No word from Dahl. No word from Brin since they’d reached Noanar’s Hold-and broken planes, he was not happy about the boy taking Havilar through a portal as finicky as that one. But they were both safe at least.
“Well,” Khochen said, “we’ll have to see what happens. Incidentally, thank you for keeping her attention. It gave me a chance to peer into her inner sanctum, as it were.” She stood on tiptoe and whispered, “She has a case hidden in there.”
“Probably her wand’s.”
Khochen smiled and shook her head. “Too big for that. Too ornate. A scepter or a rod, I would say. Marked all over with very interesting runes. Nar, by their look.”
Despite himself Mehen was curious. “Can you read them?”
“Not well,” Khochen said. “The crafter seemed enamored of cinnabar and gold. If I had to make a guess, I’d say it makes fire. People are seldom imaginative,” she added, “when it comes to gems.”
Mehen snorted. “Well that’s her business, then.”
“I don’t think so,” Khochen said. “She hasn’t touched it. Hasn’t unlocked it, so far as I can see. I don’t think it’s for her-maybe it’s for the camp, maybe it’s for an ally, maybe it’s part of her nefarious plans to kill us all.” She said all of this so cheerfully that Mehen rolled his eyes. “But I doubt it’s meant for starting campfires.”
“Nothing is simple when I’m with you people.”
“Never.” Khochen hesitated. “By the by, I do apologize for the other day. For finishing your story and getting it wrong.”
“I don’t care. It’s not your business-I don’t want to make it your business-so it doesn’t matter. I am who I am.”
“Somebody,” Khochen said, as if she were agreeing. “Though I still wish I knew the rest of your story.”
Mehen heaved a sigh. “There’s not much to tell. Pandjed told me to marry Kepeshkmolik Uadjit. I told him I wouldn’t-if I had to marry, I wanted a bride who wouldn’t force me to part from Arjhani.” Saying his name still made Mehen’s heart feel as if it were tearing, even after all these years. “Pandjed told me I could marry or be exiled. I chose exile. Arjhani did not.”
Khochen’s brows rose. “You ought to write a chapbook with that tale, goodman.”
The roar of the boneclaw cut off Mehen’s retort. Both Harper and dragonborn scrambled up the slope toward their waiting party and the sounds of a scuffle. Mehen drew his falchion as soon as he had room to, holding it ready to aid the Harper scouts. .
Whose arrows were all trained on a familiar cambion, one arrow already dangling from his wing.
“Oh, Lords of the Nine pass me by,” Lorcan said, sounding relieved. “Will you tell them to stand down?”
“Aim for his eyes,” Mehen advised. The scouts adjusted their arrows. Zahnya held two wands, the air around both filled with thick, dark magic.
“Gods damn it!” Lorcan shouted, covering his head. “Farideh says to tell you she’s safe! And if you kill me, you won’t find Havilar.”
“Stop!” Mehen bared his teeth in annoyance. “He’s with me.”
The Harpers lowered their weapons-all except Daranna, who stayed, still as a statue, her arrow trained on Lorcan’s throat. Zahnya let the magic dancing around her wands fade and retreated to her palanquin.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Khochen murmured. Mehen ignored her, sheathed his falchion again, and crossed to Lorcan.
“If this is a trick,” Mehen started.
“If this were a trick,” Lorcan said, “do you think I’d be the sort of idiot who just drops out of the sky into the midst of a mass of weapons?” He glanced at Daranna over his shoulder. “Farideh sent me to find you. She wanted me-” He seemed to reconsider his words. “She wants me to send you toward Havilar.” He told Mehen about the necklace Havilar carried, about the bead that would make it possible to cross through the magical wall encircling the camp.
“Take the bead to Farideh,” Mehen said.
“She won’t use it,” Lorcan said. “It won’t let more than a dozen of you pass before it closes. I sent Brin and Havi around the mountain and up a bit. There’s a plateau there, a place where the mountaintop is sheared flat.” He hesitated, then dropped his voice. “What are you doing with Thayans?”
Mehen didn’t so much as blink. “Wartime makes strange allies.”
Lorcan’s eyes cut to the boneclaw, watching them with burning hatred in its eyes. “Indeed. Tell me you don’t trust that thing more than me.”
Mehen held up the amulet. “It comes with a leash.”
Lorcan gave him a wicked grin. “Oh, so do I,” he said. “But your daughter keeps a tight hold on it.”
And whatever resolve Mehen had built up over the last few, terrible days, his rage overtopped it. He slammed his fist into Lorcan’s face, hard enough to knock the cambion off his feet and bloody his nose. Stunned, Lorcan clutched his face and stared up at Mehen, looking too surprised to speak.
“Do you know why I don’t kill you?” Mehen hissed. “Because you’ve proven to me-every time I am on the very edge of taking a blade to your throat, it seems-that you’re better than useless and my daughter is wise enough to know that doesn’t mean you’re any good, even if she forgets to show it. This time, I have no proof, only suggestions, and if you think for a heartbeat I’m so grateful to you that I will sit and let you torment me like some old man sitting in the dust, stand up and let’s see how many bones your pretty face has to break.”
Lorcan daubed at the black blood streaming from his rapidly swelling nose. “Noted,” he said, with a savage tone. Oh try it, Mehen thought, bunching his fists again. Give me another reason. “I meant the damned amulet, by the by, the one Havilar’s carrying still.”
“Of course you did,” Mehen said.
Lorcan pulled himself to his feet once more, still wincing and pressing at his nose. “I wouldn’t dawdle,” he drawled. “The longer you take, the more opportunities to spot you. And I’m not the worst devil you have to contend with anymore.” Before Mehen could make him say what he meant, Lorcan had opened a portal and stepped away, back to the Hells.
Chapter Nineteen
25 Ches, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR) The Lost Peaks
Farideh’s dreams were a soup of night and fear, barely formed shapes rising out of the thick darkness and smothering her with pain and anger and terror. They were endless-I’ll never wake, she thought, I have never woken. The feeling of being watched from every angle, the wrongness hiding where she couldn’t see it. . When she finally did open her eyes, her thoughts wouldn’t accept it. She lay still, not daring to move for fear of what would bleed out of the dark next.
Then she felt the mat beneath her, the dirt below that. Her eyes adjusted to the shuttered lanternlight warming up the small, earthen-walled room, and picked out the shape of a man sitting against the wall.
“Lorcan?” His name hurt to speak, her throat was so parched.
The man stiffened. “No,” Dahl said, and Farideh was fairly certain if she weren’t so wrung out, she would have died of embarrassment. Dahl opened the lantern a little more, illuminating his face, and all the walls of the cellar she was lying in. She crawled over next to him, leaning against the wall. He handed her a waterskin, and he could have been Asmodeus himself, and Farideh would have been glad for him in that moment.
“You seem fair enough,” he said as she gulped the stale water. He fiddled with a little metal flask as he spoke.
“Depends on what’s fair,” she said. Her head was pounding and her stomach unsettled, and she felt feverish. “Did I throw up on you again?”
“Again?”
Farideh felt her cheeks flush. Of course he didn’t remember, why would he? “At the revel,” she reminded him. “I was sick up your arm.”
He looked embarrassed at that. “Oh. No. You. . kept it to the gutters every time.” He chuckled softly, nervously, eyes on the flask. “I hope it’s not a recurring thing with you and I. Shady bastards putting things in your drinks.”