Prince of Lies (40 page)

“No,” Dendar replied, shrinking back into the gloom of the cavern. “It’s rare I get such morsels, and I’ll not give up Cyric’s nightmare without a fight. Even if I can’t harm you, Gwydion, your allies may not prove to be as invincible.” She sniggered. “Besides, the revolt is so close to the prince’s nightmare that he’ll never know the difference. All you need is Kelemvor Lyonsbane, and he’s - well, that’s something you’ll find out soon enough.”

The Night Serpent opened her mouth wide, dislocating her hinged jaw, and a horde of night-terrors swarmed out. The haunts swirled silently around Gwydion as he bowed to Dendar. “You have my word, the gods will be fair to you hereafter, no matter who reigns in this hellish place.”

“Your promise carries more weight than you might suspect,” Dendar said, her eyes pale yellow in the murk. “I will hold you to it nonetheless.”

As he turned away, it occurred to Gwydion that this next battle might be his last - facing the death god and his most powerful servants, without even the god-forged armor to protect him. The notion was fleeting, quickly driven back by his powerful sense of duty. Gwydion was afraid - only fools and lunatics entered a fight completely without fear - but that emotion no longer controlled him.

Surrounded by silent, phantasmal nightmares, Gwydion ran - but this time he headed toward the battle.

Kelemvor Lyonsbane struggled through a waist-deep mire of black ooze. The foul-smelling stuff reminded him of Arabel’s garbage heaps on a hot summer’s day. He shook his head at that notion. There’s your reward for years of work as a sell-sword, he noted with more than a little bitterness. You can identify at least a half-dozen cities in Faerun by the stink of their garbage.

“Godsbane!” he shouted, then staggered to a stop. He cupped both hands around his mouth. “Godsbane! No more games, damn it. Show yourself!”

The rose-hued mist continued to swirl overhead, lowering in patches to the mire, but the spirit of the sword remained hidden.

The creeping muck had filled the sword for hours now. At first Kelemvor had thought it just another torment visited on him by Godsbane, but that thought vanished when the mire reached his chest and showed no signs of leveling off. Soon after, Kel abandoned the confines of his meticulously constructed cell in search of higher ground; if the sword had been toying with him, that concession alone would have brought a declaration of victory from her. But the mire deepened, swallowing even the few dry spots Kel discovered on the endless plains. Now the ooze covered everything, deeper in some places, but sticky and rancid throughout.

A horrible moan filled the sky. The sudden noise startled Kelemvor, and he dropped into a familiar battle crouch. The stance was purely reflexive, like the flick of his wrist as he reached for a sword that wasn’t there. It annoyed the shade a little, being controlled by his training as a soldier-for-hire, but he shrugged the thought aside when the ragged, screaming souls began to appear overhead.

“Another battle,” Kel murmured.

He gritted his teeth at the pain he saw in their ravaged faces, heard in their tormented cries. There were no denizens in this lot, only human shades. Cyric must be putting down another revolt among the damned, Kel decided. Like all the other lopsided battles against the False, it would be over soon. Then the sword would drink down the souls she had captured.

A realization struck Kelemvor, a thunderbolt of hope. Perhaps the gods had finally mounted the uprising in the City of Strife!

Kelemvor raised both fists to the sky. “Justice!” he shouted, the cry echoing in the wails of the doomed souls, “We will have justice!”

A huge book, as wide as a castle gate, burst from the ooze. The Cyrinishad, the title proclaimed in blood-red letters.

The cursed tome grew straight up into the mist, raining a shower of muddy droplets as it rose. Kel covered his face with a muscled forearm and cursed. When he looked up again, he saw the holy symbols carved into the black leather binding, the grinning death’s-head in the center of the cover. The skull transformed, taking on Cyric’s lean, hawk-nosed visage. The face of the death god looked out upon the befouled landscape and the myriad souls swirling through the air, but it was clear he could see nothing.

“Believe,” the Prince of Lies intoned. “Believe.”

Cyric repeated the word over and over. The chant echoed through the corrupted void, growing louder and more insistent with each repetition. A vortex formed in the air around the book, and it drew in the captive shades. The souls struck the book one after another. Their ghostly forms scattered into thin wisps of fog, which drifted like dead leaves to the mire. Godsbane shuddered as each soul settled into the ooze, their essence lost to her forever. Their cries lived on after them, ringing faintly through the mist.

The death god’s image began to laugh.

Kelemvor stalked forward and lashed out with a fist. His blow scraped his knuckles raw, but also knocked a hole in the book’s cover. Kel glanced up, certain he would see the death god’s face contorted with anger. Instead, flakes of dried ink showered down around him as the wall quivered and shook with Cyric’s mirth.

This is what’s twisting Godsbane, Kel realized. The book is warping her somehow, causing all this chaos in her mind.

Bracing his feet as best he could, Kelemvor pressed a shoulder against the massive Cyrinishad. The monolith teetered for a moment then toppled backward like a door knocked from its hinges. The air displaced by its fall drove the mist away, so Kel had a clear view as Cyric’s face struck the ooze.

The book shattered on impact with the mire. Some pieces floated for a time. Most were swallowed quickly by the mire. Cyric’s cruel mouth remained intact, laughing until the ooze flowed in to choke off the grating sound. Kelemvor tried to gather some of the larger shards together in hopes of creating a makeshift raft, but each time he tested the platform’s strength, it broke apart under his weight.

“You bastard, Cyric,” Kel grumbled. “Couldn’t even leave me that much, could you?”

Spattered with slime and grimy with dirt, Kelemvor trudged off. The cries of the annihilated souls echoed faintly over the quagmire. Yet the wailing didn’t frighten him; it only made him that much more impatient to join the battle against Cyric, to make the Lord of the Dead and his treacherous blade pay for all the injustice they’d heaped upon him and the prisoners in the City of Strife.

When the ball of blue-white light appeared on the horizon, filling the sky with its brilliance, burning away the ooze and the everpresent blood-red mist hanging in the air, Kelemvor was certain he was seeing the fiery face of his doom.

“Midnight,” he whispered. “I-“

The rest of the vow was lost, drowned out by Kelemvor’s scream and the roar of the inferno as it engulfed him.

Cyric retreated to the massive slab of onyx that served as Bone Castle’s main door. He backed against the stone, swinging Godsbane furiously. The short sword cut a gory path through a shade, but gained no sustenance from the soul. Despite all the carnage, she remained as pale as a bleached skull, her voice thin and rasping in the death god’s mind. The work of Mystra, no doubt. Somehow the Whore was preventing Godsbane from digesting the souls she swallowed.

Cyric cursed the thought of the goddess as he slashed another shade across the face.

The diamond walls had been taken, the denizens routed from their posts by spectral night-terrors. Even now the death god’s bestial minions writhed in pitiful fear before the phantasms. Denizens cowered in every corner, hid beneath anything that could offer them shelter. It did them no good; the nightmares slipped into their minds, driving the valor from their corrupted hearts.

These are Dendar’s brood, Jergal said as he floated to Cyric’s side. A shade charged the seneschal, but he opened his cloak wide to embrace the attacker. The damned soul vanished into the darkness with a short gasp of surprise.

“Of course they’re Dendar’s!” Cyric snapped. “Why shouldn’t she be in on this conspiracy, too?”

The Prince of Lies held his left hand out and spread the fingers wide. A sudden gale blew across the bailey, the wind stripping the flesh from both armies. One of the armored shades, leading the battle from atop the wall, tumbled backward at the blast. He sank into the Slith, where the creatures lurking there drew him out through the slits in his helmet, one piece at a time.

Cyric slumped back against the door, momentarily weakened by casting the powerful spell. He had no doubt that the war proceeded as Mystra and the others had planned. His worshipers in Zhentil Keep were deserting him in droves - just as he needed their devotion most to drive the damned from the gates of Bone Castle. And through it all, Cyric’s other churches, the needy faithful of all his disparate offices, tugged at his mind. Their calls for aid and guidance threatened to draw too much of the death god’s fragmented consciousness away from the City of Strife, but to deny their prayers would be to risk sacrificing their worship.

The battle quickly swelled to fill the bailey once more as denizens retreated from the damned. When they saw their master, Cyric’s minions did not rally. They stumbled toward him, over the windswept bones of their brethren. “Save us, great lord!” they cried. “The Chaos Hound is loose in the city! Kezef fights on the side of the False!” Come, my lord, Jergal said.

The seneschal dared to lay a gloved hand on the god’s form. When Cyric didn’t object, Jergal guided him away from the battle, into the castle’s entry hall. The drow-spun tapestries fluttered nervously against the bone walls, as if they could sense the threat to their fragile hideousness. The darksome things that lurked below the crystal floor cowered at Cyric’s passing. During their eternal captivity, they’d witnessed the downfall of other gods; now they could see the blade of doom poised over the Lord of the Dead.

“Ah,” Cyric muttered. “The gods show their true colors now, forging pacts with Kezef.” He began to howl with sudden fury. “They wear facades of purity and honor, but underneath they’ve got the faces of assassins.”

Godsbane stirred weakly in his mind. Yes, my love, but you will reveal them for what they truly are.

The soothing words passed into the tangle of Cyric’s thoughts unnoticed. His mind was caught up in a firestorm of rage, which blew from one fragment of his consciousness to another, turning them away from their vital tasks. Bloody revenge was all Cyric could consider. Mystra and Mask, Torm and Oghma, they would all be forced to grovel before him. He’d turn the Circle against them, have them humiliated, stripped of their offices - and then he would murder them one by one…

As the Prince of Lies lingered in his fancies of divine carnage, cracks began to snake across the crystal floor, and the walls of bone began to tremble and sway. Jergal hurried Cyric through the skull-lined judgment hall, only to find the Rolls of the Dead tumbling from their carefully ordered places. The parchment scrolls, upon which the seneschal had recorded the fate of every soul imprisoned within the City of Strife, crumbled to dust before his unblinking eyes. The doorway to the throne room, once concealed by powerful enchantments, gaped in midair like an open wound.

Magnificence, you must turn your mind back to this realm, Jergal pleaded. You must give over just a little of your power to maintaining the castle.

“Traitor!” Cyric shouted as they entered the throne room. “There must be a traitor in my ranks.”

Yes, Godsbane echoed numbly. A traitor…

A few of the Burning Men reached out for the Lord of the Dead as Jergal hustled him toward his gruesome throne. Like everything else maintained by Cyric’s godly power, the chains that held the tormented scribes to the walls and ceiling were decaying. The three hundred ninety-eight burning souls, all men and women who had failed to create the Cyrinishad, hung precariously by an arm or a leg or rolled about on the floor in a vain attempt to douse the fires that tortured them.

“Perhaps you can tell me something about the treachery in my court, Jergal,” Cyric said. He turned on the seneschal and gripped him by the face. “What did Mystra offer you - a new title, perhaps? Do you aspire to godhood yourself?”

Certainly not, Your Magnificence, Jergal said, shaking free of the death god’s grasp. I exist to serve the master of Bone Castle.

A sinister lucidity settled in Cyric’s eyes, and the room ceased trembling. “If you would serve anyone who sits this throne, you cannot be loyal to me only.” He grinned. “Therefore you must be the traitor.”

The Lord of the Dead drew Godsbane and advanced a step toward the seneschal. The short sword looked sickly in the shifting light cast by the Burning Men, its bone-white pallor darkening to the gray of twilight shadows. No, my love, she whispered. I cannot allow you to slay your only loyal minion.

“What?” Cyric roared. He held the blade up to his eyes, as if he could look inside its steely depths. “You cannot ‘allow’ me?”

There is a traitor at your side, my love, but it’s not Jergal. Godsbane’s voice quavered, straining to form each painful word. Not everything is as it seems.

Jergal hovered close. Please, Your Magnificence. Rest yourself in the throne for a time. Gather your thoughts so you can drive the-

“Get out!” Cyric shouted. He spared the seneschal a brief, anger-filled glance. “Now!”

I will see to the defense of the entry hall. Jergal bowed formally and retreated from the throne room.

The Prince of Lies stared at the short sword, turning it over in his hands, examining it from every angle. “What have you been keeping from me, Godsbane?” he rumbled. “The identity of the traitor?”

Yes, the spirit of the blade replied. Her voice had become more masculine, slick with sibilants. I see now how wrong I was to do so, but I’ve helped the other gods plot against you.

“Impossible,” Cyric shouted. “I broke your will after I stole you from Black Oaks. I was only a mortal then, and I defeated you in mental combat. You couldn’t turn against me.”

You never bested me.

“Lies!” Cyric held the sword high over his head, one hand on the hilt, the other on the tip. With a scream of anger, he snapped Godsbane in two.