Crucible: The Trial of Cyric the Mad (13 page)

“There is no need for the mortal to speak!” Sune’s radiance moved so close to Tempus’s that they became one. “Perhaps Tempus will reconsider his charges?” “No.”

“For me?” In her desperation to prevent the reading of the Cyrinishad, it is a wonder Sune did not offer to have him on the spot. “I would be most… passionate.”

“Tempus, you would do well to accept her offer,” urged Shar. “Pressing your charges will only make matters worse for us all.”

No sooner had the Nightbringer added her voice to Sune’s than Silvanus and Talos added their voices to hers, and then Chauntea and Lathander added theirs to the growing chorus, and I saw that it hardly mattered what was hidden beneath my robe. The book could have been The Caliph’s Guide to Love, and still they would have withdrawn their charges.

But not Mystra, and not Kelemvor, and not Tempus. Together, they exclaimed, “No!” and a veritable wind swept the pavilion.

When it had passed, the Battle Lord added, “I will not withdraw the charges. I cannot.” And this was true, for Tempus would not break his word to Mask.

“Nor do I ask it,” said the One. I felt his smirk in the prickling bumps that rose on my skin. “Indeed, I demand the right to answer the charges. Malik, you will read from the ledger.” “Read, Mighty One?” I felt almost relieved not to have the Cyrinishad beneath my robe; after the terrible nausea I had suffered merely touching its box, I doubted I would have survived reading the holy tome itself. “Me?” “You, Malik-now!”

As I pulled the ledger from my robe, a deafening murmur filled the pavilion. The radiances of Tempus and Talos and Kelemvor all drifted closer, and Tyr moved to cut them off. Such a lump formed in my throat that I could not speak, for I perceived that I would be annihilated in the coming battle.

Mystra stepped forward and caught Kelemvor’s arm. “Wait! Let him read.” Without awaiting a reply, she turned to me. “Go ahead, Malik. Start from the beginning. No one will harm you.”

The harlot’s reassurance astonished her fellow gods as much as it did me. Kelemvor stopped on the spot, as did Talos and Tempus, and even Tyr’s radiance spun around to face Mystra.

“What?” cried Cyric.

“She said to let him read.” Tyr’s voice was thoughtful. He remained silent a moment, then his radiance slowly swirled back toward Cyric. “Surely, you have no objection to that?”

“Of course not, but if she changed the book when she cast that healing spell on my witness-“

“She did not tamper with your evidence,” said Tyr. “I have checked. Now, will you let him read?”

“Yes.” The smugness in Cyric’s voice had been replaced by wariness, and when he addressed me, I could feel the cold suspicion in his words. “Go ahead, Malik.”

I opened the book and saw that it was Rinda’s journal, with a dozen blasphemies in the first paragraph alone. Knowing what a grievous mistake it would be to read such sacrileges in the presence of the One, I decided to replace them with the story of the ascension of Our Dark Lord, which every child in the Church of Cyric learns by heart.

But when I opened my mouth to speak, a great hissing filled my ears, and instead of A Childhood in the Shadows, a terrible sacrilege spilled from my unwilling lips. I could read only what lay before me:

” ‘I first met Cyric in a parchment shop, where the putrid air reeked of bloody hides and offal-filled tanning vats. The stench of the place was overwhelming, yet also fitting; nothing could describe better my feelings toward the Prince of Lies.’”

I tried to stop reading. But as soon as my eyes rose from the page, that terrible hissing filled my head, and I found myself staring at the next line. I did not know it then, but Mystra’s spell against lies had caught me. I had to read the story in the ledger-and once I had begun, it was impossible to stop! Imagine my horror as the blasphemies continued to pour from my mouth:

” ‘This is the story of Rinda, a scribe of Zhentil Keep who was forced by the Lord of Corruption to write the Cyrinishad, a volume of vile lies lacking a single word of truth’-” “Malik!”

Cyric’s voice blasted me from the bench and sent me tumbling across the floor, and still I could not stop reading:

“-‘and of how Wise Oghma helped her write a true account of the liar’s life’-“

I saw a red ball separate from Cyric’s dark radiance and come streaking toward me, then I tumbled one more time. My world exploded into searing fire. That should have been the end of this tale, yet the flames did not devour me. They did not raise one blister on my skin, nor singe a single hair on my beard, nor char any page of the book in my hands, and still I read on:

“-‘which resulted in Cyric’s ejection from the City of the Dead and the downfall of his worldly power’-” “Silence!”

Though the roar of Cyric’s voice drowned out my pitiful chirping, I continued to read. How could I stop?

“Obey, Malik! Obey, or you will live to see me burn your bones clean in boiling acid!”

“You will not!” boomed Tyr. “That would be interfering with a witness. Until this trial is done, Malik el Sami yn Nasser is under my protection and, through me, Ao’s. Neither you nor anyone else may harm him.”

Cyric fell quiet, and of course I filled the silence with another blasphemy. ” ‘He read his own book and was driven mad by his own lies.’”

“Enough!” Cyric yelled. For a moment, his radiance grew so dim I could make out his fleshless hands pressed to the sides of his skull. “I release him!”

With that, the shapeless radiances of the twelve gods went dark inside my head, and the twelve forms of the Pavilion of Cynosure vanished around me, and I plummeted back into the sea of icy shadow, leaving the One to stand alone against his accusers.

The chamber fell silent in my absence. The thoughts of the gods turned inward, first to their relief that the book beneath my robe had not been the Cyrinishad, then to the strange compulsion that had kept me reading in the face of my god’s anger. Mystra saw the questions in their eyes, and she knew that soon even her magic would not prevent them from seeing the truth.

“Did your thief steal the wrong book, Cyric?” she asked. “Or perhaps you find the impressions in Rinda’s journal flattering?”

Many gods chuckled, but not Tyr and not Oghma. The Wise God furrowed his brow and turned to gaze at Mystra. “Lady Magic, why do you suppose the mortal kept reading?”

Mystra made no answer, for if she spoke at all, her own spell would compel her to reveal all she had done to guard against the Cyrinishad’s power.

Oghma pressed for a response. “Clearly, Malik knew his god was displeased.”

“Most displeased.” The One fixed his black-burning eyes on the Goddess of Magic and watched her most carefully. “Well?”

When Mystra still made no answer, Sune stopped preening and said, “The little man was in awe, of course. Twelve gods! What mortal would not be?”

Oghma bit his lip against an impatient reply, then said, “I fail to see how being in awe would cause him to defy his god. The effect would be quite the opposite, I would think.”

Sune lifted her chin, then glared at Oghma. “It is impossible to say what mortals will do when they are awestruck-they are so flighty. You should know that. You are the God of Knowledge, are you not?”

“Indeed,” Oghma replied.

The mortal’s reaction hardly matters,” Kelemvor said, seizing on Oghma’s pause. “He read nothing we did not know already.”

“But it would matter,” said Tyr. “In the Pavilion of Cynosure, everyone must be free to speak his own mind-including mortals, if they are important enough to be here at all.”

“You said it would matter,” observed Oghma. “Does that mean he was not compelled?”

“Not by magic or thought, not that I could find with Ao’s power,” replied the Eyeless One.

The reason for this, of course, was the veil Mystra had dropped before the trial. Tyr might have use of Ao’s power, but Lady Magic was the mistress of the Weave itself, and she could do more things with magic than the Just One dreamed.

Thus acquitted of suspicion, Mystra felt safe enough to break her silence. “Now that Cyric has had his say and everything seems in order, the time has come to call for a verdict” “Call for what you like, it does not matter to me.” As Cyric spoke these words, he grew as translucent as a specter and began to fade from the pavilion. “I am above your verdicts.”

“Not quite,” said Tyr. The Eyeless One pulled a loop of chain from the empty air and tossed it in Cyric’s direction; the chain vanished before it hit the floor, but the One’s form grew instantly as solid as stone. “Until this trial ends, Ao has given me the power to bind you over for judgment.”

“What?” Cyric shook his hands, and the sound of a rattling chain filled the air. “Ao gave you rule over me?”

“Of course. You are so much mightier than we,” mocked Talos. “He knew we would need it.”

“And now the time has come to wield our power,” said Tem-pus. “Let us call the verdict and get on with our real business: naming Cyric’s punishment.”

Only Tyr did not add his voice to the chorus of agreement. “Cyric has not yet retired his defense,” said the Just One. “He still has the chance to state his case.”

“To you?” Though Cyric’s tone was disdainful, he ran his gaze around the circle and studied each god in turn, and he lingered longest on the faces of Mystra and Kelemvor. “How can I expect you to understand me? I have made myself, I am as different from you as dragons are from lizards.”

“Nevertheless, perhaps you should try.” Oghma spoke gently. “These particular lizards happen to have the power of life and death over you.”

Cyric’s eyes flared to twice their normal size and burned like black fireballs. Yet when he spoke, he did it in a civil tongue. “I am charged with innocence by reason of insanity?”

That is the charge,” affirmed Tyr.

“Ah … Perhaps you will allow me the leeway to prove the charges at least half-correct.” Cyric glared at Mystra, then smiled and marched across the pavilion to stand before Kelemvor. “I ask Lord Death to be my witness.”

“What?” Kelemvor’s hand dropped toward his sword. “If you think I will-“

“Really, Kel.” Cyric glanced at Kelemvor’s sword hand, then added, “Even if you could pull it off, I suppose Tyr’s protection extends to me as well as to my witnesses.”

Kelemvor took his hand away from his sword. “I cannot imagine how you think I would help you.”

“Of course you can’t. I’m crazy,” Cyric replied. “I only want to know if you would ever serve as my … inferior, shall we say?”

“Never!”

“I suppose not. After all, I have always treated you rather poorly.” The One nodded and started to walk away, but paused and turned back to Kelemvor. “Then tell me, when you thought Malik had the Cyrinishad, why did you let him read?”

Mystra tried to catch Lord Death’s arm and warn him to be silent, but Kelemvor, thinking to evade the question with a vague answer, had already opened his mouth.

“Because Tyr said…” Here he stopped, and a long choking noise rose from his throat. He shook his head to clear it of a sudden hissing, then went on, “Because when Mystra urged Malik to read, I knew she had done something to protect us.”

This surprised no one except Tyr. “But I checked for magic!”

Cyric ignored him and turned next to Mystra. “Is Kelemvor right? Did you do something to annul the Cyrinishad?” He paused here and glanced toward Tyr. “I am sure everyone will understand if you have no wish to reply.”

“I will answer.” Mystra gazed past Cyric to Tyr, who had drawn his glowing hammer and looked ready to use it. “I spun the Weave to shield us from the Cyrinishad’s corruption, and to prevent anyone in this trial from lying.”

As soon as she said this, her magic veil appeared on the floor. Tyr stuck his warhammer in his belt and snatched up the cloth. “This was forbidden!”

“So it was,” Cyric said. “But, as I am the injured party, I ask you to wait until I finish before levying your punishment.”

“So be it.” Tyr wadded the cloth into his palm.

“I have only one more question, Lady Magic.” Cyric curled his lip as he spoke this, for he knew better than any god that Mystra was no lady. “Do you want to see me destroyed because you fear me, or because you favor what you call the

Good?”

Mystra’s answer came at once. “Because I hate you.” She closed her mouth and tried to hold it that way, but there was more truth to tell, and so her lips parted again. “And because I favor what is good for the mortals of Faerun.”

These words occasioned many whispers among the gods. It was Mystra’s divine duty to maintain the impartial balance of the Weave, and her admission was a violation of that sacred duty.

Tempus stepped forward and pointed at Cyric. “A clever trick, Mad One, but we can deal with Mystra later. You are on trial here.”

Cyric spun on his heel and faced the Battle Lord and almost danced across the floor to meet him. “I know, Tempus! I was not trying to distract anyone!” The One was almost chortling now, and the Battle Lord recoiled as a vizier does from a beggar. “But since you ask, can you hold me alone accountable for war’s decline in Faerun?” “Why should I not?”

“You have not been listening, Slowhammer! How many bystanders have been engulfed by stray fireballs lately? How many towns have been razed by magic earthquakes?” Cyric whirled around and pointed a naked finger bone at Mystra. “And how many rivers have suddenly run dry when a party of refugees needed to escape their pursuers? How many ridges have sprouted thorn thickets to turn a band of marauders away from a defenseless village?”

Mystra could say nothing, for Cyric’s charges were all as true as the words of the Cyrinishad.

After a moment’s consideration, Tempus nodded. “All you say is true. Faerun’s war magic has been less than crushing of late, and when it does devastate, it always favors the virtuous side. Perhaps Mystra shares in the blame-“

“Wait!” Cyric interrupted. “There is more-or have you not noticed how the noblest warriors are losing all fear of death, while the backstabbers and cowards grow more cautious than ever?”

Again, Tempus nodded, but this time he said nothing and waited for Cyric to continue.

“We all know whose doing this is.” This time, the One pointed at Kelemvor. “The Usurper rewards noble men so favorably that they cannot wait to die. They sacrifice themselves in the most ridiculous causes-while the more cunning are so terrified of his punishments they hardly dare to fight. Soon enough, there will be no war at all on Faerun! All the brave men will be dead in their paradises, and the cowards will not step across their own thresholds for fear of being killed by a falling pot.”