Before the Mask

Chapter 10

Verminaard could not believc, as the three of them retrieved tbe horses and rode west in the lifting fog, that he and Aglaca had rescued the right girl.

He looked back at this Judyth twice. She was seated behind Aglaca on the mare. Dark hair, dark skin, the fiery blue-lavender eyes Aglaca had promised.

And the black tattoo, the dragon's head, he had seen on her right leg that day at the bridge.

And yet she was not at all the girl he had expected. Again he asked himself, Where is the blonde hair, the pale eyes, the temperament mild and grateful? She should have been near death-defenseless.

But Judyth was lovely and tall and pleasant, with a sharp mind and an assurance that had guided the three of them through even the thickest fog. She had steered them by scattered memories, recalling blasted trees and clusters of rocks she had seen but once or twice, and from those paltry landmarks, she directed them generally toward the Nerakan Forest and the Jelek Path.

Verminaard had doubted her at first, but then, when the mist subsided, he looked back. Dwindling into the distance was the village of Neraka, the afternoon sun blazing clearly on the right side of Takhisis's dark tower.

A hundred small fires burned on the battlements and walls, spreading rapidly through the outlying encampments.

"There's a fire spreading through the town!" he called to his companions, and Aglaca wheeled the mare about. Standing in the stirrups, Judyth gazed over Aglalca's head into the distance, her gemstone eyes bright and sharp.

"Ogres," she declared, her voice calm and strangely musical. "It's as I reckoned. Our incantation freed them as well. Best keep at the path we've chosen. That should be the Nerakan forest, far ahead and to our right."

Verminaard followed her gesture and saw a gray-green mass on the far horizon. The girl was right after all. They were northward bound indeed.

He glanced once again at her leg. Yes, it was the same leg, all right.

For the last mile or so, even before the fog had cleared entirely, Judyth and Aglaca had engaged in quiet conversation. Verminaard had caught bits of it from his seat atop Orlog. Judyth prattled contentedly about things remote and Solamnic, and Aglaca joined in with a flurry of questions, his voice rising dangerously above a whisper, cracking with excitement in the thin, crisp air.

"Around the Great Library of Palanthas," Judyth explained as Aglaca guided the mare through a heap of fallen rock, "there are over a hundred kinds of roses planted. Some never cease to bloom."

"Are there blue daisies? The medicinal ones?" Aglaca asked eagerly. "How about nard and black iris?"

Verminaard muttered something hot, indecipherable.

Judyth turned and looked at the hulking figure on the black stallion. Her face set in a cold frown, she clutched the front of her robe tightly against the cool mountain winds. This Verminaard is handsome, she thought. Those blue eyes, and those shoulders, and arms like drasil trees. Though he's cut badly on the right arm-probably in the tunnel. I'll see to it later if he'll let me. There's something about him that's so stormy and melancholy, though. It makes you…

Verminaard rumbled through his clenched teeth. "Perhaps if the two of you could cease this talk of libraries and roses long enough to spot high ground," he said, "you could make yourselves useful on the long road home."

Judyth looked away. Amazing blue eyes, yes, but a voice sharp and critical.

"That's easy enough, Verminaard," Aglaca answered cheerily. "And with a hard ride behind us and the good mare double-burdened, you're wise to be looking for rest this early in the evening."

They rode on in a stunted silence for an hour or so, with only the lofty cry of raptors as accompaniment, and then, as the sun started to set and the sky to darken, the muffled, distant hoot of an owl sounded in the bordering trees of the Nerakan Forest. And a new rumbling, deep and even more distant, arose on the plains behind them. In the last of the gloaming, they reached a rise and looked back to the south, where a dozen torches spread over the wide plains, moving steadily and tirelessly north.

"Cavalry," Verminaard observed.

Judyth shook her head. "Ogres. Your idea of high ground looks better and better. Traveling over the rocks will cover our tracks better than traveling through grassland."

"D'you think-" Aglaca began.

"No. They're probably not after us," Judyth explained. "Or if they were, they've been distracted by other sounds and smells by now. Ogres are notoriously stupid, and I saw enough of them in Neraka to know their reputation's earned. It's a hunt, surely, but a random and disorganized one. We're safe if we're out of their way. Besides," she concluded, drawing a pouch from her belt, "your arm needs mending, Verminaard."

The riders took to a high, rocky path veering toward the stark, obsidian cliffs that lined the western border of the Nerakan plains. They rode a mile more in the diminishing light, until Aglaca reined the mare to a halt at the mouth of a little box canyon, an inlet in the rocks not thirty feet across, bordered by scrub plants and rubble and a solitary high trail that meandered up the cliffside.

"Look ahead of us!" Aglaca exclaimed, pointing toward a spot in the shadow of the rock face. "That's out of the way, I'd reckon. It's a campsite ready made-an abandoned bed of rushes and a smothered fire not two days old."

He leaned forward and peered at the ground. "And some sort of stone arrangement. I'm not sure what it's here for, but it's as fresh as the fire by the markings around it."

Judyth studied it as well, her gaze following Aglaca's pointing finger. "Stones? Oh. 'Tis a pair of warding signs-no more. Logr and Yr. Water and yew bow, journey and protection. Quite common around here. Travelers and bandits set 'em alike, though I cannot remember seeing the two of these ever placed together."

"I saw two placed side by side at the edge of the garden at Nidus," Aglaca observed. "Kaun and Kaun. Sore and sore. Made Lord Daeghrefn break out in hives when he passed between 'em. I took it as the old gardener's work."

"But these runes mark a serious business," Judyth said.

Aglaca nodded, his eyes on the lush greenery around the warding. Roses and comfrey, rosemary and marrow- the red symbol of love amid herbs of healing, memory, and the banishment of melancholy. "Tis a blessed place indeed," he whispered.

Unconcerned with the vegetation, Verminaard craned toward the stones, marveling at the rune signs.

"What was a good campsite so recently is probably still a good place to stay the night," Judyth observed cautiously, scanning the horizon for any sign of bandits, of pursuit.

"That's not always the case, girl," Verminaard said testily. "Why do you think the site was abandoned?"

"No dramatic reason," Judyth declared, regarding the big lad calmly. "Someone moved on. D'you plan to stay here two nights? Or are we bound elsewhere on the morrow?"

Aglaca hid a smile and slipped from the mare. Approaching the campsite, he crouched before the extinguished fire and whistled appreciatively.

"Somebody knows the full particulars of camping," he observed, looking up wide-eyed at his two companions. "No more than a handful of wood, and this fire burned through the night!"

"How do you know?" Verminaard asked sullenly, dismounting from the weary stallion.

"Didn't go to get more wood," Aglaca replied solemnly, pointing at the tracks around the fire. "So it's my guess that this was enough."

"We can't have a fire, you know," said Judyth. "The ogres will see it."

"Trust me," Aglaca said. "I can kindle a fire that an eagle couldn't spot."

Verminaard glared at the young Solamnic. Preening for the girl, he was, and charming her with his glib, western airs.

Sullenly he stepped aside. The time would come when strength would avail. Then those lavender eyes would turn to him, and the story would be different.

There was something about the campsite, a smell of flowers and aeterna and some strange and exotic attar that hinted at a deep, cryptic wisdom. Verminaard fidgeted, shifting from foot to foot as he stood watch, and Aglaca kindled the fire with a quiet, almost secretive reverence. Only Judyth seemed unaffected, merrily mixing an herb tea made from some nearby berries and leaves. "A bracer," she claimed, "after a long journey." All the while, and even as she cleaned and stitched Verminaard's wounded shoulder, she continued to regale Aglaca with quiet stories of fabled Palanthas-of the High Clerist's Tower, of the Tower of High Sorcery, and the winding streets that linked district after district of Solamnia's aristocracy as the thin spirals of a spider's web link its anchoring spokes and radials.

"I wouldn't want to go west," Verminaard offered, rubbing at his newly stitched shoulder despite Judyth's advice, as the darkness deepened. "Too much pomp and Solamnic ceremony."

"You lie. It's because Daeghrefn no longer believes in the Order," Aglaca declared flatly.

"And what of that?" Verminaard asked defensively, turning toward his companion, who knelt by Judyth as the tea steeped, their faces radiant, bathed in the last rays of the westering sun.

"Nothing, Verminaard. Sorry. It's been a long time, and I'm missing the Order a bit myself… and my father, and home on the East Borders."

"Well, gather yourself, Aglaca," Verminaard said coldly. "You're not the first to be exiled, you know. And all this talk of Solamnia and Palanthas and Oath and Measure is more than annoying after a while."

"Then don't listen," Judyth declared calmly, smiling, her gaze fastened defiantly on this big, boorish blond oaf who seemed to rankle at the joy of others. "Simply stand there and look out for ogres."

Flushed and silent, Verminaard backed away. Then he turned with a contemptuous smile, intent again on a man's business. He would stand watch. They were not fit for it.

It was then he began to hear Solamnic.

"Est othas calathansas bara…" Judyth began, and off raced a new and alien conversation, the pair of Solamnics by the fire masked in the old language, its liquid sounds and its musical, sudden vowels. Judyth's stifled laughter rang in the outpouring of words, and Aglaca, delighted to hear once again the sounds of his home, of the Order, of his father's tongue, laughed with her. It was the happiest he had been in nearly ten years.

Verminaard tried to listen, and recognized a word now and then. But it felt as if the fog had returned, as if his senses were muffled and shut. From the time when Daeghrefn had left the Solamnic Order, that language had been forbidden in Castle Nidus, and the few simple verbs he had learned from Aglaca's attendants and from a rare Solamnic emissary served him ill in the swift conversation.

It was all he could take. Muttering, he stuffed his belongings in the saddlebag-the Amarach runes, the quith-pa, the purple pendant-and took off on foot toward high ground.

Let them band together to shut him out, in the affected, gossipy fashion of courtier or knave. He had better things to do! Adventures to seek on the harsh Nerakan plains, where a stout arm availed more than some urbane knowledge of manners and far-flung places and pretty words!

There were better women elsewhere-more agreeable and compliant.

He could scarcely believe it when he looked back and saw how far he was from the camp. The little canyon below shielded them from the plains in the rising Ner-akan night. The sun was well gone and the afterglow fading fast. He had traveled a good two hundred feet or so up the sheer mountain trail, amid scrubby aeterna and the little deciduous plants the mountain folk called broucherei…

"Damn it!" he exclaimed. "They have me studying foliage now!" His gaze shot up the rock face to a plateau, void of the lush, surrounding vegetation, where four drasil trees stood in a circle, stark and black against the last of the light, like a sign from the gods.

"There's the entrance," Verminaard said to himself, stooping to enter the mouth of the cave. A quartet of bats flashed by his ears, chattering, and he shivered as one touched his face.

He had made up his mind when he recognized the trees and finally remembered that they always grew above caverns. He would go into the cave-go there alone-and find his way past the thick arrangement of roots and tendrils, exploring the dark as far as his courage would take him.

"Which is much farther than Aglaca would go," he muttered, and he crouched in the palpable gloom, moving slowly into the depths of the cave.

It wasn't long before the Voice reached him, familiar and embracing, as it had always been, but there was something new in its suggestion, some haunting note of urgency that Verminaard had never heard before. For the first time, he paused and wondered whether he should go on.

Enough of the day, the low, feminine voice intoned, almost singing, as Verminaard caught his breath and sank to his knees, leaning against the moist wall of the cavern. Enough of the treachery of sun, the little deceits of the stars in their courses. Leave them behind, Prince Verminaard, lord of a thousand leagues and the scion of dragons…

Undefined shapes flitted through the shadows ahead, spectral, robed figures mingling with the darkness, their voices mixing with the low insect drone of sound he had first heard in the depths of the Nerakan caverns, a sound like the high-pitched humming from the ruins about God-shome. He stood, his knees shaking, and breathed a prayer to Hiddukel, to Zeboim, to Takhisis.

And at the finish of the third prayer, it was as though the Lady herself had reached forth and embraced him. In the warm darkness, he traveled deeper into the cave, past the insubstantial shapes.

He gathered strength and courage with each stride.

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 darkness-pale 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 cave-a 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 family-kind 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 own-mine 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.

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