Prince of Lies (38 page)

“Oh yeah? Well if yer so sure, Zadok, how ‘bout we wager yer sheev on it?”

Zadok drew an ivory-handled knife from his belt and wiped the dirty blade across his black leather jerkin. “I dunno, Garm. I got this off the body of the first sharp I ever milled. He was a real fancy one, too - before I gave him a topper. Cracked his skull wide open, I did. One blow, right above his-“

“Oi, quiet,” Garm hissed. He grabbed Zadok’s arm and directed his gaze with one frostbitten finger. “Lookit what we got here!”

The orcs squinted down the bridge toward the northern bank, where flaming barricades had been set to stop anyone from fleeing the city. A lone figure hurried along, close to the railing.

“They let one through!” Garm snarled.

Zadok flipped his knife to a fighting grip and watched the figure slow from a run to a walk. “A woman from the looks of it. Human, I think.” He leered. “At least this’ll give us something to do.”

When she saw the blade in the orc’s grip, Rinda stopped and showed her empty hands. “No need for weapons. I’m here to see General Vrakk,” she said. “Let me pass.”

Garm took a menacing step forward. “Vrakk sent us t’help ya,” he lied. “He’s got right busy all of a sudden, so we’ll be taking care of ya.”

Slowly Rinda started away from the railing, trying to angle around the soldiers. Vrakk had said he’d leave orders with the orcs at the barricades to let her pass, but these two obviously knew nothing of that. “He gave me this as proof,” the scribe said. She slung her heavy pack off her shoulder and pulled a black armband from a pocket. Cyric’s holy symbol grinned from the tattered cloth.

“So what? You’ve got one of our old regimental bands,” Zadok said. “We threw them out months ago, missy. Anybody coulda dug a dozen out of the trash heaps.”

Rinda continued to move toward the center of the bridge, but it was clear now the orcs weren’t going to let her pass. The scribe glanced uneasily toward the twin towers that marked the southern end of the bridge. No sign of Vrakk on the battlements. She could only hope he’d seen her coming and was on his way.

“Give us the bundle. If it’s got anything good in it, we might let ya go back t’the city,” Garm offered, creeping closer.

When Rinda moved to reshoulder the pack, Garm leaped forward. He grabbed the bottom of the cloth sack and rolled, hoping to drag the woman off her feet. To his surprise, she let go of the straps. The orc tumbled forward on the rough stone pavement, cursing in a colorful mix of Zhentish and the guttural tongue of his race. The pack burst open beneath him, and its contents spilled across the bridge.

Garm didn’t have time to inventory Rinda’s belongings. As he pushed himself from the ground, the toe of her boot caught him just in front of the ear. With a loud crack, his jaw snapped out of joint. The orc went down again, this time howling in pain.

“That’ll cost you more’n you think, missy,” Zadok hissed. He shuffled forward, waving his grimy knife before him.

Rinda watched the orc move closer, watched his beady eyes for some sign he was going to strike. The sound of heavy footfalls had begun to echo from the southern end of the bridge, and shouting, too. If it was Vrakk, he was still too far away for the soldier to hear him. If it was more orcs coming to join the fun… Rinda grimaced. Better end this quickly, then.

The scribe edged sideways until she stood directly over the cloth-wrapped bulk of the Cyrinishad. She could hear the muttering of the tome’s guardian, muffled by the rags and the chain Oghma had strung across its mouth. “Last chance to save yourself some pain,” Rinda said.

Zadok slashed at the scribe. The strike was tentative, more a test of her reflexes than a serious attack, and the blade hissed through the air well in front of her. Nevertheless, Rinda acted as if the knife had come quite close. She leaped back a step then dropped to the ground, sitting right behind the book. She gasped in mock terror, as if she’d stumbled, but her hands trembled not the least as she grabbed for the heavy tome.

The feigned blunder drew Zadok into a charge. He lunged, but the blade met the indestructible bindings of the Cyrinishad, not the woman’s throat. With a high, ringing sound, the knife snapped in two. The blade jangled musically as it clattered to the cobbles.

The orc continued forward, but Rinda rolled onto her back and caught the soldier in the stomach with her boot heels. A push from her legs sent Zadok sailing. He landed face-first on the bridge. He skinned his hands bloody and broke both the incisors that jutted up from his bottom lip.

Vrakk and three other orcs staggered to a stop near their fallen comrades. At a gesture from the general, Garm and Zadok were roughly hauled away. “Pathetic,” Vrakk puffed.

The scribe winced. “Oh, I don’t know. I thought I did rather well.”

“Not you.” The general jerked a warty thumb over his shoulder. “Them. Two against one. They should’ve killed you.”

Rinda carefully replaced the Cyrinishad in her pack and stuffed the rest of her belongings in around it. “Seems to me you didn’t do much better, that first day at my place,” the scribe said coldly.

With one hand, the orc lifted Rinda from the ground. His beady eyes were narrowed in mirth. “You pretty good soldier,” he said and chuckled basely. It was the first time Rinda had ever heard an orc laugh; the sound reminded her of the sewers gurgling after the spring rains.

Vrakk led Rinda the rest of the way across the Force Bridge. More orcs gathered at the southern end, where a small, walled borough of the Keep crouched tensely upon the bank. There was little need for guards at this end of the span, since the wealthy Zhentish families who lived in the borough had either fled long ago or crossed to the better-protected confines of the north bank. From the fine cloaks, polished armor, and jewel-hilted swords the orcs wore, Rinda decided the nobles hadn’t left anyone to safeguard their homes from looters.

They climbed one of the twin towers that stood sentinel over the bridge’s terminus. When they reached the very top, Vrakk pointed across the Tesh. “Look what we done,” he said proudly.

In the city’s winding streets, crowds rushed away from the beleaguered western gate and the smoking ruin that was once the darkly glorious Temple of Cyric - though from Rinda’s vantage the mobs appeared as little more than groups of ants treading through a maze. The dragons circling the Keep reacted swiftly to the retreat. They focused their attacks on the northeastern gate. That left two avenues of escape for the Zhentish: the river or the twin bridges.

Most of the boats in the harbor had set sail, and all but a handful of them had been capsized or becalmed by the ice and the dragons. Finding the slips empty, a few foolish people tried to swim, but the bitter Tesh froze the life from them before they’d got fifty strokes from shore. With no other options, the mob turned to the bridges.

Patriarch Mirrormane had been certain the Lord of the Dead would answer the city’s pleas and strike down the besieging army - so certain, in fact, that he’d failed to consider the bridges a means of escape. So it was that Vrakk and his orcs had been assigned the unglamorous duty of guarding the spans while everyone was gathered in dawn prayer groups. The brutish soldiers had immediately constructed barricades across both bridges, barricades that now kept the Zhentish from fleeing the giants and dragons.

Xeno’s lackeys were only now discovering that the orcish troops had no intention of tearing the barricades down - not at a priest’s order, anyway. And so, the ends of both bridges were crammed with frantic refugees. Rinda could see them, masses of humanity, pulsing forward to the bonfires and toppled carts. The crowds had gotten much worse since she’d shouldered her way through. Small groups had begun rushing the orcish lines, only to be driven back by a hail of crossbow bolts. Dozens of corpses lay sprawled in the no man’s land between the humans and the orcs.

“It’s time,” Vrakk said.

“Time for what?”

The general smiled - a horrible thing to see - and gestured for a flag to be raised. As soon as the young orc started the red banner up the pole, its twin began to rise over a tower at the southern end of the Tesh Bridge.

“We do lots of work on bridges,” Vrakk murmured, then turned back to watch the distant barricades. “Priests think it punishment for us…”

Sparks rose into the morning air as the orcs scattered the bonfires. With the bridge sealed off, at least for a short time, the soldiers retreated at a run toward the south bank. They’d only gotten a quarter of the way across before the mob broke through the flaming wreckage. In the press, men and women were shoved into the fires. Their neighbors clambered over their backs as they burned.

Vrakk glanced at Rinda. “You not figure it out? Me think you smart.” He gestured to one of the dragons as it swooped low over the river to tear the sails from a coaster.

“They not attack us. How come?”

The realization swept over Rinda then. “You’ve cut a deal with them, haven’t you?” she whispered. “You’re fighting for the giants.”

Vrakk nodded. “Priests say we’re monsters, so we fight on side of monsters. Giants happy to have us in army.”

The retreating orcs had reached the south bank. Vrakk waited for the slowest of his troops to stumble to safety before he put two fingers to his lips and whistled. The shrill sound rang out even over the thunder of the charging refugees.

As one, the orcs shouted a vile curse directed at the Lord of the Dead: “Cyric dglinkarz haif akropa nar!”

Though the insult was nearly impossible to translate - at least with its original venomous hatred intact - it was enough to know that the slur involved Cyric and the forefathers of the orcs’ most hated foes, the dwarves. From the mouths of Vrakk’s troops, though, the five words were a magical trigger. The instant the orcs finished the curse, the center supports of both bridges exploded.

The whole length of the Force Bridge shuddered. As Fzoul and the Zhentarim mages had predicted, the Shou gunpowder that was the heart of the magical trap sent up a huge fireball. The blast incinerated the Zhentish at the front of the mob - the lucky ones, anyway. Shards of granite whistled through the air like sling stones and cut down others. Then the center of the bridge collapsed into the river, taking with it half the refugees. The scene on the Tesh Bridge was much the same - the frantic mob trying to turn back upon itself, the bridge dissolving beneath them into a rain of stone and mortar.

All along the south bank, the orcs howled at the devastation, at the score upon score of battered corpses floating amongst the shattered ice floes. Once, Vrakk and his soldiers had served those same people, offered up their lives to prove their loyalty. Yet the orcs hadn’t left their bestial roots so far behind that they could contrive any answer but this for the slight offered them by the city and the human god they’d adopted as their own.

Horrified, Rinda turned away from the carnage, from Vrakk. “I-I should go.”

The general grabbed her by the arm and spun her to face him. “They take away our honor,” he said. “They take away everything to give to Cyric, and he not care. Zhentish deserve this.”

“No one deserves that kind of death,” Rinda hissed. She pulled from his grasp.

“Don’t stop in Dales,” the orc noted. “Not be too safe there until giants and goblins break up army.” He tossed something toward Rinda. It landed at her feet, clattering loudly on the tower roof. “That medal King Ak-soon gave me for fighting in crusade. Bring it to Cormeer and show it to him. He take care of you.”

“I can’t take this, Vrakk,” Rinda said.

The orc grunted. “Monsters don’t wear medals.” Stiffly he turned to watch the carnage.

Rinda scooped up the medallion, the Special Order of the Golden Way, granted only to the victorious generals of Azoun’s crusade against the Tuigan. “I’ll keep it safe for you,” the scribe said, then hurried from the tower.

As she began her long, lonely journey south, Rinda said a silent prayer that all the Zhentish dragged into depravity by Cyric’s schemes - human and orc alike - might find their way back to civilization. Though the diamond holy symbol she wore made it impossible for Oghma to hear that wish, she knew the God of Knowledge would answer it, if he could. Until that wish came true, Rinda would find the strength to safeguard the Cyrinishad, to prevent the madness it contained from spreading beyond the ruined walls of Zhentil Keep.

Wherein Gwydion the Quick faces the

unremembered terrors of his mortal life,

Kelemvor’s prison undergoes some unwelcome

alterations, and Cyric pays the price for

trying to remake the world in his image.

Gwydion stood on the brink of Dendar’s cave. Orange steam swirled around him like some manifestation of the suffering that had settled over the City of Strife during the uprising. Animate fragments of denizens and shades lay everywhere, twitching, crawling, crying out. The heart of the battle raged nearby, at the gate to Bone Castle. Angry shouts and panicked orders echoed from the diamond walls, lingering over the River Slith and the field of rubble beyond. The noise drowned out the hiss of the Night Serpent’s breathing as she slept in her vast lair, contentedly gorged on the world’s unremembered nightmares.

“Mistress Dendar!” Gwydion shouted. He stepped closer to the first line of mammoth stalagmites. Tiny, lurking things scurried between the stones and watched him with hungry curiosity.

“Go away,” came a voice heavy with disdain, thick with sleep. “As I told the other lackeys: the prince must fight his own battles. My answer is final.”

“I’m not here to get you to rescue Cyric,” Gwydion called. He fought to keep the fear from his voice, to still the trembling of his gauntleted hands. “I want you to help us overthrow him.”

Dendar shifted on her bed of bones. Two eyes, large and sickly yellow, appeared in the cave’s gloom. “Overthrow him?” she asked. “Why should I ever want to do that?” Her slitted pupils narrowed as she moved closer to the cave’s mouth, and her forked tongue tested the air. “Ah, Gwydion. I never expected to see you here again - and girded like a knight. Well, well…”