“What exactly do you know about Bryseis Kakistos?” he asked.
Farideh’s pulse was in her throat. “That she, that all of the Thirteen, took the pact with Asmodeus to protect tieflings from … from having to answer to fiendish lords. That she sacrificed her own freedom to …” Farideh let her words trail away. The dark expression on Lorcan’s face said too much.
“Someone’s been lying to you, darling,” he said.
“It wasn’t … Why would someone lie about that? They didn’t know what it meant.” Farideh shook her head. “How do I know you’re not the one lying?”
“Darling, did you know that in the north, near Vaasa where your ancestress made her home, very naughty little tieflings are warned to be good, lest Bryseis Kakistos come and steal their skins off their bones? I didn’t teach them to do that.” He paused, then added, “Much as I wish I could tell you I had.”
I am such a fool, she thought. “She was evil?”
“Vile,” Lorcan said. “She was a madwoman, a killer of her own kind. In fact, plenty of people lay the credit for Asmodeus’s ascension squarely at her feet. Without Bryseis Kakistos, there would have been no Toril Thirteen-there are those among them who did not enter the pact willingly. Without the Toril Thirteen, there is a fair chance Asmodeus wouldn’t have had the power to claim the mantle of a dead god and fling the Abyss into the Elemental Chaos. Without the efforts of Bryseis Kakistos, the history of tieflings is a good bit different.”
This shouldn’t shock you, she told herself. This is what you should have known. But it did shock her, because some part of her had always hoped-no, had been certain-that she might be different. That she wasn’t doomed like the rest. Farideh felt the blood pooling away from her. I will not faint, she thought. “That’s not true.”
“Likely not entirely,” he said, as if they were arguing over a tavern tale. “These stories increase every time they’re told. But, darling, no one in the Hells would give a mortal credit for anything they could claim the glory for, unless she’d definitely done something.”
A swift stroke, she thought, is better than a thousand cuts. “What did she do?” Lorcan hesitated a moment, as if he recalled he should have been managing her differently, and Farideh’s temper rose. “What did she do?”
“It’s as I said,” he replied. “What do you want?”
“The whole story,” Farideh said. “Don’t tell me not to worry about it.”
“But you shouldn’t,” he said more sharply. “Darling, you can’t change the past, and you can’t change where you came from.”
“I have you caught in a binding circle,” she said. “Don’t treat me like a child.”
Lorcan’s expression hardened. Gods, she thought, where did they stand anymore? She wouldn’t bend to him, and he wouldn’t treat her as something more than a plaything again-where was the middle ground? Was there any place left, she wondered, where they fit?
“If you go back in time, it was never a secret that the king of the Hells wanted godhood,” Lorcan said. He spoke without softness, without care. As if he meant for her to feel every blow. “Whether they offered the sacrifices or he demanded them isn’t clear. But thirteen tieflings made a pact with Asmodeus-a mass sacrifice of fiend-born, plus their own souls and blood, for the chance to wield the powers of the Hells.
“The stories are muddled. I don’t doubt some devil has it written down-someone has everything written down-but the way it’s told, the tieflings thought their blood would be spilled in offering, or maybe that they would die in a future sacrifice, but instead … their rites let Asmodeus take the very blood in their veins-in every tiefling’s veins for his own.”
Farideh frowned. “He killed them?”
“Then how would you be here, darling?” Lorcan said. “No. Before the Spellplague, tieflings … Well, it was harder to tell who was and who wasn’t a tiefling, and what sort of being sullied the well. They might have horns or hooves or peculiar eyes or any number of things. Tieflings were descendants of all manner of creatures-demons, devils … fiendish things-and it showed. And after …”
“After we look the same,” Farideh said, horror dawning on her. “Is that … she did that?”
“Perhaps,” Lorcan said. “As I said, there’s no way of knowing what happened precisely, short of convincing Asmodeus himself to tell you the tale. But there is no demon blood left in tieflings descended from those days. No scattered fiend’s. The children born to tieflings after that rite were devilborn, the true-breeding scions of Asmodeus. A hundred years ago a body might have a little devil blood, and mixing with the right mortals could thin it all out. Mortals don’t breed straight down after all, not even with fiendish blood in them. Now a dozen generations could go by, but the result will be the same. You are the descendents of Asmodeus, every one.” His eyes darted once around the space, as if he were afraid the god of evil might be listening. “Whatever happened, those thirteen were in the middle of it and the magic was unlike anything Asmodeus had managed in ages.”
Farideh covered her face, blocking out Lorcan and the library and all of it. A madwoman. A killer of her own kind. On Bryseis Kakistos lay the blame for Asmodeus becoming the god of evil, the fall of those first thirteen infernal warlocks, the undilutable blood that cursed the tiefling race.
She closed her eyes. Mortals don’t breed straight down-but tieflings, ah, tieflings were the exception. Tieflings didn’t mix, didn’t dilute. A human and an elf might beget a half-elf, but no matter who lay down with a tiefling-human, elf, orc-the result was another tiefling. Her chest felt as if it were collapsing around her lungs. What else might carry down with that blood curse?
“Is that why you chose me?” she said, barely above a whisper. “Because you think I’ll be like her?”
Lorcan clucked his tongue. “Lords, no, you’re enough of a headache. I suspect your existence would make Bryseis Kakistos-and several of her descendents-spin in their graves.” He paused. “I told you that you wouldn’t like it.”
“She had children,” Farideh said. She stood, without any sense of where she meant to go. “How? Who would …?” She trailed off. No one, was the answer. No one sane, no one with an ounce of decency, would take that risk and have a child with someone like Bryseis Kakistos. No one would seek to continue that line. Mortals don’t breed straight down, she thought. And genocidal warlocks don’t breed at all. Or they shouldn’t.
No one sane, she thought, or willing.
“Darling, don’t,” Lorcan said, standing as well. “That’s not a path you want to go down.”
She swallowed to wet her mouth, but it did no good. “That’s why they’re rare. Sairche said there are only four Kakistos heirs. Five, if you count Havilar.” She looked up at him. “You know who our parents are.”
“Why ask? I can promise it doesn’t matter. You don’t need to know.”
“Who, Lorcan?” she asked. “Please.”
His wings shuddered as he tried to flex them against the iron bar. “I haven’t looked into it. But … you’re right. There aren’t many likely options.”
“And they’re all wicked.”
“It isn’t common to have such a principled warlock,” he agreed.
Of course it wasn’t. Of course they were wicked. What other kinds of tieflings were there but those who were wicked to the bone? “Hasn’t anyone tried to fix it?” she said softly, but she knew the answer. Who would try to undo it? If you knew, you were surely pacted … and telling yourself all sorts of fairy stories to make that all right. She wrapped her arms around herself.
“Ah, lords.” Lorcan drew her closer. “Darling, listen to me: this is not yours to repair. You are not Bryseis Kakistos. You were not there, and if by some bizarre weft of the Weave you could be, do not think that you could have changed a thing. Don’t think you can change a thing. Gods do not rise by a single act. Even if it is true, and the Toril Thirteen tipped the scales in Asmodeus’s favor, there were dozens of other acts and powers that came first-the succubi’s defection, the collapse of the Weave, the death of Azuth. Once Asmodeus discovered blood magic, there were a hundred ways he could have gained the power of a god.”