A Practical Guide to Evil

Roland had not been forced to dig so deep into his reserves for years and had not missed the sensation it brought in the slightest: like sandpaper against his insides, his very soul rubbed raw and bloody by sore Use.

The Rogue Sorcerer pointed the dragon oak wand at the latest fae to land on the railing, the artefact grown sluggish from being fired repeatedly, and swallowed a curse. Another piece of his collection, going up in smoke. The red-veined wand trembled, the last of the dragon blood the tree’s roots had once drunk unleashing its nature in the form of a narrow, powerful ray of flame. The Lord of Plentiful Harvest, childlike face serene, winked mischievously at him right before the sorcerous flame tore right through yet another damned fake made of straw. The bait was gone in a wisp of fire a moment later, as Roland dropped the wand before the angry embers it burst into could savage his hand.

If that one had been a fake, then the real Lord must be the tone trying to break through – before the dark-haired man could finish his thought, another shape bearing the Lord’s appearance unleashed a torrent of golden power against the web of crackling Light that Adanna had unleashed around the spire, preventing the fae from ignoring them and simply flying up. The fae’s blow stretched the web back, but as Roland mustered a hard smile he already saw how it would end: the web stretched but held, and as if made of rubber it shot back the golden power at the flabbergasted fae that’d struck with it. The Blessed Artificer it had to be said, was abrupt at the best of time and often judgemental.

She was also ridiculously brilliant.

“It is too soon to smile, mortal.”

Roland did not bother to look behind him, where the voice of the Baroness of Red Hunt was coming from, instead immediately vaulting over the footbridge’s railing. Beloved Gods, he prayed even as a burst of some sort of power passed just above him and set every hair on his body affright, for the curse of brag you laid on these creatures, I give many thanks. Hands already digging in his pocket, the dark-haired man fished out a small engraved copper ring and shoved it onto his finger. The old Arlesite artefact woke eagerly, itching to be used even after centuries, and Roland clenched his belly in anticipation. Though Pelagian artefacts tended to be remarkably long-lasting works, since they’d been made from an understanding of sorcery derived from the Gigantes they tended to also…

Stomach lurching as his momentum was forcefully reversed and instead of dropping down to the bottom of the Belfry, where going by the sound of it Catherine was having a merry old time slaughtering eldritch creatures older than the written word, he instead shot upwards. Roland swallowed a scream and an emerald-studded bronze bracelet on his left wrist, shaped like a snake – which many in the Free Cities considered a symbol of healing and protection – broke like a cheap bauble. Better the Stygian artefact than his spine and most his bones, as would have been the case without the harm-gathering bracelet’s effect. Gigantes sorceries were effective but unfortunately they were also made for, well, Gigantes. Living titans who’d barely notice the kind of forces that would snap poor old Roland of Beaumarais like a twig. Ligurian sorcery, and its Pelagian offspring, as a rule did not usually bother with the protective measures for the caster common to any other family of the Talent.

There was a reason the Jaquinites now held in sway in most of Procer.

Sadly, though he was going up instead of down the Rogue Sorcerer was not unaware that he was still, to used the academic parlance, damned screwed if he did not act. There was only death to be found in the air, when fighting the Fair Folk. Reluctant as he was to call on such a precious resource, Roland reached for the small orb within himself that was the sorcery that’d once belonged to the Hateful Druidess. A mere sliver was unleashed, in the shape of a burst of wind erupting from his back with precise aim that allowed him to stumblingly land back on the footbridge between the sides of the Belfry and its central crystal spire. The Baroness of Red Hunt, though, had been quicker on the move than he. Already she was there, spear of bone raised and the stripes of red going down her face grown vivid. That could prove tricky, Roland noted.

“Crouch,” Adanna of Smyrna yelled.

He did, without hesitation, but alas so did the Baroness. Yet the fine line of Light that shot over his head did not simply pass beyond the fae, instead stutteringly halting over the Baroness and then shooting abruptly down onto the fairy’s back. Another penitence box, Roland realized even as from the point of impact a hundred small lines of Light spread out and covered every inch of the Baroness of Red Hunt in a shining webbing before locking down. How many of those had the Artificer actually brought? She had to be running out by now. Still, this would by him at least thirty heartbeats – though the Light cut both ways, protecting as well as imprisoning – before the penitence box broke and the Baroness was freed.

Adanna herself was in a spot of trouble, Roland saw as he turned. The Blessed Artificer used Light much as an enchanter would used sorcery, at first glance, but the Rogue Sorcerer knew better. One of the weaknesses to the blessings of priests – and Chosen – was that they lacked staying power. An object could be made to lastingly have the properties of Light, like holy water or the famous armour of Callowan knights, but Light simply could not be used the way sorcery could be through wards and enchantments. Which meant that while Adanna, like him, relied heavily on artefacts the abilities of those artefacts were nearly always temporary in nature. When the Light ran out, so would they. No trouble, when comparing a wand using magic and one using Light.

A great deal of trouble, however, when comparing the twenty three continuous layers of magical defence Roland currently had on his body compared to the single fading globe of Light that’d been all that separated the Blessed Artificer from the vicious blades and tricks of the Fair Folk. The shell vanished, and in the fading glow three silhouettes were revealed.

Adanna of Smyrna, tall and proud in her loose white button-up shirt and black vest covered by a long apron in striped shades of grey, golden eyes cold behind her spectacles. In her right hand she held a dull sword of iron, roiling with Light, and in her left a phial of coloured glass glowing like a torch. To one side the Lord of Plentiful Harvest was perched on the railing, looking small and childlike in his sweeping cloak of straw but with golden power already gathering above him in the form of a blade. The other fae perched on the other side was an unpleasant surprise, however, for it meant a third lord of the Fair Folk had joined their struggle. Wearing green vines as cloth and quiver, the green-winged fae looked eerily calm as he shaped a long spear out of what looked like young green wood. For a heartbeat, stillness held between the three of them.

Roland’s hand went for the doubling of his enchanted coat, fingers closing around a small steel knife heavily inscribed with Mavii runes. A flick of the wrist spun it into the proper grip even as he went for one of his pockets and pressed his thumb on the correct rune for the pocket dimension to present him the handle of his second finest casting rod. The three-foot long rod felt warm against his palm, and even as he swung it forward in an arc began gathering blue flames.

“Mabethe,” the Rogue Sorcerer roared in the tongue of the Taghreb.

Scatter, it meant. An imperious incantation for an imperious people. Streaks of blue flame thundered down along the arc he’d traced, shaped like five great furrows, and the dance began anew. The green-winged fae struck with the swiftness of a viper, green spear darting forward, but the Blessed Artificer grit her teeth and shattered the vial of coloured glass in her grip.

“Flee from the Light,” she snarled.

Bloody shards dripped down, but they revealed a blooming sun of many colours – Roland was forced to close his eyes, lest he go blind, and even so the glare was burned into his pupils. The fae screamed, and when he found he was able to see again the Lord of Plentiful Harvest was seared and howling. The other, though, had merely retreated into the air past the railing. And was nocking an arrow, aiming at a still-blinking and seemingly unaware Adanna. Had she blinded herself with her own work? The Rogue Sorcerer broke into a run. His flames had been blown away by the great burst if many-coloured Light, but the ornate casting rod was still in his hand. Pulling at one of the dozens of spheres within him that had belonged to mages from the Army of Callow, the Rogue fed the sorcery through the casting rod and let the artefact shape it.

Still at a run, he slashed the length of lapis-lazuli and gold at the winged bowman. A notch of blue flame was spat out, sizzling in the air as it flew towards the fae. The creature disdainfully flew back with a beat of wings, adjusting his aim with the bow as he did, but was visibly taken aback when the blue flames followed. Adanna traced a streak of blood along the length of the dull iron sword she held, speaking soft words, and in the beat that followed Light bloomed once more: a great construct of it, shaped like a massive sword around the small one she held. The shine reflected against her spectacles, but the Blessed Artificer’s hard grin was not to be mistaken for anything but feral as she turned towards the recovering Lord of Plentiful Harvest.

Even as Roland closed the distance between himself and Adanna, the green-winged fae shot a greenwood arrow into the seeking blue flames with open irritation. There was a strange growth of the wood within the blaze, which to the Rogue’s disappointment was enough for both fire and arrow to peter out. As it was one of his better bread-and-butter spells, it was disheartening to see it fail so easily. Still, he’d gotten there in time. Adanna carved through a fake fae made of straw, the railing beneath it and even a chunk of the footbridge while she was at it, but the sword of Light would not dissipate on a single blow. It would last for a few more moments, at least, which left the Rogue Sorcerer free too… The arrow streaked forward, but fresh blue flames devoured it even as Roland leapt and his foot landed on the railing.

The green-winged fae was just out of reach and retreating quicker than he could catch up, damnation. He’d been just a little too slow to leap, and now-

“Sweet the sorrow, the heady rue

That has my hand aching of you.”

The Exalted Poet’s voice sounded like the plucking of a harp, its sorcery filling the air. It sunk into the fae effortlessly, seizing him whole.

“Thank you,” the Rogue Sorcerer hollered without turning.

The bowman fae had frozen in apparently transfixing sadness for just a few heartbeats, but it was enough for the Rogue Sorcerer to tackle him in the air. The fae’s garments of green vines boiled angrily as the two of them dipped in the air and Roland pressed the casting rod against the side of the fairy’s neck before pushing through blue flames.

“Unwise,” the fae calmly said.

Well, that’d be nothing new. Even as vines grew wildly and tore the rod out of his grasp, putting themselves between the fire and fae, Roland smiled for he’d not been holding on to the casting tool. His hand on the fairy’s shoulder, ignoring the pain of biting vines that broke through the Praesi shielding tool he’d obtained at great cost, the Rogue Sorcerer rammed his steel knife into his enemy’s back. A beat passed.

“Mine,” Roland confessed, “is a most greedy Name.”

His lot was take and keep and use, though he would never become what he had risen to correct. The Rogue Sorcerer would take only from those deserving: those who misused their talents, the gifts the Gods had given them. And there was another word, for such a thing, one that had become part of who Roland of Beaumarais was: Confiscate, his soul whispered, and Creation whispered with it. Like a hungry leech, his aspect sunk its hooks into the power at the heart of the fae. Ah, a Count of Autumn were we? The Count Green Apples, for that was his name, struggled and trashed impotently as his very nature was exsanguinated. The Rogue Sorcerer might die or go mad, if he took too much of the power within him – especially a power so utterly alien as that of the fae – but then that was why he’d brought the knife.

The runes shone, and blood both human and fae mingled as a the greater part of the power of the Count of Green Apples passed into the steel knife.

“What are you?” the Count gasped.

The wings faded, swallowed whole. The pair began to fall, still intertwined.

“The sole charlatan among a parade of demigods,” Roland told the noble. “Smoke and mirrors, my good count. Or rather smoke, mirrors and a knife.”

Ripping the runic blade free, the Rogue Sorcerer kicked off from the fae and then kicked him again in the face so the creature would drop his leg. He still had a hand free, and a small window as they both fell, but there was no artefact that would quite do the trick. Gritting his teeth, Roland shaved another sliver off the Hateful Druidess’ power and wove a quick wind that tossed the powerless Count of Green Apples into the first story of the Belfry over the railing, to impact with great fracas against a writing desk. The ground was swiftly hurrying towards Roland, and there seemed to be an unfortunate amount of fire down there, so he promptly began to Use the knife that’d drank so deep of the fae noble. His coat and clothes suddenly shivered, and the hand holding the knife was seized by massive pressure as he tried to coax out power from within.

A set of three enchanted black pearls on a string of dried seaweed, an Ashuran acquisition, immediately blew up as the power that tried to force metamorphosis onto his hand was kept from succeeding – the dark-haired man still cursed profusely as the many tiny shards drove through the skin of his ankle. The Rogue Sorcerer succeeded at making green wings bloom from his back, focusing through the pain, and immediately stopped drawing from the contents of the knife. The pressure faded. The knife he kept in hand, as a tool for control, flying crookedly back up to the footbridge on fae wings. For lack of knowing how to land, Roland instead positioned himself above the bridge and ceased using the knife. The wings shattered and he dropped, landing on his feet. Yet it felt like he’d forgotten something, the Rogue Sorcerer mused as he rose to his full height. It came to him a heartbeat later.

“Mautedit,” Roland swore. “My casting rod.”

It would have dropped all the way down and the odds it’d broken in the fall weren’t low. Still, even if it’d shattered into a few pieces it could likely be repaired by Hierophant or the Blind Maker.

A heartbeat later Night billowed out at the bottom of the Belfry like a massive sea of power unleashed, lapping at the walls and the base of the spire. Roland let out a whimper. How was it that every time he fought at Catherine’s side, he ended up losing a priceless and irreplaceable artefact? That casting rod had been crafted in Thalassina, which didn’t even exist anymore. Gods, if she’d burned down a slice of the Belfry’s library while she tangled with the fae they were going to need to have words. Cross words, even. It would have to wait, however, as now it seemed like the tide might be turning against the fae. The Baroness of Red Hunt had been freed of her prison of Light and come to reinforce the Lord of Plentiful Harvest – who was now missing an arm, and sporting a furious sneer – but now that the Exalted Poet had come, the Chosen finally had numbers on their side.

Odd, Roland thought, that Catherine would have sent up one of the Named with her but not the other. The Fallen Monk would no more be able to withstand existing in the general vicinity of the Black Queen taking a fight seriously than the Exalted Poet would have, which was why he’d assumed reinforcements had been sent at all. Both fae turned, watching him like hawks as the last wisps of his stolen wings dissipated. Yet they were not striking, and neither was the pair of Chosen facing them.

“Unmake your web, witch,” the Baroness of Red Hunt said.

Adanna, in her own way a delight, took a moment to realize she was the one being addressed and not the Exalted Poet.

“I think not,” the Blessed Artificer stiffly said. “I offer you this instead: surrender now and your deaths will be swift.”

Roland would need to have a conversation with her about how the Grand Alliance did not, in fact, endorse the execution captives but he was willing to chalk that one up to a lack of practice in heroic banter. The Artificer was not young to her Name – she’d had it for a few years – but she had been… sheltered. Treasured for her intellect and miraculous abilities by the Thalassocracy, she’d been privileged and protected to the extent that she had faced neither a villain nor a disaster before coming to join the Tenth Crusade. No wonder her first taste of war at the Red Flower Vales had seen her shy from the frontlines and embrace the concept of the Arsenal wholeheartedly.

“You need not bleed for this,” the Lord of Plentiful Harvest told them, voice warm and reassuring. “We seek no death, only to prevent a great danger that threatens us all.”

The hateful sneer from earlier was gone from the childlike face, but some ugly glint of it still lingered in the fairy’s eyes. Roland trusted not these creatures, and his fingers began inching towards another artefact from his trove. The polished orb of quartz he’d picked up in Dormer, imbued with three Callowan war-spells, was slippery against his sweaty palm but Roland cupped it against the side of his pocket and managed to seize it without giving away the game.

“Your fellows downstairs were not so eager to treat with us,” the Exalted Poet said. “This is petty trickery: Splendid are the eldest children of deception.”

“Your lives were not bargained for,” the Baroness of Red Hunt said. “They will only be lost if you persist in this fool’s errand. Let us through, lest we all pay for the madness of a single man.”

“Whether or not your intentions are laudable no longer matters,” the Rogue Sorcerer said, fingers tightening around the orb. “You have attacked the Arsenal, and in so doing become a tool of Keter and Gods knows who else. For that, there is only one end awaiting you.”

“The thief speaks at last,” the Lord of Plentiful Harvest jeered. “You’ll have no more of us, usurper. Your words are wind, and in the end what you stole will take from you.”

“What splendid diplomats you make,” the Rogue Sorcerer drily replied, fully intending the second meaning. “Begone, creatures.”

Will taking hold of one of the sorceries within the orb, Roland let it loose with a thought. He cut the side of his hand at the antlered baroness, a long streak of chittering lightning lashing out forward. Wessen’s Fork, as it was called, had been the invention of an ancient Wizard of the West of that name. It was a clever piece of work, a bolt of lightning that – ah, and there it was. The Baroness of Red Hunt threw her spear of bone at the sorcery, but instead of being shattered by the greater power the spell split into two streaks of lightning both still headed towards the fae. A heartbeat later Adanna tossed up a disk of clay covered in High Tyrian writing, which began to spin and shot out a long blade of Light. The two fairies elected to retreat, pushing off the railings and dropping below.

The spear of bone fell into dust and vanished, but Roland wouldn’t fall for that trick twice: the Baroness would have the thing in hand when she next reappeared.

“They are not attacking anew,” the Blessed Artificer noted. “Perhaps they are retreating.”

“That would be a stroke of luck,” Roland said, implicitly disagreeing. “Poet, how fares the fight below?”

“The Black Queen triumphs,” the other man shrugged. “And requires not the assistance of my verses in her struggles.”

“But the Fallen Monk’s fists suit her better?” Adanna said. “One cannot account for taste, I suppose.”

Roland kept his eyes on the Poet as the Artificer talked, looking for a reaction. He found only indifference there, as if the matter did not truly concern him. Roland knew little of the Monk, save what Archer had mentioned in passing. The man had talents useful against those who used Light, and a knack for stepping lightly. As befitting, the Rogue Sorcerer supposed, of a villain who’d been able to very publicly murder several of the Holies and then escape Laurence de Montfort’s pursuit. The dark-haired man went through his pocket, finding a slender wand of ebony. It was petty work but its sole enchantment, one that spewed out a fist-sized blow of kinetic force, tended to be useful in all sorts of situations. Roland twirled it absently around his fingers, feeling the sorcery within lapping eagerly at his skin.

“Your aid here is welcome,” Roland agreeably said. “For when they will return.”

“If they return,” the Blessed Artificer insisted.

“I expect they will, my lady,” the Exalted Poet said. “Yet I have something of my own prepared that might wound them, a fresh work inspired by what I glimpsed below.”

The Rogue Sorcerer joined up with the other two, shoulder brushing past the Poet’s as he kept half an eye on the empty space around them. But only half, for he had not forgotten this band’s true purpose.

“I look forward to witnessing it,” the Blessed Artificer said.

“I will endeavour not to disappoint,” the Poet laughed. “Yet it might be a verse of some potency. Do either of you have any defences I should beware of hurting?”

“Yes,” the Blessed Artificer noted. “My web is maintained by a-”

“Stop,” Roland ordered, eyes on the Poet. “Leave it at that, Adanna.”

There lay hidden beautiful diamond spinning top that formed the web of Light blocking the fae from going upwards would keep feeding it so long as the top kept spinning and there was Light within it. It’d been covered by illusion of his own – more accurately, of a travelling illusionist with some truly unpleasant habits Roland had briefly encountered – and had been stashed away in a nook within the spire to their side, where it should be beyond harm for now.

“If he does not know, he cannot avoid disrupting it,” the Blessed Artificer lectured him.

“I do not know what I have done to earn your mistrust, Lord Sorcerer, but I can only apologize for it,” the Exalted Poet told him, though he sounded at tad aggrieved.

“Why aren’t the fae attacking, Poet?” Roland asked.

“Who can know the minds of the Splendid?” the Poet replied. “Perhaps they are waiting for us to be distracted, or even striking at the Black Queen’s back.”

Then why can’t I hear any noise coming from downstairs? the Rogue Sorcerer thought. Not a single noise at all, not since there’d been that massive wave of Night.

“What did Queen Catherine say when she sent you up and not the Monk?” Roland asked.

“She simply ordered us so, and we obeyed,” the man laughed. “Who dares argue with a such a woman?”

That laugh had come just a little too quickly, the Rogue Sorcerer decided. And Catherine was commanding, true, but in no way above explaining her reasonings when asked. If anything Roland had noticed she tended to think better of the people who did ask, if the situation allowed for it and the tone was not confrontational.

“Of course,” Roland said, smile tugging at his lips. “I would have done the same.”

His fingers tightened against the ebony wand. He could not prove it, but his instincts were screaming. Theirs was a band of possible traitors, Catherine had made clear to him, and Roland fancied he’d just sniffed one of them out. It was the silence below that worried him. The Black Queen at war was many things, but quiet was not usually one of them.

“It has been a long day,” the Rogue Sorcerer apologized. “The web is maintained by an artefact I hid under illusion, Poet, I’ll allow you to glimpse through it.”

He gestured, calling on one of the spheres within him, and crafted an illusion of a little box of glittering gold in the middle of the footbridge. One only the Levantine should be able to see. The Exalted Poet’s eyes flicked to it, which was when Roland casually pressed the tip of his wand against the man’s throat.

“Don’t move,” the Rogue Sorcerer mildly said.

“This is becoming absurd, Lord Sorcerer,” the Poet protested.

“Roland, put that wand down,” the Blessed Artificer ordered. “Your suspicions are getting out of hand.”

“I do not understand what is moving you to violence,” the Exalted Poet told him. “And the fae could return at any moment.”

“The Count of Green Apples that nearly killed the Artificer,” the dark-haired man said, “did you get sent before or after he flew up?”

Roland was not unfamiliar with clever sorts, women with glib tongues or witty men with laughing eyes. Liars of one shade or another, especially Named, were used to being able to talk themselves out of anything. That could be used. And in this particular case, the burly Levantine might have the frame of a warrior but as far as the Rogue Sorcerer knew he only had sparse fighting experience under his belt. That was a weakness in knowledge, paired with a proficiency and tendency at lying.

“After, naturally,” the Exalted Poet said. “I assumed I was sent as reinforcements.”

Except that Catherine would have known that the Count would get here long before anybody sent up by the stairs, considering the wings, so that decision made no tactical sense. It would have been better for her to drag back down the Count of Green Apples with Night while her two helpers kept the other fae at bay long enough for her to pull it off.

Without hesitation, Roland fired the wand right into the man’s throat.

The Exalted Poet blew over the railing, toppling down with a surprised scream.

“Roland,” the Blessed Artificer screamed.

He turned to find she had pointed a short stave of charred wood at him, eyes gone grave behind her spectacles.

“Two out of three are traitors,” the Rogue Sorcerer noted, for the Poet had covered for the Monk with his words and the conclusion to be had was obvious. “I wonder, will it be three?”

“You’re the one who just threw an ally to his death, you madman,” Adanna retorted. “Put down the wand, Roland.”

“If you are, your game is deep enough I can hardly glimpse it,” Roland admitted. “But I will not surrender my wand, Artificer.”

He would not disarm himself when the enemy was not about to return. She’d understand soon enough, anyway.

“You leave me no choice, then,” she grimly replied.

A heartbeat later a spear of bone pierced up from under the footbridge, tearing through where Roland had woven the illusion of a golden box. The bait had been taken. The Baroness of Red Hunt burst through in a storm of rubble, red wings bright as Adanna’s face fell.

“You laid a trap,” the Blessed Artificer said, catching his eyes.

“Nothing,” the fae shouted. “It was nothing, you useless worm.”

“That would have been it for the web,” Roland replied, ignoring the creature.

The end of the footbridge opposite the spire shivered as a glamour went down, revealing the Exalted Poet – throat visibly bruised – and the Lord of Plentiful Harvest at his side.

“It does not have to be this way,” the Poet rasped. “They are right, Artificer, you already know it. You were shown the truth, weren’t you? They play with powers beyond their understanding, and they will doom all the world.”

“Traitor,” the Blessed Artificer replied in an indignant hiss. “I stand with Above, now and always.”

A moment of tense silence passed.

“Her wonders will break if she dies, most likely,” the Exalted Poet said, tone reluctant.

The fae looked unamused, both of them.

“A pinnacle of uselessness,” the Lord of Plentiful Harvest sighed, face displaying a childish moue. “We knew this already.”

“Wrong,” the Blessed Artificer said. “You know nothing and less.”

“I know this, child: the Black Queen is dead,” the Baroness told them. “Take down your web now, if you do not wish to follow her in this.”

Roland’s fists clenched. They could not lie knowingly, he reminded himself. Which still meant there would be no reinforcements. It would be a hard fight, even with the fae lord crippled and the Poet’s throat hurt.

“I’ll take the Lord of Plentiful Harvest and another,” the Rogue Sorcerer mused. “Do you want the Poet or the Baroness?”

A wreath of blinding Light came to life around the charred stave in the Blessed Artificer’s hand, crackling like lightning and growing into a great spear.

“I’ll take both,” Adanna of Smyrna snarled.

Well, who was he to argue with a lady?