Mask of Spells (Mask of the Demonsouled #3) Read online

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Mazael. “I suspect we have some things to discuss.”

  Chapter 4: Something Went Wrong

  Mazael had Timothy check the Prophetess’s location with the maethweisyr, and then they set off, crossing the valley and heading north.

  They slowed as they climbed the far side of the valley, largely because Azurvaltoria was having a hard time keeping up. Whatever had happened to her and the resultant fight with the valgasts had left her exhausted. Mazael considered helping her along but decided against it. Romaria was giving Azurvaltoria a fixed, unblinking stare, just as she had done to Sigaldra when they had first met and she had thought Mazael might want to seduce her. In truth, if Mazael had not been married he might well have seduced Sigaldra so he could see Romaria’s point.

  Still, there were limits. There had been a few times in his younger days when he had regretted sleeping with a woman, but attempting to seduce a dragon in human form? Mazael had made many mistakes in his life, but he hoped he wasn’t quite that stupid.

  So he had Basjun and Earnachar help Azurvaltoria along. Neither man seemed happy about it, but they obeyed.

  “This ought to be far enough,” said Mazael as they reached a barren, stony hilltop. They could keep watch from here, and no valgasts could approach the hill undetected.

  Though come to think of it, after the fiery battle along the banks of the stream, perhaps the valgasts had had their fill of fighting for the day.

  “Yes,” croaked Azurvaltoria. “Let’s all sit down. That’s an excellent idea.” She staggered over to a flat stone and sat down with a sigh, her legs stretched out before her.

  Mazael gripped his scabbard and slid Talon into it, exchanging a glance with Romaria as he did. She gave a little shrug. She didn’t know what to make of the dragon in human form, and truth be told, neither did Mazael.

  “Basjun,” said Mazael. “Get a fire going. We…”

  “Don’t bother,” said Azurvaltoria. She grunted and made a flipping gesture with her hand, and a large flame erupted from the ground nearby, throwing heat and shadow over the hilltop. “There’s nothing here to burn.”

  “Except magic, apparently,” said Timothy, watching her.

  “You would know, wizard,” said Azurvaltoria. “That was a nice trick with the elemental staff.” She smiled and wiped some sweat from her forehead. “Though I had already taught the little skulking rats to fear fire.”

  Azurvaltoria looked for all the world like an exhausted human woman at the end of her strength. But as Mazael’s father had taught him, appearances were often deceiving.

  “About that,” said Mazael. “We have a few questions.”

  Azurvaltoria snorted. “I thought you might.”

  “First,” said Mazael, “what is a dead dragon doing wandering the mountains of Skuldar in human form while pursued by a valgast army?”

  “To start,” said Azurvaltoria, “if I am dead, I am clearly doing it wrong.”

  “Obviously,” said Mazael. “Hence the question.”

  Azurvaltoria shrugged. “Bad luck. I was heading north, and I ran into a small army of the little rats. As it happens, they weren’t looking for me. They were looking for you.”

  “The Prophetess,” said Mazael.

  “Yes,” said Azurvaltoria. “Our dear Lady Celina du Almaine has everything she needs to summon her goddess. She has the Mask of Marazadra. She has the Horn of Doom and Fate. She has a child with the Sight to act as a vessel.” Sigaldra stirred at that. “Now she just needs to live long enough to reach the Heart of the Spider at Mount Armyar. Of course, she has you on her trail, which rather lowers the odds of her living long enough to reach it. So she has called all her allies and sent them after you.”

  Basjun frowned at the mention of the mountain. Mount Armyar? Mazael had never heard of it, but he was willing to wager that Basjun had. Perhaps they could reach it before the Prophetess and lay a trap for her.

  “How did they wind up capturing you?” said Mazael.

  “I was weakened,” said Azurvaltoria. She smirked. “The valgasts have something of a grudge against me. Whenever they tried to steal from the caverns of the Veiled Mountain, I made sure they regretted it. Unfortunately, they saw a chance to take revenge. I made them suffer for it, but my strength failed, and they overwhelmed me.” She hesitated. “As loathe as I am to concede it, your arrival was…timely. The spell the valgast priests used prevented me from regenerating my magical strength. I might not have been able to break free before they took me to Tchroth.”

  “Tchroth?” said Mazael, trying to pronounce the strange word.

  “The chief city of the valgasts,” said Azurvaltoria. She scowled and rubbed at her neck as if trying to loosen a stiff muscle. “It’s in the caverns of the underworld, not all that far from here. More or less under Mount Armyar, come to think of it. The Prophetess will probably pass through the place on her way to the Heart of the Spider.”

  “Another question,” said Mazael.

  Azurvaltoria sighed. “You mortals. Always so full of questions.”

  “We did just save you from death or slavery by your own admission,” said Mazael. “How many answers is your life worth? If you’d rather not answer questions, we could give you back to the valgasts.”

  Azurvaltoria blinked at him, and then snorted, her gaze turning towards Romaria. “I see why you like him.”

  “Why didn’t you kill them all?” said Mazael.

  “I was weakened,” said Azurvaltoria. “I used a considerable amount of magical power to fight off the valgasts, and once the wizards found me, their spells prevented me from regenerating my strength.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” said Mazael, “and you know it.”

  She lifted her dark eyebrows. “And just what did you mean, my lord Mazael?”

  “You shouldn’t need magic to kill a thousand valgasts,” said Mazael. “You shouldn’t need magic to kill a single valgast. Take to the air and breathe fire on them. They’ll die in their dozens. Or rip them apart with your claws and crush them with your fangs. After you killed the first few hundred, they should have fled. So why didn’t you?”

  Azurvaltoria glared at him. The glare of an ancient dragon, potent with magic, should have been intimidating even to a child of the Old Demon, but to Mazael’s surprise, he felt no fear at all. There was anger in the dragon's stare, but he also thought there was more than a little fear.

  She was afraid.

  “I can’t,” said Azurvaltoria in a quiet voice.

  “Can’t do what?” said Mazael.

  “At the moment,” said Azurvaltoria, “I am unable to resume my true form.”

  “I did not think the Prophetess was capable of wielding magic of that potency…ah, Lady Azurvaltoria,” said Timothy.

  “Lady Azurvaltoria?” said Azurvaltoria. “I like him. He’s polite. In answer to your question, she can’t. Not by herself. But while you and the Champion fought, I didn’t realize she was creating a bond between herself and the Mask of Marazadra. The Mask is a font of dark magic, and she drew upon it to work a spell far beyond her native strength.”

  “She tried to kill you?” said Romaria.

  Azurvaltoria’s smile showed teeth. “She tried. The spell was supposed to rend my physical form and kill me. Even with the Mask’s power fueling her spell, it wasn’t quite enough. Instead, it triggered a shape change.”

  “From your true form to your current shape,” said Mazael. “Obviously, you got away from the caverns of Veiled Mountain before they collapsed. So why can’t you change back to your true form?”

  “A spell lock,” said Timothy, and they all looked at him. “It is a risk of shapeshifting magic. Someone like Lady Romaria, for instance, can easily shift form because it’s part of her essential nature. For a dragon to take human form is harder, because it is…well, unnatural, like forcing water to flow uphill. A shapechanged entity, whether human, dragon, or anything else, is more vulnerable to magical attack than other
wise.”

  “Essentially correct,” said Azurvaltoria. “I am afraid I am trapped in human form until I can kill the Prophetess.”

  “How dreadful for you,” said Mazael.

  She either missed his sarcasm or didn’t care. “It is! How you manage in these feeble physical configurations, I have no idea. No scales, no claws, no talons, no wings! You have to walk everywhere! Egregious! And the human female form is even more inconvenient than the male one.” She grasped her chest. “These damned udders throw off my balance, and that one cannot stop staring at them.”

  Basjun blinked, turning red behind his beard.

  “We…do not customarily call them udders,” said Sigaldra. She looked a little poleaxed. Mazael understood. This had been one of the stranger conversations he’d had in his life.

  Yet he saw the opportunity. He had thought the mysterious wizard attacking the valgasts might make a useful ally, and he had been more right than he had known. Even locked in human form, Azurvaltoria possessed a great deal of powerful magic. More importantly, she possessed knowledge that Mazael needed. The Prophetess wanted to summon the goddess Marazadra, and Mazael had no idea how she intended to do that, and to defeat her, he needed to understand her.

  “Whatever,” said Azurvaltoria, lowering her arms. Basjun looked at her chest again, blinked, and looked away. Mazael understood the poor lad’s discomfiture. The dragon might have been locked in human form, but it was an attractive human form. “It is…undignified, to say the least.”

  “The author of your indignities,” said Mazael, “is the Prophetess.”

  “Obviously,” said Azurvaltoria.

  “Then you’re stuck in human form until you kill her?” said Mazael.

  “Or someone else kills her,” said Azurvaltoria. “The spell is bound to both of us. I can’t end it without killing her first.”

  “As it happens,” said Mazael, “I want to kill her, too.”

  “Then you are proposing an alliance,” said Azurvaltoria. She drew herself up. “I do not need the help of anyone. For three thousand years, I guarded the caverns of the Veiled Mountain, and slew anyone who dared to enter, I…”

  “The caverns in the Veiled Mountain are buried,” said Mazael, “the Prophetess has the Mask of Marazadra that you were bound to guard, you are locked in human form, and when we found you, the valgasts were about to carry you off to their lair. It is just possible you might need help, even from lowly humans.”

  Azurvaltoria let out a long, irritated breath. “As loathe as I am to admit it…you might be right. So. What do you suggest?”

  “An alliance,” said Mazael. “Even in human form, you’re still powerful…”

  Azurvaltoria snorted. “High praise.”

  “But not powerful enough to kill the Prophetess by yourself,” said Mazael. “Neither are we. We’ve faced her three times – at Greatheart Keep, at Armalast, and most recently in your caverns. All three times she escaped. I don’t intend for her to escape a fourth time.”

  “So be it,” said Azurvaltoria. “I accept your proposal. We shall hunt and kill the Prophetess together.”

  “And if we are to be allies,” said Mazael, “then we shall share our resources. Such as knowledge.”

  “Ah,” said Azurvaltoria with a little smile. “Always the questions. Very well. What do you want to know?”

  ###

  Sigaldra stared at the woman who had once been a dragon.

  The thought of allying with such a creature unsettled Sigaldra. She remembered looking upon Azurvaltoria in all of her majesty and power in the caverns of the Veiled Mountain, her wings wide enough to blot out of the sun, her teeth like daggers and her talons like swords, her blue scales like plates of armor. Mazael presumed to ally with such a creature? A dragon needed allies no more than the sun needed firewood.

  And yet…Azurvaltoria had been defeated, hadn’t she? The dragon had underestimated the Prophetess, and the Prophetess had locked her into human form. All that strength and power hadn’t saved her. Perhaps Azurvaltoria’s knowledge would make the difference.

  Sigaldra glanced at Adalar and saw her own doubts mirrored in his face. Behind him she saw Earnachar, trying to keep up his usual scowl, while she noted with a flicker of amusement that Basjun was very carefully not looking at the dragon. Yet Earnachar caught Sigaldra’s attention for a moment. She had hated the man and desired his death, and while she would never like him, they had worked together to rescue Liane.

  Surely working with a dragon would be at least as insane as going into the mountains of Skuldar with Earnachar, and they had already done that.

  Sigaldra gave Adalar a shrug and turned her attention back to Azurvaltoria and Mazael.

  “What I want to know,” said Mazael, “is how the Prophetess intends to summon Marazadra back to the mortal world.”

  “Ah,” said Azurvaltoria. “I thought you might. Clever of you to realize her goal, though I assume you know not her methods.”

  “She has been proclaiming her goal to anyone who would listen,” said Mazael. “As to her methods, I need to understand what she intends if I am to defeat her.”

  “True,” said Azurvaltoria without rancor. “So. To understand the Prophetess’s goals and methods, you must first understand some history. Some of it, I presume, you have already learned. A long time ago, before even I was born, many dark powers competed to rule this world – the San-keth, the soliphages, the Trichirabi, the deep princes, the Imperium of the Dark Elderborn, and others. Marazadra was one of those dark powers. So were the Demonsouled…and the Old Demon was the chief of the Demonsouled.”

  “The Urdmoloch,” said Sigaldra. Ragnachar and his orcragar warriors had worshiped the Urdmoloch as a god, and if the rumors were true, Ragnachar had even been a child of the Urdmoloch, his blood tainted by demon power. Certainly, that explained both the man’s cruelty and his prowess in battle, but neither had been enough to stop Mazael Cravenlock, who had slain him below the gates of Sword Town on the day Lucan Mandragon unleashed the runedead.

  “Yes, the Old Demon,” said Azurvaltoria with spiteful scorn. For an instant, Sigaldra wondered if the dragon’s venom was aimed at her, but then she realized Azurvaltoria was thinking of her enemy. “The Urdmoloch, as you barbarians called him. Or the Hand of Chaos, or whatever other poetic names his enemies gave him. He loved that, you know.”

  “He did,” said Mazael, his face hard with some dark memory of his own. Romaria stepped closer to him.

  “The worst of humanity and the worst of demons, bundled together within one man,” said Azurvaltoria. “The Old Demon wanted to become a god, the one and only god, but you knew that already. Of course, he had many competitors to that title, Marazadra and the Trichirabi and the Dark Elderborn and all the others. He also had a grave disadvantage. He had tremendous power, but he was half-spirit, so he could not attack his enemies unless they attacked him first.”

  “That never slowed him down,” said Mazael.

  “No, it didn’t,” said Azurvaltoria. “He didn’t need to destroy his enemies. All he had to do was to talk them into destroying themselves for him, and he was very good at it. That’s what he did to Marazadra and Sepharivaim both. He tricked them into destroying themselves. Of course, you can’t kill a god, not really. They’re like water that way.”

  “Water?” said Adalar, his confusion plain.

  “Water can be frozen, my lord,” said Timothy. “It can be boiled. It can be poured away and dissipated. But it can never truly be destroyed. Even steam can condense and become liquid once more.”

  “The wizard is correct,” said Azurvaltoria. “Marazadra foresaw her destruction at the Old Demon’s hands, so she made preparations. She bound her power into three artifacts, one greater, two lesser, in preparation for her return.”

  “The Mask of Marazadra,” said Mazael, nodding, “the Talisman of the Messenger, and the Mask of the Champion.”

  “Correct,” said Azurvaltoria. “You saw the Talisman of the Messenger.” />
  “That metal spider on the Prophetess’s chest,” said Sigaldra. “Right between her…udders.”

  Azurvaltoria snorted. “Yes. The purpose of the Talisman is to empower an agent to facilitate Marazadra’s return. The purpose of the Mask of the Champion is to assist the agent in her work.”

  “Hence Rigoric,” said Mazael, “and why the Mask of the Champion keeps healing him.”

  “Precisely,” said Azurvaltoria.

  “So what does the Mask of Marazadra do?” said Mazael. “It is the reservoir of Marazadra’s power?”

  “To an extent, but it is more than that,” said Azurvaltoria. “To put it in the simplest possible terms, the Mask of Marazadra is an…egg.”

  “An egg?” said Sigaldra. The Mask hadn’t looked like an egg. The Mask of the Champion looked like it had been made from miniature sword blades. The Mask of Marazadra looked like a steel spider that gripped its bearer’s face, and Sigaldra couldn’t imagine voluntarily wearing such a ghastly thing.

  “So if the Mask as an egg,” said Adalar, “then the Prophetess is trying to summon Marazadra’s…daughter?”

  “No, no,” said Azurvaltoria with an aggrieved wave of her hand. “Marazadra was a goddess. Death doesn’t work for a creature like her the way it would for you, or even for me. The Old Demon destroyed her physical form, but her power and will remained. The Mask is the egg of her new physical form, the catalyst that will allow her to be resurrected in this world.”

  An egg? A flicker of dread went through Sigaldra. The Jutai, the Tervingi, and the Marcher folk all had variations on the same proverb about eggs. To make an omelet, the proverb went, one had to break a few eggs.

  So what did the Prophetess intend to do with Liane?

  “My sister,” said Sigaldra before Mazael could speak again. “Why did she take my sister?”

  “The little barbarian girl with the Prophetess?” said Azurvaltoria. Sigaldra nodded. “Does she have any magical abilities?”

  “Some,” said Sigaldra. “She has the Sight. She can’t control it very well, though.”