Ed Greenwood: The Wizard's Mask

Why doesn't he just blast me? Oh, of course-the gauntlet. He wants it undamaged.

Tantaerra didn't stand still to ponder this or watch Mahalagris wheel around in a sweeping turn to come back at her. She rushed to the heap of exposed boulders, kicking at her partner as she ran past. "Up! Up, damn you, Armistrade! This is no time to-"

Then the wizard was on her again, the thunder of racing hooves almost deafening, the Whispering Blade lashing out.

Come kiss me, little one!

Its entreaties hissed past her ear as she ducked low behind a large boulder, just getting clear. Mahalagris wheeled his horse around hard, trying to deny her time to find better cover.

Heart pounding, Tantaerra didn't try. She had to do this just right, or …

A lashing hoof almost drove her chin up through the crown of her head, but she flung herself sideways and it laid open her ear instead. Rebounding bruisingly off a rock she'd just inadvertently hurled herself against, Tantaerra sprinted up a rising stair of boulders and launched herself from the highest one in a desperate leap.

Thank the General Lords for putting so many bad riders on horseback, giving Molthuni saddles such high backs . She caught hold of the one Mahalagris was sitting in and swarmed up him.

Mahalagris worked a swift magic that wove a halo of spitting sparks around her daggers and buckles and all else metal, leaving her hand numbed and spasming.

To keep from falling off, she wrapped herself around the wizard's neck and shoulders from behind, entwining her legs around his shoulder, watching the Whispering Blade rising to slice at her.

He doesn't care what happens to this body he's using. It won't let go in pain, or go wild if I blind it, or-

We meet at last , the Whispering Blade greeted her triumphantly, as its edge came at her face.

Tantaerra grabbed hold of the wizard's dark hair and kicked off from his shoulder hard, wrenching his head around and forcing his sword to slash wildly wide.

She clung to it for a battering instant, banging against his chest-gods, did all cavalry reek this much? — as Mahalagris glared down at her.

Tantaerra glared right back up at him. She was close enough to spit and blind him, if it hadn't been straight uphill and likely to end up all over her. Her fingers, clutching the fistful of hair desperately, brushed his cheek.

A black wave of cold, fell fury fell on her, invading her mind, seeking to crush and overwhelm her.

Tantaerra clung to the one thing that held fast, a wan and glimmering light in the roaring, swirling, fang-ridden darkness trying to devour her. The Fearsome Gauntlet.

She was seeing things. Fleeting memories from the mind of Mahalagris, scenes so horrible that Tantaerra shrieked.

Then it was all gone, so abruptly that she was lost in a daze, vaguely aware of the moon hurtling past.

No, she was flying through the air past the moon, or…or …

She landed hard, crashing through tall grass like a stone, and rolled out of sheer habit. The gauntlet was still with her, still glowing, and she was vaguely aware of dull thuds, ragged repeated blows.

When she could stand again, on legs that threatened to melt out from under her, she saw Tarram Armistrade swinging a broken lance like a blacksmith's hammer, battering the wizard's head and shoulders, and thrusting the splintered end of the lance-it no longer had its pointed head-at Mahalagris's face whenever he could.

In the distance, the horse Mahalagris had been riding was galloping off like the wind, tossing its head and bleating like a scared lamb.

The Whispering Blade was lying in the trampled grass not far away. Mahalagris reached out an arm toward it.

Despite the blows The Masked was raining down, the sword quivered and slid haltingly toward the wizard, a little at a time.

Tantaerra ran toward it, unsteadily, almost falling twice. If she could stand on it, perhaps her weight could stop it moving.

Or perhaps, just perhaps, the magical sword was what could kill a wizard who was already dead, if she carved him with it …

The lance broke, and Mahalagris laughed in triumph and started to clamber to his feet. The Masked punched him hard in the face-and the wizard punched him back.

Then they were clawing and punching and grappling, Mahalagris managing to snatch the mask off Tarram's face-and Tarram toppling them both to keep from being smashed in the face with his own mask. They rolled on the ground, punching and kicking.

The Whispering Blade rose from the ground, hilt first, as if to fly …and then fell back again, bouncing like any dropped sword.

Tantaerra pounced on it, and the blade and the gage she was wearing both flashed with bright and sudden magical light.

"Oh, great," she gasped. " Now what?"

∗ ∗ ∗

Neither Mahalagris nor the body he'd taken over had taken part in many vicious alley fights, Tarram realized. The wizard wasn't trying to gouge out his eyes, and didn't know what a good handle a man's nostrils gave a ruthless foe.

Or perhaps the wizard just didn't care what happened to his borrowed body, so long as it brought fresh victims within touching distance. His mind was flooding into Tarram's, dark and terrible, exulting …

Tarram had managed to roll atop the wizard's other arm, pinning it, so the mask was trapped under him, too. Yet he could cling to its steadying magic as the mind of Mahalagris tore at his, raging in his head, seeking to sear away everything that was Tarram Armistrade.

Light flared behind him; the Fearsome Gauntlet.

The moment he thought of it, it was as if a door had opened in the darkness seeking to ravage him, and he was plunging down a chute of wildly swirling memories. The wizard's memories.

Luraumadar, Luraumadar, Luraumadar!

The Whispering Blade had a secret!

In the hands of one who knew how-and this was how, bending one's will like this, and calling up this crawling crimson-edged darkness from the depths of the sword-it could drain the magic of the Fearsome Gauntlet.

Yet it could not hold it all, nor stop draining, once it started. The sword would quickly be overwhelmed, and self-destruct. It was a final resort, to be used only if both were about to fall into the hands of foes …

The dark malevolence raking at his mind lurched to an astonished halt. Not at what Tarram had just learned, but in surprise at something else, something over there in his memories.

Yes, Mahalagris had been reading his memories at the same time as he'd been plunged into the wizard's. Something the undead mage had just learned had staggered him.

In the dark warm passages of his own mind, Tarram turned toward that bright and quivering amazement, to see what had so astonished the fell wizard.

Only to watch his much younger self stealing the mask that had so dominated his life from Araungras Karm.

Karm! Mahalagris whirled around inside Tarram's mind, turning to directly confront Tarram, to glare at him, to rush at him and thunder, WHERE IS KARM?

That mental shout almost set Tarram's mind afire. Sizzling and half-blinded, he recoiled, flinching back, trying to mentally fend off a killing blow.

A blow that did not come.

Two burning eyes pursued him through his mind as he fled. Mahalagris was relentless. The wizard wanted Tarram dead, all right, and soon-but not until he'd learned all he could about Karm, to make hunting down the traitorous apprentice as easy as possible. No, the masked man was now a captive to be handled with exacting care, tracing from one memory to the next …

Tarram dodged behind a mental image-the wizard's, not his-of peeling back the layers of an onion more purplish than any onion he'd ever handled, and peered deeper into Mahalagris's. There had been something more about the gauntlet, something tied to an old, ever-present puzzlement …