The Shattered Mask

by Richard Lee Byers

  The lizard man lunged at her again, clawed hands raised, fanged jaws gaping, but not before she came on guard. Exploiting the superior reach the broadsword afforded her, she thrust at the reptile’s throat, then instantly stepped back and prepared to parry, perceiving even as she did so that she wouldn’t actually need to defend. Blood spurted from the lizard man’s throat. It clutched at the wound, then sprawled at her feet.

  She pivoted and saw that Thamalon had just dispatched the other lizard man. His foe had carried a battle-axe and a sturdy, leather-covered target, and the nobleman hesitated over the shield as if wondering whether he could afford the time to pull it from the creature’s arm and take it for himself. Then two rogues emerged from the trees, and Thamalon cursed, whirled, and ran up the motte on which the ruin sat. Shamur followed.

  The fortress gate had once been comprised of two leaves. The one on the left had fallen from its hinges, and the nobles had to run over it to get inside. Their footsteps boomed on the planks.

  Shamur and Thamalon flung themselves behind the leaf that was still standing, shielded at last, if only for the moment, from flying quarrels. Panting, soaked in perspiration despite the chill night air, leaning heavily on the gate, the blonde woman peered about the snowy courtyard.

  As she’d already inferred from viewing its exterior, the fortress had no donjon. Instead, rows of humbler structures, several with collapsed roofs, stood along the walls, where they’d no doubt served as a barracks, kitchen, dining hall, stable, storerooms, smithy, shrine, and every other facility such an outpost required. A wagon with the front wheels missing sat up on a trestle in the far corner of the yard.

  There seemed to be no superior defensive position farther inside. They might as well fight here, at the gate. At least that way, she wouldn’t have to stagger any farther.

  Thamalon peered out at the clearing. “They’re coming,” he wheezed, “and I need you to hold them.” He turned and trotted away.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded. “There’s nowhere better to go, and I need you here!”

  If he heard, he evidently grudged the time to reply, for he just kept going, and then she heard footsteps crunching in the snow beyond the entrance. She peeked around the gate.

  She didn’t see as many foes as she’d expected. Perhaps some of the bravos and conjured creatures were still making their way through the woods. Moreover, the bullies were hanging back at the verge of the clearing, seemingly happy to let the wizard’s inhuman minions risk their lives to take the common quarry.

  Still, a sufficiency of the conjured servitors were hurrying across the snow to do precisely that. A couple had already reached the base of the mound.

  Shamur’s throat was parched. Wishing for a drink of water, some scrap of relief to ease her plight if only for an instant, she forced herself to stand without support and lifted her broadsword from where it trailed on the ground. The notched, wet blade was heavy in her hand.

  An osquip swarmed through the gate, and she killed it. In the moment it took to free the broadsword from the carcass, a lizard man leaped through the opening. She parried the first thrust of its spear, and had her riposte deflected in its turn. Shifting back and forth, they traded attacks until she finally dispatched it with a cut to the head.

  As it fell, she realized she was now standing unshielded in the castle entrance. She dodged to the side, and a pair of crossbow bolts whizzed through the space where she’d just been standing.

  “Thamalon!” she croaked. No one answered.

  Then she smelled an acrid odor, and an instant later, a dark horror scuttled through the gate. Its shape superficially resembled that of a centaur, with a human’s head, arms, and torso set atop a hard-shelled, eight-legged body. A segmented tail, ten feet long and culminating in a curved stinger, lashed about behind it.

  Shamur cut at the spot where a human would have a navel, just above the point where skin gave way to chitin. Its blank yellow eyes flaring, the manscorpion lashed a clawed hand down to block the blow, sacrificing one of its three fingers to stop what would otherwise have been a mortal stroke.

  The creature hissed and threatened her with its unmaimed hand. It was attempting to distract her, she suspected, from the true attack, and sure enough, an instant later, its tail whipped up over its body, lashing its stinger down at her head.

  She scrambled backward, and the stinger scored the earth. The manscorpion scuttled forward, taking some of the ground she’d given up and clearing the narrow entrance for a second such creature to hurry through.

  Shamur felt a surge of despair. Exhausted as she was, how could she fight both of them by herself? Where was Thamalon? Then one manscorpion scuttled right, the other to the left, maneuvering to catch their quarry between them, and she had no more time for doubt or questions.

  She darted to the left, outflanking the wounded tlincalli, as she recalled the name, and putting it between herself and its companion. Bellowing, she charged, and the manscorpion’s sting whipped at her in a horizontal arc. Without breaking stride, she blocked the attack with her broadsword, vaulted onto the creature’s back, then leaped at the second abomination.

  Still circling to engage its prey, the unwounded tlincalli had doubtless assumed it could not be attacked until it completed the maneuver. Now, suddenly, death was flying at it through the air. Crying out in alarm, it raised its hands to fend Shamur off, but it was an instant too slow. Knowing that no fighter can use his strength to best effect when his feet aren’t planted, she hacked with all her might. Her broadsword bit deep into the tlincalli’s hairless brow.

  The manscorpion fell and so did she, slamming down on her side. As she struggled to yank her sword free, the remaining tlincalli’s tail hurtled down at her. She wrenched herself to the side, and the curved stinger smashed into the earth and splashed her with drops of venom. She grabbed the tail just beneath the deadly hook to keep it from striking at her a second time, whereupon the manscorpion whipped the member back, dragging her bumping across the snowy ground toward its ready claws. It was this pulling, rather than her own all-but-depleted strength, that actually drew her blade from the dead tlincalli’s skull.

  Bending at the waist, its four front legs bowing, the manscorpion stooped to rake her with its unwounded hand. Grunting, she evaded the attack, gashing the creature’s forearm in the process, then drove her point up at its belly.

  Her aim was too low, hitting chitin instead of skin, but the broadsword crunched through its armor. The manscorpion convulsed and toppled, and she had to scramble backward to keep it from smashing down on top of her.

  Rising, she studied the writhing tlincalli, making sure it truly was incapacitated, and then, gasping, staggered toward the gate. She had to resume her station there before the rest of her enemies swarmed through the gap. If several of them attacked her at once, they’d surely drag her down.

  She almost didn’t make it in time, for just as she reached the entrance, a pair of lizard men skulked through. She charged and somehow managed to slay them both before they turned their chert-tipped spears in her direction.

  After that, she had nothing to do but gasp for breath and wait for the next onslaught, which, she suspected, was likely to finish her. She simply had nothing left.

  At least she’d perish with a sword in her hand. Better that, she’d often thought, than dying withered, decrepit, and sick, like poor old Lindrian. There was still no sign of Thamalon, and she supposed that, his courage failing, he’d hidden himself in one of the derelict buildings in the pathetic hope that his enemies wouldn’t be able to find him. It gave her a bitter satisfaction to think that, even if he wasn’t a murderer, her repugnance for him was justified after all.

  Standing at the foot of the motte, Marance, who had enhanced his night vision with an enchantment, watched in disgust as Shamur killed two more of his lizard men, then ducked back behind the cover of the remaining leaf of the double gate.

  “Unbelievable,” he said. “She must be exhausted, yet none
of our henchmen or conjured minions can dispose of her.”

  Bileworm leered. “Perhaps you should march up to the gate and fight it out with her yourself.”

  Marance sighed. “As I’ve told you on many occasions, jackanapes, I’m the warlord, overseeing the entire battlefield, not simply one of the spearmen. I’m too important to stand in the shield wall unless I absolutely have to.”

  “Then I suppose you’ll have to wait for one of the troops to kill her. Or toss some magic at her when she shows herself again.”

  “I could,” Marance agreed, but even a well-placed and exceptionally potent thunderbolt would only kill Shamur, not her husband, who hadn’t been seen since he’d dashed inside the gate, and it was Thamalon’s death that the wizard chiefly craved. If he was going to cast a spell, then let it be one that would destroy the both of them.

  “We have sentries watching all four faces of the castle?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Bileworm replied.

  “Make a circuit,” Marance said. “Make certain they’re at their posts. Meanwhile, I will indeed attempt ‘a little magic.’”

  Actually, it would be one of the most powerful spells in his repertoire, which was why he hadn’t used it hitherto. Sorceries drew their power primarily from the fundamental forces and structure of the cosmos, but also drained a measure of the caster’s vitality. Ordinary wizards restored their strength with rest and nourishment, but, suspended between life and death as he was, Marance had discovered that such commonplace measures would not replenish him. Perhaps his liege lord had arranged it thus to insure that he wouldn’t attempt to remain in the realm of the living forever, but must return in due time to the iron city of Dis.

  Petty spells, like the ones that had summoned the osquips, lizard men, and tlincallis, leeched away such an infinitesimal fraction of his strength that he cast them freely. Greater magic, however, required enough to make him pause and consider. He saw little reason to hold back when the man he wished to chastise most of all was at his mercy.

  He took out his bag and candle, held them high, and whispered the charm. The candle spat blue flame ten feet into the air, and then the ground began to shake.

  The first tremor nearly jolted Shamur off her aching, unsteady legs. Clutching the gate to steady herself, she peeked out at the clearing.

  Violet light pulsed on the snow at the foot of the motte, and then, with a sustained, grinding roar, twisting and thrashing as it emerged from its confinement, a black, vaguely manlike shape outlined in purple fire heaved itself up from beneath the shroud of white. Pale eyes glittered in its crude lump of a head. The sustained quaking ceased with its birthing, but its lurching strides were themselves sufficient to shake the ground as it started up the slope.

  Shamur had once seen an earth elemental conjured, and she reckoned this creature was something similar. But this was much bigger, so huge that the sandstone battlements only came up to its breast. So immense that she had no hope of fighting it.

  She started to scramble backward, and then, too vast to pass through the gate, without hesitation it simply walked through the wall. The bulwark exploded into rubble, filling the night with hurtling, plummeting scraps of rock.

  One advantage of conjuring a servant tall as a tower, Marance reflected, was that he could watch it do its work even when it was standing inside an enclosure. The corrupted elemental lifted its fists above its head, then slammed them down, over and over again. Surely, it was smashing Thamalon and Shamur into jelly.

  A creature created for rage and mindless destruction, the giant then proceeded to tear down the entire fortress, and the crash and rumble of stone thundered through the night. The rogues stared in awe. Bound by Marance’s command to seek and slay the Uskevren, osquips, lizard men, and tlincallis advanced helplessly into the heart of the demolition, no doubt to be crushed by falling debris. With a modicum of effort, the wizard could have freed them of the compulsion, but given their ephemeral status, it scarcely seemed worthwhile. Like his band of scoundrels, he preferred to stand at his ease and watch the spectacle.

  When the destruction was complete, Marance pulled his staff from the ground and murmured a spell of dismissal. The elemental crumbled like a clod of mud dissolving in a rainstorm.

  Marance turned to Bileworm and said, “You quiz the sentries. I’m going to take a look at the wreckage.”

  Lengthening his legs to take longer paces, the familiar hurried away. The wizard headed for the motte, then glanced back at his two bodyguards, who, thus prompted, reluctantly trailed along behind him.

  When he reached the crest of the mound, Marance saw that the devastation was, if anything, even more all-encompassing than it had looked from a distance. Absolutely nothing remained but a field of crushed stone and the heap of earth left by the departure of the elemental.

  Bileworm loped out of the dark. “According to the watchers, the Uskevren never came out,” he said. “Not over the top of a wall, and not through any sort of postern, either.”

  “They’re buried somewhere beneath all this, then,” said Marance, and with that utter certainty came a blaze of exultation tempered with just a hint of anticlimax. He’d craved his revenge for so long, and now, abruptly, the truly important part of it was over. “Farewell, Thamalon. We’re quits now, or will be, once I kill your children.” He started back down the motte, and his attendants followed.

  “How long will the slaughter take, do you think?” Bileworm asked.

  “A day or two at most,” Marance said, “for Nuldrevyn and Ossian both agree that the sons, Thamalon the Second and Talbot, are wastrels and fools. The daughter, Thazienne, might have more brains and gumption, but she’s ill. I daresay the two of us can sit back and watch while our friends here”—he nodded at the bodyguards—“do the bulk of the work.”

  While the surviving osquips, tlincallis, and lizard men vanished, their summonings running out of power, Garris assembled the bravos for the trek back to the horses. Just as he declared them ready to depart, Marance noticed a small object gleaming in the moonlight atop a patch of trampled, blood-spattered snow. He idly stooped to inspect it, observed it was Shamur’s brooch, and picked it up.

  “A trophy?” Bileworm asked.

  “If you like,” the wizard replied. “A little memento to set on a shelf back home.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Tamlin had just succeeded in luring the giggling Nenda and Vinda, the buxom twins who served ale, wine, and liquor at the Laughing Gamecock, into the closet, when someone rudely took hold of his shoulder and shook him. He turned, opened his eyes, and the closet turned into his own spacious featherbed, just as, judging from the sunlight streaming through the casement, night had changed to morning.

  Tamlin’s head pounded, and his mouth was dry as dust. Squinting against the glare, he scowled at the freckle-faced, pug-nosed fellow who’d awakened him. “I could have you flogged for this,” he said, and then regretted it, a little.

  If Escevar resented this reminder that, although Tamlin’s closest friend, he was also a mere servant, no one could have told it from his unwavering smile. “You told me to wake you,” he said.

  “Impossible,” Tamlin said, “for you jolted me out of a beautiful dream into a hideous nightmare. Weeping Ilmater, my head!”

  “I have the remedy,” Escevar said, his auburn curls shining in the light from the window. “Hair of the dog.” He gestured to the nightstand, and the uncorked wine bottle and silver goblet sitting atop it.

  “You torturer!” Tamlin exclaimed. “Why didn’t you point it out before?”

  Disdaining the cup, he fumbled the bottle into his unsteady hand and guzzled from the neck. Usk’s Fine Old, the spiced clarry his father made, slid down his throat to ease his hangover. It amused him to think how disgusted the old man would be to see him gulp it so. The bottle was half empty when he finally took it away from his lips.

  “Better?” Escevar asked.

  “Marginally,” Tamlin said. In truth, he felt quite a bit better, b
ut wasn’t quite ready to relinquish the martyr’s role. “Why in Sune’s name did I want you to wake me?”

  “You and I, Gellie Malveen, and some others are going hawking, and we’re likely to be late if you don’t hurry.”

  “I’m not going to be late. I’m not going at all. Gellie’s an ass to plan an outing before noon.” He made a show of settling back down on the bed.

  “As you wish, Deuce. Sleep well.” Escevar turned toward the door.

  “No, wait.” Tamlin forced himself to throw back his covers and sit up on the side of the bed. Though a fire still crackled in the hearth, the parquet floor was cold against the soles of his feet. “We were going to take Brom along, weren’t we? And collect Fendolac along the way?”

  “Your memory is improving,” said the redhead.

  Brom Selwick seemed a nice enough fellow, albeit possessed of a tedious zeal which reminded Tamlin unpleasantly of Father and the old man’s faithful butler Erevis. Unfortunately, thanks to his déclassé upbringing, the wizard lacked the graces of a gentleman, and while that might be tolerable in a groom or scullion, it was inappropriate in a highly placed retainer whose position required him to mingle on familiar terms with the nobility. Tamlin had thought it might be amusing to teach Brom how to behave, and had intended this morning’s excursion to contribute to his education.

  While Fendolac, of course, had just lost his father. Tamlin had hoped a little sport would distract him from his grief.

  “Then I suppose the excursion is an act of charity,” the noble said, taking another swig from the bottle, “and I’m stuck. Not that Father will appreciate my sacrifice. He’ll keep on calling me indolent and worthless, same as ever.” He grinned. “Anyway, I’d better get dressed.”