Crucible: The Trial of Cyric the Mad (23 page)

“No, I think I caused it.” Mystra’s second avatar left the patriarch’s bedside and melded with her first, which was standing out of Adon’s sight near the door. “I have become some kind of monster to him.”

Tang furrowed his brow. “I do not understand.”

“Neither do I.” Mystra motioned the prince to her side. The lasal potion prevents me from seeing inside his mind.”

Tang stopped three paces from the goddess and eyed her suspiciously. “I apologize for the honest misfortune, but I did not know that you were coming, Venerable Goddess. I was only trying to be of service.”

“You will be, Tang.” As Mystra said this, she turned as translucent as a ghost and was suddenly standing at the prince’s shoulder. “I assure you of that.”

She began to slide into the prince’s body, much as a person slips into a new cloak.

“No! This is not permitted.” Tang tried step away, but Mystra only continued to invade his body. “I am an Imperial Shou-“

The last scrap of the goddess’s robe vanished from sight, and the prince fell silent. He blinked several times, then stretched his arms as person does when rising in the morning.

“This will do.” The voice was Tang’s, but the words belonged to Mystra. She walked the prince’s body to the bedside and bent over Adon. “Now, my dear friend, let us see what Cyric has done.”

Adon eyed the prince’s body suspiciously, but made no attempt to escape the acolytes restraining him. The two guards stood close by, cradling their maces and looking uncomfortable. Vaerana Hawklyn had told them to strike Adon down if he tried to escape, but they were loath to do this with the Goddess of Magic standing there.

Mystra took a diamond ring off Tang’s finger and pressed it between his palms. When the prince saw what she meant to do, he cried out inside her mind, No! That is a magic Ring of Chameleon Power!

Mystra continued to grind, believing in her arrogance that any magic was hers to give or take as she pleased. The diamond crumbled into powder, producing an acrid smell and a shrill chirp and a brilliant flash. The goddess ran her hands over Adon, covering him from head to foot in twinkling diamond dust; this was to dispel the magic Cyric had used to drive him mad.

“Poison!” Adon screamed.

His skin turned red and blotchy, then blisters of white ichor rose wherever the powder had touched. Adon wailed in agony and flailed about, tearing an arm and leg free. The two guardsmen raised their maces and rushed over.

Mystra glanced in their direction, and their weapons turned to smoke. She motioned the pair to Adon’s side.

“Help hold him,” the goddess commanded. Then she turned to the acolyte Chandra and said, “Wash him off, quickly!”

Chandra grabbed the water pitcher from the patriarch’s dressing table and poured it over his body. Adon stopped screaming, but he stared at Prince Tang’s body as though looking at his own murderer. His skin remained red and blistered, and he began to shake uncontrollably.

No one dared to ask what had happened, which was well with Mystra, as she had no answers. Adon’s condition could not be magical in origin, or else her spell would have removed it - in such matters, only Ao had the power to defy her. She found herself growing angrier with Prince Tang about the lasal potion. It prevented her from seeing what was wrong, but attempting to clear the haze from Adon’s mind would also destroy a good portion of his memories. Still, she was not ready to quit.

“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.”

“Well 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, men 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?”