Erin Evans - Brimstone Angels

The imp she’d sent to Invadiah had predictably not returned, but another imp had brought her a summons to appear before her mother. She took it graciously, and tucked it into her sleeve where she continued ignoring it. Obviously, Invadiah trusted Sairche’s word if she was amassing so many armed erinyes to her side. She didn’t need to hear from Sairche until after she’d returned.

A small part of Sairche wished she could go to Neverwinter and watch everything unfold, but she quashed it: It wasn’t necessary. In fact, it would be extremely foolish. Besides-she had no way to cross the planes anymore, short of asking Invadiah.

Another imp appeared beside her with a soft pop . “Her Highness wishes you to pay her audience.”

Sairche shuddered and pulled her cloak around her. “Tell her I will be with her presently.”

Farideh’s lungs were screaming, her muscles aching as she ran-for the second time that night-as fast as she could along the main roads. And Mehen was gaining on her. Close enough to hear his labored breath-

The crack of his lightning breath rattled the alleyway. The lightning scoured her skin, the sudden pain driving the air from her lungs with a sharp cry. But still she ran, slower now and gasping. Her nerves threatened to overtake her and make her cry like a child, as Clanless Mehen sought to slay his foster daughter.

Farideh drew on the powers of the Hells and split the fabric of the world enough for her to dart through, and come clear around the corner and several buildings farther on. She ducked into an alleyway and flattened herself against the wall. Mehen ran past, but only a short distance before he circled back to the intersection where she’d lost him, tapping his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Farideh drew her breath in such slow, even drafts that she thought she would surely faint.

I’m sorry, she thought. But Lorcan was, as ever, right.

She stepped into the street and pointed the rod at her father. “ Adaestuo .”

The bolt of eldritch light slammed into Mehen, and he roared in shock and pain, but he did not fall. He turned jerkily to face her and drew his falchion.

“Mehen,” she said, “don’t do this. You don’t need to do this. Rohini’s not here.”

“She will be there when I …” He stilled, blinked … and then bared his teeth in sudden rage. “When I bring back your head, warlock.”

“Mehen, put your sword down,” she said, holding up the rod and feeling the magical energy of the Hells flooding through her. “It’s me .”

Mehen answered with a vicious swing level with her head. She ducked beneath it and took a step back. She took the rod in her left hand and drew her sword.

The whoosh of Lorcan’s wings as he plummeted brought Mehen’s head up a second before the cambion dropped solidly into his back. Mehen’s head cracked against the cobbles and he went slack.

“Tie him!” Lorcan shouted. “Tie him, damn it!”

“Calm down,” Farideh said. She kneeled down beside Mehen and reached a shaking hand toward his face. He was breathing, but out cold.

Farideh nudged Lorcan off Mehen and jerked the harness off Mehen’s shoulders. She slid it down to his elbows, knotting the loose loops together, so that his arms were bound. “Help me move him.”

She had a perverse sense of satisfaction watching Lorcan struggle as much as she with Mehen’s heavy bulk. They would never have gotten him from the temple into the city. But when his arm brushed hers, she flushed nonetheless.

They settled Mehen against a wall, behind a pile of rubble. Farideh kneeled down, assessing the dragonborn’s wounds. “He doesn’t look good.”

Lorcan jerked her to her feet. The amulet exploded with a cold, silvery light. Lorcan threw his hands up to ward it off and fell back.

“Godsdamn it!”

“If you don’t like it, don’t shove me around,” she said, her voice shaking. The air was simmering again. “No one said you had to come back.”

He seized his hair in his fists. “Planes and ashes, you do understand Rohini’s not a shitting goblin you can wave your hands and distract?”

“I had to do something.” She gestured at Mehen. “He’s half-dead as it is. She had him …” Her voice caught. “She had him fighting like it didn’t matter. Like he could simply take the cuts and bruises and … whatever her magic does. She would have killed him.”

“She’s going to kill you. She knows you’re alive now.”

“She knows you’re alive too! You should have taken the chance,” she said. “You can’t get to the portal now.”

“So I was supposed to just-” He waved his hands vaguely. “I should have. I should have run past while she was distracted.” He cursed to himself. “You’re not worth this.” He cursed again. “Neither is a bloody aboleth.”

“No it isn’t.” And suddenly things fit together a little better. “Oh.”

It was, ironically, one of Mehen’s favorite tactics: burst onto the battlefields with a great storm and thunder, rattling shields and blades and breathing lightning, looking for all the world like your enemy’s worst nightmare. And while they stared at you and pondered how to take you down, your allies came around behind and cut your enemies throats.

“What if that’s it?” she said, half to herself.

“What in the Hells are you talking about?” Lorcan cried. “What if what’s it?”

“Your mistress,” she said, “do you think she’d go to all this trouble to gain a … a monster from another world’s memories?”

“Yes!” he said. “Think of the power-”

“What power though?” Farideh asked. “If they’re as alien as the Chasm, what good would their thoughts be? They might know ten thousand years’ worth of knowledge, but what good is that if they don’t think like her? That didn’t make any sense. It still doesn’t.” She held Lorcan’s gaze. “Especially because the Ashmadai never fit. Is it possible that all of this was meant to get the Ashmadai out in the open? To get them to call down Asmodeus? Or even … just to make him notice the Sovereignty? To focus on that? Why else would the Ashmadai be looking for Glasyans in the hospital?”

Lorcan started to answer, but stopped and pursed his lips. “It’s possible,” he said a moment later. “She likes making trouble. Everyone knows she doesn’t get along with her father.”

“So she might start a war, after all, not between the Layers,” Farideh said, “but between the Sovereignty and the god of evil.”

Lorcan shook his head. “She’s an archduchess of the Hells. She’s too clever to antagonize her father like that, now that he’s a god.”

“But if she were clever and angry,” Farideh said, “she might create a chain of events that … don’t look as though she’s trying to antagonize him. That get Asmodeus’s eye fixed on Neverwinter and another, powerful, alien enemy.”

“So she may act elsewhere,” Lorcan finished. He shuddered. “And you and I got in the way.”

“But what is she doing?”

Lorcan reached forward as if he would clap a hand over her mouth again, but closed his hands on the empty air. “ Stop asking that. You don’t need to know. You don’t want to know.”

“Don’t-”

“Shut up, darling, just shut up and trust me here, you do not need to know what the archduchess’s plans are.” He rubbed his wrists where the amulet’s fire had burned them. “And you had best hope like you’ve never hoped, that-”

“They matter, ” she said, “because it means the Ashmadai’s plan to attack the temple is just as likely her plan. They will come and burn the place to the ground, and kill everyone in it.” She looked at him gravely. “Something has its powers over Rohini-she isn’t on Glasya’s side anymore. And if you’re right and your mother’s erinyes come to clean things up, Rohini isn’t going to go quietly. It will be a bloodbath. Perhaps not one your lady’s planning on. Certainly not one Neverwinter’s expecting.”