The Cleric Quintet: Night Masks

Chapter Six

 
Cadderly shrugged. "I thought I had," he replied with a wry smile, "in a grand fashion befitting your illusions."
Belisarius tipped his floppy woolen cap to the young priest.
"But I am not sure," Cadderly admitted. "Actually, I am not sure of much where my magic is concerned, and that is why I have returned."
Belisarius led the young man to the adjoining sitting room where they both nestled into comfortable chairs. The wizard produced four items - three rings and a slender wand - that Cadderly had given him three weeks before, and laid them aside, anxious to hear Cadderly's revelations.
It took Cadderly a while to begin his many tales - so much had happened to him! Once he began, though, he went on and on, covering every minute detail. He told Belisarius about summoning Shilrnista's trees, about healing Tintagel, and about watching the gallant horse Temmeri-sa's spirit depart. Then he spoke of the more specific and recent incidents, of creating light and then darkness in his room and in Belisarius's maze. Most disturbing of all to the young priest were the shadowy images he had seen dancing atop shoulders. Cadderly said nothing immediately about his dreams, though, not quite certain of how they fit into anything, and also a bit afraid of what they might reveal.
"The spells you speak of are not so unusual to one of priestly magic," the wizard said when the obviously exasperated young man had finished his worrisome tale. "Many can be duplicated by a wizard as well, such as the manipulation of light. As for the shadows, well, clerics have been able to determine the general weal of individuals for centuries."
"Aurora," Cadderly replied, speaking the one word he had been able to decipher from that particular chant. "I do not understand how 'the dawn' would affect such a spell." Belisarius scratched his graying beard. "That is unusual," he said at length. "But is 'the dawn' the only meaning of the word? When was this wondrous tome penned?" Cadderly thought for a moment, then had his answer. "Aurora," he said firmly, "aura " He looked up to the wizard and smiled widely.
"Aurora means aura," Belisarius agreed, "or at least it used to, referring to the emanation of light, of good, surrounding an individual. There you have it, then, a clerical spell to be sure. Perhaps that is what has happened to you, only you have not yet learned to interpret what you see." Cadderly nodded, though he did not really agree. He certainly knew how to - or felt how to - interpret the dancing and fleeting shadows; that was not the problem.
"I have witnessed extreme examples of clerical magic," Cadderly replied, "but these powers, I fear, are different. I do not study the spells before I call on them, as do the priests at the library. I make no preparations at all - as with the illusion that I defeated before your eyes. I did not expect you to challenge me so. I was not even expecting you to know I had come to visit."
Cadderly had to pause for a long moment to compose himself, and during the silence, Belisarius mumbled almost constantly under his breath and scratched at his bushy beard.
"You know something," Cadderly declared, his words sounding like an accusation.
"I suspect something," Belisarius replied. "Since the Time of Troubles, there have been increasing reports of individuals with internal magical powers."
"Psionics," Cadderly said immediately.
"You have heard of them, then," the wizard said. He threw his wiry arms out wide in heightened resignation. "Of course you have," he muttered. "You have heard of everything. That is what is so very frustrating about dealing with you."
The dramatics pulled a smile out of Cadderly and allowed him to relax back in the comfortable leather seat.
Belisarius seemed truly intrigued, as though he desperately hoped his guess was correct. "Might you be a psioni-cist?" he asked.
"I know little about them," the young priest admitted. "If that is what is happening to me, then it is happening without my assistance or approval."
"The powers are not so different from those of a wizard," Belisarius explained, "except that they come from the individual's mind and not the external powers of the universe. I am well acquainted with your mental abilities." He snickered, obviously referring to his spell book, which Cadderly had replaced from memory alone. "That type of prowess is the prime element of a psionicist's power."
Cadderly considered the words and gradually began to shake his head. "The power I manipulated in this tower was external," he reasoned. "Could psionics interact so with a wizard's spell?"
Belisarius patted a knobby finger against his lower lip, his frown revealing the snag in the logic. "I do not know," he admitted. The two sat quietly, digesting the details of their conversation.
"It does not fit," Cadderly announced a moment later. "I am the receptacle of the power and the transmuter of the power to the desired effect, of that much I am sure."
"I will not argue " Belisarius replied, "but such power must have a conduit - a spell, if you will. One cannot simply tap into the external energies of the universe on a whim!"
Cadderly understood the growing excitement in the wizard's voice. If Belisarius was wrong, then the wizard's entire life, his hermitlike devotion to his magical studies, might be revealed as an exercise in futility.
"The song" Cadderly muttered, suddenly realizing the truth of it all.
"Song?"
"The Tome of Universal Harmony" the young priest explained. "The book of Deneir. Whenever I have used the powers, even unconsciously, as with the dancing shadows, I have heard the song of that book in the recesses of my mind. My answers are in that song."
"Song of the book?" Belisarius could not begin to understand.
"The rhythm of the words," Cadderly tried to explain, though he knew he could not, not really.
Belisarius shrugged and seemed to accept the simple explanation. "Then you have found your conduit," he sajd, "but I fear there is little I can tell you concerning it. This book would seem to be more a matter to take up with the headmasters at the Edificant Library."
"Or with my deity," Cadderly mumbled.
Belisarius shrugged noncommittally. "As you will," he said. "I can tell you this much, though, and I know I am right simply by looking at your haggard features - "
"I have not been sleeping well," Cadderly promptly put in, fearing what the wizard would say.
"Magic, the transference of such energies," Belisarius went on, undeflected by Cadderly's announcement, "exacts a toll on the practitioner. We wizards are very careful not to exceed our limitations. Normally we could not anyway, since the memorization of any spell is when those limits are revealed.
"Likewise, a cleric's granted powers stem from his or her faith and are tempered by agents of the gods, or even by the gods themselves where the high priests are sometimes concerned," Belisarius reasoned. "I warn you, young Cadderly, I have seen foolish mages consumed when trying to cast the spells of those more powerful than they, spells beyond their abilities. If you have found a way to avoid the normal boundaries and limitations of magic use, whatever type of magic might be involved, then I pray you will find the wisdom to moderate your activities, else it will consume you."
A thousand possibilities began their progression through Cadderly's thoughts. Perhaps he should go back to the library with his dilemma. He could speak to Pertelope . . .
"Now for some items that I know more about," Belisarius said. The wizard reached for the rings and the wand. He first held up a signet ring inscribed with the trident-and-bottle design of Castle Trinity. It once had belonged to the evil mage Dorigen.
"There is no detectable magic in this, as you believed," the wizard said, tossing it to Cadderly.
"I know," Cadderly said, as he caught it and put it into his pouch.
The declaration made Belisarius pause and consider the young man. "This ring," he said slowly, holding up the gold band set with a large onyx stone, "is indeed magical, and powerful.
"It evokes a line of flame," Cadderly said, "when the possessor utters 'Fete,' the elven word for fire. I have seen it in use," the young priest added quickly, noticing Be-lisarius's deepening frown.
"Indeed," muttered the wizard. "And have you ever heard of a wizard named Agannazzar?"
Belisarius smiled as Cadderly shook his head. "He is a mage of no large fame born two centuries ago," the wizard explained.
"Now dead," Cadderly reasoned.
"Perhaps," Belisarius said wryly, flashing a wink. "One can never be certain where wizards are concerned."
"And was this his ring?" Cadderly asked.
"I cannot be sure " Belisarius replied. "Either he or one of his associates created it with this specific power imbued. It is not too powerful, but you may find it useful." He tossed it to Cadderly and took up the wand. The young priest suspected that Belisarius had purposely saved the remaining ring for last.
"This is a common device " the wizard began, but Cad-derly stopped him with an upraised hand. At first the wand seemed an unremarkable, slender shaft of black wood just over a foot long, but, as he looked at it, Cadderly heard the notes of a distant song playing in his mind.
Cadderly studied deeper, sensed, and then saw clearly, the magic of the item.
"Light," he said to the wizard. "The wand's power has to do with the manipulation of illumination."
Belisarius frowned again and looked at the wand, as if ensuring that there were no runes visibly etched on its smooth side. "You have seen it in use?" the wizard asked hopefully, already tired of being upstaged.
"No," Cadderly said absently, not releasing his attention from the revelations. In his mind, he saw lights forrriing different images and dancing about. "Domin flfu," he muttered.
The light he pictured became constant and of the same intensity as the light he had conjured in his room and in the maze.
"fflu" an arcane word for light, escaped his trembling lips. The light intensified, brightened to where Cadderly squinted against the glare in his mind.
"Mas flu" he said, the literal translation being "Great light." The image burst forth in all its splendor, a fiery green explosion of light spewing golden rays and blazing in Cadderly's mind. Cadderly cried out and looked away, nearly shouting, "fl/umas beffe!" as he fell out of his chair. Cadderly sat up and looked at the wizard, who was still sitting, holding the unremarkable wand in his extended hand.
"What just happened?" Belisarius asked bluntly. "I saw the powers - four distinctly," Cadderly stammered, "in my mind."
"And you repeated the triggering phrases," the perturbed wizard added, "exactly." "But how?" Cadderly asked him, honestly perplexed. "Go see a priest," Belisarius said with a snarl. "Why did
you waste my time and effort on things you already knew?"
"I did not," Cadderly insisted.
"Go see a priest," Belisarius repeated, tossing the wand to Cadderly.
The young man accepted the item and looked to the floor beside the wizard's chair. "\fe have one more ring to explore," he remarked, backing away into his chair as he spoke.
Belisarius scooped up the remaining ring, a gold band lined with diamond chips, and held it out for Cadderly to see. "You tell me," the wizard insisted.
Again Cadderly heard the distant song playing, but for the sake of his valued friend's pride, he consciously pushed it away.
"It is not magical," he lied, extending his hand to accept it.
"Hah!" the wizard snapped and pulled back his hand. "This is the most potent item of all!" He held it close to his sparkling, admiring eyes. "A ring for wizards," he explained, "to heighten their powers. It would be quite useless to you."
An alarm went off in Cadderly's head. What was sneaky Belisarius up to? The young priest concentrated not on the ring, but on the wizard himself, and saw a shadow image of Belisarius perched on the wizard's shoulder, waggling its eager fingers and rubbing its hands anxiously as it peered at the ring. But Cadderly realized that the wizard's greed was indeed for a wizard's item. The bent of the shadow told him beyond any doubt that Belisarius had not lied to him, and he privately berated himself for thinking differently.
"Keep it," he offered.
The wizard nearly toppled from his chair. His smile seemed as though it would engulf his ears. "I will," he said, his voice an unintentional shriek. "What might I pay you in return?"
Cadderly waved the thought away.
"I must insist," Belisarius continued, undaunted. "This is too valuable a gift - "
"Not to me," Cadderly reminded him.
Belisarius conceded the point with a nod, but still searched for some way to give something back to the young priest.
"Your walking stick!" he proclaimed at last.
Cadderly took up the item, not understanding.
"You use it as a weapon?"
"If I must use anything at all," Cadderly answered. "It is harder than my hand." The mere mention of open-handed combat inevitably brought an image of Danica to Cadderly's mind.
"But not as sturdy as you would like?" Belisarius went on, not noticing the cloud of despair that briefly crossed Cadderly's face.
"Do not deny it," the wizard insisted. "You regaled your fears for the feebleness of the weapon in your fight with the minotaur, when you readily accepted the image of it breaking."
Cadderly didn't argue.
"Leave it with me, my boy!" Belisarius cried. "Give me a few days, and I promise you that you will never consider it a feeble weapon again."
"So you are an enchanter as well?" Cadderly remarked.
"There are many wizardly talents that a cleric would not understand," the wizard replied with an exaggerated air of superiority.
"Especially a cleric who does not understand his own talents," Cadderly replied, his simple admission stealing the wizard's bluster.
Belisarius nodded and managed a weak smile, then left Cadderly with a final thought: "Moderation."
Cadderly was a bit surprised to find Nameless still wandering the road between the wizard's tower and Carra-doon, expecting that the beggar would either have gone to Carradoon to further his day's take, or to his wife and children to enjoy a reprieve from the unenviable lifestyle that had been forced upon him.
Cadderly grew even more surprised when the beggar looked at him and gave him an exaggerated wink, holding up and jingling the purse of gold with a lascivious smile on his dirty face.
Something about that gesture struck Cadderly as badly out of character for Nameless, an act of open greed or open thanks, neither of which applied to the proud, unfortunate man Cadderly had met earlier on the road.
Then Cadderly saw the shadows.
He could not make them out distinctly, as he had the images of Jhanine and her children. They were hunched and growling things, their forms shifting continually, but always emanating a clear and unrepentant wickedness to the young priest. One imaginary claw reached out from the beggar's shoulder and raked the air in Cadderly's direction.
Suddenly Cadderly was very afraid. His neck hair stood on end; his heart began to drum rapidly. A sickly sweet smell came to him then; he thought he heard the buzz of flies. Cadderly shook his head vigorously, feeling that he must be going insane. It seemed as if his senses had heightened, become animallike, and the sudden intrusion of so much stimulation nearly overwhelmed the young priest.
Then he was calm again and looking at the innocent beggar man. He wished that he had his walking stick, and glanced back to the distant tower.
"Fine day!" the beggar said, seeming cheery, though Cadderly instinctively knew better.
Fete. The word came into Cadderly's head and he almost uttered it. He looked down to his hand, the onyx ring upon one finger, and saw that he had subconsciously angled it the beggar's way.
"Must you be gone so soon?" the beggar man asked, sounding innocent, almost wounded.
Cadderly saw the black shadows crouched upon the man's shoulder, saw the claws and venom-dripping fangs.
He nodded briskly, pulled his cloak tightly around his shoulders, and hurried on his way.
He caught a whiff of that sickly sweet scent again and heard the flies. If he had been alone and not so unnerved, he would have stopped and sought out the source. He glanced to the side only briefly as he passed, to the bushes lining the road.
If he had looked closer, Cadderly would have discovered the body, already bloated after just a few hours in the late summer sun. And if he had found the strength to work his magical perceptions, Cadderly would have seen, too, the spirit of Nameless, helpless and hopeless and pitifully wandering until the gods came to claim it.
Unnecessary Evils
he young priest had noticed the change! Ghost cursed himself and considered the implications I of the unexpected occurrence. He had never re I ally believed that he would be able to kill Cad deriy so easily - according to every piece of information he had been given, this young priest was a deadly opponent - but when he had seen Cadderly coming down the road, alone and with no obvious witnesses around, Ghost had briefly wondered if the purse might be earned quickly, if his artistry had so easily paid off.
The beggar man had gained Cadderly's confidence; that much Ghost knew from eavesdropping on their conversation. Now, posing as that man, the assassin thought he could get close, could catch Cadderly with his guard down. But the young priest had noticed the change!
Ghost replayed the brief encounter, trying to discern where his act had failed. Nothing obvious came to him; certainly nothing so blatant as to justify sending a defensively huddled Cadderly running on his way. A singular fear came to the assassin then: if Cadderly proved as formidable as the reports had indicated - and as Ghost was now beginning to suspect - then he might be strong enough to fend off the magic of the Ghearufu. It had been done only twice before, both times by wizards, when Ghost's attempts at possession had been mentally blocked.
"There are other options" Ghost said aloud, reminding himself of his many allies and of the fact that both of those resisting wizards had wound up as worm food. One of those times, Ghost had possessed a victim that the unsuspecting mage could not suspect - his wife. What a sweet kill that had been! On the other occasion, Ghost had served the attending Night Mask band as an infiltrator, providing them with such an enormous amount of information that the targeted wizard, as powerful as he was, had been among the society's easiest kills.
"Either way, young Cadderly," the merciless assassin whispered to the wind, "I shall paint my picture, and you shall be dead before the first of winter's snows."
With an evil snicker, the assassin in a beggar's body went to the bushes and retrieved his own form. The magical ring had nearly completed its healing work on the limp-muscled figure by then; the stench was fast fading and the flies had gone away.
"Do you wear a ring such as mine?" the evil man teased to the formless spirit he knew would still be wandering the area. Ghost willed the Ghearufu, white glove and mirror, back into sight and took the black-gloved hand from the hand of the corpse. He fell back into his mind, connecting with the powers of the magical device.
The eyes of the assassin's more familiar form blinked open just in time to watch the beggar's body fall stiffly to the side. Ghost spent a moment reorienting himself to his customary form, then propped himself up on his elbows.
"No magic ring?" He laughed at the beggar man's corpse. "Then you will stay dead, pitiful fool, though whoever finds your body will have no idea of how you died!" The thought widened Ghost's smile. In his earliest days with the Ghearufu, more than a hundred years before, he had hacked up his unmarked victims. His confidence had quickly grown, though, and Ghost had soon changed tactics, thinking in his budding arrogance that the mysteries surrounding the demise of an apparently healthy body would serve as an appropriate calling card.
Ghost willed the Ghearufu away and brushed the dirt from his clothes. He started down the road immediately for the distant gates of Carradoon, for his room at the Dragon's Codpiece.
The firbolg noted with distaste the apparently normal situation at the farmhouse on the outskirts of Carradoon. A few hens clucked and strutted, pecking at discarded seed here and there; the three horses in the stable beside the barn showed no signs that they had been spooked in the least; and the house itself seemed perfectly secure, not a broken window or even a visible scrape mark on any door.
Vander knew better. It was always this way, always done in absolute secrecy. It all seemed so perfectly cowardly to the warrior giant.
"\\fe could have stayed in the forest," Vander muttered, flipping his white-furred cloak back over his muscular shoulders.
The black-and-silver-outfitted assassins at the firbolg's sides looked at each other curiously. "It was by your orders ..." one of them began to reply, but Vander's upraised hand silenced him.
Not by my orders, the firbolg thought, remembering when Ghost, in Vander's magnificent body, had set the troupe into motion, while Vander could only sit and watch helplessly from inside Ghost's weak form.
"\\fe must get inside," offered the assassin after a few moments of uncomfortable silence. "This yard can be seen from the road."
"The light of day offends you," the firbolg remarked.
"It reveals us," the Night Mask replied obstinately. Vander cast him a threatening scowl but did follow the two men to the door. The portal was large enough so that Vander did not have to alter his size, and he was glad, for he did not enjoy wearing a human frame, especially not around the treacherous murderers. He liked the imposing strength of his giant body, the long and muscled limbs that could reach an enemy from across a room and easily throttle him.
\knder hesitated at the threshold. "The house is secure," one of the assassins inside assured the firbolg, misunderstanding his dismay. "Only the elder daughter remains alive, and she is held" - the lewd way the man spoke that word irritated %nder profoundly -  "in the bedroom."
Vander strode in. "Where?" he demanded, purposely redirecting his gaze from the bloodied male and female bodies in the corner of the small kitchen. The human assassin, obviously unbothered by the gruesome sight, sat at the table, casually eating breakfast. He motioned to a door at the back of the room.
Propelled by his mounting rage, Vander was across the kitchen and through the door in an instant. He nearly tripped over a smaller bloodied form just inside the second room, and that moved him along only faster, more determinedly.
This room connected to a side bedroom, its door open a crack. A whimpering sound came from within, revealing to kinder what was going on before the firbolg even shoved the door wide.
The girl lay on the bed, half-dressed and securely tied to the posts by her wrists and ankles, with the sides of her mouth pulled tightly back by a cloth gag. An assassin lay on each side of her, teasing her and taking delight at her terrified movements.
Vander had to stoop low in this room to avoid the ceiling beams, but that didn't slow him. He swept aside the three Night Masks standing in his way with a single movement, then stepped to the foot of the bed.
One of the prone assassins looked up and grinned wickedly, misconstruing the firbolg's urgency. The fool motioned for Vander to join in the fun.