Read Shadowmasque for Free Online

path amid the tangled gloom, Calabos gave his stick a twist with his hands, separating it into two pieces which he stowed away in his robe.
    “I’ll use Engulf to smother their lanterns,” he muttered. “Then you’ll move in and retrieve the unfortunate Captain. Agreed?”
    “Yes, master,” Tashil said as she sifted through her memory for an appropriate spell.
    The wooded park was a shapeless, dark mass in the night, except for the fitful lamplight that glimmered through the trees and bushes from a point off the main path along which they now crept. Cruel laughter and grunts of pain reached Tashil’s ears as she called up the thought-canto Leech and set it spinning in her thoughts, a loop of whispers, reverie-shapes and dream-tastes. Calabos was now standing a few feet away with both hands held before him, gripping each other. With her attuned eyes she could see the intense purpose in his features as he stared at his clenched hands.
    “Ready?” he murmured without shifting his gaze.
    Tashil breathed out her unlocking word, and the thought-canto flowed down into her hands which now flickered with an icy-blue web of power.
    “I am now,” she said.
    Calabos nodded once, eyes fixed on the flickering lamp glows. Then his hands sprang apart as the Engulf spell burgeoned forth and an utter, pit-deep darkness rushed in, swallowing every detail and every gleam of radiance. Tashil was already slipping swiftly through the trees when blackness fell, but her sight was now firmly aligned to her undersenses, allowing her to see the surroundings as ghostly, webby forms and spidery outlines.
    Moments later she reached a clearing where four wraith-like figures of men were either sprawled on ground, or struggling blindly against entangling roots and thorny vines, while giving out angry, baffled shouts and curses. But with her glowing hands she silenced them one by one, sending them into insensibility with a light and precise touch. All succumbed instantly except for one who was wearing a crescent-shaped amulet that hung down from his indistinct, dishevelled garments. The amulet resisted her thought-canto, brightening for a second or two before lapsing into dullness while its owner slumped into immobility.
    Tashil did not realise how tense she was until she felt the relief that followed. She quickly turned to the figure of Corlek Ondene who, bound to a tree, had already suffered a beating. Untying him, she realised that he was scarcely able to stand so she was forced to half-carry him with one of his arms braced across her shoulders. She was struggling with him through the bushes when she felt Calabos’ strong hands relieving her of the burden. By the time they stumbled out of the blackness and down towards the road, Ondene was completely unconscious and Calabos had to carry him over one shoulder.
    “How long before those roughs start to awake?” he asked, breathing heavily.
    “Not quite half an hour,” Tashil said.
    “Good.”
    At the park’s arched entrance he halted and lowered the unresponsive Ondene down to a seated position against the stonework.
    “I have my horse and carriage lodged at a hostelry just a street away,” he said. “If you watch over our friend, I shall return very shortly.”
    So saying, he departed at a run, leaving an apprehensive Tashil to shiver in the cold and stand over her charge while eyeing the dark wood behind her. Yet all seemed tranquil, the deserted park and street ruled by a chill, deadening silence.Then something disturbed the edges of her undersenses, a tenuous, uneasy feeling that she was being watched from shadows along the downward street they had climbed from the tavern. She turned her head enough to glance that way and began attuning her sight, reaching through the intervening distance with perceptions that made the grey veil of shadow and fog melt….
    Then the clatter of hooves and wheels broke her concentration and a moment later a two-seater drew up, and Calabos clambered out.