“I suppose.”
Dahl had read the first few lines several times over when Armas cleared his throat.
“She says she can’t tell what will come of it or when. And all I can think of is how many gods there are. . It’s a fearful thing.”
“Yes,” Dahl said dryly. “The gods smiling on you is terribly frightening.” He heard the venom in his own voice and cursed himself. You’re not seventeen and newly fallen, he told himself. Armas has taken nothing from you, and he doesn’t deserve your pique. “I suppose,” he said, more kindly, “it probably is frightening. You do have my sympathies.” He wondered how many of the Chosen Farideh named might be favored by Oghma, and realized he was reading the same line on the scroll again.
Armas sighed again. “She said she thinks it will be soon. Says the mark is sharp. I suppose that’s a small blessing on its own. Not long to wait and wonder.” He stepped to the left, rifling through the straw and twigs. “If it’s something wicked, I don’t know what I’ll do. Maybe walk into the lake with my pockets full of stones.”
“Why would a wicked god choose you?” Dahl murmured. “Are you wicked?”
“I was helping Tharra.”
“That hardly counts.”
“According to who? Who can claim to know the will of the gods, right? Ah!” He pulled a small jar and then another out of the thatch, like plucking apples from a tree. Dahl took them: oils of sacred juniper and distilled troll saliva. He frowned and looked back at the ritual scroll-both were mentioned. The latter was a very expensive component and there was quite a lot of the former-but neither was used to achieve the sort of effect Tharra had described.
He unrolled several more inches of the scroll-familiar phrases, familiar directions, intermixed with unfamiliar forms. This line was reused from pre-Spellplague castings of destructive magic out of Lost Halruaa; that one borrowed the structure of protective spells the Turmishan wizards crafted during the Wailing Years; that focusing diagram was absolutely crafted by Oghmanyte casters in Procampur. Very complex, Dahl thought. Very confusing.
Armas pulled down still more components. Powdered silver and salts of copper, resins of obscure flora and ground teeth of strange beasts. A packet of dragon scales, a pouch of iron filings, a purse of dried purple blossoms that smelled strongly of mildew. A delicate crystal bottle of residuum. Bottles of specially imbued inks and paints.
“That’s all,” Armas said, rubbing his uncaged hands as if they ached.
“That’s more than enough,” Dahl said, at a loss in regards to the sheer quantity of components. Eleven different items. Easily thousands of coins worth, especially when you added in the hamadryad’s ash. He wondered if Tharra had used it all or if Farideh had reclaimed the rest. He’d have to check.
Each component was included in the ritual-which made no sense at all to Dahl. The various ingredients had their own attributes, their own abilities to draw or repel or create patches of magic. But together. . Together these made a mess.
“What do you think the chances are I end up being able to dig the shelters faster?” Armas said abruptly. “Maybe it’s someone who’s seen what trouble we’re in.”
Dahl shook his head, still studying the ritual. “Would be nice.”
“Torden’s got people carrying dirt out of the shelters, dumping it in secret places. They’re moving quickly, but they’ve got only enough room for eight hundred or so-no more. Would be nice to make earth turn to air or some such.”
Dahl kept his tongue, all too aware that his envy was misplaced and unflattering. Armas had no idea why Dahl should even be envious. He read on, through several more utterly tortuous steps, half his mind on the puzzle before him and half on the never-ending puzzle of Oghma.
Dahl sighed and rolled the scroll back up. “We can go. I’ll need to look at this some more. It doesn’t make sense.”
“What does these days?”
Indeed, Dahl thought, as they collected the multitude of components into a cloth and bound it shut. Preparing to fight Adolican Rhand and some crafty devil at the side of a drow, a cunning half-orc, an arrogant sun elf, a girl you thought was dead, Lorcan, and scores of people the gods have given the powers to make daisies and see souls.
And all you have is a ritual that makes no sense, he thought glumly. He looked up at Armas, who was studying the space outside the hut with a similar glumness. A pang of guilt went through Dahl’s stomach-the day after his mentor turned out to be a traitor, the half-elf turned out to be the Chosen of an unknown god. It wasn’t worth ranking hardships.
“My former teacher told me something very wise once,” Dahl said. “The sort of wisdom you don’t believe at first, at least not for yourself. But maybe you’re not as pig-headed as me.”
Armas regarded him. “I’ve never been called stubborn.”
“There are times when what you want doesn’t matter. Things are already in motion and the gods have already made their wills plain. So the very best thing you can do is to just remember who you are and take things as they come-one at a time.”
Armas smirked. “ ‘Shut your mouth and accept it’?”
“You don’t have to shut your mouth,” Dahl said. “But there’s something to be said for recognizing you’d best let a god have their full say before you decide to retort.” They walked back through the camp to Oota’s court. The paths and alleys were all but empty, faces peering out of windows as they passed. Off in the distance, he heard the jangle of guards patrolling.
“They’re going to notice sooner or later,” Armas muttered. “Then what?”
“Then we hope your god’s a fighting sort,” Dahl said, “and your gift happens to be punching those bastards back into the Shadow Plane.”
They made it back without incident to find the makeshift hall still busy with people-all standing a good distance from Farideh, who sat on the edge of Oota’s dais, her head in her hands. Dahl went over to her.
“You all right?”
“Headache,” she said, her voice muffled. “This is exhausting. I just need a breath.”
Dahl sat down beside her and unrolled the scroll once more, to the line he’d read twice. “Have they gotten any farther with the rooms underground?”
“Torden thinks they’ll be able to get a thousand in, if they don’t have to be there long. If they squeeze.”
Two-thirds, Dahl thought. Five hundred souls left behind to be wiped off the plane.
Farideh lifted her head. “Do you know the worst part? There’s a scroll in Rhand’s study that would solve all of this. A spell to make a cavern in the earth. And I didn’t take it.”
“How were you to know?”
Farideh shook her head, as if she ought to have, somehow. “I could go back. I could steal it-”
“No,” Dahl said firmly. “We have time still. We have the ritual-” He stopped, a sudden stillness in his heart. He unrolled the length of the scroll, skimming down the parchment, hunting for the completion of the spell-piece he’d just read, knowing it would have to be there.
It wasn’t.
“Stlarn and hrast,” he swore. He threw the scroll to the ground and clutched his own head. “It’s broken. It’s shitting broken.”
“What?” Farideh said. “Can you fix it?”
Dahl shook his head. “That’s why it makes no sense-that devil must have made it senseless.”
“Can you fix it?” Farideh said again.
“No,” Dahl said, considering the pieces that he’d found, the ways they seemed to just miss each other’s effects. “The problems are too big, too. . insidious. It looks like a proper ritual, all together. It feels like it should make sense and I’m just missing something. There’s bits here that have the sort of hints and markers that suggest some very recognizable wizards’ handiwork. See”-he picked up the parchment and pointed to a line of runes-“that’s absolutely one of the Blackstaffs from around the turn of the century. Really common element in their spells, starting around-”