Scott J Couturier - [The Magistricide 01]

by The Mask of Tamrel (epub)

  At length he noticed something curious. Along the margins of the square, barely visible through the rush and crush of bodies, stood a legion of watchers, men and women with their eyes upturned and focused the consulate tower. They made no motion, no communication with each other, merely stood and waited, as if for some impending spectacle. Kelrob curled his fists in his lap, discomfited by their presence. He resolved to inform the council of the watchers, and of the general sense of unease in the city, before he began his formal report. As to what that report would contain...Kelrob’s fists tightened still further. He would tell all. He had to.

  His wind gathered, the mage rose and made his way across the broad square. He had just reached the base of the consulate tower, bright marble steps ascending upwards to its spell-warded entrance, when a shock ran through the cobbles.

  Kelrob cried out as the paving-stones shifted and bucked, throwing him to the ground. The dim rumble grew into a roar of flame and collapsing masonry, the air heavy with the stink of blasting-powder. Kelrob scrambled to his feet and ran, the cobbles collapsing beneath his feet. He fell several times, scrabbled, crawled forward on all fours, a rank wind blasting over him. He could hear a titanic groaning, the tinkling explosion of spell-reinforced windows, the wail of humans and animals caught in the wave of the blast. Finally, gaining the edge of the square, he hauled himself up onto the selfsame granite bench and wiped grit and dust from his eyes. Looking over the expanse of the square, he saw the Isdori consulate sway and collapse into a smoking heap of rubble. Arcane energies danced frantically on the air, twisting and shrieking as their source was demolished; thus freed, they tore into the city, blasting apart buildings and shredding flesh. Kelrob threw himself to the ground as a swathe of crackling fire passed over his head, melting the bench into a puddle of magma.

  Over the cries of the wounded, the hideous judder of collapsing metal and stonework, the mage heard laughter. Dragging himself erect, Kelrob stared through the miasma of smoke and silt, seeking the source of the profane sound. He saw that the watchers were celebrating, stripping clothing from their bodies and sounding whoops of joy as they danced amid the debris. Kelrob stared in sickened awe, then turned and fled into the webwork of streets, intent only on returning to the Modest Means and gathering his belongings before escape from Tannigal became impossible. Dimly he noted a faint electrical buzz as the city’s defensive field sprang into operation, a dome of bilious yellow energy rising to contaminate the sky. Still onward he ran, driven by desperation and terror, the collapse of the tower repeating endlessly in his mind. He barely noticed the blood flowing into his eyes, or the shard of limestone protruding like a dagger from his thigh.

  The clerk’s eyes widened as he staggered inside. “By the Gyre,” she exclaimed, “what happened to you?”

  Kelrob limped to her polished desk, his hand wrapped around the sliver of limestone embedded in his leg. “There’s been an accident,” was all he could think to say.

  “I heard something...an explosion? What’s happening? The defensive grids are up!”

  Kelrob shook his head mutely, bracing himself against the desk. “I need to get up to my room,” he said.

  The clerk rushed around the desk and helped him to stand. “That man you mentioned? He came back, just a little while after you left. He was wearing the strangest mask.”

  Kelrob grit his teeth against his pain, allowing the clerk to lever him up. “I need to see him,” he said, the words emerging as a pain-ridden hiss. “Now.”

  “But sir, you’re wounded! Shouldn’t you —”

  “Now.”

  The clerk reluctantly helped Kelrob to the elevator, which was trembling faintly, its motivating enchantment disrupted by the consulate collapse. Kelrob waved her off as the door slid shut, then set to examining his wound, watching as blood welled around the shard of rock. He was faint, dizzy, spots swam in his eyes: the floors ticked by with pleasant pings! accompanying each. He braced himself for the eighth floor, had to push open the doors by hand.

  The door to the room was open. Kelrob shoved it wide, stumbled in, immediately sinking to the corner of the nearest bed. Blood welled from his wound, staining the carpeting and pooling in his boot.

  “Lad? Is that you?”

  Kelrob’s head jerked up. He saw Jacobson kneeling by the extinguished hearth, trembling hands outstretched to the still-warm grate. His straggling blond hair framed a face obscured; Kelrob gasped as he recognized the mask of Tamrel.

  “Jacobson, what are you doing with that thing on your face?”

  Jacobson turned to him, thick-fingered hands rising to claw at the porcelain facade. “I don’t know,” he said in a frightened voice. “I had a dream, about my little sister...telling me to steal something lovely for her. There was a mask in a shop window, behind a pane of glass. I broke the glass and fetched her the prize. She thought I would look funny wearing it, so I slid it on my face; I wanted to make her happy, to make up for how she died. Suddenly I was awake, awake and aware, but wearing this thing and without control of my body. I got up from bed, went downstairs, left, all without willing a limb to move.”

  Kelrob shifted, grimacing as the splinter of stone dug deeper. For the first time he noticed a leather lute-strap slung across Jacobson’s chest, the neck of the instrument protruding over the big man’s left shoulder. In a moment the mage’s mind raced from confusion to conclusion; pushing himself upright, Kelrob staggered towards Jacobson, collapsed beside him. In the distance a second explosion sounded, the room’s wraparound windows shuddering.

  Jacobson jerked back at the sight of the mage’s wound. Immediately he set about removing the shard of limestone, which was wedged quite firmly, its tip nestled in the bone. Kelrob cried with pain as it was pulled free. He allowed Jacobson to spread him out by the cold hearth and tend to his injury, barely feeling the agonized sting as the bandit poured alcohol into the pit of his wound.

  At last the pulse of blood was stymied. Jacobson tied off Kelrob’s leg with a tourniquet ripped from the bedlinen, and helped the mage into a comfortable position on his unslept-in bed.

  “What’s going on?” the big man demanded at last. He tugged on the tourniquet a final time, ensuring the knot, then eased back to the foot of the bed with a groan. “Oh, my aching head.”

  His voice was muffled, obstructed by the mask. Kelrob laid back on his pillow and stared at the room’s blank, cream-white ceiling. “The Isdori consulate was just destroyed,” he said in a hollow voice.

  Jacobson twitched. Rising, he went to the wraparound window and stared at the plumes of smoke rising and pooling against the defensive dome. “I knew it was something big,” he said faintly, “but I never thought...”

  Kelrob turned his head to stare at Jacobson’s back. “What did your body do after it walked out of the hotel?”

  Jacobson turned from the window. Raising a hand he touched the false face, fingers lingering in the crooks of its smile. “I left the room, left the building, and went to one of the glossier merchant districts, looking for I knew not what. Turns out I was hunting for a luthier. I broke a window and stole this instrument, triggering a net of defensive spells that should have blown me to bits. Thus equipped I went to the closest tavern I could find. There were the predictable late-evening drinkers...guards just off-duty, dissipated nobles, flat drunkards, whores plying their trade. I sat and watched what was on the stage, a sour old minstrel with a voice like a bullfrog. He sang a few songs about love, about hate, a few petty tales of revenge, the usual fare.”

  Another explosion sounded; a crack lanced across the bulbous window-pane. Kelrob stared at Jacobson with furious impatience. “You can skip the embroidery. What happened?”

  Jacobson sighed. “My body kicked him off the stage, climbed up, and started playing. All these songs were in my head, songs without words, with words, tunes and chants and strange melodies — I gave voice to them all. And the people...
began to get restless. I could see the fire in their eyes. I kept playing, until at last they began to tear apart the inn. Not each other, mind; no gore. Although that seems to have changed now.”

  Kelrob glanced out the window as several fresh coils of smoke rose above Tannigal. “Are you saying they are responsible? How could a mere tavernfull of people cause such destruction?”

  Jacobson cleared his throat. “When I finished at the first tavern, I went to another. And another. Everywhere it was the same: I played and they went mad, began screaming about the hideous drudgery and thanklessness of their lives, crying out that they wanted more, wanted anything. The last inn I played was attached to one of the barracks. A bunch of salty, scarred fellows, with a goodly amount of ale consumed between them. I sang for them, and they realized in their resultant fervor that one of their number had a key to the magazine. Next thing I know they’re running into the street with the intent on scrounging up as much powder as possible.”

  Kelrob hands had curled into trembling fists on the bedsheet. “Are you telling me that you did all this?”

  Jacobson hunched forward, clutching at his stomach as if ill. “I say I,” he rasped, blue eyes glittering wildly behind the mask, “but I mean Him.”

  Kelrob felt as if he were about to shatter. He dared not say the name aloud. “Is He still there?” he asked in a small voice.

  Jacobson turned his masked face towards Kelrob. “I am and shall continue to be,” he said in a lighter, quicksilver voice, “until the sun goes blind in the sky.” The mask’s smile broadened unmistakeably; Jacobson’s eyes shone with azure light.

  Kelrob said nothing, could think of nothing to say. His heart was pounding with horrible dread, forcing blood from his wound; he choked on some half-formed word, looked away.

  The smile faded, the porcelain lips collapsing into their familiar bemused curve. “You are injured,” Tamrel said. Reaching down, he dipped the tip of Jacobson’s finger in Kelrob’s blood, used it to paint his marble-pale cheeks. “Let me help you.”

  Kelrob shivered, pushed himself back against the headboard. “What can you do?”

  “Merely sing. It is my one gift.” Unslinging the lute from Jacobson’s broad shoulders, Tamrel began to pluck out a small, wandering tune, ill juxtaposed against the cries and claxons now rising from the street. Kelrob’s blood quickly stained the strings; leaning over the mage’s wound, Tamrel began to sing in Jacobson’s husky, ale-coarsened voice, his strange curling language clumsy on the stolen lips. The strumming faltered. “I am still adapting to this vessel,” Tamrel said, almost apologetically. “There are clearly some improvements to be made.” He cleared Jacobson’s throat, fingers falling back into the trickling, bloodied lay.

  Kelrob flinched and leaned forward, a heat growing in his leg. Tamrel resumed his singing, the warbling words coming more easily. Tilting back Jacobson’s head, he piped three piercing notes, his fingers moving with ever-increasing confidence. The burning in Kelrob’s leg grew to a white-hot blaze; hissing in pain he tore at the bandage, ripping it aside to reveal a shallow indentation of discolored flesh, fastly mending.

  Tamrel bowed his head, his chant falling to a near-silent whisper. Jacobson’s thick fingers played over the strings with supernal dexterity, faded blond hair tumbling down to conceal the mask; only the ceramic lips remained visible, their cold smile framed by trails blood. The heat subsided in Kelrob’s flesh, and he watched in horrified awe as the wound vanished entirely, replaced by a pale pink scar.

  Tamrel struck a final chord, and the spell was done. The blood seeped into the porcelain of his cheeks, flushing the mask with a momentary semblance of life. Then, with a shuddering sigh, Jacobson’s body pitched forward. For a moment it seemed an empty vessel, the soul fled alongside the puppeteer, and Kelrob feared he was dead. But no, no; a faint pulse at his neck betrayed a heartbeat, and he was stirring, drawing in little gasping breaths. Kelrob fluttered his lids shut in momentary thanks. When he opened them he hoped vainly to meet Jacobson’s familiar eyes, warm with mercurial kindness, bleak with despair, dulled with drink but endlessly laughing. He felt only a twinge of shame in this longing for a nithing, a bandit, a threadbare knave; he wanted Jacobson at his side, desperately and ludicrously, and hated with a depth unfathomable this arcane parasite that had donned his flesh and stolen his mind.

  10: The Quest

  “Kelrob. Are you still in pain?”

  The voice was breathless, husky, yet unmistakeably foreign. Kelrob clenched his jaw. With a deep sigh he opened his eyes to meet the gaze of his menace, housed in the form of his friend.

  Tamrel had regained his composure, though Jacobson’s cavernous chest still rattled at each exhale. With a wheeze the minstrel gestured to Kelrob’s restored limb, the eyes behind the mask-slits glowing yellowish-blue. “Please, inspect my work. It has been many, many centuries since I sang a song of healing, though your physiology is base enough to mend with ease.”

  Kelrob hesitated, then reached forward and prodded at the scar on his leg. Blood beat in the restored tissue, hot and vital beneath his touch. The absence of pain was shocking in its suddenness. “How did you do that?” the mage breathed, looking up sharply at the mask.

  Tamrel cocked his head, inanimate lips smirking. “Magic,” he said.

  Kelrob shivered, imagining the bitter denunciations of his Masters, who would surely balk at such a heretical claim. Visceral sorcery was a taxing, soul-wearying discipline, as any flesh mended through means of the chromox consumed a small spark of the magister’s vitality. Healers often worked ceaselessly and died young, though their highly desirable skills ensured that they toiled amid opulence. Yet even the most enduring archmagister of fleshcraft would have required several hours to heal Kelrob’s wound, several more to tease out the matrix of renewed flesh to minimize scarring. What he had just witnessed no mortal magic could duplicate.

  Kelrob’s heart hammered against his breastbone, his senses drunk on revelation and dread. “Where is Jacobson?” he demanded, curling his leg to test the musculature. His tendons proved as whole as his skin.

  “He is here before you, or rather his matter, for I have suppressed his essence. A difficult task, to his credit; for all that he chooses to addle his mortal husk with drink, his will remains strong.” Tamrel raised the lute and pressed his porcelain lips to the strings. “My goddess,” he breathed, a quake of delight racing along Jacobson’s body. “I thank you, even in your absence.”

  Another explosion sounded outside, the siege-dome flickering and spitting in response. Kelrob glanced out the window, saw plumes of oily smoke rising persistently from all quarters of Tannigal. Even as he watched a distant guild-spire shivered and caved inwards, spewing a cloud of powdered masonry. Another blast, and the slender silver tower housing the Temple of the Coin collapsed with a muted shriek. Fires were spreading in the residential district, and most of the northside warehouses were in flame.

  Tamrel rose and went to the window, pushing back the curtains to further expose the view. “Lovely, isn’t it? I have never been to one of your foul cities, but I have felt them, bloated abscesses suckling at the power of the land. The towers were unexpected; I thought to find cruder forms, and cruder magic. But the lowly human has always been an enterprising worm.”

  Kelrob tore his eyes from the fuming cityscape, wincing as muted screams rose from the street below. “It’s murder,” he said coldly. “Nothing but needless death.”

  “As you see it. Of course, you are a dreadfully young creature.” Tamrel slid the lute gracefully over one shoulder, the teeth of the tuning pegs grinning beside his frozen smile. “This would seem the time for proper introductions. My name is Tamrel, and yes, I am the cause of this eucatastrophe. Those enterprising men, with their swords and powder...I sang to them, in their fine chainmail and tabards branded with symbols expressing their paid loyalties. The look in their eyes told me what to sing, as it always do
es — the souls of men swim readily to the surface, so starved are they for sustenance. I looked into their eyes and I saw a profound grief, a grinding weariness beyond reckoning, and accompanying it a deeply submerged rage at their wasted blood-stained lives. Seeing this, it was my natural impulse to sing the songs of their liberation. Every crowd demands fresh songs, intoned beside the old and tested; even so, the words I sang to the battalion were little different than the words I sang to the tradesmen and criminals and merchants and whores. Every eye here is shrouded, ever soul tamped deep within the canister of its flesh. It was only natural for me to apply my healing arts, much as I did with your wounded flesh. Body and mind are one, of course, though I understand your civilization insists that the soul is a myth. Yet I tell you, what those people now do,” and here Tamrel waved to the panoply of destruction, the smoke-haze rising to brood beneath the dome, “is in tune with their true spirits. I merely allowed them to understand this.”

  The air was growing abnormally thick in the room, hinting at further malfunctions in the building’s recycling spellwork. The ice chest began to rattle and smoke, the pipes to groan in the walls like agonized spirits. Kelrob pulled himself up and rubbed at the empty strip of flesh on his right index finger. He thirsted for the power of the chromox, thirsted as ravenously as he had at the quicksilver fountain; what he would do with it was unclear. What was clear was that this ruination was entirely his fault. He had brought this beast out of the forest, however unwittingly, and spent a night in useless analysis instead of taking the mask directly to the consulate. Now untold numbers were dead, butchered by a feral battalion who had violated their most sacred oaths. The horror in the House of the Setting Sun paled in comparison.

  Kelrob grit his teeth and thrust his guilt aside, knowing he hadn’t the luxury of despair. Tamrel had to be stopped, contained, destroyed if necessary; now was the time for action, no matter how impotent or feeble. He said nothing, but waited for Tamrel to resume his narration, confident the minstrel would do so. The creature seemed very willing to tell all.