The Mage In The Iron Mask n-4 Read online

  Gradually his eyes became accustomed to the light thrown by the torches that illuminated the chamber. His captors were behind him, and cast long and threatening shadows on the wall before him.

  "Our esteemed guest is awake. Isn't the resemblance uncanny?" one of the shadows observed.

  "Donal didn't lie. I guess even greedy liars and knaves occasionally tell the truth," the other replied, "but I guess we shouldn't ask our friends from Thay for their opinions on this subject."

  "Are you awake?" the first inquired. "I should think that you would want to thank Sir Melker Rickman for rescuing you from those wretched mercenaries from Thay."

  The source of the voice came around to Rassendyll's left, just out of sight. "I'm sorry that you have been treated so roughly, but one can't be too careful. You see, there are certain laws here in Mulmaster governing the comings and goings of you mage types, so certain precautions have to be taken. I'm sure that by now your wrists must be raw from the restraints that have kept you from using your hands since last night, and I must apologize. I have, however, taken steps to alleviate the problem. Send in the smith."

  The young wizard saw the back of the other pass in front of him as he left to fetch the smith. He returned almost immediately, and this time Rassendyll was able to discern that this one-eyed soldier with long black hair had been the same person who had led the party that had stolen him from his original abductors. He was accompanied by a burly wizard who bore two large metal plates with him, as well as a hammer and a pouch that jangled as he moved. The soldier seemed to lead the burly wizard, and the reason became obvious when he stopped in front of the yoke and frame that restrained Rassendyll.

  The burly wizard was as blind as a bat, his eye sockets still bearing the singe marks from where some flaming coals had been put to rest for some, what must have been interminable, period of suffering for Ao knows what reason.

  "You know why you are here," the voice from behind commanded. "Begin!"

  The burly wizard replied with a garbled noise of assent, for his tongue had been burnt out as well during the same period of excruciating torture, and began to place the two metal plates into slots in the yoke around the young wizard's neck, one directly behind his head, and one in front.

  Once they were perfectly balanced in place, the burly wizard began to run his hands over the metal surfaces, mouthing incantations as he worked. Slowly the metal began to heat up, and soften. With hands that had forged numerous talismans and weapons of enchantment, the wizard smith began to mold the two plates to fit the contours of the young man's head.

  At first, Rassendyll felt a slight sensation of warmth against his cheeks, which quickly became a torturous burn followed by a stifling oppression as the metal closed over his mouth and nose, preventing him from breathing. Before he could cry out or choke, his nostrils and mouth were assailed by the muscular fingers of the burly wizard smith as he poked holes through the metal, molding and smoothing the edges so that they just barely intruded into his breathing apertures. He followed in the same suit with the eye slits whose placement was slightly skewed by the young wizard who kept his own orbs of vision shut tight in an effort to prevent himself from suffering the same fate that had befallen the smith.

  When the two halves of metal were in place around the young wizard's head, the wizard smith said aloud a new incantation, flexing his fingers in the air with various and sundry subtle motions.

  Once again Rassendyll felt the metal pressing up against his cheeks and the back of his head. Then he felt his skin begin to itch around his neck and scalp as if a thousand chiggers had begun to take their bloodsucking positions along the surface of the skin. He next heard the scrape of four bolts being placed in slots that connected the front piece to the back, which was immediately followed by a cacophony of clangs as if he had been strapped to the belfry back at the Retreat during the noonday chimes.

  Even after the blows of the hammer had stopped, the ringing in his head continued, only gradually dissipating over time.

  "Are you sure the mask has adhered to his skull?" the soldier demanded.

  The wizard smith grunted in assent, running his hand across the back of the tortured Rassendyll's head, and around his neck as if to say "here, and here."

  "Good!" said the voice from behind. "Call the guards."

  The soldier left once again, and returned with three of Mulmaster's most trusted and ruthless soldiers of the company known as the Hawks.

  "Unbind him!" the voice ordered.

  Rassendyll went limp as the Hawks began to extricate him from the yoke and frame. The itching and gnawing of the skin that had been adhered to the metal was slowly retarding to a mild annoyance that paled in comparison to the soreness that his limbs felt from being bound. As this was alleviated by the Hawks, a new annoyance came to torture him.

  The voice, he thought, it sounds so familiar. Is it possible I have been tortured by someone I know?

  Once removed from the frame, the young wizard straightened and flexed his appendages to return circulation to the outermost limits. Control soon returned to his hands and fingers, as he quickly formulated a plan for fighting back in the manner he had been taught by his magisters at the Retreat.

  The wizard smith is blind, so if I act quickly enough, I might be able to cast a spell that will overpower my captors before they have time to react.

  Almost instantaneously, Rassendyll brought his now unbound hands into action, flexing them in readiness for one of the numerous attack spells he had been taught. Clearing his now unbound throat he readied himself for the incantation that he sought from the files of his mind.

  Fear seized him. He could not remember any of the spells or incantations! It was as if his entire education had been erased.

  "As I mentioned before," the voice instructed with a certain degree of cruel calmness, "we have certain ways of handling mage types like yourself, here in Mulmaster. This lovely mask that conceals your oh-so-attractive features also deadens all of your magical abilities. You have to admit that it is slightly more comfortable than being bound and gagged all the time. Guards!"

  The Hawks immediately grabbed him, one on each side. The voice came up behind him again, delicately gauntleted hands feeling the edges of the two halves of the metal mask.

  "Fine craftsmanship," the voice observed. "Form-fitting, yet feature obscuring. Too bad you didn't allow much room for his beard to grow. Eventually it will probably choke him, but by that time I am sure I will have no further use for him. Guards, take him away."

  Rassendyll wrenched himself away from the guards to confront his oppressor. The eye-slits in the mask necessitated that he only view objects directly in front of him. Maneuvering himself into position, he faced his antagonist dead on, and fainted dead away, for he realized that he was confronting a man whose features were identical to his own.

  "Throw him into our deepest dungeon," the High Blade ordered. "The wing in which we house the other madmen, vagrants, and detritus of society."

  The Hawks complied.

  Rassendyll was tossed into a damp cell whose light was cast from a torch down the hall, its illumination barely creeping in through the guards' peep hole and the slot through which the slop that was considered food would be passed.

  The weight of the mask bore heavily on his neck and shoulders, throwing him off-balance and dampening all of his perceptions. His body hurt, and he was racked with questions about his fate.

  Clearing his throat, he cried out in torment and confusion, "Why? Why? Why?"

  A lone voice answered him from one of the cells down the hall. It said gruffly, with a basso bellow reminiscent of a thespian or an opera star, "Will you keep it down? An actor needs his sleep."

  PART ONE

  The Prisoner, the Thespian, amd the Traveler

  1

  A Friend in Need On a Mulmaster city street:

  "Oh thank you, Mister Volo," the pudgy thespian Passepout exclaimed, his bulgy flesh bouncing beneath his tunic as he tried to
put as much distance as possible between himself and his previous night's lodging, the prison known as Southroad Keep. "I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't come along to bail me out."

  "Think nothing of it, old friend," Volothamp Geddarm replied to his former bond servant, pausing only a moment to adjust the beret atop his curly scalp before adding, "and I thought I had cured you of that Mister Volo stuff."

  "No," Passepout corrected. "You cured me of calling you Master Volo. The title of 'mister' is the least form of respect I deign to use for my savior and salvation."

  "Again," the impeccably dressed master traveler of Faerun (if not all Toril) instructed, "think nothing of it."

  "But you don't understand, Mist… uh, Volo," the thespian insisted. "It was horrible being locked up in a dungeon cell alongside madmen, vagrants, and the other detritus of society."

  "Believe me," Volo countered, "there is far worse company you might have been keeping in Southroad Keep's subterranean dungeon, and not all of them are prisoners either."

  "It was horrible, dehumanizing, and torturous."

  "How long had you been incarcerated?" the master traveler inquired.

  "Overnight," the pudgy thespian answered in righteous indignation, "and I didn't get a wink of sleep. An actor needs his sleep, you know."

  "So I've heard."

  "Of course," Passepout continued to rant. "The cell was hard and damp, the food was low-grade slop."

  "How terrible for you," Volo concurred half-heartedly, occasionally fingering his well-groomed beard with the hand that he had free from tending the traveler's pack that bounced as he strode.

  "It was," the actor agreed, missing the sarcasm that was conveyed by the master traveler's mischievous grin. "And if that wasn't bad enough, there was this madman bemoaning his incarceration all night, and he was accompanied by a horrible clanging as if someone were beating his cell walls with a coal bucket."

  "The nerve of that poor soul."

  "Indeed," the thespian continued. "I am quite sure that this incident has scarred me for life."

  Volo looked around at the dark and smoke-filled streets of what had been nicknamed the City of Danger, put his arm around his boon companion, and tried to put the fellow's one-night incarceration into proper perspective.

  "Surely, the legendary son of Catinflas and Idle, scourge of the Sword Coast, expert ballplayer and star goalie of Maztica, and circumnavigator of all Toril; not to mention master thespian, and sponsored actor and artist of the House of Bernd of Cormyr, will be able to put this behind him," the master traveler encouraged, trying not to be too sarcastic in his tone.

  "Of course you are right," Passepout conceded. "It would take more than one torturous night's incarceration to scar me for life."

  "Indeed," Volo agreed, then changed the subject, asking, "by the way, how are things with your position in the Bernd family household?"

  Passepout looked sheepishly at his traveling companion, mentor of the road, and savior many times over, and confessed. "I am afraid that I am no longer in the Bernd family's employ."

  "What happened?"

  "I didn't do anything wrong, really."

  "Well surely Master Bernd is a fair man, and his son Curtis is quite fond of you. I'm sure either of them would have stood by you."

  "Curtis was away on his honeymoon with Shurleen," the thespian explained, slightly wistful about the wedding of the woman whom he had at one time thought to be the love of his life, "and my problem wasn't with Master Bernd, but rather with the authorities in Cormyr itself."

  "What did you do now?"

  "Well, remember Sparky and Minx, the Bernd family cats?"

  "Of course," Volo replied, "two nobler felines I've never met."

  "Indeed," the thespian explained, "but there was a certain maid that I had taken a fancy to. Her name was Marissa, and she was quite pretty."

  "Of course."

  "Well," the portly thespian continued, "Marissa complained about the additional work that she had to do cleaning up after them, and mentioned her concern that the two felines might have kittens, and thus increase her workload, resulting in less time for me."

  "So?"

  "So I did what we always used to do back in Baldur's Gate."

  "Which was?"

  "I had them spayed."

  Volo fingered his beard, and commented, "It is a very serious crime-in all of Cormyr-to interfere with the reproductive capabilities of a feline."

  "As I soon learned," the hapless thespian replied. "The maid threatened to tell the authorities of my deed unless I vacated the premises forthwith, and so I did. It turned out that a certain young stable hand that she fancied, thought himself an actor, and it was all just an elaborate scheme to put me in the doghouse, and him in the main house. If you know what I mean."

  Volo shook his head in gentle amusement, and urged his companion on. "So what then?"

  "The maid was quite insistent about going to the authorities, so I figured it would probably be prudent of me not to wait for Master Bernd's return. So I left a note of apology and took to the road, to experience life in the theater known as Faerun, once again."

  "This way," Volo interrupted, indicating that it was time for them to turn the corner. "I've just checked in to the Traveler's Cloak Inn." The great traveler paused for a moment, scratched his chin, and added inquisitively, "But somehow you knew that, or else how would you have known to leave a message for me about your predicament. How did you know that I would be staying there?"

  The thespian beamed proudly, and answered, "One thing I certainly learned from our trip was that the legendary Volothamp Geddarm always travels in style, and only favors the most noble of establishments with his presence."

  The greatest traveler of Faerun shook his head in gentle amusement, and conceded, "But of course. And the Traveler's Cloak Inn is indeed the best place in Mulmaster. At fifteen gold pieces a night, it better be. But this still doesn't explain how you knew that I would be in Mulmaster."

  "Well," the portly actor explained, his voice dropping markedly as a pair of soldiers passed them going in the opposite direction along the avenue, "while I was enjoying the free and easy life on the road, I came across a leaflet that mentioned that a local bookseller was having a reception for a cookbook author who was on tour, and that the reception was being sponsored by the firm of Tyme Waterdeep, Limited, who I remembered as your publisher. Since it was a cookbook author, I naturally figured that there would be plenty of food there, so I decided to crash."

  "Crash?"

  "Attend without an invitation."

  "Oh," Volo replied, "and they just let you in?"

  "Well, not until I mentioned your name, of course."

  "Of course."

  "The food wasn't very good anyway, low-fat fungus flambe, and such, but I ran into a guy named Pig who claimed he knew you."

  "Imagine that," Volo mused.

  "Now call me suspicious, but I am not inclined to take a person at their word, particularly when they make claims of greatness."

  "Like knowing Volothamp Geddarm?"

  "Of course," Passepout asserted. "No telling what a rogue might claim these days."

  "No one would know better than you."

  "Of course," the actor conceded. "Anyway, he claimed that you and he had made a journey through the Underdark together, and that that trip had been the inspiration for the book. When I asked him where you were, he said that you were probably working on your guide to the Moonsea, and so, voila, we make contact."

  Volo chuckled to himself. Imagine, he thought, my two most reluctant traveling companions running into each other. I can't wait to hear Percival Woodehaus's version of the story. He then said aloud to his friend, "Well its just lucky for you that Mulmaster was my next stop. Originally it wasn't, and I wouldn't have gotten here for a month or more."

  "I shudder to think of it," the portly thespian replied. "More than a night in that hellhole would surely have been the death of me."

 
"What did they arrest you for anyway?"

  "Acting, without an official permit."

  Volo nodded in agreement, and said, "And of course in order to get the official permit, you would have had to pay the theater tax, which, of course, you couldn't afford."

  "Exactly."

  "Sometimes I think that Mulmaster should be called the City of Taxes instead of the City of Danger," the great traveler declared, a bit too loudly for his paranoid companion who was overly conscious of the excessive number of city guards that seemed to be out on the streets. Volo, noticing the uneasiness of Passepout, quickly changed the subject.

  Turning his attention back to his boon companion he said, "Enough of this idle chatter. On to the matter at hand. The Traveler's Cloak Inn is two doors away, and I have taken the liberty of changing my reservation from a single to two adjoining rooms. A few hours' rest, and you will be ripe and ready for some festing tonight. We can talk over old times, have some new times, and make plans for future times, for tomorrow I must leave."

  "You think of everything Mist… uh, Volo. But why must you leave so soon?"

  "Oh, I'll be back," the traveler answered. "I'll probably even keep the rooms on reserve until I return. You can, of course, avail yourself of their use in my absence."

  "Wonderful!"

  Volo smiled at once again hearing his friend's favorite expression, and ushered Passepout into the best inn in town.