“You can just see,” Rhand said, pointing across to the edge of the crater, “in this light, the traces of the Wall.” The low sunlight sparkled nearly seventy feet from the ground, as if catching on the edge of something invisible. “It’s quite impressive,” he said. “Completely impregnable and hides everything within. Keeps everything quite tidy.” He gave her another unwelcome smile. “Nothing gets in or out unless I let it.”
Including Dahl. Ghosts and shadar-kai, Rhand and Sairché and her guilty conscience-she wouldn’t have thought there was anything else that could happen to top those. But if Dahl was trapped inside the magical wall as well, he was in grave danger. She watched the people flowing up and down the narrow streets and wondered if he was among them. “You’ve never had an escape?”
His smile thinned, and he held her gaze a bit too long for comfort. “Never.” He leaned out over the sill, looking down at the ground below. “Ah-it looks as if they’re ready. Come,” he said, taking her arm again. “Let’s see what you’re capable of.”
Through the winding passages of the fortress, Farideh scrambled to pull together the details of Rhand’s experiment she’d managed to hear. Patrons, manifestations, ordinary somethings masquerading as extraordinary somethings? And she could help.
No killing, she told herself. No stealing souls. Rhand led her out onto a balcony with no balustrade, the guards fanning out around them. As they neared the edge, Farideh could see the enclosed courtyard nearly twenty feet below and the dozen people standing in it, staring up at her.
She took an involuntary step back.
Rhand chuckled and urged her forward. “Go ahead.”
The villagers stared up at her, puzzled and maybe repulsed. They all wore the same faded garb, tunics and breeches and skirts. It was like being faced down by an army. Her stomach tightened.
“What is it you’re looking for?” Farideh said. The wizard considered her a moment, and there was no missing his displeasure.
“Your mistress assured me,” Rhand said, “that she could get me someone to assist my efforts. That she would bring me someone who could read their little souls and tell me which of them were. . special.”
Farideh looked up at him, but he seemed no madder than before. “Special how?”
Rhand spread his hands wide. “You’ll have to tell me.” His piercing gaze speared her in place. “If you can.”
Farideh made herself look down at the crowd of people, her nerves rattling and shadowy smoke seeping off her skin as her pact drew up the powers of the Hells. They were all staring at her, all waiting for something. Good or bad. Someone who could read their souls.
The lights. Farideh caught her breath-the flickering colors and shadows that had come out of nowhere, the strange magic Sairché had infected her with. The lights were souls.
She shut her eyes. The magic was lurking in her somewhere, crouched in the recesses of her mind and waiting to spring forward. She’d been angry the last two times, she thought. The other came when the protection spell had been overstretched.
She drew up the powers of her pact, while thinking of punching Sairché in the mouth for good measure. Again, the pain in the back of her head started to bloom, and then her throat began to itch.
And there in the middle of her thoughts, was a sensation like a dangling thread, waiting to be pulled. She focused on it, opening her eyes.
The lights exploded over her field of vision, crackling across the staring crowd. They lingered on the people, little spots of brightness and color radiating strands of gray and gold and red and more. As she watched, the lights intensified-and around three of the people, the colors coalesced into the blurry shapes of strange runes. A tall man who shone with vibrant green and yellow, a brand of darker emerald thrumming at the core of his chest. A woman whose lights left streamers of violet-red drifting around her, curling at her heart into a sharper glyph. Another woman, much older, whose lights seemed to overtake the whole of her body, shining bright as one of Selûne’s tears come to earth-the symbol there was hard to spot, only a shade lighter than the silver around it.
They were beautiful.
“Nirka,” Rhand said mildly. “Hold. Give her a chance.”
Farideh looked over her shoulder at the shadar-kai guard, her hands on her knives, her cold black eyes on Farideh. Farideh looked back down at the crowd-she stood at the edge of a twenty-foot drop onto paving stones, surrounded by shadar-kai ready to kill her. And Rhand, ready to give that order.
Sairché promised you wouldn’t be killing anyone, she told herself. Wouldn’t be taking their souls. Promised this would turn against a common enemy.
“The tall man in the back,” she said. “The Turami woman on the far right. The old woman in green at the front.”
Rhand smiled. “Well done.” He gestured to the guards below, who seized those three and ushered them through one of the doors. The rest of the people were herded back out the larger gate. An uneasy feeling built in the small of Farideh’s back, and her tail flicked nervously.
“What happens to them?” she asked, watching the old woman hobble after the guard holding tight to her arm.
Rhand did not speak for long moments, until Farideh looked back up at him. He smiled, as if she’d given something away with that question. “Nothing much. I’m merely going to see if you’re right.”
“How will you do that?”
Rhand shrugged and took her arm again. “These things show themselves eventually. Close attention and study. Time. A little carefully applied pressure. If you’re right, though-and I do hope you are-we should be completely certain in a day or so at most. Come,” he said, leading her back into the building, “let me show you the rest of the castle.”
There was little Lorcan hated as much as the feeling of not having any kind of a plan. Even when the world was trying to leap out from under his feet, usually, Lorcan had some scheme, some strategy, some charm in his back pocket that would help him land safe.
But riding ahead of Havilar, now nearly a day out of Waterdeep, Lorcan could hardly form even the most basic plan aside from getting away from Mehen and the Harpers and heading north. Every time he tried his thoughts scattered, driven like sheep before the wolves of his anger at Sairché, at Glasya, at Farideh.
Give me some gods-be-damned space to figure it out, because if you make me choose right here, right now, I choose to be done. He should have expected it. He should have been prepared, not counting on Farideh like some fool mortal would.
“What are you going to name your horse?” Havilar called up to him. Lorcan drew a slow breath and steeled himself. If someone had told him a few hours ago that he would wish she were grousing and moaning about her aching head and upset stomach, he would never have believed it.
“It doesn’t need a name,” he said.
“Of course she does-how else will you call her?” she said. “I’m going to name mine Cinnamon. Or maybe Alusair.”
Lorcan glanced back over his shoulder, at the tiefling astride a placid bay. “That’s a gelding.”
Havilar made a face at him. “Fine. I’ll call him Alusair.”
Lorcan turned back to the road, to the marshy ground surrounding it, and swallowed his speculation about how impressed Brin would be about Havilar naming her gelding after his fabled great-grandaunt. It was too simple a barb, and if Lorcan had made it this far without prodding her unnecessarily, he could certainly hold out until the pact was done. He hoped.
“Are you truly more concerned about your horse than your sister?” Lorcan asked.
“I can care about her and name a horse. I’m not simple. Besides,” she added, “I’m riding out sick as a hound. With you. I think it’s pretty karshoji obvious I do care.”