This is reinforced when another attendant, perched on one of the ladders, grabs out a stack of clothes and the whole bundle shreds to threads of rotted silk. Its guttural sound of distress is worthy of pity. But I’m too preoccupied by the clothing. How long? Why would they keep ancient garments stored here when the lord of this place can clearly afford better?
Unless...The guest that left them on arrival never came back for them. Are they dead, or have they orbited this never-ending party for that long, losing themselves so deeply in the revelry that their home, their former lives, ceased to matter?
Both options give me chills.
Two of the three strip my breastplate like carrion birds. Their hands dart in, supernaturally deft, not inhibited by their lack of eyesight. One carries it toward the fireplace while its partner works on my bracers. The chest piece is handed off, and tier by tier it ascends the cubicles.
“Guests clothes,” says Kumiko, her limp limbs being undressed. She’s had the same thought I have: How long have these people been here?
“I don’t intend to be here long enough for my armor to tarnish, that’s for damn sure.”
She nods, being turned by the same pairs of warm wrinkled hands that have left me to my braes and nothing else. How do they know?
We’re ushered between velvet covered sofas and gold filigree chairs in rose silk that my sister would be ecstatic to have in her withdrawing room.
The room’s far side, save a large pair of doors, is lined with clothes. They hang from pegs mounted to the wall, and iron-railed carts on wheels of polished wood disks. The attendants gesture, urging us with gentle motions: Choose, choose.
“A masquerade,” says Kumiko, smoothing the ruby silk of a gown or cape. She looks to me. “That’s why they’ve been blinded, deafened.”
“Made not to see or hear us.” The idea raises bile in my throat. “Guests so bent on hiding their identity that the servants are deformed for it.” Maeve’s trial is still fresh in my mind.
“There has to be a reason. There’s something more at work here.”
“Let’s discover it. I’m more than ready.”
Kumiko disappears between the racks, appearing at intervals with armloads of clothes. It never occurred to me she cared about these things; her clothes were spare when we met. Her position must have been one of dignity, bringing in gifts and rewards. Now and then she chooses something and an attendant tugs it away, replacing one article with another from small clothes to outer dress. Their skill amazes me. Two good eyes and ears and I still trip going up steps some days.
“Their hands,” she says to me, smiling with shared amazement. Her attendant rests unnaturally long, spindly, flesh-padded fingers at her throat, feeling the vibration of her words. “They sense everything with their hands.”
It nods its knobby head, and while the attendants have no expressions, it’s folds ease into contented lines that signal understanding.
“Convenient in more ways than one,” I throw over my shoulder, tugged and posed by two sets of hands.
Kumiko is entirely naked, now, and I can’t look away. My cock hardens, and also stripped, I have no way to hide it, but she’s distracted, being turned, moved, and I let myself watch her.
Our companions have no idea and don’t seem to care as they draw sheer stocking over her long feet and the platinum hair of her legs. A white silk shift slips over her head and drifts down her body, breasts full and teasing beneath. A costumer fits Kumiko into a pair of stays. Her breasts mound above the tension, above the neckline of her shift prominent and predatory, weapons of seduction. Her lithe waist thinned above her hips angles her proportions to signal one thing.
She catches me looking. Our eyes meet, hers a deep shade of rose, and they drop to my waste. Kumiko knows what I’m thinking. It was already on her mind.
Being stuffed into a shirt, pulled and posed, breaks the moment. But my blood doesn’t cool for long moments.
“These are the strangest clothes,” murmurs Kumiko, being pushed onto a red-cushioned stool before a three-panel vanity arrayed like an alchemist’s workbench.
“You don’t approve?” I’m still being trussed up like a pheasant on feast day.
“I do. It’s just…” She shrugs, playing with the ruffle along her low, square neckline. “Somewhere out there among the realms people wear these sorts of garments. That makes them feel further away to me than any passage of time. But then I look around me, here, and in the temple...” She’s quiet for a moment, the attendant back-brushing her snow-white hair into a mound. “We’re not so far apart. Our fates are shoulder to shoulder.”
“Glad I’m not alone in that feeling. You have no idea how many times a day I feel so far away from home that it’s hard to believe it still exists.” Those men, up on the promontory. Their strange clothes and dialect and their weapons make me feel isolated. Then I realize they’re fighting the same things, at least indirectly. The Oryllix, Mordenn, the war that’s coming. We’re an army, I realize, resisting the tug of my companion for a second. “We’re an army and we don’t even know it.”
Kumiko nods, wide eyed. “People in each of the realms, the Nine and beyond, probably feel just like we do, but they shouldn’t.”
“No. They need hope. And they need to be united.” I let the attendant pull me along this time, just catching Kumiko’s smile.
“What?”
“You know what.”
“What.”
“All these disparate factions need a leader. Someone they can believe in, someone who understands how to organize them. Someone willing to face unbeatable odds, and win. Over, and over.”
“No.”
She wiggles her brows like the wings of a predatory bird, a warning. “Yes.”
“One...battle...at a time,” I grunt, struggling to fit my thighs into crimson velvet britches. I dread buttoning the fly; at this rate it’ll equal castration, especially after watching Kumiko dress.
All my grousing aside, the garments are fine, even if they are strange; silver tinsel and silk embroidery decorates the knee bands and hip seams, matching the cuffs and lapels of matching velvet coat. Something about the form-fitting pants and the coat’s wide skirt make me feel like a true swordsman and a noble. If I ever settle in Loria again, I have some demands for the court tailor.
“Well?” I hold my hands out, turning for Kumiko’s examination. “Like what you see?”
“Bravo,” she breathes, clapping softly. “You...ah…” She shakes her head, cheeks pink, and gives a little cough. “You do it justice.”
I stick two fingers beneath my neckcloth and tug, overheated by more than the fireplace. Then she stands up and things get more uncomfortable. Her powder pink dress is almost wider than she is tall, scalloped hem whispering over the carpet, belled sleeves swishing with each graceful movement of her arms. There’s a witchcraft to the cut of her gown, the wide or concealing parts accentuating her body.
She looks at me with a blatant invitation.
I sigh. We’re always in a hurry at the worst times.
The attendants open the set of doors between the clothes racks.
“Always ladies first, “ I murmur at Kumiko’s neck when she passes.
She smirks. “Your costume might hide your identity, but everyone will be able to identify you if you’re not careful.” She grinds the heel of her hand at the fly of my britches and mmm’s.
Hurry be damned. I grab for her and miss.
Kumiko dodges me accidentally. She’s trying to maneuver her dress and high column of silver-white curls through the doorway. Her laugh is contagious.
“As someone used to being quick, this is very frustrating.”
“As long as it’s me you’re running from, I wholly approve of this costume.”
“You would,” she lobs back, letting the attendants fuss with her underpinnings. She passes through the door with ease this time and I pretend to be disappointed.
The room’s darkness leaves us blind for a moment.
There are a handful of torches licking soot up the stone walls but compared to the glittering dressing room, we’re in a cave.
“Faces!” Kumiko gasps, and darts back against me.
“Masks,” I reassure her, but it takes me a second to realize it, too. They line all four walls from waist-high to ceiling. Cast in shadow, their smooth gray pallor and hollow eyes are deceiving.
An attendant beckons Kumiko forward. She steps on a line of rune-carved stones, a ley line. Almost instantly, an array of masks begin to glow, a random assortment across the facing wall, and two more at our left. The attendant gestures; she can choose among these.
“I wonder how it decides?” There’s no obvious pattern I can discern.
“Sex? Species? No; nothing so obvious or easily decoded.” Kumiko moves along the wall, inspecting while we silently puzzle over the question.
The masks have color now, definition. Cherubs, pink-cheeked courtesans, animals. Kumiko giggles and fingers a whimsical rabbit mask with a hint of mystery to the shape of its eye slits. “I have to; it seems meant to be.” She takes the mask from its small gold prongs and settles it over her forehead, eyes, and nose. One of our companions fastens the pair of pink ribbons at the back of her head. For the first time I notice that her ears are gone, tucked up skillfully into her large quaff so that only the lower, very human-looking half remain. Kumiko might boast the best costume of all, pretending to be what she really is.
And what a costume. She turns to me, grinning, and she’s radiantly beautiful. The mask is the final touch, mysterious and provocative.
It’s sweet agony to tear my eyes from her. My turn. Attendants summon me forward. Kumiko steps back and the masks dim. I step onto the ley line.
Nothing happens. I shuffle to one side, the other; press with the balls of my feet. The runes stay cold and unlit.
Silent panic breaks out among the three servants. Their jowls flap, soft bodies tense. They rest mitten-thick hands at each other’s throats, reading tremors so subtle I can’t hear them in the stone chamber.
Something is wrong. Silas Blaloch wrong. I have better odds of surviving that fall, but it’s not the fall I’m worried about.
“What is it?” I ask Kumiko. The attendants’ gestures grow more frantic. One steps back; he’s leaving, about to summon someone.
“You’re mortal. The line must read celestial energy. Magic. Something you’re not giving off.” Her eyes shine wide behind her mask. “I don’t know.”
Desperate, I activate Freya’s gift, biting my lip hard enough to draw blood. Nothing. Fire balls in my palm. Still nothing.
The attendants are more agitated, and one is close to the door.
Kumiko shifts, mouth tight with fear. I have to do something, now.
Use your gifts in tandem.
The voice in my head is not my own. It’s Crispin, chastising me as he beats me at our practice.
My body responds by instinct, a reaction I didn’t know I was capable of. Slime films my skin. Fire lights my fingertips. I will the attendant to stay, to forget it ever had a concern, as I activate every power I can.
The ley line thrums beneath my soles, beaming with blue-green light. Tension eases beneath cool air. One mask glows from a forgotten corner where the torchlight barely reaches. Among the demons, mythical creatures, animals and birds, the mask is conspicuous by its plainness. It’s blank, pallid, defined by hinted features and only noteworthy for its glow.
The attendants still, the last pausing with his hand on the door. One, hands down the mask and settles it on my face while pushing at my arm, turning me toward a silver-framed mirror over Kumiko’s shoulder.
Its painted wood is cool and damp from the chamber’s air. The mask is featherweight and fits my face with tailor-made precision, covering everything but my mouth and chin. My eyes disappear in the reflection, lips fade in the semi-dark. All traces of a living person beneath it recede; I become the mask. It warms against my cheeks and forehead. Small cracks appear in the paint, giving it the look of ancient weathered marble. Gold droplets bud along its edges and flow like raindrops, melding and swirling. They become filigree. Along the scoops of my cheeks the work is lacy and delicate. At the temples it thickens, fans and scrolls to the peak of my forehead where it draws into the air like a diadem. In its center, a blazing sun ringing a face both mortal and ephemeral. A warrior, his mouth wide in a battle cry.
“If the masks are affected by our magic or origin…” I look to Kumiko in the mirror. “Doesn’t that kind of spoil all this secrecy?” I’m a Lir, slash! kind of man, so maybe I’m missing the subtleties here.
“I don’t think it’s so blatant,” she murmurs, edging beside me. “Watch. Use your flame…”
I will the fire. Flame bursts from the sun on my crown and dances in the mask’s eye sockets. I can’t see the fire looking out but anyone looking back…
“Nice, that.”
Kumiko nods. “It uses your abilities to enhance the disguise, not reveal it.”
I conjure a little slime onto my face. The crazed marble morphs, glossy blue green like thick glass. “Enhance or alter it.”
“Alter your whole self. Were you chasing that girl in the pink dress?” she asks playfully. “Perhaps she doesn’t want to be caught…” Crimson dye runs down her gown like a splash of water. Her masks glimmers, fading to grey and then midnight, the face of a black hare. “And if she doesn’t wish to be caught, you’ll never find her in the crowd now.”
I wonder what else we’re capable of. “A man could find infinite ways to abuse this, you know…”
“And I’m confident you’ll know half of them right away. Shall we?”
Each of the attendants feels in his pocket with deft fingers, producing gold keys with wedge-shaped head. The keys are fit into slots in the door’s center, and a mechanism bangs an echo off the stones. We step into a mirror image of the great hall, but this one isn’t constricted by closed doors. This is part of the main castle.
The door thuds shut behind us, one of a whole wall of gilded white-plaster panels. There’s no seam, hinges, or knob. The door is gone, only accessible from the far side.
When you’re in, you’re in.
Kumiko looks around at the silent space, belied by the far-off thunder of voices, music, dancing. Her gaze is distant, suddenly, distracted. I rest a hand on her arm. “What is it?”
She doesn’t turn. “Don’t you start to go mad? Knowing your sister is...doesn’t this waiting eat at you?”
Yes. Absolutely yes, but I can’t admit it because I can’t dwell on. I tell Kumiko what I tell myself each time the muscles in my neck clench and my temples pound: “She’s collateral, a bargaining pawn. Mordenn and the Oryllix want something they’re not sure they can get without my cooperation. That makes Esmanth as safe as she can be, all things considered.” At least until they decide they don’t need me, and that’s the thought nipping at my heels.
“I’m not made for patience.” She tugs her lip between white teeth, the gesture framed and made alluring by the border of her mask. “I’m more than ready for vengeance.”
“That makes two of us.” I offer her my arm and she laughs. I’m not joking, not with the chivalry or my remark. Kumiko, more than any of the Artifacts, has been haunted, silent, reserved. No more. She’s fearsome, has found her fight, her strength. She’s ready. They all are.
We are ready for the beginning of the end.
–The Ballroom–
Light fades, swallowed by the ballroom’s length, a room that stretches like a home-road disappearing on the horizon and growing two steps for each one taken. Gold-flamed torches between the columns seem enslaved. Their tongues sputter and dance, struggling to produce illumination swallowed by the floor’s black diamonds in twice the quantity that white tiles reflect it.
It’s enough for us to behold the hundreds of silhouettes.
A footman in a three-cornered hat and ruby velvet taps his little silver wand against a chime mounted to the balcony rai
l. In my father’s court arriving guests would be announced by the herald, twice and loudly. And even then, the newcomers would be missed by some, concealed by music and conversation that ebb but never halt.
Not so here in the dragon halls. Silence falls in a quick stroke like midnight, beating against my eardrums. Every head turns and now that my eyes have adjusted, I’m reminded again the firelight is more than enough. Eyes glitter from the depths of countless whimsical, menacing masks.
Curious eyes, mischievous, malicious, enigmatic; I may not have Kumiko’s ability to sense the deeper current, but I can read the crowd in more blatant ways. We’re an unknown quantity, and that’s going to be a danger. Maybe a boon, judging by a few traded glances across the sea of bodies, but a gods-damn danger for sure.
They’re clad in crimson velvet or sky-blue silk, every color of the rainbow represented, and more. In fact, the array of beings, of clothing, is dazzling, and doesn’t stop with the cut of a dress or a silken sash. Twisting horns, wreathed in amber flame, hover above a being whose face is so dark he looks made of obsidian, and when he turns to take us in, his body grinds slowly. Nearby, a woman whose dress is nearly translucent, revealing a golden body as perfect as Maeve’s, watches us avidly as a halo of ethereal lavender butterflies spins and dances around her. Still further in the crowd, a towering being enters the room, and his white silken clothes glow so brightly that guests around him shield their eyes. His mask sparkles with glittering diamonds, and a halo of light hangs above his head. As I watch, he apologizes, and his halo evaporates, replaced by a black shadow, and his costume and mask dim to absolute midnight.
A question for Kumiko dies on my lips as his outfit changes, and I realize that all the accountments, every fantastical thing I see, isn’t a hint to their identities because they’re part of their costumes. I suddenly feel drab by comparison.
Temple of Cocidius: A Monster Girl Harem Adventure Serial Part 5 Page 6
