Warning: Chapter contains violent serial killers other than the protagonists.
—
The Calimite djinn smoked and steamed in front of a tent, the gnome turnip-merchant hawked his trays, and the guards lounged incompetent on duty half falling out of chainmail stretched too thin over wide bellies. They'd walked through a stinking swamp with distant howling beasts and close-spread trees—exactly the kind of unwelcoming bloody place druids'd choose for a home—but here Trademeet's fancy glittering cobblestones invited them in. The city gates were crowded and next to a bunch of Rom they slipped in the cloaked drow and the grinning hedgewizard with barely a thought.
"Interesting," Xzar said, "there's more death in the air than I'd expected."
"And isn't that exactly what we need," Montaron said. Wood buildings, carved into a hundred different designs and thickly glazed over to prevent one little bonfire out of hand swallowing the whole town. Pretty place ye have there, would be a real shame if anything happened to it...
The hin quarter was shabby compared to what the longlimbs kept for themselves. Montaron spotted a pickpocket lurking in the streets, and led them down the sort of alleyways where folk didn't ask too many questions, and where ye heard better news on what was going on.
"—The Fentan Knights would never stand for it!" a pipe-smoking old hin called, and Montaron lost something in his throat. The Goblin's Nails were the right kind of place, dark and dingy with a few shady longlimbs and an orcblood or two, the scent of lotus faint but there if ye knew what to identify. The greybeard stood up on a table and preached his annoyances. "Lurraxol and Alibakkar, they're the same! They can't claim our lives like cattle. Nigh every night there's trouble and death, and none is done by the guards nor any other!"
"Fascinating," Xzar said softly; and when the phrase flayed bodies came up it was more than past time for Montaron to keep his ears open. So the likes of Cole had picked Trademeet to flee to—for bodies without flesh were meant to be part of the armour the mad wizard wanted—
The remains lay in the Waukeenar temple's cellars, stone-lined and the stink of a cold preservation spell keeping them until it was time to lay 'em in the ground. 'Twas a home for the mad wizard, though the drow did not seem easy in it. Xzar moved among the corpses pulling them from their winding-sheets happily as a Zhent child ripping beetles' wings. Red and shapeless things they were, and that it was dark night outside for their sneaking in didn't help any. He'd've been more than happy to cause any of 'em for coin, Montaron reminded himself.
"Human, adult female, cause of death exsanguinaton caused by slit to carotid artery, trachea pierced, layers of skin removed to the hypodermis," Xzar said, his green magelight faint around him. "Halfling, adult male, apparent cause of death a clawlike stab entering below the sternum up into the chest cavity puncturing...oh, lungs and heart both—" Xzar took his hand out of the body. "Blade a half-inch or so wider, layers of skin removed to the partial hypodermis. Human, adolescent male, cause of death not obvious, layers of skin removed to the hypodermis, bloodflow consistent with flaying ante-mortem, ligature marks on wrists and ankles as if restrained, on the palms—"
Montaron could follow enough of that: killer'd tied down the kid first.
"Slight incisions of fingernail shape and size. Elements of defensive bruising; and left in the nail-marks a gobbet or two of actual skin, looking closely. Our new friend."
A struggle and the boy'd ripped out some murderer's flesh, then driven nails to his own palm in pain. Xzar nipped out something small with a pair of tweezers, looking under the nails left on the body.
"I'm going to do the spell, Monty. The last seen before their death; the nearest we find affiliates of the Dire We Stunt. Before they find us." The mad mage talked himself through a spell and the pale white fog flew around his face like in any of his divinations. "Talk to me!" He shook the flayed body by the throat. "Your murderer's flesh, your flayed form, behind your bulging eyeballs: speak."
The head moved. The stripped lips gaped open. The fog hissed around it. Then it changed to jagged knives and moving ribbons that might've once been parts of skin. It boiled as if something had found the mad wizard, and it weren't happy about it. Screaming'd bring down the Waukeenar; Montaron caught the drow moving the same to stop the necromancer if they had to. Sharp-shaped diamonds blew through the fog like a rushing storm, black oil stuff working through it around the wizard's head.
"Skin grated, flensed, shattered. And left behind— It's not human any more. Bone and muscle and no skin, pain, the work, inside the work. A void—and they're coming to find us—" Xzar's voice rose loudly. The oil and the white steamed around his face, and it looked as if it was burning him too. Monatron knocked the wizard's knees out from under him; Viconia thrust a hand into Xzar's mouth and caught him from hitting the floor. Then the cloud and the skinless body were falling after them.
Montaron saw flashes like jagged lightning strikes into him, never able to be coherent. —Two shadows on the wet cobblestones, lunatic-dancer, knifeman in loose hides, the skin before—
Only a puling mage-sight. He choked it off, shaking his head fiercely. The magic fell away while Viconia complained in whispers of her bleeding hand.
"—bit to bone, fool, how dare you—"
"The process," Xzar whispered, spitting drow skin, "it doesn't leave anything behind; the skin as synecdoche, the part as the whole of the person in torment; sew the self into a garment to scream forever."
"Nothing more useful than that?" Montaron said. "They find it by Alibakkar and Lurraxol to hide it. If ye can't get better than that, mad wizard, we've only to make ourselves bait. Specifically, you, tallfolk."
"I'm thinking of something now," Xzar whispered, resting a finger against the frostrime on the walls. "Something important..."
"Go ahead, jaluk."
"...That I need to write the Zhentish reports."
—
The mad mage sat over a purloined parchment of expected caravans and with pretentious black-edged vellum; and announced it was past time to seek out Zhentil backup.
"Spell components—potion components—a very nice mixture of divination-pearl-tincture, excellent thickness and concentration...vanilla?" Glass bottles were laid out on a thick black velvet rug, unlabelled.
"Improves the flavour considerably." The mistress of the caravan was a tall healthy-built surface elf, her skin a fey light blue, square-faced with witchlike silver eyes around the wide bridge of her nose. On her face were black tattoos twining on one cheek in meaningless dots and lines—not unlike the mad mage's own. "I wonder where you got your markings, wizard? Or where they were given to you."
"Very much the former," Xzar said. "The symbols we choose, to make people stay away from us... Have we ever met? Potion of healing..."
And poisons; Montaron helped himself to a mix he knew would sharpen the edge of a blade or bolt.
"You've managed to annoy the Rune and want to explain why this ought to be my problem," the elf said, taking out a pipe for herself. "Come in."
She kept her caravan littered with blankets and tapestries over every surface, tea-cosies worked in gold thread and beakers hanging with beaded scarves, the whole stinking of smoke and heavy perfumes. She'd more than her fair share of secret components, Montaron calculated; the caravan itself had much more space than showed here, probably a trapdoor under her feet; a chest-of-drawers which ended too shallowly; a porcelain tree set in too deep a pot. She cast a spell in quick businesslike tones that ought to seal against eavesdropping.
"I am Lairilow of Darkhold, apprentice to Sememmon," the surface-elf said, sitting back on a heavy pile of cushions with her feet in the air. She lit her pipe with a sandalwood tinderbox.
"My associates are Monty and Viconia DeVir of Shar," Xzar said. "Monty has his papers—or used to; Miss DeVir's officially a freelancer, but she's been very helpful."
"Montaron," Montaron said.
"There is no need to continue the disputes of our peoples here, darthiir," Viconia said. Standing, she was taller than the surface-elf reclining; otherwise, the other woman was head-and-shoulders higher. Longlimbs paid attention to such things.
"No, there's not," Lairilow said. She blew out a ring of thick blue-tinged smoke in Viconia's direction. "And fortunately for you, the Zhentarim have an interest in the prevention of the Rune from gaining powerful magical artefacts. Go take some time with Alibakkar's men, will you? Keep a watch for their murders. I'll be your backup."
"Sit around here while we get the fieldwork done, and claim the credit?" Montaron said. "Typical desk-jobber's slackness."
Lairilow's hand flared with pale yellow light and the rug he was standing on suddenly grew snapping teeth. He jumped fast off it; the mage's place was full of the same small objects that weren't possible to stab, and from the ceiling a hanging censer swung at his head.
"Keep it up and your black lotus drawer gets spilled to the guards," Montaron threatened, and slashed across eyes that had appeared on a cushion. Feathers spilled out, and then went into the censer's smoke coming after him. The smell filled the air. Lairilow coughed in spite of the pipe she'd shoved in her mouth already, and ran a hand through black-and-silver hair.
"I think you've missed one or two valid points," she said, "but I'll let it go for now." With a wave of her hand and some muttering she put down the feather-fire.
"Interestingly pliant, darthiir," Viconia said, standing between him and the mad mage as if to show that their numbers were better.
"The Ruse Tend Wit has an Azuthan priest with them," Xzar said quickly. "Orc-blooded; wears the symbol. Azuth was a wizard who gave his thoughts away to kneel at Mystra's feet," he explained in Viconia's direction. "The only one of three we left hale and hearty and cheery—well, I don't suppose cheery. Below him are those who served Darcin Cole in gathering raw necromantic material. They're here."
"Kill them," Lairilow said.
—
It was the second night of running lookout on the merchantfolk scabs that screams started in the night, while it rained hard and dark. Montaron led the way; he'd scouted earlier and he knew the spots he'd pick for business meant to be clam-kept. A section of construction marked off for rebuilding, covered by orange sailcloth for the look of the thing; and then the mad mage pulled him back.
"Monty, it's shielded—can you see it now?" Some fool's spell on his eyes like infravision, and then a glowing dark blue wall rose high above any longlimb's head covering the space. "Most likely the Azuthan—divine cheating. Ways to pierce a shield are rarely other than crude; ways to bypass are over or under or sideways and crossways..."
The next-door house was derelict and disrepaired. Montaron broke the lock easily; up the stairs and to the roof for a birds'-eye view. A woman, pretty enough for a longlimb, wheat-haired and slender and carrying a short blade; the orcblood in his robes and sigil; and a man who stood there without skin, muscles flushed red with blood and bare eyes staring from his face, sharpened bones spinning out from his fingers and flapping from his back a coat that looked like the skin he was missing. Never natural. A dead skinless thing—or so it looked, or so he'd hope—lay there on the ground beside them all. Then it moved and moaned.
"—The great work nears completion, master Remzithe. Of course it does," the woman said in a man's low voice, and after the Shade Lord Montaron wasn't as surprised as he could have been at crazies who wore women's bodies like fop-boys. They spoke soft, and the mad wizard leaned half off the rooftop to hark.
"You were intercepted in Athkatla. Darcin Cole was intercepted in Imnesvale. You have failed your masters," the orcblood said. Montaron saw flickers, and then like old paint flaking off a wall he saw what the mad mage's spell had done to him: the blue wall flared again like lightning, and the woman-shaped thing and the skinless man cast long jagged shadows into the air past a sky of dead pale yellow. They danced in the night and laughed like corpses, and the skins they wore were thrust over them like blankets. Rain pelted the ground like silver needles. The figure on the ground was white as a corpse and and shapelessly screamed like a torn-up winding sheet. The orcblood was covered in layers of the same pale blue as the wall that pulsed like a fire. He saw fragments of the mad mage's wild insanity for the moment, and went for his usual sight in the dark—
"That hin bastard," the skinless one said. "He found me. But I am the Hidesman, and I continue my work." His shadow chopped with his knives and flayed to the pain, and behind the victim leaped up with the iron needle.
"I can't hear," Xzar whispered, and straightened up with a finger on his mouth. Then he chanted softly, as if he'd not done enough damage already. Hin bastard—Montaron knew well it weren't him—
"A halfling?" the orcblood said. "I met a male halfling; a human wizard in green; and a dark-cloaked drow. Tell me of your invaders."
The wet rooftiles started shifting below Montaron's feet, and he almost let a curse into the air at it. But none of them clattered to the ground, and below his feet the roof moved. The crazy wizard gathered the tiles together like the head of a serpent and rode it like a twisting dragon, and the real crazy thing was that in the cursed magesight it was a dragon's back; the tiles were gleaming scales in the night. They flew over and above the skindancers' heads. Up was always the last place marks looked, Montaron told himself. Viconia swayed uncertain on the dragon's back, while Xzar looked close down at the group.
"Rejiek says it was a tall shortling—oxymoronic as it is—and a human in red robes; a dark-clad human female with such pale pretty skin you never did see; and a broad human," said the skindancer who wore the woman's body.
"And death walked with our shortling," said the Hidesman, "though he did not appreciate our mission." Montaron got his hands to crossbow, one quick shot from above—the dragon bucked and writhed under his feet.
"Close enough," the orcblood said, ignoring the rain falling about him. "Enemies move in; my masters think ourselves above the Bhaalspawn mess and the pitiful guild wars; but you are near a liability to us."
"It will be completed!" burst the Moor, the skindancer in girl's shape with fen and stinking mud clinging to his long shadow. Darsidian Moor, Moor Ran As Did I, Moor Arid As Din, Maid Ordains Or— It weren't natural to see that. The mad wizard's magesight danced pale words around Montaron, splitting headaches. "We have one to take the blame. We have near all the flesh we need. The work shall be done."
Viconia shifted and swayed on the dragon's back as if the drow misliked being high in the air. Then a glimmering scale fell and clattered from the dragon's wings.
One of the roof tiles clattered down from the mad wizard's fool handling of it— Montaron aimed his poisoned bolts between shattering visions, knowing full well and exactly why the mad wizard was mad. The orcblood grew his blue fire in cold icy shield, and the Hidesman readied the bone knives that grew under his skinless flesh.
Xzar whipped around the dragon's tail, and it rained scales: the old bricks flew down. His aim was off, Montaron knew, he could fire it while running but with the mad mage's visions in front of his eyes he couldn't know where he shot. The poison-edged bolt bloomed like a green flower and rushed toward Moor.
"Leave me off this—this thing!" Viconia's voice rang out, and she jumped easily to the ground. "Cretok: I gathered enough power to once defeat—"
"And he fought you too!" Xzar cried, and the dragon rose up through the air that its scales pushed back the magebolts from the orcblood's hand in place of their flesh. "Fight the skinless ones!"
Viconia was— Ye could tell why the mad mage was part-scared of her. Her shadow was taller than her behind her ankles across the ground, and her skin was bound with night above the dull gray. Viconia DeVir was older than some hills you could name, a lightless void behind her eyes and in her heart. She cast a spell and gained strength, and then knocked back the Moor with a blow. The Hidesman raised his fingers all nails, and they flew off like steel darts that went into her back.
The mad mage rode the moving dragon and cast something that slipped like a transparent snake under the bricks below the orcblood's feet, a twining rainbow serpent trying to grow too fast for him to notice. The ride swung close enough to the ground that Montaron was set free, cursing the wizard for the sight that led him wrong. He brought up shortsword and locked into the Hidesman while the drow tried to heal herself. This wasn't the kind of fight he liked, too open and not enough of a chance to stab in the back— The mad mage kept the orcblood busy, and Montaron kept up with the Hidesman's swift nails and laid a slash across his right arm. Then there was Moor, going after the drow, and he doubled back. If'n ye were fast enough, and he got to the lower back of Moor's skin.
And curse it, he was trapped between the two of them. At last the mad mage's sight was fading and he could see for himself. Moor howled in pain and turned, and the bleeding Hidesman grew more long iron nails.
"The Zhentarim have come to perform strange dances on floors built of your calcanei!" Xzar cried, too loud—did the crazy mage have a reason?—and whipped the end of the roof-tiles he rode on just above the orcblood's head. The Hidesman grunted at that one. Montaron felt a knife driven to his left shoulder, but it kept him moving. Between the skin dancers, they both tried to sweep down hunting for him.
He didn't like a straight-up fight with two longlimbs seeking his blood, and he didn't have to make it one. Montaron had his speed go up by willpower, wanting to live through it; he'd killed many a time before. He hitched the end of the Hidesman's skin cloak around his fist, and got it twisted around the man's neck and making him fall close to Moor's blade. Some made the last mistake of thinking that short never meant strong, and besides in the right leverage ye could pull anything. The Hidesman shifted aside and the next opening was Moor's thigh. He was keeping pace with the two of them, 'tween Rejiek's knives and Darsidian's blade in the dark.
Then Viconia finally got herself up to proper spellcasting and set down Moor with dark fog finding its way to his blood. Montaron opened the throat and made sure to cut into the spine, and the skin looked as if it slipped away while the body lay still— He blocked the Hidesman with the blade in his other hand. Behind him the orcblood wasn't doing anything, staying still in the rain with the mad wizard crossing over across the wet black puddles. Then the Hidesman's small knives flew like hail to him and Viconia, and Montaron put up an arm to shield his face. The Hidesman's flesh was loose and he ran like a wet ghoul, shifting and changing to get further away.
"Necromancy commands the dead; enchantment the subtleties of the living," Xzar said to the orcblood, hand-gesturing and holding him still while he talked. "You shielded against Miss DeVir's dispelments and against the more simple and brutal forms of attack. But I know what lies in your mind, Remzithe of the Twist End Rue, of the god who only thinks himself master of spells; entwine that flail around your neck, and utter the second activation word."
Montaron had seen bloodier, but it pulped the orcblood's skull into a wet rain and pulled head from neck except for a thin strip of skin. In fading damned magesight the rainbow snakes slipped and faded away from the green skin...
"Hidesman's getting away, mage!" Montaron said. Moor and the orcblood were about as dead as ye could get; but there was still that screaming skinless thing in the corner that had started to writhe, and it'd be a mercy kill for him or her or whatever it was now.
Xzar nodded. "Yes, he's gone to find Lairilow, if he has any brain." The mad boy-mage brushed wet hair from his forehead, green sparks rising off his fingertips. "I don't like the way she made her furniture try to eat you, Monty. Take Miss DeVir and go rescue her?"
"Why not you?" Montaron said for the sake of it.
"Because," Xzar said, looking down at the skinless thing still crawling around on the wet ground. It reached out for Moor's body and clutched at the skin from it, moaning and whimpering. "I think I might have some sewing to do."
—