The Wizard's Mask Page 13

  He started to pace again. "So I am firm in this—" He glanced at Zreem, who gazed expressionlessly back at him ...but had the bodyguard given his master the slightest of nods? What was going on?

  "—and these two shall go to Nirmathas for me. Accompany them if you wish, or go elsewhere if you prefer. I know what a loyal Molthuni agent would do. And I think you do, too."

  Silence fell. Then Ahrkholm sighed and said, "I shall accompany these two to the Shattered Tomb, and see that they bring you back this gauntlet, and then pass into my custody."

  Telcanor smiled triumphantly. "Go, then, with my bodyguard—" He waved at the mountainous Zreem. "—who shall conduct you to suitable quarters for the night. You shall be served a fine meal, and I shall join you later for pleasant conversation, over good wine."

  "Lord Telcanor, I have other business to conduct this even—"

  "Cancelled. A pity it'll have to wait until this pressing mission for Molthune is done. If it's just passing on a report to a fellow spy for the Imperial Governor, I'm sure you'll manage to do so between here and the Nirmathi border. If it's dropping through someone else's skylight, well—" The noble shrugged. "—they do say that a pleasure deferred is a pleasure intensified. Though I've little personal experience of that, aside from a few private little matters of revenge ..."

  "Lord Telcanor—"

  The noble turned away, and said over his shoulder, "Your meal awaits. A bath, if you'd like. High Investigator Ahrkholm, you are dismissed."

  "But ..."

  Telcanor merely waved a denial, and Zreem started ponderously forward. Tantaerra heard Ahrkholm sigh again.

  "This way, sir," the huge bodyguard said courteously. "Mind the glass ..."

  Tantaerra heard a door close, somewhere behind her. The nobleman rubbed his hands together with a satisfied air, then paced over to stand before his two prisoners in their chairs.

  "If you can deliver the Fearsome Gauntlet to me," he said with an almost fond smile, "I'll believe you truly are investigators from the General Lords, and we can work together. For the rest of our lives, and for the greater glory of Molthune. Even abandoning our feud with the Mereirs if need be."

  Then he spun away from them—and right around to face them again, the smile replaced by a scowl. "Yet know this: if you are the imposters that high-ranking liar claims you are, and somehow slip away from him and do not bring me the gauntlet, I'll have you hunted and slain on sight, anywhere in Braganza, or Canorate, or Korholm, or any corner of Molthune. Even into Nirmathas. The Telcanors are many, and we have allies few suspect. Believe me, our reach is long—and our wealth reaches farther."

  He strode to the wall of doors, struck a gong, and departed the room, leaving them still chained to their chairs.

  Tantaerra swallowed. "Masked man, are you ...all right?"

  From the other chair came a dry chuckle. "I've been better. Our future looks rather bleak."

  Tantaerra tried to nod, found the taut chain made her attempt queasily painful, and settled for sighing instead. "This Lord Telcanor seems less than sane to me."

  The chuckle from the other chair was heartier this time. When it ran down, he asked, "Are you sure you or I would really be all that different, if we never had to be polite or hide our true feelings, and had almost our every whim satisfied? Many nobles are little better than spoiled children, and this is one of them."

  "Oh? Just how many nobles have you known?"

  "You'd be surprised."

  Tantaerra opened her mouth to say something sharp to that, but four of the doors facing them opened in unison and the armored men who'd brought them here marched into the room, heading right for them. She sighed again, and fell silent.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Tantaerra felt like a prized piece of meat. The guards had been no gentler this time. They'd taken The Masked to another room, handling him even more brutally. She doubted he screamed easily—and he'd screamed more than a few times.

  Once she was locked into her own chamber, however, only three of the armored guards had remained, and they'd done nothing but sit and watch as some of the largest and most muscular human women Tantaerra had ever seen had washed her, trimmed her hair and nails, then laid her on a table in a shallow heated and scented bath and gently massaged her bruises. They all had red plump fingers liberally adorned with rings, and they'd washed her wounds with mild wine and covered them with some sort of sticky, daubed gum that smelled of bruised pine needles, that they then covered with strips of new cotton cloth.

  Then they'd bundled her into a much-too-long warming robe, sat her in a chair, and fed her the nicest meal she'd ever eaten, some sort of wonderful herbed cream broth over cut-up roast fowl. They'd even brought her seconds when she lifted up the bowl to lick it, then topped it with sugar-iced biscuits and a tiny glass of berry cordial.

  Well, if this is how Lord Telcanor mistreated guests, he could mistreat her every night of her life, from now on.

  Tantaerra winced at the vivid imaginings that thought brought her, and ruefully reflected that if this little task was half as dangerous as he'd made it sound, there wouldn't be that many more nights of her life. After all, if fetching this magic gauntlet from the Shattered Tomb was easy, someone would have done it years ago.

  Yet it must be real, because if Telcanor had just wanted them dead, he could have had his guards wring their necks instead of chaining them to those huge stone chairs—the presence of which suggested he pranced and preened in front of prisoners often. She wasn't sure she agreed with The Masked about his sanity, after all.

  She wouldn't be at all surprised if there weren't some secret way into this room, and that His Blustering Lordship wouldn't come creeping in on her before morning.

  "Come," one of the guards said brusquely, getting up out of his chair, the other two warriors rising in his wake.

  They let her keep the robe, and didn't even lay hands on her, but merely surrounded her and conducted her out of the room, down two long passages and a short one, and brought her into a smaller, cozier bedchamber, windowless but well furnished, with a fourposter grander than any bed she'd ever slept in before. There were two chamber pots, a water-ewer and basin better than the best inns provided, and even a small decanter of what looked like wine, or something stronger. With two crystal glasses, yet!

  "Clothing and gear will be brought to you when it's time for you to awaken," the guard announced. "Weapons will be bundled into cloaks and given to you outside the city. Please hold out your arm."

  Tantaerra did so rather warily, but all he did was give it a good long look, then ask, "Sword arm right or left?"

  "R-right," she answered, taken aback. She was a dagger girl, not really a swordswinger, but—

  The door slammed and locked, and she was alone. Barefoot but warm in this room of thick rugs, tapestries, and warmth coming from ...

  She drew aside a tapestry.

  ...an honest-before-the-gods ventilation duct! With an elegant cast metal grate over it that she could have off in a trice, even barehanded, and a horizontal stone shaft far too cramped for any but the smallest human children—but quite big enough for a small halfling. Oho, yes!

  Of course, she'd best also search for His Lordship's secret trysting door, not to mention any spyholes she could be watched through. In the ceiling, perhaps, or over the bed ...

  No, it had a full canopy. So, the wall panels ...

  It took some time, but in the end she could find no holes, and if any panels slid, were hollow, or had hinges, they showed no signs of it to her eyes.

  Which of course didn't mean there wasn't a hidden way. Yet if she simply wasn't to be found when Telcanor came calling ...

  She shrugged off the robe, went to the grate, and was into the dusty, cobwebby, rough stone shaft in that self-promised trice.

  It ran a long, straight way before darkness hid the rest of it from her. This mansion must be huge.

  Well, if she were going to get any sleep at all, the time for crawling was now. She
set about it, bare-skinned but pleasantly warmed by the breezes blowing along the shaft from distant hearths and the continuous run of metal plates that was meant to carry their heat. Just a halfling doing what halflings all too often did: quietly going where they shouldn't, just to have a look around, and see what advantages might be revealed.

  The shaft had gratings opening into room after room, most of them dark and empty. A row of bedchambers, none of them holding The Masked or anyone else she knew. No one was entertaining anyone abed or sorting through jewels or weapons or doing anything else of much interest, and when the shaft came to a sudden bend, she wondered if she should turn back.

  Well, not until I've seen the end of it, at least ...

  The bend proved to be a dogleg around an older wall of massive fitted stones, like a castle wall. It probably was a castle wall.

  Light ahead. More rooms. She almost certainly couldn't do more than look, because the gratings that were so easy to remove from the room sides seemed impossible to shift from inside the shaft with anything short of a smith's hammer or vials of strong acid. But looking was what halflings did.

  Someone was talking from the nearest room ahead. Two men, at least, and—

  Voices she knew.

  With infinite care, Tantaerra crawled forward.

  The gratings in her bedchamber and the row it was part of had been down by the floor, but here she was looking down into a room. A small but palatial room.

  Lord Telcanor sat at an ornately carved dark wooden table made to seat four, dining alone. There were no nearly nude concubines waiting on him, or anywhere to be seen for that matter, in this bedless room of sideboards and glorious maps and a handwoven carpet the hue of old blood.

  Telcanor was being waited on by his formidable bodyguard, Onstal Zreem, who somehow looked even larger and more muscular out of armor. Zreem wore some sort of dark, high-collared jerkin, and was pouring wine and then standing beside his lord with a mouth-cloth held at the ready—but he was talking to Telcanor almost as an equal.

  The noble gulped wine like a starving drover, then set his glass down, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before Zreem could get the cloth to it, and said dismissively, "You are angry and suspicious—but this is hardly new. You're always suspicious. Particularly of Tartesper. I know the man's a cold and scheming worm, but so is every last sage on all Golarion—odd, every one of them, in one way or another. It's the weight of all that useless knowledge they've crammed between their ears, crushing their brains like soft cheese, I tell you!"

  "Lord," the bodyguard replied heavily, "let us pretend I'd never met Tartesper before today, and knew nothing of him. So I confine myself only to what I saw and heard from him when he was in the solar, while you were confronting the two prisoners."

  He refilled Telcanor's glass, and the noble swigged from it, set it down, and spread his hands. "Very well. Just what you saw, heard, and sensed in the solar, and have wildly conjectured since. Convince me."

  "Lord, Tartesper recognized the man we brought in with the halfling, the one with the masks. I saw that. And he and the one who came through the skylight, too—they know each other, from before tonight. Yet he concealed this from you. For both men. This is some past trickery or unfolding plot of his own. He's using your authority and involving you in it. And it's foolish, lord, a needless risk that weakens your standing among your kin and endangers you personally. Who knows who these fools will talk to, what they'll say when they fall into the wrong hands? They'll name you, sure as—"

  "I want them to," Krzonstal Telcanor interrupted firmly, setting down the roast goose he'd been biting into and using that hand to gesture grandly. "How else am I to stand out, among all my posturing and preening uncles? Or rise in the regard of the General Lords? And if they somehow succeed, with the Fearsome Gauntlet I can slay Lord Cole and the Mereirs and anyone else who defies me, and so become Lord of Braganza, in truth if not in name." He shrugged. "Or openly, if I choose to."

  "Forgive me, Lord, but how is it that you know so much of this magical gauntlet? I hope you're not trusting overmuch in the details of some tavern tale. Such embellishments—"

  "Zreem, Zreem, I have a map showing the location of the tomb—Runstrer's busy making three copies of it for our expendables right now—and I know all about the Fearsome Gauntlet."

  "How so, if it's not overbold to ask?"

  Rather than being irked at his bodyguard's inquisitiveness, Lord Telcanor sounded gleefully overeager to enlighten the man. "I know what I know, loyal Zreem, because the recovery of that gauntlet from the tomb was a task I was asked to accomplish ten years back, by one of the General Lords, to prove my loyalty and worth."

  "What happened to you?"

  Telcanor sneered. "I don't gallop to my own suicide because a General Lord orders me to. I never undertook it. I relocated from Korholm to Braganza instead, letting it be known I did so because my latest prayers to Abadar had been answered by a vision showing me dwelling here."

  "I see," Zreem said, his voice perfectly neutral as he refilled his lord's glass.

  "However," Telcanor said brightly, "no one should be greatly surprised if I take great satisfaction—in the unlikely event that any of our three dolts succeed—in having any survivor who brings me the Fearsome Gauntlet murdered, then claiming the recovery of the Fearsome Gauntlet as my own deed. Redeeming my standing in the eyes of the General Lords."

  Zreem let a slow, thin smile cross his face, nodded as if in satisfaction, then asked if his lord had any other orders for him before he retired.

  Smooth. Not a hint of contempt, yet Tantaerra could feel it clear across the room and through the grating. On the other side of the metal, Lord Telcanor was now dismissing his bodyguard and taking personal possession of the decanter and all that was left in it. He was well on his way to being too drunk to molest anyone whose bedchamber he got into, thank Cayden Cailean.

  Tantaerra decided it was high time she returned to her room before her absence was discovered, and hastened back along the shaft. She scraped the worst of the cobwebs off on the grating, settled it back into place, and dived into bed.

  The covers were barely up to her chin before the door opened without knock or warning to reveal a trio of the large women who'd bathed her, all of them warmly gowned. The foremost bore a silver tray.

  "A posset for the night, lady? Warm milk from His Lordship's own herd, boiled with the finest from the cellars! No finer to be had in any palace in any land!"

  The rearmost pair of women had brought a warming pan to make her toes toasty.

  Tantaerra blinked. She could get used to this. And, well, it just might be the last wine she'd ever have, so boiled with milk or not ...

  Chapter Nine

  Go to Your Deaths

  Braganza looked even more soaringly impressive when you were marching down one of its widest streets amid your very own cohort of guards.

  Of course, it would likely be even nicer if they weren't also your very own jailers, but ...

  At least she had her sense of humor back, Tantaerra reflected. A superb meal and a splendid bed, not to mention something warm and wonderful in the little decanter that was strong enough to drive away all taste of the posset, did wonders for fear, despair, and shame. Leaving her merely doomed.

  It was a chill, clear morning, but Tantaerra was dressed in the finest clothes she'd ever possessed. They fit, too, which meant at least one of those overlarge women could judge size shrewdly, though providing footwear at such short notice had evidently defeated them, and she'd been given her own boots back. Freshly soled, shined, and repaired, mind you. Yes, she could get used to being the prisoner of a mad noble ...

  She looked over at The Masked, who was wearing one of his concealing masks once again, and was terse indeed this morning. Beneath his fine new clothes—leather vest over fine tunic, and leather foresters' jerkin over that—yellow-blue bruises covered his skin. His night had obviously been far worse night than hers.

  They wer
e briskly marching, three abreast—The Masked on Tantaerra's left, and the man who was calling himself Orivin Ahrkholm on her right—because the wedge of more than forty Telcanor guards surrounding them was marching briskly, and the once-more-armored mountain Onstal Zreem was marching right behind the trio. Behind him were six Telcanor guards with spears ready to jab any prisoner who wanted to change the pace, or head in any independent direction. Tantaerra, thanks to a genuine stumble, already had a still-smarting reminder that those spears were sharp.

  Onstal Zreem was marching them out of the city in obedience to Lord Krzonstal Telcanor's orders, and if there'd been any doubt in anyone's mind as to the power of House Telcanor in Braganza, it would have been swept away in an instant as Watchguard patrol after Watchguard patrol silently gave way before the marching Telcanors.

  It was all rather eerie. No one was jeering, and no one was throwing things. In fact, citizens seemed to literally turn away at the sight of all the armored Telcanor marchers.

  In a surprisingly short time they were through still-awakening Braganza and its westernmost gate, then along a cart-road until they were well out of bowshot of the walls, and then off the cart-road to a grassy knoll where a ring of Telcanor warriors were guarding some hardy-looking and securely hobbled saddle-horses.

  "Your mounts," Zreem said flatly, removing his helm and hanging it on a hook jutting from his belt, high on one hip. "Provided by the Telcanor stables, of course. A waste of good horseflesh."

  He looked down at Tantaerra. "You can ride, I suppose?"

  She looked right back up at him, and managed an almost perfect mimicry of his tone. "You can walk, I suppose?"

  Without a word, his unreadable expression as unchanging as the metal plates of his armor, the huge bodyguard turned away to pluck a bundle from the arms of a waiting warrior and toss it to Ahrkholm. It clanked when caught; a cloak wrapped around the self-proclaimed High Investigator's short sword and daggers.