Prince of Lies - James Lowder [72]
Beware, my love, Godsbane warned. You do not have magic to wield against an uprising in the City ofStrife. Do not dismiss such murmurings lightly.
And if Chess is any indication of the traitors to be found amongst your worshipers in the mortal realms, Jergal added, you may find turncoats of equal stature here in Hades.
The Lord of the Dead considered the warnings. He drummed his fingers against the throne, the staccato tap growing louder and faster as he pondered the depths of his predicament.
"Fetch the crates from the Gearsmith, Jergal, but before you do, create a scrying portal for me. I'll find the shades to animate the contraptions myself, pluck them from the mob watching the executions." Cyric grinned. "These Gondish artifacts will grant me absolute control over the souls imprisoned in them. Who better to choose than the shades fostering the unrest?"
The seneschal drew the tips of his fingers across his cheek in a quick, straight slash. From the deep wound that appeared, it was clear the nails were as sharp as a dragon's teeth.
Yellow ichor oozed from the gash and ran down Jergal's smooth face. In noisome clots, the blood dripped to the floor, creating a small pool. The shiny surface of the slowly spreading liquid held an image of the mob outside the castle.
Cyric stared into that gruesome window, scanning the faces of the assembled shades and denizens as they, in turn, watched their fellows tortured and destroyed. He focused the facets of his unruly mind on the crowd. With a million ears he listened to every word they said. An equal number of unblinking eyes watched every secretive gesture they made.
After a time, the Lord of the Dead drew Godsbane and pointed the tip at a cluster of unsuspecting shades. His voice tight with fury, he whispered, "The inquisition has found its first heretics – and its first inquisitors."
* * * * *
Skeletal guards lined the top of the wall surroundingBoneCastle, pikes clutched in their bony hands. Savagely they sliced and jabbed the denizens chained to the jagged diamond wall below them. Bits of denizen flesh dropped into the oily black water of the River Slith, winding moat-like around the circular keep. There the fragments burst into flame and sank. Slithering things moved beneath the surface, gobbling up the foul treats before they dissolved completely.
Like the Faithless imprisoned in the great wall around the City ofStrifeand the False trapped in the realm's noisy confines, the denizens had been created from the souls of mortals. However, they alone resided in Cyric's domain willingly. Their reward for mortal devotion to the death god was a painful transformation into a form far less than human in appearance, but possessed of astounding strength and agility. And denizens, like all souls, were almost impossible to destroy. Only three things could annihilate them irrevocably: the hand of a god; an elder, eternal evil like the Night Serpent or the Chaos Hound; or a place of indescribable corruption.
The River Slith most certainly qualified as the last.
Some mortal scholars claimed the Slith had its source in the riven heart of an evil dragon buried far beneath the world's surface. At first it trickled as a rivulet, but soon other fonts of corruption emptied into its waters – the tears of sacrifices being led to bloodstained altars, the ink spilled in penning assassins' orders, the slavering of mad dogs, and the bile of savage, power-hungry monarchs. The rivulet became a wide river, slow moving and thick with poison and offal. It wound a tortuous course through the planes, befouling the realms it touched. One drop of its dark waters would kill any mortal; dunking a shade in the Slith would destroy it forever. Of the slimy, seemingly indestructible things that swam beneath the surface of the flow, not even the gods themselves dared utter their names.
From time to time one of the False tried to end its eternity of torture by throwing itself into the Slith. The unfortunate soul soon learned that nothing escaped the Realm of the Dead without Cyric's approval. Even now, a dozen