The Inquisitives [4] The Darkwood Mask

by Jeff LaSala

  He made his way slowly back. “It stinks of rot by that door,” he whispered. “Servitors of the Cult.”

  Soneste felt a sourness settle into her stomach. “Any voices?” she asked.

  “Some. There are some living agents here. Charoth’s men.”

  “We should go through that door—fast,” Aegis suggested, and both Soneste and Tallis winced at the volume of his “whispering” voice. “Surprise will help. I will force it down.”

  Tallis nodded. “I agree, but I have a better method. Safer. Are we ready?”

  Soneste willed the glowing light of her watch lamp to dissipate. She grasped her rapier in one hand, the Riedran crysteel dagger in the other. Aegis tucked the sunrod under his arm, glowing tip pointed behind him, and he held Haedrun’s sword ready.

  “Yes,” the warforged answered for both of them.

  The Karrn grasped his hammer in two hands, angled his right fist so the dragon-headed ring he wore was pointed at the door, and spoke the word “Telchanak.”

  A transparent image took form even as it sped down the hall. Solidifying into the shape of a dragon’s head with spiraling ram-horns, it vanished the moment it impacted with the door. Wood splintered and hinges shattered, echoing loudly through the corridor. Large chunks of door struck someone standing on the other side, dropping him with a shout.

  “I so rarely get to do that,” Tallis said with a humorless smile.

  Chapter

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Royalty

  Wir, the 11th of Sypheros, 998 YK

  Striding past the wreckage of the door, Tallis found himself in a moderately-sized dungeon chamber that reeked of moldering bones. Seven hostile figures turned to face him, standing on opposite sides of the circular pit that marked the center of the room. There was a dark shape in one corner of the room and a door in the center of the far wall. A single, wall-mounted wisplight was insufficient to illuminate the whole chamber.

  The three leather-clad men on the left—Charoth’s toughs, without a doubt—dropped the game of chance they’d been playing at and reached for their weapons. Either they were inured to the smell or had some means of blocking it out. One of their fellows already lay beneath the broken remains of the entry door, unmoving. The four enemies on the right wore plate armor, but where the metal did not cover their bodies Tallis saw only clean white bones. Inscrutable skulls swiveled his way, and the skeletons drew out their own blades.

  Good, Tallis thought with an upsurge of anger. Here was something he could understand and deal with on his level.

  “Kill them now!” one of the men shouted, leading his fellows in a charge. As all seven enemies made their way around the charnel pit, Tallis noticed a stirring in the shadows in the far corner.

  “A little help here?” Tallis asked his companions, raising his hammer to meet one of the living men.

  Weapons clashed. The sunrod he’d given Aegis flew end over end through the air—tossing sinister shadows as it went—to land on the far side of the pit. The warforged barreled past him, throwing his weight into the first skeletal warrior and keeping all four—for the time being—away from Tallis. The heavy buckler on Aegis’s arm led the way, blasting the undead off its feet. Only the tangled bones of its torso, encased in armor, remained.

  Tallis met the eyes of the man before him, stepping near the pit’s edge as he did.

  “Dolurrh invites, friend,” Tallis promised.

  Soneste appeared on his left, using her rapier to keep the next man at bay. The third remained behind the other two, turning the winch of a heavy crossbow.

  Tallis feinted twice with his hammer, drawing out his foe’s attacks as wide as possible. He lunged in at last, connecting the adamantine hammer hard against the man’s chest. The thick leather parted like paper, and Tallis heard the crack of a breastbone. The man’s eyes widened in disbelief, then he gasped in an attempt to draw breath. Tallis saved him the trouble, burying the mithral pick of his weapon in the man’s neck. He shoved hard, launching his victim into the charnel pit.

  One of the skeleton warriors broke away from Aegis and circled the long way around the pit. Tallis fixed his eyes on it, feeling the twinge of the rage he reserved for such creatures. He raised his arm, gauged the distance, and threw. The hooked hammer spun end over, and crashing into the skeleton’s breastplate, dropped the creature to the floor.

  With Soneste still engaged, Tallis turned his attention to the crossbowman. He stepped away from the pit to present himself as an obvious target. The man took the bait, loosing a heavy bolt. Tallis spun away from the missile just in time—feeling the wind of its passage—and let his body drop to all fours, pitching forward in exaggerated overbalance. As he did, the jeweled sword at his back slipped from its sheath, clattering to the stone floor and sliding near the crossbowman’s feet.

  “Blunted!” Tallis swore loudly.

  The man looked at the fallen sword, its blade glowing with a dazzling green light.

  Soneste traded swing for swing with her opponent, both of them stepping dangerously close to the lip of the pit. Tallis would have to trust her to defeat the man and Aegis to hold its own against the skeleton warriors for a few moments longer. He looked up to see his own opponent drop the empty crossbow and take the glowing sword in hand. Its baleful light flickered in the man’s eyes.

  “Khyber!” Tallis said, eyes flashing left and right for some kind of defense.

  “I’ve heard of you,” the tough said with an edge of triumph. “Major Tallis, former soldier of Rekkenmark. Who’s too clever to die, they say. Where is your cleverness now, Major?”

  “Listen,” Tallis replied, noting with a glance that Soneste’s man was tiring and only two skeletons remained across the room. “Maybe we can work something out. You know, between thieves?”

  “I think not.” The man stepped almost within reach, smiling as he tested the perfect balance of the Ferine Blade. A savage gleam lit his eyes. “I’m going to be the man who ended you!”

  Tallis deliberately backed himself into the wall. He clenched his fists, as if resigned to unarmed combat. The desperate look on his face prompted the man to strike at last. The Ferine Blade trailed green fire as it arched through the air, then leveled out, coming in straight for Tallis’s gut.

  Soneste saw his predicament, calling out at alarm.

  Tallis flinched as he always did—what if it didn’t work this time, that ever-gnawing doubt—but he opened his eyes just in time to see the blade vanish from the sword’s hilt …

  Only to emerge from the man’s own stomach as though he’d been stabbed from behind by the same blade. The green fire flared, hissing as it boiled and dissolved the streams of blood that tried to escape the mortal wound. Screaming, the man pitched to the ground, thrashing in his final, agonized moments.

  “Still works,” Tallis said.

  Soneste and her opponent gaped with shock, but the Brelish recovered her wits first and slashed her blade into the man’s knee. As he clutched at the wound, her boot came up, catching him on the jaw and setting him off balance. A second kick dropped him, screaming, into the pit.

  A loud crash of metal told him that Aegis had dispatched the last of the skeletons, so Tallis took that moment to retrieve his hammer. He caught a look of disbelief on Soneste’s face. “Hence, never touch the sword. Ever.” He used his hammer to smash the jeweled hilt from the man’s preternatural grip, then used the man’s own cloak to pick it up by the blade—which had already reappeared on the hilt. “It’s called the Ferine Blade. Something went wrong during its creation, I suppose. It’s cursed, what we in the business call a ‘backbiter.’ ”

  Tallis returned the weapon to its sheath on his back. He kicked the corpse at his feet. “These are Charoth’s fodder, muscle recruited from the Low District, but those”—He pointed to the shattered skeletons—“are the Cult’s work. It confirms Gan wasn’t lying about their involvement. We should expect more.”

  A muffled voice drew their attention to the corner of
the chamber. In the light of the recovered sunrod, Tallis could see that that the shape in the corner was a large, high-backed wooden chair set against an unusually protruded section of the wall. Seated within was a figure lashed with thick rope with its head covered in a black hood.

  “Gods, please!” he heard Soneste whisper as she hastened to the captive. Aegis approached beside her, sword and shield ready.

  “Be careful,” Tallis warned as he made his way over. “It could be a trap.”

  With her dagger in her left hand, Soneste pulled the hood away with her right. She gasped, then dropped to one knee and bowed her head.

  “Thank the Sovereigns,” she said, then looked back up into the disheveled—and gagged—face of a young man who could be no more than nineteen years of age. “Your Highness … I am so sorry for this.”

  Prince Halix—by Aureon’s light, it really was him!—tried to speak through the muffle. His eyes were wild and he shook his head with alarm.

  Tallis held up a hand. “Be care—”

  Something fast and hard struck him in the head. He could barely make sense of it, the world spinning too fast for him to guess at his attacker. The room pitched sideways and he felt the hard floor crash into his side. There was some shouting, a woman’s grunt and the warforged’s bellow. Tallis forced his eyes open again, only to see that he’d fallen to the ground. His brow and cheek stung from the unexpected blow. He looked up to see Soneste and Aegis battling—

  The chair?

  Strange, blunt limbs had reached out from the back of the chair to which the prince was still bound and some even sprouted from the wall behind it. Halix remained in place, though the coils of rope appeared to have loosened as they shook in the attack. Soneste’s dagger lay flat against the suddenly mobile chair’s back as if held by some magnetic force, and Aegis’s sword had been plucked away by one of the sticky limbs and stuck to the wall. As he watched, the chair and wall protrusion undulated weirdly, like an elastic construct, reaching out with ropey strands the texture of the rest of its body to strike at the Brelish and the warforged.

  Not a construct. A creature of flesh. That could imitate furniture?

  Tallis climbed to his feet even as Aegis attempted to barrel into the moving wall. Instead of smashing it, the thing merely quivered like rubbery flesh. The warforged’s whole body remained attached to the creature precisely where it had struck it.

  “I am stuck,” Aegis announced. He struck at the creature with an empty fist, even as it pummeled him in turn. The flexible limbs rebounded off his plating, but Aegis grunted with each strike.

  Halix, held fast by the creature’s adhesive body from the start, could only struggle in vain. Even the coil of rope appeared to be part of its body.

  Soneste stood back for a moment, unable to get in a clear strike with her rapier without risking the prince harm.

  The whole situation was absurd. Tallis rotated his hammer, ready to strike with the sharp mithral pick’s head. “At the same time, then,” he said to Soneste.

  “Watch the prince,” she warned him.

  At her words, the false ropes tightened around the boy’s torso. Even gagged, the prince gasped from the constriction. At the same time, Aegis broke free. He staggered away from the counterfeit wall.

  “Prince will die. Move away!” a genderless voice called out. Tallis searched for the source.

  It had come from the creature. Something akin to a toothless mouth had formed on the false section of wall and spoke again. “Move away.”

  Tallis and Soneste both backed up.

  “I do not understand this,” Aegis said.

  “We’re away now!” Soneste demanded. “Now let him go. We’re not interested in killing you, only freeing your captive.”

  “Trade,” the mouth said. “Your prince for your sword.”

  “My sword?” Soneste asked, looking down at the rapier in her hand. She was more puzzled than dismayed.

  “Your sword,” the wall said, pointing one of its springy limbs in Tallis’s direction. “Green fire sword. Give.”

  “The Ferine Blade?” he asked, perplexed.

  “Prince dies.” The coils tightened again, and Halix groaned in its grasp.

  “Fine!” Tallis shouted. He pulled the sheathed weapon from its place at his back and tossed it by the chair’s legs.

  The foremost legs of the chair stretched and grasped the Ferine Blade and in that same moment expelled Halix. The false ropes melted away into the creature’s body. Soneste jumped forward to catch and steady the boy, but Tallis couldn’t tear his eyes away from the bizarre creature.

  It immediately altered its shape. The stony wall-shaped portion of its body fused with the woodlike chair and together they transformed into a boxlike shape. When it had finished, the creature resembled a massive, iron-bound oak chest. The appendage that still held the Ferine Blade dropped it into the open cavity of the chest’s interior, but not all the way. The jeweled hilt protruded from the lip of the chest, gleaming in the light of the sunrod. The creature remained perfectly still.

  How inviting, Tallis thought.

  Prince Halix ir’Wynarn moved away from Soneste, tearing the gag from his mouth and trying to give himself space. Aegis, in a surprisingly expressive display, unbuckled the Rekkenmark sword from his waist and offered it to him. Halix accepted it without a word, drawing forth the blade. With a weapon in hand, the boy—it was difficult for Tallis not to think of him as such—appeared to regain his composure, as if regaining control of his own fate. Even roughed up as he was, Halix carried himself with an air of dignity. He looked young, dauntless but untried.

  Halix gave the chest-shaped creature a final look of disgust then looked around.

  “Where is this?” he said, gesturing with the blade at the chamber around them. The aristocratic Brelish accent was unmistakable.

  Soneste dropped to one knee again. Aegis followed suit. Here in these filthy catacombs, Tallis found the sight almost comedic. “My prince, we are beneath the estate of Lord Charoth Arkenen, whom we have reason to believe is a traitor to Karrnath.”

  “And you are …?”

  Soneste’s eyes widened. “My apologies, Highness. I am Soneste Otänsin, inquisitive of Sharn and Thuranne d’Velderan’s Investigative Services, now in Korth by request of the Citadel. This is Aegis, formerly in service to the ir’Daresh family, now sworn to service directly to the crown. This …”

  Soneste looked over to Tallis, who shrugged. “This is … Tallis.”

  “Major Tallis?” the prince asked, eyes widening ever so sleightly.

  As he heard his name spoken by the young prince, the enormity of Charoth’s stratagem sank into his gut like an anchor. Even Lenrik’s death, while egregiously painful to Tallis, would go unnoticed to the rest of Khorvaire, but the demise of a Galifar royal like Halix ir’Wynarn? That could unmake the tenuous peace of the remaining nations. Was Charoth aiming to renew war? What did he stand to gain?

  No, the prince was still alive. In fact, Halix was still in pretty good shape.

  Tallis thought of Crownhome and King Kaius, whose interest in peace had earned him even the disfavor of many of his own warlords. The Conqueror’s Host were probably combing the streets above for sign of the Brelish royals, while court wizards employed magic to locate them. Other agents of the king would be working to keep the crisis quiet. If word got out that the royals had vanished under the king’s own nose, Karrnathi diplomacy would suffer a crippling setback.

  Here in Charoth’s dungeon, would Korth’s finest have found Halix at all if they hadn’t? Tallis looked at the inquisitive, the warforged bodyguard, and their prince. Was Tallis the only Karrn with a modicum of loyalty to Kaius III involved in this situation? The irony defeated him.

  “I am,” was all he could reply.

  “Your Highness,” Soneste said, rising to her feet. “We must get you out of here. There is a maze of corridors behind us, but we can see you through it to the streets above.”

  Halix combed
a hand through his unkempt brown hair. “No. Those bastards have my sister. She’s alive, so I’m not leaving here without here.” His handsome features were resolute.

  “What happened?” Tallis asked, needing facts.

  The prince’s face flushed with shame. “I was grabbed by men at the Lyrandar docking tower when I landed. After that, I don’t remember. I suppose I was secreted down here. I can’t remember clearly.

  “Borina is here, I know it!” Halix said. “They’re … going to do something to her. I heard some discussion between a man and a woman.”

  “Charoth and Mova,” Tallis said.

  “The woman said she’d be coming back to collect me when their business with Borina was concluded.” Halix fumed, kicking at the scattered bones of a skeleton warrior. “We have to find her!”

  “I will do so … Highness.” Tallis felt a constricting sense of guilt. Would he let Kaius take the blame for this, for allowing Boranel’s children to be taken? “I assure you, my king will want you safe … every bit as much as your own father. Trust me on that.” He looked to the inquisitive. “Soneste, take the prince out of here, back the way we came. Aegis and I will find Borina.” He pointed to the door in the far wall—the only way forward.

  Halix rounded on him. “I said no, Karrn. I am not leaving my sister to mad wizards and walking corpses.”

  Tallis approached the boy, who stood eye to eye with him. “Will you raise a weapon against an army of foes, people who don’t observe national boundaries, who don’t respect the honorable strategies taught to you at Rekkenmark? They murdered innocent people just to get to you and your sister, including a Brelish ambassador and two of my dearest friends.”

  Halix sneered in defiance. “I didn’t go to your academy for politics, Major. I went to learn skill at arms from the finest teachers in Khorvaire, to see if you Karrns really did know anything about war, after all.”

  Tallis held the prince’s stare, unflinching.

  “Prince Halix,” Soneste said, her voice exasperated, “Please. I cannot allow you to endanger yourself further. We will find—”