by James Lowder
“Go ahead, Adon,” Mystra said softly. “Try to stop him.”
The patriarch reached out and stilled the man’s hands. The lunatic trembled, watching Adon with watery eyes. After a moment, when he thought the inmate had calmed, Adon released him. The bony fingers flew to the offending beard and tore at it again, neither faster nor slower than before.
Mystra laid a gentle hand on Adon’s shoulder. “What does he see when he looks at you?”
“Someone stopping him from plucking his beard out. Maybe not even a person. Maybe I’m just some huge paralyzing shadow or a set of chains.…”
“So now you’ve met Talos,” Mystra said flatly. “Or one very much like him. This poor man destroys whatever clothes or bedding they give him. No one can figure out why. His mind is set on it, and if they keep him chained too long, he stops eating, stops sleeping. They let him out like this now and then to tear something up. And like the gods, he’s only aware of anyone around him insomuch as they help or hinder his mad view of the world.”
“But surely the gods—”
Mystra shook her head. “Their minds are more expansive, but just as limited in perception.”
“Then how can they communicate?” Adon asked. “If they’re madmen, they shouldn’t be able to agree on anything.”
“Something in their consciousness must translate what the other gods say,” Mystra replied. “They’re all looking at the same reality, but seeing it in myriad ways. Talos can see nothing but a world that must be destroyed.” She swept manically across the chamber to a man with his knees pulled up tight to his chest. Bloody tears streamed down his sunken cheeks. “And this is Ilmater, who sees only the suffering of Faerun. His cell mate is Gond, the Wonderbringer, whose mechanical marvels will spread across the world like a clockwork army.” Mystra gestured to a bald dwarf busily constructing a tower from shattered chains and fractured servings bowls.
Finally, the Goddess of Magic came to a young boy, his face twisted into a hideous mask by some misfired enchantment. He primped and fussed over the tufts of hair sprouting from his blackened scalp. “You already know Sune Firehair,” Mystra said. “It doesn’t matter that he’s a man, of course. We gods can be whichever sex we choose.…”
“And you?” Adon asked bluntly. “What is the face of your madness?”
“Ao allowed me to keep something of my humanity, but that means I can see all the others are mad,” Mystra said. “Talos has no idea how the others perceive the world. I, on the other hand, can share in his and every other god’s twisted visions. In the end, that could make me the maddest—”
Mystra stiffened in pain and clutched her side. Cyric had wounded her there a decade ago, during the battle atop Blackstaff Tower. “It was only a matter of time,” she hissed.
His hands held out to the goddess, Adon rushed forward. “What is it?”
“Cyric,” the Lady of Mysteries said through clenched teeth, though now her face was contorted with anger, not pain. “He’s striking against the weave. I’ve got to stop him.”
The inmates howled at the sudden burst of blue-white radiance as Mystra disappeared. Even through their madness-fogged brains, they felt some unknowable pain at the use of sorcery in their midst, the damnable Art that had done them all so much harm. And in the center of all the shrieking and screaming, Adon of Mystra stood in silence, with tearing eyes.
He made his way to the door and pounded on the thick metal with his mace. The guards hadn’t noticed the presence of a goddess. He hoped they would hear his calls now and take them as something more than the unusually lucid cries of one of the inmates.
“Warders!” he shouted. “I am here from the Church of Mysteries. Open this door, for Mystra’s sake, and bring some water.”
The priest turned back to the dim room. He laid his fine cloak over a shivering, rag-clad man chained to the wall. Then, choking back his gorge at the stench of offal and disease, he kneeled next to the scarred boy who Mystra had called Sune.
“You look quite handsome today,” he said soothingly as he wiped grime from the boy’s arms with his handkerchief. Something like a smile crossed the lunatic’s lips.
Adon shuddered despite himself. “Maybe the scholars were right in this much,” he murmured. “Perhaps the gods can’t live without their worshipers after all.”
* * * * *
Deep within the maze of lightless, hope-forsaken tunnels known as Pandemonium, Cyric raised Godsbane and slashed again at a glowing curtain of magical energy. The short sword bit into the seemingly insubstantial wall with a screech that sounded like an axe sliding on slate. A thin gash opened for an instant, then sealed itself, just like every other hole the Lord of the Dead had cut in the curtain.
The magic wounds me, Godsbane whispered in Cyric’s mind. Is there no other way?
Bemused, the Prince of lies stepped back from the enchanted barrier and looked up. The glittering wall stretched for miles, sealing off the circular tunnel completely.
Cyric drew his mouth into a grim line and rubbed his chin with gnarled fingers. “The gods must have drawn the wall directly from the weave when they imprisoned Kezef,” he mused. “This will prove more difficult than I thought …”
The words, though whispered, echoed down the huge tunnel. Sound built upon sound until the utterance was a howling chorus of nonsense. The winds of chaos that perpetually tore through the slick-walled black caves carried the noise away, then returned it an instant later accompanied by a thousand agonized screams. The cacophony would have deafened any mortal ears, but to Cyric the sounds of Pandemonium were soothing, the swirling miasma of darkness and choking fog a comforting cloak.
“There’s no way around it,” the death god muttered into the maelstrom and lifted Godsbane once more.
My love, beware! Mystra—
A bolt of sorcerous might struck Cyric in the back. The blow spun the Lord of the Dead around. Eyes wide with shock, he faced his attacker, then glanced down at the smoking hole in his chest. Godsbane slipped from his numb fingers and clattered to the ground. Cyric slumped forward into a lifeless heap.
Mystra took a step toward the Prince of Lies, then stopped, startled motionless by the body before her. Had she so overestimated his power? He had no magical defense, but all the gods had innate powers granted them by their very godhood, not drawn from the weave of magic. The blow shouldn’t have—no, couldn’t have harmed him so mortally—
The Lady of Mysteries cursed and lunged forward, but she moved too late. A blade cut a trail down her back, from her shoulder to her waist. Pain blossomed at the core of her being as the sword tried to drag her lifeforce from her. Yet the wound was too shallow, the contact to brief for any real harm to be done.
“I’m amazed you attacked me here, Midnight,” Cyric said. The Prince of Lies smirked at his lifeless twin, then stalked toward the goddess. The light from the magical wall made his features look all the more demonic. “Pandemonium is a place of chaos, after all, and you should know I’m quite at home in chaos.…”
Mystra backed to the glowing wall and created a magical buckler. “The Circle decreed this barrier should never be crossed by god or man,” she shouted. “And without magic, you are no match for me, Cyric. Give this up before I’m forced to destroy you.”
The mock corpse dissolved into a pile of ashes and was borne away on the cyclonic winds in the tunnel. The true Prince of Lies paused to take in his adversary’s threatening stance, then laughed. “You wouldn’t kill me even if you could,” he scoffed. “That would upset the Balance.”
Cyric allowed the winds of chaos to flow over him, through him. He channeled their might like sorcerous energy and dissolved into a swarm of flies, which split into two smaller clouds. The winds tossed the buzzing insects to either side of Mystra. There, they reformed into twin images of the Lord of the Dead. Two identical rose-hued short swords bit into the goddess’s arms, knocking the arcane shield from her grasp.
“But I care nothing for the Balance,” the death god
hissed.
Time-dusted memories of mortal pain and a sick sensation of fear crept into Mystra’s mind. She felt the awful tug of Godsbane on her spirit, the leaching of her power and the tingling of energy as it dripped like blood from her wounds. Mustering the strength to fight back, she let her hands fall against the glowing prison wall. The raw magical essence pulsed against her fingers.
With a defiant shout, she tore two handfuls of energy from the curtain. The globs of power, drawn from the heart of the weave, flared in her grasp. Lithely they slithered up her arms, pushing the blades away and forming armor more adamantine than any forged by the dwarven gods or their minions. Mystra vanished, only to reappear a dozen yards away. Now she, too, held a weapon—a staff of light that burned like the sun itself.
Yet before she could lift the staff against Cyric it transformed into the dripping, razor-edged blade of Godsbane. Then the Prince of Lies was kneeling next to Mystra, gripping the sword by the hilt. Savagely he drew the blade through her hands as if her fingers were a living sheath. Godsbane dug deeply into the goddess’s palms, nearly severing all the fingers of her left hand.
“I lured Leira to Pandemonium,” the Prince of Lies cackled. “If there was anything left of her avatar it’d still be blowing around in here.”
Cyric vanished as Mystra launched a glittering swarm of meteorites toward him. He rode on a swell in the winds until it left him standing high on the wall. “Killing her was even easier than killing you will be,” he crowed. “I must be almost as powerful here as in Hades. Must be the natural chaos of the place. Or perhaps I’m just very good at being the Lord of Murder. What do you think?”
Mystra called forth a sphere of prismatic energy to shield her from the next attack. No sooner had the globe formed than Godsbane slammed against it. The force of the blow alone sent cracks snaking along the twinkling, spinning globe.
Cyric kicked the shield. “One for you,” Mystra heard him mutter just before he disappeared again.
The Goddess of Magic took quick stock of her wounds. They were serious, but she could heal them given a moment to concentrate. And then she would—
Cyric loomed over the sphere, gigantic and menacing. He lifted the magical globe in one hand and brought it up to his red-rimmed eyes. “What will happen if I eat this, I wonder?”
Glittering energy leaking from a half-dozen wounds, Mystra looked up at the Prince of Lies. He was right: in Pandemonium, he had the advantage. The chaos made him strong, but Cyric’s real weapon was his unpredictability. “The other gods will stand with me,” Mystra said bitterly, then disappeared, fleeing to her palace in Nirvana.
“So what?” Cyric said. He watched the prismatic sphere drip through his fingers like water, then let the chaos winds wear away his gigantic facade until he stood no taller than he had when but a mortal.
The Circle fears the Chaos Hound almost as much as it fears you, my love, Godsbane offered. Her purring voice was thick, drunk on the goddess’s lifeforce. We must be cautious.
“Caution is for those who cannot see the future,” Cyric noted as he walked casually to the curtain. “And my future contains only what I will it to hold.”
Two fist-sized gaps marred the glowing prison wall where Mystra had torn away the mystic energy. They were small wounds, but large enough for Cyric to exploit. “You see,” the Lord of the Dead said mockingly. “Just as I had planned. The Whore opened wide the gates for me.”
He lashed out with Godsbane, tearing the rents wider. The shriek of the blade as it split the damaged curtain filled the tunnel and echoed throughout the dark realm of Pandemonium. The babel made its way through the endless, windswept tunnels, and creatures more malefic than any in the nightmares of men or elves or dwarves cowered in terror. They knew that, after millenia untold, a madman had come to free the Chaos Hound.
VIII
HOUNDS AND HARES
Wherein Cyric makes a perilous bargain with the Chaos Hound, Mystra discovers a strange visitor in the House of Knowledge, and a long-dead, but much-discussed hero finally makes his entrance.
As he stepped through the ragged hole in the wall, Cyric entered a place both silent and dark. The howling winds and the baleful moaning, so deafening in the caverns beyond, did not reach into the dank chamber. The sorcerous curtain cast no radiance here. Even the light that should have crept in through the hole was damped somehow.
There is still time to reconsider this, Godsbane hissed in Cyric’s mind. The blade now shone dim and sickly in the darkness, though Mystra’s lifeforce had made her burn like a blood-red sun in the tunnels.
The Prince of Lies ignored the simpering sword and called into the fetid murk: “I am Cyric, Lord of the Dead and God of Strife. I am here to bind you to my service, Kezef.”
A low, rumbling growl was the only reply.
“Come, come,” Cyric chided, taking a bold step forward. “I mean to release you.”
“No god of Faerun would loose the Chaos Hound of his own free will.” The inhuman voice was low and full of malevolence. “So you must be no god.”
“If you lavish godhood on the pretenders who chained you here, then you’re right. I’m no god,” Cyric countered snidely. “I’m very much more than that.”
The growl rolled through the darkness again, carrying the stale, nauseating smell of putrefaction. “Lord of the Dead, you say? What of Myrkul?”
Cyric laughed. “The old Lord of Bones is no more. I killed him, and many of his brethren, too.” He took another step. “Bane and Bhaal and Leira are all destroyed by my hand. I hold their titles now, and their powers.”
“Then you are indeed one to be reckoned with,” Kezef rumbled. Chains clanked as the Chaos Hound leaned forward. He sniffed twice, then paused. “Can that little blade of yours cast any more light? I would see your face, slayer of Myrkul.”
Without magic, Cyric couldn’t conjure a light, but revealing that to the beast would be a mistake. There was another solution, though, and his multifaceted mind found it even before Kezef had stopped speaking. Cyric turned and hacked a corpse-sized piece from the prison wall. Slowly he held the quivering sheet of energy so that its radiant side illuminated his gruesome, seared features.
“You are not what I would have expected,” Kezef murmured.
Cyric dropped the sheet of weave-stuff to the ground and kicked it toward the Chaos Hound. It didn’t slide far enough to reveal the creature’s form, though, only glimmer faintly in Kezef’s red eyes.
“Push it closer,” the Hound said. “We cannot deal as equals until our true forms are revealed.…”
As Cyric moved toward the glowing fragment, Kezef lunged. The Prince of Lies saw only a blur of darkness move across the rough patch of light, heard only a vicious snarl and the clatter of ancient chains. With reactions far faster than any mortal, he brought Godsbane up in a powerful slash. The sword struck something pulpy, and a wave of dark liquid washed over his sword arm. The ooze clung to him in blotches, burning like molten copper.
The howl of the Chaos Hound was matched by the pained shriek of Godsbane in Cyric’s mind.
“Is this how you prove your cunning?” the Prince of Lies hissed. “No wonder the gods imprisoned you so easily. Only a fool turns on an ally when he has nothing to gain by doing so.”
“I would have been more of a fool to bargain with you without knowing your strength,” Kezef rumbled. “Yet you must be all you say, murderer of Bhaal, for none but a god could stay my jaws.” Narrowing his eyes, the Chaos Hound moved into the light.
Kezef resembled a huge mastiff, as large as any draft horse Cyric had seen in the streets of Zhentil Keep. Teeming maggots were his fur, the coat shifting incessantly over barely covered sinews and bones. His pointed teeth glittered like daggers of jet in the sorcerous light. A tongue oozing tatters of corruption lolled to the Hound’s chin, poisonous spittle dripping in sizzling drops to the ground. The wound from Cyric’s blow festered across Kezef’s snout, but even as the Prince of Lies watched, the putrefied liquid
flesh closed over the slash.
A short length of sturdy chain, forged by the Wonderbringer himself, held the beast in place. The links clattered sullenly as Kezef settled onto his haunches and looked the Prince of Lies in the face. “What dark task would you have me complete?”
“The bards of Faerun say you can track anything, no matter where it travels in the realms of men or gods.”
Kezef’s panted breath held a sick, charnel stench as he leaned closer to Cyric. “For once, the bards speak the truth. No living creature can hide from me, once I have picked up its trail.”
Cyric held Godsbane up before him, silently warning Kezef to move no closer. “Then I would have you seek the soul of a mortal.”
“And when I have that shade in my teeth?” the Hound rumbled balefully. “Do you think to imprison me again?”
“Bring me the soul of Kelemvor Lyonsbane. Then you are free to do as you will,” Cyric replied.
The Chaos Hound survives by raiding the planes, Godsbane warned, her voice shrill with fear. He preys on the Faithful, my love. The denizens of your realm will taste as sweet to him as any other.
“What about your minions?” the Hound asked, mirroring the blade’s question as if he could hear it. “Do you not care if your denizens put flesh on these bones along with the peons of Tyr or Ilmater?”
Cyric dismissed the questions with a derisive snort. “There are many heavens more easily stormed than the City of Strife,” he said. “You have no taste for the Faithless who make up the wall, and my denizens are better armed and much more vicious than the devoted of the Lord of All Songs or Oghma the Binder. It will be many, many years before your hunger brings you to my doorstep.…”
But, my love—
Silence! Cyric shouted to Godsbane. Though the word went unheard by the Chaos Hound, it seemed to shake the shadow-heavy chamber. When my book is complete and the other gods wither and die, their minions will be unprotected. They will feed the Hound for eternity.