him? Are you the reason he left?”
“I can hardly answer that,” Lorcan said. “I don’t know his mind after all. And neither do you.”
He was dancing, avoiding the question. Farideh stepped up to him, fire in her hands, shadows pouring off of her. “What did you do to him?” she cried.
But then Lorcan met her eyes. “Absolutely nothing,” he said. He studied her face. “I suppose he’s just not our kind.”
The fire in her hands guttered out, and a moment later Farideh had to remind herself to breathe again. She’d been so certain—for a moment, she’d been so sure that Dahl had not left, that it was all Lorcan’s doing. But Lorcan had never once lied to her. She felt fresh tears break down her cheeks, and she wiped them away.
“Darling,” Lorcan said, taking her by the chin. He leaned close to whisper in her ear. “Don’t cry for him. You were never his.” He kissed her cheekbone, and even as she raised her hand to shove him away, her nerves all shivered. “I’ll be waiting while you get your head on straight,” he murmured. “Who else is going to protect you?”
“Don’t touch me,” she said.
He laughed. “Think about it for a while. You’ll change your mind.” He took the ring he wore around his neck and blew the whirlwind portal into being, drawing him back to Malbolge.
I won’t, she told herself. She wiped her face again, and hoped beyond hope that that was true. That she wouldn’t fall into that old, familiar path. That heartbreak wouldn’t drive her back to Lorcan, shielded by the belief that she’d know better this time.
She shut her eyes and blew out a breath. This is what Asmodeus could promise you, she thought: a firmer heart. And maybe she should take it—there was hardly any way to escape so many wicked powers trying to snatch her soul. Why not sign on with the most powerful of them?
Farideh laughed once. Gods, you’re gloomy. She took another deep breath, as if she could scrub it all from her thoughts, then turned to go back into the tallhouse, to find Havi and Brin, but as she did, once more, a man came to the gate.
“Well met,” Vescaras called. “Farideh?”
Farideh’s heart dropped like a stone. Every terrible thing she’d imagined to keep Dahl away rushed back at her—you idiot, you idiot. “Oh gods. What happened? What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Vescaras said. “I woke up last night to a sending from Dahl. He’s in Harrowdale. There was some kind of emergency. He said to tell you that he loves you, and that he will fix this. And that he hasn’t any more sendings.”
