Shadowmasque

by Michael Cobley

  Bureng joined in the laughter but a hard look came into his eyes. “For what I’m planning, I need more than three ships, in fact more than seven, much more.”

  Flane snorted. “Why so many? What prize would need such force for the taking…” Then he paused, his single eye widening, “….surely it’s not….”

  “Sejeend,” Bureng said. “The jewel of the empire.”

  Logrum erupted in guffaws of laughter. “Aah, so you’ve finally gone mad, eh? Attack the capital? — we’d be as well to try and sail across the fields of Khatris to lay siege to Trevada, or scuttle our ships for a raid on the Godkings of the seabed, and neither o’ them makes sense an’ all!”

  “Nevertheless,” Bureng said. “Sejeend is the prize I mean to have.”

  “How?” Zanuur said, eyes narrowing. “Where will you find the ships and men for such an undertaking?”

  “Not far from here,” said Bureng. “Sickle Bay.”

  “I lost a fine carrack in a storm there a few years ago,” muttered Flane. “Reefs tore out her hull.”

  “It’s an ill place,” said Raleth. “It’s been a graveyard for ships since olden times.”

  Logrum grunted. “Hanavok’s Last Battle.”

  “Just so,” Bureng said. “Tell me, have any of you heard the name Crevalcor?”

  Brows furrowed and heads shook.

  “He was a powerful sorcerer who lived in the Ageof Legends.” Bureng’s voice grew thoughtful. “During the great war of the Shadowkings, his essence was resurrected and put to work on their behalf. During his brief second life, before the defeat of his masters, he assembled a codex of rites, rubrics and comments…..and I have that book!”

  Listening to this, Rikken swallowed hard as an uneasy silence settled across the taproom.

  “What’s in the book?” Zanuur said warily.

  Bureng laid his hands flat on the table. “Sorcery,” he said. “The black sorcery of the dead — with it, I shall raise an armada from the bottom of Sickle Bay and hurl it against the defenses of Sejeend. After that, uncountable riches will be mine — and yours if you join me.”

  “When are you setting out for Sickle Bay?” Logrum said.

  “This very moment,” was the reply. “Do not ponder — decide now.”

  “Very well,” the big man said. “Count me in.”

  When the other stared in surprise, he shrugged. “At least, if this turns out a fool’s fancy, I’ll have the pleasure of dealing with him personally.”

  There was laughter at this and Zanuur slapped his hand on the table. “Aye, then I’m in too.”

  “And me,” said Raleth.

  Eyes looked at Flane who was studying Bureng with dispassion. “You don’t strike me as one burdened with fancy, captain. I’ll take you up on your invitation.”

  “Then it’s settled,” Bureng said. “And the time for leavetaking is upon us.”

  As the company rose and moved towards the door, Raleth said, “What about Buskal, masterof the Skewer? He’s upstairs, sleeping off a skinful but if you need another ship I can always —”

  Bureng cut him off with a gesture. “We don’t need him — the five of us will do. Five is perfect.”

  Cursed Rikken nodded happily at this, not understanding yet filled with purpose and wild daring as his captain led them all outside and down to the ships.

  Chapter Seven

  With the hooks of Fear and Desire,

  The gods do fish for men.

  —Gundal, The Doom of Gleoras, ch. 1, iv

  “Are you sure that you’re well enough, master?” Tashil said. “Such burdens would tax even a younger man.”

  “You mistake a moment’s unpreparedness for signs of infirmity,” Calabos said with a little smile. “I’ll not be ready for my dotage for at least another 15 years.”

  Countess Ayoni glanced at Dardan. “Have you tried talking sense into him?”

  “Tried to,” Dardan said. “Once, about ten year ago.”

  Calabos smiled inwardly, remembering the very predicament and the very day...yet still the two women regarded him with anxiety, and he sighed.

  I doubt that either of you would be receptive to the notion that my true age is more than three centuries rather than three score. Or that I’m far more physically strong than my appearance would suggest. No, I have to be plausible in this.

  The four of them were gathered at a table next to the wide bay windows of the lodge’s summer room. Outside, a brief but heavy shower was just slacking off and bright shafts of sunshine made the rain-drenched garden below glitter.

  Calabos spread his hands.

  “My friends, your concern for my well-being truly touches my heart,” he said, looking at each in turn. “But you must realise that we are living through testing times that will inevitably tax our strength and our purpose, my own as much as any of the Watchers. That said, be assured that I shall not needlessly exert myself or take any pointless risks.”

  Dardan looked skeptical but said nothing.

  “You are our linch-pin, Beltran,” Countess Ayoni said. “Without your leadership, the Watchers would lose purpose.”

  “There will be little point in the Watchers at all if darkness triumphs.” Calabos straightened in his chair and gave a roguish smile. “Besides, I’m not exactly defenceless, you know.”

  Ayoni and Tashil gave nods of acknowledgement while Dardan just shrugged.

  “Anyway, to other matters,” he said. “Earlier this morning I spoke with Sounek and Inryk, instructing them to find out more about the Carverists in Sejeend; Sounek is going to attempt to join one of the more zealous Carver congregations while Inryk will employ his enviable stealth to investigate the background of certain senior Carver priests.”

  “You mean he’ll be crawling across the roofs and picking locked doors,” Dardan said.

  “And searching for any evidence of conspiracy, plots, bribery and the like,” Calabos said.

  “So are you taking Tangaroth’s suspicions seriously?” said the Countess.

  “Not entirely,” he said. “I don’t really believe Carverists in Sejeend pose any real threat yet Tangaroth and others close to Ilgarion have convinced themselves that they do. But ther is room for doubt on our part, stemming from not knowing enough about the various Carver congregations, which is why I despatched Sounek and Inryk.”

  “I haven’t seen Chellour and Dybel this morning, master,” said Tashil. “Are they likewise engaged?”

  Calabos nodded. “The sources of darkness are what they seek.”

  Yet it is not last night’s sorcerous calling that they pursue, he thought. As with the Carvers, I know little about Ilgarion’s inner circle and its motives, thus the palace is their goal, a secret goal.

  “But worry not,” he went on.”I have vital tasks for you both. Countess — I assume that you will be attending Ilgarion’s audience with your husband? — good, then make it your aim to watch who Ilgarion and Tangaroth speak with, and it might be valuable to see if you can overhear any conversations. It will be a state occasion so the maskering will be formal, which may be an aid.”

  Calabos turned to Tashil. “For your part, I want you to find time to stop by various inns and stalls and listen for tales of odd happenings last night. The Archmage may believe that some Carverist was behind that sorcerous calling but I’m certain that someone or something else is at work in the city’s shadows. See what you can discover.” He paused to regard them both with a fond smile. “Do I need to encourage you exercise caution and restraint?”

  The two women exchanged a look, then laughed in unison.

  “Why, of course not, Beltran,” Countess Ayoni said with mock innocence. “I will be the very soul of prudence.”

  “As shall I, master,” said Tashil brightly.

  Then together they turned and left the summer room. Calabos watched them go, his feelings a mixture of affection and inexpressible worry. If he was right about what they faced, then the perils that awaited the Watchers would be beyond an
ything they had ever encountered.

  “You still set on our little expedition later?” said Dardan.

  Calabos nodded. “While the rest pursue other quarry, we are the ones who will hunt the darkness to its source.”

  “In that case —” Dardan stood and pulled on his battered, dark green leather cloak, “ — there are some matters for me to attend to.”

  Reaching the door, he paused. “And worry not — I shall exercise all due caution. Those laundresses can be a mite nasty this time o’ day!”

  Sniggering loudly, he opened the door and was gone.

  Grinning, Calabos shook his head. But his humour faded as solitude forced his thoughts in on themselves. He rose easily from the table, thinking to go downstairs to speak with his guards but instead paused to look out at the garden’s walled garden. A rack of heavy cloud was moving in from the east, obscuring the sun and sending an overcast greyness rushing across the sea towards Sejeend. The garden had lost its gleaming sheen and was now just drab and sodden, and as the raindrops began ticking against the window Calabos turned back to the room, now growing gloomy. He crossed to a long carved stand whose various niches and shelves held a variety of book and odd ornaments. He found an oil lamp, lit it with a flint-wheel, then set it atop the stand — and found that he was standing before a wall-hanging of the siege of Besh-Darok.

  In fading colours, it depicted the moment when the witchhorses, led by the boy-emperor Tauric, fell upon the great army of the Shadowkings. Calabos had seen it during a visit to Adnagaur and, in a moment of wry consideration, bought it, thinking to hang it in his villa. Later reflection caused him to change his mind and donate it to the lodge where he was less likely to set eyes on it too often. As it loomed over him now, it seemed to offer a silent, mordant commentary on last night’s disturbing events.

  That maddening, insistent emanation had been carefully constructed from the most ancient of tongues and was, he was sure, directed at whatever survived of the Lord of Twilight’s fragmented essence, a call ringing out across the nightbound land...and something in him had responded.

  No, that wasn’t right. He knew that nothing of that dread presence remained since it had been excised utterly by Nerek with the melded sword of powers. Could it be that there was an emptiness in him that still held the shape of what had once been there? Such that when the sorcerous wave battered through him, what answered was merely an echo of an echo, a memory of a memory?

  He shuddered, remembering how one moment he was facing down the Archmage and in the next he was sliding into grey unconsciousness. When he awoke it was after hours of deep, unwakeable sleep, a period of blankness from which he emerged without so much as a fleeting shred of nightmare or dream-vision. By his bedside had been a pale and anxious Tashil and a scowling Dardan, a reassuring sight to his dazed senses. As he recovered he heard of Corlek Ondene’s escape through the common room window while all had been distracted, and Tashil and Dardan’s subsequent chase through the night. Their account of his apparent disappearance while trapped in the coach inn courtyard gave Calabos pause — neither of them reported any sense of a focussed use of the Lesser Power and neither saw Ondene emerge from the shadows, either free or captive.

  Which left only two explanations, either that the errant captain had found a way out of the trap undetected or that some unknown power had intervened. Then there was the question of the hirelings sent to stalk him through the streets — were they working for Tangaroth or were they connected to the soldiers who had set upon him the previous night?

  He studied the fleeing rout of black-masked troops on the wall tapestry. Unknown power, he thought dismissively. I know that power’s name — I can taste the taint of his corruption spreading throughout this city. Even destroyed and scattered to the seven coasts, enough of him yet remains to draw forth worshippers of the twisted and the profane.

  And once these dark priests began to gather more converts and deepen their power, their purposes would gain potency and a momentum which would become increasingly more difficult to defeat with the passage of time. It was a pattern he had witnessed repeatedly over the last three centuries.

  No, not this time, he thought as he turned the lamp down low. We shall search out their lair and crack it open, then hunt them down like the vermin that they are. The Lord of Twilight must never return — never!

  The sun had reemerged from the clouds and brightness flooded the summer room once more. As he turned away from the tapestry Calabos could feel his hands trembling. From anger, he told himself, only anger.

  Not fear.

  * * *

  Outside the lodge, Tashil waved farewell to Countess Ayoni as she climbed into her large and sombre carriage. Once it was clattering away in the direction of the count’s coastal estates, she turned and made her way downhill through the district towards the riverside, occasionally ducking into doorways when brief but wild showers whipped along the street.

  Near the riverbank, behind the warehouses and godowns, was Oldyard Walk, a long, narrow street comprising little else but squalid lodgements, a few ramshackle inns and several mean little alehouses. Some of these she knew by reputation to be risky for a lone woman so she stopped at some of the others along the way, keeping to small beer a she swapped tall tales and ragtalk with the regulars. With her narrow features , short hair and fluency in riverway argot, she felt safe from being recognised as Mogaun: it was a guise she had worked hard at since her arrival in Sejeend and it had proved helpful in sidestepping the complications of bigotry.

  In the Black Bottle she related her and Dardan’s encounter with the unnatural hound, but told as if she had been a witness (and adding a few embellishments like the dog having yellow eyes and breathing fire). The soused ropemaker who was her chance companion responded with the meandering tale of a headless horse trotting through the streets after midnight. In the Laughing Hangman, she heard a grey-haired old porter insist that he’d seen the misty ghosts of Mogaun shamen prowling around the foot of the White Keep. In the smoky murk of the Bag ‘O’ Nails, a drunk city watchman told of how he saw two corpses rise from the bay and wade ashore to the shingle where they were set upon by a swarm of rats and a flock of crows. But when he tried to pick her up she made her excuses and left.

  Further along, in a long narrow tavern called the Packhorse, she plied her story again but heard little in return apart from a long-hair minstrel who swore that he woke in the middle of last night — in a small park nearby — to see a pair of dainty, ladies’ boots dancing with a red velvet glove upon the grass. Next door, in the Ragged Staff, she heard of flying crockery and a kulesti that played itself. In the Iron Daemon, it was a yarn about talking mice, and in the Ship and Star, it was a group of alley cats who had given voice.

  Out on Oldyard Walk, Tashil reflected on what she had once heard from an Earthmother sister about working in the temple’s hall of healing, namely that after some time it seemed to her that the entire city was ailing since all she saw were sick people. Tashil smiled — right now, she found it easy to imagine that all of Sejeend was deep in its cups…

  In the Monks Head, however, she heard a despatch rider speak of a chilling experience he had at a coaching inn some forty miles south of Sejeend on the Red Road. After a wearying ride from Vannyon’s Ford, he had stopped at the inn for the night and was unsaddling his horse when he heard a noise from a covered cart which had been parked in the stabling barn. When he went to investigate he saw an arm hanging below the edge of the canvas cover at the rear of the cart, and when he tugged the cover aside he was horrified to behold six or seven corpses lying jumbled in the cart. Immediately he hurried through to the main building and found the innkeeper in the rear parlour but before he could tell of his ghastly discovery there was a commotion from outside. By the time he and others dashed outside there were only the sounds of the cart and horse receding northwards up the Red Road. Pursuit in the pitch dark was out of the question and in the morning there were little in the way of wheel marks after the
heavy showers that had passed over the land earlier.

  The rider’s demeanour was frank and undramatic, and his tale was uncomfortably convincing. Such that when she visited the next tavern, the Five Kings, and heard the tale of a ghostly witch disappearing before a crowded alehouse, she decided that she had heard enough. Besides, it was getting on for late afternoon and she wanted to leave before the serious drinkers and twilight revellers came in search of raucous diversion.

  Tashil hurried away from the riverside quarter, heading north and mostly uphill towards the College district. The chambers where she lived lay behind her little ink and paper shop on the top floor of a high-peaked, 3-storey house, itself halfway up Gryff Path, a narrow street running along the rear of the Lord Cordale Theatre as well several other imposing trade buildings. As she turned a corner into Gryff Path she came face to face with a scrawny street dog. In an instant her memory of last night’s encounter leaped to mind, causing her to halt abruptly and instinctively begin a defensive thought-canto….

  But the dog, which had been pawing at a discarded, moldy half-loaf, quickly scurried away, tail between its legs. Relieved, Tashil breathed out and cross the street, feeling annoyed at herself for panicking so readily.

  Moments later she was passing beneath the wicker archway with its twining strands of dogthorn, then climbing the iron-framed stairs that clung to the street-facing side of her building. At the third and topmost floor she paused to check that her assistant, Maut, had closed up the shop properly, then hastened along the length of the walkway to her supposed main door, which she only used when the shop was shut.

  An intricate key opened the lock and she slipped inside…and immediately felt that there was someone or something else in the house. She stood stock still for a moment and listened through her undersenses….heard the faint rustle of cloth against cloth….breathing that was quicker than normal, nervous or anxious….not coming from her bedroom or her study, but futher down the narrow hall, from the day room next to her little kitchen….