“Come on,” Tharra said. “Let’s get you somewhere quiet.” She helped Dahl back out into the sunlight, and Dahl’s resolve failed. He was messily sick in an alley before Tharra got him back into the hut he’d spent the night in and ducked back out. She came back shortly with a bundle of rations and a small bucket.
“Here-this is safe. From the cistern,” Tharra said, handing Dahl a dipper of water.
Dahl gulped it down. Tharra grinned at him. “So. You’re out of Waterdeep. They always said you lot were skilled. How in the Hells did you get past the wall? The waters skipped over that.”
“Luck,” Dahl said. Bad luck, he thought. “I got pulled in by mistake. I got a pair of sendings out to Waterdeep already. Tam’s sending reinforcements.” That sounded better than rescuers. “If I can get more components I might be able to find out how many and how soon.”
Tharra took the dipper from his shaking hands and filled it again. “You Waterdhavians,” she said, sounding like his eldest sister-in-law. “Excess is in your blood, isn’t it?”
“I’m not from Waterdeep,” Dahl said. “I’m from Harrowdale.”
“Harrowdale?”
“Near enough. My father’s farm-” Dahl stopped-not his father’s, his brothers’ now. “It’s to the west of New Velar. About a day.”
Tharra’s smile widened. “My brother-in-law had family outside Harrowdale. Tassadrans originally, but they’ve been there since the Sembians invaded. Did you know a fellow called Melias by some happenstance?”
“Bearded fellow with a field full of beehives?”
Tharra laughed. “Second cousin.”
“He traded honey for my mother’s apple butter every year.” He finished the dipper. “So you’re from the Dalelands too?”
“Mistledale. Though lately,” she said, with a wry smile, “I wander. A Harper’s lot.”
“I suppose.”
“Funny though,” Tharra said. “I’ve got watchers up along the border line. Not a far reach to grab a Harran lad clever enough to slip out of a fortress that well-guarded. A few different turnings and you might have been my fledgling instead of the Shepherd’s.”
More than a few, Dahl thought. And if he had? He wouldn’t have gone to Procampur, he wouldn’t have become a paladin. He wouldn’t have lost his powers. Would he have let the contact in Rhand’s manor die? Would his father have died? Would he have been prouder of Dahl if he’d stayed in Harrowdale and kept a farmer’s cover?
Tharra gave him a thin smile. “You spend a lot of time with tieflings?”
“No,” Dahl said, rubbing his eyes “That’s. . new. Temporary.”
“Hm. Seems slippery,” she said. “A pity we don’t have more resources.”
“Do you have agents coming?” Dahl said.
Tharra chuckled. “No. We’re not all wizards like you lot, hauling around scrolls, casting sendings like they were stones into the sea.”
“That’s not. .” Dahl shook his head and winced when it started spinning. “Look, I’ll defer to you here. Clearly, you know what’s going on better than I do. But for the love of every watching god, you have to tell me what’s happening.”
Tharra shook her head, as if all the words in every tongue on Faerûn couldn’t sum up what was happening in the camp. “Something strange and something wonderful and something far more dangerous than we can comprehend. The gods are stirring, mark my words, and in a way we’ve never seen before. The wars? The way powers who were content to bide their time have all leaped at each others’ throats? — if that isn’t the hand of the gods moving things, I don’t know what it is.”
“Politics,” Dahl said. “Tensions past their breaking point. Wars happen, then people think ‘Why not us too? Why not our problem?’ It spills over.”
“And the earthmotes? The plaguepockets fading? The world is getting ready for something,” Tharra said. “These people, all of them, were stolen out of their lands, their homes. Gods above know what makes him choose them exactly, but he’s not grabbing at random. Sometimes he takes a whole village. Sometimes he takes a single child.” Tharra dropped her voice. “But the ones he takes, some of them, when the time is right, gain powers by the grace of the gods. Right out of the blue. Strange powers.”
“Like the boy trailing flowers.”
Tharra nodded. “Samayan? Chosen of Chauntea, near as we can figure.”
Dahl eyed Tharra. “Funny way for the Earthmother to spread her influence.”
“Depends on what it is She’s trying to do.”
A god grants a mortal powers, but not the powers that can save them, Dahl thought. “It doesn’t sound like any Chosen I’ve heard of.”
Tharra shrugged. “They call it what they call it. A lot of the ones we find are like Samayan-their gifts are modest, but you can’t deny they’re something rare. No use against the shadar-kai, but the wizard gathers them up as if they’re precious things-the ones they catch. Those powers usually come on quiet, and the wizard doesn’t always notice it’s happening. We can keep them away, shifting them around the camp ahead of the guards’ sweeps. They haven’t caught on yet. Others you get are like Oota-can’t put your finger to it, but you know something’s strange. Your thoughts just go a little crooked, a little changed. If we weren’t noticing daisies and such, we might not realize it was something unique. They can usually blend in.
“A few gain much more impressive powers. The sort of thing you expect when you hear ‘Chosen.’ They don’t tend to be quiet. The guards come for them much quicker, catch them as they manifest.” Her expression darkened. “Not all of them survive for the wizard’s use.”
“And you? Or do you Dales Harpers get that odd influence with your pins?”
Tharra flushed and shrugged, and Dahl realized there must be an etiquette here he didn’t know. “Not all of us get a clear message. And the majority of us are just ordinary. Or ordinary for now. We’ve found signs the powers are coming-a persistent ill-feeling, or sometimes a euphoria no one can explain, vertigo or dreams about the gods. It’s not perfect, but everyone knows to look out for strangeness.”
People touched by the powers of the gods. People disappearing-whole villages disappearing. Was that what had happened to Vescaras’s farmstead? Or any of the missing Harpers? Were Vescaras’s lost agents, or Dahl’s Sembian handler, among the dead Chosen?
“If you’re all touched by the gods,” Dahl asked, “why are you still here?”
“Because the wizard is very prepared.” Tharra scooped another dipper of water for Dahl. “Drink it and get some rest. You can sleep off the vision’s side effects, but your head’s going to feel like it’s the Chosen of Tempus’s Warhammer tomorrow.”
Glasya’s words echoed in Lorcan’s thoughts as he flew low over a dense forest, searching for the devil Sairché was meant to meet with that evening, according to her imps.
“Your sister understood my particular needs,” she’d said. “Asmodeus’s particular needs. I cannot say I was pleased with her results thus far. But I had my hopes.” She had smiled, and Lorcan had been too terrified to breathe for a moment. “You have her tools. Prove to me the children of Fallen Invadiah don’t repeat their mother’s weaknesses.”
Lorcan searched the ground below. Whatever Sairché had been planning, she had been careful not to leave the details lying around. The erinyes only knew about scattered schemes involving cultists who largely ran on their own. The imps told him about a devil named Magros who sent an avalanche of scrolls. And he’d found the empty case that had held the original orders, passed down from the god of evil himself, buried in a box of useless rods, tucked beneath a settee and behind a rolled up skin-rug.
This wasn’t just about Sairché’s revenge on him.
Lorcan spotted the violet-and-white flash of a portal in the trees below, and dropped straight down, catching the air again to hang near to the clearing, out of the portal’s lingering light.
There was the devil, Magros, decked in heavy furs. . and there was a cluster of strange creatures besides. Leashed ghouls. A boneclaw, towering over its companions with fingers like scimitars dragging in the litterfall. A handful of robed humans. A woman in red robes with a pale line of hair down the center of her skull. A palanquin besides, hauled by a pair of massive zombies too degraded for him to be sure what exactly they had once been.