Crucible: The Trial of Cyric the Mad (15 page)

This blasphemy was too much, especially since I had felt for myself the omnipotence of the Cyrinishad’s Dark Truths and seen with my own eyes the One’s mad behavior-and also because I perceived how well Rinda’s lies explained all that I had seen. A red sea filled my head, and, forgetting my terrible situation, I rose to my knees and flung the book away like the profane thing it was.

“Filth!”

I recalled my predicament when my world became a white flash. A deafening crack split the air, then a terrific jolt flung me from my hiding place and sent me tumbling across the hillside, until I finally struck a tree trunk and brought a shower of pinecones down upon my head. None of this caused me the slightest injury. I staggered to my feet and found myself facing exactly the direction I wished to go, which is to say away from the meddling Harper and her helpers.

The instant I tried to run, my limbs began to tremble with a sickly ache. My thoughts returned to Rinda’s vulgar journal, and especially to her claim about the cause of Cyric’s madness. Surely, this was another of her foul lies! The cries of my enemies rang out from all directions behind me, but still I found myself spinning on my heel to charge back toward the journal-and even I did not know whether this was because of Mystra’s spell or my own need to find the lie in Rinda’s claim.

My eyes were greeted by a solid line of armored warriors, grasping every sort of weapon, all rushing toward me. The sight turned my knees to rags, yet I grabbed a rock from the ground and ran to meet them.

Perhaps it would make a good tale to say that my assault stunned them so badly I smashed through their lines with nothing more than the stone and recovered the book, but the truth is much different. A few of them raised their brows; then we were upon each other. The stone flew from my hand the first time it struck someone’s head, and the soldiers’ weapons flashed at me from all sides, filling the air with such a whistling and clanging that I nearly died of fright-which was the only way I could have perished, as I remained under Tyr’s protection and could not have been killed if a dragon had swallowed me. Still, my foes thought I was giving a good account of myself.

In their fury, they slashed with blinding speed and thrust with the weight of their whole bodies and chopped with enough power to cleave me in two. But their blades never failed to turn aside, and each stroke hit one of their own. Before long, half of them lay bleeding on the ground. A clear alley to Rinda’s ledger opened before me, and I shot from the melee like a bean squeezed from its pod, whooping for joy and thinking myself invincible.

The witch’s voice burst into incantation. I glanced up and saw her flinging mud, but why should that have worried me?

“Save your magic, witch!” I leapt the crevice where I had been hiding and saw Rinda’s journal ahead. “No one can stop the mighty Malik!”

She finished her spell the instant I finished my taunt. I did not know how I could possibly outrun my pursuers while still reading from Rinda’s accursed book, but this could hardly matter to an invincible warrior such as me. I stooped to scoop up the ledger-then my feet plunged into a mudhole.

I fell flat on my face, and such was my compulsion to keep reading that I reached out and found the journal lying just beyond the fingers of my outstretched hand. I tried to bring my legs up to crawl forward and could not, and when I looked back to see the reason I found my feet caught in a block of solid basalt!

“Anyone can be stopped, Mukhtar.” The witch walked down and picked up Rinda’s journal, then scowled over her veil. “Or shall I call you the Mighty Malik?”

Ten

Kelemvor sat brooding in his crystal throne, staring out across a crystal floor through a crystal wall into the anteroom of the Crystal Spire, where an anxious mass of spirits stood awaiting admittance to the Hall of Judgment. Already the crowd filled the chamber to overflowing, and the Escorts were packing in more souls by the minute; the stream of the False and the Faithless never ended, and it was Kelemvor’s duty to choose a fitting destiny for each one. If he fell behind, he would never catch up. Yet how could he pass judgment on all these souls, when he himself stood accused of failing his office? “Jergal!”

Hardly had Kelemvor called the name before a shadow-filled cloak appeared beside the crystal throne, rising and falling upon a wind that did not exist. The cloak’s hood contained a gray oval emptiness with two bulging eyes and no other features. A pair of white gloves hung at its sides, unsupported by any sort of arm or appendage.

“I am here for you, as always.” This was the seneschal’s customary greeting. “How may I serve you?”

“You know I have been charged with neglecting my duties,” Kelemvor said. “Am I too kind to the brave or too harsh to the wicked? Do the charges have merit?”

“That is not for me to say,” Jergal replied. “I am no one’s judge, least of all yours.”

“I am not asking your judgment,” Kelemvor said. “I am demanding your opinion.”

Jergal’s cloak fluttered beneath Kelemvor’s harsh tone.

“I have no opinion,” said the seneschal. “I can only observe that you are always kind to the noble of heart and harsh to the craven. Your predecessors did not concern themselves with such questions, but only whether a soul had been Faithless or False.”

“My predecessors…”

Lord Death leaned forward, braced his chin in his hand, and fell into deep contemplation, for there had been a long line of death gods before him. Kelemvor had stolen the throne from Cyric, who had taken it after Myrkul perished during the Time of Troubles. Even Myrkul had won it in a game of knucklebones, and all this reminded Kelemvor that if he failed in his duties, he could be replaced easily enough.

A second shadow-filled cloak appeared at the hall entrance. This was also Jergal, for even he had once been God of Death, and he retained the power to manifest himself in many places at once.

“Lord Cyric has requested an audience.”

This brought Kelemvor out of his reveries, for the mere mention of the One’s name set him on guard.

“Cyric? I have nothing to say to that madman.”

“But I have something to say to you.” As Cyric spoke these words, a mighty throne of polished bones appeared in the center of Kelemvor’s empty Judgment Hall, and in it sat the One and All. He turned the black suns beneath his brow in Jergal’s direction. “I did not request an audience. I demanded one.”

Kelemvor drew his black sword from the air, but he was too shocked to use it. Aside from Mask, no one dared enter a Great God’s home without awaiting permission-and with good reason, as any god was at his most powerful in his own realm. Yet here Cyric was, not only uninvited, but sitting upon his own throne. It made Kelemvor’s head ache just to believe what he saw.

A third aspect of Jergal appeared in the entrance of the Judgment Hall. “Lady Mystra.”

The Goddess of Magic manifested herself before Lord Death’s throne immediately, for the Crystal Spire was always open to her.

“Come quickly.”

Kelemvor manifested an aspect of himself in Dweomerheart, Lady Magic’s palace of magic curtains, and he saw that Cyric and his bone throne also sat in Mystra’s shimmering audience hall.

“He entered without permission,” said Mystra.

“The same here,” said the Kelemvor in the Crystal Spire. He pointed past Mystra’s shoulder at the Cyric sitting in his Judgment Hall. “He demanded an audience.”

Mystra spun around and saw Cyric sitting before her in the Crystal Spire as well as in Dweomerheart, so that all three gods were in both palaces at once. All that follows happened in each throne room at the same moment.

“Just like old times.” Cyric’s mouth gaped open in a kind of grin. “Summon Adon, and the party will be complete.”

“Adon has better things to do,” Mystra replied. “Why have you broken into our palaces?”

The One leaned back in his throne and steepled his finger bones before his chin. “Did I approach you?” he asked. “Funny thing, but I swear you came to me.”

“If I had come to you, you would be dead by now,” said Kelemvor. “You demanded this audience. What do you want?”

The One leaned forward. In Dweomerheart he stared into Mystra’s eyes, and in the Crystal Spire he stared into Kelemvor’s.

“I have decided to take you two under my wing.”

In both palaces, Mystra and Kelemvor exchanged puzzled looks.

“Come now,” said Cyric. “Is this so hard to understand? We three must stand together. The others are conspiring against us.”

“What are you talking about?” Kelemvor demanded.

“The others are jealous,” the One explained. “And frightened. We have made so much of ourselves already.”

“They are frightened of you,” Mystra said. “With Kelemvor and me, they are only angry-or have you forgotten how you used Tyr’s aggravation against us?”

Cyric frowned at this. “Me? Tempus levied the charge!”

“At your prompting,” Kelemvor noted. “Otherwise, we would be in trouble, but Tyr-“

“Tyr is as frightened as the others!” Cyric rose from his throne, and in the Crystal Spire he pointed a bony finger at Kelemvor, and in Dweomerheart he pointed one at Mystra. “Do not believe that rubbish about blind justice. He means to turn them all against us.”

Mystra rolled her eyes, and Kelemvor shook his head.

“Sooner or later, you will join me. Do it now, and I promise you each a quarter of the spoils.” The One shook his finger at the two lesser gods. “Imagine, the three of us ruling Faerun!”

Mystra’s jaw fell. “Can you really be that mad? You must know we would rather die!”

“We have listened longer than you deserve, Cyric.” Kelemvor rose and pointed his black sword at the One. “Now go, before I save Tyr the trouble of trying any of us.”

Cyric stared at the two gods in silence, then his teeth clacked together and he slumped back. “Fools! I was willing to forgive you.” His throne faded into nothingness, so that he seemed to be sitting in empty air. “Now you fall with the rest.”

Eleven

Rinda’s journal lay atop a table on the dungeon’s far side, and there was nothing I could do to reach it. My hands were bound behind my back, and my feet were embedded in a block of basalt as heavy as the Caliph’s mother. For many hours now, Ulraunt had deprived me of food and water. He had ordered a pair of burly guards to hold my arms, then threatened to beat me with spiked clubs and brand me with hot pokers, and he even had an iron heating on a brazier now. Yet the only torture that frightened me was being deprived of the ledger. My need to read it grew more desperate with each breath, until I would have sold all my possessions at a quarter of their value just to glimpse one page. For this compulsion I reviled myself as a man does for any secret weakness, and I swore that even if Ulraunt held the book before my eyes, I would not read a single word.

Of course, this was an impossible oath. But I had yet to understand my affliction, and I did not realize Mystra’s magic had caused it. I knew only that Rinda’s journal made as much sense as the Dark Truth, and that her sacrileges explained what I had observed with my own eyes: namely, that the One’s Church was tearing itself apart, and that Cyric had to be a lunatic to send a humble merchant such as me after the Cyrinishad. These thoughts were a great shame to me and more a reflection of my own craven nature than fact, yet they were as persistent as a hungry beggar, and it was to them I credited my obsession.

Ulraunt returned from the brazier with his glowing iron and held it before my eyes. I hardly gave it a glance, for my gaze was locked on the journal across the room, where the First Reader Tethtoril and Ruha stood with qualmish looks on their faces.

My inattentiveness angered the Keeper. “Look at this!” He slashed the iron back and forth before my eyes. “Do you know what I can do with this?”

“Nothing to me.” By now, I knew this to be true, for I had not suffered a single bruise or blister from all the beatings I had taken before Ruha captured me. “I am under Tyr’s protection.”

“Tyr does not protect murderers! Hold his head!”

Though the rope binding my hands was as sturdy as a camel tether, Ulraunt’s assistants were reluctant to release my arms, no doubt on account of the fierce reputation I had gained during my capture. One of the men slipped around behind me and locked his hands behind my elbows, and only then did the other guard release his own grasp and put me in a headlock. He was very large and strong; it would have been futile to resist, and I did not try.

Ulraunt waited to be certain his assistants had me securely, then stepped forward and brought the iron close to my face, so that I could see nothing but the glowing tip. He moved the poker forward, until it was so close my eyeball itched from the heat

“I’ll ask twice more, and each time you lie, I’ll burn an eye out. I’m told it hurts very much.”

“Ulraunt, this is not necessary,” said Ruha. This was one time I was glad for a Harper’s meddling. “He has already answered, and your own priest said he was not lying.”

“This worm is immune to truth magic!” yelled Ulraunt. Such was the Keeper’s anger that his own priest had left the room for fear of witnessing the torture of a helpless man. “No one can swim that moat. It will boil lamb!”

Ulraunt brought his iron close to my eye, and I saw that he meant to keep his vow and blind me. I wondered how Tyr would protect me from this, then the shaft of the poker turned as white as the tip. There was a low sizzling and the odor of burnt flesh.

Ulraunt cried out, then dropped the poker and grasped his hand. “How did you do that?”

I could not answer, for his big assistant was squeezing my neck so tightly that I could not move my jaw.

Ruha grabbed Ulraunt’s shoulder and pulled him back. “You have had your chance. Now let me try.”

Ulraunt scowled, then looked at his blistered fingers and shrugged. “If you like. But my patience is at an end. If he doesn’t tell the truth, we’ll execute him for what he did to Rinda and Gwydion.”

The witch waved the assistants away, then watched as my gaze swung back to the journal. With each moment that passed, my compulsion to read grew twofold-and not only because of Mystra’s spell. Rinda’s claim about the cause of Cyric’s madness was a terrible burden upon my soul, for I could not forget the cold nausea that had come over me when I touched the Cyrinishad’s box. Could the scribe be right? Could the Dark Truths of the sacred tome be so powerful they had overwhelmed even the godly mind of the One and All?