Prince of Lies (18 page)

“Caution?” Mystra scoffed. “Would you sit by, weighing your options, while Cyric looses the Chaos Hound in your courtyard? What if he were to siege this library? Would you be cautious then, Oghma?”

“There would be no question of patience then, Lady,” the Binder said. The chorus of his voice had become a threatening basso rumble. “The book he is attempting to create threatens the spread of true knowledge, so I am doing what I can to thwart it. But, as yet, the Lord of the Dead has put no new plots against me into action.”

Oghma conjured an image of Everard Abbey, a lonely, ramshackle retreat in the Caravan Lands. The phantasm floated in midair between the two gods.

“It would take Cyric’s assassins but a few hours to ride from Iriaebor to this humble place,” the Binder began. “If I stand with you now, before the Lord of the Dead has struck a blow against me directly, will you give the men and women in the abbey magic to turn aside the assassins’ blades? Cyric will most certainly send them to Everard, and to every other temple and library built in my name.”

He leaned forward, looming over the ghostly image of the abbey. “And I would have to rely on your help to protect my faithful, Lady, for the rest of the Circle will say I overstepped my office in battling Cyric. This is a matter for Tyr perhaps, since freeing Kezef broke a law. It’s just not a concern for the God of Knowledge.”

“That’s ridiculously near-sighted, Oghma,” Mystra shouted. She banished the conjured abbey. “You’re dooming your worshipers.”

“No,” the Binder replied flatly. “I’m serving my worshipers. If they perceived battles as the most important aspect of life, they would worship Tempus. They value knowledge and art, Lady, and this matter has yet to threaten a single historian’s notebook, a single verse of the most wretched Sembian poetry. When it does, I will turn all the power their faith gives me to stopping Cyric.”

A brooding silence settled over the two gods. “Mystra,” the Binder said after a time, “you should know I can do nothing about the matter. It doesn’t directly concern knowledge or bardcraft. I told you in the pavilion-“

That the gods were more limited than I suspected,” she said softly. “I am hearing how true that is right this moment. Most of the Circle mirrors your stand, Binder. As you said, only Tyr will help me against Cyric, because freeing Kezef broke a law.” She held out her wounded hand to Oghma. “If you realize the gods can only see from a limited perspective, why can’t you break out of yours? Why can’t you see that the world is more than poetry and histories?”

“Knowing the truth is not the same as being empowered to act upon it,” Oghma noted. “I realize my kingdom has boundaries that my perspective might not be the same as yours or Lathander’s or Mask’s - but I cannot imagine what those other views reveal. No matter how hard I try, I cannot make my eyes see the universe as anything but a vast library.”

Mystra dispelled the wards around the throne. “You can bargain with the rest of the Circle about Kezef on your own, but I’ll have no more part of it,” she said bitterly. “If it’s going to fall on me to counter Cyric’s insanity, I won’t waste time in endless debates.”

The Goddess of Magic vanished just before chaos swept through Concordant. As it did each day at this time, the facade on the House of Knowledge changed, and along with it the trappings within the library and the binding of every book. Yet each volume remained in the same location, and each page held the same facts as before, though written in a different script or in a different colored ink.

Oghma closed his eyes and tried to imagine what the world would be like if this pattern were broken somehow, if the wave of chaos destroyed the House of Knowledge instead of altering it. He couldn’t. Though he knew the universe held more than the contents of his library, when he subtracted his books and bardic tales and musty histories, he saw nothing but an endless void.

“Don’t worry,” a soothing, feminine voice purred, “we shall deal with Kezef before he can track you down.”

Kelemvor Lyonsbane kept his eyes fixed straight ahead and continued to pace through the white, featureless void. He moved his lips, silently counting his steps. After he counted one thousand, he made a precise turn to the left and started the count over.

“I should erect a barricade in your way,” the unseen power noted petulantly. “Just to throw off your count”

“Then I’d wait for you to get bored and lower it,” Kelemvor said. His deep voice, rarely used in the last decade, was barely a whisper.

“And if I don’t get bored?”

Abruptly Kelemvor stopped pacing. “You will. You can’t help yourself.”

The silence that followed told the shade he was correct. Smiling at his victory, he resumed his march.

As he had each day for the past ten years, Kelemvor Lyonsbane marked out the dimensions of his prison. Not that there were any walls within the empty whiteness around him, but Kel knew he would surely go mad if he didn’t create them for himself. And so he walked a careful circuit with regular, military steps. The room he inhabited was one thousand paces to a side, with windows in the center of each wall. There were no doors, of course, and the ceiling was too high to reach.

Occasionally his unseen jailor spoke to him, or appeared as a woman or man or beast. But Kel dismissed these phantasms as unreal diversions, no more substantial than the memories of Midnight that sometimes took shape in the formless void around him. He never let these distract him for long; dallying in that sort of chaos would break him, and Kel was determined to rob his captor of such an easy victory.

“Cyric is growing desperate to find you,” the voice said.

“Go away,” Kelemvor replied, unperturbed by the obvious prodding. “I’ll be thinking about flaying Cyric alive in an hour. If you want to come back then, we can talk.”

“An hour? What’s that mean to you? There’s no sun here, no stars…” When the prisoner didn’t answer, the voice added, “You held up far longer than I thought you would, but I believe you’ve finally cracked.”

“I can count time as well as steps,” Kelemvor said. He stopped again and crossed his brawny arms over his chest. “Look, you should know by now none of this will work. If I could stand up to torture when I was alive, why should it be any different now that I’m dead? I don’t get hungry. I don’t need to sleep. If you were intent on trying to rack me or burn my eyes out, you would have done that by now.”

“I thought you’d want to know about Kezef.”

“There’s no need for me to know if you intend on stopping him,” Kel murmured. “As for Cyric, I’ll talk about him in a little less than an hour. That’s my schedule. You should know it by now.” With that he once more resumed his march.

Kelemvor measured the rest of the wall undisturbed. At the final corner, he took a half-turn and walked to the prison’s center. There, he carefully straightened his clothes. He paused in brushing off his high leather boots and rough leggings, sleeveless white tunic and brown woolen cloak, only long enough to marvel - as he did every day - that a dead man should find himself clothed in the afterworld. When he’d been alive, Kel had never wondered if souls went around naked or not. Such philosophical minutiae hadn’t held the slightest importance to him, not when he spent his days fighting giants for their treasure or guarding caravans from marauding gnolls. That was the sort of useless trivia pointy-headed priests like Adon worried about.

Kelemvor sighed. Now it was the very stuff of his everyday existence.

With the same care he’d taken with his clothes, the shade ran his fingers through his long black hair and smoothed out his mustache and muttonchop sideburns. His features were rugged beneath his course touch. Some women had considered him handsome in his day; at least Midnight had seemed to think him so. As always, Kelemvor allowed himself to dwell on a memory of the lovely mage’s face, her lithe body, but only for a moment.

Finally, he swept his cloak over one shoulder. With tentative fingers, the shade reached back to his right shoulder blade to feel the ragged hole in his tunic and the gaping, bloodless wound beneath. As always, the slightest touch sent a throbbing ache through his whole being. Kelemvor didn’t mind the pain in the least. It had become a signal of sorts to him, a prompting to a part of his spirit he kept carefully reined at all other times.

Through the opened floodgates of his mind, images of Kelemvor’s final moments poured like a flood of dark, poisonous water: the battle against Myrkul atop Blackstaff Tower; the defeat of the Lord of Bones at Midnight’s hands; the joyous return of Adon, who they’d all thought slain by Cyric; and Cyric’s sudden, treacherous attack…

The ache spread, sending swells of pain through Kelemvor’s body. A single memory, clearer than all the rest, rode atop the crest of the bitter flood - Cyric, laughing as he drove his sword deep into Kel’s back.

“The hour’s up,” Kelemvor rumbled. “I’m ready to talk about that black-hearted bastard, and about revenge…”

Wherein Cyric adds another chapter to his

book of lies, the Chaos Hound tracks along the

winding trail of Kelemvor’s life, and

Blackstaff Tower once more becomes the topic of

much gossip and speculation in both Waterdeep

and the heavenly realms.

Rinda rubbed the sleep from her eyes and propped her chin up on her elbow. At first Cyric had called her to the parchmenter’s shop at highsun every day. Now he was demanding her presence at more and more unusual hours-twilight, midnight, and now dawn. Days lapsed between visits, too; he hadn’t dictated another chapter for the Cyrinishad in almost a tenday.

Weighed down by exhaustion and depression, the scribe let her head sink once more to the oaken writing desk. The foul smell of the poorly ventilated shop, the fetid water and rotting hides, didn’t bother Rinda in the least. She’d grown accustomed to such unpleasantries, just as she’d grown accustomed to church spies following her every move, or Fzoul and the other conspirators appearing unheralded in the middle of her house.

With little enthusiasm, Rinda drove thoughts of treachery and The True Life of Cyric from her mind. She wondered for an instant what chaos would result if the Lord of the Dead uncovered those dangerous notions. Would the harp-voiced patron of Fzoul and the rest come to her aid? More likely the mysterious deity would strike her dead before Cyric could gain any information from her. She’d never worshiped any one particular god, though, so her soul would land squarely in Cyric’s domain, and he would get the information he wanted anyway.

Sighing raggedly, Rinda closed her eyes. The cool desktop felt good against her forehead. She thought only of that feeling as she drifted nearer and nearer the precipice of sleep…

“We shall begin whenever you’re ready.”

Rinda bolted straight in her high-backed chair. Cyric stood at her side, a smirk on his gaunt features, his arms folded casually over a surcoat emblazoned with his own holy symbol. “I can wait if you need to rest,” he added with just a trace of sarcasm. “It’s no good to either of us if you forget to cross a T or dot an I. This book needs be perfect, remember?”

“I - I’m sorry, Your Magnificence,” she blurted. “It’s just that-“

Cyric held up a long-fingered hand. “No need. I may seem to have no sense of the time when I summon you, but I do remember what it’s like to need sleep.”

Rinda watched the Lord of the Dead stroll to the padded chair from which he always dictated his story. With a flourish of his blood-red cloak, he sat. His chain mail shirt rattled brightly as he lolled one elbow over an overstaffed arm and slung one booted foot over the other. “Is there something wrong?” he asked.

“No,” the scribe replied too quickly. She took up her penknife and pinned down the corner of a gruesome parchment sheet wrought of human skin. Vigorously she rubbed the page then blew away the leavings. “Ready, Your Magnificence,” Rinda noted, rolling up one silk sleeve and dipping her quill.

This won’t do at all,” Cyric said. “Something distresses you, dear Rinda, and that may well affect how you take down the tale I have to tell this fine morning.” He dropped his feet to the dirty floor with a thump and leaned forward. “My good humor disturbs you?”

“Surprises me,” Rinda offered meekly.

The Prince of Lies clapped his hands together. “Ah, but I have reason to be glad,” he chimed. “A decade-long quest ends today. By sunset the soul of Kelemvor Lyonsbane shall be mine.” His eyes grew vague as he drifted into a mad reverie, picturing a thousand horrible ways to greet the long-lost shade.

Rinda sat in silence, waiting for the god’s mind to wander back to the parchmenter’s shop. When she noticed the mischievous spark had returned to Cyric’s eyes, the death god was staring at her. “There’s something else,” he said. “Something else is wrong.”

Fear made Rinda’s heart thud in her chest. “I’m -” She swallowed hard, trying to clear her throat, but she couldn’t. The lies came painfully, as if the very words were spiked with nails. “I’m just tired, Your Magnificence, and feeling… overwhelmed by the task.”

A slow, smug smile crept across Cyric’s thin lips. “Feeling powerless, are we?” He stood and walked to her side. With one finger he raised her chin until their eyes met. “Is that it - do you feel like a pawn?”

Her soul froze beneath that gaze. “Yes,” she whispered, though she knew not how she’d managed it.

Cyric laughed the harsh sound full of mockery. “You have no one to blame but yourself,” he said, then swept back to his chair. “You’ve given in to Fate. Not once have you voiced an objection to penning this tome.”

“B - But you’ve already said you’d destroy me if I didn’t scribe the book for you.”

“Of course,” the Prince of Lies said. “But you’ll be a pawn as long as you’re afraid of dying.”

Rinda nodded and once more took up her pen.

“Freedom from fear will give you power over every force in the universe,” he noted pedantically, cleaning his fingernails with a thin dirk. “Except me, of course. Fear is based mostly on terror of the unknown, and you’ll never be able to catalogue all the horrors I can visit upon you after I’ve killed you. Still, I think you need to pay more attention to the stories I’ve been telling. As I have shown time and time again, fear has never ruled my life.”