“I should warn you,” Gwydion announced grandly, “I wield Titanslayer, bane of all evil giants. You cannot harm me while I have this sword.” He held the weapon high, marveling at how the sunlight played off the blade.

  Thrym narrowed his eyes in confusion. He reached for his axe, which lay against the cliff like a toppled tree, and hefted it to strike. “Mad as a tarrasque,” he muttered and brought the axe down.

  Gwydion saw his sword arm hit the ground an instant before he felt the giant’s axe cleave his shoulder. The limb convulsed, and the fingers released the long, blackened bone they held so desperately. There was no Titanslayer, no gift from the gods. Then the pain shrieked through the sell-sword’s chest, along with the dim realization that he was lying in the snow, covered in his own blood.

  “Torm,” Gwydion whispered as the giant brought his axe down for the killing blow.

  I

  Life Underground

  Wherein an unexpected journey leads Gwydion

  the Quick to the maker of his doom, and the

  mighty Torm dutifully attempts a defense

  of the dead man’s honor.

  Fervent voices filled the air. Cries of joy, hopeful whispers, and murmurs thick with a desperate longing for salvation merged to become a blanket of sound over the Fugue Plain. The tangled weave of voices held a certain weird power, soothing in its constancy, exciting in its boundless optimism. Such were the prayers of the recently dead.

  “Silvanus, mighty Oak Father! Gather me into the great circle of trees that is the heart of your home in Concordant!”

  “We are the Morninglord’s children, born again into his eternal care. Let us rise, Lathander, like the sun in spring dawning, to renew our spirits at your side!”

  “O Mystra, divine Lady of Mysteries, this servant of your great church asks humbly to be shown the secrets of magic, to be taken into the weave of sorcerous power that enfolds the world!”

  In the clear sky over the endless, chalk-white plain, a burst of light announced the arrival of a god’s herald. The hulking, golemlike creature was a marut, carved from a block of onyx as large as any castle in Cormyr, ensorceled to do the bidding of its divine creator. It hovered above the throng and studied the assembled souls with a pair of eyes that burned like sapphires in its round, stony face. Wide plates of armor and intricately carved bands of hammered gold could not hide the marut’s broad shoulders or thick-muscled arms. Its aura of resolute power, of unyielding strength, likewise could not mask the glint of wisdom in its steady gaze.

  The souls crowding the endless plain looked expectantly up at the marut. The herald presented one massive hand in a sign of benediction. As it spread its blunt fingers wide, a blue-white nimbus appeared against the marut’s dark palm. The soft glow grew, forming a circle of stars. Red mist flowed in a thin stream from the circle’s center.

  The shades recognized the holy symbol. From all parts of the Fugue Plain, a cry went up: “Mystra!”

  Jagged shafts of light erupted from each of the thousand stars and seared the plain in a sudden hail of lightning. The bolts struck the worshipers of the Goddess of Magic, blasting away the cares and concerns that had hardened like shells around their souls in their years of mortal life. The servants of Mystra cried out joyously. Bathed in the power and love of the Lady of Mysteries, they stretched their arms wide and floated up toward the circle of light. One by one, Mystra’s faithful became like glittering stars. When all had been lifted from the crowd, the herald closed its hand and disappeared.

  As one voice, the souls on the Fugue Plain resumed their chants: “Hear my sword upon my shield! I summon you, O Lord of Battles, and demand my commission into your great army in Limbo. My victories in your name are legend, the host sent to this field of the dead before me without number. Astolpho of Highpeak fell to my ever-sharp blade, and Frode Silverbeard. Magnes, son of Edryn, and Hemah, foul knight of Talos…”

  Gwydion the Quick stared at the armor-clad man as he hammered his sword against his riven shield. The warrior bellowed a seemingly endless list of names, pausing only to shout for Tempus to rescue him from this dull place. Gwydion had stumbled across other worshipers of the war god on the Fugue Plain. They were all the same-boastful of their victories and anxious to join the god’s army, where they could spend the rest of eternity in glorious, unending combat.

  The sell-sword mournfully shook his head and shuffled away. On every side, men and women sent up prayers to their patron gods. Bards and rangers dedicated to Milil formed huge choruses, chanting their praise of the Lord of All Songs. A solitary devotee of Loviatar moved through the throng, scourging himself with a barbed whip, oblivious to all around him. The bards momentarily parted for this frenzied shade, discord overwhelming their song. The interruption soon passed, however, and the praise of Milil floated once more into the air, born aloft on harmonies so perfect they soothed even the savage minions of Malar the Beastlord.

  And in the midst of this tapestry of sound, Gwydion the Quick found himself mute.

  He’d appeared on the Fugue Plain some time ago, though he found it hard now to tell how long. At first the sell-sword dared to hope he’d dreamed his death. After all, his body seemed solid enough. His sword arm was attached to his shoulder again, the other fatal wounds miraculously healed. The fur-lined cloak he’d bought for the trip to frigid Thar was free of bloodstains. Tunic and breeches and high leather boots all seemed perfectly new. But images of his severed arm lying on the frozen ground and Thrym’s bloody axe descending for another blow still dominated his memory. Gwydion need only call these vivid scenes to mind to know his fate had been sealed. He had passed beyond the realms of the living, into the lands of the dead.

  The notion neither frightened the sell-sword nor awed him. From the instant he’d found himself standing in the midst of the teeming throng, a thick shroud of indifference had clouded his thoughts. He moved in a fog, taking in the strange sights and sounds as if they were no more unusual than those to be found in any marketplace in Suzail.

  Gwydion understood just enough theology to identify the crowded expanse around him as the Fugue Plain. Long ago, in his days as a Purple Dragon, he’d guarded a diplomatic caravan to Bruenor Battlehammer, dwarven lord of Mithril Hall. A traveling priest of Oghma had bored him witless during the trek north with complicated explanations of the route a soul took on the way to eternal peace. Now, Gwydion would have given almost anything for a lecture on what lay in store for him beyond the Fugue Plain. Turning his back on the worshipers of Milil, the shade tried once more to call on Torm. The words came out as a horrible croak, just as they had each time he’d attempted to pray - to Torm the True or any other god. He couldn’t even form the litany in his mind. In vain he fought to remember the prayers, but the words simply vanished from his thoughts before he could focus on them.

  One of Milil’s bards paused in her song to stare at Gwydion. When the sell-sword met her gaze, she looked away, but not before he noted the terror clouding her eyes.

  That fear proved contagious. A softly glowing ember, it flared in Gwydion’s mind and burned away the shroud of uncaring still fogging his senses. What if Torm has taken my voice as the price of failure? A chill ran down Gwydion’s spine. No, he reminded himself. I was tricked. Some mage - some very powerful illusionist - led me to my doom.

  He shrieked and whimpered, but not a single word escaped his lips. The ember of fear burst, showering fragments of panic across his thoughts. He was cursed. Whoever had cast the illusion had stolen part of his soul…

  Gwydion felt burning tears well up in his eyes, but when he tried to blink them away, he found he couldn’t close his eyelids.

  The shades of the Faithful jostled Gwydion as he broke into an aimless run, their souls as tangible as his own strangely physical form. Some prayed more fervently as the gibbering sell-sword shambled by. Others turned their unblinking eyes on the lost soul. They were struck by the sorrow etched on Gwydion’s face, but fearful to cease their own murmured prayers to comfort him, lest they, too, be cut off from their gods.

  Gwydion stumbled through the milling crowd. The faces blurred before his eyes, and the prayers became a meaningless cacophony. He grabbed a young woman wearing a silver disk of Tymora and shook her roughly. Someone had to lift the curse! In reply to his gurgled plea, the woman knocked Gwydion’s legs out from beneath him with a sweep-kick then backed away.

  “He looks like one of ours,” came an inhuman voice.

  “Nah. Just another of them cracked doommasters. Beshaba attracts that sort of trash.”

  The coarse, profane voices jarred against the sacred prayers, startling Gwydion out of his frenzy. He leaped to his feet and spun around, only to come nose to stomach with the most horrifying creature he’d ever seen. Its head had belonged to a huge wolf at one time, but the rest of its grotesque form had been patched together from a dozen other animals. Striped fur bristled in a mane that ran from between its pointed ears down its hunched ogre’s back. Bright red scales plated the rest of the thing’s body. It had a pair of human arms ending in hands that were little more than claws. These the creature rubbed together nervously. Four enormous spider legs waved and clutched the air beneath the other arms. Serpentine coils supported the monstrous torso, writhing and twisting beneath its bulk.

  “You’re cracked, Perdix,” the beast said, saliva drooling from his wolfish jaws. “This one’s for the city. It’s obvious! Look at his face. He’s been crying.”

  Perdix folded his leathery wings and hopped closer to Gwydion on a pair of skinny legs that bent backward at the knees. Rubbery yellow skin covered his body, which was as thin and wasted as that of a drought-starved child. With the single blue eye in the center of his wide face, Perdix looked up at Gwydion. “Well?” he asked impatiently, thin tongue flickering over gleaming white teeth. “Get praying, slug.”

  Frantically Gwydion tried to shove the little creature out of the way, but two sets of spider legs closed around his chest and pulled him backward. The wolf-headed thing glowered down at the sell-sword and placed clawed hands to either side of his head. “You heard Perdix,” he hissed. “Let’s hear your best holy day shout.”

  As before, a pitiful croak escaped Gwydion’s lips when he tried to call on Torm.

  Perdix shook his head. “For once you’re right, Af. I was certain he was a doommaster. They’re always getting into rows with Tymora’s lot.” He held out a set of night-black manacles. The iron rings clicked open, revealing sharp spikes pointed inward. “Now let’s not have any trouble from you, slug.”

  One glance at the shades nearby told Gwydion he was alone in this. The others had turned their backs on him, leaving him to his two hideous captors. The Faithful close by formed a wide circle. They had their faces turned to the sky, their hands clenched together in white-knuckled devotion or crossed devoutly over their unbeating hearts.

  Gwydion cursed them wordlessly and struggled against Af’s implacable grip. His panic had subsided to a slow-burning dread, allowing him to think a bit more clearly. The endless hours of drill on Suzail’s parade grounds came back to him then, his training in hand-to-hand combat. He laced his fingers together and pounded Af in the jaw. At the same time, he drove both heels down on the creature’s snaking coils.

  Af growled in annoyance at the blows, but silently reminded himself there would be trouble if he twisted the prisoner’s head off. Instead, the denizen bit down on Gwydion’s hands as he raised them to strike again, clamping his jaws just hard enough to pierce the flesh.

  In that instant, Gwydion realized the giant’s axe hadn’t liberated him from pain.

  “Tsk. Isn’t that always the way?” Perdix sighed. “No matter what I say, you slugs try to fight anyway.” He hopped high off the ground and clamped the manacles onto Gwydion’s wrists.

  As the iron rings clanked shut, their spiked interiors bit into flesh. Then, as if the taste of the shade’s essence had suddenly woken them from rusting slumber, the spikes twitched to life and burrowed deeper still. They dug into bones, twisted sharply, and shot straight up Gwydion’s arms. Blinded by the pain, the shade screamed a long, yowling wail of agony.

  For the first time since Gwydion’s arrival on the Fugue Plain, the sounds from his throat rang clear and true.

  When the haze of pain cleared from his eyes, Gwydion found himself in a noisy crowd gathered outside a great walled necropolis. His whole body ached terribly, but the manacle spikes seemed to have stopped driving into his arms. Af had a clawed hand clamped on one of Gwydion’s elbows. Perdix held the other in cool, webbed fingers. A charnel house stench hung over everything. Gwydion found tears streaking down his cheeks, not from the pain in his wrists, but from the choking smell of death and decay seeping into his nose and mouth.

  The gates towering before him would have dwarfed Thrym or any other giant in Faerun. Dark and foreboding, they reached up into a sky swirling with red mist. To either side, past the hulking gatehouses, high, pale walls stretched to the horizon. He was too far away to be certain, but Gwydion thought the walls were moving. It was almost as if each brick were shifting constantly, writhing as though it were alive.

  All around the sell-sword, the crowd of whimpering, bawling shades pushed closer to him. Each had been bound at the wrists by manacles, and, like a reluctant steer before a slaughterhouse, every damned soul was herded along by a pair of monstrous denizens. The creatures were kin to Perdix and Af, but only in their sheer grotesqueness. They’d been formed by insane mixings of animals and men, plants, or even gems and metals. They flew, slithered, and crawled along, prodding their prisoners with suckered fingers or jabbing them with sharp spines.

  The crowd surged forward, pressing Gwydion up against the closest of the twin gatehouses. The tower’s surface was hard and dark, and it felt oddly warm against the sell-sword’s face. He pushed away to get a better look at the small, roundish blocks. They weren’t stones, he decided, but fist-sized lumps of… something. He peered closer then recoiled in horror. “Hearts!” he shrieked. “The tower’s made of human hearts!”

  Af snorted. “Bright boy. The gates are, too.” He lowered his snout and stared into Gwydion’s terror-filled eyes. “Bet you can’t tell me what kind.”

  “Oh, leave him be,” Perdix said. “He doesn’t look like a priest to me. They’re the only ones who care about such trivia.”

  “Cowards’ hearts,” Af gloated, ignoring Perdix completely. “They don’t make as good a wall as heroes’ hearts, but then, we don’t get many heroes here.”

  Perdix shook his head in disgust. “Tsk. You’re so proud of the blasted things, you’d think you built them yourself.”

  “I did!” Af bellowed. “At least, I was around here when they was first put up!”

  Gwydion finally found his voice. “Torm, save me!” he shrieked.

  Every denizen in earshot turned to Gwydion, and a webbed hand clamped over his mouth. “None of that, slug,” Perdix hissed. “There’s one god in the City of Strife, and he don’t like his subjects calling out to any of the others. We don’t care if you get in deep with him the first day you’re on your own, but right now you’re our charge. This reflects bad on Af and me.”

  “And we certainly don’t need the grief,” the wolf-headed denizen grumbled. He balled one taloned hand into a fist and brought it hard against Gwydion’s jaw. Bones shattered. Teeth spilled from the shade’s mouth like marbles from a torn bag.

  Perdix frowned. “You’re our own worst enemy, Af,” he sighed, wrapping one leathery wing around Gwydion to shield him from further blows. “If he can’t speak, they’ll be really miffed at the castle. Remember what happened last time, when you twisted that shade’s head off?

  Af slithered sideways on his coils. “Aw, this’ll heal before he gets in to see him. ‘Sides, he was calling on another power. You know the rules about that.”

  Reluctantly Perdix agreed but was careful to impose himself between Gwydion and Af until the gates opened. Horns sounded from high in the gatehouses, and the dark doors creaked apart just wide enough for three men to pass through, shoulder to shoulder. Denizens shoved their wards through the gap then followed close behind. The shades tried their futile best to resist these last few steps into the City of Strife. The matter was always decided by the steady push from the thousands of damned souls milling behind the reluctant prisoners.

  A straight boulevard led away from the gates, lined on both sides by hundreds of skeletal guardians wielding pikes and spears. The undead soldiers existed solely to abuse the newly damned and their captors. With their razor-sharp weapons, they sliced off chunks of flesh that were quickly ground into paste beneath the mob’s feet. Along the boulevard, hungry things with haunted eyes waited impatiently in the shadows, hoping to recover some morsel.

  Had anyone passing through the gates needed to breathe, the press would have suffocated him before he’d gone a dozen steps. A constant drone filled the air. This wasn’t a tapestry of prayers, as on the Fugue Plain, but a shrill curtain of vile curses and anguished cries. Near the gates, the noise was so great no one bothered to speak below a shout. Thankfully, the twisted, scarred, ten-story brown-stones that made up the skyline muted the sound as the mob approached the city’s center. Time blurred for Gwydion as he made his way with countless others to the heart of the City of Strife. Only the steady healing of his jaw marked the passing of the hours.

  He could feel the bones knit, the new teeth pushing through the raw gums. The pain still plagued him, blurring his vision and scattering his thoughts, but it had lessened to a continuous, throbbing ache. Gwydion wondered dully if his capacity to feel such mundane agony had been stunted. After all, the pain from the spikes buried in his wrists had diminished, too. In his heart, though, the sell-sword knew better than to hope he’d be immune to torture after this. The denizens would invent new kinds of pain for him if the old ones wore thin.