by Troy Denning
Still, the shadow of a hope began to flicker in my chest.
Behind me, Ruha screamed as she splashed into the eel tank. I kept my gaze fixed on Thir. She stopped on the far side of the altar and placed her torch in an empty sconce, then took the keys and lifted them to the wall. A trapdoor swung down from the ceiling, and she reached up to withdraw a sliding ladder.
“You’ve seen enough, Malik.” Fzoul hooked my throat with his wooden pole and jerked me toward the copper tank. “Or would you care to join the Harper in a bath?”
I opened my mouth to assure him I did not, but no sound came out, for he had stolen my voice. I merely shook my head.
Fzoul laughed. He returned his attention to the eel tank’s frothing water and used his wooden hook to fish out Ruha’s head. Her veil had come off, but she did not look pretty. She had bitten her tongue, and her teeth were bloody and clenched, and her eyes had rolled up so that only the whites remained showing. And yet to me this was a beautiful sight, for the witch had fallen unconscious, just as I had the first time in the tank. My shadow of hope began to grow.
Fzoul pushed Ruha back into the tank and watched her thrash about. I waited. Cyric’s heart sloshed madly, as if it sensed the clever treachery I had in mind.
By the time Thir returned to her master’s side bearing a large leatherbound book, Fzoul was done with his fun. He hooked Ruha under the arm and backed away from the tank, dragging the unconscious witch half out of the water.
I ducked under the pole and thrust my hands into the water. At once, two eels slithered around my wrists. A terrible jolt shot up my arms, and my fingers dug into the creature’s slimy flesh. My elbows locked, and my teeth clacked together, and the taste of almonds filled my mouth—but I did not fall unconscious.
“Malik!” Fzoul yelled. “What are you doing?”
I pulled my arms out of the tank, still clutching the eels in my hands. I swung first at Thir, and the slimy things caught her square in the face. The torch and the book slipped from her hands, along with Fzoul’s keys, and her mouth opened as if to scream—yet no sound came. Thir’s knees buckled beneath her, and before she hit the floor, I pivoted toward Fzoul.
The High Tyrannar dropped his pole, leaving Ruha draped over the edge of the tub. My arms kept swinging, bringing the eels against his flank. He went rigid and crashed to the floor and smashed his nose, spraying blood across the stones. I shook my manacles over his body until the eels slipped free and entwined themselves around his limbs.
Thir began to groan and struggle toward her knees. I thrust my hands back into the tank and caught another pair of eels, then shook them loose on her body. She fell silent at once. I had no idea how long the eels might live out of water, but I did know from my own experience that even a short jolt would leave Fzoul and Thir too shocked to move for several minutes.
I turned to find the witch still draped over the tub. By her quivering, I knew that at least one eel remained twined about her legs in the water. After all the trouble she had caused me, I should have pushed her back and left her to drown, but we have a saying in Calimshan: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
I decided to leave Ruha in the tank, confident that when Fzoul and Thir awoke and found me gone, they would torture the witch in ways even more horrid than those I had known.
I snatched the book up from beside Thir’s dancing limbs. It was a huge gathering of pages bound in black leather, with dozens of dark suns and grinning death’s-heads surrounding a sacred starburst-and-skull. The adornments seemed strange for a tome of Oghma’s, but Rinda had written in her journal that the decorations had been necessary so Fzoul could sneak the foul volume past Cyric’s priests. Still, I had a knack for stealing the wrong book, and so I opened the cover to make certain this was the one.
As I had hoped, the first pages were blank. Being an unskilled storyteller who did not know how to stretch a simple sentence into three or four paragraphs, Oghma had written a version of the One’s life as short as it was false; to make the True Life look as similar to the Cyrinishad as possible, Rinda had filled the first part with blank pages.
In my hands, I was holding the object of my sacred pilgrimage, the relic for which I had endured so much: the True Life of Cyric!
Forty-Seven
I could have called Cyric down at once, right there before the altar and symbol of Iyachtu Xvim, and attempted to cure the One’s madness on the spot. But such an insult to the temple’s proprietor would not go unnoticed. The Godson of Bane despised Our Dark Lord, and while Xvim’s powers were paltry in comparison, a god is a god, and an angry god is worse. I did not need this complication, for even in the best of circumstances, it would be a delicate matter to trick the One into reading Oghma’s book.
I snatched Fzoul’s keys off the floor and removed my manacles and shackles, but I did not steal any clothes to cover my nakedness, as I had no wish to tangle with the eels twined around my enemies. Leaving Ruha to splash in the copper tank and Fzoul and Thir to thrash about on the floor, I extinguished all the torches in the room, save one that I kept to light my own way, and turned toward the passage by which the witch’s guard had left the temple.
No sooner had I started down the tunnel than I heard a distant chanting and the sound of many footsteps coming my way. Now, while Xvim’s followers were all fools in their Faith, most were cunning enough to stop a naked man carrying a book such as the True Life. I retreated at once to the ladder Thir had pulled from the ceiling, then climbed into the rocky tunnel that led to the High Tyrannar’s private room.
This was no easy thing. I had to cradle the True Life in the crooks of my elbows and hold the rungs with one hand and the torch with the other. More than once I slipped and had to hook my arm around the ladder, bringing the torch so close that its flame singed the hair off one side of my head. Only Tyr’s protection spared my face a terrible scorching. I soon reached the top of the shaft and thrust my head up into a dark, musty-smelling room.
My flickering torch revealed a chamber of stone walls and rough-hewn floor planks, with a bed and a desk and some other furnishings lurking in the shadows. The only sound was the sputtering of my torch, and the room had the leaden chill of a place that never sees light. I laid the True Life aside and clambered onto the floor, then rose to seek a door.
To my dismay, I did not see one. While an old doorway lay just beyond the desk, the opening had been bricked over. I stared back down the ladder, thinking I might simply jump and take my chances in the other passage, but there was still the problem of the temple guards.
Then Fzoul began to groan softly in the chamber below. Whether the eels had slithered away or died for lack of water, it was too late to go back. I shut the trapdoor and secured it with a drawbar. Then, without a thought to my own nakedness—are we not all naked before the gods?—I opened my mouth and exclaimed, “Cyric, the One, the All!”
Not a sound greeted my ear.
The next thing I mouthed was just as silent, though much more profane. I had forgotten the spell Fzoul had cast to silence my tongue. The heart in my chest dropped. How could I call the One if I had no voice?
I fell to my knees and clasped my hands before me. Surely, Cyric would hear my silent prayer—he was, after all, a god!
Cyric, Prince of Murder, Lord of Strife!
Nothing happened, except that Fzoul’s groans grew louder. A tide of anger rose up inside my chest. By what right had the Fates taken notice and turned their favor against me, a helpless mortal who was but a flea in the affairs of the gods?
I began to clank around the room, searching for some means with which to signal the One. I discovered a chest of clothes, but I hardly bothered to rifle through them. Even if the garments had not been too large, I had no time for niceties!
Fzoul groaned again, then the witch moaned too. This gave me some hope; when Fzoul came to his senses, she would occupy him for at least a moment or two.
I shuffled toward the writing desk and found a quill and an inkwell beside
a sheaf of parchment. Atop the parchment lay a dagger with an ebony hilt fashioned into Iyachtu Xvim’s sacred palm-and-eyes symbol. I pushed the disgusting talisman aside and thrust my torch into a wall sconce, then dipped the quill in the inkwell and scrawled a note upon the clean parchment: Cyric, the One, the All!
Fzoul’s voice rumbled up through the trapdoor, calling for Thir and vowing vengeance upon me. Ruha responded with something groggy, and Thir began to moan as well.
I scanned the room’s dark corners for the ghoulish figure of the One and saw nothing but murk and gloom. I would have written his name in my own blood if that were possible, but thanks to Tyr I no longer bled. I dipped the quill back into the ink and wrote, Cyric, Highest of the High—another dip, Lord of Three Crowns! At the same time, I let these words echo through my head, shouting them the only way I could.
The chamber remained as empty as before, and Cyric’s heart filled my chest with cold burning.
Fzoul and Ruha began to yell; I could not comprehend what they were shouting, but several thuds and sharp slaps vibrated up through the trapdoor.
I felt a terrible sinking, but I could not believe Destiny would drive me this far only to abandon me now. I grabbed the torch and rounded the fringe of the room, searching for some small passage that I might have overlooked. If I could escape, I would seek shelter in the Ruins until the High Tyrannar’s spell wore off, and then I would call upon the One until my voice grew hoarse from screaming.
The only exit was the bricked-over door behind the desk. One glance at the ceiling dispelled any thought of leaving that way; the rafters were sagging beneath some great weight. My chest burned as though I had been drinking vinegar.
Ruha cried out and abruptly fell silent, then the High Tyrannar began to chant in a mystic tongue. He had the witch under control, and now he was preparing to find me. I returned to the desk and snatched up the dagger to defend myself.
The instant my hand gripped that vile hilt, I knew how to capture the One’s attention. I thrust the torch back into its sconce, then pressed the dagger’s ebony hilt directly over the One’s heart.
The curdled mass twisted into a knot of cold, searing anguish as terrible as it was unworldly. A wave of bile bubbled up to scald my throat, as though the mere touch of Xvim’s holy symbol had burst the One’s putrid heart I thought my breast would explode. I collapsed backward onto the desk, and it was all I could do to keep the dagger hilt pressed to my chest.
“Malik!” cried the One’s thousand voices. “What are you doing?”
Before I could lift my head, Cyric grabbed my neck and jerked me off the desk. He held me up before his skull’s face and fixed those black burning suns on my naked chest, and only then did I realize I was still holding Iyachtu Xvim’s holy symbol over his heart. I opened my hands and let the dagger drop to the floor, and the pain in my chest faded at once.
“Well, Malik? Have you betrayed me?” He stepped on the ebony hilt and ground it to dust beneath his bony heel, and this caused such a rumble that I heard Fzoul cry out in astonishment. “You have but to deny it—I know you cannot lie.”
No! I mouthed the word, but no sound came out
“Then you cannot deny it?” Cyric’s grasp tightened, and only Tyr’s protection kept my head joined to my shoulders. “Even you, Malik? First Tempus betrays me, then Talos and Shar, and Tyr next, and now you? Faithless cur!”
The One flung me at the bookshelf, which splintered beneath the impact of my pulpy body. I tumbled to the floor amidst a cascade of tomes, then looked up to see Cyric stomping across the room. With every step, the chamber trembled, and a stream of dust sifted down from the ceiling.
“You think the verdict will go against me?” Cyric kicked Fzoul’s bed aside and gave me no chance to shake my head. “You think Iyachtu Xvim will come for you on the Fugue Plain? How can you be such a fool, Malik?”
A beam cracked over his head, but Cyric did not appear to notice. “When the Harlot escaped Helm’s prison, she sealed her own doom—and the Usurper’s too!” He raised his skeleton’s claw and curled his bony fingers. “Without Mystra’s lies ringing through the Pavilion, I have the Circle in my grasp. They will bow down before me. They will kiss my feet, they will beg my mercy.…”
These words filled me with the same hollow sickness as the first time I heard Cyric speak them. His vision was born of his madness, for even I knew the gods would level Faerûn before they bowed down before the One. I gathered myself up and crawled across the floor, trying to reach the True Life, which I had left lying just beyond the trapdoor.
Cyric snatched me up and shook me as a mongoose shakes a snake. “You will rue the day you betrayed me, Malik!”
The One hurled me against the wall, and a mighty rumble shook the chamber and another loud crack sounded from the ceiling planks, and a steady trickle of splinters and dust showered down on my head.
“Do you think I fear this trial? I welcome it! The day is at hand when I will stand at Ao’s side, and all the others will look to us as brothers!”
I gathered myself up and lunged for the True Life.
Cyric caught my ankle and jerked me to a halt. My face slammed into the floor, but my devotion to the One was too great to let him stop me now. I thrust out my hands and caught the corner of the book and pulled it into my grasp. As the One and All dragged me back across the planks, I flipped the cover open and began to leaf through the blank pages. Rinda had written that once a person saw the first word, he could not stop reading until he had perused the entire chronicle; if I could but whirl around and thrust the first page into the One’s face, Oghma’s foul words would do the rest As soon as Cyric saw the book, he stopped pulling. “What have we here?”
The tome lay about a third open, and the parchment was still blank. The One snatched it from my hands and closed the cover, scrutinizing the black suns and the death’s-heads embossed around the sacred starburst-and-skull. He turned the book over to inspect the back, and his putrid heart filled my ears with such a nervous swishing I hardly heard him ask, “Malik, what is this?”
Of course, I could not answer. Instead, I sat up and reached for the book, intending to open it to Oghma’s history. Vile as it was, I had to make the One read the account before the trial.
Cyric jerked the book away. “Is this the book you came for?”
Fearing that Mystra’s magic would dispel Fzoul’s and cause me to blurt out the entire truth, I did not even nod.
“You say nothing,” said Cyric, “just as when you left on your quest.”
The black orbs beneath the One’s brows flared, and he stumbled back against the wall and sat down amidst the fragments of the shattered bookcase. Dust and pebbles rained down from the splintered ceiling, and the sagging joists complained with an ominous creaking, but he did not care. And why should he? Such things mattered less to him than to a mortal such as me.
“It bears no resemblance to the Cyrinishad, but how could it be otherwise? Oghma’s magic would prevent …” Cyric let the thought trail off, then looked at me. “Malik, do you remain loyal to me?”
I nodded eagerly, for this was as true as ever.
The One let his bony jaw sag in a gruesome farce of a smile, then opened the book to the first page. “Blank!”
A great knot formed in my stomach, and I prayed to Tymora he would flip to the pages in back.
Instead, Cyric turned to the next sheet of parchment, and then the next, a single page at a time. “All blank—but how else would it look to me? Oghma’s magic still works. If I could read the book, I would know that I held it in my hand.” He turned the tome on edge and shook out the grit that had fallen into it from the ceiling. “You have assured my verdict, Malik! When you read this at the trial, even Oghma will bow to my brilliance!”
At the trial? I had to cure the One’s madness before the trial or he would only anger his fellow gods and ensure that the verdict went against him. I shook my head and shouted a silent No!
Cyric closed the tome wit
h great tenderness. “And we must do something about your voice. The trial begins in an hour.”
I pounded on the floor and spread my hands as though they were an open book, then gazed at the One imploringly.
“We have no time for that now.” Cyric rose and extended his skeletal hand. “Come along, Malik. I will let you bask in my shadow.”
Forty-Eight
Mystra appeared in the temple of Iyachtu Xvim and found Ruha lying spread-eagled upon the black altar, her limbs stretched over the edges by four taut ropes. Over the witch stood Fzoul Chembryl, wearing a twisted mask called the Cowl of Hatred and waving a thin-bladed skinning knife. He was droning a deep-throated dirge, and his Faithful were singing chorus and dancing slowly around the ebony hand on the floor. In the midst of their circle writhed a pillar of shadow with flashing green eyes and a halo of mordant black smoke.
All this Mystra saw in the blink of an eye, and at once she stood at Fzoul’s side, towering high above his head. He cried out and whirled on her, his weapon raised to strike.
Moving faster than any mortal eye could follow, Mystra caught the High Tyrannar by the forearm and lifted him off the ground. “Do not dare!”
Fzoul’s mouth gaped open. The chorus fell silent and left their pillar of shadow to writhe alone. Mystra plucked the knife from the High Tyrannar’s grasp, then closed it in her huge fist; the dagger melted and dribbled onto the floor.
“This would not be a good time to make me angry. I am in a hurry.”
The green-eyed shadow guttered like a flame, then hissed, “As you should be, Weave Hag! Leave my temple, now!”
“Or what?” Mystra turned her gaze on Xvim.
The pillar shrank, but the voice remained harsh. “Or I’ll fetch Helm.”