Myrkul was silent for a moment. When he spoke, there was no trace of amusement in his rasping, hollow voice. "I have not come here to listen to you state the obvious. We are, of course, both barred from our kingdoms."
"Then any measure that could help us to regain our rightful homes in the Planes cannot be deemed extreme or worthless, can it?" Bane noted as he stood.
"Only if the effort is wasted," Myrkul grumbled as the Black Lord walked toward the hovering image of the God of the Dead.
"I seek to reclaim the Tablet of Fate that I hid in Tantras, Myrkul!" Bane screamed. The Black Lord wished that his fellow god was in the room with him so he could strike him for his insolence. "Powerful forces may move against me — against us — if they discover that tablet. In Shadowdale, I was overconfident, and I paid the bitter price of defeat. I would rather die than face that again!"
Myrkul took a moment to consider the Black Lord's words. His expressionless, skeletal visage seemed to shimmer and fade for an instant, causing the God of Strife to reel with barely controlled panic. Finally the image resumed its full strength, and Bane relaxed. The Black Lord knew from Myrkul's eyes that the God of the Dead had decided to aid him even before he spoke.
"If you feel so strongly about this matter, then I will help you to recover the tablet," Myrkul said, nodding slowly.
Bane tried to act confident. With a shrug, he noted, "I had no doubt that you would aid me."
"You had every doubt," Myrkul rasped harshly. "That is the only reason I chose to help you. I am pleased to note that you are no longer blindly stumbling into situations that you know nothing about." The God of the Dead paused and fixed Bane with an icy stare. "But there is one thing you must consider: You may not have my assistance the next time you need it, Lord Bane."
The God of Strife nodded, dismissing Myrkul's threat as so much pointless rhetoric. Then the Black Lord mocked a look of concern and noted, "Bhaal will not be pleased if you kill all his worshipers."
"I will deal with the Lord of Murder," Myrkul said, rubbing his hand across his decaying chin once more. "I will contact you when all is in readiness." The Lord of Bones paused for a moment then added, "Have you given thought to what form you will use to hold the soul energy my spell will channel to you?"
Bane said nothing.
Rage danced in Myrkul's eyes. "Your human avatar couldn't handle the strain in Shadowdale, and the rite you wish me to perform will likely yield you far more power than the one I used then!" The God of the Dead shook his head and sighed. "Do you still have the small obsidian statue I used to contain your essence in the Border Ethereal?'
"I do," Bane said, a look of confusion on his face.
"This is what you must do," Myrkul told Bane. The Lord of Bones quickly listed a complex series of instructions and forced the God of Strife and his mad sorceress to repeat them several times. Then, as soon as he was satisfied that Tarana and Bane knew how to prepare for the rite, the God of the Dead's image disappeared in a flash of gray light and a puff of stinking, yellow-and-black smoke.
XV
In a darkened chamber, surrounded by a dozen of his most faithful worshipers and high priests, Lord Myrkul stared at the five-tiered stage that had been set for his performance. Emerald and black marble slabs floating in midair formed a stairway, one step for each of the five ceremonies the Lord of Bones had to perform to kill all the assassins in Faerun and grant Bane the power of their stolen souls.
From somewhere nearby, the God of the Dead heard the tortured screams of souls crying for release. Myrkul shuddered as he listened to the cries and thought of his lost home, his Castle of Bones in Hades. And even though the sounds Myrkul now heard were made by unfaithful worshipers who were receiving punishment and were nowhere near as horrifying as the screeches of those confined to his realm, the Lord of Bones enjoyed them nonetheless.
"Priests, attend me," Myrkul said as he pushed the memories of his home out of his mind, raised his bony arms, and walked to the first platform. Robed men bearing sharp-ended scepters made of bones approached and placed their offerings in the fallen god's hands. The robed men then knelt before Myrkul, raising their chins and baring their necks.
The fallen god started to chant in a hollow, rasping voice. In moments he was joined by the robed men at his feet. As their deep voices reached a crescendo, Myrkul used the scepters to tear open the men's throats one by one. The corpses fell backward onto the floor, their mouths hanging open in wordless protest at the unexpected agony of their final moments.
Far from Myrkul's hidden chambers, Lord Bane waited in a large abandoned warehouse in the port of Scardale. Tarana Lyr stood behind the God of Strife, and Cyric stood nearby, with five members of the Scorpions, Bane's new personal guard. Slater stood at the hawk-nosed thief's side, and Eccles remained close, staring wild-eyed at the fallen god. All of the Scorpions were heavily armed.
At the center of the warehouse, the faceless obsidian statue stood, for all the world, like a child's toy. A complex series of runes covered the floor around the figurine. The strange, mystical markings wound outward from the statue to fill the entire warehouse.
"Come, Myrkul, I don't have all the time in the world," Bane muttered, and a shadow passed across an open window. The Black Lord looked at the statue in anticipation just as a column of swirling green and amber light burst through the ceiling and engulfed the obsidian representation.
"Finally!" Bane cried, raising his fists into the air. "Now I will have true power…"
At that moment, far from Scardale, at the base of the mountains to the west of Suzail, a council of twelve men sat at a long rectangular table that had once been the dining table of the former lord of Castle Dembling. Now, Lord Dembling and his family were dead, murdered by the Fire Knives, a clandestine group of assassins who had sworn to kill King Azoun IV of Cormyr and had seized the small castle near his kingdom as their new base of operations.
The leader of the meeting, a dark-eyed, pug-nosed man named Roderick Tem, was tired of the small-minded bickering that had disrupted all of his attempts to organize his band of assassins into a productive company.
"Fellow assassins, this argument is getting us nowhere," Tem proclaimed, slamming the handle of his knife on the table to get his comrades' attention.
Before he could say anything else, Tem's eyes widened and his body stiffened. A green and amber light exploded from the pug-nosed man's chest and snaked around the room like a burst of lightning. In just a few seconds, the mystical fire from Tem's chest had pierced the hearts of each his friends. All the assassins fell over, dead.
Stalking the back alleys of Urmlaspyr, a city in Sembia, Samirson Yarth caught sight of his prey and drew his dagger. Yarth was a hired killer with an impressive record. Not one of his intended victims had ever escaped his blade. Yarth had even taken enough lives to personally warrant the attention of his deity, Lord Bhaal, on more than one occasion.
On this particular day the assassin was enjoying the hunt. His prey was a circus performer suspected of seducing the wife of a high-ranking city official. The purchaser of Yarth's talents, a seemingly mild little man named Smeds, had offered twice the assassin's normal fee if he could bring the performer's heart to him while it was still warm.
As Yarth watched, his victim leaped through the open window of a countinghouse. The assassin followed the young man into the semidarkness. There, he found his victim and saw the fear in his prey's eyes as the performer realized that he'd been cornered. Yarth raised his weapon.