Prince of Lies (37 page)

A few wyrms hovered over the fields beyond the city. If they watched for Zhentish reinforcements, their wait would be long and pointless. The city had been cut off from the thousands upon thousands of Zhentilar garrisoned up and down the Long Road and in the Citadel of the Raven. Had any sizable force managed to break through the dragons’ blockade, they would have found themselves outnumbered one hundred-to-one by the vast army of goblins and gnolls now milling to the north and west of the Keep, waiting for the giants to bring down the walls.

Cyric slowed his descent and pulled his mind away from the destruction of the city. For an instant he considered granting his priests the sorcerous powers they demanded. That would allow them to drive a few of the giants from the gates, perhaps stall the siege long enough for the death god to take on an avatar and wade into the fight himself. Yet the Prince of Lies could feel his own strength draining away. With each death, each worshiper who gave in to despair and abandoned his faith, Cyric lost more of his divine power. No, better to muster supernatural aid from the Realm of the Dead than risk opening himself to the vortex of his faithful’s demands.

At the merest of thoughts, Cyric traveled to his throne room. The scene that greeted him there was just as chaotic as the one he’d witnessed in Zhentil Keep.

An angry mob of denizens filled the long hall. They pressed toward the throne, shouting curses and threats at Jergal, trying to reach for Godsbane. The sword leaned against the throne, lifeless, pale as the martyrs’ bones supporting her.

“If Cyric’s run away from the fight, at least let one of us use the blasted sword,” a goat-headed denizen bleated. He bowed his horned head low, threatening to charge the seneschal.

Jergal held his ground. He hovered defiantly between the mob and Cyric’s throne, his cloak billowing around him like a dark angel’s wings. When any of the denizens got too close, he swirled his cape over their grasping hands. The darkness that was his body swallowed the creatures’ limbs, devoured the hands and arms greedily, leaving only seared stumps behind.

Furious at the violent confusion before him, Cyric lashed out. At a wave of his hand, a black globe appeared at the room’s center. Inky tentacles slipped from the orb, curled around the rioting creatures, and drew them screaming into the Abyss. Their shouts echoed from the globe as it shrank to a pinpoint of darkness then vanished. For a moment, only the soft moans of the Burning Men could be heard in the hall.

Cyric reached for Godsbane, but a momentary wave of dizziness overcame him. He dropped the sword and fell back against his gruesome throne. “Explain yourself, Godsbane,” the death god hissed as he pushed himself back to his feet. “Why wasn’t I told about the attack on the Keep?”

The spirit of the sword may not be able to answer, Your Magnificence, Jergal murmured, his cold voice ringing through the death god’s mind. Someone has struck a killing blow against her. Perhaps the Whore used her sorcery to-

“The pantheon planned this,” Cyric rumbled. “They crippled Godsbane so she couldn’t tell me the Keep was under siege.” Gently he lifted the blade from the floor and cradled it in his palms. The sword pulsed with a faint pink glow.

My love, Godsbane whispered. I failed you…

“They’ve not beaten us yet,” the Prince of Lies said. “Jergal, muster the denizens, unleash the hell hounds. We’ll drive the dragons and the giants from Zhentil Keep. I’ll lead the charge myself.”

This realm needs your valor first, my liege, the seneschal replied. The denizens you just banished-

“Yes, yes. Part of another petty uprising, no doubt,” Cyric scoffed. “I’ll deal with them after I’ve slaughtered the creatures storming my holy city. Now be quick about gathering up a suitable force, Jergal, or I’ll use your yellow blood to give Godsbane back a little life.”

The denizens had no part in a revolt. They came here seeking your protection. Jergal bowed his head. This time the souls of the False and the Faithless rise up against you, Magnificence - and they are led by the dead men you imprisoned in the Gearsmith’s unholy armor.

The City of Strife was burning. Blankets of flame wrapped themselves around the weird, ten-story structures that dominated the city’s skyline. Thick clouds of soot wafted over the fields of rubble, blinding everything that came in contact with them. The River Slith bubbled and steamed in the furnace-hot air.

Atop a huge pile of debris, Gwydion the Quick faced a dozen skeletons wielding razor-bladed pikes. The skulls of fifty of their kind, the broken shafts and twisted blades of an equal number of weapons, lay heaped before the undead soldiers, urging caution. Though he appeared too heavily armored to move quickly, the knight had proved time and again that his plate mail was far less encumbering than it might seem. And so the skeletons advanced slowly up the slanted mound of bricks and riven metal. Their prudence didn’t help them in the least.

One skeleton, braver or more foolhardy than the rest, stabbed at Gwydion with its pike. The armored shade sheared the blade off the pole with a single stroke of Titanslayer then lunged forward to shatter the soldier’s rib cage. The shattered bones tumbled back down the hill, clattering like stones rolling off a tin roof.

The other warriors took their fellow’s sacrifice as a signal to strike. Yet the Gond-forged armor turned aside the pikes as if they were blunted wooden toys. Gwydion whirled around, bringing the enchanted blade in a windmill arc through the skeletal soldiers. Bones cracked and skulls toppled from fleshless necks. The undead warriors retreated - those that could still run anyway - and Gwydion paused to look out on the battlefield.

Gangs of shades roamed the square. Some carried blades or cudgels or barbed whips wrested from the denizens. Others had crafted weapons from the debris. Gwydion and his fellow knights had found that releasing the False from their tortures was a simple enough matter. Rallying the downtrodden souls had proved even easier. Cries of “Down with Cyric!” and “Long live Kelemvor!” rang through the streets, the latter slogan born of Gwydion’s speech that day on the banks of the River Slith. Even though the shades knew nothing of the long-lost hero, Kel was a bitter foe of their oppressor. Those were credentials enough to cast him in the unlikely role of savior.

The denizens, unorganized and prone to fighting amongst themselves, had yet to mount any serious counterstrike. Overwhelmed by the sheer number of False rebelling in the city, many of Cyric’s faithful had retreated to the diamond walls of Bone Castle. They were the lucky ones. The denizens caught outside the safety of the keep found themselves facing rough justice, indeed.

Even now, across the square from Gwydion, a group of renegade souls flushed a denizen from the detritus of a ruined building. The little creature tried to flap away on yellow bat’s wings, but two of the shades tackled him before he could flee. Like all the other battles between the newly freed False and their former jailors, this skirmish was bloody and brief.

Neither the damned souls nor the denizens possessed the magical might necessary to destroy one another. Because of this, their battles tended to follow a gruesome, vicious pattern. Once the scuffle ended, the victors chopped the vanquished into a dozen pieces or more, enough so it would take days for the fingers and legs and arms to come together again and regenerate. Such was the case now, as the shades scattered sun-yellow bits of denizen flesh across the square. The creature’s head was left atop a pole, shouting curses at the False as they abandoned the square in search of other quarry.

“We’ll feed the whole lot of you to the Night Serpent when this is over, slugs!” the head cried. “We’ll sink you all to the bottom of the Slith!”

Gwydion recognized the thick, hissing voice. He hurried down from the heap of bones. Sure enough, the bruised and battered head gazed back at him with familiar contempt. “Well,” the denizen muttered, “what are you looking at?”

“You’re better off than Af was, Perdix. When this is over, you’ll still be here to serve the realm’s new lord.”

The little creature narrowed his eye, darted his forked tongue over gory, split lips. “Cyric’s black heart! You’ve come back!”

Gwydion slipped his helmet from his head. The shadows from the dozens of small fires burning in the rubble nearby made him look distinctly ominous as he smiled and said, “You said an uprising would never succeed here.” He wiped the sweaty hair from his eyes. “You were wrong.”

“Look, slug,” Perdix hissed, “you think you’re winning now, but wait until Cyric’s elite troops arrive.”

A subtle shift of the denizen’s watery eye made Gwydion turn, suddenly alert to the danger that loomed behind him. A gigantic panther, dark as midnight, fell silently from the sky on wings of black light. It struck Gwydion with one massive paw, sending him to his knees. The knight’s helmet clattered away, and Titanslayer slipped from his grasp.

The cat pounced on Gwydion with preternatural speed, pinning him to the ground. Like a house cat toying with a captured mouse, it batted at his exposed face. Claws as large as daggers drew bloody lines across the knight’s cheek, threatened to gouge out an eye.

“Hee hee!” Perdix hooted. “Speak of the devils! You’ve captured one of the important ones, you have!”

The panther spared the denizen’s head the slightest glance, clearly offended by Perdix’s statement of the obvious then turned its yellow eyes on Gwydion. The slitted orbs narrowed, as if the cat were pleased with its prize. The beast opened its mouth wide.

Titanslayer lay well out of reach, so Gwydion pummeled the cat’s legs and head with his fists. The creature’s thick fur seemed as tough as his own plate mail, though, and the blows did little damage. Still, the struggle bought the knight just enough time to pull the candle from his sword belt. With a grunt, Gwydion twisted sideways and tossed the stick of tallow into one of the dozens of small fires burning nearby.

With a hiss like a dragon gasping in pain, the wax spit forth a burst of smoke. The wavering cloud swiftly took a more definite form - a mastiff, as large as a draft horse and covered by a coat of writhing maggots.

“Free!” Kezef howled.

The rush of fetid air from the Chaos Hound’s lips extinguished all the fires in the square. The spittle from his lolling, tattered tongue ate holes into the cobbles at his feet. Kezef crouched when he saw the panther then leaped forward. The impact drove both beasts a giant’s height away from Gwydion.

The Chaos Hound closed slavering jaws on the cat and tore the death yowl stillborn from the beast’s throat. The panther tried to fight back. It battered Kezef with its black wings and ripped at his guts with powerful rear claws. Yet the mass of corruption that was Kezef’s skin shifted with each blow, as yielding as water.

When the cat fell, the maggots swarmed away from Kezef’s jet-boned skeleton to cover the corpse. They devoured the minion’s flesh then slid back onto the Hound. The gorged slugs made Kezef look bloated as they milled, sated, all across his corrupted body.

The Chaos Hound arched his back at the pleasant taste of flesh after so many eons of starvation. “Where am I?” he rumbled. “Where’s that treacherous bastard Mask?”

In the brief time it had taken the Chaos Hound to kill and devour the panther, Gwydion had managed to retrieve his sword, but not his helmet. The knight held the blade before him defensively as he faced the mastiff. “In the City of Strife. Mask gave me the candle and told me to free you here. He said you’d help us against Cyric’s minions.”

The Chaos Hound sniffed once then wrinkled his nose at the shade. “Stop trembling. I eat the marrow of the Faithful,” Kezef muttered. “You’re not quite ripe yet, little soul, and I’d only make myself sick.” He motioned toward Perdix with his dripping snout. “Where’s the rest of him?”

“Th - This is all of me,” the denizen stammered. “Just a head. Not enough to sharpen your teeth on.”

“In pieces. Scattered around the square,” Gwydion said. He backed toward his helmet and lifted it from the ground by one horn. “There are plenty of denizens swarming around Bone Castle, if you’re still hungry.”

“So that’s Mask’s game, eh?” Kezef barked a wheezing laugh. “Capture me and let me loose in his neighbor’s courtyard - all so he can rob the place through the back door, no doubt.” He turned away. “I’ll take my fill here, little soul, but I won’t be the Shadowlord’s pawn.” The Chaos Hound loped away, his paw prints spreading into pools of burning ichor in his wake.

“‘Scattered across the square!’” Perdix snapped. “You might as well have shoved me into his mouth.” The denizen snorted in contempt. “At least I’ve got the satisfaction of knowing you’ve lost the war, slug. Your secret weapon’s scampered off.”

Gwydion buckled his helmet back into place. “That creature was Mask’s idea,” the knight said, his voice echoing hollowly. He rested Titanslayer on his shoulder and started off toward the rubble-strewn fields that lay in the shadow of Bone Castle itself. “I’ve got other nightmares to unleash.”

In the Keep’s sheltered harbor, boats lurched drunkenly away from the docks, piloted by men desperate enough to brave the ice floes and the two dragons that had taken up patrol over the river. Past the Tesh Bridge to the east and the Force Bridge to the west, ruined hulks of carracks and cogs wallowed, half-submerged. Some had hulls shattered by the ice, others fractured masts and crippled rigging from the white wyrms’ frosty breath.

The floating, ice-rimed graves did little to deter the refugees from setting sail. The soldiers assigned to guard the port had also failed to turn back the mobs. Most of the Zhentilar had abandoned their posts at the first rush of panicked citizens. Those who’d tried to hold their ground now floated facedown in the Tesh, blood from their slit throats staining the water around them.

“The one w’the blue sail. She’ll make it out.” The orc spit in the general direction of his chosen boat, then leaned his knobby elbows on the low stone rail that ran the length of the Force Bridge.

“Nah,” his equally uncouth comrade grunted. “They’ll all end up driftwood - or toothpicks fer the dragons.”