Chapter Eight
19 Ches, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR) Somewhere North of Waterdeep
Farideh leaned over the strange waters of the so-called fabled Fountains of Memory. A spark of magic arced through the air and popped against her fingertips. She clutched her hand and stepped back. “That’s not a fable I’m familiar with,” she said.
“Would you like to give them a try?” Rhand asked. He laid one hand lightly against the small of her back and pressed her forward. Farideh edged nearer, if only to step out of his reach.
Her reflection looked back, rippled by the magical current stirring the waters. The air around the vessel chilled noticeably and her breath made faint clouds as she looked down into the thick, dark water, waiting for something to happen.
“There’s a trick to it-be specific enough to see what you want, but vague enough to find what you don’t know you’re going to miss.” Rhand reached around her and tossed a scattering of dried blue petals into the water. “Show us when this dear lady’s patron first took notice.”
The waters’ swirl changed direction, the ripples widening as the center of the basin seemed to pull the water inward. Farideh’s reflection broke into a hundred smaller patches of color and light. .
That reformed, bled together. . and reflected back not Farideh but an open room, the ground floor of an old stone barn that had been converted before she was born into a home for an outcast dragonborn, come to the hidden village of Arush Vayem. Below Mehen’s lofted room was a circle of chalked runes, and in the center of that circle was Lorcan.
Farideh’s breath caught. She knew enough now to see the frank appraisal in his gaze as he spoke to Havilar, standing in front of him-assessing the tiefling, looking for a warlock to complete his set. Havilar settled herself on the floor, utterly unconcerned with the devil she’d caught instead of an imp or the strength of the binding circle she’d only mimicked.
Farideh watched Lorcan, her heart aching.
He looked up, past Havilar, and something in his demeanor changed, relaxed, as Farideh came into the room. He smiled, showing the faint points of his canines, and Farideh remembered how undone she’d been to see that smile the first time.
She watched as Havilar left, after convincing her nothing would happen if she stayed with the devil in the binding circle. “You’re not like her,” he said, his voice tinny and strange. “Like night and day. Like sweet and sour. Like the ocean and the desert. It’s astonishing.” She watched herself try and fail to ignore Lorcan, falling into the bickering conversation that would change her life, Havilar’s, Mehen’s, and countless others along the way.
“Who could blame you?” he said. “Who wants to be held responsible for something they can’t control? Turned away because of something their foremothers and forefathers did to gain a little power?” She shut her eyes wishing the waters would cut off her protest, but it came anyway: it might have been anything that led her ancestors to mingle with fiends. It might have been love.
And Lorcan laughed. “My darling, let me tell you a secret: devils don’t love.”
She watched herself try to leave, watched Lorcan stop her with all the right words and warnings. “You’ll live in this village for all of your life,” Lorcan said, keeping pace with her along the border of the circle. “You’ll spend every day, trying your hardest to be what they want, and you’ll never meet their expectations, because you were not made for this. .” She watched him list all the ways she was trapped already, all the ways she couldn’t save herself- couldn’t save reckless Havilar. At least not alone. Watched herself curl into her chest, covering her face, as if she could hide from what was coming.
As much as she regretted the pact in that moment, Farideh felt only pity for her past self. She would have done the same thing over again, she knew, as Lorcan crossed the faulty line of runes to hold her near, whispering promises and coaxing her toward the agreement that would catch her in a pact. She would have taken the magic no matter what-because every word he said was true. She was trapped. She was powerless. She was so afraid. She watched herself look up, horrified, as she realized what she’d done and at the same time, her chest ached. She wished Lorcan were here, were offering her a way to save herself again.
The image vanished in a wall of flames.
“Interesting,” Rhand said, snapping her back to the present. Farideh straightened, wiped her face and realized she’d been crying. Missing Lorcan, but missing, too, the girl in the reflection. She would never be so innocent again. Rhand gave her another unpleasant smile.
“Fascinating things,” he said. “Before the Spellplague, the water formed a number of pools in a cavern here-at least, that is what the deep gnomes say. If pressed. They kept the location a secret, as much as one can keep such a thing secret.” He chuckled. “Harder to hide when the mountaintop was torn off and floated away. The cavern went with the peak-off drifting somewhere over the North, I suspect-but the springs that fed the pools remain. They muddle with the ordinary springs now, so the waters aren’t as powerful if you come upon them naturally.” He dipped a hand in and stirred the waters. “But with a little ingenuity, a little careful magic, a little discipline. . they can do miraculous things. Even better than before.”
“Indeed,” Farideh said, still rattled. “What do you use them for?”
Rhand sighed. “Originally, I had hoped to use them for their other abilities. Legends hold that the Fountains of Memory would spontaneously open portals to the locations they showed-past and present. You can imagine how useful such a thing would be. I wouldn’t have to identify anything-only send back some eager guards to stop any manifestation before it took hold.”
“Yes,” Farideh said, wishing she’d heard his earlier explanations. Manifestations of what? Devils? Gods? Something worse? She thought back to all the things she had heard, searching for a clue.
But too many of her thoughts were stuck, clinging to the phrase portals to the locations they showed-past and present.
“Alas, I haven’t managed to unlock that particular secret. Portals to elsewhere, yes. But not the past.”
“Do you think you will?” Farideh asked. If Sairché couldn’t undo the past, could he? She met his piercing blue gaze.
“I never pursue things I don’t think I can achieve.”
Farideh didn’t dare look away. “What would it take?”
“If I knew that,” Rhand said irritably, “it would be done. Nevertheless,” he went on, “the Fountains are still useful enough-ask the right questions and it will show where the likeliest candidates are to be found. Set a body before it and ask when their patron took notice, and you can weed out many of the accidental choices. Slow, and not as accurate as I would like. But four in ten is better than two in ten.”
Patron, as in Lorcan, as in pact holder. But patrons might mean devils, Farideh thought. Might mean demons. Might mean gods. Might mean just people. And still, she had no idea what Sairché meant for her to do, or who the common enemy was. The waters shimmered, showing no sign of the scene they’d just reflected.
“At any rate,” Rhand went on, “I hope this becomes merely my own amusement. Lady Sairché has assured me you are capable of vastly improving my rate of success.” With his hand again at the small of her back, he steered her to the open windows.
Beyond the jagged turrets of the fortress, beyond the castle wall, lay scores and scores of square huts with reed roofs leaking smoke from cookfires, aligned on a tidy grid of roads dotted with people. From so high, Farideh could see that the fortress and all the buildings around it sat in an enormous crater-the remains of the sundered peak Rhand had mentioned. On the far end of the village, a large lake lapped a pebble-crusted shore, and over its edge was the peak of another mountain.