Tantras

by Scott Ciencin

  As the heroes walked through the alleys to Elminster’s lair, they discussed what they’d discovered. Kelemvor couldn’t believe that Adon and the sage had Tenwealth in their grasps and let him walk away. But when the cleric explained Tenwealth’s status in Torm’s temple, Kelemvor put the final pieces of the puzzle together.

  “Torm’s high priests are running all those who are faithful to other gods out of the city,” the fighter whispered. “Then they take the abandoned temples and add the property to their own.”

  “That must be why the Sunites burned their temple to the ground, along with everything they couldn’t carry away,” Midnight added. “They didn’t want the Tormites to get it!”

  Adon frowned and ran a hand through his dirty, tangled hair. “So most of the sacred artifacts that have been confiscated from the city must be hidden in the Temple of Torm.”

  “Right!” Kelemvor snapped. “And if Bane disguised the tablet, as we suspect, and hid it in a temple, the Tormites probably don’t even know what they’ve got! Tenwealth probably believed it to be just another trinket when he saw it.”

  “This is just as I suspected,” Elminster noted as he narrowed his eyes and looked at the heroes closely. “And it’s the reason why I was at the temple this morning, too.”

  “Then you agree?” Midnight whispered in surprise.

  “Yes, Midnight. I believe ye’re right,” the white-haired mage said. “The Tablet of Fate is hidden in the Temple of Torm.…”

  * * * * *

  The port of Scardale had seen more activity during the past five days than it had in the previous five months. The theft of the Queen of the Night had brought about serious ramifications for the city. Bane’s headquarters had been moved from the Zhentish garrison to the port itself, and every ship in the harbor had been placed under the direct control of the Black Lord’s troops.

  A chamber inside the largest building in the port had been converted into a war room. The room was filled with maps and charts, all of which were lined with marks indicating past and future troop movements. Now, Bane sat at the head of a large, polished table covered with such maps. And as the God of Strife listened to his generals’ schemes and complaints, the sorceress, Tarana Lyr, stood behind him.

  The soldier closest to the fallen god, a man named Hepton, rubbed at his temples, then folded his hands and dropped them to the table. “Lord Bane, you must address the rumors that have been circulating throughout the ranks concerning Tantras. Do you intend to mobilize our forces again so soon after taking Scardale?”

  “To do so would be a grave error,” Windling, a general from the Citadel of the Raven, interjected. There were murmurs of agreement from the other Zhentish leaders.

  “Enough!” Bane shouted, slamming his fist on top of the thick wooden table. The sound of the table splintering silenced the men. Tarana’s quiet giggling was the only sound in the room for a minute or more.

  “The Battle of Shadowdale was a disaster,” Bane noted casually, his eyes narrowed in anger. “The loss was, of course, unexpected, and the casualties much higher than anyone could have anticipated.” The god paused and looked at the silent generals. “And while we managed an almost bloodless coup in the taking of Scardale, it is only a matter of time before the armies of Sembia and the Dales attempt to retake the city.”

  The generals nodded their agreement. Bane uncurled his fist and stood up. “If we use our forces to attack Tantras, then our victory here will have amounted to nothing. It is clear to me that a majority of the occupation force must remain in Scardale.” The God of Strife smiled and ran a hand through his red hair. “But I am a god. And gods have options not open to mortals.”

  The doors to the chamber flew open, and Cyric rushed in. Bane looked up and scowled slightly. Inside the Black Lord’s mind, Fzoul screeched in anger at the sight of the hawk-nosed thief.

  Cyric looked around the room and realized the mistake he’d made in interrupting the session. The thief quickly lowered his head and backed away. “Lord Bane, I didn’t mean to disturb—”

  “Nonsense!” the God of Strife snapped. “You aren’t interrupting anything important.” The generals looked at each other, then slowly began to stand. “I didn’t say our meeting was over,” Bane growled, and the Zhentish leaders quickly sat down again.

  “Lord Bane, I can come back later,” Cyric said quickly, noting the anger in the generals’ eyes. These were certainly men he didn’t want to anger.

  “Give me your report,” Bane cried, his voice impatient. “Prove to my generals that the Tantras situation is well under control.”

  Cyric cleared his throat. “I can’t do that.”

  Bane leaned forward, putting his fists on the table. The cracked wood creaked under the god’s weight. “What happened?”

  “Durrock is dead. Kelemvor killed him,” Cyric told the Black Lord, his head still bowed. “The assassin put up a spectacular fight, but the fighter tricked him.”

  “Why didn’t you kill Kelemvor?” Bane asked.

  “After Durrock failed, my duty was clear. I had to return to you and inform you that Kelemvor, Midnight, and Adon are in Tantras.” The thief swallowed once and hoped that the other information he had for the God of Strife would appease him—for the moment, at least. “And you should know, Lord Bane, that Tantras appears to be preparing for war.”

  A wave of surprised whispers rolled through the room. Bane looked at the worried faces of his generals. “Prepare the ships and man them with as few of our Zhentilar as possible!”

  “No!” Hepton cried. “This is a grave mistake!”

  “Silence!” Bane shouted. “News of our victory in Scardale has obviously spread to Tantras. The city is preparing its defenses, and it is certain to call upon its neighbors for help if we give them time to do so.” The Black Lord leaned toward Hepton and snarled, “I want my banner to fly over Tantras within the week. I want it. Do you understand?”

  Hepton nodded weakly, and the generals rose from the table and began to file out of the room. Cyric breathed a sigh of relief and turned to leave, too.

  “Not you, Cyric!” Bane snapped. The Black Lord gestured for Cyric to come closer. Tarana gripped the back of the Black Lord’s chair.

  “Shall I kill him for you, Lord Bane?” Tarana asked, her eyes taking on a dreamy glaze.

  “No,” Bane said casually, then waited until the last of the generals had left before he spoke again. As the door closed, Bane whispered, “The Company of the Scorpions is still under your command—is that correct, Cyric?”

  The hawk-nosed thief nodded and smiled slightly. It was clear that the news of Tantras’s preparation for war had turned the fallen god’s thoughts away from murder.

  “I wish you and your troops to become my new personal guard. But know this,” Bane snarled and placed his hand on Cyric’s shoulder. “If any harm comes to Fzoul’s body, it will be your flesh I will inhabit next. And I will not be as generous as I was with Fzoul. Your mind will be utterly destroyed. Is that understood?” The God of Strife squeezed the thief’s shoulder until the bones felt as if they were about to break.

  Wincing in pain, Cyric nodded, then hurried from the war room.

  The Black Lord turned to his sorceress and pointed toward the door. “Make sure the door is locked, then summon Lord Myrkul for me,” Bane commanded and sat down.

  The sorceress checked the door, then cast an incantation. There was a brief shimmering of the air, and the amber skull of the God of the Dead floated in the air before the Black Lord.

  “Congratulations on your victory in Scardale,” Myrkul told Bane, and the disembodied head bowed slightly.

  “That is unimportant,” Bane grumbled. “I need to take care of a problem in Tantras. I’ll be taking some of my fleet and—”

  The God of the Dead smiled a rictus grin, showing a row of rotting teeth. “And I am to have a part to play in the battle,” he noted flatly.

  “I need the power you gave me in Shadowdale, the soul energies of the
dead,” Bane said, drumming his fingers on the table. “Can you do it?”

  “I need a large number of people to die at once in order to empower that spell,” Myrkul said suspiciously, rubbing his chin. “You sacrificed your troops in Shadowdale. Who will pay this time for the increased power I can give you?”

  The God of Strife sat still for a moment, silently turning the problem over and over in his mind. He certainly couldn’t use his soldiers and priests for Myrkul’s spell again, yet the souls would have to be aligned to his cause or it might prove difficult to control them. Then the Black Lord realized whom he would make the victims of Myrkul’s spell.

  “The assassins,” Bane whispered through an evil smile. “The assassins have failed me time and again since the night of Arrival. They failed me in Spiderhaunt Woods, in Scardale, and now in Tantras. For this, all the assassins in the Realms must die to give me the power I need!”

  The God of the Dead laughed. “You’ve become as mad as your assistant. The assassins are valuable to me.”

  “Are they?” Bane asked, arching one eyebrow. “Why?”

  The God of the Dead frowned, and as he did, his cheekbones protruded through his decaying skin. “They provide my kingdom with souls. There is a pressing need—”

  “Ah, yes … the Realm of the Dead,” Bane said dryly. “Have you been there lately?” Tarana giggled.

  Myrkul was silent for a moment. When he spoke, there was no trace of amusement in his rasping, hollow voice. “I have not come here to listen to you state the obvious. We are, of course, both barred from our kingdoms.”

  “Then any measure that could help us to regain our rightful homes in the Planes cannot be deemed extreme or worthless, can it?” Bane noted as he stood.

  “Only if the effort is wasted,” Myrkul grumbled as the Black Lord walked toward the hovering image of the God of the Dead.

  “I seek to reclaim the Tablet of Fate that I hid in Tantras, Myrkul!” Bane screamed. The Black Lord wished that his fellow god was in the room with him so he could strike him for his insolence. “Powerful forces may move against me—against us—if they discover that tablet. In Shadowdale, I was overconfident, and I paid the bitter price of defeat. I would rather die than face that again!”

  Myrkul took a moment to consider the Black Lord’s words. His expressionless, skeletal visage seemed to shimmer and fade for an instant, causing the God of Strife to reel with barely controlled panic. Finally the image resumed its full strength, and Bane relaxed. The Black Lord knew from Myrkul’s eyes that the God of the Dead had decided to aid him even before he spoke.

  “If you feel so strongly about this matter, then I will help you to recover the tablet,” Myrkul said, nodding slowly.

  Bane tried to act confident. With a shrug, he noted, “I had no doubt that you would aid me.”

  “You had every doubt,” Myrkul rasped harshly. “That is the only reason I chose to help you. I am pleased to note that you are no longer blindly stumbling into situations that you know nothing about.” The God of the Dead paused and fixed Bane with an icy stare. “But there is one thing you must consider: You may not have my assistance the next time you need it, Lord Bane.”

  The God of Strife nodded, dismissing Myrkul’s threat as so much pointless rhetoric. Then the Black Lord mocked a look of concern and noted, “Bhaal will not be pleased if you kill all his worshipers.”

  “I will deal with the Lord of Murder,” Myrkul said, rubbing his hand across his decaying chin once more. “I will contact you when all is in readiness.” The Lord of Bones paused for a moment, then added, “Have you given thought to what form you will use to hold the soul energy my spell will channel to you?”

  Bane said nothing.

  Rage danced in Myrkul’s eyes. “Your human avatar couldn’t handle the strain in Shadowdale, and the rite you wish me to perform will likely yield you far more power than the one I used then!” The God of the Dead shook his head and sighed. “Do you still have the small obsidian statue I used to contain your essence in the Border Ethereal?”

  “I do,” Bane said, a look of confusion on his face.

  “This is what you must do,” Myrkul told Bane. The Lord of Bones quickly listed a complex series of instructions and forced the God of Strife and his mad sorceress to repeat them several times. Then, as soon as he was satisfied that Tarana and Bane knew how to prepare for the rite, the God of the Dead’s image disappeared in a flash of gray light and a puff of stinking, yellow-and-black smoke.

  In a darkened chamber, surrounded by a dozen of his most faithful worshipers and high priests, Lord Myrkul stared at the five-tiered stage that had been set for his performance. Emerald and black marble slabs floating in midair formed a stairway, one step for each of the five ceremonies the Lord of Bones had to perform to kill all the assassins in Faerun and grant Bane the power of their stolen souls.

  From somewhere nearby, the God of the Dead heard the tortured screams of souls crying for release. Myrkul shuddered as he listened to the cries and thought of his lost home, his Castle of Bones in Hades. And even though the sounds Myrkul now heard were made by unfaithful worshipers who were receiving punishment and were nowhere near as horrifying as the screeches of those confined to his realm, the Lord of Bones enjoyed them nonetheless.

  “Priests, attend me,” Myrkul said as he pushed the memories of his home out of his mind, raised his bony arms, and walked to the first platform. Robed men bearing sharp-ended scepters made of bones approached and placed their offerings in the fallen god’s hands. The robed men then knelt before Myrkul, raising their chins and baring their necks.

  The fallen god started to chant in a hollow, rasping voice. In moments he was joined by the robed men at his feet. As their deep voices reached a crescendo, Myrkul used the scepters to tear open the men’s throats one by one. The corpses fell backward onto the floor, their mouths hanging open in wordless protest at the unexpected agony of their final moments.

  Far from Myrkul’s hidden chambers, Lord Bane waited in a large abandoned warehouse in the port of Scardale. Tarana Lyr stood behind the God of Strife, and Cyric stood nearby, with five members of the Scorpions, Bane’s new personal guard. Slater stood at the hawk-nosed thief’s side, and Eccles remained close, staring wild-eyed at the fallen god. All of the Scorpions were heavily armed.

  At the center of the warehouse, the faceless obsidian statue stood, for all the world like a child’s toy. A complex series of runes covered the floor around the figurine. The strange, mystical markings wound outward from the statue to fill the entire warehouse.

  “Come, Myrkul, I don’t have all the time in the world,” Bane muttered, and a shadow passed across an open window. The Black Lord looked at the statue in anticipation just as a column of swirling green and amber light burst through the ceiling and engulfed the obsidian representation.

  “Finally!” Bane cried, raising his fists into the air. “Now I will have true power.…”

  At that moment, far from Scardale, at the base of the mountains to the west of Suzail, a council of twelve men sat at a long rectangular table that had once been the dining table of the former lord of Castle Dembling. Now, Lord Dembling and his family were dead, murdered by the Fire Knives, a clandestine group of assassins who had sworn to kill King Azoun IV of Cormyr and had seized the small castle near his kingdom as their new base of operations.

  The leader of the meeting, a dark-eyed, pug-nosed man named Roderick Tem, was tired of the small-minded bickering that had disrupted all of his attempts to organize his band of assassins into a productive company.

  “Fellow assassins, this argument is getting us nowhere,” Tem proclaimed, slamming the handle of his knife on the table to get his comrades’ attention.

  Before he could say anything else, Tem’s eyes widened and his body stiffened. A green and amber light exploded from the pug-nosed man’s chest and snaked around the room like a burst of lightning. In just a few seconds, the mystical fire from Tem’s chest had pierced the hearts of each his f
riends. All the assassins fell over, dead.

  Stalking the back alleys of Urmlaspyr, a city in Sembia, Samirson Yarth caught sight of his prey and drew his dagger. Yarth was a hired killer with an impressive record. Not one of his intended victims had ever escaped his blade. Yarth had even taken enough lives to personally warrant the attention of his deity, Lord Bhaal, on more than one occasion.

  On this particular day the assassin was enjoying the hunt. His prey was a circus performer suspected of seducing the wife of a high-ranking city official. The purchaser of Yarth’s talents, a seemingly mild little man named Smeds, had offered twice the assassin’s normal fee if he could bring the performer’s heart to him while it was still warm.

  As Yarth watched, his victim leaped through the open window of a countinghouse. The assassin followed the young man into the semidarkness. There, he found his victim and saw the fear in his prey’s eyes as the performer realized that he’d been cornered. Yarth raised his weapon.

  Suddenly a blinding, green and amber light tore through the assassin’s chest, and the killer’s blade struck the ground a few feet from his intended victim. Samirson Yarth had failed to complete his first contract.

  Far across the Realms, in the city of Waterdeep, Bhaal, the inhuman Lord of Murder, was visited by a sensation unlike any he had ever known. An incredible feeling of loss settled upon the God of Assassins, and for a brief instant he actually knew fear. Running from his chambers, the fallen god found Dileen Shurlef, an assassin who served as his faithful servant. Just as Bhaal opened his twisted, bestial mouth to speak, a green and amber flash filled the hallway. Shurlef gasped and cried out as if his soul was being torn from him. With a mind-numbing certainty, Bhaal realized that was exactly what was happening.

  At the warehouse in Scardale, the obsidian avatar had grown to a height of over fifty feet, and the expansion of the magical statue showed no signs of slowing down. A large, steady stream of green and amber light poured into the warehouse and filled the black figurine.