The wizard smith grunted in assent, running his hand across the back of the tortured Rassendyll's head, and around his neck as if to say "here, and here."

"Good!" said the voice from behind. "Call the guards."

The soldier left once again, and returned with three of Mulmaster's most trusted and ruthless soldiers of the company known as the Hawks.

"Unbind him!" the voice ordered.

Rassendyll went limp as the Hawks began to extricate him from the yoke and frame. The itching and gnawing of the skin that had been adhered to the metal was slowly retarding to a mild annoyance that paled in comparison to the soreness that his limbs felt from being bound. As this was alleviated by the Hawks, a new annoyance came to torture him.

The voice, he thought, it sounds so familiar. Is it possible I have been tortured by someone I know?

Once removed from the frame, the young wizard straightened and flexed his appendages to return circulation to the outermost limits. Control soon returned to his hands and fingers, as he quickly formulated a plan for fighting back in the manner he had been taught by his magisters at the Retreat.

The wizard smith is blind, so if I act quickly enough, I might be able to cast a spell that will overpower my captors before they have time to react.

Almost instantaneously, Rassendyll brought his now unbound hands into action, flexing them in readiness for one of the numerous attack spells he had been taught. Clearing his now unbound throat he readied himself for the incantation that he sought from the files of his mind.

Fear seized him. He could not remember any of the spells or incantations! It was as if his entire education had been erased.

"As I mentioned before," the voice instructed with a certain degree of cruel calmness, "we have certain ways of handling mage types like yourself, here in Mulmaster. This lovely mask that conceals your oh-so-attractive features also deadens all of your magical abilities. You have to admit that it is slightly more comfortable than being bound and gagged all the time. Guards!"

The Hawks immediately grabbed him, one on each side. The voice came up behind him again, delicately gauntleted hands feeling the edges of the two halves of the metal mask.

"Fine craftsmanship," the voice observed. "Form-fitting, yet feature obscuring. Too bad you didn't allow much room for his beard to grow. Eventually it will probably choke him, but by that time I am sure I will have no further use for him. Guards, take him away."

Rassendyll wrenched himself away from the guards to confront his oppressor. The eye-slits in the mask necessitated that he only view objects directly in front of him. Maneuvering himself into position, he faced his antagonist dead on, and fainted dead away, for he realized that he was confronting a man whose features were identical to his own.

"Throw him into our deepest dungeon," the High Blade ordered. "The wing in which we house the other madmen, vagrants, and detritus of society."

The Hawks complied.

Rassendyll was tossed into a damp cell whose light was cast from a torch down the hall, its illumination barely creeping in through the guards' peep hole and the slot through which the slop that was considered food would be passed.

The weight of the mask bore heavily on his neck and shoulders, throwing him off-balance and dampening all of his perceptions. His body hurt, and he was racked with questions about his fate.

Clearing his throat, he cried out in torment and confusion, "Why? Why? Why?"

A lone voice answered him from one of the cells down the hall. It said gruffly, with a basso bellow reminiscent of a thespian or an opera star, "Will you keep it down? An actor needs his sleep."

PART ONE

The Prisoner, the Thespian, amp; the Traveler

1

A Friend in Need On a Mulmaster city street:

"Oh thank you, Mister Volo," the pudgy thespian Passepout exclaimed, his bulgy flesh bouncing beneath his tunic as he tried to put as much distance as possible between himself and his previous night's lodging, the prison known as Southroad Keep. "I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't come along to bail me out."

"Think nothing of it, old friend," Volothamp Geddarm replied to his former bond servant, pausing only a moment to adjust the beret atop his curly scalp before adding, "and I thought I had cured you of that Mister Volo stuff."

"No," Passepout corrected. "You cured me of calling you Master Volo. The title of 'mister' is the least form of respect I deign to use for my savior and salvation."

"Again," the impeccably dressed master traveler of Faerun (if not all Toril) instructed, "think nothing of it."

"But you don't understand, Mist… uh, Volo," the thespian insisted. "It was horrible being locked up in a dungeon cell alongside madmen, vagrants, and the other detritus of society."

"Believe me," Volo countered, "there is far worse company you might have been keeping in Southroad Keep's subterranean dungeon, and not all of them are prisoners either."

"It was horrible, dehumanizing, and torturous."

"How long had you been incarcerated?" the master traveler inquired.

"Overnight," the pudgy thespian answered in righteous indignation, "and I didn't get a wink of sleep. An actor needs his sleep, you know."

"So I've heard."

"Of course," Passepout continued to rant. "The cell was hard and damp, the food was low-grade slop."

"How terrible for you," Volo concurred half-heartedly, occasionally fingering his well-groomed beard with the hand that he had free from tending the traveler's pack that bounced as he strode.

"It was," the actor agreed, missing the sarcasm that was conveyed by the master traveler's mischievous grin. "And if that wasn't bad enough, there was this madman bemoaning his incarceration all night, and he was accompanied by a horrible clanging as if someone were beating his cell walls with a coal bucket."

"The nerve of that poor soul."

"Indeed," the thespian continued. "I am quite sure that this incident has scarred me for life."

Volo looked around at the dark and smoke-filled streets of what had been nicknamed the City of Danger, put his arm around his boon companion, and tried to put the fellow's one-night incarceration into proper perspective.

"Surely, the legendary son of Catinflas and Idle, scourge of the Sword Coast, expert ballplayer and star goalie of Maztica, and circumnavigator of all Toril; not to mention master thespian, and sponsored actor and artist of the House of Bernd of Cormyr, will be able to put this behind him," the master traveler encouraged, trying not to be too sarcastic in his tone.

"Of course you are right," Passepout conceded. "It would take more than one torturous night's incarceration to scar me for life."

"Indeed," Volo agreed, then changed the subject, asking, "by the way, how are things with your position in the Bernd family household?"

Passepout looked sheepishly at his traveling companion, mentor of the road, and savior many times over, and confessed. "I am afraid that I am no longer in the Bernd family's employ."

"What happened?"

"I didn't do anything wrong, really."

"Well surely Master Bernd is a fair man, and his son Curtis is quite fond of you. I'm sure either of them would have stood by you."

"Curtis was away on his honeymoon with Shurleen," the thespian explained, slightly wistful about the wedding of the woman whom he had at one time thought to be the love of his life, "and my problem wasn't with Master Bernd, but rather with the authorities in Cormyr itself."