Before The Mask (18 page)

Verminaard nodded, his eyes fixed on the heart of the mace. “I want you to be my captain.”

“I'm not sure I was clear, Verminaard, but”

“It's quite simple.” Verminaard stood over him now, the broad shoulders blocking the
firelight so that Aglaca looked up into a thick, impermeable darkness. "If you are

my captain, you may keep the girl. To do with as you wish.“ ”I may keep the girl?“ Aglaca
asked incredulously. ”And what... what do you have in mind if..."

“If you refuse, Judyth is mineto do with as I wish.” He paused to let the enormity of the
possibility build in Aglaca. “You cannot hide her in your quarters forever. If I demand
the girl, she is mine. And I will demand her when the red moon is full. Until then,
neither of you is free to leave the castle. But you, Aglaca, are free to choose. And
there's no hard feelings, whatever you decide. After all, what's a slip of a purple-eyed
girl between brothers?”

“Your brother is at East Borders, Verminaard,” Aglaca insisted, “where I should be now
instead.”

“My brother is with me now as well, Aglaca,” Verminaard hissed. “You know it as well as I
do. But perhaps you haven't imagined the particulars. Let me tell you of a night long ago,
when a traveling knight named Daeghrefn stopped in East Borders to lodge with... a friend.”

Aglaca went to the garden as the shadow of the western walls lengthened over the taxus and
the blue aeterna. Politely, the soldier assigned to guard him stayed at the garden gate,
allowing the youth to wander in the midst of the rich evergreens where he had sought
refuge as a small child. Then he had been uprooted by an alliance he did not understand.
It was much the same now, Aglaca thoughtthe green smell and the dense, wiry foliage
soothing but finally comfortless, more a place to hide than a place to recover.

Aglaca traced over that evening in the former seneschal's cottagethe grotesque offers, the
badgering, and the threats. He looked in horror at Verminaard now, at the ris-

ing evil and the fierce obsession with fire and violence. He remembered the horror on the
plains, with Nightbringer rising and falling in the smoky moonlight, its obsidian head
slick with the blood of ogres.

And now this offer. To be his second in such outrage.

He is my brother, Aglaca thought. He has changed beyond belief or desire, but Verminaard
is still my brother.

He stared bleakly at the red sliver of Lunitari as the moon began its slow passage toward
the appointed time.

Daeghrefn sat and stared into the fire, an uncorked bottle of wine on the table beside
him. He was gaunt, pale, almost cadaverousa far cry from the robust man who had stood on
the Bridge of Dreed nine years ago awaiting the arrival of his Solamnic hostage. His eyes
red-rimmed and his hair matted, he stared wretchedly into the fire, turning a stemmed
glass slowly in his hand.

The door to the hall opened abruptly, and it was a moment before Daeghrefn heard the
footsteps approaching, loud and heedless, over the ancient stone floor.

“You wanted to see me, Father?” Verminaard asked icily, and the Lord of Nidus turned to
face him. “Very well. I'll grant you audience. After all, these chambers are mine. You are
here through my generosity only.”

A wide and witless grin spread over Daeghrefn's face. Vainly he tried to stand, then
weaved over the chair and thought better of it. Seated once more, addled by the wine and
breathing roughly, raspily, he glared at the monstrous young man who stood above him,
blocking the torchlight.

“Audience?” Daeghrefn asked. “Did you say ...” His voice dwindled into the vaulted hall.
"Well. We can talk of

that later, Verminaard. As for now, my mind is on another thing."

He rose, braced himself against the back of the chair, and balanced before the reeling
fireplace. Verminaard's face seemed veiled from him in the deceptive firelight. Clearing
his throat, Daeghrefn continued.

“I am thinking that I do not know you all that well. That I haven't been . . . good to
you. And now . . . well, now you intend to take all Nidus away from me.” Daeghrefn sighed.
“I expect your bitterness and anger are justified and that I have no choice but to make a
good end of it.”

The Lord of Nidus poured wine into a glittering metal cup and offered it to Verminaard.
The young man took it and stared into the ambered bowl of the vessel while Daeghrefn
talked on idly.

“This has been a long estrangement, and little has been your doing. If you would agree to
a way that we might coexist, I'd...”

Verminaard ignored the prattle, his senses drawn by the strange fragrance of the wine. As
he lifted the cup toward his lips, the new scars on his hand began to twitch and tingle.

He had come to know this as a warning.

Warily Verminaard peered over the rim of the cup, then handed the wine to Daeghrefn. “If
we are to make accord, Father,” he said with a sneer, “we should drink from the same cup.”

Slowly, his hand shaking, Daeghrefn lifted the vessel. Verminaard stared at him frostily
as the firelight seemed to tilt and shudder. Quietly, with a scarcely detectable movement
of his fingers, the Lord of Nidus let the cup drop clattering to the floor, spilling its
contents in a steaming, corrosive mist over the stones.

Verminaard seized the older man, hurling him against the stones of the fireplace. Then,
lifting him by the front of

his tunic, he pinned Daeghrefn against the wall and snarled at him.

“You adder!” he shouted. “Your fangs are devious and veiled, even when the venom is dry!
At last I have you where I have wanted you for twenty yearsbacked against a wall, your
power and poison useless!” He raised Nightbringer, its black handle quivering and droning
in his hand.

“I let you live,” Daeghrefn gasped. “I let you live, when I could have killed you merely
by walking away!”

The grip about his neck slackened.

“You're mad!” Verminaard muttered. “You let me live? And what was that in the cup? I owe
you nothing, old mannot even the chance to bargain]”

Daeghrefn watched in terror as the mace wheeled over the young man's head, then lowered
slowly, quietly to his side.

“But look at you. You're already dead,” Verminaard observed, his voice thick with scorn.
“A mere husk of a man, the skin of a locust in a blighted year. You haven't even the
decency to lie down.”

Daeghrefn quivered and whimpered. He closed his eyes, and when he looked again, Verminaard
was halfway across the room, headed for the doors to the chamber.

“I could have killed you once,” he whispered. “In the snow ... in a lost time ... before
... before all of this----”

The words were lost in the crackle of the fire, the slam of the oaken doors.

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 birdsthe jays and the lingering
dovewere 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 themtaxus and juniper and blue aeterna, bare oak and
vallenwoodshimmered 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 themthe
young Solamnic and his surprising visitorappraised 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 daysat 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 namewants 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 haveevery interest
and delight and gift you

would bring to a household or a family or a friendshipare the things that they never cared
about. Not that Verminaard was much better. But then there's also thishe'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 queenwhose name I shall
not say, even though I am safe from her powerclaimed 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 Aglacadark 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.

“Howhow 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 dearfor 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 themforget
them foreverand 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,