Victor Milan - War in Tethyr

The tunnel mouth opened twenty feet above the floor of a vast torch-lit chamber. The black galley bobbed gently alongside a mossy stone pier, tied fore and aft to protrusions that might once have been winged statues, but had long since worn to amorphousness — an indication of their age, securely hidden as they were from the erosive forces of wind and weather. The black square-rigged sail hung limp from the yardarm, but there was no mistaking the stylized black nail and Z rune against a white circle — the emblem of the Zhentarim.

Simonne's breath caught in her throat. There was also no mistaking the identities of the men busy herding a coffle of weeping, stumbling children up the gangplank and into the slave ship.

All wore the pure-white robes of the priests of Ao.

Angry murmuring and clatter awoke Zaranda from a fitful but blessedly dreamless sleep. She rose from the bed, feeling as she did so an internal blow to the heart: this is my last morning. She sought to pass the shock off with a joke, murmuring, "Need they make such racket raising the wheel of justice?" as she shuffled to the window.

Dawn was turning an overcast sky the color of sour milk. Down on the plaza men fought. Some wore the bronze armor of Hardisty's civic guard. Against them strove men in tradesman's garb, with here and there a black-shelled city policeman among them.

Zaranda blinked and dabbed at sleepy eyes. When she looked again, the scene was the same. She marked dark, unmoving shapes strewn liberally across the plaza's sandstone flagging. Some only approximated the human form, not all of them closely. Raising her eyes, she saw pillars of smoke upholding the clouds.

She sat sideways on the sill and watched. The battle flowed off the plaza and out of her field of view. Which side was winning, she couldn't tell, if indeed either was. Occasional armed bands hurried across the plaza, looking apprehensively over their shoulders. Now and again Zaranda saw a roil of activity away up one of the streets radiating from the central square.

Try as she might, she could make no sense of what was happening. She gave it every effort: better than contemplating the way her life would end a few hours hence…

The sound of three door bolts being shot back sent her heart into her throat. She gasped. Then she set her jaw, rose, and faced the door with chin high and shoulders squared.

The door opened. Duke Hembreon came in. He wore plate armor that had once been enameled blue with fastidious white trim. Now it was blood-splashed and fire-blackened. His head was bare; blood from a wound stained pink the hair on the right side of his head. In one steel-gauntleted hand, he carried a broadsword with a notched, gore-crusted blade.

"Good morrow, Your Grace," Zaranda said. "Has the council grown too impatient to wait for noon?"

The old nobleman staggered across the floor and sat down with a thump and a clangor. He grounded his sword tip on the floor and leaned on the hilt as if the chair didn't offer support enough to keep him upright.

"The council is no more," he said. "Zaranda Star, I owe you a mighty apology."

She cocked an eyebrow and crossed her arms. "Is that so? Well, Your Grace, I have been expropriated, pursued, persecuted, kidnapped, tortured, slandered, and sentenced to agonizing death. With all due respect, you'll have to do better than that."

He glared at her. Slowly the fires of anger died from his blue eyes, and his great head drooped.

"You are right, Countess Morninggold. More right than you know, for I must crave a boon of you."

"A boon?" She laughed. "Start talking, Your Grace."

"Where ought I to begin? Last night a party of armed citizens surprised a Zhentarim slave galley taking on a shipment of kidnapped Zazesspurian children in a cavern beneath the city. Supervising the vile deed were men wearing the robes of Ao's supposed priesthood."

"So Ao hasn't decided to take an active interest in the affairs of this plane after all."

The survivors confessed they were in fact priests of Cyric."

Zaranda sucked in a sharp breath. That's in character, I suppose. That upstart god loves deception for its own sake." The greatest evil deity currently known in the Realms, Cyric had been born during the Time of Troubles, even as Bhaal, Myrkul, and Bane, whose portfolios he had usurped, were destroyed.

"And Armenides-?"

The duke held up a hand. "In hiding. But more of that anon. Pray let me tell my tale in order. It is painful enough."

Zaranda gestured him to proceed.

"Scarcely had word of the discovery reached the council's ears than a frightful thing came to pass. Those children of our most prominent citizens who had joined the All-Friends rose up and began to slaughter their parents. Deymos, Baron Zam, and the Lady Koran are known dead at their offsprings' hands; Hafzul Gorbon stove in his only daughter's head with a mace as she stood over her mother's corpse with dripping blade, then lay down beside his wife and slit his own throat. Others-" He shook his head.

"Gods! Tatrina?"

He sighed. "She has vanished into the Palace of Governance, wherein Hardisty has crowned himself king and declared her his consort. At least I dare hope she has not been… affected."

"I hope so as well. But why do citizens and constables battle blue-and-bronzes in the streets?"

"An hour before dawn, even as the last of the murderous youths and maidens were being subdued, dark-lings poured forth from the sewers in unimaginable profusion and began to slay. The civic guard got orders not to fight them. Many deserted; others tried to disarm citizens and constabulary and became embroiled in the fighting you saw. A number are fortified up with the usurper Hardisty. Most have barricaded themselves in their barracks and wait to see which way fortune's winds blow."

He shook his head, like an old lion who has found temporary shelter from a pack of hounds who have harried him near death. "The hinges are blasted off the gates of all the hells. Earl Ravenak's swine rampage against nonhumans and foreigners. Artisans battle the syndics of their very guilds. The supposed forces of order fight one another. The scions of Zazesspur's finest families are turned to monsters by some means none can divine, have slaughtered the leaders of our city and been slaughtered in their turn. And all must be over-thrown if the darklings are not stopped."

He raised his head as if he had a tombstone yoked to his neck and looked at Zaranda. "It seems we are to know the Ten Black Days of Eleint again, all compressed into a single day."

She went to the stool, sat down, and began to massage her temples. "So," she said. " The evil ran deeper I than I imagined… than I could have imagined." She looked up at the duke. "What do you want of me?"

"I have myself just come from fighting the darklings. We are sorely pressed. The issue-the very survival of Zazesspur-remains in the gravest doubt."

"You want my help."

"I beseech your help, Countess Morninggold. Though I fear that all the help you can possibly provide might not suffice to stem the evil tide."

She spread her hands. "I'd love to oblige, Your Grace, but I have an appointment to be spread out on a giant wheel and have all my bones broken in a few hours."

Hembreon moaned. "You are pardoned. Your sentence of death is overturned and rendered null. We were deceived."

"Has the council voted to nullify my sentence? You said yourself that most were unaccounted for."

With surprising alacrity the duke whipped up his sword. "Whoever tries to gainsay me, I will strike down with my own hand. I warrant your life with my own. This I swear on my honor."

"Very well." Zaranda nodded briskly. Turning to the table, she took up pen and parchment. "Send a patrol to convey this message beneath a flag of truce to my friends. Needless to say, you must also alert such forces as remain loyal to the council that we're on the same side now."