Masquerades
Page 1
Victor yanked a mask from the tree rack.
“Victor, no!” Alias shouted. “It could be a trap!”
“Oh, yes,” Mist said. “Did I fail to mention the masks must be removed in a particular order?”
With a shocked look, Victor set the mask back on the tree rack, but it was too late. The floor began to shake as all around the cavern hidden gears of massive proportions began to turn.
Mist laughed. “Oh, dear. It doesn’t look as if we shall be able to complete our little transaction after all. Die well, Alias of the Inner Sea. And fond good-byes to you, Lord Victor.” The dragon skull sank back into the pool.
The level of water in the pool began to rise until it poured over the edge, splashing to the floor. The sound of gears grinding stopped, and there was a moment of relative silence. Then they heard it: the sound of rushing water, as loud as the ocean itself.…
THE HARPERS
A semi-secret organization for Good, the Harpers fight for freedom and justice in a world populated by tyrants, evil mages, and dread concerns beyond imagination.
Each novel in the Harpers Series is a complete story in itself, detailing some of the most unusual and compelling tales in the magical world known as the Forgotten Realms.
THE HARPERS
THE PARCHED SEA
Troy Denning
ELFSHADOW
Elaine Cunningham
RED MAGIC
Jean Rabe
THE NIGHT PARADE
Scott Ciencin
THE RING OF WINTER
James Lowder
CRYPT OF THE SHADOWKING
Mark Anthony
SOLDIERS OF ICE
David Cook
ELFSONG
Elaine Cunningham
CROWN OF FIRE
Ed Greenwood
MASQUERADES
The Harpers
©1995 TSR, Inc.
All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of Wizards of the Coast LLC.
Published by Wizards of the Coast LLC. Hasbro SA, represented by Hasbro Europe, Stockley Park, UB11 1AZ. UK.
FORGOTTEN REALMS, Wizards of the Coast, D&D, their respective logos, and TSR, Inc. are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the U.S.A. and other countries.
All Wizards of the Coast characters and their distinctive likenesses are property of Wizards of the Coast LLC.
Cover art by: Fred Fields
Interior Illustration: Larry Elmore
eISBN: 978-0-7869-6428-4
640A2940000001 EN
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www.DungeonsandDragons.com
v3.1
To Judith Weddell—
science fiction teacher extraordinaire
Contents
Cover
Other Books in the Series
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
The Players
One: The Night Masks
Two: Victims of the Fire
Three: The Actress and the Sage
Four: The Faceless
Five: House Dhostar
Six: Alliances
Seven: Street Theater
Eight: Engagements
Nine: Parries and Ripostes
Ten: Power Plays
Eleven: Stalking From the Outside In
Twelve: Maiden Voyage
Thirteen: Conversations Ashore
Fourteen: Melman’s Place
Fifteen: The Lair of the Faceless
Sixteen: Suspicions
Seventeen: Accusations
Eighteen: The Masquerade
Nineteen: The Unmasking
Twenty: Stirring the Ashes
Twenty-one: New Contracts
Twenty-two: The Gathering Storm
Twenty-three: Battle With the Night Masks
Twenty-four: Verovan’s Hoard
Twenty-five: Curtain Call
About the Authors
THE PLAYERS
THE HEROES
ALIAS—Swordswoman of the Realms, created by FINDER WYVERNSPUR; a cheap heroine.
DRAGONBAIT—Companion to Alias, called CHAMPION in his native tongue; a saurial.
OLIVE RUSKETTLE—Rogue Harper, self-proclaimed bard and role model to halflings everywhere.
THE NOBLES
LUER DHOSTAR—Patriarch of House Dhostar, Croamarkh of Westgate. His only son is VICTOR.
NETTEL THALAVAR—Matriarch of House Thalavar, employer of halflings. Her granddaughter is THISTLE.
SSENTAR URDO—Bad-tempered Patriarch of House Urdo and would-be smuggler. His sons are MARDON and HAZTOR.
OTHER NOBLES—Other noble merchant houses in Westgate include ATHAGDAL, GULDAR, MALAVHAN, SSEMM, THORSAR, and VHAMMOS.
THE SERVANTS
KIMBEL—Personal servant to House Dhostar, a geased assassin.
KANE—Butler to House Dhostar.
BRUNNER—Servant to House Dhostar; a harbor worker.
DREW—A halfling in the employ of House Thalavar; a shipping clerk.
MISS WINTERHART—A halfling adventuress hired by House Thalavar.
MAXWELL BERRYBUCK—A halfling in the employ of House Thalavar.
MERCY—A half-elven servant girl at Blais House.
THE LAW
DURGAR THE JUST—Priest of Tyr, chief justice and master of the watch.
RIZZI and RODNEY—Members of the watch.
THE NIGHT MASKS
THE FACELESS—Leader of the Night Masks.
THE NIGHT MASTERS—A ten-person secret cabal that serves the Faceless. Seven hold regional offices: HARBORSIDE, THUNNSIDE, GATESIDE, PARKSIDE, CENTRAL, OUTSIDE, and EXTERNAL REVENUE; and three have executive positions: ENFORCEMENT, FINANCE MANAGEMENT, and NOBLE RELATIONS.
MISTINARPERADNACLES—Advisor to the Faceless, a dead red dragon.
MELMAN, KEL, BANDILEGS, TIMMY THE GHAST, LITTLEBOY, TWIG, SAL, JOJO, KNOST, MARCUS, and ONE-EYE—Various underling Night Masks. There are others who run off or die before we learn their names.
THE TOWNSPEOPLE
JAMAL—Street performer and social critic.
MINTASSAN—Young sage of Westgate and traveler of the planes.
BIG EDNA—Keeper of a tavern in a tough part of town.
DAWN—An elven dressmaker.
AND INTRODUCING …
THE QUELZARN—Legendary monster inhabiting the sewers of Westgate.
One
The Night Masks
Alias watched the young couple seated at the edge of the plaza fountain. They appeared as stark silhouettes backlit by a golden sunset. The swordswoman shielded her eyes from the glare and picked out more detail. The boy’s tender face and oversized jerkin were both blackened by soot, and the young woman’s face and apron were dusted with flour. Apprentice smith and baker’s daughter, Alias guessed. Oblivious to the presence of others, the pair sat side by side, staring wordlessly into one another’s eyes. The boy leaned forward; the girl leaned forward; their lips hovered inches apart.…
Then the girl turned her head and giggled. The boy scowled and frowned, certain that she was laughing at him, at something he’d done. Then the girl looked back at him; the light danced in her eyes, and she smiled. The boy’s face twisted into a lopsided grin. He leaned toward the girl, and they began the courtship dance again.
Alias smiled, too, until her reverie was broken by the sharp cough of her reptilian companion, a sound akin to a sword being unsheathed.
“Fur-gathering about courtship?” teased Dragonbait. The saurial swiveled on his hips so that he stood upright, his heavy upper body balanced by a prodigious tail that now twitched back and forth impatiently. Although he stood at his full height, he had to look up at the swordswoman. Even the top of the flared fin erupting from between his eyes and cresting over his skull reached only to Alias’s shoulder. Beneath his hooded cloak the saurial’s face was more dragonlike than human, and his hide was made up of smooth, pebbly scales. He wore a soft leather tunic cinched at his waist with a broad belt of interlocking metal plates. In one clawed hand he carried an ornate staff of ash decorated with mouse skulls and orange feathers. He was trying to make it appear as if he actually needed the staff to walk, so would-be thieves would not be so quick to assume the staff was some powerful piece of magic, which in fact it was. To complete the illusion of being a lame beast, he had even gone so far as to give his enchanted blade to Alias to wear on her weapon’s belt.
Alias’s hand slid down beneath her cape to her own scabbard, reassuring herself that her sword and Dragonbait’s weapon were both within reach. She wore chain mail over her tunic, plate protectors over her leggings, arms and shoulders, and an iron collar about her throat. Even without the armor, though, there was no mistaking she was anything but a swordswoman. Her attractive figure was muscled from years of drilling for combat, trekking about in heavy armor, and battling monstrous foes. She wore her bright red hair cropped short, and her green eyes were constantly shifting about, alert to any and all possible dangers. “The word is woolgathering,” she corrected her companion.
Two passing pedestrians turned their heads to see if she was talking to herself, for Dragonbait had spoken in Saurial, a tongue too high-pitched for the normal human ear, while Alias had replied in the ordinary Common language of the Realms. A magic spell gave her the ability to hear and understand the saurial’s “voice,” and even speak it, but only a decade of comradeship allowed her to pick up the nuances of the accessory scents, clicks, and postures that conveyed his mood and tone. Other reptilian creatures, such as dragons and lizard men, still often understood him more swiftly and completely than she did.
Conversely, the more subtle nuances of her language often eluded the saurial. “Isn’t wool the fur of sheep?” he asked.
“Yes, but you have to say woolgathering,” she replied.
“Why?”
Alias shrugged. “Maybe something to do with counting sheep before you go to sleep.”
Dragonbait nodded at the wisdom of tallying a herd before resting, but still couldn’t understand what that had to do with daydreaming.
“Actually,” Alias countered before her companion could distract her further, “I was not woolgathering about courtship. I was thinking about how foolish those youngsters are. Look at them, oblivious to the world.”
“Their eyes are for each other,” Dragonbait whistled, and Alias caught a whiff of rose and honeysuckle—sort of a saurial sigh. He was thinking, she realized, of CopperBloom, his mate who had remained behind in the Lost Vale with their children. Alias also knew that the paladin had agreed to adventure so far south with her only because their mission was for the good of the saurial tribe.
“For each other, yes,” Alias grumbled, “not for the world around them, or for their change-purses. They’re oblivious to how long I or anyone else may have been staring at them. Splashing water in the fountain would drown out any sound of approaching footsteps. They’re sitting ducks for any purse-snatcher, pickpocket, or grifter that happens by.”
“They should be fairly safe,” Dragonbait argued, puzzled by her assessment of the dangers. “They are in the middle of a city with lots of people around. And surely they have friends nearby.”
Alias gave a derisive grin and snort, “We are in the middle of Westgate, my friend. Crime is this town’s hobby, vocation, and major export. Didn’t you read the sign at the port entrance—‘Welcome to Westgate, Home of the Deadly Night Masks’?”
“I saw no such welcome sign,” Dragonbait stated.
“I’m joking, Dragonbait. Remember humor?”
“I do not understand the humor. Maybe because I’m saurial.”
Alias shook her head. She switched to the Saurial tongue, “Or maybe because you’re a paladin,” she suggested. “Haven’t met the paladin yet who could catch a joke on the first bounce.”
“How many paladins have you met besides me?” the saurial asked.
Evading the question, Alias declared, “We should get going. The sooner we find this sage Mintassan, the sooner we can unload that staff and escape this wretched city.”
Dragonbait nodded in agreement. The saurial wizard Grypht had arranged for them to meet the sage Mintassan and exchange the staff for a scrying device to help protect the saurials from attack. If not for the importance of the mission, the paladin never would have agreed to travel to Westgate. His two previous trips to this city had been fraught with peril, and he did not harbor any fondness for the merchant town.
Alias surveyed the six streets leading away from the plaza. “This way,” she instructed, pointing down the least grand of the thoroughfares.
The two adventurers left the plaza and the young couple behind in the gathering shadows. The westward sky had turned the crimson of dragon’s blood, coloring pink the mounting clouds over the bay to the east. As if in response to the dangers of the darkening city, the clouds were fleeing southward, leaving only starlight to shine over the city below.
The buildings surrounding the plaza, homes to merchants and taverns catering to traders, while not of the most recent or expensive designs, were neat and well scrubbed, and the roads immediately adjacent were spacious and relatively uncluttered. As the two adventurers probed farther into the city, the quarters became more tightly packed, the alleyways narrower and strewn with the debris of civilization. Alias, taking one shortcut after another, dragged her companion off the main flagstone roads and down alleys of hard-packed earth until the saurial paladin had seen more backsides of buildings than front.
As they stepped onto another main artery of the city, Dragonbait noted that the merchants were pulling down the great overhanging wooden shutters that provided shade from the sun during the day and protection from criminals at night. Lanterns were already alight outside the bars and slophouses, though their weakly flickering flames served more for advertisement than to chase away the gathering shadows.
Dragonbait mewled once with consternation and pulled from his belt a folded piece of paper. He grasped the edges, and the sheet unfolded like a delicate Turmish paper sculpture. Dragonbait paused beneath a lantern pole, squinted at the human letters and lines scrawled in octopus ink, looked around for a landmark, then squinted again at the map. He growled.
Alias had already crossed the street and was about to plunge into a wide alley before she sensed that her companion was no longer in tow. With a huff, she stomped back across the street and tugged on the paladin’s cloak. “Will you come on?” she demanded. “I’d like to make this exchange and find decent quarters before midnight.”
Dragonbait did not look up from the map. “I do not recognize this area,” he said flatly.
“Don’t worry,” Alias reassured him breezily. “We’re on Silverpiece Way, north of the market. We cut down this alley, cross Naga Way, go left on Southgate Market Street to where Fishman’s old place was before the fire, go right, and we’re there.”
“This alley is not on the map,” he countered.
“Of course not,” replied Alias, �
�You think an ink-stained mapmaker is going to risk his hide in this neighborhood? Anything you see sketched in the poorer sections of town—it comes from a cartographer’s imagination—it’s just doodles. The poor don’t buy maps, and the wealthy never come this way. Come on. I know where we’re going. I grew up here, remember?”
“You did not. You were born—” Dragonbait began arguing, but stopped when he realized he was addressing Alias’s back as she headed for the alley.
He refolded the map hastily, shoved it into his belt, and chased after his companion, emitting clicks—the saurial version of grumbling.
Alias had not grown up in Westgate. She had not grown up anywhere. She was a magical creation designed by an alliance of evil beings who tricked the great bard Finder Wyvernspur into building her. Their intent had been to use her as their personal assassin, but she had found the strength of will to turn on them and destroy them. A swirling azure tattoo graced her right arm from elbow to wrist, a constant reminder of her previous enslavement, and of her quest for freedom.
Nonetheless, in order to complete the illusion of a real human, Finder had invested Alias with memories of growing up in Westgate. Although the memories were total fiction, they provided her with an intimate knowledge of the city—a knowledge that, so far, seemed infallible.
The shortcut Alias took now plunged through an even more decaying quarter of the city. The alley was wider, as if the buildings on each side did not want to get too close to the greenish sewage that flowed down the center of the lane. The walls had been blackened by decades of grime and colored with graffiti. Any windows or doors that had once opened to the alley at the ground level were walled over with mismatched stone only slightly less dirt-encrusted than the surrounding stone.
Dragonbait ambled after Alias with a growing feeling of anxiety. He concentrated on his shen sight, the ability to perceive good and evil, a gift from his gods to aid him in his duties. Although he could see nothing in the darkness, he could sense trouble up ahead on the right, two souls pricked by constant greed and rotted by a disgusting pleasure in the pain and humiliation of other creatures.