But it was clear to her this was nowhere she wanted Dahl to be. Rhand’s assistant appeared in the entry, white-faced, and before he could say a word, Rhand bid her good evening, and servants appeared to clear the table, taking little notice of Farideh. Rhand stopped in his rush and looked back at her.
“By the way, Nirka tells me you have been enjoying the castle grounds,” he said. “Should you be interested in a walk tonight, I’d suggest you forgo it.”
“Why is that?”
He gave her a wicked smile. “To begin, she will be locking your door. For safety. Our guest can be particular.” Without further explanation, he swept from the room.
His guest can be Asmodeus himself, Farideh thought, and it would not stop me. Not now. She had to save Dahl. She had to find out what she was doing here.
“Leave Tharra outside, would you?” she said as Nirka loomed over her. “I’m tired, and I’d rather go to bed than wait on you and her. I can get myself out of my armor.”
Nirka narrowed her eyes. “I will have to go and tell her to leave.”
“Then do that,” Farideh said. “I shall be in my room. Dealing Wroth cards.”
She climbed the stairs, feeling Nirka’s suspicious gaze on her the entire time. But the shadar-kai said not another word until they reached her room.
“Whatever you’re thinking,” she started.
“Good night, Nirka,” Farideh said sharply, and she shut the door. A moment later, the latch clanked violently, as if Nirka could somehow wound Farideh with the key in the lock.
Farideh waited, but didn’t hear the guard’s footsteps leave. She took the cards up and flipped them loudly, one after the other-snap, snap, snap. Shuffled. Dealt. Beyond the door, she heard Nirka curse and storm off, and Farideh sighed in relief. She looked down at the haphazard pile of cards-the top one was flipped, facedown. She turned it and found a faintly scorched painting of a devil, horned and winged and hoofed, chasing a green-and-gold angel in a circle. The Adversary. Farideh fought back a shiver.
The second ruby comb still sat under the mattress where she’d hidden it, still buzzing with the magic from the ghost’s strange ritual. She hadn’t touched it-and she was trying hard not to wonder if the ghost was still watching her, unseen.
Farideh pulled her haversack from the wardrobe, still heavy with the ritual book Rhand had left her, but her thoughts were on the comb, the itch of its waiting spell like a plea-Pick me up. Bring her back.
Farideh hesitated a moment, before pulling it from its hiding place and stuffing it into the sack. She’d decide for herself what to do with it once she knew what she was up against.
Then she took another deep breath and went to the window. She pulled herself up to kneel on the ledge, leaning out as far as she dared. The night was cold, and though the wind had died down, it was enough to make her glad Tharra had plaited her hair. She could not miss.
Across the way, another of the fortress’s starlike points loomed. Two floors down, one window waited, not quite covered by its heavy curtains and leaking faint candlelight. The stairwell. Farideh pulled herself up to stand on the window ledge.
It was, perhaps, thirty feet away. Or perhaps fifty, perhaps a hundred. In the dark of night she couldn’t be sure. She held in her mind the way it had looked when she’d considered it several days before-close enough, she thought, to make this work if you just do it. She found her balance, held her breath. There wasn’t much a body rebelled against like this, and in the space between panicked thoughts, Farideh leaped, into the empty air.
And started to fall.
But in that heartbeat, she pulled hard on the powers of the Hells. The fabric of the world split and swallowed Farideh, spitting her back out into the air much farther on. Still not to the opposite point, and as soon as the gape closed, she was falling again.
I’m going to die-but the thought had no more formed, before she caught hold of the ledge, two floors below where she’d started, knocking the wind out of her. Farideh clung to the stonework, lungs screaming as she caught her breath, and hauled herself into the tower again.
She leaned against the wall-it had worked. She wasn’t dead. It wasn’t a hundred feet. Farideh pressed her hands to her face to smother the giddy laughter that shook her bruised ribs. For the first time in ages, she felt a little like her old self.
Composing herself, she looked up the dim stairwell, illuminated by the light of a few unclaimed candles, and hoped that the escape from her room would not turn out to have been the easy part.
Up, first-Farideh crept toward Rhand’s study, her nerves sending Hells magic through her and blurring the edges of her frame with shadowy smoke. At the top she peered in both directions, and saw no sign of guards. Odd, she thought, and she waited a few moments more, in case they were merely out of sight and quiet. Nothing.
She thought of Rhand’s warnings about his guest, and shoved that fear aside as she made for the study.
The door was open and she found the room beyond empty. A faint light emanated from the magic limning the vessels and from a crystal hanging overhead, and the brazier glowed with hot coals. Rhand’s open spellbook and ritual book sent a shiver through the space, pulsing with magic. Farideh slipped inside.
The heat from the brazier had no effect on the air over the vessels, and through the cloud of her breath, she watched the waters ripple. With no wizards to watch her, she might be able to find the way out.
Farideh scattered a pinch of the dried petals across the water’s surface, the way Rhand had. Specific, she thought, but vague. “Show me the last time someone found a weakness in the wall around this camp.”
The waters did not change. It hadn’t happened.
“Show me the last time someone came close to escaping the camp alive.”
The waters remained, stirring gently.
Farideh leaned farther over the waters, tension closing around her breath. She’d asked scores of questions in the days before and seen all manner of visions in return. But the Fountains of Memory had nothing to say about escaping the camp. No one had managed. Rhand hadn’t lied.
She’d been sure he had. There was something odd about the way he’d responded. Something that reminded her too much of Lorcan-that half moment where he decided to tell her the truth turned sideways.
Her heart buckled at the memory. Without thinking, she threw another pinch of petals into the waters. “Show me what happened to Lorcan when I made the deal with Sairché.”
There was Sairché, there was Farideh. There was the agreement, turning the room inside-out. The waters shivered and showed the Hells-and Sairché was right, there was no mistaking anything on Toril for such a place. The ground itself seemed to quiver, as if it were alive and hurting. There was a cave-a hollow of bone sunk deep into that evil ground and filled with writhing, shadowy forms. A cage formed of what looked like insect legs, thick and thorny, the spaces between crackling with lightning, and at its center, herself and Havilar. Sairché and Lorcan watched.
“What did you tell her?” Lorcan asked Sairché.
“What goes on between a girl and her patroness is private,” Sairché said. “Isn’t that right?” Farideh’s chest tightened, and she wished perversely she could be there, that she could tell him the truth.
The lightning of the cage snapped, popped, leaped outward to spark against the sides of the bowl. The center of the waters dropped nearly to the bottom of the basin, as if a drain had opened below. A sickly light shone from the whirlpool and the smell of brimstone wafted off the waters. Farideh stepped back.
A portal, just as Rhand had said-to the Hells, but when? If she reached in, could she save Lorcan? Or only trap herself a second time? The magic holding the waters sparked and crackled as the light built. Farideh reached toward it, feeling the pressure of the air change as she approached the portal’s edge.