Crucible: The Trial of Cyric the Mad (41 page)

I screamed.

I nearly choked on the rag in my mouth; I understood why it was called a gag.

I waited for another drop to splash my lip. I tried to remember whether the count was eight thousand one hundred and sixty-four or eight thousand six hundred and four, or-

“Malik? Are you still here?” Fzoul’s voice rolled out of the darkness, and I was nearly blinded by the flickering glow of a torch. The High Tyrannar laughed. “Of course, you’re here! Where else would you be?”

Another drop splashed my lip. How much time had passed? This was a cold drop. It rolled into my nose and tickled my sinuses. I snorted it out. Had Cyric’s trial started yet? One drop every two seconds would be thirty per minute, three hundred every ten minutes, nearly two thousand every hour. Eighty-six thousand four hundred and one-or was it two?

I opened my eyes and saw two blurry silhouettes above me. One of them turned the spigot. The other loosened the strap that held my gag in place. One last drop splashed my lip. It rolled into my nose, and I snorted it out and spit the cloth from my mouth.

“A thousand blessings on your children!”

Fzoul chuckled. “Thir, didn’t I tell you the Drip Torment would soften his tongue?”

The High Tyrannar patted my face dry. He used a smooth cloth, so that he would not crack my chapped skin and make it bleed. I dismissed any thought of trying to anger him again, both on account of his great kindness and out of fear that he would turn on the spigot.

Fzoul wiped the table around my head until it was as dry as my face, then wrung the cloth and spread it gently over my private parts. Though I had hardly recalled that I was naked until that moment, this seemed a great kindness.

“Thank you.”

Fzoul smiled. “You can thank me, Malik, by taking the first step. Tell me who sent you.”

I said nothing; if I spoke at all, I would blurt out the whole truth, and then I would never save the One. “Come now, Malik.” Fzoul nodded to Thir, and she began to undo my straps. “I must make certain you are ready before I reveal the truth to you.” Truly?” I gasped. “You will read the truth to me-and all I need do is tell you who sent me? No more?” Fzoul’s mustache straightened above a row of perfect white teeth, and the resulting expression looked less like a smile than a jackal’s sneer. “That is all.”

Thir finished removing the straps. I sat up, thankful for the luxury of the cloth that now covered my private parts. After Fzoul revealed the True Life’s location, I had no idea how I would steal the book and escape, but this did not concern me as much as how I would trick the One into reading it. Still, if my long service to the One had taught me anything, it was the art of charging blindly ahead.

I nodded to Fzoul. “Very well. I will tell you who sent me, and no more.” I repeated this for my own benefit, as I hoped it might prevent Mystra’s spell from causing me to reveal more than I intended. “No one sent me. I came on my own.”

“Liar!” Thir slapped me across the face, then pulled the cloth away from my lap. “You can’t hide anything from us. I saw Cyric appear to you with my own eyes!”

I ignored her and faced Fzoul. “He told me to find the Cyrinishad. You do not have the Cyrinishad. I know this for a fact, so it makes no sense to try to find it here. I have told you the truth about who sent me, and now you must read the truth about the One.”

“Malik, what are we going to do with you?” Fzoul grabbed my manacles and jerked me off the table, then dragged me toward the Eel Bath. “Do you think you can lie to me?”

“But I am not lying!” I saw in my mind Thir’s vacant eyes and trembling muscles after she had thrust but one arm into the tank, and I thought of the agony I had suffered beneath the Drip Torment, and I screamed, “I can’t lie!”

“Not very well.”

Fzoul pitched me into the tank, and I splashed into the warm water. Something large and slimy entwined my leg, and another eel slithered around my arm, then a very large one wrapped itself around my belly, and for an instant they reminded of an experience I once had in the Caliph’s Baths.

Then I made an unpleasant discovery: one does not need to feel pain to know pain. Every muscle in my body tightened around my bones, which certainly would have snapped were it not for Tyr’s protection. The rumble of my grinding teeth reverberated through my head, and I swear a thousand-and-one banshees were screaming in my ears. My mouth filled with the taste of almonds and my nose with the smell of burnt onions, and my eyes rolled so far back in their sockets that I saw the inside of my own skull.

Some uncertain time later, I began to shiver, though I did not feel cold. Slowly I came to realize that I was sprawled on a stone floor, though I had no idea why. Then my sight cleared, and I recognized Fzoul Chembryl looming before me in his full regalia of priestly robes. He was holding a wooden pole, and when I saw the metal hook at the end, still dripping slimy water, and noticed the tub beside me, I remembered all that had happened.

“The eels!”

“You have no one to blame but yourself, Malik.” Fzoul squatted down to look me in the eye. “How can I ask Iyachtu Xvim to accept you when you refuse to cleanse yourself?”

“Accept me? You want me to …” I could hardly believe what I was hearing, for Iyachtu Xvim hated Cyric as ice hates fire. I tried to shake my head clear; all that happened was that I sloshed the water in my ears. “You want me to convert?”

“It’s your choice, of course. But the alternative …” The High Tyrannar shook his head. “Let us just say it would be better for both of us if you converted.”

In my weakness, I forgot my sacred mission. I recalled the many hardships a man can suffer on behalf of the One, and saw how I might escape them in the service of Iyachtu Xvim, and I remarked to myself that Iyachtu Xvim had never thrust a slimy mass of curd into my breast, nor demanded that I do the impossible, nor threatened me with eternal damnation if I failed. All Iyachtu Xvim had ever done was offer me the hope of eternal salvation.

I asked, “What would be involved in this converting?” Here, my chest grew cold and tight, but this only made me more determined. “And how soon could it happen?”

“As soon as you confess.” Fzoul smiled. “The truth will be your salvation.”

The truth? I have already told you the truth!” I would have been glad to tell him some lie that he liked better, but Mystra’s spell prevented it. “You threw me in the Eel Bath!”

“Yes. And now you must tell me why Cyric sent you here.”

“But he did not send me! The One has read his own book, and now he is as mad as a jackal with the staggers! He thinks he is as great as Ao, and he expects all the other gods to bow to his will, and he demands that I give him the Cyrinishad to make this so!”

A crushing weight settled on my chest. I gasped and clutched my breast, and a chill spread through my limbs, and in my folly, I grew even more determined to convince Fzoul of my honesty.

I waved a hand over my soft body. “Look at me. I am no hero! I found the Cyrinishad once and I could not even pick it up, and yet the One threatens to abandon me to Kelemvor’s judgment if I fail.” I had to pause and gasp for breath, as now my chest felt as though a camel were standing on it. “Forgive me, 0 Geyser of Merc-er-Malice-er-aaaiee!”

Mystra’s spell would not permit me to speak the proper words of fawning. I grabbed the hem of Fzoul’s robe and kissed it frantically, but the High Tyrannar’s eyes were narrow and dark.

The great man plucked me off the floor as though I were an empty sack and threw me back into the tank. The camel on my chest became as an elephant. The enormous eels entwined me, but I did not fall instantly unconscious as before; this time I felt them pull me under. I pushed my face back to the surface and gasped for breath before I sank down once more. I felt something sharp and hard against my wrists; then my eyes rolled back and I felt nothing more.

When I awoke, only seconds had passed, or so I assumed, for the High Tyrannar had just dumped my soggy body on the floor and was withdrawing the hook from the chain between my manacles. Cyric’s heart still felt like an elephant standing on my chest. My muscles trembled and my ears rang and ray mouth tasted of almonds, yet my vision was clearer than after the dunking before.

Fzoul prodded me with his hook. “You owe me a confession.”

“I confess that you are a bag of gleet squeezed from the purulent sphincter that is the mouth of Iyachtu Xvim!” He would not listen to the truth; what choice did I have but to return to my earlier strategy? “In the time beyond the Year of Carnage, your god shall empty the chamber pots at the Palace of Eternity, and you shall clean the garderobes!”

The crushing weight on my chest vanished at once, and I saw how blind I had been to seek salvation from any god but Cyric. He was the god of my heart, and I had no fate but the fate he decreed. I could only thrive in the shadow of his radiance, or perish in the darkness of his decline!

How stupid I had been to think I could escape my destiny. I fell into a fit of giggles, for I felt as idiotic as the Caliph’s own harlequin, and he had always made me laugh until it hurt

Fzoul was not so amused. He reached down and grabbed me by the manacles and lifted me off the floor, and he glared into my eyes with a murderous look.

“Why are you trying to anger me?” His breath was hot against my face. “Has Cyric warped your mind so much you enjoy this?”

And with that, he hurled me back into the tank of eels.

At once I ceased to laugh. The slimy things entwined me, and again their hideous magic burned my every sinew. My ears rang and my muscles tightened around my bones and the grating of my teeth echoed through my skull, but I never fell unconscious. This was less of a blessing than it seemed, for aside from the uncontrollable tremor, I could not move my own limbs. The eels drew me under. In wide-eyed horror, I watched the bubbles trail up from my nose, and I lay submerged for minutes, craving air and paralyzed with shock. Yet every time my yearning for breath overwhelmed me and I opened my mouth to inhale, my head always bobbed to the surface; through the mercy of Tyr my lungs filled, and then I sank again into Fzoul Chembryl’s special hell.

After the fourth or fifth time I surfaced, Fzoul snagged my manacles with his wooden hook and fished me out again, ever careful to avoid the tank himself. I managed to stagger to my feet, and as I wobbled back and forth I discovered two new visitors to this chamber of horror. One was the old guard who had cheated me out of two silver coins at the city gate. The other was a slender woman dressed in a dark robe and veil.

“Well met, Malik,” she said. “You are a hard man to catch.”

My hands, still trembling and manacled, strayed down to cover my private nakedness. “Leave me alone! This is none of your affair, Harper!”

“Harper?” Fzoul exclaimed. Thir gasped as well, then the High Tyrannar turned to the guard. “You brought a Harper to my temple?”

“She didn’t say she was a Harper!” The guard grabbed Ruha’s arms.

The witch did not resist, but only studied me over her veil. “Well, Malik-did you find what you were looking for?”

Thir raised a hand to slap the witch silent, but Fzoul caught her arm.

Ruha continued to stare at me. “Or were you too late?”

Too late?” I gasped.

The witch nodded. “Cyric’s trial ended yesterday.”

Ruha was deceiving me-but how was I to know? I had been strapped to a table for eighty-six thousand drops and thrown into the Eel Bath so many times my teeth buzzed, and I did not have even the beat of my own heart to mark the time. I slumped to the floor and beat my head against the tank.

“If the trial has ended, then I am lost!” I did not even think to ask what the verdict had been. I thought only of my eighty-six thousand drops and my three eel baths and the folly of all my useless suffering, and I threw myself at the feet of Fzoul Chembryl. “I will tell you all-only torture me no more!”

The High Tyrannar smirked, then turned to the guard. “Perhaps you should leave now. I’ll send Thir if I have further need of you. And you can leave the Harper.”

The guard scowled at his dismissal, but passed Ruha over to Thir and left by the tunnel that served as the temple entrance. Only after his steps had echoed away did Fzoul turn back to me. “Your confession must be true and complete-“

“A blessing on your name!” I wanted to add that he was also the most merciful and wise of men, but I could not lie. “What do you wish to know?”

“The same thing I have always wanted to know. Who sent you, and why?”

I groaned.

“Who sent you, and why?” The High Tyrannar pulled me up by my manacles and brought his face close to mine. “You must tell me the truth, or I cannot help you.”

“I came on my own.” My reply was weak, for I knew the High Tyrannar would believe nothing except that Cyric had dispatched me to kill him. “No one sent me.”

“Malik!” Fzoul shook me so hard I thought my chains would fall off. “I am growing weary of your games!”

“I ca-a-me to ste-e-eal the True Life of Cyr-r-ric!” I bleated. “I needed it to cure the One’s madness-“

Fzoul’s face turned as red as henna, then he snatched me up and raised me over the tank. “Have it your way!”

“Wait!” Ruha cried. For once, I did not object to the witch’s meddling, as I knew from my experiences in Candlekeep that she had no stomach for torture. “Tormenting Malik will change nothing.”

Fzoul spun toward her, holding me by the manacles and shackles. “What?”

If the High Tyrannar’s angry tone caused Ruha any fear, it remained hidden behind her veil. “Malik is telling the truth. He wishes to use the True Life to cure Cyric’s madness.”

This was more than Fzoul could stand. “You too? Enough lies!”

In his fury, the High Tyrannar hurled me clear over the tank. I crashed into the wall upside down and dropped from a height greater than my own body. My head struck the floor with a terrific crack, then I felt a terrible jolt in my neck and crumpled into a heap of chains and naked flesh.

I had grown so accustomed to Tyr’s protection that it hardly seemed remarkable to escape the fall without a broken neck or cracked skull. I merely rolled onto my hands and knees and turned to beg my tormenter’s mercy-and that is when I realized that Ruha had deceived me. Cyric’s trial could not have ended, or the God of Justice would no longer be shielding me from harm.