Prince of Lies - James Lowder [53]
Finally, the Goddess of Magic came to a young boy, his face twisted into a hideous mask by some misfired enchantment. He primped and fussed over the tufts of hair sprouting from his blackened scalp. "You already know Sune Firehair," Mystra said. "It doesn't matter that he's a man, of course. We gods can be whichever sex we choose…"
"And you?" Adon asked bluntly. "What is the face of your madness?"
"Ao allowed me to keep something of my humanity, but that means I can see all the others are mad," Mystra said. "Talos has no idea how the others perceive the world. I, on the other hand, can share in his and every other god's twisted visions. In the end, that could make me the maddest-"
Mystra stiffened in pain and clutched her side. Cyric had wounded her there a decade ago, during the battle atopBlackstaffTower. "It was only a matter of time," she hissed.
His hands held out to the goddess, Adon rushed forward. "What is it?"
"Cyric," the Lady of Mysteries said through clenched teeth, though now her face was contorted with anger, not pain. "He's striking against the weave. I've got to stop him."
The inmates howled at the sudden burst of blue-white radiance as Mystra disappeared. Even through their madness-fogged brains, they felt some unknowable pain at the use of sorcery in their midst, the damnable Art that had done them all so much harm. And in the center of all the shrieking and screaming, Adon of Mystra stood in silence, with tearing eyes.
He made his way to the door and pounded on the thick metal with his mace. The guards hadn't noticed the presence of a goddess. He hoped they would hear his calls now and take them as something more than the unusually lucid cries of one of the inmates.
"Warders!" he shouted. "I am here from theChurchofMysteries. Open this door, for Mystra's sake, and bring some water."
The priest turned back to the dim room. He laid his fine cloak over a shivering, rag-clad man chained to the wall. Then, choking back his gorge at the stench of offal and disease, he kneeled next to the scarred boy who Mystra had called Sune.
"You look quite handsome today," he said soothingly as he wiped grime from the boy's arms with his handkerchief. Something like a smile crossed the lunatic's lips.
Adon shuddered despite himself. "Maybe the scholars were right in this much," he murmured. "Perhaps the gods can't live without their worshipers after all."
* * * * *
Deep within the maze of lightless, hope-forsaken tunnels known as Pandemonium, Cyric raised Godsbane and slashed again at a glowing curtain of magical energy. The short sword bit into the seemingly insubstantial wall with a screech that sounded like an axe sliding on slate. A thin gash opened for an instant, then sealed itself, just like every other hole the Lord of the Dead had cut in the curtain.
The magic wounds me, Godsbane whispered in Cyric's mind. Is there no other way?
Bemused, the Prince of Lies stepped back from the enchanted barrier and looked up. The glittering wall stretched for miles, sealing off the circular tunnel completely.
Cyric drew his mouth into a grim line and rubbed his chin with gnarled fingers. "The gods must have drawn the wall directly from the weave when they imprisoned Kezef," he mused. "This will prove more difficult than I thought…"
The words, though whispered, echoed down the huge tunnel. Sound built upon sound until the utterance was a howling chorus of nonsense. The winds of chaos that perpetually tore through the slick-walled black caves carried the noise away then returned it an instant later accompanied by a thousand agonized screams. The cacophony would