Трой Деннинг - Prince of Lies

The notion neither frightened the sell-sword nor awed him. From the instant he'd found himself standing in the midst of the teeming throng, a thick shroud of indifference had clouded his thoughts. He moved in a fog, taking in the strange sights and sounds as if they were no more unusual than those to be found in any marketplace in Suzail.

Gwydion understood just enough theology to identify the crowded expanse around him as the Fugue Plain. Long ago, in his days as a Purple Dragon, he'd guarded a diplomatic caravan to Bruenor Battlehammer, dwarven lord of Mithril Hall. A traveling priest of Oghma had bored him witless during the trek north with complicated explanations of the route a soul took on the way to eternal peace. Now, Gwydion would have given almost anything for a lecture on what lay in store for him beyond the Fugue Plain. Turning his back on the worshipers of Milil, the shade tried once more to call on Torm. The words came out as a horrible croak, just as they had each time he'd attempted to pray — to Torm the True or any other god. He couldn't even form the litany in his mind. In vain he fought to remember the prayers, but the words simply vanished from his thoughts before he could focus on them.

One of Milil's bards paused in her song to stare at Gwydion. When the sell-sword met her gaze, she looked away, but not before he noted the terror clouding her eyes.

That fear proved contagious. A softly glowing ember, it flared in Gwydion's mind and burned away the shroud of uncaring still fogging his senses. What if Torm has taken my voice as the price of failure? A chill ran down Gwydion's spine. No, he reminded himself. I was tricked. Some mage — some very powerful illusionist — led me to my doom.

He shrieked and whimpered, but not a single word escaped his lips. The ember of fear burst, showering fragments of panic across his thoughts. He was cursed. Whoever had cast the illusion had stolen part of his soul…

Gwydion felt burning tears well up in his eyes, but when he tried to blink them away, he found he couldn't close his eyelids.

The shades of the Faithful jostled Gwydion as he broke into an aimless run, their souls as tangible as his own strangely physical form. Some prayed more fervently as the gibbering sell-sword shambled by. Others turned their unblinking eyes on the lost soul. They were struck by the sorrow etched on Gwydion's face, but fearful to cease their own murmured prayers to comfort him, lest they, too, be cut off from their gods.

Gwydion stumbled through the milling crowd. The faces blurred before his eyes, and the prayers became a meaningless cacophony. He grabbed a young woman wearing a silver disk of Tymora and shook her roughly. Someone had to lift the curse! In reply to his gurgled plea, the woman knocked Gwydion's legs out from beneath him with a sweep-kick then backed away.

"He looks like one of ours," came an inhuman voice.

"Nah. Just another of them cracked doommasters. Beshaba attracts that sort of trash."

The coarse, profane voices jarred against the sacred prayers, startling Gwydion out of his frenzy. He leaped to his feet and spun around, only to come nose to stomach with the most horrifying creature he'd ever seen. Its head had belonged to a huge wolf at one time, but the rest of its grotesque form had been patched together from a dozen other animals. Striped fur bristled in a mane that ran from between its pointed ears down its hunched ogre's back. Bright red scales plated the rest of the thing's body. It had a pair of human arms ending in hands that were little more than claws. These the creature rubbed together nervously. Four enormous spider legs waved and clutched the air beneath the other arms. Serpentine coils supported the monstrous torso, writhing and twisting beneath its bulk.

"You're cracked, Perdix," the beast said, saliva drooling from his wolfish jaws. "This one's for the city. It's obvious! Look at his face. He's been crying."

Perdix folded his leathery wings and hopped closer to Gwydion on a pair of skinny legs that bent backward at the knees. Rubbery yellow skin covered his body, which was as thin and wasted as that of a drought-starved child. With the single blue eye in the center of his wide face, Perdix looked up at Gwydion. "Well?" he asked impatiently, thin tongue flickering over gleaming white teeth. "Get praying, slug."

Frantically Gwydion tried to shove the little creature out of the way, but two sets of spider legs closed around his chest and pulled him backward. The wolf-headed thing glowered down at the sell-sword and placed clawed hands to either side of his head. "You heard Perdix," he hissed. "Let's hear your best holy day shout."

As before, a pitiful croak escaped Gwydion's lips when he tried to call on Torm.

Perdix shook his head. "For once you're right, Af. I was certain he was a doommaster. They're always getting into rows with Tymora's lot." He held out a set of night-black manacles. The iron rings clicked open, revealing sharp spikes pointed inward. "Now let's not have any trouble from you, slug."

One glance at the shades nearby told Gwydion he was alone in this. The others had turned their backs on him, leaving him to his two hideous captors. The Faithful close by formed a wide circle. They had their faces turned to the sky, their hands clenched together in white-knuckled devotion or crossed devoutly over their unbeating hearts.

Gwydion cursed them wordlessly and struggled against Af's implacable grip. His panic had subsided to a slow-burning dread, allowing him to think a bit more clearly. The endless hours of drill on Suzail's parade grounds came back to him then, his training in hand-to-hand combat. He laced his fingers together and pounded Af in the jaw. At the same time, he drove both heels down on the creature's snaking coils.

Af growled in annoyance at the blows, but silently reminded himself there would be trouble if he twisted the prisoner's head off. Instead, the denizen bit down on Gwydion's hands as he raised them to strike again, clamping his jaws just hard enough to pierce the flesh.

In that instant, Gwydion realized the giant's axe hadn't liberated him from pain.

"Tsk. Isn't that always the way?" Perdix sighed. "No matter what I say, you slugs try to fight anyway." He hopped high off the ground and clamped the manacles onto Gwydion's wrists.

As the iron rings clanked shut, their spiked interiors bit into flesh. Then, as if the taste of the shade's essence had suddenly woken them from rusting slumber, the spikes twitched to life and burrowed deeper still. They dug into bones, twisted sharply, and shot straight up Gwydion's arms. Blinded by the pain, the shade screamed a long, yowling wail of agony.

For the first time since Gwydion's arrival on the Fugue Plain, the sounds from his throat rang clear and true.

* * * * *

When the haze of pain cleared from his eyes, Gwydion found himself in a noisy crowd gathered outside a great walled necropolis. His whole body ached terribly, but the manacle spikes seemed to have stopped driving into his arms. Af had a clawed hand clamped on one of Gwydion's elbows. Perdix held the other in cool, webbed fingers. A charnel house stench hung over everything. Gwydion found tears streaking down his cheeks, not from the pain in his wrists, but from the choking smell of death and decay seeping into his nose and mouth.

The gates towering before him would have dwarfed Thrym or any other giant in Faerun. Dark and foreboding, they reached up into a sky swirling with red mist. To either side, past the hulking gatehouses, high, pale walls stretched to the horizon. He was too far away to be certain, but Gwydion thought the walls were moving. It was almost as if each brick were shifting constantly, writhing as though it were alive.

All around the sell-sword, the crowd of whimpering, bawling shades pushed closer to him. Each had been bound at the wrists by manacles, and, like a reluctant steer before a slaughterhouse, every damned soul was herded along by a pair of monstrous denizens. The creatures were kin to Perdix and Af, but only in their sheer grotesqueness. They'd been formed by insane mixings of animals and men, plants, or even gems and metals. They flew, slithered, and crawled along, prodding their prisoners with suckered fingers or jabbing them with sharp spines.