Erin Evans - The Adversary

My doom, Sairché thought. Lords of the Nine, damn you, Lorcan.

The girl’s gaze inched its way over Sairché. “She is less amusing than I would have expected for a devil.”

“A cambion,” Rhand corrected, “my lady.”

She sniffed and Sairché’s pulse became a voice shouting in her ears, Run, run, run . “Where’s the other one?” she said. “The tiefling you mangled.”

Rhand’s expression tightened. “Still absent. But she’ll return, I’m assured, the day after tomorrow. Isn’t that right, Lady Sairché?” Sairché couldn’t speak, couldn’t find the clever words to string together. Damn Lorcan, damn Rhand, damn Farideh and Glasya and Asmodeus too. Every muscle of her body felt flooded with fear and adrenalin. She was a deer in the wood, too startled to move, and after a full day of the Chosen of Shar’s company, she felt as if she were dying.

“It sounds as if your experiment has failed, Saer Rhand,” the girl said.

Rhand cleared his throat, nerves Sairché had never managed to inspire in him clear even at a distance. “Not failed. Delayed.”

“I was told,” the girl said loftily, as the world threatened to roll over Sairché and smother her, “to assess the usefulness of keeping your camps going.”

“Yes, my lady.”

You have lived this every day, Sairché reminded herself, gazing down at the floor. She thought of each of her surviving half sisters in turn, the terrible tortures they’d gladly heap on her, one by one. It kept her sane, it kept her in the little room and not drowning in the void that threatened her mind. But still she could not bear to speak.

“You are not a very popular man within the Church. No one powerful left to speak for you.”

“Save you,” Rhand said. “My lady.”

“I don’t speak for you ,” the girl said. “In fact, I think it is plain that this experiment is not worth the resources of Shade. I am ordering you to destroy it and return to the city.”

Sairché spared a glance for Rhand. His rage was enough to push aside the plain discomfort he’d worn since he’d entered the room.

“You don’t have the right,” he said.

“Don’t I?” the girl said. “I believe you’ll find you owe me your obedience, just as Shar intends.” The feeling of looking into an unending maw intensified. Sairché squeezed her hands into fists. Megara would spit me like a lamb, she thought. Oenaphtya would just cleave me in twain. Tanagra would stake me to the ground and let Malbolge deal with me. .

Beside Sairché, Rhand gave her the uncomfortable impression of one of her worse sisters about to snap. The girl smirked at him. “Order my veserab saddled.”

“It hasn’t been recovered,” Rhand said. “And if you think I’m ending this on the whim of a-”

“Saddle yours, then,” the girl said. “And call for carriers. I intend to leave. Take care of your experiment, or you will find yourself answering to people much more powerful than you.”

Rhand started forward, all inchoate violence, but he stopped just past Sairché, his eyes locked on something over the nameless girl’s dark head.

Sairché dared to look up-feeling the girl’s eyes still on her, still shrinking her down into something small and unnecessary-and followed Rhand’s gaze to the winking bluish light that hung in the air over the center of the camp.

Magic, Sairché thought. And not his.

Rhand swallowed, but the rage in him didn’t fade. “Excuse me,” he said. “I’ll let you know when the carriers have arrived.”

The girl watched him leave, a smug smile playing on her mouth. Her luminous eyes fell on Sairché once more. “How droll you assumed a mere archdevil could stand against the might of the Lady of Loss,” she said. “If you find your tongue. devil, perhaps you can tell me another funny tale.”

The scroll lay in a box, buried only a few inches under the packed earth floor of the tiny hut. Dahl levered it out of the hole with the blade of the stone spade Armas had found him. The half-elf stood silent and watching in the doorway.

“Half-done,” Dahl called. Armas said nothing. “You can start looking for the components in the thatch any time,” Dahl added. The fledgling Harper stood silent. “Armas?”

Armas jerked at the sound. “What?”

“Components.”

“Sorry.” Armas stepped into the hut and sighed, reaching up for the roof.

“Your friend. . do you think she knows what she’s doing?”

Dahl opened the scroll to find a very detailed spell and smiled-gods, he loved this. “Which part? The sorting?”

“Aye.”

Dahl shrugged, his eyes on the lines of runes before him, the diagrams, the list of components. “Seems so. Tharra and Oota made it sound as if she picked people they knew had been Chosen. Though with any luck, it won’t matter to us.” He glanced up at Armas, realization dawning on him. “Oh. . You’re one of them?”

Armas kept his eyes on the thatch. “She stopped me as we left.”

“Oh.” Dahl looked back down at his scroll. “Well, many blessings.”

“I suppose.”

Dahl had read the first few lines several times over when Armas cleared his throat.

“She says she can’t tell what will come of it or when. And all I can think of is how many gods there are. . It’s a fearful thing.”

“Yes,” Dahl said dryly. “The gods smiling on you is terribly frightening.” He heard the venom in his own voice and cursed himself. You’re not seventeen and newly fallen, he told himself. Armas has taken nothing from you, and he doesn’t deserve your pique. “I suppose,” he said, more kindly, “it probably is frightening. You do have my sympathies.” He wondered how many of the Chosen Farideh named might be favored by Oghma, and realized he was reading the same line on the scroll again.

Armas sighed again. “She said she thinks it will be soon. Says the mark is sharp. I suppose that’s a small blessing on its own. Not long to wait and wonder.” He stepped to the left, rifling through the straw and twigs. “If it’s something wicked, I don’t know what I’ll do. Maybe walk into the lake with my pockets full of stones.”

“Why would a wicked god choose you?” Dahl murmured. “Are you wicked?”

“I was helping Tharra.”

“That hardly counts.”

“According to who? Who can claim to know the will of the gods, right? Ah!” He pulled a small jar and then another out of the thatch, like plucking apples from a tree. Dahl took them: oils of sacred juniper and distilled troll saliva. He frowned and looked back at the ritual scroll-both were mentioned. The latter was a very expensive component and there was quite a lot of the former-but neither was used to achieve the sort of effect Tharra had described.

He unrolled several more inches of the scroll-familiar phrases, familiar directions, intermixed with unfamiliar forms. This line was reused from pre-Spellplague castings of destructive magic out of Lost Halruaa; that one borrowed the structure of protective spells the Turmishan wizards crafted during the Wailing Years; that focusing diagram was absolutely crafted by Oghmanyte casters in Procampur. Very complex, Dahl thought. Very confusing.

Armas pulled down still more components. Powdered silver and salts of copper, resins of obscure flora and ground teeth of strange beasts. A packet of dragon scales, a pouch of iron filings, a purse of dried purple blossoms that smelled strongly of mildew. A delicate crystal bottle of residuum. Bottles of specially imbued inks and paints.

“That’s all,” Armas said, rubbing his uncaged hands as if they ached.

“That’s more than enough,” Dahl said, at a loss in regards to the sheer quantity of components. Eleven different items. Easily thousands of coins worth, especially when you added in the hamadryad’s ash. He wondered if Tharra had used it all or if Farideh had reclaimed the rest. He’d have to check.