Midnight's Mask

by Paul S. Kemp

  The bottom finally came into view. Cale saw a wasteland of broken rock, hillocks, and rolling dunes of dirt that stretched as far as he could see in every direction. It looked as desolate as a desert.

  Cale let go of the anchor before it took them all the way down. He and Jak kicked to end their downward momentum. With their lungs full of water, they hung at equilibrium ten paces above the sea floor. The anchor continued its descent, hit the sand, and in silence sent up a cloud of mud.

  They glanced about, looking for any sign of the slaadi. Cale saw nothing. Other than the disturbance caused by the anchor’s impact, the sea bottom was as still as a painting—no movement, no life. Cale found the bottom so alien it might as well have been another plane of existence. He was very conscious of the fact that he and Jak were intruders, bringing life and motion to the still death of the bottom.

  Eerie down here, Jak projected. An understatement.

  Both held their blades in hand. As an experiment, Cale made a stabbing motion with Weaveshear. The water did not interfere with his movement. Jak’s spell allowed them to move as easily in the water as they could in air.

  Large chunks of broken rock lay embedded in the sea floor below them, scattered across the mud like the gravestones of giants. Several were as large as towers, some as small as a man. Worked stone, too, jutted from the sand: pillars, the limbs and heads of ancient statuary, pedestals, columns.

  He remembered Sephris’s words and realized that they were looking upon the ruins of a city that had been old when Sembia had been nothing more than a collection of farming hamlets. The sea had kept Sakkors in stasis for centuries.

  Cale could see only twenty or so paces in any direction, but he had the sense that the rubble field extended over a vast swath of the bottom. Sakkors must have been a large city, as large as Selgaunt.

  What is that? Jak asked, and pointed behind Cale.

  Cale turned and saw a diffuse red glow, dimmer than moonlight. He thought it odd that they had not seen it on the way down. Though distance was hard to gauge in the depths, Cale figured the radiance to be a long bowshot away, maybe farther.

  Shadows leaked from Weaveshear and flowed lazily in the direction of the light.

  Mags, we’re on the bottom, heading for a light, Cale projected.

  Magadon made no response. Cale and Jak shared a look. The halfling shrugged.

  Let’s go, Cale said, and they set off, following the rope of shadows that bled from Weaveshear.

  Cale saw that they were swimming above a wide furrow torn in the bottom of the sea by the floating city that had crashed into the ocean and rolled along the floor. He did not allow himself to imagine the terror the inhabitants must have felt as they hit the water.

  Dark, Jak said. This was no small town. Look at the damage. Imagine the number of people.

  Cale nodded. Sakkors was a graveyard for tens of thousands.

  The bottom sloped upward as they swam, slightly at first, then more steeply. The light grew brighter with each stroke. They came to a ridge and … the sea floor fell away beneath them.

  They stood at the top of a cliff so steep and smooth it looked like the sea floor had been sheared with a vorpal blade. At the bottom of the cliff, easily five hundred paces down, a mass of ruins spread beneath them. Broken buildings lay piled haphazardly on more broken buildings, one after another, until they formed a mountain of ruin. The heap reached a third of the way up the cliff face. Only underwater could such an unstable mass not collapse. The red glow emerged from somewhere within the pile of ruins, near the bottom.

  Looking down the cliff face, Cale understood the geography. The smooth cliff must have once faced the sky, part of a massive chunk of mountain that had borne Sakkors through the sky. When the city crashed into the sea, the slab of earth upon which it had been built had come to a stop on its side and much of the city had poured off and slid downward to form a pile at its base.

  For a few moments, neither Cale nor Jak said anything. The destruction was too big for comment. The red glow bathed the ruins, cast them in blood. Shadows poured from Cale’s blade toward the bottom of the mountain of ruins, toward the red glow.

  Jak swam out over the cliff, turned, and looked down.

  There are caves carved into the cliff face, he said. Above the ruins.

  The scrags’ lair, Cale guessed.

  Jak gave a start, peered downward.

  Cale followed his gaze and saw what had drawn the little man’s attention.

  Far below them, perhaps a third of the way down the cliff face, three silhouettes knifed through the water. Cale could not see them clearly but the figures were too small for scrags. They swam rapidly, with the speed and undulating movement of something native to the depths.

  Is that them? Jak asked.

  It has to be, Cale said, but cursed himself for not casting a spell ahead of time that would have allowed him to see dweomers. He might have confirmed for himself that the three humanoids were the shapechanged slaadi and Riven. Now he could cast nothing because he could not give voice to his prayers.

  But the darkness would still answer him. Controlling the shadows did not require him to speak. He needed only his will.

  Ready yourself, he said to Jak. I’ll move us there.

  Jak nodded and Cale called upon the shadows. He first molded the darkness of the depths into simulacrums of himself that mirrored his motions. The images flickered about him, continuously changing positions around the real Cale.

  Jak tried to follow their motions, failed, shook his head.

  Focus on Azriim, Cale said. He will have the Weave Tap seed.

  How will we know which is him? Jak asked.

  Cale had no answer for that. They would not be able to mark the slaad’s unusual eyes underwater.

  We will have to improvise, little man. Jak hefted his blades, nodded.

  Cale looked down the cliff, picked his spot, and drew the darkness around them. With an effort of will, he moved them instantly from atop the cliff to the water beside the three forms.

  The moment they materialized, the three forms recoiled and shouted a bubble trail. Cale marked Riven as the one-eyed aquatic elf, and the slaadi as the scaled, fanged, and clawed sea devils.

  Riven, in the flesh of the aquatic elf, darted backward from the combat and jerked a pair of daggers from his belt. The assassin caught Cale’s eye and shook his head as if to say, Not yet!

  Cale ignored him, noted a thigh sheath of wands on one of the sahuagin, and knew that was Azriim. He lunged forward and stabbed Weaveshear at the slaad’s chest. The surprised slaad responded quickly, darting out of the way of the stab and answering with a claw slash across Cale’s exposed forearm. Trailing blood, Cale swung Weaveshear in a reverse slash that bit deeply into the slaad’s side. Azriim screamed, bled, kicked, and swam backward away from Cale.

  Dolgan gave a roar, audible even underwater, and tried to wrap his arms around Cale. Instead, he grappled a shadow image and it winked out of existence. The big slaad lashed out with a claw rake that struck another image, destroying it.

  Jak appeared behind the big slaad and drove dagger and short sword into Dolgan’s side. The slaad roared with pain, whirled around, and caught the little man with a backhand slash across the face. Blood poured from Dolgan’s wound, trickled from Jak’s cheek and lip.

  Cale swam toward Azriim.

  The slaad held his ground and glared at him around a forced, fang-filled smile.

  You truly are proving to be inconvenient, Azriim said, and fired what should have been a bolt of energy from his hand. The water diffused the lightning into a globe that charged the water in a sphere all around the slaad. White light flared and the water sizzled. The discharge popped Cale’s eardrums, caused his heart nearly to stop, and left him momentarily stunned. It appeared to have no effect on Azriim, and Riven had backed clear of its effect. A cloud of smoky bubbles raced surfaceward.

  Before Cale could recover, Azriim pulled another wand from his thigh sheath and fire
d it at Cale. Cale could not get Weaveshear into place in time and a thin green beam struck him. Instantly a green glow formed around his body. Cale recognized it as the same type of glow he had seen on the slaadi’s ship, the magic that had prevented him from shadow stepping through patches of darkness.

  Cursing, Cale swam for the slaad, Weaveshear held high. Azriim swam backward, his form much more adept in the water than Cale’s. The slaad easily kept the distance between them as he pulled his teleportation rod and worked its dials.

  Enjoy the scrags, priest, Azriim said, and vanished.

  Cale cursed aloud, and it came out as merely an inarticulate shout and a stream of bubbles. He turned back to Jak and saw the little man swimming a few strokes away. Riven and Dolgan were also gone.

  I’m fine, Jak said, in answer to Cale’s look. The halfling appeared to have suffered no wounds other than the scratch to his face. Jak, too, must have been clear of the effect of Azriim’s spell. Strong whoreson, that slaad. What about you?

  Fine, Cale answered. His ears tickled as the drums regenerated. But that is the last time we let those bastards escape us. Done?

  Done, Jak answered. The little man looked past Cale toward the cliff face and his eyes went wide.

  Cale whirled and saw a dozen scrags swimming out of the caves toward them. They probably smelled blood in the water.

  Cale cursed. Glowing green with the effect of Azriim’s wand, he knew he must look like a beacon to the trolls. He could not use the shadows to move them from place to place while Azriim’s spell still enshrouded him. And neither he nor Jak could attempt to dispel the effect until they reached the surface. He touched Weaveshear’s blade to the glow, hoping it would absorb the spell. It had no effect.

  Move! Cale said.

  They turned their backs to the trolls and swam as fast as they could downward, toward the ruins and the source of the red glow. Despite the spells that aided them underwater, Cale still felt that he was moving too slowly. He spared a glance back.

  The trolls’ powerful bodies undulated and the creatures cut through the water. Their fangs—many as long as a finger—jutted from their open mouths and promised Cale and Jak a painful, bloody end. Their thick-lidded, yellow eyes focused on Cale and Jak with the intensity that all predators regarded their prey.

  Move, Jak! Move! Cale said.

  But the trolls were gaining.

  The awakening Source, perhaps out of instinct, blocked Ssessimyth’s parasitic use of its mental powers. Ssessimyth’s expanded consciousness ceased functioning. He could no longer sense the ships above him; he could no longer sense his minions in the caves near him, in the waters above. It was as if someone else were drinking the mind of the Source, stealing it from Ssessimyth.

  He shifted his tentacles and pressed his head farther into the Source, trying to hold onto whatever it had left to give him.

  His dream was ending. He was no longer content.

  Azriim, Dolgan, and Riven materialized where Azriim had intended—near the base of the mountain of ruins. Slabs of stone, columns, statues, broken rock, and millennia of detritus lay piled against the cliff face in a towering heap. The whole reminded Azriim of a monstrous hive.

  As they swam in place, framed in the red light leaking from the pile, much of the heap unexpectedly shifted and rumbled, as if shook by a small earthquake. Stones cracked, rock grated against rock. A few large slabs of stone slid from the top of the pile and crashed to lower positions. A cloud of dirt rose up and befouled the water.

  The pile resettled, and the tremor did not recur.

  What was that? Riven asked.

  Azriim only shrugged.

  The ruins lay in a messy jumble and the pile featured innumerable openings, crevices, and tunnels. Red light leaked from several of the cracks near the bottom, casting red beams into the surrounding water. The largest of the tunnels opened at the very base of the ruins. The light was brightest there. That was their route in. Somewhere within that tunnel, they would find the heart of Sakkors’s mantle.

  Not far from the tunnel lay a haphazard stack of immense bones, picked entirely clean. Spines as long as ships rested alongside jawbones that could have contained a dozen men.

  Whale bones, Riven observed.

  Azriim nodded. The scrags must have been voracious eaters. The bones of at least a dozen dead whales littered the sea floor.

  I wonder what a whale’s brain tastes like, Dolgan said, eyeing a skull curiously.

  Azriim ignored his broodmate and looked upward, through the swirling dirt. High above them he saw Cale, glowing green beside the halfling, swimming downward. A dozen or more scrags trailed them. The trolls were gaining with every stroke.

  Follow me, Azriim said, and he swam for the large tunnel. He would have teleported directly to the mantle’s origin but saw no need to risk a blind transport in such close quarters. They could swim to it. It would not be far.

  Cale and Jak swam through the cloud of mud and dirt that floated up from the bottom. Whatever had caused the tremor had destabilized the mountain of ruins. Jak and Cale swam clear of it as they descended, to avoid falling stones or shifting rock.

  What in the Hells caused that? Jak asked.

  Cale shook his head and kept swimming. He spared another glance back and saw through the hazy water that the trolls had closed the distance. Their long arms threw water behind them with alarming efficiency.

  Cale looked ahead and down, toward the red glow emitted from the bottom of the ruins. He thought he caught a glimpse of three figures entering a tunnel at the base of the ruins but could not be certain. He was certain that he and Jak would not make it. The trolls would catch them first.

  As always, Jak knew what he was thinking.

  Go, said the little man. He pulled up and started to turn around. Stop the slaadi. I’ll hold the trolls here.

  Cale did not slow. He grabbed Jak by the shirt and pulled him along.

  Not a chance, Cale said. We pick a spot and make our stand together.

  We have to stop the slaadi, Jak answered.

  Cale nodded. We will.

  But—

  Save it, Jak, Cale snapped. Neither of us is dying today.

  Like Jak, Cale wanted to stop the slaadi. He had said himself that something large was at stake. But he would not sacrifice a friend to do it.

  There, Cale said, and pointed down to a pocket formed in the ruins. A pile of pillars and statues created a shallow tunnel. If they could reach it, the trolls would be able to attack them from only one direction.

  Jak nodded and they angled toward it.

  Behind them, the trolls roared. And continued to close.

  The slaadi and Riven swam abreast through the broad passage. Slabs of broken stone lined the tunnel walls and braced the ceiling. Statues, their features long ago worn away, jutted from the ruins like specters rising from the grave. The movement of the threesome through the tunnel disturbed the fine sediment of the sea floor. They left a fog of dirt in their wake.

  Between the sea water, the slash from Cale’s blade, and the ubiquitous dirt, Azriim despaired for his clothes. Then he realized he was becoming giddy and took control of his emotions.

  The red light grew brighter and drew them in. The tunnel angled slightly downward. Azriim wondered why the trolls—if the trolls were responsible—had cleared the passage. Perhaps they worshiped at the mantle’s source. They were simpletons, after all.

  Ahead, an opening beckoned, as wide as the mouth of a dragon. Light poured from it. Azriim picked up his pace, swam through the portal, and found himself at the end of a large hemispherical pocket, at the very root of the ruins. Dolgan and Riven followed.

  Across the chamber was the provenance of the mantle—a red shard of glowing crystal as large around as the trunk of a mature oak. One end of it jutted out of a strange mound that made up the far wall of the chamber, and the other end disappeared into the rock of the sea floor. Only part of the shard’s middle section was visible. Its length must have been thr
ee or four times Azriim’s height.

  Invisible magical energy soaked the chamber. Azriim’s body tingled in the concentrated power. Swirls and eddies of crimson and orange flowed deep within the crystal’s exposed facets. Azriim found the movement hypnotic.

  The wall from which the crystal extended must have been transmogrified in some way by long exposure to the magic of the source crystal. Azriim thought it some kind of unusual coral mound, for it had literally grown around the crystal. Where crystal and coral met, the coral’s edge was thin and ragged, and tendrils grew out of the mound and onto the surface of the crystal. From afar, the surface of the coral looked almost like leather. Azriim had never seen anything like it.

  Riven, as though reading the slaad’s mind, said, That’s not stone, is it?

  Azriim did not bother to answer. He shook the clawed hand upon which he wore his fingerless magical glove. The movement and Azriim’s mental command summoned the silver, black-veined seed of the Weave Tap. He closed his fist over it. It vibrated slightly in his hand, perhaps in response to the mantle’s energy.

  Beside him, Dolgan stabbed the claws of one hand into the palm of the other. Blood leaked into the water.

  Do it, his broodmate projected, his excitement palpable.

  Azriim nodded and swam forward. Before he had gotten halfway across the chamber, a faint shudder shook the mound out of which the shard jutted, a pulse that sent a ripple along the rock. The shard flared crimson at the movement.

  That shudder looked like something an animal might do.

  Understanding dawned, and Azriim stopped cold in the center of the chamber. He looked hard at the tendrils and saw them for what they really were—veins. The implications settled on him.

  The wall mound was not coral; it was flesh, the flesh of an enormous animal that had melded with the crystal. Perhaps the mantle was not sentient at all. Perhaps the creature used the magic of the mantle to project its consciousness surfaceward.

  But then why had it taken no notice of Azriim and his companions?