The Masque of Vyle (7 page)

‘
No fun, these friends.

And no help either.

Yet a show of weakness was all it took,

To bring them rushing hither.
’

The Commorrites smiled cruel smiles and menaced the quailing Yegara with evident pleasure. They pushed and pulled his cringing body between them, squabbling at times like a flock of vultures over a choice piece of carrion. At length the Commorrites seem to tire of their sport and gradually drifted away until only one remained. This lone noble had sharp and predatory features, the face of none other than the Shrike Lord – Vyle Menshas.

The landscape of spires silently shattered before the viewers’ eyes. The shards flew apart and reassembled into a new scene while the figures of Vyle and Olthanyr remained unmoving. Now they stood on the rugged coastline of the Sable Marches as shadowy ranks of Commorrite warriors marched past in the background. Motley spoke again.

‘
Not to aid,

Not to help

But to claim a weakling realm,

The Shrike Lord spread his sable wings

And the Marches all fell down.
’

Olthanyr surged to his feet, his face flushed and his eyes filled with tears. He stared about wildly as if seeking an escape route but there was none to be seen. A cacophony of wailing, shrieking, pleading voices suddenly burst across the scene from invisible lips – although Olthanyr evidently recognised the speakers. It was his whole clan, each and every one of his relatives being wiped out of existence by the Shrike Lord’s torturers. Olthanyr pressed his hands over his ears but the voices still resounded inside his skull. The performance, the Harlequins and even Vyle Menshas were completely forgotten now. As the last Yegara reeled in horror Motley stepped smoothly forwards to continue speaking.

‘
A whole clan consumed

Burned root and branch.

Save one that kept his life

By surrendering all he had ever known

To survive the coming strife.
’

The vision of the Sable Marches and Vyle’s troops had faded away. Only Olthanyr was left, shuddering alone in the darkness, and for a long time no one moved or spoke. Then an arid breeze swept through the wall and brought with it the smells of burning. Red flames kindled in the distance and by their sullen light a ghastly form was illuminated. Olthanyr recognised it at once as the corpse of Qu’isal Yegara as it had been found after the fire in the Onyx wing. It was eyeless and blackened with charred strips of flesh hanging from its scorched bones. The dreadful apparition raised an accusing finger at Olthanyr and intoned in a dry, parched voice:

‘
Last among us and last to die.

Damned forever by word and deeds.

Be judged now and forever, you worthless cur.

As a warning of where too much self-interest leads.
’

Perhaps Olthanyr’s mind broke in that instant. Cylia had noted that it was already a fragile thing held together only by self-delusion and pride. The last member of the Yegara clan staggered in a circle and gibbered incoherently before making a break for the entrance to the Confluence. He careened sightlessly from scenery and audience members alike. Voices were raised in anger against him as he reeled blindly from the hall. The servants of the old Yegara clan now understood how their lives had fallen so easily under the sway of Commorragh and they hated Olthanyr for his betrayal. The last Yegara was cursed and vilified until he disappeared from sight. His despairing shrieks could be heard getting fainter until they were abruptly silenced.

In the Amber hall the lights slowly brightened until the audience could see enough to look at one another in some bemusement. Kassais turned to Vyle and found himself unaccountably relieved to find that the Shrike Lord was still present. All trace of the Harlequins, the chorus, the dancers and their stage sets had completely vanished. Seemingly, for the first act at least, the performance was over and in a dream-like manner it now seemed questionable whether it had happened at all.

‘Was it a fair portrayal of events?’ Kassais asked. Vyle arched his brows in response and picked at some food before deigning to respond.

‘Of the toad’s coming to Commorragh? I suppose after a fashion,’ the Shrike Lord admitted. ‘Although we didn’t
literally
pull him around like that. Vect had the final say over who would benefit from the new realm on offer, I merely had to prove myself to be the most loyal and able of the archons suitable to be granted control.’

‘Yes, I would love to know how you did that,’ Kassais purred. ‘Our beloved Supreme Overlord is so notoriously hard to please.’

‘You may live several lifetimes and never become privy to that information,’ Vyle retorted.

‘I wonder if Yegara really has gone mad,’ Kassais mused, ‘or was that just part of the act?’

Chapter Seven

The Second Banquet

+A failure then.+

+A success, now we know that Olthanyr Yegara is not the one we seek.+

+Must we blindly continue until we stumble across the answer?+

+Rejoice! The pure pursuit of our art will, of itself, bring the wrongdoer to justice.+

+Regardless of collateral damage done?+

+Accidental judgment may also fall upon other guilty parties along the way, ’tis true.+

+We should shed no tears over that, I believe we serve a higher force in this regard.+

+So po-faced! Can’t you see the humour in the situation?+

Kassais found Vyle on the battlements the next morning. The old stone walkway was windswept and rain-soaked in the aftermath of the previous night’s storm, but Kassais found something agreeably fresh about it after being cooped up in the musty keep with its monochromatic halls. The prospect of spending an entire week in the place was already beginning to feel like an unnecessarily oblique form of torture.

Vyle was poised with a long-barrelled splinter rifle in his hands, aiming at something down in the forest. As Kassais approached he heard the high-pitched crack of the rifle’s shot and then Vyle curse like a spitting gyrinx. Evidently a miss.

‘Bad luck,’ Kassais called amiably. ‘Want me to take a try?’

Vyle turned and gave him a dark look, but then relented and thrust the splinter rifle towards him with evident disgust. ‘Go ahead,’ the Shrike Lord said. ‘It’ll give me a chance to see whether the rifle is at fault or me.’

Kassais shrugged and took the rifle in his hands. It was a beautiful piece, evidently of Commorrite manufacture. The delicate fluting on the barrel and microscopic filigree-work on the grips reminded Kassais of work from the Street of Knives. In truth it might have come from any one of a few thousand armourers in Commorragh that served the higher echelons of the city. It was a hunting rifle with an extended barrel, cushioned stock and a multi-spectral viewing scope. Kassais brought it to his shoulder with well-practised precision and began to scan the treeline.

What he saw caused him to lower the rifle again so that he could check it with his own eyes. Beyond the short-grassed lawn outside the keep the forest shook its leafy head in the gusting breeze. Yesterday it had seemed ancient and immovable, but now the whole damn thing seemed to be on the move like a slow, green sea.

That was not what had surprised Kassais, however. All along the edge of the forest he could see saucer-eyed faces peering back and groups of smooth-skinned bodies crouching between the thick boles of the trees. There were several hundred natives in view and the forest could have held an army of them out of sight. All of the ones he could see were doing nothing aggressive, indeed they were barely moving at all. They all seemed to be staring expectantly at the keep.

Kassais raised the rifle to his shoulder again and sighted on one of the faces beneath the trees. The viewing scope reacted to the tiny muscle movements around his eye and zoomed in until its targeting icon was squarely between the creature’s bulbous, unblinking eyes. Whatever toxins Vyle was using in the splinter rifle’s ammunition would probably be deadly enough to kill with the merest scratch, but Kassais was a fan of finesse even – or rather especially – when it was unnecessary. He wanted a head shot.

When he was satisfied that the rifle could not miss the designated target, he touched the activation stud and felt the tiniest push of recoil as it fired. At the same moment the distant native unaccountably ducked out of sight and the hypervelocity splinter the rifle had fired arrived in the now-vacated space a fraction of a second later. Kassais cursed with the self-same vitriol that Vyle had expressed a few moments earlier.

‘It’s the rifle,’ Kassais said in disgust, and tossed it back to Vyle. ‘It must be out of alignment.’

‘I thought you’d say that,’ the Shrike Lord responded bleakly.

‘What’s happened to the toad? I’d expect him to be here and dutifully sucking up to you by this hour.’

‘Yegara has vanished,’ Vyle said disinterestedly as he raised the rifle to his shoulder again and scanned the treeline. ‘My guards are looking for him, they found blood but I doubt they’ll find anything else. I suspect Yegara’s slaves have already murdered him and disposed of the body.’

Kassais smiled at that. In Commorragh being killed by one’s own slaves was taken as a sign of an individual plumbing the very depths of bumbling incompetence. It was an event that was generally greeted as a welcome weeding out of the gene-pool. It was not too surprising an outcome given the revelations of the preceding night’s banquet but it was a little unsatisfying. Kassais had been looking forward to the point where Vyle’s offhand bullying of Olthanyr Yegara would ferment into some serious torment. There had been something naive and virginal about the last Yegara that Kassais had longed to see broken. Now he was to be denied that pleasure and he felt more than a little cheated.

‘We should round up all the suspects and question them,’ Kassais said ruminatively. ‘Grab a few of those goggling natives on the outside too – I’m sure they had something to do with it.’

‘I’m sure you’d like that, Kassais,’ Vyle responded tetchily, ‘but my resources are not infinite. Those gawking locals are out there precisely to tempt us out of the keep. Our predilections are certainly well-enough known for them to be taken advantage of.’

‘May I say that as a host you’re proving to be no fun at all,’ Kassais complained as Vyle looked through the rifle’s sight again. ‘We could at least bring some lances up here and set the forest burning…’

The way the Shrike Lord stiffened caused Kassais to spin and look out at the trees with some alarm. The sudden movement provoked a twinge in his shoulder that reminded Kassais his flesh was still not fully healed from his encounter with the reszix the day before. Kassais looked and he saw nothing different. The natives were still out there, the only unmoving things in a constantly shifting tapestry of green. Trees, grass, sky.

As Kassais turned to ask Vyle what he’d seen he caught the faintest distant flicker of white from the corner of his eye. He turned back in time to see a pale, suspiciously cat-like shadow slink between two tree trunks.

‘It’s still out there.’ Vyle nodded grimly. ‘Now it’s had a taste of you it surely wants the rest…’

‘Oh, very funny.’ Kassais grimaced and rubbed his neck. He sought to quickly change the subject to something less uncomfortable. ‘Do you think the Harlequins will come back tonight after getting such a tasteless reception last time?’

‘I’d wager your life on it,’ Vyle grunted. ‘They warned Yegara of the dangers and he went ahead anyway. In terms of a performance they probably rate a participant going insane as a rousing success – they say it’s all about evoking strong emotions after all. You should rest and gather your strength, perhaps.’

‘Come now, Yegara was weak and I am not,’ complained Kassais as Vyle led the way inside. ‘It’d take more than stage ghosts and provincial melodrama to unseat my reason.’

‘No doubt, and I shall keep that in mind at the banquet tonight. I’m not telling anyone which hall it’s in until the last moment so the little turds can’t pick their costumes to match the wall colours again. It’s time to learn to adapt.’

Perched in the
top of the trees Ashanthourus, Cylia, Lo’tos, Hradhiri Ra and Motley watched the distant figures of Kassais and the Shrike Lord disappear into the brooding bulk of Windgrave keep. Cylia let out a little sigh as she relaxed from reading the splinter rifle’s target from moment to moment and nudging its intended victims aside.

‘A random venue could make things distinctly awkward,’ opined Motley. ‘I’m a great fan of improvisation, but it’s always nice to have a plan to fall back on.’

‘It will make no difference,’ said Ashanthourus with an air of finality.

‘Getting Kassais to spill his metaphorical guts won’t be hard to achieve,’ whispered Hradhiri Ra. ‘He’s a warrior and he loves to boast. It’s his literal guts that will be harder to bring to the table.’

‘Pfft, pish posh, and other such nonsense,’ exclaimed Motley. ‘I think I may say without indulging in flattery that I’m quite confident of our collective ability in that regard.’

‘Don’t be too quick to dismiss Hradhiri’s concern,’ replied Ashanthourus in a strained voice. ‘Conjuring Olthanyr Yegara’s entire life’s history from his mind and then interpreting it without his realising was no parlour trick. I am already weary and I sense that Cylia and Lo’tos are worse off than I.’

‘Make no exceptions on my account,’ Cylia said firmly. ‘I do not wane so easily as our Sun-King, it seems.’

Lo’tos lowered his head and whimpered for a moment before rolling on his back to offer his belly to Cylia. When she indulged him with a tickle the Master Mime sprang back to life and began rapidly brachiating from branch to branch like a spindly primate. Ashanthourus seemed unmoved by the antics of his troupe.

‘Brave words, my Moon-Queen, yet I know you better than you know yourself. We are barely a third of our way through this Masque and I fear for the ability of our troupe to complete it.’

‘But we must be brave, Ashanthourus, all the performances and Masques we undertake in different circumstances are only rehearsals for occasions like this. These are the times when Cegorach truly tests our art because we
must
perform come what may.’

If Ashanthourus was convinced by the Shadowseer’s words he gave no sign of it. The High Avatar turned his grinning mask to gaze gloomily towards the keep and silently waited for nightfall.