by Troy Denning
Mystra staggered back. “What has happened to you?” She stepped off the hill into the empty air. “I will talk to you when your senses return!”
Kelemvor watched the goddess vanish, then looked back toward the Web of Snakes. “Jergal!”
“I am here for you, as always.” The seneschal’s empty cloak appeared at Kelemvor’s side. “How may I serve you?”
“Did you hear what passed between Mystra and me?”
“Did you want me to?”
Kelemvor thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No, I suppose not.”
Jergal’s yellow eyes swung away, gazing down upon a bed of crimson lilies. “Then I heard nothing. Is there anything else?”
Kelemvor nodded, then faced his seneschal. “Mystra was right about one thing: it is time I started taking action.” He stepped off the hilltop directly into the Crystal Spire’s throne room, though the distance was farther than a camel could run in two days. “Jergal, I want you to prepare a list of all the judgments I have made since becoming God of Death.”
The seneschal appeared at Kelemvor’s side, his empty cloak waving like a banner in the wind. “All your judgments?”
“All of them. Avner will be returning with his report soon. If things go as I expect, we will have a lot of work to do.”
Twenty-Eight
It required Halah but a short time to find me in the forest where I had fallen, for my hand was coated with Silvercloud’s blood and she had a very keen nose for gore. Within minutes I was on her back, galloping along on my sacred pilgrimage. Aside from the strain my terror had placed on Cyric’s rancid heart, I was none the worse for my long plummet. Though my thoughts remained much concerned with my wife’s unfaithful miracle, I had learned my lesson and kept a careful watch over my shoulder. Apparently, the Harper’s hippogriff had fared worse than I during our quick exchange. I saw no sign of the witch or her beast all day, and so it was that I rode into Arabel upon the supper hour, shortly before dark.
Although the One had graced the city by living there before the Time of Troubles, Arabel seemed no different than any other barbarian town, with dogs wandering loose and insects swarming out of the open gutters. The avenues were narrow and crooked and almost deserted, since most people were inside taking their suppers. The smell of roasted meat and warm bread filled the air. After my harrowing escape that morning and the hard ride that followed, I felt worthy of a good meal and a soft bed.
I guided Halah to one of the few people on the street, a burly guardsman standing outside an alley. As we approached, he turned to face us and angled his halberd across his body.
“Well met, traveler,” said he. “How can I—”
Before I could ask him a single thing, Halah bit his halberd in two and nosed him back into the alley.
“In the name of Torm!” The guard dropped his useless polearm and reached for his sword. “Control your mount!”
The poor soul did not know the folly of what he asked. Before his sword could clear its scabbard, Halah bit off the astonished fellow’s hand. There is little point in describing what followed, except to note that I was lucky enough to salvage his coin purse before my ravenous mount swallowed it whole. I retreated to the mouth of the alley and, by virtue of my dark aba and disheveled appearance, managed to look suspicious enough that the few passersby who came along crossed to the other side of the street. As I listened to Halah devour her meal, naturally my thoughts turned to my own empty stomach and to the soft bed I would enjoy afterward.
And the moment I thought of a soft bed, I also thought of my wife and of the unfaithful timing of her miracle. Bile filled my throat, my chest tightened, and I grew so angry about matters in Calimshan that I did not even notice the lanky figure in the hooded cloak until he was almost upon me.
I stepped out to meet him, thinking to distract him with the same question I had intended to ask the guard.
“Sir, can you tell me of a good inn?”
“Of course!” The figure spoke in a thousand voices, and when he raised his head, I saw Cyric’s bony face. “But until you find the Cyrinishad, what use do you have for an inn?”
Mystra’s spell compelled me to say, “I am hungry and tired.”
“And?” asked Cyric.
I sighed, for I knew better than to declare I could not continue without rest. The truth was only that I felt sorry for myself and on that account did not want to go on, and who could tell what else I might blurt out?
“Malik, it seems your heart is no longer in your mission.” The One tapped his chest to remind me how he knew this. “Perhaps you have been … distracted?”
“Perhaps,” I said, and then the Harlot’s spell compelled me to add, “I can think of nothing except the shame brought upon my good name by my wife and the prince!”
Cyric smirked, which is a horrible thing for a skeleton’s face, and said, “I thought so.” The One looked away for a moment, then said, “You longer have any need to worry about your wife and the prince. I have eliminated that problem.”
“Eliminated it, Mighty One?”
“Yes, Malik! You understand ‘eliminated,’ do you not? Do not let them trouble your thoughts again.”
“Them?” I staggered back, for it was one thing to curse my unfaithful wife and quite another to know that it had been done. “Then my wife is … gone? I will never see her again?”
“Not in this life.” The black suns beneath the One’s brow flared to twice their customary size. “I am surprised her death troubles you. How can you think of your wife when I am on trial?”
“Because of the terrible shame she …” Here, my throat seemed to close in on itself, then another reply spilled from my lips: “Because I might miss her.”
The One’s jaw snapped shut, then he glared at me so long I thought he had turned into a statue. Yet, he could be no more surprised than I was, for I had not realized the truth of my words until they spilled from my mouth.
At last, the One shook his head. “I will not return her to life, Malik. She is too much of a distraction.” He laid a bony arm across my shoulders, then pulled me as close as a brother. “But perhaps—if you ride very hard—I will hear her calling from the Fugue Plain. Then, after you recover the Cyrinishad, you can join her in the Castle of the Supreme Throne.”
I did not know whether to rejoice or despair, as he had not mentioned how soon this might be. “That is more than I deserve!”
Cyric patted my shoulder. “Not so, Malik. If you fail me, you will join your wife in the City of the Dead—this I promise.” The One glanced westward, toward the Storm Horns looming beyond the city walls. “Now, think of your wife no more. You have other women to worry about.”
I pushed myself away from the building and peered in the same direction. There, silhouetted against the crimson ball of the setting sun, I saw the distant figure of a hippogriff and its rider. “That witch is a demon from the Abyss!”
“No, Malik,” corrected the One. “She is a Harper.”
Twenty-Nine
When a man is seized by an unreasonable fear and knows it, he begins to fear his reason itself. He doubts what his eyes show and what his ears tell, what he smells and tastes, and even the thoughts that fill his head. He can be certain of nothing except that he is, and that something out there wants him not to be. This was the state of Adon the patriarch.
He lay in his humble bed, clutching the sides of his straw mattress, afraid to turn his eyes upon anything but the coffered ceiling above. When he looked outside, his gaze slipped between the balcony balusters and he saw Mystra’s avatar on the shore of Hillshadow Lake. A cloud of hair floated like black smoke around her head, and her crimson talons were hurling lightning and fire at a many-tentacled monster thrashing about in the water.
But neither the battle nor Mystra’s presence disturbed Adon so much as the certain conviction he was imagining the whole thing. The fight was as silent as a mirage; the lightning and roiling fire did not rumble or crash, and when the slimy beast op
ened its maw to roar, no sound came at all. This was because the goddess, having no wish to disturb the sleep of her troubled patriarch, had enclosed the combat within a curtain of silence. But Adon did not know this. To him, the fight seemed a dream, except that he was awake. And since he was awake, the dream could only be a hallucination, and since the dream was a hallucination, he could only be mad.
This thought was a great relief to him. Like any fool who ever loved a deceitful woman, Adon preferred ignorance to betrayal; going mad was just the excuse he needed to ignore what he had seen in the eyes of Nadisu Bhaskar. Where before a heart full of adoration for Mystra had beat in his chest, now there was only a gnawing void he could not abide. He had felt such an emptiness once before, when he lost Faith in Sune after a madman’s dagger slashed his face. For months afterward, he had felt hollow and sick inside, and he could not bear such emptiness again.
Yet the prospect was difficult to ignore. When he looked anywhere but the ceiling, he saw Mystra in all her horrible countenance. Her snarling visage was carved into every panel of the room’s immense double door, and her dreadful form was portrayed in grisly scenes sculpted into every wall. Adon remembered choosing these scenes himself, though for some reason he had believed them to portray miracles instead of cataclysms. Had he been crazy then, or was he crazy now?
After several hours, Adon decided to test his madness by looking upon a relief he remembered well. On the wall opposite his bed was a portrayal of the goddess joining the hands of two rival kings. He had once viewed this scene as an illustration of Mystra’s divine love. If he looked upon it now and saw anything else, he would know he had lost his mind. The patriarch tore his gaze from the ceiling.
The instant his eyes fell upon the carving, his vision blurred. He took a breath and squinted, forcing himself to see. He half-expected the goddess to start moving, but she remained as motionless as any piece of stone. His vision cleared, and he sighed in relief. There were no fangs or talons, no bare bones jutting through the flesh of her face.
And yet the carving was as smooth and white as Mystra’s skin had been when she last came to him. The silky long tresses could have been the smoky hair he remembered, and who was to say whether the artist had envisioned teeth or fangs lurking behind her full lips?
Adon’s breath grew fast and shallow, but he forced himself to study other scenes. Was the goddess turning back a fire, or spreading it across the fields? Was she stopping a tidal wave, or summoning it forth?
The patriarch shut his eyes and softly cried out in despair. He was careful not to scream, for he did not want an acolyte to come check on him. They all stank of the goddess’s magic, and the smell made him retch and soil his bed.
“It is all so vague! Am I seeing these things or not?”
“What things, dear Adon?”
Though the voice was as quiet as a thought, the patriarch knew it had not come from inside his own head. He threw off his blanket and rolled onto his knees and spun around to search for the speaker.
The room was empty.
“That proves it.” Adon cowered on his mattress. “I’m mad.”
“Mad?” Now the voice came from behind him. It was soft, like a woman’s, and sickly sweet. “Not at all, Adon. If you were mad, you would belong to Cyric. Do you think I would let that happen?”
“I am mad.” Adon refused to turn toward the voice. “I am hearing voices.”
A laugh followed. “But isn’t that normal when a goddess speaks with her patriarch?”
Something rustled on the other side of the room. Adon turned toward the noise, but saw nothing. The sound had come from a bas-relief near the enormous double doors.
He broke into a sweat and stared at the scene. The carving showed Mystra dancing with a circle of horned fiends. The beasts were all about her, falling to the ground and writhing in ecstasy—or perhaps they were thrashing in pain. Adon could no longer see any difference; the scene depended entirely upon how he looked at it. The brutes could have been grinning or grimacing, as he decided.
Adon squeezed his eyes closed. “If you care about me at all, dear goddess, you will leave me alone.”
“You have nothing to fear from me, Adon. I will cause you no harm.”
The patriarch pushed himself across his bed, away from the voice, and stepped onto the floor. He glanced out across his balcony and saw Mystra outside, still battling the kraken. This did not shock him, for he was sane enough to recall that gods can create more than one avatar.
A pair of stony footsteps echoed across the floor, as though someone had entered the room. Adon looked back toward the door and saw that Mystra’s figure had stepped out of the wall carving. She was walking toward him slowly.
Adon crouched behind the headboard of his bed. “Stay back!”
The alabaster goddess was small, standing only as high as Adon’s waist. Her hair floated about her head like pale smoke, and her eyes blazed with a fierce yellow light. Beneath the curve of her upper lip gleamed the tips of five little fangs.
The figure waved a white claw down her pale body. “How can you doubt what you see, Adon, when it is set in stone?”
Adon screamed, for what he saw was a fiend more wicked than any from the Abyss.
The doors to the anteroom swung open. Prince Tang entered, thrusting a square-tipped sword before him. “Patriarch! What is—”
The avatar swung an arm toward the intruder. “Leave us!”
At once the doors swung shut, knocking Prince Tang back across the threshold. He had no chance to withdraw his hand; his forearm became lodged between the great doors. There was a sharp crack, and his sword clanged to the floor.
The prince allowed a cry of pain to slip from his lips but quickly regained his usual composure.
“A thousand pardons, Goddess,” said Tang, peering through the crack between the doors. Despite the unnatural bend in his arm, his voice betrayed no pain. “I did not mean to interrupt.”
“Then be silent!”
Mystra fluttered her hand in the prince’s direction. His eyes closed, then he slumped to the floor, his arm still caught between the doors. The goddess hardly looked at him; instead, she raised her alabaster arm toward Adon.
“Now come to your goddess and take comfort.”
Adon could only stare at Tang’s crooked arm. The Mystra he remembered would never have injured a mortal so callously.
Of course not, said a voice in his head. You would have turned away if you knew the truth about her, and she needed you to start her church. Mystra was always good at such games—or have you forgotten how she played Kelemvor and me against each other?
“Cy-cyric?”
The instant Adon gasped the name, Mystra’s avatar jumped onto the foot of his bed. “Adon, come to me!”
The avatar’s voice was so commanding that Adon found himself stepping around the headboard to obey.
No, Adon! If you go to her, I cannot protect you.
The patriarch stopped.
Call my name now, and I can save you.
“Save me?” Adon shook his head, praying that he was not yet mad enough to believe such a lie. “You would never save me.”
Say my name, and I’ll spare you her wrath.
The alabaster goddess sprang off the foot of his bed. “No, Adon, do as I command.” She started toward him, and her lips drew back to show her fangs in all their painful glory.
Adon retreated into the arch that opened onto his balcony. “Keep back! Don’t make me say it.”
“Say what?” Mystra’s little avatar stopped a pace away. The flesh had peeled from her cheeks, and the bone underneath was as white as the rest of her. “Adon, I want to help you.”
“Then leave me alone!”
Mystra shook her head slowly. Her silky hair turned into black smoke and flowed into the room like bitter incense. “That I cannot do. You have gone mad, poor boy.”
“But you said—” Adon gasped and rubbed his neck; the smoke had made his throat so dry he found it dif
ficult to speak the words. “You said that if I was mad, I belonged to …”
The patriarch would not speak the One’s name.
Go ahead, Adon. Say it.
Adon shook his head and continued to stare at Mystra. “You said that if I was mad, I would belong to him.”
“I said I would never let that happen. And now the time has come to prevent it.”
The statue stepped forward, raising her arm to strike.
Adon rushed to the edge of the balcony. Out on Hillshadow Lake, he saw Mystra’s avatar walking across the water. She did not look up, for she was peering beneath the surface, stabbing at her quarry with harpoons of lightning. With each strike, the water rose like a curtain, and still none of it made a sound.
Say my name and let me save you!
“I’d rather die!” And this was true, for Adon feared Cyric’s promises even more than he feared a Faithless death. “I will trust to Kelemvor’s justice, but I will never trust you.”
With that, he threw a leg over the balcony rail and looked down. Five stories below sprayed the Morning Fountain, surrounded by a stone terrace where the temple’s Faithful liked to make their morning devotions. The court was empty now; the Faithful had all walked down to the shore to watch the silent battle between Mystra and the kraken. A few dozen townspeople had also gathered at the lake to observe the spectacle.
The goddess’s avatar grasped Adon’s arm. He tried to shove her away, but her talons were buried too deep.
Say my name, urged the voice in his head.
“I spurn you!” he screamed. “I repudiate both of you!”
Then Adon turned and flung himself off the balcony.
He was halfway to the fountain before he asked himself where he had found the strength to pull free from the grasp of a god, and by then, there was no time to recant—or to embrace the One.
Thirty
Mystra was still battling the kraken when she felt a pain in her heart and heard a body splash into the fountain beneath Adon’s balcony. Her avatar reached the terrace before the splash faded from the air, but already she was too late. The patriarch lay floating in the pool, his dead eyes staring at the sky, a cloud of red blood billowing outward around his head. A crack had opened in the fountain wall where his skull had struck, and now a steady stream of water was pouring out upon the terrace.