Midnight's Mask

  Then it was over. The slaadi eyed him with hunger in their eyes.

  Riven pulled his holy symbol from under tunic and let it dangle openly. He knew the slaadi had just become more dangerous but he held his ground. Mask had put the temple under his feet, and he was a Chosen of Mask. He would not abandon it.

  Cale and Jak stood on the deck of Demon Binder, surrounded by crewmen, all of them staring up at the dawn.

  “Gods,” Jak whispered.

  Cale watched the rocky sphere slowly swallow the sun. He knew it was the Sojourner’s doing. It had to be. Whatever the creature was planning, it was about to happen. Cale had seen enough eclipses on Faerûn to know that a partial eclipse in one region might be a full eclipse in another. He knew that wherever the Sojourner was, the eclipse was total. The water rose, causing the ship to bob.

  The darkness lengthened, stretched a shadowed hand over the bay. He thought of the Fane of Shadows, of Shar, the goddess of night, of Mask, of the Sojourner, of his own transformation, of the Weave Tap. He saw the thread that connected them all. He knew what he had to do.

  “Go get Mags,” he said to Jak.

  Magadon was meditating alone in a cabin in the forecastle.

  “Tell him we have to go now, Jak. We’re going to kill the Weave Tap.”

  Jak stared at him for a moment, uncomprehending.

  “We’re going to act like heroes, Jak. Go.”

  The little man grinned, nodded, and sped off.

  Cale stared up at the heavens. He and his companions might not be able to defeat the Sojourner, but they could destroy his tool, stop whatever it was that he intended. Cale thought he knew how to do it—like him, the Weave Tap was a creature of darkness, created by the priesthood of the goddess of the night. Like him, it was vulnerable to the sun.

  Jak returned shortly with Magadon. The guide stared up at the sky, pale eyes wide.

  “Activate the leech on Riven, Mags. We have to move. Jak, cast every protective spell you can. Quickly, now. And the moment we arrive, divine the location of the Weave Tap. This time the Tap comes first. The slaadi are secondary.”

  Jak nodded and began to cast. Magadon concentrated and a soft red light haloed his head.

  “I’ve got him,” he said.

  “Show me,” Cale said, and took Magadon’s hand.

  The slaadi parted to either side of Riven, crouched low. The creatures’ transformation had changed their outward appearance little, but Riven did not fail to notice the coiled grace with which they moved. Dolgan flexed his claws and growled. Azriim showed his fangs and hissed.

  Riven remembered that the slaadi’s transformation from green to gray had granted them new magical powers. He assumed their new transformation had granted them still more such powers. He decided not to wait for a demonstration.

  He showed his back to Dolgan and feigned a charge at Azriim, who leaped backward. As Riven had expected, Dolgan lunged at his exposed back.

  Riven spun a half-circle and slashed a crosscut at Dolgan’s throat with his right saber. The move surprised the slaad, who could do nothing but sacrifice his arm to save his neck. The saber cut hard into the slaad’s bicep. The blow should have sunk halfway through the muscle, but instead cut only a deep gash into the slaad’s flesh.

  Grunting with pain and dripping black blood, the slaad swung wildly at Riven with the claws of his other hand. Riven had expected the attack and tried to ride the momentum of his slash into a full spin out of arm’s reach, but he was too slow. The slaad’s transformation had made him faster, and his claws caught Riven’s back and tore through cloak and flesh to cause a painful slash. Riven grimaced and chopped with his left saber at Dolgan’s head, but the slaad used the momentum of his own swing and bounded a few steps away from Riven.

  He snarled as the wound in his arm began to close.

  Riven caught motion out of the corner of his eye—Azriim. He doubled up his sabers in his right hand, jerked a dagger from his belt, and flung it at the slaad. The short blade flew true and hit Azriim in his chest, but deflected off his hide as if it were a breastplate. The slaad pointed a clawed finger at Riven. A sickly green beam issued from the digit and hit Riven in the stomach.

  Riven’s heart stopped. He gasped, clutched his chest, and fell to all fours. He tried to pull in a breath, to force air into his lungs.

  A breath came. Another. He closed his hands around the hilts of his sabers and tried to rise. Before he could regain his feet, Dolgan’s huge hands closed over his shoulders, pinning his arms. The slaad lifted him bodily toward his fanged, open mouth. Riven stared into the tooth-lined opening.

  Thinking quickly, he brought his knees to his chest, kicked out, and drove his feet into the slaad’s throat. The blow would have crushed a human’s windpipe but only caused Dolgan to gag, cough, and drop Riven.

  Riven hit the floor in a crouch and slashed the slaad’s gut with both sabers. The blades opened two gashes in the creature’s midsection. Dolgan hissed with pain and lurched backward. His regenerative flesh was already closing the wounds.

  Riven whirled a half-circle to face Azriim. The slaad bounded forward and let fly with a flurry of claw strikes. Parrying wildly, Riven gave ground, countering where he could. The slaad pressed, caught Riven in the chest with a claw, then a shoulder, and nicked his throat. Riven finally managed a more aggressive counterattack. He ducked beneath a claw strike and drove his saber half its length into Azriim’s chest.

  The slaad expectorated a spray of blood. Before Riven could finish him, Azriim bounded backward, hissing with pain as the saber withdrew from his flesh. Riven pursued but Azriim leaped upward and the leap never ended. The slaad went airborne, hovering near the ceiling, spattering the floor with his blood. Riven’s slash hit only air.

  Like Dolgan, Azriim’s wounds, too, were closing before Riven’s eyes.

  Riven knew his situation was dire. The slaadi were faster than before, stronger, and they regenerated wounds that should have killed them. Riven was breathing hard and bleeding from a handful of painful wounds.

  “You see it now, don’t you?” Azriim taunted. “This isn’t your temple. You’re in your tomb.”

  Riven donned his sneer and answered, “What I see is you and your boy unable to close the deal.” He put his fingers to the gashes on his face and they came away bloody. He looked at them, spat on the floor. “And if this is the best you have, neither of you are walking out of this room.”

  Azriim grinned. “I always liked you. It’s unfortunate that I have to kill you.”

  Dolgan roared a challenge.

  Riven resolved to take at least one of the bastards with him before he died. He readied himself….

  The darkness on the far end of the room behind Azriim deepened and Riven could not contain a grin.

  “It’s about godsdamned time,” he said.

  Cale had finally arrived.

  Answering Dolgan’s roar with a shout of his own, Riven charged the slaad.

  Cale, Magadon, and Jak materialized in a large chamber in the tower they had seen through the leech, near a stairway leading upward. Doors dotted the walls of the chamber, and the whole room glowed a soft silver. Even through his boots, Cale could feel the magical power moving through the structure.

  Azriim floated in the air in the center of the chamber with his back to the newcomers. Riven and Dolgan fought across the chamber. The assassin’s blades whirled, darted, slashed. The big slaad held his ground and answered, lashing out with his claws.

  Magadon drew an arrow to his ear, caused its tip to glow red with mental energy, and let it fly at Azriim.

  The shaft sank to the fletching in the slaad’s back. Azriim screamed, clutched at the tip protruding from his chest, and turned around. The scream distracted Dolgan and the big slaad also turned. Riven made him pay for his inattention.

  The assassin drove a saber into the big slaad’s throat, pulled the blade free, and swung a decapitating strike with his other saber. Somehow the big slaad kept his feet and duc
ked under Riven’s slash. Blood poured from the hole in his throat. He held up one clawed hand and a small glowing ball appeared in his palm. Without a moment’s hesitation, he threw it to the ground at his feet and it exploded into a ball of fire. Slaad and assassin flew backward from the point of the blast.

  Cale, Magadon, and Jak raised their arms to shield themselves from the heat.

  “The Tap,” Cale reminded Jak, then drew Weaveshear and ran to Riven.

  “You again, priest,” Azriim said from near the ceiling. “My, but you are stubborn.”

  Cale risked a look up and saw the slaad pull Magadon’s mentally-enhanced arrow through his body and let it fall to the floor. Magadon fired several ordinary arrows but they deflected off the slaad’s hide.

  “Enough of that,” Azriim said, and launched a fireball from his palm at Magadon and Jak. The ball exploded in their midst, engulfing both of them in flames. When the flames dissipated, neither showed so much as a scorch mark on their clothes. Jak’s wards had shielded them both from incineration.

  Cale reached Riven’s side and pulled him to his feet. Burns covered the assassin’s face and hands. His good eye was seared shut.

  “They’ve transformed,” Riven said through his burned lips. “More powerful now.”

  Cale nodded and hurriedly incanted his most powerful spell of healing. Mask’s power flowed through him to Riven and the assassin’s burns vanished entirely.

  Riven smiled his thanks, hefted his blades.

  Ten paces away, Dolgan laughed. “That hurts,” he said, and lifted himself to all fours.

  Cale ignored him.

  “I’m here for the Tap,” he said to Riven. “We kill it first, then we kill them. Where’s the Sojourner?”

  Riven shook his head. “He said he would not see the slaadi again. He’s not in the tower.”

  Cale nodded, relieved despite himself. Still, he thought he knew where he would find the Sojourner when the time came.

  Behind them, Dolgan found his feet, still laughing. His flesh was healing the burns even as he stood.

  “I’ve got it, Cale,” Jak shouted to his back. “It’s here. In an upper floor.”

  Cale and Riven sprinted across the room. Above them, Azriim incanted a series of arcane words and a pulse of black energy spread from the slaad in a visible ring across the entire room. It could not be avoided.

  When it hit Cale, he felt a preternatural cold seize him, but a ward that Jak had cast flared and chimed. Cale recognized it as a death ward. The spell might have killed him but for Jak’s protective spell.

  The slaadi had indeed transformed into something more powerful.

  Similar chimes and flares sounded from the wards on Magadon and Jak. Unprotected, Riven gasped and stumbled. Cale shrouded him in shadows and kept him moving.

  “Are you all right?” he asked Riven.

  Riven waved and nodded. They reached Jak and Magadon near the stairs.

  “Up,” he ordered. “Keep the divination active, little man. The Sojourner is not here so we move fast.”

  He turned around to look at the slaadi. Azriim’s spell appeared to have done no harm to Dolgan. Azriim floated down to the floor to stand beside the bigger slaad.

  “Come back,” Azriim taunted. “Things are only now getting interesting.”

  Cale ignored the taunt and ushered his friends up the stairs. He delayed a moment behind them and incanted a spell that summoned a wall of stone at the base of the stairs. The magic of the spell caused the edges of the wall to meld with the stone of the tower, blocking access.

  It would only delay the slaadi, he knew.

  “We should stand and fight,” Riven said, seemingly recovered from the death spell.

  “We will,” Cale said. “But the Tap is first. The only way to stop the Sojourner is to kill it. This is bigger than our personal grudges.”

  “That’s right,” Jak said.

  “Nothing is bigger than the personal, Cale,” Riven said, but did not argue further.

  Cale stared at him a moment, turned to Jak. “Which way, little man?”

  “Follow me,” Jak said.

  The slaadi appeared behind them at the bottom of the stairs, bronze rods in hand. They had teleported through the wall.

  “Go,” Cale said to them.

  Azriim and Dolgan rushed up the stairs, taking three steps at a stride. They raised their hands as they raced upward and balls of energy streaked out of them.

  Cale stood in the path of the fireballs, held Weaveshear before him, and intercepted both before they exploded. Shadows poured from the weapon.

  “Move,” Cale called again over his shoulder, and his friends went. Cale pointed Weaveshear down the stairs and released the pent-up energy directly into the slaadi. The magic slammed into the creatures’ chests, knocked both of them back down the stairs, and engulfed them in fire.

  Both roared, leaped to their feet, and bounded back up the stairs. Their clothing was aflame and smoke poured from both of them.

  Cale turned and sprinted after his friends. With his shadow-enhanced speed, he caught up with them quickly. They crossed another broad, bare chamber and found themselves at the foot of another set of stairs.

  “Up again,” Jak said. “We’re close.”

  “Here they come,” Magadon said, looking behind them. He turned, dropped to one knee, and drew an arrow to his ear.

  Across the large chamber, the slaadi appeared. Other than some slight charring, their bodies showed no wounds from the fireballs. Both roared.

  “Trickster’s toes,” Jak oathed.

  “Keep your concentration on the Tap,” Cale ordered him. He did not want Jak trying to cast a spell against the slaadi and losing the thread of his divination.

  Magadon spent more of the little mental energy he still had, charged his arrow, and let fly. The missile hit Dolgan in the hip, sank deeply into his body, and sent him spinning to the floor. Azriim leaped over him and continued his charge.

  Holding his mask around Weaveshear’s hilt, Cale incanted a spell. When he spoke the last word, he called into being a magical wall that spanned the width of the room. Composed of shadows and veined with viridian lines, it audibly sizzled, radiating magical energy from only one side—that facing the slaadi. Cale could barely see through it.

  Azriim halted his charge and hissed, skin smoking in the presence of the magic. Behind him, Dolgan climbed to his feet, his skin also smoking. The big slaad jerked Magadon’s arrow from his hip. Azriim withdrew a wand from his thigh sheath.

  “Up,” Cale said. “Go.”

  Like the wall of stone, he knew the magical wall would slow the slaadi for only a few breaths.

  The four comrades raced up the stairs. They found themselves in a wide foyer. A pair of large wooden double doors bound in brass stood on the other side of the foyer.

  “In there,” Jak said. “That’s it.”

  Below them, the sizzling sound from Cale’s wall of energy went silent. Azriim must have countered it somehow.

  The slaadi were coming.

  “How are you going to kill it?” Riven asked.

  “I’m not,” Cale answered. “The sun is.”

  As they charged down the hall, Cale whispered the words to a spell that allowed him to see dweomers. The double doors glowed in his sight, the wards evident to his magic-sensing vision. The Sojourner had warded the doors well. Cale did not hesitate. Blade in hand, he threw his shoulder against them and knocked them open.

  Glyphs flared and magical energy blazed out of the jambs. Weaveshear drank it all and Cale suffered no harm. Power rushed into the blade’s steel and it emitted a cloud of shadows. The weapon vibrated in Cale’s grasp, pregnant with the Sojourner’s power. Cale whirled around, pointed the tip at the head of the stairs, and waited.

  The moment the slaadi appeared, he discharged the energy.

  A beam of viridian light streaked from Weaveshear’s tip—the recoil drove Cale back a step—and hit Azriim in the stomach. The slaad bared his fa
ngs and grimaced but the energy seemed to have no effect. Even Azriim looked surprised. He looked up and grinned a mouthful of sharp teeth.

  “Go,” Jak said to Cale. “We’ll hold them off. Get the Weave Tap. Kill it.”

  Cale hesitated as the slaadi advanced.

  “Go,” Magadon said over his shoulder.

  Cale nodded, turned, and ran into the room. Judging from its size and the defaced murals painted on the walls, the room once was a religious sanctum of some kind. Scorch marks marred much of the floor, as if a magical battle had been fought there.

  In the center of the chamber stood the Weave Tap, grown to ten times the size of the sapling Cale had seen the slaadi remove from the Fane of Shadows. Silver limbs formed a canopy for golden leaves sparkling with arcane power. A silver pulse periodically raced up the bole, like the beat of a heart. The energy in the room stood the hairs of Cale’s arms on end.

  The Tap’s roots stood exposed, the ends melded with the floor of the chamber. The entire ceiling of the room glowed silver. Cale visualized the tower shooting a beam of magical energy from its top into the sky. If he killed the Tap, he would kill the beam, kill the eclipse, stop the Sojourner.

  He stepped through the space between shadows and covered in one stride the distance between the doorway and the Weave Tap. He materialized amidst its roots, near the bole.

  Behind him, he could hear his comrades fighting for their lives with the slaadi. The combat had leaked through the doors into the sanctum. Cale turned to see Azriim unleashing a flurry of claw strikes against Riven. The assassin held off the attack with a whirling counter of his sabers, but barely. The slaad forced Riven backward through the doorway and fired a bolt of energy from his palm at Magadon, who was fighting alongside Jak to finish off Dolgan. The energy struck the guide squarely and drove him into the wall—hard.

  Dolgan took the opportunity to tear into Jak. A claw strike sent the little man careening backward, bleeding from his chest. He answered with a stab of his shortsword and a shouted spell. White fire flew from his hand and struck the slaad in the chest. It scorched Dolgan’s skin, but the slaad only grinned.