The Mage in the Iron Mask

by Brian Thomsen

  Honor led the group, who linked hands in order to stay close together. The blind swordmaster used his acute senses of hearing and touch, and his excellent memory of years earlier to retrace the route he took along these paths many years ago.

  “Merch was always fond of these tunnels as a means of getting around Mulmaster without being seen. If I know his damned son Selfaril, and I believe I do, he will no doubt be heading to the High Blade’s study,” Honor asserted, his voice echoing through the underground chambers.

  “Don’t you think you should lower your voice?” Passepout said in a hushed tone.

  “No,” the blind swordmaster replied, “I am using it to help keep my course. Given the shape and width of the tunnel around us, I am fairly certain that we are going in the right direction as the echo of my voice is traveling further to our rear than it is in front of us.”

  Volo thought he understood the principle that the aged Fullstaff was using and decided to make a mental note that he should study and experiment with it before undertaking his Guide to the Underdark.

  “Now if memory serves,” Honor instructed, “there should be a ladder hanging against the wall to my left.”

  “Here it is,” Passepout announced proudly.

  “Good,” Honor replied. “Now up we go.”

  “Up?” asked the stunned thespian.

  “Indeed,” the blind swordmaster confirmed. “Now scoot. The High Blade’s study awaits at the top of this ladder, and Rassendyll may need our help.”

  Passepout paused for a moment to look up. The fact that he couldn’t see the top of the ladder frightened him to death.

  “Now!” Honor insisted. “We’re burning daylight!”

  Passepout shot up the first few steps of the ladder at a speed that surprised the rest of the group, causing Volo to chuckle at both Honor’s jibe, and the panic that had urged the thespian into action.

  “I’ll go next,” McKern replied, pausing only long enough for a body length to separate him from Passepout before joining the climb upward.

  “Now you,” Honor told Volo, “and don’t look down. I’ll see you upstairs.”

  Volo waited for the prescribed body length to separate himself from the old mage, and joined the climb, proceeding accordingly.

  The progress upward continued slowly, with the older mage and the corpulent thespian stopping every few steps to take a breath. On one of these intervals Volo paused for a moment to look down at Fullstaff, who he was sure would be climbing right behind him.

  The ladder below the master traveler was completely empty.

  The wave of exhaustion Rassendyll felt from his ordeal thus far threatened to envelope him, as he fought to remain alert and conscious in the presence of this new threat. With false bravado, he brandished his father’s sword.

  Rickman laughed.

  “That’s funny,” the captain of the Hawks retorted. “I always thought that mages were forbidden to handle such vulgar and impure weapons as a saber—oh, that’s right … your brother already took care of that little detail. You are a mage no more.”

  Rassendyll took a step forward, careful to disentangle his feet from the body of the Thayan coward, his saber ready to strike.

  The captain of the Hawks laughed again.

  “Oh dearie me!” Rickman exclaimed sarcastically. “A simpleton new to the sword is coming at me. I must defend myself.”

  Faster than the weary Rassendyll’s eyes could follow, Rickman leaped and pivoted at the same time, and proceeded to hurl himself against the wall of the study. In the blink of an eye the human projectile had landed on the edge of the hearth, grabbed a pair of crossed swords from the wall, and propelled himself back in the direction of the High Blade’s twin.

  Rassendyll ducked barely in time to avoid being skewered as part of the villainous Rickman’s acrobatic act.

  “Well done!” the knave hailed. “I don’t want this to be too easy. After all it isn’t every day that I get to kill the two assassins who plotted against and killed my liege.”

  Within a second, Rickman launched himself back at Rassendyll. The High Blade’s twin raised his father’s saber to deflect both blades, parrying the first while blocking the second with the hilt.

  “Not bad for one so new to the artistry of the blade,” Rickman jeered. “If you weren’t so obviously tired you might actually make a worthy opponent.”

  Rassendyll shook his head quickly, trying to clear the cloud of exhaustion that pressed down upon his entire being.

  “Come, come,” Rickman offered sarcastically. “Why don’t you attack this time? Maybe I should mention that your beloved Retreat is no more. All of your brethren were slaughtered. And shall I mention that I was the one who ordered their deaths?”

  Rage gripped Rassendyll as a new rush of adrenaline sent a lightning bolt of energy through his entire body. With all the fury of a berserker in a blood rage, he leaped forward, blade slashing through the air that separated him from the object of his fury.

  Rickman was prepared for the attack and sandwiched the saber’s slicing strike between his own two blades, deflecting the efforts of the novice swordsman, and sending him spinning to the side. The captain of the Hawks could not resist further toying with his prey, and booted him in the rear as he spun by, sending the brother of the High Blade sprawling, Rassendyll barely held on to the sword of his father.

  “So sorry you tripped,” Rickman mocked. “Killing well takes practice. Now let me see. Over the past few days I have killed a Thayan traitor …”

  Rassendyll scrambled to his feet.

  “Ordered the deaths of the entire inhabitants of a monastery …”

  The High Blade’s twin thought he detected a sound from the hearth through which he had entered the room, but kept his eyes focused on the purveyor of bladed destruction in front of him.

  “Ordered the deaths of some of my own men, just to keep a few things secret …”

  Rickman sprang forward again, slashing at his prey, the tip of his blade nicking Rassendyll at the edge of his scalp.

  “How clumsy of me!” he taunted. “I bet you wish you had that iron mask on now.”

  The captain of the Hawks hesitated for a moment as a new thought just crossed his mind.

  “Oh dear!” Rickman mocked. “I seem to have lost count. Did I mention that I also killed another of your kind? The blind wizard smith who fashioned that mask for you!”

  “No!”

  The shout from the hearth startled both of the duelists, as McKern tried to race into the room having just climbed up the ladder moments in time to hear the taunting admission of Rickman to murdering his only brother.

  Rickman spun toward the hearth, ready to slice and dice the Cloak who was frantically trying to enter the room and extract his own vengeance. The captain of the Hawks was focused on this latest intruder, but failed to observe the now-prostrate form of Passepout, who had fallen forward at the mage’s scream. The thespian had had the misfortune of being in front of the now enraged wizard and had belly-flopped out of the hearth and onto the carpet directly in front of the rampaging swordsman, catching Rickman’s foot in his wake.

  Rickman realized this latest obstacle too late to stop himself from pitching forward. His frantic attempts at regaining his balance only succeeded in making his head come into contact with the hearth ledge, knocking him out. Both of his swords fell point first beneath him, skewering the prostrate form of the helpless Passepout as Volo peeked out from the secret entrance to observe the unfortunate proceedings.

  “No!”

  The master traveler now cried in vain. He could not stop the body already in motion.

  Covering Tracks

  In the High Blade’s Chambers

  in the Tower of the Wyvern:

  Volo rushed to the side of his impaled friend, scrambling past the equally horrified Mason McKern, and around the other two prostrate forms that littered the floor near the hearth. The master traveler unceremoniously cast the groggy form of Captain Rickma
n off the body of his obese and decidedly prone boon companion.

  Rickman began to groan; the concussion of the contact of his head against the hearth only succeeded in knocking him out for a moment, and in no time he would be in a groggy state of consciousness. “Oh, my head!” he mumbled as his hands vainly tried to make their way off the ground and up to his pate. “Ohhhhhh.”

  Volo ignored the blackguard’s cries of pain, and knelt by his boon companion, trying desperately not to look at the hilts of the duelist’s two swords that swayed like flagpoles on the mountainous summit that was the body of his beloved Passepout.

  “Oh, son of Idle and Catinflas,” the master gazetteer cried.

  The thespian opened his eyes, and a grimace of pain immediately passed over his face.

  “You are alive old friend!” Volo said softly, not yet sure how serious the thespian’s wounds were.

  “Just barely,” the son of Idle and Catinflas replied weakly.

  “Is there anything I can do, old friend?” Volo asked.

  “No, dear Volo,” Passepout said a trifle dramatically. “Just allow me to pass from this life, here and now, in this pool of blood.”

  Volo felt on the verge of tears, and held the dying thespian’s hand up to his face. “Courage, dear friend,” he implored. “You are still warm, perhaps McKern can save you.”

  “No,” the master thespian insisted, “I already feel death’s cold shadow as my heart pumps its last few ounces of blood into the river that feeds this pool of blood.”

  Pool of blood, the master traveler thought to himself, it sounds so familiar.

  Volo looked down at the area around his bisected friend. The floor was dry, and nary a trace of blood was visible.

  Quickly the master traveler cast back the cloak from his prostrate friend’s body, and observed the placement of the two blades, one sandwiched between two tree-sized thighs, the other nestled in the right armpit. In both cases, the thespian’s skin was barely nicked.

  The master traveler laughed.

  “It serves me right, you lucky knave,” the master gazetteer replied, as his thought-to-be-dying friend sat up with great vigor.

  “ ’Twasn’t luck, ’twas skill,” the thespian replied. “It is imperative that a skilled actor know how to avoid an oncoming blade in a dying sequence if one wishes to have much of a career on the stage.”

  “Pool of Blood was the title of one of the plays in your repertoire, if I recall correctly.”

  “Indeed, it is,” the thespian replied, “Ward’s Folly, also known as The Pool of Blood, a real slaughterfest of a show.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Volo saw McKern. The old mage was still staring at the slowly recovering form of the captain of the Hawks, muttering under his breath.

  “You killed my brother,” he murmured. “An honest man, a craftsman, a humanitarian. He served Mulmaster as best he could, trusting his superiors, and now he is dead. He never saw it coming. My name is Mason McKern. You killed my brother; prepare to die!”

  As the grief-possessed mage rambled on, his rage increased, his fingers began to flex, and his exclamations of grief dissolved into arcane incantations.

  Rassendyll immediately recognized what was happening. “Back off Volo, Passepout!” he ordered. “Get away from the bodies!”

  Volo sprang to the side, while the chubby thespian responded with a quick roll to the right, seeking shelter behind a chair.

  The High Blade’s twin approached the mage, who was in turn approaching Rickman. “Calm down, McKern,” Rassendyll urged gently, trying not to notice the smoke that seemed to be coming from the old wizard’s fingertips. “This is neither the time nor the place for a fireball.”

  “Leave me be,” Mason said sternly. “Your father’s killer is dead, and my brother’s killer should join him.”

  For the third time in less than half an hour, a person announced their presence to the inhabitants of the room with a loud, prohibitive command.

  “No!”

  The mage, former mage, gazetteer, and thespian turned toward a sideboard located on the other side of the room which had just started to swing forward to reveal yet another secret passage, out of which stepped the imposing figure of the blind swordmaster, Honor Fullstaff.

  “The sentence of death will be carried out, old friend,” Honor Fullstaff said with great certainty, “but not just yet. I am afraid that he might still be of use to us for just a little while longer.”

  McKern was torn between his desire for vengeance and the common sense preached by his old friend. The stern look on his old friend’s face cast the deciding vote, as the old mage had no desire to cross Honor Fullstaff when he had already let his position be known.

  “Agreed,” the old mage assented. “What’s our next move?”

  In the Apartment of Mischa Tam

  in the Thayan Embassy in Mulmaster:

  Mischa Tam was beginning to get nervous.

  The cat’s-paw who had been dispatched to attempt the assassination of Selfaril should have botched the job by now, she thought. Even if he had somehow managed to surprise the High Blade, surely he would not have been able to overpower him. And what about the Hawks? She had made darn sure that Rickman was aware of the plot as well and would be able to intervene and arrest the quivering maggot.

  A heinous thought crossed her mind.

  What if, somehow, the incompetent had succeeded?

  The First Princess would surely have her head, that is, if any of the Thayans managed to make it out of Mulmaster alive.

  Though the death of Selfaril was undoubtedly the eventual goal, timing was of the essence, and at the present, the time was not right.

  Mischa removed a talisman from inside her robe, and stared into its multi-faceted surface.

  “Do I dare to see through the eyes of the worm?” she whispered.

  She had to know.

  Mischa took out a piece of skin that had formerly belonged to the ambassador and placed it on the talisman. She paused for a moment, reliving the disgust she felt at the measures that she had to take to obtain this living souvenir of the maggot, shuddered, and placed it onto the orb.

  The skin immediately melted into the talisman’s surface.

  Wasting no time she held the orb up to her eye, and looked into its opaque surface as if it were a magnifying crystal.

  All she saw was darkness.

  Mischa considered the possibilities. Perhaps he is already dead, or unconscious … but unfortunately that still doesn’t solve the problem.

  Concentrating with all her scrying powers, she once again looked into the orb, trying to backtrack through the images that had been recorded by the maggot before he had been enveloped by the darkness.

  The shadows gradually cleared. First she saw a dishevelled and unkempt High Blade … a hearth … the High Blade better groomed, but obviously fatigued … a crystal wand striking home into the heart of the mortally wounded Selfaril!

  Mischa dropped the orb in a panic.

  The fool actually succeeded in killing my sister’s husband!

  A knock on her chamber door interrupted her panic.

  “Who is it?” she said with mock calm. “It is I, Mischa,” announced the messenger, “Elijakuk.”

  Mischa opened the door to allow in the Tharchioness’s chancellor.

  “What is it?” she demanded, still trying to hide her own uneasiness.

  “The First Princess sent me for your part of the project,” he said gravely. “I believe she desires to use it tonight. She fears that our window of opportunity is rapidly diminishing.”

  Mischa stifled a laugh at the inadvertent irony of the chancellor’s last statement, and thanked Szass Tam for the news.

  My sister does not yet know of the fate of her husband! she thought in exultation. There may be a chance for me yet.

  Maintaining her composure, the Tharchioness’s half sister went to her vanity table, reached into a secret compartment, and extracted the disk that she had treated with the
appropriate oils and herbs to accomplish her part of the spell. She wrapped it in a silk scarf and handed it to the chancellor.

  “Her desire is my command,” she said reverently. “My part is now complete.”

  “The First Princess will be pleased,” Elijakuk acknowledged her with a bow that included a pause to appreciate the Tharchioness’s sister’s ample cleavage. “Szass Tam be with you.”

  Mischa cracked her best seductively serpentine smile.

  “And with you,” she said sweetly, “but tarry no longer. We mustn’t keep the First Princess waiting. She knows best. If she believes that time is of the essence, then who are we to dispute it?”

  “Indeed!” the chancellor agreed, a satyrlike smile on his lips. “Shall we go?”

  “No,” she countered with a touch of mock regret. “You will travel faster and more discreetly, on your own. I will wait here to carry out any further orders from the First Princess should she desire me to do so.”

  “I will return with further instructions,” the chancellor said, giving Mischa’s hand a quick kiss accented with a touch of the tip of his tongue, adding, “with great haste.”

  “I will await,” she responded with mock eagerness, as she closed the door behind him and let out a sigh of relief.

  Collecting her thoughts, her composure regained, the Thayan sorceress set about gathering her things, for she had no intention of being around when the detritus flew from the waterwheel.

  “My sister will need a scapegoat and I have no intention of being available for that honor,” she said aloud.

  In a matter of moments she had packed all she needed, and within the hour she had already stolen herself from the city of Mulmaster like a thief in the night, hoping to make the court of Szass Tam in enough time to state her case before the Tharchioness had issued her death warrant.

  The chancellor was quite disappointed later in the evening when he returned to her chamber having completed his appointed mission. When she failed to respond to his gentle taps on her door, he increased the force of each of the blows until he became afraid that he would wake up a neighboring minister before arousing the lovely Mischa. He quickly concluded that she must have already fallen into a sound sleep, and that a good night’s rest would do him good as well, so that he would be amply refreshed when they resumed their tête-à-tête on the following day.