Before the Mask

by Michael Williams

  "Stay behind me," Aglaca whispered sharply. "And stay down where you belong!"

  Verminaard blinked stupidly, his thoughts drawn from the maze of the Voice by his companion's warning. He found himself standing full upright in the waist-high grass, an easy target had the fog been thinner and the sentries more alert.

  Instantly he crouched, but the Voice was not through with him.

  Be ruled by me, it intoned. These things are mine to give, for the smallest of favors. I shall show you this as the hours unfold.

  "No," Aglaca said flatly, to nothing and no one, his back to Verminaard. The older lad turned toward him in astonishment, and looking over his shoulder, Aglaca grinned sheepishly.

  "Just that voice again, Verminaard," he admitted. "Come to me with another set of lies. Guess I forgot myself in the quarrel."

  "Enough of voices," Verminaard declared. "We need to find the girl. This fog can't last forever."

  It can if a dragon wields it, Ember thought, coiled not a hundred yards from the young men, his thoughts masked against intrusion and his wings moving slowly, cyclically, fanning the fog he had summoned magically as it spread through the landscape, darkening and thickening.

  Takhisis's commands were convenient, the dragon mused. How better to take the girl than to have Verminaard and Aglaca do it for him?

  He smiled, baring his many rows of long teeth. His golden eyes glittered as he searched the mist, then found Verminaard and Aglaca again as they stooped in the grass and waited. It would not be long before they found the Pen.

  His scales rippled red and gold and red with a fierce anticipation. It was all falling into place.

  Only this voice troubled him. Aglaca spoke of it now freely and often, and to hear him tell it, you would think he argued with it daily. It might be hallucination, born of his loneliness at Castle Nidus, but the dragon suspected otherwise.

  It might be what prompted Aglaca when, in the guise of the mage Cerestes, Ember had offered the young man magic. Perhaps this voice had urged Aglaca to refuse those studies.

  The other one seemed oblivious to the coaxing of this voice-of any voice. Then again, he was dense and stubborn, not the kind to be won by words and argument. Aglaca was the brains and Verminaard the muscle of this quest, and, masked by this magical fog, it would not be long until the girl was in their hands. Then, in the safety of Nidus, in the trust of her rescuers, her lips would open to a kindly dark mage named Cerestes. She would tell him of druids and runes and magnificent strategies, never knowing she spoke those words into the ears of a dragon.

  He would know before all of them. Before Verminaard and Daeghrefn, to be sure, but before Aglaca as well. And therefore, before Laca's spies and Laca himself….

  And before Takhisis. Before the Dark Queen knew, and found the missing rune, and the stone, and the key to her worldly kingdom.

  He would sound the girl and the rune, the lads and the grounds of the temple he faced, dark in the midst of the fog he had engendered. He would sound them all, and when the Dragon Queen's mission failed at the gates of

  her own temple, he would be the lord of the mountains and the lands that lay beyond them. The clerics would answer to him, and it would be his governing voice in the ears of the rich and powerful, not some thin, insinuating babble in the mind of a lone Solamnic boy.

  The dragon purred, a low, rumbling sound that the lads and the sentries beyond mistook for thunder, for a rising storm out of the north.

  This is a comedy of mirrors, the goddess thought, reclining in the warm, swirling night winds of the Abyss.

  Around her lay darkness on darkness, darkness layering darkness until those places where light had fled entirely seemed hazy, almost luminous, compared to places darker still that surrounded them-a gloom not only of shadows but of spirit.

  But Takhisis was laughing now, her low, melodious laugh echoing in the great surrounding void. A comedy of mirrors, when one character watches another, who in turn watches a third watching a fourth, and all of this observed by the audience itself, watching from beyond the play's little world of spies and intruders.

  Ember certainly did not know she watched him as he crouched, flightless and stupid, in the high, foggy grasslands. Let him approach her temple; let him see what he would see.

  She would win, regardless of what he discovered.

  As for the lads, they knew her only fleetingly, when what they called "the Voice" came to them, and she told them dark, unimaginable things. One would be hers, twisted from his high bloodline to her desire and design.

  There would be no room for the other.

  Turning in the perpetual blackness, fluttering her

  pennons, she dropped straight down ten thousand fathoms, plummeting, falling, dreaming, until at length she floated amid a wild, universal hubbub of stunning sounds, of disembodied voices all confused, borne through the hollow dark. She laughed amidst the chaos of noise, and she thought of Laca.

  His pedigreed line, aflourish since the Age of Light, would end in a traitorous son.

  It would be the last drop of Huma's blood, she thought. With one of the two-whether Verminaard or Aglaca, she cared not which, though she had begun to suspect which one it would be-the line would end.

  She thought of Huma and shivered. Thought of the bright lance exploding in her chest, the incandescent swirl of darkness and the crackle of the firmament as the lance thrust her into the negative plane of dark and chaos, of the Jiight winds that whirled about her, buoying and buffeting her, and of the continual whining and whirring of these voices at the edge of nothingness, the hysterical gnatsong of the damned.

  She had destroyed him in their battle, but at the great cost of three thousand years of banishment. She had destroyed him, brotherless and heirless, and for centuries, she had dreamt, believing that his line had died against her in that final battle, there at the end of the Second Dragon War.

  But there were the cousins, and the cousins had sons. Laca had been the last. Distant in descent and in blood, but Huma's kin nonetheless. And then there was Aglaca.

  And along with Aglaca, there was the visit of Laca to Nidus, beneath the roof of his old friend Daeghrefn, with whose comely wife he forgot all loyalty, all honor and Oath and Measure, if for only a bright morning….

  So with Aglaca, there was the child Verminaard, fair of hair and blue-eyed, the opposite of Daeghrefn, but the image of his real father. ;

  So Huma's line had branched again. Almost as though it had scattered to elude her, to distract her from her three-millennia search. But she had located them both-both of Laca's sons-and time, circumstance, and her own devices had brought them together at last.

  And before she chose between them-or rather, before one of them chose her-there was the matter of the girl.

  For a while, Takhisis had let the Nerakans hold the girl. Surely that softhearted wretch L'Indasha would reveal herself and come to the rescue-in a hostile country where the veils Paladine had cast over her whereabouts would no longer protect her.

  But weeks had passed, and there had been no sign of the druidess. So she had turned to Laca's sons: They would bring her the girl-they and that scheming subordinate of hers, who fanned the fog unwittingly, veiling their movements to the Nerakan guards.

  Once they had brought the girl to Nidus, the sounding would begin. Something in the girl's thoughts resisted all probing, and her dreams were opaque and unfathomable.

  No doubt Paladine had veiled her as well.

  But the girl would leave Nidus eventually, and her path would lead to L'Indasha Yman, to the secret of the blank rune. Then all the ingredients would fall into place-the mysterious Judyth of Solamnia, the immortal druidess, and the last of Huma's line.

  The last of Huma's line. In whatever role he would play. She would sound him soon, try him in the darkness of her own choosing. Oh, yes. The ingredients were all there. It would all make sense when Takhisis gathered them. Of that she was sure.

  The voices wailed and gibbered around her in
a chaos of laments. The Queen of the Dragons extended her sable wings.

  The time would come when the rune was blank no longer, but inscribed with its long-lost opposing symbols,

  and when the last rune was added to the others, their prophetic powers would be perfect. She would find the green keystone to the Temple then, for the restored runes would see through all-through centuries of stone and through the clouded chaos of history. The runes were knowledge, and with that knowledge, Takhisis could open the portals to the world. And return to govern it.

  She spread her wings and turned in a hot, dry wind, rising to the lip of the Abyss, to the glazed and dividing firmament beyond which she could not travel. It looked forbidding, mysterious, like thick ice on a bottomless pool. There, in the heart of nothing, Takhisis banked and glided, aloft on the wafting current and her own dark strategies.

  Chapter 9

  As the Voice had told Verminaard, tbe Pen lay to the west, in an encampment amid a forest of green banners.

  He crept closer, almost to the banners themselves, where he could hear the sniffling and coughing of a rheumy sentry. Aglaca followed gamely, crouching in the shadow of a large green pavilion, peering across the campground at the Nerakan stockade.

  "I've never seen anything of this sort," Aglaca marveled. "The stockade is a living thing."

  Verminaard gave the stockade a second look.

  Sure enough, the Pen was alive and growing-a tight circle of small-boled trees, so close together that a mouse could barely pass between the trunks. Their branches

  spread and intertwined, forming a netted canopy that kept out the rain, no doubt, and most of the sunlight. Near the Pen's narrow entrance, the sentries paced, and the air seemed to bristle and crackle before them.

  Aglaca smiled. "It's easier than I thought."

  Verminaard shot him a puzzled look.

  "Those are drasil trees," the young Solamnic explained. "Remember the ones above the cave in the mountains?"

  Verminaard did not.

  With a sigh, Aglaca continued, leaning back into the darkness. "Once again, they grow over caves. That's the point. This whole area must sit atop a cavern-perhaps a system of caverns. When we find an entrance, it will be simple. We'll come up under the Pen and burrow her out."

  "Won't that be hard to do? To break through all that cavern rock?" Verminaard still did not understand.

  "The trees have already done that for us," Aglaca replied delightedly. "The system of roots has broken it to gravelly soil, I'd wager. The two of us, at work for a couple of hours with sword and knife, could hack a hole big enough to draw out the girl-to draw out her entourage, if need be. Then it's back to where we left the horses, and on to Nidus before the Nerakans know they've been … undermined."

  The caves were easy enough to find.

  And Aglaca was right: The whole plateau was riddled with tunnels and fissures. The tunnels branched and burgeoned, forming an intricate network that spread roughly westward, toward the Nerakan walls, the center of town, and the temple itself.

  Aglaca led the way. It seemed that he had a dwarf's

  underground sense, weaving through the dark, perplexing tunnel system, his hands extended before him. Rejecting blind passages almost by instinct, he would feel at an opening, shake his head and pass by.

  Deep within the tunnels, Aglaca withdrew a tinderbox and a small lamp from a pouch at his belt. Crouching quietly and suddenly, so that Verminaard almost stumbled over him in the gloom, the Solamnic youth lit the lamp deftly and held it aloft.

  The darkness dispelled a little. Amid confusion and discord, rubble and guano, strange, translucent crickets whirred and stalked blindly over the glistening stone walls and the ancient cobwebbed beams that supported the tunnels ahead.

  "I had no idea they were …" Verminaard began. But the depth and extent of the caverns baffled him.

  Another sound, high and melodious, filtered to the young men like a chorus of a thousand distant voices, the harmonies so intricate that the music itself teetered on the edge of chaos. Beautiful though it was, the sound was distracting, and Verminaard shielded his ears.

  "What is it?" he whispered, but Aglaca only shook his head.

  "You should know. It's the sound of spellcraft," the smaller youth explained. "Something surrounds the Pen-a shell of energy or light. Since we can't pass around it or through it, we're on our way under it and up to the girl."

  "How do you know, Aglaca?" Verminaard slipped narrowly through a latticework of thick roots. "You don't listen when it comes to magic."

  "I don't listen to Cerestes," Aglaca corrected mysteriously and handed the lamp to his companion.

  Though he was thoroughly lost by now, turned about in the tunnels, and though each passage was indistinguishable from the last, Verminaard could tell that, slowly but

  directly, Aglaca was guiding them somewhere. Resentfully he held the lamp aloft, giving the smaller lad the light to see by.

  The rescue had been Verminaard's idea, after all, planned over runes and misgivings in the dark nights of Castle Nidus, and now this interloper-this hostage-had seized command with his cleverness and know-how.

  I am no oracle, he thought. And yet I see the lay of this tunnel-how this venture will be reported to the ears of those at home, and who will receive the glory for the rescue.

  He glared at Aglaca, who bent down a tunnel, nodded, and motioned to Verminaard excitedly, urgently.

  "Here it is!" he whispered. His blue eyes caught for a moment in the torchlight, flickering a bright, unexplain-able red. "Drasil roots. Looks to be a circle of 'em, like a ring of mushrooms. We're directly under the Pen, I'll wager. It's all digging and a straight climb from here, Verminaard. Set the lamp where it gives the most light."

  Verminaard's enmity vanished with the news. Thoughts of the girl returned like a fresh wind in the damp and musty cavern. Verminaard wedged the lamp into a crack in the tunnel wall, split by one of the drasil roots in its blind plummet through both ceiling and floor of the cave. Taking up his sword, he sprang compliantly to Aglaca's side, ready to hack and dig and fight anything that stood between him and the captured girl.

  He was so close now to realizing his daydreams. She would be a beauty of unparalleled fairness. Verminaard had had his share of serving girls and milkmaids, but none of them would be like this creature. Her eyes would be pale blue stars and her silky hair the color of flax. She would know him immediately for the one who'd planned and propelled her rescue, and she would be forever grateful-so grateful that she would never wish to speak to another man. The way she would say

  his name would-

  "Verminaard! I said you can start anytime! Where have you been?"

  "You wouldn't understand. And don't get pushy with me."

  It was only a matter of minutes before the roots knotted above them, as thick as cords, as fingers, tendrils snagging their weapons, dulling them in a maddening, fibrous web. Verminaard thrashed vainly at the snarl of root and dirt and rock that seemed to open for him and engulf him as he climbed past the more slender roots to ankle-thick, leg-thick monstrosities that broke through the rock above and below, searching blindly for air and water and sustenance.

  Slowly the network of roots surrounded them. It seemed like an underground stockade, a mirror image of the Pen that stood directly above.

  "We could work like loggers for a week down here," Aglaca muttered, "and still be no closer to squeezing those shoulders of yours through this tangle."

  Verminaard gasped for breath and wiped his dirty brow. Between the dust and his exertion, the air in the cavern was slowly becoming unbreathable.

  "We'll go back to the surface. Fight our way in," said Verminaard, moving back the way he'd come.

  "Nonsense," Aglaca replied. "You saw their numbers. And there are ogres as well-I could smell them through the fog. I'll bet they're penned up nearby, no doubt enchanted into service to build the wall around the temple. Prisoners or not, they'll fight for the bandits rather than
help us out. No, between the brigands and their servants, this is still the best of entries."

  Verminaard winced and twisted his foot out of a long tendril.

  Aglaca grinned slyly. "Listen. I spoke only of loggers," he said. "Not of burglars."

  Verminaard scowled. He was doing it again. A plan was hatching in that ever so clever Solamnic brain- something complicated and intricate, no doubt, rife with twists and illusions, masks and double-talk. Sheathing his sword, his hands still numb from hacking at the roots, he sat on the cavern floor, awaiting a long explanation.

  He was surprised at how simple it was.

  But he did not like it one whit.

  And his thoughts dwelt on the woman pent above them, and the charms and imagined deceits of Aglaca Dragonbane.