Death Masks

by Ed Greenwood

  “It is,” Vajra said flatly. “I’ve made a few missteps, and so am proceeding cautiously, but I am well aware of my duty, and will step forward rather forcefully when the time is right.”

  “And when will that be?”

  “When Elminster of Shadowdale is finished crashing about upsetting schemes and goading conspirators,” the Blackstaff said in dry tones. “Which will almost certainly be when I, and if you’re wise you, take cover, because something fierce will happen.”

  “Something fierce?”

  “The Open Lord of the city will finally lose her temper and go on a spell-rampage.”

  • • •

  “GREAT,” JALESTER GROANED, coming to a halt and trying to catch his breath. “Gone into a noble’s mansion! Now what?”

  “We go in after them, of course,” Dunblade said calmly. “Come on!”

  “W-wait a moment!” Jalester was still winded, and could see that the doors at the head of the flight of steps their quarry had so recently run up had opened again, and four large and impressive-looking men in armor had just stepped out to occupy that top step, facing out into the city with hard-eyed hostility. “You think we can take them?”

  Dunblade squinted. “No,” And he started forward.

  “Faerrel!” Jalester hissed fiercely. “D’you want to die?”

  “No, and that’s why I’ve no intention of disobeying Elminster! Who can kill me slowly in excruciating agony, as a frog sizzling on a spit or some such! Those gentlesaers can merely shove swords through me!”

  Jalester groaned again. “Let me catch my breath first, at least. The ones we’re chasing went in there; they’ll still be in there a few moments from now!”

  “All right,” Dunblade agreed, looking up at the four guards. Who looked back rather stonily.

  “So where are we, anyway?” Jalester asked, still bent over and trying to slow his breathing.

  “North Ward,” his partner replied. “Northwest corner of Gelthoon Street and … Golden Serpent Street. Large and impressive mansion.”

  “Does it have a name?”

  Dunblade peered. “There’s something chiseled on that gate pillar.” He took a few steps, peered, and read aloud, “Talltowers.”

  “Which is the Waterdhavian seat of some important noble family or other,” Jalester sighed. “Do we really have to go up those steps?”

  “Jess, I thought you were an adventurer,” his partner said reproachfully.

  “I am. An adventurer, not an idiot. And no, they’re not the same thing.”

  “Come on,” Dunblade said kindly, and strode to the ornate iron gates. The four guards waited for them at the head of the steps, putting their hands to sword hilts as the two former Steel Shadows ascended.

  “The Gosts are expecting no guests today,” one of the guards informed them coldly. “Be gone.”

  “Who?”

  “This is the seat of the House of Gost, one of the oldest and most noble of the noble families of Waterdeep,” another of the guards said. “They do not associate with rabble. Kindly remove yourselves from these grounds and return to the street.”

  “We were ordered to follow two persons after they attempted a crime against the lords of the city,” Dunblade replied calmly, “and they came here. Passing through this very door just before you four came out of it.”

  “Your orders are of no interest to us,” the third guard said flatly. “Leave, undesirables, or face bodily consequences.”

  “ ‘Bodily consequences’?” Dunblade repeated, as if incredulous.

  “You heard me. Get gone, smart-jaws.”

  “We are Watch guards of Waterdeep,” Jalester said flatly. “Stand aside, or be arrested.”

  The fourth guard snorted. “Arrested? By you? Try it, and we’ll deliver what’s left of you to Castle Waterdeep.”

  “You dare to defy the Watch?”

  The first guard took a step forward. “Dangerous steps, these,” he said pleasantly. “So easy to break your neck, falling back down them.”

  “I say again,” Jalester told the man. “Stand aside.”

  “We are pursuing two miscreants—” Dunblade began, but the first guard interrupted him flatly.

  “The Gosts do not entertain miscreants. A noble lady and her bodyguard entered this house moments before your arrival; they are the honored guests of Lady Myrathrandra Gost. You are not.”

  “Lady—?”

  The door behind the four bodyguards swung open again, and a short, ancient and wrinkled, but ramrod-straight woman in a garish gem-encrusted gown glared out at them and said, “Korlmarl, why do you bandy words on my doorstep with these armed murderers and ruffians who seek to burst into my home to try to slay me! Sword them! Sword them now!”

  And she leveled a cane whose metal-shod end kindled into a magical glow at Jalester, as the four guards drew their blades in smooth unison and started down the steps.

  Dunblade turned like the wind, snatching at Jalester’s arm and spinning him around, too, and three frantic moments later they were back out in the street and pelting down it, in the direction they’d spent so much time running from, to get to North Ward.

  As they ran, a Watch horn blew behind them.

  “Oh, stlarn,” Jalester sighed. “Can this day get any better?”

  “Well, we got to meet the matriarch of a noble family who probably has nothing whatsoever to do with mere Watch guards of the city,” Dunblade replied brightly. “And we didn’t get four swords through us!”

  “Yet,” Jalester replied, as they ran. “Yet.”

  CHAPTER 21

  A Reach Long and Strong

  Gentles, let me say it plain:

  I fear most a reach long and strong

  So no miscreant can outrun its owner

  And leave misdeeds behind.

  We all have occasions to flee our pasts.

  —Xorrend Qeldrur, in Act I, Scene IV, of the play Black Blades And Red Blood by Melra Janneth, Playwright of Neverwinter, first performed in the Year of the Turret

  “INTERESTING CITY, THIS WATERDEEP,” DUNBLADE PANTED, AS THEY ran. “House bodyguards of a noble not hesitating to openly defy the Watch; wonder what happens if real trouble ever erupts? Like a war between two nobles?”

  “Pray to all the gods that we never find out, Faer, and keep running,” Jalester suggested, between gasps for breath.

  They kept running.

  “It’s not as if we’re wearing Watch uniforms,” Dunblade added, a block or two later. “They probably just didn’t believe us!”

  Jalester nodded. “Didn’t get the chance to show our badges, did we? So, what now? Do we tell Elminster—and then watch as he spell blasts the Gost mansion skywards?”

  “Heh. He’ll more likely remind that crusty old matriarch of some night they shared together a century back, and she’ll chortle, and they’ll go off somewhere together!”

  “Faer!”

  Thoroughly winded, they slowed, and risked a look back. All they could see, apart from the usual traffic that always crowded the High Road, was a Watch patrol heading after them. Not running or hurrying, no doubt because the right notes of a Watch horn would bring whatever patrol Jalester and Dunblade were trotting toward out to block the road and detain two suspicious running men until the first patrol caught them up.

  “Turn right at the next cross street, and stop running,” Jalester suggested.

  Dunblade nodded. “And make for the Palace? Without bringing down Elminster on our heads, or the Gosts’?”

  “Yes. The two we were chasing are long gone, anyway. All they had to do, if they really were old Lady Gost’s friends, was say, “Hi! Just passing through!” and be right out the other side of her grounds and on. They may have been a block or more along while we were facing those guards on the front step, and we don’t even know their names!” Jalester adopted the deep, gruff tones of an imaginary Watch officer. “ ‘We’re looking for a suspicious man and a woman, one of each! Can’t tell you anything about them, exc
ept that they were running!’ ” He returned to his own voice, and added with a sigh, “I can’t help but point out that Waterdeep holds a lot of men and women.”

  “Elminster knows who they are, I think.”

  “I’m not so sure, but if he isn’t still standing in the street hurling death at those bullyblades who jumped the Harpers, we don’t even know where to find him.”

  Dunblade nodded. “Which means the Palace. We’re Watch guards now, so we’ll report our failure to the Lady Silverhand. Huh; better her than Elminster. And she can find El whenever she wants to, one Chosen to another, through the Weave.”

  “I’ve a strong suspicion that Chosen can only be found that way if they want to be found,” Jalester said thoughtfully, as they reached a street moot and turned right.

  “She might not be able to handle Elminster,” Dunblade observed, “but I think Lady Laeral can take care of just about anyone else in this city right now.”

  • • •

  THE SLOW AND patient rhythm of dripping water sent its strange echoes through the dark, vaulted places of the sewers, rebounding off distant corners. The Xanathar hung above the center of a placid inky pool, one of the few places where underground waters slowly welled up to join the stinking flows of the city’s wastes and wash them seawards.

  It was in conference, the hissing of Undercommon susurrating around the chamber. It spent a great amount of time just talking with underlings, but then, that was the fun in all of this. Dominating and manipulating these humans, using them deftly as its tools, to bring about its ends and thwart the deeds of others. Aside from slaying and devouring, what else was life for?

  The human cowering as far away from the Xanathar as he could get was obviously terrified for his own skin, but the Xanathar wasn’t inclined to lash out at the man. He was only a human, after all, and reversals were part of the cut and thrust of the life the Xanathar had chosen. It was the setbacks that made the victories worth something.

  “We have only now succeeded in getting Voskur’s remains away from the Watch. We don’t think anyone of rank in the Watchful Order examined him, just a patrol mage, and they hadn’t managed to get any priest of power to attend the body, but …”

  “You have brought it for me to destroy?”

  “We have. It awaits in the next chamber, to be brought in at your command.”

  “Bring it now.”

  The human scurried out. The Xanathar sighed inwardly. Many rats were bolder.

  The human returned with two others, bearing a plank litter with a blanket-wrapped bundle on it. They set it down and turned to hurry out, but the beholder said flatly, “Take your litter and the blanket. Only fools waste resources.”

  Nodding their heads frantically, the bearers hastened to unwrap the body and remove the gear, almost fleeing headlong when they were done. The third human, the Xanathar was sourly amused to notice, removed himself a fair distance from the carrion.

  “You are upset,” it observed aloud. “Why?”

  “Cazondur.”

  “Because he turned on his fellow conspirator? Reducing the ranks of the Lords by one working with us, however unwittingly, rather than an opponent?”

  “I—ah, yes.”

  “This was anticipated. All of the Lords are expendable, especially now that the city has an Open Lord who understands more than ambition and power. The turmoil that accompanies all political change affords us the best opportunities for extending and securing our own power without overt violence—and the responses that inevitably brings. Cazondur’s unreliability comes as no surprise. He, too, is expendable.”

  All humans were expendable, was that not obvious? Yet these humans, like the one trembling and stinking of fear across the room right now, persisted in believing they were special, they alone would be spared.

  Perhaps that was how humans had accomplished so much, flourishing and spreading across the world so quickly at the expense of all others.

  They just didn’t know any better.

  • • •

  THEY WERE DOWN in the deepest secret passages of the Palace, the damp stony ways that linked to Undermountain, and by the sounds of his grunting and huffing and stumbling, Mirt was winded and footsore.

  Laeral suspected he was more than a little thankful when she mastered her emotions, came to an abrupt stop in a chamber where water seeping out of the wall filled a tiny carved basin, and turned to face him with her face composed again. “I’m all right now, Mirt.”

  “Meaning you want to be alone, and have the wheezing fat man go off and leave you in peace,” Mirt grunted, palming his glowstone so the darkness flooded in.

  In the dim light that leaked out around his fingers, she saw him bend and draw something out of his boot. It was a flask, of course. He offered it to her wordlessly; Laeral took a cautious sip of its contents, found her mouth full of the fiery sort of wine she’d expected, made a face as she swallowed it, and handed it back.

  “My thanks,” she told him, “and I’ll be even more thankful if you refrain from gathering your adventurers and friendly Lords and the Blackstaff—though if you want to deploy your three Dock Warders as spies, that’s fine with me. I can fight my own battles.”

  And we can help you, the invisible Dove and Syluné whispered in her ear, so quietly that Mirt couldn’t have heard them.

  “As you prefer, lass,” Mirt said gruffly. “Only trying to help, not hamper the Open Lord at being Open Lord.”

  Then they both stiffened as light flared far back the way they’d come. Bobbing lantern light, getting closer. And accompanied by the scuff of boots and the occasional tlang of scabbard on stone, though the marching men were obviously trying to move quietly as well as quickly.

  “A Watch patrol,” Mirt grunted, catching sight of uniforms. “They’ve seen us.”

  “And I,” Laeral said grimly, “see Swordcaptain Mraekur. Leave him to me.”

  “Lady Silverhand?” the swordcaptain called, sounding more like an anxious young man than an officious, aggressive Watch officer. “Open Lord Silverhand?”

  Laeral and Mirt exchanged surprised glances. Mraekur was hastening to meet them, leaving his patrol behind.

  “M-my apologies for my conduct earlier, Lady Silverhand!” he blurted out. There was fear in his voice and in his eyes.

  “Accepted, Swordcaptain,” Laeral said gently. “I can tell something has happened; how can I help?”

  “The—ah—” Mraekur looked from Laeral to Mirt and back again, helplessness on his face. Then it all came out in a rush. “The Warden is missing from his office. It’s awash in blood, disarranged, and with sword-hacked furniture. We fear for his fate, and it’s spreading through the Watch, now—we’re passing word from patrol to patrol to seek the Warden.”

  Did you see what happened to him? Laeral thought at her two spirit sisters.

  She received two sighs, and Syluné saying in her head, “No. We didn’t think to spy on Watch officers. They’re always so, well, boring.”

  Laeral’s mind-reply was rather grim. The diligent work, sisters, so often is.

  • • •

  JALESTER AND DUNBLADE hastened up to the Palace. There were far more Watch guards milling about than they expected to see, most of them looking stern and with hands on sword hilts.

  “Uh-oh,” Dunblade muttered, “something’s happened.”

  “Hold hard there, you two! Weapons, trying to get into the Palace in such haste; halt!”

  Jalester and Dunblade halted. “We need to speak to the Open Lor—”

  “Of course you do,” a rorden said crisply. “Hands away from your sides, my lads, while we relieve you of all that cutlery!”

  Dunblade took a step back, clapping hand to hilt. “We’re with the Watch, and on special assignment.”

  “Prove it,” the woman snapped, “or it’s disarming, manacles, and a holding cell for you.”

  “What’s happened?” Jalester asked, producing his badge.

  “Hawkguard!” the rorden sn
apped over her shoulder, and a grizzled old veteran stepped forward and took Jalester’s badge.

  He peered at it, grunted, “Looks good,” gave Dunblade’s the same scrutiny and nodded his approval, then looked at the rorden.

  “Yours,” she barked at him, and spun around to head for a knot of Watch guards forming around a protesting envoy who was dressed for warmer climes.

  “Lads, I’m Watchsword Hawkguard,” the veteran told Jalester and Dunblade, “and I’m afraid reporting to Lady Silverhand’ll have to wait for a bit. We can’t find her, for one thing, and for another, all Watch guards we can find are being pressed into service on an urgent mission: find the Warden of Waterdeep, Ezender Drayth—or his remains—and find out what happened to him.”

  “And we should look … where?” Dunblade asked.

  “Wherever you think he might be. Follow your hunches. We’ve already got patrols scouring all the likely places—short of dead and floating in the harbor, and we’ll be looking there soon enough. And while you’re at it, keep your eyes sharp for anyone sending bodyguards or armed bands where they shouldn’t. This just might be the first step in some guildmaster or disgruntled noble starting a coup—or those who’ve coins enough to hire swords in this city might try to settle some scores by indulging in butchery while we’re all upset and hunting our own.”

  Jalester and Dunblade looked at each other, and then with one accord resumed their rush into the Palace. Lady Laeral or Lord Mirt or Elminster might know best where to seek Drayth, should be told that the fleeing pair had gotten away and might be linked to the noble house of Gost, and might even agree to vouch for them against Gost if need be.

  They never saw Hawkguard, behind them, arching an eyebrow at their chosen route, then narrowing his eyes in suspicion—as he turned and urgently waved some Watch guards to his side.

  Those two young lads would bear watching, to see where they went and what they did.