by Troy Denning
“ ‘This is the story of Rinda, a scribe of Zhentil Keep who was forced by the Lord of Corruption to write the Cyrinishad, a volume of vile lies lacking a single word of truth’—”
“Malik!”
Cyric’s voice blasted me from the bench and sent me tumbling across the floor, and still I could not stop reading:
“—‘and of how Wise Oghma helped her write a true account of the liar’s life’—”
I saw a red ball separate from Cyric’s dark radiance and come streaking toward me, then I tumbled one more time. My world exploded into searing fire. That should have been the end of this tale, yet the flames did not devour me. They did not raise one blister on my skin, nor singe a single hair on my beard, nor char any page of the book in my hands, and still I read on:
“—‘which resulted in Cyric’s ejection from the City of the Dead and the downfall of his worldly power’—”
“Silence!”
Though the roar of Cyric’s voice drowned out my pitiful chirping, I continued to read. How could I stop?
“Obey, Malik! Obey, or you will live to see me burn your bones clean in boiling acid!”
“You will not!” boomed Tyr. “That would be interfering with a witness. Until this trial is done, Malik el Sami yn Nasser is under my protection and, through me, Ao’s. Neither you nor anyone else may harm him.”
Cyric fell quiet, and of course I filled the silence with another blasphemy. “ ‘He read his own book and was driven mad by his own lies.’ ”
“Enough!” Cyric yelled. For a moment, his radiance grew so dim I could make out his fleshless hands pressed to the sides of his skull. “I release him!”
With that, the shapeless radiances of the twelve gods went dark inside my head, and the twelve forms of the Pavilion of Cynosure vanished around me, and I plummeted back into the sea of icy shadow, leaving the One to stand alone against his accusers.
The chamber fell silent in my absence. The thoughts of the gods turned inward, first to their relief that the book beneath my robe had not been the Cyrinishad, then to the strange compulsion that had kept me reading in the face of my god’s anger. Mystra saw the questions in their eyes, and she knew that soon even her magic would not prevent them from seeing the truth.
“Did your thief steal the wrong book, Cyric?” she asked. “Or perhaps you find the impressions in Rinda’s journal flattering?”
Many gods chuckled, but not Tyr and not Oghma. The Wise God furrowed his brow and turned to gaze at Mystra. “Lady Magic, why do you suppose the mortal kept reading?”
Mystra made no answer, for if she spoke at all, her own spell would compel her to reveal all she had done to guard against the Cyrinishad’s power.
Oghma pressed for a response. “Clearly, Malik knew his god was displeased.”
“Most displeased.” The One fixed his black-burning eyes on the Goddess of Magic and watched her most carefully. “Well?”
When Mystra still made no answer, Sune stopped preening and said, “The little man was in awe, of course. Twelve gods! What mortal would not be?”
Oghma bit his lip against an impatient reply, then said, “I fail to see how being in awe would cause him to defy his god. The effect would be quite the opposite, I would think.”
Sune lifted her chin, then glared at Oghma. “It is impossible to say what mortals will do when they are awestruck—they are so flighty. You should know that. You are the God of Knowledge, are you not?”
“Indeed,” Oghma replied.
“The mortal’s reaction hardly matters,” Kelemvor said, seizing on Oghma’s pause. “He read nothing we did not know already.”
“But it would matter,” said Tyr. “In the Pavilion of Cynosure, everyone must be free to speak his own mind—including mortals, if they are important enough to be here at all.”
“You said it would matter,” observed Oghma. “Does that mean he was not compelled?”
“Not by magic or thought, not that I could find with Ao’s power,” replied the Eyeless One.
The reason for this, of course, was the veil Mystra had dropped before the trial. Tyr might have use of Ao’s power, but Lady Magic was the mistress of the Weave itself, and she could do more things with magic than the Just One dreamed.
Thus acquitted of suspicion, Mystra felt safe enough to break her silence. “Now that Cyric has had his say and everything seems in order, the time has come to call for a verdict.”
“Call for what you like, it does not matter to me.” As Cyric spoke these words, he grew as translucent as a specter and began to fade from the pavilion. “I am above your verdicts.”
“Not quite,” said Tyr. The Eyeless One pulled a loop of chain from the empty air and tossed it in Cyric’s direction; the chain vanished before it hit the floor, but the One’s form grew instantly as solid as stone. “Until this trial ends, Ao has given me the power to bind you over for judgment.”
“What?” Cyric shook his hands, and the sound of a rattling chain filled the air. “Ao gave you rule over me?”
“Of course. You are so much mightier than we,” mocked Talos. “He knew we would need it.”
“And now the time has come to wield our power,” said Tempus. “Let us call the verdict and get on with our real business: naming Cyric’s punishment.”
Only Tyr did not add his voice to the chorus of agreement. “Cyric has not yet retired his defense,” said the Just One. “He still has the chance to state his case.”
“To you?” Though Cyric’s tone was disdainful, he ran his gaze around the circle and studied each god in turn, and he lingered longest on the faces of Mystra and Kelemvor. “How can I expect you to understand me? I have made myself; I am as different from you as dragons are from lizards.”
“Nevertheless, perhaps you should try.” Oghma spoke gently. “These particular lizards happen to have the power of life and death over you.”
Cyric’s eyes flared to twice their normal size and burned like black fireballs. Yet when he spoke, he did it in a civil tongue. “I am charged with innocence by reason of insanity?”
“That is the charge,” affirmed Tyr.
“Ah … Perhaps you will allow me the leeway to prove the charges at least half-correct.” Cyric glared at Mystra, then smiled and marched across the pavilion to stand before Kelemvor. “I ask Lord Death to be my witness.”
“What?” Kelemvor’s hand dropped toward his sword. “If you think I will—”
“Really, Kel.” Cyric glanced at Kelemvor’s sword hand, then added, “Even if you could pull it off, I suppose Tyr’s protection extends to me as well as to my witnesses.”
Kelemvor took his hand away from his sword. “I cannot imagine how you think I would help you.”
“Of course you can’t. I’m crazy,” Cyric replied. “I only want to know if you would ever serve as my … inferior, shall we say?”
“Never!”
“I suppose not. After all, I have always treated you rather poorly.” The One nodded and started to walk away, but paused and turned back to Kelemvor. “Then tell me, when you thought Malik had the Cyrinishad, why did you let him read?”
Mystra tried to catch Lord Death’s arm and warn him to be silent, but Kelemvor, thinking to evade the question with a vague answer, had already opened his mouth.
“Because Tyr said …” Here he stopped, and a long choking noise rose from his throat. He shook his head to clear it of a sudden hissing, then went on, “Because when Mystra urged Malik to read, I knew she had done something to protect us.”
This surprised no one except Tyr. “But I checked for magic!”
Cyric ignored him and turned next to Mystra. “Is Kelemvor right? Did you do something to annul the Cyrinishad?” He paused here and glanced toward Tyr. “I am sure everyone will understand if you have no wish to reply.”
“I will answer.” Mystra gazed past Cyric to Tyr, who had drawn his glowing hammer and looked ready to use it. “I spun the Weave to shield us from the Cyrinishad’s corruption, and to p
revent anyone in this trial from lying.”
As soon as she said this, her magic veil appeared on the floor. Tyr stuck his warhammer in his belt and snatched up the cloth. “This was forbidden!”
“So it was,” Cyric said. “But, as I am the injured party, I ask you to wait until I finish before levying your punishment.”
“So be it.” Tyr wadded the cloth into his palm.
“I have only one more question, Lady Magic.” Cyric curled his lip as he spoke this, for he knew better than any god that Mystra was no lady. “Do you want to see me destroyed because you fear me, or because you favor what you call ‘the Good’?”
Mystra’s answer came at once. “Because I hate you.” She closed her mouth and tried to hold it that way, but there was more truth to tell, and so her lips parted again. “And because I favor what is good for the mortals of Faerûn.”
These words occasioned many whispers among the gods. It was Mystra’s divine duty to maintain the impartial balance of the Weave, and her admission was a violation of that sacred duty.
Tempus stepped forward and pointed at Cyric. “A clever trick, Mad One, but we can deal with Mystra later. You are on trial here.”
Cyric spun on his heel and faced the Battle Lord and almost danced across the floor to meet him. “I know, Tempus! I was not trying to distract anyone!” The One was almost chortling now, and the Battle Lord recoiled as a vizier does from a beggar. “But since you ask, can you hold me alone accountable for war’s decline in Faerûn?”
“Why should I not?”
“You have not been listening, Slowhammer! How many bystanders have been engulfed by stray fireballs lately? How many towns have been razed by magic earthquakes?” Cyric whirled around and pointed a naked finger bone at Mystra. “And how many rivers have suddenly run dry when a party of refugees needed to escape their pursuers? How many ridges have sprouted thorn thickets to turn a band of marauders away from a defenseless village?”
Mystra could say nothing, for Cyric’s charges were all as true as the words of the Cyrinishad.
After a moment’s consideration, Tempus nodded. “All you say is true. Faerûn’s war magic has been less than crushing of late, and when it does devastate, it always favors the virtuous side. Perhaps Mystra shares in the blame—”
“Wait!” Cyric interrupted. “There is more—or have you not noticed how the noblest warriors are losing all fear of death, while the backstabbers and cowards grow more cautious than ever?”
Again, Tempus nodded, but this time he said nothing and waited for Cyric to continue.
“We all know whose doing this is.” This time, the One pointed at Kelemvor. “The Usurper rewards noble men so favorably that they cannot wait to die. They sacrifice themselves in the most ridiculous causes—while the more cunning are so terrified of his punishments they hardly dare to fight. Soon enough, there will be no war at all on Faerûn! All the brave men will be dead in their paradises, and the cowards will not step across their own thresholds for fear of being killed by a falling pot.”
Kelemvor could say no more than Mystra, for the truth was just as Cyric claimed.
After the One finished, Tempus looked him up and down. “All you say is true, but if you think to trade your own life for—”
“Not at all!” Cyric said. “All I ask is that I be charged for my own … actions.”
“The request is reasonable.” Oghma’s comment surprised Cyric more than it did Mystra or Kelemvor. “A case could be made that Lady Magic and Lord Death are more guilty of neglecting their duty than is Cyric.”
Tempus’s visored face swung toward Tyr. “Can I expand my charges to include the other two?”
Tyr glanced at the crumpled veil in his hand. “Done.”
Mystra whirled on the Eyeless One. “How dare you!” she stormed. “I may have disobeyed you, but I am not like Cyric. Neither is Kelemvor!”
“We will decide that in a tenday,” Tyr replied. “Use the time to prepare for your trial.”
Nine
Even the darkness of the Shadow Sea could not save me from the power of Mystra’s magic. Though Rinda’s journal lay hidden beneath an icy blanket of murk and my eyes could not read a single letter, syllables spilled from my lips one after another and strung themselves into words. The words knotted themselves into sentences, which bound themselves into paragraphs, and I spoke the foulest profanities that had ever assailed my ears. Yet these words were nothing compared to the blasphemies that had poured from my mouth in the Pavilion of Cynosure. Soon Cyric would torture me a thousand ways, and I saw each in overwhelming detail. They all ended with bitter death, with me lying alone and forlorn upon the Fugue Plain with no god to claim me—no god except Lord Death, who would sentence me to an eternity of torments as terrible as those inflicted by the One.
Some uncertain time later, my stomach rose into my chest, and the sea of icy shadow melted into wisps of black mist. The wall of a great tower appeared before me, silhouetted against the golden disk of Lathander’s dawn sun. Cyric had returned me to Candlekeep in the same place from which he had plucked me, and now I was plummeting down alongside the Keeper’s Tower.
Favoring a quick death on the moat’s rocky bank to a slow death in its boiling water, I kicked my feet up over my head. The leather journal flapped open in my hand, and even then did Mystra’s magic compel me to read what I had glimpsed:
“ ‘The skin of my father, Bevis the Illuminator’—”
The outline of the stony bank emerged from the sulfurous vapor below. I thought my death would come quickly and at last still my blasphemous tongue, but Cyric’s trial was not over. I hit the stones with a soft thump, then bounced into the air and tumbled down the slope. And such was Tyr’s protection that I suffered only a dizzy head.
I came to a rest against a scraggly pine, then finished the sentence that had been on my lips when I struck the ground: “—‘was used to make the parchment for draft 398, and I knew my own skin would be used for draft 399 if my words did not please Cyric.’ ”
The accursed journal still lay in my hands!
Dawn was full upon Candlekeep; the sun stood a hand’s span above the ramparts, flooding the citadel with golden light and laying down long streaks of shadow behind trees and towers. From the ward below came the bustle of companies forming to receive unexpected orders, but the area near the Keeper’s Tower seemed surprisingly deserted, with not a monk or soldier in sight.
The Cyrinishad’s fetor hung thick and cloying in the air, and I felt a shadow of the revulsion that had sickened me when I touched its iron box. The beckoning rustle of the tome’s parchment pages swelled into a blaring drone, but no longer did the sound come from Rinda’s window. Now it reverberated through the thick walls of the Keeper’s Tower, growing deeper and more sonorous as it settled toward the lowest floor.
They were moving the Cyrinishad!
And though my greatest ambition remained the recovery of the sacred tome, I was helpless to rescue it from the thieves who had it now. Even had I been a mighty warrior capable of slaying a dozen men, Mystra’s magic compelled me to do nothing but read from the accursed journal in my hands.
“ ‘Cyric had brought me to that rank parchment shop to begin his story because he was born there. It is a pity his mother didn’t toss him into a tanning vat and forget what she had borne; certainly Faerûn would have been the better for it!’ ”
As this sacrilege gushed from my lips, a booming clamor erupted on the far side of the Keeper’s Tower. A company of guards thundered across the drawbridge, and the rustle of the Cyrinishad’s pages became a deafening roar. Then that meddling Harper witch shouted some orders, which I could not understand on account of the noise in my ears, and a small band of warriors left their fellows to rush down into the ward. I knew at once that they were carrying the One’s sacred book, for the sound that filled my head grew more distant and more shrill.
I gathered myself up and stumbled across the hill, thinking I might circle around and follow them
from a safe distance. My eyes darted from Rinda’s journal to the uneven terrain and back again, caught in a constant struggle between ground and page. I had gone only a few steps before the meddling witch came around the tower with more than a dozen men. They could not have been thirty paces away, yet they were mere silhouettes creeping along through the steam that rose from the moat, crouching down to peer through the sulfurous vapor and search the water’s steely surface for my scalded body. Fearful of drawing their attention, I stopped and dropped to my knees and clasped my free hand over my mouth, but even that could not stop me from reading.
“ ‘Cyric spoke until dawn, though I will not offend my readers with all the lies and false words he spewed forth that first night, except to say that I returned home sick and weary. There I was greeted by the second god I had met that day, a mysterious figure who arrived with Lord Chembryl of the Zhentarim to ask me to write a companion to Cyric’s tome of lies. So it was that I began the True Life of Cyric that same day.’ ”
Though my palm muffled these blasphemies, they rang as loud as bells to my own ears, and I was certain my foes would hear them too. I turned across the hill and placed the journal on the ground before me, then crawled forward on my hands and knees, reading as quietly as I knew how, watching between words for loose rocks that I might send tumbling down the hill.
The witch and her companions edged along the moat and stopped beneath Rinda’s window, where the guards stirred the water with the butts of their halberds. Of course, they did not find my body.
“Lodar, get some hooks and line so we can drag the moat,” said Ruha. The Cyrinishad’s droning had grown distant enough that I could hear her words. “Balas, go ask Zale to rouse the rest of his hippogriffs. If that little murderer did not drown, then he has flown away.”
