Before the Mask

Chapter 9

As the Voice had told Verminaard, tbe Pen lay to the west, in an encampment amid a forest of green banners.

He crept closer, almost to the banners themselves, where he could hear the sniffling and coughing of a rheumy sentry. Aglaca followed gamely, crouching in the shadow of a large green pavilion, peering across the campground at the Nerakan stockade.

"I've never seen anything of this sort," Aglaca marveled. "The stockade is a living thing."

Verminaard gave the stockade a second look.

Sure enough, the Pen was alive and growing-a tight circle of small-boled trees, so close together that a mouse could barely pass between the trunks. Their branches spread and intertwined, forming a netted canopy that kept out the rain, no doubt, and most of the sunlight. Near the Pen's narrow entrance, the sentries paced, and the air seemed to bristle and crackle before them.

Aglaca smiled. "It's easier than I thought."

Verminaard shot him a puzzled look.

"Those are drasil trees," the young Solamnic explained. "Remember the ones above the cave in the mountains?"

Verminaard did not.

With a sigh, Aglaca continued, leaning back into the darkness. "Once again, they grow over caves. That's the point. This whole area must sit atop a cavern-perhaps a system of caverns. When we find an entrance, it will be simple. We'll come up under the Pen and burrow her out."

"Won't that be hard to do? To break through all that cavern rock?" Verminaard still did not understand.

"The trees have already done that for us," Aglaca replied delightedly. "The system of roots has broken it to gravelly soil, I'd wager. The two of us, at work for a couple of hours with sword and knife, could hack a hole big enough to draw out the girl-to draw out her entourage, if need be. Then it's back to where we left the horses, and on to Nidus before the Nerakans know they've been… undermined."

The caves were easy enough to find.

And Aglaca was right: The whole plateau was riddled with tunnels and fissures. The tunnels branched and burgeoned, forming an intricate network that spread roughly westward, toward the Nerakan walls, the center of town, and the temple itself.

Aglaca led the way. It seemed that he had a dwarf's underground sense, weaving through the dark, perplexing tunnel system, his hands extended before him. Rejecting blind passages almost by instinct, he would feel at an opening, shake his head and pass by.

Deep within the tunnels, Aglaca withdrew a tinderbox and a small lamp from a pouch at his belt. Crouching quietly and suddenly, so that Verminaard almost stumbled over him in the gloom, the Solamnic youth lit the lamp deftly and held it aloft.

The darkness dispelled a little. Amid confusion and discord, rubble and guano, strange, translucent crickets whirred and stalked blindly over the glistening stone walls and the ancient cobwebbed beams that supported the tunnels ahead.

"I had no idea they were…" Verminaard began. But the depth and extent of the caverns baffled him.

Another sound, high and melodious, filtered to the young men like a chorus of a thousand distant voices, the harmonies so intricate that the music itself teetered on the edge of chaos. Beautiful though it was, the sound was distracting, and Verminaard shielded his ears.

"What is it?" he whispered, but Aglaca only shook his head.

"You should know. It's the sound of spellcraft," the smaller youth explained. "Something surrounds the Pen-a shell of energy or light. Since we can't pass around it or through it, we're on our way under it and up to the girl."

"How do you know, Aglaca?" Verminaard slipped narrowly through a latticework of thick roots. "You don't listen when it comes to magic."

"I don't listen to Cerestes," Aglaca corrected mysteriously and handed the lamp to his companion.

Though he was thoroughly lost by now, turned about in the tunnels, and though each passage was indistinguishable from the last, Verminaard could tell that, slowly but directly, Aglaca was guiding them somewhere. Resentfully he held the lamp aloft, giving the smaller lad the light to see by.

The rescue had been Verminaard's idea, after all, planned over runes and misgivings in the dark nights of Castle Nidus, and now this interloper-this hostage-had seized command with his cleverness and know-how.

I am no oracle, he thought. And yet I see the lay of this tunnel-how this venture will be reported to the ears of those at home, and who will receive the glory for the rescue.

He glared at Aglaca, who bent down a tunnel, nodded, and motioned to Verminaard excitedly, urgently.

"Here it is!" he whispered. His blue eyes caught for a moment in the torchlight, flickering a bright, unexplain-able red. "Drasil roots. Looks to be a circle of 'em, like a ring of mushrooms. We're directly under the Pen, I'll wager. It's all digging and a straight climb from here, Verminaard. Set the lamp where it gives the most light."

Verminaard's enmity vanished with the news. Thoughts of the girl returned like a fresh wind in the damp and musty cavern. Verminaard wedged the lamp into a crack in the tunnel wall, split by one of the drasil roots in its blind plummet through both ceiling and floor of the cave. Taking up his sword, he sprang compliantly to Aglaca's side, ready to hack and dig and fight anything that stood between him and the captured girl.

He was so close now to realizing his daydreams. She would be a beauty of unparalleled fairness. Verminaard had had his share of serving girls and milkmaids, but none of them would be like this creature. Her eyes would be pale blue stars and her silky hair the color of flax. She would know him immediately for the one who'd planned and propelled her rescue, and she would be forever grateful-so grateful that she would never wish to speak to another man. The way she would say his name would "Verminaard! I said you can start anytime! Where have you been?"

"You wouldn't understand. And don't get pushy with me."

It was only a matter of minutes before the roots knotted above them, as thick as cords, as fingers, tendrils snagging their weapons, dulling them in a maddening, fibrous web. Verminaard thrashed vainly at the snarl of root and dirt and rock that seemed to open for him and engulf him as he climbed past the more slender roots to ankle-thick, leg-thick monstrosities that broke through the rock above and below, searching blindly for air and water and sustenance.

Slowly the network of roots surrounded them. It seemed like an underground stockade, a mirror image of the Pen that stood directly above.

"We could work like loggers for a week down here," Aglaca muttered, "and still be no closer to squeezing those shoulders of yours through this tangle."

Verminaard gasped for breath and wiped his dirty brow. Between the dust and his exertion, the air in the cavern was slowly becoming unbreathable.

"We'll go back to the surface. Fight our way in," said Verminaard, moving back the way he'd come.

"Nonsense," Aglaca replied. "You saw their numbers. And there are ogres as well-I could smell them through the fog. I'll bet they're penned up nearby, no doubt enchanted into service to build the wall around the temple. Prisoners or not, they'll fight for the bandits rather than help us out. No, between the brigands and their servants, this is still the best of entries."

Verminaard winced and twisted his foot out of a long tendril.

Aglaca grinned slyly. "Listen. I spoke only of loggers," he said. "Not of burglars."

Verminaard scowled. He was doing it again. A plan was hatching in that ever so clever Solamnic brain- something complicated and intricate, no doubt, rife with twists and illusions, masks and double-talk. Sheathing his sword, his hands still numb from hacking at the roots, he sat on the cavern floor, awaiting a long explanation.

He was surprised at how simple it was.

But he did not like it one whit.

And his thoughts dwelt on the woman pent above them, and the charms and imagined deceits of Aglaca Dragonbane.

Hagalaz and Isa, two young bandit sentries, stood watch at the narrow opening to the Pen. It was no more than a small gap in the drasil trees, curtained of late by their courtly sergeant, who respected the captive's dignity and modesty.

Now was the time when the curtain most availed the girl, as the servingwomen brought in the pitchers of warm water, poured it into the hostage's tub, then backed courteously from the living enclosure, their heads bowed and the pitchers empty. Shortly, the men could hear the girl moving behind the thick canvas. She muttered to herself, and it sounded like two voices in the Pen, like a hushed conversation, but that was nothing new. Judyth of Solan-thus always talked to herself, or murmured incantation, or prayed to her foreign gods.

The thoughts of the guards were scarcely on her prayers. Instead, they were concluding a long speculation as to what the Lady Judyth wore beneath that purple cloak and riding tunic, each sentry goading the other to inch aside the curtain and peer in on the girl as she undressed for her bath.

The speculation was merely cultural, they told themselves. It could be of interest to the Nerakan wives and mothers as to how a wealthy Solamnic girl might dress, especially since she hailed from one of the more ancient and honored cities of that western country.

The interest was academic, they told themselves, at least for now, while the sergeant's orders were strict. The temple clerics had told him not to lay a hostile hand on the girl. Not until Takhisis had given them a sign as to her fate.

So for now, the interest was academic, and their attentions as well. They winked in a most scholarly fashion, holding their breath as they quietly peeked through the curtain. It was a far better job than guarding a foul-smelling band of fifty ogres.

Aglaca climbed higher through the tough entanglements, hands clutching at coarse, sandy root, the leavings of guano, and silt and gravelly dust. Finally, balanced a dozen feet above Verminaard, he could reach no farther. The crumbling ceiling of the cave dipped directly above, and the sound of the girl's muffled words reached him through the thin layer of dirt and rock.

He gritted his teeth and began to dig-slowly and cautiously at first, but with rising urgency as he heard the murmuring cease, heard the girl's voice clearly for the first time: "What in the name of Branchala…"

Then there was light, and the torn edge of a wooden tub hovering over him. The water swirled and trickled above him, yet he remained dry.

"By Paladine!" he breathed.

The water pooled and was caught on some strange shimmering tension in the air. It was like looking at a rain storm through glass or ice, and for a moment, Aglaca thought that indeed it was glass above him. He weaved a moment on his ladder of rough roots, clutching for purchase in the fractured dark.

"Who-who are you?" the girl whispered, peering through the puddle. He recognized the face, the lavender gown she clutched to her breast, the brilliant blue-lavender eyes.

"Y-Your rescuer, by Paladine's grace! We are two. The other waits below," he muttered triumphantly and vaulted toward the light.

It was then that he discovered the magical shell that lay between him and the astonished girl. The spell-charged air snared him, pushed him back. He fell back into the roots with a crash and an oath, staring stupidly up at her. His hands crackled with sparks as he clutched for balance, and his hair stood on end.

"Do you think a simple line of trees could keep me in?" the girl hissed to Aglaca. "Or keep the guardsmen out, if they fancied to trouble me? The priests in that temple have magicked the Pen with a glyph of warding."

"Glyph of warding?"

"An old sign, it is. Charged with shamanic conjury when the black moon rises."

Aglaca swallowed. This hostage girl knew magic beyond his wildest dreams. "How do we…" he began, but a quick wave of her hand urged him to silence.

"I know the countercharm," she whispered. "I didn't go guileless into the mountains, but I need another voice for the casting."

"Another voice? Why?"

"No time. Speak after me. Then stand back. There's a big leak in this bathtub. You're partway under it."

Blushing, his eyes averted and his legs lodged in a chaos of roots, the lad waited for Judyth to dress, then repeated the spinning, incomprehensible Elvish that she spoke to him. It was a brief verse, its vowels dancing in subtle arrangements, and twice the girl had to stop him, correct him, and start him again in the strange incantation.

But the third time it worked.

In triumph and relief, Aglaca repeated the last line, and the air above him stirred and snapped. A deluge of soapy water tumbled from the broken tub, and Judyth, now fully dressed in the lavender robe, slipped through the wet hole and clutched her rescuer about the waist.

"Hurry!" she ordered through clenched teeth, untangling her sleeve from a stray root tendril. "You've freed more than a damsel in distress."

Verminaard had waited sullenly in the cavern, clutching an oozing shoulder wound he had received from backing into a sharp broken root. Then he heard her voice- hushed and melodious and low, not the high-stringed harp music he had imagined-and it was suddenly drowned by a rumble overhead, a tumult of shouting and screaming and the crashing sound of buildings and lean-tos shaking and toppling.

Judyth quickly descended into the torchlight, Aglaca leading her carefully over and around the latticework of roots. They were both wet, dripping with soapy water, and it would be much later before Verminaard discovered the reason.

Verminaard stepped back indignantly.

It was your plan, the Voice insinuated. Your plan, and a good one, conceived in d noble spirit… the'stuff of heroism, all- For a moment, the Voice paused and garbled, as though at the edge of an unpronounceable word. Then it continued. All Huma and lances and glorious victory. It was your idea and your doing, and who leads the girl forth? And why does he lead her?

The Voice repeated the questions again and again, each time more softly until they merged entirely with Ver-minaard's thoughts, and the lad forgot the Voice altogether, asking the questions himself as he reached out to help the girl through the last of the knotted entanglements.

"Thank you," she breathed, and brushed back her hood.

Behind her, a stalactite crashed to the cavern floor.

For the first time, Verminaard looked into the face of the girl he had dreamt of and pursued through two seasons. Her dark hair shone like obsidian in the guttering lamplight; it was not the spun gold he had imagined. And though her skin was flawless, the touch of her hand like fine silk or velvet, that hand was dark, not porcelain or alabaster as the poems had told him it would be, should be.

And the eyes. Deep and lavender, a strange blue, bright and fathomless. Like the eye of that daylily.

She was not the girl he had imagined at all.

Behind her, a rockslide opened the cavern to a shifting, misty light from above. She shoved Verminaard toward the cave entrance and shouted as he staggered back in amazement.

"Don't stand there gawking or we'll all be crushed! Get us out of here!"

They emerged from the cavern just as it collapsed behind them. Verminaard wheeled about, open-mouthed, as the passage behind him caved in with a dusty crash, the plateau collapsing, concentrically spreading all the way to the base of the Nerakan walls, toppling tents and lean-tos and makeshift cottages in a matter of seconds.

He could barely speak. His order that they move quickly to retrieve the horses came as a dry, croaking sound in a landscape of deafening noise. They hurried toward the wooded rise where Orlog and the mare nervously waited, and did not look behind again as the tower itself quaked and the first fires sparked in the town of Neraka.

They did not look back, but not far from the green encampment, another pen-this one fashioned of stone and timber-toppled when the ogres pushed against it. There were two dozen of them, freed from ensorcellment by the chanting of Judyth and Aglaca, and they were joined by thirty others whose chains had burst on the scaffolding near the walls. Drowsily, stupidly, as though they had freshly awakened, the monsters tramped through the fallen tents, gathering torches as they wandered, weaving in dangerous circles and rapidly igniting more thatch and wood. They were dark and hulking in the torchlight, draped in skins and furs, their own sallow hides and blue-black hair glistening in the rising flames as the fires spread through the settlement.

By dark instinct, the ogres moved to the spot of the chanting, where the spell that had contained them was first broken. They reached the Pen and milled together, gaping at one another, uprooting tent posts and wattled walls in their dull uncertainty.

Then one of them-grizzled and small for his race- lifted his face and smelled the switching wind.

"Horse!" he cried out, his broken mouth salivating at the prospect of food. "Horse… and young humans!"

With an exultant, rumbling cry, the ancient ogre rushed toward the green flags, and the rest of the monsters followed.

Ember heard the outcry of the sentries-the name "Judyth" rising like an alarm out of the smoke-and fanned his wings contentedly as the magical fog redoubled over the city and the plains, mingling with the smoke and casting the town into a thick and abiding darkness.

They had her now. Ember was certain. And they would need cover of shadow and cloud to mask their path west through the mountains.

The dragon stirred and rumbled. He had done all he could. He would return to Castle Nidus and await their arrival. There he would be Cerestes again, handsome and witty and learned for the benefit of the captive girl. He would charm the rune-wielder, and he would sound her like the lost rune, rist her in his intricate thoughts and plans until she told him everything she had learned at the feet of the druids.

He would steal her out from the watch of the young humans.

And when he had learned her heart, he would also learn the heart of all the runes.

The dragon lumbered into the sky, rose above the maze of fog into the clear mountain air, and turned his golden eyes to the northwest and to Castle Nidus, abuzz with rumors and vanishments of its own.

Two days into the lads' journey, their absence had become unbearable to the seneschal Robert. He had coaxed, wheedled, and finally berated the master of the castle. Lord Daeghrefn, lost in memories of betrayal and winter, finally stirred at the harsh words of his retainer and noticed that the young men were indeed missing.

"Where would they take those horses for this long, Robert?" he bellowed, stalking down the halls of the castle toward the entrance, the bailey, and the stable beyond them. With a growl, he swept a torch from its sconce on the wall. The brand struck the floor, sputtered, and went out, and Robert coughed behind him.

"Two days is a long time in the saddle if you're hunting, sir. I fear the worst: that they've decided to be heroes, as young men are prone to decide, and that they've taken off toward Neraka with some quest a-brewing."

"Then it's Verminaard's fault!" Daeghrefn stormed, wheeling to face Robert at the sunlit door to the bailey. "What if something happens to Aglaca?"

"Sir?"

"If Aglaca falls in some harebrained escapade, then Abelaard's life is forfeit!"

Robert hesitated. "I reckon that's the rules of the gebo-naud, but I don't think-"

"Where's the fool who helped them with the horses?" Daeghrefn shouted, and made for the distant stable.

Frith was long gone by the time Daeghrefn burst through the stable doors.

He had seen it coming for an hour or two. The young masters were not yet back, though Master Verminaard had sworn they would need the horses only for a night. There was tumult in the keep, and the loudest voice belonged to old Daeghrefn-Lord Stormcrow himself.

Finally Frith's father had been summoned to the council hall. It could mean only one thing.

"They don't summon a groom for matters of state," Frith mumbled to himself, wrapping a cheese and a loaf of bread in his other clean pair of stockings. "It's punishments they're after, punishments and blame, and they'll know before they ask him that Pa don't know a thing.

"But I do." He tucked the woolen package under his arm. The cheese had already begun to smell.

"Whoof!" Frith exclaimed, shifting his burden at once. "Great Reorx forbid 'em to think of the hounds!"

Silently he slipped from the stable atop a swift little gray, figuring that Daeghrefn couldn't kill him but once. Passing through the gate, he coaxed the horse north, toward the shelter of the mountain passes in the long direction of Gargath. The castle dwindled behind him, and he would never return to it, never know that the lads would come home safely, with a mysterious girl in tow, and that Daeghrefn's anger would blow over within a week.

Nor would young Frith discover, until he was much older and the passage of twelve winters had softened the distant news, that his father would be put to death by a furious Daeghrefn for the high crime of not keeping track of his son.

But at the moment Aglaca declared his plan to Ver-minaard, before the Nerakan guards discovered the missing girl and Ember rose above the fog, almost at the same moment that the groom's son Frith decided to flee Castle Nidus, the largest of all the plans was evolving in the depths of the Abyss.

Takhisis watched everything, even forseeing some of it, her golden eye lazing from guard to dragon, from questing lad to stable groom, and her thoughts raced over actions and words to make sense of what would come next.

They are like runes, she decided-Aglaca, Verminaard, the captive girl, Daeghrefn, and the dragon. Somehow they had converged, had all come together in this little rescue story.

Takhisis smiled. It was her task to read convergences. That which was. That which is. That which might become.

Daeghrefn was simple. The wild, immutable force of anger. Whenever he showed in the arrangement, it became volatile… explosive.

The dragon was Daeghrefn's opposite. Ever calm and outwardly serene, laborate and involved, Ember's thoughts turned in on themselves, knotting and entangling until he suspected his own suspicions, deceived himself with his own lies.

The boys were opposites as well. When they glared at one another-in anger, in rivalry, or even in rare agreement-it was as though they looked into a mirror, each the image of the other. Such are brothers, she thought affectionately. But when Verminaard's left hand raised, Aglaca's right hand countered, so that each was the other reversed.

And in rune lore, the Dark Lady remembered, the sign reversed is its opposite as well: The Sun rune reversed foretold darkness, the reversed Harvest rune foretold famine.

Balances. It was all balances. So she had known for ten thousand years, and the little commotions of mortals followed the same vast pattern.

But the girl was different. Unmatched, unpaired, and so far unreadable, she had come from the west, urged on by Paladine's guiding hand. Takhisis could not read her, could not yet discover her mystery or her opposite.

Perhaps she was the blank rune.

The shaman's magic that encircled the Pen had been a test for the girl: a primitive spell, easily broken by mage and by cleric as well, if there were clerics left to break it, but since the girl had done it, she was even more than Takhisis had figured.

For the time being, Takhisis would watch. The girl was more useful alive and free. If she was the blank rune-and when before had the Dark Lady been mistaken? — Judyth would lead Takhisis to L'Indasha Yman, to the secret of the augury.

The girl was the lapwing, the lure that would draw the druidess from hiding.

It would have to be done carefully, this strategy. As soon as Judyth reached Castle Nidus, Takhisis would have the mage cast a warding spell far stronger than the one encircling the Pen in Neraka. She would aid him in the casting, breathe power into his paltry skills so that no enchanter-not even the skillful L'Indasha Yman-could pass through the warding undetected.

No, the druidess would not disrupt these plans. Eventually Judyth would go to her, and when that time came, Takhisis's spies would follow. She would find the druidess, sound the rune, and through the restored prophecies, Takhisis would discover yet another stone-green and priceless and hidden for a century-that would complete the circle of her temple, would bring into being the promised towers in the depth of her dreams.

She turned again on the hot darkwind, watching and waiting.