Death Masks

by Ed Greenwood

  “Man, you heard me! Stop where you are! That’s an order!”

  “Stop,” the crossbowman added in a phlegmy snarl, “or I’ll drop you.”

  Neglecting to reply, Drake sidestepped smoothly, that way, blade out now and—

  “Drop it!” That sharply shouted command came from behind the two guards. Drake found himself staring at a line of six—no, eight. More were stepping into view, and all of them menaced him with crossbows.

  There was no way he could prevail against so many. The line was long enough that even if he was able to swing the one guard back and forth fast enough so they turned the man into a pincushion, bolts would be hissing past, right into … yes, Drake.

  “I have business with the Lady Melshimber—business of her instigation, mind you—but if you prefer I return at another time,” he announced calmly, “I’ll depart.”

  And turned to go.

  “Halt right where you are,” the burly guard who’d last shouted a command at him now ordered sharply, “or we’ll down you where you stand.”

  Drake obeyed. As they hastened to surround him in a ring of aimed and ready crossbows, he announced flatly, “I speak truth.”

  The burly guard jerked his head in a silent command at one of his fellows, who carefully set down his crossbow and hastened off. Gone to bring back the Lady Melshimber, of course.

  And almost undoubtedly to return with the wrong one: Lady Andraethra Melshimber, Tasheene’s mother. Drake silently recalled the most colorful curses he knew, in slow and exacting order.

  And stayed very still.

  CHAPTER 14

  A Night’s Worth of Troubles

  I do hope you weren’t hoping for a good long dream-voyage,

  Lady, for some nights oblige with peaceful oblivion

  And others seem alive with mischief and affray

  This one already, I deem, shows itself one of the latter;

  Lady, more than a night’s worth of troubles assails us.

  —Faernsar the Fair Knight, in Act II, Scene I, of the play Storm-Tossed Seafarings by Jostrin Zavalandur, Playwright of Marsember, first performed in the Year of the Scroll

  SURE ENOUGH, THE WOMAN WHO ARRIVED AT THE MELSHIMBER gates from the deepening night-shadows within, accompanied by a lantern-bearer and three encloaked ladies-in-waiting, had hair that was streaked with gray and white. Her eyes were bright and alert, and as she surveyed Darleth Drake standing alone in a ring of her bowmen, something that might have been amusement played about her face.

  “Lady,” the burly guard asked, his barking voice gentler and more respectful now, “do you know this man?”

  The Lady Andraethra Melshimber looked Drake up and down unhurriedly, gave him a pleasant smile, and informed the guard, “No, I’m afraid I don’t, Malryn. Yet I do like the look of him.”

  “I,” a new voice cut in firmly, from behind the lantern-bearer, “do know him. This man is my employee.”

  The ladies-in-waiting silently parted with a speed and grace that was almost magical, and as Tasheene, the younger Lady Melshimber, stepped out into the light and met her mother’s amused gaze, she felt the need to add, “He’s my trade agent and messenger, here in the city.”

  Lady Andraethra’s eyebrow arched more than a little mockingly, but she said serenely to the bodyguards and servants, “You may all return to your posts. We are, it seems, as safe as ever here in Melshimber House.”

  And favoring her daughter’s newly revealed employee with a rather sardonic nod, she turned away.

  Guards melted away silently; in the time it took Drake to slowly let out a tensely gathered breath, he found himself alone with Tasheene.

  Who turned without a word and strode deeper into the night-shrouded grounds of her family seat, a little wave of her hand bidding him follow. He obeyed, not missing tiny sounds in the darkness on either side that told him some of the guards were keeping pace with them. Tasheene must have heard those noises, too, but chose to ignore them.

  Once they were in her rooms, the door firmly closed, Tasheene kept her bedside lamp hooded and turned to address him in soft murmurs. Drake bent close to her lips. They both knew that servants would be standing in the passage outside the door, straining to overhear.

  Tasheene conveyed their orders for the evening ahead, not bothering with the fiction that she was selecting the Lords to be killed.

  Drake let his misgivings show in his face. “Forgive my boldness,” he muttered, “but whoever is giving you orders is risking you more and more each foray, with increasingly bold and dangerous arrangements. This could very well mean both our deaths, before sunrise.”

  Tasheene stared at him. “It could always have done, from the first. Yet I agree; this hazards us more than before.” She stared into his eyes. “And so?”

  “And so, Lady Tasheene,” he said quietly, their gazes locked, “I want to become more than an employee. I want to become your partner.”

  The ghost of a smile quirked her lips for the briefest of instants. “In all senses of the word?”

  “Of course. I’ve wanted to sleep with you since our road together began.”

  The young noblewoman’s eyes were cool as she stared at him. And then, without the slightest change in her expression, she started unbuttoning what she wore. “Of course. I thought you’d never ask.”

  Drake gaped at her, then cast a swift glance back over his shoulder at the door. “Now?”

  “Why not? We may both be dead by tonight—and what better way to make the servants think you’re just my play toy, and therefore can be gossiped about and otherwise ignored? Feel free to ravish me as noisily as you want to.”

  Tasheene winked. “I might even enjoy it.”

  • • •

  JALESTER FELT DUNBLADE stiffen beside him, and knew very well why; he was struggling to rein in his own rising irritation. He kept silent with an effort, knowing his best deadpan expression had slipped more or less for good several moots ago. Even armed with Elminster’s wryly eloquent tongue, they were encountering difficulty after difficulty in getting past the far too numerous guardposts.

  Every few steps through the tunnels leading into the Palace—tunnels that, so far as he could tell, only came from places garrisoned by the Watch—the trio found their way onward barred by another armored cluster of vigilant, wary, and dedicated Watch guards, reinforced by Watchful Order mages.

  This latest group of sentinels seemed particularly obstinate. Jalester glowered at them, and they glowered back.

  “I know the previous guardpost let you pass,” the burly orsar in gleaming oiled blue plate armor told Elminster gruffly, his arms folded across his chest and his thick and even more heavily oiled mustache hanging over his lip like a stout old shield. “I have eyes, man. Yet their decision is in no wise my decision. I say again: you cannot pass!”

  “And I,” Elminster informed him pleasantly, “say again that ye have no authority to stop me. If ye persist in this defiance, then I deem ye all traitors—so consider thyselves, all of ye, dismissed from the city’s service. Now stand aside, before I become less civil.”

  The orsar snorted, and there was a barely suppressed chuckle from the line of armored guards behind him, as they stirred and laid hands to sword hilts and sidestepped to give the mage a gap to hurl magic through.

  “I tremble,” the orsar sneered. “Less civil, old man? Are my ears going to be smitten by the oaths my granddam favored, then?” He cast a disparaging glance over Jalester and Dunblade. “Or are you going to shake your fists and prance as these two striplings of yours menace us with their sold swords, hmm?”

  Elminster smiled, leaned forward conspiratorially, raised his hand, and said behind the back of it, “Orsar, before thy wayward tongue gets ye in more trouble, I must ask: are ye certain?”

  The orsar stepped back a pace and half-drew his sword meaningfully. “Certain of what?”

  Elminster’s smile widened. “That I’m not a Lord of Waterdeep?”

  Several of the guar
ds laughed, and the Watchful Order mage sighed and said, “Oh, come now, dotard! Just how gullible do you think us?”

  Elminster waved a hand behind his back, making Dunblade stiffen still more as a wash of Weave-power made his skin crawl and tingle. Jalester felt it, too, and turned his head to look across Dunblade’s back in time to see a few phantom ghosts of sparks fade around the old wizard’s fingertips.

  Which were suddenly cradling not mere empty air but the gleaming and gilded helm of a Masked Lord, the upswept collar soaring into two latticework seeing-screens surmounted by a golden crown around the pointed spire of the helm. In short, the distinctive Mask of a Masked Lord. Unhurriedly Elminster raised it, put in on, and asked, “Now are ye still so certain?”

  The guardians exchanged brief and troubled glances of disbelief and dawning doubt, as that dry old voice from within the helm murmured something they couldn’t catch, that made the mage’s eyes narrow in suspicion.

  There was a brief but spirited flickering of light in the dim tunnel behind the old man in the helm—and out of it stepped a Lord of Waterdeep in full and splendid purple robes and black leather gauntlets, wearing an identical Mask-helm. This new arrival strode past Elminster, Dunblade, and Jalester, and curtly ordered the guardians, in the firm and deep voice of a man of some years, “Stand aside!”

  They gave way uncertainly, and the anonymous Lord walked into their midst and then turned and asked Elminster, “Well? Are you coming, or staying to talk to these adventurers all day?”

  “They’re with me,” the old wizard replied. “Lady Silverhand wants to talk to them.”

  “Well, she hates to be kept waiting even more than I do,” the Lord said. Jerking his head in a “come on” gesture, he marched on into the Palace.

  Elminster walked confidently after him, and Jalester and Dunblade fell in behind, but the guards walked alongside and laid hands on the two adventurers’ swords and sword arms.

  “You’ll have to leave those with us,” the orsar said firmly.

  “ ‘Those’?” Jalester asked.

  “Your weapons. All of them.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so—” Jalester began, but caught sight of Elminster looking back over his shoulder and shaking his head, so the scion of the Silvermanes reluctantly, as he walked, drew his sword and then his dagger and then its better-hidden mate, offering each in succession to the orsar, who triumphantly took weapon after weapon and passed them to his fellow guardians.

  Jalester and Dunblade reached the ends of their visible arsenals just before the Masked Lord striding along ahead of Elminster attained the next guardpost.

  Where two mages stood guard, accompanied by only three Watch guards in full armor—and this time, as Jalester and Dunblade held up empty sheaths and scabbards and Elminster said firmly, “These two are with us, and attend by request of Open Lord Laeral,” there was no move to stop them.

  So on they went, through another archway and a moot of passages, where Elminster cleared his throat to attract the attention of the Lord ahead of him before he turned into one.

  The Lord turned in mid-stride to join El, who had stopped beside a door.

  Where he doffed his Mask-helm, the better to turn and favor the wearer of the other impassive Mask-helm with a grin.

  As he murmured, “Thanks, Mordenkainen.”

  The magnificent purple robes, crowned Mask-helm and armored collar, gauntlets, and all promptly melted away like smoke, to reveal a burly, trim-bearded man in plain, rather worn robes smiling back at him.

  “That,” Mordenkainen chuckled, “was fun. Now, can I get back to my chowder before it burns? It’s at the crucial stirring-in of the last spice. Worry not; there’ll be plenty left when you get back tonight.”

  “But of course,” El grinned—and there was suddenly empty air where Mordenkainen had been standing.

  El turned to Jalester and Dunblade. “Ye didn’t hear any of that, of course,” he advised them dryly, as he produced a skeleton key from under his robes and unlocked the door. “Or see this.”

  An existing enchantment made the ceiling of the room beyond the door glow faintly as the door was swung wide, and they saw it was a small armory, crammed with beautiful and expensive weapons of the finest make.

  “Select whatever ye want,” Elminster told them. “That ye can carry without staggering and clanging, mind.”

  Eagerly and wonderingly, the adventurers from Shadowdale did so.

  • • •

  “LORDS ARE BEGINNING to arrive,” a passing servant murmured at the doorway, not waiting for an answer.

  Laeral looked up with a smile and a nod, but only for a moment. Her desk was still heaped with reports, reports, and more reports.

  Fresh writings, all of them penned within this past tenday. Updates of leaking pumps and sewers, of how far behind city workers had fallen on the street repair program after Neverember diverted so many of them, and funds, to work on repairing and widening the coastal road linking Waterdeep and Neverwinter, and several personal petitions—that might better be termed outright offers of bribes—to her as Open Lord, from wealthy Waterdhavian private citizens who wanted to join the nobility, listing the reasons why their new blood would improve the ranks of the decadent oldbloods, and demanding to know why the previous Open Lord had reversed the practice of allowing nobles to sell their titles, which had “worked so well, and served our fair city so handsomely.”

  Laeral made a face at that one.

  Well, yes, when it came right down to it, everything was for sale, but surely society worked when there were some certainties, some ironclad traditions … now, the trick was, just which elements should be those sacrosanct pillars?

  Deeper thinking, for another day …

  Beneath the petitions were pleas for compensation for houses lost in the Field Ward and cavern-homes lost in Downshadow. Then three letters demanding to know what the Palace was going to do to protect the city if the dragon raids came again, two of them with suspiciously similar wording.

  Beneath that, complaints of the prices of specific foods rising for a tenday for no good reason, and suspicions that certain merchants and costers were colluding to fix these prices so highly.

  And complaints of bad smells from the sewers, and of noise at night in the streets, and—

  Waterdeep had so many problems that seemed small, but made more difference in the daily lives of its citizens than the fate of the Lords, or even who or what—aside from an out-and-out tyrant—was sitting in the Palace.

  And a lesser, more craven Lord might have taken refuge in Castle Waterdeep or the caverns inside Mount Waterdeep or some private fortified mansion in Sea Ward, but—immobile and enticing target or not—she was staying right here.

  For one thing, how would she get any work done, in a timely manner? All of these reports, decisions to be made, things to be ordered … so much paper to get lost or deliberately altered or mislaid, trundling across the city. Moreover, as fire and bloodshed seemed to erupt anywhere in the city where someone wanted a Lord dead, it would seem a great kindness to honest Waterdhavian citizens—if there were in truth any of those—if she kept such unpleasantness out of harm’s reach of them. So here she would stay, prudence be damned.

  As the vultures came to her.

  Laeral sat back and stretched, letting her weary thoughts wander.

  So, would these lordlings give her rein enough to tackle them all, or stand in her way? Or try to oust her as they’d ousted Dagult Neverember?

  Did they just want a biddable figurehead?

  And were any of those six pushiest lords using the murders—or were they even behind the killings in some way—to install their friends, or individuals they could compel, among the Lords? It certainly seemed that way …

  Laeral gave the ceiling a wry smile.

  The evening ahead was going to be interesting, to say the least.

  • • •

  ON WARM AND pleasant summer nights, the plaza outside what Waterdhavians still in
sisted on calling “Piergeiron’s Palace” was usually crowded with people. Walking and talking, seeing and being seen, laughing together and sharing jests and boasts and suggestions to do business on the morrow. It was a crossroads, and a place to gather that afforded a magnificent view, of Ahghairon’s dark and frowning needle of a tower facing the rising opulence of the Palace, with the huge sheltering bulk of Mount Waterdeep rising at its back. It wasn’t the best view in the city, but the vista out over the harbor inevitably came with a reek that was muted or missing here. So this was a favorite place for Waterdhavians with noses that still worked to congregate.

  They were here in plentiful throngs right now.

  Mirt lurched among them, trying to keep his three lasses in view. Not an easy task, even if he’d wanted to bend and crane and peer as obviously as a mother seeking strayed children, for the trio were spread out across the open space—well, except for Waratra, who was a few paces up the rising flank of the Castle Spur of Mount Waterdeep so that slight height would let her look out over the milling throng.

  It would not be long now; there was a sharp tension in the air, the scent of blood to come.

  Mirt knew that smell of old, and growled to himself, nostrils flaring. ’Twasn’t the fighting or even the damned panting running he minded so much … ’twas the infernal waiting, spew it all …

  And then, so suddenly that it was shocking despite his anticipating it, it was happening. A man whisked a small, sweptback crossbow out from under his nightcloak not six paces away, already cocked. He slapped a bolt into place, aimed, and—with Mirt still three lumbering strides away—fired.

  Mirt’s foremost well-worn boot hadn’t hit the ground yet before there were two sharp cracks of crossbows firing not far behind him. A moment later another rang out, from far off to his right.

  And then it seemed as if the plaza was alive with screaming, running frantic people and men and women coolly downing identical small sweptback crossbows to the cobbles to plant their feet in the stirrups and draw them ready again. Mirt wasted no time in gawking, but ended his hastening charge by crashing hard into the bowman he was heading for, ramming head and shoulder deep into meaty gut as the man instinctively swept the bow aside out of harm’s way. As he bore the wildly kicking man over backward, Mirt punched the bowman’s throat thrice, hard, bouncing the man’s head off the unyielding cobbles. The head had a face he knew; a Zhentarim agent. Blood spurted, the Zhent convulsed under Mirt, and went limp even before the wheezing old Lord of Waterdeep—for he was still that, aye, whether these younglings prancing about the Deep these days respected that or not—rolled off him and unsteadily back to his feet to run on.