Richard Byers - The Shattered Mask

She couldn't trust her eyes, her ears, her nose, or her perception of direction, yet surely there was some aspect of reality the enchantment hadn't muddled. Despite her awkward, flailing swordplay, the revenants had never actually touched her, and perhaps that meant they couldn't. That would imply that the magically induced confusion didn't extend to her sense of touch.

She and Thamalon had been approaching the mansion from downwind. Perhaps if she kept the frigid, howling gusts in her face, and didn't permit any other cues to mislead her, she could lead her husband out of the area tainted by the spell.

Unfortunately, that would mean closing her eyes, and what if she was wrong, and the phantoms truly existed? She'd have no way to defend herself as they ripped her apart!

With a snarl, she thrust that crippling thought away. If she was wrong, she and Thamalon were dead anyway. "Walk with me," she said, squinting her eyes shut. "Don't let go of my hand."

Her lack of vision didn't end the fear, the nausea, or the sense that the world was writhing and jerking around her, nor did it keep her from hearing the wails or smelling the fetor of the revenants. She struggled to ignore all such distractions and focus only on the frigid caress of the wind. Thamalon jerked on her hand as he lurched about swinging his long sword at the apparitions.

Then he stopped and murmured, "Valkur's shield, you did it. You got us out."

Shamur opened her eyes to find the world returned to normal. She looked back toward the marble lammasu. No wraiths were streaking in pursuit of mortal prey.

She drew a long breath and let it out slowly, to calm her racing heart and purge the dregs of the terror from her system. "The Talendar must give interesting garden parties."

Thamalon grinned. "I imagine they only set the snare at times when no one is supposed to be in this part of the grounds."

"You think? And here I thought they prided themselves on their sense of humor. Are you ready to press on?"

"When you are." They sheathed their swords and sneaked toward the house.

Like Argent Hall, the Talendar mansion had once been a stark donjon, but as their wealth increased and their taste for luxury and ostentation grew apace, the occupants had modified and extended the building to a far greater extent than the Karns had ever imagined. Old High Hall had become a sprawling, rococo confection graced with a profusion of friezes, cornices, arches, and similar ornamentation. It was a truism in Selgaunt that the Talendar never tired of stripping away the old decorations and replacing them with something more fashionable or even avant-garde, and scaffolding currently extended along a portion of the west wing. The framework looked as if would provide an easy means of ascent to an upper-story window, but given the family's reputation for wariness, Shamur suspected that appearance was deceptive. A mantrap waited up there somewhere, or at least the two spearmen walking the alures on the roof were watching the scaffold with special care. Crouching at the edge of the open space surrounding the keep, she looked for a safer means of access.

After a few moments, she noticed a sort of secondary portal projecting from the body of the house, bordered by pilasters and capped with a block of carved stone more than half again as tall as the recessed door itself. Just above that coping were round stained-glass windows, that, if her memory of various dances and parties wasn't playing her false, ran along the wall of a clerestory overlooking one of several spacious halls.

She pointed to the entry, and Thamalon nodded. They waited until neither of the guards were looking in their direction, then darted up to the portal and crouched in its shadow.

Shamur quickly climbed to the top of the capstone, then, feeling vulnerable and exposed to the view of the sentries above her, examined the windows. She hoped they'd been designed to open. Otherwise she'd have to extract one from its frame, a time-consuming process that would greatly increase the likelihood of someone catching sight of her.

But fortunately, it wasn't going to come to that. A moment's scrutiny revealed the simplest of latches. She worked a thin strip of steel between the stile and post, popped the fastener, cracked open the window, and peeked inside at a shadowy gallery illuminated only by a single oil lamp burning at the far end. No one was in sight.

Shamur tied off a thin rope and dropped it to enable Thamalon to ascend to her as quickly and quietly as possible. When he joined her, she freed the line, coiled it, started through the window, and froze.

"What's wrong?" Thamalon whispered.

"Nightingale floor," she replied, "built to squeak when anyone treads on it. I am rusty. I nearly failed to notice in time."

He peered past her at the gloomy interior of the building. "It's a marvel you noticed at all."

She shrugged the compliment away. "You can generally tell by the kind of wood, and the pattern in which the planks were laid."

"Does this mean we can't go in this way?"

"Luckily, no, but you must step precisely where I do."

"Very well. Lead on."

She did, taking care to trust her weight only to those spots where she reckoned the floorboards made contact with the joists beneath. She and Thamalon reached the arched entrance without either making a sound.

After that, they crept through the keep, listening for the voices and footfalls of others, ducking for cover and avoiding being seen whenever possible, strolling casually and pretending they belonged in the mansion when observation was unavoidable. Had they waited another hour or so to break in, there would have been fewer people roaming about, but Errendar Spillwine had taught Shamur that shortly before midnight was an advantageous time to enter a wealthy house. Many of the occupants had either retired already or were preoccupied with preparing to do so, and unfamiliar persons walking the corridors were less likely to excite alarm would be the case later on.

Finally, lurking in the doorway to a playroom full of balls, dolls, toy men-at-arms, and hobbyhorses, the Uskevren spied what they had been searching for. A brown-haired young man with a wispy mustache and the characteristic slim frame and wry, intelligent face of the Talendar, some bastard son of a female servant, perhaps, judging from the fact that he wore an ill-fitting hand-me-down doublet cut in last year's style, ambled rather unsteadily down the corridor.

The youth was alone. Indeed, as far as Shamur could tell, no one else was even in the immediate vicinity. So she lunged from the doorway, seized the lad, poised her dagger at his throat, and hauled him into the playroom. Thamalon shut the door behind them.

As she'd expected, the youth smelled of wine, but she saw no confusion in his wide, bloodshot eyes. Perhaps fear had sobered him up.

"What do you want?" he croaked.

"Tell me about the plan to assassinate the Uskevren," she said.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Shamur believed him. It made sense that few members of the household would be privy to a criminal conspiracy. "Then tell me where Ossian Talendar is."

"Gone."

She increased the pressure of the keen edge against his neck. "Don't lie, or I swear to Mask, I'll kill you."

"It's true! He left a couple hours ago and took some of the warriors and Lord Talendar's mage along with him! Some other wizard in a moon mask went along, too, somebody I never saw before."

Shamur and Thamalon exchanged glances.

"Where did they go?" Thamalon asked.

"I don't know," said the boy. "They didn't tell anybody. All I know is that the guards didn't wear their uniforms, or take any arms or armor they couldn't hide under weathercloaks."

Shamur frowned. Did Ossian and the masked wizard mean to attack Stormweather Towers itself? No, surely not, they must realize that even with Jander and Master Selwick dead, such an effort had little chance of success. Did they then have hopes of catching one or more of the Uskevren children away from home? That seemed equally unlikely. Tamlin, Thazienne, and Talbot knew they were being hunted, and thus ought to have sense enough to stay in after dark.