“He never said what it would do?”
“The agreement did. ‘Gather the Chosen,’ as you said. He means to kill them, maybe all of us.” Tears started falling. “But I owed him.”
“How did he catch you?”
Tharra wiped her face, hesitating. “Seven years ago, a warm Eleint night, a fellow came up to me, out of nowhere. Said there were two folks being held by cultists for a sacrifice near to the village we were standing in, and they’d be dead by morning. Gave me a single clue-‘cowslips’-and vanished. I’d just been given a pin of my own and was looking for my own troubles to right. I knew the meadow he meant, the hollow hill-so I headed in and played the hero. Magros found me the next night-he didn’t bother hiding his horns that time. Thanked me for the assistance-those cultists worshiped someone he didn’t want gaining any power, and wasn’t it nice how we could help each other? I asked why he didn’t just tell me, and he smiled. ‘Where’s the fun in that?’ “So that’s how we were for years after. He’d turn up, give me a clue, and I’d save some innocents and end some evils. I’m sure someone better than I would say that helping Magros was tilting the balance-weakening his enemies only meant he got stronger-but I saved a lot of people. I got to be the hero.
“And then, the better part of a year ago, Magros came to me and said there was a Sembian force moving through the Dales. That they were going to sack one of three farmsteads-three families I knew and loved and counted on. And this time, no clue. He would tell me which it was, for a price-my soul. I told him no, made for the nearest farm, and got them packing-down to the little ones. Out of harm’s way.
“I rode hard for the next, but there wasn’t time. Magros came and made me another offer-he’d throw off the Sembians, force them from their path and save my friends. But I’d have to do something for him. I’d have to run his half of this camp scheme. I’d have to trigger the gathering ritual. And if I didn’t, my soul would be his. I thought I could handle it. I thought it was fine. And then it wasn’t. The only thing I could do was agree to this awful deal.”
“But you saved those people,” Farideh said.
“Those, yes. But Magros turned the army into the path of the ones I sent fleeing. Because I’d said no the first time.” Tharra looked up. “I wouldn’t have gathered the children, I swear. I made sure I never promised to catch everyone. I read that agreement, every word.” She chuckled through her tears. “Made that devil spitting mad. And in the end, it didn’t matter.”
“It matters,” Farideh said. “If you don’t break your agreement, you keep your soul. We can make this turn out-”
“That ritual has to go off,” Tharra said. “Even if Oota let me out of here to do that. . People are going to die. Will you tell me that you’ll let that happen?”
Farideh squinted at Tharra. “Where’s the ritual now?”
Tharra shrugged awkwardly. “The scroll’s buried under my bed. The components are hidden in the thatching. Rotate a poison or two out of them and keep it on me, for safety.”
“That’s where you got the hamadryad’s ash,” Farideh said. “Have you got any more?”
“What’s left is in a pouch in my sleeve,” she said. She met Farideh’s gaze as the warlock fished the pouch out. “What are you going to do now?”
“See if these are secrets Dahl can use,” she said. She bit her lip, not wanting to ask, but knowing she had to. “You read your agreement, and you agreed anyway?”
Tharra lifted her head. “In the moment, there were no other options.”
Farideh left the former Harper in the makeshift cell, not sure whether she was more culpable than Tharra or less, or if it mattered in the end. A soul was a soul, after all, however it landed in Asmodeus’s basket.
She found Dahl just beyond the dais, talking to a haggard-looking Oota. “What did she say?” Dahl asked. Farideh told him about the ritual, about the components hidden in Tharra’s hut.
Dahl frowned. “That’s strange. Destructive magic doesn’t make for very stable rituals.”
“Well, you can tell what it is if you read it, so that’s your task. The devil also told her to dig herself a hidey-hole and get there quick. She was pretty sure that meant the spell wouldn’t penetrate the ground. That’s why she was encouraging the shelter rooms-she was hoping she could save at least some people.” Farideh turned to Oota. “That still might be our best bet. We have to destroy the tower to break the wall. Either the ritual will do it for us, or the ritual will kill the guards and Rhand, and we’ll have a chance to take the tower down ourselves, without being attacked all the while.”
Oota frowned. “You want to carry out this devil’s plans?”
“We need to find a way to destroy the tower,” Dahl said. “That’s the only way we know of to shut the wall’s magic off. This ritual might be the simplest way to carry that out.”
The half-orc didn’t seem convinced. “The shelter rooms only hold a hundred or so.”
“We have to make them bigger,” Farideh said. “Maybe deeper. How many do you have who can move earth?”
“Torden,” Oota said. “A few of the dwarves might come out of the middle ground for this. Maybe others-but we’d have to free the captured ones to get a decent count.”
“Start with who we have out here,” Farideh said. “We need to break in to rescue the rest-even if they can’t dig, they won’t be safe if the tower collapses-but the very breath we do, Rhand’s going to know something’s happening. Then we’re all in danger.”
“Tonight,” Dahl promised. “As soon as it’s dark enough to get Phalar’s help.”
There was a commotion near the doors, and the crowd of caged spellcasters stood aside for a very regal-looking sun elf in rags just as tattered as the rest of them. “We come to parley,” he said in thickly accented Common. He held out his hands. “And to let you prove, tiefling, that you are what the Harper says.”
Oota stiffened and turned to face the elf with her cunning smile. “Well met, Saer Cereon,” she said. “And welcome to my court.”
“Please,” the elf said. “The cages first. Then we talk.”
Farideh drew up the soul lights. Greens and golds and umbers dappled the sun elf, but nothing shaped into the strange glyphs that marked the prize of a faraway god. “You aren’t Chosen,” she observed. The elf tilted his head.
“Will I become so?”
She shook her head. There was no rune, not even disguised in the light and shade of his soul. “I don’t think so.”
“A relief,” Cereon said. “Honoring the gods is difficulty enough. Pleasing a particular in times of trouble, this one wouldn’t wish it.” He held his hands higher. “Can you? Or was that not so?”
Farideh raised her palm. “Assulam.” The cages shattered into dust and Cereon flexed his long hands with a curious smile. “Many thanks, tiefling.” He looked to Oota and inclined his head the barest amount. “Now, we must see how to lay down old anger and aid our people.”
Oota raised an eyebrow and gestured to the dais. “My home is yours, then, eladrin.” Cereon gave her a cold look, but walked ahead.
Farideh looked back at Oota and spied the crimson and green swirl of lights that overtook her, the traces of gold. The lack, again, of any sort of rune. “Are none of their leaders actually Chosen?” she asked Dahl quietly, keeping her eyes off of him.
“Oota is. They call her Obould’s Shieldmaiden. .” Dahl trailed off. “Are you saying she’s not?”
Farideh looked again, but no-there was nothing there. “Nothing I can see.” She let the powers recede before she turned to Dahl, who was goggling at Oota’s back. “Maybe she can hide them?”
“Maybe she’s just good at what she does,” Dahl said. “Maybe she doesn’t need a god to aid her.” He shook his head. “Don’t tell anyone, all right? I think a fair number of them are fine following a half-orc when they think they have no choice. We have plenty of chaos as it is.”