Before The Mask (19 page)

Aglaca.“ . ”To court you?" Aglaca shot to his feet.

“For a week now,” Judyth explained. “At first it was confusing. He stood at the door to
your quarters and boasted of his deeds against the ogres, as if I hadn't the eyes nor the
sense to know that for the lie it was. The number of monsters he had killed multiplied
with each telling, and each time he stepped farther into the room.”

“'Farther into the room'? You let him in?” Aglaca asked icily, jumping up from the bench.

“No farther when I told him to stop,” Judyth replied hastily, her eyes averted. “And then
it was gifts. Always jewelry: bracelets, a ring, cloisonne”

“What's a cloisonne?” Ignoring his question, Judyth reached for something around her neck.
“And then it was this.” “Bring it to the light, Judyth. I can't see it.”

She stepped away from the shadows and, standing in the cool light of Solinari, displayed
the jewel. The moonlight shone on a single triangular lavender-blue stone, fixed in the
heart of six silver flower petals.

“What is it?” Aglaca asked. “And why”

“I had to take it,” Judyth explained. “It wasn't his to give.”

“How do you know?”

“I don't,” she confessed, hiding away the pendant. “At least, I'm not sure how I do. But
the moment I saw it... well, something told me I must take it, must return it to its
proper owner.”

“And now he thinks you've received gifts from him,” Aglaca said. “And he'll take that to
mean .. . That's why he thinks ...” He caught himself, averting his gaze from Judyth's.

“Are you taking your brother's part?” the girl snapped, and the couple fumed in the
shadows as an

owl soared over the walls with the faintest whisper of wings.

Judyth almost told Aglaca thenalmost told him of the orders that had urged her to leave
the safety of her home two years ago, the command that had led her wandering over the
plains of Solamnia into the dangerous East, through Throt and Estwilde until she reached
the foothills of the Khalkists, where the bandits ...

She rubbed at the hated tattoo on her leg. They had not been gentle.

She almost told him, but she wasn't sure he would understand. It sounded foolish, she
admitted: that his

father, her commander, would send a lone girl traveling through bandit and goblin country,
armed with only a dagger and led ...

Led by old intelligence. By the ancient rules of Solamnic espionage. But led by more, as
well, in ways that Laca hadn't reckoned. By instinct. By intuition and dream.

How else could she explain consenting to a dangerous and reckless undertakinggoing forth
with few guide-posts beyond her bookish knowledge of the mountains and a strange, secret
sense that whatever it was she pursued was still just ahead of her, or passing somewhere
nearby, in the cloaked and mysterious night?

It sounded too flighty and foolish for words. But by indirection, she had come to the
place she was sent, to the duties with which she had been charged years back by Aglaca's
father.

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 meforces 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 himmagical 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 circumstanceperhaps even by destinyto 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 dutystronger, 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.

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 baileya 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 garrisoneven Gundling, who feared nothingfelt 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 Nidusseven 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 gamethe
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 spokewhen 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 Voicehe 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 closelytoo 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 askedor 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 roadthe 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 rodehow 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.

He had never thought they would come to meet him.

The gate of Laca's castle opened in the morning gray-ness, and five men rode forth beneath
the standard of Dragonbane. Crossing the drawbridge and the outer ditch, they spread out
on the plain and approached, each of them armed with the short cavalry spears favored by
the mountain armies. Helmets and aventails masked their faces, and they were bundled
against the cold wind as well, but from the silver kingfishers on their breastplates,
Verminaard could tell that they were members of the Solamnic Order and therefore splendid
fighters.

Well, I shall speak with them, he thought. Tell them who I am and demand escort to Lord
Laca himself.

Speak? the Voice taunted. Do you think they have come to speak? They stand between you and
your inheritance1.

The mace lurched in his hand, flickering with a sudden ebony glow. Before he could protest
or speak or even think otherwise, Verminaard found himself pulled by the weapon toward the
standard-bearer, the centermost man in the rank. It was as though Nightbringer called him
to battle, and he was impelled to answer.

He remembered Aglaca's words in the deepest chambers of Nightbringer's cave: If you choose
this, you'll forget that you can ever choose again.

The standard-bearer reined in his horse and stopped on the level plain, his banner
uplifted in the time-honored Solamnic sign of truce and parley. Verminaard rode to meet
him, Nightbringer lowered and set across the front of the saddle, so that none of the
Solamnics could see how tightly he gripped the weapon. He guided Orlog to the side of the
standard-bearer, a green-eyed, freckled youth with red hair. The lad stared at Verminaard
nervously, intently, and his fingers twitched on the banner pole.