Midnight's Mask

by Paul S. Kemp

  Cale and Jak doffed their cloaks and wrung them out, checked their gear. Cale eyed the sea suspiciously as he did so.

  “Like it’s waiting,” Jak said, reading Cale’s expression.

  Cale nodded. What is Riven doing, Mags? he asked.

  Before Magadon answered, Cale felt a thump against the ship’s timbers. Another.

  “That’s from below the waterline,” Jak said. Another thump.

  Confused shouts sounded from the maindeck. Cale cursed, fearing the slaadi would hear.

  Splashing sounded from below, the crack of splintering wood. Bestial grunts carried up from the sea and caused Cale’s heart to accelerate.

  Something was coming out of the water.

  Cale and Jak leaned out over the side as far as they could and looked along the hull of the ship.

  A dozen or more dripping, green-skinned creatures were scaling the hull. Thin, overlong arms and legs ridged with muscle and sinew ended in long claws that dug furrows in the ship’s side as the creatures climbed. Long, straggly hair the color of seaweed sprouted from their round heads. Their fang-filled mouths could take off a head at one bite.

  “Scrags,” Jak said. “Dark!”

  From the maindeck, shouts of alarm from the crew echoed Jak’s words. “Sea trolls! Scrags!”

  From below the waterline, the thumping against the hull continued, as did the grating sounds. No doubt some of the scrags were trying to tear a hole in Demon Binder’s bottom. Cale had seen their claws and had little doubt they could do it, given enough time.

  Chanting sounded from down in the water. Cale recognized the cadence of a spell.

  “They’ve got a shaman,” he said.

  He pulled Weaveshear free of its scabbard, and he and Jak raced over the forecastle to the maindeck.

  Azriim watched the huge heads and fang-filled mouths appear over the sides of the ship. Straggly green hair hung from the trolls’ oversized heads.

  “Scrags!” screamed several members of the crew, and grabbed for weapons. “Trolls on the deck!”

  Riven started to draw his blades but Azriim stopped him with a hand on his wrist. He showed the assassin and Dolgan the compass. The needle pointed directly down.

  “Here is where we disembark,” Azriim said.

  Several of the trolls already had scrambled over the rail. They shook the water from their long, stringy hair, roared, and charged the nearest crewmen. Sertan shouted orders, men fought with whatever weapons were at hand, screamed, and bled. Trolls answered with growls and grunts. The chant of a spellcaster sounded from somewhere and a bubble of darkness formed over the melee. Within the blackness, sailors screamed in pain.

  Azriim knew the trolls had olfactory senses sharper than even his. They could hunt and kill the blinded sailors by scent alone. Dolphin’s Coffer was lost; its crew, dead.

  Azriim looked out over the gunwales and selected a point in the water a short distance from the ship.

  “There,” he said, and projected the location into the minds of Riven and Dolgan.

  The assassin grabbed his arm. “I do not swim well.”

  “You soon will,” Azriim answered.

  Not ten paces from where they stood, another three trolls gained the deck. A sailor lost his footing at the edge of the darkness. The trolls swarmed him. They tore gobbets of flesh from his body as he screamed, bled, and died.

  Riven started to remove his gear.

  “I’d be quick,” Azriim advised.

  Azriim had little to leave behind. He wore only his clothes, his wands, and his blade. Dolgan secured his axe on his back. Riven stripped off his pack, his boots, his leather armor, everything but his weapons.

  From behind them, Sertan shouted, “Use your wizardry, friend! Spells, man! And quickly!” The captain pointed at the trolls.

  Another sailor died under troll claw. In their panic and desperation, two or three of the crew dived over the side. Azriim had no idea where they thought they would go. A troll dived after them, roaring with bloodlust.

  Azriim smiled innocently at the captain, withdrew his teleportation rod, and teleported into the sea. He knew the salt water would ruin his clothes but nothing could save them now.

  He found himself floating in the calm water a spearcast from the ship. Kicking to keep his head above water, he looked back on the slaughter.

  Six or seven trolls had gained the deck, and another four were climbing up its sides.

  “Farewell, Sertan,” he said.

  Dolgan appeared in the water beside him.

  “Damned trolls get to eat the sailors and I got to eat none,” the big slaad said.

  Azriim cuffed him once across the face, hard, splitting his lip. “No cursing,” he said.

  Dolgan smiled and licked the blood from his lip.

  Riven appeared. Azriim guessed that the assassin would find the water cold. The human foundered, but managed to keep himself afloat. Riven took a fistful of Azriim’s shirt, and a sharp prick in Azriim’s back indicated that the assassin had a blade at his kidney.

  “I trust you have something in mind,” Riven said. “Because I’ll bleed you out before I drown here.”

  Azriim could not contain a grin. The assassin reminded him more and more of Serrin.

  “Of course I have something in mind.”

  With obvious reluctance, the assassin removed the blade from Azriim’s back.

  Azriim removed from his thigh quiver the thin ivory wand with which he had turned a human into a cave shrimp back in Skullport. The wand allowed him to transmogrify a target into whatever shape Azriim desired. He held the wand up out of the water to confirm he had the right one. He did.

  He touched it to Riven and said, “Aquatic elf.”

  The magic flared and the human began to change. Riven’s one good eye went wide as gill slits opened in his throat, his body thinned, and his skin turned pale blue. His ears elongated into points, and his eye sockets broadened. The assassin held up a hand to discover flaps of flesh between his fingers.

  “There now,” Azriim said. “Well enough?”

  The assassin grunted acquiescence, dived underwater, and emerged a short time later. He took a deep gulp of air. The new form allowed him to breathe both air and water. His mouth did not smile, but his good eye did.

  “Well enough,” the human said. “How long will it last?”

  “Long enough,” Azriim answered. Azriim did not intend to remain underwater long. The mantle obviously had guardians—scrags at least. Azriim would descend to the provenance of Sakkors’s mantle, plant the Weave Tap seed, and use the teleportation rod to exit. He expected it to take no longer than half an hour.

  He tried to send a mental message to the Sojourner, to inform him of their progress, but the interference caused by the sentient mantle prevented him from making contact.

  “And how will you two travel?” Riven asked.

  “Something similar,” Azriim answered.

  He and Dolgan called upon their innate ability to change shape and converted their human forms into green-scaled, muscular bipedal forms, each with clawed, webbed hands and a mouthful of shark teeth—creatures known as sahuagin.

  “I like to keep my fangs,” Azriim said to Riven, and smiled a mouthful of razors.

  With that, the three turned their faces to the dark deep and began to descend.

  Demon Binder’s crew, armed with cutlasses, met the trolls as the lumbering creatures tried to scramble over the sides.

  Cutlasses hacked into troll flesh and black blood wet the decks. The trolls clutched the ship’s rails with one hand and lashed out with claws from their other. Men screamed in pain, shouted in rage. Red blood joined the black. The trolls roared, deep and bestial. Cale did not see the shaman.

  Two of the towering creatures clambered over the side and gained the deck. Sailors swarmed the pair, but troll claws tore into two seamen and kept the rest at bay. One sailor’s chop with his cutlass brought him too close and one of the trolls caught him up in both of its
clawed hands. The crewmen hacked at the creature but the second troll forced them back with a reckless charge, claws flailing. The pinned man screamed and kicked while the troll tore out his throat with his fangs and gulped down the gore. It roared victory to the sky, leaking red blood from its mouth, clutching the crewman’s corpse in its arms.

  From the other side of the ship, more trolls appeared over the sides.

  “The other side too, lads!” shouted Evrel, and charged across the deck. A troll cut off the two sailors who would have joined their captain. Cale and Jak leaped down from the forecastle and joined the captain’s charge.

  Two trolls climbed over the side and onto the deck just as Cale, Jak, and Evrel arrived. The larger of the two lashed out with a claw that opened Evrel’s shoulder, spinning him to the deck, bleeding and cursing. Cale lunged in front of the creature and stabbed it through its gut. It grunted with pain and struck out with its other claw at Cale’s face. Cale dodged backward, but too slowly. The tips of the creature’s claws tore gashes in his cheek and nearly took out his eye. Blood flowed but his regenerative flesh closed the wound quickly.

  Cale twisted Weaveshear, still embedded in the troll’s viscera, and the creature roared and bled. Unlike the trolls Cale had encountered on land, the scrags did not appear to be regenerating their wounds. Perhaps they needed to be in the water to do so.

  The troll tore a gash in Cale’s shoulder, and Cale ducked another rake that would have torn his face from his skull.

  Grunting with pain and exertion, Cale jerked Weaveshear free of the troll’s gut and bounded back. He spared a glance to his left to see that Evrel had regained his feet. The captain and the little man were fighting the other troll. Jak looked tiny standing before the towering creature, but its futile attempts to grab hold of the halfling, who was much faster, led it to growl with anger. Evrel chopped at its arms, shoulders, and chest at every opportunity.

  Cale’s troll, still bleeding from the hole in its gut, produced a necklace of shells and stones in its palm and chanted something in its guttural tongue. A globe of darkness formed around Cale, but his shade eyes saw through it perfectly. Darkness was Cale’s element.

  Thinking him blinded, the troll sniffed at the air and charged.

  Cale braced himself and sidestepped the charge at the last moment. He caught a claw rake across his chest, but managed to put a foot under the troll and send it sprawling to the deck. He leaped atop it, driving a knee into its back. The creature bucked, trying to throw him off, but Cale drove Weaveshear into its ribs until he felt the blade dig into the wood of the deck. The troll roared. Cale jerked the blade free and drove another strike into the flailing creature’s neck. It lay still, blood pooling around it.

  Mags! Where are you? Cale projected as he rose. He had neither seen Magadon nor heard the thump of arrows from the guide’s bow.

  Cale looked to Jak and Evrel to see the troll knock Evrel flat and loom over the prone captain, fanged mouth wide. Jak darted in, drove his dagger into the troll’s chest, and sank his short sword to the hilt into its side. The creature emitted a squeal of agony and struck out with a backhand strike at Jak. The blow hit Jak in his stomach and sent blood spraying, but the little man held his ground. He pulled his short sword free and drove it home again. The troll gave a final squeal and collapsed atop Evrel. The captain, covered in black blood, rolled the corpse off and stood.

  “Cale?” Jak shouted, staring at the globe of darkness.

  “Here, little man,” Cale said, and emerged from the pitch.

  Jak grinned, wincing a bit at the pain in his stomach.

  Erevis, Magadon finally answered. It calls itself the Source. I think I can take what it’s offering and use it to help us.

  Cale looked across the deck and saw a troll bodily lift a sailor to its mouth and snap off his head with a single bite. The neck stump sprayed blood onto the creature’s face, and the troll eagerly slobbered it up. Two more crewmen lay dismembered on the deck. Cale did not see that any trolls had been felled other than the two he and Jak had put down.

  Do it, Mags. They’re being slaughtered.

  A hesitation. Then, I will pay a price, Erevis.

  That gave Cale pause. He scanned the deck for Magadon and finally spotted him standing alone in the darkness near the mainmast. The guide’s white eyes were wide, distant. Cale could see the sweat on his face.

  What price, Magadon? he asked, his mouth forming the words his mind asked.

  Another crewman screamed. The trolls roared, charged the survivors. The sailors fell back, slipping on the blood-washed decks. Three of the trolls looked across the deck and caught sight of Cale, Jak, and Evrel. They charged and their clawed feet tore divots in the deck boards as they loped across the ship.

  Jak and Evrel stepped to Cale’s side, blades bare.

  “Come on, you ugly bastards,” Evrel muttered.

  It’s mine to pay and I’m willing, Magadon said.

  Before Cale could respond, white light flared around Magadon’s head. The trolls charging toward Cale aborted their charge, clutched their heads, and screamed in agony. Blood erupted from their noses, their eye sockets, their ears. They fell to the deck, writhing, bleeding, dying. Their lives were over in five heartbeats.

  “Trickster’s hairy toes,” Jak breathed, eyeing Magadon.

  Cale could only agree. He saw the strain in Magadon’s face. The veins in his brow were as pronounced as those in the trolls’ arms. A trickle of blood dripped from Magadon’s nose.

  Stop, Mags! Cale ordered. “Stop now!”

  Magadon shook his head and white light flared again around him. The trolls on the other side of the ship began to die. Blood poured from the creatures’ faces. They fell to the deck, squirming in agony. Their heads were softening; brains and blood leaked from their noses. The surviving sailors jumped on those who fell and hacked them to pieces.

  Erevis, Magadon said, and Cale felt the pain in his mental voice. Riven and the slaadi have changed form and have gone underwater. The ship is safe. Go after them. It’s the Source they want. It’s on the bottom, Erevis.

  Cale hesitated. What about you?

  I will be all right, Magadon answered, but Cale thought he heard the lie in it. I will keep the mindlink open.

  Cale stood unmoving, torn.

  Go now, Magadon said, and Cale nodded.

  “Little man, let’s go,” he said to Jak.

  Both of them hurriedly stripped off cloaks and armor, keeping only trousers, shirts, weapons, belt pouches, and holy symbols. Jak used a spell of healing to close the wound in his stomach. The wounds in Cale’s flesh caused by the troll had already healed.

  “Where are you going?” Evrel asked.

  “Under,” Cale said.

  The captain was too dumbfounded to speak.

  “We will return,” Cale said.

  Evrel only nodded.

  “I’ve got the pressure and swimming,” Jak said.

  “And I have warmth and breathing,” Cale answered.

  Both cast simultaneously—one spell, then another, then another, each including the other in the effect of their spells. In moments, both were insulated against cold, free to move easily even in water, able to breathe both water and air, and safeguarded against the pressure of the depths.

  “And one more so I can see,” Jak muttered, and he made a last plea to the Trickster.

  When he finished, Cale asked, “Ready?”

  Jak grinned, actually grinned. “As ready as I can get. I hate the sea. Give me a calm lake every time.”

  “Follow me,” Cale said, and he sprinted toward the bow.

  Magadon had said that Riven and the slaadi had changed forms. No doubt they had transformed into aquatic creatures that could swim fast. Even with the assistance of spells, Cale and Jak would not catch them unless….

  In the bow sat one of the four anchor lines aboard Demon Binder. Cale used Weaveshear to cut the thick rope. He took hold of the anchor. Even with his shadow enhanced strength, h
e found it hard to bear.

  “Take hold of me, little man,” he said, and Jak did.

  Cale pulled the darkness around them, eyed the waters near the slaadi’s ship, and made the shadows move them there.

  They materialized in the open sea perhaps a bowshot from the slaadi’s ship. Cale had only a moment—he thought he saw trolls aboard, it, too, and they were also clutching their heads and dying—before the anchor pulled them under.

  Sound fell away. Light disappeared. The sea enshrouded Cale and he took comfort in the darkness. They sank like a stone into the deep.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE SOURCE

  The water swallowed them. The surface fell away. Cale held his breath out of instinct and it took a conscious effort of will to inhale water. When he did, the fluid stung his nose as it rushed into his lungs. He could not control a reflexive fit of coughing. It passed soon enough, and after only a few deep breaths, inhaling water felt as natural to him as breathing air, save that his chest felt heavier.

  Strange sensation, he said to Jak, and the little man nodded as they fell.

  Pulled by the weight of the anchor, they descended rapidly. The darkness grew profound. Only the lightlessness of the Plane of Shadow compared with the pitch of the depths. Cale’s transformed eyes allowed him to see but only to about the distance of a long dagger toss. Shadowy forms moved in and out of his field of vision, all of them finned, and some of them large. They fell through a school of orange fish as big as Cale’s forearm. He kept his eyes open for scrags, but saw none. Cale suspected that Magadon had left no survivors.

  They descended deeper. Cale looked down and saw only a black abyss. He glanced up and saw only a trail of bubbles left in their wake, spiraling away into the dark. The surface was lost to them. They were alone, sinking into the soundless depths.

  Cale had no idea how they would find the slaadi down there.

  Trickster’s toes, Jak projected. I am at a thirty count and no end in sight. My ears are popping.

  Cale nodded. His ears were popping too, and he had deliberately not kept a count. He did not want to know how far down they had gone.