Yngve, AR - Darc Ages 02 - City Of Masks Read online

  The dwarf broke in: "Yes, yes! It was his damned courtier, you know, the one who always wanted to impersonate Berluchos during the festivals! He started to think he was Berluchos. And the poor city lord, old and sick as he was, his big nose always getting a cold, he welcomed this opportunity to let someone else stand in for him. Now both of them are gone! The impersonator took Berluchos and myself and the guests hostage. Why does nobody listen to me? Nobody listens to the dwarf! But when I was Counselor Sarastos, everybody listened! Ha! Now look who's laughing..."

  Threo began to see now, why the dwarf had started his career as a jester. He was an artful misanthrope. "The impersonator fled to the harbor. Did you not see him?"

  The citizens mumbled no and shook their heads. Of course, Threo thought with increasing anger, the impersonator could pretend to be just about anyone, since nobody cared for his true appearance. The only thing he could not pretend to be was a child.

  Threo had an idea. The only way to reach the Vanitians was to play their weaknesses against them. "The impersonator is going to reveal your secret to the world!" he lied. The lies came much easier while wearing the mask. "We tried to stop him! If he gets away, your city is doomed. The city will be burned to the ground!"

  The masked citizens went into a panic. "Man the guns!" "Raise the chain!" "To the harbor!"

  "There," he said when the crowd had abandoned them. "Now at least we will not be lynched by a mob... for a while anyhow. Do you think Kensaburé caught the villain?"

  "I only wish I had my radio back," said Awonso. "How do we call for help without it?"

  The dwarf cleared his throat. "Ah yes, that thing. In all the excitement, I forgot to ask you how it worked..."

  Awonso's face turned red, and he grabbed the dwarf's neck. "So it was you all the time, you two-faced creep! I remember now how eager 'Counselor Sarastos' was to lay his hands on my set!"

  "I was going to give it back to you!" the dwarf croaked. "I was only curious! We have never seen that machine in Vanitia... but I could barely make it work... it only sounded like rushing water, until..."

  Threo urged Awonso to let go of the gagging dwarf, and crouched down with Okono to question him.

  Okono said: "I suspected from the outset that the Vanitians did have radio, and were using it to sabotage our transmissions. But I was wrong, no?"

  The grimacing dwarf rubbed his sore throat and exchanged hostile glances with the red-faced Awonso. "Nobody listens to me! I said, that infernal radio only made a racket when I borrowed it... until the morning you and your robot were taken away from the palace. I barely had time to listen to the most wondrous music from some distant land... and then, of course, you came back and started wrecking the place, so I decided to hide away your machine until you were in a friendlier mood."

  Okono started as if she had received a slap in the face. She tugged at her hair and bared her teeth. "It is my fault! I forgot about the radiation emissions."

  Awonso snapped his fingers. "Yes I see, Kiti-Mo... robots have strong power sources which can emit powerful electromagnetic signals. The older robot designs have atomic batteries shielded with lead. But Kiti-Mo..."

  Okono bowed her head in shame, nodding ruefully. "I made her as light as possible, so that she could carry the weight of her head. I removed the lead shielding on the sides, to ease her weight... because I had loaded the head with bullets. My stupidity is unforgivable."

  Threo reached for her hand before she started to think of another suicide attempt. "You did not make a mistake. Your robot saved us all."

  While Okono and Threo embraced, Awonso looked across the slowly rising canal, at the smoldering ruins of the palace. "Well, there goes our radio. Remind me next time to bring two sets... if there ever is a next time."

  The dwarf poked Awonso's knee. "I did not leave your radio set in the palace, bonehead! I was afraid the false city lord might steal it from me... um, from you. So I paid a servant to wrap it up good and hide it in a safe place."

  "What safe place?"

  The dwarf rolled his eyes and held up one palm in the obvious gesture. "Nobody listens to the dwarf. I keep saying it..."

  Awonso sighed and dug in his pockets for the hidden money belt. "If thats the game, you sneaky snake... how much?"

  "Five gold coins."

  "It's a crime! That's all I have left! You're robbing me blind!"

  "If I hadn't been safekeeping it for you, it would be on the bottom of the canal by now. Think of it as insurance."

  Reluctantly, Awonso counted five coins and dropped them one by one into the dwarf's outstretched palm.

  "Lousy Vanitian embezzler," he grumbled. "You're no better than your former masters."

  "Talk to the mask," the dwarf deadpanned.

  Chapter 15

  Slowly the afternoon gave way to evening, as Kensabur searched the darkened harbor. Rifle in hand, he looked for the impostor who had drugged them, taken them hostage and attempted to kill them.

  He had traded his clothes for the uniform of a dead guard, and now wore the guard's skull-faced mask. He went from ship to ship and asked for Lord Berluchos, but none of the masked fishermen had seen him.

  He began to despair... then it hit him. He had the city lord's face in his pocket!

  Kensabur held up the mask of Berluchos, its mouth forever grinning, its features always thin, and shouted from the pier: "Before Lord Berluchos leaves the city, he may want to come and take his face with him! Here is the face of Berluchos, who wants to have it?"

  He waited a minute.

  "No one? Then I shall claim it for myself!" He placed it on top of the guard's mask and proclaimed in a loud voice full of scorn: "Now hear this! I am Lord Berluchos, protector of Vanitia, the scourge of the Singing King, friend of dwarves and slayer of the wicked! My palace is in ruins! But I shall build a new one!"

  The sailors, dock workers and fishermen, whose wooden masks were of a rougher kind, carved into burlesque caricatures, turned and listened in shocked silence. They seemed to be asking themselves who was speaking. Should they obey the familiar old face of Lord Berluchos? Or was something deeply wrong? If that man was not Berluchos, then who was? The harbor was getting very dark, and the city too. Rumor spread fast that the city's ancient, central power source had been cut off when the palace caved in.

  A torch-bearing mob marched into the harbor area, and was irresistibly drawn to the stranger wearing the familiar mask.

  "Lord Berluchos!" cried the man leading the mob, who was wearing the mask of a merchant. "Is it true that you are trying to leave us?"

  Kensabur turned around and stood with his back against the sea. The mob was more than he could take on. He dared not think the citizens were deluded enough, fanatical enough to buy a desperate ruse... but he had seen greater men than himself take a dare.

  "Of course not!" He mimed a hearty laugh with his body and hands. "I was only inspecting the harbor! What a mess my guards made! We shall have to work hard to repair my palace, and lit the city lights anew..."

  "With all due respect, sire... should you be here?"

  Kensabur, possibly the world's worst actor, was now improvising the greatest performance of his life. He put on the dialect and mannerisms of the man he had seen wearing the mask the first time. His movements became slow, his tone wise, his head rolled as he had seen it done.

  "Why should I not want to take a stroll after my home is destroyed? I wanted to find out who fired at the palace from the harbor. What madman would do such a thing to me, Lord Berluchos?"

  The crowd murmured and nodded.

  "No!! Noooo!!" A tortured howl emerged from one of the fishing-vessels. A man in a fisherman's mask came running over a gangplank. He tore off his carved wooden mask and showed the mob his mad features. He was somewhat older than Kensabur, had short curly hair and a thin nose. No one could mistake him for Berluchos without the mask.

  " I am Berluchos!" the man said. "See? That man stole my face! That thief! Arrest him! Give me back my face!"
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br />   Kensabur turned to the crowd. "Do you recognize my face?"

  "Yes, my lord," said the mob's leader. "How could we not?"

  "Does anyone recognize that man without his proper face?" Kensabur pointed to the madman, the would-be ruler of the city, the usurper of the late mutated lord. The mob flinched.

  "How could we know who that stranger is?" "He has no face! The fisherman's face cannot be his." "There is no likeness. He stole it, obviously."

  "No! No!" The impersonator threw down his fisherman's mask and wept hysterically. "I am Lord Berluchos... give me back my face... I am Berluchos, I say..."

  "That poor madman," chuckled Kensabur, miming pity. "Even I cannot say who he is." And he meant it. "Now leave me, my children. "I am tired and it has been a terrible day." He feigned an aching back. "Tomorrow, we rebuild."

  But as he walked away from the mob, he could feel the spell rubbing off. The bad lighting had helped his performance, but from behind no one would mistake him for an old man. He snatched a torch from the mob and ran for the southern cannon tower. Then he remembered that the power was out.

  He spun around and faced the crowd, and removed the city lord's mask, revealing his skull-mask underneath. In the gloomy, dancing firelight, the mask resembled a real cranium. The mob slowed down.

  "The game is up! I am not Berluchos. He is dead." The mob gasped. "He lies in the southern tower. But I did not kill him. His own men did. Do not ask me to explain. They obeyed the madman who claims he is me - I mean, Berluchos." He made a nervous laugh. "Perhaps we are all Berluchos. Ha ha."

  No one else laughed. He threw the city lord's mask to the ground, crushed it underfoot and fled into the city. The mob ran after, calling him a murderer. Kensabur thought, with a trace of pride: I almost had them fooled. What is wrong with these people?

  He wished he could tore off all their masks at once and force them to reject their collective act, but that was clearly not possible. Not even the near destruction of Vanitia would make the Vanitians let go of their precious illusions. If every one of them pretended they were not Lepers, then by the Goddess they were not Lepers.

  Kensabur, running for his life, suspected he had just barely survived his first truly unbeatable opponent...

  Hours later, Kensabur had exhausted himself searching the pitch-black streets. His torch was dying, and he had no clue to the whereabouts of his friends. To die by the hands of a commoner mob in a foreign country... the fear of such a disgraceful end drove him onward.

  He arrived at the ruins of the palace, and it dawned on him that the others might have died. Kensabur sat down on the canal embankment facing the palace courtyard, and watched his torch go out. He was in the dark; even the stars were hidden.

  Then he saw a faint glow among the ruins, ghostlike, moving slowly toward the water. It was too small to be a torchbearer. The speck of light leaped into a gondola with audible bump, and he heard the gondola creak as someone gently rowed it across.

  He stood up to face the apparition, and then he recognized the clicking rhythm of Tiki-Mo's four feet. He bent down and saw the tiny lamp in the center of the robot's eyeless head.

  "Tiki-Mo."

  "Sire."

  "Is your mistress alive?"

  "I am receiving Lady Okono's homing beacon."

  "Can you show me the way to Lady Okono - to the source of the homing beacon?"

  "Yes, sire. Follow."

  The short robot walked through the darkened streets without tripping or falling over once. Within minutes it stopped by a doorway, and knocked on the door.

  A man in a mask opened, saw the robot and the soldier, and asked for his name. When the knight - dressed and masked as a guard - had uttered his name, the man demanded to see some proof of identity.

  "Go tell your guests that if they do not let me in now, they shall be served the traditional Orbes specialty: a mouthful of knuckles."

  The man returned half a minute later and let them both inside. He led them downstairs to a spacious dry cellar, where candles illuminated the walls. The dwarf sat by a table together with Awonso, Okono and Threo. They did not use masks here, but shielded their faces from the host. On the table stood some food, and the missing radio set.

  Kensabur threw down his skull-mask, sat down and immediately started to eat and drink with a ravenous appetite. That was another side of the nobility that Threo disliked: its gluttony.

  When he had finished and burped, Kensabur wanted to know if Awonso had sent the emergency distress call just yet, for there was a mob on the street shouting for their blood.

  "The radio worked just fine until you wandered in with the little saboteur here," said the dwarf. "Now we are back to the sound of running water."

  "I did manage to send out a distress call, sire." Awonso looked hopeful. "I told about a street battle with a hostile force, and mentioned how bravely both Lady Okono and you have fought. But the robot disturbed the incoming signals just as I was waiting for the reply. Should we send it away?"

  Kensabur nodded thoughtfully. "The robot stays here. Go to sleep, all of you. You have done well. Our mission is over. Tomorrow the dwarf will get the necessary funds from my purse to smuggle us out of here. He put a hand on Threo's shoulder. "I am very sorry, doctor. You are an honorable man. But this city... is impossible. Whatever we do - fight, threaten, cajole, flatter, bribe, promise, lie, tell the truth - the Vanitians twist it into something false and useless. I am sick to the soul of this place."

  He went to his bedchamber and shut the door.

  "To tell the truth I agree with him," the dwarf said matter-of-factly. "The Vanitians are hopelessly caught up in -"

  Okono, Awonso and Threo said in chorus: "Shut up!"

  They went to their separate quarters; the dwarf slept on the table for fear of rats.

  No one objected when Okono and Threo chose to share bed. Okono came back from the washroom wearing a long shirt; Threo wore his longjohns. When they were both ready to crawl underneath the woolen sheets, Threo made to blow out the candle by the bedside table.

  Okono asked him to leave the candle burning.

  "I want to see you," she said softly. This was another side of her that Threo was discovering - the most intimate and personal moments. "I want to see all of you."

  They swept the sheets over themselves and lay pressed closely together. For a minute neither of them knew what to say or do but watch each other; they were virgins again. Her face changed in the weak illumination, from strong to soft.

  "Will you be gentle?" she asked.

  "I will."

  Threo could not understand how such a fearless woman could be so vulnerable in this moment, but it aroused him in a way he had not felt before. He pressed his mouth against her neck and she threw back her head, sighing with pleasure. They forgot where they were and the thin walls; their lovemaking grew more unrestrained.

  She touched him in ways he had never been touched before. He loved her with a force she had never felt before.

  Their neighbors held their ears with an effort they had never known before.

  Chapter 16

  In the early morning, the frightened host knocked frantically on their door.

  The dwarf opened, half-awake, eyes half-shut, and the host told him the news. The dwarf started and quickly went to alert the others.

  "Prepare yourselves," he told them. Kensabur rubbed his eyes, and staggered out of his bed. Awonso groaned and stirred in his cot at the other side of the room.

  "For what?" asked Kensabur.

  The dwarf grinned. "Your flying friends are in town. The distress call came through. We can finally leave."

  Kensabur dragged Awonso out of his cot. They rushed up the stairs and stepped out into the street, ignoring the host's pleas that they "must wear a face".

  The sky above the city rumbled with passing jet aircraft. Warships and transporters from the Yota and Orbes clans circled and descended on the palace courtyard.

  Kensabur and his party made their way to the
palace ruins and were greeted by his older brother Sabur; and a contingent of Yota troops.

  The Orbes brothers greeted each other in their own inimitable manner.

  "Little brother! Do I always have to come and change your soiled underpants for you?"

  "Sit on this sword, Sabur!"

  "And screw you too!"

  Then they shook each other's hands vigorously and clenched their fists, testing who would stop first. Then they challenged each other to a lightning round of Rock, Paper, Scissors - and after both brothers had won and lost, they embraced.

  The formalities over with, Kensabur immediately began to recount the events of their mission to his older brother. Sabur listened. A sorrowful frown grew on his hard, square-jawed face when he learned that their servant Jacob had been killed in action.

  "He died braver than I, brother," Kensabur said and ended his account.

  His older brother nodded. "You have been tested, and you have passed most honorably. We shall go to the nearest cathedral and pray for all those who fell, for dear old Jacob, and also for your opponents who fought bravely."

  "He asked for his overdue pay to be sent to his family."

  "They shall have it, and a lifetime's pay as well."

  A messenger delivered a letter to Okono, from her family. She read it out loud to Threo: "We wish to share our concern for your safety abroad, and we pray for your safe return to your home province in Castilia."

  She laughed, and it sounded like the first laugh of her entire life. "They have forgiven me!" Okono tittered like a much younger woman. "They are not ashamed of me anymore!"

  Threo frowned. "You read all that from such a formal message?"

  She smiled at him. "I want you to meet my father."

  Threo backed away one step. "He will surely cut my head off when he hears of my intentions for you... and that my father used to be his enemy who defeated him."

  "No, Threo. He respects you because of it. And... the nobility often arranges marriages with rival clans to settlefeuds and disputes." She gave him a subtle wink.