Prince of Lies (10 page)

“I suppose,” Perdix sighed. “We’ll do the marshes after that”

The two started away from the wall, Af slithering, Perdix hopping on thin legs. After a few steps, both denizens turned around. “Well?” Perdix asked. “You don’t have any choice in this, slug. Come on.” The denizen’s tongue darted out between each word, punctuating the command.

Gwydion shuffled forward. There was no point in resisting; the denizens were Cyric’s agents, and the Lord of the Dead had already proved to the sell-sword how completely he owned the souls in his domain. As he fell into step with Af and Perdix, Gwydion picked away at the mold that had worked its way into his matted blond hair and the rags that had once been warm winter clothes. The shackles had been removed from his wrists when they put him in the wall, yet Gwydion still found his hands incredibly clumsy. His fingers felt no more agile than stumps of wood.

The trio passed through dark alleys, where souls with indistinct yellow-gray faces and expressionless gray eyes huddled in doorways. Sputtering lamps set on windowsills cast sickly yellow light into the gloom, along with fetid black smoke that made Gwydion’s eyes sting and his skin burn. Denizens passed in pairs, rousting the faceless shades or moving into the buildings themselves. These other denizens always gave Af a wide berth. Surprisingly, most of them nodded respectfully to Perdix, as well, offering solemn greetings to the diminutive creature.

“These shades all look alike,” Gwydion observed dully after a time. His voice was a rasping whisper from screaming for release from the wall.

Deftly Af slithered to the top of a pile of broken stone that blocked the alley. “Yeah. So?”

“So how do we recognize Kelemvor when we find him?”

With two leaps, Perdix hopped over the mound. “Oh, we’ll know him all right. There are only three sorts of beings in the City of Strife: denizens, the False, and the Faithless. All the denizens - souls like me and Af here, who used to worship Cyric - are transformed when we arrive here into forms that’ll be more useful in our new line of work.” The yellow-skinned denizen flapped his wings proudly. “Makes it easy to tell the jailers from the inmates, too.

“Anyone stupid enough not to believe in the gods is stuffed into the Wall of the Faithless,” he continued, “so we know where that lot can be found.” Perdix folded his wings again and sighed. “That just leave slugs like you - the False, the people who didn’t make the list for any god’s eternal reward.”

The alley emptied into a small plaza surrounded by more buildings. A shade wearing drab gray rags moved away from the denizens as they approached neither hurrying nor tarrying. Perdix gestured at the faceless soul. The False who came here before Cyric took over are easy to spot - they’re the ones that look like this sorry slug. The old Lord of the Dead used to think it was the worst thing possible to forget your Me and your identity once you came here.” The denizen laughed. “The new lord of the dead is a lot more creative than that. Anyone who arrived after Cyric claimed the throne retained his own appearance and has marks on his wrists from the shackles.”

Gwydion nodded. “So Kelemvor will look like a shade, but he won’t have any scars on his wrist.”

“And he’ll be roaming about, which is getting more and more rare,” Perdix added. “Cyric’s started locking the False into unique tortures created to punish whatever bad things they did in their life - like that slug there.”

Gwydion followed Perdix’s gaze to a spot in the center of the plaza. There, a soul stood chained to a statue of a river spirit. The scantily clad stone nymph held a jug from which poured a steady stream of water. Iron bands kept the soul’s head and legs rigid against the stone, and his arms ended in blackened, scarred stumps too short to reach the sparkling liquid. The water rained down before the red-haired shade, fell to the parched ground, and evaporated.

Torture helps you slugs remember why you’re here. The pain reminds you of every misstep you took that led you away from the truth of the world,” Perdix noted as he hopped up to the shade bound to the fountain. “Like old Kaverin here. He thought he could outlive Cyric and outsmart him, too.”

The red-haired shade opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out were wisps of blue flame. Kaverin’s lifeless eyes grew wide as Perdix hopped beneath the water. The little denizen threw back his head and gulped mouthful after mouthful of the cool, clear liquid. Af soon joined his partner, and the two tormented the prisoner by soaking themselves.

“No drinks for you today,” Perdix taunted.

Kaverin thrashed against his bonds frantically. His screams were gouts of fire.

“Yeah. None for you today,” Af repeated, then gestured to Gwydion. “But you can take a drink if you want.”

When the denizens stepped aside, Gwydion walked slowly toward fountain. A small silver cup lay at the statue’s base, well out of Kaverin’s reach. The sell-sword glanced at the denizens, but they merely watched without comment as he took the cup and filled it. He hesitated for a moment then brought the water to Kaverin’s parched lips.

The red-haired shade flailed madly, knocking Gwydion onto his back. Over the laughter of the denizens, the sell-sword heard Kaverin curse vilely. “You bastard,” he hissed, thin rivulets running down his chin. He spit the rest of the water at Gwydion. “They start all over again now - five years wasted! I didn’t want the water. I didn’t want your help. You’ll pay-“

The flames rekindled in Kaverin’s mouth, burning away the rest of his threat. Perdix lifted the cup and battered the imprisoned shade with it, then tossed it down and hopped to Gwydion’s side. “He’ll never forget that you made his torture worse,” the denizen said flatly. “Of course, you won’t forget it either.”

Impatiently Af gestured for Perdix to follow. “Enough of the civics lesson,” he grumbled. “We’ve got to get to the Night Serpent, remember?” Shaking his lupine head, Af slithered across the plaza, into another alley.

At Perdix’s prompting, Gwydion struggled to his feet, then set off at a jog after the brutish denizens. He soon found himself padding through grim streets crowded with the faceless, emotionless shades of the elder False. The sight of so many damned to an eternity without hope or love or fear sickened Gwydion, but there was something about his surroundings that preyed in more subtle ways on the sell-sword’s mind. The buildings, the streets, even the humid, stinking air seemed just as cold and hopeless as the souls of the damned. Something inside Gwydion warned him the city itself would try to leach away any true emotions he would feel if he shook off the shroud of despair that had settled over him.

At last the boroughs gave way to an uneven field of rubble, beyond which lay the city’s heart - Bone Castle itself.

Gwydion and the denizens struggled through the shattered stone and twisted metal to the mouth of a vast cave, near the oozing river that served as the castle’s moat. Stalactites and stalagmites lined the gaping hole like stone teeth. Orange steam hissed between the jagged points in a steady, sibilant flow, and dark water from the River Slith pooled around the entrance. The ground underfoot was marshy and foul.

Af clamped a hand on Gwydion’s shoulder. “Stay behind me and keep your mouth shut,” the denizen ordered gruffly.

Gwydion watched as Perdix flew to the cavern’s mouth and called out. “Envoys from Lord Cyric,” the little denizen announced, his voice quavering noticeably. “Mistress Dendar?”

A grating sound echoed from the cave as something enormous shifted position. Two eyes appeared in the darkness. They were the sickly yellow-black of rotten eggs, with slitlike pupils. “What do you want with the Night Serpent?” she hissed.

“Lord Cyric wishes us to search your cave,” Perdix explained meekly, crouching behind a stalagmite. “There is a shade hiding-“

“Ah. He is hunting Kelemvor again, is he?” the thing sighed.

Gwydion thought he saw a flash of blood-drenched fangs in the cave’s murk. The sight stirred some vague horror in him, resurrected some long-forgotten terror.

“Your master fears his old friend - or was he a foe?” The Night Serpent chuckled. “I don’t think Cyric himself remembers.”

“Lord Cyric fears nothing,” Af growled.

“I have reason to know otherwise.” A square snout edged closer to the mouth of the cave. The Serpent’s scales glowed with a thousand hypnotic hues of darkness. “The unremembered nightmares of gods belong to me as much as those of mortals… and Kelemvor Lyonsbane haunts Cyric’s nightmares. He frequently leads a revolt in the City of Strife, a revolt that brings your prince low.”

The Night Serpent tilted her head slightly. “But, come, you may search my cave. I have nothing to hide from Cyric, least of all his nightmares.”

Perdix started forward tentatively while Af grabbed Gwydion with one hand and climbed boldly into the cave. Light from the swirling crimson sky reached shallowly into the murk, revealing a wide stone floor littered with bones. Only the tip of the Night Serpent’s snout was visible, but it was as large as a noble’s town house in the richest part of Suzail. The yellow eyes seemed to hover in the darkness, twin pools of cunning and malice.

Those eyes focused on Gwydion as he entered the cave. The slitted pupils dwarfed the trembling soul. “I was sorry to see you die, Gwydion,” the Night Serpent hissed. “Your nightmares were delicious.”

“B-But I never had nightmares,” the sell-sword replied meekly.

The bloody fangs flashed again - a smile, perhaps? “If you’d remembered them, dear Gwydion, I couldn’t have made them mine.” The Night Serpent tilted her head slightly. “Come, now. Has the world grown so smug that you know nothing of Dendar the Night Serpent? Don’t the elders teach the poem any longer?”

Gwydion’s memory stirred, and he heard his grandfather’s voice repeating a childish rhyme:

“In Shar’s domain of night I rest,

So dreams may show me how I’m blessed.

If screams of terror break my sleep,

Then Dendar’s sunk her fangs too deep.”

A shudder wracked the sell-sword. Dendar was a myth meant to frighten children into going to bed when their parents wanted - or so he’d always believed. His grandfather had told him that the Night Serpent ate the horrible dreams of disobedient boys and girls, growing fat so she could rise from Hades at the end of the world and swallow the sun. Each nightmare you couldn’t remember was another pound of flesh on Dendar’s bones.

The Night Serpent nodded her black snout, recognizing the fright in Gwydion’s eyes. “Ah, I see you do know me. I’m relieved.”

“Er, excuse me, Dendar,” said Perdix, “But you’re blocking the way. We can’t go any farther into the cave unless you give way.”

“My body has grown so large only my head has room to move,” the Night Serpent said. “So the mouth of the cave is the only place big enough for anything to hide - and, as you can see, there is nothing here.” Dendar swept her snout slowly back and forth over the pile of bones. “I like to think my predicament means the world will end soon.”

Perdix nodded with all the enthusiasm he could muster. “We can only hope. Well, we’ll be going. Let Cyric know if you see anyone suspicious lurking around your cave.”

“Certainly,” the Night Serpent purred.

“Come on, Af,” the little denizen said. He turned to his brutish fellow, but found the wolf-headed creature frozen in place. “What is it?”

Af lifted a misshapen skull from the scattering of bones beneath his coils. “These are from denizens,” he murmured.

“Of course,” Dendar said nonchalantly. “They don’t taste very good - not as good as a fresh soul, anyway - but Cyric throws in a few denizens along with the shades for variety. The whole idea of a levy is for show. The forgotten nightmares are food enough for me, as you might guess from my bulk.”

“But we’re his servants,” Af said to no one in particular. He shook the denizen’s skull until it broke. “Cyric can punish us or torture us, but we’re not supposed to be destroyed. The levy should be drawn from the False!”

“How can you destroy a soul?” Gwydion asked. “I mean we’re already dead.”

“There are ways to pass beyond death,” Dendar hissed with smug self-satisfaction. “But your denizen friends would have no reason to seek out oblivion. They’re happy with their lot in death. As for the False or the Faithless - well, Cyric has absolute command over their fates. They can’t die unless he wills it, and he only sends shades to oblivion after he tires of torturing them.”

“Let’s talk about this on the way to the marsh, all right? We don’t need to bother Dendar with it.” Tugging on one of Af’s spider legs, Perdix hopped toward the cave mouth.

“No!” Af barked. “There’s a pact. I was there when it was signed. Cyric himself told us-“

Sudden, bitter laughter filled the cavern. “And you believed him?” Gwydion scoffed.

Perdix and Af glared at the shade with hate-filled eyes. When he didn’t stop laughing, they beat him viciously, but even their blows and threats couldn’t stop him.

The look of helplessness on Af’s lupine features had shown Gwydion that the denizens had no more power than he, that they, too, were victims of Cyric’s madness. With that realization, the shroud of despair slipped from his soul and a giddy dream took root in his thoughts: the False and the denizens were brothers in damnation. Why couldn’t they rise up and free themselves from suffering?

It was the Night Serpent who finally silenced Gwydion’s mad laughter. She turned one yellow eye on the shade and said, “Oh yes, dear Gwydion, dream of freedom. But remember; where there are dreams, there are always nightmares.”

Wherein the daughter of Bevis the Illuminator

begins a new, and likely short-lived, career

as a scribe for the Church of Cyric.

Rinda owned the entire building, but that really wasn’t saying much. The sad, one-story hovel squatted in the poorest part of Zhentil Keep, among the unlicensed brothels, the gin mills, and the broken-down homes of escaped slaves and men too besotted by drink to be of use to anyone. In another quarter, the place would have been condemned. Rats maintained a thriving colony in the rafters. Dry rot had claimed large sections of the floor where the boards had not already collapsed into the foul mud below. On cold Marpenoth days like this, the wind whistled through chinks in the walls, promising four more months of relentless cold.