Erin Evans - Lesser Evils

The mummy was worse than he’d imagined-no part of the mummy resembled Tarchamus, and when he raised his head from his position of repose, if he recognized Emrys as anything more than a walking meal, there was no sign.

The scroll sat on a pedestal between the pit and the mummy, bait for the trap. The mummy unfolded himself, ponderously slow-slow enough to miscalculate, but Emrys was ready. Farideh had no names for the spells he cast, no understanding of the magic he wielded, but one thing was absolutely clear: he meant to destroy Tarchamus.

The mummy screamed the same beams of green magic and hurled balls of lightning. The ghosts swooped and dived, landing long enough to take solid form and hurtle around the battling arcanists, aiming to knock Emrys from his feet. The air sizzled and popped with magic as Emrys’s spells shaped walls of flames, brought angels to earth, and made the bones rise from the ground and fight for him. Farideh found herself flinching at each remembered missle, each phantom blast that came near. Especially those which struck her guide.

Now bleeding, dizzy, and favoring a burnt and broken hand, Emrys might have meant to kill what was left of his friend, but it was quickly apparent that he could do no such thing. Tarchamus had been powerful when he died, and what he made of himself was meant for nothing so much as permanence. There was no spell in Emrys’s book that could destroy the strange mummy. There might be no spell on the plane that could.

And so he cast a spell that split his form into three, and three again, and three again, overwhelming the space with Emryses and weaving between them as Tarchamus’s horrible beams of green light vaporized the doubles in great swaths. It was enough to get the scroll in hand-the spell that had begun all of this. Emrys took it and ran for the exit.

Another spell lifted him up the shaft, chased by the howls of Tarchamus and the fearsome threat of his apprentices. They streaked ahead, took shape, and lunged at Emrys, digging great gouges into his flesh, and knocking him off his feet and into traps. Arrows pierced him. Flames leaped after him. Still Emrys ran.

The door was locked, much as it had been for them, and Emrys was failing fast. He tore down the aisles, the scroll clutched to his chest. The screams of the arcanist rattled through the library.

Farideh’s blood ran cold-Tarchamus was no longer in the pit.

Emrys came to the little clearing with the wizard’s statue. He needed time, he thought, he needed to rest. There was one spell left, one desperate spell. He wove the words and gestures and strands of the Weave together and the stone of the wall grew pliable and peeled back, making a little pocket the size of a man.

The ghosts were coming, and quickly. The screams of the mummy grew nearer and nearer. But Emrys kept his focus as the secret room widened to admit him-and the traces of Farideh that rode with him-and sealed the wall where he passed. He traced the rune-the one Havilar had found-and the wall lit with its power.

He’d meant to rest, to regain his strength and study his spells again. To be ready to find his way free of the library. To stop the ghosts and the mummy and somehow free the knowledge Tarchamus had stolen and hidden away. But the arrows were poisoned, and Emrys was already wounded and weak. As Farideh watched, the arcanist died, shivering and fevered and clutching the scroll tight in the failing light of a conjured orb.

This is the legacy of Fallen Netheril , the voice whispered in her thoughts. The privilege of power, the claim to all knowledge, the right to the Empire. If they can set hands on it, then it is theirs. Tarchamus was not the rarity I thought. I did not see it in time …

There was no saving the library, Farideh realized. She reached out to close the dead man’s eyes, but her hand only passed through the memory his face and the darkness swallowed them both.

Farideh’s eyes were a sliver of silver and a sliver of gold beneath heavy lids. She was there and she was not, her body limp on its feet. Lorcan did not watch for ghosts the way Dahl did. He watched for the ghost in Farideh. He wondered what would happen to the protection if the ghost didn’t let her go.

Buried under a mountain, he thought, watching the unchanging curve of her eyes, menaced by an undead monstrosity capable of slaughtering Bibracte and both her underlings. And some godsbedamned Book putting ideas in her head-and pulling others out.

“This is a very bad idea,” he said again.

“It’s already done,” Dahl snapped. “You should have talked her out of it.”

As if it would have made a difference, Lorcan thought. Clearly the paladin didn’t know Farideh as well as he thought he did. She’d made Lorcan keep his distance from the books they were searching, claiming the need for a sentry, but she was a terrible liar. He wondered if the paladin had managed to see any of the texts that blasted Book had made out of Farideh’s thoughts.

Then her lashes fluttered. Her mouth twitched, as if she were struggling to speak.

“Darling?” Lorcan said. “Are you in there?”

Her breath hitched. She swayed on her feet, mumbling. Arguing with someone.

“Farideh?” he tried again.

With a great gasp, her eyes shot open, unseeing, and she lurched forward. Lorcan caught her as she stumbled, as if she were learning to walk all over again. Slumped in his arms, she looked up at him, wide-eyed and horrified for a moment, as if she did not know him, as if she’d never known anything like him. Then she seemed to focus and her eyes narrowed. A smile eased itself across her mouth. Lorcan tensed.

A smile that was not Farideh’s.

She blinked at him languorously. “Caisys?” she said and chuckled.

Lorcan’s blood froze. Not the ghost you were expecting, he thought. Oh Lords of the Nine-

“Farideh!” he shouted.

A jolt went through her, her lax muscles all tensing together, taking the weight of her body off his arms. She blinked, then blushed and scowled in equal measure. “What are you doing?”

Let her go, Lorcan told himself. You’re imagining things, anyway. You have to be. “Would you rather I let you fall over?”

“Did it work?” Dahl asked, coming nearer.

“I saw the scroll.” Farideh rubbed her head, pulling out of Lorcan’s embrace. “I saw him fighting the arcanist’s mummy-we’re not going to beat it. But worse, it’s not trapped down there. It can get out.”

“Son of a barghest,” Dahl cursed. “How?”

“I couldn’t see.” She pursed her mouth. “But if we’re going to get past, I think we need to find out. Dahl, truly-it wasn’t even trying before. What it did before was nothing . We won’t be able to kill it. We need to get around it. We need to find the trapdoor.”

“What in the Hells do you think you’re going to do?” he said. “Ask it to come out?”

“No,” Lorcan said, because he did know Farideh entirely too well. “She wants to try and trick that Book.”

When Tam woke again, Mira was sitting amid the piles of books and scrolls she’d gathered, sorting through them as somberly as if she were deciding which wounded could be saved and which would have to be left to die. The other five were all elsewhere. The devil was missing from his circle. “Ah stlarning gods,” Tam said.

“I wouldn’t worry,” Mira said, looking down at him. “She has him well in hand.”

Tam started to protest that there was no such thing with regards to a devil-but Mira wasn’t the one who needed to hear that. Farideh’s admonishments still hung over his thoughts. “Your maps are finished, I gather?”

“Ages ago. Are you feeling better?”

“Much,” he said. “You ought to lie down for a bit as well.”