“Shit and ashes,” Lorcan shouted. “Will you run already?”
Green light collected in the arcanist’s open mouth.
The erinyes poured out of the second portal, near where Lorcan’s had opened. The center one she remembered all too well-the erinyes slicing one of the Asmodean cultists in half, laughing and toying with his innards, as Lorcan turned her face from the carnage. One of the pradixikai, the elite. The other two-one with red eyes, one with a broken fang-seemed smaller and less terrible but still fit for Farideh’s nightmares. Their shining hooves crushed the field of bones as they strode from the portal, surveying the battlefield. “Oh karshoj.”
“What are those?” Dahl cried.
“Run, Dahl,” she said. She pointed the rod at the mad erinyes. “Adaestuo.” The bolt screamed past the arcanist and struck her wicked black armor. She focused her attention on Farideh, sneering … then turned away. Back to Lorcan. She pointed to either side and the erinyes fanned out to surround him.
As his sisters’ gazes swept the tomb and each person in it, Lorcan had sprinted away-after the mummy. He scooped up a skull, a pelvis, poor Pernika’s torn-off forearm, and hurled it all at the arcanist, between blasts of the bruised-looking energy.
The arcanist swung around to swat at Lorcan-but as he did, he released the building burst of magic. The green light screamed across the tomb and enveloped the erinyes with the broken tusk fully.
One moment the erinyes was stalking toward her brother. The next she had become nothing more than an ear-splitting scream and a wispy emerald vapor hanging in the air … before swirling together into a cloud that streamed back to the arcanist’s open mouth, chased by the insubstantial forms of the ghosts.
Farideh clapped a hand to her mouth to stem the scream that threatened to work its way free. Even the erinyes seemed shocked. Then the mad one barked a command, and they broke wide to flank the mummy. The arcanist paid them no mind-the essence of the erinyes seemed to swell through him, and he threw back his head, making a hideous droning hum of pleasure. The ghosts chased each other around their master’s form, sending a queer vibration through the air.
Lorcan ran to Farideh as if he meant to bowl her over, ignoring the death of his sister, ignoring the hideous sound coming from the mummy. “The bolt!” he shouted catching hold of the hand that held the rod. “Gods damn it, the bolt!”
Farideh tore her gaze from the arcanist. “A-assulam.”
The bolt shattered into a rain of rust and sparks, and Lorcan’s wings sprang open. He took another quick survey of the crypt and tried to grab her around the waist. “It had to shitting be Bibracte. Come on.”
“Dahl,” she said slipping out of Lorcan’s reach. “We have to-” The clash of Dahl’s sword against the erinyes’s interrupted her, and Lorcan leaped away from the sound. The mad-eyed erinyes-Bibracte-had circled around the arcanist, leaving him focused on her compatriot, whose own blackened sword swatted wildly at the ghosts as they swept near.
In the very core of her heart, Farideh was screaming. Compared to the erinyes of her nightmares, Bibracte was larger, fiercer, and more gleefully determined to tear through her brother and the tiefling before her as if they were made of parchment. Dahl blocked the erinyes’s advance with sword strokes so clean and firm that Farideh could imagine Mehen directing her to pay attention, this was how it was done.
But Bibracte had a faint, amused smile-Dahl was a better match than she’d expected, but he wasn’t built to cut down the enemies of archdevils.
… the erinyes are a thunderstorm, unstoppable and rolling toward them out of nothing. Their hooves crack the cobbles, shatter the rune. Their crowns of horns threaten to spear the moon. Their swords are fire. Their swords are hungry …
Farideh cast a stream of flames up under the erinyes’s sword arm, forcing her back and burning the tender skin not shielded by her gleaming armor. If it hurt her, though, Farideh couldn’t tell. Bibracte skittered back and snarled at her.
“Thank Sairche for your life,” she spat. She swung a fist at Farideh, expecting, no doubt, to knock her flat.
But Lorcan’s borrowed sword interrupted her-stabbing deeply into the gap of her spaulder and cuirass. Black blood oozed from the wound and Bibracte grunted as Lorcan pulled the weapon free again.
“Run, darling,” Lorcan ordered, her nightmare starting all over again. But before Bibracte could punish her brother’s impudence, the screams of the other erinyes demanded everyone’s attention.
The ghosts had taken solid form again and pinned the erinyes to the ground. She was strong enough to lift them each from their feet, but they were three and she was one.
“Mother of nightmares, Cissa,” Bibracte cursed.
The arcanist bent down, as leisurely as if he were retrieving a fallen coin, plucked the erinyes’s armor away, and plunged a skeletal hand into her abdomen.
Farideh knew better than to watch after that, and focused only on the distance between them and the exit shaft, on being certain Dahl and Lorcan followed. The ghosts, no longer needed to hold down the red-eyed erinyes, streaked past, landing and taking solid form to strike at the trio before dissolving into smoke and light again. The old man slammed into Farideh with all the same strength the last ghost had had, knocking her into Dahl. But the Harper kept his feet and pulled her past so he could swipe at the ghost with his sword.
The other two hurtled into Lorcan, raking his flesh with their nails, tearing the wounds in his wings deeper. Farideh heard him cry out in shock and pain, but there was no time to stop.
The rope still hung down the wall’s side, dancing as someone started down it. “No!” Dahl shouted. “We’re coming up!” He pushed her forward. The arcanist looked up from his still-kicking meal, as if realizing he was about to lose them all. He roared and started toward them.
There wouldn’t be time, Farideh realized. Not for each of them to ascend. Lorcan reached them. She shoved the rope into Dahl’s hands.
“You go!” she shouted. “I can slow him down.” She turned back to the monstrous creature and pointed the rod at the ground before it. “Laesurach.”
The ground beneath the arcanist’s feet turned molten, and a geyser of magma shot forth around him. He screamed, an unearthly howl, and the ghosts twined around and around and around. The mad erinyes retreated a distance, her sword drawn, waiting, it seemed, for the flames to die down.
Farideh looked over at Lorcan. “Can you fly?”
“Not well,” he said. He took hold of her, and without explanation he plucked the rod from her hands. “Is your paladin out of the way?”
Dahl hauled himself awkwardly over the top. “Yes.”
“Pity,” Lorcan said.
The powers of Malbolge surged around and through them both, then burst out in a ring of flames that gusted up the exit shaft and under Lorcan’s battered wings. She held tight as the burning air vaulted them both up, past the walls, past the lip, and out to the second layer.
“Back!” she heard Tam shout, as the flames burst outward, setting the scrolls and books left scattered by their efforts afire. She shut her eyes and curled toward Lorcan, shielding her face from the heat.
They landed in an awkward heap, the cuffs of Farideh’s blouse singed and smoking. Havilar rushed her and pulled her up, and embraced her fiercely. “You stupid henish-don’t do that!” she said. She tucked her head into her sister’s hair. Farideh hugged her back, still trying to catch her breath. Below them the arcanist’s screams of pain faded.
“Make a circle!” Lorcan shouted. “Someone make a godsbedamned circle!”
Farideh let go of Havilar, suddenly aware that everyone could see Lorcan and that only Havilar wasn’t braced as if the devil was a new threat. Tam in particular, though he stood as if that were all he could handle, held the holy symbol of Selune and his chain as if both would spring to life at any moment.