Before the Mask

Chapter 20

The man stalked across the eastern plains, and the first of the winter winds swept up from the south, bearing with it the smell of ash and corruption.

It was Verminaard. That much was certain. Aglaca knew him at once by the broad shoulders, by the blond hair and the tattered black cloak. By the damned mace he still clutched tightly.

He moved swiftly, feverishly, as though something pursued him. And behind him the wave of darkness spread and settled, and the eastern hills vanished into a complete and abject night.

"Here he comes," Cerestes announced, pointing a long, bony finger at the approaching man. "Look behind him,

Aglaca, and tell me this: How can such darkness bode aught but ill for you and for your kind?"

Aglaca smiled. Toward the approaching figure he turned, and he began the second chant.

"The light in the eastern skies Is still and always morning, It alters the renewing air Into belief and yearning…"

With a bleating cry, Cerestes leapt toward the young Solamnic, who brushed him aside with a wave of a sinewy arm. The mage teetered at the edge of the ramparts, shrieked…

And clutched at the crenels, his legs skidding out over the bailey before he tugged himself back to safety and crouched, rasping and whimpering, on the stone walk. Aglaca rushed at him, pinning him against the battlements with one muscled arm.

Verminaard, approaching below, felt a great and ponderous weight lift from him. Suddenly, unexplainably, Nightbringer loosened in his hand. For a moment, thunderstruck, he gazed down at the weapon, then up to the battlements, where his eyes locked with Aglaca's, and he clutched the mace more tightly, more passionately.

Suddenly he remembered the vision-years ago on the Bridge of Dreed, when he had stood and awaited Aglaca's crossing. Again he saw the blond youth on a windy battlement, a lithe, blue-eyed image of himself. But not me, he thought again. My brother… my image. Not Abelaard, but my brother.

The young man gestured. His lips moved in a soundless incantation, and Verminaard felt weaker, felt his own power drain from him, then return as he found himself by the walls of Nidus. A dark force pushed him toward the battlements, and relentlessly, almost mechanically,

Verminaard began to climb.

Looking down into the transfigured face of his brother, Aglaca fumbled with the spell for a moment, the words slipping away in his astonishment. For Verminaard's countenance was sallow and gaunt, and a lost light flickered in the depths of his eyes. It seemed as though nothing lay beneath his skin except air and bone. And Verminaard's eyes…

For an instant, Aglaca recalled their first hunt, the turning of the great beast in the box canyon, the dull look in the monster's eye, and he wondered why he was remembering this, why his mind played lazily over the past when the present rushed at him, armed and deadly.

And his own vision, a decade ago on the bridge, returned to him.. the pale, muscular young man, and the mace descending…

So it will be, unless you take this matter in your own hands, Aglaca Dragonbane, coaxed the Voice, again low and seductive, neither man nor woman.

" 'Even the night,' " Aglaca sputtered at last, closing his ears to the disembodied coaxing, his voice gaining confidence as he spoke the second verse of the chant:

"Even the night must fail, For light sleeps in the eyes And dark becomes dark on dark Until the darkness dies…"

Verminaard did not stop for an instant. Scrabbling up the wall like an enormous spider, buoyed by a dark, whirling cloud, he slung his leg over the merlon and hurdled onto the battlement, his fingers digging at the solid stone of the crenels as he clambered atop the walls and crouched, the mace clutched tightly in his hand.

"Stop him, Verminaard!" Cerestes cried, fumbling in his sleeves and producing a long, narrow dagger. "Stop Aglaca before he enchants you with his Solamnic wizardry!" Aglaca slammed the mage into the wall. Dazed, Cerestes gasped for air.

Verminaard stared coldly at Aglaca, waving the mace nervously, like the switching tail of a lion.

Aglaca stood his ground, watching Cerestes out of the corner of his eye as the mage drew hesitantly nearer, the dagger rising and falling awkwardly in his delicate hand.

"Stop him!" Cerestes spat, "or the chant will kill you!"

Serenely Aglaca chanted the third of the four verses.

"Soon the eye resolves Complexities of night Into stillness, where the heart Falls into fabled light…"

Color returned to Verminaard's skin, and he took a long breath. Was that lilac in the air? His arms were heavy, and suddenly he was very hungry.

"What is your answer, my brother?" Verminaard asked. "Will you choose to be my captain, to serve me in the dignity and honor of our long acquaintance, our deepening friendship, or will you choose to leave the girl with me?"

"If you let me finish, I'll be your captain."

Uneasily Verminaard glanced down to the bailey, which seemed to pivot and rock below. For a moment, it seemed to rush up toward him with a blinding, insensible speed, and he thought he was falling.

He closed his eyes, gathering his courage and balance.

Do not listen to him, the Voice coaxed, rising from the shimmering head of the mace. He will hoodwink you with Solamnic lies.

No. Aglaca is trustworthy. That is why I want him as my captain. Ten years I have known him… ten years…

See. Test him and see.

"Have I ever lied to you, Verminaard?" Aglaca asked. "Would I lie to you now? Would I say, 'Yes, I shall serve you,' and then turn away when a safer moment could take me west to Solamnia, or a moment more dire, more dangerous, might let me betray you?"

But remember the hunt, the Voice insinuated. Remember the dmsil roots, and who returned with the girl…

With a deep breath, Verminaard leapt onto the battlement and walked slowly toward Aglaca. "It will be one or the other, Aglaca. Choose now. Either you serve me, here and now, or the girl is mine."

"Then there is one more choice," Aglaca replied. "Not to choose from the choices you offer."

"Do not listen to him!" Cerestes shrieked. "Help me! He will kill us both and take your castle!"

"He is the darkness on the moon. He is a dragon," Aglaca said, his voice low and soothing and persuasive. He stepped toward Verminaard on the narrow battlement, extending his hand.

A gesture of friendship. Or to seize the mace?

Verminaard edged forward, then back again.

"Set down the mace, my brother," Aglaca urged. "It holds you in the depth of enchantments. It is loose in your hand already. You felt it as you approached the castle, I know. Let me finish and you are forever free."

"Let him finish and we both are dead!" Cerestes cried, and rushed at Aglaca. Swiftly, with the grace of a dancer, the young Solamnic pivoted and kicked him back, and Cerestes clattered against the stone crenels. Aglaca steadied himself on the battlements between his old companion and the stunned mage.

Quietly, turning to Verminaard with a smile on his face, Aglaca began the last verse.

"And larks rise up like angels…"

The image of Abelaard flashed through Verminaard's mind, the pale eyes milky and uplifted, the pale hands groping for the hilt of a broken sword.

This is what Solamnia has given you, the Voice urged as Abelaard's eyes fixed upon his brother's in the twisting depths of Verminaard's imaginings. It has taken your brother away, and its lies have made you injure the one dear… one dear… The words echoed inside Verminaard's head.

"Like angels larks ascend…"

The voice went on, urgently, compellingly. Remember the cave and the strong surge of power. He would take that from you as well, as his father took your mother and your father… as he took your true brother Abelaard and the girl you had dreamed when she became Judyth. He took them all, and now he would take me from you… I, who am your sole confidante, your friend and lover and family as well.

Do you remember once, when the two of you spoke of me? He said, "I choose not to believe," and you thought, I choose not to believe Aglaca… not to believe Aglaca…

You have chosen already, Lord Verminaard. There is no going back. You are mine, always and forever. You have said.

I have seen Aglaca fight, Verminaard thought. He is swift and powerful. I could not defeat him even if I He is yours, the mace assured him. Be ruled by me.

Aglaca touched Verminaard's arm, and as he began to recite the penultimate line, the big man recoiled, as if something loathsome had attached itself to him. "Midnight!" he roared, and brought the mace, flashing with dajk and cold energy and malice as old as thought, toward the innocent face of his companion and brother.

Aglaca had scarcely time to cover his head when the mace struck his arms full force.

Gundling, standing by the portcullis below, heard the shriek of Nightbringer hurtling through the air and the sound of the impact, the snap of the young man's bones. The old guard raced to the bailey's edge and looked up on the ramparts where Aglaca reeled and fell to his knees, quietly breathing the last lines of the spell:

"From sunlit grass as bright as gems To where all darkness ends."

Gundling turned and raced toward the guardhouse.

As the chant ended, Verminaard felt the mace let go in his hand, felt the hand straighten and heal. He dropped Nightbringer on the stone of the ramparts as Cerestes rose slowly, still clutching his long dagger.

Time seemed to stop for a long breath, Aglaca's pain-dazed face unblinking, unseeing, as he stared into Ver-minaard's eyes. Cerestes stood, caught in the moon's dark glow, and Nightbringer looked for all the world like a cold cave rock, formed only of limestone and tears, all presence gone, all magic fled. A slow wailing began deep in Verminaard's throat and rose into the stillness.

He had blinded both brothers.

As Aglaca struggled to rise and failed, dazed and sightless on the battlements, his arms shattered, Verminaard stared down upon him, and for a moment, something like compassion crossed over his face like a brief flicker of flame.

And I have done these things, he thought. So there is no hope for me. No hope. I have chosen.

His howl died away, and he knelt and picked up the mace. Nightbringer awoke with a crackle, and this time there was no pain in his hand at all. The scar ran too deep. Coldly he stood above his dazed brother, who groped for the crenel, trying vainly to stand as Cerestes, with a rustle of black robes, slipped behind Aglaca and plunged the dagger once, twice, a third time into his back.

For a moment, the two of them stood there. Verminaard stared blankly at the mage, who looked back at him with a sly, exultant smile.

"His spell is broken as well," Cerestes whispered, lifting his dripping hands, and the blood and the red moonlight glittered upon newly formed scales.

Fifty miles away, in the infirmary of Castle East Borders, Abelaard sat upright in the bed and cried out.

He had dreamt of a song-some verse, some incantation-soothing words about day and light and larks and angels…

He lifted his hands to the bandages on his eyes, then sank disconsolately back upon the bed. There was no music in this absolute dark.

He remembered the last of the song in his dream, whispered the words to himself as the door opened in the far end of the infirmary, and he could tell by the footsteps and the bobbing light of the candle that the surgeon was making his nightly rounds.

The candle.

Abelaard sat bolt upright and called to the approaching doctor, called out in joy to guards on the bailey battlements, to the lord in the motte: "The candle! I can see!"

He leapt from the bed and lurched toward the source of the light, tearing the bandages off as he ran.

"Thanks be to Paladine!" he whispered, and lifted the astonished surgeon off his feet.

And to whoever had sung the forgotten song in his dreams, he offered thanks as well.

Judyth waited in the garden, but Aglaca did not come.

Long past the appointed time, she sat in the little clearing ringed with evergreens, marking the hours by the tilt of the moons in the sky. An owl cried ominously from the bare branches of the vallenwood, and when Judyth looked up, it was perched there, framed in the red light of Lunitari like something monstrous, glimpsed on a burning plain.

She felt hollow then, and alone. But not afraid. She had already passed through the country of fear. Aglaca had seen to that.

They had come to meet nightly in the garden, and each meeting had been an assurance. Aglaca had been cheery and humorous and confident, his affections strong and kind. Though the greatest of dangers had loomed before them, Aglaca's faith had bolstered them both. He had hoped in Verminaard, but he had believed far deeper things-that even if Verminaard failed him, there was a power, eternal and good, that undermined all of the weakness and treachery of those in Nidus and everywhere. And no matter the failures of mortals, that power would never fail.

Somewhere out in the bailey, a soldier shouted, then another, and the silence of the garden broke with the sound of rushing, scattering feet beyond the evergreens- guardsmen calling for Gundling, for Sergeant Graaf, a muffle of voices speaking veiled words, veiled news. "Battlements," she heard. And "mage." "Murder."

Judyth stood, straightening her skirts, her fingers absently brushing her hair, clutching the pendant at her neck. Verminaard would be sending for her, no doubt, for in the confusion of sound and light, she knew one thing instantly.

Aglaca was dead.

She had known it could come to this from that time in

Nightbringer's cavern, when Verminaard had first set his hand to that damnable mace. And later, when Aglaca had resolved to free Verminaard from the dark bondage of the weapon, Judyth had known that large and uncontrollable forces were set in motion, that the time would come when her fate and Aglaca's would depend on a single choice.

And the choice would not be theirs to make.

After a while, someone approached, the dim light from his lamp weaving elusively through the trees. The lamp-bearer stepped into the ring of evergreens. It was the Seneschal Robert, armed and solemn and bleary-eyed from a sudden wakefulness.

"Who are you?" Judyth asked. "I think you bear the worst of news."

"Oh, it is scarcely the worst, m'Lady," Robert replied, his voice grave and sorrowful, "terrible though this news is. Tonight we leave this terrible castle and make for the mountains and safety. Toward Berkanth, and the home of L'Indasha the druidess. You have been called to her service, she says, for there is worse to come from Verminaard and Cerestes."

Judyth dropped her eyes from Robert's concerned stare and fought down a surge of anger and pain. He knew this would happen, she thought. Aglaca knew this would be the outcome, but still he chose to let Verminaard choose again.

And now I am alone, without him.

When do I get to choose? Since I left Solanthus, I've been adrift on plots and wills and plans, all of which mapped what's best for the girl. I've followed their roads and followed their banners, and the way has changed so often that I could never get back to Solanthus… at least not the place I remember.

Then there was Aglaca, and though he did not ask to leave, he's gone and irretrievable, and Robert is planning for me now. But Aglaca was right to do it. There was the one hope of us all in the way he met his own choice…

"Bravely, quietly," she said aloud. Then she looked at Robert again. "There's something left for me to do here."

"Lady?" whispered Robert, still awaiting her answer.

She looked up again, and tears of triumph coursed down her cheeks. She was smiling.

"I will go with you, Robert," Judyth replied. "But not yet. There is something I must attend to here."

Daeghrefn heard the outcry from his tower balcony. He saw the torches milling below in the bailey, the fractured glint of firelight on armor.

It is the mutiny, he thought. The uprising has begun.

He stumbled into his chambers and lurched toward the bed. The window open behind him, the red moonlight skimming across his shoulders, he sat on the bedside and extinguished the candles. Dressing slowly in the half-dark, his eyes fixed upon the door to the chamber, he paused when he was fully dressed in tunic and tabard.

He turned to his battle gear-first the old Solamnic greaves and gauntlets, and then the newer pieces, the black body armor adopted when he set aside the Solamnic plate and its embossed roses and kingfishers.

They will not see me until they pass through that door, he declared to himself, fumbling with his breastplate and helm. And then they will see me as a knight, as the warrior lord of the castle. I shall be waiting for them. At the very last, when all are marshaled against me, I shall end as I began, under my own standard, in the face of the damned and damning Order.

Ceremoniously he donned the long, black cape adorned with the crest of Nidus.

The armor was too large for him.

Robert noticed at once as he quietly entered the chamber, leaving the two unconscious guards lying in the corridor behind him.

The gaunt, wild-eyed man who faced him was only a shadow of the strong young fellow who had come to the castle lordship twenty-five years before-the man Robert the seneschal had sworn to uphold, to follow. It was as though he was waning, like a sliver of the declining moon.

When Daeghrefn saw who it was, he sprang to his feet and backed into the corner, his dark eyes blazing with anger and fear.

"You!" he shouted, his voice husky and harsh. "I knew when I left you on the plains it would be only a matter of time until you came to this room, weapon in hand! So take your revenge and go. If you're man enough."

Daeghrefn drew his sword. The blade weaved and wavered in his hand.

He's exhausted, Robert thought. He's wearied past sense.

"No," he replied, closing the door behind him. "I come for no vengeance, but for your rescue. I am here to take you from the castle, Lord Daeghrefn. It has become unsafe here. There's a mutiny afoot."

"I know that." Daeghrefn's eyes were haunted, wretched.

Robert cleared his throat. "-Perhaps, then, you are also aware that your old… acquaintance, Lord Laca of East Borders, is on his way from Estwilde at the head of a thousand mounted soldiers."

Daeghrefn gripped his sword more tightly. In his mind's eye, he saw a burning plain, the South Moraine smoldering and charred… saw Robert riding away into the smoke…

"Come with me, sir/' Robert urged. "I'll care for you."

"Very clever, Robert," Daeghrefn said with a sneer. "You could dupe a guardsman or a falconer with your soothing double-talk, but it's hardly clever enough for the lord of the castle. I shall stay here, thank you. And you shall depart my presence."

Robert studied his old master from across the shadowy chamber. I believe where you are going, I cannot help you, he thought. But I shall try, Lord Daeghrefn.

I shall try.

"You must come, sir," he entreated, his voice hushed and somber. "Verminaard has killed Aglaca, and who can tell what that will-"

Daeghrefn stood bolt upright, his gaze vacuous and distant. "The gebo-naud," he whispered, his voice cracking. " 'Truce for truth… and son for son.' "

"We must leave now, sir," Robert persisted.

Daeghrefn backed toward the balcony, shaking his head, his hands extended as though he tried to fend something off.

"The gebo-naud," he said, his voice cracking hysterically. "My son

… 'And his hand will strike your name,' the druidess said."

Wheeling about with a shriek, he rushed onto the balcony, Robert trailing desperately behind him. "Laca! Abe-laard!" Daeghrefn screamed.

"AbelaardV

And he toppled headfirst from the railing, into a strange and dreadful silence, the dark cape flapping behind him like a broken wing.