Prince of Lies - James Lowder [61]
Oghma closed his eyes and tried to imagine what the world would be like if this pattern were broken somehow, if the wave of chaos destroyed the House of Knowledge instead of altering it. He couldn't. Though he knew the universe held more than the contents of his library, when he subtracted his books and bardic tales and musty histories, he saw nothing but an endless void.
* * * * *
"Don't worry," a soothing, feminine voice purred, "we shall deal with Kezef before he can track you down."
Kelemvor Lyonsbane kept his eyes fixed straight ahead and continued to pace through the white, featureless void. He moved his lips, silently counting his steps. After he counted one thousand, he made a precise turn to the left and started the count over.
"I should erect a barricade in your way," the unseen power noted petulantly. "Just to throw off your count"
"Then I'd wait for you to get bored and lower it," Kelemvor said. His deep voice, rarely used in the last decade, was barely a whisper.
"And if I don't get bored?"
Abruptly Kelemvor stopped pacing. "You will. You can't help yourself."
The silence that followed told the shade he was correct. Smiling at his victory, he resumed his march.
As he had each day for the past ten years, Kelemvor Lyonsbane marked out the dimensions of his prison. Not that there were any walls within the empty whiteness around him, but Kel knew he would surely go mad if he didn't create them for himself. And so he walked a careful circuit with regular, military steps. The room he inhabited was one thousand paces to a side, with windows in the center of each wall. There were no doors, of course, and the ceiling was too high to reach.
Occasionally his unseen jailor spoke to him, or appeared as a woman or man or beast. But Kel dismissed these phantasms as unreal diversions, no more substantial than the memories ofMidnightthat sometimes took shape in the formless void around him. He never let these distract him for long; dallying in that sort of chaos would break him, and Kel was determined to rob his captor of such an easy victory.
"Cyric is growing desperate to find you," the voice said.
"Go away," Kelemvor replied, unperturbed by the obvious prodding. "I'll be thinking about flaying Cyric alive in an hour. If you want to come back then, we can talk."
"An hour? What's that mean to you? There's no sun here, no stars…" When the prisoner didn't answer, the voice added, "You held up far longer than I thought you would, but I believe you've finally cracked."
"I can count time as well as steps," Kelemvor said. He stopped again and crossed his brawny arms over his chest. "Look, you should know by now none of this will work. If I could stand up to torture when I was alive, why should it be any different now that I'm dead? I don't get hungry. I don't need to sleep. If you were intent on trying to rack me or burn my eyes out, you would have done that by now."
"I thought you'd want to know about Kezef."
"There's no need for me to know if you intend on stopping him," Kel murmured. "As for Cyric, I'll talk about him in a little less than an hour. That's my schedule. You should know it by now." With that he once more resumed his march.
Kelemvor measured the rest of the wall undisturbed. At the final corner, he took a half-turn and walked to the prison's center. There, he carefully straightened his clothes. He paused in brushing off his high leather boots and rough leggings, sleeveless white tunic and brown woolen cloak, only long enough to marvel – as he did every day – that a dead man should find himself clothed in the afterworld. When he'd been alive, Kel had never wondered if souls went around naked or not. Such philosophical minutiae hadn't held the slightest importance to him, not when he spent his days fighting giants for their treasure or guarding caravans from marauding gnolls. That was the sort