"Convert?"
The tightness in Malik's breast became a smashing weight. The heart beating-slurping-in his chest was not his own, but a rotting mass of curd that, in a fit of the deranged genius of the mad god, the One had plucked from his own body and traded for Malik's mortal-though far healthier-heart. Since that day, the mere thought of betraying Cyric brought crushing agony. It was all Malik could do to continue speaking.
"Certainly I will convert." His chest felt as though someone was standing on it. "I will convert you and all of your followers to the Church of Cyric, the One and All!"
The weight vanished.
Yder’s fist came from nowhere, catching Malik in the side of the mouth. Two teeth came loose and got caught in his throat. Malik began to choke.
"Trifle with me all you wish," Yder said. "The goddess relishes your blood on her altar."
Malik’s only answer was a cough. He grew dizzy from lack of breath, and the world started to close in around him. He fought to stay conscious, summoning his anger by imagining his wealth in the hands of Prince Yder and his filthy Sharists.
"Nothing to say?"
Yder struck him again, and Malik's mouth grew so full of blood that it bubbled over his lips and spilled down his cheeks onto Shar's altar.
"That is good, Seraph," Yder said. "You are learning to please the Lady."
Unable to do anything else, Malik stared at the monstrous shadow hanging above him. A purple crescent appeared where the traitorous thing's mouth should have been-a smile. It thought he was going to choke to death.
Malik continued to cough.
"You will convert, Seraph," Yder said. "All you control is how long it takes."
"The Hidden One rules all," said someone behind the prince.
A chorus of whispers filled the chamber as Shar's worshipers repeated the paean. Had he not been so busy coughing and choking, Malik would have laughed. He might die upon Shar's altar or even rot upon it, but he would never convert. That was the one thing he did not control at all.
Malik's vision narrowed to a black tunnel, then went completely black. Yder's voice came to him from far away, demanding that he pay attention and not insult the Hidden One by closing his eyes upon her. The prince's cold fingertips settled on his eyelids and pulled them open, and that was the last thing Malik felt before sinking into a soft bed of unconsciousness.
The next thing was the heel of a large hand slamming him between the shoulders, and the icy fingers of another one dangling him upside down by his ankle.
"Breathe, you craven little ranag!"
The hand struck Malik again. The teeth upon which he had been choking flew from his lips, along with a mouthful of blood and bitter-tasting bile. He started to gasp and cough at the same time, two conflicting actions that left him helplessly hiccupping for breath.
"Did you really think you could escape that easily?" Yder demanded. "The Hidden One will not be deprived of her pleasure."
Malik opened his eyes and was blinded by the same painful radiance as when he had returned to consciousness before.
"And I am most thankful for that," Malik said, "though I know it is likely to cost me a month of terrible agony!"
Knowing Yder would interpret his gratitude as progress toward a conversion, Malik would have liked to stop there and enjoy the reward any good torturer would bestow on him as incentive for further progress-but Mystra's curse would not allow it
"Now I can finish what I have started by converting you and your followers to the Church of Cyric-" Malik tried to bring his hands up to cover his mouth, but found his wrists manacled together behind his back. The words continued to spill out-"so that I may spare my soul the danger of having to present itself at the Shattered Castle after I have failed to seize control of the Shadow Weave for the One, as he instructed."
Yder shook with such a rage that the chains binding Malik's wrists began to jingle. Malik cringed and tried to guess whether he would lose fewer teeth by clenching his jaw or leaving it to hang slack, but the blow never came. Instead, the prince remained silent and continued to hold him upside down, allowing Malik a few precious moments to study his surroundings.
They were, as Malik had guessed from the altar, in a temple to Shar-though it was certainly far from what he had imagined such a place would look like. While the walls were covered with the expected images of mysterious women and dark disks limned in purple flame, the chamber itself was blindingly bright, so much so that the shadows dancing on the walls seemed more real than the worshipers standing motionless in long rows of pews. There were easily a thousand Shadovar there, all submerged to their knees in a glimmering pool of mirror-bright fluid. As thick and viscous as quicksilver, the liquid was slowly flowing out toward the edges of the chamber, where it gathered at the walls and vanished down the drainage pits in lazy whirlpools.
Malik recognized the liquid instantly. It was the same thing that he and his friends had found inside the Red Butte in Karsus, spilling out of the Karsestone that Galaeron had used to summon Shade back into the world.
The prince hoisted Malik by the chain between his manacles, forcing his arms up and back until he thought his shoulders would break.
"In my centuries," Yder said, "I have learned a few things about pain."
Malik felt sick to his stomach. Though the One had blessed him with the ability to suffer any amount of agony and still have the strength to perform his duties as Seraph, that did not mean he was immune to pain. Quite the contrary.
It seemed to him that he always felt pain more acutely than those around him-and usually a great deal more of it
As Yder turned back toward the altar, Malik was not all that surprised to find himself looking at a luminous white boulder about the size of a horse. There was a jagged fissure down the center, and from this crack poured a steady flow of the silvery liquid that had filled the temple.
The stream was, Malik knew from his earlier adventures in the Red Butte, the last whole magic in the world. Seventeen centuries earlier, a mad Netherese archwizard named Karsus had tried to steal the godhead of Mystryl, the goddess of magic at that time. It had been a terrible mistake. The Weave had filled Karsus to bursting and killed him on the spot, and it had split into the Weave and the Shadow Weave. The luminous white boulder was Karsus's heart-all that remained of the mad archwizard-and the silver magic pouring from it was all the remained of the original, unsplit Weave.
Though Cyric's rancid heart began to slush so hard that Malik could barely hear himself think, he forced himself to remain calm. The Karsestone, as they had dubbed the boulder, was undoubtedly an artifact of untold power, but it seemed to Malik that for Shar's worshipers to tolerate its bright light inside their hidden temple, it had to be something more-something much more.
"The Karsestone!" Malik gasped as though he had just realized what he was looking at, for it was important to his plan that Yder did not realize how much Malik understood about what he was seeing. That seems an odd altar for followers of the Nightsinger."
"Shadow is born of light," Yder said.
The phrase was repeated by a thousand whispering voices as Yder hoisted Malik onto the stone and laid him facedown.
"All the same, so much bright light must be a great insult to your goddess… unless the Karsestone is the source of the Shadow Weave, of course." Malik swore a silent oath, for it been Mystra's curse that compelled him to add such a clumsy probe, then he hastened to add, "Or the one you worship here is not really Shar, but some other Hidden-"