Midnights Mask Read Online Free Page B

answer.
    Riven gave his own: “Cale-the priest of Mask-I want him dead.”
    The Sojourner stared at him, baring his soul. “Why?”
    Riven gritted his teeth and looked away. He would not admit, even to the Sojourner, that being the Second of Mask galled him. Instead, he said simply, “I have my reasons. It’s enough that I’m here of my own choice, and for my own benefit.”
    “I will decide if it is enough,” the Sojourner said softly.
    To that, Riven said nothing. His thumb hovered over the rod’s dials, gave another half turn.
    The only sound in the room was the Sojourner’s wheeze.
    Riven decided to make one last play.
    “Make the decision,” he said softly. “I’m either with you or I’m not. And if not, then we are no longer allies.”
    Dolgan lurched to his feet with a growl. Riven put a hand to a saber hilt.
    A look from the Sojourner froze the big slaad. The mysterious creature eyed Riven with something akin to appreciation.
    “You remind me of Azriim,” he said.
    Riven did not consider that a compliment but kept his feelings to himself.
    Perhaps sensing a change in the Sojourner’s sentiments, Azriim again took station beside Riven. “He can accompany Dolgan and me, Sojourner, to the Eldritch Temple. He has already proven his usefulness. I believe his words—he wants the priest dead.”
    “No,” Dolgan said. “Kill him.”
    Riven wanted nothing so much as to turn around and slit Dolgan’s throat.
    The Sojourner smiled distantly. To Riven, he said, “You are here of your own choice? For your own benefit?” “Those are my words,” Riven answered.
    “They are,” the Sojourner acknowledged. “Now let us see if they are true.”
    The Sojourner never moved, gave no warning, but agony wracked Riven’s head.
    He screamed, clutched his skull in his palms, and fell to his knees. He felt as if five long fingers had burrowed knuckle-deep into his brain. There, they began to sift through what they found. Riven had never before felt more violated. He resisted the intrusion and fought-futile. The Sojourner’s will was inexorable, the pain unbearable. Riven’s eye felt as though it would pop out of his skull. He forced his blurry gaze upward and stared into the Sojourner’s eyes, fell into them. His body shook, convulsed, but he held the Sojourner’s gaze. He bit open his tongue. Screams, spit, and blood poured from his mouth. He felt his consciousness being cracked open like a nut. He could not move; his body would not answer his commands. He could do nothing but suffer and scream.
    He forced himself to stay conscious.
    Mental fingers peeled away the layers of his brain, baring memories, hopes, fears, ambitions. He screamed again, again.
    The Sojourner’s expression did not change.
    Distantly, he heard Dolgan laughing and Azriim shouting.
    He, too, is a servant of Mask the Shadowlord, the Sojourner mentally projected, sorting Riven’s life and laying it out for the slaadi. A mistreated boy who became an assassin. He hates his life up to now. Religion has given him purpose….
    “Get out,” Riven tried to mutter, but the syllables emerged only as an indecipherable mumble.
    Ah, the Sojourner projected, and nodded. He is much like you two in that he also desires a transformation, not to gray, but from Second to First. He hates the priest for being First.
    Riven tried again to speak, failed. His heart hammered in his chest. He tried to dismiss from his mind the events that had occurred in the Plane of Shadow, tried to tuck them into some distant corner of his consciousness, but the Sojourner burrowed like a gnome through the dirt of his life.
    The Sojourner reached the memory. Riven screamed again. Blood leaked from his nose. Surely his skull must explode. Surely.
    And here is this, the Sojourner said, his mental voice hard. He came to kill me, to draw others here to kill me. The betrayal of the priest of Mask was a fraud, a ploy. You have brought a would-be murderer into my presence, Azriim.
    The