Midnight's Mask

by Paul S. Kemp

Jak looked over his shoulder and caught Cale watching.

  “Kill it, godsdammit!” the little man shouted. He turned and charged Dolgan. Magadon climbed to his feet and joined him. Blades and claws met.

  Cale turned, sheathed Weaveshear, and wrapped his arms around the Tap’s bole. The wood felt warm, like skin, and the moment he touched it, he knew the Tap possessed sentience.

  He gritted his teeth as the Tap’s awareness reached for his mind. He did not resist it. The mental touch was not hostile, merely unfocused, flailing. Still, it indicated a living, self-aware creature.

  Cale sensed its nature through the mindlink—born of the Weave and the Shadow Weave, of light and darkness, forever existing in the gray area between the poles of its being.

  Just like Cale.

  And Cale was going to kill it. He had no choice.

  I’m sorry, he thought, and hoped it understood.

  For a breath, but only a breath, he almost reconsidered. But the sounds of combat from behind brought him back to himself. Jak screamed. Magadon shouted. Another spell sizzled into the stone.

  Pulses of silver light throbbed between Cale’s arms as regular as a heartbeat. Cale pictured the first place in Selgaunt that came to his mind and called upon the darkness to move both himself and the Weave Tap there.

  The darkness answered. Pitch surrounded him and the Tap. He felt the familiar sensation of being stretched parchment-thin, and in the next heartbeat found himself blinking in the half-light of Temple Avenue. He had brought the Weave Tap with him. It stood beside him, towering and unstable on its exposed roots.

  Shouts of surprise greeted his appearance. The street was crowded.

  “Look! Look there!”

  The street traffic stopped. Horses started, snorted at his sudden appearance. Heads poked out of coaches, out of temple windows. A hundred faces, formerly upturned to watch the partial eclipse, turned to regard him. The pilgrims near him backed away quickly, warily. Children regarded him with wide eyes. A walkway philosopher pointed his finger at Cale and berated him as an agent of devilry.

  “Is that a tree?” someone shouted. “Look at it!”

  Exposed to the partial sunlight, the Weave Tap began to writhe and smoke beside Cale. The silver pulses came faster, faster, the frantic beat of terror.

  Cale backed off, eyes wide. People poured out of the temples to watch.

  The Tap’s branches and roots twisted, curling with agony, blackening in the partial sunlight. Formerly glowing leaves of pure arcane power fell from smoking limbs, showering the street and disintegrating in small explosions of sparks. The Tap’s consciousness still had a vague hold on Cale’s mind and he distantly sensed its pain and fear.

  Bark peeled; the tree’s trunk split. Cale imagined the equivalent happening to a man—bones shattering, skin burning, peeling away. It was too much.

  The Tap started to topple over.

  “Get out of the way,” Cale shouted to no one in particular, and the assembled crowd retreated.

  The Tap caught for a moment on one of the Hulorn’s statues, then crashed fully to the street. Limbs shattered. Magical energy sprayed out in all directions.

  “I’m sorry,” Cale said to it again.

  The Tap’s death throes became increasingly violent as it burned in the sun. The crowd shouted, oohed. The Tap’s thrashing limbs and roots threw off intense flashes of power. Where they landed, unpredictable magical effects occurred: cobblestones sprouted legs and scurried into the crowd; flowers rained from the sky; a horse was transmogrified into a mouse; one of the bestial statues that lined the street—a manticore—sprang to life and flew roaring into the sky.

  The crowd of pilgrims turned and ran, panicked. From afar, Cale heard the telltale clarion of a trumpet. A squad of Selgaunt’s watch, the Scepters, was coming.

  Cale wanted to wait, to ensure that the Tap died and that the geyser of magic accompanying its death would cause no real harm. But his friends needed him. He stood for a moment, torn. The Tap’s silver heartbeat slowed. He felt it dying.

  Erevis! Magadon projected into his brain, his voice urgent. We need you!

  Magadon’s tone sent alarm through Cale.

  The Scepters rounded the corner at a run, blades bare. They were a dagger toss from Cale. The watch sergeant looked first at Cale, then the burning, dying Weave Tap, and slowed his advance. He pointed the tip of his weapon at Cale.

  “Hold there, goodsir,” he said.

  Beside Cale, the Weave Tap burst into flames. Gray-green smoke poured into the sky. Cale glanced into the faces around him and saw….

  Sephris.

  The loremaster was staring at him out of the crowd. He shook his head and mouthed some words. “Two and two are four.”

  Erevis! Magadon called again, and the despair in the guide’s voice made Cale’s mouth go dry.

  Ignoring the Scepters and the loremaster, Cale stepped into the shadow of a nearby statue and imagined in his mind the chamber in which he had found the Weave Tap. He drew Weaveshear.

  “I said do not move,” the watch sergeant commanded again.

  The darkness gathered around Cale.

  The Scepters rushed him.

  The last thing he saw before he moved across Faerûn to the tower was Sephris, calculating.

  CHAPTER 16

  GOOD-BYES

  Cale materialized in the shadows of the sanctum, an eerie void with the Weave Tap gone. What he saw near the doorway froze him.

  Magadon, prone, bleeding, and laboring to breathe, cradled Jak in his lap. He had a hand on the little man’s brow. Jak lay across the guide’s legs, covered in blood, unmoving.

  Unmoving.

  Riven stood near them, watching, blades held slackly at his sides. His expression was impossible to decipher—it could have been controlled grief, contained rage, or indifference.

  “Jak?”

  The word came out of Cale’s mouth before he could stop it. He tried to move but his body would not respond.

  “Jak?” he said again, his voice louder.

  He knew his friend would not answer.

  A ragged gash opened Jak’s throat. The little man’s blades lay on the ground near him. He was not breathing.

  Neither was Cale.

  “I tried to save him….” Magadon choked as he looked up. Tears glistened in his colorless eyes.

  Cale swallowed. His vision was blurry. His body went weak, numb. He managed a step forward, another. He could not take his eyes from the body of his friend, his best friend.

  “I thought you were going to miss the festivities,” said a voice, Azriim’s voice. “I am glad to see you return.”

  For the first time, Cale noticed the slaadi. They stood on the other side of the sanctum’s double doors, denied entry by a barrier of force. Magadon must have raised it. The barrier distorted the air like a lens of imperfect glass. The slaadi’s forms looked twisted and distended through it, but Cale could still see Azriim’s smirk. Both held their teleportation rods in their hands.

  Cale ignored the creatures, sheathed his blade, and moved to Magadon’s side. He knelt and pulled Jak’s limp body from the guide. Jak felt so … light. The little man’s eyes were open but unseeing. Cale could not quite believe how small his friend looked, how fragile. Had he always been that small?

  Jak’s shirt was twisted around his torso and for some absurd reason Cale found himself straightening it. He tried to ignore the sticky fluid that clung to his fingers. He noticed that the little man’s left fist was clenched around something. Cale gently peeled back the fingers—he had never noticed how tiny were Jak’s hands—to reveal the jeweled pendant that served as Jak’s holy symbol. Jak must have taken it in hand before the end. Cale’s eyes welled and he closed his friend’s hand over the symbol.

  He stood, cradling his friend, and carried him a few steps away from the doors. It seemed right to him that they be apart from everyone else.

  “Look at him,” Dolgan said from behind the barrier, and Cale heard the mo
ckery in the slaad’s tone. “I think he might weep.”

  Cale kept his back to the slaadi and looked down into the little man’s green eyes. A thousand memories rushed through his mind. In all of them, Jak was smiling, laughing, smoking. Cale could not remember laughing except when he had been in Jak’s company. What would he do without him?

  The tears pooling in his eyes fell down his cheeks, welled in his eyes, splashed on the little man’s face. He wiped them away. A sob wracked him.

  His mind was empty. He wanted to say something, anything, but no words would come. Instead, an inarticulate animal sound emerged from his throat, a primal expression of the inexpressible.

  They had been through so much. Survived so much. Only to end like this?

  His mind kept repeating: How can this be? How can this be?

  Jak’s body was cooling in his hands. His best friend was growing cold. Cale was distantly conscious of his rage beginning to build. It welled up from the core of his soul, soaked him, caused his body to shake. Shadows swirled around him, little flames of darkness.

  The rage gave him a focus, something to hold onto, a purpose.

  His tears stopped. His sobs stopped. The world restarted.

  He turned, met Riven’s gaze, held it. Neither of them said anything. Cale saw something in the assassin’s eye, something he had never seen. Riven’s breath came fast; he bled from half a dozen small cuts. Magadon still lay on the floor, propped on his elbow, trying to staunch the gashes in his chest and abdomen. From the grotesque angle from which the guide’s leg jutted from his hip, Cale could see it was broken or out of joint. The guide’s face was nearly as white as his eyes. His eyes were glassy but focused.

  Cale had healing spells at his command but he could not use them on Magadon, not then. At the moment, Cale’s grief was the whetstone that sharpened his rage, that honed his hate. He had no healing in him. He had only anger. He could do only harm.

  He knelt down on one knee and set Jak on the floor, against the wall. He brushed his hand over the little man’s face and closed his eyes, gently. It was the last gentle thing he would do for a time.

  “He is crying,” Azriim said. Dolgan chuckled.

  Cale thought back to the docks in Selgaunt when Jak had told him they should be heroes if they had the chance. He would honor his promise to the little man. But not yet. Before he could be a hero, he first had to be a killer.

  He rose, looked over at Magadon, and said, “Which one?”

  Magadon stared at him uncomprehending. He was going into wound shock.

  “Which one did this?” Cale snapped. His tone was harsh; he had not meant it to be. Shadows boiled from his skin. His fists were clenched.

  “The big one,” Magadon stammered, his words slurred.

  Cale nodded. He looked through the barrier at Dolgan—the big one. The distorted air magnified the slaad’s claws. Blood coated those claws. Jak’s blood.

  Cale’s hands opened and closed, opened and closed. The pounding of his heart filled his ears. With effort, he took control of his anger, channeled it.

  “I think you’ve made him angry, Dolgan,” Azriim jibed.

  Dolgan fixed Cale with a hard glare and bared his fangs. “Good,” the slaad said.

  Moving with deliberateness, Cale took out his black mask and donned it. Behind its opaque curtain, he let the killer in him take hold. Jak was dead. For the moment, so was Cale’s conscience. He was going to make the slaad suffer.

  Never taking his gaze from the big slaad, he whispered a series of prayers, casting spells that gave him added strength, speed. The darkness in the sanctum deepened, mirroring his mood.

  “Oh, he is definitely angry,” Azriim said.

  The slaadi paced along the edge of the psionic barrier, their movements predatory. Azriim removed first one wand, then another from his thigh sheath, touching himself and Dolgan in turn, no doubt augmenting their own abilities.

  Cale watched the slaadi work and called upon Mask again, invoking a spell that infused him with a shard of the divine. A small part of Mask’s power rushed into him, filled him, focused his rage, increased his spite. His body grew half again as large as normal. His strength increased still more. He stood as tall as Dolgan. His strength matched a giant’s.

  He was ready.

  He turned from the slaadi to look back at Magadon.

  The guide looked … drained. Cale could not help him, not until he had killed something.

  “Hang on,” Cale said to him, and his voice was deeper than usual, more commanding. “This will be over soon.”

  Magadon nodded, gritting his teeth against the pain.

  “Lower the barrier, Mags,” Cale told him, and turned back to face the slaadi. “Raise it behind us after we’re through.”

  The slaadi stopped pacing.

  “Don’t trouble yourself,” Azriim said, and held up his teleportation rod. “We’ll come to you.”

  Cale stared holes into the slaadi.

  Azriim lowered the rod.

  “Have it your way, then,” he said.

  The slaadi backed off and spread to opposite sides of the wide corridor.

  “Erevis….” Magadon began.

  “The big one is mine,” Cale said to Riven.

  The assassin nodded, stood at Cale’s left shoulder. He spun his blades and pointed their tips at Azriim’s chest.

  “That’s unfortunate. I have wanted to kill the stupid one for a long while. But I’ll settle for the chatty one.”

  Azriim smiled, and the smile gave way to a hiss. Dolgan drew his axe from the sheath on his back, held it in his hands, and roared. Veins and sinew rose from the muscles of his arms, chest, and neck.

  Cale put his hand to Weaveshear, started to draw it, but stopped.

  Riven looked at him sidelong. “What are you doing?”

  “Close work,” Cale said, the words a threat and promise for Dolgan. He could not control the shadows pouring from his flesh.

  Riven absorbed that. “I think I’ll go with my steel, just the same.”

  “Lower it, Mags,” Cale commanded again.

  Dolgan dropped his axe and waited, claws flexing. He and Cale would fight hand to claw.

  “Remember that they are stronger,” Riven said to Cale.

  “No, they’re not.”

  Riven stared, nodded, bounced on the balls of his feet. “Do it, Mags,” he said.

  The psionic barrier flared once and disappeared.

  The moment it disappeared, Azriim spoke a word and discharged a bolt of black energy from his outstretched hand. Cale and Riven threw themselves against opposite walls and the black ray streaked past them.

  Riven bounded forward at Azriim, blades whirling.

  Cale charged Dolgan.

  Memories of a past life—or was it only a dream?—slipped away from Jak, gossamer wraiths of recollection floating away into oblivion. He knew he remembered things, he just could not quite remember what things. The loss pained him distantly, but even that soon faded.

  It did not matter. He was happy where he was.

  He stood barefoot on a rolling moor. Swells of plush green grass stretched around him for as far as he could see. The grass felt soft under his feet, between his bare toes. Golden sunshine showered down to warm him. Stately, solitary elms dotted the moor, their canopies casting great swaths of grass in shadow.

  Shadow.

  A memory bubbled up from somewhere. He almost got his mind around it but it drifted away before he could pin it down. Still, whatever it was made him smile.

  A soft breeze stirred the grass, caused the leaves of the elms to whisper among themselves. It also carried from somewhere in the distance the smell of food cooking—a heavy, stomach-warming smell. The aroma was familiar to Jak but he did not know why.

  “Oh well,” he said, unperturbed.

  Following his nose, he started walking. A cerulean sky roofed the land, dotted with puffs of white. He had to have a smoke. It was too nice a day not to have a smoke. He reached f
or his pipe and discovered that it was not in his belt pouch.

  Strange, he thought, but his disappointment faded quickly.

  He whistled a tune and walked on. After only a short while, another smell attracted his attention and caused him temporarily to forget about the cooking aroma—the unmistakably wonderful stink of pipeweed. And good quality.

  Someone else had decided that the day required a smoke. Surely they would share a spare pipe with a fellow traveler.

  “Hello there,” Jak called. “Who’s there? Who’s smoking?”

  “Here,” returned a voice from the other side of a nearby hill.

  Jak legged his way up the hill. When he crested the rise he saw a well-dressed halfling with wavy, sandy hair seated under an elm, his back to the trunk, a wooden pipe stuck between his teeth. A broad-brimmed green hat with a purple feather lay on the ground beside him. The halfling smiled around the stem of his pipe. Jak found the smile infectious.

  “Well met!”

  Jak returned the smile and said, “Well met.”

  He was certain he had seen the halfling before, maybe in some dark place underground. He searched his memory but found nothing.

  The halfling climbed to his feet, dusted off his red trousers, and said, “You sure took your time. Seems like I’ve been waiting for you a long while.” He banged his feathered hat against his thigh and replanted it atop his head.

  “You have?” Jak asked, confused.

  “I have,” responded the halfling with a wink. “Now come on.”

  Green cloak swooshing, the halfling walked up to Jak, placed a tindertwig and pipe—already tamped, no less—into his palm.

  “You’ll be wanting this, I assume. Now, follow me. I know where you’re going.”

  “You do?” Jak asked, and followed along, taking a whiff of the unlit pipeweed. “How? I don’t even know where we’re going. Do we know each other?”

  The halfling looked at him out of the corner of his eye, green eyes glinting.

  “We know each other very well, Jak Fleet.”

  Jak flushed with embarrassment. It was quite rude not to remember an acquaintance.

  “Uh … I’m afraid I don’t remember your name.”