Before the Mask

by Michael Williams

  Sound the situation at Nidus, Laca Dragonbane had charged her. And send me word of my son. But something had sent her long before the Solamnic orders, and when he had commanded, she had sensed then and there that her journey east was the beginning of what she had lived to do.

  It was all too veiled and mysterious. She was relieved beyond measure when Aglaca finally spoke.

  "Judyth, we shouldn't argue," he said, touching her shoulder softly. "We shouldn't begin to argue, with the castle around us filled with conspiracy and scheme."

  Slipping her arm about his neck, the girl nodded. "You have your honor, I suppose. And whatever mystery you've discovered. And I… well, I believe that I am bound for something important and good and needful. It's … it's only Castle Nidus that makes those things seem foolish."

  "You're right, Judyth," Aglaca conceded. "Which is why I shall have to find a way to get us free of this dilemma. Verminaard is not in control of himself. I'll

  wager my life on it. And of late, I have found something that may help in the wager."

  "Something?" her forehead rested against the back of his neck. He felt her skin, cool and soft against his skin.

  "Another choice," he replied softly. "Another pass through the mountains. For instead of following one of Verminaard's proffered choices and betraying you, my father, and even him in the process, I shall choose a third path."

  "A third path?"

  "I shall turn him from this romance with Nightbringer, this marriage to darkness. But there are forces against me-forces at work in this castle, Judyth, that seek to bind him to a bitter pact. He has taken instruction from the worst of teachers."

  "The mage!" Judyth exclaimed. "All along I've known! There's something at the core of Cerestes that is bleak and inhumane."

  "And inhuman as well," Aglaca added. "For human is not his natural form. Though it may be hard to believe, Cerestes the mage-"

  "Is the dragon!" Judyth hissed, grabbing Aglaca's arm.. "Oh, Aglaca, the night of the fire, when those dark wings passed over the face of the moon, I knew that the dragons had returned, that the legends and rumors were true. But what hope do we have against a dragon?"

  Aglaca smiled. "There is a passage through those mountains as well. And I've been given the password."

  Leaning close to Judyth, he told her of the old man in the garden and the songs he had learned from him-magical songs of binding and loosening, composed years ago in the Age of Light to unravel the cords of spellcraft. The first would bind Cerestes in a human form, restraining him from his draconic powers, and the second would loosen Nightbringer's power over Verminaard, if he wished it to be loosened.

  "'Tis a tall order, that wish," Judyth observed, looking long into Aglaca's eyes.

  "And a greater risk as well," Aglaca replied. "I can use the songs but once. The breath of Paladine will pass through me, and my lips will shape the words. I must remember them all, must sing them in their proper rhythm and tone, just as the old man sang them to me. And that still is not enough. After the singing, I must trust that something of light and good remains in Verminaard, and that, released from the powers of mage and mace, he will turn from the darkness."

  He smiled at Judyth, and a great foreboding rose in her heart.

  "Verminaard told me once that he trusted me," Aglaca said, "and I must show him my trust so that he might act on his."

  Robert crouched silently in the midst of the evergreens as the young couple stood, kissed softly, and parted. Then he rose and walked into the heart of the garden, into concentric circles of taxus and aeterna, the maze of cedar and juniper and sleeping fruit trees. On the soft earth, his steps were muffled, and the only other sound was the high silver song of one unseasonably late nightingale.

  It changed everything, Robert thought, this meeting, this romance. He had seen the pendant in the girl's hand, and he knew it was the one L'Indasha had lost, that it had returned by fortune and circumstance-perhaps even by destiny-to the woman who had been sent to help her. For a moment, when the light of Solinari glinted on the pendant's silver flower, he had almost risen from his hiding place, almost called to the both of them, explained his mission, and taken the girl then and there.

  She would be safe in the mountains, far from the corrupting hand of Verminaard.

  And yet he knew how this Judyth must feel, knew that the ties that bound her to the Solamnic lad were stronger than duty-stronger, perhaps, than any destiny that oracle or prophecy might imagine. He knew what it was like, knew how the boy felt as well, how his difficult tangle of honor and duty would seem impossible without Judyth nearby to strengthen him.

  "May the gods and L'Indasha forgive me," he whispered quietly, "but she should stay the course until her own choosing." He slipped from the garden into the shadows along the west wall of Nidus, where the nightingale sang a final note before it flew north on the morrow- north to safer, more clement weather.

  Chapter 17

  On the third night following Verminaard's meeting with Aglca, the noises began from the top of the keep. Strange shouts and calls tumbled to the bailey onto the dumbstruck sentries, who glanced nervously at one another from their posts. Daeghrefn called out "betrayal" and "murder," "abandoned" and "fire," and "Laca" and "dark dark wings," and throughout the long wail into the morning watch, the shouted name of "Abelaard" tolled the hours regularly, like a ship's bell.

  Verminaard stirred on his cot in the seneschal's quarters, unable to sleep in the shrill, pathetic din. Finally, just before dawn, he arose and stepped into the bailey, wrapping Cerestes' black cloak about his shoulders against the

  crisp autumn morning. The grass crackled with frost as he walked to the foot of the keep and glanced up into the vaulted darkness, the cloudy night sky where Solinari had waned to a sliver.

  On the battlements, Daeghrefn had lit a single candle. It glowed bravely, forlornly in the windless morning. It seemed as though the fire itself were calling as the flame waved and beckoned, as Daeghrefn's wail slipped suddenly beneath words and was now a simple, terrifying bleating.

  On the next night, a second candle stood by the first, like a pair of glowing eyes, and one of the younger sentries, a boy from Estwilde named Phillip, had begged off duty, maintaining that the tower had come alive and was watching him.

  Verminaard had laughed at the boy, had told him the dungeon had far more dangerous eyes, and offered to show him where to look for them. Reluctantly Phillip returned to his post and shivered for three nights through a tense and tedious watch.

  On the fifth night since Daeghrefn's confinement, young Phillip came breathlessly to the seneschal's quarters with the news that the whole battlement was ablaze.

  Indeed, it was so. The topmost walls of the keep blazed with candle and torch and lantern. It was a beacon visible for miles, and Verminaard's cavalry, patrolling the South Moraine on a watch for Hugin's arrival, steered their horses by its light. -

  Then, at midnight, a breeze lifted from the south-a cold wind diving down from the Doom Range, and the array of lights began to waver and sputter. And then young Phillip, the impressionable lad who saw eyes in the clouds and fire on the battlements, looked up …

  And saw the black shape dancing on the tower ramparts.

  The long black cape spread behind it like tattered wings

  as it leapt from merlon to merlon like a large demented bird. Twice it teetered dangerously above a fifty-foot drop, and the second time it whooped and called over the rapt bailey-a shrill, mournful cry that chilled Phillip, Tan-gaard, and the others.

  For the cry was completely wordless now, a long, cascading howl that startled the horses in the stables and raised the hackles of the dogs.

  And the veterans of the garrison-even Gundling, who feared nothing-felt their blood twitch and their hands shake.

  For the cry was a raven's, a carrion bird's, but the voice was Daeghrefn's own.

  Verminaard leaned over the seneschal's stained table and examined the runes.

  Estate. Chariot
. Earth.

  Idly, with his scarred hand, he stirred the Amarach stones and cast them again.

  Estate. Birch. Hail.

  He had waited a week in Castle Nidus-seven days since the offer to Aglaca, since Daeghrefn's retreat. And in that time, Aglaca had avoided him, and the old man in the keep was mad and useless. Even Hugin, the captain of the Nerakan bandits, had the audacity to promise and promise and fail to arrive.

  The waiting had begun to ravel at Verminaard's patience.

  For a third time, he gathered the rune stones. They were becoming but a parlor game-the constant casting and reading, the passion of fools and fortune-tellers. In disgust, Verminaard pushed them carelessly off the table, and they clicked and clattered on the hard stone floor.

  It was then that the mace spoke to him.

  He had known it was going to speak from the first time he touched it in the cave above the Nerakan plains. When the dark fire raced over him and his hand burned with the transforming pain and his heart with the vision and insight, he had known it was only a matter of time until the Voice itself would return, transformed as well by the dark fire.

  For after what had happened deep in the haunted recesses of the cavern, how could the Voice ever be the same?

  So when it spoke-when the head of the mace glistened with an ebony fire and the room around him lapsed into absolute darkness and silence, so that he saw nothing but the weapon, heard nothing but the soft insinuations of the Voice-he was frightened and awestruck but not surprised.

  Never surprised. It was no longer his way.

  Throw not away your auguries, child, it said, the low, feminine Voice rushing down on him like a hot, fragrant rain. Verminaard's fear melted at once to a rich and forbidden delight, and he leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes in relief and release.

  He had not known how much he had missed her.

  Throw them not away, for though they speak to few in this profane and uneventful time, they speak with clarity to you- with clarity and with wisdom, if you but listen to what they say.

  "Estate. Chariot. Earth," he murmured. "Estate. Birch. Hail."

  You look too closely-too much at the depth of things, Lord Verminaard, the weapon coaxed.

  Verminaard opened his eyes. The room had folded in on itself, the far walls at arm's length, strangely illumined by the pulsating black light. Once propped by the fireplace, the mace now lay within his grasp.

  He blinked and murmured the names of the runes once

  more. "Estate. Twice the rune of Estate."

  The Voice did not reply, but the air crackled. The hair on the young man's arm rose and swayed in a warm wind, and he gasped as he took the mace in his scarred hand.

  What does it mean? the Voice asked-or he thought it was asking, for he could no longer tell whether the words rose from the room or the weapon or his own racing heart.

  "Estate. Ancestral inheritance. Old spirituality," he replied haltingly.

  A low laughter filled the borrowed chamber, and the rune stones clacked together on the floor. Foolishness. Double-talk. Where is your estate, Lord Verminaard?

  "Castle Nidus," Verminaard replied confidently. "Mine by right and might and the show of weapon."

  Nidus is yours indeed, the Voice granted, but not by inheritance. Where is your estate?

  An obscure smile spread over the young man's face. "East Borders," he replied. "Castle East Borders. I am the son of Laca Dragonbane, Solamnic Knight of the Sword."

  Go alone, the Voice urged. Take no escort, no companion. I shall be with you, and Nightbringer will rest in the dark moorings of your hand.

  Verminaard rode alone, as the Voice had told him. He did not look back as he rode, cloaked and hooded, through the secret gate near the back of Daeghrefn's tower, riding quietly into the cover of the mountain night. Is it not foolish? he asked himself. Will I lose Nidus by neglect, when my ambitions draw me to East Borders? What will Daegh-refn do in my absence? And what about Aglaca? Where is Cerestes?

  Be still, the Voice urged him. Still your thoughts and steady your ride, Lord Verminaard. Nidus is yours, whether far

  or near, for I have eyes in Daeghrefn's castle, and naught can be done to harm or hinder you without my knowing.

  I believe you, Verminaard thought. We are bound by the strongest of covenants, the vows we made to one another in the cave of Takhisis. But show me a sign. Give me the vision that ends my questioning.

  A long silence filled the night air, then the mace whined and sputtered in his hand. /

  You still do not trust me. But very well. Look to the battlements.

  Verminaard pivoted in the saddle and looked back toward Castle Nidus. He saw a dark form trooping on the moonlit wall, in the blood-red glow of Lunitari.

  Who is it? he asked. Who is it, Lady?

  Why, 'tis you, my dear, the Voice exulted. 'Tis you, to all mortal eyes. For whoever told you that Cerestes had but one form, one countenance? He rules with your face and voice, and with my magic. It is a pattern of things to come.

  Verminaard smiled malevolently.

  I am confirmed, Lady. I am assured past disbelief.

  Good, the Voice prompted as Castle Nidus vanished into the swiftly falling darkness. This is no time for questions and fears. Depart like a man to arrive like a man.

  West from Nidus, a single night's ride on the well-traveled Jelek Road took Verminaard to Jelek itself. He skirted the town to the south, then veered west over the farthest stretch of Taman Busuk, toward Estwilde and the easternmost Solamnic outposts. Armed only with his mace, guided by the stars and the Voice and the scattered auguries of the rune stones, he carried but seven days' worth of waybread, certain that the week's end would find him in East Borders, safe in the house of his father.

  And when he arrived there …

  Well, the Voice would tell him what to do, what to say. And how to demand his rights from the father he had seen only once, gray and distant beyond an arching bridge.

  Verminaard traveled by night, hooded and cloaked against the wind and masked from curious eyes. He traveled swiftly as well. Orlog was tireless and fluid beneath him, erasing the miles as though he were winged. Those who met them on the road-the caravans to Sanction and the pilgrims to Gargath and Godshome, the patrols and the solitary travelers bound for more private destinations-all wondered whether someone had passed their camps indeed, dark and flying toward the western horizon, or whether the night and the wind and the shifting clouds had conspired to form a dream of a rider, cloaked in black, astride an enormous black stallion.

  Through five long nights, Verminaard spoke only to himself and to the Voice arising from the mace. He muttered in the saddle as Orlog rushed past the outskirts of Jelek and into the gray foothills north of the ruins of Godshome, then north again through the narrow, rubble-strewn pass of Chaktamir, site of a Solamnic victory a full century ago, and down to the rocky, forbidding borders of Estwilde.

  Estwilde was a stark country, a place of vast and desolate stretches, seldom touched by rain and even less frequently by mild and temperate winds. Verminaard rode on tirelessly, and his vision in the cave of the gods returned to him as he rode-how he flew on the proud, enormous beast, its broad back thick and striated with powerful muscles….

  And he was sure that this was the moment that the vision had foretold, the tale of the young man returning to claim his inheritance.

  Early the sixth morning, horse and rider rested on a rocky rise overlooking East Borders. Orlog grazed wearily while Verminaard stretched in the short, crisp grass and peered down at the distant castle.

  The castle was where the Voice had told him, set on a knoll in the midst of a wide and barren plain, prime country for the huntsmen and a good vantage against approaching armies.

  And yet East Borders itself was a simple motte and bailey that looked modest, almost meager compared to the lofty battlements and the four towers of Castle Nidus. Verminaard had hoped for something more grand and daunting, and for a moment, he suspected he
had lost his way, only to stumble on the moat house of some petty noble or bandit chieftain, misplaced and forgotten in the middle of Estwilde.

  But it was Laca's castle, all right. He could tell by the insignia on the banners: the silver kingfisher of the Solam-nic Order, fluttering side by side with the black dragon and white lance of Family Dragonbane.

  "This is my home," he whispered uncertainly.

  This is your possession, the Voice corrected, its inflections soft and urgent and musical. Ride down and claim it.

  The mace quivered in his hand, and a strange, unbidden confidence surged through him.

  "So be it," he whispered. "East Borders is mine."

  Verminaard wrapped the cloak about him tightly as he rode toward the castle. The old black garment was showing its inadequacy from the hard and inclement ride. Frayed and tattered, it offered little protection from the cold southern breezes, and the young rider shivered in the saddle.