Before The Mask (25 page)

L'Indasha frowned. “But you're to be my helper....” It was Paladine's turn to speak.
“Judyth, there is no rule. You may offer yourself, but your choice would be a binding one.
Would you become the keeper of the secret of the blank rune? The keeper continues without
age, without death, without the company of a spouse, so long as the rune holds power.”

The girl looked far off into the night. Paladine himself was asking her to be his servant.
But not demanding it. It truly was her choice.

“I choose...” she began, relishing the words, “I choose to become the keeper, my lord.”
And then she chuckled. “Because I want an adventure of my own choosing. And because you
have asked me my” mind. How could I refuse your respect, your love?"

“You could,” the god said. “Many do. And you, L'Indasha? Your choice returns to you, if
you will have it.” “I choose Robert,” the druidess said. “I choose to let go of the one
secret in faith of knowing others.”

“You are absolutely certain?” Paladine asked softly. “You will be mortal again. You will
die as others die.”

“And I will live as others live.”, said L'Indasha. “Yes. I have chosen.”

Paladine laid his hands on them and spoke the words of forgetting to L'Indasha, of
remembrance to Judyth, and the exchange was complete. Judyth wore the flower pendant with
the blue-purple stone.

Now it was truly hers chosen with full knowledge.

As Robert and the druidess made their way down the mountainside, L'Indasha stopped short
and crowed with delight. “Look! My daylilies! They were all burned in the fire except this
patch, and it was so small and I planted it so quicklywell, just look!”

Before her spread an enormous clump of bright green fans, each one with several scapes
rising into the night sky. Beside it lay the signs of warding. Logr and Yr. Water and Yew
bow.

Journey and Protection. “Mort. Of course,” L'Indasha breathed. “ 'Thank you for the gift,'
he said. Bless him.”

Judyth heard the last of the druidess's laughter floating up on the mountain breeze. She
turned to bid Paladine and Mort good-bye, but they were already gone. She started down the
mountain herself and came quickly upon the clump of daylilies. One blossom remained open
in the advancing night. In its center, behind a blue-purple eye area, a risted rune-staef,
now visible to her in the vein-ing of the flower, spelled the blank rune's symbol. It was
now her turn to guard this key to augury against enemy eyesfor a thousand years, if need
beuntil the coming storms were calmed.

Sothonsien, the rune-staef read, in the old language: The True Face. Revealed Knowledge.

Judyth thought of Aglaca, and then of a ruined face. She wept as she understood. The
rune's reverse its oppositewas Heregrima: The Mask.

The End