Night Masks - By R. A. Salvatore Page 0,24

it. Cadderfy watched him for few moments, then turned and continued away from Carradoon. He smiled as more squirrels scrabbled overhead, but he hardly looked up to see them.

It seemed to the young priest that the day had grown finer and less fine at the same time.

Nameless smiled as a squirrel nearly lost its balance on a small branch, catching hold and righting itself at the last moment. The beggar man tried to use that simple, natural movement as a symbol of what had just transpired between him and the curious young priest, viewing himself as the branch and Cadderly as the creature righting its course. The thought made the leper feel good, valuable, for the first time in a long, long while.

He couldn't brood on it, though, and could hardly hope to meet enough people like this curious Cadderly, who would care to see their arrogance laid out before them. No, Nameless would have to continue as he had for more than a year, struggling daily to gain enough trinkets to keep his wife and children from starving.

He had at least a temporary reprieve. He tossed the purse into the air, caught it gingerly, and smiled again. It was indeed a fine day!

Nameless spun about, prepared to pay Jhanine and the children a long overdue visit, but his smile fast became a frown.

"So sorry to startle you, good friend," said a puny man, his drooping, thick eyelids open only enough for Nameless to make out his small, dark eyes.

Nameless instinctively moved the coin-filled pouch out of sight and kept his arms in front of him.

"I am a leper," he growled, using his disease as a threat.

The smaller man chuckled and gave a wheezing laugh that sounded more like a cough. "You think me a thief?" he asked, holding his hands out wide. Nameless blinked at the man's curious gloves, one white, the other black. "As you can see, I carry no weapons,"the little man assured. '

"None openly," Nameless admitted.

"I see we both wear a mixed set of gloves " Ghost remarked. "Kindred spirits, eh?"

Nameless slipped his hands under the folds of his badly fitting clothes, embarrassed for some reason he did not understand. Kindred spirits? he thought. Hardly. The fine gloves this little man wore, matched or not, must have cost more than Nameless had seen in many months, the young priest's pouch included.

"But we are," Ghost asserted, noticing the frown.

"You are a beggar, then?" Nameless dared to ask. "Car-

radoon is but a mile down the road. I was going there myself. The take is always good."

"But the young priest changed your mind?" the stranger asked. "Do tell me about that one."

Nameless shrugged and shook his head slightly, hardly conscious of the movement. Ghost caught it, though, and the beggar man's confusion told the wicked man much.

"Ah," Ghost said, his arms still wide, "you do not know young Cadderly."

"You do?"

"Of course," Ghost replied, motioning to the pouch Nameless tried to hide. "Shouldn't all those of our ilk know one as generous as Cadderly?"

"Then you are a beggar," Nameless reasoned, relaxing a bit. There was an unspoken code among the people of squalor, an implied brotherhood.

"Perhaps," Ghost answered cryptically. "I have been many things, but now I am a beggar man." He wheezed another chuckle. "Or soon I will be," he corrected. Nameless watched as the man unbuttoned the top of his surcoat and pulled the woolen folds aside.

"A mirror?" the beggar man muttered, then he said no more, transfixed by his own image in the silvery device.

Nameless felt the intrusion. He tried to pull away, but could not, held firmly by the strange magic. He saw nothing except for his own image, lined in black as though he had been transported to some other place, some dark, otherworldly place. Nameless tried desperately to look around at his surroundings, tried to make sense of them, find some familiarity.

He saw only his image.

He heard a clap, then he was moving, or he felt as though he was moving, even though he knew that his physical body had not stirred in the least. There came a brief, sharp pain as his spirit exited his body and floated helplessly toward the effeminate vessel that awaited it.

The pain came again.

Nameless blinked, consciously fighting against the heavy droop of his eyelids. He saw his own beggar's image again, wearing gloves, black and white. His confusion lasted only until he realized that it was no longer a reflected image he saw, but his own body.

"What have

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