by James Lowder
“You admit your sins?” Torm asked, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. “Gwydion is free to leave?”
“I admit nothing,” Cyric said, “but I’ll give you the chance to rescue this would-be Tormite.” He kicked Af out of the way and raised Gwydion by the shackles. “Before you take him under your armored wing, though, you must convince me he will have a home with your faithful. I cannot release a soul from my realm without such a guarantee.”
“If not with me,” Torm began, “then with—”
“You cannot speak for the other gods, Torm. I’m surprised you would be bold enough to try.”
The God of Duty flushed. He turned his steady gaze on Gwydion and said, “I can offer you sanctuary, but only if you are truly one of my faithful. Will you prove your devotion to me?”
The shade stepped forward, away from the cringing denizens and the weird, silent seneschal. “Of course,” he said.
Torm straightened his fingers and held his hands out, palms to the floor. The sickly glow from the windows revealed myriad tiny runes carved into his gauntlets: on the right hand, the word for duty in every language ever known; on the left, the same for loyalty.
It was whispered that Torm could be destroyed if all those words were lost. To prevent this disaster, some Tormish novices spent their first year of servitude sequestered in tiny cells, where they repeated one of the words for duty or loyalty, mantralike, throughout their waking hours. The most devoted of them even kept up their assigned chant in their sleep.
“Read any word from either gauntlet,” Torm said solemnly.
Gwydion squinted at the armor, then looked up at the God of Duty. “I … I see no writing, Your Holiness.”
A genuine sadness filled Torm’s eyes. “The pact I have with my church is clear, Gwydion the Quick. I cannot accept your soul if you cannot pass this simple test.” The anger returned then, flaring hotly. He faced Cyric. “You will pay for this. I’ll make certain of that.”
The Prince of Lies turned his back on the armored god and walked slowly to his chair. “Af, Perdix, take Gwydion and stick him in the wall. Watch over him until I summon you again.”
Silently Gwydion looked to Torm for aid, but the God of Duty shook his head. All the shade’s hopes died. Head down, he let the denizens lead him away without a struggle.
As soon as the prisoner had left the room, Cyric waved a hand, idly dismissing Torm. “Go on, report his punishment to the Circle. I know perfectly well the wall is reserved for the Faithless. I put the worm there for one reason: I want you to know for the rest of eternity you made things worse for him by sticking your square jaw where it didn’t belong.”
“The law that governs—”
“My whim is law in the City of Strife,” Cyric snapped. “You’d be well-served to remember that, especially since you are trespassing. If I happen to summon a few hundred pit fiends to escort you out …”
“You threaten me!” The God of Duty transformed, his handsome features becoming leonine. “I could slay every pit fiend in your hellish home,” he roared.
“But they would keep you occupied for quite some time,” Cyric cooed. “Long enough for me to visit your churches in your guise and start a holy war. You wouldn’t have the might to stop me, either. After all, Torm, you are only a demipower.”
Torm stalked to the edge of the library. His lion’s face was locked in an angry snarl. His golden mane bristled around his head like a halo. “You are unfit to be called a greater power.” With a flash of blue light, he was gone.
The Fool is lucky he cannot know how dangerous you truly are, Your Magnificence, Jergal noted.
Cyric drew his short sword again and stared intently at the crimson blade. “If he did, I would simply deal with him as I did Bhaal and Myrkul and Leira. In fact, I might kill him anyway. My sword has gained a taste for the blood of gods.” He ran his hand gently along the blade. “Haven’t you, my love?”
Only if it is blood spilled for you, a seductive, feminine voice purred. The spirit of the sword curled contentedly in the mire of Cyric’s consciousness, as dark and vicious as any of the corrupt thoughts lurking in the death god’s mind.
II
BOOK OF LIES
Wherein the three hundred ninety-seventh version of a book detailing Cyric’s life receives a very harsh review indeed, much to the dismay of the scribes and illuminators in Zhentil Keep.
Bevis had been an illuminator for fifteen years, and he couldn’t think of an instant when he’d enjoyed his job. He hated the perpetual ink stains blotting his fingers. The sour-smelling paints made his eyes run, and he never finished a day’s work when his hand wasn’t cramped to the wrist. The problem was, Bevis had no other skills he might put to legal use and even less bravado with which to cut himself a niche in Zhentil Keep’s sizable and thriving underworld.
And so he plodded through the days, providing artistic embellishments for dull collections of sermons, tedious accounts of local battles, and pompous autobiographies by guildmasters hoping to buy a place in Zhentish history. Bevis found the work he did on penitentials a bit less tiresome. Such books detailed the penance demanded for various sins and usually contained vivid scenes of denizens torturing souls in the City of Strife—just in case the faithful needed to be reminded of the penalties for shirking. like all the other miniatures Bevis drew, the horrific images originated in a pattern book. Still, copying denizens was more interesting than repeatedly scribbling the holy symbol of Mask on cheap paper intended for thieves’ guild ransom notes.
The volume in Bevis’s uninspired care at the moment had snared his attention more completely than even the most gruesome penitential. He’d been hired by the Church of Cyric to clean up the gatherings of finished pages before they went to the stationer for binding; even with the mysterious shortage of scribes and illuminators in Zhentil Keep, the clerics had rudely informed Bevis that his skill wasn’t up to standards to provide any borders or miniatures for this important work. After scanning the first few pages, he was inclined to agree.
The parchment was the finest he’d ever seen, thin and flexible and textured perfectly to hold ink and paint. Ornate display scripts written in bold red ink called out the intention of each new section. Weird borders of bestial denizens lurked around the text, apparently warning the squeamish reader away from the knowledge they guarded. Large squares of rubbed gold foil served as backdrop for the miniatures. The most elaborate of these depicted cities under siege by unnatural monsters and the gods themselves being cast from the heavens.
“Ah, the Time of Troubles,” the illuminator whispered, then nervously scanned the cavernous room surrounding him.
The priests had gone back to the warmth of the temple long ago, leaving Bevis alone in the crypts. A ring of braziers drew a wide circle of light around him, but he still had the uneasy feeling someone hovered just out of sight. After a staring into the darkness for a time, though, the illuminator decided he was being foolish. He was alone. The priests would never know he’d disobeyed their strict orders and read just a small part of the book.
The Wrath of Ao, the page before him declared in grand, noble letters. The section described how the overlord of the gods, angry at the theft of the Tablets of Fate, had banished the deities of Faerun from their eternal palaces in the heavens. The gods-made-mortal were forced to walk the world in mortal avatars until the tablets were returned. In their wakes, chaos and strife erupted. Magic became unstable, clerics could no longer call on their heavenly patrons to heal the sick, murder and violence seized even the West’s most civilized nations and city-states.
This was all the stuff of history, and in the decade since the Time of Troubles, dozens of treatises had been written to explain the calamitous events. Bevis had even illuminated one, five years back. Yet something about this telling drew his interest. He felt strangely compelled to read on. Collecting the gatherings before him, Bevis sorted them into a ragged-edged pile.
The Theft of the Tablets—well, that goes before the se
ction I just read, he thought. The Betrayal of the Guild—this history isn’t limited to the Time of Troubles. It’s about Cyric before he became a god! A Childhood in the Shadows. Kelemvor and the Ring of Winter. The Knightsbridge Affair.…
Breathless, Bevis scanned the first page of each gathering. An illumination showed Cyric in his days as a young thief, sneaking up on an unsuspecting guard atop the black walls of Zhentil Keep. The next entry told of his first meeting with Midnight, the sorceress who would quest for the Tablets of Fate alongside Cyric, the cursed warrior Kelemvor Lyonsbane, and a vain priest named Adon. Little did Cyric or Midnight suspect that first night in Arabel they would recover the tablets and be rewarded by Lord Ao with a place among the gods.
A violent miniature bright with the sheen of gold caught Bevis’s eye as he turned to the next gathering. The artist had created a ghastly scene of slaughter in a halfling village. Zhentish soldiers spitted small women and children on pikes. The houses and barns burned in gold foil while severed heads with ink-black eyes looked on. And in the center of the carnage stood Cyric, a rose-red short sword clutched in his bloody hands. A halo of darkness foretold his future divinity.
The display script next to the gory scene proclaimed its topic simply: Black Oaks and Godsbane.
So it came to pass that Cyric freed himself from the company of the whore Midnight the preening Adon of Sune, and the cursed swordsman Kelemvor Lyonsbane. He gathered around him, in the days that followed, a small force of Zhentilar and made them prophets of his ascension. He crossed the Heartlands with these soldiers, striking down any who challenged his vision of a world free from the hypocrisy of Law and Honor.
The blood of doubting kings stained their blades, the brains of foolish sages spattered their armor. Yet each shattered skull or riven heart recruited twin heralds to Cyric’s cause. In the mortal realms, the corrupting corpses reneged their challenges to his greatness with silent screams and faces frozen with terror. In Hades and the other heavenly realms, the newly liberated souls arrived with a proclamation: Make ready, for a god comes who will take all the vast universe for his domain.
Once his message had spread and the people realized that freedom could only be earned through Might Cyric found himself welcomed as a conquering hero by many cities and towns. They hung garlands around the necks of his men and presented lavish feasts in his honor.
Yet some isolated hamlets-like the halfling village of Black Oaks—remained blind to Cyric’s glory. The stunted creatures that dwelled in Black Oaks shunned him and threatened to call down the wrath of the feeble icons they worshiped. Even then, a month before his ascension from the top of Mount Waterdeep, Cyric knew someone of his stature could not tolerate such insults.
With fire and steel he scourged Black Oaks from the map of Faerun. As his Zhentilar burned the squalid houses, Cyric herded the halflings together and beheaded them one by one. The heads were set in neat rows, like gawking, bloody cabbages awaiting harvest; Cyric then cursed the bloated lumps of bone and flesh to an unending living death. To this day, the ravaged skulls speak to all who look upon them, decrying their foolishness.
Because his blade had been so dulled by his tiresome work upon the halflings, Cyric sought another to replace it. He liberated a powerful enchanted sword from the hands of Sneakabout, the greatest warrior in Black Oaks and the only one to escape the village that day. The spirit of the blade had broken the halfling’s will, making him an unquestioning slave. There was no shame in this, for until Cyric held her, the rose-hued sword had been unconquered. Great was the line of soldiers and kings destroyed trying to bend the blade to their purposes, but only Cyric had sufficient will to triumph over her.
The enchanted, rose-hued sword served Cyric well, shielding him against the chill winds of Marpenoth, healing the wounds he received in the fierce battles for the Tablets of Fate. In return, Cyric rewarded her with blood. like all who serve him selflessly, the sword received that which she desired most.
Fane, a Zhentilar officer, was the first to give his life to the blade. The halfling Sneakabout was next. Yet the essence of these men would prove to be mere scraps before the banquets on which the blade soon feasted.
At Boareskyr Bridge, Cyric slew Bhaal, Patron of Assassins, Lord of Murder. So great was the chaos unleashed at Bhaal’s death that the Winding Water still runs black and poisonous from Boareskyr Bridge to Trollclaw Ford. Every creature that drinks of the river dies cursing those who stand against Cyric, for such resistance is futile, as the poisoned water surely proves.
Bhaal was not the last god unmade by Cyric’s hand. Atop the tower of Khelben “Blackstaff” Arunson, a mage known as a foe of both Zhentil Keep and her agents, Cyric faced his united enemies, for Midnight had allied with Myrkul, the fallen Cod of Death. Together they had hatched a cowardly plan to place the Tablets of Fate—and thus all the lands of Faerun—into the hands of those gods who worshiped Law and Good above all sense. Cyric slew Myrkul for turning against his worshipers. With a single stroke of his enchanted blade, he sliced the god’s avatar in two. The corpse dissolved into ashes, which rained down upon Waterdeep, melting away buildings and roads.
Kelemvor Lyonsbane died that glorious day atop Blackstaff Tower, too. And the traitorous Midnight would have followed her lover to destruction had she not called upon her magic to flee from Cyric’s wrath. It is because of this cowardice that Lord Ao commanded Midnight to abandon her name when he raised her up to take the place of the destroyed Goddess of Magic. And so it was that Midnight became Mystra.
Thus has the enchanted, rose-hued short sword come to be known as Godsbane, for no other weapon in the history of Faerun has been used to strike down the powers that rule over the mortal realms.
Bevis closed the gathering. Reading in the braziers’ flickering light had given him a throbbing headache, and his mouth was strangely dry. He rubbed his temples and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, hoping to banish the ache, but the grisly illuminations flashed in his mind. The words of the history echoed in his thoughts like a siren song, calling him to read on. Perhaps it was a spellbook of some sort, disguised to appear as a life of Cyric. Or perhaps the clerics had placed a curse on the pages to punish anyone who might read it uninvited.
His heart pounding, Bevis overturned the stack of pages in search of a clue. The scribes’ guild in Zhentil Keep required its members to place a colophon on a manuscript’s final page. Usually these personal notes—written in the guild’s esoteric code—expressed the scribe’s relief at having completed the book, along with a prayer that he be paid well for his efforts. For dangerous tomes, the colophon warned other guild members to browse the text only at their own risk.
The colophon for this volume was longer than most. It started with the common exclamations of relief and complaints of cramped hands, then moved on to hopes for a pretty wench and a pint of fine ale. The final section of the colophon had been obscured by hasty crosshatching, which indicated the lines should be scraped from the parchment before binding. The marks made the text difficult to read, but Bevis was not unpracticed in deciphering such puzzles.
From the god’s mouth to my pen, in this, the tenth year of Cyric’s reign as Lord of the Dead. Three hundred ninety and seven versions of this tome have come before. May it please my immortal master not to use my skin for the pages of the three hundred ninety-eighth.
With a cry of horror, Bevis pushed the gatherings away. They fluttered from the table and settled to the floor like vultures dropping around a corpse.
“That’s hardly the way an artist should treat the work of his fellows,” said a voice from the shadows.
Bevis spun around. Someone was there, in the darkest part of the crypt “P-Patriarch Mirrormane?” the illuminator stammered, cautiously reaching for his penknife.
“Hardly.” The man lurking in the darkness stepped forward. He was young and lean, with a catlike grace that betrayed his training as a thief. Brushing aside his black cloak, he planted a hand dramatically on the hilt of his s
hort sword. The weapon hung from a loop on the man’s belt, its rose-hued blade unmasked by a scabbard. “Did you enjoy my book?”
The illuminator mouthed a reply, but the words wouldn’t leave his throat The hawk-nosed man stalked closer, his footfalls utterly silent on the crypt’s cold stone floor. He bent down and retrieved a gathering, one that depicted the Lord of the Dead, then held the page up next to his face for Bevis to compare. The miniature was a remarkable likeness, right down to the halo of darkness.
“Oh gods,” Bevis managed to gasp as he crumpled to the floor.
Cyric’s cruel smile widened. “No, the only one that matters.”
* * * * *
Bevis hung limp against the stone pillar, blissfully unaware of the three figures gathered around him. The ring of braziers still burned brightly, but they were no longer needed. With only a thought from Cyric, light had filled the catacombs, revealing every inch of the uneven stone floors and low vaulted ceilings.
“I wish Fzoul would hurry up!” Xeno Mirrormane shrieked. The high priest’s silver-white hair curled wildly around his head as he stalked forward, waving the steaming iron rod at Bevis. The priest’s thin frame was hidden by the bulk of his dark purple robes. “I want to get started on this spy before dinner.”
The fat nobleman lounging nearby yawned and held a scented handkerchief to his bulbous nose. “Your departed brother would have been proud of the way you wield that thing, Xeno,” he drawled through his square of patterned Shou silk. “You have taken to your newfound role as patriarch admirably. We are all grateful you could replace Maskul after he passed away so, er, mysteriously.”
“Spare us your innuendos, Lord Chess,” Cyric said. “You know Xeno murdered Maskul. Your spies informed you of the deed even before the dagger found his heart It shouldn’t have surprised you, though. After all, Xeno serves me, and I am the Lord of Murder, am I not?”