The Inquisitives [4] The Darkwood Mask (37 page)

Soneste stood and sprinted after an empty coach that trotted near. “Driver!” she called. “Five dragons to buy my friends passage across the city with no questions asked?”

T
here had been more activity around him than usual, but the man in the chair was ignorant of his only visitor. A promise was made to him—a promise of freedom—but he continued to stare, unhearing.

Sverak stands at the railing, stooped over a panel of scrolls and creation schemas. One of the titans—Rejkar One, the same one to which I have devoted the last week—stands on the ground level below, but the twenty foot tall construct still looms above the railing. It was animated weeks ago, but its ability to take action, to reason at all, is minimal. It should be inoperable, situated at the other end of the hall to await further work
.

Yet here it is, one arm raised and frozen in place. A block of granite, bolted between a metal vice, serves as the hand
.

A group of workers has gathered near, afraid to approach, with Leonus at the front
.

“Stop that!” my nephew shouts
.

My eyes return to Sverak. At his feet are several broken slates. He holds a flat, wooden schema in one hand. I recognize it. It contains the recorded instructions for activating one of the creation pods of the forge below. Before our eyes, he takes the schema in both hands and snaps it in half
.

Lord Charoth rushes forward, confronting my assistant. “Touch not one more!” he roars, pointing his wand at Sverak. “Back away from there now, or you will die today, warforged!”

These schemas are the lifeblood of the facility, magical possibility in its purest, recorded form. They allow the Cannith machines—especially the creation forges—to function. Sverak has already destroyed the worth of thousands of gold pieces
.

“Sverak, please,” I say, hoping my assistant will reason with me. “What are you doing this for?” He does not understand the fury of Lord Charoth Arkenen. The director does not give empty threats
.

In answer, Sverak holds up another schema before him—one he’d concealed behind his back. In the bright lights of the central hall, I recognize it as I know my superior must: a narrow slate of gold, in which are carved powerful sigils from ancient Xen’drik
.

This particular schema is vital to the Orphanage’s work, the catalyst from which all of our research springs. It should have been guarded, under lock and ward. Only the director and I have access. How did Sverak get it? Why does he hold it?

“It would be unwise to discharge that wand,” my assistant says to Lord Charoth
.

Enthralled
Wir, the 11th of Sypheros, 998 YK

V
erdax grunted irritably when he heard Tallis’s hammer upon his door again. He set the damaged darkvision lenses down and jumped down from the table, wondering if they had completed their mission. Perhaps the female was ready to talk about Sharn. He cheered himself with the thought of pulling
Kapoacinth
out of port and beginning the long voyage around Khorvaire to the city of Sharn.

He’d had that daydream many times.

Verdax didn’t bother checking the spyhole. He knew Tallis would be coming back to restock eventually. That’s what he liked about the warmblood. Unlike most of the surface-dwelling races, he didn’t lapse into stagnancy at the war’s end.

Which meant he kept the gold coming. Yes, Tallis was his best customer.

When the door cracked open, the half-breed elf pushed through with a body in his arms—and it wasn’t the female. Another stranger? Moody warmbloods! Verdax revoked his renewed admiration for Tallis.

“Who is you brought now?” he shrieked.

“
Not
now,” Tallis said, his face paler than usual. The half-breed’s tone was harsh, his words peremptory. Verdax didn’t like it.

Tallis and his burden entered the workshop, and the female came aboard behind him. Verdax moved to shut the door, but then the warforged pushed its way in. “Cursed warmbloods and constructs,” the kobold muttered in his mother tongue then sealed the door and followed them in.

The stranger showed evidence of a sound beating. Verdax said nothing, hoping he wasn’t expected to heal the man. The indignities heaped upon him this day were numerous enough, thanks to his “best customer.”

Tallis dropped the man unceremoniously to the ground. Verdax scrambled to clear away his most valuable tools from the area and hastily removed all glass devices. It looked like the Tallis was going to get rough. Apparently he’d forgotten whose boat this was!

“He’s still awake,” Tallis said. The man who wormed on the ground looked like a military officer. His wrists were locked in by a pair of manacles.

“No more bringing law man here, Tallis,” Verdax insisted, baring his teeth. First the half-breed worked
with
them, then he beat them up. Tallis was losing his head.

“Water, Verdax,” the half-breed said without looking at him. “Now. Please.”

The kobold fetched a wooden cup, the largest one he had, newly filled with water from the Karrn River. Tallis dumped it on the man’s face. The military man sputtered and came to. Verdax sympathized—the river water was like ice, especially so late in the year.

“Soneste tells me you are not Major Dalesek,” Tallis said to the man, “so tell me who you are.”

The battered officer fixed his eyes on his captor. “Forget it. The only good choice for you now is to run from here.”

Tallis punched him in the face. “No. What’s your name?”

The officer spat at him. The female crouched down low to
the man. “You’re a changeling,” she said simply. Verdax fumed in silence. He didn’t like lawmen
or
tricksters on
Kapoacinth
. Khyber’s cauldron, this one was both!

“No changer-mans here!” Verdax exclaimed.

Tallis punched the man in the face again. “What’s your name?”

The officer lolled on the floor, one of his eyes too swollen to see. “Just … run away, Tallis. You don’t … want this.”

“You
know
me?” Tallis said, his lips twitching. His eyes were wild. Verdax had never seen him so angry. “How?”

The half-breed reached up and took one of Verdax’s woodcarving blades from the tabletop. When the officer didn’t answer, Tallis pressed the knife point against his ear and with and started to cut. The officer screamed and tried to reach up his ear, where Verdax saw a trickle of blood.

The female reached out her hand and stopped him. “No! Not this way!” she said.

“Gan,” the man said feebly. “My name. That’s … all you get.”

“Not enough.” Tallis held the blade up, still wet with blood.
“Are
you a changel—?”

Before Tallis finished his question, Verdax watched with disgust as the man’s bruised skin quivered as if it were made from wet clay. His already pasty complexion shifted into a faded gray, made sickly by the livid bruises. Verdax didn’t know much about changelings, but he felt sure this one was younger than the man he’d been impersonating. The only eye this Gan could see out of was milky white, bereft even of pupils. His thin lips curved into a weak smile.

“Gan, then,” the female said. “Where is Jotrem? You haven’t been him for very long, have you?”

“He is fine,” the changeling said. “He was not to be killed.”

“Listen to me, Gan,” Tallis said, putting his face only inches from that that blank white eye. “You are going to die if you don’t tell me everything you know. Everything, Gan. Two of my friends are dead because of you and whoever you work for. Someone will
answer for that, and it will be you alone if you don’t tell me more. Do you understand?”

Gan blinked, steadying his breath.

The female stood, a nervous look on her face. “He’s not going to speak truth to you, Tallis, because there’s someone else he fears more, fears more than anything.”

Tallis jammed the butt of the knife into Gan’s already swollen eye. He cried out and tried in vain to clutch at the injury. Verdax wasn’t sure the changeling would ever see with that eye again. Not at this rate.

“Protect
yourself
, Gan,” Tallis said to him, “because your boss isn’t here to suffer like you are.”

Still the captive said nothing.

“Verdax,” the female said, looking to him. “Do you have a device that can cancel magic or other, similar effects?”

Well, at least Verdax would get compensation for this intrusion. A fee would be in order. “The wand of dispelling,” Tallis said.

“Thirty platinum,” Verdax said, baring his reptilian teeth and taking a stand. The amount was fifty gold coins more than he usually charged Tallis for each use of the wand. They needed reminding that this was
his
ship and their unexpected intrusion was unwelcome.

“Fine,” Tallis said, giving in too easily. He’d expected a fierce negotiation of price, in which Verdax wouldn’t yield a single coin. But the half-breed elf didn’t argue at all. What had
happened
to his favorite warmblood? “We’ll settle up later.”

Verdax crossed the room, produced the ivory wand from a locked shelf, and returned. He held it out hesitatingly to the female. “Know how to using it?” he asked.

The female merely nodded and took the wand from him even as she placed a strange ceramic one in his hand as if in exchange. Verdax recognized its typical Cannith design. It was an eternal wand! Such wands possessed a limited store of magic each day, but were otherwise everlasting. He accepted it, for now.

The female wrapped her fingers around the dispelling wand in a precise fashion and pointed it at Gan. The changeling struggled under Tallis’s grasp. The half-breed elf looked expectantly at her.

The female turned to face the warforged. Verdax had already forgotten about it. “Aegis, I will need your help. Hold down his legs. Tallis, hold his hands.”

When they were in place, Gan struggled in vain. Then the female discharged the wand in his face.

Gan wanted the dream of his perfect woman to return.

Beneath the throbbing agony of his head and the sharp ache of his swollen eye, he focused his mind solely upon her. Perhaps he could replace this unforgiving reality with his fantasy if he concentrated hard enough, to escape with that sinuous form in silken red.…

But no, she wouldn’t come. Only that damnable blonde stood over him. The wand she pointed at him buzzed with power as a cyclone of magical
absence
coursed out from his body, leaving only a vacuum of longing within him.

Gan screamed, and in the torrent of pain he couldn’t even hear himself. He could hear only that which he craved. It called to him, a liquid panacea that could make sense of his world, give song to his desire, and soften the pain of his unfair, vermiculated life.

The wand’s drain upon him had ended, but time seemed to slow. It felt like he’d been locked under its power for hours. The evil device had suffused an ache within his body that he couldn’t articulate. Gan felt sick deep within and all throughout. Everything he’d ever dreamed or hoped for seemed unattainable now. Shattered. The beautiful landscapes he’d imagined in his youth, the freedom and peace he’d craved as child—far from Tumbledown, from Sharn itself—all of it dissolved. Life was pain and emptiness, a waiting room to Dolurrh.

“What’s wrong with him?” he heard the half-elf ask. Gan wanted to kill him, but could come nowhere near trying. Ever. The man was too dangerous for him.

“The wand strips away magical or other similar effects.” The woman—Soneste was her name, he remembered as if from far away—sounded like she was giving a lecture.

“I know that, but—”

“When there are no prominent spells, illusions, or devices left to take from, the spell goes deeper. Now it’s removing every trace of magical—or psychic—toxin.”

Oh, Khyber! Is that what she—

She hit him again with another infernal blast from the wand. Gan felt like his vital organs were being liquefied, wrenched from his being to evaporate like vinegar in the air. He felt his lungs open, heard pitiful sounds issue from his lips.

“He craves dreamlily,” Soneste said calmly, as if every fiber of his being
weren’t
rushing out of his spine in a din of torment. “He’s an addict, a slave to its power. I’m taking away from him every trace of it that lingers in his body. It’s a psionic drug, which makes it susceptible to the wand’s effects. He’s going into a hastened withdrawal.”

How did she know? Even his lord hadn’t known until three days ago!

“He hid it well, but when I realized he wasn’t Jotrem, the clues made sense. I’ve seen it before.”

Again came the flux from the wand.

“You has enough gold?!” demanded that yapping lizard. Where on Eberron
was
Gan right now? Was he losing his mind?

Gan groaned again. His bones began to throb. His head pounded near to exploding. He just wanted this to end. If he had strength enough, he would kill himself. Gan could feel his body writhing even under the unmoving grip of the warforged’s hands. His bowels loosened within.