“I think you’re waiting to see how things fall out so you can swoop in and grab the glory.”
“To what end? I have more to lose and nothing to gain. I’m not playing your games, succubus.”
She leaned in close, baring her teeth before speaking in barely a hiss. “Then why are your toys all over my board?”
He shrugged, trying to look insouciant. Trying to look like the careless, accidental son of the most powerful erinyes in Malbolge and nothing more. “As I said: coincidence.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I expect you’ll believe anything I tell you to believe,” he said, harder. “Because I’d hate to tell my mother you destroyed one of my … ‘toys.’ ”
Rohini narrowed her eyes at him. Lorcan’s stomach turned to ice, but he kept his smirk. Rohini had to know Invadiah would let her take the blame if things went awry. She had to know Invadiah was waiting for the merest excuse to cast off the skulking and infiltration Rohini favored for a frontal assault. She had to know-
Rohini slapped her hand down in the center of Lorcan’s chest, sending a wave of agony coursing through him. He gasped and before he could stop her, she did it once more. His knees buckled and he fell to the ground.
“You understand,” she said, “that it would take nothing-
Lorcan kept his mouth shut. Whether she could or couldn’t, he wasn’t stupid enough to test her further. This was Rohini after all.
She kneeled down beside Lorcan and clucked her tongue. “You all think I’m just a tool, when I could kill you without a moment’s breath. You, Invadiah, all her pretty little erinyes.” She chuckled to herself. She leaned in and whispered into his ear, “If you know what’s best, Lorcan, you’ll do what I tell you. Either get your warlock out of my way, or give her to me.”
“I’ll get her out,” he panted. “Give me some time, though. I can’t scry her. The mirror is fighting-”
Rohini stood. “You have until I return to the temple.”
He waited until she’d left, until the worst of the pain and the nausea had passed, before pulling himself up on the bone spurs of the room’s corner. Bloody Rohini. He’d try a few more times, and surely Farideh would get out of the way of whatever was blocking the mirror. He’d call her through the brand, get her someplace secluded, and then travel to Neverwinter and make her leave. He waved the ring in front of the mirror.
A shop. A street. The shop again, and Farideh hurrying out from the alley beside it, glancing back at the front door, over which hung a sign that read “Claven’s General Goods and Armory.”
“Oh, shit and ashes,” he whispered.
Forbiddances positively haloed the shop. Those spells had been what kept the mirror from scrying her- powerful magic that had no place at all around a random storefront. Lorcan’s pulse hammered unpleasantly at him: nestled in the crook of one of the runes in the store’s sign was a trio of black triangles.
The sign of Asmodeus.
Farideh had just left an Ashmadai lair.
He grabbed ahold of the mirror as if he could shake her through it. Stumbling into Rohini’s way was bad enough, but this could make everything so much worse. He pulled hard on the tethers that connected to her brand. She had to get someplace quiet. Someplace he could get to her.
In the mirror, Farideh stopped in the middle of the crowded street, clasped her arm, and flinched. Lorcan pulled again and again.
Listen to
Farideh was threading her way through a crowd of people in front of a fishmonger when Lorcan pulled on her scar. It flared so hot and sharp she gasped and clapped a hand over it.
A woman in front of her, a human with large knobby hands, grabbed hold of her shoulder as she stumbled. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. Thank you,” Farideh said. But then the pull came again, so sharp it made her eyes water and again she gasped the fishy air. She pushed past the woman and out of the crowd, hurrying toward the House of Knowledge.
He called again, but if he wanted her attention he could come and ask for it. After days of leaving her alone, leaving her wondering what had happened to him, and, of course, what made him take notice of her was finding out she’d spoken to someone else about him and how to leash him better. She should have expected it.
Again Lorcan pulled on the scar hard enough to take her breath, and Farideh stopped walking. Around her, the road was still busy with passersby, and off to the right a fountain in the shape of a wyvern swarmed with citizens and children and more than a few gulls.
Mehen often told her she was stubborn, a complaint Havilar often repeated. Farideh headed for the crowded fountain. For once, Lorcan would see exactly how stubborn she could be. She sat down on the edge of the fountain, resolutely ignoring the insistant pain of her scar.
Mehen dreamed.
He was following the redheaded woman from the temple through a forest. Not a forest like Tymanther’s scraggly mountains-heavy evergreens interspersed with bone white birches and monstrous oaks. Around their feet, ferns swished and shushed as they passed. The world smelled damp and resinous, like wet pine.
He remembered waking in the temple, preparing to go haul stone. He remembered the redhead-Rohini, that was it-coming to find him. He must have fallen asleep, though, since he couldn’t make himself ask her where they were or what they were doing. He couldn’t do much at all but follow along after the hospitaler. He hated the dreams he knew were dreams yet couldn’t wake from. But at least Arjhani and Uadjit hadn’t made an appearance yet, to drag up everything that had happened so long ago.
Rohini turned to him.
“Stop,” she said, and he did. In his dream, she looked strange-stronger, fiercer, almost bestial. She grinned at him, but it looked more like she was baring her teeth.
“We’re going to fight some of those orcs you mentioned,” she said. “But I need you to avoid killing them. I want as many as possible alive.”
“Of course,” he said.
“And another thing,” she said. “I won’t look like myself. So mark me-if you hurt me, Mehen, I will hurt you back.”
Confused, he regarded her. He didn’t want to hurt Rohini. He couldn’t hurt Rohini. He drew his falchion, and bowed over it to her, his new commander.
“Good,” she said. Her form wavered and for a moment, she seemed to have wings and talons, her hair a cloud of bloodred. He blinked and he found himself looking instead at a lean and muscular male orc, his face crazed with deliberate scars, his dark hair tinged red. Her face? Her hair? No, it was simpler to call the orc as he looked- young, male, and oddly handsome.
Somewhere deep in his mind, Mehen sighed. This was going to be a long, strange dream.
“Lead on,” he heard himself say.
The Rohini-orc strode through the brush, making no effort to dampen the sound of his passage. Even in his dream, Mehen knew where to step and how to slide around the densest brush. Even if Rohini didn’t care, it was his way.
The squad of orcs crouched around a low fire, finishing the remains of a midday meal. Twelve of them. Half nursing wounds that could not be more than a few days old. All males, but one-a shaman decked in totems and packs of herbs. She was as big as the males though.
At the sight of the Rohini-orc, those who could took up their weapons. At the sight of Mehen they leaped to their feet and Mehen recognized them-it was the remnants of the same group they’d clashed with on the road. Judging by the biggest one’s bellow, they remembered him too.
The Rohini-orc said something in a language Mehen didn’t know, and the big orc cut short his war cry. A few more words and he regarded the Rohini-orc cautiously and curiously. The shaman stared openly and eagerly.
To kill them would be simpler. Clustered like this, if his falchion could reach one, it could reach them all. If
