The Inquisitives [4] The Darkwood Mask

by Jeff LaSala

  “Tallis,” a voice said softly, and he whirled with his hammer ready to throw. Soneste stood there, her hands held out to show she meant peace.

  “I told you—” he began.

  Soneste pointed to the wall. “Look. The tapestry.”

  He followed her gaze, expectant. When he didn’t move, she walked across to stand in front of the Aerenal tapestry. She slipped her fingers behind one edge, peeling the layered fabric away from the wall to see behind it.

  Tallis stared at the violet, red, and gold threads and the beauteous spiraling patterns they formed. For a moment, Tallis succumbed to the glamer, but his trance ended abruptly when the tapestry shifted.

  “Help me with this,” Soneste said, trying to push her way behind the heavy fabric.

  He pulled the bottom of the tapestry up and away, giving her room. She prodded delicately at the smooth worked stone—looking for something? Some hidden niche in the wall? Tallis stared in shocked silence as one of Soneste’s fingers disappeared into the masonry. She reached tentatively further, until half her forearm had disappeared.

  “Illusion,” she murmured, more absorbed by her work than the discovery itself. “It’s not warded or trapped. It’s just … a disguised door.”

  “How did you know this was here?” he asked. Tallis had learned over the course of his career how to identify and even disable many magical traps and hidden doors. Most of the time, one didn’t need magical expertise so much as an aptitude for disrupting someone else’s, yet in all this time, he’d never found this.

  “I didn’t.” Soneste sounded honest. “When I was here with Lenrik this morning, I just imagined it was possible there was a door behind this.”

  The art of possibilities. Soneste seemed to excel at that.

  “Slowly, now,” she said. She pulled a silver metal circlet from her haversack and slipped it around her head. Immediately, a white ball of light formed in the air above her shoulder. She stepped through the hidden door and vanishing from sight. For some reason he didn’t understand, Tallis did not want to enter. He didn’t want to know what Lenrik had hidden away.

  But circumstances demanded it. He followed, finding that he had to push aside a heavy curtain that lay across the unseen threshold. As he did, Tallis breathed in a spicy, souring aroma which seemed to cling to the fabric but had not drifted into the bedroom behind him.

  The chamber in which they found themselves was small, unremarkable in itself with a low, vaulted ceiling like many in the undercroft. It would take time to study all of the room’s strange contents, but Soneste found her eyes drawn immediately to an array of masks hanging from another, less exquisite tapestry on the left-hand wall. There were easily two dozen of them, crafted of wood and bone and painted to resemble grinning white skulls and visages of the animate dead. They stared back like gruesome sentries through empty eyes.

  Aerenal death-masks.

  It didn’t surprise her too much to see these here. Many elves in Khorvaire harbored at least some remnant of their homeland culture—as evidenced by the Aerenal tapestry itself—but unless he’d deceived everyone, Lenrik worshipped Aureon and the Sovereign Host exclusively—not the Undying Court of Aerenal.

  “Oh, Khyber.” There was dread in Tallis’s voice.

  At his words, Soneste looked beneath the assemblage of masks to what appeared to be a shelf of very old, desiccated skulls. Between a pair of liquid-filled goblets was a human head propped up to face them, the skin ash-gray and plastered tight against the skull beneath. The brown hair was lank, trailing only inches over the lip of the shelf. She stepped closer, needing to know … and she smelled the astringent stench of embalming fluid.

  Unless she was mistaken, she was looking at the severed and preserved head of Ambassador ir’Daresh.

  “Sovereigns preserve us,” Soneste whispered.

  “What is this?” Tallis said, breaking tension with outrage. He stared down at the dead face of Gamnon. “Lenrik can’t … can’t know about this.”

  “Tallis,” she breathed. “This is incriminating.”

  The Karrn gripped his hooked hammer in both hands, knuckles whitening. “What does Gamnon have to do with all this?” He gestured to the rest of the room, where Soneste saw a collection of shelves and other, more innocuous objects reminiscent of Aerenal culture.

  Soneste looked back to the head, feeling constricted, helpless. A burning suspicion began to grow within her. The trappings of this room were inconsistent. It was her understanding that the Aereni believed that death was merely a transcendent phase in a much longer spiritual journey. They imitated and revered their own dead ancestors, even called back their spirits to become deathless advisors, but as far as Soneste knew, they only mummified other Aereni. This didn’t look like the practice of the Undying Court.

  “I don’t know. We’ll find out.” Soneste pulled herself from her thoughts and set about examining the room, searching every space for further evidence. She drew her crysteel dagger and held it in hand.

  “He’s blessed water before,” she heard Tallis say, his voice hollow. “I’ve seen him do it. Made it holy. Burned the flesh of the undead. I’ve used it myself. He can’t have murdered innocents like this.”

  Soneste shook her head sadly and lifted a hand mirror carved of bronzewood. Beneath it was a sheaf of folded paper. She separated each piece and examined them. The first appeared to be a letter written in complex shorthand. The second—

  A diagram of the Ebonspire, the thirty-fourth level circled in black ink. Skull-shaped symbols were scrawled in the corner.

  Just then she heard a muffled cough from the behind the hidden door. She turned, meeting Tallis’s eyes. He nodded, his face pale. She set the mirror down and drew her rapier, shifting her dagger to her left hand.

  Her heart hammered inside her when she saw that it was Lenrik himself who stepped slowly through the false wall. He looked upon them uncomprehendingly, his angular features wan and vaguely distraught.

  “Tallis, what …” The elf’s voice dissolved into a fit of coughing. He looked ill.

  Tallis approached his friend with his weapon lowered but still grasped tightly. “Lenrik, what is this?” He pointed the pick’s head to Gamnon’s withered head. “What did you do? To him, to his family!”

  The priest tried to shake his head, then reached out his hand to steady himself against the wall. “I don’t …”

  “What is this?” Tallis’s eyes glistened with tears.

  Lenrik’s eyes widened as he followed Tallis’s gesture. Was it feigned horror or genuine revulsion upon his face? Soneste refrained herself from casting out her empathic net—the anger and shock was too strong here, even within her, to give her an accurate assessment.

  Lenrik leaned heavily against the wall, coughing again. His other hand grasped for Aureon’s symbol around his neck. He began to murmur a spiritual incantation, the words slurring sleightly. A soft emerald light shone from his fingertips.

  Tallis stepped forward and tore the priest’s hands away from the symbol, disrupting the spell almost without effort. “Tell me, damn you!” he demanded.

  “My friend,” Lenrik moaned, then dropped hard to his knees.

  Tallis caught him before he collapsed completely to the ground. Soneste steadied him from behind, carefully watching the elf’s hands for signs of deception or sleight of hand.

  Instead she saw a glimmer of moisture at the base of Lenrick’s neck. His hair had fallen away from it, revealing a small but angry red slash. The skin around it was purple and swelling fast.

  “Poison,” she said, feeling ice riming her guts.

  Tallis pulled his friend closer. “Sovereigns,” he breathed, unsure what to do. “Try again. Try again!” He grabbed the priest’s hand and wrapped it forcibly around the bronzewood symbol. “Aureon, heal him!”

  “Give him this,” Soneste said, offering the minor healing draught she’d carried with her since leaving Investigative Services. She had no idea if it could help. The Karrn forced the
solution down Lenrik’s throat, massaging his neck to ease its passage inside. The elf had gone entirely limp

  “Upstairs!” Soneste suddenly said. There were priests milling around just above them in the worship hall. “Tallis, carry him. Upstairs. We’ll get help.”

  The Karrn nodded and gathered the stricken elf in his arms. As he rose, they heard muffled voices and the unmistakable clanking of armor beyond the hidden door. Soneste felt resignation sink into her at last. Enough subterfuge, then.

  She backed away as a handful of White Lions stormed into the room, evidently well aware of the hidden door or directed by someone who was.

  “Drop your weapons!” the lead sergeant demanded with an upraised battle-axe.

  Chapter

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Apprehension

  Wir, the 11th of Sypheros, 998 YK

  Alinda entered the shrine of Aureon dauntless as any of Karrnath’s warlords. Retired Major Jotrem Dalesek, a man she’d known only by name and reputation, had led a squad of Lions into the cathedral only minutes ago, citing the need to apprehend a dangerous criminal within. She’d been hastily summoned to speak with him and decided immediately that she did not like the man. Fifty years in the service of Korth and three major sieges against the city had gifted Alinda with a swift and accurate judgment of character.

  “Tallis is a severe threat to the state,” he’d said.

  “The cathedral maintains its own security, Major.” She’d pointed to the Deneith soldiers gathering beside her. “They quarter on church grounds, for Host’s sake!”

  “It is my understanding that the priest Lenrik Malovyn has harbored this man for a very long time, Prelate,” Jotrem said. “With all due respect, we cannot risk treating with others who may have him in confidence.”

  “Such as myself?” Alinda had smirked. Jotrem was at least a decade younger than she. She wasn’t afraid of him in the sleightest. The very idea of Lenrik, hiding a fugitive of the law. Not likely. She was confident that the elf could dissolve this confusion.

  “The men entrusted to me were named by General Thauram himself.”

  “Very well, Major,” she’d said, fully intent upon verifying his claim after the fact, “but I will accompany you.”

  Aureon’s shrine had appeared vacant when they’d entered, but for a single Vassal pulling herself up from prayer in one of the pews. She was a thickset woman almost Alinda’s own age, with a kindly face and a startled expression when she saw the prelate and the soldiers arrayed around her.

  “Excuse me, my lady,” the old woman—Mova, wasn’t it?—said and hurried away.

  Alinda followed the brazen inquisitive and his squad of soldiers. On the off chance that Major Dalesek’s words held some truth, she’d shielded herself and the guards with a prayer. Two of the Deneith soldiers flanked her, magewrought steel ready in hand.

  They’d descended to the undercroft of Aureon’s shrine, entering one of the storage chambers as Jotrem set about examining the walls as all the guards watched. He’d seemed sure of himself, but she didn’t like his pace. Alinda hadn’t been down here herself in some time. Most of her meetings with the shrinekeepers took place in the sanctuary or in her own office.

  “Here, Prelate,” Jotrem had said, pushing away Lenrik’s tapestry with the help of a pair of guards. “A door.”

  The cathedral had many such hidden compartments, but Alinda had not been aware of this one. Why hadn’t Lenrik told her? Had there been truth to the inquisitive’s claim? Jotrem had ordered his men through the illusionary wall, and Alinda pushed her way through them, unwilling to be left behind the group. The Sovereign Host guarded her, she had nothing to fear.

  “Out of the way,” she said irritably

  “Drop your weapons!” she’d heard the lead soldier shout to someone beyond the illusory wall.

  What her eyes took in when she stepped into the hidden room Alinda was not prepared for. Lenrik, lying limp and sickly in the arms of a bewildered half-elf. A blue-coated, blonde young woman, armed with a rapier and a purple-tinged dagger, both pointed at the White Lions. Behind them, a room draped with adornments, peculiar if not heretical. The Aerenal art was a mere oddity. She’d met many elves in her long life, but only those from warlike Valenar had ever troubled her.

  But it was the taint of the necromancy which disturbed her most. The shelf of mummified heads offended her utterly—especially the recently decapitated human head. This place was consecrated ground. How dare anyone despoil the shrine of Aureon with such grisly trophies! On impulse, Alinda called to the Host to quell the chamber of its unholy aspect.

  Soneste considered retaining her weapons, considered resisting this. Things needed sorting out. If everyone would just wait, she felt certain she could solve the puzzle of inconsistencies this secret chamber presented.

  Then a strong female voice pushed away all other thoughts. “Dol Arrah, purge this corruption from our presence!”

  For a moment, blinding white light flooded the chamber. The supplication was followed by a litany of words from an older woman, sounding more like a language of primal power than a wizard’s calculated chant. Soneste felt her muscles seize up preternaturally, her limbs overwhelmed with stiffening force.

  One of the White Lions smacked her rapier blade with his axe, wrenching the weapon painfully from her frozen grip then plucked the dagger from her hand. Another of the Lions—Sergeant Bratta, whom she had questioned a few days ago—advanced on Tallis and struck him in the head with a mailed fist.

  “That’s only the beginning, scum!” the man promised.

  Soneste’s eyes remained on the woman. She found she could not tear them away from that fixed point even if she wanted to, constrained by magic. She deduced that this must be Prelate Roerith herself, the high priestess of the Cathedral. Her long silver hair hung loose, her dark eyes clouded by sudden grief. She moved beyond Soneste’s clear sight over to Lenrik, where the White Lions had taken hold of Tallis. The Karrn, a dusky shape in her periphery, made no attempt to resist.

  “Blessed Boldrei,” the prelate intoned with great passion. “Cast your healing spirit upon this servant of your lord and husband.” More undecipherable, crooning words followed, and tiny points of bright light shone from the priestess’s fingertips as she laid them upon Lenrik’s shoulders and neck.

  Anger coursed through her mind as Soneste saw a new figure moved from the blurred edges of her vision into the sharp center. Jotrem! Yet there was a measure of anxiety in his still-bruised face. He met her eyes.

  Prelate Roerith’s words halted abruptly. She expected to hear the elf cough again as the healing power of the Sovereign Host had poured into him through the hands of one its greatest mortal servants. Instead, cold silence.

  “He is dead,” she said, her voice lamented. For just that moment, Soneste was sure she saw relief flicker across Jotrem’s features.

  Soneste’s mind spiraled inward. So much had happened too fast. Was this meant to frame Lenrik? Who but Lenrik himself could enter the undercroft of Aureon’s shrine and find this place?

  She began to follow the path of events backwards more thoroughly—to return along the mystic avenues to that place in her mind where all images were stored, all words were memorized—when she heard her name spoken aloud. A question had been asked.

  “An inquisitive from Breland,” Jotrem answered the priestess, “who came on her government’s behalf to investigate the murder of Gamnon ir’Daresh. The ambassador, Prelate Roerith, whose head was—”

  “I know what happened,” the elderly woman said quietly, but her voice was steady, demanding. “And you?”

  Soneste’s muscles were slowly easing from the magical grip. She was able to move her eyes again, so she watched as the prelate walked over to Tallis, where he was held by three White Lions. Soneste had never seen him look so defeated, not even after the death of Haedrun.

  “You are Tallis? I am told my friend, Lenrik, was safeguarding you from the reach of the White Lions and from t
he Justice Ministry. My friend is dead now, presumably at your hands. Is this true?”

  Whatever the truth of it, Tallis had known nothing of this room, nor the cause of Lenrik’s death. Someone had gotten to Lenrik first. Someone close by.

  Tallis said nothing, merely stared at the floor like the lost soul he was.

  Jotrem walked around the room, peering at its contents. She heard him rifle through the papers on one shelf then clear his throat. “Prelate Roerith, what we have found in this room demands explanation. I understand that, but time is of the essence. We will sort out the details later, and I will certainly call on you when we do. I must escort the criminal to Ministry headquarters. Please leave this chamber as we have found it, so we may—”

  “It is blasphemous, Major,” she said, looking at the shelf of heads. “I will not tolerate the presence of these a moment longer.”

  “I will send an associate of mine to investigate,” he said, “so that it may be quickly removed, but we must document these crimes, prelate, if you would see justice done. As for … your friend, I will summon an agent of—”

  “Neither the corpse collectors nor any Cultists of Vol will set foot in the cathedral.” The prelate stroked the dead elf’s hair and closed his eyes for him. Soneste could see that the discoloration had vanished from his skin. The poison had been purged, but the prelate’s spell could not bring him back from death. “I will tend to Lenrik myself.”

  “As you wish.” Jotrem nodded. He turned to Soneste. “Miss Otänsin, you may accompany us, if you wish. Out of respect for the King’s Citadel, you will not be arrested at this time, but you will answer for consorting with a wanted criminal.”

  He turned to the guards. “Return Miss Otänsin her weapons.”

  It didn’t add up. None of it. Soneste saw evidence to suggest that Lenrik had planned for Tallis to be the dupe but was betrayed in the end by a third, but that wasn’t right either. She knew she could solve this but needed some time and the freedom to do it. There was something about the whole scenario that felt … intentionally inaccurate?