J. King: The abduction

To one side of the hall, standing aloof from me gossiping horde, Noph saw a circle of paladins, clad in glittering silver chain mail. In awe he recognized among them Kern, a mighty warrior despite his youth, and Miltiades, once un-dead but now again among the living. Noph formally saluted the group and passed on.

Noph approached another group. He drifted nearby and turned about as if admiring some particular beauty. This conversation had a very different tenor:

"— not at all like it was. What is the point of overland trade? The oceans have been charted to Kara-Tur and beyond. We've felled enough forests to give us a matchless fleet and now we don't want to use any of the ships? I don't understand."

“Think how we feel. Mate. You're a landlubber-sure it's your money that sets sails on our rigs and get us where we go, but if you're out coin, think what we're out. Out a living, that's what. Used to be that seamen had a hard life, sure, but now, no life at all."

"Yes, which is why I thought, why wait? Why wait for a politician to pave the way-no pun intended. We've got all we need, just not official sanction. I thought, perhaps, to make five of our merchant ships into warships, send them down to grab the right bits of land-the capes and so forth-capture them, put up outposts, and there you have a water trade route…"

Noph drifted away. These people were planning business, not treason. Certainly, it might be a fine line between the two, but Noph doubted these men were in league with regicidal traitors.

"— during the ball… The crossbow is already in place… I've said too much already-… No, we shouldn't be seen speaking… wait until we're masked-"

Noph paused, pretending to check the sole of his boot for something stuck to it. He listened a bit more.

The speaker was a woman, standing in the shadow behind a large, potted palm. Her voice had a strange burr that Noph had never heard before-something vaguely Calashite. He could see little of her appearance-only that she was of extraordinary height, with lean shoulders and a graceful figure.

Abruptly, she moved away from the palm, toward the great dance hall where the ball would be held. Noph watched the sway of her red dress for a moment before remembering to put his boot down and follow.

By the time Piergeiron had returned to the celebration after discovering the disappearance of the shapeshifter's body-dinner was finished and the dancing had begun.

It was a masquerade.

Eidola herself had planned the masked ball, saying she wanted to dance with the groom without courting bad luck by seeing him before the ceremony.

The costumes were designed to provide complete anonymity. At the entrance to the ballroom, a curtain had been strung to make a dressing area between curtain and doors. One by one, the guests entered the changing area. donned loose grey robes over their clothes, and were fitted with full-head masks. The masks were grotesquehawks, toads, dragons, bugbears, dwarves, elves, humans, gnomes-and they took their forms from all the creatures of Faerun.

By wearing these masks, the guests were, Eidola said, transformed into every manner of creature in the world. They became emissaries from Faerun to the wedding couple, gathered to bless a marriage that would bring peace and prosperity to all creatures.

Such were the bride’s lofty justifications of this masquerade. In truth, as each guest pushed back the double doors and joined the flocks of other grotesque beasts in the ballroom, the masks did not create a peaceable kingdom so much as an exotic jungle.

Piergeiron and Madieron stood in the dark dressing space outside the ballroom. All around them were small stands holding the heads of mammoths and pixies, treants and tigers. Their ghoulish grins made the Open Lord shiver.

Piergeiron was a straightforward man, and he didn't go much for elaborate charades. On the other hand, he had had no hope of prevailing over Eidola when it came to wedding arrangements.

Out of a dark corner of the dressing space, a baldheaded attendant slid toward Piergeiron. He pulled a grey robe over the groom's shoulders and the hilt of his sword. Piergeiron bristled. With assassins about, it was folly to let his sword get so fouled.

To add insult to injury, the costumer next appeared with an especially repellent mask for him to wear.

"A rat?" Piergeiron asked regretfully.

The clothier's bulbous head nodded eagerly on his skinny neck. "A Waterdhavian Sewer Rat. They are tenacious creatures. Brave. Almost noble… in their way"

Piergeiron stared at the glassy black eyes of the mask, the boars' teeth set in its maw, the mossy felt and pantomimed garbage dangling between those teeth… "Isn't there something more suitable?"

The clothier reached up to set the mask in place. "The point of a masquerade is to be what you are not."

Piergeiron stoically suffered the placement of the rodent head over his own. When it was situated, he hesitantly asked, "How do I look?"

"Perfectly ratty," the man replied. "And what do you think of Madieron?"

Piergeiron looked up at his eight-foot-tall bodyguard and saw the fey smirk of a pixie.

The Open Lord broke into laughter. Madieron, unamused, unceremoniously thrust the man toward the double doors.

The Open Lord stumbled through the doors. The ballroom beyond gleamed with crystal chandeliers and mouldings of gold. Masked dancers swirled across the floor in a twostep pavane. The ensemble of rebecs and fifes played a familiar dance cadence, though the tones they produced were twisted in the new Sembian fashion. Measured harmonies continually devolved into chaotic dissonances.

Still trying to catch his balance, Piergeiron took two full strides before stopping dead within the sweeping arm of the pavane. He felt as if he had stumbled onto a clockwork carousel. There he stood, frozen amidst radiant motion. The procession of creatures was dazzlingbeholders, wraiths, lions, lizard men, griffons, owls, horses, camels, basilisks… Staring at their shifting multitude, whirling in the dance, Piergeiron grew dizzy.

He dropped to one knee, struggling to see something familiar. Wasn't this his palace? It felt as though he had stumbled through a portal to some deviant jungle. Or perhaps. a madman's mind.

Hadn't Eidola planned this all?

His eyes found no relief. The pillars that lined the hall glowed with an ill green fight that made them look like the ancient boles of green-sapped trees. Their acanthus-leaf tops and the riot of carved plaster across the ceiling became a dense canopy of foliage. The candles of the chandeliers glowed in pendulous bunches of exotic fruit. They sent up crazings of smoke, soot in place of pollen. Piergeiron wondered where these deadly spores would take root.

The touch of a hand-a feminine hand-drew the Open Lord from his crouch and set him into motion among the others.

Despite his dizziness, Piergeiron's feet fell into the duple rhythm of the pavane. He held the hand of the woman, an eel-headed thing, and swayed toward her and away from her,

"So, handsome," the eel said through her gill slits, "when's a charming rat like you going to get married?"

"Very soon, now," be replied, stepping sideways.

He let go of her hand and clasped that of another. This woman was a tall leopard. She moved expertly in the dance.

"Is it you, Eidola?" Piergeiron asked.

"Perhaps, Open Lord," the leopard replied enigmatically. "Perhaps."

He pulled away from her, too. His feet moved faultlessly in the two-step pattern as he circled the room. Sleepwalking. That was what this was. While part of his mind wandered freely, another part, accompanied by his feet, staggered and stumbled, carrying him deeper into nightmare.

Somehow it made sense. The guests were beasts. These monstrous semblances were the faces of their inner selves. Friend and foe alike, they were monsters.