Brimstone Angels (49 page)

Off the main hall, Lorcan turned down the corridor that led to the acolytes’ quarters and abruptly stopped. Lying half out of the open door on their left, the body of an orc scintillating with blue fire blocked the path.

Lorcan reached back to press Farideh against the wall, but she’d dropped low, out of the eye line of anyone in the doorway. She crept
forward, ever so slowly, until she could see the form of Brother Vartan standing near the door. Beyond him there were more of the spellscarred orcs and two men whose skin glistened in the torchlight. One stood to the side holding a wooden box. The bodies of another orc and one of the men lay on the ground. Beyond them stood Mehen, holding his falchion and rocking on his feet. Beyond Mehen, standing on a chair with her wings spread as if she could fly from the small room, was Rohini.

The succubus looked only vaguely like the hospitaler she’d portrayed before. If Farideh had not been told what to expect, she would never have put the proper name to the creature. Aside from the vibrant red hair, the only thing Rohini had in common with her former mask was the inexorable air of competence—Rohini the hospitaler seemed like she could cure anything. Rohini the succubus could easily bring anyone down.

The succubus twitched, a scatter of blue lightning racing over her bronze skin. “
In the space between twilights the favored one will return
—you let me pass or I’ll show you what you ought to fear!”

“If you accept it,” the slimy man closest to her said, “it shall not hurt anymore.”

“Mehen,” she said, in a strained voice. “Kill them.”

Rushing forward, Farideh tried to cry out, but Lorcan’s hand covered her mouth. The amulet flared, and he muffled his own cry of pain against her hair.

Brother Vartan turned to look out the door, his face a mask. Lorcan held her tighter with one arm, and with the other grabbed hold of one of the charms pinned to his breastplate. A rush of cold air wrapped around them and Brother Vartan’s eyes swept by.

“Hold still,” Lorcan murmured, hardly speaking. “Mehen can take a few beatings. Let him thin that crowd out. Tymora smiles, he gets knocked out in the process.”

Mehen’s falchion was too large for the little room. He tossed it aside, well out of the reach of orcs or servitors, and pulled his ancient daggers instead. The nearest orc’s spellscar bulged into ropey vines that streamed toward Mehen. The dragonborn dropped beneath them, darting out with one thin blade to pierce the orc’s hamstring. But the blue tendrils plunged down after him and sank into the dragonborn’s scales. Mehen did not cry out, but the blue
magic crackled over his skin. It took a heart-stopping moment for Mehen to stand.

Farideh pried Lorcan’s hand off. “We can’t resurrect him if he’s dead!” She fought against his hold. “And we can’t
carry
him if he’s unconscious!” She shoved Lorcan away, trying to break his grip on her.

“Mehen knows what he’s doing.”

But Farideh had watched Mehen’s drill her entire life—this Mehen was slower, not caring if he left his guard open, not caring if his strikes brought him to a better counterattack. The only thing this Mehen did well was protect Rohini.

Farideh had to get him away from her.

“
Adaestuo!
”

The blast of energy struck Brother Vartan, hurling him back away from the doorway. Farideh shoved her elbow into Lorcan’s chest and broke free of his grasp. She cast a second bolt into the room, into the cluster of orcs attacking Mehen. Whether due to luck or the frailty of the orcs from their transformation, the bolt exploded with a spray of blood, and one of them fell.

“You!” Rohini cried, the strange blue magic surging up through her unruly mane. She shuddered and looked for a moment as if she would fall from her perch. “You’re supposed to be dead,
the dead will swarm the gates of the city of skulls.
” She broke into a string of infernal curses.

Farideh answered with a blast of fire. It washed over Rohini with no more effect than a gust of wind. But now eyes were on her—the slime-skinned men, the remaining two orcs … and Mehen. She took a step back, into another body, into hands that grabbed hold of her hair and pulled her backward. Brother Vartan’s blank eyes looked down at her—

Lorcan struck Vartan hard with the pommel of his sword and the half-elf collapsed with a sickly crunch of bone. “Not fire,” he ordered as she regained her balance. “We and she are of a type.”

“And Lorcan,” Rohini snarled. She spread her hands and flames built in them. The sickly light of a hundred colors suffused the fire, and Rohini’s body gave a violent jerk. The flames exploded across the room, but what struck Farideh and Lorcan only singed them and didn’t burn as hot. The unprotected orcs, the men, and Mehen on
the other hand—their skin blistered and the hair on the orcs burned, sending up a stench like nothing Farideh had smelled before.

“The dead walk,” Rohini said with a laugh. “Or were your sisters not up to the task?”

Lorcan smiled, a slow cunning grin. “Oh, they’ve failed all right. They were to meet me here—or didn’t they tell you?” He slashed at the encroaching orc. “I’ve been exonerated … and now they come for you, traitor.”

“Liar!” Rohini’s wings spread as if she would take off. “I have done all the archduchess has asked, all your bitch mother has ordered. I am no traitor.”

“You are no devil either.” Lorcan sneered. “Foulspawn demoness.”

Rohini shrieked in rage, and as if to underscore Lorcan’s insult, the scintillating magic crackled over her again: she was no longer simply a devil. Farideh felt the course of Hellish magic thrumming through Rohini, but the crackling light was something else, something stranger.

Farideh kept her rod high, ready to cast, but gods, she wished to run. Rohini was more dangerous than Lorcan, the orcs, Criella, the man from the inn, and the mad shopkeeper combined. Even maddened by that alien power, even clearly angry and beset on at least two sides, she was deadly. Farideh cast a bolt of fire toward the orcs—it burst outward and set fire to one of the slimy men.

You do not get to be a coward, she thought. Especially when Lorcan isn’t. She cast another bolt at Rohini.

“Deny it all you like,” she said, mimicking Lorcan’s cruel and haughty tones. “But it won’t save you from the erinyes’ blades.”

Rohini’s focus trained on her. “How
did
you escape that nest of Ashmadai, little mouse?”

Farideh smiled, though she felt sick under the succubus’s ruby gaze, and let the shadows curl around her as she drew her powers up to cast again. “Did you never suspect you were only leaving your mark on someone else’s dirty work? I was never meant to die.”

Rohini’s eyes widened at that, as if Farideh had struck her physically. She most definitely had all the succubus’s attention. Lorcan cast another bolt at Rohini, but when she recovered, she was still focused on Farideh.

“Mehen,” she said. The dragonborn froze, letting two of the orcs strike him while he awaited Rohini’s orders. She stepped down and laid a hand on his shoulder, and a jolt of magic went through Mehen. “Kill the warlock. She’s ever so much trouble, don’t you think?”

Mehen’s yellow eyes were full of hatred. It’s not him, Farideh told herself, taking a step backward. It’s Rohini.

But it wasn’t only Rohini: it was Clanless Mehen, eyeing his daughter like a dire enemy. He curled his lip, baring his long sharp teeth.

“Yes,” he said. “Trouble.”

Stay calm, she told herself as Mehen scooped up his falchion. She edged toward the door, sparing a glance for Lorcan. He was still fighting back the orcs, and looked as if he’d like to strangle her. Rohini stalked toward her, following Mehen.

Farideh needed to slow her down. The slimy-skinned man holding the box hadn’t moved—had only watched as Farideh and Lorcan burst into the room. As Rohini drew near to him, Farideh pointed at the box.

“
Assulam!
” she cried. The box shattered into a cloud of splinters, forcing Rohini back with a shriek of surprise. Something bright and horrible burst free. Mehen didn’t notice. She turned to run, catching Lorcan’s eye. He could still find the portal if he ran now.

“Farideh!” he shouted after her.

Farideh led Mehen away from Rohini and hopefully into the safety of Neverwinter. As she bolted out the side doors and across the broken remains of the city so close to the Chasm, she wondered if it would be any sanctuary at all.

Rohini’s hands closed on the thing out of impulse, instinct. What her hands touched … there were no words in the languages of mortals. Only the secret parts of Rohini’s brain, the parts that still stoked a demon spark of madness, knew the words to describe what she held
.

The Hex Locus froze her hands colder than the blessings of the chapel, colder than the blood of the Stygian general—but blisters erupted all
over her palms and up her arms as if she held the sun itself. She was screaming—she could feel her throat tearing and the power of the Hex Locus snaking down, down into her very core. Tendrils of magic seized her limbs, her neck, and squeezed as if to crush the life out of her. As if to bury themselves in her flesh. All she saw was blue as the heart of a glacier, blue as the heart of a flame. The Hex Locus’s tendrils plunged into her eyes, into her nostrils, into her ears, all the while singing the maddening prophecy that already boiled her mind
.

Her breath failed. Her lungs sucked into themselves. Her screams echoed into a thin, high vibration and the world swirled—shadows and blue magic fighting for supremacy
.

Out of the depths of her dying vision, strange shapes swam closer. The same shapes, perhaps, she had glimpsed when the Hex Locus first insinuated itself into her thoughts. Monstrous shapes that dwarfed Rohini—even though, here, there was no Rohini. There might not even be a Rohini in Toril any longer.…

The creatures moved closer, great behemoths that swam through the nightmare ether she drowned in. Their tentacles encircled her. Their great ruby eyes pierced every layer of her being, through the artifice and the carefully crafted barriers, into what remained: ambition and the demon spark of madness
.

The aboleths’ thoughts tore through her like a hurricane wind, exposing that demon spark to the winds of the Far Realm. Coaxing a fire from her as the images of a world reformed, reborn into shifting, shapeless powers that would drive a lesser devil mad
.

She had served madness. She had served ambition. She had served chaos and order and destruction and hierarchy. Now Rohini could serve this nameless entity that sought something unnameable which was all this and more
.

Rohini returned to her bones and her breath, the sudden grossness, the abruptness more a violation than anything she had ever experienced. She did not belong in a succubus’s skin … and she realized why
.

The servitors stood quietly by, watching her stir. Vartan hovered over her, holding the bronze coffer she’d kept possets in. Only now … now Rohini was in it
.

No—she fought to press that thought back into a more secure place. It wouldn’t budge. She was in the box because the Hex Locus was in the box. They were entwined now, united. Its song pulsed in her ears, demanding
to be spoken, but when she hushed it, it coiled deeper, deep as the heartbeats in the bottom of the Chasm. Waiting
.

She looked down at her arms, as if she could see the pulse there, throbbing in time with those of the creatures waiting in the Chasm, ready to be called forth
.

“
You live,” the proxy said. “We were correct.
”

“
You are the Prophet,” the second servitor added, bowing. “You are the one who will gather the Choir, to sing the Symphony of Madness into being.
”

“
I am Rohini,” she said. The Hex Locus buzzed angrily and clenched its powers around her guts. “Your spell cannot change that, whatever it is.
”

“
It is a fragment of the spellplague,” the proxy said, “made solid and discrete. You held the blue fire.
”

She held it still, Rohini knew. The Hex Locus had chained itself to her very being. It thrummed in her blood and in her thoughts. Her secrets were its secrets now. Its powers were hers
.

“
Most impressive,” the proxy added. “You ought to have died.
”

The girl. Rohini looked around. Farideh had burst the box somehow … with Glasya’s magic, she had shattered it
.

“
Where did she go?” Rohini asked. “Where are the devil and the tiefling warlock?

“
Your allies?” said the proxy who remained. “Why do you protect them? They have given you up for lost.
”

Rohini didn’t answer. Her mind was reeling. Invadiah had said the erinyes would capture and kill Lorcan, and yet there he’d been. She had herself left the warlock girl to be torn apart by the Ashmadai. And yet there she’d stood, taunting Rohini.… She was the one who’d put the Hex Locus in Rohini’s hands. Using Glasya’s spells
.

Invadiah lied, the voice of the Hex Locus said, and it sounded so like Arunika, taunting her. Glasya lied. You were meant to die
.