Erin Evans - The Adversary

The big fellow turned on her, but when his chain lashed out, she stepped into it-and vanished, reappearing at the guard’s back. She threw another bolt of bruised-looking energy. Dahl took advantage of the guard’s surprise and punched his dagger through the seams of the shadar-kai’s leather armor, deep into his belly. The chain slipped from the man’s grasp.

He heard Farideh’s shouts of Infernal and the sound of one of the swordsmen crying out and hitting the floor. When Dahl turned she was bleeding from one nostril and a cut on her arm below where the sleeve of her shirt had torn loose like a flapping sail, but the heel of her hand was also slamming into the philtrum of her assailant. The shadar-kai’s head snapped back, but he kept his feet.

“ Adaestuo ,” she hissed, and the pulse of energy came again, bursting out through her palm and over the man’s face. He screamed-that horrid scream the shadar-kai had, half pain and half mad laughter-and dropped the sword, stumbling back into Dahl and his dagger. Dahl cut the creature’s throat, ending his ecstasy.

“Oghma, Mystra, and lost Deneir,” Dahl said, panting. His ribs ached, his elbow was screaming, his head pounding hard. He couldn’t take another fight like that. He scanned the room-no more shadar-kai, but stairs up to some other level ahead and a path behind him into the torchlit gloom.

He sheathed his sword and took hold of her unwounded arm, dagger in the other hand. “We have to get out of here.”

She didn’t budge. “ You have to get out of here.” She tore her sleeve at the elbow, wadded the cloth up and pressed it to the side of his head. Only when he took it, only when her hand came back smeared scarlet, did Dahl realize how much he was bleeding.

He cursed and pressed the cloth harder to the wound. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll find somewhere to lie low. There’s got to be-”

“No.” She looked from one exit to the other. “You shouldn’t have followed, Dahl.”

“Followed?” Dahl squinted, the wooziness of blood loss catching up. “You came here on purpose?”

“It’s not what it looks like.”

“It had better not be-it looks like you’re a godsbedamned Shadovar agent. Where is this place?”

“Whatever it is, it’s not safe for you to be here. Please. Trust me, I-” She jerked her head toward the sound of footsteps echoing down the stairway. “ Karshoj ,” she hissed. “You have to go. Before someone finds you.” She drew her sword and pushed him toward the dark corridor.

“I’m not leaving you!”

“You are, because they aren’t going to kill me .”

“What in all the planes are you-”

“Gods damn it, run!” The shadows of approaching bodies slunk down the stairs like the fingers of a reaching hand. And though a chorus of old instincts shouted at Dahl to stay, to draw his sword, to find out what in the Hells was going on, to protect her or stop her or something, Dahl had enough sense to know he wasn’t going to do any of that while bleeding from the head, Farideh fighting him every step of the way.

Farideh shoved Dahl hard toward what she hoped was the exit, and ran back to the circle of dead guards. It had to look like she’d come alone. It had to look like she’d done this, whatever the consequences. She drew her sword and bloodied it with the mess of one guard’s belly wound. Kept the rod in her off-hand. Didn’t dare look after Dahl as six guards-humans this time, but still armored in the same spiked and studded armor the shadar-kai had favored-came into view.

You can do this, Farideh thought, drawing herself up and trying to look dangerous.

The guards considered her, considered the dead shadar-kai. Considered the sickly looking light dancing around Farideh’s rod. But they didn’t move.

Not until the seventh, a man in robes of emerald so deep and dark they might have looked black were he not flanked by the guards in ebon armor, came up behind. The guards parted for Adolican Rhand, and Farideh’s heart stopped dead in her chest.

“You?” she said, suddenly no more dangerous than a stunned deer.

Adolican Rhand smiled at her, his blue eyes piercing and predatory, even if his next words were innocent enough. They always were, she thought.

“Ah, your mistress didn’t tell you,” he said. He clucked his tongue-at Farideh or at Sairché’s omission, she couldn’t say. “Nor did she mention that you planned to sacrifice half a dozen of my guards.”

Farideh didn’t dare move, didn’t dare look away. The memory of Rhand smiling at her while the poison he’d slipped her made her thoughts slip out of reach like little fishes in a dark pond. What had Sairché promised him?

Anything she wanted, Farideh thought. And Havilar and Lorcan will answer if you don’t.

She looked down at the dead guards. Adolican Rhand was still watching her, one part amused, one part hungry.

“If you didn’t intend them as a sacrifice,” Farideh said calmly, “you should have told them to let me pass. I didn’t come here to be tested.”

“My apologies,” Adolican Rhand said. “I suppose it was in their nature. To see how far something can be pressed before it breaks.” He smiled. “Obviously further than they thought.”

“Much further,” Farideh snapped.

“Well met, and I will warn them they should avoid it in the future.” His smile wavered, as if he might laugh. “Though you must promise me you won’t press them back. Come, I have quarters prepared for you.”

Run, every muscle of her body urged. Go. Go.

But instead she sheathed her sword, put away the rod, and sent the quickest, most secretive glance in the direction of the dark hallway. Dahl was gone, and despite her fear, she nearly sighed in relief, as she headed up the stairs, into the reaches of a man she’d had every intention of never, ever coming near again.

Dahl cursed and cursed again, as he wound through the passageway away from Farideh, away from the dead guards. He should have stayed. He should have gotten her away-she might be a traitor, she might not, and he wouldn’t be able to find out which if she was dead.

She’d come here on purpose, and if she hadn’t expected the shadar-kai, she’d expected something bad. Something dangerous.

But she told you to run, he thought, pulling the second dagger from his boot before edging around a corner. She could have kept you there, let whomever it is kill you.

Shade, he thought, easing open a door and finding a cistern and storeroom. That many shadar-kai in Faerûn and who else could it be? But why would Farideh aid the Shadovar? And if she would, why would she tell him to run?

A deal with a devil, Havilar had said. If the Nine Hells worked in concert with Netheril. .

Then Toril had best all pray together, he thought, because anyone would make a better hero than you in this case.

Dahl moved quickly and quietly, checking for exits, and though he heard the sounds of more guards behind several doors, none of them opened on him.

He ducked behind a stack of water barrels, checked his wound. Still bleeding. He pressed harder and tore strips off his own sleeve to tie the packing on. He wriggled the flask out of his breeches’ pocket and took a mouthful- just enough to think straight. Until he knew what was happening, until he could get reinforcements, he was the only hero Toril got.

Stop the bleeding, he thought. Send a message back to Tam. A group of human guards passed by, talking in low, tense voices. Dahl waited until they passed, then-after another swallow too tiny to count-he edged down the corridor in the direction they’d come from.

He tried a quiet door-found a pair of human guards, dead asleep in their uniforms-and quickly shut it. A second-filled to the edges with casks. No exit. A third-an armory. Dahl slipped inside, his head getting lighter. He needed to sit.