Before the Mask

Chapter 16

Safely in the garden, hidden amid the evergreens and the bare fruit trees, Aglaca knelt and began the Seven Prayers of Conscience, calling upon the gods to aid him in the approaching hard decisions. They were long prayers, and the young man struggled to remember them, for he was shaken by Verminaard's news and by a choice in which both options were impossible.

He had been told long ago that the Prayers of Conscience were always answered, that if he placed a question before Paladine and his glittering family, the answer would rise in the words of the prayer itself, or on the wind or in the harmonies of birdsong. Or perhaps it would come as a quiet, still voice in the hollow of his heart, when the words and the wind and the music had died away.

So faithfully he began the prayers, asking Kiri-Jolith for courage, Mishakal for compassion, Habbakuk for justice, Majere for insight, Branchala for faith, Solinari for grace, and Paladine for wisdom. The words rose readily from his lips, as though they had been planted for years, awaiting the chance to blossom.

He sang the hymn that marked the end of the ritual, the old Solamnic song of benediction. At the end of the hymn, the garden lay hush. The autumn birds-the jays and the lingering dove-were silent, almost as though they were startled by the song. Aglaca breathed deeply and started to rise from his knees.

The gray branches of a young vallenwood, scarcely ten feet away from him, shone with a strange silver light, which moved from branch to branch like a white flame.

Suddenly the light fractured into a million reflactant shards, spangling the trees at the edge of the grove until all of them-taxus and juniper and blue aeterna, bare oak and vallenwood-shimmered like a forest after an ice storm, and music rose out of the wind in the branches.

Aglaca bowed his head reverently. He closed his eyes and waited until a voice, high and thin and immoderately ancient, ended the silence.

"Well, don't just sit there. You've said the Seven Prayers, and you sang the hymn. I expect there's a question in this as well."

The old man clambered from the branches of the vallenwood, brushing the light like dust from his shoulders. With a crack and creak of aged bone and tendon, he scurried from the bole of the tree toward Aglaca like some ruined, white-haired spider, his thin robes bunched and knotted above his knees.

The old man dusted the bark and moss from his threadbare clothes, sat unceremoniously on the ground before Aglaca, and, removing his hat, batted it against his knee as a servant would beat a rug. The garden filled with floating dust as the two of them-the young Solamnic and his surprising visitor-appraised one another amid a flurry of sneezes.

"Who are you?" Aglaca asked.

The old man waved his long, bony fingers. "Only the gardener. You were praying for something?"

Aglaca remembered that the real gardener, an ingenious and honest man named Mort, had left Nidus long ago, in exasperation at the constant intrigues of the castle after Daeghrefn's wife had died. Suddenly Aglaca's eye found the silver triangle pinned to the old man's hat. "Wisdom," he murmured reverently. "The right decision. That light when you were in the tree-"

"Just a bit of pageantry for an entrance," the old fellow announced proudly. "Works wonders with the pharus plants. One flash and they blossom on overcast days-at night, too, for that matter." He coughed. "Looks like the dust is clearing at last."

Aglaca regarded the intruder. A graybeard, gangling and thin, stooped at the shoulders like a benign praying mantis. "You are no gardener," he said, a half-smile on his lips.

"But I am," the old man said suddenly. "Appointed to tend this spot since before you were born. You didn't think the taxus trimmed itself, now, did you?"

Aglaca started. The old fellow could read his thoughts. Despite himself, the young man warmed to the bearded, stooped oddity seated before him. He extended a hand and helped the ancient intruder to his feet.

"It's a hard decision I'm after, sir," Aglaca began, astounded at his own rashness. "The lord of this castle- not the old lord, mind you, but the young man who rules in everything but name-wants me to become his captain. Time was when I would have done so gladly, but Ver-minaard has changed. He has undergone a dealing with darkness in the caverns south of this castle, and what he has become… I am not sure. I suspect the worst."

The old fellow regarded him seriously, listening and nodding. "No hard decision. Seems like you'd refuse such an offer, then."

Aglaca cleared his throat. "If that was the lot of it, deciding would be simple enough. But Verminaard has been my companion for many years at Nidus, as close to a friend as I figure I've had. It's been lonely here, sir, when all the talents you have-every interest and delight and gift you would bring to a household or a family or a friendship-are the things that they never cared about. Not that Verminaard was much better. But then there's also this-he's my half-brother as well."

"Verminaard is your brother." The old man nodded. "And what he asks of you is treasonous, against both your country and your spirit. Then either of the choices-"

"And it doesn't stop there, sir," Aglaca interrupted, his politeness giving way to a troubled eagerness. "Verminaard has threatened me. If I refuse his offer, he'll seize my friend Judyth."

The old man leaned against the gray trunk of a vallen-wood. A strange silver radiance danced over his shaggy hair, and the triangle on the crown of his hat caught the light and glinted. "Judyth," he repeated. "I see. I almost forgot that when young men tug and wrangle, there's generally a young woman to tug and wrangle over."

Aglaca shrugged. "That, sir, is the long and short of it. It's wrong to choose for Verminaard, and it's disaster to choose against him. I suspect it's a test of sorts, imposed to try my spirit and wisdom."

He looked intently at the old man.

"I see." The old gentleman smiled. "I, on the other hand, suspect that you are making this a test. You just haven't yet found the other choice."

"The other choice? I don't understand, Old One."

The gray fellow shook his head. "It must be there someplace. There's never only one pass through the mountains. With every confrontation, there comes an escape route, so that you may be able to bear all temptations."

"Where is my other choice, sir?"

"Somewhere… between the two of you," the old man replied mysteriously.

"Between?"

"Ages ago, the power behind the mace, behind the Voice, walked the face of the earth."

"What does that have to do-" Aglaca began, but the gray fellow waved his hand for silence.

"I listened to you for a spell, Aglaca Dragonbane. Now it's your turn."

Chastened, the young man nodded politely, and the old illusionist continued.

"In the Age of Light, the dark dragons ruled the sky, and their queen-whose name I shall not say, even though I am safe from her power-claimed all Ansalon as her own."

"Huma Dragonbane defeated her," Aglaca said. "Drove her away."

The old man regarded him with a thin smile.

"He was my ancestor," Aglaca muttered, and sank into embarrassed silence.

"I know that well," the illusionist replied, "which is why you figure into this elaborate mess. At the time Huma banished the Dragon Queen, banished as well was the secret of the Amarach runes."

Aglaca started to speak, but the old man stared him to silence.

"Yes, Aglaca. The very runes your brother Verminaard employs in a silly fortune-telling game. The Amarach is not silly, though, just incomplete. He's one stone away from immeasurable power."

The illusionist stood and paced around the clearing, the branches in his wake sparkling with a strange, silver light. "And the Dragon Queen is looking for the secret of that stone now. To sound the runes. To find the key to enter the world, to seize power before the forces arrayed against her are strong enough to stop her."

He paused. The clearing was completely silent.

"But once again," the illusionist continued, "Huma's blood stands against her. The two of you are needed- Verminaard and Aglaca-dark strength and bright wisdom. Your compassion balances his force, his judgment your mercy.

"You two are the opposite sides of the rune, Aglaca. When the symbol of the stone is revealed to you, and that time will be soon, then the two of you can use the power of the rune-"

"To stop her before she comes into the world!" Aglaca cried.

A larkenvale fluttered in the branches of the glowing vallenwood. The garden settled again into silence as the young man took in the gravity of what had been entrusted him.

"How-how do we use it?" he asked meekly. "How do we use the rune?"

"You will know when the symbol is revealed," the old gentleman told him. "Each of you carries half the story in his heart."

"Verminaard's heart is changed," Aglaca argued. "But I will stay by him. I will seek to help him change it back. But I cannot do it alone."

The illusionist nodded. "I know. I have something that will be quite useful. It is dangerous, and for you, more dangerous still after you use it. For then you must trust in Verminaard's decision, and the choice will be his, finally. Your choice comes now, Aglaca. You can risk your life, or the life of the world."

Aglaca took a deep breath. "Then the choice is simple.

For the sake of all I hold dear-for the sake of everything- I'll stay in Nidus. I'll use whatever you want me to use. Verminaard will change. I know he will."

With a kindly smile, the old man beckoned Aglaca closer. "Then these may help you. I will tell you things about Cerestes, and things about binding and loosing. Volatile words, these are," he cautioned, "and you may use them but once. Then you will forget them-forget them forever-and your chance to help Verminaard will be over."

Aglaca took a deep breath. "I am ready to hear."

And there in the garden, the old man whispered them in the young man's waiting ear.

Aglaca didn't know when the gardener left. He was staring into the old man's kindly eyes, his mind filled with the verses of the two powerful songs he had just learned, then suddenly the ancient was gone. In his wake shone a last shimmer of light in the lowest branch of the vallenwood.

"Thank you," Aglaca breathed. "My thanks for the words and the wind and the birdsong. And for revealing the hidden passage in the mountains, dangerous though it may be."

Robert stood at the edge of the garden, watching the boy babble and gesture.

It was the oddest thing, with young Aglaca standing in the midst of the evergreens, holding forth on something or other to the airy nothing of the garden. Robert always reckoned that when a man talked to himself, it was time for the surgeons.

And yet this one had saved his life not two years ago. Aglaca was a cool and level lad, not one for fancy or lunacy.

Perhaps he was the lunatic for coming back to the traitor's castle, simply because the druidess had asked him to help search for the girl. A victim of brown eyes and auburn hair, he was, his soldier's resolution melting before the wishes of L'Indasha Yman.

He had passed easily through the south gates, where the sentries, two lads he himself had trained, had squinted suspiciously as the swirling leaves skittered under the arch and into the castle, borne aloft by a brisk wind. For a moment, the leaf storm seemed to take the shape of a man, but when the sentries blinked, the image had vanished, as L'Indasha had told Robert it would. When he had reached the garden, he had taken his own shape again and, hidden behind living leaves in a decidedly unmagical fashion, had set up a watch on Castle Nidus.

Daeghrefn would be enraged to find him here, Robert thought gleefully. But he was not here for revenge. He was here to find the druidess's helper and take her back to the mountains.

Now, at least, he had found Aglaca. He figured the girl was not far away. After all, L'Indasha had seen her with the wiry Solamnic lad.

And yet, standing in the garden, talking to the taxus, Aglaca seemed to have lost a little of his graceful balance in the last month or so.

Robert rubbed at his eyes and peered through the bushes. Perhaps it was best that L'Indasha wanted him to bring back the girl. Perhaps it was a rescue of sorts.

The crack of a dried twig sent him burrowing deep in the aeterna. Cautiously, as if he were scouting an enemy camp, he parted the blue branches.

The girl. He had not needed to wait long.

"We can't leave," Aglaca maintained. "Even if we could elude the guards, I will not leave." Judyth regarded him skeptically. "It's odd to keep honor with Daeghrefn and Ver-minaard, since neither knows the word," she declared fiercely, and Aglaca started at the heat of her reply.

The two of them sat quietly in the garden as the evening stars emerged in the autumn sky. His head in Judyth's lap, Aglaca looked up into the turning constellations and watched Solinari rising in the eastern sky.

The silver moon was in High Sanction, in the phase of fullness and power. Whatever magic rode upon the night was good now, was auspicious.

"It's not Daeghrefn and Verminaard. It's… something else," Aglaca said. "Something I learned this afternoon." But he remained silent about what he had learned. "I see," Judyth said after a long silence, resting her hand on Aglaca's shoulder. "But brother or friend or… whatever, I think it would be foolhardy to believe that Verminaard will protect you. He's going to join with the Nerakans, Aglaca. Do you think his other treaties will fare any better? When the bargains are his alone to strike or break?"

"Yes. Hmmm. I don't know."

Judyth leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. "He's come to find me. He's trying to court me,

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 then-almost 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 undertaking-going 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 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 morrownorth to safer, more clement weather.