Prince of Lies (23 page)

Grunting noncommittally, Gond turned his attention to a wickedly horned helmet. He detached the rounded top from the bevor and set about adjusting the thin needles that lined the inside of the helm’s lower half. A sudden clatter of metal on the stone floor brought a flush to his sooty cheeks and a spark of anger to his iron-gray eyes. “Careful with that, you stupid walking safe!” he snarled. One of the golems - a box with long arms and four thin legs - bowed a stiff apology and hefted the fallen cuisses to its more humanlike compatriot, who gracefully secured the armor to Gwydion’s legs.

The clockwork smiths had almost finished girding the shade in the golden, god-forged armor. They levered him from the table, forcing him to his feet. Gwydion wobbled unsteadily until the largest of the golems supported him with unyielding arms of iron. Even then, the weight and size of the new body disoriented the shade. He was at least half-again as tall as he’d been, with a body bulky enough to belong to an ogre.

The armor appeared at first glance to be nothing more than an exquisitely crafted set of oversized field plate, though it was far more than that. The breastplate was engraved with thousands of tiny grinning skulls, each rictus face surrounded by a dark sun scored into the metal with acid. Thick spikes coated with poison jutted from elbow - and knee - cops, and razors tipped the sollerets on the shade’s feet. Both gauntlets bristled with dozens of tiny, barbed hooks meant to bite into the heretics the inquisitor would grapple. No straps or buckles held the armor in place; each piece was anchored to Gwydion’s new metal skeleton.

“The helmet’s the most intricate part,” Gond said, stepping up onto the table. He lifted the bevor, taking care to position the needles over the eyelets he’d driven into the shade’s throat. “To keep it secure, we’ll need to hammer this bit into his mouth. It’s going to make talking kind of tough.”

Cyric leaned forward, mildly engaged by the transformation taking place before him. “As long as he can manage ‘die, heretic’ I’ll be satisfied,” the death god said facetiously.

Your Magnificence, Jergal began, hovering closer to the gruesome throne. There is the matter of the final sentencing…

“More formalities,” Cyric hissed. “All right. Get it over with.”

The seneschal unrolled a long sheet of parchment. Know you, Gwydion, son of Gareth the blacksmith that you have been found guilty of high treason against the rightful lord of Bone Castle and ruler of the City of Strife. You are hereby sentenced to serve said lord for eternity as a holy inquisitor.

“Sentenced?” Gond scoffed. “He should be privileged to wear this armor. I forged it with my own hands!”

“I’m certain he’d thank you if you hadn’t jammed that bit into his mouth,” Cyric murmured. “Now, can we just get this over with? My inquisitor has business to attend to in Zhentil Keep.”

Gond lowered the bevor over Gwydion’s head, guiding the quills into his neck. He anchored the lower half of the helm to the bit in the shade’s mouth then took up the rest of the headpiece. Like the bevor, the upper part of the helm was lined with needles.

The long slivers of metal slipped into Gwydion’s skull, and he felt his consciousness being drawn back into his hulking new body. He tried to resist, but it was as if the needles had opened a maelstrom below him. He spiraled down into a place of absolute darkness. Suddenly, cold metal walls loomed on every side. They closed in, pinning his arms to his side and crippling his legs. A scream died in his throat, impaled on pins of gold.

For a time Gwydion knew nothing but that terrible paralysis. Then a burst of light shattered the darkness around him. He opened his eyes and looked out on Cyric’s throne room.

The shadows from the Burning Men danced along the walls, playing over the trophies hung carelessly about the room. Gwydion could see each individual bone in Cyric’s throne, each perfectly tooled plate of purest silver or bronze on Gond’s clockwork smiths. The Prince of Lies and the Wonderbringer stood before him, a strange look of pride on both their faces, though for very different reasons. For the first time the shade noticed that their human forms were facades, like costumes worn at a fancy dress ball. Power lurked in their unblinking eyes, radiated from them with every subtle movement. Their tangible forms were nothing more than puppets, no more living than carved husks of wood.

Gwydion could smell the gods’ power, like the charge in the air before a violent storm. Other odors washed over him then - the stale blood on Cyric’s blade; the musty, ancient bones, encrusted with bits of grave loam that made up most of the hall’s furnishings; the stench from the burning scribes; and the thin oil from the golems’ gears. His own scent troubled him most. Mixed with the harsh, cold smell of the gold plate armor was an air of decay, of death. They were all a thousand times more subtle, a thousand times more powerful than any scent he’d detected in mortal life.

Gwydion’s other senses began to take in the chamber, too. The bit crammed in his mouth had a vile, bitter taste, like wine just turning to vinegar. He could feel every bolt, every rivet in the armor, as if they’d always been part of his flesh. Each blow from the Wonderbringer’s hammer had left an almost imperceptible mark on the metal, and for a moment Gwydion lost himself in studying each dent. Other sights and sounds and smells flooded in on him: the hiss of Jergal’s cape as the seneschal floated to Cyric’s side; the warmth from the fires surrounding the Burning Men; the distinctive, fetid odor wafting off the Slith as it meandered just beyond the castle walls…

“It’ll take him a bit to get used to the way the helmet boosts what he sees and hears,” Gond said. He tossed a wrench to one of the golems, who snatched it out of the air with surprising agility. “So when do you want me to do the other eight for you?”

“Right away,” Cyric said. “I’ve already chosen shades to power the rest of the armor.”

Gond frowned and dug his fingers into his barbed wire beard. “Hmmm. This takes a lot of my concentration, to do the fitting right, and I’ve got other work to get to back in Concordant.”

“I need these inquisitors right away,” Cyric noted bluntly, then strolled back to his throne. “Mystra has robbed me of magic, and there’s an insidious subversive turning my church in Zhentil Keep against me. That city holds my largest collection of worshipers. If I lose them, I won’t have the power to control the Realm of the Dead.” With sudden fury, he slammed a fist down on the throne. “Do you know what would happen if this place went into revolt and I couldn’t put it down?”

Gond shrugged. “No, and I don’t much care, either. I told you before, Cyric, it doesn’t matter to me what you use the armor for, just so long as it ain’t turned against my faithful. Beyond that -” he patted Gwydion on the shoulder “- I just want the world to see that artifice can outdo magic, given the right smith and a good set of raw materials.”

“Nine clockwork knights will show off your craft better than one,” Cyric replied, ridding himself of his theatrical anger like a snake shedding a dried skin. “Come, Gond. Be reasonable…”

The God of Craft rolled his eyes. “From you that’s almost funny,” he said then held up a beefy hand to stave off the death god’s wrath. “All right. I’ll do them all now.”

At a nod from Gond, the golems hustled to the eight crates lined up at the other end of the hall and began to unpack them with noisy efficiency. The Wonderbringer turned to Gwydion. “Raise your left arm,” he said gruffly.

Though he tried to fight the command, Gwydion felt his body do as the god had ordered. Gond watched the shade’s movement with a practiced eye, walking around him to get a better vantage of the armor’s performance. “If he can understand spoken commands, he’ll be ready to go pretty soon,” the Wonderbringer announced. “You can give him his marching orders anytime you want.”

“You are to destroy all heretics in Zhentil Keep,” Cyric said.

“Not good enough,” Gond noted distractedly, gathering his tools for the next operation. “That kind of command’ll just confuse him.”

“You said he’d do anything I wished,” Cyric rumbled. “Are you telling me now he can’t?”

I believe you need to define your wishes more precisely, Jergal offered. The shade must be told what you mean by heresy.

Cyric paced to Gwydion’s side. “We’ll start with the obvious traitors, then,” the Prince of Lies said. “You will destroy anyone who speaks out against me or my church within the walls of Zhentil Keep.”

“Yeah, that’ll do,” Gond said. He tinkered with a sliding rivet at Gwydion’s hip. “I hope he comes up against a mage first, a really powerful one. Any enchantment a mortal could wield will roll off this plate like rainwater off a tin roof.”

“And the wizardry of an immortal?” Cyric asked. For the first time he seemed genuinely interested in the Wonderbringer’s explanation.

“Never been tested, but the same thing should apply.”

The Lord of the Dead paused and rubbed his pointed chin. “Jergal, I want you to attack the inquisitor. Engulf his arm.”

But, Your Magnificence. All the work-

“Don’t worry. If you harm him I won’t be angry with you.” Cyric leveled a warning finger at Gwydion. “You just stand there. Don’t fight back.”

Jergal swooped up to Gwydion’s outstretched arm, swallowing the limb in the formless darkness that was his body. The seneschal’s cloak seemed to devour the arm completely, then a faint glittering shone from the murk. A voiceless moan filled the hall, and Jergal retreated from the inquisitor. The golden gauntlet and brassard gleamed defiantly, unbreached and untarnished.

“Impressive,” Cyric murmured. “Any normal shade would have been destroyed by that.”

He drew Godsbane and brought the blade hard against the inquisitor’s hand. Sparks shot into the air, metal grinding against metal with a terrible keening sound. But when the Lord of the Dead pulled the short sword away, only the slightest scar marred the gauntlet.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Gond bellowed. “I didn’t build this armor just for you to practice your swordsmanship on it.”

“I needed to see if the armor was immune to all magic,” Cyric murmured. He stared at the inquisitor, discomfort clear on his demonic features.

“That’s what you asked for,” Gond grumbled, “powered armor that’s nonmagical. That’s what you got. Not even Mystra herself could blast this suit - not unless the helmet’s off. If someone gets the helmet off, all bets are canceled.”

Gingerly the God of Craft ran his fingers along the scarred gauntlet. “Look. If you’re worried about him turning against you, don’t. The helmet was designed to make him follow your commands. No one can change the orders you gave him unless they get the thing off his head - and if they do that, it’ll unbalance the suit.” Gond rapped the breastplate with his grimy knuckles. “Then all you’ve got is a very nice set of plate, but nothing that can withstand a sword like yours.”

Cyric nodded vaguely. “So how do I send him on his way?”

“Oh, he’s already gearing up to follow your order,” Gond said. “He should be on his way to the Keep any time now.”

In a way, Gwydion had already left Bone Castle. His mind was focused entirely on the babel of voices he heard in the streets and houses of Zhentil Keep. When anyone mentioned Cyric or his church, the words rang in the inquisitor’s ears. Hundreds of fervent prayers to the Lord of the Dead hummed continuously, punctuated by oaths sworn in Cyric’s name. Church scholars debated the nature of the City of Strife and the denizens that resided there. In hushed tones, mothers warned their children to do as they were told, else the Prince of Lies would steal them away in the night.

The urge to find a heretic lay curled around Gwydion’s heart, a coiled spring pressing him into action. He quickly learned to set aside the prayers of the faithful and the endless scholarly sparring. He focused instead on the mutterings of gin-soaked malcontents and greedy minor clerics. He could almost sense the creeping chill of heresy in their minds. Part of Gwydion, the part controlled by the armor, prayed the heretics would voice their treacherous thoughts. The rest of him railed impotently at the bloody deeds he knew he must commit in Cyric’s name…

In a litter-strewn back alley in the Keep’s slums, someone ridiculed the Prince of Lies, openly challenged his power.

Wires thrummed with power and precisely pitched tuning forks hummed in the inquisitor’s guts. The mechanism tore open the curtain between Hades and the mortal realms. Gwydion took a tentative step forward into the swirling chaos, then another. Soon he was thundering across the heavens like a charging dragon, his natural speed heightened beyond belief by the Wonderbringer’s armor.

The inquisition had begun.

As Fzoul and the other three conspirators conversed softly with their mysterious divine patron, Rinda jotted down the last of her notes on Cyric’s years in Zhentil Keep’s thieves’ guild. She scanned the tight, cramped pages and shook her head. The True Life was a tale of helplessness and desperation, hardly the heroic paean to self-reliance the Prince of Lies had woven for the Cyrinishad.

After being sold to the guild by slavers, Cyric had struggled to earn his freedom through work for the guildmasters; he failed time and again to complete a job flawlessly, dooming himself to a life of servitude. Kindhearted people very much like Rinda herself helped him escape, helped him flee the city that would have ground him beneath its iron-shod heels had he stayed. His pockets bulging with the coins given to him in pity, the young Cyric traveled north on a misguided quest for the Ring of Winter. Had Kelemvor Lyonsbane not rescued him from the frost giants in Thar, the history of Faerun might have been very different indeed…

As you leave here today, be wary of your words and your deeds, the melodious, disembodied voice proclaimed. The words seemed to fill Rinda’s ramshackle home, driving away the bitter cold. Cyric has grown suspicious of treachery within the Keep. He will be watching the city carefully. Without magic he may find it difficult to keep an eye focused on all his servants. But never underestimate him.

“None of us are foolish enough to do that, I trust”

Rinda glanced at Fzoul Chembryl. The flame-haired Zhentarim agent stood statuelike in the room’s center, his arms folded across his black-armored chest. His harsh features had twisted into a grimace at the warning; he knew that the death god’s eyes were upon him at all times. Only the powers of their divine patron made it possible for him to attend these subversive meetings with little fear of discovery.