by Troy Denning
The two soldiers moved to obey, Lodar returning to the drawbridge and Balas starting down my side of the slope. I rolled into a shallow crevice where a nearby pine had rooted itself. This cranny was a little deeper than my body was thick, and just wide enough for my belly—an ideal place to hide, at least until I could finish Rinda’s accursed journal and turn all my thoughts to the Cyrinishad.
After Balas passed by, I squirmed onto my stomach so I could watch my foes above, then surrendered to my compulsion. The journal contained nothing but blasphemies and lies, and yet these made as much sense as the truth, so that not only was I compelled to read Rinda’s vile story, but also to give it consideration and search out the inconsistencies that proved it false. Unfortunately, these were exceedingly few and small, as she was the most accomplished liar who has ever written.
After that first day, when Rinda met Cyric and that other cowardly god who would not show his face, she wrote day and night, meeting Cyric at the parchment shop at strange hours, then returning home to slave an equal time on the profane True Life of Cyric. And while she did all this, Mystra and Oghma and many other jealous gods struggled against the One and his sacred plan, turning Zhentil Keep, which was Rinda’s city, into a place of deadly intrigue and shadowy battles. The time came when her last friend perished in this struggle. She despaired of surviving alone, and, fearing the One’s wrath in the afterlife, wisely decided to destroy her unfinished work on the True Life Of Cyric. Before she could act, the coward-god revealed himself to her as Oghma the Wise and promised to look after her and protect her from the One and All.
Rinda wrote with such a plain and honest style that I would have believed these lies, save for the contradiction in her story: only a fool would believe Oghma powerful enough to defy Cyric the Almighty, and Rinda was no fool.
As I read this, the droning of the Cyrinishad grew more distant and more shrill in my ears, but I could not answer its call. With Ruha and the soldiers still searching the moat above me, I would have been discovered the instant I sent a stone clattering down the slope.
A long stream of hippogriffs began to rise from their pens and fly off in all directions to search for me. Then Lodar and three more men returned with a tangle of ropes and hooks, and the soldiers began to drag the moat They started beneath Rinda’s window and worked their way around the entire tower, drawing forth old soggy mattresses and swine carcasses and many other vile things, none of which was my body. It was a great relief to see the witch rushing to inspect each new discovery. As long as this business kept her occupied, there seemed little chance she would interrupt my reading.
At last, the day came when Rinda finished her work. Cyric came to her house and read the Cyrinishad from cover to cover and saw that it was perfect, and he took great pleasure in ordering Fzoul Chembryl, who was a notorious Unbeliever, to peruse the book. At once, Fzoul acknowledged the omnipotence of the Dark Sun. Then Cyric ordered him to punish Rinda, for the One had found the True Life of Cyric hidden beneath her floorboards and knew how she had betrayed him to Oghma. Fzoul obeyed, stabbing her in the stomach so she would die slowly and in agony. This so pleased Cyric that he bestowed on Fzoul the honor of reading the Cyrinishad to the masses of Zhentil Keep. He also commanded Fzoul to destroy the True Life, a volume which the One found too loathsome to touch himself.
As I read this, a lone hippogriff came swooping over my head and stopped my heart—if not my reading—but the creature did not wheel around to pluck me from my cranny.
Instead, it raised its wings and settled to the ground at the summit of the hill. The witch rushed over to speak with the rider. She stood close to him, like a lover, and they spoke too softly for me to hear. The man shook his head and waved his hand at the sky. The meddling Harper glanced back toward the moat, which her soldiers had already dragged two times, then began to scan the hillside around me. Something inside my stomach wanted to leap up and flee, but my head knew better than to think I could escape while reading a book.
My eyes were drawn back to the page, where I read of the low treachery of the One’s enemies. After Cyric left Rinda’s house, the god Mask emerged from Fzoul Chembryl’s body, where he had been hiding to shield Fzoul from the power of the Cyrinishad. The Shadowlord healed Rinda. Oghma appeared also, and he gave Fzoul the True Life of Cyric to read in the Cyrinishad’s place before the masses of Zhentil Keep. Then the thieving God of Wisdom bestowed his diamond scroll on Rinda and gave her Cyric’s sacred chronicle to safeguard.
I glanced up from Rinda’s journal to see the witch motioning her soldiers away from the moat. “He is not there, or you would have found him. Let us work our way down the hill.”
The soldiers dropped their hooks and spread out along the slope. I looked back to Rinda’s journal—I could not help myself.
Fzoul read the True Life Of Cyric at dawn the next morning, and the lies in the vile book so inflamed the masses that they rioted at once. Then, as soon as the One turned his attention to the disaster in Zhentil Keep, the harlot Mystra stirred up a rebellion in the City of the Dead, and Cyric was helpless to save himself.
I came very near to believing these lies, as they did much to explain how the One lost the Throne of Death. Fortunately, at the last moment I perceived the flaw in Rinda’s words, which was the impossibility of the One being helpless in any manner.
Up near the Keeper’s Tower, the Harper and her soldiers began to creep down the slope, peering up into the boughs of every tree and thrusting their halberds down into every crevice. I began to inch backward down the slope, my eyes still fixed on the page before me.
Although Rinda did not claim to see Cyric’s failure for herself—a rare honesty for her—she heard later that Mask was overcome by the Cyrinishad’s power, and that during the rebellion in the City of the Dead he confessed his betrayal to Cyric. According to Rinda, the One grew so furious he lost control of himself and, in his attempt to kill Mask, accidentally freed Kelemvor’s spirit. On this falsehood, there is no need to comment; we all know the One never has accidents. I spat upon the page and smeared my dribble around to smudge the ink.
Then the Cyrinishad assailed my ears with a tremendous hissing. The cold nausea that had assaulted me in Gwydion’s chamber returned, and my nostrils filled with the vile stench of sulfur and offal. I knew at once that my foes meant to drop the Cyrinishad into one of the boiling cesspools below their latrines, where no mortal could venture and no immortal would. I was filled with a terrible longing to rush to the holy tome’s rescue—and also with the dreadful fear of glimpsing again its Dark Truths.
I started to rise, but then I saw the Harper hag standing at the other end of my crevice, peering up into the pine boughs over her head. Fearing the slightest movement would draw her attention, I froze and fought to keep my gaze from returning to Rinda’s book.
Despite my terrible predicament, I lost my battle. My fingers turned the page ever so quietly, and my eyes read the first line, and the words welled up inside me, and nothing I could do would keep my lips from whispering them:
“ ‘As for Cyric, now he sits alone in his Shattered Keep, lost in delusions of grandeur and absolute power, leaving his church on Faerûn to grow ever more fragmented and weak. Some say this is because the shock of losing the City of Dead drove him insane, but I know better. Cyric was the first to read the Cyrinishad; his own lies drove him mad.’ ”
This blasphemy was too much, especially since I had felt for myself the omnipotence of the Cyrinishad’s Dark Truths and seen with my own eyes the One’s mad behavior—and also because I perceived how well Rinda’s lies explained all that I had seen. A red sea filled my head, and, forgetting my terrible situation, I rose to my knees and flung the book away like the profane thing it was.
“Filth!”
I recalled my predicament when my world became a white flash. A deafening crack split the air, then a terrific jolt flung me from my hiding place and sent me tumbling across the hillside, until I finally struck a tree trunk and brought a
shower of pinecones down upon my head. None of this caused me the slightest injury. I staggered to my feet and found myself facing exactly the direction I wished to go, which is to say away from the meddling Harper and her helpers.
The instant I tried to run, my limbs began to tremble with a sickly ache. My thoughts returned to Rinda’s vulgar journal, and especially to her claim about the cause of Cyric’s madness. Surely, this was another of her foul lies! The cries of my enemies rang out from all directions behind me, but still I found myself spinning on my heel to charge back toward the journal—and even I did not know whether this was because of Mystra’s spell or my own need to find the lie in Rinda’s claim.
My eyes were greeted by a solid line of armored warriors, grasping every sort of weapon, all rushing toward me. The sight turned my knees to rags, yet I grabbed a rock from the ground and ran to meet them.
Perhaps it would make a good tale to say that my assault stunned them so badly I smashed through their lines with nothing more than the stone and recovered the book, but the truth is much different A few of them raised their brows; then we were upon each other. The stone flew from my hand the first time it struck someone’s head, and the soldiers’ weapons flashed at me from all sides, filling the air with such a whistling and clanging that I nearly died of fright—which was the only way I could have perished, as I remained under Tyr’s protection and could not have been killed if a dragon had swallowed me.
Still, my foes thought I was giving a good account of myself. In their fury, they slashed with blinding speed and thrust with the weight of their whole bodies and chopped with enough power to cleave me in two. But their blades never failed to turn aside, and each stroke hit one of their own. Before long, half of them lay bleeding on the ground. A clear alley to Rinda’s ledger opened before me, and I shot from the melee like a bean squeezed from its pod, whooping for joy and thinking myself invincible.
The witch’s voice burst into incantation. I glanced up and saw her flinging mud, but why should that have worried me?
“Save your magic, witch!” I leapt the crevice where I had been hiding and saw Rinda’s journal ahead. “No one can stop the mighty Malik!”
She finished her spell the instant I finished my taunt. I did not know how I could possibly outrun my pursuers while still reading from Rinda’s accursed book, but this could hardly matter to an invincible warrior such as me. I stooped to scoop up the ledger—then my feet plunged into a mudhole.
I fell flat on my face, and such was my compulsion to keep reading that I reached out and found the journal lying just beyond the fingers of my outstretched hand. I tried to bring my legs up to crawl forward and could not, and when I looked back to see the reason I found my feet caught in a block of solid basalt!
“Anyone can be stopped, Mukhtar.” The witch walked down and picked up Rinda’s journal, then scowled over her veil. “Or shall I call you the Mighty Malik?”
Ten
Kelemvor sat brooding in his crystal throne, staring out across a crystal floor through a crystal wall into the anteroom of the Crystal Spire, where an anxious mass of spirits stood awaiting admittance to the Hall of Judgment. Already the crowd filled the chamber to overflowing, and the Escorts were packing in more souls by the minute; the stream of the False and the Faithless never ended, and it was Kelemvor’s duty to choose a fitting destiny for each one. If he fell behind, he would never catch up. Yet how could he pass judgment on all these souls, when he himself stood accused of failing his office?
“Jergal!”
Hardly had Kelemvor called the name before a shadow-filled cloak appeared beside the crystal throne, rising and falling upon a wind that did not exist. The cloak’s hood contained a gray oval emptiness with two bulging eyes and no other features. A pair of white gloves hung at its sides, unsupported by any sort of arm or appendage.
“I am here for you, as always.” This was the seneschal’s customary greeting. “How may I serve you?”
“You know I have been charged with neglecting my duties,” Kelemvor said. “Am I too kind to the brave or too harsh to the wicked? Do the charges have merit?”
“That is not for me to say,” Jergal replied. “I am no one’s judge, least of all yours.”
“I am not asking your judgment,” Kelemvor said. “I am demanding your opinion.”
Jergal’s cloak fluttered beneath Kelemvor’s harsh tone.
“I have no opinion,” said the seneschal. “I can only observe that you are always kind to the noble of heart and harsh to the craven. Your predecessors did not concern themselves with such questions, but only whether a soul had been Faithless or False.”
“My predecessors …”
Lord Death leaned forward, braced his chin in his hand, and fell into deep contemplation, for there had been a long line of death gods before him. Kelemvor had stolen the throne from Cyric, who had taken it after Myrkul perished during the Time of Troubles. Even Myrkul had won it in a game of knucklebones, and all this reminded Kelemvor that if he failed in his duties, he could be replaced easily enough.
A second shadow-filled cloak appeared at the hall entrance. This was also Jergal, for even he had once been God of Death, and he retained the power to manifest himself in many places at once.
“Lord Cyric has requested an audience.”
This brought Kelemvor out of his reveries, for the mere mention of the One’s name set him on guard.
“Cyric? I have nothing to say to that madman.”
“But I have something to say to you.” As Cyric spoke these words, a mighty throne of polished bones appeared in the center of Kelemvor’s empty Judgment Hall, and in it sat the One and All. He turned the black suns beneath his brow in Jergal’s direction. “I did not request an audience. I demanded one.”
Kelemvor drew his black sword from the air, but he was too shocked to use it. Aside from Mask, no one dared enter a Great God’s home without awaiting permission—and with good reason, as any god was at his most powerful in his own realm. Yet here Cyric was, not only uninvited, but sitting upon his own throne. It made Kelemvor’s head ache just to believe what he saw.
A third aspect of Jergal appeared in the entrance of the Judgment Hall. “Lady Mystra.”
The Goddess of Magic manifested herself before Lord Death’s throne immediately, for the Crystal Spire was always open to her.
“Come quickly.”
Kelemvor manifested an aspect of himself in Dweomerheart, Lady Magic’s palace of magic curtains, and he saw that Cyric and his bone throne also sat in Mystra’s shimmering audience hall.
“He entered without permission,” said Mystra.
“The same here,” said the Kelemvor in the Crystal Spire. He pointed past Mystra’s shoulder at the Cyric sitting in his Judgment Hall. “He demanded an audience.”
Mystra spun around and saw Cyric sitting before her in the Crystal Spire as well as in Dweomerheart, so that all three gods were in both palaces at once. All that follows happened in each throne room at the same moment.
“Just like old times.” Cyric’s mouth gaped open in a kind of grin. “Summon Adon, and the party will be complete.”
“Adon has better things to do,” Mystra replied. “Why have you broken into our palaces?”
The One leaned back in his throne and steepled his finger bones before his chin. “Did I approach you?” he asked. “Funny thing, but I swear you came to me.”
“If I had come to you, you would be dead by now,” said Kelemvor. “You demanded this audience. What do you want?”
The One leaned forward. In Dweomerheart he stared into Mystra’s eyes, and in the Crystal Spire he stared into Kelemvor’s.
“I have decided to take you two under my wing.”
In both palaces, Mystra and Kelemvor exchanged puzzled looks.
“Come now,” said Cyric. “Is this so hard to understand? We three must stand together. The others are conspiring against us.”
“What are you talking about?” Kelemvor demanded.
&n
bsp; “The others are jealous,” the One explained. “And frightened. We have made so much of ourselves already.”
“They are frightened of you,” Mystra said. “With Kelemvor and me, they are only angry—or have you forgotten how you used Tyr’s aggravation against us?”
Cyric frowned at this. “Me? Tempus levied the charge!”
“At your prompting,” Kelemvor noted. “Otherwise, we would be in trouble, but Tyr—”
“Tyr is as frightened as the others!” Cyric rose from his throne, and in the Crystal Spire he pointed a bony finger at Kelemvor, and in Dweomerheart he pointed one at Mystra. “Do not believe that rubbish about blind justice. He means to turn them all against us.”
Mystra rolled her eyes, and Kelemvor shook his head.
“Sooner or later, you will join me. Do it now, and I promise you each a quarter of the spoils.” The One shook his finger at the two lesser gods. “Imagine, the three of us ruling Faerûn!”
Mystra’s jaw fell. “Can you really be that mad? You must know we would rather die!”
“We have listened longer than you deserve, Cyric.” Kelemvor rose and pointed his black sword at the One. “Now go, before I save Tyr the trouble of trying any of us.”
Cyric stared at the two gods in silence, then his teeth clacked together and he slumped back. “Fools! I was willing to forgive you.” His throne faded into nothingness, so that he seemed to be sitting in empty air. “Now you fall with the rest.”
Eleven
Rinda’s journal lay atop a table on the dungeon’s far side, and there was nothing I could do to reach it. My hands were bound behind my back, and my feet were embedded in a block of basalt as heavy as the Caliph’s mother. For many hours now, Ulraunt had deprived me of food and water. He had ordered a pair of burly guards to hold my arms, then threatened to beat me with spiked clubs and brand me with hot pokers, and he even had an iron heating on a brazier now. Yet the only torture that frightened me was being deprived of the ledger. My need to read it grew more desperate with each breath, until I would have sold all my possessions at a quarter of their value just to glimpse one page. For this compulsion I reviled myself as a man does for any secret weakness, and I swore that even if Ulraunt held the book before my eyes, I would not read a single word.
