Erin Evans - The Adversary

“I think we can consider Prince Levistus’s offer rescinded,” Magros said, opening his own portal. “We have no need of the second-best leavings of discredited erinyes in Stygia.”

Lorcan watched the violet swirl of the portal surge and then fade, the wind of a frozen layer sending goosebumps across his red skin. Not an ally he wanted, Lorcan reminded himself, and he hoped Harpers and tieflings and the Chosen of Asmodeus made a better army than what powers Prince Levistus could muster from the heart of his glacier prison.

He pulled the portal to Malbolge open again. A few hours was not enough time to find out. Especially when he couldn’t find Sairché.

But he could find the erinyes she’d taken with her, he realized as he stepped through the portal. He crossed to the balcony and peered out over the suppurating landscape of Malbolge. Near Glasya’s garden walls, a group of erinyes loitered. Even at a distance he could spot Sulci’s shock of yellow hair. He glided down to land among them.

“Well, well,” Nisibis said, “are you in charge again?”

“Think we might want Her Highness’s input on that,” Noreia said lazily from her perch to the side.

“Where’s Sairché?” The erinyes all chuckled.

Sulci swung her blade up onto one shoulder. “We left her with the wizard.”

“What?” Lorcan cried.

“She invoked the disputation clause,” Nisibis said, “and offered a proxy. I thought he’d take Sulci there-gave her quite a look-but he chose Sairché instead. You’ll get her back in three days.”

Lorcan shut his eyes and silently cursed his sister’s damnable hubris. Sairché would not be back in three days, because she had not invoked the disputation clause of her contract with Rhand-she had only bluffed him, and Asmodeus would hand down no judgment on a contract that was still in force.

And worse, Lorcan knew Sairché was in danger. “I wish you had not told me that,” he said to Nisibis.

Havilar frowned at the space in front of her. It looked as if the mountain continued up, the trees blocking much of her view of the peak. But there was a faint distortion to the air, a not-quite-shimmer that made her eyes ache. She blinked hard a few times, then reached to touch it as the scout who’d found it had prompted. There was something smooth and hard there where there seemed to be nothing. With her other hand, Havilar squeezed the ruby necklace in her pocket.

“Beyond,” the Red Wizard declared, “is the camp. And here is where my aid is of no more use to you: I cannot pass the barrier.”

Vescaras considered Zahnya. “How is it you plan to claim Shar’s weapons if you can’t get inside?”

“I have a confederate,” she replied. “My spells will center on her. After. .” She shrugged. “I’ve been told I can access the camp then. But I can’t make promises for anyone left inside.”

“You expect that we’re going to stand here and let you kill a camp full of people?” Vescaras demanded. “We outnumber you as of yet, goodwoman. By still more than when we began.”

“Don’t be dramatic, saer,” Zahnya said. “You and I both know that a weapon in Shar’s hands is far more dangerous. The number of lives at stake should she raise herself any higher, gain any more kingdoms, or worse, rebuild her Shadow Weave, pale in comparison to the number of souls inside these walls. So yes, I will act. And you will have time-if, of course, you can enter-to stage a rescue. My spell will take hours to cast, after all.”

Havilar watched the Harpers, but none of them seemed to react to that. Good or bad? she wondered. Zahnya talked too much like Lorcan-made too much sense of things that shouldn’t make sense at all-and it set Havilar’s tail lashing. Beside her, Brin slipped his hand into hers and squeezed it furtively.

“How long?” Mehen asked.

Zahnya smiled. “Ten hours. It is complex.”

Vescaras narrowed his eyes. “Very well.” He looked at Havilar. “Have you still got the bead your father mentioned?”

She pulled the necklace from her pocket and held it up. “Bomb, charm, beacon, passwall,” she recited.

Vescaras crossed to her and plucked the passwall bead from the necklace. He held the red gem up to the growing light. “How certain are you?”

Havilar glanced over to Zahnya and her apprentices, who were clearing a square off the forest floor and taking various items out of their packs. Preparing for the casting.

“Sure enough for this,” Havilar said.

“I suppose we haven’t another option.” He gave Khochen a grim look and beckoned the others closer. Then the half-elf stepped forward and slapped the bead against the invisible wall. A ripple spread out through the seemingly empty air, then another, then a third that came with a crackle of rock. The air seemed to part like a pair of drapes, and there beyond was a valley-a crater, Havilar corrected herself-filled with small, close together huts and dominated by a shining black tower. The Harpers and Mehen hurried through, and Havilar followed. The spell faded quickly after, sealing the wall once more.

Behind them, the slope appeared just as they’d left it, with Zahnya and her minions working hard at the spell. She was smiling to herself in a way Havilar didn’t like.

“Do you trust her?” she asked Vescaras.

“Not a bit,” he spat. “ ‘Ten hours,’ my broken chamber pot. We have six at the outside.” He turned to his colleagues. “So we’re out of here in three.”

“I haven’t got another bead,” Havilar reminded him.

“Which is why we’ll have to be clever,” Khochen told her. “But first, we find Dahl and your sister.”

“We need to fan out,” Daranna said. “Khochen, take the dragonborn and his friends-”

“No,” Mehen said. He bared his teeth, tapping his tongue against the roof of his mouth repeatedly before saying. “You want to capture her, I want it to be safe and easy. So you put one friendly face in each of your groups.”

Vescaras and Khochen exchanged glances. “We’ll be cautious, goodman,” Vescaras said. “There’s no need to worry.”

“There is no need to worry because I or Havi or Brin will find her and make sure you keep your word,” Mehen snapped. He turned to Havilar. “Much as I don’t want to leave your side.”

Havilar hugged him awkwardly. “I know. Be careful.”

“ Everyone, be careful,” Mehen said, looking past her to Brin. “I’ll go with Daranna.” The elf didn’t look pleased at that, but she nodded at one of her scouts and the three of them moved east and along the wall, down into the camp below.

“Very well,” Vescaras said. “Lord Crownsilver, you are with me.” He gestured to one of the scouts, an elf woman with reddish hair, as well. “Come on.”

“Do you think,” Havilar murmured, as Brin hugged her tight, “that this could be the last time we do this for a long while? I’m getting sick of it.” He laughed softly.

“Let’s try. I’ll see you soon, I promise.” Havilar watched him head along the northern edge of the invisible wall’s curve, tailing Vescaras and the elf. If this were a chapbook, she thought, he would definitely be getting hit by an arrow soon. She shook the thought from her head and turned back to her assigned allies.

“Come on, Ebros,” Khochen said to the remaining scout, her laughing eyes on Havilar. “This will be fun.”

“Your ladyships,” Rhand said as he crept over the threshold. For all the deference he showed the girl with no name, there was only cruelty in his smile. Sairché’s pulse became a voice shouting in her ears. “How are you getting on?”

The girl sitting beside the window looked up at Sairché with luminous eyes and smiled slightly. Panic rose up in Sairché, and there was no trick, no clever turn, no magic ring that could save her.