The Shattered Mask s-3

by Richard Lee Byers

  By that time, Marance was already completing another spell. A flare of dark power leaped from his pointed index finger. Shamur threw herself flat, and the magic sizzled over her. Even though it missed, for an instant, it made her jerk with agony.

  She decided she couldn't allow him any more free shots at her while she was out of distance. Sooner or later, she wouldn't be able to dodge. She scuttled behind a butcher-block, then darted in his approximate direction from one such piece of cover to the next, scrambling on all fours, never presenting a target for more than an instant.

  As she advanced, she heard him chanting in some bizarre tongue that was all grunts and consonants, but as far as she could tell, the spell had no effect. No destructive power blazed in her direction, nor did her surroundings alter.

  Finally she was close enough to rush in and attack him. Somehow divining her location, he pivoted in her direction, settled into a fighting stance, and lifted the sparking, smoldering staff into a strong guard.

  She nearly hesitated, for she was sure that last spell had achieved something, had set some sort of snare for her. But she couldn't very well retreat and permit him to strike her down from behind, then resume demolishing the bridge. She had no choice but to fight him, and so she bellowed and charged, trusting to her skills and aggression to see her through whatever surprise he had devised.

  When she was nearly close enough to attack, her eyes met the strange, pale ones shining inside the sockets of the sickle-shaped mask, and Marance spoke a word of power. At that instant, Shamur's eyelids dropped, and her knees buckled, even as her mind grew dull and somnolent. She barely noticed Marance sweeping the staff around in a horizontal strike, and nearly failed to comprehend the significance as she did.

  Nearly, but not quite. She dropped beneath the blow and bit down savagely on her lower lip. The burst of pain helped clear her mind of the unnatural sleep that had threatened to overwhelm her.

  As she sprang up and came back on guard, she realized that Marance's last spell had given him a capacity somewhat like the basilisk that nightly guarded Argent Hall. He could now induce unconsciousness with his gaze, which meant it was perilous even to glance at his pearly eyes. In fact, she thought with a sudden, unexpected swell of her old daredevil's exultation, given all the wizard's advantages, this would almost certainly be the most challenging duel of her career.

  Grinning, she feinted a thrust at Marance's foot, then, when the staff whipped down to club her wrist, she lifted the broadsword to cut his forearm. Retreating a half step, he spun his length of polished wood in a parry, and she snatched her blade back a split second before the two weapons could clash together.

  He swung the staff at her head, and she jumped back out of range. At that point, he too tried to retreat, and she sprang forward to keep him from withdrawing too far away. She had to press him hard at all times, never allowing him a single moment's respite to cast a spell.

  As they battled on, the crackling staff leaped at Shamur time after time, burning brighter and brighter, its corona of magenta fire burning streaks of afterimage across her sight. She ducked when the weapon shot at her head, jumped over it when it swept toward her ankles, sidestepped blows, or evaded them by hopping backward out of range, sometimes avoiding calamity with less than an inch to spare. Whenever Marance gave her a chance, she struck at him in turn, relying on compound attacks to draw the staff out of line and counterattacks to catch him at the moment he started to swing or thrust at her. She made sure above all else that whether her action succeeded or not, he wouldn't be able to bring his weapon into contact with her own.

  Considering the handicaps she was laboring under, her mere survival demonstrated that she was fencing as brilliantly as she ever had in her life. But even so, she couldn't penetrate his guard, and soon, she would begin to slow down, for no one could fight as furiously, as she was, never pausing for an instant to catch her breath, without flagging fairly quickly. Meanwhile, if Marance felt any fatigue, he wasn't showing it, and she feared that such mortal limitations were meaningless to the dead.

  If she didn't find a way to kill him quickly, he was going to do the same to her, and she could only think of one tactic that might serve.

  Marance twirled the burning, crackling staff in a move calculated to draw Shamur's eyes to his face. He'd attempted the trick before, and, recognizing it for what it was, she'd refused to fall prey to it. Now, however, she intentionally did what he wanted her to do, praying that, having resisted the magical slumber once, she could do so a second time.

  Marance spoke the magic word, and gray oblivion surged into her mind. Suddenly, everything was dull, distant, meaningless, and, her body numb and leaden. She simply wanted to collapse onto the cobbles and sleep.

  Then some defiant part of her remembered Thamalon and the children, dependent on her to save their lives, and, biting her lip bloody, she thrust the lethargy away.

  The magic had staggered her, and, pretending she was still in its grip, she continued to reel, meanwhile watching Marance through slit eyes. When he stepped in to bash her head with the staff, she lunged so deeply it carried her beneath the arc of the blow and buried the broadsword in his chest.

  Now it was the wizard's turn to stumble, dropping the staff as he blundered backward. The sizzling sparks blinked out as the rod clattered on the cobbles. Shaking, he struggled to lift his fair, delicate hands, seemingly to bring his iron thumb rings together.

  Shamur had no idea what that would accomplish, but, suspecting she wouldn't like it very much, she yanked her weapon from his torso, flicked off the thumb of his right hand, then cut at his head. The broadsword shattered the crescent mask and crunched deep into the skull beneath.

  Marance collapsed. Believing that one couldn't be too careful with the undead, Shamur, panting, watched him for a time to make sure she really had destroyed him, and while she was so engaged, she noticed that at some point during the duel, the bridge had stopped shaking.

  Apparently it wasn't going to fall.

  Chapter 22

  The Drum and Mirror possessed a verandah overlooking the bay, a railed porch warded against cold weather by the same sort of enchantment that protected the Wide Realms. Slumped there now, filthy, sore, weary to the bone, yet actually feeling fine, Talbot savored the warmth of the mulled wine glowing in his belly and the splendor of the red and golden dawn flowering above the Sea of Fallen Stars. His equally grubby and battered parents and siblings sat with him, likewise gazing to the east, and amazingly, whether exhaustion or contentment was responsible, it appeared that no one in his loquacious, quarrelsome family had a word to say.

  After, as Talbot now knew, Mother had killed Marance Talendar, the wizard's conjured minions had fought on for a little while longer, then, one species at a time, vanished back to wherever he'd summoned them from. That, however, had scarcely been the end of the family's labors. Father had immediately gotten them started digging through the rubble of the several collapsed houses to rescue whomever might be trapped inside. In time, other residents of the bridge and a troop of Scepters had joined the effort, but the task had taken several hours even so.

  It was finished now, and here the Uskevren were, all five of them basking in a rare moment of family amity. Then Tamlin straightened up a little, opened his mouth to speak, and Talbot winced, somehow knowing that his brother was about to spoil the mood.

  "I did well tonight, didn't I, Father?" asked Tamlin, fatuously, in Talbot's jaundiced opinion.

  Father smiled. "Yes, son. All three of you did."

  "Then maybe this is a good time for me to tell you something," Tamlin said. "You know those dreary men from Raven's Bluff and wherever else it was?"

  Father frowned. "The emissaries? Of course. What about them?"

  "Well," the younger man said, "to tell you the truth, I sent them packing."

  "You what?"

  "Well, they just babbled on and on, and I didn't understand a word of it. I thought it would make life easier if I simply got rid
of them, the better to focus on the effort to find you and Mother and catch the rogue who was trying to assassinate us. So I broke off the talks, trying to be nice about it, though I must confess, the outlanders seemed rather peeved even so. They said they would sail for home forthwith."

  "You imbecile!" Father roared, his face ruddy with anger. "Do you know how much money that alliance would bring in?" He made a visible effort to rein in his temper, and Talbot could all but hear the wheels turning as Thamalon began to ponder how to salvage the situation. "I have commitments that absolutely preclude my leaving Selgaunt for at least a month, and by then some other House will have gotten in ahead of us. You, boy, must journey east in my stead. You'll apologize profusely for rebuffing the envoys, spread a fresh round of gifts and bribes about, and resume the negotiations."

  Tamlin grimaced. "I told you, I wouldn't know what to say, and in all candor, I really feel that these past couple days, I've done my bit to serve the family already. Besides, I have commitments, too. I've already accepted invitations to any number of parties and balls."

  "Fine," Father snapped. He turned to Tazi. "You'll go."

  "No, I won't," she replied. "Tamlin's the heir, and if he isn't willing to shoulder the responsibilities of his position, I don't see why I should have to take up the slack, particularly now that I've just gotten over being ill. I'm planning to enjoy myself, not sit cooped up in a room and dicker endlessly over the price of knickknacks, or whatever it is you'd want me to discuss."

  "So be it," Father said. He pivoted toward Talbot. "And what do you say, lad?" Tal could see the anticipatory disgust in the old man's eyes, the expectation that his youngest child, like the others, would disappoint him.

  Rather to his own surprise, Talbot felt a momentary impulse to surprise his sire, to please him for once by undertaking this task and performing it well. But he knew he couldn't journey to a strange city. The full moon was coming, and it must find him locked in his cage backstage at the Wide Realms when it arrived. "I can't go either," he said. "Mistress Quickly has cast me in her current play and the two that will follow."

  "You feckless ingrates," Father began, trembling.

  Mother, looking utterly strange with her blisters, scrapes, bruises, and torn lower lip, her masculine clothing and short, dyed hair, laid her hand on his arm. To Talbot's surprise, the gesture sufficed to make the old man pause in mid-diatribe.

  "You have a choice," Mother said. "You can take their recalcitrance to heart, or you can remember the valor they displayed earlier, and be proud."

  The corners of Father's mouth quirked upward. "You have a point. For the moment, I will be proud, albeit grudgingly. Will you stroll with me to the far end of the porch?"

  "All right," she said. As they walked away, Talbot wondered what they had to say that they didn't want their children to overhear.

  *****

  For some reason, Shamur felt awkward and flustered, and it was worse when she looked at Thamalon. Hands resting on the railing at the edge of the verandah, where the enchantment of warmth gave out, she gazed out at the gorgeous sunrise gilding the rippled surface of the sea. The cold breeze smelled of salt water.

  "I was just wondering," Thamalon said, a bit diffidently, "how soon you'll be moving out of Stormweather Towers, and where you'll go when you do. Obviously, you don't need to run all the way to Cormyr anymore, unless it's what you want. I'm sure Fendolac would welcome you back at Argent Hall."

  Once again, a knot of emotion tightened painfully in her chest, and this time, at long last, she understood precisely what she was feeling, just as she knew there was nothing to be done about it.

  "Perhaps Argent Hall would be a good choice," she said, striving to be austere, dignified Lady Uskevren, with never a hint of distress in her tone or expression.

  And it was that very reflexive attempt at masking her true self that abruptly snapped her to her senses. Since Thamalon now knew who she really was, she didn't have to deceive him anymore. If she was willing to risk a bit more heartache and a wound to her pride, she could speak to him honestly at last.

  She forced herself to turn and face him.

  "Do you want me to go?" she asked.

  His green eyes blinked in surprise. "No, milady. Despite all the quarrels and misunderstandings, I've always cared for you, and after these recent days, I think I love you better than before." He smiled for an instant.

  "Apparently I like it when a woman tries to kill me. I only asked about your intentions because I thought you wished to leave."

  "At one point, so did I," she replied, "but gradually, I realized something. Somehow, by preventing you from truly knowing me for all those years, I likewise kept myself from perceiving you as you truly are. But the last three days have opened my eyes, and I see someone rather grand. I'd like to come to know him better, if it's not too late."

  Thamalon beamed, an expression of such naked joy that it pierced her soul. "Even though he's an old man?"

  "Yes. Judging from the way he handles a long sword, he still has a little life in him. So I ask to be your wife, my lord, a truer, fonder wife than I was before. I'll renounce swords and adventure and become my grand-niece once again." The declaration brought an upwelling of bitter anguish, and she swallowed it back down as best she could. She had made her choice, and must strive not to pine for all it would cost her. "I just hope I can resume the masquerade successfully. I thought I could hunt for Master Moon and still safeguard my secret, but it didn't work out very well. Nuldrevyn knows who I truly am, and even if he doesn't tell, any number of people have now seen the refined, weapons-hating Lady Uskevren brawling in the streets. It's possible that one of them will figure out that the Shamur of today and the thief of yore are one and the same."

  Thamalon chuckled. "You do talk nonsense sometimes." She peered at him quizzically. "What do you mean?" "That if nobody else reveals your secret, we Uskevren will do it ourselves. Think about it. You committed your robberies almost a century ago. Nobody's outraged about them anymore. To the Selgaunt of today, Shamur the thief is a charming rascal in a series of amusing stories, not a threat to the common weal. Moreover, you're now the hero who prevented the destruction of the High Bridge. I very much doubt that anyone will want to arrest you for your past indiscretions, and if they should, we'll buy them off."

  "Then I could live as I please," she murmured, not quite daring to believe it.

  "Well, you can't go back to plundering our peers," Thamalon said. "That's simply not appropriate for the mistress of a great House. But I daresay we can satisfy your yen for mayhem somehow. You can fence, of course. Travel with our caravans and argosies and fend off brigands and pirates. Help stamp out the Quippers. Bear your sword against the Talendar, Soargyls, or our other rivals, the next time they take it into their heads to exterminate us. I only insist on one condition. Should anybody inquire, I always knew who you truly were."

  "Agreed," Shamur said, and then, heedless of their dignity, of the eyes of their astonished children or anyone else in the tavern, she and Thamalon embraced.

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