Midnights Mask (10 page)

The three of them continued their slow walk forward, eyeing Sephris.

One of the priests asked Sephris a question and the whole group tried to move him forward, but the loremaster held his ground. He irritably pushed away the hands that tried to force him up the stairs. He turned around, numbers and formulae still tumbling from his lips. He dropped the book under his arm and scanned the crowd as he calculated. The gazes of his escorts followed his.

Sephris’s eyes found Cale and Cale read his lips: “… two and two are four,” the loremaster said.

Korvikoum, thought Cale.

They stared at one another over the crowd of passersby. Sephris looked to Magadon, to Jak, and Cale did not see pleasure in the loremaster’s expression. More like resignation.

The little man waved tentatively.

Sephris did not wave back. The priests escorting him saw Jak’s wave, Sephris’s stare, and frowned. Brows furrowed; hands went to maces. Quiet words passed between them. Two spoke aloud the words to spells that Cale guessed to be divinations. They were examining the trio. They reported whatever they learned to the tallest priest in the group, who nodded. The two others tried to turn Sephris around and guide him up the steps.

“What do we do?” Jak asked softly.

Before Cale could answer, Sephris pushed away the two priests near him-demonstrating surprising strength—and started down the stairs toward Cale. The two priests caught him quickly and stopped him cold. Sephris struggled, began to shout numbers, formulae. The loremaster’s words made no sense to Cale. He sounded like the madmen elsewhere on the street. Passersby watched with wide eyes.

“What in the Hells are they doing to him?” Jak said. “Come on,” Cale said, and hurried forward.

The two priests forcibly turned Sephris around and bodily carried him up the stairs. He continued to shout over his shoulder, kicking and flailing. The rest of the priests moved to the base of the stairs to intercept Cale. There, they formed up and waited, their expressions hard, their hands on mace hafts.

Cale did not slow until he stood face to face with the tallest of the four.

“We are here to see Sephris Dwendon,” Cale said, and started to push past the priest. The man put a hand to Cale’s chest and halted his advance. With effort, Cale resisted the urge to punch him in the face.

“He is not seeing anyone at this time,” the priest said. He stood a head shorter than Cale, but looked to be built as solid as a tree.

“That’s a horse’s pile,” Jak said.

On the stairs above, Sephris struggled furiously in the grasp of his fellow priests.

“The three are come,” the loremaster called. “Let me go. Let them come. I need to hear their words to finish the equation.”

Jak tried to dart past the priests, but they stepped before him and blocked his way. They started to draw their maces and Jak backed off, palms raised.

Cale stared into the eyes of the priest. He could not control the shadows that sweated from his pores.

The priest’s eyes widened behind his scarlet mask but to his credit, he did not back down.

“He needs our words,” Cale said, his voice low. “You heard him.”

“You heard him,” Jak echoed, nodding.

“What did they just say?” Sephris shouted from above. “What did they just say? I know their sums. Let them come, now! It is important.”

The priests trying to manhandle Sephris up the stairs had not managed to get the loremaster very far along. Both of their masks sat askew on their faces. Both were huffing.

A crowd started to gather at the base of the stairway, looking on. Cale could feel dozens of eyes on his back. The priests looked twitchy but did not stand aside. “I will summon the Scepters,” the priest said.

“He wants to see us,” Cale answered, and nodded up at Sephris.

“That is not his decision,” the priest said, his mouth a hard line. The other three priests shifted their stances nervously.

“Not his decision?” Jak exclaimed. “We are his friends. He’s not your slave.”

Before the priest could reply, another priest appeared at the top of the stairs, above Sephris and the priests wrestling with him. He wore an elaborate black vest embroidered with gold thread. A neatly trimmed dark beard housed a severe mouth. He called to the priests below.

“Enough! Veen, let them come up! Now. Enough, loremaster,” he said to Sephris. “They are allowed to pass.”

Veen, the priest in front of Cale, looked relieved. He and his fellows stepped out of the way and the three companions hurried up the steps, two at a time. Behind them, Veen ordered the crowd to move along and the four Oghmanytes fell in behind Cale and his comrades.

The two priests who had tried to restrain Sephris released him. The loremaster stood between the sweating priests, gasping and still calculating as he waited for Cale, Jak, and Magadon to approach. He appeared to be counting their steps as they climbed. When they stood before him, he said, “Three of you, on the ninth day of the ninth month during the fifth hour after noon.” His gaze looked not at Cale but through him. To Cale’s surprise, Sephris’s voice lacked its typical mania-fed intensity. “The variables are… complex.”

“Loremaster,” Cale said. “We are surprised to see you.”

“I am not surprised to see you,” Sephris said, and gave a mirthless smile. Cale saw an unexpected hardness in the loremaster’s expression. He remembered Sephris’s words to them when they had called to his spirit after his death-Release me, Erevis Cale. My time on Toril is complete. It has not summed to zero. The loremaster had seemed at peace then, for the first and only time since Cale had made his acquaintance.

“What have they done to you?” Jak softly asked, and stared accusingly at the two priests to either side of Sephris. They did not meet the little man’s gaze.

Sephris ignored the question, looked Cale up and down, and said, “The darkness has found you, First of Five. Soaked you. And you think it is done. But it has only begun. There is more, much more, yet to come. To all of us. Did you know that? Did you know what you were doing? What you were causing?”

Cale felt Jak’s and Magadon’s eyes on him. The priests, too, stared holes into him.

He swallowed and managed to say, “I’ve done what I’ve had to. I can’t always see the consequences.”

“Come inside, Sephris,” called the bearded priest at the top of the stairs. “You can speak with them inside. Come.”

“You do not see them because you do not want to see them, First of Five,” Sephris said. He spun and stalked up the stairs.

The six Ogmanytes fell in behind him, along with Jak, Cale, and Magadon. Cale’s legs felt heavier with each step.

Riven sat for more than an hour in the late afternoon shadows across the street from the scribe’s shop. His old garret, adjacent to the shop, stood dark and closed.

At last he saw what he had come to see and his brewing anger dissipated. A butcher’s boy hurried through the street traffic with a package of wet cloth in his hand. He carried it to the door of the scribe’s store, knocked, and waited, shifting anxiously from foot to foot. When no one responded to his knock, he opened the door and took a step inside.

The fat scribe appeared in the doorway, irritated, and hustled him out.

“I told you not to bring that into my shop,” the scribe said.

“Then answer my knock, good sir,” the boy said, and pushed the package into the scribe’s hands.

The scribe fumbled with a retort, managed nothing, pushed a few coins into the boy’s hand, and hurried him off. The boy ran past Riven, never noticing him.

The scribe—Riven could not remember his name-unwrapped the cloth to reveal a pile of boiled meat scraps. Seemingly satisfied, he retrieved two shallow buckets he kept near his stoop and put equal portions of the scraps in each.

Whistling a tune and nodding at a passerby, he carried the buckets to the doorway of Riven’s garret. He used a key to open the door and entered. Some bustling sounds issued from just within. After a moment, he exited with another bucket and put both down on the ground.

“Come, girls!” he called, and gave a whistle so loud and piercing that Riven figured the sailors back in the Dock District had covered their ears. “Here, dogs!”

The few passersby on the street eyed the scribe curiously but otherwise paid him no heed.

Riven waited, watching, expectant, hopeful. To his surprise, his heart was racing.

“Come on, girls!” the scribe called again. “Are you out there? Here!”

The scribe put his fingers to his mouth and was about to unleash another whistle on the world when two small, four legged figures padded out of an alley to Riven’s left and started across the street.

Riven could not contain a grin when he saw his girls.

“There you are,” said the scribe. He nudged the bucket of scraps with his toe. “Come now. Mealtime. It’s boiled organ meat. Very good. And water I drew this morning.”

The dogs pelted across the street, tails wagging, but skidded to a stop halfway. They stood in the street, noses in the air, sniffing. Both of their tails went stiff, then began to wag. The older bitch turned an excited circle, chuffing. Her whelp fairly jumped on her back in excitement.

Riven’s grin broadened.

The girls looked in Riven’s direction and bounded toward his hiding place, tongues lolling. That they had recognized his scent gave Riven more pleasure than anything had in a long while.

“Dogs!” the scribe called, and stomped his foot. “No! Come, here! Here! Beware the wagons!”

The dogs darted out of the way of two vegetable carts pulled by mules and crossed the street.

Riven rose from the shadows.

The scribe saw him and his expression fell. He reached for a post to help him keep his feet.

The girls swarmed Riven, jumping up on his legs, yipping. He held a hand down and they licked his fingers. He scratched their ears, petted their flanks, each in turn. They looked exactly as they had when he had left them. Both were well fed. The scribe had kept his word.

“You,” called the scribe across the street, a nervous tremor in his voice. “You’ve returned.”

Despite his delight at seeing the girls, Riven put on his professional sneer before walking across the street. The girls trailed him, circled him, tails wagging. He found it difficult to look intimidating with two small dogs jumping about his legs and yapping.

The scribe watched him approach, mouth open, as though he wanted to speak, but said nothing.

“I told you I would check on you from time to time,” Riven said, and kept his voice hard.

The scribe nodded rapidly enough to shake his paunch. “Yes. I’ve done as you asked. You see?” He pointed at the buckets of scraps, the other bucket of water.

“I don’t recall asking,” Riven said.

For a moment, the scribe lost his tongue. “Yes. Well, they’re good dogs. Very good. They come every day.” He kneeled and patted their flanks with genuine affection. They licked his hand but quickly returned to circle excitedly around Riven. “Look how happy they are to see you,” the scribe said, standing. “They’ve even forgotten their food.”

Riven had trouble keeping his expression hostile.

“You’ve done well,” Riven said, and it was the best show of appreciation he could manage. He left unstated the fact that he would have killed the scribe without hesitation had he done any less. “I will be leaving again soon. But I will be back for them. Until I am, keep doing as you have, You have enough coin?”

“Of course,” the scribe said.

Riven had paid him enough previously to care for the dogs for a year or more.

“Good. Go, now.” Riven waved him back to his shop. “Be about your business. I want to check on my garret in privacy.”

The scribe looked to Riven, to the dogs, and almost smiled. He was wise enough to keep a straight face, however, and melted back into his shop.

Riven watched him go, then gathered the three buckets and entered the garret with the girls.

The moment he shut the door behind him, he sank to the floor and put the buckets before him.

“Eat, girls,” he said.

They seemed more interested in him than the food, so he accommodated them with stomach rubs and head scratching. Finally, he coaxed them into eating, As always, they shared space around the bucket rather than squabbling for position as most dogs would.

“No rivalry for First and Second, eh?” he said. The older bitch turned to regard him with a question in her brown eyes and scraps dangling from her jaws. He only smiled and she returned to her meal.

Afterward he spent a few hours with his girls, doing nothing more than playing or petting them. He wondered what they did all day, and the wondering made him worry. They could run afoul of a wagon cart, a horse, or some petty bastards like the pirates Riven had left dead on the streets of Skullport.

His girls were gentle creatures-he had no idea why-but he did know that gentleness was not rewarded on the street. He had learned that lesson often in his youth. But somehow his girls had managed to survive without becoming vicious.

He watched as they ran circles around the room, barking, nipping playfully at each other, licking him, tackling each other. They were friends, inasmuch as dogs could be friends.

“Friends,” he said softly, and pondered.

*****

The bearded priest who had called down from the top of the stairs awaited them just outside the temple’s double doors.

“Welcome to the Sanctum,” he said to Cale, Magadon, and Jak, though the hardness of his voice belied his words.

Engraved characters from a dozen or more Faerunian alphabets covered the verdigris-stained copper double doors of the Sanctum of the Scroll. Cut into the smooth stone lintel above the doors was a phrase in the common tongue that captured the pith of Oghma’s doctrine: Strength can moue only mountains. Ideas can shake worlds.

Magadon nudged Cale, nodded at the inscription, and said, “Can you mark that?”

Cale nodded, read it for the guide.

“True, that,” Magadon said, as they entered the temple.

The double doors opened directly onto a small foyer beyond which stood the worship hail itself. Cale welcomed the shelter from the late afternoon sun. Once within the foyer, the priests uttered a short invocation and removed the masks they wore.