Tantras

by Scott Ciencin

  “Answer the question,” Mourngrym said.

  Kelemvor glanced at Midnight, and her eyes were wide with fear. With a heavy heart, Kelemvor turned back to Mourngrym. “I could not,” he said.

  “No further questions,” Thurbal snapped, turning away from the fighter in disgust. Storm simply smiled and dismissed Kelemvor.

  The fighter said nothing as he was led back to the crowd. Cyric stared at Kelemvor as he walked past. The thief saw the look of defeat in his friend’s eyes. For some reason, it made Cyric feel a little better to know that Kelemvor now realized he was right about the dalesmen.

  “This day grows long, Thurbal.” Mourngrym folded his hands upon the lectern. “Have you any other witnesses?”

  “Only you, milord,” Thurbal said softly.

  Mourngrym stared at the older man. “Are you well? Have you taken leave—”

  “I call Mourngrym Amcathra,” Thurbal pronounced distinctly. “By the laws of the Dales, you cannot refuse to testify unless you wish to declare this trial at an end and release the prisoners.”

  The eyes of the dalelord turned wild with anger, but Mourngrym nodded and said in an even voice, “Very well. Ask me what you will.”

  “Where was Lord Bane throughout the battle for Shadowdale?” Thurbal asked.

  Mourngrym cocked his head slightly. “I don’t understand.”

  “Bane led the attack through the forest from Voonlar. Our scouts can verify this. I will summon them if you wish.” Thurbal leaned against the lectern as a coughing fit overcame him.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Mourngrym said. “Bane led the attack.”

  “At Krag Pool, before the defenders of the dale toppled the trees upon Bane’s army, the Black Lord vanished,” Thurbal stated calmly. “There are dozens of witnesses I can present to verify this as well.”

  “Go on,” Mourngrym said impatiently.

  “The next time Bane was sighted, it was at the crossroads, near the farm of Jhaele Silvermane. The Black Lord appeared before you, Mourngrym Amcathra, and attempted to slay you. Mayheir Hawksguard pushed you aside and was fatally wounded in your stead. Is that correct?”

  “Aye,” Mourngrym replied. “Hawksguard died nobly in the defense of the Dales.”

  “Where did Lord Bane go after that?” Thurbal asked. “Weren’t you quite vulnerable? Could he have not slain you then and there, despite Hawksguard’s sacrifice?”

  “I don’t know,” Mourngrym mumbled uncomfortably. “Perhaps.”

  “But he didn’t. He vanished again,” Thurbal said. “Bane’s attentions must have been drawn elsewhere.” The captain was seized by another coughing fit. Mourngrym drummed his fingers nervously on the lectern.

  “I’m all right,” Thurbal said, and he drew a breath before continuing. “Now, where was Elminster throughout the battle for Shadowdale?”

  “At the Temple of Lathander,” Mourngrym replied.

  “Why?” Thurbal asked. “Why was he not at the front lines using his magic to help repel Bane?”

  Mourngrym shook his head. He had no answer.

  “Didn’t Elminster tell you repeatedly that the true battle would take place in the Temple of Lathander?” Thurbal asked.

  “Aye, but he never explained what he meant by that statement,” Mourngrym said. “Perhaps he had foreseen the danger to the prisoners and wished to draw them away from the true battle—”

  Thurbal held up his hand. “I suggest that the true battle was at the temple, that Bane went there, and it was he who murdered Elminster the sage.”

  Storm stood up and threw her arms over her head. “All this is complete speculation. There isn’t a bit of evidence to suggest Bane was at the Temple of Lathander.”

  Thurbal grimaced and turned to Mourngrym. “Before you can convict the prisoners, you must show a motive for their actions. Storm Silverhand claims they were agents of Bane. Yet there is no proof to support such allegations. I spoke to the prisoner, Midnight, before the trial, and she claims—”

  Mourngrym raised his fist. “I don’t care what she claims!” he snapped. “She is a powerful mage, powerful enough to slay Elminster. My orders were explicit: She was not to be allowed to speak to anyone!”

  “Then how is she to defend herself?” Thurbal yelled.

  “How do any of us know that she did not ensorcel you when you spoke, bending your will to hers?” Storm asked. “You are hopelessly trusting, my friend, and for your own sake, you should be removed as counsel.”

  “You cannot!” Thurbal yelped and moved to Mourngrym’s side.

  “You’re wrong. I cannot let you be injured again by Bane’s servants.” Mourngrym gestured to a pair of guards. “See that Thurbal is well provided for. He is obviously fighting off the effects of powerful magic. Whatever guards were present when Midnight spoke should be relieved of duty, pending my later judgment. Take him away.”

  Thurbal cried out in protest, but he was too weak to stave off the guards that dragged him away.

  Addressing the court, Mourngrym stepped out from behind the lectern. “I have seen all that I need to,” Mourngrym said. “Elminster the sage was our friend and our loyal defender to the death. It was his blind trust in others that led to his demise. Yet we of this court are not blind. Our eyes are open wide, and we can see the truth.

  “Lord Bane was a coward. He ran from the battle in fear when our forces overwhelmed his army. That is why we cannot account for his whereabouts. If Elminster were alive, he would appear before us now. But that cannot happen. There is nothing we can do to bring Elminster back, but we can put his tortured soul to rest by punishing his murderers.”

  The audience chamber had grown completely silent again. Mourngrym paused a moment and looked back at the noblemen seated behind the dais. Like the rest of the room, the nobles were staring at the dalelord, waiting for his verdict.

  “I decree that at dawn tomorrow, in the courtyard of the Twisted Tower, Midnight of Deepingdale and Adon of Sune will be put to death for the murder of Elminster the sage. Guards, remove the prisoners.” Mourngrym stood back, and guards grabbed Midnight and Adon and pulled them to their feet. The crowd erupted in a roar of cheering.

  At first Cyric was swallowed up by the crowd, but the thief fought his way through the blood-crazed villagers in time to see Midnight and Adon exit the courtroom under heavy guard.

  Justice will be served, Mourngrym had said. The words of Shadowdale’s ruler echoed in Cyric’s thoughts as he maneuvered past the remaining guards standing in Mourngrym’s vicinity. As he drew closer to the dalelord, Cyric thought about exactly how quickly he could draw his dagger and slit Mourngrym’s throat.

  Mourngrym Amcathra felt a slight rush of air at his back, but when he turned to see what had caused the breeze, he saw only the back of a lean, dark-haired man vanishing into the crowd.

  Once again lost in the throng of excited townspeople, Cyric contemplated why he had changed his mind at the last instant and spared the life of the man who had condemned Midnight to death. There were better ways to honor his debt to Midnight and make these contemptuous imbeciles pay, Cyric thought. Besides, the crowd would have torn me to pieces. And I’m not ready to die quite yet.

  Quite the opposite, the thief thought. Quite the opposite.

  * * * * *

  The God of the Dead reached for the shard of red energy with his bony right hand. The fallen god chuckled softly as he held the fragment next to the foot-tall obsidian statue of a man he clutched in his left hand. There was a flash of brilliant white light as the statue absorbed the energy, and Lord Myrkul looked at the faceless figurine. A red mist swirled inside it violently.

  “Yes, Lord Bane,” the God of the Dead rasped through cracked, black lips. “We will have you whole again soon enough.” Myrkul chuckled once more and stroked the smooth head of the statue as if it were a small child. The mist pulsed with an angry red light.

  Myrkul looked around and sighed. Faint images of the real world hung in the air around him. The farmer’s
home in which he stood was dark, dirty, and bleak. The low-beamed ceiling was black from the greasy smoke of the peasants’ cooking fires. Rats occasionally scurried across the floor, racing between the legs of the warped wooden tables and splintering benches. Two people lay asleep under stained furs.

  Lord Myrkul, the God of Decay as well as the God of the Dead, rather liked this place. It was like a tiny, unintentional shrine to him. In fact, it upset Myrkul that he couldn’t experience it fully. For Myrkul was in the Border Ethereal Plane, an area parallel to the plane where the Realms and its people existed. From the Border Ethereal, the things Myrkul saw around him—the furniture; the vermin; the grimy, sleeping peasants—appeared only as phantasms. And if the snoring farmer and his wife had been awake, they wouldn’t have been able to see or hear Myrkul.

  “If only they could see me,” the skeletal man complained to the black statue. “I could frighten them to death. How pleasant that would be.” Myrkul paused for a moment to consider the effects his avatar’s visage, complete with rotting, jaundiced skin and burning, empty eye sockets, would have on the humans. “Their corpses would make this hovel complete.”

  Energy crackled and arced from the figurine.

  “Yes, Lord Bane. The last shard of your being isn’t far from here,” the God of the Dead hissed. Myrkul cast one glance back at the hovel as he walked through the insubstantial walls. When he got outside into the ghostly moonlight that shone down upon the countryside south of Hillsfar, the God of the Dead shuddered. The filthy hut was much more to his liking.

  Pulling the hood of his thick black robe over his head, Lord Myrkul stepped into the air as if he were climbing an invisible staircase. Gravity had no effect on him in the Border Ethereal, and it was easier to see his prize if he looked for it from a vantage point high above the ghostly hills and houses. After he had climbed a hundred yards or so straight up, Myrkul could see the final fragment of Lord Bane glowing in the distance.

  “There lies the rest of the God of Strife.” Myrkul held the statue up and faced it toward the pulsing shard that rested over a mile away. Tiny bolts of red and black lightning shot from the figurine and bit into the God of the Dead’s hands. Slivers of pain raced up the avatar’s arm, and Myrkul could smell burning flesh.

  “If I drop you, Lord Bane, you will plummet back into the Prime Material Plane, back into the Realms.” The tiny arcs of lightning grew smaller. “And I will not help you to recover the last piece of your essence. You will be unwhole—trapped inside this statue.”

  Myrkul smiled a rictus grin as the lightning ceased and the statue became black once more. “I am pleased to serve you, Lord Bane, but I will not be goaded into action.” When the figurine remained dark, the God of the Dead started walking toward the shard of Bane’s essence. After an hour, the fallen deities reached their destination.

  This fragment of the God of Strife resembled a huge, bloody snowflake, almost three feet wide. It was larger and far more complex than any of the other pieces Myrkul had recovered. How odd, the skeletal figure thought. Each shard is different. This one is the most intricate yet. I wonder if it could be his soul.…

  The God of the Dead shrugged and held the statue next to the snowflake. As before, there was a brilliant flash of light as the shard disappeared into the figurine. This time, however, the statue continued to glow brightly, pulsing red and black in a quickening pattern. Myrkul narrowed his eyes in pain as a loud, high-pitched shriek tore through his brain.

  I am alive! the God of Strife screamed in Myrkul’s mind. I am whole again! A pair of burning eyes and a leering, fanged mouth suddenly appeared on the smooth face of the statue.

  “Please, Lord Bane, not so loud. You are giving me a splitting headache,” the God of the Dead rasped. “I am pleased my plan succeeded.”

  How did you find me? How did you know I wasn’t destroyed?

  “I was monitoring the battle in Shadowdale as best I could. When that debased form of Lady Mystra appeared in the temple, it became clear to me that we gods cannot be destroyed, but merely dispersed.” Lord Myrkul smiled. “And so, when your avatar was destroyed, I tracked one of the shards of your being into the Border Ethereal and started searching for the others there as well.” The God of the Dead tilted his head slightly and tried to look into the obsidian statue. “Are you quite whole now?”

  Yes, Myrkul, I’m fine. Do you understand what you’ve done? The voice inside Myrkul’s head was growing loud again, and the God of the Dead winced at the noise. You’ve crossed into the Planes! You’ve beaten Lord Ao! We have escaped from the Realms, and now we can go home and claim our true power! The eyes on the statue were wide with excitement.

  “No, Lord Bane, I’m afraid we cannot. I was ready to give up when I discovered that you had been blown into the ether. I thought that Lord Ao had blocked all the existing planes from us.” Myrkul rubbed his rotting chin with a bony hand. “I was wrong.”

  Wrong?

  “Yes,” Myrkul sighed. “As my high priest pointed out, none of the gods live in the Border Ethereal, so Ao had no reason to stop us from entering it. Of course, with magic being so unstable, three of my wizards died trying to locate all the fragments of your being and send me here to recover them.” The God of the Dead bowed slightly, and all the vertebrae in his back cracked. “But I could not let you suffer here.”

  Please, Myrkul, spare me your flattery. After all, you need me to force my way into the heavens so you can follow.

  Myrkul scowled. For a moment, he considered journeying farther into the Border Ethereal and dropping the statue into the Deep Ethereal, a place of swirling colors and mighty vortices. Bane would never make it back to the Realms—or his home—from there. But the thought lasted only a second.

  Bane was right. Myrkul did need him. But not because the God of the Dead lacked courage or initiative. Myrkul wanted the God of Strife to lead the assault on the heavens because it was very dangerous, and it wouldn’t do at all for the God of the Dead to be destroyed.

  So Myrkul grinned obsequiously and again gave a slight bow to the obsidian statue. “Of course you are correct, Lord Bane. Let us exit this place so that we may find you a new avatar and proceed with your plans.”

  How will we return to the Realms?

  “It seems that magic is more stable outside the Prime Material Plane. I should be able to cast a spell to send us home without error.” The God of the Dead held the statue close to his face and smiled once more, so wide this time that the decaying skin at the sides of his mouth tore slightly. “I only await your command.”

  The mystical wards that Elminster had placed throughout the Twisted Tower had begun to fail the night the Temple of Lathander was destroyed. The passageways within the tower that were cloaked to appear as part of the walls sometimes revealed themselves as open doorways, and during the first day after the Battle of Shadowdale, people passed through them without incident. By that night, however, an unwitting guardsman walked into one of the openings and was killed as the break in the wall sealed up by itself, trapping him within.

  Outside the tower, the torches lit by blue-white eldritch fires either smoldered dimly or blazed with a light that blinded any who dared to look directly at them. Any attempts to remove the torches met with failure, since mortal hands merely passed through the torches as if they weren’t there.

  The mists that engulfed the upper levels of the tower were meant to stop any prying mystical eyes, but their nature had changed, too. Now the mists swirling around the tower caused a continuous, ear-piercing shriek. The shutters in the upper levels had been closed and heavily boarded over in an attempt to block out the noise.

  Dressed completely in black, Cyric ignored the shriek as he stood in the trees at the far end of the tower’s stables. Though it was night, the thief could see the guard who stood before the northeast entrance to the tower, near the kitchen. During his last night in Mourngrym’s home, on the day Midnight and Adon had been arrested, Cyric had made a detailed study of the tower’s defen
ses. Plying a disgruntled guardsman with gold and liquor, the thief had learned all he needed about the tower’s secrets to formulate his plan.

  A half dozen guards were always posted at the main entrance, while other soldiers patrolled the tower’s perimeter. Security at the Ashaba bridge stations had been relaxed, since most of the bridge’s length lay in ruins at the bottom of the river. The guard Cyric had bribed stood alone on the west bank of the river, but when the time came, he would be at the northernmost end of the bridge, investigating a “minor disturbance” that Cyric left to the guard’s imagination.

  The only other guards who had been posted near the boathouse were inside the tower, looking out from time to time through spy holes to verify that the quiet of the night held no hidden dangers. The workmen who sometimes prowled the boatyard long into the night had been ordered home to their families, so that they might be properly rested when they attended the execution of Elminster’s murderers in the morning.

  Inside the tower, a large number of Mourngrym’s men had been assigned that night to the upper levels, to guard their liege. The magical wards that normally protected the dalelord were unstable. Worse still, the trial had raised concern about the whereabouts of Lord Bane, and Mourngrym was troubled over the welfare of his wife and child should the Black Lord seek revenge against him.

  Cyric was certain that the lower levels of the tower, where Midnight and Adon were being held until their execution the next morning, would be occupied by quite a few guards, too. But Cyric was prepared to assault the Twisted Tower. He was armed with a pair of daggers, a hand axe, several lengths of blackened rope, a small black cylinder, and the skills that only training by the Thieves’ Guild in Zhentil Keep could foster.

  The light from the torches lining the tower wall suddenly flared intensely, and a series of brilliant flashes lit the streets. A string of curses erupted from a guardsman. His back pressed against the trunk of nearby tree, Cyric forced his breath slowly from his lungs as he waited for the lights to flicker and fail. He had been in full view of the rear guard when the torches flared.