Farideh shook her head, not here, not now. He smiled at her and shook his head gently, as if she were being willful. As if she’d change her mind. A line of blood ran down from one of his nostrils, black as ink.
“No,” she said. “No.”
“Oh, it’s safe,” Rhand said beside her. “Are you sure you feel well? Why don’t you come lie down?” She blinked and it wasn’t Lorcan standing there, but a young man giving her a hard stare. She shook her head a little and looked over at Rhand. He was smiling at her in that unpleasant way, and she realized something was very wrong.
You could kill him, a voice in her thoughts said, and it occurred to her dimly that it didn’t sound like herself at all. Make it clear who he’s toying with.
“Don’t touch me,” she said. Then, with hardly a thought, “Do you know who I am?” A Brimstone Angel, she thought, but the thought came after as if buoying the demand. Rarest of the Toril Thirteen. Her head was spinning. Flames licked the spaces between her fingers.
Rhand’s blue eyes pierced her, surely as swords, and he said, quite simply, cruelly, “My latest acquisition.”
No-and whether it was her voice or the Hells’, she let the flames fill her hands. Her brand felt as if it were on fire.
“Don’t touch-” Someone bumped her from behind, and she startled. There were so many people. There was no keeping an eye on them all. She looked back the way they’d come, but Brin and Havilar were lost in a sea of skirts and surcoats.
“Havilar,” she murmured. That was what she’d forgotten-if there were devils, they would certainly be after Havilar. She took a step toward the door. Her knee buckled and Rhand held her firm. She was shaking her head again, the Hells surging up into her blood and her nerves with every quickening heartbeat, every extra breath. She could burn him. She could make him stay away. She had to get loose, to get back to Havilar.
“There you are,” a voice said, and someone yanked on the back of her brigandine sharply enough to break her free. She stumbled backward, fists up and burning. People were staring-let them stare. Dahl turned her so she faced him. “We need to go,” he said.
“Your pardon,” she heard Rhand say, “but she and I aren’t through-”
“Another time then,” Dahl said, and he pulled her out of the quicksand conversation and out through the crowds. The flames sputtered out. She clutched his arm, for fear of falling, and her own arm in hopes of feeling the brand burn again.
“I leave you alone for all of a song,” he said, “and suddenly you’re exactly where you said you didn’t want to be. Are you a fool or do you take me for one?”
She shook her head, still clasping her arm. Her breath didn’t seem to be willing to make its way into her lungs and her throat was squeezing tight. If she spoke again, she thought she might scream.
“I don’t want to be there,” she managed. “I … Where’s Havilar? I can’t …”
Dahl stopped and looked back at her. “Are you drunk?” he demanded.
“I don’t … I’m not … I just had a little glass. Almonds. Zzar.” Her face was prickling with the heat, but she didn’t dare touch it, the flames were already in her hands. She tried to shake them out. “He gave me just a little glass. And then the room’s full of devils-Dahl, I can’t figure out which ones to stop. I don’t know what’s …”
Dahl’s eyes widened. One moment he was glancing around, the next he was pulling her behind a settee. She managed to keep the flames away from him, but only just. “You have to vomit,” he said urgently. He grabbed her hand and yelped as the fire burned him. She kept shaking.
He pointed two fingers-Draw the rune, Lorcan says, say laesurach-toward his mouth. “Do it yourself, or I’ll do it for you,” Dahl said, panic in his voice. “He gave you something. You have to get it out.”
Farideh stared at her burning hands. The powers kept flowing, kept searching for an outlet. “Even I’ll burn,” she murmured.
“Stlarn it,” Dahl cursed. One hand went behind her head, under her horns, and before she could ask what he was doing, the other slipped two fingers past her lips and suddenly she was sick, vomiting hard enough to see stars.
“All of it,” he said, his voice shaking. “Completely empty. I haven’t found Tam.”
She tasted bile amid the almonds and leaned on him hard. “I need to find Havilar,” she croaked.
“You need to find Tam,” he said. “You need a healing. And water, lots of water.” He kept looking around the room, fierce as a hunting hawk. “There’s a fountain in the garden. Come on.”
Eyes and eyes and eyes watched her careen across the floor. A layer’s worth of watchers, she thought. “I have to find Havilar,” she said, a little surer. “I have to find Lorcan.”
If Dahl heard her, he made no sign as, still holding her under her arms, he pulled her through the sea of people, to the revel’s edges, and up a short flight of stairs. The air cooled noticeably as they broke free of the crush of bodies, and Dahl glanced back once, then pulled her through an arched doorway into the night.
Moonlight swamped the garden, gilding the lashes of water spraying out of a fountain shaped like a pair of monstrous dryads and making deep shadows among the trees.
In the shadows, something watches …
Farideh dug her heels in-cast, cast something, anything. But there were people here too, watching her, and she couldn’t tell who was a devil and who wasn’t. If she cast fire into the shadows, she’d surely hit someone.
Maybe you should.
Dahl leaned her over the fountain’s edge. “Drink it, as much as you can,” he said. “If you hark up again all the better.” He cupped a handful of water and held it to her face. It smelled stale and tasted faintly of stone and dirt, but she swallowed, and took another cupped handful of her own. It made her sick again, all over the stone patio.
“What possessed you to just drink something he gave you?” Dahl demanded.
“I’m not a Harper,” she said. She wiped her mouth and leaned back over the fountain. “Where I come from people don’t suddenly poison you. Not even the devils.”
Dahl shook his head, as if she wasn’t making sense. “At least you sound a little better. Can you walk all right?”
She cupped more of the foul water-its taste was nothing compared to the burn of bile in her throat. “I don’t want to, but I can. I think.” Her head was pounding, and her veins found the same pulse in the powers of Malbolge.
“You need a healer,” Dahl said. “And a safe place to lie down.”
“I need to find Havilar,” Farideh said. She stood and looked down at her arms, the veins were as black as she’d ever seen them, and seemed to swirl under her skin. “It’s doing something … I have to cast, I think … it’s like a volcano. It’s going to vent.” She thought of Neverwinter, crisscrossed by ancient streams of lava-her arms like the ruined roads. She shut her eyes. “I’ll vent it at him.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Dahl said, propping her up. “You should have told Master Zawad that Rhand had taken a shine to you.”
Farideh leaned back on the fountain’s lip. “I can handle it.”
“Words, Master Zawad,” a voice behind them said, “is entirely too familiar with.” Farideh didn’t know whether to smile or curse, but she opened her eyes to find Tam striding out of the shadows. The silverstar was dressed in unobtrusive grays-he might turn invisible like that, she thought. “You made quite the scene plowing through the crowd,” he said. “What are you two doing here?”
“Four,” Farideh said. “Havi and Brin. I need to find Havilar. She’s in trouble. I know it.”
“She’s been poisoned,” Dahl said. “Rhand slipped her something.”
“Hrast,” Tam said. He glanced around the garden. “There’s a bench. Have his guards come after you?” he asked as the two Harpers helped Farideh over to the stone bench.