Prince of Lies (41 page)

A blue-white ball of light formed around the break in the blade. For an instant, the glow hovered like faerie fire in front of Cyric, dancing along the sword’s edges. Then it swelled, filling the throne room with its brilliance. The explosion crushed the death god’s trophies to dust, splintered his throne of misguided martyrs.

When the light subsided, a shadow-wrapped figure lay before the Prince of Lies, its back broken, tears welling in its rose-red eyes. “Ah, my love, I was a fool to betray you.” Cyric dropped the sundered blade. “You.” The black mask had fallen away from the Shadowlord’s face, revealing features that shifted and warped like the cloak of darkness that hid its form. A soft, feminine visage coarsened into a man’s. An aquiline nose blunted into bulbousness, flattened, then narrowed and turned up daintily at the end. Only two features on Mask’s face remained constant: the god’s glowing red eyes and the pale fangs extruding from his lips. “If I had read the Cyrinishad sooner, realized your greatness before it was too late.” The Shadowlord slumped to the floor. “I never would have kept him hidden from you.” Mask’s form melted away into a pool of darkness, which merged with the death god’s own shadow. The voices of Cyric’s myriad selves shouted out their dismay, chorused their anger. The Prince of Lies stared, unseeing, at his shadow, trying to make some sense of the bizarre scene. He couldn’t. There were too many things clawing at his thoughts, hoarding bits of his attention. In Yulash, an assassin offered up a halfhearted prayer to the God of Murder, her words as empty of devotion as her heart was of pity. A peddler, down on his luck and starving amidst the opulence of Waterdeep, bitterly cursed the God of Strife. His insults flew up like arrows into Cyric’s mind. And then there were the Zhentish. Thousands of women and men shrieked Cyric’s name, as if that act alone could earn his aid. Their pleas streamed across the death god’s consciousness, scattering his thoughts in their wake. He was lost, his consciousness torn in a million directions at once. The blow caught Cyric in the face. He barely noticed the physical pain, but the surprise dragged his attention from the maelstrom of racing thoughts back to his realm in Hades. The Prince of Lies looked out on the ravaged throne room, but what he saw there only confused him more.

The Burning Men, loosed from shattered chains, writhed across the floor in pain, unable to douse the fires consuming them. The explosion from the attack on Godsbane - no, Mask - had charred the walls and scorched a huge hole in the carpet. Cyric’s throne had been shattered, the bones strewn about. All these things seemed right somehow, appropriate to the setting. Yet there were other objects, other people in the room as well, bits and pieces from all the vistas taken in by Cyric’s incarnations. They all superimposed themselves over the reality of Bone Castle, creating a strange jumble of images.

Liquid shadows played upon the columns, blackened and broken, from the temple in Zhentil Keep. Near the fragments of the throne, a young novitiate to Cyric’s church in Mulmaster kneeled in prayer. The silver bracelets signifying his enslavement to the death god reflected wan torchlight; his blue-black robes smelled of sweet incense. Assassins crept along the walls, silently stalking unseen quarries. Three Zhentilar soldiers huddled near the door, just as Cyric was seeing them in the Citadel of the Raven. Standing but an arm’s length away from the death god, Kelemvor Lyonsbane raised a martyr’s bone like a war club…

Some part of Cyric’s mind shrieked a warning, and he lashed out. The back of his left hand snapped the makeshift weapon from Kel’s grasp as the palm of his right connected with the shade’s chin. Grunting in pain, Kelemvor flew backward. To the Lord of the Dead, the shade seemed to pass right through the devout young priest in Mulmaster, coming to rest at the feet of a dark-cloaked assassin.

“Capture him!” Cyric shouted madly. With twitching fingers, the Prince of Lies gestured at the phantom murderer, directing him toward the bruised and grimy shade rising up before him. When the assassin continued to skulk along the wall, the death god smiled. “Are you a nightmare, then? Has Dendar dispatched you to haunt me like those feeble terrors that attacked my denizens on the walls?”

Kelemvor brushed the dust from his tunic. “You’re going to wish this were a bad dream, you backstabbing cur.” He rushed forward, roaring like a bear.

Cyric called an enchantment to mind, but the undertow of his thoughts sucked the incantation away. Another part of his mind suggested he transform to avoid the blow. The Prince of Lies willed himself into the guise of a poisonous cloud, but he remained in that form for only an instant before a purring voice demanded he take on his rightful shape again, the form described in the Cyrinishad. The Lord of the Dead found himself trapped in his mortal-seeming avatar when Kelemvor struck.

They tumbled together, Cyric flailing wildly to defend himself, Kelemvor landing blow after blow with his hammerlike fists. When they came to a stop, the death god shrugged off his attacker and struggled to his feet. For the first time in a decade, Cyric felt pain. Though the ache came from nothing more profound than a blackened eye and cracked ribs, he found himself trembling.

The pantheon must have given Kel some power, the death god decided. Mystra and the others must be animating him with their might, just like one of the Gearsmith’s mechanical men. The shade couldn’t harm me otherwise.

The voices in Cyric’s head murmured their agreement: Better to flee such a direct battle. Strike from the shadows until your strength returns, until you discover what strange spell Mystra has placed on you to dampen your strength.

Kelemvor gripped the hilt of Godsbane and started toward Cyric again. “This’ll do to cut out your black heart. That’ll be my trophy. The rest I’ll leave for these poor souls.”

With the broken blade, Kel gestured to the Burning Men. The scribes crawled with painful slowness toward the death god. They moaned and clutched the air with sizzling fingers as they dragged their agony-stiffened bodies across the throne room.

Cyric backed away from Kelemvor, toward the center of the room. He kicked one of the Burning Men out of his way and ducked the awkward lunge of another. “I’m a god, Lyonsbane. And if I killed you when I was mortal, think of the agony I can put you through now.”

“So why are you running?” Kelemvor murmured.

Cyric didn’t answer. He attempted to focus his mind on teleporting away from Hades, but too many things were drawing his consciousness away from the enchantment. The voices in his head had become a chorus of discord offering five dozen opinions on even the slightest matter. And there were his faithful all across Faerun, of course, invoking the death god’s name to resolve every petty conflict in their lives. In Bone Castle, Cyric could hear the sound of battle ringing out in the antechamber and the soft tread of Kelemvor’s boots as he stalked closer.

Beware, Your Magnificence, Jergal cried from outside the throne room. The damned have broken into the castle!

The Prince of Lies abandoned the enchantment. Obviously Mystra was denying him access to the weave, or hobbling his ability to concentrate on magic. As he turned toward the door, Cyric silently vowed to gouge out her blue-white eyes when next they met.

A shade blocked the doorway, a mystic blade sparking starlight in his hands.

“I am called the True because I value loyalty above all else.” Gwydion leveled the point of Titanslayer at Cyric’s heart. “I am called the Brave because I will face any danger to prove my respect of duty.”

“Fool,” the Prince of Lies muttered.

He took a step toward Gwydion, but got no farther before a fierce pain shot up his leg. One of the Burning Men had locked his fiery hands around Cyric’s ankle, and no matter how hard the death god kicked him, he would not release his hold. Another of the scribes wrapped searing arms around Cyric’s neck and hung over his back like a cloak.

Screaming, the Prince of Lies spun around. He managed to shake the soul loose from his neck, and, for an instant, it seemed that Cyric might escape the scribes. As the death god stumbled forward, though, Kelemvor drove the sharp-edged stump of Godsbane into his gut and kicked him backward into the arms of the Burning Men.

“Your faithful await,” Kel said as the scribes swarmed over their tormentor.

The flames that tortured each of the Burning Men were unique, created to anguish their souls endlessly without diminishing them; as more and more of the scribes threw themselves onto the pyre, the fires mingled, grew white-hot and wonder-bright. The heat from the inferno drove Kelemvor back and forced Gwydion to shield his eyes. So it was that the Burning Men were freed of their torment, released from suffering by their brethren’s flames.

When the pyre died down, Kelemvor used Godsbane to sift through the ashes. Cyric was gone.

“Destroyed?” Gwydion asked hopefully.

“All the fires in Hades couldn’t burn Cyric from the world. He’s like a sickness, a plague.” Kelemvor shook his head. “He’ll be back.”

Wherein the effects of Cyric’s absence are felt

throughout the mortal realms, Gwydion the

Quick lives up to his name once more, and

Bone Castle gets a new tenant.

Renaldo led what was left of the company into the alley. For most of the morning, ever since the giants and goblins and gnolls had stormed through the shattered western gates, they’d been avoiding the monsters. Hopes of mounting a counterattack had slipped away quickly, undermined by each slaughtered Zhentilar they found, victims of the treacherous orcs who’d sided with the reavers or the savage mobs of gnolls now stalking the streets. The sewers beneath the city were no safer. The goblins had taken up residence there, along with the darksome things that usually dwelled in the murky depths - giant rats, carrion crawlers, and the floating blobs of flesh called beholders.

All Renaldo and his dozen troops hoped for now was a way to slink out of the city unnoticed. They would have settled for a place to rest, to bandage their wounds and gulp down whatever food they could find. Surprisingly, this narrow street of crippled cobbles showed a little promise.

To one side, a row of cramped houses slouched together like drunken sailors at muster. To the other, marble columns towered overhead. They marked a silent perimeter around the high piles of rubble that had once been the walls of an arena. Wooden skeletons of stalls and tents huddled between the columns. Gamblers had held court here, and moneylenders; the bloody games staged in the arena had given them a livelihood as profitable as any in the Keep.

As he crept past one gutted flashhouse, Renaldo paused a moment to revel in its destruction. He owed the better part of a year’s salary to the sharp who ran this place.

“Hsst. Lieutenant.”

Renaldo started at the sound, but didn’t turn around. With the field promotion only a few hours old, he still thought of himself as a sergeant.

“Something’s moving, Lieutenant. In the arena.”

The warning got through to him that time, but by then he’d heard the noises, too: low grunting and the slap of leather on stone. Something large was moving in there, struggling for purchase on the steeply angled rows of seats that led up from the sandy arena floor.

Renaldo signaled the soldiers skulking along behind him then slipped into the ruined flashhouse. Through the doorway he watched the rest of the company scatter. A few found dark niches across the alley. Most crouched under convenient piles of debris. They gripped their swords with hands trembling from fear and exhaustion and cold.

A quick survey of his surroundings told the lieutenant he’d chosen his hiding place poorly. The building’s walls were sound, but a huge hole gaped in the roof. Worse still, there was nothing in the room big enough to hide beneath. The tables and chairs had been hacked up, the larger pieces hauled away by the gnolls and orcs to build bonfires.

Renaldo considered making a dash for the dilapidated buildings across the alley, but the hiss of shifting rubble pinned him in place. He crouched next to the door, glancing up through the breached roof. Puffs of steam rose over the arena wall, each followed by a grunt of effort.

A giant struggled to the top of the ruined arena. The titan was large, even for his kind, and the blood matting his beard was obviously not his own. Dents marred his horned helmet and breastplate, damage done by siege engines. He’d knotted tents and tapestries together to fashion himself a motley cloak. Trophies of gold and silver-candelabras, mugs, and serving dishes - hung on a chain around one wrist. The trinkets jangled noisily as the giant hefted his real prizes, the limp corpses of two bulls, and balanced them upon his shoulders. The giant twisted his blue-tinged face into a mask of gleeful triumph and galloped down the rubble heap into the alley.

Renaldo held his breath as the giant lumbered closer. The titan had to squeeze sideways to fit between the arena’s columns, and he absently kicked a tent frame out of his way as he stepped over the abandoned flashhouses and moneylenders’ stalls. The clatter of the wooden poles as they rolled across the cobbles sent shivers up the soldier’s spine. Ground to dust beneath the heels of dragons and giants. That’s what the old woman had said. She’d been right about his promotion, though there was little left of the company to command. Perhaps she’d foreseen his doom, too.

Yet the giant passed by Renaldo’s hiding place without ever looking down. The titan stepped right over two of the other Zhentilar, as well, huddled as they were beneath an overturned cart in the middle of the alley. Whistling a tuneless victory song, he hurried out of the narrow street. His thundering tread shook the ground as he lumbered onto the boulevard beyond.

Sighing with relief, Renaldo crept from the gambling stall and started across the cobbles. The rest of the patrol followed his lead, sliding out from their hiding places and moving toward the shelter of the abandoned row houses. They’d rest there for a while, settle on a definite escape route.

Renaldo was in the middle of the alley, as far from cover as he could possibly be, when the first of the gnolls rounded the corner. At least twenty of them followed the scout, perhaps as many as thirty. Their tall, muscular frames were covered in armor pillaged from the Zhentilar’s own barracks. Their canine snouts jutted out from helmets designed for human features.