Midnights Mask by Kemp Paul S Read Free Book Online

Dolgan, of course, remained the larger of the two.
    Both slaadi smiled a mouthful of new fangs, though Azriim frowned when he realized that he had rent his shirt and breeches. Dolgan smiled at his brother’s displeasure.
    Azriim disappeared from sight, but his disembodied voice said, “Excellent.”
    He reappeared. Dolgan grinned and also disappeared and reappeared, disappeared and reappeared, like a child delighted with a new toy,
    Riven now knew that the transformation had changed not only the slaadi’s bodies, but their magical abilities. At the very least, they could turn themselves invisible merely by willing it. Riven wondered what other new abilities the slaadi could manifest.
    “Enough of this,” the Sojourner said, and Dolgan’s grin vanished. “Time is short. Sakkors awaits.”
    “Sakkors?” Dolgan asked, stumbling over the word with his new lips and teeth.
    “A onetime Netherese city,” the Sojourner answered. “Now in ruins.”
    “Unfortunate,” said Azriim, and grinned. “I like to leave cities in ruins, not find them so.”
    Dolgan guffawed.
    Riven kept his disdain from his face. He thought the slaadi unprofessional fools. They were as undisciplined as children.
    The Sojourner said, “Sakkors was destroyed and lost long ago, when the ambition of the greatest of human mages exceeded his reach. But the city’s mantle remains intact.”
    “We can teleport there,” Dolgan said. He held up his teleportation rod, shot Riven a glare, and tucked it back
    in his pocket. “Then we tap the mantle with another seed and complete our transformation.”
    “You are not listening, Dolgan,” Azriim said, and tsked. “The Sojourner said Sakkors was lost. That means he does not know where it is.”
    Dolgan stared at Azriim, confusion in his dull eyes and slack mouth. He asked, “How can we go there if he does not know where it is?”
    “I am certain he will inform us,” Azriim said, and made a flourish at the Sojourner.
    The Sojourner frowned at Azriim’s flamboyance but said only, “I have been unable to locate Sakkors’s exact location, but my research and divinations have revealed its general vicinity.”
    “You see?” Azriim said to Dolgan.
    “Scry it,” Riven said, thinking of how Cale used Magadon to see a location before teleporting there. “Then teleport in.”
    “It resists remote scrying,” said the Sojourner. “Even mine. Instead, you will find its exact location with this.” The Sojourner tapped his staff on the floor and a device appeared out of the air-in form, it reminded Riven of a ship’s compass. A thin needle with a golden point hung suspended in a clear liquid within a transparent sphere chased in gold. The whole rested in a tripod gimbal.
    “It looks like a compass,” Riven observed. He had seen sailors use such devices for navigation. He understood their use, though he could not use one himself.
    The Sojourner smiled at Riven. “That is not far from the truth. But this compass is attuned to the emanations of Sakkors’s mantle, rather than to the magnetic sheath that surrounds your world.”
    “So we need only get in the area of the ruins,” Azriim said. “And the compass will guide us to it exactly?”
    “Yes,” the Sojourner said. “I have determined that Sakkors lies somewhere beneath the waters of the Inner Sea—”
    “Underwater?” Riven asked.
    “Not to worry,” Azriim said, but offered no further explanation.
    “Yes,” the Sojourner said. “Underwater. Not far off the coast of the realm of Sembia, near the city of Selgaunt.”
    “Your old haunts,” Azriim said, slapping Riven on the shoulder and grinning. “I almost killed you there, not long ago.”
    “I haven’t forgotten,” Riven said in a low tone. He let the slaad make of that what he would.
    The Sojourner continued. “You will take a ship to sea and the compass will guide you to the ruins. Once there, you will tap Sakkors’s mantle, exactly as you did in Skullport.”
    “And after