The Shattered Mask Page 25

  In a few seconds, he backed himself into a corner. Black tongue dancing, the snake raised its head high and stared down at him. Meanwhile, Bileworm flowed back into something approximating human form.

  The ferule of his staff tapping on the floor, Marance walked closer to his brother. “As you may be aware,” said the mage, “summoned creatures often vanish back to their points of origin after a relatively brief period of service. But you mustn’t get your hopes up, because I made certain this one will linger long past midnight. While it’s watching over you, you mustn’t call for help or try to escape, else the beast will strike, and its bite is venomous in the extreme.”

  “Can’t we just kill him?” Bileworm wheedled. “Don’t I need to become him so I can direct his retainers to obey your commands?”

  “They’ll take orders from young Ossian just as well.”

  Bobbing up and down, swaying this way and that, Bileworm made a show of inspecting the diminutive corpse. “It’s going to be a very tight fit,” he said, “and I think the guards might notice a difference.”

  Marance sighed. “The body will revert to its former dimensions in a bit.”

  “Aha!” said the spirit. “Well, in that case, give me a halloo when it does.” He strode closer to Nuldrevyn and, craning and stooping, peered at him avidly, drinking in his fear, grief, and shame.

  CHAPTER 20

  With more snow falling from the night sky and a frigid wind whistling out of the north, the pitched roof of the brownstone tallhouse was scarcely a comfortable perch. But no matter how Shamur shivered and clenched her jaw against the cold, she reckoned she had no choice but to remain, for this building was one of the few structures in the immediate area lofty enough to afford a view inside the enceinte of Old High Hall, the Talendar castle. She was glad she and Thamalon had made time to go to a shrine and pay a priest to heal the bruises, scrapes, and swellings the Quippers had given them, else the vigil would have been even less pleasant than it was.

  It was a vigil that Shamur hadn’t required Thamalon to keep. Seeing no reason why both of them needed to spy, she’d suggested he wait somewhere warm. Perhaps he’d feared she’d think him soft or a shirker, for he’d insisted on sharing the chore with her, and, to her relief, had scaled the side of the tallhouse with considerable agility for a sexagenarian who had never taken instruction from a housebreaker like Errendar Spillwine.

  Within the facade of the Talendar mansion, another window went dark. Soon, she thought, it would be time to move. Thanks be to Mask that the noble family hadn’t opted to host a feast or ball tonight. Then the castle might have swarmed with boisterous revelers and bustling servants until dawn.

  “I have something to tell you,” said Thamalon, tightly bundled in his cloak.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “When this affair is over, you can leave me without fear of reprisals against the House of Karn or the children. You can also come back and visit our brood whenever you like.”

  Shamur reckoned that she ought to be overjoyed, and in fact, she did feel a tingle of excitement, but it was muted and undercut by some other, less comfortable emotion. “Thank you. That’s far kinder than I had any reason to expect.”

  He shrugged. “What should I do, drag you into court and complain to the Probiters that for the last thirty years, I’ve been married to the wrong woman, but up until now didn’t know the truth? I’d be the laughingstock of Selgaunt. Besides, I suppose I owe you something for seeing me safely out of the Quippers’ lair. I wasn’t sure you’d be able to, or even that you meant to try.”

  “Don’t tell me you were taken in by my agreeing to Avos’s terms,” she replied. “That was simply necessary to move things along. We’re comrades in this venture, and I was always resolved that both of us would escape, or neither. That was why I aimed my short sword at his belly and never his heart. Even had I pierced his guts, he likely wouldn’t have died at once. Thus, I still could have extorted your release by threatening him with further harm.”

  Thamalon chuckled. “Such a delicate little flower I married.”

  “There’s something I ought to tell you. Two things, really. The first is that back in the days when I was a thief, Old High Hall was rumored to be impregnable to the kind of intrusion we intend, and I certainly never heard of any burglar surviving such an attempt. The second is that I haven’t attempted to slip inside a fortress like this since I was an adolescent. I fear my skills are rusty.”

  “Nonsense. I’ve seen you fight and climb.”

  “But I’ll need other abilities tonight, ones I have yet to test.”

  “Wife, I know where this is going. You’re going to offer me another chance to stay safely behind, aren’t you?”

  “It’s a sound idea. If something befalls me, you’ll still be alive and free to search for Master Moon and protect the children.”

  “You said it yourself. We’re partners. You watch my back, and I watch yours. In any case, I trust you.”

  She smiled. “All right, fool. On your own head be it.”

  They sat in silence on the cold, rough shingles for a while longer, while the snowflakes tumbled, the stars twinkled, and the lights in Old High Hall winked out one by one. Finally she judged the mansion was dark enough. She said as much to Thamalon, whereupon the two of them descended to the ground, then crept toward the enceinte.

  In Shamur’s youth, Old High Hall had been the sort of old-fashioned stronghold that Argent Hall remained today, with a perimeter wall high enough to balk an army. At some point during her long absence from Selgaunt, however, the Talendar had seen fit to tear down that enceinte and put up one that was only about twelve feet tall. She wished she could find that encouraging, but she knew better. The rival House had only become more wealthy over the past several decades, and it stood to reason that the measures they took to deter thieves had become more sophisticated and effective.

  The Uskevren reached the base of the wall without being noticed, at least as far as Shamur could tell. The masons had made some effort to smooth the sandstone blocks and the mortared chinks between so as to make climbing difficult, but she was confident she’d find adequate finger- and toeholds. What concerned her was the mechanical and magical traps that might be concealed in the stonework. She kept an eye out for such things as she ascended.

  She made it to the top without incident, peeked over the wall, and saw a snowy garden on the other side. It didn’t appear to possess any magical flowers like the Karns’ famous silver roses, which flourished even in the dead of winter, but the servants had shoveled the paths anyway, perhaps so strollers could admire the statuary.

  Since Shamur saw no sentries rushing in her direction, she turned her attention to the coping on the summit of the wall. Most climbers would unthinkingly, blindly grab hold of it as they ascended, making it an excellent location for poisoned spikes, sharp scraps of glass, or some other type of mantrap. She didn’t see anything of the sort, nor magical sigils incised in the stone, but still, her instincts warned her not to trust the surface. Clinging to the facade of the wall one-handed, she extracted a slender steel probe from her kit and pressed it against the top.

  In the twinkling of an eye, the patch of sandstone immediately beneath the metal rod reshaped itself into a pair of jagged jaws, which shot up, clashed together, and bit the probe in half. Startled, Shamur jerked backward and nearly lost her grip.

  She recovered her balance, peered over the coping again, making sure no one had heard the magical trap activate and come to investigate. She studied the stone jaws. They hadn’t tried to bite her a second time. In fact, they seemed to be softening and slumping ever so slightly, as if, having failed to seize a victim, the projections were melting back into the block from which they had erupted. Shamur warily prodded them with the stub of the probe, and even that failed to provoke another attack.

  She grinned. If the jaws could strike only once, that made it easy. She discarded the remaining piece of the probe, which was a bit too sho
rt for the task she had in mind, drew her dagger and used it to trigger several traps on either side of the first one, enjoying the game of snatching the blade back before the jaws could catch it.

  “What are you doing?” Thamalon whispered from below.

  “Making a point of entry.” She lay on her belly atop the hard, irregular bumps of the unsuccessful mantraps, anchored herself with one hand, and stretched down the other. “Come on, I’ll help you up. Just don’t let any part of your anatomy swing up over a section of the coping that’s still level, or a trap’s liable to snip it off.”

  “I understand.” He gripped her hand, she heaved, and he clambered up. They dropped inside the enclosure.

  At once they hunkered down motionless, while Shamur peered and listened for signs that someone else was in their immediate vicinity. It seemed that nobody was. She gave Thamalon a nod to indicate that so far, they were all right.

  “It’s a miracle nobody heard the traps going off,” he whispered.

  “It’s a ways to the house,” she replied, “and I doubt anyone wanders the grounds on a chilly night like tonight if he can avoid it. Still, there are guards somewhere, so let’s be careful.”

  He inclined his head. She motioned for him to follow her, then skulked to the right.

  Shamur used all her old tricks to approach the mansion. She instructed Thamalon to stay low, take advantage of every bit of cover, and look before he moved. She kept an eye out for tripwires and odd depressions or humps in the earth that might mark the site of a mantrap, for all that the snowdrifts made them difficult to spot. She stalked behind rather than in front of any light source, such as the glowing magical lamps which the Talendar had mounted here and there on posts, lest she reveal herself in silhouette or cast a shadow. And she crept to the leeward, so no watchdog could catch her scent.

  For a while, she was on edge, but by the time she and Thamalon slipped by the first patrolling spearman, she had relaxed and begun to enjoy the challenge. Win or lose, live or die, the incursion was grand sport. Never had she felt more alive, more keenly aware of her surroundings or of her own body. She savored the beauty of the fat, almost luminous snowflakes and the bracing kiss of the cold breeze, even as she eased along with a sure grace that made silence all but effortless.

  But she supposed that Thamalon, who had never been a burglar, might well be finding their venture nerve-wracking. She glanced back over her shoulder and was pleased when he gave her a nod that suggested that if he wasn’t having fun, he was at least bearing up well under the strain.

  She glided forward, then the world twisted itself into a nightmare.

  One moment, she was calmly leading Thamalon past a marble statue of a lammasu, a winged lion with a human head, the flowerbeds encircling its plinth, and the ring of stone benches surrounding those. The next, everything shifted. Though Shamur didn’t actually see them move, she was virtually certain that all the objects in view had changed position, and though she couldn’t make out exactly how their appearances had altered, they now seemed ugly and vile.

  On the night of Guerren Bloodquill’s opera, Shamur had seen her surroundings abruptly alter in far more overt and astonishing ways. Statues had come to life, and space had folded, opening gateways to the far reaches of the world. But none of those transformations had affected her as this one did. She shuddered, and her stomach churned. Behind her, Thamalon let out a moan.

  She struggled in vain to compose herself, and then a skeletal creature in a ragged shroud swooped out of the darkness, its fleshless fingers poised to snatch and claw. At that moment, it seemed the most terrifying threat she’d ever encountered, and, sobbing, she whipped out her broadsword and hacked at it. From the corner of her eye, she saw Thamalon pivot to confront a skull-headed assailant of his own.

  Panic robbed her sword arm of much of its accustomed skill, and her first blow missed. The revenant whirled around her, scratching and gibbering, exuding a foul stink of decay, and when she turned to keep the dead thing in front of her, her own motion seemed to cause the landscape to shift even more violently, albeit undefinably, than before. A surge of vertigo made her reel.

  The phantom picked that moment to pounce at her, and despite her dizziness, she did her best to cut at it. Her stroke swept into the undead creature’s black, rotting cerements, and it vanished. The blow also spun Shamur off her feet.

  As she peered frantically about, she found that her disorientation was all but complete. Spatial relationships made little sense. From moment to moment, she had difficulty determining which objects were adjacent to one another, which were near and which were far. Though she could have sworn she had blundered about in a complete circle, she never so much as glimpsed Thamalon or his attacker. She could hear him grunt and his boots creak, but couldn’t figure out from which direction the sounds were originating.

  Another spectral assailant floated toward her. She clambered to her feet and staggered to meet it. The revenant seemed to disappear. Then she discerned that the stone lammasu, which a moment ago had appeared to be on her right, now loomed on her left. Assuming she could trust that perception, in the course of just a few steps, she’d managed to spin herself completely around. Which in turn meant that the phantom was even now rushing at her back.

  She whirled, cutting blindly. The broadsword struck the phantom’s yellow skull and swept it into nonexistence.

  Shamur noticed she was panting. She struggled to control her breathing and thus her overwhelming terror. She had to figure a way out of this trap now, this second, before yet another dead thing hurtled at her.

  It didn’t make sense that she was so profoundly afraid, gasping, shaking, her heart pounding. She’d encountered apparent distortions of space and time before, and though the revenants were foul and unsettling, she’d faced far more formidable adversaries in her time. She suspected that she and Thamalon had triggered some sort of magical field of disorientation, dizziness, and terror. It was possible that the phantoms weren’t even real, just one illusory aspect of a trap intended to immobilize its victims until one of the patrolling warriors happened by.

  She clung to that notion for a heartbeat or two, until another keening wraith dived at her, at that point logic gave way to raw, animal fear. By the time that, slashing wildly, she dispatched the thing, it was hard even to remember what she’d just been thinking, let alone put any faith in her conclusions.

  How could the ghostly attackers be phantasmal when they looked and sounded so real? How could the warping of the landscape be a mere deception when she could see the world dancing and contorting around her? And even if it was all in her mind, that didn’t mean there was any way to escape it. She was going to die here, the revenants would claw her apart, her heart would burst from fear, or—

  At that moment, when sanity was slipping from her grasp, Thamalon reappeared in her tear-blurred field of vision. He hadn’t had a chance or else in his distress hadn’t remembered to remove his buckler from his belt, and she desperately, reflexively snatched at his unweaponed hand.

  Their fingers met. He turned his head and saw her, and, plainly feeling the same frantic need for contact as herself, he yanked her to his side.

  Clinging to Thamalon anchored her somehow. For the moment at least, terror loosened its grip. Suspecting this was the last lucid interval she was likely to get, she tried to reason her way out of the trap.

  She couldn’t trust her eyes, her ears, her nose, or her perception of direction, yet surely there was some aspect of reality the enchantment hadn’t muddled. Despite her awkward, flailing swordplay, the revenants had never actually touched her, and perhaps that meant they couldn’t. That would imply that the magically induced confusion didn’t extend to her sense of touch.

  She and Thamalon had been approaching the mansion from downwind. Perhaps if she kept the frigid, howling gusts in her face, and didn’t permit any other cues to mislead her, she could lead her husband out of the area tainted by the spell.

  Unfortunately, that would
mean closing her eyes, and what if she was wrong, and the phantoms truly existed? She’d have no way to defend herself as they ripped her apart!

  With a snarl, she thrust that crippling thought away. If she was wrong, she and Thamalon were dead anyway. “Walk with me,” she said, squinting her eyes shut. “Don’t let go of my hand.”

  Her lack of vision didn’t end the fear, the nausea, or the sense that the world was writhing and jerking around her, nor did it keep her from hearing the wails or smelling the fetor of the revenants. She struggled to ignore all such distractions and focus only on the frigid caress of the wind. Thamalon jerked on her hand as he lurched about swinging his long sword at the apparitions.

  Then he stopped and murmured, “Valkur’s shield, you did it. You got us out.”

  Shamur opened her eyes to find the world returned to normal. She looked back toward the marble lammasu. No wraiths were streaking in pursuit of mortal prey.

  She drew a long breath and let it out slowly, to calm her racing heart and purge the dregs of the terror from her system. “The Talendar must give interesting garden parties.”

  Thamalon grinned. “I imagine they only set the snare at times when no one is supposed to be in this part of the grounds.”

  “You think? And here I thought they prided themselves on their sense of humor. Are you ready to press on?”

  “When you are.” They sheathed their swords and sneaked toward the house.

  Like Argent Hall, the Talendar mansion had once been a stark donjon, but as their wealth increased and their taste for luxury and ostentation grew apace, the occupants had modified and extended the building to a far greater extent than the Karns had ever imagined. Old High Hall had become a sprawling, rococo confection graced with a profusion of friezes, cornices, arches, and similar ornamentation. It was a truism in Selgaunt that the Talendar never tired of stripping away the old decorations and replacing them with something more fashionable or even avant-garde, and scaffolding currently extended along a portion of the west wing. The framework looked as if would provide an easy means of ascent to an upper-story window, but given the family’s reputation for wariness, Shamur suspected that appearance was deceptive. A mantrap waited up there somewhere, or at least the two spearmen walking the alures on the roof were watching the scaffold with special care. Crouching at the edge of the open space surrounding the keep, she looked for a safer means of access.