Shadowmasque (8 page)

As Tashil’s gaze came to rest on Dardan she was surprised to find him watching her in turn. He gave a wry grin and came over to where he stood at the end of the mantelpiece, out of the fire’s hot glow. Tashil felt a sting of embarassment, wondering if he was going to remonstrate her. Dardan was highly-respected within the Order of Watchers and was effectively Calabos’ second-in-command.

“So — which of us do you find the most intriguing?” Dardan said a quiet, amused voice.

“I couldn’t possibly single out any one person from this honourable gathering, ser,” Tashil replied. “Think of the consequences…”

“Quite right,” saidd a stalwart, red-faced mage called Chellour who sat before the fire with a heap of parchments in his lap. “I would find it most upsetting were I to be ranked lower than, say, Dybel….”

Dybel, a tall, lantern-jawed man sitting on a stool on the other side of the fire from Tashil, smiled and shook his head. “Be careful what you wish for, my friend…”

Hearing this, Dardan shrugged. “Then perhaps we need another focus for our curiosity, like yonder brooding student of the rain,” he said, tilting his head in Ondene’s direction.

Tashil had prepared for this. “Oh, that’s Stom — he’s just a guest of Calabos who’s been retoring some old statuettes.”

Dardan’s smile was accompanied by a dry chuckle.

“No need to play parlour games, lass. I recognised the notorious Captain Ondene the moment I entered the room.”

“Is that really him?” said Inryk, an edgy, untidy-looking man who turned in his armchair to peer across the room. “He doesn’t seem very dangerous—”

There was a muffled thud as Ondene suddenly closed his book and glared round at him.

“I have been considered sufficiently dangerous to have been hired by a number of southern lordlings and castle princes in recent years, ser,” he said darkly. “If it’s any of your business.”

Oblivious, Inryk shook his head. “But I don’t see how that’s relevant to why the city knotmen have been putting up posters about him…”

“You should pay more attention to the gossip about the nobility, Inryk,” said the sixth mage, Countess Ayoni, an elegant, mature, dark-haired woman. “You see, the former Ondene estates were gifted to House dor-Galyn, and they have a son with a captaincy in the Iron Guard.” She regarded Corlek dispassionately. “Who knows that Baron Ondene’s last surviving son is in Sejeend, thus…”

Corlek Ondene’s only response was a brief nod, as if to confirm her summary, but Inryk was not satisfied.

“That’s all very well, but how does he come to be here?”

Eyes turned towards Tashil but before she could even begin to frame an account of last night’s events, there was the sound of a door opening and closing in the antechamber beyond the arched entryway, and footsteps crossing the wooden floor.

“Ah, Calabos at last,” said Sounek. “Now we’ll have some answers.”

But it was not Calabos but another taller man who stepped through the arch, stooping slightly as he did so. Clad in a long, powder blue coat of austere cut and a plain grey skullcap, his very presence silenced the entire room. His hair was short and as silvergrey as his well-trimmed moustache and beard which, in his weathered and bony face, gave a strong impression of authority and intellect. His eyes were a pale blue, somewhere between ice and ash, and held no pity.

“Good,” hs said in a level, slightly harsh voice. “Everyone is here, everyone except the poet.”

Startled at this intrusion by a complete stranger, Tashil wondered why the other mages looked tense and guarded, saying nothing as they watched the newcomer who returned their collective gaze with a disdainful smile. But before she could ask his name, Sounek spoke from his chair.

“This is a private meeting, ser,” he said. “It appears that you have entered the wrong house.”

“No, Sounek, I am in the right place,” the man answered.

“I fear that you’ve mistaken me, ser — I am Ven Hortis, a master of antiquities from Scarbarig -”

“Sounek of Tymora,” the man went one. “Born to a family of barrelmakers, ran away at age eleven, studied at the Green Hall in Tobrosa, admitted to the Order of Mages 31 years ago by my predecessor, renounced the Order eight years to become a Watcher….”

“You’ve worn out your welcome, Tangaroth,” Chellour said angrily.

Tangaroth?
Tashil thought in amazement.
The Archmage? Here?

“Aah, Nyls Chellour, youngest son of an Adnagauri pickpocket, made a ward of the House of Guilds, trained as a scribe and illustrator until a mage brother at the Earthmother temple saw his potential and helped him become an initiate. Admitted to the Order of Mages 25 years ago but left 14 years later…”

He surveyed them. “I know each and every one of you, what you were and what you think you are, even your rash young guest over there…”

“No, you don’t, Tangaroth,” said a familiar voice from beyond the arched entrance. “You may know details of their lives, but you do not
know
them as I do…”

Tashil felt a rush of relief as Calabos, looking spry and alert, entered the room, shrugged off his damp cloak and slung it over an empty highbacked chair before turning to confront the unwelcome visitor. The two men faced each other for a drawn-out moment before Calabos addressed the Archmage.

“So why are you here, Tangaroth?” he said. “To merely dispense threats and the crown’s unique menace, or was there ome other reason?”

“You and your Watchers are only just tolerated, Calabos,” the Archmage said. “Keep that in mind. Renegades, outcasts, and the offspring of enemies -” He shot a glance at Tashil with that. “Only your marginal usefulness has saved you from the dungeons thus far.”

Tashil felt a strange hollowness, a mingling of panic and anger at the Archmage’s cruel jibe. Some of the others got to their feet and Dardan clenched his fists as he took a step towards the Archmage. But Calabos halted him with a raised hand and a tight smile.

“That was a mean blow, Tangaroth,” he said. “And not worthy of your office. You must know that all of us here have vowed to protect the interests of the empire and its people — that is why the Watchers exist.”

Tangaroth sneered. “You seem to have forgotten why the Mage Order exits, then...but in any case, when Ilgarion and his court take up the reins of power he will learn of you and wonder why all of you are not under my direct control and guidance” He shrugged. “I doubt that any record of past achievements will stand between you and incarceration at his majesty’s pleasure.”

“Unless?” Calabos said.

“Unless the Watchers perform a service vital to the sanctity of the realm.”

Everyone’s eyes were on Calabos. Tashil stared at the old man’s face, wishing and hoping that he would turn down this blatant coercion but to her dismay he frowned and gave a smal nod.

“Go on,” he said.

The Archmage looked satisfied. “It has come to the notice of the High Minister of Night as well as myself that the Great Carver Pilgrimage to the Isle of Besdarok will be used as a veil for the assembly of an army of northern Carver zealots which will then attack Sejeend. At the same time, other Carver wreckers will attempt to sow confusion in the city with burnings, assassinations and the like. It will be the Watchers’ task to spy on the few prominent Carver priestholds and their sympathisers in Sejeend, find out who is party to the plot and ascertain its details.”

Calabos regarded him pensively. “And may I ask what the Order of Mages will be doing in the meantime?”

“Working closely with the High Lord Marshall and his commanders to counter the threat from the north,” Tangaroth said. “Pre-emptively, if necessary.”

Tashil felt so full of outrage at this that she teetered on the brink of shouting in his face. ‘Norther Carver zealots’ could only mean the Mogaun tribes, but the only true zealots among the tribes were the fanatical Oathtakers and they accounted for only a small minority with numbers that scarcely constituted an army. In any case, it would be sheer madness to mount an attack on a city like Sejeend…

Then Sounek caught her eye and raised a cautionary finger, to which she gave a slight nod and held back, listening.

“A most singular strategy, Archmage,” Calabos was saying. “Very well, then — you can be assured that we will carry out this investigation for you on the understanding that our integrity and independence will remain as it was under Magramon.”

“So it shall be,” Tangaroth said. “But before you begin, it might be wise to escort your hotheaded guest out of the city — who knows what harm might befall him were he to stray out into the streets.”

“Yes...quite…”

Calabos suddenly paused, swayed on the spot then reached out to the padded back of a divan to steady himself. “Can you hear….a voice….calling….”

Then Tashil could hear something but only in her mind, a low, rumbling voice speaking a continuous string of syllables. And even as she became aware of the sound, it grew louder and louder in her head. In the next moment, Calabos let out a strangled cry and keeled over to sprawl on the floor.

But the terrible roaring went on, even as the others stumbled forward to Calabos’ aid, all of them similarly affected by the monstrous torrent of noise. It was now so loud that it seemed to fill her head to bursting and sent her senses reeling. She could hear nothing else and the mere act of trying to walk over to Calabos’ motionless form was like crossing a tightrope above an abyss. And still the brutal, demanding bellow raged on within her skull but now she could discern divisions, a feral shriek, an incoherent droning moan, and over it all vast words surging through like waves of oceanic thunder….

Finally it abated, faded to a murmur and whispered away to nothing with surprising swiftness. Relief was stark on every face around her, and Tangaroth was crouching by an unconscious Calabos with fingers pressed against the side of his neck.

“Unharmed,” the Archmage said, getting shakily to his feet. “When he awakes, impress upon him the gravity of this new...incident.” He looked at them all. “I’m sure that he will have recognised that as a spell of dark provenance.”

“It was an invocation,” Dardan said sourly.

“Yes, but of a kind known as a calling,” Tangaroth said. “It is supposed to draw powerful spirits and other things to the vicinity of the caller. If this was perpetrated by Carver zealots then your task may just have become a little more arduous that I originally anticipated.”

The Archmage had regained his composure and once more carried an air of haughty disdain.

“When Calabos sufficiently revives, have him contact me with mindspeech,” he said. “But before that comes about, you yourselves might consider sending forth a search party, for I fear that your caged bird has flown!”

With a quiet, malicious laugh, he turned and left by the archway, while Tashil whirled round and cursed at what she saw. One of the windows stood open and a book lay on the chair nearby, but Captain Corlek Ondene was utterly gone.

The old tyrant was long since slain,
But his accursed bane lived secretly on,
A blight that rotted out the land,
And poisoned us all.

—Ralgar Morth,
The Empire Of Night
, Canto III

From the deepening shadows of a muddy alley, he gazed at the Watchers Lodge which sat across the road behind a low hedge, its dark mass broken by the curtain-muffled radiance of a few of its windows. He knew there were others also spying on it, the driver of a wagon, a gardener, and someone behind a curtained window in the adjacent house, all of whom had come to his attention after the arrival at the lodge of one who could only be the emperor’s archmage, such was the strength of his aura. Using the long voice he had reported all of this to Prince Agaskline, his clade chief back aboard the Stormclaw and the response had been one of concern, to say the least.

The elderly mage from the previous day arrived not long after the archmage. Knowing from past rumour that there was some antipathy between the two, he had expected some hint of magery but he felt no disturbance in the Lesser Power. Only the silence and tranquility of neat, well-tended gardens and streets bereft of people in the night.

When it began it sounded like a faint sussuration in the air while a tenuous but noticeable coldness flowed over him. Then he thought he could hear a steady murmur emanating from the ground underfoot, a sound that grew steadily, becoming an interleaved drone of voices, one of which intoned an unending string of words in an ancient, primitive Othazi dialect. Distorted amid the burgeoning roar it was barely comprehensible but here and there he picked out exhortations to awake, to follow, to fulfill….

And for some moments he imagined that this din was audible to anyone until he saw two locals stumble past in the weak glow of porch lamps, chatting away, seemingly oblivious.

Only those attuned to the Void or its powers would be able to feel such a primal outpouring, he realised. Yet this was not a direct, focussed act of sorcery, rather an enveigling incantation that was meant to flood the thoughts while an insistent compulsion worked away at the undersenses. No focus, no direction, just this pervasive torrent, gushing in all directions from some source across the river, somewhere near the cliffs.

Then, as it reached its peak, his night-piercing eyes spotted a figure clambering over a wall separating the lodge from the grounds of the house next door. Momentarily a face was framed in a shaft of light from within the lodge before slipping out of sight. Without hesitation he moved out into the feebly-lit street, affecting a sot’s stagger along with a limp and a slurred, wavering sea shanty. For a second, the other lookouts had neither noticed Ondene’s escape nor his own weaving drunkard’s walk across the road towards a lane that ran along the other side of the Watchers lodge.

With only a few paces to go he just caught a high-pitched whistle over the sound of his own voice and quickened his stride. Once within the thick shadows of the lane he broke into a run whose swiftness and silence would have stunned any chance observer. He could not know where the hunt would lead him, but he knew that he had to get to Ondene before the other pursuers. His brothers and sisters aboard the Stormclaw would expect no less. Of course, once he had the man in his custody, his problem would then be what to do next.