Scott J Couturier - [The Magistricide 01]

by The Mask of Tamrel (epub)

  The big man sighed. “I fear for you, lad. There’s a reason the Isdori use the word ‘dogma’ to describe the Gyre’s teachings. Men don’t like having their accepted world tumble about them; you could be dooming yourself to a much worse fate than if you’d just kept quiet.”

  Kelrob drained his glass grimly. “It is a possibility,” he admitted, “but at least if the worse happens I’ll know for certain that the truth is being purposefully distorted, rather than simply forgotten.”

  Jacobson’s eyes glittered. “And then what?”

  Kelrob stiffened. Turning to the big man, he said in lieu of an answer, “Enough. I’ve told you everything I know. Are you willing to respect my wishes? No mask-smashing, no betrayal. I promise to make it all very worth your while.”

  Jacobson shrugged, tugging a lever on the side of the chair and easing it into a recline. “You’re the magister. I’ve been hired meat often enough to know how to obey orders, though I still say the thing’s accursed, and that we’re not out of the woods yet.”

  Kelrob nodded. “Thank you.” He looked around the tight box of a room, crowded with overstuffed furniture, the ice box humming faintly in the kitchen where running water was readily available. It felt like civilization, albeit cheaply affordable civilization. There was no hint of leaf of foliage, no decorations to mark the harvest: a perfectly indentitiless room, host to a thousand faceless lives. This thought drew Kelrob’s attention back to the drawer, to the mask within, the consummate face. For the briefest of moments he imagined vine-tendrils and leaves flowing from its mouth, inundating the sterile room and clouding the scent of disinfecting sorcery with the heavy reek of loam.

  Jacobson finished the glass of wine, his heavy body tense despite its state of advanced intoxication. “I’ll admit I’ve heard some of what you said in stories around campfires, or by hearthsides in the deep country,” he said. “The Order is hardly all-encompassing, despite its belief to the contrary. The poor, the landscratchers, tell their own tales, and keep them from the ears of the rich and the wise. You talk about reading secrets in rural practices, but tell me true, lad: before falling in with the disagreeable likes of myself, had you ever really had a conversation with someone you would deem a nithing?”

  This question gave Kelrob pause, and he drew his robes closer about himself, thinking back. The nithing class were ever-present in the backdrop of his existence, the distant and simple growers of food and tenders of animals who had no guild or city-state to call their own. Even growing up in the country, he had been distanced from his father’s vassals, only mingling with the peasantry on high holidays and to settle disputes between villages. “Yes,” Kelrob said, his brow furrowing, “though such exchanges are usually burdened with formality. My father keeps several household servants who once belonged to the nithing class...his majordomo, Osseus, was a farmer before he was brought into the service of House Kael-Pellin. But you are the first nithing I’ve ever held such expansive discourse with. I must admit, you surprise me.”

  Jacobson’s eyes dimmed. “They’re not all like me,” he said. “Most are stupid, backwards, grubbing folk, uninterested in anything beyond the breeding of their families and the tending of their crops and flocks. Far as I can tell they were made to be that way by the Isdori and the guild-lords, feckless slaves that are given their petty rituals in exchange for their labor. But of course that’s the sort of talk that could get a man killed.”

  Kelrob shifted uneasily, his eyes straying into the fire. “Keep my secrets and I’ll keep yours,” he said.

  Jacobson nodded. “Think on this, lad: Tamrel has been singing in the Umberwood since time immemorial. I know because the old ones speak of it, and they say he hasn’t changed. That means there is still magic beyond the power commanded by your precious chromox. Perhaps it’d be better to let that secret lie than hand it over to some high magister to peel apart and dominate? As for your hoped revelation, I can only tell you that it won’t be well-received. Those accounts were left there to molder for a reason.”

  Kelrob rose from his chair and started pacing, creeping dread nibbling at his certainty. “I have your word that you will do nothing to hinder me,” he said, hands clenched tightly behind his back. “That includes fatalistic speculation. My course is set. If you have a problem with my intentions you can leave now and find different lodging.”

  Jacobson sighed. “I am your man, as I said, bought and paid for.” He saluted Kelrob, rose to pour himself another glass.

  Kelrob cleared his throat. “If that is so, perhaps you could slow your alcohol consumption, at least for the remainder of your employment?”

  Jacobson filled his cup to the brim in response. “I’m no miracle worker,” he said through a belch.

  They settled down to eat in earnest, Kelrob picking over several of the milder dishes, Jacobson stuffing himself until his stomach protruded over the lip of his belt-buckle. At length he declared himself satiated, claiming it the best meal he’d enjoyed in a decade. The servant returned and took away the cart, still half-laden with food; Jacobson salvaged the wine carafes and drank himself into an unbelievable stupor, his conversation soon becoming unintelligible. At last he passed out, and Kelrob was left alone with the night. Going to the curved floor-to-ceiling window, he peeled back the heavy curtains and stared out over the cityscape of Tannigal, the tall concretized towers cloaked in double-moonlight and the perpetual flicker of eldritch energies. He watched the crimson moon Dephon scud behind the multi-spired outcrop of a guild complex, steam and smoke rising perpetually from vents in the sculpted limestone. He’d said much to Jacobson, but nothing about his visions of long-dead cities and fountains of living light.

  Jacobson broke into a thunderous snore, shattering Kelrob’s reverie. The mage allowed the drapes to fall shut and turned his attention to the drawer containing the mask, hesitating for a moment before he slid it open and gently removed the visage, which had somehow slid beneath a glossy pamphlet extolling the virtues of the Temple of the Coin. Firelight fell on the marble-pale brow, the delicate, amused curve of painted lips; Kelrob held the mask up to his face, stared into it, silently willing it to speak to him, to divulge its ancient secrets. After a few minutes of intense concentration his head began to ache. “Too much wine,” the mage grumbled to himself. He set the mask on the desk, went to his pack, and dug out his sketchbook, along with a thick charcoal stylus. The fire was burning too low in the grate, shedding insufficient light for his intended pursuit - Kelrob turned up the flames with the small metal crank, grimacing as the smokeless fire danced and writhed. He preferred natural flame, though even his few friends at the Rookery had mocked him for his addiction to beeswax candles. Drawing his chair up to the desk (which he was determined to use for a purpose that justified its mass) Kelrob propped the mask against the backboard, flipped open the sketchbook, and sharpened his stylus with a small coal-stained knife. Ignoring Jacobson’s snoring, he set to recording the mask from every angle, taking particular care to capture its expression of bemused, though cunning, mirth. The sweep of the brow he captured easily, but the smug curl of the pigmented lips gave him some trouble; Kelrob was only a fair artist, and his renderings often left something to be desired. All the while he called out silently to the mask, cursing the absence of the chromox on his finger. He felt like a blind man straining to see a painting, a deaf man feeling out the vibrations of a symphony.

  As the evening wore on Kelrob began to wish he had foregone the opportunity of examining the mask and instead taken it the consulate that very evening. He could glean nothing from it beyond its expression, feel nothing from it beyond a faint but omnipresent sensation of otherness which hinted at deeper secrets he had no means of unlocking. It was well on to dawn when he finished the final renderings and slumped back in his chair, cursing himself for his foolish curiosity. Flipping through the vast series of sketches, he found he was immediately dissatisfied with each depiction, and fed several of the
least pleasing to the flames. The paper, at least, emitted a crackle as it burned. Returning his attention to the mask of Tamrel, Kelrob folded his arms and rested his pointed chin on the chairback, his eyes staring through the empty almond slits.

  “Talk to me,” the mage commanded, his voice emerging thin and desperate. “Tell me your secrets.”

  The mask merely smiled, clearly amused at his frustration.

  Oh well. Kelrob shrugged off his immense disappointment with a yawn. Already the trained and rational portion of his mind was constructing excuses for Tamrel, for what he had seen in the House of the Setting Sun, for how the mask had materialized in Jacobson’s baggage, for every queer and unaccountable event that had plagued his journey. He thought again about auburn-haired Salinas, the Taskmaster, the idiot, his body rotting amid the brilliant leaves, and wondered how to communicate his certainty of the magister’s death without mentioning the vision. He always kept such visions secret, had kept them from his father and brother and Master Kenlath; only Master Huerton knew, and then only because mind-plumbings were routine for initiates into the Mentatis discipline. In the end, just before nodding off, Kelrob decided to simply recount how Salinas had gone mad and charged off to be swallowed by the Umberwood. Doubtless the Isdori Council would send scouts, and find the body in due time.

  He fell asleep in the chair, a common habit of his, and dreamt of the horrors in the House of the Setting Sun. When he awoke covered in sweat he discovered that Jacobson was gone, along with the mask.

  9: Siege and Song

  “He was a large man, about 6’2”, with shaggy blond hair, blue eyes, and a considerable girth. Dressed like a forester, completely out-of-place. Are you sure you don’t remember seeing him?”

  The morning-shift proprietor was a small mousy slip of a woman, weary-eyed and bored, her hair tied back severely into a dun knot. She shook her head at his query. “I’ve been here since sunup. No one’s come down matching your description, sir. I’m sorry.”

  Kelrob cursed aloud, causing the woman to blink and shy back from her ledger-book. “Sorry,” the mage muttered, glad at least that Jacobson had paid their fare in full the night before. He shouldered his pack and glanced at the bronze water-clock dribbling evenly on the wall. “I’m leaving some things in my room for the day, but should be back long before nightfall. If the man I’ve described should show up, please tell him to wait for me.”

  The clerk nodded faintly. “Of course, sir.”

  “Wonderful. Thank you.” Kelrob turned and exited the lobby, his boots clacking softly on the spell-scoured marble. The previous night’s lavish dinner sat ill in his stomach; he winced as he pushed aside the glass-fronted doors and emerged into the full mid-morning bustle of Tannigal. Shading his eyes from the sun he cast a glance up and down the busy street, ostensibly checking his bearings but also stupidly hoping to see Jacobson leaning against a nearby lamppost or shopfront, waiting for him to emerge.

  He saw no familiar faces, but a plenitude of unfamiliar ones. The narrow street was choked with carts and stamping horses, with merchants striding in all their silk-and-gemstone finery, with beggars who crouched in the shadows extending trembling hands, with peddlers and performers and rustic nithings, all building into a clangor of humanity that set Kelrob’s teeth on edge. The air was smudged with the conflicting reek of spices and sweat and horse manure, which the chromox-imbued cobblestones worked to hastily compost. Above Kelrob sprawled the skyline, large ash-spewing towers thrusting into the clear autumn sky.

  Jacobson had betrayed him. The revelation stung like vitriol; Kelrob had done everything to master his fury before leaving the room, but it kept returning in hot waves, clouding his mind and clotting his tongue. He knew he should go to the constabulary and alert the garrison of the theft of a priceless relic, but a numbing weariness ran in him deeper than anger, deeper than care. With Jacobson’s vanishing he could pound the final nail into the coffin of this hideous, bewildering trial, and go his way in peace. Given, he would be perpetually haunted by what he had seen, and tormented by hidden knowledge forever beyond his grasp...Kelrob slumped in the street, the cool sunlight burning against his skin. He cursed Jacobson with all his being, cursed him for a coward and a liar, all the while loathing himself for the same bitter traits. He yearned for the swelling of the chromox on his finger, for the assurance of mastery that it instilled in his heart; with a final murderous tooth-grinding Kelrob set his pace towards the heart of the city, bound for the Isdori consulate which reared above the lesser towers of Tannigal, a glistening edifice of glass and twining steel.

  Quickly he was swallowed in the jostling crowd, pushed this way and that by hawkers and self-important nobles, nearly trampled by a passing carriage. There was a fearful energy in the air, unlike the expected bustle of a waking city; Kelrob retreated beneath the eaves of a squat stone bakery, and was surprised to find the doors locked, the ovens cold. Keeping himself out of the straining tide of traffic, he watched as a caravan master urged a long line of dray wagons towards the Northgate with shouted orders and whip-cracks, the horses nervous and chewing at their bridles, their handlers equally uneasy. The wagons were haphazardly laden with tobacco sheaves and bolts of fabric and poorly-secured urns of balm that jostled glassily at each bump and surge in the cobblestones; not so much as a tarp concealed them from the elements and the hungry eye of thieves. Kelrob shook his head as the wagons vanished down the choked thoroughfare, wondering at the master’s business acumen. The entire train had seemed almost in a panic.

  Tannigal was laid out like a many-spoked wheel, concentric circles of warehouses and barracks and private dwellings and, ultimately, the merchant districts and guild precincts, all cradling the heart of the demi-metroplis wherein stood the consulate, the Temple of the Coin (also the seat of the local Banking guild), and beyond them the Entitled Lands, home to the idyllic manses and towering blood-palaces of the rich. The hostelry Kelrob had chosen lay at the cusp between the private and merchant districts, where the first of the gray windowed towers rose out of the lesser press of two-or-three story townhouses and the highly gambreled roofs of smaller stores and emporiums. These ground-level businesses were mostly private enterprises, some firmly associated with a guild, the rest yearning and struggling for similar recognition. It was, as Kelrob’s father had often called it, a killing floor, where dreams were either made or shattered, and rarely in equal measure. The mage pressed onwards, the high towers becoming more numerous, the pall of ash and steam dimming the crisp autumn sunlight to a drab gray. In the Great Cities such environmental factors were masterfully controlled; pollution was nonexistent, the air constantly recirculating through a mesh of spells that removed contaminates and purged out contagions. Tannigal, though a true city, was still a barbarian settlement by comparison, its intrinsic enchantments still fresh in their weave. A hundred years previous the city had been little more than an aggressive trading post; it was only in the last forty years that the first utilitarian towers had been thrown up.

  At last Kelrob struck one of the main thoroughfares. Traffic, it seemed, was flowing out from the heart of the city in an almost-frenzied rush. He had to push against jostling bodies, and popped his head into several taverns along his chosen course, hoping against hope that he would find Jacobson mercifully slumped in a pool of his own vomit. He had no such luck; obviously the bandit had roused himself from his stupor and left at first light. He was probably leagues beyond Tannigal, bound to one of the four winds with his precious prize. Kelrob resisted the urge to raise his ringless hand above the crowd and command them to part for his pleasure; stepping lightly, dodging around obstacles, he made his way towards the consulate in frantic haste, desperate to be free of the human crush. He’d never been borne into the city on a palanquin, as per Jacobson’s irksome suggestion, but he had always ridden high in one of his father’s heavily-guarded trains, with a treated canopy over his head to deflect sun or rain at need and, simultaneousl
y, shield him from the crowd. This had always suited Kelrob, as he enjoyed being an observer rather than a specimen.

  Strangely enough, walking the streets unhallowed by power and station had a similar effect. Kelrob realized with a growing sense of ease that not a single glance was focused in his direction. He kept to the margins of the broad roadway, walking amid the foot-traffic, incredibly grateful for the decision to leave his robes back in the room. For a while he kept pace with a young noble scion of Ixthis, tunic emblazoned with the pick-and-gemstone insignia of the Miner’s guild, his boyish face barely touched with a dark whisper of beard. He clutched a bundle of papers under one arm, clearly an apprentice in his familial trade, dress humble but patrician nose firmly upheld. After three blocks of striding silently beside Kelrob he vanished down a narrow side-street, casting a look over his shoulder as he vanished into the labyrinth. The mage was surprised to see fear in his eyes, and wondered at the cause.

  At last the street broadened further, and emptied into a vast tract of open cobblestones that encircled the heart of Tannigal. The towers were taller and older here, of more opulent make, their pinnacles emblazoned with the various crests of their guild affiliations. Rearing above them all was the slender finger of the Isdori consulate, devoid of expulsions of smoke and steam and shimmering with a faint internal light. A stylized coin crowned the building, a representation of a newly-minted polgari imprinted with the eight spokes and various wheels of Tannigal, with the consulate itself rising in miniature at its heart. Beyond the silver tower loomed a high wall, and beyond it lines of trees, the artificial forest where the dwellings and grottos and gardens of the rich sprawled in lazy profusion, cradled by the city.

  Kelrob paused for breath, sinking down onto a granite bench and watching the crowd as it surged past. Within sight of his goal, he allowed himself to experience all the weariness, horror, wonder, and stupidity of his recent fortunes, eager to catalog them before he came before the local representatives and delivered his report.