Midnight's Mask

He cursed a string of expletives—knowing Azriim could read lips—and awaited the bite of fangs.

  Magadon saw his danger. Cale’s eyes did not show recognition.

  “Erevis!” he said, and held up his hands. “Erevis, it’s me. You brought me here when you brought the slaad. Erevis, it’s me, Magadon.”

  Cale showed no sign of hearing his friend.

  Fueled by fear, Magadon dug deep in his mind for strength, found some, and projected into Cale’s brain: Erevis! It is me, Magadon! Erevis!

  Cale stopped. He shook his head. Weaveshear fell to his side.

  “Magadon?” he said, his voice distant. “Mags?”

  Magadon exhaled. He started to speak but the words came out slurred. His vision blurred, doubled.

  Cale pulled off his mask, saw Magadon’s condition, and rushed to his side. Magadon’s last sight before losing consciousness was a double image of Cale’s concerned face. For some reason, one of the images looked darker than the other.

  He came back to consciousness with Cale kneeling over him. Cale held his mask in one hand. The energy from Cale’s healing spell still warmed Magadon’s flesh. The broken bone in his leg had reknit. Most of the other wounds in his flesh were also healed. He had his strength back.

  Cale pulled him to his feet. His grip smeared slaad blood onto Magadon’s hands.

  “Are you … all right?” Magadon asked.

  Cale nodded.

  “We need to go back,” Magadon said.

  “Riven,” Cale said.

  Magadon nodded.

  Cale picked up Dolgan’s head, left on the ground near his feet, as shadows gathered around them. Magadon felt cold in that darkness, exposed. The darkness intensified, deepened, and Magadon felt the telltale tingle in his skin that accompanied movement between planes.

  They materialized in the corridor of the Sojourner’s tower to find Azriim standing with one foot on Riven’s chest and both hands closed over the assassin’s wrists. The air smelled acrid. Smoke leaked from Riven’s clothes the same way shadows leaked from Cale’s flesh. Riven’s sabers lay on the ground beside him. He was struggling to breathe. The slaad opened his mouth wide and bent to snap off Riven’s head.

  “Riven!” Magadon shouted, but neither the assassin nor the slaad showed any sign of hearing him.

  Something whizzed past Magadon’s ear and struck Azriim squarely in the side of the head—Dolgan’s eyeless head. Azriim turned to Cale and Magadon and visibly hissed, though no sound emerged.

  Riven sagged back, eyes closed. He was dying, or already dead.

  Azriim’s mismatched eyes widened when they went to Dolgan’s eyeless head, to Cale’s bloody hands, but he recovered his aplomb quickly.

  Back so soon? the slaad asked. And just in time for supper.

  Mouth agape, fangs dripping, Azriim took hold of Riven’s cloak and pulled his head toward his mouth.

  Cale dropped Weaveshear and stepped from Magadon’s side over to the slaad in a fraction of a breath. Still enlarged and empowered from his spells, he intercepted Azriim’s attack on Riven by sticking his hands into the slaad’s jaws—impaling his palms on the fangs—and pulling the creature’s head around toward him. Cale’s blood filled the slaad’s mouth. Azriim tried to bite down on Cale’s hands but Cale not only held the slaad’s jaws apart, he started to stretch them open further.

  Azriim’s neck corded with muscles and veins; Cale’s arms, too, strained with the exertion. Both combatants were screaming, but the spell of silence devoured the sound.

  Increasingly desperate, Azriim clawed at Cale’s hands and forearms as his jaws stretched wider and wider. The attacks tore Cale’s flesh but the man seemed beyond pain. He continued to pry Azriim’s jaws apart, attempting to tear the slaad’s face in twain.

  Eyes fearful, Azriim left off savaging Cale’s arms, groped in his pouch, and found his teleportation rod. Cale tried to knock it from his hands with a series of awkward kicks but the slaad managed to work the dials.

  Magadon drew his blade and charged down the hall, intent on not allowing the slaad to escape. He was five strides away, four….

  Azriim gave the dial a final twist and disappeared, leaving Cale and Magadon staring at each other over Riven’s body.

  Cale’s breath was heavy and audible. The slaad’s silencing spell must have been centered on Azriim’s own person.

  “Your hands,” Magadon said.

  Cale looked at his palms. Each had ragged punctures that went all the way through. Even as they watched, Cale’s flesh started to regenerate the wounds. He ignored what must have been excruciating pain and kneeled at Riven’s side.

  “He is still alive,” Cale said. He withdrew his mask, held it in his hand, and uttered a series of healing prayers.

  Riven’s breathing grew deeper. He would live.

  Cale stood, still large, still dark, still … something more than a man.

  Riven’s eye opened. He started to rise. Cale moved to help him to his feet and to Magadon’s surprise, Riven accepted the aid.

  “I cannot see,” the assassin said, unsteady on his feet. “The slaad used a spell to blind me.”

  Cale incanted another prayer. When he finished the spell, he waved his hand before Riven’s eyes.

  Riven blinked and his eye widened when he saw Cale. He offered a nod of thanks.

  Cale said nothing. He walked down the hall, into the sanctum, to Jak’s body. He studied it as if committing it to memory. He turned to them and said, “I’ll return when it’s done.”

  “What?” Magadon asked.

  “The Sojourner,” Riven answered for Cale, and Cale nodded.

  “We’ll stand with you,” Magadon said. “I know you will. But not this time. This time, I work alone. Stay with Jak. I’ll return.”

  With that, he vanished into the shadows.

  CHAPTER 18

  ENDINGS

  Vhostym smiled through his pain. He had teleported out of his tower and now stood, in his own flesh for the first time in centuries, on the surface of Toril.

  The starlight, visible in the dark sky around the Crown of Flame, caused needle stabs of pain in his flesh but he did not care. The pain on his skin was paltry compared to the agony of his rapidly deliquescing organs and bones. He would be dead soon, but he had accomplished what he had planned for so long. He could die content.

  His spell, his greatest spell, caused the umbra of the Crown of Flame to fall directly on his island, casting a perfect circle of shadow over it and the surrounding sea. As Toril continued its orbit around the sun, as Toril spun and wobbled on its axis, the magic of Vhostym’s spell constantly adjusted to keep Selüne’s tear before the fiery orb, poking a black hole in the sky, projecting a black spot onto Faerûn’s surface, onto Vhostym’s island. He had turned day into night and claimed that night for his own. He reveled in his final act of dominion over the multiverse.

  Looking up through watery, stinging eyes, Vhostym admired the white flares of the corona that shot out in vaporous streams from the black hole of the sun—it was his father, millennia ago, who had called the corona the Crown of Flame. Vhostym had thought it beautiful then and he thought it more beautiful now than a rage of dragons in flight, more wondrous than the magma cascades of the Plane of Fire. He thought of his father’s face, something he had not done in a long while—the long chin, deep set eyes, the thin-lipped mouth that so rarely smiled. He wondered if his father would have been proud of all Vhostym had done, all he had created and destroyed.

  Vhostym had only a short time left, he knew. He had finished his work only just in time. He who had lived for millennia now had only hours remaining to him. Vhostym felt no melancholy about his impending death. He had lived well and accomplished all he wished.

  He could have walked Faerûn during a natural eclipse, of course. Toril experienced many. But during a natural eclipse the umbra raced across Faerûn’s surface as the celestial bodies continued in their orbits. He would have been able to spend only moments in its darkness. r />
  He wanted more. He wanted to create the eclipse, to hold it in place, to spend a day on the surface. To control it, as he had controlled so much in his life. And he had done it.

  Instead of his habitual flight, Vhostym walked on one of the Wayrock’s rocky shorelines, shoeless. He stumbled often, but the feel of the stones under his feet, the sound of the surf in his ears, the smell of sea salt, all of it was more precious to him than all of the treasures he had accumulated. He savored each moment. He would pass into nothingness with the satisfaction of having spent a life accomplishing much.

  Cale’s grief and rage had given way to a simmering, inexhaustible need that could be met only in the Sojourner’s death. Cale did not understand the Sojourner’s purpose in blocking the sun and did not care. He wanted only one thing—chororim. Justice, vengeance. For Jak and for himself.

  He walked the shadow space to the island outside.

  Darkness reigned, as black as pitch. In Selgaunt, the eclipse had been partial. Here, as Cale had expected, it was total.

  For now.

  A ring of white fire surrounded the black hole in the sky. Dim stars were visible beyond the absent sun.

  The tower loomed behind him but no magical energy rose from it to seize the rocky sphere in the sky. Cale had ended that when he killed the Weave Tap. The eclipse continued for now, but soon Toril would spin the Wayrock out from under its shadow. The Sojourner’s spell was dead; he just didn’t know it yet.

  And so was the Sojourner.

  Cale saw nothing around him except the tower and an unending series of rocky outcroppings and sandy beaches. Even the gulls, tricked by the eclipse into thinking it was night, had returned to their nests. The roar of the breaking surf was the only sound. He stepped through the darkness to a high promontory and scanned the ground below. He did not see the Sojourner. He would need to scour the island, and do it rapidly. If the Sojourner did not yet know that his spell had ended, he soon would.

  With an act of will, Cale caused the darkness to make him invisible, visualized the dark spaces between visible space, and stepped across the island, covering a spearcast at a stride. He moved methodically across the terrain, from beach to promontory to hilltop.

  He heard the Sojourner before he saw him. Cackling, grotesque laughter carried above the sound of the surf. Cale followed it to its source, blood on his mind.

  On a sandy beach below him, ankle deep in the foamy water, a pale, sticklike figure moved feebly along the beach. With effort, the figure held his thin arms out, as if enjoying the fresh air. He stumbled often in the surf, nearly falling several times. He grabbed at his thin chest from time to time, his breath rattling. Gasps of pain escaped his lips but always gave way to another bout of laughter.

  He was dying, Cale saw, and the realization made his pulse pound. The Sojourner was going to die in only one way—by Cale’s hand.

  Watching the small, pathetic creature wade in the surf, Cale realized that there was no grand plan. The Sojourner had not strived for power or immortality. He had schemed and risked the lives of thousands to walk the sand in the darkness he had created. Nothing more. Cale could hardly believe it. Cale thought the Sojourner worse than any power-mad mage he had ever heard of. Jak had died for nothing.

  Cale’s anger flared, burned hot, but he resisted the impulse to attack. He knew the Sojourner’s power. He knew he could not simply cut the wizard down. His defenses would be powerful. Cale needed an opportunity.

  He looked to the hole in the sky and knew it would come soon enough.

  So he did what all assassins do—he watched and waited for his chance to kill. He pulled on his mask and whispered the words to a series of protective spells, ending with a spell that allowed him to see dweomers.

  Unsurprisingly, the Sojourner glowed like the sun in his sight. Layer upon layer of spells cloaked him. Cale studied them for a few moments, trying to discern their purpose. Some he recognized as defensive wards, others he could not identify.

  The island brightened. In the sky above, a fingernail of light peeked out from the edge of the eclipse. Toril was turning and the misplaced moon was not keeping pace. A flare of magical energy, some last vestige of the Sojourner’s spell, engulfed the moon, caused it to glow silver. Cracks formed in its surface.

  The returning light made Cale uncomfortable but it made the Sojourner’s skin blister. Cale could not distinguish between the Sojourner’s continuing laughter and his hisses of pain. The sun sneaked farther out from behind Selüne’s tear. The cracks in the moon grew wider. The light grew. The Sojourner stumbled again, looked up. He rubbed his bare arms. Wisps of smoke rose from his skin. He was burning in the sun. Cale saw his lips peeled back in a grimace of pain.

  Cale drew Weaveshear and waited.

  The Sojourner looked up as if to the great deepstars overhead, then quickly turned away, hissing with pain. The light surely must have burned his eyes. He stumbled, nearly fell.

  Cale struck.

  He stepped from the shadows near him and into the Sojourner’s own shadow. His proximity triggered the Sojourner’s defensive wards. Lightning flared, a fan of flame, a cloud of negative energy. Cale held Weaveshear before him and the blade drank what it could. But the power of the spells was too much for the blade to consume and some of the energy reached Cale. His muscles violently contracted and lightning burned a hole in his stomach. He bit down involuntarily on his tongue, so hard he nearly severed the end. Blood filled his mouth. The last of the negative energy ward stole some of his soul and chilled him to the bone.

  He endured it all, cast Weaveshear aside—this was not a matter for the weapon of Mask, but for Cale’s own hands—and wrapped his arms, still powered by the spells that augmented his size and strength, around the frail body of the Sojourner. The creature did not struggle against his hold, did not even seem surprised.

  Cale clamped one huge hand over the Sojourner’s mouth and his palm nearly covered the creature’s entire face. He would not let the Sojourner utter a magical word, not a sound. He felt the Sojourner’s wet respiration against his fingers. The Sojourner stank of medicines.

  Cale spit a mouthful of blood and said though his pain, “This is over.”

  Cale felt a tingling behind his eyes, the Sojourner’s mental fingers, and feared that his protective spell had not worked. The creature’s voice sounded in his head: You have protected yourself against attack but not communication.

  Cale held the Sojourner still and said in his ear, “You killed my friend.”

  Did I? I would do it again. I’ve killed many. I suspect you have too.

  Cale wanted to kill him then, but he could not. He had to know.

  “Why all this? Did you do it for nothing more than a stroll in the godsdamned sand?”

  A shudder wracked the Sojourner’s body. It took Cale a moment to realize it was laughter and not pain.

  Men always ask why, as if there must be some overarching reason for events. Not this time, priest. There is no such reason. Thousands will die to satisfy my whim.

  Cale thought of his words to Riven: This is more than personal. He had been wrong; Riven had been right. There was nothing bigger than the personal.

  He gritted his teeth and started to squeeze. Calmly, the Sojourner projected: What moments do you remember most fondly from your youth, priest?

  Cale did not answer but he hesitated. He remembered nothing from his youth with fondness.

  When death comes for you, you will look back to those moments, long for them as you do for nothing else. All that I have done, I have done to satisfy that longing. To walk the surface in my own form, to feel the wind, to see the Crown of Flame, as I did in my youth. Yes. Is that enough of a why for you?

  Cale was disgusted, but in a barely acknowledged corner of his mind, admiring. He hung onto the disgust. He looked up to the sky, to the moon, to the growing slice of the sun. He remembered telling Jak and Magadon that the Sojourner would not involve himself in something small. But he had. His methods had b
een large but his goal was no more ambitious than that of any man.

  “You speak of killing as if it were a small thing.”

  And you speak as though I should be concerned with the deaths of others. What are all those hundreds, even thousands, to me? I have killed entire worlds for less.

  Cale struggled for words, found none.

  The Sojourner said, I have seen and done what I willed. Nothing matters anymore. I will be dead by the end of the day.

  “It’s already night,” Cale said.

  He lifted the Sojourner from his feet and squeezed.

  The frail creature gasped as Cale brought his strength to bear on the thin body, the weak bones. A final protective ward on the Sojourner flared green and Cale felt a surge through his body.

  The Sojourner’s ribs snapped, folded in on themselves, his collarbone cracked. Cale echoed with his lips the mental screams of the creature that he heard in his brain, for the final ward on the Sojourner was some kind of reciprocity spell. Cale experienced the damage that he inflicted on the Sojourner—the shattered bones, the pain, the pierced organs. His shade flesh tried to repair the damage but the pain made him vomit down his shirt, down the back of the Sojourner’s cloak.

  Cale did not know whether pain prevented the Sojourner from casting a spell, or whether he was even interested in trying. Cale did not care; he squeezed and the Sojourner screamed. Cale took satisfaction in his own agony because he knew it mirrored what was felt by the Sojourner. He smiled at the creature’s screams, smiled at his own, feeling soiled but unable to stop himself. He pulled the Sojourner so tight against him that they might as well have been melded. Cale’s bones ground against bones; his lungs filled with blood. He forced his shattered chest to draw another breath, another.

  He was killing the Sojourner, and he was killing himself. He did not care. He thought of Jak and squeezed. The Sojourner’s frail body broke to pieces in his grasp; his own body shattered. Soon the pain became unbearable; he could not see, he could not breathe. His ruined arms could not hold the creature. The Sojourner slipped from his grasp to the beach. Cale too collapsed. He could not tell if he was screaming alone or if the Sojourner’s mental screams continued.