“You’re no better than an animal,” the novitiate said, disgust written all over his features. He pointed to the shattered stage and snapped, “Get that mess cleaned up, then dispose of these corpses before the resurrection men cart them off.”

  “Not so many body snatchers around now, I hear,” Vrakk mumbled facetiously.

  He set about building a fire to destroy the stage, the ruined puppets, and eventually even the corpses, though the merchants wouldn’t like the smell of the place when they returned.

  Wait ‘til The True Life is finished, Vrakk reminded himself, glancing back at the novitiate. Then it’ll be our turn to choose which puppets go onto the pyre…

  XIII

  The Price of Victory

  Wherein the Lady of Mysteries proves she

  understands the value of good craftsmanship, but

  few in the Circle of Greater Powers appreciate

  how she puts that understanding into action.

  Gwydion couldn’t remember how many people he’d slaughtered, how much blood he’d spilled in Cyric’s name. A part of his soul screamed each time he wrapped his gauntleted hands around someone’s throat, but that feeble cry could never dull the urgency of the death god’s command to kill all heretics. Gwydion knew he had no choice but to obey Cyric’s mad orders. That didn’t matter, though. The guilt was still his to bear.

  The babel of voices from the Keep had quieted since his transformation. Or perhaps Gwydion had grown accustomed to the constant hum of prayers and pleas to the Prince of Lies. Whichever was true, the results were the same: as he hovered in a nether-plane, somewhere between the City of Strife and the mortal realms, Gwydion found himself enjoying an instant of near silence.

  The nine inquisitors had done their job well. Only rarely did a heretic blurt out a denial of Cyric’s power or refute his mandate to reign in the heavens. If the Lord of the Dead hadn’t granted his patriarch the right to modify the definition of heresy, the knights of Hades might have remained idle for days on end. Now Gwydion spent his time culling out opponents to each new church edict. The heretics he faced were more often than not minor foes of Xeno Mirrormane, but opposing the patriarch had become just as deadly as insulting his god.

  As for the eight remaining unholy knights, they’d been dispatched to other cities in Faerun, other places Cyric considered vital to the nurture of his cult. In Mulmaster and Teshwave and Yulash, inquisitors had begun new wars against heresy. Darkhold and the Citadel of the Raven, fortresses well-known as centers of Zhentarim intrigue, were also visited by the gold-armored terrors. Just as they had in the Keep, the inquisitors struck suddenly and violently against anyone who spoke out against the Prince of Lies or his church. The resistance in these places was stronger, but futile nonetheless.

  And once these cities bowed to Cyric’s will, there were many others waiting for a revelation of the death god’s truth and his power…

  “Cyric’s a coward. A god would have to be a coward to use clockwork thugs to watch over mortals!”

  The vehemence of the insult shocked Gwydion out of his respite. After a tenday of vaguely muttered threats to minor priests or slurred, drunken rails against all the powers and fates - including the Lord of the Dead - the clear, purposeful challenge rang out across the inquisitor’s consciousness like a barrage of Shou fireworks.

  Gwydion stepped into the mortal realms at the center of the Force Bridge. The ice-choked Tesh flowed sluggishly beneath the long stone bridge, and gulls wheeled overhead. Before him, on one of the low railings that edged the span, sat a stoop-backed old woman. She looked as frail as elven crystal, so thin the cold winter wind might pull her up into the twilight just now settling over the Keep.

  “There you are,” she cackled. Stiffly the old woman stood, and the blue-white shawl dropped from her shoulders. The cloth slithered along the ground like a huge deadfall leaf.

  Gwydion took two quick steps toward the heretic then stopped. This was no mortal. Beneath the aged facade lurked the power of a god. The inquisitor could smell the crackle of lightning in her movements, could feel the tremor of the bridge at her every footstep. And all around the woman, a million thin cords of light flowed from her body, linking her to the magical weave surrounding the world. This could be none other than the Goddess of Magic herself.

  “Goddess,” the inquisitor said thickly. From his lips, the word sounded as if it were the most vile curse he could manage. “Heretic.”

  “Well,” the old woman said, surprise playing over her features. “Either you’re more than I expected or my illusions are not very good.” The facade slipped away, pouring from her like water. Beneath lay the young, raven-haired avatar Mystra usually adopted in the mortal realms.

  As Gwydion started forward again, the shawl curled around his foot. It rubbed up against him for a moment like a house cat, then it, too, transformed. The tattered cloth became a sheet of magical force. A flick of Mystra’s fingers, and the glowing sheet slipped beneath the inquisitor’s boot. It strained, trying to topple the giant, but soon fell limp.

  Gwydion pointed his toes down and ran the boot’s razor tips along the shimmering square. The god-forged metal tore through the enchantment, shredding it into blue-white wisps that quickly dissipated.

  Shouts of alarm went up from both ends of the bridge. Orcs from the Zhentilar lined the span’s southern end, far from the fighting; they paused in shoring up the support beams to gawk and jeer at the strange warriors. On the opposite bank, a horn sounded from the city walls. Human soldiers with longbows appeared atop the twin gatehouses, while others pushed the huge gates closed.

  Mystra glanced in both directions, checking to be certain none of the mortals were coming to join the battle. Gwydion used that momentary distraction to charge. When the Lady of Mysteries turned toward the inquisitor again, he towered over her, fists drawn back to strike. She barely managed to dodge the duel blows, which fell like thunderbolts against the bridge. Huge chucks of stonework plummeted from the walkway into the Tesh.

  Fear shook the part of Gwydion’s mind left unfettered within the Gondish shell. He was attacking a goddess! His fear demanded he run, to escape the fight, but the urgency of Cyric’s command overwhelmed those thoughts. Mystra was a heretic. She must be destroyed.

  The inquisitor charged again, feinting first to the right then darting left. He caught the goddess’s arm as she attempted to sidestep the lightning-quick strike. The avatar’s elbow splintered in Gwydion’s grip. The hooks in his gauntlets tore long ribbons of flesh from her arm as she pulled away.

  Mystra showed no fear of Gwydion, no pain from his assault. With nimble fingers she traced an arcane pattern along her battered arm, and the wounds healed.

  Enraged, Gwydion lashed out again, and again Mystra sidestepped the blow. The inquisitor’s fist knocked another jagged hole in the bridge. Stone and timber fell from beneath the goddess’s feet, but she floated above the breach. As Mystra landed on the other side of the gap, she cast one of the most powerful enchantments known in the planes.

  At a single word, unknown by all but the most learned wizards, a sphere of pale silvery light formed around Mystra and Gwydion. The inquisitor felt the jolt of the spell, felt his limbs slow. His heightened senses registered a dozen weird occurrences simultaneously. The debris from the hole between him and the goddess had stopped falling toward the river. The fragments hung suspended in air, motionless. The sounds of the city’s harbor and bustling streets, the trumpeting from the battlements and the shouts of the orcs, all were suddenly banished from his ears. The subtle wear of the wind, of decay, against the bridge had ceased.

  Mystra had stopped time itself.

  The spell should have been enough to end the battle. Yet, almost as quickly as his senses told him what Mystra had done, the inquisitor found himself moving again.

  For the first time, Gwydion could read the goddess’s emotions on her beautiful features. Faint surprise showed in her inhuman eyes, but the grim line of her mouth told the knight Mystra had expected the spell to fail. She was testing his limits, toying with him. Again Gwydion wanted to flee, but Cyric’s commands drove him forward, toward the trap he now knew the Lady of Mysteries had set for him.

  The silver sphere disappeared, and time rushed in to fill the void. The wave of sound and smells and sensations shook the inquisitor, unbalanced him long enough for Mystra to summon a servant from her castle in Nirvana.

  The marut Mystra called was nowhere near as large as the one Gwydion had seen on the Fugue Plain, gathering up the souls of her faithful, but it was still huge. The hulking creature towered twenty-five feet into the air, its stony flesh as black as the walls of Zhentil Keep. Enchanted armor, blessed by Mystra to withstand any physical blow, covered its arms and broad chest. In one hand the marut clutched a length of sturdy chain, in the other an enormous cage.

  The onyx-skinned creature appeared right in front of the inquisitor. The sound of their collision rolled over the city, a tortured clash of unbreakable metal and flesh that was stone. Those in the Keep who’d lived through the Time of Troubles trembled at the din; it echoed over their homes and shops much the same way another cacophony had in those dark times: the cataclysmic destruction of Bane’s temple.

  Both the inquisitor and the marut fell back a few steps, ready to clash again. The marut struck first, slamming the cage down around Cyric’s minion. Gwydion grabbed the bars. His strength should have been enough to tear the steel like paper, but it held fast against him. More bars slid from the frame to close off the bottom before the inquisitor could dig down through the bridge. And when he tried to step out of the mortal realms, retreating back through the planes to Cyric’s domain, he found the armor’s mechanisms baffled.

  “Gond was right,” Mystra said as she walked around the cage. “The armor is utterly magic resistant.”

  This cage is not magic? the marut asked. In the goddess’s mind, the creature’s voice echoed as if it had come from deep within a cave. Surely this is no mundane device to hold such a warrior.

  “Mechanical,” Mystra replied softly. She continued to circle the prison like a curious child at a zoo. “The cage is mechanical, just like the armor. The Wonderbringer built the bars specially to counter the strengths and prey upon the weaknesses of the armor he built.”

  Then the cage is like a shield of spell turning?

  Mystra smiled. “More like fighting fire with fire. Force and counter-force.”

  Bah. I still say this is magic somehow.

  The marut sullenly hooked the length of chain to the cage’s top so it could carry the thing without getting too close to the inquisitor.

  “It’s only magic if you don’t understand how it works,” the Lady of Mysteries murmured.

  Gwydion mirrored the goddess’s movements as she paced, trying to grab her whenever she got close. After one swipe snagged her hair, Mystra paused in her study of the armor and looked more carefully at the helmet, at the soul trapped inside. Though the inquisitor still thrashed against the bars, his eyes - Gwydion’s eyes - stared helplessly at the goddess from the golden prison.

  “Can you hear me?” Mystra asked.

  The part of Gwydion’s soul dominated by the armor screamed for the heretic’s blood. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t force himself to speak or even move in some way that might answer the goddess.

  “Don’t worry,” Mystra said after a time. “I’ll get you out of there once we capture your eight brothers. Then we’ll see about making Cyric pay for this.”

  A maelstrom raged inside Gwydion’s head. Shouted prayers to Cyric and solemnly sworn oaths blurred together with the whispered heresies he could no longer punish. He threw himself against the bars time and again, but deep inside, at the heart of the storm, Gwydion gave silent thanks the killing had been stopped.

  “Lady Mystra,” Tyr said, “you stand accused of willfully endangering the Balance, the most serious charge that can be leveled against any deity. How do you plead?”

  “I enter no plea,” the Goddess of Magic snapped. “The charge is ludicrous.”

  At his desk to Tyr’s right, Oghma sighed. “I’ll take that to mean ‘not guilty,’” the Binder said without a trace of humor.

  The Pavilion of Cynosure was packed with gods and demipowers from all parts of Faerun. Deities rarely seen in the pavilion - Labelas Enoreth, elven God of Longevity; Garl Glittergold, Father of All Gnomes; dour, stone-featured Grumbar, the Boss of Earth, ruler of that grim elemental plane; and a hundred others - took up long-unused tiers along both sides of the room. Public trials against one of the Circle of Greater Powers were rare, and few would miss the opportunity to witness such a spectacle.

  Mystra had taken up her traditional post, toward the back of the wizard’s workshop that she perceived the pavilion to be. By her side stood the nine inquisitors, imprisoned in their cages of unbreakable, Gond-crafted steel. Tyr sightlessly faced the goddess from the opposite side of the workshop, clutching the lectern with his lone hand as if the box were a pulpit and he an impassioned preacher; there was nothing the God of Justice loved more than a trial, especially one involving his fellow deities.

  “Members of the Circle,” Tyr began, “Lady Mystra stands accused of carrying out a vendetta against the rightful Lord of the Dead, with blatant disregard for the consequences to the Balance. To reach a verdict, we must consider two-“

  “If my crime is so terrible,” Mystra snapped, “why haven’t I been brought before Ao?”

  Tyr scowled at the interruption, but Oghma looked up from his notes. “Your accuser demanded the greater powers sit as the jury,” said the Patron of Bards. “As a member of the Circle, that was his right.”

  Oghma’s voice was full of anger, a mob singing a bloody song at a lynching. The tone of it brought a look of disbelief to Mystra’s eyes. “Did you have me summoned here?” she murmured. When the Binder shook his head, the goddess glanced at the other greater powers scattered around the pavilion floor. “Then who?”

  “Can’t you guess?” Cyric called from the mob of lesser powers and inhuman deities crowded in the tiers. He stood to face the Lady of Mysteries.

  “And the rest of you took this seriously?” Mystra scoffed.

  “Why not? I have proof enough to convict you three times over,” Cyric purred. “You’ve done everything you can to prevent me from executing my office. I realize now the only way to save myself - and stop you from upsetting the Balance - is to ask for the Circle’s help.” He smirked. “You see, I can play by the rules, even if you won’t.”

  “This is absurd,” Mystra said. She summoned a spell to mind that would remove her and the caged inquisitors to Nirvana.

  “Consider the trial more seriously, Lady,” Oghma warned. “Your worshipers face total sanctions from the rest of the Circle if you don’t cooperate.”

  The Goddess of Magic paused, stunned by the threat. Sanctions meant total isolation for her worshipers; the greater powers would deny her faithful the benefits of their offices. Lathander would stop the dawn from rising over church grounds, and Chauntea would prevent their crops from growing. Mystra’s faithful would be refused entrance to the Fugue Plain if they died, and any knowledge preserved in their libraries would vanish. There was but one way for the mortals to escape these harsh measures: abandon their worship of the goddess. It wouldn’t take long for most to turn away, and those few devout souls who didn’t would soon perish. With no mortal worshipers, the Goddess of Magic would cease to exist.

  “Cyric is using you against me,” Mystra pleaded. “Can’t you see that?”

  “I’ll have no part in judging the evidence,” Cyric called. “I’m an innocent bystander. The wronged party, if you want to be totally accurate.”

  “So says the Prince of Lies,” Tyr noted flatly from the podium. “Do not doubt that we listen for the ring of truth in each word you utter, Cyric. And as for you, Mystra, you should know that I will be a fair and just judge, conducting this trial in accordance with all the laws of the Balance, as decreed by Ao himself.”

  Tyr cleared his throat. “As I was saying, to reach a verdict we must consider two questions. First, did Mystra act beyond the demands of her office in battling the Lord of the Dead? Second, if this is true, did she endanger the Balance by doing so?” He gestured to Cyric. “You may state your case.”

  “With the inquisitors, I’d hoped to counter the heresy growing in my church,” the Prince of Lies said. “Mystra took it upon herself to foil that plan - even though it had nothing to do with her responsibilities as Goddess of Magic.”

  Tyr nodded and stroked his long white beard. “Do you have anything to say in your defense regarding the capture of the inquisitors, Lady?”

  “They were threatening everyone’s worshipers,” Mystra replied. “They had to be stopped.”

  “The inquisitors didn’t single out your lackeys,” Cyric said. “They struck down anyone who spoke against me. If some of your faithful were harmed, they brought it upon themselves.” The Lord of the Dead turned to the crowd. “As I see it, the inquisitors were like a force of nature - like one of Talos’s storms. Surely Mystra doesn’t reserve the right to counter any force that might harm her worshipers. If this is the case, there can be no deep water, no poisonous plants, no weapons or-“

  “We understand,” Shar interrupted. The Mistress of the Night stretched languidly. “Come now, Mystra. You must be able to offer up a better reason why these clockwork warriors concern the Goddess of Magic.”

  “The armor is constructed to withstand all enchantments,” Mystra replied. “By their very nature the inquisitors attempt to prove craft’s supremacy over the Art.”

  Tyr paused to consider that claim. “True enough,” the God of Justice noted after a moment. “And you might have been able to sway us with that argument - had you yourself not sought the aid of Gond in combating the inquisitors. The cages you had the Wonderbringer construct endanger the place of magic in the world, too, if we follow your logic.”