Jeff LaSala - The Darkwood Mask

“You mean to speak the truth, Gan, but addiction is a tenacious thing. It takes only a single weak link to break a strong chain. I will not have such a poison compromise your excellent skills or the integrity of my estate. Understand, you are a worthy investment, and I mean to protect that investment. Master Rhazan?”

Charoth nodded to the bugbear, and the spiked chain was drawn back again, harder now. Gan tried to scream, but the thug’s fist slammed into the small of his back and robbed him of his breath. Dropping hard to his knees, his pale flesh was ground hard into the broken shards of glass. Through the haze of agony that followed, Gan was aware of his employer watching his anguish without comment. He could almost see those sickly fingers clutching the vulture-headed, blue glass cane his lord always carried.

The crushing force of Rhazan’s grip returned and Charoth began to evaporate from Gan’s view, as slowly as he’d first appeared.

“Are you still alive?” Valna asked, drawing a scimitar of razor-edged bone. The dead woman smiled, rotted teeth elongating into fangs, then she slashed at his throat .

Tallis woke from the nightmare with a reflexive spasm.

He opened his eyes. Distorted visions of bloodshed crowded his mind, leaking from his dreaming conscious like brackish water. He thought of the war, of the battlefields he’d surveyed and the hundreds who had fallen. Surely what happened last night could be nothing worse than that. What was the slaughter of one family compared to the thousands slain in the Last War?

“Not good,” he said to the ceiling above him.

Realizing that he lay in bed, Tallis sat up. Every bruise and cut on his body chose that moment to protest the harried flight of the night before. He remembered the White Lion who had trained the crossbow at him, then looked to his leg where the bolt had pierced him. A fresh bandage was wrapped tightly around his calf, but he could barely feel it-the result of magical healing.

Tallis surveyed the room, which smelled faintly of familiar incense. The curtains of the small basement window were drawn, but he could see the glimmer of daylight beneath. His magic rods lay on a small table alongside his belt, a dagger, and his darkvision lenses-one of the frames was now empty. Damn . Those were on loan.

He was dressed only in his smallclothes, and the purplish flesh of the bruises along his arms and legs stood out. His torn clothing from the night before was in a bundle on the floor. His boots sat against the wall next to a fresh set of clothes, neatly folded. The crossbow bolt had made a sizable hole in the fine leather of his boots.

“Oh, not good,” he said again, wondering how much Verdax would charge him for the repair. Flesh, it had always seemed, could be mended more easily than enchanted leather.

With a start, he realized that his hooked hammer was missing as well. He strained to remember where he’d lost it. After clearing the roof of the adjacent tower, Tallis couldn’t recall what had happened next. He only remembered running.

The distant murmur of voices had Tallis moving to the door, where he cracked it open and listened. Beyond lay a dark hall with brazier light spilling down a narrow stair from the main floor. Tallis proceeded up the stairs. When he reached the first landing, he stopped to listen to the conversation in the chancel above. Sound carried well within the stone halls of the temple, especially here in the undercroft.

“-will come to an end, as all things do.” The voice was strong, delivered with a conviction Tallis could associate with none other than his friend Lenrik.

“But what of his soul? ” The other voice belonged to a woman of middling years. She sounded frightened, desperate to be convinced.

“Mova, your son was- is -a soul. He had a body, yes, but he has passed from it. What you saw was the vessel your son once possessed-and nothing more. That body, that shell, is a property of the crown now, and though our faith protests such indignities, in the end it does not matter. We are spiritual beings given life by the Sovereign Host-all of us-and we will transcend physical limitations at the last, as has your son.”

“But … does Aureon tell you all this? Can you hear him speak these things?”

Tallis smiled sadly at the woman’s words. He’d asked Lenrik the same questions long ago. What, indeed, did the Sovereign of Law and Lore relay to the elf during his daily prayers, that he could be so sure?

“Not in such words,” the elf answered. “The gods find better ways to be heard. Words are the clumsy tools we use when we can’t find that better way ourselves.” The elf gave a gentle laugh. “But yes, in many ways, I do hear him. You can, too, Mova. You just have to let him be heard.”

Not so easy, old friend, Tallis thought. What will you say if she asks you about Dolurrh? Do you give her the beliefs of the Order or your own?

Tallis crept up the last few stairs to peer around the corner into the shrine of Aureon. The sanctuary was large-the holy Octogram of the Sovereign Host carved in relief upon the marble floor and the white stone altar sculpted into the open book of Aureon’s symbol-but the adjoining worship hall of the cathedral proper dwarfed the whole shrine. There were only two people sitting together in the pews.

“I will … try,” Mova said. She looked matronly, with gray hair and tired, red-rimmed eyes.

She reached out to embrace the slim figure in the dark green cassock who sat beside her. The elf’s face was youthful, but Tallis knew Lenrik was more than twice the old woman’s age. Mova pulled slowly away, her hands clasping the elf’s shoulders as if he were a dear son of hers. “Thank you for listening to me again.”

“My pleasure,” Lenrik said. “May Aureon and Boldrei preserve you, Mova.” Together they rose. For one moment, Tallis thought she saw him watching from the stairwell.

We can’t have that, he thought. Tallis turned back and returned to the room and closed the door. He walked to the wall mirror and stared back at his own disheveled image. His shoulder-length black hair showed only a pretense of order and the stubble on his chin was considerably coarser than he last remembered. What time of day was it?

He crossed to the corner where his and Lenrik’s game of Conqueror awaited. He examined Lenrik’s latest move. The elf’s king was only three squares from Tallis’s chancellor, who in turn shielded his own monarch from Lenrik’s legionnaires. Tallis pondered his strategy for a long moment, then moved the chancellor out of the way. A bold ploy, to be sure, but Lenrik’s king would not be able to advance directly.

Tallis turned his head and found himself staring into the wall tapestry, as he always did when visiting his old friend. It had been woven by Lenrik’s own great-grandmother in her youth, the only relic of the elf’s childhood in Aerenal. A sorceress of uncanny skill, she’d woven magic into the violet, red, and gold threads that allowed the delicate work to endure for so many centuries. As Tallis lay there, the hypnotic patterns calmed his mind, allowing his thoughts to return inevitably to Haedrun. Why would she set him up? Did she even know what she’d sent him into? Where was she now?

Haedrun was a member of the Red Watchers, an organization dedicated to purging the taint of undeath that still pervaded Karrnath. It was this focus that had attracted Tallis to the Red Watchers when he’d first learned of them. Their interests were much like his own, but when Haedrun and her superiors had offered him membership in their secret society, he had politely declined.

Haedrun had been hurt by his refusal. Though he had tried to give her reasons, he’d been unable to satisfy her need to understand. In the end, the Red Watchers were an organized network. He did not work well within such hierarchal confines. Never had. He had to do things his own way.