than know her mission.
They’ll know soon enough, the crooning voice said. Embrace it. After all, Glasya isn’t here to save you. She doesn’t care what happens to you now.
“Her plan was always that I died in the process,” she said aloud, startling herself.
“The process of what?” Vartan asked.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she said. She threw her head backward against the chair, studying the ceiling as if the lines of the stone and the ancient stains left behind by collecting water, persisting beyond the shifting colors that clouded her vision, would anchor her. She had to find a way out.
She locked her eyes on one particular stain-the size and shape of a grown man’s liver-and smiled. She knew this room-and what lay near it.
She lowered her head and with all her effort hurled her charm like a net over Vartan. He stilled, sensing the change and not understanding it. Good, she thought, ignoring the splintering lights that filled her vision. “I’ll tell you all about it, if you do something for me.”
“Of course,” he said.
She nodded at the back of the room. “Open the door.”
Vartan started to do as she bid. One of the servitors, a tall, lanky man, caught him by the wrist. “That is unwise.”
But Rohini’s charm held firm, and Vartan shook off the servitor and pulled open the door.
“Mehen!” Rohini screamed. “Mehen, help!”
The dragonborn was faster than she’d expected, and more agile, despite her magic dragging against his reserves for the past two days. Clever her for leaving him his weapons-the wide blade that hacked at the orc nearest the door and sent a slash of blood and slime spraying across the stone. The servitors were quicker and avoided the dragonborn’s next swing.
The tall, lanky man drove his shoulder hard, as if his body didn’t matter, into Mehen’s lower back. It didn’t fell the dragonborn, but it took his attention and gave the other servitor a chance to pull his blade.
And Rohini a chance to escape. Her flesh shifted again, dwindled, as the bones of her arms tapered into the thin limbs of a young elf girl. She wriggled out of the restraints and worked her feet free of the manacles, only stripping the first layer of her skin away, the blood making it easier to slip free. She didn’t feel anything except a rush of glee as she retook her own form, the madness curling itself around her mind.
“Stop him,” one of the servitors said.
“Stop,” Rohini repeated, her tongue turned traitor. Mehen froze, his sword raised over the servitor now lying on the floor. The corruption settled on her mind in an uneasy truce.
“Your resources are impressive,” the wounded servitor said.
“I can bring him to bear again,” she said. “Him and more.”
“We are pleased to hear it,” the other said. “It is a skill we covet dearly.”
“You think to convert me as you did Anthus,” she said.
“After a fashion,” the servitor said mildly. “We had thought Brother Anthus would suit, but in the end he proved himself less ideal than we had previously assumed. You are much preferable. For one, you have resisted the powers of the Hex Locus like no other has. You are too willful to be a singer, and we are pleased to have found you.”
They sounded like the sort of things she found herself blurting out. The strange phrases were bubbling up in her thoughts again, and Rohini clenched her jaw until they subsided, her tongue flicking around her mouth trying to shape the words. “What are you talking about?” she said once she was sure she could say it.
“You are the Prophet,” the servitor said, bowing. “You are the one who will gather the Choir, to sing the Symphony of Madness into being.”
Rohini wavered, the blur of the corruption surging through her, twisting her thoughts into a sort of pleasure at the opportunity. She could spoil a hundred Anthuses and Vartans with the power of the Sovereignty, it told her. You can bring Arunika back from the grave tomorrow. Power like she could never gain in the Hells. Power to unmake those who’d treated her as if she were disposable.
Rohini laughed, a high, mad sound. “You want me to trade one master for another and thank you for it. Fool.”
The servitor smiled. “It is too late for that. The Hex Locus has blessed you. The mark of the Far Realm is on you. You have already been granted a new master.”
“It does not mean I will serve.”
“It is your nature to serve,” the servitor said. “It is in all of our natures. But put yourself in the yoke of the Sovereignty and we promise you a longer lead than that of the Hells. You will be a queen.”
“Among slaves,” Rohini snarled.
The servitor shrugged, almost beatifically, his slimy palms turned up. “Is that not better than what you have now, devil? We are not privy to the current state of the Nine Hells, but our masters know what your kind gave up. Is it worth it, Asmodeus’s bridle? Your former enemies now your mistresses, your reward the dissolution of your true form?” The servitor stepped toward her. “If you tell us who sent you, and why you are here, we can help you destroy them.”
Arunika would have relished such an offer, the voice reminded her, and not so long ago, Rohini would have relished it too-they’d been raised from the cradle to corrupt and undo. The murmuring of the Hex Locus’s infection sang to her of the unparalleled pleasures of careful unmaking, of bringing down such complex schemes as the one she now lay tangled in. To hand over Glasya and Invadiah when they least expected it-the demon in her would have reveled in their falls.
The servitor was watching her expectantly.
I am not Arunika, she thought.
“What benefits Asmodeus, benefits us all,” she said again, as the prophecy bubbled up to her lips once more. Even though it wasn’t true in the least.
Sairche crept through her mother’s apartments to the treasure room and slipped inside. Someone had sliced the damaged door away and cleared the rubble of the Needle of the Crossroads. The faintest shadow of its interwoven spells still disturbed the air-otherwise not a pebble remained.
She slid the ring she’d shaped and enchanted from one of the iron curls of the scrying mirror’s frame onto her finger. Not a piece she’d wear to court, but it did the job. As she waved it before the mirror, the surface shimmered, hiccupped, then solidified on the temple of Oghma, the House of Knowledge in Neverwinter. And did not move.
Sairche cursed. She’d spent good, long hours adding to the mirror’s spells, pouring holy water with heavily gloved hands and painting monstrous bloods onto the mirror with a stolen angel’s feather, for
“Piece of rubbish.” She pursed her lips. Fine. Rohini could have her privacy a little longer. She’d warm the mirror up to breaking through the temple’s protections. Spy on someone less interesting and easier to get at.
Sairche waved the ring again and bade the mirror show her Aornos. The mirror swirled and formed an empty street under a dark, drizzling sky. Neverwinter again. But there was no sign of red-haired Aornos. Sairche peered at the image, but as she did, the image blurred and wavered and reformed into the plains of Malbolge. Into the Birthing Pit, where the damned became devils and the devils killed out in the world incubated.
Sairche raised her eyebrows, and felt a small smile sneaking its way across her lips. “Oh no.”
She pressed the mirror to find Nemea, and again it showed her the same twitching images that settled, resolutely, on the boiling pit of souls. No doubting its message: Nemea and Aornos were dead.
Had Aornos and Nemea been stupid enough to pick a fight with Glasya’s hellwasps? Sairche shook her head sadly at the bubbling pit. Why did she even ask? Poor stupid Nemea. Poor stupid Aornos. They were exactly the sort to take Invadiah’s rage as an exhortation to kill the hellwasps.
With luck they would emerge as erinyes once more, though Sairche doubted their luck was that good. If
Hellwasps, she ordered the mirror. It snapped but flowed more smoothly, forming a window into Glasya’s audience chamber, where the hive of hellwasps swooped and swarmed around the throne of their chosen queen. Sairche frowned.
The ring, she remembered, and directed the mirror to find the hellwasp which carried the green stone ring in
