The Shattered Mask Read online

  “I’ll ring for your valet,” Escevar said.

  “No, please. I can’t stand to see another face or listen to another voice just yet. You help me.”

  Tamlin kept nipping at the clarry while he and Escevar retired to his wardrobe. They rummaged through trunks and armoires to create a suitable outfit that the nobleman had never worn before, at least in the sense that he’d never before combined this particular cambric shirt with that branched velvet doublet, or that scarlet riding cape with these crimson lugged boots. By the time the bottle was empty, there was only one element still lacking.

  Tamlin had never shared his siblings’ passion for weapons and fencing. He liked to think that was his mother coming out in him. Still, no gentleman was properly dressed without a sword. It needn’t be a functional sword, however, and for the stylish young nobles of Selgaunt, who had guards to protect them and tended to favor whimsy over practicality, it often wasn’t. Moved by that same frivolous spirit, Tamlin selected an object d’art; a long, slender blade, spun from rosy glass, in a scabbard. The delicate ornament had been specially enchanted to a resilience sufficient to withstand casual bumps and jostles.

  He attached the crystal trinket to his favorite gold sword belt, and then he and Escevar walked to the kitchen, where squat Brilla, who presided there, bustled about to provide them with fragrant, fresh-baked manchet bread, marmalade, and ale. Tamlin had once overheard the maids Dolly and Larajin complain of Brilla’s harshness, and to this day, he couldn’t understand it. The woman was always sweet as a sugar-sop to him.

  With food in his belly, he felt better still, and as he and Escevar made their way to the courtyard, he was actually smiling in anticipation of the day ahead.

  When he stepped outside into the bracing cold, he found that all was in readiness. The grooms had the horses saddled, and a pair of greyhounds roamed excitedly about the cobbles. Master Cletus, the falconer, had two hooded hawks waiting on their conical wooden blocks, while a third already perched on Brom’s gauntleted wrist. It was a tiercel, ordinarily a hawk for ladies and boys, but as much bird, Tamlin had thought, as the wizard should try to manage his first time out. Judging from the leery way Brom was handling the bird, his arm extended to keep its beak and talons as far as possible from his face, Tamlin had been correct. Meanwhile, aloof from all the commotion, Vox lounged in a doorway.

  Vox was Tamlin’s personal bodyguard, and few who saw him doubted his fitness for the task. A hulking, swarthy, middle-aged mute with a shaggy black beard and long hair tied in a braid, he wore studded leather armor. A bastard sword rode sheathed on his back, a short sword and dirk hung at his waist, and he’d tucked another dagger into each of his high boots where squares of bronze were riveted to stop an enemy’s blade.

  When the greyhounds spotted Tamlin, they dashed up to fawn on him. He crooned to them and petted them for a moment, then advanced to greet his human retainers. The dogs romped along at his heels.

  “Good morning!” Tamlin said. “It’s a meeting of the masters, I see, master falconer and master magician, too. It looks like you’re all ready to go, Brom.”

  “Uh, yes,” the skinny young wizard replied. “Master Cletus insisted that I start becoming accustomed to the bird, and vice versa. But in truth, I wonder if this outing is wise. We might be needed here.”

  Tamlin grinned. “You just want to stay indoors, where it’s warm.” He’d noticed Brom’s aversion to the cold on the very day that Father brought him into the household. “But I promise you, once the birds start flying, you’ll forget all about the chill. Falconry is the grandest game on earth, or at least the grandest you can play without a pretty girl.”

  “It’s not the cold,” Brom said. “Are you aware that Lord and Lady Uskevren didn’t come home last night?”

  “I wasn’t, and now that I am, I say, so what?”

  “Master Cale is quite concerned.”

  Tamlin snorted. “He would be. Any excuse to be glum and grim! But the fact of the matter is, Father is frequently gone overnight, and sometimes Mother is too when she visits her friends.”

  “I understand that,” said Brom, his cheeks ruddy above his patchy beard, “but according to Erevis, when Lady Uskevren is going to sleep elsewhere, she always informs him in advance, and if you’ll excuse my commenting on their personal habits, it’s extremely unusual for your mother and father to spend a night away from home in one another’s company.”

  “Well, maybe the old goat is finally starting to appreciate her. Look, wizard, as I understand it, Father was busy with those dreary emissaries from the other side of the sea all morning, and in consequence, he and Mother didn’t depart until mid-afternoon. They probably couldn’t make it back before dark, and it was truly cold last night, and snowing as well. Rather than ride all the way home through the worst of it, they likely stopped at an inn, or one of the family tallhouses closer to the bridge.”

  “That does sound plausible,” Brom admitted. The tiercel shifted its feet, jingling the bell attached to its ankle, and he flinched just a little. “But I had a bad feeling when they rode out without an escort, and without any of us knowing precisely where they were headed, or why.”

  “You’re every bit as bad as Erevis, fretting over ‘feelings’! I guarantee you, nothing happened to my parents, and even if it had, Father can take care of himself. Believe me, I know. I spent my boyhood stupefied with boredom at the umpteenth retelling of his exploits, his doomed but valiant defense of the first Stormweather Towers, his daring trading expeditions into Cormyr and the Dales, his defiant return to Selgaunt, and all the rest of it.”

  “So you’re not worried at all?”

  “Why should I be? That’s why my family employs retainers, to worry for us and sort our problems out. Retainers like you, but you won’t do any sorting today. Today you’re going to learn hawking!”

  Brom smiled wryly. “Very well, sir—”

  “Deuce, please.”

  “Deuce, then. I hear and obey.”

  The wizard had to give the tiercel back to Cletus while he clambered onto his mount. Meanwhile, Escevar collected the saker he was fond of, and Tamlin took Honeylass, his bronze gyrfalcon, onto his wrist.

  “I think we’ll ride by the river,” he said, stroking the hawk’s feathers. “Perhaps you can take a crane.”

  When everyone was in the saddle, the hawking party headed out the gate into the busy street, the greyhounds loping at the head of the procession. Tamlin, Escevar, and Brom rode palfreys, while Vox, bringing up the rear, sat astride a massive black destrier strong enough to bear his weight.

  Tamlin soon noticed that Brom managed a horse almost as awkwardly as he did a hawk. He started giving the magician pointers, alternating between expounding on equestrianism and discussing the art of seduction with Escevar, who was jogging along on his other side. So much talking quickly dried his throat, but fortunately, the grooms had performed their duties well. They’d hung a wineskin from his pommel, and no doubt tucked a flask of brandy or aqua vitae in his saddlebag as well.

  Tamlin was just tugging the leather stopper out of the wineskin, the action made a trifle more difficult by Honeylass’s weight on his wrist, when a barrier of glistening ice, its edges momentarily flickering with blue and violet light, sprang up to bar the way. It materialized just in front of the greyhounds, who yelped and recoiled, while the horses whinnied and shied. Brom’s mount reared, and the spellcaster nearly fell off. The tiercel on his arm screamed and spread its wings.

  “Watch out!” Escevar shouted.

  Dropping the wineskin, Tamlin wheeled his dappled gelding around and perceived that he and his companions had ridden into an ambuscade, with the barricade of ice conjured to hold them in the killing box. Men with crossbows were leaning out of upper-story windows, while others with naked blades scrambled from doorways and the mouths of alleys. The other innocent folk unfortunate enough to be trapped on this particular stretch of street at this particular time scurried to get out of the waylayers’ pa
th.

  Though Tamlin had no particular love of fighting, either for sport or in deadly earnest, every nobleman was schooled in the martial arts, and his training now took over. Guiding his steed with his knees, he dropped the wineskin and reached for his sword, remembering only as he grasped the hilt that it was a blunt, fragile ornament of glass. He wouldn’t even be able to wield it unless he freed it from the loops that secured it to his belt, and then it would almost certainly break into pieces on the first swing. Useless!

  A crossbow bolt whizzed past his head.

  As a ragged child who seldom had a penny in his pocket, Brom Selwick had loved the puppeteers, storytellers, and itinerant players who provided free entertainment in the plazas and markets of Selgaunt. And in the tales of high adventure and bloodcurdling terror the young Brom had relished most, wizards, whether good or evil, had all been of a certain type. Keen of eye, aquiline of countenance, and luxuriant of beard, the mages uniformly possessed an imperious manner, even as they fairly reeked of awesome powers and secret knowledge.

  Brom knew full well that he did not measure up to this popular stereotype. Most people saw him as bookish, awkward, and diffident, and he had to admit that in many situations, it was all true. But if casual acquaintances inferred from his mild demeanor that he was useless in a fight, in that they were very much mistaken.

  Upon completing his apprenticeship in the mystic arts, Brom had taken service as a ship’s mage, and as he sailed about the Sea of Fallen Stars, honed his battle sorcery in numerous clashes with corsairs from the Pirate Isles and later the savage sea creatures called sahuagin, when they waged their war upon mankind. He most certainly could acquit himself well in combat.

  Ordinarily, that was. When he didn’t have a wild killer bird screeching and flapping on his wrist, and a frightened mare shifting and heaving beneath him more treacherously than, it seemed to him now, any storm-tossed cog ever had.

  The horse tried to lurch into a gallop, though Mystra only knew where it thought there was to escape to. Nearly thrown from the saddle, Brom heaved on the reins with all his strength and forced the animal to stand. The wretched tiercel screeched again, and clutched his wrist so tightly that it hurt despite his thick falconer’s glove.

  Brom surveyed the battlefield and spied swordsmen and their ilk charging up the snowy street, crossbowmen in windows, and, perched high above the action atop a roof, a masked figure in dark blue clothing with a vague, murky shape crouched at his side. No doubt it was the wizard who’d produced the wall of ice, attended by some sort of familiar.

  Brom decided he must trust Vox and Escevar to fend off the attackers on the ground, for only his magic could reach the others. And since the masked wizard didn’t appear to be conjuring at the moment, the crossbowmen posed the more immediate threat.

  Wishing he’d brought his staff—it had no magical attributes, but he always felt more wizardly when he had it in his hands—Brom shouted a word of power and thrust out his fist, springing his fingers open as his arm became fully extended. Though the tiercel’s weight hampered him, the gesture nonetheless adhered to the proper form. Shafts of scarlet light leaped from his fingertips, and, their trajectories diverging, struck five of the crossbowmen. Two of the bullies fell from their windows and slammed down on the ground. The others were thrown backward out of sight.

  Brom needed the materials tucked away in his pockets to work most of the rest of his spells, and he couldn’t take them out, juggle the hawk, and control the agitated palfrey at the same time. He abruptly remembered Master Cletus explaining that if he unhooded the tiercel and flipped his arm, the bird would fly. He hastily released it to go wherever it wanted, and then one of the surviving crossbowmen shot his mare in the head.

  The animal dropped. Brom frantically kicked free of the stirrups, and, thanks more to luck than athleticism, a quality of which he had little, flung himself clear of the falling carcass.

  Even though the greater portion of his body lacked grace, his hands were deft enough. Even as he floundered in the cold, much-trodden snow, he snatched a wisp of cobweb from a pocket, recited an incantation, and used the gossamer to trace a mystic symbol on the air.

  A thick swatch of meshed gray cables materialized across the row of windows from which attackers were still shooting. Suddenly trapped amid the sticky strands, the crossbowmen struggled vainly to extricate themselves, then called to the mage on the roof for help.

  Ah yes, thought Brom, his teeth bared in a fierce grin that would have amazed any acquaintance who had never seen him in the heat of battle, our friend on the roof. He glanced about, making sure he was in no immediate danger from any of the enemy swordsmen, then began sending the masked wizard a little token of his regard. He snatched out a tiny ball composed of sulfur and guano, murmured a couplet, and tossed the orb into the air. The ball hurtled up at the spellcaster in blue, and as it did so, swelled in size and burst into crackling yellow flame, so it resembled a missile of blazing naphtha hurled from a catapult.

  Brom expected that the other mage would die in the impending blast, but the detonation never happened. Evidently the masked man had warded himself with some manner of defensive enchantment, for the burning missile winked out of existence a yard or so before it struck its target. Brom couldn’t be sure at such a distance, but he thought he saw the shadow creature leer at him.

  It seemed to Tamlin that with the crossbowmen out of commission, the enemy was having a harder time of it. Then Tamlin saw his bodyguard. His black braid streaming out behind him, revealing the ugly scar on his neck, Vox rode among the bravos like an avenging fury. His bastard sword flashed up and down, up and down, and it seemed that every time it descended, a foeman perished. His huge mount was scarcely less formidable, kicking, biting, and trampling the fallen beneath its hooves.

  Escevar lacked the advantage of a trained war-horse, but he was a skilled rider, and evidently his chestnut palfrey was game, for its master seemed to have no difficulty guiding it amongst the bravos. Whooping as if the fight were nothing more than some sort of roughhousing game, the redhead hacked and slashed with a will, and while he was scarcely the warrior Vox was, something, his sheer audacity perhaps, had thus far kept him safe from harm.

  After a futile attempt at slaying the masked wizard, Brom too had turned his attention to neutralizing the attackers on the ground, blinding some with a handful of sparkling golden powder and choking others with a vile-smelling greenish vapor. Tamlin suspected that if one of the bravos could only close with Brom, he could put an end to the unarmed mage and his troublesome spells in a trice, but so far, none of them had managed it.

  Meanwhile, the scion of the House of Uskevren sheltered helplessly between his friends and the barrier of ice with his ridiculous pink crystal bodkin at his side. It made him feel vaguely ashamed, and he scowled and reminded himself that after all, these people were paid to protect him.

  Bubbles of purple light appeared among the combatants, swelled, and burst, leaving in their place gaunt, mottled green things that would have been half again as tall as a man had they stood fully erect. Their limbs were long and graceless, and masses of iron-gray tendrils writhed atop their heads. Their black eyes were round and sunken, their noses, grotesquely long, and their wide mouths were lined with yellow fangs.

  The enemy swordsmen instinctively shied away from the trolls. Vox, Escevar, and Brom maneuvered frantically to engage these new and far more formidable foes. But four creatures had materialized, and the Uskevren retainers only managed to intercept three of them. Despite its clumsy, ill-made appearance, the remaining troll shambled toward Tamlin fast as a man could run, its clawed, four-fingered hands dragging through the snow.

  Tamlin’s dappled gelding went wild with fear, and as he fought to control the animal, he felt on the brink of panic himself. With the ice barrier behind him and the troll in front, there was nowhere to run. Even if by some miracle he could dodge around the creature—and he was all but certain that one of those long, thin arms would w
hip out and pluck him from the saddle if he tried—he doubted any unarmed man could ride unscathed through the band of bravos behind it. Finally, he realized there was one place to go, even if it would only buy him a few seconds.

  He snatched off Honeylass’s leather hood and sent her toward the troll’s head. The gyrfalcon had never been trained to attack such monstrosities, and, winging to the left, she sensibly veered off at once. Even so, the troll apparently considered the hawk a threat, or perhaps the conjured creature was simply startled. At any rate, it stopped charging long enough to swat Honeylass from the air, then took another moment to shake the bird’s carcass off its long, curved claws.

  Meanwhile, Tamlin spurred the gelding toward the open entrance to someone’s shop. He ducked beneath the lintel of the doorway, and the horse knocked over a rack of men’s hats, which fell to the floor with a crash. Soft caps, high-crowned copotains, and other examples of masculine headwear tumbled about, some of them to be immediately trampled by the gelding’s stamping feet.

  Tamlin tried to straighten up, bumped his head on the ceiling, cursed, and stooped once more. His scalp smarting, he peered about the shop. As he’d feared, there didn’t seem to be another exit, certainly not one he could take a horse through, and if he attempted to flee on foot, he suspected the nimble, long-legged troll would run him down.

  The hatter, a stout, black-bearded man with orange dye stains on his fingertips, evidently knew why Tamlin had ridden into the shop, for he gaped up at the aristocrat with horror in his eyes. “Get out of here!” he wailed.

  “A weapon!” Tamlin replied. All shopkeepers kept weapons on the premises to fend off thieves, didn’t they? Torm’s fist, he hoped so!

  “Get out!” the merchant repeated.

  “The troll will burst in here in a matter of seconds,” Tamlin replied. “One of us will have to fight it. Unless you want to do it, give me a weapon!”

  The hatter threw up his hands and raced for the counter at the back of the shop. Deciding he’d be better off on foot than trying to maneuver his terrified horse through the clutter of hat racks and tables, Tamlin dismounted and followed the other man.