Midnights Mask (32 page)

Moving with deliberateness, Cale took out his black mask and donned it. Behind its opaque curtain, he let the killer in him take hold. Jak was dead. For the moment, so was Cale’s conscience. He was going to make the slaad suffer.

Never taking his gaze from the big slaad, he whispered a series of prayers, casting spells that gave him added strength, speed. The darkness in the sanctum deepened, mirroring his mood.

“Oh, he is definitely angry,” Azriim said.

The slaadi paced along the edge of the psionic barrier, their movements predatory. Azriim removed first one wand, then another from his thigh sheath, touching himself and Dolgan in turn, no doubt augmenting their own abilities.

Cale watched the slaadi work and called upon Mask again, invoking a spell that infused him with a shard of the divine. A small part of Mask’s power rushed into him, filled him, focused his rage, increased his spite. His body grew half again as large as normal. His strength increased still more. He stood as tall as Dolgan. His strength matched a giant’s.

He was ready.

He turned from the slaadi to look back at Magadon. The guide looked… drained. Cale could not help him, not until he had killed something.

“Hang on,” Cale said to him, and his voice was deeper than usual, more commanding. “This will be over soon.”

Magadon nodded, gritting his teeth against the pain.

“Lower the barrier, Mags,” Cale told him, and turned back to face the slaadi. “Raise it behind us after we’re through.”

The slaadi stopped pacing.

“Don’t trouble yourself,” Azriim said, and held up his teleportation rod. “We’ll come to you.”

Cale stared holes into the slaadi.

Azriim lowered the rod.

“Have it your way, then,” he said.

The slaadi backed off and spread to opposite sides of the wide corridor.

“Erevis….” Magadon began.

“The big one is mine,” Cale said to Riven.

The assassin nodded, stood at Cale’s left shoulder. He spun his blades and pointed their tips at Azriim’s chest.

“That’s unfortunate. I have wanted to kill the stupid one for a long while. But I’ll settle for the chatty one.”

Azriim smiled, and the smile gave way to a hiss. Dolgan drew his axe from the sheath on his back, held it in his hands, and roared. Veins and sinew rose from the muscles of his arms, chest, and neck.

Cale put his hand to Weaveshear, started to draw it, but stopped.

Riven looked at him sidelong. “What are you doing?”

“Close work,” Cale said, the words a threat and promise for Dolgan. He could not control the shadows pouring from his flesh.

Riven absorbed that. “I think I’ll go with my steel, just the same.”

“Lower it, Mags,” Cale commanded again.

Dolgan dropped his axe and waited, claws flexing. He and Cale would fight hand to claw.

“Remember that they are stronger,” Riven said to Cale.

“No, they’re not.”

Riven stared, nodded, bounced on the balls of his feet. “Do it, Mags,” he said.

The psionic barrier flared once and disappeared.

The moment it disappeared, Azriim spoke a word and discharged a bolt of black energy from his outstretched hand. Cale and Riven threw themselves against opposite walls and the black ray streaked past them.

Riven bounded forward at Azriim, blades whirling. Cale charged Dolgan.

Memories of a past life—or was it only a dream?- slipped away from Jak, gossamer wraiths of recollection floating away into oblivion. He knew he remembered things, he just could not quite remember what things. The loss pained him distantly, but even that soon faded.

It did not matter. He was happy where he was.

He stood barefoot on a rolling moor. Swells of plush green grass stretched around him for as far as he could see. The grass felt soft under his feet, between his bare toes. Golden sunshine showered down to warm him. Stately, solitary elms dotted the moor, their canopies casting great swaths of grass in shadow. Shadow.

A memory bubbled up from somewhere. He almost got his mind around it but it drifted away before he could pin it down. Still, whatever it was made him smile.

A soft breeze stirred the grass, caused the leaves of the elms to whisper among themselves. It also carried from somewhere in the distance the smell of food cooking-a heavy, stomach-warming smell. The aroma was familiar to Jak but he did not know why.

“Oh well,” he said, unperturbed.

Following his nose, he started walking. A cerulean sky roofed the land, dotted with puffs of white. He had to have a smoke. It was too nice a day not to have a smoke. He reached for his pipe and discovered that it was not in his belt pouch.

Strange, he thought, but his disappointment faded quickly.

He whistled a tune and walked on. After only a short while, another smell attracted his attention and caused him temporarily to forget about the cooking aroma—the unmistakably wonderful stink of pipeweed. And good quality.

Someone else had decided that the day required a smoke. Surely they would share a spare pipe with a fellow traveler.

“Hello there,” Jak called. “Who’s there? Who’s smoking?” “Here,” returned a voice from the other side of a nearby hill.

Jak legged his way up the hill. When he crested the rise he saw a well-dressed halfling with wavy, sandy hair seated under an elm, his back to the trunk, a wooden pipe stuck between his teeth. A broad-brimmed green hat with a purple feather lay on the ground beside him. The halfling smiled around the stem of his pipe. Jak found the smile infectious.

“Well met!”

Jak returned the smile and said, “Well met.”

He was certain he had seen the halfling before, maybe in some dark place underground. He searched his memory but found nothing.

The halfling climbed to his feet, dusted off his red trousers, and said, “You sure took your time. Seems like I’ve been waiting for you a long while.” He banged his feathered hat against his thigh and replanted it atop his head.

“You have?” Jak asked, confused.

“I have,” responded the halfling with a wink. “Now come on.”

Green cloak swooshing, the halfling walked up to Jak, placed a tindertwig and pipe—already tamped, no less—into his palm.

“You’ll be wanting this, I assume. Now, follow me. I know where you’re going.”

“You do?” Jak asked, and followed along, taking a whiff of the unlit pipeweed. “How? I don’t even know where we’re going. Do we know each other?”

The halfling looked at him out of the corner of his eye, green eyes glinting.

“We know each other very well, Jak Fleet.”

Jak flushed with embarrassment. It was quite rude not to remember an acquaintance.

“Uh… I’m afraid I don’t remember your name.”

“No?” the halfling asked with raised eyebrows. “Well, I imagine you will in time. Are you going to smoke that or keep holding it hostage under your nose?”

“Huh? Oh.” Jak grinned, struck the tindertwig on the rough leather of his belt pouch, and lit. He took a deep draw. Exquisite.

“Very good,” he said. “Where’s the leaf from?” “Around here,” the halfling said.

Jak resolved to get some more as soon as possible. Meanwhile, he blew a series of smoke rings as he walked along. His comrade did the same and for a time they held an unspoken competition over who could produce the biggest ring.

Jak lost, but barely. He found that he liked the halfling; he could not help it. Something about the rascal seemed so familiar and yet Jak could not remember his name. He was sure he would in time, just as the halfling had said.

What a strange way to think, he thought.

“Nice around here, isn’t it?” his friend asked.

Jak nodded. “Where are we, anyway? I don’t know this moor.”

“We’re right where we are,” the halfling answered.

“I know that,” Jak replied. He was beginning to think that his comrade was a bit… simple. “I mean, what is this place called?”

The hating smiled. “It’s called ‘my place’.”

Jak was incredulous and could not keep it from his tone. “All of it? Seems like a lot for one ‘halfling.” His comrade grinned. “Oh, it’s not for just one.” “No?”

“No. Look.” The halfling took his pipe from his mouth as they topped a rise. With it, he pointed down into the valley.

Jak followed his comrade’s gesture and saw…. A small cottage. A smoking chimney rose out of a mud and-thatch roof. The clank of plates and the wonderful, familiar smell that had drawn Jak across the moor floated through the open shutters. So too did laughter. The voices sounded familiar to Jak.

His comrade took a deep breath. “Smells good, doesn’t it? Homey, like.”

“It does,” Jak answered. He inhaled, drank in the smell, and it triggered a sharp memory from his childhood. “That’s my mother’s potato soup!” he said.

The halfling grinned wide. He tapped the stem of his pipe on his temple.

“It is, Jak. She’s waiting for you. She and your father. Your grandmother too. Even your younger brother Cob. Do you remember him?”

“Remember him? Of course!” Jak could hardly believe his ears. He had not seen any of those people for years, not since they all had…

Not since they all had died.

But that didn’t seem right. How could that be right? And his mother shouldn’t be there either, should she?

As though reading his mind, the halfling said, “A lot happened after you left Misteldale, Jak. Go on. The soup’s going to get cold. This will all make sense soon.”

Jak turned, stopped. “Wait. I feel like I’m leaving something behind, something… undone.”

His friend shook his head and smiled gently. “No. You’ve done all you can. Memories haunt even better than ghosts. Go on, now.”

Jak could not make sense of the halfling’s words but that did not keep him from smiling. “Come with me. My mother loves guests. And the soup is wonderful.”

The halfling in the green hat shook his head gently and replanted the pipe in his mouth.

“I can’t, Jak. Not right now, at least. You go. Go and rest. come back when I can and we’ll talk then. Well enough?” grin. His family! “This is a great place.”

“I am glad you think so,” replied his companion.

Smiling, Jak turned and sprinted down the rise toward the cottage.

From behind, he heard his companion exclaim, “Oh, drat!”

Jak stopped, turned, and looked back up the rise to see the hailing looking forlornly at his pipe. He held it up for Jak to see.

“It’s gone out,” he said, and frowned. “Trickster’s hairy toes!”

For some reason, that oath made Jak smile.

“You like that?” the halfling called down to him. Jak nodded.

The halfling tucked the pipe into his cloak. “I always liked it too. See you soon, Jak.”

Jak gave his friend one more wave, turned, and hurried to the cottage.

Magadon did not have enough mental strength left to raise the barrier behind his friends. He was so weak that he did not even have the strength to stand. He could do nothing but lie there and watch, awed, as the two servants of Mask engaged their enemies.

He was not certain that they were human, not at that moment. Or perhaps his wounds had thickened his mind. Magadon and Cale seemed too fast, too big, too… present to be mere men.

But his mind was clear enough to understand his role. He was to bear witness.

He watched Cale charge into Dolgan with enough force to vibrate the floor. Man and slaad roared into the other’s face. The slaad’s greater weight drove Cale backward, toward Magadon.

The slaad tried to claw at Cale’s sides and back but Cale caught Dolgan’s arms by the wrists and held them away from him. The shadows circling Cale intensified, reflecting his anger.

The slaad snapped his jaws at Cale’s head, missed, then leaped up and drove his legs into Cale’s stomach, rending cloak and flesh. Blood and shadows leaked from Cale, but still he did not buckle.

Still gripping Dolgan by the wrists, Cale spun a half-circle and flung the slaad into the corridor wall with such force that Dolgan’s breath flew from his lungs and his bones cracked. Cale allowed no respite. So many shadows boiled from his skin that he looked ablaze in black fire.

Dolgan barely ducked out of the way of a punch that would have dented a kite shield. Bones crunched when Cale struck the stone wall instead of the slaad, but other than a growl of frustration at the miss, he did not seem to care. The slaad countered with a claw rake at Cale’s throat, but Cale parried it with his forearm and drove a punch with his shattered fist into the slaad’s abdomen. Dolgan staggered backward, bent double, coughing. Cale shook his broken hand at his side and Magadon could see the bones twisting, knitting. After only a few heartbeats, Cale rushed the huge slaad and the two went careening backward, a tangle of fists, claws, shadows, scales, grunts, and shouts. Shadows sheathed them. They fought in a black mist.

Magadon felt that he was watching giants grapple.

The ambient silver light from the tower dimmed. Magadon felt dizzy and feared he was losing consciousness. The corridor fell away. He saw only darkness. A tingle raced through his body, the same feeling he experienced when Cale moved them between worlds.

The darkness partially lifted.

He was sitting on a rocky plane on a small, featureless island set in a black sea under an oppressive, starless sky—the Plane of Shadow. Ochre lightning tore across the sky. Thunder rolled in the distance.

Consciously or unconsciously, Cale had moved the battle to the Plane of Shadow and had inadvertently brought Magadon along.

Ten paces away, Cale and Dolgan continued to roll on the ground.

*****

The sounds of the battle between Cale and Dolgan started out loud, grew faint, and abruptly stopped altogether. Riven spared a glance back at them and saw….

‘Nothing. They were gone.

“Just us, then,” Azriim said through a mouthful of fangs. “And the dead halfling, of course.”

Riven snarled and rushed the slaad, his sabers wheeling. Azriim parried with his own blade and danced backward out of Riven’s reach. Riven followed, and for a few moments they circled, blades spinning, stabbing, slashing. Riven could see that he was the faster of the two, but the slaad was the stronger. Azriim used his off-hand claw as a second weapon, slashing at Riven’s exposed flesh when opportunity allowed.