Crucible: The Trial of Cyric the Mad (24 page)

“Shortly before I died.” The rodent in the mirror smirked, for Nadisu could see Kelemvor’s interest, and he planned to use that interest to good advantage. “He possessed my body. Then he said, Telling the truth is good for the soul.’ He made me beat poor Pandara and tell her how I had murdered her father and say that I had never loved her.”

“And that last was a lie, was it not?” Jergal sneered.

Nadisu nodded. “Pandara was a silly woman, but she was also the mother of my children. Over the years, it seemed the softer I grew, the more I loved her. I would have killed myself before telling her I didn’t love her.”

“You would have done better to kill yourself before you killed her father,” said Kelemvor. “What did Cyric do then?”

“He left me,” Nadisu answered. “I fell deathly ill, and Lady Yanseldara herself suggested a party to celebrate the Rites.”

“And Adon came to endorse them!”

“Yes. The instant he touched me, Cyric possessed me again.”

“What magic did he use against Adon?”

In the mirror, Nadisu’s rattish eyes gleamed with cunning. “It would be helpful if I remembered, would it not?”

“I have warned you about trying to bargain with me.”

Then why should I answer?” Though Nadisu’s voice caught with fear, he looked Kelemvor in the eye and did not waver. “I will not ask much, and more on my wife’s behalf than my own.”

Kelemvor could not bear this insolence. “Jergal! Tell me what happened!”

“As you wish, Lord Death-but would you care to look in the mirror first?”

Kelemvor scowled and turned to look, and then he voiced such a gasp that all the vultures in Faerun cried out at once. His reflection was covered head to foot in pitch, so that only his eyes and the great emerald on his belt clasp showed through. Lord Death recognized this image as the mark of a grafter, for he had lived many years in the kingdom of Cormyr, where it was custom to punish those who abused their office by painting them in tar.

“What is this?” Kelemvor demanded of Jergal. “You said whatever a god does is perfect!”

“And you said if I was right, you would not be the latest of many death gods,” Jergal replied. “This is your own doing. You have made the rules by which you perform your office, and now you must decide whether to abide by them or break them.”

“But I must know how this spirit died.” Kelemvor pointed at Nadisu’s reflection. “It is necessary for a proper judgment.”

“Yes, but there is no need to tell Mystra what you learn,” replied Jergal. “That would be violating the privacy of Nadisu’s death, and you are the one who declared the dead deserve the secrecy of their graves. If you change your mind now, it is only because of your fondness for Mystra and her patriarch.”

“What if I said he could tell Mystra?” Nadisu’s voice was smooth and sly.

Kelemvor glared at the spirit. “In exchange for leniency?”

Nadisu smiled, thinking he had won Kelemvor’s accord. “In exchange for a little forbearance and for keeping secret the true nature of my life. If my reputation is ruined, the high houses of Elversult will shun Pandara. She does not deserve that-not after the things Cyric made me say to her.”

Kelemvor stared at Nadisu for a long time, then said, “I suppose a murderer and spy must have such nerve, but it will do you no good here.”

Nadisu’s eyes grew round. “You do not care about Adon?”

“I care. But if I am going to ignore my duty as God of Death, it will not be to spare you.” Kelemvor looked to Jergal. “How did this man die?”

Jergal’s yellow eyes swung back to Nadisu. “Cyric possessed his body again, then grabbed Adon and locked gazes with him. The patriarch tried to defend himself by smashing Nadisu’s head.”

“And what magic did Cyric use against Adon?”

“You are sure you want to know?”

Kelemvor glanced at the mirror and saw his eyes held open by sickles of ice. He knew this to be the mark of a traitor to duty, for in the cold land of Vaasa, such men were tied out in raging blizzards with their eyelids cut away.

“I want to know,” Kelemvor said.

“Nothing,” said Jergal. “Cyric used no magic at all. He only opened his soul and allowed the patriarch to look inside.”

“And Adon saw Mystra through Cyric’s eyes!” Kelemvor continued to stare at himself in the mirror.

“Yes, that is what drove him mad,” said Jergal. “Adon’s faith is remarkable, but it is no match for the mind of a god.”

Kelemvor turned away and started out the anteroom door.

Jergal drifted after him. “Lord Death, where are you going?”

“Into the city,” Kelemvor said. “A walk will help me think.”

Jergal floated along at Lord Death’s side, his disembodied glove dragging Nadisu across the floor. “And what of Nadisu?”

Kelemvor paused to look down at the False spirit, who had learned better than to beg for mercy.

“Nadisu Bhaskar, know that your reputation in Elversult will remain unblemished, for I have said that the secrets of the dead are their own. But you have lived a wicked life and a False one, and for that you shall suffer.” Kelemvor pointed at the lice-covered rodent in the mirror. “What you see shall be your punishment. As long as any coin you ever gave in deceit is counted as money anywhere in Faerun, you shall wander the streets of my city in that form.”

Twenty-Two

If the Storm Horns are not the highest and coldest mountains in the world, then I do not know what mountains are. They are nothing but jagged granite teeth a thousand feet high, with no tree taller than a fire giant and a cold wind that blows down from the barren heights at every hour of the day and night. Yet barbarians will live anywhere, and some of them lived in a little village that straddled a treacherous goat path they stupidly called the High Road. In the heart of this village stood a small citadel, and by the starburst and skull discreetly carved in the top of the gatehouse arch, I knew this to be a temple of the One.

Despite my hunger and fatigue, I was reluctant to pound the gate. From inside the castle came a terrible wailing, and the air near the walls reeked of death; this could have been on account of the fresh kill Halah had snatched as we passed through the village, yet the underscent of decay and mustiness suggested otherwise. But even this was not as disturbing as the green fly roaring over the citadel; the thing was as large as an elephant, with black legs longer than spears and eyes as big as wagon wheels. This was not the sort of pet True Believers usually kept in their temples-at least not in civilized lands - and I found it difficult to believe what I saw.

I considered riding on. Certainly Halah was capable; she had already galloped a distance greater than the breadth of Calimshan, and still she was as fresh as the minute she burst from the stock shed. It was I who needed rest. The witch had been hounding my trail since her windstorm knocked me from my mount, and this was the first time I had stopped without spying her somewhere on the distant horizon. Whether she and her companion had finally ridden their hippogriff to death or merely stopped to rest, I did not know-but it hardly mattered. Even with the One’s heart slushing in my chest, two solid days of riding had left me so weary that I had twice fallen off my horse. Only Tyr’s protection had saved me from smashing my skull.

Halah tore a leg off her kill’s carcass and began to gnaw at the thighbone, trying to get at the bone marrow. I turned away from the gruesome sight and studied my backtrail, as I had grown accustomed to doing. The River Tun snaked along the base of the mountains, as brown and murky as the plain beyond, and in the distance the sky was as blue as steel. When I still saw none of the brushfires or tornadoes or raging floods that always seemed to accompany the witch, I leaned over to knock on the gate.

The portal swung open before my hand touched it. An old priest in the silver skull-bracers of a True Believer peered out at me. His eyes were as vacant as a ruin, his flesh as gray and fixed as clay. If he noticed the flies swarming his ears and eyes and nostrils, he did not disturb them by twitching or blinking-nor even, so far as I could tell, by breathing upon them.

“Yes?”

“I am on a mission for the One and All.” I had to shout to make myself heard above the roaring of the great fly above. “I need food and shelter and perhaps protection from my enemies.”

He glanced at the bloody mess my horse had laid before the gate, then back at me. “Can you pay?”

“No, but you will if you refuse me.”

I kicked Halah, and she grabbed her meal and pushed through the opening. The gatekeeper stumbled back with the stiff-legged gait of a sleepwalker, and it was then I saw I had been talking to a corpse. This did not amaze me much; it seemed but one more novelty of my draining journey through barbarian lands.

I dismounted. “What happened to you, old man?”

He shrugged the shrug of the weary, then glanced up at the great fly. “The Troubles,” he said, as though that explained why he was not in the grave. He closed the gate and lowered the drawbar, then turned back to me. “Ours has been pestilence.”

I glanced around the courtyard and noted how empty and unkempt it seemed, with flies swarming in the corners and crickets as large as cats chirping on the warm cobblestones. Though I was much amazed by what I saw, I had no wish to appear naive. And in any case, I was too weary to ask questions.

“I trust you can feed me.”

The priest pointed toward a pair of rats fighting in an open doorway. “They are serving lunch, if you care to risk it.”

“It is no risk for me,” I answered, wondering what the old man was talking about. I passed Halah’s reins to him. “See to it that she’s combed and rubbed down. Feed her two goats and whatever else she wants, and let no children you like near her.”

The walking corpse took the reins and started toward the stable, and he made no further mention of payment. His dead face did not betray whether this was because of my bearing or another reason; I only knew that my sacred pilgrimage and the god’s heart slushing blood through my veins made me the most important person in the entire Faith. Now I understood how the Caliph’s son felt when he rode his prancing stallion through the City of Brilliance, and why he did this so often. I crossed the courtyard and kicked the rats from the rectory doorway and went inside.

The room was customarily dim, lit only by a four-candled candelabra suspended beneath a vaulted ceiling. The air smelled of ale and meat, and in the center of the chamber sat a dozen murky figures, spread along a table that could have held three times their number. They made no sound except to smack their lips and clatter their mugs, and if any of them raised his eyes to see who stood in the doorway, I failed to notice.

I took a seat near the middle of the table. Seeing that none of my companions knew the use of silverware, I used my fingers to put a slice of musty-smelling meat upon a slab of stony bread and began to eat. The food was as foul as the company, but to one who had tasted only the dust of the road for two days, anything was delicious. I devoured the barbarous fare as though it were a honeyed partridge and helped myself to more.

As I began to sate my appetite, my thirst demanded its own attention. Seeing no empty mugs upon the table, I said to the figure across the table, “I have nothing to drink from.”

A woman with hair as coarse as straw pushed her head close enough to scowl at me. “What you want me to do about it?”

I looked back at her. “Get me something.” When she did not rise, I added, “I am on a mission for the One and All.”

Her scowl deepened. Then she seemed to sense the One’s presence in me, and her brow rose. She stood and went into a dark corner and returned with a wooden mug, which she filled from the pitcher on the table. The ale was sour and gritty with the dust she neglected to rinse from the cup, but after two days of drinking only my waterskin’s foul contents, it was as refreshing as the elixir of life-and all the sweeter for having been poured by someone else.

I helped myself to a third serving of food, less to assuage my hunger than to enjoy my newfound prestige, and that is when something thumped onto the table.

“Pass some dog.”

The airy voice startled the woman and all the other murky diners from their seats, and I looked down the table to see a circlet of yellow orbs glimmering in the candlelight. The globes were each the size of a man’s eye, and they all sparkled like diamonds and swiveled in their sockets.

“Dog?” I asked. Behind the glittering eyes, I saw dimly eight hairy legs and a bulbous shape as large as Halah’s rump. I glanced at the greasy meat on my bread. “This?”

“Do you expect me to eat rat?”

“Of course not.” I carried the platter down the table and set the entire thing before the spider. I also slid a mug of ale over in front of it, then stooped down to peer into its eyes. “Is that you, Mighty One?”

“Congratulations, Malik.” Now the spider spoke in the thousand voices of the One. “You shall soon be a father.”

“What?”

“A father, Malik!” The spider curled one of its legs into a hoop, then used another to make a lewd gesture inside the circle. “You do know how a man becomes a father, do not you?”

“A father!” I dropped onto the bench. “But how? I have not seen my wife in … No! Say it is not so!”

“There has been a miracle.” The spider hissed and chuckled. “Your wife claims you have been visiting her in her dreams.”

My fist slammed into the table with such force that only Tyr’s protection kept my hand from breaking.

“Really, Malik,” said the One. “I would think you would be overjoyed. I suppose you want a son? I can arrange that-he might even look like you.”

With that, the spider plunged its fangs into the platter of meat and began to slurp out the juice, and I laid my head in my hands and started to groan. What would my friends think? They were a cynical and suspicious lot, and they would never accept the miracle of my wife’s pregnancy. No doubt, they were already calling me a cuckold and making little horns by their head when they mentioned my name.

“Stop sniveling, Malik,” hissed the One. “What reason do you have to complain? Has Mystra been despoiling your temples?”