Before the Mask

Chapter 12

Cerestes watched from a high grove overlooking the castle as the fire raged toward Nidus.

Again in human form and wearied from flight and the Change, he knelt amid cedar and taxus, his black robes wrapped closely about his shoulders. In cold, unblinking curiosity, he gazed out at the riders bursting through the edge of the flame, the standard of Nidus-black storm-crow on a red field-tattered and burning in the diminishing light.

There were five of them left. Daeghrefn and four others. No sign of Robert.

And the ogres were closing from west and east and north.

Covered in mud and moss and dung from a long, oblivious sleep, a harsh battle cry now on their lips, yet another band of the monsters swarmed out of the foothills below him. They crashed down the hillside, skidding through rocks, uprooting small trees in their descent. They stopped only to gather weapons-huge felled branches, stones for slinging and hurling. A dozen of them lumbered onto the plain to join their advancing brothers.

Cerestes chuckled, brushing the ash from his hair. The creatures were considerably far from him now, but moving resolutely onto the plains, and the dark was coming. The dark, where human eyes would fail and falter, where the fire would cast long, deceptive shadows, in which an ogre could hide or the road itself could vanish.

Night was the ally of monsters.

"And night is lovely, and my friend as well," he murmured ecstatically as the red moon and the silver tilted over the smoke-blurred landscape, and black Nuitari rose between them. Cerestes stood in the copse of evergreens and breathed a low prayer to the black moon and Hid-dukel, to Zeboim and Chemosh and Sargonnas-to all the dark gods, even to the Lady herself.

He had seen Takhisis's tower in far Neraka, the black stone and scaffolding heaped at the foot of its surrounding walls when the enchantments broke and the ogres fled. It was a setback, a slowing of her plans, but only a brief one. The tower was almost complete-grown out of rock, out of earth, out of nothing. The walls were an afterthought, scarcely necessary when strong magic ruled in Neraka.

Cerestes had seen enough to know. The devices of the Dark Queen were well under way, but they could still be disrupted with a clever mind and a subtle tongue. His own safety lay in continuing to serve her for now, to seem strong and resolute as her captain in the waking world. The time would come, and the secret of the runes would come to him-but not now, not yet. Open rebellion seemed thin and futile, like the hopes of these horsemen on the darkening plain.

He laughed again at that prospect. It looked as though Daeghrefn had found disaster within sight of his own fortress. But there was always the garrison-a hundred stout men in Nidus's walls, who, on seeing the danger to their lord and master, would…

What would they do? What indeed?

The world was filled with unfaithful servants, he mused ironically. And sometimes it seemed that they were the safe ones, huddling and skulking behind the walls while their masters stood in the open and braved the approaching peril.

Braved the fires and the ogres.

But if the fire raged further and the ogres ran riot, Daeghrefn would not fall alone. Somewhere behind the flames wandered the mace-wielder, and the druidess's girl was with him, and the other lad.

Softly, insistently, the Voice spoke to him now, low and melodious and achingly feminine. Those three cannot perish on the plains, it said. They must not fall into the clutches of the ogres.

"I know," he replied, whispering a quick spell of veiling. Then he stood in the midst of the evergreen grove, his face shadowed by the crisp-smelling darkness, his deepest thoughts concealed in a layer of spellcraft. "What would you have me do, Lady?" he asked aloud to the wind and the night.

It is time, the Voice proclaimed as the branches rustled with a warm breeze, upon it the smell of lilac. But beneath that sweet and lulling smell lay the sharp, disturbing odor of fire and carrion, so that Cerestes reeled for a moment, wondering if the smoke had risen from the plains or if he had imagined the gruesome smell on the air.

Or if, on the wings of the night, the breath of the god dess had passed over him.

It is time, she repeated, and he knew what she meant.

Time to show yourself.

"But they will fear me as well," he protested. "The mace-wielder. His companions."

The mace-wielder understands me, Takhisis explained. And I am the Queen of Dragons.

Mystified, Cerestes nodded. And though he was weary of changing and longed for a form that was ever the same, he answered her call. He focused his will past pain and fear, past the barriers that the mind sets for the body's limits and boundaries, and his thoughts rocked in a white-hot ecstasy. His bones stretched and thickened. Scales erupted on his blistering arms, and he groaned with the fresh pain of metamorphosis, with the remembered pain of a thousand years of waiting for this moment.

All who wandered the plains would look upon the dragon, and the will of the Dark Queen would be done.

Daeghrefn shielded his eyes against the heat and the rush of smoke. One of the men-Mozer, he believed-tugged at his cape, shouted something loud and urgent and indecipherable, but it was lost in the roar of the flames, the whinny of horses, the fierce war cries of the ogres.

A half-mile's ride north toward Nidus had brought them up against yet another wall of fire. Yet another band of ogres had arranged themselves in the flatlands south of the castle, so that Daeghrefn and his men were caught between two converging parties of the enemy.

"Lord Daeghrefn!" Mozer shouted insistently, tugging again.

With the back of his hand, the Lord of Nidus slapped away the sniveling wretch, then guided his horse to yet another rise in the midst of the plains-a small, bare moraine glittering with black obsidian.

The men followed him numbly onto the rise. Graaf, Mozer, Tangaard, and Gundling-they were the survivors, all who remained of the proud dozen who had set off for Neraka.

"What now, sir?" Graaf shouted above the din.

He was the sensible one. The veteran.

"The north is thick with ogres," Graaf continued. "There's a score of 'em between us and the castle, and a brace of 'em alone would be a handful for five tired men."

"I am aware of the tactics, Sergeant," Daeghrefn answered hotly, his mind on the fire coursing relentlessly over the plains behind them. They had passed through it twice, and the second time Aschraf had fallen from the saddle. As the flames engulfed him, the soldier had tried to rise. But he stumbled, and the blood burst from his face, and he stretched his dying hand pitifully toward his commander, a flame on the tip of each finger.

Daeghrefn shook his head and banished the thought.

Gundling spoke now, a rough voice to his left, his Est-wilde accent still thick after a dozen years at Nidus. Something about "more" and "last hopes."

Daeghrefn looked to Gundling. For a brief, nightmarish moment, he saw Aschraf's face, mottled and fire-sheared. Then he blinked, and Gundling stared at him, his beard singed and blackened.

Gundling was pointing to Castle Nidus, where twenty more of the monsters were circling and menacing, hurling rocks wildly at the old black battlements.

Daeghrefn looked toward the eastern foothills. Perhaps there was still a way to get to the highlands, circle the castle, and approach from the northern side. There was a rise he remembered… a copse of evergreen…

As he looked toward the jagged silhouettes of the trees framed against the white of Solinari, Daeghrefn saw the dragon's dark wings rise above the black aeterna, and the hillside shook, and the tall pines snapped like kindling.

"Lord Daeghrefn, what do we do?" Gundling shouted, his eyes on his commander. "Lord Daeghrefn? Lord Daeghrefn!"

When Daeghrefn froze in the saddle on the fiery plain, it was not from fear of ogre or flame, but from a darker cause. He would never remember the dragon itself-the dark web of wings passing over the moon-but he would remember the fear always.

And he would think, as a man who believes in neither monsters nor gods, that the fear was again of his own making.

Verminaard galloped over the blackened plain, moonlight glimmering on his uplifted mace.

At a distance, he saw the ogres, milling around a small group of soldiers atop South Moraine. It was defensible ground, and the men had bows, but the ogres were closing on them slowly, batting at the arrows. The men were few and the weapons paltry against such monsters. The soldiers wouldn't hold out much longer.

"Verminaard!" Aglaca shouted. "It's your father's squadron!"

Verminaard looked more closeJy at the stone-tattered standard nodding above the horse soldiers, a black raven on a red field.

The black mace whistled and droned in his scorched hand, and he was suddenly filled with surety and power. Here was an enemy he could fight!

With a shout, he turned Orlog toward the milling ogres and lifted the mace above his head. Exuberant and wild, he swung the weapon in a wide arc. Black fire flashed before the mace head, and its wake painted a wide stream of darkness, a blackness against which the depths of a starless night sky seemed afire.

Two hulking ogres, bound for the battle at the moraine, turned at the sound of Orlog's hoofbeats. Verminaard galloped toward them, mace uplifted, and before the first of them could raise its club, he brought the weapon flashing down upon the monster's shoulder.

"Midnight!" he cried, as the Voice in the cave had instructed.

The air rained blood and black fire. The ogre shrieked, its skin curling and blackening, and it fell to its scabious knees in the high grass. Its eyes, suddenly and strangely blinded, rolled white and terrified toward the slate-gray sky, where the stars of Morgion shone coldly above the fiery bloodbath.

The second ogre leapt away with a shout, crossing swiftly before Judyth's charging mare and stumbling and sliding through the rock-littered grass on its way back to the smoke and safety. Verminaard veered to follow it, spurring Orlog swiftly across the field in pursuit. The ogre reeled and tried to bring up its weapon, but the mace descended again with a crash, and the monster bellowed as the darkness encircled it.

Verminaard shouted again, held the dripping mace aloft, then steered the black stallion toward the rise, toward the ogres, and toward his father. Caught up in the blind rush, the roaring swirl of the mace, and the chaos of fire and noise, Judyth whistled shrilly, and the mare followed Orlog, picking her way over the few remaining spots of unburned ground.

Now the ogres loomed before them, hulking, ash-covered shapes lurching from the smoke, their weapons raised as they charged toward the rattled party. Judyth had heard the stories the knights told back in Solamnia- how the monsters strayed out of the mountains, ravaging livestock, caravans, occasional drowsy villages. One of them, it was said, was a fighting match for five men, ten of them for a whole company of knights.

But here on the plain there were twenty… thirty… forty against a mere eight men.

She looked toward the castle, where yet another score advanced, beating their breasts and roaring, pummeling the ground with stone, axe, and club.

There were far and away too many. It was a massacre in the making.

Judyth brought the mare to a struggling halt twenty yards from the gathering monsters as two ogres, rushing out from the smoke, closed ground rapidly, their stony teeth chattering in fury. Aglaca leapt from the saddle as the girl grabbed vainly for his arm. He twisted through the air like a cyclone, shouting and kicking out at the nearest ogre, who toppled forward, choking from a crushing blow to its windpipe. Aglaca hurdled onto the shoulders of the other ogre, a big fellow with a club the size of a fence rail, who swatted at him vainly, like a bear fending off a darting wasp. And then Aglaca slammed an elbow to the side of the monster's baffled face and sprang back for the saddle while the ogre staggered and dropped to its knees, its head and shoulder in a new and grotesque arrangement.

"Judyth! Ride toward those three!" Aglaca shouted, pointing toward a trio of ogres in the gathering smoke.

Judyth did not stop to question. With a shrill whistle and a slap of the reins against the mare's withers, she goaded the willing little beast to a gallop.

The ogres were caught unaware. The smallest raised its club and bellowed, but Aglaca was plunging from the saddle before the weapon descended, his sinewy arms wrapped about the creature's wrist, his weight pulling the thing over backward. The ogre reeled, teetered, then suddenly, surprisingly, flew through the air, as the young

Solamnic tossed it over his shoulder with a levering move he had learned from L'Indasha Yman. Crashing into its two oncoming companions, who fell dazed to the hard, fire-blackened earth, the monster roared, grunted, and lay still.

"Take the horse, Judyth!" Aglaca shouted. "Ride for the castle! They're bound for Daeghrefn. Perhaps we can hold them off until-"

"It'll be too late!" she protested. '

Aglaca nodded. "All the more reason to stand with the soldiers," he declared calmly.

She stared down at him, reached for him, tried to speak.

Then overhead, a dark shape eclipsed the white moon, and the plains themselves shadowed for a breath. Judyth paled.

"Don't look up!" she shouted at Aglaca, shielding his eyes with her hand. In front of them, Verminaard, the ogres, and the horsemen from Nidus stared into the night sky, where the dragon swooped and vanished in smoke and cloud. A long moment passed.

"Wh-what was that?" Aglaca asked, still holding her gaze.

"I'm not sure," Judyth replied, "but I know we shouldn't look on it directly."

"But look now," Aglaca said. "What, in the name of Pal-adine…"

Most of the ogres were scattering in panic, lumbering toward the foothills or toward the fire itself, covering their heads, grunting and shrieking. The others stood still in fear, like a circle of stones around the frozen riders of Nidus.

All were still except Verminaard. He reeled for a moment with Dragonawe, then righted himself in the saddle, clutching Orlog's mane until the dizziness passed. Then he raised his mace and brought it thundering down onto the head of a panic-stricken ogre, and a black wind muffled the screams of the dying monster.

Verminaard swung again, shouting wildly, as a passing ogre, a large one, ducked, dodging the blow. The creature lunged at the mace-wielding rider and passed through the whirl of darkness that followed the weapon's arc through the air. At once, the ogre fell to its knees, clutching its eyes, then groped and gibbered as it crawled toward the fire wall and vanished into the white-hot flames.

Slapping the mace excitedly against his broad thigh, Verminaard guided his horse through the dazed monsters and rode to the side of the Lord of Nidus.

"Lord Daeghrefn?" he called, tugging on the scorched sleeve. "Father?"

Daeghrefn stared blankly at the northern sky.

Propped against a sturdy young vallenwood in the foothills, Robert had watched the plains below through the swirl of smoke and moonlight. By the red light of Lunitari, his eyes had followed Verminaard's path through the ogres to Daeghrefn, the mace-wielder untouched by the scattering ogres. And as the druidess set and splinted Robert's shattered leg, the seneschal had seen the new battle begin, the moon darken and the deepest of shadows pass over the battlefield.

She had told him to close his eyes then, and he had done so. But still he felt a breathless, sweating dizziness, overwhelming nausea, and the sudden, brief impulse to run.

Indeed, he would have run, had his leg allowed it, the rough old seneschal thought bitterly.

"What was that shadow, Lady?" he muttered, but the druidess shook her head. Her auburn hair shimmered in the faint moonlight, and for a moment, Robert was again breathless.

"Not yet," she cautioned. "The world is not yet ready to see it, nor even to hear again the stories and rumors."

"But it… it laid out half of 'em!" the seneschal protested. "Put most of the ogres to flight! What in the-"

"'Tis the Awe, if my guess is right," L'Indasha Yman explained cryptically. "The creature inspires the Awe in most mortals. They break, panic-stricken, for safety, or else they are frozen dead."

"Then Daeghrefn's boy must be a god," Robert replied in perplexity. "Not that I ever fancied him one. But did you see how he didn't run? Didn't freeze? Why, he stood alone against it!"

"He's no god," L'Indasha replied with an ironic smile, "but that mace he carries will give him illusions of it."

Robert lowered himself painfully to the ground, lifting his battered leg onto the litter the druidess had fashioned of vines and fallen limbs. "He had illusions to begin with, Lady. Right curious ones, of runes and hocus-pocus."

The druidess laughed softly, musically. "Rest now, loyal Robert. You have earned this brief holiday."

"We need help here, Verminaard," Aglaca insisted. Come down from your horse and help us lift Tangaard."

Judyth and Aglaca struggled with the dazed cavalryman, a man noted in his company for strength and bulk. Between the two of them, they had scarcely the strength to lift the enormous soldier to his feet, much less to hoist him over aiiorse's back.

The others, however, were ready to be carried into Nidus. Daeghrefn and his surviving soldiers lay draped across the saddles of their horses, and Aglaca's wondrous little mare, still shaking from the shadows across Solinari, was pawing the earth, ready to guide the lot of them into Nidus.

"Verminaard?" Aglaca called again, but the lad sat astride Orlog, staring out at the fading fire as though he, too, had been paralyzed by something in its depths. "Verminaard!"

Verminaard turned, regarding Aglaca with a wild, exuberant stare.

"Help?" he asked, his strong hands shaking on the stallion's reins. "Oh, rest assured I'll help, Aglaca. While you take them into the castle, I shall cover our escape."

"Cover our… I don't understand."

"Quickly, Aglaca," Judyth urged. "Before the ogres waken."

She glanced nervously at the circle of monsters. Nine ogres remained after the darkening of the moon and the panic and flight of their comrades. Stunned by the Dra-gonawe, they lay stiff and scattered like tomb effigies in the forsaken field.

"Carry our comrades in, Lady Judyth," Verminaard commanded, a strange note of hilarity in his voice, "and let the banquet be called to celebrate our victory over the assembled ogres and the powers of the enemy."

Aglaca and Judyth glanced nervously at one another.

"As you say, Verminaard," Aglaca murmured. "For now."

Verminaard lifted the mace again, holding it delicately, almost lovingly, fitting its handle in the scar-notched groove of his palm. "Do so, and I shall attend to the rear guard action, to the last despicable attempt to spoil our victory."

Aglaca shook his head and started to speak, but Judyth set her hand on his shoulder. Wordlessly she nodded toward the unconscious soldiers tied carefully to the horses they were leading, and Aglaca understood. Swiftly, almost shamefully, with scarcely a look behind them, they mounted the horses, Judyth atop the mare and Aglaca on

Daeghrefn's stallion, steadying the petrified Lord of Nidus across the horse's rump.

It was a strange caravan that made for the gates of the castle. Traveling in darkness, the dying fires behind them, the party of seven approached the battlements, where, at their posts, the sentries began to waken and stir.

Gundling was the first to sit up in the saddle. Blearily he looked toward the battlements. The sentries waved and the gates opened.

"By the gods!" he cried ecstatically. "By the Book of Gilean, by Zivilyn and by great Kiri-Jolith, we have weathered the lot of it!"

He looked beside him, where the dark girl, her hands gently on the reins of his horse, led them toward safety, toward a good meal, no doubt, and a warm bath.

With a sooty hand, Gundling rubbed his head. His hair was a little singed, his right ear bloodied. Otherwise, he thought, he was unbroken and sound. And yet he felt he had seen… no doubt had imagined…

What was it? He couldn't remember, and the opaque, troubled stare of the girl riding beside him told him nothing.

With a groan, Graaf sat up on the other side of the girl, weaving atop his horse, almost falling, until Aglaca rode up and caught him.

"Be calm," the Solamnic was saying with a thin, unas-suring smile. "Rest and try not to stir. You nearly fell from your horse there, Sergeant Graaf, and it'd be a shame to weather threescore ogres only to break your crown in a riding accident."

The ogres. Where were the ogres? Gundling steadied himself, turned painfully in the saddle.

Behind him, dark in the light of the waning fire, Master Verminaard stood on the plains. He was shouting- riotous words, incomprehensible-and lifting a black mace to the night sky. A dozen ogres lay lifeless around him, and he stood over the last one shouting, the mace rising, wheeling, and falling in a lethal, silent rhythm.

Twelve of them, Gundling marveled, a strange and numbing awe spreading over him. Twelve of them, by the gods, and if he's been unsung before, he will be unsung no longer.

Not if I have breath and voice to sing.