"Hah! I have disarmed you, villain!" Jack gloated. He snatched up the other weapon and swung wildly with both blades, groping for contact with his adversary.
Instead his adversary fled. Jack caught sight of a couple of quick footfalls in the dust, and then the brush and branches up on one side of the road rustled violently. Droplets of blood marked his assailant's trail-but the blood drops lasted only a moment before sizzling away in some strange dark vapor.
"Come back here!" Jack roared. "You have much to answer for, my friend!" He ran a couple of steps in the general direction of his foe's retreat, swinging aggressively, but there was no sign of the shadow Jack. "Curses!"
"Is he gone?" Illyth asked.
"I'm afraid so. He ran off, as if to mock the character of that noble hero whose likeness he so impudently stole," Jack said. He leaned against the carriage, suddenly tired beyond belief from the strenuous duel. "Do you have any idea of who that was?"
Illyth rounded on him with a look of such anger and amazement that Jack took a step back. "In the names of all the gods, why should I know who that was? He was your identical twin! Are you telling me that you have no idea why someone who looks exactly hike you showed up at my doorstep, ushered me into the coach, and started pawing at me like a lovesick orc?"
Jack shook his head, although he couldn't shake a very odd sense of guilt over his double's actions, as if he were somehow responsible for what anyone who looked like him did. "Dear Illyth, I am many things, not all of them reputable, but I have never sought to force my attentions on anyone. And I would never do so to one of my dearest friends. I am at a complete loss to explain who that person was or what he was doing." He paused, and then added, "I am just glad that I was able to drive him off before he did you any harm."
The noblewoman looked down at her dress. She had to hold it with one hand to cover her bosom. "Who would want to impersonate you? And why would he want to abduct me? What can this possibly mean?"
"I suspect that this stone was aimed at me and not at you. I seem to be collecting enemies at a very unhealthy pace."
"Which of your enemies would take the trouble to impersonate you so perfectly?" Illyth asked. "Tell me a name, and I'll see to it that the authorities arrest him. I have some friends in high places, and I want that… that person locked up safely in a cell somewhere."
Who, indeed? Jack thought for a moment. The House Kuldath? Zandria? Morgath and Saerk didn't have the means or motive to strike at Illyth, and creating doppelgangers to strike at those close to her rivals simply was not Zandria's style. The Knights of the Hawk? Marcus and Ashwillow would certainly have nothing to do with such a scheme. Iphegor? Now there was a possibility, although it seemed overly subtle for the necromancer, and Jack couldn't imagine that even a black-hearted scoundrel like Iphegor would willingly strike at Illyth to get at Jack.
No, what they needed was someone who was anxious to strike at both Jack and Illyth.
"Lord Tiger and Lady Mantis," Jack said. "I am sure they were behind this. Who else would have reason to strike at both of us together, or to strike at you alone? Somehow they must have determined our identities outside the Game, and they mean to silence you and discredit me."
"Or to silence you by framing you for rape, murder, or worse," Illyth added. "It makes sense. Oh, Jack, what should we do? We have to find out who they are so that we can involve the authorities before they try again!"
Jack wasn't quite so certain that involving the authorities would be a wise move on his part, although he couldn't fault Illyth for thinking so. Best to move softly and avoid coming forward unless he absolutely had to.
"I know that you were looking forward to tonight's Game, Illyth, but do you think it would be wise to attend? If we fail to appear tonight, Tiger and Mantis might guess that their ploy has succeeded, and we might finally have them at a disadvantage. Perhaps they'll make a mistake."
Illyth looked down at her dress. "Solving the riddle of the Seven Faceless Lords doesn't seem as intriguing as it did an hour ago," she said. "I don't share your certainty that Tiger and Mantis are responsible, but I agree that attending the Game isn't a good idea at the moment. That person escaped, and who knows where he's going to strike next?"
"I intend to confront him at my earliest convenience and settle this issue," Jack replied. "The Green Lord's banquet is in four days, correct? By then I will have certainly apprehended the miscreant who borrowed my appearance, thus ending the threat." He offered Illyth his cloak and draped it over her shoulders, then helped her to his coach. "I'll stay with you awhile and keep watch, in case he returns, and we'll pass the time by comparing clues, as we'd planned."
"That's right," Illyth said, narrowing her eyes. "Jack, you were late by nearly an hour!"
"Punctuality is a virtue I never claimed to possess in abundance, dear Illyth," Jack said. He climbed into the coach behind her and signaled to the driver. "Back to Woodenhall, good man. We will be staying in this evening."
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jack passed the night comfortably stationed in the parlor of Woodenhall, ostensibly watching for any return of the doppelganger or shadow that had attacked Illyth earlier. But well before dawn he rose and slipped away, anxious to get back to the city in time to meet Anders and Tharzon. He left word with the staff that Illyth was to be guarded carefully and made his preparations for an expedition into Sarbreen's depths. He should have been trembling with anticipation, given the situation; if all went well, he might take possession of a prize so valuable that Elana's commission and the Game of Masks would pale in comparison. But Jack still couldn't help but feel that Zandria had excruciatingly poor timing. He had too many other things to think about, so, with a mind full of dark suspicions and an uneasy heart, he met Anders and Tharzon near the house rented out by the Company of the Red Falcon and followed Zandria into Sarbreen.
The Guilder's Tomb proved to be a surprisingly accessible place. From the sewers beneath Tentowers, an old vertical shaft led to a deep drain tunnel far beneath the city. Deeper tunnels and complexes intersected the shaft at various intervals, like floors of a building connected indirectly by a laundry chute or dumbwaiter. About sixty feet below the city sewers, a long, vaulted passage slanted across the vertical drop, leading to a broad chamber guarded by fierce-looking stone statues of grim dwarves. Zandria's company splashed through the sewers for a time, then rappelled down to the intersecting passage and marched only a hundred yards to reach the place. Jack, Anders, and Tharzon followed at a discreet distance.
Dwarves were hewers of rock and carvers of stone; Sarbreen, their ancient city, was bored through the rocky prominence of Raven's Bluff, in some cases hundreds of feet below the surface. The place was a maze in three dimensions, an endless labyrinth of shafts and passages, halls and chambers. In over a century and a half of human habitation on the hillside above, no one had ever mapped more than a tiny portion of Sarbreen's lost halls, but no part of Sarbreen was more than an hour's walk from the city above-if one knew the way.
If one didn't, the dwarven ruin might as well have been a wilderness the size of a kingdom. Most expeditions returned empty-handed after wandering aimlessly for hours or days through the same chambers. A few encountered old dwarven traps, hidden pits, and deadly blades that scythed out of dark alcoves, and some ran into dangerous and deadly monsters-undead things that hungered for the blood of the living, ferocious scavengers that fed from the city's effluvia drifting down from above, and horrifying aberrations that crept up into Sarbreen's halls from even more mysterious and remote depths far below the light. Jack had abandoned dungeoneering as a pastime after one such encounter. Hours of tedium punctuated by rare moments of utter terror hardly seemed like a heroic pursuit to him. Besides, the few expeditions that were successful brought their loot back to the surface, where rogues like Jack could easily help themselves to someone else's good fortune.