by James Lowder
“To oblivion,” the Prince of Lies offered solemnly, “and to Kezef.” He lifted the cup to his lips and drank deeply.
* * * * *
Dawn in Zhentil Keep. Rinda made her way through squalid alleys, her hands cramped from taking notes for hours on end, her vision blurred from lack of sleep. She welcomed the chill morning with its bite of sleet in the air. It kept her from completely losing track of her surroundings.
This street was wider than most, which meant a clear path through the offal and garbage dumped from the buildings’ upper floors. Ragged refugees slept in every open doorway, the detritus of Zhentish society. Most of them came here to die, in places the dawn never seemed to touch with its healing light and soothing warmth.
Rinda glanced up only to find the rising sun hidden behind the huge spires of Cyric’s temple. They loomed, black and twisted, like blind giants standing watch over the city. No, the scribe reminded herself, not blind. The Church of Cyric has a thousand ways of seeing into the hearts and minds of the Zhentish.
“Help me, missy. In the name of Ilmater.”
The man sprawled against the Serpent’s Eye. His haggard face and scraggly beard were limned with frost. His nose was blue from cold. Holding shaky hands out to Rinda, he pleaded, “A copper, missy. Anything.”
The scribe stopped and crouched before him. “I’ve got no money, but I can bring some clothes here for you.” She glanced up through the tavern’s windows. Dark. “Will you stay here for a while? The Serpent’s closed, so they won’t chase you away.”
Slowly the man nodded. “You have anything for me to drink till you get back, missy?” He reached under his tattered tunic and pulled out an empty bottle. “That’ll keep me warm as any rags.…”
“No,” she said firmly. Rinda stood and turned away. “I’ll send someone with the clothes as soon as I can.”
It never helped to get angry with the poor wretches—not when gin was cheaper than food and more plentiful than clean water—but Rinda always found herself railing inwardly whenever she came across someone crippled by drink. Without hope, they drowned the sting of each passing day with a ten-copper bottle. Hodur had been like that when Rinda first found him, but the dwarf had managed to pull himself out of the gutter. Maybe this old man could, too.
The swell of hope washed against the events of the night before and dissipated. Rinda closed her eyes for an instant, willing the dark monolith of despair to crumble. It wouldn’t. As large and as immovable as the black spires of Cyric’s temple, the tower of hopelessness dominated her thoughts; the Prince of lies had taken control of her life, at least until this damned book of his was done.
No, she chided herself sharply. He’ll take control of my life only if I let him.
After all, she wasn’t being held prisoner—despite what Patriarch Mirrormane had suggested. If she arranged her time carefully enough, there might still be a few hours a day to devote to the unfortunates. And there were always men and women who needed her help.…
When she finally arrived home, Rinda found the door hanging open slightly. More from habit than concern, she scanned the alley, looking in the doorways and windows of the surrounding buildings for signs of trouble. If robbers or ruffians were waiting in the house, there’d be a lookout posted—someone like the unshaven man watching her from the second-story window across the street. Scowling, Rinda moved away from the door. No sense in walking into a trap alone when she could muster a few friends to help out.
“Hey, Rin! Where you going?”
Hodur’s gruff voice stopped the scribe short. She turned to find the dwarf standing in the doorway, his beefy hands planted on his hips. “I was getting worried. It ain’t like you to stay out all night”
Rinda sighed in relief. “You shouldn’t leave the door open like that,” she said. “Not even when you’re around. You never know who might wander in.”
Just before she followed her friend inside, Rinda looked up at the window across the way. The unshaven man was still there. One elbow planted on the sill, he cupped his chin in his hand. Brazenly he returned the scribe’s gaze, with eyes that betrayed more intelligence than his demeanor suggested. He lowered his arm, revealing the grinning white holy symbol of Cyric on his purple clerical robes.
“So you’re not a prisoner, hmmm?” Rinda muttered to herself and slammed the door closed behind her.
Hodur had already dropped into his chair by the door, though he didn’t plant his feet on the table as he usually did. The stained and scarred tabletop was crammed with bowls and mugs. He’d only cleared one small circle, at the center of which squatted a leather cup full of dice.
Another man—or, more precisely, an elf—sat across from Hodur. He watched Rinda enter, his back painfully straight, his shoulders set squarely, in military fashion. A neat gray tunic draped his thin frame. The material was clean, though a few stubborn bloodstains marred the sleeves. In one hand he held a deep-sided bowl. Carefully, with long, thin fingers, he drew a wriggling beetle from the dish and popped it into his mouth.
“Ivlisar,” Rinda greeted stiffly.
The elf nodded, crunching the beetle. A smile stretched across his narrow face as he held the bowl out to the scribe. “I only take ’em from the graves of the bright blokes I dig up. The way I figure it, if they eat the brains of the stiffs, and then I eat ’em—”
“No,” Rinda snapped, holding a hand out to ward off the bowlful of beetles. She moved to a neat pile of clothes on the floor and grabbed two tunics she’d taken from the rubbish heap outside a Zhentilar garrison. “Hodur, I need you to take these over to an old man outside the Serpent’s Eye. He’ll freeze to death if he doesn’t put something between him and the wind.”
“Later,” the dwarf replied. “We need to talk.”
“Talk,” she scoffed. “You have dicing to do, you mean. Look, it won’t take very long. And I’m sure Ivlisar would be happy to go for a walk with you.” She gave the elf a stern look. “Don’t give the old man anything to drink. If I find out you did, you’re not welcome here again.”
“A bit of the blue ruin never hurt nobody,” Ivlisar said defensively. “ ’Sides, Hodur isn’t pulling your leg. We’re set to have a bit of a parley, dear lady.”
“Ilmater give me strength,” Rinda hissed. She tucked the clothes under her arm and headed for the door to the back room. “Fine, then. I’ll go myself. Did you put those spare gloves back here?”
Panicked, Hodur leaped to his feet “Rin, wait! There’s—”
Rinda couldn’t hold back her gasp of surprise when she saw what lay beyond the door.
An orc in leather Zhentilar armor lounged on her bed, his muddy feet propped on her pillow. He turned his gray-green face to the scribe and wrinkled his piggish snout disdainfully. Another man, clad in stylish clothes and a rich, double-lined cloak stood before the chest where Rinda kept her few belongings. In his hands was her most treasured possession—a globe of enchanted glass. Locked within the glass was a panoramic view of a lovely, verdant hillside in the Moonshaes.
“Get out!” she roared. “Now!”
The shouted command startled the orc enough for him to roll to his feet. The other man turned slowly to Rinda, then held out the glass globe to her. “These are quite rare,” he said. “And quite beautiful. Your taste is to be applauded.”
“Quite a compliment coming from you, Lord Fzoul,” Rinda said coldly, recognizing the man at last.
When Rinda didn’t take the globe, the red-haired man gently replaced it in the chest, then bowed formally. “My reputation precedes me,” he said archly, “and from the tone of your voice, it has not presented my best face.”
“You got more’n one?” the orc grunted. He shrugged and turned to Rinda. “This her? She don’t look like much.”
Fzoul rolled his eyes. “As you will find, Rinda, General Vrakk prides himself on being blunt. It might appear that he is quite stupid, but don’t let him fool you.”
“Me get commendation from King Ak-soon himself
for fighting Horde,” Vrakk crowed. He slapped his broad chest and grinned, an act that made the sizable incisors jutting from his lower lip almost touch his snout “Big hero in crusade.”
“If you two are here to arrest me,” Rinda said, “get it over with. If not, get out. I won’t have soldiers or Zhentarim scum—no matter how well-mannered—in my home.”
A large hand pressed against Rinda’s back. “They’re here to help, Rin,” Hodur murmured solemnly. “We all are.”
“Help what?” the scribe said. “Ruin my reputation with the neighbors? Their kind isn’t well liked around here, you know.” She crumpled the tunics into a tight ball.
Fzoul stepped gracefully around Vrakk. “I assure you, Rinda. No one saw us enter. No one will see us leave.”
She took a step back from Fzoul, bulling Hodur out of the way. “What about the church watchdog across the street—or did you miss him? Or maybe he’s one of your lackeys.…”
“Hardly,” Fzoul said. He paced Rinda carefully, keeping close to her as she backed across the room. He took his eyes off the scribe once, and then only to nod to Ivlisar. “I’m afraid we can’t let you leave just yet,” the Zhentarim agent noted as she got close to the door.
Glancing over her shoulder, Rinda found the elf blocking her way. He leaned against the door, munching on beetles and smiling fatuously. “No walking until you hear what we have to parley about,” Ivlisar said, then used a long fingernail to dislodge a stray leg from between his teeth.
“Yeah, just sit,” the orc rumbled. “We tell you what to do.”
The pig-snouted soldier locked a hand onto Rinda’s shoulder, intent on pushing her down into a chair. At first she seemed to comply, to bend with the pressure from his grip. Then, suddenly, she twisted and flung the tunics at Vrakk. The orc swatted them away from his face, but as he did, Rinda planted a kick in his stomach. With a porcine grunt, Vrakk buckled over.
Rinda turned to give the same to Ivlisar. The elf dropped his bowl, allowing the beetles to scuttle away. “Please, dear lady,” he said. “This is a terrible mistake.”
Fortunately for him, the scribe only managed one step toward him before she was tackled from behind. As she rolled onto her side, kicking furiously to free her legs, Rinda looked down at her attacker. She expected to see Fzoul or even Vrakk holding her down. But it was neither of them.
Hodur clamped her ankles tight within the circle of his brawny arms. Rinda could feel the dwarf’s drink-palsied muscles trembling, even through her boots. “Please, Rin,” Hodur said. “We don’t want Cyric to do to you what he done to all them others.”
“Like your father,” Fzoul added coolly. “I saw him die, you know. It was quite unpleasant.” He knit his gloved fingers together. “And Cyric will kill you, too, if you fail.”
Rinda stopped struggling. “Maybe I won’t fail.”
“Then you have much more to fear than death,” Fzoul said. Even through his veneer of civility, Rinda could hear the unaccustomed ring of truth in his voice. From the look of distaste on Fzoul’s face, he found being honest unpleasant.
Hodur looked up at her, his dark eyes full of watery sincerity, like a wounded hound’s. “Listen to him, Rin.”
“Seems I don’t have much choice,” she said. When Hodur loosened his grip, she pulled her legs free and pushed the dwarf away.
“He lucky,” Vrakk wheezed, gesturing with his snout to Hodur. “That why he capture she-cat like you.” Bracing his stomach he tottered to a chair. As he slumped into it, the orc added, “Stupid dglinkarz like him not good in fighting.”
“Orcish is a right charming language for curses,” Ivlisar noted cheerily. He gave up scanning the room for his scattered breakfast and turned the bowl upside-down on the crowded table. “All right, Lord Fzoul,” he drawled, settling onto the floor in front of the door. “Let’s get this over with. Like dear Rinda, I’ve been up all night, and I need my sleep. Bodies don’t dig ’emselves up, you know.”
Fzoul offered Rinda a hand up, but she ignored it. Instead, she sat cross-legged in the center of the room. “He’s right,” she said. “Let’s get this over with.”
“We know Cyric wants you to create a book of his life,” Fzoul began without preamble. “What you cannot realize, and what the Prince of Lies will not tell you, is the purpose of that book.” He paused dramatically. “If written correctly and imbued with the right prayers, the right hymns, and the right illuminations, it could coerce anyone who reads it into worshiping Cyric.”
“So?” Rinda asked, stifling a yawn. “What makes that different from any church’s holy text? The priests want you to believe what it says is true, otherwise, it’s a waste of parchment.”
“But with this book, you’ll have no choice but to believe it,” Hodur said. At Rinda’s disbelieving look, he nodded solemnly. “Anyone who reads it or has it read to them will believe Cyric is the only god worth worshiping.”
“Then the other gods.…”
“Will fade away,” Fzoul said. He dusted his palms together, as if dismissing the rest of the heavenly pantheon. “Giving Cyric complete control of Faerun and every soul in it, living or dead.”
“And I’m supposed to stop him?” Rinda asked. “He’s a god—a god!”
Ivlisar enthusiastically applauded her observation. “It’s nice to chat with someone else who sees backstabbing a deity as just a bit ludicrous.”
“You’re all lunatics,” Rinda said, then shut her eyes tight “Or I’m dreaming.”
“More like a nightmare,” Hodur offered. “But this is all as real as the rats in this place and deadly serious to boot. We need your help, Rin. There’s a lot of us in the Keep’s underground what hate Cyric more than anything, but we need you to help us discredit the book.”
Fzoul stepped forward. “Indeed. We have many allies: priests of Bane and Myrkul and Leira, who all want Cyric overthrown; mages and illuminators and men with enough common sense to see the Prince of Lies will be unhappy until the world is a smoking ruin—you’ll have the skills of all these people at your disposal.”
“No forget my warriors,” Vrakk grunted.
“The orcs in the Zhentilar are none too pleased with the army’s new restrictions on their kind,” Fzoul clarified. “It seems Cyric questions their loyalty. Only humans go to his realm when they die, so he feels orcs like Vrakk here have no reason to fight for him. The priesthood pressured the Zhentilar into limiting the ores’ promotions and assigning them tasks of only minor importance.”
Vrakk ground a beetle beneath his heel, then scraped the remains onto the edge of a chair. “We make them priests sorry they no like us.”
“Some of the merchants will fight, too,” Ivlisar chimed in. “We have a great deal to lose. We in the medical arts—”
“Body snatchers, you mean,” Hodur scoffed.
The elf stuck his chin out haughtily. “I prefer resurrection men, actually.” Turning back to Rinda, he continued. “We in the medical arts got lots of contacts, what with knowing the mages and herbalists and gravediggers and all. No one but the priests are getting rich off Cyric ruling the Keep like it was his manor house. Just imagine how much worse it’ll be when he’s got no competition at all!”
“And what about you?” Rinda asked, eyeing Hodur suspiciously. “Who do you represent?”
“N-No one,” the dwarf stammered. “I just promised to smooth over an introduction for them all, after they heard the church picked you as the next holy scribe.”
“Of course Hodur had to report your predicament to me anyway,” Fzoul noted. “As a member of the Zhentarim, it was his obligation.…”
Rinda stared in disbelief. “You traitor,” she hissed. “How long have you been a spy? How long?”
“For years before he met you,” Fzoul said. “We sent him here to pose as a drunkard, to get inside your operation. You were getting so good at smuggling people out of the city, we were worried someone really important might slip by unnoticed. Of course, I tell you this only because I want us
all to be honest, now that we’re fighting a common foe.”
“Rin, I never—”
“Don’t pretend to be sorry,” the scribe snapped. “Even if you meant it, Hodur, I wouldn’t believe you. Gods, I always told you to be careful what you said around here, but I never thought you were the one spying for the Zhentarim.”
“Be a realist about this,” Fzoul said. “We are offering you a way to prevent an apocalypse.” He smiled knowingly. “You could kill yourself, of course, but since you’ve never been particularly faithful to any of the gods, you’ll just end up in Cyric’s realm. There’s no other way out, I’m afraid. It’s us or him.”
Rinda stood and walked to the closed front door. “This is all moot anyway,” she said bitterly, pointing in the general direction of the lookout across the street. “The watchdogs Mirrormane set outside here will have heard the fight and our argument. This will all go right back to the patriarch, and that means the end of this conspiracy.”
“Hardly,” Fzoul said with unbearable smugness. “The spy in the building across the way, the one on the roof, and the others planted around the neighborhood will only see and hear and smell what we want them to. The same with Cyric. Oh, don’t look so surprised. Do you really think he’d let such an important person wander around in the slums without watching over you himself? We had to take care of that prying eye before we spoke to you.”
“But you can’t blind a god. That would take—” She swallowed and glanced nervously around the room.
Yes, Rinda, a soothing voice said from everywhere and nowhere, from within the piles of parchment and the shabby walls, from within Rinda herself. It would take another god to hide your actions from the Prince of Lies. Cyric’s dark deeds worry many in the heavens, and the time has come to act against him and his book of falsehoods.
“Why me?” Rinda asked, her mind struggling to stay above the swells of confusion. “What do you want from me?”
The same thing Cyric wants from you—your skill as a scribe, as a writer of tales, the voice explained calmly. I, too, wish you to set down the story of Cyric’s life, but I will tell you the truth. And with this true life of the Prince of Lies, we will show those who worship him just how deluded and dangerous he can be.