“Havilar,” he said, “help your sister aside.”
“No!” Farideh cried. She stepped back, closer to Lorcan. “Please, Tam! Lock him in a circle. Let me bind him, but don’t kill him.” She shook her head. “He hasn’t done anything.”
“Yet.”
“Please,” Lorcan repeated, without an ounce of scorn in him. “Please. I will go wherever you want, tell you whatever you need. Just make a circle. Now. Or they will find me and you will find yourself with still more to contend with, and I don’t think you have the resources for that.” He smiled and spread his hands in a gesture of peace. “We’re on the same side for the moment, I promise.”
The last erinyes started screaming, and though Farideh wouldn’t have thought it possible, everyone grew tenser.
“We’ll need him,” Dahl said, and Tam dropped the holy symbol to his side and stared at him. “We’ll need as many as we can,” Dahl added, “when we go back down.”
“Next time,” Havilar said, “you’re taking me.”
“No one is going down there again,” Tam said. “Understood?”
Dahl shook his head. “We have to. The air shafts. Didn’t you see? There are three of them along the far wall. That’s our other exit.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
"You are not allowed to do things like that,” Havilar whispered to Farideh as they stood off to the side of the camp. “Especially not when we’re fighting.”
Tam cast a silvery circle around Lorcan, its powers pointing inward and hemming the cambion in close enough so that he had to hold his wings close. Whether that was Tam’s goal or an effect of the priest’s clear exhaustion, Farideh couldn’t tell-the set of his mouth suggested one thing, and the way his eyes didn’t seem to focus on the runes suggested the other.
“Tam and Brin wouldn’t let me go down there until the rope was fixed,” Havilar said. She’d only just let go of Farideh’s arm, holding tight to her sister during the whole rushed trip back to the camp. Brin was watching them both, looking concerned. “And there were all those awful noises and then there were devils-where did Lorcan even come from? You said he was trapped and getting cut to pieces?”
Where had he come from? Farideh wondered. Lorcan watched her, looking annoyed as if it were her fault there were so many people there. He still held tight to her rod, as if it were a talisman. Had he been lying about being tortured and captive? Had he lied about being glad she’d pulled him here the first time?
“You have to ask him,” Farideh said.
Havilar’s tail made an agitated slash. “Are you still mad about Brin? Is that why you took Dahl and not me?”
Between all the Hellish powers she’d been channeling and the adrenaline that had coursed through every inch of her veins, Farideh’s head was pounding and her muscles ached. She rotated her twisted ankle. “I wasn’t thinking clearly,” she said. “I thought, ‘he used to be a paladin, he can heal Tam.’ Which … was stupid, I know. But he knew how to splint his leg at least. Besides,” she added, “you were at the back. With Brin.”
“If you’re mad, just say-” Havilar frowned at her. “What do you mean, ‘used to be a paladin? As in he fell?” She scrutinized Dahl as he finished a a second circle of protection around the camp-his runes drew themselves in a flurry of chalk dust. He eyed her as she edged away from the border of the circle, as if he were trying to decide whether or not to yell at Farideh again. “Did he tell you that?”
Farideh hesitated. Havilar wasn’t happy about Lorcan, and she’d be less happy to hear about his previous appearance. “More or less,” she said.
“Huh. I wonder if that’s why he’s so touchy.”
“I think it’s probably just him.”
Havilar looked at her, perplexed. “Do you ever read chapbooks? Paladins falling, that’s a big deal. They decide to do something-for love if they’re good, for power if they’re evil, and for both if they’re just tragic-and their god doesn’t like it, so they lose all their powers. Forever. It’d be like getting an arm chopped off or something. I think.”
Farideh shook her head. “That’s chapbooks though.”
“Well, they have to get it from somewhere,” Havilar said. “Too bad you couldn’t do something and lose Lorcan. Mehen is going to drop eggs when he finds out you called him back.”
Farideh thought of all her fears that Lorcan might have died or been locked away forever, or forgotten her or tired of her or given her pact away to someone else. It might be as far as could be from losing the blessings of a god, but the result was the same. She would be lost and lonesome and always wondering what had happened.
What have I done? he’d wailed at the darkness. How have I failed? If Havilar was right-if all it took was a single misguided action-it sounded as if Dahl didn’t even know what it had been. Considering how Dahl seemed to pride himself on knowing almost everything, it must be a wound that never closed.
Tam stood in the middle of the camp, looking so pallid and determined that he might have been a statue-had he not been swaying on his feet. “I hardly know where to begin.”
“I think you start with what in the Hells killed Pernika,” Maspero said, “then work your way around to why you’ve taken a devil hostage instead of killing him, too.”
“Because I’m a good deal more useful than your dead swords-woman?” Lorcan said.
“Not another word,” Tam snapped. He glared at Farideh. “Don’t think this is permanent.”
“But he’s right,” Farideh said. “We could use his help getting past the arcanist.”
“What do you need help getting past a crumbly old wizard for?” Havilar asked. “Is that all that’s down there?”
“It’s not-” Farideh started. The air suddenly sizzled and Tam clapped his hands to his ears. Two voices broke the silence, both bellowing as if demanding to be heard first, both too loud and broken as if bits of them were falling away.
Shepherd, drop the stlarning wards-
— no word since the twelfth and-
— and respond, damn it. Your fellow Rhand-
— Band of mounted shades with carriers spotted flying your way from-
— He’ll be right on top of you and Everlund says he’s got reinforcements-
— Get out of there immediately, agent …
No one spoke as Tam straightened, as if dizzied by the effort of the sendings. “Received,” he said. “Location … is secure. Looking for alternate exits. The wards …” He looked at Mira, as if he wasn’t sure who she was. Farideh’s chest tightened-a mix of fear and sympathy for Mira. She’d gotten that look before. “… are down. Send word if situation changes.” The spell crackled again, as if it clung unevenly to the strands of the Weave, colliding with its own power.
Tam stared up at the ceiling, catching his breath. “When did the wards come down?” Tam demanded.
“A good question,” Maspero murmured, turning on Mira. “You said this place was secure. That we shouldn’t worry about Shade, because with the wards were in place, they couldn’t find the spells faster than you. But that makes you wrong twice over, by my count.”
Mira shook her head. “They can’t have come down. They’ve lasted for years. Even the Spellplague didn’t destroy them.”
“Well, something did,” Maspero said. “Else we wouldn’t have dead shadovar in the stacks and sendings and devils coming through.”
Mira backed away from him. “Then something changed. Runes don’t unravel themselves.”
All the blood pounding in Farideh’s head suddenly dropped to her feet, dragging her breath behind. The runes were for doors, she thought. There must be different runes.