Death Masks

by Ed Greenwood

  All of Mystra’s born Chosen—the Seven—wear out their distinctive silver-haired bodies over time. Centuries, but eventually the crumbling began in earnest. Then they must take new ones from others as Elminster did, an ethical choice none of them preferred, or return to the Weave and await Mystra “mothering” a new body for them, or put more and more of their energies into maintaining either their magic or their bodies.

  She’d chosen the latter herself, so her Art was now slowly fading. Dove, on the other hand, had ached to join her husband Florin in the Weave, and so had decided to end her mortal life, going down fighting to defend Myth Drannor.

  So if she dared leave awareness of the world around her behind, as she was now so lessened she could not maintain it when she merged with the Weave, Laeral could confer with Dove and Syluné and even Florin, and call on their memories and knowledge.

  She could use the Weave to reach out to the full-bodied living, too—Alustriel and Storm, and for that matter Amarune and her man Arclath Delcastle. Yet they were every bit as busy as she was, and such attempts might distract them from foes at a vital moment.

  So it might well become a deadly moment.

  Storm and Rune were in rural eastern Cormyr right now, with Mystra’s blessing.

  The Zhentarim had a habit of murdering those wielders of Art who couldn’t or wouldn’t join them, and knowing that the Zhentarim had reoccupied Zhentil Keep, Storm wanted to strengthen those who’d stand against the Zhents in the Moonsea region without starting yet another war—so she was working to rebuild the trust, prosperity, and cohesion between commoners and nobles in eastern Cormyr, and establish firm ties of support and friendship between Cormyr and the elves in Semberholme, led by the Coronal. It was all in the hope that elves and Cormyrean humans could mutually benefit, grow in strength together, and prevent Zhentil Keep from seizing control of Sembia, which was rebuilding as Sembians who’d fled all the warfare returned, bringing their wealth with them, to take advantage of the chaos and power vacuum to become influential power-players at home.

  If Sembia and Cormyr could be closer and more friendly, Zhentil Keep or anyone else—Storm was certain some Shadovar had survived, and would now be lurking and awaiting any good chance to gain power, and Sembia, with its wealth but current chaos, would be a perfect place to do so—could be prevented from easily exploiting their traditional feud to work mischief in either land.

  Storm found it desirable to share what she was up to, but Mystra, herself more distant even from her daughters these days, wanted most of her Chosen to keep secrets. Even from each other.

  Wherefore Laeral knew very little of Alustriel’s current mission.

  And only knew Storm’s suspicions about Elminster’s main concern—which had something to do with dealing with a powerful mage whose mind was not whole.

  “I only hope ’tis someone other than me,” Laeral murmured to herself as she rose to depart her private little place. “Obviously I left my wits under the bed this morning. Possibly in the chamberpot.”

  She was four turns down the spiral stair, passing the second landing that offered a pair of doors, when she heard a curious sound.

  A deep and repetitive rumbling, coming through one of those doors, from a room that should be hosting no sounds at all.

  And what did that say, for how secure she or anyone else was, here in the Palace? Hmm …

  These tower rooms were among the few in the Palace that could be locked, and this particular pair of them not only were locked, they were two of four small disused rooms that the Palace seneschal had—or so he’d informed her, and she’d had as yet no cause whatsoever not to trust the tall, grave Talen Telfeather—given her the only keys to.

  She hadn’t yet had time nor need to make use of either of this upper pair of rooms, so they should be empty. Her gear was stored in the pair on the floor below. She hastened on down the stair to the lower pair of rooms, caught up the right key from her girdle, and opened the one she was using for storing magic.

  Specifically, one of the few suits of her own storm armor Laeral had left. She’d made it to go on as easily and quietly as any tailored-to-fit cloth robe, and that served her well, considering the tight confines of the room and the need to fetch enchanted daggers by reaching over a rack of vials. Metal vials, true, but any fall can cause a stopper to leak, and most of the vials held laerand—the ultimate painkiller, each vial worth about a year’s pay to a guild apprentice in this city or about half a year’s takings for most shopkeepers.

  After a moment of thought, she took an enchanted ring from a small coffer, and slid it onto its usual finger. A ring of the ram, nothing to bring down Palace ceilings, but a way of smiting a foe that needn’t be fatal. Yes, a prudent choice.

  Thus suitably armed and armored—and feeling more contented than she had in days; though she’d seldom worn armor, somehow when clad thus, she felt herself again—Laeral ascended the stair again to investigate.

  Cautiously she tried the handle-ring of the door, in as near silence as she could manage.

  It turned freely. Unlocked.

  She thrust it wide, into the room, one of her magical daggers raised to hurl—and found herself facing an empty and rather dusty room.

  Yet the noise, much louder now, persisted. This close and clear, it sounded like … snoring.

  It was coming from the solid stone wall of the room to her right. Well now. A secret door or panel she hadn’t known about? How many more of those did this Palace hold?

  Cautiously, not hurrying, she examined the wall. The latch, if it had one, would most likely be here … no. Or down low, right by floor level, here where—yes.

  Stone shifted, almost inaudibly—so, well used, and recently—and the apparently solid stone swung open like a door.

  Laeral found herself staring down into a shallow but long-across closet, hung with decaying robes and half-cloaks that had been in style more than a century ago, and—tangled up fast asleep on its floor, atop their discarded clothes, Mirt the Moneylender and a lady friend—who judging by the motto tattooed prominently on her bared hip was a proudly independent Dock Ward professional. By her face, unfamiliar to Laeral, but a turn-coin who evidently displayed her ample self to clients in rather stylish silk and leather. Mirt was doing the snoring, of course, as they lay sleeping cheek to cheek. Wrapped around each other, they looked obliviously content and disheveled.

  Laeral felt a grin rising to her face. With a soundless sigh and a rueful shake of her head, she shut the door on them both and headed back down the stair to find Telfeather.

  Whose expression betrayed nothing when she gave him the location of her find and ordered crisply, “Have Mirt report in to me at dawn tomorrow. I care not if he’s dressed or fully awake. Tell him he can have morningfeast with me—and there’ll be strong drink—or neither eat nor drink within these walls at all, on the morrow.”

  She turned away, briefly contemplating leaving the storm armor on, and then shrugged and headed back up the turret stair, unbuckling as she went. If some assassin’s blade was going to find her, it was going to find her.

  Even enchanted armor of her own design was hot and cumbersome, and she’d rather wear silk and leather.

  If it was good enough for a dockfront turn-coin, it was good enough for her.

  • • •

  IT WAS LATE, deep in what the servants liked to refer to as “the wee hours,” and Tasheene had just seen Cuthbarrel and Raelantaver safely out of her family mansion by way of the haunted door. It had taken her some expensive hired magic over three summers to scare the servants into shunning that dark and damp little back stair and doorway, but it had been worth it; these days, they all kept well away from that part of the Seashield Hall.

  Tasheene suspected some of them knew she regularly made use of the disused and crumbling northwestern tower for late night meetings with her co-conspirators, but frankly, she didn’t care. Scores of nobles met regularly with guildmasters and wealthy investors and wanted those mee
tings kept quiet, and if any Melshimber servant was ever bold enough to ask, or to say anything about the company she kept at all, she’d icily inquire if they wanted her to be able to find coin enough to keep them employed, in the years ahead, when this house would be hers alone.

  Tasheene walked her ancestral home in darkness most nights now, used to the dimness and not wanting to attract attention to her presence in either the tower or the handy upper floor passage that linked it so directly to the row of bedchambers that included her own. That passage had large windows overlooking much of the walled grounds, so a light carried along it would readily catch eyes all over the eastern half of the three tall and sprawling buildings that made up the Waterdhavian seat of the Melshimbers—and she had no desire to have her father frowningly striding around snapping hard questions at servants, trying to find who’d been carrying a lantern along it in the middle of the night.

  Especially since she had good reason to know he was up and about at such hours doing things he’d rather all the rest of Melshimber House knew nothing about, and her mother with him.

  No, Lord Harlond Melshimber in a real temper was something to be avoided. She’d provoked him often enough to know that all too well. Hopefully she was wiser these days—

  That thought was dashed away forever by what she saw as she passed one of those high passage windows. Flickering candlelight, down in the moonlit grounds, right at the back … as if someone was holding up a multi-branched candelabra to serve as a lantern.

  Tasheene stopped and stared. Who would be—? Thieves weren’t fool-headed enough to …

  A moment later, the bearer of that candelabra came out into the full moonlight, to stop at the fountain and … wash. It was her father, and right behind him, joining him now and plunging her arms up to the elbows in the fountain’s chest-high splash basin, was her mother. They must have come from the tree-cloaked private Melshimber chapel in the overgrown northwesternmost corner of the walled mansion grounds. Which meant they were now washing off sacrificial blood after a rite. The cult they hosted must have been worshipping.

  Venerating Asmodeus, Lord of the Nine Hells.

  Tasheene looked down from her dark window at her parents shaking water from their fingers and laughing together, and felt scorn.

  Weaklings and degenerates, like so many of their generation. From her spies, she knew other highborn had their own hidden altars to the Lord of Nessus. Oh, it was high time for fresh blood to lead the city, not these decadent old fools, who’d strayed so far and sunk so low.

  “Earn your own fate, don’t court it from a Dark Lord,” she hissed, though there was no one but herself in the passage to hear, and then slipped away down the passage to seek her bed.

  Unseen and unheard, the vengeful wind of the future …

  Doing her bit to scour Waterdeep of its blemishes and reform it for a stronger, prouder, better era ahead.

  In the close and familiar darkness of her own bedchamber, Tasheene set all her usual precautions.

  The suit of armor set to topple on intruders coming through the door by means of a high tripwire—one thin black thread whose rigging she was proud of, for it had been her first success, done all on her own.

  The multiple low tripwires she had added later, all of which pulled boxes of old daggers and maces down on the heads of anyone triggering them, off the high shelves she’d had installed that ran all around the inside of the room’s walls.

  And finally, the last set of trip-threads, which were strung among the pulled-shut draperies of her grand and fluffily feminine four-poster. They triggered the loaded crossbow set up on its tripod on her pillow.

  There. Done. In the sadly fallen Waterdeep of today, one couldn’t be too careful.

  Tasheene stripped off her clothes where she stood, joined them on the floor, and rolled under the four-poster. Where the bed she slept in these last few months awaited her: a thin mattress with a sleeping-fur for warmth. It was a hard bed, but she’d grown quite used to it. Out of habit, and by feel in the darkness, she checked the contents of the slender coffer slipped inside her pillowcase, beneath the goose feather pillow—a handful of steel vials, laerand and healing potions. All there, nothing had been disturbed. Good.

  She yawned once, and if she yawned a second time, never remembered doing so, already lost in her swift plunge into oblivion, down through a whirling flurry of waiting dreams. Reforming Waterdeep was exhausting work.

  • • •

  “ALL DONE, SIR,” Haemiekal said quickly, his gruff voice sounding comically young and feminine when he was fawning. Standing beside him, Glethro kept his eyes on the floor and his face as expressionless as he could. “All of our stuff is out and cleaned up.”

  “Very good,” the owner of the building with the false wall and ceiling they’d just finished painting replied in his distinctive voice. It was very deep, and his words unfolded at a plodding, deliberate pace. “Come and look at the sign. I’m very pleased with it.”

  Outside in the street, the usual night-chill and darkness were held at bay by the lanterns other workers in the crew were holding—lights that were now raised so the painters and plasterers could clearly see what they were supposed to be admiring over the door. A soft, lustrously glowing silver finish, with boldly flowing gilt letters standing proud from it that proclaimed to the world: “Thantilvur Investments.”

  What it really proclaimed to the world, Glethro thought privately, was: “Look how much coin I can waste on a sign like this. I’m rich, look you, rich!”

  “Very nice,” Haemiekal said eagerly, almost sounding as if he meant it. “Handsome indeed, Saer!”

  “It is,” their deep-voiced employer agreed, “and by way of thanks, I’d like you all to join me next door, in Haskult’s Horn. I’ve laid on a feast—and there’s elverquisst.”

  “Elverquisst? The stuff elves go mad for?” Glethro gasped, startled into speech.

  “Indeed,” the deep-voiced man chuckled. “Any of you ever had any?”

  “The likes of us can’t afford elverquisst, Saer,” Haemiekal replied, shaking his head, “so it’ll be a rare honor, it will. Thankee, Saer! You’re a lord of a client!”

  The building owner chuckled even more heartily. “Am I? Well, well, that’s good to hear.”

  • • •

  IT WAS DARKER than the inside of a blind woman’s womb, and this worn old Calishite carpet was as rough as a scrubbing brush under her bare feet.

  And Thraelra never wanted to have to wield a scrubbing brush again.

  It was high time they replaced it. The entire runner, all down this upstairs passage. Barkeld had refused thrice, because he was so tight-coin, but before all the Watching Gods, they had money enough for a hrasted passageway runner. After all, he was a Masked Lord of Waterdeep! Surely he could—

  In the darkness, Thraelra tripped over something, recovered her balance only after a few frantic running steps that twisted her knee and fetched her up against the nearest passage wall with a curse, then swung around in anger to unhood her night-lantern and see whatever she’d fallen over. The maids were getting so—

  The lantern light spilled down and showed her what she’d tripped over, and Thraelra discovered in a shocked and breathless instant that she didn’t need to breathe to start screaming.

  She knew that hand. That arm. And the rest of the sprawled body it was attached to, too, though his head was missing, and long dark fingers of blood were spreading across the floor, well on the way to making the ruination of the detested carpet complete.

  “Barkeld Haelinghorse,” she sobbed, “what have they done to you?”

  Then she started screaming again. Servants were coming from all directions now, running hard, other lanterns flaring out.

  “Barkeld,” Thraelra pleaded, as she fell to her knees beside what was left of her husband, “what’ve you done to your head?”

  But somehow, through the shattering depths of her grief, she knew the missing part of Barkeld would be nowhere to be found
.

  And a cruel saying of the streets rose into her mind, as loudly and persistently as if all the coarsely laughing dockhands in the world were shouting it lustily at her in sneering unison: “The precious Hidden Lords of our city! Lose their heads over every trifle, they do!”

  • • •

  IT WAS DARK in the alley, in this cold and relatively quiet time just before dawn, but there was just enough light to see how menacing the tall, burly, bald man with the broken nose and scars and missing ear looked. His customary street name, “Shrikegulk,” fitted those looks; he looked menacing even when he was snoring peacefully in his sleep.

  He wasn’t sleeping right now. Instead, he was growling “That’s the last of them” under his breath, as he shoved a dangling foot back under an old, much-patched sail that had been draped over a cart to serve as a tarpaulin.

  The foot slipped back into view again, so the one-eared man took firm hold of the leg and shoved hard, until the entire heap under the sail shifted. Idiot ceiling-carpenters; stubborn even in death! He gave the lumpy shrouded mass a glare that must have impressed the heap, for it stayed right where it was, the foot failing to reappear. Shrikegulk watched it rather suspiciously for a moment longer, then turned away with a little bark of satisfaction.

  “Thank you, Shrikegulk,” came a deep and plodding voice, out of the deeper darkness behind him. “Now get them all down into Undermountain before morning. I don’t want anyone getting curious and discovering this many poisoned citizens. Not when they all dined in the same place with the same grateful employer. There’ll be enough Watch interest when Haskult and all his staff are discovered missing. As the saying so eloquently puts it, the wagging tongue is a deadly sword.”

  “Aye. None of them had ever tasted elverquisst?”

  “None. Nor rymmthan, for that matter.”