Masquerades

by Kate Novak

  “My gods,” Olive gasped under her breath. “She’s going to get herself killed.

  “But if that isn’t an entrance to die for,” Jamal whispered, “I don’t know what is.”

  The aura of puissance momentarily faded from the Faceless as he retreated from the point of the halfling’s weapon and nearly took a tumble down the dais steps.

  “Maybe we could grab her and escape down the stairs,” Olive whispered. She began to pull back the tapestry, but Jamal set a heavy hand on her shoulder and held her back.

  “Wait,” the actress whispered. “Heroes never truly die,” she added with a delighted grin on her face.

  She’s as crazed as Winterhart, Olive thought.

  The Night Masks held their breath, waiting to see what their master would do.

  From behind his mask the Faceless glared with fury at the insolent halfling facing him. It would not look particularly valiant for him to skewer the vermin, but none of his Night Masters showed the least inclination to grab the creature and throw it at his feet. All were no doubt afraid of losing a hand to the steel weapon still pointed in their master’s direction. Even more aggravating were the charges the halfling brought. How had she discovered his secrets?

  He would have to make a joke of her. It was not the dignified beginning he imagined for his reign, but he had to keep her from making further accusations. “Did you intend to challenge me all by yourself?” the Faceless asked with a tone of amused derision.

  Miss Winterhart smiled. “Well, to tell the truth, I did bring a few friends.”

  Olive’s heart leaped to her throat. Surely this crazy halfling didn’t expect the three of them to fight a horde of Night Masks! Did she expect Olive and Jamal to step out from behind the tapestry and make another dramatic speech?

  Apparently Winterhart had not been counting just Olive and Jamal among her few friends. The halfling swordswoman gestured to the back of the hall just as platoons of the city watch marched toward the back ranks of Night Masks. The soldiers all wore leather armor and copper helmets and were armed with swords and crossbows. The room rang with the echoes of their boots stomping on the stone-paved floor.

  Durgar the Just stood at the front of his troops in his silver plate armor, carrying his mace like a staff of power. “In the name of the watch,” the priest bellowed, “I order you to lay down your weapons and surrender. Failure to obey will be met with lethal force. This is your only warning.”

  The Night Masks, who for years had considered the watch a joke, were not about to surrender to them when the largest treasure they’d ever looted was nearly theirs.

  The thieves charged first, with their weapons drawn. The front ranks of the watch knelt in a precision maneuver, leaving the second rank clear to toss out great capture nets. The kneeling first rank let loose a volley of crossbow bolts. Night Masks at the battle’s front who were not dragged down by the heavy, weighted nets, were felled by the shower of missiles.

  The Night Masters and the Faceless began moving toward the door hidden behind the tapestry. Winterhart leaped down from the table in front of them, blocking their escape. The Faceless and four of the Night Masters drew swords.

  “I guess this is what you call a cue, isn’t it?” Olive asked the actress.

  Jamal nodded grimly. She pulled back the tapestry, and, with swords drawn, the pair burst onto the dais to back up Winterhart.

  In the back of the hall, swordsmen of the watch maneuvered right and left on the thieves, and soon steel clashed against steel. There was a burst of light as some thief, equipped with a powerful amulet, teleported from the hall. Three thieves standing behind their fellows aimed wands at the watch. Blasts of eldritch energy issued from the wands, and five swordsmen were knocked back by an invisible rain of blows. A moment later, however, all three wand-armed thieves became pincushions of crossbow bolts—a warning to any other Night Masks that those using magic would be favored targets.

  On the dais, those Night Masters not armed with long blades shrank back from the naked steel presented by the two halflings and the actress. The remaining four flanked the Faceless.

  Winterhart squared off against the Faceless and one Night Master, Jamal against a second Night Master, and Olive against the remaining two. Winterhart dealt the Faceless an immediate blow to his sword hand with the flat of her blade, and her return sweep parried a blow from the Night Master who stood beside him. Faceless lost his grip on his weapon—the blade spun across the dais. The leader of the Night Masks was forced to retreat to retrieve his weapon.

  Jamal remembered immediately why she’d given up adventuring twenty years ago. The thought of a sharpened steel blade slicing through her skin, her flesh, and her innards filled her with a nauseating fear. In his scornful offering of a sword, Kimbel had challenged one of her greatest fears. She wished desperately that she was wearing some kind of armor or carrying a shield, but she knew that in the shape she was in the weight of the armor would be too great and she needed both hands to keep the sword before her steady. The goddess of luck must have been looking out for her, though. The Night Master before her seemed to be neither an aggressive nor skilled fighter. Perhaps he’d drawn a blade only to impress the Faceless. Jamal held her own, parrying the blows the Night Master delivered. She even managed to draw first blood across his arm.

  Olive was not feeling so fortunate. One of the two humans attacking her was a burly man, quite skilled with his weapon, while the other human was so tall that she had trouble keeping her sword high enough to parry his blows aimed at her head. She’d only just managed to ward off a stroke that might have decapitated her, but the cost was accepting a smack to the ribs. Her leather jerkin kept the blade from cutting into her, but the force of the blow knocked the air out of her and left her side throbbing. As if that weren’t enough, it appeared as if the assassin Kimbel were about to join the two swordsmen in their attacks on the older halfling.

  Kimbel placed his hands on the head of the taller Night Master facing Olive. An aura of ball lightning erupted from the thief’s head. His hair stood upright from his scalp, and Olive could see the bolts of energy crisscross the flesh left exposed by the mask. The Night Master fell forward, steam pouring from his ears.

  Olive gaped at Kimbel with astonishment. If she’d told every halfling in Westgate that the Dhostar assassin had helped her, not one of them would believer her. She didn’t believe it herself.

  Kimbel blew on his hands. With a sly grin, he asked, “Haven’t you ever seen a shocking grasp spell before, Mistress Ruskettle?”

  The remaining Night Master engaging Olive was distracted just enough by the fall of his fellow for Olive to deal him a critical blow. Kimbel moved on to give another shocking grasp to the Night Master battling Jamal.

  In the meantime, Winterhart dispatched the Night Master before her with professional precision just before the Faceless returned to the fray.

  Olive turned to a corner where two Night Masters without swords cowered, waiting for the tide to carry them one way or the other. Olive barked an order for them to surrender or fight. To the halfling’s delight, they surrendered.

  Jamal and Kimbel bullied the remaining three Night Masters into lying with their hands over their heads.

  Olive looked out across the hall.

  The superior teamwork of the watch was delivering the victory to them. For years they had fought their enemy in the streets, where the thieves could too easily go to ground. Now, however, the watch’s more conventional combat training had the Night Masks pinned, and the thieves were surrendering in droves. Some lay down or played dead with the plan of creeping off once the battle front crossed over them, but these were thwarted by the watch, who dropped heavy nets over them before moving forward. Durgar was in the middle of the room, charging the dais, his glowing mace administering his judgment against those who had disobeyed his command.

  Kimbel, Olive, and Jamal stood back and watched as the Faceless attempted a powerful strike against Winterhart, which she parried
with a strength beyond any Olive might have credited to a halfling. “Admit your guilt, Victor Dhostar,” Winterhart demanded, “and surrender to the watch, or you will pay for your crimes with your life.”

  The Faceless snarled like a beast, but admitted nothing, and neither did he surrender. He and Winterhart battled on. It soon became apparent which combatant had more skill. Every stab the Faceless delivered to the halfling she matched and bettered.

  Olive was just beginning to realize that there was something familiar about Winterhart’s parries and attacks when the Faceless’s blade caught on the fabric of the young halfling’s sleeve and tore it away from her arm.

  Olive gasped, and even the Faceless stepped back in surprise. Winterhart’s right arm was marked by an azure brand, a tattoo of thorns and cresting waves, with a blue rose at her wrist.

  “I knew she had to be a cheap hero,” Jamal declared with a chuckle. Beside the actress, Kimbel muttered some unintelligible spell words.

  A shimmer of light rippled across Winterhart’s body and the halfling began to transform before their eyes. Her frame grew to human size, her muscles took on the definition of a warrior in training, and her plump cheeks and rounded chin grew more drawn and angular. She became the former defender of Westgate—Alias the Sell-Sword. With the polymorph magic dispelled, the chain-mail armor, boots, and cloak she’d worn upon her transformation into a halfling were now revealed. The scar from Victor’s ring still blazed across her cheek.

  Alias swung her weapon with an uncustomary fierceness and let out a blood-curdling battle cry as she dashed at the Faceless. Shocked, the Night Mask retreated three steps, stumbled on his long robes, and fell on his back. The swordswoman stepped up to her foe and set her booted foot down on his sword hand, keeping enough pressure on it to prevent him from raising it. With the tip of her blade she pried off the coin mask, which obscured his features.

  Victor Dhostar’s face appeared at her feet. “I should make you pay for your crimes now, with your blood,” Alias said coolly, “but I will give you instead to Durgar for trial. The quick death of a warrior is too good for you.”

  “Alias, my darling, no!” Victor cried. “It wasn’t me! It was Kimbel! He was never enchanted to serve my family. It happened the other way around. All those years ago, he put me under his spell so he could use my family and finally destroy them. I tried to resist, but he was too strong. All I have done has been at his command. He is the true Faceless.”

  “Why did he help us in combat then?” Olive demanded.

  “And why,” Durgar said, climbing the stairs to the dais, “did he turn over all the Night Masters’ books to me and dispel all their magic yesterday?”

  Victor glared up at the assassin standing beside Jamal. “You will pay for your treachery!” he screamed. Pointing a ringed finger at the assassin, he snarled, “Kreggarish.”

  Kimbel grabbed the sides of his enchanted mask, screaming as Melman had when he had been branded.

  “Enough,” Alias commanded, smacking at the nobleman’s hand with the tip of her blade, leaving a crimson streak across his fingers. Victor whimpered like a child, but a moment later he laughed at the assassin. “The brand is permanent Kimbel. You’ll never be rid of it. You shall always feel the pain,” the vanquished Faceless gloated.

  Kimbel tossed aside the white mask with a hearty chuckle. His face was untouched. “Sorry, old boy,” he said, “but not only do you have the wrong man—” Kimbel’s figure began to glow and shimmer as Winterhart’s had when she had transformed into Alias, and in a moment he reappeared as none other than Mintassan the Sage. “—but a magic ring like that hasn’t held power over me for decades.”

  “If you’re not Kimbel,” Olive asked, “who is?”

  “Why Kimbel is, of course,” Mintassan replied. “Though at the moment he’s chained in the dungeon of Castle Dhostar and looks like a feeble-minded sage named Mintassan.”

  “And where’s Dragonbait?” Olive demanded.

  Alias looked up at Mintassan. “Where is Dragonbait?” she asked.

  In the swordswoman’s moment of distraction, Victor Dhostar slid his wounded hand deep into the sleeve of his robe and pulled out a twisted glass vial. He smashed the vial against the floor.

  Quicksilver dribbled from the broken glassware. The liquid metal glowed white-hot until it bathed Victor Dhostar in a glaring light. When the light faded a moment later, Victor Dhostar had vanished.

  “What was that?” Jamal asked, blinking away the spots on her eyes.

  “He’s slid through a dimension door. He cannot have gotten far,” Mintassan explained.

  “Spread out,” Durgar ordered a patrol of his men. “Search the entire castle.”

  “I’ll check the lair, in case he tries to escape by one of the portal mirrors,” Mintassan said. “Silver path, Faceless’s lair,” the sage murmured, then vanished.

  “Thistle!” Olive cried. “He would go after Thistle and try to snatch something from Verovan’s hoard. Mist said she’s—”

  “At the top of the south tower,” Alias shouted. The swordswoman dashed from the hall with Olive and Jamal at her heels.

  Twenty-Four

  Verovan’s Hoard

  Thistle Thalavar paced anxiously on the roof of the southern tower of Castle Vhammos. Her heart was heavy, her mind uneasy. The evening was not turning out as she had imagined it would. In the daydreams she indulged in all day, Victor had been amazed when she proved she really did know how to reach Verovan’s treasure. He had recognized how clever she was and had considered her his equal. He had made her his confidant on all matters of state. Once again he had declared his love. In her fantasy, they had spent the rest of the evening in one another’s arms.

  In reality, when Thistle had used her grandmother’s feather brooch to open the magical portal into the treasure hoard, Victor, although pleased, had not seemed particularly amazed. He had accepted the feather brooch as her token with a warm kiss, but he had been unable to hide his annoyance when he discovered he himself could not use the token to open the hoard. When Thistle explained that only someone of Verovan’s bloodline could use the brooch, the croamarkh had bristled.

  Thistle realized with sickening dread that Victor was sensitive to the fact that she was descended of royalty and he was only a noble. Even worse, no matter how loyal and loving she was, the nobleman did not like having to rely on her to reach the treasure.

  The final disappointment came when, instead of spending the rest of the evening alone with her, the croamarkh had asked her to wait on the tower while he assembled his forces to help clear out the treasure.

  Now Thistle waited alone, trying to convince herself that Victor was still worthy of the treasure because he would use it to make Westgate a city of beauty and justice, admired by all. She suspected, however, that he was not the lover she had dreamed of.

  The interdimensional portal to Verovan’s treasure hung twenty feet from the edge of the tower. By stroking the spine of her feather brooch Thistle could cause the portal to open just a crack. First a section of the sky would ripple, causing the stars to shimmer. Then a searing white light would flash out from the eldritch rent in the planar fabric. As soon as the girl removed her hand from the brooch, the portal snapped shut, leaving her standing in the dark, beneath the starlit sky. If she held the pin long enough, the portal grew into an oval eight feet across by twelve feet high. Once the portal was completely opened, it sent out a dark, arcing bridge to the edge of the tower.

  Thistle stroked the feather brooch, causing the sky to flash as if with heat lightning. Something hissed in the darkness behind her, and Thistle turned around slowly, more curious than startled.

  Dragonbait stepped out of the shadow of the tower battlement. He had been hiding there since Thistle and Victor had arrived at the castle. He had seen how Victor had played on Thistle’s affections and had watched as she had demonstrated how to use the feather brooch to reach Verovan’s hold. Thistle had arrived with Victor giddy and carefree, bu
t now she was solemn and melancholy. The saurial hoped that meant he could now convince her to come away from the tower—for he was growing nervous for her safety—for the safety of all of Westgate.

  Each time Thistle stroked the feather brooch, cracking open the portal, the paladin’s shen sight sensed a bolt of lightning and went momentarily blind, leaving him with a stabbing pain in the back of his head and a throbbing sensation in his teeth. His shen sight was being overloaded by some great evil that lay beyond the portal—within Verovan’s hoard. Whatever it was, Dragonbait did not want to risk its release over the city.

  The paladin motioned for Thistle to come away from the battlement and go with him down the tower stairs.

  “I can’t,” Thistle replied. “I promised Victor that I would wait here for his return.”

  Dragonbait made the sign for danger in the thieves’ hand cant.

  “I know all about the dangers,” the girl said. “Grandmother first told me the tale of Verovan’s hoard when I was six, just in case she died suddenly and I became the keeper of the key.”

  Thistle turned away to look over the tower battlement as she explained the history of the key to the paladin. “King Verovan’s greed is legend,” she said. “He was so obsessed with hanging on to his treasure that he exchanged a piece of his soul with a lord of the Abyss to create a planar pocket to hold his treasure hoard. When Verovan died, the lord of the Abyss ordered his minions to loot the king’s hoard. Their lord gave them the piece of Verovan’s soul encased in amber so they could use it with the key to open the portal.

  “My grandmother’s grandfather, Gen, was the king’s third cousin. Gen was an adventurer, a paladin, like you. Luckily, he was in Westgate when Verovan died. He sensed the evil things swarming to the royal castle and followed them. He waited until they had opened the portal and had rushed inside. The minions of the Abyss left the key and the piece of Verovan’s soul on the battlement with a single guard, a true tanar’ri. Gen battled the tanar’ri and destroyed it. Then he smashed the amber, freeing the piece of his cousin Verovan’s soul, but the piece of soul flew to what it loved most—the treasure. Once the soul was separated from the key, the portal closed. Gen fashioned the key into a brooch, hiding it in plain sight, making a green feather the trading badge of our family’s house.”