The forests of the Nether Mountain foothills were packed with larches and laspars with their shags of needles, and gnarled felsuls clinging to hollows of rock matted by their own shattered bark. In between, all manner of wildflowers and weeds, snags and bogs of old needles, and thick slicks of moss slowed them down. As Farideh picked her way through a matted patch of fireweed, a great flock of moths the size of doves swirled up around her. They battered blindly into her, and where they landed, they clung to her clothes and hair. She yelped and swatted wildly, trying to cover her head and knock the creatures off her armor at the same time.
She heard Brin crash back through the underbrush to her and the weight of the moths came off her hair one by one.
“Laspar moths,” Brin said. “They’re harmless.”
She shivered and rolled her shoulders, trying to rid herself of the sensation of them. “They’re too big to be harmless,” she said. The rest of the group was looking down the rise at them. Particularly Havilar.
“Thank you,” Farideh said to Brin. She started forward again, but he fell into step beside her.
“She’s angry, isn’t she?” he said. “Did she tell you why?”
Farideh hesitated. “I think it’s complicated.”
“Not that complicated,” he said irritably. But by then they’d caught up to Havilar, and he wouldn’t say any more. There was a moment between them so awkward and prickly that Farideh didn’t dare guess at its source, and then Brin was picking his way across the bare rocks.
“What did he say?” Havilar demanded.
“He wanted to know if you’d told me why you were angry. And I told him you hadn’t.”
“Hmph.” Havilar kicked a larch cone over the hump of granite. “If he doesn’t know, he could ask me. I almost wish he hadn’t come. Or we hadn’t.” She watched the group ahead of them for a bit. “Do you think we shouldn’t have come?”
“Why are you mad at him?”
“He called me daft,” Havilar said. “And some other things. But, I mean, I wonder if we shouldn’t have come because of Mehen. I keep expecting any moment Tam’s going to hear one of those senders and it’ll be Mehen roaring curses about how much trouble we’re in. We’re going to be in so much trouble anyway, you know? And then I wonder if maybe Mehen’s in trouble.”
“Maybe he’s just accepted we’re grown. We can go where we like, when we like. He can’t really stop us-”
Havilar grabbed her arm. “You’re not leaving.”
“No,” Farideh said, shaking her sister off. “But I could. You can. Or we can go off for a bit without Mehen and be trusted to come back. Maybe he’s seen reason.”
“Mehen?” Havilar said skeptically.
“Well what makes more sense?” Farideh asked, as the cliffs came into view ahead of them. “Mehen’s all right with us having a little adventure? Or he’s gotten into trouble standing in line for forms and approvals?”
“Well, yes.” Havilar’s tail slashed the fireweed. “I don’t know. What if … it’s Constancia? She might-”
“Want to keep us and Brin away?” Farideh interrupted. “Isn’t she more likely to … I don’t know, ransom Mehen? Or something more knightly to try to get Brin to come back?”
“That letchy fellow with the beard-”
“Would want us to go back to Waterdeep and bring the page with us.” Havilar went quiet and there was only the sound of their breaths and the crunch of dry moss underfoot.
“Devils,” Havilar said firmly. “What if it’s devils? Who … are trying to get us trapped somewhere …”
Farideh pursed her mouth. It was close-awfully close-to all she feared. Could Sairche have found out about the expedition? Could Sairche be manipulating Mira’s plans? Ahead, the dark-haired historian had stopped and was consulting her compass with a furrowed brow. Farideh would have called her independent, maybe carefree. Never the tool of another. But she would have called the cultist who’d nearly killed both her and Havilar kind and well-mannered. Her opinions of others weren’t all that trustworthy.
Mira had handed Dahl her map, and the Harper was holding it open for her to scrutinize. That opinion, Farideh thought, she trusted wholly.
“Lorcan would do it,” Havilar said.
Farideh watched Mira dart off over the rise, down toward a stream valley. “No, he wouldn’t.”
“He hates Mehen. And he tried to kill me.”
“No, he didn’t. He expressly didn’t, all right?” And he wouldn’t-he’d promised she was safe. They were both safe. Only so long as he’s alive, Farideh thought. And then who knew what would come? “It’s not Lorcan.”
“You don’t know that.”
Farideh yanked her sleeve up to her shoulder, displaying the angry red scars of her brand. She took Havilar’s hand and pressed it to the marks. “Cool. See? I’ll tell you when it’s Lorcan.”
Havilar scowled. “All right, fine. Maybe Mehen just trusts us.”
“And we were perfectly right to come.”
“You’re acting strange,” Havilar said, as they started after the others, “you know that? You’re supposed to be the worried one. I’m supposed to be the one demanding adventures.”
Farideh shook her head. “Maybe that’s why you’re worried. Because someone has to be.”
“That’s stupid,” Havilar said, but Mira’s cry of discovery from up ahead forestalled any argument. They had found the cavern of Xammux.
For all of Mira’s assurances, nothing was simple about entering the cavern, in Farideh’s opinion. First, there was a climb up a nearly sheer rock face, the stream that seemed to trickle out the broken door pouring down on her head. She hauled herself up onto the narrow ledge behind Mira, not wanting to consider how they would get back down.
The stone here was the same strange pattern as the fragment, layers of sharp circles over the dark grain of the granite. One door still hung in place, held to its ancient frame by the remains of one stone hinge. The other was half gone, its base nowhere to be seen. All over, mad writing scratched the pale stone’s surface-runes in Dethek, Draconic, and languages Farideh had never seen before. Xammux, they said. The Many.
And beneath those, in firmer, more formal lettering, was the Draconic that wasn’t Draconic.
“Not our door,” Mira said. She kneeled down and ran a finger over the broken edge. She shook her head. “No, it wouldn’t be.”
Farideh looked back down the cliff face, at Tam who’d nearly made the top. “So we’re through?” she panted.
Mira looked up at her and blinked. “Through with what?”
“It’s the wrong door.”
“No,” Mira said. “Just not the door that fragment came from. This is an old break. Ours had sharper edges. And none of this.” She waved at the scrawls crisscrossing the facade. “We have to go deeper,” she informed Tam as he climbed up beside her.
Tam peered at the door himself, easing across the slippery rock to touch the carvings. “The marks of our cultists.”
“Possibly,” Mira said. “But I don’t think they’re around, if they have been around any time of late.” She pointed across at the canyon wall, where one of the spongy funguses was crawling slowly toward them, the patterns of its skin shifting as it eased over the rocks. “The caverns must have flooded recently-and violently. Those things certainly look as if they’d rather be inside. And that’s likely where our fragment came from.” She pulled a slim book from her haversack, and the page from the center of that. “Perhaps you would too,” she said to it.
Second came the long and stumbling trek along the uneven streambed as it wound deeper into the ground. The wet, marshy smell of the funguses still hung in the air over the cold, clammy smell of wet stone. Rocks polished smooth by their passage out of the mountains turned under Farideh’s feet, and the water that covered her boots at the beginning swiftly rose to her knees. Mira led the way, the page in hand. Ashenath enjareen … Tarchamusi enpuluis …
At least Farideh could see well enough. Something greenish and shimmering coated the broken edges of the walls, the points of stalactites, and it threw off enough light for her sensitive eyes to pierce the dark, leaving both of her hands free to catch her balance on the walls.