Midnight's mask

CHAPTER 11

The wind rose as the sun sank below the horizon. The storm swallowed the stars and the sea grew increasingly rough. Demon Binder sailed headlong into the storm's teeth. The rain started slowly, thick dollops that felt like sling bullets, but soon fell in wind-driven sheets. Immense swells alternately lifted the ship up to touch the sky or sent it careening down to nearly bury the bow in the waves. Foam sprayed. The decks were awash. Through it all, Cale held station in the bow, leaning out over the prow, trying to increase the ship's speed through sheer force of will. His stomach fluttered every time they descended a swell, but he refused to give ground to the storm. Jak stood beside him, clutching the rail with white knuckles and groaning with every roll of the ship.

The rain hit Cale's face so hard it felt like hail. His soaked cloak felt as though it were filled with stones. He looked ahead, blinking in the rain, the spray, the foam. They had to be gaining on the slaadi. They had to be.

There!

Atop a distant swell he spotted a green glow. He strained to see. He was not certain that his eyes had not deceived him.

Lightning ripped through the sky, silhouetting a dark shape atop a mountainous swell-a ship, the slaadi's ship! Like Demon Binder, it had all of its sails unfurled and was riding straight into the waves.

"There!" Cale shouted above the storm, in his excitement using his voice rather than the mindlink.

"I see it," Jak hollered in answer. The little man slipped and nearly fell as Demon Binder slid down a trough. The slaadi's ship was lost to their sight.

Did you see it? Cale asked Magadon. We are closing.

I saw it, Magadon answered. So did Evrel. He's concerned for the ship, Erevis. And his crew.

Cale knew. He was concerned for them too.

Above them, the billowing square sails strained to contain the fierce wind without shredding. Rigging frayed. The masts creaked, bending under the force of the wind. Thunder rolled. Cale did not know how much more the ship or its crew could endure.

Below them, the water elementals Jak had summoned pulled Demon Binder through the churning sea, keeping her prow square to the waves. Watery appendages stuck out of the rolling sea to clutch the hull. Cale caught snippets of their rushing voices above the storm. They, too, must have been shouting to one another.

Tell him to hold on, Mags, Cale projected. We're getting close. We'll have them soon.

Before Magadon could reply, Cale felt a pressure in his temples, an itching under his skull. He looked to Jak, whose expression told him that he was feeling much the same thing. At first Cale thought it was a side effect of the storm, but the pressure intensified, as did the itching. Both grew painful. Cale squinted, clutched his brow.

"You feel that?" he shouted to Jak.

Jak nodded, holding two fingers to his temple and wincing with pain.

Mags? Cale asked. Do you-

I feel it, Erevis, Magadon answered, and Cale heard the strain in his mental voice. More intensely than you, I think. The whole crew feels it. I can see it in their faces.

What is it? Cale asked, and felt the connection between him and Magadon waver.

I.. not know, Magadon answered, his reply partially cut off. Not an attack. .

The pressure grew worse as they moved deeper into the storm. Cale's eyes ached. His head throbbed. He felt as though his eyes soon would pop. He looked back and saw that many members of the crew were balled up on the deck, writhing.

A wave of dizziness hit Cale and nearly sent him over the side but he managed to get both hands on the rail and his feet stable beneath him. He reached out and took a fistful of Jak's cloak to ensure his friend did not tumble into the water.

"What is this?" Jak screamed. He pulled at his hair.

Cale would have ordered Evrel to turn back if it were possible, but he knew it was not. Any change in course risked swamping the ship.

The pressure grew worse, caused his senses to deceive him. He imagined that he saw flashes of color dancing across the waves-not the green of the slaadi's ship, but will o'wisps of red and blue, flames of violet and orange, a sunset, a moonrise. Too, he thought he heard music and mumbling voices behind the roar of the storm. A huge shadow formed above him, a floating city. He cowered, then it was gone. He tasted ale in his mouth, beef, anise, onion.

Beside him, Jak shouted in a slurred voice, "What in the Nine Hells isth happening? I'm stheeing things. Hearing voices in the wind."

Cale could only shake his head and answer, "As am I. Hang on to the rail and do not let go, no matter what."

He was conscious of shadows gathering protectively around him.

Cale projected to Magadon, but the mindlink flickered in and out.

What is hap … Mags? Is there.. you can do?

For a time, Magadon did not answer and Cale feared for his safety. He looked back but could see nothing through the storm and pain.

Wait, Magadon said, and Cale heard wonder in his tone. Wait. …

Without warning the pressure in Cale's head decreased, then ceased altogether. Cale gasped, sagged. Jak did the same. Cale's senses returned to normal. The storm still raged around them but Cale felt a peculiar, inexplicable calm.

Magadon's mental voice sounded in Cale's and Jak's minds, and the connection was clear, powerful.

There is a presence here, Erevis. An ancient presence.

Dolphin's Coffer rose and fell in the swells like so much flotsam. Lightning split the sky. Thunder rolled. Rain poured down, thumped hard against Azriim's adopted flesh. Above him, the sails billowed outward in the breeze, straining the masts.

Azriim, Dolgan, and Riven stood on the maindeck near Captain Sertan, just in front of the helmsman's station. Lifelines were strung across the deck to form a web of rope over the entire ship. The crew clutched the lines tightly as they moved. Azriim and Dolgan, too, kept their grip on a line. Only Riven and the captain seemed able to hold their balance unassisted on the listing ship and slippery deck.

"Keep us square to the wind, Nimil!" Sertan shouted to his helmsman.

Veins stood out on Nimil's temples, his forearms. He held the tiller so tightly that Azriim figured he had left an imprint of his hands in the wood.

"Aye, Captain," grunted Nimil, his thin hair pasted by rain against his head. "This gets much worse, we'll lose the rudder."

"She'll hold," Sertan answered. He stared out at the storm and the sea, evaluated his sails and masts, eyed his crew.

"Sharp about your business, lads!" he shouted to every crewman within earshot. "Sharp about your business and the Coffer will carry us through. This blow cannot last much longer."

Sertan looked at Azriim, squinted through the rain. "If we get sideways to this, Umberlee will claim us all this day. How close are we?"

Azriim clutched the Sojourner's compass in his hand. He had taken it from the table beside Nimil the moment the storm had hit. He did his best to hold it flat in his palm and examine the needle. The movement of the ship made it difficult. Finally, he took a satisfactory reading: the needle in the center of the sphere pointed westward and slightly downward.

"Very close!" Azriim shouted, and added for effect, "Hang on, my friend."

The enspelled Sertan put a comradely hand on Azriim's shoulder and grinned.

"We will make it!" Sertan said. "And the first round of drinks is on your coin!"

Azriim only smiled in answer.

Not more than a quarter hour, Azriim projected to Riven and Dolgan, as the Coffer rose up another swell, then plummeted back down. Then-

He cocked his head, sensing mental contact. At first he thought it might have been the Sojourner, but realized quickly that the sensation was too severe for his father. He looked at Dolgan and saw that the big slaad was wincing.

Do you feel that? asked his broodmate.

Azriim nodded. Riven and the rest of the crew looked around, rubbed their temples. The pain intensified until slaadi and men clutched their heads in pain. Two seamen lost their grip on the lifelines and went over the side. The storm's wail swallowed their shouts. No one else witnessed their fate and Azriim did not care.

What is this? Riven projected, his mental voice tight. He had a hand on his blade and the other on his brow.

"What sorcery is this?" shouted Sertan, holding his massive head in his hands.

Azriim was not certain. The mental contact was incredibly powerful but also primitive, as though born of a consciousness only half-formed. He had never encountered anything like it before.

He tried to answer the contact with an innocuous mental touch but felt no connection. The mental abilities with which the Sojourner had gifted Azriim and Dolgan were quite limited and the consciousness did not seem to sense him….

Azriim looked at his compass, at the sea, and a realization hit him. It was the only explanation for this strange mental contact. No wonder the Sojourner had been unable to scry Sakkors.

The mantle was sentient, or nearly so.

We are closer than I realized, he projected to Dolgan and Riven, and smiled through his discomfort.

They nodded and tried to keep their feet on the slippery, rolling deck.

Riven and the rest of the crew still clutched their heads, grimacing at the pressure building in their skulls. Even Nimil released the tiller to hold his head. The ship started to turn.

Dolgan shoved the helmsman aside, took the tiller in his own hands, and wrenched it back into position. Azriim feared his broodmate's strength would break the rudder but it did not, and the ship straightened.

"I am seeing things!" Riven shouted, and finally took hold of a lifeline. "What in the Abyss is happening?"

The ship rolled up another swell, crashed down. A wave took another crewman over the side. Another.

The captain cursed through his haze.

Above, the rigging holding a sail on the mizzenmast finally snapped and the canvas flapped free in the wind. The sudden loss of the rigging sent a boom whirling a half-circle around the mast. It hit a sailor in the midsection and knocked him overboard.

Azriim feared that Dolphin's Coffer soon would not have enough crew to sail her.

Then, the mental torture ended as abruptly as it had started. The crew looked up and around, dazed, but hurriedly set to retaking their ship from the storm. Crippled but unbroken, Dolphin's Coffer sailed on.

Still shaking his head, Riven asked, "What was that?"

Azriim smiled. "Not what. Who."

The assassin and Dolgan both looked a question at him but Azriim offered no further explanation.

"The storm is breaking " said a crewman huddled on the forecastle. He pointed ahead, to a break in the clouds through which stars were visible.

Almost as soon as the crewman said it the rain slowed, then ended. The wind fell off entirely. The ship sails went slack and the vessel gradually coasted to a stop. A thankful rustle wound its way through the men, followed by a hoarse cheer.

"Well done, lads," the captain said to his crew. "Well done. Didn't I say she'd hold together?"

Azriim was not sure what to make of the calm. He found it portentous. Beside him, Riven must have felt much the same thing. The assassin eyed the sky, the black, rolling expanse of the sea, and said, I do not like this.

Azriim smiled. Not to worry, assassin. We are not remaining aboard.

Azriim held up the Sojourner's spherical compass on his palm. The needle within pointed straight down.

Vhostym appeared inside the sanctum of his tower, now safely removed to the top of the Wayrock. Still incorporeal, he floated into the outer wall of the tower and down to the root of the structure. There, he examined the bonds between the native stone and the transplanted tower. His spell had done its work well. The tower looked as though it had been built atop the Wayrock rather than moved from a secret mountain vale in the south of Faerun. He would need it to be well rooted when he began the spell.

He was pleased. Things had unfolded exactly as he had hoped.

He glanced skyward, to the stars, to Selune, to her tears. He already knew which of them he would use. He picked it out of the glowing field of silver points that trailed after their mistress. He imagined his spell taking effect, imagined how it would feel.

The time was drawing near. He needed only the power of Sakkors's mantle and he could begin.

Extending his consciousness across the Inner Sea, he reached out for Azriim's mind but could not make contact. He assumed that meant that his sons were in proximity to Sakkors. The ruined city's mantle had rebuffed Vhostym's attempts to scry it, so it surprised him only a little that it also interfered with mental contact.

A sudden, sharp pain ran the length of Vhostym's spine. He gritted his teeth and waited for it to pass but the pain lingered longer than usual. He bore it, hissing, and it passed at last.

He needed to complete his work soon.

He flew back up to the top of the tower, floated through a wall, and entered the former sanctum of Cyric. He dismissed the spell that made him incorporeal and his flesh solidified instantly. The sudden weight on his weak muscles and bones caused him to stumble. He fell to the floor, on all fours, and the impact sent knifing stabs of pain into his kneecaps and wrists. He screamed from the pain-the first time that he had ever given voice to his agony with more than a hiss-certain that the fall had cracked several bones.

Physically and mentally tired, he remained in the undignified posture for some time. He had taxed himself by using so many spells to claim Cyric's temple. It had been decades since he had done so much in so little time.

And there was more yet to do.

His breath came rapid and wet. He prepared himself to stand. He could have used a spell or mental power to assist himself but refused out of pride. He would stand under his own power; he had to.

He moved one leg, then another, gingerly asked them to bear his body. The memory of the pain still lingered in his knees, but he straightened them and made them bear him up. When they did, he allowed himself a moment's satisfaction, but only a moment.

Despite his fatigue, he had to prepare the tower.

He first whispered the words to a spell that summoned the Weave Tap from the pocket dimension in which he had left it. He pronounced the final couplet, energy flared, and the dendritic artifact appeared before him. It stood about as tall as a dwarf maple. Dim light pulsed along the silvery bark of its bole. Golden leaves dripping stored arcane power hung from its limbs.

Vhostym felt the Tap's distress at being removed from its nursery in the pocket plane. The twisting mass of its roots and the tips of its gilded limbs squirmed for a moment in agitation, seeking purchase in the Weave and Shadow Weave. Roots dug into the stone of the floor, found a home in the Shadow Weave and went still. Limbs reached upward for the ceiling but the tips disappeared into the net of the Weave before reaching the roof. They, too, went still.

Vhostym felt the Tap's agitation change to contentment.

Rest easy, he projected to it, though he did not think it could understand him. Or perhaps he could not understand it. The Tap had been born in shadow to serve the priesthood of the goddess of the night. Like Vhostym, it was vulnerable to the sun, but unlike Vhostym, it felt no loss from its vulnerability, no need to conquer its weakness.

The Tap simply existed, and in that existence found contentment.

Vhostym stared at the living artifact. He suspected that the Tap felt contentment only because its sentience was limited. Aware of little beyond itself, the Tap did not crave, need, or covet. Not in the way Vhostym did, not in the way all sentient creatures did.

The curse of sentience, Vhostym knew, was that it bred desire, ambition. And those birthed discontent. Vhostym exemplified the point. In the course of satisfying his own desires, he had razed worlds, killed millions.

He felt no guilt over his deeds, of course. Guilt required for its existence the failure to meet some moral absolute. Vhostym had learned better thousands of years ago. Mathematics was the only absolute in the multiverse-two and two were always four. Morality, on the other hand, was merely a convention with which men mutually agreed to delude themselves. There were no moral facts, just preferences, and one was no better than any other.

"Take solace in your simplicity," he said to the Tap.

He used a spell to lift his feet from the floor and floated out of the sanctum. He closed the doors behind him and warded them with a series of spells, a precaution born more of habit than necessity. No one knew of his refuge on the Wayrock. No one knew what he intended to do there, not even his slaadi, and by the time anyone did, it would all be over.

He floated through the halls of the tower until he reached the central room two floors below the sanctum, a chamber more or less at the midpoint of the tower.

Slowly, painfully, he lowered himself to the floor. Lying on his back on the bare stone, he placed his arms out wide and spread his legs apart. The floor felt cool through his robes. Attuning himself to the energy of the stone, he closed his eyes and started to hum. As he did, power gathered in him. He channeled it through his body and into the stone of the tower. When he felt the stone vibrate slightly in answer, he changed from humming to chanting. His voice, carrying power in its cadence and tone, rang out through the large chamber, reverberated against the walls, ceiling, and floor. The stone absorbed the power he offered and its vibrations increased to a mild shaking. He felt the floor softening under his body, as though it would embrace him. He ceased his inarticulate chant and recited words of power. They fell from his lips and hit the shaking stone. With the words he coaxed the power of the rock to the surface. He felt as if he were resurrecting the dead. He knew he had succeeded when the floor beneath him grew as warm as living flesh.

The power was awakened.

He nearly ended the ritual there but decided to do something more, something he had not contemplated initially, something for his sons-a final gift from their adoptive father. They had earned it.

Vhostym knew that slaadi spent most of their lives striving to metamorphose from their current form-whatever that might be-into the next, higher form. Azriim and Dolgan thought they would find contentment with their full transformation into gray slaadi, but Vhostym knew better. The change to gray would itself birth in them another drive, a need to transform yet again into another, higher species of slaad. That form was the most powerful his sons could attain, and only in that form could they find the contentment that Vhostym hoped to find when he brought forth the Crown of Flame.

He decided that he would spare them the lengthy search for the means of that transformation. Instead, he would transform them, and that would be his legacy.

He changed the cadence of his incantation and laced into the words a second spell, one that would take effect when his sons appeared within the tower. After only a short time within the tower, they would be transformed from gray slaadi into death slaadi.

Vhostym imagined the pleasure his sons would feel, and the thought made him smile.

When he finished the spell, he sat up, dizzy and lightheaded. He took a few breaths to recover, then attuned his vision to see dweomers. He immediately saw not active magic but a complex matrix of magical lines that crisscrossed the tower's walls, ceilings, floor.

The entire tower was now a focus that Vhostym could use to amplify the power he soon would draw from the Weave Tap.

He rose cautiously to his feet. Behind him, he saw that he had left a silhouette of his body pressed into the stone. He stared for a time at the image of his body. He had not realized how frail he had become.

It does not matter anymore, he thought, and looked away. His work was nearly done. All was prepared. He had only to wait for his sons to plant the second seed of the Weave Tap in Sakkors's mantle.

Then he would summon the Crown of Flame.

A second ship had joined the first. Ssessimyth sensed the tiny vessels floating on the sea far above him-floating on his sea, drawing the attention of the Source. The storm he had sent had not dissuaded the crews. They had sailed into its teeth and survived. He knew the ships had come to take the Source from him. What else could be their purpose?

He had ended the storm as his minions neared the surface. They would find it easier to attack a becalmed ship than a moving one. He used the dreaming Source's power to fill his minions with rage, hunger for manflesh.

Feast, my children, he sent to them. Feast.

Frustratingly, the Source continued to feed him only half-measures, realities that Ssessimyth felt but did not live. His anger swelled. He tried and failed again to pull the attention of the Source back to himself alone, to share its dreams with only him. It resisted and Ssessimyth's body jerked in agitation. He became conscious for the first time in a long while of the throbbing pain in his head, of the ruins around him, the coldness of the water, the darkness of the deep. His waking dream-more beautiful than reality ever had been-was ending. At least temporarily. As it did, he felt something he had not felt in centuries: rage. He would not let his universe slip away easily.

If his servants did not kill those who dared try to share the Source with him, he would kill them himself. He knew that at least one creature aboard the ships was in contact with the Source, stealing its visions from Ssessimyth. He would not tolerate it much longer.