Death Masks

by Ed Greenwood

  • • •

  THE HOUR WAS late, and Tasheene was beginning to know what it was like to feel old and bone-deep exhausted. There had been a lot of running today, and now this last bit of skulking and climbing to safely reach the disused tower of her family mansion to talk where no servant would overhear them.

  Yet they’d made it. She and Drake needed no lamp to talk nose to nose in the old turret room, so they were in pitch darkness as Tasheene said grimly, “I believe that was a test of sorts. All those blades who set upon the Harpers didn’t all just decided they hated harp music all at the same moment; they were mustered and given orders and held in readiness.”

  “To make sure we got away,” Drake agreed.

  “So we can try again. To carry out the order I was given. Three lady lords, each with daughters; so, do we try again for the Stravandars? Or Arhond? Or—?”

  “Antler wants at least one captured,” Drake muttered, “of Dalarrla Stravandar, Ildathe Stravandar, Naelvala Arhond, or Laelyra Serendragon.” He sighed, and added, “This is increasingly likely to get us killed.”

  “I know,” Tasheene replied grimly, “but I see no way out. Even if I renounce my heritage and flee the Deep—and this city is my home, the place I love—I fear the reach of the one I’m working for is long and strong. He won’t let someone who knows as much as I do of his schemes live.”

  She reached out and embraced her partner, pulling him close, and added fiercely, “So let us to bed. We could be dead tomorrow.”

  “Plans first,” Drake murmured. “Then pleasure.”

  Tasheene sighed. “Then let it be the Stravandars. One captive is as good as two, so that gives us twice the chance of success—and after what happened last time we tried there, there’ll be far fewer Harpers still alive to try to thwart us.”

  Drake nodded, knowing she’d feel the gesture as their foreheads were touching, and they set off together through the darkened rooms and passages of Melshimber House, in search of Tasheene’s bedchamber.

  All was dark, still, and silent as Drake opened its door—and froze, reaching back to tap Tasheene sharply in warning.

  She backed away, and he went with her. “Tripwires. Not yours,” he breathed almost soundlessly into her ear. “I almost tripped them.”

  He went into the unoccupied bedchamber next door, fetched a bedside oil lamp, and flooded Tasheene’s bedchamber with light.

  Zaraela Raelantaver smiled at them from Tasheene’s bed. She lay atop its covers at ease, fully clad and evidently entirely healed.

  “Did you miss me?” she asked lightly.

  Tasheene didn’t have to entirely feign her delight. Drake stepped into the room to deal with the tripwires—set, it seemed, merely to topple Tasheene’s display suit of armor, in warning—so she could rush to the bed and embrace her friend.

  “I’m whole and dragon rampant to go!” Zaraela informed her happily. “So who’s next on our list?”

  “On the morrow,” Tasheene replied, “we try for Masked Lord Stravandar. Failing her slaying, we kidnap one or both of her daughters, so we can lure her into an ambush. Up for it?”

  “Very much so,” Zaraela chuckled. “Got anything we can drink to it with? I’m parched!”

  “That,” Tasheene said happily, “I can manage.”

  • • •

  A LITTLE FINE gray dust eddied behind the Xanathar as it drifted back to hang once more over the center of the pool. Lords, courtiers, Watch guards, guild members … they all ended up gone. No priest would be resurrecting them.

  And those who yet lived would continue to be the fools they’d been born to be. The follies of some augmented by its control over them. Prudent or merely terrified humans would have fled Waterdeep days ago, but none of the Hidden Lords who’d held their Masks when this month had begun would leave the city now for any reason. Nor do what prudence might suggest to protect themselves.

  Thralls of the Xanathar, to this slender extent, without a one of them realizing it. Cattle, all humans were cattle.

  These two Chosen of Mystra now within reach were, however, slightly stronger stuff.

  So it would be pure pleasure breaking them.

  • • •

  DRAKE HAD SLIPPED off to visit Lord Melshimber’s private cellar while Tasheene had rung for servants to bring her a late supper with suitable wine, and settled Zaraela in the bedchamber next door for the night.

  They’d made merry, and drunk deep. After Drake had made certain that the servants had obeyed Tasheene’s orders and taken themselves out of this entire wing of the mansion, and then locked them out, for eavesdroppers could be disastrous.

  The food was long gone now, and even all the wine. It wasn’t long before dawn, and a stuffed and no doubt internally gurgling Zaraela was finally snoring.

  Drake slipped back into Tasheene’s bedchamber, carefully closed the door behind him and locked it, then held up some vials.

  Tasheene recognized her own healing potions, and laerand, and made a sour face.

  “Zaraela?”

  Drake nodded. “I pilfered them back from her.” He carefully set Tasheene’s usual night tripwires, then drew Tasheene’s coffer from under her pillow to return the vials to their home.

  Knowing it was too dark, and she was far too yawningly tired and eager for his arms to check them. And perhaps—just perhaps—discover that two of them now contained syrup from the kitchens. Their former contents, one healing potion and one vial’s-worth of laerand, now resided in different containers in Drake’s boot heels.

  Gallantly, he removed his boots before coming to bed.

  • • •

  LAERAL ROSE FROM her desk just as two courtiers came into the room with fresh stacks of documents. Expressionlessly they set them side by side on the space in front of her she’d just cleared, and withdrew.

  Laeral glared at the papers, but did not return to her desk from the door she’d been heading for.

  Another door swung open, and Mirt lurched through it, reeking of boar fry and carrying a tankard of ale as large as his own head. He was yawning, but it turned into a belch as he started to smile a morning greeting to her.

  “Senior Lord of Waterdeep,” Laeral said crisply, “sit down at that desk and start signing things!”

  Mirt gaped at her. “Awhaa—?”

  “You heard me! Make some decisions, and forge my name just as you’ve been forging it these last few days to get all that old wine up from the cellars!”

  Mirt blinked at her, then slowly started to grin.

  The old bastard isn’t even looking guilty, Syluné commented, a moment before Laeral was going to say those more or less those same words aloud.

  You have to feel guilty to look guilty, Dove said dryly.

  “You heard me,” Laeral contented herself with snapping. “Sit down and start signing!”

  “You going adventuring at last?” Mirt asked hopefully—and then, under the fire of her hot glare, he sat down and started signing.

  Laeral went out without slamming the door. Being Open Lord of Waterdeep meant iron self-discipline.

  • • •

  BOWGENTRA SUMMERTAEN, LADY Master of the Order, could be tall, imposing, and strikingly beautiful when she made an effort. Right now, she was sitting behind her desk and looking far more like a stone-faced statue—though for all her five enraged guests were concerned, she could have been sitting there stark naked with her long hair spectacularly on fire.

  It was rare for the first light of morning to fall on the semicircular doorstep of the Tower of the Order and find anyone standing at all on it. It was unwise to bother wizards who were at less than their best, even if they adhered to the rules of the Watchful Order.

  It was still rarer for dawn to find five dressed, fully awake, and furious guildmasters of Waterdeep on those steps.

  Yet this dawn had, so now they were venting their rage before the head of the Order: the short, long-nosed, and heavily bespectacled head of the Jewelers’ Guild, Ismur Klaveth
; the fat, fringe-bearded, normally jovial and always sweating lump in green satin that didn’t flatter him, Brenlar Boltcavvan of the Bakers’ Guild; and the mountainously tall, wide, and deep-voiced man with hands as big as shovels, Talstren Telfeather, Master of the Stablemasters’ & Farriers’ Guild. The other two guildmasters simmered in silence, behind these louder three.

  The Lady Master peered, trying to identify them. Dardreth Malasper of the Guild of Apothecaries & Physicians, and, yes, Tesker Malverth of the Guild of Glassblowers, Glaziers, & Speculum-makers.

  They were so spittingly angry that they’d all refused to sit down, and each of them was trying to pace in a carpeted space far too insufficient for such angry perambulations, so they kept crashing into each other or backhanding each other’s jaws and faces when they flung their arms wide to make a point.

  And the tenor of the loud and colorful points they were making was that they, and their guilds, and quite likely all the other right-minded guilds of this fair city, demanded—demanded—that the Watchful Order, as a guild, police its own! When asked to be more specific, they screeched and swore like sailors and stamped their feet, before finally simmering down to a state sufficiently and seethingly coherent to inform the Lady Master of the Order that she was to stop all member mages from such irresponsible illusions as dragons diving out of the sky—and to identify and thwart any outlander mages who are visiting the city and doing such reckless castings. In the meantime, the Watchful Order of Mages & Protectors, so derelict in its duty, should consider itself expected to pay for every last copper coin of the damages suffered by guild members in yesterday’s uproar.

  That comment left the Lady Master staring at her own last straw, so she received the demands of her five fellow guildmasters frostily—and they stormed out, slamming the door of her office so fiercely that the room shook, a book fell from a high shelf, and the stuffed pseudodragon doorstop shuddered enough to make a casual observer think it had come back to life and awakened from a long slumber.

  Whereupon Bowgentra turned toward the tapestry by her right shoulder and asked worriedly, “So which member most likely spun the dragon illusion? Qasmult, do you think?”

  A wand thrust forth and shoved the tapestry aside, to reveal the second in command of the Order standing behind it, leveled wands in both hands. Imindur Glenmaur had been at the ready in case the guildmasters got personally violent with Bowgentra.

  He now looked back at her gravely, wearing his usual expression of neutral wise inscrutability.

  “Qasmult or Lavalander,” he murmured. “They’re becoming the most independent of us—and are already the most dangerous.”

  • • •

  SUTHOOL CAME DOWN the steps into the same moldy, darkness-drenched cellar beneath The Bloody Fist tavern, and found Belvarra of Asmodeus waiting for him, leaning against a wall with one shapely boot propped up on a moldering barrel.

  Neither of them made a move to approach the small window at the end of the room, because Cazondur should not be on the other side of it right now.

  “You’ve checked?” the illithid asked through his speaking stone, pointing with his tentacles.

  A mind flayer’s tentacles made it unnecessary for nodding or pointing with the inclined head, Belvarra thought. Interesting. Just the latest interesting thing about this Suthool.

  The two of them were here to meet without Braethan Cazondur because they were meeting about him. The Xanathar might be gleefully enjoying all the slaughter and mayhem, but the two of them were having serious second thoughts about Cazondur’s tactics.

  “I have,” she reassured him. “No sentience is in the next room.”

  “Then please begin.”

  “No pleasantries?” Belvarra teased, then before the illithid could respond said, “Laeral yet lives, but the turmoil we wanted to avoid is spreading nonetheless. I am personally furious that Cazondur has had the Warden of Waterdeep slain. And he capped that by having his pet wizard cast the illusion of yet another raiding dragon, and that has goaded guildmasters into going to the Watchful Order—where they are right now.”

  “And?” Suthool asked, the voice generated by his speaking stone decidedly dry in tone. “You think the Order can’t help them? Or won’t even try to answer their concerns?”

  “Won’t even try, and their visit will in turn goad Cazondur’s conspirator into doing something to them. And once we have guildmasters being slain readily and in multiples, in the same way the city’s lately been losing its Hidden Lords—thanks again to ambitious Cazondur—there will be real trouble. He’s left Laeral alive but is slaying everyone else. Not helpful.”

  “Not helpful at all,” Suthool agreed thoughtfully. “So, have you a plan?”

  CHAPTER 22

  When the Bodies Start to Fall

  I heard Khelben “Blackstaff” Arunsun very clearly when he made reply to the rulers of the Lords’ Alliance. He told them, “Your people want safety first, then clean water, then food, then garderobe flushing to carry off stink. Then temples, and good roads, and only then will they have luxury enough for casual complaining. Listen well, for those who don’t are always surprised when the bodies start to fall. Their own usually among the first.”

  —from Chapter 6 of the chapbook Volo’s Guide To Good Rulership by Volothamp Geddarm, first published in the Year of the Haunting

  “I EXPECTED NO LESS!” GUILDMASTER DARDRETH MALASPER SNAPPED. “The Order has always considered themselves superior to the rest of us! Wizards always do—and like brigands, their swaggering arrogance is emboldened by their numbers!”

  “What a stone-faced bitch,” the Master of the Bakers’ Guild panted bitterly. “She could at least have offered us her sympathies, ’stead of tossing her head like an annoyed steed and giving us cold words!”

  “She’s not worth wasting our time on,” the mountainous Telfeather rumbled. “But she’ll take orders from the Open Lord! That one’s a Chosen of Mystra, not a mere from-the-book spellhurler! She’ll lay down the law!”

  “But will she?” Klaveth of the Jewelers asked. “These wizards stick together against the rest of us, you know.”

  “Unless they hate each other,” Malasper pointed out. “And it stands to reason the Watchful Order don’t like having someone who knows and hurls the Art better than they do sitting on the Open Lord’s throne!”

  “I hope you’re right,” Boltcavvan of the Bakers puffed heavily. “Being as we’ll have to count on that.”

  The five guildmasters had been striding along the streets as they talked—heading straight from the headquarters of the Watchful Order to the Palace, borne along on the hot tide of their anger.

  “The Open Lord is responsible for the safety of the city,” Malasper reminded this fellow guildmasters excitedly. “That’s what we must harp on! If we just keep demanding she immediately order the Watchful Order to stop the casting of draconic illusions—and by nightfall pass a Lord’s Decree outlawing such castings—”

  “We might get somewhere,” Tesker Malverth of the glassblowers said quietly, “and we might not. Yet it’s very much worth a try.”

  The Palace door guards were unused to seeing five guildmasters gathered together demanding entrance at anything other than high ceremonial occasions, and seeing guildmasters walking anywhere more than the few paces it took them to alight from a carriage and reach the Palace doors was also unusual. Add to that the obvious fury of the five men now stalking toward them, and they scurried to be fawning and conciliatory in accommodating their visitors’ every need. Which meant that no less than a dozen courtiers escorted the seething quintet to one of the largest and best-appointed audience chambers to await the Open Lord—while the most senior courtier on duty hurried to find the Lady Silverhand.

  No sooner were the furious guildmasters shut into a room to snarl and wave their hands at each other and gloweringly echo their outrage than Palace staff hastened through various doors to bring them an impressive selection of decanters and whatever food was ready, and the
n withdraw to leave them to it.

  Five stomachs promptly rumbled—the five angry men had arisen early, and had rushed about with high energy and higher emotion, and now discovered they were both parched and famished—and the guildmasters fell upon the food and drink voraciously.

  Only to soon reel and slump.

  A courtier came rushing in to tell them the Open Lord was on the way, stared at them in horror—and was promptly daggered from behind.

  “Not the same poison as took down these five guild ornaments,” the courtier’s slayer murmured with a smile into the dying man’s horrified and pain-wracked face, as he lowered the Palace official onto a heap composed of two of the guildmasters, a hand clamped over the courtier’s mouth to stifle any dying cry, “but it will do.”

  Lord Cazondur took his hand away only when the man’s stare had gone fixed and his last breath had been some time ago. Then he calmly cleaned his dagger on the front of the courtier’s livery, resheathed it at his belt, and headed for a certain panel in the wall that he knew very well to be a secret door, as he’d used it to enter the room very shortly before.

  He was still a step away from the panel, hand outstretched to open it, when it slid open right in front of him.

  Cazondur snatched at his dagger, but relaxed when he saw who was stepping out of the darkness of the revealed opening into the audience chamber: the wisely intractable, neatly goateed wizard Imindur Glenmaur, second in command of the Watchful Order.

  Glenmaur surveyed the slumped corpses calmly. “If word of this spreads, the city could erupt. Better six deaths buried for a time than hundreds, and citizens daggering each other in the streets.”

  And with that, he cast a spell that set all the bodies afire. “Servants are so careless,” he commented, as he and Cazondur stepped through the panel and closed it behind them. “It’s a wonder fires don’t erupt in the Palace more often.”

  The two men took secret passages they knew well, to a certain room from which Glenmaur teleported them both away.