Before the Mask

by Michael Williams

  stepped toward the heart of the cave. The girl followed him at once, and together they moved toward the odd, disturbing glow.

  They had not traveled a dozen steps when a Voice rose out of the light, musical and seductive and venomous.

  Not yet, it said. Wait.. .not yet.

  "What's that?" Judyth asked. "Who is it?"

  Aglaca shivered and tugged at her hand.

  "Hurry," he whispered.

  They found him at the enlarged end of the passage, at the source of the light.

  Verminaard stood rapt before a green, glowing stalactite. The ancient stone formation shimmered, shifted, and boiled with a cold, morbid light, and before the astonished eyes of the trespassers, it assumed the shape of a mace, long and narrow, ending in a terrible spiked head that glowed like some unearthly gemstone.

  When Aglaca and Judyth stepped into the final chamber and Verminaard wheeled to face them, the Voice spoke again instantly. It spoke as always, low and dangerous, rising melodically from some great depth in the earth, echoing from the moist and glittering walls of the cavern, but for the first time, it addressed both Verminaard and Aglaca at once.

  From the Age of Light, I have chosen you both, it proclaimed, and Judyth, knowing the words were not for her, inched cautiously back toward the mouth of the cavern.

  But she stopped when the Voice continued.

  1 have known you since then, known you by the promise of your blood, by your blood's fulfillment in three thousand years of waiting in the darkness.

  Aglaca frowned. It was prattle as usual, the same

  deceptive poetry he had ignored for a dozen years. And yet this time …

  He glanced at Verminaard, who swayed again in a rapturous ecstasy before the glowing stone, his eyes half-lidded, an empty smile on his lips.

  I have chosen you among thousands, the Voice continued, honeyed and insistent. You for your strength and physical courage, Lord Verminaard, and you, Lord Aglaca, for your inventiveness and grace.

  The mace deepened in color and intensity of light until its green darkened to blood purple, to black, then to a color beyond black itself, until all that seemed to remain was its outline, its shadow against the dark of the cave walls a silhouette darker still.

  And though both of you are worthy indeed . . . oh, indeed worthy, the Voice continued, and though I could offer both of you the lineaments of your fondest desire …

  As the words tumbled forth from the light and embraced them, Aglaca saw the walls of Castle East Borders in the glowing head of the mace. For a moment, it seemed that the great eastern gate of the castle, in one corner of which he had carved his name when he first learned to write, was opening slowly, and someone, his craggy, thin face bathed in a pure and simple light, stood open-armed in the gateway.

  Aglaca blinked. His eyes smarted, and for a moment, tears blurred his sight.

  But Verminaard saw clearly, coldly, a different vision- a castle, its battlements ablaze, its towers crumbling. Above it, he flew on the back of … he could not tell what it was, but it was enormous, its broad shoulders thick and striated with powerful muscles. All around him, the sky was darkened by the sweep of black wings. The sunlight dimmed, and he knew that the destruction below him, the crushed and defenseless fortress, was the work of his own hand and heart and will, and he delighted in its fierce,

  magnificent ruin.

  I ask for only one of you. Which of you has the courage to seize the night? the voice prodded, taunted.

  Verminaard smiled triumphantly. He had seen enough. He looked over his shoulder at Aglaca, who stood protectively between Judyth and the glowing rocks.

  "Don't do it, Verminaard," Aglaca urged, painfully fighting his own temptations. "If you choose this, you'll forget that you can ever choose again."

  For you there is power, Lord Verminaard, and rule to be wrested in strength and violence. And there is the bridal of blood and night, the nuptials of your willing soul.

  If you choose this, you will not need to choose again, for men will fall before you, and the fortresses of men.

  "There are snares in that voice," Aglaca cautioned.

  "So be it," Verminaard declared, lunging assuredly for the mace. "My power will free me from all snares."

  "No!" Aglaca cried.

  "Go home, little boy," Verminaard hissed, and grasped the handle of the mace.

  Its dark fire coursed up Verminaard's clutching hand, raced through his wrist and forearm in rivulets of purple flame. Judyth's careful stitching burst apart on his arm, and the blood trickled forth, "steaming and boiling on the charged surface of his skin. Verminaard writhed in the pulsing flames, his grimace turning slowly to a dark, unholy leer as he broke the mace free.

  Aglaca shouted and sprang toward Verminaard, but Judyth's strong grip held him back.

  "There's nothing you can do," she urged. "He's in the hands of a goddess."

  Slowly, reluctantly, the two backtracked to the mouth of the cave, where they stood shaking in the hushed night air, listening helplessly to the cries and shouts of the young man who tangled in the depths of the earth with stone and fire and absolute shadow.

  Alone with the goddess, Verminaard gritted his teeth, exulting in the pain. His whole body bristled with glittering fire, and sparks scattered from his hair and fingers. The Voice returned, soothing and soft, motherly and yet uncomfortably seductive and strange, singing to him the last verse of the song that had drawn him here, the love song and dirge and lullaby wrapped in an intricate bewildering melody:

  And, love, what heat your frail skin hides, As pure as salt, as sweet as death, And in the dark the red moon rides The foxfire of your breath.

  And still Verminaard held on, marshaling the sum of his despair and his anger to cling to the weapon as it jolted and blistered him, as it staggered him until he grasped it mainly to keep his balance, to keep from falling to where he would never, never rise again.

  Then at last it was over.

  You will do, the Voice breathed, all seduction gone, after a long, abiding silence, answered only by the dying sputters of the stone mace and the sobs of the youth who had wrested it from the living stone. Yes, you will do….

  All other covenants are broken, soothed the Voice. Bonds of family, blood, friendship, or oath .. .all of your bonds.

  Save for those with me.

  "Aglaca," Verminaard whispered. "What of Aglaca?"

  You must use him. Then you can destroy him. I shall reveal to you how and when.

  Oh, you will do, the Voice repeated, again hypnotic and soft.

  Oh, I will do, Verminaard's thoughts sang in response. I will more than do….

  For I choose you as well, Takhisis.

  "Let's go from here now, Aglaca," Judyth urged. "Leave him be."

  The young Solamnic shook his head.

  They stood together at the bottom of the mountain trail, glancing nervously up into the rocks, where the shouting and rumbling had died into a menacing silence.

  "Come away," Judyth whispered. "There are trails enough through the mountains. We can skirt Jelek and Daeghrefn's pursuit, ride through a little pass south of the ruins at Godshome, and be back in East Borders before the morrow. Home, Aglaca! I can guide you home!"

  Aglaca glanced curiously at his new companion. "You know the passes well, Judyth," he observed, "and the way to East Borders. For a western lass, you have a very eastern geography."

  Judyth flushed and looked away. "Question your own bearings, Aglaca Dragonbane, for you're on the road to the Abyss itself if you keep that one company."

  She gestured disgustedly at the cave, and for a moment, an uncomfortable silence rose between them. The first cool winds of night passed over them, carrying the smell of smoke and the faint sound of shouting from the plains.

  "I can't leave him, Judyth," Aglaca explained. "There's still the gebo-naud that binds us, and just because he'll break his part now doesn't mean that I can break my own-mine and my father's."

  "Silly Solamnic M
easure-wrangling," the girl muttered. "You'll honor yourself to death, Aglaca."

  "Oh, I know exactly what will come to pass now," Aglaca replied. "He'll be changed .. . changed for good. We both heard the Voice when Verminaard took the mace. He's with her now, whoever she is, and I've more than a

  suspicion she'll swallow him whole and try to kill me in the bargain."

  "Then go west," Judyth insisted.

  "It isn't that easy. There's blood between us. Verminaard is my brother."

  "Your brother!" Judyth exlaimed. "But he couldn't be! You couldn't… though you do have the same features … but, no, Laca…"

  Aglaca's eyes narrowed. What did she know of his father?

  "B-Besides," Judyth stammered quickly, "how can you be sure?"

  "My surety is that I know it," Aglaca declared. "As well as I know he has taken the Dark Gods to him and that I shall never hear that Voice again. Perhaps he's taken the Dark Queen herself, but he can still choose to … to set her aside."

  Judyth glanced at Aglaca skeptically.

  "He's my brother, Judyth," Aglaca insisted. "And I am all he has, though he doesn't know it."

  "Not anymore," the girl whispered, and pointed toward the mouth of the cave, where a dark, hulking shape emerged into the night air.

  Verminaard shielded his eyes against the moonlight. The entrance of the cave seemed unbearably bright, as though he had walked from midnight into the fullness of noonday.

  Hand in hand, Judyth and Aglaca stood waiting, their faces turned toward him, eyes wide in consternation and dread. For a moment, he thought that he was taller, older … somehow terrifying with the dark weapon in his seared hand, the blood dripping from his reopened shoulder.

  He smiled scornfully down at them and started to speak….

  Then, with a cry of dismay, Aglaca pointed beyond him toward the plains.

  Verminaard turned, slipping on the narrow footpath, and fell to his knees facing north, his eyes toward the plains.

  In a swath five miles from west to east, the summer-dry grasslands were burning in a mad and relentless blaze.

  Chapter 11

  High up the slanting hills, where prickly gorse grew into tbick nuts that shepherds sometimes skirted for miles, L'Indasha Yman moved deftly through the tangles of thorn and yellow bloom toward Mount Berkanth, where the ice never thawed.

  Of late, the ice of her augury, still holding through careful attention and the deepness of her cave well, had shown a black tower growing, almost as if it were alive, attended by scores of chained ogres. And this morning she had discovered someone near that tower, barely visible and only for an instant, shielded from view by some kind of warding.

  The one Paladine had sent.

  In L'Indasha's excitement, she had looked too long at the vision, and her chances of exactly locating the girl had melted away. Emptying the bucket and taking up a light, oaken bowl instead, she had raced from her cave toward the permanent frost of arid Berkanth to try to catch another ice-augured vision and find the violet-eyed helper.

  Fatigued from the intense concentration and speed the trek required, the precarious footing and the high switching winds, the druidess stopped to rest and check her progress. She was now just above the timberline, where the forest gave way to rugged, short alpine vegetation. While the climb was steeper, the view was at last unhindered. Her breath steamed in the cool, thin air. It was a long, precipitous way down the side of this nameless rise, the highest of the Nerakan foothills. The plains spread out and away in voluptuous green waves below the trees. Several miles to the south, smoke danced over tents and banners. L'Indasha stared in shocked wonder when the cloud feathered away and revealed the twisted, spiring shape of the black tower of her vision, in the midst of the huts, barracks, and pigpens.

  The druidess wrapped her green robes closer and stared out at the smoke and flames rising from the village. The sky was nearly dark. That tower was no Nerakan invention, if she knew Nerakans, but the construction of darker and more powerful forces. She made a quick decision. She must get there somehow, in secret, and bring out the girl. A warding would no doubt surround the captive, but breaking it would be no hindrance once she deciphered its pattern. The journey would take some thought and planning-and nourishment; it had already been a very long day.

  Digging through her pockets for a bit of food, she found only the last of the daylilies from yesterday's dividing and replanting. It was an undersized fan, with only a couple of

  decent leaves, but the vigor of the little plant had kept it firm and healthy despite its sojourn in her pocket. She marveled at the strength of life in its greener forms and started to return the lily to her rpbes; there would be time to plant it later. But as she closed her hand over the sprig, a remembrance of Paladine's words came to her: Plant against famine and fire.

  She dropped to the ground and quickly began to sing the sowing prayer over the plant and its lofty new home. Only a moment later, she was dusting off the mountain soil from her hands and knees, and the runtish daylily was settled within a protective circle of stones.

  As L'Indasha turned to mark the place in her mind, she froze at what she now saw out on the dark plains. The tiny puff of smoke had become a huge billowing thundercloud, and bright fire lashed at the edge of the grasslands. Two horses raced down from higher ground southeast, galloping obliquely along the edge of the fire, their riders low in the saddle. Behind them, swarming like queenless bees, a great many ogres lumbered in pursuit. From the North-Nidus?-through the smoke to the edge of her sight, the druidess could see a small party riding toward the forest. Two dozen men or so, their torchmen wearing red standards, all no doubt unaware of what ill wind blew before them.

  She felt for the purple pendant around her neck, but it wasn't there. She vaguely remembered tearing the clasp in her recent haste, somewhere in the cave. There was no help for it now. She would have to brave the flames without Paladine's protective gift.

  L'Indasha slung her skirts up over her arm and raced down the hillside, this time catching her bare legs and feet on every thornbush she ran through. Another fire. Another burning. Another darkness.

  Daeghrefn wheeled in the saddle, shouting vain orders to his confused search party.

  The fire storm had surged all around him, rushing over the plains and into the forest like a devouring wind. The plume of his helmet was charred and smoking, and the mane of his stallion brittle and tipped with ash. He had called to Reginn, to Asa, called desperately to his captain Kenaz, but they had vanished behind a wall of smoke. Beside him, five young guardsmen sat their horses unsteadily, their eyes fixed on the commander, awaiting orders, strength, assurance. Robert, mounted on a skittish roan mare, watched the thickest part of the smoke, the column to their south, in which dark, hulking shapes turned and doubled and danced amid the burning trees.

  What had begun as a simple search for Aglaca and Ver-minaard had come to disaster just as they emerged from the Nerakan Forest, intending to follow the foothills south to the borders of the settlement.

  Then the fire had rushed on them like something out of the Rending, like the images in a shaman's vision. Daegh-refn's column had scattered, a dozen crack soldiers bolting from heat and curling flame, and he had led them back through the forest, groping toward open country and the castle beyond, toward thinning smoke and clear skies and unimpeded breathing….

  And then, surging through the flame, their filthy hides blackened and smoldering, the ogres rushed at the soldiers through the trees and drove them toward the plains. Thunar fell at once, Nidus's best swordsman pulled from his horse, and a breath later Ullr fell, torn in the terrible hands of monsters. Daeghrefn himself had lurched in the saddle, clinging desperately to his stallion's brittle mane, one foot precariously in the stirrup, as a huge ogre, crashing through smoke and undergrowth, scored his leg with

  its filthy, ragged claws.

  It was fear that had righted him atop the horse, a desperate scrabbling animal fear that had surged from some
where beneath his skin, rushing over him like the fire storm, rushing over his shouts and tears and finally his screams as he kicked the horrible, drooling thing away, as the ogre's fingers clutched and loosened on his ankle, and the horse quickened under him and suddenly, mercifully, he was clear of the monster and regained the saddle in the heaving smoke.

  Before the fire and in the heart of the flames, the ogres danced ecstatically, their madness propelled by the fury they had ignited.

  Now Daeghrefn's men regrouped on a rocky rise on the plains to the north of the forest's edge. The hard flatlands stretched around them, ending in smoke, in flame, in a border of ignited trees. As the flames approached through the crackling and toppling conifers-and with the flames, the ogres-the Lord of Nidus counted his losses.