The Shattered Mask (3 page)

The sky was darkening by the time they entered the clearing she’d selected for her work. A hidden arena far removed from all his minions, where no one would see or interfere.

“We’re here,” she said.

Thamalon peered about. Standing behind him, Shamur unfastened her cumbersome cloak and let it drop to lay on the snow like a pool of drying blood. The winter chill bit into her flesh, but she reckoned exertion would warm her soon enough. She lifted her skirt, removed the broadsword she’d concealed beneath it, unsheathed the blade, and discarded the scabbard. It would have been child’s play to drive the sword between her husband’s shoulders, but that had never been her way. Besides, she wanted to watch his face as he perished.

“All right,” he said, puzzlement in his voice, “whereis the pillar?”

“There is no pillar,” she replied, now making no attempt to keep her malice from sounding in her voice. What a joy to discard her mask at last. “Turn around and face me.”

He turned, and his brows knit when he beheld the weapon. “Is this a joke?” he asked.

“Far from it,” she replied. “I recommend you draw and do your best to kill me, because I certainly intend to kill you.”

“I know you haven’t loved me for a long while,” he said, “if indeed you ever did. But still, why would you wish me dead?”

“Because I know,” she said.

He shook his head. “I don’t understand, and I don’t believe you truly do either. Rather, you’re ill and confused. Consider what you’re doing. You have no idea how to wield a sword. Even if we did fight—”

She deftly cut him on the cheek. “Draw, old serpent. Draw, or die like a sheep at the butcher’s.”

For an instant he stared in amazement at her manifest skill with her weapon. Then he stepped back and reached for the hilt of his long sword.

Bileworm passed one of his misty gray hands through the other, then inserted his long, gnarled fingers into the bulging brow of his wedge-shaped head. It was his way of fidgeting when he was bored.

Perhaps he ought not to be bored, for after all, he’d rarely visited the world of mortal men. The stars in the black sky were a wonder, and so was the air, which carried the scents of wood smoke, horse dung, and a hundred other novel aromas, but was entirely free of the tang of brimstone. Even the temperature was peculiarly mild. He’d been surprised to overhear humans complaining of the winter cold.

But Bileworm’s was not a contemplative nature. He had a restless need for activity, and when the brown spaniel with the floppy ears came ambling down the street, stopping periodically to sniff at a

gatepost or the base of a tree, the gaunt, shadowy creature with the slanted amber eyes couldn’t resist the opportunity for a bit of sport.

The dog was handsomely groomed with a wavy, silken coat. It was well-nourished, and wore a black leather collar with a brass buckle. Evidently it had somehow gotten loose from one of the pleasant homes lining this quiet, horseshoe-shaped boulevard. Bileworm was glad that someone loved the animal. He hoped he could make the spaniel run so far away that its doting owner would never see it again.

The spirit was crouching behind the alabaster statue of a trio of weeping maidens that some householder graced with more money than taste had seen fit to place at the arched entrance to his property. The lachrymose damsels currently dripped icicles, as if their tears had frozen. Abandoning this hiding place, Bileworm crept stealthily along on his toes and fingertips, his belly a scant inch above the cobblestones. He wanted to see how close he could approach before the spaniel noticed him.

As it turned out, not very, even though he’d moved silently and was downwind of his quarry. Beasts could sometimes sense the presence of beings of his ilk, and the dog abruptly wheeled in his direction. The animal growled and bared its fangs.

Bileworm hissed, exposing his own black, needlelike teeth, and pounced six feet closer. The spaniel turned and fled.

When he gave chase, Bileworm discovered that a dog can run faster than a man. Or himself in his present shape, for that matter. He sprang upright and his legs stretched until he looked as if he were pacing along on the longest stilts ever fashioned.

Now a single stride carried him over the dog and set him down in front of it. Its nails clicking on the cobbles, the animal scrambled about and ran in the opposite direction. Bileworm stepped over it again and again, blocking its escape no matter which way it tried to run.

The trapped dog whimpered and piddled, tingeing the

air with the sharp stink of urine. To further heighten the spaniel’s terror, Bileworm stretched his arms long enough to reach the ground and pretended to try to snatch the animal up. His ethereal hands were incapable of trapping a creature composed of such coarse matter, but happily, the spaniel didn’t know that, and in any case it would find his touch abominably unpleasant.

Suddenly, agony blazed up Bileworm’s leg. Toppling, he lost control of his form, whereupon his limbs shrank to their normal length. When he slammed down on the pavement, his shadowy flesh splashing, the spaniel bolted.

The pain faded sufficiently for Bileworm to pull his body back together into something approximating its normal shape, roll over, and see what had happened to him. As he’d suspected, his master had stalked up behind him and thrust the iron ferule of his long black staff into his familiar’s ankle. Wisps of violet light still crawled on the magical weapon.

Master was a compactly built man of average height. In this world, he’d opted to dress plainly and unremarkably in a deep blue fustian cloak and buckram robe, as if he were nothing more than an itinerant spellcaster of no extraordinary talent. His hands were white and delicate, almost the hands of a lady, and he wore an iron ring on the thumb of each. He’d concealed his face behind a crescent-shaped papier-mache mask of the Man in the Moon, such as revelers often wore at festival time, or when embarked on a night of mischief. Within the shadowed sockets of the false face shone his most unusual feature, deep-set eyes with irises so pearly gray they were virtually white.

Master prided himself on his self-control, and though he was manifestly angry now, it wasn’t reflected in his tone. “I asked you to remain in hiding while I scouted ahead,” he said in his soft, prim tenor voice. “What if someone had seen you?”

“No one did,” said Bileworm. “It’s very late. The humans are all sleeping.”

“You don’t know that,” said the wizard. “You might have

spoiled everything.” The spirit flinched in anticipation of another burst of pain, but the wizard merely sighed and lifted the staff away. “Sometimes I don’t know why I put up with you.”

“Because I found you when you were naught but a writhing grub in a hole,” said Bileworm, drawing himself to his feet. “Because it was I who saw your potential, restored you to human form, and helped you prove your usefulness to the archduke.” Afterward, of course, when Master had begun to rise in the service of his new liege, he had enslaved his benefactor with his magic, but Bileworm had long since stopped resenting that. It was the way of the universe for the strong to subjugate the weak.

“Come,” said Master curtly, “we have work to do. He turned and led his minion back up the street. They halted in the shadow of an elm to regard the house called Argent Hall.

Argent Hall, Master had explained, was the residence of the Karn family and also one of the oldest merchant-noble homes in this peculiar human city of Selgaunt. The builders of many of the newer mansions had opted to encircle them with relatively low walls, a joke to an invading army but sufficient to inconvenience thieves and rioters. Argent Hall, on the other hand, was a true castle, albeit not a huge one. Its twenty-foot ramparts all but concealed the keep at their center. There were modest turrets at the four corners’and wall-walks behind the crenels.

Master murmured words of power and turned widdershins in a circle, sweeping his staff in a mystic pass. The air grew warmer. Blue and silver sparks flickered along the granite battlements.

“I just dispelled the wards set to bar intruders like you,” the pale-eyed wizard explained. “Now, there’s only one sentry patrolling the wall, and he doesn’t go round very often. I imagine he’s spending most of his watch in one of turrets to avoid the cold.” Bileworm snorted in contempt. In his world, a lord so poorly guarded could not have survived an hour. “As soon as he passes, we’ll go over the wall.”

“Why don’t we just kill him?” asked the familiar, leering.

Master sighed. “Because I want to slip in and out without anyone being any the wiser. As you know very well, so stop trying to annoy me.”

After a few minutes, a spearman tramped quickly along the alure, making his circuit as rapidly as possible. When he disappeared from view, the wizard and his minion trotted up the street to the foot of the wall.

Bileworm simply lengthened his legs to reach the embattlement. Master reached into one of the many pockets sewn into his robe, brought out a small leather loop, flourished it, and muttered under his breath. Power sighed and crackled around him, and he floated straight upward.

the wizard and his minion crouched on the parapet and studied the bailey below, which the latter-day Karns had turned into a garden. Paths of crushed white stone traced ghostly patterns in the gloom, winding among beds of silvery roses in full flower despite the season. At the center of a turnaround stood a dry fountain, whose creator had fashioned it to look as if the water, when flowing, were a spring bursting forth from a natural rock formation. A bronze archer knelt atop the boulders. One hand shielding its eyes, the statue peered intently into the distance.

Behind the turnaround rose the donjon. Broad stairs ascended to tall, carved double doors, while a green banner emblazoned with a silver cockatrice hung above them. The structure had begun as a fortress, and in its essence still displayed the stark, utilitarian lines of a stronghold designed first and foremost to withstand a siege. More recently, however, the occupants had attempted to transform it into a stylish, luxurious home to rival that of other merchant-noble families, widening the meutrieres into windows bright with stained glass and affixing decorative molding to the facade.

“Do you see anyone?” Master whispered. “No,” Bileworm replied.

“Nor do I. Come on.” Master simply stepped into space, and, his spell of levitation still operative, dropped slowly

and gently to the ground. Lengthening then contracting his right leg, the spirit nimbly stepped down beside him.

Gleaming softly in the moonlight, the silver roses looked as if an artisan had cast them from metal, but evidently they truly were alive, for they exuded a sweet, heady perfume even in the depths of a winter night. Clearly a master enchanter had created them. They were uncommonly beautiful, and Bileworm wished he had the leisure to linger and cup one in his ghostly fingers. After several minutes the petals would wither and die.

The two intruders skulked toward the great house. There was no chance of Bileworm’s gossamer footfalls making any noise, but he tiptoed anyway, burlesquing stealth like a clown in a pantomime, purely for his own amusement.

Then a low shape, more than seven feet long from the tip of its snout to the end of its scaly tail, lumbered out from behind a wrought-iron bench. The eight-legged watch beast swung its crocodilian head in their direction, and Bileworm discerned the sheen of a luminous emerald eye.

“Hide!” Master whispered, lunging behind a tree. Bileworm sprang after him. ‘-‘Don’t even peek at it.”

“Why not?” the spirit asked.

“It’s a basilisk.”

“What?” Few powers in this mortal sphere were capable of harming Bileworm, but the gaze of a basilisk was one of them. It could turn the flesh of even an insubstantial ctea-tiire to stone. “Kill it, Master!”

“I can’t, or people will know we were here. Be silent and I’ll try something else.”

Master whispered the rhymed couplets of an incantation and rotated the knobbed head of his staff counterclockwise. Worms of phosphorescence crawled on the black wood. Meanwhile, Bileworm listened to the basilisk’s hissing breath and its tail dragging and bumping along the frozen ground. The sounds were growing louder. He didn’t think the monster had spotted him or Master. Otherwise, it would be more excited. But, just his luck, it was coming toward them anyway, and if it looked at him squarely, it wouldn’t

much matter whether it had been intentionally pursuing them or not.

In his present form, Bileworm couldn’t even strike a blow in his own defense, and fervently wished he could bolt. But he didn’t, for he was far more afraid of Master than of any watch beast.

The reptile grunted, sounding as if it was just on the other side of their tree. Bileworm trembled. Then, at last, Master completed his spell.

Off to the left, bubbles of golden light swelled and burst. The soft brassy notes of a glaur rippled through a fanfare. Then a white stallion, its bridle encrusted with silver and pearl, appeared in the center of the illusion. The horse whinnied, turned, and trotted into the night, whereupon the basilisk gave chase, waddling as fast as it was able.

“I hope no one in the house noticed that,” Master said, “but I had to divert the creature somehow.”

“Do you think there are any more of them?” Bileworm asked.

“It’s possible,” the wizard replied, “so perhaps you might try keeping an eye out instead of cutting capers and playing the fool.”

In fact, they reached the donjon without encountering any more trouble. Turning, his mantle sweeping outward, Master cast a second abjuration, wiping away another set of wards. Sparks danced and sizzled on the facade of the mansion.

The spellcaster had already decided that they wouldn’t attempt to enter at ground level. Despite the lateness of the hour, there might well be a porter tending the front door, or other servants laboring behind any of the lesser entries. So Master floated to a dark second-story window, and Bileworm stretched up beside him.

The casement’s lead cames ran diagonally, dividing the glass into diamond-shaped panes. Most of the quarrels were clear, a couple, bottle green. Master spoke a word of power and inside the frame, the fastener unlatched itself. The window swung silently open.