The Mage In The Iron Mask n-4 Read online

  When the plate was placed in front of him, he immediately dug in without so much as a thank you or other acknowledgement for the efforts of the hard working innkeeper.

  True to the advisement of Dela, he was midway through his second plateful when his stomach revolted, and his faced turned a sickly color of pea green.

  Dela, who had been keeping a close eye on her least favorite guest of the moment, decided that she had taken quite enough abuse up to this point. She strode over to the chair that was straining under the weight of the heavy thespian and, taking him by the collar, none too gently escorted him to the door.

  "There will be no getting sick in the Traveler's Cloak Inn for as long as I'm still the proprietor," she sternly instructed. "I don't care if you are a friend of Volothamp Geddarm's, or not. You are an embarrassment to all of the well-mannered gentlemen who have passed through these doors before you. I don't care where you go, just don't come back here until you have learned yourself some manners."

  The portly thespian tried to protest but found himself unable to hold back the upcoming deluge from his stomach and formulate words at the same time. Passepout instead concentrated on just keeping from passing out.

  Releasing the actor's collar, and with a little bit of encouragement from the sole of her shoe, Dela propelled the green-faced thespian out into the Mulmaster city streets, where the human projectile quickly wandered off, and passed out.

  Moments later, Dela's afternoon tea was interrupted by a contingent of Hawks with a warrant for the arrest and confiscation of goods for both Volothamp Geddarm and Passepout, son of Idle and Catinflas.

  Dela, the perfect innkeeper, informed the guards that both guests were no longer on the premises, and that if either of them returned, she would immediately inform the local authorities.

  Mentally she added in her own mind, once I've warned them and sent them on their way, of course.

  Dela had no desire to alienate either the local authorities or her guests, which is probably why she was considered to be a model innkeeper for all Faerun.

  In the dungeon of Southroad Keep:

  A light was flashed once again through the window in Rassendyll's cell, when the guard retrieved the plate that had previously borne the slop that had been dinner. As the footsteps of the guards retreated off into the distance, Rassendyll waited for the return of his visitor.

  Seconds stretched into moments, moments into hours, hours into immeasurable blocks of time that felt like years, yet the abbe Hoffman did not return.

  Rassendyll reflected as he waited. Before the arrival of the dwarf, he had despaired and welcomed death, accepting it and his own continued captivity as inevitable and beyond his own ken.

  The appearance of the cheerful dwarf had changed all of that. Maybe his inevitable fate was not all that cut and dried after all. True, his magical abilities and secrets had left him, and he was imprisoned in a hideous mask of iron in the bowels of a Mulmaster dungeon, but no matter what he had thought before, he was far from helpless and the time for action had arrived.

  Rassendyll decided that it was time to take control of his destiny for the first time in his cloistered life. If an old dwarf has the spark of life within him, why not a mage-in-training?

  Checking the small window in the door for a guard who might overhear his actions, and finding the coast to be clear, he moved away the blocking stone from the tunnel entrance, and with great care to avoid the telltale sounds of metal on rock caused by the hitting of the mask against the dungeon wall, Rassendyll shimmied through the entrance and crawled through the dwarf's tunnel.

  The girth of the dwarf's torso necessitated a wide tunnel so the masked prisoner had little trouble moving through it. Within seconds, he arrived at its apparent end, and carefully pushed a stone not unlike the one on his end of the tunnel away, and hauled himself up into the dwarf's cell.

  Hoffman was resting with his back against the cell wall. His eyes were closed and his breathing was unduly labored.

  Rassendyll's heart sank. It appeared that his newly found reason for living was in his final hours.

  As the masked mage moved the stone in place, he accidentally hit his head. The clang, soft as it was, announced his presence, and the dwarf opened his eyes.

  "I have company, I see," Hoffman said with a weak grin.

  "Good manners required that I return the neighborly visit," Rassendyll replied, approaching the infirm dwarf. He was shocked by how sickly the dwarf now appeared, when he had seemed so robust, not counting the coughing fit, when he had visited Rassendyll's cell earlier.

  Hoffman instinctively read the look of surprise that existed beneath the mask on his fellow prisoner's face. "I hope you don't mind me not going to the effort of casting a keeping up appearances spell. It would take a bit too much out of me at the present moment."

  "Not at all," Rassendyll replied, his grin obscured by the iron mask.

  "You were going to tell me how you wound up with that coal bucket on your head," the dwarf reminded him.

  "A blind wizard smith put it on me at the direction of a cruel but handsome looking man who resembled myself."

  "Tell me a little more about this good looking fellow, the bad guy. You can fill me in about yourself a little later."

  "He was dressed in silken robes with fur trim, and around his neck was a pendant of a blood-encrusted dagger. The blood was made up of red gemstones. Rubies, maybe," Rassendyll tried to recall.

  "That pendant represents the office of the High Blade of Mulmaster. I believe that the tormentor who looks just like you is the tyrant Selfaril himself. Rumors pass occasionally through these dungeon walls, and I recall that he ascended to the throne after killing his own father," the dwarf explained. "Are you sure that you resemble him?"

  "Indeed," Rassendyll replied. "If I could remove this mask, I would show you."

  "Don't even try," Hoffman advised with a cough. "It is clearly ensorcelled. I'm afraid that not even during my younger years would I have been able to defeat a spell as strong as this one."

  "It also seems to have removed all of my own spellcasting abilities."

  "You were a spellcaster?" the enfeebled dwarf inquired.

  "A mage-in-training," Rassendyll explained. "I had been in training for my entire life. Now, all those years have been wasted."

  "Maybe not," Hoffman asserted. "Though the ability to do is desirable, the ability to wield and recognize is also of great benefit."

  "I don't understand."

  "The enchanted metal of the mask acts as both an insulator and a leeching conductor of your magical abilities and spells. It prevents any spells formed within from being cast out, while conducting the knowledge and innate powers from within, onto its metallic surface, and eventually causing them to dissipate in the air around you. What it doesn't do is prevent you from using the general knowledge you obtained in your studies, such things as recognizing spells that are cast by others or using magically powered artifacts and objects."

  Rassendyll chuckled at the dwarf's optimistic observations. "Little good those vestiges of my training will do me here," he said, trying not to sound too despairing in the presence of the obviously dying dwarf.

  "Don't be too sure," Hoffman replied, his voice weakening rapidly. "My years of tunneling around here are coming to an end. Originally I had an agreement with the former resident of your cell, that when my time had come I would aid him in his escape from this hateful place."

  "What happened to the former resident?" Rassendyll asked.

  "He died at the hands of an overly playful guard, whose solution to the boredom of his regular duties was torturing the prisoners. In Kupfer's case, he went a little too far."

  "Oh."

  "When a person dies in the keep, their body is placed in a sack with a weight and dropped down the same drain that the garbage goes. It leads to an underground canal that eventually empties out into the Moonsea. The dead are bagged and weighted before the dinner service, and then collected on the same trip
they retrieve the plates. I've seen it happen many times over, and it runs like clockwork. You can tell when it happens. The guards ring a bell to signal that someone has to bring down a sack and a weight."

  "Kupfer and I," Hoffman continued, "hatched a plan that when one of us died, the other would sneak into the cell, and trade places with him in the sack, on the off chance that there was a chance of surviving the underground trip out to sea."

  "Was Kupfer a dwarf too?" Rassendyll asked, intrigued by the plan.

  "No," Hoffman answered, his voice hardly a whisper, "he was a firbolg."

  "Don't you think they would have noticed the difference in the size and weight?"

  "Not with this, they wouldn't," the dwarf explained holding out a charm. "Don't touch it. I'm not too sure how long it will last in close contact with that mask of yours. It transmits an aura of disguise so that, for a limited amount of time, the guards will believe that the burden they are carrying is actually the mass of the previous bearer of the charm."

  The dwarf carefully placed it back in the pouch beneath his beard, making sure that the young used-to-be mage-in-training saw exactly where he kept it.

  "Now quickly return from whence you came," Hoffman instructed, "and just let old abbe Hoffman die in peace. I am old and it is about time. When you hear the bell, wait for the dinner service to begin, and then hightail it on over here. Drag my body back to your cell, being sure to place it in the darkest corner possible. We only have to be able to trick the watch once. Then take my place in the sack, and go with Dumathoin, my son. Perhaps you will be able to find someone who can remove that coal bucket from your head."

  Rassendyll was saddened by the weakening condition of his newfound friend.

  "Maybe you're being a bit premature about this whole thing," he offered.

  The dwarf shook his head slightly.

  "Nope," Hoffman replied, starting another frightful coughing fit. "Afraid not. I'll be gone by dinner, and with any luck you'll be gone not too much later."

  "Why should I benefit from your death?" a tearful Rassendyll asked.

  "Because it would be a darn no good waste of a near perfect escape plan, that's why," Hoffman replied. "Now back to your cell, and let me die in peace."

  Rassendyll returned to his cell to meditate on the opportunity that had been presented to him. His thoughts were soon interrupted by the clear tolling of a bell.

  It tolls for he, Rassendyll thought to himself, and he steeled himself for the hours ahead.

  As Hoffman had indicated, the evening meal came like clockwork, and as soon as he heard the guards move on, he set his plate to the side, and shimmied back down the tunnel.

  Hoffman's body had already been placed in the sack, a weight carefully attached to its end.

  Carefully, the masked prisoner removed the body of the dwarf from its low-budget shroud, being sure to remove the charm from around its neck. He then pushed the corpse of his recently acquired friend back through the tunnel and up into his cell where he placed it, as instructed, in the shadow-most corner. He then placed his plate back outside of the door, and raced back down the tunnel, pulling the blocking rock back into place behind him, and rushed at breakneck speed back to Hoffman's cell hoping that he would be able to beat the guards there, be disguised by the powers of the old dwarf's charm, deceive the guards, and survive the trip downstream and out to sea.

  He realized that all of the odds were long, but knew that the gamble would be worth it because it was the only game in town and he was no longer content to just wait for death.

  No sooner did he cinch the sack shut from the inside, than Rassendyll heard the lock to the door of the cell being opened, and two guards coming inside. Rassendyll clutched Hoffman's charm to his bosom, desperately trying to keep it from making contact with the magic-leeching iron mask. Please work long enough to get me out of here, he prayed.

  With a heave-ho one of the guards hoisted the burial sack over his shoulder, magically unaware of its newly added bulk.

  "Good riddance," said the guard who opened the doors for his corpse-laden associate. "That's one less prisoner to keep an eye on."

  "And one less dwarf to blight Mulmaster," the other added, as they ventured further into the keep's bowels, toward the entrance to the sewer.

  Rassendyll could smell the stench of sewage getting closer when he heard the guard who was carrying him complain: "Gee, I must be out of shape. This dwarf is getting awfully heavy."

  Rassendyll prayed that the spell would last just a little while longer.

  The guard stopped for a moment, and the masked prisoner expected to have his presence revealed at any moment.

  One guard opened a trap, releasing an aromatic draught of sewage stench. The other guard shifted the weight of his burden and carefully, so as not to entangle himself in the shroud's downward descent, dropped what he thought to be the corpse-filled sack down into the sewer below.

  Before the sack made its splash in the water below, Rassendyll thought he heard an alarm sound in the chambers above. His disappearance had been discovered, but he was already on his way down the drain and out to sea.

  5

  Under Currents In the Tharchioness's Boudoir in the Tower of the Wyvern:

  "Your majesty," the ambassador said in urgent hushed tones, momentarily forgetting the breaches of protocol that he had just committed.

  "Silence, worm!" the First Princess of Thay ordered. "My husband is on his way. My spy in the Tower of the Blades believes that he intends on confronting me with evidence of our conspiracy."

  "But your majesty-"

  "Silence! Do you wish to join the ranks of your predecessors? Don't try my patience! I must concentrate before he gets here. It will require all of my feminine wiles to distract him."

  "The prisoner escaped!" the ambassador blurted out, just as the Tharchioness's backhand made contact with his doughy cheek.

  "What did you say?" she asked, her hand poised to strike again.

  "My spy in Southroad Keep just informed me that all havoc has broken out due to the escape of a certain prisoner. Two guards have already been executed for gross incompetence."

  "Have they recovered the prisoner yet?"

  "Not according to my sources, your highness," the ambassador answered, his head still ringing from the last blow.

  "Is there anything else I should know, worm?"

  "Only that the last words of the executed guards were that they were sure he was dead-drowned, or something."

  "Did they find the body?"

  "No," the ambassador answered cautiously. "They believe it was washed out to sea."

  The Tharchioness stroked her own brow seductively.

  Well, this does change things, she thought. No body, no evidence. No evidence, no conspiracy. It would appear that my dear husband has snatched a stalemate out of the jaws of victory. I will have to comfort the dear lad.

  The Tharchioness let loose a fiendish laugh, and continued to apply her makeup. The ambassador took the opportunity of his mistress's distraction to escape from her boudoir with his life in hope that she had already forgotten his several infractions of protocol.

  Once in the safety of the public hallway, the ambassador breathed a sigh of relief at having cheated death yet again.

  In the Courtyard Between the Towers of the Blade and the Wyvern:

  "What do you mean he's gone?" the High Blade demanded.

  "We believe him to be dead, sire," Rickman explained. "My experts believe that the sheer weight of the iron mask would have made it quite impossible for him to swim, and that he would undoubtedly have drowned before he even reached the open sea."

  "How can we be sure?" Selfaril demanded.

  "We can't, sire," the Hawk captain conceded. "The men responsible for this severe foul-up have already been executed."

  "That is not good enough," the High Blade blustered. "Your Hawks have been slipping. First, they could not hold onto a possible witness to our plans, even though you yourself thought h
im to be nothing but an itinerant thespian. Now, they have allowed the prisoner to escape."

  "There was no way he could have survived, your highness. It is obvious that we underestimated the suicidal lengths a desperate man would stoop to."

  "Indeed," the High Blade answered. "Rickman, I am holding you personally responsible for cleaning up after this mess. There must be no evidence left that the prisoner ever existed."

  "At least he is not in Thayan hands, sire."

  "That is small consolation. Evidence of their seditious plan was all I needed to castrate my bitch of a wife. Now things are just back to status quo."

  A Thayan courtier appeared out of nowhere.

  "Your majesty," the courtier said, "the First Princess is waiting for you in her boudoir. She saw you coming across the courtyard from her window, and was troubled by what was possibly detaining you. Is everything all right?"

  "Everything is fine," the High Blade announced with a roll of his eyes that only Rickman noticed. "Tell my dearest bride that I will be there directly."

  The courtier gave one final message.

  "Sire, the First Princess said to tell you that she would be counting the minutes," the Thayan said, and returned to his post.

  As am I, the High Blade thought, to your death!

  Selfaril turned back to Rickman, delaying his trip back to his wife even further. A thought had just crossed his mind, and he was grinning in fiendish glee.

  "Have your men returned from the Retreat with the bloodstained wand yet?" he inquired.

  "No, your majesty," Rickman replied.

  "Notify me immediately when they do," Selfaril instructed. "The Retreat was under Mulmaster's protection, and I would hate to see the unfortunate slaughter of those wizards turn into a diplomatic hot potato, if you know what I mean."

  "Yes, your majesty," Rickman replied, understanding what the High Blade was planning. "It wouldn't be the same as a plot against the throne."

  "No," Selfaril agreed, "but sometimes we have to settle for the next best thing."