Erin Evans - The Adversary

“Lie down in your cloak with a haversack for a pillow?” Dahl said, corralling her up another set of stairs. “You were running away.”

No, Farideh thought. I was trying to keep my word. I was trying to get out of this horrible deal alive. I was trying to protect Havilar. “I was going for a walk,” she lied.

“I’m sure.” Dahl was silent a moment. “You know, I thought Tam could trust you. It’s not such a leap to see hidden agents and traitors in what I’ve heard of your tale, but I was sure that couldn’t be the answer.”

“I wasn’t here ,” she said, as he marched her the rest of the way up the stairs. “I don’t even know who you’re fighting.” But he said no more, as they continued past two guards who spat bursts of yellow and black stars and streamers of red, past a ward he disarmed with a wave of an arm, and into the offices of Tam Zawad.

“Dahl? What’s wrong,” Tam said, silver bursts of light blooming over him like ice flowers across a windowpane. “Shar pass us over, Fari, are you all right?”

Three steps past the door, the protection grabbed hold of her again, strong, icy fingers of magic wrapped around her arms, her chest, her throat. She stopped, but Dahl urged her on. Another step, another two-the lights surged. Her legs buckled, and she stumbled backward before she could fall.

“I can’t,” she said, panting. “Something’s wrong. And I need to go. I need to leave.” Don’t tell them, she thought. Don’t bring them into this. “I’m not feeling well.”

“She was in the taproom,” Dahl said, “dressed for a journey.”

“Sit down,” Tam said.

“I have to stand,” she said. If she sat, she couldn’t move, couldn’t correct for the protection’s pull.

“You’ll sit,” Tam said. “Before you fall. Dahl, get a chair.” He turned to the sideboard, and through the shroud of lights she could hear the clink of glass. “I don’t have a better cure for nerves,” Tam said with a lightness she didn’t believe. “And perhaps then you can give us a better explanation.”

The popping was no longer her imagination, she was certain. The sound of a fire built high and damp, the sound of a thousand bullets from a thousand slings hitting the walls. She could hardly see for the lights and shadows. Though they seemed to grow, to surge off the two men, they swirled around the room like something alive.

Farideh shoved a hand in her pocket and felt the ring there. Whatever was happening to her, Tam and Dahl didn’t need to be pulled into it. Let them think she was a traitor, let them think she’d been corrupted in the Hells, let them think she was beyond saving anyway-just let them be safe.

The lights seemed to overtake her, as if they were boiling over from some source beyond the fabric of the world, like ethereal lava. She heard, dimly, the sound of Tam asking her something, the clink of a bottle being set down. The sound of the chair falling and Dahl shouting her name. She felt, at a distance, it seemed, her finger slip through the warm circle of the ring, and Dahl’s hands on her back as she collapsed into the space between worlds.

When Tam turned back from the sideboard at the sound of Dahl’s shout and Farideh’s wordless grunt, he expected his erstwhile charges puddled on the floor, one highly annoyed and one insensate and much heavier than expected.

Instead, there was only the chair, lying on its side on the well-worn rug, and the clink of the glass Tam dropped on the desk. Dahl and Farideh were gone.

Sairché waited until Farideh had left the library, off to assemble her things, and smiled to herself. Matched against a warlock in a game of wits? Even Farideh had to realize by now how unsporting that was.

Still, Sairché thought, it paid to make absolutely certain that she was defeated. Sairché knew better, after all, than to leave loose ends. She pulled a scroll from her sleeve, unrolled it and tore a large corner from it, making sure to catch just enough from the Netherese missive she’d snatched out of Rhand’s study. Enough to imply Farideh knew something about supply chains to the High Forest. Enough to be interesting to meddling Harpers. Enough to make even her family doubt Farideh’s innocence.

Sairché tucked it beside the ugly woodcut of a pit fiend. She tapped the little guardian on the nose. Farideh was going to wish very soon that she’d submitted quietly.

18 Ches, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR) Somewhere north of Waterdeep

The floor dropped out from under Dahl’s feet, the air around him evaporated, and the only thing he could be sure of was the weight of Farideh slumped against him. But with his next heartbeat his feet slammed into a stone floor, the air condensed around him once more, cold and clammy, and there were six shadar-kai men standing around them, looking startled. “Gods’ books,” Dahl spat, and he dropped Farideh to her knees. He drew his sword and cut at the nearest of the shadar-kai-the blade slashing deep into the scarred, gray skin of the man’s arm, opening a vein. The shadow-damned creature looked down at the blood pumping from the wound, surprised. A wild grin spread across his face, thrilled by the sensation stirring up his nerves, anchoring his soul to his body a little firmer.

Dahl cursed. One didn’t wait for shadar-kai to bring the fight, and one didn’t count on a surrender.

Dahl moved quickly, taking out the fellow behind the wounded shadar-kai with a quick, fortunate strike to the side of the head. Still spraying blood, the wounded one pulled a pair of sharp sickles and with a crazed yell hooked both around toward Dahl’s back. Dahl twisted, slamming the hilt of the sword into the man’s face.

All around him, the sound of blades being pulled from scabbards, chains being unhooked from carriers, bodies primed for violence and eager for the pain of that violence, set into motion. He glanced around as he wrenched one of the sickles out of the wounded shadar-kai’s hand. They were all grinning.

Farideh was still on the floor, fingers curling against the stone, eyes on the backs of her hands. Gods damn it, Dahl thought, stepping between her and the shadar-kai. He flung the scythe at an approaching guard, a thick brute with a missing eye. He didn’t even flinch as it hit his collarbone. A long spiked chain slithered over the floor beside him, twitching as if preparing to strike.

It lashed out, but Dahl was ready. He leaped out of range and into the reach of another shadar-kai, this one shaved bald and pierced all over with silver barbs. He caught Dahl and slung him down to the stones, so quick Dahl couldn’t stop his head from smacking the floor.

Up, up, up! he shouted to himself. His head was spinning and the pain was intense, but it was nothing compared to what would come if the brutal shadar-kai got ahold of them. The chain struck him hard in the ribs as he pushed up, sending a lightning bolt of pain through his chest. One elbow buckled, but he kept moving, twisting up to face the shadar-kai who’d thrown him and slamming his elbow into the side of his knee. The pain lit the man’s face, and the dagger that was arcing toward Dahl slowed, enough to give the Harper a chance to sit up and get out of the way of the chain that hit its owner’s ally instead. Dahl’s sword finished its work.

But, Hells, there were still too many. He looked around, past the advancing thug with his chain, past the swordsman shifting around Dahl’s side, past the fellow who’d knocked him down, now holding a pair of sharp-bladed carvestars in hand, ready to throw. There had to be an exit, a way to retreat, but even then, could he get Farideh-

A crackling gust of magic streaked through the air and devoured the carvestar as the guard threw it. An explosion of metal shards and sparks made the guard flinch back. Farideh stood now, eyes wild, the powers of the Hells suffusing her arms and tinting her veins black. She hissed another unholy word and Dahl scuttled back, as several bolts of burning brimstone streaked out of nothing to hammer at the three guards.