the misfortune of being in front of the now enraged wizard and had belly-flopped out of the hearth and onto the carpet directly in front of the rampaging swordsman, catching Rickman's foot in his wake.
Rickman realized this latest obstacle too late to stop himself from pitching forward. His frantic attempts at regaining his balance only succeeded in making his head come into contact with the hearth ledge, knocking him out. Both of his swords fell point first beneath him, skewering the prostrate form of the helpless Passepout as Volo peeked out from the secret entrance to observe the unfortunate proceedings.
'No!'
The master traveler now cried in vain. He could not stop the body already in motion.
18
Volo rushed to the side of his impaled friend, scrambling past the equally horrified Mason McKern, and around the other two prostrate forms that littered the floor near the hearth. The master traveler unceremoniously cast the groggy form of Captain Rickman off the body of his obese and decidedly prone boon companion.
Rickman began to groan; the concussion of the contact of his head against the hearth only succeeded in knocking him out for a moment, and in no time he would be in a groggy state of consciousness. 'Oh, my head!' he mumbled as his hands vainly tried to make their way off the ground and up to his pate. 'Ohhhhhh.'
Volo ignored the blackguard's cries of pain, and knelt by his boon companion, trying desperately not to look at the hilts of the duelist's two swords that swayed like flagpoles on the mountainous summit that was the body of his beloved Passepout.
'Oh, son of Idle and Catinflas,' the master gazetteer cried.
The thespian opened his eyes, and a grimace of pain immediately passed over his face.
'You are alive old friend!' Volo said softly, not yet sure how serious the thespian's wounds were.
'Just barely,' the son of Idle and Catinflas replied weakly.
'Is there anything I can do, old friend?' Volo asked.
'No, dear Volo,' Passepout said a trifle dramatically. 'Just allow me to pass from this life, here and now, in this pool of blood.'
Volo felt on the verge of tears, and held the dying thespian's hand up to his face. 'Courage, dear friend,' he implored. 'You are still warm, perhaps McKern can save you.'
'No,' the master thespian insisted, 'I already feel death's cold shadow as my heart pumps its last few ounces of blood into the river that feeds this pool of blood.'
Pool of blood, the master traveler thought to himself, it sounds so familiar.
Volo looked down at the area around his bisected friend. The floor was dry, and nary a trace of blood was visible.
Quickly the master traveler cast back the cloak from his prostrate friend's body, and observed the placement of the two blades, one sandwiched between two tree-sized thighs, the other nestled in the right armpit. In both cases, the thespian's skin was barely nicked.
The master traveler laughed.
'It serves me right, you lucky knave,' the master gazetteer replied, as his thought-to-be-dying friend sat up with great vigor.
' 'Twasn't luck, 'twas skill,' the thespian replied. 'It is imperative that a skilled actor know how to avoid an oncoming blade in a dying sequence if one wishes to have much of a career on the stage.'
'Pool of Blood was the title of one of the plays in your repertoire, if I recall correctly.'
'Indeed, it is,' the thespian replied, 'Ward's Folly, also known as The Pool of Blood, a real slaughterfest of a show.'
Out of the corner of his eye, Volo saw McKern. The old mage was still staring at the slowly recovering form of the captain of the Hawks, muttering under his breath.
'You killed my brother,' he murmured. 'An honest man, a craftsman, a humanitarian. He served Mulmaster as best he could, trusting his superiors, and now he is dead. He never saw it coming. My name is Mason McKern. You killed my brother; prepare to die!'
As the grief-possessed mage rambled on, his rage increased, his fingers began to flex, and his exclamations of grief dissolved into arcane incantations.
Rassendyll immediately recognized what was happening. 'Back off Volo, Passepout!' he ordered.
'Get away from the bodies!'
Volo sprang to the side, while the chubby thespian responded with a quick roll to the right, seeking shelter behind a chair.
The High Blade's twin approached the mage, who was in turn approaching Rickman. 'Calm down, McKern,' Rassendyll urged gently, trying not to notice the smoke that seemed to be coming from the old wizard's fingertips. 'This is neither the time nor the place for a fireball.'
'Leave me be,' Mason said sternly. 'Your father's killer is dead, and my brother's killer should join him.'
For the third time in less than half an hour, a person announced their presence to the inhabitants of the room with a loud, prohibitive command.
'No!'
The mage, former mage, gazetteer, and thespian turned toward a sideboard located on the other side of the room which had just started to swing forward to reveal yet another secret passage, out of which stepped the imposing figure of the blind swordmaster, Honor Fullstaff.
'The sentence of death will be carried out, old friend,' Honor Fullstaff said with great certainty, 'but not just yet. I am afraid that he might still be of use to us for just a little while longer.'
McKern was torn between his desire for vengeance and the common sense preached by his old friend. The stern look on his old friend's face cast the deciding vote, as the old mage had no desire to cross Honor Fullstaff when he had already let his position be known.
'Agreed,' the old mage assented. 'What's our next move?'
In the Apartment of Mischa Tam in the Thayan Embassy in Mulmaster:
Mischa Tam was beginning to get nervous.
The cat's-paw who had been dispatched to attempt the assassination of Selfaril should have botched the job by now, she thought. Even if he had somehow managed to surprise the High Blade, surely he would not have been able to overpower him. And what about the Hawks? She had made darn sure that Rickman was aware of the plot as well and would be able to intervene and arrest the quivering maggot.
A heinous thought crossed her mind.
What if, somehow, the incompetent had succeeded?
The First Princess would surely have her head, that is, if any of the Thayans managed to make it out of Mulmaster alive.
Though the death of Selfaril was undoubtedly the eventual goal, timing was of the essence, and at the present, the time was not right.
Mischa removed a talisman from inside her robe, and stared into its multi-faceted surface.
'Do I dare to see through the eyes of the worm?' she whispered.
She had to know.
Mischa took out a piece of skin that had formerly belonged to the ambassador and placed it on the talisman. She paused for a moment, reliving the disgust she felt at the measures that she had to take to obtain this living souvenir of the maggot, shuddered, and placed it onto the orb.
The skin immediately melted into the talisman's surface.
Wasting no time she held the orb up to her eye, and looked into its opaque surface as if it were a magnifying crystal.
All she saw was darkness.
