The Book. It had said it knew the library. That it could find spells if you asked for specifics. She closed her hand into a fist. She’d only be able to read Loross a few more hours-if that; there was no hope of telling time down beneath the earth. She’d have to stop and recast the ritual anyway.
No one else was standing in the alcove where they’d left the Book, and Farideh stood just at the edge of the shelves considering it. There was a good reason, she was sure, that everyone was avoiding it but Havilar. She thought of the way the Book hadn’t known where the spell was that Mira mentioned, the thing that Rhand wanted. Perhaps it’s just not that clever, she thought.
Can I help you, dear girl? the Book spoke. Farideh moved closer, watching the pages. Someone-Havilar, no doubt-had left it open on the lectern again, and the pages crawled with spell-enhanced lines of Draconic written so neatly they might have been printed.
“I think … perhaps,” she said. “I don’t want to be a bother.”
Nonsense, the voice said, sounding more like a pleasant old man than anything else. Do you see anyone else bothering me? That callous woman earlier made it sound as if you were in a hurry. As if you had agents of a floating city on your heels. And yet no one’s here asking for my help.
Because you didn’t know the spell we need, Farideh thought. “I need to find a ritual. Where would I find such books?”
Ritual … ritual … the Book mused. Ah-do you mean the spells of the new era? The magic cast to rebind the Weave?
“Yes?” That certainly sounded right. Like something Dahl would utter.
Fascinating study. Alas, that variety of magic is the work of more modern minds. We did not need such measures before the Blue Fire. Its voice grew wistful. Before, the Weave of magic was like a tamed beast, if you had the right sort of mind, the right sort of sight. No need to tie together errant wildlings of power-just let your spells work with the natural flow of Mystryl.
“Of course,” Farideh said, not sure about half of its assertions and not wanting to ask. Her stomach twisted, remembering Lorcan’s bloody, empty sockets. No rituals in the library. None but Dahl’s and Tam’s.
Is there something in particular you need? the Book asked. Magic has certainly changed, but it’s always possible to adapt, to reinvent. Perhaps the spell you require already exists in another form?
“Perhaps,” Farideh said. The runes were shivering, as if they might swirl into something else, the way the page alone had. “I need to summon someone from another plane,” she said, leaving the book on the plinth.
Someone willing? the Book asked. Or someone … coerced?
Farideh hesitated. “Yes, willing. I mean, I believe so.”
Well there’s nothing simpler! the Book said. There are half a dozen spells to do just that, and Netheril mastered the art of interplanar travel very long ago. It would help, the Book went on, if I knew where your someone needed to be gathered from.
Farideh hesitated again and looked around to make certain no one was near. “The sixth layer of the Hells.”
Your friend is in Baator? The Book sounded genuinely surprised. In the domain of Moloch?
She frowned. That didn’t sound right-Lorcan answered to a mistress, an archdevil called Glasya-but whether the Book was wrong or the Book was remembering something long ago, she couldn’t have said. Did archdevils have successors? “Things,” she said, “may have changed somewhat.”
The Book harrumphed. Even evil is inconstant. Nevertheless-you should start with the details of the planes and the fabric between. The scrolls you need are in an antechamber on the western side of the library.
“There are other chambers?”
Something your leader should like to know, eh? Let her come and ask then. It chuckled once more. Follow the outer ring of the shelves until you find a large column with a rune on it. Now that rune locks the antechamber, so before you so much as touch the door, you need to disarm it. Eradicate the mark and that should break the spell. The door is a score of paces beyond, between the maps of the Eastern kingdoms and the star charts.
“Thank you,” Farideh said.
Not at all, the Book said. Come back when you’ve found your information and we’ll see about finding you the right sort of spell.
Farideh followed the Book’s directions along the curved path that traced the library’s outer wall. The shelves along it stretched to twice her height and were laden with thick, leather-bound tomes. The sounds of the others echoed back across the dim cave, but no one was working here. She was completely alone.
She stopped and drew a deep breath, trying to still her thoughts to match the quiet. How long had it been since she’d been truly alone? No Havilar asking her what she was thinking. No Lorcan telling her what to think. Not even the anonymous bustle of Waterdeep.
It was strangely unnerving. She wondered if the arcanist had enjoyed the solitude.
The columns along the outer edge were wide enough to wrap her arms around and polished to a sheen. Farideh kept her eyes high, studying the veins and grains of the stone, searching for anything that might have been a rune. She needn’t, it turned out, have looked so hard.
Six columns from the Book, a rune scarred the stone high above her head, a deep black mark shivering with a greenish light that echoed the pulse of the swirling lights and swarmed in the space between the shelves and the ceiling. Eradicate the mark, she thought. She took the rod from its pocket.
“Adaestuo.” The ball of jagged violet light crashed into the column almost as soon as it came into being, just beyond her outstretched arm. The spell and the rune combined in a blinding burst of light, a pop, and a shower of stone dust.
When the flare of the blast had faded and her eyes had adjusted, she could see the polished exterior of the column had been destroyed, blasted into powder. The powers of the Hells that had surged up through her when casting slipped back into their places, trailing down her nerves like a lover’s fingers.
She rolled her shoulders, trying to shake the sensation. The bones of her neck popped past each other.
Then … more popping. Like a campfire.
She turned and saw the camp, the full moon casting shadows with the broken remnants of ancient walls. The campfire tossing them back. Akanul, she thought. Scarcely a tenday out of Arush Vayem-the village she’d grown up in, the village that had cast her aside when she took the pact. They had come down far enough from the mountains that winter had all but lost its teeth, and only the night air had a bite to it. The grass and scorched stonework beyond glittered with frost.
She blinked and Lorcan’s portal opened, in the heart of the campfire. Whether because of the noise, the smell of burning brimstone, or the fluctuation in the air as one plane intruded on the next, she heard Mehen stir as the devil stepped toward her.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she blurted, dimly noting that she said it because she had said it that winter night. “He’ll wake.”
Lorcan didn’t stop, but passed her by and so she followed between buildings to a roughly flat field that had once been a road. “First it’s that I can’t come around while he can see me,” he said. “Now it’s not while he might wake. Honestly, darling, I’m going to have to insist you give me more options. Or give yourself a little more space.”