Read Crucible: The Trial of Cyric the Mad for Free Online Page A

plate of the purest silver. Oghma the Wise viewed her as a young sage, while Talos the Destroyer saw her as an annihilating whirlwind of magic that left havoc wherever she went.
    But Mystra did not know how Kelemvor, Lord of the Dead, saw her-perhaps as a skeleton of polished ivory, or a mummy wrapped in golden silk. She had asked him once, in a quiet moment alone, and he had refused to answer, saying only that he regretted some things about becoming a god.
    When these eleven had come to the pavilion as gods do, they waited. Two places remained empty in the circle. The first was a large gap between Oghma and Chauntea; it was always left open in acknowledgment of Ao’s eternal presence. A smaller space lay between Talos and Shar, the space reserved for Almighty Cyric, the One and the All. Although the Dark Sun had not deigned to attend any circle in many years, the gods stood in such awe of his power that they did not dare begin before allowing him a few moments to appear.
    When it grew clear that Cyric had chosen not to grace their meeting with his presence, Tyr the Evenhanded gazed around the pavilion, lingering upon each of the gods until he caught their eye. Slowly, the chamber fell silent.
    Tyr the Just turned his empty eye sockets in the direction of fickle Tempus. “I believe you called us here, Foehammer?”
    Tempus walked to the heart of the pavilion, which he saw as a war room cluttered with maps and markers. Most of the other gods remained in their places, arranged in a circle, although some created chairs in which to sit or couches upon which to lie. Ever restless, Talos the Destroyer and Sune Firehair began to wander about, Talos tearing map corners and Sune pausing at every shiny surface to study her own reflection. No god scowled at their behavior, for it was no more in their nature to hold still than it would have been in Shar’s to step into the light.
    Tempus raised one armored fist and smashed it into the palm of the other. “I have had enough of Cyric the All!” he declared. “The time has come to strip him of his powers. Give me the word, and I will muster my thousands to storm the Shattered Keep and drag that mad god from his throne!”
    Tempus offered no explanation of his charges and presented no evidence to back them up. He had done all that as he summoned the others to the pavilion, and the Battle Lord was not one to repeat himself. He spun in a slow circle, glaring at each god in turn. “Who will stand with me?”
    Tempus turned to Shar and Talos, then waved his palm through the air before their eyes, leaving in its wake an image of the plain before Candlekeep. Though the battle between Jabbar and Haroun was not yet an hour gone, already Kelemvor’s carrion-eating harbingers had turned the knoll black with their gleaming feathers. On the plain before Candlekeep, hundreds of bodies lay scattered through the salt grass, struck down from behind as they fled the madness that had seized the Ebon Spur. “Even now, your worshipers lie dying in the field, betrayed by Cyric’s madness.”
    “You bound ahead of yourself, Foehammer,” said Tyr the Eyeless. “We cannot levy the punishment without giving a verdict, and we cannot give a verdict until we have debated the charge.”
    “Speak for yourself, No-Eyes!” exclaimed Talos. He overturned a table, sending a parchment that was to Tyr a law scroll and to Tempus a war map fluttering to the floor. “We have had too much of Cyric already! We know the charge and we know the verdict. I stand with you, Tempus! My bolts and my quakes will level the Mad One’s twisted castle, my winds scatter his Faithful to the thousand Planes!”
    Tyr waved his stump at the Destroyer. “Your rancor has no place here, Stormstar. Our duty is to preserve the Balance, not annihilate it.”
    The Nightbringer Shar leaned forward in her chair, spreading a stain of darkness before her. “In this case, Blind One, it seems clear that what Tempus proposes is in the best