by James Lowder
As he formulated his plans for the search, the Lord of the Dead cursed Mystra again for robbing him of magic. But then another thought presented itself fleetingly. Mystra was the one who’d been hiding Kelemvor all along, masking his presence within Cyric’s own realm since she had no way to rescue him. The death god had no doubt of that. But now that she was expending so much power to guard the weave, she’d missed the prying magic of Cyric’s new followers. The Prince of Lies smiled. That had the ring of truth to it.…
Cyric’s mind spun away, embellishing the plot he’d just created. He was soon certain there could be no other explanation for Kelemvor’s elusiveness. But now Mystra had let her guard slip, and Cyric would have his revenge. He imagined a thousand new tortures to be played out on Kelemvor’s soul. The fantasies stretched across his mind like a web shimmering silver in the swirling darkness.
* * * * *
“Stop your whining, Perdix,” Af grumbled. “I’m climbing as fast as I can.”
The wolf-headed denizen pushed himself past another level in the Wall of the Faithless. He climbed slowly, planting spider legs between the rows of writhing souls that made up the wall, then pulling his long, serpentine coils up the steep face. “I don’t see why you needed my help, anyway,” Af grunted.
Perdix hovered just out of striking range, wings beating furiously against the fetid air. “You’ve never had to get someone out of the wall before, have you?” he puffed. “Tsk. You should know it’ll take at least the two of us. After all, you built the thing single-handed didn’t you?”
“I never said that!” Af shouted over the agonized moan emanating from the wall. “Don’t be so facetious, or I’ll club you one. You need—” With his human hand, Af clamped the mouth of the nearest shade closed. The souls of the Faithless cried out continually; that’s why the wall had been built with the souls facing into the City of Strife, so that, in their torment, the unquiet spirits could serenade the Lord of the Dead. “Damn whiners,” Af said bitterly. “Worse than living downstairs from a banshee.”
“I knew a banshee once,” Perdix said wistfully. “Lovely lass, but you’re right, they are a bit hard on the ears.” He scanned the wall with his single blue eye. “Almost there, Af. Just two or three more levels—well, possibly ten, but that would be the most.”
After passing thirty rows of souls, Af reached the spot where they had left Gwydion the Quick. Like the Faithless stacked around him, the sell-sword twisted and cried out. Some of his agony was caused by the greenish mold that held the souls in place. The living mortar grew between the shades, sending painful rhizoids into any of the unfortunates that stopped moving.
“What do you know,” Perdix exclaimed as he looked at Gwydion’s pale face, “he’s still got a tongue. He learned something after all. I thought for sure he’d try calling out to another god again.” He wrinkled his face in distaste. “Those beetles they use to eat the tongues out of troublemakers … brrr.”
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s just get this over with.”
Af placed his human hands to either side of Gwydion’s head and leaned back. Slowly the denizen worked the soul out of the wall, though the Faithless to either side tried their best to hold the sell-sword back. It was Perdix’s task to deal with these jealous shades. The little denizen tore at their arms and hands with gleaming white teeth.
When Gwydion was free of the other souls and the green mold, Af hefted him over one hunched shoulder and started back down the wall. “You’re a lucky boy,” the denizen grunted. “I woulda bet anything Cyric was going to leave you in there forever.”
“W-Why free me?” Gwydion gasped.
Perdix hovered close to the soul’s ear. “Cyric wants all the denizens—that’s us—and the False who aren’t being tortured for something specific—that’s you—to search the city,” he said. “You’re going to help us look for a fellow named Kelemvor Lyonsbane, some old enemy of Cyric’s who’s hiding out here.”
Numbly Gwydion turned his head to look out over the City of Strife. The wall of writhing bodies encircled the hellish place, reaching high into the air. Denizens crawled or flew to the high ramparts. The bestial creatures carried screaming souls to be stacked atop the wall like so much cordwood. As far as Gwydion could see, he was the only one being taken down.
Inside the Wall of the Faithless, ramshackle buildings clustered in decaying boroughs. All these structures had been built on the same pattern: ten stories with square windows and a flat red roof. They only differed now in how ruined they were. In some places, huge fires engulfed whole blocks. In others, denizens tore the buildings down brick by brick, creating huge piles of rubble. Other denizens bombarded the boroughs from the air with javelins of lightning; these darksome beasts soared over the necropolis on massive wings of flame that cut through the choking shroud of fog like shooting stars.
And in the center of this destruction stood Bone Castle. From this distance, the pointed white tower seemed to be nothing more than a distant church spire, a haven of law and peace that might be found in any city in the Heartlands. Yet Gwydion knew that, within its protective curtain of diamond and moat of black ooze, Bone Castle harbored the most dangerous agent of chaos. Thoughts of Cyric and the madness he’d glimpsed in the god’s eyes haunted Gwydion the rest of the uncomfortable way down the wall.
“Awright,” Af said. “End of the line.” The denizen shrugged and unceremoniously dumped the shade onto his face.
Gwydion pushed himself up from the base of the wall, spitting a mouthful of dust. Here, the Faithless were quiet, having long since been crushed into immobility by the thousands of others atop them—and thereby conquered by the mold holding them in place. The sell-sword shuddered as he found himself leaning against the fungus-eaten features of a shade. Only the man’s staring eyes remained free from the green mold covering him.
“Well,” Perdix asked lightly, “now that we’ve got our ward, where do you want to start? The marshes on the far side of the castle?”
Af wrinkled his wolfish snout. “Nah. How about the Night Serpent’s lair? She gets fed about now, and it’ll be easier if we try to talk to her after she’s eaten.”
“She frightens me,” Perdix said bluntly.
“But we have to see her sooner or later, right?”
“I suppose,” Perdix sighed. “We’ll do the marshes after that”
The two started away from the wall, Af slithering, Perdix hopping on thin legs. After a few steps, both denizens turned around. “Well?” Perdix asked. “You don’t have any choice in this, slug. Come on.” The denizen’s tongue darted out between each word, punctuating the command.
Gwydion shuffled forward. There was no point in resisting; the denizens were Cyric’s agents, and the Lord of the Dead had already proved to the sell-sword how completely he owned the souls in his domain. As he fell into step with Af and Perdix, Gwydion picked away at the mold that had worked its way into his matted blond hair and the rags that had once been warm winter clothes. The shackles had been removed from his wrists when they put him in the wall, yet Gwydion still found his hands incredibly clumsy. His fingers felt no more agile than stumps of wood.
The trio passed through dark alleys, where souls with indistinct yellow-gray faces and expressionless gray eyes huddled in doorways. Sputtering lamps set on windowsills cast sickly yellow light into the gloom, along with fetid black smoke that made Gwydion’s eyes sting and his skin burn. Denizens passed in pairs, rousting the faceless shades or moving into the buildings themselves. These other denizens always gave Af a wide berth. Surprisingly, most of them nodded respectfully to Perdix, as well, offering solemn greetings to the diminutive creature.
“These shades all look alike,” Gwydion observed dully after a time. His voice was a rasping whisper from screaming for release from the wall.
Deftly Af slithered to the top of a pile of broken stone that blocked the alley. “Yeah. So?”
“So how do we recognize Kelemvor when we find him?”
With two lea
ps, Perdix hopped over the mound. “Oh, we’ll know him all right. There are only three sorts of beings in the City of Strife: denizens, the False, and the Faithless. All the denizens—souls like me and Af here, who used to worship Cyric—are transformed when we arrive here into forms that’ll be more useful in our new line of work.” The yellow-skinned denizen flapped his wings proudly. “Makes it easy to tell the jailers from the inmates, too.
“Anyone stupid enough not to believe in the gods is stuffed into the Wall of the Faithless,” he continued, “so we know where that lot can be found.” Perdix folded his wings again and sighed. “That just leave slugs like you—the False, the people who didn’t make the list for any god’s eternal reward.”
The alley emptied into a small plaza surrounded by more buildings. A shade wearing drab gray rags moved away from the denizens as they approached, neither hurrying nor tarrying. Perdix gestured at the faceless soul. “The False who came here before Cyric took over are easy to spot—they’re the ones that look like this sorry slug. The old Lord of the Dead used to think it was the worst thing possible to forget your life and your identity once you came here.” The denizen laughed. “The new lord of the dead is a lot more creative than that. Anyone who arrived after Cyric claimed the throne retained his own appearance and has marks on his wrists from the shackles.”
Gwydion nodded. “So Kelemvor will look like a shade, but he won’t have any scars on his wrist.”
“And he’ll be roaming about, which is getting more and more rare,” Perdix added. “Cyric’s started locking the False into unique tortures created to punish whatever bad things they did in their life—like that slug there.”
Gwydion followed Perdix’s gaze to a spot in the center of the plaza. There, a soul stood chained to a statue of a river spirit. The scantily clad stone nymph held a jug from which poured a steady stream of water. Iron bands kept the soul’s head and legs rigid against the stone, and his arms ended in blackened, scarred stumps too short to reach the sparkling liquid. The water rained down before the red-haired shade, fell to the parched ground, and evaporated.
“Torture helps you slugs remember why you’re here. The pain reminds you of every misstep you took that led you away from the truth of the world,” Perdix noted as he hopped up to the shade bound to the fountain. “Like old Kaverin here. He thought he could outlive Cyric and outsmart him, too.”
The red-haired shade opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out were wisps of blue flame. Kaverin’s lifeless eyes grew wide as Perdix hopped beneath the water. The little denizen threw back his head and gulped mouthful after mouthful of the cool, clear liquid. Af soon joined his partner, and the two tormented the prisoner by soaking themselves.
“No drinks for you today,” Perdix taunted.
Kaverin thrashed against his bonds frantically. His screams were gouts of fire.
“Yeah. None for you today,” Af repeated, then gestured to Gwydion. “But you can take a drink if you want.”
When the denizens stepped aside, Gwydion walked slowly toward fountain. A small silver cup lay at the statue’s base, well out of Kaverin’s reach. The sell-sword glanced at the denizens, but they merely watched without comment as he took the cup and filled it. He hesitated for a moment, then brought the water to Kaverin’s parched lips.
The red-haired shade flailed madly, knocking Gwydion onto his back. Over the laughter of the denizens, the sell-sword heard Kaverin curse vilely. “You bastard,” he hissed, thin rivulets running down his chin. He spit the rest of the water at Gwydion. “They start all over again now—five years wasted! I didn’t want the water. I didn’t want your help. You’ll pay—”
The flames rekindled in Kaverin’s mouth, burning away the rest of his threat. Perdix lifted the cup and battered the imprisoned shade with it, then tossed it down and hopped to Gwydion’s side. “He’ll never forget that you made his torture worse,” the denizen said flatly. “Of course, you won’t forget it either.”
Impatiently Af gestured for Perdix to follow. “Enough of the civics lesson,” he grumbled. “We’ve got to get to the Night Serpent, remember?” Shaking his lupine head, Af slithered across the plaza, into another alley.
At Perdix’s prompting, Gwydion struggled to his feet, then set off at a jog after the brutish denizens. He soon found himself padding through grim streets crowded with the faceless, emotionless shades of the elder False. The sight of so many damned to an eternity without hope or love or fear sickened Gwydion, but there was something about his surroundings that preyed in more subtle ways on the sell-sword’s mind. The buildings, the streets, even the humid, stinking air seemed just as cold and hopeless as the souls of the damned. Something inside Gwydion warned him the city itself would try to leach away any true emotions he would feel if he shook off the shroud of despair that had settled over him.
At last the boroughs gave way to an uneven field of rubble, beyond which lay the city’s heart—Bone Castle itself. Gwydion and the denizens struggled through the shattered stone and twisted metal to the mouth of a vast cave, near the oozing river that served as the castle’s moat. Stalactites and stalagmites lined the gaping hole like stone teeth. Orange steam hissed between the jagged points in a steady, sibilant flow, and dark water from the River Slith pooled around the entrance. The ground underfoot was marshy and foul.
Af clamped a hand on Gwydion’s shoulder. “Stay behind me and keep your mouth shut,” the denizen ordered gruffly.
Gwydion watched as Perdix flew to the cavern’s mouth and called out. “Envoys from Lord Cyric,” the little denizen announced, his voice quavering noticeably. “Mistress Dendar?”
A grating sound echoed from the cave as something enormous shifted position. Two eyes appeared in the darkness. They were the sickly yellow-black of rotten eggs, with slitlike pupils. “What do you want with the Night Serpent?” she hissed.
“Lord Cyric wishes us to search your cave,” Perdix explained meekly, crouching behind a stalagmite. “There is a shade hiding—”
“Ah. He is hunting Kelemvor again, is he?” the thing sighed.
Gwydion thought he saw a flash of blood-drenched fangs in the cave’s murk. The sight stirred some vague horror in him, resurrected some long-forgotten terror.
“Your master fears his old friend—or was he a foe?” The Night Serpent chuckled. “I don’t think Cyric himself remembers.”
“Lord Cyric fears nothing,” Af growled.
“I have reason to know otherwise.” A square snout edged closer to the mouth of the cave. The Serpent’s scales glowed with a thousand hypnotic hues of darkness. “The unremembered nightmares of gods belong to me as much as those of mortals … and Kelemvor Lyonsbane haunts Cyric’s nightmares. He frequently leads a revolt in the City of Strife, a revolt that brings your prince low.”
The Night Serpent tilted her head slightly. “But, come, you may search my cave. I have nothing to hide from Cyric, least of all his nightmares.”
Perdix started forward tentatively while Af grabbed Gwydion with one hand and climbed boldly into the cave. Light from the swirling crimson sky reached shallowly into the murk, revealing a wide stone floor littered with bones. Only the tip of the Night Serpent’s snout was visible, but it was as large as a noble’s town house in the richest part of Suzail. The yellow eyes seemed to hover in the darkness, twin pools of cunning and malice.
Those eyes focused on Gwydion as he entered the cave. The slitted pupils dwarfed the trembling soul. “I was sorry to see you die, Gwydion,” the Night Serpent hissed. “Your nightmares were delicious.”
“B-But I never had nightmares,” the sell-sword replied meekly.
The bloody fangs flashed again—a smile, perhaps? “If you’d remembered them, dear Gwydion, I couldn’t have made them mine.” The Night Serpent tilted her head slightly. “Come, now. Has the world grown so smug that you know nothing of Dendar the Night Serpent? Don’t the elders teach the poem any longer?”
Gwydion’s memory stirred, and he heard his grandfather
’s voice repeating a childish rhyme:
“In Shar’s domain of night I rest,
So dreams may show me how I’m bless’d.
If screams of terror break my sleep,
Then Dendar’s sunk her fangs too deep.”
A shudder wracked the sell-sword. Dendar was a myth meant to frighten children into going to bed when their parents wanted—or so he’d always believed. His grandfather had told him that the Night Serpent ate the horrible dreams of disobedient boys and girls, growing fat so she could rise from Hades at the end of the world and swallow the sun. Each nightmare you couldn’t remember was another pound of flesh on Dendar’s bones.
The Night Serpent nodded her black snout, recognizing the fright in Gwydion’s eyes. “Ah, I see you do know me. I’m relieved.”
“Er, excuse me, Dendar,” said Perdix, “But you’re blocking the way. We can’t go any farther into the cave unless you give way.”
“My body has grown so large only my head has room to move,” the Night Serpent said. “So the mouth of the cave is the only place big enough for anything to hide—and, as you can see, there is nothing here.” Dendar swept her snout slowly back and forth over the pile of bones. “I like to think my predicament means the world will end soon.”
Perdix nodded with all the enthusiasm he could muster. “We can only hope. Well, we’ll be going. Let Cyric know if you see anyone suspicious lurking around your cave.”
“Certainly,” the Night Serpent purred.
“Come on, Af,” the little denizen said. He turned to his brutish fellow, but found the wolf-headed creature frozen in place. “What is it?”
Af lifted a misshapen skull from the scattering of bones beneath his coils. “These are from denizens,” he murmured.
“Of course,” Dendar said nonchalantly. “They don’t taste very good—not as good as a fresh soul, anyway—but Cyric throws in a few denizens along with the shades for variety. The whole idea of a levy is for show. The forgotten nightmares are food enough for me, as you might guess from my bulk.”