Crucible: The Trial of Cyric the Mad (38 page)

Then the avatar vanished, and she found herself lying on the floor next to the battered Seraph of Death. Mystra saw at once that she had escaped, for the instant Helm’s avatar had fallen completely into the prison, the Vigilant One had lost all his godly powers and his avatars had disappeared. She leapt to her feet, knowing it would not be long before Tyr saw what had occurred and called upon Ao to free the Vigilant One. Before Avner could so much as moan, she dispatched eight avatars to Faerun to answer the calls of her Faithful and undo the damage Talos had done to her church. She sent another aspect to visit Kelemvor in the City of the Dead, and only then did she kneel beside her broken rescuer.

“You have my gratitude, Avner.” Mystra saw that when the seraph had struck Helm, he had snapped his neck and torn both of his wings and shattered one of his shoulders. As she spoke, she began to straighten all the breaks. “I shall tell your master of your bravery. Kelemvor will reward you well.”

Avner shook his head. “No … Kelemvor is no longer… my master. Mask… sent me.”

“Mask?” The goddess straightened Avner’s neck, then enclosed it in her hands and allowed her healing magic to flow into him. That cannot be. Mask has more reason than anyone to keep me imprisoned.”

“Perhaps-but he did not expect me to succeed.”

Now that his neck had been repaired, the seraph found it much easier to speak. As the goddess healed the rest of his injuries, he told her of how Kelemvor had decided to reassess all his judgments as God of Death, and Avner also explained how Mask had given him a chance to become the Seraph of Thieves by assigning him the impossible task of freeing her. When he finished, Mystra had healed all his wounds.

They stood, and the goddess said, “Avner, you should not be seraph to a low god like Mask. I shall intercede with Kelemvor, and you will remain the Seraph of Death.”

Avner shook his head sadly. “I do not think so, Goddess. Lord Death has changed. The old Kelemvor is gone, and I fear even you cannot bring him back.”

Forty-Two

Brother Durin led us through the shattered remnants of the old Harbor Ward Gate, then turned down a slippery river of mud that served as the main boulevard of the City Rebuilt Dusk had fallen and plunged the borough into shadows as purple as the One’s sacred vestments. The last of the masons and day laborers had vanished across the bridge, and now only the denizens remained, peering down at us from the arrow loops and third-story drawbridges of their fortress homes. The street stank of seaweed and fish entrails and all the other things anyone saw fit to dump into it, and so deep was this slime that Halah’s hooves made sucking sounds as she carried Svanhild and me forward.

About a third of the way through the City Rebuilt, which is to say no more than a hundred paces down the boulevard, someone hissed at Durin from the shadows. He turned down a narrow lane between two buildings and vanished into the darkness. As I guided Halah after him, I thought of the burly guards who had perished in the alley where we had hidden earlier, and a shudder ran down my spine. They had died within the “civilized” confines of the walled city. Here in the Ruins, I doubted that even the One knew what might be lurking around any corner.

In this alley, the lurker happened to be Armod, a brother of the temple almost as gaunt and filth-covered as Durin. Armod led us through a maze of lanes so black I could scarcely see my hand before my face, and the whole time I kept thinking what a splendid place this was for an ambush. Yet nothing happened except that I felt many eyes watching us from above, and once a stray dog barked from a muddy alcove. Here Svanhild and I had to dismount and stand in the quagmire as Halah tried to make a snack of the dog, but her neck was not long enough to reach the back of his den, and after a few minutes we were allowed to remount

We emerged from this maze of alleys to find Sister Kelda waiting behind the jagged vestiges of the Harbor Ward wall. She took Armod’s place as guide and led us forward, and the gloomy citadels of the City Rebuilt were replaced by shadowy piles of rubble. The sound of Halah’s hooves changed from a regular slurp to an unpredictable clatter, and the light of the full moon shone down to pave our way in glimmering silver.

The stench of the Harbor Ward vanished, and Svanhild grew less tense behind me. She leaned forward and brought her lips close to my ear.

“Why did you come to Zhentil Keep?” she whispered. “You must know the Cyrinishad is gone. We spent an entire year sending letters to important True Believers.”

“You didn’t send one to me,” I retorted. “But I do know of the letter you sent my Caliph.”

“So, why are you here?”

I held my tongue, for I had no wish to blurt out the truth to this woman. Fzoul might have stayed in his tower all day, watching and wondering when we would arrive-or someone might have told him we were coming at dusk, and that someone could be Svanhild as easily as any other of Zhentil Keep’s acolytes.

“Well?” Svanhild pressed.

I craned my neck over my shoulder. “You ask too many questions, Sister.”

Svanhild jerked back as though I had struck her, yet her arms stayed tight around my waist-the better to hold me when Fzoul sprang his trap, I supposed.

I furtively scanned the shadows, until it came to me I had little to fear from an ambush. With Tyr’s protection to keep me whole and a mount such as Halah to insure my escape, no assault would harm me or my quest. Thus assured, I did a foolish thing: I leaned down to pat my faithful horse on the neck.

Halah swung her head around and bared her sharp teeth, and I barely had time to move my leg before her jaws snapped together.

Svanhild leaned forward. “What’s wrong with her?”

“She is angry because the dog escaped.” Mystra’s spell compelled me to add, “Or maybe because I took her bone away.”

“Who is the master?” Svanhild snorted. “You or Halah?”

“Who do you think? As I said, Cyric made her.”

Kelda turned down a broad, rocky furrow that had once been a street. About fifty paces ahead, the path ended beneath a high, unbroken wall. There we found the rest of the acolytes. They were waiting in the mouth of a steep-sided trench where someone, or perhaps something, had tunneled through the rubble to create a narrow passage.

One of the brothers pointed down the channel. “The Annihilator went there. Thir is still-“

“Hurry!” Thir’s voice sounded muffled and distant as it rolled out of the trench. “He’s trying to escape!”

Kelda and the others rushed into the trench at once, but I held Halah in check and let them clatter through the dark alone.

“Go!” Svanhild commanded, kicking at Halah’s flanks.

A snarl like a lion’s rumbled up from the mare’s throat and she took a tentative step forward. I jerked the reins to stop her, and she in turn kicked up her rear legs, nearly dislodging Sister Svanhild.

“Malik! What are you doing?” Svanhild clutched my waist to keep from falling. “I thought you wanted to catch Fzoul!”

“As I said, you ask too many questions.” Mystra’s spell compelled me to add, “I did not get this far by being stupid. I see the ambush you are planning.”

“Ambush?” Truly, she sounded surprised, and I realized how practiced she was at lying.

A loud crack echoed out of the narrow trench, then a silver flash bounced off its steep walls. Someone screamed in agony.

“See?” I exclaimed. “I am no fool!”

The acolytes cried out as one. A soft roar crackled out of the trench, then an orange glow lit the stones in its depths.

Svanhild took one arm from my waist, and something sharp pricked my back. “You wanted to find the Annihilator, and we have found him. Now ride!”

“Stupid woman-do you think I fear your knife?” Despite my words, I had nudged Halah into the trench, for I still meant to track Fzoul to his home. “You saw the quarrels bounce off my back when I entered Zhentil Keep. I am protected by Tyr himself!”

Tyr?” Svanhild shoved her dagger forward, but the blade tangled in my robe and scraped past my ribs and did not inflict even a scratch. She spat on my neck. “Traitor! Tyr-loving spy!”

“Me?” I paid no attention to her attempt to kill me. “You are the betrayer!”

As all this happened, we rode half the length of the trench. I could have leaned out and touched the stones to either side, and the walls loomed so high above us they blocked the moonlight. Halah raised a terrible clatter as she stumbled through the darkness-but this hardly mattered, for a mighty roaring and a horrid screaming suddenly arose from the far end of the channel.

I looked up to see an imposing, long-haired figure twenty paces down the trench, trapped against a half-buried wall. A low curtain of fire burned between him and the handful of his attackers still standing; the rest of the One’s acolytes lay rolling on the ground, screaming in agony and beating at the flames on their bodies.

My throat grew dry at the prowess of my quarry, but I had no time for wonderment. Svanhild pushed herself from Halah’s rump and dropped to the rubble behind us.

She fell to her knees and raised her arms to the heavens. “0 Cyric, god of gods. One and All, hear this, the prayer of your servant, Svanhild of Zhentil Keep.”

“No!” I jerked Halah’s reins around, but the trench was too narrow and rocky for her to turn quickly.

“Mighty One,” continued Svanhild, “you have placed your trust-“

I pulled so hard on Halah’s reins she reared and turned. Her front hooves struck the trench wall and caused a clattering rubble slide.

Svanhild shouted, “-in a traitor!”

“Lying trollop!” I drew my dagger and flung myself off Halah’s back.

Before my feet touched ground, a silver flash sizzled down from the channel rim and struck Svanhild full on the brow. Her head vanished in a spray of blinding fire and bone, and I came down upon the headless corpse and drove it down into the bottom of the trench. For a time, I lay on top of the gruesome thing, too stunned to move and trying to blink the sight back into my eyes, gagging on the harsh fumes that rose from the place where Svanhild’s face should have been.

“I trust she is dead.” The words were so deep and resonant I mistook them for the One’s, until I realized the man was speaking in a single voice instead of a thousand. “We cannot have her calling the Mad God, can we?”

I rolled off Svanhild’s body and looked up. The speaker stood at the crest of the trench wall, high overhead, silhouetted against the pale night sky. With long, flowing hair and a high-collared cape stretched over a pair of broad shoulders, he looked eerily similar to the figure trapped at the end of the channel.

The man stared into the trench and lifted his arms high. “Rise up!” I thought he was calling to me, until he added, “Awaken, my children!”

A tremendous clatter arose along the entire length of the passage. Halah let out a startled whinny and at last wrenched herself around to face me. Behind her, the orange glow at the end of the trench had vanished, and now the rubble beside her began to churn. Halah bared her teeth and backed away.

“No, Halah! Come this way!”

Halah continued to retreat, then heard the stones behind her also stirring and stopped in her tracks. I stepped forward to grab her reins, but a pair of long arms suddenly shot out of the rubble between us. In the darkness, they looked like the branches of a gnarled myrrh tree, and I could see well enough to tell that one of these limbs ended in a deformed claw.

“Halah, come to me!”

The mare raised her head at my tone, then growled.

A head emerged from the rubble to join the arms that separated us. By the light of its burning red eyes, I perceived it to be the face of a corpse, long dead, with shriveled gray skin still clinging to its skull. The creature looked toward me and began to dig itself out of the rubble.

Of course the thing was not alone. The clatter of shifting stones continued to build along the length of the trench, and I glanced around to see dozens of pairs of red eyes emerging from beneath the rubble. I uttered a curse on Svanhild’s soul, then looked back toward my mare, my only means of escape.

“Halah, now!”

Halah fixed a dark eye on my face, then snarled and sprang forward. The corpse between us lashed out and caught her foreleg with its twisted claw. She bit the arm off in midstride and stopped beside me with the gruesome thing still clamped between her teeth. I thanked the One for her loyalty and started to step around to mount her.

She reared up and planted her hoof in my chest and pushed me straight to the ground.

“Halah!” I glanced along the trench and saw a dozen red-eyed silhouettes shambling toward us. “Let me up! What are you doing?”

Halah growled and brought her face down close to mine. She rolled the corpse’s filthy arm between her teeth and made a low, menacing nicker.

“Halah?”

The first corpse shambled closer, lacking the arm my horse had bitten off. It stooped down and grasped my ankle with its remaining hand. Halah allowed this, and I recalled the threat I had made before we crossed the bridge.

“Halah, I am sorry I interrupted your meal, but we had to leave the city.” A second corpse came up, and she permitted this one to grasp my arm. “And I would never ask the One to turn you back into a nag. You know this.”

Halah snorted in my face, just as she had done when I seized her bone, then took her foot off my chest and trotted on.

“Halah?”

I tried to rise, but the two corpses pushed me down. I grabbed a stone and smashed the skull of one, but this did not even loosen the thing’s grasp. A third cadaver grabbed the rock and pinned my weapon hand to the ground.

“Halah!”

Her only reply was a mocking snort, now painfully distant. I kicked and rolled and tried to squirm free. Every time I moved a body part, another corpse arrived to pin it down. Within moments, I lay buried beneath a pile of rotting and writhing flesh, and my own limbs became more twisted and bent than Our Dark Lord’s mind.

I cursed the One a thousand different ways. I called him a buffoon and an oaf, a fraud and a cheat and a miser, a maker of empty promises and a squanderer of borrowed wealth, a murderer and a liar and a thief, and a hundred names twice as scornful. Nor did I repent; I could think only of the great sacrifices I had made for the love of Cyric, and of how it would all come to naught because he had given me a horse so fickle she would betray me over a bone!