The Inquisitives [4] The Darkwood Mask

by Jeff LaSala

  “It is, my lord,” the thug rumbled.

  Charoth turned to regard Gan again. At least he thought so. It was always difficult to tell where the Masked Wizard’s gaze was directed.

  “Unless, of course, the user in question is a dreamlily addict. As I was unaware of your dependency—or indeed of your possession of the illegal drug at all—I find myself sorely disappointed.” Charoth paused again, tilting his head sleightly. “Have I been remiss about your well being, Gan?”

  “No, lord,” the changeling managed to gasp.

  How many times had he stood by as his employer spoke this calmly to men and women who’d earned his wrath? Gan had watched others beg, weep, and wet themselves under such scrutiny. He was not accustomed to bearing it himself. He steeled his nerves, determined to maintain his courage. He was, after all, too important to be dismissed from service. Charoth needed him.

  “How very comforting to hear,” Charoth said, straightening.

  He made a small gesture with one gloved hand, and Rhazan relaxed his cruel chain. Gan was able to stand again on his own feet. He longed to massage the raw flesh of his neck, but suffered in silence to salvage his dignity.

  “But there is still the uncertain matter of your whereabouts last night. I was entertaining guests, Gan, and you were not there to attend me. Could it be that you had simply forgotten? Or had I given you personal leave?”

  Gan made his face impassive, relying upon the malleability of his changeling skin to hold it still. Last night’s errand was one of his own freelance jobs—not something he wished to connect to his employer. In one panicked moment, he remembered that he’d fallen into the ‘lily’s embrace at his flat in the morning hours—what time was it now? Charoth’s men must have found him there. What had they seen? What had he left out as evidence of his deed?

  “Lord Charoth,” came another voice, a woman’s impatient hiss. “This is taking too long.”

  By the Traveler! Was she here, too? Gan hated the old crow and her condescending tongue.

  “My lord,” he answered, attempting a sleight bow, but his neck only rattled the chain Rhazan still held ready. “I am sorry … for all of this. But you had given me the night off, as well as today. I would never have indulged in … any diversions had I expected you to call on me today.”

  “Ahh. My own apologies, then,” Charoth answered. “My memory isn’t as sharp as it once was. All that remains, then, is the matter of my negligence regarding your personal vice.”

  The Masked Wizard gingerly pulled one glove from his hand, an act Gan had never seen before. An unpleasant aroma arose from the mottled flesh of his lord’s hand. Gan could see almost every vein in the wizard’s hand, resembling black worms beneath the unwholesome skin. He tried desperately not to wince at the sight or smell and knew Rhazan must be doing the same. Their lord’s disfigurement was not something of which his retainers spoke. It was understood.

  Charoth held up the glass vial with his hideous hand, seeming to inspect it in the firelight. There were no windows this deep within the factory, and Gan assumed they now occupied one of the storage rooms beneath factory floor. The heat alone gave testament.

  “Dreamlily is a Brelish problem, Gan, trafficked through the black markets of Sharn. I will not waste your time or mine to ask you how or why you procured this filthy substance in our city. It has no place in my employ, and you will not use it again.” Charoth tossed the vial to the floor at Gan’s feet, where it shattered into several pieces.

  “Of course, my lord,” Gan answered, head bowed. “It will … not be a problem.”

  The old priestess laughed. She stood somewhere in the shadows beyond. Gan couldn’t even glare at her.

  “You mean to speak the truth, Gan, but addiction is a tenacious thing. It takes only a single weak link to break a strong chain. I will not have such a poison compromise your excellent skills or the integrity of my estate. Understand, you are a worthy investment, and I mean to protect that investment. Master Rhazan?”

  Charoth nodded to the bugbear, and the spiked chain was drawn back again, harder now. Gan tried to scream, but the thug’s fist slammed into the small of his back and robbed him of his breath. Dropping hard to his knees, his pale flesh was ground hard into the broken shards of glass. Through the haze of agony that followed, Gan was aware of his employer watching his anguish without comment. He could almost see those sickly fingers clutching the vulture-headed, blue glass cane his lord always carried.

  The crushing force of Rhazan’s grip returned and Charoth began to evaporate from Gan’s view, as slowly as he’d first appeared.

  “Are you still alive?” Valna asked, drawing a scimitar of razor-edged bone. The dead woman smiled, rotted teeth elongating into fangs, then she slashed at his throat.

  Tallis woke from the nightmare with a reflexive spasm.

  He opened his eyes. Distorted visions of bloodshed crowded his mind, leaking from his dreaming conscious like brackish water. He thought of the war, of the battlefields he’d surveyed and the hundreds who had fallen. Surely what happened last night could be nothing worse than that. What was the slaughter of one family compared to the thousands slain in the Last War?

  “Not good,” he said to the ceiling above him.

  Realizing that he lay in bed, Tallis sat up. Every bruise and cut on his body chose that moment to protest the harried flight of the night before. He remembered the White Lion who had trained the crossbow at him, then looked to his leg where the bolt had pierced him. A fresh bandage was wrapped tightly around his calf, but he could barely feel it—the result of magical healing.

  Tallis surveyed the room, which smelled faintly of familiar incense. The curtains of the small basement window were drawn, but he could see the glimmer of daylight beneath. His magic rods lay on a small table alongside his belt, a dagger, and his darkvision lenses—one of the frames was now empty. Damn. Those were on loan.

  He was dressed only in his smallclothes, and the purplish flesh of the bruises along his arms and legs stood out. His torn clothing from the night before was in a bundle on the floor. His boots sat against the wall next to a fresh set of clothes, neatly folded. The crossbow bolt had made a sizable hole in the fine leather of his boots.

  “Oh, not good,” he said again, wondering how much Verdax would charge him for the repair. Flesh, it had always seemed, could be mended more easily than enchanted leather.

  With a start, he realized that his hooked hammer was missing as well. He strained to remember where he’d lost it. After clearing the roof of the adjacent tower, Tallis couldn’t recall what had happened next. He only remembered running.

  The distant murmur of voices had Tallis moving to the door, where he cracked it open and listened. Beyond lay a dark hall with brazier light spilling down a narrow stair from the main floor. Tallis proceeded up the stairs. When he reached the first landing, he stopped to listen to the conversation in the chancel above. Sound carried well within the stone halls of the temple, especially here in the undercroft.

  “—will come to an end, as all things do.” The voice was strong, delivered with a conviction Tallis could associate with none other than his friend Lenrik.

  “But what of his soul?” The other voice belonged to a woman of middling years. She sounded frightened, desperate to be convinced.

  “Mova, your son was—is—a soul. He had a body, yes, but he has passed from it. What you saw was the vessel your son once possessed—and nothing more. That body, that shell, is a property of the crown now, and though our faith protests such indignities, in the end it does not matter. We are spiritual beings given life by the Sovereign Host—all of us—and we will transcend physical limitations at the last, as has your son.”

  “But … does Aureon tell you all this? Can you hear him speak these things?”

  Tallis smiled sadly at the woman’s words. He’d asked Lenrik the same questions long ago. What, indeed, did the Sovereign of Law and Lore relay to the elf during his daily prayers, that he could be so sur
e?

  “Not in such words,” the elf answered. “The gods find better ways to be heard. Words are the clumsy tools we use when we can’t find that better way ourselves.” The elf gave a gentle laugh. “But yes, in many ways, I do hear him. You can, too, Mova. You just have to let him be heard.”

  Not so easy, old friend, Tallis thought. What will you say if she asks you about Dolurrh? Do you give her the beliefs of the Order or your own?

  Tallis crept up the last few stairs to peer around the corner into the shrine of Aureon. The sanctuary was large—the holy Octogram of the Sovereign Host carved in relief upon the marble floor and the white stone altar sculpted into the open book of Aureon’s symbol—but the adjoining worship hall of the cathedral proper dwarfed the whole shrine. There were only two people sitting together in the pews.

  “I will … try,” Mova said. She looked matronly, with gray hair and tired, red-rimmed eyes.

  She reached out to embrace the slim figure in the dark green cassock who sat beside her. The elf’s face was youthful, but Tallis knew Lenrik was more than twice the old woman’s age. Mova pulled slowly away, her hands clasping the elf’s shoulders as if he were a dear son of hers. “Thank you for listening to me again.”

  “My pleasure,” Lenrik said. “May Aureon and Boldrei preserve you, Mova.” Together they rose. For one moment, Tallis thought she saw him watching from the stairwell.

  We can’t have that, he thought. Tallis turned back and returned to the room and closed the door. He walked to the wall mirror and stared back at his own disheveled image. His shoulder-length black hair showed only a pretense of order and the stubble on his chin was considerably coarser than he last remembered. What time of day was it?

  He crossed to the corner where his and Lenrik’s game of Conqueror awaited. He examined Lenrik’s latest move. The elf’s king was only three squares from Tallis’s chancellor, who in turn shielded his own monarch from Lenrik’s legionnaires. Tallis pondered his strategy for a long moment, then moved the chancellor out of the way. A bold ploy, to be sure, but Lenrik’s king would not be able to advance directly.

  Tallis turned his head and found himself staring into the wall tapestry, as he always did when visiting his old friend. It had been woven by Lenrik’s own great-grandmother in her youth, the only relic of the elf’s childhood in Aerenal. A sorceress of uncanny skill, she’d woven magic into the violet, red, and gold threads that allowed the delicate work to endure for so many centuries. As Tallis lay there, the hypnotic patterns calmed his mind, allowing his thoughts to return inevitably to Haedrun. Why would she set him up? Did she even know what she’d sent him into? Where was she now?

  Haedrun was a member of the Red Watchers, an organization dedicated to purging the taint of undeath that still pervaded Karrnath. It was this focus that had attracted Tallis to the Red Watchers when he’d first learned of them. Their interests were much like his own, but when Haedrun and her superiors had offered him membership in their secret society, he had politely declined.

  Haedrun had been hurt by his refusal. Though he had tried to give her reasons, he’d been unable to satisfy her need to understand. In the end, the Red Watchers were an organized network. He did not work well within such hierarchal confines. Never had. He had to do things his own way.

  Yet Tallis had maintained contact with the Red Watchers. Their shared objective kept him in touch, and he frequently exchanged information with them for mutual benefit. Haedrun was his only remaining contact among the Watchers, and after that incident with the Deneith mercenary, she’d grown cold even to him.

  Lenrik entered the room, unadorned as usual except for the holy symbol of Aureon that he always wore on a leather cord around his neck. He greeted Tallis with a sad smile, eyes concerned but utterly without judgment. It was a look that Tallis had needed many times, but never more than now. The memory of the previous night was still too close.

  Lenrik closed the door quietly behind him. “Will you tell me about it?” he asked, sitting in a stiff-backed chair.

  Tallis hesitated, then pointed to his leg. “Thanks.” Lenrik waved his hand dismissively. Tallis had heard him explain it many times before. There was no longer a need to. It was Aureon’s will to heal him, the priest always insisted. Tallis wasn’t so sure he was doing any god’s work, but they hadn’t argued such theology in a very long time.

  “Murder at the Ebonspire,” Lenrik said. “You were involved somehow?”

  “How did you know?”

  “The incident is drawing quite a bit of attention. A chronicler from the Sentinel was nosing around among the flock this morning after worship, asking questions of everyone. There is talk of an assassination.”

  Tallis groaned. “When and how did I come in here last night? I’m a bit muddled on that part.”

  “You entered through the side door, making no small amount of noise when you did. Had you come one hour before that, you would have interrupted a visit from Alinda.” He offered a weak smile. “I’d say we’re cutting it very close this time, Tallis. You must take this one seriously.”

  Tallis sighed. Prelate Alinda Roerith was the head of Korth’s Cathedral of the Sovereign Host. She was Lenrik’s superior, a high priestess, and a politically connected heroine of the Last War. Sympathetic as the prelate would be to Tallis’s opposition to the Blood of Vol and its sponsors, an encounter with her would have been very bad for both of them.

  No one knew of Tallis’s friendship to Lenrik, the esteemed caretaker of Aureon’s shrine. Aside from his flat in the Commerce Ward, this was Tallis’s only safe house in the city, and Lenrik was the only one he could trust unconditionally. Even if he evaded the Justice Ministry’s scrutiny, Lenrik’s religious vows would be called into question by the clergy and the prelate herself. Aureon was the god of law, and Tallis had been on the wrong side of that particular ethos for years. Mere knowledge of Tallis, much less actively sheltering him, could condemn Lenrik to excommunication or worse.

  Tallis sat up. “I went there to take something—and that’s all—from someone. Just another well-to-do with too much gold and an unhealthy interest in the Blood. Apparently I was set up to take the blame for the massacre of a Brelish and his family. I saw it all happen, Lenrik. There were children …” Tallis stopped. The memory made him nauseous. “I’m … I’m taking this bloody seriously, don’t worry.”

  Lenrik folded his hands. “I heard the name ir’Daresh.”

  Tallis nodded, solemn. “It was him, Lenrik—all the more reason to think I’m being set up. He sure as Khyber looked different, but it was definitely him.”

  “Gamnon became an ambassador after the Treaty of Thronehold,” the elf said. “Hence the political ramifications. Didn’t you know this?”

  “Sovereign Host!” Tallis cursed. He’d long since stopped apologizing to the priest for taking the gods’ name in vain. “He became a politician? This is going to be complicated. What time is it now?”

  “Fourth watch,” Lenrik said.

  “I was out that long?”

  “You needed the rest.” The elf looked around the room as though he would find an idea amidst the trappings of the spare bedchamber. “What will you do now? You could disappear for a while. Return to Rekkenmark, perhaps? Get away from this dark cloud.”

  Tallis gave the thought only a moment of consideration. “No. I can’t just run from this one. I have to figure this out. The backstreets will be dark by the time I return. Besides, security’s going to get tight fast. They know who I am, and some of them saw me there. Getting out won’t be as easy as usual.”

  “You could visit her,” Lenrik said with a grim smile. The way his friend made allowances for him warmed Tallis’s heart. The Midwife, the woman in question, was as illegal as they came.

  “I thought of that,” he answered, “but even if I do, I can’t go tonight. She’s got rules about these things. And much as I love breaking rules, there are some people you just don’t cross. Besides, I’ve never gone to her for myself. It would be�
��”

  “Odd.”

  Tallis chuckled quietly for the first time since gaining consciousness. He fingered the frayed leather where the crossbow bolt had torn his boot. “I need to visit Verdax first, I think. I’m going to need every advantage in the coming days, so I’ll be clearing a few of my things out of here. Do some trading again.”

  “If I can help, Tallis, I will, but I need to know what happened. Will you tell me?”

  “No.” Tallis stood up. “You’ve done enough for me. Too much. I’m not going to get you involved in this, whatever happens. The less you know the better.”

  Seeing the priest open his mouth to retort, Tallis held up his hand. “No. Not this time.”

  Lenrik Malovyn watched his old friend go, slipping out of the west-facing sanctuary door onto the temple grounds. The grove of firs afforded Tallis enough cover to hide him, but he’d left in disguise as usual. Sovereign Lord, he prayed, watch over him now. He will need your vigilance to stay safe, and if it be your will, return him to me before long. His soul needs absolution.

  The elf returned to the spare room and gazed for a moment at the Aerenal tapestry. The magecraft his ancestor had woven into the fabric formed a subtle glamer designed to relax the mind. Centuries ago, in her time, Aereni wizards who served the Undying Court often used such works of art to steady their minds before attempting complex spellwork. Shortly after crafting this family heirloom, she’d passed into the next phase of existence—mortal death.

  Lenrik considered what lay beyond the ancient tapestry. Tallis wasn’t the only one with secrets.

  The hood was pulled over part of Tallis’s face, but not so low as to suggest he had anything to hide. He assumed the gait of an older man, an easier feat now that he was limping sleightly and his whole body was still sore. His left sleeve was folded up, fastened to his ragged cloak with a cheap brass pin. His arm was twisted behind him under the oversized garment, loosely bound in place and well within reach of his dagger.