Midnights Mask (2 page)

Cale hesitated. Magadon must have seen it. The guide added, “He trusted you when he agreed to do this. We’ve got to back him up. We can return to Skullport afterward. I’ll go with you. Jak will go with you.”

“I will?” Jak asked, confused. “Wait a-“

“But not right now,” Magadon said. “Right now, we do what we intended to do.”

“And what in the Hells is that?” Jak exclaimed.

Cale stared at Magadon, not in anger, but in frustration. He knew Magadon was speaking sense but he felt as though he were abandoning Varra. He made one last play. “You’re sure you have Riven?”

If Magadon did not have a sensory link on Riven, they would have no way to locate him. Cale did not know how he wanted Magadon to answer.

Magadon nodded and replied, “Since the moment I stepped into the cupola atop the tower. Erevis, if he makes a play for the Sojourner because he expects our help….”

Cale sighed and nodded. The guide spoke the truth. Riven had trusted him. Cale silently prayed to Mask to protect Varra until he could return to Skullport.

If there still was a Skullport.

Fed up, Jak stepped between Magadon and Cale. He pointed his pipe at Cale, glared, and said, “I’ll ask again. What in the Hells are you two talking about?”

Cale smiled and said, “Sorry, little man.” He quickly explained to Jak the plan they had developed on the Plane of Shadow: Magadon had implanted a latent mental urging in Riven’s mind to betray them at an opportune moment and ally himself with the slaadi. They had hoped that Riven would thereby get close to the Sojourner, where he would serve as a beacon for the rest of them. To avoid discovery by the slaadi, who likely could read minds, Magadon had wiped the scheme from their memories until the triggering event occurred-Riven’s putative betrayal. Riven’s trigger was different. He would not remember the plan until he saw the Sojourner.

Jak absorbed the story in wide-eyed silence. Finally, he said, “He’s a plant? Burn me! Every time I think I have that blackheart figured…”

“You are not alone in that,” Magadon said.

Jak popped his pipe in his mouth and looked up at Cale, his expression mildly hurt. “You could have trusted me with it.”

“I know that, little man,” Cale answered. “It wasn’t trust. I figured the fewer who knew, the better. And I wanted at least one of us to be outside of it, in case something went wrong. If we all started to go mad, I wanted someone who could figure things out and fix it.”

Jak seemed to accept that. He chewed his pipe, thoughtful, and said, “You three were talking a long while to come up with this little scheme. And you said something in a foreign language, Cale. What about that?”

“We did?” Cale asked.

“You did,” Jak answered.

Cale had no idea what Jak was talking about. He looked to Magadon, whose face showed similar confusion.

“Something else?” Cale asked Magadon. “Another contingency?”

Magadon shook his head. “Perhaps. We won’t know until we know.”

“Trickster’s hairy toes,” Jak softly said.

Cale agreed. The idea that something else might have been placed in his mind but he was ignorant of it….

From far down one of the tunnels, whispers sounded, hisses. They trailed back to silence. Still, whatever lived in the Underdark of the Plane of Shadow must have heard their voices or perhaps seen their light.

All three had blades in hand before they drew their next breath. Jak pocketed his pipe and licked his lips.

“We should not stay here overlong,” the little man said.

Weaveshear leaked shadows; so too did Cale’s flesh.

“We aren’t,” Cale said. “Mags, show me what Riven sees. We go on my word. We wait for the Sojourner to show, find out what we can, then hit him with everything we have.”

Magadon nodded, closed his eyes, and concentrated. A violet halo surrounded his head and he held up his free hand. Cale took it.

And saw.

*****

For the hundredth time, Riven rebuked himself for leaving Cale bleeding but alive. He still did not understand why he had done it. He never left opponents alive. A simple flick of his blade would have opened Cale’s throat and put an end to the First of the Shadowlord. Cale’s shade flesh could not have regenerated the damage that Riven could have done.

He could not explain his behavior. When he looked back, it was as though someone else had been controlling him. The events atop the tower were a blur in his memory.

He pushed the recriminations out of his mind as unproductive nonsense. He needed to focus on the present. He stood on a sword’s edge and he knew it. He had taken a gamble allying with the slaadi. The creatures were unreliable; they might turn on him at any time.

He did not know where the slaadi had brought him. From the crumbling cavern near Skullport, they had teleported to the surface, mentally communicated with their master, the Sojourner, and from there teleported to….

Here, Riven thought.

The foppish slaad Azriim, in his preferred half-drow form, stood to one side of him, and the dull slaad, Dolgan, stood to the other. Both seemed to have already recovered from the wounds inflicted on them at the Skulls’ tower.

“Where are we?” Riven asked.

“Home,” Azriim answered.

They were in the center of a smooth-walled, hemispherical chamber. There were no windows and the stone, while smooth, was not masonry, so Riven assumed they were underground. The dry air smelled faintly of medicines or perhaps alchemical preparations. The smell made his nose tingle.

A thick carpet covered the floor, and a single, dim green glowglobe on the far side of the chamber provided the only light. The globe cast only enough illumination to raise shadows in the room. Riven could see little. Irregularly-shaped mounds dotted the floor and it took Riven a moment’s study to recognize them as cushions and furniture. In better light, the place must have looked like a Calishite Caliph’s harem room.

Riven saw no means of egress, no doors or archways of any kind. That made him uncomfortable, and he let his hands fall to the hilts of his sabers. It would have been ridiculous for the slaadi to have brought him all the way here only to ambush him, out….

They are unpredictable, he thought. And it’s better to

He decided to take steps to ensure a means of escape, should he need it.

“Home is dark,” he said. “How about a light? I can’t see past my hands.”

He deliberately stepped on a cushion at his feet and feigned a stumble into Dolgan. Cursing, he intentionally entangled himself in the slaad’s cloak and limbs—the slaad’s foru looked fat but his body was as solid as a tree-and used the short-lived tussle to lift the teleportation rod from the slaad’s cloak pocket.

“Watch where you step, human,” the big slaad said, dislodging Riven and shoving him away.

“I can’t watch anything, oaf,” Riven answered. “I said I cannot see.” He feigned a second stumble on another cushion and used the movement to secrete the rod in his cloak. “There are cushions all over the floor and walking on this ridiculous carpet is like moving through mud.”

“I selected these carpets myself,” Azriim said, his tone mildly hurt.

“I’m not surprised,” Riven answered, putting a sneer in his voice.

Dolgan said to Azriim, “Why can’t I just kill him?”

“I am tempted,” Azriim said lightly, “given his view of my carpets.”

Riven stared into Dolgan’s face, the features indistinguishable in the darkness. “His permission to try won’t make it so, slaad. I’d put you down in less than a tencount, darkness or no.”

Riven kicked away the cushions near him, to clear any trip hazards. Both hands went to saber hilts and he balanced on the balls of his feet. Dolgan took a step forward but Azriim stopped him with an arm across his chest.

“Enough,” Azriim commanded, smiling indulgently. “You’re adding to his tension.”

Riven kept his gaze on Dolgan but said to Azriim, “You haven’t yet seen me tense, slaad.”

“I can smell your sweat at ten paces,” Azriim said. Dolgan glared at Riven and said, “I do not understand why we have not killed him. His brood killed Serrin, wounded you, wounded me.”

“Brood?” Riven asked derisively. “I’m a man, oaf. I don’t have a brood. And you’re fortunate that it wasn’t me who gave you the wound. If it had, you wouldn’t be standing here to annoy me.”

Azriim ignored Riven and said to Dolgan, “You enjoy being wounded, Dolgan, so no harm done. And besides, I like him.” He looked at Riven and smiled broadly. “Even though he has poor taste in clothes, friends… and carpets.”

Dolgan started to speak but Azriim cut him off, saying, “Silence, now. The Sojourner comes.”

Riven felt something… a presence… join them, fill the space. He could find no other way to characterize it. The slaadi looked past him, their eyes wide.

Riven could not help himself, though it meant turning his back to the slaadi. He turned around to see a circular hole in the wall where none had been before. Floating a hand’s-breadth off the floor before it was a humanoid creature that could only be the Sojourner. The instant Riven laid eyes on the creature, memories from the Plane of Shadow flooded him.

“Father,” said Dolgan, awe in his tone, and Riven heard the big slaad abase himself.

Azriim stepped forward and put a hand on Riven’s shoulder. The sudden contact gave Riven a start but he managed not to gut the slaad.

Azriim said, “Sojourner, I’ve brought you a present.”

*****

“What in all the Hells is that?” Cale breathed. Wisps of shadow snaked from his flesh.

“The Sojourner,” Magadon answered softly. “It must be.” “Dark,” Cale swore. He knew that at that moment Riven’s memory was filling in.

Beside them, Jak asked, “What does he look like? What is he?”

Cale only shook his head. ‘I don’t know, Jak.” He had never seen a creature like the Sojourner.

The Sojourner was neither slaad nor human, though he was humanoid in shape. With his pale flesh and skeletal frame, Cale might have thought him undead had it not been for the thready black veins pulsing beneath his skin. He bore a staff, and several magical gemstones orbited his head.

Magadon said, “Gods. I can detect his mental energies even through the link with Riven. He has a presence, Erevis. Do you feel it? I think he’s not only a wizard but also a mindmage.”

“A mindmage? Like you?” Cale asked.

“Not like me,” Magadon corrected. “More powerful, Erevis. Much more. Riven is in very real danger.”

Cale nodded. To Jak, he said, “Little man, cast every defensive spell on us that you can. Hurry. Do whatever you can to shield us from spells and mental attacks.”

“Done,” Jak said. He pulled out his holy symbol, a jeweled pendant, and recited the words to a spell, then another.

Still watching through Riven’s eyes, Cale said, “Speed and surprise are all we have. When we get there, we concentrate everything on the Sojourner. He’s the target. The slaadi are incidental. Mags, can you tell Riven that we’re coming?”

“Not without risk of detection by the Sojourner,” Magadon answered. “He will be sensitive to mental emanations. I’m surprised he hasn’t yet detected the visual leech.”

“Then we’ll surprise Riven, too,” Cale said. “Get ready. We go when I say.”

Cale held off because he wanted to give Riven a moment to gather himself. The rush of memories was intense. Besides, he also wanted to learn as much as he could before attacking. He could not hear through the mind leech but he could see enough to read the Sojourner’s thin lips.

Meanwhile, Jak continued to cast.

*****

In a rush, Riven remembered why he had betrayed Cale, why he had left the First of the Shadowlord bleeding but not dead. The torrent of memories made his temples burn.

He was a plant.

Only long practice allowed him to keep his face expressionless. He suddenly became painfully conscious that a mind-reading slaad stood beside him and another behind him, and that the Sojourner—a creature of obvious but unknown power—hovered across the chamber.

Riven, Magadon, and Cale had devised a plot back on the Plane of Shadow to get Riven close to the Sojourner. Riven’s betrayal of Cale was designed to gain the slaadi’s trust, which it had. Magadon and Cale would then use Riven as a beacon to bring them to the Sojourner.

Snippets of the exchange played in his mind.

Why me? Riven had asked, when Cale had related his idea.

You already know why, Cale had answered, and Riven had known why: because a betrayal by a former Zhent and assassin was believable; because the Second of the Shadowlord would surely covet the position of the First; because Riven was a better killer than Cale.

It was believable enough that it was almost true. Hells, perhaps it was true.

Riven’s mind raced; he pored through his memories. What had he really intended? He could not remember many of the details. But he did remember that he’d wanted to keep other options available. And at that moment other options were looking more and more appealing.

When Riven had told Azriim in Skullport that he always sided with the winner, he had meant it. And while he deplored being second to Cale in Mask’s eyes, he also had thought back then that they would succeed. Mask was blessing him with more powers every tenday. He’d had no intention of remaining the Shadowlord’s Second forever.

But he could see now that his calculus had been off. He had stood face to face with high-ranking members of the Zhentarim, powerful priests, skilled warriors, all of them powerful men and women, but he had never before stood in the presence of anything like the Sojourner. The creature’s thin body fairly sparked with pent-up power; his presence implied might. There would be no defeating him.

If Riven wanted to side with the winner, he had to side with the Sojourner and the slaadi.

He reconsidered the plan, reconsidered everything. He may or may not have planned a betrayal of the betrayal back on the Plane of Shadow, but now…

Don’t come, he thought to Cale and Magadon, in case Magadon was somehow connected to him. Don’t bother.

The Sojourner looked past Riven and Azriim to Dolgan and said, “Stand, Dolgan.” His soft voice leaked so much power that it seemed to squeeze everything else out of the room.