Prince of Lies - James Lowder [73]
Gwydion watched one of these tormented souls float past. He stood on the riverbank opposite the diamond walls, part of the mob gathered there to witness the executions. Though he and Perdix had tried to find a spot as far as they could from the Slith, the press of the denizens and shades had forced them ever closer to the moat. Now they were barely an arm's length from the stinking water.
Finally fed up with being trod upon by the crowd, Perdix flexed his leathery wings and hopped into the air. "Tsk. Af's probably admiring the workmanship of the chains," he noted to no one in particular. "Probably muttering to the poor sap next to him that he was here when they forged the damned things."
Gwydion looked across the river at his former captor and shuddered. In choosing the denizens to face execution, Cyric's seneschal had been surprisingly logical: the doomed would meet their end alphabetically. That decision had put Af very near the front of the line.
The hulking creature dangled upside down on one side of a mammoth set of scales. He was bound in a dozen ways to a huge obsidian disk. Chains linked the stone to an identical twin, and the two teetered vertically over the black water, balanced upon a fulcrum of iron jutting from the diamond wall. Blood and grime hid Af's wolfish features, and most of his spider legs had been sliced away by the skeletons. The only sign that he still lived was the occasional twitch of his long, serpentine coils. The equine-bodied denizen lashed to the other side of the scales wasn't moving at all.
"How can you watch this, Perdix?" Gwydion asked.
"You think this bothers me?" the little denizen replied. He glanced at the shade with his one blue eye. "I never really liked Af much. Ours was a friendship of sloth. That's the only kind down here."
Despite his brave front, the concern showed on Perdix's inhuman features, in the nervous fluttering of his wings. It wasn't concern for Af, though. The winged denizen could see himself tied to the stone, battered and bloody and waiting for the balance to tip, lowering him into the oblivion promised by the murky Slith. As Gwydion looked around at the other denizens crowded on the riverbank, he saw the same badly disguised fear. Discontent lurked in the silent mob, as well. Cyric's faithful felt betrayed; their narrowed eyes and clenched fists trumpeted their rage like a battle cry before a bloody skirmish.
Gwydion smiled secretively and turned his attention to the other shades scattered amongst the monstrous denizens. Their faces held blank looks or grim scowls of acceptance. In a few eyes, Gwydion saw a desperate joy at the suffering of their tormentors. That spark of life gave him hope. The others might throw off the pall of hopelessness, too, given the right leader or the right example to follow.
The steady clanging of an iron gong drew Gwydion's attention to the unwieldy contraption holding Af suspended over the river. A particularly tall skeleton clad in a robe of blood-red samite unrolled a parchment and began to read.
"Because the denizens of the Realm of the Dead have yet to complete the holy quest for the soul of Kelemvor Lyonsbane," the skeleton rasped, its voice like the rustling of ancient cerements, "Lord Cyric sentences these prisoners to be destroyed. Know you all that every denizen will share this doom if the renegade soul is not found."
No one in the gathered mob paid much attention to the dire warning. The same perfunctory announcement was made at each execution, in each of two dozen sites along the bank of the Slith and in front of the Night Serpent's cave. Repetition had dulled the impact of the threat, just as it had leached some of the horror from the unsettling executions.
The robed skeleton signaled two other fleshless fiends with a casual wave