Prince of Lies - James Lowder [129]
Gangs of shades roamed the square. Some carried blades or cudgels or barbed whips wrested from the denizens. Others had crafted weapons from the debris. Gwydion and his fellow knights had found that releasing the False from their tortures was a simple enough matter. Rallying the downtrodden souls had proved even easier. Cries of "Down with Cyric!" and "Long live Kelemvor!" rang through the streets, the latter slogan born of Gwydion's speech that day on the banks of the River Slith. Even though the shades knew nothing of the long-lost hero, Kel was a bitter foe of their oppressor. Those were credentials enough to cast him in the unlikely role of savior.
The denizens, unorganized and prone to fighting amongst themselves, had yet to mount any serious counterstrike. Overwhelmed by the sheer number of False rebelling in the city, many of Cyric's faithful had retreated to the diamond walls ofBoneCastle. They were the lucky ones. The denizens caught outside the safety of the keep found themselves facing rough justice, indeed.
Even now, across the square from Gwydion, a group of renegade souls flushed a denizen from the detritus of a ruined building. The little creature tried to flap away on yellow bat's wings, but two of the shades tackled him before he could flee. Like all the other battles between the newly freed False and their former jailors, this skirmish was bloody and brief.
Neither the damned souls nor the denizens possessed the magical might necessary to destroy one another. Because of this, their battles tended to follow a gruesome, vicious pattern. Once the scuffle ended, the victors chopped the vanquished into a dozen pieces or more, enough so it would take days for the fingers and legs and arms to come together again and regenerate. Such was the case now, as the shades scattered sun-yellow bits of denizen flesh across the square. The creature's head was left atop a pole, shouting curses at the False as they abandoned the square in search of other quarry.
"We'll feed the whole lot of you to the Night Serpent when this is over, slugs!" the head cried. "We'll sink you all to the bottom of the Slith!"
Gwydion recognized the thick, hissing voice. He hurried down from the heap of bones. Sure enough, the bruised and battered head gazed back at him with familiar contempt. "Well," the denizen muttered, "what are you looking at?"
"You're better off than Af was, Perdix. When this is over, you'll still be here to serve the realm's new lord."
The little creature narrowed his eye, darted his forked tongue over gory, split lips. "Cyric's black heart! You've come back!"
Gwydion slipped his helmet from his head. The shadows from the dozens of small fires burning in the rubble nearby made him look distinctly ominous as he smiled and said, "You said an uprising would never succeed here." He wiped the sweaty hair from his eyes. "You were wrong."
"Look, slug," Perdix hissed, "you think you're winning now, but wait until Cyric's elite troops arrive."
A subtle shift of the denizen's watery eye made Gwydion turn, suddenly alert to the danger that loomed behind him. A gigantic panther, dark asmidnight, fell silently from the sky on wings of black light. It struck Gwydion with one massive paw, sending him to his knees. The knight's helmet clattered away, and Titanslayer slipped from his grasp.
The cat pounced on Gwydion with preternatural speed, pinning him to the ground. Like a house cat toying with a captured mouse, it batted at his exposed face. Claws as large as daggers drew bloody lines across the knight's cheek, threatened to gouge out an eye.
"Hee hee!" Perdix hooted. "Speak of the devils! You've captured one of the important ones, you have!"
The panther spared the denizen's head the slightest glance, clearly offended by Perdix's statement of the obvious then turned its yellow eyes on Gwydion. The slitted