by Troy Denning
Then I spied two glints of yellow in the shadowy tangle beside Haroun and Jabbar. The glimmers came from their scepters of office, still grasped in their cold hands. I recalled my vision and saw again the great host of True Believers standing before me, and I perceived what a fool I had been to question the ways of Cyric the All.
I struggled to rise, but could not escape the press of bodies upon my back. The ground began to rumble as though it would open. Taking this to be a sign of the One’s anger at my weakness, I clawed desperately at the ground—and dragged myself forward an inch. A deep lowing joined the rumble, and then an angry snorting and the clang of clashing weapons. My heart sank, for this noise was no holy sign; it was the sound of the Ebon Spur riding into battle.
With a fury born of panic, I redoubled my clawing and began to kick, and at last I freed myself of the corpses. Then, seeing that all the warriors nearby were too busy killing each other to pay me any heed, I crawled toward the Dark Masters. The stench of death was horrid, for bodies were never meant to spill all their contents, but I clenched my teeth and burrowed into the steaming heap like a dog after a badger. A bodyguard wailed in pain as I pushed aside his shattered leg. I slid between two breastplates slick with blood, passing faceless lips that moaned for help, and at last the golden staffs lay within reach. I stretched my hand forward and grasped Haroun’s scepter.
It issued no warning scorch, nor did it discharge a heart-stopping shock. The scepter slipped free of the Most High’s dead grasp, then gave a soft pop as I wrenched the iron starburst from Jabbar’s head. I drew the staff to my chest and tucked it into the rope that served as my belt, then pushed Haroun’s arm aside so I could reach Jabbar’s scepter.
A hand, warm and slick with blood, clamped my forearm. I was so startled that I screamed and pulled away, but the hand held fast. I heard a heart beating, low and fast and mean, and I did not think it was my own. My blood cooled, for it was said that Dark Lords could come back from the dead to avenge themselves.
“I beg … you.” The words were wispy and weak, and I had not spoken them. I felt a great relief, for Jabbar would never beg. “Help … me.”
“As you wish,” I replied. “But first you must let go.”
Still the bloody fingers held fast. Lacking the strength to break the fellow’s death grip, I slipped my free hand inside my beggar’s cloak, then drew forth the small hooked dagger that I always carried in a concealed place.
“Here is your help!”
I slashed the blade across the clutching hand. The warrior cried out and loosened his grip. I twisted my arm free, then snatched the scepter from Jabbar’s dead grasp and began to squirm backward. When at last I freed myself from the stinking heap, my ears filled with thunder—the sound of charging war bulls.
I staggered to my feet and turned. Less then fifty paces away, a pair of the beasts were pounding across the hilltop in my direction, their black horns rocking up and down, their hooves pummeling the dead and wounded alike. On their backs sat two officers, one a Black Helm and the other a Purple Lancer, flailing at each other with an axe and a morningstar.
I scrambled up a pile of bodies and raised the golden scepters above my head. “In the name of Cyric the All, stop!”
The riders continued forward, and I saw that only a few of the Dark Lords’ bodyguards still remained standing, fighting each other in scattered pockets all across the gore-strewn hilltop. But the two troops of the Ebon Spur were flooding onto the knoll, their blades and hammers filling the air with a clamorous din. I could not see over them to tell what the rest of our army was doing, but it alarmed me greatly to notice a dark line of the enemy’s flying mounts streaming down from Candlekeep.
I brought the scepters together above my head, creating the sacred starburst and skull of Our Lord Cyric. The war bulls continued to pound across the hilltop, the lead pair still thundering in my direction. The riders were cursing and grunting, oblivious to anything except their clanging weapons, but the bulls fixed their eyes on the holy scepters and came charging toward me as though I were taunting them with red flags.
I stood where I was, weak in the knees but trusting in the protection of Almighty Cyric. “By this hallowed symbol, stop!”
So close were the bulls that I saw their nostrils spraying steam. My knees would have buckled, had a peal of thunder not broken across the sky and shocked the strength back into my legs. I glimpsed the enemy’s flying beasts diving out of the sky—they were fantastic creatures with the heads of eagles and the bodies of winged horses—then I saw a silver bolt flash from the lead beast down toward the plain.
The bulls reached my gruesome pulpit and continued forward, veering apart only slightly as they plowed over the tangle of limbs and torsos. The riders leaned inward and continued their battle, creating an arc of flashing steel before my eyes.
“For the Cyrinishad, Mighty Cyric, make me brave!” I separated the two halves of the starburst and skull and, having no idea what magic might pour forth from the staves, pointed one scepter at each of the charging bulls. “Stop, I command you!”
There was nothing, for Cyric had turned his back on me, or so I believed. Before I could flee, the beasts were beside me, filling my ears with a booming tempest of hooves and hearts and snorting breath. I could not keep from cowering. The bulls, always quick to seize on any weakness, lowered their heads.
A searing pain lanced deep into my stomach. I rose into the sky and glimpsed below me a purple-clad rider sitting astride a bull. I closed my eyes and felt myself rise further still. For a moment, I could hear every sound in the battle with perfect clarity: every chiming blade, every crunching bone, every last gasping curse. I heard the feathers of the enemy’s eagle-horses beating the air, the thrum of the foot companies scattering through the salt grass, the bellowing of fire giants lying scorched and torn upon the plain. I thought I would rise until I reached the heavens and never come down.
Then I heard the crash of my shoulders slamming into the ground, the crunch and hiss of my broken body rolling down the slope, the wail of my own voice:
“Why have you done this, Cyric My Lord?”
I smashed into a boulder and came to a rest bent around it backward, blood gushing from the wound in my stomach. By some miracle, my quaking hands still grasped the scepters of the starburst-and-skull. The sun had already risen high above the eastern horizon, and I felt it beating down on my face, a hot disk of mocking golden light. The sounds of battle grew distant, until the silence became so profound I could hear nothing but the low, dead pulse of my own heart.
“Why did you leave us, My Dark Lord?”
The disk of light vanished. I was foolish enough to believe Cyric had answered and turned my face into the darkness.
It was only an eagle-horse swooping across the sky, its outstretched wings blocking the sun like those of some great fiend risen from the pit to carry me to Cyric’s palace. The beast wheeled low over my head, and I saw a man in leather armor holding the reins. Behind him sat a smaller figure, her head swaddled in a purple scarf and her body cloaked in dark robes. I could see her eyes, rimmed in kohl and as black as the veil that hid her face, scanning the battlefield. Her hands began to move.
She was calling to me, I thought, casting her spell. I imagined her voice rustling inside my skull, beckoning to me, bidding the Finder of the Book to stand and show himself.
It might be wiser, I decided, just to close my eyes.
Two
I am but a man, and no man may perceive everything that occurs in the world and in the boundless heavens above. Only the gods see all, and when it serves their purpose, they will sometimes brighten a mortal’s mind with their perfect knowledge. Know then that the following accounts, like many others describing events I could not have witnessed personally, are gifts of the One. Long after my days as a spy came to their end, Our Dark Lord graced my thoughts with an exact knowledge of all that occurred during the search for the holy Cyrinishad, whether or not I had seen it with my own eyes,
and even if it happened in the heavens above where no man may see.
I bear no blame for the many blasphemies of speech and thought contained in these accounts. These lies belong only to those who spawned them, and I swear they are a great offense to my ears! I include them only because it is my duty to present a complete and faithful chronicle of the search for the holy Cyrinishad. I pray you, Almighty Cyric, One and All, do not torment your poor servant for doing as he is bound!
* * * * *
After the companies of Most High Haroun and His Deadliness Jabbar destroyed each other, what remained of Cyric’s army fled across the plain in ten directions at once: south toward the Cloud Peaks and east toward Beregost and north toward the Cloak Woods, and in all directions but west, where loomed the towers of Candlekeep and the raging Sea of Swords. The eagle-horses wheeled over the field, their riders hurling fireballs and lightning bolts, True Believers scattering before them as sheep before wolves. Only the Company of the Ebon Spur did not flee, for it had become a crimson tangle on the knoll where Jabbar and Haroun had fallen. The bodies of men and beasts lay as deep as a man’s shoulders, and their steaming blood cascaded from the summit in glistening streams. A dozen bulls staggered over the heap, lowing for their dead masters, while the warriors who had not yet expired prayed to Cyric in voices hoarse with pain.
All this did fickle Tempus, God of War, see from his home in faraway Limbo. The sight charged his heart with such a fury that he smashed his gauntleted hand against his iron throne, and fields of battle quaked all across Faerûn. Pikemen lost their footing and exposed whole flanks to the charging enemy. Loyal war-horses stumbled and fell, pitching their riders to the mercy of their foes. Castle walls crumbled and cracked, and besieging armies poured through the breaches to pillage and plunder.
The Battle Lord paid no heed to these calamities, for war is won as often through accidents of destiny as through acts of courage. But when he thought of the valiant warriors slain before Candlekeep, stilled by the blades of their own fellows, and of the epic contest that might have been, again Tempus felt his anger rising. It erupted with the rumble of a hundred thunderclaps, and the Numberless Hosts that did battle in his vast halls shrank from the ire of their god. They lowered their blades and turned to tremble before his throne. For the first time since the Time of Troubles, the Eternal War fell quiet.
A slender elf emerged from the shadows of a far corner and started across the debris. He wore a cloak of dark gloom, and though he crossed many heaps of crumpled armor and trod upon the shards of countless broken weapons, he moved in utter silence and never caused a sound. Nor did his feet leave any track, though he often walked through pools of fresh blood and stepped in piles of steaming gore.
The elf stopped before the throne of Tempus and bowed low. “When mighty Tempus is robbed, I would expect him to strike down the thief—not vent his anger upon the mortals who serve his cause.” The words were as wispy as a yard of silk, and so soft they seemed a mere thought. “But I often expect more than I should.”
Tempus, garbed as always in little more than his battered breastplate and war helm, regarded the intruder in sullen silence. Though the Battle Lord’s visor was lowered and had no slits for seeing, his gaze sent a shudder down the visitor’s spine. Such was the horror of War, that its face was too terrible to look upon and its stare too withering to bear.
Tempus leaned forward in his great throne and loomed over the elf, who stood no higher than the Battle Lord’s knee. “What you expect is no concern of mine, Shadowflea.” He did not ask how this visitor had passed through his castle’s defenses; though Mask was feeble by the measure of gods, no ward or hasp could lock out the God of Thieves. “And when I am robbed, I shall strike you down before any mortal.”
Mask rose from his bow, and his gloom-shrouded features changed to those of an elven female. “Then you shall be doubly robbed, first of what is already lost, and next of a loyal ally.”
“You could never be loyal, and I take no allies.” Tempus made no comment on his visitor’s transformation, for he knew that the Shadowlord changed appearances constantly to evade his many pursuers. One of these pursuers Mask feared above all others, and the Battle Lord could not resist a taunt. “Perhaps you should say what you came to say. Is that not Kezef I hear baying?”
Mask cringed and looked over both shoulders, and Tempus chuckled darkly. Many years before, during the turbulent times of the Cyrinishad’s creation, the God of Thieves had tried to sic Kezef the Chaos Hound on Cyric. Of course, the One had countered this plan easily, nearly destroying the Shadowlord in a mighty blast. Kezef had arrived on the heels of the explosion, angered by Mask’s bid to manipulate him and eager to take vengeance. The Shadowlord had fled so quickly that, for a time, even his fellow deities had thought him destroyed in the blast.
When Mask saw that Tempus had deceived him, his features brightened to the color of a fair-skinned girl. “The god of war makes a joke,” said the Shadowlord. “How unexpected.”
Tempus sat back, his eyeless glare still fixed on Mask’s ever-changing face. “I have more humor than patience this day, Shadowcrab.”
“As well you might, given what Cyric has stolen from you.”
“Stolen?” Tempus noted the quiet that had fallen over his battle hall. With a mere thought, he ordered the Eternal War resumed, then snorted, “Cyric could not steal the feculence from my cesspits. That lunatic has done nothing in years but ponder his own lies.”
“Just so, but Cyric has robbed you.” Mask’s visage changed to that of a long-snouted troll. “He has robbed you so well you do not blame him, though his guilt is as plain as the nose on my face. In too many places, diplomats are bargaining fairly, second princes are content in their positions, foes are keeping treaties made in good faith. This is Cyric’s doing. Is he not the god of murder, strife, and intrigue? Is it not his duty to spread these things across Faerûn? And yet, they are vanishing everywhere—everywhere but within his own church.”
Tempus nodded. “Peace has spread like a disease across the continent—and without the usual aid of Sune or Lliira.”
A crescent of yellow teeth shone in the gloom beneath Mask’s long troll nose. “We are in agreement, then.”
“We have noted the same condition,” Tempus said. “But to say we agree implies we are allies, and I remember how you betrayed both sides during the debacle of the Cyrinishad.”
“You dare chastise me for vacillating? The God of War, who favors one side at dusk and another at dawn?”
Tempus folded his arms. “Such is the nature of war. I make no claim otherwise, and that is why I make no alliances.”
“But you are unhappy with events at Candlekeep. You were robbed of an epic battle by Cyric’s incompetence. His priests are more adept at murdering each other than at spreading strife across the land.” Mask had taken the stocky form of an orc, and nothing showed in his shadowy face except two gleaming pig’s eyes. “Unless matters change, war will become a thing of the past on Faerûn—and you with it.”
Tempus felt his anger stir once more, but he resisted the urge to pound the arm of his throne. If he tipped the balance of battle yet again and so quickly, he might dampen the fighting, and already there were too few good wars raging across Faerûn.
“I know what Cyric’s incompetence has cost me,” Tempus said. “And I know why you are here. But if I lash out in vengeance—”
“Not lash out,” Mask said. “That would accomplish nothing, save to draw your foes into a battle there is no need to fight.”
Tempus locked his visored gaze on the God of Thieves. Mask’s form shifted from orc to dwarf, but the Battle Lord still did not see the meaning behind the Shadowlord’s words.
“What are you suggesting?”
At that moment a howl echoed through the hall, and though its source lay outside the Battle Lord’s palace, it was loud and shrill, piercing the din of the Eternal War as cleanly as the blare of an unholy trumpet. The Shadowlord’s flesh rippled and tu
rned pale. Tempus saw a puny halfling with pink eyes and skin as white as alabaster, then Mask remembered himself and took the form of an eight-foot gnoll.
“You must assemble the Circle of Twelve.” Mask spoke rapidly and edged away from the direction of the howl. “Accuse Cyric of neglecting his godly duties.”
“Call a trial council?” Tempus paid no attention to Kezef’s impending arrival; the Chaos Hound was Mask’s concern. “We cannot intrude upon Cyric’s affairs. Ao would never hear of it!”
“He will—if enough of you ask.” Mask’s gaze darted over his shoulder. “You are not the only great god who suffers because of Cyric’s neglect. After the debacle at Candlekeep, Talos the Destroyer and the Nightbringer Shar both have reason to stand against him. And you can be certain Mystra and Kelemvor will support you; their hatred for Cyric will blind them to how his incompetence benefits their cause.”
Another howl broke over the hall, this one as shrill as finger bones scratching at iron walls.
Mask shuddered and became an amorphous blob. “Of the twelve gods in the Circle, you can already count the support of five. Just one more is enough to guarantee victory, for Cyric will never deign to attend, and Tyr will hold himself above the polling as judge.” Mask raised his shadowy hand, and a parchment scroll appeared in his grasp. “I have spelled it out for you here. Even if Ao denies your petition, he will take action himself. He must, for the very Balance is threatened!”
“All you say is true enough.” Tempus spoke slowly, for he enjoyed watching Mask twitch and ripple, and he wished to see whether the Shadowlord’s fear of Kezef was greater than his hatred of Cyric. “Yet, your plots have a way of rebounding on those who take part in them.”
