The Mage in the Iron Mask - Brian Thomsen [101]
They parted after a moment, and he opened his eyes.
The Tharchioness was smiling, confident of her victory. On the matrimonial battlefield of wills and diplomacy, she would emerge the victor. Mulmaster would be hers.
"Well, I'll see you in the morning," he replied, and began to head toward the door.
The Tharchioness was momentarily speechless.
"Don't you want to stay?" she sputtered, trying to understand what could have gone wrong with the spell.
"Of course I do," he replied, "but I have much to attend to tomorrow." Rassendyll paused for a moment, and added sharply, "and I am tired, I thought I had explained that!"
"Yes, my High Blade," she said instinctively.
Rassendyll left the chamber. He correctly surmised that the brooch that she had been wearing must have had some charm spell attached to it that was designed to work on his brother. He made a mental note that he would have to be especially careful in dealing with her sorcerous ways in the future.
Once the door had closed, the Tharchioness let loose with a string of obscene epithets directed at the incompetence of all of her ministers. The amulet had not worked and they would pay!
Little did she realize that it would be the last time she would see the man she thought to be her husband in the privacy of their bedchamber.
* * * * *
Beneath the City of Mulmaster:
Volo put his arm around his corpulent friend. The grown man had stopped crying and seemed resigned to the fact that the two of them would die together in the darkness. Despite the telltale rumblings of his impatient stomach, nary a complaint or whine issued from his lips.
Idle and Catinflas would be proud, thought the master traveler.
Volo passed the time with his friend relating tales of his expedition to the Underdark. What seemed like hours passed, and still the master traveler was without a plan. The irregular contours of the ground and walls, and the frequent underground cliffs overlooking bottomless pits made groping around in the dark unadvisable. Had he had ample time to prepare for this excursion in the darkness, there would have been numerous precautions against situations such as this that he would have taken, but unfortunately such was not the case.
The master traveler's thoughts drifted back to Honor Fullstaff and Mason McKern. He was still not quite sure if they had planned for this to happen once he and Passepout had fulfilled their mission, but was quite confident that neither member of the old guard of Mulmaster had the least bit of concern for himself or his friend's lives now that their task had been performed. In fact, to a certain degree, they might even be more comfortable with their now assured permanent silence on the matters that had recently transpired.
Volo sighed, but Passepout seemed not to notice, having slipped into an almost catatonic state of despairing acceptance.
The master traveler was fairly confident that he could find their way back to the sewer hole and would have been willing to accept the risks involved in surviving the subterranean trip out to sea, had he not also been confident that his dear friend would never have survived such a journey.
If no alternative came to them shortly, they would have to take the risk.
Passepout bolted upright, his nose sniffing the air.
"What's that?" the portly thespian asked urgently.
"What's what?" the master traveler responded.
"I smell breakfast rolls," Passepout replied.
Volo sniffed the air, but was unable to detect a change in the aroma of their locale. He feared that his friend was beginning to hallucinate, until he heard what seemed like the soft patting of slippered footsteps on the underground