by Troy Denning
“Chandra, give me that.” Mystra motioned at a silver starburst, the holy symbol of the Church of Mysteries, hanging about the acolyte’s neck. “And open Adon’s tunic.”
The patriarch made no protest as Chandra obeyed. Mystra raised the holy symbol to Tang’s lips and kissed it.
Adon’s eyes grew wide, and he fought against his captors. “Fire!”
Mystra came very near to turning away, but then she thought of Cyric’s infinite cunning and knew he would have foreseen her aversion to hurting her patriarch. What better way for the One to guard his curse than to protect it behind just such a shield of pain? With her kiss still fresh upon its metal, the goddess laid her sacred starburst on Adon’s bare chest.
There was a sick sizzling sound; then Adon raised his head and let out a terrible scream. Mystra kept the starburst pressed to his chest.
“Take it away!” Adon looked into Tang’s eyes, but Mystra knew he saw her. “What have I done to deserve your hatred?”
“Nothing, Adon,” she replied. “I could never hate you.”
Tiny tongues of yellow began to flicker up around the starburst, and Adon let out a horrid shriek. Chandra and the others gasped and stared at Mystra with wide eyes, but still the goddess pressed her symbol to the patriarch’s chest.
Inside Mystra’s mind, Tang asked, Is killing your Esteemed patriarch the only way to remove Cyric’s curse?
The goddess ignored the prince and continued to hold the starburst in place. After a time, a circle of orange flame flared up around the amulet, and the patriarch stopped screaming. Mystra thought for a moment her plan had worked, but the flames only grew hotter. The stench of charred flesh filled the air, and Adon watched in horror as his skin grew black and crisp.
Mystra pulled the starburst away.
“Cyric!” The scream reverberated across nine heavens at once. “Now you have gone too far!”
Perhaps it is you who have gone too far, suggested Prince Tang. That burn is most serious.
Mystra slipped out of Tang’s body, stepping back so that the prince’s figure blocked Adon’s view of her. “Adon will recover from the burn, Prince Tang, if he is cared for.”
“We’ll heal him at once.” Chandra stepped around a guard, moving toward the head of the bed. “We have a dozen priests—”
“No, Chandra.” Mystra waved the acolyte back. “Until I discover what Cyric has done, I fear our magic will cause Adon more harm than good.” She offered the starburst to her acolyte.
Chandra glanced at the burn on Adon’s chest and hesitated a moment, then overcame her fear and accepted the sacred symbol. It was as cool as when she had relinquished it.
“But if we don’t heal the patriarch—”
“Adon will recover quickly under the prince’s care.” Mystra turned toward Tang, then added, “His lasal potion certainly proved effective.”
The prince flushed, but nodded his assent. “I can heal the Esteemed patriarch’s burns and rashes, but his madness—”
“Will be my concern—but no more lasal, at least not until I discover what Cyric did to him.” The goddess turned to Chandra. “You will pray to me the instant Adon seems lucid.”
Chandra looked surprised. “You won’t be watching?”
“I will be busy.” Mystra glanced at her tormented patriarch, then added, “And so will Cyric.”
Twenty
First a roaring wind rose at our backs, then a wall of air slammed into us from behind. Halah stumbled and almost fell, catapulting me onto her withers, and I found myself clinging to her mane and sliding down her neck toward her flashing black hooves.
“Halah, wait!” It was an hour past highsun, and we were in the plain east of the Wood of Sharp Teeth, galloping toward the distant city of Berdusk at a dead sprint. “Stop!”
Halah surprised me by obeying at once. My fingers slipped free of her mane, and I hit the ground and tumbled more than a dozen paces into a ravine as deep as I was tall. For a moment, I lay there too dizzy to move, staring up at the sky and wondering at the power of the sudden wind. Then the roaring became a low, deep chugging, and leaves and sticks and screeching birds began to stream through the air above. I rose and peered over the rim of the ravine.
A stinging torrent of grit and gravel instantly assailed me, and I perceived this was no ordinary dust storm. The western horizon lay hidden behind a blowing curtain of dirt a thousand feet high.
“Halah, come here!”
Thinking I meant to take shelter, the mare trotted over and climbed down into the ravine. I took her reins and clambered out of the gully, for such was my devotion that I intended to ride straight through the storm.
Halah stamped her hooves and refused to follow me up the slope. The storm continued to sweep toward us, and the closer it approached, the more deafening it grew, until my ears ached from the pulse of its roaring winds. The hair on my arms stood on end, and I saw dark shapes—branches and bushes and splintered trees—whirling around in the gray curtain.
I jerked on the reins. “Halah, I am the rider! Do as I say!”
Halah snorted in disgust, then raised her nose toward the storm. And now I saw another dark figure in the sky, soaring along above the top edge of the storm. It was shaped like a cross, with a blocky body and two feathery wings stretched out to catch the fierce winds, which were sweeping it forward so fast it doubled size in the span of a heartbeat.
And I knew, even before I spied the witch’s cloth-swaddled head peering over the rider’s shoulder, who was chasing me.
“Quick, Halah!” I leapt straight onto her back from the rim of the ravine. “Run like the wind!”
And she did.
Twenty-One
Kelemvor had changed the wall of his Judgment Hall into a mirror so perfect it revealed all the onlooker’s flaws, whether of body or mind or character, and now he stood before this mirror, observing himself in its silvery depths. He saw a square-jawed man with a swarthy face, piercing green eyes, and a wild mane of black hair. He discerned no distortions or deformities of any kind, but neither did he perceive the resplendent reflection of a god.
“You will find no guidance there.” Jergal drifted over to Lord Death’s side, his disembodied hand dragging along one of the False. “Whatever a god does is perfect.”
“If that were true, I would not be the latest in a long line of death gods.”
In the mirror, Jergal was nothing but a gray eyeless face and two disembodied arms, the complement to the shadow-filled cloak in the chamber. The spirit in his grasp was reflected as a black rat with yellow eyes and a coat teeming with lice.
Kelemvor gestured at the gruesome reflection. “I have told you, I will not judge spirits until the trial is decided.”
“So you have said. Judge this one anyway.” Jergal did not wait for Lord Death’s permission, but forced the False spirit to his knees. “Recount the tale of your life, Nadisu Bhaskar, and the God of Death will judge you.”
Kelemvor turned to castigate Jergal for daring to order him about, and Nadisu Bhaskar, thinking the god’s anger directed at him, clasped his hands before his breast.
“Have mercy on my wretched spirit, and I swear I shall make it worth your while!”
Lord Death cocked an eyebrow and glanced down at the brazen spirit. Nadisu Bhaskar was a round-faced man with ginger skin and the sly, dark eyes of a killer, and his words were such an affront that Kelemvor forgave Jergal’s audacity at once.
“Nadisu Bhaskar, perhaps you could bribe the judges of Elversult, but that will not work here.” Kelemvor turned to Jergal. “Will you begin? When Nadisu feels like making a free and honest confession, he may speak for himself.”
“Certainly.” Jergal pointed a disembodied glove at Nadisu. “Nadisu Bhaskar, you are the gutter-born spawn of a brothel sow. You learned to cut purses before you could speak, and you killed your first man at the age of ten. Because of this, Indrith Shalla recruited you to join the Cult of the Dragon. By the age of twenty, you were her top assassin
and a loyal worshiper of Bhaal, Lord of Murder at that time.”
“And that is when Indrith arranged employment for me in the house of Ganesh Lal.” Seeing that Jergal was determined to cast his life in the most disapproving terms possible, Nadisu took over the narrative himself. “Ganesh’s caravans had proved too effective in repelling the cult’s bandits, and I was to kill Ganesh in manner that would warn others against his example.”
Here, Nadisu paused to look up, and his expression was most earnest. “But then something changed my life. During the course of my duties, I met Pandara Lal, and we fell in love.”
“She fell in love,” Jergal corrected. “You merely thought it fun to get a bastard on your victim’s daughter.”
“Perhaps I fell in love later.” Though Nadisu kept his eyes on Kelemvor, the rodent in the mirror snorted black steam at Jergal’s reflection. “In any case, I convinced—”
“Indrith decided,” Jergal interrupted.
“It was determined I would be more useful to the cult inside the Lal cartage company. Ganesh’s life was spared—” Nadisu glanced toward Jergal, then continued “—for a time, and Pandara and I married. After a decent interval, Indrith ordered me to cut Ganesh’s throat, but Ganesh had treated me so well that I smothered him in his sleep instead.”
The False one tried a weak smile, thinking Kelemvor would approve of his compassion.
Lord Death looked back to Jergal. “So far, I see no reason to hurry the judgment of Nadisu Bhaskar. From what I have heard so far, I suspect he will find more mercy standing in line.”
“Let him finish.” Jergal’s bulbous eyes swung in Nadisu’s direction. “Say what occured after the Time of Troubles.”
Nadisu continued, his voice too confident for one in his position. “After Bhaal died and Cyric ascended to godhood, I took him as my deity, and I continued to murder for Indrith Shalla. Then, when Yanseldara overthrew Raunshivear’s cartel and made an honest city of the place, Indrith decided to plant an agent in her circle of friends. She ordered me to stop murdering and start contributing to charity, and soon my wagons were feeding half the city’s beggars. Yanseldara took Pandara and me as her friends, and I started to enjoy helping others.”
“You enjoyed feeling important,” Jergal corrected. “Even Indrith did not know you were cutting your flour with sawdust”
Nadisu shrugged, then continued, “When I realized that Indrith never meant to use me as an assassin again, my offerings to Cyric grew smaller and less frequent, until one day I realized he was no longer as important to me as the people I was helping. I even opened an orphanage, and I never stole a copper from it”
Jergal nodded that this was true.
“But I should have known better than to think I could quit the One’s church. One day Cyric came to me—”
“In Elversult?” Now Kelemvor was as interested in Nadisu’s story as in his own trial. “How long ago?”
“Shortly before I died.” The rodent in the mirror smirked, for Nadisu could see Kelemvor’s interest, and he planned to use that interest to good advantage. “He possessed my body. Then he said, ‘Telling the truth is good for the soul.’ He made me beat poor Pandara and tell her how I had murdered her father and say that I had never loved her.”
“And that last was a lie, was it not?” Jergal sneered.
Nadisu nodded. “Pandara was a silly woman, but she was also the mother of my children. Over the years, it seemed the softer I grew, the more I loved her. I would have killed myself before telling her I didn’t love her.”
“You would have done better to kill yourself before you killed her father,” said Kelemvor. “What did Cyric do then?”
“He left me,” Nadisu answered. “I fell deathly ill, and Lady Yanseldara herself suggested a party to celebrate the Rites.”
“And Adon came to endorse them!”
“Yes. The instant he touched me, Cyric possessed me again.”
“What magic did he use against Adon?”
In the mirror, Nadisu’s rattish eyes gleamed with cunning. “It would be helpful if I remembered, would it not?”
“I have warned you about trying to bargain with me.”
“Then why should I answer?” Though Nadisu’s voice caught with fear, he looked Kelemvor in the eye and did not waver. “I will not ask much, and more on my wife’s behalf than my own.”
Kelemvor could not bear this insolence. “Jergal! Tell me what happened!”
“As you wish, Lord Death—but would you care to look in the mirror first?”
Kelemvor scowled and turned to look, and then he voiced such a gasp that all the vultures in Faerûn cried out at once. His reflection was covered head to foot in pitch, so that only his eyes and the great emerald on his belt clasp showed through. Lord Death recognized this image as the mark of a grafter, for he had lived many years in the kingdom of Cormyr, where it was custom to punish those who abused their office by painting them in tar.
“What is this?” Kelemvor demanded of Jergal. “You said whatever a god does is perfect!”
“And you said if I was right, you would not be the latest of many death gods,” Jergal replied. “This is your own doing. You have made the rules by which you perform your office, and now you must decide whether to abide by them or break them.”
“But I must know how this spirit died.” Kelemvor pointed at Nadisu’s reflection. “It is necessary for a proper judgment.”
“Yes, but there is no need to tell Mystra what you learn,” replied Jergal. “That would be violating the privacy of Nadisu’s death, and you are the one who declared the dead deserve the secrecy of their graves. If you change your mind now, it is only because of your fondness for Mystra and her patriarch.”
“What if I said he could tell Mystra?” Nadisu’s voice was smooth and sly.
Kelemvor glared at the spirit. “In exchange for leniency?”
Nadisu smiled, thinking he had won Kelemvor’s accord. “In exchange for a little forbearance and for keeping secret the true nature of my life. If my reputation is ruined, the high houses of Elversult will shun Pandara. She does not deserve that—not after the things Cyric made me say to her.”
Kelemvor stared at Nadisu for a long time, then said, “I suppose a murderer and spy must have such nerve, but it will do you no good here.”
Nadisu’s eyes grew round. “You do not care about Adon?”
“I care. But if I am going to ignore my duty as God of Death, it will not be to spare you.” Kelemvor looked to Jergal. “How did this man die?”
Jergal’s yellow eyes swung back to Nadisu. “Cyric possessed his body again, then grabbed Adon and locked gazes with him. The patriarch tried to defend himself by smashing Nadisu’s head.”
“And what magic did Cyric use against Adon?”
“You are sure you want to know?”
Kelemvor glanced at the mirror and saw his eyes held open by sickles of ice. He knew this to be the mark of a traitor to duty, for in the cold land of Vaasa, such men were tied out in raging blizzards with their eyelids cut away.
“I want to know,” Kelemvor said.
“Nothing,” said Jergal. “Cyric used no magic at all. He only opened his soul and allowed the patriarch to look inside.”
“And Adon saw Mystra through Cyric’s eyes!” Kelemvor continued to stare at himself in the mirror.
“Yes, that is what drove him mad,” said Jergal. “Adon’s faith is remarkable, but it is no match for the mind of a god.”
Kelemvor turned away and started out the anteroom door.
Jergal drifted after him. “Lord Death, where are you going?”
“Into the city,” Kelemvor said. “A walk will help me think.”
Jergal floated along at Lord Death’s side, his disembodied glove dragging Nadisu across the floor. “And what of Nadisu?”
Kelemvor paused to look down at the False spirit, who had learned better than to beg for mercy.
“Nadisu Bhaskar, know that your reputation in Elversult wi
ll remain unblemished, for I have said that the secrets of the dead are their own. But you have lived a wicked life and a False one, and for that you shall suffer.” Kelemvor pointed at the lice-covered rodent in the mirror. “What you see shall be your punishment As long as any coin you ever gave in deceit is counted as money anywhere in Faerûn, you shall wander the streets of my city in that form.”
Twenty-Two
If the Storm Horns are not the highest and coldest mountains in the world, then I do not know what mountains are. They are nothing but jagged granite teeth a thousand feet high, with no tree taller than a fire giant and a cold wind that blows down from the barren heights at every hour of the day and night. Yet barbarians will live anywhere, and some of them lived in a little village that straddled a treacherous goat path they stupidly called the High Road. In the heart of this village stood a small citadel, and by the starburst and skull discreetly carved in the top of the gatehouse arch, I knew this to be a temple of the One.
Despite my hunger and fatigue, I was reluctant to pound the gate. From inside the castle came a terrible wailing, and the air near the walls reeked of death; this could have been on account of the fresh kill Halah had snatched as we passed through the village, yet the underscent of decay and mustiness suggested otherwise. But even this was not as disturbing as the green fly roaring over the citadel; the thing was as large as an elephant, with black legs longer than spears and eyes as big as wagon wheels. This was not the sort of pet True Believers usually kept in their temples—at least not in civilized lands—and I found it difficult to believe what I saw.
I considered riding on. Certainly Halah was capable; she had already galloped a distance greater than the breadth of Calimshan, and still she was as fresh as the minute she burst from the stock shed. It was I who needed rest. The witch had been hounding my trail since her windstorm knocked me from my mount, and this was the first time I had stopped without spying her somewhere on the distant horizon. Whether she and her companion had finally ridden their hippogriff to death or merely stopped to rest, I did not know—but it hardly mattered. Even with the One’s heart slushing in my chest, two solid days of riding had left me so weary that I had twice fallen off my horse. Only Tyr’s protection had saved me from smashing my skull.