The Inquisitives [4] The Darkwood Mask (48 page)

But in such a deluge, unguided …

What has Sverak done? What have I done?

Time means nothing. There is only muted sound. More distant screams
.

The world brightens unimaginably. Like a white burning sun manifesting before me. I feel … invigorated, invulnerable. Why does immortality feel like agony?

“Master!” I hear Sverak shout. He is screaming. I have never heard him shout or sound so human. “Master Erevyn! I am sorry! I did not mean this! I will save you. I will save you!”

Sverak is concerned for my well being, but I am all right. I am impervious to all harm
.

But not pain?

Sverak is carrying me now. I cannot see him, but I can sense him. He is carrying me from ruin, delivering me from death. Can I not carry myself?

“Sverak?” I say, but my voice is louder than I remember it. “Where am I?”

The Blood of Galifar
Wir, the 11th of Sypheros, 998 YK

T
he crack of electricity brought Soneste back to consciousness. She felt like she’d been stabbed in four different places, but there was no warmth or wetness of blood. In one painful instant, she remembered where she was.

She pulled herself to her feet and looked around.

Halix leaned heavily upon the glass table, struggling to free Princess Borina from her prison. Tallis leapt to avoid a bolt of lightning, which snaked out beyond the laboratory and vanished into the factory beyond.

The Karrn rose from the floor and met Charoth face-to-face. With dagger in hand—its blade still slick with Mova’s blood—Soneste circled around the table. Her body protested every step, her head throbbing.

It didn’t matter. She saw Tallis’s weapon come away on a backswing, and pieces of Charoth’s mask fell away. The wizard fell hard to the ground without a sound.

Soneste felt her blood freeze as she advanced and looked down upon the prone man. Tallis struck again, sweeping the pick across Charoth’s midsection. The wizard’s body jerked from the impact,
the sharp tip of Tallis’s weapon catching on something more than flesh and bone. With effort, the Karrn pulled it free, tearing away ribbons of fine cloth.

A skull-sized head of wood and metal looked up at both of them from beneath the hood, a ghulra carved into the forehead. Two faceted eyes of dark blue stone pulsed with a weak light. The wizard’s jaw was metal, hinged at the side of his head. Where Tallis’s pick had torn away robes, Charoth’s torso lay exposed. It was wood—
darkwood
—banded with strips of silvery metal and engraved with eldritch symbols.

Tallis looked at Soneste, seeking an answer.

She opened her mouth, not sure what to say. If Charoth was some kind of warforged, he was the strangest she’d ever seen. His frame was skeletal enough to pass for a human body beneath thick robes.

“Sverak … where … am I?”

Soneste turned to look at the gaunt man in the glass throne. He leaned heavily upon the arm, his sunken eyes watery as he tried to blink, tried to focus.

“Master …” Charoth—
Sverak
, or whoever he was—struggled to sit upright. The voice sounded like Charoth’s as she’d known it, but its timbre was sharper, more metallic, lacking the resonance and volume afforded by the magical mask he’d worn.

Tallis raised his hammer, but Soneste held up her hand.
Wait
.

She briefly met the old man’s eyes. The uniform he wore was familiar, the traditional gray-blue of a Cannith-employed artificer. Then she saw the gorgon emblem upon his breast and a faded, lyre-shaped tattoo at his collarbone. No, not a tattoo. A dragonmark.

The Mark of Making. This man was of House Cannith!

“Sver—” he rasped. “Sverak, it hurts …”

The skeletal warforged at their feet reached out a gloved hand. “Master Erevyn! I am here!”

Erevyn
. Soneste recalled the
Chronicle: Among the thirty-two presumed dead at the Orphanage was Erevyn Korell d’Cannith, chief artificer and minister of the facility
.

The warforged yanked off one glove then the other. Sickly, translucent skin—not unlike the mottled flesh of Erevyn himself—sent a putrid stench into the air. More delicately, the construct Sverak also began to peel the skin from his arms as though they, too, were mere gloves. The end of each was cut off at the elbow with ragged cuts and dry, exposed veins. Even as he discarded these, the dead skin twitched with a semblance of life—or necromancy.

Whose skin was that? Soneste felt sick.

“What are you?” Tallis asked, disgusted.

“It is me, Master,” the warforged continued, holding up its arms. The metal fingers—five on each hand—were thin, delicate, nothing like the strong digits of a normal warforged.

She thought of Aegis and Soneste’s anger flared again.

“Sverak,” Erevyn said, his voice sleightly stronger. “Where … are we?”

“You are safe, Master.” The lean warforged sounded weak, but there was a desperate elation in his voice. He crawled on his hinged, metal-capped knees, reaching a hand out to his master. Tallis watched Sverak carefully, primed to strike him down. Without his mask and robes, the construct seemed so much smaller.

“I have
saved
you, at last. Look! Master, I have used what you taught me. I have learned how to undo the damage to your body. The energies that hurt you—they kept you alive, impervious to harm, but they were too much for your body to sustain. You have been … asleep, but I learned at last to reverse the effects!”

“I don’t …” Erevyn d’Cannith turned his head—an effort which seemed to pain him—to look upon the room, the shattered glass door, and the factory beyond. “Where is the director, Sverak? What have you done to Lord Charoth? He is badly hurt.” The artificer was still feeble, unable to do more than writhe slowly in his seat.

Soneste saw despondency in the man’s watery eyes, the weight of some terrible knowledge. Erevyn—and not Charoth, the
real
Charoth d’Cannith—was the sole survivor of the Orphanage disaster.

“He is gone, Master,” Sverak said. “He sought to destroy all that we worked for.”

“We? Sverak … no.”

“Master, I have done
all of this
for you. Your body is infused now with the power of Galifar’s own pure blood—the oldest human lineage on Khorvaire! Its power is your power, its vitality
yours
. You will live strong again! We can do whatever you like, go wherever you want to go. I have wealth, influence, prestige. We will be untouchable, you and I. House Cannith will offer us so much for your return!”

Minister Erevyn turned his head to look again upon the warforged—
his
own creation—and then to Tallis. “Who are …?” he asked weakly.

Tallis opened his mouth but nothing came out. He probably didn’t know what to make of this exchange, but Soneste was piecing it together. She remembered the empty chair in Charoth’s estate. She remembered the articles’ words:

“It was not mere fire that has scarred me,” was all he told the
Korranberg Chronicle
regarding his condition …

 … While most creation forges in the late 980s produced the rank and file units that House Cannith sold to the Five Nations, the Orphanage facility worked to augment the warforged mind …

… “I cannot speak to the destructive properties of such devices. That is not our province. I can, however, confirm that Positive Energy, such as that channeled by the Mark of Healing, can be deadly if not used correctly.”

It was Erevyn who had been stricken in this way. He had languished for six years while his assistant, an unorthodox product of the Orphanage, claimed the identity of the wealthy and influential Lord Charoth. All for this
one
moment, to capture scions of Galifar blood for an attempted reversal of the damage.

The royals! Soneste’s desire to unravel the mystery disintegrated instantly. She looked back at the glass table. Halix had freed his sister and was laying her gently on the ground. Soneste could see the young woman’s chest rise and fall. Still alive, thank the Sovereigns.

“Who are—?” Erevyn started.

“No!” Sverak screamed, his voice shrill with anger, with arrogance. Soneste looked at the warforged’s narrow head, his faceplate bereft of expression. “Do not speak to them, Master! They would destroy us, just as Charoth would.”

Tallis’s lips twitched. She could see the darkness in his eyes returning.

“Us?”
Erevyn’s face became a grimace of agony. Soneste had seen dying men in less pain. Tears soiled by his affliction traced a watery black path down his lined face. “He would have destroyed you, not me, destroyed you as he should have. As
I
should have. You are
my
mistake. Onatar, forgive me for what I’ve done. You …”

“Master, no, listen,” Sverak leaned forward, reaching his hand out again as if physical contact with his master would bring him absolution.

The artificer shrunk away the best he was able. “You are … animate material, Sverak … nothing more. A tool of industry … and my failure.”

Soneste looked back at Sverak. The warforged froze, speechless.

“By the … Host.” Erevyn’s head slumped, his mouth working to speak. “Kill me, please.”

“Master, no,” the warforged said, struggling to stand. “You will be strong again, and I will
make
you understand.”

“No, you won’t,” Tallis said, his voice cold.

The hooked hammer came down in a two-handed grip, splintering the wood of the construct’s back. Sverak collapsed to the ground and lay still.

Conciliation
Far, the 13th of Sypheros, 998 YK

T
he windows of her room had frosted over. When Soneste leaned in close against the glass, she saw that a fine layer of snow had dusted the streets of Korth.

She hadn’t yet decided whether she loved or hated this city.

It was dusk. She’d spent the last two days in Crownhome, which despite its elegance had felt like a prison. Confined as she was to a series of well-guarded chambers, she’d had a great deal of time to reflect. The view was marvelous and the food, when she forced herself to eat, was extravagant. She wanted for nothing.

Except answers.

She’d been allowed to leave only once—under escort—to the House Sivis enclave. There she’d sent a brief and cryptic message to Thuranne to let her know that the ir’Daresh case had been closed, that she was all right, and that she’d be returning soon. She’d dare to presume.

When Kaius’s court wizards had at last breached the doors of the glass factory, even the White Lions had been denied entry. Soneste had been allowed only a brief exchange with Prince Halix and Princess Borina before they were escorted away by
the Conqueror’s Host. Strangely, even Aegis’s remains had been taken.

Tallis had been claimed by the king’s royal guard, who operated above the Justice Ministry’s jurisdiction. The bone knight, Laedro, personally oversaw Tallis’s apprehension. There was finality in the Karrn’s quicksilver eyes when they’d taken him. He’d given her a nod, a sad smile, and then he was gone. She knew nothing of his fate. It had occupied her mind for the last two days. Was he even—

“Still alive,” a woman’s deep voice spoke behind her.

Soneste whirled, heart hammering. She hadn’t heard anyone open the door, much less move so close to her.

The woman wore royal garments of white and gray, embroidered with black designs. The effect was subtle, exhibiting wealth in reserve. Long silver hair was bound in a tight bun at the nape of her neck. Her dark eyes were unsettling, and the deathly pallor of her age-lined face was traced with the faint scars of a blade. Soneste knew this woman by her reputation. She was the king’s aunt, and prior to Kaius III’s coronation, ruler of Karrnath for seventeen years.

“Regent Moranna,” she said, offering a respectful bow.

Soneste couldn’t help but stare at the older woman’s bloodless lips as she spoke again, her Karrnathi accent thicker than most. “The deeds of Major Tallis are known to us. Your efforts, Miss Otänsin, have erased
certain
recent events from his record, but he will still answer for crimes against the crown.”

He may have
saved
the crown, Soneste thought bitterly, but she forced herself to nod. “May I request, Regent, the opportunity to speak with him?”

“Spare yourself, Brelish, and move on.” Moranna’s severe face turned away as she approached the window, looking out into the deepening twilight. Soneste found herself looking out at the city as well.

“You are free to leave now, Miss Otänsin. On behalf of King Kaius III, I thank you for your actions and ask for your discretion
in these events. Articles addressing the brief disappearance of the prince and princess of Breland, the fate of Charoth d’Cannith, and the events at the glass factory will be circulating among various chronicles very soon.”

Soneste looked back to Moranna. “What will they—?”

The woman turned, fixing Soneste with fierce dark eyes. “It is our
strong
recommendation that any accounts of your experience in Korth, should you be asked to describe them, not deviate from these articles.”

“I … understand,” Soneste said, unable to meet Moranna’s gaze. Her presence was formidable.

“Do you? King Kaius has worked very hard for the peace we all enjoy. Prince Halix and Princess Borina are our honored guests in this land, yet even they appreciate the need for discretion. The troubling events of the last week have reminded us how quickly such peace can be taken away by insurgents and outlaws.”

How true, Soneste thought. She dared to look back at the Regent. “Princess Borina. How is she?”

“Both children are well, in excellent health, and are grateful for your part in these events. Be assured that they will never again face such peril on Karrnathi soil.” Moranna withdrew an envelope from her pocket and held it out. “They leave you with this parting letter and a recommendation to their father that you be commended for your work on the case of Ambassador ir’Daresh. Ask for nothing more, Miss Otänsin.”