Prince of Lies - James Lowder [35]
"Let's talk about this on the way to the marsh, all right? We don't need to bother Dendar with it." Tugging on one of Af's spider legs, Perdix hopped toward the cave mouth.
"No!" Af barked. "There's a pact. I was there when it was signed. Cyric himself told us-"
Sudden, bitter laughter filled the cavern. "And you believed him?" Gwydion scoffed.
Perdix and Af glared at the shade with hate-filled eyes. When he didn't stop laughing, they beat him viciously, but even their blows and threats couldn't stop him.
The look of helplessness on Af's lupine features had shown Gwydion that the denizens had no more power than he, that they, too, were victims of Cyric's madness. With that realization, the shroud of despair slipped from his soul and a giddy dream took root in his thoughts: the False and the denizens were brothers in damnation. Why couldn't they rise up and free themselves from suffering?
It was the Night Serpent who finally silenced Gwydion's mad laughter. She turned one yellow eye on the shade and said, "Oh yes, dear Gwydion, dream of freedom. But remember; where there are dreams, there are always nightmares."
V
AGENT OF HOPE
Wherein the daughter of Bevis the Illuminator
begins a new, and likely short-lived, career
as a scribe for the Church of Cyric.
Rinda owned the entire building, but that really wasn't saying much. The sad, one-story hovel squatted in the poorest part of Zhentil Keep, among the unlicensed brothels, the gin mills, and the broken-down homes of escaped slaves and men too besotted by drink to be of use to anyone. In another quarter, the place would have been condemned. Rats maintained a thriving colony in the rafters. Dry rot had claimed large sections of the floor where the boards had not already collapsed into the foul mud below. On cold Marpenoth days like this, the wind whistled through chinks in the walls, promising four more months of relentless cold.
Rinda barely noticed these blights. She spent as little time as possible in the hovel, using it only for sleeping and eating and sometimes scribing false traveling papers for runaway slaves or assassin-plagued merchants. It made Rinda uncomfortable to do the work there, but with most of the men and women who came to her for help, she had no other choice. Her clients often called darkened doorways home; to keep a steady hand in those dank places was close to impossible.
She'd refused a position in the scribes' guild to help these people, something her father had argued against right up until the instant she walked out of his house, two years past. Rinda didn't miss him. He was a bitter man who hated his lot in life. He could never understand her need to help others, the drive that made life worth living in a bleak place like Zhentil Keep.
Whenever she tried to rest, Rinda found herself troubled by thoughts of those more unfortunate than she. And so she spent most of her waking hours on the streets, helping the Keep's downtrodden as best she could. Some days, this meant arranging temporary shelter for a destitute family or forging letters of passage for a soldier deserting the Zhentilar. On other days, she roamed the inns and taverns, teaching the prostitutes and petty thieves how to read and write.
This particular day had been spent in the marketplace, begging money for bribes. The Zhentarim mages who watched over the slums cared little if Rinda helped a few escaped prisoners slip away down the Tesh. They demanded a price for their silence, though. Now, as she had died against the cold in her hovel, Rinda tallied up the few coins she'd scrounged.
"I don't have nearly enough." She sighed raggedly then counted the coppers again. "Not even close. This will mean trouble for the girls hoping to run away from Madame Februa."
Rinda turned thrillingly green eyes on the dwarf lounging by the door. He tilted precariously in a rickety chair, his heavy boots up on a table. His clothes were unkempt leathers, his beard and hair a tangled