Madri viewed her meeting with Demascus as one more state function. Certainly the stakes were potentially high, but she was used to that. Zalathorm worried that Damascus might turn out to be a secret agent for Estagund, who’d somehow fooled even divine beings. It had happened before.
They’d met under an umbrella, one midday. Demascus, who she’d thought of then as a pale-skinned human, acted like he’d rather be anywhere else. He refused to so much as look at her, talking only of politics, of temples and gods and their clergy, and other meaningless jabber. He wouldn’t speak about Mystra, the “great favor” he’d supposedly done the people of Halruaa, or anything of real substance. He disdained even trying a single draw on the water pipe. And he’d caught her glance only once-she saw that his eyes were the color of ancient glaciers-then he quickly looked away.
If it hadn’t been for that one passing glance, Madri would have thought him one of the biggest bores she’d ever had the misfortune to meet. And that would have been that.
Zalathorm was disappointed with her report, but sometimes even someone with her skills in finding out the obscure and hidden comes up dry. She’d done background on Demascus, using a mix of her mundane and arcane resources, and found so little that she’d become sure that, at the very least, he was an expert in obscuring his past. Hells, he could even throw her off the trail. It made her curious, but she had other issues to fill her mind.
A letter came for her two months later from Demascus, asking that they meet again at the same place. She penned a reply and gave it to the messenger. And instantly regretted it. She wasn’t looking for another opportunity to learn what Zalathorm wanted; she wanted to see the stranger’s startling eyes again. What a fool you are, Madri! This is no assignment. Remember what an ass he was?
In his message Demascus had said, “I hope you’ll accept my apology for acting the hound. I wasn’t ready for a social engagement. Sorry I subjected you to my worst self, still tired from my previous task. But if you’re available, I’d like to see you again and apologize in person. You’re one of the few people I know in the city.”
When she met him the second time, it was a cool evening. They sat at the same table as before, this time with candles flickering between them. The smells of smoke, body heat over crushed roses, and violets mingled in the air. He looked right at her. His eyes were wells, leading down to depths of experience she could hardly imagine. They talked for hours.
Later, when the evening had drawn to a close, they kissed goodnight. Her chest, the hollows behind her knees, every part of her body seemed to fill with light. Her hands clutched briefly across the small of his back, pulling him into an embrace. What was she doing?
She’d been struck insane, obviously.
When they drew apart, she suggested they meet for a third time. And so their romance began.
A glum-looking watersoul banged into the Copperhead, and Madri’s reminisces went up with the smoke of a dozen exhalations.
Damn me, what’s past is past, she thought. I’ve got to focus on the present. Halruaa is gone, and I’m in Akanul. Thanks to … Demascus himself, perhaps.
She remembered when he’d last gazed at her in Halruaa, with sorrow scribing his face like talons. As if he was sorry for what he was doing, even as his hands tightened on her head, for the final sharp twist …
Darkness seemed to stretch forever.
Until she was somewhere else, a mausoleum. Demascus, the Sword of the Gods, was there, too. Except that he was clutching his blade like a child just out of weapons training. He gaped at her with wide, ice-blue eyes. If Madri hadn’t immediately lapsed into another fit of timeless nonexistence, she would have gone for his throat.
“Madam, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there,” a voice said. She shook her head, clearing the memory and returning to the moment. The proprietor of the Copperhead was wiping down a table, scant feet from her. He was hardly more than a kid, pierced with flashing jewelry, and staring with a question in his eyes. “Follow me. I’ll set you up with a pipe.”
“No, no, I’m fine,” she replied. “I came in to get out of the rain.”
“Ah. I suppose that’s all right. If you change your mind, just head up to the counter there.” The kid gave her a curious stare.
She sometimes forgot that, though she could appear and disappear without drawing attention to herself, as if people in the vicinity had just edited her into or out of their consciousness, it didn’t mean she was invisible.
Time to leave. She concentrated, hoping that if she fixed carefully in her mind the image of where she wanted to go, she could avoid too many more random hops …
Flicker.
Earthmotes drifting through piles of lightning-lit clouds.
Flicker.
A cliff face on which the Sea of Fallen Stars lashed its rage.
Flicker.
A floating obelisk, cratered and crusted like a fossil dug from the living rock of Toril and set adrift in the sky. Tentacles hundreds of yards long slithered down its sides. What? Was she even in Akanul any-
Flicker.
Darkness and the smell of loose earth. The odor, despite its sour tang, was a welcome one. She was back. Madri mumbled a charm. A light caught in the lantern mantle. The glow revealed a small side table and chair. A silvery mask, blank but for two shadowed eye openings, lay next to the lantern on the table.
She dropped into the chair. It was the one comfortable piece of furniture down here. She eyed the mask, wondering if it had a comment or instruction for her. When the mask remained quiescent, she turned to look at the stone wall opposite her. The surface possessed a couple of notable features-a narrow flight of stairs leading up to a secret door and a painting.
Red velvet draped the painting, hiding the visage scowling beneath it. The first time she’d locked eyes with the entity called the Necromancer, illustrated on the canvas, it had spoken words of horror to her. She’d fallen to the floor as her body spasmed out of control. Afterward she’d retched, but nothing came up. The image she’d seen, a face composed of broken pieces of reality, screaming in frozen unending agony at its splintered flesh and mind … Gods!
That event further sustained her hope that she wasn’t a ghost. Ghosts didn’t have fits, did they? Or try to puke up their guts?
After she’d collected herself, Madri had procured a drape for the painting. She had a feeling that, no matter her status, too much undirected exposure to the Necromancer could permanently damage her.
She glanced away. There were two more interesting features in the room. The first was a fissure across the floor that dropped into darkness. She’d made no attempt to plumb it, other than throwing a single pebble into the cavity and failing to hear it strike bottom.
The second was a heaped pile of grave dirt. Madri pushed herself out of the chair and approached the black mound. Close up, the sour odor was mixed with the reek of a rotting carcass. Beneath the dirt lay the shell of Kalkan Swordbreaker. Kalkan who, one day soon-far sooner than Demascus could hope to be ready for-would be reborn. When this self-styled nemesis of the Sword of the Gods woke, he’d help Madri exact vengeance against Demascus. So the mask promised, at any rate.
Her nose wrinkled with the odor. But she patted the waist-high pile of soil like it was a pet. “You’d better actually be in there, Kalkan, slouching back to the world to live again. Because sometimes I worry I’m imagining all this as I spin in my own grave …”