The Inquisitives [4] The Darkwood Mask

by Jeff LaSala

  A ghastly cry, almost human, rose up from the night itself, sending a painful chill through his spine. Tallis grit his teeth and forced himself to turn, looking for the source. Soneste stood behind him, eyes searching left and right, her expression panicked. Tallis didn’t want to hear that wail again. It made him feel like a child hiding from the dark.

  “I see it,” Aegis said, and Tallis turned in time to see a lion-sized animal with motley skin and fur crash into the warforged from a low-hanging eave of the house.

  The weight of the beast bore the construct to the ground. Tallis lashed out with the mithral pick of his weapon, but it passed harmlessly through the creature. He remembered Soneste had warned him of this, a displacement glamer that made the yowler appear a short distance from its actual location. He swung again, guessing, and felt the mithral bite into the creature’s hide.

  A yelp of pain that sounded too much like a screaming child turned its glowing, catlike eyes upon him. It raked one hideous paw across Aegis’s chest, and the warforged lay perfect still. Tallis wondered if Aegis was dead.

  The yowler evidently thought so and padded off the construct to prowl around Tallis. Aegis rolled to his feet and smacked the buckler of his hand against the beast’s rump. It turned, snarling, and Tallis buried the pick’s head into its hide a second time.

  Man and warforged continued this barrage as Soneste backed away, evidently frightened by the preternatural yowl that gave the creature its name. Tallis noted that the creature seemed weakened by their blows only marginally. It was going to take a lot more to bring it down.

  Soneste managed to load her hand crossbow and aimed it with shaking fingers at the creature. A dart-sized bolt struck the beast on the head, leaving a welt that Tallis swore vanished only seconds later. It was time for a new tactic. He reached for one of his metal rods. The beast finally gave up trying to fight each of its opponents and focused exclusively on one: him.

  Tallis had no time to raise a defense as the thing launched itself in the air. Teeth clamped down on his arm, and its body weight—more than twice his own, easily—threw him to the ground. His sleeve ripped apart under its jaws, and Tallis could feel the sharp edges of its slavering, unwholesome teeth worrying at his flesh. The magic vambraces he’d borrowed from Verdax did their job, preventing the yowler from snapping through to the bone.

  Beyond the thing’s body, Tallis glimpsed both Aegis and Soneste swiping at it with their blades, but it was still taking too long. The yowler’s jaw was strong, and those teeth were bound to get through eventually.

  He heard Soneste call out in a quavering voice, “Audsh! Nerzhaat hak irezh!”

  The yowler paused for only a second, its stubby, hairless ears perking up at the sound of her voice and the peculiar words she’d used.

  Tallis used the moment to wriggle his left hand up to its head, where he put all of his strength into maneuvering the magic rod into its mouth. He felt his hand gummed by the creature’s saliva as it slid along the length of its tongue, but he pushed again, harder and harder. The yowler made a gagging sound, and Tallis pressed the activating button, locking it in space.

  The beast attempted to let out its cry again, but it was impeded by the metal wedged in its throat that would not move. The wheeze was painful to hear but not half as frightening. In a panic, it tried to jerk its head this way and that, hoping to break loose, hoping to vomit the offending object. Freed from its attention, Tallis slid himself away. He rose and joined Soneste and Aegis as they pushed their weapons again and again into its body.

  Blood spurted from empty space while the perceived body of the creature puckered into wounds too fast for it to mend in full. When the yowler’s muscles started to slacken, Aegis stepped over to its head and drove Haedrun’s blade into its neck repeatedly until it cut through it completely.

  “You speak—what was that, Orc?” Tallis retrieved his magic rod from the yowler’s head, which allowed the beast’s head drop to the ground.

  “No.” Soneste smiled and tapped her forehead. “I just have a good memory.” In truth, she was embarrassed at the fear that had taken hold of her when the creature had loosed its wail.

  The Karrn shrugged. “Disgusting,” he said, trying to scrape the beast’s vile saliva off his arm even as he returned the magic rod to his belt. He had his share of the yowler’s blood caked onto his body as well. “If I live through today, I think I’m going to be very sick later.”

  The trio approached the porch. Soneste looked up at the statue perched atop the dry fountain in front of it. The vulture-headed demon had not moved—in her imagination, it was a golem, ready to spring to life—but Soneste felt naked under its glass-eyed gaze. They still glowed with a soft, hellish red.

  “We need to hurry,” she said softly, following Tallis to the front door.

  The Karrn examined the entrance for signs of a trap. He didn’t bother picking at the lock. He lifted his hammer and brought down the head against the doorknob. Whether the weapon was magical or the metal it was forged from was something uncannily strong, the lock broke apart on the first swing.

  Aegis gazed out at the street. “It’s snowing,” he said.

  Soneste looked out into the darkness. She caught the tiny specks glistening in the air. Under other circumstances, she might have appreciated it. It never snowed in Sharn.

  Charoth was not bothered by the young woman’s screams. He’d worked under more clamorous conditions. Master Rhazan was strong enough to hold her still until the table did its work. Her strength would ebb soon enough. Not for the first time, he wondered if he should have insisted on choosing the other subject—one male’s life energy for another’s—but Mova had made her choice already and they’d come to an agreement. Today was not a day for changing plans. They’d been too long set into motion. The girl would do.

  It didn’t really matter. Both had the blood of Galifar flowing through their veins, a lineage that reached farther back in human history than any he’d researched. Mova had explained that the purer the blood, the stronger its memory, the more conducive it was to both arcane and divine magic. His initial experiments supported this claim.

  He was counting on it.

  Charoth continued his work until a galvanic pulse in his mind halted him again. A moment’s concentration revealed the sensory information that awaited him. He saw three figures rendered in the gray shades of darkvision pass below in the courtyard of his estate.

  Tallis, blood-stained and flushed from a fight, was the first.

  From the start, Charoth had wanted to channel the major’s wonderful resourcefulness into something more tangible than foolish nationalism. The half-elf wasted his efforts trying to rid the nation of its own vices—a lost cause. Tallis should not have come this far. His presence at Charoth’s estate troubled the wizard severely.

  A willowy figure followed the half-elf. Soneste, that damnable arriviste. What have you done with Gan? he asked her silently. What did he dare to tell you?

  A third, bulkier figure moved at the edge of the statue’s vision, but Charoth couldn’t refine it. The scrying eyes had its limitations.

  At least there were only three of them. They were fugitives of the law, so they would have no help, and who would believe them?

  His factory was impregnable tonight. Charoth had layered its entrances with wards of his own, and his magewrights had reinforced the doors. Even if the court wizards turned their magic upon his factory, it would take time to get in.

  He wrenched his mind free from the vision and turned to look across the table. Mova worked quietly, smoothing down the young woman’s arms with a sanitizing solution.

  “Lady,” Charoth said, addressing her after long minutes of silence between them. “There are intruders at my estate. And they have killed your pet, Master Rhazan.”

  The bugbear snarled from his post. “Let me go, my lord,” he said with a rattle of his chain.

  “You are needed here,” Charoth said

  “The construct, then,”
Mova offered nonchalantly.

  “No.” He would not explain his reasons again.

  “I will go there myself,” she suggested, “to put your mind at ease. My work, for the time being, is finished.”

  Charoth considered this. If Tallis found and killed Mova, he should be able to finish tonight’s work alone, but the final steps would be more difficult without her. She had already suffused the throne with divine spells. Whether this power originated from Mova, the apocryphal Vol herself, or some ambiguous spiritual “inner spark” Seekers always raved about, Charoth didn’t care, so long as it did its job.

  Still, he could trust no one else in this. “Thank you, Lady. It is imperative that they do not discover the—”

  “I am well aware, Lord Charoth. I will return swiftly.”

  As they searched the estate, Soneste’s thoughts roiled. Had she the time, she could send word by speaking stone back to Thuranne about their suspicion, but what if she was wrong? A clear threat to the peace of the Five Nations would have the King’s Citadel dispatching its best agents, including the Dark Lanterns. Would they get here in time, and what would happen to her if it was all a false alarm? After all, their strongest evidence was the testimony of a dreamlily addict.

  In less than a quarter hour, they’d searched most of the house. Adornments and other trappings of a wealthy man aside, the estate was disconcertingly empty. No servants, no traps. And no more monsters. A burglar’s dream. It was as though Charoth and his entire staff had vacated the house without selling it or its luxuries first.

  The last room to search was the master bedroom. A single crash of Tallis’s hammer on the lock and a heavy warforged foot forced the ornate mahogany doors open. The wide chamber was swathed in heavy cloths of green, gold, and black. Expensive furniture and paintings framed in precious metals exhibited the wealth of Charoth’s station. Even bereft of House Cannith, he’d obviously done well for himself.

  Tallis moved to secure all visible exits, while Soneste set out to find those less obvious. Aegis took up position at the center of the room, watching for intruders. She soon revealed a hidden door in a three-way mirror, which opened up into a spacious walk-in closet. The carpeting from the bedroom stretched into this one as well, while heavy curtains hung from each wall. A single window lay tightly shuttered on the northern wall, with a high-backed, velvet-padded chair facing it.

  “For a prisoner?” Tallis asked, stepping into the room behind her.

  Soneste dropped to one knee and studied the empty chair. “I don’t think so. Why keep a slave or captive in such a comfortable seat?” She ran her fingers along one of the padded arms, then lifted her hand to her nose. “Strange smell. Almost like … vinegar. Or brining solution.”

  Tallis pried open the shutters with the pick end of his hammer. “There’s a rumor that Charoth bathes in some sort of pickling liquid to keep his scarred flesh from sloughing off.”

  Soneste shook her head. “This whole place—the bedroom, the lavatory, this closet—is immaculate.”

  “He’s wealthy, with legions of maids and servants,” Tallis said. “Even his secret prisoner had a nice view of King’s Bay.”

  “No, it’s more than that. Either his servants are the best paid in the industry or … he doesn’t actually live here much. If at all.”

  Tallis turned to face her. “What do you mean?”

  “The bed hasn’t been used in weeks. Or months. Maybe this house is a front.”

  “For what?”

  “That’s why we’re here, right?” Soneste looked back to the empty chair. “This chair … it was occupied. Recently. The carpet shows plenty of movement too. Charoth, or someone, came through here a lot, but he didn’t stay here.”

  “So where next?” Tallis said.

  Soneste shut her eyes and visualized the entire house as she’d impressed it within her mind. They’d searched everywhere—the ground floor in its entirety, the two levels above, even the wine cellar. Ahh, but not everywhere! Soneste saw again the sparsely furnished cellar rooms, the blank stone walls—and the wine racks.

  She opened her eyes. “We go back down.”

  She looked like any of the lower wards’ residents shuffling across the snow-dusted street in a heavy winter cloak. She might be dismissed as a nursemaid, servant or a baker’s wife, someone’s wizened mother, but she was so much more, and the importance of her presence in this city would not be understood by the uninitiated.

  Mova stepped into the alley and approached the sentry. Her only bodyguard, one of the soldiers assigned to her by the Order, took up a position on the street to ensure none interfered. He needn’t have bothered. The authorities were paid well to keep off this street.

  Especially tonight.

  The sentry lay against the wall like a vagrant, but Mova could sense that all life had been wrenched from his body—confirmed a moment later when she kneeled and saw that his collar bone had been smashed and his neck broken. This one had died differently than the others, not a clean cut delivered quick and painless.

  Life was precious, the blood that fueled it sacrosanct, but only Seekers truly deserved to keep theirs. Mova did not mourn this man. He was merely another of Charoth’s ignorant marionettes, motivated only by personal desires. Like his master, he saw no glorious plan in the afflictions of the world. Charoth’s ambitions were lofty indeed—Mova gave him that much—but ultimately only for his own purposes.

  Mova’s arrangement with the wizard was a temporal one, as were all between Seekers and those who did not heeded the covenants of Vol.

  Seeker or not, the dead man before her still had his uses.

  Mova stared into the sentry’s dead face, grasping the bone that hung from the beaded bracelet on her left wrist. The icon, which had once been her late husband’s ring finger, served as a focus for her magic. She called upon the power of the blood—the spark of divinity that lay within everyone, for those enlightened enough to see it—and spoke the words to make it manifest. She pointed three fingers at the corpse’s face, coaxing the settled air within its lungs to surge out through the damaged throat.

  “How did you die?” she asked.

  The corpse’s head tilted sleightly to align its neck properly for speaking. She could hear the grinding of splintered bone. “A warforged struck me with a shield,” it said, its voice soft and wheezing. Mova had to lean in to hear the words.

  “Was the warforged alone?”

  “No.”

  The dead were not very forthcoming, but Mova was feeling patient. “Who accompanied the warforged?”

  “A man in black, with a military pick in his hand.”

  “Lady, there is movement within the house,” the soldier called out.

  She turned and stood, looking up at Charoth’s manor. A white light roved within the upper floors of the otherwise dark house. Tallis, indeed—so close now! And a warforged with him? The nimblewright hadn’t mentioned that.

  What Mova had gained from her arrangement with Charoth would be inestimable to the abactors of the Crimson Monastery—an opportunity to channel the blood of ancient Galifar and gain leverage over the political powers that be. What she would gain would be the abactors’ esteem, one great step toward learning the deepest mysteries of her faith. In addition, Arend ir’Montevik had promised a profound donation to her efforts if she returned to Atur with proof of Tallis’s demise. There was even talk of animating the half-elf’s bones as poetic justice.

  Well, she supposed, perhaps we are each of us motivated by personal desire, after all. Such was the world the charlatan gods of the Sovereign Host had crafted for their subjects.

  Mova kneeled again and produced from her pocket a small black onyx. She inserted it in the corpse’s mouth and pronounced the words that would give the husk a semblance of life.

  “Follow me,” she said. “We have others to tend to.”

  The dead sentry began to rise, incapable of resisting her power.

  Opening the hidden door in Charoth’s cellar hadn�
�t been half as simple as finding it. The lack of dust on every bottle in the impressive wine rack suggested an uncanny diligence on the part of Lord Charoth’s maids—or a suspicious means of egress for the wizard’s secret chambers—and Soneste had discerned a pattern in the lattice of the rack that allowed it to “unfold.” Parting down the middle, the rack rolled aside to reveal the stone wall behind it.

  Seeing the cracks that formed the hidden door did nothing to actually open it. His and the warforged’s combined strength would not budge the obvious portal. Tallis eventually found the stone that loosed the door, but it rewarded him with a tongue of electricity that coursed into his hand. Thank Aureon, it was brief.

  The tunnel beyond smelled of the must of centuries and gave way to a mazelike network of passages. “I think we’ll find out just why Charoth chose this house,” Tallis said. “It looks very old. There are many tunnels beneath Korth, many interconnected, many with limited access. Evidently, he wanted access to these.”

  Tallis produced a sunrod from his pack and struck it against the wall. The iron rod’s tip flared up with alchemical light brighter than Soneste’s watch lamp.

  “This should last us,” he said. “Stay behind me, both of you. He may have left his house empty, but that doesn’t mean he’s not protecting his interests. Be on the lookout for traps. Aegis, stay behind Soneste.”

  Sure could use one of the Midwife’s men right now, Tallis thought, eyeing the walls. Every inch could be trapped, and Charoth was a damned wizard—magical traps were so much the harder.

  Their exploration ended when they found a closed, iron-bound door at the end of an otherwise empty corridor. Between the imperfect cracks of the door, they could see light. Tallis handed his sunrod to Aegis. “Hold this behind you to keep the light away from the door. Wait here, both of you.”

  Tallis crept up to the door and listened close, even as he examined the doorknob in what little light he was afforded. An expression of total disgust came over his face, and he looked back at Soneste.