Down in the pit, where Farideh and Dahl still were, the arcanist howled.
Lorcan didn’t have long to plan before Sairche returned, wearing more of Invadiah’s treasured armor and accompanied by Bibracte again. Arisia and Cissa positioned themselves on either side of the door. Bibracte took off her sword belt and set it beside the door. Lorcan’s pulse quickened.
“I suspect,” Sairche said, “you thought you were being clever.”
“It’s possible,” he said, pointedly not looking at Bibracte, standing there beside the door, all fang and muscle. He palmed the pearl Invadiah had given him. “I often am. What are we talking about?”
“The succubus.”
“Ah,” he said. “No. I wouldn’t deign to call myself clever over that. I might suggest you were being a bit … let’s say, overbold. As if I can’t spot a succubus?” Bibracte was grinning at him. The memory of his mad half sister killing an Asmodean cultist for being near her sword, by slicing him completely in half, ran through his thoughts. Along with the sound of her cackling, like only Bibracte could, seeing him clutching at his innards. Beshaba shit in my eyes, he cursed to himself. Bad, bad, very bad. He could smash the pearl now … and hope picturing some cave on Toril would get him anywhere near where he needed to be.
“She told me,” Sairche said, “what it was you talked about. The protective spells. Took some … convincing, but she was most forthcoming in the end.”
“I didn’t expect anything else,” he said. She hadn’t mentioned the blood magic. “It’s more telling that she wasn’t interested in sharing, don’t you think?”
Sairche straightened the bracer on her left arm with a small, secretive smile. “Not so interesting as the fact that you thought you could keep her from compelling you. But that’s all behind us now. I thought you should know I figured out how you got around the protections.”
Lorcan met her golden gaze. “Did you now?”
“The rod.”
He held perfectly still. Shit. Shit and ashes-he hadn’t thought of that. The rod Farideh carried-a minor artifact from the first layer called the Rod of the Traitor’s Reprisal-had been a fixture of his mother’s treasury, gathering a greasy layer of wall spatter and bone dust for ages, before he gave it to Farideh. While Invadiah had been impatient and ill-tempered as a hornet’s nest sinking in boiling water, she’d been remarkably thorough about her belongings. There would be records. Someone would have noted that Lorcan had taken it when he’d requested the weapon.
Which meant Sairche had a focus for her scrying that wasn’t covered by the protection spell.
“It seems your girl is playing adventurer somewhere in Northern Faerun,” she said.
Lorcan smirked, though inside he was throttled by panic. If she’d found Farideh, she might know that he’d slipped out. That he might again. “That’s an awful lot of world to consider. Doesn’t sound like such a good solution after all.”
Sairche smirked back. “Oh, not to worry. I haven’t been able to find her precisely. She’s somewhere with a forbiddance cast upon it. Some sort of temple, I’d wager. Fortunately, I have this lovely scrying mirror, already altered to pierce hallowed ground.” She started toward the mirror.
Not a temple, he thought. A cavern. A cavern whose forbiddance had been broken down enough for him to pass through. It would be like greased tissue to the scrying mirror.
He rolled the pearl back between his fingers. Now. It would have to be now.
“What do you intend to do about the protection?” he blurted.
Sairche glanced back at him over her shoulder, puzzled. “Why should I do anything? By tracking the rod, I circumvent it.”
Lorcan spread his arms wide. “Am I nothing if not an object lesson in the perils of relying on magic items? If you can track the rod, so can everyone else.” He smirked, though he didn’t feel terribly confident. “Not just the ones you’re willing to deal with.”
Sairche turned, eyeing him cautiously. “You didn’t use the rod, did you?”
He shrugged, trying to look as impish and thoughtless as possible. “You may have noticed Invadiah only granted me that treasure fairly recently. Or you may not have.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Dissolving the protection is a trifling matter, if you know anything about magic. I’ll swap the rod.”
“But you don’t want it broken-that would merely send a signal to the entirety of the Hells that there’s a Brimstone Angel to be had.”
For a moment, Sairche looked as if she would sic Bibracte on him. She broke her gaze and stared deeply at the scrying mirror. “You might,” she finally said, “have loosened the protection. Stretched it over yourself and her both. It would be enough to block her and you.”
He snorted. “You’re clever, but widening a spell is archwizard’s magic. Not an option.”
Sairche gave him a withering look. “Do you even read your pact agreements before you hide them away? You don’t have to widen the spell, you just have to convince her to share her spell’s effects … So that’s not what you did.” She shook her head. “Of course not. Then you’d have been stuck within the protection’s boundary, and it wouldn’t stretch between the planes.”
She pursed her lips. “You’d need something she could carry without notice, something no one could take and something she wouldn’t give …” Sairche’s voice trailed away, and she looked up at Lorcan with the faintest suggestion of respect.
“Blood magic,” she said. “That’s how you got around the protection-called her blood with her blood. She can’t lose it, she can’t cast it aside, and you keep the protection.” She cursed. “You shitting bastard. How could I have missed that?”
“I’m not the only thing you have to attend to,” Lorcan said, as impudently as he could. But inside his thoughts were racing-now that she knew about the blood connection, she could find Farideh and take her own vial. There was a finite amount of time before there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to stop Sairche.
But Sairche didn’t know Farideh had pulled him out of this prison. Nor, he thought, did Sairche realize what she’d given away as she puzzled. Not the details he was hoping for, but a beginning, a possibility. And she wouldn’t kill him until she had Farideh in hand.
Bibracte eyed him like a waiting vulture, as she pulled spiked gloves over her powerful hands.
Use the mirror, damn it, he thought. Anytime you like.
“Where’s the connection?” she demanded. “It’s one of your trinkets, isn’t it? Which one has the sympathetic link?”
Lorcan shrugged. “You have all my belongings, don’t you? Search them yourself.”
“Oh, I will.” Sairche glared down at the dark mirror, where it leaned against the fleshy wall. “Does it pain you to realize all you ever had to do was assist me?” she burst out. “It didn’t have to be this way.”
“When should I have done that? Before or after you went around bargaining with my warlocks?”
“I would have let you live.”
“Then you should have come to me first,” Lorcan snapped. “But we both know that was never going to happen. You don’t want allies. It’s not in your nature.” It’s in neither of our natures, he thought.
Sairche narrowed her eyes at his reflection and waved a hand to stir the powers of the scrying mirror.
It found the rod, the blast of Hellish magic that streamed from it, and Farideh’s hand. Sairche forced the image to shift, to show the entire warlock-still down in the caverns where Lorcan had left her-and fighting alone against what looked to be a seven-foot-tall corpse spouting green fire.
Lorcan held his breath.
Sairche clenched her fists. “What is she doing? Gods be damned, I need her alive!”
“Welcome,” Lorcan said, “to owning a Brimstone Angel.” He folded his arms and kept his eyes off the mirror, off the sight of Farideh putting herself in mortal danger. There’s nothing you can do, he thought. She’ll dig her own grave. “You don’t even have a portal with which to gather her. Whatever shall you do?”