Prince of Lies - James Lowder [64]
Yet there was one last task Cyric had to complete before leaving Zhentil Keep: the dark gods who so wanted him dead had sworn to protect his true father, who had aided them against his son in the past. He had served those cowardly pretenders well, but Cyric wanted to prove that nothing could shield a sworn foe from his blade.
The magical wards Bane and Myrkul had erected around Cyric's father were intended to warn them of anyone who sought to harm their trusted agent. In their foolishness, though, they failed to realize that without the heavy chains of Fate around his throat, Cyric could move silently, invisible to them. He slew his father and left a mark for the gods to know him by – the skull within the dark sun, the symbol that would one day be his holy symbol.
Cyric's war against the gods had begun.
His freedom from Fate made him invisible to the gods, just as his freedom from Fear made him an unvanquishable foe. Yet Cyric knew he would need weapons to topple the pretender powers from their heavenly thrones. So it was that he went in search of one of the most powerful artifacts known to mortals: the Ring of Winter.
To the Great Gray Land of Thar, home to dragons and other dire beasts, Cyric came. Armed only with a sword of mundane steel and the cunning of a dozen elves, he sought the ring in the caverns of the frost giants. There, he found himself cast in the role of rescuer to a party of sell-swords and cutthroats who had ventured into the giant's domain seeking treasure.
After Cyric slew five of the monstrous giants, they called upon their god, a powerful elemental from a frost-wracked layer of the Abyss. The ice creature, like the gods of Faerun, could not see Cyric the Fateless. Of this weakness the young warrior took the fullest advantage, wounding the ice god sorely before it finally retreated to the cold halls of its Abyss-palace. The remaining giants fled at the defeat of their inhuman master, which taught Cyric to strike always at the leader of his enemies first.
Though the Ring of Winter was nowhere to be found in those caves of ice and stone, Cyric gained the use of another sort of weapon that day – the warrior Kelemvor Lyonsbane. Of the sell-swords he had rescued, only Kelemvor survived the battle with the giants. For years this brutish mercenary followed at his savior's heels like a devoted hound. Though Cyric was loath at first to accept the worship of this fool, he came to realize Kelemvor's strength would cause others to rally to him like a flag on a smoky battlefield.
For a time, the warrior earned his keep by catching food and keeping watch for assassins, but he proved blind to Cyric's vision of the world. Dozens of fears chained him to mediocrity. Had Kelemvor been wise enough to stand aside, Cyric would have traveled on, forging his destiny alone, but the cursed sell-sword proved more treacherous than the pretender gods themselves.
So it was that Kelemvor Lyonsbane, who was the first mortal to worship Cyric, also became his most bitter foe on earth…
* * * * *
The Chaos Hound searched the abandoned halls of Lyonsbane Keep, snuffling the ground noisily with his black snout. It was just a matter of time before he found the beginning of Kelemvor's life trail. Then he could get this hunt over with and raid the verdant pastures of some deity's heaven. Elysium would be a good place to start, in Chauntea's domain. The Great Mother's druids were always a well-fed lot, and never very proficient at defending themselves. Too busy hugging trees to practice swordsmanship, the Hound snarled to himself.
A sharp tang in the air caught Kezef's attention. He crouched low against the rubble. Here it was – the beginning of one life and the end of another. Cyric had said Kelemvor's mother died in childbirth.
Howling madly, the Chaos Hound