Erin Evans - The Adversary

Dahl dropped his eyes to the parchment and finished scribbling notes on Vescaras’s reports. Even if the half-elf and he didn’t get along, even if Vescaras clearly thought Dahl should have been thrown out of the Harpers’ ranks, they agreed on this score: the Harpers not overseen by Tam were still a worthwhile resource, milkmaids, shepherds, and all.

Tam cursed under his breath for a moment. “What else?” he finally said. Khochen and Vescaras ran down the more mundane parts of the mission- coin spent, contacts made, resources lost. Dahl wrote every item down, all the while thinking it was not such a transgression to have let that question slip. Probably. He would have done the same thing in Vescaras and Khochen’s position. . which might well mean it was the wrong thing to do altogether.

Gods, he thought. You’re a mess today.

Vescaras then gave a detailed accounting of more than a dozen missions the agents who reported to him were running along the caravan routes. He paused and gave Dahl a sidelong look. Perhaps Khochen was right. It might help to know why Vescaras disliked him so.

Because you say all the wrong things, a part of him seemed to say. Make all the wrong decisions.

Vescaras looked back to Tam and cleared his throat. “I’ve lost a village. A farmstead, really. Roarke’s Crossing, east of Berdusk.”

Tam cursed. “To the Shadovar? When did they capture it?”

“I’m not convinced they did. I received reports two tendays ago that it had been deserted. There are signs of struggle throughout, but not a single body, beyond a few animals. No goods taken-they weren’t fleeing and they weren’t killed. But they’re gone.”

“It happens,” Tam said. “Maybe the raiders caught them at the right time.”

Dahl thought of the farmstead he’d grown up on, some miles outside New Velar in Harrowdale. Of what it would look like if everyone had just vanished-cow unmilked, butter half-churned, his mother’s bread burning in a dying fire. His brothers’ and their wives’ tools fallen. Only his father’s grave watching over the empty farm. .

The image brought with it the sick shadow of grief, and he glanced out the window. Well after highsun. And Khochen had drank half his ale-Nera couldn’t fault him for one more.

“Did you check the state of their stores?” he asked. Vescaras and Tam both looked at him, as if surprised he was speaking. Khochen smiled between them.

“Low,” Vescaras said. “And tidy. Exactly what you’d expect to find this time of year.”

Dahl shook his head. “Right.” He cleared his throat. “Anyone raiding a farmstead would have ransacked the stores. And if they fled, they would have taken supplies.”

Tam frowned. “Did you have a wizard search it?”

“They didn’t find much,” Vescaras said. “The two I brought down there said it would be a feat to kill as many people who lived there with magic that destroyed the body so completely and left no trace. If there were portals involved, they sealed closed. If it was some other planar passage, it had been too long to find evidence of it.

“There’s more,” Vescaras said. “Possibly. A connection, perhaps. I’ve lost two agents as well. One scouting along the High Road, one working out of Athkatla. Again, out of the blue, no word, no sign.”

“Still, not as odd as we’d like,” Tam said sadly.

Vescaras shook his head again. “It doesn’t feel right. They were good agents, careful agents. They weren’t heading into anything difficult. Athkatla was recovering from fieldwork, watching donations to Waukeen’s temple. She missed a report, I went to see her. No one knew where she’d gone. The scout was in Daranna’s territory, reporting to her as well. Nothing. She’s covering a lot of empty wilderness,” he admitted, “but it’s Daranna .”

That made eight lost agents in the last tenday. And a farmstead, Dahl thought, wiping his quill on a rag. And much as he thought Vescaras was over-cautious, he agreed: something felt wrong.

“What else?” Tam asked.

“There are Shadovar picking through the ruins of Sakkors,” Lord Vescaras Ammakyl was saying. “I can’t say what they were doing, precisely. I didn’t want my people getting too near, but I would wager they’re looking for artifacts.”

Tam nodded at the dark-skinned half-elf over his steepled fingers, staring intently at the surface of his desk. Dahl kept writing and waited for the older Calishite man to say something-what else would the Shadovar be doing with the ruins of their floating city? Looking for survivors a year after the collapse?

“I still have no count of those who might have fled by arcane means,” Vescaras went on. “One assumes there were some, but we haven’t ascertained what exactly brought the city down yet. There mightn’t have been time.” Dahl dutifully added this to Vescaras’s report as well.

“Why are you still looking?” Khochen interjected. “It’s been ages.”

“Clues,” Vescaras said. “Sakkors falls, then the earthmotes start. It could be connected.”

“You mean the Trade Way crashes?” Khochen asked. “Dahl thinks that’s idiotic. I think he makes a convincing argument.”

Dahl froze, his mind a swirl of doubt. Vescaras glared at him.

“Oh?” Tam said, turning to face his scribe.

Dahl laid his quill down, swallowed to wet his mouth, and gave Khochen a glare of his own. “Most likely.”

“Then how do you explain it?” Vescaras asked.

“Bad luck? Odds? I’m not trying to be difficult, all right? It makes more sense.”

“ Six within sight of the Trade Way and that’s the odds?” Vescaras demanded. “I’ll not be dicing with you throwing anytime soon.”

“If they were dice , you’d be right, but they’re great hulking mountains of earth.” Dahl shook his head, too far to stop now. “Moving an earthmote isn’t as easy as people seem to think. They float, but they’re enormously heavy and especially if they’re moving, it takes an absurd amount of power to turn them. They’re falling all across Faerûn, you know; it’s not that odd to have six fall near a road that runs the entire length of the continent. Otherwise you’d find signs of the rituals long before you’d get up to six earthmotes.

“And,” he added, “if you’re going to poke around Sakkors, a much better question to be asking is where are they taking those artifacts, because there is absolutely nothing else to be looking for in those ruins, and who is looking for them, because it’s almost certainly someone who expects to find something, and is possibly hoping that their fellows don’t notice, since you didn’t see a great bunch of Netherese soldiers. So yes: it’s idiotic, there are better uses of your time.”

Deliberately ignoring Khochen’s smirk, Vescaras’s glare, and Tam’s raised brow, Dahl picked up his quill again and set his eyes on the parchment.

“Lord Ammakyl,” Tam said, “Khochen. Would you give us a moment?” Dahl didn’t dare look up as the other Harpers left, his face burning, and for a long moment, the older man said nothing.

“My apologies,” Dahl said. “It just came out.”

“To be honest, I’m glad it did,” Tam said. “You almost sounded like your old self.”

“My old self is not exactly in high demand.”

“Oh for the gods’ sakes.” Tam stood and came around the desk to stand opposite Dahl. “What else haven’t you been saying?”

“It’s nothing important.”

“Dahl.”

Dahl blew out a breath. “Daranna’s agents could cover the ground Everlund’s leaving open, and instead, she shouldn’t worry about the possible slavers crossing into Anauroch. Our Zhentarim agent requested ‘reinforcements’ be sent to help the Bedine near there, and they’re going to walk straight into a moot of Bedine tribes, and you know exactly what they think of slavers. It will probably help Mira’s case, really-get them all banded together against the slavers as a mass for once. Brin’s reports are over-detailed-they boil down to two important facts: Crown Prince Irvel has the nobles in line for the moment and all our intelligence about the Dales and Sembia is correct. You could tell him to stop wasting parchment.” He paused. “That’s all I can recall. I expected to re-read reports tomorrow. No, wait-Vescaras’s agents and farmstead. That comes to eight agents-plus the farmstead-reported missing, although I haven’t gotten a report from Sembia or Many-Arrows, so it could be ten.”