Midnight's Mask

by Paul S. Kemp

  Jak surprised him by saying softly, “I don’t know. Maybe they will.”

  Cale laughed to hide his shock. “You waxing philosophical as you age?”

  “No,” the little man said, and they started walking again. “I just think that doing something good and being remembered for it—even if for nothing else—is worthwhile. And whether the histories call you a hero or not doesn’t change the fact of the heroism.”

  Cale thought about that, then said, “Maybe you have some truth there. But aren’t we already doing good things, little man? Big things?”

  Jak looked past the ships, out to the bay. “Most of the time I think so. Still, if we get a chance….”

  “What?”

  Still looking out to sea, Jak said, “If we get the chance, let’s be heroes.” He looked back at Cale. “All right?”

  Cale could think of nothing to say. He was not sure that he was made of the stuff of heroes, the stuff of Storm Silverhand and Khelben; he was not sure that a priest of Mask could be a hero. But to satisfy Jak he managed, “All right, Jak. If we get a chance.”

  “Is that an oath?” Jak asked.

  “That’s an oath,” Cale answered. “What’s animating this, little man?”

  “Nothing,” Jak answered. “Just thinking aloud.”

  Cale let it rest there, and with that, the two friends walked back to the inn.

  The next day they caught a lead. The docks buzzed with news of two bodies found floating in the bay. Most of the stories suggested that both corpses had been mutilated. Most also suggested that the bodies were those of two sailors, both from the same ship. Cale and Jak took hold of the tale, its various incarnations, and followed it to its end to find the truth of it. Sprinkling coin among the laborers on the docks and finally bribing one of the harbormaster’s undermasters, they learned that only one of the bodies had been mutilated—his skull had been opened and emptied—and the sailors had been the captain and first mate of a Thayan ship, Demon Binder, that had set to two nights earlier. Cale learned too that Demon Binder transported slaves. The rumors spoke of a mutiny. Cale knew better.

  “That’s our ship,” Cale said as the three of them sat around a table in the Depth’s taproom. Cale figured that the slaadi had taken the form of the slain captain and mate and brought Riven aboard, probably in disguise.

  Jak frowned. “They put to sea two days ago. We don’t know where they’re headed. Even if we can find a faster ship, how can we catch them?”

  Cale already had an idea. “The Sojourner may have warded the slaadi and Riven against scrying, but he did not ward the ship. We know its name and there’s power in that. A divination can find it. And if I can see it, I can move us there during the night.”

  Jak and Magadon looked at him, and both grinned.

  The three finished their meal then retired to their opulent room. Sitting on the end of one of the three down-stuffed beds, Magadon checked and rechecked his arrows, oiled his bow, meditated in silence. Jak inventoried his pouches, his tobacco, sharpened his blades. The schk schk of steel on whetstone kept the time.

  Cale sat at an oak desk, on which rested a basin of clear water. He held Weaveshear across his knees and waited, silently imploring Mask to ensure the success of the scrying. Streaks of shadow moved from his hands into the blade, from the blade back into his hands. Sunlight spilled through the western window and painted the floor. The light crept across the slats as sunset approached. The shadows in the room grew longer, darker.

  Even without looking out the window, Cale knew the very moment the sun sank below the horizon. He thought of casting then, but decided against it.

  “What are we waiting for?” Magadon asked.

  “Midnight,” Cale answered. Midnight was the hour sacred to Mask. Cale would wait for it. “Have some food brought up,” he said to Magadon. “Eat. Keep up your strength.”

  Magadon and Jak did just that. Cale did not eat. He focused. He knew intuitively when midnight arrived. Moonbeams strained through the shutters. The shadows were at their deepest; Cale’s connection to his god was at its most profound.

  “Now,” Cale said, and his comrades rose to stand beside him.

  Cale leaned forward over the basin, studied its still water. Running his thumb along Weaveshear’s edge, he slit his skin and drew blood. His flesh regenerated the wound almost immediately but he had what he needed. He let a few drops of blood fall into the basin. He swirled shadows around his fingertips until they grew tangible and he let them, too, fall into the water. He breathed on the basin and stirred the mixture with his fingertips.

  Calling upon Mask to show him Demon Binder, he cast the divination. With nothing more than the ship’s name to drive the spell, the casting faltered. Cale compensated with his will, forcing the magic to reveal what he needed to know.

  Within moments, the water in the basin solidified into a surface as smooth, black, and shining as polished basalt. A wavering image took shape in the blackness—a two-masted cog with great, square sails full of wind, sailing on the smooth sea. The perspective showed the vessel from a distance, as though Cale were seeing through a bird’s eye above it.

  “There it is,” breathed Jak, standing on his tiptoes to see into the basin.

  The ship had two crow’s nests, one on the mainmast, one on the mizzenmast. A two-story forecastle squatted on the decks to fore, and a sterncastle to the rear. Lanterns hung from the stern, the gunnels, the post over the helmsman. Cale saw no sailors moving on deck, though one of the crow’s nests contained a watchman. The crew slept on deck or in quarters. The ship was on nightwatch but had not set its anchor or furled its sails. It was sailing through the night, by the light of a waxing Selüne and her tears. Cale knew that to be unusual. Azriim must have been in a hurry.

  “The crew will fight,” Magadon said, “unless they can be shown the slaadi’s true form.”

  Cale nodded. He figured the cog’s crew numbered perhaps a score.

  “We’ll go in fast and quiet,” he said. “We find the slaadi, put them down, and get out. But if the crew gets in the way …” He looked his friends in the eyes. “They are Thayans and slavers. Remember that.

  Neither Magadon nor Jak protested.

  “Riven?” Jak asked.

  Cale shook his head. He did not know what to expect from Drasek Riven. “If necessary, we put him down too.”

  The little man pulled out his holy symbol and prayed to Brandobaris. When he completed the casting, a soft glow covered him, Cale, and Magadon. The glow faded but left a warm feeling in its wake.

  Jak explained, “A prayer to Brandobaris. We may need the help.”

  “A good thought,” Cale said.

  He felt a tickling under his scalp.

  We are linked, Magadon said.

  Cale nodded. They were as prepared as they could be.

  He pulled the shadows around them, found the link in the darkness between their room in the Murky Depths and the aft deck of Demon Binder.

  In a moment, they were on the open sea, aboard a Thayan slave ship.

  Riven awoke, certain that he had heard Cale whispering something to him. He sat up with a start, hand on one of his sabers, and looked about his quarters. He saw no one.

  He had been dreaming, and the dream had been a vision sent to him by the Shadowlord. He had seen a tower in ruins but rebuilt before his eyes, a priestess of Cyric screaming in rage. The shadows had laughed at the priestess’s ire. He had seen himself and the slaadi together in the tower as darkness fell.

  His skin went gooseflesh at the memory. His heart was racing. He could not shake the feeling that something was wrong, that someone was watching him. Long ago he had learned not to ignore those feelings.

  He rose, donned his weapons and an overcloak, and padded out of his room.

  A gentle chiming in Azriim’s head awoke him from sleep. One of his alarm spells had been triggered. Erevis Cale was aboard. He climbed out of bed and as he donned his clothing and weapon belt, reached his mental fin
gers out for Dolgan, who slept in the mate’s quarters nearby.

  The priest of Mask is aboard.

  Dolgan answered back, his consciousness noticeably groggy. He is?

  Azriim rolled his eyes as he buckled his belt. No matter the situation, Dolgan could always find a way to ask a stupid question.

  Find the assassin and meet me outside the forecastle, Azriim projected.

  Should I alert the crew to intruders? Dolgan asked.

  Not yet, Azriim answered. Let us see what events bring.

  He stayed in Captain Kauzin’s form but willed himself invisible. He exited his quarters, walked a short corridor, and exited the forecastle. There, he waited for Dolgan.

  His broodmate’s mental voice sounded in his mind: The assassin is not in his quarters.

  No? Azriim asked. How interesting.

  He reached out with his mental perception and tried to contact Riven.

  CHAPTER 7

  DEMON BINDER

  The darkness dissipated and Cale, Magadon, and Jak found themselves near the aft railing on the sterncastle of Demon Binder. A short, bearded crewman, perhaps thirty winters old, stood a few paces from them, looking out over the sea. Cale had not seen him in the scrying lens.

  The crewman noticed them at the same moment they noticed him.

  Surprise widened the man’s dumbfounded eyes and temporarily stole his shout.

  Cale did what he must. In the space of two heartbeats, he lunged forward and impaled the man through the heart with Weaveshear. The man groaned, bled, sagged toward Cale. Cale caught him up before he fell and heaved him over the rail. The crewman never uttered a scream but the splash of his corpse hitting the sea sounded loud to Cale’s ears. He, Jak, and Magadon shared a tense look while they waited for a cry of alarm.

  It never came. No one had heard. All three visibly exhaled.

  Cale wiped a bloody hand on his cloak. He noticed the way his friends looked at the blood and projected a reminder: These are slavers, not spice merchants. They do not deserve your pity.

  Magadon and Jak looked over the railing, back at Cale, and nodded.

  The ship was quiet, the deck barely moving on the calm sea. A brisk wind from the south stirred their cloaks, snapped the sails above them. Masts creaked. The sea lapped against the hull as it cut its way through the water.

  Selûne, gibbous and waxing, hung low in the sky, trailed by her glowing train of silver tears. Along the deck of Demon Binder, a few covered oil lanterns hung here and there from the railings. Otherwise, the ship was dark.

  Soft steps, Cale projected, and pointed at the deck of the sterncastle below his boots. He figured some of the crew—the masters who ranked below the first mate—were sleeping in quarters below them. The cabins of the captain and mate, where Cale expected they would find Azriim and Dolgan, would be at the bow of the ship in the forecastle.

  Soundlessly, the three slid forward to the edge of the sterncastle until they could look down on the maindeck below. A score or so crewmen lay sprawled about, sleeping. Some hung in canvas hammocks strung between posts. Others slept in the large, cloth-lined leather bags Cale had once heard a sailor call a “deckbag.” Cutlasses, knives, and belaying pins lay within ready reach of all of them. Slavers kept their weapons ready at hand.

  The night helmsman stood at the tiller in the steering pocket almost directly below them, presumably guiding the ship by the stars. Across the ship, Cale saw two sailors standing on the forecastle to either side of the bowsprit, looking out at the sea ahead.

  Cale’s heartbeat accelerated. Hopeful that he had found the slaadi, he whispered the words to the spell that allowed him to see magic.

  Nothing lit up on the two sailors, but Cale did detect a diffuse magical aura glowing before the door that led to the interior of the forecastle. The slaadi must have warded it. He would examine it more closely when he got there.

  A man in the forward crow’s nest, Magadon said, peering up the masts. I see no one in the rear nest.

  Could you cover the deck from the forward nest? Cale asked.

  Magadon eyed the nest, the deck, judged lines of sight.

  The sails will create some blind spots, the guide answered, but otherwise, yes.

  Cale nodded. He looked down at the top of the helmsman’s head. The man was unsuspecting, vulnerable, alone. Cale could see no way that they could move across the ship unseen without first putting down the helmsman.

  First the helmsman, he said. Then the lookout in the nest.

  He started to move but Jak’s hand closed on his shoulder.

  A spell first, the little man projected. If it does not work, we put him down.

  Cale looked into Jak’s eyes. He did not see weakness there, but neither did he see bloodthirst.

  They’re slavers, Jak. Remember Skullport?

  Jak nodded. I know what they are, Cale. But that doesn’t mean that I want to kill everyone aboard, at least not if we do not have to. We’re here for the slaadi. Well enough?

  For a moment, Cale imagined himself through Jak’s eyes. He must have looked a bit too ready to shed blood. Perhaps he was a bit too ready to shed blood. He did not want to become so much a shade that he forgot how to be a man.

  Well enough, he said. I’ll get in position. Then you cast. If your spell doesn’t work….

  Jak nodded.

  Cale sheathed Weaveshear and merged with the darkness, becoming invisible even to his friends. He circled the sterncastle, silently padded down one of the two ladders that led to the maindeck, and took station directly behind the helmsman. He drew a dagger.

  The helmsman wore a sweat-stained tunic and wool breeches. His beard and hair were ill kept, his arms gnarled and scarred. He stood in a large opening, almost a box, that sank below the level of the deck—the steering pocket. The tiller shaft stuck out of the rear of the box. An elaborate metal device, no doubt for charting course, and a waterskin sat on a small table within arm’s reach. The helmsman hummed to himself while he held the tiller, probably to help stay awake.

  Now, Cale projected to Jak.

  Cale did not hear Jak cast his spell but he knew when the spell was completed because the helmsman’s humming ceased. The man stood rigid and silent, tiller in his frozen hand.

  It worked, Cale projected to Jak. How long will it last?

  Hard to say, Jak answered.

  Cale did not like the uncertainty but decided that he would accept it for Jak’s sake.

  The one in the crow’s nest? he asked Jak.

  After a moment’s hesitation, the little man answered, Too far.

  Cale had expected as much. He is mine, then. Give me a ten count.

  Magadon said, I will meet you there.

  Jak projected, I’ll go invisible and seal the door out of the sterncastle with a glyph. I’ll meet you at the bottom of the mainmast.

  Good, Cale said. He looked up to the crow’s nest and felt the darkness there. He stepped in one stride from his place behind the helmsman to the rear of the crow’s nest. The crewman occupying the nest made no sign that he heard Cale appear. The sailor, who could not have seen many more than twenty winters, leaned on his elbows over the front of the crow’s nest, staring out over the sea.

  Cale hesitated, torn. He could have used a spell like Jak’s. There was no guarantee that it would work, but he could have tried. But then he reminded himself that the crew made a living selling other human beings into bondage. When he remembered Skullport, the despair he had seen in the eyes of the slaves there, he needed no further justification. The sailor had chosen this occupation. There were consequences to that choice.

  Cale stepped behind the man, jerked his head back to expose his throat, and slit his jugular. Cale became visible the moment he attacked but the man never saw him. The sailor’s scream was nothing more than a wheezing gurgle through the new opening in his throat. He flailed for a moment in Cale’s grasp but his strength left him as quickly as his blood. Cale lowered him to the bottom of the nest as he died. It was
soon over. Cale peeked over the edge of the nest to the deck below and saw no sign that anyone had heard.

  Mags?

  On my way, the guide answered.

  Cale turned around to see Magadon sprinting silently across open air, as though an invisible ramp connected the sterncastle to the crow’s nest. In the space of three breaths, the guide was climbing into the nest. Again, no sign of alarm from the sleeping crew below. The two men standing atop the forecastle continued to stare out to sea.

  “Mind your footing,” Cale said softly. “It’s slick.”

  Magadon looked down at the slain sailor, the pool of blood, and said nothing. He picked his spot in the nest.

  He removed his quiver of arrows, set it beside him, and unshouldered his bow.

  Jak? Cale projected.

  The door on the sterncastle is warded, the little man answered. I’m on the maindeck now, near the hold door. He paused, then said, I can see what’s down there.

  Cale and Magadon shared a glance.

  And? Cale asked.

  Jak answered, Cages. Maybe a score or so slaves. All men. He hesitated before saying, We should free them, Cale.

  Jak’s words did not surprise Cale but he was not certain how to respond. He knew that freeing the slaves would complicate matters, might mean putting down the entire crew. There was one ship’s boat rigged to the side. Perhaps they could force most of the crew off the ship and into the boat.

  Perhaps.

  Cale stared into Magadon’s pale eyes. The guide said nothing, merely waited. Cale? Jak prompted.

  All right, Cale said. We’ll free them. It will mean a lot of blood, little man.

  I know. But now that I’ve seen them, I can’t walk away. We did that in Skullport. Not again. Not here.

  Cale nodded. He understood. Jak was not a killer by nature, but for the right reasons the little man could be as savage as any assassin Cale had ever known.