Erin Evans - The Adversary

“I’m not giving it to you,” she said. “It just doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you pour out where someone might stumble into it.”

“It’s not some sort of dragon acid-”

Armas pushed through the remaining prisoners, looking blanched and out of breath.

“You need to see this,” Armas said.

They followed him down several roadways, out through a growing crowd of prisoners waiting for the underground shelter to widen enough for them too. They were all staring up at the same spot, thirty feet above the middle of the camp: a ball of energy the size of a fist hung in the air over the camp, sizzling blue and black.

“It started,” Cereon said in heavily accented Common, “as a mote. That was a quarter hour ago. It’s magic-strange magic. Destructive and something else. Something-” He turned and spoke Elvish to Armas.

Armas frowned. “It’s going to collect something.”

Dahl said a silent apology to Oghma, because here indeed were the means to solve the unsolvable: Magros hadn’t given Tharra the proper tools to perform the gathering, because someone else was going to do it.

“Get everyone underground,” Dahl said. “Let’s hope this spell works the same way.”

“My lady,” the apprentice says, “ have you nothing to do but muddy the Fountains?”

Farideh doesn’t-at least she tells herself that. She cannot act without knowing where her enemies are, she cannot strike without being sure of who stands in the way. At least here she has a view of what’s happening-as slim and mendacious as a sliver through a cracked door. But it’s better than walking blind.

And if she wants to see clearly, the next vision has to be called. She’s been avoiding it, almost-asking more times than she cares to admit. But as she’s crawled back and back and back through the past, until the waters grow cloudy with the detritus of the petals, it’s hunkered there in the back of her thoughts, waiting like a dragon in a cavern, knowing that eventually it will be time to come out.

“Show me,” she says, trying for solemnity, “the Toril Thirteen and the day they cursed the tiefling race.”

The waters shimmer and shiver, and a faint mist seems to rise up off their surface, followed by the image of a grove at night, the ground burnt bare up to the roots of winter-dead trees. There are thirteen tieflings arrayed around the grove. Hooved and horned and winged and tailed and some who might as well be human, for all their fiendish blood shows-but Farideh knows they are tieflings all the same. Six men, six women, and the Brimstone Angel herself.

Bryseis Kakistos stands on polished black hooves, facing a statue shaped like what must be the king of the Hells: a man with the great horns of a ram, broadshouldered and beautiful even hewn out of bedrock. Blood paints the stone, as if tides of it have lapped Asmodeus’s feet.

Farideh peers into the waters, waits, but Bryseis Kakistos doesn’t look away from the statue, her confederates arrayed around her. Farideh can see that Lorcan was right-some do not seem to wish to be there. A man with snow-white hair and antlers sprouting from his brow. A woman with serpent’s eyes and a jungle of red curls around her long horns. A boy on the edge of manhood, whose fretful hands seem to have been attached the wrong way around.

And others watch the Brimstone Angel as if she is the source of all riches. An ancient man with ram’s horns and a beard to his knees. A fox-faced woman with a smile that sets Farideh’s nerves on edge, even through the waters. A handsome man who wafts shadow and darkness with every move.

But Bryseis Kakistos doesn’t turn. Farideh finds herself edging to this side and that as the chanting rises and the magic gathers, as if she can move around the surface of the water and see her wicked ancestor’s face. The magic around the basin snaps and fizzes as if Bryseis Kakistos is calling on it, too.

“What are you doing?” one of the apprentices demands. Farideh looks up, just as the chanting reaches a terrible peak, just as it turns into screams. The apprentice pushes her back, away from the waters, and she doesn’t see the end or whether Bryseis Kakistos ever turned to face her coven. She can only see the reflection of a terrible light-a fire to rival a crashing star-that reflects so brightly off the waters that it dapples the ceiling as if it were truly there in the room with them all.

“That is enough !” the apprentice all but shouts. And Farideh realizes, it will never be enough. She cannot stop Rhand’s experiments by spying. She cannot change the past by watching it. She cannot change where she stands, not now. No matter what features she recognizes in her ancestor’s face, she is not the Brimstone Angel, she never will be.

She cannot save them all. They are already damned.

26 Ches, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR) The Lost Peaks

Dahl fought the urge to bury Cereon and Oota in details that made it clear this was the only viable option. But the longer the two of them watched Dahl, waiting for the other to speak first, the harder it was.

“You were willing before,” Farideh pointed out quietly, “when Dahl was the one casting the scroll.”

“ ‘Willing’s not the word I’d use,” Oota said. “ ‘Back against the cave wall,’ on the other hand-”

“You are quite a madman, Harper,” Cereon interrupted. “We shall die.”

“You said yourself the spell is destructive, that it gathers,” Dahl said. “If that’s not a replacement for the ritual scroll Tharra thought she was given, what else is it?”

Cereon raised a slim, pale eyebrow. “There is no way to know.”

“Just as there’s no way to know who’s casting it,” Oota said. “Or what they want from us.”

“Their motives don’t matter,” Dahl said. “They want you all dead so that they can claim the Chosen’s powers-whether that’s to raise up a new god or armor an old one or just sacrifice us in the name of stopping Shar is irrelevant. The spell is already happening and our best bet is to ride it out.”

“What do you intend to do instead?” Farideh asked them. “Can you disrupt that thing? Can you stop the casting?” Oota’s eye slid to Cereon. The sun elf’s impassive expression tightened ever so slightly.

“No,” Cereon said. “We may be able to deflect some of it. A shield, perhaps. I can make such a casting. I suspect some of the others can assist me, make it stronger.” He shook his head. “It will not be enough to protect all the tel’Quessir. ”

Oota gave Dahl a knowing look. “Thank you, Harper, for bringing me such valued allies.”

Dahl scowled. “Look, there are three basic possibilities. First, I’m right. That spell does exactly what I’ve said and we need to be ready. Second, it’s not what I’ve said and it’s not going to kill us. In that case, we end up exactly where we are now: convincing people to attack the tower and try to bring it down. Third, it’s not what I’ve said, it’s far more powerful, and it’s going to harm us all no matter where we hide.” He spread his hands. “And if that’s the case, so far as I can see, there is nothing we can do about it.”

“Except a shield for the favored of the elves,” Oota said.

“Rhand must have taken notice,” Farideh went on. “We should be prepared for him to try and stall things.”

“A force near the shelters,” Oota agreed. “Spread out to catch the guards coming at us if need be. And a second,” she added significantly, “to free the prisoners in the fortress.”

“Now,” Dahl said. “We don’t have the time to spare waiting for nightfall. Though Phalar-”