Before The Mask (8 page)

And since She seemed resolved to test the youths by allowing them this adventure, Cerestes
could not seize the girl himself....

And since one of the lads, no doubt, would be the Dark Lady's cleric, and the dragon queen
paid him in a harder currency...

And there was the matter of the missing rune. And finally of a temple in Neraka.

He would see that temple, he resolved, but not for Takhisis's sake. In the temple's
obsidian stones lay secrets as mysterious as those housed in the sixteenth and hidden
rune. But these were different secretsof worldly architecture, of politics and power and
the strategies of a hun-. dred dark clerics who awaited the arrival of their mistress.

A dragon's eye could translate those secretsthe simple intrigues of humans to whom the
goddess had not yet come.

And then, with Takhisis safely imprisoned behind the portal, he would sound the runes,
find the green gem-stone, and remove it from her grasp forever. Perhaps he would have it
made into a ring of power, a symbol of his own new order.

Cerestes murmured in obscure anticipation, a veil of spells like smoke enshrouding his
face. He was a rune himself, a blank rune, he thought, his imagination more fanciful as he
crossed over, at last, into sleep.

He was, after all, a dragon. A superior being. He could fashion a prophecy of his own, and
what he desired would come to pass.

Verminaard checked his plan again. The groom's son was bribed, as well as the sentries at
the east gate.

Two horses would await him in the stableone for himself, and one for the returning girland
the east gate of the castle would remain mysteriously open and unguarded for an hour after
midnight.

It was orchestrated completely and carefully, and yet Verminaard fidgeted through the
sparse meal in the early evening at the silent, somber table with Daeghrefn and Aglaca,
Robert and the mage. He hovered nervously above the cold food, certain that all eyes were
upon him, all thoughts uncovering his secret quest.

He cursed himself for having been foolish enough to confide in others. Left to his own,
Daeghrefn could spend days, weeks without even once speaking to him. Verminaard could
travel all the way to the Icewall and back, a journey of some nine hundred miles coming
and going, and be assured that Daeghrefn would not notice.

But perhaps the mage had warned the Lord of Nidus. Or Aglaca had told, naturally, in some
meddlesome concern for his safety. Though Verminaard had clued neither of them that this
was the appointed night, he feared they might know, for the insinuating Voice, silent for
so long as he had

arranged his adventure, had begun to goad him late last evening that this nightwith the
banked clouds and the summer winds dyingwould be ideal for unseen travel.

Perhaps someone else heard the same Voice, the same goading?

And yet they seemed unperturbed, seated in their high-backed chairs, the yellow light from
the hearth dancing over Cerestes' wine cup, over Aglaca's glittering knife as he set it to
the venison and carved gracefully, deftly, with the Solamnic manners that nine years at
Castle Nidus had not shaken from him.

The mage and Aglaca finished their meals and excused themselves. Verminaard pushed back
his chair as well, intent on following Aglaca, but a cold stare from

Daeghrefn stopped him before he completely stood, and it was a long moment until Robert
rose, muttered something to Lord Nidus about “talJage” and “archer's pay,” and the two
older men retired to the fireside, a ledger and another bottle of wine set between them.

Backing at last from the chamber, Verminaard glanced one more time at the grayed heads
bowed over the castle records. The tilting light magnified his father's shadow until
Daeghrefn seemed to fill the hall with a thin, indefinite darkness, through which the lean
hounds stalked, scavenging under the table. It was a shadow that seemed to follow the lad
down the corridor and up the stairs to his quarters, where a huddled shape under the
blankets told him that Aglaca had already fallen off to sleep.

Quietly he draped his heavy cloak over his shoulder, slowly buckled on his sword and
knife, and took up his bow. Then there was the little jeweled risting dagger Aglaca had
given him after the gebo-naud. It was two days' ride to Neraka, and he had thought it
better to forage for food along the way than to risk calling attention to himself by
taking provisions from Robert's closely monitored larders. He withdrew the sack of runes
from beneath his mattress, holding his breath as the stones clicked together loudly in the
leather bag.

Aglaca did not stir, but lay in a leaden silencea thick, invulnerable sleep.

Verminaard leaned over the edge of Aglaca's bed and stared perplexedly at the draped form,
heavily covered and blanketed on a night unseasonably warm. He and the Solamnic youth had
spent most of their time together in silence or argument and rivalry, in the long foraging
hunts through the highlands and mock combat of Robert's demanding lists. Verminaard, much
the larger and stronger of the two, managed to baste Aglaca thoroughly in tests of
strength, and Aglaca still refused outright to compete in Cerestes' classroom, stoically
scorning the

instructions of the dark mage.

“There is no defeat in you,” Verminaard whispered, then caught himself, surprised at the
respect in his voice. Quietly, angrily, he unsheathed and tossed Aglaca's small gift
dagger onto the foot of the bed.

In the eight years Verminaard had held it, the magic Aglaca had claimed for the weapon had
yet to show itself. Protection against evil indeed! He had never seen the blade do its
work, never seen it glow with the fierce and arcane light of real enchanted weaponry. If
it hadn't protected him against the lesser evils of Castle Nidus, what good would it be on
the dark roads through the mountains?

After all, it was only a small knife, a child's gaudy toy. And he was about a man's
business, traveling

south to Neraka in the dead of night.

Verminaard stood uncomfortably and strode to the door. The corridor was dark and damp, and
he removed his boots to take the stairs silently, attentive to every sound in the
castlethe resettling of beams, the murmur of deep voices from downstairs, and the rustle
and growl of the dogs in the great hall. Twice he had to wait, holding his breath in the
dark recesses of the corridors as sentries passed by. It seemed like hours until he
stepped into the night air, into the bailey, and raced across the castle courtyard to the
stables against the east wall.

He would bid it all good-bye gladlycastle and garrison and especially Daeghrefn. A new
freedom lay before him, frightening him and inspiring him at the same time, and Verminaard
longed to embrace it as he moved toward a solitary light waving in the shadows of the east
tower.

The stable door was open and the stalls lit dimly by that lonely lantern, just as the
bribed boy had promised. Verminaard slipped through the door and closed it behind him,
starting for a moment at the hooded form that stood

between the stalls, tightening the cinch on a black mare's saddle.

Young Frith, it seemed, was intent on earning his illicit pay. In the adjoining stall,
Verminaard's black stallion Orlog stood saddled and set for the coming journey.

Verminaard inspected the boy's work.

“Good,” he breathed. “Very good. Frith, you saddle a horse for a knight. When I return,
I'll see to it that your lot rises with my father.”

“See to your own lot,” the hood replied, and turned to face him with a crooked smile and
dancing eyes.

“Aglaca!” Verminaard exclaimed much too loudly. Then, angrily clutching the youth by the
hood, he threw him roughly to the floor of the stall.

“I'm going with you,” the lad whispered, his pale eyes intent and dauntless. He had not
flinched once, not when Verminaard had pulled him down, kicked him, nor even now, when
Verminaard's big knuckles promised a broken nose.

Slowly Verminaard drew back his hand. The horses, confounded by the struggle at their
feet, whickered nervously and kicked against their stalls, and the dogs began to bark in
the keep.

“Go back to bed,” Verminaard urged, opening the stable door and looking nervously out
toward the keep.

The windows were dark. Good. Daeghrefn must be abed. There was time yet. But that time had
narrowed sharply. Breathing an old calming spell Cerestes had taught him for the occasions
when he had to speak with

Daeghrefn, Verminaard led the horses into the bailey. The sky had cleared suddenly,
disturbingly, and the grounds were starlit and silver.

“I'm going with you,” Aglaca said again, dusting the straw from his hair. “You need me.”
“Never! Just hand up my pack.”

Aglaca grunted as he hoisted the bundle onto the stallion. The barking from the keep
became louder, more insistent, and the first lightfrom Robert's lodgings, it seemed
flickered to life from the other side of the courtyard.

“Now you help me,” Aglaca urged as Verminaard turned away. “Hold this. They'll be here any
moment.”

Verminaard started to spur the stallion toward the east gate, risking the noise and the
commotion, the attentions of a dozen guards. Better to be stopped now, to answer to
Daeghrefn for a midnight disturbance, than to ride over the Khalkist mountains with this .
. . this child in tow. It was his adventure, planned and dreamt of and augured for half a
year, and Aglaca would be ...

“Could you even pick her out, Verminaard?”

“What?” he shouted, spinning in the saddle, losing his balance, clutching frantically at
the reins and the saddle horn as he leaned, rocked ...

. . . and steadied, gasping in fright and anger, glaring coldly at Aglaca, who had somehow
managed to hoist both himself and his pack onto the other horse.

“Would you know this girl if they set ten Nerakan women before you?” “Of course! Now let
me” “What color are her eyes?” Aglaca was persistent, intent on an embarrassing truth. “Go
back to bed!” “What color are her eyes, Verminaard?”

“Well, I know they'll be the color of sea or skybut I suppose you've seen them?”
Verminaard spat, his horse prancing, turning in tight circles. He wanted to strike the
lad, knock him from the saddle and be on his way, but already the doubts were rising, the
great misgiving he had tried to hide from himself....

It had been misty that day. He had seen her from a great distance.

“What color are her eyes, damn it?” Verminaard roared, and the keep erupted in a flurry of
lights and shouts and barking.

“Make for the gate!” Aglaca cried.

They were out into the night before the bleary garrison had mustered to find them.
Galloping swiftly over the rocky trail, stone and gravel flying from the horses' hooves,
they kept a reckless pace. Finally, in a stretch of country where the trail opened into
the grassy flatland, Aglaca overtook

Verminaard, who gradually, reluctantly, slowed Orlog to a trot, then a walk.

Behind them, the towers of Castle Nidus were lost in the distance and in a strange dark
wall of clouds that had descendedor must have descendedfrom somewhere in the clear night
sky. Peering back over his shoulder, Aglaca gave a low whistle.

“We've come far in a short spell, Master Verminaard,” he observed wryly, giving the mare's
flank a soft, reassuring pat.

Verminaard regarded his companion coldly. “How did you know, Aglaca?” he asked. “Know?”
“That I was leaving for Neraka tonight? I told no one of the time.”

“That you did not.” Aglaca guided his mare to a high green patch of harrowgrass, where she
bent amiably and began to graze. “But by your deeds I knew. Cleaned boots, for the first
time in a month. Two capes draped over the foot of the bed, and your old gloves for
travel. If anyone ever prepared for the road, and prepared obviously and visibly, it was
you, Verminaard of Nidus.”

His face burning, Verminaard followed Aglaca, guiding his stallion slowly over the dry
ground. The beast snatched at the nourishing harrowgrass eagerly as Aglaca recounted the
events of the day how Verminaard had sharpened his blades and restrung his bow, how he had
passed by the stable twice, looking in on the well-being of the horses.

“And finally,” the lad continued, dismounting from the mare and drawing forth a strip of
quith-pa, the dried fruit of elven travelers, “you steered even farther away from Robert
and Daeghrefn than usual, as if Daeghrefn would actually attend to anything you'd a mind
to do.”

Verminaard nodded, eyeing the quith-pa wistfully. Already the romance of foraging had
passed away, and the real hunger of the trail had set in.

He was soft, he knewscarcely two hours from Castle Nidus, but he would gladly trade his
sword for some dried fruit.

“Where's your dagger?” Aglaca's question shocked him.

Wordlessly he dismounted, letting the moment pass. He muttered something about
“forgotten,” about “hurried departures” and “I prefer my sword, for that matter”. Aglaca
said nothing, but regarded him quietly.

“I hope your 'hurried departure' didn't keep you from bringing that second cloak,” he
observed, nodding toward the cloud bank to the north, rising out of the coun-

try they had left behind. “There's a storm following us. North to south, fast, with sheets
of water and a day-long dark. Should be here about midmorning, by the way those nightbirds
flew over.”

Verminaard frowned. How did Aglaca know all this weather lore and counsel? Aglaca smiled
and vaulted into the saddle as though he had left some mysterious heaviness at the

gates of Castle Nidus. “So you'd best have a rain-fast cloak on your person, Verminaard,
or the two of us should find a cave or a copse very soona dry place to wait out the wind.”

Verminaard lifted himself back onto Orlog and led the way toward the foothills and the
rocky ground above the great Nerakan forest. Aglaca paused for a moment, watching his
companion ride ahead.

“Where is your dagger indeed?” he whispered. Sadly, he brought the small glittering blade
from beneath his cloak and held it aloft in the pale light of Solinari.

“It will protect you from evil, brother Verminaard,” the Solamnic youth declared. “Even if
I have to wield it.”

The promised storm never reached them, but the dark clouds did.

For an hour or so, the lads rode at the head of a cold, moist wind as tendrils of ashen
fog reached out and passed over them. The temperature dropped rapidly, and soon their
breath misted and the flanks of the trotting horses steamed in the brisk new weather.

But there was still no rain, and a shadowy midday passed as Verminaard and Aglaca kept
moving south, where the forest abutted a steep ridge of mountains, on the other side of
which, Aglaca promised, lay the Plains of Neraka and the settlement itself.

All around them, the clouds thickened, covering the rock face, descending in a thick fog
that blotted the sun entirely. They rode through a swimming grayness, the trail ahead
lost, until Verminaard surrendered guidance to Orlog, letting the reins go slack as the
stallion waded his way through the narrow passage. Aglaca followed closely, his mare's
nose inches from Orlog's switching tail.

There were tales about the mountain bandits, how they bred for keen eyesight and could
follow unwary travelers through storm and fog. How they called to their intended victims
from the sides of the road. Hidden in mist and obscurity, they would cry out deceptively,
like wounded men or lost babies.

Verminaard rose in the saddle, his hand resting uneasily on his sword. Twice he started at
noises in the mist, at the sudden, flurried wingbeat of rooks and then at something large
crashing blindly through the high aeterna foliage in the foothills. He had assured himself
that the sounds meant nothingwere nothing, indeed, beyond the weav-ings of his own fears
and imaginationswhen the Voice came to him again, as though it rose to greet him out of
the chill and the fog ...

... or the fog itself was speaking.

Excellent, Lord Verminaard, it said, the old familiar accents sugary with praise.
Verminaard glanced quickly behind him, but Aglaca's head was turned, his shoulders relaxed.

He did not hear the Voice. Good.

Of course he does not hear, Lord Verminaard, the Voice broke in, low and musical and
neither masculine nor feminine, as usual. Why should I let him hear what passes between
us? He could not... understand. He is different, but it is much more than that. You
understand, don't you? How singling you out was ... all I could do?

Verminaard nodded dimly, then looked'back uneasily through the mist at his companion.

fust look at him, coaxed the Voice, and the fog seemed to play with Aglaca's angular
features, molding his face to the soft roundness of a child's. He hasn't an inkling. Nor
does he have the instruments. The faculties.

Verminaard blinked. Aglaca had always seemed clever enough to him. There was a certain
blessing on the boy, a certain art like that of the runemaster's risting, where a humble
stone is transformed to something magical with a quick stroke of the carving knife. And
Aglaca could take a defeatin the lists, in the hunt, wherever defeat was handed himand
turn it toward graciousness, to where defeat was no longer humiliating, and the victory no
longer mattered as much, either.

But these are new circumstances, the Voice insisted, rising in pitch, in volume, drowning
out his charitable thoughts. And this time the victory mattersmatters more than anything
and anyone, yes, because it is this victory that can make your name.

“Verminaard? Slow your horse,” Aglaca urged. “This little mare's not used to following the
likes of Orlog.”

All of your mistakes and misdeeds, the Voice persisted, higher in pitch and more
penetrating, will be set right if you bring back the girl. Your father's favor is won,
yes, and the esteem of the garrison of Robert and the mage and the rest of them. What need
will you have of runestones then, with your future assured and seamless and joyous?

The reins shook in Verminaard's hands. It was too good, this prophecy, too good....

Too good if you fail to do this alone, the Voice continued, a faint hum at the edge of
hearing, for if the child helps you, whom will your father credit for the rescue? And whom
the mage?

And whom the girl, for that matter?

“Wait!” Aglaca shouted as Verminaard urged Orlog to sudden speed on the trail ahead,
vanishing into the gray fog.

Aglaca's voice faded behind him, the strained shouts of “Verminaard!” echoing in the maze
of rock and cliff and entangled forest. At times, it seemed as though there were two or
three voices clamoring in the mist.

Good, Verminaard thought, steering Orlog through the precarious fog. Let him find his own
way back to Nidus. Or let him find worse, for all I care. Neraka is mine, and the girl. I
don't need him to find the way.

Was it his own thought, or was it the Voice, returned to him and muffled by murk and
distance until he could no longer distinguish it from his own musings?

He reached for the pouch of runes at his belt. They rattled reassuringly as Orlog passed
through a passage of rubble and pine, and the trail narrowed and sloped southeast, weaving
into the foothills, shadowed by the black looming form of Mount Berkanth.

Instinctively Verminaard touched the hilt of his sword. He could see better now. He was in
the heart of bandit country, in the rocky highlands where the crack Nerakan cavalry
patroledworse by far than the bandits, and the horror of huntsman and horseman from Nidus
all the way to the grasslands of Estwilde and Throt. Once no more than competent brigands,
they were disciplined now and far

more deadly, their numbers increasing as a great and unfathomable power pushed them to
raids more and more daring, more and more successful.

He coughed nervously. It was a time that he wished for company. The Voice was utterly gone.

Steering the stallion over the sloping ground, he traveled by instinct, offering prayers
to the gods of darkness. Takhisis he asked for safe passage, and Sargonnas the Consort,
Hiddukel and Chemosh and Zeboim and the others until the names failed him. Then, with a
deeper

and more basic instinct, he drew his sword, resting the blade across the swell of the
saddle.

Instantly, almost as a perverse answer to his prayers, shadows flitted through the mist
around him, dark horsemen at the edge of his sightsome scarcely ten yards from where he
trembled atop Orlog. Verminaard heard the snort and whinny of horses, a hushed flurry of
what seemed to be command and instruction in a cant of Common speech and a language he did
not understanda rocky tongue, full of hard consonants and gutturals.

The shapes milled about at a threatening distance. Had they carried torches, as regular
cavalry often did in a fog, he would have been discovered at once.

Bandits again. For surely they were the ones encircling him, lightless in the way of
brigand riders, their destination westthrough the forest, no doubt, then north to the high
plains of Taman Busuk beyond. Soon their paths would cross his, and no fog would conceal
that he was a stranger, and alone, and bearing the emblems of Castle Nidus.

For a moment, he froze in the saddle, paralyzed by fear and indecision. They would raise
his head on a pike; they would torture him and leave him for dead on the high plains.

Where was Aglaca when you needed his wits?

Desperately Verminaard reversed his path. If he doubled back and rode among them, veiled
by murk and distance, the bandits might assume he was one of them. They would be less
likely to investigate, and the fog might give him enough time to figure an escape.