Brimstone Angels

knowing she was his warlock? Why would it be better for her to think she was his lover?

The sun hung down to the treetops before they reached the edge of Neverwinter Wood. There the trees were thicker-evergreens and birches interspersed with broad-crowned oaks. They were close to the city, but not close enough. They’d have to camp one more night and arrive in the morning.

“We’re short on food,” Mehen said, shaking out his haversack. “We’ve waybread enough to get us to the city. But I think you’d all do better with something more substantial. Go bring down some rabbits.”

“Karshoj to rabbits,” Havilar said ripely, once they’d gone a ways into the thick woods. She kneeled beside a break in the brush and pointed at a small pile of droppings. “Let’s get a deer.”

“A deer?” Brin said. “There are only five of us.”

Havilar looked back over her shoulder and grinned. “You haven’t seen Mehen eat yet.”

Brin stopped walking to stare at Havilar, and Farideh had to laugh. “No, stop, Havi. Mehen doesn’t eat much at all. He says he uses his food better than us. We don’t need a deer.”

Havi smiled at her. “But it sure would be fun to take one down.”

“All right,” Farideh said. “But only once. If we miss we go back to pheasants and rabbits. We don’t have time to track a herd through the whole damned forest.”

“I only need one try,” Havilar said.

The deer left spoor enough to follow through the evergreens and spry birch saplings. They wound through the trees and around thickets of brambles, until the flora cleared. In a glade nearly a hundred feet across, a herd of half-a-dozen deer grazed on the thick patches of grass, their graceful heads lifting now and again to listen for danger.

Havilar gestured: Go around. Flush them out. Farideh nodded once and tugged on Brin’s sleeve, gesturing down the side track. She pressed a finger to her lips, and they started down the trail.

Farideh kept an eye on the deer through the brush and branches. They kept grazing, unaware of the hunters’ approach. They crept around them nearly a quarter mile.

The snap of a branch made Farideh freeze and the deer lift their heads in alarm. Behind her, she heard Brin come to a stop. The deer stared, one-eyed, in their direction.

Damn, Farideh thought. The deer did not return to grazing. Another sound-any sound-and they would flee.

Which was fine, provided they fled in the right direction.

“Brin?” she said, soft as she could. “When I reappear, run at them and keep them headed toward Havi.”

Without waiting for his reply, Farideh pulled Lorcan’s powers into her and she slipped through the folds of the world, bursting free along the herd’s left side. The deer scattered-but because she’d come along the herd’s left flank, at least one veered toward Havilar crouched in the brush. Brin ran at them, keeping the deer from breaking toward the rear. Two harts zigzagged toward Havilar’s hiding place.

“Havi!” Farideh shouted.

She heard the crash of Havilar’s glaive …

And then Havilar cursing, and the continuing crash of the tiefling and the hart tearing into the woods.

“Maybe she wounded it?” Brin said, catching up to Farideh.

“Maybe we’re eating waybread for supper,” she replied. “Come on.” They started across the meadow, when a strange growling howl confronted them from the far side. Both froze and Brin’s hand went to his sword.

Lumbering out of the woods from the direction they were heading, a beast, heavy with muscle and bristling with brassy feathers, had spotted them. It swung its head, glaring at them with one bright yellow eye, then another, and clacking its beak. It drew back onto its hind legs and screeched again.

“Oh, karshoj,” Farideh swore. The owlbear screamed again and her knees buckled, but Brin grabbed her arm and started pulling her away across the glade, away from that spine-chilling scream. The owlbear galloped after them. At the edge of the woods, Farideh turned.

“Adaestuo.” The blast screamed across the field and struck the owlbear. It shrieked again but did not slow.

They darted through the birches that grew close together. The owlbear waded in after them, shoving the trees aside. As they rounded a small grove, Farideh turned again and pointed at a sapling.

“Assulam!” The tree shattered into chips and pieces. The owlbear kept coming, barreling over the snags of tree and into the cloud of splinters. It pulled up short and screeched, pawing at its eyes and snapping its beak.

Farideh and Brin ran, dodging through the trees, Farideh turning back again and again to cast blasts of energy. The owlbear howled and crashed after them, shouldering aside the saplings that blocked it. If she could set one on fire-

Brin threw up his arm and caught her. Farideh whipped her head around and saw, ahead of them, the ground dropped away into a steep ravine. The floor was a good forty feet below them, the opposite side a crumbling ledge at least as far away. If she’d kept on, she’d be lucky to have broken her legs.

The owlbear broke free of the tangle of birch saplings.

Brin started to pull his sword, but Farideh grabbed his arm. The Hells seeped into her blood with whispering promises and boiling shadows. The layers between the worlds split neatly as flesh beneath a scalpel, and she pulled Brin through. Where they went in those moments, Farideh didn’t know, didn’t want to know. She kept her eyes shut and focused on landing at the bottom of the ravine.

A gust of biting, hot smoke and they tumbled out of the passage, falling the last ten feet to the ravine floor. The wind went out of Farideh, and she lay on her back trying to catch her breath.

Brin rolled onto his feet and pulled his sword out, glancing around for a moment as if he couldn’t tell how he got where he was.

“It’s … all right,” Farideh panted. She pointed up the cliff. The owlbear was still up there pacing back and forth, stirring up the deadfall, whuffling and hooting.

Brin stared at the cliff a moment, as if waiting for the owlbear to tumble after them and resume the chase. When it continued its frantic pacing and did not, he turned and helped Farideh to her feet.

“That spell comes in useful,” he said, catching his breath. “Only I wish it didn’t smell so bitter. That and I wish I knew how you managed it.”

Farideh looked up the cliff. “I don’t think we should climb back up there.”

“There should be a way past it,” Brin said. “They’re territorial, owlbears-we must have crossed into its range. If we walk a little ways along the ravine, it will be safer to climb up.” He shook his head and started walking. “Nothing makes you realize the world is a mad place like owlbears. You think they’re so silly-looking, and then they’re eating your face in strips.”

Farideh followed after him. “How do you know all of these things? Owlbears and types of magic and such?”

“Well-rounded education,” Brin said.

“I didn’t know Selunites studied such things.”

“Who? Oh … right.” He looked at her sidelong. “Listen, please don’t tell Mehen, but … I’m not really Tam’s apprentice. I mean, I agreed to be until we get to Neverwinter, but not for any reason other than I needed blades to travel with. I’m not a Selunite any more than I’m still Tormish.”

Farideh felt a weight come off her shoulders. “Good! Oh, good.” He gave her another look and she blushed. “I don’t know how to talk to priests.”

“Same as anyone else,” he said with a chuckle. “ ‘Fine afternoon. Do you come to this ravine often?’ ”

She smiled. “ ‘What is your opinion on owlbears?’ ”

Brin chuckled. “Precisely.”

Farideh glanced up at the ravine’s edge again. “Do you think it will go after Havilar?”

“Not if it knows what’s good for it.”

They continued along the ravine for a good quarter hour or more, before the calls of the owlbear faded into the distance, and then they walked farther to make certain it was behind them, before they came upon a scraggly tree clinging to the side of the ravine. Brin, then Farideh, clambered up the tree, then used the rocky outcrops of the ravine wall to pull themselves to the top.

Farideh took a moment to dust her robes off and rub her aching palms where the sharp rocks had scraped the skin. She glanced up at the sun: they’d lost Havilar almost an hour ago. Hopefully, she had the presence of mind to