Erin Evans - The Adversary

Dahl frowned. “That’s strange. Destructive magic doesn’t make for very stable rituals.”

“Well, you can tell what it is if you read it, so that’s your task. The devil also told her to dig herself a hidey-hole and get there quick. She was pretty sure that meant the spell wouldn’t penetrate the ground. That’s why she was encouraging the shelter rooms-she was hoping she could save at least some people.” Farideh turned to Oota. “That still might be our best bet. We have to destroy the tower to break the wall. Either the ritual will do it for us, or the ritual will kill the guards and Rhand, and we’ll have a chance to take the tower down ourselves, without being attacked all the while.”

Oota frowned. “You want to carry out this devil’s plans?”

“We need to find a way to destroy the tower,” Dahl said. “That’s the only way we know of to shut the wall’s magic off. This ritual might be the simplest way to carry that out.”

The half-orc didn’t seem convinced. “The shelter rooms only hold a hundred or so.”

“We have to make them bigger,” Farideh said. “Maybe deeper. How many do you have who can move earth?”

“Torden,” Oota said. “A few of the dwarves might come out of the middle ground for this. Maybe others-but we’d have to free the captured ones to get a decent count.”

“Start with who we have out here,” Farideh said. “We need to break in to rescue the rest-even if they can’t dig, they won’t be safe if the tower collapses-but the very breath we do, Rhand’s going to know something’s happening. Then we’re all in danger.”

“Tonight,” Dahl promised. “As soon as it’s dark enough to get Phalar’s help.”

There was a commotion near the doors, and the crowd of caged spellcasters stood aside for a very regal-looking sun elf in rags just as tattered as the rest of them. “We come to parley,” he said in thickly accented Common. He held out his hands. “And to let you prove, tiefling, that you are what the Harper says.”

Oota stiffened and turned to face the elf with her cunning smile. “Well met, Saer Cereon,” she said. “And welcome to my court.”

“Please,” the elf said. “The cages first. Then we talk.”

Farideh drew up the soul lights. Greens and golds and umbers dappled the sun elf, but nothing shaped into the strange glyphs that marked the prize of a faraway god. “You aren’t Chosen,” she observed. The elf tilted his head.

“Will I become so?”

She shook her head. There was no rune, not even disguised in the light and shade of his soul. “I don’t think so.”

“A relief,” Cereon said. “Honoring the gods is difficulty enough. Pleasing a particular in times of trouble, this one wouldn’t wish it.” He held his hands higher. “Can you? Or was that not so?”

Farideh raised her palm. “ Assulam. ” The cages shattered into dust and Cereon flexed his long hands with a curious smile. “Many thanks, tiefling.” He looked to Oota and inclined his head the barest amount. “Now, we must see how to lay down old anger and aid our people.”

Oota raised an eyebrow and gestured to the dais. “My home is yours, then, eladrin.” Cereon gave her a cold look, but walked ahead.

Farideh looked back at Oota and spied the crimson and green swirl of lights that overtook her, the traces of gold. The lack, again, of any sort of rune. “Are none of their leaders actually Chosen?” she asked Dahl quietly, keeping her eyes off of him.

“Oota is. They call her Obould’s Shieldmaiden. .” Dahl trailed off. “Are you saying she’s not?”

Farideh looked again, but no-there was nothing there. “Nothing I can see.” She let the powers recede before she turned to Dahl, who was goggling at Oota’s back. “Maybe she can hide them?”

“Maybe she’s just good at what she does,” Dahl said. “Maybe she doesn’t need a god to aid her.” He shook his head. “Don’t tell anyone, all right? I think a fair number of them are fine following a half-orc when they think they have no choice. We have plenty of chaos as it is.”

“Someone’s been this way,” Brin said, examining the brush on the side of the path. A broken fringe of dried fern fronds lay against his palm. “Might be deer,” Havilar said. “Or an owlbear woken up early?”

“It’s too wide a path. This is people, stomping along the trail. Too wide to stick to it.”

Still could be deer, Havilar thought, but didn’t say. “Maybe it’s the Harpers?”

He shook his head. “Could be.” He looked up at her. “Or maybe it’s from the camp.”

Havilar looked up the slope of the mountain, into the thick trees. It might only go up another dozen feet. It might be thousands, right up high enough for the sun to trip over. “I think we ought to start climbing. We’re never going to get there winding around like this. Especially not before something bad happens.”

“It’s not safe,” Brin said, standing and dusting off his breeches. “We haven’t got the tools to climb.”

“We’ll have to eventually.”

“We’ll wait for Lorcan,” Brin said. “If it gets too steep, he can fly us.”

“How about,” Havilar tried again, “we climb until we can’t and then we wait for Lorcan. Otherwise we’re going to be exhausted by the time we even get there.”

“Havi,” he said sternly, “you need to trust-”

“How about you trust me?” Havilar interrupted, her cheeks burning. “I get it-I’m the fool for storming into Farideh’s room without knowing what was in there. But I do know something about tracking and traveling in the woods.” She looked up the mountain’s slope. “Whatever Mehen taught you, he taught me first.”

Brin stood, looking as if he’d been caught between steps, as if the core of him hung off-balance. “I know,” he said.

“Then act like it,” Havilar replied. She started up the slope without him.

Farideh was right, she thought. Whatever hopes she had that she might take back what Farideh’s deal had stolen from her, they were shriveling into nothing. Her glaive might as well be a hoe for all the skill she had wielding it. She couldn’t stop having nightmares that splintered her sleep into spans so short she might as well have been blinking. And Brin thought she was a stupid little girl-a millstone, a nuisance.

She heard him start up the steep path behind her, but she didn’t dare look back.

“I don’t. .” he started. He fell silent for a moment. “I don’t think you were a fool for going into Farideh’s room that night. I just. . I just wish you hadn’t. Or maybe that you’d waited for me.”

Havilar hauled herself over a short wall of rock, up to another plateau. “Then you would have been trapped in the Hells too.”

Brin gave a short, bitter laugh. “Do you think I haven’t been?”

“I think the court of Suzail is a far cry from the Hells.”

“It’s not as far as you think.”

Havilar looked back at him. “Are there devils and lava fields and things?”

“No, but there are assassins and stupid rules and noblewomen who spend their days trying to trick you into marriage so they can be queen, even though that’s not an option.”

Havilar flushed. “Armies of princesses,” she said, ignoring the twist in her stomach. “Got it.” She scrambled up the next bit of slope, crushing moss and sending little stones tumbling down.

“Ye gods,” she heard Brin sigh behind her. “I’m not bragging.”

“Didn’t think you were,” Havilar said, her eyes on her hands and her face on fire.

“Havi,” he called. “Havi, stlarn it, wait!”

She kept climbing, up over another rock wall slick with melt and moss. When she hauled herself up onto the wide ledge beyond, her throat felt as if it would close around her panting breath. You knew this would happen, she thought. Why wouldn’t it? You’re no one.