Prince of Lies - James Lowder [32]
Gwydion shuffled forward. There was no point in resisting; the denizens were Cyric's agents, and the Lord of the Dead had already proved to the sell-sword how completely he owned the souls in his domain. As he fell into step with Af and Perdix, Gwydion picked away at the mold that had worked its way into his matted blond hair and the rags that had once been warm winter clothes. The shackles had been removed from his wrists when they put him in the wall, yet Gwydion still found his hands incredibly clumsy. His fingers felt no more agile than stumps of wood.
The trio passed through dark alleys, where souls with indistinct yellow-gray faces and expressionless gray eyes huddled in doorways. Sputtering lamps set on windowsills cast sickly yellow light into the gloom, along with fetid black smoke that made Gwydion's eyes sting and his skin burn. Denizens passed in pairs, rousting the faceless shades or moving into the buildings themselves. These other denizens always gave Af a wide berth. Surprisingly, most of them nodded respectfully to Perdix, as well, offering solemn greetings to the diminutive creature.
"These shades all look alike," Gwydion observed dully after a time. His voice was a rasping whisper from screaming for release from the wall.
Deftly Af slithered to the top of a pile of broken stone that blocked the alley. "Yeah. So?"
"So how do we recognize Kelemvor when we find him?"
With two leaps, Perdix hopped over the mound. "Oh, we'll know him all right. There are only three sorts of beings in the City ofStrife: denizens, the False, and the Faithless. All the denizens – souls like me and Af here, who used to worship Cyric – are transformed when we arrive here into forms that'll be more useful in our new line of work." The yellow-skinned denizen flapped his wings proudly. "Makes it easy to tell the jailers from the inmates, too.
"Anyone stupid enough not to believe in the gods is stuffed into the Wall of the Faithless," he continued, "so we know where that lot can be found." Perdix folded his wings again and sighed. "That just leave slugs like you – the False, the people who didn't make the list for any god's eternal reward."
The alley emptied into a small plaza surrounded by more buildings. A shade wearing drab gray rags moved away from the denizens as they approached neither hurrying nor tarrying. Perdix gestured at the faceless soul. The False who came here before Cyric took over are easy to spot – they're the ones that look like this sorry slug. The old Lord of the Dead used to think it was the worst thing possible to forget your Me and your identity once you came here." The denizen laughed. "The new lord of the dead is a lot more creative than that. Anyone who arrived after Cyric claimed the throne retained his own appearance and has marks on his wrists from the shackles."
Gwydion nodded. "So Kelemvor will look like a shade, but he won't have any scars on his wrist."
"And he'll be roaming about, which is getting more and more rare," Perdix added. "Cyric's started locking the False into unique tortures created to punish whatever bad things they did in their life – like that slug there."
Gwydion followed Perdix's gaze to a spot in the center of the plaza. There, a soul stood chained to a statue of a river spirit. The scantily clad stone nymph held a jug from which poured a steady stream of water. Iron bands kept the soul's head and legs rigid against the stone, and his arms ended in blackened, scarred stumps too short to reach the sparkling liquid. The water rained down before the red-haired shade, fell to the parched ground, and evaporated.
Torture helps you slugs remember why you're here. The pain reminds you of every misstep you took that led you away from the truth of the world," Perdix noted as he hopped up to the shade bound to the fountain. "Like old Kaverin here. He thought he could outlive Cyric and outsmart him, too."
The red-haired shade opened his mouth to speak,