Before The Mask (20 page)

Nightbringer made the decision. Heedlessly, so quickly that Verminaard thought it was his
own arm, his own doing, the mace flashed in the air and shrieked into the side of the
man's head.

In a crash of bone and metal, the standard-bearer hurtled from his horse. The other
knights wheeled and galloped toward the black-robed invader.

Verminaard glanced about. He was encircledtrapped in the midst of four charging knights.
Orlog whinnied nervously and bucked, but the Voice in the mace soothed horse and rider.

What if there are four? Would four men have daunted Lord Soth? My champions of a thousand,
two thousand years ago? Fret not, Lord Verminaard, for I am with you, and your mace is the
comfort I send.

Verminaard smiled and faced the first of the oncoming enemy.

The knight bent low in the saddle, couching the short spear in a jouster's attack. He
charged, and Verminaard twisted as the spear tore through the folds of his black cape.
Spinning with a raw, awkward power, Verminaard brought the mace thundering down upon the
back of the passing knight, who slumped over his horse in a flood of black light and fell
soundlessly to the dry plain.

Three left, the Voice proclaimed. They'll come at you one by one, for honor's sake. Three,
and the castle is yours.

The next knight approached, circling and menacing like a Nerakan cavalryman, the short
spear jabbing the air, waiting for an opening. The other two hung back, veiled spectators
at the edge of sight. With a roar, Verminaard spurred Orlog toward the defiant man, who
raised the spear and hurled it.

Verminaard blocked the weapon with the mace, and black fire raced over his arm and
shoulder as the spear splintered in the air. Steady, the Voice urged. Steady. Oh, is this
not a lovely thing?

Then Verminaard closed with the knight, who lifted his shield as he groped for the hilt of
his sword. Verminaard rose in the saddle and brought down the mace with all of his weight
and strength. The ornate silver kingfisher

exploded in the heart of the shield, and the man rocked violently in the saddle. With a
cry of triumph, Verminaard raised the weapon to strike again, but the knight's head lolled
and his hand fell slack on the hilt of his half-drawn sword. The ropes that held him in
the saddle snapped with his full weight, and he toppled from the horse, slain by the sheer
force of the blow.

Two remaining, the Voice coaxed, high and thin with excitement and delight. And you are
coming to love this, my love, my love....

And he was. Exultantly Verminaard galloped toward the last surviving Solamnics. One of
them the larger onedismounted, suddenly and surprisingly, and motioned for Verminaard to
do the same.

“He wants it hand to hand and man to man!” Verminaard muttered, pulling up Orlog not a
spear's cast from the valiant, honorable knight. “And if he is brave enough to offer the
challenge, then so be it!”

As he moved to dismount, the Voice resounded from the mace, dazing him, banishing his
thoughts. You fool! There are two of them. When he has you afoot, then the other

But they don't fight that way, Verminaard thought. They're Solamnics! They don't... Unless
things have changed.

He leaned forward in the saddle, peering mistrustfully at the masked knight who awaited
him. It would be just like the deceptive Solamnic Order to call him forth on a pretext of
honor, then ambush him when he had given up the advantage. And yet something about this
man ...

The Voice returned immediately, taking away the thought before it formed. Now! it urged.
The sun is behind you! Now!

Verminaard looked over his shoulder into the blinding, blood-red sunrise.

Now!

With a shout, he launched the stallion toward the

knight, who blinked, dazzled by the sun, then leapt away just as Verminaard drove the mace
by his head.

“Midnight!” cried Verminaard, and the black light in Nightbringer's wake engulfed the man.
He cried out once, struggled to his knees, and clutched his face.

“I can't see!” he shouted, groping through the dry grass for his dropped weapon.

Now! the Voice urged again. The mace has blinded him. Now!

As he steered the horse toward the helpless man, his mace raised high for the killing
blow, Verminaard saw something flash in the corner of his eye.

The last of the knights swooped by, a silver blur as rider and horse crossed in front of
him. With a shrill whistle, the man leaned out of the saddle, stretching his sinewy arm
toward his blinded companion. In one graceful, incredibly powerful movement, he caught up
the injured man, lifting him onto the horse, and together they rode toward the open castle
gates. Verminaard, astonished, pressed his horse hard behind them.

The Solamnic horse was now overburdened, but in the mile's gallop across the flatlands,
Orlog's weariness made

it hard for Verminaard to make up the distance. At last, sweeping wide around the hapless
riders, Verminaard cut off the path to the castle bridge, and the Solamnic was forced to
rein in his horse scarcely a hundred yards from the bailey walls. Resolutely the rider
lowered his wounded companion and, rising in the saddle, faced Verminaard fearlessly.

“Good adversary,” the Knight called out, raising his sword in the traditional Solamnic
salute, “you have shown yourself strong in arms and enduring in battle. I give you the
chance to show honor as well.”

Listen to him! the Voice whispered as Nightbringer pulsed in Verminaard's hand. The
Solamnic prattle of honor and code and oath is about to begin. Beware, my child: He will
entangle you in honor.

Verminaard nodded. The Voice was right. He had seen the honor-mongers before, and he knew
that their words carried poison and knives.

“My friend is injured,” the knight continued. “He is blind and helpless. Allow him to pass
over the drawbridge and into the bailey. Whatever quarrels you have with our country, our
lord, and our Order, you and I can settle here on the plains, in full sight of my
countrymen.”

“Damn your country! Your lord and your Order be damned!” Verminaard roared, whirling the
mace above his head until a dark spiral formed in the morning air, widening and widening
until it covered the horses and riders, veiling the view of the garrison on the bailey
walls like a thick, gloomy cloud. “As I see it, you've no grounds to bargain. Your
companion stays where he is.”

“So be it,” the knight replied tersely. “Before these walls and the men assembled there, I
say that you are a base, ignoble coward, and should the gods grant me the power to defeat
you, you will be shown no mercy.”

Verminaard sneered. "Oh, but I'll show mercy to you, Sir Knight. I shall prolong your
miserable time of breath

until the lord of the castle himself begs that I finish the job."

“Villain!” someone shouted from the castle walls, and from farther away, the shout was
answered by another, the words indistinguishable, muffled by distance.

The raised hand of the knight stilled further outcry. “The lord of the castle begs to no
brigand. If it must come again to sword and mace, then let it come, by Paladine and by
Huma!”

“And let it come on foot,” Verminaard declared, dismounting in a rustle of robes and a
creak of black leather armor. “For I yearn to face you man to man and arm to arm, so that
none will credit my victory to the stallion beneath me, nor your defeat to poor
horse-mastery.”

The knight dismounted as well, removing his shield from the back of the saddle and
uncovering it so that the risen sun danced fitfully on the embossed white lance and black
dragon that adorned its polished center.

Nightbringer shivered and hummed in Verminaard's hand.

Do not spare him, the Voice murmured with a new, frenzied urgency. Oh, do not spare him,
Lord Verminaard, for he is the worst of our enemies and the fount of our suffering.
Because of his line, we lie in darkness, and at the end of his descendants, we will
breathe again!

“He will not be spared,” Verminaard muttered, “for he stands between me and the lord of
the castle.”

As he approached the veiled knight, Verminaard knew that he faced the strongest fighter
yet.

The man dropped into a swordsman's crouch, sidling gracefully to high ground, away from
his wounded companion. Verminard lumbered after him, noisy and awkward afoot, but
confident in his strength and his weapon and in the mysterious power that ran through the
pulsing mace.

Their paths met on a little rise not fifty yards from the

castle bridge. There, under the sight of Laca's archers, they circled each other twice and
closed for the first attack.

The knight struck first, his saber switching and flashing like the tail of a snake. A
quick backhand slash brought the blade across Verminaard's chest, furrowing effortlessly
through the leather armor. Had the larger man not stepped back quickly, he would have been
slain before the fight had really begun.

Backing away, gasping, Verminaard staggered down the rise, the knight in calm, relentless
pursuit. The blade whistled by his ear once, twice, and he could barely stifle a whimper
as he blocked a thrust with the handle of Nightbringer.

It was then, at the bottom of the rise, that sword locked with mace, steel with ancient
stone. The knight pushed against Verminaard, his mailed face only inches from Verminaard's
own, so that the young man could see the color of his enemy's eyes.

Blue. Pale blue like his own. Like Aglaca's.

Something in those eyes softened. Verminaard dug his heels in the dry, cracked earth and
pushed, and the knight tumbled backward, landing with a rough clatter on the hard ground.

He was back to his feet at once, but the tide of the battle had changed. Verminaard knew
now that he was stronger than the man before him, that for this time, at least, the
quickness and skill of Solamnic swordsmanship fell short against the sheer brute power of
muscle and rock.

With a jubilant shout, Verminaard brought the mace shrieking down at his pressed opponent,
who scrambled free of the blow at the cost of a shattered shield. Reeling, his left arm
limp and useless, the swordsman backed from the violet darkness and staggered up the rise
once more, seeking the vantage of higher ground.

Now! the Voice urged again as the spiked head of Nightbringer swirled, its stone surface
roiling like black lava. He's yours if you strike now! “Who are you?” the wounded knight
rasped, weaving from pain and exertion.

Don't tell... don't tell. He will entangle you in honor___

“Verminaard of Nidus,” the young man announced proudly. “I have come far to meet the lord
of this castle and demand from him what is rightly mine.”

The knight dropped his sword and fell to his knees. With his one good arm, he removed the
helm and aven-tail. His blond hair was streaked with first gray, but his eyes were
brilliant and young, as resolute as they had appeared nine years ago across the Bridge of
Dreed.

Verminaard gasped. It was his own face, thirty years older. “You!” he cried. “Laca
Dragonbane!”

The man met his stare serenely. “What would you have from the lord of the castle,
Verminaard of Nidus?”

Verminaard took a tentative step toward his blood father, then another. Laca rose slowly
to his feet, turned his back on the approaching warrior, and walked calmly, almost
casually to the side of the wounded knight.

“I would have the castle.” Verminaard replied. “I would have the rest of my inheritance,
Laca. And I would have vengeance on you for your years of silence, for my years of
suffering at the hand of Daeghrefn for your deed.”

Laca knelt silently by the blinded man, cradling the fellow's head in his lean,
long-fingered hands. He glared up at the monstrous young man before him and spoke to him
coldly, as though across a great chasm.

“You're a creature apart now, Verminaard of Nidus,” he pronounced. “And you have made your
choices.” He lifted the helm from the face of the injured man. The clouded eyes rolled
back in the head of the hapless man, who lay stunned and moaning in Laca's arms.

“Abelaard!” Verminaard roared. “No! No!”

The wounded man blinked pathetically at the sound of the voice, raising his bruised arm
vaguely.

“No!” Verminaard shouted again, and fell to his knees, Nightbringer black and glittering
in his hand.

He would strike something. Rock and wind ... Laca ... himself. He would end everything,
here at the borders of Estwilde, and there would be nothing but night, and night upon
night....

And a darkness rushed over him, and he saw and remembered nothing.

Laca watched the young man vanish in a swirl of black, engulfing fire. Clouds broke over
the landscape, and for the first time in hours, sunlight spread over the bailey walls of
Castle East Borders. Wearily the Lord of East Borders took the reins of the shivering
Orlog and led the stallion back toward the injured Abelaard.

“Who . . . who was it, Uncle Laca?” the young man asked, rubbing his vacant and useless
eyes. “I don't know,” Laca replied.

In the Khalkist Mountains, overlooking the Nerakan plains, overlooking Nidus and the razed
forest to its south, Verminaard received a new and stern discipline at the hands of nature.

He awoke in a sunlit grotto high above Castle Nidus. The shriek of a raptor wakened him,
and he sprawled blearily, painfully on the stone floor of the little cavern, breathing in
the moist air, the odor of guano and mildew,

and a dark, alien stench that underlay all thesesomething profound and fierce and
reptilian.

He could not figure how he had come there, but he knew he was far from East Borders and
close to home.

Nightbringer lay beside him, glowing with a cold, ebony fire. He shuddered at the memory
of those flames on his arm, of the black oblivion, and most of all at the prospect of
wielding the weapon again.

“No more,” he whispered, his voice as dry and desolate as the vanished plains of Estwilde.
“I shall bear you no more, fight no more.”

And yet as he said the words, his hand reached for the handle of the mace and closed about
it.

He did not know how he had come to that spot. He had knelt in Estwilde, raging and
mourning, and the darkness had swept him away. And now he was miles from the fields of
East Borders, where he could see the smoke rising from the hearth fires of his childhood
home.

Though Nidus was in full view below him, it was a week before he considered returning
there. He stayed in the grotto, in its deepest recesses, faring to the mouth of the cavern
only at night, and then only when the hunger became overwhelming. Though the sun would not
harm him, daylight was strange to him nowalien and unnerving, like darkness to a child.

Far better to stay in the dark awhile, he told himself as the red moon passed sullenly
overhead on his second night in the cave. Better to abide here and mend and recover
strength.

He ate what bitter roots he could forage from the spare highland terrain: knol and dioscor
and the foul-tasting purple betyschastise root, old Speratus had called it. And by night,
the brown madfall beetles were sluggish and unaware. Their flesh was cold and slippery,
but it was nutrient enough as long as he did not eat the poisonous tail.

Once he stood at the edge of a precipice, bathed eerily

in the red glow of Lunitari, and tried to drop Nightbringer into the obscure and rocky
darkness. It seemed fitting, as though dropping it into the darkness would make retrieval
impossible if he was weak and returned for the mace. But the weapon fastened itself to his
hand, glowing and droning, twisting like some monstrous black leech, and he told himself,
Not yet. I can rid myself of it anytime, once my strength is returned. But not yet.

Yet he mistrusted his own thoughts, and so he tried once more. A shadowy pool lay in the
nethermost reach of the cavern, so far from light that only the green glow of the
vespertile bats lightened its black waters. The madfall beetles who dwelt by its banks had
evolved for generations in the near-total darkness, eyeless now, their shells a pale,
translucent pink. It seemed like the spot to leave Nightbringer, and for a moment, his
heart leaped. There would be rest from all of this

from hunger and cold and from the consuming presence of the mace. He would find peace in
the depths of this darkness.

But though Verminaard plunged his hand in the icy water and tried to release the weapon
into the calm, deep pool, still the mace adhered to the skin of his hand. It glowed
beneath the water, if glowed was the word, a deep, velvety blackness within the abject
shadows of the pool.

He tried more drastic methods after that, but fire failed to damage the weapon, and his
own paltry spellcraft was powerless against it. It could not be lost, nor could it be
destroyed, it seemed, but the deeper truth came to him as the fruitless days passed.

It was a week before he admitted that he could not deliver himself from Nightbringer
because he would not be delivered.

But by then he had other concerns, other callings. For Castle Nidus was drawing him as
well, and he knew his long night of solitude was almost over. Soon the gates of the castle
would open for him, and he would enter as a

man utterly changed, brought into total compliance with the Lady's will. He was the Arm of
Takhisis, her champion in the black and flowing light.

Verminaard had found the drus berries earlier that morning. Crushed into a potion, they
were the stuff of visionaries, carried in flasks by shaman and druid, by the scattered
dark clerics of the Dragon Queen. Growing in the wild, untempered by waters or the
alchemist's art, the raw berries offered wilder, more erratic visions. Sometimes more
profound.

Or so Cerestes had told him in the long, magical studies of his childhood.

Now, following a long afternoon's meditation at the edge of the daylight, he ate a handful
of the violet berries and crept back into the grotto. There he crouched on his massive
haunches and waited for the visions and auguries to begin.