Prince of Lies - James Lowder [40]
"I would never ask you to waste your time writing on parchment like this," Cyric said, watching the scribe as she took in her surroundings. "For notes it's fine, but never for a finished book." He patted her hand. "The parchment I use is made much more carefully, from much rarer stock."
"I don't understand," Rinda managed at last.
"Don't worry. You will."
Cyric paced around the huge room, taking in the drying racks crammed with badly cut sheets and tables piled high with account books. "I always begin the story in this place because I was born here." He stopped and rested his hands on his hips with theatrical flair. "Hard to believe, but this is the birthplace of a god – well, the house that used to stand here was, at any rate."
Slowly Cyric turned and stared into Rinda's green eyes. A jagged lance of fear bit into her heart. "I am going to tell you a story," the Prince of Lies said. "And from it you will write a book, one that will inspire men to worship me. The mages in my church have created special inks and parchment. They wrote special prayers that must be incorporated into the text exactly where they dictate, in the precise form they dictate. There will be illuminations and special bindings… but your work is the most important."
He crossed to Rinda's side once more and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. "If you succeed, you'll be worshiped, praised in the annals of my world as a herald of the new order, an angel of knowledge to rival Oghma himself."
An unvoiced question hung in the air. Cyric paused only an instant before he answered it. "If you fail -" a shadow passed over his face, and he dug his fingers into her shoulder until the nails drew blood "- I'll drag your screaming soul down to Hades and hang you in my throne room next to your father."
* * * * *
From the Cyrinishad
It is said that Tymora and Beshaba wager for dominion over each and every soul born into the world. Lady Luck flips her silver coin, and the Maid of Misfortune calls heads or tails. If Beshaba guesses wrong, then Tymora showers the happy soul with good luck for the rest of his life. It is also said that the Maid of Misfortune rarely loses such contests.
Only one man in all of history escaped their cruel game – Cyric of Zhentil Keep. Even before he first walked the world as a mortal, Cyric had the will to resist the random call of Fate and make his own fortune. As his newborn soul stood before the goddesses, he cast a light upon Tymora's silver coin, blinding them to his presence. The deities never saw the coin fall never settled their wager for Cyric's destiny. Thus was he born into the world without any fate save the one he himself could forge.
In the squalor of Zhentil Keep's slums, the man-who-would-be-a-god took on the shell of mortality for the first time. His mother, a beautiful bard with a mind as quick as Oghma's, had foreseen her child's greatness in a dream. She hid the infant Cyric from his father in the back alleys of that grim city, for the man was a leader of the Zhentilar and an agent of the Black Network, faithful to the god Bane. The God of Strife, too, had foreseen Cyric's potential mightiness. Fearing the only mortal unbound by Fate, he sent his agents throughout the city to slay the child.
On the hottest night in Flamerule, in the grips of the most brutal summer ever visited on Zhentil Keep, the assassins caught Cyric's mother and murdered her. Among the first to drive a blade into the woman's heart was her lover, the father of her son. Yet Cyric himself escaped their daggers by crawling away into the sewers. Gore-smeared and alone, he fought for life when any other human child would have withered and died. The blood of rats