by Ed Greenwood
Light flared behind him; the Fearsome Gauntlet.
The moment he thought of it, it was as if a door had opened in the darkness seeking to ravage him, and he was plunging down a chute of wildly swirling memories. The wizard's memories.
Luraumadar, Luraumadar, Luraumadar!
The Whispering Blade had a secret!
In the hands of one who knew how-and this was how, bending one's will like this, and calling up this crawling crimson-edged darkness from the depths of the sword-it could drain the magic of the Fearsome Gauntlet.
Yet it could not hold it all, nor stop draining, once it started. The sword would quickly be overwhelmed, and self-destruct. It was a final resort, to be used only if both were about to fall into the hands of foes …
The dark malevolence raking at his mind lurched to an astonished halt. Not at what Tarram had just learned, but in surprise at something else, something over there in his memories.
Yes, Mahalagris had been reading his memories at the same time as he'd been plunged into the wizard's. Something the undead mage had just learned had staggered him.
In the dark warm passages of his own mind, Tarram turned toward that bright and quivering amazement, to see what had so astonished the fell wizard.
Only to watch his much younger self stealing the mask that had so dominated his life from Araungras Karm.
Karm! Mahalagris whirled around inside Tarram's mind, turning to directly confront Tarram, to glare at him, to rush at him and thunder, WHERE IS KARM?
That mental shout almost set Tarram's mind afire. Sizzling and half-blinded, he recoiled, flinching back, trying to mentally fend off a killing blow.
A blow that did not come.
Two burning eyes pursued him through his mind as he fled. Mahalagris was relentless. The wizard wanted Tarram dead, all right, and soon-but not until he'd learned all he could about Karm, to make hunting down the traitorous apprentice as easy as possible. No, the masked man was now a captive to be handled with exacting care, tracing from one memory to the next …
Tarram dodged behind a mental image-the wizard's, not his-of peeling back the layers of an onion more purplish than any onion he'd ever handled, and peered deeper into Mahalagris's. There had been something more about the gauntlet, something tied to an old, ever-present puzzlement …
Luraumadar.
That was it!
Luraumadar, the word the mask had repeatedly whispered into his mind, down all the years he'd had it-it was the command word for the gauntlet, the magical key to unlock the rest of its abilities!
It would let him do things with it that it hadn't shown him, magical powers that a moment ago he'd had no inkling it possessed.
Things like controlling the Whispering Blade.
My blade?
That was Mahalagris, astonished anew, and furious, boring through Tarram's mind. Then he departed, so abruptly that Tarram was left dazed, drenched in sweat and shaking. The wizard, that great fell heavy darkness worming its way through his thoughts, was suddenly gone-out of Tarram's head and thrusting him away with impatient arms, scrambling free of him to work a swift spell.
Tarram heard his partner curse, an oath that rose into a despairing snarl. Before he could turn to see what the wizard's magic had done to her, he saw its results.
The Whispering Blade came hurtling hilt-first through the air, into the wizard's hands.
With a cold smile of triumph, Mahalagris wrapped both hands around its hilt, swung it back, and turned to look at Tarram.
There was death in that stare.
Preserve the mind, the blade whispered, but limbs are expendable …
Tarram smiled back. "Luraumadar," he said firmly, and clapped his mask back onto his face. It lit up like a pillar of fire.
The gauntlet blazed up to match it; he heard Tantaerra's gasp of astonishment, but kept his gaze on Mahalagris.
If the undead wizard could just indulge him by being as arrogant and stubborn as most spellcasters were, for just a few moments …
Tarram bent his will, and the Whispering Blade flew. It almost tore itself out of the wizard's grasp, but Mahalagris sneered and hung on tighter.
Tarram sent the sword streaking into the largest boulder in the heap. There was a ringing clang, sparks flew, and the body Mahalagris had borrowed thudded into the rocks. Tarram swept the sword away into the air, the dazed wizard's body still clinging to it, then dashed it against another rock. He refused to give Mahalagris time to think. Again against unyielding stone, and again, bones shattering, Mahalagris crying out now, trying to form words with a smashed mouth.
Tarram brought the Whispering Blade to a hovering halt, and started the draining.
As the gauntlet's power rushed into it, the sword went from angry whispering to exulting gasps, a gleeful song arising from it. The slumped, broken man clinging to it lifted his head, visibly healing as a golden-white radiance erupted from the Whispering Blade and washed over him.
He was healing and growing, getting larger, a surprised and delighted smile spreading across his face. His eyes lost all pain and danced in excitement. He looked down at the masked man gloatingly as a golden-white aura grew to surround him, flickering brighter …and brighter …
A strap parted, and then a belt, Mahalagris's clothes falling away as he grew. The wizard didn't seem to notice, or to care.
Tarram sidestepped and backed away until he stood between the growing spellcaster and Tantaerra, and could put one hand behind his back and wave at her to get away.
He backed away himself as he made that gesture. Mahalagris was eight or nine feet tall now, his eyes flaring into golden-white flame. The wizard threw back his head and laughed, opening his arms wide. Tiny lightnings crackled around his fingertips. He was alive with power.
Tarram moved the hovering sword carefully, lifting Mahalagris off the ground slowly as a feather lifted by the gentlest of breezes.
"Ride the wind," he whispered, as if in blessing, and watched the wizard in the body of the unfortunate, mind-dead Molthuni rise into the sky, a tiny sun ascending to challenge the moon.
"Tarram Armistrade," Tantaerra said quietly from behind him, "you had better know what you're doing."
"You," he murmured, his eyes fixed on the now tiny figure, aloft amid its glowing nimbus of magic, "had better hope I do, halfling princess."
The explosion seared their eyes. Its thunder rocked the landscape, echoes rolling away across the hills to rebound off the Mindspin Mountains.
The magical backlash of the blast raced right after that echo, lifting Tarram Armistrade off his feet. He had just time to turn in midair and see dweomercats sprinting away into the distance and his halfling partner dashed to the ground in front of him. Then the magical shock of the destruction of the Whispering Blade reached the mask, and snatched all Golarion away.
∗ ∗ ∗
Luraumadar, Luraumadar, Luraumadar the mask shouted in Tarram's mind, driving him up out of darkness. The strong smell of roast boar was in his nostrils, and there were armored Molthuni warriors bending over him, half a dozen lance tips hovering near his throat.
"I'm a Lord Investigator of Molthune," he croaked.
The nearest Molthuni sneered. "And I'm a dancing pleasure-girl of the Savored Sting. Now, you're going to tell me what that mask is you're wearing, and why it's glowing-and we won't hesitate to nail your throat to the turf with lances if you try anyth-"
Tarram didn't hesitate, either. Through the mask, he could feel that the Fearsome Gauntlet still had most of its abilities; the Whispering Blade had been overloaded and destroyed long before it could drain the gauntlet entirely. He awakened the gauntlet now, using its simplest ramming blow to dash aside the lance tips.
He rolled hard to the left, to wrap himself around the ankles of a Molthuni and topple that soldier over. The smell of cooked boar seemed to be clinging to him.
Tarram kept rolling, up to his feet and into a sprint that took him out of the ring of Molthuni. He could hear them pounding
right after him, and kept dodging to keep any thrown lances from biting home.
He ran through the grass in a wide circle, knowing he had to get back to Tantaerra-and because doing so should give him a good look at all of his pursuers, strung out in his wake. His targets.
A soldier at the rear of the chase wasn't running at all, but rather mounting his horse, probably having realized that a man on a galloping horse can easily run down a fugitive on foot. Tarram called on the gauntlet through its link with the mask and punched that soldier ruthlessly in the throat. The man's head lolled loosely on a broken neck as he bounced off his startled horse, making it rear and bolt.
The gauntlet was still on Tantaerra's arm, as she lay sprawled and senseless. As he aimed the gauntlet to slam into the throat of his closest pursuer, Tarram saw his commands were making the gauntlet lift his partner's limp arm and move it about, the glove towing and turning it.
His chosen target was close behind him, panting and jabbing the air with his spear, trying to stick it into Tarram's back or behind, but not quite close enough yet.
Tarram didn't hesitate. After all, it was his and Tantaerra's lives or those of these-gods! — twenty-some Molthuni.
That closest soldier was abruptly smashed aside, landing like a heavy sack, felled by the empty air.
The next closest Molthuni soon joined him, throat crushed and neck broken, another heavily thudding heap in the grass.
Followed by another, as Tarram grimly went on using the gauntlet, stumbling on in his circling run, heading back to Tantaerra now, his wind almost gone.
Molthune may have more soldiers than I can count, but I have a Fearsome Gauntlet.
The patrol's horses stood watching as the running men came back toward them. A few pawed the ground, but most were stolidly accepting of the loud idiocies of human riders, and merely gazed placidly as Molthuni after Molthuni jerked back into sudden falls and lay still.
"Madness!" a soldiers shouted, realizing his superiors were all down and dead. "We need reinforcements!"
"Archers!" another agreed, and the pursuit of the masked man became a general rush back to the horses, the wide circle collapsing into a flood of men heading straight for their mounts.
"Magic to fight magic!" another Molthuni panted, as men sprang into their saddles and spurred hurriedly away.
Tarram crouched low to confound any last-second spear casts, but none came. Freed of their officers, the Molthuni were in haste not to fight, but to gallop back to Braganza.
Tarram watched them go, feeling much better. Now that all echoes of the stunning lash of the wizard's destruction were done, he felt alert and stronger. Using the gauntlet seemed to have driven away his dazedness and a lot of his aches and pains, too.
He looked at Tantaerra, sprawled and senseless. Could it do the same for her?
He bent over her and concentrated on the gauntlet, trying to get it to leak just a little power into her. Enough to invigorate, not sear or harm.
The gauntlet on her hand pulsed with light, then rippled.
Yes. Envisage that bright white light, lapping rather than flowing or rushing, creeping …
The halfling stiffened, and her eyes flew open.
And fixed on him with blazing anger.
"What are you trying?" she snapped. "I felt it! This-this violation you're-"
Furiously she pointed the gage at him. Tarram could feel that she was trying to slap him away, to sunder his link with it, but if that dread bolt struck him …
He overrode her, and saw the horror dawn on her face as she realized she couldn't break his control.
Frantically Tantaerra tried to snatch the gauntlet off, fumbling because her stump lacked fingers to grasp it.
Tarram hastily snatched off his mask and let it fall, breaking contact. The reek of cooked meat grew suddenly stronger.
"I–I was only trying to help," he told her, sudden tears spilling from him as he saw the look on her face. "I'm sorry. I …I did not mean to give offense."
Tantaerra's glare had fallen into open-mouthed, dumbfounded revulsion. She screamed now, loud and long and raw, as she scrambled up and ran wildly away.
The Masked bent to pick up the mask. He could put it on and stop her, through the gauntlet …
Then he straightened, wearily, without touching the mask. And stood watching his partner flee.
∗ ∗ ∗
Breath failed Tantaerra, and she stumbled in mid-sprint and almost fell. Catching her balance by staggering almost to a stop, she fought down her fear.
He had used her-had crept into the gauntlet-her body-without her permission. Had used her to kill soldier after soldier.
And look what that cursed mask of his 403
had done to him. It had melted away the ragged cloth undermask beneath it, and all the underlying skin, too. His freshly ruined face was now two eyes-one of them protruding, almost dangling, on a stalk of muscle-a hole where his nose should be, and a lipless ruin of a mouth, in a glisteningly smooth nightmare of crawling veins.
The backlash of the sword exploding had probably done it. Not that knowing that made him look any better.
Fearfully Tantaerra looked over her shoulder.
The Masked-the Unmasked? — was standing dejectedly alone in the trodden grass. She saw him bend over, slowly pick up the mask, put it on with obvious reluctance-then fling up his hands in horror, and clutch at his head with both hands.
Frightened anew, she started to run again.
Away, just away …
Chapter Twenty
In the House of Telcanor
She ran out of wind again, staggered, and fell.
Tantaerra got up, shaking her head. She was fleeing to she knew not where, trying to run from the vivid image that would not, would not go away.
Tarram Armistrade was a monster. Truly a thing. He'd tried to control her again, to enslave her. In the end, he was just like everyone else.
Yet with every step her resolve and strength ebbed, and her anger and horror too, until she stopped, turned around, and looked back.
The Masked was still standing there, a tiny figure in the distance. Alone, his hands empty.
Tiny. Alone. Empty.
Just like her.
Tantaerra drew in a deep, shuddering breath. Then she gathered her courage and started the long, long walk back to him.
∗ ∗ ∗
"Tarram," she began, to his unmoving back. "I…I'm sorry. I reacted poorly."
The Masked stood like a statue, facing away from her, looking out over the rolling hills of Molthune. She waited, but he said nothing.
"I'm sorry," she said again, hesitantly walking around to face him. Forcing herself to walk close to him, to reach up her hand to his.
"I should have trusted you," she whispered, finding herself again on the verge of tears. "After all we've been through, after what you've done for me …I should trust you."
She reached for his hand.
He did not take it, but merely looked at it, his face unreadable again behind the mask. Not that there was much of it left to read if it had been bare.
"But you didn't." he said softly.
Tantaerra felt tears begin to leak down her face. "No, I didn't." She gripped his hand. "But I can learn."
The Masked looked down at her, blank. At last, with a great sigh, he hauled her up into his arms. "I'm sorry, Princess Tantaerra. I'm used to working alone. I shouldn't have tried to control you. Not even to help you."
Tantaerra nodded, but their heads were so close to his that she merely bumped his chin.
"I forgive you," she said, "if you'll forgive me. Will…will you take your mask off now?"
"You don't really want to see that, do you?" he asked.
"No," she admitted. "But maybe it's time we both started getting used to it."
Tarram held her silently for a long time, then told the darkening sky, "Well, this is awkward."
"Agreed," Tantaerra said. "So will you unmask?"
Tarram sig
hed again. "In time. Not now. I don't think Braganza is ready for what my face looks like-and neither are you, just now. Later, when we've both eaten and stepped past worry and danger, and you're bored again and back to carving me with your tongue. Then it will be time."
"I don't carve-well, I do, don't I?"
Tarram laughed. "You do. You most certainly do. And the mask stays on."
Tantaerra found herself chuckling as well. "Then put me down, please. I've been humbled enough."
Tarram Armistrade set Tantaerra gently on her feet, and bent over so they could hold hands.
They walked on together.
∗ ∗ ∗
Silence had fallen between them, but it was an easy, companionable silence again.
They walked and walked, through the now still and deserted night. It was getting darker as the moon sank low and clouds stole in, heading for the handful of lights on the horizon.
Lights that seemed somehow to have very quickly multiplied, atop walls and towers looming over them in the night.
"Braganza," her masked partner pointed out, unnecessarily.
In reply, Tantaerra waved her hand back behind them. "The inevitable pursuit," she said dryly. Then she pointed at the gates ahead. "And the inevitable armed welcome."
The Masked chuckled mirthlessly. "Let's get this over with."
"Let's," Tantaerra agreed.
The gates were closed and guarded, and in response to the sharp challenge, they demanded entrance in the name of the General Lords.
This met with the usual disbelief, but The Masked merely took a confident step forward, drew himself up to his full height, and waited in expectant silence. Tantaerra stole a quick glance at him, then did the same.
After a few cold, slow breaths of waiting, toe to toe with the commander of the guard, one of the other guards rather doubtfully pointed out, "There're only two of them. Once they're through the foregate, we have them penned, and can find out what they're really up to."
