And, he thought glancing down at the back of his hands, though it wasn’t supposed to, the spell that shifted his appearance hurt like the Hells. He reversed the enchantment slowly, wincing against the pain. It took him nearly a quarter hour to change back, and left him sweating and sore-but still, it hurt less than doing it quickly. When he opened his eyes, the backs of his hands were red again. He sighed. Someday he ought to put a little more effort into learning that spell properly.
But not today. Fidgeting with the scourge-pendant, he waved the activating ring over the mirror. After that night in the forest, he’d decided to leave her to her own devices for a while. See how she liked things without her “sword.”
With any luck, Goruc would have caught up with them, dealt with the priest, the acolyte, and Mehen, and Farideh would be nothing but grateful to see Lorcan turn up again.
The mirror’s surface swirled. It started to form a mountain road. Then stopped, swirled again. Started to form the gates of a city. Stopped. Swirled. The city again. A broken-down temple. A street. The city.
And no Farideh.
Dread coiled in his stomach. Goruc would not have gone against him, not after seeing all Lorcan threatened. Lorcan waved the ring over the mirror again. This time it showed him Goruc, wild-eyed and storming down a street, his axe still clearly in hand.
Lorcan cursed under his breath and waved the ring over the mirror. This time the image closed in on a building-a shop with a large sign he had no time to read-before leaping back to the gates.
“Godsdamned, piece of-”
“Troubles, Lorcan?”
Lorcan cried out and spun around, fire in his hands. Rohini raised an eyebrow at the spell-a spell that would not so much as singe a succubus.
“Not at all,” Lorcan said, more calmly than he felt. He shook the flames out. “You surprised me.”
“Not as much as you surprise me.”
Lorcan eyed her a moment. Rohini’s voice was no longer a purr but a growl, and she looked more ready to physically tear his heart out than to break it. “What do you mean?” he said carefully.
“What is your warlock doing in Neverwinter?” she asked.
“Neverwinter?” he said, trying hard to sound puzzled. The mountain road. The city gates in a towering wall. Oh, shitting Hells, Farideh, he thought. No, no, no!
“Invadiah didn’t tell me you were involved.”
“I’m not,” he said. “If one of my warlocks has gone off to Neverwinter, it’s simply a coincidence.”
“A coincidence?”
“There are a lot of cities in the world. Is there any reason she shouldn’t be in Neverwinter?”
“You know damned well there is,” Rohini said. She jabbed a taloned finger into his chest. “You pretend like you don’t know or care what happens in the Hells, but you haven’t fooled me at all, half-blood. You know Invadiah’s plans. Are you acting on her orders?”
“I know you’re in Neverwinter,” he countered, stepping back, “and I know Mother’s very unhappy with you. And I don’t want to know more.”
“I think you’re waiting to see how things fall out so you can swoop in and grab the glory.”
“To what end? I have more to lose and nothing to gain. I’m not playing your games, succubus.”
She leaned in close, baring her teeth before speaking in barely a hiss. “Then why are your toys all over my board?”
He shrugged, trying to look insouciant. Trying to look like the careless, accidental son of the most powerful erinyes in Malbolge and nothing more. “As I said: coincidence.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I expect you’ll believe anything I tell you to believe,” he said, harder. “Because I’d hate to tell my mother you destroyed one of my … ‘toys.’ ”
Rohini narrowed her eyes at him. Lorcan’s stomach turned to ice, but he kept his smirk. Rohini had to know Invadiah would let her take the blame if things went awry. She had to know Invadiah was waiting for the merest excuse to cast off the skulking and infiltration Rohini favored for a frontal assault. She had to know-
Rohini slapped her hand down in the center of Lorcan’s chest, sending a wave of agony coursing through him. He gasped and before he could stop her, she did it once more. His knees buckled and he fell to the ground.
“You understand,” she said, “that it would take nothing-nothing-for me to convince you to go find the biggest, most ill-tempered pit fiend in Malbolge and pick a fight? To waltz up to Glasya herself and call her treasonous? To throw yourself into the midst of your squabbling pack of sisters and let them tear you limb from limb?”
Lorcan kept his mouth shut. Whether she could or couldn’t, he wasn’t stupid enough to test her further. This was Rohini after all.
She kneeled down beside Lorcan and clucked her tongue. “You all think I’m just a tool, when I could kill you without a moment’s breath. You, Invadiah, all her pretty little erinyes.” She chuckled to herself. She leaned in and whispered into his ear, “If you know what’s best, Lorcan, you’ll do what I tell you. Either get your warlock out of my way, or give her to me.”
“I’ll get her out,” he panted. “Give me some time, though. I can’t scry her. The mirror is fighting-”
Rohini stood. “You have until I return to the temple.”
He waited until she’d left, until the worst of the pain and the nausea had passed, before pulling himself up on the bone spurs of the room’s corner. Bloody Rohini. He’d try a few more times, and surely Farideh would get out of the way of whatever was blocking the mirror. He’d call her through the brand, get her someplace secluded, and then travel to Neverwinter and make her leave. He waved the ring in front of the mirror.
A shop. A street. The shop again, and Farideh hurrying out from the alley beside it, glancing back at the front door, over which hung a sign that read “Claven’s General Goods and Armory.”
“Oh, shit and ashes,” he whispered.
Forbiddances positively haloed the shop. Those spells had been what kept the mirror from scrying her-powerful magic that had no place at all around a random storefront. Lorcan’s pulse hammered unpleasantly at him: nestled in the crook of one of the runes in the store’s sign was a trio of black triangles.
The sign of Asmodeus.
Farideh had just left an Ashmadai lair.
He grabbed ahold of the mirror as if he could shake her through it. Stumbling into Rohini’s way was bad enough, but this could make everything so much worse. He pulled hard on the tethers that connected to her brand. She had to get someplace quiet. Someplace he could get to her.
In the mirror, Farideh stopped in the middle of the crowded street, clasped her arm, and flinched. Lorcan pulled again and again.
Listen to me this time, he begged.
Farideh was threading her way through a crowd of people in front of a fishmonger when Lorcan pulled on her scar. It flared so hot and sharp she gasped and clapped a hand over it.
A woman in front of her, a human with large knobby hands, grabbed hold of her shoulder as she stumbled. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. Thank you,” Farideh said. But then the pull came again, so sharp it made her eyes water and again she gasped the fishy air. She pushed past the woman and out of the crowd, hurrying toward the House of Knowledge.
He called again, but if he wanted her attention he could come and ask for it. After days of leaving her alone, leaving her wondering what had happened to him, and, of course, what made him take notice of her was finding out she’d spoken to someone else about him and how to leash him better. She should have expected it.
The key is not to hand over the reins too easily, Yvon had said.
Again Lorcan pulled on the scar hard enough to take her breath, and Farideh stopped walking. Around her, the road was still busy with passersby, and off to the right a fountain in the shape of a wyvern swarmed with citizens and children and more than a few gulls.