Waterdeep

by Troy Denning

  Dalzhel winced at the mention of High Horn. Last night, they had camped a mile from the fortress. A patrol of fifty Cormyrians had surprised them. After losing quite a few of his men, Cyric had been forced to flee into the mountains.

  The Cormyrians, mounted on sure-footed mountain ponies, had dogged their trail through most of the night. The enemy patrol had only turned back when Cyric’s band of cutthroats ambushed them in a narrow gorge. The Zhentish outlaws had taken the rest of the night to find the road and their present resting place. Along the way, the Zhentish sergeant, Fane, had broken both his legs in a bad fall, two horses had stepped off cliffs, and half the mounts had gone lame stumbling through the rocky terrain. Though he had originally snickered when he saw the Cormyrians’ riding ponies, Dalzhel would now gladly trade three men for a dozen of the sure-footed beasts.

  Cyric placed his swordtip north of the spot representing his company. “The Farsea Marshes. Home to the Lizard People.” He touched the sword to the west. “Darkhold, Zhentilar stronghold.”

  “We have nothing to fear from that direction, at least,” Dalzhel said. “Darkhold’s forces were decimated in the battles at Shadowdale and Tantras.”

  Fane wailed again, causing the horses to whinny. Both men glanced in his direction, then returned to their conversation.

  “We have plenty to fear from Darkhold,” Cyric snapped. “With his numbers decimated, the garrison commander is surely sending raiders into the Tun Plain to look for recruits. Don’t you think they’d come after us?”

  Dalzhel reluctantly nodded. “Aye.” A puff of steam came out of his mouth with his voice and obscured his face. “We’d be stuck on garrison duty for the rest of our lives.”

  “If they didn’t recognize us as deserters,” Cyric added.

  Dalzhel shivered. “This had better be worth the trouble. Fighting Cormyrians I can take—but being tortured as a deserter is another matter.”

  “You don’t have a choice, do you?” Cyric snarled, irritated. A staggering urge to kill his lieutenant washed over him. He lifted his sword, then realized what he was doing and stopped. The thief closed his eyes and calmed himself.

  “Is something wrong?” Dalzhel asked.

  Cyric opened his eyes. The anger had faded, but bloodlust had replaced it—a bloodlust more powerful and more sinister than anything the thief had ever felt. The emotion was not his own, and that made Cyric truly angry.

  “You’d better check on the watch,” the hawk-nosed man grumbled, thinking of an excuse to get Dalzhel out of his sight. “And let me know the minute our spies report from High Horn.”

  Dalzhel obeyed immediately and without question. He had no wish to add to the tension that was playing over his commander’s face.

  Cyric sighed in relief, then laid his sword across his knees. The blade had paled and was now beige instead of a healthy red. Pity for the weapon washed over him.

  Cyric laughed aloud. Feeling sorry for a sword was no more his emotion than the thirst he had felt for Dalzhel’s blood.

  Fane howled again, sending a shiver of irritation down the thief’s spine.

  Kill him.

  Cyric hurled the sword off his knees and watched it clatter to the rocky ground. The words had come unbidden to his mind in a wispy, feminine voice.

  “You’re alive!” Cyric hissed, the cold biting his ears and nose for the first time.

  The sword remained silent.

  “Speak to me!”

  His only answer was Fane’s pitiful groan.

  Cyric retrieved the sword and immediately grew warm. The desire to kill Fane washed over him, but he made no move to act on the urge. Instead, the thief sat back down and laid the sword across his knees again.

  “I have not decided to kill him,” Cyric said, glaring angrily at the weapon.

  Before his eyes, the blade began to pale. Hunger and disappointment crept into his heart, and the thief found himself completely absorbed with pangs of hunger. As the blade grew more pale, Cyric became increasingly oblivious to his environment. By the time the weapon had turned completely white, he was aware of nothing else.

  At Cyric’s back, a girl’s voice said, “I’m hungry.”

  He stood and spun around. An adolescent girl, perhaps fourteen or fifteen years old, stood before him. She wore a diaphanous red frock that hinted at ripening womanhood, but which also betrayed a half-dozen protruding ribs and a stomach distended with starvation. Black satiny hair framed a gaunt face, and her eyes were sunken with fatigue and desperation.

  Behind her stretched an endless white plain. Cyric was standing in a wasteland as flat as a table and as featureless as the air itself. The boulders on which he had been sitting were gone, as were the mountains that had surrounded him, and even the sword that had been lying across his knees.

  “Where am I?” Cyric asked.

  Ignoring his question, the girl dropped to her knees. “Cyric, please help me,” she pleaded. “I haven’t eaten in days.”

  The thief didn’t need to ask how she knew his name. The girl and his sword were the same. She had moved him into a sphere where she could disguise her true form and assume a more sympathetic one.

  “Send me back!” Cyric demanded.

  “Then feed me.”

  “Feed you what?” he asked.

  “Feed me Fane,” the girl begged.

  Though the plea might have shocked Midnight or Kelemvor, Cyric did not recoil from its hideousness. Instead, he frowned, considering her request. Finally, he shook his head. “No.”

  “Why not?” she asked. “Fane means nothing to you. None of your men do.”

  “True,” Cyric admitted. “But I decide when they die.”

  “I’m weak. If I don’t eat, we can’t return.”

  “Don’t lie to me,” Cyric warned. An idea occurred to him. Without taking his eye off the girl, he turned his attention inward. Perhaps she was manipulating his imagination and he could break free by force of will.

  “I’m dying!” The girl staggered a few steps and collapsed at the thief’s feet.

  The girl’s scream broke Cyric’s concentration. They remained in the wasteland. The young girl’s skin had turned gray and doughy, and it truly looked as though she would perish. “Then, good-bye,” Cyric said.

  The girl’s eyes glazed over. “Please. Have mercy on me.”

  “No,” the thief growled, returning her gaze with a cold stare. “Absolutely not.”

  Whatever the sword’s true nature, there was no doubt it was evil and manipulative. Cyric knew that to give in to its plea was to become its servant.

  The girl buried her head in her arms and began to sob. Cyric ignored her and looked at his feet, trying to visualize the jumbled, gray rocks upon which he had been sitting. When that didn’t work, he turned his gaze to the sky, trying to see the soft, curved lines of clouds in the barren bowl above.

  The sky remained a white void.

  Cyric stared at the horizon, searching for the towering peaks that had encircled him just minutes ago. They were gone.

  As if reading his mind, the girl said, “Disbelief won’t save you.” Her voice had grown deeper, more sultry and mature.

  Cyric looked at her. She had become a woman, her red frock now clinging to a full, round figure. As he watched, the void upon which she lay formed itself into a white bed and lifted her off the ground.

  “You’re in my world now,” the woman purred. “And it’s as real as your own.”

  Cyric didn’t know whether to believe her or not, but he realized that it made no difference. Whether she had truly transported him or was only playing games with his mind, he could not leave this place on his own. He had to force her to return him.

  “I’m yours,” the woman cooed.

  Despite the dark circles beneath her eyes, she was voluptuous, and Cyric might have been tempted had he not known that she was trying to lure him into servitude.

  “Every gift has a cost,” the thief said. “What is the price of yours?”

/>   The woman tried to redirect the conversation. “I’ll keep you warm when others are cold. When you’re wounded, I’ll make you well. In battle, I’ll give you the strength to prevail.”

  Her promises interested Cyric, for he would need magic in the days to come. Still, he resisted his desire to go to the bed. “What do you want in return?”

  “No more than any woman wants from her man,” she replied.

  Cyric did not respond. The meaning of such a statement could easily be twisted. He was determined to master the sword, not be indentured to it through some vague covenant.

  “Let’s be more specific,” he said coldly. “I’ll feed you only when and where it pleases me. In return, you’ll serve me as your master.”

  “What?” the woman screamed. She twisted her face into a grotesque mask of rage. “You dare to suggest that I become your slave?”

  “That’s your only choice,” Cyric replied. “Serve me or starve.”

  “You’re the one who’ll starve!” she snarled, baring two long fangs.

  A crash sounded behind Cyric and he spun around. A dirty gray wall stood where moments before there had been nothing. Then another wall slammed into place on his right, and a third to his left. The thief turned around again, just as the fourth wall and a ceiling appeared. The floor turned hard and dirty, and the thief suddenly found himself standing in a prison.

  Beneath her blood-colored robe, the woman’s body had withered into a grotesque and frightening parody of womanhood. Her sunken eyes had grown cold with hatred and malice. A pair of silvery manacles appeared in her hand. She stepped toward Cyric. “Give me Fane.”

  With her sinewy muscles and clawlike fingers, the woman looked as though she could disembowel Cyric in seconds. But he didn’t retreat or show fear. To back away was to surrender, to become her slave—and he was determined to rot in the foulest dungeon before serving someone besides himself.

  “I want Fane!” the woman hissed, opening a shackle.

  As the hag reached for his arm, Cyric punched her with all his strength. The blow connected squarely with her jaw. She staggered two steps back, her mouth agape in astonishment. He struck again. This time, the woman caught his fist in her open hand, stopping it in midair.

  “Fool!” With her free hand, she closed one shackle over the thief’s wrist. “You’ll pay for that!”

  Cyric slammed his other fist into the woman’s head, surprising her once again. She released the manacles and stumbled away, puzzlement showing on her face. “I can kill you,” she gasped, as if surprised that she had to mention that fact.

  “If you want to starve!” Cyric replied. He began twirling the chain hanging from his wrist. With nearly two feet of steel links between shackles, the manacles made a serviceable weapon. “Return us to Faerun,” he ordered.

  The woman sneered at him. “Not until you feed me.”

  “Then we’ll both die,” Cyric told her flatly.

  He swung the chain. The hag barely managed to duck the attack.

  “Stop!” she hissed. Her expression was a mixture of disbelief and fear. It had never occurred to her that, despite being marooned, the thief would attack.

  Cyric did not stop. He swung the chain again, but it suddenly disappeared from his hand. Without an instant’s pause, he stepped forward and punched the woman’s chin. She took the blow with a painful grunt and fell on her back.

  “You’re mine!” Cyric yelled. “Do as I say!”

  Instead of replying, she swept her feet at his ankles, knocking his legs from beneath him. He dropped to the floor, landing on his shoulders with jarring abruptness.

  The woman sprang to her feet and leaped at Cyric. He rolled to his left, and her claws raked his back. He came up on his knees, facing the gruesome woman eye-to-eye. She brought her elbow across his chin, snapping his head back.

  But Cyric didn’t allow himself to fall unconscious, and he did not retreat. If he wanted to be the sword’s master, he could not shrink from facing the weapon’s spirit in its most hideous form. He grinned and smashed his fist into her temple, then immediately stood and slipped his other arm across her neck.

  The woman rammed her fist into Cyric’s ribs, driving his breath away. Nevertheless, the thief slipped around behind her, locking his hands together. With all his strength, he pulled his forearm across her throat.

  The hag’s face turned white and she snarled, then clutched at the thief’s arm with her spindly fingers. Cyric pulled harder. Her claws ripped deep grooves into his arms.

  When Cyric still did not release her, the woman stopped clawing at his arms. Instead, she tried to slash at his eyes, but he pulled his head away. Then, stiffening her fingers like fork tines, she tried to reach behind her back and drive her fingers into his rib cage. By then, however, she was too weak and the attack did little damage.

  “Take us back!” Cyric ordered. “Take us back or I swear I’ll kill you now!”

  The hag’s arms fell limp, but Cyric maintained his chokehold. After a time, the woman’s body went slack and her head drooped onto her shoulder. Her eyes had rolled up into their sockets. After a few more moments, the outlines of the woman’s face began to soften, and it became a white smear.

  “Take us back!” Cyric said again, this time subdued. All he could see before him was a white blur.

  “Sir, are you feeling well?”

  Cyric looked toward the voice and saw that the speaker was Shepard, one of his Zhentilar. Behind Shepard stood another five men, their faces wrinkled in concern.

  “I’m back!” Cyric gasped. It was true. He stood at the side of a boulder, holding his short sword in his hand. The blade was as pale as ivory.

  “Begging your pardon, sir, but did you go somewhere?” Shepard asked. For the last minute, he and the others had been watching Cyric talk to himself and wrestle with his short sword. Some of the men—Shepard included—were beginning to suspect their commander had lost his mind.

  Cyric shook his head to clear it. The fight could not have been an illusion. Everything had felt so real.

  When Cyric didn’t reply, Shepard suggested, “Perhaps the cold—”

  “I’m warm enough!” Cyric responded testily. “Do you know the penalty for approaching me without leave?” He did not know how to explain what had happened, and thought it better not to try.

  “Aye, Lord,” Shepard replied. “But—”

  “Leave me, before I decide to enforce it!” Cyric ordered.

  The men behind Shepard breathed a sigh of relief and began drifting away. Their commander’s petulance had convinced them he had returned to normal.

  After glaring resentfully at Cyric for a moment, Shepard bowed his head. “As you wish, sir. But I’d have Dalzhel look at those scratches if I were you.” He turned and left.

  Cyric looked at his forearms and saw that they were striped with cuts. He smiled. “I won!” he whispered. “The sword is mine.”

  The thief sheathed his weapon, then sat down. He pressed his cloak over his wounds and passed the time by listening to Fane’s screams. They no longer seemed as irritating as they once had.

  An hour later, Dalzhel scrambled through the boulder field and approached. He looked alarmed. “The spies have returned from High Horn,” he reported. Though he noticed the scratches on Cyric’s arms, he wasted no time by asking about them.

  Cyric stood. “And?”

  “The woman and her companions are riding this way.”

  “Set up an ambush,” Cyric said sharply.

  Dalzhel held up his hand. “There’s more. They ride with fifty Cormyrians.”

  Cyric cursed. His twenty men were no match for a patrol of that size. “The Cormyrians will break off eventually. We’ll have to trail the patrol.”

  Dalzhel shook his head. “They’re watching their back trail. They don’t want to be followed.”

  “Then we’ll ride ahead and use scouts to watch them from an advanced position.”

  Dalzhel smiled. “Aye. They won’t be expecting t
hat.”

  “Then prepare the men,” Cyric said, pulling his blood-soaked cloak over his shoulders.

  Dalzhel did not turn to obey. “One more thing.”

  “What?” Cyric demanded angrily, picking up his saddlebags.

  “The lookout on the road saw forty halflings ride past this morning. They missed us, but he thought they were looking for our trail.”

  “Halflings?” Cyric asked incredulously.

  “Aye. They’re about half a day ahead of us. There’s no telling when they’ll realize they missed us and circle back.”

  Cyric cursed. He did not like being trapped between the halflings and the Cormyrians. The halflings he could handle, but an engagement with them would attract too much attention.

  Fane let out a bloodcurdling scream. It echoed off the mountains and caused both men to wince. Given the Cormyrians and the halflings, it was obvious they would have to do something to keep the wounded man silent.

  “Tonight,” Cyric said slyly, ignoring Fane for the moment, “send a few men ahead to lay a false trail. Steer the halflings toward our friends in Darkhold.”

  Dalzhel grinned. “That’s why you’re the general. But what about—”

  “Fane?” Cyric interrupted. A crooked smile on his lips, the thief went over to the wounded sergeant and chased away the attendants.

  Dalzhel followed, then asked, “What are you doing?”

  “He can’t ride,” Cyric responded, drawing his sword. “Even if he could, he’d give away our position. Cover his mouth.”

  Dalzhel frowned. He did not like the idea of killing one of his own men.

  “Do it!” Cyric ordered.

  The lieutenant obeyed automatically and Cyric plunged his pale sword into the injured man’s breast. Fane struggled only briefly, biting Dalzhel’s hand as he tried to cry out. A moment later, when Cyric pulled the blade from the wound and cleaned it, the weapon’s rosy luster had returned.

  Sneakabout stopped his pony and scanned the plain. Nothing lay ahead but an undulating sea of pale green grass. The day was a clear one, so the halfling could see their destination, the Sunset Mountains, to the northwest. The range was so distant it looked like a reddish cloud on the horizon.