Masquerades

Three The Actress and the Sage

This time it was around four corners and about a half-mile away, through empty streets and past bustling bars, past groups of young toughs who gave the smoky warriors a few catcalls and older, more grizzled veterans who gave them a wide berth.

At the last corner, the appearance of the neighborhood improved markedly. The pavement stone was uniform and unvandalized. The buildings were constructed from more brick and stone than wood. The oil in the steetlamps burned more brightly and smoked less. The streets and thresholds of every building had been swept within the last week. There was no visible sewage.

Mintassan’s townhouse was constructed of brick in the Sembian style—the first story was half underground, its door at the bottom of a narrow, descending stairway surrounded by a brick retaining wall, and the second story was raised several feet, its door atop a broad stone staircase. The lower quarters, usually reserved for servants, were where Mintassan had set up his shop. A sign mounted over the lower door displayed the sage’s sigil, the Beastlands symbol topped by a waxing crescent moon and surrounded by a circle. The sign read, “Mintassan’s Mysteries—Curios from Very Faraway Places.” The door itself was divided horizontally, and the top half stood wide open. They could see there was a light blazing in the shop within.

Just as Alias and Dragonbait approached the stairs, a high-pitched shriek came from the room below. Alias and Dragonbait exchanged glances. There could be a completely innocuous reason for a scream to be coming from the sage’s shop, but after all their other evening adventures, caution did not seem out of place. They crept down the staircase and hovered at the doorway, peering in and listening.

Magically glowing stones in glass globes hung from the ceiling, illuminating the shop. Shelves and tables within were covered with the curios from very faraway places. Most of the items were creatures that had once been alive but were now pelts, skeletons or stuffed trophies. Most were creatures Alias had never seen before, but a few she’d heard of in bards’ tales. Mixed in among the trophies were a few sculptures of strange creatures and vases and bowls depicting mythic beasts.

In the center of the room, a big man sat on the arm of a red velvet sofa directly beneath a globe. He wore a billowing cotton shirt and baggy pants, both white, and a powder-blue vest embroidered in gold thread. His long chestnut-brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail with a leather thong. His back was turned to the door, so Alias could not see his face. In one large hand he held up the bare, shapely leg of someone lying on the sofa, and was currently rubbing something on the sole of the foot belonging to the leg. The high back of the sofa also blocked Alias’s view of whoever was lying there, but whoever it was was no doubt the source of the first shriek, for a moment later a second shriek rose from the sofa, followed by a woman’s voice crying, “Ow, ow, ow.”

“The pain’ll be good for you,” the man said. “Remind you not to go fire-walking without both your slippers. Personally I prefer heavy boots when I run around burning buildings. Now don’t fidget. It takes a moment for the salve to work.”

“It wasn’t my idea to go barefoot,” a woman’s voice argued from the sofa. “It was that witch. I told you, the slipper came off when she grabbed my leg. She nearly had me. I was lucky to escape with my skin still on.”

Even if Alias hadn’t recognized the situation described, she would have recognized the voice. It was a little sharper and more nasal than her memory recalled, but it sounded like her mother, the phony mother Finder had given her.

“Jamal, be reasonable,” the man requested. “She’s dead. She’s been dead for years.”

“Since when’s being dead slowed down a wizard?” the voice on the couch argued. “I’m telling you, Mintassan, Cassana’s come after me. The Night Masks set the fire, of course, but she was there, too. She’s trying to kill me for that rude skit we did about her and that lich-boytoy of hers.”

Mintassan gave a long-suffering sigh and insisted, “Cassana’s dead, Jamal.”

No, she isn’t,” Jamal retorted, sitting up straight on the sofa and waving her finger in Mintassan’s face.

“Well, actually, yes, she is,” Alias said, turning the handle of the lower half of the door and letting herself into the shop. “I cut through her staff of power myself up on the Hill of Fangs ten years ago. I survived the blast that killed her only because I was half standing in another plane. Cassana was burned to ash. And if she came back by some fell sorcery, I’d know immediately, but she hasn’t. She’s still dead.”

Jamal’s complexion went as white as an underfed vampire’s as she stared wordlessly at the newcomers, one a dead ringer for the sorceress Cassana, the other a lizard creature resembling a monster from a tale of darkest evil.

“Cassana was a distant relation,” the swordswoman explained as she circled the sofa and stood before Jamal and Mintassan. “Alias the Sell-Sword, at your service,” she introduced herself with a sweeping bow, “and this, I believe, is yours,” she added, holding out the slipper she’d taken from the woman in the burning building.

Mintassan shook his look of surprise at Alias’s self-announced entrance and smiled broadly. “There, Jamal, see. There was a perfectly rational explanation. Pleased to meet you, Alias. I’m Mintassan the Magnificent, though my friends call me Mintassan the Mad.” Mintassan offered his hand, and Alias accepted it in her own.

Mintassan was tall with broad shoulders, but somewhat overweight—his gut parted the center of his vest. Nothing, Alias thought, that a few laps around the Sea of Fallen Stars couldn’t take care of. Perched on the sage’s nose was a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles made with glass as thin as soap bubbles. Alias wondered if the spectacles were magical or if Mintassan wore them to give himself a look of erudition. In his baggy white pants, billowing shirt, and bright-colored vest, he really looked more like a merchant than a sage. Aside from the glasses, the only other clues to his scholarly interests came from the sigils embroidered in his vest and a tiny ornament fastened to the vest’s lapel—what appeared to be the skull of a tiny mammal.

As Alias shook hands with the sage she realized his eyes lingered over the azure tattoo emblazoned on her right arm. Alias pulled her hand away self-consciously and turned her attention back to Jamal.

Jamal remained frozen, staring at the swordswoman, trying, as she fought off her obvious terror of a long-dead sorceress, to take in all of Alias’s and Mintassan’s words.

Alias set the slipper down on the floor in front of the sofa and stared back at the other woman. Jamal was older than the “memory” that Finder had given the swordswoman, with wrinkles etched about her eyes and her neck, but she looked almost regal with her posture straighter than a schoolgirl’s and her flowery housecoat draped dramatically over the sofa. She remained unbowed by the pressures of Westgate life or the sordid attacks of its underworld. Yet there remained something comic about her appearance, the frayed sleeve of the housecoat, the singed hem, the scarf half falling off, the missing slipper. Alias was reminded of meeting an artist’s model once. The painting looked just like the woman, but the woman was nothing like the painting; without the brush strokes, she was less romanticized, but much more real.

“I’m nobody, also at your service,” Dragonbait whispered in Saurial.

Alias shook herself from her reverie. “Oh, and this is my companion, Dragonbait,” she said, indicating the saurial with a wave of her hand.

“Yes, of course,” Mintassan said, nodding and offering the paladin his hand as well. “Dragonbait the Saurial Paladin. Companion to Alias of the Magic Arm. We’ve heard a halfling bard tell of your exploits down at the Empty Fish. Haven’t we, Jamal?” the sage asked, nudging the older woman.

Alias fidgeted slightly, but kept her agitation in check. The only thing she disliked more than strangers knowing details of her life was when the strangers were spellcasting sages like Mintassan.

Jamal finally overcame the shock of Alias’s resemblance to the sorceress Cassana and was able to concentrate on Mintassan’s words. “Ruskettle,” Jamal said. “Milil’s Mouth, can that woman ramble.”

“Exactly,” Mintassan agreed. He turned back to Alias. “The tales, however, do not do justice to your loveliness.”

Alias fidgeted again under Mintassan’s appraising eyes. He had a bold gaze that she found rather forward.

Jamal sighed and slapped the mage’s leg. “Mind your manners,” she reprimanded.

Mintassan grinned and asked, “Please, allow me to present to you my current charge, a patient singularly lacking in patience, that talented and fearless righter of wrongs, Jamal the Thespian, Jamal the Lady of Cheap Heroes and Cheaper Theatrics—”

“Jamal the Slightly Parboiled,” Jamal finished, as she picked up her recovered slipper and slid it gingerly over her wounded foot. “So what were you doing in my burning house?” the woman asked, her distrust obviously not completely allayed by the fact that the swordswoman was a character in the halfling Ruskettle’s tales.

“Um—We just happened to be passing by when we saw the Night Masks run out of the building and toss a torch back in,” Alias explained.

“And then you followed me here just to return my slipper?” Jamal asked suspiciously.

“Well, no. We have business with Mintassan,” Alias said defensively.

“What business?” Jamal insisted.

“Grypht’s business,” the sage replied with a theatrical grimness. “And for such dark work we should retire to the back room.” Mintassan strode off behind the shop’s counter and through a doorway hung with a curtain of glass beads. “You might as well join us, Jamal,” the sage called back over his shoulder. “I’ll make tea. You can be mother and pour. You can serve as a witness to our transaction, too.”

Jamal rose slowly and motioned for Alias and Dragonbait to go before her. Alias suspected she did so more out of caution than courtesy. Jamal did not want them at her back.

Alias moved cautiously through the curtain, into an extraplanar graveyard. While the trophies in the front of the shop had an air of respectability by virtue of their mounted settings, the remains of the dead in the back room gave the place a grisly appearance.

Fur and hide pelts of every color hung from the ceiling. Work tables all along one long wall were covered with boxes of bones and skeletons in various stages of being pieced together with pins and wires. Pickled internal organs filled jars on the shelves over the work tables. The ceiling was covered with strange insects stuck there with pins in their thoraxes. A box at Alias’s elbow contained red eggshells and the remains of three baby birds. Snake skins and feathers lay out on the writing table beside a sketchbook. There were piles of boxes and crates beneath all the tables and all around the perimeters of the room. Alias did not want to know what was inside any of them.

“Wonderful what he’s done with the place, isn’t it?” Jamal said with sarcasm as she noted Alias’s discomfort. “Early Abattoir—a Sembian style you don’t see displayed much in the finer homes of Westgate.”

“Grypht gave us to understand that your specialty was transmutation, which, if I recall, excludes the necromantic arts,” Alias said, treading as politely as she could into what Mintassan’s business was with so many dead things.

The sage looked back at the swordswoman with a gleam of curiosity in his eye. “My, my. Heroism, sword skill, beauty, and brains all in one. Where, I wonder, did you learn about the art?”

Alias flushed, but did not reply. Finder had filled his creation with everything he’d known, and she could forget none of it. It wasn’t the first time she’d embarrassed herself with a demonstration of more knowledge than she ought to have.

“Yes,” Mintassan replied to the swordswoman’s comment when he realized she wasn’t going to reply to his query, “you’re quite right. Specializing in transmutation does exclude necromantic studies. But while other transmuters choose to study the more mundane and commercially lucrative transmutations, straw to gold, salt water to fresh, sow’s ears to silk purses, and so on, I prefer investigating the mutation of nature itself—or herself, as your religion requires.”

Mintassan stood beside a massive table, which dominated the center of the room. The table, some castoff from a Westgate festhall, judging by its thick legs and velvet-covered sides, was littered with various scholarly debris: maps of the inner and outer planes, tomes with mildewing leather covers, diagrams and sketches of creatures, calipers, rulers, magnifying lenses. The sage picked up a hunk of amber larger than his fist and held it out for Alias to see.

“I am seeking the secret,” Mintassan said, “of how the descendants of a creature like this—”

Alias peered into the amber and could see an animal that resembled a bat embedded within.

“—become a creature like this.” With a flourish the sage yanked a black cloth cover off a second specimen—the mounted, mummified head of a tanar’ri, a powerful denizen of the Abyss.

Alias and Dragonbait drew back, startled. The next moment, though, Alias’s eyes squinted in disbelief. Mintassan was teasing them, or testing them somehow. “And whose ancestor is that little fellow?” she asked, pointing to the tiny mammal skull Mintassan displayed on his vest lapel.

Mintassan stroked the tiny skull almost reverently. “My own,” he declared, but a moment later he looked just a little doubtful, “I think,” he amended. The sage picked up the tanar’ri head, looked around with a frown for another empty flat space, and finally set the grisly trophy in an empty crate labeled, “Spell keys and other darks.” From Finder, who had traveled in other planes, Alias knew those were planar slang for magic components and mysteries.

“Please, have a seat,” the sage said as he pushed all the remaining junk on the table to one side. “Excuse me while I get the tea things together.” He disappeared into a side alcove, leaving Alias and Dragonbait alone with Jamal.

“Planar travel has scrambled his wits, but he’s really sweet and harmless,” Jamal said matter-of-factly. There were eight completely mismatched chairs set about the table. The actress flopped into an overstuffed chair of worn and tattered brocade and put her feet up on a rocker of woven cane.

Alias settled into a wooden chair with a wolf skull mounted atop its straight, high back. Dragonbait’s choice was limited by his massive tail, so he perched on a three-legged stool carved from ruby quartz.

From the alcove came the sound of rattling pots, the squeak of a hand pump, and a magical cantrip, followed by the whoosh of an enchanted flame igniting. Mintassan was singing a bawdy version of “Lie Down, Ye Ladies” in a passable baritone.

An uneasy silence had settled over the occupants at the table. Jamal watched Alias with the attention of a fox watching a wolf. Alias held her smile until it felt like a brittle, dried leaf.

Jamal tilted her head from side to side, studying Alias. Finally, she said, “I remember you now.”

Alias felt her chest tighten. “You do?”

“According to Ruskettle’s tale, you’re the one who popped in over Westgate with the mad god Moander, chased by your friends, riding a red dragon.”

Alias felt her heartbeat slow to its normal rhythm.

“I saw that battle,” Jamal declared. “Moander puffed up like an overproofed loaf of bread. The dragon spat flame at it. Boooom! Fried dragon and chunks of rotting god rained on the city. Took out a piece of the city wall, the Dhostar warehouses, and a lot of the northwestern slums.”

Alias felt the heat return to her face. “It was an accident. If there was something we could have done to avoid damaging your fair city, we would have. Cassana and her crew jumped us right afterward, and after we killed Cassana, we ended up in another plane, so we never got a chance to apologize.”

Jamal laughed raucously. “Apologize? Whatever for? That crash shook out this town like a dirty rug. The town’s merchant nobles thought a new Flight of Dragons had arrived! There was total chaos while they all tried to save themselves and, of course, their merchandise. All of them had egg on their faces when the furor died down, especially Ssentar Urdo. Family Urdo called in a marker with some old Thayan necromancer to protect its docks. The necromancer was inebriated at the time, centered his spell too low, and teleported a squad of skeletons into the dock itself. Little rib cages and arms and skulls waving around, trying to pull the rest of their bodies through the wood. Mintassan collected a specimen as I recall. He really wanted the dragon’s skull, but someone else snatched it up before he reached the scene of the crash. He was so disappointed.”

Alias shuddered to think what someone in Westgate would want with the skull of the dragon Mist. While the ancient wyrm had been an ally at the time of her fiery demise, the beast had hated Alias. The swordswoman would have preferred to hear Mist’s remains had been laid to rest in their entirety.

“Kids were playing ‘Dragons and Warriors’ in the streets for weeks afterward,” Jamal continued, “and everyone talked about what cowardly leeches the merchant nobles were when push came to shove.” Jamal sighed. “But, alas, when you did not return with more dragons, the merchants and the Night Masks reestablished their grubby holds on everyone’s lives. Ah, well. I got three months worth of material for my street theater even if I had to invent a cheap hero for it.”

“So, what were you doing on my street last night?” Jamal demanded, switching the topic suddenly. “It’s not on the way to Mintassan’s by any stretch of the imagination.”

Alias thought fast for an answer that might satisfy the woman. “I was just passing by, reliving old memories. Someone I knew used to live on that street. The Swanmays,” she answered, hoping that memory wasn’t another of Finder’s fictions.

“That band of female adventurers? That was a long time ago.” Jamal smiled at some memory. “They were such great troublemakers. Solid cheap hero material.” Her look grew less suspicious. As she came out of her reverie, she said, “You knew it was the Night Masks who started the fire. Even so, you rushed in to save what they wanted destroyed. They have watchers. You’ve made yourselves enemies.”

Alias laughed. “We already made them enemies. This was just the salt in the wound.” The swordswoman explained how she and the saurial had taken care of the shakedown team and the assassin squad.

Jamal laughed with delight. “Definitely a cheap hero story.”

“What does that mean, cheap hero?” Alias asked.

“Cheap hero. An everyday hero,” Jamal explained. “Not one of those highfalutin, noble-born, kill-a-dragon-before-breakfast, always-get-the-girl heroes. But your regular type hero. The merchant who doesn’t cheat widows and orphans. The neighbors who bring you hot meals when you’re sick. The kid who stops the pickpocket who grabbed your purse. The fishermen who paid a protection racketeer with the racketeer’s own teeth. The festhall girl who testified at a murder trial and had to leave town. The apprentices and journeymen who helped the farmers guard their fields so no one could start a brush fire to drive up the price of grain and start famine in the outlying regions.

“I’m the Lady of Cheap Heroes. I tell their tales,” Jamal said with a flourish of her hand. “Jamal’s Street Theater. Four performances daily. Written, directed, and performed by Jamal herself, with the help of some loyal associates. That’s why the Night Masks want me dead, and the merchants wouldn’t miss me any. I tell everyone that ordinary people can fight their oppressors.”

“After tonight, it looks like you may have to make your living in some other city,” Alias replied.

“Make my living!” Jamal laughed till her eyes teared. “You don’t make a living in the theater, girl. It’s a calling. And Westgate is my city. They are not driving me out.”

Mintassan came bustling back into the room carrying a silver tea service laden with a silver teapot, a silver creamer, a silver brandy flask, a tiny parcel wrapped in brown paper, and four mismatched clay mugs.

The sage sunk into a wood-frame-and-canvas chair, which looked about ready to collapse under his weight. With a flick of his finger, he opened the paper parcel on the tea tray, revealing little cubes about the size of dice but without markings. He dropped two into a mug and held the mug out for Jamal to fill.

“Amnite sugar cubes,” Mintassan explained upon noting Alias’s curious look. “Among the many things the Amnites have stolen from the Mazticans. For years they were a novelty known only to the upper classes, but last year House Dhostar brought in a huge consignment and lowered the price. Now they can’t keep up with the demand. They’re all the rage.”

Alias picked up a grainy cube, then dropped it tentatively into the mug of tea Jamal handed her. The sugar cube bubbled and dissolved. She blew over the tea’s steamy surface while Mintassan added a dollop of cream to his mug. When the sage had taken a sip of his own beverage, Alias hazarded a taste of her own. “It’s good,” she declared with surprise. “Sweet, like honey.”

Jamal snorted. “Sweet, but no kick,” the actress said, pouring a more-than-healthy dose of brandy into her own tea.

“So what’s your poison, Dragonbait?” Mintassan asked as he handed the last mug to Jamal to fill.

“I would like it plain, please,” the saurial replied.

Alias translated, “He’ll have it straight up.”

“Please,” Dragonbait repeated.

Alias sighed. “Please,” she translated.

Mintassan smiled as he handed the paladin the mug of tea. “So it’s true what Grypht wrote—Alias does understand Saurial. I always wondered if a human could ever master it.”

“I can hardly claim to have mastered it even though I’ve lived with the saurials for eight years,” Alias protested. “Their language is a mixture of sounds, scents, and postures. A tongues spell with a permanency cast on it enables me to hear the sounds and understand them, and I can smell their scents even better and interpret the emotions they convey, but I’m not very good with the postures. I can speak the sound part as well, but I can’t put out the scents, and since I can’t do the postures, Dragonbait says, I’m sort of a monotone speaker, and there are levels of subtlety I just don’t get. Fortunately, Dragonbait understands my tongue better than I do his. I think other saurials still find it easier to speak with other dragonish and lizardish creatures than with me.”

“Perhaps their tongue is related to Auld Wyrmish, or the ancestral dragon languages. Saurials and dragons could share the same ancestors,” Mintassan suggested.

“I think not,” Dragonbait retorted, emitting a fishy smell that just hinted at how insulting he found the suggestion. Alias translated the words and the emotion.

Mintassan chuckled. “That’s the same reaction I got from Grypht.”

“Who is this Grypht?” asked Jamal, tearing her attention away from her spiked tea.

“A fellow blood,” Mintassan replied.

“A what?” Alias asked.

“Blood,” Jamal said. “That’s plane-hopper slang for professional traveler.”

“Grypht sent Alias and Dragonbait down to Westgate to make an exchange of magic,” Mintassan explained. “He and his people are exiles from their own plane and live up north now. He’s a saurial like Dragonbait here.”

“Except he’s ten feet tall and has horns all over his head,” Alias corrected.

“He’ll always be little Grypht to me,” Mintassan said, with a chuckle. “Now, down to business,” the sage said rubbing his hands together. “Show me, please, what you’ve brought for me.”

Dragonbait set the staff down on the table before the sage.

Mintassan ran his fingertips along the staff. He sighted down its length. Peered into the little mouse skulls dangling from the top. Sniffed at the orange feather. Rapped it sharply against the floor. Squinted at the runes that spiraled down from the top to the bottom. “Definitely Netheril,” he declared. “Beautiful workmanship. A staff of the undead. What can you tell me of its provenance and pedigree? Did it come from the Great Desert?”

“From Anauroch, yes,” Alias answered. “A saurial exploration party came across the slaughtered bodies of a Zhentarim patrol decaying in the dunes. The staff was among the corpses.

“That fits, too,” the sage said, nodding. “The Black Network has stooped to tomb-robbing ever since their precious city was smashed. Well, I am quite satisfied.” He pulled a small box out from under the table and set it down in front of Alias. He turned the handle on the top and the sides fell away.

A perfect blue crystal sphere glowed before Alias, bathing her in a blue light. The sphere floated and spun ever so slightly an inch above a base of white jade carved in the shape of a twisting dragon.

Alias shot a glance at Jamal, but the woman did not seem interested in the magic crystal sphere. The swordswoman looked over at Dragonbait, who squinted at the magic ball with his shen sight. “Nothing malefic,” the paladin reported.

“I think that Grypht will be happy with this crystal ball,” Mintassan said. “It can find anyone in the Realms.”

With no magical abilities of her own, Alias was unable to test the sphere’s reputed ability, but since Grypht had said all his dealings with Mintassan had been honorable ones and Dragonbait confirmed the magic was not evil, she gave a short nod. “We accept the trade,” she said evenly.

Mintassan smiled and flipped up the sides of the box and twisted the lid back on. He looked up slyly at the swordswoman, noting, “There is, of course, one exception to the sphere’s abilities.”

“I have a permanent misdirection shield cast on me,” Alias explained.

“Grypht mentioned it, and of course I had to test it,” the sage said. “I struggled for hours trying to get the sphere to reveal you—without success. You didn’t even set off the alarms at my door when you entered the shop. Now that we’ve finally met, I suppose you’ll head right back to the Lost Vale.” Mintassan sighed and leaned forward to stare into Alias’s eyes. “Protected from magical scrying so only the lucky saurials have the pleasure of gazing on you.”

“He must realize we don’t find you as attractive as he does,” Dragonbait said in Saurial.

“He knows,” Alias said in Saurial. “He’s flirting with me.”

“Really?” Dragonbait asked. “Do you think he’d make a good mate?”

Alias ignored the paladin’s question and replied to the sage, “That’s our plan. As soon as there’s a ship going that way,” Alias said. “We may be stuck here a few days, though, according to the harbor master.”

“Good,” Jamal said to Alias. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to retire to one of the spare bedrooms.”

Alias wondered if Jamal was explaining her sleeping arrangements to protect her reputation or to let Alias know the field was clear.

Jamal rose and began limping over to a staircase in the back of the workroom. She turned at the stairway and said, “Since you’ll be around a few days, you’ll have a chance to catch one of our performances. You’ll see what a great cheap hero you make.

“I don’t want to be a cheap hero,” Alias called after her.

“Too late,” Jamal called back as she pulled herself up the stairs by the railing. “I’ve already written the first act.”

“I don’t want to be a hero, cheap or otherwise,” Alias insisted to Mintassan.

“I don’t think you get a say in it,” the sage replied. “Anyway, there’s really nothing I can do about it. Jamal has total creative control over her theater. At least this time she’s picked someone easy on the eyes,” Mintassan noted with a grin.

Dragonbait chuckled. Alias glared up at him and said, in Saurial, “I am not going to take on the Night Masks, the merchants of Westgate, or whatever cheap villains Jamal has in mind,” the swordswoman insisted.

“Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll be a very good cheap hero,” the paladin reassured her.