A crash and a chorus of screams rang out as the Netherese hit the first of the traps. She looked back again for Dahl’s signal. Tam still scribbled. Dahl still gestured wildly as he tried to explain how the spell went together.
“It does make a neat little pair, doesn’t it,” he said savagely. “She has her not-quite-paladin, and you have yours.”
Farideh laughed once. “If Dahl is what I get then you can send me to the Hells right now. It would be much more pleasant.”
“He cares an awful lot about what you think of him,” Lorcan said.
Because he’s a proud idiot, Farideh thought, but she smiled sweetly at Lorcan, “Does that bother you?”
He made a face. “Well done.” She made the cross of leaves through the center, and looked back to Dahl and Tam. Now at least they had started, the lines of powdered silver gleaming in the light of the orbs overhead.
“What will you do if we escape?” Lorcan asked.
“Do we have to talk about this now?”
“What else should we do?” he said irritably. “The priest, no doubt, would tell you to be rid of me.”
“I’m not sending you back,” she said. She looked up at him, unsure of what to say. She wouldn’t betray him, she couldn’t. She wanted him near, even if at the same time she didn’t. If nothing else-no threat of Sairche, no Brimstone Angel, no debt of gratitude-here was a chance to see where they landed, he and she. To sort out whether she loved him or feared him or resented him, or some unnameable combination she would never come by with a thousand unexpected visits.
“I owe you better than that,” she finally said, and she thanked the gods that Dahl waved for her attention. The rituals were set. Once hers was finished, they’d make for the vents below.
She dropped the vial between them, and the magic surged through her, sucking the words of the spell from her mouth. The wind and the roar that rushed up between them was cool and then cold, blowing through Farideh’s armor and raising gooseflesh along her skin. Light burned through the circle of salts, and Farideh felt the Weave’s broken strands winding around them both, tying into tighter and tighter bands, before collapsing into them. The light and wind faded but a faint steam rose off of both of them, their flesh already scalding. She tucked the ritual book back into her haversack.
“Are you afraid?” she asked quietly.
“Not very, no,” he said, unrolling the scroll. “Though I don’t like to consider what comes after.” He looked down at her with those black, black eyes. “I don’t know which would be worse: oblivion or to rise into the ranks of devilkin already knowing I cannot win at the hierarchy.”
She looked at him, surprised. A devil killed on Toril would reform in the Hells, but not a half-devil. He’d said so before. “If you’re half-devil,” she said slowly, “then you’re half-mortal too?”
“Human, most likely,” Lorcan said. “Just as fragile as a devil, when it comes to undead monstrosities.”
Half-human means half a soul, she thought. You’re not doomed, and maybe he isn’t either.
“It’s very brave,” she said. “What you’re doing. Even if you’re not afraid.”
“Let’s see if it convinces the priest,” he said. “Are you ready?”
There was not a syllable of the arcanist’s spell that Farideh recognized, but every word sounded like magic. It made the pulse of Malbolge’s energies strike a frenzied beat, fighting against her heartbeat. The flood of the Hells spilled into her, and she stepped back and back from the cambion, until the protection that linked them stopped her feet.
The flames of Phlegethos burst forth from the limestone floor, hotter than a hundred cookfires, even with the ritual’s protection. The roaring stream of fire was nearly enough to drown out the ear-splitting screechs of the arcanist’s mummy and the crashes of the Netherese approaching. The screams as the arcanist reached them.
Lorcan was thrown up into the air by the force of the spell, and for a moment he hung there, his wings buoyed by the shimmering air, his head thrown back in a cry of pain.
Then the fire caught. The edges of his wings started to burn.
Farideh rushed forward as he fell, the heat of the cracking ground forcing her back. She pressed on and caught him.
“Hurry,” she said, hauling him up. “The lava’s coming.” He could hardly breathe for the pain of his burns it seemed, his eyes wild with the shock of it. She hauled him bodily toward the camp and the trapdoor beyond.
Mira raced across her path, knives out. Farideh called out to her, but she didn’t stop. A moment later, the arcanist lumbered into view. He turned to face Farideh and Lorcan and opened his mouth. The green light began to swell between his jaws.
Lorcan held her tighter.
The arcanist looked up, past their heads to the fires crackling beyond and the lava that was flowing over the shelves and stone, making greater fires in its wake. The arcanist howled up at the ceiling, as the column behind them started to crack. He turned back the way he had come, back toward the door, and Farideh dragged Lorcan on, watching after the creature as they passed. He had thrown aside the fallen bookshelves and the Netherese mercenaries that swarmed at him. Magic crackled in his hands, a great storm of power that seemed to take all his focus-the Shadovar who attacked him drew no notice from the arcanist. The tattered remains of his three apprentices battered the score of blades at their master’s feet, taking form and dissolving again and again.
As she got Lorcan past the aisle, she saw the arcanist cast some terrible power out the doors. As they came into sight of the camp, she heard the rush of the water pouring in. By the time Dahl and Tam reached her, it had covered the soles of her boots.
“He’s hurt!” Farideh said. “Do something!”
Tam hesitated, and her heart threatened to crack under the strain like the stone of the column. Lorcan raised his head, his whole frame resting on Farideh now. It would be easy to say no, she could imagine Tam thinking. It would be easy to let the devil die.
The priest set his hands on either side of Lorcan’s face. “Grant me, Selune, our balm for this … unlikely ally.”
If Lorcan’s screams had been loud before, now they rivaled the roaring flames of Phlgethos. She held him tighter as the goddess’s blessing racked a frame never meant to feel it.
For a moment, she was sure Tam had decided to kill him. But the charred flesh of his wings flaked away to reveal new, whole skin, and Lorcan straightened with a pained gasp. The hiss and crackle of the cooling lava carried across the caverns. The stone snapped and split as it cooled. Still the lava kept flowing over the river’s efforts. The arcanist roared. She heard a sound like an explosion and more water poured in, the wall torn free to let in more of the watercourse beyond.
“Go,” Tam said firmly, and he pushed her toward the hole where Dahl helped her down the steep drop. She ran down the slope, icy water rushing around her ankles, pressing her on. She nearly slipped in it and caught herself as she burst out into the crypt. Those were Mira’s legs disappearing up the farthest shaft and she followed, not daring to hesitate long enough to look back and be sure of the other three.
Farideh braced herself against the sides of the shaft and inched her way up, panting and sore and pelted by the frequent rain of stone bits kicked loose by Mira, or whoever might be above her. For an eternity, she climbed, all too aware of the crumbling column, the swelling lava, the steam that was no doubt building up behind her as the river rushed into the gate to Phlegethos.
Suddenly, Mira was gone, and the light of the sun blinded her, and hands were helping her out of the air vent and onto the slope of a mountainside. Farideh helped her pull Dahl and then Lorcan from the shaft.
“Move,” Mira said, pointing down the slope where an ancient path led down a nearly sheer face. “Around the cliff, quickly, before it blows.” She reached down to catch her father’s hands, and Farideh followed Dahl and Lorcan down the winding path, as fast as she dared to go, to find Havilar and Brin and Maspero waiting at the foot of a sheer granite wall.