hoped would be there: a much smaller, plainer, closed door.
It was locked, too, but a swift spell seared through it, leaving the lock holding a half-moon of door separate from the larger rest of it. El gently pushed that larger panel open and stepped inside, finding himself in a dark robing room lined with wardrobes. The weeping was louder now, coming from a gap in the wardrobes along the side wall, where a curtained archway obviously led into the main bedchamber.
Elminster peered through the gap where the two curtains met, satisfied himself that only one person was present-hunched over on the floor at the foot of a gigantic canopied bed, and trembling-in the room beyond, and glided soundlessly through the curtains.
His first act was to kick away the bloody knife in front of the sobbing woman. His second was to do the same to a black gem the size of his palm that positively crawled with magic. His third was to kneel swiftly and take her by the arms.
She raised a tear-streaming, bleeding face of misery to him, staring in fear. “S-sneel? Here?”
“No, I merely wear his shape. I’m not of the keep, Lady. Ye are Lady Sarbuckho, are ye not?”
She nodded, drawing her head up but spoiling the proud movement by sniffing like a young lass getting over a tantrum. “Yavarla Sarbuckho I am, saer. Are you here to kill me for what I’ve done-or for my jewels, or for who I am?”
“I’m not here to slay ye at all. But tell me now, what have ye done?”
By way of reply, she shook her head and looked away, trying to jerk free of his grasp.
“Ye sent your lord husband down dead into the sewers, did ye not? Using yon knife, aye?”
Yavarla Sarbuckho went rigid in his arms, then sagged limply and whispered, “Y-yes.”
“Why?” El asked, as softly as any comforting mother, gathering her against his chest.
She burst into fresh tears, in a flood of uncontrolled weeping, and struggled incoherently to say something through it. Elminster daubed at the blood on her face-one eye was swollen almost shut, and she might have a rather piratical scar down the line of her chin, if she lived long enough for things to heal-and murmured wordless comfort, rocking her like a child.
Eventually words came to her. “He-he-he burst in on me, in a rage… beat me! He’d learned… what I’d done!”
“And what have ye done?” El murmured into her ear, holding her tight.
Yavarla drew in one shuddering breath, and then another, fighting for control. “L-lord Manshoon came to me… alone. He was very kind, comforting, the very sort of lord I wanted-ohhh, kind gods deliver me!”
She burst into tears again, sobbing wretchedly, and Elminster rocked her and murmured, “Ye and the First Lord lay together, and he was kind and understanding and tender, and ye talked. He asked questions, like a kindly friend, and ye answered them, and he learned much about the Darkways, and Lord Sarbuckho’s dealings in Sembia, whom he traded with, and who else in the city used their Darkways in like manner… am I right?”
She managed a nod as she shuddered her way through hard breathing again, fighting her way out of weeping once more.
“Just now, thy lord husband burst in on ye in a rage, and tried to force ye to-what?”
“G-go straight to Manshoon, and touch him with the gem.”
“Did he say what would befall then?”
“N-no. I knew. We both knew. He got it years ago from adventurers who plundered a Netherese tomb. When awakened, you touch it to the one you named when awakening it, and it will explode.”
“With force enough to turn Manshoon-and ye-and probably most of whatever tall keep ye’re standing in-to dust.”
“Y-yes. It’s awake now.”
“So ye both knew he was sending ye to death. Ye refused, and he beat ye, and ye snatched out his own belt dagger and stabbed him… and he died. So ye stuffed him down yon garderobe.”
“I did.” Yavarla was past tears now. She stared at him almost defiantly. “And I regret it not at all. I have hated him for a very long time.”
Elminster nodded. “With good cause, I have no doubt. Come-time is running out for us both.” He pointed at the robing room he’d come through. “Choose thy two most favorite coverings-everything, from toes to top of head, mind; gems and underthings, main garments, and the cloaks and wraps ye wear when stepping out into snowstorms-and thy least favorite wear; three entire outfits. Bring it all in and toss it on thy bed. Be swift and quiet, and run right back in here if anyone sees ye through the ruin I made of thy robing room door. Do not flee out into the house beyond, or ye’ll surely be slain. Brutally, by Zhentarim who have invaded thy halls, not by me.”
Yavarla stared at him for a moment, then rushed into the robing room. Elminster went straight to the gem and sent it somewhere far away and safer. Then he plucked up the dagger, wiped it on a white fur rug that was already spattered with much of Ambram Sarbuckho’s spilled blood, then kept the dagger and sent the rug on the same journey that the Lord of Wyrmhaven had recently made.
By then, Yavarla was done, and standing anxiously by the bed.
“Find thy most precious jewels, and all coins ye can lay hand on, that are in this room,” El told her.
She held up a small coffer already in her hands. “N-no coins would he allow me, and his are locked in vaults down below, not here.”
El nodded and waved at her to drop the coffer on the bed with the rest. She did, and he gathered up the thick coverlet, with its glossy shimmerweave skin around overlapped and sewn-together thick wool blankets, around all she’d gathered. The bundle was nearly as large as she was.
“Fight me not, now,” he murmured, settling the bundle on one hip and sliding his other hand around her waist. “Hold very still.”
She obeyed, and that gave his hands freedom enough to work a teleportation spell, and whisk them both to an alley that was becoming all too familiar.
We All Wear the Masks We Need
El looked up and down the gloomy alleyway. Seeing no one, he swiftly spread his bundle out on the filthy stones underfoot, in a spot where a shaft of moonlight fell fair upon it.
“Stand on that, strip, and get dressed in thy best,” he ordered, hurriedly unfastening his own garments.
Yavarla was trembling as she stared at him, eyes large with mounting fear. “What-who are you?” she whispered.
“A friend,” Elminster replied, his face and body melting and shifting under her stare, Sneel’s rippling garments falling away or hanging limply.
Yavarla fought back a scream. A moment later, she stared at a woman of very much the same size and build as herself, a rather plain woman she’d never seen before.
“Is… is this… am I seeing who you really are?” she blurted out.
“Nay,” the unfamiliar woman told her flatly. “We all wear the masks we need.”
At that moment, Yavarla felt her own flesh beginning to creep and crawl…
She did scream and try to flee, then, but deft hands whirled her around, carried her back to the midst of the moonlight, and tripped her.
She landed hard on her knees, grunted in fresh pain, then shivered. It was cold, out here in the night…
“Hurry,” her rescuer-captor?-said in her ear. “I’ll help; what need ye first? Clout? Dethma?”
Feeling dazed, Yavarla gave in, getting dressed in greater haste than she had for many a year. She scarcely noticed that whenever she made a choice of garment, the woman-or was he really a man, as he’d first appeared?- donned one of the two like garments she’d not chosen. It was all done in panting haste, and she’d barely gained steady breath before she was fully dressed, cloak and all, and being towed firmly by the hand along the alley by her strange escort, who now carried a rather smaller bundle.
They came out into a street and turned right. Despite it being deep night, quite a few quiet, furtive folk were walking purposefully along, hands on weapon hilts, or meeting side by side with their backs to a building wall, where they could look this way and that while they muttered whatever business they were transacting. A few cloaked and hooded women silently parted their cloaks to show bare leg or hip at their approach, but made no reaction when they hastened on past.
The noblewoman shuddered, perhaps wondering if her future included becoming a desperate streetskirts. Elminster gave her no time to ponder; the lamps of the inn he sought were only a block away.
He tugged her close for a moment, to murmur in her ear, “For now, ye are not Lady Sarbuckho. In fact,
