Трой Деннинг - Prince of Lies

"In here, slug," Perdix said, his rasping voice lowered to a respectful whisper.

The room beyond the ghastly entry hall was large, but sparsely furnished. A podium stood in the center, a wide ribbon of parchment hanging from its top and curling down its single leg. To its right sat a bulky chair. The ancient throne had been weirdly beautiful long ago, with scrollwork carved in hypnotic patterns over much of the night-black wood. In recent years, some vandal had chipped away at the arms and legs with a blade. Rubies had once formed a circle on the back that would appear as a crystalline halo to anyone looking at the man seated there. Half the gems were missing now, the crimson circle broken and ragged.

Light bleeding in through the room's stained glass windows painted everything the brown of dried blood. Thousands of skulls lined the walls, their mouths open in perpetual, silent screams. Thick rolls of parchment had been stuffed into each maw. Spider webs hung from the skulls like banners in a dining hall, and tiny white eyes peered out from between the decaying skulls in every part of the room. Somehow Gwydion knew these weren't rats, but something far more malevolent.

The denizens brought their captive to the podium and forced him to his knees. Af and Perdix followed suit, prostrating themselves as much as their twisted forms would allow.

No sooner had the creatures touched their foreheads to the floor than the seneschal ofBoneCastleappeared at the podium. The monstrous scribe's smooth, gray face held no features other than a pair of bulging yellow eyes. His body was nothing more than a shadow-filled cloak, which rose and fell upon a wind Gwydion could not feel. With white gloves supported by unseen arms and hands, the creature produced a quill pen and positioned it steadily over the scrolled parchment.

From every corner of the library, every skull and roll of parchment, cockroaches skittered into the light. The insects dropped to the floor with a patter like a hard autumn rain. Large and small, black and brown and white as bone they scrambled toward the empty chair. Gwydion felt the roaches racing over his legs, across his back, but the denizens grabbed his hands when he tried to swat them away.

The insects scaled the chair's battered legs, heaped themselves into a hissing pile upon the seat. And then the cockroaches were gone, melted together into the form of a rather mundane-seeming man, lean and hawk-nosed and apparently quite bored. He slouched low in his seat, his legs crossed at the ankles, his arms draped loosely at his sides. His clothes were hardly regal-high boots, drab black trousers, leather scabbard, and a shapeless crimson tunic bearing the emblem of a black sunburst and skull. Only his short sword and his circlet of white gold marked him as someone important inBoneCastle, though the crown seemed to be intended less as a show of power than as a device to hold the man's long brown hair back from his eyes. Yet for all this apparent ennui, an air of tension hung around him like a pestilent cloud. No matter how far he slouched in the chair, he was still a coiled serpent, ready to strike at the slightest provocation.

"Hail, Cyric, Lord of the Dead, greatest of all the powers of Faerun," Perdix said, kowtowing.

Af repeated the gesture. "Hail, Cyric, Prince of Lies, slayer of three gods."

The Lord of the Dead fidgeted, as if he were anxious to be elsewhere. Whether the impatience was purely for show or merely the echo of some habit of Cyric's from his mortal life was unclear, but like all the greater powers, the Prince of Lies wasn't limited to a single physical incarnation. Even as he held court in Bone Castle, his divine consciousness manifested in dozens of avatars across the universe, answering the prayers of his faithful, sowing strife and discord wherever it would take root.

"Let's get this over with, Jergal," the Lord of the Dead murmured.

The seneschal leveled his gaze at Gwydion, and the shade felt something cold and inhuman slither across his mind. It burrowed into his memories, rooting through his life like a rat in so much refuse. Gwydion tried to look away from Jergal's lifeless eyes, but he found himself paralyzed. Then, as quickly as it had begun, the interrogation was over.

You are Gwydion, son of Gareth the blacksmith. The disembodied voice was as chilling as Jergal's mental probe. Born in Suzail thirty winters ago, as time is reckoned there. In your life you have been a soldier and a sell-sword, though your only true gift was your fleetness of foot. This you used mostly to win petty wagers. No great happiness touched your life, nor any great pain.

"Wait a minute," Gwydion sputtered. "What about Cardea or Eri? I loved-"

You believed in the gods of Faerun, but worshiped them only in times of danger. You named the Fool your patron, but displayed neither great courage nor any loyalty to his causes throughout the last years of your lifetime.

Cyric yawned. "Your deeds have branded you one of the False," the Lord of the Dead said without thought. "No god will accept you into his paradise, so you are my ward. As such-"

Gwydion leaped to his feet. "I died fighting for Torm! He must-"

The name of the God of Duty had barely left the shade's lips when a short sword pierced his throat. Gwydion hung, impaled on Cyric's blade, twitching and coughing. A chill unlike any the shade had felt in life or death spread from the wound, leaching his very essence. The short sword pulsed, and its blade darkened slowly from pale red to deep crimson.

The Lord of the Dead turned cold eyes on Af and Perdix. "Someone should have informed him I alone may repeat the name of another god in the City ofStrife."

"We — we did, Your Magnificence," Perdix said. "But he thinks there's been some sort of mistake. He claims someone tricked him and-"

"Everyone thinks there's been a mistake when they end up here," Cyric noted. "You two will share this one's punishment for a time, just so you'll be more diligent in preparing the shades to meet me in the future." He slipped his sword from Gwydion's throat and let the shade drop to the floor.

"Thank you, Your Magnificence," Af said. Both the denizens prostrated themselves before their master.

"As for a fate… We haven't sent Dendar any souls recently, right, Jergal?"

The Night Serpent would be glad for your generosity, the seneschal agreed. She has not tasted the marrow of a fresh soul in quite a long time.

Cyric slouched back into his chair. "Then it's decided. Take the shade to Dendar."

As Jergal scratched notes with careful, precise strokes of the pen, the denizens grabbed Gwydion. The shade, though weakened by the abuse, fought them. He gasped something at Cyric, but the words wheezed from his punctured throat like steam from a hot kettle.

The untempered astonishment in Gwydion's eyes caught Cyric's attention. The Lord of the Dead gestured, and the shade's wounds healed instantly. "You recognize me?" he asked, idly striking the chair's leg with his sword.

Gwydion pointed to the blood-red blade. "It was you," he gasped. "You came to me in… than you pretended to be-"

The Fool, Jergal prompted. Each god has a name more appropriate to his or her stature in our realm. The God of Duty is known here as the Fool.

"You pretended to be… the Fool," Gwydion said. Speaking the blasphemous name made him wince. "Why? Just to trick me into throwing myself at the giant like a lunatic?"

"Exactly so," came a deep, booming voice from the doorway to the library. "That is just the sort of petty amusement Cyric makes for himself."

Jergal, Gwydion, and the denizens spun around to find a massive figure standing before them. His ancient armor was stained dusky purple, with elbow and knee cops wrought of dragon bones. Light glinted like stars on his breastplate, even in the badly lit library. He radiated power, stern and unforgiving.