Midnights Mask (8 page)

The brisk wind and nearness of the bay did not efface the aroma of incense, perfume, and unwashed bodies. The air was syrupy with the smell. Cale inhaled deeply, cleansing his nostrils of the last of Skullport’s fetor.

Five temples dominated Temple Avenue-fanes dedicated to Milil, Sune, Deneir, Oghma, and Lliira-though another dozen or so shrines stood in their shadows. Midway down the avenue, the construction on a new temple to Siamorphe, the goddess of hereditary nobility, was progressing apace. Cale knew that the cornerstone had been hallowed and the foundation laid three months earlier. In another month or three, the structure would be complete. The Talendar family, a rival to the Uskevren, was financing the construction. The second son of the Talendar, Vees, had returned from Waterdeep as a priest and vocal advocate of Siamorphe. By financing the building of the Noble Lady’s temple, the Talendars hoped to curry favor with the church hierarchy, expand the worship of Siamorphe to the most cosmopolitan city in the Heartlands, and ensconce their son as a high-ranking priest.

Cale smiled. As always, rank was not necessarily earned in Selgaunt. Sometimes it was bought. But from what little Cale knew of Siamorphe’s faith, he imagined that things might not go as the Talendar hoped. Bloodline meant everything to the faithful of Siamorphe, but Selgauntans little understood that. Wealth mattered in Selgaunt, not lineage.

Sitting areas for public contemplation dotted the street—stone and wood benches situated under the red and yellow autumn canopies of dwarf maples. Each bench generally shared the shade with one or two monstrous sculptures, the legacy of the late Hulorn’s fetish for peculiar statuary. All of the works depicted this or that hybrid monster; manticores, chimerae, owlbears, and the like. Starlings perched in the nooks of the statues and their droppings painted the stone and marble with splashes of white.

Cale, Magadon, and Jak weaved their way into the crowd and moved toward the Hallowed House of Higher Achievement, Deneir’s temple, which stood near the eastern end of the avenue, where the street curled back into the city proper.

A robed trio of Ilmatari priests sprinkling flower petals into a fountain and praying to their god for an end to a pox afflicting an outlying village. Dancers in red gossamer and adorned with finger gongs swayed through the crowd, lay worshipers of Sune who promised with the swing of their hips the pleasures of the Firehair’s worship. The tallest of the dancers ran her fingertips over Cale’s shoulder as she passed. When her painted fingernails came away trailing shadows, her eyes went wide.

As they passed the small but popular shrine to Tymora, the Lady of Luck, Jak and Magadon both walked over and flipped a copper piece into the public offering plate set outside the doors.

“A copper to the Lady returns tenfold in gold,” Jak said, uttering a traditional Tymoran prayer of offering. Other passersby did the same, offering the same prayer or a slightly modified version. The priestess standing near the offering plate, garbed in a blue robe chased in silver piping, thanked them all and offered the Lady’s benediction.

“Dare much,” she said. And the Lady keep you.”

Cale kept his coppers in his pocket. He did not think that the Lady of Luck would appreciate the coins of a servant of the Shadowlord.

Groups of faithful walked past them in close-knit groups, talking amongst themselves, eyeing the wonders of the street. All looked suspiciously at Cale, Jak, and Magadon. Cale knew that he and his companions looked less like worshipers and more like predators. Other than Cale, Jak, and Magadon, and a few pairs of whistle-carrying Scepters on patrol, almost no one else on the avenue bore weapons openly.

Cranks and aberrant philosophers held court on the avenue’s walkways, or under the eaves of a maple, shouting sermons and nonsense at anyone with whom they made eye contact. They reminded Cale of the madman who had accosted him back in Skullport. Cale could not remember what the man had said to him but for some reason he thought it important. It escaped him and he put it out of his mind.

A few noble coaches rolled slowly down the center of the road, the occupants looking out from their lacquered havens with looks of benign disdain. Cale knew that worship on Temple Avenue by the nobility was more about status than piety. All noble households had at least a shrine to the family’s patron deity within their manse. The rich worshiped in the public temples to see and be seen, mingle with the other rich, flaunt their baubles, make and break alliances, and gossip.

Cale remembered Thamalon once telling him that more deals were done in the churches and festhalls of the city than ever were done across a desk or in a parlor. Cale knew it to be true, and thinking of the Old Owl and his practical wisdom turned Cale sentimental.

To his left, the whitewashed bell tower of the Temple of Song jutted into the sky like the finger of a titan. A quartet of songhornists, accompanied by a shawm player, stood on the temple’s portico and softly played. A crowd stood around them, smiling and clapping.

Farther up the avenue stood the sprawling Palace of Holy Festivals, Lliira’s temple. Colorful pennons atop its roof flapped in the breeze. Music and laughter leaked from the doors, audible even from a distance.

Across the street from Lliira’s temple stood the elegant, soaring spires of Firehair’s House, the temple of Sune. The architecture of Sune’s temple sported many suggestive protuberances, shafts, openings, and curves. Two flaming braziers shaped like salamanders flanked the tiered stairway that led to the temple’s double doors. The priestesses never let the flames in the braziers go out, even in thunderstorms. Beauty was everlasting—that was the message of the ever-burning flames. Sune’s temple served not only hedonists, artists, and aesthetes, but also Selgaunt’s prostitutes by providing temporary shelter and minor healing magic to those in need. Many such women subsequently converted to the worship of Sune and thereby turned the practice of their livelihood into a kind

of worship. Cale remembered that a jest among the men of the Old Chauncel was that the temple’s presence had resulted in Selgaunt having some of the most attractive and disease-free working women in the Heartlands.

Jak elbowed Cale in the thigh. “Strange that I do not see a worship hall for Mask. Do you, Magadon?” Jak shaded his eyes with his palm and made a show of looking about.

Magadon chuckled.

Cale smiled and said, “Brandobaris seems to be similarly absent, little man.”

Jak laughed and shook his head. “Ah, but that is where you’re wrong, my friend.”

With the ease of the practiced expert, Jak casually lifted the coin purse from a passing pilgrim, a thin, middle-aged man with a scar running down one cheek. Jak’s skill impressed even Cale, who had seen seasoned Night Mask lifters operate.

Jak held up the purse for Cale to see as the pilgrim went on his way.

Jak said, “The Trickster’s temples are where I find them. Turns out, that’s mostly in the pockets of others.” He grinned at Magadon, who wore an appalled expression. “Never fear, Mags. I’m not in the mood to worship today. And I only take the Trickster’s Tithe from those who deserve their pockets emptied.”

Jak turned and called to the pilgrim, “Good sir! Good sir! You dropped this.”

The pilgrim turned, saw his purse in Jak’s hand, and patted at his empty vest pocket. He seemed too shocked to speak.

Jak jogged up to him and pressed the purse into his hand.

“My mother always said to keep your coin purse in your underlinens. Along with the rest of your jewels. That’s sound advice.”

Leaving a speechless pilgrim in his wake, Jak sauntered back to rejoin Cale and Magadon, neither of whom could help but smile.

“Now that, my friends—”

Jak looked past them and froze in mid stride.

Alarmed, Cale whirled, but he saw nothing other than the sea of faces and heads. He started to turn back to Jak, but then saw what Jak had seen.

“Dark and empty,” he swore. He could not believe his eyes.

“It cannot be,” Jak said behind him.

Sephris Dwendon, Chosen of Oghma and likely madman, walked slowly through the crowd toward the low, stalwart walls of the Sanctum of the Scroll, Oghma’s temple. A group of somber priests surrounded him, forming a protective circle and keeping passersby from getting too close. All of the Oghmanyte bodyguards wore white shirts, white trousers, and black vests adorned with embroidered characters from a variety of alphabets-the typical outerwear of priests of Oghma. Each also wore a crimson harlequin mask over their eyes and an iron mace at their belts. They eyed the crowd warily but did not seem to notice Cale’s and Jak’s stares.

Sephris wore a simple red robe and worn shoes. He carried a book in the crook of his elbow. The loremaster’s distant gaze carried sadness, and he did not seem to see those around him.

Cale did not remember Sephris being so tall. The loremaster stood half-a-head taller than any of the bodyguards, almost as tall as Cale.

“What is it?” Magadon asked, stepping beside him. “That man should be dead,” Cale said, and nodded at Sephris.

“Which? The tall one with the Oghmanytes?” Cale nodded.

Jak stepped beside them and added, “The slaadi killed him, gutted him. We saw his body.”

“Then he could be a slaad,” Magadon said, eyeing

Sephris coldly. “Shapechanged to resemble your man. Remember Nestor?”

Cale remembered. Nestor had been a comrade of Magadon’s. One of the slaadi had killed him and taken his form.

“I remember,” Cale said. “But we just saw both slaadi hours ago. You two killed the third. This… this would have required several tendays to put in place.”

“They can teleport from place to place quickly, Erevis,” Magadon said. “They could have been moving between Skullport, the Sojourner’s lair, and here. Or there could be another slaad that we haven’t yet seen. We should be certain.”

Cale nodded. Magadon was right.

“If he is a slaad,” Cale said. “Then we kill him on the street. We’ll deal with the Scepters afterward.”

To his surprise, Magadon and Jak both nodded, faces grim.

Cale put his hand to the velvet mask in his pocket and whispered the words to a spell that allowed him to see dweomers.

Once cast, the spell was indiscriminate in its application. Many trinkets, weapons, rings, and robes of passersby lit up as they walked through Cale’s field of vision. He ignored them and picked his way through the press toward Sephris, with Magadon and Jak beside him. The three circled wide and fell in beside and slightly behind the loremaster and his bodyguard priests.

The maces of the bodyguards all shone a soft red, and two wore magical belts that glowed, but Sephris’s body did not show an aura in Cale’s sight, as it would if he were a shapechanged slaad. Only a single ring on his right hand radiated an aura.

“He’s no slaad,” Cale said.

Jak blew out a soft whistle. “Then they must have brought him back. He was dead and they brought him back. Dark.”

Cale said nothing but his skin went gooseflesh. Not because Sephris had been returned from the dead, but because too many things seemed to be happening at just the right time, in just the right place. Had they not stopped to take a meal and re-equip, they would not have seen Sephris at all. Cale found it increasingly difficult to deny the presence of Fate in events. He felt as though he were being propelled toward something, something important, something he might not like.

“Perhaps I should have thrown a copper into Tymora’s plate, after all,” he muttered.

“What did you say?” Jak asked.

“Nothing. Speaking to myself.”

Like Sephris sometimes did, he thought, and he did not like where those thoughts started to lead.

Any idea of asking Elaena and the temple of Denier for assistance vanished. If Fate had determined that Cale would happen upon Sephris, then Cale would consult him.

*****

Riven despised Selgaunt’s Dock District, always had. The alleys all stank of fish, puke, and urine, and with rare exceptions, the food served in the ramshackle inns along the waterfront smelled only mildly better. The whores were all too cheap and the sailors all too drunk. The place was a cesspit of human weakness.

Beside him, Azriim, still in the flesh of a half-drow, walked along as though he might step in something unpleasant at any moment. Despite the slaad’s efforts, his otherwise shiny black boots had picked up a coat of road muck. Riven took satisfaction in the slaad’s unhappiness about that.

Dolgan, once more in his guise as a bald, muscular, Cormyrean axman, stumped along beside Azriim. Unlike Azriim, with the prominent gray streak that cut through

his hair, Dolgan’s new form showed no telltale sign that he had been partially transformed into a gray slaad.

“We should not be walking the docks undisguised,” Riven said. “Cale may have returned to the city.”

Cale had magically transported himself somewhere with Fleet and Magadon. Selgaunt seemed as probable a destination as any.

“Why would he?” Dolgan said. “This place is a hole.”

Riven thought the dolt’s words ironic, considering he had worn vomit on his clothes as though it were a badge of honor. But he kept his thoughts to himself and said, “He would return because he’s got nowhere else to go.”

“Let’s count on him being here, then, shall we?” said Azriim as he surveyed the piers. “If he shows, grand. And if not, then not.”

Riven grunted noncommittally. He still had not made up his own mind what he would do when the First of the Shadowlord showed. He had laid the groundwork to make Cale think him a possible ally. Riven was not yet certain that was his best play.

“What type of ship are we seeking?” he asked, eyeing the wharfs.

Ships thronged the bay and a forest of masts dotted the sky-schooners, carracks, longships, barges, frigates, caravels-and most of them flew a pennon denoting their country or city of origin. Dock hands shouted, cursed, and sang as they furled and unfurled sails, loaded and unloaded crates of cargo. The fat harbormaster and his agents prowled the piers, assessing cargo taxes, recording the names of berthed ships and their captains. Gulls squawked in the air above. Deckhands on a nearby caravel took shots at the birds with a sling. They missed every time.