Lorcan nearly laughed-for once, things seemed to be turning his way. The little lordling had no idea what damage he was doing. If Lorcan was out of practice, Brin had gone to seed.
“Havilar?” Lorcan said. She looked up at him. “What would you like to do? I’m hardly going to ‘drag you across the countryside’ if you’d rather go back to the Harpers’ hospitality. But I hope,” he added more seriously, “that I don’t end up needing a quick blade at my side if you do. As I said before, there’s no telling what we’re dealing with.”
“Shade,” Brin said hotly, “isn’t going to be brought down by a blade and a stlarning half-devil.”
Lorcan held Brin’s gaze and wondered if perhaps someone was listening to his prayers after all-Havilar was more of a certainty than ever. “Well,” he said. “Perhaps we’ll leave Shade to the Harpers and worry about our own plans.”
“We’re not going back,” Havilar adjusted her haversack. “Be angry if you have to. But I’m doing this.”
“And what about Mehen?” Brin asked.
“Mehen. .” She looked at Lorcan again. “Will keep. And he should know I’m not going to wait when I can do something.”
Brin sighed and threw his head back to stare at the cloudy sky. “Fine,” he said after a moment. He wrapped the horse’s reins once around his wrist. “Then I’m coming with you.”
Havilar’s eyes widened. “Oh. Are you?”
Lorcan cursed to himself. Bad, bad, bad. “Don’t your Harpers need you? Doesn’t Mehen? You are the best equipped to ferry a message back, after all.”
Brin scowled at him. “I’ll send a message from the caravansary. There’s a waystation outside the Goldenfields, a few hours down the road. Then we’ll get a reply-maybe they’ve worked out more details by now.”
Lorcan calculated, considered, and cursed to himself again. This could be fixed. “Wonderful,” he said. “Lead on, then.”
Brin turned to Havilar once more. “You’re right,” he said, and he smiled. “I should know you’d never sit on your hands.”
Havilar gave a nervous laugh as Brin nudged his horse into motion and rode to the head of the group. Havilar watched him go, then gave Lorcan a dark look as if daring him to say something.
But Lorcan only turned his horse to follow Brin. After all, he kept his promises.
The waters of the Fountains of Memory well up from the center and pour down the sides as if a spring beneath refreshes them, although not a drop enters or leaves the basin. Farideh has stood here for over an hour, watching scene after scene after scene. Meanwhile the apprentices come and go-never leaving her alone, never speaking above a whisper-trading scrolls and worried expressions. She gets the impression that somewhere in the fortress, Rhand is unhappy, and the implications clench around her stomach. She wonders if he’s discovered the Harper in his camp.
“Show me where Dahl was. .” Farideh catches herself. The wizards aren’t watching her, but they’re not as dedicated to their tasks as they’ d be if they weren’t listening at all. She lets the rest of her question-“an hour ago”-disappear. She isn’t such a fool as to think they won’t report every single thing she tells the waters to show. If Dahl’s still trapped behind the wall, it might mean his doom. The waters turn, waiting for the rest, waiting for something they can use.
“Three midwinters ago,” she blurts-long enough that it shouldn’t matter one bit what Dahl was doing. She shouldn’t watch, but if she doesn’t, the wizards will notice that too.
The waters spit back a street scene-Proskur, Farideh realizes, surprised-and Dahl coming out of a dark doorway into an alley. A fine snow falls, trimming the dirty ice of the streets like lace. Dahl wraps his cloak close and hurries down the road toward the market.
Farideh’s fingers itch to touch the surface of the waters-the frustration and anger that seem to vibrate Dahl’s frame might make the waters shiver too. He is turned inward, scowling, his mouth twitching as if he were trying not to argue aloud with someone who wasn’t there. She sighs despite herself-that was more Dahl than a doppelganger could make.
He winds through the crowded market of stalls and carts and other bundledup people. The light is fading and lamplighters thread through the crowd. Past an unlit corner, Dahl eases around a pair of arguing merchants, cutting into a bookseller’s shop to do so. He is watching the fight when he crashes into the third man, hidden in the shadows. Farideh watches as Dahl is thrown off, as if pushed away, and falls into a stack of books. They tumble, some falling open, their pages rapidly speckled with melting snowflakes.
“Gods stlarning hrast it!” Dahl shouts. “Watch yourself!” The man just chuckles. The lamplighter brings her torch up to the streetlamp, and the flame reflects off plate armor, elegantly wrought and inlaid with gold and copper.
“It’s you that’s turned the wrong way, my good man,” the man says, and his voice sends an eerie, slow shiver down Farideh’s back. It’s like a song. It’s like a prayer. Dahl freezes. The man keeps walking, looking over his shoulder to call back. “Surely you can figure that out.”
Dahl sits, stunned, amid the fallen books, staring after the man as if he’s seen a ghost. He looks as if he’s frozen to the cobblestones, as if he’ll never move. .
“Wait!” he shouts, leaping to his feet like the ground beneath him has exploded. But the ice is slick and kicks his feet out from under him as he stands. He falls onto the scatter of books again, catching himself inches from an open page. The red-inked print of an angel with a herald’s horn and a flaming sword standing before an elf hero stripped of his weapons, and leaning on a crutch. The line of text beneath it: You believed yourself unmatched, good Fflar, honest and wise beyond all measure. But you never set yourself to find the whole truth, and that was your undoing.
Dahl lets out a breath as if he’s been punched. The bookseller is shaking the Harper’s shoulder, demanding to know who will pay for the ruined books. But when Dahl sits up, his gray eyes are locked on the crowded street, where the strange man with the elegant armor and the song for a voice has disappeared. A smile eases over Dahl’s face, as if someone has snatched away a heavy burden. He starts to laugh.
The vision disappears, leaving Farideh to wonder what happened between then and now, what took away that moment of lightness. And what exactly caused it.
Chapter Nine
2 °Ches, the Year of the Nether Mountain Scrolls (1486 DR) Somewhere North of Waterdeep
Whatever this place was-village, prison, long-term military encampment-Dahl still couldn’t make sense of it. He’d spent the first sleepless night under a thick yew bush near the wall, nibbling at the bitter orclar lichen and emptying his flask sip by sip. Before the sun was too high, he sneaked down into the village again and stolen clothes-a tunic and cloth breeches-off a line. He’d tucked his dagger into a boot, hidden his sword and the armor in the thatch of one of the empty huts’ roofs, and made his way around the perimeter.
He’d estimated close to five hundred stone huts. Spotted something like an infirmary. Garden patches, a lot more than he’d have expected in such close quarters. Meager piles of food stores left by the guards in two places, and quickly divvied up by a score or more. Later, he saw familiar faces doling out gruel from wooden buckets.
Near the lake, the villagers were mostly elves, and the shadar-kai more frequent. Up on the higher slope, the huts were crowded and the mix of villagers more dramatic-humans, orcs, half-orcs, half-elves. He even found a contingent of dwarves all packed in together in six huts. Wherever he went, the villagers watched him cautiously, but no one tried to drive him off, the way he would have expected if he’d wandered into the wrong quarter of some other town. Whatever this place was, whoever these people were, they seemed to know he was either on their side. . or he was with the shadar-kai and not to be provoked.