Midnight's Mask

by Paul S. Kemp

  “I enjoy random elements,” Azriim answered, a challenge in his tone.

  Anger flashed in the Sojourner’s eyes. He raised his staff slightly and Dolgan fell to the floor. Azriim bowed his head and took his hand from Riven.

  Riven considered using the teleportation rod to get the Nine Hells clear of there, but his pride refused to let him run. He would make his play and see it through.

  “Time is short,” the Sojourner said to the room, and Riven wondered at his meaning. “I am disinclined to indulge you. You will take another seed by sea to the Eldritch Temple of Mystryl. Your human is an unnecessary risk. Accordingly—”

  “I can be an asset,” Riven interrupted, even as he put one hand to the teleportation rod. “I know Cale well.”

  Azriim nodded and said, “He was his companion.”

  “He was, Azriim, and that is why I wonder why he aided you.” The Sojourner turned his gaze to Riven. “That is the question.”

  “Why do we aid you?” Azriim asked. “That, too, is a question.”

  Behind Riven, Dolgan whined in dismay.

  Riven turned one of the dials on the rod with his thumb. He was not certain he could operate it. He certainly could not dictate a location. But if things went poorly, anywhere would be better than where he stood.

  The Sojourner’s eyes bored into Azriim. “You aid me because I give you no choice. But also because I offer something you crave. And because you fear me.” He said the last in a soft, tight tone that caused Azriim to take a half-step backward, leaving Riven alone and exposed.

  “And appropriately so,” the Sojourner added. He nodded at Riven. “This one does not fear you. That is evident. So what do you offer him?”

  Azriim made no answer.

  Riven gave his own: “Cale—the priest of Mask—I want him dead.”

  The Sojourner stared at him, baring his soul. “Why?”

  Riven gritted his teeth and looked away. He would not admit, even to the Sojourner, that being the Second of Mask galled him. Instead, he said simply, “I have my reasons. It’s enough that I’m here of my own choice, and for my own benefit.”

  “I will decide if it is enough,” the Sojourner said softly.

  To that, Riven said nothing. His thumb hovered over the rod’s dials, gave another half turn.

  The only sound in the room was the Sojourner’s wheeze.

  Riven decided to make one last play.

  “Make the decision,” he said softly. “I’m either with you or I’m not. And if not, then we are no longer allies.”

  Dolgan lurched to his feet with a growl. Riven put a hand to a saber hilt.

  A look from the Sojourner froze the big slaad. The mysterious creature eyed Riven with something akin to appreciation.

  “You remind me of Azriim,” he said.

  Riven did not consider that a compliment but kept his feelings to himself.

  Perhaps sensing a change in the Sojourner’s sentiments, Azriim again took station beside Riven. “He can accompany Dolgan and me, Sojourner, to the Eldritch Temple. He has already proven his usefulness. I believe his words—he wants the priest dead.”

  “No,” Dolgan said. “Kill him.”

  Riven wanted nothing so much as to turn around and slit Dolgan’s throat.

  The Sojourner smiled distantly. To Riven, he said, “You are here of your own choice? For your own benefit?”

  “Those are my words,” Riven answered.

  “They are,” the Sojourner acknowledged. “Now let us see if they are true.”

  The Sojourner never moved, gave no warning, but agony wracked Riven’s head.

  He screamed, clutched his skull in his palms, and fell to his knees. He felt as if five long fingers had burrowed knuckle-deep into his brain. There, they began to sift through what they found. Riven had never before felt more violated. He resisted the intrusion and fought—futile. The Sojourner’s will was inexorable, the pain unbearable. Riven’s eye felt as though it would pop out of his skull. He forced his blurry gaze upward and stared into the Sojourner’s eyes, fell into them. His body shook, convulsed, but he held the Sojourner’s gaze. He bit open his tongue. Screams, spit, and blood poured from his mouth. He felt his consciousness being cracked open like a nut. He could not move; his body would not answer his commands. He could do nothing but suffer and scream.

  He forced himself to stay conscious.

  Mental fingers peeled away the layers of his brain, baring memories, hopes, fears, ambitions. He screamed again, again.

  The Sojourner’s expression did not change.

  Distantly, he heard Dolgan laughing and Azriim shouting.

  He, too, is a servant of Mask the Shadowlord, the Sojourner mentally projected, sorting Riven’s life and laying it out for the slaadi. A mistreated boy who became an assassin. He hates his life up to now. Religion has given him purpose….

  “Get out,” Riven tried to mutter, but the syllables emerged only as an indecipherable mumble.

  Ah, the Sojourner projected, and nodded. He is much like you two in that he also desires a transformation, not to gray, but from Second to First. He hates the priest for being First.

  Riven tried again to speak, failed. His heart hammered in his chest. He tried to dismiss from his mind the events that had occurred in the Plane of Shadow, tried to tuck them into some distant corner of his consciousness, but the Sojourner burrowed like a gnome through the dirt of his life.

  The Sojourner reached the memory. Riven screamed again. Blood leaked from his nose. Surely his skull must explode. Surely.

  And here is this, the Sojourner said, his mental voice hard. He came to kill me, to draw others here to kill me. The betrayal of the priest of Mask was a fraud, a ploy. You have brought a would-be murderer into my presence, Azriim.

  The full force of the Sojourner’s mind and will assaulted Riven’s mind, pinioning him, burying him under its weight. He fell flat on the floor. His vision went dark; something warm dripped from his ears. He was falling, falling.

  Riven tried to mouth the words, “No. It is real. I want him dead.” His lips would not form the words so he thought them instead: I want him dead! I want him dead!

  A booted foot slammed into Riven’s ribs—Dolgan. Riven’s leather armor kept the bones intact but his breath went out in a whoosh.

  “Kill him,” Dolgan said.

  He was going to die prone on the floor, helpless as a babe. Distantly, he wondered if Cale and Magadon were watching, laughing.

  They must have a practitioner of the Invisible Art among their number, the Sojourner observed, surprise in his mental voice. He has moderate skill.

  The pain in Riven’s mind intensified. He was too far gone to scream anymore. He dug his fingers into the carpet so hard that he tore three fingernails from their beds. He felt a peculiar sensation through the pain. A tickle in his consciousness. Something scurried around the edges of his sentience, trying to avoid the Sojourner’s mental perception. To no avail. Nothing could avoid the Sojourner.

  The Sojourner said, We have a mindmage in our midst. To someone Riven could not see, the Sojourner projected, I see you.

  It must have been Magadon. They had been watching the whole time.

  With the Sojourner’s attention temporarily diverted, Riven managed to claw his way back to coherence.

  “Get … out … of my head!” he shouted, and pulled himself up to all fours.

  Magadon lurched back, clutching his temples and groaning with pain. Jak stopped whatever spell he had been casting and leaped to the guide’s aid.

  “He sensed me,” Magadon managed, leaning on Jak. “Such a mind….”

  Cale knew. He had felt the Sojourner make contact through Magadon, had felt the residuum of power that had accompanied the contact. Cale had let the mental scrying go on far too long. Riven had suffered unnecessarily. He had hoped to learn the Sojourner’s full plans for the Weave Tap, but he had learned only snippets.

  He started to draw the darkness around them. The light from
Magadon’s sunrod dimmed. Shadows intensified.

  “Mags?” Cale asked while he summoned shadows.

  “I’m all right,” the guide said. He took his hand off Jak’s shoulder and massaged his brow. He unslung his bow and nocked an arrow, though he did not draw. “I’m ready.”

  The air around Cale’s body crackled with magical energy; the hairs on his arms stood up—the result of Jak’s various protective spells. Cale hoped the magic would be enough.

  “I did what I could,” Jak said by way of explanation, and gripped his holy symbol, shortsword, and dagger.

  Magadon concentrated, and a handful of coin-sized spheres of light formed around his head and quickly faded.

  “I cannot mindlink us,” he said. “Jak’s spell is blocking my abilities, at least. Let us hope it does the same to the Sojourner.”

  Cale nodded and quickly donned his mask. To Jak, he said, “It’s a dark cavern, little man. Cluttered with cushions and furniture. The two slaadi—one in human form, one as a half-drow—and the Sojourner. Riven is on the floor.”

  He hefted Weaveshear, looked each of his comrades in the eye.

  Both nodded.

  “We go,” he said.

  Cale let himself sink into the darkness around them, let it seep into him. He understood that the shadows anywhere were the shadows everywhere. He pictured the Sojourner’s cavern in his mind, the shadows that filled its corners.

  Pulling his comrades into his personal night, he moved them through the black, from a cavern on the Plane of Shadow to a distant cavern elsewhere.

  CHAPTER 2

  SHIFTING ALLIANCES

  The instant they materialized, Magadon’s sunrod went dark, probably extinguished by some ambient magic in the cavern. Only the dim glowglobe provided illumination in the chamber. It was enough for Cale. He hoped it was enough for Jak and Magadon.

  They stood on soft carpet on one side of the cavern, perhaps fifteen paces from the slaadi and the Sojourner. On the floor between the slaadi, Riven struggled feebly to draw his weapons.

  Azriim and Dolgan went wide-eyed at the sudden appearance of the three comrades.

  “Cale,” Azriim hissed, and fumbled at his blade hilt.

  Dolgan growled and unslung his axe.

  The three comrades went straight after the Sojourner.

  Jak held his holy symbol before him and shouted the words to a spell. Beams of white fire shot from his hand at the Sojourner. They never reached their target. Instead, one of the gems circling the Sojourner’s head attracted and absorbed the beams as if they had never been.

  Magadon’s bow sang and an arrow flew, its tip glowing red with mental energy. The arrow slammed against some invisible shield before the Sojourner, stopped in mid-flight, and fell to the ground, inert.

  Cale felt a twinge behind his eyes and feared a mental attack, but the sensation never grew beyond the initial sensation. Perhaps Jak’s spell had shielded him from the Sojourner’s attack.

  Jak’s and Magadon’s failed attacks confirmed what Cale had already suspected: A formidable array of defensive spells and wards protected the Sojourner. Cale had to bring them down or weaken them.

  Hurriedly, he recited a prayer that pitted the power of his magic against that of the Sojourner. When the spell took effect, the contest proved short-lived and one-sided. The Sojourner’s power overwhelmed Cale’s spell, which dissipated without effect.

  Cale saw then that magic would be of little use against the superior spellcraft of the Sojourner.

  “Use steel,” he called, and charged, leaping over a couch as he went.

  Jak and Magadon brandished their blades and joined his rush.

  Before they had taken five strides, the Sojourner responded. Unlike most wizards Cale had encountered, the Sojourner did not speak a complex phrase or manipulate some esoteric ingredient. Instead, he simply raised his left hand—wincing with pain as he did so—and spoke a single word.

  An expanding wedge-shaped spray of variously colored beams shot outward from his fingertips. The three companions had no time to dodge.

  A yellow beam struck Magadon in the chest and blew him from his feet. Lightning played over his body, leaving him smoking and sparking on the floor.

  An orange beam struck Jak in the left leg as he jumped the couch. His trousers, boots, and flesh blackened, bubbled, started to melt. The little man screamed in agony, collapsed to the couch, and rolled onto the floor, clutching his melting thigh and writhing. The stink of burning flesh filled the chamber.

  The green and blue beams intended for Cale diverted into Weaveshear. The blade drank them greedily, though the magical impact staggered Cale and stopped his charge. Weaveshear shook in his hands, bleeding shadows. He clutched it in both hands to keep his grip.

  The Sojourner eyed the sword with raised eyebrows—as though surprised that it had been able to absorb his spell—and spoke another word of power, this time without a gesture of any kind.

  A sphere of lightning took shape around the creature, surrounding him at arm’s length. It sizzled and spun, charging the air in the chamber with energy. Bolts arced out to touch the metal of the slaadi’s weapons, to burn the cushions and furniture at the Sojourner’s feet. Even at a distance, the hairs on Cale’s arms rose.

  Cale knew that he could not allow the Sojourner the freedom to continue casting, but the slaadi were in his way.

  Azriim and Dolgan, seeing Cale alone, seized weapons in their hands and advanced. Dolgan held his huge axe in his ham hands; Azriim held his blade in one hand and one of his many wands in the other.

  Cale pointed Weaveshear at them and released the pent up magical energy he had stolen from the Sojourner. The unsuspecting slaadi had no time to avoid the attack, and the green and blue beams intended for Cale struck Azriim and Dolgan.

  The blue beam hit Azriim squarely in the chest. His mouth opened to exclaim in surprise, but before a sound could emerge, his body went rigid. In the span of a single heartbeat, starting at his chest but spreading rapidly to the rest of his body, the magic transformed his flesh, clothing, and weapons into gray stone. In an instant, he was no more than a statue.

  Dolgan took the green beam in his right arm. The impact spun him around and he groaned, wobbled, and fell over, only a few paces from Riven. Cale did not know what the spell had done to him but the slaad was down, and that was enough.

  It was only he and the Sojourner now.

  Cale spared a glance at his friends. Jak’s face was twisted with pain but he had his holy symbol in hand and already was casting a healing spell on his wounded leg. Magadon, still smoking, was climbing clumsily to his feet, his expression dazed.

  The Sojourner started to cast again, this time using gestures and words. His casting with a mere word must be limited, Cale reasoned. That pleased Cale. It made the Sojourner more ordinary.

  Before the creature could complete his spell, Cale stepped into the shadowy space that existed in reality’s interstices. He moved from one side of the chamber to the other in a single stride. He materialized behind the Sojourner, a little to the right, near Riven and the slaadi.

  The Sojourner’s sheath of energy spat arcs of lightning that burned Cale’s skin. The resistance to magic granted by the shadowstuff in his being was no match for the Sojourner’s power. Cale gritted his teeth, endured the pain, and stabbed Weaveshear’s point at the Sojourner’s spine and kidneys, a killing blow.

  The blade cut only empty air.

  The Sojourner winked out and reappeared ten paces away.

  Some kind of contingency, Cale presumed.

  Three bolts of lightning discharged at Cale from the ring of energy around the Sojourner. Weaveshear absorbed two but the third slammed into him. The bolt lifted him from his feet and blew him bodily across the chamber until he slammed into the far wall. His breath left him. His skin smoked and burned. He sagged to the carpeted floor amidst several cushions, gasping, shot through with pain. His shade flesh began to regenerate the injuries.

  T
he Sojourner began to cast another spell, again using elaborate phrasing and gestures.

  Cale found his breath and clambered to his feet. He pulled the shadows to him and formed them into five images of himself. They flitted around him, exact duplicates that mirrored his movements. Hopefully they would confuse the Sojourner.

  To the left of the creature, Cale saw that Riven had drawn his blades and at last found his feet. The assassin stood on wobbly legs not far from the slaadi, one petrified, the other prone and vulnerable. Riven looked down at Dolgan, back at Magadon and Jak, over at the Sojourner, at Cale.

  What in the Nine Hells was he waiting for?

  “Do it,” Cale shouted, meaning that Riven should kill Dolgan.

  Riven’s eye narrowed but instead of executing the prone slaad, he stared at Cale and offered his signature sneer. Turning toward Magadon and Jak, Riven shouted a series of words in the foul tongue Mask had taught him in his dreams. The words rang off Cale’s ears, sent vomit up his throat. Even Dolgan writhed on the ground. Magadon staggered, fell. Jak vomited, covered his ears.

  Cale cursed Riven, cursed Mask, cursed everything. Riven turned back to grin at him. Cale stared hatefully in answer, leveled Weaveshear at him, and discharged the two stored lightning bolts. They ripped the air between Cale and the assassin but Riven anticipated the move and dived aside in an awkward roll. The bolts slammed into the far wall, blackening stone, setting a divan afire, and narrowly missing Jak.

  Riven regained his feet, wobbled, stayed upright.

  “I told you what I wanted, Sojourner,” Riven called. With that, he turned and advanced unsteadily toward Jak and Magadon, sabers bare.

  If the Sojourner heard Riven, he showed no sign. He spoke the final word to his spell and a globe of nothingness as big as an ogre’s head formed in the air near Cale. Its edge brushed a stuffed chair and the piece of furniture was reduced to dust instantly. It touched one of Cale’s shadow images and annihilated it, too. Cale dived aside, his images trailing him, mirroring his movements. The sphere followed, ponderously but inexorably, and what it touched, it destroyed.