Midnights Mask (3 page)

Over his shoulder, Riven watched the big slaad lurch to his feet, as obedient as a well-trained dog. Dolgan was gnawing excitedly at his lower lip, so hard it was bleeding. Riven wanted to sneer at the oaf’s obsequiousness but could not quite manage it. Obsequiousness seemed appropriate, somehow.

Dolgan caught his gaze, made a bloody grin, and said, “Maybe you’re tense now, eh?”

Riven resisted the urge to slit the bastard’s throat and turned back to face the Sojourner.

The creature held a smooth duskwood staff in his pale, long-fingered hands. A tracery of gold or electrum spiraled around the shaft from base to top. He inclined the staff slightly and the hole in the wall behind him vanished, replaced again by smooth stone.

No wonder Riven had seen no exits. The Sojourner created them as needed. Riven was doubly pleased that he had lifted Dolgan’s teleportation rod. He would need to figure out its operation quickly, should an emergency arise.

Riven considered the Sojourner. He looked vaguely human, but unlike any race of humans with which the assassin was familiar. Standing a head taller than even Cale, the Sojourner’s thin body looked as though it had been stretched overlong by pulling him at the ankles and head. Sunken black eyes in cavernous sockets stared out of a similarly elongated face. His nose was little more than a bump with two vertical slits, his lips as thin as blades. The points of his backswept ears reached nearly to the top of his bald, spotted pate. A handful of magical gemstones whirred around his head in different orbits. Seeing them, Riven was reminded somehow of Cale’s celestial sphere, the magical artifact that had started everything.

“A present, Azriim?” the Sojourner asked, letting his gaze fall on Riven as he floated forward across the room. Outside the light of the glow globe, the Sojourner was reduced to a shadow in Riven’s sight.

With great effort, Riven kept his face a mask—no fear, no wonder, no dread—even while his mind moved through possibilities.

Azriim said, “Yes, Sojourner. This human was… helpful in our successful use of the Weave Tap. His clothes are unfortunate, I acknowledge. And his taste is poor in general. But neither of those are fatal flaws.”

Riven did not bother to correct Azriim, though he had been more than merely helpful with planting the Weave Tap seed—he had been instrumental. Without Riven’s intervention, Cale would have killed Azriim.

But instead of speaking, Riven made a stiff bow. The gesture did not come easily to him.

“Sojourner,” Riven said.

The creature did not acknowledge him, and Riven dared take no offense. The Sojourner stopped in the air two paces from Riven. Up close, his power was even more palpable. Fear threatened, but Riven managed to hold his ground and his expressionless mask. Riven’s eyesight adjusted somewhat to the darkness and he could again mark the Sojourner’s features.

Though he was not a slaad, the nose slits, spotted skin, and the shape of his eyes reminded Riven of something slaadlike, or at least reptilian. He wore a short-sleeved robe of red silk, trimmed in gold, over which hung an ermine-trimmed black cape clasped at his throat with a silver pin. His thin body swam in the clothing, and both robe and cape hung off his frame as though he were made of sticks.

The Sojourner fixed Riven with a stare, started to say something, but stopped, blinked, and inhaled sharply.

At first Riven did not know what had happened, then it hit him. The Sojourner had felt a stab of pain.

“Father?” Dolgan asked.

Beside him, Azriim wore a sneer nearly the match of Riven’s.

The Sojourner had to be sick or injured, Riven reasoned, which explained why the creature had moved his body hardly at all since entering the room. Perhaps even small movements pained him.

Riven tried to figure how that fit into his calculations, if at all_

The Sojourner’s spasm passed as quickly as it had appeared.

“I am well, Dolgan,” he said, and eyed Riven. “You were a companion of the priest of Mask?”

Riven nodded tightly. The mention of Cale as a priest irritated him.

“You betrayed your friend to join my sons?”

“I don’t have friends,” Riven answered, and kept his voice steady. “I have allies and enemies. Allies I use. Enemies I kill?’

The Sojourner smiled, a barely perceptible rise in the corners of his mouth. “Which are we, then?”

Behind Riven, Dolgan chortled. The big slaad shifted on his feet.

“Allies,” Riven said, but could not prevent himself from adding over his shoulder, “For now.”

Dolgan growled, moved a step closer.

Riven tensed, readied himself. Azriim dispelled the tension. “You see?” the foppish slaad said, grinning and thumping Riven on the shoulder. “I like him. So does Dolgan.”

Dolgan scoffed and spat on the carpet.

Azriim frowned at that and said, “Mind the carpet, fool.”

The Sojourner remained expressionless, motionless, and considered. Riven knew his life sat on a blade’s edge. The moments seemed hours. Finally, the Sojourner said to Azriim, “The timing is poor, Azriim. Things are nearing completion and you have introduced a… random element into my plans.”

“I enjoy random elements,” Azriim answered, a challenge in his tone.

Anger flashed in the Sojourner’s eyes. He raised his staff slightly and Dolgan fell to the floor. Azriim bowed his head and took his hand from Riven.

Riven considered using the teleportation rod to get the Nine Hells clear of there, but his pride refused to let him run. He would make his play and see it through.

“Time is short,” the Sojourner said to the room, and Riven wondered at his meaning. “I am disinclined to indulge you. You will take another seed by sea to the Eldritch Temple of Mystryl. Your human is an unnecessary risk. Accordingly-“

“I can be an asset,” Riven interrupted, even as he put one hand to the teleportation rod. “I know Cale well.”

Azriim nodded and said, “He was his companion.”

“He was, Azriim, and that is why I wonder why he aided you.” The Sojourner turned his gaze to Riven. “That is the question.”

“Why do we aid you’?” Azriim asked. “That, too, is a question.”

Behind Riven, Dolgan whined in dismay.

Riven turned one of the dials on the rod with his thumb. He was not certain he could operate it. He certainly could not dictate a location. But if things went poorly, anywhere would be better than where he stood.

The Sojourner’s eyes bored into Azriim. “You aid me because I give you no choice. But also because I offer something you crave. And because you fear me.” He said the last in a soft, tight tone that caused Azriim to take a half-step backward, leaving Riven alone and exposed.

“And appropriately so,” the Sojourner added. He nodded at Riven. “This one does not fear you. That is evident So what do you offer him?”

Azriim made no answer.

Riven gave his own: “Cale-the priest of Mask-I want him dead.”

The Sojourner stared at him, baring his soul. “Why?”

Riven gritted his teeth and looked away. He would not admit, even to the Sojourner, that being the Second of Mask galled him. Instead, he said simply, “I have my reasons. It’s enough that I’m here of my own choice, and for my own benefit.”

“I will decide if it is enough,” the Sojourner said softly.

To that, Riven said nothing. His thumb hovered over the rod’s dials, gave another half turn.

The only sound in the room was the Sojourner’s wheeze.

Riven decided to make one last play.

“Make the decision,” he said softly. “I’m either with you or I’m not. And if not, then we are no longer allies.”

Dolgan lurched to his feet with a growl. Riven put a hand to a saber hilt.

A look from the Sojourner froze the big slaad. The mysterious creature eyed Riven with something akin to appreciation.

“You remind me of Azriim,” he said.

Riven did not consider that a compliment but kept his feelings to himself.

Perhaps sensing a change in the Sojourner’s sentiments, Azriim again took station beside Riven. “He can accompany Dolgan and me, Sojourner, to the Eldritch Temple. He has already proven his usefulness. I believe his words—he wants the priest dead.”

“No,” Dolgan said. “Kill him.”

Riven wanted nothing so much as to turn around and slit Dolgan’s throat.

The Sojourner smiled distantly. To Riven, he said, “You are here of your own choice? For your own benefit?” “Those are my words,” Riven answered.

“They are,” the Sojourner acknowledged. “Now let us see if they are true.”

The Sojourner never moved, gave no warning, but agony wracked Riven’s head.

He screamed, clutched his skull in his palms, and fell to his knees. He felt as if five long fingers had burrowed knuckle-deep into his brain. There, they began to sift through what they found. Riven had never before felt more violated. He resisted the intrusion and fought-futile. The Sojourner’s will was inexorable, the pain unbearable. Riven’s eye felt as though it would pop out of his skull. He forced his blurry gaze upward and stared into the Sojourner’s eyes, fell into them. His body shook, convulsed, but he held the Sojourner’s gaze. He bit open his tongue. Screams, spit, and blood poured from his mouth. He felt his consciousness being cracked open like a nut. He could not move; his body would not answer his commands. He could do nothing but suffer and scream.

He forced himself to stay conscious.

Mental fingers peeled away the layers of his brain, baring memories, hopes, fears, ambitions. He screamed again, again.

The Sojourner’s expression did not change.

Distantly, he heard Dolgan laughing and Azriim shouting.

He, too, is a servant of Mask the Shadowlord, the Sojourner mentally projected, sorting Riven’s life and laying it out for the slaadi. A mistreated boy who became an assassin. He hates his life up to now. Religion has given him purpose….

“Get out,” Riven tried to mutter, but the syllables emerged only as an indecipherable mumble.

Ah, the Sojourner projected, and nodded. He is much like you two in that he also desires a transformation, not to gray, but from Second to First. He hates the priest for being First.

Riven tried again to speak, failed. His heart hammered in his chest. He tried to dismiss from his mind the events that had occurred in the Plane of Shadow, tried to tuck them into some distant corner of his consciousness, but the Sojourner burrowed like a gnome through the dirt of his life.

The Sojourner reached the memory. Riven screamed again. Blood leaked from his nose. Surely his skull must explode. Surely.

And here is this, the Sojourner said, his mental voice hard. He came to kill me, to draw others here to kill me. The betrayal of the priest of Mask was a fraud, a ploy. You have brought a would-be murderer into my presence, Azriim.

The full force of the Sojourner’s mind and will assaulted Riven’s mind, pinioning him, burying him under its weight. He fell flat on the floor. His vision went dark; something warm dripped from his ears. He was falling, falling.

Riven tried to mouth the words, “No. It is real. I want him dead.” His lips would not form the words so he thought them instead: I want him dead! I want him dead!

A booted foot slammed into Riven’s ribs—Dolgan. Riven’s leather armor kept the bones intact but his breath went out in a whoosh.

“Kill him,” Dolgan said.

He was going to die prone on the floor, helpless as a babe. Distantly, he wondered if Cale and Magadon were watching, laughing.

They must have a practitioner of the Invisible Art among their number, the Sojourner observed, surprise in his mental voice. He has moderate skill.

The pain in Riven’s mind intensified. He was too far gone to scream anymore. He dug his fingers into the carpet so hard that he tore three fingernails from their beds. He felt a peculiar sensation through the pain. A tickle in his consciousness. Something scurried around the edges of his sentience, trying to avoid the Sojourner’s mental perception. To no avail. Nothing could avoid the Sojourner.

The Sojourner said, We have a mindmage in our midst. To someone Riven could not see, the Sojourner projected, I see you.

It must have been Magadon. They had been watching the whole time.

With the Sojourner’s attention temporarily diverted, Riven managed to claw his way back to coherence.

“Get… out… of my head!” he shouted, and pulled himself up to all fours.

*****

Magadon lurched back, clutching his temples and groaning with pain. Jak stopped whatever spell he had been casting and leaped to the guide’s aid.

“He sensed me,” Magadon managed, leaning on Jak. “Such a mind….”

Cale knew. He had felt the Sojourner make contact through Magadon, had felt the residuum of power that had accompanied the contact. Cale had let the mental scrying go on far too long. Riven had suffered unnecessarily. He had hoped to learn the Sojourner’s full plans for the Weave Tap, but he had learned only snippets.

He started to draw the darkness around them. The light from Magadon’s sunrod dimmed. Shadows intensified.

“Mags?” Cale asked while he summoned shadows.

“I’m all right,” the guide said. He took his hand off Jak’s shoulder and massaged his brow. He unslung his bow and nocked an arrow, though he did not draw. “I’m ready.”

The air around Cale’s body crackled with magical energy; the hairs on his arms stood up-the result of Jak’s various protective spells. Cale hoped the magic would be enough.

“I did what I could,” Jak said by way of explanation, and gripped his holy symbol, shortsword, and dagger.

Magadon concentrated, and a handful of coin-sized spheres of light formed around his head and quickly faded.

“I cannot mindlink us,” he said. “Jak’s spell is blocking my abilities, at least. Let us hope it does the same to the Sojourner.”

Cale nodded and quickly donned his mask. To Jak, he said, “It’s a dark cavern, little man. Cluttered with cushions and furniture. The two slaadi-one in human form, one as a half-drow-and the Sojourner. Riven is on the floor. “

He hefted Weaveshear, looked each of his comrades in the eye.

Both nodded.

“We go,” he said.