by James Lowder
The room warped before Rinda’s sleepy eyes. The piles of rags, the rickety chairs and tables, the gathered conspirators—all these twisted and flowed like images in an imperfect mirror. When at last they stopped, the people and objects disappeared in a flash of unreality. Behind this crumbled facade lay the dark tower of hopelessness built of Cyric’s plans for her. Now, however, it was no longer a lone spire in an open sea of possibilities. A thousand other spires, just as black, just as foreboding, jutted up around it. They filled the world from horizon to horizon.
“When do we begin?” Rinda heard herself say. It was what she was supposed to ask, she knew, just what the mysterious god had expected.
The reply, too, was eerily familiar. Right now, the god said, the voice filling her mind with long-hidden truths about the Lord of the Dead. Of course, we shall begin at the beginning.…
* * * * *
From The True Life of Cyric
Though men may try to wrest the reins of their destiny from the gods, they are all born at the mercy of Nature, bound in a hundred ways to those around them. This is how the gods insure mortals are tied to their world of toil and sorrow. Cyric of Zhentil Keep was no exception.
In the hottest Flamerule to ever grip the Keep, Cyric was born to a destitute bard, so lacking in skill she could not earn a copper singing on street corners. Like many desperate women in the slums, she got what little money she could selling her body to the officers in the Zhentilar barracks. Thus was Cyric’s paternity sealed in shame, and his fate set for the next decade.
Hoping to gain pity from the Zhentilar who fathered her child, Cyric’s mother went to him and pleaded for a few silvers to feed his son. The man, a low-ranking lout of little substance and less ambition, denied ever having bedded the wench. When she persisted in her claims, he threatened to kill her and sell the child into slavery.
In the days that followed, the mother and child lived off the kindness of others—tavern keepers and scullery maids, street singers and pickpockets, who all gave what they could to keep the two alive. Yet the gods had not finished casting lots for Cyric’s future, or the story may have ended there. Driven by greed and hatred, Cyric’s father returned to the slums. He killed Cyric’s mother, taking the screaming, mewling child as payment for his inconvenience.
Sold into slavery before his first step, before his first word, Cyric was transferred like so much veal to the merchant-kingdom of Sembia. There, childless families often purchased babies, since fortunes went to state coffers if not passed from father to child. Astolpho the vintner bought Cyric for a middling sum. In the years to come he would curse the purchase as the worst investment he ever made.
Cyric grew up in the lap of luxury, wanting for nothing. For a time, he seemed content and even happy. As the years went on, though, he became aware of the subtle scorn of his fellows and their parents. It wasn’t until he was ten winters old that he learned the reason—his birthright was not the cultured palaces of Sembia, but the back alleys of Zhentil Keep, feared throughout Faerun as a city of great evil and corruption.
Torn by shame and desperate for his parents to prove their love for him, Cyric made a show of running away. Before his parents could mount a search, though, he was captured by the local watch and returned home. News of the incident spread throughout the merchant palaces, adding to the mistrust centered on the boy.
Cyric remained in Sembia for two more years. Astolpho’s business faltered, his social connections withered. Subtle shows of disdain became open displays of scorn. When Cyric, now at an age when he should have been learning his father’s trade, confronted his parents about his origins, they offered no excuses for their actions—though they noted more than a little regret at having taken a Zhentish child into a civilized home. When Cyric threatened to leave, Astolpho and his wife didn’t raise a hand to stop him.
Servants from Astolpho’s house found the bodies of the vintner and his wife the next morning. From the small, muddy footprints around their beds, it appeared that someone had crept into the room and murdered them in their sleep. Such was Cyric’s blooding, a cowardly strike against an elderly rich man and his overfed wife.
In the days that followed, Cyric made his way north, through Sembia, toward the black walls of Zhentil Keep. There, he thought, the murder of his parents might buy him acceptance. Yet the young man had little experience in surviving outside the tapestried walls of a merchant’s home; within a tenday, he was at the edge of the Dales, close to starvation and delirious from fever.
What happened next may have been Tymora smiling on the unfortunate boy, or Beshaba raining more hard luck on him. Whether good fortune or ill, the Zhentarim agents that happened on Cyric in the wilderness saved his life. They also put him in chains in preparation for the slave markets at their final destination—Zhentil Keep.
So it was that Cyric returned to the place of his birth, once more bound in chains, once more at the mercy of slavers and merchants.…
VII
PANDEMONIUM
Wherein Mystra and her patriarch debate the limitations of godhood, and the Prince of Lies demonstrates the true power of chaos.
With her grip of ice, Auril the Frostmaiden had plunged Cormyr into the coldest days of a long and bitter winter. Snow lay thick over the entire kingdom of Azoun IV. There would be no sight of green for months to come. The country, like much of Faerun, slept under death-white cerements—except for the gutted shell of Castle Kilgrave and the lands that surrounded those stony ruins.
The snow and ice had vanished from those hills, replaced by a green and lush carpet of life. Jungle foliage spread in riotous tangles around tranquil fields of gorgeously hued spring flowers. Birds too hearty or sickly to fly south for the winter frolicked amidst suddenly ripe fruits and abundant seeds. Confused badgers and rabbits nosed cautiously from their burrows to wander across the verdant hills, their winter coats stifling in the springtime warmth.
Then, without warning, the mock spring fell away, and the Frostmaiden’s cruel fingers spread winter across the land once more. Birds plummeted from the sky, killed by the slash of icy winds sweeping across the fields. Flowers bowed beneath ever-deepening snowdrifts. Vines and trees and hedges withered under a cloud-filled iron-gray sky. Animals cowered against the gale, their homes hidden from them by a thick carpet of sleet.
The cold wind intensified, even beyond Auril’s wont, and shrieked across the hills like a grief-maddened banshee. In an instant, the trees and shrubs and every other hint of spring were swept from the land. The stiff corpses of birds were blown up into the sky. The blast stripped the fur and flesh from the rabbits, leaving tiny ice-limned skeletons huddled in the shadows of snow mounds.
Such was the way of wild magic.
“I can’t believe it has been ten years,” Adon said sadly. “We watched the Goddess of Magic die here a decade ago. Who’d have thought it would cause all this?”
The cleric pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders, though there was little need. The globe of magical energy surrounding him and his companion kept out the cold and shielded them from the wind. “It really seems like yesterday,” Adon murmured. “Though I suppose you don’t notice the passing of time the same as you used to.…”
Mystra neither turned nor spoke, and the comment fell away unanswered. The current Goddess of Magic stared out at the blizzard and watched the plants and animals die. She gritted her teeth as the magical chaos threatened to warp even her sorcery, but the wave passed, leaving her shield intact.
Suddenly uncomfortable, Adon chattered on to fill the silence. “Still, the land has healed quite a bit since then. Used to be bubbling tar pits as far as the eye could see—well, mortal eyes anyway.” He laughed boldly. “Does Helm realize how much spite went into naming this place the Helmlands? I suppose he only thought he was doing his job, killing Mystra and all.”
“Helm sees the world as nothing but some vague prize to be protected from an even more vague adversary,” Mystra said.
“T
hat would have to be Mask, I suppose. Who would the God of Guardians hate more than the Patron of Thieves?”
Slowly Mystra turned blue-white glowing eyes on her patriarch. A decade ago, when he first met the mortal mage named Midnight, Adon had been a dashing young priest of Sune Firehair. Barely twenty and untutored in the harsher lessons of life, he joined Midnight, Cyric, and Kelemvor Lyonsbane on an adventure that quickly became a quest to find the gods-wrought Tablets of Fate. His faith in himself and the unpredictable Goddess of Beauty shattered when he was scarred by a lunatic. The man who became the high priest of the new Goddess of Magic was much more worldly, much more wise than the vain young dandy who first left Arabel scant months before.
The Lady of Mysteries could see that worldliness in everything about her old friend. His brown hair was shot with harsh streaks of silver. Tiny wrinkles surrounded his green eyes. His cleft chin had kept its strength, his features their sharpness. Only Adon’s scar had faded. Once an angry red streak running from eye to jaw, the trail of the old wound was now a puckered line, pale against his tanned face. It was as if the priest’s acceptance of the wound had healed it just a little.
“Cyric will be sending more assassins,” Mystra noted. “You must take care.”
Adon nodded, his hand straying to the mace that hung from his belt. The worn patch on his leggings told any observant man the priest rarely traveled without the weapon. “They’ve tried before, Lady. Besides, the ring you crafted has done an admirable job in warning me of their presence.”
“Cyric’s planning to strike against the church,” Mystra said darkly. “Your death would be a prize to him second only to finding …” The words trailed into silence.
“He’ll be sorry if he ever finds Kel,” the priest said. Brushing a lock of raven-black hair from Mystra’s brow, he looked into her inhuman eyes. “Somehow Kel has kept himself hidden all these years. For all we know, he’s safe somewhere, plotting revenge against Cyric.”
“The sentiment’s appreciated, Adon, but I’m no love-struck child to be consoled by such hopeful fancies,” Mystra chided, though she smiled just the same. “I can only hope one of the other gods is hiding Kel’s soul, waiting to barter with me for some favor.”
Adon shrugged. “Kel tricked Bane into removing the Lyonsbane curse from him when he was alive. If he’s clever enough for that, he may have his revenge yet.” He caught the sadness crossing Mystra’s delicate features, like storm clouds over a sun-bathed rose garden, and unsubtly changed the subject. “The church in Tegea is doing fine,” Adon offered. “The village is thriving, and we’ve gone a long way in reversing the duke’s curse. Corene—”
“I know how my church fares, Adon. You are doing an admirable job, and your protege has become an outstanding cleric in her own right.” Mystra paused and looked out at the blizzard. “She’s quite beautiful, and she cares a great deal for you.”
“Midnight,” Adon said, the name full of his devotion and respect. “You didn’t bring me all the way out here just to talk about Corene.”
The goddess smiled sadly. “No. I brought you here for a more important reason. I thought seeing this place would help you to understand what I want to tell you.”
Her gossamer robes flowing around her like moted sunlight, Mystra began to pace up the hill. The protective globe moved with her, and Adon fell into step at her side. “I need someone to talk to,” she began.
“I’ll try to help,” Adon said softly. “But another god might see—”
“That’s the very heart of the problem, Adon. The other gods can’t see anything but their own narrow visions of the world.”
The Lady of Mysteries gestured idly to the hillside, buried now beneath a mountain of snow. Even as she pointed, the ice and snow melted away, revealing a plain of black rock. The icy skeletons of rabbits and foxes shuddered to life. Howling in agony, they began to battle like crazed knights at tournament.
“I’ve never told you why the Helmlands are like this, why wild magic acts the way it does, have I?” The goddess continued without awaiting an answer. “In some places, where the avatars did the greatest destruction in the Time of Troubles, the very cloth of reality was worn thin. And here, where Mystra’s dying energy blasted the land like a million Shou cannons, that fabric is the thinnest of all.”
“What does this have to do with how the other gods see the world?” Adon asked.
“Where the fabric is so thin, the Balance is unstable,” Mystra explained. “The land swings back and forth between the powers, letting each have dominance over the area for a brief while. The verdant spring we saw was the work of Lathander. Then Auril took the land back. Now—” she looked out over the battling skeletons on the featureless field of rock “—this could be the work of Cyric. Or Talos.” Sighing raggedly, the goddess closed her glowing eyes. “And the gods never know that they’re doing harm. They can’t see how plunging the world from winter to summer might destroy everything.”
“Can’t you show them? If you can see the danger—”
“That’s just it,” Mystra said, anger making her eyes flash. “The gods see the world as if it were merely a field to be won or lost. But each is playing a different game. Talos seeks to destroy everything, while Lathander plots and schemes to bring about rebirth. They only notice the others in the pantheon when they get in the way.”
Adon shook his head. “I’m sorry, Lady, but I just don’t understand. I mean, they’re gods, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” Mystra said ominously. “They’re gods. But that doesn’t mean all that you believe, all that the priests propose in their sermons and tracts. I’ve been inside their minds. I’ve—” She paused, studying the mad battle taking place on the stone field. “Perhaps there’s another way to show you.…”
Mystra gestured subtly, and they vanished from the Helmlands. But when the goddess and her patriarch appeared an instant later at their destination, the scene around them was no less chaotic.
“Where’s the light, Gareth? Don’t leave me in the dark with them. They’re crawling over everything.… Ai, get them away from my eyes!”
“The angels have fangs. The angel have fangs!”
“The Serpent took them all! She swallowed all my dreams.…”
Adon cupped his hand over his mouth and pinched his nostrils shut. The stench of the place was horrible. He glanced around frantically. Piles of damp, dirty straw lay everywhere. Some of these makeshift beds were occupied by dozing lunatics, others by rats or roaches or worse. In the shadowed corners of the large, dim room, vaguely human figures squatted or brawled or howled. Many inmates had huge cages strapped to their heads or thick wads of cloth wrapped firmly around their hands. The rest were clad in rags, though the place was cold enough for breath to turn to steam.
But what Adon would remember most from that hellish place was the high-pitched, terrified screeching of the madmen.
“The angels have fangs!” A thin half-elf with long brown hair and a pale beard reached out for Adon with trembling hands. “You must warn everyone. The angels have fangs.”
Mystra turned the half-elf toward her. “Sleep, King Trebor,” the goddess soothed, passing her thumbs lightly across his eyes. He slumped to the ground, though the shudders that wracked his frame showed that slumber provided no escape from his troubled thoughts.
“You know him?” Adon gasped. “Where are we?”
“I know all these unfortunates,” Mystra said. “They are as much my children as the mages and scholars who flock to the temple in Tegea. Magic brought them all here.” The goddess turned to her patriarch. “This is an asylum, Adon. It’s run by the Golden Quill Society in Waterdeep. The bards have taken pity on these men and women, sorcerers warped irrevocably by magic gone awry. They put them here and care for them as best they can.”
“Gods, better to kill them than this,” Adon said. He had to shout to be heard over the keening.
Mystra shook her head. “Cyric’s realm awaits most of them, those who hadn’t dev
oted themselves to a god before magic warped their minds.” To the unasked question in Adon’s eyes, the goddess added, “I take all those I can, but Ao proclaimed at the beginning of time the gods may reward only their faithful with paradise.”
“Magic did this?” the patriarch mumbled, staring at a poor, cowering wretch with neither mouth nor eyes.
“Necromancies and thaumaturgies should never be cast lightly,” Mystra replied, “for the power of the weave can destroy as well as create. And even my hands cannot heal their minds, though I have spent hours upon hours here trying to comfort them.”
Anger began to show in Adon’s eyes. “If you wish to prove the gods can be heartless, you’ve wasted the lesson,” he shouted. “Sune abandoned me when I was scarred, remember? I have no illusions about the world, Midnight. Either tell me how to help these men or take me away from here.”
The Lady of Mysteries turned away and walked toward a grizzled old man hunched beneath a thickly barred window. A few of the lunatics quieted as she passed, as if her presence offered them a glimpse of sanity. As soon as the goddess moved away, though, they resumed their howling.
“Come here, Adon. I want you to meet Talos,” Mystra called.
Still tense with anger, the patriarch stalked to Mystra’s side. “Have you lost enough of your humanity to make light of these wretches?”
“Hardly,” Mystra said, her blue-white eyes snapping fire. “Look again, Adon. I know you’re bright enough to understand this.”
The madman was naked, his hair long and unkempt. With blue eyes narrowed in suspicion, he watched the patriarch closely. All the while, he plucked the beard from his chin one whisker at time. He dropped the hair onto the floor around him, which was already crowded with the unraveled threads of his blanket and the cloth shreds that had once been his clothes.