Before The Mask (12 page)

One voice rose above all the babble, the bewitching Voice of his childhood, of a thousand
thoughts that had passed through his beleaguered mind. In voluptuous darkness lies the
truth, it urged, and then, as the cloaked shapes wavered and danced at the edge of
Verminaard's sight, the urging intensified, growing more rhythmic, more melodious, until
the cavern echoed with a cold and melancholy song.

Set aside the buried light Of candle, torch, and rotting wood, And listen to the turn of
night Caught in your rising blood.

How quiet is the midnight, love, How warm the winds where ravens fly, Where all the
changing moonlight, love, Pales in your fading eye.

How loud your heart is calling, love, How close the darkness at your breast, ~ How hectic
are the rivers, love, Drawn through your dying wrist.

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.

He followed the song in a daze, as newly visible stalactites strangely dripped and melted
around him and the cavern rippled and eddied like the heart of a whirlpool. Voices called
to him from the center of the walls; pale hands seemed to reach from the stone, grasping
at his tunic, his hair, coldly fingering the wound in his arm until his hand tingled, his
fingers numbed about the hilt of his drawn sword. Before him, the shadows twitched and
cavorted, chittering like bats, and time and again bright shocks of color flashed behind
them in the darknesspale purple, deep red, occasional green.

Then all shadow and the odd light descended to a single slim corridor, a green-white
sickly glow emanating from it like a dying phosfire, like the damaged soul of a marshland.
Verminaard followed mindlessly, shuffling in the dried clay of the corridor, the trail
behind him a fading stream of light.

Aglaca looked up and noticed that Verminaard had vanished.

Waving his hand, the Solamnic lad stilled Judyth's florid description of the purple
clematis that scaled the western walls of Dargaard Keep.

“Verminaard!” he said, a low note of concern in his voice. Quickly he leapt from the
fireside and raced toward the mouth of the little box canyon, where the plains spread
before him ten miles to the darkened east.

No sign of him. Aglaca stared disconsolately across the low expanse to the black edge of
the Nerakan Forest, where the torches of the ogres danced in the distance, moving steadily
north and

away.

They were safe from the monsters, but there was no sign of Verminaard. If he had stomped
off in anger, he could be a mile away by now. A mile in any direction ...

Aglaca brightened, wheeled suddenly, and raced toward the cliff side trail. Sure enough,
there were footprints in the dust. He knelt, recognized the outline of Ver-minaard's
enormous boot...

And started when Judyth's hand clasped him on the shoulder. “If you're bent on finding
him, don't go alone,” she urged.

Aglaca smiled, but the smile faded when the tracks led into a cavea low, bramble-covered
burrow in the rock face, framed by hardy juniper and a blue mask of aeterna. Carefully,
with Judyth still clutching his arm for balance, safety, and support, the lad leaned into
the darkness, following the footprints until his sight failed and he lost them in a
strange, pale green light.

“Judyth! Look here!” Aglaca urged. “What's this?” “I don't know exactly,” the girl
declared. “Nor do I like my first sight of it.”

“Nonetheless,” Aglaca insisted, “Verminaard is nearly familykind of like a brother. Well,
exactly like a brother. And he's always doing things like this. I wouldn't blame you one
whit for waiting right here. I'd do it, if I had a choice. But by my honor, I have to
continue and see what's befallen him.”

Gently the lad freed himself from Judyth's grip and

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 ownmine and my
father's.”

“Silly Solamnic Measure-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.