The doors to Oghma’s palace were, as always, unguarded. The goddess rushed into the cavernous entry hall, beneath a vaulted ceiling inscribed with an unending roll of the faithful residing in the palace. Two sets of stairs wound away to the right and left. They led to the chambers reserved for the shades of Oghma’s blessed scholars and bards.

  “The alignment of the stars must be fortunate indeed to bring you to my home,” Oghma announced, his melodious voice filling the hall.

  The God of Knowledge stood framed by the ornate arch that opened from the entry hall into his library-throne room. His clothes matched the exotic facade on his palace - a flowing caftan, cinched at the waist with a sash of purest sky-blue silk; slippers with curling, pointed toes; and a sultan’s turban, pinned with a sapphire the size of a dwarf’s fist. A parchment page wrought of moonlight glowed in his left hand.

  “This isn’t a social call,” Mystra replied without prelude. “The faithful of all the gods are in peril.”

  Oghma’s broad, welcoming smile drooped into a frown. “You’ve been wounded,” he said, gesturing with a ring-heavy finger to the glittering slashes on Mystra’s hands and shoulders. “Cyric?”

  “Yes, but don’t worry. These are nothing that a few moments of meditation won’t heal.” She took the Binder’s arm. “We need to mobilize, and quickly. I left the bastard in Pandemonium, at the wall to Kezef’s prison.”

  “Then he truly is mad,” came a smooth whisper.

  Mystra turned to find Mask standing at her shoulder. The Patron of Thieves was wrapped in a cloak of shadows, his face hidden by a loose-fitting black mask. “I have heard rumors of a battle in Pandemonium near Kezef’s prison. I’d hoped they were untrue.” His red eyes narrowed as he bowed perfunctorily. “I have waited for a chance to undo the aid I once provided the Prince of Lies. Perhaps now I shall be of service to the rest of the pantheon…”

  “I’m sure you’re anxious to help,” Mystra replied stiffly. “I’ll mention that to the rest of the Circle.”

  Mask bowed again. “As you wish. But do not forget the Chaos Hound will devour the honored thieves in the darkened alleys of my domain as well as the sages in your weave-wrought castle of magic. I’m certain all the gods will want to strike against Kezef before he grows strong again. We should-“

  Oghma dropped his hand onto Mask’s shoulder. “Mystra is correct. This is a matter for the Circle.” The God of Knowledge held out the glowing parchment. “Here is the information you requested. My payment shall be your silence about the Chaos Hound until the Circle has had a chance to discuss the matter.”

  “Wait,” Mystra said. “The intermediate and lesser powers should be warned so they can set guards along their borders.”

  “In time, Lady,” Oghma replied. “We’ll only panic them if we don’t offer a plan of attack along with the warning.” He turned to the Lord of Shadows. “If you require such arcane texts in the future, Mask, I would appreciate the offer of some lost lore of equal obscurity in return. I’m sure your groundlings occasionally uncover useful tomes when rooting for coins in long-forgotten tombs.”

  “You’re right. Thievery is no honest labor, not compared to copying the words of others in some dank monastery,” Mask said, his normally smooth voice thick with disdain. He took the parchment in his gloved hands and disappeared into the shadows of the arch.

  Mystra scowled in consternation. “You were telling the truth back in the Pavilion of Cynosure. You aren’t a flatterer. Why insult him so? The Circle will need his help against Cyric and Kezef.”

  “My house is open to all,” Oghma replied blandly, “but by his nature Mask seeks to obscure, to cloak minds in the shadows of ignorance. There has never been true peace between us.” He dismissed the matter with practiced casualness. “Now, what’s this about Kezef?”

  As she passed under the arch into Oghma’s throne room, Mystra explained what had transpired in Pandemonium. The library at the heart of the House of Knowledge was infinite, with shelves rising as high as anyone - mortal or immortal-could see. The Binder’s faithful spent millennia cataloguing every bit of information they had learned in life. Others kept careful track of the library’s ever-growing hoard of knowledge. The shades of bards and writers studied these volumes of obscure lore and distilled the facts into brilliant tales and songs, as captivating as they were enlightening.

  In keeping with the palace’s Zakharan facade, the library was decked out in exotic finery. Shades soared from shelf to shelf on flying carpets, huge stacks of books balanced precariously in their arms. Readers stretched out in luxurious piles of pillows. Small air sprites known as djinnlings whisked between patrons. The blue-tinged elementals fulfilled every whim of the scholars crowded there, scribing notes, fetching food and drink, or seeking out myriad priceless tomes.

  “You were wise to flee,” Oghma noted. He slid into the ornate, high-backed throne then shifted uncomfortably. “I do hope these furnishings change soon. The setting’s far too gaudy for my tastes. Too many distractions to lure my faithful away from their work…”

  Mystra waved away a genie bearing a decanter of ambrosia. “The rest of the Circle is discussing the matter with me now,” she said, then traced an enigmatic sign in the air. Invisible wards sprang up around the two gods, shielding them from prying ears or scrying magic. “I would like to tell them you are ready to strike against Cyric as soon as we’ve recaptured the Chaos Hound.”

  “I will provide all the information I can on Kezef,” the Binder said. “And if the rest of the pantheon will give me certain bits of knowledge I seek, I will be glad to act alongside them in capturing the beast.”

  Mystra sighed. “Yes, I expected as much. The rest are asking for concessions, too. I suppose we can work something out.”

  “By rights, we cannot imprison the Hound until he has struck against one of the gods’ faithful. Even when that has happened, don’t count on a treaty too quickly,” Oghma warned. “When we last hunted Kezef, it took us nearly a year of mortal time to hammer out the pact. Talos is always the problem. He gets fixated on blowing up the moon, and, well, you’ve been to enough councils to know how he gets…”

  Though she was fighting hard to hide her anger, Mystra flushed crimson. “And Talos says Lathander will be the unreasonable one,” she grumbled. “Look, we don’t have a year. If Cyric released Kezef, he must have some task in mind for the beast. By next winter it’ll be too late to stop whatever that plan might be.”

  “Cyric is another matter completely, Lady,” the Patron of Bards said, his voice a thousand mournful dirges. “You were brave to stand against him in the meeting of the Circle, but I’m afraid my opinion on that matter hasn’t changed. It would be foolish for you or me to strike openly. In fact, caution will be needed now if we are to avoid a war in the heavens and catastrophe in the mortal realms.”

  “Caution?” Mystra scoffed. “Would you sit by, weighing your options, while Cyric looses the Chaos Hound in your courtyard? What if he were to siege this library? Would you be cautious then, Oghma?”

  “There would be no question of patience then, Lady,” the Binder said. The chorus of his voice had become a threatening basso rumble. “The book he is attempting to create threatens the spread of true knowledge, so I am doing what I can to thwart it. But, as yet, the Lord of the Dead has put no new plots against me into action.”

  Oghma conjured an image of Everard Abbey, a lonely, ramshackle retreat in the Caravan Lands. The phantasm floated in midair between the two gods.

  “It would take Cyric’s assassins but a few hours to ride from Iriaebor to this humble place,” the Binder began. “If I stand with you now, before the Lord of the Dead has struck a blow against me directly, will you give the men and women in the abbey magic to turn aside the assassins’ blades? Cyric will most certainly send them to Everard, and to every other temple and library built in my name.”

  He leaned forward, looming over the ghostly image of the abbey. “And I would have to rely on your help to protect my faithful, Lady, for the rest of the Circle will say I overstepped my office in battling Cyric. This is a matter for Tyr perhaps, since freeing Kezef broke a law. It’s just not a concern for the God of Knowledge.”

  “That’s ridiculously near-sighted, Oghma,” Mystra shouted. She banished the conjured abbey. “You’re dooming your worshipers.”

  “No,” the Binder replied flatly. “I’m serving my worshipers. If they perceived battles as the most important aspect of life, they would worship Tempus. They value knowledge and art, Lady, and this matter has yet to threaten a single historian’s notebook, a single verse of the most wretched Sembian poetry. When it does, I will turn all the power their faith gives me to stopping Cyric.”

  A brooding silence settled over the two gods. “Mystra,” the Binder said after a time, “you should know I can do nothing about the matter. It doesn’t directly concern knowledge or bardcraft. I told you in the pavilion-“

  That the gods were more limited than I suspected,” she said softly. “I am hearing how true that is right this moment. Most of the Circle mirrors your stand, Binder. As you said, only Tyr will help me against Cyric, because freeing Kezef broke a law.” She held out her wounded hand to Oghma. “If you realize the gods can only see from a limited perspective, why can’t you break out of yours? Why can’t you see that the world is more than poetry and histories?”

  “Knowing the truth is not the same as being empowered to act upon it,” Oghma noted. “I realize my kingdom has boundaries that my perspective might not be the same as yours or Lathander’s or Mask’s - but I cannot imagine what those other views reveal. No matter how hard I try, I cannot make my eyes see the universe as anything but a vast library.”

  Mystra dispelled the wards around the throne. “You can bargain with the rest of the Circle about Kezef on your own, but I’ll have no more part of it,” she said bitterly. “If it’s going to fall on me to counter Cyric’s insanity, I won’t waste time in endless debates.”

  The Goddess of Magic vanished just before chaos swept through Concordant. As it did each day at this time, the facade on the House of Knowledge changed, and along with it the trappings within the library and the binding of every book. Yet each volume remained in the same location, and each page held the same facts as before, though written in a different script or in a different colored ink.

  Oghma closed his eyes and tried to imagine what the world would be like if this pattern were broken somehow, if the wave of chaos destroyed the House of Knowledge instead of altering it. He couldn’t. Though he knew the universe held more than the contents of his library, when he subtracted his books and bardic tales and musty histories, he saw nothing but an endless void.

  “Don’t worry,” a soothing, feminine voice purred, “we shall deal with Kezef before he can track you down.”

  Kelemvor Lyonsbane kept his eyes fixed straight ahead and continued to pace through the white, featureless void. He moved his lips, silently counting his steps. After he counted one thousand, he made a precise turn to the left and started the count over.

  “I should erect a barricade in your way,” the unseen power noted petulantly. “Just to throw off your count”

  “Then I’d wait for you to get bored and lower it,” Kelemvor said. His deep voice, rarely used in the last decade, was barely a whisper.

  “And if I don’t get bored?”

  Abruptly Kelemvor stopped pacing. “You will. You can’t help yourself.”

  The silence that followed told the shade he was correct. Smiling at his victory, he resumed his march.

  As he had each day for the past ten years, Kelemvor Lyonsbane marked out the dimensions of his prison. Not that there were any walls within the empty whiteness around him, but Kel knew he would surely go mad if he didn’t create them for himself. And so he walked a careful circuit with regular, military steps. The room he inhabited was one thousand paces to a side, with windows in the center of each wall. There were no doors, of course, and the ceiling was too high to reach.

  Occasionally his unseen jailor spoke to him, or appeared as a woman or man or beast. But Kel dismissed these phantasms as unreal diversions, no more substantial than the memories of Midnight that sometimes took shape in the formless void around him. He never let these distract him for long; dallying in that sort of chaos would break him, and Kel was determined to rob his captor of such an easy victory.

  “Cyric is growing desperate to find you,” the voice said.

  “Go away,” Kelemvor replied, unperturbed by the obvious prodding. “I’ll be thinking about flaying Cyric alive in an hour. If you want to come back then, we can talk.”

  “An hour? What’s that mean to you? There’s no sun here, no stars…” When the prisoner didn’t answer, the voice added, “You held up far longer than I thought you would, but I believe you’ve finally cracked.”

  “I can count time as well as steps,” Kelemvor said. He stopped again and crossed his brawny arms over his chest. “Look, you should know by now none of this will work. If I could stand up to torture when I was alive, why should it be any different now that I’m dead? I don’t get hungry. I don’t need to sleep. If you were intent on trying to rack me or burn my eyes out, you would have done that by now.”

  “I thought you’d want to know about Kezef.”

  “There’s no need for me to know if you intend on stopping him,” Kel murmured. “As for Cyric, I’ll talk about him in a little less than an hour. That’s my schedule. You should know it by now.” With that he once more resumed his march.

  Kelemvor measured the rest of the wall undisturbed. At the final corner, he took a half-turn and walked to the prison’s center. There, he carefully straightened his clothes. He paused in brushing off his high leather boots and rough leggings, sleeveless white tunic and brown woolen cloak, only long enough to marvel - as he did every day - that a dead man should find himself clothed in the afterworld. When he’d been alive, Kel had never wondered if souls went around naked or not. Such philosophical minutiae hadn’t held the slightest importance to him, not when he spent his days fighting giants for their treasure or guarding caravans from marauding gnolls. That was the sort of useless trivia pointy-headed priests like Adon worried about.

  Kelemvor sighed. Now it was the very stuff of his everyday existence.

  With the same care he’d taken with his clothes, the shade ran his fingers through his long black hair and smoothed out his mustache and muttonchop sideburns. His features were rugged beneath his course touch. Some women had considered him handsome in his day; at least Midnight had seemed to think him so. As always, Kelemvor allowed himself to dwell on a memory of the lovely mage’s face, her lithe body, but only for a moment.

  Finally, he swept his cloak over one shoulder. With tentative fingers, the shade reached back to his right shoulder blade to feel the ragged hole in his tunic and the gaping, bloodless wound beneath. As always, the slightest touch sent a throbbing ache through his whole being. Kelemvor didn’t mind the pain in the least. It had become a signal of sorts to him, a prompting to a part of his spirit he kept carefully reined at all other times.

  Through the opened floodgates of his mind, images of Kelemvor’s final moments poured like a flood of dark, poisonous water: the battle against Myrkul atop Blackstaff Tower; the defeat of the Lord of Bones at Midnight’s hands; the joyous return of Adon, who they’d all thought slain by Cyric; and Cyric’s sudden, treacherous attack…

  The ache spread, sending swells of pain through Kelemvor’s body. A single memory, clearer than all the rest, rode atop the crest of the bitter flood - Cyric, laughing as he drove his sword deep into Kel’s back.

  “The hour’s up,” Kelemvor rumbled. “I’m ready to talk about that black-hearted bastard, and about revenge…”

  IX

  Nothing to Fear

  Wherein Cyric adds another chapter to his

  book of lies, the Chaos Hound tracks along the

  winding trail of Kelemvor’s life, and

  Blackstaff Tower once more becomes the topic of

  much gossip and speculation in both Waterdeep

  and the heavenly realms.

  Rinda rubbed the sleep from her eyes and propped her chin up on her elbow. At first Cyric had called her to the parchmenter’s shop at highsun every day. Now he was demanding her presence at more and more unusual hours-twilight, midnight, and now dawn. Days lapsed between visits, too; he hadn’t dictated another chapter for the Cyrinishad in almost a tenday.

  Weighed down by exhaustion and depression, the scribe let her head sink once more to the oaken writing desk. The foul smell of the poorly ventilated shop, the fetid water and rotting hides, didn’t bother Rinda in the least. She’d grown accustomed to such unpleasantries, just as she’d grown accustomed to church spies following her every move, or Fzoul and the other conspirators appearing unheralded in the middle of her house.

  With little enthusiasm, Rinda drove thoughts of treachery and The True Life of Cyric from her mind. She wondered for an instant what chaos would result if the Lord of the Dead uncovered those dangerous notions. Would the harp-voiced patron of Fzoul and the rest come to her aid? More likely the mysterious deity would strike her dead before Cyric could gain any information from her. She’d never worshiped any one particular god, though, so her soul would land squarely in Cyric’s domain, and he would get the information he wanted anyway.