The Shattered Mask s-3

by Richard Lee Byers

  A shout roused Marance from his musings. Turning his head, he saw that the strapping warrior with the red kerchief on his head had finally returned with the men-at-arms Marance had dispatched him to fetch. Three of them, anyway. The others had no doubt been too prudent to set foot on the quaking bridge.

  "What are you doing?" the big man demanded, swaying as the vibrations rattled him.

  "Nothing," said Marance, deeming the lie worth trying. "Go forward and help Master Ossian."

  "Do you think we're stupid?" the guardsman replied. "We see that thing under your hand. You're shaking the bridge, and I know damn well that Lord Talendar wouldn't want you to do that. Stop it right now, or we'll stop you." He brandished his long sword.

  "If you insist," Marance said. He took his hand away from the simulacrum, but naturally, the tremors in the actual bridge continued. It would take time for them to subside, if, indeed, that was still possible, if he hadn't already damaged the structure sufficiently that a collapse was inevitable.

  "I told you to stop it!" the warrior barked.

  "I understand," Marance said. "Evidently it's going to take a bit of countermagic."

  He removed a scrap of fur, a piece of amber, and a paper of silver pins from one of his pockets, and then, manipulating the spell components, he began to chant.

  When he was half way through the incantation, the men-at-arms somehow guessed what he was really up to, and frantically staggered toward him. But they failed to close the distance in time. A flare of lightning crackled from Marance's hand to the warrior with the scarf and blasted him dead.

  Immediately the magic leaped from the importunate fellow's withered, blackened corpse to the guard behind him, then leaped twice more, slaying each man in his turn. Surveying the smoking, reeking husks, Marance sighed. "I regret that was necessary," he told them, then took hold of the bridge simulacrum once more.

  *****

  Shamur waited for the present shock to subside, then leaped across the narrow gap between rooftops. Had she not chosen her moment properly, a fresh tremor might have staggered her and spoiled the jump. Even though the bridge wasn't shaking too badly, the houses still were. The vibration made her lead foot slip as it landed, and she fell and slid down the pitch. Grabbing for some semblance of a handhold, she managed to arrest her descent before it could fling her off the eaves into space. As she proceeded on her way, she reflected that if the shaking had made walking the roadway difficult, traveling the thief's path above verged on the impossible, even for a pupil of Errendar Spillwine.

  Nor could she proceed cautiously. Unless she scrambled as rapidly as possible, risking a fall with every move she made, she stood no chance of finding Marance in time to prevent the destruction of the bridge.

  At least her scheme was sound. The wizard hadn't thought to station any of his creatures up here, which meant that if she didn't plummet to her death, she could get at him without having to hack her way through dozens of defenders.

  Off to the east, where the black river met the bay, she spied the myriad lights of the floating city. Had it only been last night that she'd bounded from vessel to vessel in pursuit of the tattooed ruffian? So much had happened since that it felt like a lifetime. She wondered fleetingly if the watermen could hear the tortured bridge grinding and rumbling, if they all were peering up at it, and then the section of shuddering roof she was currently climbing shed its shingles all at once.

  The slates streamed down the pitch like an avalanche. She had nothing at all to cling to, and as the skidding, disintegrating shingles carried her relentlessly down toward the drop off, she could only scramble frantically, striving to reach something solid to grab onto before she plunged into space.

  She seized hold of a piece of sturdy eaves just outside the slippage even as the loose shingles swept her lower body off the edge. She grunted at the jolt as her arms took her weight. The bridge lurched, and she gripped with all her strength to keep the shock from jarring her loose from her handholds. Then she hauled herself back up onto the roof.

  Afterward, she would have liked nothing better than to lie still and catch her breath, but knew she had no time for such an indulgence. She forced herself to continue onward.

  In a few more seconds, she peered down at the roadway. For the most part, Marance's minions were behind her now, but she still saw no sign of the wizard himself. She wondered grimly just how much farther she had to go.

  Bileworm skulked through the shadows on Ossian's feet, the dead youth's beautiful sword in his hand. Or at least he tried. It was difficult to move stealthily when he could barely maintain his balance.

  He was on his own now. As soon as the mock earthquake – perhaps he should call it a bridgequake – had begun, the Talendar troops under his nominal command lost all interest in combat. They only wanted to hunker down and wait out the tremors. Trust Master to initiate one strategy, then abruptly switch to another that entirely undermined the first one, and left the lieutenant charged with making the alpha plan work stuck in a precarious position.

  Still, though Bileworm was now alone, Master had commanded him to fight, and fight he would, for he was far more afraid of the wizard's displeasure than the Uskevren.

  His best course, he reckoned, was to pick out one enemy who had drifted away from the others, strike him down by surprise, slice off a recognizable trophy, and carry it back to Master. Surely then the spellcaster would concede that his servant had done his duty, and allow him to spend the rest of the battle idling safely at his side.

  Bileworm spied Thamalon himself, finishing off a hell hound. The nobleman was at least ten paces from Talbot, his nearest ally, who was busy with adversaries of his own.

  Placing his left hand over his breast, Bileworm glided forward.

  Ironically, it was one of the tremors that saved the Owl, for by staggering him, it turned him around sufficiently to see the would-be assassin slinking toward him. He and Bileworm both came on guard, the familiar making sure to stand in extreme profile, angling the left side of his body well away from the human's blade.

  ''I know what you really are," Thamalon growled. "Nuldrevyn explained it."

  "How nice for you," Bileworm said, then lunged.

  Ossian had been a competent swordsman, and by inhabiting his corpse, Bileworm had inherited a measure of his skill. Still, employing his buckler, Thamalon deflected the attack with ease, then riposted with a head cut.

  The nobleman's long sword sheared away the left side of Bileworm's face. The shock of such a grievous injury would have incapacitated any normal fighter. Bileworm, however, had no need to suffer discomforts arising in Ossian's flesh. He reflexively blocked the pain and renewed his attack.

  The remise caught Thamalon by surprise, but, displaying the reflexes of a highly trained combatant, he twisted aside from Bileworm's point with not an inch to spare. Instantly he hacked at the spirit's extended wrist, slicing muscle and tendon and splintering bone. The blow didn't quite lop off Bileworm's hand, but it rendered it useless for swordplay.

  Time to go, then. Hoping that Thamalon wouldn't see him depart in the darkness, Bileworm stumbled around, turning his back to the aristocrat, then exploded from Ossian's mouth. The lad's corpse collapsed.

  His malleable form flattened against the cobbles, Bileworm slithered rapidly along, seeking another shell to inhabit. The first he came across was a behir carcass, and after a split second's hesitation, he passed it by. If a body wasn't manlike, it sometimes took him a few minutes to figure out how to make it move properly, and he needed a vessel in which he could fight immediately.

  Next, he spied a dead gnoll with a gash in the side of its furry neck and its hide tunic tacky with blood. That ought to do. He poured himself between the creature's fangs, then jammed his substance into rough alignment with the gnoll's limbs. Rushing the possession this way, he might find that his new body moved a trifle awkwardly, but the violence of the bridge bouncing about reduced everyone to clumsiness anyway.

  Bileworm stealth
ily turned the gnoll's hyena head. Thamalon was still poised over Ossian's mangled form as if suspicious that it was about to jump up and resume the battle. The familiar took hold of the gnoll's notched iron scimitar, leaped to his feet, and charged, once again hoping to take his opponent by surprise.

  Alas, Thamalon sensed him rushing in on his flank, spun in his direction, ducked low, and extended his point at the gnoll's chest. Staggering as another tremor jolted him, Bileworm only barely managed to halt in time to avoid impaling himself, an injury that, though it might not have affected him at all, might also have inconvenienced him severely. Snarling, he hastily reverted to the fighting stance he'd employed before.

  Struggling for balance as the bridge shuddered, the two combatants circled, until Bileworm discerned an apparent weakness in Thamalon's guard. He swept the scimitar in a brutal arc toward the outside of the human's sword arm.

  Thamalon's blade instantly shifted back to the right, closing the line. Metal rang as the scimitar struck the long sword and rebounded. The nobleman cut at the gnoll's already damaged neck and severed its head.

  Since the head couldn't fight, Bileworm elected to remain with the body. He plunged forward, slashing madly, hoping that sheer ferocity would compensate for the fact that he was now fighting blind.

  His curved blade touched only air, and his leg gave way. Thamalon must have cut it out from under him.

  As the gnoll fell, Bileworm streamed up from the stump between its shoulders. This time, Thamalon saw him leave, and thrust his point harmlessly through the familiar's shadowy form. Bileworm gave him a mocking leer, then darted away, shrinking himself so his foe would lose track of him.

  Tottering, Thamalon pivoted this way and that, peering to see which of the corpses on the cobblestones would rear up and attack him next. Meanwhile, Bileworm circled, trying to decide the same thing. Which carcass would best serve his purpose?

  After a few seconds, he noticed the dead Talendar guard slumped in a shadowy, recessed doorway at Thamalon's back. It was in the one direction that Thamalon hadn't glanced. Evidently he hadn't noticed it was there.

  Swinging wide to keep the Owl from spotting him, Bile-worm slithered up to the warrior's body and writhed his way inside. When the dead man's eyes began to serve him, he discerned that everything was proceeding according to plan. Thamalon still had his back to him.

  Bileworm gripped the warrior's longsword and carefully climbed to his feet. He was resolved that this time, he would keep silent and succeed in attacking by surprise.

  He assumed his fighting stance, crept forward, and aimed his sword to pierce Thamalon's spine. Then, just as he was about to thrust, his enemy spun around, lunged, and drove his point through the guard's heart and deep into Bileworm's form beneath.

  Wracked by a shock and weakness he couldn't block out, Bileworm dropped his blade. Swaying, he told himself that this couldn't be happening. He, who had survived for millennia by dint of his cunning, couldn't perish at the hands of a dull-witted mortal man. Yet even as he denied it, he knew it was true.

  "You aren't quite as clever as you think," Thamalon told him almost gently. "I pretended to ignore one of the corpses to induce you to occupy it, so I'd know from what quarter you'd attack next. And by taking such pains to protect your heart, you simply revealed where you were vulnerable."

  The human sounded so smug that Bileworm felt some sort of mocking retort was in order, but with his mind crumbling, he couldn't think of one. His knees buckled. and darkness swallowed him.

  Across the roadway, a four-story post-and-bearn house rumbled, swayed, and collapsed. Shamur winced to think of the unfortunate family crushed or trapped inside, and then, at last, she caught sight of her quarry.

  As she'd hoped, Marance was alone, in the center of the fish market. She realized that she'd unconsciously expected to find the masked wizard standing straight and tall to work his magic, his hands upraised and his dark mantle flapping around him. Instead, he'd seated himself atop one of the fishmonger's tables, where he was rocking a glowing violet miniature replica of the bridge back and forth.

  The burnt black remains of four men who had apparently tried to interfere with Marance lay within a few paces of the butcher-block. A few pale, horrified faces gawked from the windows of houses adjacent to the market, but evidently none of these spectators could muster the courage to try to stop the spellcaster, even though they must realize that if he kept on as he was, his efforts were likely to kill them.

  Shamur, of course, did intend to stop him, and this once, despite her natural inclinations, she had no intention of allowing her adversary a sporting chance, the better to challenge and revel in her own prowess. Marance was too formidable, and there was too much at stake, to opt for a fair fight as long as she had an alternative. If possible, she meant to slip up on him from behind and dispatch him before he even realized he was in danger.

  Unfortunately, the fish market was one of the few sections of the bridge that didn't have buildings along the sides. It would have been easier to sneak around behind Marance if she didn't have to descend to ground level, but she reckoned that a skilled thief still should have a chance. It was night, after all, and she was wearing dark clothing, including a hooded cloak to distort her silhouette. She started to clamber down the brown-stone wall of the last house south of the open space.

  When she was halfway to ground, a tremor hit, and her poor, abused fingers, battered, wrenched, and rubbed raw by all the difficult climbing she'd already done, finally failed her. She lost her grip and fell.

  She thought fleetingly that Marance was going to get his chance after all, for he would surely notice her slamming down on the cobbles. Then she did precisely that. She tumbled into a forward roll to cushion the shock, but it was a hard landing even so, and knocked the wind out of her.

  Though half stunned, she felt a pressure in the air around her, and when she looked up at Marance, she observed that the glowing simulacrum of the bridge was reshaping itself into a doll-sized image of herself. Knowing a magic that could shake tons of stone could surely crush her to jelly in an instant, she hastily scrambled several feet to her left. The feeling of pressure vanished, and her replica dissolved into a shapeless, shifting blob of purple light, from which she inferred that this particular spell couldn't seize hold of her as long as she kept moving. Good to know, though it still left her with all of Marance's other tricks to worry about.

  She drew her broadsword and stalked toward him, noticing as she did that even though he'd stopped tampering with it, the bridge kept on shaking. That probably meant it wouldn't take much more abuse to make it fall; she only prayed it wasn't doomed to collapse regardless. Staff in hand, Marance rose and glided backward from the writhing ball of purple phosphorescence, maintaining the distance between himself and his adversary, interposing butcher-blocks between them.

  "This is rather a pity," the wizard said. "If I have to fight one of you Uskevren face to face, by rights, it ought to be my principal enemy, Thamalon."

  "I disagree," Shamur said. "You murdered my grand-niece and made me into your pawn, so I deserve the satisfaction of killing you. I've been hoping for a chance to confront you when you weren't surrounded with a horde of protectors."

  "Then you're in luck," he replied, "for I've pretty much expended all my summoning spells already. But I really don't think I'll need them to dispose of you."

  He reached inside his voluminous mantle. She sprang up onto a heaving table and charged him, bounding from one butcher-block to the next. He couldn't use them to impede her advance if she was running on top of them.

  Still retreating, he brought out a feather, an article which she, who had known her share of wizards, recognized as one element of a spell of flight. She had to prevent him from casting it, or he'd soar up beyond her reach and magically smite her at his leisure. Reciting a rhyme, he twirled the quill through a complex mystical pass, and magenta sparks danced along its length. Meanwhile, still running, she transferred the broadsword to he
r left hand, drew her dagger with her right, and threw it.

  She was grimly certain the quaking would hamper her aim, and in fact, the cast missed. But the knife flew close enough to his Man in the Moon mask to make him flinch, and the feather slipped from his grasp, disrupting the spell in progress.

  Not allowing him time to attempt any other magic, she plunged into the distance and cut at his head, a hard, direct attack which, given that most spellcasters she'd known were not exceptionally skilled at hand-to-hand combat, she fully expected to land. But with the facility of a master, Marance slapped the broadsword aside with his staff. The two weapons were only in contact for an instant, but purple fire sizzled from the wooden one into Shamur's blade.

  Wracked with pain, shuddering uncontrollably, she saw her opponent spin the staff to deliver another blow. Unable to parry, dodge, or counterattack in her current state, she floundered desperately backward and fell off the back of the table.

  Once again, she crashed down with bruising force, but almost felt that the impact jarred some of the spasticity out of her, for her seizure abated somewhat. When, his staff weeping magenta flame, Marance scrambled around the table, she lurched to her knees and met him with a thrust to the groin. Since he halted abruptly, the attack didn't harm him, but it bought her a second to regain her feet. Then it was her turn to retreat and retreat while her twitching subsided.

  Abruptly, catching her by surprise, Marance stepped backward as well, putting space between them, snatched something out of his mantle, and murmured another incantation. Voices moaned and gibbered from the air, and shadows danced crazily.

  With terrible suddenness, bands of shimmering violet light appeared all around Shamur, thickening, meshing, rapidly combining to form a closed sphere. She lunged at one curved side of the trap and ripped at it, feeling the surface harden from a gummy consistency to steely hardness just as she forced her way through.