Crucible: The Trial of Cyric the Mad (3 page)

Jabbar’s mouth fell open, then he began to assail me with many insults, the worst of which are too terrible to recount here. “You fat little lunatic! You bug-eyed insect! You filthy, unwashed groveler of pig sties! Betray me, will you?”

I heard the swish of Jabbar’s silken robe and glimpsed the rise of his scepter. Knowing I would not live to see my vision come true, I fell to my knees and began to pray. Time raced on, and yet it also seemed to slow, and all that happened next occurred in the space of a single instant: A streak of feathered darkness shot from the mouth of the iron skull on Jabbar’s scepter, and Most High Haroun bent forward to seize my arm.

“Stand up, you-“

The Most High’s command ended in a gasp, then he raised his hand to touch a small puncture in his neck. A ribbon of smoke was curling from the tiny hole, and the skin around the wound had already grown dark and puffy with poison. I grew queasy and weak at the sight, for I knew that Jabbar had meant his needle for me.

Haroun’s anger poured forth in an incoherent rasp, then he flung himself past me, scepter raised to strike. A dozen of Jabbar’s bodyguards leapt forward to intercept him, but they were too slow. The Most High’s holy starburst found its mark, driving an iron point clear through the skull of His Deadliness Jabbar.

The starburst flashed crimson. Jabbar’s mouth fell open and poured forth a cloud of vile-smelling smoke, all that remained of the matter that had once filled his head.

Then the Dark Lords came together, each as lifeless as the other, and before their bodies hit the ground, a wall of Haroun’s bodyguards swept past me to crash into Jabbar’s men. The hilltop erupted in a frenzy of clanging steel and screaming warriors. From all around came the slash of ripping flesh and the crackle of splintering bones and the thud of falling bodies. I covered my ears and pressed my head tight to the ground, trying to escape the terrible sounds-not because they sickened me or made me fear for my life, but on account of what they meant. With each death rattle, each prayer that died upon a warrior’s lips, each drop of blood that trickled into the ground, the Cyrinishad grew more distant. This knowledge filled me with such an anger that I feared I would leap up and get myself killed!

Fortunately, a pair of armored bodies fell across my back and held me down. For a time, I lay half-crushed beneath them, wheezing for breath and waging battle with my angry heart. Haroun and Jabbar lay less than two paces away, the Most High still sprawled over His Deadliness, all but hidden beneath a mound of dead and dying bodyguards. I called a thousand curses upon their names, and prayed their spirits would simmer in the Boiling Sea a thousand years. Their rivalry had cost me the Cyrinishad, and in my ire I could not see why Cyric had suffered either one to command his Faith-fill, much less the pair together!

Then I spied two glints of yellow in the shadowy tangle beside Haroun and Jabbar. The glimmers came from their scepters of office, still grasped in their cold hands. I recalled my vision and saw again the great host of True Believers standing before me, and I perceived what a fool I had been to question the ways of Cyric the All.

I struggled to rise, but could not escape the press of bodies upon my back. The ground began to rumble as though it would open. Taking this to be a sign of the One’s anger at my weakness, I clawed desperately at the ground-and dragged myself forward an inch. A deep lowing joined the rumble, and then an angry snorting and the clang of clashing weapons. My heart sank, for this noise was no holy sign; it was the sound of the Ebon Spur riding into battle.

With a fury born of panic, I redoubled my clawing and began to kick, and at last I freed myself of the corpses. Then, seeing that all the warriors nearby were too busy killing each other to pay me any heed, I crawled toward the Dark Masters. The stench of death was horrid, for bodies were never meant to spill all their contents, but I clenched my teeth and burrowed into the steaming heap like a dog after a badger. A bodyguard wailed in pain as I pushed aside his shattered leg. I slid between two breastplates slick with blood, passing faceless lips that moaned for help, and at last the golden staffs lay within reach. I stretched my hand forward and grasped Haroun’s scepter.

It issued no warning scorch, nor did it discharge a heart-stopping shock. The scepter slipped free of the Most High’s dead grasp, then gave a soft pop as I wrenched the iron starburst from Jabbar’s head. I drew the staff to my chest and tucked it into the rope that served as my belt, then pushed Haroun’s arm aside so I could reach Jabbar’s scepter.

A hand, warm and slick with blood, clamped my forearm. I was so startled that I screamed and pulled away, but the hand held fast. I heard a heart beating, low and fast and mean, and I did not think it was my own. My blood cooled, for it was said that Dark Lords could come back from the dead to avenge themselves.

“I beg… you.” The words were wispy and weak, and I had not spoken them. I felt a great relief, for Jabbar would never beg. “Help… me.”

“As you wish,” I replied. “But first you must let go.”

Still the bloody fingers held fast. Lacking the strength to break the fellow’s death grip, I slipped my free hand inside my beggar’s cloak, then drew forth the small hooked dagger that I always carried in a concealed place.

“Here is your help!”

I slashed the blade across the clutching hand. The warrior cried out and loosened his grip. I twisted my arm free, then snatched the scepter from Jabbar’s dead grasp and began to squirm backward. When at last I freed myself from the stinking heap, my ears filled with thunder-the sound of charging war bulls.

I staggered to my feet and turned. Less then fifty paces away, a pair of the beasts were pounding across the hilltop in my direction, their black horns rocking up and down, their hooves pummeling the dead and wounded alike. On their backs sat two officers, one a Black Helm and the other a Purple Lancer, flailing at each other with an axe and a morningstar.

I scrambled up a pile of bodies and raised the golden scepters above my head. “In the name of Cyric the All, stop!”

The riders continued forward, and I saw that only a few of the Dark Lords’ bodyguards still remained standing, fighting each other in scattered pockets all across the gore-strewn hilltop. But the two troops of the Ebon Spur were flooding onto the knoll, their blades and hammers filling the air with a clamorous din. I could not see over them to tell what the rest of our army was doing, but it alarmed me greatly to notice a dark line of the enemy’s flying mounts streaming down from Candlekeep.

I brought the scepters together above my head, creating the sacred starburst and skull of Our Lord Cyric. The war bulls continued to pound across the hilltop, the lead pair still thundering in my direction. The riders were cursing and grunting, oblivious to anything except their clanging weapons, but the, bulls fixed their eyes on the holy scepters and came charging toward me as though I were taunting them with red flags.

I stood where I was, weak in the knees but trusting in the protection of Almighty Cyric. “By this hallowed symbol, stop!”

So close were the bulls that I saw their nostrils spraying steam. My knees would have buckled, had a peal of thunder not broken across the sky and shocked the strength back into my legs. I glimpsed the enemy’s flying beasts diving out of the sky-they were fantastic creatures with the heads of eagles and the bodies of winged horses-then I saw a silver bolt flash from the lead beast down toward the plain.

The bulls reached my gruesome pulpit and continued forward, veering apart only slightly as they plowed over the tangle of limbs and torsos. The riders leaned inward and continued their battle, creating an arc of flashing steel before my eyes.

“For the Cyrinishad, Mighty Cyric, make me brave!” I separated the two halves of the starburst and skull and, having no idea what magic might pour forth from the staves, pointed one scepter at each of the charging bulls. “Stop, I command you!”

There was nothing, for Cyric had turned his back on me, or so I believed. Before I could flee, the beasts were beside me, filling my ears with a booming tempest of hooves and hearts and snorting breath. I could not keep from cowering. The bulls, always quick to seize on any weakness, lowered their heads.

A searing pain lanced deep into my stomach. I rose into the sky and glimpsed below me a purple-clad rider sitting astride a bull. I closed my eyes and felt myself rise further still. For a moment, I could hear every sound in the battle with perfect clarity: every chiming blade, every crunching bone, every last gasping curse. I heard the feathers of the enemy’s eagle-horses beating the air, the thrum of the foot companies scattering through the salt grass, the bellowing of fire giants lying scorched and torn upon the plain. I thought I would rise until I reached the heavens and never come down.

Then I heard the crash of my shoulders slamming into the ground, the crunch and hiss of my broken body rolling down the slope, the wail of my own voice:

“Why have you done this, Cyric My Lord?”

I smashed into a boulder and came to a rest bent around it backward, blood gushing from the wound in my stomach. By some miracle, my quaking hands still grasped the scepters of the starburst-and-skull. The sun had already risen high above the eastern horizon, and I felt it beating down on my face, a hot disk of mocking golden light. The sounds of battle grew distant, until the silence became so profound I could hear nothing but the low, dead pulse of my own heart.

“Why did you leave us, My Dark Lord?”

The disk of light vanished. I was foolish enough to believe Cyric had answered and turned my face into the darkness.

It was only an eagle-horse swooping across the sky, its outstretched wings blocking the sun like those of some great fiend risen from the pit to carry me to Cyric’s palace. The beast wheeled low over my head, and I saw a man in leather armor holding the reins. Behind him sat a smaller figure, her head swaddled in a purple scarf and her body cloaked in dark robes. I could see her eyes, rimmed in kohl and as black as the veil that hid her face, scanning the battlefield. Her hands began to move.

She was calling to me, I thought, casting her spell. I imagined her voice rustling inside my skull, beckoning to me, bidding the Finder of the Book to stand and show himself.

It might be wiser, I decided, just to close my eyes.

I am but a man, and no man may perceive everything that occurs in the world and in the boundless heavens above. Only the gods see all, and when it serves their purpose, they will sometimes brighten a mortal’s mind with their perfect knowledge. Know then that the following accounts, like many others describing events I could not have witnessed personally, are gifts of the One. Long after my days as a spy came to their end, Our Dark Lord graced my thoughts with an exact knowledge of all that occurred during the search for the holy Cyrinishad, whether or not I had seen it with my own eyes, and even if it happened in the heavens above where no man may see.

I bear no blame for the many blasphemies of speech and thought contained in these accounts. These lies belong only to those who spawned them, and I swear they are a great offense to my ears! I include them only because it is my duty to present a complete and faithful chronicle of the search for the holy Cyrinishad. I pray you, Almighty Cyric, One and All, do not torment your poor servant for doing as he is bound!

Two

After the companies of Most High Haroun and His Deadliness Jabbar destroyed each other, what remained of Cyric’s army fled across the plain in ten directions at once: south toward the Cloud Peaks and east toward Beregost and north toward the Cloak Woods, and in all directions but west, where loomed the towers of Candlekeep and the raging Sea of Swords. The eagle-horses wheeled over the field, their riders hurling fireballs and lightning bolts, True Believers scattering before them as sheep before wolves. Only the Company of the Ebon Spur did not flee, for it had become a crimson tangle on the knoll where Jabbar and Haroun had fallen. The bodies of men and beasts lay as deep as a man’s shoulders, and their steaming blood cascaded from the summit in glistening streams. A dozen bulls staggered over the heap, lowing for their dead masters, while the warriors who had not yet expired prayed to Cyric in voices hoarse with pain.

All this did fickle Tempus, God of War, see from his home in faraway limbo. The sight charged his heart with such a fury that he smashed his gauntleted hand against his iron throne, and fields of battle quaked all across Faerun. Pikemen lost their footing and exposed whole flanks to the charging enemy. Loyal war-horses stumbled and fell, pitching their riders to the mercy of their foes. Castle walls crumbled and cracked, and besieging armies poured through the breaches to pillage and plunder.

The Battle Lord paid no heed to these calamities, for war is won as often through accidents of destiny as through acts of courage. But when he thought of the valiant warriors slain before Candlekeep, stilled by the blades of their own fellows, and of the epic contest that might have been, again Tempus felt his anger rising. It erupted with the rumble of a hundred thunderclaps, and the Numberless Hosts that did battle in his vast halls shrank from the ire of their god. They lowered their blades and turned to tremble before his throne. For the first time since the Time of Troubles, the Eternal War fell quiet.

A slender elf emerged from the shadows of a far corner and started across the debris. He wore a cloak of dark gloom, and though he crossed many heaps of crumpled armor and trod upon the shards of countless broken weapons, he moved in utter silence and never caused a sound. Nor did his feet leave any track, though he often walked through pools of fresh blood and stepped in piles of steaming gore.

The elf stopped before the throne of Tempus and bowed low. “When mighty Tempus is robbed, I would expect him to strike down the thief-not vent his anger upon the mortals who serve his cause.” The words were as wispy as a yard of silk, and so soft they seemed a mere thought. “But I often expect more than I should.”