Crucible: The Trial of Cyric the Mad (21 page)

Adon had taken part in a hundred such Rites over the last few years, but something in House Bhaskar made him uneasy. It could have been Pandara Bhaskar herself, who was not sitting with her dying husband like a good wife, but was hanging on Adon’s arm and showing him off to her distinguished guests. There were more than a hundred of these, including Lady Lord Yanseldara and her good friend Vaerana Hawklyn, Prince Tang, Thunsroon Frostbryn, and a dozen others who had contributed most generously to the building of Elversult’s new temple to Mystra.

So that all these guests could witness the moment of death, poor Nadisu’s bed had been moved down to the banquet hall and placed on a dais, where he would be visible above the throng of musicians and dancing girls and acrobats and jugglers hired to keep the celebration lively. Nor would the guests go hungry waiting for Nadisu to die; the food piled on the feasting tables could have fed the poor of Elversult for a week-though of course Pandara had not invited a single beggar to the ceremony. Her husband had done so much for the poor in life, she had explained to Adon, that he deserved to die in dignity. The leftovers would be taken to the shanty quarter and given to the hungry.

It may have been the opulence of the celebration that made Adon uneasy, for he sensed none of the melancholy normal at even the most joyous Rites. Or it may have been only the itch beneath his star ring, a simple gold band set with an unpolished diamond. Mystra had given it to him to guard against Cyric’s Faithful, who were always trying to win the One’s favor by slaying the patriarch. Whenever an assassin came near, the diamond would sparkle like a bright star and the band would grow hot. But the ring had never itched; Adon did not know if this was a warning, or only an irritation such as men get beneath their rings.

Pandara pulled Adon over to a crowd gathered around a pair of scarf dancers, then stopped next to a guest in a gossamer robe. Of voluptuous proportions and sultry beauty, the woman looked the patriarch over and smiled. His ring finger began to itch more noticeably.

“Adon, may I present Usreena Juepara,” said Pandara. “I believe she is … an admirer of your goddess.”

“An acolyte, even.” Usreena presented her hand for Adon to kiss. “Which is not to claim I am one of her favored.”

“A pleasure.” Adon bowed to Usreena, but did not take her hand. “You must visit the temple soon. It’s nearly completed. Now, if you will excuse me, I must go to Nadisu. After all, this celebration is in his honor.”

With that, Adon started toward the front of the hall. Pandara clutched his arm and dragged herself along behind. “Really, patriarch! Do you know who that was?” “I know what she was,” Adon replied. He stopped and faced Pandara, and brought his mouth close to her ear. “And I must say that I am concerned about your husband’s Rites. You have invited far too many people like Usreena.”

Pandara pulled back. “What do you mean by that, patriarch?”

So shrill was her demand that nearby guests turned to stare. Among them were several people who had made large donations to Mystra’s new temple, but Adon could not shrink from the truth.

“Something feels wrong here, Pandara.” He fingered his star ring as he spoke. “The Rites of Joy honor the dying. They are not intended to impress one’s friends.”

Pandara’s eyes narrowed. “How dare you! I am aware of how much Nadisu gave to build Mystra’s temple, even if you are not.”

“I am-which is why I must be honest with you.” The whole banquet hall had fallen silent, and all eyes-except Nadisu’s, of course-were turned toward Adon and Pandara. “The Rites of Joy are bestowed by Kelemvor and Mystra on those they deem worthy. I have no influence in the matter.”

Pandara glanced around the room, then her face grew stormy. “What are you saying? You want more money for your temple?”

Adon shook his head. “Not at all. It would make no difference.” He grasped Pandara’s hands and spoke in his most comforting voice. “I am trying to tell you that something feels wrong. I’m receiving a sign. The opulence of the celebration may have offended Kelemvor, or Mystra may be reluctant to grant so many wishes. It might even be that Nadisu’s time hasn’t come yet Perhaps he will recover as suddenly as he fell ill.”

Pandara jerked her hands free. “Don’t be ridiculous! Of course Nadisu will die! His face is as green as mold, and the circles beneath his eyes are as dark as a crow’s belly.”

Adon raised his brow. “You almost seem eager.”

“And why shouldn’t I be?”

Pandara’s voice carried no love in it, and in a strange way, this relieved Adon as much as it stunned him. Perhaps her selfishness had caused his unease; it certainly would not be the first time a good person had married a wicked one.

“Nadisu will be happier in the afterlife, won’t he?” Pandara asked. “Isn’t that the point of the Rites?”

The Rites don’t do anything,” Adon explained again. They’re only a sign-“

A ghastly wheeze sounded from the throne, followed by a sputtering groan. Nadisu sat up and gazed around the chamber in confusion. His head was the color of a green melon and as round as the moon, while his eyes were as dark and sunken as wells.

“Pan … dara!” he gasped. His dry lips cracked and bled. “Come … to … me!”

Nadisu dropped back and let out a long strangled gurgle.

Adon took Pandara’s arm and started toward the dais, but the woman pulled free and shook her head.

“No-you go.” The fear in her eyes was the first emotion she had shown concerning her husband. “I don’t want to see him … like that, I mean.”

“But he asked for you. It could be the last-“

“I don’t want to!” Pandara covered her face and turned away, leaving Adon to frown at her back.

Yanseldara came to the patriarch’s side. “I think the time has come. You should go to Nadisu.”

Adon barely heard the lady lord, for his thoughts were completely absorbed by Pandara’s strange behavior. Even if she felt nothing for her husband, she would want to keep up appearances.

“Pandara, what is it?” Adon asked. “Are you frightened of your husband?”

Pandara found the courage to turn around, and now she was crying. “No, of course not. I just don’t …” She paused to glance at the dignitaries watching her, then wiped the tears from her eyes. “I don’t want Nadisu to remember me like this.”

Adon scowled at the lie; whatever the woman was hiding, it made his finger itch more than ever.

A long gasping rattle sounded from the bed, then a smiling servant girl came to the edge of the dais. “It’s happening!”

Yanseldara took Adon’s arm. “Shouldn’t you go to him?”

Adon shook his head. “I don’t think it will happen. Pandara’s keeping something from us.”

Yanseldara leaned close to Adon’s ear, at the same time pulling him toward the dais. “Pandara’s half-crazy,” the lady lord whispered. “She lives in the Towers of the Moon as often as not, but Nadisu has never complained. And he has done more to feed the poor than any man in the city. I would consider it a personal favor for you to be at his side when he dies.” “As you wish,” Adon sighed. “It will do no harm for me to be there, as long as you remember that no one can buy-” Thank you, Adon.” Yanseldara released his arm. Given that Yanseldara’s word was law in this city, and that she had personally given him the land for Mystra’s temple, Adon could only hope the lady lord would not hold it against him if Kelemvor and Mystra withheld the Rites. He climbed the stairs and went to the dying man’s side, acutely aware of all the eager eyes on his back. A terrible stench hung in the air, and the sheets were smeared with vile fluids seeped from the pores of Nadisu’s bloated body. The dying man’s fingertips had turned black and fallen off. The patriarch could not imagine what illness had seized the poor man, for the fellow had been as healthy as a horse just that morning.

Nadisu’s eyelids fluttered open, but his eyes seemed only two dark holes. He raised his puffy hand. “Pandara?”

Adon sat on the edge of the bed and grasped the hand. Nadisu’s skin felt scaly to the touch, but the flesh beneath was spongy and soft. “No, Nadisu. It’s Adon.”

“Adon?” Nadisu clutched the patriarch’s hand and pulled himself upright, then turned his gaze toward the coffered ceiling. “Forgive me, my lord! Forgive my faithless heart!”

An astonished murmur rustled through the banquet hall. Pandara let out a little cry and sank into a chair, but no one paid her any attention. Everyone in the room, entertainer and servant and dignitary alike, kept her eyes fixed on the dais, and Adon’s star ring grew hot. He tried to pull his hand free and failed, for Nadisu’s grasp had grown strong as an ogre’s. The diamond began to shine with its warning light, and shafts of silvery light shot up between Nadisu’s fingers to dance across the ceiling.

Someone cried, “Look! The Rites!”

A hush fell over the hall as Pandara’s guests made their little wishes, but Adon knew he was in trouble. His ring had grown so hot that he felt it scorching his flesh. He slammed his free hand into Nadisu’s head.

“Hey!” someone yelled. “Is that part of the Rites?”

Nadisu’s grasp remained as tight as before, and his gaze shifted to Adon’s face. “Cyric, the One, the All! Take me back!”

Though Nadisu spoke in a thousand voices at once, they were hardly a whisper, so soft that of all the people in the room, only Adon heard what was said. The patriarch reached across his body and awkwardly pulled his mace from its sling.

“What’s he doing?” someone cried.

Nadisu’s sunken eyes bulged from their sockets. They were as black as a grave and a thousand times as deep. As Adon looked into them, an inky darkness welled up from their depths to swallow him.

“Stop him!” someone yelled.

Adon swung his mace and felt it sink deep into Nadisu’s bloated head. Then the gold of his star ring grew so hot it scorched the skin of his finger.

He cried out for his goddess. “Mystra!”

Mystra? Adon heard the word inside his own head, and the voice was sharp and hissing and cruel, one that he recognized from more than a decade before. As you command, old friend-but I warn you, she has changed. My, how she has changed!

The voice was Cyric’s, of course. No sooner had he spoken than Mystra emerged from the darkness and rushed Adon, her long black tresses swirling behind her as foul and acrid as smoke. She wore a thin black dress that clung to her haggard body like wet silk. Her cheekbones jutted through the leathery skin of her face, while her lipless mouth gaped open to expose two rows of blood-crusted fangs. The hatred in her eyes licked out of her pupils in long writhing tongues, and when she reached for her patriarch, it was with gore-dripping talons.

Adon screamed and flung his arms up before his eyes, for he had seen Mystra’s true face. Now he recognized her for the murdering trollop she was. She meant to slay him, as she slew all those who learned her secret, and to wipe even the memory of his existence from the face of Faerun.

He stumbled back and fell off the dais, his head striking the floor with a sharp crack that silenced the entire chamber.

Now you see her as I do, chuckled Cyric. Not so pretty, is she?

Adon did not hear the One’s words, for he lay on the marble floor, curled into a tiny ball and clutching his bloody mace. The star ring had reduced his finger to a charred stump and fallen off somewhere, and his gaze was fixed far beyond the walls of House Bhaskar. He kept asking, “Why does she hate me? Why?” He did not notice the arm he had broken in his fall, or Vaerana Hawklyn pushing through the crowd to his side.

“By Torm!” She plucked the bloody mace from his hands. “He’s lost his mind!”

Eighteen

The trail of the hell horse-for so Ruha had come to think of the beast she was tracking-ran into the Wood of Sharp Teeth as straight as an arrow. Even from the edge of the forest, she could see a hundred paces down the tunnel it had torn through the underbrush, and there was not a single turn in that whole distance. The horse always ran straight eastward, never veering more than a step or two off course.

Ruha turned away from the wood and went to stand beside her companion, a tall and handsome hippogriff rider named Zale. He was kneeling some distance back from the forest, in a crimson circle where the hell horse had made a kill. It had devoured its prey almost entirely, leaving behind only ten long claws, a pair of sharp fangs, and the blood on the ground.

“How long ago?” she asked, not stepping into the red circle.

“Six hours, at least.” Zale crumbled a clot of crimson dirt between his fingers. “This can’t be our man. We’re riding a hippogriff. No one could be this far ahead of us.”

“It is him.”

Ruha fingered her Harper’s pin, which now adorned the breast of her extra aba. After being drawn to the stock shed by a scout’s signal fire, she had pulled the brooch from a pile of bloody goat dung and sworn vengeance, both for the disrespect shown to the Harp and the Moon, and for the death of the old man lying trampled in the farmyard. The witch and Zale had started after the hell horse at once, but the beast was so swift they had not even glimpsed it yet.

From the depths of the forest came a long howl, as ghostly as it was chilling. Ruha looked back toward the murky trail, then at Zale’s hippogriff. The beast sat upon the ground in a pose of great nobility, massive wings folded against the flanks of its horselike body, huge eagle’s head held high and proud.

“Can Silvercloud fly through the forest?” Ruha asked. “It looks too tangled.”

“We’ll have to go over and drop down to check the trail whenever there’s a clearing.” Zale glanced toward the west, where the sun was sinking behind the thunderheads that had been creeping behind them all day. “But we can’t do it tonight. Silvercloud’s exhausted, and if that storm catches us over the forest, we’ll be in big trouble.”

Ruha scowled, though Zale could not see it behind her dark veil. “If we wait, we will never catch that murderer. Already, he is pulling ahead.”

“I know,” said Zale. “And I want to catch him too-but not if it costs me Silvercloud. Capturing that little beggar won’t bring back Rinda and Gwydion, or the man at the farm.”

At this, a flash of sheet lightning erupted inside the distant storm, and a clap of thunder pealed across the sky, shaking the ground beneath their feet. Silvercloud screeched and spread his great wings and flattened himself against the grass. The glare he fixed on Zale made clear what hippogriffs thought about weathering storms in the open.