Death Masks

by Ed Greenwood

  “It doesn’t have to. What I want to hire you to do is something that will be to your liking regardless. And I can and will pay so well that your coin troubles will be flung far behind you for a very long time, no matter how bad your investments and how expensive your future spell experimentations.”

  “Oh? And how do I know you’ll pay what you promise?”

  “The nature of the tasks mean you can easily betray me unto death if I don’t—whereas your magic can take you far enough from Waterdeep to survive, if your part in our agreements becomes known.”

  “So just what are these tasks?”

  By way of reply, Cazondur made a certain gesture, but Qasmult waved a dismissive hand and told him, “I’ve so shielded this room that even an archwizard—nay, even a Weave-working Chosen like Old Elminster himself—would have to be sitting at this table with us to overhear.”

  Cazondur promptly waved his hands through the air just above the two vacant chairs at the table, evoking a thin smile from Qasmult.

  “Well, then,” the Masked Lord said, “I thought we’d begin with something I’ll pay you one hundred thousand dragons for—ten thousand delivered into your hands by nightfall if we reach agreement here and now, and the rest when the task is done.”

  Qasmult leaned forward, unable to conceal his eagerness.

  “The task,” Cazondur added softly, “is to slay—in such a way that it can’t be traced back to you or to me, especially not by someone using spells to try to do so, even someone like Imindur Glenmaur, who like all of the Watchful Order should remain utterly unaware that we are working together—a Hidden Lord of this city.”

  Qasmult didn’t even blink. He was still leaning forward, hungry for money. “Any Hidden Lord? I would expect it to be a particular one—and not you, Lord Cazondur.”

  Cazondur shrugged. “I’m not surprised that any wizard of standing in Waterdeep knows I’m a Lord of the Deep. No, not me, and not just any other Lord you can reach, either, but a particular target: Khaliira Arhond.”

  “She’s a Lord? That I did not know,” Qasmult replied. “I accept the task. There will be more, and similar?”

  “There will, and for the same amount. Leading to a task I know you’ll enjoy very much, for which I will pay four times that fee.”

  Qasmult looked a silent question, but Cazondur merely smiled. And waggled his finger that was adorned with the mindstone ring.

  “As subtle as a fish in the face,” the wizard murmured, but he was smiling. “I believe we can work together. Oh, yes. You’d prefer Arhond destroyed in a way that she doesn’t see and can’t know her slayer, I presume?”

  “You presume correctly.”

  “How soon would you like her unfortunate demise to occur?”

  “How soon do you want to be paid?”

  Qasmult smiled again, sat back, and replied, “Very soon after I have another glass of this excellent qarskatal.”

  • • •

  JALESTER’S EYES TOLD him they’d trudged into a tavern called The Sleeping Dragon’s Den. Jalester’s aching feet told him they were somewhere midway along north-front Ironpost Street. Jalester’s brain was wearily marveling at just how many taverns stood in Trades Ward—and at just how much wine a disguised ancient wizard could drink.

  By the way he was stumbling and slurring, Dunblade was also feeling the effects of the ale he and Jalester were sticking to. “Why Trades Ward?” he asked curiously, as they sat down heavily at a corner table, and he almost grounded his nose on its scarred stickiness. “Why not Dock Ward?”

  El was looking merry—and entirely sober. “Most Dock Warders already think the Palace is the home of their foes and the Open Lord is a corrupt tyrant. That attitude is only modified in the case of this particular Open Lord for a few of them, who think she’s someone they might want in their beds, if they could have her without her world-blasting magic. And Sea Ward and much of North Ward sees the Open Lord as a necessary evil, an opponent whenever he or she isn’t their puppet. So it’s the shopkeepers and guilds that remain to be turned against the Open Lord.”

  “And that’s Trades Ward, before all others,” Jalester said slowly. “It all makes sense, once you see it the right way.”

  “Ah,” Elminster grinned, “and there’s the problem. Folk who see it other ways dismiss ye as crazy. They’re right about the madwits, but not about the dismissal.”

  Mirt reached across the table and tapped the back of the old sage’s hand with his forefinger, then used that same finger to point back at himself—or, no, Jalester decided, back through himself at the table behind him.

  With one accord they leaned their heads together over their table, as if listening to something Mirt was whispering—but he kept his mouth shut, so they could all strain to hear what was being said at that other table.

  “Drink up, drink up,” a man was saying jovially, “for the next round’s on me, too! And you’ve got to hear this! I’m told the Open Lord’s taken to slaughtering guildmasters! She’s already killed a dozen or more of the Hidden Lords! I don’t think she’ll stop until every last person of power in the Deep is dead, and she’s the only one left! Lads, the City of Splendors is well on its way to becoming the City of the Tyrant!”

  “Oh, come, come!” one of the drinkers protested mildly. “Surely you weave much from little! Didn’t they all die in a fire?”

  “They burned in a fire; all their bones were found in a heap, as if they were already dead and piled up in a corner—of the room they went to meet the Lady Silverhand in. To yell at her over something they were raging about, as they walked the streets to the Palace. She’s a wizard, you know! They always turn to fire, in the end!”

  There were nodded heads and wary murmurs, all around the table. “So what do we do? I can’t leave the Deep! Where else will I find work at guild rates?”

  “Neverwinter? They say the Lord Neverember’s itching to ride back here, with an army if need be, to retake the Open Lord’s throne!”

  “Which will mean Waterdeep and Neverwinter aren’t safe to be in! Folk die in wars—and pillagings, and all of that!”

  “Or we could watch for someone standing up to her—and when that happens, rush in and help that someone! Showing the Tyrant she can’t get away with it, see?”

  “So just who has she killed?”

  Elminster grew a big smile, and turned in his seat and asked, “Aye, who has she killed?”

  The man buying the drinks looked over at him, his eyes narrowing, and said, “I wasn’t talking to you, friend.”

  “But I live in the Deep, so I’m naturally concerned when I hear the Open Lord’s going around murdering people! So either ’tis true, and something must be done—or it’s just wild jaw-wagging, and I can dismiss it and order another ale. So tell me now: where did you hear this, and who got killed, exactly? Details, details!”

  “Well, uh, the stablemasters’ guildmaster, and the head of the glassblowers, and the master of the jewelers, and the bakers, and—and I forget who the fifth one was, but there were five, I know that much, and more’n a dozen Masked Lords, too—”

  “Know from whom? Or were you there watching, while she was burning and blasting all of these people?”

  “I—” Abruptly the man got up, gave El a glare, and announced to his table, “I have to go to the jakes! I’ll be right back, so drink up! Drink up, and order the next round—I’m paying!” Then he hurried off.

  Mirt rose, grinning, and Jalester and Dunblade were only half a stride behind as the fat, wheezing man announced, “I’m for the jakes, too!”

  The retreating man who’d been telling his table all about the murderous Open Lord cast a look back over his shoulder, saw three drinkers joining the one who’d started asking him all the awkward questions, and suddenly decided the jakes just off the taproom wasn’t good enough for him.

  He bolted across the taproom and up the stairs that climbed its far wall to the rental rooms above—“Chambers by the evening, or half-evening, or overnigh
t! Ideal for private parties, for the business meetings that so enrich our city, or for trysts with our handy low-coin lasses!”

  They gave chase, Mirt lumbering to the lead, but the four reached the top of the stairs to the echo of a slamming door.

  And found themselves looking down a passage that sported six closed doors.

  Mirt promptly hauled the nearest one open. Two merchants facing each other across a table, with papers spread out between them, looked up to tender identical unfriendly glares. “Private deal,” one of them snapped.

  Mirt yanked the door closed again, took two lurching strides, and snatched open the next one.

  There were five men and women seated around the table in this room, with a board between them depicting the city of Waterdeep. One of the men was grinning and announcing gleefully, “Time for a mandatory quest, I think!”

  As none of the people in the room were the man they were looking for, and there was nowhere for him to hide, Mirt sighed and slammed that door shut again, too.

  He promptly tried the next door—which lacked a table, sporting instead a four-poster bed that held three unclad women and a slithering python, abed with a middle-aged man wearing only a pot of flowers strapped to his head.

  “Hoy!” the man barked, “I paid for a private time! Go find your own flower-waterers!”

  So they tried the next door. It had a drapery-covered window, and its bed was a large and grand affair that had skirts all around, and draperies adorning its four-poster frame. A man lay on the bed, spread-eagled and tied to the frame, and a woman was lying atop him, both of them looking scared as they stared back at Mirt and the others.

  Elminster’s eyes narrowed. “Block the doorway,” he muttered to Jalester and Dunblade, then rushed to the bed and plucked the bed-draperies aside.

  There was no one behind them, but the man they were seeking promptly erupted from under the bed and—because Jalester, Dunblade, and Mirt were all blocking his way to the door—tried to leap out the window.

  Only to rebound back into the room, reeling, and topple senseless to the floor. His crashing meeting with them hadn’t even left a mark on the shutters that were still dogged shut over the window; they had utterly refused to yield before his charge.

  El took hold of the fallen man by the collar, and said to the couple in bed, “Pray excuse the interruption. By all means continue. Were ye at the tickling stage, or still at the archly purring and being sinuous?”

  “Uh—ah—” the man sputtered.

  The woman smiled, relaxing, and replied, “Being sinuous. Thank you for dealing with our unwanted visitor. He threatened us with a dagger. Told us it was poisoned.”

  “It probably is,” Mirt grunted, and he and El dragged the unconscious man to the door. Jalester managed to favor the woman with a bright smile and a little wave before their newfound captive was dragged out, and they could close the door in his wake.

  “Drag him,” Mirt grunted. “He’s not worth carrying—but by the head and shoulders, so it’ll be his feet that bump down the stairs, not his other end.”

  However, when they reached the head of the stair, six glowering men were waiting for them at the bottom, with drawn swords.

  “Ah, now,” Mirt and Dunblade said in almost perfect unison, “this is more like it!” And they laughed merrily, drew their own blades, and charged down the stairs.

  • • •

  CAZONDUR WAS THE lone man sitting at the table for three in the Mermaid’s exclusive upper room when its door opened and the wizard Vaerentevor Qasmult entered. The serving-maid glided into the room, but vanished again at the slight shake of Cazondur’s head.

  Qasmult watched a side-door close behind her and then said with a smile, “Success. Khaliira Arhond is no longer among the living.”

  Cazondur clapped his hands, and the maid’s door opened to admit not her but four strong men sweating under the weight of a chest large enough to serve as a big man’s coffin. They set it down and went out and fetched another. And another.

  Cazondur slid a key across the table. “You will want to count it, no doubt. Rest assured that the sum total is ninety thousand dragons, to go with your advance payment—and discreet delivery to the address of your choice within the city walls is free.”

  Qasmult took the key, then almost bolted to the nearest strong chest, unlocked it, and flung the lid open. An unbroken sea of golden coins gleamed in the light.

  “Good Waterdhavian dragons, all of them,” Cazondur purred. “That key opens all of the strong chests.”

  Qasmult scooped his hand through the coins, let them fall back in a metallic singing of small clinks, sighed with relief, and then threw back his head and laughed heartily—and a little wildly.

  Cazondur smiled politely, and when the wizard’s mirth died away said, “There will be others—Hidden Lords and the heads of noble houses and senior members of the Watch—but I have reconsidered matters since last we met, and believe you should commence the fourfold-payment task I mentioned. One that may take longer, for not being traced and achieving complete success at the first strike are more important than haste. I will pay a quarter of the fee here and now, if you accept here and now, though for practical reasons—the amount I can personally carry—I can only pay it in gems, not in actual coins.”

  “I am interested,” Qasmult said flatly. “Who?”

  “The wizard Glenmaur. Imindur Glenmaur of the Watchful Order.”

  Qasmult’s smile was slow but broad. “It will be a pleasure.”

  “I thought as much,” Cazondur replied, and slid a large coffer across the table. Qasmult opened it. “Rubies,” he purred. “I have always loved rubies.”

  Cazondur produced a decanter from where it had been standing down beside his right leg, and pushed it across the table too.

  “And qarskatal.” Qasmult smiled.

  CHAPTER 25

  The Gods Spinning Fun for Us All

  My dark luck, the exasperated merchant calls it

  The thorny way things always seem to turn out

  Saith the weary crofter, while others mutter of curses

  And proud folly leading always to a fall. And I?

  I say it’s the gods, spinning fun for us all.

  —Shardretha the Dowager Queen, in the first canto of Swordhewn Road: A Poem of the Fall of Aluphin by Tarlor Hallanth, Bard of Berdusk, published in the Year of the Moat

  “WE ONLY NEED ONE ALIVE!” THE BULLYBLADE AT THE BACK OF THE waiting six told the others, in the midair moment before Dunblade reached them. He sprang into their midst, slashing and hacking furiously to strike aside their waiting blades and find himself footing enough to fight.

  Mirt, on the other hand, bounded off the last step into a ponderous roll that snatched the feet out from under one man and felled a helpless, arm-flailing second beneath the fat man’s progress.

  Whereupon Jalester and Elminster rushed down in Mirt’s wake, Jalester laying about him wildly with his sword, and Elminster dodging and ducking until he could touch their assailants with his bare hand.

  And whenever he did so, that man collapsed in an instant, crashing heavily to the floor, out cold.

  In a few panting, whirling moments, all six were down, with only two of them wounded.

  “That one,” El directed, pointing at the man who’d given the “one alive” order, “and our jaw-wagger. The rest we leave.” He strode across the astonished and gawking taproom. “Ho, tavern master! I wish to buy some lamp wick and some wine flask-wire!”

  When he produced a handful of coins that gleamed golden, the tavern master was suddenly delighted to sell those two sundries, and so it was the four victors were soon escorting two terrified and rather helpless trudging captives back to the Palace. The little fingers and thumbs of both men had been wired together, behind their backs, and lengths of lamp wick cord run from those wire bindings up to encircle their throats from behind. El and Mirt kept firm hold of those cords—and their unwilling captives went where they were directed.


  “I wonder,” Jalester sighed, as the now-familiar soaring façade of the Palace loomed larger and larger ahead, “what reception we’ll get from the door guards this time.”

  Mirt chuckled. “So, lad, want to be made a Lord of Waterdeep, so you can just give yon guards their orders?”

  Jalester rolled his eyes. “No, I’d prefer to live a little longer than that, thanks.”

  • • •

  LAERAL WAS FLOATING in drifting blue-white oblivion. Immersed in the Weave, feeling the pain in her head slowly—oh, so slowly—ebbing as the power rolling through her renewed and healed. It felt good to just let all of the tension and striving and stress of being alert and keeping so many trains of thought all racing ahead fade away. She was dimly aware that her body was lying still locked in the small room at the Palace, because Dove had affectionately shown her an image of her senseless self with the teasing words, Looking good for an old one, looking good!

  Oh, go carve up a dragon, she thought back, amused. What news, sister?

  You are supposed to be healing and leaving all cares aside, Syluné told her severely, sailing up to join them on the flowing currents of the Weave. How can you heal if you try to work harder than ever, Laer?

  Humor me, Laeral thought back.

  We always have, sister, Dove told her gently. We always have.

  Laeral sent them both a mental sigh. So do it one more time. What news?

  Syluné’s mind-voice sounded amused. Well, it seems you now have cultists as neighbors. In the Sumber Hills.

  Elemental cultists, Dove put in. Earth, air—you know. The air cultists are calling themselves the Cult of the Howling Hatred. Wasn’t that a hobgoblin adventuring band, about a century back?

  Howling Haters, sister, Howling Haters.

  So beware earth tremors and odd storms, Syluné added, as they may be more than freak weather. Particularly watch out for a lone racing cloud that spits many lightning bolts as it travels.