The Inquisitives [4] The Darkwood Mask

by Jeff LaSala

  Then he deactivated his magic rod and dropped. A shock of fear stabbed through her at the sight, but when he hit the ground he started moving immediately. The glass had become thick, almost gummy, but she could see it was eating away at his boots.

  Tallis reached the edge of the pool and jumped to the unmarred floor of the factory room. He looked down with something like regret at his boots—the remaining strips of leather barely clung to his legs. The Karrn shook his head, scooped up his hooked hammer from where it lay safely outside of the glass pool, and worked his way around the glass pool.

  Climbing atop portions of machinery, he finally reached the metal stairs and vaulted the railing. Tallis’s face was reddened from the heat, his black hair gray from the fumes.

  “Aegis,” she said.

  Tallis looked sadly to the the valiant warforged and nodded grimly then touched her briefly on the shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

  He looked to Prince Halix. The young man’s eyes brightened with anger. They were all of the same mind. “Let’s finish this.”

  Tallis smashed away portions of the glass door that his first strike against it hadn’t cleared, only to discover that Charoth’s invisible barrier was gone entirely. Thank the Host, she cheered. The magic had run out.

  Appropriately, the office resembled a wizard’s laboratory. It was spacious and well-furnished with an arcanist’s equipment, but Soneste’s attention was fixed firmly upon Charoth and his allies. The nimblewright, standing still behind the wizard, sprang into motion.

  “Borina!” Halix shouted, moving forward as he looked to the glass table and the young woman bound to it.

  “Enemies first,” Tallis said, grabbing the prince’s shoulder, then pointed to the woman in black robes. “Now spread out!” The Karrn dashed to the right, intent on the wizard himself.

  The nimblewright produced its remaining rapier-blade and advanced on Soneste. Her heart hammered in her chest. She feared this elemental construct more than anything. By rights, it had already killed her once.

  She raised her rapier fast enough to parry its first attack, but two strikes sent her sword spinning out of her hand and across the room.

  Aureon, not again.…

  “Kill Tallis,” the black-robed priestess commanded.

  Without a sound, the nimblewright sprinted away from Soneste. Relief for herself and fear for the Karrn gave way as she and Prince Halix faced the priestess together.

  Soneste’s first thought was that Lady Mova looked like a wise woman, a grandmother with eccentric taste in clothing, but her eyes were cold, entirely bereft of humor or compassion.

  “Death for you, dear,” the old woman spat, holding up a curving dagger that glowed with a poisonous light.

  She rattled a bracelet of bones and swept her arms outward as if she were conjuring a shield. A thick layer of frost appeared on Mova’s skin and clothing, then fell away to form a cloud of tiny ice crystals in the air around her. As Soneste and Halix closed in, the inquisitive could see their breaths puffing in the air.

  Soneste drew out her own dagger. Halix himself was distracted—his eyes returning again and again to his vulnerable sister and her prison of glass—but he kept pace with Soneste.

  Lady Mova raised a hand in the air and spoke a twisted, undecipherable phrase. Soneste knew very little about true scriptural prayers to any god, but the old woman’s words felt offensive to her very soul. A ray of crackling black energy coursed from her fingertips and struck Halix in the chest.

  The prince gasped for breath as if all air had been expelled from his lungs in an instant. He clutched at his chest and fell hard to his knees, his sword clanging to the ground. His body slackened. Mova wasn’t going to kill Halix, Soneste realized. From what the prince had said earlier, he was probably supposed to be Mova’s prize just as Borina was Charoth’s. She needed the prince intact for her own purposes, and young Halix was no match for her magic.

  You won’t harm another soul, Soneste promised the woman silently.

  Soneste rushed willingly into the aureole of freezing crystals that encircled the priestess, hoping Mova would be no match for her physically. She focused her mind as she closed in, as fast as she could, drawing on the last reserves of her psychic power. Quick as a thought, she recalled the last few seconds in her mind: Mova uttering a prayer of her bloody faith and smiting Halix with its power. Grasping the memory fragment with mental fingers, Soneste flung the vision into Mova’s own mind.

  Soneste prayed to Aureon that the priestess could not use the same spell again—a severe risk.

  The memory took hold. Lady Mova readied her blade for Soneste then stopped. Her eyes were wild, alarmed, as she raised her hand in the air against her will and spoke the same foul prayer she had only seconds before. This time there was no spell unleashed as she pointed her fingers at Halix.

  With her defenses lowered, she was not prepared for Soneste.

  The cloud of freezing air hit Soneste like a storm of ice, chilling her to the core, but she pushed through and plunged the sharp Riedran crysteel into Mova’s body. The old woman’s breastbone resisted then split as the last vestiges of Soneste’s psionic power surged through the blade.

  Tallis wanted to bring Charoth down, wanted to hurt the wizard again and again for Lenrik’s death, but the nimblewright had appeared before him to meet his challenge instead.

  He steeled his rage and struck first, denting the nimblewright’s armored forearm.

  Charoth’s incanting voice rolled across the room as he issued another spell from his defensible position behind the table. At once, the nimblewright’s body appeared to flicker. Tallis reversed his weapon then struck again. The pick’s head slashed harmlessly through the metal body as if it were mere illusion.

  “No!” Tallis screamed, exasperated.

  His world divided into a series of long, desperate moments, and he was forced fully on the defensive. His efforts were in vain. To have come so far, to find the very man behind all this pain, and to fail. Tallis was once again at the Ebonspire, helpless to stop the killer. Only he was the victim.

  Well, why not? he despaired. Lenrik, I tried.

  The nimblewright’s blade broke through his slowing defenses once, then twice. The rapier would have cut through his stomach, were it not for the bracer’s invisible armor. How long could he last?

  Shivering from the hideous cold, Soneste stepped away from the old woman’s body. Lady Mova—priestess, murderess, Seeker of the Blood—writhed on the stone floor, her lips mouthing a meaningless litany.

  Soneste turned away, hoping she could do something for Halix. He slumped on the ground looking as helpless as his sister. Soneste’s teeth chattered uncontrollably as she tried to say his name, to offer him some comfort as her mind inventoried her resources.

  Her eyes were drawn to the desperate battle between Tallis and the nimblewright. Crippled by its missing hand, the construct was effectively outmatched, but the Karrn’s every strike passed through its body without effect. This was obviously the same magic that had allowed it to enter the Ebonspire and exit again without a trace.

  Her hand trembled as she reached to her haversack and she pulled out the ivory wand. “Take this,” Tallis had said. “Verdax said there are only three charges left, so use it sparingly.”

  According to Tallis, this very wand—empowered to strip away magic effects—had been used to dispel the alarm wards at the Ebonspire, allowing him to enter undetected. Soneste herself had used it to extract the truth from the changeling Gan. It was only fitting that she use it here, at the end.

  She pointed the wand at the nimblewright, her hands still shaking from the numbing cold. Invisible energy streamed from its tip, but she saw no change in the construct’s form. She tried again, to no avail. One charge left.

  Aureon, she prayed. Justice, Sovereign Lord, please!

  She flicked the wand again and was rewarded by a flash of light from the nimblewright’s armored frame. She heard the impact of Tallis’s hammer against
its body, and smiled.

  “Thank you,” she said aloud.

  Then her body shook from the impact of several pulses of energy which slammed into her from out of nowhere. She was thrown from her feet, and the world chose that moment to spin in every direction at once.

  Then darken.

  Charoth felt a constricting sense of loss as Lady Mova fell. The Seeker herself was unimportant now, but his servants were far too few. The nimblewright would carry out the final command of its mistress, so he’d had to trust in its skill to occupy or defeat Tallis.

  The spell of incorporeality had been a difficult one to master, but he’d researched it solely for use with the nimblewright. Once he’d imbued the construct’s blades to exist in both the corporeal and incorporeal realms, the perfection of his spell in conjunction with its peerless swordplay could not be denied.

  The nimblewright had been sold to Mova’s family by the Twelve more than a century ago. Entombed beneath the Crimson Monastery for many years, the moment the priestess had introduced it to him, Charoth knew it needed to be in his power. He was not comfortable in its presence—its eyeless gaze judged him, he was sure—but from the moment he’d seen its skill put to work, its role had been vital in his plans. The nimblewright could go where he could not and leave behind no evidence.

  Until now, it had been invulnerable, but the Brelish girl had just taken that away from him with some second-rate tinkerer’s wand.

  Charoth had paused in his work to strike her down with a spell—a minor force attack he could afford to expend—which should have been sufficient to kill her. It was about time. He’d considered having the nimblewright kill Soneste shortly after her interview with him, but the death of Breland’s sole investigator might have brought in Boranel’s Dark Lanterns—a more troublesome possibility.

  Still, this was entirely too distracting. She shouldn’t even have been here.

  Charoth looked down at Princess Borina. Her eyes were open, timorous, her gaze fixed upon his mask, pleading for cessation. In mere minutes, the arcane lineage of her blood would be siphoned away completely. She was just another privileged human undeserving of her noble inheritance. Such power, such purity of youth and mortal divinity, should belong to those whose brilliance deserved recognition. The world should be shaped by those with the will to shape it.

  He had not labored in the Orphanage those many years ago to see things go wrong again.

  The way it weaved its body from side to side, Tallis could well imagine the watery spirit that occupied the nimblewright’s body. His own body was drenched with sweat, his fingers slick with blood. The bracers Verdax lent him had staved off many blows, but his body ached from every hit.

  Even with only one hand, the construct was a fierce opponent, but at least he could hurt it.

  “You’ve killed innocents,” he said, needing to understand the creature’s motive.

  They traded blows, the clash of steel and adamantine the only thing he could hear.

  “I do not care,” the nimblewright said between strikes, surprising Tallis so much he nearly failed to parry its next one. The construct’s voice was like a wet hiss of steam issued from a human throat.

  According to what Soneste had learned, the nimblewright would simply obey its master. It had no moral base, no opinions of its own. Like a golem, it knew obedience and nothing more. It was not evil. It simply was.

  “Well I do,” Tallis answered.

  He knew he was winning now, could feel the construct’s movements slowing not out of exhaustion but from the sheer damage it had sustained. The armor plating of its body was dented and gouged in ways that would have killed any man.

  He struck again, pounding the adamantine hammer soundly against one shoulder.

  There was no cry of pain. Tallis expected none. One moment it was a fluid creature of death and metal. The next, it was an inanimate suit of armor crashing to the floor. A cloud of vapor rose from his enemy and dissipated around him.

  There was no elation, no satisfaction, from its demise. Tallis merely stepped past it, taking his remaining rod into his left hand and hefting his hammer in his right.

  He glanced to his left and saw Soneste lying on the ground. She might well be dead. Halix struggled to stand. The young prince looked half-dead. There was no time to tend to either of them.

  To Khyber with you, Charoth.

  The wizard stepped away from the table, fully aware that he was all that remained of his cabal. Princess Borina cried out when his gloved hand moved away from her body, drawing wisps of power from the pulsing table. In the adjoined glass throne, the cadaverous man stirred. Whatever Charoth had been doing—whatever all of this was for!—it was nearing its end.

  Tallis knew something about magic weaponry, armor, and various enchanted devices. Like his immovable rods, they had well-defined rules, limitations, and numerous applications, yet he could make no sense of this bizarre experiment, ritual, or whatever it was. The spells and variations of a wizard’s work were beyond him.

  He did know that Borina was dying from it.

  At the sound of his sister’s voice, Halix pulled himself to his feet. Tallis wanted to shout at the boy to get down—another spell from Charoth would end him. Damn it!

  Tallis needed to make himself a target.

  He held his arms out. “I’m sorry,” he said to Charoth, gesturing to the shattered door and the laboratory itself. “Is this the wrong room? I was just looking for the latrine.”

  Charoth struck the ground with the tip of his blue-glass cane. “We are at a stalemate, Major,” the wizard said, his voice reverberating across the room clearly. He twisted the silver vulture’s head at its top and withdrew a jeweled wand from the concealing shaft. “It needn’t end in violence. We are rational men, you and I.”

  Tallis wasn’t intending to trade words with Charoth any longer. He made sure his grip was good on both rod and hammer then took a step forward.

  “Sss … sver …”

  Tallis looked to the figure in the glass throne. The voice had been barely audible, but it had certainly come from the withered man. More importantly, it had drawn Charoth’s full attention.

  He would not waste the opportunity.

  Tallis placed all his strength and focus into the throw, sending his hooked hammer into the air. The weapon spun end over end, spanning fifteen feet and rebounding off whatever magic shielded the wizard’s body, but the force of the blow sent Charoth stumbling back. He recovered quickly and swiped the wand in Tallis’s direction.

  Accuracy didn’t matter. Electricity sprayed from the jeweled device, twisting in the air and skewering Tallis. Overwhelming vibrations, the inability to control his own muscles, and the smell of his own burning flesh assailed Tallis’s senses for several agonizing seconds. He regained control with time enough to catch himself from falling, but he had to steady himself with one hand to the ground. He labored for breath, his body quivering.

  One more hit like that …

  Tallis looked up, ready to spring away.

  “Can you hear me?” the wizard asked the figure in the throne, his voice sounding almost subdued. Was that a House Cannith emblem upon the man’s uniform? Pain blurred Tallis’s vision.

  The bright colors of Charoth’s mask turned to face Tallis again. The sleightest flick of his gloved hand loosed another bolt of blue-white lightning. Tallis jerked his body sideways and forward, whiplash sending a blossom of pain through his neck. He felt the charge in the air as the splintering bolt streamed past him.

  Tallis dived to the ground and grasped his hammer. Even as he rose, he brought the mithral pick arcing through the air—

  Where it cut into the back of Charoth’s hand. The jeweled wand whirled free. There was no blood, just a gash in the glove and a glimpse of gray flesh as the wizard recoiled without a sound.

  Tallis stood face-to-face with his adversary, expecting a paralyzing or fiery blast of magic, but Charoth wasn’t fast enough, not by far. Tallis struck again with his ha
mmer, feeling it pass through invisible armor and rebound off the wizard’s own chest. The resistance of the man’s breastbone was stronger than he’d expected, but he felt it crack. The blow should be beyond painful.

  Charoth made not a sound. He merely stumbled back, doing his best to get away from Tallis. Was this all the feared wizard could do?

  The words of Karrn the Conqueror flashed through Tallis’s mind, from The Analects of War: “Only utter destruction prevents a foe from rising again.”

  Tallis spun the weapon in his grip and aimed for Charoth’s damnable face. Come, he thought, let’s see how hideous you really are.

  The mithral tip of the pick clove the darkwood mask in two even pieces.

  “Stop,” the withered man whispered.

  Interlude

  Shouts and angry voices surrounded him, but the man in the glass chair couldn’t quite hear them. The world around him struggled to merge with his thoughts, but he could think of only one thing.

  “Stop!” I shout. In this moment, it is the only word I know.

  Sverak echoes me. The titan’s arm stops.

  Lord Charoth Arkenen lies in a sickening heap before us. Blood pools beneath him, his back arched in a dreadful angle. I cannot give voice to my horror. I cannot speak at all.

  “You are free, master,” Sverak says. “Free from him.” I know my assistant is speaking to me, but I cannot bear to look at him. I made him. I made this monstrosity.

  My superior stirs. He may yet be saved! I reach for the wand of healing that I’d never had to use before. As one, the magewrights rush to save him. More workers appear at the edge of my vision, warforged guards with them.

  Sverak now holds Lord Charoth’s wand. He waves his thin arm in the direction of the incoming guards, unleashing a bolt of lightning. The electricity arrests the first man’s movement even as it kills him, but the bolt arcs through his body to the next, then the next, then the next. I hear a woman’s scream, but it dies as quickly as she. In a single gesture, Sverak has slain five Cannith workers.