Brimstone Angels (24 page)

“Still hunting that
pothac
orc.” Mehen looked up at Farideh. “What am I supposed to tell him? Did you think about that before you went for a spell?” She looked away.

“Tell him she owns a rod enchanted with fire spells?” Brin said. He shrugged when all eyes turned to him. “It’s not impossible. You can purchase such things in the large cities if you know where to look.”

“That could work,” Farideh said quietly.

“It shouldn’t have to work,” Mehen said. “I don’t even want to know where you got that bloody thing. But we’re selling it when we get to a large enough city.”

No, Farideh thought, she wouldn’t sell it. Not until she knew what its story was. Not until she was sure it was safe for someone else to hold.

And not until she found something better to replace it with.

She said none of this to Mehen, who stared at her as if he still didn’t know what to do with her, as if he wished she were anyone else. As if—perhaps—he was afraid of her.

When Lorcan found that stupid orc, he was going to rend the bastard limb from shitting limb. Tear out his veins and strangle him with them. Pluck out his bones and beat him to death—

No, he thought, scanning the dark woods below. Not yet. As much as it seemed that Goruc had botched the plan, he had also deepened the thing, entrenched it down into Farideh’s mind, as certain as the sunrise. If the orc came again and his arrows found another heart, she wouldn’t be suspicious or surprised. She would want revenge, he thought with a smile. She would do all manner of things to gain vengeance.

He thought of her standing there, covered in blood and pale with fear.

He would kill the orc afterward.

A light, small and cool, stood out bright and sharp among the bristling shadows of the firs and pines. Lorcan circled, dropping lower
and landing behind a screen of sword ferns. He crouched low, peering into the darkness.

Not the orc, not at all, but a man, wiry and brown-skinned, carrying a chain that scintillated with a blessing that itched at Lorcan even across the distance.

The priest. The one Mehen didn’t want to know about Lorcan.

Perfect, Lorcan thought. He didn’t need a silverstar keeping Farideh company either. He took hold of the charm that granted him invisibility, and crept through the darkness toward the cool light of the priest’s magic. He matched his footfalls to the priest’s own, any sound masked by the silverstar’s steps.

Lorcan drew his sword. Faster than a spell and inarguably more satisfying. If they found the silverstar, the orc’s dagger would match enough to explain it away. A pity he couldn’t kill that little pretender paladin, who didn’t even try to protect Farideh.

The priest turned and looked directly at where Lorcan stood. Perhaps he’d heard something, but it didn’t matter. The charm was impenetrable. He could stare all he liked—

The chain lashed out, nipping at Lorcan’s elbow. He cried out and let go of the charm as he yanked his arm away, rendering him completely visible. The priest raised his eyebrows.

Forget the blade—Lorcan gathered up his own spell, something to make the priest burn from the inside out with the fevers and corruptions of Malbolge.

The priest reached calmly into his collar and pulled out an amulet. “
Vennela.
”

Lorcan’s spell fizzled into nothing. He clutched at another spell, a simpler thing, but it too collapsed. Cold horror seized him.

He reached for the sword again, but this time it was only to defend himself. The bastard priest had
bound
him, and nothing Lorcan set against him would work until the binding was undone. Even a quick lunge of the sword would probably knock Lorcan flat and screaming. Very slowly he set his thumb on the green ring, preparing to turn it, if that chain so much as twitched.

The priest looked him over once. “I’m not in the mood to hunt you right now,” the silverstar said. “It would just make both of us
annoyed and I have other quarry. But make no mistake, devil, if you don’t flee now, you’ll be next.”

“And I suppose you’re not in the mood for my assistance either?” Lorcan said. “I only saw your light and thought you might be interested in … directions.”

The priest held up the amulet. It felt as if crystals of ice were growing in Lorcan’s veins, spearing the flesh and splintering the bone. He flinched.

“Trust me,” the priest said. “If I have to send you back myself, you won’t enjoy it.”

I could kill him, Lorcan thought. I could. What good is the blood of an erinyes if you don’t give into the bloodthirst now and again? To the Hells with the amulet—if he just dived at—

No, Lorcan thought. He stepped back. Whatever blood he carried, he was cleverer than an erinyes. Whatever bloodlust he bore, it did not approach his sisters’ suicidal mania. And the key difference: If he were an erinyes, or a full-blooded devil as this priest seemed to believe, death would only return Lorcan to Malbolge, shamed and delayed, but whole nonetheless. But if the priest killed the cambion, Lorcan would be as dead as any mortal, unless Asmodeus pulled him back from the brink of the Fugue Plane. A scenario Lorcan did not wish to test.

“Another time then,” he said, and he was in the air before the priest could have the last word. Another time indeed—the silverstar would make a fit target. Right after Brin and that overcompensating plague-orphan, Mehen.

But first: Goruc.

The orc had been clever as well. Without his night-piercing sight, Lorcan wouldn’t have noticed the trail of broken grass that marked the passage of a dragging body across a clearing and up into the brush. Goruc lay still beneath a gorse bush, his hides blackened once more and his right arm bent inward.

“You,” the orc said, when Lorcan pushed the brush aside. He sat up, seizing his axe in his off hand.

“Me,” Lorcan agreed. “How much of that wyssin did you take? Or are you so stupid you can’t tell the difference between a human boy and a tiefling girl?”

Goruc bared his yellowed teeth in a cruel grin. “You can have her in the Hells then.”

“I think not,” Lorcan said. “What’s more, I have suspicions, Goruc, that you were not aiming to hit the glaivemistress, but her sister.”

“Your witch burned me again,” the orc said. “Knocked my shoulder loose when she threw me.”

“I gave you one order,” Lorcan said coldly. “One stricture that you were not to disobey. And yet you did.”

Goruc sneered. “What does it matter? I’m damned either way.”

“Oh, it matters,” Lorcan said. “It matters a very great deal.” He seized the orc by the shirt front, and used his thumb to spin the green ring that linked him to the Needle of the Crossroads.

Goruc had clearly never experienced interplanar travel. Lorcan slung the orc into the antechamber, and Goruc promptly vomited all over the floor. Lorcan closed the portal and seized Goruc by the back of his collar. Disoriented and frightened, Goruc could do little more than scrabble along with Lorcan through the haunted palace of Osseia, making pathetic whimpering noises.

Lorcan dragged him out onto the nearest balcony, thrusting Goruc’s torso over the edge. Below, the landscape of Malbolge, the warped and perverted corpse of the Hag Countess—Glasya’s unfortunate predecessor—stretched, horror after horror, away from the hag’s former skull and off into the distance.

“There,” Lorcan said, pointing to a mound in the midst of the oozing plains. “That is where you’ll begin—if you behave. They’ll harvest your soul and what’s left will get to enjoy the delightful experience of rising up the hierarchy of the Hells. In perhaps a thousand years, you’ll creep your way up to being a member of the legions and promptly be crushed by an angry war devil. And you will feel
lucky
for it.

“If you think what you’ve seen thus far is bad, remember Goruc: this is our home. This is what is normal. Now”—he seized the orc’s face and wrenched his head toward the east, where the finger bone towers rose up, where the first of the towers loomed—“that tower? Is full of horrors you can’t imagine. They torture the worst of the worst there. In there, that’s where they torture devils. Ever hear a nightmare scream for mercy?” Still gripping Goruc by the face, he leaned
down to speak in the orc’s ear. “You
touch
my warlock and you will never forget the sound. I’ll make certain. Not even while you’re being dissolved alive in a lake of acid. I’ll pull you out before you’re gone though. There are so many ways to spend eternity in Malbolge.

“That,” he said, shoving the orc away and to the floor, “is how it matters. You’re right—you’re damned either way—but I decide how
exactly
your damnation proceeds.”

Goruc scrambled to his feet, trembling to his every extremity, gabbling in whatever tongue it was that orcs spoke. That, Lorcan thought, is much more appropriate. Damn Mehen. Damn the priest. Damn Farideh too if she was going to shove him away and listen to them.

“I’ll kill the boy,” Goruc said, finding his voice. “Just as you order.”

“No,” Lorcan said. “You want to be in my good graces again, Goruc? I want the boy. I want the silverstar. And I want the dragonborn. All dead beyond any cleric’s skill to return them. The tieflings you don’t
touch
. Understand?”

“That’s …” Goruc shook his head. “How? The boy is one thing and maybe the dragonborn … but him
and
the silverstar … They’ll have my head before I get close enough to take theirs.”

Lorcan sneered. “You’ll find a way. Or I’ll find you.”

Goruc shook his head. “You said they’re heading for the cities. I need more time. I can track them in the wilds but the streets of Luskan? I’ll be hunting them my whole life.”

Tendays, Lorcan thought. He had tendays at best, now that she was asking questions about the Rod of the Traitor’s Reprisal, now that the boy was set against him, now that the silverstar had seen him. He unclenched his fists—Invadiah wouldn’t appreciate him asking for another of her treasures. He’d have to snatch it quickly, and not go after anything more.

“Give me your axe,” he said to Goruc. “I’ve something better to replace it with.”

Sairché watched Lorcan and the orc with the dislocated shoulder reenter the anteroom that held the Needle of the Crossroads, among other treasures of her mother’s, all but forgotten and sticky with the secretions of Osseia. She’d wiped down the trunk she perched upon, before settling herself behind a spell of invisibility.

Lorcan pulled down a case from one of the tidy piles and opened it. Inside lay an axe of shining mithral, with black runes inlaid down its haft. “Take it,” he said. “It will hunt the blood of your enemies.”

The orc lifted the axe with his good arm and tested its weight, his eyes shining and awed as though he held a relic. It was a relic, of sorts, Sairché thought. No one laid curses quite as strong as the one on that axe anymore.

“Now,” Lorcan said, snapping the case shut. He waved his hand to activate the portal of the Needle and seized the orc by his wounded arm. “Get going.”

Both flashed out of existence for a moment, but Sairché knew when to be patient. Secrets didn’t uncover themselves, even if Lorcan was being exceedingly sloppy with this one—especially for him. While she could count on one hand the number of her half-sisters who could aspire, perhaps, one day, to Invadiah’s levels of intrigue—if they didn’t get demoted by crashing in where they didn’t belong, or killed in some skirmish with another Layer—Sairché and Lorcan were different. Cunning Invadiah had no other cambion children.

Sairché wondered sometimes if their sire had been as cunning—or perhaps, craftier still; Invadiah still had the savagery her sisters became known for after the Ascension. But his identity was one secret Sairché had never managed to flush out. Invadiah had taken what she needed—twice—and never dealt with him again, as far as anyone knew. Certainly not to gain more offspring—Lorcan was the last of Invadiah’s efforts to expand her ranks. If she wasn’t going to get erinyes, she wasn’t going to bother.

And she certainly wasn’t going to see to the cambions’ inheritance.

The portal flashed again, and Lorcan stepped through.

“Does your orc know that axe’s cursed?” Sairché asked. With her words, the invisibility ceased.