The Shattered Mask

Chapter 20

With more snow falling from the night sky and a frigid wind whistling out of the north, the pitched roof of the brownstone tallhouse was scarcely a comfortable perch. But no matter how Shamur shivered and clenched her jaw against the cold, she reckoned she had no choice but to remain, for this building was one of the few structures in the immediate area lofty enough to afford a view inside the enceinte of Old High Hall, the Talendar castle. She was glad she and Thamalon had made time to go to a shrine and pay a priest to heal the bruises, scrapes, and swellings the Quip-pers had given them, else the vigil would have been even less pleasant than it was.

It was a vigil that Shamur hadn't required Thamalon to keep. Seeing no reason why both of them needed to spy, she'd suggested he wait somewhere warm. Perhaps he'd feared she'd think him soft or a shirker, for he'd insisted on sharing the chore with her, and, to her relief, had scaled the side of the tallhouse with considerable agility for a sexagenarian who had never taken instruction from a housebreaker like Errendar Spillwine.

Within the facade of the Talendar mansion, another window went dark. Soon, she thought, it would be time to move. Thanks be to Mask that the noble family hadn't opted to host a feast or ball tonight. Then the castle might have swarmed with boisterous revelers and bustling servants until dawn.

"I have something to tell you," said Thamalon, tightly bundled in his cloak.

"What's that?" she asked.

"When this affair is over, you can leave me without fear of reprisals against the House of Karn or the children. You can also come back and visit our brood whenever you like."

Shamur reckoned that she ought to be overjoyed, and in fact, she did feel a tingle of excitement, but it was muted and undercut by some other, less comfortable emotion. "Thank you. That's far kinder than I had any reason to expect."

He shrugged. "What should I do, drag you into court and complain to the Probiters that for the last thirty years, I've been married to the wrong woman, but up until now didn't know the truth? I'd be the laughingstock of Selgaunt. Besides, I suppose I owe you something for seeing me safely out of the Quippers' lair. I wasn't sure you'd be able to, or even that you meant to try."

"Don't tell me you were taken in by my agreeing to Avos's terms," she replied. "That was simply necessary to move things along. We're comrades in this venture, and I was always resolved that both of us would escape, or neither. That was why I aimed my short sword at his belly and never his heart. Even had I pierced his guts, he likely wouldn't have died at once. Thus, I still could have extorted your release by threatening him with further harm."

Thamalon chuckled. "Such a delicate little flower I married."

"There's something I ought to tell you. Two things, really. The first is that back in the days when I was a thief, Old High Hall was rumored to be impregnable to the kind of intrusion we intend, and I certainly never heard of any burglar surviving such an attempt. The second is that I haven't attempted to slip inside a fortress like this since I was an adolescent. I fear my skills are rusty."

"Nonsense. I've seen you fight and climb."

"But I'll need other abilities tonight, ones I have yet to test."

"Wife, I know where this is going. You're going to offer me another chance to stay safely behind, aren't you?"

"It's a sound idea. If something befalls me, you'll still be alive and free to search for Master Moon and protect the children."

"You said it yourself. We're partners. You watch my back, and I watch yours. In any case, I trust you."

She smiled. "All right, fool. On your own head be it."

They sat in silence on the cold, rough shingles for a while longer, while the snowflakes tumbled, the stars twinkled, and the lights in Old High Hall winked out one by one. Finally she judged the mansion was dark enough. She said as much to Thamalon, whereupon the two of them descended to the ground, then crept toward the enceinte.

In Shamur's youth, Old High Hall had been the sort of old-fashioned stronghold that Argent Hall remained today, with a perimeter wall high enough to balk an army. At some point during her long absence from Selgaunt, however, the Talendar had seen fit to tear down that enceinte and put up one that was only about twelve feet tall. She wished she could find that encouraging, but she knew better. The rival House had only become more wealthy over the past several decades, and it stood to reason that the measures they took to deter thieves had become more sophisticated and effective.

The Uskevren reached the base of the wall without being noticed, at least as far as Shamur could tell. The masons had made some effort to smooth the sandstone blocks and the mortared chinks between so as to make climbing difficult, but she was confident she'd find adequate finger- and toeholds. What concerned her was the mechanical and magical traps that might be concealed in the stonework. She kept an eye out for such things as she ascended.

She made it to the top without incident, peeked over the wall, and saw a snowy garden on the other side. It didn't appear to possess any magical flowers like the Karns' famous silver roses, which flourished even in the dead of winter, but the servants had shoveled the paths anyway, perhaps so strollers could admire the statuary.

Since Shamur saw no sentries rushing in her direction, she turned her attention to the coping on the summit of the wall. Most climbers would unthinkingly, blindly grab hold of it as they ascended, making it an excellent location for poisoned spikes, sharp scraps of glass, or some other type of mantrap. She didn't see anything of the sort, nor magical sigils incised in the stone, but still, her instincts warned her not to trust the surface. Clinging to the facade of the wall one-handed, she extracted a slender steel probe from her kit and pressed it against the top.

In the twinkling of an eye, the patch of sandstone immediately beneath the metal rod reshaped itself into a pair of jagged jaws, which shot up, clashed together, and bit the probe in half. Startled, Shamur jerked backward and nearly lost her grip.

She recovered her balance, peered over the coping again, making sure no one had heard the magical trap activate and come to investigate. She studied the stone jaws. They hadn't tried to bite her a second time. In fact, they seemed to be softening and slumping ever so slightly, as if, having failed to seize a victim, the projections were melting back into the block from which they had erupted. Shamur warily prodded them with the stub of the probe, and even that failed to provoke another attack.

She grinned. If the jaws could strike only once, that made it easy. She discarded the remaining piece of the probe, which was a bit too short for the task she had in mind, drew her dagger and used it to trigger several traps on either side of the first one, enjoying the game of snatching the blade back before the jaws could catch it.

"What are you doing?" Thamalon whispered from below.

"Making a point of entry." She lay on her belly atop the hard, irregular bumps of the unsuccessful mantraps, anchored herself with one hand, and stretched down the other. "Come on, I'll help you up. Just don't let any part of your anatomy swing up over a section of the coping that's still level, or a trap's liable to snip it off."

"I understand." He gripped her hand, she heaved, and he clambered up. They dropped inside the enclosure.

At once they hunkered down motionless, while Shamur peered and listened for signs that someone else was in their immediate vicinity. It seemed that nobody was. She gave Thamalon a nod to indicate that so far, they were all right.

"It's a miracle nobody heard the traps going off," he whispered.

"It's a ways to the house," she replied, "and I doubt anyone wanders the grounds on a chilly night like tonight if he can avoid it. Still, there are guards somewhere, so let's be careful."

He inclined his head. She motioned for him to follow her, then skulked to the right.

Shamur used all her old tricks to approach the mansion. She instructed Thamalon to stay low, take advantage of every bit of cover, and look before he moved. She kept an eye out for tripwires and odd depressions or humps in the earth that might mark the site of a mantrap, for all that the snowdrifts made them difficult to spot. She stalked behind rather than in front of any light source, such as the glowing magical lamps which the Talendar had mounted here and there on posts, lest she reveal herself in silhouette or cast a shadow. And she crept to the leeward, so no watchdog could catch her scent.

For a while, she was on edge, but by the time she and Thamalon slipped by the first patrolling spearman, she had relaxed and begun to enjoy the challenge. Win or lose, live or die, the incursion was grand sport. Never had she felt more alive, more keenly aware of her surroundings or of her own body. She savored the beauty of the fat, almost luminous snowflakes and the bracing kiss of the cold breeze, even as she eased along with a sure grace that made silence all but effortless.

But she supposed that Thamalon, who had never been a burglar, might well be finding their venture nerve-wracking. She glanced back over her shoulder and was pleased when he gave her a nod that suggested that if he wasn't having fun, he was at least bearing up well under the strain.

She glided forward, then the world twisted itself into a nightmare.

One moment, she was calmly leading Thamalon past a marble statue of a lammasu, a winged lion with a human head, the flowerbeds encircling its plinth, and the ring of stone benches surrounding those. The next, everything shifted. Though Shamur didn't actually see them move, she was virtually certain that all the objects in view had changed position, and though she couldn't make out exactly how their appearances had altered, they now seemed ugly and vile.

On the night of Guerren Bloodquill's opera, Shamur had seen her surroundings abruptly alter in far more overt and astonishing ways. Statues had come to life, and space had folded, opening gateways to the far reaches of the world. But none of those transformations had affected her as this one did. She shuddered, and her stomach churned. Behind her, Thamalon let out a moan.

She struggled in vain to compose herself, and then a skeletal creature in a ragged shroud swooped out of the darkness, its fleshless fingers poised to snatch and claw.

At that moment, it seemed the most terrifying threat she'd ever encountered, and, sobbing, she whipped out her broadsword and hacked at it. From the corner of her eye, she saw Thamalon pivot to confront a skull-headed assailant of his own.

Panic robbed her sword arm of much of its accustomed skill, and her first blow missed. The revenant whirled around her, scratching and gibbering, exuding a foul stink of decay, and when she turned to keep the dead thing in front of her, her own motion seemed to cause the landscape to shift even more violently, albeit undefinably, than before. A surge of vertigo made her reel.

The phantom picked that moment to pounce at her, and despite her dizziness, she did her best to cut at it. Her stroke swept into the undead creature's black, rotting cerements, and it vanished. The blow also spun Shamur off her feet.

As she peered frantically about, she found that her disorientation was all but complete. Spatial relationships made little sense. From moment to moment, she had difficulty determining which objects were adjacent to one another, which were near and which were far. Though she could have sworn she had blundered about in a complete circle, she never so much as glimpsed Thamalon or his attacker. She could hear him grunt and his boots creak, but couldn't figure out from which direction the sounds were originating.

Another spectral assailant floated toward her. She clambered to her feet and staggered to meet it. The revenant seemed to disappear. Then she discerned that the stone lammasu, which a moment ago had appeared to be on her right, now loomed on her left. Assuming she could trust that perception, in the course of just a few steps, she'd managed to spin herself completely around. Which in turn meant that the phantom was even now rushing at her back.

She whirled, cutting blindly. The broadsword struck the phantom's yellow skull and swept it into nonexis-tence.

Shamur noticed she was panting. She struggled to control her breathing and thus her overwhelming terror. She had to figure a way out of this trap now, this second, before yet another dead thing hurtled at her.

It didn't make sense that she was so profoundly afraid, gasping, shaking, her heart pounding. She'd encountered apparent distortions of space and time before, and though the revenants were foul and unsettling, she'd faced far more formidable adversaries in her time. She suspected that she and Thamalon had triggered some sort of magical field of disorientation, dizziness, and terror. It was possible that the phantoms weren't even real, just one illusory aspect of a trap intended to immobilize its victims until one of the patrolling warriors happened by.

She clung to that notion for a heartbeat or two, until another keening wraith dived at her, at that point logic gave way to raw, animal fear. By the time that, slashing wildly, she dispatched the thing, it was hard even to remember what she'd just been thinking, let alone put any faith in her conclusions.

How could the ghostly attackers be phantasmal when they looked and sounded so real? How could the warping of the landscape be a mere deception when she could see the world dancing and contorting around her? And even if it was all in her mind, that didn't mean there was any way to escape it. She was going to die here, the revenants would claw her apart, her heart would burst from fear, or-

At that moment, when sanity was slipping from her grasp, Thamalon reappeared in her tear-blurred field of vision. He hadn't had a chance or else in his distress hadn't remembered to remove his buckler from his belt, and she desperately, reflexively snatched at his unweaponed hand.

Their fingers met. He turned his head and saw her, and, plainly feeling the same frantic need for contact as herself, he yanked her to his side.

Clinging to Thamalon anchored her somehow. For the moment at least, terror loosened its grip. Suspecting this was the last lucid interval she was likely to get, she tried to reason her way out of the trap.

She couldn't trust her eyes, her ears, her nose, or her perception of direction, yet surely there was some aspect of reality the enchantment hadn't muddled. Despite her awkward, flailing swordplay, the revenants had never actually touched her, and perhaps that meant they couldn't. That would imply that the magically induced confusion didn't extend to her sense of touch.

She and Thamalon had been approaching the mansion from downwind. Perhaps if she kept the frigid, howling gusts in her face, and didn't permit any other cues to mislead her, she could lead her husband out of the area tainted by the spell.

Unfortunately, that would mean closing her eyes, and what if she was wrong, and the phantoms truly existed? She'd have no way to defend herself as they ripped her apart!

With a snarl, she thrust that crippling thought away. If she was wrong, she and Thamalon were dead anyway. "Walk with me," she said, squinting her eyes shut. "Don't let go of my hand."

Her lack of vision didn't end the fear, the nausea, or the sense that the world was writhing and jerking around her, nor did it keep her from hearing the wails or smelling the fetor of the revenants. She struggled to ignore all such distractions and focus only on the frigid caress of the wind. Thamalon jerked on her hand as he lurched about swinging his long sword at the apparitions.

Then he stopped and murmured, "Valkur's shield, you did it. You got us out."

Shamur opened her eyes to find the world returned to normal. She looked back toward the marble lammasu. No wraiths were streaking in pursuit of mortal prey.

She drew a long breath and let it out slowly, to calm her racing heart and purge the dregs of the terror from her system. "The Talendar must give interesting garden parties."

Thamalon grinned. "I imagine they only set the snare at times when no one is supposed to be in this part of the grounds."

"You think? And here I thought they prided themselves on their sense of humor. Are you ready to press on?"

"When you are." They sheathed their swords and sneaked toward the house.

Like Argent Hall, the Talendar mansion had once been a stark donjon, but as their wealth increased and their taste for luxury and ostentation grew apace, the occupants had modified and extended the building to a far greater extent than the Karns had ever imagined. Old High Hall had become a sprawling, rococo confection graced with a profusion of friezes, cornices, arches, and similar ornamentation. It was a truism in Selgaunt that the Talendar never tired of stripping away the old decorations and replacing them with something more fashionable or even avant-garde, and scaffolding currently extended along a portion of the west wing. The framework looked as if would provide an easy means of ascent to an upper-story window, but given the family's reputation for wariness, Shamur suspected that appearance was deceptive. A mantrap waited up there somewhere, or at least the two spearmen walking the alures on the roof were watching the scaffold with special care. Crouching at the edge of the open space surrounding the keep, she looked for a safer means of access.

After a few moments, she noticed a sort of secondary portal projecting from the body of the house, bordered by pilasters and capped with a block of carved stone more than half again as tall as the recessed door itself. Just above that coping were round stained-glass windows, that, if her memory of various dances and parties wasn't playing her false, ran along the wall of a clerestory overlooking one of several spacious halls.

She pointed to the entry, and Thamalon nodded. They waited until neither of the guards were looking in their direction, then darted up to the portal and crouched in its shadow.

Shamur quickly climbed to the top of the capstone, then, feeling vulnerable and exposed to the view of the sentries above her, examined the windows. She hoped they'd been designed to open. Otherwise she'd have to extract one from its frame, a time-consuming process that would greatly increase the likelihood of someone catching sight of her.

But fortunately, it wasn't going to come to that. A moment's scrutiny revealed the simplest of latches. She worked a thin strip of steel between the stile and post, popped the fastener, cracked open the window, and peeked inside at a shadowy gallery illuminated only by a single oil lamp burning at the far end. No one was in sight.

Shamur tied off a thin rope and dropped it to enable Thamalon to ascend to her as quickly and quietly as possible. When he joined her, she freed the line, coiled it, started through the window, and froze.

"What's wrong?" Thamalon whispered.

"Nightingale floor," she replied, "built to squeak when anyone treads on it. I am rusty. I nearly failed to notice in time."

He peered past her at the gloomy interior of the building. "It's a marvel you noticed at all."

She shrugged the compliment away. "You can generally tell by the kind of wood, and the pattern in which the planks were laid."

"Does this mean we can't go in this way?"

"Luckily, no, but you must step precisely where I do."

"Very well. Lead on."

She did, taking care to trust her weight only to those spots where she reckoned the floorboards made contact with the joists beneath. She and Thamalon reached the arched entrance without either making a sound.

After that, they crept through the keep, listening for the voices and footfalls of others, ducking for cover and avoiding being seen whenever possible, strolling casually and pretending they belonged in the mansion when observation was unavoidable. Had they waited another hour or so to break in, there would have been fewer people roaming about, but Errendar Spillwine had taught Shamur that shortly before midnight was an advantageous time to enter a wealthy house. Many of the occupants had either retired already or were preoccupied with preparing to do so, and unfamiliar persons walking the corridors were less likely to excite alarm would be the case later on.

Finally, lurking in the doorway to a playroom full of balls, dolls, toy men-at-arms, and hobbyhorses, the Uskevren spied what they had been searching for. A brown-haired young man with a wispy mustache and the characteristic slim frame and wry, intelligent face of the Talendar, some bastard son of a female servant, perhaps, judging from the fact that he wore an ill-fitting hand-me-down doublet cut in last year's style, ambled rather unsteadily down the corridor.

The youth was alone. Indeed, as far as Shamur could tell, no one else was even in the immediate vicinity. So she lunged from the doorway, seized the lad, poised her dagger at his throat, and hauled him into the playroom. Thamalon shut the door behind them.

As she'd expected, the youth smelled of wine, but she saw no confusion in his wide, bloodshot eyes. Perhaps fear had sobered him up.

"What do you want?" he croaked.

"Tell me about the plan to assassinate the Uskevren," she said.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Shamur believed him. It made sense that few members of the household would be privy to a criminal conspiracy. "Then tell me where Ossian Talendar is."

"Gone."

She increased the pressure of the keen edge against his neck. "Don't lie, or I swear to Mask, I'll kill you."

"It's true! He left a couple hours ago and took some of the warriors and Lord Talendar's mage along with him! Some other wizard in a moon mask went along, too, somebody I never saw before."

Shamur and Thamalon exchanged glances.

"Where did they go?" Thamalon asked.

"I don't know," said the boy. "They didn't tell anybody. All I know is that the guards didn't wear their uniforms, or take any arms or armor they couldn't hide under weathercloaks."

Shamur frowned. Did Ossian and the masked wizard mean to attack Stormweather Towers itself? No, surely not, they must realize that even with Jander and Master Selwick dead, such an effort had little chance of success. Did they then have hopes of catching one or more of the Uskevren children away from home? That seemed equally unlikely. Tamlin, Thazienne, and Talbot knew they were being hunted, and thus ought to have sense enough to stay in after dark.

Perhaps the enemy meant to attack and burn one of Thamalon's warehouses or merchantmen at anchor, as in the days when the vendetta between the rival Houses was at its fiercest.

"Nuldrevyn must know what's afoot," said Thamalon. "Where is he?"

"I don't know that, either," said the youth.

"Nonsense," Thamalon rapped. "The lackeys and retainers in a great house always have some notion of where their master is and what he's up to. The lad's playing games with us, milady. Carve him up a bit to prove we're in earnest."

"No!" yelped the youth, squirming futilely in Shamur's grasp. "I'm telling the truth!"

"Then explain," Thamalon said.

"No one's seen Lord Talendar since this afternoon. Master Ossian fetched him away from a conference with a quarryman, then returned later to tell the fellow that something had come up, and his lordship couldn't give him any more time. We've all been kind of wondering where the old man's gotten to."

"You're sure he didn't depart with Ossian and the others?" Shamur asked.

"Yes," said the boy. "Somebody would have noticed." ?

"And no one saw the masked spellcaster arrive?" she persisted. "Suddenly he was simply here inside the castle?"

"That's right."

Shamur nodded. "Is there a part of the mansion where people don't generally go? Where Lord Talendar and Master Ossian could confer with a third party without anybody else knowing it? Where, perhaps, a guest could even take up residence without the rank-and-file members of the household getting wind of it?"

"I suppose. I mean, there's a section nobody's used for at least a generation."

Shamur looked at Thamalon. "Perhaps well find Nul-drevyn there, or failing that, some clue to Master Moon's identity or his current intentions. I admit it's by no means a certainty, but I don't have any other ideas."

"Nor do I," Thamalon said. "Tell us how to get there, boy."

The youth obeyed, whereupon the intruders gagged him with a long gown commandeered from a marionette, trussed him to a chair with a pair of jump ropes, and left him in the playroom.

The Uskevren reached the disused portion of the house without incident. Once they entered its precincts, and no longer had to worry about appearing suspicious, they drew their swords, and Thamalon readied his buckler. Ere long, Shamur grinned with excitement, for she could tell from the broken cobwebs and the scuff marks on the dusty floor that someone else had recently walked these frigid, gloomy corridors.

Then she glimpsed dim light spilling from one of the doorways ahead. She and Thamalon crept up to it and peered beyond the threshold. On the other side was the parlor of a suite, luxurious and stylish once with clear, faceted crystals decorating many of the articles inside. Now it was musty and dark. The only illumination shone from the stub of a single white candle in the latten holder on the marble mantelpiece. It looked as if someone might have initially have lit two or three, but the others had already burned out. That wan, wavering glow barely sufficed to reveal the enormous, coiled shape in the corner, and the motionless human figure behind it that might be either a prisoner or a corpse.

Shamur gave Thamalon an inquiring look. He flicked his long sword in the suggestion of a cut, indicating they should attack the snake, and she nodded in agreement. Though she had no way of knowing precisely what was transpiring here, it seemed likely that Master Moon had conjured up the reptile to guard or kill the man on the floor. Therefore, the Uskevren needed to kill the beast so they could interrogate the fellow if he was still alive, or search his body and the apartment if he wasn't.

Hoping to take the serpent by surprise, the Uskevren stepped forward. Meanwhile, Shamur wondered if their efforts to cat-foot into striking distance were unnecessary, for a learned comrade of hers had once told her that snakes were deaf. Then the huge, steel-gray creature demonstrated that, however deficient its hearing, it had some way of sensing enemies at its back, for it swiveled its wedge-shaped head and regarded them with malevolent coppery eyes.

The Uskevren charged, and the serpent struck, its head streaking forward like a bolt from a crossbow. Thamalon caught the attack on his buckler, the metal rang, and the force of the impact sent him reeling backward.

Shamur drove her point at the snake's flank. The broadsword glanced off the creature's scales as if they were fine plate armor. She had succeeded in attracting the serpent's attention, however. It twisted around, gave a screeching hiss, and struck. Lacking a shield, and dubious of her ability to parry such an attack with her blade, she sprang backward out of range.

Its long body uncoiling, the serpent slithered after her, striking repeatedly. She kept on dodging, riposting when possible, always failing to penetrate the scales, and did her inadequate best to keep the beast from backing her up against a wall. Every time she started to dart to the side, the reptile whipped its head around on that long, sinuous neck and cut her off.

The snake had almost succeeded in trapping her when Thamalon, his buckler pocked where the creature's fang had struck it and corroded where venom had spattered from the point of impact, cut at its spine from behind. He too failed to penetrate the scales, but he distracted the serpent, and Shamur lunged out into the center of the room.

The snake struck at Thamalon, who sidestepped, brushed the attack away with the buckler, and attempted to counter. Before he could complete the action, the serpent, employing a new tactic, lashed its tail around at his ankles and tumbled him off his feet.

The reptile's enormous gray head plunged at the stunned and supine man. Shamur frantically leaped forward and swung her broadsword with all her strength. The edge failed to gash the creature's snout, but it did bash it aside and so prevent its long, curved ivory fangs from piercing Thamalon's body.

She had assumed the snake would now turn its attention to her, but it persisted in trying to strike at the human on the floor, and so she hacked at it again. This time, her stroke landed but failed to deflect the enormous head. Her eyes widened in horror, and then Thamalon, who had evidently recovered his wits, rolled out from under the plummeting fangs.

Shamur managed to keep the snake occupied while her husband scrambled to his feet. Once more, they assailed the reptile together, narrowly dodging its strikes and thrashing tail, and again failing to do it any discernible harm. She knew it would be only a matter of time before the beast had a bit of luck and plunged its poisonous, swordlike teeth into one of them.

She also knew how to fight a foe with impervious armor. Strike at the parts the armor didn't cover. Unfortunately, in the snake's case, they were all on its head, which the creature carried so high it nearly brushed the ceiling. It was effectively out of reach except for those instants when the serpent struck, and then the reptile withdrew it so quickly that by the time its human foes completed a parry or evasive maneuver and were ready to riposte, the opportunity was gone.

If Shamur wanted to attack the head, she needed to abandon any attempt to fight defensively and meet it with a stop thrust as it hurtled down. She twirled her blade in a gesture she hoped would draw the snake's attention.

It did. The head plunged at her, and she lunged at it. Her point flashed between its fangs and punched through the roof of its pale, gaping mouth.

She knew she'd hurt it badly, probably fatally, but the head kept driving forward, the maw engulfing her arm. The snout smashed into her shoulder and knocked her down. Now the upper part of the serpent's body was flopping spastically on top of her legs, pinning her down, while its jaws gnashed with bruising force, trying to spear her imprisoned arm with one of the fangs.

Thamalon lunged and drove his long sword deep into one of the huge copper eyes. The snake thrashed wildly, then stopped moving.

"Are you all right?" Thamalon asked.

Shamur carefully extracted her arm and broadsword from the dead creature's mouth, then inspected the limb for punctures. "I think so," she said.

"That was an idiotic tactic," he grumbled. "It was pure good luck the brute didn't get its fangs into you."

She laughed. "You offer to Tymora, you ought to know that fortune smiles on the bold." She extricated herself from the scaly mass on top of her, then sprang to her feet. "Let's take a look at our friend in the corner."

When they moved close enough for a good look, she was surprised to see that the man on the floor was Nuldrevyn Talendar himself. Had the conspirators had a falling out? The aristocrat was still curled motionless in a ball, but she could see that he was breathing.

Thamalon kneeled beside his rival and touched him gently on the arm. Without opening his eyes, Nuldrevyn shrieked and began to thrash.

Shamur stared in astonishment. Never had she seen the arrogant patriarch of the House of Talendar in such a panicked state, nor would she have imagined he could ever be reduced to such a condition, except perhaps by prolonged torture.

Thamalon gripped Nuldrevyn's shoulders and said, "The snake is dead. We killed it. The snake is dead."

Nuldrevyn's struggles subsided into violent trembling, proving that Thamalon's surmise was correct. Even in his present circumstances, the Talendar lord wasn't afraid of the Uskevren, whom he had battled courageously for much of his life. He had never even opened his eyes to observe that they were there. It was an overwhelming and unreasoning dread of the serpent that had so unmanned him.

"The beast is no more," Thamalon persisted. "Look for yourself."

Nuldrevyn did so with much hesitation and anticipatory flinching. To her disgust, Shamur felt a slight twinge of pity for him, even though she had little doubt that, his present situation notwithstanding, the Talendar lord had at the very least endorsed the scheme to murder her family and herself. At last he regarded the long, gleaming carcass for a moment, averted his eyes as if even the sight of the beast in death was too horrible to bear, and began to cry.

"Stop blubbering," Thamalon said. "The gods know, we have good reason to wish you ill, but we may forgo our vengeance if you tell us what we want to know."

Nuldrevyn shook his head. "I no longer care what happens to me, Uskevren. I weep because my son is dead."

Shamur peered at him quizzically. "Do you mean Oss-ian? What makes you think so? I gather he looked healthy-enough when he left the castle earlier tonight."

"No," Nuldrevyn said, brushing ineffectually at his eyes. "That wasn't really him. He's gone. Marance murdered him."

Thamalon blinked. "You don't mean your brother Marance, whom I slew thirty years ago?"

"Yes," Nuldrevyn said. "He came back from the tomb to settle his score with you, and may the gods forgive me, I welcomed him." Fresh tears slid down his cheeks.

"Can this be true?" Shamur asked.

"I… think it may be," Thamalon replied, amazement in his voice. "I told you Master Moon's voice was familiar, and Marance always fought by whistling up beasts and demons to do his killing for him." He turned back to Nuldrevyn. "Tell us everything, and perhaps we will avenge Ossian for you."

Half mad with grief and the agony he'd endured under the cold, unblinking gaze of the snake, Nuldrevyn related the tale in a disjointed and only partially coherent fashion. Still, Shamur grasped the essentials. At last she fully understood how the masked wizard had tricked her into trying to kill her husband. But the Talendar patriarch's final revelation crushed such insights into insignificance.

"Midnight on the High Bridge?" she demanded, appalled.

"Yes," Nuldrevyn said.

Shamur looked at Thamalon. "It must be nearly midnight if it isn't already, and the bridge is halfway across the city." Even as she spoke, her mind was racing. If they dragged Nuldrevyn along with them, the old man could countermand the false Ossian's orders and call off the Talendar guards. But no, that notion was no good. In his present state of collapse, Nuldrevyn would slow them down too much. Nor was there time to locate another high-ranking Talendar, explain the situation, and prevail on him to intervene. All the Uskevren could do was commandeer a pair of horses, race to the High Bridge, and pray they'd arrive before the trap closed on their children.

Thamalon sprang up from Nuldrevyn's side. "Let's find the stables," he said.