by Ed Greenwood
"Those look all too much like tentacles to me," the halfling commented.
"Agreed. So let's start throwing gears into them, and see if-aha!"
The Masked's first missile had caused the chains to writhe and coil around it. He flung a second, and a third, and the chains were now darting about just like the tentacles of a hunting squid, stabbing and encoiling and-
They flung all the gears they'd salvaged, more than a dozen cogs and gear fragments in all, into the chains, which convulsed into crushing, strangling knots about them, leaving only three chains to wave and quest about. Tantaerra and The Masked slid under them feet-first at top speed …
And found themselves in a room floored in gleaming black marble, that rose up in sweeping curves into a central plinth, on which stood the source of a steady pearly glow: an ornate catafalque of chased and carved white marble, grander than any coffin they'd yet seen.
Once safely out of the reach of the archway chains, the two partners peered at it hard and long.
It was a box carved out of one massive block of marble, with a sculpted lid that rose in arches and domes, into a narrowed replica of an ornate royal crown, its spires and winking gems rising almost The Masked's height above the upper lip of the coffin sides.
"Someone certainly thought a lot of himself," Tantaerra commented. "Those jewels are huge. I wonder if they're real."
The Masked wasn't looking at gems or carved furbelows. His attention was on a half-hidden iron frame under the lid, which thrust forth thick rings beyond the edges of the lid. From those rings stretched chains rising up to large pulleys affixed to the ceiling, and continuing from those pulleys around smaller pairs of guide-pulleys to run toward each other and down from ceiling to the far wall, where they came together in a winch affixed there, beside a plain, closed door.
"Freshly oiled," he noted. "I wonder how often Mahalagris emerges for a stroll?"
"You want us to be stupid enough to lift the lid, don't you?"
The Masked shrugged. "Do you see a Fearsome Gauntlet anywhere? These gauntlets we've borrowed aren't even close. It's got to be on his body or with it, and …"
"He's got to be lying in his coffin," Tantaerra sighed.
They kept well away from the coffin on its upswept plinth as they gingerly passed it, seeing nothing in the darker corners of the room except carvings of smiling human faces spaced around the room above the height of a tall door. No one wearing crowns or anything of the sort, and no faces they recognized. There were more women than men.
"Apprentices?" Tantaerra asked.
The Masked shrugged. "Who knows? Mahalagris, yes, but he's probably beyond asking. I hope."
The winch beside the door was the sort that had a spike an operator could thrust in through holes in the winch, to stop what had been winched up from falling again as its weight undid the winching.
"I want to open this door and just move on," Tantaerra muttered. "What are we going to do when we get the lid up, hey? Are we ready to battle some sort of undead wizard hurling the-gods-alone-know-what sort of horrid spells at us?"
"Of course not," The Masked replied. "So we'll just…improvise." He laid hands on the winch handle.
And as he started cranking, his mask started to glow.
∗ ∗ ∗
Tantaerra peered at the mask on her partner's face-now blazing an eerie blue-and backed away.
"Tarram?" she asked. "Masked man?"
He kept on cranking the winch, the oiled chains rattling smoothly.
"Tarram?" Tantaerra asked, more sharply.
"Yes?"
"Your mask."
"Is glowing, yes. I did notice; my eyes are looking out through it, remember? Worry not-I'm still Tarram Armistrade, not some mind-mazed minion of a dead wizard. So far."
Tantaerra didn't laugh.
The next turn of the crank caused a chime to sound somewhere nearby beyond the walls, metal clashing on metal. Then another. And another.
Silently, in the far corner of the room, one of those carved faces started to glow. Tantaerra watched it intently, but it didn't move or change expression or anything else, just started to glow as brightly as a lamp.
Her partner kept on cranking, and another face started to shine.
She spun around with a little chill of fear. What was she doing staring at glowing faces when she should be watching the catafalque-and what might just be starting to rise out of it, as the lid ascended?
Nothing was, that she could see. The lid was rising slowly but steadily as The Masked worked the winch, but the coffin just seemed to be …sitting there.
Which was very much a good and favorable state of affairs, she reminded herself, though what she felt was disappointment.
Around the room, face after carved face started to glow, forming a row of rather eerie lamps.
"High enough?" the masked man called, dog-spike poised to jam the winch with the lid at its current height, about twice his height above the coffin, and not far beneath the pulley.
"I'm no palace decorator," Tantaerra replied. "Looks fine to me." She went on staring at the coffin for a moment and then added, "You're going to want me to climb up and look inside, aren't you?"
"Stand on my shoulders," The Masked told her. "Seeing as we've lost both pole and rock."
She gave him a wry grin. "Isn't it your turn to smile fetchingly at evil, rotting undead wizards?"
"Not with what I'm wearing on what's left of this face," he reminded her darkly, and strode to a stop right beside the plinth. "So start climbing."
"I'm not going to be tall enough," Tantaerra complained, on her way up his back. "I'm going to have to jump high-so step back and catch me, hey?"
"Done," The Masked replied, turning sideways on to the catafalque and backing to one end of it, so her jump would give her a good look at its inner depths.
"I'm afraid we might well be," she replied grimly, standing up on his left shoulder. No, she was much too short. This was going to have to be a spectacular jump-or a grapnel, cord, and climb task. "Ready?"
"For what? Standing here?"
"Ha ha," Tantaerra replied-and leaped high.
The Masked caught her neatly by the hips and set her down gently on the floor. "Well?"
"It's empty."
A door closed-the door, beside the winch. They both whirled.
"Of course it's empty," said the tall man who'd just come through it. "I'm much too busy to spend time lying in my own coffin in the dark, wallowing in endless boredom. There is, after all, so much still to do."
He took a step closer. "So many scores to settle."
Another step. Mahalagris the Mighty loomed over them, seven feet tall or more, hollow-cheeked and sallow, his eyes blazing brilliant blue. One of his hands was hidden in a copper-hued gauntlet that had rubies inset into every knuckle joint, but the other had impossibly long, cruel-taloned red fingers that held a curved, naked sword glowing with emerald light.
"Right, Tarram Armistrade?"
Chapter Sixteen
Unmaskings
The Masked did not answer the wizard, but took a step back from that curved blade and muttered warningly to Tantaerra, "Undead. Don't let it touch you."
"Gee, you think?" Tantaerra spat.
Mahalagris lifted his blade and took another step forward, its point following the retreating man-whose mask was now a steady blue, as bright as any beacon.
Fear me not, the sword whispered, both aloud and inside Tantaerra's head. I heal, not harm.
Tantaerra looked up at its wielder, tall and grinning, his eyes gleeful.
And full of hate.
"I–I don't believe we've been introduced," she observed as she backed away, too, managing to get the words out with only the slightest of quavers.
Mahalagris looked down at her for a moment, then returned his attention to The Masked. "An amusing pet," he croaked. "Housebroken, no doubt, but truly preferable to a human wench, when nights are cold? Hmm?"
"How is it that you know me?"
Tarram asked softly. "Do you watch the world outside this tomb of yours with the mask, or magic of your own?"
"Both," Mahalagris replied smugly. "I've been waiting for you for some time, Tarram Armistrade. Or do you prefer Dusker Bellowbar? Morim Jalosker? Or perhaps Taluth Markant? I knew you'd have to come here. A properly crafted curse is like a hook no fish can shake loose. You took your time, though. Schemed, thought up stratagems. Then threw them all away when seeming mischance handed you an excuse to visit ruined Hurlandrun."
"Mischance?" The Masked asked, almost mockingly.
Mahalagris smiled and took a step closer. "At last."
My touch will make you tall and strong, the glittering sword in its hand murmured. My kiss hurts not at all.
"I'll just bet," Tantaerra told it bitterly, backing away. "Does the Fearsome Gauntlet talk, too?"
The corpse ignored her.
"None have reached me, all these years," he told The Masked, almost mournfully. "None have got farther than the third chamber. I have been so bored."
The wizard wasn't even looking at her when it lunged, that whispering blade lashing out with a swift suddenness that terrified her.
Tantaerra flung herself headlong. An instant later and she'd have lost an ear, not just the tress of neatly severed hair that was now sighing floorward.
Guts and garters, but the sword must be sharp!
Mahalagris could have beheaded her, she realized with a chill. He had let her escape being slain. This time.
So the dance begins, the sword told her, as tenderly as a lover.
"At last, after so long idle …" Mahalagris purred. "Fresh foes, excitement once more …sport that must be made to last."
"And if we don't play?" The Masked asked the undead wizard.
Mahalagris shrugged. "Then you die faster."
"Faster?"
The wizard sighed. "Dullards, just as I feared." He raised his sword, and explained as if to a child, "A slaying stroke, rather than slowly hewing you to pieces." Then he raised the Fearsome Gauntlet. "Or I'll use this, rather than just wearing it."
Tantaerra took three swift steps sideways, farther from The Masked. Was the creature now far enough from the door that she could scuttle past it and have time to get the door open?
The Masked sidestepped too, moving farther from her. Giving her a better chance to try, she realized.
Instead, she rushed at Mahalagris.
At last, the blade purred, gliding up into an almost liquid arc to race down and across at her in a wicked slash.
The Masked charged Mahalagris, and the corpse-thing turned with frightening speed, the slash becoming a parry that-
Tantaerra didn't wait to see more, but swerved away from the creature and launched herself into a pounding run, faster than she'd ever sprinted before.
The door seemed to rush up to meet her, as blood pounded in her ears. It didn't look to be locked, and the handle was a simple protruding lever, metal cast in the shape of an undulating serpent. She was going to manage this!
She caught hold of the lever, pulled it sharply down, felt the latch disengage, kicked off from the wall to propel the door open-
And found herself slamming hard into the floor and rolling, sudden burning agony in her left wrist. There was blood everywhere, spurting and glistening wet and dark, and she was-she was-
Lying on the floor, writhing in pain and clutching at her wrist, where her body now abruptly ended.
Her left hand was missing.
Four fingers fewer, and a thumb, the wizard's blade whispered gloatingly, as it glided over her, trailing drops of her own blood. A triumphant reddish-purple light was flaring from it.
Mahalagris was floating above her as well, wearing a gleeful smile as wide as the door she'd failed to open. "Such a valiant little fool! Need a hand, halfling?"
Tantaerra wept, rolling over and over and curling up around her pain. Her hand was severed and gone, somewhere in the room behind her, but she could feel pain in her lost fingers, a burning that-
The Masked shouted something wordless and furious. Then tortured metal clanged, shrieked, and clattered, a sound that became the dying tinklings of many shards on stone.
Mahalagris laughed.
"Your paltry fangs are no match for the Whispering Blade! But please, keep trying. Come at me with your broken hilts and your stumps!"
Someone-The Masked, she could tell by his panting-came running, scooped Tantaerra up around her waist, and ran with her.
Gods, the pain! She howled, waving her ruined arm. It felt as if it were on fire, and blazing from her elbow on down.
Down to the fingers she'd never have again.
Mahalagris was roaring with laughter now, a booming, gloating bellowing that echoed back from something large and solid just ahead. The Masked skidded to a halt and set Tantaerra down against it, in a half-sitting slump. The wall.
"The winch," he muttered in her ear. "Pull its spike when the moment is right."
And he was gone, sprinting away across the room.
Through a chaos of hair and tears Tantaerra saw her partner reach the catafalque and swarm up it. Still laughing, Mahalagris swooped, not bothering to use his wicked blade. Instead, he raked The Masked's back with his long red talons, baring shoulders and spine in long, bloody slashes that trailed tattered clothing.
The Masked roared in pain, driving his attacker into fresh bellows of laughter.
"Trying to entomb yourself before I slaughter you? How considerate! So thoughtful of you, mask-thief!"
The undead wizard whirled in the air and slammed into The Masked like a charging bull, sweeping him off the catafalque to crash back down to the floor. Mahalagris swirled around him tauntingly.
"Up! Up, fool! Up and lose a finger! Just one at first, I think …oh, I foresee us dancing together a long while yet!"
Dance together, the Whispering Blade echoed eagerly. Dansssssse.
The Masked got up and ran a few strides away from the catafalque, then skidded to an abrupt halt. Mahalagris was in front of him again, blocking his way, grinning from ear to ear, his eyes two blue flames of malice, his blade drawn back to slash.
"The smallest finger of your left hand," Mahalagris announced calmly, and flew backward, whirling his purring sword above his head in a grand flourish.
The Masked backed a step and planted himself-and the wizard swooped at him, slashing viciously.
Tantaerra's partner dodged, flung away his shattered dagger with enough force to reclaim his balance into a low lunge in the other direction that made the Whispering Blade just miss, and snatched off his glowing mask.
As Mahalagris whirled around in midair and hacked at his quarry, the unmasked man swept the glowing mask through the air in a slash of his own, a parry that met and caught the curved sword.
Tarram snarled in pain as the tip of the Whispering Blade caught in one of the mask's eyeholes-and his own sliced eye, cheek, and brow erupted in a spray of blood!
Yet he'd intended this, Tantaerra saw, for he was already twisting the mask in his hand to bind and capture the sword-as he flung himself over backward.
The startled corpse-wizard didn't let go of his blade, and was vaulted helplessly over The Masked. An instant before he would have slammed headfirst into his own catafalque, Mahalagris let go of the blade and flew upward. His shoulder rammed the edge of the open marble coffin and sent him into a hard, tumbling meeting with the opposite lip of the catafalque.
"Now, Tantaerra!" The Masked roared unnecessarily.
Tantaerra was already leaping into the air, her surviving hand slapping around the dog-spike protruding from the winch. With a snarl of her own, she tugged with all her might.
Then she was falling away, holding it, to the roaring rattle of racing chains.
Halflings bounce well. She turned in the air as she rebounded from the jet-black floor, in time to see the lid of the catafalque smash down on the undead wizard, crushing limbs into flopping ruin.
Mahalagris fought
against the massive lid for a frenzied moment, head obviously shattered and broken ends of bone protruding from his shoulder and back, and then sagged, pinned under it.
Only to flinch in helpless spasms an instant later as The Masked landed atop the lid, the Whispering Blade in hand.
Blood streaming down his smooth ruin of a face, Tarram Armistrade hacked at every bit of Mahalagris he could see, dicing the undead wizard as his victim shrieked horribly. The curved sword in his hand flared brighter and brighter, a reddish-purple blaze too bright to look at as the curved steel rose and fell relentlessly.
Soon the screams ended and the glowing blue eyes went dark, but the man with the sword kept right on chopping and slicing for a long and terrible time, until there was nothing left of Mahalagris but an unrecognizable heap.
He stood panting above it, glaring down, until Tantaerra managed a weak cheer.
That died in her throat as he turned to glare at her with one wild eye, peering out of a mask of dripping blood, and sprang down from the wizard's catafalque to stalk toward her.
Your turn, yours, the blade whispered. Death at last, halfling princess.
"I'm not-" Tantaerra mumbled, as she scrambled up, bumping her stump and sending fresh pain racing up her arm.
She staggered back against the wall, feeling sick and beaten, watching the unmasked man coming to kill her.
"Tarram! Tarram Armistrade!"
He wasn't stopping, might not even be hearing her.
Still shrieking his name, Tantaerra rushed desperately to the door and tried to claw it open. She succeeded with almost mocking ease this time, revealing a dimly lit room beyond that seemed to open away to the left.
She didn't have time to see more; the reddish-purple glow rising right behind her told her that much. So instead of plunging through the door into the half-seen unknown, she ducked away along the wall beside it, tugging out one of her vials as she went and swigging it.
The taste that filled her mouth was the minty healing tingle-thank Desna-and she dared to turn and look back.
The Masked was still pursuing her, but was well behind her, staggering like a drunkard. With every stride his body trembled violently, muscles rippling in spasms. Time and again he almost fell, swinging the Whispering Blade clumsily and aimlessly as he lurched and swayed. He seemed to be fighting against his own sword arm.
