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Death stalked the night. It haunted the shadowed alleys of Shasesserre.
Those it passed near hurried away, driven by the knives of fear.
Death wore the guise of a squat, gnarly man in a vile yellow mask, the mask of a shantor, a
carrier of the weeping sickness.
Death was a liar, a wearer of false faces.
The gnarly man zigzagged the darkest ways, hurrying toward the city’s heart—the Plaza of
Jehrke Victorious. Across his back he carried a rag-wrapped bundle. He reached the edge of the
great square. Beyond, the Rock and its crown, Citadel Nibroc, reared their humped and spikey
silhouettes against the stars.
It was a rare and cloud-clear night there at the crossroads ‘twixt land and sea.
Between plaza’s edge and Citadel stood a five-hundred-foot temporary needle of timbers, kept
upright by scores of guylines. The masked man paused to see if he was observed, then ran to its
foot. He swarmed upward with the tireless energy of a machine. When he reached the crowning
platform, from which rope divers would plunge during tomorrow’s celebrations, be was barely
The gnarly man shed his burden. For a moment he stared at the nearest spire of the Citadel,
then began ripping rags off his bundle. Starlight glinted off steel and polished wood. He began
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