Midnights Mask (23 page)

Vhostym stared at the living artifact. He suspected that the Tap felt contentment only because its sentience was limited. Aware of little beyond itself, the Tap did not crave, need, or covet. Not in the way Vhostym did, not in the way all sentient creatures did.

The curse of sentience, Vhostym knew, was that it bred desire, ambition. And those birthed discontent. Vhostym exemplified the point. In the course of satisfying his own desires, he had razed worlds, killed millions.

He felt no guilt over his deeds, of course. Guilt required for its existence the failure to meet some moral absolute. Vhostym had learned better thousands of years ago. Mathematics was the only absolute in the multiverse two and two were always four. Morality, on the other hand, was merely a convention with which men mutually agreed to delude themselves. There were no moral facts, just preferences, and one was no better than any other.

“Take solace in your simplicity,” he said to the Tap.

He used a spell to lift his feet from the floor and floated out of the sanctum. He closed the doors behind him and warded them with a series of spells, a precaution born more of habit than necessity. No one knew of his refuge on

the Wayrock. No one knew what he intended to do there, not even his slaadi, and by the time anyone did, it would all be over.

He floated through the halls of the tower until he reached the central room two floors below the sanctum, a chamber more or less at the midpoint of the tower.

Slowly, painfully, he lowered himself to the floor. Lying on his back on the bare stone, he placed his arms out wide and spread his legs apart. The floor felt cool through his robes. Attuning himself to the energy of the stone, he closed his eyes and started to hum. As he did, power gathered in him. He channeled it through his body and into the stone of the tower. When he felt the stone vibrate slightly in answer, he changed from humming to chanting. His voice, carrying power in its cadence and tone, rang out through the large chamber, reverberated against the walls, ceiling, and floor. The stone absorbed the power he offered and its vibrations increased to a mild shaking. He felt the floor softening under his body, as though it would embrace him. He ceased his inarticulate chant and recited words of power. They fell from his lips and hit the shaking stone. With the words he coaxed the power of the rock to the surface. He felt as if he were resurrecting the dead. He knew he had succeeded when the floor beneath him grew as warm as living flesh.

The power was awakened.

He nearly ended the ritual there but decided to do something more, something he had not contemplated initially, something for his sons-a final gift from their adoptive father. They had earned it.

Vhostym knew that slaadi spent most of their lives striving to metamorphose from their current form-whatever that might be—into the next, higher form. Azriim and Dolgan thought they would find contentment with their ful transformation into gray slaadi, but Vhostym knew better. The change to gray would itself birth in them another drive, a need to transform yet again

into another, higher species of slaad. That form was the most powerful his sons could attain, and only in that form could they find the contentment that Vhostym hoped to find when he brought forth the Crown of Flame.

He decided that he would spare them the lengthy search for the means of that transformation. Instead, he would transform them, and that would be his legacy.

He changed the cadence of his incantation and laced into the words a second spell, one that would take effect when his sons appeared within the tower. After only a short time within the tower, they would be transformed from gray slaadi into death slaadi.

Vhostym imagined the pleasure his sons would feel, and the thought made him smile.

When he finished the spell, he sat up, dizzy and lightheaded. He took a few breaths to recover, then attuned his vision to see dweomers. He immediately saw not active magic but a complex matrix of magical lines that crisscrossed the tower’s walls, ceilings, floor.

The entire tower was now a focus that Vhostym could use to amplify the power he soon would draw from the Weave Tap.

He rose cautiously to his feet. Behind him, he saw that he had left a silhouette of his body pressed into the stone. He stared for a time at the image of his body. He had not realized how frail he had become.

It does not matter anymore, he thought, and looked away. His work was nearly done. All was prepared. He had only to wait for his sons to plant the second seed of the Weave Tap in Sakkors’s mantle.

Then he would summon the Crown of Flame.

*****

A second ship had joined the first. Ssessimyth sensed the tiny vessels floating on the sea far above him—floating on his sea, drawing the attention of the Source. The storm

he had sent had not dissuaded the crews. They had sailed into its teeth and survived. He knew the ships had come to take the Source from him. What else could be their purpose?

He had ended the storm as his minions neared the surface. They would find it easier to attack a becalmed ship than a moving one. He used the dreaming Source’s power to fill his minions with rage, hunger for manflesh.

Feast, my children, he sent to them. Feast.

Frustratingly, the Source continued to feed him only half-measures, realities that Ssessimyth felt but did not live. His anger swelled. He tried and failed again to pull the attention of the Source back to himself alone, to share its dreams with only him. It resisted and Ssessimyth’s body jerked in agitation. He became conscious for the first time in a long while of the throbbing pain in his head, of the rains around him, the coldness of the water, the darkness of the deep. His waking dream—more beautiful than reality ever had been—was ending. At least temporarily. As it did, he felt something he had not felt in centuries: rage. He would not let his universe slip away easily.

If his servants did not kill those who dared try to share the Source with him, be would kill them himself. He knew that at least one creature aboard the ships was in contact with the Source, stealing its visions from Ssessimyth. He would not tolerate it much longer.

Cale and Jak shared a look

“What kind of presence?” Cale asked Magadon. “Under the sea? Is that what the slaadi are after?”

“I am not sure,” the guide answered, and curiosity colored his tone. There’s a consciousness here, Erevis. It’s primitive, almost childlike, but very powerful. It’s also torpid, as if sleeping. It does not communicate in a way that I can make sense of but it makes itself… available.

What does that mean? Cale asked.

Magadon answered, I am not certain yet. I need some time.

Cale did not think they had time to spare.

“It is breaking!” shouted a sailor from the forecastle. There, look!”

Cale followed the man’s gesture and saw a hole in the clouds ahead. Stars peeked through.

As if in answer to the sailor’s words, the rain slowed, stopped. The wind, too, died. Cale put a hand on Jak’s shoulder and smiled. Demon Binder had made it through.

From the maindeck behind them, Cale heard Evrel ordering a headcount.

Do what you must, Cale projected to Magadon. But do not lose track of the slaadi.

I won’t, the guide answered.

Cale turned and looked out on the calming sea, where the swells already were settling.

That was when he saw it.

The slaadi’s ship floated not more than three bowshots away, glowing green on the black waves. And Demon Binder was closing fast. Despite the lack of wind, Jak’s elementals propelled the vessel rapidly over the sea.

The light from the slaadi’s ship was growing larger, brighter.

“Tell the elementals to stop us, Jak,” Cale ordered. “Right now.” To Magadon, he projected, Mags, tell the captain to snuff all lights aboard ship and to keep the crew quiet. Now.

Cale knew that light and sound traveled far across a calm sea. As though to make his point, a cheer carried across the water from the slaadi’s ship.

Cale unhooked the lanterns from the prow and let them fall into the sea. Within moments, the crew had snuffed all other lights aboard Demon Binder. The ship’s forward progress stopped. Jak must have dismissed his spell and released the elementals from their service. Demon Binder bobbed in silence on a calm sea, within eyeshot of the slaadi.

Cale and Jak doffed their cloaks and wrung them out, checked their gear. Cale eyed the sea suspiciously as he did so.

“Like it’s waiting,” Jak said, reading Cale’s expression.

Cale nodded. What is Riven doing, Mags? he asked. Before Magadon answered, Cale felt a thump against the ship’s timbers. Another.

“That’s from below the waterline,” Jak said.

Another thump.

Confused shouts sounded from the maindeck. Cale cursed, fearing the slaadi would hear.

Splashing sounded from below, the crack of splintering wood. Bestial grunts carried up from the sea and caused Cale’s heart to accelerate.

Something was coming out of the water.

Cale and Jak leaned out over the side as far as they could and looked along the hull of the ship.

A dozen or more dripping, green-skinned creatures were scaling the hull. Thin, overlong arms and legs ridged with muscle and sinew ended in long claws that dug furrows in the ship’s side as the creatures climbed. Long, straggly hair the color of seaweed sprouted from their round heads. Their fang-filled mouths could take off a head at one bite.

“Scrags,” Jak said. “Dark!”

From the maindeck, shouts of alarm from the crew echoed Jak’s words.

“Sea trolls! Scrags!”

From below the waterline, the thumping against the hull continued, as did the grating sounds. No doubt some of the scrags were trying to tear a hole in Demon Binder’s bottom. Cale had seen their claws and had little doubt they could do it, given enough time.

Chanting sounded from down in the water. Cale recognized the cadence of a spell.

“They’ve got a shaman,” he said.

He pulled Weaveshear free of its scabbard, and he and Jak raced over the forecastle to the maindeck.

*****

Azriim watched the huge heads and fang-filled months appear over the sides of the ship. Straggly green hair hung from the trolls’ oversized heads.

“Scrags!” screamed several members of the crew, and grabbed for weapons. “Trolls on the deck!”

Riven started to draw his blades but Azriim stopped him with a hand on his wrist. He showed the assassin and Dolgan the compass. The needle pointed directly down.

“Here is where we disembark,” Azriim said.

Several of the trolls already had scrambled over the rail. They shook the water from their long, stringy hair, roared, and charged the nearest crewmen. Sertan shouted orders, men fought with whatever weapons were at hand, screamed, and bled. Trolls answered with growls and grunts. The chant of a spellcaster sounded from somewhere and a bubble of darkness formed over the melee. Within the blackness, sailors screamed in pain.

Azriim knew the trolls had olfactory senses sharper than even his. They could hunt and kill the blinded sailors by scent alone. Dolphin’s Coffer was lost; its crew, dead.

Azriim looked out over the gunwales and selected a point in the water a short distance from the ship.

“There,” he said, and projected the location into the minds of Riven and Dolgan.

The assassin grabbed his arm. “I do not swim well.” “You soon will,” Azriim answered.

Not ten paces from where they stood, another three trolls gained the deck. A sailor lost his footing at the edge of the darkness. The trolls swarmed him. They tore gobbets of flesh from his body as he screamed, bled, and died.

Riven started to remove his gear.

“I’d be quick,” Azriim advised.

Azriim had little to leave behind. He wore only his clothes, his wands, and his blade. Dolgan secured his axe on his back. Riven stripped off his pack, his boots, his leather armor, everything but his weapons.

From behind them, Ser tan shouted, “Use your wizardry, friend! Spells, man! And quickly!” The captain pointed at the trolls.

Another sailor died under troll claw. in their panic and desperation, two or three of the crew dived over the side. Azriim had no idea where they thought they would go. A troll dived after them, roaring with bloodlust.

Azriim smiled innocently at the captain, withdrew his teleportation rod, and teleported into the sea. He knew the salt water would ruin his clothes but nothing could save them now.

He found himself floating in the calm water a spearcast from the ship. Kicking to keep his head above water, he looked back on the slaughter.

Six or seven trolls had gained the deck, and another four were climbing up its sides.

“Farewell, Sertan,” he said.

Dolgan appeared in the water beside him.

“Damned trolls get to eat the sailors and I got to eat none,” the big slaad said.

Azriim cuffed him once across the face, hard, splitting his lip. “No cursing,” he said.

Dolgan smiled and licked the blood from his lip.

Riven appeared. Azriim guessed that the assassin would find the water cold. The human foundered, but managed to keep himself afloat. Riven took a fistful of Azriim’s shirt, and a sharp prick in Azriim’s back indicated that the assassin had a blade at his kidney.

“I trust you have something in mind,” Riven said. “Because I’ll bleed you out before I drown here.”

Azriim could not contain a grin. The assassin reminded him more and more of Serrin.

“Of course I have something in mind.”

With obvious reluctance, the assassin removed the

blade from Azriim’s back.

Azriim removed from his thigh quiver the thin ivory wand with which he had turned a human into a cave

shrimp back in Skullport. The wand allowed him to transmogrify a target into whatever shape Azriim desired. He held the wand up out of the water to confirm he had the right one. He did.

He touched it to Riven and said, “Aquatic elf.”

The magic flared and the human began to change. Riven’s one good eye went wide as gill slits opened in his throat, his body thinned, and his skin turned pale blue. His ears elongated into points, and his eye sockets broadened. The assassin held up a hand to discover flaps of flesh between his fingers.